But I don't know how to run it!

  You're in a safe mooring - you and Marta have time between you to learn. Kill him quickly and be done with it. Don't waste the next opportunity. He is insane; the next opportunity could be your last.

  I didn't have an answer for him. I'd never had an answer for him; sooner or later I always ran out of them.

  You can do this, Katja. You know you can. But first, look out of the window.

  And so I got off the couch-bed. I was still sore, between my legs, but it had faded from a raw burning pain into a dull, persistent ache. I would remember this.

  I looked back at the white hump of Derek's body, and started to feel a new sensation, breaking through the cracking pack-ice of my despair.

  Anger. It was only a small flicker, a spark amid embers, but it was there to be nurtured. It was like being stranded in an arctic wasteland. Without a fire to warm you, you would die. So you kindled a spark, and you bent your strength to keeping it alive, making it grow.

  I felt rage, and I felt humiliation. All the ugly feelings rose. I could have shut them out, retreated from them, into some warm place where I could grow numb again. But I did not, would not. Not this time.

  I picked up the bra and knickers and put them on. That was a little better. Only a little, but better. I found my jeans and my T-shirt and I put those on as well. My socks were nowhere to be seen, but I found my trainers and pulled them on, lacing them up as I watched the heavy shape in the bed.

  Now I was fully clothed. I felt better still. No longer naked. But he was. And he was asleep. I had a position of strength. I realised how easy it would be. I could see at least two spots where a single blow would cause instant death. He'd never wake. It would be better this way. Simpler.

  But first -

  I looked out of the window.

  The mist was still there, but it had receded, far enough that I could see for quite a distance. The brown water lapped around the pylon. Further along I could just see the top of another one, but nothing beyond that. There was only the wide brown sea, and the mist -

  And something else.

  Even now, I'm not sure if I really saw it. It registered for a second and then was gone. A brief, momentary gap in the mist? Or an illusion?

  Whatever the truth of it, for a second I was sure I saw a low dark hump in the distance. Something that could only be land.

  Only for an eyeblink, then gone.

  Even if I'd imagined it, there would be land somewhere. There had to be. The seas hadn't, couldn't have covered everything.

  But even if they hadn't, the dead things would find it. I'd seen that already. The circle of dead things around the island, closing in. And if anyone was passing by, they'd keep on going. Just as we had. I'm sorry, they'd think, but better you than me. Just as we had.

  One problem at a time, Katja. Deal with each situation as it arises. Now, kill that man.

  Yes. While he was still asleep. Quickly, while I had the will -

  "Morning, love."

  Shit.

  I turned. Derek blinked and smiled sleepily at me. His face was kind again. Like any loving husband's, waking up to see his wife's face. "Up already, are you? Seeing as you are, fancy getting us a brew?"

  I could have killed the Derek of last night without a second thought. But this was the original Derek. The one who'd saved Marta and I. Did he remember what he'd done? Probably, but not as I did. He'd remember me coming to him of my own free will. He'd have erased the chunks that didn't fit with that.

  In the galley, I boiled water for the coffee. There was no sound from Marta's cabin, but I could hear Derek thumping about in his. In a moment, he'd be through.

  He would be awake and armed. I needed a weapon. And I had little time.

  He'd put something in Marta's drink. Where would he have kept that? No, I'd never find it in time.

  A knife. There'd be cutlery. Something sharp - a steak knife maybe. I pulled the top drawer open.

  "What you after, love?"

  Derek lumbered in, barefoot in jeans and t-shirt. The butt of the revolver in his waistband.

  Last night I'd had the opportunity, but not the will. This morning it was the other way around. I had to focus on the anger, keep it bright. Wait for my chance and take it without hesitation.

  He looped an arm round my waist and kissed my cheek. "After a teaspoon? They're in there."

  The gun nudged my hip.

  There.

  He'd made it so easy.

  Now.

