Britain's End

by Frank Tayell

  Nilda shone her light around the vehicles, and then underneath, until she was absolutely certain they were alone. “I wonder why they decided to camp down here rather than in the offices above, or why they didn’t come to the Tower. I suppose we could find the answer by going through their belongings, but it doesn’t matter. Not now. They were infected and they died. I used to collect the names of the undead. I stopped just before it became it became a habit that would have been impossible to give up. So many have died. So many.” She turned to look at George. “What’s your plan? Are you coming to London?”

  “Me?”

  “I mean all of you, the people in Anglesey.”

  “Like I told you yesterday, it’s too far,” George said. “It’s not a question of want, but of fuel. We’ve got the three large grain carriers, and we’ll be taking them with us. They’ve got about three months of oats, wheat, and barley still aboard. We can cram the decks with people, but not with much else. Otherwise, we have the Amundsen, and The New World as soon as we’ve collected it from the Shannon Estuary. Each can carry around five hundred passengers, depending on how much comfort they travel in, and how much gear we leave behind. We’ve had the satellites scouring the coasts of Britain and Ireland, and we’ve found a few ships, but just because they seem to be afloat on a satellite photograph doesn’t mean the engines will work. It’ll be January before we can get them operational, if it can be done at all, and I want everyone off Anglesey before then. There’s a cargo ship outside Belfast, the John Cabot, but we don’t know whether the hull will stand up to rough seas. We have the Smuggler’s Salvation, the Hedd, and a few multi-masted sailing yachts, but even the largest weren’t intended for more than a few dozen passengers and crew. The rest of our craft are the sailing ships and fishing boats in which people escaped the outbreak. They’ve been in the water for nine months. They’ll survive the trip across the Irish Sea, or I hope they will, but I doubt they’d make it all the way around the English coast. No, getting everyone from Anglesey to Belfast is as much as we can manage right now. Perhaps more than we can manage.”

  “But if you were to find more ships,” Nilda said. “After you get to Belfast, after January, would you come here?”

  “To what end?” George asked. “Yes, if The New World was ten times the size, if we could pack everyone onto it, then I might consider it, but what do you have here in London? You said you had three months of supplies for a hundred. That won’t see our ten thousand alive for very long. You’ve done a good job here, but weren’t you planning to leave?”

  “I think we still are,” Nilda said. “Though I don’t know when. There doesn’t seem much point going to Anglesey. Maybe we’ll stay here until spring.”

  “Stay until your supplies run out,” George said. “Our shipping crisis cuts both ways. I can provide you with a few decent sailing ships, enough to get you away, but not so many that you’ll be able to bring much food with you. Stay until it’s gone. By then, we’ll have a clearer idea of where our future lies.”

  “And where do you think that might be?” Nilda asked.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” George said. “Come on, there’s no point having this conversation in the dark. It’s farmland,” he added as they walked back up the ramp. “In the short-term, anyway. In the long-term, it all comes down to how many of the undead are dying. By this time next year, we’ll know if they all have, or we’ll know if some simply won’t. That will determine whether we can make our permanent home on the mainland, and which mainland. Until then, we need a place to plant a crop to see us through the next year.”

  “And you think that’s Belfast?” Nilda asked.

  “Maybe,” George said, as they stepped back out onto the street. “Ireland’s not as bad as Britain, but it’s still a land of the undead. The islands of Connemara are a possibility, but that would involve splitting up into small groups, and that brings problems of its own. In short, I’m not sure where we’ll move after Belfast, or if we’ll move, or when that might be. But I am sure we won’t all be coming to London.”

  George had told her as much the night before, just after he’d arrived, but she’d wanted to hear it again. Part of her wanted him to say that he’d been lying, that all ten thousand would arrive in London the day after next. Mostly, she wanted the old man to tell her there was a plan. That the combined minds of all the politicians and soldiers, sailors and survivors on Anglesey had come up with a solution. They hadn’t. Anglesey was confronting the same problem they faced in London, and which she had discussed with Chester and, to a greater extent, with Aisha, Greta, and Tuck. It was the same problem, but magnified a hundred-fold.

