“Okay, so does that mean if they found something at the George Best Airport, they wouldn’t have gone any further?” Kallie asked.
“That’s why it’s hard to say,” I said. “It’s not as if we have any real use for a plane. Yes, we’d bring back some aviation fuel in its tanks, and that would enable us to run some tractors and other machinery, but if I found a tanker sitting by the harbour, would I scrap the rest of the mission? Who can say?”
“Right, then it’s possible they were the people who went to the zoo,” Dean said. “They could have left the supplies there intending to come back for them.”
I gave that some thought. “Yes,” I finally said. “It’s possible. I just don’t think it’s likely.”
“Is there any point speculating,” Kallie asked.
“I guess not,” I said. We rowed the rest of the way in silence.
“Nothing,” Kallie said pulling the wire from the fuel tank.
“It’s petrol, anyway,” Dean said. “Do you see the sticker?”
I’d deliberately chosen a route that took us nowhere near the piano teacher’s house, and had planned to check a handful of cars on our way to the zoo. The bright red Mini was the twelfth in under an hour.
I left the driveway, and walked back to the lumpen shape in the middle of the road. Something sharp had been plunged through the zombie’s eye. The fallen leaves partially covering the creature suggested it hadn’t died in the last few days. Could it have been people from Anglesey, or was it someone else? The answer was important because, though we’d run a wire into the fuel tanks of twelve cars, we’d come across scores of others whose fuel caps had been hanging loose.
“What do you reckon?” Dean asked, walking over to join me.
“You remember me telling you about Mary O’Leary,” I said.
“The old woman in the wheelchair who runs Anglesey?” he asked.
“That’s it,” I said. “She can’t move fast, and old George can’t move much faster. After the outbreak, since they struggled to manage more than a few miles a day, they didn’t try. Instead, they were methodical. They went from house to house, emptying every fuel tank and kitchen in a village, stored all the fuel and food in one place, and then went onto the next hamlet. Their goal was to find enough to get them to Wales, but as the days went by, they met more people. More people meant more fuel was needed. Then they met Bran, a soldier who— that’s not important,” I added. I could see he was getting impatient. “The point is, I think something like that happened here. What we want to look for is an enclosed garage. Let’s see if whoever came through here went for the hidden targets as well as the obvious ones.”
“Zombie,” Kallie called out.
It was the third moving creature we’d seen that morning, compared to six undead corpses. Dean drew an arrow and fired just as the wind changed. The bolt sailed past the zombie’s ear. It threw up an arm, almost as if it was swatting it away, but came nowhere near touching the arrow, which skittered to a rest on the road behind the creature. The zombie half turned, stopped, hissed, and staggered towards us.
“I wondered if it would see us,” I murmured, as I raised the cutlass.
“I’ve got it,” Dean said.
“No,” I said. “The wind’s buffeting this way and that. Save the arrows.”
He muttered something under his breath that I decided not to hear.
I first thought the zombie was wearing shorts, but its trousers had been ripped at the knees. It was wearing a t-shirt, though, which suggested it had been infected at some point during the summer. Obviously male, not too old, with short hair and a long beard. I don’t know why I pick out the human features in some of the undead. It would be easier not to, but I can’t always help myself. I wonder if it’s that they remind me of people I once knew. Or is it that I want to see people I once knew in their ruined faces, and in that way accept that my old colleagues and friends are dead. Perhaps it’s something else, but dwelling on it was a distraction I couldn’t afford.
The zombie staggered closer. I raised the sword, like I’d done so many times with so many different weapons, and swung at its head. The blade bounced off its skull. The zombie lurched sideways, and I did the same, but it recovered before I did. It fell on top of me, its hands pawing, clawing, grabbing at my coat. I stepped back, and it came with me. I dropped the sword, and slammed my palm into the side of its head. It barely moved, though my hand felt the full force of the blow. The zombie’s mouth snapped nearer. I pushed back, but it pushed harder. My back slammed against a stalled van. I hooked my foot under its leg, and pulled its feet from underneath. It fell and took me with it, but I managed to get a hand to my knife and draw it. I stabbed upwards, under its chin, pushing and twisting as we rolled through the dried leaves until it was on top. I heard something snap, and hoped it wasn’t me. I slammed the blade further and deeper into its head until, finally, its body went still, collapsing on top of me. A second later, the weight was removed as Dean dragged it off.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Fine. Clothes are ruined, but what does that matter?” I said, wiping a hand across my eyes. “It’s got a metal plate or something in its skull.” I took another look at myself. “Damn.” My clothes were more than ruined. The fleece jacket was already blotched white along the left sleeve where I’d cleaned it with bleach after a previous encounter. Now it was sodden with vile black gore. I shrugged it off, and instantly felt the cold nip at my skin.
“One more house,” I said, walking away from the corpse. “One with a garage. Then the zoo. There, that one, that’ll do.” I pointed at a house five doors down the road.
“Why do you think only some of the fuel tanks were checked?” Dean asked. “Do you think the other cars came after?”
“Dunno,” I said, perhaps a little more tetchily than necessary. “Why do you think?”
