by Frank Tayell
They found a jetty a quarter mile from the port, beneath a nondescript industrial facility dotted with fifty-foot chimneystacks and thirty-foot cooling towers.
“What’s the plan?” Jennings asked George. He looked to Nilda.
“Tuck stays with the boat, guarding our retreat,” she said. “Jennings— What’s your first name?”
“Norman. Some people call me Normal, I prefer Norm.”
“Fine. George, Lorraine, Tuck, stay with the ship, keep the jetty clear. Norm, you’re coming with me and Jay. We’ve done this before. A lot. We’ll head for the imported-car lot, check a few cars, and return. We’ll be gone an hour at most. Jay, find some wire. And we’ll need a crowbar.”
The jetty led to a narrow track. Partially submerged after the recent rains, and hemmed in by hedges, it curved up and around the coast until it met a wider, properly tarmacked road. Nilda suspected it was the access road for transporter lorries collecting cars from the port. That same wide road had to be the reason for the industrial facility immediately inland, and for the other factories scattered among the grassland.
“Too many factories, not enough fields,” she murmured.
“What’s that?” Jennings asked.
“Nothing to worry about today,” she said.
“The hedgerows are dying,” Jay said. “You checked the radiation, didn’t you?”
“It’s fine,” Nilda said. “Low. Very low.” But the hedgerows were dying. They’d been kept high before the outbreak, over eight feet in height, there to catch the pollution from the heavy traffic that streamed back and forth to the port. Over the summer, the hedges had grown wild and unchecked, spilling into the drainage ditch, sending tendrils snaking up into the sky. Now, with the onset of cold weather, the hedges had collapsed in on themselves. Wilting and withering, the small leaves had turned a mottled brown.
“It’s just the cold,” she said. “It’s—” She stopped. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Jennings’s demeanour completely changed. Simultaneously stiffening and crouching, the barrel of his rifle tracked back and forth. His right hand never leaving the grip, his finger never leaving the trigger, he gestured with his left hand towards the industrial site on the other side of the hedge.
“Zombies?” Jay whispered.
Jennings gave a brief nod, but said nothing.
Nilda pointed ahead of them, to a gap where the hedge had collapsed. Jennings darted forward, moving quickly and silently until he reached the ten-foot-wide jumble of withered stalks and optimistic ivy. Jay ran after him, not nearly as silently, but mimicking his posture. Nilda gave a rueful shrug and followed, checking behind with every third step.
Through the gap in the hedgerow, she could see the chimneys and half a dozen rooftops belonging to a mixture of one-storey and three-storey buildings. Whatever the factory was for, it couldn’t have employed more than a hundred people. Now, it was home to the undead. There were three, almost motionless, hunkered around the open doorway to the one-storey building closest to them. Between Nilda and the zombies were fifty metres of scrubby grass and twenty metres of asphalt. Waterlogged ruts marked where a heavy vehicle had driven across the grass and, almost certainly, through the hedge. From the shade of green at the ruts’ edge, it had been long enough ago for the grasses to re-root. All further investigation had to wait because the undead had heard them.
Jennings fired. One shot, a second, a third, but that last bullet hit the zombie in the throat. As the other two creatures collapsed, that last gangling zombie lurched a step backwards. Quickly, dispassionately, without a trace of emotion on his face, the submariner fired again. The zombie fell, and as it did, its arm flew out, knocking into the door. There was a soft clang of metal, louder than that of the living dead falling to the ground, far louder than that of the casings landing in the damp mud. They all listened. Nilda’s eyes roamed the countryside, then the buildings.
“I think we’re okay,” she finally said.
“You’re a good shot,” Jay said. “I didn’t think there would be much shooting on a submarine.”
“I learned it on the farm, growing up,” Jennings said.
“Oh? What kind of farm?” Jay asked.
“Sheep in Lancashire,” Jennings said. “Seventeen years of that smell in winter, and I was more than ready to run away to the sea.”
