Future's Beginning

by Frank Tayell

  “Good,” Bran said. “When you plan a route, make a note of the features you should pass, but remember that they might have been destroyed. Signs might have been knocked down, or long since removed. Bridges might collapse, but rivers will still flow to the sea. Roads might be pot-holed, covered in snow and grime, but they’ll still be there. So will roundabouts,” he added, looking at Annette. “We’ve another three hundred metres north, then two hundred due east, and we’ll get to Soldier’s Point. How long will that take?”

  “Five minutes?” Joan said.

  “More like twelve, the speed we’ve been going,” Bran said. “But close enough. Dee-Dee, Ken, take point.”

  Bran took up position behind the lead pair. Kim let everyone else continue before she fell in at the rear, Annette at her side.

  “Maybe the sailors from The New World are wrong,” Annette said, “and we can get everyone aboard at Soldier’s Point.”

  “They sailed the ship from the Shannon Estuary,” Kim said. “They know what they’re doing, so we should trust them. And we have to trust them when they say that the bay is too shallow to bring the ship in much further.”

  “But they only made one, very brief, trip to explore,” Annette said.

  “Even so, they wouldn’t have missed a pier,” Kim said. She rolled her sleeve up and her glove down so she could check the time. The cold air bit deep into exposed flesh, but a working watch was too much a rarity to risk leaving it exposed to the elements.

  It was three hours since Sholto had returned to Belfast with the change in plans. When they left Dundalk, they wouldn’t go north. They would go south, perhaps to Dublin, but ultimately to France where they would collect Bill. They would. And then they would go somewhere warm. Somewhere they didn’t have to wear a week’s worth of clothes just to avoid frostbite. They would live aboard ships, sailing from place to place, taking what they needed, fishing, looting, scavenging, until they found a liveable island or the undead finally died. That decision had not yet been widely shared among those in Dundalk. Regardless of where they went next, first they had to find a way to board The New World.

  “So if we can’t get the ship close to the shore, we’ll have to use the lifeboats to board it?” Annette asked.

  “The lifeboats and their sailing ship,” Kim said. “Apparently that yacht was designed for the cross-Atlantic race. Oh, what was its name?”

  “Dunno,” Annette said, with her usual disinterest in an irrelevant part of the old-world. She pulled out her map. “When we get to Soldier’s Point, we’ll follow this coastal road into Dundalk, cross the motorway bridge, and then follow the road up and down and back and forth until we get to Bellurgan Point on the opposite side of the bay. It’s only five kilometres, but at this rate, it’ll be night before we get back.”

  “We’ll return to the college just in time for dinner, but too late to do any cooking,” Kim said. “That’s the perfect time to return. Now, put the map away, and keep an eye on the buildings. We want a—”

  “A warehouse or something, I know,” Annette interrupted. “Because we’ve got to carry the grain there first, which will take at least an hour, but I think it’ll be at least two if we’re only walking this fast. Then we’ve got to get it onto the ship, which’ll take all day. I mean, there’s nearly eight hundred of us; how many can we fit on a yacht? We’ll have to feed everyone and sleep on shore overnight. That means we’ve got to secure the warehouse or wherever. That’s more time wasted, so it’ll probably take us two days. It was a lot easier when it was just you, me, Daisy, Bill, and Sholto.”

  “It was different,” Kim said. “Not easier.”

  “What if Rahinder gets the turbine working? Will we still leave the college?”

  “If he can get it to work, we’ll decide then,” Kim said. While electric lights and electric heaters would be welcome, she wasn’t sure they were worth the risk. If they had electricity, they would be inclined to remain in the college, but the campus buildings were separated from one another by too much open space to be easily defended. No, what she really wanted was to board the ship and set sail for France, to find Bill, and… and that was where her mind usually went to an image of a farm house surrounded by rolling fields of wheat. Now it went blank. If he’d survived the crash, he’d be fine. And he would have survived the crash. He would.

  “Even if we found a jetty long enough, you know what we’ve forgotten?” Annette asked.

  “What?”

