Chapter
25
Dark waves lapped against the sides
of our rowboats. Under the night sky the sea looked like tarmac, sloshing from
side to side in the chilly breeze. I zipped my coat up to my neck as far as it
would go, making sure not to pinch my skin.
We had found the row boats at a small
wooden pier ten miles east of camp. The wood of the pier was green in places
from the spread of mold, and the boats were tied to thick wooden posts. We
approached them cautiously, scanning the area around us in case anyone was
waiting for us. The pier was deserted but just beyond it, anchored in the sea,
was a large fishing boat. It was just where Billy said it would be.
“I feel sick,” said Ben.
He leaned back against the wood.
There were three rowboats, but one had a hole in the side as if someone had
kicked through it. That meant that me, Ben, Mel and Al were in one boat, and
Billy, his two friends and Kendal were in the other.
The sea smelled of dead fish and
salt. I shoved the tip of the oar into the water, pushed it forward and then
pulled it back, feeling the resistance make my biceps tense. A spray of current
splashed over the boat and stung me with cold. It was difficult to see where
the black sky ended and the murky sea began, and it felt like the darkness
could swallow us any time it chose. My arms began to ache just two hundred
metres from shore.
“Put your back into it,” said Al.
“This isn’t the Oxford boat race,” I
said. “We need to go slowly.”
“Is that because you don’t want them
to see us, or because you’re tired?”
“A bit of both.”
Mel was behind me. She leaned forward
and spoke into my ear.
“Think Charlie and Lou will be okay
in camp?”
“We didn’t have much of a choice. We
could hardly bring Lou on the boat with us, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be
much good when it comes to boarding. This is going to be messy.”
“We don’t even know how many of them
there are,” said Mel.
“I chatted to Billy about it,” said
Al. “They watched them for a while. Thinks there’s less than a dozen.”
Mel didn’t seem convinced. “Doesn’t
seem like probability is on our side.”
Al looked up at the boat. It was five
hundred metres in front of us. It was hard to make out the ageing timber
against the blackness around it.
“Imagine standing on deck now and
looking out,” said Al. “All you’ll see is a shitload of water. A black pea
soup. There’s no way they’ll know we’re coming until I stick my knife in their
throats.”
The original plan had been to walk to
the coast. From there, we were going to swim out and then silently board the
ship. We’d kill the group on board, free the campers and then take the boat as
our own. I don’t know what the hell we were thinking. Even sticking my fingers
into the sea was enough to freeze them, so there was no way we could swim all
the way from the shore. We had gotten lucky and found the rowboats moored at
the dock.
Ben retched. I looked at him, and
even with poor visibility I could see that his face was turning green.
“You shouldn’t have brought him,”
said Mel.
“I couldn’t leave him. From now on,
Ben stays with me.”
Ben leaned his head over the side of
the boat and coughed. I couldn’t tell if he was actually being sick. As he
wheezed and spewed over the side, a gust of wind hit the boat. The thin wooden
vessel rocked on the waves, and the bow shot up a few feet out of the water.
I fell back, dropping the oars in
front of me. Mel slammed against the portside. The whole boat tipped over to
the right. Before I could do anything Ben lost his balance and fell over the
side, slipping into the black water.
“Oh shit,” shouted Mel.
I dropped the oars and scrambled over
to the side. For a few seconds, Ben was invisible amongst the lapping waves. My
pulse fired. I scanned every inch of the water but saw nothing except the froth
that hit the stern. I got ready to jump in. I knew the water would be ice cold,
so I took a breath and steeled myself against the shock that was to come.
Ben’s head broke through the surface
of the water. He spluttered and reached out for the boat, hitting nothing but
water and splashing more of it into his face. He flapped around in panic as the
sea lapped around him, dark as an oil slick.
I leaned over as far as I could. I
felt the blood rush to my face as I strained, until finally I grabbed hold of
his collar. Ignoring the ache in my arms, I started to pull him in. I leaned
forward so much over the side that I thought I was going to fall in. I felt a
strong hand grip the back of my jeans and hold me steady. With a few more
heaves, I dragged the soaking boy on board.
Bean lay on his back on the floor. I
turned him onto his side. He coughed out a mouthful of salt water and then
wheezed a few times. Al moved away from me.
“That’s the last time I grab your
arse,” he said to me. Then he looked at Ben. “So don’t be pulling this stunt
again, lad.”
I pulled Ben’s soaking jumper and
t-shirt over his head. His skin was goose pimpled, and a shiver ran through him
like an earthquake tremor. I unzipped my coat, took it off and forced Ben’s
arms through the sleeves. Even wrapped in a man-sized coat, his teeth still
chattered. Al took off his own coat and did the same until Ben was drowned in a
bundle of clothes.
