by Frank Tayell
“The wheelchair would be handy for Mary,” Kim said. She knocked her machete against the side of the first ambulance. “Not occupied, good.” She walked around to the back and found the door unlocked. “Clothes and books. Looks like whoever drove it here did so after the outbreak.”
“Do you think it’s the same people who made it to the hotel?” Mirabelle asked.
“Maybe,” Kim said. She picked up a book from the ambulance’s floor. “Nicholas Nickleby.”
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to read that,” Mirabelle said.
“Here.” Kim handed it to her. “And loan it to me when you’re finished. Bill keeps nagging me to read more classics.”
“We should start a book club,” Mirabelle said. “So why didn’t they drive these ambulance away? Did they run out of fuel?”
“Not all of them together, not at the same time, not after they parked,” Rahinder said.
“So what happened to them?” Mirabelle asked.
Collectively, their eyes fell on the wheelchair, the door it held open, and the dark corridor beyond.
“I vote we do the sensible thing, and don’t go inside,” Mirabelle said. “Not when it’s just the three of us. It’s still early. We could get a large group down to the college, enough to protect Rahinder while he inspects the turbine. Then we can bring a hundred or so here.”
“Agreed,” Kim said.
“Good,” Rahinder said. He smiled. “My brother loved horror films, but hated watching them with me. I would always point out that, in real life when you heard an escaped convict was on the loose, you wouldn’t decide that was a good time to take a date to the abandoned asylum.”
“Personally,” Mirabelle said, “and it’s just my opinion, but an abandoned asylum never makes a good location for a date.”
A raven landed on the roof of the ambulance.
“Let’s get the wheelchair and go,” Kim said.
The chair’s wheels were partially buried in wind-blown leaves. She had to tug to get it free. With nothing holding it open, the door swung sharply closed. As the door slammed into the frame, the fractured glass shattered, breaking the silence. As glass tinkled to the ground, the raven took flight. As the sound of its wings diminished, it was replaced a rustling of cloth, a rasp of air, a creak of bones, all coming from inside the hospital.
“Zombies,” Kim said, pushing the chair down the ramp. “Mirabelle, take the chair.” She unslung the rifle. “Let’s draw them out. Kill them now, or kill them later, we will have to kill them.”
The zombies drew nearer. The first emerged into the shadow of light shining through the broken door. Dressed entirely in black leather, right down to the gloves, it almost looked human, except for the face. As it swung its arms left and right, the fingers brushing against the corridor’s walls, Kim fired. The bullet slammed into its temple. The creature fell, toppling into the zombie behind. That creature, dressed in stained scrubs, tripped and fell, but the third zombie, wearing the remains of battledress, stumbled over both, and nearly made it to the door before Kim had a clear shot. She fired. Again. Again. Again. And the undead kept coming, stumbling over the dead, trampling them underfoot as they pushed onward and out towards the doors.
“There’s too many,” Kim said. “Almost… No, back up.” They both retreated a step. Rahinder fired his crossbow, then drew a pistol from his belt. Kim felled a gangly creature, also in military uniform, but missing an arm beneath the elbow.
“I’d thought…” She fired. “That they’d fall…” She fired. “And block the…” She fired. “Corridor. No. Such. Luck.” Her magazine was empty. She reloaded. Rahinder fired, and the first zombie reached the door. It pushed against it, and the door swung open. Kim fired. The zombie fell into the drift of rotting leaves, and once again, the door was blocked ajar.
“Kim! Your left!” Mirabelle called.
The undead were pushing their way out of a wider door further to the southwest. From the position of the buildings, Kim didn’t think that it was even connected to the corridor near them.
“Back to the road,” Kim said. “Back.” She fired one last shot, then jogged after Rahinder and Mirabelle, who was still pushing the empty wheelchair. She paused on the other side of the barrier.
“Some of them are dressed for an operation,” Mirabelle said. “Is this what happened to the survivors in Dundalk? They left the hotel and came here?”
