I squinted at the place she had indicated. “I don’t see anything.”
“There,” she said. “Oh my God, we need to get out of here! Now!”
Dozens of hybrid soldiers erupted from the cluster of buildings like ants scuttling out of a nest. They ran towards the jetty, fixing us with their hateful yellow eyes. As the first half dozen reached the jetty, more and more came pouring out from between the buildings. I was reminded of a scene in a Matrix movie where thousands of copies of Agent Smith attack Neo.
The soldiers, although different facially, wore identical uniforms and their running bodies blurred into a mass of camouflage patterned jackets.
“Let’s move!” Tanya shouted, grabbing the Zodiac.
We all lifted the boat and headed for the steps that led down the opposite side of the jetty but it was obvious we weren’t going to make it. “Take it to the end and throw it over,” Tanya shouted, changing direction. We took the Zodiac to the end of the concrete jetty and heaved it into the water twenty feet below. The boat landed with a splash and took on some water but remained afloat.
The nearest soldiers were almost on us. Their boots thundered along the jetty.
We all jumped. In normal circumstances, I would have thought twice before diving twenty feet into the sea but with a horde of hybrids running towards me, I didn’t even give the jump a second thought.
I hit the water and went under, enveloped by cold and darkness. Struggling to the surface, I heard splashes as other bodies landed in the water around me. I had expected to hear three but there were many more.
I broke the surface and gasped for air. Splashing through the water to the Zodiac, I saw Tanya, Jax and Sam. They were almost on the boat, swimming strongly.
Splashes continued around me, some spraying me with water. I swam like a madman. I was so panicked I couldn’t breathe. The hybrids were in the water with me. As I swam for the Zodiac, I heard more of them hit the surface and go under.
My three companions were clambering onto our inflatable boat.
I thought about dropping my bat. It was slowing me down.
Jax, on the boat and pulling at the engine’s starter cord, turned to me, her eyes wide. “Alex, swim!”
Tanya and Sam leaned over the side of the boat and reached out their hands towards me.
But as I reached up to take them, a hand grabbed my boot and pulled me under.
Chapter 25
I barely had any breath in my lungs as I was dragged down through the murky water. I kicked out with my free foot and my boot connected with something but the hand still gripped me.
I held my bat in both hands and jabbed it down as hard as I could, hoping to hit the hybrid’s head and make him let go of me. Instead of letting go, he reached up with his free hand and grabbed my other boot. I was helpless, unable to kick or swim, being pulled down to a watery death. At least I would drown before he bit me. My lungs already screamed for air and my chest felt like it was collapsing.
In a minute, it would all be over. I would never know what happened to Lucy, never find Joe.
A movement to my left startled me. A face and arms appeared, swimming rapidly at me with wide, strong strokes. I wouldn’t have thought the hybrids could swim but here was one coming this way to prove me wrong.
It reached me and I turned to look into its yellow eyes.
They weren’t yellow.
They were blue.
It was Sam. He turned over and faced downwards before sweeping his arms and diving down towards my boots, tire iron gripped in his hand.
He had come to save me. Sam had risked his own life to save mine.
I wanted to tell him it was too late; the tiny breath of air I had in my lungs was gone.
I couldn’t tell him anything. We were underwater.
And everything was turning black.
A low ringing began in my head.
The blackness seeped over my eyes.
Then everything ended.
* * *
The first sound I heard was the cry of seagulls. And voices. Familiar voices. Jax and Sam, talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but their voices were rushed, panicky. I wasn’t concerned. I listened to the Zodiac engine firing steadily. The sound of the boat gliding through the water.
I could smell fish. And the gasoline smell of the engine.
My clothes were wet and cold. I was lying on a hard surface.
Something heavy pressed against my chest over and over.
Now the panic I heard in Sam’s voice got into my head. I had almost drowned. The heavy pressure on my chest continued.
I felt a rush of water travel up my throat and into my nose and mouth. I gagged on it, spat it out.
I opened my eyes and saw the night sky and stars above.
My throat felt raw. My nose burned.
Sam was above me, a worried look in his eyes. “He’s coming round,” he said to someone I couldn’t see.
I sat up and leaned against the inflatable side of the Zodiac, gasping for breath.
“How you doing, man?” Sam asked. He sat back on his heels, grinning. Jax was behind me with her hand on the tiller and Tanya was at the front of the boat scanning the water ahead with the binoculars.
“I’m not dead,” I said.
Sam laughed. “No way, man. I saved your ass.”
“Thanks.” I looked over the side of the boat towards the shore. A pair of gulls sat on the water, fighting over a fish that they had torn apart. The shore was no longer the rocky seashore I was used to seeing. It was a wooded bank. The trees came all the way to the water’s edge.
I turned and looked at the opposite bank. More trees, with fields beyond.
We were on the river.
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“Only about a minute, man. Don’t sweat it. I hauled you into the boat and started working on you. Jax got us out of there. That was some fucked up shit.”
I looked back beyond Jax to the harbour. The yellow-eyed soldiers stood on the jetty motionless, their prey out of reach. I had no idea why some of them had followed us into the water.
