Invasion of the Dead (Book 3): Escape (31 page)

FIFTY-SIX

Dylan remembered the way to Station Pier and they made good time, leaving the bulk of the threes behind. They turned right onto City Road, following it through South Melbourne and into Bay Street, Port Melbourne, before hitting Beach Street and following the road into Waterfront Place. That took them up to the parking lot at Station Pier, surrounded by a precinct of cafés and restaurants where Lauren had brought them once on a trip down from Albury. The food had been spectacular.   

Dylan spotted the ship from the roadway. He cut left onto the parking lot and tried to drive right onto the docks, but a mess of cars barred their way. They would have to walk the last bit.

“Let’s keep moving. I’ve got a bad feeling there might be more of them on the way.” Dylan hurried to the trunk and handed packs to Alexander, Claire, and Kristy. He hoped the ship had plenty of food because they hadn’t brought much. The other car pulled up beside them—Greg, Evelyn, Jake, Sarah, and Julie. There should have been more. Out of all the people they had met, it should have been so many more.

“Thanks,” Greg said. “We owe you… another one.”

“It all evens out, believe me.”

Deeper in the city, the growl of a thousand voices sounded.
God help anyone caught in that,
Dylan thought
.
Maybe their friends were in it, racing to meet them. He had given up on Callan and Blue Boy, though, and partly grieved for Kristy, as he had for their parents. Maybe one day when it all settled down, he would purge the rest and deal with the death of his loved ones, as most of them would need to do.

The others slung as much gear as possible onto their shoulders, and trudged onward. The walk was only a few hundred yards and, as they drew closer to the building, Dylan saw a plank leading from the upper level onto the ship. Gallagher stood at the edge of the vessel, signaling for them to go through the doorway. Dylan felt an overwhelming sense of relief that Gallagher was still alive, and they had made it.

They hurried in through a set of glass doors, past a reception area and counter, tables and chairs, beyond where people ate lunch and watched the docking ships. A set of stairs beckoned and they climbed, Greg leading the way, Dylan standing at the bottom as the others passed him.

The next level contained a series of desks and queues for incoming and outgoing passengers. The group walked through the rope barriers in silence, eager to reach the ship and be done with the mainland before the mainland was done with them. Outside, a platform led to the gangway, and on the other side, standing on the ship, was Gallagher.

The admiral looked beaten and bloody. He fought some off-screen battle and might not even last much longer. His eyes and nostrils were inflamed, scleras bloodshot, the lids and surrounding tissue, red. His nose was tender underneath, and as if to confirm it, he wiped it on the sleeve of his shirt. But he was still standing; Dylan had not been expecting that. The serum wasn’t working and he might not be alive next week, but he had made a commitment to get them to Tasmania.

“We have to leave,” Gallagher croaked.

“We can’t yet,” Dylan said. “We need to give the others more time.”

Gallagher drew a pair of binoculars up to his eyes. “No time. If those bastards get here from the city and latch onto this ship, we’re finished. I’ve already had to kill half a dozen of the crew. They’d locked themselves on the boat.”

“Please. Give them five minutes?” There was a long, terrifying moment where Dylan thought he was going to ignore the question.

“The engines are primed. We’re ready to move. I can’t sit here for too long, it’s wasting fuel. Five. That’s it. Any more and we’ll die too.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

They reached the pier as the afternoon sun peaked, blazing down on the sea with blinding intensity. The heat cooked a million corpses and drove the sweat from the skin of those still alive as though they wept. There was no air conditioning, only the hot, fetid wind of a scorching summer blowing through the windows, permeating their hair and skin with a smell they might never wash free. Still, as they pulled into the Station Pier car park, Callan found before them a sight that was both amazing and horrific.

After leaving the site of the fallen chopper, Callan had demanded Harlan tell him another route. He was afraid the threes would chase them. Harlan had argued the direct course down Queen Street would be the fastest, but Callan had insisted. His gut instinct had served him effectively more than once, and he wasn’t going to abandon it now. Reluctantly, Harlan  revealed a number of alternates.

