Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland

by Tayell, Frank

  “Can’t stay here.” I pushed myself up onto my elbows, then forward, not quite in a dive, not quite in a run, until I reached the minivan. There was a shot. Glass showered down as the window shattered.

  “Okay. So you’re still there,” I said, seeking reassurance in my own voice. Another shot, and a bullet slammed into the vehicle’s metalwork. “And now you’ve got the angle.” There wasn’t much reassurance in that.

  “Who are you?” I yelled. There was no reply, but no shot either. For a heartbeat I wondered if the shooter had thought we were zombies, but surely not, not when we were carrying weapons.

  I checked the safety on the pistol, then ejected the magazine, confirming it was loaded.

  “Why are you shooting?” I yelled. Again, no reply, no shot.

  “So,” I murmured. “Shoot back?” The shooting had stopped. “Right. Three possibilities. He’s moved. He’s waiting. He’s realised his mistake. Why? The accent?” Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was my accent. He’d mistaken us for someone else. “You’re grasping at straws, Bill,” I said.

  I looked around for inspiration. Instead, I saw the car’s wing mirror. With a tug, and a snap, it came free. I inched along the ground until, in its reflection, I could see up the road.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “We’re human. Not zombies.” Nothing. I thought that he’d gone. Then I saw movement. I saw a figure dash across the street, about four hundred yards up the road, moving from the cover of a car to disappear into the driveway of a house. I was too far away to see the golden wave embossed on the jacket, but I recognised the clothing, and I recognised the figure. It was a woman and I knew her name.

  “Kempton!” I called. “Lisa Kempton!”

  I waited, wondering if she’d reply. She did. A moment later, bullets hit metal and glass, wood and stone, as she emptied a full magazine in my direction. A ricochet broke the wing mirror. On second thought, I wondered if it was a ricochet. She was getting closer, and with proximity, her aim was improving. I wanted to attack, to do just what Dean had desired and charge up the road, but I’d be cut down if I tried. It would only take seconds, and then she’d go after Dean. What alternative was there? One of the bungalow’s windows had been broken.

  “Ten feet. Here we go.” I launched myself forward, and was two strides from the minivan when a bullet whistled past me. It smacked into the window frame a second before I dived through.

  Glass pierced my flesh as I rolled across the floor. I picked myself up, and ran in a crouch from the room. The back door was in the kitchen. It was locked. I didn’t have time to look for a key. Above the sink was a wide window. I grabbed the stool from the breakfast bar, and slammed it into the glass. It shattered. I swept the stool around the frame, knocking free the loose shards, climbed through, and headed after Dean and Kallie.

  My shoulder blades itched with the knowledge that Kempton was somewhere unseen, behind me, following. At any moment—

  “Golf course,” I muttered, forcing myself not to look behind. “Find the golf course.”

  And, almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I stumbled into the fence running around it. There was no sign of Dean and Kallie, and the wide expanse of the links stretched for an infinity in front. I’d seen a map, I knew the golf course wasn’t that large, but right then it seemed to be. I turned around, my back to the fence, looking for the woman. I could see nothing. I could hear nothing. No birds. No zombies. No gunfire. No sign of Dean and Kallie.

  “Dean’s a local. He knows the way back.” I didn’t, except that it was roughly due east. I pushed myself along the fence until I found a gap wide enough to squeeze through. I still couldn’t see Dean and Kallie, but I did see a figure, lumbering across the unkempt green.

  It was then I realised that I’d made the wrong decision, but I’m not used to fighting people. We shouldn’t have split up. Dean would have the zombies heading towards him, and perhaps Kempton as well. There was only one thing I could do about that. I raised the gun, pointing it at the sky.

