CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

AS WE HEADED north, the wind rose. The mist began thinning out and the visibility improved, but the waters grew choppier, white streaking the brown surface as it crested and heaved. The narrowboat rose and fell; the deck swayed underfoot.

"Better get inside," Derek shouted over the gale. "Get down, hang on to summat."

I nodded and stepped to the door.

"Just one thing."

I looked back. "Yes?"

"Do us a favour? Just put any loose stuff away. There's a cupboard. It's just - some of it was the wife's. I'd miss it."

"Of course."

I went inside.

Marta huddled on the couch; she looked pale, scared and ill. I'd forgotten her. "Are you alright?"

"No!"

I ruffled her hair, grabbed the couch as the Rosalind lurched.

"It's alright. It's just a squall." I hoped that was the right word. I hoped I was right.

"It's not that."

"What, then?"

"I'm scared of him."

I looked back at the door. "I think he's OK, Marta. He's just a little - messed-up. We all are."

Her voice rose. "No. There's something wrong with him."

I held her shoulders. "Marta. We don't have anywhere else to go right now. So stay -"

"Stay calm! Stay calm!" She pulled free. "I know. I know." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "But something's wrong with him."

"OK." I nodded. Privately, I agreed, even though I wasn't sure why right then.

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't talk to me like I'm stupid."

"I'm not."

"I'm not stupid. I'm scared, that's all."

"Me too. You did well back there."

"I didn't."

"You were scared at first -"

"I still am."

"But you got yourself together. You watched my back, you kept your head. I'm proud of you."

She scowled, but I could tell she was pleased.

The boat lurched again. A china figure flew off a shelf and hit the carpet. Luckily it didn't break. I wasn't sure how Derek would react if it had. But why hadn't it broken before? Had he put everything away when the floods came? Or before?

There was something wrong there, niggling me. But there was no time now.

"Help me put this stuff away," I said. "Let's keep him happy."

 

 

WE PACKED AS much away as we could, then climbed onto the couch and grabbed hold.

The boat heaved and bucked, juddering each time it came down in the water; once we were nearly thrown clear across the room. I don't know how long this went on, but finally the storm eased. The boat bobbed and rocked gently in the water, but I could stand, although my legs shook.

Marta looked shakier still, and queasy. I guessed seasickness was kicking in. My stomach felt a little tender, but nothing bad. I guessed I had good sea legs. That was the English term, if I recalled.

"I think it's calmer now," I said.

She nodded weakly. "I hope so."

I parted the curtains. Outside, brown water slopped against a few protruding treetops, and a thin mist gathered. Without the wind, it would soon thicken again.

 

 

THERE WAS A cabin, with a double bunk. Apparently it had been his daughter's room.

"He said they used to go out on the canals at weekends," said Marta, pulling off her shoes and socks. "Him and his family. Sometimes a friend of his daughter's."

"Sounds nice."

"Yes." She slumped onto the lower bunk and pulled the covers over herself. "But I still don't trust him."

I went back up on deck. Derek glanced down at me. "Y'alright there, love?"

I nodded.

"How's the kid?"

"Seasick, I think."

"Ah. Poor love. I've some tablets for that, somewhere. Break 'em out later."

I stood next to him in silence. I wasn't that eager for conversation, and I doubt he was either. But I wanted to see where we were going as best I could. It gave me, at least, the illusion of control. "Where are we now?"

"Hard to tell at the minute. At a guess, I'd say somewhere between Bury and Rochdale. But I could be way off."

They were just names to me in any case. "How far along are we?"

"Along?"

"Towards where we want to go?"

He shrugged. "Not sure, love, to be honest. All I can think at the minute is keeping on northward. Like I said, further we get from towns and cities and the like, the safer we'll be. Best thing'd be a good stretch of land well above sea level, preferably in the middle of nowhere. But at the minute it's pot luck. Just got to keep going long as we can."

"And hope we sight land?"

"Pretty much."

I didn't ask what would happen if we didn't.

Something loomed ahead. It came out of the mist; a church steeple. Near the top, a woman was clinging to it. Her face was pale, eyes tight shut.

"Derek -"

He gripped my arm. "Shh, lass."

"What?"

Too late. The woman had heard me, or us. Or the chug of the engine. Whatever the cause, her eyes flicked open. They were sunken and ringed with darkness; we were close enough now that every detail of her face seemed to jump out. "Oh thank God... help me, please. Please!"

But Derek just gazed straight ahead.

"Please!"

