by Frank Tayell
“Makes sense,” Chester said. “So what do you want to do?”
“Other than the tank, the vehicles down there appear abandoned,” Locke said. “The smoke is from a cooking fire. A small one.” She sniffed. “That’s meat, burning. The tank must be here to guard the northern approach to the main facility.”
“Guard from what?”
“Zombies, judging by the corpses on the road,” Locke said. “Can’t you see them? I assume they were zombies. Perhaps they weren’t. Regardless, and considering the paucity of our enemy’s numbers in Belgium, I would guess at two or three sentries on this lonely duty.”
“But in touch with the others by radio,” Chester said.
“Almost certainly,” Locke said.
“And where are those others?”
“The main facility is beyond the trees. Another kilometre away.”
“Right. You want to attack, don’t you?”
“I’m seeking a reason not to,” Locke said.
“How about that it’ll do no good?” Chester said. “We’ll kill a couple of them, but the main group will be alerted, and we’ll have to give up the fuel at the airport.”
“We can hardly fly a plane out of here with them so close,” Locke said. “We have to abandon the fuel unless we can kill them all.”
“And how many is that?” Chester asked. “I’ve got a submachine gun and so do you, and that’s all we’ve got. Handguns aren’t much better than knives, and I don’t fancy going hand-to-hand with a human. I didn’t bring any grenades. Did you?”
“No. And they would be little use against a tank.”
“Against a lot of tanks,” Chester said. “And we don’t know how many. We don’t know if Cavalie is here, but she knows about the horde now, and this is clearly where she retreated to. Was there a radio mast here?”
“Weather balloons,” Locke said. “Yes there is a mast, but there were also weather balloons. They would reach far higher, give a radio signal a far longer range.”
Chester looked up. “I can’t see anything. I guess that doesn’t matter. This won’t bring you closure, trust me on that.”
“Tuck is correct,” Locke said. “We have to think of the future. If the horde is near the Alps, then it poses no threat to them here, and may never pose a threat to them again. They have tanks, they have diesel. They will have the aviation fuel at the airport as soon as they venture north. They might not be able to reach Sweden via Copenhagen, but once the undead are all gone, they will have Europe at their feet. There will be other people out there, Chester. Admiral Popolov’s people. Others who fled Ukraine, who lost contact with the convoy. Do we leave them to the cartel? Do we let Cavalie become empress? Do we leave them to become the enemy your children will have to defeat or else be enslaved? Perhaps we can’t kill them all, but we can at least kill those immediately in front of us. Or I can. You should warn Nilda.”
“Nope,” Chester said. “There’s a way we can do this and both walk away alive. I’ve got an idea.”
Chapter 31 - Nicki
Hovst, Denmark
His idea was the least complex in the long list of scams, tricks, plays, subterfuges, and cons he’d committed in a life of almost constant duplicity. And it had most recently been played on him by Cavalie.
“Hello,” he called out as he approached the gates from the north. He raised his empty right hand, waving. His left, he kept on the hilt of the mace now slung on that side of his belt. His holster was in his bag, his submachine gun had been given to Locke. “Hello,” he called.
A rifle-toting woman trudged out from behind the hut. Her face matched her clothing: greasy and grubby. Lank hair hung limp from beneath a baseball cap. Soot-stained jeans were tucked into battered biker boots, while a leather jacket was zipped to her neck. The rifle was a Kalashnikov, and she carried it with confidence.
“Hi there,” Chester called. “I saw the smoke. Came to say hello.”
A second figure came out to join the woman. A man who, like the woman, was covered in so much of the same grime it was impossible to make an accurate guess at his age. Probably closer to twenty than fifty, though Chester was basing that on his choice of looted clothes: baggy, multi-pocketed skater-trousers, trainers rather than boots, and a sleeveless denim jacket over a lurid green shirt. It wasn’t clothing for the outdoors, let alone survival, yet he carried the shotgun with the confidence of familiarity. A military shotgun, Chester saw as he ambled closer. Probably from the same stash that had produced the Kalashnikovs. French tanks, Russian weapons. His interest was piqued, but those particular questions would wait.
