by Frank Tayell
“Have you been inside?” George asked.
“Inside the palace? No, not yet,” Nilda said. She climbed up the tracks, and then onto the roof of the cab. She was fishing out the phone in order to take some photographs when she saw the zombie. The creature came from the southwest, from the direction of Buckingham Palace. Carefully, she put the phone back, and unslung the submachine gun. “Never fired a gun before this year,” she said as she took aim. “Only one. In… in uniform, I think. Hard to tell. About two hundred metres away.”
“You weren’t tempted to go inside the palace?” George asked, as his hand curled around the grip of his spear.
“Oh we were tempted,” Nilda said, “but the security shutters are down. We tried breaking through them a few times, but barely made a dent. I was going to take an acetylene torch to them at some point, but it’s a matter of time. There’s never enough.” The zombie had staggered closer, but still wasn’t close enough. She lowered the gun, took out the phone, and snapped a few quick pictures of the park. When she put the case to the others in the Tower, the pictures would support her position. She put the phone away, and raised the gun again. A hundred metres. The zombie was definitely in battledress. Was it uniform, or was it army-surplus? It didn’t matter. She fired. She missed, and couldn’t tell by how far. She forced herself to relax, took aim, and fired again. The zombie fell. She jumped down.
“I don’t think you’ll land a plane here,” she said. “And I don’t think I’m going to plant much. Not unless we can level out the ground.”
“With a bit of a clean, I think we can get this digger working,” George said.
“You drove one of these?” she asked.
“The principle is the same,” George said. “And while I don’t know how to fix it myself, I think we could manage. You wanted to turn this into a farm?”
“Like you said, we need farmland,” Nilda said. “What do you think?”
“Assuming you have the fuel for the diggers, you could level out the soil. I don’t know about drainage, mind you. I suspect that’s an issue all over. The bigger one is sealing the roads around the park. You’ll need more than a few barricades made of office furniture. It could be done, but it’ll require people, and I didn’t think you wanted any more coming here.”
“It’s not people I mind,” Nilda said. “It’s the ideas that come with them. I know there aren’t enough of us, not really. Not where we are. The supplies we found in that bunker gave us some time, but not a future. That’s why Chester was going to head back to Anglesey. It’s why Eamonn left after Chester was shot. It’s why Styles, Xiao, and Constance walked into the wasteland. McInery killed them, but they knew if they stayed we’d die. No, those supplies give us a few more months, but we still need an answer as to what to do when they’re gone. If you’d arrived with news that Anglesey was safe, we might all have left with you, but I’d say the Tower is safer than Belfast. London could be part of our long-term answer, if we can find somewhere to make a more permanent home.”
“But it won’t be here,” George said.
“No,” Nilda said. “It would have been nice living in Buckingham Palace. Probably nicer than the Tower. I needed to see it for myself to know it was another impossible dream, and take the photographs to prove it to everyone else. Zombies,” she added. “Two of them. Three hundred metres away. I’m not going to waste the bullets, and I don’t think we should waste the time.”
Pursued by the undead, the ground seemed more uneven, the troughs deeper, and the mounds steeper. They climbed up and down, slipping on the mud, splashing into the five-inch-deep puddles of stagnant water on the other side.
“Movement,” George said. “Zombies. What’s that, ten or so?”
They were coming from the north, and they were heading towards Nilda and George.
“As long as they’re not in front,” she said, as they staggered on, barely faster than the undead. When she looked behind, she saw there were five more zombies following them.
She didn’t look around again until they reached the even ground of the concrete path by the park’s entrance. She unslung her submachine gun, took aim, but lowered her weapon with the shot unfired.
“They’re moving too erratically,” she said. “I won’t have a clear shot until they’re a lot closer. Too close, maybe. It’s time to get the others.”
She let George set the pace, but the old man’s jog wasn’t much faster than she could walk. Outside the entrance to the bunker was an overfull backpack, but no sign of Jay, Jennings, or Denby.
