Surviving the Evacuation 11: Search and Rescue

by Frank Tayell

  “Four people,” Chester whispered. “They look like soldiers.”

  “The uniform doesn’t make the man,” Bran said. “And they are all men. Five, not four, one’s lying down. No rifles that I can see. Some knives. An axe. Two shotguns. Here.” He passed the binoculars to Chester.

  “Why would a group of civilians dress up in military uniforms?” Chester asked. “There are other clothes available in every house. For that matter, why would a soldier wear a uniform? You don’t.”

  “Good point. Give me the binoculars.” Bran took them back, scanned the group, and then passed the binoculars to Chester. “Look at their feet.”

  “Some are wearing boots, some are wearing trainers. What am I looking for?”

  “They don’t clean their boots or maintain their gear,” Bran said. “Those uniforms are the very definition of ill-fitting. Look at their stance, their walk. They’re civilians dressed as soldiers. Never in the history of the world has that been a good thing.”

  “A couple of them are drinking,” Chester said. “I’d say that’s another bad sign. With that fire, it looks like they’re settling in. Do we go around them?”

  “You tell me,” Bran said. “If that was you, what would you do next?”

  “Probably get killed when those zombies who were on the railway line arrive here,” Chester said. “That river isn’t deep. The undead will be able to wade across. That wall’s no protection, and I don’t think they’ve even barricaded the windows around the restaurant.”

  “Maybe they don’t plan to stay here for long,” Bran said. “If they want supplies, Wrexham is the logical place to look, unless that’s where they’ve come from. There’s an old Army barracks in the city that was used for officer training. Maybe that’s where they got the uniforms. If they’ve come from the east, and keep going west, they’ll reach Anglesey. Either way, this is a confrontation we can’t avoid, so it’s best to get it over with.”

  “You mean you want to fight them?” Chester asked.

  “No,” Bran said. “Not if we don’t have to. Most likely this is just another group of survivors who donned the uniform because it’s more hardwearing than denim.”

  “What if they’re the people who killed the brigadier?”

  “How would we ever know?” Bran asked. “I doubt they’d freely admit it to a pair of strangers. No, we’ll talk to them, but we won’t mention Anglesey. We’ll say we’re from a community in Ireland. We’re here seeing what’s happened to the country. That’s all.”

  He unslung his pack, took the holster off, and put that and the suppressor into his bag. He tucked the pistol into his belt at the small of his back.

  “Gunfire’s the last resort,” Bran said. “If I start shooting, you start running. The zombies will hear the shots.”

  “This isn’t my first fight,” Chester said.

  “Fine. I want you to do the talking. Let them focus on you so I can concentrate on them.”

  Halfway across the bridge, Chester raised his hand and waved. It wasn’t until they were at the far side that they were noticed. There was a shout. The man on the ground stayed there. Three of the others stood and walked a few steps away from the fire. The fifth ran into the restaurant. That wasn’t a good sign. Either they had more people inside, or better weapons, or both.

  “It’s good to see people,” Chester called, stopping on the road near the restaurant’s sign. “Haven’t seen anyone for a while, not alive. Did you come from Birmingham?”

  “Birmingham?” one of the men carrying a shotgun asked. “Is that where you’re heading?”

  “We caught a snippet of a radio broadcast,” Chester said. “There are meant to be survivors there. We’re going to see if it’s true.”

  “Just the two of you?” the man asked.

  “We didn’t want to send too many more in case it was another will-o-the-wisp,” Chester said. “You hear so many rumours, don’t you? So you’re not from Birmingham?”

  “We’re from a lot of places,” the man said. “What did they say about Birmingham?”

  Before Chester could reply, there came a yell. It was a yell not a scream, and it was angry rather than afraid. It came from inside, was definitely female, and was followed by a woman running out of the door.

  “I said get your hands off,” she said stumbling out into the daylight. She came to a halt when she saw Chester and Bran. The woman’s accent was Scottish. Her hair was bright red, and her face was young. Bran placed her in her early twenties, if that.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” Chester said. “I don’t suppose you’ve come from Birmingham?”

