by Frank Tayell
“There were about a hundred of us,” she went on, “split into three eight hour shifts. A few of the people came from the warehouse, like me, but most of them seemed to come from prison. They'd emptied those, too difficult, too expensive to keep running, I guess. They'd been told this was a continuation of their sentence, and here I was, a volunteer. At the end of the shift, they'd all be taken back to the church they'd been billeted in. They didn't know how good they had it. It sounded like a far nicer place than the warehouse everyone else went back to. Everyone except me. When the shift was over I stayed, and just kept working. No one said anything. No one seemed to care.
“When I got too tired to go on, I found a small alcove near a storage room to sleep. All night long there were gunshots. Not many, just frequent enough to wake me each time I started to drift off to sleep. The next day, when the shift changed, when people who'd been in the warehouses came in, I listened to the rumours.
“Life in the warehouses was a life of queuing. You queued for breakfast, then you queued for the toilet, then you queued for lunch, then, for a bit of variety, you queued for a chance to climb up to one of the windows to look out at the sky, then you queued for dinner, then you slept. If you could sleep, with the people wandering around asking if anyone had seen their husband or wife or son or daughter. It sounded like almost everyone was looking for someone, and they kept on asking until they'd asked everyone. Then they would go out to ask at the other warehouses. But there was a strict curfew. Anyone who went outside was shot.
“As more people came in, they started having to queue for a bed. But the numbers coming in didn't add up. It was a hundred here, a dozen there, not the millions rumour had us expecting. I worked, I ate, I slept. Compared to the warehouses it wasn't too bad, but only if you compared it to the warehouses.
“After a couple of days the fresh food was eaten. Then the porridge ran out. Then the delivery truck only brought carrots and onions, and we started bulking out the vegetable stew with flour and cooking oil. That must have been after...” she paused, “only three days, maybe four. It seems like so much longer. The days blurred into one another. There was no end to the vegetables that needed to be scrubbed. I hated that. Looking back on it, after, when I was hungry, with nothing to eat but dirt and air, I used to dream of those piles of carrots. It took weeks for the stain to come out of my fingers.
“Most of what I learnt came from the guards. The cities were going to be evacuated. The Londoners were heading there, to us. There was a vaccine and they were going to get it first. That was the catalyst, the trigger, the tangible inequality which the refugees could grab on to and understand. The Londoners, who'd done nothing but bankrupted us, who took our money and ran our country into ruin and did nothing for anywhere outside the M25, they were getting preferential treatment.
“It was too much. The refugees became angry. Then, one day, I heard shots in the afternoon. It was so loud, everyone stopped and just looked at one another. The guards on the door went out to check. They were visibly tense, expecting the worst. I’m not sure what they thought was happening, but they came back a few minutes later, looking relieved. They gave no explanation, but you could tell it wasn't the zombies that had been shot.
“That night when the shift changed I found out about the gunshots. I'd sort of shifted away from everyone else, into a corner. It wasn't exactly hiding, but just trying to be separate, making them think I was different, meant to be there. One of the guards came in with one of his mates, some soldier who'd been on a different duty that day. They'd come in to scrounge food and though they were talking quietly so they couldn't be overheard by the others, they didn't notice me.
“The shots in the afternoon were a protest. A formal democratic protest. One of the warehouses had elected a representative. It was a show of hands thing, some former TV-gardener who everyone recognised. He'd taken a delegation of four of the more respectably eminent refugees, to meet with the person in charge.
“I don't know who that was. They got as far as a Captain. A real Captain of some real military unit, not someone thrown into a uniform at the last minute. The Captain ordered them back to their warehouse. They refused. He shot them. He did it himself, I heard, a bullet in each head. It was the guard who'd told the people in the warehouse. He was a corporal in the Territorial Army, who lived in Yorkshire. The evening of New York he'd had a call and been driven down to the south. He was as outraged as anyone.
“He was the one who found out about the shipment of vaccine. There was a car park down near the port packed with lorry after lorry, loaded up with the stuff, all just sitting there. Why should it go to the Londoners first? How was that fair? That was what people were asking.
“When the morning shift came in they were full of that same rumour about the vaccine and the same outrage that it should go to the Londoners over the locals. By the time the afternoon shift came in half the lorries had driven away. The other half couldn't, because someone had got into the car park and released the air from the tyres.
“These weren't military grade lorries, just commercial vehicles that had been requisitioned, and now they each had four flat tyres apiece. People were pulled off work details left and right, even the elderly from the warehouses got dragooned into unloading the lorries so the tyres could be changed. Some of the vaccine got loaded into police cars, some into whatever other vehicles they had, but there weren't enough.
“The next morning there was no replacement for the night shift. One of the supervisors, a supercilious guy whose experience managing a fast food place had given him delusions of culinary grandeur, went out to check what was happening. He came back a half hour later. The warehouses, the churches, they were all in lock down. People had started dying during the night. Not turning, just dying. It was the same thing all over the enclave. People were just dying.
“There was no delivery of food that day, instead we got a message saying no meals were going to be served until further notice and we had to stay where we were. The whole enclave was in quarantine. We sat, and we waited and we listened to the sound of gunfire.
