by Frank Tayell
“I am sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault. Some people, what they’ve been through, you can see it in their eyes. They don’t really want to live anymore. Not in a world like this.” His voice caught, and I was suddenly reminded just how young this man was.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
“What, me? Oh, that’d be down to my specialised personal knowledge.”
“Really?” I was intrigued. “What kind?”
“I found the APC’s, and the diesel. Well, me and Leon. I knew about Belfast too. I used to work there.”
“In the airport?”
“Oh, I didn’t do anything important. I just ran a coffee and sandwich place. That’s where I was, when the outbreak hit.”
“Really? What was it like?
“It was crazy,” he said. “Some planes were allowed in, but not many and none were allowed out. No people were allowed in either. I could have gone home, but what for? The airport seemed safe, and I’d more food in the shop than I did in my cupboards. So I stayed, and kept on doing almost exactly what I’d been doing before. I kept the security people full of coffee and increasingly stale pastries. At any minute I was sure there was going to be an announcement that everything was going to return to normal. There wasn’t. The news just kept getting worse, and each day, though I didn’t notice it at first, there were fewer and fewer people at the airport. The few planes still flying were just running a shuttle service to Britain. There were plenty of planes and helicopters parked on the tarmac, and there was plenty of fuel. I started asking around, seeing if anyone was planning on taking a plane and flying somewhere. But the only people who were interested had no more idea of how to fly a plane than I did, let alone where they should fly to.
“I decided I should leave before I was stuck or kicked out. The only place I could think of that might be safer than my flat or the airport was a cabin a friend of mine had near Slievenamon, down in The Republic. It had no electricity, no phone and no heating, but it was remote. That was important, because when those planes did come in, they were met with soldiers who’d go on board before anyone was allowed off. Sometimes there would be gunfire, and it would only be the soldiers who’d leave the plane. I grabbed the last of the food, borrowed some fuel for my car and headed south. I thought I’d have trouble crossing the border into the Republic, but the checkpoints were all abandoned. I got to the cabin, and I waited.
“The days all blended into one, you know? I sometimes picked up something on the radio, but it was never good news. I started to think that I should go somewhere or try and do something. I didn’t know what. It seemed wrong that I was safe whilst the world had fallen apart. I’d no family in Ireland, not in the Republic or up in the North, at least none that I cared about. But I did have family over in England, and this idea came over me that I was the only family they had. I was the only person in the entire world who cared what happened. If I didn’t go and see, then who would? But how could I get there? And what would I do if I did?
“That thought would have driven me mad if there hadn’t been a knock at the door. And it actually was a knock. It was Leon. Him and his unit, they’d spotted the light from my fire from down in the valley and driven up to investigate. I’d not even thought to cover the windows.”
“Marcy said that Leon was a colonel in the French Army?” I asked.
“In Africa, Special Forces supporting the peace keepers, and that’s another grim story. Their base was next to the refugee camp hospital Marcy worked in. From what they’ve said, calling it a hospital would be a lie. It doesn’t sound like more than a concrete bunker that had four patients to a bed on a good day. A five year old boy had come in, needing an operation of some kind. Marcy didn’t have the equipment to do it in the camp, so she smuggled him into the military base to do it there. She’d finished the operation and was waiting to see whether he’d live or die when the outbreak hit. Orders came through. The soldiers were to leave everything they couldn’t carry and get on a plane back to Paris. Leon offered Marcy a ride.
“Now personally, the idea of French Special Forces being deployed on the streets of France is enough to make me stop and think, but she took him up on the offer. By the time they were airborne a plane had crashed into the runway at the airbase they were meant to be landing at. By the time they reached Paris, even Charles de Gaulle was gone. Their plane was redirected to Shannon airport in Ireland, along with a whole load of EU military flights. Just before they landed, Leon received a message. They should wait and be ready. That was the last they heard from France.
“No more orders came through, but too many planes came in, with too many infected. They tried to quarantine the runways, them and all these other soldiers from all over the continent and some from further than that. The quarantine got pushed back and they were trying to maintain a ring around the airport, and then they were being pushed back further. With ammunition running low, when the power went out, retreat turned into a rout. They’d been in touch with other military units and knew that some people were still holding on over on the east coast. They commandeered some vehicles and headed across the country. They must have got lost, because they ended up knocking at my door.”
“That was lucky.”
“It was, but surviving is as much luck as anything else. Leon said he was taking his men east, towards the Irish Sea. He asked if I wanted to go with him. I had nothing to offer them, and yet he asked. I still don’t know why. Of course I said yes.
“We reached the coast, started fortifying a house and it seemed like everything might just work out. At some point, I can’t remember when, I’d told Leon about my family in England. About how I thought they must be dead. He said nothing is ever certain. Which, when you think about it and when you’re talking about life, death and the undead, could mean two very different things. But he did say he wanted to go to England, and he asked if I’d like to travel with him. No,” he corrected himself, “asked isn’t the right word. I think he was finding a reason for himself that would allow him to leave his men and the dozen or so refugees we’d picked up. We took a dinghy and reached Wales about the same time, we found out later, that Francois, Marcy and the rest made contact with the Santa Maria.
