Britain's End

by Frank Tayell

  “There was,” Nilda said. “It’s changed in the last… gosh, sixteen years, I think. Most of these tower blocks hadn’t been built. There were other buildings here, but the old must have been torn down to make way for the new. So it went in London.”

  “Right. And that’s the cathedral where the Royals got married?” Jay asked.

  “No, that’s Westminster Abbey, down near Parliament,” Nilda said. “The cathedral was Roman Catholic.”

  “Oh. So were you… um… religious?”

  Nilda smiled. “Not even close. I worked near here. It was…” She took a few steps away from the piazza back towards the main road. As she did, she caught sight of Denby. The Marine stood guard in the middle of Victoria Street. Next to her were the bags containing the meagre loot they’d collected during this, their last expedition into London. The Marine raised a questioning hand. Nilda waved a reassuring one in return.

  Clumsily, the Marine signed “Five minutes.”

  Nilda nodded, then turned back to Jay. “The building I worked in has gone, too. They built that shopping centre on top of it.”

  “Oh. What kind of work was it?” Jay asked.

  “Very low-paid admin. Stuffing envelopes, answering the phone, delivering post, that kind of thing.”

  “This was before email?” Jay asked.

  “I’m not that old,” Nilda said. “It wasn’t the best job in the world. Sadly, it wasn’t the worst I ever had. On balance, it was better than stacking shelves, worse than driving a cab. The days were awfully long, and seemed far longer than that. They called that kind of work a nine-to-five, but I had to wake before six to get to work in time. Most nights, I wouldn’t get home until after seven in the evening. Factor in some time to sleep, do laundry, cook, clean, shop, and there wasn’t much time left over for me. That’s why I liked coming here to the piazza on my lunch breaks.” She smiled. “And at other times, too. One of my bosses would often make me go out to get him coffee. I’d said I knew a place that did the best in London. It was just a latte with five spoons of sugar. He’d give me what I’d earn in an hour for a cup of that coffee. Since it only cost me a little more than a pound, I’d pocket the rest, and take a few minutes to sit on the bench there.”

  “Seriously?” Jay said. “After all those lessons you gave me about being honest? I’m… I’m shocked. But also a little impressed.”

  “He wasn’t a particularly pleasant man,” Nilda said. “And it was a particularly poorly paid job. The company went bust a few months after I quit, but before then, I met your father. I used to come here because there was a bench. I’d bring my sandwiches, and sit amid the dirt and fumes and wonder what my future held. In not one of those dreams did I picture myself standing here with a submachine gun in my hands.”

  Jay grinned. “Yeah, I often wonder what people back at school’d say if they could see me now.” The wind rose, the door banged open, and both of them turned to look at it, before again scanning the roads and alleys that led onto the piazza.

  “It was a nice place once,” Nilda said. “Try to picture it without these rotting leaves, the plastic, the charred wood, and broken glass.”

  “And without the bones,” Jay added. “So my dad worked around here, too?”

  “In a jewellers down near the old coach station. His pay was barely better than mine, but they were training him. It would have been a job for life, a comfortable one, too, after his apprenticeship was over.”

  “So how did you meet? How did it happen?”

  “There were a few benches here back then. One day, a man came over and asked if I minded if he sat on the same bench. That was your father. You have to remember that this is London. There was an etiquette, you see. It was such a crowded city, with most of us living in such small rooms, that respecting one another’s space was vital. Other than in exceptional circumstances, you would never talk to a stranger, that would be intruding into their attempt to find inner peace.”

  “Hmm.” Jay said. “I think I prefer how it was in Cumbria.”

  Nilda smiled. “If a bench was empty, you’d sit at one end. The next person would go to an empty bench as far away from any already-seated people as possible. If there were no empty benches, then it was permitted to sit on one that was already occupied, but right at the far end. Maybe, if you met one another’s eyes you might give a very tight smile, but you would never, ever speak. Only if there was no other choice might a third person sit in the middle, but again, barely with any eye contact. Your father actually asking me whether I minded if he sat down, that was… disconcerting.”

