Shaun Harbinger - Rain

She held up the Colt. “I’ve got the gun. I don’t need the bat.”

“I’ll get a speargun and cover you.” I was dying to try them out but hadn’t had the chance yet.

“Don’t point those things anywhere near me. I’ll be fine.”

“Just promise me you won’t go on board.”

“I promise. This is just a reconnaissance mission.”

I untied the rowboat from The Big Easy and went back through the boat to the sun deck to watch her. She waved as she came into view then put her back into the rowing. The Hornet had drifted thirty feet away, now. Lucy rowed half the distance then shouted to me, “Throw me the mooring rope.”

I frowned at her. “Why?”

“If I tie her on, she won’t drift away. Otherwise I might have to row half a mile to get back to The Big Easy.”

She had a point. I picked up the thick rope, swung it a couple of times to get momentum, then let it go. It snaked across the water and landed a few feet from the rowboat. Lucy fished it out of the sea with an oar and coiled it by her feet. She rowed the rest of the distance to The Hornet and tied the rope around one of the aft railings.

Even being connected by a rope felt like too much contact between us and The Hornet.

The banging had stopped and The Hornet was quiet again. But the silence was unsettling.

Lucy knelt in the rowboat and used her hands on the hull of The Hornet to pull herself to the first porthole. She peered inside. After a few seconds she pulled herself along to the next porthole and shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked through the glass. The Hornet had four portholes on this side and after Lucy had inspected the interior of the boat through each one, she rowed around the other side to check there. I waited until she reappeared around the stern.

“Nothing,” she shouted. “Should I climb aboard and have a look?”

Sudden panic rose in me like acid in my throat. “No! Come back and we’ll decide what to do next.”

She stood in the rowboat and grabbed the edge of The Hornet, craning her neck to see over onto the aft deck. “It looks deserted,” she said.

“Lucy, come back!” If she went on board, I was going to have to jump in and swim over there. I couldn’t let her go onto The Hornet by herself. It might look empty from the windows but that meant nothing.

She reached up as if she was going to pull herself up onto the deck.

“Lucy, you promised!”

She stopped and looked over at me.

Hesitated.

Sat back down in the rowboat and made her way back to The Big Easy.

I breathed a sigh of relief but I knew this wasn’t going to be as simple as untying The Hornet and letting her float away. Lucy’s curiosity had gotten the better of her and she wanted to investigate. I felt like cutting the rope now and watching The Hornet disappear into the distance. That would be that. But that would just delay the inevitable. At some point we were going to have to raid the mainland for food and then we would have to deal with zombies. Maybe facing one or two on a boat was a good way to get us ready for that confrontation when it came. The world was full of monsters now and there was no way we could avoid them forever.

Lucy shouted to me from the aft deck. I went back there, the baseball bat feeling heavy in my hands. It looked like I was about to face a nerve-shredding situation again. I would have thought that after playing hundreds of video games involving sneaking around and trying to avoid enemies, I would be prepared for this kind of thing. But my games had only prepared my nervous system so far. Just the thought of going below deck on The Hornet made my palms feel sweaty and my hands tremble.

I climbed into the rowboat and took the oars from Lucy.

As I rowed towards The Hornet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something really bad was about to happen.

I stood on the deck of The Hornet, bat ready in my hands, while Lucy climbed up to join me. The boat swayed gently beneath my feet but there was no other movement. No zombie rushing at me from inside, yellow eyes blazing. Even the banging we had heard earlier had stopped and the eerie quiet had descended over the yacht again.

“Anything?” Lucy asked as she stood next to me.

“I wouldn’t be standing here calmly if I’d seen anything.”

“That’s true.” She stepped to the door that led below deck and turned the handle. The door opened slowly with a slight creak. A small flight of wooden steps led down to living quarters.

I sniffed the air. It smelled stale and underlying the staleness was a hint of decomposition. Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Something’s dead down there.”

I could deal with the dead. It was the undead I wanted to avoid.

Lucy went down the steps with the gun held up in front her face. I followed, leaving the door open behind me to let fresh air into the cabins and cleanse the stench of death.

Lucy poked her head around a doorway and said, “He’s in here.” She stepped into the room and I took a quick glance along the corridor before joining her.

It stank worse in here and that was because of the corpse on the bed. He was a man in his thirties. He had a neat haircut, linen shirt, jeans and what looked like a real gold Rolex on his left wrist. In his day, this man had been wealthy. But his day was gone and there would be no more. On the nightstand, an empty bottle of pills and a drained bottle of whisky told the story. In case we didn’t get it from the booze and tranquillisers, he had left a note on the bed next to his body. I picked it up and read it out loud.

“Mary and Dan have changed. I have locked them in the store room. I can’t live without them. Max Prentice.”

I looked over the paper at Lucy. “He said he locked them in the store room. They’re still on board.” Instinctively, I glanced at the door, expecting this dead man’s wife and son to come staggering in, reaching for us.

“Why can’t we hear them banging anymore?” Lucy asked.

I shrugged. “If they know we’re here, why aren’t they going crazy to get to us? I’d at least expect banging on the door if they’re locked in somewhere. Why are they being quiet?”

“You’re the zombie expert; you tell me.”

“I don’t know.” Were they lying in wait for us? I had assumed that the zombies at the farmhouse hadn’t been waiting for us to leave the house… that they had only been on the porch because they were sheltering from the rain… but now I wondered if they had been hiding after all.

A sudden bang from within the boat made us both jump.

I put my finger to my lips and we stood there in the silence that had again descended over The Hornet. I wanted to get out of this room of death more than anything but I needed to know if my theory was correct. I tried to put myself in the shoes of the virus. It wanted to spread. If it was trapped and unable to infect others, what would it make the host do to increase the chances of escape?

Another bang sounded from along the corridor.

“They’re trying to attract our attention,” I whispered to Lucy.

“By banging on the door?”

“They’re locked in a room. There’s no way for the virus to spread. So it’s trying to attract the attention of somebody… anybody… to come open the door. They’ve probably been banging like that since they got locked in there. Just biding their time and waiting.”

“Do you think they know we’re here?”

“Yeah. They probably want to try and tear that door down to get to us but they know we’d run. So they’re luring us to them. Think about it… the only reason we came on board was because we heard that bang. They’re using human curiosity to get us to open the door. And if we did that…”