Year of the Zombie
Author: Rich Hawkins; Iain Rob Wright; Mark Tufo
Date: 2018-02-02 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies
Description: LONG LIVE THE DEAD! Throughout 2016 - the YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE - cult apocalyptic publisher INFECTED BOOKS released an original zombie-themed novella every month. Featuring a mix of readers' favourite authors and new voices, YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE resulted in a collection of stories like no other.From Somalia to WalesFrom cruising the ocean to hiding in bunkersFrom bored kids to ferocious warriorsFrom hunters to the huntedFrom the beginning of the apocalypse to the post-apocalypse, to the post-post-apocalypse...In print for the first time, and featuring stories by: David Moody (Autumn, Hater), Adam
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing

THE YACHT

by Iain Rob Wright

Copyright © Iain Rob Wright 2016

All rights reserved

The right of Iain Rob Wright to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters,
organisations and events portrayed in this novel are
either products of the authors’ imaginations
or are used fictitiously.

First published in 2016 by Infected Books

www.infectedbooks.co.uk

@infectedbks

Cover design by David Naughton-Shires
www.theimagedesigns.com

Iain Rob Wright’s website
www.facebook.com/authoriainrobwright

@iainrobwright

TABLE OF CONTENTS

YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

THE YACHT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY IAIN ROB WRIGHT

ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

ALSO FROM INFECTED BOOKS

MONTH THREE

THE YACHT

CHAPTER ONE~

The sun licked hungrily at the back of Emily’s neck, drawing beads of sweat like a thousand invisible syringes. When she rubbed her hand there she felt hot pinpricks and realized she’d sunburned. No surprise, really. Sailing the Costa de Morisco in July was a recipe for peeling skin and sweaty armpits – but stay in the oven long enough and you’d eventually be a crisp, golden bun. The real joy of tanning on the sundeck of your own private yacht was that you didn’t have to rub elbows with an obese family from Croydon like you would on a typical Spanish beach. The days of package holidays and all-inclusive booze were behind her. Only the finest plonk would do nowadays for Emily Tyler.

She’d struck fried gold when she’d met – and married – her husband, Ross Tyler. The nature of his business – farming equipment – was unsexy, certainly, but the profits were a massive turn on. During their first year of courting, Ross had taken her all over the world, driven her around in his Maserati, and allowed her to taste lobster for the very first time (she hadn’t cared for it, but had pretended otherwise). For a butcher’s daughter from Redcar, it was a massive step up in the world, and she had fallen into the role of middle-class girlfriend so comfortably that she hadn’t hesitated in accepting Ross’s marriage proposal when it had come. In the three years they’d been wed, she’d wanted for nothing, which was why the yacht she currently lazed on bore her name. The EMILY-DEVINE.

She glanced up at the sky, watching the clouds drift along gently like fluffy sheep in a line, and wondering how she had got there. More importantly: what did the future hold? Right now she had no clue.

Boredom had been a surprise to Emily. She’d spent so much of her youth – her student days right through to the moment she married Ross – dreaming of success and fortune, that when she finally got it, she was left feeling… unfulfilled. Her friends no longer held anything in common (most of them now hated her), and Ross worked often. It was lonely, and there was no longer anything to strive for. If she wanted a new necklace, she bought it. New car, bought it. New anything? Bought it.

Money removed the yearning from life.

Ross wasn’t all he’d cracked up to be either. Emily stared at him now while he crouched on the 100ft Sunseeker’s rear deck, next to the anchor recall and fishing perch. Emily was up top on the sun deck, struggling to relax – although what she was really doing was making a point. She and Ross had kept their space for the last twenty-four hours after what had occurred yesterday afternoon. He had tried to hurt her, but had been the one who ended up suffering.

Her throat still throbbed where his thumbs had dug in.

The man she’d married had always been forceful – able to intimidate others with the mere strength of his confidence. Whenever they dined out (always at the finest restaurants), the waiters would hurry around anxiously despite Ross never being anything other than polite. People instinctively feared upsetting her husband.

Emily had feared it too.

She had never antagonised him during their first year of marriage, and very rarely in the second, but during this last year she’d finally begun to dig her heels in regarding certain things. Working hours – for one. Ross would often leave as early as 6AM and not return until midnight, with barely a text message in between. An affair was possible – it always was with men – but even if it was just honest hard work, Emily had no intention of being wed to a ghost. She needed to see her husband. And she bloody well told him so. The argument last month ended with her threatening divorce and vowing to take half his money. If she saw nothing of him anyway, what would be the difference? She had access to his money already, so just hand it over and part ways. It had been a bluff, of course, and not something she was proud of – but it had worked.

Yet Ross had seemed resentful during their voyage to Portugal’s Silver Coast. He’d explained it away as a headache at first, but that had not kept him off his phone, trying to conduct business back home. When he’d lost signal sixty-miles off France’s West Coast, he’d become downright sulky. Didn’t he enjoy spending time with her? What was the point of having so much money if you couldn’t drag yourself away long enough to enjoy it?

She’d spent most of last night alone and in tears – then she had passed out. The shock of what had happened, mixed with too much booze, had left her comatose for several hours. If only she had dealt with the situation sooner.

It had all happened because she’d taken a stupid look at his phone.

God, she’d been angry.

So angry that, yesterday afternoon, she’d confronted him. ‘What did I say I would do if I ever caught you cheating on me?’ she demanded. ‘I said I’d cut your goddamn balls off!’

He didn’t bother trying to deny it. Instead, he shocked her by flying off the handle and attempting to strangle her right there on the sun deck. No words, no emotion, just rage. Like she was the one who had done something wrong! How dare she check his phone! How dare she be upset by his cheating! Arsehole.

If she hadn’t snooped, maybe he wouldn’t have snapped like a lunatic, but what else had she been supposed to do? Surviving her husband’s savage attack had been a mere stroke of luck. If things had gone even slightly differently…

Ross still crouched on the rear deck. Emily didn’t know what to do. How could she remedy the situation? How did you go about talking to your husband about the fact he attacked you? Or that you passed out and left him for dead?

With a sigh, Emily pulled her feet off the sun lounger, leant over the railing, and took a long look at the man she’d married. Ross’s sleek torso glistened with salt water. From her vantage point, he looked every part the millionaire dreamboat on the cover of a romance novel, just not quite as healthy as normal. His skin seemed just a little less sun kissed and a little more sallow. She should never have left him on the rear deck all night. He would never forgive her.

Their marriage was over.

He glared up at her with hungry eyes. Snarled.

Fuck him! Least he’s not dead. I would be if I hadn’t fought back. I don’t owe him anything.

Emily got up, taking the bottle of half-finished Prosecco with her. She took the ladder down to the rear deck and approached her husband cautiously.

The moment she was near, he hissed at her like an animal.

‘Oh, calm down, you arsehole,’ Emily told him ‘It’s me who should be pissed off. I’ve come to see if you’re okay. I didn’t mean to leave you all night. I… I drank a bit too much too quickly, but can you blame me? My nerves were shot.’

Ross was silent, but kept his eyes on her like a cat watching a mouse. His sclera had reddened, the spongy white flesh now criss-crossed with burst blood vessels, and his nose still dripped blood from where she’d struck him in the face with the granite lamp.

After having somehow slipped free of his attempt to strangle her last night, Emily grabbed the closest thing to hand, which had been the heavy lamp. The blow was hard enough to hear Ross’s face crack, and it had sent him staggering backwards out of the lounge cabin and right over the safety rail. He hit the boards of the rear deck below with a sickening clunk!

Foolishly, she had run down to help him.

Despite everything, Emily still loved Ross – would have likely married him with or without money. She liked the way he held her in his powerful arms at night, or could educate her on any given subject if she asked a question. He was a man of knowledge and action, and she felt safe and confident by his side. The selfish side of him had not been apparent at first, but it had never been enough to stop her loving him.

