Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

Panicking now, I sprinted to the first launch bay. The boat was gone. Then the second and that boat had gone too. Same story with the third. I hoped, prayed, that the one boat had been left. This had been the only part of our plan that relied on luck as much as planning and now I was cursing my decision to leave this final, crucial stage to chance. If it didn't work, it would all have been for nothing. Less than nothing. I thought about the autopsy table, the blood, Queen M's cold, calculating eyes. The beginnings of despair set in.

Don't give up, the Voice told me, your plan hasn't failed yet.

It was right. There in the fifth bay was a small motorboat. As we approached, five others pushed past us, walking away. "It isn't working," one of them said. "No key."

I nodded and shrugged and carried on walking with Ingo and Haru beside me. When we got into the boat, Haru pulled the key out of his pocket and put it into the ignition. We were pulling away from the side of the ship before anyone on board had begun to realise what was happening.

As soon as they did I heard a roar of fury and then every person left on that deck was heading our way. There was five foot of water between us and the ship when a huge white man with brown hair and a vivid red scar running the length of his face reached the side of the ship and launched himself straight off. His dive brought his fingers into contact with the side of our boat.

Haru swung the boat hard to starboard but it didn't dislodge the man. I saw the fingers tense and whiten and then he was pulling himself up by sheer force of will. A few more seconds and he'd be on board. I had a sudden clear memory of my own panicked attempt to drag myself on board the schooner when the Infected attacked. Not letting myself think about it I pulled my gun and aimed. But I couldn't shoot him, not when I'd been the one who told him to escape in the first place. Not when all he wanted was exactly the same thing I did – to get away.

I'd set out to free everyone, and now all I seemed to care about was freeing myself. The Voice told me to do it, that he didn't matter, but it was still quiet enough that I could ignore it. I'd left five, maybe ten, corpses behind me already and I suddenly found that I couldn't add another. I grasped the barrel of the gun instead and used it to slam the butt hard against his fingers. Index finger first, then the ring finger – two slams to dislodge that – and finally the last two. He let out a roar of rage and pain, and disappeared into the waves.

I fell back into the boat, allowing the penetrating ache in my joints to sweep through me as the rush of adrenaline swept out. I felt as if every bone in my body had been broken and reset, sparks of electric pain still firing off randomly in the neurons of my brain.

Around us, the sea was choppy and restless, waves in ragged white-tipped ranks. The sky was just pinking with the first light of dawn at the distant horizon. The other ships were dark blots in the water around us, some already lost to distance. Ahead of us, a larger, darker blot.

Cuba.

I'd always assumed that Queen M would be able to get her ship back under control before it ran aground on the Cuban coast. Now I wondered. The island couldn't have been more than a mile ahead of us, maybe less. The humps and mounds of its mountains looked enticing in the growing morning sunshine, glints of gold catching off patches of sand on its beaches. Like pretty much everything seen from a distance, it seemed harmless. But it wasn't.

The rest of Queen M's fleet was heading out to open water, fleeing the island with all the speed the wind offered. Most of them were sailing boats and they could go where the wind went. None of us knew how to sail and we'd been forced to steal ourselves a motor boat. There was enough fuel in it to take us to Cuba – or to leave us stranded in open waters. No other land was in reach.

Another problem we'd anticipated but hadn't been able to avoid.

I was so focussed on looking at the shoreline that it took me a moment to register that there were four figures standing behind me where there should have been two. The first thing I saw as I turned was Haru, his face frozen with fear. To the other side of him was Ingo, looking startled and a little annoyed, that anything could have interfered with his neat little plan.

Between them were Kelis and Soren. They were each holding a large gun, and both of them were aimed at me. Soren smiled, an expression that was more like a snarl. Behind him, the tarp they'd been hiding under was flung carelessly aside, so obvious now it was too late.

"So," Kelis said. "I guess you weren't expecting us."

Kelis looked hurt, as if everything we'd just done had been a personal slight. "Yeah," I said. "This is certainly a surprise." I tried edging a little closer to her, a millimetre shuffle forward of each foot, but a quick twitch of her gun stopped me in my tracks.

"We told you not to do this," Soren said in a dull, heavy voice. For the first time, in the bright morning sunlight, I noticed the strands of grey in the ash blond of his hair and the fine wrinkles raying out from his mouth. There was something a little off-centre in his pale eyes. We'd broken something he never thought could break and now he wasn't sure about anything.

I shrugged. "You told me I wouldn't be able to. Not the same thing."

Kelis stepped forward until the barrel of her gun was pressed into the thin material of my t-shirt.

I carefully didn't look at it, only into her eyes. "As a matter of academic interest, how exactly did you find us?"

"A boat with no keys and a full fuel tank. You're not that subtle."

"No, I guess not. But you're free too now, you know. That's a good thing, isn't it?"

Soren frowned. "Maybe we didn't want to be free."

"The sea round here is full of people who did," I said. "So are the islands. I wanted to be free, and I'll die before I let you make me a slave again." With a confidence I didn't feel, I pushed my fingers against the barrel of the gun pressing into my chest. There was a moment of resistance, then Kelis let me brush it aside. Soren shot her a look and didn't let his own barrel drop. I ignored him and turned back to the wheel of the boat.

"And how many people did you kill to get free?" Kelis asked. "How many of my friends?"

That hurt more than I thought it would. I was sure she could see the sudden tension in my shoulders, but I kept my voice light. "I don't know, I didn't keep count. Did you?"

I felt Haru's sharp intake of breath, but I thought I knew Kelis now. She didn't need things sugar-coated. She didn't like them that way.

"You could come with us, of course," I said when there'd been a moment without either a reply or a gunshot. "We've got the brains covered, but now we're out we could do with some muscle."

"That's one of the least flattering offers I've ever received." I risked a look at Kelis and saw that she was almost smiling. "What makes you think that we won't just take this boat ourselves and push the rest of you overboard?"

"I don't know. Maybe the fact that you haven't already?"

"No, they cannot come" Ingo said suddenly. He seemed completely unconcerned that two very large guns being held by two pretty pissed off people were now being pointed right at him. He just frowned, as if mildly annoyed that they couldn't see it for themselves. "Their tracking devices are still functional. Once the computers are back on-line, Queen M will be able to find them."

"Yeah?" I said, before Kelis could actually shoot him. "And how is Queen M going to get the network back up now her entire crew has fled?"

"Fled from the ship," Ingo said. "The islands are still hers. And there is nothing to say that the loyal will not return to her once the danger of Cuba is passed. It is that, not freedom, which drove many away."