by Frank Tayell
“You’re the first,” Nilda said. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t so much Jay’s idea,” Greta explained as they hauled on the other three ropes, “but that he said what everyone was thinking. We had to do something, and we had to get the food, so that’s what we did. Ten of us went over the wall as a diversion, and he took the rest downriver on the rafts.”
“But he was okay?” Nilda asked. “You’re sure?”
“I saw him get in the raft,” Greta said. “There weren’t that many zombies. Twenty? Maybe less. Some more came, but we led them away to make the next trip easier. How’s Chester?”
“He’s unconscious, but we stopped the bleeding.”
“He’s a fighter. He’ll be fine,” Greta said. “And Jay was fine, too. He really was, but they’re rowing against the current.”
“Yes. Of course,” Nilda said, but she wouldn’t believe it until she could see it for herself. Leaving Greta to watch for the return of the rest of that small group, she went down to the river to wait for her son.
She tried to hurry but found her feet were like lead. It wasn’t tiredness, not this time, but a sinking dread that when the boat came in her son wouldn’t be on it. Somehow that was the inevitable end to such a tragic day.
When she reached the riverside path, she found the Thames empty, and that acted as a catalyst for her worst fears. Unable to stand still, she paced back and forth, trying not to stare at that empty patch of dark grey water beyond Tower Bridge. There was an atonal clang from the west. A section of the panelling they’d braced against the iron gate had come loose. A zombie stood there, its arms thrust between the railings. It moved one hand, then the other, reaching out towards her, and with each pawing grasp, its head clanged against the gate.
She drew her sword and stalked towards the creature. Rage boiled up. She wanted to let it loose, to hack and hew at the zombie, and in doing so vent her fury and frustration. She’d done that before, but when it was over and she was standing over a mangled twice-dead corpse, found no quieting of her inner turmoil, no satisfaction, no peace. An errant beam pierced the clouds. The light caught something on the creature’s hand. An engagement ring, Nilda realised. It wasn’t a large diamond, just an everyday ring for an everyday person, the kind that would be a little more expensive than the woman’s intended could afford. The skin around it was swollen, and there was no wedding band.
Nilda raised the gladius and stepped to the side of the railings. She hacked down once, severing the creature’s arms at the elbows. It didn’t even notice as it waved its gory stumps through the gaps. She stepped in front, braced her hand on the pommel, aimed, and slammed the blade through its eye socket, twisting and turning the sword as she broke bone and destroyed its brain. It collapsed, and she stepped back, feeling no different than she had a moment before. She picked up the fallen sheet of wood, and wedged it back into place. Her eye fell once more on the hand with its ring, now lying on the ground at her feet.
“When will it stop?” she asked, knowing that there was no answer to the question.
She walked back along the path, her eyes fixed on the stone, her pace slow. When she reached the steps that led down to the river and finally dared look up, the Thames was still empty. It was five minutes before she caught sight of something bright orange crest a wave just under Tower Bridge. It disappeared from sight for a moment and then reappeared.
The raft looked so fragile. Such an impermanent thing when set against the power of nature and the unnatural that plagued them. She raised a hand. An oar was raised in return, but it was another agonising ten minutes before the craft was close enough that she could be certain that the figure in the bow was Jay. There was relief in that, but not as much as she’d been expecting.
“We got the food off the coaches without a problem,” Jay said, pre-empting any words from his mother as he jumped onto the quay. “But there wasn’t enough space on the rafts for all of it.”
“And the rest?” she asked. “Is it still on the coaches?”
“No, it’s by the riverbank, behind a pub. We need the food, right? I mean, it was going to rot if we left it.”
“No. Yes. I mean, it was a good thing. A good idea.” She reached out a hand to help Aisha up onto the steps.
“Thanks,” Aisha said, heavily.
“How’s Chester?” Jay asked.