Kim raised the rifle, and had a wide choice for her next target. “No. There are too many. Over fifty are outside, and some are still coming. I think some escaped here and made it to the hotel.” She lowered the rifle. “That was stupid. Of course it was stupid. Back up the road, come on, towards the hotel. No, bring the wheelchair. We can move faster than the zombies.”
“What was stupid?” Rahinder asked.
“We’re only sixty miles from Dublin,” she said. “I bet there’s a motorway that runs straight here. Maybe a train, too. When Dublin fell, where would those soldiers who took refuge there have gone?”
“Leon and his people headed south,” Rahinder said. “Towards Waterford.”
“Right, but what happened to the others? Leon’s wasn’t the only military unit that was sent to Ireland. Did you see those zombies? Some are dressed in scrubs, but half of them are in uniform. Zombie.” It was ahead of them, staggering out onto the road, dressed in jeans and a ski-jacket. Kim took careful aim, and fired. “When they fled Dublin, they’d have left in a convoy.”
“There are no military vehicles here,” Rahinder said.
“Because those would have been on the planes, and so abandoned at the airport. Perhaps they were abandoned at an airport in some foreign country. No, they’d have taken whatever vehicles they could find in Dublin. Ambulances, for instance. And they’d have arranged somewhere to meet in case they had to split up. A hospital is a good rendezvous since it’d be listed on every map.”
“But why Dundalk?” Mirabelle asked.
“This wasn’t their final destination,” Kim said. “They would have wanted to get to Northern Ireland. Their planes came to Ireland while Britain was shooting down aircraft and sinking boats. Dublin invited them because Quigley had broadcast his plans for a de-facto invasion of the Republic. When Ireland fell, when they had to flee Dublin, where else in the world could they go? Where else would they think there was a chance at survival? They would aim for Northern Ireland, assuming there was a redoubt, and a welcome for a group of soldiers who shared the same enemy. The people in the hotel came after. They unpacked some of their food, putting it on shelves in the kitchen. Some of those survivors began searching the houses in the town, and had time to box up the food we found in the college. At least now we know the shape of why they fled.”
The wheelchair caught in a pothole, and clattered onto its side.
“I could run faster if I wasn’t pushing this chair,” Mirabelle said.
“We can’t run,” Kim said. “We’d lose the zombies, and we need them to follow.”
“Back to the hotel?” Rahinder asked.
“We’ll fight them there. From a secure position,” Kim said. “Kill them now, or kill them later, but they are between us and the harbour. Whether we stay or leave, if we want to live, they have to die.”
They reached the hotel only a few paces behind Bran and the tail end of a group of a hundred, each carrying a heavy pack.
“We’ve got close to three-thousand kilos,” he said cheerfully. “And there’s still more in the ship. Another three trips, maybe four, and we’ll have it all.”
“There’s no time, not now,” Kim said. “We reached the hospital. There were zombies. At least a hundred are following us.”
“Get the bags inside,” Bran said. “Quick now.” He turned back to Kim. “Keep watch. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Take the wheelchair to Mary,” Kim said to Mirabelle. “We need her mobile and calming people down.”
“I’ll get more bolts,” Rahinder said.
Kim stood in the road alone, waiting for
the undead.
At first, it was easy. The zombies came in a diffuse line, funnelled by hedgerows and property-walls, slowed by the camber of the road and their own decayed limbs. Kim took a knee, and took her time. The first was a soldier, still wearing his pack. She pictured him, not as a person, but as a target with a bull’s-eye centred on his forehead. She fired. The zombie fell two hundred metres from the barricade. A civilian, then another soldier, and then another civilian. One-by-one, bullet-by-bullet, she fired until the magazine was empty. Her last bullet felled a zombie dressed in scrubs and covered head-to-toe in dried blood, and it died one hundred and eighty metres from the hotel. Twenty-five bull’s-eyes for thirty bullets; it was a good ratio, but the undead still came on.
She retreated back behind the barricade of tables and mattress frames. Bran reappeared with two-dozen others. Each carried a rifle and in such a way that it was clear the weapon was a familiar friend.
