“It will be fine,” Cass said. “You’ll see. He’s harder to kill than a cockroach.”
She smiled as she said it and I offered my own in return. It was true. He was a stubborn son of a bitch and should have died any number of times. Sheer force of will had kept him alive more than once and I realised something.
I didn’t really doubt him when he said he would come home to me.
With another smile for Cass, I pushed myself to my feet. In the morning we would have the election results and I would be out of a job. Until then, I was still in charge and I was damned if I wasn’t going to make sure that I would do everything I could to get Ryan home safe.
Chapter 6
The boat rose up on a swell, listing to starboard and sending me tumbling against the wall as I tried to return my knife to its sheath on my hip. I glanced down at the dead man behind me and grinned.
He’d resisted at first, but after losing a few of his fingers, he had finally spoken freely. What he’d told me though, well, it hadn’t been good.
I turned as the door opened and a damp and clearly upset Gregg stumbled in. There was a tinge of green around his lips and he shivered visibly, though whether from the cold or the trip down from the helicopter, I couldn’t say.
“What are you doing here?”
He reached behind himself and unhooked the cable from the harness before tossing it out the door, which he then pulled shut. With the fury of the storm blocked out, it was almost quiet inside the small cabin.
“I do not want to have to do that again.” He looked down at the dead man behind me, brow furrowing at the bloody stumps on the ends of his hands. “Should I even ask?”
“Tried to shoot me and didn’t want to tell me why,” I said with a shrug as I braced myself against the control console. “Why are you here?”
“Someone has to look out for you.”
The next wave washed over the boat and sent Gregg to the deck. He landed on the corpse of the pilot and scrambled back, a look of disgust on his face as I chuckled.
“You have any idea what to do with this?” I asked him as I offered a hand to pull him up.
There were a number of dials and panels set into the polished wooden console. A computer screen was fixed off to the left and a radio to the right. There was even an actual wooden wheel like those seen in old movies.
Whoever had owned the ship either had a penchant for the old fashioned or simply couldn’t afford to upgrade to a more modern setup. Either way, it left me scratching my chin as I stared at the controls.
There were some levers to the right of the wheel, and I pushed them forward. The wheel started spinning as the boat began to move once more. I gripped it quickly and grunted as I used all the strength I had to keep it from turning.
“That’s the coordinates, mate,” Gregg said as he tapped a display. He tilted his head as he listened to his headset and nodded. “Right, turn us left until I say stop.”
“Port,” I muttered as I struggled with the wheel. “It’s turn to port.”
“Whatever.”
He watched the numbers on the display change as I moved the wheel, bit by bit, to port. Despite the cold, I began to sweat, my muscles aching.
“There! Hold it!” he pointed at the display and grinned happily. “Keep it on course and we’ll go straight towards the harbour.”
“Then what?”
“When you see the reef, aim for it.”
I doubted that it would be that simple, but it wasn’t like I had much choice. What the man had confessed had been of some concern. While I was fairly certain that just being on the ship wouldn’t have infected me, I couldn’t risk taking it home to my family.
“You were foolish to come,” I said, quietly, eyes not leaving the display. “Might have been a one-way trip.”
“Yeah, well, you need me.” There was no hesitation in his voice as he said that and I almost smiled.
“You’re a good friend. Better than I ever expected to have.”
“Christ! It must be bad if you’re getting all soppy.” He was grinning as I glanced up at him and I smiled in return.
“Fatherhood has softened me.” His gaze moved to the dead man behind me and he cocked an eyebrow as I shrugged. “Not that much though.”
The journey seemed to take an eternity. I clung on to the wheel, fighting against the fury of the storm and the sea. The boat lurched from wave to wave, water washing over the deck and cabin. The cold bit deep, not kept at bay by our wet clothes.
There was no light beyond that of the cabin. The moon and stars obscured by the storm clouds above and only the roar of the wind that managed to drown even that of the engines. There was little to speak of and we would have had to shout to be heard, so we stood in silence and worked together to keep the boat on course.
I looked at my friend as he stared out of the window, searching for signs of our destination in the black beyond. His face bore the scars of an encounter with a Feral and he had begun to shave his head to avoid the plague of lice that seemed to swarm our island home.
My own short beard and hair itched at that thought.
When I had first met him, I had killed the man tormenting his sister and, on a whim, had taken them back with me to Lily and the others. I would never have thought that he would become one of the few people in the world that I trusted.
I would have laughed, back then, at the suggestion that he would become one of my closest friends.
“Light ahead,” he shouted to be heard above the wind.
I narrowed my eyes and peered through the glass, straining to see through the falling snow. Then I caught it, a flash of light in the distance, seen only as we rose up on a wave. Something like relief washed over me and, with a start, I realised I had been concerned about seeing my family again.
A strange thought and one that was both unexpected and new. It indicated I was still changing, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
No matter, I pushed it to one side and pulled on the wheel, aiming straight for the flash of light.
