After what felt like an hour of struggling through the water, Smith surfaced in front of me, around thirty feet away from the shoreline. He stood and walked then shuffled, keeping low in a hunched stance. He flipped up his mask and spat out his mouthpiece, turning back towards me.
“Come on, kid.” He waved me forward.
I felt my non-flippered foot scrape the sandy bottom. Then my foot scuffed across sand again. I’d reached the shore. My relief was brief. I tried walking through the shallow waves and fell on my face. Smith was too far away to pick me up again. I tasted the saltiness of the sea and hauled myself up. I waded, almost running through the shallows. Smith had already reached the golden sand beyond the waves.
I kicked off my remaining flipper and felt spongy wet sand between my toes as I paddled through the receding tide. For the first time, I closely studied the beach area spreading in a semi circle around one-hundred feet each side of me. The beach was nothing more than a small cove and the sand at the water’s edge soon yielded to thick woodlands beyond.
I glanced to my left and saw we were completely shielded from the castle now. The dense trees and rocks covered us from any sniper’s sights, no matter how good a shot he was. Momentarily, we were safe.
Smith sat on a large gray rock to my left, ripping off his air tank, flippers and face mask. I trudged slowly towards him and stopped a little way from the rock, breathing heavily and aching all over.
“I don’t suppose you thought to bring some smokes with you?” Smith asked.
“Where the hell would I carry a pack of cigarettes, inside my damn undercrackers?”
Smith shrugged. “Only asking.”
I glanced over the thick, bushy green plants and cluster of tall trees directly inland, around twenty yards behind the bay.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked.
Smith pulled the rubber hood from his head and ruffled his hair. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply facing the sea, taking in the warm coastal breeze.
“Mac and his boys will have their work cut out repairing that sea boat and they won’t be able to move inland because that damn sniper up there will pick them off when they get in range,” Smith said. “They’re stuck aboard that warship and we’re stuck on the island. Only one thing we can do.” He opened his eyes and stared directly at me. “We’re going to have to go right on up to that castle and take out the sniper.”
I felt hot and sweat trickled down the side of my head. I pulled off my own rubber hood and let the breeze cool my face.
“Why is that damn guy shooting at us?” I asked again. “What is he going to achieve by killing us all?”
Smith sighed. “Beats me, kid. Whoever it is could have been through a bad experience with the remaining survivors and doesn’t want anybody else on their patch. You know how it is. We’ve run into some badass characters ourselves.”
“How far out do you think his range is?” I asked, staring at the warship stranded out at sea. “Can he hit anybody onboard the ship from where he is?”
Smith shook his head. “I doubt it. Those were two good shots he hit McPherson with. A range of around two hundred yards. That’s some damn fine shooting. Hannigen is a lucky guy he managed to get away before he got tagged.”
“So, that also means McElroy and his guys won’t be capable of shooting back with their weapons and hit the castle,” I said.
“Correct,” Smith grunted. “Coastal winds, angle of elevation, fall of shot, you’d have to be the best marksman in the world to hit the target from that ship. Plus, whoever it is up in the castle is obviously an experienced combatant. They won’t stay in one vantage point too long. That warship carries some series firepower.”
I remembered the missiles tubes and heavy guns onboard. “Can’t they just blast that damn castle to dust using those missiles on the ship?”
“Already thought about that,” Smith huffed. “I asked
Chernakov about using the heavy duty weapons some weeks ago, in case another one of those Russian warships popped up on the horizon and we had to defend ourselves.” He turned his head to look back out to sea.
“And?” I was impatient for him to continue.
“And…because of this damn digital and politically correct, health and safety obsessed world that we used to live in, all the missile systems and heavy guns need an encrypted pass code to be entered into each of the control systems before the damn things become operational. And guess what?”
“Nobody has the codes,” I groaned.
Smith nodded. “You got it. The codes change with each signal and they only get sent in coded messages from the command center in Russia. And only the ship’s captain has access to these damn signal codes and obviously, he ‘ain’t around.”
That meant the warship we’d hijacked was almost totally defenseless. Another great plan gone up in smoke. “Oh, that is good,” I sighed. “So that warship is nothing more than a floating carnival boat? If the Russians finally catch up with us, we’re dead in the water.”
Smith shrugged. “Well, we still got use of some heavy duty machine guns and whatever small arms the Russians left behind.”
“Not much use against a fucking nuclear warhead,” I snapped.
Smith dumped his discarded diving gear behind the boulder he sat on. “Maybe not but if we can all get ashore right here, we’ve got a fighting chance.”
I had to admire Smith’s optimism. If a fleet of Russian warships loomed over the horizon and found their stolen ship and saw the state of it, they wouldn’t have to be a bunch of masterminds to figure out we’d fled ashore to the island. Then there was no reason why they wouldn’t simply bomb the crap out of the whole place, with all of us being evaporated amongst a huge ball of nuclear flames, no matter how hard we fought.
I had no clue where we were and there was no way of telling if we were even close to any sort of mainland continent. So far, the only building we’d seen was the castle up on the cliff and the only thing we knew for sure was at least one uninfected person occupied the island.
“Where the hell do we go from here?” I asked. I pointed to the dense foliage behind the bay. “That route looks pretty impregnable through that whole bush land.”
Smith shuffled around, still sitting on the rock to face the jungle. “There has to be some type of pathway through, maybe a track of some kind.” He lifted himself off the boulder. “Come on, let’s go take a look.”
I took off my face mask and tossed it behind the rock. “Don’t we want to shed these damn wetsuits before we go trudging through the bush? I don’t know about you but I’m starting to swelter in this damned thing.” I vented rubber neck and sleeves to try and get a little fresh air inside the suit.