Nilda set off across the fields, her submachine gun held tight, but her finger off the trigger. She heard Jay and Jennings follow, but didn’t look around. She swept her gaze across the chimneys, and then the buildings, before setting her sights on the dark, open doorway in which the undead had stood. She paused outside, three feet from the door, uncertain as always what to call out.
“Anyone dead in there?” Jay yelled. “What?” he added. “It’s to the point.”
The building was an office and break room. It had a desk at the far end, a few filing cabinets against one wall, a moth-eared sofa and an ancient TV against the other. Work schedules and safety notices were pinned to a board, though pride-of-place went to a union missive exhorting members to vote in an upcoming ballot. What was most interesting were the bags and bicycles.
“There are four backpacks, four bikes,” Nilda said. She slung the submachine gun, bent, and gingerly opened the largest of the bags.
“But only three zombies,” Jay said, following her inside. “One of them got away.”
“Away from here, but not to safety,” Nilda said. “Not to the Tower, and not to Anglesey.”
“Maybe they took a ship to Europe,” Jay said.
“Maybe,” Nilda said.
“What are you looking for?” Jay asked. “Is it names, again?”
“No,” Nilda said. Collecting the names of the undead was a habit she’d picked up when she was looking for her son. It was something she’d forced herself to stop when she realised the alternative was a quick descent into madness. “No, I’d like to know where they came from. Rather, I’d like to know they didn’t come from the mansion the children were sheltering in.”
“These zombies might not have,” Jay said, “but what about all the others on the island.”
“I know, but information can’t hurt. There’s a diary here. A journal of a sort. Ah, I think it’s in French. Damp’s destroyed most of the entries, but the first, I think, was written just after the outbreak.” She put the book in her pack.
“You’re taking it with you?” Jay asked.
“Greta can translate it when she gets back,” Nilda said. “Whatever it says might be the only account of life on the continent that we ever know.”
They went outside, and then back across the field to the road that followed the coast. After another two hundred yards, the road turned inland where it met the fence ringing the port facility.
“We forgot wire-cutters,” Jennings said.
There were two fences, both of double-thick chain-link, planted four feet apart and topped with razor wire. Jay gave the fence a shove. The metal rattled.
“Can’t see any undead,” Jay said. “Shall I run back to the boat for tools?”
“No,” Nilda said. “We’ll keep going for ten minutes. Either we’ll find a gate, or we’ll all go back.”
“Lots of cars, though,” Jennings said. The car park beyond the fence wasn’t full, but even so there were too many vehicles to count.
“There are,” Nilda said. “And too many for the three of us to search. I wonder, if you were bringing cars off a boat, wouldn’t you make provision in case one ran out of petrol? There have to be at least a thousand cars there, and room for maybe twice that number. More, I suppose since the facility has to continue inland for quite a ways. They had to have thousands going through here each day. So, basically, I wonder if there’s a fuel store somewhere near the main entrance to the facility.”
“Could well be,” Jennings said. “And you want to find it?”
“Not today,” Nilda said. “It’ll be near where Tuck saw those zombies. Besides, however much fuel ther
e is, however much hasn’t evaporated, it will tilt the balance in our favour a little, but it won’t help us deal with the undead. For that, we need to destroy the bridge. If we can manage that, then petrol or not, this island—” She stopped, unwilling to say it aloud, not yet.
Ahead, a red estate car had been abandoned in the road. All four doors were open, and the right-hand wheels were in the drainage ditch. They slowed as they approached, but the car was empty. Nilda turned a full circle, but couldn’t see any zombies.
“Another five minutes, then we turn back,” she said.
But after only one, they came to the gate. It was wide enough for two trucks driving side-by-side to pass through. Built on rollers, it would open by sliding to the north. Either side, the parallel lines of wire rolled back to meet the gate, so the gap between was only wide enough for the gate to slide through. Either side, on the road, and again inside the car park, were two tall pillars mounted with cameras and lights.
