by Frank Tayell
The tow truck was stalled on top of the barbed wire with the engine facing the house as if the driver had been trying to get inside. At night, perhaps? When they’d been unable to see the wire until it was too late? It was as good an explanation as any, and lasted until he reached the cab. The windshield was spider-webbed but unbroken, partially covered in a creeping purple-tinged moss, but inside he could see a figure. Hunched over the driver’s seat, unmoving. Zombie, or corpse? Or both?
He drew the nine-millimetre, reached for the door handle, and found it was jammed. Holstering his gun, he drew the hatchet. A moment’s fruitless levering, and he raised his arm, slamming the axe down on the window. The glass shattered. He stepped back, but the body hadn’t moved. It was decayed, yes, but he couldn’t tell if it was a dead zombie or a preserved corpse of one of the immune. On the passenger seat, though, he saw the familiar rectangle of a rifle case. After a second’s reflection, he crossed to the passenger-side, broke that window, grabbed the case, and stepped back. The gun inside was pristine, but not worth half the value of the case. A .308 hunting rifle, well oiled, the wooden stock well-polished. Ten rounds in the case, and no more. He closed the case and peered at the house. There wasn’t time to go inside. Not today. Probably not tomorrow. And there was no time to search the truck unless he made sure the corpse was properly dead. He didn’t wish to do that, either.
Carrying the rifle case, he went back to his truck, got in, and continued driving. Ammunition at the police station. The discovery of this rifle. All in the space of a few hours. And on a peninsula that was free of snow and ice. Six months ago, they’d have rejoiced at such a find. Even a month ago, they’d have spent hours debating the possibility of making a home here. But Nilda was right. They needed factories. They needed to stop moving, and to start making something new. They’d found Eldorado, and now they needed to transform it into a home.
His destination was only seventy miles from Port Lewes, east of the town of Centreville, and on the Maryland portion of the peninsula. Quite exactly where, he wasn’t certain, but he knew he wouldn’t miss it. He’d never been to the mansion, but he’d seen the documentary, with its faux-interrogative angle and soft-ball questions. The cameras had roamed beyond the estate, interviewing residents of the nearby town, asking their opinions on the billionaire who’d converted a dozen acres of farmland into a palatial mansion. The show had even showed Kempton arriving by helicopter. The take-away was that this foreign-born billionaire lived within an air-commute of the corridors of power. Somewhat reclusive, she was generous to her neighbours, except when it came to helicopter noise.
From his own research, he knew Kempton rarely spent any time in the house. It was a blind, a bluff, the place the world was supposed to think she lived. But now, as he drove slowly in search of its ornamental entrance, he wondered if he’d again judged Kempton wrong. The peninsula had once been known as America’s garden. Was that why she’d picked this place? Was the mansion another aspect of her long-term apocalyptic planning against the day the remains of the species returned to tilling the soil?
The mansion was easy to find. The five-foot-high granite wall was very out of place amid the empty Maryland farmland. The ten-foot-high blue-painted railings were even more out of keeping. Behind them, he caught a glimpse of the mansion, then another, before it was lost behind trees. That had been a feature of the documentary, a comment by the narrator, a question as to why the billionaire had not created real privacy for herself. The response, in one of the few segments featuring Kempton herself, was that she’d strategically planted every tree with her own hand. In a century they would create a proper shield for the house, and she was quite happy to wait. It was one of those trademark responses that made you feel you’d gained a real insight into the woman, until you spent more than a few seconds thinking about it.
Following the wall, he found the entrance, and the gate, which was closed. Not barricaded. Just locked, which he discovered after getting out of his truck and giving it a shake. A thin drift of leaves had gathered against the base of the gate, but there were barely any on the driveway, nor much mud. The head-height walls on either side had done a good job of retaining the raised soil-banks. He gave the gate another shake. It barely moved. Lockbars ran into the pillars on either side, with more sunk deep into the roadway itself. For all that this house was rarely used, it was still once the home of a billionaire with the security concerns brought by such wealth.
