by Frank Tayell
“And Francois is the captain and Leon’s the sergeant?”
“It’s the other way around. Except Leon’s a colonel. Or was, back when nationalities and ranks mattered.”
“And they got you out of Mali? How did you end up here?”
“Now that is a very long story, but if you asked Leon, he’d find a way of telling it in less than ten words.”
I nodded.
“Where’s he going though?” I asked. “Who’s Gwen?”
“Oh, right. Gwen and Leon were on truck duty. We drove here, it was a supply run, of sorts. Of course the undead, they follow, don’t they? They always do. We lured the zombies away from the trucks, and up here. We came up that road, you see,” she pointed along the coast, “the way you came. That’s why Mr Tull was worried. If there were more zombies following us than we thought then that’s where They will be coming from. Anyway, the plan was that tomorrow morning we’d signal. Gwen would sound the horn until the undead start heading away from the house and then we’d shoot Them.”
“So you really didn’t need our help at all.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “There were twenty of us a week ago.”
Before I could think of anything else to say, Donnie came out of the barn. He looked resigned more than upset.
“I don’t get this life, this world. It doesn’t make sense. None of it does. Immune or not immune...” he shook his head. “Hi. I’m Donnie.”
“Bill,” I said, and went through the ‘can’t shake hands now’ business all over again. Then we talked about nothing for a while, as we waited for Kim and the girls.
“Kim, Annette, Daisy,” I said, by way of introduction when they got closer, skipping over my brother as I was completely unsure how to introduce him. When they reached the house, he didn’t help me out. He just stood smiling behind everyone else. But no one asked who he was. They were all far too interested in Daisy.
“We’ll take her inside and I’ll have a look at her,” Marcy said.
“Will she be ok?” Kim asked.
“She’ll be fine. There’s a boat coming here tomorrow morning. You’re lucky you stumbled across us. That’ll take us home, and we’ve a hospital there. She’ll be fine. But I’m going to take a look at her now. If you want to bring her in here,” she added to Kim.
“I’ll come too,” Annette said.
“No, dear,” Macy said, firmly but kindly, “not until after you’ve cleaned up. We’ve no spare clothes here, I’m afraid.”
I looked down at myself, and then over at Kim, Sholto and Annette. I suppose it’s natural that we didn’t really notice. Our clothes were singed and covered in dirt, except in the places where they’re ripped or burnt through, exposing the grime covered skin underneath.
“I can wash after,” Annette said.
“No, I think the doctor’s right,” I said. “We could all do with a clean.”
“There,” Marcy said. “Listen to your father.”
“My father?” Annette giggled, Sholto grinned and even Kim rolled her eyes.
“We found each other on the road,” I explained.
“Sorry,” Marcy said, “I should have realised. It’s old habits, you know? Well, come on then. There’s an old shower room, you can wash in there. Back when this was a...” The doctor’s voice faded as, carrying Daisy, she led Annette into the house. Kim gave me a brief look, full of meaning that I completely failed to understand. Then she shrugged and followed the doctor into the house.
“We should move these away from the door,” I said, gesturing at the undead.
“And I should go and check on Leon,” Francoise added.
“He’s already been up here,” Donnie said.
“He has? Of course he has. And I bet he ran too. Of course he did. That man, he learned to run before he could walk.”
Donnie and Francois exchanged a smile at that private joke.
“Which direction was that?” Sholto asked.
“Over there.” I pointed.
“The east,” Sholto nodded. “And will he keep a watch for the undead?”
“Of course!” Francois sounded affronted at the question
“And we came up from the south, that leaves the north,” Sholto said. “I’ll go that way, and see how many zombies heard the shooting.”
“I will go with you,” Francois said. “What is that expression? ‘Two knives are better than one’.”
I was glad I didn’t have to go and traipse around the countryside, until I looked down and saw the undead still littering the courtyard. And now there was only Donnie to help move the bodies.