Now things were a mess.

Waking up this morning, with a skull-thudding hangover and a feeling of doom in her guts, she’d expected to find Ross dead. He’d been badly hurt by what had happened shortly after being hit with the lamp, and she should have helped him right away, but she had been so mad… and so drunk. So when she had peeked out of the lounge window down at the rear deck, she was relieved to see Ross alive – and still visibly pissed off. He had immediately reached out an arm to her and growled. His injuries weren’t all that bad if he could still think about hurting her. Bastard.

So she had left the son-of-a-bitch to suffer a little more.

As she looked at him now though, she regretted the decision.

Up close, she noticed blood crusting his groin, and other foul substances leaking down the inside of his thighs. He looked like a monster, and the hatred in his eyes made it clear he would act like one if released.

Why did he still want to hurt her?

I really shouldn’t have left him overnight, she thought to herself.

CHAPTER TWO

Midday was too hot to stay up on the sun deck, so Emily moved into the lounge while she tried to keep from panicking. There she continued to drink Prosecco and ruminate. It was crazy that she hadn’t already got Ross help, first passing out drunk after burying her head in the sand, then leaving him to fester even longer out of malice.

She had to make a plan.

Lifting her bum from the sofa, Emily again peeked down at the rear deck. Ross glared right back at her.

Oh god, this is such a mess.

The Prosecco bottle on the table was empty, but she didn’t want any more alcohol. She’d begun to feel sick, and the room was spinning. If she had any chance of figuring things out, she needed to clean up and face things rationally. Problem was, the thought of facing things sober was frightening. Her husband was possibly dying, and she was drifting somewhere off the Spanish Coast without a clue what to do. Alone and far from home.

Ross hunched over the spot where their fight had ended yesterday afternoon.

When she had hurried down the ladder to help Ross after his fall from the upper deck, he’d leapt straight back up and resumed trying to throttle her. In their struggle, they tumbled backwards and collided with the anchor return port. The back of Ross’s head thumped against the steel lever hard enough to knock most men out, but he didn’t so much as flinch.

The steel chain started ravelling, leaping up out of the water.

Ross grabbed Emily’s head with both hands. He was strong – much stronger than her – and she was completely powerless as his grinding teeth inched closer and closer to her cheek. He was trying to bite her. Blood spilled from his nose and splashed into his own mouth like a cave at the bottom of a waterfall. He was going to bite her nose right off her face – revenge for breaking his with the lamp.

He was insane.

Emily had closed her eyes and screamed, seeing stars as her husband’s thumbs pressed into her temples like tightening screws.

She begged.

The anchor’s chain continued leaping up out of the water. The noise the rotor made was loud enough to drown out her screams. Ross’s skull still pressed down on the lever.

Clunk clunk clunk, it had gone. Clunk clunk clunk.

Emily could still hear the sound now, as she headed out of the lounge, deciding that she would sober up quicker in the fresh air. Now, past six o’clock, the sun was gentler and easier to bear. Her sunburned neck and shoulders still stung as the salty spray settled on them, but the pain faded. She went to the railing and leant over. At first her eyes saw fields of blue all around, holding the ship in place, but then she spotted her husband.

‘Ross, honey, can you speak?’

He grunted.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe this has happened. I didn’t realise you were so badly hurt.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. She could barely look at the bloody, shit-stained mess that was now her husband. ‘Will you please just try to say something to me?’

He grunted again.

Wiping tears from her face, Emily climbed down to the rear deck and stood in front of Ross. He swiped out at her angrily, only narrowly missing her face. The stench from his fingertips wafted up her nose and turned her stomach.

Furious, she took a step back and pointed a finger. ‘You caused this, Ross. You cheated on me, and then tried to hurt me when I found out about it. I don’t understand why you’re acting this way. I haven’t done anything wrong. All I wanted was to spend some time with you. I love you, goddamnit.’

Ross tilted his head, ground his teeth. A bloody slit ran through his lower lip and his chin was caked with gore. He must be in agony.

What the hell was Emily doing? He needed her. Yes, he had cheated – a lot by the look of his text messaging history – but he didn’t deserve this. He must be in so much pain, probably delirious. He was only swiping out at her because he didn’t know what was happening. All he knew was pain. His guts hung out and now he was covered in his own shit, yet he was still trying to pull himself free and stand up. Maybe there was still time to help him. If only she had called the moment it had happened, or at least first thing in the morning when she awoke from her coma.

If only they hadn’t fought. If only things had gone differently.

When the anchor had leapt free of the water… Ross’s entire body had lurched sideways… His hands had let go of her head, and suddenly she was free.

Panting and wheezing, Emily had staggered backwards, crashing into the side rail and bruising her hip. She put out an arm, ready to fend off another attack, but Ross didn’t come after her this time. He twisted side-to-side, tugging on something like a dog with a bone.

Blood soaked his swim shorts.

The anchor had impaled Ross through the hip, tethering him in place against the recall machine A couple of inches to the left and it would have missed him completely but, as it had happened, it pierced through a sizeable chunk of flesh and hooked him like a fish. Emily went to help him, but he reached for her throat again. Even in shock, Ross still wanted her dead.

So she had left the fucker to suffer.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. First, she had vomited over the side rail (blood always made her gag), then she had gone into the lounge cabin and swigged from a bottle of Remy Martin Ross kept in the sideboard. She had cried for a while, letting her emotions flow out of her, then the alcohol fuzzed her mind sufficiently that time passed by without her realizing it. She remembered trying to go back out and see her husband one last time, and he once again reached out to attack her, even as the anchor yanked his flesh and tore his wound wider.

What would Ross do if he managed to get free? He was acting possessed – an enraged monster from her nightmares. She rushed into the pilothouse to call for help, but didn’t know what she was doing with the radio. She twiddled knobs and pressed buttons, but all she got was jumbled voices. Was there an emergency number she was supposed to tune to – a Coast Guard channel or the Navy? Then her mind turned to how suspicious things would look. Would the authorities believe her story? If Ross were still angry, would he say she was the cause of his injuries? Would he use all of his money and clout to bury her? He already knew his cheating was exposed. Maybe he would cut his losses and use the situation to skip the costly divorce by sending her to prison.

He could tell them she had lost control again. Like before.

Anxious and unsure of what to do, Emily had hit the bottle again, this time a little too hard. She didn’t even remember falling asleep.

Morning came, but she still didn’t know what to do. For the first few minutes it had all seemed like a dream. But it wasn’t.

Twelve hours later, the dream had become a nightmare.

‘Hold on, honey,’ Emily said now as she peered at the sickening wound slashing her husband’s middle. ‘I’m going to call help. I’m so sorry, Ross.’

Full of guilt at having delayed, Emily hurried up the ladder and went around the edge of the cabin to the pilothouse. The sleek black dashboard was dotted with soft blue lights. She sat down directly in front of the radio to the left of the steering column and thumbed buttons and twiddled the dials. This time she almost immediately found a voice. The disenchanted mumble sounded like a ghost coming out of the yacht’s innards, yet she yelled back at it urgently. When nothing happened, she realized she had forgotten to grab the extendable microphone. She pulled it to her mouth and shouted again. ‘Help me, help me. Mayday. SOS. Help!’

The other voice stopped mumbling and quieted for a moment. Then it spoke back in a confused tone. Emily knew the voice was talking to her, but she also realized, with dismay, that the speaker was Spanish.

‘I don’t speak Spanish. English! Please, I need someone who speaks English.’

The voice mumbled again, making the radio unit vibrate with the bass of the deep voice – but it was useless. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, or if he could understand her. She stated her situation, hoping it would be recorded or in some way understood at the other end. Then she twiddled the dial to search for somebody else. Could there be anybody English she could find so close to Spain? Didn’t many Spaniards speak English as a second language? How far did the radio reach? Could she get a hold of Portsmouth or some boats in the Channel? She had to try.

