by Frank Tayell
“So what do we do?” I asked. “We have to do something.”
“Go back to your original question,” Mary said. “We want to prevent it happening again. To do that we need laws. We need judges.”
“We need police,” I said.
“You can’t give an old man a magnifying glass and call him a detective,” Mary said, in what was clearly another dig at George, “in the same way you can’t give a man a rifle and call him a soldier. But training a detective is easy. Training a judge, creating laws, that is a lot harder. Without them we’ll end up with the despotism that Quigley desired. What was the point of struggling against him if we throw democracy away now?”
“Judges? I didn’t think there were any,” I said.
“I spent my morning going through the records we’ve made of the people arriving here,” George said. “I’ve drawn up a list of people who said they used to be lawyers. It’s civil law, for the most part, and so far only one solicitor who actually practiced in England. Since we haven’t decided whose laws we’re going to use, that doesn’t matter. I’ll start interviewing them later.”
“What will you tell them?” I asked. “Not that there’s been a murder, surely?”
“No, I said we’re putting together a group who could write a constitution,” George said.
The longer I spent on Anglesey, the greater my appreciation was for the work this old couple had done. On the surface, the lack of working farms and nascent industry gave the impression of idleness. Certainly that was my first impression, but it was only accurate to a degree. Simply holding things together thus far, preventing the survivors from taking their boats and scattering to the four winds, from raiding the grain ships, or simply stealing from one another had been achieved mostly through force of will. Their will. I’m not sure I could have managed it. Sure, I might have thought I wanted a formal militia of thousands to descend on towns like Caernarfon. The battle in Bangor had made me see the truth. There would never be enough people for us to reclaim the mainland from the undead. Clearing a city so we could scavenge its remains was as much as we could hope, and almost more than we could achieve.
“Start with the judges,” I said. “And the lawyers. But we’ll still need laws.”
“And police and so much else,” Mary said. “But we have to start somewhere, and the best place to start is with what we have. This is the last lap, George.”
“Do one and a half more,” he said. “And we’ll watch another episode of that Jane Austen thing. Come on, if I can manage to sit through an hour of that, you can manage another few steps.”
“I’m not sure I can,” she said, but took step after step regardless, only pausing when Sholto walked into the playground. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes heavy. He looked like he hadn’t slept.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s gone,” he said, collapsing onto the picnic table’s bench.
“What has?” Mary asked, gratefully easing herself down into her wheelchair.
“Crossfields Landing,” he said. He pulled a tablet from his pocket. On the screen was an aerial view of a ruined coastal village bisected by two roads. In the top corner of the screen was what looked like a wrecked helicopter.
“Those look like figures. Like people,” I said.
“They’re zombies,” Sholto said. He swiped the screen. The image was replaced by an almost identical one. All that had changed was that a pair of figures had moved northward. He swiped it again. One of the zombies had drifted south again.
“There’s no video?” Mary asked.
“Just stills,” Sholto said. “The satellite’s primary purpose wasn’t surveillance, but for transmitting communications. There’s a camera for photographs. I guess you could programme it to take multiple images per second, but I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter. The village is a ruin. You see that shell? That was Jimmy’s restaurant.”
I took the tablet and began cycling through the images.
“There’s no smoke,” I said. “So it didn’t happen recently.”
“There’s little comfort in that,” he said.
“No, but there might be in this,” I said. “Didn’t you say it was a fishing village, that they had boats?”
“Sure.”
“There are no boats in the harbour.” I passed back the tablet. “See?”
He stared at the screen.
“They got out,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean they’re alive,” he said.
“No, but there’s no reason to assume they’re dead,” Mary said. “If we’re agreed on that, then perhaps we could focus on the almost miraculous news that you got the satellites to work?”
“How many are there?” George asked.
“Three,” Sholto said. “The same three I had access to at the beginning of the outbreak. One is over Crossfields Landing, the second is over New York, and the third is orbiting the Atlantic in an odd pattern that brings it almost overhead. Those must be the positions that Jimmy set up.” He looked at the screen again, idly swiping back and forth between the two images.
“What’s New York like?” I asked, not really interested but wanting to get his mind off the fate of his friends.
“It’s still there,” he said, tapping at the screen. “There. That’s Central Park.” He passed me the tablet.
“It looks… wild,” I said.
“Manhattan wasn’t hit with a nuke,” Sholto said. “But you can make out the buildings that have collapsed. I think a fire must have swept through the Upper West Side. That’s where I met…” He trailed off, the sentence unfinished.
“Not all news is welcome,” George said, “but it’s always better to know. Now, can we alter the orbits?”
“Until we use up the propellant,” Sholto said.
“Can we download what they’ve seen over these last months?” Mary asked.
“Only for the last forty-eight hours. There’s virtually no data storage.”
“We need images of the nearby coast,” Mary said. “That should be our priority. Then the mainland. We’ll want images of Belfast, too.”
“We will? Why?” I asked.
“Before Donnie escaped from there, he was sure there were fuel tankers lined up near the airport,” Mary said. “And helicopters by the runway. If they’re still there, we could use them. Pass me the tablet. Thank you.”
