“I remember,” Chester said, “all those stories about farmers pulling together and helping one another out. I remember when there was rioting, and the streets were on fire at night, how the shops still opened the next morning.”
“That was calculated self-interest,” Reece said. “And I didn’t have you down as a believer in the Dunkirk Spirit.”
“N’ah. I’m not. Jay reckons I’m a cynic, and I’m not that either. I’ve just seen enough to know that when you’re cornered, when your back’s to the wall, when you’ve no fight left, it’s better to charge at the darkness than simply hope you’ll live long enough to see the dawn.”
“Well, that proves my point, doesn’t it?” Reece asked, wincing at a needle of pain from his leg. “Looking back on all the things you told us that happened, and how and why they happened, if the country had hung together then maybe not so many would have died alone in the dark.”
There was a long minute’s uncomfortable silence as no one could think of an argument to refute him.
“You said you were prepared,” Greta asked. “You mean you had food and things like that?”
“I had a three-month supply,” Reece said.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“Hardly. I had three years’ worth in a cabin. Built it myself. Stocked it myself.”
“So why aren’t you there?”
“The zombies. I stayed in London because like you, Greta, I reckoned it would be easier to travel once the evacuation was complete. I did try and leave a couple of times, but the furthest I got was five miles from my house, and that took an entire day. And then Mathias found me. And now…” he shrugged.
“Where’s this cabin?” Finnegan asked. “Because three years’ worth of supplies would—”
“It’s twenty miles north of Lairg.”
“In Scotland?”
Reece nodded. “It was an old croft really. Four stone walls and no roof. I bought the land as part of a syndicate years ago. It was meant to be an investment. It turned out to be a con. I bought the others out and kept the land. Built a roof, added a timber framed second building. Wasn’t meant to, of course, it was against the planning regulations, but no one cared. I mean, why would they? There was no electricity, no mains water. But there was a stream nearby. It was great for fishing. I could’ve lived there for a couple of years without having to go within a mile of another person.” He sighed. “And now it’s gone. Yeah, whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t ending up lying on a ragged sofa waiting to learn if I was going to turn into one of the living dead.”
“I told you that you’re going to be fine,” Chester said as cheerfully as he could. “Where do you think that is?” he asked, searching for a different topic of conversation.
“I’m sorry?” Greta asked.
“In that photo on the mantelpiece. Do you think that’s Morocco?”
“Tunisia, maybe?” Finnegan guessed. “It’s odd there’s only one picture.”
“The family would have taken the rest with them,” Chester said. “Either when they went on the evacuation, or when they came back.”
“How do you know they came back?” Greta asked.
“From the state of the rooms upstairs,” Chester said. “Someone went through them, looking for specific things. Not just clothes, but keepsakes. Who else but the people who lived here? Judging by the kitchen, they stayed here for a night or two. If it was longer, they’d have made an attempt at washing up. Then, perhaps when they realised that no other family members would return here, they left. Not long after that someone else came along and took everything that was of any possible use. Food, soap, bleach.” He picked up the television’s remote control from the coffee table. “The batteries.”
“And the tractors?” Finnegan asked.
“Possibly. More likely, they were requisitioned,” Chester said, picking up another book from the stack by his feet.
“Which means that we won’t find anything at any other farms nearby, doesn’t it?” Reece asked.
“Probably not,” Chester said. “But the time when you could rely on finding canned food and half-empty packets is past. Though it’s always worth looking.” He put down the second book and picked up a third.
“Didn’t any survivors from Kent reach Anglesey?” Finnegan asked.
“Not that I can think of. I know I didn’t come down this far. I don’t think anyone did. London was in the way. Further west you had the M4. That was full of the undead and formed a pretty decent barrier. Some people from Kent had to have made it out during the first weeks, but after that? Well, the people I met were more concerned with where they were going to rather than where they were coming from.” He put down the book and picked up a fourth.
“What are you looking for?” Greta asked.
“A recipe that involves hops,” Chester said. “There’s got to be one.”
As the sun disappeared behind the newer of the two barns, he closed the last book, having found none. There was little point lighting a fire, so as darkness fell, one by one, they went to sleep. Except Chester.
Flashes of the past came to him, of Cannock, of McInery, of his father, and of the life that he’d had. He searched through them for a single memory on which he could hang the prospect of a future. All he found was an understanding of the misery and despair he had wrought on others. His future lay before him, a mirror of the life he’d led, an echo where theft was sanctioned, violence required, and where there would be no respite except in death. Until he’d met Nilda that hadn’t bothered him. Now he felt there had to be something more, some purpose to it all, some point at which he could stop fighting and start to live. A recent memory, of those days on the lifeboat travelling down from Hull came to mind. He and Nilda were too busy trying to stay afloat to call that time happy, yet—
The dry coughing rasp brought him to his feet. The room was dark, but he knew from where the sound came. He pulled out his knife.
“Reece?” he called, softly. There was a heavy thump as something fell a short distance to the floor.
