Shaun Harbinger: Survival: Revenge of the Living Dead

It was late morning, with the sun beating through the Big Easy ’s portholes, when I rolled out of bed feeling like I’d just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

The cabin was bright and hot and smelled distinctly of sweat. I needed to get out of here and get some fresh air before the contents of my stomach—burgers and pasta mixed with a liberal amount of red wine and beer—came spewing out over the bed.

Groaning as a bolt of pain speared my head, I opened the door and stumbled up the stairs to the living area. It was no less bright or warm in here and the smell of greasy burgers and alcohol hung in the air. I pulled open the door to the aft deck and threw myself outside just in time to throw up over the side of the boat.

A couple of minutes later, as I spat the last remnants of acidic bile and bits of burger into the sea, I heard a chuckle floating over the waves. I looked up to see the Lucky Escape anchored off our port side and Sam standing on her foredeck. He wore red swimming trunks and a white shirt printed with large red palm trees. He also wore a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Dude, I told you to slow down last night,” he called. “You were chugging that wine like there was no tomorrow.”

“Well, unfortunately, there is a tomorrow,” I said, “and it has arrived.”

He chuckled again. “Alex, you need to take it easy, man. We’re going ashore later and you need to be on top form.”

“Top form isn’t achievable today,” I told him.

“Well then, you’ll be zombie chow.”

“Thanks for that, Sam.”

“Just telling it like it is, man.” He turned away from the railing and went below deck.

I sank down onto the bench that curved around the bow of the boat and willed my head to stop hurting. It didn’t work. Why had I drunk so much last night?

Deep down, I knew the answer. Since seeing my father and brother at Camp Achilles a month ago, I’d been in a funk that had been difficult to shake. I wasn’t moping around like a moody teenager or anything like that but every now and then, I’d feel so down that I wouldn’t know what to do. Everything seemed hopeless.

Last night, the four of us—Lucy, Tanya, Sam, and myself—had eaten together on the Big Easy and we’d all partaken of a case of wine we’d looted from a shop last week. After the wine had gone to my head, I’d foolishly decided that a few beers would be a good idea and had drunk at least four bottles of ale we’d taken from the same shop as the wine.

I’d been trying to forget, to banish the black dog of depression that had been hanging over for me ever since I’d seen Joe and my dad.

My plan had worked for a couple of hours and I’d spent the evening in a fuzzy cloud of merriment.

But it had only been temporary and now I was paying for it.

Getting gingerly up from the bench, I took a deep breath of salty air and walked through the living area before pushing through the door that led outside to the sun deck. As I’d expected, Lucy was there, lying beneath the beating sun in her yellow bikini with a pair of shades over her eyes. She was lying on a dark blue beach towel that she’d spread over the deck and her long blonde shone in the sun like a golden halo.

She was a work of art and I couldn’t help but appreciate her even in my less-than-optimal state.

“Hey, Alex,” she said, surprising me. I’d thought she might be asleep but her eyes were obviously open behind the sunglasses. “How’s your head?”

“It’s been better,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have had so much wine. Everything is bright and I feel hot.”

“Take your T-shirt off, then. It’s way too warm to be wearing that thing.”

I looked down at the ‘Sail to Your Destiny’ T-shirt I was wearing, aware for the first time that I’d gone to bed fully-dressed. As well as the T-shirt, I was also wearing my jeans. No wonder I was melting.

I took my jeans and socks off but left the T-shirt on. Even though I’d lost a lot of weight lately, I still felt self-conscious every now and then, even around Lucy. Feeling cooler in my boxers, I sat, cross-legged, on the deck next to her. The day was cloudless, the sea calm, and in the distance, I could see the south-east coast of England. A slight breeze cooled the sweat on my face and bare legs.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Lucy asked.

“Talk about what?”

“Last night. The last couple of weeks. How you’re feeling?”

I shrugged. “I just keep thinking about my dad and my brother stuck in that camp, believing that the army is going to keep them safe. We’ve seen what happens to the camps once the zombies decide to attack.”

“You asked them to come with us and they refused. There’s nothing else you could have done, Alex.” She sat up and put a hand on my shoulder. “I know this has been bothering you ever since you saw your family but you have to stop beating yourself up about it.”

“You’re right,” I said. “But It’ll probably just take some time.”

“Of course it will,” she said softly, squeezing my shoulder. “Now, why don’t you put some music on and we can chill for awhile before we go ashore?”

That sounded like a good idea. I needed some time to recover from last night’s excess before I tackled a food run. I went into the living area and turned the radio on, wincing as Def Leppard blared out of the speakers. Why was everything so loud? Grabbing a pair of sunglasses from the counter, I put them on and retreated to the aft deck, then climbed the ladder up to the bridge where the pulse of the music was still audible but wasn’t so deafening.

Sitting on the pilot’s chair, I leaned my elbows on the instrument panel and put my head in my hands, silently pleading with my headache to go away.

I’d only been there for what seemed like ten minutes before the radio crackled and a voice came through the static.

“This is Echo Six. Does anyone copy? Over.”

I sat up in the seat but didn’t key the radio. This sounded like a military unit calling others in the area. Our past experience with the military had been both good and bad, but the bad had taught me it was best to stay out of their way. So I thought it best not to give away the fact that we were close enough to receive this broadcast from Echo Six.

After a couple of moments, the voice spoke again. “This is Echo Six. Does anyone copy? Over.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall and realised that what I thought had been a ten-minute nap had actually lasted an hour and a half. The headache was becoming duller but now my neck and shoulders felt stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.

“This is Echo Six. We require immediate assistance. Is there anybody out there? Over.”

Echo Six wasn’t getting any response to his call for help. His voice, which had seemed calm when he’d begun broadcasting, now held a note of urgency. “Is there anybody out there? Anyone at all?” I heard another voice, someone in the same room as the speaker, say, “It’s no good, Sarge. No one can hear you. We might as well accept that we’re not getting out of this.”

“This is Echo Six,” the original speaker said into the radio. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.”

I don’t know what it was about that broadcast—maybe the note of panic in the speaker’s voice, maybe the fact that the other person there seemed resigned to his fate—but something made me pick up my own radio and press the Talk button. “Echo Six, I hear you. Over.”

“Oh, thank God! We need immediate assistance. Our vehicle has broken down and we have a number of enemies approaching our position.” He reeled off a set of coordinates that meant nothing to me. I quickly scribbled them down on the notepad next to the radio. “Please,” he added after giving me the coordinates. “We need help.”