“We need to get him back to shore as
soon as this is done,” said Mel.
Across from us, Billy stood up in his
boat. He held his hand in the air as if to ask if anything was wrong. I held up
my thumb. We were only a hundred metres away from the fishing boat now, and I
knew that we had to see this through.
A light flickered on in the ship in
front of us. It was joined by another, and then a third. Beams of light shot
from down and scanned across the sea, sweeping from left to right. One of them
went right over us in an arc. I held my breath, as if doing so would keep the
light away.
“They must have ears like a dog’s”
said Al.
Another beam swept over Billy’s boat.
It drifted over their heads and then into the darkness beyond them. It started
to curve back, finally settling on them and illuminating Billy, his friends and
Kendal in a yellow ray of light.
Sounds came from the fishing boat,
but I couldn’t hear them properly over the slurping sea. My eyes adjusted to
the darkness and I saw something move. The beam of light stayed trained on
Billy. It was soon joined by two more until their boat was fixed under a harsh
glow, like a prisoner under the beam of a watchtower.
Billy shouted something. His friend
Alistair rowed harder, but it seemed like the boat was stuck in treacle and
couldn’t manage more than a few feet per minute.
A shot rang out louder than the waves
and the breeze, and then two more followed it. My eyes adjusted more, and I
made out the dim figure of a man on the boat. He leaned over the side, a rifle
propped against his shoulder.
I looked at Billy. When I saw that
none of them seemed to have been hit, I felt like luck might have been with us
for once. Then Billy’s boat began to lurch forward. The bow dipped into the
water, going further and further into the black sea until half the vessel had
disappeared.
“They’re taking on water,” said Al.
“Clever bastards shot the boat, not the people.”
I hadn’t rowed in minutes, but the
sea had drifted us toward the boat so that we were only fifty metres away. A
rope ladder was tied to the side of it. The wind picked it up in its breeze and
then slammed it back against the portside.
Billy, Casey, Alistair and Kendal
jumped off their boat and into the sea. The wooden vessel tipped further
forward, finally showing us its stern as if waving a last goodbye. Billy and
the rest of them swam toward the ship.
“We better meet them at the side,”
said Mel.
I rowed toward the portside of the
fishing ship. When we hit against the wood, Al and Mel gripped hold of it and
helped guide the rowboat toward the rope ladder. I reached forward and grabbed
it and held us steady. We waited there as the others swam through the cold
waters.
We heard commotion above us. I
couldn’t tell what was being said, but it didn’t matter. The group on the ship
were in a state of alarm, and that was the last thing we needed.
“May as well have pressed the
doorbell,” said Mel.
A wave hit the side of the rowboat
and salt water splashed over. It soaked over my shoes and into my socks,
freezing my feet. Without my coat I felt a chill spread over my limbs.
“For all they know,” I said, “There was
only one boat. Could be that they didn’t see us. I’ll climb up first, and the
rest of you follow me.”
“I better go first,” said Mel. “No
offence, Kyle, but I’m considerably more agile than you. Subtlety isn’t exactly
your forte.”
“Fine. But we need to do this now.
Here’s Billy.”
Billy reached the side of the boat.
Al grabbed him and heaved him aboard. Billy sat against the side and shivered.
Kendal followed shortly after, refusing Al’s outstretched arms and dragging
herself on board. The vessel swayed under the weight.
Billy looked out into the sea.
“Come on…Come on...,” he said.
We waited for his friends, but there
was nothing but darkness in front of us. Cold swept through me and started to
lock my arms and legs in place. Billy gripped hold of the side of the boat. His
shoulders trembled, but he didn’t complain. He stared out into the night,
tapping against the wood and watching every movement of the sea in case it was
Casey or Alistair. After two more minutes, it was clear his friends wouldn’t be
coming.
“Billy,” I said. I put my hand on his
shoulder.
He shook me off. “They’ll make it.”
“I think they’ve drowned,” said Al,
in a grave voice.
“I’m sorry Billy,” I said. “But we
need to do this now. If we wait any longer, I’m not going to be able to move.”
Billy nodded. He gave one last look
into the water beyond us, and then his shoulders shook as a tremor ran through
him. He looked up at the rope. Before any of us could react, Billy grabbed hold
of the first rung and started climbing up, his anger fuelling him as he scaled
the ladder.
Chapter
26
Mel was the second person to reach
the top. By the time I climbed the ladder and pulled myself onto the deck, the
boat was already in chaos. Panicked voices cut across the night time winds, and
from dark places around me people ran out with weapons in their hands.
I put my feet down on the deck. There
was a body on the floor to my left, a man with his skull caved in. I knew from
the wound that it had cracked under the weight of Billy’s hammer. Blood leaked
out and spread across the floor, running in a straight line toward the stern.
