Britain's End

by Frank Tayell

  “You’re going to scout a route?” Mary asked.

  “I’ll just take a few people,” Kim said. “We should send more back to the ship to get as much of the grain as we can. We can’t board The New World at night, so even if it arrives this evening, we’ll still be here tomorrow morning.”

  “And we can’t board it until we’re at the waterfront,” Mary said. “I’ll have Bran take charge of salvaging food from the wreck, while you take a look at Dundalk.”

  Kim found Rahinder by the lift-shaft where he’d pried open the doors.

  “Is there something wrong?” Kim asked.

  “Not at all,” Rahinder said. “I am making myself see the things that we have designed to be invisible. These cables, for instance. They were designed to safely raise a full elevator. To what other purpose could they be put?”

  “I don’t know,” Kim said, peering inside the lift shaft, “but there’s a wind turbine in the town. If we go there, could you determine whether it will still work?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “A turbine isn’t a complicated machine.”

  “Then get your gear, and meet me outside in five minutes.”

  She went to find a rifle.

  When she got outside, she found Mirabelle waiting with Rahinder.

  “I’m still alive,” she said, beaming. “And I’d thought I’d volunteer. Who else is coming?”

  “I think three of us should do,” Kim said. “If there’s more than a handful of zombies, we’ll retreat. From what I could see out of the top floor window, the wind turbine is in the grounds of what I’d guess is some kind of tech firm. It had that Californian-campus look about it, which might mean it’s too open for us to properly defend. The hospital is a little further north, and a bit to the west. That might be a better bet, though it might not be a hospital, and it’s probably been looted. Both are on the way to the harbour, on a road that should lead us over a river. If neither will do, I’m sure we’ll find somewhere else.”

  They awkwardly clambered up a stepladder, climbed over the barricade, and then had to pick their way through the corpses on the other side. Some were riddled with crossbow bolts, others had been shot, and some killed hand-to-hand. Kim stopped counting at thirty, confident there were fewer than fifty.

  “I didn’t check the other side of the hotel,” she said. “Do you know, did they face a similar number of undead there?”

  “About the same,” Mirabelle said.

  “They don’t look recently turned, do they?” Kim said.

  “Not this one, certainly,” Rahinder said. “That’s a uniform. Is that the German flag? So she was part of those EU forces who came to Dublin around the same time that Leon did. She died before she had need to loot civilian clothes. Why do you ask when they turned?”

  “We saw one in the hotel, and another in a field to the east that might have come from Anglesey,” Mirabelle said.

  “Not with us,” Kim added. “But who might have fled by sea a few weeks ago. It’s hard to know. These zombies must have been in the town for a while. Add in the undead on the beach, and it must be close to a thousand. That has to be most of the undead in the town. In which case, perhaps the worst is over.”

  “The Dundalk Technology College,” Kim read from the sign at the side of the road.

  “Why on Earth would they have a wind turbine?” Mirabelle said.

  “Hopefully to cut down on electricity costs,” Rahinder said. “If that’s the case, then the turbine will power the campus, which means, if we can switch it back on, we’ll have lights.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why a small college has its own turbine,” Mirabelle said. “I’m not complaining,” she added. “I’m jealous. We were trying to get one for the office. It would have met all our energy needs, and half of those for the school at the end of the street, but the planning application kept being blocked.”

  “Zombies,” Kim said, raising her borrowed rifle. “I can hear them. There, I think, behind the cars.”

  There were four vehicles, abandoned in the drive leading from the road into the campus. Two cars had been attempting to get inside, while one had been attempting to get out. The fourth had either crashed or been deliberately driven askew so that it was parked across both lanes. The sound came from beyond the vehicles.

  “Watch the ground,” Kim said, edging sideways. Mirabelle took a step forward. Rahinder raised his crossbow. Kim had no faith in the weapon, but before she saw the target, he fired. The bolt thrummed through the air, and cracked into bone before embedding itself in tarmac.

