Surviving The Evacuation (Book 10): The Last Candidate

by Frank Tayell

  Annette made a face. “They’re weird.”

  “And secretive,” Sholto said. “They claim a grain ration for two hundred, but say they’re feeding the rest of their people on what they grow. Whatever that is, they don’t share it, or their knowledge on how to grow it. That’s about the sanest leg of Bishop’s campaign platform, that he knows how to keep his people fed. Not knowing precisely how many people are there, or how he’s doing it, that’s not much use to us. They’re not a drain on resources, I’ll say that much. The Parsons were arable farmers. Long term, the skills they can teach us will be a real boon. With little breeding stock, we’ll have to rely on potatoes, wheat, and oats for at least the next decade, though they say not to expect much until the harvest after next.”

  “Two years?” I asked.

  Sholto shrugged. We returned to our bowls, spooning in the metallic-tasting dish. I told myself that was the iron with which the food-pellets were fortified, and that it was good for me. I still threw a covetous glance towards Daisy’s now empty bowl.

  Two years before we could stop worrying about food. Two years if everything went as planned, of course. Even then it wouldn’t be a varied diet, and we’d replace our worry over whether there was enough with worries over blight destroying the crop. There would be fishing, and we could trap birds, but the last reserves of the old world were almost gone. If the undead did stop, and I was on the it’ll-never-happen swing of that particular cycle, then there might be hunting on the mainland. Maybe. Hunting what, I wasn’t sure. Lions around Stonehenge? It would take years for whatever animals had survived to regain sufficient numbers that their populations would support us hunting them. Even then, they would be too far from Anglesey for that kind of meat to be anything but a luxury for teams scavenging on the mainland. Assuming that the elements spared enough of the old-world for such looting excursions to be worthwhile. And assuming that the undead did stop.

  I watched as Daisy drew a finger through a spilled patch of her much thicker stew.

  “Willow Farm is going to be the real problem,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

  “We’ll sort Bishop out after the election,” Sholto said blithely.

  I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself. It was the secrecy surrounding Willow Farm that was causing me concern, the idea that it was becoming a state within a state before we’d properly established the first one. Sholto was right; it was a problem to be solved after the election. Then there were the other problems like Sorcha Locke, Kempton, and the rest of her refuges. We suspected that the survivors of those had all fled to Elysium, but that video Sholto had found proved suspicion wasn’t enough. We might survive the election, deal with Willow Farm, and solve the food crisis, only to discover Kempton and her people fortifying some island fastness just over the horizon.

  Daisy took a tentative lick of her finger, decided she didn’t like the taste of cold table-stew, and began drawing a shape through the spilled mess. It might have been a circle. It might have been a square.

  “Don’t do that, Daisy,” Kim said. “Wipe your hands.” She held out a handkerchief. Instead, Daisy wiped her hands on her top, leaving sticky finger-marks behind.

  I almost dropped my spoon. “Fingerprints!” I said.

  “What?” Annette asked, as they all turned to look at me.

  “That’s how we confirm that Agatha was the woman who shot at Kallie.”

  “Who’s Agatha?” Annette asked.

  “It’s what we’re calling the woman I killed,” I said. “That’s a longer story. But I’d like to know there aren’t any more of Kempton’s people hiding somewhere in the city, waiting for us to leave.”

  “There was only one person living in that warehouse,” Kim said. “If you can call that living.”

  “Even so,” I said. “Better we know now, and I would like to know. I’d like to be absolutely certain that we’re not leaving a problem that’ll develop into another crisis a few months from now. To confirm that Agatha was the one who shot Kallie, all we have to do is take fingerprints from her corpse and compare them to… to… I’m not sure.”

  “The plastic crates she put the food in?” Kim suggested. “What about somewhere near where she ambushed you? Perhaps she touched a car windscreen or something. Of course, she might have been wearing gloves.”

  “She might,” I said. “Though it’s worth checking. We could all do with a little certainty in our lives. On our way, we can collect some of the food she left in those boxes.”

  “Proper food?” Annette asked. “Sounds good.” She pushed her bowl away. “When do we leave?”

  Chapter 6 - Nevermore

  16th October, Day 218, Belfast

  The deck was eerily empty as Kim, Siobhan, Colm, and I stepped into the wire cage at the ship’s side. Children, sailors, new recruits: everyone was watching the satellite feeds of the international airport, waiting for the plane to take flight. Everyone but us.

