Year of the Zombie (Book 3): The Yacht

by Iain Rob Wright

  ‘Thank you. So what’s your story? Do you just go around the high seas rescuing people in need? Are you married?’

  ‘Me? No, no, I never married. The sea is my wife. Thirty years a carpenter, I retired four years ago to live on the Blessed Betty. I’m living my dream for whatever years I have left.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I-’ He stopped speaking and winced. ‘Ouch! Another headache. I should really get this wound on my neck covered up. I shall pop back to my boat and get it seen to. Will you be okay?’

  She nodded and waved a hand. ‘I’ll be fine. Will stay right here.’

  Alex got up unsteadily and moved away from the controls. ‘I’ll be back soon. Just stay calm.’

  Then he left.

  Emily slid into the pilot’s seat and perched Ross’s laptop on top of the console. She took another few moments to enjoy the Madrid photograph, and then went to close it. As she reached out though, she spotted a file at the bottom left of the screen just above the taskbar. It was a video named: PRIVATE.

  Was it a nudie flick from one of Ross’s paramours?

  Porn?

  She didn’t know why, but she found herself stroking the track pad and double-clicking the file to open it.

  The video began to play. It was not what she expected.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The video hadn’t been taken by a woman, but by a man. The narrator’s voice sounded familiar, and Emily thought it might be Tom Gladstone, Ross’s Director of Acquisitions – the guy who travelled around the world for her husband trying to find the best deals on tractors, ploughs, threshers etc. It looked like he had made some kind of video report for Ross and emailed it over.

  The video opened on the interior of some kind of far eastern factory. White-coated employees milled about on either side of a long walkway, with dark-hair and light brown skin. Chinese, possibly?

  ‘So this is the place I was telling you about,’ came the voice of whom Emily was now certain was Tom Gladstone. ‘They are already in full operation here, but haven’t yet found a European franchisee. We make the right offer and we could be rolling this stuff out as early as next year. Our company will make a killing.’

  Emily narrowed her eyes and concentrated. Tom started walking down the long walkway, panning the camera left and right. Every now and then a white-coated employee would realize they were on film and bow reverently. They were attending industrial mixers, each of the large vats filled with straw-coloured liquid.

  ‘The fertilizer is like nothing I’ve seen before, Ross. Mr Sai gave me a demonstration this morning and it blew my mind. His chief scientist applied a dose of the solution to a row of hydrangeas. Ross, these plants were at death’s door, their petals shrivelled and brown. Within an hour, the bushes were blooming with bright pink flowers again. The dead leaves fell off and new ones grew in their place. It was like a miracle – except it was science, and for sale. I told Mr Sai that I needed a demonstration on a harvestable crop, and he agreed to do so tomorrow, but in the meantime he’s assured me that the formula works on all species of plant life. It promotes incredible growth and vitality. Crop failures will be a thing of the past. Every season will give a bountiful harvest, regardless of drought or anything else. Ross, I cannot stress this enough, but you have to authorize me to make whatever offer we can afford. As soon as we get the ball rolling, Mr Sai will allow me to bring back a sample. We have to be onboard with this.’

  The video ended.

  Emily leant back in her seat and chewed her lower lip. What had Ross been working on? Had he already signed the deal of a lifetime? Or would he now never get the chance? She hated herself for it, but the thought briefly crossed her mind that, with her husband dead, she might end up with a controlling interest in his company. So, was this miracle fertilizer already under the purview of what might become her company? Or had the deal died with Ross?

  Emily leaned forward, fingered the track pad and left the cursor hovering over the video file. After a couple of seconds the meta data popped up. The file had last been modified a couple of weeks ago, but what did that mean? Was that the date it was copied to the desktop? Then she saw the creation date: three weeks ago. Surely the deal would have been signed within that time. She went into her late husband’s emails again and started being even nosier. She let herself off the hook a little, because she knew the main reason she was snooping was to keep her mind occupied. Now that the panic and shock of the situation was subsiding, a rising tide of emotion kept threatening to burst its levees at any moment. Sporadic pressure beyond her eyes sought to bring tears, and a mild dizziness tried to dislodge her thoughts and send them spiralling into madness. Her life had flipped upside down in a single day, and it was hard to see how it would ever settle again once it righted itself. Would she get over Ross’s death, or would it break her? She feared ever having to sit in front of a doctor again arguing for her sanity.