  “Okay, it’s official, Londoners were weird,” Jay said.

  “I utterly agree,” Nilda said. “The next day, he came and sat down on the same bench, this time despite there being other seats available. And he said hello.”

  “And?” Jay asked.

  “And nothing, he just said hello,” Nilda said. “On the third day, he introduced himself.”

  “Yep, weird,” Jay said. “Definitely weird.”

  “It transpired that, about the same time as I took my lunch break, he’d take the morning’s takings to the bank. He’d seen me, and… and that’s how we met. He just came over and talked to me. The rest is… the rest was a whirlwind. I regret that we never married. We were going to, but he wanted to buy the ring first. He’d seen one, you see, on the afternoon that we first met. He thought that was a sign. It was brought into the jewellers, and sold as part of an estate sale.”

  “A what?”

  “It had belonged to someone who’d died.”

  “Oh.”

  “The ring was priced at a thousand pounds, and that was after his employer offered a discount. If you ask me, I think Mr Rafferty was trying to be kind.”

  “Rafferty? That was his boss?”

  “It was. He was a nice man, a good man, a kind man. I think he was trying to push your father into buying a cheaper ring. Something he could actually afford, so he could put the money to real use, but he’d set his mind on that ring. He was stubborn like that, your father. Like you, in many ways. They put the ring aside for him, and he was paying it off one week at a time. Just after you were born, Mr Rafferty offered him the ring. Your father didn’t want to take it. Buying it outright was important to him. He was a week away from owning the ring when he died. They offered it to me, but I didn’t want it at the time. It was too strong a reminder of what I’d lost. Then they offered me a job, his job, and his apprenticeship.”

  “Okay, well, that is the weirdest,” Jay said.

  “Not really. It was the most practical and useful thing they could do. It would have been a genuine help, I think. But I had the settlement, and I wanted to leave London. I wanted a new life. Looking back, before the outbreak, I thought I’d made the wrong decision. I told myself that I’d left London because of you, that I’d done it for you. That it was a way to give you everything that I’d missed out on. I was kidding myself. I left because I wanted a new start. I wanted… I don’t know, but that decision was all about me, not you. It would have been far better for us both if we’d stayed. I should have taken your father’s old job, working in a small firm that was nothing but kindness.”

  “Of course, then we’d have been in London during the outbreak,” Jay said.

  “Exactly. It’s not often that you experience something routine or familiar, knowing that it’s for the last time. Usually it’s only with hindsight, and with regret, that we look back on something done or said and wish things had been different. My last time here, with your father, we were discussing whether they’d ever fill in a pothole outside my flat. It’s not exactly a romantic moment to echo down the ages. That’s why I’m glad we were able to come here together. I can say a proper goodbye.”

  “What do you think happened to the ring?” Jay asked.

  “I imagine they sold it. Maybe they didn’t. The firm had been run by the same family for over two hundred years; they operated on a different time scale to most. I’ll tell you this, thou
gh, if I had taken it, I’d have sold it a couple of years ago when our cupboard was bare.”

  “I don’t think you would,” Jay said.

  Nilda smiled, but was saved having to either lie or disappoint by the door to the cathedral opening. George and Jennings came out.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Nilda said.

  “I think so,” George said. “It’ll do as a reminder for Mary, if not quite an artefact for future generations.”

  “There were bodies in there,” Jennings said. “Corpses. Quite a lot of ’em.”

  “Zombies?” Jay asked.

  “Some,” Jennings said, “but not all.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nilda said. “Time is marching on, and we don’t want to miss the tide. Parliament next, then… then the Tower.” She had been about to call it home, but it wasn’t that any more.