“Give them a shout,” Nilda said, the submachine gun now firmly fixed to her shoulder. She crossed to one of the abandoned trucks, propped her weapon on its frame, and aimed towards the park. When the sound came, it came from behind. She spun around and saw the pair of the undead, drifting out of the road down which they’d walked. She fired, but hadn’t aimed. The bullet hit the zombie in its shoulder. It staggered with the impact while the other came on. She tried to ignore the shreds of clothing, the flayed skin on its face, the exposed bone on its cheek, and the almost complete lack of anything resembling humanity. She fired. The zombie fell. She shifted aim, but the other creature collapsed before her finger curled around the trigger. She glanced to her left. Jennings stood by the doorway, his own rifle raised.
“Zombies. More of them, coming from the park,” Nilda said. “Time to get back to the boat. Where are—” But as she spoke, Denby, George, and then Jay came outside. “Good. Jay, secure the door. What’s in the bags?”
“Some ammo, but mostly explosives,” Jennings said. “It’s Aladdin’s cave down there.”
“Four bags of explosives? No, tell me later. We’ll come back for the rest.” She didn’t know when.
Chapter 4 - Parakeet Pie
The Tower of London
The piecrust was more like suet, the parakeet was beyond gamey, and the whole dish was far too sweet. That was the bane of using crushed ration bars as flour; they were as much sugar as oats.
“I’ll need two days to prepare,” Tuck signed. “We’ll make some barricades here, and take them up river. We’ll all go, and split into teams, one to take care of the undead, the other to seal off the roads. We should have done it weeks ago.”
“We have to clear the blockage around that bridge first,” Jay said. “But we’ve got the explosives now.”
“More than enough,” Tuck signed. “And I can take care of that while the barriers are being made. Two days to prepare, one day to do the work. Three days, and we’ll be done.”
“I’d say four,” Jay said.
“And you’re both being optimistic,” Nilda said. “Look.” She held out the phone with the photographs of St James’s Park. “That’s the parkland. There’s a four feet height difference between the troughs and the peaks where the diggers tore through the grassland. We can’t plant there.”
“There are other parks,” Jay said.
Nilda shook her head. “It’s time, Jay. George wants somewhere he can land his plane. Wherever that is, that means people to clear a runway. Those are the kind of people we want to stay. No plane can land on grass like that.”
“We don’t need more people,” Jay said.
“We do,” Nilda said. “We really do. And they’ll come when they bring some boats from Anglesey. If they think they can bring the plane here, some will stay. Otherwise, they’ll all leave. At which point, we need to make a decision. Stay here until the supplies are gone and then join them in Ireland, or go with them, back to Anglesey and take advantage of a few weeks of electricity until the islanders all go to Belfast.”
“You mean, either way, we’re going to Belfast?” Jay asked. “What about the Mediterranean?”
“The depths of winter isn’t the time to learn how to master a sailing boat,” Nilda said. “As I say, that’s the situation if we can’t find a place for them to land their plane and somewhere for us to farm.”
“But somewhere that’s not here, and not the Royal Parks?” Tuck
signed. “Then where?”
“I looked at the maps you had those children draw,” Nilda said. “I saw the islands that used to dot the coasts of Essex and Kent, and how most of the rivers were filled in, the marshland reclaimed. There’s one island that’s still entirely ringed by water. Sheppey.”
“Where’s that?” Jay asked.
“Find a map and I’ll show you,” Nilda said. She pushed her bowl away. Then she remembered how long it would be until breakfast, picked up her spoon, and stoically chewed her way through the remainder of the gloopy meal.
She still had her mouth full when Jay returned, Simone and Janine close on his heels, clutching a fistful of maps between them. The two girls were the leaders among the children, and acted in concert, almost like twins. Behind the girls came George, Lorraine, and a score of other adults. Their curiosity was more an excuse to stop eating than out of genuine interest in the new scheme. Poor Aisha, Nilda thought, she’d spent an entire day plucking the parakeets, and another day grinding ration bars into flour.