  “You’re not with them?” the woman said. She took a step across the car park towards Chester. One of the faux-soldiers stepped between them.

  “We’ve come from Ireland,” Chester said, leaning to the side to address the woman. “There’s a settlement there with people from all over. We heard a radio signal from survivors in Birmingham and we’re on our way to check it out. What about yourself?”

  “I’m…” She took a step towards Chester and Bran. The nearest uniformed man tried to grab her, but she ducked under his arm, stamped on his foot, and jabbed an elbow into his side. As he doubled over, she ran out into the road, and stopped near Chester and Bran, though not quite at their side. “Ireland? That has to be better than this.”

  “This is a military matter,” the man with shotgun said. “She’s under arrest. We’ve got to take her back to central command where she’ll face trial for murder.”

  “That’s a lie,” the woman said. “I had the misfortune to be passing, that’s all.”

  “You need to step back,” the man with the shotgun said.

  The door to the restaurant opened again. A figure stepped out. This man was also dressed in uniform, though it was far better fitting. Despite the captain’s insignia on the man’s shoulders, Bran recognised the man instantly. More than that, he knew where the man had recently been. Bran might have been mistaken about the World War Two gun belt at the man’s waist, but not when it was taken with the ivory pipe between his teeth.

  “What’s going on out—” the man began. He stopped. “Why, if it isn’t old Web. How are you, Sarge?”

  “Barclay,” Bran hissed. “Run,” he added, as he dropped to a knee and drew the pistol from his belt. He fired three shots at the doorway. Barclay ducked back inside as Bran emptied the rest of the magazine at the man’s supporters. There was a roar of a shotgun, but the pellets went nowhere near. Then came a sharp crack from Bran’s left as Chester fired his revolver.

  “Run! The bridge!” Bran snapped. The woman had already set off. Bran slotted a fresh magazine into place, and pushed Chester after her. Bran fired as he ran, not aiming at the group, but just wanting to keep them from realising they had the upper hand.

  Another shot came, this one the more familiar crack of an SA80. Stone flew from the bridge’s balustrade as Bran ducked behind it. He dropped the pistol and unslung his own rifle.

  “Do you know him?” the woman asked, snatching the pistol from the ground.

  “That man’s name is Barclay,” Bran said. “He’s a soldier, but he wasn’t a captain, not the last time we met. You saw the belt?”

  “Can’t say I did,” Chester said.

  “World War Two, standard issue back then, but very un-regulation now. You’d have to hold serious rank to get away with it.”

  “Like being a brigadier?” Chester asked.

  “A lot higher than a brigadier unless you had a reputation that went with the rank,” Bran said. “The brigadier smoked an ivory pipe. Another antique. The man was obsessed with them. A leather belt, an ivory pipe, do I need to draw you a picture?”

  “You might want to draw me one,” the woman said. “Are you really from Ireland?”

  “Actually, we’ve come from somewhere a little nearer than that,” Chester said. He half stood and fired over the balustrade.

  Bran pulled him back down. “Save the ammunition for when they’re clo
ser, and they will get closer if we stop firing. What was that stuff about Birmingham?”

  “You said I should do the talking,” Chester said. “I thought it was a plausible reason for us being in this part of the world.”

  “There wasn’t a radio broadcast?” the woman asked.

  “Sorry, no,” Chester said, “but there is a refuge not far from here. I’m Chester Carson.”

  “Lorraine.”

  “And this is Bran,” Chester said.

  “That man called you Web,” the woman said.

  “Long story,” Bran said. “This isn’t the time for it.”

  A bullet hit the road, followed by a shotgun blast that sprayed pellets into the bark and leaves of a willow ten yards further down the bank.

  “Nice to meet you, Lorraine,” Chester said. “You’re from Scotland?”

  Another bullet hit the bridge.

  “He’s right,” she said, “this is not the time for small talk. Where’s this refuge, and why are we waiting?”

  “Anglesey,” Bran said. “Though we’ve a boat on the coast.”

