Rain

by Shaun Harbinger

  “As good as we can be in the situation,” Mike said. “Alex, we’re sinking.”

  I nodded, trying to clear my vision of the black floating spots that danced there. “We can’t open the doors until the car fills with water. Something about equalizing pressure.”

  “We’ll fucking freeze to death by then, man!”

  “So we need to break the windscreen and climb out.”

  Mike looked around for something to break the glass. “The tire iron,” he said. “Elena¸ it’s in the back.”

  She leaned over the back seat and into the trunk. She grabbed the tire iron and handed it to Mike.

  The sea water was rising. It spread over the seats.

  Mike took a swing at the windscreen and managed to crack it. A second blow shattered the safety glass. We both used our legs to push it clear of the frame.

  “Bring the rucksacks,” Mike said. “There are things in there we’ll need.”

  The girls passed the rucksacks forward.

  “Tie the straps together,” I suggested. “They’ll float. We won’t lose them if they’re all tied together.”

  Mike unfastened the clips and attached the straps so the rucksacks were looped together. He pushed them out through the hole where the windscreen had been and climbed out onto the hood. I followed him and we helped the girls clamber through.

  With our weight on top of it, the Land Rover sank quickly into the deep water.

  “See that beach?” Mike said, pointing at a stretch of sand beneath the cliffs. “Head for that.” He pushed the rucksack raft into the water and followed it. I let myself fall forward into the water and gasped as I felt the icy wetness cover my body. I grabbed the rucksacks and kicked my legs to stay afloat.

  The four of us used the raft to stay together, each of us holding onto the slippery fabric and swimming towards the beach.

  I glanced back to where the Land Rover had been. It was gone, buried beneath the waves.

  I spat out a salty mouthful of cold seawater and scanned the beach. It appeared deserted. As darkness fell, so did the rain, fat drops splashing into the water around us. I looked up at the cliffs where we had gone over the edge. It must be at least a fifty-foot drop. We were lucky to be alive.

  I felt something grasp my legs and I cried out, certain that a zombie was standing down there under the water and had curled his rotting hands around my calf.

  “It’s just weeds,” Mike said, his teeth chattering with cold.

  I looked at Lucy. Her lips were turning blue and her skin was pale, making her appear like a beautiful vampire.

  We reached the shallows and stood up, dragging the rucksacks out of the water.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Mike looked along the cliff wall. “There must be caves. There are always caves.”

  That was true. I remembered many family holidays when I was a kid, exploring caves along the beach with Joe while Mom and Dad sat on sun loungers. There were always caves.

  We set off along the wet sand. The rain lashed into our faces, making it hard to see. I put my hand up to ward it off but I had to keep blinking raindrops from my eyes. It made it harder to find a cave. Worse, I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to see the zombies. There would be nothing more tragic than surviving thus far only to stumble into a zombie in the rain.

  “There’s a cave,” Lucy shouted, pointing to the rocks with a trembling hand.

  A dark gap in the cliff wall led into darkness.

  We made for it, shuffling through the sand until we stood at the mouth of the cave. Mike searched through the side pocket of his rucksack and got a flashlight. He shone the beam into the blackness. Shadows fled to the edges of the space he illuminated.

  The sand on the floor in there was dry. The space was big enough for all of us to fit inside. We got in out of the rain and Mike lit the kerosene lamps, placing them at the back of the cave so the light wouldn’t spill out onto the beach outside.

  There was driftwood in here. It looked like someone visited this cave regularly and built fires here. Before the world went to hell. Blackened and charred wood lay in the centre of a circle of stones. I placed fresh wood in there and Mike lit it. As the fire sparked into life, we huddled around it, removing our soaked jackets and laying them on the sand by the rocky wall.

  “I’m going to get changed,” Elena said, digging into her rucksack.

  “So am I,” Lucy agreed.

