There was a shout and I looked up to see the first infected had managed to grasp on to the guard rail and had pulled its upper body onto the deck. Daz was standing motionless, staring at it, but Claire had run forward and grabbed the boathook from him. She swung it hard at the infected, connecting with its head with a sickening thump. As she swung again, it took its hand off the rail and lunged towards her. She hit it hard across its neck and it slipped over the side; a splash telling me it had dropped into the water.
By then, the next had both hands on the deck and was hauling itself upwards. As Claire stepped forward to swing at it, Sophie appeared in the cockpit. ‘Mum, what’s going on?’
Claire turned, taking her eyes off the infected. ‘Get back inside!’
Sophie craned her neck, trying to get a better view of what was happening, unaware of the danger we were in. ‘But what’s going on?’
‘Inside, now!’
‘But, Mum!’
‘NOW!’ Claire bellowed and Sophie disappeared down the companionway just as the third infected reached through the guard rail and grabbed Claire’s leg with its one good arm. She yelled and tried to step backwards, losing her footing on the slippery deck. She landed on her back with a crash, but her attacker refused to let go. Instead, it started pulling her towards the edge of the boat, gnashing its teeth with anticipation. Claire’s cry finally roused Daz and he leapt into action, latching onto one of Claire’s arms, but it wasn’t enough to stop her being dragged across the deck. Suddenly, there was a shout and Sophie appeared beside Daz, grabbing Claire’s other arm, and together they were able to stop the infected pulling her any closer to its waiting mouth.
‘Sophie, get back inside!’ Claire shouted, but Sophie remained where she was, hanging onto her mother’s arm with all her strength. ‘No!’
‘Sophie, it’s too dangerous for you to be out here!’
‘Mum, I’m not losing you, too; not after Jake; not after Dad.’ Sophie was blinking rapidly, doing her best to hold back the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her. ‘You’re all I’ve got left. I can’t lose you, too.’
Before Claire could reply, I heard a sound behind me and turned to find the second infected had made it onto the boat. It leapt towards me, its face contorted with anger and rage. I swung my boathook, catching it in the chest and sending it staggering backwards, but within a second it was attacking again; lips pulled back; teeth bared; blackened, grasping hands reaching towards me. I swung the boathook once more, this time aiming for its head. There was a sharp crack as my hit found its mark, sending the infected spinning onto the deck. At first I thought I might have broken the boathook, but as the infected scrambled around, trying to get back to its feet, I could see the noise hadn’t come from my makeshift weapon. Instead, it had been the sound of my attacker’s jaw breaking, and the left side now hung uselessly from its skull.
I advanced, hitting it over the head again and again until it finally stopped moving. Leaving it there, I ran back to where Claire was still being pulled one way by the infected and another by Daz and Sophie. I stamped on the infected’s arm, hearing bones shatter beneath my boot. Still it held on, its grip like a vice. I leant over the guard rail and brought the boathook down hard on the top of its head, smashing it in two. Only then did it finally let go and Claire was able to scramble back to her feet. I ran my eyes over her. ‘Are you hurt? Did it scratch you?’
Claire pushed up her trouser leg and I grabbed the spotlight from Daz and shone it on to her calf: it was badly bruised, but the skin was unbroken. I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That was close.’
‘Way too close.’ She turned to Daz and Sophie. ‘Thanks. I don’t know what would have happened if it wasn’t for you two.’
Sophie wiped her face and threw herself at her mother, hugging her tightly, but Daz wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he was pointing upstream into the darkness, his hand shaking with fear. ‘There’s another one coming!’
I scanned the water ahead of the boat with the spotlight; sure enough there was another infected floating towards us. This one was half-submerged and clinging to the smouldering trunk of a large tree. ‘I think we’ll be okay with that one. I don’t think it’s going to come near us.’
I cast the spotlight wider and further ahead; the debris was now coming thick and fast, and almost everywhere amongst it I could see the movements of infected, clinging to anything they’d managed to get a hold of.
‘We need to get away from here.’ I glanced up at the sky. ‘With the city on fire, this is about as dark as it’s going to get. I think we should try to get under the bridge again. D’you agree?’
The others nodded.
‘Daz, go and start the engine. Claire, come with me and help me pull up the anchor. Sophie, take the spotlight and keep moving it around. Yell out if you see any getting too close.’
Daz ran back towards the cockpit, but before he got there he stopped and nodded towards the body of the infected. ‘Ben, what’re we goin’ to do with that?’
‘Use the boathook; push it over the side. Whatever you do, don’t touch it.’
As we approached the bridge for the second time, we could hear machine gunfire.
Daz hunched down nervously, ready to throw himself to the deck in an instant. ‘Are they firin’ at us?’
‘I don’t think so, look.’ I pointed to where two large beams of light were sweeping back and forth across the water. All along the bridge, men were firing straight down, shooting at any infected they could see passing beneath; they were hitting some, but there were too many for the soldiers to be able to get them all and some still moved in the water after they had passed under the bridge.
