by Frank Tayell
I tried not to laugh. I failed. The absurdity of the situation was too much. “Time's against us. You want to risk going down there?”
“Try the hanger first. That's our best bet.”
The hanger was empty, at least of fuel. Most of the space was given over to a partly dismantled prop-plane. Sections of engine had been taken apart and arrayed along a series of now dusty work benches. If I hadn't known what was under our feet I would have taken it to be an entirely legitimate, if close to bankrupt, business.
We went round the other buildings, checking the walls for any sign of some underground fuel storage tank. We found nothing. Then, we turned towards the concrete hut in the middle of the airfield. Both of us wanting to get it over with, we headed towards the bunker.
We didn't see the scorch marks until we reached the doorway. A few fragments of burnt wood hung limply from a frame that was no longer hiding the steep steps leading down to a stout, reinforced, metal door.
“We're not going to find any fuel down there,” I said.
“I know,” Kim replied.
“We can go,” I suggested. “Just get the cart as far as we can, search the cars, find fuel that way, or...”
“I think it might be too late for that. Look up,” she said.
I did. Above us, over the doorway, was a camera. It swivelled one way, then the other. Then the door clicked open.
We could have left. Of course we could. We didn't. We just looked at one another and shrugged. Somehow, in that same strange way that I knew I had to climb into that window at the Manor, that same luck that landed me with a broken leg during the outbreak, the same instinct that had kept me alive when billions had perished, it was all telling me that, despite every appearance to the contrary, it was going to be OK.
Nevertheless, I checked that the pistol was still in my pocket. I took out the torch, but then had to wait an infuriatingly embarrassing few seconds for Kim to twist the end so that the light would come on. It is so maddening the simple everyday things that require two working hands!
The torch illuminated a narrow staircase that descended a dozen steps before ending in a short landing.
“You think you can make it on your own?” Kim asked.
“I can try.” I replied. She nodded, and raised the rifle in front of her.
We were half way down when we heard the door shut behind us.
“Figures,” Kim said.
At the landing, we turned the corner and found another staircase. We kept going down, staircase to landing to staircase, about seventy feet in total, and I was exhausted when we finally reached the bottom. We were standing in front of a steel door that resembled an airlock from a submarine. It was hanging loosely by one hinge. Whether it was there to keep something in or to keep it out, it had clearly failed.
“What if whatever's down there isn't human?” Kim asked
“The door up there clicked open and closed,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.
“That's not very reassuring,” she muttered, pushing the door aside, and stepping through.
We walked into a reception area. There were no pot plants, no magazines, no chairs except one behind the solitary desk. Beneath the desk was a computer tower unit, shattered and ruined by an unmistakable bullet hole.
“This is getting...” Kim began, but didn't finish the sentence. Opposite the door we had come through was another pressure door, its hinges broken like the first. She pushed it open and we stepped into a long corridor.
I played the torch up and down and across its sides. “No light fittings,” I muttered. “Nothing but nozzles. Probably part of a fire suppression system,” I said. Then I remembered what it was we might find here, and I realised what kind of systems might be in place and what those nozzles might dispense.
“Sightseeing later,” Kim said, and we hurried on, through another broken door and into a wider corridor. The torch wasn't powerful enough to make out anything more than shadows at the far end, about two hundred yards away. As I looked, I saw that the corridor had once been a large rectangular chamber, subdivided and partitioned into individual work spaces.
I glanced into the one closest to the door. There were computers, with similar matching bullet holes, screens, a light-desk and a cabinet, but my attention was taken by the bullet holes in the wall. Two, close together, at head height, surrounded by a horrible red smear.
“At last,” a voice called out. “You made it.”
I spun around, shining the light towards the far end of the corridor where I thought the voice was coming from. Kim moved away from me, edging to the opposite wall, her rifle raised.
“You took your time,” the voice continued. It was male, with a US accent, but that was all I could tell as I took a tentative step forward, trying to gauge how much danger we were in.
“You know,” the man went on, “I was starting to think you wouldn't come at all.”
I took a few steps forward. I could just make out the man, standing in the doorway to a cubicle. Behind him a workbench was dimly illuminated by the light of a series of screens.
“Spotted you on my security system,” he said, pointing to the screens. “It's amazing what you can do with some batteries, an improvised wi-fi network, a couple of web cams and a whole lot of time.”
I stopped about twenty yards away from him, and played my torch up and down the cubicles to either side and opposite him. They were empty, unless you counted the bullet holes and blood stains.
“It's a mess. I know,” he said. “I tidied up as best I could, but there was so much to do. You saw my early warning system?”
“The camera on the door?” I asked, wanting to keep him talking. He was a large man, a few inches taller than I was, with the kind of athletic figure you can never get from a gym. I tried to see his face, but there were too many shadows to make out his features properly.
“No, no... Well, yes. I mean, the cameras are there to tell me if I need to run and hide. Not that I've had to. No, I meant the signs. The road signs. You saw those?”
“With the word zombies scrawled across them?” Kim asked.
