by Frank Tayell
“Does it matter?” Locke asked. “Either we continue along this road, ultimately heading to the coast, or we turn south. Where precisely we are doesn’t have any bearing on that.”
Bill shook his head. Locke’s point was valid, but her sanguine detachment was far less reassuring than Kim’s upbeat pragmatism. “We’ll check a few more houses, and then head back.”
The next house wasn’t as far from the one-storey bungalow as that was from the mansion, and before they reached it, they came to a corpse. This time, it was a corpse. The body was slumped against the trunk of a fir whose lower branches had been long ago trimmed. The upper branches had kept away the worst of the snow. A light dusting lay across the woman’s legs, but nothing obscured the bullet hole in her skull.
“Zombie, I think,” Bill said. “Probably. It’s the way she’s sitting against the tree. I can’t think how a zombie would die like that.”
“I would say that she was shot a week ago,” Locke said. “About the same time as the people in the barn.”
Beyond the corpse, the front door to the next house was open. They went inside to confirm the kitchen had been stripped, then continued along the road. Locke took the lead, easily outpacing Bill. She marched past the next house, and then the next. The buildings grew closer together until, fourteen houses later, they reached a crossroads. Some houses were bungalows, some had two storeys. Some were old, some relatively new. What they all had in common was that the doors had been opened.
“According to the compass,” Bill said, glancing between it and the roads leading from the junction, “we’ve a choice between north and due west. More or less. Those bodies don’t help us make a decision.”
Three corpses lay on the road to the west, two on the road to the north, all partially buried in snow, but all unmistakably undead.
“We go north,” Locke said.
“Are you sure?” Bill asked.
“Can’t you smell it?” Locke said.
Bill sniffed. “Wood smoke? Isn’t that just the mansion?”
“No.”
“It’s coming from the north? You think the fire is close? It has to be. Then it can’t be the smoke we spotted from the air. There’s no way we’ve walked far enough.”
“A better question is whether it was lit by friendly hands,” Locke said.
“That’s an argument for going west, then,” Bill said.
“Look down. Look backward,” Locke said. “We’ve left footprints in the snow. If they’re hostile, they can follow us back to the mansion. We can’t outpace them, not while carrying the pilot. Nor can we leave anyone there while we go in search of supplies. Even without the footprints, they’d be able to follow the smoke from our own fire.”
“And so we can’t go back to the mansion to get reinforcements, either,” Bill said. He checked his belt, and the pistol holstered there. “Right. Advance, hope they’re not hostile. If they are, retreat back to the mansion where we have the high ground, a high wall, and Sergeant Khan and his rifle.”
“Once again, I wish I had a better plan,” Locke said.
The northward road led uphill. Bill stopped counting his steps, and started counting corpses. After twelve bodies, all of which had almost certainly been undead, they reached a signpost. One arm read Fleurines, the other, Château de Saint Christophe ou Château d’Argand. The sign had been knocked askew so that both arms pointed towards opposite sets of houses.
“Have you heard of either of those places?” Bill asked.
“No, but a castle would be a logical place to find survivors. Unless it’s a chateau in the modern sense of a grand house.” She sniffed. “The scent of wood smoke is growing stronger.”
It wasn’t visible above the towering pine trees, each fifty feet tall or higher, shielding one property from its neighbours.
“Must be a big fire,” Bill said.
After another trio of broken-open houses, two cars were skewed across the road. Before them lay a mound of rotting bones. The vehicles had acted as a snow break, leaving the bodies uncovered.
“They’re wearing uniforms,” Bill said. “They must have died at the beginning of the outbreak.” He scanned the trees, then peered into the vehicles. “Can’t see why they set up a blockade here.”
“Hello? Bonjour!” Locke called out. There was no reply. “I don’t want to be mistaken for a zombie by any sentry they’ve deployed,” she added.
