by Frank Tayell
“Thank you,” Bill said. “We’re the help that comes to others. A help that’s unlooked for.”
“Let’s just hope it’s a help they want,” Chester said. He hung up. “Fifty miles, call it sixty with detours, and we should manage it in seven hours.”
“Not if it rains again,” Greta said. She picked up the submachine gun. “And not if we come across that horde.”
Chapter 21 - Survivors
Birmingham, 14th November, Day 246
Greta scanned the ruined buildings, and then rubble-filled street. “I think we’re safe,” she whispered, and crouched down behind the broken wall.
The previous day, they’d managed an almost easy thirty miles along the canal before the storm exploded. Wind and rain had lashed the ground until long after sunset, and they’d set off at dawn under cloudy skies. During an exhausting three hours that was spent walking more than cycling, they traversed flooded fields that morphed into derelict suburbs that seemed as endless as the storm the night before.
Finally, they’d come to a sign for the Edgbaston Reservoir and had left the bikes in the hallway of a tumbledown second-hand bookshop. They’d found a map by the counter, a battered A-Z that would have proved a useful guide if half the streets weren’t so covered in rubble that it was often impossible to tell road from house.
“The Geiger counter’s normal,” Chester said. “Though something destroyed this suburb. I wonder why they targeted it. I can understand why they might drop a nuke on Birmingham, it was a major city, but why launch a barrage of conventional ordnance?”
A cascade of bricks fell from the building next door.
Greta eased herself up. “I can’t see anything. Call Anglesey, find out what they can tell us, and then we should move to somewhere less likely to collapse around our ears.”
Chester took out the sat-phone. It took three minutes before anyone answered.
“Where are you?” Bill asked.
“Near the western edge of the Edgbaston Reservoir,” Chester said. “The last sign I saw was for Mariner Road, but that was a few streets away.”
“What’s the city like?”
“Ruins,” Chester said. A broken tile, warped by the heat of the fire that had swept through the terrace cracked under his feet. “Looks like it was a residential street. The damage is similar to what we saw in London, done by missiles and bombs during the civil war when Quigley was taking over. Not many zombies, mind you. Any update on the building with the lights?”
“We got a few more partial images this morning,” Bill said. “There was smoke coming from a U-shaped building a few hundred metres east of the reservoir. It’s probably from a cooking fire. We looked back over the pictures we gathered before that team went to Birmingham. There were no lights, no smoke, though we’ve only got a handful of images. After we lost contact with the team, and with you in Hull, we moved the satellites to take pictures of Ireland, but I think it’s pretty clear that these people arrived after we lost contact with our team.”
“There’s an alternative,” Chester said, “that whoever lit the fire is the reason you lost contact with your team.”
“Agreed,” Bill said. “And there’s a third possibility, that they came from Anglesey. Did George tell you about Bishop and Rachel?”
“He did, but I thought you got all their followers.”
“We’re not sure,” Bill said. “It might be that one or two escaped. The lights might be them, in which case there’s no connection with our lost people. Be careful. See if you can get eyes on them, and then call back. We’ll have someone waiting for the call.”
“Give us a couple of hours,” Chester said. “If we don’t call back before nightfall, send the cavalry.”
“The helicopter’s fuelled and ready to go,” Bill said.
Chester hung up.
“Is that an expression,” Greta asked. “Or did he really mean they’ll send a helicopter?”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” Chester said. He pointed at the street map. “We’re around here. That’s the reservoir. The warehouse is about half a mile away.”
A distorted length of plastic guttering was caught by the wind. It tumbled across the road until it landed against a bath that had fallen into what had once been a front garden. Behind them, wood creaked and was followed by a crack of breaking glass.
“There’s a lot of noise,” Greta said. “You’d expect to see zombies. Living ones, I mean.”
There were two, both dead, lying on the pile of bricks twenty yards from their perch.
“Does that bode good or ill?” Chester said. “Either way, it bodes something about the people in the warehouse, but there’s little point pondering when we can go and see for ourselves. I say we follow the reservoir until we see smoke.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice said. Chester and Greta spun around. In the ruined doorway stood a woman in a dirty blue jumpsuit with a golden logo across the left breast. In her hands was a crossbow, though the bolt wasn’t pointing at either of them.
“You move quietly,” Chester said.
“You don’t,” the woman said. Her accent was Irish, her tone suspicious. “Who were you speaking to?”
“On the phone, you mean?” Chester asked. “We were looking for a friend of ours, though we lost the trail about fifty miles south of here. Our other friends up there…” He gestured upwards, but the woman didn’t follow his finger. She kept her eyes firmly on the submachine gun in Greta’s hands. “They saw some smoke coming from a warehouse on the other side of the reservoir,” Chester continued. “We said we’d come and look. I take it you lit the fire?”
“No,” she said. “Where did you come from?”
“Well, now, that’s a hard question to answer with a short reply,” Chester said with a broad grin and an expansive stretch of his arms that gave him an opportunity to take half a step forward. In response the woman raised the crossbow half an inch.
“London,” Greta said. “We came from London.”