  That was my plan. Fire a shot, and so announce my presence to Kempton and the undead alike in the hope they would kill one another, thus giving Dean time to get Kallie back to the boat. At the last minute, I changed my mind, lowering the barrel so it pointed at the distant zombie. I pulled the trigger. I missed. I couldn’t even say by how much, but the zombie stopped. It turned and began moving towards me. Wearily, I went to meet it. I could imagine Kempton taking a bead on my head. Twenty feet. Ten. I stopped, waiting until the zombie was four feet away and I could smell the rank foetid stench of its dead breath. I fired. It fell. I turned around. I stood, looking back at the houses, waiting for the shot. Not hoping for it, not wanting it, but knowing it would come. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. A minute. Longer. I lost count. Then I saw movement. A figure coming from the west. From the way it lurched forwards, throwing its arms in front, it was one of the undead. It had heard my shot. It was coming for me. There was no sign of Kempton.

  “Damn.”

  There was little choice left but to head to the raft, and hope it wasn’t there. If it was, I’d have to search the warren of streets between the motorway and the Antrim Road for Dean and Kallie. There was little chance I’d find them both alive.

  Yet again, I was proved wrong. I found them on the motorway, though I saw the zombies first. Five of them lumbering towards a white van.

  “Dean!” I yelled. “Dean?”

  The only response came from the zombies as the two at the rear turned around.

  “Dean?”

  That brief flame of hope was almost extinguished, but then I heard “Bill? Bill? Bill.” It was Dean.

  “Right. Five of them? Right. Over here! Here!” I yelled. “Here! Come for me!” I don’t know if I actually said it aloud, but in seconds, all five were heading towards me. There was nothing between us but twenty yards of motorway and a rusting tow truck. Ten yards. I raised the gun, waited the first snarling creature was five feet away, and fired. It fell. I changed aim. Fired again. The zombie collapsed. My third shot missed, and the creature was too close. I skipped back as it threw out an arm. Its hand clawed against the back of mine. I dropped the gun.

  Swearing, cursing, damning the already dead, I slammed my palm into the zombie’s chest, then its face. I punched. I kicked, but I did more damage to me than the hideous creature. I ducked under its grasping hand, and then skipped back a pace as a bellow of rage came from further down the road. Dean ran forward, a twisted metal bar in his hands. Incoherently screaming, he laid into the zombies, hacking left and right, smashing bone and pulverising flesh until all three were on the ground, twitching and still moving, but they were down.

  “Kallie,” I said grabbing the pistol. “Kallie!”

  “Got to finish them!” Dean yelled.

  “No,” I yelled back. “Kallie!” I took the metal bar from his hands, and pushed him back towards the van. “She’s alive, right?”

  His reply was an unintelligible sob, but she was alive, though unconscious.

  I don’t remember carrying her back to the raft. I don’t remember rowing back to the ship, but we did. I remember trying to get her back on board, having to tie a rope around her shoulders so she could be hauled up. I was sure she’d be dead before she reached the top. She wasn’t, but getting her up to the deck did far more damage than the bullet.

  “We’ll swap,” Lena said, an hour later. Dean was close behind her. She looked as blank faced as ever. He looked similar, almost vacant. Colm and Kim weren’t back yet, and I’d been watching for them as much as I was standing sentry in case Kempton had followed us.

  “How’s Kallie?” I asked.

  “Alive,” Lena said.

  “How are you?”

  She gave a shrug as if it didn’t matter.

  “You’ll keep watch?” I asked, hoping for some response from Dean. He said nothing, his eyes lost in some distant past. Lena gave another shrug, and I went downstairs.

  The children were gathered in the corrido
r outside the galley. Siobhan had chosen it for the operation on the grounds she’d had the kids cleaning the room as punishment for some minor transgression earlier in the day. I won’t say it was sterile, but it was cleaner than anywhere else on the ship.

  “How is she?” Charlie asked me as I reached them.

  “Bill doesn’t know,” Tamara said. “How can he know? He was outside.”

  The door opened. Siobhan looked tired, worn, her features tightly controlled.

  “Kallie’s sleeping,” she said.

  “You mean she’s dead?” Billy asked.

  “No,” Siobhan said. “I mean she’s asleep. I’ve patched her up. Now, I’m going to need lots of hot water. You remember that crate, the one with the saucepans in it? You’re to get them out, and line them up on deck so they can collect rainwater. Collect the boxes that they’re in. We’ll need them, but you have to flatten them so they can be stored. Understand?”