That security extended to a camera on each of the gate pillars. No doubt there were others inside which he couldn’t see, but he was certain no one was watching. He ran his eye up the gate. It would be easy enough to climb. So why was he hesitating? Fear of finding something, or of finding nothing? Darkness was only an hour away. He could be in and out and on his way before sunset. He climbed the gate.
Inside, he trudged up the road until it branched towards a clearing in which was a raised tarmac circle with a vivid letter H. There was no helicopter, though there was a low concrete structure partially buried at the side of the helipad. Something connected with maintenance, he supposed. Perhaps even refuelling. But he didn’t head towards it. There was something about the helipad itself. Something odd. Something he was looking at and not seeing. When he took another step, his foot slipped on the thick layer of leaves fallen from Kempton’s hand-planted forest. Realisation came quicker than he regained his footing. The helipad was virtually free of leaf litter. Had it been swept? Kept clean in case rescue came?
His hand dropped to his holster, not thinking of Kempton so much as the cartel. Gun raised, he trekked over to the concrete structure. Three sided, with a shallow door, it was bolted, but the padlock had been removed and was missing. Inside was a five-foot-square, seven-foot-high chamber built partially under the helipad. A few snow shovels sat in a rack, while a bank of dark computers stood next to them, with a trio of pipes next to those. Probably connected to refuelling. He gave the chamber another slow examination, but if there were any other clues there, he didn’t recognise them.
To the north of the helipad, at the edges of a broad puddle, he found footprints. Some were heading towards the helipad, some away, but they were too indistinct to identify whether they belonged to the same person. They were recent, though. A week old, perhaps two. Perhaps a month, but probably not longer, depending on the recent weather. Eyes open for more prints, he headed over the grass and into the trees, picking his way between them as he headed towards the house.
The mansion was built in an imposing curve, arcing around a driveway where a fountain provided a roundabout. He remembered from the documentary how there were four single-storey 3D-printed buildings behind the main house. Designed in a Roman style, complete with columns, one was a gym, one was a pool, one was an art gallery, while the fourth was used as a dining space for casual functions. From above, the collective shape was supposed to look like Kempton’s logo.
The documentary had, on casual viewing, appeared to gently mock its subject for her bafflingly profligate, confusingly anachronistic exercise in vanity. Which was precisely what Kempton had wanted. While the world laughed at her, they weren’t suspicious. They were distracted from asking the right questions while she was free to pursue her righteous quest. No one was left to laugh at the billionaire’s folly now, of course. No one except Sholto, and what he saw in front of him drowned all good humour. Outside the front doors to the mansion, he saw them. There his hopes were dashed. The Delmarva Peninsula was not akin to Newfoundland. There were zombies outside the house. At least twenty, gathered around the main doors near the silent fountain. Shielded by trees, Sholto carefully scanned the driveway, the tennis court, the woodland, and the artificial hill built to hide a nearby farm’s multi-storey grain silo.
He couldn’t see any more of the undead. He couldn’t see any of the living, either. No smoke. No lights. No obvious evidence of recent barricades or long-ago battles, but there were zombies here. Almost certainly there would be more zombies elsewhere on the peninsula
. More immediately, it suggested another way in and out of the estate. Had the undead had been woken by the arrival, or departure, of the helicopter? Why had the zombies come here in the first place? Why had the helicopter? Why were they gathered outside the front doors? Were people still inside?
This was a mansion, not a house. There were a hundred windows someone could climb out of. In which case, there was no reason anyone had to stay in the house except by choice. The cartel wouldn’t, but would Kempton? Maybe she’d done her job. She’d killed the last of the politicians, and now she waited here, hoping Tamika Keynes would find her.
He sighed. He was wasting time. He knew what he had to do. From the long shadow cast by the tree, he had to do it now or risk being caught outside after dark.