“London?” the woman said, finally raising her eyes from Greta’s gun to her face. She frowned. “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” Chester asked.
“Sorcha Locke,” she said, still looking at Greta. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Chester Carson.”
“And you’re Nilda?” Locke asked. “You’re not the deaf soldier. Unless… are you Greta?”
“How do you know those names?” Greta whispered.
“Eamonn told me about you,” Locke said.
“He’s alive? He’s here?” Greta asked, her voice cracking.
“Oh yes,” Locke said. “He’s alive, but it’s not safe talking here. Come.” She walked sure-footed and silent across the rubble, disappearing into what had once been a back garden, and then into the house beyond.
“Wait,” Greta said, and hurried after her.
“Oh, hell,” Chester muttered.
The woman hadn’t taken shelter in the house, but had continued through it. She seemed to have memorised a route that took her through the unsafe ruins of homes and partially flooded streets.
Greta had almost caught up with her when they reached Reservoir Road. Outside a broken-doored newsagent was a zombie wearing a red fleece stained brown from a savage gash in its shoulder. Before Locke took another step, Greta raised the submachine gun and fired. The zombie collapsed.
“Damn it,” Locke snapped. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Where’s Eamonn?” Greta asked.
“If they see the corpse,” Locke said, “they’ll know I was on this road.”
“Who’s they?” Chester asked.
“Where’s Eamonn?” Greta asked again.
Locke ignored them both and went into the newsagent. Greta threw Chester a look of confused concern. Chester shrugged, as unsettled as she. A moment later, Locke reappeared, grabbed the zombie by the legs, and dragged it inside. She paused in the doorway.
“Are you coming?” L
ocke asked.
“Enough,” Greta said. She pushed Locke away from the corpse. “Tell me about Eamonn. Where is he?”
“Being held hostage in my warehouse,” Locke said. “Five of the soldiers came out this morning to inspect the reservoir. They should be coming back soon. I don’t think they’ll come here because there’s nothing left to loot, but if they see the zombie, and they see that it’s been shot, they’ll know that someone new has arrived in the city. You don’t want that, not if you want Eamonn to live. Grab the legs, and help me get this corpse inside.”
Greta stared open-mouthed, but only for a second. She took hold of the creature’s legs. Together they carried it behind the ransacked counter. It wasn’t a large shop, truly there for the convenience of the nearby residents for whom the extra few pence on a bottle of milk was a fair price to pay for the minutes saved on a Saturday morning.
Chester took up a station in the shadows near the open doorway. “I think we could do with a few more details about who these people are,” he said. “And who you are, too. You’ve certainly got the advantage of us.”
“The warehouse where you saw the smoke,” Locke said, “that’s mine. That’s my warehouse. They took it.”
There was something about Locke that was familiar to Chester. He was certain he’d never met her, but she had a manic calm that he’d come across too often in his old life. She was the kind of person to be kept beyond arm’s length, and an unarmed one at that.
“Who are they?” Chester asked.
“Soldiers,” Locke said. “They used to work for Quigley. You know about him, don’t you? You know what he did? These soldiers are the last survivors of Quigley’s little empire, but we didn’t know who they were when they arrived. They took over my warehouse, and we barely got out with our lives. Eamonn arrived about three weeks ago. I had a plan. We were going to— It doesn’t matter. We were in a building site, but they must have seen us, they must have followed us. They came at dawn. Not all of us escaped. They took Eamonn and Isabella hostage.”
“Eamonn only arrived three weeks ago?” Greta asked.
“Three weeks. Maybe four. Who keeps track? He was trapped by a horde somewhere to the south,” Locke said dismissively as if it was an unimportant detail.
“Hang on,” Chester said. “A hostage usually means that you’ve got something that they want. What is it? Why haven’t they killed Eamonn and… what was the other one’s name?”
“Isabella. They’re still alive because I have something they want. There is a vault beneath the warehouse. It contains ammunition and food, enough for five years. That’s what they want.”
“They can’t open it?” Chester asked.
“Not my vault, no. I have the codes, and they have the prisoners. They think that gives them the upper hand.” She gave a dark smile.
“Then just give them the codes,” Greta said.
“If I do, they will kill Isabella and Eamonn,” Locke said.
“Hold on, both of you,” Chester said. “How many soldiers?”
“Thirteen,” Locke said. “There were thirty when they first came to Birmingham, twenty-three when Eamonn arrived.”
“Thirteen?” Greta asked. “That’s not too many. What do you think, Chester?”
“I think we need some more information,” Chester said. He needed some more time to think.
“There are five buildings that offer a clear view of the warehouse,” Locke said. “I can take you to one I’ve not used before. You can see for yourself.”
“Then let’s go,” Greta said.
“Just a minute,” Chester said. His instincts told him not to trust this woman, but they also told him that she wasn’t lying. His instinct had been tragically wrong in the recent past, but he didn’t think it was this time. Nevertheless, he could ask the woman all the questions he wanted, he still wouldn’t believe the answers. “I guess seeing is believing,” he said. “After you.” Only when her back was turned did his hand slide around to the submachine gun on his back. He slid the safety off.