She kept shouting into the radio, hoping that somewhere in the static somebody would hear her. ‘My husband needs help. Please. Help. My husband needs medical attention.’

‘Hello?’

Emily shot back in her seat, shocked by the voice even though she had been searching desperately for it. The word had been unmistakable. Hello.

‘Yes, hello,’ she shouted. ‘I need help. Can you help me?’

‘That depends,’ came the voice. ‘Where are you and what’s your situation?’

‘I-I have no idea where I am – somewhere off the north coast of Spain in a yacht. He’s been injured. My husband needs help. Can you help?’

‘All right,’ came the soothing voice. ‘Try to stay calm. What is your position?’

‘I already said I don’t know.’

‘You should have a GPS unit. Do you see one?’

She looked around the cramped compartment. ‘You mean the little television screen? It has three circles on it and a little green boat in the middle.’

‘That’s the one, sweetheart. Now, at the top of the screen, are there any numbers? Those are your coordinates.’

‘Yes, yes, I see them!’ She read the numbers out eagerly.

‘Got it,’ came the man. ‘Bear with me, sweetheart.’

There was a tense silence, and for a terrifying second, Emily thought he’d gone. But he hadn’t. ‘My name is Alex, and I’m only forty minutes away. I’ll call through to the Spanish Coast Guard in the meantime. What exactly has happened?’

Emily shook her head. This was where it all began, the explanations and recounting of what had happened. She really hoped Ross survived – of course she did, he was her husband – but mostly so that he could tell them she had not been responsible for what had happened.

‘My husband is dying,’ she said, deciding to go with the truth. ‘The anchor came up out of the water and impaled him. It’s bad.’

‘Bloody hell. I’ll be there as quick as I can, sweetheart. Just stay calm.’

‘That ship has sailed,’ she moaned, but her rescuer had already gone.

CHAPTER THREE

All Emily had to do was sit tight. Help was on the way, and Ross was still alive (she could hear him shuffling around on the rear deck). That was good. If he were still alive when help arrived, they would see she was trying to help him. Perhaps they could save him. Maybe his injuries weren’t as bad as they looked.

She just hoped he told them the truth about what happened.

Would Ross admit his wife had found out he was a cheat, and that he had attacked her when she’d confronted him? He was a respected man, and his reputation was important to him – maybe more important than she was. She had broken his nose in the struggle, yes, but would they think she had impaled him, too?

This was stupid, she thought to herself. Ross was her husband. They loved each other. She never wanted to hurt him. Even if he was getting dirty text messages off a bunch of slags – but maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe it had never gone further than text.

Yeah, right!

She needed to be with him, so Emily went down to the rear deck and sat down along the edge. Ross reached out to her as soon as he saw her, grasping hungrily at the air. He looked just like a zombie, and the more she examined him, the more her ghoulish interpretation seemed correct. Beneath the caked, black blood, his face had gone an unhealthy grey. His teeth were splintered from grinding together so much, and his lower jaw hung limply. The coil of his intestine had slipped further out of his gut and was now hung like a glistening skipping rope. She had no medical experience, having only ever worked in an office before meeting Ross, but she had seen in the movies that stomach wounds took a long time to kill you – yet she had never got the impression that somebody could hang on this long with their insides on the outside.

‘Ross,’ she said. ‘Help is on the way, okay? I managed to call somebody.’

Only a snarl.

‘Do you know what’s happening? Do you remember fighting with me and falling on top of the anchor return? It was an accident.’

Ross struggled towards her, yanking the anchor in his guts and dragging it several inches to the side. Congealed flesh, like bloody scrambled eggs, slopped out onto the deck. Ross’s bare feet paddled in it.

‘Ross, stop! Stay still or you’re going to…’

It became too obvious to deny it anymore. Her husband should be dead. His torso was ripped almost in two and his blood had turned to porridge in his veins.

His bloodshot eyes did not blink.

This was all too unreal.

‘Am I the one who’s dead?’ she asked him. ‘Did you strangle me to death and this is… Hell, I suppose, although I don’t know what I would have done to deserve it. I’ve been a good wife, haven’t I? An okay person?’

Ross managed to move a couple more inches across the deck towards her. The anchor tore a furrow beneath his bulging ribcage.

‘I was such a mess when we met,’ she said, talking as an alternative to panicking. ‘The bar you picked me up in… I was there most nights. I pretended like I’d been stood up, but really I was hanging around trying to meet rich men. Huh, not sure what that makes me. Maybe you knew that about me, but I fell in love with you anyway. The money never mattered in the end – not truly. Why has this happened, Ross? I don’t understand. After what my first-husband did…’

Ross thrashed and snarled. The anchor tore around his body more, splitting his flesh apart like a razorblade through dough.

‘Ross, stop!’

Then he was free.

Emily squealed as her husband lunged at her and their bodies collided. Wet fluids and flaking scabs filled the air in a choking cloud. Ross grabbed her neck and tried to bite her.

‘Ross, get off me!’

His teeth chattered together inches from her nose, hot, rancid breath gusting through the gaps between them. His weight was too much to bear. Emily fell backwards. Her arms were busy keeping Ross from biting her face. She had no way to protect the back of her skull from hitting the deck.

Clunk!

She saw stars.

Ross bore down on her.

She tried to put her hands up to protect herself, but she was dizzy. Her hands grasped clumsily. The fight was over.

‘Please, Ross...’

Ross only snarled in reply. Opened his mouth wide.

Emily closed her eyes.

There was an almighty whump!

She opened her eyes again to see Ross cartwheel away from her, a long shaft of polished wood lifting him off his feet and over the deck. The entire yacht rocked as another vessel collided with it, the boom of which had swept over the rear deck and knocked Ross into the air. The pilot of a small sailing boat began hastily throwing out ropes and securing them to hooks.

As soon as the two vessels were tethered, the short man did a running hop onto the EMILY-DEVINE. Emily scrambled to her feet and took the stranger’s hand. He was an older man with unkempt grey hair spilling out over his ears.

‘Looks like I got here just in time,’ he said in a deep voice.

Recognition made Emily’s eyes wide. ‘You’re the man I spoke to on the radio?’

‘Yes! I’m Alex. Your husband, what’s wrong with him? Why were you fighting with him?’

‘He’s hurt. I think h-he’s dead.’

Alex looked at her like she had accused him of something. ‘Hitting him with the boom was the only thing I could think to do, but I don’t think it killed him.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I mean before you came. I think he’s a monster.’

Alex reached out and grabbed her bare shoulder. His touch stung her and she realized her sunburn had worsened. ‘You must be in shock,’ he said ‘The Spanish Coast Guard will be here soon. I called them.’

‘You saw my husband attacking me? You’ll tell them?’

‘Of course. We will get all of this sorted out. We should go and check on him though.’

A growl alerted them and they both turned to see Ross back up on his feet. His chest had caved on one side and a rib poked out like a porcupine’s quill.

Alex shouted. ‘Sir, I beg you to remain calm. Help is on the way.’

Ross ignored the request and sprinted across the deck, guts flapping like tassels on a dancer’s vest. This time, instead of trying to grab Emily, he went straight for Alex.

‘Ross, please, stop!’ she pleaded.

But the fight had already begun.

Alex didn’t panic. He threw a punch that connected with Ross’s unhinged lower jaw. It snapped his head back but didn’t stop him from advancing. He fell on top of the sailor and bit down on his neck with his ragged teeth.

Alex bellowed and tried to wriggle free. ‘Get him off me!’

Emily snapped out of her daze, and looked around for a way to help the man who had been trying to help her. There was nothing that wasn’t bolted down, so she leapt up the ladder and raced into the cabin. Inside she saw empty wine bottles and crystal flutes that had fallen to the boards and shattered. Anything bigger was part of the fixtures and bolted down.

Alex continued shouting from below, begging for help.

Ross’s snarls cut him off.

