Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey

by Frank Tayell

  “Rob did this,” I wrote. “He killed Simon. He tried to kill us. We’re in pursuit. Bill & Kim.”

  Pursuit

  “So he’s got Simon’s rifle, an MP5, and Will and Lilith’s weapons, plus all that food and ammo?” Kim asked. “How much is that going to weigh? A hundred kilos? That has to be more than him.”

  “He’d have to have dropped at least some of it,” I said, turning my head left and right. We were walking briskly, roughly following the shore away from the boat. There was almost a track, though it didn’t really deserve the name. It was just a curling line of worn rocks where there wasn’t enough dirt for any grass to take root. After a quarter mile, flowering heather began easing its way through and around rocks that were increasingly covered in a light green moss. A hundred yards after that, the nearly invisible path vanished as the ground turned to a cliff that dropped down to a rocky inlet.

  We turned inland, tromping through the increasingly dense heather with a stubby holly tree as our guide. It was strange. With the sound of the sea loud in my ears, I could almost imagine that the last eight months hadn’t happened, until Kim took a step past me. She raised the barrel of her rifle, pointing it at a dry stone wall. As we drew nearer, I saw the road on the other side. Closer still, and I saw the rifle propped against the stones. It was an SA80 with a silencer attached.

  “Rob,” Kim said. “He’s beginning to lighten his load.” She picked up the rifle. “He took the magazine.”

  I knocked a few stones loose as I climbed over the wall. They rattled to the ground, and I paused, listening, but all I could hear was the sea. We followed the road, away from the mansion, our eyes and ears open, not saying a word until we reached a T-junction where an even narrower road cut inland.

  “He’d avoid the coast,” I murmured.

  “Scared that someone on a rescue boat would see him,” Kim said, “but if we’re wrong…”

  She didn’t finish, and I knew the fear. Rob had burdened himself down with loot, and that gave us the chance of catching him, but only if we found him before nightfall. Each branching road halved the chances we would.

  “We’re not going to catch him standing here,” I said, and took the turning heading inland. Kim paused, laying the unloaded SA80 down on the road so that the silenced barrel pointed in the direction we were going.

  “If we find him,” she said, “are we going to try to arrest him? Will we take him back?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. If we can.”

  “It’s not going to be likely,” she said. “This isn’t like Rachel, or even Paul. He’ll be armed, and we know his guilt.”

  “Are you saying we shouldn’t try?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m saying I don’t want to, and that’s why we should. Summary execution isn’t justice. And without justice, without laws, we’re nothing. We’re not a society or a community, just a war band with electricity. We have to try, we have to give him a chance, but only one.”

  How can I describe Ireland? That was my first real sight of it. There had been a few trips to Dublin, and a few more to Belfast, but I’d never ventured beyond those two cities. When we’d arrived, we’d gone straight to Kempton’s estate, with barely an hour between making landfall and being trapped by the undead.

  Ireland is wild, windswept, and green. At least, it seemed greener than anywhere I’d recently been. Holyhead, Caernarfon, Bangor, Menai Bridge, those might be small, but they’re still towns. Even Anglesey itself, though it’s mostly farmland, has rooftops always on the horizon. Before we’d found that refuge, there was southern England. In my memory it’s a bleak and forlorn landscape absent of life. During our escape from London, we’d stuck to the train line until we’d been trapped by the horde. Then we’d travelled through a cratered landscape as barren as the moon. Ireland, or at least that small corner we saw this afternoon, was green and truly remote. I suppose that’s why Kempton chose the location.

  “Wait,” Kim said, and jogged a few yards ahead and to the side of the road. She reached behind an ancient marker stone so weather-worn that the name and distance were illegible. She held up another SA80. She grinned a feral smile of delight, and raised her rifle. Peering down the scope, she scanned the road, the hill to our left, and the road again. I eased the MP5 from my shoulder. Against the undead, I’d be wasting ammo. Against Rob, even an inaccurate burst would make him take cover. We began walking more quickly.

