She gave me a sideways glance and I realised she was asking me to show her for the same reason Mike had shown me. If anything happened to me, they would need to know how to pilot the Lucky Escape.
As I talked Tanya through the gauges and controls, Britney finished singing and Johnny Drake’s smooth voice came over the airwaves. “That was Britney Spears and ‘Toxic’. Now here’s a song that goes out to all the survivors still out there. It’s Journey and ‘Don’t Stop Believing’.”
As the music began, I wondered if we were really going to be able to get into Johnny Drake’s studio and take over Survivor Radio.
Trying not to think of how difficult getting to Truro was going to be, I continued showing Tanya how to pilot the boat.
In case I didn’t make it.
eighteen
We saw the village on the coast two hours later.
Tanya was at the wheel, holding our course steady. The rain had eased to a light drizzle then disappeared completely and the dark clouds had blown inland to be replaced by fluffy white cumulus in the deep blue sky. The sun was doing a good job of evaporating the raindrops on the foredeck of the Lucky Escape where I sat watching the water and the distant coastline.
My hoodie and jeans were laid out on the deck along with a selection of clothing from everyone else. The fabric steamed in the heat. Sam had stripped down to his boxers and prowled around the deck looking like a modern day Tarzan, if Tarzan sported a soul patch. Tanya and Jax were in their bras and panties. They were both lean, muscled and toned—a pair of action girls who wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of a comic book.
I was the odd one out. I was in my boxers but unlike Sam, I had decided to keep my “Sail To Your Destiny” T-shirt on my body. It was uncomfortable and clung to me but I felt less self-conscious than I would if I were shirtless.
Besides, in the sun and breeze, everything was drying pretty quickly.
A gull dived into the waves and came up with a fish, reminding me how hungry I was. My mouth tasted of salt from the mouthful of sea water I had swallowed earlier.
The first indication of the coastal village was a small bay up ahead. The beach there was sandy and rocky with a small gravelled area beyond where two cars were parked. From there, a road led inland, flanked by grey stone houses.
I shouted up to Tanya, “There’s a village ahead. Might be worth checking out.”
She nodded and cut the engine. The sudden silence made me realise how comforting the constant hum of the engine had been. It was a reminder of civilisation. We had been sailing along, powered by manmade machinery, a link to the old world before the apocalypse. Now we were just floating on a piece of fibreglass and wood, playthings of the elements and the tide like ancient tribespeople paddling a fragile raft into a storm.
The anchor dropped, splashing heavily into the sea. The Lucky Escape shifted slightly then settled on the gentle waves.
Tanya came down the ladder and stood on the aft deck shielding her eyes from the sun. “Looks promising,” she said, scanning the village. She went into the living area and brought out the binoculars she had taken from the marina store. She inspected the village through the lenses. “I can’t see much except the beach, two cars, and a few houses.”
“A good place to look for food,” Jax suggested.
I nodded. “We need supplies and it doesn’t look too bad from here. Maybe it was evacuated or something. Maybe the army cleared the people out and moved on.”
Tanya lowered the binoculars. “It looks pretty isolated. Maybe the army never came here and everybody in the village is still there, hiding in their houses.”
“Or turned,” Sam added. “An isolated village full of zombies. That would make a good horror movie.”
As if we weren’t already living in a horror movie day by day. I had tried to imagine the village as deserted, all the houses empty, but now Sam’s comment worried me. The village seemed almost too quiet. It was dry and warm so there should be at least a few nasties roaming the beach or the road.
I remembered the zombies Lucy and I had encountered on The Hornet. Unable to reach humans, they had waited for their victims to come to them, biding their time until the time was right to strike and spread the virus.
Did a rotting, undead corpse lurk behind every door of every house in the village? If so, going there was suicide.
“We don’t have a choice,” Tanya said as if reading my mind. “We need food and this looks as good a place as any. Alex, you and Jax take the Zodiac and see what you can find.”
The Zodiac was a dark blue and white inflatable boat that was tied to the foredeck. It had a small outboard motor and looked like it could carry four people. I didn’t know why Tanya had decided Jax and I should take it ashore. Wasn’t there strength in numbers?
“We’ll empty the rucksacks so you can take those with you,” Tanya said. “Bring back as much as you can carry.”
“And if we get in trouble?” I asked.
“Then run back with as much as you can carry.”
I didn’t find her remark funny but I wasn’t about to argue. She knew how to pilot the boat now. I wasn’t really needed. I certainly didn’t bring strength to the group and my ultimate goal was different to theirs. They wanted to get a message out to all the survivors; I only wanted to reach Lucy and find my brother.
If I argued too much or became a burden, I could find myself being thrown overboard like Williams.
So I went over to the Zodiac and started to untie it. It looked sturdy enough. It had an aluminium floor and a bench seat. The sides were inflated but looked sturdy enough. There was a logo that said “Zoom” on the sides and on the front. The engine that had been fitted to this one was small but the craft was light so I guessed it would go fast enough for our purposes, as long as that didn’t include outrunning army mortars.
Jax had put her jeans, boots, and white T-shirt on. She came over to help me.
