Future's Beginning

by Frank Tayell

  “That’s sixty hippopotamuses I’ve counted,” Annette said. “So, can we go inside now?”

  “Coal,” Kim said. “That’s why the door wouldn’t open.”

  Two heavy-duty plastic sacks, five feet square and a foot deep, blocked the pedestrian-door. They were far too bulky for even two people to carry, but next to them was a small forklift, on which were another three sacks.

  “The defenders were interrupted halfway through moving the coal,” Kim said. “Were they trying to make this place a new fortress, or just moving the fuel away somewhere?”

  “There’s more coal over here,” Ken called. “Lots more.”

  The gate led onto a driveway, and that to an open area ringed by narrow warehouses and the low building out of which the industrial chimneys emerged. Ken hadn’t gone inside the building, but stood next to a sixty-metre-long metal rack in which hundreds of blue-plastic sacks were stacked.

  “Did Ireland provide coal to its pensioners?” Dee-Dee asked. “Or was that Scotland?”

  “There were no coal mines in Ireland,” Bran said. “That’s why they burned peat, wasn’t it? I think that’s what the book said.”

  “From what we’ve seen of Dundalk, it doesn’t look like a coal-mining town,” Dee-Dee said. “If it was, Mary would know, right?”

  “So if there’s no mine, the coal had to have come in by sea,” Bran said. “If my internal compass is correct, beyond that coal, beyond that wall, there’s the bay.”

  “There’s got to be tonnes of the stuff,” Ken said. “Hundreds of tonnes, and who knows how much more in the warehouses. Forget burning furniture, we can burn coal all winter long. Hey, maybe we can get a steam engine going, and have some lights, too.”

  “Why bother if Rahinder can fix that wind turbine,” Dee-Dee said. “We’d have electricity when the wind blows, and can burn the coal for heat when it doesn’t.”

  “We’ll be able to boil water more quickly than with wood,” Kim said, “but we can’t eat coal.” She shivered. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing. I’m exhausted, and we’ve only been out of the college for a couple of hours. Just imagine three months of this weather, of this kind of life. No, we need to get to France.” She clamped her mouth closed, but it was already too late.

  “France? I thought we were going to Belfast,” Ken said.

  “The cat’s out of the bag,” Bran said.

  “That’s a point,” Annette said. “We need to look for that cat.”

  “What do you mean, France?” Dee-Dee asked.

  “Mary and I were talking about our options,” Kim said. “Nothing can be decided until we’ve a way to get onto the ship so, right now, it’s just theory, just an idea. But once we’re on the ship, why go to Belfast? Why not go somewhere warmer? France, initially, to find Bill and meet up with Leon, George, and Nilda. Then we could follow the coast down to the Mediterranean. We can look for more ships, enough ships for everyone in Elysium and Belfast. We can live aboard The New World while we look for somewhere with a climate where we’re not shivering in five layers. As I say, it’s just an idea we were kicking around, and it’s utterly academic until we’re aboard the ship, but I don’t think this coal changes much.”

  “I like the idea of seeing sunshine again,” Dee-Dee said.

  “And the saboteurs are in Belfast,” Ken said. “I’d like to steer clear of there until they’re caught.”

  “As she said, our destination is academic until we’ve found a way to board the ship,” Bran said. “We’ve got to check the waterfront, and search these other warehouses. Let’s not forget that these people, these soldiers, they weren’t killed by the snow.”

  Thirty minutes later, they were back outside the depot’s entrance.

  “At high tide, we might be able to get The New World up to the sea wall,” Kim said. “We can certainly get those lifeboats and the yacht there. I’ll leave a sailor to make the judgement, but then I want to get Commander Crawley to confirm it. The ship’s crew should have seen those small cranes. It worries me that they didn’t.”

  “Instead, they fished for their supper,” Ken said.

  “Those cranes will make loading the ship easier, right?” Annette asked. “I mean, they were there for bringing the coal ashore, right? So we can use them to move the grain the other way.”

  “Not without electricity,” Bran said. “Maybe Rahinder can rig up something mechanical.”