‘Damn it, damn it. Come on, Emily, think.’

She yanked up the cushions that topped the long sofa on the right of the cabin and unlatched the storage bin beneath. Inside, she found extra blankets and some board games, but then she spotted something else. A bright orange flare gun sat inside a box with a glass lid. She unlocked it and pulled the handgun out. Hurried back to the lower deck where Alex was now on one knee, fighting desperately to keep Ross’s teeth from taking another chunk out of him.

‘Alex, get down!’ Emily shouted, fumbling with the chubby orange pistol in her hand.

Alex glanced back at her. ‘What?’

‘I said, get down.’

He saw the flare gun in her hands and seemed to understand. He let go of Ross and threw himself down on the deck, leaving himself defenceless. Emily hoped it would be as easy as simply squeezing the trigger, but that didn’t stop her from yelping when the pistol bucked in her fist like a squirming child.

A fuzzy ball of light bloomed from the muzzle and zipped across the deck like a fairy. The fizzing projectile hit her husband in the throat, spinning him around and dropping him onto his hands and knees.

He leapt back up and came after her.

The flare continued to burn and crackle. The mottled flesh under Ross’s chin blackened and smoked. He didn’t care.

‘Please stop!’ Alex shouted from where he lay on the deck.

‘I told you,’ Emily said. ‘He’s dead. He’s a zombie.’

But then Ross did the unexpected and flopped forwards onto his face. There he lay, twitching spasmodically.

Alex clambered to his feet, rubbing his own neck as if the flare had hit him. ‘He is not a zombie. He’s just plain dead.’

Emily didn’t understand. After all of the injuries Ross had sustained, why had he finally stopped now? Had he been running on adrenaline, but that adrenaline had now run out? She edged towards her husband’s body, wary that he would leap up again and attack her, but his twitching ceased and he was completely still. Full of fear, yet fuelled by concern, she reached out and rolled him over – but while his body turned freely, his head remained face down.

There was a slick plop as his skull slipped free of his shoulders.

Emily covered her mouth.

The flare had burned through the already damaged flesh of Ross’s neck. The force of impact must have snapped his spine, yet not severed it completely until he’d hit the deck and jarred his skull.

Husband decapitated at her feet, Emily let out a wail that could not be stopped. Alex tried his best to console her, hugging her tightly, but it was clear that he too was horrified.

CHAPTER FOUR

Emily covered Ross with a blanket from the bedroom cabin and joined Alex in the pilothouse where he was chattering urgently into the radio. When he saw her enter, he placed the microphone down as if he’d been caught doing something indiscrete, then quickly leaned forward and switched the radio off. ‘The Coast Guard isn’t far away,’ he explained. ‘They should be here around dusk. I’ve told them we’ve had a fatality, but didn’t go into the details. I’m not really sure what the details are, to be honest.’

‘Me neither,’ Emily admitted with a sigh. She took the seat next to the man, moving Ross’s laptop out of the way before she almost sat on it. She’d asked him not to bring it along – no work, she had said – but it didn’t surprise her that he had snuck it along anyway. ‘I think maybe he was sick or something. He attacked me yesterday and this morning, like a maniac, and it’s not his style to lose his cool. He’s been complaining of headaches the last couple days and feeling under the weather. I think he was ill.’

Alex looked at her, examining her face. ‘He was in pretty bad shape when I got here. What happened to him? You said he got impaled by the anchor?’

She nodded. ‘Happened when he first attacked me. I broke his nose with a lamp, but everything else that happened was by accident. You have to believe me.’

‘I do. I…’ He stopped mid-sentence and grabbed his forehead. ‘Sorry, I have a sudden headache myself. Power of suggestion, huh?’

She looked at Alex and saw that his eyes were bleary and red. The bite mark on his shoulder was glistening beneath the edge of his t-shirt. ‘Thank you for saving me,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry you got hurt.’

‘It’s okay. I’m not sure your husband knew what he was doing. He seemed delirious. Good thing I got here when I did. I’m sorry for your loss, miss.’

‘Ross was a good man. Not always on the surface – he was so driven – but I loved him.’

Alex smiled, but said nothing.

With a sigh, Emily opened Ross’s laptop and switched it on. From hibernation, it came to life almost immediately. A photograph of her and Ross in Madrid popped filled the screen and she looked at it fondly. They had asked a waiter to take it while they stood in front of the Grande Basilica. They had only been married three months at that point and the smile on her face was genuine – she had been truly joyous that day – and many of the days since. Only lately had things begun to sour.

Ross’s emails popped up automatically on screen.

She was unsurprised to see messages from a list of paramours, but it still hurt seeing their explicit taunts. Even though Ross was dead, her stomach turned at the thought of him sleeping with another woman. Had he always been so obvious about it? She felt stupid for not learning of his infidelity sooner. The amount of opportunities she’d had to check his phone, his computer, so why hadn’t she done so until now?

He’d probably been laughing behind her back this whole time.

Emily ground her teeth.

Her first husband, James, she’d naively married at seventeen. He’d started hitting her soon afterwards, and had almost put her off men for good. After this, the task was nigh on complete. Ross had promised to never be anything like James, and in truth he hadn’t been, but it turned out that he was just as damaging in his own way. Now Emily had been married twice, and widowed twice. Both men had died shortly after attacking her.

Maybe she was cursed.

Or maybe it was justice.

‘Were you two married long?’ Alex asked. He was looking at her curiously, hands fidgeting in his lap.

‘Three years nearly,’ said Emily.

‘Kids?’

‘No, thank God. Having to explain something like this… I was pregnant once, but I lost the baby.’

Alex sighed. ‘That must have been very hard for you and Ross.’

She shook her head. ‘It was before Ross. I was married before, when I was a teenager. He used to hurt me. Pushed my down the stairs one time, when I was…’ She couldn’t complete the sentence.

Alex’s face screwed up in disgust. ‘When you were carrying! Jesus, I hope they locked the guy up for a thousand years.’

‘They didn’t have to,’ she said. ‘I covered it up, said I tripped. He was actually kind to me afterwards – for all of six months. The next time he went for me, it all came flooding back. I thought about my unborn baby and who he might have been. I lost control.’

‘You don’t have to talk about this,’ said Alex, shifting uncomfortably in the pilot’s seat.

‘No, it’s okay. It keeps my mind off panicking. My first husband was a jealous type – about the silliest little things. He needed help, really, but he always said he would overcome it on his own. Well, he didn’t. The last night he attacked me, I’d been out to dinner with my cousins. I made the mistake of getting stuck in traffic and getting home twenty minutes late. That was all it took for him to work himself up. He was waiting in the kitchen for me when I got home, like he was my father. At first I was afraid but, once he started hitting me, I just lost it. I grabbed a knife out of the block and buried it in his neck. When the police found me I was wandering the streets, almost catatonic. I spent eighteen months in a clinic. Took me a long time to get my life back on track after that, but when I met Ross it got a whole lot easier.’

‘You loved him?’

She nodded. ‘I did.’

‘Then I am doubly-sorry. If it is any comfort, you seem much stronger than the woman they sent to that clinic. You will get through this. Just tell them what happened and I am sure they will understand.’

‘Thank you. So what’s your story? Do you just go around the high seas rescuing people in need? Are you married?’

‘Me? No, no, I never married. The sea is my wife. Thirty years a carpenter, I retired four years ago to live on the Blessed Betty. I’m living my dream for whatever years I have left.’

She smiled. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I-’ He stopped speaking and winced. ‘Ouch! Another headache. I should really get this wound on my neck covered up. I shall pop back to my boat and get it seen to. Will you be okay?’

She nodded and waved a hand. ‘I’ll be fine. Will stay right here.’

Alex got up unsteadily and moved away from the controls. ‘I’ll be back soon. Just stay calm.’

Then he left.