  “Got it,” he said.

  Kim took a cautious step forward, then jumped up onto the bonnet off the car. She listened, stamped her foot, and listened again. “I think we’re clear. Is that a different model of bow?”

  “The same model,” Rahinder said. “I just practiced before we left Anglesey.”

  The campus was pleasant, or it would have been a year before. The grass was now overgrown. Tress had lost their branches, and their trunks were half-buried in drifts of leaves. Neat paths were slick with mud. The myriad benches, still damp from yesterday’s drizzle, were covered in a green patina of guano and grime. As for the buildings, she couldn’t tell if they had new cladding on old structures or if the entire campus was as recently state-of-the-art as the turbine.

  Kim looked from building to building. “I should have brought Donnie. He might have known how many students they had here. I’d say there’s, what, three main buildings, each three storeys high. No, that’s four, isn’t it?” She stopped counting windows. “Looking and guessing is only going to get us so far. This way.” She led them along a path between two of the college buildings and towards the turbine towering behind them. She tried to concentrate on not stepping on leaves, on listening for the undead, but her brain was whirring with possibilities. After ten paces, she stopped.

  “Rahinder, honestly, will you be able to tell if that turbine works without climbing up to the top?”

  “No,” he said.

  “How will it take?”

  “To climb?” he asked.

  “To know whether it works?”

  “The blades are intact, and the column is undamaged,” Rahinder said. “It’s a question of circuitry. Three hours? It could be less. It could be a lot less, but I can’t tell you until I’ve got to the top.”

  “We don’t have three hours,” Kim said. “And two of us aren’t enough to stand guard while you climb to the top. Electricity would be nice, but we need water more than that. To find that, we need…” She paused, looking at the buildings either side. The windows were almost all intact.

  “A map?” Mirabelle asked, finishing Kim’s thought. “That’s what we need, a map of Dundalk.”

  “What, yes,” Kim said. “Sorry, I just had an idea. A good one, but that can wait, too. A map, yes. Let’s try in there. It’s the largest of the buildings.”

  The main doors were closed and locked, but easily broken.

  Kim sniffed. “Musty. Damp. Is that the smell of death?” She raised her rifle. “Mirabelle, see if there are any maps behind the reception desk.” On the wall was a sign, pointing to the canteen, but Kim turned around, more interested in the door. “One building is much like another, isn’t it? We’ll need walls around us. Walls to keep out the undead, but we can collect water on a flat roof. Can we collect enough?”

  “I found a map,” Mirabelle said. “Well, sort of. It’s very much student-orientated. There is a hospital further up the Dublin Road. And there’s a football club beyond that. Are cinemas any use to us? Probably not. Nor are pubs, bars, or a nightclub. Churches. Bus routes. Ah, there’s a place called Our Lady’s Well. It’s not far beyond the hospital and more or less on our way to the harbour. Probably.” She held up the map. “It’s straight lines on a sketched outline. For accuracy, footpaths, and cycle routes, they want you to download the college’s map app and fitness tracker.”

  There was a slow drawn-out rustling from deep inside the building
. Outside, it might be put down to the wind, but inside…

  “Zombies. They heard us break the door.” Kim tracked the rifle’s barrel towards the sound, and ended up with it pointing towards a sign for the canteen. The sign was almost redundant, since the double doors were situated just beyond a trio of bathrooms. The canteen doors were chained and double-padlocked.

  “Like at the hotel,” Mirabelle said. “Must be the same group. The key’s still in the lock.”

  “They padlocked the zombies inside?” Rahinder asked, raising his crossbow. “No, there must be another door.”

  The chain rattled as the zombies pushed. “No time to look for it,” Kim said. “Mirabelle, watch our backs. Let us know if we’re being surrounded.”

  A zombie smashed its decayed face into the reinforced glass window. Kim ignored it, peering around and beyond. “Three of them, maybe four,” she said. “And a lot of boxes near the back. Plastic boxes. Rahinder, get ready.”

