Future's Beginning

by Frank Tayell

  “Ware left,” Siobhan called. With his back to her, he didn’t know if she meant his left or hers. He spun around as she fired, and the zombie splashed into the over-flowed gutter.

  “Was that zombie wearing blue and grey?” Sholto asked.

  “No time to find out,” Siobhan said. “Can you hear it?”

  “More zombies? No,” he said, again sweeping his torch in a quick arc as he scanned their surroundings.

  “No, the fire. It’s getting louder. The reflected glow is getting bigger. The flames are spreading. We need to hurry or we’ll be cut off from the harbour.”

  The checkpoints were still deserted, at least of the living. Three undead clawed and pushed at the barrier. Sholto shone his light quickly from one to the next. The first wore a green waxed-jacket. The second wasn’t just nearly naked, it was nearly skinless. The third wore what was either a woollen dress, or possibly a massively stretched jumper. None wore the blue and grey. He fired a three-shot burst, then another, and the hammer hit an empty chamber as he fired the last bullet in the magazine. He ejected it, inserting a fresh.

  “Smoke’s getting thicker,” Siobhan said as she ran to the barrier.

  It hung in front of the still-illuminated checkpoint lights, a darkening shroud that cut visibility, but he didn’t need the growing pall to tell the fire was spreading. He could hear the roar of the flames now. He didn’t hear the zombie on the road behind him. As he was climbing over the barricade, Siobhan swung her rifle to point over his head. He didn’t turn to look.

  “Too far away, but hurry,” she said.

  When he was inside the barricade, he looked back along the road. There were four zombies now, lurching slowly towards the checkpoint.

  He gave an up-jutting length of rebar a shove. It didn’t move. The cement, tyres, razor wire, wood, and rubble would hold the undead. For now. It would have to be for long enough.

  “Feel that?” Siobhan said. “The heat?”

  “I think so,” he said. He wasn’t sure if he could or if he was imagining it, but the harbour didn’t have long. If the next few hours went wrong, then neither had humanity.

  New defences had been thrown up, deeper within the harbour. Between the partially dismantled fences separating the warehouses, tables and chairs, furniture and junk had been haphazardly piled. It wouldn’t hold back the undead, but it would slow them. It slowed Siobhan and Sholto as they forced their way through. The rear-guard slowed them, too. Half were in the blue and grey, and only half of those carried rifles. The rest were as often armed with tools as machetes. A barrage of questions was thrown at them, but none were about the fictitious server. The defenders only wanted to know about the fire and the undead. On that score, neither Siobhan nor Sholto had good news to give.

  The harbour was a chaotic frenzy. As many people were running into the warehouses as were leaving them, often with more than they could carry, and just as often carrying it loose in their arms.

  It was only when they reached the infirmary that they found some semblance of order. Two lines had formed, either side of the access road. The line on the far side of the road was made of individuals and groups, clutching whatever they’d managed to salvage, and that was little enough. The other line snaked back inside the infirmary itself, with medics and volunteers helping the injured, sick, and recently poisoned. More held plastic crates containing the hastily packed medicines and equipment. And they were holding them, not carrying them, because neither line moved except when someone tossed an unwanted item onto the road as being too heavy to carry, and some less encumbered person darted out of the line to pick it up. Most people, though, were watching the tableaux in the middle of the road where an angry Leo Fenwick stood inches from an exasperated admiral. Colm, looking bemused, stood to one side.

  “It’s a democracy!” Fenwick yelled.

  “Yes, yes,” the admiral said. “I heard you the first dozen times, but now’s not the time for debate.”

  “We can’t leave the food,” Fenwick said. “We’ll starve without it.”

  “There’s food in Dundalk. We’ll catch fish,” the admiral said. “We’ll find a way, but if we stay here, we’ll die.”

  Sholto slowly eased his way through the crowd, barely able to keep the smile from his face. Fenwick was trying to exert himself, to show he was in charge, but the man had picked the wrong end of the wrong fight, and this one was already over. Fenwick just didn’t know it yet.