  “Of course,” Tamara said. “Come on you two.” She chivvied the two boys away to begin what was clearly make-work to keep them from getting underfoot.

  Siobhan stepped back inside our improvised hospital. I followed.

  “How is she really?” I asked.

  Kallie lay on the galley counter. Her eyes were closed. There was an infinitesimal movement in her chest. Above her, and around the room, were scores of LED torches that cast as much shadow as light.

  “What do I know about surgery?” Siobhan replied. “Look at this.” She picked up the saucepan. “Our instruments. You can hardly call them that. Scissors. Tweezers. Things we found lying around and hastily sterilised. That’s my real worry. You were a real state when you came in, covered in blood and brain.”

  I looked down. I’d changed again, this time into clothes left behind by the crew. Then I grasped what she meant. “Kallie’s not immune?”

  “I don’t know,” Siobhan said. “She didn’t either. Kallie’s strategy was not to get bitten. I’m not blaming you,” she added. “You had to get her back. What else could you do? I don’t know, I—” She stopped and took a breath. “I had to use glue to seal the wound. I couldn’t find any thread and the only needles were in Lena’s pack, and I know where they’ve been.” She put the saucepan back on the counter. “Can you give me a hand? I want to move her to the wardroom. It’ll be warmer there.”

  Kallie weighed no more than a feather, and was almost stone cold. Unconscious, she looked so young, too young for such a cruel fate. We laid her on the rock-hard bench seat. Siobhan covered her with blankets, though left the bandaged wound exposed.

  “Can’t add to the risk of infection,” she said. “But does it help?” She collapsed into a chair, and I did the same.

  “She didn’t scream,” Siobhan said. “I was prodding her insides with a knitting needle, and she didn’t scream.”

  There was little I could say to that. “What do you think her chances are?” I asked instead.

  “Toss a coin and you’ll have as accurate a guess as I can make. I was police, not a medic. I had the major incident training, of course. What to do if you were first on the scene at an explosion, derailment, or mass pile-up. Very little of it’s applicable here. It was mostly about keeping people stable until help arrived. There’s not much chance of that happening here, is there?”

  “But you managed to get the bullet out?”

  “I did. It hadn’t penetrated too far.”

  “I was wondering whether the fleece-jackets are bulletproof,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Siobhan said. “It might have been a ricochet, or a function of distance that caused the bullet to lose velocity. Are you sure it was Lisa Kempton?”

  “It was.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “It makes sense,” I said. During the hour I’d stood guard, I’d had time to think about it. “From the message that Captain Keynes left on The New World, Sorcha Locke came from Elysium, and headed north looking for Lisa Kempton. So we know that Kempton was in Ireland. We know Locke didn’t find her, because neither of them went back to the ship. So, if Locke didn’t find her, it’s possible Kempton didn’t know The New World was in the Shannon Estuary, but she knew about Elysium. That she didn’t go there can only be because she had somewhere better to stay.”

  “Here? In Belfast?”

  “Why not? In fact, it’s more logical than the Republic of Ireland. Due to her involvement with the conspiracy and her connections to Quigley and other politicians, she could get away with pretty much anything in the UK or the U.S. That extends to stockpiling an arsenal far greater than that the MP5s in Elysium.”

  “The bullet was a 9mm,” Siobhan said. “It’s a common-enough cartridge. Are you sure it was Kempton?”

  “I only got a glimpse,” I said. “But I am. She was wearing the same gear that all her people at Elysium wore, the same gear we found on the ship.”

  “It doesn’t seem like her, that’s all,” Siobhan said. “She gave a lot of money to charity. She seemed like a good person.”

  “She was part of the conspiracy,” I said. “Other than that, all we really know about her is what her P.R. people wanted us to believe.”

  “True.” Siobhan stretched out her legs. “There’s no damage to any of Kallie’s vital organs as far as I can tell.” There was a second part to that sentence, an unspoken acknowledgement that if there was, there was nothing we could do about it. “The bullet took some cloth into the wound,” she continued. “I fished out a few threads, but I doubt I got them all. I had to stop hunting for the rest, and seal her up. She’d already lost too much blood. Infection, sepsis, blood loss, those are the real dangers in the next few hours.”

