Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest

by Tayell, Frank

  “It’s a guitar,” the girl said.

  “I’m sorry?” Greta asked, laying her axe down.

  “She means the house. It’s built like a guitar,” the man said. “Or that’s what it was meant to look like from the air. It was a rock star’s mansion. The swimming pool is meant to be a musical note.”

  “Huh,” Chester grunted. Meetings like this were always awkward, but he didn’t have the energy for the bluff bluster he usually employed

  “So what’s your name?” Greta asked the girl.

  “Janine. And this is Detective Inspector Harry Styles,” Janine said, with obvious pride.

  “Really?” Chester asked, giving the man a closer inspection. “Where were you based?”

  “London,” Styles said. “The MET.”

  “Huh,” Chester grunted. He looked over at Finnegan and noticed the man was leaning up against the wall. “We could do with somewhere to wash and some spare clothes if you’ve got them.”

  “We use the pump house down by the pool for washing,” Styles said. “And we’ll see about clothes.”

  “They’re Army clothes,” Janine said.

  “Really?” Chester asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Styles said. “I’ll tell you over dinner. Come on, Janine.”

  He turned and led the girl back to the house.

  “That was… odd,” Greta said.

  “Yeah, a bit. Do we leave the weapons here?” Finnegan asked.

  “We do. He’s no threat, so we might as well be polite,” Chester said.

  “I’m not sure why we should when he didn’t even thank us for saving him,” Greta said.

  “Yeah, well, people are like that,” Chester muttered, his mind already elsewhere. He didn’t recognise Styles, he was sure of that. Not that that meant anything in itself, but he would be the first police officer that Chester had met since February who’d actually admitted to have been in the force. After the implementation of martial law and their involvement in the evacuation, any who had made it to Anglesey had wisely kept quiet about it.

  “How’s your arm?” Greta asked Finnegan.

  “Stings a bit,” he said. “What do you think my chances are?” he asked Chester.

  “You’ve not been bitten before? No? Then I’d say it’s fifty-fifty the infection got inside. If it has, you’ve a ten percent chance of turning.”

  “That low?”

  “I thought anyone who’s survived this far must have been exposed to the virus scores of times and so had to be immune. Reece gave the lie to that.”

  They washed, mostly with bleach, and entirely in silence. Styles brought them clean clothes. They were, as Janine had said, military uniforms.

  “You said there was a story behind these?” Chester asked.

  “It’s pretty much the same as the story behind this place and us,” Styles replied. “I’ll tell you about it after you’ve met everyone else. After that you can have dinner.”

  “There are more of you?” Greta asked.

  “Get dressed, and come and see. Up the path there, that leads to the front door.” He looked the three of them over one more time and was on the verge of saying something else, but he just gave a rueful shake of his head and walked away.

  “I’m not sure I should go inside,” Finnegan said as they walked up a path lined with green veined marble. “In case… well, you know.”

  Chester patted his pocket. “I’ve got the revolver, if it’s necessary,” he glanced at the house. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on here, but whatever it is I’d rather you were there when we go inside. Ready?”

  Chester pushed the door open and stepped into a vestibule with a huge glass window stretching five metres high, and just as wide. The setting sun was on the other side of the house, so it let in little light, but there was more than enough to make out each of the faces staring at the three newcomers. Some sat on the stairs, some on the floor, others stood half-hidden in the doorways leading off left and right.

  Chester swallowed. “How many?” he asked, the words coming out gruff, hoarse.

  “Forty-three,” Styles said. “Janine’s the oldest. Marco’s the youngest. He’s five.” The man gestured towards a tousle-haired boy barely visible behind a circular bronze statue.

  “And you, you’re the only adult?” Greta asked.

  “There were more. They left, looking for help, or just looking to get away.”

  “Leaving their children behind?” she asked.

  “Those with kids were amongst the first to leave. No, this lot all came from a boarding school down near Sevenoaks. They were brought to the enclave, and that, as I said, is a long story. You’ll want to eat.”

  Hi,” Finnegan said, waving. The children watched him warily. They didn’t look scared. The expressions were far worse. They looked resigned, as if all possible disappointments had already been visited upon them. “We’ve come from the Tower of London,” Finnegan said. “We’re going to take you back with us. Then a boat will come to take you to an island in Wales. They have electricity, and lots of food. You’re going to be safe. It really is going to be okay.”

  The children looked at him blankly, then at the Inspector.

  “They said it better than I could,” Styles murmured. “The food’s waiting.”

  He led them into a long room with a view of the garden. Dinner was a soup so thick that it almost qualified for being called vegetables boiled in sauce.

  “Do you have a radio?” Styles asked, almost before Chester had sat down.

  “No, sorry.”

  “No way of communicating with these people on Wales?”

  “No.”

  “But you mentioned a boat.”

  “A lifeboat,” Chester said. “It dropped us off. We’ll go back to London and arrange a point somewhere near the coast. There’ll be room for all the kids.”

  “If we can get to the coast,” Styles said, walking over to an empty bar in the corner of the room. He opened a drawer and took out a packet of cigarettes. “My last pack,” he said. “I was keeping it for… I don’t know. Not this. Thousands of people you say?”