Locke crawled across the roof to the edge of the seven-storey apartment building. Greta followed, clearly eager to get a view of the place Eamonn was being held hostage. Chester hung back, uncertain whether the woman’s story was some kind of elaborate trap. The apartment block was just another mid-rise building in a city infrequently dotted with them. With the binoculars, Chester could see the reservoir to his left. He could see the centre of Birmingham to his right, and see that the devastation extended deep into the city, with collapsed buildings often obscuring the line of the old canal.
“Chester!” Greta hissed.
He knelt, and crawled to the building’s edge.
“There. You see,” Locke said.
Chester didn’t, not immediately. Then he saw the wisp of smoke rising from a large U-shaped building a few hundred metres from the eastern edge of the reservoir.
“Where is he?” Greta asked.
“Inside the warehouse,” Locke said.
Chester stared blankly into the distance. “How do you know he’s still alive?”
“Up until two days ago, they would bring them both outside,” she said. “It was always at noon. You know why?”
“So you’d know they were alive,” Greta said.
“No,” Locke said. “So they could try to catch me. They sent people out before dawn. They would lie in wait, but I never went to sleep, and now there are only thirteen of them.”
Yes, she was mad. Mad and dangerous. In some ways, she reminded Chester a lot of McInery.
“So Eamonn got trapped by a horde for a few weeks, then he came here?” he said.
“The soldiers came the night Eamonn arrived,” Locke said. “He wasn’t very good at walking quietly through the city. The soldiers must have seen the zombies that had been following him. They found us. Gavin died getting the children outside. He sacrificed himself. Isabella and Eamonn did the same, just so Isabella could escape.”
“Sorry?” Chester asked. “I thought you said they caught Isabella.”
“No, they caught the other Isabella,” Locke said.
Now she was sounding more like Stewart, not making sense to anyone but herself.
“That was three weeks ago?” Chester asked. “Did Eamonn tell you he was on his way to Anglesey?”
“Yes,” Locke said.
“He told you there was help there?” Chester asked. “That there were people with boats? That there were soldiers?”
“He told us that was what he thought,” Locke said.
“So why didn’t you go to Anglesey for help?” Chester asked.
“Because I couldn’t,” Locke said. “I came through there months ago, and barely escaped with my life. My friend wasn’t so lucky. Do you know a man named Bishop?”
“I know he’s dead,” Chester said.
“He is?” Locke seemed surprised.
“Yeah, apparently he was killing people,” Chester said. “There was something to do with a religion and taking people’s supplies. I didn’t get the full story, but I do know he was killed, along with his supporters.”
“Like Rachel Gottlieb?” Locke asked.
“Yeah, and a few others,” Chester said. “I wasn’t too interested in the details. We were told this by people from Anglesey. They came by ship up the Thames.”
“How did they know you were in London?” Locke asked.
“Satellites,” Chester said. “They got some working.”
“They did?”
“Eamonn didn’t tell you that?”
“No, though we didn’t have long to talk before he was captured. Maybe Anglesey has changed. Eamonn seemed to think so. To leave here, to take that chance, would have meant leaving the others alone, undefended.”
“You mean the children?” Greta asked. “How many?”
“Four,” Locke said. “And there’s Isabella as well.”
“Hang on,” Chester asked. “Another Isabella.”
“Isabella the grandmother and I
sabella the granddaughter are safe. Isabella the mother is the one who was captured,” Locke said testily. “Since then, the soldiers have been trying to capture me, and since then, I have been setting my own ambushes, but mine have been successful where theirs have been abject failures. That’s why they stopped coming outside, and that’s when I blocked the water pipe. It leads from the reservoir to a pump room in the warehouse basement. I had to find scuba gear, of course. That was an interesting experience. For forty-eight hours, they stayed put. This morning, at dawn, the soldiers came out. Five of them.” She smiled. “When they go out tomorrow, they will be less watchful. In a week, I will get them all.”
Every answer begged a dozen more questions, so Chester stopped asking. He took the binoculars from Greta, and scanned the building. It was shaped like a ‘U’, with no windows on the ground floor and only small ones on the upper level. The entrance was blocked with a bus around which barbed wire had been wrapped. Beyond the bus, two thin wisps of smoke rose up from the courtyard.
“Is that a deckchair?” he asked, passing the binoculars to Greta. “On the roof, to the left of the entrance.”
“That’s where Barker comes to sit sometimes,” Locke said.
“Barker?” Chester asked.
“Their leader. I think that’s his name. I heard some of them talking,” she said. “That was just before I killed them.”
“What are they armed with?”
“A few rifles and shotguns,” Locke said, “but not much ammunition, not any more. The first I killed had three spare magazines in his belt. The last only had two loose rounds. I’ve been using my crossbow since, but I’m still more than a match for them. They took some of my guns and ammunition when they stole my warehouse, though I’d only brought a few thousand rounds up from the vault. They got more ammunition from a group that arrived from Anglesey. No one came looking for those people.”
“We came,” Greta said.
“What happened to the people from Anglesey?” Chester asked.
“They hung a flag on a car showroom, declaring it safe. Barker killed them. He took their guns.”