They fought on through the incessant traffic jam for more than a third of the way, along cluttered pavements outside battered shopfronts, across tram tracks, and even through a glass tram stop at one point. They smashed the headlights and indicator lights, cracked the windscreen driving too close to an overturned four-wheel drive with a pipe sticking out of the engine, and had lost both side mirrors before the third turn. Type ones stumbled into their path, slapped the windows when the Camry missed a gap or slowed for a sharp bend, and, in one case, dived off the top of a bus in front of them. But it was the threes who scared Callan shitless. They had the devil in their black eyes, the invisible fires of hell beyond the darkness. They watched from the windows of buildings, from the shadows of doorways, and in the bright sunlight, they moved with the super speed. He couldn’t stop thinking about what the man in the supermarket at Yass had said: they talk with their minds. There were fewer of them on the alternate journey, but Callan knew that until they were sailing across Bass Strait on that damn boat, they weren’t safe. And now, as their journey from Albury reached the final stage, they were coming. The question was whether they could outrun them.  

That question had now been answered with a shattering response. The big boat was moving away from the pier. Callan strained his eyes to make sure.
They wouldn’t.
Even from the distance though, he knew it was.

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t giving up. They would make it to the edge of the dock even if the ship had left without them, but they must hurry. Harlan was struck with the virus, but he could run. Jacob would have to risk it. If not, it wouldn’t matter, he’d be dead soon. Callan drove forward, smashing through a blockage of cars, halting them with a loud scrape of metal.

He twisted around and peered through the back window. Shadows along the esplanade shifted and undulated, like a crowd at a rock show jumping to the beat.

“Out!” he screamed. The Camry would go no further; too many cars blocking the way. “We have to run for the pier. Grab what you can.”

“The boat’s gone!” Bec cried.

“NOW!”

They tumbled out of Harlan’s tiny vehicle, Callan guiding Kristy and Bec to the front, helping Harlan and Jacob from the back. The older man went easier, shuffling his feet decked in brown loafers, but Jacob was another matter. He leaned across the seat and tried to swing his legs around, but they caught in the foot well. His tanned face strained, turning it a bronzy red. Finally, he got free and stumbled from the car.

Blue Boy ran towards the horde, barking and growling. “Blue! This way!” Callan screamed.

He wanted to scream a lot more. Bec was right; the boat was gone. They’d run out of time. What had they thought—that Callan and the others had died? That they’d given up?
Of course, you fool.
They didn’t know Kristy was alive; didn’t know that they had found more people. What if he ran for the dock and tried to signal them to stop? He wouldn’t make it, and neither would the others.

He jogged ahead a short way, Kristy and Bec trying to keep up. He wanted them to move faster, but the heat and the pressure were too much. They ran through the far end of the car park, over lawns that would never again be mowed, and through an untamed garden beneath a row of three drab palm trees. Callan crossed a narrow road and then a short bridge over a causeway. Technically, he was on the pier, but the others weren’t. He turned back, fighting the urge to scream for them to move faster. Blue Boy jogged past. Kristy reached him, panting, her beetroot face begging forgiveness.
Sorry, I’ve got nothing left.
Harlan was next, a way behind, suddenly looking sicker than Callan recalled in the Camry. Callan wanted to tell him it would be all right. He wanted to say they had the medicine and it would not make the disease any worse, but he couldn’t, because the medicine was floating away with their friends and their hopes and dreams for a safer life. He had failed. And Callan knew that what was coming for them was a death beyond comprehension. Jacob was still a long way back. Bec ran at his side. He had given it everything, but the bullet wound and blood loss had zapped him of life.

Beyond Jacob was a sight worse than his nightmares. The zombie horde raced along the shoreline road towards them en masse. They ran in a pack like an army of ants he had once uncovered beneath a sheet of corrugated tin up in the dirt at the back of the property. Now, it was the same thing, only these monsters were once people that had become enraged with strength and psychosis and the insatiable need to eat human flesh.

Jacob and Bec staggered past him. Blue Boy rounded them up, like the cattle dog he was, filling Callan with an affection he couldn’t put into words. Callan ran after them. “Come on. Not far.” Bec smiled through tears. She knew what was going to happen. Jacob wore a perpetual mask of pain. “We might have to go for a swim.”

Kristy stood where the boat had earlier been moored, ropes thicker than Callan’s thighs hanging over the edge. She had discarded her supplies and begun loading a rifle. The others stopped at her side, dropped their bags, and peered out at the ship, now more than four hundred yards away. They were done. It was official: he had finally failed.

