I was going to tell this to Sam but he held up a hand, shushing me. He seemed to be listening for something.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered.
I listened to the environment around us. I could hear the waves hitting the boat and seagulls in the distance but nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I heard it. Voices in the distance and the low hum of a boat engine.
“I think it’s those soldiers, man,” Sam said. “They’re looking for us.”
Because of the mist, I had no idea how far away—or how close—the other boat was. I knew that sound travelled well over the water, which could mean it was miles away. But it could just as easily be a hundred feet away, hidden by the mist.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
Sam nodded. “I’ll get Tanya and we’ll get the Escape started. He downed his coffee and left the deck.
I followed him inside but instead of going down to the cabin area, I walked through the living area and went out through the rear door to the aft deck. Once there, I climbed the ladder to the bridge and sat in the pilot’s chair.
After a minute or so, Sam appeared on the aft deck with a tired-looking Tanya and gave me the thumbs up before they descended the aft ladder to the Zodiac. Instead of using the Zodiac’s motor, they grabbed the paddles and rowed across to the Escape, obviously trying to make as little noise as possible.
I switched on the radio and dialled through the channels to see if I could pick up any sort of transmission from the unknown boat.
I couldn’t pick up any chatter so I returned the radio to its original channel.
It crackled and Sam’s voice said, “Okay, dude, let’s get the hell out of here. I think they’re south of us so we’re going to head north.”
“Copy that.” I started the Big Easy’s engine, inwardly flinching as it roared to life. If the other boat was close enough that we could hear the voices of those on board, then they were sure to hear the Easy’s engine.
Through the mist, I saw the Escape begin to move slowly away and I followed her, keeping a steady pace.
I searched the radio channels again and now I did pick up something.
“Foxtrot Two, do you hear that? Over.”
“Sierra One, this is Foxtrot Two. I hear engines. Sounds like they’re north of our position. Heading that way now. Over.”
“Copy, Foxtrot Two.”
Yeah, they were military all right and they were definitely looking for us. If not for this mist, they’d probably have found us already. Our only hope now was to slip away unseen. That wasn’t going to be easy when we were piloting forty-two foot boats with powerful engines.
I came up alongside the Lucky Escape and we sailed together through the mist. Tanya was at the wheel of the Escape and she waved at me through the window. Sam was standing on the aft deck, peering at the mist in our wake.
I wondered if Lucy was still asleep. I should probably have awoken her and told her the trouble we were in but that would only have made her mood worse. She was probably in a deep sleep, anyway; a sleep aided by the pills she seemed to be taking on a regular basis.
I guessed I couldn’t blame her if she wanted to run away from everything. Hell, we all did. Since the world had turned upside down, there was nothing I wanted more than to curl into a ball and block it all out. But I knew that if I did that, I wouldn’t last long. In this new zombie-infested world survival was a hard-fought game that had no grand prize other than one more day of staying alive.
I heard the door below open and Lucy came out onto the aft deck. I opened the bridge door and looked down at her. “Hey, how are you doing?”
“Okay,” she said, rubbing her bleary eyes. “What’s going on?”
“We heard another boat in the area so we’re getting out of here.”
“Gordon’s men?”
“Probably.”
“Are they following us?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Anything you want me to do?”
“Just sit tight for now. Hopefully we can lose them in this mist.”
She nodded slowly and went back inside.
The radio crackled and I heard something that made my blood run cold.
“Delta One, this is Foxtrot Two requesting air support. Over.”
“Foxtrot two, this is Delta One. Air support confirmed. ETA six minutes.”
10
I wanted to shout across to Tanya to see if she’d heard the message on the radio but I didn’t dare make a noise that would give away our position. When I looked through my window at the bridge of the Escape, I was in no doubt that Tanya had heard the message from Delta One. She’d paled and she looked across at me with worried eyes.
If the military was sending planes this way, we had no hope of escape. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Tanya turned the wheel and steered the Escape towards the shore. As the boat peeled away, I looked at her through the bridge window with a questioning shrug.
She keyed her radio and simply said, “Follow me.”
I had no reason to do otherwise so I spun the wheel and followed. I guessed that Tanya’s plan was to get to land. When the air support arrived, we were sitting ducks out here but if we could get to land, we had a chance to evade capture.
Also, if we headed into the shallows, we might get away from the boats that were following us. They probably thought we were headed out into deeper water so going in the opposite direction might fool them.
It wasn’t much of a plan but it was all we had.
Lucy appeared at the foot of the ladder. “Alex, where are we going?”
“It might be a good idea to get ready to abandon ship,” I told her. “We could be going ashore.”
“What? Why?”
“There are planes heading our way. Or helicopters. Or something. We’ll never get away as long as we’re out here.”
I expected her to react violently, to blow up and let out a string of curses. She didn’t. Instead, she calmly said, “I’ll get the weapons,” and disappeared inside. In some way, that was worse than if she’d had an outburst.
