by Frank Tayell
He laid a fire in a room so crammed with books that calling it a library didn’t do it justice. He set a large saucepan of water to boil. Only as he was staring at the flames did he think about the water that had come out of the faucet. Another brief trip outside found a sealed well with a silent electric pump. Once the water in the pipes and storage tanks was used up, they’d have to draw it by hand.
“My specialty,” he said, placing the saucepan on the table. “Pasta with red sauce.”
“I don’t eat that,” Luke whined.
“He means ketchup,” Soanna said. “That’s right, isn’t it? Ketchup.” She gave him a pointed stare and encouraging nod.
“Of course,” Tom said.
“There. See. You like ketchup,” Soanna said to Luke.
“Doesn’t look like ketchup,” Luke said as a portion was spooned into a bowl.
“Did you know,” Tom said, “that ketchup was originally a fish sauce.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” Soanna said giving him another pointed look. “Don’t be silly.”
He resolved to keep the rest of his comments aimed solely at Kaitlin and Helena. It didn’t matter; as soon as the food was put in front of the children, they tore into it.
“Was there a lot of food in the kitchen?” Helena asked.
“There’s pasta and rice, some canned tomatoes and vegetables. The woman lived mostly on chicken, and that was in the freezer. Of what’s left, there’s a real lack of protein, but there’s enough carbs to keep us going for a week.” He took in the children shoveling food into their mouths. “Perhaps five days.”
“It’s a decent house,” Kaitlin said. “Lots of rooms. It’s remote.”
“You’re thinking of staying here?” Helena asked.
There was a sudden hush from the children as eight small pairs of eyes turned toward Kaitlin. The only sound came from Luke, who was humming tunelessly as he methodically chewed.
“Eat your dinner,” Kaitlin said, and said nothing more until the saucepan was empty. Helena gathered the children in front of the fire to read to them from a Paddington Bear book. It was a first edition, and well-worn, as if it had been bought new and read to many successive generations of children. Kaitlin and Tom took the dirty crockery and cutlery into the kitchen.
“It’s worth considering staying here,” Kaitlin said. “It is remote. Unless you count when we were inside the airfield, this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing the zombies since we left Baltimore. Even at the airfield, we could hear them.”
“On the plus side, it’s remote,” Tom agreed. “There’s a well, but the motor’s electric and there’s no gasoline for the generator. I guess we could rig something up using the pump in the fire truck, but that’ll use up the diesel, and we’ll need that to escape when the zombies come. They will come.”
“That’ll be the same everywhere,” she said.
“True. But if we’re saving the fuel, we’ve got to pull the water by hand, and fetch the wood to boil it. I guess the children can help with that, but only after the three of us have killed the zombies that gather nearby.” He opened a cupboard. “It’ll be a bland diet, and the food will be gone in a week. So, we’ll have to take the fire truck out to find more. Wherever we go, we’ll have to fight the undead and kill them to stop them following us back. And what do we do when the fuel is gone?”
“And it won’t just be zombies we’re fighting for the food,” she added. “I don’t know what it was like for you, but it was people that were the real danger.”
“Yeah, we saw that.”
“But is Maine going to be any better?” she asked. “We’ll still have to collect water, gather firewood, go out to scavenge for food, and fight off the undead. Isn’t it better to start fortifying somewhere now, and hope that the zombies just stop? They have to, sooner or later.”
“But can we wait until later?” he asked. “What if there are no supplies to be found anywhere nearby? That woman was infected. She managed to chain herself up and lock herself in the cellar before she died. Since we didn’t see any zombies, dead or alive, around the house, she wasn’t infected here. What if it happened when she went looking for supplies? I checked the two cars, and there aren’t any boxes or bags in the back. So wherever she was infected, it happened before she could find any food or fuel. That doesn’t speak well for our chances of finding much. At the cottage, I have a boat. If all else fails, we can fish.”
“You know how?”
“Sure. More or less. Okay, if I’m being honest, I’m the kind of guy who sets up the rod as an excuse to sit and watch the water for a few hours, but I’ve caught fish in the past. The boat would also allow us to go up and down the coast, moving from place to place, looking for supplies, and moving on when the zombies arrive.”
“And if the food’s all gone? If we don’t find any, anywhere?”
“We keep following the coast,” he said. “Hell, we can even strike out to sea and make for Britain if we have to.”
“In a rowing boat?”
“It’s a little larger than that. Britain’s evacuating the cities to the coast. It might hold on longer than anywhere else.” Of course, there were other problems with going to that country. “Look, I’m not saying it will be easy, or that there won’t be a million other problems we’ve not even thought of. We can’t stay here. It’s better to leave now, take all the supplies we can, drive north, then east, get to the cottage and take it from there. Maybe you’re right, maybe in a week or a month, the zombies will stop.”
“And maybe they won’t,” she said. “I don’t like the uncertainty.”
