Surviving the Evacuation 11: Search and Rescue

by Frank Tayell

  “We’ll start with Newfoundland,” Devine said, “that’s closest, but the weather may prove too demanding for long-term settlement. Then we’ll make best speed to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Long Island. From there, we’ll go south to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, stopping at islands and bays where we’ll see what there is to be seen.”

  “And if it is as bad as here?” Lorraine asked.

  “At least we’ll know,” Devine said.

  “And we do have to find somewhere,” Jones said. “America, or Ireland, or the Mediterranean. Somewhere.”

  “It’s going to be a long winter,” Kim said, “and it hasn’t yet begun.”

  “You really are starting to sound like Heather,” Lorraine said.

  “You’re right,” Kim said. “We’re alive today, and we should be thankful. We know what the problems are, and that’s always half the battle when it comes to devising a solution.”

  Bill nodded, but he was more concerned with the other half of the battle. His eyes fell on a loose piece of tape that covered a bullet hole in the cockpit’s wall. It was at head height and came from a shot that had killed an undead member of the yacht’s original crew.

  No, the evacuation was straightforward, but life was about to get immeasurably harder. Water, food, ships, medicine, electricity, zombies. Those were problems, but ones they knew how to deal with. It was the crises that those problems created, and how those were overcome, which would determine humanity’s fate.

  For the next few weeks, while the evacuation was underway, and while everyone bated their breath against the collapse of the nuclear plant, everything would stay calm. Bill expected it would break as Christmas drew near. Minds would turn to the past, to an idealised version of the family gathering around a table laden with food. They would see what little they had, and order would collapse.

  Law and order, peace and justice, those were the real problems. That was what differentiated a society from a collection of barbarous individuals. There had nearly been a riot after the announcement was made about the nuclear plant. The trial had restored a thin veneer of calm.

  They had searched Willow Farm and arrested all of Bishop’s followers. They had searched Markus’s pub, and found the evidence that Rachel had left behind. It was encyclopaedic, and it implicated only one man, Gareth Lenetti. There was an audio recording of him discussing the murder of four people with Paul. After the jury heard it, the trial was effectively over. It had been a swift affair, pulled together in a matter of hours more to soothe the mob than to pursue justice. No one had come forward to offer evidence for the defence, and after the recording was heard, the jury had been ready to give a verdict: guilty. The judges had taken barely longer to decide on a sentence. Throughout it all, Lenetti had claimed innocence. Only when the verdict had been pronounced did he admit some measure of guilt. He’d said there was proof of his lack of culpability in the campsite near Llandudno where Bill and Lorraine had been held prisoner. That claim had been made in open court, in front of a packed gallery.

  That was where Bill and Kim, Lorraine, Heather, and Captain Devine were going. The evidence would be searched for because they had to become a society of laws. Guilt would be proven, not assumed. If they found nothing, the sentence would be carried out with all that meant for the future of their fragile, fledgling society. What worried Bill more was what would happen if they did find some evidence. No matter how compelling, he doubted it would satisfy the mob.

  Chapter 2 - Evidence

  North Wales

  Mist hung over the Welsh coast, reducing visibility to a few hundred feet. Heather Jones swung the boat to within a short jump of the concrete jetty. Lorraine leapt ashore, rope in hand. Kim was half a step behind, a rifle in hers. As she aimed her weapon into the fog, Heather and Captain Devine quickly disembarked. Bill clambered awkwardly after them.

  At first, he wasn’t sure it was the correct section of coast, but then he saw the boat in which Bishop and his acolyte had attempted to flee. Lorraine had sniped at it from their vantage point on the cliffs. Her bullets had found their mark. Water had flooded the craft, but it had been securely moored and those ropes still held it fast to the jetty. As the boat had filled with water, it had toppled onto its side. The mast now floated on water flecked with fragments of bright red fibreglass from where successive tides had smashed the hull into the quayside.

  “Our ship’s secure?” Jones asked.

  “Aye, Captain,” Lorraine said.

