by Frank Tayell
“Tell me the mission,” Toussaint said to Petrelli.
“You and Torres are going north with the officers,” Petrelli said.
“I meant your part of the mission,” Toussaint said.
“Me and Gloria drive south to the harbour, to meet with Reg and Gonzales,” Petrelli said. “We check the fuel tanks, set up the fishing rods. Then we check some apartments.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Whatever we can find,” Petrelli said.
“And this afternoon?” Toussaint prompted.
“We go to the hospital, then the government buildings, but we’re back at the hotel by two.”
“And why are you going to the government offices?” Toussaint asked.
“Because if the hydroelectric plant has been destroyed, we need to find out where the wind turbines and solar panels are, where the other dams are, whether there are any other power stations. I’ve got it, Sarge.”
“Good.”
Sholto closed the bonnet of the last of the cars. “There’s nothing wrong with them that I can see. All are in good working order. All are diesel, for what that tells us. Pick a colour, Sergeant.”
“Mud-grey suits me,” Toussaint said. “We’ll take the second car. Private, you wait five minutes after the sound of our engine has faded before you drive to the harbour. Listen for the undead. There’s at least one, somewhere.”
“Yes, Sarge,” Petrelli said, but he didn’t appear worried. Nor was Sholto. Not about the undead. It wasn’t that he didn’t think they would find more on these islands, but compared to every other night since they’d left Anglesey, he’d slept well and undisturbed.
They’d woken to find the street outside the hotel as empty as it had been at dusk. Dawn’s walk up to the library had been as uneventful as any before the outbreak. All that was missing was the smell of fresh-brewed coffee coming from any of the many cafes. Instead, the air just smelled fresh. There was a hint of damp behind it; the persistent drizzle had continued through the night, hardening into a morning mist that truncated sounds. And beneath long-ago blocked guttering and near puddles around clogged drains there’d been the sharper smell of rotting mortar. Despite that, it was so very different to Dundalk and Belfast, and even Anglesey. There was a promise to the air. Add in a few thousand people, the smoke from cooking fires, the sounds of laughter and crying, and that promise would be well on the way to being kept. He smiled as he reached for the driver-side door handle at the same time as Siobhan.
“I’ll drive,” she said.
“It’s been a long time since I drove,” he said.
“Good reason I should today,” she said.
“I miss it,” he said.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” she said. “One, two, three.”
“And paper beats rock,” he said. “I’m driving.”
“Only on the way there,” she said, making her way around to the passenger-side.
He adjusted the mirror as Siobhan sorted through the junk left by the car’s previous occupants.
“Well this is interesting,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
“Let me drive, and you can take a look for yourself. Otherwise, hands at ten and two, seatbelt on. Remember you have a police officer in the car who is not afraid to charge you with driving without due care and attention, even if it means she has to drive the rest of the way herself.”
He placed his compass on the dash. “Left then right, then left again.”
“Then right, straight on, another right,” she said. “But always north and hopefully we’ll pick up a road sign or two.” She checked the safety on her rifle. “Ready,” she said.
He glanced in the mirror. Luca and Gloria stood on the pavement across the street, weapons in hand, she looking west, he peering east. In the car behind, Toussaint, in the passenger seat, gave a thumbs-up.
Sholto turned the engine on. It was louder than he’d been expecting. “Here we go.” He revved the car, found the gear, and drove off.
He drove slowly through the narrow streets of the ancient town, letting his muscles remember how to drive without conscious instruction, while letting any lurking undead be summoned by the engine’s growl.
“Wipers,” Siobhan said.
Visibility was worse in the car than it had been on foot, but there were no obstacles in their way.
“Right,” Siobhan said. “Now left. Straight on.”
“Closed doors. Intact windows,” he murmured.
“Eyes on the road,” she said. “But, yes, there’s no more damage here than closer to the sea. And I think we’ve reached the edge of town,” she added as the patches of green between the houses grew wider, and the landscape beyond turned from clad and plaster to grassy hill-slopes. “We must have taken a wrong turning.”
“Or the roads were changed since the map was made,” Sholto said.
