Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey

by Frank Tayell

  “We’ve a problem,” Sholto whispered. “A 5.56mm round will go straight through the chalet’s thin walls.”

  “We can’t shoot them? Then we need to get them to move. I’ll be the bait,” I said. “I’ll lure the zombies away from the chalet and onto the road.”

  “Then we’ll be as likely to hit you,” he said.

  “So aim carefully,” I said, and didn’t wait for him to argue. I limped off, skirting a route between the huts and holiday homes, until I was forty metres inland of the encircled chalet.

  The curving road once again hid the zombies from view, but I heard the creatures beat an arrhythmic storm against the wooden cladding. I took a look around, but the sound was loud enough to carry for a quarter mile. All the zombies on the site had to be gathered by that chalet. Probably. Instinct made me take a second look over my shoulder, and as I did, I could feel fear beginning to rise. Before it had time to become an excuse for inaction, I stepped over a fallen signpost for the holiday park’s restaurant and out into the middle of the road. If Markus was after beer and spirits, wouldn’t that be the more logical place to loot? In fact, wouldn’t anywhere be a more logical place than a caravan site that would have been emptied of anything valuable before it was shut for the winter? I took another few cautious steps, puzzling over what they might have found in these paint-faded temporary homes as an alternative to thinking about the undead, until the chalet and the zombies came into view.

  “Hey! Hey, you! You alive in there!” I yelled.

  The snapping, banging cacophony drowned out any reply, and it almost drowned out my words, but there was a leathery whisper as the two closest creatures swivelled their heads.

  “Over here,” I yelled. “Turn around. I’m here!”

  The two zombies pivoted as one. Their heads bucked and their mouths snapped as they lurched an uneven step towards me. I took an involuntary step back.

  “Come on,” I said, and now I was talking to myself. I forced myself forward, shifting my grip on the axe. It wasn’t a great weapon for this, not with the lack of balance that came from a hand missing two fingers.

  “Come on!” I yelled again, and another two turned. “I’m here!”

  The zombie next to the chalet’s door twisted to its left, and its arms knocked into the creature next to it. That zombie slipped sideways and into a third.

  “Turn around!” I yelled, my eyes alternating between the chalet and the creatures getting nearer with each shuffling step. With three fewer zombies slamming against the thin wood, my voice was finally heard. As one, the pack shifted, pivoting around. The two zombies nearest me were less than twenty metres away.

  “Why haven’t you fired,” I murmured. “Fire!” I yelled, and then I realised. I was in the middle of the road, right in the path of any bullet. I skipped three steps to the left.

  “Fire!” I yelled again. “I said—”

  I didn’t hear the shot, but I saw the zombie collapse. It was near the back of the pack. Of course it was. I finally saw the obvious flaw in our plan. The roads weren’t straight, and the rifles were silenced. The zombies didn’t know the shooters were behind them, but they knew I was in front, now less than ten metres from the nearest grasping hands. I started walking backwards, keeping to the verge and out of direct line of sight of Lorraine and Sholto. I saw another zombie fall, and then turned my complete attention to the nearest of the undead.

  I gauged the distance at eight metres and closing. Walking backwards, I couldn’t limp faster than they could stagger, and so I’d retreated as far as I could. Shifting my weight to my good leg, I skipped forward and swung the axe, bending with the blow. The blade bit into the knee of the nearest creature. The axe slid through rotten cloth and necrotic flesh. Bone shattered. I darted backwards as the zombie collapsed, thrashing its arms on the asphalt road. Ignoring it, I back-swung the axe. The shaft twisted in my now sweat-slick grip, and the head hit the second zombie in the side. It staggered a pace and doubled over. I raised the axe up, and hacked down on its head. It fell, but my mistimed blow had wasted a valuable second. The rest of the pack got nearer. I couldn’t tell how many there were. It was just a sea of open mouths and snarling faces. I limped back, told myself to stay calm and that I’d been in far worse situations, but somehow this felt different.

