“You’re wasting bullets, man,” Sam said.
Cooper shouted. “Please sit down and let us handle this.”
I could see the driver of the lead car, a bearded man with a scarred face. The man sitting next to him in the passenger seat was bald and looked like he might have been a bare-knuckle boxer in a previous life. He was holding an SA-80, the machine gun usually used by the British Army, but he wasn’t firing at us.
“Why aren’t they firing?” I asked Sam.
“I don’t know, man.”
Were they waiting for the road to widen so they could flank us? There was some reason they were biding their time.
“Tanya, do you have the map?” I asked her.
“Yeah.”
“What’s up ahead?”
“Nothing much. There’s a crossroads about a mile from here.”
“They’re not firing at us because they’re herding us toward the crossroads,” I told Cooper. “There will be more cars there, maybe a roadblock. These guys behind us are making sure we can’t go back once we see it.”
“Thornley,” I said. “Aim the gun ahead of us. You might want to try and hit something this time or we’re going to be in trouble.”
Thornley spoke into his microphone. “Cooper?”
Cooper hesitated. Then he said, “Do as he says.”
The gun mount whirred as Thornley turned it to face front.
Lucy had unstrapped herself and grabbed an M16. Tanya slid out of her seat and into the rear compartment. “You think there will be many of them, Alex?”
I nodded. “Yeah. If they can spare a dozen cars just to make sure we keep going forward, they must have a lot of personnel at the crossroads waiting for us.”
“We should be able to storm right through them in Betty,” Sam said.
“The problem will be when we get to Muldoon,” I said. “Once we’re at the harbor, we’ll need to get out of Betty and onto a boat. That’s if there are even any boats there after that drone attack.”
“Well, that’s the answer, man.” Sam pointed at the Magpie. “As long as we’ve got that thing on board, the drone won’t attack us. But the bandits will be toast.”
He was right. If we played this the right way, the drones would take care of our bandit problem.
“Crossroads ahead,” Cooper said. “There are cars everywhere. And a roadblock.”
We moved forward to look through the windscreen. The bandits had parked cars on the road ahead and on the roads going left and right. There were gunmen crouched behind the cars and some in the fields.
“We’re going to go through them,” Cooper said. “Oh, shit, they’ve got an RPG.”
I saw the RPG at the same time Cooper did. A man standing in a field to our right had the anti-tank weapon on his shoulder and was aiming it at us.
“Thornley, the guy in the field!” I shouted.
The top gun boomed. At the same time, the man in the field fired the RPG. He was cut to pieces by Thornley’s shots but the anti-tank missile was already flying our way.
I tried to grab my seat harness to prepare for the impact but the missile hit us before I had wrapped my fingers around the material. The blast ripped into the side of the Mastiff, making a deafening bang and shaking the vehicle.
Cooper managed to keep us on the road. We shot forward into the roadblock of cars, pushing them aside. The gunmen started shooting at us.
I expected Thornley to return fire but there was no sound from the gun on the roof.
“Thornley, you okay?” I asked him.
He collapsed onto the platform. “I…no. Not okay.”
Tanya grabbed the first-aid kit and rushed over to him. He leaned heavily against the wall.
“What’s wrong?” Tanya asked. “Where does it hurt?”
He shook his head slowly. “It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt at all.” He closed his eyes.
“Thornley!” Tanya said, shaking him. “Thornley!”
His body was lifeless. Tanya laid him on the floor. I could see blood seeping through his jacket at the base of his neck. He had taken a bullet at the roadblock.
I checked the SDU screen. The gunmen were getting into their cars and joining the vehicles already following us.
Tanya got up onto the platform. I expected to hear the gun fire and see cars explode behind us, but Tanya came down again. “The gun’s damaged.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The drones will take care of them.” I went up front and climbed in next to Cooper. “How much farther to the coast?”
“We should be there in about half an hour. Is Thornley dead?”
“He is,” I said.
“Damn. He was a good kid. His whole family got killed right after the zombies first appeared. He always said that he would be reunited with them one day. He was a man of faith, you know? Well, I guess he’s with them now.”
“Listen, I said, “when we get to the coast and get rid of these bandits, we should take the boats south instead of driving all the way back. We can find a vehicle and only have to drive fifty miles to Prometheus. That was our original plan but we had a problem with the drones. With the Magpie, we don’t have that problem.”
“But the captain’s orders were to load the vaccine onto the Mastiff and drive it back.”
“He didn’t know we were going to lose Thornley and take an RPG blast. Who knows what damage it’s done? If we try to drive all the way back, we might not even make it.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I follow orders. “I know you guys aren’t real soldiers but I have my job to consider.”
“What are they going to do? Fire you? You’re a valuable resource in this apocalypse. They won’t fire you just because you followed the best course of action to get the vaccine to Prometheus safely.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Of course.” He had half an hour to make up his mind and it really didn’t matter what he decided. I had already made up my mind that once I was on the Easy, I was sailing south. Driving the route to the camp had been a necessity yesterday but I was damned if I was going to leave the safety of the boat to make that drive again. I wanted Cooper to agree to my plan because that would save any conflict we might have when we got to the coast.