  Holding the rifle one-handed, she turned the key with the other, and undid the padlock. The long chain slowly snaked back and up through the handles. Kim stepped back.

  “Rahinder, take the first shot,” she said.

  The chain fell away. The door swung open. A zombie staggered through. A pair of parallel scars ran from its eye down to its chin. Below that, a scarf had been wrapped around its neck. Originally blue, that part closest to its head was now stained dark. Rahinder fired. His bolt slammed into its eye, and almost straight through its skull. It collapsed as another zombie appeared in the doorway. Taller, thin to the point of emaciated, its sleeve had been torn away, exposing an arm from which muscle and skin sloughed away. Kim fired, and it fell onto that first corpse. The third zombie, smaller, a child before it had been infected, stumbled into those corpses. Strands of its shredded woollen cardigan caught against the claw-like fingers of the dead creature beneath it. As it thrashed and lurched its way over the bodies, the wool began to unravel. Kim fired, and the zombie died. She shifted aim, but hadn’t brought her rifle to bear before Rahinder fired again. His bolt struck the last zombie in the forehead.

  Kim stepped over the corpses, and into the room. “Clear,” she said. “The zombies must have come through that door over there. That looks like the kitchens, but I’m more interested in the boxes in front of the serving counter. They’re stacked… what, four high and twenty long. Can you take a look in the boxes, I’ll check the kitchen.”

  The kitchen was empty. The door that led outside had been propped open with a fire extinguisher. She picked it up, letting the door swing closed. She went back into the canteen.

  “It’s food in those boxes, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Quite a lot of it,” Mirabelle said, lifting the top-most box down, and opening the lid of the one beneath. “Cans. Packets. Spices.” She picked up a bottle. “Orange.” She cracked the cap, and took a deep draft. “Ah, sugar and artificial flavours. I’d almost forgotten how wonderful they tasted. Here.” She passed it to Kim. She drank, and passed the bottle to Rahinder, who took a sip and winced.

  “Are you okay?” Kim asked.

  “I lost a filling last week,” he said. “What can you do?” He took another, though more tentative, swig and passed the bottle back to Mirabelle.

  Kim took the lid off the next crate. “Some of these are catering-sized containers, but this pack of teabags came from a supermarket.”

  “It’s like at the hotel,” Mirabelle said. “Some of this food might have been in the kitchens, but a lot has been collected from places nearby.”

  “It reminds me of Belfast,” Kim said. “In fact, I’d go one step further and say that this is almost exactly like Belfast. We found boxes like this there.”

  “Left by Sorcha Locke?” Rahinder asked.

  “Yes and no,” Kim said. “I’m not sure whether Locke started boxing up the food, or whether it was Jasmine Cotter. That’s the woman who shot Kallie. In fact, I’m not even certain that it was either of them. Perhaps someone or some group who arrived in Belfast before them was responsible for putting that food into boxes. We didn’t ask Locke much about Jasmine Cotter. We were too busy asking her about Lisa Kempton, and Locke was too busy evading a straight answer to volunteer information about anything else. We didn’t ask where Cotter was before she arrived in Belfast. We didn’t ask whether Cotter arrived alone. Hmm. Bill and I found a church in that city. The doors were padlocked. Inside were the undead, but the people had to have been alive when they were locked in there with the infected. We found the bodies of other survivors near the harbour. Cotter killed them. At least, Locke denied knowing anything about it. I wonder whether those survivors were here first. After they were forced to flee, they went north to Belfast.”

  “Does it matter?” Rahinder asked.

  “Yes, for two reasons,” Kim said. “For one, if this food came from the houses around here, then these crates, and what’s in the hotel might represent all the food we’re likely to find in Dundalk.” She picked up a bottle of ketchup. “It’s calories, and it’s flavour, but it won’t stretch far. Second, when they fled from the hotel, they left empty-handed. They’ll have taken the food from the towns north of here. Not all, sure, but we’re unlikely to find much food between here and Belfast.”