“I thought we’re getting oil from Svalbard,” I said.
“Even if there is oil in Svalbard,” George said, “we’ve no way of bringing it south except in barrels strapped to the deck. It’ll be a slow, laborious process. Then we’ll have to find the ships that can burn it. Most of the boats here run on diesel. We have those grain carriers, but they require a mile to stop and further to turn.”
“It’s the helicopters that are the real prize,” Mary said, swiping from one image to the next. “We can use those to get rid of the undead. What’s this?”
On the screen was a photograph that must have come from the front page of a newspaper. There was something about the stance and smiles that said the people had endured a dozen variations of the same pose.
“I know her,” George said, peering at the screen. “That’s Kempton, the billionaire, right?”
“Yeah, that’s her,” Sholto said. “The picture was in a local paper about a year ago.”
“I’m more interested in what’s behind the group,” Mary said. “Those are wind turbines, aren’t they? And solar panels on the roof of that building? Are those electric cars? Where is this?”
“It’s a fifty-acre farm on the Atlantic coast of Ireland,” Sholto said. “Kempton ran it as an experiment in combining organic farming with modern technological techniques as part of a far-reaching plan to combat the impending global food crisis. That’s what the article says. The guy to her right, he’s the local TD. He wanted to burnish his tech credentials by being in close proximity to her, the jobs she was creating in his constituency, and the foreign exchange she’d bring into
the Irish Exchequer.”
“So why’s it on the tablet?” George asked.
“It took an age to get the software to load,” Sholto said. “I was browsing through the other files I sent Bill, particularly those on the cabal behind the outbreak. This was part of the dossier I put together. Kempton bought a fifty-acre farm and equipped it with solar panels and wind turbines in a bid to make it completely self-sufficient. It was her retreat, her hideaway in case the U.S. collapsed. It’s an odd place to have one, since Ireland had close ties to America. It means that she wasn’t worried about extradition. I think she foresaw that some part of Archangel and Prometheus could go wrong, and wanted somewhere remote, but not too remote, to weather the storm. A little more digging discovered other, similar locations in New Zealand, Mauritius, and Micronesia. There were hints in a discretionary budget that suggested more, but I stopped digging. I knew she was involved in the conspiracy, and I was looking for some leverage on her, but this wasn’t going to be it.”
“Those are electric cars, aren’t they?” I said. “Electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels. You say it’s close to the coast?”
“I think so,” he said. “The article mentions someone’s sea view being obstructed by the turbines.”
“Ireland,” Mary said wistfully. “My heart yearns to return, and though my bones won’t, my soul forever resides there. If we’re sending an expedition to Belfast…” She trailed off, and stared at the sky. “Ireland’s smaller population should mean fewer zombies than on the British mainland. Less radiation as well?”
“I’m not sure,” Sholto said. “The targeting data I acquired before the outbreak doesn’t match the location the bombs actually fell.”
“Then it’s possible,” Mary said. “And with the satellite data, we could know in a few days. Ireland… Yes, we’d need a base from which to survey it. If the turbines still stand, and those solar panels still work, this might be it. If it’s not tenable, we could bring those electric cars and solar panels back here.”
“What about the turbines?” George asked. “The ones on Anglesey were all wrecked.” He tapped the screen. “I reckon with a bit of scaffolding, and a bit more time, we could take them apart.”
“Kempton’s turbines wouldn’t generate enough electricity for more than a few dozen homes,” I said.
“Enough for the farm and two hundred and forty homes,” Sholto said. “It says so in the article. I think that was the sweetener to get her scheme past the planning authorities. She’d provide electricity for the three villages nearest the property.”
“Two hundred and forty? That’s with old world usage,” I said. “So for us, perhaps a thousand people, maybe fifteen hundred.”
“It’d be a start,” George said. “We need to make provision for when the nuclear plant is shut down.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “But turbines are only of use if the wind’s blowing.”
“And Kempton would have known that,” Mary said. “If she really planned to survive the apocalypse in that house, then there will be some system to store the energy against a windless, sunless day. If she didn’t, what does it matter? We can survive a few days without electricity. We’ve all done it before. The inconvenience of having no electricity on a calm day is far less troublesome than the risk of a meltdown.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But it won’t be enough electricity. If we want wind turbines, we’d be better off going to Hull. The factory there was one of the biggest in the world. They made them for the offshore farms, the kind where a single turbine could power a small town. A few of those would more than suit our needs. Since they were destined for the sea, the facility is right on the docks. They’d have cranes and other equipment for loading them onto barges. We could take a boat there, put a team ashore, and get a turbine loaded far quicker than building scaffolding to dismantle those.”
“Not now, we couldn’t,” Mary said. “We’re barely able to move something larger than a golf cart, but it’s worth investigating. As is Ireland, we don’t want all our eggs in one basket. There you are, Thaddeus, we need images of Hull, Belfast, and of this house.”
“Satellites,” George murmured. “Instant communication and images of the world. There’s a lot we can do with that, there is indeed. Come on, Mary, one more lap. No arguing. And you lads, you’ve got work to do. We’ve all got work to do.”