  “We’ll die of starvation at sea,” Fenwick said.

  “I don’t know,” Sholto said, loud enough for his voice to echo. “Despite everything you and your sister did, despite the bombs you planted, the people you killed, we’re still alive today.”

  Sholto enjoyed watching the man’s face freeze. He saw the look of confusion spread from his eyes to his forehead, then freeze, then saw the man’s face drop. Fenwick spun around, looking for an escape, while also trying to reach into his buttoned coat.

  “Stop him!” Siobhan called.

  Toussaint and Petrelli moved from the infirmary door, but Colm moved faster. He leaped, tackling Fenwick as the man still vacillated between fight and flight. Fenwick landed hard, the boxer on top. Colm pushed him down, as he pushed himself to his knees, one knee either side of the prone conspirator, then spun him around, pinning his arms.

  “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?” the boxer asked.

  “Him and his sister were behind the bombings,” Sholto said, pitching his voice to carry far into the crowd. “And they were behind everything else, starting with sabotaging the nuclear power plant, finishing with all that happened tonight. They had Willis and a few others working for them, until they murdered them. Kennedy’s dead. Tried to kill me. But we got a confession from her. A recording.”

  “It’s over, you mean,” the admiral said, her own voice just as loud. “We can expect no more danger?”

  “Yes, it’s over,” Siobhan said, her voice the loudest of all. “There’s no more danger here, except for the fire and the undead.”

  “Then a longer explanation can wait until we’re aboard,” the admiral said. “Specialist, take the man into custody. Everyone else, keep moving. Onto the ships. Move!”

  Sholto looked up. There were no stars in the sky, but he didn’t think it was cloud obscuring them. He sniffed. In the moment, he’d forgotten the fire, but that smell permeated the harbour, replacing that of the sea, of dirt, of decay, of thousands of people crammed in too small a space with little water and less soap.

  When he looked down, Toussaint and Petrelli were already hauling Fenwick to the storage building behind the infirmary.

  “Come on,” Colm said, brushing dirt off his clothes. “Move on, everyone. On to the ships. Sooner we’re aboard, sooner we’ll get to Dundalk. We’ll have coal fires and grain, and like the admiral says, there’ll be time for an explanation when we’re all aboard.”

  The line shuffled forward as Colm cajoled them onward, but even so, people moved slowly. Sholto nodded to the admiral, and they moved to the side of the building, out of earshot, but not out of sight, of the two columns.

  “It was Fenwick?” the admiral asked.

  “More his sister, I think,” Sholto said. “The actual sabotage was done by Willis.”

  “I see. Why?”

  “Power,” Sholto said. “Not just to be the people in power, but so that no one would have power over them.”

  “But there’s no one else? No more bombs?”

  “I’ll have a word with Fenwick to make sure, but I don’t think so.”

  “Then nothing has changed,” the admiral said. “We still need to leave.”

  “Yep.”

  “There’s no server?” she asked.

  “No, and no prospect of any salvation from anywhere or anything except that which we can find for ourselves.”

  “Keep the rhetoric for later, but you’ll need to make it better than that. People will want an explanation, and they’ll want justice. First we’ve—”
>
  But she was interrupted by Gloria Rycroft, sprinting out of the smoky darkness. “Zombies!” Gloria said. “Zombies! Hundreds of them!”

  Chapter 21 - The Final Defence

  Belfast Harbour

  Within seconds, the admiral began issuing orders. She drafted some civilians to replace those helping the injured, while enlisting just as many to defend the harbour. The first eight were given to Gloria, and told to follow her back to the breach. Siobhan and Sholto accompanied them, running through the potholed alleys covered in mud, littered with discarded clothing, filling with smoke.

  Far too quickly, they came to a halt. Reg Cafney and two others stood seaward of a thin line of furniture that was more a trip hazard than a barricade. Made of wheelie-bins, a pair of tables, and a smattering of plastic chairs, a zombie lay sprawled atop it, its skull cleaved in two. Beyond, shot, were the corpses of three more of the undead.

