“They’re naming the camps now,” Jax said.
Tanya nodded.
As we finished the meal, I wondered how many times the farmer and his family had sat around this table enjoying dinner together. They could not have guessed that one day the world would be changed forever, they would all be dead, and a group of strangers would be sitting at the table listening to music and eating curry. For that family, it was all over.
Maybe they were the lucky ones.
We pushed the empty plates away and took our beers into the living room where the fire still crackled in the fireplace. Sam brought the radio in and placed it on the mantelpiece. Rhiannon was singing about an umbrella.
“Come and look at this map,” Tanya said, pointing to the map of Britain. I sat on the rug next to her.
“Is it possible to take a boat from here”—she indicated the coast near our current location— “to here?” She pointed farther south at the city of Truro in Cornwall.
I had been to Cornwall on holiday when I was ten years old. My parents had taken Joe and me to Truro to look at the port. There had been some big ships there. “Yes, it’s possible to take a boat there,” I said, “but why Truro? It’s no different from any other city.”
“It is different,” Tanya replied, “because that’s where the radio station is being broadcast from.” She looked at me closely but I didn’t get her point.
I looked at Jax and Sam sitting on the sofa. “I don’t understand.”
Jax leaned forwards and told me their plan.
“We’re going to take over Survivor Radio.”
Chapter 12
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why?”
“We’re only going to take it over temporarily,” Tanya said. “We need to get a message out to anyone who’s listening.”
“What message?”
“The people in the Survivors Camps need to leave. The people outside of the camps need to stay there and not report to the military checkpoints.”
I looked from one to the other of my new friends. The firelight flickered on their solemn faces. They were serious. They were actually considering taking over Survivor Radio. I could only imagine how well the army must be guarding their one media channel. How did Tanya, Jax, and Sam think they were going to get into the studio? Just walk in under the noses of the soldiers?
“I’ve seen what happens in those camps,” I said. “I’m sure the people in them already know they should leave.”
“They’re being fed misinformation,” Jax said. “As far as they know, there isn’t anywhere safe to go. They’re like that woman in the basement…afraid to leave because they don’t think there’s safety anywhere else.”
“There isn’t,” I reminded her.
“Yes, there is,” Tanya said. “Just not in this country.”
“Where?”
“America.”
I shook my head, remembering the news reports I had seen on the Solstice. “The virus has reached America. They’re as infected as we are.”
“That’s not true,” Jax said.
Maybe they just didn’t know it yet, hadn’t seen the news reports on the internet. “It was on the internet news. I saw the reports with my own eyes. The president called a state of emergency. One of the headlines said there was a virus outbreak in the U.S.”
“When was this?”
I tried to count off the days in my mind. “Six or seven days ago.”
Sam laughed and shook his head. “That was propaganda bullshit, man.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yeah, I can. Vigo Johnson is in the States right now. I spoke to him on a satellite phone two days ago. All they knew over there for a while was that Britain had gone dark. The U.S. government sent military aircraft over and looked at images from spy satellites and now they have some idea of what is happening but there’s no virus over there. It’s only here.”
“What about India?” I asked, “That’s where the virus came from.”
Jax shook her head. “No, Alex, that’s a lie. The news reports said there was a patient zero in London but I had been investigating reports of an unknown virus a week before that story came out. There were sightings of patients turning blue and staggering out of hospitals before the London story was concocted.
“These sightings and reports started in Scotland and moved south across the country. They didn’t originate in London. The government is trying to wash their hands of all responsibility by blaming a virus from another country. The truth is, the thing started in Scotland. Probably escaped from a military test centre or something. My bet is it all started on Apocalypse Island.”
“Apocalypse Island?” I wondered if these people were journalists for respected media outlets or conspiracy theory websites.
“It’s a nickname,” Jax said, “for a government facility on an island off the coast of Scotland. The place is run by scientists conducting experiments into diseases like foot and mouth and mad cow disease. If this virus came from that area, it must be from Apocalypse Island. Somebody messed up and it got to the mainland. The rest was inevitable once it reached a population of people to infect.”
“Have you seen this island?” I asked.
She shook her head. “But we’ve all heard about it. And if it’s true, that’s where the virus came from.”
I took a deep swallow of beer as I tried to process what I was being told. “Does it matter where the virus came from? The fact is, it’s here. I know you guys are journalists and want to get to the bottom of things like this but for people like me, all that matters is that there are zombies trying to kill us.”
“It matters, Alex,” Tanya said, “because if they created this virus, they might have a vaccine. Something that stops you from turning if you get bit. Don’t you think the people have a right to know if that’s the case?”
“If there’s a vaccine, they’d be injecting everyone in the camps,” I suggested.
“And what happens then, man?” Sam asked. “Everyone wouldn’t feel so helpless. They might leave the “safety” of the camps and find out that the rest of the world is hunky dory. Everyone would flee by any means possible, leaving the politicians in control of nothing but a country full of the undead. The way things are now, they are still in control of the people. That’s what they want.
