Rain

by Shaun Harbinger

  “Can’t do that, man. A few good waves will crash the boat against the rocks and destroy her. Then we’d have to swim back to The Big Easy.”

  I looked out at the yacht. That was a long way to swim. I could barely make out Lucy standing on the sun deck, watching us through Mike’s binoculars. I felt like waving but repressed the urge.

  Mike took off his T-shirt and placed it on his seat. Bare-chested, he slipped into the sea and swam ashore. When he climbed out onto the rocks in his jeans and boots, he looked like a model on a shoot for a cologne commercial. Only the gun in his hand looked out of place. “Come on,” he said.

  I removed my sweater but left my Slipknot T-shirt on. It was already ruined by sea water anyway and our display of power might be ruined if I was standing there feeling self-conscious. As I was about to jump in, Mike called, “Throw me the rope, man.”

  I tossed it over to him and he slung it over his shoulder.

  Elena slid gracefully into the water and breast-stroked towards shore. It wasn’t until she climbed out of the water and onto the rocks that I realized she had stripped to her black bra. With her khaki cargo pants, boots and toned physique, she looked like Lara Croft. The axe in her hand enhanced that illusion.

  I grabbed the baseball bat, jumped in and came up gasping for air as the cold sea took the breath from me. Using a combination of doggy paddle and breast stroke, I got to the rocks and clambered out of the water. The T-shirt clung to my back like an icy second skin. I stood up and pulled it away from my goose-bumped flesh.

  “Careful on the rocks,” Mike said. “They’re slippery.” He climbed up to the lighthouse, Elena close behind. I steeled myself and followed them, the unwieldy bat making the climb difficult.

  When I got to the top, I was out of breath and shivering with cold. The little island had been levelled and reinforced with concrete to facilitate the building of the lighthouse. We stood at the base of the building and looked towards the beach.

  “There’s a hell of a lot of zombies over there, man.”

  I nodded. Although the lighthouse was built on an island, it was no more than a quarter mile from the mainland. And the water separating us and the beach looked shallow. The monsters on the sand could see us and they came to the water’s edge, staring at us with their dead, yellow eyes.

  “They won’t go into the sea,” I said. “If the virus compels them to protect themselves from rain, they won’t go walking into salt water.”

  “I hope you’re right, man.”

  “If I wasn’t, they’d be wading towards us right now. Look at the hunger in their eyes.”

  Mike shouted at them, “You fuckers. You want some of this? Come and get it.” He laughed and watched them react to the sound of his voice. More of the things came from distant parts of the beach and gathered at the water’s edge.

  “Look at them,” Mike said. “Stupid fuckers. I’m not scared of them.”

  “Mike, we should meet with Eric,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah. I’m not scared of him, either.” He strode to the metal door of the lighthouse and banged on it with the butt of the gun. “Hey, open up.”

  “It’s open,” Eric shouted from inside. He sounded distant, like he was a few floors up, shouting down at us.

  Mike looked at us and tried the metal handle on the door, pressing it down. Elena held her axe ready and I had the baseball bat in both hands. I wasn’t sure I could actually hit a person with it; I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out.

  The door clicked open and swung outward. We stepped back, ready for whatever waited inside.

  My heart pounded and the cold I had felt a few minutes ago was gone. All my attention was focused on the interior of the lighthouse.

  The circular room beyond the door was empty. Coats hung on hooks and boots stood beneath them but there was nothing else there. A circular steel staircase led up to the rooms above.

  “Eric,” Mike shouted, “where are you? It’s Mike.”

  “Up here,” Eric shouted back.

  I didn’t like this one bit. Why was he up there waiting for us? Why hadn’t he come down? If he wanted to leave the lighthouse, he had to come down at some point. There was no other door, only the one we had come through.

  “Why don’t you come down?” Mike shouted. “Is this any way to treat your guests?”

  “You come up.”

  “Should we close the door?” I asked Mike.