“I hope you don’t mind going with me,” I said.
“You watch my back and I’ll watch yours and we’ll be okay,” she replied, untying a cord and pulling the Zodiac free.
I put my damp jeans and boots on and the four of us carried the inflatable boat to the rear of the Lucky Escape. We got it over the side and when it was in the water, Sam tied it to the aft ladder. Jax and I descended the ladder and climbed on board.
I sat on the bench and Jax knelt by the outboard motor while Sam went to fetch our weapons. He returned with our baseball bats and handed them down to us. I lay them on the aluminium floor of the Zodiac.
Tanya threw the four empty rucksacks down and I stowed them next to our weapons.
“You want to take anything else with you?” Sam asked, offering us his tire iron.
I shook my head. “No, I’m fine with the bat.” I didn’t want to be weighed down by anything except a backpack full of food. Jax also refused the offer of his weapon and started the outboard engine.
It was noisy and spat out white smoke that smelled of oil and petrol. Jax grabbed the tiller and guided us away from the Lucky Escape.
The Zodiac cut through the water towards the beach.
As we reached the sand, I jumped out and waded ashore with the boat’s mooring rope. Someone had tied a heavy rock to the rope already so I made a hole in the sand and buried the rock in it. I didn’t want to risk the boat floating away with the tide.
Jax tilted the engine forward to keep the propeller from hitting the sand and rocks then she grabbed the empty backpacks and baseball bats and jumped out to join me on the beach.
We slung the backpacks over our shoulders and stood silently on the sand for a moment, listening and evaluating our situation.
All I could hear was the gentle rush of waves breaking on the beach. A slight smell of rotting meat hung in the warm air but that didn’t necessarily mean there was a village full of zombies here.
Jax looked at me. “You ready?”
I nodded with more confidence than I felt. “Ready.”
/> We moved up the beach to the parking area. One of the cars was a white Nova, the other a metallic red Toyota Camry.
As we approached, a sudden movement in the Nova surprised us both and we jumped back. Two rotting blue-skinned faces appeared in the back window of the car, their hateful yellow eyes fixed on us. They banged on the windows with their fists, leaving smears of blood and flesh on the glass.
“Don’t worry, they can’t get out,” Jax said. “They scared me though.”
“Yeah,” I said. The sudden appearance of the two zombies worried me. They had waited there quietly until we were close. If not for the car windows, they would have grabbed us.
How many more of them were hiding in the village?
We readied our bats and walked past the cars towards the houses.
nineteen
The village was no more than a single street lined with thirty or so houses built of grey stone and with small fenced-off front yards, a post office and a pub. The street was deserted. A few cars were parked here and there but there was nothing to indicate that anyone was in the houses. Most of the curtains were closed and through the windows where they weren’t, I could only see glimpses of empty living rooms. A dead meat smell hung in the air.
“It’s too quiet,” Jax whispered.
“Let’s just find some food and get out of here,” I suggested.
She nodded. “Which house do you want to try first?”
I indicated the nearest house with open curtains. For some reason, the houses that had closed themselves off from the street seemed more dangerous. What if the people in them had closed the curtains as they had fallen ill and died? What if they were roaming the rooms behind those curtains?
“Let’s go,” Jax said. Then she saw something at the end of the road and put a hand on my arm. “What’s that?”
I looked up the road. Past the houses, the street intersected with a wider road that was probably what was considered to be a main road in this rural area. Beyond that road, a low stone wall marked the boundary of a field. Part of the wall was missing. It looked like a vehicle had driven off the road and into the field. Beyond the gap in the stones, a green army truck lay on its side.
“I wish we’d brought the binoculars,” I said. “I can’t see it clearly. Looks like an army truck.”
“We should investigate,” Jax said, setting off along the street.
Walking farther from the beach, from the Zodiac, didn’t seem like a good idea to me but I had no choice. I couldn’t let her check out the army vehicle alone. I caught up with her and kept a wary eye on the houses we passed as we made our way along the street. I was keenly aware of the growing distance between us and the Zodiac.
The pub was called The Fisherman’s Rest. Its wooden sign was dark green with the pub’s name in gold letters beneath a painting of a fishing trawler sailing on a sunlit sea. I looked into the windows. It was gloomy inside. I could see the bar and the beer pumps and a few tables. There was no movement.
We reached the main road and looked both ways. The road wound between stone walls and hedges in both directions, following the coast. We crossed to the gap in the stone wall and looked into the field beyond.
The army truck bore the medical red cross symbol on its doors. It lay on its side in the long grass and judging by the skid marks on the road and the distance the truck had slid into the field, it had been moving quite fast when it crashed through the wall.
The rear of the truck was crumpled on one side and the windows and windscreen of the cab were smashed. I couldn’t see anyone inside either in the front or the rear.
“Do you think it’s been there long?” Jax asked.
“A while,” I said. “See how the grass behind the truck is standing up? That would have been flattened when the truck slid through here.”
“What do you think happened?” She leaned on the wall to get a closer look but neither of us suggested going into the field to investigate closer. Standing here in the dead quiet of a sunny afternoon with the silent village behind us and the crashed army truck lying in the grass seemed almost surreal.
