“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m getting us out of here!”
Paul put the car in gear and hit the gas. Utilizing the space that he created around the sedan, he turned the car toward the bridge railing. Many undead flocked to the moving car; fifty of them surrounded it as Paul drove straight into the guardrail. “Brace yourself!” he shouted. The car jumped the curb of the walkway and hit the rail, buckling the grill and hood, but the concrete and steel of the rail held.
“We’re going to die!” Katie cried.
“No we’re not!” Paul answered as he put the car in reverse.
The tires burned, sending the car back. It crashed into a car in the opposing lane of traffic, and the t-boned car was pushed back by the impact. Paul put the car in drive. By now, a hundred ravenous ghouls were on top of the car, practically engulfing it in dead flesh. The child in Katie’s arms cried at the top of her lungs in horror of the monsters that were all around her, instead of being under her bed. This was a living nightmare. Paul floored it. “Get ready!” he shouted.
The large sedan sped at the guardrail with dozens of the dead things holding on as others were thrown off and dragged. The heavy vehicle collided into the barrier and this time it cracked into sections, yet didn’t break, stopping the car cold. Paul cursed in frustration and backed up again, the living dead stuck to the car as they tried to bang their way through the windows. The windows were giving way from the pressure, but hadn’t cracked, yet. Katie was scared beyond comprehension as she tried to comfort the little girl and shield her eyes from the terror.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s all right…I’m here, close your eyes.” she said with trembling, tear-soaked lips.
Paul ran many of the undead monsters over as he backed up and then rammed the car at the back, crushing a few corpses in a sandwich. The back window of the sedan cracked from all the decaying hands that pounded on it. “All or nothing!” Paul said as he put the car in drive, the gears grinding from strain. “We’re gonna make it!” he shouted. He floored the accelerator and the car jerked forward against the weight of the undead, throwing many off, but dragging the majority with it. The BMW hit the guardrail and broke it apart in a cloud of concrete dust and debris. The dead on the car’s hood were launched into the waters below. Paul and Katie screamed, as they were about to go over the edge—the car stopped.
To their horror, they were caught halfway over the jagged concrete and steel edge. “No! No! God, no! No!” Paul shouted as he floored the gas pedal with no effect. The sedan teetered forward and back like a seesaw, the car’s heavy engine bringing it down toward the drop-off and the water fifty feet below, chunks of fallen concrete disappearing in white splashes. As they leaned forward to fall, the weight of the numerous dead clinging the back of the car brought the rear-end down, the spinning back tires burned the concrete as they made contact, only to be lifted from the counter weight of the front of the car. “Oh my God, we’re stuck!” Katie said in a panic.
The dead were all over the rear of the car, their blood and puss covered faces, smeared all over the glass as they tried to break in, cleaving their hands at the windows, strike after strike. The rear windscreen fractured into a web pattern. Paul continued to floor the gas pedal and the engine whined loudly. “Come on, damnit!” he yelled. Part of the back window tore open and a decayed arm pushed its way in.
“Paul!” Katie screamed at the sight of the arm that was three feet from her.
The baby wailed at the sight of the dead thing pushing its way through the rear glass like the birth of a demon, and her swelling tears distorted her wide, terror-filled eyes.
Paul looked at the several stenches that were at his door window and had a desperate idea—he began pounding his hands on the front glass, trying to lure the dead onto the hood. They didn’t move so he pressed his face on the door glass to agitate them and slid from the door toward the front windscreen. “Over here, you dead bastards!” he shouted at them.
One followed his face, jumped on the hood, and began to bang on the windscreen. “That’s it, you daft piece of shit!” Another climbed on the hood.
Paul saw the head of the dead thing as it pushed through the rear window. The safety coating on the glass made it difficult to get through and the jagged glass tore its face apart like razor blades—but it kept coming. “Hey! I’m over here!” Paul shouted as he pressed his face on the front glass to lure more. The car was balanced evenly; he needed more of them on the hood. A third and fourth corpse clawed on to the hood and the car slowly drifted down, inch by inch. Paul looked back—the thing got its shoulders through the glass, then its arms—it reached out for them and its infected fingertips were within a foot of touching their heads. Katie leaned forward to be away from it.
“RIGHT HERRRE!” Paul screamed and banged on the windscreen.
He took the gun and fired two shots through the glass, that attracted more of them to the hood and the car began to go over. “Hold on!”
As the sedan began to fall over the edge, Paul turned around with the gun…
The beast was almost through the back window, up to its chest, ferociously trying to reach them…
Paul took aim, but everything turned topsy-turvy as the car flipped over…
Everything went slow in Paul’s mind; loose items in the car fell past him at a snail’s pace in gravity’s embrace.
As he went upside-down, he held his aim true…
The creature’s saucer eyes of madness were aimed at them and its jagged fingernails reached out as daggers of a dark lord.
The dead on the rear of the car were thrown into the air and fell toward the water as the sedan fell off.
A gunshot cracked in the car…
The sedan tumbled twice before it splashed into the river.
It landed bottom-up and, when the white water cleared, it had floated down river and was sinking into the darkness of the cold, black waters.
A second muffled gunshot discharged in the car…
Air bubbles broke the surface here and there, but there were no other signs of life…
Katie burst the surface. She gasped for air, seizing life by filling her lungs, kicking and paddling to keep afloat. She was alone. “Paul!” she yelled. She spun around looking for him or the child. “Paul, where are you? Oh God, the baby, where’s the baby?”
Paul broke the surface a distance from her; he took in a deep breath and shook the water from his eyes. “Katie!”
“Paul! The baby, I lost my grip on her, I can’t find her!”