  “A gang plank to get onto the ship,” Annette said. “Does The New World have one? I suppose it won’t be too hard to build.”

  “With what tools?” Kim asked. “We haven’t got those, either. It’s a good point, though. Our minds are still stuck on Anglesey. Over these next few days we need to develop a new way of thinking.”

  “Some people will need longer than that,” Annette said. She pointed ten metres ahead to where Perry Munkton paused to brush snow from the petals of a fragile yellow flower growing in the lee of a wide hedge. Twenty metres beyond Munkton, at the far end of the dark-leaved hedge, Ken swung his rifle to the left. Everyone halted, but Bran waved them on.

  Ken had stopped just beyond a terracotta-roofed bungalow ringed by a five-brick-high yellow wall. The front garden had space for two cars, two trees, and one bench positioned to the right of the closed front door. Separating that from its neighbour was a towering hedge, still evergreen and flourishing, which ran the length of the boundary line. At the front of the property, the trees ran behind a thick stone wall until they reached a pair of eight-foot-wide white-painted gates. The gates were six feet high at the gateposts, but arched upwards to a height of twelve feet in the middle. Of all things, they reminded Kim of an image of the Pearly Gates in that sitcom about the afterlife. Then she saw the crest worked into the centre of the gate. Who in Ireland would display a coat of arms? She was about to ask the group at large, when she saw what had caused Ken to stop. In the snow, leading between the open gates and up the driveway, was a set of dragging footprints.

  “Zombie,” Ken said.

  “But which way was it going?” Bran said, his tone utterly calm. “The deepest part of the print indicates where the most pressure was applied. That gives us its direction.”

  “It went that way! Up the drive,” Annette said before anyone else had a chance to think, let alone answer.

  “I suppose we can’t just pull the gates closed and leave it there?” Joan said.

  “Not a chance,” Bran said.

  “Why’d a zombie go up there?” Annette asked. “You don’t think that some of those Irish survivors are still here?”

  “I doubt it,” Kim said. “But we’ll investigate. Dee-Dee, you’re with me. We’ll be five minutes.”

  Leaving Bran to guard the road, Kim walked up the path. She heard footsteps in the snow behind, turned, and saw that Annette was following as well. There were a million things she wanted to say, but they were long past the time when she was able to keep the girl out of danger.

  “Your safety is on,” she said instead.

  Beyond the gates was a wide expanse of snow beneath which, she assumed, was a lawn. There were no sundials or benches, no flowerbeds or vegetable plots, no trellis or trees. There wasn’t even a football net, though the space was large enough for a seven-a-side pitch. At the far end of the snow-covered lawn, the ground sloped upwards, ending in another tall hedge, but this one had an eight-foot gap in it, presumably for a car. The dragging footsteps led towards that gap.

  “Can you see it?” Kim whispered.

  “No, but I can see a chimney,” Dee-Dee said. “Can’t see the roof, let alone a window. Weird. With the incline, they’d have a great view of the sea.”

  “Those are paw prints,” Annette said. “That’s a cat!”

  Kim looked down. She hadn’t noticed them before, but there were paw prints mixed in with the dragging scuff marks. That explained what the zombie had followed. Annette had spoken too loudly. From behind the hedge came a crunch of snow, a
nd then a soft, gagging rasp.

  “Here it comes,” Dee-Dee said, as the creature lurched around the hedge.

  It was barely humanoid, and more skeleton than person. Its head was missing ears, its face missing an eye, and its mouth was missing its lips. Its left arm was gone at the shoulder, its right absent below the elbow. Both its legs still ended in feet, but it moved as if they were tied together. A rib protruded from a chest covered in ragged strips of grey-green cloth. No, Kim corrected herself as the zombie shuffled another step nearer, it wasn’t a rib; it was a shard of white plastic. And those weren’t strips of cloth hanging from its chest, but ragged flaps of skin.

  Kim let her rifle fall to its sling and drew her machete. “No point wasting a bullet. Keep watch, but I think it’s alone.”