“How do we know the boat won’t sink when we hit the reef?” Gregg asked with a mild look of concern.
“Well… it’s a reef. The water should be too shallow to sink in. That’s kind of the point.”
“Yeah, but won’t the boat break up?”
That, I realised, was a good question. If it broke up or sank, and what was contained in the hold got out. That would negate the whole point of trying to land on the reef and not the island proper. Anything that got out of the hold could well end up making its way to the island.
“Dammit!”
There wasn’t much I could do about that, other than make sure that anything that got out, couldn’t become a zombie. I looked over at Gregg and held back a soft sigh.
“Take the wheel.”
“What! Why?”
He grabbed a hold of it as I let go, stepping back and drawing my knife. His eyes went down to it and then back up to meet mine as he shook his head.
“I heard what you said, mate. Don’t go into the hold.”
“We can’t risk it. If any of them die and come back as a zombie…”
“It’s fine! You don’t think the Admiral will have thought of that? He’ll have every part of the coast covered. If anything comes ashore it will be killed on sight.”
That made sense, but my children were on the island. Lily was there. If something went wrong and a plague-carrying zombie made it ashore, they would be in danger.
“Can’t risk it.”
“You have to!” His face twisted with some emotion that I couldn’t quite recognise, and I reached for the door. “Mate, don’t! If you go down there you might be the one that could bring it to the island.”
“It’s a risk, but one that is necessary.”
“Crap!”
I grasped the door handle and twisted, as the radio came to life and a voice I knew so well came through loud and clear.
“We see you, Ryan,” Lily said. “Tell
me you’re okay. Please.”
There was an urgency in her voice, and I looked over my shoulder at the where the radio was fitted into the wooden console. The handset was right there, beside Gregg’s hand but he didn’t reach for it.
“You better answer, mate.”
“Ryan? Please respond.”
I knew that if I went over to answer the radio, I would be stuck. She would ask questions and I would answer. The boat would get closer and closer to the damned reef and I wouldn’t have time to do what needed to be done.
That urgency in her voice though, it told me that they were going to take measures to protect themselves if we didn’t answer. I looked at Gregg and saw that he understood that too. He still made no move towards the radio.
With a snarl I stomped across the cabin and grabbed the radio, thumbing the switch and speaking.
“We’re here. Alive and well with a hold full of sick people.”
“Thank God!” she said. “Look. Aim for the reef. As soon as you come aground, head for the tower. You can stay in there till the storm passes and then we’ll come for you.”
“You can’t allow this to come ashore,” I said insistently. “If the boat breaks up on the reef…”
“We have measures in place. Trust me.”
I did trust her. I really, truly did. She was top of the very short list of people I actually trusted with my life. But even so, since becoming a father, I found my need to be in control, to protect them, outweighed most rational thought.
It was galling at times, but also made it incredibly difficult to trust that anyone other than me could protect them.
Gregg kept his eye on me, and I grunted as I gripped the handset. Indecision warred in me and I very much wanted to lash out in anger. More than that. It had been so long since I had killed anyone and the dead man behind me had done little to salve that need.
A hold full of people I was justified in killing was entirely too tempting.
“Dammit,” I said as I put the handset down. Gregg grinned and I shook my head. “Just head to the reef.”
I ignored his grin and waited in silence as we drew closer to the light. The waves crashed against the reef, washing over the tower. Even if we managed to survive the landing, we would be at risk of being washed off of the rocks by a wave.
“Brace for impact!” Gregg’s grin was infectious. “I always wanted to say that.”
We were thrown forward as the boat's momentum stopped rather abruptly, a grinding coming from beneath us, audible even over the storm. I pushed myself away from the console and rubbed at my ribs where I had collided with the console.
“After you,” Gregg said, his voice a little shaky. He stopped me as I reached the door. “Should we unload the people in the cargo hold?”
“No.”
A single word that was enough to tell him that we couldn’t risk it at all. While in the hold, they were safe. Unless the boat broke apart or it sank, they would be safer there than with us. If we tried to take them out, the chance of one being swept away to drown and wash up later was too high.
I pulled open the door, staggering back as a gust of wind caught me. Gritting my teeth, I leant into the wind and grabbed the doorframe, pulling myself up and out. The boat listed to port by a good fifteen degrees. Enough to make it awkward.
Gregg followed behind me, face screwed up against the wind and snow. We gripped the guardrail as we moved around to the bow.
“Wave!” Gregg screamed just a moment before it hit us.
I was slammed back, barely holding on to the railing with one hand as my other shot out to grab at Gregg as he was dragged past me by the force of the wave. I clung on with all of my strength, knowing that I didn’t want him to die.
As the wave receded, he stared up at me with wide eyes and an ashen face. I flashed him a grin and hauled him to his feet before ushering him forwards.
At the bow, we paused, both gripping the rail as tight as we could as we counted the seconds. The next wave came, crashing against the rocks and rising up and over the side of the boat. Icy water clawed at us, trying to pull us away from the rail to be dragged down into the darkness beneath the waves.