  Another husband dead. Emily Tyler, you are a black widow.

  She had lost control, they would say. Just like last time.

  She gave the flirty emails from Ross’ various women another cursory look, but found none of them particularly enlightening. The fact that her husband had been screwing around seemed unimportant now – his death had brought closure on that – so she flicked through the more mundane messages to see what she could find: the internal memorandums and intercompany correspondence. Of most interest was anything from Tom Gladstone. She opened up the most recent message from him.

  Ross:

  Sorry to hear the sample had cracked open by the time it got to you. Mr Sai’s team will be sending out a new one immediately. I’ve been told that the formula can cause allergic reactions in some people, so make sure you get it all cleaned up. Speak soon.

  So Ross had received the sample. That must mean the deal had been signed. Good news, she supposed, but the excitement of running her own company had gone away as quickly as it had arrived. She didn’t care about business deals and farming. She was just kidding herself.

  Starting to get upset, Emily stood up and brushed herself off. The Coast Guard would arrive any moment, and she needed to be in control of herself. Ross’s had been a messy death, and one that would arouse incredulity. If Emily were a mess, her story – the truth – would be less believable.

  She left the pilothouse and went back out on deck. Alex was still missing after having left to return to his boat. She felt bad that he had got hurt, but glad that he had been there to save her. Ross would’ve killed her for sure.

  The moon shone down on the yacht and made everything shimmer like it was plated in silver. Emily hadn’t even realized that night had fallen, but now that it had the summer breeze was a gusty chill. She still wore her swimsuit, so went and grabbed her long cardigan from a hook on the outside of the lounge cabin. Wrapping it around herself, she shivered.

  Alex’s sailboat bobbed alongside the EMILY-DEVINE, the moon bouncing off its metal hooks and rivets. No sign of Alex though. He must be inside the wheelhouse, or down below in the living space. Ross still lay on the rear deck beneath a blanket. In near-darkness, he was nothing but a grey mound that could have been anything. She couldn’t kid herself about what lay under the blanket though.

  She climbed down to the rear deck and took a moment to find her balance. Under the pull of the moon, the waves crested higher than they had during sun-up, and the constant wishy-washy sound unsettled her. She wanted to find Alex. It was difficult to trust herself under stress, so she would feel much better having somebody with her – to shake her if she started acting crazy.

  Was she crazy?

  At the edge of the deck, Emily grabbed a hold of the railing and stepped over. Alex had lashed the boats together tightly, so there was less than a foot-gap between the two hulls, but it was still nerve-wracking hopping between the two. When her feet came down on Alex’s deck, she stumbled and fell to her knees.

  A buzzing sound came from somewhere. Emily looked aro
und for it and saw that there was a waterproof radio attached to the main mast. It was tuned in to a station, but imperfectly – the voices interrupted by static and crackling. The reception improved when she got near and a clear BBC-English speaker came through loud and clear.

  ‘…mainland officials have yet to confirm the nature of the disease, leading some experts to fear it is something never before encountered. Sufferers are presenting flu-like symptoms progressing towards haemorrhagic fever and death. In some cases, the final stages of the disease seem to bring on some kind of seizure, characterized by delirium and rage. Medical experts are reporting of near-death patients displaying surprising strength and resistance to pain…’

  ‘Jesus,’ Emily muttered. Had Ross caught the virus the man on the radio was talking about? How could he have, though? He’d been out on the yacht for almost a week. How would he have become infected with something like that?

  The sample was cracked.

