by Frank Tayell
He shrugged. “Even if I’d known, this is where I need to be. VanHausen and the other engineers here are builders, not mechanics. They know bridges and walls, and know them well, but you’ve got eyes of your own, you can see what they think of engines. What’s next on the list?”
“Don’t forget your gear,” Salman said. “And the pilot’s.”
Scott picked up his toolbox, leaving his pack for Amber to carry. His hand went to his belt. He had a holster there now, a hunting knife slung on his left side. Like the Mossberg-500 12-gauge shotgun, his sidearm, a PAMAS G1 nine-millimetre, had come from the military airfield on the outskirts of town. The ammunition had come from there, too, and unless they could find more vehicles, they’d be leaving most of the ammo behind.
“How can you take this so calmly?” Amber said.
“You’re only unhappy because you’re not thinking far enough ahead,” Scott said. “Let’s try that panel van.”
“What do you mean?” Amber asked.
“Let’s say we slogged our way back to Belfast together,” Scott said. “We’d only have to cross the sea again to come search the Pyrenees for all these people. I’d rather make that journey to the mountains now, given the choice. And since we don’t have a choice, why grumble about it? Check the engine first. See if they’ve already charged the batteries,” Scott added, as he took out a torch and began a slow inspection of the vehicle. It was battered, but the damage appeared superficial. He reached the rear as the engine came on, whining rather than roaring, and revealing that three quarters of the lights were broken. “Turn her off,” he called out.
“That didn’t sound healthy,” Amber said.
“Nope. Let’s take a look. This is triage, not repair, but we might be able to fix her. Anyway, as I was saying, you’re not thinking far enough ahead. What happens when we get them all to Belfast? Why are we doing that? Why are we doing anything? We’re trying to keep enough people alive that we’ve got some kind of society five years from now. What does it matter if we’re in Ireland or Spain?”
“I guess.”
“Try her again.” This time, the whine turned into a growl as the van came properly to life. “Good enough,” he said. “The tyres look okay, so tie a rag to the mirror, and let’s move on.”
“What about the buses?” Amber asked. “There are six of them.” She shone her torch onto one, then the next. “All have the same destination listed on the board. Gare de L’Est. That means station of the east, right? East of where?”
“Paris,” Scott said. “It’s not that far. About sixty kilometres due south. I wonder whether all six buses came here together, or whether Professor Fontayne sent some people south to collect them.”
“President Fontayne,” Amber said. “She’s President of France, and of the EU.”
“But she still calls herself professor,” Scott said. “And that gives me hope for her and the people she leads. They want to be something more, something that reflects all the communities they’ve come from, but she’s still grounded enough to know they’re an over-large band of survivors in an increasingly precarious position. Ah, no, look. That tyre’s flatter than the Tanami desert. It’ll take more than a sergeant’s superhuman strength to change one of those. We’ll need a hydraulic jack, and we’ll need more people. Where are those engineers? They should be helping us.”
“I haven’t seen them in hours,” Amber said.
“The buses can wait until they return. Let’s try that coach, though. The trouble with buses is that, though we can cram fifty people aboard each, if one breaks down, it’ll be a push finding somewhere to stick them all.”
“Won’t it be the same with a coach?” Amber asked.
“Not if the coach travels at the rear of our column, picking up people from cars which have broken down.”
“Why bother with the cars, then?” Amber asked.
“Because it’s better to have options, and there’ll be no chance to create them when we’re on the road. We won’t reach the Pyrenees tomorrow night. We’ve no idea what the roads are like, or what state that Ukrainian column is in. No, keep your options open. I’m sure that’s one of the rules.”
“What rules?”
“Oh, this bloke I know has them,” Scott said. “Took tourists and archaeologists into the outback, came up with rules to keep them alive. Changed them every trip, mind, but I’m sure he’d have a rule or three for this.”
Amber climbed aboard. “There’s no key.”
“One flat tyre, but I think we can fit a tyre from one of the buses,” Scott said.