We’d been sailing toward the shore for a couple of minutes at a fair pace when something huge and dark loomed out of the mist.
I cut our speed when I realised it was a rock and we were heading straight for it. Tanya had also seen it and had manoeuvred the Lucky Escape around the seaward side of the obstruction. I turned the wheel so that the Big Easy sailed past the side of the rock closer to shore.
I heard a thump and felt a shudder as the boat’s hull hit something and realised I’d made the wrong choice. I’d avoided the large rock but in doing so, I’d taken the Easy into shallow water and we were now hitting submerged rocks.
If I turned back towards deeper water, I’d hit the rock that jutted above the water. If I turned the wheel in the opposite direction, I’d be going into even shallower water. I had no option other than to stay on course until we got past the large rock and then head for deeper water.
But that wasn’t going to work either. I heard and felt another rock hit the hull and then the Easy stopped in her tracks.
We were grounded.
The bridge door opened and Lucy stuck her head inside. “Alex, what the fuck?”
“We’re stuck,” I said, killing the engine.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t be.”
“It’s time to abandon ship,” I told her. “We’re in shallow water so we can’t be far from the shore. We’ll swim for land and Tanya can pick us up farther along the shore where there aren’t any rocks.”
Lucy was still shaking her head. “No, it isn’t going to be that easy.” She pointed towards the shore.
I looked through my window and felt my heart sink.
The mist had lifted enough that visibility was improving. We were no more than a hundred feet from shore. The beach was sandy and would have been a perfect holiday destination
if the world hadn’t gone to hell.
Right now, the entire area was full of zombies.
Most of them shambled over the sand aimlessly, unaware of our presence. A group of five stood at the water’s edge staring at us, alerted to our location by the sound of our voices.
Swimming ashore wasn’t an option.
“What are we going to do?” Lucy asked.
I appraised our situation and didn’t like it at all. The boat was stuck. We were stuck. And military aircraft were coming this way. I could already hear a low buzzing somewhere overhead.
Lucy heard it too. She looked up at the sky. “Sounds like a drone.”
That made sense. The coast was being constantly patrolled by drones so all Delta One had to do was request that the closest aircraft be diverted to our position.
“Those things have Hellfire missiles,” Lucy said. “They’re going to blow us out of the water.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No, they’re not. They can’t. For all they know, we have Vess’s body on board. They can’t risk blowing it to pieces.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lucy said as we heard a whistling noise that got louder in pitch with each passing second. She slid down the ladder and I followed. Zombies or not, if there was a missile heading towards us, we had to swim for shore.
The sea in front of the Big Easy erupted. A plume of sea water geysered into the air and rained down on the boat.
Lucy passed me a baseball bat and she grabbed a tyre iron.
“We can’t leave the papers behind,” I told her, running into the living area.
“Alex, come on!” she shouted at me. “That was just a warning shot. The next one will kill us!”
She was probably right. My reasoning that the military wouldn’t risk blowing Vess up seemed to be misguided.
A second missile struck the area in front of the boat. This one was closer and the foredeck ripped apart in the explosion. Flames and black smoke began to rise from the bow. Maybe I’d been right about them not wanting to blow us up after all. They were trying to cripple us to make sure we couldn’t escape. They didn’t realise we were already grounded.
“Leave the damn papers!” Lucy shouted at me.
I couldn’t let Gordon and his men get this stuff back. I just couldn’t. I stuffed everything back into the footlocker and carried it out onto the aft deck. I was sure it would float when I jumped overboard.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” Lucy was looking towards the shore with panic in her eyes.
I followed her gaze and my breath caught in my throat.
The zombies, attracted by the sound of the explosion, were all coming this way now. And they weren’t stopping at the water’s edge. They were wading into the sea, intent on reaching us.
The Big Easy listed slightly onto her side and I felt cold water rush over my feet. The rocks we’d hit must have punctured the hull. The bow of the boat was on fire, the stern was sinking, and the zombies were wading towards us with a hungry hate in their yellow eyes.
11
We stood on the sinking deck with our weapons ready. The bat felt heavy in my hands. The footlocker sat on the deck behind me. Lucy stood next to me, wielding the tyre iron. I wasn’t sure if we should stay on the boat and fight or get the hell out of here. If we stayed, we were in danger of being blown up by the next missile that came our way. If we swam for it, we’d swim right into the zombie horde.
Some of the creatures had almost reached the boat already. I hefted the bat and took a swing at a rotting man who was wearing a life vest. I had no idea how he’d got here or why he was wearing the vest but those things were irrelevant now. They were part of his old life. Now, he had become a creature that acted in accordance with the virus coursing through its body.
What had once been a man with hopes and dreams was now nothing more than something I had to exterminate.
The bat connected with his skull, which collapsed like an overripe watermelon. The creature collapsed into the water.
