“You okay?” I asked Lucy.
She looked at me with eyes that betrayed no emotion. “Well, our boat’s totalled and we’re on the run from the army, so no, I’m not okay.”
“Sorry, I was only asking.”
“And what did you expect me to say? That I’m fine with all this? If you’d listened to me and not gone ashore to answer that radio call, we’d be happily sailing around without a care in the world right now.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We wouldn’t. You grabbed those pills weeks ago so you hardly had no care in the world. You were already depressed. And I get it. This situation we’re in—“
“Shut up about the fucking pills, Alex. They help me, okay? Is that so fucking bad?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that—“
“So we’re agreed. Now leave the pills out of it. What I choose to do is none of your damned business.”
I held up my hands, telling I wasn’t going to interfere anymore. She was right that it was none of my business what she did to handle her emotions, although I’d thought our relationship meant we would probably talk about such things before resorting to drugs.
My biggest fear was that taking the pills meant Lucy didn’t have her head in the game and she might endanger herself or others. In this new world, survival meant having your head on a swivel and staying alert. The pills Lucy had been taking were dulling her edge.
Sam came back down the ladder. “Guys, there’s a small harbour a couple of miles ahead. We can’t all fit in the Zodiac with Vess so Tanya is going to take the Escape right up to the jetty. You guys get Vess off the boat while Tanya and I grab a car. Simple.”
I hoped it was going to be as easy as Sam thought.
“What about a nearby town?” I asked.
He nodded. “There’s a seaside town called Frinton-on-Sea.”
“Sounds ideal.” Being a seaside town, Frinton would have hotels and shops close to the beach. We could be undercover quite quickly.
“Let’s lock and load,” Sam said, going inside to get the weapons.
Unfortunately, we’d lost the guns that were on board the Big Easy, which meant we now had two M16s, and two Walther PPKs between us. And the ammo for these guns was running dangerously low. Each M16 had a spare magazine but the Walthers had only the bullets that were already loaded.
“Let’s hope we don’t run into too many zombies,” Sam said, examining the remaining ammunition.
That was a hope I definitely shared. We’d seen a few towns during our travels and all of them had been swarming with undead creatures. The army was rounding up people for the survivors camps from villages and isolated communities but they seemed to be leaving larger towns alone. It was probably too dangerous to mount a rescue mission in an area where thousands of zombies roamed the streets.
I had no idea what the population of Frinton-on-Sea was but there was no doubt in my mind that most of the people who lived there were now infected.
The bridge door opened and Tanya shouted down to us. “The harbour is dead ahead.”
I wished she’d used different words.
12
The Lucky Escape glided into the harbour and Sam jumped off. After hastily tying the mooring rope, he sprinted away in search of a vehicle. Lucy and I grabbed an end each of Vess's crate and heaved it off the boat and onto the cement jetty. Tanya followed us, carrying the footlocker.
We'd distributed the weapons so that Tanya and Sam had the M16s and Lucy and I had the handguns. I also had my baseball bat slung over my shoulder. We weren't exactly equipped to take on a large number of enemies—be they soldiers or zombies—but this was an escape mission and we'd agreed that if we got into trouble, we'd run rather than fight.
"Come on," Tanya said, heading along the jetty. "That boat won't be far behind us."
We made our way to the end to land, where Sam had already hotwired an RV and was waiting for us with the engine running.
He climbed out and helped us load Patient Zero into the vehicle. He was grinning the entire time, obviously pleased with himself. "Good thinking on my part, huh? Something large enough to carry us all."
"Also easier for the drone to spot," I said. I didn't mean it maliciously but I also thought that this wasn't the time for self-congratulation. We were still in danger and until we'd found somewhere safe, I couldn't relax.
Sam looked crestfallen but he perked himself up and said, "We're not going far in it, man. The town is just there." He pointed at Frinton-on-Sea, which was no more than a couple of miles away.
"Okay," I said. "Let's go." I climbed into the back of the RV with Lucy while Sam got behind the wheel and Tanya took the passenger seat. We rumbled away from the harbour and I looked seaward. The military vessel, which looked more like a civilian boat the army had commandeered, was landing at the harbour.
"Don't worry," Sam said, putting his foot down. "We'll be long gone before they find a vehicle. I slashed the tyres of all the other cars in the car park."
"Good thinking," I said, in part because I felt a little guilty about my earlier jab at him but also because it was a smart thing he'd done. We might actually have a chance of escape.
Tanya turned around in her seat and asked, "What exactly is the plan, Alex? If we hole up in a building, they'll find us eventually."
"We're not going to hole up," I told her. "The drone will probably watch us enter a building but then it will lose visual. We'll slip into the next building, and then the next, until it loses us. If we can get into the sewers, we should be able to get far enough away that we can get back to street level and find another vehicle while the army is still searching for us in the wrong area."
"Sounds great except for the zombies," Sam said. "There's bound to be a shitload of them in town."
"We'll just have to deal with them as we encounter them," I told him. "I can't account for everything and I never said this would be easy."
He nodded. "Fair enough, man."
We reached the outskirts of Frinton a few minutes later. Sam slammed on the brakes and the RV juddered to a stop.
"What's wrong?" I asked, looking between the front seats at the sight beyond the windscreen. When I saw what was there, it was obvious that my question was moot.
The streets of Frinton were full of shambling zombies. I'd feared that the town would be full of the creatures and unfortunately I'd been correct. There must be at least a thousand undead monsters roaming the streets.
"What now?" Sam asked.
"Get us out of here," I said. "We'll have to find another town."
But before Sam could put the RV into reverse, an explosion rocked the vehicle. My ears rang from the sound. Rocks and bricks rained down on top of the RV, clanging off the metal roof.
"Fuck!" Sam said. "There's no road behind us anymore. They blew the fucker up!"
"They're trying to trap us," I said.
The zombies ahead of us began to turn in our direction and shamble towards us. We couldn't stay in the vehicle; we'd be surrounded by a thousand zombies in less than a minute.
I looked desperately through the windows for a place to go. The only option was a five-storey block of flats. "Let's get inside there," I said.
No one argued or questioned that decision. We couldn't go backwards, we couldn't go forwards, and we couldn't stay where we were. We unloaded the crate and footlocker and carried them to the flats.
When we got to the main door, my heart sank. It had been smashed and pulled off its hinges. The zombies would be able to follow us inside.