Emily slid into the pilot’s seat and perched Ross’s laptop on top of the console. She took another few moments to enjoy the Madrid photograph, and then went to close it. As she reached out though, she spotted a file at the bottom left of the screen just above the taskbar. It was a video named: PRIVATE.

Was it a nudie flick from one of Ross’s paramours?

Porn?

She didn’t know why, but she found herself stroking the track pad and double-clicking the file to open it.

The video began to play. It was not what she expected.

CHAPTER FIVE

The video hadn’t been taken by a woman, but by a man. The narrator’s voice sounded familiar, and Emily thought it might be Tom Gladstone, Ross’s Director of Acquisitions – the guy who travelled around the world for her husband trying to find the best deals on tractors, ploughs, threshers etc. It looked like he had made some kind of video report for Ross and emailed it over.

The video opened on the interior of some kind of far eastern factory. White-coated employees milled about on either side of a long walkway, with dark-hair and light brown skin. Chinese, possibly?

‘So this is the place I was telling you about,’ came the voice of whom Emily was now certain was Tom Gladstone.  ‘They are already in full operation here, but haven’t yet found a European franchisee. We make the right offer and we could be rolling this stuff out as early as next year. Our company will make a killing.’

Emily narrowed her eyes and concentrated. Tom started walking down the long walkway, panning the camera left and right. Every now and then a white-coated employee would realize they were on film and bow reverently. They were attending industrial mixers, each of the large vats filled with straw-coloured liquid.

‘The fertilizer is like nothing I’ve seen before, Ross. Mr Sai gave me a demonstration this morning and it blew my mind. His chief scientist applied a dose of the solution to a row of hydrangeas. Ross, these plants were at death’s door, their petals shrivelled and brown. Within an hour, the bushes were blooming with bright pink flowers again. The dead leaves fell off and new ones grew in their place. It was like a miracle – except it was science, and for sale. I told Mr Sai that I needed a demonstration on a harvestable crop, and he agreed to do so tomorrow, but in the meantime he’s assured me that the formula works on all species of plant life. It promotes incredible growth and vitality. Crop failures will be a thing of the past. Every season will give a bountiful harvest, regardless of drought or anything else. Ross, I cannot stress this enough, but you have to authorize me to make whatever offer we can afford. As soon as we get the ball rolling, Mr Sai will allow me to bring back a sample. We have to be onboard with this.’

The video ended.

Emily leant back in her seat and chewed her lower lip. What had Ross been working on? Had he already signed the deal of a lifetime? Or would he now never get the chance? She hated herself for it, but the thought briefly crossed her mind that, with her husband dead, she might end up with a controlling interest in his company. So, was this miracle fertilizer already under the purview of what might become her company? Or had the deal died with Ross?

Emily leaned forward, fingered the track pad and left the cursor hovering over the video file. After a couple of seconds the meta data popped up. The file had last been modified a couple of weeks ago, but what did that mean? Was that the date it was copied to the desktop? Then she saw the creation date: three weeks ago. Surely the deal would have been signed within that time. She went into her late husband’s emails again and started being even nosier. She let herself off the hook a little, because she knew the main reason she was snooping was to keep her mind occupied. Now that the panic and shock of the situation was subsiding, a rising tide of emotion kept threatening to burst its levees at any moment. Sporadic pressure beyond her eyes sought to bring tears, and a mild dizziness tried to dislodge her thoughts and send them spiralling into madness. Her life had flipped upside down in a single day, and it was hard to see how it would ever settle again once it righted itself. Would she get over Ross’s death, or would it break her? She feared ever having to sit in front of a doctor again arguing for her sanity.

Another husband dead. Emily Tyler, you are a black widow.

She had lost control, they would say. Just like last time.

She gave the flirty emails from Ross’ various women another cursory look, but found none of them particularly enlightening. The fact that her husband had been screwing around seemed unimportant now – his death had brought closure on that – so she flicked through the more mundane messages to see what she could find: the internal memorandums and intercompany correspondence. Of most interest was anything from Tom Gladstone. She opened up the most recent message from him.

Ross:

Sorry to hear the sample had cracked open by the time it got to you. Mr Sai’s team will be sending out a new one immediately. I’ve been told that the formula can cause allergic reactions in some people, so make sure you get it all cleaned up. Speak soon.

So Ross had received the sample. That must mean the deal had been signed. Good news, she supposed, but the excitement of running her own company had gone away as quickly as it had arrived. She didn’t care about business deals and farming. She was just kidding herself.

Starting to get upset, Emily stood up and brushed herself off. The Coast Guard would arrive any moment, and she needed to be in control of herself. Ross’s had been a messy death, and one that would arouse incredulity. If Emily were a mess, her story – the truth – would be less believable.

She left the pilothouse and went back out on deck. Alex was still missing after having left to return to his boat. She felt bad that he had got hurt, but glad that he had been there to save her. Ross would’ve killed her for sure.

The moon shone down on the yacht and made everything shimmer like it was plated in silver. Emily hadn’t even realized that night had fallen, but now that it had the summer breeze was a gusty chill. She still wore her swimsuit, so went and grabbed her long cardigan from a hook on the outside of the lounge cabin. Wrapping it around herself, she shivered.

Alex’s sailboat bobbed alongside the EMILY-DEVINE, the moon bouncing off its metal hooks and rivets. No sign of Alex though. He must be inside the wheelhouse, or down below in the living space. Ross still lay on the rear deck beneath a blanket. In near-darkness, he was nothing but a grey mound that could have been anything. She couldn’t kid herself about what lay under the blanket though.

She climbed down to the rear deck and took a moment to find her balance. Under the pull of the moon, the waves crested higher than they had during sun-up, and the constant wishy-washy sound unsettled her. She wanted to find Alex. It was difficult to trust herself under stress, so she would feel much better having somebody with her – to shake her if she started acting crazy.

Was she crazy?

At the edge of the deck, Emily grabbed a hold of the railing and stepped over. Alex had lashed the boats together tightly, so there was less than a foot-gap between the two hulls, but it was still nerve-wracking hopping between the two. When her feet came down on Alex’s deck, she stumbled and fell to her knees.

A buzzing sound came from somewhere. Emily looked around for it and saw that there was a waterproof radio attached to the main mast. It was tuned in to a station, but imperfectly – the voices interrupted by static and crackling. The reception improved when she got near and a clear BBC-English speaker came through loud and clear.

‘…mainland officials have yet to confirm the nature of the disease, leading some experts to fear it is something never before encountered. Sufferers are presenting flu-like symptoms progressing towards haemorrhagic fever and death. In some cases, the final stages of the disease seem to bring on some kind of seizure, characterized by delirium and rage. Medical experts are reporting of near-death patients displaying surprising strength and resistance to pain…’

‘Jesus,’ Emily muttered. Had Ross caught the virus the man on the radio was talking about? How could he have, though? He’d been out on the yacht for almost a week. How would he have become infected with something like that?

The sample was cracked.

Ross would have received the sample at his headquarters in Stoke.

Emily thought about Tom Gladstone’s last email and shuddered, still cold but also afraid. Had the chemical that Ross purchased from the Far East made him sick?

She was being silly. The news reporter had described some sort of epidemic. No way could Ross have been involved in something like that. Liquid fertilizer did not cause infectious disease.

Or did it?

Now that Emily thought about it, she was sure there were movies about chemical companies polluting the water table and making people sick, or giving them cancer. Wasn’t Erin Brockovich about something like that? Can cause allergic reactions, Tom had warned. The sample had cracked.

Emily cursed herself for having no practical experience beyond what she saw in the movies. She realized now that by marrying money – and even by ambitioning for it beforehand – she had failed herself. Her entire self-worth had become a mere extension of her husband’s, and now that he was gone she was nothing. The feminist inside of her screamed.