“Form up!” Bran called. “Form a line. Take your time. Make each bullet count.”
“I’m out,” Kim said. “Do you have a spare?”
“Here.” Bran handed her a magazine. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
He left, and Kim climbed onto a table so that she could better see the approaching foe. She reloaded her rifle, but she didn’t fire. Not yet.
“How many were in the hospital?” a man asked. Pete, she thought his name was. He’d helped out in Scott Higson’s bakery.
“A hundred,” Kim said. “At least a hundred.”
“There’s far more than that,” Yasmina Haldava said. Hers was a name Kim knew well. She was one of those who’d worked in Rachel’s pub. As soon as Rachel’s perfidy had been exposed, Yasmina had volunteered the names of everyone she could remember ever having gone into the pub. As far as Kim was concerned, a cloud of suspicion still hung over the woman, but Bran clearly trusted her.
“I think that the hospital was a rendezvous point for military survivors from Dublin,” Kim said.
“Makes sense,” Pete said. “Lots of road signs to a hospital. They’re easy to find.”
“And the zombies all came from the hospital?” Yasmina asked.
“I think so,” Kim said. “We didn’t see many others on our way to the college.”
“What college?” Pete asked.
“That’s where the wind turbine is,” Kim said.
She said no more, because where the undead came from didn’t matter, only that they were coming. And no one was shooting. She berated herself. They were waiting for the order.
“Fire when you have a target,” she said. “Like Bran said, make each bullet count.”
The undead fell as a slow and steady fire came from the row of rifles, but the bodies were falling at one hundred metres, now, and the pack was growing thicker. She told herself that was good, that if this was the main mass of the undead, their rear-most rank couldn’t be far behind. She repeated that to herself as she finally raised her rifle adding her bullets to the onslaught. The magazine was soon empty, and the undead still came on.
“I’m out,” Pete said. “What do we do now?”
“Find Bran,” Kim said. “Get some more ammo.”
She stood on the table, watching the undead get closer and closer as the last of the bullets were fired. Yasmina drew her machete. Kim was still debating whether to call a retreat when Bran ran back, Pete a few steps behind.
“This is almost all we have,” Bran said handing a bag to Yasmina. “Take one, pass it on.”
“This is all there is?” Kim asked, taking a magazine, and passing the bag on.
“Most people who left Anglesey with a rifle only had the magazine in their weapon,” Bran said. “But there weren’t many rifles on the ship. They were only given to those who went out onto the mainland. The ammunition was distributed last week to Belfast and Elysium. It’s not like we had much use for it on Anglesey.”
“What about the crossbows?” she asked.
“Considering the time it takes to reload, we’d only manage three volleys before they reached us.” Bran looked towards the approaching undead. “Two volleys,” he said. He gestured for her to jump down from the table, then to follow him a few steps away from the line. He lowered his voice. “We can’t fight them hand-to-hand out here. The fighters, the real fighters, the soldiers, the people like you and me, they aren’t here. They’re in Elysium. They’re in Belfast. They were sent to the Shannon Estuary. These people are good. They’re solid, but this is the first action they’ve seen since the outbreak. We need to fall back to the hotel, hold the enemy back on a narrow front with support from the crossbows firing the windows above.”
“If we do that,” Kim said, “they’ll surround us. There won’t be any retreat, but there isn’t, is there? No, there’s no retreat, not now, not for us. Fall back!” She called out. “To the hotel.”
The squad hesitated, and a few looked to Bran.
“Go,” Bran said.
That they looked to him reassured her. It suggested an independence of thought that might get them through the next few hours. There was no basis in reality for that, but she was willing to seize even the most meagre glimmer of hope. She climbed back up to the table, watching the undead stagger towards the hotel. There were at least a thousand. She looked up at the hotel towering above them. They’d rescued Bran from a rooftop in Birmingham, could the helicopter rescue Annette and Daisy from the roof of the hotel? She hoped they wouldn’t have to find out.
“It’s time to go inside,” Bran said.
