When Michael saw a patch of lighter darkness up ahead, he almost screamed in relief.
The tunnel seemed to have curved around under the water for an eternity, until ridiculous notions surfaced in his mind that there was no exit after all; that the Mersey Tunnel was just some terrible joke played on the people of Merseyside.
No light reached him from the city, of course, but he saw faint starlight, and he redoubled his pace, struggling to keep up with the others. In a different time Michael would have bet on himself in a race against any of them, but in the terrible present, it was all he could do to give silent thanks to whatever god might be listening that his legs still obeyed his commands.
He exploded from the tunnel to find the others had stopped running, and he came to an abrupt stop, panting for oxygen and searching frantically for Claire. Only when he saw her, bent double and heaving air into her small lungs, did he relax a little.
But only a little.
Behind him he heard the terrible echoing of death approaching. The Infected had reached the tunnel, and there was no way Jason would be able to stop them. They had a few minutes at most.
“Why have you stopped?” he panted, as he pushed his way through the bodies, but nobody answered. There was no need.
Rachel pointed ahead silently.
Around fifty yards ahead, Michael saw a row of huge stakes driven into the gardens of the houses, spread out at intervals of around ten yards.
On each stake, an eyeless body had been hung like a grisly Christmas decoration. Even at this distance, Michael could see the banner that had been hung across the road. Foot-high letters daubed in blood.
WELCOME TO LIVERPOOL.
POPULATION 113.
People.
He felt a hand clutching at his shirt, and a moment later Rachel’s voice breathed into his ear.
“What the fuck is this?”
Michael shook his head at her. He was about to say that it didn’t matter, that the docks weren’t far away and they should just run through the grisly fence that had been erected around Liverpool and make their escape, when a sudden thought occurred to him.
Stifling the urge to grunt in pain, he bent low to pick up a small stone from the ground near his feet. A trick he had learned the very first time he had encountered the Infected. A simple test.
He hurled the stone toward the hanging creatures, and when it landed with a harsh click on the road, the fence burst into life. Ragged panting. Eyeless faces twisting left and right, searching for the source of the noise, before once more lapsing into silence.
An alarm system.
The horror of it drove needles of terror deep into Michael’s heart. The Infected were horrifying, but looking at the fence and wondering at the insanity that had caused somebody to build it, Michael realised that the most frightening thing about them was that they had once been human. Nothing was worse than humans. Maybe nothing ever would be.
Three miles behind and closing fast, a herd of killers raged through the tunnel like a pyroclastic flow. The herd would destroy everything in its path, and the hundred-and-thirteen sick bastards left in Liverpool, whoever they were, were about to discover that their time was up.
The only thing that mattered was that they didn’t get a chance to interfere with the survivors of Caernarfon before the surging river of death washed over them.
“Single file,” Michael whispered. “Straight through the middle. No noise. Move slow. Once you’re clear, you run. Don’t worry about anybody else, just run. The docks should be to the left. Whoever gets to a boat, get on it and go. Don’t wait. Got it?”
Michael stared around the group and saw frightened eyes staring back at him, but he saw understanding, too. The road into Liverpool was the point of no return. The choice had always been between death or survival, and the time had come to make it and suffer the consequences. No more hiding.
Silently and slowly, ignoring the screaming of his nerves that death was chasing him and that he should run for his life, Michael began to pad forward. One step at a time, barely daring to breathe.
The plan was doomed to fail.
Michael should have known it, but he was so focused on moving without making a sound, creeping forward by inches, that he had forgotten.
He was standing right between two of the horrific fence posts when he heard the noise that told him the game was up.
Sniff.
Sniff.
A shriek split the air right next to him, and then suddenly the entire world seemed to be screaming, as the fence came to life.
In the distance to his right, Michael heard a man’s voice shout: “People at the fence! Go!”
“Run!” Michael screamed, and he veered to the left, pouring every last drop of energy into pumping his legs, heading for the docks in the distance.
He was overtaken almost immediately. Even the larger guys, like Shirley and Gareth Roberts, men that he would once have beaten in a race without breaking sweat, swept past him, and Michael cursed his legs. After everything that had happened, his back was going to get him killed after all, right before he reached the finish line. It was so cruel, it seemed almost funny.
He watched the others disappearing toward the docks, and pounded onward, but he felt like a marathon runner in the final few paces of the race, hitting the wall.
He had to stop.
Had to draw in some oxygen.
“Michael, come on.”
Rachel’s voice.
He looked up in horror to see her coming back for him.
“Rachel, go,” he snarled. “I said don’t wait for anyone. Keep Claire safe.”