“I looked for my family. They weren’t there. There’d been a battle, of sorts, and there were bodies everywhere, but no sign of either of them. Then we went to Cambridge. That was where Leon wanted to go, to a house just outside the city. He didn’t say who lived there, and it was clear from the street what was inside. He insisted on going in alone. A few minutes later he came out again. And he’s never said who lived there. Maybe that’s for the best. We’ve all got so many of our own horrific memories that we don’t need each other’s as well.
“We drifted around for a few days after that. He didn’t seem to want to go back to Francois, but nor was there any point doing anything but heading back towards the Irish Sea. One afternoon, we just stumbled across the warehouse. I knew there was something odd about it from the moment I saw it. The number of windows, the position of the ramp and the layout of the loading bay was just wrong. It seemed as good as anywhere else to hold up for the night, and solving the mystery was as good a way of passing the time as any other. It took a couple of hours before I worked it out. The place was an illegal fuel dump. You know, the kind that sold agricultural diesel to people who wanted to avoid paying the duty for a commercial vehicle. It was all contained in these old tanks buried under ground.”
“You drove out of there?”
“Hardly. We spent the next day trying to find a clear route out by road. We spent too long on it. We were spotted.”
“Zombies?”
“Humans. It was a good thing I had Leon with me. Even so, we had this running battle through the suburbs, with the noise of gunfire drawing in the undead. It was... terrible. We were pinned down. Each time Leon fired he hit someone. But he didn’t fire that often, because they were in cover and being cautious. Me, t
hat was the first time I’d fired a gun and my hands were wavering so much there wouldn’t have been any point aiming even if I knew how. I thought we’d die. Of course we weren’t going to. Leon had it planned. He’d remembered that spot and picked it on purpose. I suppose he’d been in far worse situations than that. The gunfire attracted the undead, and They dealt with the bandits, leaving us to climb up a fire escape we’d not dare use when we were facing people with guns. We climbed up onto the roof and escaped.
“About ten minutes walk from there we found the car park, with its assortment of APC’s, halftracks and tanks. They were lined up almost as if they were on sale. All they were missing was a price tag on the windscreen. After that fire-fight we’d just been in, I really wanted to take one. Leon wouldn’t let me. We didn’t have enough fuel, and with just the two of us, there was no way we’d be able to secure the warehouse to get more. It turned out twenty people wasn’t enough either.
“We found a car instead, and about five hours driving later, we found one of the safe houses. A couple of days after that we were out at sea and found that the redoubt in Ireland had been reduced to one small village. Half of Leon’s men had died, and I don’t think he’s forgiven himself for not being there.”
I tried to say nothing, to maintain a respectful silence, but curiosity got the better of me.
“And these safe houses...” I began.
“Ah now, let me stop you there. That’s one thing the old man will definitely want to tell you about himself. They were his idea, you see. And what about you, though? How did you get manage to keep a baby alive out here for so long?”
“Well, to start with that was mostly Annette’s doing...”
I kept the story as much as possible on Annette and Kim, and a little on Sholto, but skipped over Lenham Hill, and who I’d been. After what he’d said about politicians and the evacuation I thought that was wise. As it turned out, that circumspection was utterly pointless.
About three hours later, when we’d long lapsed into silence we saw two figures heading towards us from the north. Sholto and Francois. Sholto went into the house, Francois into the barn. A few minutes after that, Francois and the old man came out. Carmen wasn’t with them. And a few minutes after that Francois climbed up to the roof through the skylight.
“She died,” Francois said, simply. “She spent seven weeks in a motorway service station. Ten people were there to start with and she was the only one to walk out alive. I’ll take over up here.”
“I can stay,” Donnie offered.
“No. There’s no need. Anyway, you make too much noise.” He held out his hand. I took it, and he helped me up. Then he kept hold of my hand and gave me a long calculating look, before nodding to himself. I followed Donnie back down through the skylight, leaving the French soldier to stand watch alone.
Down in the kitchen, a pot was bubbling away over the fire. The old man sat at the end of the table, Marcy next to him. Annette was curled up in a battered armchair, Daisy was in Kim’s lap. I think she seemed happier. It was hard to tell.
“I told you there was a boat and a sub and a village in Ireland,” Sholto said with a grin. He was stretched on a chair, his boots loose, looking supremely pleased with himself.
“Were there many undead out there?” I asked.
“Two or three. Seven if you’re counting. Not many. There can’t have been many people in these parts to start with.” He rubbed at his arm where it had been burnt during our exit from the tunnel.
“Let me see that,” Marcy said, looking at the burn. “No, on second thought, first you need to wash, then I’ll have a look it. There’s a shower room, down by the back door.”
“That way,” the old man gestured with his thumb. “Showers don’t work, you can boil some up on the stove if you want hot. Otherwise it’s cold. Be frugal. We don’t want to waste it, not if that boat’s late.”
“Who’d have thought the life of a living folk hero would be so mundane,” my brother said with a grin, as he headed off down the hall.
“He’s not really a folk hero is he?” I asked.