  “You don’t need to come with us,” Jones said.

  “If I leave it to Bill, you might get lost,” Lorraine said.

  Kim and Lorraine moved quickly towards the shore, Heather close behind.

  Captain Devine glanced at Bill. “You don’t need to come, either,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “More than anyone, I need to know.” He limped after the others.

  His left leg had never properly healed from the fracture he’d sustained at the beginning of the outbreak, but he could now limp almost as fast as he’d once been able to walk. Possibly faster considering how out of shape he’d been after a sedentary decade of parliamentary campaigns. Even so, he couldn’t keep up with Kim as she vanished into the mist.

  Ten steps and five seconds later, there was a near silent sound of a suppressed shot followed by a sharp crack of metal hitting rock, and then there was silence. It was absolute. Bill hurried down the jetty, Devine at his heels.

  Alone among the expedition, the American military police captain wasn’t holding a weapon. Her holster’s flap was unbuttoned, and her hand was never far from her pistol, but she hadn’t drawn it. Bill wondered if that was because she had over a decade of combat experience, or whether she needed the hand free for balance. Her left hand was missing, the result of an IED before the outbreak. That injury was why she’d been taken to the USS Harper’s Ferry, and why she’d survived when so many others hadn’t. Bill decided that the captain hadn’t drawn her sidearm because she didn’t think danger was imminent. He drew comfort from that until he heard a flurry of bullets impacting against stone and flesh. He turned his quick limp into a loping run, and almost slipped on the slick steps. Devine caught his arm, holding him up.

  “Less haste, less speed,” she said. “Zombies don’t have guns, so don’t panic when you hear shots.”

  Bill couldn’t help wonder if he should panic when the shooting stopped, because it had stopped now. He reached the edge of the jetty, and the beginning of the rock-covered beach. Kim stood next to an undead corpse, Jones and Lorraine either side.

  “There were three zombies still moving,” Kim said. “They must have fallen from the cliffs, and managed to crawl this far.”

  Splinters of white bone jutted through the zombie’s shredded trousers, evidence of the injuries the creature had sustained during its fall.

  “That’s a military jacket, isn’t it?” Lorraine asked.

  “So are the boots,” Devine said. “British Army, standard issue. He was a soldier.”

  “Probably infected near the beginning of the outbreak,” Kim said. “And after that fall from the cliffs, after wrecking its legs and oozing that… let’s call it blood, but leaving a trail of it from there to here, after all of that, it was still… alive.”

  Bill took the point. He and Kim had seen a zombie die. Once that news had spread, everyone was keen to report having seen others dying or dead with no obvious head wound, but they had yet to find definitive proof. This dead soldier was the opposite. Not all of the living dead were dying, not yet.

  There were more bodies close to the cliffs. One that Lorraine had shot, and four others that had landed head first. There was a rattle of stones and a dry rasp from near the base of the steep steps. A zombie in an almost-clean tweed jacket snarled as Bill approached. Like the creature on the beach, its legs were a mangled ruin. Its face was marred by three ragged gashes where a clawing hand had torn through flesh and beard, but its features were discernible.

  “I don’
t think I recognise him,” Bill said. “Lorraine, was he one of Bishop’s jurors?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so,” she said.

  “But he’s recently turned,” Devine said. “He must have been one of Bishop’s people.”

  Bill brought the machete down on the zombie’s skull. “We should call Bran, let him know.”

  “When we’re at the campsite,” Devine said.

  After Rachel and Bishop had died, a squad of soldiers had travelled to the campsite to ascertain whether any of the zealot’s followers had survived. They’d found no one living, and had ventured inland to search the nearest safe houses. The safe house network had been organised by George Tull, and had a grander name than the reality deserved. Flags were hung outside isolated buildings. Food and water were left inside along with a map directing any survivor towards the next safe house and, ultimately, to Anglesey. That squad of soldiers was being led by Bran, though it would be more accurate to say that the British Army sergeant was leading a group of volunteer-fighters. Though they were looking for Bishop’s people, they were also leaving a warning for anyone who arrived at the safe houses in the months to come that Anglesey was no longer a sanctuary.

