I guessed I couldn’t blame her if she wanted to run away from everything. Hell, we all did. Since the world had turned upside down, there was nothing I wanted more than to curl into a ball and block it all out. But I knew that if I did that, I wouldn’t last long. In this new zombie-infested world survival was a hard-fought game that had no grand prize other than one more day of staying alive.
I heard the door below open and Lucy came out onto the aft deck. I opened the bridge door and looked down at her. “Hey, how are you doing?”
“Okay,” she said, rubbing her bleary eyes. “What’s going on?”
“We heard another boat in the area so we’re getting out of here.”
“Gordon’s men?”
“Probably.”
“Are they following us?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Anything you want me to do?”
“Just sit tight for now. Hopefully we can lose them in this mist.”
She nodded slowly and went back inside.
The radio crackled and I heard something that made my blood run cold.
“Delta One, this is Foxtrot Two requesting air support. Over.”
“Foxtrot two, this is Delta One. Air support confirmed. ETA six minutes.”
10
I wanted to shout across to Tanya to see if she’d heard the message on the radio but I didn’t dare make a noise that would give away our position. When I looked through my window at the bridge of the Escape, I was in no doubt that Tanya had heard the message from Delta One. She’d paled and she looked across at me with worried eyes.
If the military was sending planes this way, we had no hope of escape. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Tanya turned the wheel and steered the Escape towards the shore. As the boat peeled away, I looked at her through the bridge window with a questioning shrug.
She keyed her radio and simply said, “Follow me.”
I had no reason to do otherwise so I spun the wheel and followed. I guessed that Tanya’s plan was to get to land. When the air support arrived, we were sitting ducks out here but if we could get to land, we had a chance to evade capture.
Also, if we headed into the shallows, we might get away from the boats that were following us. They probably thought we were headed out into deeper water so going in the opposite direction might fool them.
It wasn’t much of a plan but it was all we had.
Lucy appeared at the foot of the ladder. “Alex, where are we going?”
“It might be a good idea to get ready to abandon ship,” I told her. “We could be going ashore.”
“What? Why?”
“There are planes heading our way. Or helicopters. Or something. We’ll never get away as long as we’re out here.”
I expected her to react violently, to blow up and let out a string of curses. She didn’t. Instead, she calmly said, “I’ll get the weapons,” and disappeared inside. In some way, that was worse than if she’d had an outburst.
We’d been sailing toward the shore for a couple of minutes at a fair pace when something huge and dark loomed out of the mist.
I cut our speed when I realised it was a rock and we were heading straight for it. Tanya had also seen it and had manoeuvred the Lucky Escape around the seaward side of the obstruction. I turned the wheel so that the Big Easy sailed past the side of the rock closer to shore.
I heard a thump and felt a shudder as the boat’s hull hit something and realised I’d made the wrong choice. I’d avoided the large rock but in doing so, I’d taken the Easy into shallow water and we were now hitting submerged rocks.
If I turned back towards deeper water, I’d hit the rock that jutted above the water. If I turned the wheel in the opposite direction, I’d be going into even shallower water. I had no option other than to stay on course until we got past the large rock and then head for deeper water.
But that wasn’t going to work either. I heard and felt another rock hit the hull and then the Easy stopped in her tracks.
We were grounded.
The bridge door opened and Lucy stuck her head inside. “Alex, what the fuck?”
“We’re stuck,” I said, killing the engine.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t be.”
“It’s time to abandon ship,” I told her. “We’re in shallow water so we can’t be far from the shore. We’ll swim for land and Tanya can pick us up farther along the shore where there aren’t any rocks.”
Lucy was still shaking her head. “No, it isn’t going to be that easy.” She pointed towards the shore.
I looked through my window and felt my heart sink.
The mist had lifted enough that visibility was improving. We were no more than a hundred feet from shore. The beach was sandy and would have been a perfect holiday destination if the world hadn’t gone to hell.
Right now, the entire area was full of zombies.
Most of them shambled over the sand aimlessly, unaware of our presence. A group of five stood at the water’s edge staring at us, alerted to our location by the sound of our voices.
Swimming ashore wasn’t an option.
“What are we going to do?” Lucy asked.
I appraised our situation and didn’t like it at all. The boat was stuck. We were stuck. And military aircraft were coming this way. I could already hear a low buzzing somewhere overhead.
Lucy heard it too. She looked up at the sky. “Sounds like a drone.”
That made sense. The coast was being constantly patrolled by drones so all Delta One had to do was request that the closest aircraft be diverted to our position.
“Those things have Hellfire missiles,” Lucy said. “They’re going to blow us out of the water.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No, they’re not. They can’t. For all they know, we have Vess’s body on board. They can’t risk blowing it to pieces.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lucy said as we heard a whistling noise that got louder in pitch with each passing second. She slid down the ladder and I followed. Zombies or not, if there was a missile heading towards us, we had to swim for shore.
The sea in front of the Big Easy erupted. A plume of sea water geysered into the air and rained down on the boat.
Lucy passed me a baseball bat and she grabbed a tyre iron.
“We can’t leave the papers behind,” I told her, running into the living area.
“Alex, come on!” she shouted at me. “That was just a warning shot. The next one will kill us!”
She was probably right. My reasoning that the military wouldn’t risk blowing Vess up seemed to be misguided.
A second missile struck the area in front of the boat. This one was closer and the foredeck ripped apart in the explosion. Flames and black smoke began to rise from the bow. Maybe I’d been right about them not wanting to blow us up after all. They were trying to cripple us to make sure we couldn’t escape. They didn’t realise we were already grounded.
“Leave the damn papers!” Lucy shouted at me.
I couldn’t let Gordon and his men get this stuff back. I just couldn’t. I stuffed everything back into the footlocker and carried it out onto the aft deck. I was sure it would float when I jumped overboard.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” Lucy was looking towards the shore with panic in her eyes.
I followed her gaze and my breath caught in my throat.
The zombies, attracted by the sound of the explosion, were all coming this way now. And they weren’t stopping at the water’s edge. They were wading into the sea, intent on reaching us.