Britain's End

by Frank Tayell

  Kim’s eyes went to the man and woman standing sentry outside the kitchens. They may not suspect any passengers of involvement in the crash; that didn’t mean they wouldn’t steal food when pressed by hunger.

  “With just under eight-hundred of us, I would say there’s enough for around two meals,” Rahinder said.

  “Then we should get someone cooking,” Mary said. She leaned forward in her chair, peering around the room. “And didn’t I see… Ah, Prudence, didn’t you want to open a restaurant? Well, my dear, your hour has come. See what you can manage, speak to Rahinder if you need anything found, or anyone to assist. And how are we for water?” she asked, turning back to the table.

  “We’ll be drinking the rain,” Donnie said. “But it is raining at the moment.”

  “And when the rain stops,” Mary said, “we’ll look for a river. This is Ireland, after all; there are more rivers than a person has veins. For now, we must collect as much rain as we can. Donnie, you can take care of that?”

  He gave a shrug.

  “And our defences?” Mary asked.

  Bran gave an almost identical shrug. “The barricades are going up. Other than on the beach just before we left, there haven’t been too many undead. Those that were close to the shore would have heard the wreck and gone there. For now, I’m cautiously optimistic.” He said the last loud enough to carry to all those listening in. “I want to split people into three shifts, about two hundred and fifty in each. It’ll be four hours on, eight off.”

  “Good,” Mary said. “We have begun well, but there is more work to be done. Kim, could you help me, dear?”

  Mary sat in an office chair that had come from a room near the reception desk. It was one of the few they could find with wheels. Kim pushed Mary into the meeting room next door. She placed her torch on the floor, with the beam pointing at the ceiling.

  “I don’t think I realised how much I’d become used to electric light,” she said. “Now, let’s see what clothes Donnie found for you.” She unzipped the bag that Donnie had grabbed from the room behind the reception desk. “Ah. Tell me, Mary, have you ever done much skateboarding?” She held up a bulky hoodie.

  “Cotton is cotton,” Mary said, “And I dare say I’ll be warm in that. Could you help me take this coat off? I can’t quite stretch my arms far enough.”

  The coat was sodden to the touch. As Kim pulled it off the old woman, she saw her back and realised that not all the damp was water.

  “Is it bad?” Mary asked.

  “Hang on,” Kim said. She picked up the torch, and shone it on Mary’s back. “Yes and no. You’ve got glass embedded in your skin, but I don’t think there’s any cuts so wide or deep they’ll need stitches. There weren’t any doctors on the ship, were there?”

  “They’re all in Elysium and Belfast,” Mary said.

  “Then, if you can hang on, I’ll find some tweezers and bandages.”

  “Not you, dear,” Mary said. “People need to see you out and about. Without my wheelchair, that can’t be me. Now, before you go, did anyone fetch the sat-phone?”

  “I’m… I’m not sure.”

  “We need to let Angl—” She stopped. “I mean, we need to let the admiral know that we’re alive, and that we’re here. If we don’t, that helicopter will appear at first light, if not before, and unless we have a landing site prepared for it, then all it will bring is the undead following in its wake.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Kim said.

  “If it means going back to the ship,” Mary said. “Remember there’s grain still down there. That will keep us fed for a few days.”

  “If it survived the crash,” Kim said.

  “It has,” Mary said. “Or some has. After that spore ruined so much, we re-packaged and re-sealed the rest in watertight containers. While we were waiting for you on the beach, I had Donnie check the hold. He counted at least ten crates that appeared undamaged. Hmm. I wonder… I wonder about that spore. Ah, but now I’m getting paranoid, blaming all our ills on whoever sabotaged the ship and plane. One problem at a time. Task Annette with finding some tweezers and a good pair of scissors. There’s plenty of clothes in that bag we can turn into bandages. It’s an unpleasant task for the girl, but a safer one than being on a barricade. Now, go and be seen, Kim. And be seen to be confident, even if you don’t feel it.”

  Kim smiled at the echo of advice she’d first been given by someone of equal life-experience, though thousands of miles and a lifetime away.