  They fished out dry clothes and stood in the heat of the fire. I watched as they peeled off their wet clothing. Mike looked at me and grinned then stared at the girls, firelight glowing in his eyes.

  As they stripped down to their underwear, I felt myself getting excited despite the cold, wet cargo pants clinging to me. Elena was much thinner than Lucy, her ribs showing beneath her black bra. Her legs were sleek and muscled.

  Lucy’s curves made her appear more womanly in my eyes. Her breasts thrust against her pink bra, her cleavage deep between the swells of soft flesh. Her waist was small above the inviting curves of her hips. Her pink panties were small too and when she turned around to protect her modesty while she removed her bra, the firelight cast flickering shadows over the smooth slopes of her buttocks.

  She removed the panties and quickly replaced them with a fresh, dry pair. White with tiny blue flowers printed on the cotton. She put on a matching bra before slipping on a black T-shirt and blue jeans.

  When the girls turned to face us, we were sitting there with huge grins on our faces.

  Elena looked at Lucy and raised an eyebrow. “Looks like the boys are happy about something.”

  We all laughed. It was a moment of light relief in an otherwise shitty day.

  “It’s your turn now, boys,” Elena said.

  I looked at Mike and he shrugged. We did need to get out of our wet things. I found my dry clothes and faced away from the girls while I stripped. Mike did the same except he spun around for a split second to give the girls a flash of his goods. I remained as hidden as I could in the shadows. Working a sedentary job and playing video games is not the way to get a great physique.

  I hurried into my clothes and returned to warm myself by the fire as quickly as I could.

  Lucy looked into my eyes. “You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  I was thankful she didn’t know the non-history of my non-existent love life. Apart from the prostitute in Amsterdam, my only other experience in the sex department had been with a girl named Gina Lewis when I was twenty-one. Gina was as much of a geek as I was and we met in Second Life one afternoon when I was off sick from work. I actually only had a cold but I rang in and said I had the flu because I wanted a couple of days off to stay in bed and play on the computer. I took enough shit at work to have a couple extra days off at my discretion.

  On this particular sunny afternoon, I was propped up against the pillows balancing the laptop on my knee when I ran into Gina. We had a chat and it turned out she lived in Manchester, which was only an hour’s drive from my house.

  Gina was online looking for a man. As obsessed with games as I was, but without a Mike-equivalent to get her out of the house, she lived most of her life online. She worked freelance, writing manuals for software companies, so she didn’t even have contact with work colleagues. Every now and then she craved human contact so she went online to find a man who lived close by.

  And so I had spent an hour driving to Manchester followed by an hour of sex. I didn’t see Gina again and she never contacted me.

  So I reckoned my embarrassment in front of Lucy was justified.

  I stared into the fire and let it warm my face.

  I felt exhausted. Today had been the longest day of my life. I had experienced every emotion possible and almost been killed a number of times. “Someone should be on guard duty,” I said. “We can take turns.”

  We arranged a shift pattern, which meant I had two hours’ sleep before it was my turn to keep watch for an hour. Laying the sleeping bags out in the sand, we agre
ed that the guard would have the gun.

  I put my head down and closed my eyes. The soft sand shifted beneath my sleeping bag, adjusting to my body. This was more comfortable than the ground on the mountain. I fell asleep almost immediately.

  And dreamed of a fish swimming in the shallows before being picked up and eaten by a heron.

  twelve

  I knew what the dream meant. I sat by the entrance of the cave on my guard shift, watching the rain pour down over the sea and sand and cliffs, and I knew why I had dreamed of the fish and the heron.

  It was because of the virus.

  I had seen a TV show once about how viruses controlled the hosts they infected. There was a virus that infected insects then made them climb as high as they could up a plant or a tree so the virus could send out spores to infect more insects. The higher the spores were, the better they could catch the breeze and travel farther.