  “There’s no easy answer, is there,” she said.

  “In life, there rarely is,” George said.

  They heard footsteps, running. It was Jay and Lorraine, accompanied by Jennings and Denby.

  “You all right, sir?” Jennings asked. “You shouldn’t have gone into danger without us.”

  “We’re fine,” George said. “Don’t you worry. And don’t worry that I’ll tell Mary.”

  “I was worried about the admiral,” Denby said.

  “Ah, then you don’t know Mary well enough,” George said. “We checked the basement, it’s clear. I’m not so sure about the building above.”

  “Or any of the others,” Nilda said. As one, they looked upwards, taking in the thousands of windows overlooking the street. And that was just one narrow street in the sprawling city. “Secure the door,” she said, “and then we’ll get back.”

  Chapter 2 - A New City Farm

  The Tower of London

  “Chester’s going to be all right, Mum,” Jay said, as they closed the postern gate and stepped back inside the safety of the Tower’s walls. “He knows the wasteland better than anyone.”

  “Of course,” Nilda said, though that hadn’t been the concern plastered across her face as they’d walked back to the Tower. It was clearly something worrying Jay, though. That was a relief, in a way. Even so, her relationship with Chester was a topic that she would have to discuss with her son. Not now, but soon. “No, you’re right, Jay, but that won’t stop me worrying.”

  “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” George said.

  “We’ve got that,” Jay said. “The crown, I mean. Or a crown. The line is from Shakespeare, isn’t it?”

  “From one of the Henry’s,” George said. “I always get them mixed up.”

  “Do you want to see it?” Jay asked. “The crown, I mean.”

  “I wouldn’t mind the proper tour,” George said. “I didn’t see much of the place last night, but it’d be useful to see how you’re organised. There might be something you can teach us, or something that we know that’ll be useful to you.”

  “The crown’s probably up in the gallery,” Jay said. “The kids like playing with it, so if it’s not there, it’ll be on Simone’s head.”

  “Does ‘up’ involve stairs?” George asked. “My knees aren’t what they were. Ramps are okay, but stairs turn a stroll into an expedition.”

  “Sorry, everywhere here has stairs,” Jay said.

  “Why not start with your farm,” Nilda said.

  “You have a farm?” Lorraine asked.

  “It’s just some greenhouses and hydroponics,” Jay said.

  “I’d like to have a look at those,” Lorraine said. “Heather’s built a system of indoor farms in Menai Bridge. It’d be great to compare them.”

  “Call Anglesey first,” George said. “Let them know Chester and Greta have gone north, and ask them to re-task a satellite. Then you can catch us up.”

  “I’m not sure a satellite will see much today,” Jay said. “Not with all the cloud.”

  “Ah, but when it’s raining in Durham, the sun is shining on Doncaster,” George said. “That’s something my wife used to say a lot.”

  “You mean Mrs O’Leary?” Jay asked.

  “No, Dora was my wife,” George said. “Now…”

 
; Nilda let George’s story wash over her as she followed him and Jay towards the old museum, while Lorraine hurried back to the ship. Stories of the past were all well and good, but it was time to think of the future, if for no other reason than it would take her mind off the present danger that Chester was already in.

  “Well, now, this is impressive,” George said. “This was a museum, before?”

  “For the Fusiliers,” Jay said.

  The exhibition cases had been emptied. Inside, commercial shelving units had been bracketed together to form uneven racks. Those supported an equally irregular collection of seed trays. Above and behind the trays, small mirrors reflected the light from the room’s tall windows onto the green leaves poking up through damp soil.

  “Let’s see,” George said, peering through the moisture-laden glass case. “You’ve got thermometers, and is that a PH metre?”

  “Yeah,” Jay said. “The database said radishes liked a PH between six and seven, and the soil was a little too acidic, but we didn’t know how to change it. I mean, the database told us what to add, but not where to find it.”

  “What database?” George asked.