  “He doesn’t know we’re following him,” I said.

  “No,” Kim said.

  “Lilith and Will were cold, but that might have been the seawater.”

  “He’s got at least a three-hour head start,” Kim said.

  “But he’s Rob,” I said. “He’d take cover as soon as he dared.”

  It wasn’t at the first house we came to. The building was empty, the door open, the windows broken. The roof had partially collapsed, though it looked like a recent construction. “Wind and rain, I guess,” Kim said. “Damn. Another five minutes wasted.” She sighed and continued walking down the road.

  Silence settled, but not for long.

  “There,” I said, pointing. “Do you see it? A body.”

  Kim’s rifle came back up as we double-timed it to the corpse. It was a zombie, and it lay just where the road bulged into the neighbouring field, providing an overtaking-spot for any driver caught behind a slow-moving tractor.

  “Recent,” Kim said, gesturing at the black-brown gore still spreading from the dozens of wounds on the zombie’s chest and legs, and oozing from the larger hole in its head. “Twenty bullets at least. Probably an entire magazine. No… no if it was, he’d have dropped the empty one here.”

  “We might catch him yet.”

  After another ten minutes we came to another body. After twenty, a second. After thirty minutes, we found Rob.

  Justice

  I walked slowly down the road and stopped by the waist-high concrete wall. Access to the bungalow was through a wooden five-bar gate, currently held open by an undead corpse. Like the zombies a little further up the road, it looked as if it had taken at least a dozen shots for Rob to kill it. The other three bodies littering the driveway had taken a similar effort. It made sense, of course. Where in England would someone like Rob have learned to fire a gun? The question was whether it really was him inside the one-storey house. The front door was closed. The windows unbroken. The driveway was empty, but I was certain there was someone inside. Smoke drifted lazily from an out-of-character chimney flush against the eastern wall.

  I was itching all over, but my palms were the worst. I hated having my hands empty, but it was necessary. I could almost sense someone watching me. I glanced back the way I’d come, but the road was empty. There were no undead in sight. No people either. Just me and the smoke, and then a shadow, moving past the bungalow’s window.

  “Hello!” I called. “Is there anyone there?”

  My mouth went dry, and I wanted to duck down behind the wall. I told myself that, as Rob was such a terrible shot, the safest place to be was standing in plain sight. I waited. I was about to shout again when there was a sound of something heavy being moved inside the bungalow. A moment later, the door opened and Rob stepped out. He looked exhausted. He didn’t look scared, but wary, confused. He had a silenced SA80 rifle in his hands, but the barrel was pointing at the ground.

  “Bill?” he asked and sounded surprised to see me.

  “Rob,” I said, and my tone was grateful, though not for the reason he might expect.

  “I… I thought you were dead,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking another step, looking around. “Yeah, everyone else is. I’m sorry, but Kim’s dead. Her and Simon, it was the zombies.”

  I wasn’t willing to play his game. “When we first met near Caernarfon,” I asked, “you and Paul were trying to get to Bangor, weren’t you?”

  “What? Yeah.” He took another step, and craned his neck forward, looking left and right d
own the road, as if confirming that I was alone. “Why? What does that matter?”

  Another judge might call that circumstantial, but it was enough for me.

  “Did you know Paul before?” I asked.

  “Why are you asking?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a yes or no, but wasn’t going to ask him again. His guard was rising, and there was something I wanted to know, a question that wasn’t for me, but for a woman who must surely be dead. “Did you kill Nilda’s son?”

  “No,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him. Even so, there were a few questions that had to be asked simply so that I could say the words had been said.

  “What about Lilith?” I said. “Will?”

  “What about them?” Rob said. “I didn’t know ’em before, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’m asking why you did it,” I said. “Why did you kill them?”

  “What d’you mean?” The barrel of his gun twitched. He took a step closer. My own hands twitched in an involuntary reply, but I kept them down by my side.