“We just learned one thing,” Sam said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That hybrids can’t swim worth a damn.”
“It doesn’t make sense that they’d jump in like that,” I said. “The virus doesn’t have anything to gain if they die. Why did they do that?”
“Don’t ask me, man, I just work here.”
I racked my brain for the answer to my own question. I wanted to understand the virus. It was our enemy and if we understood it, we could predict what the zombies would do in specific situations.
So far we had seen that it protected the true zombies—the dead, rotting ones—by keeping them out of the rain. Why would it allow hybrids to jump into the sea like that? Their flesh wasn’t rotting so they had nothing to fear from the water itself but they couldn’t swim. Jumping into the deep sea was suicide. The hosts were destroyed and could not spread the virus.
It made no sense.
Sam tapped my shoulder, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“Don’t dwell on it too much, man. We’re alive and that’s all that matters.”
“Holy shit,” Tanya said from the front of the boat. “There’re zombies everywhere.”
We didn’t need the binoculars to see what she was talking about. The movement in the trees on the shore and dark shapes shambling through the fields told us everything we needed to know: this area was crawling with zombies. I couldn’t see any hybrids out there, just a whole load of shamblers. A few seconds after we saw them, their low moans came drifting across the water to our boat.
They couldn’t get to us but the sight of so many zombies made my skin crawl. The air was thick with the stench of their rotting flesh. Their unnatural gait and staring yellow eyes spoke to some deep fear within me. I could barely stand to look at them as they dragged their putrefying corpses across the fields and between the trees.
Some of the walking dead came down to the edge of the river bank and stood glaring at us. Some stretched out their blue mottled hands and clawed at the air. None of them stepped into the water.
As I watched them, I understood the fundamental difference between these dead shamblers and the living hybrids. The shamblers were totally under the control of the virus. It had killed the host and now controlled the body. In the case of the hybrids, the host was still alive and still had some control.
Even though the hybrids had a primal urge to spread the virus, they also had a remnant of their human emotions. The hybrids at the harbour had jumped into the sea because their desire to catch us overrode the virus’s need to keep the host alive.
Their virus-infected brains didn’t think, “If I jump into the sea, I will drown”. They didn’t base their actions on logic, only on the need to kill their prey. They no longer possessed the intelligence to avoid throwing themselves into dangerous situations.
The shamblers had the same lack of intelligence but the virus had complete control of their bodies so it kept them from harm because if the body was harmed, the virus could not be spread by that host.
If the rage of the hybrids meant they acted without self-preservation and ignored the needs of the virus, maybe there was a way to use that against them.
Sam waved his tire iron at the zombies on the riverbank. “You want some of this? Come and get it.”
“There’s no point taunting them,” Jax said.
“I’m ready to bust some heads, man.” Despite his outburst, Sam seemed too relaxed for a man on a dangerous mission.
I, on the other hand, was terrified. The countryside was crawling with zombies and we were heading to a city where the undead population would be even larger.
We weren’t going to make it out alive.
Chapter 26
We continued along the river into the night. An inky blackness crept across the sky and low-lying dark clouds blotted out the moon. I could barely see the zombies on the bank but their low moans told me they were still there. Apart from the moans, the only other sound was the purr of the engine and the rush of the water against the Zodiac’s sides as we glided upriver.
The gasoline smell coming from the engine masked the stench of rotting flesh hanging in the night air.
Tanya, Jax, and Sam were quiet. I guessed they were all wondering what lay ahead and how they were going to complete their mission. In their minds, they had probably already taken over the radio station, got their message out, and were back in the Lucky Escape sipping champagne.
I had no such illusions. My three companions might be winners in life but I was used to failure mixed with a good dose of disappointment. I was pretty sure I would never see the Lucky Escape again. Or Lucy. My heart broke at the thought of not seeing Lucy again. What had started out as a massive crush based only on her looks had developed into something much more. I didn’t think I could bear surviving the apocalypse without her.
Tanya turned to us and whispered, “We’ve reached the city.”
The trees and fields gave way to houses with lawns that stretched down to the river. Beyond the houses, the glow of street lights illuminated hundreds of zombies wandering aimlessly like lost souls.
As we traveled farther upriver, the houses gave way to industrial units and factories then shops and businesses as the river wound into the heart of Truro. The banks of the river became walls of cement and stone with a safety rail that separated the river from a small walking path. The path was heaving with nasties. They glared at us as we passed them.
They were everywhere, clogging up the city with rotting flesh and hungry moans. In the distance we heard a gunshot and I wondered if the army was actually fighting this massive horde of the undead or if there were survivors in the city. Maybe someone had simply had enough and taken their own life. Goodbye, cruel apocalypse.
“We’re not going to be able to get off the boat,” I said.
Sam said, “We don’t need to, man.”
I threw him a confused look but the pale overhead lights on the path barely reached our boat so I wasn’t sure Sam saw my face in the darkness. I added, “What do you mean?”
