The soldier turned to where the sound had come from. He moved a step forwards, then another and another until he was walking to the yard across the street.
A second ball sailed into the street and landed on the roof of a Volvo before bouncing away down the road.
Walking quickly, the soldier reached the Volvo and looked into the windows of the car.
Jax sent the third and fourth balls in rapid succession down the street, trying to lure the soldier farther away. With no other sound or movement to stimulate his senses, he followed the balls although he didn’t seem as interested now, as if he might have realised they were not worth pursuing.
I went through the house and out into the yard. “Let’s go,” I whispered to Jax.
We went to the first fence and placed the backpacks we were holding over into the next yard. We had packed towels between the cans so they wouldn’t make much noise but the sound of everything settling in the packs as we put them on the ground sounded too loud. I was sure the soldier would hear us. If he heard us now, we were dead.
Carefully, we straddled the waist-high fence and climbed over. It was difficult with the weighty pack on my back shifting every time I moved but I got over into the next yard and picked up my second pack. Jax was already waiting at the next fence. I looked at the row of yards ahead of us. There were at least a dozen fences between us and the last yard in the row. I groaned inwardly.
It took us nearly an hour to move along the yards. It was slow and strenuous work, lifting the packs over each fence and listening for the approach of the hybrid soldier. I had no reason to believe the soldier had some sort of super-hearing but even so, every little noise we made sent my heart hammering. I was bathed in sweat by the time we climbed out of the final yard. The sky was darkening into twilight with a few stars already visible.
We stood a hundred feet from the parking area where the white Nova and the red Toyota Camry sat. The Nova was as quiet as it had been when we first arrived, the zombies inside hiding and waiting for unsuspecting prey.
We pressed ourselves against the side of the house. We had no idea where the soldier was. He could be at the far end of the street or he could be standing just around the corner. Our ruse with the tennis balls had gotten us this far but now we had to run for the Zodiac. As soon as we stepped away from the side of the house, we would be visible and vulnerable.
I slowly leaned out and peeked around the corner of the house, half expecting to see the soldier standing right in front of me, yellow eyes glaring. But he was still at the other end of the village, standing still in the road. And he was facing in the opposite direction, toward the field and the crashed truck, his back to us.
I whispered to Jax, “He’s looking the other way. If we’re quiet, we can get to the boat.”
She nodded and we broke cover, walking toward the beach and carrying our heavy packs as quietly and as quickly as possible. I kept looking over my shoulder, afraid that the soldier would turn and see us, but he remained still as a statue staring the other way.
The tide had gone out and the Zodiac, which we had left in knee-deep water, now rested on the damp beach. The mooring rope lay twisted on the wet sand like a dead snake.
“Shit,” Jax whispered.
“We can drag it to the water without making too much noise,” I whispered back. “If we…”
A sudden noise to my right startled me. The zombies in the Nova had erupted into action and were banging and clawing at the car’s windows,
The soldier standing on the street turned slowly, saw us, and started running towards the beach.
We fled to the Zodiac, dropping our second packs and weighed down by the ones on our backs.
I grabbed the wet coil of rope and yanked it with all the strength I could muster. The rock anchor came out of the wet sand with a sucking sound. I threw it into the boat. It clattered on the aluminium floor.
We picked up the boat and side-stepped to the water as fast as we could. I glanced along the street. The soldier was less than a hundred feet away.
Splashing into the sea, we pushed the boat into deeper water and climbed on board. Jax fumbled with the engine, pulling at the starting cord with trembling hands.
The hybrid zombie soldier had reached the cars. The zombies in the Nova detected movement and went crazy but he ran past them, his deadly focus on us.
Jax pulled the starter cord again.
The engine burst into life, coughing out clouds of oily smoke.
The smell of gasoline had never been so sweet.
The soldier splashed into the sea, still running at us.
Jax grabbed the tiller and the engine roared. The Zodiac leapt forward so quickly, I almost went overboard, saving myself from such a fate by gripping the seat until my hands hurt.
We sped out into deeper water.
The hybrid soldier stopped when he was up to his waist in the sea. He stared at us with a malevolence that made me shudder.
Jax slowed our speed and steered us for the Lucky Escape.
I breathed deep breaths of salty air tinged with the smell of gasoline. We were safe.
I watched the soldier as he turned and strode back up the beach. He reached the white Nova and banged on the rear side window with his fists. The zombies inside were going crazy, clawing at the window.
The soldier smashed his fists through the glass and grabbed the closest zombie. He tried to drag it out through the small opening but the arm and head ripped away. He tossed them onto the ground and reached in for the second zombie, pulling it out viciously.
The rotting zombie tore apart as it was forced through the small window opening.
The soldier crouched down over the zombie parts on the ground, selected an arm, raised it to his mouth, and ate.
I leaned over the side of the Zodiac and puked violently into the sea.
twenty-two
The four of us sat in the living area of the Lucky Escape around the small table. The radio was on and Survivor Radio was playing a selection of rock hits. Beyond the windows, darkness had fallen and the lights inside the boat cast a pale light over the room.
