“I still can’t believe you’re a mother and I’m an uncle.”
She scoffed. “Not a world that you’d want a baby growing up in, though.”
Dylan gave Harvey his little finger and he clutched on with a tight grip.
“He’s strong.”
She had listened to the tale of her parents’ deaths, insisting Dylan left no detail out, although he probably had. Lauren hadn’t cried—in her mind, they had already died. She had prepared herself for that, weeks ago. Now, at least, she could put them to rest. Dylan stood and opened his arms. They hugged, long and gentle, a siblings’ embrace. They had been closer when they were young; he had always looked out for her, despite his more passive nature.
“I’d like to get that prick Todd and wring his neck.”
“I wouldn’t let you waste your time.” She tickled Harvey’s chin. “We’re better off without him, aren’t we, bub? If I hadn’t fallen pregnant, we’d have broken up.” Lauren finished wrapping the nappy, then scooped up the baby, and dropped him on Dylan’s lap. He sat frozen, peering at his uncle, whom he had only just met. Harvey reached out a tiny hand, and cooed.
“He likes you.”
Dylan made soft noises. She wanted to ask more about Kristy. He’d touched on it; their relationship as it had developed, and his feelings, but again, she knew he had held back. Perhaps it was too raw. Perhaps he needed to talk about it.
“You wanna talk about Kristy?”
He continued making faces at the baby for a moment, and then his smile faded. “There’s nothing to talk about.” Lauren made a face. “I’ve dealt with it. Same as I dealt with Mom and Dad.”
“You sure?” He nodded. “Okay.” He looked tougher than when he’d last visited. What had he gone through to be there now? Had it hardened all the soft parts of him, the bits she loved, that made him different to the other guys she had known? He had always been kind and considerate and she worried it had been driven out of him. She supposed they had all changed though; must have, in order to have survived. “What about the virus? That really worries me.” He had explained how the serum came about—the scientist who had developed it, but later died trying to find more.
“As long as I keep taking the serum I should be okay.” But there was truth in his eyes that unsettled her. He didn’t quite believe that. Maybe it was because he knew that at some point the serum would run out. Surely, Dylan had thought that far ahead.
“And Admiral Gallagher? He doesn’t look so good.”
“Klaus said it works differently with each person. Like the flu.” He looked contemplative. “I don’t know why it’s not working for Gallagher, though. I wish we could do something for him.” His mind disappeared in thought for a moment. “Hard to believe you survived all of this.”
“When they evacuated the building, Claire and I chose to stay. Lots of people left though. That gave us access to food and water we otherwise wouldn’t have had. Probably kept us alive longer.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I need to speak to Gallagher.”
Lauren wrapped Harvey and laid him in the cot, then returned to the kitchen where the heat was stifling. Julie and Claire had taken over, setting up what remained of their supplies into edible dishes. There were slices of potatoes and bowls of rice, both boiled on the gas cooker.
“I’ll have to leave soon,” Gallagher said, leaning against the kitchen bench with a bottle of cold water. “I need to find out what’s at Station Pier. Whether there’s anything that can take us across Bass Strait.”
“Why? Why do you have to go now?” Evelyn asked. “Couldn’t we wait it out here a couple of days? We’ve earned a rest. Maybe give the others a chance to catch up.”
“I don’t know how long this city will last. Something’s brewing here. You heard what the man in Yass said. The threes are changing the type ones. I need to know what’s at that dock.”
Lauren studied the man. There was a hard edge to him; thick muscles under his shirt that flexed when he moved. He was average height, but stocky, and the cropped salt and pepper hair added to the toughness. But his eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in black shadow. He coughed regularly, interrupting his croaky voice.
“You can’t go alone.”
“I’ll go,” Greg said. Gallagher nodded thanks.
Dylan screwed the lid back onto his bottled water. “How well do you know the city layout?”
Greg’s expression widened. “I don’t, but what does that matter?”
“Where are you going?”
“Station Pier.”
“Port Melbourne. Do you know even know where it is?”
“I can go,” Alexander said. “It’s about an hour from here by foot. That’s if you don’t run into any trouble.”
Lauren frowned. “You can’t go. Your hand’s still a mess. It’s not even stitched.”
“Sarah can take a look at that,” Dylan said. “She can stitch a wound now.”
Greg was silent. He had no idea where the pier stood. Lauren didn’t like where it was heading.
“I’ll go,” Dylan said. “I roughly know the way. I’ve driven down here a few times.” Greg looked annoyed. Dylan frowned. “What? You’ve done more than your share of work.” He turned to Gallagher. “You think we’ll find anything?”
“I think it’s our best chance to find a cruise ship or passenger ferry capable of crossing Bass Strait.”
Lauren wanted to ask if Gallagher would even make it there. By her count from walking around the city during her lunch breaks for three years, an hour meant about four miles. “What about a car?”
“We’ll assess as we proceed,” Gallagher said. “Sure would make it easier, but we don’t want to draw attention.”
“What then? Even if there’s a ship you can drive, we still have to all get down there.”
“Can you check the campervan, Greg? I don’t think it’ll be any good now, and it’s too risky to make it back from the underground lot. We’ll have to find a couple of working cars down there,” Dylan said. Greg nodded.