  “I saw the bodies,” I said. “I know it was you. You stabbed Simon. Did Paul teach you that? You weren’t a very good student. You didn’t do it well. Took you five goes. Even then, you missed the artery. Why kill him? Why kill any of them?”

  “I didn’t,” he said in a reflexive denial.

  “You took their weapons,” I said. “That’s Simon’s rifle you’re holding.”

  His eyes went down, and his head fractionally bowed so he could see the weapon more clearly. When his head rose, he met my eyes. A wicked smile slowly spread across his face, until it turned into a bitter laugh. “All right, Mr Wright. You want to ask questions? Then I’ve one for you. Why d’you bring me here?”

  “To give you a second chance,” I said. “To get you away from Markus, and allow you to show that you had some measure of worth.”

  “Yeah, you see, I thought you’d lie. You always lie, you and your kind. You killed all those people on the evacuation, and then you walk into Anglesey like you’re in charge. Yeah, I read your journal, but I didn’t believe it. You might fool all those people on the island, not me. No. No, I know that’s a lie, and I know you’re lying now.”

  “So why did I want you here?” I asked.

  “To kill me, of course. I knew you would. You got Rachel to shoot Paul, so I was going to be next, wasn’t I?”

  “If I wanted you dead, why didn’t I just kill you on Anglesey?” I asked.

  “Because of witnesses. Because of questions. You know if they get asked, your story will come apart. All your plans will fall down. So you have to do it where there are no witnesses. Yeah, that’s why you wanted me here.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “You’re seeing a conspiracy where there’s none. Put the gun down.”

  “Oh yeah?” He laughed again. “You just don’t get it. Your world’s gone. It’s my world now. All mine. My kingdom. I’ve inherited it, don’t you get it?”

  “Put the gun down, Rob,” I said, louder this time. “Put it down.”

  “Nah. Your time’s up.” The barrel of his rifle began to pivot upwards. “Your life’s—”

  I didn’t hear the shot, but then, neither did he. He spun and tumbled, crumpling into a heap. I glanced at the thicket of trees on the crest of the field to the left of the bungalow. I saw Kim stand. I raised a hand, and then turned to Rob’s corpse. It was a good shot. Her bullet had taken Rob straight through the heart.

  “Did he confess?” Kim asked, coming up the drive, her rifle still in her arms.

  “More or less,” I said. “He admitted he and Paul were going to Bangor. He didn’t quite say it, but he intimated he killed Will and Lilith. It doesn’t matter, since that’s Simon’s rifle.”

  “Did he say why?” she asked.

  “He thought we were going to kill him,” I said. “He thought we’d staged Paul’s death, though I’m not sure who the ‘we’ is in his delusion.”

  “But he admitted it?” she asked again.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, he did. He did it. He killed Simon, Will, and Lilith. He was about to kill me. You were right to shoot him.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “Or not just that. I want to know that, in the end, he admitted what he’d done.”

  “There was no remorse,” I said. “No apology. No regret. He laughed. I don’t know if I can say the world will be better off without him in it, but I won’t mourn his passing.”

  I knelt down, and began searching Rob, taking the ammunition from his pockets. It was quickly done, but I didn’t stop my search.

  “What are you looking for?” Kim asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A confession would be nice, but I don’t think he was the writing kind. Back in the mansion, there was a folder on the desk of an office. It was open and empty. That wasn’t you, right?”

  “No. It was empty?”

  “Yes, there was a label that read ‘Embarkation’. There was dust on the desk, but not on the folder, so if it wasn’t you who took the contents, it had to be Rob or Simon. And Simon would have told you. Ah.” I pulled a folded wad of paper from Rob’s pocket. It was two sheets, both with the logo of Kempton’s company.

  “What is it?” Kim asked.

  “Two sheets of paper. This one’s a list of numbers.” I stared at it, but they were meaningless. “The other… Ah, this is more like it. It’s a list of addresses.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m... I’m not sure. I think this one is Cape Verde. When we had Captain Devine over for dinner didn’t she mention a Cidade Velha? I suppose there might be one in Spain. There are some addresses in English but I’m not sure they’re in England. There are no countries listed.”

