Jax jumped up and pulled herself over quickly.
I stood up in the Zodiac, leaning against the rough, white stone to steady myself. I slid my hands up to the edge of the wall and curled my fingers over the top. I wouldn’t be able to do this. I was too heavy.
Tanya, Jax, and Sam grabbed my forearms and pulled me up. I used the toes of my boots against the wall to assist them but it wasn’t necessary; they had me over the top in seconds.
I stood in the narrow cement walkway between the wall and the building. Both ends of the walkway were closed off with tall, locked, iron gates. Another reason the army didn’t have to worry too much about people climbing in this way.
“Thanks,” I whispered to my companions.
“Don’t mention it, man,” Sam replied. They had pulled me up because they knew I couldn’t climb over by myself. I felt both grateful and embarrassed. I picked up my bat and hoped I could prove myself in the fighting ahead. I was tired of being the weakest member in every group.
Sam went to the nearest window and looked inside. “We’re going in this way,” he whispered. “The studio is upstairs so we need to get up there as quickly as possible.” He jabbed his tire iron at the corner of the window. The glass shattered.
I had thought we were going to use stealth but Sam’s approach was fast and hard. He reached in and opened the window before disappearing through it into the dark room beyond.
“Go, Alex,” Tanya said, pushing me forward. She was making sure I didn’t lag behind by making me go in front of her. Luckily the window was large. I struggled through and found myself inside a carpeted room with vinyl chairs and a sofa. Framed Radio Cornwall posters hung on the walls.
Sam opened the door and light spilled in from a lighted corridor. The girls pushed past me and ran out of the room with Sam. I followed, scared to be left alone. I didn’t want to be killed or captured and someone must have heard that window breaking.
The corridor was brightly lit with strip lights, the floor covered in blue and grey vinyl floor tiles. Pictures of the Radio Cornwall DJs lined the walls.
At the far end of the corridor I could see an empty reception area and a steel and glass door that led to the parking lot. Two soldiers stood outside the door, looking out into the night. Their rifles were slung over their shoulders and they looked relaxed. If they had heard the window breaking, they didn’t seem too bothered by it.
“Alex, this way,” Sam whispered, holding a door open for me across the corridor and gesturing for me to follow him. I went through quickly and we ascended a wide set of stairs to the next floor.
A double door at the top was open and two soldiers stood guarding it, facing away from us. Tanya and Sam rushed up the steps and swung their weapons before the soldiers knew what was happening. They crumpled to the hallway floor.
As I reached the top of the stairs, Sam tossed me an assault rifle. I caught it reflexively, being careful to point the barrel at the floor. I recognised the gun as an L85 rifle but my knowledge of weapons came from video games, not from real life. “I’ve never fired a gun before,” I said.
Jax, holding the other L85 and looking like she could grace the cover of
Soldier of Fortune
magazine, said, “It’s easy. Just point it and pull the trigger.”
“Come on,” Tanya said, stepping over the bodies in the doorway.
We followed her along the corridor. I kept the gun pointed down and my finger well away from the trigger. The weapon felt heavy in my hand and I had to carry my baseball bat tucked under one arm. The bat hit my leg as I ran. Jax carried her bat in one hand and the rifle in the other. I considered doing the same but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to aim one-handed.
We reached a windowless door at the end of the corridor and Sam opened it. We stepped through into a production studio. The room was dimly lit but an electric glow came from banks of audio machines and computer screens. A plump woman with long blonde hair and wearing glasses, headphones, jeans and a Robert Plant T-shirt looked up from the computer as we entered.
“What the hell?” she asked as she pulled her headphones down to her neck.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Tanya said quickly, raising her hands in a placating motion. “We just want to get into the broadcast studio.”
A large window above the banks of machines showed the next room where a slim black man in his thirties with dreadlocks and wearing a Jim Morrison T-shirt sat at a desk and spoke into a large microphone. He was surrounded by papers, computers and machines with dials and sliders. He wore headphones and seemed oblivious to our presence as he spoke into the microphone.
