Surviving The Evacuation (Book 4): Unsafe Haven

by Frank Tayell

  Nilda let out a deep breath.

  “That’s one problem solved,” she said to Tuck. The woman gave a noncommittal shrug. “Right. Just another million to deal with. Come on then.” She headed towards the pavilion.

  “Listen up,” she said loudly. “Tomorrow we start on the perimeter. We need high walls.”

  “It’s got walls,” Rob said.

  “Not all the way around. A lot of it is just railings. In a few weeks, perhaps just in a few days, the undead will gather outside. That’s inevitable, so we need to be prepared. We’re going to reinforce those railings with fencing. We can collect it from the houses and back gardens—”

  “And who put you in charge?” Rob cut in.

  “You don’t strike me as the kind of person who votes, Rob. But if you want, we’ll do that now. Hands up who wants me to lead.”

  Fourteen hands, some instantly others hesitantly, went up.

  “Majority rule, Rob. Breakfast will be at five. At first light we’ll go out. I want you and you and…” She started pointing and allocating tasks to each of the group. It was only when she’d finished, and turned around to go and talk to Jay that she saw Tuck had been standing behind her, the shotgun held not quite casually in her hands.

  17th March

  “How much does it come to?”

  “Forty kilos of barley,” the girl said. “It was all still at the back of the pub, just where you said it would be.”

  “And the vinegar,” Jay added. “That was Deb’s idea. You know, for preserving.”

  Nilda glanced at the girl standing next to her son. She was a year older than Jay and had come in on her own the previous evening, two hours after the sun had set and an hour after a party of four had cycled in from Nottingham.

  “But vinegar won’t go off,” Nilda said eyeing the catering sized jugs. “We could have got it later.”

  “Not if we get surrounded like you think might happen. And there’s the flour too. Two sacks of it,” Jay said. “And the rats would have gotten that. We think they might be a problem, soon.” He glanced at Deborah as if for confirmation.

  “Good work,” she said. “Both of you. It’s been a good day.”

  Jay shrugged and the two of them went off. The moment she was sure her son wouldn’t notice, Nilda allowed herself a small smile. It was good to see him doing something so normal as boasting on the behalf of a girl to improve his mother’s opinion of her. And it had been a good day. The flour, the barley, and the odd assortment of condiments had more than made up for the newcomers. In addition to those who’d arrived the previous evening, there had been seven more that day. All came from the south, and most had been heading towards the Lake District. All had seen the smoke. All had been disappointed to find a group of survivors who were much the same as them. But, to one degree or another, they had all buckled down to whatever job they were given.

  A good day, then, despite the undead. All of the groups that had gone out had seen them. There had been some fights, some of the undead had been killed, and everyone had returned unhurt. Rob had claimed to have killed five though no one else had seen it happen. She thought he was bragging.

  They had planted some seeds, and had even found a few seedlings at one of the garden centres. They had been wilting, the dirt in their pots bone dry, but there was a chance they might take. Yes, she thought, it had been a good day.

  18th March

  Nilda decided she’d take personal charge of gathering the rest of the materials to reinforce the school’s walls. There was a park less than a mile away on to which scores of houses backed. Each of those had a fence. It was, she’d guessed and Sebastian had calculated, more than enough to ensure that there was a solid barrier around the school.

  She had one team tearing down the fences, another ferrying the fencing from the park to the school, whilst everyone else worked at putting them back up. They’d found a trailer next to the park-keeper’s shed. It was a heavy thing, designed to be pulled by a van or tractor. It required more effort to pull and push than it would to have carried the fencing by hand, but it was easier to drop a handle to grab a weapon when the undead appeared. And they did appear. Twice, when the group with the trailer returned to the park, they reported having been attacked by the undead. But, partly because Tuck was with them, they had held their own.