“I don’t know,” Nilda said, reaching out her hand again, this time to grab an old carpetbag. Even if the zip hadn’t been broken, revealing the apples within, she’d have been able to tell the contents from the wonderfully pungent smell. It was a tonic compared to the musty decay of the city, the rancid stench of the river, or even the sickly sweet smell of the laminated furniture fuelling the boilers. “He’s alive. Unconscious, but breathing.”
“Alive is all you can hope for,” Aisha said, taking the bag from her and moving off towards the gate. Kevin jumped from the boat and moved to take the bag from her.
“I’m pregnant, not sick,” Aisha snapped.
Nilda passed a bag to Kevin. They were a mismatched couple, unlikely to have met in other circumstances. He was classically old-fashioned; she was modernly pragmatic. Nilda grabbed a large black holdall almost too heavy to lift, staggered a few paces under the weight, put it down, and pulled back the zip. Inside, underneath a pair of glass jars containing something unidentifiable beyond that it was pickled, were some more apples, beans, and a few radishes mingled together amidst a layer of dirt and leaves.
“How much did you leave behind?” she asked.
“We loaded on about a quarter, maybe a bit less,” Jay said.
“A quarter? And the rest is by a pub, close to the water? Then finish unloading. I’ll get some better shoes, and we’ll go back,” she said, speaking loudly and to the group at large. She carried the bag to the dining hall that had once been the Tower’s main tourist restaurant, getting there just behind Aisha and Kevin. There was no one inside.
“Did Stewart go with you?” Nilda asked.
“He was in the next raft,” Kevin said.
“I see.” Perhaps it was for the best. “Can you organise this?” she asked Aisha.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s been sitting in a sealed coach for a couple of days, and half of this bag is dirt and leaves. We need to empty the bags, sort the food, and then work out how much we have. Someone needs to, and I don’t think I can… well, I can’t think at the moment. Please.”
Aisha weighed that up for a moment. “Of course,” she finally said.
As Nilda went to the supply room in search of shoes and a coat, she wondered whether she was indeed being subconsciously protective of the pregnant woman. She didn’t think so. Whilst responsibility for not noticing the theft of the stores fell on everyone’s shoulders, they had all assumed Stewart was keeping track of their supplies. He worked hard but was too often lost in his own grim past to be truly reliable. No, she wasn’t being protective; the castle’s thick walls offered little protection against starvation.
By the time she’d found a pair of boots that nearly fit, a second raft had tied up at the steps, and was halfway unloaded.
“If we wait five minutes we can go back together,” Jay said, grabbing a bag.
“No,” Nilda said, addressing her son but speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. “There’s no point waiting; we’ll take the first raft back now. This one can follow as soon as it’s unloaded.”
She didn’t ask for volunteers, nor look to see who, if anyone, was coming with her until she’d climbed down the steps and stepped on board. Their expressions were a mixture of the resigned, exhausted, and terrified, but no one stayed behind.
“There,” Jay said. “You see the red roof? That’s the pub. The bags are in the decked area behind it.”
“Is it enclosed?” Nilda asked. “Can the zombies get in?”
“Maybe,” Jay said.
“Keep going then, a bit further down the river,” s
he said. “We’ll stop near that lamppost.”
From the raft, all she could see were the roofs of the coaches and the anonymous office block behind it. The zombie crawling along the path was invisible to her until she pulled herself over the wall. Its hand clawed at her foot. There wasn’t time to draw her sword. She lashed out, kicking first at the hand, then at its snapping mouth, but the boots were made of soft felt and plastic. Cursing with the sharp pain in her toes, she limped back a step, pulled out the gladius, and hacked down. She swore again, this time cursing the company that had made such cheap footwear, and took in her surroundings.
The pub was to the west, standing alone on the water’s edge. Going by the lacquered wood, tarnished brass, and its location, it was an upmarket place, there to service daytime tourists and evening workers putting off their return home. Before the pub were the two coaches and the heavy gritting truck with the fitted snowplough. Beyond it the road narrowed, jinked, and turned inland.
