by Frank Tayell
Sholto scanned the car park, the road beyond, and slid the safety back on. “No zombies,” he said. “No zombies. No people.”
“No bodies,” Siobhan said. “No bones. Eyes open.”
But by the time the four of them reached Petrelli and Toussaint, the sergeant had lowered his rifle.
“Seems quiet,” Toussaint said.
“Tell me, Sergeant, would you say it’s too quiet?” Reg asked.
“Stop it, Reg,” Gloria said.
“Sorry, it’s just one of those lines I was never cast to say. Always wanted to.”
“Not too quiet, no,” Toussaint said. “I’d say it’s deserted. And long ago.”
The sound of running footsteps made them turn around. Gonzales was jogging towards them, alone, but she didn’t look worried.
“It’s a freight terminal,” she said, gesturing at the warehouse to the south of the quay she’d just come from. “There’s some other buildings beyond it. All municipal, official.”
“Was there anything inside the warehouse?” Siobhan asked.
“Dunno, ma’am,” Gonzales asked. “We didn’t look inside. But outside, there were no zombies, no bodies. There is a bus, but it’s missing two tyres.”
“Can you secure the warehouse?” Toussaint asked.
“Yes, Sarge.”
“And you’ve a clear line of sight on the Amundsen?”
“A bird!” Reg exclaimed. “Is that a gull?” A solitary black and white bird took wing from behind a battered signpost on the far side of the road, rose, banked, and soared towards the town.
“A cormorant?” Gloria asked.
“A puffin?” Gonzales asked.
“They don’t fly,” Petrelli said.
“That’s penguins,” Gonzales said.
“Either way, it’s gone, but it’s alive,” Gloria said.
“That terminal building will be our fall-back position,” Toussaint said. “Gonzales, you and Torres will hold there until we return. Do you have the flares? If you launch one, we’ll return. And if you see one launched by us, you know what to do?”
“Get the boat ready for departure,” Gonzales said.
“Good. Either way, we’ll be back in three hours,” Toussaint said.
Gonzales gave a grin instead of a salute, and jogged to the warehouse.
“Three hours,” Siobhan said. “Remember the goal. Can we survive here, alone, with no hope of rescue, while the Amundsen goes north?”
“I’d say yes,” Reg said.
“I’m not saying anything until we’ve seen the town proper,” Toussaint said. “But so far, so good. The harbour is deep enough for the cruise ship. The town hasn’t been destroyed, and it’s not irradiated. Petrelli, you’ve got the rear. I’ll take point. Ears open but safeties on. Anyone who shoots me in the back will live to regret it.”
Sholto fell into step next to the sergeant. So far, so good? He hoped so, but felt deeply unsettled by the silence. Partly, it was the lack of devastation. After Ireland and Wales, he was unused to it. But also, it was the weather. The thin mist rose to meet an equally light rain, and together they deadened sounds, while truncating the horizon to a few hundred yards.
Granite boulders sprawled across the hillside to the east as regularly spaced as the occasional house. They had to be homes, though they were blockier than the buildings in Ireland. Just as colourful, and yet somehow not quite as bright. It was the same ahead, up the gently curving road that followed the harbour to the beginning of the town proper. The buildings had no uniformity of design, and little in the way of external adornments. Some were clad in grey, others in brick-red or ink-blue. None had balconies. None looked like hotels, either, but more like offices. Yet surely, with the harbour and sea for a view, they would be apartments, if not rooms rented to tourists? But perhaps not. It was a volcanic outcrop in the northern Atlantic. How many tourists came here? None of the survivors from Dundalk had.
The one book they’d found was written at the tail end of the Cold War, and recounted anecdotes that had taken place in the decades before. It mentioned Hotel Tórshavn a few times, but in a way Sholto wondered if that was the only hotel in the town. Perhaps on all of the islands. But it was an old book. Surely, in the days of budget air travel, more hotels would have sprung up. Surely.