  “Do you think they are more estates with farmland and wind turbines?”

  “No, Elysium isn’t mentioned. Embarkation? To go where? How? I wonder… Here. This one, Palleskenry, that’s a village on the southern side of Shannon Estuary. Not quite, but almost opposite Shannon airport, and if there was a place famous for transatlantic flights, it was Shannon. I doubt Rob knew how to fly, but perhaps it’s a boathouse. Rob seemed confident. Not scared. Not like he was on the run. When he thought I was alone, his confidence grew. He acted as if had a plan. The only thing that would have mattered to him is an escape or a refuge. As to which it was, we’ll figure it out when Sholto arrives and we’ve cleared Elysium of the undead.”

  “Or we could just use the satellites to get an image of the place. We could see what it is without having to visit,” Kim said.

  “That would be simpler, yes.” I looked for somewhere to put the list and settled for the journal.

  “You should write it down,” Kim said. “Exactly as it happened, and do it now while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

  “Now?”

  “Why not? Sunset’s less than an hour away. We didn’t see any zombies coming up this way, and none were following us.” She crossed to the gate and kicked the corpse out of the way, allowing the gate to swing closed. She slid the bolts closed. “It’s a short walk back to the coast. If we get surrounded, we’ve got enough ammunition to fight our way out. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the coast and wait for the boat. Tonight, you need to write down what we did and why. We need a proper account that can be presented to the community. Our actions have to be judged like Rachel’s were, otherwise…” She stared at Rob’s body. “Hell, Bill, otherwise what’s the point? I really do wonder. Each day it’s two steps forward, and three sideways. We never end up where we expect, certainly not where we intend, and I’m not sure it’s ever anywhere better.”

  Epilogue - Ard na Mara, The Republic of Ireland

  23:30, 21st September, Day 193

  “Poor Simon,” Kim said, closing my journal after having skimmed through it. “And poor Will and Lilith. So many people have died, I don’t know if I have any tears left to shed. We said we’d find a time to mourn, but I wonder whether we ever will.” She cleared her
throat and forced a smile. “You didn’t need to explain who Lisa Kempton was.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “Everyone on Anglesey knows. Annette certainly does. And you missed out the argument you had with Mary O’Leary about the Vehement.”

  “I thought there were some things that should be forgotten,” I said. “Or at least, not written down.”

  “That’s not how a proper chronicler would do it. You have to include everything, the bad and the good. You should have put in the trial, at least.”

  “There wasn’t time,” I said. “That’s when I heard the gunshots.”

  “Well, you should record it. It was important,” she said.

  “What’s there to say? Rachel was found not guilty, but it took more time selecting a jury than it did for them to come to a verdict.”

  “Right. Precisely. That should go in.”

  “I’ll get around to it at some point,” I said.

  “And the planning for all the trips?” she asked. “You barely mentioned the one going to Belfast.”

  “I can write about that when they get back to Anglesey,” I said. “When we get back to Anglesey, too.”

  “I bet you won’t,” she said. “But you should. There should be a record. I think… in some ways, I think it might help hold people together. We need something to do that. These expeditions, like Belfast, and the islands in the Irish Sea, they’ve helped, but in a couple of weeks everyone will be back on Anglesey. Well, not all of us. Poor Simon, Lilith, and Will.” She sighed. “But when everyone’s back, what then? The satellites will be a distraction for a while, but when winter comes, and we can’t leave Anglesey, interest in them will fade. The cold weather may prove Mary right, and people will come ashore, but I think it will bring just as many problems.”

  “Problems for which I don’t think another volume of my journal will be a solution.”

  “It might be,” she said. “It can’t hurt. But if you don’t want to do it for anyone else, write it for Daisy. Write it for Annette, because you know she’s going to keep nagging you until you do.” She opened the journal again, and leafed back through the entries I’d made while stuck in the garage. “There are parts that are missing. Questions that need answers.”