“It took a while, maybe until afternoon, to find out what had happened, and by then it was too late. That corporal, the ex-territorial one, he came to tell us. The people who had died had stolen the vaccine. Some had taken it then and there, others when they'd got back to the warehouse and shared it with others. That's how we found out. The Londoners, they weren't to be saved, they were to be euthanised. Put down like they were nothing more than animals. I almost felt sorry for them.
“Around midnight a lorry of food came in. Food was to be served at eight am, and that was it. We were back to work. At dawn a new lot of workers came in, and the others, those who'd been there with me all day, they went back to wherever. Not me though. I stayed, and I was glad I did. I didn't see any of them ever again. I could have asked someone what was going on, I suppose, but if you ask questions, then sooner or later you get asked them right back. Then and there I was safe, just as long as I kept my head down.
“After that I got used to the shooting, an intermittent banging that went on day and night. Over that week I pieced it together. Scraps of overheard conversation and the things people didn't say. I suppose, if you had to call it something, you could say that that was our civil war. It was too big a thing, too tied up in moral certainties to be called a mutiny, too small and ultimately futile to be called a revolution. The soldiers, police and refugees who'd had friends or family or whatever in the cities, they'd had enough. There was no central command, it was just a bunch of individuals, all doing what they knew they had to. All fighting alone, together, and one by one they died.
“It was about a week after the cities were evacuated that the guards came in and said everyone was being cleared out. They were emptying the warehouses, pulling back along the coast. They didn't say why. I'd had enough. I decided to stay and hide. Hours passed. I couldn't tell you how many. I wanted to see what was happening outside, and was half way to the off
ice when it happened.
“Everything went white. The lights went out. All the little clocks on the ovens, they went off. Then there was a second light, just the same as before, this stabbing blinding glare shooting through the windows. It only lasted a second, but it was a second that lasted an eternity, during which the world was nothing but light. Then it was gone. Then there was... I suppose it was the shock wave. The whole building shook. When it stopped, I picked myself up and went into the office. The glass in the windows was broken. I didn't notice that at first, because when I looked outside, I saw the Mushroom Clouds.
“One to the south, one to the east. I couldn't tell you how long I stood there, looking at them. Minutes, hours, seconds, I don't know. Then I went out to the lobby. The doors were locked. I peered through the glass, but I couldn't see any sentries. There was still gunfire in the distance, and that was all I could hear. I was safe inside. Safe until another Bomb was dropped, safe until the food ran out, safe until the radiation reached me. I had to get out.
“I climbed out the window and dropped down to the car park. Then I ran. I just ran, heading nowhere but away from the sound of gunfire. I kept running until I reached the train line, then I kept running until I reached a tunnel. Then I stopped.
“I don't know what time it was, but it got dark soon after. Dark and cold. The shooting lessened during the night, but every so often there'd be a sudden flurry, a crescendo of sound that went on for twenty or thirty minutes. Then it would die off again, replaced by the occasional single isolated shot. I tried to stay awake, I mean, how can you sleep with all that going on nearby? But I fell asleep. When I woke the sun was high in the sky and the city was quiet. I got up, walked to the end of the tunnel and looked out. Pillars of smoke filled the sky. It was all on fire. Every direction I looked.
“I walked away, heading west, towards home. I saw my first zombie a half hour later. That wasn't the first body I saw, but those had been dead people. I hadn't thought to bring a weapon with me. Hadn't even considered it. It was standing in front of a bank, banging mechanically at the window. Its head turned. It saw me. It stated moving towards me, getting closer. To me, then, it seemed as if it was about to burst into a run. I turned and sprinted away, ducking down alleys, not even daring to look back until I was thoroughly lost.
“I needed to get away. The road I was on ran north-south, so I ran inland away from the Bombs. I saw some other people, other survivors, but I didn't stop, nor did they.
“They'd started building a wall around the enclave, but they'd not got very far. There were plenty of gaps, and it was easy enough to get out and into the countryside. I hid and scavenged, until I saw the smoke from the chimney and headed to the farm. I don't know which side it was who dropped the Bomb. I don't even know how many sides there were. All I know is that it happened because of the evacuation. Because of your plan.”
An expectant silence settled around the room and, I realised, that she had finished and that they were waiting on my response. Of course, now, after a few hours to think it all through, I think I understand what it was all about. They had all heard the story before. No doubt they had discussed it, and gone over every little detail, coming to their own conclusions, and their certainty in those conclusions had grown with each retelling until, now, they are certain that they are right.
And there was me, in that kitchen, an unelected representative of the old government, the architect of evacuation plan itself. I was being judged. This was my trial. They were my jury. I had no right to silence, yet nothing I could have said, nothing I can say will ever be sufficient. Not to them.
“Well?” Stewart asked.
I thought of saying nothing, of just walking out. I wanted to, but I didn't. I felt they deserved something. “The government was relocating to the Isle of Wight, that would have been one of the targets, the other was probably the nuclear power station at Dungeness,” I said.
“What?” Barrett said. “That's it? That's all you have to say.”
