by Frank Tayell
“On two,” Bill said, reaching for the handle. “One. Two.” As the sergeant covered him, Bill threw open the door. Beyond was a short corridor with two doors leading from it. As Bill and the sergeant moved along the corridor, checking one office, then the next, Chester helped Scott into the chair behind the desk. Thinly padded, it appeared more comfortable than the hard-backed seats against the wall.
“At least we’re inside,” Chester said. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Scott muttered, closing his eyes.
“Two offices,” Bill said. “Empty of bodies, and zombies. Not much in there, just a few filing cabinets, a desk, a computer.”
“Do you think this building is earthed?” Kessler asked from the doorway, her eyes on the storm outside.
“Perhaps we’ll find out,” Locke said. “How are your hands?”
“My hands?” Kessler said. “Fine, I guess. Why?”
“I never liked the cold weather,” Locke said. “The skin between my fingers would always crack after a few hours exposure. It made meetings in cold climates an embarrassing nightmare. After the crash, after the hike through the snowfield and a freezing night in a damp ruin, they were bleeding. Today, they’re healing.”
“You’re saying the temperature has risen?” Bill asked, glancing at his own hands, then out at the rain. “Of course it has.”
“But by at least ten degrees,” Locke said.
“I’d say that was worth celebrating,” Chester said.
“Nuclear winter,” Locke said.
“It can’t be,” Kessler said. “Isn’t that when the entire sky gets blanketed by a radioactive cloud of fallout, blocking the sun? That didn’t happen. Back on the ship, when we left Cape Verde, we worried about that. Believe me, we had little food and water, everything we knew had gone, but we still had space to stare up into the cloudless sky wondering, worrying.”
“Yes, it was a theory,” Locke said. “A hypothesis developed in a laboratory, tested with simulations. Data was gathered from each major volcanic eruption and fed into the models, precipitating a global debate over whether the theory held water.”
“Sure, but the sky wasn’t blanketed,” Kessler said. “Nuclear winter didn’t happen.”
“No, but Lisa and I did engineer for thousands of nuclear warheads to detonate in the oceans. Compared to the force of a storm, even a nuclear warhead is little more than a pinprick, but a pin can still draw blood. The injection of so much energy could have disrupted the underwater currents, the energy from which feeds the jet stream and other atmospheric conditions, which, in turn, determine the weather. The temperature has risen rapidly in the last day, and this year has seen nothing but bizarre and changeable weather.”
“Maybe,” Bill said. “Or the sudden removal of people, of industry, of agriculture, has massively reduced the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases in the atmosphere. That’s my theory to explain the weather. Perhaps it’s just one of those odd years. Time will tell, but not any time soon.”
Another bolt of lightning lit up the airfield outside.
“Even if it is warmer than yesterday, we need a fire,” Khan said. “And we can’t start one in here.”
“You can run a diesel engine on aviation fuel, can’t you?” Bill asked, turning to the pilot, but Scott’s eyes remained resolutely closed.
“You can,” Locke said.
“Sergeant, what kind of fuel do those tanks use?”
“Diesel,” Khan said. “You want to commandeer a tank?”
“Why not?” Bill asked. “What do you think, Scott? You got a plane to work, can you manage a tank? Scott?”
“A… a tank?” Scott winced. “Sure. Maybe.”
“It’d be a noisy beast,” Chester said.
“So would a car or a truck,” Bill said. “With a tank we wouldn’t have to worry about potholes or partially flooded roads.”
“How fast can they go?” Chester asked.
“That depends on the terrain,” Khan said. “Forty or fifty miles an hour is possible. Twenty or thirty would be more realistic.”
“The same as a car, then,” Bill said. “Back in the summer, twenty was about the most we could manage. Any faster, and a collision with the undead would have risked us being thrown off the road. That wouldn’t be a problem with a tank.”
“What about rivers?” Locke asked.