‘I bet they didn’t think about that when they decided to bomb the city.’ Claire spat cynically. ‘I wonder when they’ll realise it hasn’t worked; that there are still infected out there? All they’ve done is drive them past their “ring of steel”.’
I shielded my eyes as one of the spotlights swept away from the bridge and caught us in its beam. ‘That’s the least of our worries.’
Moments later, the deep rattle of the large machine gun started again. The bullets from it slammed into the water straight ahead of us in a tight cluster.
‘Fuck!’ I whipped the wheel to the right until we were heading upstream once more, trying desperately to avoid hitting any of the debris floating down towards us.
‘Should we try again?’ Daz peered into the darkness behind us, where the spotlight had returned to scanning the waters below the bridge.
‘I don’t think they’re ever going to let us pass, not if they see us.’ Claire was right. It seemed there was no way they would let us under the bridge if they saw us, and it seemed there was no way we could get past without being seen. We were trapped between the bridge and the remains of the city. To the east, flames still rose high into the air; above them, the sky was jet-black; not a single star was visible. As I watched, lightning flashed across the sky; the rumble of the thunder arrived a fraction of a second later.
Sophie stuck her head out of the cabin where she’d been keeping an eye on Tom, spooked by the unexpected noise. ‘What was that?’
I wrestled with the wheel as I answered. ‘Nothing to worry about, just a thunderstorm. How’s he doing?’
‘He’s still the same; just lying there.’ She turned to Claire, her forehead creased with concern. ‘Is he ever going to get better?’
Claire glanced at me and then back to Sophie, ‘I don’t know, honey. I hope so, but I can’t tell how badly he’s hurt, not without taking an X-ray or an MRI scan.’
I stared ahead, trying not to let the worry show on my face. Sometimes, it felt like I’d known Tom all of my life, and now I’d lost everything else, I couldn’t face losing him, too.
There was another flash, followed immediately by a crash that reverberated through the boat. Sophie flinched and disappeared back into the cabin.
‘It’s getting closer. I’d better go down. Sophie’s never been go
od with thunder.’ Claire climbed down into the cabin leaving me and Daz in the cockpit.
Daz frowned. ‘How come there’s lightnin’ all of a sudden? There wasn’t a cloud in the sky earlier.’
I looked up. ‘A fire that big starts to make its own weather. All that soot and ash in the air helps the clouds form and the heat gives it all energy.’
There was an almighty flash of light and then a crashing boom that I felt deep in my chest. ‘The storm’s drifting over us; it’s going to get wet up here. Daz, if you go down below you’ll find some waterproofs under the bunk in the front cabin. Get one for yourself and then bring one up for me.’
Daz got back just as the rain started to fall in earnest, but it wasn’t normal rain: it was black and oily, and it clung to us rather than running off onto the deck. Whenever we moved, it slithered down our necks and worked its way up our sleeves, staining our faces and our clothes. With it, came fierce gusts that pushed and pummelled the boat, meaning I had to fight to keep it pointing in the right direction. I adjusted the throttle so that we weren’t really going anywhere, just holding our position against the current. Around us, the waters were thick with burnt and melted debris. The smaller pieces weren’t much of a problem, but I had to keep an eye out for larger ones and move out of their way if it looked like they might hit us.
With the detritus from the ruined city, came infected; some were so badly injured, they could barely move; others were almost unharmed. I wondered how this had happened: whether it was just the way the bombs had fallen or whether some had been shielded from the blasts while others hadn’t.
Suddenly, a blackened and blistered hand, the tips of its fingers missing, appeared over the side of the boat.
‘Daz, boathook.’
Daz grabbed his weapon and ran forward; there was a sickening crunch as he made contact, but it took several blows before the infected finally let go.
‘Daz. There!’ I pointed to the other side where another hand had appeared over the gunnels. Daz ran across, barely managing to keep his footing on the increasingly slippery deck, and laid into the new infected. Even as he did, more grasping hands were appearing out of the darkness that surrounded us. With Daz already busy, I let go of the wheel, grabbed the other boathook and ran forward, but before I could get there, the boat struck something in the water, the impact sending me spilling onto the deck. I struggled back to my feet, looking around desperately for my boathook, but it had skidded beyond my reach. With no time to retrieve it, I kicked out hard at a badly scorched head which appeared between the guard rails, sending it spinning into the river. I just had time to see it disappear in a swirl of inky black water before the boat juddered again as we hit yet more of the wreckage. I picked up my boathook and looked round to find Daz was back on the right side of the boat, bringing his makeshift weapon down onto the head of yet another infected, while Claire and Sophie had emerged from the cabin.
Sprinting unsteadily back to the cockpit, I threw the boathook to Claire and went back to the wheel. Claire immediately ran forward and joined Daz as he fended off the ever-increasing number of infected trying to get on board. Ahead, I saw the burned-out remains of a large boat drifting directly towards us. I turned the wheel to the left, trying to keep the movements smooth enough to avoid sending Daz or Claire over the side, and missed the wreckage by a matter of inches. Knowing we’d just got very lucky, I turned to Sophie. ‘Take the spotlight and go up to the bow. I need you to keep it shining forward and shout if it looks like we’re going to hit anything.’
