Shaun Harbinger - Storm

But as I reached up to take them, a hand grabbed my boot and pulled me under.

I barely had any breath in my lungs as I was dragged down through the murky water. I kicked out with my free foot and my boot connected with something but the hand still gripped me.

I held my bat in both hands and jabbed it down as hard as I could, hoping to hit the hybrid’s head and make him let go of me. Instead of letting go, he reached up with his free hand and grabbed my other boot. I was helpless, unable to kick or swim, being pulled down to a watery death. At least I would drown before he bit me. My lungs already screamed for air and my chest felt like it was collapsing.

In a minute, it would all be over. I would never know what happened to Lucy, never find Joe.

A movement to my left startled me. A face and arms appeared, swimming rapidly at me with wide, strong strokes. I wouldn’t have thought the hybrids could swim but here was one coming this way to prove me wrong.

It reached me and I turned to look into its yellow eyes.

They weren’t yellow.

They were blue.

It was Sam. He turned over and faced downwards before sweeping his arms and diving down towards my boots, tire iron gripped in his hand.

He had come to save me. Sam had risked his own life to save mine.

I wanted to tell him it was too late; the tiny breath of air I had in my lungs was gone.

I couldn’t tell him anything. We were underwater.

And everything was turning black.

A low ringing began in my head.

The blackness seeped over my eyes.

Then everything ended.

The first sound I heard was the cry of seagulls. And voices. Familiar voices. Jax and Sam, talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but their voices were rushed, panicky. I wasn’t concerned. I listened to the Zodiac engine firing steadily. The sound of the boat gliding through the water.

I could smell fish. And the gasoline smell of the engine.

My clothes were wet and cold. I was lying on a hard surface.

Something heavy pressed against my chest over and over.

Now the panic I heard in Sam’s voice got into my head. I had almost drowned. The heavy pressure on my chest continued.

I felt a rush of water travel up my throat and into my nose and mouth. I gagged on it, spat it out.

I opened my eyes and saw the night sky and stars above.

My throat felt raw. My nose burned.

Sam was above me, a worried look in his eyes. “He’s coming round,” he said to someone I couldn’t see.

I sat up and leaned against the inflatable side of the Zodiac, gasping for breath.

“How you doing, man?” Sam asked. He sat back on his heels, grinning. Jax was behind me with her hand on the tiller and Tanya was at the front of the boat scanning the water ahead with the binoculars.

“I’m not dead,” I said.

Sam laughed. “No way, man. I saved your ass.”

“Thanks.” I looked over the side of the boat towards the shore. A pair of gulls sat on the water, fighting over a fish that they had torn apart. The shore was no longer the rocky seashore I was used to seeing. It was a wooded bank. The trees came all the way to the water’s edge.

I turned and looked at the opposite bank. More trees, with fields beyond.

We were on the river.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“Only about a minute, man. Don’t sweat it. I hauled you into the boat and started working on you. Jax got us out of there. That was some fucked up shit.”

I looked back beyond Jax to the harbour. The yellow-eyed soldiers stood on the jetty motionless, their prey out of reach. I had no idea why some of them had followed us into the water.

“We just learned one thing,” Sam said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That hybrids can’t swim worth a damn.”

“It doesn’t make sense that they’d jump in like that,” I said. “The virus doesn’t have anything to gain if they die. Why did they do that?”

“Don’t ask me, man, I just work here.”

I racked my brain for the answer to my own question. I wanted to understand the virus. It was our enemy and if we understood it, we could predict what the zombies would do in specific situations.

So far we had seen that it protected the true zombies—the dead, rotting ones—by keeping them out of the rain. Why would it allow hybrids to jump into the sea like that? Their flesh wasn’t rotting so they had nothing to fear from the water itself but they couldn’t swim. Jumping into the deep sea was suicide. The hosts were destroyed and could not spread the virus.

It made no sense.

Sam tapped my shoulder, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“Don’t dwell on it too much, man. We’re alive and that’s all that matters.”

“Holy shit,” Tanya said from the front of the boat. “There’re zombies everywhere.”

We didn’t need the binoculars to see what she was talking about. The movement in the trees on the shore and dark shapes shambling through the fields told us everything we needed to know: this area was crawling with zombies. I couldn’t see any hybrids out there, just a whole load of shamblers. A few seconds after we saw them, their low moans came drifting across the water to our boat.

They couldn’t get to us but the sight of so many zombies made my skin crawl. The air was thick with the stench of their rotting flesh. Their unnatural gait and staring yellow eyes spoke to some deep fear within me. I could barely stand to look at them as they dragged their putrefying corpses across the fields and between the trees.

Some of the walking dead came down to the edge of the river bank and stood glaring at us. Some stretched out their blue mottled hands and clawed at the air. None of them stepped into the water.

As I watched them, I understood the fundamental difference between these dead shamblers and the living hybrids. The shamblers were totally under the control of the virus. It had killed the host and now controlled the body. In the case of the hybrids, the host was still alive and still had some control.

Even though the hybrids had a primal urge to spread the virus, they also had a remnant of their human emotions. The hybrids at the harbour had jumped into the sea because their desire to catch us overrode the virus’s need to keep the host alive.

Their virus-infected brains didn’t think, “If I jump into the sea, I will drown”. They didn’t base their actions on logic, only on the need to kill their prey. They no longer possessed the intelligence to avoid throwing themselves into dangerous situations.

The shamblers had the same lack of intelligence but the virus had complete control of their bodies so it kept them from harm because if the body was harmed, the virus could not be spread by that host.

If the rage of the hybrids meant they acted without self-preservation and ignored the needs of the virus, maybe there was a way to use that against them.

Sam waved his tire iron at the zombies on the riverbank. “You want some of this? Come and get it.”

“There’s no point taunting them,” Jax said.

“I’m ready to bust some heads, man.” Despite his outburst, Sam seemed too relaxed for a man on a dangerous mission.

I, on the other hand, was terrified. The countryside was crawling with zombies and we were heading to a city where the undead population would be even larger.

We weren’t going to make it out alive.

We continued along the river into the night. An inky blackness crept across the sky and low-lying dark clouds blotted out the moon. I could barely see the zombies on the bank but their low moans told me they were still there. Apart from the moans, the only other sound was the purr of the engine and the rush of the water against the Zodiac’s sides as we glided upriver.