  Ross would have received the sample at his headquarters in Stoke.

  Emily thought about Tom Gladstone’s last email and shuddered, still cold but also afraid. Had the chemical that Ross purchased from the Far East made him sick?

  She was being silly. The news reporter had described some sort of epidemic. No way could Ross have been involved in something like that. Liquid fertilizer did not cause infectious disease.

  Or did it?

  Now that Emily thought about it, she was sure there were movies about chemical companies polluting the water table and making people sick, or giving them cancer. Wasn’t Erin Brockovich about something like that? Can cause allergic reactions, Tom had warned. The sample had cracked.

  Emily cursed herself for having no practical experience beyond what she saw in the movies. She realized now that by marrying money – and even by ambitioning for it beforehand – she had failed herself. Her entire self-worth had become a mere extension of her husband’s, and now that he was gone she was nothing. The feminist inside of her screamed.

  And yet she was powerless to break the cycle. Even now, she looked to Alex – a man – to make her feel better. This was her own life – her own situation – yet she was relying on someone else to sort it all out for her. Maybe if she hadn’t buried her head in the sand at the beginning, none of this would have happened. The entire mess could have been cleaned up. Ross would likely still be alive. She’d screwed up bad.

  Screwed up because she was a screw-up.

  Whether Emily liked it or not, Alex was now involved. She needed to tell him what she had just heard on the radio. If Ross had been sick, then maybe they were both infected too. Alex had gone to clean his wound, but perhaps he could be more thorough if he knew he had to be.

  Unfamiliar with the cramped sailboat, Blessed Betty, Emily held onto the railing and scooted along the edge. The hatch to go downstairs was on the side, so that was where she headed. Not wanting to enter Alex’s private living quarters uninvited, she stopped to call out. ‘Hey, Alex. Can I come down? I need to talk to you. Alex?’

  No answer.

  The boat was too small not to hear someone shouting, so Emily didn’t know what could make Alex fail to reply. She swallowed a lump in her throat. Took the first step down.

  Below, she found a cramped living space: a tiny kitchenette and breakfast table along one wall, stocked bookshelves all along the other (most of the spines had titles relating to history, spanning from the Roman Republic to the Second World War). Alex obviously enjoyed living in past times more than existing in the present. Perhaps that was why he lived on a boat, removed from society with only books to keep him company. Hadn’t stopped him from coming to her aid though. There was no doubt in her mind that Alex was a decent man.

  But where was he?

  ‘Alex? Can you answer me, please?’

  She still heard nothing. Up ahead lay a door to where she imagined his bedroom would be. Privacy was even more of an issue now, but she was beginning to freak out, and that was his fault for not answering.

  ‘Okay, Alex, I’m coming in.’

  She pushed open the door and blinked as the light from a bedside lamp assaulted her eyes. There was little in the room except for a bed – and no sign of Alex.

  She saw the blood.

  On the edge of the bed was a round puddle of fresh blood. Had Alex bled over the bed? Been sick or had a nosebleed?

  Where was he?

  There was an en suite bathroom to her right. The door to it was closed, but the light inside was on.

  ‘Alex, are you okay? I think maybe Ross was sick. If he was, then we might be too. Do you feel unwell? There’s a lot of blood out here.’

  Thunk!

  The door rattled in its frame, not so hard that somebody had barged against it – more like somebody had cupped their ear against the wood.

  ‘Alex, are you in there? I can hear you.’

  A grunt.

  ‘Alex, you’re scaring me. Please, come out.’

  Silence.

  She reached out to the doorknob, wondering if it was locked. If it was, and he refused to come out…

  What could she do?

  Why was he doing this?

  The door burst open, hitting her in the face and knocking her back onto the bed. She felt the cooling blood beneath her thigh and squealed.

  Alex appeared from the bathroom, snarling at her like a hungry beast – just like Ross had. He leapt towards her. Emily managed to tumble into a backwards roll, landing off the other side of the bed. While Alex clambered over the mattress after her, she raced around the bottom of the bed and made for the door.