“They can’t have it any other way. If the rest of the world found out the truth and it was a manmade virus that escaped from a government facility, the people in charge would be mass murderers. They would be tried as such. No way, man…better to spread propaganda and keep the population under control.”
I wasn’t sure how much of this I believed. I had never trusted the media. Tanya, Jax, and Sam worked for an industry that was known for putting a spin on everything. On the other hand, I had seen with my own eyes the military takeover of the marina at Swansea. The story would explain that. There might be a grain of truth in what they were telling me but they were filling in the rest themselves.
But their plan to take over Survivor Radio had me interested. Lucy listened to Survivor Radio. Maybe I could get a message to her. And Johnny Drake was playing requests for people in the Survivors Camps, which meant he had some form of communication with those camps. I might be able to get a message to Joe or find out where he and my family were.
The rest of it…Apocalypse Island, the government lies…didn’t concern me. But if the story I had just heard was true and the rest of the world was uninfected, I could find Joe and my parents, rendezvous with Lucy and sail for America on The Big Easy. We could escape this hell.
All I had to do was help Tanya, Jax, and Sam break into a radio station in Cornwall and take over the government-controlled broadcast for long enough to get a message out. Then escape with my life.
Easy.
Yeah, right.
But what other option did I have? This was a chance to contact Lucy. The only chance I would ever have.
I looked at Tanya and nodded. “We’ll need to g
et a boat. Swansea marina is out.”
“Every other marina will be exactly the same,” she said. “They’re controlling every way into and out of the country.”
“So what do we do?”
“We have to steal a boat from under their noses.”
Chapter 13
The next morning, I awoke on the sofa as sunlight streamed in through the window. I had found fresh sheets and a pillow in the linen closet and used them to make my night on the sofa more comfortable, but when I moved, I felt a painful stiffness in all my joints and muscles.
Tanya, Jax, and Sam had taken their sleeping bags upstairs to spend the night on the bedroom floors. Nobody wanted to sleep in the beds of the dead old lady or farmer. Sam had taken the teenage son’s room and I could hear him snoring up there.
I rolled off the sofa onto the floor and spent several painful minutes getting to my feet before staggering to the window. It was sunny but there were dark clouds over the trees. A good day to steal a boat from a military-occupied marina? Was there ever a good day for that?
I went upstairs to the bathroom and checked myself in the mirror after taking off my “Sail To Your Destiny” T-shirt. My chest and back were covered in ugly purple bruises. The bridge of my nose was swollen where Tanya had punched me. The skin on my arms and face had blistered from the heat of the exploding Jeep Cherokee.
I looked a mess.
Even more of a mess than usual.
How much longer was I going to survive? And even if I did stay alive, would I remain mentally stable or would I become like the feral survivors I had fought at the marina?
I remembered the man I had killed on the beach. Best not to think about that; it was one of the thoughts that could send me spiraling into depression.
I removed the rest of my clothes and took a shower, using the shampoo and citrus-scented gel in there. The hot water stung my bruised and blistered skin but I stood under the spray for as long as I could, letting it wash over me and wash away the dirt and grime that I felt was ingrained in my flesh.
By the time I was dressed again, the others were in the kitchen searching for breakfast. Jax was in the pantry tossing tins of food out to Sam. He caught them and lined them up on the counter, inspecting the labels. Tanya was boiling the kettle, making coffee for everyone. I was glad to see four mugs. I needed caffeine. The plan we had formulated to get a boat from the marina was a crazy one. I needed to be alert.
“Hey, dude, you want baked beans or tinned tomatoes for breakfast?” Sam indicated the tins with a flourish.
“I’ll take beans.”
He handed a tin of beans to me. “There’re saucepans hanging up over there if you want to heat them up.”
“Cold is fine.” I found the cutlery drawer and fished out a fork. As I leaned against the wall and ate, Tanya brought me a mug of steaming black coffee.
“You okay with today’s plan?” she asked me.
“I understand it,” I said, “but I don’t know if I’m okay with it.”
She grinned. “You’ll be fine. Just think, we could all be safe on a boat later today.”
“A boat headed to a city that is probably heavily guarded, not to mention full of zombies. I looked at the map last night. We have to sail up the River Fal, then the Truro River to get to Truro Harbour. If there are army positions along those rivers, we’ll be sitting ducks.”
“You worry too much, Alex.”
“We also have to sail past Falmouth Harbour to get onto the river. The army presence there is going to be a lot stronger than at the Swansea marina; Falmouth Harbour is much bigger.”
“So we’ll wait until night time and sneak past them under cover of darkness.”
“It won’t be that easy.”
“Then we’ll improvise. How long will it take us to get to the mouth of the river?”
I shrugged. “Maybe two or three days. We have to go south from here, sail around Land’s End then head north along the East Coast until we get to Falmouth. I don’t know anything about navigation and I suggest we take it slow and easy.” I thought, but didn’t add, that there was no sense rushing into danger.