  “I thought we were sailing north on The New World, not walking,” Rahinder said.

  “We are,” Kim said. “I’ll call Sholto when we get back to the hotel and ask him to get Bill to ask Locke. And I’ll ask Annette to take another look through those papers she found in the hotel’s reception. It would be helpful to have some external evidence on how much we can trust Locke’s words. But it doesn’t matter for us, here and now. How much food do you think this amounts to?”

  “Depending on how much is still edible, enough for one meal for four hundred” Rahinder said.

  Kim opened the next box, then another. “Ah, iced-tea, two bottles. And some biscuits. That’ll do for lunch. Come on.”

  “We’re leaving the rest here?” Mirabelle asked.

  “Who’s going to take it?” Kim said. She led them back outside. “Is there anything we can secure the door with?”

  “That bench?” Mirabelle suggested. They picked it up, and moved it in front of the doors.

  “That should do for a few hours,” Kim said. “We won’t be gone long.”

  “We’re coming back, then?” Mirabelle asked.

  “I think so,” Kim said, listening to the sounds of the lifeless college. She heard leaves caught by the wind. Something metallic tapped against glass. Water dripped from an overfull gutter. A bird cawed. “Yes, I think so.” She led them back toward the road. “On Anglesey, we had enough grain for three months. We had fish, we had some supplies left over from before the outbreak, and we’d what was being grown in the greenhouses in Menai Bridge. We had a boring but healthy diet. One that was dependent on the grain, on fish, and on some kind of harvest next year.”

  “And now it’s changed,” Mirabelle said. “But it’s not changed much.”

  “The hospital is…” Kim checked the map they’d found behind the reception desk. “This way, down the Dublin Road. Yes, things have changed. I don’t know how much of the grain we can recover from the ship, but when we leave here, it’ll be with the weapons in our hands and the clothes on our backs. The grain, the food in the hotel, and in those boxes back there in the college, will be left behind. What will we do when we get to Belfast? At least some of us will have to go out looking for supplies. Whether it’s fish from the sea, or cans from a cupboard, will we find as much as there is here?”

  “You want to stay here until the food runs out?” Mirabelle asked.

  “I think so,” Kim said. “Maybe not in the college, and certainly not in the hotel, but somewhere in Dundalk. If we can get the wind turbine to work, we could have some lights, but it’s more important that we learn how to repair it. That’s got to be the first step in learning how to build one. Electricity means light and heat, and if we have those, everything e
lse will fall into place.”

  “Are you thinking of hydroponics?” Rahinder asked.

  “There’s not much difference between a terraced house in Menai Bridge, and a college classroom,” Kim said. “Which means the next question we should be asking is for how long can we stay in Dundalk?”

  Chapter 29 - Ambulances

  Dundalk

  Rahinder stabbed his knife deep into the zombie’s chest. He levered left, then right, and pulled the crossbow bolt free.

  “No, it’s ruined,” he said, tossing it aside.

  The creature had been pushing against the three-foot-high barrier blocking the road-entrance to the hospital, seemingly unaware of the open pedestrian-gate five feet away. It had barely noticed Rahinder’s first shot. That bolt had dropped in flight, embedding itself deep in its chest. A swift blow from Mirabelle had finished the zombie, but even when she’d stepped close enough to swing, it had barely become more animated.

  “According to the sign, it is a hospital,” Kim said. “A small one.”

  “And we’re looking for medical supplies?” Mirabelle asked.

  “Not really,” Kim said. “They’d be useful, but the real question is whether this is a defensible location, and a better one than the college. However long we stay here, we’ll have to leave by sea, and so the closer we are to the harbour, the better.”

  “In my opinion, this is less secure than the college,” Rahinder said, as they walked across the car park towards the parked ambulances. “There are too many ramps.”

  “And too many open doors,” Mirabelle said.

  The doors beyond the ambulances were ajar, held open by a wheelchair.