  “You don’t think that liquid in those tanks is diesel?” Ken asked.

  “The sign said heating oil,” Dee-Dee said. “I think we should trust it.”

  “But the peat, the coal, we’ll be able to get warm after we finish work,” Bran said. “Fine. No one builds a single barricade across one road whose only approach is from the sea. Not in our world, anyway. There’ll be at least one more between us and the college. We’ve got to find that, clear it, and then we’ll have a route to get back here tomorrow. One more hour, and we’ll be back in the dry.”

  “Shall we bring some coal back with us?” Annette asked.

  “Only if you want to carry it,” Bran said. “Speaking of which, anyone who wants to unload some of the loot they found in the bungalow, that shed they kept the peat in would be a good place to leave it.”

  From their quick exploration of the interior, they knew that the depot was massive, curving along the waterfront. Outside, they followed the hoarding eastward until the road met the motorway.

  “This isn’t on the map,” Bran said. “There should be another road here, and a string of… ah.” He shoved the map back into his pocket, this time with far less reverence. “There should be a string of restaurants and cafes here on the waterfront. Yes, I think we can say this was part of a student project. Perhaps something to do with regeneration. Either way, the map is untrustworthy, but we don’t need it any longer. We’ll follow the motorway for a bit.”

  “At least we know where we’re going,” Ken said.

  “Aim for the turbine, right? That’s easy enough to spot,” Dee-Dee said, though a second later, the weather proved her wrong.

  A gust of wind appeared from nowhere, dusting flurries of snow across the road. Another quickly followed, raising a fine white cloud in front of them. The distant turbine was momentarily obscured, but as the snow drifted downward, the towering monolith re-emerged.

  Kim was glad they were on their way back, not just because she desperately wanted to get into the warm and dry; she needed time to think. It was an understatement to say that they needed to do things differently. The New World hadn’t been in Dundalk for long. Even so, the crew should have made a more thorough examination of the shoreline. Then there was their own expedition, of which she couldn’t help feel the first two hours were wasted effort and wasted calories. Yes, they needed to do things differently, but that didn’t give her the method by which they would do things in the future.

  Bran ran ahead, briefly vanishing in a white squall before the wind dropped, and the loose snow settled back to the roadway. He was by a sign, partly hidden by a dead hedge collapsed across the snow-coated pavement.

  “Now we’re getting some answers,” he said.

  As Kim tried to grasp his meaning, Dee-Dee pointed at a sign. “Barrack Street,” she said. “You think there’s a barracks here?” She took out her map. “It says this is Doyle Way, and it leads to a cinema and an ice-rink.”

  “It could just be an old name,” Ken said.

  “Not on a road sign,” Dee-Dee said.

  “Good point,” Ken said. “I vote we should investigate.”

  There was a general shifting of feet, a general shiver against the cold, but also a nodding of heads. It wasn’t that no one wanted to give up, but that no one wanted to be the first to suggest it.

  “Best to keep moving,” Kim said. “Let’s see if there is a barracks.”

  The houses either side of the street were a mix of terraces, semis, and a smattering of maisonette-conversions. What they all had in common were the padlocked
doors and blocked ground-floor windows. Some of the unseasoned plyboard had warped, sections of rough-sawn planking had come loose, and Kim counted two doors where the padlocks had been cut through. There were many more doors where a key still hung on a nail next to the letterbox. It was a professional job, and so was the barricade. It stretched across the road, a hundred metres from the junction with the motorway. Giant plate-steel sheets towered as high as the second-storey windows of the houses either side. The plate-sheets ran from those windows, through the front gardens, and across the pavement on both sides, leaving a gap in the middle. It was impossible to tell whether there was a gate or a low barrier due to the mound of snow-covered corpses piled in front. The dead lay three-deep and four-high close to the houses, but nearly ten times that number lay in front of the gap.

  “A barricade, a barracks, a fortress,” Dee-Dee said softly. “Here they fought, and I hope they escaped.”

  “But why here?” Ken said, far more loudly. “Why not at the coal depot? Surely the coal is the real prize worth protecting.”