“The map might be wrong, but the compass isn’t,” she said. “Take the next left. We want the coastal road, and we’ll follow that to the bridge.”
“Then don’t we want a right?”
“No, that’ll take us back into Tórshavn. Here. Take the turning. This road should be…” She peered at the map. “Hvítanesvegur. Unless that’s the name of a farm or village.”
“I can stop and ask for directions if you want,” Sholto said.
“We’ll do that, the next person we see,” she said. “No, wait. Stop there, ahead. That… is it a farm? There’s a couple of trucks parked outside. No, not trucks. Those are buses.”
Sholto brought the car to a stop. The farm, if it was that, took up a small plot on the northern side of the road. A small bungalow was dwarfed by a new, long shed, next to which was an older, longer wooden barn. Behind them all were a quintet of long polytunnels, at the southern end of which were parked the two buses.
“Can’t see movement,” Siobhan said. She climbed out.
Sholto did the same, checking the road behind and ahead before turning back to the small farm.
“There’s a digger in that field,” Siobhan said.
“Problem?” Toussaint called out, as he stopped his car behind theirs.
“I don’t think so,” Siobhan said. “But there are buses, polytunnels, a digger. I want a few minutes to look around.”
“Why?” Toussaint asked.
“Curiosity, mostly,” Siobhan said. “But there are solar panels on that roof. Solar panels and polytunnels, they grew food here, and so we could do the same.”
“Ten minutes,” Toussaint said. “Torres and I have you covered.”
“I’ll check the bungalow, the field,” Siobhan said. “Thaddeus, take a look at the polytunnels and buses.”
Sholto reached for his rifle, checked the safety, then trudged down the rain-soaked driveway and into the farm. Puddles had merged into pools, but they were at least one more storm from being called a lake. A drainage tunnel ran under the road, but it was soddenly, and stinkingly, blocked. He detoured slowly around the bungalow as Siobhan crossed to its door, taking the longer, less-flooded route towards the rear of the enclosed tunnels.
They were empty. A few slime-filled trays marked where food had been grown, but the empty tables running down the middle of the polytunnels had space for hundreds more trays, and they were gone.
He followed a row of partially submerged duckboards to the first of the buses. They were close to identical, red-and-white single-decked with doors at the front and halfway along. The doors were closed. A thick patina coating the inside of the windscreen prevented him from seeing inside.
He whistled, waved to Toussaint and Torres, slung the rifle, and drew the hatchet, sliding it between the closed front doors, splitting the rubber seal, letting out a darkly forbidding fug. He could guess what he’d find inside. He stepped back, checking his rifle was within easy reach, before stepping forward again, sliding the hatchet back between the doors, and forcing them apart.
The smell of death hit him like the worst memory. Dundalk, Belfas
t, Bangor, Oxfordshire, London, New York, and all points between. He sheathed the axe and raised his rifle, aiming it at the now open doors, waiting. But he was waiting for nothing. After ten long seconds, he stepped aboard. Enough light made it through the broken windows to see the bus was empty of bodies, of the undead, and even of bones. But not of dead insects, of strips of cloth. He backed outside.
“What is it?” Toussaint called.
“It’s clear,” Sholto said, walking away. “Empty. No zombies.” He saw Siobhan walking slowly over from the field with the rusting front-loader. “Graves?” he asked, meeting her close to the road, and close to Private Torres and Sergeant Toussaint.
Siobhan nodded. “Looks like it. They used the digger to excavate trenches. Two are full. A third was dug, but it’s empty except for a few feet of water.”
“They drove the bodies here in the buses,” Sholto said.
“Why here?” Private Torres asked. “Of all places, why here? This is such a beautiful spot. I thought… of all the places we’ve been, Cape Verde, Anglesey, Belfast, I thought I might be happy here. This view. It isn’t home. It’s as far from home as I could imagine. Why would they spoil it by turning it into a cemetery?”
“Because the digger was here,” Siobhan said. “I imagine it’s as simple as that.”