“Casings,” Toussaint said, pointing to the far right-hand side of the road. He walked over, crouched, then stood. “5.56mm NATO rounds. Like ours.”
“What were they shooting at?” Siobhan asked, turning towards the bay. “When were they shooting? How many rounds did they fire?”
“I can answer that last one,” Toussaint said. “About forty.”
“More than a magazine’s load?” Siobhan said. “Interesting, but not interesting enough. Time is getting away from us.”
“It always is,” Toussaint said, and continued walking north.
It was cold, and cold enough Sholto was glad he wore gloves, but not nearly as cold as it had been aboard the ship, out on the exposed sea. The smell was fresh. Earthy. Alive. And yet all he saw told him this town was more utterly deserted than anywhere he’d been since the outbreak.
“Grass!” Reg exclaimed. “On the roof. They have grass on the roofs.”
Sholto blinked. Despite looking straight at it, he hadn’t noticed. Ahead, where the harbour turned into the town, was a two-storey long-style with grass on its steeply sloping roof. To the north was a smaller one-storey cabin, and behind it a more traditional house with a chimneystack and grey-plaster facade, both with grassed roofs.
“How do they get the lawnmower up there?” Reg asked.
“Don’t you remember what was in that book?” Petrelli said. “They use the sheep to cut the grass.”
“Oh, of course,” Reg said. “Wait—”
Petrelli laughed.
“Focus, people,” Toussaint said. “Remember those bullet casings.”
Sholto walked north, to a building whose wide glass windows suggested it was a retail establishment. The signage didn’t help identify what they sold. He recognised none of the words and only half the letters. The other half, strangely runic, matched the style used on the signage around the harbour. The tables and chairs beyond the unlocked door suggested a cafe, perhaps a restaurant. The espresso machine confirmed it, but it was only when he spied the bottom corner of the menu board, the part written in sparse English, that he was certain what he’d found.
“It’s a cafe,” he said. “Soup, sandwiches, coffee, that kind of thing.”
“If you’re buying, mine’s a flat-white,” Petrelli said.
“Yours is to check the kitchens are empty, Private,” Toussaint said. “Double-quick.”
“Aye aye, Sarge,” Petrelli said.
Sholto stepped aside to let him enter, then crossed to the counter. There was nothing behind it, nothing beneath. A lonely espresso machine squatted above a row of small cupboards. Inside were cups and saucers, though there was space for at least twice as many, or perhaps something else. He sniffed. Coffee? They had to store it somewhere.
“It’s empty,” Petrelli said, coming back into the cafe. “No food, not even in the fridges. The back door’s unlocked. Don’t know if that means anything.”
“The front door was unlocked, too,” Sholto said. “It might just be remote-island habits. If it isn’t, I don’t know why someone would leave the doors unlocked after the outbreak.”
“To facilitate looting,” Siobhan said. “You said the fridge was empty. Do you mean empty as in full of rotten food, or empty as in cleared out?”
“Cleared out, but not cleaned,” Petrelli said.
Siobhan moved over to a switch near the door. She flipped it up, down, and back up again. “No power,” she said. “No barricades on the roads. No bodies. No lights, no smoke, and no boats in the harbour. No cars in the car park. No food in the fridges. Casings on the road, but no other sign of any battles fought here.”
“What do you think it means?” Petrelli asked.
“I think it means we need to find somewhere to sleep, and we should do it quickly,” Siobhan said.
Chapter 9 - Check-In
Tórshavn, The Faroe Islands
The floor felt sticky beneath his boot. Sholto shone the torch down, but other than a slight discolouration, the carpet looked no different to any of the rest of the corridor on the small hotel’s second floor. Nonetheless, he reached for his belt. After a moment’s hesitation, he chose the pistol over the bayonet. The Berretta M9 wasn’t silenced, but a shot would be the simplest way of alerting the rest of the now dispersed team that the hotel wasn’t safe.
