Surviving the Evacuation, Book 13

by Frank Tayell

  Ahead, a down-pipe had come loose from its bracket. As the wind surged, the pipe banged against the wall. Reflexively he shone his light to the left, and so almost missed the zombie staggering towards him from the right. He heard the dragging splash of feet in water, and swung rifle and light around to illuminate a one-armed zombie, fifteen feet away. As the light fell on the creature, it lurched forward, slipped on the mud and slime concealed beneath the six-inch-deep stagnant pool, and fell to its knees.

  Sholto slipped the safety onto the rifle, and made a pantomime of raising the weapon and being unable to fire. As the zombie thrashed its way to its feet, he detached the torch from the barrel, slung the rifle, and drew his crowbar. As the zombie stood, he slammed the metal into its skull. Everything was now set. The trap was ready to be sprung.

  He played the light on the sign, the houses, the road. He was twenty metres from a junction. The street sign was too covered in mud be legible, but on the corner was a pub, and he recognised its sign well enough. He’d gone inside on a brief looting expedition a few days before. They’d only needed five minutes to confirm the pub had nothing left to take, and if he remembered correctly… yes. The windows were boarded up. That wouldn’t do. The pub marked the beginning of a short parade, with a general store next to it, the door of which hung wide open. Next to that was a cafe. The waist-to-ceiling window was cracked, but still intact, and the door was held closed with a clasp and screwdriver. On the ground, almost buried in an inch of leaves, was a cut-through padlock. This had been one of the properties that Jasmine Cotter had searched and then sealed. It was perfect. He pulled the screwdriver free and went inside.

  He quickly shone the light under the tables before moving to the kitchen. The cafe was empty. He took the rifle off his shoulder, slid the safety off, and laid it down, balancing it so the grip and trigger were over the edge of the counter. He pulled out the smart phone he’d taken back from Siobhan, turned the voice recorder on, and placed it, face down, next to the till, but with the microphone pointing toward the door. Finally, he propped the torch so that the light bounced off the mirrored glass to one side of the serving board. He gave the faded writing a brief glance, and then a slightly longer inspection.

  Half the items were served with beans, and all were served with chips. The memory that came back to him was one he’d almost forgotten. Forty years before, but four hundred miles to the east and south, he’d gone with his father to such a place. It was one of his Dad’s brief returns home. The trip had been unexpected and unusual. Looking back on it, his mother must have instigated it, sending father and son to spend some time together. Certainly there didn’t seem to be any destination in mind. They’d walked into town, sat in awkward silence on a park bench for twenty minutes longer than was comfortable, then gone to a cafe. Again they’d sat in silence, and it was then that he’d realised that they always would. That quiet companionship was as much as his father could offer to his son. As if reading his mind, on their way back, his father had said, “I do love you, son.”

  Sholto sighed, now wasn’t the time for such memories. He turned around, set his back to the door, and waited. This was the dangerous part, the moment when, if he’d misjudged his foe, he could expect a bullet. He’d never misjudged them so far. Even so, his hands itched, but he kept them half raised, pretending he was doing something at the till. Time stretched into seconds that seemed like hours. He could feel the eyes watching him. Almost hear the breath being held. He didn’t turn around, not until he heard the door open. He knew he needed to act surprised, but there was no need to pretend, because he was genuinely shocked when he saw who entered.

  “Nicola Kennedy?” he said. “I’ll admit I didn’t think it’d be you.”

  “I came to see if you needed help,” Kennedy said. She held a semi-automatic pistol in her hands, though with the barrel pointing at the floor.

  “No, I know why you’re here,” Sholto said. “I’m just surprised that it’s you, not your brother. I suppose you want him to play the hero, valiantly struggling to put out the fire in an attempt to save humanity, right?”

  She swung the gun up to point at his head.

  “You know?” she said. “How did you know?”

  He smiled. The trap had been sprung, it had caught its prey, and now, humanity had been saved. That left the small matter of his getting out of the cafe alive.

  “You went overboard on the evidence,” he said. “And over the top with the sabotage, not to mention the murders. There were too many clues. Is that a trick you picked up as a solicitor? Something a client once did? In your defence, the list of suspects was hardly extensive. So, do you want to tell me why you and your brother did all this?”