Bill pushed himself onto the roof of a car. “No footprints in the snow, so I don’t think there’s a sentry nearby. But I think I can see smoke. About three or four hundred yards away.” Bill looked down at the corpses, then back the way they’d come, but it was too late to turn around. “Whatever this is,” he said, jumping down, “whoever they are, let’s get it over with.”
Chapter 7 - A School for Vampires
Fleurines, France
The smoke wasn’t billowing from a castle, but from a bonfire smouldering in a farm’s courtyard. Set back from the road, the wide gate had been reinforced with metal sheets, but only to a height of five feet. A jumble of barbed wire had been added to that, hanging loose over the join with the lock-post, then continuing along a chain-link fence that disappeared into the trees. The entrance was wide enough for an industrial vehicle, evidenced by the tanker parked twenty yards from the bonfire. The tanker was plain white, completely devoid of warning signs or company brand, but its proximity to the fire suggested that it didn’t contain anything flammable. Behind the tanker were a trio of cars and a pair of rusting four-by-fours. Beyond those was a quartet of small-windowed outbuildings blocking the view of what lay behind.
When first lit, and based on the diameter of ash and melted snow, flames from the bonfire had to have risen as high as the main building’s roof. That building was an odd construct covered in flaking whitewash. Two storeys high, and long and wide, it had a sloping roof that would restrict the height of the upper floor to five feet close to the eaves. It reminded Bill of the seasonal bunkhouses that the Mastertons had on their Northumberland farm. Freezing in winter, baking in summer, it would only suit a one-season worker whom you knew would never return for a second harvest. Next to a windowless door was an external spiral staircase. The stairs ascended to a balcony deep enough for a leather armchair, table, and a threadbare sun-umbrella. Sitting in the chair was a man wearing a battered leather jacket, dirty black combat trousers, a bright red woollen hat and almost-matching scarf.
Before Bill could call out, the man turned his head and saw them. He jumped up, grabbing a carbine. The barrel knocked into the balcony’s steel-rod railing, before being aimed at them.
“Arretez-vous!”
“Hello!” Bill called back. “It’s all right, we’re people. Alive.”
“Nous sommes en vie!” Locke said.
The man lowered the barrel a little. “English?” he asked.
“Non monsieur, Irlandais,” Locke said, and then continued in rapid-fire French that Bill failed to understand.
He took it as a good sign when the man replied, and a better one when the carbine was lowered until it was being held more casually in his arms.
The French was rapid and involved, far beyond the classroom language Bill had rarely used beyond the bars of Strasbourg. He did pick out a few words, of which avion was the most illuminating, but the increasingly relaxed tone from both Locke and the Frenchman calmed his nerves. Finally, the man nodded, turned around, and went inside.
“Well?” Bill asked.
“The fire was for our benefit,” Locke said. “They saw the plane overhead, and lit the fire so that we would find them.”
“Ah. Then they weren’t the lights that I saw from the air. Are they friendly? And is it them or him?”
“It’s a small group, but they are part of a larger group. They only arrived here a few days ago. I’m not sure exactly when. It’s been a while since I had to speak French, and my vocabulary is better suited to the casinos of Monte Carlo than a quasi-military stand-off.”
“I’m thinking about the barn,” Bill said.
“So am I,” Locke said. “But I—”
Before she could finish, the door opened, and the sentry stepped out onto the balcony. With him was another man. He wore the same style of combat trousers, but over his chest was a plain t-shirt. Around forty, his head was shaved, but his face was bearded, the hair squared off two inches below his chin. Dark eyed, sallow-skinned, his bare arms were muscled and tattooed, the left bearing a long scar visible even from such a distance. Bill guessed a military background was the most likely explanation for the scar, but he was more interested in the explanation for the t-shirt. Clearly, they had heating inside. Now he was listening for it, he heard the soft chug of a generator. That meant fuel, and, possibly, a far quicker method of reaching the coast.
The leader addressed Locke, and this time Bill didn’t understand a single word. After a minute, he gave Locke and Bill a gruff wave and went back inside.