  I went for the pistol, but for a big man he was quick. I didn't catch him off-guard; it was as if he'd been waiting. One hand caught my arm; the other swept out in a backhanded arc. My lower lip split and I crashed against the cooker.

  "Stupid bitch!" he spat at me as I slid down. He drew the gun. "You stupid, ungrateful bitch." He grabbed a fistful of my hair, half-lifting me from the floor; I yelled at the pain, clutching at his wrist. "I fucking saved your life!"

  "Katja?" It was Marta. Her cabin door was rattling. "What's going on out there? Are you alright? I can't get out."

  "It's alright, love," Derek called out. His flushed, sweaty face twisted back and forth between the rage of a second ago and the kindly rescuer we'd first seen. Trying to be two people at once. "Mummy and Daddy are just messing around, that's all."

  "Katja! Leave her alone you mad bastard!"

  "Shut up!" Derek half-turned to scream at her. He kept his grip on my hair and it felt like I was being scalped, but he'd given me an opening and I took it; I hit him in the groin with everything I had.

  He screamed and doubled up, but the gun was swinging towards my face. I grabbed it with both hands, trying to wrestle it away. It fired once; the report was like a blow to the head and for a second I thought I'd been hit. But I hung on.

  He let go of my hair. And then clenched his fist and brought it down, in a brutal, clubbing blow to the side of my head.

  I vomited. I let go of the gun and fell to the galley floor and I vomited. There was a shrill whining tone in my left ear and through it I heard the bang and rattle of the cabin door and Marta screaming my name.

  "Bitch!"

  Derek staggered to his feet above me, aiming down. I was on the floor, woozy. I tried to wriggle away. He turned the gun towards me. I kicked out with my right leg, driving the heel out straight. It slammed into his kneecap; I felt the bone crunch, and heard it even over Derek's shriek. He fell; the revolver clattered from his hand. He was howling and sobbing in agony. He lashed out at me blindly and started crawling away.

  The gun. I reached for the gun. Picked it up. Managed to stand. My neck was throbbing. God, what had he damaged? He was crawling up the steps, towards the bow door, dragging his ruined leg behind him. One hand fumbled in his pocket -

  "Derek!" I screamed, aiming at his back.

  He kept crawling. I pulled back the hammer. Aimed. And then fired.

  The recoil drove me back, the gun flying up towards my face. I pulled my head aside just in time; the barrel clipped my ear nonetheless. The back of Derek's t-shirt ripped, blood flying out. A bright, vivid crimson fan of it exploded up the steps. There was a splintering crack as the bullet ploughed into wood. Derek's body jerked and fell forward. His legs tremored and kicked. And then he was still.

  "Katja?" Marta's voice had grown strangely calm. "Katja?" Now it was small, despairing and forlorn.

  "I'm alright," I called out. Probably louder than I needed to, but my ears still rang from the gunshots. "I'm alright."

  I let her out of the room. But first I checked on Derek. I had to make sure he was dead.

  I was almost certain he was long before I checked his pulse; there was a stench coming off him; shit and piss. A dark wet stain was spreading out from between his legs, dripping down the steps, mixing with the blood. The galley stank of it, of the blood; it overwhelmed the rest. I had to walk into it to get close enough. It squelched underfoot, and my trainers began to stick.

  I put the gun behind his ear and cocked it, then reached down and felt for a pulse in his neck. There was nothing.

  I uncocked the gun and stepped back. His hand had come out of his pocket. It held a bunch of keys. It took several tries to unlock the door of Marta's room, but soon she was out.

  She didn't cling to me, or cry.

  "You're OK, then?" she asked.

  I nodded.

  She looked down the corridor towards Derek's body. Her face stayed calm, like a Madonna. She turned and looked back at me and nodded.

  "I told you," she said. "I told you there was something wrong with him."

  I put the gun in my waistband and held her. She was stiff to begin with, like wood, but finally she hugged me back. "That's right, little one," I told her. "You did."