After three quarters of an hour, I decided we’d done as good a job as we were going to, and stopped. Donnie happily concurred, fetched a couple of buckets of water and an old bar of soap for me, then he went to check on Carmen and the old man
I was halfway through washing when Kim came outside.
“She’s not sure,” she said, quietly.
“About Daisy?”
“She doesn’t know what’s wrong. The food, the smoke, the water, it could be anything. It could be nothing. But she says they’ve a hospital. And power to run the equipment. She said a lot of other stuff, but I didn’t really...” She took a deep breath. “They have electricity, Bill. And a school.”
“Do you trust her?”
“She seems normal. Like a normal doctor doing normal things. You know, off-hand, brusquely professional and insultingly dismissive.”
“You don’t like her?”
“No, I’m not talking about likes and dislikes. I’m saying she’s not changed. Not like us. Not like me.”
“There’s something else, a ‘but’, isn’t there?”
“She’s secretive. There’s something she’s not saying.”
“I got that impression too. It’s the old man who’s in charge. And that’s odd in itself.”
“Old man?”
“George. And he is old, he went into the barn with Carmen, the woman who was bitten, to wait and see if she turns.”
“Oh, right.”
“We could still leave,” I said neutrally. “If you wanted.”
“No,” she said after a moment. “We’re all secretive, they’ve just met us. They don’t know who we are. They seem to want to protect the girls, and that’s got to be good enough.”
“Good,” I said, lifting the bucket and dumping its contents over my head. Now there was just the question of whether I’d be staying with them or going off to find the Doctor on my own.
As for the trifling matter of who we were and whether or not these were the same people Sholto had arranged his rendezvous with, where I had been circumspect, Annette hadn’t.
“So he’s the infamous Sholto, and you’re the brother he went off to find,” Marcy said, almost as soon as I walked into the kitchen. “Annette told us,” she added. She sounded amused.
“You’ve heard of my brother?”
“The man who tried to save the world? Who hasn’t? At least in our little world. Give it another couple of years and he’ll be a folk legend.”
I couldn’t tell how serious she was being.
“There’s some stew. Or tea,” Annette said sounding slightly apologetic, but only slightly. “I made a pot.”
“How did you hear about Sholto, then?” I asked the doctor.
“From his friends. Sophia Augusto and Mister Mills.”
It took me a moment to place the second name.
“Captain Mills, of the Vehement?”
“Except he’s decided that he’s a civilian now. He’s still in charge of the submarine, but at the moment that means little more than deciding whether to scuttle the boat now, or waiting to see if the winter storms will do the job for him.”
So everything my brother had said was real.
“And you have a hospital and a school?”
“And some of the mod cons. Electricity’s a bit ropey, so hot showers are limited to one per week.”
“They’re rati
oned?”
“We don’t use that word. Not after... well, after all that happened. It reminds people of the other things. You know, the muster points, the evacuation and all that.”
“Oh, right, yes of course.” I didn’t know what to say.
“And a boat will be here tomorrow?” Kim asked, loudly.
“Like I said, tomorrow morning. And you guys can get a lift with us and our supplies. But there is the small matter of getting through until it arrives. Someone should be on watch. Would you mind?” The doctor asked, me. “You can get up to the roof from the skylight upstairs. I’ll send Donnie up to join you, just as soon as he comes back from the barn.”
That’s the moment I’m going to remember, the image I’m going to take with me. Kim, collapsed in a chair, sipping from a mug, Annette at the table, eating a fourth bowl of stew and Daisy, lying on a couch, snoring quietly.
“So if you’ve got this community out in Ireland, what are you doing over here?” I asked Donnie, when he joined me up on the roof about twenty minutes later. “Marcy said something about a supply mission, so I take it you’re not just waiting for my brother.”
“Ah, no. It’s a bit complicated, but the old man said I should tell you. The only boat big enough for our supplies is the Santa Maria and since Sophia insisted on coming here to meet your brother it would be more accurate to say we were catching a lift with you.”