And yet she was powerless to break the cycle. Even now, she looked to Alex – a man – to make her feel better. This was her own life – her own situation – yet she was relying on someone else to sort it all out for her. Maybe if she hadn’t buried her head in the sand at the beginning, none of this would have happened. The entire mess could have been cleaned up. Ross would likely still be alive. She’d screwed up bad.

Screwed up because she was a screw-up.

Whether Emily liked it or not, Alex was now involved. She needed to tell him what she had just heard on the radio. If Ross had been sick, then maybe they were both infected too. Alex had gone to clean his wound, but perhaps he could be more thorough if he knew he had to be.

Unfamiliar with the cramped sailboat, Blessed Betty, Emily held onto the railing and scooted along the edge. The hatch to go downstairs was on the side, so that was where she headed. Not wanting to enter Alex’s private living quarters uninvited, she stopped to call out. ‘Hey, Alex. Can I come down? I need to talk to you. Alex?’

No answer.

The boat was too small not to hear someone shouting, so Emily didn’t know what could make Alex fail to reply. She swallowed a lump in her throat. Took the first step down.

Below, she found a cramped living space: a tiny kitchenette and breakfast table along one wall, stocked bookshelves all along the other (most of the spines had titles relating to history, spanning from the Roman Republic to the Second World War). Alex obviously enjoyed living in past times more than existing in the present. Perhaps that was why he lived on a boat, removed from society with only books to keep him company. Hadn’t stopped him from coming to her aid though. There was no doubt in her mind that Alex was a decent man.

But where was he?

‘Alex? Can you answer me, please?’

She still heard nothing. Up ahead lay a door to where she imagined his bedroom would be. Privacy was even more of an issue now, but she was beginning to freak out, and that was his fault for not answering.

‘Okay, Alex, I’m coming in.’

She pushed open the door and blinked as the light from a bedside lamp assaulted her eyes. There was little in the room except for a bed – and no sign of Alex.

She saw the blood.

On the edge of the bed was a round puddle of fresh blood. Had Alex bled over the bed? Been sick or had a nosebleed?

Where was he?

There was an en suite bathroom to her right. The door to it was closed, but the light inside was on.

‘Alex, are you okay? I think maybe Ross was sick. If he was, then we might be too. Do you feel unwell? There’s a lot of blood out here.’

Thunk!

The door rattled in its frame, not so hard that somebody had barged against it – more like somebody had cupped their ear against the wood.

‘Alex, are you in there? I can hear you.’

A grunt.

‘Alex, you’re scaring me. Please, come out.’

Silence.

She reached out to the doorknob, wondering if it was locked. If it was, and he refused to come out…

What could she do?

Why was he doing this?

The door burst open, hitting her in the face and knocking her back onto the bed. She felt the cooling blood beneath her thigh and squealed.

Alex appeared from the bathroom, snarling at her like a hungry beast – just like Ross had. He leapt towards her. Emily managed to tumble into a backwards roll, landing off the other side of the bed. While Alex clambered over the mattress after her, she raced around the bottom of the bed and made for the door.

Screeching like a vulture, Alex snatched a hold of her cardigan. Dragged her backwards. Emily let her arms flop behind her and squirmed until they slid free of her garment.

Alex tumbled back, clutching the cardigan.

Emily was free.

She raced through the sailboat’s main cabin, smashing her hip painfully on the wooden breakfast table as she went, adding a bruise to the one she already had, and then rushed up the stairs.

Alex was right behind her. A hungry wolf.

Getting back up on deck was like emerging from a swimming pool. The cold, salty spray on her face distracted her, but woke up her senses at the same time. The ocean was unsettled: the deck rolled beneath her bare feet. She managed to keep her balance long enough to sprint towards the ship’s bow. A glance over her shoulder showed that Alex was only one step behind.

The deck was short and she quickly ran out of it. Desperately, she searched for the nearest thing with which to defend herself. It turned out to be a large hook on the end of a pole that probably had a name known to a fisherman. She pulled it off its brackets and span around with it, wielding it like a long, cumbersome baseball bat.

It cracked Alex right above the eyebrow. Blood soon covered his entire face.

‘You’re sick, Alex,’ Emily cried, ‘Just like my husband was. Please calm down.’

He came for her again.

This time Emily thrust the pole out like a spear, aiming for Alex’s chest. She miscalculated and hit his collarbone. The metal hook bounced off the hard bone and entered the soft tissue of Alex’s throat. Yet, impaled through the neck, he still continued trying to grab her, swiping with both hands. She held him at bay with the pole like an animal controller restraining a pit bull until its fight ran out. But Alex’s fight never ran out.

The pole bucked and twisted in Emily’s hands, tearing at her palms and making her skin burn. She yelled out. ‘Please, Alex. Stop. Last. CHANCE!’

She yanked and twisted the pole in her hands, felt the hook catch on something inside Alex’s neck. Rather than shy away from the resistance, she yanked harder, pulling the pole – and the hook – towards her. Alex bellowed, a demon that was once human.

Then his voice was cut off by a short, sharp snap!

The hook slid free and the pole fell from Emily’s hands. Before she could catch it, it clattered to the deck at her feet. She had lost her weapon, but no longer needed it. Alex flopped to his knees, head resting awkwardly on one shoulder. The white slither of his spine dangled out of a hole in his neck where she’d snapped it in two with the hook. When he collapsed onto his face, Emily knew that he was dead. Just like Ross. Two boats, two dead men. Yet, she was still alive.

Emily Tyler. The black widow.

CHAPTER SIX

Back on board the EMILY-DEVINE, Emily stared out at the black, featureless sea. It could have been Hell surrounding her, vast and endless, with neither joy nor pain – just foreverness. Land could be a hundred metres away and she wouldn’t know it. She had called for help – and got Alex killed as a result.  Perhaps she should have just got behind the wheel and tried sailing inland. It was her yacht after all – a gift – yet she had no clue how to manoeuvre it. Just another example of how useless and looked-after she was. No more useful than a pet.

She was fucked. Ross’s death had been an accident, and in no way her fault, but Alex’s had been all her doing. He was only there to help her and had ended up with a sliced throat and a severed spine.

The authorities would never believe her. She could try explaining that Ross had attacked her and fallen on the anchor recall, and that Alex had left her with no choice but to defend herself, but all they would see was a rich widow and two dead men. She’d be in the media for the rest of her life, probably painted as some man-hating monster like Charlize Theron in that move. She likes to break men’s necks, they would whisper.

Christ, there she went again with the movies. Her go-to reference included the name of an actress, rather than an actual person. What did she even have to live for? Maybe she should just take the rap for the entire thing in exchange for privacy. They could lock her up in some quiet cell where she could read books and actually learn something beyond movie trivia – things that would be of no use to her, of course, because she would spend the rest of her life in prison.

Or, maybe, they would buy her story because the virus had been released in other places too. The radio said as much, and if that were the case then what was awaiting her back on land? She was probably infected too, and her husband’s company might even have been responsible for letting the sickness out. The sample had cracked…

Emily’s mother had been right. She’d always said she would amount to nothing. Sure, she might have had it all for a while, but she’d been kidding herself. It had all gone to Hell in an instant. She was either sick, dying, or heading back to the loony bin.

The utter darkness outside matched her mood, and if not for memory, there would be no suggestion that she were standing on a luxury yacht with her name on it. Her head buzzed as though it were full of bees, and her skin felt numb. Salt clung to every inch of her. She barely felt human.

Was this strange feeling she was experiencing the sickness? Was some tiny, sinister microbe swimming around her bloodstream right now, snaking through her vital organs with its nasty little edges? Would she end up like her two dead husbands, broken and bleeding?

She tried arguing with her own mind, offering herself a little solace and hope, but she could find nothing. The opaque cloud engulfing her wasn’t just inextinguishable, but comforting also. It was a soft blanket wrapped around her that she didn’t want to fight. Could she just slump to the ground right now and leave her inert body, her shattered mind, in the hands of fate? Oh, to just give up.