  She found Annette sitting behind the reception desk, Daisy on her lap, the piles of handwritten pages in front of her.

  “All well?” Kim asked.

  “I think so,” Annette said. “I’ve not heard any shooting, if that’s what you mean. From outside, or upstairs.”

  By the time the main group had arrived at the hotel, Rahinder had searched the first and second floors of the tower. Two more zombies had been found, both in rooms containing the long-dead remains of other survivors. Commander Crawley had led a team to search the remaining upstairs rooms, with the instruction that if they found any real danger, they’d fire an un-silenced shot.

  “And how are you, Daisy?”

  The toddler shook her head, and raised a finger to her lips. Kim sighed. This was no way to bring up a child.

  “This is interesting, though,” Annette said, gesturing at the papers. “It’s all about Ireland. I mean, obviously, since it was written by the Irish survivors.”

  “You should take that to Mary,” Kim said. There were half-a-dozen others in the reception area, all members of the coding collective who’d spent the last month peering at satellite images in their terrace in Holyhead. Even so, she lowered her voice. “I know this is a lot to ask, but I need you to help Mary. There’s glass embedded in her back from when we crashed. Can you tweezer it out, then bandage it?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Annette said. She gathered the pages. “Come on, Daisy, we’ve a job to do.”

  Kim was about to say that she shouldn’t take Daisy, that it might be too upsetting, but compared to what they’d been through, this was nothing. “Thank you.” She smiled, and said nothing more.

  It took ten minutes to find Vasco Fonseco, standing guard by the delivery entrance near the rear of the restaurant. He’d not been able to find Mary’s cabin, so hadn’t retrieved the sat-phone.

  Kim deputised Vasco to find Bran, and Bran to find fifty reliable people while she went to collect fifty of the sturdiest bags left behind by the Irish survivors. Twenty minutes later, she stood outside the hotel, as the group gathered.

  “Take a bag, make sure you’ve a light and weapons,” she said.

  “Where are we going?” Mirabelle asked.

  “Back to the ship,” Kim said, letting her voice carry. “We need to find the sat-phone, and we’re going to collect some of the grain from the hold.” She lowered her voice, speaking only to Mirabelle. “You don’t need to come.”

  Mirabelle gave a shrug, and glanced at the bandage on her arm. “I don’t want to sleep. Not yet.”

  “You could help Donnie with water gathering,” Kim said.

  “Sure, and if you want me to rig up some software to monitor how much drips into a bucket per hour, I can, but I’ll need my laptop and an electricity supply. It’ll take me a couple of hours to write the code, and in the end, it won’t tell you anything you couldn’t learn by looking into a bucket.” As one, their eyes went the meagre collection of buckets, trays, and saucepans dotting the car park. A few plastic sheets had been rigged at a steep angle, angling into stainless steel troughs.

  “We’ll have to look for a river tomorrow,” Kim said.

  “And for firewood,” Mirabelle said. “Is there enough water for cooking?”

  “Probably not,” Kim said. “Prudence is cooking down the last of the wine behind the bar. I think that the Irish survivors were drinking it because there was nothing else left. The water and juices were gone. Some of the canned food is in brine or juice, but there’s no
t nearly enough of it.”

  “Then let’s hope for some proper rain,” Mirabelle said.

  Bran took charge of the patrol’s disposition, though he didn’t take the lead. Kim led from the front, Mirabelle at her side. As she walked the road towards the shore, her light stabbing into the darkness, her mind wandered. Was this a patrol, or a squad? Were they now an army? Who, exactly, were they since they were no longer the people of Anglesey?

  “Zombie!” a voice called from her left, and behind. She stopped to look, and wasn’t the only one.

  “Keep going, don’t stop!” Bran said, as he raised his rifle. A moment later he fired. “It’s down. Keep going. Don’t stop. If you see the undead, call out the location, number, and distance. If it’s less than three, and more than twenty metres away, it’s not an immediate threat.”