  “Oh, that was something Quigley left behind,” Nilda said. “Essentially, it’s an encyclopaedia, but it’s not quite as encyclopaedic as if first appeared. The content is a tad European-centric.”

  “It has radishes, but not pak choi,” Jay said. “And we had a lot of pak choi seeds from the farm in Kent. We’re learning what not to do at the moment. We’re getting food,” he added, “not much, but some.”

  “Enough to enliven our meals,” Nilda said.

  Jay pointed at another tray of equally small seedlings. “Those are marrows. Or they will be. It’ll get better when the days get longer.”

  “Have you tried LED lights?” George asked.

  “Oh, sure,” Jay said. “But the batteries keep catching fire.”

  “What batteries?” George asked.

  “That was Kevin’s idea,” Nilda said. “There was some fuel and a generator left among Quigley’s stores. His people took most of what was left, but there was enough to keep a few lights on. Of course, we don’t want all the lights in here. That’s where the batteries came in. Or they should have done.”

  “Laptop batteries,” Jay said. “You need thousands of them, then you set up an array, right. Then you use software to monitor each battery, disconnecting them whenever they overheat. Kevin couldn’t get that part to work, that’s why they caught fire.”

  “Laptop batteries? Why not car batteries?” George asked.

  “Because, theoretically, using lithium batteries is more efficient,” Nilda said. “We salvaged a few small solar panels, but those are next to useless. The wind turbines are better.”

  “I didn’t see any turbines,” George said.

  “Not like the kind they made in Hull,” Nilda said. “Ours are five feet high, with blades a foot long. We found them on the roof of an office block on Fenchurch Street, and planted them in the moat. The idea is that they’d charge up the batteries, and we’d use those to power the LEDs, the pump for the water, and the software that told the lights and pump when to turn on. That was the theory.”

  “And we’ll get there,” Jay said. “We just need a bit more time. And a lot more batteries.”

  “Other than them overheating, it works?” George asked.

  “Yes, but that is a major drawback,” Nilda said.

  “Kevin got the rest of the software working,” Jay added, clearly feeling he’d been disloyal. “I mean, for the pump to moderate the water flow. It’s just… well… I guess it’s hard to work out if a battery is about to explode until it does.”

  “Kevin’s an engineer, is he?” George asked.

  “He designed an app for people who wanted to chat on their lunch break,” Nilda said. “The app would tell you who was near, and would filter out those who you worked with, or who knew people you worked with, so you could complain about your morning without worrying it would get back to your boss.”

  “In my day, if you wanted to chat to someone, you’d just go up and talk to them,” George said.

  “That’s exactly what I said to him,” Nilda said.

  “Was there much money in it?”

  “He sold it to a dating site,” Nilda said.

  “Ah. Well, I think we can help you with the software,” George said. “They’ve got something like this in Menai Bridge. Of course, electricity isn’t an issue there. How do you manage the wavelengths?”

  “The what?” Jay asked.

  “Different plants prefer different wavelengths at different times in their growing cycle,” George said. “It’s a bit of a nightmare going into a house in Menai Bridge, being confronted with all the pink light.”

  “Oh, right, no, we haven’t got to that yet,” Jay said.

  “Why don’t you show him the turbines in the moat,” Nilda said. “I’m going to have a word with Tuck.”

  The soldier was in the restaurant. The children were gathered at three of the long tables close to the fire. Aisha sat at the table closest to the kitchen with Kevin, where they were plucking parakeets. Some honeymoon, Nilda thought, though the two newlyweds looked happy enough. They were in quiet conversation, whereas the children were utterly silent except for an occasional giggle at a signed comment. With Tuck as their teacher and Jay their role model, they’d embraced sign language far quicker than the adults.

  Tuck slowly stood from her chair and picked up her cane. Leaning on it, she came to join Nilda.

  “You’re walking better today,” Nilda said.

  Tuck shrugged. “Dr Harabi wants to open me up and take a look,” she signed. “Surgeons, they’re never happier than when they’re elbow deep in someone’s insides.”

