ANNA
Anna rubbed the tiredness from her eyes and yawned. The events that had transpired at dawn were now like a daydream, just two hours later. Despite what Roman suspected, the members of the pier had not dumped Birch’s body into the sea. The sea was theirs and they would not spoil it with the dead flesh of a rapist. Chris and Jimmy had carried Birch through the gate and dumped him next to the boxer and the skinny woman they had killed not two days before. He can rot with them.
Now everyone stood huddled in the diner. Despite their fleeting victory over the three strangers from the fleet, each of them now wore a look of deep concern on their faces. There were a thousand members of the fleet currently floating on their doorstep. If they’d just made an enemy, they had made a big one.
Tim eased himself down onto a chair in the diner and let his crutches collapse to the floor. Blood oozed beneath his bandages but there was little Anna could do about it. She would just have to keep the wound clean and hope for the best.
He glanced around the room. “It’s very good to meet you all. Sorry it’s not in better circumstances.”
“Save it,” said Anna. “I stuck up for you, but only because I liked those men less than I like you.”
Tim nodded. “Understandable. I’ve brought trouble to your doorstep and for that you must hate me, but everything I told you was true. The reason we’re all in this situation, the reason we had our lives ripped from us, is Samuel Raymeady. That man is the Devil.”
Alistair grunted. “So you said, but his side claim you’re a terrorist. Who are we to believe? How is it you ended up with a bullet in you? Garfield said he found you inside a storage container.”
“He did. That’s where I went to die after Roman shot me.”
“Why did he shoot you?” Poppy asked. She had a stern look on her face. “Did you do something bad?”
“When the infection first hit,” Tim explained. “I knew Samuel’s plan was to commandeer a navy frigate his company was building and start collecting people. I made sure I was amongst the first group of survivors brought on board. The arrogant swine didn’t even recognise me.”
“You knew him as a child?” Anna confirmed.
“Yes. He was…sickly…as a child, the only son of an extremely wealthy family. I was sent to see him as part of an investigation into any external causes at the home that could have been causing his ill health. The family had tried everything, but nothing got Samuel out of his bed. At the time, I was a sort of an environmental scientist. I tried several experiments to find a cause for Samuel’s condition, but nothing gave any answers. Needless to say, things turned out badly for me in the end. I went into that Worcestershire manor house whole and came out with a broken back. It was six years before I could even stumble around like an insect on these crutches. Once I managed to leave my wheelchair, though, I devoted my life to bringing that evil boy to justice. But that evil boy grew into an evil man and I remained a cripple.” He sighed and shook his head. “I thought that by getting aboard the Kirkland I could at least finally put a stop to the man before he ruined what little left there was of the world. I failed to do that as well.”
Alistair folded his arms. “You tried to blow the ship up?”
Tim shifted in his seat and winced in pain. Sweat beaded on his brow. “I admit there would have been casualties, but in the long run lives would have been saved. I’ve witnessed Samuel bulldoze through anybody who dares stand in his way his entire life. By stopping him I was hoping to save all of the victims he is yet to meet. The men and woman aboard the Kirkland are already lost. They worship their captain. They think he saved their lives. If only they knew the truth.”
Rene came and brought them all a glass of water each. Tim sipped his gratefully, as did everyone else. No one had realised how thirsty they were. Rene stopped when he was in the middle of the group and rubbed his hands together thoughtfully.
“What is it?” Anna asked him.
Rene sighed. “This man, Tim, speaks of terrible things. He says that the man, Samuel Raymeady, is a tyrant and a monster.”
“He is,” Tim confirmed. “He’s like Hitler crossed with Godzilla.”
“Then my concern is that our actions may anger him and that we have made an enemy of a monster – of a Godzilla. I fear that Samuel Raymeady may bulldoze us next.”
Anna sipped at her water and nodded wearily. In the heat of the moment she had gone with her gut and done what she thought was right, but now that the events were laid out more clearly it seemed like they had all made a big mistake. We still did what was right, though.