  The virus that infected the fish I had dreamed about was a waterborne virus that wanted to infect birds, not fish at all. But it started in rivers because it was spread in bird faeces. So it infected a fish host then made that host swim in the shallows in a manner that would attract hungry birds. The birds ate the fish and became infected. The virus got to where it wanted to be.

  So now there was a virus infecting everyone and my mind had looked back in its data banks for any information it had about viruses and brought up memories of that TV show. Interesting, but useless to me in my current situation.

  If a virus could control its host like that, it explained why the zombies were seeking out prey. The virus wanted to spread. But we already guessed that, so nothing new there. Thanks, brain, but you’re on the wrong track. An old TV show about ants and fish isn’t really relevant in a zombie apocalypse.

  I was bored and hungry. Tomorrow we needed to find a boat and food. As for boredom, staring at a rainy beach for an hour was mind numbing. I unzipped the pocket on my jacket and took out the army radio we had taken from the soldier. It looked and felt dry. The hiking jacket had waterproof pockets but I didn’t think that included being immersed in the sea so I was surprised that the radio seemed to be intact.

  I clicked it on. Static came out of the speaker. I turned the volume down and found the tuning dial. With the radio to my ear, I searched for a signal. Maybe I could pick up a conversation between soldiers in the area.

  I thought I caught a fragment of a word for a second but it got lost in all the hissing static. Maybe the water had affected the radio after all. I turned the dial the opposite direction slowly, scanning back across the channels.

  “…That’s what I think, anyway. Over.”

  My fingers froze on the dial.

  “Yeah, I know but we have to follow orders, Jim. These things are decided at a much higher pay grade than ours, mate. Over.”

  “The fucking U.N. Who put them in charge? And why do they get to come sailing in on their fucking rescue mission and get all the fucking glory when it’s us who’ve done all the grunt work? Have they been separating the uninfected from the zombies? Have they? Fuck. We run all the risks and they come in for the medals. It pisses me off. Over.”

  “Relax. It’ll all be done soon. Over.”

  “It’ll be done alright. Done and dusted. Do you know what they’re going to do to this country once they get the uninfected out? I heard they’re going to nuke it. Nuke Britain. What gives them the right to do that to our country? Over.”

  “That’s just a rumour, Jim. Don’t go spreading it around. Anyway, once we’re gone, there will only be nasties left so why not nuke the place? Over.”

  “Because it’s…oh, fuck, I’ve got to go. The captain is coming this way. Over and out.”

  I sat staring at the green military radio in my hand, trying to process what I had just heard. The U.N. were staging a rescue mission and then they were going to launch a nuclear strike on the zombies? That meant the entire world wasn’t affected by the apocalypse. If the U.N. were still operating, they must have a base somewhere. If they were rescuing survivors, they must have somewhere to take them.

  That explained the Survivor Camps. The British Army had been instructed to separate the uninfected in preparation for a rescue mission. The soldier on the radio said the U.N. were going to come ‘sailing in’ so that probably meant they were coming here on ships.

  I scanned the other radio channels, desperate for more information, but all I got was static.

  When I woke up Elena for her shift, I told her to try the radio every now and then to see if she could pick up any more military chatter. She nodded wearily and took her post by the cave entrance while I crawled back into my sleeping bag.

  I lay looking up at the darkness for a while before I could get to sleep. There was a way out of all this. We just needed to find out where and when the U.N. ships were going to land. Maybe Joe and my parents would be rescued too. If they had been taken to a Survivors Camp and avoided infection, they could be among the ones waiting to be rescued.

  The chance of that was slim. I knew that but still my spirits were lifted. We just had to make it to those ships. Maybe Mike had been right to be optimistic earlier and there was a way to escape all of this.

  I closed my eyes and dared to dream.

  But my dream wasn’t about rescue ships or Joe or my parents. I stood on the beach outside the cave. The sky was clear and the sun shone brightly. The beach was deserted, the golden sand stretching off into the distance, but I didn’t mind having the place to myself. This was a good day to be at the beach. I raised my face to the sun and felt its warmth bathe my skin.