  There were three zombies walking abreast, with at least two bobbing, lurching heads less than five feet behind. I ignored everything else, stepped to the left, and skipped forward, swinging the axe at head height. The blade sliced through its cheek, spraying teeth and skin and rotten muscle. The zombie staggered as I punched the axe into its ruined face. The creature fell, and I let the axe fall, swinging it back like a pendulum, twisting my grip and bringing it up and over my head, and down onto the skull of the second creature. The scalp split, bone broke, and its brain exploded as its head was cleaved in two. I dragged the axe free, skipped back as the third zombie lurched forward, arms outstretched. I swung at its legs and overshot. The shaft hit its shin. Remembering that old trick with the pike, I yanked the axe towards me. The blade hooked under its leg, and pulled the creature from its feet. I changed my stance and brought the axe down on its head just as it landed on the asphalt.

  “Three down,” I murmured, skipping back apace, looking for the next threat. There were two of them, and that was all. There wasn’t time to wonder what had happened to the others. I assumed they’d been shot, and there wasn’t time to think any more. A snarling monster in a torn tweed jacket was limping closer. Only one arm was outstretched, the other hung uselessly by its side. The coat was missing its sleeve, the arm missing its hand. I slammed the axe into its knee. I heard a pop, and the creature collapsed. The axe-shaft was slick with sweat, gore, and blood. I raised it up, over my head, and then down in a great scything blow that connected with the second zombie’s skull. The axe bit into bone, but I lost my grip, and the weapon pinwheeled sideways. I didn’t look to see where it landed, but grabbed the hatchet from my belt.

  I walked over to the tweed-jacketed zombie and slammed the hand-axe into its brain. I stalked back up the road, slashing the hatchet left and right, finishing off those twitching, writhing creatures. But then, almost abruptly and sooner than I expected, I realised they were dead. I was alone, the road was empty, and the chalet was out of sight.

  There were seven bodies around me, and an eighth just a little way ahead. I was reasonably certain I hadn’t killed that one. I was right. The eighth zombie had been shot. I found four more zombies that had been shot before I reached the chalet. The rest of the small pack were banging on the doors and walls once more.

  My heart was pounding in my ears, and only as it slowed did I hear the indistinct yells for help coming from inside.

  “Shut up!” I barked. “You’re making this harder.”

  A zombie turned. I took a step towards it, and it took a step towards me. “Come on, then. Over here.”

  Someone inside yelled a reply I couldn’t make out.

  “Shut up!” I yelled. I don’t know if the chalet’s occupants heard me, but the zombies did. Two more turned around. The lead creature sauntered towards me. It was another recent addition to the undead. The bows on the laces of its shoes were still tight.

  “I said—”

  The zombie collapsed. I glanced up and to my left, and saw Lorraine kneeling on the roof of a caravan.

  “I said,” I yelled, even louder. “Shut up. We’re here to rescue you, though I don’t know why. You’re making this a whole lot—”

  As its foot touched the asphalt, a zombie in a blue anorak collapsed, its coat billowing out behind it as it thumped to the ground. All bar one of the remaining zombies turned towards the sound of the falling body. They saw me, the obvious prey. I stood, silent, hatchet in hand, as they lurched towards me. One after another, as they moved away from the thin-walled wooden hut, Sholto and Lorraine shot them. In less than two minutes, only one zombie remained, languidly beating against the door to the chalet. There was no force to i
ts blows. It was more like it was running its palm down the wood. It didn’t notice me until I was right behind it. Just as it began to turn its head, I swung the hand-axe down. Dragging the blade free, I walked away from the chalet.

  Sholto, loading a fresh magazine, was heading towards me. “I thought you’d use that to draw them towards you,” he said, pointing at my belt.

  I looked down, and saw the pistol still holstered at my side. “I… I forgot I had it,” I said.

  He laughed and I joined in, sharing the relief at a hard job, that I’d made harder, but which was now done.

  “You alive in there?” Sholto yelled at the chalet.

  There was a moment of silence when the only sound was the settling of the twice-dead corpses, then came a reply.

  “Who are you?” It was a British voice, gruff, male, with tones from the north.

