Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (6 page)

He thought about the day he and Harry had fled their
carpentry workshop in Wolverhampton, hoping to escape the infection.  They
made it all the way to the south coast without finding anything resembling
safety.  They stole a dinghy from the back of a trailer and threw
themselves into the sea from a dockside in Kent.  They had floated
aimlessly for days before Samuel’s fleet picked them up.  Back then,
Damien had been grateful to the sea for keeping the two of them safe, but now
he had begun to hate it for its vast nothingness.

“We’re heading inland,” he told Harry.  “You’ll
get to see for yourself what the dead are like.”

“Inland?  Why?”

“To search for the cripple.”

“I thought you killed him.  Isn’t that why you
went ashore, to make him dead?”

Roman nodded.  He didn’t tell Harry how Samuel
was obsessed with making sure the man on crutches was dead.  If he was
honest, he didn’t understand what the big deal was.  Of course, the
cripple needed punishing for trying to blow up the
Kirkland
, but being
wounded and on land was as certain a death sentence you could give a man. 
The issue had been dealt with.  Roman had dealt with it. 
So why
did Samuel give me a tonne of shit for it?

Harry rubbed at his eyes.  He was starting to
look very old.  His short brown hair was turning greyer by the day. 
For some reason, the news that they were going ashore saddened him, which was
the opposite reaction Damien expected.  Usually the members of the fleet
were excited at the briefest glimpse of the land they’d long abandoned. 
It was like coming home.

“How are the headaches?” Roman asked is friend.

Harry shrugged.  “They come and go.  At the
moment I am waiting for them to go.  But no worries; there’s nothing can
be done.  What happened with the cripple?  I thought escaping you was
impossible, or so the people around here like to whisper when you’re not
listening.  You’re quite the living legend.”

Roman sighed.  “I shouldn’t be.  I failed my
mission.  The dead got in my way.  The cripple was wounded well enough,
though.  That’s the difference between the living and the dead.  The
living run away when you shoot at them.”

Harry seemed to wince for a moment, but then his face
became an expressionless mask.  “How did it feel?  Trying to kill
another human being?”

Roman looked down at the 9mm tucked into his belt
beside his sword.  Samuel had given it to him, but he had taken it only
reluctantly.  There was something dishonourable about a gun.  It made
killing too easy.  He plucked the weapon free and examined its brushed
steel contours and machine-cut grooves.  Then he tossed it into the
sea.  “It’s not something I wish to do again,” he said earnestly.

Harry nodded knowingly.  “Killing a man is
different to slicing up an already-dead man.”

Roman had not enjoyed the feeling of firing at the
cripple.  He had done many bad things, but murder was not something he
relished.  “The cripple would have killed us all if he’d gotten his
way.  He deserved to die.”

“But you don’t want to go searching for him again, do
you?”

“It’s an unnecessary risk and one I don’t
understand.  Even if the cripple lives, he can’t hurt us on land.
 He’s doomed out there on his own with a gunshot wound.  I don’t know
what Samuel is so concerned about.”

“Others call him captain, or
sir
.”

“The same fools call
me
Roman.”

“If only they knew your real name,
Damien
.”

“Damien was the man I used to be.  Only
you
knew that man.”

Harry smiled knowingly.  “Only
I
know the
man you still are.  You may have sharpened an antique sword you found in a
museum and attached a rusty spear to your stump, but I still remember the lost
youth you were when I met you.  You’ve come a long way.  You should
be proud.  You gave up drugs and violence for courage and honour, but that
doesn’t mean you have to go running into danger everywhere you find it. 
You should take an easier job like mine.  We were both tradesman; I could
get you work in the ship’s tool room.”

Damien looked out over the sea, at the two hundred
boats and ships.  Soon they would all be sailing north to meet with the
coast, and he would once again be going ashore to contend with the dead. 
And perhaps the living.
  They are no better.
 
What Harry was suggesting was a nice thought, but it was beyond Damien’s
reach.  A man with one hand and a hundred battle scars did not simply lay
down his sword and start making replacement engine parts.  That was only
the surface of it, though.  The deeper truth was that Damien felt more at
ease ashore amongst the dead than on the claustrophobic ship amongst the
living.

Harry placed a hand on his shoulder.  “People
aren’t as bad as you think, you know?”

“The people aboard this ship are.  They’ve become
like the zombies out there.  No one thinks for themselves, they just
follow orders.”

“Perhaps.  But some of them might surprise you.”

“They haven’t yet.”

“Give it time.”  Harry squeezed Damien’s
shoulder.