Smith grunted and rubbed his stubbly chin. “I know what you mean, Wilde Man. These suits are uncomfortable out of the water but it’s bad enough we’ve got to tread barefoot. If we take the suits off, we’ve got no protection against thorn bushes, sharp branches, spiky-assed plants or snakes or other nasty-bitey bastards.”
I hadn’t considered other hazards on the land and felt apprehensive about moving through the woodland.
I followed Smith as we trekked across the bay, close to the jungle spreading over the landscape to our left. We searched the thick tropical forest for an opening leading to a pathway through. We found what we were looking for on the far side of the bay.
A two foot wide gap between the dense green foliage stood around five feet high, sandwiched between the forest and the side of a rocky cliff face jutting back out to sea. Tall bushes with large green leaves formed the overhead canopy lining the pathway. The plants bent in an oval shape at the top and reminded me of old hedged mazes I’d seen as a kid when living in England.
Smith and I stopped and studied the trail. We shared an apprehensive glance then turned back to the clearing in the bush. The track doglegged to the left at around ten feet from the entrance and the high cliff to the right threw dark shadow beyond the turn.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Smith shrugged. I don’t see no other way out of here unless we go back out to sea and swim around those rocks.”
The thought of going back in the water made my stomach churn. I nodded at the trail entrance. “It’ll be a squeeze going through there but I don’t think we have any alternative.”
Smith jutted out his chin. “Before we go in there, kid, you might want to reload that weapon of yours.” He nodded at the spear gun still protruding from the holder.
I pulled the gun out, looked at Smith and shrugged. “I can’t figure out how this damn thing works.”
Smith sighed. “Look, it’s quite simple. It works kind of like a crossbow. Ever had a crossbow? Here, let me show you.”
Smith took the spear gun and a replacement barb and showed me how to cock the shaft back into the housing mechanism.
“You see?”
I nodded, taking the loaded gun back off him. “I think I got it.”
“Well, you better get it and real quick.” He nodded beyond my shoulder. “Because you’ll need to have that damn weapon handy and you may need to use it real soon.”
Chapter Twelve
I spun around to take a look at what or who Smith alluded to. Three zombies with gray flesh peeling away from their faces and scantily wrapped in the remains of saggy beach clothing lurched through the shallow waves across the bay. Each one emitted a gargling sound and seawater gushed from their mouths.
“Shit, they followed us ashore,” I groaned. “I thought the sharks would have finished those suckers off.”
“You never know, they might have finished the damn sharks off,” Smith said, with a hint of sarcasm.
“This is no time for your dumb jokes, Smith,” I said. “What the hell are we going to do, fight them off or make a run for it?”
Personally, I felt too exhausted for more zombie battles but I knew if we ran they’d keep on following us through the bush. Then if we found a safe place, it wouldn’t be secure for long.
Smith took a sideways glance at the pathway. “It will be slow going through the bush and those bastards will come right in there after us.”
He confirmed my thoughts.
“Guess we’ll have to take care of them right here on this beach.”
“With the guns?” I asked, holding up my weapon slightly.
Smith pulled a single spear from the holder and slung the gun over his shoulder. He held the spear in his hand like somebody would hold a hunting knife.
“Try not use the guns if we don’t have to. We’ve got limited ammunition so if we fire and miss, that’s a potential weapon wasted.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a whirl,” I sighed, slinging my own gun over my shoulder and retracting a spear from the holder. “Do we go to them or let them come to us?”
“I think it’d be more appropriate if we went over their way,” Smith said, that sarcasm returning again.
“Come on then, let’s go,” I sighed. “But let’s try and make it real quick.”
“Sure,” Smith chirped. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
We trudged towards the three zombies as slowly as they approached us. They waded through the remaining waves and stumbled across the dry sand. The sounds they made were nothing more than a watery gargle, as though they were rinsing their mouths and throats with mouthwash.
Smith and I readied our spears in our hands, bracing ourselves for another short, sharp killing spree. These three ghouls seemed unsteady on their feet and by the rotten state of them, they must have been underwater for some time. They comprised of two males and a female. One male was tall and almost skeletal, with half the top of his head missing. He had the ripped remains of a dark blue shirt draped around his torso and matching dark blue shorts with the whole of the left side missing. The second male was shorter but bigger built, almost stocky, although his bare torso may have been bloated. He still had a shock of black hair that dripped water and flopped to one side over his rotten gray face. A pair of gray underwear was visible beneath a pair of tatty red jog pants. The skinny female had blonde hair, with clumps missing in places and her face was a torn, matted mess where she’d been perpetually bitten in the last throes of life. A purple cotton shirt was loosely swathed around her chest and back and the material thankfully covered her genitals, as she didn’t seem to have any remaining clothing on her bottom half.
The tall, thin male led the bedraggled party of undead and seemed to be the most mobile of the deadly decaying trio. He led the way with the female and the second male lagging behind him.
“You want to do the honors on this skinny prick up front and I’ll take out the two assholes behind?” Smith asked.
“Ah, thanks, man,” I scoffed. “Give me the toughest dude out of the mob, why don’t you.”
Smith shrugged. “Trade if you want. I don’t give a fuck.”
“No, no,” I sighed. “Let’s stick to the damn plan.”
“All right,” Smith muttered. He skirted around the tall guy, who reached out with flailing arms but Smith easily darted beyond the outstretched grasp.
“Hey, you,” I called. The zombie turned its mangled head and focused on me. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, you ugly bastard.”