He took down the jar of coffee beans. They were an exotic blend in a small jar, suggesting the old woman didn’t drink more than a cup a day. The grinder was electric. He picked up the pepper mill, and unscrewed it, emptying the grains onto the counter. “No more pepper. No more spices. No more anything except that which we can grow.” He filled the pepper mill with coffee beans and began to grind it over a bowl. “No more coffee. Now, that’s going to be the real challenge.”
“You don’t know of any military bases or bunkers or somewhere we can go?” Kaitlin asked.
“I worked on the campaign,” Tom said, “not in the administration, but I know the location of plenty of bunkers. I don’t know that they’d let us in. What about you? You’re military. Were you on leave?”
“Retired,” she said. He glanced at her. She seemed too young for that. He put it down to military cutbacks. Whatever the story, by the way she bustled around the cupboards, she didn’t want to talk about it.
“Did you vote for him?” he asked instead. “For Max?”
“No,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I voted for General Carpenter.”
“Ah. Well, that’s why we wanted him to be on the ticket.”
“I almost stayed home. Every election seems to be the same. You get these grand promises, but they never come true. Something always comes along to derail them. Nothing like this, of course.” She closed the cupboard. “That, at least, is one thing to thankful for.”
“What?”
“No more elections. We’ll leave at first light. Go to Maine, and who knows where after that.”
The children were asleep before Helena reached the last page. They looked peaceful, lying on the floor and sofa, cuddled together. The moment lasted until Helena put another log on the fire. The flickering flames cast weird shadows, making everything look primitive. Reading by firelight, sleeping when it was dark, and all in the same room for warmth.
He took his mug to a dark room on the other side of the house. He opened the curtains and sat, watching the night outside, sipping the peppery coffee.
Chapter 7 - Toll
March 1st, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
“What are you looking at?” Luke asked.
Tom jumped down from the truck’s roof. He’d retreated outside when a mutiny had erupted over sharing a toothbrush. From the sounds inside the house, it was still going on. �
��What do you see?” Tom asked, holding out the tablet.
Luke squinted at the screen. “A… is that a fire truck?”
“Precisely,” Tom said. “That’s us. That image was taken by a satellite. Up in space,” he added.
“I know what a satellite is,” Luke said. “That’s how we talked to Katie when she was away. Wait…” He stared at the screen, then the sky. A look of puzzled wonder spread over his face. He jumped up and down, waving his arms, all the time trying to see the screen.
Tom smiled, but after a few seconds, relented. “It’s not live,” he said. “The picture was taken just after dawn.”
“Oh.” Luke stared at the screen, one arm waving slowly back and forth. As the concept sank in, he lowered his hand. “But that is our truck?” he asked.
“That’s us, yes,” Tom said.
“Cool!” He ran inside.
The satellite was three degrees off the course Tom had thought he’d programmed, and it was traveling too fast. It wouldn’t be long before its orbit decayed and it burned up in the atmosphere. However, it had done what they needed. He had images of most of the route north. To be more accurate, he had pictures of the places they very definitely wanted to avoid. The area around Crossfields Landing was still a mystery, but he thought they could reach it long before nightfall.
He put the tablet away and climbed back up to the truck’s roof. He was under no illusion that life would miraculously improve when they reached the coast. Life was going to get a lot harder before it ever got better. What was galvanizing him was a new sense of purpose. He’d woken with a clear and achievable goal: get the children to Maine. Beyond that, his future was a blank canvas, and that was an entirely new and unexpectedly liberating concept.
Movement caught his eye. On the road, two hundred yards north of the house, a slouching figure shuffled toward them. The sight soured his mood. He jumped down and picked up the fire-axe.
“Luke said you’ve got a satellite image of us,” Helena called from the doorway.
“Yeah, I’ll come inside in a moment.” He waved the axe down the road. Helena nodded and closed the door.
How swiftly death had become commonplace, Tom thought as he walked onto the road to await the staggering creature. Dealing with the undead was a morning chore. His sour mood turned dark. Not just a chore for the morning, and not just for this morning, but for how many days to come?
It was a man, wearing a police windbreaker over a suit. An expensive one, he realized, as the zombie drew nearer. Mud splattered the once-polished shoes, gore covered the buttons, and ragged tears marred the perfect creases.
He took a step toward the zombie, waiting until it raised its arms, until it opened its mouth, until it grew more animated, clawing and thrashing at the air as it got closer. Closer. He swung. The axe hit the creature squarely above the nose. For a moment it was motionless, those dead eyes meeting his. Then it collapsed. Using the axe as a lever, he rolled the body to the side of the road.
Yes, his future lay before him as an open book, but he felt he could already see what events would dominate the individual chapters.
“That’s the route,” Tom finished. “As I say, I don’t have the last fifty miles, but this will get us to the coast.”
“Use the highway to get to the interstate in New York State, and then avoid any major roads as we go east into Maine. Especially Route 2,” Kaitlin summarized, looking at the lines drawn on the roadmap. It was a touring guide to the northeast, short on details but big on adverts. The soldier threw a glance at the children, all jockeying for a better position from which to view the map. “It’s easy enough. We should be there long before nightfall. Okay, kids, I’ve a game for you. It’s called find and keep.”