An electric guitar blared from inside the coach, echoing off the cavern’s crumbling concrete walls.
“Sorry, sorry,” Amber said, turning the music down, then sticking her head out of the window. “Sorry. I didn’t know coaches had CD players.”
“Turn it up,” Scott said.
“Really? You like this?”
“It’s Bob Dylan,” Scott said, the only answer he deemed necessary. The music transported him back a decade and more, to a late night departure and lonely drive across a near empty continent. “We used to listen to this album,” he said. “Me and Liu and Clemmie, and Bobby after he was born. When we were on the road, when we went looking for a new home. After we abandoned that airfield, I don’t know if the criminals were really looking for us, but paranoia can seep beneath your skin. It gets into your bones. When strangers started asking questions, we’d bundle up our sticks and leave. And after a while, leaving became a habit. So was that album. So was that song. Subterranean Homesick Blues, well, that’s an appropriate name for our current surroundings.”
“My father was a fan, too,” Salman said.
Scott nearly jumped. He’d not heard the sergeant approach. “Of Dylan?”
“After he moved from Minnesota to Texas, he played nothing else,” Salman said.
“In the sixties?” Amber asked.
“How old do you think I am?” Salman said. “This was thirty years ago. He was trying to fit in. Thought Dylan was the most American of musicians, and so the best thing to have blaring from the car stereo. How old is your son?”
“He’d be eleven, now,” Scott said. “Clemmie’s about your age, Amber. There’ll be hell to pay from both of them for missing their birthdays. Yeah, don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking. But since it’s just as likely they’re alive as dead, why not assume the best?”
“Allo!” a man called out from near the ramp leading up and outside. “Allo?”
“Wait here, I’ll go see what’s up,” Salman said.
Scott turned his attention back to the coach’s engine. “Looks like someone took a power hose to the outside, but didn’t seal this panel first.”
“What is that stuff inside there?” Amber asked.
“The technical term is gunk,” Scott said. “Grease, grit, gravel. Some leaves, somehow. Don’t know where they came from. Got to clear it out before we can find the problem.” He raised his muddy hand to his nose and sniffed. “Though I think I know where it might be. That smells like—”
“Private!” Salman shouted, his voice travelling before him as he ran back over. “Rifle and ammo, leave the rest.”
“Problem?” Scott asked.
“Zombies, what else?” Salman said. “They’ve attacked the airport. That’s Luc Brissard, one of the engineers. And the zombies are why they’ve been missing. A large group of the undead attacked the airport. We’ve got to relieve them.”
“I’ll get my shotgun,” Scott said.
“No, you stay here,” Salman said. “Get as many of these vehicles roadworthy as you can. We may be leaving sooner than we thought. Ready, Private?”
“Always, Sarge,” Amber said with a hint of resignation.
Scott listened to their vanishing footsteps before returning his attention to the coach. It was odd that the engineers said the problem was at the airport. Odd because it was at the airport the ammunition and weapons had been stored. But everything ab
out Creil was odd. They called it the Sixth Republic, led by a president and a National Assembly, though some of those representatives had died during the chaotic last few weeks. Professor Fontayne called herself the President of the European Union, too, in a nod to those survivors who came from outside of France. Perhaps it wasn’t odd, clinging to the past like that. Himself, he preferred holding onto a vision of a possible future.
“Wish you were here, Liu,” he muttered, as he scooped out another handful of rotting mud.
Ten minutes later, the coach was purring, and he was moving between the vehicles, heading further from the entrance, assessing which of the rest might be salvaged. None could be fixed alone, and so when he heard feet splashing through shallow puddles, he headed back towards the entrance. When he heard voices, albeit speaking in French, he relaxed; it wasn’t the undead.
“G’day!” he called as he neared. “Watch where you step. There’s enough debris on the ground to trip a snake.”
The voices went silent until a woman spoke in Germanic-accented English. “Who is there?”