“Go,” he whispered.
Gloria turned the key in the lock and stepped aside as Sholto pushed the door open and quickly swept the bedroom, then the en-suite bathroom. “It’s clear.” He let his gun-hand fall, while sending the torch around the room more slowly. “Clear and empty.”
“Stripped, in fact,” Gloria said. “Right down to the bedding.”
She stepped into the bathroom, giving it a quick sweep with her light. “No shampoo, no shower gel, no towels. No toilet paper.”
“They left the pillows,” Sholto said, opening a drawer next to the bed, before moving over to the cabinet beneath the wall-mounted TV. “They left the mattress and the pillows, but took the sheets. Let’s try next door.”
“Okay, so if this was me,” Gloria began, then paused as she withdrew the key from the door. She inserted it in the lock of the room opposite.
Sholto stalked inside, sweeping torch and gun left and right, but again he found it empty. “Clear. Smells musty, not damp. No one’s been here for months.”
“That’s one question answered,” Gloria said, extracting the key they’d found on the reception desk downstairs. “These are the master keys for the entire hotel. Do you want to check any more rooms?”
“Two is enough for now,” Sholto said. “We can search the rest when it gets dark. Assuming we stay here. What was that you were saying about if this was you?”
“Oh, I was just pondering aloud. Imagining what I’d have done if I were stuck on this island after the outbreak. It’s ever so different from England.”
“Do you mean the buildings? I was thinking that.”
“Yes, but also the means of survival,” Gloria said. “There, every day was spent finding somewhere safe for the night. Two nights, if we’d been graced with good fortune. From a bit of a natter with Siobhan, Ireland was the same. Worse in some ways. But here, there was nowhere to run, no way of leaving. But that’s counter-balanced by fewer undead. Perhaps none, since we’ve seen none yet.”
“The operative word being yet,” Sholto said. “I’ll want to check beneath each rock and behind every hill before I’ll walk a road without a weapon in hand.”
“And I’ll wait until you’ve been wandering unarmed for at least a month before I do the same,” she said. “I meant that the people who lived here, the islanders, experienced a very different apocalypse to us. And so, to work out what happened, we must think differently. For them, looting, scavenging, it wasn’t about prioritising what they found based on the maximum weight they could carry. What I’m getting at, what I’m wondering, is why they took the sheets from the bed. Toilet paper and soaps are consumables. How many sets of clean sheets do you need? Why stockpile them? And surely the people who took them were locals. Did they not have any sheets at home?”
“Unless they were taken by tourists who only had what they’d packed for their holiday,” Sholto said.
“And if they were tourists, where did they go that they needed sheets but not pillows?” Gloria said. “Besides, February isn’t peak tourist season.”
“An interesting question,” Sholto said, “and one whose answer will be found by searching a private residence or three. First, let’s confirm whether we’re staying here or not.”
They pulled the bedroom doors closed, headed back through the swing doors, and down the stairwell to the ground floor. They were the last to return to the lounge-bar adjacent to the restaurant. This wasn’t the Hotel Tórshavn; they’d not found that establishment. Five minutes sodden trekking from the harbour, Siobhan had spotted the sign for the restaurant, and so they had ventured inside, and discovered it was a small hotel. While Sholto and Gloria had gone upstairs, the others had searched the ground floor, the kitchens, the storerooms, and it appeared they’d found as little as he and Gloria.
“Did you find anything?” Siobhan asked.
“Almost nothing,” Sholto said. “We checked two rooms on the second floor. The toiletries are gone from the bathroom, the sheets from the bed. They left the mattress and pillows, and the furniture, but nothing else.”
“No suitcases? Signs of guests?” Siobhan asked.
“None,” Sholto said. “But there were no signs of violence. What are the kitchens like?”
“The same as the bar,” Siobhan said, waving a hand at the empty shelves. “Professionally emptied except for a few pots and pans.”