  Screeching like a vulture, Alex snatched a hold of her cardigan. Dragged her backwards. Emily let her arms flop behind her and squirmed until they slid free of her garment.

  Alex tumbled back, clutching the cardigan.

  Emily was free.

  She raced through the sailboat’s main cabin, smashing her hip painfully on the wooden breakfast table as she went, adding a bruise to the one she already had, and then rushed up the stairs.

  Alex was right behind her. A hungry wolf.

  Getting back up on deck was like emerging from a swimming pool. The cold, salty spray on her face distracted her, but woke up her senses at the same time. The ocean was unsettled: the deck rolled beneath her bare feet. She managed to keep her balance long enough to sprint towards the ship’s bow. A glance over her shoulder showed that Alex was only one step behind.

  The deck was short and she quickly ran out of it. Desperately, she searched for the nearest thing with which to defend herself. It turned out to be a large hook on the end of a pole that probably had a name known to a fisherman. She pulled it off its brackets and span around with it, wielding it like a long, cumbersome baseball bat.

  It cracked Alex right above the eyebrow. Blood soon covered his entire face.

  ‘You’re sick, Alex,’ Emily cried, ‘Just like my husband was. Please calm down.’

  He came for her again.

  This time Emily thrust the pole out like a spear, aiming for Alex’s chest. She miscalculated and hit his collarbone. The metal hook bounced off the hard bone and entered the soft tissue of Alex’s throat. Yet, impaled through the neck, he still continued trying to grab her, swiping with both hands. She held him at bay with the pole like an animal controller restraining a pit bull until its fight ran out. But Alex’s fight never ran out.

  The pole bucked and twisted in Emily’s hands, tearing at her palms and making her skin burn. She yelled out. ‘Please, Alex. Stop. Last. CHANCE!’

  She yanked and twisted the pole in her hands, felt the hook catch on something inside Alex’s neck. Rather than shy away from the resistance, she yanked harder, pulling the pole – and the hook – towards her. Alex bellowed, a demon that was once human.

  Then his voice was cut off by a short, sharp snap!

  The hook slid free and the pole fell from Emily’s hands. Before she could catch it, it clattered to the deck at her feet. She had lost her weapon, but no longer n
eeded it. Alex flopped to his knees, head resting awkwardly on one shoulder. The white slither of his spine dangled out of a hole in his neck where she’d snapped it in two with the hook. When he collapsed onto his face, Emily knew that he was dead. Just like Ross. Two boats, two dead men. Yet, she was still alive.

  Emily Tyler. The black widow.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Back on board the EMILY-DEVINE, Emily stared out at the black, featureless sea. It could have been Hell surrounding her, vast and endless, with neither joy nor pain – just foreverness. Land could be a hundred metres away and she wouldn’t know it. She had called for help – and got Alex killed as a result. Perhaps she should have just got behind the wheel and tried sailing inland. It was her yacht after all – a gift – yet she had no clue how to manoeuvre it. Just another example of how useless and looked-after she was. No more useful than a pet.

  She was fucked. Ross’s death had been an accident, and in no way her fault, but Alex’s had been all her doing. He was only there to help her and had ended up with a sliced throat and a severed spine.

  The authorities would never believe her. She could try explaining that Ross had attacked her and fallen on the anchor recall, and that Alex had left her with no choice but to defend herself, but all they would see was a rich widow and two dead men. She’d be in the media for the rest of her life, probably painted as some man-hating monster like Charlize Theron in that move. She likes to break men’s necks, they would whisper.

  Christ, there she went again with the movies. Her go-to reference included the name of an actress, rather than an actual person. What did she even have to live for? Maybe she should just take the rap for the entire thing in exchange for privacy. They could lock her up in some quiet cell where she could read books and actually learn something beyond movie trivia – things that would be of no use to her, of course, because she would spend the rest of her life in prison.