But if he refused and insisted on driving back, I would tell him that he’d be doing so alone. Given the choice between that or coming with us, I knew he would choose the boats. Driving back alone would be suicide.
We drove on for half an hour with the bandits in pursuit but not making their move yet. When we saw a sign for Muldoon, I told Cooper to follow it.
When the half-ruined fishing village came into sight through the rain-streaked windscreen, I directed Cooper to the barricade and told him to drive down to the beach. Maybe there was a boat in the harbor that hadn’t been sunk in the drone attack.
He took us past the Kingfisher pub and down the road toward the sea. It looked like there were at least twenty cars behind us now. As they slowed down to drive through the gap in the barricade, a sudden flash erupted behind the lead car. The entire village seemed to shake as the cars exploded one after the other like dominoes falling.
Cooper kept his cool and got us to the harbor in one piece.
Sitting on the pebbly beach, exactly where we had left it, was the Zodiac.
We got out of the Mastiff and crossed the beach to our craft. It looked undamaged, unlike the boats that had been moored at the harbor. They lay at odd angles, grounded on the sea bed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sam said, untying the Zodiac from the metal stake.
I turned to Cooper. “You really don’t want to drive all the way back to the camp, do you?”
He nodded toward the Easy and Escape floating out at sea. “Have you got food on board those boats?”
“We have,” I said.
“Then no, I don’t want to drive back.”
I grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “If you want, you can even have steak tonight.”
“I wo
n’t say no to that.”
We made two trips in the Zodiac. Sam and Tanya took the snacks and drinks we had taken from the petrol station in the first run. Tanya stayed on board while Sam piloted the craft back to take Lucy, Cooper, and me as well as all the weapons and ammo. We also took the Magpie because we were going to need it when we got another vehicle farther south.
But that could wait. For now, I was glad to be heading home to The Big Easy.
27
After we had stowed the weapons and snack food, we decided to take the boats down the coast, look for a suitable place to go ashore that was as close as we could get to the road that led to Prometheus, and spend the night on the boats.
The brigadier was expecting us to be driving back today with the vaccine but as far as I was concerned, he could sweat for a while.
I climbed up to the bridge and sank into the pilot’s chair, feeling instantly at home among the controls. Cooper was with Tanya and Sam on the Escape, which was already beginning to sail south.
Lucy was in the living area below me, either listening to the radio or reading a book. I wished the day was sunny instead of wet because then Lucy would sit on the aft deck, usually with the radio playing.
But apart from the weather, everything else was perfect. Tomorrow would bring more hardships, no doubt, but for now we were on the waves and free from the perils of the mainland.
And if all went well tomorrow and I finally discovered where Joe and our parents were, then soon they would be on board with us. Then things really would be perfect.
I hoped the brigadier would be true to his word and check the database to find my family.
By the time we reached the area of the coast that would give us the closest access point to Prometheus, the rain had eased a little. The radio crackled and Sam’s voice said, “Dude, do you see what I see?”
I looked toward the coast. I saw an empty, sandy beach with cliffs behind it but not much else.
“Where are you looking?” I asked Sam.
“On the cliffs, man.”
I looked up and saw what he was referring to. I smiled. It was perfect.
Atop the cliff was a cafe. In the car park sat a single vehicle. A bus.
“Can you drive a bus?” I asked Sam.
“Of course. Can’t everyone?”
“No.”
“It’s easy,” he said.
“Okay, you want to go check it out?”
“Nah, it’ll still be there tomorrow. For now, let’s just relax. Drop anchor, man, this is where we’re spending the night.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. I cut the engine and dropped the anchor. We had stayed a good distance from the coast because of the drones, despite the fact that the Magpie was on board the Escape. There was no need to fall under the scrutiny of a drone operator if we didn’t have to.
I got the binoculars and aimed them at the bus on the cliffs. It was a single-decker painted in blue and white. I saw movement within and adjusted the focus on the binoculars. The bus driver was still in there, his mottled blue skin starkly contrasting with his crisp white shirt. I played the binoculars over the rest of the vehicle. The driver seemed to be the only zombie in there.
I went down to the living area and found Lucy sitting on the sofa, her legs curled up beneath her as she read a paperback romance novel. The Chris Barnes Midday Show was playing on the radio, with Bastille’s “Things We Lost in the Fire” currently coming out of the speakers.
I went to the freezer and took out five steaks, setting them onto a plate on the counter so they would defrost for later.
Lucy put the book down and stretched languorously. “I’m going to go down to the bedroom and take a nap. Want to come?”
I recognized the wicked glint in her blue eyes. “Yes,” I said, following her to the door. “I do.”
* * *
The rest of the day passed too quickly. No sooner had Lucy and I showered and returned to the living area than it was time to prepare dinner. Sam, Tanya, and Cooper came over in their Zodiac and we ate the steaks while telling Cooper of our adventures. We learned that he was divorced and had no children. The army had always been his first love. Without it, he would be lost.