“What should we expect to happen?” Anna asked Tim.
Tim didn’t seem hopeful as he spoke. “I think they will come again, but this time with more men and weapons. They have a few guns aboard – pistols mostly – but they’re more likely to snap an arm than fire a gun.”
“They shot you,” said Alistair.
“They did. Once my gunpowder plot was discovered – although I still can’t work out how Samuel found out – I managed to flee the ship before anybody caught me. I headed inland and disembarked at Dartmouth. From there I followed some train tracks, hoping it would lead me north. Roman, although his real name is Damien Banks, managed to track me, probably from the fires I lit to keep warm – stupid of me, really, but it was either that or freeze. I was holed up in an old petrol station when he came. I broke the windows and screamed and shouted, tried to raise hell. Luckily the dead were near and heard me. They swarmed, and as Roman was out in the open, they all went for him first. I hobbled from the petrol station, hoping to go in the opposite direction while my enemy was distracted. Roman took a shot at me and hit the target. Before I passed out, I managed to climb inside an open storage container and close the door. All I was hoping for was to die in peace, but then your man found me. A miracle really. We should make a movie about it. Where is he, anyway? Always nice to meet a fellow ginger.”
“Garfield went on a supply run with the others,” said Anna. “They’ll be gone for a few days.”
“He goes out a lot,” said Poppy grumpily. “He gets us all our food.”
“Well, I hope he returns soon,” said Tim. “The more of you here the better. Hopefully Samuel will leave you be once I give myself up.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to give yourself up?”
“I’ve put you people in enough danger already. Samuel won’t stop until he has me. I don’t plan on running forever. I don’t have the spine for it, or the legs.”
“Then why did you resist in the first place?” said Alistair. “We could have given you up and there’d be no danger.”
“Of course there would be. Samuel is a danger everywhere he goes. The reason he wants me dead is because I know the truth. And now so do you people. My burden is shifted. I can die in peace. I’ve been trying to get someone to believe me about Samuel for years, and now that I have I’m giving up. A cripple has no place in the wastelands. I’ve told you all what I know, but quite frankly I’m happy for Samuel to just do what he wants with me and be done with it.”
Rene was shaking his head. “Your burden is now ours. You have doomed us all. Samuel will become our enemy as he was yours.”
Anna raised her hand. Rene could be a tad dramatic at times. “Not if we give Tim up and say we don’t believe him. We’ll explain that after what their man, Birch, did to Poppy, we were angry, but that we think Tim is a lunatic and don’t want anything to do with him.”
Tim folded his arms and winced as his wound creased. “I think that would be smart. Samuel wants followers, not enemies. The battlefield on which to fight him is not head-on. The fact that you people know the truth is enough to light the fires. It means the entire world does not belong to Samuel Raymeady, even if he thinks it does. You people need to give me up and keep your heads down. Survive and grow and don’t let Samuel turn the world into his own private dictatorship.”
Alistair folded his arms. “As long as Samuel doesn’t just destroy us a
ll and be done with it.”
Poppy whimpered. Anna placed a hand on her shoulder. The girl shouldn’t really be listening to any of this, but nor was it fair to keep her outside after what had happened to her.
“Samuel won’t do that,” said Tim. “He’s too smart. He’s wearing the hat of benevolent leader. Killing innocent people isn’t in his interests. Roman will be back, I promise you, and when he comes, you people need to play nice and hand me over. They’ll string me up on the Kirkland and make an example of me, but you’ll be okay. I’ll die a coward and a traitor, but I’m cool with that. Meeting you people and telling you what I know is redemption enough for me. Everything will work out fine. Trust me.”
Anna nodded. It all sounded like a good idea.