She stared at him hesitantly.
“Go!” he screamed.
He turned away from her. In the distance he saw shapes moving in the darkness, but the animal gait he had come to expect from the Infected was absent. This was a different sort of threat. Far worse.
Panting for air, he pulled the rifle from his back and took aim.
The shot rang out like thunder.
He had missed, of that he was certain. He had never been a good shot to begin with. But the roaring of the gun had stopped their approach. Michael counted ten men; maybe twelve, scattering for cover behind parked cars on the dark road.
“They've got a gun,” he heard a voice say, and Michael’s face split in a savage grin.
Well, not really, he thought.
Two bullets left.
He fired off another round when he saw the distant shadows creeping out into the road once more, and when they ducked back into cover, Michael drew in a huge lungful of air and turned away, pumping his legs through a thick lake of fire.
A few hundred yards to the docks.
It wouldn’t matter. The others would be gone by now, on a boat and heading out to sea. All that did matter was that Claire was safe. He just wanted to see the boat; to know that she was gone.
Footsteps behind him again.
Gaining ground.
He turned and fired his last bullet.
No more cards left to play, Mike.
Tossing the rifle aside, Michael focused all his thoughts on his legs once more.
And ran.
*
He heard the engine of the boat before the dock loomed into sight, and his heart sank. It sounded close. Far too close, like it had taken them a while to find a boat with a working engine and to get it started.
When he finally saw it, Michael’s heart leapt into his mouth. In the darkness, the boat was lit like a beacon, but it wasn’t far out at sea as he had hoped. It hadn’t moved at all. The engine churned the water and light spilled from every window, but it sat in next to the dock wall like it had not even been unmoored.
They don’t know how to move it, he thought in despair. He should have known; should have expected that it would all end so feebly. Get a large boat, he thought. So simple. Unless no one knows how to actually operate a large boat.
Michael slowed to a stop about twenty yards from the boat, and turned away from it. He waited on the dock, standing in the narrow alley that ran between large shipping containers and parked trucks. Only a second or two passed before the group of men that had been chasing him burst into his line of sight.
He saw knives.
Clubs.
Feral grins.
Michael balled up his fists. He couldn’t stop them getting to the boat, but he would make sure some of them didn’t get past him. Hell, he was going to make sure some of them didn’t go anywhere ever again.
The man at the front of the pack laughed savagely.
“Just you is it, mate? Everyone else on board the jolly roger over there?”
The man dropped his gaze to Michael’s fists.
“All out of bullets, too. Hope you’ve watched a lot of Jackie Chan films, fella. Or this is going to get pretty ugly for you. And for all them pretty girls you’re travelling with.”
Michael gritted his teeth as the man took a step towards him.
And then his jaw dropped in astonishment as the man’s head exploded and a deafening roar split the night air. Michael watched, stunned, as the headless corpse crumpled to the ground.
“Not just him. Me, too. And I’ve got plenty of bullets.”
Rachel stepped out of the shadows to Michael’s left, pointing the revolver at the group of stunned men.
“And we’ve all got plenty of knives. I even have this lovely mace. Any of you fuckers have a mace?"
Shirley appeared next to Rachel, grinning widely.
And then Michael saw Gareth Hughes. Linda. Ed. All of them.
Michael saw glinting knives and dead-eyed stares loaded with threat. He wouldn’t have believed them capable of it.
“Next one of you to so much as blink is going to end up in the same mess your mouthy bastard friend there found himself in,” Rachel said amiably, sweeping the revolver left and right. “Now we’re going to get on that boat, and be on our way. It’s up to you how many of you are left to wave us off.”
Michael saw hesitation on the faces of the men from Liverpool. Saw a couple of them take a faltering step backwards and his face split in a grin.
“I thought I told you not to wait for me,” he said as the men began to retreat.
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. “You’re an idiot sometimes.”
*
Rachel kept her gun pointed at the road long after the group of men had slunk out of sight, and was still aiming it as the boat chugged slowly away from the docks.
“Good job you still had that thing,” Michael said, joining her on the small deck to the rear of the boat.
“Good job I still had one bullet left,” Rachel replied with a sly grin.
Michael’s mouth dropped open, and he shook his head in disbelief.
“Balls of steel,” he whispered in admiration, and Rachel laughed.
“You think we’ll make it?”
Michael shook his head ruefully.
“On this thing? To Australia? Honestly, no I don’t,” he said. "We barely got this thing moving and no one has any idea how to steer it, let alone how to navigate. Getting to the other side of the planet doesn’t seem likely.”