“Reece?” he called again, louder. He could see the man’s outline. He could hear the scrabble of fingernails on carpet. He heard the wheeze as the last breath in the man’s dead lungs was expelled.
“Oh, Reece,” he sighed with well-practiced regret. The only response he got was a violent thrashing of arms and legs as the zombie tried to stand.
Chester kicked its legs aside and stamped his foot down on the creature’s back. He dropped to a crouch so his knee was at the back of its neck, and raised the knife.
“I’m sorry, mate. I truly am.”
He stabbed down. Once.
“Did he… was that… he turned?” Finnegan asked, scrambling to his feet.
“He did,” Chester said. “It happens. But not to everyone,” he added. “Look at me. At Jay. At Nilda. Not everyone turns. It’s important that you remember that.”
Wordlessly, they went into the kitchen to wait for dawn.
19th September
“The sun’s coming up,” Chester said, nodding towards the window. By the faint light of the new day, the farmhouse kitchen had lost its quaint charm. Now it appeared as a dingy shadow of its former self.
“Those shelves,” Greta said, “they’ll never be full again.”
“I’m sorry?” Chester murmured, standing, stretching.
“It’s the same everywhere, isn’t it? It’s more than likely we’ll be the last people to ever set foot in here. Think of all the houses, all across the world, and the time and love that went turning them into homes. It was all for nothing.”
“Maybe,” Chester said. “But I find it best not to think about that, certainly not first thing in the morning. Save those thoughts for next week or next month when you’re safe behind thick walls and outside of a hot meal, with the knowledge that a new day will bring nothing more than gruelling toil.”
“If that day ever comes,” Finnegan said. “And what do we do now?”
“We go back
to the boat,” Chester said. “Then head back along the coast. We’ll go ashore anywhere we can and gather what food we find, but this time we’ll stick to the places where we can smell the sea even if we can’t see it. I’ll head to Anglesey as soon as we get back. There’s a grim job ahead. For me I mean,” he added. “And I’ve put it off for long enough. Get your gear.”
“And Reece?” Greta asked.
“What about him?”
“We can’t just leave him,” she said.
“We can’t afford the time to bury him,” Chester said. “There’s no reason for us to return here, and like you said, little chance anyone else will. Give it a few years, and this house will collapse. That’s a better tomb than most of us get.”
There were two zombies near the main gates.
“I’ll deal with—” Chester began, but Finnegan and Greta pushed past him, the man moving to the left, the woman to the right, raising their axes as they stalked towards the undead. Almost simultaneously the blades came down, and the zombies fell. Greta remembered to twist her blade with the cut. Finnegan didn’t, and he had to stamp on the twice-dead creature’s face to retrieve it.
Chester said nothing as he opened the gate, but he made a point of closing it behind him. He looked back at the house. He’d spent many nights sitting up with people who’d been bitten, and he’d known many of those far longer than the few days he’d known Reece, yet the man’s death seemed somehow significant. It felt almost like the end of something. He shook away the thought.
“The sea is that way,” he said, starting off at a brisk clip. They’d barely gone two hundred yards before they saw a pair of zombies on the road ahead.
“Same as before. I’ve got the left,’ Finnegan began. “Greta, you—”
“No,” Chester interrupted. “Look behind ‘em. There’s another three coming.”
“We can deal with five,” Finnegan said.
“Yeah, but they either followed us or heard us, and it doesn’t matter which. Five there means more behind. If we stick to this road, we’ll have to fight the whole way back.”
“That’s fine by me,” Greta said. “We’ll kill them all. Every last one of them.”
“Save that rage for when you need it. Don’t think of them as an enemy that can be defeated. Think of them as vermin too numerous to exterminate. You have to learn to live with them and hope you outlast ‘em. We’ll go back, and try one of the roads to the east of that farmhouse.”
But when they got back to the farm, they saw a small pack of the living dead approaching from the other direction. They were left with no other choice but to head south through one of the fields of hops, then down a track and to a lane, the hedgerows on either side already half collapsing to fill the narrow thoroughfare.
The sun was rising high when they finally smelled the sea air, and they found the footpath with the wooden cross Chester had carved into the planking the day before.
“Almost there,” he said, trying to buoy his own spirits as much as those of the other two. The mace was growing heavy. He’d used it frequently during the long morning’s trek.
They stopped six hundred yards from the raft. It was surrounded by the undead. The lifeboat was gone.
“Where are they?” Greta asked.
“It’s probably the tides,” Chester whispered. “They’ll be back.”
“Do we fight?” Finnegan asked.
“There’s at least twenty of ‘em. To do it safely, we’d have to lure them towards us, get them to spread out. It would take us half an hour at least, probably longer. And then what? I’m not sure it would be safe to take the raft. It’s hard to tell, but I think the tide would pull us out to sea. How much water have you got left?”
“A mouthful,” Greta said.
“A couple of inches,” Finnegan said.
“That’s not enough,” Chester said. “No, it’s too much of a risk. We stay on land and keep heading west, back to London.”
