Aftermath

55

The constant wind and rain refused to let up, battering everything, buffeting the sides of the van as Harte drove them toward the center of Chadwick.

“Head straight for the marina,” Michael said, nervously stating the obvious.

“What else was I going to do?” Harte quickly replied. “Stop for a pizza?”

He was struggling to see out through the rain, windscreen wipers on full speed. Michael sat in the seat next to him, his stomach churning with nerves. Had the others got away safely before the weather had broken? Had they got away at all? If they’d delayed leaving for any reason, then there was a strong possibility they’d still be here, under cover somewhere, waiting out the storm. Worse still, what if the storm had hit during their crossing? That didn’t bear thinking about.

Harte drove down roads he’d followed many times before, past things he recognized and which sparked strong memories: the petrol station he’d used as cover to make his escape from Jas and the others, and The Minories—the shopping mall they’d been looting that day. And as they approached the town, he looked out into the distance toward the apartments where he’d spent a couple of weeks alone in the midst of all this chaos. Strange now, he thought, how he almost felt a kind of fondness for those days. Things had generally been easier while he’d been on his own, much less complicated, but it hadn’t been an easy ride. The solitude had been alternately stimulating and soul-destroying. It was by no means perfect, but there was a lot to be said for the isolation. He could also see that the helicopter had gone. That had to be a go sign, didn’t it?

Harte tried to drive down the route he knew best to get down to the marina, but he couldn’t get through. The roads were blocked. Many more slow-moving corpses had dragged themselves down the narrow streets than had been here last time.

“We might as well leave the van,” Michael suggested. “It’s not far now. We’ll get there quicker on foot.”

Harte stopped the van and before anyone else had chance to move or say anything, Michael was out and running toward the marina. He sprinted down the road, skidding in gore, occasionally changing direction to avoid the odd corpse which desperately reached out for him. The others followed as best they could, their line becoming spaced out as large gaps appeared between the fittest and the slowest. Caron, Hollis, and Lorna brought up the rear. Lorna refused to leave the other two behind, and they were the last to reach the water’s edge. There they found the others. Howard, Kieran, and Harte had stopped short of Michael, who stood alone at the end of the jetty, hands on his knees, doubled-over with effort and breathing hard. Even from a distance they could sense his pain.

The marina had been destroyed.

Every boat—every single boat, no matter how large or small—had been damaged beyond repair. And this wasn’t storm damage: everywhere they looked they saw ruptured hulls, broken masts, slashed sails … several smaller vessels had been burned out and were now just floating wrecks. Others had sunk, parts of them still jutting out of the water, reminiscent of the way the bones of the dead now littered the land.

Michael slowly stood up straight, turned around and walked back towards the others. He looked beaten, disconsolate.

“Who did this?” Caron asked as he pushed past her.

“Who do you think?” he replied. “Your bloody friend Jas and his lackeys.”

“Are you sure? It might have been—”

“I’m sure,” he said angrily, turning back to face her. “No one else would have done anything like this. Such a fucking pointless waste. No one from the island would have done this.”

“But why?”

“To stop us getting away,” Howard suggested.

“Either that or it’s to stop the others getting back,” Kieran said. He looked around the boatyard, trying to take it all in. In spite of everything he’d witnessed since last September, what they’d found here was unexpectedly shocking. It was the sheer senseless, wanton destruction that was eating at him. He felt ashamed to have ever had any allegiance to Jas. He’d always thought he was better than this.

“So what do we do now?” Lorna asked. “There’s no way we’re getting off the mainland now.”

“And there’s no way Richard will be able to bring the helicopter back in this weather either,” Michael said.

“We should wait until the storm passes,” Howard said. “Maybe there’s another boat…”

“We’ve already been through this. Even if there is, who’s going to navigate?”

“Okay, but we can’t just sit here feeling sorry for ourselves.”

“You give me an alternative and I’ll listen.”

“What about the castle?”

“What, go back there? No thanks,” Harte said quickly.

“What, then? Stay here? This place is a ruin.”

“Isn’t everywhere?” said Caron.

“So what exactly are you saying?” Lorna demanded, looking directly toward Michael for an answer. “After surviving everything we’ve been through, are we just supposed to roll over now and play dead?” Her outburst was met with silence from the others but she continued, unabated. “I’m not going to give up now, and neither should any of you.” She pointed at Michael. “For fuck’s sake, you’ve got a baby coming. You can’t stay here. Your missus is going to need you.”

“You think I don’t already know that?”

“I think you’re missing the point, Lor,” Caron said, holding her arm against the wind. “It’s not that he doesn’t want to go back, he can’t. We can’t.”

“Not now, perhaps, but there’s always tomorrow. We can find another port, find a boat that’s still seaworthy, learn to navigate if we have to. But I don’t think it’s going to come to that.”

“Why not?” Kieran asked.

“Surely the helicopter will come back at some point?”

Everyone looked at Michael.

“Richard might come back, I guess. I hope he will, but I can’t assume that he’ll—”

“I don’t think we can do anything but assume. We’ve got to hope he flies back over.”

“So what if he does,” Harte said. “Don’t tell me, we’ll try and attract his attention from the ground.”

“Haven’t we been through this before?” Hollis said, an increasingly rare interjection from the exhausted, beaten man.

“Bloody hell,” Howard sighed “How many times have we tried that?”

“Yes, but things are different now,” Lorna said.

“Are they?”

“The stakes are higher, for a start. This is absolutely our last chance. And the bodies are different too. We don’t have to worry about them like we used to.”

“So?”

“So all we have to do now is concentrate on doing something big enough that he can’t miss from the air.”

“It won’t work,” Harte said, sounding dejected. “Richard told me. He said there’s always something burning somewhere, those were his exact words. We’d have to burn the whole bloody town for him to see us.”

“Then let’s do that,” she quickly replied. “Let’s torch the whole place if we have to. Because there’s another thing you’re not considering here.”

“And what’s that?” Michael asked.

“This time Richard knows we’re here. If he does come back, he’ll actually be looking for us.”