“I’ve seen what happens in those camps,” I said. “I’m sure the people in them already know they should leave.”
“They’re being fed misinformation,” Jax said. “As far as they know, there isn’t anywhere safe to go. They’re like that woman in the basement… afraid to leave because they don’t think there’s safety anywhere else.”
“There isn’t,” I reminded her.
“Yes, there is,” Tanya said. “Just not in this country.”
“Where?”
“America.”
I shook my head, remembering the news reports I had seen on the Solstice. “The virus has reached America. They’re as infected as we are.”
“That’s not true,” Jax said.
Maybe they just didn’t know it yet, hadn’t seen the news reports on the internet. “It was on the internet news. I saw the reports with my own eyes. The president called a state of emergency. One of the headlines said there was a virus outbreak in the U.S.”
“When was this?”
I tried to count off the days in my mind. “Six or seven days ago.”
Sam laughed and shook his head. “That was propaganda bullshit, man.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yeah, I can. Vigo Johnson is in the States right now. I spoke to him on a satellite phone two days ago. All they knew over there for a while was that Britain had gone dark. The U.S. government sent military aircraft over and looked at images from spy satellites and now they have some idea of what is happening but there’s no virus over there. It’s only here.”
“What about India?” I asked, “That’s where the virus came from.”
Jax shook her head. “No, Alex, that’s a lie. The news reports said there was a patient zero in London but I had been investigating reports of an unknown virus a week before that story came out. There were sightings of patients turning blue and staggering out of hospitals before the London story was concocted.
“These sightings and reports started in Scotland and moved south across the country. They didn’t originate in London. The government is trying to wash their hands of all responsibility by blaming a virus from another country. The truth is, the thing started in Scotland. Probably escaped from a military test centre or something. My bet is it all started on Apocalypse Island.”
“Apocalypse Island?” I wondered if these people were journalists for respected media outlets or conspiracy theory websites.
“It’s a nickname,” Jax said, “for a government facility on an island off the coast of Scotland. The place is run by scientists conducting experiments into diseases like foot and mouth and mad cow disease. If this virus came from that area, it must be from Apocalypse Island. Somebody messed up and it got to the mainland. The rest was inevitable once it reached a population of people to infect.”
“Have you seen this island?” I asked.
She shook her head. “But we’ve all heard about it. And if it’s true, that’s where the virus came from.”
I took a deep swallow of beer as I tried to process what I was being told. “Does it matter where the virus came from? The fact is, it’s here. I know you guys are journalists and want to get to the bottom of things like this but for people like me, all that matters is that there are zombies trying to kill us.”
“It matters, Alex,” Tanya said, “because if they created this virus, they might have a vaccine. Something that stops you from turning if you get bit. Don’t you think the people have a right to know if that’s the case?”
“If there’s a vaccine, they’d be injecting everyone in the camps,” I suggested.
“And what happens then, man?” Sam asked. “Everyone wouldn’t feel so helpless. They might leave the “safety” of the camps and find out that the rest of the world is hunky dory. Everyone would flee by any means possible, leaving the politicians in control of nothing but a country full of the undead. The way things are now, they are still in control of the people. That’s what they want.
“They can’t have it any other way. If the rest of the world found out the truth and it was a manmade virus that escaped from a government facility, the people in charge would be mass murderers. They would be tried as such. No way, man… better to spread propaganda and keep the population under control.”
I wasn’t sure how much of this I believed. I had never trusted the media. Tanya, Jax, and Sam worked for an industry that was known for putting a spin on everything. On the other hand, I had seen with my own eyes the military takeover of the marina at Swansea. The story would explain that. There might be a grain of truth in what they were telling me but they were filling in the rest themselves.
But their plan to take over Survivor Radio had me interested. Lucy listened to Survivor Radio. Maybe I could get a message to her. And Johnny Drake was playing requests for people in the Survivors Camps, which meant he had some form of communication with those camps. I might be able to get a message to Joe or find out where he and my family were.
The rest of it… Apocalypse Island, the government lies… didn’t concern me. But if the story I had just heard was true and the rest of the world was uninfected, I could find Joe and my parents, rendezvous with Lucy and sail for America on The Big Easy. We could escape this hell.
All I had to do was help Tanya, Jax, and Sam break into a radio station in Cornwall and take over the government-controlled broadcast for long enough to get a message out. Then escape with my life.
Easy.
Yeah, right.
But what other option did I have? This was a chance to contact Lucy. The only chance I would ever have.
I looked at Tanya and nodded. “We’ll need to get a boat. Swansea marina is out.”
“Every other marina will be exactly the same,” she said. “They’re controlling every way into and out of the country.”
“So what do we do?”
“We have to steal a boat from under their noses.”
thirteen
The next morning, I awoke on the sofa as sunlight streamed in through the window. I had found fresh sheets and a pillow in the linen closet and used them to make my night on the sofa more comfortable, but when I moved, I felt a painful stiffness in all my joints and muscles.
Tanya, Jax, and Sam had taken their sleeping bags upstairs to spend the night on the bedroom floors. Nobody wanted to sleep in the beds of the dead old lady or farmer. Sam had taken the teenage son’s room and I could hear him snoring up there.
I rolled off the sofa onto the floor and spent several painful minutes getting to my feet before staggering to the window. It was sunny but there were dark clouds over the trees. A good day to steal a boat from a military-occupied marina? Was there ever a good day for that?
I went upstairs to the bathroom and checked myself in the mirror after taking off my “Sail To Your Destiny” T-shirt. My chest and back were covered in ugly purple bruises. The bridge of my nose was swollen where Tanya had punched me. The skin on my arms and face had blistered from the heat of the exploding Jeep Cherokee.
I looked a mess.
Even more of a mess than usual.
How much longer was I going to survive? And even if I did stay alive, would I remain mentally stable or would I become like the feral survivors I had fought at the marina?
I remembered the man I had killed on the beach. Best not to think about that; it was one of the thoughts that could send me spiraling into depression.
I removed the rest of my clothes and took a shower, using the shampoo and citrus-scented gel in there. The hot water stung my bruised and blistered skin but I stood under the spray for as long as I could, letting it wash over me and wash away the dirt and grime that I felt was ingrained in my flesh.