Lucy attacked a bald-headed zombie similarly dressed in a life vest. Perhaps he’d once been a friend of the man who’d become the creature that now floated in front of me. Or perhaps they’d never known each other and had simply ended up on this beach by chance. Either way, they both met the same fate as Lucy’s tyre iron cleaved the bald skull in two and the creature dropped like a bag of cement into the sea.
The life vests ensured the two corpses remained afloat as other creatures waded past them to get to us.
“Why are they in the water?” Lucy asked. “They usually avoid it.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I’d try to figure out their unusual behaviour later; right now, we needed an escape plan.
“We can’t swim for shore,” I told Lucy, “but we can swim for that big rock out there.”
“Won’t they follow us?”
“I hope not,” I said, throwing the footlocker over the side. These zombies were ignoring their usual instinct to avoid water but could they actually swim? From what I’d seen so far, the animated corpses only had rudimentary movement. Could they perform a physical task as complex as swimming?
I doubted it. Even hybrids—which were way more capable than the shamblers we had wading towards us—couldn’t swim. I’d seen a group of them fall into the sea and simply drown.
I vaulted over the railing and into the water, followed closely by Lucy. Now we had the boat between us and the creatures. I grabbed the footlocker—which was floating—and swam for the rock that jutted from the water.
I didn’t look back until I scrambled out of the water, dragging the footlocker up onto the rock. The Big Easy was swarming with zombies now. The boat’s bow was underwater and the creatures scrambled aboard easily.
They seemed to know Lucy and I were on the rock and some of them stepped off the boat into the deeper water but they flailed helplessly once they were out of their depth. They didn’t exactly sink but they were unable to achieve any forward movement. They struggled and splashed as if they were drowning but they didn’t actually drown.
I heard a buzzing sound that I thought was the drone overhead but soon realised was coming from the deeper water. I looked in the direction and saw Sam and Tanya in the Zodiac, speeding towards our position. They were armed with M16s and they looked like they meant business.
Sam steered the craft so that it came up alongside the rock and Lucy and I got in. As soon as we were sitting down, he revved the engine and we sped away towards the Lucky Escape.
“You’re such a geek, Alex,” he said, motioning to the footlocker with his head. “Even in a crisis, you have to save the paperwork.”
“There could be something really important in here,” I told him. “I couldn’t let it sink. There might be something in here that Brigadier Gordon needs to complete Operation Dead Ground. By keeping it from him, we may have saved a lot of lives.”
He shrugged and looked at me incredulously. “Dude, we don’t even know what Operation Dead ground is.”
“We know it’s not good. The clue is in the name, remember?”
He grinned and nodded.
“It might not be safe to get on board the Escape,” I said. “You saw what they did to the Easy.” I looked back at the burning, broken craft that had been our home and safe haven for all this time. Without that boat, I’d have been long dead. I remembered time spent on the boat with Mike and Elena. Now, like my two friends, the Big Easy was gone. Another casualty of the world we now inhabited; a world where nothing good can ever last.
“They won’t hit the Lucky Escape with any missiles,” Tanya said.
I frowned at her. “How can you be so sure?”
“They won’t risk blowing Patient Zero up.”
“For all they know, Vess might be on the Easy,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, they know he’s on the Escape. Before we came to rescue you, we dragged the crate up onto the deck so they could see it from the air. They can’t blow up the boat because then the
y’d lose their precious science experiment.”
Putting Vess’s crate on display was good thinking but it probably meant the boats we’d heard earlier were racing towards the Escape now, hoping to board her and take the prize.
It was still too misty to see the military boats but I had no doubt they were close.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “We can’t outrun the army forever and we can’t hide as long as they have air support.”
“You’re the brains of the group,” Sam said. “Planning is your department, dude.”
“I’ll think of something,” I said, not feeling anywhere near as confident as I sounded.
We reached the Escape and climbed quickly on board. Tanya climbed up to the bridge and got us moving. I could hear the drone but when I searched the sky for it, I couldn’t see it.
I was sure it had a visual on us, though.
Cold and wet, I stood at the railing and peered into the mist in our wake. Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, there was a dark shape back there, almost completely hidden by the mist.
“They’re getting closer,” I said to Sam and Lucy, pointing at the shape. “That’s their boat.”
Sam looked at me and for the first time in ages, his usual bravado was gone. “So what’s the plan?”
As I’d already told everyone, we couldn’t run forever and the drone gave Gordon’s men a bird’s eye view at all times so we couldn’t hide. Not in the boat, anyway.
“The only way to hide from the drone is to enter a building,” I said.
Sam gestured around us. “Dude, there aren’t any buildings out here. We’re in the sea.”
Ignoring the fact that he was stating the obvious, I said, “How quickly can we hotwire a car, load Vess on board, and drive away?”
He thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of minutes maybe.”
“We have to get to land,” I said. “Out here, we have no chance. If we can quickly get into a car and drive to a town, we can hide out in the buildings. Maybe even use the sewers. That’s the only way we can avoid the army’s airborne eyes.”
Undead Rain (Book 5): Survival [Revenge of the Living Dead] Page 6