“Oh. What kind of supplies have you got?”
“Four armoured personnel carriers.”
“What on earth for?”
“Ah, well, this is the complicated bit,” he said. “You know the story about the nail and the King? How for want of a nail the horseshoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse bucked, and the King fell off to be eaten by the undead? Well that’s the problem we’ve been having. Plenty of horseshoes, horses and kings and all the rest, but no nails. Metaphorically, I mean. We do have a few horses. Four of them, scared witless, the poor beasts. They were locked in their barn, the undead around outside when the old man found them. You know, now I think about it, that can’t have been that far from here.”
I coughed.
“Right, right, the APC’s. Well, we’ve got diesel, thanks to a NATO supply dump. Enough of that to keep the Santa Maria and a few other boats going until the Spring, maybe longer. Probably. We’ve enough to spare to keep the generator in the hospital running and a little over that everyone can have a few minutes under a hot shower once a week. But that’s all. Everyone who arrives at our little community, whatever personal hell they’ve been through, knows the only guaranteed protection against the undead is having at least fifty feet of water between them and land. They don’t want to get off their boats, and we’ve so much food to spare it’s hard to persuade them that planting crops can’t wait until next year.”
“You’ve food to spare?”
“And ammunition. And diesel to run a fishing trawler. When the Santa Maria goes out, it comes back with its nets full. And what’s the point of not sharing it. That’s what Sophia says. And the Mayor agrees, and if Leon doesn’t, what does that matter? We are a democracy.”
“So what’s that got to do with the army vehicles?”
“The Mayor says it’s a problem of economics. On their boats people have food, shelter and security. What incentive can you give them to come ashore and do a hard days toil on the land, or take the risk of helping on a supply run? Money doesn’t mean anything and everyone thinks food and shelter is all they want. So, we have to pay them with something they don’t have, and don’t realise they want.” he paused for dramatic effect. The moment stretched.
“Go on, then,” I relented. “What is it they don’t know they want?”
“Electricity. The Mayor thinks that if they have lights and TV’s and all the rest just for a few days then they’ll be willing to break their backs for more. We have the diesel, but like I said, that’s allocated for the boats. Sophia won’t allow that to be diverted, nor will Mister Mills, and together the two of them form quite a voting block. I think she’s right. Hence this trip.”
I waited for him to go on, but he seemed to have finished.
“How does coming over to England to collect four armoured vehicles help?”
“Oh, right, sorry. We need more fuel. Fuel we can waste. The trouble isn’t so much in finding it, but getting it out again. That means we need a way of clearing the roads and keeping them clear so a load of tankers can get through. That’s what the armoured cars are for. I’d have preferred we brought back one of the tanks, but Leon said no. Since he and Francois are the only people who know how to drive one, it’s a bit of a moot point. Shame that.”
“And the fuel dump, that’s somewhere near here is it?”
“Ah, no. Not really. It’s at Belfast International Airport.”
“Belfast? You’ve come all the way over to Britain to find some armoured vehicles, just so you can go back to Ireland to drive them to Belfast?”
“Ah, well,” he sounded puzzled for a moment, “do you mean why don’t we find some vehicles closer to the airport? We looked. We’ve looked everywhere.” He sighed deeply. “Where we found one or two or a half dozen, there’s been no fuel. Those APC’s they need too much to just carry it all in. So we didn’t need to just find the armoured cars, but we needed to find a fuel supply near them. I told you it was a horse and a nail problem.”
“So you found a stash of diesel somewhere near these APC’s? Well, why didn’t you just bring back that diesel for people to burn on their boats? Wouldn’t that have been easier than trying another trip to the airport?”
“Ah, no, I see. Sorry, I didn’t quite make it clear. It’s not diesel we’re getting from the airport. It’s aviation fuel. And we’re not just talking about a few tankers. We’re planning on bringing out seventy of them.”