The ship wasn’t large. There was a
cabin at the bow, which I guessed housed the navigation equipment and hopefully
a door which gave access to below levels. The deck was in front of me, empty
save for wooden pallets which were covered in tarpaulin and secured by ropes. A
light shone out from the cabin wall, the bulb inside spinning in circles so
that beams of red light swept all over the deck.
Someone screamed. Billy stooped over
the body of a woman. She had a bread knife in her right hand. She strained to
stab it toward Billy, but he pressed his knee into her arm so that she couldn’t
move. He raised his hammer and brought it down on her head. Her arm went limp
and her knife clattered to the floor.
A wave of sickness washed through me.
For a second, I wondered what we were doing. Killing people wasn’t the same as
taking care of the infected. When you killed a person, you saw the light dim in
their eyes and you knew that your actions had significance.
Then I remembered who these people
were and what they had done. I thought about the bodies that we found at camp,
about Reggie’s son and all the others who had been murdered and then butchered.
Any trace of guilt evaporated.
Boots hit the floor behind me. I
turned and saw Kendal running across deck, and a few seconds later came Al. Ben
was on his back, his hands clinging to the big man’s neck. To our left Mel gave
a shout and swung her cleaver at a man who ran at her.
Al set Ben down on the deck.
“Stay here,” he told the boy. “Don’t
move for anything. Not until the fighting stops.”
I held my knife in my hand. I took a
breath and I readied myself. With Al and Kendal behind me, I ran into the
fight.
Men and women screamed. I felt my
knife sink into flesh, and forced myself not to think about it when warm blood
splattered my face. It seemed like the fight lasted hours, though in reality
only minutes went by as people ran at us from all sides, meeting their ends at
the blades of cleavers and knives, or the hard end of Billy’s hammer.
We stabbed and slashed and shouted,
and it seemed like it would never end. My knife was coated dark crimson, my
arms ached, and my senses were so wired that I hacked at everyone who came
close.
Finally, with the smell of blood
mixing with the salt in the air, the shouting stopped. A man on the deck, blood
trickling from his neck, groaned, and then was quiet. Billy sank to the floor,
and Mel stood and rubbed her hand over her face.
Nothing moved. We waited and waited
but there were no survivors of the battle on their side. Mel’s cleaver made a
clanging side as she dropped it, and I realised it was the first time in days
that she hadn’t held it.
Ben ran over to me and hugged my legs
and I felt like I was going to drop to the floor. It didn’t matter anymore,
because the deck was silent. Everything was still, save the ship as it rocked
gently on the tide.
Chapter
27
It took days for the chill to leave
me after the fight. I hacked up phlegm and coughed my way through the hours.
All around me people made preparations to leave. I’d wanted to help, but Mel
insisted that I get some sleep.
Before that, I had helped them
dismantle the tents and carry them away from camp and toward the coast. Not all
the survivors could pitch in. Some were so shaken from what had happened that
they did nothing except sit with their knees tucked against their chest.
One morning I woke to sunlight
straining against the side of my tent. I got out of my camp bed and stood up. I
stretched my arms and felt my joints crack, and then I got dressed.
When I unzipped the tent and stepped outside
I was hit by hot sunrays. They were the first that we had seen in months, and were
a welcome change in weather. The view from the mouth of my tent was different,
too. Rather than trodden mud and wide open fields, the view now was of the
coastline, with the water rolling gently over the rocks. Beyond them, anchored
closer to shore, was the fishing ship. It was ours now.
“Like the name?” said Al.
I turned as he walked from behind me.
He put his hand on my shoulder. There was a long cut across his right cheek,
running from just under the corner of his eye to his lip. I hadn’t seen it
happen in the fight, but then the whole night was a blur to me now. We had
gotten through it, and that was all that mattered. We had killed the group on
the boat and we had found the survivors below deck. Twelve of them were huddled
together as water trickled through the wood above and soaked into their
clothes.
“You listening, cloth ears?” said Al.
“Sorry,” I said.
He pointed at the boat. In the
daylight I saw it clearer. The mast ran twenty five feet into the air, but the
sail was folded up now. Cables and wires twisted off from everywhere and were
tied along the side of the deck, though I had no idea what they did. I could just
about tell the bow from the stern, but I was no Captain Ahab.
“So what do you think of the name?”
On the side of the black ship, painted
in large white capital letters, was its new name. The paint was so fresh that
some of it had started to run. Still, it was a name that you couldn’t really
miss.
THE SPARROW
I smiled. “Can sparrows swim?” I
said.
