by Frank Tayell
“Nothing,” Annette said. “I was just looking for the cat.”
Chapter 4 - The Point of Maps
Soldier’s Point, Dundalk
“Where’s the bus stop?” Annette said.
“Where’s the road?” Joan said. “We are in the right place, aren’t we? Of course we are.”
“It’s the map that’s wrong,” Kim said.
To the east was the Irish Sea. To the west, and widening as it approached the city, was Dundalk Bay. To the north, and across four hundred metres of sea was Bellurgan Point on the Cooley Peninsula. Beyond that were the Cooley Mountains. Those features were marked on the map, but the cartographer had obviously embellished the page with fictional additions that didn’t match their immediate surroundings.
They’d found stacks of crude straight-line maps of the surrounding area behind the reception desk at the college. Those were intentionally inaccurate, designed to get students to download the college’s map-and-fitness app, and so were useless as anything but kindling. The maps they’d brought with them had been found in three sealed boxes in the graphics department. They looked every part the professional map, down to the topographical lines. Kim looked between the map and the distant mountains, then back to the map.
“There’s no way the Cooley Mountains are really two thousand metres high,” she said.
“Told you,” Ken said. “You’re calling it, then?”
Kim sighed. “Fine, yes, you win.” She took out a small slip of paper from her pocket and handed it over. “An IOU for a chocolate bar, as agreed.”
A few other slips of paper were handed back and forth. She’d suggested the bet on a whim, after seeing Bran parade the group in the college’s car park. The harmless wager made the expedition less martial, but now she wondered whether, if she was ever able to pay the debt, that would only exacerbate inequality.
More immediately, on their side of the bay, the map claimed that Soldier’s Point ended in a wide pier, approached by a wider road, with an expansive car park and bus stop. That road then curved along the coast back into Dundalk. Despite the icy white blanket coating the surface, it was obvious they were standing on a footpath. There was no pier, either, just the last ten metres of a ruined steel jetty. The tide was out, and so the sea began a further twenty metres from the twisted remains of the jetty.
“There are bones,” Ken said, peering down at the rocky shore. “Human bones. No zombies, though.”
“There isn’t even a road!” Annette said. “The people on the ship should have said.”
Her ire was shared by most of the group. Eyes went from the narrow track, to the wrecked jetty, to the single-sailed boat riding the gentle waves a hundred metres out to sea. She couldn’t see The New World, but it wouldn’t be far away.
“I think they’re fishing,” Kim said. “A fish supper, that’s motivation for us to find somewhere they can dock, and they told us they couldn’t do it here.”
“They should be looking, too,” Joan said.
Kim shrugged. “These maps must have been a student project. Quite why they had so many printed is a mystery we don’t need to solve.”
“I’ll add proper maps to our list.” Annette said. She took out a small notebook, and wrote it down. She was only recording the utter essentials, and she was already on the third page.
“Can we repair that jetty?” Joan asked.
“Theoretically, yes,” Ken said. “The foundations are still there, embedded in the silt, and they’re exposed at low tide. We just need some scaffolding and cement.”
“A lot of scaffolding,” Dee-Dee said. “We’ll need to create a waterproof shield around the exposed foundations because even quick-drying cement won’t set before the tide comes in.”
“We don’t have the cement,” Ken said.
“Or the scaffolding,” Dee-Dee said.
“Fair point,” Ken said.
“There aren’t any warehouses or other large buildings close enough to the water’s edge,” Bran added, bringing the debate to a close. “There’s nowhere for us to store the grain, or to store ourselves, while we build the jetty and board the ship. Those houses back there might do in a pinch, but we’d be splitting up into small groups at night, and that would create too large a perimeter, with too many people tending too many cooking fires. Too much duplicated labour.” He nodded towards the sailing boat. “They said there were some warehouses closer to the bridge where the Castletown River becomes Dundalk Bay.”
On the boat, a figure stood up, waved, bent down, and picked up a foot-long object.
“They’re waving a fish at us,” Annette said. “That’s mean.”