“We’re being invited in,” Locke said as the sentry ran down the spiral stairs. He’d slung his carbine and left it on his shoulder as he fished for a loop of keys attached to a chain around his belt. He grinned as he fumbled with the padlocks. It might have been a friendly expression if his mouth wasn’t missing so many teeth.
“Come,” the sentry said in halting English. “Come. Inside. Please.”
“Thanks very much,” Bill said. “I’m Bill Wright, pleasure to meet you.” He held out his hand. The guard stared at it for a moment, almost as if it was an alien gesture.
“Philippe Laurent,” he said, taking Bill’s hand. “Please. Come.”
Locke said something in French, but the man only responded with a shrug. As soon as they were through the gate, Laurent locked it again. They followed Laurent towards the spiral stairs. At the top, the guard turned to them, and gave a curt instruction, though with a smile.
“What was that?” Bill asked.
“We have to leave our weapons outside,” Locke said. She put her rifle at the top of the steps. Bill hesitated a fraction longer.
“Bill, please,” Locke said. “Trust me, it’s all fine.”
The trouble was that he didn’t trust Locke. There was plenty she hadn’t told him, and little of what she had said that he believed. She could have sabotaged the plane and engineered where they crashed if she’d been able to communicate with her people in France. As far-fetched as that seemed, Lisa Kempton had owned a satellite network. What other contingencies had she established?
“Bill?” Locke prompted.
Regardless, he had no choice. He unbuttoned his weapons belt, placed it on the wrought-iron balcony, and went inside.
On first sight, his guess at the building’s original purpose was confirmed. The room, five feet high at the eaves, taller in the centre, ran halfway the length of the building. It was a communal eating-living space, and no doubt the bunkrooms were on the floor below, but his attention was taken by the people.
Not counting the sentry, there were two other men in the room. The bearded leader was propped on a massive oak table, his hands on either side, gripping the edge. Each arm had a tattoo. The arm covered by the scar had what might have been a military tattoo. His other arm bore a faded tricolour above a branch wrapped in barbed wire from which extended three circular leaves. Was it a unit badge of some kind?
Standing arms folded to his left was a man of about the same age, mid-forties to the sentry’s mid-twenties, and an inch shy of six feet. Like the leader, he was bald-headed and bearded. There was a similarity in their appearance, and a similar three-leafed tattoo on his folded arm. They weren’t brothers, but perhaps cousins. Perhaps it was just that they were dressed alike, their clothing tattered and worn, tending towards filthy. Bill knew well enough that cleanliness was no longer a guide to goodliness, and after so long among the luxuries of Anglesey, he shouldn’t judge.
“Bonjour,” Bill said, with a wide smile. “And I’m afraid that’s about the extent of my French.”
“Monsieur,” Locke began, and Bill had soon lost the thread. Instead, he smiled, and made an ostentatious show of enjoying the heat while he took in the room.
It was a cut above the cheap accommodation that the Mastertons had offered their seasonal workers. The skylights were wide and broad, letting in enough natural light that artificial illumination would only be required at night. The windows were double-glazed, keeping in the heat from the pair of glowing-red three-bar fires at the room’s far end. The heaters might be ancient, but the cabling was new, snaking off from a multi-plug and through an equally new hole in a door at the room’s far end. Next to the multi-plug, other than cables trailing to the TV, were a trio of fridges whose size matched the gaps beneath the counter of the kitchenette. The pair of ovens hadn’t been removed, but on top of the hob were a pair of stained hotplates. The sinks were still used for their original purpose; at least, they were full of dirty crockery.