We had eaten a dinner of pasta and tomato sauce and Jax and I had told Tanya and Sam about our experience in the village. They had listened intently, asking questions now and then and getting us to clarify parts of the story so they knew every detail. The appearance of the running zombie hybrid was big news. This changed things. If we were going to have to deal with hordes of runners as well as shamblers, the danger factor in our mission went up several thousand notches.
When we finished telling our story, Sam shook his head as if in disbelief. “That’s some fucked up shit, man.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
A sudden noise on the windows startled us but it was only rain hitting the glass.
“That’s another thing,” I said, “the hybrids won’t take shelter from the rain like the other zombies have to. The hybrids are alive. They aren’t rotting away so the virus doesn’t need to protect them in the same way. That soldier chased us into the sea without a second thought.”
Tanya sighed. “So they’re some sort of super zombie and the rain won’t protect us anymore.”
I nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
“Any idea how many of them there could be?”
“It’s impossible to know for sure. But if everyone in the military is being vaccinated, that’s a lot of people walking around with the potential to become a hybrid. Since they work dangerous jobs and come into contact with zombies all the time, a lot of soldiers must get bitten or scratched every day.”
“So we’re screwed,” Sam said. “There’s going to be an army of undead hybrids.”
“Except the hybrids aren’t undead,” I said, “They’re alive.”
“Does it make a difference, man? Either way, if they catch you, you’re fucked.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes, feeling a wave of despair flood over me. There was no w
ay we would survive on land once the number of hybrid runners increased. What was going to happen to the people in the Survivors Camps? I thought about Joe and my parents. How could they possibly survive a hybrid attack on their camp? And where was Lucy? For all I knew, she had been captured by the soldiers and was also in a camp somewhere.
I needed to get that message to her on Survivor Radio but it seemed an impossible distance away now that there were nasties, soldiers and hybrids between us and the radio station.
“How does this affect our mission?” Jax asked nobody in particular.
“It doesn’t,” Tanya replied immediately. “We need to get the message out to the survivors even more urgently now. They’re in even more danger than they were before.” She looked at me and asked, “Based on what you know of this vaccine, do you think we should we inject ourselves with it?”
The three of them looked at me expectantly and I realized that I did have a role in this group after all. They were strong and fit and intelligent but they saw me as being smarter than them. While they had spent time in exotic places filming adventurers like Vigo Johnson, my life had consisted of playing video games and reading books, many of which pertained to exactly the situation we now found ourselves in.
Games and books were one thing and real life was another but my knowledge of a zombie apocalypse…even based on fictional works…was better than nothing. It allowed me to make guesses about our situation that were informed opinions…even though the information came from the thoughts and ideas of writers and game designers. I wondered how many of those writers and game designers were now dead and how many had lasted long enough to see their nightmares come to life.
I thought a moment about Tanya’s question. “There might be an advantage in vaccinating ourselves,” I said. “If we get bitten without the vaccine in our blood, we’ll die quite quickly and the virus will reanimate us as zombies. If we get bitten after we’ve been vaccinated, it takes around four days to turn. If nothing else, that will give the rest of us time to decide what to do with the infected person.”
“That’s easy,” Tanya said. “We kill them.”
“It might not be that easy. When vaccinated people get bitten, they try to isolate themselves. Wilder’s notes said Corporal Francis kept trying to wander away, saying he wanted to be left alone. The virus probably makes the host do that so the host isn’t vulnerable during the incubation period. So it isn’t easy to kill them. They might just disappear, go into hiding somewhere, then reappear four days later as a hybrid.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, trying to reconstruct Corporal Francis’s transformation into a hybrid in my mind’s eye.
“I think that when a nasty bites a vaccinated person,” I said, “it stops after the initial bite. It doesn’t tear them apart like it would normally. The soldier we saw had a single bite on his neck. Maybe the nasty gets a taste of the vaccinated blood and stops. That means the host has a good chance of surviving. He goes somewhere remote and becomes a hybrid, infected with a mutated form of the virus. Either the original virus reacts with the vaccine or it mutates itself to turn the victim into a zombie despite the vaccine, the same way certain strains of bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.”
“Dude, you’re geeking out on us now,” Sam said. “I think we should vaccinate ourselves. At least that gives us four days after being bitten. And we get to stay alive. That beats death and reanimation in my book.”
Tanya looked at him with hard eyes. “You’re assuming we’d let you live for four days after you got infected.”
He shrugged. “Like Alex says, I’d get the hell out of Dodge and the next time you saw me I’d be a kick-ass hybrid.”
She rolled her eyes. “You sound like you want to be a zombie.”
“Nah,” he said, “the hours suck. But I’d rather be a living hybrid than one of those mindless dead fuckers.”
Tanya considered that and nodded. “I think we should all be vaccinated.”
“It’s safer,” I agreed. “If nothing else, it means we won’t get ripped apart by zombies. They’ll deliver one bite then leave us alone when they taste the vaccinated blood.”
Jax spoke up. “If that’s the reason the soldier only had one bite. For all we know, he could have killed the zombie that bit him before it could sink its teeth into him again. It might not have anything to do with the vaccine.”