  He shrugged. “Why? There’s nobody else on this shitty piece of rock. Leave it open in case we need to get out of here fast.”

  We moved to the base of the steps.

  Mike put his boot on the bottom step and I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. “This doesn’t feel right,” I whispered.

  He held the Colt up in front of my face. “Don’t worry, man.” He ascended the steps, gun held in both hands, eyes darting around as if he expected Eric to come jumping out from somewhere up there.

  I didn’t share Mike’s gung-ho attitude. I wished I had stayed on The Big Easy with Lucy, but Mike was my friend. As well as having something to prove, I wanted to look out for him. We went back a lot of years and what he had done for me meant a lot. Even so, my stomach was going crazy with butterflies and my mouth felt dry. My heart hammered in my chest and my breathing was fast. The baseball bat felt like lead.

  Don’t panic.

  There’s just one guy up there.

  Mike has a gun.

  We’ll be OK.

  I followed my friend and Elena took the rear.

  We ascended to the first room, a living area with a wood-burning stove, sofa, easy chair and bookshelves. No sign of Eric. Mike stood on the steps waiting for us. He looked eager to find the lighthouse keeper.

  “Keep up,” he whispered as he went up to the next level.

  I looked down at Elena, wondering if she was as eager to find Eric as Mike seemed to be. Coming here in force had been her idea, after all.

  “Move it, Alex,” she urged.

  I looked back up. Mike had disappeared around the curve in the steps.

  Then I heard a gunshot.

  nineteen

  “Mike!” I ran up the steps, all thoughts of self-preservation blown out of my head by the fact that my friend was in trouble.

  I reached the room above. The kitchen. Eric stood behind the kitchen counter with a shotgun in his hands.

  Mike was flattened against the wall by the steps. The shotgun had blown a hole in the wall inches from his head. The air smelled of gunpowder.

  “Get back,” Eric commanded, “or your friend dies.”

  I halted on the top step. “You OK, Mike?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “Now, we’re all getting out of here,” Eric said. “We’re going back to that boat of yours.”

  “What’s the hurry, man? We can talk about this.”

  Eric shot a glance out of the window. “There isn’t time to talk. Either you take me back to your boat with you or I shoot you and go back by myself.”

  Elena whispered into my ear, “If we rush him, we can take him down.”

  I was about to protest, thinking how much ground we had to cover between us and Eric, but she was already counting down.

  “3…2…1…Go!”

  She gave me a push and I went sprinting forward, bat held in front of me in both hands. Eric jerked his head in our direction and surprise crossed his face. He swung the shotgun so the muzzle pointed at us and he fired. The blast sounded like an explosion in the confined space.

  Ears ringing, I jumped up onto the kitchen counter and slid across it on my butt, pushing the bat into Eric’s face. He managed to twist away and lifted the shotgun again.

  This time I swung the bat at his stomach. It connected and he went down with a groan. The shotgun clattered away across the floor.

  I considered delivering another swing but he was down and out, holding his stomach and gasping for breath.

  Elena was writhing on the kitchen floor, holding her leg where a gash in her
jeans revealed a bloody wound. Mike was holding her, telling her everything was going to be OK. He looked at me with tears in his angry eyes. “I’m going to kill that fucker. He shot Elena.”

  He came over the kitchen counter in one swift movement and pointed his gun at Eric’s head. “You shot my girlfriend, you fucker.”

  Eric shielded his face with his hands, cowering away from the muzzle of the gun. “Listen to me. We have to get out of here. I’ll explain everything when we get to the boat.”

  “The boat? You aren’t getting on our boat.”

  “The bombs,” Eric pleaded, “they’re going to drop the bombs.”

  “You won’t be around to see that,” Mike said coldly.

  I put a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You can’t kill him, Mike. We need to know where those ships are going to be.”

  Mike turned on me. “He shot Elena, man.”

  “Yes, and we need to get her back to The Big Easy as soon as possible. Her wound needs to be bandaged up. We’re wasting time here. We can tie him up and take him with us, interrogate him later.”

