by Frank Tayell
“Your warehouse?”
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “You said Chester and Nilda arrived in London having been on Anglesey, but when they arrived, you decided to go to Kent. Why didn’t one of you set off immediately for Wales?”
“It was Nilda,” Eamonn said. “She didn’t trust them. It was to do with her son, and how—”
“She didn’t trust them, and so now, when the only alternative is death, you’re attempting the journey. How long has it taken you to get to Birmingham? You said weeks.”
“About four, I suppose,” he said.
“It’s further to Anglesey,” she said, “and there are fewer roads and far more mountains. Do you think you’ll ever get there?”
“I’ve got to try,” Eamonn said. “They’ll die if I fail.”
“There’s always an alternative,” Locke said. “In this case, the alternative is helping me.”
“You? How?”
“I have a warehouse,” she said. “It contains enough ammunition, weapons, clothing, and food for about five years.”
“Why?” Eamonn asked.
“That’s not important,” Locke said. “Those people took my warehouse. They haven’t taken my supplies. They’re in a vault to which only I have the combination. That’s why they’re hunting me. That’s what they were doing out there, looking for me, but they’re too arrogant to consider that I’d be hunting them. There were thirty when they arrived, and now there are only twenty-three. In a few days, a few weeks, they’ll all be dead. We can take those supplies of mine down to London. Your people will be saved.”
Eamonn didn’t believe her. Rather, he didn’t know what part of that to disbelieve the most. “You want my help killing Quigley’s soldiers?”
“Yes and no,” she said. She picked up her crossbow.
“They’re professionals,” he said. “I’m not.”
“Clearly,” Locke said. “But they’re not SAS. They’re the rejects, the last pick of a rotten barrel.”
Eamonn wasn’t so ready to dismiss their ability. “I could be in Anglesey in a week, and back in London a few days after that.”
“Ten days? Maybe,” she said. “Or you could leave here with supplies two days from now.”
“How would I get them to London?” he asked. “It’s taken weeks to get here. No, the only quick way back to London is by boat.”
“If you go to Anglesey and no one’s there, or they won’t give you a boat, what then? Will you walk back through England and Wales empty handed?”
Eamonn wasn’t a soldier. He knew his limitations. He hadn’t, not at first, but he’d learned the hard way what a weapon in trained hands could do.
“You’ve got a crossbow. I’ve got a crowbar and bayonet,” he said. “They have rifles.”
She smiled. “I know, but you won’t need a gun and they won’t get a chance to use theirs. You can stay with us tonight. Decide after you’ve eaten.”
She led him to a building site less than half a mile from the apartment building. Five bare steel pillars jutted up from behind the hoardings. In front, clawing at the sheet metal sealing the entrance, were two of the undead. Locke whistled. It was an odd little tune, a jaunty shanty utterly out of keeping with the devastation surrounding them. The zombies heard it. One turned around, and then the other. Both were wizened, bent nearly double, covered more in open sores than clothes.
Eamonn raised the crowbar.
“Put it down,” Locke said, and whistled again. The zombies staggered closer.
“What if there are more zombies?” he asked.
“You see the northernmost pillar in the building site?”
He wasn’t sure which direction north was. “Sure,” he said.
“If there were more than five, there’d be a strip of blue plastic hanging from it,” she said.
The zombies were fifteen feet away when Locke fired. The bolt sung through the air, plunging through the forehead of the nearest creature. Before it had hit the ground, Locke was working the ratchet, pulling the string back.
Eamonn raised the crowbar to his shoulder, his eyes on the last remaining zombie. Eight feet. Six. He shifted his weight, tightened his grip, but before he could swing, a bolt sprouted from the zombie’s eye. It fell, and again, Locke was already reloading.
A section of the metal sheeting covering the building site swung aside. A hand appeared. A small hand. It waved.
“We’re clear,” Locke said. She slung the crossbow on her back. “Grab that zombie’s legs.”
