When I turned my head to look in the direction I was running, I noticed that Lucy had reached the Zodiac but, instead of untying it from the metal stake, she was standing beside it with her head cocked to one side, as if trying to listen to something.
“Lucy, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“Do you hear that?” She frowned, listening.
I couldn’t hear anything above my heavy breathing. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here.”
Then Tanya shouted, “Get back to the vehicle!”
I halted, skidding on the pebbles. What the hell was going on? The zombies had reached the beach but there was no need to panic. We could get out of here if we…
Then I heard it too. A low buzzing sound.
“Run!” Sam shouted. He was already climbing back into the Mastiff.
Lucy started running back to the vehicle, abandoning the Zodiac.
I ran after her. “Lucy, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. But it isn’t safe out here.”
We clambered back into the Mastiff. Sam had already started the engine and was reversing back up the road before we had a chance to close the rear door. I slammed it shut and turned to face the cockpit. “What the hell is happening?”
“Strap yourself in, man,” Sam said. He sounded worried.
I got into my seat and fastened the harness. Lucy was buckled into the seat next to me again.
Zombies thudded against the rear of the vehicle as we reversed up the road and into the village.
“Why are we leaving the Zodiac?” I asked.
Then, the world beyond the windscreen became a flash of red fire. An explosion shook the Mastiff. Debris rained down onto the vehicle, pinging off the metal roof.
On the screen, I could see what was left of the harbor. Most of the boats were on fire. The beach had been torn up by the explosion. I couldn’t see the Zodiac. There were zombie parts everywhere.
A second explosion rocked us. Sam kept his foot on the gas, taking us back through the village as fast as he dared. We rolled over debris as a line of houses collapsed.
The world around us had become a chaotic inferno of destruction.
“We have to get out of here,” Sam said. “It’s a drone. They’re attacking the village with a drone.”
15
While the village erupted around us, there was nothing I could do other than sit tight and trust in Sam’s driving skills. We reversed past the pub. Sam twisted the wheel so that the Mastiff backed into a side street. Then he took the vehicle out of reverse and moved forward back onto the main street.
He floored the accelerator.
We shot forward toward the barricade of car bodies. Sam aimed for the gap he had already created when we’d entered the village and was accurate enough to guide the Mastiff through it without another collision.
Ahead of us on the road was the horde of hybrids.
A sudden explosion among their ranks sent bodies hurtling through the air. The road was ripped apart and black smoke spread across the remaining hybrids, the remnants of the road, and our vehicle.
The SDU screens showed nothing but blackness and the view through the windscreen was the same.
Sam turned the wheel sharply to the right. “We’ re going off-road,” he said.
We bumped along blindly until the smoke cleared and the screens showed us that we were driving over grassland.
“Where are the hybrids?” I asked. I didn’t want any of the damned things jumping into the vehicle again.
Tanya adjusted the view on her screen. The hybrids were being bombarded with whatever missiles the drone was firing from the sky. Each time a flash of bright fire appeared among the horde, the ground beneath the Mastiff shook. “They’ve got problems of their own,” Tanya said.
We continued driving away from the scene of carnage and destruction. When we reached the edge of the woods, Sam stopped the Mastiff and cut the engine.
Lucy looked at him. “We can’t stop. What if it comes for us when it’s done with the hybrids?”
“It won’t,” I said. “At least, it shouldn’t if the drone operator is thinking logically. Those things are controlled by operators that can see the ground below the drone through a camera. They sit in a bunker somewhere and remotely control the drone to take out ground targets. It’s like a video game.
“Whoever is controlling that drone has obviously been tasked with destroying zombies. They probably spotted the horde of a thousand hybrids on the road and followed them here. But they have no reason to attack vehicles. Zombies can’t drive.”
“Well, it sure seemed like they were attacking us at the harbor, man,” Sam said.
I shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t see us down there on the beach.” But even as I said it, I doubted that had been the case. I’d seen drone operator footage on the internet and knew that the cameras on the unmanned aircraft showed a clear and detailed view of objects and people on the ground. When the drone had attacked the beach, the zombies had still been on the road. We had been the target of the attack.
“We should get out of here,” Tanya said. “I don’t trust that thing.”
Sam started the engine and drove us over the grass and back onto the road. The road took us inland, past farmland and woods.
The drone didn’t follow us.
“So how do we get back to the boats?” I asked.
Tanya unfolded the map and found our current position. “There’s another village south of here. Maybe we can find a boat there and get back to the Escape and the Easy.”
We agreed to try it. As we set off for the new destination, I felt my energy dwindle. I had hoped to be onboard the Easy by now, eating a hot meal and enjoying the feeling of safety I only had at sea. Being back on board seemed like a faraway dream now.
Night fell as we drove along the road to the next village. The sky turned an inky black dotted with shining stars. The moon was a bright silver orb. There was no light pollution here in this isolated part of the country, so the night sky looked clear and dramatic.
“You okay, Alex?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah, I just wish we were back on the boats,” I said. “This was supposed to be the easy part of the mission and it’s already turned to shit.”
“We’ll be back home in no time. We should make a nice dinner tonight. There are some steaks in the freezer.”
“Sounds good,” I said. But I wasn’t optimistic about our chances of eating those steaks tonight. Nothing had gone to plan so far and I had a feeling that things were only going to get worse.
We drove in silence for half an hour, listening to Survivor Radio play a loop of eighties music. Then Sam slowed down and said, “Guys, I think this was the village.” He killed the engine and we all stared out through the windscreen at what had probably once been a quaint fishing village on the coast.
Every building had been reduced to rubble.
“We should go and take a look,” Tanya said. “There could be a boat in the harbor.”
I agreed. If there was even a leaky rowboat, I was willing to take it as long as it meant we could get back to the Easy and the Escape.
Sam started the engine again and drove us slowly toward the ruins of the village. On the radio, Iron Maiden was playing “Run to the Hills”.
Sam hit the brakes and pointed at the sky in front of us. The drone was difficult to see in the night sky. It was no more than a dark shape that blotted out the stars as it crossed in front of them.
“They’re patrolling the area, man,” Sam whispered, as if the drone could hear us.
We sat there for at least fifteen minutes with the engine idling, watching the drone as it flew back and forth along the coast.