I was about to protest, thinking how much ground we had to cover between us and Eric, but she was already counting down.
“3… 2… 1… Go!”
She gave me a push and I went sprinting forward, bat held in front of me in both hands. Eric jerked his head in our direction and surprise crossed his face. He swung the shotgun so the muzzle pointed at us and he fired. The blast sounded like an explosion in the confined space.
Ears ringing, I jumped up onto the kitchen counter and slid across it on my butt, pushing the bat into Eric’s face. He managed to twist away and lifted the shotgun again.
This time I swung the bat at his stomach. It connected and he went down with a groan. The shotgun clattered away across the floor.
I considered delivering another swing but he was down and out, holding his stomach and gasping for breath.
Elena was writhing on the kitchen floor, holding her leg where a gash in her jeans revealed a bloody wound. Mike was holding her, telling her everything was going to be OK. He looked at me with tears in his angry eyes. “I’m going to kill that fucker. He shot Elena.”
He came over the kitchen counter in one swift movement and pointed his gun at Eric’s head. “You shot my girlfriend, you fucker.”
Eric shielded his face with his hands, cowering away from the muzzle of the gun. “Listen to me. We have to get out of here. I’ll explain everything when we get to the boat.”
“The boat? You aren’t getting on our boat.”
“The bombs,” Eric pleaded, “they’re going to drop the bombs.”
“You won’t be around to see that,” Mike said coldly.
I put a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You can’t kill him, Mike. We need to know where those ships are going to be.”
Mike turned on me. “He shot Elena, man.”
“Yes, and we need to get her back to The Big Easy as soon as possible. Her wound needs to be bandaged up. We’re wasting time here. We can tie him up and take him with us, interrogate him later.”
Eric looked at me with hope in his eyes. He really wanted off this rock. And fast.
Mike glanced over at Elena. She staggered to her feet, pain etched on her face. Leaning heavily against the wall, she looked at Mike and said, “Kill him. We don’t need him. We can find the rescue ships ourselves.”
Mike nodded.
He lifted the gun.
Pointed it at Eric’s head.
“Wait! There’s something you need to know.” Eric’s eyes were wide. Sweat had broken out across his forehead.
“Talk,” Mike said.
Eric pointed a shaky finger at the window. “Look out there.”
I went to the window and the sight outside made my blood run cold. The water between us and the mainland was gone, leaving a cement causeway connecting the lighthouse to the beach. All of the zombies from the beach were making their way to the lighthouse. There were dozens of them.
“What is it?” Mike asked.
“We’re connected to the beach,” I said. “This isn’t an island at all. It’s tidal. At low tide, there’s a causeway.” I looked at him and I knew there was fear in my eyes. “The tide’s gone out. The zombies are coming.”
A sound from the ground floor came drifting up the steps. Shuffling feet. Low moans.
“They’re here,” Eric groaned.
“How do we get out of here?” Mike asked him, shoving the gun into his temple.
“There’s no other way. Only the door downstairs.” He looked up at Mike and sneered. “I’m not the only one who’s going to die.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell us to close the door? Warn us?”
“You’d have sailed away and left me here. If we’d made a deal we could have gotten off here together. Now we’re all going to die. Go ahead and shoot me.”
Elena cast a glance down the stairs. “What do we do?”
The only way to go was up. The lighthouse had no doors so we couldn’t barricade ourselves inside a room and wait for the zombies to leave.
They were coming up and they would find us.
The moans on the steps became louder.
They could probably smell us up here.
“We need to go up,” I said.
“Not him,” Mike said, indicating Eric.
“What? You can’t leave me here for those things to find me.”
“It might buy us a little more time,” Mike said, shooting Eric twice, once in each leg. The lighthouse keeper screamed, clutching his wounds.
I didn’t judge Mike’s actions. We were all dead anyway. It was just a matter of time.
While Eric continued screaming on the kitchen floor, we left him and went up to the next level. Elena leaned on Mike for support and I followed, glancing over my shoulder every now and then, expecting to see a zombie reaching out for me. Luckily they were slow and stairs seemed to slow them down even more.
We reached the bedrooms and continued up to the level above.
I wondered what Lucy would do when we didn’t return. She was a survivor, I was sure she’d be alright. The only regret I had was that I would never know what had become of Joe and my parents. This was the time to face facts; they were probably lying dead somewhere, victims of the apocalypse.
And I was about to join them.
One more victim of the zombie outbreak.
Below us, Eric’s screams of pain were suddenly replaced with a panicked, “Oh my God! No! No!”
The zombies had reached him.
His cries turned into screams of agony which suddenly cut off.
We ascended the steps to a radio room. A large radio sat on a wooden table. Papers and charts littered a shelf on the wall and a black hardbound log book and pen sat on the table. While Mike and Elena went up to the next level, I grabbed the log book from the table and stuffed it into my jeans. If Eric had learned about the U.N. ships from the radio, he might have written details in the book. It didn’t even matter now but something made me take that book.
I followed Mike and Elena up to the top level.
The stairs terminated in a small, featureless room. A steel door led out onto the balcony. We went through the door and I closed it. There was a lock but no key. Enough force from the other side would break the latch easily. Of all the places I had thought I might die, on top of a lighthouse had come pretty far down the list. I leaned over the railing and looked down, immediately regretting it as my stomach lurched. It was a long way down. I stepped back.
In the distance, I could see The Big Easy floating calmly on the still sea.
A bang on the door made me flinch. A second bang followed, then a third until the door was being beaten constantly by hungry fists.
I wondered if Lucy could see us through the binoculars. I didn’t want her to see me getting ripped apart by zombies. I would rather jump to my death on the rocks below.
Mike was leaning out over the rail and I wondered if he had the same suicidal tendencies. “We can jump,” he said.
“It’s either that or get ripped to pieces,” I replied. “Getting splattered on the rocks might be the quickest way to go.”
“No, man, we can jump into the sea.”
“Are you crazy?”
He went to the railing. “If we jump from here, it’s straight down into the water. It’s plenty deep enough down there. We can do it, man.”
The door buckled beneath the pounding fists.
There was no choice. The zombies would be all over this balcony in a few seconds.
I nodded. “OK.”
Elena looked over the edge. “It’s totally doable. Mike, you go first and get to the rowboat. Bring it closer for when Alex and I jump.
He nodded, grinned, saluted us and vaulted over the railing. I watched him drop like a rock into the sea below. After the splash, he surfaced and gave us a thumbs up before swimming to the rowboat.
The door collapsed and two zombies came onto the balcony, many more behind them.