Shaun Harbinger - Rain

Eric’s voice came out of the radio. “Are you still there? Over.”

Mike looked at me. “I say we ignore him.”

“What do you think?” I asked Lucy,

She sighed. “We need the information about the rescue but I don’t think we should risk our boat to get it.”

Mike pumped the air with his fist. “Yes. Elena, what’s your vote?”

“We should make this guy tell us what he knows. What gives him the right to keep it to himself?”

“He wants to live too,” I said. “What gives us the right to take the info and leave him to die? And how were you thinking of taking it, anyway?”

“We’ve got a gun.”

I shook my head. Even Mike’s plan of ignoring the man was better than this. Was this what we had become now? Thieves? Murderers?

“Elena’s right, man. We can’t trust him. I say we go over there and fuck him up until he tells us what we want to know.”

“Mike, listen to yourself. This isn’t you. You don’t use violence to solve problems.” All his life, Mike had only ever used violence as a last resort, in self-defence, or in defending me. I had never seen this side of him before.

He looked at me with hard eyes. “The world has changed, man. It’s kill or be killed.”

Great. So now he was on a ‘survival of the fittest’ kick. Where did that leave me—the out of shape gamer geek? How long before Mike and Elena decided I didn’t fit into their new evolutionary plan and threw me overboard to fight the sharks for survival?

I looked to Lucy for some common sense but she didn’t seem to care that we were entering Lord of the Flies territory just so long as we didn’t risk the boat.

“I’ll stay with The Big Easy,” she said to Mike. “We can’t risk losing her.”

He grinned. “Awesome. What about you, Alex? You staying on board or coming ashore?”

“I’ll come with you,” I said reluctantly. I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to stay part of this group of survivors. It felt like the rules were changing by the second and I couldn’t let myself be the outcast. So just like when I was at school, I went along with the stronger kids to ensure my own survival.

“Cool.” Mike went back into the bridge and keyed the radio. “Yeah, we’ll talk with you.”

“We can talk when I’m on your boat, OK?” The calmness that had been in Eric’s voice earlier seemed to be breaking. Maybe he was going mad up there.

“No,” Mike replied, “we’re coming to see you.”

“Listen, you don’t understand…”

“See you in a few minutes, man.” Mike turned off the radio and Eric’s voice was silenced.

The Big Easy’s engine started up and the anchor chain clanked as it drew the anchor up from the sea bed.

I felt a nervous anticipation run through my body as we started moving towards the lighthouse.

Like it or not, we were going in hard.

And nothing would ever be the same again.

Mike brought The Big Easy to a stop a quarter mile out from the lighthouse. As we rocked in the ocean, our own wake hitting the stern, I inspected the lighthouse for signs of danger.

It rose from the rocks like a white cylinder. Windows were placed at various levels and at the top, the huge light sat like an eye looking out over the sea. It reminded me of the eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Around the light ran a balcony, and leaning over the railing was a dark-bearded man dressed in green waterproof trousers and a dark blue sweater. He waved at us and shouted. “Let me come aboard.”

Mike snorted. “Yeah, right.” He turned to us. “OK, here’s the plan. Lucy stays with The Big Easy and we take the rowboat to the island. I’ve got the gun. If that fucker tries anything, he’ll be sorry. Alex, where’s that rope you got from the marine store?”

“In the hold, but…”

“Go get it.”

There was no point arguing. I went below deck to fetch the rope I had slung over my shoulder at the marine store. I’d had no idea then that we would be using it to tie up a man. If I had known, would I have still brought it aboard? Depressing as the answer was, I knew I wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Mike’s earlier reference to the survival of the fittest hadn’t just been an off the cuff remark. The world as we knew it had ended. Survival was a prize that had to be fought for. Mike’s tactics may have seemed barbaric but the world had slipped into a new reality. I didn’t know where I fit into the new world order but at the moment I was with people who could thrive in it. I had to keep my head down and survive the best I could. At the moment, that meant following Mike’s plan to get the information we needed from Eric.

I took the rope up to the aft deck and threw it over the stern railing into the rowboat.

“You need a weapon, man,” Mike said. He had the gun in his hand and Elena had the hand axe.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“I’m not taking you ashore unless you have a weapon, man. What if it’s a trap and there’s ten guys in there?”

I sighed. I had seen a wooden baseball bat in one of the storage closets earlier. I went to get it. Returning to the deck with my weapon, I said, “Let’s go,” before tossing the bat into the rowboat.

Mike started down the ladder to the rowboat, Elena close behind. Before I set foot on the top rung, Lucy came over to me.

“Be careful, Alex.”

“I will. Look after The Big Easy.”

She smiled and I started down the ladder. I felt a cold knot in my stomach. As I sat in the rowboat, Mike took the oars and grinned. “Hey, lighten up. Everything will be OK.”

I nodded and gave him a thin-lipped smile.

On the lighthouse balcony, Eric seemed as resigned to what was going to happen as I was. He grimly turned from the railing and went inside.

As we rowed across the water to the rocky island, I was glad I had brought the baseball bat along. Mike was right; there could be a dozen men in there waiting to ambush us and take our boat. It was better to have a fighting chance than no chance at all.

The lighthouse looked much bigger as we approached it, towering above us like a finger pointing at the clear sky. The rocks it stood on were closer to the mainland than they had appeared from The Big Easy. Beyond the rocky island, I could see the cliffs and shoreline. Zombies swarmed over the beach, staggering in the sand. Their pitiful moans reached my ears and I wanted to club every last one of them with the baseball bat just to shut them up.

Mike stopped rowing and let the little boat drift to the rocks. He took the anchor, which the previous owner had made out of a bleach bottle filled with gravel, and threw it overboard. The bottle sank and pulled the rowboat back slightly as it settled on the bottom. Mike looked over the side. “It’s deep here. We’re going to have to swim ashore.”

A dip in the icy sea was not something I had planned on today. The jeans, T-shirt, sweater and boots I wore had only recently dried after the last unplanned swim. Salt stains had ruined the clothes but I still preferred them over the T-shirts from the marine store with their nautical slogans. In this post-apocalyptic world, a T-shirt that said ‘Sail To Your Destiny’ was just depressing.

I looked over the edge of the boat. The rocks dropped straight down into the murky depths. “Why couldn’t we tie the boat to the rocks?” I asked Mike. “Then we don’t need to get wet.”

“Can’t do that, man. A few good waves will crash the boat against the rocks and destroy her. Then we’d have to swim back to The Big Easy.”

I looked out at the yacht. That was a long way to swim. I could barely make out Lucy standing on the sun deck, watching us through Mike’s binoculars. I felt like waving but repressed the urge.