Just then, the child surfaced a ways from them. She was tiny but knew how to swim naturally. Paul and Katie swam over to her, and he got to her first. The little girl was relieved to see Paul and threw her arms around his neck. Katie reached them and they huddled together in the middle of the river. They saw the dead everywhere. Car crashes were heard near and far, along with screams of the dying and the howls of the dead killers. London was falling down, falling down all around them.
“What are we gonna do?” Katie asked, her lips shivering from the cold water.
“Give me a minute to think,” Paul said. He had no idea what to do.
They could easily swim to either side of the river and get out, but they would be attacked the moment they left the water. So they waited. Slowly drifting with the current, knowing they couldn’t stay in for much longer, not with the child. The cold would be their undoing, that or exhaustion, and they would drown.
“Look!” Katie pointed.
Paul saw a passenger ferry—the boat was at full speed and heading straight for them. They paddled out of the way. “Hey!” Paul shouted. “Over here!” he waved his arms.
“Please!” Katie yelled.
The boat kept going at full steam.
“They don’t see us!” Katie said.
“Here!” Paul screamed. “We’re here!” he waved his arms frantically.
The people onboard saw them and slowed down the boat. The ferry came along side them.
“Thank you!” Katie said to Heaven, “Thank you!”
The boat crew cast a line out to them, Paul caught the rope, and Katie clung to him with the child as they pulled them in. They bumped into the side of the boat and were thrilled to touch something solid, but the men didn’t pull them up right away. They held them at bay, dragging them along. “Hey, can you help us up?” Paul said.
“Please, we have a baby!” Katie told them.
An older man with a gray beard and a captain’s hat leaned over to look. “Have any of you been bitten?” he said to them in a solid, rough seaman’s voice.
“No!” Paul said as water splashed his face off the boat’s hull.
“Are you sure?” the captain asked.
“Yes!” Katie pleaded. “We have a child, please help us!”
The captain nodded to his crew and the men pulled them up.
The three of them splashed on the deck, waterlogged and exhausted, but they were given no rest. “Get up,” the captain ordered.
As they slowly pulled themselves up, they noticed the captain and his men had surrounded them in a defensive posture; these people had saved them, but were ready to end them as well. “Do you have any weapons?” the captain asked.
“I had a pistol,” Paul answered.
“Where is it now?” the captain inquired.
“Lost it in the river.”
“Are you sure?” the captain was suspicious. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, son?”
“We don’t have any weapons, I assure you,” Katie told him.
One of the captain’s men moved toward Paul to check his pockets. “Stay away from him!” the captain said harshly and the man moved away. “Take off your shirt and your pants,” the captain said.
“We’re not infected,” Paul told him.
The captain opened his jacket to reveal a handgun tucked in his waistband. “Just do it, lad.”
Paul undressed.
“You as well, Miss, I’m afraid,” the captain told Katie. “I do apologize for this, but it’s a necessity.”
“I understand,” she answered.
She put the child down, who clung to her thigh, and removed her clothes.
Paul and Katie were shivering in their underwear. The captain saw no bite wounds on Paul, he was bruised all over his body, but there were no open wounds. Except for the gash on his forehead from the plane crash. Katie’s skin was unblemished, just some scraped knees and bruises, but she was fine.
“You can redress,” the captain said. “What about the child?”
Katie lifted the child’s pajama top to reveal her untouched perfect skin, and then pulled down her bottom part. Besides a soaked diaper, the child was free of any wounds.
“Welcome aboard,” said the captain.
“Thank you,” Paul answered.
“We’re in your debt,” Katie said.
“Think nothing of it,” the captain told them. “It was the Christian thing to do.”
Paul and Katie gazed in the passenger area and saw twenty or so people—a few were paying passengers on the tour before the outbreak began, others were sitting in their soaked clothes after being fished out of the river by the captain and his men—a wayward group of living flotsam and jetsam that were lucky enough to wash ashore on this boat.
“Where we headed, Captain?” Paul inquired.
“We’re gonna make a go for the Shetland Islands, if we can. Anywhere away from London.”
“What about food and supplies?” Paul asked.
“We’ll make stops along the coast and collect what we can.”
“Thanks, again, Captain, for picking us up.”
“You’re welcome,” the captain answered and went to the wheelhouse.
Katie had the child in her arms at the back of the boat. She watched London spiral into chaos in their wake. Paul stood beside her and put his arm around her. He looked down at the churning water the boat propellers produced and the liquid patterns gave him peace for a moment—an explosion erupted a couple miles back—it was too far away to see the cause, but the fireball rolling into the sky shrouded in black smoke brought Paul back to reality. He looked at Katie, the reason he came back. She was tired, with no make-up, her hair in disheveled clumps, but she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yes. I’ll be completely black and blue in the morning, but I’m fine.”
Paul placed his hand on her stomach. “Is everything okay?”
She smiled, “Yes, the baby’s fine, we’re okay.”
Paul was relieved and he gently kissed her on the forehead as the little girl spied them in curiosity.
Katie leaned her head on his shoulder and they witnessed their past drift away.
The sun was setting and they had no idea if it would rise on the morrow, but they did know one thing in this madness that almost took their lives…
They were together.
• • •
The captain’s quarters were well appointed, considering this was a passenger ferry they were aboard. He was gracious enough to let Paul and Katie rest in his room, along with their newly adopted Indian girl, who was sound asleep at the foot of the bed. Hopefully, the child was out of the horrors of their reality and in the cradle of sweet dreams, a place where all innocent children should be.
The ferry swayed back and forth gently. Katie was lying in the center of the bed and Paul was lying in between her legs, resting his head on her belly, he never felt safer or more at peace than he did now. The curve of the boat’s motion increased. Through a portal in the hull, he could see they had left the river Thames for open sea, and the small ship was at the mercy of Poseidon. Through the intermittent spray of seawater across his view, Paul could see land. The infection had spread beyond London as other cities were in burning chaos.