“Bridges and tunnels,” Bill said. “The same way we’d cross them on foot. If we can reach a train line, and follow that northwest, we could reach the coast in a day, carrying enough spare fuel to get a boat to Belfast without having to detour via Sheppey.”
“If we can find the fuel,” Locke said. “And repair a tank. But I suppose it’s worth investigating once the storm has ceased.”
“Nope,” Bill said. “I don’t feel like waiting.” As he spoke, the wind howled, shaking the windows. “And we need a sturdier refuge to wait-out the storm.” He picked up the shotgun. “At least we don’t have to worry about noise. Sergeant, can you give me your compass?”
“I’ll come with you,” Kessler said.
“Good. Put a light in the window. We’ll be back when we’re back.”
Outside, it was as dark as night, with visibility reduced to a few dozen yards. The wind drove the rain horizontally into Bill’s face while whipping up a river around his feet. As the ground grew firmer, the rain abruptly slackened. Visibility lengthened enough that Bill saw a large void ahead of them. Just as he thought the storm was ending, electricity lit up the sky.
“It’s a hangar!” he called out. “Ahead!”
“There’s a plane,” Kessler said, gesturing along the runway.
Bill caught sight of a large wing, bent upwards at an impossible angle, but was nearly blinded as lightning struck the wrecked plane. “The hangar,” he said. “Now!”
The hangar doors were closed, but there was a pedestrian access door to the left. It was unlocked and unchained. From the gloom inside, he assumed the hangar was windowless, but it didn’t have the smell of a tomb. He took out his torch. Again the beam flickered, but the light caught rows of boxes, tables, chairs, and then two fighter jets.
“I recognise the flag,” he said. “Two French fighter jets. They’re… what was it? Dassault Rafale.”
“I didn’t think you knew much about the military,” Kessler said, shaking water from her coat.
“Those jets provoked a lot of envy in Whitehall,” Bill said. “When it comes to international rivalry, there is nothing quite like that waged between Britain and France. On official visits, Paris would organise a fly-past. Those sleek lines with their swept-back wings, the radar-resistant profile; you know, I think they designed them just to wind up the RAF.”
“Seriously?”
“Only a little bit,” Bill said. His torch flickered again. Kessler unslung her small pack, opened it, and took out a plastic-wrapped package. “Candles,” she said. “I brought them from the farm.”
“Just be careful where you put them. Those look like ammo crates.”
“They look empty,” Kessler said, lighting a candle and placing it on the ledge of the small window next to the door. “For the sergeant,” she said. “If they have to leave that hut, they’ll know where we are.”
“Good call,” Bill said. “Shh!”
Kessler immediately brought her rifle up.
“No,” Bill added. “No, I think we’re alone. Are hangars earthed? They must be. Well, this seems like a better place to shelter from the storm than that hut. Question is whether there’s anything here that will make it a good place to wait until the rain stops.”
“It’s a big hangar,” Kessler said. She lit another candle and balanced it on an upturned crate. “Big enough for ten of those fighter jets. Not big enough for a passenger jet, though. Not a big one. A corporate jet, maybe.”
Bill slapped the side of his torch, and the beam steadied. “Whiteboard. Maps. Tables. Chairs. I think they used the hangar for planning. But planning what?”<
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“There’s some bedding over in this corner,” Kessler said. “Ash, too. The remains of a fire, and a couple of saucepans on the ground.”
“How many people warmed themselves around that fire, do you think?” Bill asked as he scanned the words on the whiteboard and found few that he recognised.
“A dozen or so,” Kessler said.
“I think more people were here than that,” Bill said, having turned his attention to the maps. “Assuming this is a map of where we are, then there’s a place called Creil to the west. Maybe a town, maybe a small city; it’s hard to gauge the scale. They’ve marked barricades on the roads leading to the airfield and to the town itself.”
“Like the barbed wire we saw near that armoured vehicle?”
“Maybe. This must have been a redoubt. During the early days of the outbreak, we know the French government recalled their troops before the runways became impassable and they redirected the planes to Ireland. No sign of any bodies here. What about you?”