  Eric looked at me with hope in his eyes. He really wanted off this rock. And fast.

  Mike glanced over at Elena. She staggered to her feet, pain etched on her face. Leaning heavily against the wall, she looked at Mike and said, “Kill him. We don’t need him. We can find the rescue ships ourselves.”

  Mike nodded.

  He lifted the gun.

  Pointed it at Eric’s head.

  “Wait! There’s something you need to know.” Eric’s eyes were wide. Sweat had broken out across his forehead.

  “Talk,” Mike said.

  Eric pointed a shaky finger at the window. “Look out there.”

  I went to the window and the sight outside made my blood run cold. The water between us and the mainland was gone, leaving a cement causeway connecting the lighthouse to the beach. All of the zombies from the beach were making their way to the lighthouse. There were dozens of them.

  “What is it?” Mike asked.

  “We’re connected to the beach,” I said. “This isn’t an island at all. It’s tidal. At low tide, there’s a causeway.” I looked at him and I knew there was fear in my eyes. “The tide’s gone out. The zombies are coming.”

  A sound from the ground floor came drifting up the steps. Shuffling feet. Low moans.

  “They’re here,” Eric groaned.

  “How do we get out of here?” Mike asked him, shoving the gun into his temple.

  “There’s no other way. Only the door downstairs.” He looked up at Mike and sneered. “I’m not the only one who’s going to die.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us to close the door? Warn us?”

  “You’d have sailed away and left me here. If we’d made a deal we could have gotten off here together. Now we’re all going to die. Go ahead and shoot me.”

  Elena cast a glance down the stairs. “What do we do?”

  The only way to go was up. The lighthouse had no doors so we couldn’t barricade ourselves inside a room and wait for the zombies to leave.

  They were coming up and they would find us.

  The moans on the steps became louder.

  They could probably smell us up here.

  “We need to go up,” I said.

  “Not him,” Mike said, indicating Eric.

  “What? You can’t leave me here for those things to find me.”

  “It might buy us a little more time,” Mike said, shooting Eric twice, once in each leg. The lighthouse keeper screamed, clutching his wounds.

  I didn’t judge Mike’s actions. We were all dead anyway. It was just a matter of time.

  While Eric continued screaming on the kitchen floor, we left him and went up to the next level. Elena leaned on Mike for support and I followed, glancing over my shoulder every now and then, expecting to see a zombie reaching out for me. Luckily they were slow and stairs seemed to slow them down even more.

  We reached the bedrooms and continued up to the level above.

  I wondered what Lucy would do when we didn’t return. She was a survivor, I was sure she’d be alright. The only regret I had was that I would never know what had become of Joe and my parents. This was the time to face facts; they were probably lying dead somewhere, victims of the apocalypse.

  And I was about to join them.

  One more victim of the zombie outbreak.

  Below us, Eric’s screams of pain were suddenly replaced with a panicked, “Oh my God! No! No!”

  The zombies had reached him.

  His cries turned into screams of agony which suddenly cut off.

  We ascended the steps to a radio room. A large radio sat on a wooden table. Papers and charts littered a shelf on the wall and a black hardbound log book and pen sat on the table. While Mike and Elena went up to the next level, I grabbed the log book from the table and stuffed it into my jeans. If Eric had learned about the U.N. ships from the radio, he might have written details in the book. It didn’t even matter now but something made me take that book.

  I followed Mike and Elena up to the top level.

  The stairs terminated in a small, featureless room. A steel door led out onto the balcony. We went through the door and I closed it. There was a lock but no key. Enough force from the other side would break the latch easily. Of all the places I had thought I might die, on top of a lighthouse had come pretty far down the list. I leaned over the railing and looked down, immediately regretting it as my stomach lurched. It was a long way down. I stepped back.

  In the distance, I could see The Big Easy floating calmly on the still sea.

  A bang on the door made me flinch. A second bang followed, then a third until the door was being beaten constantly by hungry fists.