  Nilda would have preferred to be doing that task herself. The difficulty was one of trust. As they were pulling down the fencing someone had to go into the houses to gather any food that might be left. And whilst that was a task anyone could do, she didn’t trust any of them not to keep some of it for themselves.

  It was nearing lunchtime when she found her first occupied house. From the outside it appeared no different to any of the others. She checked the back door. It was locked. She levered it open with the crowbar.

  She heard movement almost instantly. Something was upstairs. She knew what it was. What it had to be. She glanced over her shoulder. Of course, she could ask for help, but out of the people nearby, Rob was the closest. She neither thought she could rely on him, nor wished to appear weak in front of him. She went in alone.

  Step by cautious step she moved through the house. It wasn’t large, and soon she found herself at the bottom of the stairs. The noise kept on, but no zombie appeared. She began to climb the stairs, fear manifesting as anger at the inconsideration of this unseen creature. She reached the top, but the noise didn’t stop, nor did it get any closer. It was coming from behind a door at the end of the landing. She took a step towards it. The creak of a shifting floorboard echoed through the house. The sound got louder, but she was now convinced the noise wasn’t coming from immediately behind the door. A door that, she now clearly saw, was held closed with a hastily installed padlock. There was no sign of a key.

  She gripped the crowbar, braced herself, and broke the door open. The moment the wood splintered she leapt back, bringing the crowbar up, ready to strike. The door swung slowly inward. There was nothing behind it. She breathed out and stepped forward. She saw into the room. On the bed, tied up by its ankles and feet, was the zombie.

  Male, she thought, somewhere the right side of fifty. It thrashed and twisted. The ropes held tight, but with each convulsive spasm, they bit deeper into flesh, ripping through decaying skin, muscle, and fat. From those wounds, thick red-brown pus oozed down onto the soiled bed-sheets.

  It was obvious what had happened. He had been infected, then tied up and left to die. That was cruelty personified, she thought. Better to kill the person, than let him turn into this type of creature. She walked over to the bed, gripped the crowbar two handed, and punched it down into the zombie’s head.

  She wiped the weapon clean on the edge of the bed, and then went back downstairs to check the kitchen for food. There was none. She went outside.

  “What happened?” Rob asked, taking a step back when he saw her expression.

  “Zombie,” she said. And she would have left it at that, but others had moved closer to hear. “He’d been tied to the bed and left to die. I did the merciful thing.” She regretted the last words. They sounded trite, like some line from a bad movie.

  “Merciful? They’re zombies. Not people,” Rob said.

  She stared at him for a moment. There was nothing provocative in his words, nor even his tone, but his stance, his demeanour, it all spoke of a man waiting for his chance.

  She nodded towards the approaching trailer.

  “Load it up, and go back with it,” she said.

  Before he could argue, she turned and went into the next house.

  After that, she tried to be more cautious. But she felt an increased sense of urgency. There was so much to do, so little time, and yet all their lives, and especially Jay’s, relied on getting it all done.

  Four houses, later she came out to find the small group sitting idly in the sun, next to the large stack of fencing.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, dropping the two food-filled bags she’d brought out from the hous
e.

  “That’s it,” a man said. Nilda thought his name was Terry, though it might have been Jerry. “We’re done. That’s all the fencing. Just got to wait for the cart.”

  Nilda nodded and dropped the bags. She was about to sit down herself, but then she stopped.

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  “Since it was here?” Terry, or possibly Jerry, asked. “Half an hour. Forty minutes. Maybe a bit more.”

  Too long. Nilda started moving towards the school. After a few paces she began to run. She didn’t check to see if the others followed.

  When she got to the school, her worst fears were realised. A group of zombies lay dead around a section of the wall. She saw her son kneeling amongst them.

  “Jay! What happened! Are you okay?” she yelled as she ran over to him.

  “I’m fine but…” he trailed off.

  “Were you bitten?”

  “No. Not me. Deb.”

  She’d not even noticed the girl lying at his feet.