“We’re broadcasting,” the woman said, pointing to a red light above a door that was marked “On Air”.
“What’s your name?” Tanya asked her.
“Cheryl. Cheryl Ginsburg.”
“Cheryl, we’re going to put out a message on the radio. Jax here is going to stay with you while the boys and I go in there and meet…Johnny Drake, I presume?”
Cheryl nodded.
“We’re not going to hurt anyone,” Tanya said. “But we have to make sure our message goes out to the people. So you can just relax and don’t touch anything.”
Cheryl raised her hands and wheeled her chair away from the computer. Jax levelled her gun in Cheryl’s general direction but the woman didn’t seem to be a threat at all.
Sam opened the door to the next room and we stepped through beneath the “On Air” light.
Johnny Drake looked up as we entered and his eyes went wide. He ripped off his headphones. “What the hell?” He reached for a dial on his desk but I pointed my gun at him.
Tanya stepped up to the desk. “No, Johnny,” she said. “Don’t touch that dial.”
twenty-seven
Johnny raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, guys, no need to do anything we’ll all regret.” It was strange to hear the familiar rich tones of his mid-Atlantic accent in real life when I had heard them on the radio for so long. All the time I had been listening to his show, I hadn’t thought about meeting Johnny Drake in person and I certainly hadn’t envisioned holding him at gunpoint.
Tanya went around to the desk and looked at the controls and dials. “Get me on air,” she said to Johnny.
He nodded. “Okay. Here, let me get this…” Leaning forward, he reached for the control panel.
Tanya grabbed his wrist and looked into his eyes. “Just remember, if you try anything, we’ve got your friend Cheryl at gunpoint in there.” She nodded towards the window. Johnny looked into the production studio where Cheryl sat, arms raised, as Jax stood over her with the L85.
“There’s no problem here,” Johnny said. “I’ll patch you right in and you’ll be on every radio that’s turned on.”
“Do it,” Tanya said.
He reached for a switch then hesitated. “You have to realise,” he said, finger poised over the switch, “that the army listen to Survivor Radio all the time. It plays in all the Survivors Camps. As soon as they hear your voice, they’ll know exactly where you are. There’s a whole platoon stationed outside this building. They have tanks and huge guns and the road is totally blocked with razor wire. You won’t be able to escape.”
“Let me worry about that,” she said, flicking the switch.
Johnny leaned back in his chair with a resigned look that said, “It’s your funeral,” on his face.
“This is a message to all the survivors,” Tanya said into the microphone. “Everything you have been told is a lie. The virus has not infected the world, only Britain. The authorities have told you there is no escape so they can control you and put you in camps. They are covering up their own mistake…a mistake that has killed millions of people and means those in charge are mass murderers.
“You have to refuse to be confined by liars. There are options other than sitting in a Survivors Camp waiting to die. The army are attempting to control ports and marinas but they have a problem on their hands right now. There is a hybrid version of the virus that is affecting vaccinated soldiers. Yes, that’s right, the soldiers have been vaccinated. Have you? No, they are not going to vaccinate you. Only themselves.
“The hybrids are weakening the military. We saw it ourselves at Falmouth Harbour. All the soldiers there had become hybrids. I won’t lie to you, the chances of survival are slim but you can take boats and sail to Europe. Tell them what is happening here. Once the rest of the world knows our plight, they will send help.
“This country has been plummeted into hell by the people in charge and they have told you there is nothing you can do about it because the rest of the world is in the same hell. That isn’t true. You can escape. But first you need to escape the camps. Head for the coast. Tell the world what has happened here.”
She flicked the switch and stood back from the control panel.
Johnny Drake looked at her. “Is that true?”
“You should know, you’re part of their system.”
He shook his head. “No, that isn’t true. Cheryl and I are prisoners here. We’ve been kept in this building since the outbreak. We don’t know what’s happening outside, only what they tell us and what we see through the windows.”
We heard tires screeching outside in the parking lot.
“They’re here,” Sam said. “We need to leave.”