Scott made his way around a partially demolished wall to where he could see them. He saw Luc Brissard first, and Brita VanHausen second. It was she who’d spoken, and she was the chief of Creil’s group of structural engineers. Some more of them stood behind her, but the shadows were too deep for him to see their faces.
“Good to see you,” Scott said. “I take it the crisis is over? The airport’s clear?”
“Why are you here?” VanHausen asked.
“I’m fixing up these old wrecks,” Scott said. “Like you were meant to be helping with.”
“We need a vehicle,” VanHausen said.
“Help yourself,” Scott said, waving a hand towards the battered Fiat. “Anything with a strip of cloth tied to the driver’s-side wing mirror is ready to go.”
He could tell something was wrong, and it didn’t take his daughter’s expensive education to know what. The engineers had decided to quit the town. The airport must have been the last straw.
“Show us something larger,” VanHausen said.
“You can look for yourself,” Scott said. “What happened at the airport? Where are the Marines?”
Scott sensed it happening before it did. But these were engineers, not soldiers. As VanHausen’s hand dropped to her belt, he was already diving backwards and behind the nearest, partially demolished wall.
“Take whatever you—” he began, but was cut short by a burst of bullets impacting against stone and brick. He ducked down and turned off his torch. Moving slowly, his feet already ankle deep in water, he edged deeper into the darkness.
Up until now he’d been cursing the lack of proper illumination, but now he was cursing there was any at all. He needed to reach the deeper shadows far away from the garage’s original entrance. The engineers wouldn’t search for long. They’d go, leaving behind nothing but the question of why they were shooting at him in the first place. The gunfire grew louder. Some of it grew nearer. Stone chips splashed into the water along with ricochets and misses. More shots hit stone, then metal, then glass as an unseen windscreen broke.
Inwardly fuming at how a morning’s work was so quickly being undone, he kept moving as the gunfire continued. Foot raised and back bent double, he paused when he heard shouting over the gunfire. It came in French, and he didn’t understand the words, but the tone was angry. The timbre of gunfire changed, the impacts becoming more distant. The shouting continued, even angrier, and even louder than the fusillade.
He moved sideways to the nearest gap in the narrow wall, peering around the already creaking joist barely holding the roof up. He could, just, make out the lights by the entrance. Making out the people was harder, but he thought there were two groups: one by the entrance firing into the garage, another returning fire who then shifted aim, shooting at the lights.
That second group had to be the engineers. Some of the French soldiers had chased these deserters here. He’d be grateful except each miss meant more damage to the already battered motor-fleet, each bullet expended was one that couldn’t be used on the undead, and each minute wasted was one minute more for the horde to get closer. This had to end. He had no idea where his shotgun was, but he had the pistol at his belt. More shots fired into the darkness would make little difference, but he knew what might.
Tearing his clothes, banging his knee, cutting his neck, scraping his elbow, he crawled across the partially submerged rubble. He tried to stay in cover, but as the darkness ahead of him flattened, he realised he was approaching the open. He’d have to sprint, to take the risk, but it wasn’t far to the Fiat. He couldn’t see it, but he remembered roughly where it was.
He braced himself, ready to run, pushed down with his hands, and felt the rubble give way. The floor beneath him collapsed. Water and dirt cascaded around him, into a growing sinkhole above an unseen chamber below. He kicked and rolled, scrabbling for a handhold as the hole grew larger, grabbing a long cable just before he dropped into empty space.
Below, far, far below, water and stones splashed into what had to be a disused sewer. The cable grew taut, and he hauled himself up and onto the crumbling roadway. It was only when he was back on relatively solid ground that the sounds around him came back into focus. Everyone was still shooting. As far as he could tell, they were utterly oblivious to how the garage was collapsing beneath them.
Another roll, and a longer, slower, crawl, and his hand touched rubber. A tyre. He followed the wheel arch until he found a door, then another. He couldn’t see the shooters, but he could hear them, in front.
