She shook her head. “If she was going to confide in anyone, it would be you, Alex. You’re closer to her than I am.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said uncertainly. Lucy and I had been close, there was no doubt about that, but she seemed to be pulling away from me lately, both physically and emotionally.
“If you’re worried about her,” Tanya said. “Why not have a talk with her while I go back to get Sam?”
I nodded. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to say to Lucy.
Tanya must have seen the uncertainty on my face because she said, “Just ask her how she’s doing.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
We got back into the Zodiac and Tanya helped me get the footlocker on board the Big Easy before she took the Zodiac back towards the harbour where I could see Sam still sunbathing on the Volvo’s bonnet. I watched her and the Zodiac for a moment before leaving the footlocker on the deck and heading into the living area.
Survivor Radio was coming through the speakers in here. The Clash were playing London Calling. I went through the door that led belowdecks and called out Lucy’s name. There was no answer.
I found her on the bed. She was curled up, facing the wall.
Sitting on the mattress next to her, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she murmured.
“What’s wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing you can do to change it.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Still, it might help to talk about it.”
She sighed. “I’ve had enough.”
“Enough of what?”
“Of everything. The fighting. The danger. The uncertainty. I can’t take it anymore.”
I felt helpless. What could I do to help her? The world had changed and the days when life seemed safe were gone. Now, everything was a fight for survival and danger lurked around every corner.
“We’re safe on the boats,” I offered. It was a lame thing to say. Despite the relative safety of the boats compared to being on land, we had to make constant supply runs on land and every run we undertook put us in danger.
“We’re not safe,” Lucy said. “One day we’ll run into pirates or the hybrids will learn to swim. Or the army will blow us out of the water.”
“We’ll just have to face those things if and when they happen,” I told her.
“I don’t want to face them. I want to feel safe again.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. There was nothing I could say or do to make her feel safe. I noticed a pill bottle on the bedside table and picked it up. According to the label, the bottle contained Xanax, prescribed to someone whose name I didn’t recognise.
“Where did you get these?” I asked.
“I found them in a house during one of our supply runs.”
“And you’ve been taking them?”
She nodded slightly. “Yeah. I thought they’d help me forget for a while.”
“And do they?”
“They make me tired.”
“You probably shouldn’t be taking them.”
She rolled over and snatched the bottle from me. “Don’t even think about throwing them away.” Rolling back to face the wall, she clutched the pills to her chest.
“I wasn’t going to throw them away. I was just saying you probably shouldn’t be taking someone else’s prescribed drugs. Those things can be pretty powerful and they’re probably addictive.”
She shrugged. “If I need more, I’ll get more.”
“Lucy, you need to think about what you’re doing.”
“Leave me alone, Alex.”
“Don’t you want to know what we found in that Land Rover?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“No, I don’t care.”
“You will when I tell you what it was. You won’t believe it, actually.”
“I said I don’t care!” she said, turning to glare at me. “I also told you to leave me alone.”
“Okay, okay, I’m going.” I got up off the bed and left the room, shutting the door behind me. As I ascended the stairs to the living area, I pondered the situation. I’d known something was bothering Lucy but I hadn’t realised she’d been taking pills. How long had this been going on?
The last supply run she’d taken part in had been two weeks ago so she must have had the pills at least that long.
I didn’t even know if the bottle I’d seen was the only one in her possession.
I went out onto the aft deck where the footlocker was waiting. After bringing it into the living area—where Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield was coming through the speakers—I placed it on the dining table and stared at it. Hopefully, it would provide me with some answers.
In the distance, I heard the Zodiac’s engine buzzing as it approached.
I looked through the window and saw Tanya and Sam making their way to the Lucky Escape.
Going out onto the aft deck again, I waved to them and shouted, “We should probably get out of here. Those soldiers didn’t find us but by now they probably have the entire base out searching this area. It’s only a matter of time before someone sees us anchored out here.”
Sam gave me a thumbs up and they took the Zodiac around to the Escape’s stern.
I went up to the bridge and used a pair of binoculars to scan the shore. I found it hard to believe Camp Victor would only send a handful of vehicles to retrieve something as valuable as Patient Zero. Surely this entire area would be scoured by the military soon.
I couldn’t see anything through the binoculars, though, so it looked like we were going to make a clean getaway.
The radio crackled and Sam’s voice came through the static. “Hey, man, let’s go.”
“Copy that,” I said. I raised the anchor, started the engine, and turned the wheel so we’d be heading out into deeper water. From there, we could head south and get out of this area before we stopped again and tried to find the location of Bunker 53 in the footlocker. Sergeant Locke had said there was a map, so that should make things easier.
The Big Easy glided out into deeper water and the Lucky Escape sailed alongside her.
After five minutes or so, when the shoreline was far behind us, Sam’s voice came from the radio again. “Look behind us, man. We got out of there just in time.”
I turned around in my chair and squinted as I surveyed the shore. Unable to see anything with the naked eye, I used the binoculars and immediately saw what Sam meant.