Following her lead, he dragged the corpse to the nearest house. The smell hit him before she pushed open the door. It was the smell of London. The house was full of the slowly rotting undead.
“Just leave them in the hall,” Locke said. “One way or another, we’ll be leaving here soon.”
Pausing only to push the door closed, she led him across the street. The metal sheet was still open.
“Phoebe, this is Eamonn,” Locke said to the girl on the other side. “Eamonn, this is Phoebe.”
He followed Locke inside. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. For one thing, it was a narrow corridor of corrugated metal. The girl, Phoebe, was dressed in a cut-down version of the same blue jumpsuit Locke wore. The girl looked him up and down.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Originally? Dublin, I suppose,” he said.
“Oh, you’re one of Sorcha’s friends? That’s good!” she said, and before Eamonn could correct her, she’d sidled through a gap far too small for an adult.
It was a murder-hole, a narrow corridor less than three feet wide that bent at ninety degrees, and then again. The top was open, but he could hear the people on the other side. He could imagine them firing crossbow bolts into him. At the far end of the narrow tunnel, a narrower gate was already open. Eamonn stepped through and into a semi-circle of people. There were six of them. Seven if you counted the infant in the woman’s arms. An older woman stood next to her, two young girls just behind. A bearded man stood next to them, his hand on the knife at his belt, a young boy at his side. All, except the baby, wore a blue jumpsuit.
“Hi,” Eamonn said.
“This is Eamonn,” Locke said. “He came from London. He’s going to help us.”
There was half an hour when he did nothing but answer questions. When food appeared, Eamonn devoured it, and as that gave a pause to their questions, he finally got some answers.
“We’d taken refuge in the library before Sorcha came,” the older Isabella said. “She was a gift from God. We had food, we had weapons, we had water, and we had strong walls behind which we could enjoy them.”
“Then Barker came,” Gavin said. “If Sorcha was a gift, Barker was a curse. That was in the middle of August.”
“No, it was the beginning of September,” Phoebe said.
“We’ve got a long-running dispute about what the date is,” Gavin explained.
“Barker’s one of Quigley’s soldiers?” Eamonn asked.
“Their leader,” Locke said. “I think that’s his name. He’s the man with the pipe. I got close enough to hear two of them talking, and heard that much before they realised I was there. That’s how we know they came from Quigley. You know Quigley worked in covert operations before he was a politician? One of the reasons for his meteoric rise was his knowledge of the off-the-books missions that the British government took part in. I don’t know why Barker came to Birmingham, but he found our warehouse. We weren’t cautious enough. We lost most of our supplies, but we escaped.”
“Not all of us,” Phoebe said. “Micah and Talya didn’t. They died.”
“Hush, now,” the older Isabella said.
“We’ve been hiding since then,” the younger Isabella said. “We’ve got some supplies, but they won’t last forever.”
“Why haven’t you left?” Eamonn asked.
“To go where?” the older Isabella asked.
“It’s the baby,” Gavin said. “It is,” he added as the chil
dren glared at him. “Have I left? No. I stayed, didn’t I?”
“Of course you did,” the older Isabella said. “He’s right,” she added, addressing Eamonn. “It is difficult travelling with young Bella. She doesn’t know to be quiet. It’s why we stayed here. In the city, we can kill the undead, and we have plenty of buildings in which to barricade ourselves. Even with Barker and his people, the city is safer than the wide-open countryside.”
“We could kill the undead when we had ammunition,” Locke said. “Barker and his people have been killing them since, though not as thoroughly as we were. We had planned to drive to the coast. We were syphoning petrol from across the city, and Gavin and I have been venturing out, searching for a route to the sea. That’s how we discovered the crater near Peterborough.”
“I’ve never seen the like,” Gavin said. “It was—”
“Shh!” the older Isabella said, throwing a glance at the three children. “We’ve been through that before. Now, why don’t you three go and read. Go on. See if you can find some books about London.” Grumbling, the children left.