“That's them,” he said turning to look at her. I played the torch at his face, but there were too many shadows to make out his features. “Cell phone with a motion sensor. If the sign gets knocked over I get a call.” He turned and walked back into the cubicle and was suddenly hidden from view. I had to take another couple of steps forward. The partition between the next cubicle, the one between myself and him, was transparent. He slapped his palm down on a desk covered in half dismantled phones, all connected by a spider web of wires.
“That was the first thing I did when I arrived,” he said. “On my way up here, I got trapped in an old church for a week. You saw that? The horde? Must have been millions of zombies. Shame really. I was looking forward to finally seeing the British countryside, and They had to go and ruin it. I almost starved then. Would have died of thirst if it wasn't for the water in the font. That's why I rigged those signs up. Helps to keep people away, too. Which is never a bad thing. Have to keep going out to change the batteries, but it's better than sitting down here in ignorance.”
“How long have you been here?” Kim asked. I glanced over at her, wondering if the question meant she had some kind of plan, but it was too dark to make out more than her shadow.
“Oh, a week. Two. No, three. Maybe three, but who's counting? Oh, I’m sorry, where are my manners. Would you like some coffee? Or tea? Or water? That's all I can offer. I'll have to unplug this lot.” He began to disconnect a series of plugs from a large metal box. “They blew the generator. Literally. Grenades, going by the burn pattern. Left me having to use this. Portable battery pack. It's meant to be rechargeable, but the hand crank broke, and it's not like I can call up the manufacturer to complain. Found two here. The other's doing duty by the front door. I thought they'd be coming back for them, since they left the vault intact.”
“The vault?” I asked. “With the virus in it?”
<
br /> “Right. 67,892 vials.” He said. “Counted, and double counted, and I think they're all accounted for. No,” he added to himself, “no, I’m sure they are. That's why I put up the cameras. I figured they'd left the job only half done. And even if they didn't all come back, I thought the food, the fuel, the battery packs, that'd be enough for one or two of them to get an idea to loot the place. Hence the cameras, like I said.”
“The fuel's still here?” Kim asked.
“Sure. Gas, diesel. All in the tanks. As far as I can tell, anyway.” He plugged in a small travel kettle. “Makes you wonder, doesn't it. Makes you think that maybe they're not coming back after all. Of course that could be what they want you to think. Is there a game within a game? It's so hard to know. It's why you can never be too careful.” He bent over the power unit. “And I suppose we can afford to spare a little light as well, eh?”
He flipped a switch. A few fluorescent lights, rigged up on the table and across the floor flickered and went on. The light was dim, but compared to the gloom before it was as bright as day. I put the torch down on a work counter, and lowered my hand to my pocket.
“From what I've gathered,” the man waved his hand at a pile of partially disassembled computers on the table, “someone came in here, stormed the place on the 15th March. And they had someone on the inside. You see up there,” he pointed at the door we'd come in through. I looked and saw a panel had been removed.
“Shape charge. They all went off. Someone initiated the self destruct system. The first part of which is to blow all the doors except the air lock at the front and the door to the outside at the top. Then, what's meant to have happened, but didn’t,” he walked over to a small cylinder lying apparently discarded on the floor, and tapped it, “is that this stuff is meant to be sprayed out. Highly flammable. Like, napalm mixed with Thermite. Then there's another explosion and the place is meant to have burnt down. Steel, concrete and everything in between. The only thing that's meant to be here is a crater. Except,” he waved his hands to take in the room, “it didn't go off. The doors blew open, and then someone blew the airlock and waltzed right in. Grenades, bullets and knife work. Not a good end, judging by the bodies.”
“And where are they?” Kim asked.
“Downstairs. The vault. Wasn't space anywhere else. When I realised I was going to be here a while, I figured it was better down there than up here, you know? Stuck in a few of these too,” he tapped the cylinder again, “because, like I said, you can't be too careful.”
I took a few steps closer, trying to get a better view of the man's face.
“What I can't work out is if they took anything with them.” he went on peering down at the workbench. “Two bullets to the head. Each. I mean, was that it? Was that all they wanted to do? Just kill everyone here?”
The man turned towards me, and for the first time I could see his face. It was unremarkable in every way, at least a decade older than mine, with traces of grey streaking through hair I’m sure would have been dyed six months ago. The eyes were tired, the beard was roughly trimmed, and the expression barely concealed an inner mania that, if anything, made him seem generations older than he was. I knew then, and I know now, that I had never seen him before in my life.
“Doesn't really matter,” he went on expansively. “I only came here to blow the place up. Figured someone had to. Thought I might find an address for the doctor here. Not in person, of course, I knew he'd come back to the UK, but I doubted he'd come here. Thought I'd kill two birds.”
He walked over to another work table, this one covered in a pile of charred paper. “This is how I knew how many vials there should be. Not that they'd left a list, or anything. I had to work out how many they made. But why torch this lot and not torch the whole place? Why destroy the hard drives, and in such a theatrical manner, rather than take them away? Why leave the vials here? Why? You know why?”
“Transport?” Kim suggested. I glanced at her. She'd raised her rifle and was peering at the man through the scope. He didn’t seem to mind.