  She focused on the road in front, and the growing sound of the sea ahead. Knowing the route helped, and made up for the creeping weight of tiredness. She’d worn trainers for the crossing, a thin jacket, and just-as-thin trousers, leaving her more hardwearing gear in her bag. She’d thought she was dressing for comfort, but it was increasingly uncomfortable as her insoles absorbed the water seeping into her shoes. Even so, she hoped the rain never stopped.

  Bran moved up and down the line, making sure that they remained vigilant as tiredness took hold. He was walking twice the distance as the rest, but didn’t seem to notice. She made a note to ask him what the secret was.

  “Sholto will come, won’t he?” Mirabelle said. “In the helicopter, I mean.”

  “If we don’t call, he will,” Kim said.

  “Probably stealing the helicopter if the admiral won’t let him,” Mirabelle said.

  “I don’t think he knows how to fly one,” Kim said. “But it won’t do us much good. It could take the injured away, but not the rest of us. No, we’ll have to wait for The New World.”

  “That’s a luxury yacht, isn’t it?” Vasco asked. Kim hadn’t realised that her voice had carried.

  “More like a small cruise ship,” Kim said. “But yes, I’d say some of the staterooms were far grander than what I even dreamed luxury could be.”

  But when eight hundred people were crammed aboard, it wouldn’t be much better than on the grain ship. She kept that thought to herself, because the ship’s arrival was still a very long way away.

  “Movement,” Vasco called. “Zombies. Two of them. Forty metres. Three o’clock.”

  “Mine,” Bran said. “Keep going.”

  He fired, and everyone else kept moving.

  The ship was a hulking shadow against the dark expanse of the sea. The wind mixed spray with the mist, cutting visibility even further. As lights stabbed into the darkness, there was no need to ask for silence, but despite no one speaking, there was a symphony of noise. Feet crunched on shells, slipped on rocks, and kicked against driftwood. At every misstep, lights flashed towards the sound, then out again, searching for the undead.

  Kim wanted to say they should stop, should hurry up, should do something, anything, to break the nerve-shredding anxiety, but she kept quiet until her foot hit something soft. She jumped back a step, swung the light down and onto a corpse. It was a passenger.

  “That’s Brita,” a woman said behind her.

  “We’ll come back for them,” Kim said. She shone her light along the ground. There were other bodies. “We’ll come back for all of them, and bury them, but not tonight.” She shone the light on the hulking shadow of the wreck. “The food must come first. Bran?”

  “Vasco, take ten people, go into the hold, fill the bags with food. The rest of you, form a line over here.” He shone his torch, indicating the positions people should take.

  “What about us?” Mirabelle asked.

  “I’m going to get the sat-phone,” Kim said. “You can stay outside.”

  “No thanks,” Mirabelle said. “What’s the worst that can happen inside? That the ship falls apart and I end up being crushed or drowned? I’d say that’s better than the worst that can happen out here.”

  “Possibly,” Kim said, shining her light up at the superstructure.

  “That’s my problem, you see,” Mirabelle said. “I’ve got too vivid an imagination. I can always picture the worst. I hated cars.”

  “Oh?” Kim asked, barely listening. Her light fell on the rope and harness with which Mary and Daisy had been lowered down. She crossed to it, and gave it a tug. “It seems secure.”

  “Every time I was in one,” Mirabelle said. “I’d think it was going to crash. I could just picture every passing car slamming into the side.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “That’s why I don’t like cars,” Mirabelle said. “Are we going to climb up?”

  “I think so. The alternative is going through the hold, and I don’t know the way.”

  Climbing was muscle-tearing work for already exhausted arms, but it was a simple task with an obvious goal at the end. At the top, she pulled herself into the doorway, then rolled around, reaching down to help Mirabelle the last few feet.

  “Easy enough,” Mirabelle said.

  “We need to go that way,” Kim said. “Through that hatch that leads down a level, then to the cabins.”

  “Sure,” Mirabelle said. “I mean, this is a good example.”

  “An example of what?” Kim asked as she crawled along the corridor.