  “You alive? Unhurt?” I replied.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Open the door, Markus,” Lorraine yelled.

  The door opened. A man appeared. I guess I was expecting another Hollywood-reject like Paul, but this man was perhaps five-seven, shaven-headed, wiry with a gymnast’s frame, and seemed too slight for such a deep voice.

  “Thank you,” he said, eyes narrowed, as if he wasn’t sure if he meant it. “But who are you?”

  “The rescue party,” Sholto said. “What happened?”

  He looked at Sholto, then at me, then turned around and addressed whoever was inside. “Let’s go.”

  He grabbed a bag from by the door and came out into the sunlight. A man and a woman followed.

  “You’re unarmed,” Sholto said.

  Markus turned around. “Your rifles,” he snapped. The other two darted back inside, banging into one another in the narrow doorway. “You can’t get the help,” Markus said.

  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of agreement. There was something contagious about Lorraine’s distrust of the man.

  She climbed down from the chalet’s roof and came over to join us.

  “What happened, Markus, why did you leave Will and Lilith alone?” she asked.

  “The job was to survey the golf club and nearby town,” he said. “It took ten minutes to confirm the golf carts were there. That left the town.”

  “But you ended up here,” she said.

  “There were too many zombies in the town,” he said. “Too many for us, at least.”

  “Will and Lilith were surrounded,” she said. “They had to barricade themselves in there. Will was injured. He might have died.”

  “They had the radio, didn’t they?” Markus asked.

  “Yes, but it broke.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Markus said. “It’s a piece of junk. That’s the problem. You’re playing at soldiers with broken toys, but this isn’t a game.”

  He gave me another look and then turned his attention to Sholto. My brother met his glance and returned it with interest.

  “The yacht’s that way,” Sholto said. “We’re leaving as soon as we get back. Unless you want to swim, get moving.”

  “We’re out of ammo,” Markus said. “What we didn’t use getting into Caernarfon, we burned up trying to get out. I even lost my bayonet.” He tapped the empty sheath at his belt. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been trapped.”

  “Then you better stay close,” Lorraine said, walking away down the road.

  “What about you, Mister American,” Markus asked, “won’t you spare a guy a round?”

  I started to understand Lorraine’s dislike of this man. There was something indefinably unpleasant about him. Sholto weighed him up before passing him a magazine. “There’s ten rounds left,” he said.

  “Thank you kindly,” Markus said in an almost passable Georgian accent, and headed off after Lorraine. I let the other two follow him before I fell into step with my brother at the rear.

  We shared a look that we both understood. We’d received half a story, and it had the feeling of being just that, a story, not the truth. The full packs on the backs of his two followers, and on Paul and that kid, Rob, didn’t seem to be heavy, but they were full. I ran through the various possibilities and found none of them appealing.

  “What’s in the bags?” I called out as we reached the coastal road.

  Markus stopped, walked back to the woman, opened her pack, and took out a small cardboard box. “For your troubles,” he said, throwing it to me.

  “It’s tea,” I said, awkwardly catching the box.

  “We’ve got coffee if our transatlantic friend would prefer.” He took out another small packet. “Individual sachets don’t spoil, you see?”

  “That’s why you wanted to come here?” Lorraine asked, walking back to join us.

  “No,” Markus said. “But I’ll settle for it as a consolation prize.”

  There was a lot more to the story, but it was equally clear he wasn’t going to share it. I decided I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was get back, have a shower, get Daisy, and get home to Kim.

  The tide was in our favour, but the wind wasn’t. It took nearly an hour to sail the nine miles back to Menai Bridge. Gwen was alone on the police launch and looked ready to depart. George and Lilith had driven Will back to the clinic in Holyhead that served as our under-equipped hospital.

  The hierarchy on Anglesey was vague beyond that George and Mary were at the top, propped up by Mister Mills, Leon, and their sailors and soldiers. Where Gwen ranked wasn’t clear, but when she told Markus to clear off, he didn’t argue. He started walking the twenty miles back to Holyhead. Rob looked sullen, and Paul looked reluctant, until Markus barked at them to follow. During the almost silent boat ride back, I’d got the impression that those two had disappeared without permission, and that Markus held them responsible for his being trapped in that chalet. Again, I didn’t care. I went to find Daisy.