“Right.” he said leaping up again, seemingly oblivious to the gun pointed at him. “Exactly. Transport. They didn't have any, or any space to spare in whatever vehicles they had. That's the only possible answer. So,” he said turning to me, “do you think that would have been a problem for them?”
I didn't know what to say. Clearly this man thought he knew who we were. Since I had no idea who that was, I had no idea what was the right type of response to keep him talking and his hands away from that canister. I slipped my hand into my pocket and gripped the pistol.
“Sorry,” he went on, as I was still working out what to say, “you don't know, I didn't show you. Hang on, look at this.” He rolled the chair over to the other desk. “Got it finished a couple of days ago. Not great, sure, had to combine pieces from different angles. Sort of a photo-fit picture.” He tapped at a few keys on the laptop “Here” he said swivelling the screen around to face us.
I recognised the image on the screen instantly.
“Quigley.”
“Got it in one” he said. “Sir Michael Quigley. The Foreign Secretary. Or Prime Minister, or Tyrant in chief or whatever he was calling himself by then. He came here in person. Puts a bit of a spin on it, doesn't it? Everyone who was here worked for him, so why did he need someone on the inside? The game within the game, that's what I’m trying to work out. I know, after that demonstration in New York went wrong, after the outbreak, he came back to the UK. I also know he left the doctor over there in the US. Then, a few days later, Quigley comes here, tells the inside man to disarm the system, and then he makes sure everyone inside is killed. Was he covering up his involvement? Or was he as surprised as the rest of us?”
He stared expectantly at me, at first I didn't realise it was a question.
“I... don't know,” I said, and I didn't. I searched around for some innocuous comment, something that would just keep him talking. “Wouldn't he have been on the Isle of Wight?” I asked.
“Check the date stamp on that image. No, he missed the Nukes. I reckon if he survived New York, and survived Prometheus, then he's got to be out there somewhere. The question is where. I found some addresses. That's about all I've got to show for my time here. Probably six months ago they'd have led somewhere, but now? Who knows?”
I looked over at Kim. She was now flicking the rifle back and forth between the man and I, her eye glued to the scope. I thought she was trying to signal something, but couldn't work out what.
I gripped the pistol tightly, lifting it slightly, to check it hadn't snagged on any errant strands of cloth. I edged sideways, away from the cubicle wall, to where I thought I would have a better shot. I just needed a few more seconds.
“So there's nothing else to find out here?” I asked.
“Not really. No. I suppose I would have left soon, but I couldn't decide where to go next. I didn't want to go, you see. I mean, I knew if I was going to find you anywhere it'd be here. I tried the house of course, but you'd already left. So where else on this entire planet could I look? Some part of me knew you'd come, and, hey, I was right. Here you are.” He grinned.
I glanced over at Kim. She had lowered the rifle. The kettle began to boil. I stepped out from the partition. I had a clear shot. I raised the gun.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“What?” he asked, surprise in his voice. “Jen didn't tell you?
“What? Who are you?” I asked again, the gun trembling in my hand.
“I thought she'd have told you...”
“Who are you?” I shouted.
“But you must know. Don't you... I... I'm Sholto,” he said, “I’m your brother.”
Epilogue
Day 126, River Thames.
“Tell me again,” I asked for what must have been the fourth time.
“Really?” Kim asked. I glared at her. She'd taken it in her stride, and I was somewhat resentful of that. “Personally,” she went on, “I want to know what
your real name is. I mean, it's not really Sholto, is it?”
“N'ah,” Sholto said. “Though it's as real as any other name I've had these last thirty years or so. You can call me Thaddeus if you want. That's the name on my birth certificate. Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Two brothers. There's a Sherlock Holmes story with two brothers, Thaddeus and Bartholomew Sholto. They were twins, which kind of messes up the comparison, but I figured it was enough of a clue to get Bill here digging. Turns out I was wrong. When Jen Masterton gave him that Sherlock Holmes anthology, I was certain he'd get it...”
“No, I worked that part out,” Kim said.
“Wait. What? You did?” I asked.
“Sure,” she replied. “Whilst you were unconscious. It was in your journal, and it's not exactly hard to find a copy of Conan Doyle in this country. Was it you,” she asked turning back to Sholto, “who put the bookmark into that copy in his flat?”
“The Orwell one? Right again. Last time I was over here. Only the third time I came back since I left. I figured since Jen Masterton was dropping her oh-not-so-subtle hints by giving you that book, that I should do the same. So I stuck in a Big Brother bookmark. I really thought that you might get the hint, but no. I had to break into your flat to do it. Sorry about that. But I wanted to check it wasn't bugged.”
“What. Wait. Jen knew too?”
“Right. I told her before I confronted Lord Masterton. I figured that maybe she had some sway over her father. No such luck. She's just a chip off the old block, like father like daughter, she used what I told her to blackmail her way up the ladder. Giving you that book, well, maybe that was her way of giving you a hint. She should have told you. I thought she would of at the end.”
“Was his place bugged?” Kim asked
“Wait,” I said. “Go back to the bit about Lord Masterton. You confronted him? You didn't mention that earlier.”