  “About ten thousand, more or less,” Chester said. “Probably a bit less. Some people arrive, and they leave again. They go out searching for their families or—”

  “And no one mentioned us?” Styles interrupted.

  “We didn’t know you were here, no,” Chester said.

  “Would you? Should you? I mean, could people have been sent from there and just not arrived?”

  “If someone reached Anglesey with the news that there was a farm filled with children, help would have been sent,” Chester said.

  “It’s the same in London,” Greta added. “If we’d known, we would have come.”

  Finnegan nodded in agreement. Chester wondered if it was true. He was sure Tuck and Jay would have made the effort, but would anyone else?

  “So no one made it. Well, I suppose I already knew that,” Styles murmured, tapping the pack on the counter. “Eat. Please. It’s getting cold.”

  Finnegan did. Greta took a polite mouthful. Chester just looked at Styles.

  “How many were here originally?” he asked.

  “Originally? No one,” Styles said. “The place was empty when we arrived. But there were seven hundred and eighty-eight of us when we left the enclave. Men, women, children. Families and orphans, soldiers and civilians. And now it’s just me and the kids. Everyone else went looking for help. And none of them made it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Chester said.

  The man gave a brittle laugh. “Ten thousand in Wales, you say. How many in London?”

  “Fifty,” Greta said.

  “Fifty thousand?” Styles asked, “Well, that’s something—”

  “No. Just fifty,” Greta corrected him.

  “Oh. I see. And what about everywhere else? What about America? The kids kept thinking they’d send help. That was Amy’s fault. She kept saying that their aircraft carriers wouldn’t
be destroyed. That they’d be the first to get back on their feet, you know?” He tapped the box on the table again. “I buried her last month. It wasn’t the undead. It was a fever. She wasn’t the first. A lot of people died, but most left, looking for help. And you’re sure none of them made it?”

  Chester sat back, his appetite gone. “Not that I know of.”

  “You didn’t live around here?” Greta asked.

  “Me? No. I was on holiday. In Tankerton, you know it? It’s a little seaside place on the north coast. Or was. An off-season break, that was my plan. Something to look forward to as a way of getting through the winter. So I was there when they decided to turn it into an enclave. They planned for it to be a stopover point for ships going between the Isle of Wight and London. Plans and ideas. They had a lot of those, and they didn’t last long. A ship came in. I don’t think it was one of ours. It shelled the village. We took shelter. I’d been given charge of the children. They’d come from a boarding school, did I tell you that? Their teachers didn’t come with them. I don’t know if that was by choice or accident or even design. It doesn’t matter, does it? I was an adult without responsibilities, and they were children in need of supervision. We hid from the shelling. I don’t know how long it went on for, but it seemed…” He tore the film off the pack. “I don’t know. When it stopped, when we went outside and looked around to see who was left, there were fewer than a thousand of us. That’s a small fraction of the number that’d been there before. There were no plans then. A lot of people ran. The rest of us followed the screaming, sorting through the wreckage, trying to find survivors. We were making a bad job of a worse situation when Corporal Derry arrived. She told us about the nuclear bombs that’d been dropped along the south coast, how the government had collapsed, and how it was everyone for themselves. More people left, but she stayed, her and the soldiers with her.”

  “We found her,” Chester said. “She was dead. In an empty house on a construction site about a mile from here.”

  “Yeah, I thought she would be,” Styles said, emotionless. “She left last week and was the last to go. We’d had more deaths as we tried to bring in the harvest, and then, well, then it was just me, her, and the kids. The zombies were getting thick around the gates. She tried to lead them away. When she didn’t return, I guessed what had happened. A few more days, that’s all we needed. If we could have harvested the rest of the food, we’d have had enough to last until spring. We could have stayed inside, safe, waiting for the snow, and then for the thaw, and then…” he trailed off again.

  “The people who left,” Chester asked, “did they go on foot?”

  “They drove when we had fuel. They took the bicycles when we ran out. After that, they walked.”

  “Always going west?” Chester asked.

  “We knew there was nothing to the south, east, or north. West was all that was left. Everyone promised they’d send help if they found a larger group, or come back if they found a smaller one. They never did. Around June, after we’d stripped all the houses nearby of everything that could be of use, they did stop leaving for a while. I think people really did understand that this, here, was all they had. Then the undead came and in greater numbers than we’d seen before. We lost a lot of people fighting them off, and a lot more got sick afterwards. That’s when people started leaving again, but this time no one promised to come back. They just disappeared in the night, never saying goodbye.”

  “So there are no cars left?” Chester asked.

  “There are a couple of coaches,” Styles said. “The same ones we drove the kids here in. They were both full when we arrived,” he added. “But there’s no fuel. No, we’ve got food here. We’ve got a well. Staying isn’t safe. The undead come. You saw that for yourself, but it’s safer than trying to leave. We won’t starve, so we’ll wait. We can outlast the undead.”

  “And what if a horde comes?” Chester asked. “You haven’t seen one of those. Millions of undead trampling through the countryside, destroying everything in their path. The only safe places are islands or cities. The buildings act like breakwaters, splitting them up.”