  “But they built this back in March, or April,” Annette said, just as loudly. “You don’t need to burn coal when—”

  The frozen landscape deadened sound, turning the usual symphony of a decaying town into a four-piece-band of snow melting, ice cracking, wood creaking, and metal warping. As they’d spoken, the sound had grown, almost as if it was caught by the wind, centralising and focusing on a point just beyond the fallen dead. Though the wind had dropped, snow billowed from the mound of corpses, exploding outwards as the frozen undead clawed and pushed and rolled to their feet.

  “Spread out!” Bran called. “Form a line, one deep. Slowly now.”

  Joan slipped as she took three steps sideways and four back. Kim caught her arm.

  “Don’t run!” Bran called. “Take your time. Aim! Wait for—” But then the firing began.

  Bran didn’t try to stop it, so nor did Kim, she just grabbed Annette’s arm and dragged her to the side of the road, into the lee of the nailed-shut door.

  “Hey! No!” Annette said.

  “Crossfire,” Kim said simply, raising her own weapon, looking for a target. “Watch our retreat.”

  The undead were obscured by a cloud of snow, ice, and flying black gore as bullets smacked into living corpses that shoved against one another as they rose. Few bullets hit heads, as the great roiling mass of death undulated too violently for anyone to get a clear shot.

  There was a brief lull in the gunfire as magazines were emptied and hastily replaced. Fear rose, hands slipped, and full magazines were dropped to the snow. Nervous shuffling became a backward step.

  “Stand firm,” Bran said loudly but calmly. “Don’t run. We’re winning. We’re winning. Take your time. We’ve got plenty. Take your time. Aim. Always aim.”

  “Watch the rear,” Kim said again to Annette. “Shout if you see anything coming.” She ran out into the road, and walked behind the ragged line of shaking rifles. “Take your time,” she said, matching her tone to the soldier’s. “Aim for the heads. Take your time.”

  “We’re winning!” Bran called. “Aim and fire, aim and fire.”

  The rifles were fitted with suppressors, but over the sound of cracking ice, of breaking bone, of air being dragged into dead lungs, the words barely carried. It was the tone that mattered. These zombies were between the college and the waterfront. Kill them now or kill them later, they would have to be killed.

  A zombie fell. Had it slipped, or had it been shot? The ice-covered creature that staggered over the corpse definitely slipped, falling to the snow-coated roadway, sending up a plume of white dust that obscured the zombies behind. They were firing blind now, but the barrage slowed. It didn’t stop, but confidence was replacing panic. Not all the bullets were on target, but between them, the ice, and the constant shoving and pushing of their fellows, the zombies were getting no nearer.

  There was another lull as empty magazines were replaced. Kim raised her rifle, firing one quick shot after another, barely registering the snow-sleek faces as she placed one bullet after the next into an undead skull.

  “Stand your ground!” Bran called as Joan took a step backward. “Keep firing!”

  It was a waste of ammunition, but if they stopped shooting, the line would break. People would run, and then, almost certainly, some would die. Yes, they had to do things differently, but would they ever get the time to learn?

  “Eyes front!” Bran called. “We’re winning.”

  Kim spared a glance at Annette. The girl, at least, was obeying orders. She stood, rifle half raised, her eyes on their retreat. Kim allowed herself a thin smile, then returned her attention to the undead. The movement had slowed, though it hadn’t stopped.

  “Cease fire!” Bran called. “Cease fire! It’s over! Hold your fire. Stop!”

  As raggedly as it had begun, the barrage ceased.

  “Annette?” Kim called.

  “We’re fine. The road’s clear,” Annette called. “Did we win?”

  “Almost,” Bran said. “Reload if you have to.”

  Twenty feet away, a crawling zombie threw out an arm, spraying snow into the air. Almost simultaneously, four bullets slammed into it, only one of which found its head.

  “Hold your fire!” Bran called. “Ken, Dee-Dee, watch our retreat. Everyone else, fix bayonets.”

  “Um, I don’t have a bayonet,” Joan said.