  We needed to find out where everything was. The bullet I'd fired into Derek had been soft-nosed; it had expended most of its energy on him and embedded itself in the step beneath. The other round had punched a hole out through the galley wall.

  We went through the boat to take stock of what we had. In the gas locker beneath the well-deck, we found a rubber dinghy, complete with oars in unscrewed sections. Obviously Derek had liked having a getaway option.

  The guns were there too. Two pump-action shotguns, the rifle, the automatic pistol he'd carried and the one he'd taken from me. Both pistols were the same calibre, so I could reload mine.

  When I'd done that, I dragged Derek's body onto the well-deck and propped him against the bow. His head lolled back over the gunnels. I tried to tilt it forward but it kept falling back.

  I stepped back and drew the revolver. Aimed. Clicked back the hammer.

  Now he was dead, my pity for Derek resurfaced. He was no longer a threat, just a man who'd lost too much and been unable to cope with it. He'd saved our lives, even if it had been for distorted and insane motives. We were alive because of him.

  And so this was as much to ensure death was the end for him, and that he found whatever peace there was to be found, as for mine and Marta's safety.

  So I told myself, at least, as I pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Eight

  We restarted the engine and cast off. I left Derek's body in the bows till we were moving, then heaved it overboard, just in case he brought anything to the surface. He didn't sink, just bobbed face down in the low brown swell as we pulled away. The mist swallowed him before he could sink.

  "Where do we go now?" asked Marta.

  It might have been a trick of the light, an optical illusion, or my worn-out brain seeing what it wanted, needed to, but it was the only clue we had, and we had to go somewhere.

  "That way," I said, and pointed.

  "Why?"

  "Because I think I saw land out there this morning."

  "You think?" We just looked at one another. Then Marta broke out in what sounded all too much like the mad, jagged laughter I'd been fighting off. "Why not?" She squeezed my shoulder. "Let's go."

  Morning became afternoon and the afternoon wore on in turn. We passed through flat, featureless brown waters, endless and still. At least there were no winds yet, no storms.

  "Jesus Christ!" Marta was staring over the guardrail, she looked sickened and fascinated, all at once. "Have you seen this?"

  I looked over the side and felt my stomach perform a slow roll. The boat was cleaving its slow, steady way through a thick, matted brown mass. At first I thought it was sewage, but then I looked more closely and saw the fur. More; I saw paws, tails, tiny faces twisted in a last agonised snarl.

  Rats. Thousands, millions of drowned rats. They piled up around the bows of the boat and against the sides, rolling back and down into the water. Their legs stuck stiffly out, bellies bloated, huge as if massively pregnant.

  Marta turned away, grimacing. The smell was foul. I saw other debris mixed in with them. A broken chair. A tyre. Plastic bottles. Twigs and branches. Clothing, snarled up amongst it.

  Clothing?

  It was nearly ten minutes later - the boat still forging a path through the matted tangle of corpses - that it hit me.

  Where would all the rats have come from? Rats live among people. In a city, someone told me once, you're never more than three metres from a rat.

  Please let them have drifted. Let them have drowned somewhere far away.

  "Katja?"

  Marta was pointing out to starboard. I looked.

  The dead rats spread out for metres on all sides of the boat. The surface was lumpy and irregular. But there was something under it, where she was pointing.

  Two somethings, to be precise.

  Two somethings that glowed green.

  As I watched, the surface broke. Rats and water streamed and tumbled away from something dark with glowing eyes.

  Then another appeared, and another. I whirled, stared down the side, towards the stern. A head bobbed in the stretch of dead water behind us. Two others rose behind it.

  "Shit." Marta was looking portwards now. "They're over there as well."

  She had Derek's automatic; I had my gun. "Marta?"

  "Yes?" She was still looking to port, hypnotised. I caught her arm. She started, turned and stared at me, face white.

  "Get the shotguns," I said. "And spare ammunition." To port and starboard I could see dozens of the dead things now, rising all around us, watching - just watching, for now. "Plenty of it."