“You wanted some maps?” Janine said.
“Of Sheppey, can you find it?” Nilda asked.
Within seconds both girls had opened a score of maps, spreading them on the table. Each showed the small island just off the northern Kent coast.
“Sheppey,” Nilda said. “George, you must have sailed past there on your way to London.”
“We did,” he said. “Though I don’t recall anything particular about the island. Lorraine?”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t remember the island. It was just one more section of coast.”
“Why the interest in Sheppey?” George asked.
“It’s an island off the coast of Kent,” Nilda said. “About forty-five miles from here if we travel along the river. I say river, but it’s more or less where the Thames Estuary becomes the North Sea. Call that fifty miles from there to Whitehall. It’s not too far to gather supplies from the bunker, nor anything else we need from the city. Closer to the island, we’d have Kent and Essex to loot, and there won’t be any skyscrapers liable to collapse.”
Tuck measured her fingers against the map’s legend, then against the island. “Ten miles long,” she signed. “Four miles across at the widest part.” Then she picked up one of the other maps, a far older one. “But, a thousand years ago, Sheppey was two islands. Does anyone know how they reclaimed the land? Will those defences hold?”
There was a collective shaking of heads.
“We might lose some land, but not all of it,” Nilda said. She pointed at the same ancient map. “That’s a church, yes? Or is it a monastery? Either way, they’d have had water.”
“So why didn’t we move there months ago?” Jay asked.
“The bridge,” Nilda said, turning back to a map from the 1950s. “The island is only a few hundred metres from Kent. Of course, now we’ve got explosives. We could destroy that bridge. What do you think, Tuck, do we have enough explosives?”
She shrugged. “It’s impossible to know until I see it,” she signed.
“That’s a very old map,” George said. “There are two bridges. The new one’s only a few years old. It’s a suspension bridge, I think. That one on your map, the old Kingsferry Bridge, has a drawbridge section that rises up above the channel so that shipping can pass.”
“Two bridges? Tuck?” Nilda asked.
The soldier gave another shrug. “One, two, ten; like I said, I need to see it.”
“Then we’ll take the boat down the Thames,” Nilda said. “We’ll see what the island is like, and whether we can destroy the bridges. If we can, and if there aren’t too many undead, we’ll move there. With the help of people from Anglesey, and using the ammunition in the bunker, we clear it of the undead. In return, we’ll clear some roads or fields where that plane of yours can land, George. We can use the island as a base to scavenge supplies, and turn the land into our farm. We’ll grow potatoes, if we can, though for the next nine months we’ll be relying on your hydroponics, Jay, and what we can fish from the sea. Next autumn, we’ll be able to raid the farms of Kent for all the fresh fruit we can carry.”
“And by then the monsters will have stopped,” Simone said.
“Here’s hoping,” Nilda said.
Chapter 5 - Awake, Alone
13th November, The Tower & The Thames, Day 245
Nilda woke up, rolled over, and found the bed cold and empty.
“Oh, Chester.”
She hadn’t known him long. Not long at all, really, not when time was measured in the span of days. When measured in the activity that had been compressed into each hour, it was more than a lifetime. Yet it was only a few months since they’d first met on Anglesey. She had fallen fast and deep. He had, too. She thought he had. She hoped he had.
In one small way, his absence was a blessing. It gave her time to test whether her feelings were true or just borne from fear, convenience, and their mutual struggle. Even so, she wished he’d just gone back to Anglesey rather than straight into danger. Right now, she wished he was here because he’d been doing a sterling job of keeping the room warm. The cold from his empty side of the bed was already adding a chill to her hand. She threw the covers off, got up, and quickly dressed.