Mary offered a pro forma protest as George helped her back to her feet.
I passed the tablet back to my brother. He swiped at the screen, returning to the image of the ruined village.
“We have electricity,” he said. “Replacing nuclear with wind won’t fundamentally change anything.”
“True,” I said. “But the journey to somewhere like Hull might. Who knows what we’ll find along the way.”
“Not me,” he said. “There’s only one place I’m going, but the question is whether I then go north, or south. Or rather, it’s a question of which way they went, and how long ago.”
Chapter 7 - Elysium, The Republic of Ireland
18:00, 20th September, Day 192
It’s getting dark. I don’t want to waste the torch’s batteries on writing so I’ll leave the account there for now. That was how I first met Lilith, Will, Simon, and Rob, and how we first learned that this house was here, on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. Quite where the zombies outside came from is a mystery. When Sholto did get a few satellite images of this estate, it appeared intact and unoccupied. That’s the problem with satellite images; you’ve only got a top-down view. One of those barns in the middle of the farmland must be an open-sided structure, and the undead must have been gathered inside. Or perhaps it’s something more prosaic. I’ve seen them swipe at birds before. Perhaps they chased the animals to the trees and the bushy canopies hid the zombies from view. Whatever the reason, it hardly matters. I saw Kim in the window of the house a few minutes ago, and we waved at one another. The zombies are beginning to settle down. Perhaps by morning, they’ll have stopped moving, and then Kim will start shooting. Even if more are summoned from the surrounding countryside, Kim has the radio. By now she’ll have called Lilith and Will, and they’ll have used the sat-phone to call Anglesey. Reinforcements may already be on their way. No, I’m not worried. If anything, I’m bored. It’s—
Call that stupidity, arrogance, or forgetfulness. Call it all three. Having spent so much of the past month with other people, and so little of it out here in the wilderness, I’d forgotten that danger lurks in every dark corner. I wasn’t alone here in the garage. I’d asked Rob to check it was empty, and assumed he’d done it. I guess he’d given it as cursory a glance as I had. Well, you know what they say about assumptions? This one almost got me killed.
I was mid-sentence when I heard a sound far closer than the inhuman racket outside. I dropped the pen, grabbed the pike, and went to stand in the office’s doorway. The garage was pitch black. Because of the solar panels on the roof, there’re no skylights. There’s a bank of concealed spotlights in the ceiling, but, of course, they’re dark. The garage’s only natural light comes from the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors currently covered by the metal shutters. I turned on the torch. It’s a cheap, two-battery affair with a weak beam that barely stretched further than the second-hand light from the hatch in the roof above and behind me. Like the radio, my miner’s lamp is the pack I lost outside.
With the torch held awkwardly in my left hand, flush against the shaft of the pike, I swung the beam left and right, searching for the cause of the sound. The light bounced off the pitted chrome bumper of one of the ancient Rolls-Royces, then a discarded toolbox, then something bright blue. Before I could identify that object, a shadow fell across it. I shone the light into the darkness and onto a ragged shadow moving towards me. Old memories came back, and with them came the fear. I pushed it down, and forced myself out of the doorway so I’d have room to swing.
“Not too high. Remember the ceiling,” I muttered, and got a rasping sigh in return. The
shadow drew nearer, and I began to make out details. It was five-foot-seven and hunched over. In life, it would have been taller. Probably female, though I couldn’t be certain. The trousers might once have been green, and the rotten fleece missing its left sleeve was probably red, except for the peeling logo of a golden, stylised wave. With each lumbering step, its head lolled to the left, as if the muscles in the neck had been partially torn. Its mouth opened and snapped closed, and it was now fifteen feet away. It was time to focus.
My actions were familiar to the point of automatic. I lowered my arms, positioning the pike low, ready to hook the blade under its legs. It was a move I’d perfected out in the wasteland, but that was in daylight. Here it meant shifting my grip so the light only shone on the zombie’s shuffling feet. I could hear the brittle snap of its teeth. I could sense the air move as its arms flailed left and right. All I could see were the stained hiking boots inching closer and closer.
I stabbed the pike between its legs, twisted my wrist so the axe-headed blade was parallel to the floor, dragged it back so it hooked behind the zombie’s shin, and pulled the creature down. As I raised the pike, the light moved with it, dancing across the creature and then about the room. My eyes followed the beam, so I wasn’t sure the creature was down until I heard the thump and then the thuds and slaps as its hands and feet flailed against the polished concrete floor. I actually closed my eyes as I swung the blade up, but opened them as the weapon banged into the low ceiling. Growling with frustration and fear, I flashed the light around until I found its snarling face, and then stabbed the spear-point forward. It jerked its head at the last second, and the pike stabbed into its cheek. Skin ripped. Muscle tore. I drew the pike back and lunged again, this time smashing the point through its temple. It went limp.
As I eased the pike out of its ruined skull, I concentrated on separating the sounds from outside the sheet metal barrier with those that might be closer. As I did, I began doing what I should have done the moment I stepped inside: I took a closer look at my surroundings.