“We leave after dark,” Gallagher said.
FIFTY
Dylan and Gallagher stepped out onto the street through the broken glass at the front entrance with their pistols loaded and their pockets full of ammunition. Part of Dylan couldn’t believe they were actually leaving when they’d only just reached the refuge. He looked back at the dark silhouette of the apartment building, full of regret. It had to be done though. Gallagher was right. Night travel was safer than daylight. They could hide in the shadows and plod their way through the city. He hoped it would only take them a few hours and they would return before ten.
The heat of the day lingered, sticking to them like a second skin. Lauren had forced each person to peel off their clothes and wash them by hand in the laundry sink. Such things were long forgotten in Dylan’s mind, but although the clothes were still a little damp, the feel of clean threads on his skin was pleasant.
Alexander and Lauren had given him a rundown of the streets to take and turns to make, drawing a map on the back of an old market flyer. Dylan had a vague idea of the direction—their parents had caught one of the big ferries to Tasmania and Dylan had driven them down to the pier. The darkness made it more challenging, but they had torches if they got stuck or needed to check the map. In the daylight, a smoky haze had covered the city, but at night, the orange flames from dozens of fires provided guidance.
“So it was follow Queen Street all the way to the bottom, turn right into Flinders, then right into Queen …”
Gallagher coughed. “Bridge. Queensbridge.”
“That’s it. Then follow that down to City Road and take City Road all the way down to Beach Street and turn right. It’ll be up on the left.”
“Sounds like you got it.”
At the Clarendon Street junction, they spotted a group of men firing guns into the old McDonalds store. It was alight; twenty feet of orange and yellow flames illuminated the night. Dylan
thought they’d have all the zombies in Melbourne attending soon. They watched the group for five minutes, ensuring there were no more wandering about, and then snuck down the opposite side of the street, using rubbish dumps and trashed cars as camouflage. Gallagher seemed grateful for the pause.
They walked on in comfortable silence for a time until Gallagher broke it with a question that surprised Dylan.
“You sorted things out with Greg yet?”
“How do you mean?”
“Greg told me something went down at the facility, after rescuing Klaus and me. He didn’t say what, but he asked me how to win back a person’s trust.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said you have to deliver for them, time and again, no questions. They have to know that you’ll be there when it counts.”
Dylan considered that. Technically, Greg had met the criteria. Dylan could recall countless times over the last week or two when Greg had delivered for him. “Greg has done that. He’s been amazing.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Dylan explained what had transpired underneath the defense facility. “Then you have a choice to make, my friend, but let me tell you something. I was once in a similar predicament to you. I didn’t trust a man, and he died because of me. I hesitated. The reasons now seem absurd. I still think about it from time to time, and I found out later I had no basis for my mistrust.”
“I just can’t get that moment out of my head. If he hadn’t hesitated, would I have gotten bitten?”
Gallagher cleared his throat and launched into a coughing fit. “You’ll never know. And does it matter? Even if he did hesitate—and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been for any reason other than fear—it sounds like he’s covered for you enough times to make up for it.”
Gallagher’s voice had become husky. Dylan couldn’t recall him ever saying so much. All his points were valid though. He knew this. He just couldn’t shake the feeling.
“We all have to make choices in our lives. Dwell on what might have been, or move on. Shit, I’ve had a ton of them, and none more significant than knowing I will soon die. I’ve spent the last few years drinking my time away. How much I missed I’ll never know.”
More truth. He wanted to trust Greg. The man was a legend and Dylan owed him his life for more than one rescue. If Greg died because Dylan hesitated, wondering whether to trust him, how would he feel? Easy answer. “You haven’t been drinking lately.”
“I had to move on. I didn’t want what might be the last few weeks of my life to be empty and meaningless. I’ve had enough of that.”
“Greg stopped drinking too.”
Gallagher coughed into his fist. “That was another reason, too. Greg was a younger version of me. There are symptoms that alcoholics perceive in each other. Mine were obvious. He spoke to me about it early on. We chatted. I realized I had an opportunity to positively or negatively influence a young man. I thought that if I kept drinking, so would he. If I stopped …”
“You have no idea how grateful we are for that. Especially Callan. And Greg.”
“Helped us both. Although nothing can help my other issue.”
The virus. While Dylan was infected too, the last he knew, he was in a good place. Gallagher was struggling. Dylan wondered what it would be like dealing with that. “You think… it will kill you?”
“I know it will. I knew from the moment I was bitten that I would die. It’s just a matter of how I dealt with it, and what I can do until then.”
There was a depth to Gallagher they had all missed. To most of them, he was the quiet, ex-Navy tough guy in the corner who delivered fists and bullets when they needed him. It wasn’t going to end well for the admiral, they all knew that, but the way he was conducting himself in the final week or two of his life was admirable. He didn’t outwardly show it, but Gallagher had to be scared. Dylan thought it was true courage to be fearful of something, yet not show it—or more so, to battle onward when you were frightened, knowing a fatal outcome awaited.