DAMIEN
Damien had managed to re-board the Kirkland without anybody important seeing him. He’d climbed the rigging, which ran down the starboard side and allowed people to moor their yachts and climb up. Only a single guard patrolled the gunwale and he had seemed half asleep when Damien headed past him. Hopefully Samuel would not even know he’d returned. The longer Damien could put off meeting with him, the better. The first person he wanted to talk to was Harry. I don’t even know where to begin. Which question do I ask first?
Before he sought out his friend, though, he had retired to his private berth to get some sleep. After the events on the pier Damien was out on his feet and just wanted to sleep. He washed the blood from his spear in the stainless steel sink and stared into the cracked mirror. His stump was bleeding, too, which added to the mess. It was all he could do just to get out of his clothes before collapsing on his bed and passing out.
He slept through the entire morning and part of the afternoon, dreaming the whole time, but remembering nothing once he awoke. It was probably for the best considering what nightmares he might have been having. As soon as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, Damien thought about seeing Harry.
Harry didn’t have a private berth on the Kirkland – he stayed in the bunkhouses with a majority of the other civilians – which was why it was a surprise when Damien opened his hatch and found him waiting there against the wall of the passageway.
“I thought you’d never wake up,” he said with a smile on his face.
Damien snatched at Harry’s shirt and yanked him inside the berth. “Does anyone else know I’m back?”
Harry shook his head. “I doubt it. I was the only one out on deck waiting for you.”
Damien thought about the events of last night and suddenly became overwrought with rage. “Why were you waiting for me? Wanted to know the latest about your partner in crime, Tim?”
Harry didn’t seem surprised. He sat down on the bed and sighed. “Tim told you, then? I wondered if he might. To be honest, I assumed he was dead after you shot him. How did he survive?”
“Some people on the pier patched him up. Anyway, what the hell, Harry? Tim said…” He lowered his voice. “He said that you were involved in trying to blow up the sodding ship.”
Harry sighed. When he looked at Damien he was tired and weary. There were wrinkles on his forehead that seemed to have come overnight and his skin was grey. For a second all was forgotten. “Your headaches are getting bad again, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Bad, bad?”
“Bad as before. Worse, actually.”
Damien sat down on the bed beside his friend and said nothing. There was nothing to say. Harry had developed a brain tumour three years ago that had grown rapidly. The pressure on his brain had caused excruciating headaches, made him blind in one eye, and half-crazy. At its worst, Harry used to space out and start mumbling religious nonsense; talking about an endless snow storm and Angels coming to reap the Earth. He would point at Damien and tell him that everyone was supposed to be dead, that they were all buried in ice and snow. It had got pretty frightening towards the end and the prognosis was that it wouldn’t get any better in Harry’s final months. There was nothing to be done, the doctors said.
But Damien hadn’t accepted that. Harry had taken him on as a teenager, took him away from the crime-ridden council estates, and trained him up to be a master carpenter. Learning a trade and finally having a father figure had changed Damien’s life completely. He had once sold drugs and dealt violence to those who crossed him, but had gradually become a hardworking man who wanted to put his past behind him and do good things. It was Harry’s kindness that had changed the course of Damien’s life for the better. He owed the man everything. So when the doctors had said Harry was going to die, Damien had refused to allow it. He took to the Internet and researched every clinic, health trial, and treatment he could find. Eventually he had come across an experimental drug trial in South Africa. The only problem was that it had been expensive. Damien had needed to sacrifice everything he had to gather the money to pay. But he had done so, and it had worked. Harry got better. The cancer went away…almost. Harry had been due to fly out for the final round of treatment, to eradicate the last few cancer cells remaining. But then the world had ended, along with any notion of healthcare. Both he and Harry worried that the cancer would return from the few cells remaining, but tried to put it out of their minds; there was nothing they could do but hope.
Then, several weeks ago, the headaches started again. Neither of them had wanted to admit what that meant.
“I’m sorry,” said Damien.
Harry nodded. “Me too.”