“Before Barker came,” Locke said, “we had planned to leave. Britain is dead. Ireland is the same. We needed to get to the coast, and get far away. I favoured taking the Grand Union Canal down to the River Thames, and then following it to the estuary. We were worried that we would be chased out of the city, but we thought that the danger would come from Anglesey, not from the north, and so we thought we had time. A canal boat is slow. If the undead heard Bella cry out, we might have been trapped, so Gavin and I went east. We were looking for the shortest route to the coast, and for vehicles that could take us there quickly. We didn’t find one, but we found the crater. The canal was our only escape. It would be a dangerous journey, but danger is everywhere, and with guns and ammunition, the danger could be minimised. We began moving supplies out of the warehouse. We started with the food, taking as much as we could, as far as we could. Those supplies are what we’ve been living on, because Barker came. He took my warehouse, and the supplies we’d brought upstairs. It was a few months of food, and a few thousand rounds of ammunition. I always kept the vault locked when no one was inside. There is a code, and he doesn’t know it. The weapons, the ammunition, and at least four years of food are still sealed inside, beyond his reach.”
“He didn’t seem to have a shortage of bullets earlier today,” Eamonn said.
“Those are the guns he took from the group which came from Anglesey,” Locke said. “They can’t have had brought than a few hundred rounds apiece. The people I’ve killed have never had more than a handful of spare cartridges. They have a few shotguns, a few sidearms, but nothing that counts as an arsenal. He has to be running out of ammo, and of food, but he can’t get into the vault. Nor can we as long as he’s there. Without the ammunition, it isn’t safe for us to travel slowly, and with the child, we can’t travel quickly. Your arrival changes that.”
“I don’t see how,” Eamonn said. “It took me a month to get here from London.”
“Did you follow the canal?” Locke asked.
“No, I travelled along the railway when I could, on the roads when I couldn’t, and the fields when I had to.”
“I followed the canal south,” Locke said. “I travelled fifty miles, and it was safe and easy. Relatively easy. It took three days for the round trip. There is a canal boat ten miles away, and another twenty miles beyond that. There are some gates and locks that require electricity to open, but the mechanisms are simple, and we have a portable generator.”
“Do you have fuel?” Eamonn asked.
“A little diesel,” Locke said. “Enough to get us to London, but no further.”
Eamonn shook his head. “The River Thames is blocked,” he said. “The bridges have fallen. Upstream, the locks are blocked with floating wreckage. You might be able to get to the city’s outskirts, but no further.”
“Presumably someone did,” Locke said. “Someone who told you that the river was blocked.”
“Jay and Tuck,” Eamonn said. “They came through there on their way into London.”
“We can do the same,” Locke said. “We’ll find a way.”
“Maybe,” Eamonn said. “Even if you managed it, the reason I left London was because we were low on food. That’s why we went to Kent. I don’t know how much will be left by now, but as soon as we got there, someone would have to set out for help, and the only help we know of is on Anglesey. In which case, better I continue the journey now, and from here.”
Locke smiled. “I propose a trade. When we get to London, I’ll take all the supplies I can fit into a ship. You can have the rest. The ammo, the food, the clothing.”
“I thought that was all in the warehouse?” Eamonn said.
“It is,” Locke said.
“In a vault?” Eamonn asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s a secret way in?”
“No.”
“So, to be clear, you want me to kill all of these soldiers first?” Eamonn asked.