Staying within the treeline, he jogged between the trimmed trunks and behind the occasional ornamental shrub, staying in cover until he could no longer see the main entrance or the undead. Scanning the building, looking for a way in, he saw someone’s way out. A length of rope hung from an upper-floor balcony. They had left. A flash of regret caused his shoulders to slump. Lisa Kempton had gone. Presumably travelling in the same helicopter which had first woken the undead. Probably. But had she left a clue as to her next destination?
There were no zombies beneath the rope, nor any at all within sight or hearing, and he’d come too far to turn back now. Before good sense got the better of curiosity, he ran across the wild-grown lawn, scanning for movement, listening for the undead, but there were none. None that were alive. Two lay dead at the base of the rope. Both shot in chest and head. Around them and the base of the rope were footprints and bullet casings, enough to suggest more shots had been fired into the distance. He looked for the targets, but saw nothing except patchwork mud, long grass, tall trees, and the low sun stretching towards the horizon. Time was running out. He gripped the rope, and gave a tug. It seemed secure. Holstering his gun, he hauled himself up.
The balcony was only fifteen feet above the ground, constructed in a style closer to medieval than fairy tale, unless it was one of the gothic fables redolent with blood and pain. Very much out of keeping with the rest of the mansion, it must have been a private joke of Kempton’s. That opinion was doubly reinforced when he saw the room beyond.
It was a small bedroom barely large enough for the pair of throne-like armchairs and an empress-sized futon. The thinnest of horizontal lines on the ocean-blue walls hinted at recessed drawers. If two weren’t open, he’d have missed them because his attention was on the bloody bandages. Discarded on the edge of the bed, with sterile wrappers next to it. Military grade, certainly. Again, it hinted at someone recently having been here, but how recently? Who?
There were footprints on the floor, heading to the wall. No, they led to a nearly hidden doorway that opened into a cavernous bathroom, far bigger the bedroom. A bathroom which had been used recently, despite the plumbing no longer working. There were more discarded bandages in the bin, but no sign of surgery.
Someone had been injured, and they took refuge in this room. They were hurt, but not too seriously. Or perhaps they weren’t alone. But they waited here until… when? Presumably until the helicopters arrived. But why had Kempton come back here in the first place?
By following the droplets of blood, he found the door. Drawing his gun first, he opened the door. Beyond was a long corridor, not a hallway, but a vestibule of sorts, complete with paintings on the wall. Not very good ones, and mostly of seascapes.
Between them, a door led into an entirely functional galley kitchen, with dime-store appliances and a cupboard crammed with chipped crockery. It was a hint at Kempton’s real self, and one he’d have loved to spend more time investigating, but there wasn’t time.
At the end of the corridor, another door led onto a hallway. Looking back, the door itself was nearly invisible in the wall, flanked by two double-wide, gold-handled, gilt-trimmed doorways too pretentious for Versailles. But Sholto was now concentrating on the blood trail, following the dried brown drips across the cold polished marble, along the corridor, and down the imposing central staircase that split in two, curving along both walls to the ground floor. The stairs ended opposite one another, and only a few metres from the front doors. They appeared to be wooden-panelled, double-wide with brass hinges. Impressive. Sturdy. They were bolted, but not boarded. How strong were those bolts? Was there steel beneath the wooden panels? How soundproof were they?
From the treeline, he’d not been close enough to see or hear if the zombies outside were beating their fists against the door. From all he’d seen, it was days, if not weeks, since anyone had been in the house, so were those zombies outside active? Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe they were dead. Some of the zombies in Port-Aux-Basques had died on their feet. He should have crept closer while he was outside, but he’d taken too many risks to test the theory now, inside. Intending to climb back up the stairs, he turned around, and caught sight of something in the corner of the vestibule. A waterproof backpack, with a neon green rope attached to one side, a compact shovel on the other. It had to have belonged to someone recently in this house.
The blood trail led to it, and just beyond, there was a wider splash of dried blood and a trio of bullet casings. The bag looked as if it had been dropped, presumably by whoever had been injured. It wasn’t a huge leap to assume they were with at least one other person, and the bandages had come from the second person’s bag. That begged another question, not what was in the bag. He could search it from the safety of his car. No, the question was why the bag had been dropped. Or, to put it another way, what were they shooting at? There were no corpses, nor any bullet holes in the walls.