The scent of turmeric hung heavy in the air, but Bill had already forgotten food. He tried to estimate how much fuel these people had if they were willing to waste so much. It wasn’t just the fridges, though he was curious what they might be storing inside, but the television as well. The screen was seventy inches wide, and almost certainly hadn’t been in the bunkhouse before the outbreak. His eye caught the stack of Blu-rays next to the player. He recognised the stylised woman on the cover with her wild blue and white hair, carrying a scythe. It was a cartoon that Annette had watched back on Anglesey, and for which he’d got an hour-long lecture for calling a cartoon. Someone among the collective of coders had introduced her to it, most likely Mirabelle. It was a Japanese story, something to do with vampires at a European boarding school. Considering the weaponry stacked around the room, it was not the kind of show he’d expect such hardened men to watch, but in the days of VOD, perhaps those were the only discs that could be found.
Next to the television was a pile of guns. Hunting rifles dominated, though he counted two farmer’s shotguns, at least four military-grade shotguns, and an FN P90. The personal defence weapon was one of the few whose proper name he knew, but only because he’d assumed that it was a gun invented for Hollywood before he’d seen the anti-terrorist police carrying them in Brussels. Between those and a battered sofa were a score of backpacks. All either blue or red, and all with fluorescent stripes. Were they go-bags in case they were overrun?
A cog slowly clicked against a mental gear, but before it could fall into place, Locke spoke.
“Did you catch much of that, Bill?” she asked.
“Uh, no, not really,” he said.
“The short version is that they saw our plane flying overhead, and ran outside to light their bonfire.”
“Ah, so that wasn’t the smoke we saw from the air. What’s the longer version?”
“That they haven’t been here long. Not in this building. Soon after the outbreak, they heard rumours about Britain having a vaccine. They headed to the coast, thinking they might find a boat and cross the Channel. Instead, they found refugees from England who told them the truth about the vaccine. After that, they came inland. They were heading to Paris when they heard a second-hand account of Marseilles’ destruction. A mushroom cloud, Bill.”
“Ah. Do they know of any other bombs?”
“Not with certainty. They avoided cities, just in case, and have been moving from place to place, looking for somewhere secure. Which brings us to where we are. It’s a place called Fleurines. A village, I think, about sixty kilometres north of Paris, and about two hundred and fifty kilometres south-southeast of Calais.”
“Two hundred and fifty? That’s a lot further from the coast than I hoped. If they came from the coast, do they know a safe route back? For that matter, do they know of any refuges along the coast, or places we should avoid?” He glanced at the lights, but was conscious that the Frenchmen probably understood English. The last thing he wanted was for them to think that he and Locke were a threat, and asking about precious supplies of fuel would certainly
make them think that.
Locke fired off another string of rapid French. Bill glanced around the room. Something was wrong. Off. Out of place. He almost had it when Locke spoke.
“You’re to take Philippe Laurent back to the others,” she said. “And bring them all here.”
“You’re not coming?” he asked.
“Now, William,” she said with a smile. “You know me; given the choice between a comfortable chair in the warm, or a hike across a river, which do I always pick?” She grinned, and Bill forced a wry chuckle. Something was wrong. Very wrong, but he hadn’t a clue what message she was trying to give.
“Fair enough, just save some of the food for us.” He turned around to face Laurent. “After you, then.”
Laurent reached the door and had opened it when a high-pitched scream rent the air. Bill turned around, and saw Locke barrelling towards him. She pushed him outside, and in turn, he pushed Laurent before him. Laurent toppled over the balcony, and it was all Bill could do to stop himself from following. Laurent screamed as he landed hard. Locke pushed Bill away from the door, and halfway down the spiral staircase. Then the grenade detonated.
The door flew outwards, as glass from the skylights exploded upwards.
Bill shook his head, trying to dislodge the ringing.
“The grenade?” he asked, knowing he was yelling. “Why?”
“Clear downstairs!” Locke said. “I’ve got up here.”
She said no more, but ran through the broken door, back into the building.
Bill decided that, for once, it was best not to think. He looked for his weapons, but his belt was nowhere to be seen. A scream came again, but this one was from Laurent.
Bill ran down the stairs. Laurent’s legs were broken, twisted at the wrong angle, but his hands covered his face. Bill hesitated, uncertain until he remembered that first scream, the one that had come from downstairs.