She’d been in love before, but only once. That had been just like this, but, at the same time, utterly different. Since she and Jay had moved to Penrith, she’d been on a few dates, but not many, and none recently. Dating was expensive, and all their money had gone on bills with barely enough to pay for food. There was Sebastian, of course. That hadn’t been love, but a friendship that could have become something more, something as deep as this. That was what worried her, that her feelings were ephemeral products of fear and mortality. She needed to talk to someone, but wasn’t sure who, not about this. Jay was a non-starter. Aisha, despite that she was labouring twice as hard in the kitchens, was very much on honeymoon and would treat any discussion of love through that lens. Tuck was dealing with her own issues. She spent a lot of time by the grave of that undead soldier she’d killed, the one who’d been wearing dress uniform. Nilda wasn’t sure if Tuck had known the man, and the soldier wouldn’t discuss it. In fact, she wasn’t sharing much at the moment. No, it wouldn’t be fair to discuss it with her. Greta was the obvious choice, but she was out in the wasteland with Chester.
“Chester…”
She smiled. She’d never acted the love-struck fool. Well, except for Jay’s father, of course. She smiled again, and found she could smile at that memory. And then she shivered. It was too cold to linger in the room.
Her home was one of the grace-and-favour cottages given to the families of the warders. Heating would have been by an electric stove if that had still worked. She could have installed a wood-burning stove in the room, but there was little point wasting the firewood when she spent so few conscious hours there.
The historical timeline of the Tower of London could be written in many ways: the accession of monarchs, the battles waged, or how each victory and defeat had nudged the nation closer to democracy. Nilda thought of it in terms of basic amenities: running water, double-glazing, electric lighting, central heating, and indoor plumbing. She pulled on the fur-lined boots, hurried outside, and towards the washroom. There was already a queue.
“Hey, Filly,” she said.
Felicity smiled. “Oh, for an en-suite.”
“And central heating,” Nilda replied, voicing the words that had begun as a morning ritual but which were becoming a daily prayer.
The toilets summed up the problem with the Tower. Indoor plumbing was, in theory, easy. The development of the technology, from the flush to the U-bend was impressive in its simplicity. The overhead-cistern was as great a testament to human ingenuity as the Sistine Chapel. A sharp squall dragged a sheet of rain underneath the wooden panelling, drenching her feet. As the damp seeped into her boots, Nilda changed her mind. Indoor plumbing was far more impressive than a painting on a church’s ceiling. They’d run up wooden fen
cing outside the toilets, with more overhead creating some shelter from the wind and rain, but going to the loo had become a trial.
Creating a river-water reservoir to fill a tank for flushing the toilets was on their list of tasks, but it was below creating a rainwater reservoir for them to drink. Nor was flushing the toilets the only engineering problem to be solved. There was the matter of where they flushed them to. At present, they were using the old drainage system, but it was only a matter of time before that was blocked. Then… then they would be back to holes dug into the ground, and there just wasn’t that much ground inside the castle’s wall. Hygiene was important. One of the few things that the Tower had in abundance was books on history. The overarching lesson was that ancient battles had been decided less by tactical genius and more by whichever side was least affected by dysentery.
The Tower was safe. It was secure. With the barricades in the streets outside keeping the undead a quarter mile away, they didn’t have to worry about noise. Since Graham and McInery’s deaths, no one else had died. No one had even become sick. The Tower was working, but to keep it that way would require more effort than there was time for. With a hundred people, someone would have to spend their entire day just digging a new latrine. Of those hundred, half were children too young to be left unsupervised. That left the adults to cook, chop wood, fetch water, boil it, and patrol the barricades. There was barely any time left to search the ruins for more clothes because there certainly wasn’t time to launder them. It worked, more or less, because they had the rations left by Quigley. Those MREs were far from appetizing, but cooking them required little more than adding water. Anything more exotic was a Herculean task. Parakeet pie was a case in point. It had taken two days’ labour by Aisha, Kevin, all of the children, and any adults who’d wandered into the dining hall.