The harbour was crawling with soldiers and military vehicles. Some of the soldiers were on the jetty, inspecting the Volvo. As I swept the binoculars over the beach, I thought I saw a familiar figure standing by a Jeep near the water’s edge. Adjusting the wheel on the binoculars, I brought the man’s face into focus.
When I saw the neat, close-cropped grey hair and well-tended moustache, I recognised the man immediately. Brigadier James Gordon. We’d crossed paths before. As far as I was concerned, the man was dangerous.
And right now, he was standing stock still on the beach with his hands behind his back, looking out to sea.
Staring directly at our boats.
8
“It was Brigadier Gordon,” I told the others as we sat around the Big Easy’s dining table later that evening. Night was falling rapidly and the view of the waves beyond the waves was darkening. We’d had a dinner that consisted of pasta and meatballs and now we were talking about our next move.
Lucy had finally emerged from the cabin to eat and had chatted airily for a while but now that we were discussing the matter at hand—Vess’s body and how to get it to Bunker 53—she seemed to have lost interest in our conversation.
She moved away from the table and sat in the easy chair some distance away, listening to Survivor Radio, which was still coming through the speakers.
“I bet he’s the fucker who dug up Vess,” Sam said. “It has to be him.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “The thing is, I’m sure he knows we’re out here on the
water. He was watching the boats as we sailed away from the harbour.”
“You sure?” Sam asked.
I remembered Gordon’s face as he stood on the beach, his beady eyes staring in our direction. “Yeah, pretty sure.”
“Great,” Lucy murmured from the chair.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, turning to face her.
“It means that thanks to your little excursion onto the mainland, we’re not even safe in the boats anymore. They’ve probably got boats of their own and they’re probably out looking for us right now.”
“The sea is a big place,” Tanya said. “They won’t find us out here. It’d be looking for a needle in a haystack. Especially now that it’s getting dark and the navigation lights are switched off.”
“They’ll find us,” Lucy said with a certainty that unnerved me.
“So let’s not hang around for too long, man,” Sam said, taking a handful of papers from the footlocker that now sat on the floor by the table. “Let’s find out where Bunker 53 is and head in that direction.” He distributed papers among himself, Tanya, and me. He offered some to Lucy but she ignored him so he threw them into a pile in the middle of the table.
I looked through the papers in front of me. There was a manila folder containing scientific jargon and chemical equations that meant absolutely nothing to me. From what I could ascertain, this was a report about Patient Zero’s blood.
Putting it aside, I checked the other papers on the table and then rummaged through the remaining contents of the footlocker.
“What are you looking for?” Sam asked.
“A map. Sergeant Locke said there’s a map that shows the bunker’s location. I don’t see it here.”
“Are you sure he said there’s a map?”
“Yeah, I told him I didn’t know where the bunker was and he said there’s a map in the vehicle.” As I spoke the last three words of that sentence, a realisation hit me. “Shit. He didn’t say the map was in this footlocker. He said the map was in the vehicle. This is the stuff Echo Six stole from the military base. There won’t be a map here. It must be in the front of the Land Rover.”
Tanya let her head drop into her hands. “We can’t go back there; the area will be crawling with soldiers.”
“Yeah, man,” Sam said. “And the guys who took Vess and the footlocker out of the Land Rover probably took the map too.”
I shook my head. “No, they didn’t. We killed those guys at the crossroads and took their vehicles. They didn’t have a map. They just took back the items that had been stolen from Camp Victor, which was what they’d been tasked to do. The map is still in Echo Six’s Land Rover.”
Sam frowned. “Dude, I agree with Tanya; that area is too hot. You saw how many soldiers there were at the harbour.”
Tanya and Sam were right; there was no way we could go back to Echo Six’s Land Rover now. It was simply too dangerous.
“So that’s that,” Lucy said. “Your plan to save the world has fallen at the first hurdle. Going ashore was a complete waste of time.”
I wasn’t ready to accept that just yet. Yes, this was a setback but there had to be a way forward. I just couldn’t figure out what that way was right now.
“Maybe I’ll sleep on it,” I said.
“Sounds like a good idea, man,” Sam said. “I’m beat.” He got up and stretched, cracking his back. “You coming, Tanya?”
“Yeah.” She got up and looked at Lucy and me. “Maybe things will look better in the morning.”
“I hope so,” I said.
They went out to the aft deck to take the Zodiac back to the Lucky Escape.
“I don’t envy them,” I told Lucy. “Having to sleep on the Escape with Marcus Vess in the storeroom isn’t a pleasant prospect.”
“Maybe they should sleep here,” she suggested.
That wasn’t such a bad idea. “Hey, guys,” I said, going out onto the aft deck after them. “You can stay here if you like. For the night, I mean. We have a spare cabin.” I realised that I wasn’t exactly sure about Sam and Tanya’s relationship. Did they even sleep together or were they just friends? I’d never asked and they’d never offered to enlighten me regarding their situation.
“Why would we want to do that?” Tanya asked.