“Maybe somebody in the truck turned, grabbed the driver, sent the vehicle skidding through this wall. Or they might have swerved to avoid hitting something in the road, overcorrected, and gone into the field. We’ll probably never know.”
“We should check it out,” Jax said. Her tone made me wonder if she was trying to convince herself.
“Yeah, we should,” I replied. I hated to admit it but there could be something valuable in the truck. Assuming the survivors of the crash hadn’t been evacuated by the army when they realised one of their trucks was missing and came to find it, there could be dead soldiers in there. Maybe even guns.
We stepped through the hole in the wall and into the long grass. It swished around our knees as we walked slowly towards the truck. I gripped my bat tightly. My breathing had quickened since stepping into the field and I felt a little queasy. Sometimes these trucks were used to transport soldiers. Any minute now, a dozen of them could come crawling over the tailgate, mottled blue hands reaching for us.
The back of the truck was dark. I knelt in the grass and peered into the blackness. I was sure there were no zombies in there waiting for us and the air here didn’t smell any worse than it did on the road.
Jax had gone around to the cab. “There’s nobody up here,” she said, “but there’s something you should see.”
“Okay, be there in a minute,” I replied. I didn’t want to go up front without first checking that the rear of the truck was empty. The tailgate was held shut by a metal pin on each side that had been dropped into a hole in the truck’s metal frame. I turned my bat over in my hand and used the handle to push first one pin out then the other. I hooked the lip of the bat’s handle over the tailgate and pulled.
The crumpled metal refused to move at first. I pulled harder and it opened with a metallic scream.
I stepped back so quickly, I nearly fell over in the grass.
My heart slowed slightly when I saw no zombies. There was a mess of papers, medical equipment and cardboard boxes in there but no bodies, either dead or undead.
I went around to the cab and joined Jax. She pointed at the shattered windscreen. Some of the shards of glass were blood-stained. There had probably been more blood but the rain had washed most of it away.
“I expected to see blood,” I said. “Somebody was driving the truck when it crashed.”
“So where are they now? There aren’t any bodies.”
“Maybe the army sent out a search party when this truck didn’t arrive wherever it was headed. They evacuated the casualties.” I thought about that for a moment then changed my mind. “No, I don’t think that’s what happened. There are medical supplies and papers in the back. They wouldn’t leave them behind.”
“What if the driver turned and crawled out?” Jax asked, scanning the long grass. “Or what if he’s still alive? He could be somewhere in this field. He could be watching us.”
We both stepped back instinctively.
I watched the grass for movement but if there was anyone out there, he was taking care to keep still. A line of trees marked the edge of the field a quarter of a mile away. Could an injured man crawl out of the truck and make it that far? I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand and stared at the trees but I didn’t see anything resembling a man or a corpse…or a walking corpse.
“Let’s get some of the stuff out of the back of the truck then get out of here,” I suggested.
Jax agreed and we went around to the back. With the truck lying on its side, everything had fallen out of the metal racks that were fixed to the walls and ended up in a chaotic heap. Jax kept watch while I went into the truck on my hands and knees.
I grabbed handfuls of loose papers and tossed them out to Jax. “Take a look at these, they might be useful.” It was too dark inside the truck for me to read anything. I grabbed one of the cardboard boxes and threw that out the back too. I found a
hardbound notebook and two first aid kits in green plastic boxes. I dragged them back outside and examined the notebook in daylight.
The cover was dark green with a white label that had the words, “Sgt. Wilder” written in it in black pen. I flicked through it. Inside there were dates and notes written in black ink. I stuffed it into one of the backpacks along with the first aid kits.
“These papers are useless,” Jax said, “They’re just lists of names and dates.” I looked at a few of the sheets. The names were printed onto the paper and next to each one was a handwritten date. Vaccination dates?
“What’s in the box?” I asked.
She reached into the box and pulled out a clear plastic packet that contained a small sealed glass bottle of amber coloured liquid. I took it from her and inspected the bottle. It was clear and unlabelled. The top of the bottle was sealed with a metal lid which had a rubber seal in the centre for inserting a hypodermic needle.
“The vaccine,” I said.
Jax nodded. “I’ll put it in my backpack.”
I went back into the truck and searched through the jumble of items until I found a box of needles still in their packages with hard plastic covers over the sharp tips. I grabbed a handful and brought them outside. I stuffed them into my backpack along with the first aid kits and notebook.
Jax had stopped looking at the papers and was staring at the trees on the edge of the field.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, getting up and adjusting the backpack straps.
She pointed at the trees. “There’s a man over there.”
I looked over at the area. Before I had gone into the truck, there had been nobody among the trees. Now, a man stood watching us. He was too far away to make out any details but something about him unnerved me.
“We need to go,” I said to Jax as I backed towards the hole in the wall.
“Definitely,” she whispered. “Why is he just standing there watching us?”
“I don’t know.”
We reached the road and again I was all too aware of the distance back to the safety of the Zodiac.
Undead Rain (Book 2): Storm Page 8