“The rain is getting heavier,” Toussaint said. “Next stop is the village of… I won’t try to pronounce it. We keep going until we reach it. We’ve got to keep our eyes on the prize: can ten thousand people make this place a home?”
“Where did they come from?” Siobhan asked as Sholto started the engine.
“The sergeant said there was a bus terminal at the harbour,” Sholto said.
“I meant the corpses. I don’t need to dig them up to know they were zombies. Was the outbreak in Tórshavn, or at the airport? Or somewhere else? Are there more graves? The questions are stacking up, and we’re distinctly short of answers.”
“Yep,” Sholto said. “Torres is right, this place would have been beautiful. When I crossed the Atlantic in search of my brother, I dreamed of the home we’d find for ourselves. After, when I found he was travelling with Kim, Annette, and Daisy, the dream grew. My fantasy of our own post-apocalyptic paradise was somewhere like this. But it doesn’t seem so beautiful anymore.”
Chapter 12 - Bridges and Barbs
The Island of Streymoy, The Faroe Islands
The rain grew steadily heavier as they followed the coast north, causing Sholto to drop his speed, but the road remained surprisingly clear of debris and obstruction.
“The village is close,” Siobhan said. “Take a right at… well, before we get to that mountain we’re driving straight towards. The road has to branch, unless there’s a tunnel.”
“Think it’s a volcano,” Sholto muttered, though he gave the towering monolith barely an upward glance.
“Extinct, I think,” Siobhan said. “I hope. There are none in Scotland.”
“But plenty in Iceland,” Sholto said. “And we’re halfway between.”
“You know what I’m looking forward to? A month of reading about these islands from the comfort of a hot bath.”
“Here’s hoping.”
“And here’s the turning,” she said.
They followed the road southwards, around the base of the dead volcano and back towards the coast, and to the village of Kollafjørđur where the second thing he saw, after a small sign confirming the name, was a boat tied up at a jetty. A red pennant flew from the single mast, though the sails had been furled. Again, they stopped their vehicles and climbed out, though the worsening rain made Sholto regret it immediately. He and Siobhan headed over to Toussaint as Private Torres dashed down the steps, and to the small harbour.
“Room for forty fishing boats,” Toussaint said, his finger hovering over the trigger as he scanned the empty shoreline. “It’s a bigger village than the map made out. Looks free of damage.”
“Only one boat, though,” Siobhan said.
“But there would be provision for refuelling,” Toussaint said. “There’ll be a diesel store down there.”
Torres reached the boat, waved the all-clear, jumped aboard, checked inside, then reappeared, clambered ashore, and headed back towards them.
“The boat’s empty,” Torres said. “No signs of fighting. No bodies. No blood. Not much water over the sides. I don’t think it’s been there long. Could belong to the people who drove these cars to Tórshavn.”
“Why drive when you have a boat?” Siobhan asked. “One more question we can’t immediately answer, but we’re wasting daylight.”
“Agreed,” Toussaint said. “It’s time we split up.”
“You sure that’s wise?” Sholto asked.
The sergeant smiled. “Take a step back, and you realise we’re worrying because we’re not, for once, in immediate danger. We need to know if those bridges are gone. If they are, that explains the boat. And if they’re not, we still have a mission to complete. The Amundsen will return in four days, and we’ve only another five hours before dark. We’ll rendezvous here in four. Agreed?”
“He’s right, isn’t he?” Siobhan said as they closed the car doors, sealing themselves back inside the dry, though increasingly musty, car. “Four days. Three if the sea remains calm, and the Amundsen will return, and we’ll have to decide whether to board it or not.”
“Yep,” Sholto said. “But from everything we’ve seen so far, this is a safer harbour than Dundalk. Even if the ultimate decision is that we’re crossing the Atlantic, this will be a stopping point until the Ocean Queen arrives, so I’d say that a final decision doesn’t have to be made until then. Can you get the heater to work? Nothing I’m trying seems to do the trick.”
“There. Try that. And no, you’re wrong. If we’re going west, better we start from Kenmare Bay, not Dundalk, which means we need to turn the evacuation of Ireland around on its head, and ideally before the Ocean Queen reaches Elysium. We should begin the voyage from Elysium, and travel straight across the Atlantic until we hit… what would we hit? Newfoundland?”