She took all of that in but dismissed it as background to the undead. There were scores of bodies, some killed when they’d abandoned the vehicles a few days before, others still oozing a dark brown pus from their crushed skulls. But there were some still moving. Four, no, five, coming towards her from the pub.
She raised her sword and edged towards the nearest. Its shredded gabardine coat was caught by a gust and billowed up like spectral wings, exposing the stub of an arm beneath. Someone had attacked it before. Nilda draw back the gladius and felt a wave of sorrow wash over her. Not for the creature or the person it had been, nor even for whoever had attacked it and the grim fate that must have awaited them, but for those who still lived and what they had become. She lunged forward, stabbing the sword straight at its skull. The blade bit deep, and she’d skipped back before the creature hit the ground. She changed her grip and took two long paces sideways, swinging the sword low at the legs of the next creature. It fell, and she ignored it, stepping past its thrashing arms as she moved toward the next target, and then the next, and then… and then there were no more.
Intending to go back to finish the creatures that she’d only disabled, she turned around but saw Jay already moving towards the downed undead, punching his sharpened crowbar at their skulls with a practiced efficiency. He looked up and met her gaze. She nodded. Whatever future she’d once envisioned for her son, it wasn’t this, but he’d found something he was good at.
As Jay and the others went to gather the bags they’d haphazardly stacked in the decked area behind the pub, Nilda went inside. The door’s lock had been broken, but the interior was unoccupied. There was that damp, slightly sweet smell of rot, but not that deeper, noisome tang of the undead. The pub had been looted. The spirits were all gone, and the fridges were empty, but that was a familiar sight. So was the collection of empty bottles and dirty glasses near one end of the bar.
The kitchen had been searched but not stripped. Whoever had done it had looked for easily cooked food. They’d left the bags of flour, sugar, and other ingredients behind. The mice had got into the packets, and the damp had finished off what the rodents hadn’t, turning their contents to a gluey green paste lining the shelves. All that was left were three trays of condiments by the serving-door. Ceramic jars of salt and pepper stood next to regimented bottles of vinegar and ketchup. The drips running down the side of the sauce bottles were more an angry blue than red. If the mice had rejected them, then she would do the same.
“Are there any empty bags?” she asked, as she went back outside.
“Not here, why?” Jay replied.
“There’s some salt and vinegar in there,” Nilda said. “Not much, but since the only other way of storing food is in the stomachs of those pigs, we should take it back with us.”
“Well, the raft is full,” Jay said. “We can bring a bag with us on the next trip.”
Nilda nodded and looked back up the river. She could just make out the next raft labouring through the waves. Inland, she could hear the telltale rustle of leaves, the sucking of mud, and the crackling of metal as the undead shuffled towards them.
“You take the raft back,” Nilda said. “Get it unloaded, and bring back a few empty bags.”
“And what about you?” Jay asked.
“I’ll stay and deal with the zombies. There won’t be many, and it won’t be a long wait.”
“But—” Jay began
“Someone has to,” Nilda said. “If there are too many, I can jump in the river and tread water until the next raft arrives. This will be a lot quicker, and safer, if the group on each raft doesn’t have to fight its way onto the bank. I’m not as tired as anyone else. This is my first trip here; for everyone else it’s their second. It’s logical, Jay. Now, quickly, back to the Tower, we need to get this done today.”
Jay nodded, and if he saw the flaw in her argument, didn’t realise it until after he was in the raft, pushing it away from the embankment wall.
Alone, Nilda finally let go of the tumult of fear that had been gnawing at her since Westminster. She stalked the riverbank, first east, then west, hacking at necrotic heads, chopping at desiccated knees, but it gave no relief to the pain tearing at her soul. As she stood over the body of the tenth, plunging her sword down into lifeless eyes, she felt no different to how she had that morning, and knew she could kill a thousand more and that wouldn’t change.