“Wait,” I said, leaning forward to the microphone and flicking the switch. “Lucy, it’s Alex. I don’t know where you are or what happened at the marina. Meet me at…” I tried to think of a place I could mention on the radio without alerting the army to where I was going. “…At the place Mike and Elena died. In three days’ time.” I added, “Joe, if you can hear this, I’m going to find you somehow.”
I turned to Johnny. “Did that message go out?”
He nodded.
“We’re leaving,” Tanya said.
“Take us with you,” Johnny said, looking suddenly desperate. “Please.”
She hesitated for half a second before saying, “We’re going to have to fight our way out of here.”
“That’s fine. I can’t stay locked up in this building any longer.”
“Let’s go,” Tanya shouted.
We left the studio and ran back down the hallway with Johnny Drake and Cheryl Ginsburg in tow. The two soldiers Tanya and Sam had dealt with still lay in the same positions. I didn’t know if they were unconscious or dead.
As we descended the stairs, we heard boots running along the hallway below.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and Jax stuck her head and arm out through the doorway, firing her rifle. The bursts of fire cracked the air in the enclosed space and made my ears ring.
Jax sprinted across the hallway into the room we had broken into earlier. She looked across at me. “Alex, put down some suppressing fire!”
I handed my bat to Johnny Drake and shoved my rifle out through the doorway, pointing it along the hallway and squeezing the trigger. It spat out bullets and kicked in my hand. The soldiers in the reception area took cover.
Sam went across the hallway with Johnny and Cheryl as I continued to let off bursts of deadly bullets. The windows in the reception area shattered.
Tanya went across and beckoned me to follow.
I leapt into the room. Sam closed the door and pulled the vinyl sofa across it. “We’re out of here, man,” he said as he ran for the broken window.
We went out onto the cement walkway one at a time. By the time it was my turn to climb through, the soldiers on the other side of the door slammed into it. The sofa slid across the carpet.
“Give me that,” Sam said, grabbing my rifle. He let off a burst of rounds at the door. The pushing from the other side stopped.
Dropping down into the Zodiac was easier than climbing out of it. With six people, it was a tight squeeze but we found our places and sat tight while Jax started the engine and turned us around in a wide arc so we faced downriver.
As we started out of the city in a cloud of gasoline-tinged engine smoke, Sam pumped his fist into the air. “We fucking did it, man!”
I couldn’t share his enthusiasm. I was glad to be alive but I had no idea if Lucy had heard my message. The meeting place I had suggested worried me.
The lighthouse where Mike and Elena had met their deaths.
Somewhere I had vowed to never return.
The rain began to fall from the night sky as we approached Falmouth Harbour. I wished the heavens had broken earlier so we didn’t have to endure seeing the rotting mass of zombies lining the river banks. I was sick of them. I wanted to take the rifles and fire every last bullet into the crowd of yellow-eyed monsters. It would be a waste of ammunition and even if every bullet delivered a killing headshot, it wouldn’t make any difference to the huge population of zombies but it might make me feel better.
Instead of actually carrying out my plan to waste all of our bullets to fight the depression that was dropping over me like a heavy, dark blanket, I just closed my eyes and thought about it while Tanya and Sam filled Johnny and Cheryl in on the events of the last few days.
I had already heard Johnny say that he never had access to the Survivor board—the list of survivors and camps—and that he was given the Survivor Reach Out recordings on data sticks. He had no idea which camp they came from or when they were recorded.
After hearing that, I tuned out.
I needed to get my hands on one of the networked military laptops if I was to have any chance of finding Joe.
The harbour looked as deserted as it had earlier except for the drowned hybrid bodies floating face down in the water by the boats. The ones that hadn’t jumped in after us had disappeared. Probably hiding in the shadows of the buildings. The hybrids seemed to go into a dormant state when there was no prey around. They found a place out of sight and stayed there until triggered into action by sound or movement.
I thought back to the hybrid in the village, standing in the middle of the road waiting for us. He hadn’t been hiding because he knew the prey was already aware of his presence. But when he first saw us, he was hidden in the trees at the edge of the field.