I shrugged. “You know, with Patient Zero being on your boat and all. I just thought it might creep you out. It’d creep me out for sure. And we could all do with a good night’s rest. That might be easier to achieve on a zombie-free boat.”
Sam grinned. “Sounds good to me, man.”
Tanya nodded. “Sure, why not?”
They came back into the living area and I closed the door against the night.
Lucy was nowhere to be seen. I assumed she’d gone to bed.
Noticing her absence, Sam said, “Is Lucy okay with this? With us staying over, I mean.”
“Yeah, it was her idea.”
“Okay, cool. See you in the morning then, man.”
“Goodnight, Alex,” Tanya said.
I gave them a little wave as they went through the door that led to the cabins belowdecks. “Goodnight.”
Before I went down myself, I cleared up the dishes and cutlery and threw them in the sink so they could soak overnight. Then I turned off the radio and made sure all the windows were closed and the doors locked.
“Batten down the hatches,” I murmured to myself in a pirate’s voice.
Satisfied that everything was secure, I went downstairs to the cabin Lucy and I shared. When I got there, I found the door closed and locked.
“Lucy?” I said, tapping lightly on the door. “Are you going to let me in?”
There was no answer.
“Lucy?”
Still nothing. If she’d taken more Xanax, she was probably out of it by now. I couldn’t sleep in the spare cabin because Sam and Tanya were in there so I went to the storeroom, grabbed a blanket, and took it upstairs to the living area.
After making myself as comfortable as I could in the easy chair and pulling the blanket up to my chin, I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.
My dreams were inhabited by shambling zombies and soldiers whose chests exploded into clouds of red mist. And every now and then, a recurring image would flash into my head; the memory of Brigadier James Gordon standing on a beach watching our boats sail out to sea.
9
I woke up the following morning to find an insidious mist creeping over the sea and the boats. I sat up and rubbed my eyes before checking the time on my watch. It wasn’t even six o’ clock yet but my uncomfortable night in the chair had ensured I’d be an early riser today.
Climbing out of the chair stiffly, I stretched. The joints in my knees and elbows cracked audibly. I staggered into the kitchen area and filled the coffee machine. Although the day had barely started, I already knew I was going to need a large dose of caffeine to face it.
While I waited for the machine to do its thing, I stared out through the windows at the misty sea. The weather conditions had reduced visibility to no more than fifty feet and I could barely see the Lucky Escape through the mist.
At least this would help to conceal us from the military; it would be hard to find us while the boats were hidden by a misty shroud. I had no doubt the mist would burn off later today but by then, we’d be far away from here.
But where would we go? No matter how many times I tried to solve the problem of finding Bunker 53, the only answer I came up with was to get the map from Echo Six’s Land Rover.
And that was out of the question while Brigadier Gordon’s men were combing the area. Besides, now the soldiers were out in force, they’d probably taken Echo Six’s Land Rover back to Camp Victor. I doubted they’d leave a military vehicle in the road.
The four of us were hardly going to be able to break into a military base and get out alive.
That meant our chances of finding Bunker 53 were less than zero. The location of a secret government bunker wasn’t something you could jus
t look up online or find on a regular map.
The inability to find Bunker 53 presented us with another problem; we couldn’t hold onto Marcus Vess’s body indefinitely. If the virus was bringing him back to life, then eventually he was going to wake up. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him when that happened.
When the coffee had finally filled the pot, I poured some into a mug and took it out onto the foredeck. The morning was cold and I shivered slightly. The sea was relatively calm and I could hear small waves slapping rhythmically against the hull.
I leaned on the railing and sipped the hot coffee, watching the Lucky Escape as I did so. On board that boat was the most fearsome creature I’d ever faced, a true nightmare in the flesh. Considering the fact that we had no idea what the virus was doing to Vess’s body, it might be a good idea if Sam and Tanya remained on the Big Easy for a while.
I had little faith that the metal crate and a locked storeroom door would hold him if he came back to life.
I heard movement behind me and turned to see Sam coming out on deck. He’d helped himself to a mug of coffee and took a swig before waving to me. “Hey, Alex. Couldn’t sleep? It’s hella early.”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I always get up at the asscrack of dawn, dude, so I can workout.”
“You workout?”
He looked at me dubiously. “Hell, yeah! How do you think I look so ripped, man?”
I shrugged. “I thought it was due to having little food and spending a lot of time running from danger.” That was how I’d lost weight. I’d just assumed Sam—who’d always been in good shape—had maintained his toned physique the same way. I didn’t realised he was working at it.
He scoffed. “Once a gym rat, always a gym rat, buddy. I can’t go to a gym anymore, obviously, but I still do some bodyweight exercises. Gotta keep everything tight, know what I mean?” He patted his flat stomach through his T-shirt.
One look at my physique should have told him I didn’t know what he meant at all. I hadn’t worked out a day in my life, unless walking to the Chinese takeaway counted as exercise.
Survival- Revenge of the Living Dead Page 5