To his left were two sets of intact glass doors which opened into a chamber most people would have called their main room, but in this house, considering the layout, had to be another corridor. Through the glass were more chairs, more paintings, though these were traditional gilt-framed old masters. But not far from the bag was another tracer-thin line in the wallpaper, a rectangle, a little taller and wider than a person. Another of the near-hidden doors. Pausing to sling the survivor’s backpack over his shoulder, and wincing at the metallic clink as he did so, he fished out his flashlight.
The door had no handle, hidden or otherwise. A gentle pressure on the top, the sides, the centre, did absolutely nothing. After a brief wrestle with his fears, he holstered the pistol and took out the hatchet. When he eased the blade into the miniscule gap, however, the door slid open and inwards, utterly silently. He’d been expecting a spiral staircase, or a secret elevator. What he found was a long narrow corridor, stretching for fifty feet. And he found corpses. Three of them. All zombies. All shot.
That explained the bullet casings. He shone the torch on one body, then the next. They were certainly dead, two female, one probably male. Undead since the outbreak, near enough. Wearing shapeless rags that gave no clue as to how they’d ended up here, nor when.
The sensible thing was to retreat. But he could hear Annette’s voice asking him what lay at the end of the corridor. And it did appear to just be a corridor, one which ran between the more obviously opulent parts of the house. Picking his way over the corpses, he stepped inside, but the moment he let go of the door, it swung shut behind him, so quickly and quietly he didn’t have time to realise what was happening before it was closed. Standing with both feet in the spilled brains of the dead zombies, he shone the light over the door, but there was no more obvious sign of a handle than there’d been on the outside. Try to shoulder-barge it? No, he’d fall on his face. Rather, fall on the faces of the corpses at his feet. He’d find another exit.
By torchlight, he picked his way over the bodies and along the pitch-dark corridor. After fifty yards it jinked, with a sharp right turn, then a left. He couldn’t see any doorways, but at the far end of the corridor he saw light. Only a sliver, but it was unmistakable, and grew into a nearly bright rectangle as he drew nearer. It was another door, and this one had been prevented from clos
ing by a zombie’s arm. The rest of the creature lay on the other side of the door. Cautiously he pushed the door open, and found himself in a piano room. Other than a trio of long benches against one wall, the matte-black grand was the only furniture in there. In the ceiling was a wide skylight, not directly linked to the outside, but to a light-well that serviced… He couldn’t remember, but he did remember the piano room being shown in the documentary. A chart-topping pop star, who’d just happened to be staying with the billionaire when the pre-arranged cameras had turned up, had been pressed into playing a soon-to-be-released song. Who was it? Sholto searched his memory for the name, until he heard a dry rustle behind him.
A hand as cold and lifeless as metal curled around his ankle. He spun, kicking, dropping the backpack. The prone zombie whose arm had been keeping the door closed hadn’t been dead. It had one hand around his ankle, the other reaching upwards.
Sholto swung the axe low, chopping the blade deep into the creature’s arm where it snapped the bone, but lodged in the gory mess of torn sinew. He tore his foot free, lashing out with his other, slamming his boot into the zombie’s jaw, then stamped down on its shoulder. Again bone broke, this time as its chin slammed into the floor. But that was nothing compared to the soft crack as he brought his heel down on the back of its skull.
Breathing hard, he drew his gun, swinging around in two full circles until he was sure he was properly alone. He forced his breathing to slow. That was when he noticed the zombie’s clothing. It wore a blue and gold jumpsuit identical to those they’d found aboard The New World. It was Kempton’s post-apocalyptic uniform. Hard-wearing, lightweight, easy to clean, fire-resistant and chemical retardant. She’d stashed sets of the gear in the safe houses in Ireland, in Birmingham, and beyond. But was this woman Kempton? No. Almost certainly not.