“This one’s going to have to,” said
Al. “We’ve got ten days to get to London. With one full day of prep, that
leaves nine really. I want to be setting off tonight. With the wind behind us
we’ll be okay, and we can blast the engine from time to time. Buggers who had
it before us managed to get it working, but they didn’t leave much fuel. We
should be alright. I’m assuming there aren’t any pirates on the British
waters.”
“Is this going to be worth it, Al?” I
asked.
Al took a deep breath, his chest
rising as the oxygen flooded into his lungs. I took a breath myself and tasted
the salt in the air. It made a change from the aroma of the toilet trench that
we that had definitely built too close to camp before.
“Imagine if you had somewhere the
infected couldn’t reach,” said Al. “First of all, to get there they’d have to
learn how to swim. Even assuming the infected can develop a good breaststroke,
they’ve still got five miles of swimming before they get to our safe haven.
After that, there’s a moat dug twenty feet deep and left empty so that if
anything falls in, its bones will smash. We have people on watch twenty four
hours a day. Most of them are so bored that they’re just itching to pull the
trigger on their rifles and smash an infected’s head like a pumpkin. You get
the picture?”
“Sounds too good to be true,” I said.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Al looked at me for a few seconds.
His eyes squinted, as if he was surprised I would ask him that.
I looked across camp and I saw Mel
outside a tent. She was picking up wooden crates and helping load them onto a
rowboat. From there, they were transported to the ship by a makeshift pulley
system.
I joined her as she strained to carry
a heavy box over to the boat. Her biceps twitched as she walked the last few feet
before dropping it down. The boat shook as the weight hit it.
“Steady on,” said a man, gripping
hold of the boat to stop it rocking in the water.
I recognised him from camp, but
shamefully I didn’t know his name. It was time to stop pretending that I was
perfect, I realised. These people needed to see that I was human, just like
them. That I got scared, that I forgot things, and that I just wanted somewhere
safe to live. It was no use acting like I was the only person with the survival
skills needed to stay alive. Everyone had to be equal from now on.
“What’s your name?” I said.
The boat stopped rocking under the
man’s grip. He rolled up his sleeve. On his right arm there was a tattoo of a
name, the letters written in bold blue ink. Half of the name had been scratched
out, so that some of the skin was scarred.
“You never asked me that before,” he
said.
“I know. That was pretty stuck up of
me.”
He smiled and waved his hand in a
dismissive gesture.
“In your position I’d be the same. My
name’s Dusty. Must be a headache, having to look out for everyone. I want you
to know that everyone appreciates what you’ve done for us.”
“Even me,” someone said.
I recognised the voice. After all
we’d been through over the last couple of weeks, my brain still found the time
to register annoyance. I turned around, knowing who I would see.
“How are you holding up, Darla?” I
said.
When we had rescued the survivors
below the deck of the boat, most of them had been huddled together in the
middle of the room. The only exception was Darla. She’d been bound and gagged
and left in the corner where the leaking rainwater was particularly bad. The
drops had poured rhythmically onto her face for hours. Her chin was cut, her
left eye bruised and her shoulder was dislocated. When I asked what had
happened, the answer didn’t surprise me.
“Darla fought back,”
someone
had told me.
“I’m okay, Kyle. Better than I would
have been, anyway,” said Darla.
Her words were spoken softer than I
had ever heard them, and her cold eyes had started to warm. She put her hand on
my arm and squeezed it. The sensation was so strange that I almost had to shrug
her off.
“We saw what happened at camp,” said
Darla. “They made us watch everything. That would have been us, later on. I
think they were saving us for something worse. You should have seen them,
Kyle.”
“I got a look at them during the
battle. Mean-looking bastards.”
“But you didn’t see them when they
were doing it. On their knees cutting through skin. Their faces. God, Kyle.
You’re lucky you didn’t see.”
“I know you’ve been through a lot,” I
said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” said Darla. “For the
way I went about things. I had a lot of time to think about it when they
stuffed the gag in my mouth. It was all I could do to get rid of the taste of
sweat. I thought things out and realised that I treated you like shit.”
“Well it’s done now. I wasn’t exactly
a gentleman to you, either,” I said.
We stood like that for a few seconds.
Darla held my arm until we both realised how strange the situation was, and she
awkwardly moved away. She smiled at me and then watched as Dusty pulled on a
rope and sent the rowboat bobbing along the water and toward The Sparrow. Over
on the ship, people moved back and forth across deck. I always liked to see
people busy.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked.
“A full day, Rip Van Winkle,” Darla
answered.
“Jesus. I better check on Lou.”
***
Lou was in a tent near a wooden pier,
with Mel and Billy stood outside. They wouldn’t let me in.
“Charlie’s in there with her,” said
Mel.
“So? Is he a priest or something?
Lou’s not the type to give confession. Let me go in.”