Rachel nodded sombrely.
“Oh,” she said.
“We’ll find somewhere. A small island. Somewhere safe. As far away as we can get.”
Michael shrugged.
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Rachel nodded.
“We’ll make it,” she said, and Michael almost believed her.
*
“Vessel to starboard, Sir.”
“Range?”
“One kilometre, Sir.”
Nathan’s ears pricked up. It had been several hours since the Portsmouth had fled the waters north of Scotland. He had spent most of that time on the bridge, explaining the events of the recent past to Captain Bertrand. It was made abundantly clear to Nathan that he was a guest of the Captain’s, and that he had no rank on this ship.
He was fine with that.
He spent a long time persuading the Captain that the rumours about Australia were true. It was Sullivan’s rally point. A place to flee if disaster struck the project. Once the Captain had heard enough, Nathan was told to remain in his seat, and the journey became a procession of uneventful miles that passed slowly.
The sighting of another vessel was the first bit of excitement he’d had in hours.
The Captain scanned the windows with powerful binoculars.
“Pleasure yacht,” he said, and Nathan thought he detected a little disdain in the man’s tone.
“Should we fire on them, Sir?”
Nathan looked at the radar operator in horror, and flicked his gaze back to the Captain. He knew what Fred Sullivan’s answer would have been. He hoped the man that ran this ship might turn out to be different. So far Bertrand had been businesslike and aggressive, with a ruthless air that made Nathan edgy, but he hadn’t seemed like a maniac.
Outside the Portsmouth, in the far distance, a small yacht bobbed on the choppy waves of the Irish Sea, lights flickering in the dark like fireflies, and apparently making little in the way of progress in any direction.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Soldier?” the Captain snarled, and Nathan heaved out a relieved sigh. “No we should not fire on them. This is over, don’t you get it? All this secret mission bullshit is done. What we’re doing now is surviving. There is no us and them.”
He pointed behind him, back toward the dark shape of the mainland that had all but disappeared from sight.
“There’s us and them. Understand?”
The soldier flushed and nodded.
“Sound the horn. And get a lifeboat out there. Tell the medical crew to be ready. We’re taking on more passengers.”
*
The Portsmouth made steady progress, but the trip to Australia would be long, Michael had been told. They would give the land as wide a berth as possible, so they wouldn’t be taking the fastest possible route.
Adding extra time to the feeling of calm safety that being on the ship gave him didn’t seem like such a bad idea to Michael. Already he was beginning to wonder what they might find when they reached the only country on Earth that was supposed to be unaffected by the Wildfire virus. Nobody really knew if it was true; for all anybody knew they could make land and walk right into the very same horror they were running from.
He wouldn’t have minded staying on the ship forever.
After two days the power station at Wylfa finally collapsed upon itself, and the sky behind the Portsmouth was lit briefly, like a poisonous second sun had appeared, burning itself out in seconds.
Michael realised he couldn’t even be sure it had been Wylfa. Could have been any number of power stations around the UK. Might even have been an explosion tearing apart a different country altogether. France, maybe; Spain. It barely mattered. All around them, the land itself would burn as the remnants of civilization began to decay.
This fire would burn for decades. Centuries, maybe.
The fallout from the destruction of the nuclear industry might well kill off the Infected, but there was no way to know for sure. The creatures’ genes were a mystery, and might now remain so forever. Michael hoped so.
He leaned on the rail and stared at the endless peaceful ocean. They hadn’t seen land for a while. He smiled when he felt Rachel’s presence next to him.
“G’day, mate,” she said with a wide grin.
Michael arched an eyebrow.
“Figured I should practice the lingo,” she said with a shrug. “We’re all going to be Australians now, right?”
Michael cracked a smile.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “When there’s only one place left, is there any point giving it a name?”
“It’ll just be home, then.”
Michael couldn’t disagree with that.
“I guess we’re still running,” Rachel said a little wistfully.
“I look at it more as regrouping,” Michael replied. “Australia’s a big place, but it won’t be long before it feels small. One way or another, we’re going to have to take this planet back.”
Rachel nodded thoughtfully, and stared down at the waves that washed gently against the hull of the ship.
“One way or another,” she agreed finally.
Michael followed her gaze and watched the sea passing underneath the Portsmouth, and wondered how long it would be before he saw land again. Saw people again.
He flinched a little in surprise when Rachel slipped her hand into his and squeezed gently. For too long, Michael's thoughts had been dominated by fear of humans; by the overwhelming urge to put as much distance between himself and others as possible.
After a moment’s hesitation, he squeezed back.