“No bodies, no bones,” she said.
“Check the crates, see if they left any ammo behind.” He didn’t think it likely. The place had the air of somewhere that had been evacuated rather than fled.
“Empty. Empty. Empty,” Kessler said, checking the boxes near her. “This crate’s food, but it’s empty like all the others. Do you really think we can repair a tank?”
“A tank, a car, it’s not that much different. Well, maybe they are, but it can’t be as complicated as a plane.”
“Right, that’s what I thought,” Kessler said. “Because there are two fighter jets here. They look airworthy. I mean, the wings are still attached to the fuselage. They’ve got engines and everything. If we got one working, maybe Scott could fly out of here.”
“Back to Belfast? I don’t know where he’d land,” Bill said.
“The motorway, like we planned to.”
“But we had Sholto to make sure it was clear of the undead,” Bill said. “Without the sat-phone, we can’t guarantee a safe landing.”
“He could eject,” Kessler said. “Fighter planes have ejector seats, don’t they?”
“Maybe,” Bill said. “I’d be worried the G-forces would knock him unconscious.” He crossed to another stack of crates. “And we’d still need someone to come and rescue the rest of us.”
“They could bring the helicopter to the coast on The New World,” Kessler said.
“Is it worth the risk?” Bill asked. “But it’s an idea. We’ll see what Scott thinks. No, these crates are empty. We can check the rest later, but I doubt we’ll get lucky.”
“So they took everything with them when they left?” she said. “I guess that makes sense. Whatever was left was taken by whoever lit that fire. I suppose that means we won’t find much else here.”
“We might find aviation fuel,” Bill said. He unpinned the map. “And this military map tells me that it was stored at the far end of the runway.”
“You want to go back into the storm to look for it?”
“Nope, not yet. Let’s get the others, and move them over here. We’ll make a fire, and can boil up some water. Dry out for a bit, and then hunt for fuel.”
The door banged open. The wind caught the candle on the ledge, extinguishing it.
In the doorway stood a woman.
“Locke? What’s wrong?”
But as his torch shone on the woman, he saw it wasn’t Sorcha Locke.
“Qui êtes-vous?” the woman asked.
Chapter 12 - Nous Sommes L’Humanité
The Airfield, Creil
Bill lowered his light. “Hello,” he said. “Nice weather for ducks, isn’t it?”
“You’re English?” the woman asked, shining her own torch on him, then on Kessler.
“And you’re French, I suppose,” Bill said, keeping his tone as bumblingly non-threatening as he could manage. “And that means you’re not as far out of your way as we are.”
The woman turned her head to the left, addressing the shadows. “Ce ne sont pas les voyous de Dernier.”
A figure detached himself from a dark alcove near the door. As tall and broad-shouldered as Chester, he carried a compact carbine in his hands. It wasn’t pointing at them, not yet, but it could be brought to bear long before Bill had unslung the shotgun from his shoulder. If necessary, his best option would be to dive for cover and hope Kessler did the same, and that Sergeant Khan heard the shots.
The door opened again. Another woman stepped inside. When she pulled her jacket’s hood down, Bill saw a late-middle-aged face, her close-cropped hair almost entirely grey. In her hands was a carbine, but when she saw them, her first action was to reach into a pocket and pull out a pair of spectacles. She smiled, and stepped aside so a fourth figure could come inside.
“It’s you!” Bill said.
Her hair was shorter, her face cleaner, her clothing newly-found salvage, but it was the same young woman from the farm.
“C’est l’Anglais,” she said.
“Hi,” Bill said. “I’m glad to see you’re still alive. We looked for you, but when the rain washed away your tracks, we had to give up the search. I’m Bill Wright. This is Amber Kessler.”
“You were the man at the… the watchtower?” the grey-haired woman asked. Her English was accented, but her pronunciation was impeccable.
“Is that what you call the farm building? Yes,” Bill said.
“And you were on the plane?” the grey-haired woman asked.