“Time is the only thing I have left,” said Damien.
 He turned away from Harry, shrugging his hand away, but then reconsidered
and turned back around.  “And an old friend, of course.  I still have
that.”

“More than most have, nowadays,” said Harry.

“Then I must be blessed.”

“Or cursed.  It means you still have something to
lose.”

Damien sighed and glanced back out at the sea. 
Never you, Harry.
  I must never lose you.

“
Z
ut
alors
!” 
Hugo sidestepped to avoid tripping over the woollen sheep that stared
innocently up at him from the cabin floor.  He picked it up and stuffed it
into the gap between the dusty television and the cabinet on which it
stood.  “Daphne, Sophie, will you please pick up your things?  You’ll
send me overboard one of these days.”

His two young daughters were sitting on the yacht’s
cosy sofa, playing with a set of cards atop the oak-veneer dining table. 
The
eight of spades
had fluttered overboard some time ago, but all the
other cards were still present.

“
Désolé
,
papa
,”
they said in unison with the voices of innocent choirgirls.  They were
growing up – eight and nine – but they were still just children.

“Please, my loves, speak English.  We are
surrounded by them, so you will do better to talk as they do.  In fact, we
may be the last French speakers alive, as much as it pains me to think about,
so don’t waste effort with a language no longer used.”

“But we are French, papa.”

“Nobody is anything anymore.  We’re all just…
people.
 
And most people speak English, so we shall also.”

“
D’accord
,” said
Daphne, making her younger sister
giggle
.

Hugo laughed, too, but he gave his eldest daughter a
stern look of disapproval.  “No more, okay?”

“Okay, papa.”

Hugo smiled and left the cabin to go out on the
deck.  Dozens of other boats surrounded him on the sea, both big and
small.  The largest ship was the frigate in the centre of the fleet, where
the kind man, Samuel, gave his orders.  The smallest boats were mere
single-mast sailboats that struggled to stay afloat when the winds were
bad.  Hugo had witnessed more than a few go under during the nastier
storms. 
The English are not the sailors they think themselves to be.

Despite his longing for home – a modest cottage
on the outskirts of Brest – Hugo was grateful for the safety of the
fleet.  What Captain Samuel had done, bringing so many sailors together
and providing refuge to the weak and weary, was a kindness beyond most
men.  Whilst the world had been crumbling, most men thought only of their
own survival, but not Samuel Raymeady.  True to the humanitarian he’d been
as the head of the monolithic Black Remedy Corporation, Samuel had turned his
resources to rescuing those lost and frightened.  The fleet, now a
thousand bodies strong, sailed as a testament to the man.  The world had
ended, but Samuel Raymeady had kept the human race alive.  And for that,
all men should love him. 
As I do.  My daughters live because of
him.

When France had fallen to the biting jaws of the dead,
Hugo had made immediately for the marina where his small yacht was
berthed.  The carnage and bloodshed he witnessed during the short journey
had horrified him enough that he would gladly never set foot on land again. 
He had gawped in horror at his countrymen tearing into one another, children
and men alike.  He had spectated impotently as a coach full of pensioners
caught alight in the ensuing riots.  The old men and women burned alive
inside, with nobody doing a thing to help them.  It had not been the dead
who had done that.  We
were the real monsters when things fell.

The marina had been teeming when Hugo arrived, and
desperate people were begging to board the various boats departing.  Many
forwent begging in place of outright stealing.  Hugo himself had needed to
wrestle with a fat man who sought to take his keys and steal the
éternuer
from
him
. 
Hugo had won that battle when he drove his keys into the
man’s left eye, leaving him screaming on the jetty and half-blind.  Hugo’s
daughters had not spoken to their father for days after that. 
I barely
blame them.

But he succeeded in sailing them free of their
homeland and into the English Channel.  There, he and several other
seafarers had chanced upon the
HMS
Kirkland
.  A dozen boats
– fishing trawlers mostly – already surrounded the frigate but a
messenger had been quick to inform each newly arriving party that they were
free to join the growing fleet and that all supplies would be shared out equally. 
Regular landing parties early on, raiding both French and English coastlines,
had been successful in liberating great caches of food, whilst the fishermen of
the fleet caught bountiful loads of fish.  Life was still greatly lacking,
but it seemed that life was becoming a little less about survival and a little
more about rebuilding.  It was the best any man could hope for in the
savage new world. 
I do sometimes miss being on land, though.  Can
we live out here forever?