  The zombie staggered another step, then attempted to throw itself forward at the prey which had so eagerly presented itself. It slipped on the ice, and fell face-first into the snow. Kim lowered her machete as the zombie’s legs twitched, then shuddered. Then they went still.

  “Did it just die?” Annette asked.

  “Maybe,” Kim said. The zombie spasmed. “Maybe not.” She raised the machete as she trudged across the ten feet separating them, and swung the blade down on its skull.

  “Maybe the snow and ice will finish them off,” Annette said. “Maybe, in a few weeks, they’ll all be gone.”

  “Remember what they said in Svalbard,” Kim said, walking slowly up the path.

  “But that was at the beginning of the outbreak,” Annette said. “I’m saying that this snowfall could be the last straw.”

  “We can continue that debate when we’re back inside,” Kim said. “But first we’ve got to get to Soldier’s Point, so let’s check the creature was alone, then we can finish our day’s work.”

  “Not until we’ve found the cat,” Annette said.

  “It’s survived this long, it’ll be fine,” Kim said.

  “It’ll be feral,” Dee-Dee said.

  “You don’t like cats?” Annette asked.

  “I like domesticated cats just fine,” Dee-Dee said. “The kind that welcome you home after a long and tedious day, even if it is just so you can fill their bowl, those I like. The kind that spit and snarl, and shred your favourite chair, those I can do without.”

  “You speak from experience?” Kim asked, as she wiped the machete clean on the snow, leaving behind a trail of black gore.

  “When you’re left a cat in a friend’s will, what can you do?” Dee-Dee said. “She vanished three days after the outbreak. I wasted two more waiting for her to come back before I decided she stood a better chance of survival than I did.”

  “Oh, we can’t leave her here,” Annette said. “Please, Kim?”

  “One minute to look for the cat,” Kim said. “No more.”

  The hedgerow concealed a very old, small cottage. At least that was her first impression. Then she realised how large the windows were, how the chimneys were topped with vents, and how the guttering was artfully concealed within the eaves. Some of the stone might have been reclaimed, or perhaps there had been an ancient cottage on this plot, but this was an improved version of those basic homes of two centuries before.

  “The door’s open,” Kim said. “That’s never a good sign.”

  “But there are no footprints in the snow,” Dee-Dee said. “Not beyond the point that zombie reached.”

  “There are paw prints,” Annette said. “They’re going inside.” She hurried forward.

  Kim caught her arm. “Wait,” she said. “Remember England. Never rush in.”

  “We can’t leave the cat,” Annette said. “Not now. It’s a survivor, like us. We’ve got to help it.”

  Knowing how stubborn Annette could be, it would be quicker to search inside than to argue. “Okay. Fine. There’s no car out here. No signs of a battle. No signs of bodies, either.”

  A bench faced the house, next to a trio of pots containing plants that must have died during the long, hot summer. In the corner was a six-foot-high plastic basketball hoop, almost lost in the hedge.

  Kim tapped her machete against the door. Above, she heard snow shifting on the roof. Was there a sound from inside? It was hard to tell.

  “I’ll go first. Dee-Dee, second. Annette, you’re to watch the door. Shout if there’s trouble.” She went inside.

  The carpet was sodden from snow, and turning green from where the autumn’s rain had washed moss inside. That moss was making a bid for the walls, angling towards the gallery of photographs that almost completely obscured the paint underneath.

  “I know this one,” Dee-Dee said. “That’s Frankenstein’s Revenge. This is The Mummy’s Return. The Vampire of Paris… they’re opening-night photos.”

  “I’ve not heard of them,” Annette said.

  “They’re old films,” Dee-Dee said. “About forty years old, I think.”

  “That poster,” Kim said, pointing at a framed print above an ancient rotary phone perched on an equally ancient teak and baize table. “Do you see the gate? That’s the same crest as is on the gates outside.”

  “If the film’s called Dracula’s Children, then I suppose that’s Dracula’s crest,” Dee-Dee said. “So I guess that makes this Dracula’s summer cottage in—”

  Kim sensed the movement before she saw it, and was already swinging the machete when a small ball of fur darted around the corner and through her legs.