“Is that why you tried to set off the bomb? Are you losing it again?”
“No! Tell you the truth I had nothing to do with the bomb Tim tried to set off. It was me who helped get him off the ship before they found him, though. I got him in a lifeboat during the night and sent him away.”
“Why, Harry? How did you even get involved with this guy?”
“By seeing what is right in front of me. Samuel Raymeady is evil.”
Damien snorted. “Wow, you and this Tim really have it in for the captain, don’t you?”
“Are you really so blind? Samuel is a dictator in the making. He’s building his little empire, rescuing stragglers and earning their love, but the harsh reality is that the captain of this ship is the man who ended the world in the first place. Samuel Raymeady destroyed everything.”
“So that he could rise up as the leader of the new world, right? I’m not buying it.”
Harry blinked. “Have you ever noticed how many people go missing around here? There was a guy named Dennis, worked in the mess hall, remember him?”
Damien vaguely remembered a man with glasses and a crooked nose. “I think so. What about him?”
“When did you see him last?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly. Dennis let slip that he intended taking a boat with a couple of his friends and heading down to Spain where it would be warmer. They wanted to find someplace quiet and try to live on the land again. Dennis disappeared the night before he was due to leave and everyone assumed he’d finally set off.
“Maybe he did.”
“Except I knew the friends he was leaving with and none of them had seen him. I can promise you that Samuel made Dennis disappear. He won’t have any dissenters or want-aways in his fleet.”
“You have no proof.”
Harry went to say something but stopped himself.
“What?” Damien asked. “What were you about to say?”
“I…I saw Samuel on the aft deck one day and….and I saw what he was. He’s the devil, Damien. I’m telling you.”
Damien leapt up from the bed and marched the room. He placed his hand on his head and swore at the ceiling. “Damn it, Harry. It’s just the brain tumour. You’re having funny turns again. You’re talking bollocks.”
“They’re not funny turns. I see things that others can’t. There’s a layer beneath the surface that most people don’t know about, but just you wait. You’ll see what Samuel Raymeady truly is. He’s not our saviour. The only thing he cares about is collecting his kingdom.”
“That bomb would have killed hundreds of people, Harry. How can you judge Samuel when you were party to something like that?”
Harry stood up from the bed and faced Damien. He winced for a second as if getting up had hurt his head, but when he recovered he gave his friend a hard stare. “I told you I knew nothing about that. My own plans were to be more surgical. I only wanted to take out Samuel.”
He’s going to get us both killed with this nonsense.
Damien looked down at his spear. He was already guilty of murder. Once Samuel found out about Birch and Fox, Damien would be a dead man himself. But if he took Harry’s life and revealed him as the second traitor, perhaps all would be forgiven? Harry was dying of a brain tumour, anyway, what harm would there be in ending his suffering?
The weight of Damien’s spear suddenly made his arm ache. He tried to raise it but couldn’t. What the hell am I thinking? He couldn’t hurt his friend, no matter what the reason. Harry had looked out for him when nobody else had. Harry had made him a man, been a father to him. There was no way he could turn his back on the only person he’d ever loved and respected. Especially not for a dickhead like Samuel Raymeady. “If Samuel finds out that you’re planning against him…”
Harry shrugged. “Way my head feels, I’ll be dead soon anyway.”
The thought made Damien’s stomach roll. Whatever happened, he was going to lose his only friend – either to cancer or execution. The world had just become even shitter than it used to be. Damien was soon to be alone. Harry was the moral centre that had given him his path through life. He didn’t know what would become of him once Harry was gone. Will I go back to being the useless thug I was when he found me? Maybe a thug is all I am deep down. Sam tells me to do something and I do it. Where do I draw the line?
Harry came and placed a hand on Damien’s shoulder. “I’m getting old, Damien. My time is nearly done, but there are still people out there who have futures left. Not if Samuel Raymeady gets his way, though. You need to stop him.”
Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel Page 14