  Movement in the sea caught my eye and I looked out to where two shapes were rising from the waves. One dark-haired, one blonde. Both naked. Elena and Lucy. They waded in towards the beach, their long hair covering their faces. As they got closer, I could see their breasts; Elena’s small and perky, Lucy’s rounded and full. I got a sudden erection and realized I was naked too.

  The girls were in the shallows now, the sea water lapping against their thighs. They stopped there and I knew they wanted me. Their need pulsed from them like a thick, heady scent.

  I went to them, running over the hot sand until I was ankle-deep in the warm sea.

  Both girls looked up, the hair falling back from their faces.

  They glared at me with their hateful yellow eyes.

  * * *

  I sat up, immediately awake and disoriented. Where was I? The rock walls felt like they were closing in on me. The cave. I was in the cave. It was just a dream. A nightmare.

  I lay back down and glanced over at the cave entrance. Lucy sat there, gun in hand, army radio on the sand by her feet. She leaned back against the rock, watching the rain hiss down over the sand outside.

  “It’s still raining,” she said, looking over at me.

  “Typical Welsh weather.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t pick anything up on the radio.”

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. We had kept the fire burning all night and I had slept in my clothes so despite the weather I felt warm and dry. “We need to find out where those U.N. ships are going to land.” We had relayed the information I picked up from the radio during the night. Now all of us were hoping to be rescued.

  “We’ll keep checking.” She stood up and stretched, those perfect breasts I had first seen at Doug Latimer’s house pressing against the fabric of her T-shirt. She waved me over. “Look at this.” She pointed out along the coastline.

  I squinted into the rain. “What am I looking at?”

  “About three miles along the beach. Just offshore.”

  I saw a white shape but it was too far to distinguish any details. “What is it?”

  “I think it’s a boat. It’s been there all night.”

  I delved into Mike’s rucksack and brought out the binoculars. It was a boat. A long, white yacht. The type of pleasure craft wealthy people spend their summers on, cruising the Riviera or the Bahamas. I concentrated the binoculars on the windows. No movement in
side that I could see. Painted in blue script on the white hull was the name The Big Easy. I hoped the name was prophetic.

  “Looks like it’s anchored there.” I handed Lucy the binoculars.

  She took a look and nodded. “So how do we get out to it?”

  “There must be a rowboat or something around here somewhere. There’s a marina just along the coast.” I didn’t want to go to the marina if we could avoid it. It was situated in the city, which meant zombies. A lot of zombies.

  That boat, anchored tantalisingly close to the shore, seemed like our best option to remain safe while we tried to figure out the U.N. rescue plan. I judged the distance from the shoreline to the boat to be maybe half a mile. We could cover that distance in a rowboat in a short time and be in a zombie-free environment. We still needed food but we could sail along the coast and find a house or a village to raid.

  I hoped it was going to be that easy. The beach was eerily quiet except for the constant sound of the sea breaking on the pebbles and the rain hitting the rocks. It seemed too quiet. We weren’t all that far from Swansea, a city with a population of 240,000 people before the virus outbreak. There should be more zombies around. I didn’t believe the military had eradicated that many of them.

  I kept my thoughts to myself. I wasn’t about to complain out loud about the lack of zombies. If it meant we could get to The Big Easy without much trouble, that suited me just fine.

  I didn’t want to look into a pair of yellow eyes again for as long as I lived.

  thirteen

  We packed up our stuff and hoisted the rucksacks onto our backs. Lucy had the gun in case we met anyone along the beach but the area looked deserted. Mike led the way, striding along the wet sand as if he were out for a pleasant walk along the seashore. Elena kept up with him while Lucy and I trailed behind. This was now the accepted formation of our group and one that we fell into easily. I liked it for two reasons. One: I didn’t have to keep up with Mike and Elena, and two: I could talk with Lucy.