"Derek, what are you doing? We can't just leave her."

He glared at me and spoke through his teeth, lips drawn back from them. "How much food do you think we have? How much bottled water? And extra weight means we'll use more fuel. How much of that d'you think we've got?"

He kept staring at me, without blinking, till I looked away. I could've asked why, in that case, he'd rescued Marta and I? But perhaps I didn't want to go down that road. He might start to regret his decision. Or I might find out why he'd really rescued us. I didn't believe it was simple compassion. My sense of something badly wrong with him had deepened.

I might be better off knowing the truth. But I didn't think Derek wanted to get into that, anymore than I did. I'd heard a phrase in a song once - 'comfort-lies'. It's not just men who have those, it's all of us. Or almost all. Perhaps people like me, or Marta, had none of those because we couldn't afford them. Or was that a comfort-lie in itself?

Whatever the case, there's nothing more dangerous than a man stripped of his comfort-lies. And I believed Derek had them, about what he'd done and why. As long as he had to keep believing he'd rescued us out of kindness, we had a degree of safety. But if I made him admit his real motives, that would be gone - and so far I didn't know what his real motives even were.

And there was something else.

Derek was right. There would be others like this woman, like us. People who'd climbed onto rooftops or church spires. People on hilltops or little knobs of ground just clear of the floodwaters. None of them safe for us to stay. But all of them begging us to take them on board. Derek's Ark.

That horrible jagged laughter bubbling up in me again; a scream broken up into a kind of manic stutter to stop me going mad. But if I started laughing now I'd never, never stop.

Yes, we could take this woman on board. But what about the next, and the next? There would always be good reason to take another on board, till the boat wallowed low from the weight... running more slowly from it too... using more fuel... the food rationed more and more... and the water too... until very, very soon there was none left at all...

So yes - Derek was right. But that didn't mean he was safe. And it didn't make the woman's screams, increasingly desperate and forlorn as we moved away from her, seeming to get more loud with the distance and not less, any easier to hear.

We heard them for quite a long time. I don't know if we just moved out of her range or if she gave up. I think the latter; for a while I was sure I could hear sobbing. But that could just have been my conscience.

 

 

FOR SOME TIME after that, thankfully, we didn't see anything. Just unbroken brown water. The mist was thin and distant, but the light was starting to dim. Visibility, though, was reasonable for us. Neither of us spoke.

I wondered how much food or fuel Derek had on the Rosalind. Probably a lot. He seemed prepared for a crisis. Or he'd always expected one. The guns, for instance. Why all these guns on a boat kept for weekend breaks? Yes, we were only alive because of them, but what did they show about Derek?

Still, I could hardly pick and choose. Derek might be paranoid, but so far that paranoia had kept me alive, in comparative safety, with food, water and some degree of protection. Better than the poor woman on the steeple had or was likely to. I would have to cope as best I could.

"You can go below if you like," Derek said after a while. "Getting nippy out."

"I'm OK."

He shrugged. "Whatever. I could murder a brew, though. Tea'd be good. If you wouldn't mind."

I made my way through the boat and ran the wood-burning stove. There was coffee as well as tea; I found I was cold as well, and made myself one. He only had tin mugs, and no tray. The heat seeped through the metal as I carried them through; I gritted my teeth against the pain.

"Ta lass."

I cradled my own in my bandaged hand; the gauze gave some insulation. "What time is it?"

"Getting on for four, me love. We'll need a place to moor before long. No point travelling by night. Could go straight past dry land. Or hit something."

I nodded. What if it gets dark and we can't find a place to moor? I didn't ask. There were too many questions like that, with no answer. Or no answer I wanted to hear.

The mist parted and I saw something dark. "Derek, look -"

"Aye, love, I see it."

The boat wasn't built for speed. It took time to reach the island.

Island. Before today it would have been a hill. Now it was a low hump of land, twenty metres square and maybe three, four metres above the surface at its highest point. Tiny, stick-like figures moved atop it.

At first I thought they were trying to hail us and my stomach clenched, imagining what would follow. The woman on the steeple all over again, only worse. But they weren't hailing us; I don't think they'd even seen us then. They were screaming. And minutes later, I saw exactly why.

Eight or nine men and women and two or three children were huddled together on the top. They were the only people on the island. But they were not alone.