  The sea of dead rats never seemed to end. We had to be over a population centre. A good-sized town, at least. I hoped that was all it was. At best, it meant hundreds of the dead things; at worst, thousands. But if we were over a city...

  I stayed on the tiller, the shotgun slung across my back. Marta had climbed up on the cabin roof to scan for danger ahead.

  The engine growled, the only sound. And all around there were heads in the water. None of them moved, other than bobbing up and down. Treading water. And watching.

  They weren't mindless. They might look it, but they weren't. It might just be an animal cunning, but that was dangerous enough; they had huge superiority in numbers, after all.

  They seemed to prefer it in the water. They ventured out of it only when they had to. And they seemed to know when their victims were helpless. I remembered Derek shooting the dead thing that swam after us; the others had retreated. Staying in their territory. Back at the brothel, when I'd killed a couple of them - was killing the word, when they were already dead? - the others had retreated. They'd killed everyone else, the unarmed ones, but left us alone.

  Briefly. Then they'd come back, attacking in force.

  At least with the boat, we had the advantage of being mobile. The swimming ones had let us go; once we'd left their territory, we were of no interest. Which meant that -

  "Katja!" I looked up. Marta was grinning over the edge of the cabin roof. "It's clearing up ahead! I can see it!"

  I craned my neck to see ahead. Marta was right. Perhaps another twenty or thirty metres, and the drifting mass of rats came to an end. The open waters beyond seemed empty. Seemed. It could be a trap.

  How much intelligence are you crediting them with, Katja?

  I didn't know. But better to be cautious than otherwise. Would we be any safer when we reached land, or would we have just painted ourselves into a corner? But Derek had said himself, there was only so much fuel. Sooner or later, we would have to stop for good.

  But for now, we were moving, and the dead things weren't. They were just watching. And soon we'd be clear of them, I hoped, and then -

  The dead things were shifting in the water. I wasn't sure, but I thought their eyes had brightened.

  The engine. Its steady puttering growl had begun to falter and cough.

  I looked at Marta. Her face had gone white, the blood draining.

  The Rosalind jerked in time with a couple of particularly violent coughs from the engine. No more than twenty metres left to go. They were up ahead, but moved aside as the boat passed. Shouldered aside by the bow wave. Behind us, they were moving too; closing in to fill the gap the boat had made in their ranks.

  The engine whined. And died.

  The boat jerked and jolted once, and then stalled. It cruised forward under its own momentum a little further, but it wasn't enough. Not enough to take us clear.

  We were between ten and fifteen metres from the clear water. With the motor gone, the only noise was the slap of waves against the boat's sides. The world was so silent now.

  I unslung the shotgun. "Marta?"

  "Yes?"

  "Get in. Shut yourself in a cabin."

  "What about you?"

  "Do as you're told!"

  Careful, Katja; don't panic. Remember, panic -

  Panic is a choice. Yes Papa. I heard you the first time.

  "What are you going to do?"

  I pumped a round into the shotgun. "Hold them off."

  Marta pulled back the 'pigeon box' on the roof and dropped in through the skylight. I didn't like giving her a gun. Perhaps, after this, I'd show her how to use one. The heads just watched me. The blue, bloated faces of the lately drowned, the oozing, rotted ones of those longer dead.

  A muffled thumping came from forward. The bows.

  I scrambled up onto the cabin roof and ran. It was the best place to be. Exposed and vulnerable, but it gave the best vantage.

  Three of the dead things were clinging to the bow. Their hands thumped on he hull as they clutched for a hold. One was hauling itself over the gunnels. I aimed down and fired.

  A shotgun isn't a marksman's weapon, but it didn't need to be at that range. The full charge hit the back of the dead thing's head and blasted a gaping hole in the skull. It teetered and then flopped forward across the gunnels. The second of the three was heaving itself up, mouth agape. A low hiss escaped, like gas from a punctured, bloated corpse. I pumped the slide and fired again, blowing away everything from the eyes upwards.

 

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