  At the top of the steps, the mist was thinner, visibility better, but sounds were still eerily muffled.

  “Is that the zombie you thought might be Sorcha Locke?” Devine asked. She pointed to the corpse that Bill had killed while Lorraine had been shooting at the boat. The creature’s head was a mangled ruin, but around the corpse’s neck was a blue and gold scarf.

  “I think so,” Bill said. “I mean, yes, I think that was Sorcha Locke.”

  “Good.” Devine bent down, opened her satchel, took out a cloth, and carefully lifted the corpse’s hand. “Damn. I was going to take her fingerprints, but they’re too worn, too covered in grime.”

  “Is it important?” Heather asked.

  “There’s been a crime,” Devine said. “The trial notwithstanding, it’s a crime in which the victims will not get justice. In the absence of justice, people look for answers. The fate of one of Kempton’s lieutenants is an answer they would welcome hearing.”

  “She’s right,” Kim said. “You made a big deal out of Lisa Kempton and Sorcha Locke in that account you published, Bill. People now think she’s as big a monster as Quigley.”

  “I thought it better that people focused on Kempton and her people rather than on anyone living in our community,” Bill said.

  “True,” Devine said, “but you’ve created a villain, and people want to know that she’s dead. But I can’t take fingerprints from this woman, not here.”

  “Could you do it on Anglesey?” Heather asked.

  “Sure,” Devine said. “I’d need a few hours to put together the equipment. We’ve got prints from the bunker in Belfast. I had Sergeant Conrad take samples a few days ago.”

  “If you only want fingerprints, you only need the hand,” Heather said.

  Bill sighed. “Stand back,” he said as he raised the machete. As the blade severed rotten sinew, he felt he was also severing another link with their lost civilisation.

  After another hundred yards along the path, they reached the first of the mobile undead. The dark-haired creature in the shredded remains of a sun dress tore itself free of the hedgerow. Mud caked its legs. Dried blood covered its face. Kim and Lorraine fired almost simultaneously. The zombie collapsed into the hedge with a cracking of branches far louder than the gunshots.

  “Call out your targets,” Devine said. “We can’t waste the ammunition.”

  Dr Umbert had expressed it best, though others had expressed it before: they were fighters, not soldiers. Umbert’s death on the ill-fated expedition to the Isle of Man had proven the psychiatrist’s point. Bill blamed himself for Dr Umbert’s death, and his own arrogance for not heeding the man’s words. Then again, in his darker moments, Bill blamed himself for the death of the entire world.

  They came to another undead corpse. Bill didn’t remember having killed it. The bullet wound in its forehead was too neat for it to have been caused by Bishop’s shotgun. He assumed the zombie had been killed by Bran. He hoped that was the case, but dark thoughts were growing as they ventured back to the place of his recent imprisonment. They managed another twenty yards before they heard the next creature. It was alive, and more recently turned.

  “Recognise him?” Kim asked.

  But Bill didn’t, nor did anyone else. Kim fired. The zombie fell, and they continued down the track.

  The wind picked up, thinning the fog. The caravans and chalets emerged from the mist, as did the path down which Bill and Lorraine had escaped. From the scores of footprints in the mud, some booted, some bare-footed, more undead had found their way out of the campsite than had died on the beach. The barbed wire that had previously blocked the gap between the two caravans had been trampled into the dirt. Two corpses lay on top of the wire. Again, both had been expertly shot. The caravan’s walls were dented, smeared with dark stains of blood, gore, and soot. That last showed those creatures had come from the house in which Bill and Lorraine had been held prisoner, and which Bill had burned down.

  The silence was fractured by the tinkling of broken glass. Rifles and machete were raised, but the sound came from deep inside the campsite. Captain Devine’s hand was braced on her sidearm, though she hadn’t drawn it.

  “Once more unto the breach,” Bill murmured, “but just this once more.”