Sholto walked over to one of the low sofas, but settled for perching on its back. If he got comfortable, he’d fall asleep. He was cold, he was wet, and he still hadn’t found his shore-legs. It was as much as he could do not to let it show. “We’ve got a decision to make,” he said.
“We do,” Siobhan said. “Another two hours remain before dark. The Amundsen could use that time to get out to sea, and on towards Svalbard. Do we tell them it’s safe to leave us here? Sergeant?”
“There are three entry points to this building,” Toussaint said. “The main doors, the fire door by the stairwell, and a staff door behind the kitchen. All are unlocked, but we can secure them with items to hand. It’s a pity there’s no food, but we don’t need it. We can strip out some of those metal grease trays from the kitchen to use as a fire pit, and we can break this furniture for fuel. If we’re forced to, we can retreat upstairs, barricade ourselves there until help returns. I’d prefer we found somewhere with multiple exit points, and I’d like a better fall-back position than that warehouse on the harbour, but this will do for tonight. I say we stay.”
“Sholto?” Siobhan asked.
“We’re not in any immediate danger,” he said. “There’s no reason to leave.”
“Luca, Reg, Gloria, do you disagree?” Siobhan asked.
“As a general rule, yes,” Reg said, “but not on this particular point.”
“I want to know why they took the sheets from the bedrooms,” Gloria said. “Was it locals who took them, or was it paying guests? I’d like to stay until I’ve found out.”
“And I’ve been a Marine long enough to know a private’s opinion doesn’t count,” Petrelli said.
“It does here and now,” Siobhan said.
“Then I’d prefer sleeping here than in that cabin on the ship. No offence, Reg.”
“Why are you singling me out?” Reg asked.
“Sergeant, can you go back to the harbour?” Siobhan said. “Radio the Amundsen, tell them to sail north. Make sure our boat is secure, get Torres and Gonzales, and make your way back here. Take the long route. Have a look around, but don’t take any risks. Luca, Gloria, Reg, secure the doors and windows, then make a start on the rooms upstairs. Let’s make sure this place really is empty. There’s one other thing missing from this hotel, and that’s a map of the local area. Thaddeus and I will go look for one. We’ll rendezvous here in an hour.”
Outside, the rain was heavier, thinning the mist, but visibility had barely improved.
“Narrow road, narrow pavement,” Sholto said, pulling his collar tight before checking the safety on his rifle. “Not much room for road-side parking, and no signs for a car park.”
“It’s a small town,” Siobhan said. “Locals would have walked to the restaurant.”
“They wouldn’t in small-town America,” he said. “North?”
“I think so,” she said, and together, they walked along the narrow road. “You’ve got to factor in the price of the fuel. It would be significantly higher here.
”
“And the weather would be significantly worse,” he said. “Everyone would have a car, so where are they?”
“Isn’t that the mystery we want to solve?” she said, peering at one curtained window, then another. “What happened here? It’s such a shame. I wish I’d visited a year ago. I wish I’d taken the time to holiday more. To see the world.”
“You travelled a lot, didn’t you? For work, I mean.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t call those holidays, not when the first stop after the hotel was a crime scene or the local morgue. No, I didn’t take many holidays. Not the sightseeing kind. That wasn’t the regret, and if anything, I wouldn’t call it a regret, but I’d forgotten how wonderful solitude can be.”
“Present company excepted?” Sholto asked.
“I dearly love the children,” she said, “but this is the first time I’ve been away from them since it began. Not counting a few mad, midnight escapes where we were none of us sure we’d see each other again come morning. With so little devastation, I can see what it would have been like a year ago. I’m not saying that I want to fantasize the apocalypse didn’t happen, but there’s simply not been much time to think. Not in Belfast. Not in the months before that. The voyage was the first opportunity to really take stock.”
“And what conclusion did you reach?” he asked.
“So far? That I wouldn’t mind a little bit of luxury in my life.”