  She was happily stamping her paint-covered hand onto flowerpots, which Pierre was filling with soil, and into which Giselle was planting seeds. Daisy looked up, saw me, and grinned. There was enough paint around her mouth, and crumbs on her borrowed smock, to tell me she’d taken frequent biscuit breaks.

  “Ad’sh,” she mumbled.

  “Radis,” Giselle corrected her. Putting the two together, I worked out what they were planting.

  “How long do radishes take to grow?” I asked, and got a burst of French in return that I didn’t begin to understand.

  “Non,” Pierre said as I stepped closer to Daisy. “Bath. Wash.”

  I looked down. My clothes were covered in gore.

  A hot shower and a set of borrowed clothes later, I felt a new man.

  “Daisy’s been fed, and dinner for us is on its way,” Lorraine said. “You guys going to stay for it? Giselle’s cooking, and her cooking’s good.”

  “We have to get back,” I said. “Annette and Kim will be waiting.” I hoped George had explained what my note hadn’t. The events of the morning seemed an age away, but if I was going to play the apologetic supplicant, admitting that I’d stopped for a hot meal wouldn’t count in my favour.

  “Pierre and Giselle like Daisy,” Lorraine said.

  “I’d noticed.”

  “They had a granddaughter, you see,” she said. “Their daughter and son-in-law died years ago. It was a car crash. They sent their granddaughter to a boarding school. It’s their biggest regret. The school was in England.”

  “Ah. Their granddaughter was there, during the outbreak?” I asked.

  “Yes. They tried to cross the channel in a fishing boat,” Lorraine said. “They would have drowned, but the Vehement was passing that way.”

  “What about their granddaughter?” I asked.

  “Leon went to look. He grew up in a town ten miles to the north of Pierre and Giselle. He sort of vaguely remembered them from when he was growing up, which, these days, makes them family.”

  “The granddaughter was dead?”

  “The school was empty,” she said. “Evacuated. In some ways that’s wor
se. You know, the not knowing.”

  It was clear she was talking about herself, but I didn’t want to press. “We’ll come back,” I said. “And I’ll bring Annette and Kim, but we should get home before dark.”

  We borrowed a pair of bicycles, one of which had a child seat, and set off. Daisy was reluctant to leave, until Pierre produced, as if by magic, another biscuit for the road. It was a nice evening, and the peaceful exercise helped me put the day’s events into perspective. We all needed a lot of training, that was clear. As was that we had to have a more professional approach to what we were doing. For that matter, we needed to have a clearer and shared idea of what we were doing. That, I thought, might have been what George was getting at during his lecture as we’d sailed over to Caernarfon. As to what that idea was, and how we’d put it into place, I decided it was something best discussed with Kim. Where I always search for the path around obstacles, she has a way of seeing a route straight through them.

  By the time we got back to the cottage, dusk had settled and night was setting in. Daisy was asleep, half a biscuit clutched in an iron grip. I was exhausted, and Sholto didn’t look much better. The house was dark. The note I’d scrawled was still on the kitchen table where I’d left it that morning. Leaving Sholto to put Daisy to bed, I went down to the school that’s become the administrative hub for our nascent community. I found George with Mary O’Leary, sorting through newly acquired books in the school library.

  “I was looking for Kim,” I said. “She never came home.”

  “I’m sorry, Bill,” George said. “They’ve gone to Svalbard.”

  “What?”

  “When Annette stormed from your house this morning, she went to the harbour,” Mary said. “There was only one boat leaving, and she stowed away. Not very well, and she was found before they cast off.”

  “So?” I asked, unable to think of a more expressive question with which to frame my confusion.

  “It was The Smuggler’s Salvation,” Mary said. “Miguel’s boat, the one with the solar panels and the electric motor, and—”

  “I know the boat,” I said. “Why have Annette and Kim gone to the Arctic?”