  “I thought you said there were hundreds,” Sholto said.

  “That was closer to the harbour entrance,” Gloria said. “What happened, Reg?”

  “There were too many of them,” Cafney said. “Far, far too many. We had to pull back.”

  “Get tables, chairs, anything you can from that warehouse,” Siobhan said, as Sholto shone his light into the gloom. Either side were chain-link fences, and beyond those were depots in which some survivors had lived until a few short hours before. The pocked-tarmac car parks were covered in circles of plastic picnic chairs, clusters of wooden trestle tables, and giant oil drums with plastic-sheet funnels for collecting rainwater. Goalposts had been painted on one depot’s loading bay doors with the, less functional, outline of a basketball hoop painted above. That joke, the furniture, and the multi-coloured bunting hanging between the depot and neighbouring warehouse, were the first crude attempts in turning the harbour into a home, all now wasted effort.

  “Come on,” Gloria said. “Quick now, our lives depend on it.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Sholto muttered as everyone else ran to gather what they could, leaving him and Siobhan alone on the firing line.

  “The smoke’s getting thicker,” Siobhan said, tracking torch and rifle left and right, right and left, in a short arc that covered the road. “Can’t see more than twenty metres.”

  “How long do you think we have?” he asked.

  “Before the fire reaches us, or before the— Movement! There!” Her light settled on the zombie as it staggered out of the haze. They both fired, and the creature collapsed.

  “Next time, call out our shots, yes?” Sholto said.

  “How much ammo do you have left?” Siobhan asked.

  “This is my last magazine,” he said. “You?”

  “About forty rounds, I think. That zombie’s smouldering, do you see?”

  Sholto swung his light down from the gloom onto the corpse they’d just shot, then turned the light back onto the dark shadows further along the road. “Steaming, maybe,” he said. “There’s no chance of rain, is there?”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “Not enough. Not in time. You asked how long we had. Hours, and not many of them.”

  “Where do you want these?” Gloria asked, hauling one end of a picnic table while a Marine corporal carried the other end.

  “Zombie, mine,” Siobhan said, firing before Sholto could answer and before he saw the ghoulish shadow coalesce into a lurching, clawing figure.

  “Dump the furniture in a line here,” Sholto said. “We just need to slow them down, buy ourselves enough time to get everyone aboard the ship.”

  “Right, good. You heard him,” Gloria said, dropping the table in the middle of the road. “Come on.” She ran back into the warehouse.

  “Mine,” Sholto said, seeing the zombie first, though no one could have missed this creature. Flames blazed across its legs and chest, licking upwards around its neck like a collar. He fired. The zombie fell, but the flames kept burning. “Hours? I hope we have hours,” he said. “You see the smoke? It’s shifting, blowing north now, not west. The wind’s changing. Zombie. Mine.”

  This creature wasn’t ablaze, nor was it alone. Another four zombies staggered along the road behind it, and one wore blue and grey. A dark, damp stain spread across the front of her chest from a wound in her neck. It was the quartermaster. He fired, watched the undead woman fall, and then shifted aim, calling out his targets as Siobhan did the same until the road was empty.

  “This is the last stick of furniture from outside,” Gloria said, dropping a plastic chair as Reg dumped a rusting barbecue next to it. “It’s not much, is it?” she added. “It’s a wall, more than a barricade, and hardly even a barrier. Shall we go inside and get something more substantial? We could, but there are no lights inside. We’d have to use torches, and we’ve only got three between us.”

  “Leave it,” Sholto said. “The fire’s spreading fast. That will stop the zombies, and this will slow down any that make it through.”

  “You sure? Okay, good,” Gloria said. She breathed out, and seemed to relax. “What a day. What a day.” She rubbed her hands down the sides of her mud, gore, and smoke-blackened clothes, unslung her rifle, and aimed the light into the darkness.

  “Fenwick was really behind the sabotage?” Reg asked. “That’s what they’ve been saying.”