“I think,” Kallie said, “that, if it was me, I’d go along a street and check each car. If the tank was full, I’d put the cap back on, but leave the cover open. If the tank was empty, I’d close the cover. Then I’d know how many fuel cans I’d need, and come back to empty the cars all in one go.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said, though I wasn’t really listening. I could feel damp patches around my waist where the zombie’s necrotic fluid had seeped into my trousers. I wanted a hot shower. I wanted properly clean clothes that didn’t smell of half a year’s worth of mildew. I wanted a warm bed, a good meal, and a day not worrying about food, water, and the undead.
“Ah, Anglesey,” I murmured.
“What?” Dean asked.
“Nothing.”
From the outside, the house was just another two-storey, post-war, three-bedroom semi-detached. On the inside, it was a library. Stuffed bookshelves lined every wall, except above the mantelpiece on which was a sequence of photographs that began with a graduation. It wasn’t an official portrait, but showed a gowned woman and man outside a university quad, with scores more similarly dressed students in the background. He wore a beard, she a wide smile. The next picture was taken in a leafy forest, where a trio of bicycles were propped by a tree. He still had the beard, and she still had the smile. In the third, the beard was gone, replaced by the nervous grin of a groom standing next to his bride. If anything, her smile was wider. The next might have been taken on honeymoon, but the fifth was taken at least a decade later. The smiles were smaller, almost reluctant. There were six more photographs; seated at a formal dinner; at someone else’s wedding; on the stage at a conference; in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background; on a stony beach with a rain-drenched picnic in the foreground; and, finally, outside the small house. The beard came, the beard went, but though her smile was sometimes less wide, it never truly vanished. The last photograph showed a couple in their sixties smiling into the camera as if they were looking back at lives well lived.
“The Macro-Economics of Suburban Planning in Post-Communist Warsaw,” Dean said. “Who’d buy a book like that?”
“An academic?” I suggested.
“This one’s called Potential Impacts on Proposals for Sub-Saharan Energy Development, with a Focus on Nomadic Communities,” Kallie said.
“That’s the Tuaregs, isn’t it?” I said.
“Is it?” Kallie asked.
“Read the book and find out,” I said. I went into the hall, and upstairs to rummage for something to wear. The trousers were too short, but looters can’t be choosers. In the cupboard was a trench coat. I’d always liked them, but they’d never suited me. Personally, I wouldn’t describe myself as having been overweight before the outbreak, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t. A life in politics meant more late nights, and late night junk food, than is healthy for someone in their thirties.
I paused by the open door to the wardrobe, staring at my reflection in the long mirror. Trench coat, belt with sword and gun, two fingers missing from my left hand, a shaved head, and too many scars to count. I was unrecognisable from the man I’d been.
“There’s food here, Bill,” Dean called.
I half filled my bag with an assortment of clean clothes, and went downstairs.
“Mice got into that cupboard,” he said. “But there’s tins in here. They chewed on some of the labels to get to the glue, but there’s a picture of tomatoes that’s mostly intact.”
“That’ll be nice,” Kallie said. “It’d go with those pellets.”
“And with this,” Dean said holding up a jar of curry powder. “I think half a jar would make it eatable.”
“Interesting, though,” I said. “The fuel’s gone from the cars on the street, but no one took the food.” They both stared at me, clearly waiting for a conclusion. “I don’t know what it means,” I said. “Just that it means something. Did you look in the garage?”
“They used it for storage,” Dean said. “There’s more books, but no car.”
“Ah. Pity. Probably drove off somewhere in the early days of the outbreak. Okay, I say we go to the zoo, leave our note there for whoever left the footprint, collect some of those pellets, then come back to this neighbourhood. If there’s food in this house, there might be in the others. We’ll bag up enough for a couple of weeks, then start carting it back to the ship. Agreed?” I found myself looking at the front door. “They weren’t even looking for food. Odd.” I just couldn’t work out why.
“Which way?” Kallie asked when we’d reached the Antrim Road, and the section of it that ran parallel to the M2 motorway. According to the signpost, the zoo was half a mile away.
“We might as well follow the signs,” I said. My voice sounded loud. So did my footsteps, the rustle of cloth, the damp thump of my boot-heel on the inch thick layer of rotten leaves. “No birds,” I murmured. “No birds.”
“You mean there’re zombies ahead?” Dean asked, notching an arrow to his bow.
“Probably,” I whispered. Kallie glanced behind, and I found myself doing the same. The street was empty, but I suddenly felt exposed. Cities are more familiar to me, but that familiarity comes from the old world. Yes, there were more buildings in which we could barricade ourselves from a horde, but there would be no escaping it, nor any chance of rescue by Kim.
“We going on, or what?” Dean asked.
“On,” I said firmly. “Onward, ever onward, but maybe a little faster.”
Arrows were held close to bows, and I gripped the cutlass tightly. It had looked good in that case hanging from the wall of The New World’s wardroom, and the edge might be sharp, but it was still an ornament. Not for the first time, I missed my pike.
“Zombie,” Dean hissed.
I had the sword half raised before I saw it. There was only one. A ragged creature squatting motionless in the driveway of a bungalow with green colonial-blinds.