“Hey,” he called out again. “Is that meat cooking? Been a while since I had fresh meat.”
The man looked at the woman, but she was simply watching him. Neither said anything, so he kept walking until, five metres away, the woman raised a hand.
“Arrêtez!”
“That’s French, isn’t it?” Chester asked, stopping. “You’re from France? You’re further from home than I am.”
“Anglais?” the man asked.
“A long time ago,” Chester said. “I came from Russia.” He jerked his hand over his shoulder. “Before that, it was China. I’ve been walking the long way home for nearly a year. You’re the first signs of life I’ve seen in weeks.” He took a step forward as he gestured behind him, then another as he turned around. “Barely seen any zombies, either. Is this your doing?” He waved at the dead lying near the junction between the road and the access way leading into the car park.
The woman frowned. English might have stolen the place of a lingua franca, but it wasn’t a universal language. What little this woman had known had lain unused for months, and now she struggled to summon it from that dormant recess.
“Russia?” the woman finally said in English. “You, from Russia?”
“I took the long way. Sailed. Crashed,” Chester said. “Story of my life, crashes and journeys taking me places I’d never dreamed.”
The woman shook her head. “Come,” she said.
Chester nodded, lowering his left arm, though he kept it upright, flush against his body, his hand holding the right-side strap of his pack. A moment of doubt washed through him. But it was too late to turn around, too late to find another way.
“Non,” the man said.
“What’s that?” Chester said.
“Ton sac,” the man said. “Your bag.”
“What, this?” Chester asked. He let the bag slip from his shoulder, then held it up by the straps. “What do you want it for?”
From the small hut behind the duo came the sound of breaking glass. Both man and woman spun around.
Again, that wave of doubt crashed against reality, but he was too far down the bloody path to turn back. Too far by twenty years.
“Here,” Chester said loudly, and threw the bag at the man. Both man and woman turned around to face him in time for the bag to hit the man heavily in the shoulder. He staggered back as Chester stepped forward, gripping the hilt of the unsheathed knife he’d concealed under the left sleeve of his shirt and jumper. Slicing through cloth, he tore the blade free. Before it was clear he was already reaching out with his left hand. He grabbed the woman’s rifle barrel, tugging the weapon so the trigger was clear of her finger, pushing the barrel down and to the side as he slashed the knife across her throat. Surprise didn’t have time to turn to fear as hot blood gushed from her severed jugular, washing over his hand. Her eyes blinked, her mouth moved, but no words came out before the light faded, and she fell, her last drop of life’s blood pulsing onto the ground.
The man was already dead. Shot by Locke who stood in the doorway to the cabin.
“Sorry. Took longer than I expected,” Locke said, crossing to the tank, peering up the road. “There were two of them inside. Getting a clear angle on them both was difficult. Kalashnikovs. AK-74Ms, the same as in Calais.”
“You don’t recognise them, do you?” Chester asked, taking his submachine gun from her. His hand, stic
ky with blood, felt tacky against the gun’s grip.
“No. You?”
“I meant that these might not be Cavalie’s people,” Chester said. “I should have asked.”
“The same weapons as Calais. The same tanks. And they are here,” Locke said, climbing up to the tank’s turret. She paused, stuck her head briefly inside. “Clear.” She climbed in.
“I meant…” Chester began. The doubt was increasingly familiar. He crossed to the woman he’d stabbed, then turned away without checking her for a tattoo. The one thing worse than finding one would be finding none at all.
Locke climbed back out of the tank. “It would take me a week to learn how to drive it. I thought it would be as simple as a digger. Of course it isn’t. Shall we?”
“Shall we what?”