“Let’s move out,” Kim said. “The sooner we find an anchorage, the sooner we can have some fish in our stew.”
A five-foot-high flood-defence wall showed them where, beneath the snow and ice, the path lay. After four hundred, slow-paced, trudging metres they came to an improbably massive tree that had collapsed onto the path.
“How about another bet?” Ken said. “How old’s the tree? Two minutes to make a guess, and then I’ll start counting rings.”
“No, no more gambling until we’ve something more than IOUs to pay the debt,” Kim said. “Up and over, then.” She kept her tone light and the smile on her face. Where the snow lay undisturbed it was only five inches deep, but each trudging footstep dragged flakes upward, coating the hem of her trousers. The clothes had come from the hotel, found in a mildewed bag left by one of the lost Irish survivors. From the number of pockets and loops, and the pair of vents behind the knees, they appeared to have been designed for outdoor-pursuits. Appearance wasn’t everything, and the material was absorbing water like a sponge. With each passing second, damp was turning to cold, discomfort to frostbite, and she clearly wasn’t the only person slowly suffering. Only Bran seemed utterly immune.
“There’s a body here,” the soldier said. “The snow’s formed a drift against the tree trunk, partially obscuring the corpse beneath.”
“Is it a zombie?” Kim asked.
“Hard to say,” Bran said. “He was a soldier before. Tags are… Dutch. The head’s not destroyed, so I’ll say uninfected. You heard her, up and over.”
Kim was the last to clamber over the fallen tree. Her jacket caught against a branch and the sleeve ripped as she tore herself free. She jumped down to the snow and saw that the fallen tree marked the end of the footpath. At least, it marked the end of where the footpath followed the coast. If the signpost was to be trusted, the path curved inland to what looked like a wider road. From the rooftops, it was one lined with houses, but in the distance, she saw a trio of chimneys.
“Didn’t the ship’s crew say something about industrial chimneys being close to the waterfront?” Kim said. “We’ll make that our marker.”
It would also be the point where they turned back. She’d been over-optimistic about what could be achieved in this weather. Even so, they’d achieved so little. They had a few packets, clothes, and books from that bungalow, but that wasn’t enough for half a day’s labour. The weather was confirmation that they did need to do things differently, but she could see each coming day unfolding like this. It would be trial and too-much-error, putting a night-time theory into frigid daylight practice, making one new mistake after another, wasting hours, wasting calories, until there were none left.
“There’s another body here,” Annette said almost as cheerfully as Bran. She kicked at the snow. “Bones, anyway. And a gun.” She picked it up. “A weird gun. More like an overweight pistol with an overlong magazine. It almost looks like it was made in someone’s shed.”
“That’s a Heckler and Koch MP-7,” Bran said, taking it from her. “It’s a personal defence weapon designed to penetrate body armour. More common among police and paramilitary units than regular infantry. Slide’s jammed, magazine’s empty.”
“It’s a German weapon?” Kim asked.
“It was designed for NATO,” Bran said. “The Irish Gardaí used it, so d
id GSG-9, the German anti-terrorism unit. French Special Forces, Austria, the Czech Republic; it was commonly used, though not a common weapon.”
“There’s another body,” Ken said, five metres ahead of them.
“And another, here,” Dee-Dee said, five metres ahead of him.
There were more after that, an erratic line of pecked-clean skulls and bones mixed in with rag-covered limbs of dead zombies, all partially buried in snow. There was little uniformity to the clothing, or to the weapons, though most firearms were military. Scattered among them were rusting bayonets and just as many axes, shovels, and metal bars. It was impossible to tell whether these defenders were fleeing to the town or from it, but the greatest concentration of the dead was outside a two-storey warehouse. Though it was ringed by an ancient stone wall, the building was made of entirely functional gunmetal-grey cladding dotted with six-inch-by-two-feet windows.
“With those grey walls and narrow windows, it’s a bit like a castle,” Annette said. “Is that why they came here, because it looks like a castle?”