  “Isn’t a confession a little clichéd?” she said. “Where’s the server?”

  “In the back,” Sholto said. “You were a solicitor before the outbreak, weren’t you? Did you do any criminal work? Was it all civil? You understood some procedures, but you also understood the limit of your knowledge. You stole the explosives, because evidence was being kept in the armoury. Rather, I suspect it was your idea those records should be kept there. Trouble was, you didn’t know what C-4 looked like. Is that why you took the claymores, or did you take them because you wanted to make sure people knew exactly how many bombs they were looking for?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “A provincial solicitor wouldn’t see many cases involving explosives,” Sholto continued, as if oblivious to her question. “Whether you knew what C-4 was, you didn’t know how to wire a bomb. Nor did you know how to sabotage a plane, or the ship. That was Willis, wasn’t it? That was why he had to die. You killed him, but you drugged him and his people first. It was safer that way, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t dare getting into a stand-up fight with them, nor could you dare to let them live. They knew too much, and you knew you couldn’t control them, not now everything’s changed. We’re all going to America, right? We’re all sailing off into the unknown, and you realised your brother could become leader in a far more conventional way. Yes, Willis was the muscle, and you were the brains, because it certainly wasn’t your brother.”

  “Do you have anything else you want to say?” she asked.

  “Just a couple of questions,” Sholto said. “Do you want to guess what they are?”

  “Oh, some variation on why, I suspect,” Kennedy said.

  “Not really,” he said. “I’m curious, sure. It’s always interesting to know whether the justification a criminal tells themselves is the same one they’ll tell the world. The reason, the motivation, is power. It’s always power, people like you, crimes like these. It’s not that you want to lead, but you can’t stand the idea of other people telling you what to do. You expected the grain ship to sink, not run aground in Dundalk. You were trying to reduce the population, but you weren’t trying to preserve the food. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn. You wanted to take the Amundsen and The New World across the Atlantic. Without those ships, we wouldn’t be able to follow you. But taken with everything else you’ve done, I can guess your route. You would have gone to Svalbard, and destroyed the fuel reserve, making sure that even if we repaired the Harper’s Ferry, or found another ship, we’d never be able to pursue you. Yes? As to your final destination, I don’t even need to guess. Your brother told me.”

  “He did?” Kennedy said, curiosity overwhelming feigned indifference.

  “Earlier today,” Sholto said. “That rumour about my brother and the list he’d found in Elysium. You coming here, thinking there is a server, that confirms it.”

  “There’s no list?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused. “Your brother wrote that he found one. He put it into that account. Rachel said there was a list. A list of addresses of inner-city redoubts and the codes to enter them. That’s why she told Rob to volunteer to—” She stopped.

  “There’s no list. There never was,” Sholto said. “Well, no. There was a list of addresses of places like Pallaskenry. Places with a few guns
, and enough food to keep a few dozen people alive for a night. They’re places located halfway between one of Kempton’s corporate offices and the coast or an airport.”

  “Kempton made more detailed preparations than that,” Kennedy said. “Rachel was certain. She knew. Kempton had a protocol in place. She planned for the end of the world. In Virginia, twenty miles north of Roanoke, at a— Why are you laughing?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sholto said. “That’s what Rachel told you? That’s where? Perhaps she believed it, or maybe she just didn’t know.”

  “Know what?” Kennedy snapped, the gun trembling in her hand.

  “It’s a corporate retreat,” Sholto said. “Concealed amid mountainous woodland. Sure, on a map, it’s a likely spot to survive a nuclear war. Even up close, it almost convinced me. I went there two years ago, certain she was using the place to conceal something. She wasn’t, unless you count middle-aged board members playing paintball.”

  “You’re lying,” Kennedy said. “There were codes for a vault door. Rachel knew it had been designed, knew it had been ordered, knew it had been shipped to Roanoke. It has an internal power supply that will last for a century, shielded against a nuclear blast.”