“Or Nova Scotia.”
“But if we start from here, we’ll island-hop to Iceland, to Greenland, to I’m not sure where, but it’ll be covered in ice and snow. The weather outside notwithstanding, this is a blip for the time of year. We have to expect blizzards like they had in France.”
“You’d prefer one voyage and done, into the unknown?” he asked.
“I don’t prefer either option, but the decision will be made sooner not later. The weight of responsibility just hit me square on the shoulders. And maybe we could try a bit of music. There’s a CD player on the dash, I wonder if— Woah!” The moment she’d pressed play, an avalanche of drums and soprano screeching erupted from the speakers. She turned it off. “Is that rock, or opera?”
“It’s something,” Sholto said. “Kids and their music today.”
“And with so much of it having been digital, it’ll be CDs like that which’ll become the lasting record of what was listened to in the dying days of the old era.”
“You’re saying that’ll become a famous classic?”
“Our generation’s addition to Bach and the Beatles,” she said.
The rain grew worse. The wipers struggled to keep up.
“Hold on!” Siobhan began. “No… no, it’s only a rock. I thought it was a sheep. Keep going. No, wait, slow. Okay, no. Keep going.”
“What was it?”
“There’s a farm up that lane. Probably a farm. But there was a car outside. That was all. Just a car. Just one car, and we’re missing hundreds from Tórshavn. Maybe we should have looked around Kollafjørđur for vehicles. I didn’t see any, though. And the boats were missing.” She began rummaging through the detritus left by the car’s previous passengers. “If we can find out what language they spoke, we’ll know where they came from. If that boat wasn’t left here recently—”
Again she stopped, this time interrupted by a flash of lightning. Th
e roar of thunder came a second later, shaking the car.
“Cars are grounded,” Sholto said, more to himself.
“A direct hit would do more than fry the wiring,” Siobhan said.
“Nothing we can do but keep on keeping on. How far is it?”
“Fifteen kilometres. Maybe twenty. Have we gone through Hósvik?”
“Not sure,” he said. “I can barely see the road ahead.”
“Then slow down, but keep going,” she said. “What else can we do?”
“The bridge should be ahead,” Sholto said as a river of rain pelted against the windscreen. “It should be behind us. Next house we see, assuming we ever see anything ever again, I say we stop.”
“Next house? Next building,” Siobhan said. “What’s our speed?”
“Ten kilometres an hour. At least the lightning’s stopped. But the rain is still getting worse. I think— No, I think— That’s a sign! An honest-to-goodness road sign!” He slowed the car to a crawl so they could attempt to read it.
“We’ll have to learn runic script if we’re going to live here,” Siobhan said. “Any ideas whether any of that means bridge? Ah, wait. No. The other island, that’s Eysturoy, yes? Right turn ahead.”
“Driving used to be so much fun,” he said, his mood brightening now he knew their next waypoint was ahead.
“You saw the roads around Dundalk,” she said. “Now imagine them narrower, and picture yourself driving the follow-car in a high-speed pursuit. Driving had its moments, but I wouldn’t say it was fun.”
“I was thinking of driving in America,” he said.
“Tell that to Torres and Gonzales,” she said. “Even our news carried stories of LA’s infamous gridlock.”
“To be specific, I meant driving, about twenty years ago, one summer. There’d been a special election for a mayoral race, and my candidate won. After, I was at a loose end, so I got in the car and decided to drive across America. West to east.”
“West to east? I thought you lived in Maine.”
“I had a cabin there, but I lived wherever, though most recently in Washington, and that because of the presidential race. No, this was a campaign in Washington State, over on the Pacific coast. But I wanted to see the East Coast again, so I got in my car and drove. Didn’t take nearly as long as I’d expected, so when I got there, I drove north to south, and that didn’t take as long either, even after stopping at the battlefields. I went east to west along the southern border, then north again, but that time, I threw the map out the window, and used the setting sun as my guiding star. Now, that was driving.”