“The building we’re heading for was BBC Radio Cornwall before the army took it over for Survivor Radio. I came here with Vigo Johnson last year to do an interview about a TV show we had filmed in the Sahara. While we were waiting to go on air, one of the producers was shooting the shit with us and he took us out to the back of the building to get some fresh air. There’s a covered walkway out there with a waist-high wall. The other side of that wall drops straight down into the river. All we have to do is climb out of the boat and over the wall. It’s simple, man.”
It sounded simple but he was forgetting the fact that the building was probably heavily guarded by the military or could be overrun with zombies or hybrids. This was not going to be simple. Rather than give me hope, Sam’s optimism pissed me off.
I sat brooding in the boat until we got to the radio station. I felt a mixture of fear, depression, and anger, which made for a bad combination. I didn’t even know who I was angry at, only that I felt like smashing heads with my baseball bat to relieve the pressure building up inside me.
“We’re here,” Tanya whispered.
The river forked into two. On the left, it ran to a small marina with a large store and a zombie-filled parking lot. On the right, a group of white-painted buildings skirted the water. Both forks ran beneath a wide bridge, along which ran a main road judging by the amount of abandoned cars up there.
The final building on this side of the bridge had black letters on its wall that read, “BBC Radio Cornwall”. A porch roof supported by brown-painted wooden struts ran almost the entire length of the building, covering a narrow walkway, which was hidden from us by a low white wall that dropped down to the water.
There was no sign of life. Or zombies.
“It’s too quiet,” I whispered.
“Would you prefer soldiers? Or zombies, maybe?” Sam asked. He laughed. “Jesus, Alex, you’re too highly-strung, man. Relax.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I protested. “If the army is running their radio broadcast from here, why aren’t they guarding it?”
Jax leaned forward and said, “Why would they guard it from the river side? Zombies don’t swim.”
And nobody else would be crazy enough to do what we were doing.
Jax steered us in towards the wall and Tanya stood up with the Zodiac’s mooring rope in her hand. She reached up, grabbed the top of the wall and pulled herself up and over in a swift, graceful movement, crowbar in one hand. She checked the area and tied the boat to one of the porch struts. “It’s clear,” she whispered down to us.
Sam went next, heaving his bulky frame over the wall. “Pass the weapons up,” he whispered to us.
Jax passed our bats and his tire iron up to him then looked at me. “You want to go next?”
“You go ahead. I’ll follow.” My refusal was nothing to do with chivalry; I wasn’t sure I could make it over the wall. It wasn’t all that high but for someone as unfit as I was, it was high enough to give me serious doubts that I could pull my bulk over the top. I almost suggested that I stay with the Zodiac but if I did that, I would never be able to get my message to Lucy.
Jax jumped up and pulled herself over quickly.
I stood up in the Zodiac, leaning against the rough, white stone to steady myself. I slid my hands up to the edge of the wall and curled my fingers over the top. I wouldn’t be able to do this. I was too heavy.
Tanya, Jax, and Sam grabbed my forearms and pulled me up. I used the toes of my boots against the wall to assist them but it wasn’t necessary; they had me over the top in seconds.
I stood in the narrow cement walkway between the wall and the building. Both ends of the walkway were closed off with tall, locked, iron gates. Another reason the army didn’t have to worry too much about people climbing in this way.
“Thank
s,” I whispered to my companions.
“Don’t mention it, man,” Sam replied. They had pulled me up because they knew I couldn’t climb over by myself. I felt both grateful and embarrassed. I picked up my bat and hoped I could prove myself in the fighting ahead. I was tired of being the weakest member in every group.
Sam went to the nearest window and looked inside. “We’re going in this way,” he whispered. “The studio is upstairs so we need to get up there as quickly as possible.” He jabbed his tire iron at the corner of the window. The glass shattered.
I had thought we were going to use stealth but Sam’s approach was fast and hard. He reached in and opened the window before disappearing through it into the dark room beyond.
“Go, Alex,” Tanya said, pushing me forward. She was making sure I didn’t lag behind by making me go in front of her. Luckily the window was large. I struggled through and found myself inside a carpeted room with vinyl chairs and a sofa. Framed Radio Cornwall posters hung on the walls.
Sam opened the door and light spilled in from a lighted corridor. The girls pushed past me and ran out of the room with Sam. I followed, scared to be left alone. I didn’t want to be killed or captured and someone must have heard that window breaking.
The corridor was brightly lit with strip lights, the floor covered in blue and grey vinyl floor tiles. Pictures of the Radio Cornwall DJs lined the walls.
At the far end of the corridor I could see an empty reception area and a steel and glass door that led to the parking lot. Two soldiers stood outside the door, looking out into the night. Their rifles were slung over their shoulders and they looked relaxed. If they had heard the window breaking, they didn’t seem too bothered by it.
“Alex, this way,” Sam whispered, holding a door open for me across the corridor and gesturing for me to follow him. I went through quickly and we ascended a wide set of stairs to the next floor.
A double door at the top was open and two soldiers stood guarding it, facing away from us. Tanya and Sam rushed up the steps and swung their weapons before the soldiers knew what was happening. They crumpled to the hallway floor.
Undead Rain Trilogy Box Set Page 27