“Listen a moment,” Bran said. “No, I think we’re okay. Anyone want to take a guess at what O’Brian and Sons sold?”
The name was emblazoned in bright yellow letters on an equally bright red background, the sign the only splash of colour on the drab building. But there was no clue beneath, or in the courtyard, as to what business was conducted within.
“Ken, watch the south,” Bran said. “Dee-Dee, the north. Take five people apiece. Joan, watch the corpses.”
“You’re going to check inside?” Annette asked.
“There’s a reason they died here,” Bran said, as he stepped over one body and then the next, stopping at the patch of snow by the doors. Nearly pristine, it was marred only by a dripping rust-red stain from a broken down-pipe. He slung his rifle, drew his crowbar, then nodded to Kim. “Ready?”
“Go for it,” she said.
He knocked the crowbar against the heavy steel door. No sound came from within. He tried the handle, a partially recessed lever. It squeaked as it descended, but when Bran pushed, the door didn’t move. He pressed the crowbar between door and frame, heaved, but still the door didn’t budge.
“Now I am curious,” he said. He looked up. “The windows are too narrow for a person to fit. We’ll have to cut through the door. That’ll take half an hour, after we’ve found the tools. I say leave it for now.” He lowered his voice. “Time to think about calling it a day?”
“I was thinking the same,” Kim said. “We’ll take a look at those chimneys, then head back.”
Beyond the warehouse, the trail of corpses thinned. Abruptly, they grew more numerous as they approached a T-junction masquerading as a crossroads where Point Road met Peter Street. A barricade had been built across Point Road. Made of razor wire, sandbags, and steel crash-barriers supported by cement-filled oil drums, it was a far more professional construction than those they’d seen elsewhere in Dundalk. Behind the barricade was an APC, its roof-mounted machine gun still aimed along Point Road. In front of the barricade was a great mass of the twice-dead, and an even greater collection of bones.
Bran whistled. His eyes narrowed, but before he spoke, the razor wire jangled.
“Zombie!” Ken said, aiming his rifle at the mass of corpses. This time, they all saw the creature move. It was caught on the wire, having managed to pull itself halfway to the top before the barbs had torn its undead muscles to shreds. Its left leg feebly kicked. The wire moved, and further along, closer to the APC, a discarded rifle whose strap was also tangled in the wire knocked against a steel drum.
“I can’t see the zombie’s head,” Ken said.
“Then don’t waste a bullet,” Bran said. “It’ll wait.”
The zombie kicked. Again, the rifle hit the metal drum.
“About twenty dead soldiers, maybe?” Dee-Dee said. “A lot more zombies than that.”
“Why would you set up a barricade at a junction here?” Annette asked.
“Usually because there’s something inside the perimeter worth protecting,” Bran said. “Barricades never appear alone. Somewhere beyond there’ll be another barricade, other roads sealed. As to why, if it was valuable to them, it’ll be valuable to us.”
“Assuming the weather hasn’t beaten us to it,” Joan said. “So how do we get through? I don’t want to climb razor wire.”
“It’s a professional job,” Bran said. “Which means there’s a door… there. That wooden pole. We should be able to move that section beneath.”
“If that’s a door, and if it’s closed, then what will we find inside?” Ken asked. “There has to be a reason those people who died outside the warehouse abandoned their barricades. If you ask me, that reason has to be zombies. Does that mean that this barricade is now keeping the undead inside?”
Further along the wire, the zombie kicked. The wire jangled. The rifle knocked against the metal barrel. They all listened.
“I think we’re cool,” Annette said. “The barricade must have broken on the other side of town, right? So all the zombies would have gone inland. I mean, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Who’d worry about zombies coming from the sea? When the barricade on the other side of town broke, some people fled this way, and others… I guess they went to the hospital, and that’s where they died and stayed until we turned up.”
Bran grabbed the wooden pole. “Let’s find out.”
“I’d say that’s the answer,” Ken said, slapping the sign. More snow fell away, but the writing revealed was in Gaelic. Aside from the name of the government department, there were only five words of English: Regional Strategic Fuel Distribution Depot.