Kim followed him, but waited outside the doors until she heard the first of the undead reach the barricade by the wall. There was a brief moment where she thought the barrier might hold. Within seconds, dozens more reached the crude blockade of furniture. They pushed and shoved, and were pushed in turn by the scores of zombies behind. Wood splintered, metal buckled, and, as the first of the creatures was propelled into the car park, Kim saw what they’d forgotten. The water containers were still outside. The weather had remained dry, and the containers were empty, but when this was over, they would not be able to use those buckets and trays again.
“What else didn’t we remember?” She hurried inside. “Seal the doors.” And then she realised they’d forgotten the food. She saw Dee-Dee. “Go to the kitchen, grab anyone you need, and get them to take the food upstairs!”
They were trapped now, until the zombies were all dead. The helicopter could bring more ammunition, and as long as they kept the zombies outside, or at least downstairs, they could kill them. And she realised that she was being far too optimistic. Their food supply mostly consisted of raw barley. How were they going to cook that? Could the helicopter bring water?
There was a shout from the reception area. Ken was by the barricaded doors.
“They’re coming!” he yelled.
A palm slammed into the doors; it was followed by a face as that zombie was pushed against the glass. Kim grabbed a sofa, upturning it, adding its weight to the barricade, and blocking sight of that creature. She took a step back, and drew her machete, waiting for the barrier to break. But it didn’t.
“Told you,” Ken said. “It’s simply a matter of proper construction.”
But that was only one set of doors in one small corner of the building.
“Keep watch,” Kim said. She walked the corridors, checking the other doors and windows. There was, thankfully, little to see. The doors to the conference and meeting rooms were closed, though she could hear the undead battering against the windows in the rooms beyond. She was grateful that she couldn’t see the undead, but the sentries in the corridor clearly weren’t. She offered what words of comfort she could, and made her way to the restaurant, meeting Dee-Dee coming the other way.
“This is the last bag,” Dee-Dee said.
“The rest of the food is upstairs?”
“Prudence already had it under control. Can you take it, I want to get back to Ken.”
“Yes, of course.” She took the bag, a canvas ho
ldall containing a mixed assortment of herbs and spices that Dee-Dee must have swept from the shelf. She would trust Bran and his people, and that the restaurant was secure for now.
Upstairs, she heard Mary encouraging people, though she wasn’t giving orders. It wasn’t clear that any one was, but they weren’t really needed. Windows had been smashed so that the crossbows could be aimed outside. From the elevated position, and with so many targets, they were more effective, but there weren’t enough bolts.
She went to find Daisy, Annette, and the sat-phone, and found them in a bedroom just above the main entrance. Mirabelle was there, too, but it was Annette who held the rifle. The bag containing Kim’s personal stash of ammunition was at her feet. As Kim entered, Annette pulled the trigger.
“Got one. That’s seventeen, Daisy. Seventeen.”
Kim pushed down an all-too-familiar pang of regret for their lost childhood.
“I need the sat-phone,” she said.
“Oh, hey. What for?” Annette asked. “Are you calling for help?”
“I don’t know, and maybe not yet, but soon,” Kim said. “I need them to be ready.” She took the phone from the bag, and dialled. “We’re surrounded,” she said the moment that Sholto answered. “There’s about a thousand zombies ringing the hotel.”
“About eight hundred, I think,” Annette said.
“How many injured?” Sholto asked.
“I don’t… I don’t think anyone is yet,” Kim said. “The barricade outside is holding, but we’re almost out of bullets and will be out of crossbow bolts soon. Can you fill the helicopter with ammo and bring it over? We’ll need water, too, if we’re trapped here overnight.”
“Of course, but the weather’s turning,” Sholto said.
“It is?” She looked outside and up. The clouds were denser than the morning, but there was no rain. “What does that mean?”
“The wind’s picking up,” Sholto said. “We think a storm is on the way. We’ll come, but it might take longer than half an hour. Where do we land?”
Kim leaned out of the window. The angle was wrong, and she could only see a small sliver of the road leading to the hotel, but there didn’t seem to be many undead on it.