  “We must have torn the wound when we were getting her from the raft to the ship,” I said.

  “Probably,” Siobhan agreed, though without malice. “You remember me telling you about Petrov?”

  “The Russian pilot. He was with Mark, but he died?”

  “He didn’t die immediately,” Siobhan said. “There was this old couple, the Baileys. Well, not that old— Doesn’t matter. They’d gone out looking for mushrooms. Petrov was out on his own because he didn’t like being around people. He heard the screaming. He went to help. Gina Bailey made it back to the settlement. By the time we got there, the zombies were dead. Petrov had ripped them apart with his bare hands. He was still alive, but he’d lost so much blood. Too much. Mark was type-O negative, a universal donor, so he tried a person-to-person transfusion. The first time, it didn’t work. The blood coagulated too quickly. Fortunately, it jammed up the tubing before it got into Petrov’s vein. If it had clotted inside him… Not that it mattered in the end. Mark donated about three pints of blood that day, another two the next. It didn’t matter. Petrov died from an infection. It wasn’t quick. Now, it was probably something under a zombie’s fingernails, but it might have been the needle that was stuck into his arm, or something in the plastic tubing. No, we can’t risk a transfusion, even if we had the equipment. I’m not even sure I’d attempt to set up a drip if we had saline. She’s young. She’s strong. We’ll get some fluids into her the old-fashioned way. Assuming she doesn’t turn. I better start boiling some water. Can you go and keep watch? I don’t think Dean and Lena will be able to concentrate.”

  I returned to the deck.

  It was four o’clock when Colm and Kim returned.

  “What is it?” Kim asked.

  “It’s bad,” I said, and told them. Colm ran inside to see Kallie. Dean and Lena followed.

  Kim hung back. “It was Lisa Kempton?” she asked. “You’re sure?”

  I was beginning to doubt myself. “I’ve only ever seen her in pictures and on the TV,” I said. “And that was always in a business suit or ballgown, and never carrying a submachine gun, but I am sure. She was wearing the uniform. The fleece, the trousers, everything. In fact, thinking about it, I think that’s why she fired.”

  “You are?”

  “At least, I think that’s why she shot Kallie fir
st,” I said. “Dean was wearing his camouflage. I was wearing a trench coat and… I can’t remember. Some things I’d grabbed from a house this morning. Kallie was wearing one of those fleeces. That’s why Kempton fired at her first. Dean would have been the more obvious target. He was closer, and he’s dressed more like a soldier. But Kempton must have thought Kallie was one of her old employees, come seeking revenge. Why else shoot at her first?”

  “So if we can talk to Kempton, explain that—” Kim began.

  “No. I tried that,” I said. “I really did. She shot at me. She’s been here since the beginning of the outbreak, and I think she’s as insane as that woman who was digging the graves. That footprint we saw at the zoo, that must have been Kempton’s. She must have known about the food there. Maybe she saw us going there yesterday, and today she was lying in wait.”

  Kim kicked the nearest container, then walked over to the railing, and stared at the city. “Lisa Kempton. Here, in Belfast?” She shook her head. “So what do we do?”

  I didn’t have an answer, nor had I worked one out when, a few minutes later, Dean, Lena, and Colm came out of the hatch.

  “Siobhan’s watching her,” Colm said. “In case she—”

  “Turns. Turns into one of those… those…” Dean stammered into silence, too angry to speak.

  “I’ve sent the children to break wood for a fire,” Colm said. “But we need a plan.”

  “Yeah,” Dean said. “What are we going to do? I mean, it’s obvious, right? We have to go and kill her.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Kim said.

  “She shot Kallie,” Dean said. “So, yes, it is.”

  “Killing her won’t undo the damage she’s done,” Colm said softly. I was surprised. I’d expected him to demand his pound of flesh. I suppose it’s because he was a professional fighter who wore his past on his battered face. Then again, because of that, he has a better and more personal understanding of conflict than I.

  “Letting her live won’t change it, either,” Dean said.