By the time I was dressed again, the others were in the kitchen searching for breakfast. Jax was in the pantry tossing tins of food out to Sam. He caught them and lined them up on the counter, inspecting the labels. Tanya was boiling the kettle, making coffee for everyone. I was glad to see four mugs. I needed caffeine. The plan we had formulated to get a boat from the marina was a crazy one. I needed to be alert.
“Hey, dude, you want baked beans or tinned tomatoes for breakfast?” Sam indicated the tins with a flourish.
“I’ll take beans.”
He handed a tin of beans to me. “There’re saucepans hanging up over there if you want to heat them up.”
“Cold is fine.” I found the cutlery drawer and fished out a fork. As I leaned against the wall and ate, Tanya brought me a mug of steaming black coffee.
“You okay with today’s plan?” she asked me.
“I understand it,” I said, “but I don’t know if I’m okay with it.”
She grinned. “You’ll be fine. Just think, we could all be safe on a boat later today.”
“A boat headed to a city that is probably heavily guarded, not to mention full of zombies. I looked at the map last night. We have to sail up the River Fal, then the Truro River to get to Truro Harbour. If there are army positions along those rivers, we’ll be sitting ducks.”
“You worry too much, Alex.”
“We also have to sail past Falmouth Harbour to get onto the river. The army presence there is going to be a lot stronger than at the Swansea marina; Falmouth Harbour is much bigger.”
“So we’ll wait until night time and sneak past them under cover of darkness.”
“It won’t be that easy.”
“Then we’ll improvise. How long will it take us to get to the mouth of the river?”
I shrugged. “Maybe two or three days. We have to go south from here, sail around Land’s End then head north along the East Coast until we get to Falmouth. I don’t know anything about navigation and I suggest we take it slow and easy.” I thought, but didn’t add, that there was no sense rushing into danger.
“Fine. No worries.” She took her coffee and went into the living room.
She might not be worried, but I was. The more I thought about taking a boat up the river, the more nervous I became. We could be blown out of the water with nowhere to run. That was if we even managed to get a boat in the first place. I had my doubts that the plan we had formulated the previous night was going to work; there were too many variables, too many chances for something to go wrong.
This trip was my only chance to get a message to Lucy, otherwise I wouldn’t even be considering it. I forced myself to finish the cold beans, despite a sudden loss of appetite. I would need the energy later.
We finished breakfast in silence. I was thinking about the task ahead and guessed the others were too. Sam had discovered a green Citroen in the garage last night but the vehicle we were most interested in was the farmer’s dark blue Land Rover Defender parked behind the house. The keys had been hanging on a hook by the back door.
After formulating our plan, we had checked the fuel gauge on the Defender. The tank held enough petrol for what we had in mind.
We all piled in. I got in the back with Sam while Tanya took the wheel and Jax sat beside her, map spread out on her lap.
We drove down to the gate and I jumped out to open it and let the Land Rover through. I re-closed the gate, jumped back in, and we set off down the muddy track to the main road.
“This is where we saw the herd,” Jax said, pointing to an area on the map, “and this is where we are now. If we take a left on the main road and the first left after that, we should be in the general vicinity. They might have moved but unless something caught their attention, they’re more likely to just wander around the same area for a while.”
Tanya nodded. “How far is it to the marina from there?”
Jax pointed at the map. “The marina’s here.”
“Okay,” Tanya said, “let’s go and collect some zombies.”
Dark clouds filled the sky. I hoped they weren’t an omen of bad luck.
Or something worse.
fourteen
When we reached the area where we had seen the herd of zombies the day before, the first thing I noticed was a smell of burnt flesh. Even with the Land Rover’s windows closed, the stench was strong.
“Jesus, Alex, you could have waited,” Sam joked, elbowing me lightly. I wondered if his attempt at humour covered a deeper fear of what we were about to attempt.
Ahead of us, the Jeep Cherokee lay on its side, a black burned-out shell of metal. Around it was the charred remains of dead zombies. In the shadows beneath the trees on each side of the road, the rest of the herd stood staring at us with malevolent yellow eyes. They shambled towards us, letting out a collective moan of hunger, rage, or whatever it was they felt when they saw living people.
The herd had thinned but there were still enough of them for what we had in mind. When they reached the road and staggered closer to us, Tanya moved the Defender forwards slowly.
The zombies followed.
As we set off down the road with the undead shambling along behind, I wondered if our plan had a hope in hell of succeeding. We were going to lead the herd to the marina and create enough of a distraction to allow us to sneak into the marina shop and grab a set of boat keys.
The keys to the marina’s hire boats were kept beneath the counter in the shop and numbered. Our plan was to grab a few sets of keys, find the correspondingly-numbered boats and take the one that was moored farthest out along the jetty to allow a faster escape.
The plan sucked in so many ways.
We were going to ditch the Land Rover before we got to the marina to make ourselves less conspicuous. That meant we would be exposed on foot between an army unit and a herd of zombies.
For all we knew, the army might have taken the hire boat keys from the marina shop. Then we would be trapped with no boat and no vehicle.
Even if we managed to get a key, the boat we chose could be out of fuel. That was doubtful since they were hire boats and therefore likely to be topped up but it was a possibility.
Then, even if we got out to sea in a fuelled boat, we could easily be shot out of the water. I had seen a tank at the marina and the army probably had mortars set up there too. We could execute the plan perfectly only to be blown up as we got out on the waves.
I told myself to stop being so pessimistic. It wasn’t like I had any other options. This plan had to work.
I wished I was at sea now, safe in a boat, away from the shambling hordes of undead.
They followed us along the road with hate burning in their yellow eyes. I wondered how aware they were. Did they have memories of their old lives? Or were their thoughts long gone, their bodies mindlessly reacting to stimuli in an attempt to spread the virus? The hateful glares made me think that there were some remnants of intelligence left in those rotting skulls, along with simple, dark emotions.
I counted at least fifty of them lurching along behind us. More than enough to create chaos once we reached the marina.
Sam looked at the rotting, walking dead and shook his head slowly. “They were once people like us, man. Now look at them. Monsters. This is why we have to tell everybody the truth about where the virus came from. Someone has to pay for causing this.”
My own motives weren’t anywhere near as noble as Sam’s. I just wanted to find Lucy and get to the safety of The Big Easy. Then I could work on the problem of finding Joe and my parents. I wasn’t going to come ashore again until I knew exactly where to find my brother.
If we got to the Survivor Radio station, there could be information about where he was. His message had been broadcast on Survivor Reach Out so somebody must know which camp the message came from.