Shaun Harbinger: Storm

Tanya, Jax, Sam, and Johnny came out to the aft deck.

“Something’s wrong,” I shouted down to them, “Something’s wrong.”

Where the hell was Lucy?

I brought the Lucky Escape around in a wide arc and came up behind The Big Easy , matching her speed. Through the binoculars, I inspected her bridge.

The wheel had been lashed with a cord to keep the boat on a straight course.

The pilot’s seat was empty.

I slid down the ladder to the aft deck. “Tanya, take the wheel and get us closer. I’m going to go on board.”

She nodded and went up to the bridge. She did a good job. Within a minute, we were alongside The Big Easy and I was able to jump across the narrow gap separating us.

“Lucy?” I called once I was on the familiar aft deck. “Are you here?”

No reply.

I went up to the bridge and untied the cord holding the wheel steady. If I didn’t take her out into deeper water, she would be stranded on the sea bed at low tide.

I didn’t know what was happening. Lucy had obviously lashed the wheel and set a course for the lighthouse. Only she knew the place I was referring to in the radio message.

But where the hell was she?

I took The Big Easy into deeper water and dropped anchor. On the Lucky Escape , Jax, Sam, and Johnny watched from the aft deck, worried looks on their faces.

I went down the ladder and into the living area. There, on the table, was a note from Lucy, written in black pen on a piece of paper. I recognised her handwriting but it looked like it had been hastily written.

“Alex. Bitten at 1100 hours on 15 th. Lucy.”

I didn’t understand. Today was the 15 th. Was she saying she had been bitten today? Why leave me a note? Where was she?

“Lucy!” I called. “Where are you?”

I heard a noise from below. A low moan?

If she had been bitten this morning, she would have turned by now. No. Please, no.

I didn’t even think about taking a weapon with me as I went down the steps to the bedrooms. How had she been bitten? What if she was turned… gone? The note didn’t make any sense. If she was leaving me a note to tell me she had been bitten, why write the exact time? What difference did that make? She wasn’t thinking straight. With the virus in her blood, she was confused. Perhaps she had been in some kind of denial.

I listened at the bedroom door but everything down there was quiet.

“Lucy?” I whispered. “Are you there?”

Nothing.

I opened the bedroom door, ready to flee back up the steps and jump over the side of the boat if I had to.

The bedroom was empty.

I heard a noise coming from the storeroom.

I pressed my ear to the wooden door and listened.

Rapid breathing came from the other side of the door.

“Lucy,” I whispered.

A noise like scuffling on the floor.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

She lay in the corner of the room, among a pile of T-shirts and the spear guns. She was curled up in an embryonic position, shivering and sweating. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her jeans were torn on the right thigh. Lucy had bandaged a wound there but blood seeped through the cotton and stained the denim.

Lying next to her on the floor was an empty hypodermic needle. Traces of the amber fluid it had once contained lined the plastic tube.

Now I knew why the time she had been bitten was in the note. She had injected herself with vaccine a few hours ago and knew by the time she arrived here, she would be in this state, unable to tell me what had happened.

The note was a plea for help.

She had four days before she became a hybrid.

She wanted me to try and save her.

I knelt down next to her and reached out to stroke her matted blonde hair.

She shrank away and groaned three words that chilled my heart.

“Leave… me… alone.”

COMING SOON: WILDFIRE

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Rain

Copyright © 2014 Shaun Harbinger

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to characters living, dead, or undead is purely coincidental.