  The caravans were more battered than he remembered, the glass often broken and always smeared with grime. The paintwork was peeling, with white and grey flecks floating in the wide puddles that had gathered after a long night of heavy rain. The steps leading to the caravans’ doors were covered in a thin moss. In the drier patches of gravel, leaves of ivy poked upwards. In a few years, the plant would rule the campsite, choking out all other vegetation and swaddling the mobile homes until the ivy’s own weight crushed the caravans’ rusting metal frames.

  More glass shattered, this time far closer. Shards sprayed onto the path as a zombie tumbled halfway out of a chalet’s window four feet from Kim. The zombie snagged itself on the glass still embedded in the frame, but its clawing arm brushed against Kim’s shoulder as she turned.

  “Mine,” Devine said, and before Bill could take a step towards Kim, before Kim could finish her turn, the captain had drawn her weapon and fired. The zombie slumped forward. The group froze, and held their breath as they listened, but the only sound was of gore dripping from the creature’s head onto the leaf-litter below. Devine holstered her weapon.

  “It’s clear,” she said.

  The house at the centre of the campsite was a charred shell. The northern part of the roof had collapsed. On the upper floors, the plastic window frames had buckled and the glass had fallen out. On the lower floors, the boards covering the windows had kept the fire contained. There were some undead corpses near the building that Bill remembered killing, but others which lay on top of the ash. Killed by Bran and his squad, he thought, he hoped. That same ash coated the line of cars parked outside the building, but otherwise the vehicles looked undamaged and untouched.

  “They didn’t try to drive away,” Lorraine said, indicating the two vehicles with inflated tyres. “Though I think he was going to.”

  The body of a juror lay on the gravel close to the lead car. Most of it did. There was no sign of his right leg.

  “Even after all this time, I still can’t figure out if they are trying to eat people, infect them, or just kill them,” Kim said. She shuddered. “That’s the house, then?”

  “We’re unlikely to find any evidence inside,” Devine said.

  “We’ve got to look,” Bill said.

  “Is that the hut where you found the petrol?” Jones asked.

  The door to the concrete blockhouse was held ajar by the broken shotgun Bill had used to pry open the lock.

  “The petrol’s still inside,” Lorraine said.

  “Lorraine and I will search t
he cars and gather everything we can salvage,” Heather said. “We’ll need ten minutes. Will that be enough?”

  Out of all of Bishop’s followers arrested at Willow Farm, and those detained at the Inn of Iquity, the only evidence they’d found pointed to the guilt of one man, Gareth Lenetti. The evidence was extensive. The trial had been quick. The verdict was unanimous, and only after the sentence was announced had the man changed his defence, claiming that, though he’d worked for Rachel, there was proof that he’d had nothing to do with the murders or abductions. That proof was in the campsite, locked in a safe within the main house. A house that was now an ash-coated ruin.

  “Ten minutes will be more than enough,” Bill said.

  The charred front door creaked as Bill pushed at it with the machete. It moved an inch, and then stopped. Hoping that the door wasn’t keeping the rest of the house from falling down, he slammed his shoulder into it. The wood split, cracking louder than a gunshot. A bird took off from the bare branches of a pine tree at the edge of the driveway. Bill watched it fly up and around before it settled back on its perch. It was a raven. They’d seen a lot of those recently.

  There was a corpse inside the door, the hands held in front, the fingers missing.

  “Some things don’t change,” Devine said.

  “You’ve seen this before?” Kim asked.

  “Bodies in burned-out ruins? Yes,” Devine said. “I worked a war crimes detail in North Africa under General Carpenter. We had a U.N. mandate, gathering evidence that was never used. It’s why the general resigned. He offered me a job when he was made V.P. You can’t say no when your president asks you to serve, and even though Maxwell was in the White House, General Carpenter was the man I voted for. I told him to ask me again, but when I was stateside. Before I could get back, there was the outbreak. So it goes. Lenetti said the safe was in the office upstairs.”