Jacob groaned and fell to the ground. Bec fell to her knees at his side. “Please don’t die.
Please.
” His skin was grey and washed out. One arm fell off his stomach and onto the pier. Bec sobbed, pinching her eyes shut. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “You’ve still got to get that CD for me… the Beatles.
The White Album
. You owe me. You promised.” Jacob lifted his arm and Bec took it, holding his palm to her chest. “Dad?” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Dad?” Callan had never heard her call him that. Jacob came awake. “You can call me Bec, okay? I want you to call me that from now on.”

He smiled. “Okay.” His voice was dry and cracked. “I’d like that… very much.” He pulled Bec to the left side of his chest where she lay, sobbing.

Callan pulled the handgun from his waistband and dropped the empty cartridge onto the concrete with a clunk. He slotted another into the pistol with a click and counted how many more in the pack. Ten. He spied a second handgun; removed it, and loaded that, heart racing, full of a primal urge to defend his people. He would take these motherfuckers head on and they would feel his wrath for all his friends that had died, and those who would soon join them.

The swarm reached the café and restaurant at the end of the pier, their burning eyes and hungry mouths screaming. It sounded like a train, the loudest thing Callan had ever heard. He moved away from the group standing at the edge of the dock: Jacob lying with Bec, Harlan on Kristy, Blue sitting patiently in waiting. They were sick, bloody, and beaten. He had been expecting this day; sooner or later, he had known it would come. He began walking down the pier towards them. Blue ran up to him and trotted by his side, looking up with those adoring eyes. They would face death together, he and his little mate, and Callan would have it no other way.                                                       

FIFTY-EIGHT

Dylan hung over the edge of the railing at the port side of the boat as it drifted away from the pier. He watched the gap of water open up with the docks as the ship swung around, leaving Melbourne behind forever. Several columns of smoke rose in sooty plumes from the city. The wind picked up, and on it, he heard the distant howl of the breeze. There were no more choppers. No more Army. He wondered what had happened to it all—the government, the police, the military. He supposed it didn’t matter anymore. What was done was done.  

It was bittersweet, of course. He still had his sister, and they were on their way to Tasmania, a place that promised safety, and refuge, but they had lost so much—Kristy and Callan, and Blue too, along with almost everyone else. Whilst he hadn’t expected Callan to show up at the last moment, part of him had hoped, and with the disappearance of that hope, a deep ache in the pit of his stomach remained. He tried to push it away, as he had done with his mother and father, but this was different. They had shared things beyond the realms of normality—life-changing moments, each saving the other countless times. He wished he had paid them back. He wished he had taken the opportunity to tell them that he loved them—Kristy again, and Callan, his brother for the first time.

He looked out at the horizon of the land, noting movement along the esplanade. His eyes seemed to have deteriorated over the last few weeks, probably from all the smoke and dirt he had peered through. He couldn’t remember his last good wash. He squinted into the sun. Was that—
Yes
. Threes. A mass of them moving along the shoreline towards the pier.
Jesus,
they had been lucky to leave when they did.

Lauren came up beside him, holding the baby. The ship swung the other way, and they walked along the railing, bringing the pier back into view.

“How do you think Gallagher will go?”

Dylan tipped his head either way. “He was an admiral in the Navy once. Said he had commanded large ships, and had handled them in seas worse than this. We don’t have much else.”

“Is that someone on the pier?” Lauren asked.

“Huh? Where?” He strained hard, scanning the place she had indicated. He saw movement at the far end of the pier. The zombies had almost reached it. “The zombies? There’s a shitload of them running along the—”

Lauren’s voice was frantic. “No. This way. Closer. The small dots.”

His eyes
were
crappy, but eventually he picked up a huddle of dots standing at the edge of the dock. Further on a lone figure walked towards the oncoming horde. He strained his eyes more and… a dog.
Blue Boy.
He tried to speak, but his parched throat failed. “Oh fuck… oh fuck… oh fuck.”

“It’s them!” Lauren screamed. “Oh Jesus, Dylan, we’ve left them behind.”

Dylan stumbled backwards, not taking his eyes off the distant pier. He ran back towards the deck. They had to turn around. They had to go back for them. “GALLAGHER!” he screamed, grabbing hold of the metal rail of the stairs. “GALLAGHER! WE HAVE TO TURN AROUND!”

THE END