We drank a toast to Thornley before calling it a night. Sam, Tanya, and Cooper returned to the Escape while Lucy and I went down to bed.
It was in the early hours of the morning that I was startled awake by a nightmare. I sat up in bed and looked out of the porthole at the dark sky while I tried to rid my mind of the images that had woken me.
Lucy sat up and touched my shoulder lightly. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a nightmare.” I lay back down and closed my eyes, hoping that when sleep returned, it wouldn’t bring the nightmare back with it.
I had dreamed that I was standing in a scorched field, surrounded by other people. In the center of the crowd was Jax, naked with her dark veins standing out in stark contrast to her skin.
She looked at me and smiled but there was no humor in that smile; it was pure evil. Then, as she stood there, black roots began to sprout from her fingertips, their tendrils twisting and reaching for the scorched earth. When the roots reached the ground, they disappeared into the soil.
Suddenly, the people around me looked down at their feet. Dark roots were growing up from the ground and twisting their sinewy tendrils around everyone’s feet and legs, creeping up and up until they covered the people entirely.
The roots fell away and everyone had become a zombie. They turned to look at me with their yellow eyes.
Then they all started to stagger toward me.
28
The following morning was bright and sunny, the clear blue sky promising a day without rain. As we rode the Zodiac to the beach, I still had memories of the Jax nightmare running through my mind. I tried to push it out of my head. I needed to be alert if I was going to live through today and see tomorrow.
We landed on the beach and dragged the Zodiac up along the sand to the rocks at the base of the cliffs. Leaving it there, we found a set of concrete steps that climbed from the beach to the cafe above and ascended them warily. We had no idea what might be at the top of the cliffs. We knew the bus driver was a zombie and that the presence of one zombie usually indicated that there were more somewhere close by.
That was why we hadn’t brought any of the vaccine boxes across with us yet; we wanted to scout the area first and make sure it was as safe as we could make it before we loaded ourselves down with boxes.
Our ammo supplies were low, so Lucy and I had elected to bring our baseball bats instead of the guns for the trip to the cafe. That also meant that we could dispatch any zombies, including the bus driver, quietly.
The bus was the only vehicle parked outside the cafe. The cafe itself looked deserted. “There’s nothing in there that I can see,” Lucy said, peering through the window.
We moved to the bus. The emergency exit at the rear was open. “Why didn’t he get out this way?” Cooper asked.
“If there isn’t something to motivate him to do that, he won’t,” I said. “He’ll just stay in the same place until something catches his attention.”
“Well, we’ve caught his attention now,” Cooper said, pointing through the bus windows to where the driver was lurching along the aisle between the seats. He had heard us speaking and was coming this way to bite us and spread the virus.
Or so he thought.
He stumbled out of the emergency exit and onto the cement surface of the car park. He groaned when he saw us.
I smashed his head in with my bat. He fell to the ground and lay there, the wound in his head oozing dark blood.
I looked around. The area seemed to be free of any other threats.
“Let’s get the vaccine,” Tanya said. “I’m sure that by now the brigadier is worrying about us.”
* * *
It took us over an hour to load all the boxes into the bus. By the time we were done, I felt exhausted. My
lack of sleep, due to the nightmare, was catching up with me. We had checked the bus over before loading it and found the keys already in the ignition. There was enough fuel to get us to Prometheus and back.
We boarded the bus, but before sitting down in one of the front seats -the other seats were all piled high with the vaccine- I went to one of the boxes and opened it. I removed three syringes of vaccine and put them in the pocket of my combat jacket. If I was going to find Joe and my parents, I was also going to vaccinate them.
I turned to Lucy. “Do you want to take two of these in case you find your parents?”
She shook her head. She really was sure that her parents were dead.
I sat next to her and offered her a smile that didn’t really mean anything but at the same time meant everything.
Sam started the bus. The engine thrummed like a heartbeat. We set off along the road that would take us to Camp Prometheus.
During the drive, we saw zombies in the fields and in the small villages we passed through, but none of them bothered us. Some of the creatures glared at us with their yellow eyes but by the time they had seen us, we were gone again. Sam kept us moving along at a steady pace.
When we reached the M6 motorway, we only had to drive down it for five miles before we reached the gate that led to Prometheus.
We drove past the lake and woods to the military compound. After the gates were opened for us and we drove into the compound, we got out of the bus, ready to go in search of the brigadier.
There was no need. He came marching over to us with a grin on his face. Seeing the cardboard boxes piled on the seats and in the aisle, he simply said, “Well done.” He told Cooper to report to his squad. Cooper said goodbye to us and marched away along the street. The brigadier looked around. “I sent two men with you. Where is the other?”
“He didn’t make it,” Tanya said.
“Fine,” the brigadier said coldly. “Now, I have something to show you.”
“Wait,” I said. “Before you show me anything, I want to see the results of the database search for my family.”
Wildfire- Destruction of the Dead Page 13