The dead things ringed the shoreline, the water lapping around their ankles. Most looked newly dead. Some had pieces missing, bite wounds. One had a dangling arm that was mostly bare bones with a few chunks of meat still clinging to it. They just stood there, staring up at the humans. Eyes glowing. I flinched, and actually drew closer to Derek. I hate that feeling, of dependence on another. Especially for protection. I didn't need a man for that. The ones who'd claimed they were doing so - Papa aside - did anything but.

Derek lifted the edge of his sweater, and I saw the butt of a revolver, tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

I realised something; didn't know how I could've missed it. My gun - when he'd undressed me, Derek had taken it. There'd only been one bullet left, of course, but even that was better than none. The pistol he had wasn't mine, so where was it?

But the dead things didn't move. They gave no sign of having seen us. They just stood there, looking up at the tiny, frightened huddle above them.

Then one of the women on the island saw us and screamed, pointing. The next moment, they were all shouting.

"Fuck," Derek hissed. I didn't say it aloud, but I was thinking the same. I already knew we wouldn't - couldn't - help them. And I hated them for expecting us to. For shouting and pointing and drawing attention to us. For doing exactly what I would have. I hated them for wanting to live.

As the boat passed them, it seemed at first that the dead things hadn't noticed us. Too fixated on these survivors to notice. How long had they been there? Minutes? Hours? I remembered, at the brothel, the long pauses between attacks. As if they were advancing, taking a piece of territory, then consolidating, regrouping, planning the next move. They had plenty of time, after all. The water belonged to them, and there was so little land left. Just as they must outnumber the living.

But then one turned. Just one. It turned and stared, directly at us. Not the boat, but Derek and I.

No. Not at us.

At me.

I was sure of that. It stared straight at, into, me. I had no idea what was behind those eyes. But I knew what it would want to do.

The ring of the dead around the island began drawing in. With those jerky, tottering steps they advanced up the slopes. All of them, except one.

The one who'd been staring at me - it'd been a man once. It wore a smart suit, and I could see the glint of gold on its wrist. He turned all the way round to face us and walked forwards, into the water. Soon he was swimming, a sort of convulsive dog-paddle. The water splashed and churned white about him, but only his head stayed above the surface, his hair - doubtless once neatly coiffured - now a grotesque, straggly bird's-nest.

"Fuck," said Derek again.

The people on the hilltop were screaming as the dead closed in. There was nothing else they could do. Nothing anyone could do - not even us, if we'd been so inclined. They had nowhere to run and no weapons, except for some kind of wooden post one of the men was brandishing at them. Two of them seized one of the women and bore her down as she shrieked. Another woman ran in and tried to pull her free, but another of the dead things seized hold of her, biting into her shoulder. Two others lumbered in, one grabbing her arm, the other catching her round the legs, and she went down.

The two nearest the man with the pole slowed down, lifting their arms to grapple. He swung at them. One retreated; the other lunged forward. A second swing drove into its skull; even at that distance, over the screams, I heard the crunch of bone. The dead thing went down and didn't rise, but the other lunged forward, in one of those sudden, jerky bursts of speed. It seized the pole, and as they struggled for it, three others fell on the man.

I saw a child snatched up by a dead thing and held high. Other dead hands thrust skyward, groping for it. It shrieked and shrieked till the thing holding it thrust it groundwards and they descended.

The other humans went down very quickly after that. I say 'went down', not 'died'. Because they didn't die quickly. They kept on screaming for a long time.

They were still screaming when Derek drew the revolver from his belt and leant out over the railing. The head bobbing in the water, growing slowly closer to the boat, was no longer alone. Four, no, five others were now bobbing in the water behind it. As I watched, a sixth appeared.

"Take the tiller," Derek said. He aimed two-handed, steadying the revolver. There was a dull metallic click as he thumbed the hammer back. I took hold of the tiller, but I kept looking back.

For a long time he seemed to stand like that, unmoving, while the bobbing heads drew silently but relentlessly closer.

Then he fired. The gunshot was so sudden and loud I have to admit I almost wet myself. But didn't.

Water spewed up in a short-lived geyser, about half a metre from the dead thing's shoulder. Derek cocked the gun again. This time, when he fired, a shower of dark fragments flew up, back and out from the dead thing's head. It stopped moving forward and I saw its eyes flicker and fade, leaving it a dark featureless lump in the dying evening light, that slowly sank from view.

The other heads stopped advancing. They were treading water. They didn't follow us; one by one, as the boat moved away, they turned and swam back towards the island. I saw the first of them climbing out of the water onto dry land, dripping heavily, as the mist closed around them. Moving in to join the others at their feast.

A feast whose screams we still heard long after they were lost to sight.