  “And why aren’t we sprinting there now?” she asked.

  “I want to make sure we’re not followed,” Bran lied.

  The bridge had stone balustrades at either end that were far older than the iron bridge over the river itself. That looked like a temporary structure installed when a more ancient bridge had been washed away. More importantly, the bridge was open-sided. They were safe behind the stone balustrade, but only until the undead came, and they would come. They’d seen too many zombies in the last few days not to know that this area would become infested with the creatures. They weren’t going to reach Wrexham. It was time to go back. First, though, he had a score to settle with Barclay.

  “Chester, on my word,” Bran said, “I want you to fire a shot over the top. One shot, and then you both run to the other side of the bridge. Now!”

  Chester fired, and Bran swung out around the far edge of the balustrade. He found a target, a man with the shotgun. He fired his rifle, and his bullet found its mark. He shifted his aim. There was no sign of Barclay, so he fired his next round at the window close to the door. Then he saw movement, a rifle barrel in the window next to the door. He fired. The shadow fell, but a shotgun blast came from his left. He ducked back into cover.

  Chester and the woman were halfway across the bridge. Bran rolled to the other side of the balustrade. There was no clear target, so he shot the windows, hoping the sound of falling glass would distract Barclay’s men. Another blast came from a shotgun. The pellets didn’t come close. Whoever Barclay had surrounded himself with, they weren’t soldiers. They weren’t even raw recruits.

  Bran aimed at the corner of the building from where the gunfire had come. A figure appeared in the doorway. It was Barclay. He held an assault rifle in one hand, his other hung loose by his side. Barclay pulled the trigger. The weapon was set to fully automatic. Bran ducked back into cover as Barclay emptied the magazine.

  The shots came out too fast to count, but Bran knew how long it took for a magazine to empty. When the last shot came, while Barclay was still pulling the trigger on an empty chamber, Bran swung around the stone abutment and fired. Barclay staggered back into the restaurant. There was another shotgun blast from an upper window, but Bran didn’t waste ammunition returning fire. Barclay was dead, and Bran could see what the bandits in the restaurant couldn’t. Coming up the road, summoned by the gunfire, were the undead. It was time to get away.

  He ran to the far side of the bridge where Chester and Lorraine crouched together in the scant cover of a willow.

  “Zombies! Move,” he snapped. It was ten minutes before Bran slowed the pace to a brisk walk.

  “Did Barclay tell you anything?” Bran asked.

  “Like what?” Lorraine asked.

  “Why he was here. Where he was going. Where he’d been,” Bran said.

  “Not really,” Lorraine said. “Nothing I believed. They said that the government was running things from Northumberland. They were scouting for supplies, chasing looters, trying to get survivors to go back there.”

  “That’s a lie, isn’t it?” Chester asked.

  “Probably,” Bran said. “It’s probably no more true than what you were saying about there being survivors in Birmingham. No, we need to get back to the ship, then back to Anglesey.”

  The mission had been a failure. The brigadier was dead. Anglesey would have to find another leader.

  Chapter 6 - Signs and Prints

  Anglesey, 29th October, Day 230

  “That was Sam?” Bill asked. “Chester Carson was Sam? The guy in the house in Sydenham? I wonder why George never told me.”

  “He’ll have had his reasons,” Bran said. “He usually does.”

  “So that was how Lorraine came to be on Anglesey,” Kim said. “You know she won’t tell us because she doesn’t want it to go in Bill’s journal. Did you ever get to Wrexham?”

  “Not yet,” Bran said, “but that wasn’t the end of the story. Barclay survived. I don’t know if he’d really come from Northumberland, or if he’d only heard about it, but that’s where he went. Maybe he died when you and your brother confronted Quigley, but why assume that he did? You survived, didn’t you?”

  “Only just,” Bill said. “Was Barclay a portly guy in his early fifties?”

  “No, he was thirty-eight, with greasy-black hair. Broken nose, close-set eyes. Olive skin pockmarked on his left cheek.”