A sudden
yip!
from
behind him made Hugo turn around.  Houdini – named so because of his
talent for getting in and out of the strangest places as a pup – was
sitting on the
coachroof
above the yacht’s main
cabin.  The tan and white
Papillon
often chose
to spend his time outside, watching the hustle and bustle of the surrounding
boats and fishermen.  Even in the rain the dog preferred to remain
outside, although in the high winds Hugo would carry Houdini inside the
cabin.  Such a small dog could easily be swept away. 

Hugo reached up and patted the dog on its head. 
“What are you up to,
mon
ami
?”

Yip
!

“Just watching the world
go
by, huh? 
You and me both.
 
Boys together, no?
  We must spend our time thinking so
that we are best able to protect our delicate young ladies.”

The little dog hopped down from the roof and came to
Hugo’s side, wagging its tail like a maniac.  The six-year old dog was a
good companion for the girls, but it was
heart-breaking
to see the animal without a field in sight on which to run and chase a ball.

Hugo patted the dog again.  “One day things will
be different.  You might be a very old dog by then, but I promise you that
you will once again get to run amongst the pigeons.”

Yip!

Out across the Channel, the
Kirkland
cast a
vast shadow against the twilight background.  Its thick cannons and
spindly radars jutted out at sharp angles and made the mighty vessel’s
silhouette seem like it belonged to some exotic beast.  Hugo wondered what
the captain was doing right now.

Hugo had met Samuel Raymeady only once, early on, when
the captain had assembled a man from each ship of the fleet and introduced
himself, although it was unnecessary.  Everybody knew who Samuel Raymeady
was. 
The richest man in the world.
 
Who’d have thought a businessman would be responsible for saving so many lives. 
I used to think the man was greedy with all his money and power, but how wrong
I was.  He is a saint.
 

At the time, the men and women who had come aboard the
Kirkland
were broken and battered, some of them dying from wounds and
infection.  Samuel had assured them all that they were now all safe. 
The world had plummeted into the abyss, but they had survived extinction. 
They would survive upon the sea, regain their strength, and retake the earth
one day.  He promised them salvation, and from the fire in his voice and
the passion on his face, Hugo believed every word of the man.  Samuel
Raymeady was their saviour.

As Hugo thought about how grateful he was, his mind
inevitably turned to his losses.  His wife, Patricia, had not survived the
infection.  She had come home from work sick one day and gone straight to
bed.  Hugo had nursed her as best he could and left his job as an
accountant to pick up the girls from school.  It had seemed no different
to the flu, that night.  The next morning Hugo had awoken to find his wife
in the en suite.  She was raving and mad.  When she tried to claw and
bite at him, he had smothered her in a blanket and lay on top of her. 
When Daphne and Sophie called to him, he shouted back that school was cancelled
and that they could go watch television.  Hugo restrained his wife for
almost three hours, pleading with her calm down, but she was like a wild animal
beneath the sheet.

Then she had fallen into a coma.  Nothing he did
could wake her.  He sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed the phone, but
when he called emergency services, the line was busy.  That was when his
precious daughters came and told him that all of the cartoons were cancelled
and that the news had come on every channel.  Hugo had watched the reports
for twenty minutes, barely blinking and barely breathing.  He had taken
his daughters and ran. 
That day seemed so long ago.  I wonder
whatever came of my darling, Patricia.  I hope she is in peace.

As Hugo stared out at the
Kirkland
’s long
silhouette, he noticed that it seemed to be wheeling around and pointing back
towards the English coast.  Other boats were turning around as well.

“Are we on the move, Houdini?  Are the fishermen
displeased with this spot or is there bigger intrigue afoot?”

The fleet often travelled, yet sparingly.  Fuel
was at a premium and not all of the boats had sails.  Hugo placed a hand
over his brow and tried to see past the glare of the setting sun.  He
spotted the signal off the
Kirkland
’s starboard bow.  A small Coast
Guard ship that remained ever close to the frigate had hoisted a flag upon its
tall radio tower.  The flag was green and it meant ‘follow’.  The
Kirkland
moved slowly and there would still be time to rest, but Hugo disliked falling
too far towards the rear of the fleet.  The
Kirkland
was the centre
of law and order.  The closer Hugo was to it, the safer he felt –
the safer he felt about his daughters.

Hugo patted Houdini on the head one last time. 
“Time to go inside,
mon
ami
.  We’re on the move.” 

When Hugo started the yacht’s 43HP diesel engine, his
daughters joined him in the pilot’s cabin.  Both of them looked
apprehensive.  “Where are we going, papa?”

“Wherever the good captain takes us, my
beauties.  Do not worry.  The kind man, Samuel, would never do us
wrong.”

Yip!

“You see?”  Hugo laughed and set off after the
HMS
Kirkland
.  “Houdini agrees.”