‘Okay.’ Sophie, her wet hair plastered to the side of her face, trembled with fear as she tentatively made her way past where Daz was striking out at yet another attacker. As the lightning flashed again, illuminating Daz and Claire as they kept up their assault on any infected who tried to haul themselves on board, I wondered how long we could continue to hold them back. If it was just the storm, or the debris, or the infected, we could probably deal with it, but all three at once was just too much. We wouldn’t be able to rest, not for a second, and we couldn’t carry on like that for long.
Chapter Six
By dawn, the fires where Glasgow had once stood were beginning to subside and the storm had passed. We’d made it through the night, but we were exhausted. The infected had attacked us relentlessly, latching onto the boat as they were swept past us by the flow of the river. There were so many of them in the water that no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to avoid them all. None had got on board, but only because we’d been constantly on guard against them. Now the sun was rising, we could see more clearly what was going on around us, and this made it easier to keep well away from any debris which had infected clinging to it. It helped that the wreckage was beginning to thin out, too, and finally I felt we could start to relax.
Suddenly, the engine spluttered and died. I checked the fuel gauge: we were out of diesel. There was no wind, so the sails were useless, and we began to drift slowly along with all the other flotsam and jetsam that surrounded us, towards the bridge.
Claire shouted back from her position on the left hand side of the boat. ‘Why’ve you turned the engine off?’
‘I didn’t. We’re out of fuel,’ I called back.
Claire frowned. ‘So what happens now?’
‘The current will carry us down to the bridge, whether we like it or not; there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘Can we no’ drop the anchor?’ Daz was making his way towards the cockpit along the other side.
‘If we do that, we won’t be able to move out of the way if anything big comes towards us, and we’d risk getting holed. If that happens, we’ll end up in the water and we won’t last long in there.’
‘But what about the soldiers?’ Sophie’s voice trembled with fear.
I stared grimly downstream. ‘We’re just going to have to take our chances.’
We waited nervously as the bridge slowly grew larger, but Daz was the first to spot that things were different this time. ‘Somethin’s wrong.’
I shaded my eyes with my hand as I looked up at it. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Last time, the soldiers were strung out along it; now they’re all crowded in the middle.’
Sure enough, the men were huddled in the centre of the bridge and their vehicles had been rearranged to form barriers across it. They started firing; not at us, not into the water, but along the bridge itself. It took a moment to work out what they were shooting at, then I saw them, the infected, swarming onto the bridge from both ends.
Daz gazed upwards. ‘The fire must’ve driven them out of the city.’
‘The law of unintended consequences!’ Claire snorted. ‘Bet that was another part of their plan they didn’t think through properly.’
‘Claire, this isn’t the time or the place for that.’ I pointed to the bridge. ‘Not when people are dying up there.’
Claire opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it and remained silent. As we drifted closer, I watched the infected descend on the soldiers, clambering over their makeshift barricades and weaving between the vehicles. No matter how fast the soldiers fired, it made no difference; more infected simply replaced those that fell. As the bridge passed directly overhead, we could no longer see what was happening, but we could hear the guns, and the shouts and screams of the terrified soldiers high above us as they fought for their lives. Rather than face the inevitable, some chose to leap, but from that height they might as well have been landing on concrete and we heard them hit the water with a deep, bone-shattering smack as they disappeared from sight. Few resurfaced, but those that did were so badly broken that they were barely recognisable as something which had once been human.
By the time we reached the far side of the bridge, the battle was over, and the only movements were from the infected feeding on the bodies of those they’d killed. Despite their training and their weapons, it had taken less than five minutes for the soldiers to be decimated. There must have been several hun
dred of them there, and now they were all dead. If they couldn’t hold off the infected, what hope did we have?
Once clear of the bridge, we did our best to clean the boat. The detritus from the city had been carried out to sea by the flow of the river and it had returned to its usual state. We sloshed buckets of water across the deck and scrubbed until the worst of the oily grime which coated every surface had been removed. Yet it remained grubby in comparison to the pristine white it had been before. Then we turned our attention to ourselves: we were as dirty as the boat, our clothes, even through waterproof jackets, were caked with the fallout from the bombs and stained with blood from the infected; our faces and hands were smeared with the greasy, sticky ash.
Making sure there were no infected nearby, we removed our waterproofs and took turns to drop into the river, finding the cold, clear water refreshing after the long, sleepless night. It quickly became obvious that while we could clean ourselves, our clothes were beyond saving and that the best option would be to discard them altogether. This wasn’t a problem for me, but the others were faced with having to make do with the limited range of clothes in my wardrobe. Daz faired best, since we were closest in size, and Claire somehow managed to still look smart, even dressed in slightly oversized men’s clothes. Sophie came out worst, being swamped by the shirt and jeans Claire picked out for her. Claire rolled up the legs and sleeves, and tied the front of the shirt in a knot: it improved the fit, but I could tell it was far from Sophie’s usual style. She stood in the middle of the saloon, her arms held out to the side, glaring at Claire. ‘I look like a scarecrow!’
For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak Page 9