Shaun Harbinger - Storm

I went back inside. Even listening to the three amigos talk about Apocalypse Island was preferable to seeing that lone figure on the deserted beach.

And wondering if I was going to end up like him.

By noon the following day, we had sailed around the southern tip of England and begun to make our way north along the English Channel. Grey clouds scudded across the sky, occasionally breaking and showering us with cold rain. The day was grim and the sea was rough. The Lucky Escape rode the waves well but every now and then a swell would break over her hull and the decks would be drenched with a deluge of saltwater.

I sat in the pilot’s chair, making sure we stayed deep enough to avoid rocks but also close enough to shore that we didn’t go off course. Jax stood looking out of the water sheen that covered the bridge windows. Tanya and Sam were somewhere in the living area, keeping dry. I had the radio on but even Johnny Drake must be in a depressed mood today; he played mostly emo and Goth tracks.

A quiet, contemplative atmosphere had descended over the boat. We were all lost in our own thoughts of the mission ahead. I was wondering if it was even possible to get to the radio station alive. The slogan painted on the boat’s hull and printed on my T-shirt, “Sail To Your Destiny” seemed particularly apt today. And the destiny wasn’t good.

Jax had come up to the bridge five minutes ago, said, “Hi,” and then stood silently watching the coastline through the windows. I wasn’t sure if she wanted a conversation or not so I kept my mouth shut. If she spoke to me, I would answer. Otherwise, I was going to stay quiet.

The silence didn’t bother me too much. I was used to uncomfortable silences with girls.

After another minute of staring out at the rain and cliffs, she said softly, “Do you think we’re going to make it, Alex?”

I sighed. Did she want a truthful answer or reassurance that everything was going to be OK? I decided to walk the middle ground and said, “I don’t know.” If I had tried to reassure her, I wouldn’t have sounded convincing at all and if I had been truthful, I would have said, “No, Jax, I don’t think we’re going to make it. I think we’re all going to end up dead… or worse. We don’t have a chance of surviving this crazy mission.”

She turned to face me. There were tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to die.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“Me either,” I replied. “So let’s try and stay alive.” I sounded much calmer than I felt.

She smiled and nodded. “Good idea.”

I was about to reply but she held up her hand, silencing me. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

I listened. All I could hear was Bauhaus singing “Bella Lugosi’s Dead” on Survivor Radio. “The music?” I asked like an idiot.

“No, not the music,” she said, twisting the volume knob to zero.

Then I heard it. Outside. Beyond the windows. Voices. “What’s that?” I asked, vocalizing my confused thoughts. It sounded like hundreds of people speaking at once out there. I leaned forward and used my sleeve to wipe away condensation from the window. There were shapes on the cliffs and the beaches.

We went down to the deck where Tanya and Sam were already leaning on the railing and gazing towards the shore.

On the tops of the cliffs and on the rocky beaches, at least a hundred soldiers lay curled up beneath the slate grey sky. They all lay in the same fetal position and they all murmured the same three words. But they weren’t saying the words in unison so the sound they made as a group was confused. I listened to the jumbled torrent of words and picked out what each soldier was saying. “Leave… me… alone.”

Tanya turned to me. “What’s happening?”

“They’ve all been bitten,” I said. “And because they’re vaccinated, the virus is battling with the vaccine. They’ll be like that for four days then become hybrids… or die.” I shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.”

Sam stared at the curled up soldiers with fascination in his eyes. “Why do they keep saying that? ‘Leave me alone’? It’s fucked up, man.”

“They’re probably just saying that because it’s the only thought going through their heads. The virus compels them to find an isolated place and they’re vocalizing the command.” The voices floating across the water to our boat were eerie. The soldiers sounded distressed, in pain.

I remembered the soldier I had seen on the beach last night. He had been silent.

“I think they’re only murmuring like that because they’re in close proximity to one another. Look at that one down there alone on the rocks.” I pointed to a soldier who had removed himself from the others and lay alone on the beach. He shivered like the others but his mouth was closed and he made no noise.

It seemed the words, “Leave… me… alone,” were an automatic reaction to the presence of others.

I went back up to the bridge and turned on the radio again. Those eerie voices were creeping me out. On the radio, Johnny Drake had switched to a more upbeat selection of tracks and was currently playing “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams.

I watched the soldiers through the water-streaked windows until we sailed past them and their voices faded away in the distance.

An hour later, the sea calmed and the Lucky Escape settled into a gentle rolling gait as she took us along the Cornish coast towards Falmouth. I checked the map and guessed we would be approaching the harbour in the next thirty minutes. I cut the engine and went down to the deck where the others were sitting.

“We’re approaching the harbour,” I said. “What’s the plan?”

Tanya looked at the late afternoon sky. “We should wait until it’s dark before we sail past the harbour into the river. It’s our best chance.”

Everyone agreed so I went back up to the bridge and took the Lucky Escape out into deeper water and continued toward Falmouth. We could get a look at the harbour from a safe distance and wait there until dark. The plan didn’t fill me with confidence but I couldn’t come up with anything better and I knew that if I didn’t go through with this, my chances of seeing Lucy again were probably zero.

When a wide inlet appeared, cutting a path inland, I used the binoculars to see more details. A small castle sat on the headland. I wondered if the army were using it as a lookout post but it looked abandoned. The harbour was situated on the other side of the headland, which meant I would have to sail into the wide inlet to assess the situation there. I just hoped we weren’t sailing into a trap we couldn’t escape.

I piloted the Lucky Escape around the headland and into the inlet. Despite the huge size of the inlet, having land on both sides of the boat made me feel claustrophobic.

The harbour appeared on the port side. It was much larger than the marina at Swansea and the area was filled with boats of all shapes and sizes moored to the long jetties. I couldn’t see any soldiers. The harbour was eerily quiet. The rain became a weak drizzle then stopped entirely.

The mouth of the river that led inland to Truro lay directly ahead. Maybe I should make a run for it now while there seemed to be nobody around. I had feared a huge military presence but the lack of even a single soldier unnerved me. I thought I could see army vehicles parked in the harbour but it was hard to tell from this distance.

On the water, something sparkled in the afternoon sun like a silver spider’s web stretching across the mouth of the river all the way to the nearest jetty in the harbour.

Using the binoculars, I took a closer look.

What I saw made me groan. An emptiness filled my gut as I realized I was going to have to tell the others the bad news.