When the next raft arrived, Nilda let Kevin and Xiao take over sentry duty on the riverside, and she returned to the Tower. It was only as they were rowing upriver, her arms burning with the effort of keeping in clumsy time with the others, that she realised she’d not searched the undead for their names. The compulsion to pin an identity onto those creatures she’d brought to a second, final end was a compulsion similar to those she’d developed soon after Jay’s father had died. The therapist, paid for as part of the insurance settlement, had said that because the pointlessly tragic death had been so random, she was seeking other aspects of her life that she could control. Routine had become compulsion, and it was only the presence of Jay in her life that had prevented it from turning into something far worse. And one day she’d woken up to find that need gone. It was about the same time she’d realised that her own future would be nothing but a repetition of work and sleep and unfulfilled dreams. That compulsion had returned with the outbreak, and though it hadn’t gone, it was buried deep beneath all the more practical things that needed to be done just to survive.
Greta was waiting for them by the bank outside the castle.
“Eamonn’s gone,” she said, even before the raft was secure.
“What do you mean, gone?” Nilda asked as she jumped onto the steps.
“He left a note in our room. He’d planned it,” Greta said, her words disjointed, her tone distracted.
“Planned what?” Nilda asked.
“To go to Anglesey,” Greta said. “Here.” She held out a small piece of paper.
The note was brief. ‘Someone has to go to Wales. As Chester can’t, it might as well be me. I’ve taken the maps from Chester’s room and will follow one of the routes he marked out. Give me a week to get there, and a week for a boat to get back. Remember what we talked about that night we thought I might die. E.’
“Do you know when he left?” Nilda asked, handing the note back.
“He came with me over the walls,” Greta said. “We split up to lure the undead away from the coaches. He said he was going to lead them north for a mile. It must have been then. He must have kept going.”
“He left the note and took the maps,” Nilda said. “So, as you say, he planned it. He would have prepared and taken supplies.” Or would he? Would Stewart have let him? How much could he have carried without Greta realising something was wrong. That was something to check but not to mention to Greta. “And he’s right, someone did have to go,” she finished.
“I know, but I would have gone with him. I would have gone instead of him. Stupid, macho pride! He thinks he’s… well…” Greta stopped, clearly no
t wanting to speak ill of the man. “Half of me wants to go after him, but the other half says I’d never catch up with him.”
“No, you probably wouldn’t. How long ago was it? Two hours, three?”
“Closer to five,” Greta said.
Nilda found her eyes tracking up to the sky. For the second time that day, she’d lost all track of time. “Well then,” she said, “by now he’ll have found a bicycle and could be fifty miles away. Maybe further.”
“It’s just…” and again Greta stopped. “When it was Chester who was going, I thought… well, I thought it was just a matter of time. That we’d just have to count down a couple of weeks, a boat would arrive, and that would be it. Not that it would be over, but… oh, I don’t know.”
“That there would be others to share the burden? And now you feel like it’s all changed, but it hasn’t. Eamonn stands as good a chance as anyone else. All he has to do is follow the routes Chester marked out.” She remembered how she’d seen Chester sitting in his room, going through one map, then the next. “They must show the safe houses. Do you remember him telling us about those? Compared to what we’ve got to do, he’s got the easy job. Now, let’s get this raft unloaded. I think we can make another trip before dark.”
As they hauled the bags up to the shore, Nilda tried to keep a confidence she didn’t feel in her posture. Chester had spent months wandering the wasteland. Eamonn, by all that she’d heard from Jay and Tuck, had spent most of the time since the outbreak ensconced in Kirkman House. On the one long trip he’d made from there, he’d nearly been bitten, and during the one trip he’d made afterwards, he had been. Nilda couldn’t help feel that Greta was right. With Chester there had been a near certainty the mission to Wales would be a success, with Eamonn there was an almost definite probability it would end in a failure, and one that no one would ever know of.
“Oh, for a bath,” Greta said.
“Don’t,” Nilda replied, scrubbing at her hands with the soap. “All I can think of is warm towels and hot radiators. No,” she added, speaking to the two children at the sink next to her, “wash your hands properly.”