“What does that mean?” Annette asked.
The building itself was equally opaque, in that it was covered in a two-storey hoarding painted to look like a sanitised street-scene of a century before; a cobbled, but clean, road; a brewer’s dray; chimney’s puffing narrow plumes of grey smoke; pedestrians in flat caps, bonnets, and scarfs; an anachronistic woman with a parasol; a timeless priest in his dog-collar walking with an equally changeless black-habited nun. The exception was the gates. Wide enough for two lorries to pass abreast, they were painted a plain dark grey. Even the pedestrian entrance, ten feet to the side, had been painted as part of the mural. The artist had a sense of humour, though. The door had been painted as the front door of a house, at which a milkman was placing a bottle on the stoop. The milkman’s face was now marred by a modern bolt-and-clasp, held closed by a bayonet.
“We’re not the first to break in,” Kim said. Metal rasped against concrete as her foot hit something buried beneath the snow. She bent, expecting to find a discarded weapon, but it was most of a padlock. “Cut through. So that explains why there’s a bayonet holding the door closed.”
“Like we practiced,” Bran said. “Eyes on the road. Barrels, too. Never point a gun at a living person. Never pull the trigger unless you’re sure of the shot. If we have to run, head to the barricade, and go through to the other side. Wait there for the others, and for as long as you can. Retrace your steps back to the college, but don’t run blindly into the town; we don’t know which other roads are blocked. If you have to take shelter, remember that the undead might be inside. Secure the ground floor, go upstairs, and hang out some sheets. We’ll come looking. Whatever you do, don’t panic. Always remember the undead can’t run.”
Nor, in the snow, could people, Kim thought.
The rusted bayonet rasped as she dragged it free from the clasp. From beyond the door came a familiar sound as cold air was dragged into long-dead lungs.
“Zombie,” Kim muttered as she pulled the clasp out. She pushed at the door. It moved an inch. “It won’t open. There’s something blocking it.”
“The zombie?” Bran asked.
“I don’t think so,” Kim said.
“Let me try.” Bran stepped forward, and launched his shoulder into the closed door. The hoarding shook, but the door didn’t open any further.
> “See what I mean?” Kim said.
On the other side of the door, a foot crunched on snow. She heard another footstep. A third. Then the hoarding shook, this time without anyone touching it.
“Zombies, plural,” Kim said. The giant panels shook. Snow fell from the top, crumping onto the ground below. Metal rasped as bolts strained against brackets.
“I guess we found what those people were running from,” Annette said.
“Everyone back,” Bran said. “Form a line on the road. Ken, watch the east, Joan, the west. Everyone else, be ready to run back to that barricade on my command.”
The two-storey gates shook. They shuddered. The metal bolts holding the door to their over-tall frame burst, and broken bolts shot out like bullets. Kim ducked, straightening in time to see the doors collapse downward, shattering as they hit the icy ground, spraying up a cloud of dust, splinters, and snow.
“Eyes forward! Ready!” Bran bellowed as the cloud of dust and snow settled. “Huh,” he added.
On the other side of the door were three undead figures, but only three. Wizened, desiccated, twisted nearly double, between them they were missing two ears, three hands, and four eyes. The creatures staggered a pace forward. The zombie on the left slipped on the ice and fell onto the door. The wood cracked louder than a shot, and that was the trigger. Half their group opened fire. A soft crescendo of suppressed shots tore into the two upright creatures.
“Stop! Stop! Hold your fire!” Bran called, his voice even louder. Silence returned, but only for as long as it took for the fallen zombie to roll to its side with a further cracking of that rotten wood. “Mine!” Bran said, firing before anyone else would attempt the shot. The zombie slumped, dead, to the ground. “There’s a lesson here,” Bran said.
“There is,” Kim said. “One I think we’ve all learned.”
“Is that it, then?” Ken asked. “There were only three of them?”
“Three, and a rotten gate in a temporary hoarding,” Bran said. “We’ll hold here for a minute. Everyone listen. Everyone keep watch.”