She couldn’t get to the rope, the infected were scrambling to get to her, growling and grasping. If she went for the rope, they’d grab her. but they couldn’t leave without unmooring the boat. The boat rocked as an infected tried to jump on, lost his footing and fell into the sea. He sank like a rock.
Jon revved the engine, ready to take off like a rocket if she could just get to where that damned rope anchored the boat. But there was no way, the stanchion was now hidden in the boiling mass of the infected, the rope disappearing between the legs of a blood-covered man in a once-elegant suit, howling and snarling at her.
She was paralyzed, looked around for something, anything, that would allow her to cut the rope. It couldn’t be a knife because she couldn’t saw through the rope. It would take too long, they’d grab her. It had to be something like a hatchet…
The rope parted suddenly, as if an invisible hand had swung that hatchet, severing it in one blow. What happened? Then one monster’s head exploded, then another. She glanced back to see Jon aiming and shooting precisely with one hand, while starting to back the boat out of the tiny harbor.
A thud to her right and she screamed. An infected. A lithe young man, hands out in claws, inhuman sounds coming from his throat.
Jon blew the young man away, then another who’d jumped aboard. A stream of infected jumped on the other boat then tried to jump to theirs, clearly unable to judge distances. It was like a waterfall, a waterfall of humans pouring into the ocean. But another young man, an athlete by his build, made a spectacular leap, catching on to the gunwale, starting to haul himself in, screaming all the while.
One well-aimed bullet and the screaming stopped and the man fell back, sinking in a pool of red.
They backed away quickly, beginning the turnaround to head out to the open sea when Jon took careful aim at the boat next to them. “Cover your head!” he screamed and shot into the boat. Immediately it exploded, fuel spilling over the infected, lighting the dark afternoon sky with a nightmarish view of burning infected, those right behind the columns of burning living flesh pushing them into the water to get a chance at them, and catching fire themselves.
Then Jon got the boat turned around completely and throttled the engine wide open. The prow lifted, they skirted the tourist boardwalk behind them and then they headed out to the open sea.
Sophie sat on the deck, exhausted, trembling, and watched the burning creatures until Jon turned a corner around a pier and they disappeared from sight.
The screams could still be heard though, becoming fainter and fainter as they headed northwest.
When she felt her legs could carry her, Sophie went into the pilot’s cabin and watched Jon pilot the boat. His movements were fast, precise, the boat steady. He clearly knew what he was doing. It was as if he sensed her presence by a change in the air molecules. He turned, one hand on the wheel, one arm outstretched.
With a sob, Sophie stumbled to him, burying her face against his shoulder. He’d somehow had time to divest himself of the vaccine case and his backpack. They were stowed neatly in a corner.
Jon was headed for the Golden Gate Bridge and then the wide Pacific beyond it. To their left, the city burned. Columns of fire had merged and entire city blocks were aflame. Every once in a while a distant boom sounded.
A great city, brought to its knees.
Finally, finally, the huge empty horizon stretched in front of them. The ocean. Jon steered them north.
Neither spoke until the sounds of the dying city could no longer be heard.
“We made it,” Sophie whispered.
He kissed the top of her head, hugged her more tightly to him, steering one-handed.
“We made it.”
CHAPTERNINE
Jon casta worried glance at Sophie, huddled shivering in a corner. Her head was on her knees, hands tucked under her arms, in a vain attempt to hide from him the fact that they were trembling.
Hell. There was nothing to be ashamed of. They’d just come out of something worse than a firefight.
For all the tight situations he’d been in, outnumbered and outgunned, Jon had never faced a battle like that before. In every other firefight he’d been combating humans and he could understand even the worst scumbag. These infected—they had no sense of self-preservation. It was terrifying to see them throw themselves into the water, hungry to attack, and then sink to the bottom. To see them throwing themselves over the parapet to land with broken bones on the small pier had unnerved him because it went against the human grain. They couldn’t think, couldn’t reason so you couldn’t outwit them in any way. They were absolutely terrifying.
He was fucking spooked, too.
Sophie had been as brave as any warrior. She was untrained—a scientist for fuck’s sake—and yet she’d outshone many a fellow soldier, never losing her nerve under hair-raising circumstances.
They’d done it, but now Sophie needed a little care, which he was more than happy to provide. They’d lucked out with this boat. It was a working fishing boat but its owner had tricked it out with every modern enhancement. It had excellent radar so he had no fear of running into other boats and it had the latest type of autopilot. He could leave the helm and tend to Sophie, and know they wouldn’t be running aground and they wouldn’t be ramming another boat. The system was very sophisticated and would move around any obstacles.
He was going to travel up the coast until he was more or less at the same latitude as Mount Blue. It was going to be hard to make their way overland. The infected were everywhere even if not as concentrated as in San Francisco. They needed to find a vehicle and try to make their way on roads that were clogged with stalled cars.
On the way down, he’d found very few roads with clear stretches and without abandoned cars, so it would have to be a vehicle with off the road capabilities. God, he wished he had one of their hovercars, little miracle cars could be driven either in wheeled vehicle mode or hovercraft mode. But he didn’t.
He’d have to try to find an undamaged four wheel drive with a full tank of gas and/or a fully charged engine. Not easy, because there weren’t going to be functioning charging stations and there weren’t going to be gas stations anywhere on the route to Haven.