“You saw the plane?” Kessler asked.
“Américaine?” the man asked.
“Um, yes. American,” Kessler said. “From California.”
“We come from all over the Atlantic seaboard,” Bill said. “Presently we call Belfast our home. We were flying the plane there when it developed a problem with the steering. We couldn’t turn, and ended up on a south-easterly heading, hence why we crashed here, and why we’re now heading for the coast.”
The man muttered something that Bill didn’t hear. That began a stilted conversation in French. Though Bill didn’t understand the few words he heard, he sensed the tone, and it was surprised more than anything else. He took a step forward. The conversation stopped, and their attention returned to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, speaking slowly, addressing the young woman. “I think I have some bad news for you. There was a barn near where we crashed. We found the bodies of two young men. They had streaks of red and white in their hair, calf-length jackets, light blue backpacks with red flashes and fluorescent stripes. They’d been murdered. I’m sorry.”
The young woman stood motionless, her face blank. Then she turned on her heel, and walked out into the storm.
“Gaston!” the older woman said. The man nodded, and slipped into the rain.
“I take it she knew them? You know them?” Bill asked, his brain whirring. The enemy of his enemy wasn’t always a friend, and quite who these people were was still a mystery. He took another step forward, keeping his light low. That only added to the shadows, but from the second-hand gleam, he was able to get a proper look at the two women. The grey-haired woman wasn’t as old as he’d first thought. Late fifties, perhaps younger. The other was forty, or thereabouts. Dark haired, dark eyed, a recent scar running from cheek to ear. Above average height, with a survivor’s physique, she looked no different to anyone he might have seen walking through the streets of Holyhead, assuming you didn’t give the clothing too close an examination. Beneath the long jacket, the trousers were patched, the shoes clumsily re-soled. The woman turned to her older companion, and again spoke in a voice too low to be heard. The older woman laughed.
“Monsieur…” the older woman prompted.
“Bill Wright,” Bill said. “And this is Amber Kessler.”
“I am Professor Victoria Fontayne,” the older woman said. “This is Claire Moreau. That was Major Gaston Lambert and you met Claudette.”
“Starwind,” Claire added. “My daughter wants to be called Starwind.”<
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“Your daughter?” Bill gave a nod. A memory of sitting on a sofa in Holyhead with Annette came back to him. “Starwind is one of the characters in that cartoon, isn’t it?”
“You’ve seen it?” Claire asked.
“My daughter got into it a few weeks ago,” Bill said. “She wasn’t happy when I called it a cartoon.”
The professor laughed. Claire forced a thin smile onto her exhausted face.
“You come from Belfast? In Ireland?” the professor asked. “We thought it was as dead as England.”
“Not quite,” Bill said. “And yourselves?”
“Thank you for saving my daughter,” Claire said. “Bonne chance.” She turned around, and made for the door.
“Wait, hang on,” Bill said. He wasn’t sure what to say next, but the storm did it for him. As Claire opened the door, lightning lit up the airfield outside. “No one’s going to travel far in this weather,” Bill said. “Perhaps we should gather our people together, share the sentry duty, and our food. We can also share information on where we’ve been, and what we know. You must have some questions for us, because I certainly have some for you.”
The professor reached out, and took Claire’s arm. She lowered her voice, and spoke in a low whisper. Bill saw Claire’s eyes narrow, but then she shrugged.
“You saved Starwind,” the professor said, addressing Bill. “Bien. We shall talk, but not here. This hangar isn’t safe. There is an office at the end of the runway, beneath the remains of the control tower. It is secure from the… les morts vivants. The living dead, yes?”
Chapter 13 - Friend or Foe?
The Airfield, Creil
Chester sat by the window in the first-floor office, watching the rain, but thinking about the people with whom Locke conversed in rapid-fire French. He didn’t understand a word, but he didn’t need to. Could they be trusted, that was the question, and it was a familiar one. In his distant past, the wrong answer might lead to incarceration, occasionally worse. More recently, the danger was always worse.