  “Like you said, we’ve not seen one yet. There haven’t been many zombies around here until recently. Thirty-eight was the most we saw in a day, and that was about the same time as the sickness came. I’ll take my chances that no horde will ever come this far south over the certain death that the children will face if they try walking to the coast. Eat your meal. Sleep. Leave tomorrow if you want. I’d rather you stayed because the children need your help, but it’s your choice. Excuse me.” He stood up and left the three of them alone.

  Chester took a mouthful of the soup. It was good, but he had no appetite.

  “What about helicopters?” Finnegan asked. “Could they fly them down from Anglesey?”

  “To here? I’ve no idea if they would have the range,” Chester said.

  “We can’t leave the children alone,” Greta said.

  “They’ve survived okay for all these months,” Finnegan said. “They can last a few more weeks.”

  “They won’t,” Chester said. “And they haven’t. There’s only forty-four of them left, and you know how they managed it? You heard what he said. The undead appeared when people stopped leaving. Just think about it, all those hundreds of people leaving every other day or so, and all heading west. They lured the zombies away. Now there’s no one left to make that unwitting sacrifice, the undead will come back. They’ll gather at the walls. Their numbers will grow until the gates break, and then every last one of those children will die.”

  “Then we have to get them out,” Greta said.

  “Yeah, we do,” Chester said. He was thinking about Anglesey and how so few children had reached the sanctuary there. Of how Jay was the youngest of the survivors in London. He remembered the airport, and all those tiny undead creatures tripping and staggering along the runway. “And we’ll do it the only way we can. We’ll drive one of those coaches to the coast, load them onto the lifeboat, then get Anglesey to send help. They will, for children. I guarantee that.”

  “He said there was no fuel,” Greta said.

  “So I’ll go back to London. I’ll get the boat to come back upriver, and we’ll return with enough diesel to drive to the sea. There, that’s a simple enough plan. You two can stay here, and well, you don’t need me to tell you what to do. Excuse me.” And he left the room, going outside to look for Styles.

  He found the man in a battered deckchair a quarter way through the pack of cigarettes, the butts lying amidst a thin pile of ash at his feet.

  “Smoke?” He offered the pack to Chester, who took one.

  “I’m going to leave tomorrow,” Chester said, “and come back with enough diesel to drive those kids to the coast. We’ll rendezvous with the boat and take them to London. Then to Wales.”

  “Really?” Styles sounded distant.

  “Greta and Finnegan are solid. Reliable. They’ll help you with the kids.”

  “You know,” Styles said, dropping the half-smoked cigarette to the floor, “you’re not the first person to have said that.” He took another from the pack. “It’s what everyone says. They’ll leave, but they’ll come back, and when they do, everything will be fine.” He took out a battered silver lighter. “But where are they now? You want a light?”

  “No, I think I’ll keep this. The last one. I’ll give it back to you when we get to London.”

  “Ah, I see, you’re of a metaphorical frame of mind. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. This garden is what humanity has been reduced to. Our Eden has become purgatory, a—”

  “Harry?” It was Janine, she’d come from inside the house. “It’s Marko,” she said. “He’s having nightmares again.”

  Styles took a long look at the unlit cigarette, then put it away and stood up. “I know my duty,” he said. “Look around, and tell me you know yours.” He went back into the house.

  Chester took a walk through the grounds, looking at the pl
ants, then at the trees, and the greenhouses. Most of those were sheets of glass propped against frames improvised from shelving units. From the uniformity of the brackets, he wondered whether they’d all come from one of those self-assembly furniture stores. Of course, it didn’t matter.

  He picked a path between the beds until he reached the rear of the house and found the two coaches. After a brief examination, he decided both were drivable, though the tyres were tending towards flat.

  It was thirty miles to the coast in a straight line. Two gallons of diesel would be all they’d need. Call it forty miles and three gallons to be safe. He gave one of the tyres a kick.

  A drop of rain fell from the sky. Then another. He took that as a sign and went to join Greta and Finnegan in the small building near the pool.

  20th September

  When morning came, Finnegan was still alive. Out of the three of them, he was the one who seemed most surprised.

  “It should take a day to get back to London,” Chester said, standing by the ladder leaning against the wall. “So give me two, and another two to return.”

  “And if you’re not back in four days?” Greta asked.

  “You’ll have to use your best judgement. There’s the raft back on that beach. Or maybe you could try and find fuel for those coaches. I don’t think you can stay here. You feel that chill in the air. You saw the rain last night? It’s going to get worse. The weather’s changing, and if I don’t make it, I can’t imagine anyone else ever stumbling across this place.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Finnegan said. “We’ve got the easy job.”

  “Yeah, alright.” He supposed he should talk to Greta alone, but tact seemed out of place. “It’s been well over twelve hours. You should be fine. On the other hand, I thought Reece was going to be fine. Keep an eye on him,” he added to Greta. “Just in case.” They both nodded. “Right. So, if all goes well,” he added, speaking quickly to brush over the awkward moment, “be ready to leave in four days.”

  “You’ll be coming back by bike?” Greta asked.