“Emergency access,” Jennings said. “No sentry post, so I bet this was for fire engines and ambulances. The gate could be opened remotely when an operator in a control room viewed authorised people wanting to get in.”
“But can the gate be slid open without electricity?” Nilda asked.
Jay gave the gate a shove. It moved an inch. “I think so,” he said. As they pulled and pushed, and slid the gate open, the rusting wheels squeaked against the mud-filled runners. As soon as there was a two-feet-wide gap, Nilda carefully scanned the interior of the vehicle-park. She caught movement from behind the first row of cars.
“Just a seagull,” she said, lowering her weapon as the bird took flight.
“There’s good eating on a gull,” Jennings said.
“Is it better than parakeet?” Jay asked.
“Depends how you cook it,” Jennings said, judiciously adding, “But I think I could grow to like parakeet.”
Nilda smiled. She eased through the gap in the gate, and walked across the tarmac to the nearest car. Here, furthest from the port, there were more empty spaces than vehicles, but there were still dozens of cars. Leaves had gathered around tyres, partially deflated after nine-months of neglect. Windscreens were covered in a thin film of green moss. On the nearest car, a white hatchback, there were scratches on the door from where birds had sharpened their beaks. Around those, rust had settled, spreading inward and up, causing the paintwork to blister. She clambered onto the roof.
Closer to the sea, the cars were parked boot-to-bonnet, with little more than an inch between them. Inland, they were arrayed further apart, with over a foot between each door. She wondered if different sets of cars came from different ships, or if they’d been parked depending on where their final destination was going to be.
“It’s mostly cars,” she said. “There are some vans closer to the sea. Those might be diesel. I think the rest are petrol.”
“This one is,” Jay said from below. “The fuel cap’s open.”
“Someone came through here, then,” Nilda said. “Well, that makes sense. And they closed the gate behind them so they intended to come back.”
“Then the question is how often did they come back,” Jennings said, “and did they leave anything behind.”
Nilda checked her watch. “We can spare another ten minutes, but no more or Tuck will come looking for us. That row over there, the one that starts with the red van.” She jumped down as Jay ran ahead. He’d slung his submachine gun, and had taken the crowbar from his pack.
“Fuel cap’s closed,” he said.
“Wait, stop!” Nilda said as Jay raised the crowbar. “Keys, Jay! Keys.”
“What keys?”
Nilda reached the car. “Time is money,” she said, checking the wheel arch. “And the time between the steel being cut and the vehicle being sold is paid for by the factory and the dealership. Storing the keys in some central location, then having to sort through them to find which matches which car, that’s…” She tried the driver-side door. It was unlocked. “That’s time wasted.” The keys were in the ignition.
As Jay took out the wire and ran it into the fuel tank, Jennings leaned against the boot.
“All these cars, all those keys,” Jennings said, “I’m surprised no one stole them. Before the outbreak, I mean.”
“Ask Chester, when he gets back,” Nilda said. “But look at the cameras. I bet this place was patrolled. Plus, even if you broke out of here, you’d have to cross the bridge, and then you’d be in Kent. How much did a car like this sell for? Twenty thousand? What’s the value in parts? Five thousand? Four? One person could only steal one car, and you could only do it once. The profit doesn’t outweigh the risk, that’s what Chester would say.”
“You wouldn’t be in Kent,” Jay said, withdrawing the wire. “I mean, you wouldn’t make it to the mainland. The wire’s barely damp. There’s fuel in there, just not much.”
“Petrol or diesel?” Jennings asked.
“Petrol, according to the cap,” Jay said. “Less than a litre. A lot less.”
“But there are a lot of cars,” Jennings said. “A lot of a little adds up to a lot. So what do you want to do now? Check the vans?”
“Head back,” Nilda said. “We’ve seen all we wanted, and we’ve got the best possible answer we could.”
Jay walked over to the next car, then around it to the next. “The fuel caps are on,” he said. “On all of them.”
