the barrier behind her, while the unleashed energy hammers through the shield, creating a porthole to freedom.
We’re both shaken and crying, but we have to act swiftly or Sharmila will have died for nothing. We try nudging the lifeboat over to the hole in the barrier but the restraints won’t let it be moved in that direction. Weary beyond belief, I yell for Kirilli to join us. When we link hands, I draw on his energy—he hasn’t used as much as we have, so he has a fair supply in reserve. I snap the ropes and chains holding the lifeboat in place. Guided by us, it glides through the air, centimetres above the deck. We shuffle along after it.
When the boat is level with the gap, I edge forward, dragging the others with me, refusing to focus on the gory remains of Sharmila which decorate the rim of the hole. I glance over the rails. We’re high up in the air. The water’s a long way down. Two options. We can let the boat drop and try to scale down to it. Or…
“Climb in,” I grunt.
“Will it fit?” Kirilli asks, studying the lifeboat, then the hole, trying to make accurate measurements of both. Typical man!
“Just get in, you fool!” I shout. “That hole could snap shut in a second.”
Kirilli scrambles in. When the contact breaks, the lifeboat drops and lands on the deck with a clang. I push Dervish ahead of me, then crawl in after him. The zombies are almost upon us, mewling with hunger.
I grab Kirilli’s left hand and Dervish’s right. Focusing the last vestiges of our pooled magic, I yell at the lifeboat and send it shooting ahead.
It catches in the hole, jolts forward a few centimetres under pressure from me, then stalls. It’s too wide. We’re stuck. Worse—it’s plugged the hole, so we can’t try jumping to safety. What a useless, stupid way to—
The lifeboat pops free with a sharp, creaking noise. We shoot clear of the hole, the barrier and the ship, gathering momentum. We sail through the air like some kind of crazily designed bird. We’re whooping and cheering.
Then, before any of us realises the danger of our situation, we hit the sea hard. The boat flips over. I bang my head on the side. My mouth fills as I spill into the sea. I try to spit the water out, but I haven’t the energy. As I sink slowly, I raise my eyes and steal one last look at the sky through the liquid layers above me. Then the world turns black.
ALL AT SEA
Arms squeeze my stomach and I vomit. My eyes flutter open and I groan. My head’s hanging over the edge of the lifeboat, bits of my last meal bobbing up and down in the water beneath me. I know from the memories flooding into me that Dervish is doing the squeezing.
“It’s OK,” I groan as he tenses his arms to try again. “I’m alive.”
Dervish gently tugs me back over the side. There’s water in the bottom. Kirilli is bailing it out with his hands. But we’re afloat and the lifeboat doesn’t look like it sustained any major damage.
“We thought we’d lost you,” Dervish says, smiling with relief. “Kirilli fished you out, but you were motionless…” He clears his throat and brushes wet hair back from my eyes. The tenderness in his expression warms me more than the sun.
“Have I been unconscious long?” I ask.
“No.”
“The ship…?”
“Still there.”
Dervish helps me sit up and we gaze at the sinking vessel. It’s listing sharply. It can’t last much longer. We’re quite far away from it, but if I squint I can make out the shapes of zombies throwing themselves through the hole in pursuit of us. They don’t last long once they hit the water.
Kirilli stops bailing and studies the ship with us. We don’t say a word. It’s a weird sensation, watching something so huge and majestic sink out of sight. It’s as if the ship is a living creature that’s dying. I feel strangely sad for it.
“All those people,” Dervish sighs as the last section slips beneath the waves in a froth of angry bubbles. “I wish we could have saved them.”
“Beranabus,” I whisper, fresh tears welling in my eyes. “Sharmila. Kernel.”
“A costly day’s work,” Dervish says bitterly. “And we didn’t even destroy the Shadow. It’ll come after us again. We’ve lost our leader and two of the strongest Disciples. If Lord Loss was telling the truth, Grubbs is probably dead too. Hardly counts as a victory, does it?”
He doesn’t know how true that is. I start to tell him what I learnt about the Shadow, but Kirilli interrupts.
“When I left you in the hold,” he says shiftily, “I hope you didn’t think I was running off. I just wanted to make sure the stairs and corridors were clear, so we could make a quick getaway together.”
“Of course,” Dervish murmurs. “It never crossed our thoughts that you might have lost your nerve and fled like a cowardly rat, leaving the rest of us in the lurch. You’re a hero, Kirilli.”
Dervish claps sarcastically and Kirilli looks aside miserably. I put my hands over Dervish’s and stop him. “Don’t,” I croak. “He helped us in the end. We couldn’t have escaped without him.”
“I suppose,” Dervish mutters.
Kirilli looks up hopefully. “You mean that?”
“We’d never have shifted this boat ourselves,” I assure him. “We needed your magic. If you’d fought in the hold and used up your power, we’d have all died.”
“Then it worked out for the best,” Kirilli beams. “I did the right thing running. I thought so. When I was down there, sizing up the situation, I—”
“Don’t push your luck,” Dervish growls. Then he narrows his eyes and studies Kirilli closely. “Are those bite marks?”
“Yes,” Kirilli says pitifully. He stares at the stumps where his fingers were bitten off. He must have unwittingly used magic to stop the bleeding, scab over the flesh and numb the pain. He’ll be screeching like a banshee once the spell fades.
“Those beasts bit and clawed me all over,” Kirilli says sulkily, ripping a strip off a sleeve to wrap around the stumps. “I’m lucky they didn’t puncture any vital veins or arteries. If I hadn’t fought so valiantly, they’d have eaten me alive.”
“Such a shame,” Dervish purrs, shaking his head.
“What?” Kirilli frowns.
“You’ve seen a few zombie films in your time, haven’t you.”
“One or two,” Kirilli sniffs. “I don’t like horror films. Why?”
“You must know, then, that their saliva is infectious. When a zombie bites one of the living, that person succumbs to the disease and turns—”
“No!” Kirilli cries, dropping the strip of shirt and lurching to his feet. “You’re joking! You must be!”
Dervish shrugs. “I’m only telling you what I’ve seen in the movies. It might all be nonsense, but when you think about it logically…”
As Kirilli’s face crumples, Dervish winks at me. I stifle a smile. This isn’t nice, but Kirilli deserves it. Not for being a coward, but for trying to lie. A good scare will do him no harm at all.
We drift for hours. The sun descends. Night claims the sky. After letting Kirilli fret for an hour, Dervish finally told him it was a wind-up. Kirilli cursed us foully and imaginatively. But he calmed down after a while and we’ve been silent since, bobbing about, absorbing the refreshing rays of the sun, thinking about the dead.
It all seems hopeless without Beranabus, especially knowing what I do about the Shadow. Mankind has reached breaking point and I can’t see any way forward. I doubt if even Beranabus could have made a difference. There are some things you can’t fight. Certain outcomes are inevitable.
Kirilli has spent the last few minutes examining the lifeboat, scouring it from bow to stern. He returns to his seat with a bottle of water and a small medical box. “Good news and bad,” he says, opening the box and looking for ointment to use on his wounds. The healing spell must have passed because he’s grimacing. “The good news