  The moment that she’d had the call from Belfast to say that Chester’s plane had crashed, she’d wanted to take Lorraine’s ship and cross the Channel. That moment of madness had only lasted a few seconds, vanishing as she’d heard the children’s laughter. Nevertheless, as soon as Leon and his ships arrived, they would be crossing to France. They would find Chester and the others, and then search the coast for ships in which humanity could survive the next year. She smiled. In the end, it sounded as if they were all staying together. The smile vanished as she remembered the reason they were going to make the crossing. There was someone truly evil in Belfast who’d sabotaged a plane, a ship, and probably the nuclear power plant as well. Yes, all in all, it was a good thing that they were going to France.

  “We ready?” Denby asked, as the four of them joined her on the road.

  “Lead the way,” George said.

  “It’s that way,” Jennings added.

  “I can read a map, Norm,” Denby said.

  They each picked up a bag, though none was particularly heavy, and most of the contents were warm clothing found in a department store in the shopping precinct opposite the piazza. That wasn’t why they’d come to central London. Nilda wasn’t so blind to the twists of fate to boldly state that she would never come back to the capital, but she didn’t think it was likely. She’d wanted to say goodbye to the city, and to take something of it with them. When, last night, she’d proposed tacking on the expedition to their last trip to the bunker under Whitehall, a debate had ensued as to what artefacts and museum pieces they should salvage. Practical considerations precluded travelling too far, besides, they lived in a museum. The Tower contained far more historical treasures than they had room for. They had gone to Downing Street, then to Buckingham Palace, where they’d once again failed to get inside. That had brought them to Victoria, and to the cathedral via the department store where they’d seen the winter jackets on a sale-rack behind a grimy window. Their next and final stop would be the ruins of Parliament.

  The submariner and Marine took the lead, and Nilda took the rear, taking in the buildings towering above them. It was different to how she remembered it. Cleaner, somehow, despite the rubbish, rubble, broken glass, and drifts of leaves gathered around the occasional rusting car. She felt she should find some symbolism in that, and in this final farewell to the capital and the civilisation that had created it. The city already felt alien, unfamiliar. She would not regret leaving. It was naive to think that she would be leaving her regrets behind, but she had some new happy memories to take with them.

  Denby stopped, raising a warning hand. Jennings ran forward, pivoting to aim his rifle down a side street. The barrel moved left, right, up, and then slowly came down before he waved the all-clear. Unlike the Marine, he didn’t attempt any sign language.

  Last night, Leon and his ships had reached the Kentish coastal town of Whitstable, not far from Sheppey. By now, they would be nearing the Thames. Depending on wind and tide, they would reach the Tower either tonight, or in the early hours of tomorrow morning. The horde would reach the outskirts of London about ten hours after that.

  Nilda didn’t think the horde would destroy London in the way that it had obliterated Birmingham. There were too many rivers, too many roads, too many buildings to act as breakwaters, funnelling the undead this and way that but never in a straight line. No, the horde wouldn’t destroy London in the same way that it had destroyed Birmingham, but the old capital would be destroyed. She’d asked Belfast to look at the satellite images and the photographs that the helicopters had taken, to see what happened when the undead reached a river. Her worst fears were confirmed. The lead ranks formed a dam with their bodies, crushed beneath the feet of the millions walking behind. They would do that with the Thames. The river, upstream, would burst its banks. The land would flood, and the landscape would change. In a year, it was anyone’s guess what route the rivers would take on their way to the sea.

  The only certainty she had was that, if ten million truly had descended on Birmingham, not all would have left it. Far less would have made the journey all the way to London. However many there were, it was too many to stay and fight. With Chester now in France, none of them wanted to. No, they would rescue him, and find a ship, and then begin a life as strange and wonderful as their time in the Tower.

  She forced down the nagging doubt, the question of what they would do if they couldn’t find Chester, or worse, found him dead. There would be plenty of long, dark nights ahead for that particular dread to keep her company.

  Ahead, a single-decker bus was skewed across the road. The route on the side showed its home was deep within the East End. On the window next to the front-most doors was a hand-written sign. The words had been faded by sun, and the glass inside was tinged green, but Evacuation Service was still faintly legible. Had the bus collected stragglers along the evacuation route? Had the driver realised what death they were being taken to? More likely, some of Quigley’s people at one of the muster points, their gruesome task done, had brought the bus here as per their orders, and here, they had died. All for what? Power? Greed? Fear? Whatever label was applied, it had been utterly futile.