No, she had to stay strong. It was time to take control of her life.

Time to stop being a passenger in her own life.

It felt right to say goodbye to Ross, even though the truth was he had been gone the moment this had all started. Still, he was her husband, and she would miss him. It would do no good looking under his blanket, for it was not how she wanted to remember him, but she knelt down and placed a hand on his middle. There was no warmth, but neither was there cold.

‘Thank you for giving me another shot at life, Ross, after I thought there was nothing but a sucking black hole waiting for me. You weren’t perfect, but neither was I. We both knew what we were getting into, I suppose. I loved you, and I think you loved me.’ She was about to cry but stopped herself. She needed to stay in control. ‘I feel like I’m living in a horrible movie, but I’ve realised tonight that life isn’t like the movies. Things don’t end the way they’re supposed to. They do end though. I’m going to make a decision, be in control. For once in my life I am going to take action.’

Emily got up and went over to the edge of the deck. For once in her life, she was certain of what she was doing. No doubts in her mind as she climbed up and stepped over the top rail. She would never go back to the clinic. Would not allow them to put her in prison. This wasn’t her fault.

But that didn’t change what they would do to her.

The wind buffeted Emily’s bare skin. The salt stung her eyes.

The black, endless Ocean waited for her, and she saw light.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The light was so glaring that it made Emily’s eyes throb. She stepped down from the railing and shielded her face. Her ears picked up the sound of parting water, something large cutting through the waves.

She heard an engine.

‘THIS IS THE SPANISH COAST GUARD,’ came an accented voice, projected through some kind of loudspeaker. ‘WE HAVE RECEIVED A DISTRESS CALL FROM THIS LOCATION.’

Still struggling to see against the tremendous glare, Emily waved her free hand. All thoughts of suicide were swatted aside now that someone in authority had arrived. Emily went right back to giving herself over to another’s command. Part of her didn’t mind. It was comfortable, like slipping into a warm bath.

The ship came closer and dimmed its light. Emily could finally lower her arm and see. At least six Spanish sailors glanced over at her from the other deck, all of them gruff, serious looking men.

It took them only a few moments to moor their ship to the EMILY-DEVINE, and as soon as they had, two of the crewmen hopped aboard and took a look around. They each carried two-handed guns. One was a small, boxy man with a long nose. The other had dark eyes, dark-hair, and a dark expression.

Emily followed them around like a lost puppy, trying to explain the whole time. ‘My husband was sick. He had the virus that has got loose on the mainland. I heard the reports on the radio. When he lost his mind and attacked me, there was an accident.’

The whole time the two crewmen said nothing. They examined Ross’s decapitated body beneath the blanket with some concern, and gave her several glances of suspicion. When they then found Alex’s body, they raised their weapons at her.

‘I didn’t do any of this,’ she said, whipping her hands up above her head. ‘They were both sick. I was just trying to defend myself.’

Of the two, the crewman with darker features lowered his weapon and nodded. Speaking in fluent English, he said, ‘Okay, ma’am. We understand. Just come with us, please.’

‘What about the virus? Is it bad? How many people are infected?’

‘Please, ma’am. We will talk about it more once we are onboard the ship.’

Reluctantly, but seeing no other option, Emily went with the two sailors and allowed herself to be corralled onto the Coast Guard ship. The assembled crew watched her intently as she was led into the wheelhouse. There they sat her down at a metal desk. Outside she heard the sound of winches being fastened and tightened to the EMILY-DIVINE. They were going to tow the other vessels to land. She was finally going to get off the water and out of this nightmare.

‘Which man is Mr Alex Draper?’ asked the dark-eyed man sitting opposite her.

‘Alex is the one on the sailboat,’ she explained.

‘The one who was stabbed in the neck?’

She flustered for a moment, realising how insane it sounded when spoken aloud. ‘Yes, I had to defend myself when he attacked me.’

‘Why did he attack you? It was he who contacted the Coast Guard to come and help you. He told us you and your husband had some sort of fight, and that your husband got injured.’

She shook her head. ‘No, no, he was sick. My husband was sick. Alex told me he informed you of all this. He spoke to you before he even reached me, right?’

The dark man nodded. ‘Yes, and he spoke to us again after he arrived to help you. He informed us that you thought your husband was a zombie. He said you shot him with a flare and would have hit Mr Draper too if he hadn’t ducked.’

‘What? When did he…?  I was trying to save Alex. My husband was attacking him.’

The man nodded as if he understood. ‘Mr Draper said you were upset.’

‘Of course I was upset. My husband had just died!’

‘Lost his head, correct?’

She folded her arms tightly around herself. These callous Spaniards had not even got a blanket for her yet. ‘Yes! He was badly hurt, but he wouldn’t stop attacking me. The anchor tore him up badly, but he was trying to murder Alex, so I shot him with a flare gun, and that’s when his head fell off.’

‘Okay, ma’am, I understand.’

‘Do you?’

The man turned to one of his colleagues standing in the doorway. The two men chatted briefly in Spanish, and then the one in the doorway left. The dark man turned back to her. ‘We will leave now and talk more about this back on land.’

‘But what about the virus? What if I have it?’

The man stood up. ‘We will talk more later. For now, my men will find you something warm and get you something to eat.’

Emily flopped back in her chair. The thought of food and warmth was too much to resist. Things would be okay, she was sure of it. She’d told her story, and no one had accused her of lying, which was a good sign, right? She just hoped things were over with now. It would be impossible to withstand any more without losing her mind.

***

They were back on land in just under two hours. From inside the small cabin, Emily couldn’t tell how fast they had been travelling, but the straining sound of the engines suggested ambling. The Coast Guard ship had needed to tow the EMILY-DEVINE and Alex’s sailboat at the same time.

During the trip, the Spanish sailors had brought her a steaming mug of hot coffee and a cheese sandwich. It was Spanish cheese, tarter than the cheddar she was used to. When they finally pulled into dock, she was upset to see that they were on the continent and not back home in England. She had expected their destination to be Spain, but a small part of her had hoped they would drop her home and have everything conducted there. It was now firmly the middle of the night, and she had to watch her footing every step as they led her from the darkness of the dock into the brightness of a large terminal. She wondered if they had taken her to Bilbao or some other coastal city, and it made her think of all the good times she had spent with Ross on the fringes of Spain and Portugal. They had so many memories, and it was heart breaking knowing that there would be no more.

After keeping her locked inside an empty staff lounge for almost an hour, they then led her to a small office where a doctor came and checked on her. He took her blood pressure and temperature, and checked her joints and limbs for pain. Emily was happy to oblige.

‘What are the first symptoms?’ she asked. ‘When will I know if I have it?’

The doctor was Spanish and seemed to have a hard time understanding her. When it looked like he was about to try and have a conversation with him, the Coast Guard captain entered and ushered him out of the room, before sitting down opposite her.

‘Hello again,’ said Emily.

‘Hello, Mrs Tyler. I have contacted the British embassy for you and someone is on their way. You do not have to speak to me until then, if you do not wish.’

‘I have nothing to hide. I just want to help.’

The man smiled at her, and she wondered why he wasn’t more wary. She could be sick with the disease. Wasn’t it contagious?

‘I have some questions for you, if you don’t mind, Mrs Tyler.’

‘Of course.’

‘You take medication, yes?’

She was surprised by the question. ‘Well, yes. I take an anti-depressant for my nerves.’

‘Your nerves?’

‘Yes, I have problems coping some time.’

‘I understand. Because of your first husband, yes?’

She shifted in her seat. ‘It started with him, I suppose. He abused me.’

‘That is a terrible thing. I am sorry that you went through that. You killed him, yes?’

‘In self-defence.’

‘Of course. What happened after?’

‘What do you mean?’

The captain leaned forward across the desk and all of a sudden seemed less kind. ‘You went to hospital, yes?’

‘Yes. I had a nervous breakdown.’

‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she snapped. ‘Unless you’ve ever had a nervous breakdown, you do not understand.’

The captain was unapologetic. ‘What happened with your present husband, Mrs Tyler? He was a rich man, yes? A big man in England? We checked the registration of your yacht. We know all about your husband.’

‘He was a big man everywhere,’ she corrected him, ‘but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘No! It was an accident.’

‘You shot him with a flare gun by accident?’

‘Well, no, but I had no choice.’

‘I understand. What happened between you and Mr Draper? How did he die?’

‘He caught the virus after my husband bit him. It took a while, but he got sick too. He attacked me and I had to defend myself.’

‘You had to stab him in the neck?’

‘Well, no, but in the heat of the moment…’

‘I understand.’

‘You do?’

He nodded. ‘I think you have had a hard time with men.’

‘That’s an understatement.’

‘I believe that your first husband did some bad things. Things that left you a very sad lady.’

She felt the tears come and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘I understand why you snapped, Mrs Tyler. You probably did not even know what you were doing?’

‘What?’ She leapt up out of her chair, but the captain barked at her to sit back down. True to form, she did what the man told her.

‘No one is blaming you here, Mrs Tyler. We just want to understand what happened.’

‘I told you. My husband was sick. He had the virus.’

‘When did you last take your pills?’

‘I don’t remember. Last night, probably. None of this matters. Do I have the virus? What did the doctor say?’

The captain tilted his head and looked at her curiously. ‘What virus, Mrs Tyler?’

‘The… the virus that has broken out. I heard it on the radio, on the news.’

‘Mrs Tyler, there is no virus. I do not know what news you think you have heard. Your husband was gutted and beheaded like a mackerel. No virus did that. Mr Draper had his throat torn open. No virus did that. There is no virus, Mrs Tyler. Not here, not anywhere.’

‘What? The… It’s like flu, they said, but then it makes you bleed out and you get all crazy before you die. I heard it on the radio. There’s a virus.’

The captain shook his head sadly. ‘No, Mrs Tyler. There are only two dead men. Before he died, Mr Draper used your radio to tell us you were delusional, afraid of some deadly virus that made your husband attack you – turned him into a zombie.’

Emily swallowed, trying to make sense of it. ‘But… but Alex was attacked by my husband too. He bit his neck.’

‘Mr Draper said that you bit him. Said you were delusional and that he tried to restrain you. Once you’d calmed down, he played along to keep you from doing anything dangerous.’

‘He was there when Ross’s head fell off!’ She realised she sounded crazy, but she could think of nothing else to tell him but the truth.

The truth.

The captain’s dark eyes bore into her. ‘Mr Draper told us your husband was hysterical and begging him for help. While Mr Draper tried to calm him down, you shot him with a flare gun. He played along with you after that for his own safety. Why did you kill him too?’

She thought about following Alex down into his bedroom and the fight that ensued. He had attacked her first, hadn’t he? She was sure of it.

Yet she wasn’t sure.

Had he been trying to hide from her?

Emily wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Was she sure Alex had even been bleeding when she’d found him? Had she imagined the blood on his bed?

‘I… I’m sick.’

The captain nodded. ‘I think so, Mrs Tyler, but not with any virus. You killed your second husband when you found out that he was cheating on you.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘We have your husband’s phone, his laptop. We saw his messages. You were angry when you found out, yes?’

‘Yes,’ she almost whispered it.

‘I understand, Mrs Tyler.’

There was a buzz and the office door opened. The captain spun around and exchanged a few words with a man who popped his head through. When the brief conversation was over, he turned back to Emily. ‘The ambassador is here with a lawyer for you. I will leave you now, but things will be better for you if you say what really happened. No more talk about viruses or zombies. Do yourself a favour, Mrs Tyler.’

Emily shook her head, feeling nothing but utter pity for herself. Once again her life was being controlled – and ruined – by men, yet she was powerless to do anything about it. She glared at the captain, trying to get through to him, to make him see. ‘I am telling you what really happened. My husband was sick. He had a virus.’

‘There is no virus, Mrs Tyler.’

‘Yes, there is! I killed Ross in self-defence – Alex too. I am not crazy. They were trying to hurt me. It happened exactly as I am telling you. Please, tell me that you believe me. Do some tests, please. We could all be in danger. I think I have it too. That’s why I’m feeling so confused. It’s the virus. If you don’t help me then I might hurt somebody.’

The captain looked at her and sighed. ‘I understand.’

Then he exited and left her alone. Alone to think about what was real and what was not. The more time that passed, the harder it became to tell the difference. The only thing for sure was that Emily was sick.

But was it her body or her mind?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Iain Rob Wright is from the English town of Redditch, where he worked for many years as a mobile telephone salesman. After publishing his debut novel, THE FINAL WINTER, in 2011 to great success, he quit his job and became a full time writer. He has now published more than a dozen novels, and in 2013 he co-wrote a book with bestselling author J.A.Konrath.

The three most important things in his life are his wife, his son, and his fans.

His work is currently being adapted for graphic novels, audio books, and foreign audiences. He’s an active member of the Horror Writer’s Association and a massive animal lover. Join his mailing list and receive five FREE books, as well as all the latest news and releases.

You can find Iain at:
www.iainrobwright.com
www.facebook.com/authoriainrobwright

@iainrobwright

ALSO BY IAIN ROB WRIGHT

Sam

ASBO

The Final Winter

Holes in the Ground (with J.A.Konrath)

The Housemates

Sea Sick

Ravage

Savage

Straight Up (with J.A.Konrath)

Soft Target (MCU 1)

Hot Zone (MCU 2)

The Picture Frame

Slasher

Wings of Sorrow

Animal Kingdom

2389

The Peeling Omnibus

A-Z of Horror

ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

My first novel, STRAIGHT TO YOU, was released in 1996 and promptly disappeared from view. 500 copies were printed, and I still have a couple of boxes from the original print run in my garage! The experience taught me several valuable lessons about writing, most notably that both the hardest and most important task for a new author is to find people to read their work. In those dim and distant pre-Internet, pre-ebook days, that was no easy task.

When it came to releasing my second novel, AUTUMN, in 2001, I was already making my first tentative steps online. It struck me that the easiest way to get people to read my book was to give it to them for free, so that was what I did. And with no real plan or design, my first zombie novel generated around half a million downloads, a series of sequels, a radio adaptation and even a (not so great) movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine.

Self-publishing was frowned upon in 2001 (and still is today in some quarters), so I decided to take a different approach. I talked about ‘independent publishing’ instead, and I set up INFECTED BOOKS, my own publishing company. I hit the market at just the right time and managed, through luck more than judgement, to capitalize both on the sudden growth of ebooks, and also on the massive popularity of zombies.

In the fifteen years since AUTUMN was published, zombies have become a global phenomenon. In the same decade and a half, the publishing industry has changed beyond all recognition. Back in the day, myself, Brian Keene and David Wellington were just about the only folks putting out zombie fiction. Now that’s changed and there are many brilliant zombie authors delivering the goods. I thought the fifteen year anniversary would be a great opportunity to celebrate both the enduring appeal of the living dead and the massive success of zombie authors worldwide.

2016 is Infected Books’ YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE, and over the course of the year you’re going to be treated to brand new zombie novellas by some of the very best in the business. Check www.infectedbooks.co.uk at the beginning of each month for each new release.

David Moody

January 2016

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM INFECTED BOOKS

YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

KILLCHAIN by Adam Baker

THE PLAGUE WINTER by Rich Hawkins

STRANGERS

LAST OF THE LIVING

ISOLATION

THE COST OF LIVING

STRAIGHT TO YOU

AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

TRUST
by David Moody

GIRL IN THE BASEMENT
by Wayne Simmons

VOODOO CHILD
by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza

FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.INFECTEDBOOKS.CO.UK

SPREAD THE INFECTION

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN