As Jax and Johnny waded into the water, I looked along the slim stretch of wet sand for a boat, any kind of craft that would make the crossing to the Lucky Escape easier and less dangerous. What I saw made me rush into the water, joining Jax and Johnny in the ice-cold sea.
Four feral survivors were running towards us, brandishing machetes and big cruel-looking fishing hooks. They were dressed in dark sweaters and waterproof trousers and the look in their eyes was murderous.
I swam for my life, swallowing sea water as the waves pounded into me. The powerful rolling sea and the chill of the water sapped my strength, making it harder for me to keep my head above water. Soon I was gasping for breath between each mouthful of water, coughing to clear my airway. Struggling to survive.
I couldn’t see Jax or Johnny. I tried to focus on the Lucky Escape but she was so far away and she never seemed to get any closer no matter how much I splashed towards her. Like a mirage, she seemed to shimmer in my vision. I wondered if I was going to black out from lack of oxygen. Maybe sinking down into the depths wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. There were definitely worse.
I looked back at the beach. The hybrids had arrived and were feasting upon the bodies of the four feral survivors. Maybe death was preferable to the madness those fishermen had endured, living every insanity-laced day killing others in a frenzy of bloodlust. Now they were at peace. Their apocalypse was over.
I tried to relax, let the insistent rolling of the sea gently toss me over the waves. I kicked my legs and moved my arms slowly, concentrating on just staying afloat. If I got through this, I had to make a sling for the baseball bat so I could put it over my shoulder; its weight and length hindered every move I made.
Lightning cracked the air, followed by a boom of thunder. The rain hit me like a thousand angry needles. I wasn’t made for this. My life of exclusively sedentary pleasures was about to catch up with me and send me to a watery death.
I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t give up now. I had to see Lucy again, had to believe she had heard my message and would be at the lighthouse. I refused to die before I saw her face again.
Resisting the urge to let myself sink into the dark depths, I let go of the bat and let the waves wash it away so I could concentrate on swimming. My slow breaststroke was bad enough without the hindrance of holding the bat in one hand. I looked up at the Lucky Escape and my heart lifted slightly. Her lights were on. Someone had reached her. Probably Tanya and Sam, since I doubted Jax or Johnny could swim that fast.
Tanya and Sam had a head start on us. Maybe the reason I couldn’t find a rowboat on the beach was because they had already taken it.
The thought that they were waiting on the Lucky Escape for me lifted my spirits. I barely knew these people but we had banded together against a common enemy and helped each other survive. In the face of the zombie and hybrid threat, we had been there for one another.
I hadn’t fit into the world before the apocalypse and I certainly didn’t fit into it now but these people had helped me, just as I had helped them by thinking up reasons for zombie and hybrid behaviour. That knowledge could help us one day, I was sure of it.
The Lucky Escape seemed closer now. I could hear voices calling me from on board. “Come on, Alex. You can do it.”
I was utterly exhausted. The boat was no more than fifty feet away but it might as well have been fifty miles. I pulled myself through the water with the last of my strength but my arms felt dead. I wasn’t sure if I was still kicking my legs or not because they were so cold I couldn’t feel them anymore.
Somehow I made it to the boarding ladder and grabbed the cold metal rungs. I looked up. The top of the ladder looked so far away. I closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Lucy’s face. If I wanted to see her again for real, I had to get up this ladder.
I pulled myself up and got my boot on the lowermost rung.
Sam and Tanya appeared at the top of the ladder, leaning over the edge of the aft deck, reaching down for me.
“Take our hands, man,” Sam said.
I shook my head. At least, I think I shook my head, I wasn’t sure. I concentrated on getting my other boot on the next rung. Then the next.
I had to do this myself. If I gave each step every ounce of strength in my body, I could ascend the ladder.
As I got to the top rung, I fell forwards and lay in a pool of saltwater and rainwater on the aft deck, gasping, coughing, and shaking.
I was alive.
And I was determined to stay that way.
I had a job to do.
I had to find Lucy.
thirty
By the next morning, the storm had blown inland, leaving the sky blue and clear. The sun beat down on the Lucky Escape and we hung our wet clothes from various railings and lines to get them dry. That meant we were all in our underwear again and I was feeling self-conscious.
I had spent the night shivering naked beneath the blankets in a small bed. Johnny had taken the other bed in the room and curled up beneath his blankets, teeth chattering. Eventually, we had fallen asleep.
Tanya had piloted us out of the inlet and into open water before she, Sam, and Jax took turns sleeping in the second bedroom and keeping a lookout on deck. They wanted to be sure the army didn’t send another boat looking for us. The barricade separated us from the river but a radio command from Truro to one of the marinas on the coast could mean a boat being dispatched from this side of the steel wall.
As I sat on the sun deck in my boxers, letting the warm sun heat my skin, I was glad the three had taken such precautions but doubtful there had been any need. The army seemed to be having a huge hybrid problem. We were an annoyance but they had bigger things to think about than four unknown people who had taken DJ Johnny Drake from them.
We had Survivor Radio coming out of the boat’s speakers but it was non-stop music. There was no Survivor Reach Out every hour. No dialogue between tracks. Just one song after another.
I had found a notepad and pen on the kitchen counter, with the “Sail To Your Destiny” logo at the top of each page, and as I sat in the sun, I drew a grid on the top page. Two downward lines crossed with two horizontal lines like a tic-tac-toe board.
In the top middle square, I wrote “Zombies”. In the top right square, I wrote “Hybrids”.
In the middle left square, I put “normal person” and at the bottom left, I scrawled “vaccinated person”.
In the squares where the zombies and people intersected, I wrote down what happened when that type of zombie bit that type of person.
Zombie bites normal person; normal person dies and is reanimated as a zombie.
Zombie bites vaccinated person; vaccinated person is bit only once. Wanders away and after four days becomes a hybrid. If approached while turning, will say, “Leave me alone.”
Hybrid bites normal person; hybrid kills them and eats them.
Hybrid bites vaccinated person; hybrid kills them and eats them.
Below the grid, I wrote, “Hybrids also kill and eat zombies”.
I studied the page for a moment.
What I saw there gave me hope. The hybrids were actually sabotaging the spread of the virus. All it wanted was to spread to as many people as possible and turn them into zombies that would then spread it to more people. The zombies were controlled by the virus and did everything they could to spread it to their prey.
On the other hand, the hybrids seemed to be controlled by a rage that made them kill and eat their victims. They weren’t spreading the virus, they were killing potential hosts. They were also killing the zombies.
The arch enemy of the virus was the hybrid.
As more soldiers became vaccinated then bitten by zombies, the hybrid population increased. They were faster than the zombies and appeared to be stronger, so they would eventually decimate the zombie population and the population of living humans. The virus would have no more hosts and no more prey. It would die out.
Unless it mutated.
T
hat was possible. Bacteria and viruses mutated all the time in response to the use of pharmaceutical drugs on patients. If this virus mutated, would it produce something worse than the hybrids? Or would it find a way around the vaccine to kill vaccinated victims and reanimate them as zombies as it did with normal people?
There were too many unknowns, too many variables. I didn’t have the knowledge to put it all together.
For now, I had to take hope in the fact that the hybrids were slowing the spread of the virus. Sure, they were doing it by killing everything they could get their hands on but at least it was an effective way to reduce the number of hosts the virus could infect.
I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun. I couldn’t be so clinical about the deaths of all those people when Joe and my parents were in the middle of all this. For all I knew, Lucy might be in danger and not safe aboard The Big Easy. I would only know for sure when I got to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse. It was the last place in the world I wanted to go. The memory of Mike and Elena’s deaths still stung but I managed to keep it below the surface of my thoughts. I knew visiting the lighthouse would make the memory come swimming up to the surface like a monster from the deep.
Jax came over and sat down next to me. “What are you writing?”
I showed her my grid. “Just some thoughts about the zombies.” I told her my theory that the rise of the hybrids could mean the end of the virus.
She thought it over for a while then nodded. “You could be right. But how does that help us right now?”
I shrugged. “It’s just a theory. It doesn’t help us in any practical way. I don’t think there’s anything that can kill the virus and stop the zombies and the hybrids. The best we can hope for is that the hybrids kill the zombies then die off eventually.”
“That could take years.” She looked towards the shoreline. On the cliffs, zombies shambled beneath the morning sun, driven by the virus in their bodies.
“I can’t think of any other way this is going to end,” I said.
“There are people who know a lot more about the virus than we do,” Jax replied. “They could come up with a solution.”
“On a secret government island?” I asked, unable to keep the disbelief out of my voice.
She looked at me with a serious expression on her face. “Apocalypse Island is real, Alex. We’ve known about it for years. The scientists there probably caused this fuck up so they might have a chance of stopping it. The place isn’t a joke or an urban legend; it’s real. Where do you think the vaccine came from?”
I held up my hands in an attempt to placate her. “Okay, okay. I didn’t say the place doesn’t exist. If they developed the vaccine, then maybe they can find a cure.” It sounded like what she wanted to hear but I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. The vaccine, if it had even been developed at Apocalypse Island, did not work. In most cases.
I wondered if there were any vaccinated soldiers who were bitten and recovered completely, without turning into hybrids. It was possible. We wouldn’t know about those because they would return to active duty as soldiers. Or maybe they were sent to Apocalypse Island for testing in the hopes of developing a better vaccine. I had no idea. It was all guesswork.
Whether it was optimism or wish fulfilment, Jax needed to believe in Apocalypse Island. I guessed the thought of scientists on an island somewhere, working on a possible solution to the predicament we found ourselves in, was a comfort to her.
My own pessimistic outlook made me think that even if Apocalypse Island did exist, the scientists would only be working in their own best interests, not in the interests of the people stuck on the mainland with the undead monsters.
I didn’t say anything to Jax about that. I still had the feeling there was a loved one she was worrying about and I wanted her to be as optimistic about that as she could. I still clung to the thread of hope that Joe and my parents were alive and I knew how thin that thread was. It wasn’t up to me to pull another strand from Jax’s.
So instead, I said, “Have you got people still alive somewhere on the mainland?”
“I hope so,” she said. Tears pooled in her eyes, glistened in the sun. “My boyfriend was at home when the virus spread. I spoke to him on the phone the day before and he said he was going to spend the weekend watching TV with his feet up. I haven’t heard from him since. He could be okay. It’s not like we live in a big city or anything. We live in a small village in Derbyshire. There’s a good chance he’s still alive.”
“Yes, there is,” I said. I hoped for Jax’s sake he was. If he was in a village at the time of the virus breakout, he could have holed up there. Or escaped to the countryside. Maybe the army were too busy rounding people up from more populated areas to worry about villages.
But I thought of the village Jax and I had entered, looking for food. It had been empty. Desolate.
“I don’t know how I can reach him,” she said. “At the moment, going that far inland is too dangerous. Not knowing if he’s all right is the worst thing. It’s driving me crazy with worry.”
I guessed this was where I was supposed to pat her on the shoulder and say, “I’m sure everything will be all right,” but we would both know how false that platitude was. Instead, I offered her a weak smile and asked, “What are your plans now that the Survivor Radio mission was successful?”
“We want to find Apocalypse Island,” she said. “It was always our plan. If they have some kind of vaccine that actually works, we need to make sure it reaches everyone and not just the authorities.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You mean you’re going to steal it from a government facility?”
“If that’s what we have to do. It’s not just the vaccine; they must be working round the clock on other things too. What if they have a vaccine that makes you invisible to zombies like in World War Z?”
I rolled my eyes. “I think if they had that, they’d be using it by now, don’t you?”
“Okay, so not that in particular but they must be working on other things.” The tears were gone from her eyes, replaced with an enthusiastic brightness. I understood then that people like Jax, Tanya, and Sam needed a goal at all times. They were goal-oriented and without that part of their personality being fulfilled, they would probably go as crazy as the feral survivors on the beach.
Although we had banded together, I was the polar opposite from them in a lot of ways. Once I was reunited with Lucy and Joe, I would be happy to take The Big Easy out into open water and live a carefree existence on the waves. Fishing. Reading. Listening to music. I could happily adjust to that life while others took responsibility for rebuilding the country from the ashes of the apocalypse.
“What about you?” Jax asked. “What are your plans?”
“Right now, I just need to be reunited with Lucy. After that, I’ll take it one day at a time.”
“So when we get to the lighthouse, we’ll be going our separate ways,” she said.
I nodded then asked, “What about Johnny? Is he happy to go on a search for Apocalypse Island with you?”
“Yeah. After his experience at the hands of the authorities, he wants to do anything he can to get back at them.”
“Cool. It’s weird but I kind of miss hearing him on the radio.”
“Me too.”
I stood up. “I guess we should get moving. The sooner we get to the lighthouse, the sooner you can start your search for Apocalypse Island.”
She smiled and touched my arm. “Thanks for the chat, Alex. Talking to you always cheers me up.”
I walked to the bridge ladder wondering if I had mastered the art of conversation…or at least mastered the art of withholding the truth. If I had told Jax what I really thought, I wouldn’t have cheered her up at all. Her boyfriend was probably dead and they were crazy to think they could go to Apocalypse Island and set foot in a government facility, never mind steal a vaccine from there and live to tell the tale.
There was a big difference between break
ing into a radio station and entering a government facility. The place was sure to be heavily-guarded and not in any half-assed way like the radio station had been.
I was glad I had cheered Jax up but sad that I’d done it by being dishonest.
As I sat in the pilot’s seat and started the Lucky Escape’s engine, I wondered if I was being dishonest with myself. I had sent out my message on Survivor Radio but there was a good chance Lucy never heard it. We had the radio on nearly all the time on The Big Easy but for all I knew, Lucy wasn’t even on the boat any longer. There had to be a good reason why she had left me at the marina and it might be that she was taken by the army. They were all over the marina on that foggy day.
My hopes of meeting Lucy at the lighthouse could be nothing more than a mental survival mechanism, the same way Jax and the others had their goals to keep their minds focussed on something other than the hell around us.
What would happen if Lucy didn’t turn up? I would never know what happened to her. Would the mental strain eventually send me into madness like so many other survivors?
As I turned the boat south and headed for Land’s End, the song on the radio finished and a voice came over the airwaves. Male and smooth and with a mid-Atlantic accent, it said, “Hey, folks, this is Nick Tucker, the new voice of Survivor Radio. We’ve got lots of great music for all you survivors out there. Don’t touch that dial.” Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” started playing.
The army had replaced Johnny Drake quickly.
The world moved on.
thirty-one
Two days later, we reached the lighthouse. It was mid-afternoon on a cool but sunny day when the rocky island and the lighthouse came into view through the bridge window. Seagulls and crows circled around the island and perched on the railing I had once jumped from to save my life.
Elena had not made that jump.
The tide was in at the moment, so the island was cut off from the beach by a strip of seawater. When the tide went out, a rocky causeway beneath the water would be revealed.
Undead Rain (Book 2): Storm Page 14