  “Fenwick and his sister,” Sholto said.

  “You mean Judge Kennedy?” Gloria said. “Seriously? Why?”

  “Power,” Sholto said. “They wanted to rule, and thought they could do a better job than anyone else.”

  “Yes and no,” Siobhan said. “It’s more complicated than that. They got in too deep.”

  “Too deep with what?” Gloria asked.

  “With their co-conspirators,” Siobhan said. “Back on Anglesey, they must have recruited Rachel and Willis. Rachel knew about Kempton and some of her plans. To stay in control, to maintain their authority, Kennedy and Fenwick had to up the ante, turn conspiracy into murder. I think Rachel went rogue, and Bishop lost all grip on reality, and Fenwick and Kennedy kept killing in an attempt to regain control, knowing Willis and Rachel were watching them. They kept digging their hole, hoping if it got deep enough it wouldn’t become their grave.”

  “We got a confession from Kennedy,” Sholto said. “A recording.”

  “And we’ll get some more answers out of Fenwick,” Siobhan said. “Nothing he can say will help us now. No explanation will give us comfort. Understanding won’t put out that fire.”

  “Belfast could have worked,” Gloria said. “It should have worked. There’s no server, then? No secret warehouse?”

  Once again, Sholto found himself choosing his words with care, knowing what he said would spread around the community. “No. There are places like the Claverton Industrial Supplies depot on the Shannon Estuary. We’ll find the pre-cursors for fertilizer and the like, but nothing we can eat, nothing we can plant. There are a few other places like Birmingham and Elysium, or there were, but that amounts to a few days of supplies when spread around our community. No, there’s nothing that can help us immediately, nor anything that could have forestalled this disaster.”

  A zombie lurched out of the smoke.

  “Mine,” Gloria said, firing before Sholto got a proper look at the creature. It wasn’t wearing blue and grey, but that was all he could tell. It was all he needed to know. A wisp of smoke rose from its corpse, joining the pall that hung heavy over the harbour.

  “We need radios,” Sholto said. “Radios and spotlights. A balloon, even.”

  “Like Quigley had in Northumberland?” Gloria asked. “Now that’d be a good idea. And, next time, we should turn each warehouse into its own fortress.”

  A loud retort echoed from somewhere to the south.

  “Shotgun, I think,” Siobhan said.

  “Is that the signal to fall back?” Gloria asked. “Or are they just out of rifle ammo?”

  “Good question,” Sholto said. “Who’s got ammo, and does anyone have any spare?”

 
“I’ve two magazines,” Gloria said.

  “Give one to Siobhan,” Sholto said. “Reg, Corporal, go back to the harbour. Find the admiral, and find out what the signal to retreat will be. We’ll hold this position until we hear it. Then find Toussaint, he had the remaining claymores. Bring those, or some C-4. If ever there was a time so desperate it’s worth trying to blow the undead up, this is it. Go!”

  A trio of zombies staggered out of the darkness. Siobhan fired. So did Gloria, but both missed. It took another four bullets to down all three creatures, and behind them came a dozen more.

  “I’m out!” Sholto said, searching his pockets for another magazine. All he found was the sidearm he’d taken from Kennedy. He drew his crowbar, watching the undead approach, watching them fall, watching them shudder as mis-aimed bullets hit shoulders and chests.

  “Take your time,” he said. “Call out the targets.”

  “On the left, tall, bent double,” Gloria said.

  “On the right, on fire,” a sailor called.

  The descriptions were too vague. Two bullets hit the same zombie. The first, in the shoulder, caused it to shudder sideways so that the next shot took it in the neck.

  Sholto took a half step forward, picking the gap between two trestle tables as the best place to make his stand. The tables were, by far, the sturdiest part of the barrier, though that wasn’t saying much. Between the trestle tables was a mound of plastic chairs. It would only take a good push to shove them aside. That shove would bring the chairs towards him, though. He lashed out with his foot and, far more easily than he’d expected, they scattered across the road.