I gasped as it retreated and with shaking limbs, climbed over the railing, dropping down onto the slick rocks. The short distance we walked to the tower seemed to stretch for an eternity. We hurried across, determined to reach it before the next wave.
The tower door was unlocked, and I pulled it open, rushing in with Gregg behind me. He slammed it shut as the next wave hit and we stood for a moment in the darkness, shivering from the cold.
My numb fingers found the torch I carried in my coat pocket and I flicked it on, shining it around the room we were in. Nothing impressive, just a wide open space of bare stone with a fireplace at the far end of the room.
Beside it, a metal bin sat and I crossed to it, flipping open the lid and letting out a soft sigh of satisfaction.
“What is it?”
“Wood, blankets and some basic supplies,” I said. “Probably from back before the fall of the world.”
“B-build a f-fire then,” Gregg managed through chattering teeth.
Moving as quickly as I could, I stacked the wood in the fireplace, adding tinder and a little of the oil that had been left for just that purpose. A few strikes of a match and the tinder caught flame, beginning to burn despite the wind coming down the chimney.
“Get undressed,” I said and began to pull my own clothes off without hesitation.
“W-why?”
“Can’t sit in wet clothes. We’ll freeze.”
“B-bloody freeze w-without clothes.”
Despite his complaint, he did as instructed and began pulling off his clothing. As I removed the last of mine, I pulled out the blankets and then turned to see my shivering friend pulling the last of his clothes off.
“N-now what?”
“Lie down in front of the fire.”
One blanket went to the floor to shield us from the cold stone. Then, I lay down beside Gregg, pressing myself up against him.
“Need to conserve body heat,” I said as wrapped the other blanket around us both.
Gregg didn’t reply, just lay there staring at the fire as he shivered. One of the problems of a post-apocalyptic rationing diet was that neither of us had any real body fat to help keep us warm. We had a few hours till dawn and rescue, so all we could do was keep feeding the fire and save what heat we could.
It would be a long night.
Chapter 7
Despite the snow that blanketed the town and the cold that seemed to reach down to your bones, the docks were fairly busy. There were many people wandering around in the snow, watching the boats being loaded with personnel and equipment.
I shaded my eyes and stared out at the Tower of Refuge, my breath misting the air before me. It had been a long, sleepless, night and I was beyond exhausted. Despite that, I was determined to wait for the rescue boats.
News had spread, as it seemed to do and as I waited, more people turned up. In the short time that we had been on the island, I had instituted some changes. A list of jobs and tasks had been drawn up and another list of all of the people and their skills too.
People were matched to various jobs and given a simple choice. Work or leave. It sounded harsh, but we were fighting for our lives and there was no room for people unwilling to do their part. It helped that most of those jobs they were given didn’t take up too much of their time.
We had more people than we needed so most people had a couple of hours of work a day, at most. It had become quickly apparent that we needed more things to occupy people and so we had begun filling the day with sports, exercise, games and social clubs, support groups and all manner of other busy work.
Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see so many people listlessly wandering around the docks, eager for some fresh entertainment.
“Are you concerned about the election?” Samuel asked quietly.
“What! No?” I lo
oked at him and he smiled gently. “Why do you ask?”
“You look annoyed. If you looked concerned, I would imagine it was because of Ryan. When you look annoyed it is due to the island.”
“No.” I couldn’t help the burst of laughter. I’d no idea I was so transparent. “Just wondering why these people aren’t doing something more productive.”
“They are curious. That is not a bad thing.”
“Maybe.”
I’d spent a lot of time coming up with ideas for how to keep everyone happy and busy. Curious or not, it still annoyed me when they weren’t doing something productive.
“About the election…”
“Not now,” I said with a little more bite than I intended. I offered a thin smile of apology. “Later. Let’s just make sure they’re okay first, yeah?”
“Of course, My Lady.”
“Don’t go all bloody formal on me.”
His lips twisted teasingly, and I sighed and rolled my eyes. He was a good man, despite his strange religious beliefs, and I liked him. More than that, I considered him family.
“Vanessa is here,” I said with a nod of my head towards the docks.
A handful of people were following behind the tall doctor, carrying boxes of equipment. From what I gathered, she would have a full hazard suit in amongst that gear too. I didn’t envy her.
There were two boats going across to the reef. One would pick up Ryan and Gregg, putting them into isolation until it could be determined that they were free of infection. I didn’t envy them their next few days of blood tests and invasive procedures.
The other boat was set up to hold the people from the trawlers hold. It would head straight to a secured dock where armed naval personnel would escort them to a medical facility where they could be quarantined.
I was determined that there would be no incidents like the Briony disaster and had made that very clear to the Admiral and Vanessa both.
“Your people are in place?” I asked with a quick look at the older man.
“Yes. Forty of my best, surrounding the medical centre. No one will go in or out without our consent.”
Killing The Dead (Book 17): Siege Page 4