  “Let me see,” she said firmly, bending down to examine the wound. The girl’s jeans were torn. Her hands gripped tightly around them. A thin trickle of blood seeped slowly between the gaps in her fingers.

  “We need to get her inside. Clean the wound. Bandage it—”

  “What for?” Rob asked. “What’s the point. She’s going to die. Do the merciful thing. Isn’t that what you said?” She’d not noticed him standing there, a crowbar in his hands, the end dripping with the red-brown pus of the undead. At his feet was the boy, Charlie. The one she’d thought was almost pleasant. And lying a few feet away from his body, her head caved in, was Marjory Stowe.

  Nilda bent down and picked up the wounded girl, and without another word, carried her over to the pavilion.

  Jay, with Sebastian a few paces behind, followed her into the changing rooms.

  “Get me something to bandage the wound,” she snapped. “And get him out of here.”

  Sebastian led Jay away, returning alone a few moments later with a first aid kit. He handed it to her, then took a step to one side, and took out a chisel from his belt, placing it on a bench out of the girl’s sight. Nilda stared at him for a moment, then nodded her understanding. He left. She bandaged the wound as best she could. The bleeding slowed, but didn’t stop.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

  “It’s not though, is it?” Deborah replied.

  “You’ll be fine,” Nilda said. She didn’t believe it. The cuts had bled too fast and too much for such a shallow wound.

  The girl smiled. Her mouth twitched as if she was trying to speak. Then she coughed. Nilda raised her hand, stroking the girl’s cheek. She felt hot. Too hot. The girl closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed. Then stopped.

  Nilda breathed out, looked down at the body, then at the chisel. She reached out for it, but just couldn’t bring herself to pick it up. Then she realised someone was behind her. She turned. It was Tuck. She stepped past Nilda, picked up the chisel, then knelt next to the girl. Tuck placed a hand on the girl’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Then placed the chisel close to the girl’s ear.

  “No,” Nilda murmured, half moving her hand to stop the former soldier. Tuck glanced across at her, shook her head, then plunged the chisel through the girl’s ear, deep into her brain.

  Nilda bit back a wracking sob. She wanted to scream. She wanted to bellow her rage, and rail against such a cruel and capricious world. She bit back the anger. Suppressing it. There wasn’t time. She glanced over at Tuck. The woman seemed lost in her own thoughts.

  “Come on. There’s work to be done,” Nilda said. “There’s always work to be done.”

  Night fell as they brought back the last load of fencing from the park. They used up the last of the car batteries to keep the lights on whilst they finished erecting it around the school. Only when it was done did Nilda think about the body. She went to look for a shovel, only to find Tuck had already dug a grave behind the groundskeeper’s shed, out of sight of the pavilion.

  “What happened?” she asked Sebastian that evening. She’d tried to talk to Jay, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He’d thrown himself into the work with furious abandon. He was trying to lose himself in it, she knew.

  “Someone came in on a bike. The fifth person today. Except this last one, he had the undead following him. There was a fight.” He shrugged as if to say that was explanation enough.

  “And four people are dead. Which guy is this?”

  “He’s one of the ones who died.”

  Nilda was relieved at that. It was one less complication to deal with.

  19th March

  Nilda didn’t go out on the supply run. Around noon, the first of the groups looking for food came back. They had found three tins and a packet of lentils. She tried not to let her disappointment show. It was made more difficult when a second group returned in late afternoon with only a dozen cartons of orange juice to show for their efforts. She looked over the maps she’d given them. They had marked off the houses they had been to and made far larger marks against the streets now filled with the undead. There were more of those each day. Including the places Rob and his gang had looted before coming to the school, there were only a few streets they had yet to search.