“Seventy? Seventy tankers?” My voice rose to a dangerously high pitch.
“One big trip, one big risk. That’s the plan. There are a dozen fuel tankers at the airport, and a depot half a mile down the road. That’s why we needed the armoured cars.”
“And boat engines can run on aviation fuel?”
“If you’ve got a group of engineers used to keeping the nuclear engine of a Trident submarine working, then something like that isn’t a problem.”
“Seventy,” I murmured. “That would require nearly everyone in your little community.”
“It’s certainly a big undertaking.”
“But you’ve only brought back four armoured cars.”
“Well that’s where this has all gone a bit wrong. There were twenty of us a few days ago. We’d planned on bringing fifteen vehicles back. Then... well, you know how it is out here?”
We sat in silence for a moment. I let it last as long as I could, but macabre curiosity at this bizarre plan took the better of me.
“Fifteen APC’s? How big is this trawler?”
“Oh, the Santa Maria’s a big beast, but we were planning on towing the vehicles on barges.”
“Ah.”
I ran the plan over in my mind. Whichever way I looked at it, it didn’t make sense. There had to be a few pieces he’d not yet told me.
“Isn’t there anywhere closer to this village? Anywhere easier to get to?”
“Village?” Again he sounded puzzled, and again only for a moment. “We’ve looked. We really have. We’ve tried airports, refineries, military bases and depots. We’ve looked in Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, even the French coast. Belfast is the best option.”
“But you found the diesel for the boat in a NATO fuel dump. That’d be some underground storage facility on some uninhabited rock in the Atlantic, right? So why not just go and find another one?”
“And put the diesel in what? We’d have to transport it over in the Santa Maria’s fuel tank. Then where would we store it? We’d end up just using the Trawler as a floating petrol station, which would leave no one to do the fishing or the supply runs. Believe me, we’ve looked at it from every ang
le. We even tried it, down in Cork. There was an explosion that killed twelve of us. We lost another dozen just getting out to sea.”
“You mean the coast?”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” And I decided it didn’t. Whatever happened, none of us would be joining them on their excursion to the airport. I decided to change tack.
“This Mayor, who is she, some politician from the old days?”
“After that evacuation and Prometheus? She’s the compromise candidate. We’re a nation of blocks, you see. There’s Mister Mills and his sailors, Leon and his soldiers, Sophia and her refugees, then some people from Ireland, others from Britain and a lot from pretty much everywhere else. We needed some kind of government and out of all the possible candidates, everyone objects to her less than they object to anyone else.”
“Well that hasn’t changed, at least.” We sat in silence for a while, staring out at the fields. In the distance I thought I could make out a figure staggering down a hill. Gravity was angling it away from the house towards the north.
“Leon and Francois are soldiers. The old man, I take it he’s in charge?”
“He’s the power that pushes the throne,” Donnie said, cryptically.
“And Marcy’s a doctor so I can see why she’d be here. What about Gwen?”
“She’s a long haul trucker. Knows every side road, short cut and low bridge this side of Krakow. She was near Warsaw when the world collapsed. She did a deal with the driver of a diesel tanker. She ran her rig in front, clearing the way, in exchange for enough fuel to keep the rig on the road. They made it down to the Channel Tunnel just in time to find it had been blown up, then drove around just long enough to know they had to get off the continent. They made it down to Monte Carlo, picking up a half dozen others on the way. They stole some rich kid’s yacht and drifted out to sea. Then there’s Carmen, now she’s...” he trailed off.
“Do you know her well?”
“What? No, not really. She turned up about three weeks ago, just before we were about to set out. She volunteered. Said she couldn’t settle. It’s not that uncommon. Some people, after spending a few months out in the ruins, can’t accept that they’ve found somewhere safe. They’re driven by some nameless necessity into going back out. Since we were planning the trip, she said she’d come along.” He glanced down at the barn.