  Nilda smiled, and made a mental note to speak to the doctor herself. If Tuck did need another operation, now, while Anglesey still had electricity, was the only safe time for it to happen. “How are the children?”

  “Physically, fine,” Tuck signed, “but I could have told you that. Mentally…” Again, she shrugged. “What can we do? I’ve got them drawing maps. A little writing, a little geography, and a little colouring; it’s as much therapy as it is education, and it’s as much of both as we can provide. They’re copying from a topographical map of what London and the Thames Estuary was like before the Norman invasion.”

  “Before the marshland, fens, and swamps were reclaimed?” Nilda asked.

  “Yes,” Tuck signed. “And they’re adding where the major roads and towns now are. It’s a lesson that might be of practical use in a decade or two. Certainly, it’ll be of theoretical use, learning what parts of the old-world might be washed away.”

  “Were there any problems when it came to drawing Kent?” Nilda asked.

  “Not yet,” Tuck signed. “Chester and Greta have left?”

  “They have. And there’s not much more that we can say. They’ll be fine. Of course they will.” She looked around making sure the children weren’t eavesdropping. “There were zombies in the underground car park off Hart Street. They’d been there a while. We dealt with them, but it makes me worried about what else is beneath our feet.”

  “Like the Tube?” Tuck signed. “Too many tunnels, too many buildings, and too few people. Did you speak with George again?”

  “I did. He’s really not planning to bring his people here.”

  “We need some,” Tuck signed. “A few hundred, at least, if we’re going to make this place work.”

  Nilda gave a shrug. It was a debate they’d had before, and one she wasn’t willing to have again, not yet.

  She took a slow walk around the tables, speaking to the children, praising their work, but her mind was on the future. They’d lost Anglesey as their safety net. From what George had said, Belfast and Elysium were only temporary refuges. In which case, there was no point leaving London until they had to, but nor could they expect, or fear, the arrival of thousands of others. George had promised some boa
ts, but how big would their crews be? Would the crews want to stay? Would they stay long enough to teach the Londoners how to sail? And that brought her full circle. George was correct; they had been intending to leave, but mostly because there were just too few of them to make the Tower work.

  She didn’t want the entirety of that Welsh island to come to London, simply because their little community would be swamped. In order for the Tower to become sustainable, they needed more able hands. Even with the children helping in the kitchens, and with their meals mostly constituted from the rations that Quigley had left behind, there were too few of them to keep ahead of the chores. Patrolling the barricades, breaking firewood, boiling water, and keeping the castle relatively clean; it was full-time work, leaving little time to even think. And there would be less time in the future. Nilda didn’t need to look at the ancient maps to know their options were limited. Depending on the undead, they could stay in London for now. The Tower wouldn’t flood, though the grassed-over moat might. The biggest threat was from the sky-scraping buildings surrounding them. In a year or ten, those buildings would collapse. So, though they could stay in London, they couldn’t stay in the Tower for more than a few years.

  Once the undead were gone, food would become their dominant concern. Nearby, the only green spaces were the parks surrounding Buckingham Palace and Whitehall. Quigley, or his people, had deposited construction equipment there. They’d even made a crude attempt at ploughing the lawns before they were overrun. The parks might be an option if the undead died. If they could bring more people here, but how many was enough? How many was too many?

  If not the Royal Parks, then where? An island was her first thought, and one their discussions often turned to. Corsica, Sicily, Malta; it was always somewhere remembered from holidays, documentaries, or the news. They had no idea what they’d find there, save that an island would have fewer undead than the mainland. Maybe, when the boats arrived, when Chester returned, they could send a ship to the Mediterranean. Or maybe they could get Anglesey to re-task a satellite. How much would a satellite see? What if Corsica appeared habitable, then what? She didn’t think George was lying about the quality of Anglesey’s boats. They would get small craft, sailing boats with room for people and a bag or two each. Weapons, food, and Jay’s hydroponics, that would be all they took. Even with the satellites, they would be venturing into the unknown. This time, there would be no unexpected ship arriving from Anglesey.