“Fine. No worries.” She took her coffee and went into the living room.
She might not be worried, but I was. The more I thought about taking a boat up the river, the more nervous I became. We could be blown out of the water with nowhere to run. That was if we even managed to get a boat in the first place. I had my doubts that the plan we had formulated the previous night was going to work; there were too many variables, too many chances for something to go wrong.
This trip was my only chance to get a message to Lucy, otherwise I wouldn’t even be considering it. I forced myself to finish the cold beans, despite a sudden loss of appetite. I would need the energy later.
We finished breakfast in silence. I was thinking about the task ahead and guessed the others were too. Sam had discovered a green Citroen in the garage last night but the vehicle we were most interested in was the farmer’s dark blue Land Rover Defender parked behind the house. The keys had been hanging on a hook by the back door.
After formulating our plan, we had checked the fuel gauge on the Defender. The tank held enough petrol for what we had in mind.
We all piled in. I got in the back with Sam while Tanya took the wheel and Jax sat beside her, map spread out on her lap.
We drove down to the gate and I jumped out to open it and let the Land Rover through. I re-closed the gate, jumped back in, and we set off down the muddy track to the main road.
“This is where we saw the herd,” Jax said, pointing to an area on the map, “and this is where we are now. If we take a left on the main road and the first left after that, we should be in the general vicinity. They might have moved but unless something caught their attention, they’re more likely to just wander around the same area for a while.”
Tanya nodded. “How far is it to the marina from there?”
Jax pointed at the map. “The marina’s here.”
“Okay,” Tanya said, “let’s go and collect some zombies.”
Dark clouds filled the sky. I hoped they weren’t an omen of bad luck.
Or something worse.
Chapter 14
When we reached the area where we had seen the herd of zombies the day before, the first thing I noticed was a smell of burnt flesh. Even with the Land Rover’s windows closed, the stench was strong.
“Jesus, Alex, you could have waited,” Sam joked, elbowing me lightly. I wondered if his attempt at humour covered a deeper fear of what we were about to attempt.
Ahead of us, the Jeep Cherokee lay on its side, a black burned-out shell of metal. Around it was the charred remains of dead zombies. In the shadows beneath the trees on each side of the road, the rest of the herd stood staring at us with malevolent yellow eyes. They shambled towards us, letting out a collective moan of hunger, rage, or whatever it was they felt when they saw living people.
The herd had thinned but there were still enough of them for what we had in mind. When they reached the road and staggered closer to us, Tanya moved the Defender forwards slowly.
The zombies followed.
As we set off down the road with the undead shambling along behind, I wondered if our plan had a hope in hell of succeeding. We were going to lead the herd to the marina and create enough of a distraction to allow us to sneak into the marina shop and grab a set of boat keys.
The keys to the marina’s hire boats were kept beneath the counter in the shop and numbered. Our plan was to grab a few sets of keys, find the correspondingly-numbered boats and take the one that was moored farthest out along the jetty to allow a faster escape.
The plan sucked in so many ways.
We were going to ditch the Land Rover before we got to the marina to make ourselves less conspicuous. That meant we would be exposed on foot between an army unit and a herd of zombies.
For all we knew, the army might have taken the hire boat keys from the marina shop. Then we wou
ld be trapped with no boat and no vehicle.
Even if we managed to get a key, the boat we chose could be out of fuel. That was doubtful since they were hire boats and therefore likely to be topped up but it was a possibility.
Then, even if we got out to sea in a fuelled boat, we could easily be shot out of the water. I had seen a tank at the marina and the army probably had mortars set up there too. We could execute the plan perfectly only to be blown up as we got out on the waves.
I told myself to stop being so pessimistic. It wasn’t like I had any other options. This plan had to work.
I wished I was at sea now, safe in a boat, away from the shambling hordes of undead.
They followed us along the road with hate burning in their yellow eyes. I wondered how aware they were. Did they have memories of their old lives? Or were their thoughts long gone, their bodies mindlessly reacting to stimuli in an attempt to spread the virus? The hateful glares made me think that there were some remnants of intelligence left in those rotting skulls, along with simple, dark emotions.
I counted at least fifty of them lurching along behind us. More than enough to create chaos once we reached the marina.
Sam looked at the rotting, walking dead and shook his head slowly. “They were once people like us, man. Now look at them. Monsters. This is why we have to tell everybody the truth about where the virus came from. Someone has to pay for causing this.”
My own motives weren’t anywhere near as noble as Sam’s. I just wanted to find Lucy and get to the safety of The Big Easy. Then I could work on the problem of finding Joe and my parents. I wasn’t going to come ashore again until I knew exactly where to find my brother.
If we got to the Survivor Radio station, there could be information about where he was. His message had been broadcast on Survivor Reach Out so somebody must know which camp the message came from.
Undead Rain Trilogy Box Set Page 21