  “There’s nothing there,” Sholto said. “Let me rephrase that. Kempton built safe-houses like at Pallaskenry. She built redoubts like Elysium, and storehouses like Birmingham. Hey, maybe she concealed some supplies beneath those luxury chalets in Virginia, but it won’t be more than enough to keep people alive for a few months. I went to Roanoke. I saw it for myself. If you ask me, I think that was the whole point of that place. It was designed to keep me, and people like me, off the scent of what she was a part of. Think about it. She planned for a nuclear war that was being used as a screen to orchestrate a global coup. They didn’t expect the undead. Kempton expected, best case scenario, to get onto The New World and weather the worst of the fallout at sea.”

  The gun lowered a fraction, but then it steadied. Kennedy smiled. “You are lying. I almost believed you. If there was nothing there, then why were the codes to that vault hidden in Elysium? Your brother found them. He even wrote as much. You can’t lie about that.”

  “Yes, in Elysium, Rob found a list of codes, and Bill took them off his corpse. They weren’t the codes to some mythical treasure. They were the protocols and passwords to access Kempton’s satellites. The same satellites we’ve been using since before the mission to Elysium was launched. Those codes have been useless since just after the outbreak. I changed the passwords back before I left the U.S. Oh, and I don’t know what instructions Rachel gave Rob. I don’t know what Rachel told you, but Kempton didn’t hide those codes. They were left in plain sight in case all her people died. In case all her plans failed. It says a lot about her, doesn’t it, that the only time she’d care about the species is if she’s certain she’d be dead?”

  “But… but the journal. That’s not what your brother wrote.”

  “You know why? He got into a lot of trouble with that journal back in England. Then he got into trouble again on Anglesey when Annette distributed copies. He learned from his mistake, though not as quickly as he should have. He thought Rob might be working for, or with, someone. He suspected Markus, and so did I. We laid a trap. All we did was omit the precise nature of what he’d found. In doing so, we implied a mystery that would entertain and intrigue the populace at large, but which would gnaw away at someone who thought they were in the know. Then we invited anyone who wanted into our home to look at the images from the satellites. We set up those screens in the downstairs of the terrace, but we set up cameras as well. We watched, and we waited, expecting to catch Markus raiding Bill’s office, but he didn’t. Nor did anyone else, not until today when you stole my bag. I want my photos back, by the way. But if you wanted Bill’s original journals, you’d have had to go to Dundalk. Annette’s got them. Is that ironic? That you almost sunk the ship which was carrying the treasure you sought? We didn’t know about Birmingham, back then, of course. We didn’t know that Locke was alive. We didn’t know that you’d already sabotaged the power plant. You had, hadn’t you?”

  Kennedy said nothing.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Sholto said. “You couldn’t leave Anglesey as a thriving community with abundant electricity. Even if you’d destroyed Svalbard, you couldn’t risk us finding more fuel. You couldn’t risk that we’d repair more ships. You couldn’t risk us coming after you, because above all, you were terrified of being caught. That’s why you’ve been getting of rid of the loose ends. Willis, Markus. Before them there was Rachel. There was Paul, too. How many others have there been?”

  “No,” Kennedy said. “You’re lying. Rachel saw the purchase orders. She knew what Kempton bought.”

  He was watching her eyes, her shoulders, her hands, and knew he was running out of time, and so far, while she’d said more than enough, she hadn’t said the one thing he was waiting to hear.

  “Did Rachel really know?” he asked. “Or did she just tell you what you needed to hear so that she would remain as the person with the most power in the relationship? The person with the most valuable information? The person you couldn’t kill until she was exposed and so you, or Willis, had no choice?”

  Kennedy took a deep breath. Her hand began to shake. “No,” she said. “There is a warehouse. We will reach it. The zombies are dying. Within a few weeks, they’ll all be dead. One year, that is their life span.”

  Time had run out.

  “Another myth,” he said. “Tell me, when did you first begin to sabotage the nuclear power plant. Chief Watts was initially under the impression he could keep it running for years, yet things kept breaking. Whose idea was that? What about all that grain we lost to mould, was that you? All to guarantee we’d leave Anglesey where we had electricity, food, shelter, safety, and the chance to build a new and better society. Whose idea was it? Yours? Rachel’s? Whose?”

