“The humans it infects, it kills then rises from the dead. As we’ve seen… and smelled… the bodies rot. That means they will eventually rot away completely and be useless as hosts. The virus needs to slow that rotting process for as long as it can so the host has a longer ‘lifespan’ and can infect more victims.”
“That makes sense,” Lucy said. “Keep the host body as intact as possible. Wet meat attracts microbes. So it makes the zombies avoid the rain.”
I nodded. “When those zombies were hiding out on the farmhouse porch, they weren’t hiding there waiting for us. They were sheltering from the rain. Cartwright and Brand just happened to go outside while it was still raining and the nasties were there. That’s why they didn’t chase us to the Land Rover. The virus wouldn’t let them. Rather than take one or two victims at that moment, it wanted to keep the hosts in good condition for longer so they could infect more victims in the future.”
“So it makes sense,” Elena said, “but how does it help us?”
I had been thinking about that during our meal. “It means that if we have to move over land, we do it when it’s raining. We time our raids to coincide with rain and we can move about the streets freely. We’ll only have to deal with the zombies inside the buildings we enter. We couldn’t even think about entering a city any other way; we’d be outnumbered as soon as we hit the streets. So it gives us a tactic we can use to increase our chance of survival.”
“But we aren’t going to be raiding cities,” she said, “because the U.N. ships are coming, remember? We just need to hold out on this boat until then and we’ll be saved.”
“We don’t know when that will be,” Mike said.
“So get on that damn radio and find out. Has anyone even checked the radio lately?” She got up from the table and took her plate over to the sink, throwing it in angrily before going out on deck.
Mike went to follow her. Before stepping out into the night, he turned to us. “This is all getting to her.”
“It’s getting to all of us,” I said to Lucy after Mike was gone, “but she’s right. We haven’t checked the radio since we heard the emergency broadcast.”
“I’ll get it.” She went below deck to where we had put the rucksacks and came back up with the radio. As I switched it on and placed it on the table, Lucy sat close to me. She had showered earlier and her hair smelled of apple shampoo. Beneath that, I detected a faint hint of her musky perfume.
The radio came on and the EBS played, exactly as before. “Damn,” I said, “no change.”
“Try the other stations. You never know.”
I moved the dial gently, pausing whenever the static seemed to falter, hoping for a transmission. As I was about to give up, a male voice broke through.
“Hey, people, this is Johnny Drake at Survivor Radio wishing you a great evening. Don’t let those nasties get you. Here’s a classic tune from Zager and Evans.” The song ‘In the Year 2525’ started to play.
I looked at Lucy. “Survivor Radio?”
She grinned, reflecting the grin I felt on my own face. It was good to hear another voice, to know that somebody was out there somewhere playing music for survivors like us.
Mike and Elena came through the door. “What’s that music, man?”
“Apparently it’s Survivor Radio.”
They started to dance in the kitchen.
Lucy looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Shall we?”
I had never danced before but I joined her on the living room floor and gyrated to the music. The next song was ‘Break On Through’ by The Doors, and by now I had gained some confidence and threw out some sixties moves I had seen in movies. Lucy laughed and joined in.
We danced like that for half an hour while Johnny Drake played tune after tune. He sounded like a professional DJ with his smooth voice and slick lead-ins to the music. He even had a station jingle which was, ‘Survivor Radio: Lifting the spirits of survivors everywhere.’ The music was a mix of everything from old classics to modern rock. Our situation made some of the lyrics even more poignant and we sang along with the songs we knew.
We collapsed, exhausted, onto the seats and Johnny said, “OK, all you folks out there, it’s time for Survivor Reach Out. Want to reach out to a loved one? Need to get a message to a fellow survivor? Contact Survivor Reach Out. You know how.”
Another man’s voice spoke. The quality of the recording was bad, as if the man were talking through a walkie-talkie and had been recorded on an external microphone.
“My name is Frank Jones and I’m trying to contact my son. His name is Lee. Lee Jones. He was at work in Regent Street when the… when everything went wrong. If anyone sees Lee, please tell him I’m alive. His dad is alive.”
Johnny Drake’s voice came back, sombre this time. “Survivors, keep a look out for Lee Jones in the London area. Let him know his dad is OK. Lee, if you hear this, go to your nearest Survivors Camp and tell them your name. They’ll make sure you get back together with your dad.”
I was sure everyone on The Big Easy and Johnny Drake were thinking the same thing. If this man’s son had been in London when the virus broke out, he was probably dead. Or wandering around Regent Street as a zombie.
A woman’s voice came crackling out of the radio. “My name is Linda Williams. My husband is Jim Williams. He was taking our daughters to school on the morning when the virus hit. The girls are Jessica and Olivia. They’re six and nine years old. Please, if anyone sees Jim and the girls, ask them to contact the army. They know which Survivors Camp I’m in. That’s Jim, Jessica and Olivia Williams. The school was in the Birmingham area. If you’re out there, Jim, please get in contact.”
Drake said, “If you have a relative or loved one out there, remember to listen in to Survivor Reach Out every hour on the hour. Now here’s Billy Joel and ‘Piano Man’.”
The music drifted from the radio but I wasn’t in the mood to listen anymore. Hearing those survivors pleading to the their loved ones… loved ones who were almost certainly dead or worse… left a sour taste in my mouth. Also, Survivor Radio, or at least the Reach Out slot, seemed to be run by the army. The appeals were telling survivors to go to Survivors Camps. The people appealing were in the Camps already. Was this the military’s way of keeping spirits up among the survivors? Giving them hope that they could contact loved ones? It sounded like Johnny Drake was either on the military payroll or being forced to play the Reach Out segments on his station.
There was no news about the U.N. rescue mission.
“What shall we do?” Mike asked. “We don’t know where the U.N. ships will land or when. Are we just going to drift out here hoping it’ll get mentioned on the radio?”
“I don’t think the army are telling anyone about the rescue ships,” I said. “It’s probably on a need-to-know basis.”
“Or those two soldiers you overheard on the radio were just talking bullshit,” Elena added.
“That’s possible too. Either way, if we just drift out to sea, we won’t know anything.” I had found a map of Britain in the bridge earlier. Now, I laid it out on the table between the dishes. “We need to figure out the most logical place the U.N. will land so we can be in the area when they arrive.”
“It could be anywhere, man.”
“Not necessarily. It depends where the ships are coming from and what the conditions near the ports are like. If the ships come from Europe, they’ll be landing on the East Coast. Unless the ports are too dangerous. Since the main ports on that coast are near majorly populated areas, they’re probably too risky. So the ships would probably come around Scotland and sail along the West Coast.