  “Wait! Come back!” Annette called as the cat dodged between her hands and darted out into the snow. “Oh, it’s gone!”

  “I told you,” Kim said. “It’s survived this long, it’ll be fine. The house belonged to an actor, then?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dee-Dee said. “There’s an award here for cinematography. Someone who worked behind the lens, I think.”

  “You never think of—” Kim stopped. She listened. She heard the sound again. It was soft, and it came from around the corner from which the cat had run. “Wait here,” she said. She could guess what she’d find. She stepped around the corner. Four doors led off the corridor. Three were anonymously blank. The fourth, at the far end, had a porcelain nameplate. Moira was picked out in pink, surrounded by a garland of hand-painted roses, over which stickers of footballs had been plastered. The scratching came from behind the door.

  “What is it?” Annette asked.

  “Watch the front door,” Kim said. “Keep an eye open in case that cat returns.” She tried the handle. The door had no lock, and it opened easily. Inside was a familiar smell of death and decay. She tried not to breathe. She tried not to take in the room; the soft pink-painted walls covered in posters of footballers; the four-foot-high doll’s house pushed into the corner and which was being used as a prop to support a forest of hurleys and hockey sticks; the white princess-bed-frame, on the base of which was tied an Ireland scarf, and to each corner was tied a limb of the undead girl. She snarled as Kim entered, struggling against the nylon ropes with which she was secured. She bucked as Kim sheathed her machete and raised her rifle. Kim fired, and the girl went still.

  “Clear,” she called out, then quickly checked the other doors leading off the corridor. She found the corpse in the room opposite. An old woman sat in a chair, an empty pill bottle on the table in front of her.

  “What was it?” Annette asked, as Kim returned to the entrance hall, empty-handed.

  “Nothing. Just a zombie tied to a bed,” Kim said.

  “Oh. Yeah, I don’t get why people did that,” Annette said.

  Kim said nothing, but let Dee-Dee take the lead as they headed back to the road. There were some things best not thought about, and some things, once seen, that were impossible to forget.

  “Find anything?” Bran asked.

  “We almost caught the cat,” Annette said. “But it got away. Did you see it? Anyone?”

  “It didn’t come this way,” Bran said.

  “Never mind,” Kim said. “Everyone ready? What’s in the bags?”

  Eve
ryone had brought an empty pack with them from the college in case they stumbled across anything worth scavenging.

  “No one had looted the bungalow,” Ken said. “We found some spices, and more tea and coffee, but the real treasure was a pack of biscuits. Still sealed, and only four months past the expiry date.”

  “They’re edible?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Bran said, glancing at the group. “I thought we’d keep them for lunch. Something to look forward to after we finish our tub of cold porridge.”

  It was a small bungalow, but the bags appeared to be nearly full. They had to have collected other things as well. Clothes? Books? She shrugged.

  “I told them they’ll regret the extra weight in an hour,” Bran said.

  “Well, we should be on our way back by then,” Kim said.

  Again, she fell in at the rear. She fixed her gaze on Joan’s bag and her mind on the problem its contents represented. One hundred people were collecting grain from the wreck, and were unlikely to return even with much of that. Eighty were gathering burnable furniture and wearable clothing from the homes near the college. A further hundred were searching the college buildings themselves, but they would find little to improve their personal existence. The others, about half, were breaking firewood, cooking food, gathering and boiling snowmelt, standing guard, building barricades out of cars and benches, or each of the other hundred mundane but essential tasks. They would have no chance to search for books or clean clothes, let alone the real treasure of a packet of biscuits.

  They’d all arrived in Dundalk with next to nothing, and would be leaving with little more. In the meantime, there had to be an equitable way of sharing what little they found. Bill would say that she was fighting against human nature. She tried to conjure his face, but she found her mind returning to that girl’s bedroom in her grandparent’s home. With it came a legion of questions, none of which would ever be answered.

  Next to her, Annette looked back the way they’d come.

  “What is it?” Kim asked.

  “Nothing,” Annette said. “I was just looking for the cat.”