“No,” Locke said. “We were storing the fuel in the warehouse, and while they’ve been burning some of the diesel in the generator, they’ve had no reason to touch the petrol. There’s close to a thousand gallons. Here’s my plan. They know what we all look like, but they’ve never seen you before. Tomorrow, when Barker goes searching for us, Gavin will let himself be spotted. He’ll lead them to the Bullring. That shopping centre is a ruin. It’s an easy place to lose them in. Meanwhile you, Eamonn, will go up to the gates. There will only be six or seven of them inside, and those are the least reliable of Barker’s people. You’ll spin them a story, and get a few more to leave. While they’re distracted, I will sneak in. I’ll set a timed incendiary in the fuel store. Gavin will vanish into the ruins, as will you, and I will sneak back out. Barker and his people will return. At midnight, the incendiary will detonate. The fuel will explode. The soldiers will die. The vault, though, will be intact. We will lose the fuel, but we will regain everything else. Getting down to London will be easy when we have more ammunition than we can carry, and no need to stop to search for food. Once there, your people will be fed. Any who wish can return here to collect whatever they need from the vault. I will use your lifeboat to find a larger ship, and then I will return. Anyone who wants to come with me on the next part of my voyage would be more than welcome. I think everyone will. There is no future in Britain. No future for any of us.”
There was silence. It seemed like Gavin and the Isabellas were as stunned as Eamonn.
“Do you have an incendiary?” Eamonn asked.
“I can make one,” Locke said. “It isn’t hard.”
“There’s another way into the warehouse? A back door or something?” he asked.
“No,” Locke said, “there’s only one entrance, but I can climb up to the roof if I know they’re distracted.”
Eamonn shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t clear. We had a boat. We had some fuel. We don’t even have food. It took me a month to get this far. It might take me another month to make it the rest of the way, but I have to try. I have to go to Anglesey.”
“He’s right,” the younger Isabella said. “It’s over, Sorcha.”
“Anglesey sent those people here,” Locke said. “No one came to look for them. Perhaps they didn’t care. Perhaps there is no one left. Can we take the risk?”
“We have to,” the older Isabella said. “Your explosive might not work. They might have used up all the petrol. They might not follow Gavin, or catch him, or give up too soon. They might shoot Eamonn on sight, or spy you climbing in. Your plan is fraught with difficulties. Even if it were to succeed, we’d be moving from one ruined city to another. You really don’t have a boat?”
“There are some life rafts,” Eamonn said. “We looked for boats on our way down to Kent. We looked before then. Anything that could float was taken to sea by those early escapers from London. Yes, Nilda didn’t entirely trust the people on Anglesey, a
nd that’s partly why we went to Kent rather than sending someone north immediately, but it was also because we knew how dangerous this journey would be. It took Tuck and Jay months to get from Penrith to London. Nilda and Chester made the journey more quickly, but that was because they spent a good portion of it at sea, following the coast. If there was another way, any other option, we would have taken it, but there wasn’t. There isn’t. Anglesey is our only hope.”
“Anglesey won’t help,” Locke said.
“They might,” Gavin said. “We’ve got enough food to last us until Christmas. That’s more than long enough for Eamonn to get to Anglesey, for them to return here and deal with Barker.”
“What if they won’t come?” Locke asked.
“You don’t want to go back there,” the older Isabella said. “I understand, but you can’t stop Eamonn, and you can’t stop someone else from going with him. So, instead, go with him yourself, Sorcha. Go with Eamonn, and make sure he gets to Anglesey. How long did it take you to get here from there? Four days?”
“They have electricity on Anglesey,” Eamonn said. “They turned the power station back on. In four days, five at the outside, we could have hot water and electric lights, and know that soldiers and sailors were coming to rescue those we care about.”
“And if Bishop and the other murderers are still there?” Locke asked.
“Bishop, Barker,” Gavin said, “what’s the difference? You’re ready to deal with one, so why not the other?”
“Will you go?” the older Isabella asked.
Reluctantly, Locke nodded.
Eamonn didn’t follow all of the subtext, but he understood the message. He was going to Anglesey. He’d have supplies, and a companion who might be reluctant, but who knew how to move far more silently than he. If they set off at dawn, they should be in Wales before nightfall, and on Anglesey the day after. Three days at most, five at the outside.
Part 5
Search and Rescue
Chester
London and Beyond
November