  Denby raised her hand, then dropped to a crouch. Jennings pointed towards the bus, but the Marine shook her head.

  “What is it?” George asked in a low whisper that echoed across the desolate street. Denby shook her head again, and rose from her crouch just as the floor-to-ceiling windows of the shop on their left shattered. Marching almost in step, three zombies staggered through the cascade of falling glass. The jagged shards shredded skin and ripped through their rotten clothing. It had been hardwearing gear, civilian in cut and colour, designed for hardy outdoor pursuits. Denby fired a fraction of a second before Jennings, and he a second before Nilda saw the pair of moving shadows deep within the shop. There were more of the undead inside. She raised her submachine gun, but had barely brought it to bear before Denby fired again, and the third zombie fell. A moment later, Nilda had a target as a soldier stepped into the breach. At least, the zombie was wearing fatigues. Nilda fired, her bullet slamming into the zombie’s skull. Denby fired again. The last zombie fell, and all was still within the shop.

  “It’s a lot easier when we have guns, isn’t it?” Jay said, breaking the silence. “They must have been with the people who Quigley tried to kill.”

  “He tried to kill everyone,” Jennings said, turning back to the bus. “Look at that. Evacuation Service? Talk about gall. Talk about bloody-minded nerve.”

  “I meant that they were soldiers,” Jay said. “The ones on… well, not on Quigley’s side.”

  “I wouldn’t call the people who followed him soldiers,” Jennings said, walking around the side of the bus. “I’d— Woah!”

  They’d been wrong. The noise they’d heard, the noise that had stopped them in their tracks, had come from behind the bus. The zombie had squatted motionless in the lee of the vehicle. It had heard them approach, and had stood with a rustle of cloth and a rasping sigh that they had ignored when the shop’s window had shattered. It staggered out, arms raised, mouth open. Jennings spun around, r
aising his rifle, but he was too close. He pulled the trigger, but the barrel was only at chest-height. His bullet slammed through the zombie’s sternum. It was a shot that would have killed a person, but the inhuman creature lurched on. Its hands curled around the submariner’s arms. Jennings tried to pull himself free, tried to step backwards, but the zombie stepped with him. Its snapping mouth inched closer to the sailor’s throat. Jennings yelled, and that turned into a coughing gag as Jay’s bullet smashed through the zombie’s skull spraying black blood into the submariner’s mouth.

  Jennings shook himself free, spitting gore onto the road.

  “Here, son,” George said, handing him his water bottle. “Rinse and spit.”

  Jennings gargled a mouthful and spat. “Thanks. Good shot.”

  Jay gave a nonchalant shrug, clearly trying not to grin.

  “Parliament’s ahead,” Nilda said. “Or it was.”

  There wasn’t much left of the working monument. It wasn’t just the Palace of Westminster that had been hit. St Margaret’s, Westminster Abbey; it was impossible to tell where one had begun and where the other had ended, though both had been utterly destroyed. The Supreme Court was missing its upper floors, though a lot of that rubble was to be found on the grassed-over Parliament Square. There was no grass now.

  “The statues are gone,” George said, picking his way across the rubble. “Mandela, Gandhi, Peel, Disraeli; it looks like Churchill is the only one still standing.”

  “He’s not really standing,” Jay said, following the old man through the uneven boulders of reinforced cement. “He’s more doubled-over. Was there a statue of Attlee here?”

  “Not that I can recall,” George said.

  There was a creak, then a tinkling crash as glass fell from a distant, broken window frame.

  “We should hurry,” Denby said. “But I can’t let you go into the ruins.”

  “We don’t really need to take anything,” Nilda said. “It’s what we’re leaving behind that’s important.” She looked about the ruins for a suitable surface, her eyes finally settling on the statue of Winston Churchill. “Bent but unbroken,” she said. “It’s appropriate, don’t you think?”