  I wondered if Lucy could see us through the binoculars. I didn’t want her to see me getting ripped apart by zombies. I would rather jump to my death on the rocks below.

  Mike was leaning out over the rail and I wondered if he had the same suicidal tendencies. “We can jump,” he said.

  “It’s either that or get ripped to pieces,” I replied. “Getting splattered on the rocks might be the quickest way to go.”

  “No, man, we can jump into the sea.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  He went to the railing. “If we jump from here, it’s straight down into the water. It’s plenty deep enough down there. We can do it, man.”

  The door buckled beneath the pounding fists.

  There was no choice. The zombies would be all over this balcony in a few seconds.

  I nodded. “OK.”

  Elena looked over the edge. “It’s totally doable. Mike, you go first and get to the rowboat. Bring it closer for when Alex and I jump.

  He nodded, grinned, saluted us and vaulted over the railing. I watched him drop like a rock into the sea below. After the splash, he surfaced and gave us a thumbs up before swimming to the rowboat.

  The door collapsed and two zombies came onto the balcony, many more behind them.

  I rushed forward with my bat, swinging it wildly. We needed to slow them down to give us time to jump over the railing. The bat connected with the head of a monster that had once been a businessman judging by his suit and tie. He went down hard and the zombies behind fought to get past the body in their way.

  I ran back to the railing. Elena was climbing over, her face a mask of agony as she took her weight on the bad leg.

  “You OK?” I asked as I straddled the railing. I tried not to look down. My stomach was flipping crazily and I felt off balance.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s go.” She pushed me forward the same way she had done when we rushed Eric. I felt my feet leave the railing and suddenly I was suspended in mid-air, the deep sea below me.

  Then I fell so fast I barely had time to register it before I hit cold water and heard nothing but a rush in my ears as I went under.

  I struggled against the sea, pulling with my arms to bring myself to the surface.

/>   As my face broke though, I breathed in sweet air.

  Mike was close by in the rowboat. I swam towards him but his attention was on the lighthouse. He stared up at the balcony and shouted, “Elena!”

  I looked up and my heart sank.

  For some reason, Elena hadn’t managed to clear the railing and now she hung by her hands, dangling over the sea. She looked panicked.

  “Just let go!” Mike shouted to her.

  She held her breath and let go.

  But she didn’t fall into the sea.

  Hands reached over the railing and grabbed her. Blue-skinned rotting hands.

  She screamed as they dragged her back up onto the balcony.

  “No!” Mike screamed. He dived off the boat and swam towards the lighthouse. I grabbed him and he struggled against me. “Elena!”

  Her screams had been silenced. There was nothing anyone could do.

  “It’s too late,” I told Mike.

  His eyes went to the scene on the balcony. The zombies were in a frenzy up there. Tearing. Ripping. Biting.

  He looked at me and started to cry. “It’s Elena, man.”

  “I know.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

  He looked from me to the lighthouse and for a moment I was sure he was going to swim ashore despite the dozens of zombies on the rocks. Then he went weak and I had to hold him up to stop him from sinking.

  Supporting him with one arm and using the other to swim, I got us to the rowboat. He climbed aboard but then sat staring at the sea.

  I put the oars into the metal locks and started to row us back to The Big Easy.

  My friend stared at the water in a daze and I was sure I would never see the Mike I knew ever again.

  twenty

  “He’s been like that for hours,” Lucy said as we sat at the dining table. Her face was still streaked from the tears she had cried for Elena. I was sure there would be more tears but for now she was too drained to shed them.

  Outside, evening fell quickly, the darkness spreading over the sea. I had managed to pilot The Big Easy away from the lighthouse. None of us wanted to see that place again. Now we were anchored farther north, about two miles from shore. We could still see the city on the coast but at least we couldn’t smell it anymore. The sea breeze was fresh and tangy. I felt more removed from those monsters than I had since the apocalypse happened. It was a shame that my feelings of safety were tinged with the darkness of tragedy.