The message about trust and forgiveness stuck with Dylan, too. Maybe it was time he forgave Greg and started trusting him again. That one hesitation amongst countless acts of selflessness to save all of them could surely be forgiven. Maybe he did need to make a choice and move on.
They reached the pier without further trouble. Dylan guessed it had taken them an hour, even at a slower pace to allow for Gallagher’s dwindling health. They saw only a handful of zombies, and it wasn’t until they got down near the sea where the salty smell of the water hit them, removing part of the stench from all the dead bodies.
“Good idea to come after dark,” Dylan said.
“It was too easy.” Gallagher coughed again. Dylan had administered a shot of serum to the admiral before leaving, although Gallagher didn’t think it mattered for him, either way. “There should have been more of them.” The admiral hobbled over to a nearby bench. He had struggled for most of the journey. A man of his age shouldn’t have had such trouble. It was the virus, Dylan knew. It was changing him, despite the serum. He didn’t know if Gallagher would even make a journey across Bass Strait. And what awaited Gallagher once he got there even if he did? He didn’t like the thought of how it might end. “There’s something more. Something…” He put both hands to his temples, as though he had a headache he couldn’t shake. “I can feel them. The threes. They’re in the city. A lot of them. They’re…” He strained again. “Ready to go. Ready to make a final attack.”
Jesus, Dylan thought. “That’s sounds ominous.”
“It is. We need to get on that boat as soon as possible.”
They stood at the entrance to the pier where cars had once parked and visitors had taken in a restaurant or the ice cream shop while looking at the latest boat that had docked. The inky sea lay on either side, the silhouette of the pier building straight ahead. On the left, the outline of a boat was visible.
“Is that a ship?” Dylan asked.
“Looks like it. Probably the Spirit of Tasmania.”
“That’ll get us over there right? I mean, you can drive that?”
Gallagher nodded. “Most likely.”
Dylan stood looking at it. Was it worth hoping? Worth thinking that maybe they might get there? “That is a damn good sight. We were lucky.”
“A little. A boat runs every afternoon from here.
Dylan wished his father could have been there. He had planted the thought in Dylan’s mind from the beginning. Would anybody have considered it, had he not pushed the idea all along? His father had always been a man of vision, looking well ahead of the pack, anticipating their needs. Dylan supposed that was part of the reason for his business success. He tried to bury the ache and focus on the present. “What now?”
“This is where we part company,” Gallagher said.
“What?”
“Go back to your sister.”
“What about—”
“I have to prepare the ship. Make sure it’s fit for a twelve-hour journey across that body of water, which can be treacherous at the best of times.” He coughed, clearing his throat. “There are hundreds of checks to do before we can leave. If we come back in the morning it’ll be two hours before we can depart.”
“The morning?”
Gallagher rubbed his head again, grimacing as a wave of pain passed through. “We can’t wait. They’re moving. Something major is going to happen; I can feel it. Tomorrow might be too late.”
If what Gallagher said was right, preparing the boat now made sense. Still, Dylan didn’t like it. He didn’t mind the part about returning to the apartment alone, but leaving Gallagher at the pier on his own to carry out all those checks and balances was worrisome. What if he was attacked or died? “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’ll stay with you and help out while you get it ready.”
Gallagher shook his head. “Listen to me.” All the sickness disappeared from his voice. Now it was strong, calm, and comforting. It spoke of a leadership Dylan couldn’t yet comprehen
d, but he understood how people would follow this man. “This is the sensible solution. I prepare the ship, you prepare the people. You want to carry out your father’s plans, don’t you?” He let the thought linger. “I will help you do that. I’ll get you and the rest of the group to Tasmania, that’s a promise. You go back and rest up for the night, get the others ready, and in the morning you get down here at first light. That will be challenge enough. We’ll leave the mainland behind and hope Tassie is in a better state and you can find out if your old man was right.”
It was impossible to argue. He walked Gallagher up to the ship and watched as the admiral made his way through the building and up several flights of stairs until he reached the gangplank. He used the flashlight to signal down that he had made it.
Dylan started back, retracing the steps they had taken using the tall buildings against the sky as markers. He made good time.
He jogged down the middle of the road with the flashlight low to the ground, trying to avoid drawing too much attention. It was impossible to walk the trashed streets without it. They had not used it often on the way down to the pier, but he had relied on Gallagher and his inbuilt sonar to lead the way. That got him thinking about the admiral and their conversation.
They’re coming. The words had spooked Dylan. What did it mean? How did Gallagher know? The virus. Just like the man from Yass, the admiral’s infection was getting worse, and with it came some kind of mental connection. He understood things, perhaps even had an insight into their minds. Maybe they could look into his mind, too. Maybe they knew the group was planning to leave. Dylan didn’t feel such a connection. Maybe the virus wasn’t advanced enough in him.
He had made it three-quarters of the way back when he sensed something or someone watching from the shadows. He increased his pace, glancing back over his shoulder often, listening amongst the sounds of a dying city. He crossed at an intersection, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever or whatever it was. He even walked backwards for a time, biting down on his desperation to use the flashlight, but knew that if he started poking a yellow beam about, it would attract the unwanted.
Invasion of the Dead (Book 3): Escape Page 27