“A living legend might be closer to the truth. And not him, of course, but the idea of him. An American who knew about the end of the world and tried to stop it, then insisted on searching across England for his brother. You have to admit, it’s a good story. It was Sophia who came up with it. She’s a captain of a fishing trawler. Has he told you about her?”
“A bit, yes.”
“The story, or the idea of it, gave her crew and passengers the hope that amidst the death and horror there was still some humanity out there. Romantic nonsense if you ask me, just like the safe houses.”
“But that was you,” Annette said, “Marcy, you told me! You said he was the flag man.”
“The flag man?”
“Down near the Abbey there was a house with flags,” Annette explained. “Was that you?”
“That depends which Abbey you mean.”
“Brazely, down in Hampshire,” Kim elaborated.
“Hampshire? No, that wasn’t me. Might have been Bran, of course. Not really sure where he goes or what he gets up to. I don’t think that’s his real name, just what he said I should call him, which is not the same thing at all. But everyone’s entitled to rewrite their past.” He glanced at me as he said that. “Could have been someone else, too. There’s quite a few people working on my overground railway now.”
“Railway?” Annette repeated, puzzled.
“It’s what I call it. The network of safe houses, that makes it sound grander than it is. Did you go inside this one that you saw?”
“No,” she said, “but I know there were people in it, there was smoke coming from the chimney. Then I got lost looking for it. That’s when I met Kim and Bill.”
“Ah.” He seemed to relax.
“We saw one, though, didn’t we,” Kim said, “and went inside it, down by the River Thames, near Windsor.”
“You went inside?”
“I think someone had emptied it of anything valuable. The cupboards were empty.”
“Ah, well we always leave some food there.”
“And there was a map” Kim said.”
“There was?”
“Well, no,” she amended. “There had been a map, taped to the kitchen counter but that had been removed as well.”
“Ah, yes. That sounds like Bran,” he said, and only once it was gone did I notice the tension that had been in his voice. “Not taking the map and the food. I mean leaving it there in the first place.”
“The map, was it directions to here?”
“Possibly, possibly,” he said. “It’s hard to say. Probably it just listed the other houses within a couple of days walk. No, these houses aren’t anything grand, just a place that’s empty with a fireplace and, for preference, a flag pole out front. It’s just somewhere we can leave some food and water and firewood. And it all started by accident.”
“It was an accident?” Annette asked.
“Completely,” he stretched out. “When this all began I was in a home. A retirement home. I’ve not much to say about that place other than I’ve found a new lease on life since. The undead appeared a few days after the evacuation. I had to fight, I got bit, I found out I was immune. After the shock of that wore off, I realised our troubles had only just begun. You know what it was like in those first few days. We tried to get down to Cornwall. That was where we were meant to be evacuated to, but it took us a whole day to cover five miles and we were exhausted.”
“Who’s we?”
“Oh, me and the Mayor. We thought if we got to the town we might find some police or army and they’d give us a lift. I mean, this was after the evacuation, but we didn’t know, then, that the vaccine was poison. We just thought we’d been overlooked, that we’d been unlucky. We got to the hill overlooking the shopping centre. It was one of those out of town sorts, with the generic shops selling clothing that’s more logo than thread. Anyway, we were looking down from this h
ill and we could make out these people, fighting. Except they weren’t fighting zombies. They were fighting each other, just for a few meagre scraps that wouldn’t last more than a couple days. I’d killed three zombies that morning, I knew there’d be more. I knew it was only a matter of time. And when you get to my age you get a real understanding of the value of time. We decided to turn around and head north.”
“To here?”
“Not here, not this very house, no. But to one a bit like it, not that far away. I had a friend. A sort of boss, I suppose. His brother had a house over here in Wales that he never used. That was the only place either of us could think of. So when I say we were heading north, it’d be more accurate to say we were just walking in that direction, because it seemed better than any of the others. We met some other people the next day. We were heading the same way, but they didn’t want us to travel with them, not us two oldies so close to death the undead probably didn’t realise we were still breathing. Not that they said that, not out loud. They just said ‘we’ll see you further down the road’. And they were right. We did, and I had to finish Them off.” He patted the spear at his side.
“Well,” he went on, “we may be old, but we’re not stupid. Being on foot just wasn’t going to work for us, we needed a car and there were plenty of those. What we were lacking was petrol. Thanks to the rationing there just wasn’t very much left in any car. What I realised, and this is how the whole safe house business started, was that whilst there wasn’t much in any one car, all together there’d be enough to get us wherever we wanted. We stopped early, picking this nice little detached cottage mostly because it had these white roses trailing up around the door. That it had a flag pole in the front garden was what the Mayor would call ‘a fortuitous happenstance’. We went around the houses and went around the cars. By nightfall we’d enough food for a week and enough petrol to get us twenty miles. It wasn’t enough, but it was too much to carry. So we decided to go and check the next village along. We took enough food for a day, and left the rest with the fuel, and made a note of the address. Then, and it’s important that you remember this because no matter what Donnie or Ronnie might tell you, this is the truth of it, we hung up a couple of flags. And we only did that in case we couldn’t find the street. That was all. It was just a marker to help us find the place on our way back.” He paused. “I think that water’s boiled. You mind making some tea.”