“You mean find and go seek,” Luke corrected her.
“No, find and keep. You have to find blankets. The winner is whoever can carry the most. Here’s a hint, they’re easier to carry when they’re folded. Go on.”
Luke scuttled off. The others followed, though Soanna wore a far too grown-up expression, as if she realized that it was a chore rather than a game.
“Is there any news? Any messages or anything?” Helena asked when the children were gone.
“Not really. The World Wide Web is gone,” Tom said. “There are a few networks still operational, but they’re full of people asking whether a sanctuary exists anywhere in the world. A lot of people are talking about Britain. They’ve been broadcasting that there are no reported cases of infection there. It was for domestic consumption, but radio waves carry, and other people have heard. There’s anarchy from the Volga to the Pyrenees. Russia’s gone quiet, so has China. Korea’s in flames, and Japan’s just as bad as anywhere else.”
“What about closer to home?” Kaitlin asked.
“Nothing concrete, and nothing official,” Tom said. “There’s no rump government issuing emergency decrees, and no one’s trying to hold the nation together. I’m taking that as a mixed blessing. It means Max is almost certainly dead, but it also means Farley has failed in his bid to seize power.”
“Found one,” Luke said, running back into the room, trailing a blanket in his wake.
“Folded, Luke, folded,” Kaitlin said. “And we should see what else is here that we can take.”
The house, originally built in the time before steam, and rebuilt before the automobile supplanted the railroad, had more supplies than they had room for. The difficulty came in choosing what was most important. The tool lockers were already full and had little space for more. With the children in the back of the cab, each clutching as many blankets as they could find, there was room for the food and not much else.
“What’s that?” Helena asked, as he carried a box out toward the truck.
“Candles,” Tom said. “I found them in the pantry.”
“Candles?” She smiled. “Seriously?”
“What?”
“Batteries use up less space and they’ll last longer.”
There was logic in that, but when he put them back in the house, he did so with reluctance. What they might not need now, they certainly would in the future.
The children’s chattering excitement, a residual by-product of a night of relative safety, abruptly stopped when they drove past their first zombie, two miles from the house. After that, they saw them more frequently, and always moving toward the truck. At first, Tom thought they’d escaped the house just in time, but then realized they were heading toward the sound of the engine. He wondered whether they’d made a mistake leaving that property.
At first, Kaitlin was able to drive past the undead. Then they started coming across the vehicles. One after another, abandoned on the road. Their undead former occupants crawled across broken glass and over twisted metal as they tried to reach the truck. Kaitlin stopped trying to dodge them and, with gritted teeth, drove over them instead.
“You sure about the route?” Kaitlin asked an hour later as she weaved around another van, stalled in the middle of the road.
“Another mile, and we’ll hit the highway,” Tom said.
“You sure?” she asked again.
“There was a sign,” Soanna said. “I saw it. One mile ahead.”
“One mile,” Tom echoed. He’d seen the sign himself, and that was all he had to go on. The stalled cars weren’t on the pictures the satellite had taken. There was no way that the rusting row of abandoned vehicles had appeared during the time they’d been driving that morning. Wherever that picture was of, it wasn’t here.
“One mile,” Kaitlin muttered. There was a screeching grind as the truck shunted a car out of the way. An undead arm stretched through the broken windshield, giving them an almost languid wave as the vehicle was shoved against another. Jade gave a muted whimper. Emerald and Amber swiftly copied suit. Soanna responded by bellowing an absurd nonsense rhyme. Tom joined in, loudly and off-key, making up words for those he didn’t know. The caterwaul didn’t quite drown out the sound from outside, but the absurdity distracted the ch
ildren. They screamed the rhyme, giving vent to their fears until, just as abruptly as it had slowed, the truck sped up.
“We’re through. We’re through,” Kaitlin said, as they accelerated onto a highway gloriously, wondrously free of vehicles.
Tom closed his eyes, and relaxed, only realizing how tense he’d been as his muscles slowly unwound. A few hours north, a few east, and they would be at the coast. Whatever happened after that, the traveling would be over.
“There’s something ahead,” Helena said.
Tom opened his eyes. Images of the choppy Atlantic waves were replaced with a line of police cruisers parked across the road. Beyond those, vehicles lined either side of the shoulder. Parked in front, at the side of the road, was a tow truck. Kaitlin brought the fire truck to a halt, with the blockade still a quarter mile ahead.
A figure appeared from behind the tow truck, walking out into the middle of the road. They waved their arms in what might have been a friendly gesture before crossing to one of the cruisers. There was a muted hum of an engine, and the cruiser pulled out, leaving a gap in the barricade.
“They’re making a space for us to drive through,” Helena said. “Or are they getting ready to pursue us if we drive away?”
“We can’t outrun them,” Kaitlin said. “And we can’t risk them shooting at us.”