I nodded. “That’s true. We don’t know.”
“If you get bitten, you’re screwed either way,” Tanya said. “The best course of action is not to let them bite you.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Sam said, raising his mug of water. He took a gulp then looked around the table. “I had medical training before I did the survival shows with Vigo. So I can give the injections. Who’s first?”
Ten minutes later, we had all been injected with the amber liquid. It hurt like a wasp sting as it went in and the area on my shoulder where the needle had gone in rose into an angry red welt.
Sam vaccinated himself last, then disposed of the used needles and empty vaccine vials in the kitchen trash can. “Man, that stings,” he said. “I wonder what’s in that shit.”
Jax, rubbing her shoulder, said, “You’d have to ask the scientists on Apocalypse Island. They made that stuff just like they made the original virus.”
Unwilling to listen to another political rant, I went out onto the sun deck and looked up at the stars. The rain had stopped for a moment and the night breeze was cool. I could hear an animated discussion inside as my three friends talked about their favourite subjects: the government, Apocalypse Island, and conspiracy theories.
What did it matter where the virus came from? It was too late for that knowledge to do us any good. When you were burning in the flames of hell, knowing who lit the match wasn’t going to ease your pain.
When the rain started again, this time as an insidious drizzle, I climbed up to the bridge and sat in the pilot’s chair. Thousands of raindrops streamed down the windows like tears, blurring my view of the coast and the sea.
It was only later, when I went back down the ladder to the deck after letting my thoughts about the apocalypse, hybrid zombies, Joe, and Lucy run in depressing circles, that I saw a soldier on the beach. He was alone, half-running, half-stumbling over the wet sand. He looked drunk as he weaved across the beach to the base of the rocky cliffs.
I went back up the ladder to get the binoculars from the bridge and brought them back down to the deck. Adjusting the focus, I watched the soldier as he dropped to his knees then curled up into a fetal position, shivering as if he had hypothermia.
He wasn’t shivering from the cold. He wore the usual army outfit, including a waterproof camouflage jacket, and the night was cool and wet but not cold enough to make anyone shiver. He was obviously infected. He had left his squad somewhere up on those cliffs and come down to the deserted beach to turn.
As he lay there shivering, I understood why vaccinated victims of the virus sought out a remote place to turn. They were weak and vulnerable while the virus and the vaccine fought a biochemical war inside their bodies. There was a risk that they could be easily killed so the virus compelled the host to find a safe place to turn.
If the host was sick like this for four days, maybe there was a good chance they would be killed before they turned. If the military knew about the four days downtime, they might be hunting down and killing the hosts before they had a chance to complete the transformation into hybrids.
Even if they weren’t being killed by the army, it was possible that not every infected host completed the transformation. Maybe in some cases, the vaccine won the biochemical battle and the host did not turn.
Maybe they lived through the four days and beat the infection.
Or maybe the strain on the body killed them.
I lowered the binoculars. I didn’t want to look at the shivering, curled up soldier any longer.
I was vaccinated now and if I got bitten, that was the fate that awaited me. Lying helpless an
d alone while the virus tried to take over my body.
I went back inside. Even listening to the three amigos talk about Apocalypse Island was preferable to seeing that lone figure on the deserted beach.
And wondering if I was going to end up like him.
twenty-three
By noon the following day, we had sailed around the southern tip of England and begun to make our way north along the English Channel. Grey clouds scudded across the sky, occasionally breaking and showering us with cold rain. The day was grim and the sea was rough. The Lucky Escape rode the waves well but every now and then a swell would break over her hull and the decks would be drenched with a deluge of saltwater.
I sat in the pilot’s chair, making sure we stayed deep enough to avoid rocks but also close enough to shore that we didn’t go off course. Jax stood looking out of the water sheen that covered the bridge windows. Tanya and Sam were somewhere in the living area, keeping dry. I had the radio on but even Johnny Drake must be in a depressed mood today; he played mostly emo and Goth tracks.
A quiet, contemplative atmosphere had descended over the boat. We were all lost in our own thoughts of the mission ahead. I was wondering if it was even possible to get to the radio station alive. The slogan painted on the boat’s hull and printed on my T-shirt, “Sail To Your Destiny” seemed particularly apt today. And the destiny wasn’t good.
Jax had come up to the bridge five minutes ago, said, “Hi,” and then stood silently watching the coastline through the windows. I wasn’t sure if she wanted a conversation or not so I kept my mouth shut. If she spoke to me, I would answer. Otherwise, I was going to stay quiet.
The silence didn’t bother me too much. I was used to uncomfortable silences with girls.
After another minute of staring out at the rain and cliffs, she said softly, “Do you think we’re going to make it, Alex?”
I sighed. Did she want a truthful answer or reassurance that everything was going to be OK? I decided to walk the middle ground and said, “I don’t know.” If I had tried to reassure her, I wouldn’t have sounded convincing at all and if I had been truthful, I would have said, “No, Jax, I don’t think we’re going to make it. I think we’re all going to end up dead…or worse. We don’t have a chance of surviving this crazy mission.”
Undead Rain (Book 2): Storm Page 10