“Gather supplies and plan the next stage of the assault,” Locke said. “We need to find their radio first.” She crossed to the hut’s doorway. “Perhaps you should keep watch. I won’t be long.”
Chester took one last look at the two bodies, then turned his gaze back along the track, in the direction they assumed Cavalie’s reinforcements would come.
Assume. They assumed Cavalie was here in Haderslev. They assumed these were part of the same gang of slavers who’d occupied Calais. They assumed they were evil.
The man who’d organised the attack on the people of Creil, Dernier, had escaped from prison. Perhaps the young man was a convict. That didn’t make him evil, Chester knew that. And perhaps neither of them were convicts. Perhaps she’d been a doctor in a care home, a nurse, a nun. Perhaps they were both innocents a year ago. Perhaps they’d fallen in with the first survivors they’d found, and had stayed with them because there’d been no opportunity to escape. Perhaps.
It had been so much simpler before he’d left London, when he’d been walking a winding path of redemption. Since then, he’d gone to war with no idea of what that truly meant. Kill or be killed; he thought he’d learned that lesson as a child, but only now did he truly understand what it meant to fight for survival in a lawless world. There would be no repercussions, but there was judgement. With each and every death, he found himself asking whether he had more of a right to live than his foe.
“Good news and bad, I think,” Locke said, coming back outside. “I found the radio.” She held it up. “A walkie-talkie. One of ours. From the facility. What is it?”
“I was just realising that this is war,” Chester said. “All of this, how we’re living, and we’ll live from now on. It’s war.”
“Yes, and only in victory will your child be safe,” Locke said. “As I say, good news and bad. The bad is in the quantity of supplies. They are considerable.”
Chester nodded, her words sinking in, and finally he saw what she was carrying in her other hand. “What’s that?” he said, though he thought he knew. “It’s a rocket launcher.”
“An RPG7,” Locke said. “The same as they had in France at that ambush by the bridge. I assumed the weapons were associated with the destroyer in Calais. I think my supposition was inaccurate. Considering the location, I would guess these came from Kaliningrad. Whether Cavalie went there, or they took them from Russian personnel somewhere between here and there, I won’t waste time guessing. I would venture that travel by sea would be more logical than by land, and so we should confirm whether they have any boats.”
“And then?” Chester asked.
“I have the beginnings of a plan,” Locke said. “We must destroy the fuel supply. Without it, they’re trapped. Here, take the RPG. The grenades are in this bag. They only had four.” She glanced up and down the road. “And after all this time, I imagine they didn’t expect they would need even one. This way. We’ll avoid the path, and take the route less travelled. I cut some of the wires in the tank. That was as much as I was able to do.”
There was something in Locke’s voice, an edge to the tone, not excitement, but it was almost vindication.
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
“As I say, destroy the fuel supply,” Locke said. “Ensure that, when they leave here, they do so with only that which they can carry. Yes, that is all we can do.”
She seemed to know where to go, but she avoided the obvious path as she picked her way through the trees. After a ten-minute slog, she led him up a slight rise, and to the shelter of a neat copse of trees, in the middle of which was a solitary curving bench, and beyond, running between and around the trees, a rubbery-leafed shrubbery.
“Lisa’s bench,” Locke whispered, moving past it to the overgrown hedgerow. “The rhododendrons were for inspiration. I don’t think she ever had a chance to sit and enjoy them. There it is.”
Beyond the hedge was a down-slope leading to concrete. An access road, then a car park, then more roads, intersected with wide patches of overgrown grass, dotted with an occasional one-storey, ringing the main building. Or was it buildings, plural? In each corner was a four-storey block, fifty metres wide. Connecting them was a two-storey corridor that, at ground level, was mostly glass. It was almost like a castle with towers and walls, though the space in between appeared to be covered with a glass roof.
“Where are the fuel tanks?” he asked.
“Underground,” Locke said. “A pipe leads to a small pontoon a hundred metres offshore.”
“The sea? I can’t see it.”