  “I mean sling your rifles, draw your machetes,” Bran said. “We need to save the ammunition. Let them come to us.”

  As they watched the remaining undead claw their way along the road, then thrash their way to their feet, the wind returned. Snow danced from the corpses, making it seem as if, once again, the twice-dead were rising, but movement truly only came from a handful. Bran fired, shooting one, then two, then the third upright zombie. Two more pushed their way out of the mound of the dead, and joined those crawling along the road.

  “Kim and I’ll take care of those that are upright,” Bran said. “When the crawling creatures get within ten feet, whoever is closest, move forward, kill them, step back.”

  “This is one helluva way to learn soldiering,” Joan murmured.

  A zombie staggered to its feet on the left-hand-side.

  “Kim, the left’s yours,” Bran said. “The right’s mine.”

  Kim fired. The zombie fell. Joan darted forward, hacking her machete at a zombie’s head. It took her two swings to kill the creature. Kim waited until she saw the woman retreat back to the line, then focused once more on the shifting mound. Ignoring her heart, pounding like a drum in her chest, ignoring the sheen of sweat turning to ice in the sub-zero air, ignoring the ocean of fear, the wave of exhaustion, the tide of despair that the nightmare would never end, she fired. Bran fired. One by one, people darted from the line, hacking machetes and hatchets at the crawling undead, until, ten minutes later, all movement had ceased from the mound of the dead.

  “Ken, Dee-Dee, watch our retreat.”

  “I was doing that, and didn’t say I needed help,” Annette muttered.

  “Everyone else, count your ammo,” Bran said. He waited until everyone’s eyes were on their gear before taking a few steps away from the line, and towards the barricade. Kim trudged through the slick snow, crushed to slush by the crawling undead, and over to him.

  “What do you think, between a hundred and two hundred zombies?” she said.

  “About that. Closer to two hundred, I think. Maybe one-seventy, but a lot were dead before we arrived.”

  They stepped over the legs of a corpse, its body riddled with bullets before someone had got lucky with a headshot.

  “It was luck, wasn’t it?” Kim asked, her voice low.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, nothing that can’t wait.” She paused by a corpse still buried in snow. She prodded it with her rifle barrel. “Okay, yes, some were dead before we got here. This one’s head’s undamaged. Must have been a survivor.”

  “A so
ldier,” Bran said. “A lot of them are in uniform. Redeployed from some distant posting, shoved onto a plane, flown to Dublin, then they came here.”

  “And died before they had chance or need to change their clothes.” Her eyes tracked from that corpse to those they’d killed, settling on the barricade. Now that the undead had moved, she had a clearer view of the gap between the two sections of sheet-metal. It was filled with a five-foot-high, three-foot-thick, metal-clad concrete monolith. “It looks like those things they had at airports,” she said.

  “An anti-ram barrier? Probably. Looks like they added some barbed wire, but the zombies have crushed that.”

  “It’s professional, though,” Kim said.

  “Very,” Bran said. “Now I’m really curious what’s inside.”

  “There’s a stepladder on the other side of the barrier,” Kim said, “and a lorry beyond that. The ladder means they came back and forth. They knew they would be fighting the undead, that people weren’t a threat. I’m cold, I’m sore, I’m half drenched with sweat, and the rest of me is dripping with snowmelt, but I don’t like leaving a secret unanswered. Not anymore.”

  “Me neither,” Bran said.

  “I’m out,” Joan said loudly. “Does anyone have a spare magazine?”

  A minute later, they had the answer for the group.

  “We’re down to less than thirty rounds apiece,” Bran said. Kim knew that the real figure would be closer to zero than thirty. They’d set off with three magazines each, with both herself and Bran carrying a small reserve. Close to a thousand rounds had now been expended. For less than two hundred undead, that was far too unequal a ratio.

  Bran opened his pack. “Here. Pass them out. This is the last. Stay here, watch the road.”

  Chapter 5 - The Barracks

  Aiken Barracks, Dundalk

  “Those are speakers, aren’t they?” Annette asked from the top of the stepladder.