  “Of my imagination. I know there were no zombies on the ship, and that there’s no way they could have got onto the ship from the shore, and that, even if they did, there’s no way they could have climbed up here, but that doesn’t stop me thinking they’ll jump out from that corridor.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that,” Kim said. But the corridor was clear.

  There wasn’t much in Mary’s cabin beyond the woman’s bags. Kim tried the smallest, more a handbag than a holdall. A small pistol was on the top. Underneath were a few odd little curios, and seven pill-boxes. She picked one up, and found it rattled. She put it back, wandering what the medicine was for. The sat-phone was at the bottom. She zipped the bag back up, and passed it to Mirabelle.

  “We’ve got the phone. My cabin’s next door. I want my rifle.”

  It wasn’t the sniper rifle she’d grown so fond of; they’d run out of ammunition for it. That weapon was in a crate along with other equipment they had no immediate use for, but which they had no way of replacing. She wasn’t even sure if that crate was on this ship. Her new rifle was one of the SA80s, modified on Anglesey with a suppressor, and to which she’d attached the sniper rifle’s optical scope.

  “Where’s your bag?” she asked Mirabelle.

  “It was down in the hold,” Mirabelle said. “I’m not sure where it is now.”

  “There’s some clothes of mine in here that should fit,” Kim said. “There’s some for Daisy and Annette, too. Bill’s bag? No. Wait, it’s got his journals in it. I better take it or I’ll never hear the end of it from Annette. I’m sure his clothes will fit someone. And here.” She picked up another bag. “It’s ammunition. Five hundred rounds of 5.56mm. My personal supply. Shared out among those who know how to shoot, it’ll help us get through the night.”

  She grabbed her thick coat, and dropped her now-sodden jacket on the floor. She eyed the bag that Mirabelle was now holding. “You and your imagination,” she said with a smile.

  “What?” Mirabelle asked.

  “I was going to say we should change here, but I can’t stop picturing this ship falling apart. Let’s get back to solid land.”

  She heard the shouting before they reached the doorway. The urgency was clear in those voices, but there was no fear. As she peered into the darkness, she saw lights below, casting shadows along the shore. The lights moved, roaming forwards, picking out a hunched shape, then darting back. She unslung the rifle, aiming left, right, following the lights.

  “No, I can’t. I can’t get a clear shot. Haul the rope up. We’ll tie the bags on, lower them, then climb down.”

&nbs
p; As the end of the rope reached their precarious perch, she saw a light pinwheel across the shore. She swung her rifle up again, but couldn’t see either zombie or person.

  “Quick,” she said, though Mirabelle was already tying the third knot. They lowered the rope, letting gravity do most of the work, only applying a brief pressure to stop a descent turn into a drop. The moment the bags hit the ground, Kim hauled herself down the rope. It seemed to take far longer than climbing up. Each time she glanced down, the ground seemed no nearer. When her foot finally touched solid rock, she let the rope go, grabbed her rifle, and aimed into the darkness, but all seemed calm. Once again, lights were slowly swinging left and right, piercing the darkness.

  Kim grabbed the bag of ammunition, and went in search of Bran.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “Sure,” he said calmly.

  “From up there, it looked… well, it looked bad. The lights were going all over the place.”

  “There were two zombies, they came drifting down from the north. No casualties on our part, though Horst lost his light. Slipped on… let’s call it water. He’s got a gash on his head, probably needs a couple of stitches. Did you get the sat-phone?”

  “The— Yes. And some ammunition. What about food?”

  “We’ve filled the bags,” he said. “I’m not sure how much we’ve got, or how much will be edible, but it’s as much as we can do. I think it’s time to go back,” he added, in the tone that said it was more than a suggestion.

  “Twenty minutes, everyone, and we’ll be back at the hotel,” Kim said. She turned her face upward to the rain. It was growing heavier. “There might even be enough water to wash.”

  They had almost made it off the beach when there was a low, sustained creak behind them. As they turned around, the creak turned into a metallic screech. The rain was growing heavy, the torchlight barely made it back to the wreck, but it cast enough light to see the ladder next to the superstructure come away from its pins, and fall to the beach.