“I told you,” Liz said
“Alright,” I went on. “Yes, I came up with a plan. As I saw it there were only two options. Stay put and starve, or evacuate and try and hold onto something. That was all I suggested. I wasn't in the government. I wasn't in the cabinet. I wasn't even in the meetings. I was in a flat in south London with a broken leg and not enough painkillers. I didn't know about the vaccine or the plan to kill off the population...”
“We read your journal,” Chris interrupted. “You knew about the vaccine years ago. So you're lying to us now, you probably lied in that book. How can we trust anything you say?”
I stood up, moving my hands to my sides in an unsubtle gesture that ended with my right hand being inches away from the pistol in my pocket. “In that case, like you said, you've read the journal. Believe it, or not. Trust me, or not. Just don't go through my stuff. Ever again.” Then I walked out.
Day 115, Brazely Abbey, Hampshire.
10:00, 5th July.
An uncomfortable silence has settled over the Abbey, made worse by this morning's summer shower. The undead do not care, and ordinarily I would relish the cool rain, but not when there is a veritable storm brewing just below me. I have retreated, if that is the right word, once more to the top of the walls.
I've been up here since shortly after yesterdays “trial”. Kim brought me dinner. She'd been teaching Annette how to shoot the rifle. It seems a waste to me. On the other hand, whose rifle is it? Whose ammunition? We aren't a community here, let alone a democracy. Besides, ten or twenty or fifty, they could shot off every bullet, and we'd still be surrounded by the undead.
Dark thoughts breed depression, and that won't help. We are besieged. We need to escape, and that, regardless of the attitude of the others, is what I've turned my mind to. I think we could get the cars out of here. It won't be easy, but we could do it, if we could thin Them out just a little. If we created some kind of diversion on the other side of the Abbey, something loud enough to clear Them off the track and away from the road, then perhaps we could might be able to get away.
Two cars, nine souls, because regardless of their attitude a life is a life, and that has to be more precious than water right now. I mean that literally as well as metaphorically. The only real activity below me is the seemingly constant fetching of water from the well to flush the toilets in the shower block.
We've enough food for about two weeks. Rationing could stretch it out, but they won't listen to me. Nor to Kim, they seem to dislike her almost as much as they loathe me. Even if they did, what difference would a few extra weeks make?
No, forget rationing, we're not going to be able to take much food with us. We'll take fuel and water since those are a lot harder to find, and that won't leave space for much else. We might as well eat it now, as leave it here, so let's call it thirteen days to find a way out of here. And how we do that, I've no idea.
Do we leave together? Obviously I don't mean the others, I mean Kim, Annette, Daisy and myself. Do they go where I go, because I know where that is. I haven't discussed it with them, there hasn't really been time since we left that car showroom, but I don't think they want to go to Lenham. But where else could we go? Where should we go after?
Allowing for a margin of error in my calculations, and the circuitous nature of any journey we undertake, then we've fuel enough for twelve hundred miles. Divide that by two for the two cars, and we could still reach pretty much anywhere in Wales or Scotland.
South is out, the Bombs have seen to that. We have to assume the other enclaves met a similar fate, so that rules out south west to Cornwall, or west to Bristol. There's east, of course, back towards London.
Of all the places in the country, of all the places in the world, London might just work out. If there was ever one national stereotype that wasn't built on ancestral hatred and local bias, then it has to be the English obsession with gardening. There were fruit trees and vegetable plots in almost every garden in the Capital. Even the local councils got
in on the act, planting fruit trees along the verges of almost every road. Then there is Kew. Every plant on the planet, or near enough, was grown there. Pineapples, coffee, chocolate, that would be our source of seeds. We'd find enough vinegar, salt and probably even sugar if we looked hard enough. We could find some place where the buildings were crowded together, and connect the buildings with roof top walkways. We could live without having to go down to the streets.
We could look somewhere north of the river, in one of the old districts, and hey, if we're doing that then why think small? We could take one of the apartment blocks overlooking Buckingham Palace, or somewhere in Mayfair of Park Lane. Or why not the Palace itself?
Imagine that, the four of us living in the Palace. The idea of Daisy sitting on the throne is enough to raise an unfamiliar smile, but it would just be the four of us. Which would mean it is down to Kim and myself to ensure a place is secure. Could we do that with the Palace? Could we do it with a large Victorian block of flats? No.
I barely survived London once, completely unaware there was an extra factor to consider, the radiation. How many Bombs were dropped? Where? Who by? We could find an apparently perfect redoubt, not knowing we were being poisoned by the air around us until it was too late. No. If we had to, we could return to London, but it's a place to escape to, not a destination to journey towards.
North, then to Wales or Scotland, but where? I can think of a dozen places, I can think of a hundred, that would be ideal, if they had water, and if no one has reached there first, and if they are free of radiation.
What's left? One of the Scottish islands? Or would someone recognise me and turn me into a pariah there, like I have become here, an albatross around Kim's neck? The Americas? Now there's an idea. Somewhere in the north, somewhere so sparsely populated, so remote that the undead are few in number. We'd have to travel by boat of course...