“It’s there, about a kilometre away. I can’t see any large ships. There’s a boathouse, can you see that?”
“Not with these eyes. Can you see any small boats?”
“None, but if they aren’t in the boathouse, they might have gone for supplies.”
“To some Russian military depot in Kaliningrad?” Chester said.
“After losing Calais, and losing the munitions they hoped to take from Creil, it is likely they have turned their gaze elsewhere. There is some hope that the supplies in Kaliningrad are more dangerous to reach than those in Creil.”
“Or they’ve got no boats,” Chester said. “Or they’ve gone to collect more tanks from where those came from. So, let’s get down to brass tacks, how do we destroy the fuel? We’ve got four rockets.”
“Yes. Three standard grenades, one thermobaric. That is the grenade with the bulbous end, designed to neutralise people rather than as an anti-tank device. I don’t know what it’ll do to a Leclerc, since one assumes those tanks were designed with this particular weapon in mind. Hence why we should target their fuel supply.”
“And how do we do that?”
“We don’t. I do,” Locke said. “Lisa knew the cartel were acting against us, and getting ready to destroy us. As, indeed, we were intending to destroy them. Their methods were cruder. Kaliningrad. Russia. RPGs. I think they were acting against Quigley, too. Regardless, Lisa planned for this. Ultimately, there was little we could do if they attempted to disappear us except to ensure that questions were asked. We were very public in some of our acquisitions. Elysium, here, an ancient mountaintop castle in Portugal. Across the world, there were people who knew that Lisa Kempton had purchased those properties. Each is remote. Each has a fuel store. Beneath each fuel tank, there is a small explosive. It is not enough to cause much damage to the facility itself, but it will ignite the fumes. It will cause a pillar of smoke that could be seen for miles. Conspiracy theorists would pester journalists into asking questions. The cartel’s pocket-politicians would provide answers, but not everyone would believe them. People like Mr Tom Clemens knew the real truth, and they would spread the word. Doubt would emerge and our deaths would not be in vain.”
“There’s a bomb beneath the fuel store? And there’s one in Ireland?”
“I removed it in Elysium, along with some other fail-safes, other information, before I left.”
“Someone could have done the same here,” he said.
“Perhaps. But it is unlikely that anyone who knew of it would have come here. Not impossible, I grant you. This was something not even the inner circle knew. We knew it had been infiltrated. After Man
hattan, I reset the codes remotely. After Prometheus, the remote triggers would not have worked. There is a detonator onsite.”
“Where?”
“In an office in the main building.”
“There are people down there,” Chester said. “I can count six. Assume some more sentries on other roads, and more people inside, we’re talking dozens. We won’t get close.”
“I might,” Locke said. “Whoever is down there will know who once owned this complex. I shall do as you did a few minutes ago. I shall walk up to the gate and ask to be let in.”
“What if they just shoot you?”
“Then I shall be dead,” she said. “Give me half an hour. Then use the RPG to shoot their tanks. Listen in on their radio. If the voices become frantic, attack sooner. If they begin mustering their people, make your way back to the airport.”
“You expect to die,” he said.
“As you said, we’re at war,” Locke said. “The only purpose a conflict serves is to preserve a future for those we love. There is no other course open to us, and so I go. Good luck to you, Chester Carson. Make this a better world than I did.”
He wanted to stop her, but didn’t because he knew she was right.
He watched Locke until she disappeared among the trees, then turned his attention to the buildings. He could make out figures, but not their features. The tanks were more distinct, but even they were outlines more than shapes. Half an hour? He had no watch. Would he see Locke arrive? Would he see her be taken to that large building? Maybe not. He would have to listen to the radio, but they would speak in French. And surely one of the first things they’d do was alert the other sentries, telling them to keep watch for other new arrivals. When the group by the wetlands visitors centre didn’t report in, a search would begin and he’d not get close. Locke wouldn’t either. He had to get in position now.