Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

My arm felt like it was tearing itself out of its socket, but inch by inch I managed to draw myself upwards, towards safety. And then another grappling hook hit the side of the boat, failed to find purchase and splashed down into the water fifteen feet below me. A gout of seawater splashed up, spraying across my eyes, and for just a second I lost concentration as the salt burned. My arms straightened and I was right back where I'd started, facing one sort of death or another.

"Fuck!" I screamed. "Fuck!" It just couldn't end like this. How could it, when I didn't even know if he was alive? When I'd spent the last five years doing nothing but shooting junk into my veins, and now those were going to be the last five years of my life.

With one last adrenaline-fuelled burst of energy, I flexed my arms and lifted myself up. I couldn't see anything now because the other boat was so close, the stars above me were nearly gone. I was lifting. And then it wasn't just my own force bringing me up because someone else had hold of my arms and, Jesus, it hurt but it didn't matter because I was over the railing and lying on the deck, gasping in fear and shock. Haru's face, three inches from mine, looked like it had aged twenty years since I'd last seen it.

"What..?" I said, but he didn't let me finish, just yanked on my arm – my injured arm, and this time I managed not to scream, biting down on my tongue until it bled – and dragged me as far away from the other boat as he could.

"Don't touch them!" he screamed. "For fuck's sake, don't let them touch you!"

But how the hell didn't you touch four people who were climbing onto a thirty-foot wide boat with you? And why not? Were they contagious? Christ, could we turn into what they were? I suddenly wished, fiercely and hopelessly, that Soren and Kelis were with us. Or if not them, at least one of their guns.

I was unarmed and Haru didn't have anything more deadly than a 2H pencil, and the crew of our boat were sailors, not soldiers. I saw one of them now, wrenching open a lockbox under the tiller with desperate fingers. The youngest of the… things which had boarded our boat trotted over the deck towards him. I'd been half expecting them to shamble, like B-movie zombies, but these people were alive. Somehow, they were still alive.

All three of the others were watching the sailor, heads tilted as if in idle curiosity. But they were leaving the boy to take him on alone.

"What do you want?" I said, not expecting any sort of answer.

The man with the one good eye and the one pustulent hole, turned to face me. "Nothing you'll give us willingly," he said with a light Spanish accent, a voice you could have heard on the street and not thought about twice.

Even on the other side of the boat I could hear the sailor's teeth chattering with fear. The boy was almost within touching distance now and the sailor was still trying to cram the key into a lock that didn't seem to want to take it. I didn't think there was any way he'd get it open in time, but then the key snicked into place and the gun was out of the lockbox and in his hand. He might not have been a soldier, but the kid was standing right next to him. Even with his hands shaking so hard that he could barely hold the weapon, he managed to put three bullets straight into the boy's chest.

The boy staggered back a few paces – then kept on coming. Not enough stopping power, a voice inside me that belonged to my husband said. Another part that was still the little girl who'd been afraid of the dark was gibbering in fear of the unnatural things that couldn't be killed. But I was a scientist and nothing was irrational, only yet to be understood. I'd seen soldiers walking around with injuries that should have laid them out cold, because the body's own anaesthetic had kicked in and they just didn't know how bad things were yet.

But there were some injuries no one walked away from.

"The head!" I shouted. "Aim for the head!" After I'd said it I let out a half-hysterical choked laugh because maybe we were in a zombie movie after all.

The sailor turned to look at me, as if he was about to ask me if I was certain, and for a moment I wanted to kill him myself. Then he turned back round, the boy's hands were only inches from his throat, but the gun roared one final time and the target was right in front of him. He didn't miss. The bullet tore through the boy's left eye and exited messily out the back of his head. He let out one quick, surprised cough, a trickle of arterial blood from his nose joining the gush from his head – then dropped on top of the sailor like a marionette with its strings cut.

The sailor screamed an almost unearthly wail of complete panic. I thought he must have been hurt in some way. Maybe the boy had been carrying a knife, though I hadn't seen it. But then he pushed the boy off him and shoved himself to his feet, his mouth still open as the scream went on and on. His whole face and his white t-shirt were drenched in the boy's blood, black and shiny in the moonlight. Infected, I realised. He thinks he's been infected.

And by the time I'd realised that it was already too late, because the sailor turned wide, desperate eyes to us for just one second and then turned and leapt over the side of the boat. Another second later, and the remaining three infected turned their heads to us, moving in an eerie kind of unison.

The sailor had taken the gun with him, out of reach into the depths.

Still, I knew they could be killed now. Haru was huddled behind me, whimpering. His stock of courage seemed to have been entirely used up dragging me over the side. Now he was hugging the boom as if it might offer him some sort of comfort.

The boom.

I pushed Haru out of the way, not really caring when I heard his head crack against the deck. He swore viciously in Japanese. The boom was tied off – of course it was. They'd been trying to get away from a boat full of god knows what, but it was important to keep up maritime discipline.

Fuck!

How could a rope that thick be knotted that tightly? My fingers picked at it feverishly but all I seemed to be doing was unravelling it. Haru pulled himself up from the deck, groaning, and he must have realised what I was doing because his fingers started working alongside mine. Maybe he'd picked up a thing or two since he'd been serving Queen M because the knot finally began to loosen.

But shit – shit! – they were spreading out, the three of them fanning across the deck. One towards us, two towards the other sailors cowering uselessly in the stern. There was no way I was going to get all of them. Then the boom was free. Haru and I heaved on it together, and for once things were going my way because it swung easily, quickly, well-oiled and beautifully counterbalanced. Even though I think they were expecting it they weren't expecting it so fast. It took one, then two of them, and swept them clean off the deck and into the water.

"They'll come back!" Haru said. "They'll climb back onboard!"

"Then stop them!" I screamed because, for fuck's sake, did I have to think of everything myself? And clearly I did because he was still standing there, looking baffled. "Get rid of the grappling hooks – or use one to hit them with if they try to climb the sides!"

He nodded once and then again, jerkily, but he still just stood there. His eyes were so wide that I could see the whites all the way around them. Shock, I thought. But I didn't have any patience for that. I wasn't exactly feeling on top of my game either, but I intended to finish the night alive and I needed Haru moving and functioning to help me achieve that. I yanked his shoulder round to turn him in the right direction and then shoved him on his way. He stumbled, then kept on walking and I had to assume he'd do what I told him because there was still one more of them on board and I'd caught a flicker out of the corner of my left eye. I knew she was coming straight for me.