  “I don’t believe you,” Kennedy said. “You say that the journals are in Dundalk. Then that is where I shall go. First, though—”

  He didn’t hear the shot, but he heard the plate glass window shatter. Blood sprayed from Kennedy’s head. Her corpse fell to the floor.

  The door opened. Siobhan stepped in.

  Sholto grabbed the rifle, flicked off the safety, and fired a shot into the wall before, just as swiftly, grabbing the phone and turning the voice recorder off.

  “What was that for?” Siobhan asked, baffled.

  “So there were two shots on the recording,” Sholto said. “She fired first.”

  “I wish you hadn’t,” Siobhan said. “The truth must be told. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Otherwise, why bother having laws and rules. No police officer should be an executioner, but she was our judge.” She sighed. “And she was about to shoot you.”

  “I had a few more minutes,” Sholto said. “I have done this before.”

  “So have I,” Siobhan said. “More often than you, I think. You had seconds, if that.”

  “Fair enough. Thank you. Here.” He handed her the smart phone. “Did you hear much?”

  “Some, not all. I arrived a little late. It was hard following her in the dark. Your light told me where you were, but I had to track her by sound while not making any of my own, and while keeping one ear out for the undead. Did she name anyone?”

  “No. I think only her brother’s left. Willis, Markus, they were loose ends.”

  “Was it like you thought? They wanted to steal The New World and the Amundsen?”

  “And take them across the Atlantic to a storehouse bigger than the vault in Birmingham. That’s what Rachel told her she’d find there. As it became likely we’d all cross the Atlantic together, she decided to kill anyone who knew she was involved in the plot. We can get the rest of the answers from her brother.”

  “You can’t be certain it was just the two of them?” Siobhan asked.

  “Not absolutely,” Sholto said. “But I won’t lose any sleep worrying ther
e are others.”

  “Fine. We’ll get the rest of the details from Fenwick. We should go. There are zombies out there. One almost got her as she was following you. Would have done if I’d not shot it.” She looked down at her gun, then at Sholto’s rifle, then at the pistol on the floor. “I really wish you hadn’t fired that shot. Two suppressed shots? Her pistol doesn’t have a silencer.”

  “Who’ll ever know?” Sholto said, bending to pick it up. He quickly searched her pockets for ammunition.

  “Thaddeus, is there a warehouse in America?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Rachel told Kennedy it existed. Locke implied there was. Perhaps there is, but if it’s not near the coast, how would we ever reach it? Before we left Anglesey, I considered taking the plane, taking Locke, and going to take a look. I was doing so more out of hope than faith it would be our salvation. I wanted to give everyone something to rally behind. A grand mission, an expedition with a far-off goal. Something to distract from the nightmare that was life in Belfast. I feared that Kempton and her people would still be there. It’s more likely that it’s just like Elysium or Birmingham; a bunker with enough supplies to keep a few people alive for a few months, and like Elysium, those supplies have been consumed. Even if they haven’t, we don’t need them anymore. What we need is land we can farm in peace. Once we plant our first crop, we’ll be tied to that land, united forever, and that’s the only chance for our species.”

  “Then, Mr Sholto, let us get back, deal with Fenwick, and then deal with the far more pressing issue of the fact that the harbour is on fire.” A splash came from outside as undead feet staggered through the over-flowing gutter. “And there’s still the undead.”

  Chapter 20 - One Minute to Midnight

  Belfast Harbour

  The trek back to the harbour was far more fraught than the journey into the city had been. The glowing orange haze above the inferno was a more useful marker than the street signs, but the city was filling with sound as much as it was with smoke. The distant roar of burning wood intermingled with the crack of tortured metal and charring rubber as the fire spread. Much closer, Sholto heard feet splash through the flooded gutter behind him. He spun around, sweeping rifle and torch left and right, seeking their unnatural pursuer. A lanky creature in a tattered skirt staggered into the light, swiping its hand across the torch’s beam. He fired a three-shot burst. The zombie slumped onto a foot-deep drift of mud.