“On foot?” Finnegan asked. “It’s taken us nearly five hours to travel three miles.”
“We’ll find bicycles. But we won’t find them here.”
Chester swallowed a mouthful of core and crunched down on a pip. The taste was bitter, familiar, and wonderful. Finnegan took out the map.
“Where do you reckon we are?” he asked.
“Somewhere east of the Downs?” Chester guessed.
“I meant this farm. If we came back, do you reckon we can carry all this fruit to the boat?”
“I think so,” Greta said, pointing at the map. “I’d say we’re ten miles from the coast, and no more than fifteen.”
“If it wasn’t for the zombies, I’d say yes,” Chester said. “I’d say that if everyone in the Tower helped, and if we all used bikes, or since this is a fantasy why not say a tractor or three, then yeah, we could manage it. And there would be enough to keep us and the pigs happy until the end of winter. But in this reality we’ve got no tractor, and there are just too many undead.”
He stood, stretched, and pulled another pear from the tree. He took a bite and looked left, right, forward, and back. The road was invisible. All he could see in any direction were trees, some still laden with fruit, the ground about them littered with more.
They’d found a bicycle in the garden of a house two miles from where they’d left the raft. Taking it in turns for one to ride and scout ahead, they’d had advanced warning of the roads blocked by the undead, so had to backtrack less. The other two bikes were found an hour later, and the pear farm soon after that.
“We’re not going to make it back to London tonight,” Finnegan said, voicing what Chester had been thinking.
“No,” he said. “We’ll fill the bags. The fruit will do us for food and water. Twelve each per day should be about right.” He was about to take another bite when a wasp landed on his hand. He watched it crawl over his hand towards a spot of juice and then fly up and onto the pear. Carefully, slowly, he put it down on the ground.
“Wouldn’t harm a fly,” Greta said with an attempt at a smile.
“Not when I don’t have to,” Chester said. “Not anymore.”
On two wheels, they made better time. When they found the way blocked by the undead, sometimes they fought, sometimes they fled, and sometimes they cycled straight through them. The choice often wasn’t theirs. The frequent storms and recent rain had washed the soil off many fields. The narrower roads were often coated in a layer of mud too thick to cycle through. Minutes became hours, and their progress took them south as much as east.
“I think those are carrots!” Finnegan suddenly yelled. Before Chester had time to brake, the other man had dropped his bike and climbed into a field. He reached down and wrenched at a patch of leaves, coming up with a handful of small, stunted, bug-eaten stumps that were coated with black and white mould. No one spoke as Finnegan climbed back over the fence, picked up his bike, and set off, faster than before.
“You see that,” Greta said pointing at a sweeping field of green and amber. “I reckon that’s barley.”
“Could be wheat. Or oats. But whatever it was, the zombies beat us to it,” Chester said, sparing a glance from the road to watch the undead tramp their way through a golden field whose edges were already choked with weeds.
The further they got from the coast the more fields they saw with crops still in them. The barley was replaced with rapeseed and then with lavender. All reminders that not all that was grown was meant for food, and that which was they had no way of gathering.
“Hives,” Finnegan said.
Chester nodded. He’d seen them too. No one suggested they try and stop.
“Alright, that’s it,” Chester said, bringing his bike to a halt.
“What?” Greta asked.
Chester pointed at a cluster of steel chimneys sticking up beyond a distant hill. “That. I don’t know what it is, but this road leads straight there. I don’t fancy going through it, so we’ll have to go around, and that can wait until tomorrow.” He gestured
towards a paddock. “We’ll try over that way, and see if we can find a house or barn, or anything with a roof to keep out the rain and walls to keep out the undead.”
“People have been here,” Greta said when they were halfway across the paddock.
“They might have,” Chester said.
“No. I mean they definitely have been,” she said. “Look at that tree.”
“It doesn’t look any different to the others.”
“Then look at the hedge,” Greta said.
“What for?” Chester asked. “Just tell me, I’m too tired to guess.”
“There’s no blackberries,” she said. “And there’s no fruit on that tree.”
“It looks like a horse chestnut,” Chester said.
“Look at the leaves. They’re the same as the one in the orchard. It’s a pear tree.”
Chester squinted. The leaves were green. That was about as detailed a description as he felt confident to give. “Then the birds beat us to it. Or the insects,” he said. “Or more likely you’re wrong about what type of tree it is.”
“I’m not,” Greta said. She’d gone a little ahead and was bent low over a ditch just beyond the tree. “Come and see.” They did.
“That,” she said, pointing at a rotting pear, “is a bite mark. So either the zombie’s are developing a healthier diet, or there are people nearby. People who stripped those bushes and this tree.”
“Yeah.” Chester peered at the decaying fruit. “About a week ago? Less? Not today though,” he murmured. Then he straightened, looked down the lane, and then at the fields. “Right, yeah. So…” The other two looked at him expectantly. “People,” Chester said slowly. “Enough of them to collect the fruit from the bushes. That’s… something. It’s not just survival, that’s actually living.”
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest Page 13