Quietly, he opened the car door and searched for the ignition, finding a screwdriver instead. It was the Fiat. He turned the screwdriver. Lights inside the car came on, but not the headlamps. A quick twist of the lever and the headlights came on, bathing the small group of engineers in light. Scott dived sideways as Luc Brissard turned, bringing an assault rifle to bear on the Fiat. He didn’t find the trigger before a bullet found him, clipping his skull, sending him sprawling to the ground. The two other engineers lasted no longer, both dying as they stood to run, shot in the back, leaving VanHausen alive and alone.
“Don’t move,” Scott said, having drawn his pistol. “Seriously, don’t. Stay where you are.” He raised his voice. “Whoever’s there, stop shooting. It’s over.”
The sight of the first figure to run into the car’s headlights proved he was correct. It was Starwind. The daughter of Professor Fontayne’s deputy, Claire Moreau, Starwind had taken her name from an anime about teenage vampires protecting the world from evil. She’d taken her mode of dress from the cartoon, too, and her purpose, setting up a watchtower to the east of Creil, protecting the town from the undead.
“Starwind!” Scott said. “You don’t know how good it is to see you. I— Easy on!”
Starwind had stormed over to VanHausen, and slammed her submachine gun into the woman’s back, sending the engineer sprawling to the ground.
“Traitre!” Starwind hissed.
“What’s happening?” Scott said, holstering his gun. “And speak quick, because the floor’s giving way.”
“You are the Australian? The pilot?” a woman asked, stepping into the light. Older than Starwind by at least five years, her hair was cut into a ragged Mohawk. Her expression was furious.
“Scott Higson. And you are?”
“Adrianna,” she said.
“From the watchtower to the west? Bill found you?”
“And helped us escape,” Adrianna said. “Yes. We have much to discuss, but later.”
“Too right,” Scott said. “The floor’s about to collapse.”
Adrianna nodded, and spoke to Starwind in French, then to VanHausen. The engineer shook her head. Whatever she said, it was all Adrianna needed to hear. As Starwind stepped back, Adrianna raised her hunting rifle, and fired, killing the engineer.
“What the hell?” Scott barked.
“She was a traitor,” Starwind said.
“How can you be sure?” Scott said.
“We were trapped,” Adrianna said, slowly and patiently. “If your friends hadn’t arrived, we would be dead. She was working with the enemy, providing them with information using radio, and using the crane as her antenna. By the time we arrived here, she already knew we were coming. VanHausen knew it was over. She knew her comrades had been defeated. But not killed. Not all of them. At least one survived long enough to radio a warning to her.”
“She was working with that bloke, Dernier?” Scott asked.
“And for a woman called Cavalie,” Adrianna said. “Cavalie is the real danger, the true evil stalking my country. There is no time for a trial. And that is what the Assembly would insist upon. No time, and no purpose.”
“C’est vrai,” Starwind said.
“Where’s Bill and the others?” Scott asked.
“They went to Ireland,” Starwind said.
There was a loud creak deeper in the darkness.
“I want to hear more detail than that,” Scott said, “but the floor is giving way. There’s a hole over there, and it sounds like it’s getting bigger. We need to get these vehicles out of here. Anything with some cloth tied to the wing mirror is ready to go. You can drive? Then get to it. Go on.”
Not waiting to see if they’d do as he asked, he climbed into the Fiat. The motor clicked, whirred, and clanked, but the wheels turned. Slowly, he drove up into daylight. Nearly as slowly, he returned to the underground garage, and found more headlights on, and that the bodies were gone.
He guessed they’d been dumped in the hole because any questions asked by the Assembly would lead to unnecessary delays. He didn’t ask, but climbed into the panel van, and drove that up and onto the road.
Five hours later, the temperature was dropping as the moon rose above Creil, and over the aboveground car park into which the vehicle-fleet had been driven. There was a knock at the coach’s door. Scott opened it, letting Salman inside.
“Just you two aboard?” the sergeant asked.
“Just us three,” Amber said. “Scott was making me listen to the entire album.”