  She turned the map over, examining the area around the town. Marjory Stowe, before she died, had been working with Sylvia Harper on marking out the places they might find wild fruit. Both women had grown up in the area, and had spent a surprisingly happy evening - whilst Andrew Harper got miserably drunk with Rob - marking out the spots they had picked blackberries and scrumped apples. There were a lot of circles and lines now on the map, but autumn was an impossibly long way off. In some of the farms there would be kitchen gardens in which there might be vegetables waiting to be picked. Probably. Possibly. It was hard to know until they looked, but how much time could they spend wandering the countryside? Would they ever find enough? Or would the undead pick them off one by one as they searched?

  She calculated the distance between the school and the farms. Would there be enough food to make up for the energy expended in a return trip? Perhaps at first, but then they would have to go to the farms further away. Their best bet would be to find crops that had already been planted and bring them back to the school, roots and all. Unless they went to the Lake District National Park. There would be fish there. Water and food, that would be a start. But they couldn’t live on fish alone. They would have to come back to the towns and villages for other supplies. Then, whatever they did, wherever they went, they would have to get it back safely. And that was the biggest problem of all.

  She turned the map over again. There was one area they’d not searched; the industrial estate. She’d found an address where they might find some food. Perhaps a lot of food. She looked around. People were working, and they seemed happy to do it, but there were so few of them. She thought back to what Sebastian had said about the numbers not adding up. She knew then, whether they stayed or went somewhere else, it just wasn’t going to work.

  She went to find Jay and Sebastian. They were in the hallway outside the teachers’ common room looking up at a painting.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “Alfred, Lord Tennyson,” Sebastian replied.

  “The poet,” Jay added with an air of indifference.

  “Guns to the left of him, guns to the right?” Nilda asked.

  “Cannon, but yes. That was him. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. An exercise in futile bravery. I thought the lesson apt under the circumstances.”

  “Yeah,” Jay muttered. “And I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about lessons now that the world had come to an end.”

  “There’s always time to learn. That’s what life is about. Learning not to repeat the mistakes of the past. You see, I was trying to lead you towards an understanding. Most people see the world as a series of either-or decisions where one can either fight or retreat. But there’s always another choice
.”

  “Yeah. Well, I look at that and you know what I see?” Jay asked.

  “What?” Nilda asked, curious.

  “The last of his kind.”

  “There were poets after him,” Sebastian said. “Some fine ones. In fact, in the library—”

  “I didn’t mean poets,” Jay said. “And I didn’t really mean him. I meant people like him. Lords and Ladies and all that stuff. It’s all gone, hasn’t it? This school, all those rich people who sent their kids here. All that money, all that fame, that’s gone. We’re all the same now. That’s what I meant. It’s a new beginning. A new world. It’s just not the one we thought we’d get.”

  Nilda wondered whether that thought had come from Deborah’s death, from their circumstances, or whether it had been there all along, hidden under a sullenly impenetrable teenage exterior.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you two about,” she said.

  “Oh?” Sebastian asked.

  She glanced around, checking that they were alone.

  “I don’t know if this is going to work,” she said.

  “This?” Jay asked.

  “Three people died yesterday. Today, ten people went out. They brought back less than they ate this morning. We’re eating dog food, Jay, and we’re grateful for it. Or most of us are,” she added. “Look, we’re just a group of strangers held together by fear. We’ve not had a chance to think about next week or next month or next year. Walls and water and shelter and firewood. That’s as far as we’ve got, and it’s not going to be enough. The undead will come. More of them, and they’ll keep on coming. What do we do then?”

  “We’ll fight,” Sebastian said. “Tracy and I had a look at the chemistry labs. It’s not my subject of course, but we’ve come up with…”

  “Weapons? Chemicals? Explosives, perhaps? And will they kill a million zombies? Ten million? Twenty? We don’t know how many there will be. Look at what happened yesterday. Do you think we’ll fare any better tomorrow? All we’re doing out there is building the walls to our own prison. What was it you said, ‘prepare for the worst and hope for the best’? Well, if we stay here I can’t see our ‘best’ being anything but a slow death.”