  “I don’t think I met him,” Bill said. “Perhaps he was already dead.”

  “Why assume it,” Bran said. “Why assume that only the good people survived? Didn’t you write something like that?”

  Bill raised his hands. “What I wrote was really just what I thought at that particular moment in time,” he said. “Usually it was at the end of a long day limping away from the undead. I was tired, hungry, and scared out of my wits. I wouldn’t take any of it as a philosophical treatise.”

  “My point,” the soldier said, “as much as I had one, is this, we talk a lot about us being the last people left alive, but we don’t know that we are. We don’t even know if we’re the largest group left on Earth. I agree that we have to act as if we are, but for that we need a leader. Mary and George have done a good job as far as it goes, and maybe they were the leaders we needed, but they’re not the leaders for the future. We need a strong mind and a steady arm. There was a time I wanted it to be the brigadier. There was a time I thought it might be me. There were a lot more times when I thought I’d return to find this place nothing but ash and bone. We need a leader. Like it or not, that’s you. I heard about the execution. Everyone did, but no one’s talking about it. You know why? Because they have nothing to say. You did what they expected would be done. You did what had to be done. You made the hard choice, and that makes you our leader in everything but name. Thank you for the soup.” He stood up. “I’ll have a word with Lena and Dean. If they want to be soldiers, they need to get used to a dressing-down from their sergeant.”

  “The hard choices?” Kim said. “How on earth did we end up here? But he’s right, you’re the one making them.”

  “We are,” Bill said.

  “Hmm,” Kim murmured.

  “George and Mary wanted me to be the candidate in the election. Sholto wanted you. I think they both got their own way in the end,” Bill said.

  “Do you think Barclay is still alive?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “If he is, or if any of Quigley’s people are, they know about Anglesey, but they haven’t come here. Until or if they do, we have enough problems to worry about.”

  “Speaking of problems,” she said, taking her coat from the hook. “I’m going to find Dean and Lena. They might be over eighteen, and they might have fought their way across Ireland, but they told me they were getting on the boat to Belfast. I don’t like them lying to me. I don’t suppose I can stop them going to the mainland with Bran, but while they’re on An
glesey, they’ll sleep under our roof. That way we can make sure they get off the island if we get the signal to flee.”

  She left, and Bill was alone. The kitchen seemed suddenly large, yet somehow too small. He was about to return upstairs when he caught a few words from the front room. He opened the door and found that everyone was gathered around one set of screens.

  “Have you found a ship?” Bill asked.

  Almost as one, the entire group spun around. All wore a matching guilty expression.

  “Oh, hi, Bill,” Annette said, sounding as guilty as she looked. “I think we’re there.”

  “Where?” Bill asked.

  “London,” Annette said.

  “You moved the satellites?” Bill asked.

  “Well, it’s more that we’re moving one of them,” Annette said. “I watched Sholto do it. It’s not hard.”

  “That’s not the issue,” Bill said. “You shouldn’t have moved it without permission.”

  “There wasn’t time to ask,” she said. “We’ll be leaving soon, won’t we? And when we get to Belfast, we might not have the electricity for all the screens. We need to get the images now, and find any people in them before winter because they might not be alive in spring. Anyway, I didn’t use much of the propellant. Oh, and we’ve got some pictures of France,” she added, giving the lie to her previous statement. “At least I think it’s France, but I’m sure this is the Thames.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement from the group. Bill opened his mouth, but closed it. In a month, if not in days, all of these people would be living in a world without electricity, without screens, without an excuse not to spend a day hacking at a field or at the undead. He let them have the moment.

  “Why London?” he asked.

  “Because of Nilda and Jay,” Annette said. “That’s where Bran said they were both going. Maybe they got there.”

  They wouldn’t have, Bill thought, but he didn’t say it aloud. Nor did he voice the real reason he suspected Annette had decided to move the satellite. London had once been her home, too. She didn’t talk about London much, or her parents at all. That told Bill she spent a lot of time thinking about them. She was looking for a way to say goodbye, and he wouldn’t take that from her.