“So the question,” Jennings said, “is how we use the petrol.”
“For lights. For heat. For boiling up water,” Nilda said. “That will save us having to chop and burn wood. Beyond that, we’ll use the engines to charge batteries.”
“Car batteries?”
“I was thinking of power tools,” Nilda said. “Perhaps a generator to run construction gear. Can we use a pneumatic drill to till soil? We’ll find out. Come on, Jay.”
“Just a minute,” he called from five cars away. “I’m counting.”
Nilda looked at her watch again. “No, we’re out of time.”
Jennings heard it first. He jumped onto the bonnet of the next car. “Zombie!” he yelled.
Nilda couldn’t see it. She ran into the space between two rows of cars. Then she heard the low, hissing sigh accompanied by a slow, grating rasp of fingers dragging against damp concrete.
“Jay!” she called.
Time slowed. Jay turned around. Surprise lit up his face as undead fingers curled around his foot. Surprise turned to pain as fingers were joined by teeth, biting into his calf.
Nilda had the submachine gun raised, but couldn’t pull the trigger without risking hitting her son. She advanced, but didn’t have a shot. Jay screamed, hopped back, and fell over. He shook himself free of the zombie’s mouth, but not its hand. Nilda fired. The gun was set to single shot, but she pulled the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine into the zombie. She didn’t attempt to aim at its head, she just wanted to keep the creature distracted. Then its skull exploded as Jennings fired from where he’d climbed onto the roof of the neighbouring car.
“There’s more!” he said. “Can’t see them, but I can hear them.”
Nilda pulled Jay up. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just… fine,” he said, wincing.
With one arm under his, she half carried, half dragged him back towards the gate. She didn’t look back when she heard the soft retort of Jennings’s silenced rifle, nor when she heard it again, nor even when she heard him jump down and run after them.
“There’s at least a dozen, but less than twenty,” he said. “All crawling under the vehicles.”
Only when she reached the gate did she look back. She couldn’t see the undead. She thought she could hear them, but they weren’t close, and they wouldn’t catch up.
She looked at Jay’s leg. “Hold him. Hang on.” She took out a water bottle, and washed the wound. “It’s not too deep.” She took out a bandage and slapped it on.
“Sorry, Mum,” Jay said.
“There
’s nothing to apologise for,” Nilda said. “It’s just one of those things.”
“He’s had worse,” Tuck signed, as Nilda attached a fresh bandage. “That’s barely a scratch.”
“What’s that?” George asked.
Nilda glanced at her son before replying, but there was no point hiding the truth from him. “The wound’s clotting but the real danger is infection.”
“I’ve been bit before, Mum,” Jay said.
“I didn’t mean that kind of infection,” Nilda said.
“We get a lot of wounds like that on Anglesey,” George said. “Dr Harabi can take care of it when we get back to the Tower.”
“No,” Jay said. “We can’t go back, not yet, not until we’ve seen the bridges. How long will it take to get there, an hour?”
“Maybe longer,” Nilda said.
“A few hours isn’t going to make a difference to me,” Jay said. “But if we return now, we’ll only have to come down again in a few days. Each trip is more risk, it’s more food wasted. More ammo. More time, and that’s running out, Mum. You said so. We can’t risk everyone else just so I’ll be a bit more comfortable.”
Nilda’s heart swelled, and once again, she felt hope for their future.
As Lorraine piloted the boat down the Swale, the sky remained ominously grey. On deck, Jennings had one hand on the rail, the other holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes as he watched the channel for sunken obstacles.
“What was Sheppey like?” George asked.
“The small part we saw? Okay, I think,” Nilda said. “There were three zombies at that industrial facility we could see from the jetty. Otherwise, in the port, the only undead were those crawling beneath the vehicles.” She turned her gaze back to the shore. “The fuel caps had been removed from a few cars. I think someone came, took fuel, and left. What else they took, I don’t know, but we’ll find out. They didn’t take all the petrol, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind to move here,” George said.