“Right eye,” Kallie said as she raised her bow.
“Five says you miss,” Dean said.
“Ten says I don’t,” Kallie said, drawing back the string. She loosed. The arrow sung through the air and plunged into the zombie’s skull. “And that’s another ten. So that’s ninety-four thousand, two hundred and eighty you owe me,” she said.
“Only if it went through the eye,” Dean said, walking towards the corpse.
“You’ve killed nine thousand of them?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Kallie said. “Well, maybe. I don’t keep count of that, just how much he owes. We bet on a lot of things. It’s something to do, isn’t it? Colm started it. He—”
A shot rang out, loud and clear. Dean turned around, looking at us. He looked puzzled. His face froze as, behind me, I heard something clatter to the ground. I turned around. Kallie had dropped her bow. Her hands were over her side. She raised them to her face, and then raised that to look at me. Her hands were covered in blood, her face in an expression of utter confusion.
“Bill?”
There was another shot. Mud and leaves flew two feet to our left.
I dropped the cutlass, grabbed Kallie, and hustled her toward the relative shelter of the nearest house: a bungalow with a minivan outside. I heard the third shot, but didn’t see where it hit. The fourth hit the rear window of the minivan just as I reached the bungalow’s front door. It was locked, and a quick kick didn’t budge it. Kallie sagged in my arms, and I had to drag her around to the side of the building.
“Let’s see,” I said, easing her to the ground with her back against the wall. She’d been shot in the side, about six inches above the hip. The bullet had passed through her jacket and shirt. I searched her back. “No exit wound,” I said.
“Is that good?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. What else could I say? “I think these jackets are bullet-resistant as well as fireproof.”
“I wish they were bulletproof and fire—” Her words turned into a shallow hiss of pain.
I heard footsteps, and had the pistol out and up before Dean dived around the corner.
“Kallie!” he wailed.
“In her side. No exit wound,” I said curtly.
“Who shot her?” Dean asked.
“Someone we were walking towards,” I said, opening my pack. “You have any bandages?”
“Don’t you?” Dean asked.
“This’ll do,” I took out a t-shirt I’d taken from the academics’ house. It wouldn’t do, not really, but it was all I had. I wrapped it around Kallie’s side.
“There’s not much blood,” I said. “We’ve got to get you back to the ship.” There was the sound of another shot, though I didn’t hear an impact.
“He’s dead,” Dean said, stalking towards the side of the bungalow. I leaped up, grabbed his arm, and pushed him against the wall.
“With the first shot, he took out Kallie,” I said. “He had time to aim, but the bullet hit her side, not her chest. It dropped in flight, right? She was the furthest away, but only by a few feet. Second shot came a second after, but it was a miss. Third shot was wide. You know what that means? He’s far away.”
“He was,” Dean said. “He might be getting closer.”
“Either way, he’s got the range. If you go out there, he’ll have plenty of time to shoot you before you get close, but right now, we’ve got time. Not much, but we’ve got enough to get Kallie to safety. Okay?”
“Bill?” Kallie asked.
Her face was pale. The wound hadn’t gushed blood, so I didn’t think it had hit an artery or a vein, but what do I know? All I knew was that she’d been shot, the bullet was still inside, and whether it was gushing or not, blood was spreading across the shirt.
“Dean, listen. You’re going to have to carry her, okay? Back to the ship, but not the way we came. Go…” I was at a loss. “Do you know a way back?”
“Yeah. South to the golf course, then past Miss Clements’ house.”
“Right.” Would it be safe? Though no zombies had been immediately summoned by the sound of the battle the previous day, would more have come from further afield? There were no good choices. “Good. Go that way. I’ll catch up
.”
“Wait, what?”
“Don’t argue. There isn’t time. I’m going to be the distraction. I’ll give you a couple of minutes’ head start. Listen, you’re right about my leg. It always slows me down. Even carrying her, you’re going to reach the raft before I catch up, so when you do, don’t wait. Get her back to the ship. Understand? Her life is in your hands.”
I didn’t need to say that the real reason I wouldn’t catch up with them was that I would be dead. If he couldn’t guess, he didn’t need to know.
Dean helped Kallie to her feet. With her arm around his neck, he helped her slowly away. Too slowly. He’d need more than a few minutes. I edged my way to the side of the bungalow.
A memory of when I’d first been shot at, the day I’d first met Kim, came back to me. Then I’d known where the shooter was. I’d only survived that by luck, but hoping a trick I’d tried once might work again, I took off the trench coat. With the tip of the blade under the collar, I moved the coat just beyond the wall. Nothing happened. I let the coat fall, and sheathed the knife.
“So you might have gone,” I muttered. “Or are you thinking about it? Did you see Dean and Kallie leave? Are you looking for a better vantage point?” A million more questions came to mind, but they were a distraction from what I had to do. There was no alternative. Acting before I talked myself out of it, I dived from the side of the house and rolled hard across the withered lawn to the shelter of the low wall running around the side of the bungalow. I heard a shot, and the sound of a bullet hitting stone, but I couldn’t tell if that was the wall, the house, the driveway, or the road.
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland Page 25