  “You don’t need to come,” I said for the third time. “This is my obsession.”

  “Nah, you’re all right,” Colm said. “I want to say goodbye. To the city,” he added. “Lena said I should, and when she utters more than four syllables in a row, it’s wise to listen.”

  “I don’t think she meant you should do it like this,” Siobhan said, as she closed the gate. The chain clanked, the gears clacked, and the cage creaked as it swung out over the side of the ship and began its descent. “And you don’t need to do this, either,” Siobhan added.

  “I don’t think this is an obsession,” I said. “Not yet, but I first thought that the woman who shot Kallie was Kempton. I just…” I struggled to articulate the fear. “It’s the uncertainty,” I said. “I’d like to know that we’re right about this one thing.”

  “It might not be an obsession,” Siobhan said, “but is it anything more than a distraction?”

  “That’s what I said to him,” Kim said.

  The cage jolted as the rubber pads hit the hard concrete of the quay.

  “It’ll be good to get some food if nothing else,” Colm said. “Something to make the next leg of our journey palatable, even if it’s not that comfortable.”

  “Then first we’ll go to Agatha’s corpse to collect fingerprints,” Siobhan said. “Then we’ll head north towards the zoo, visit some of the properties marked on the map, gather prints from the plastic boxes, then look for some more prints at the site where she shot Kallie.”

  “Call it three hours?” Kim asked.

  “Add another for safety,” Siobhan said, “and we should still be back by midday.”

  That was when the plane was due to depart. Even if we weren’t back by then, it wouldn’t matter. The aircraft’s flight path wouldn’t take it over the city. Instead, Higson planned to fly northeast, turning southward only when they were over the Irish Sea.

  “Do you think this’ll be the last time?” Colm asked as we followed the increasingly familiar route through the harbour.

  “Going through Belfast?” I asked.

  “No, the plane,” he said. “Everyone was talking about this being the last time we’d get to see one take off.”

  “I’d rather see it land,” I said. “If it manages that safely, then I suppose we’ll fly it again. I mean, now we’ve got a plane, we might as well use it. Then again, I don’t think we’ll find a clear runway anywhere in Europe, and I can’t see the point in sending an expedition inland to clear one.”

  “Then, if it is the last flight,” Colm said, “I’m glad I’m not watching it.”

  There were three sailors on guard at the harbour’s entrance. I recognised Sergeant Conrad from the day before, and he was at the entrance with a woman who bore the single-red-striped flag of Cape Verde on her tunic. The third was a sniper, crouched on top of a stack of shipping containers.

  “Where are you going?” Sergeant Conrad asked.

  “We’ve business in town,” I said. “Didn’t you want to watch the plane take off?”

  He didn’t answer
the question. “It’s dangerous out there,” he said. “Our orders are that no one goes past this point.”

  “It’s not your city,” Colm growled. There was a quiet menace to his words that I’d not heard in his voice before.

  “We’ll be back before the plane takes off,” Siobhan said, offering the sergeant a way out.

  The man weighed that up, shrugged, and stepped out of the way.

  Kim took the lead, and we travelled with weapons ready. The streets were empty, at least of the moving undead. Near the harbour were the corpses that we, and the sailors, had killed. The bodies thinned, replaced with the slowly decaying creatures killed in the months before we arrived and the even more occasional skeletal corpses of those who’d died while still human. It was only when we reached Graymount Road, near where I’d killed Agatha, that we saw the first of the living dead.

  The creature’s shoulders were slumped, its head extended with its nose an inch from a brick wall stained by an overflowing gutter.

  “Alive?” Colm half said, half asked. I wasn’t sure until the zombie’s head slowly pivoted. Its jaw dropped open as Colm stepped forward, hefting his axe to shoulder-height. The creature’s mouth shook, but its jaw didn’t close. It didn’t look like it could. The zombie banged into the wall as it tried to turn around, but before it pivoted more than forty degrees, Colm swung his axe. The heavy blade slammed into the zombie’s skull, splitting it open before taking a chunk out of the damp brick wall. The corpse fell, splashing into the slime-filled gutter.

  “Alive,” Colm said. “Though not anymore. This is how it’s going to be from now on. Each one we’ll see, we’ll wonder if it’s the last. We’ll hope it is, until that hope is dashed by the sight of another.”

  “There’s time for you to get all philosophical later,” Siobhan said brusquely. “It’s too late to go back, so we go on, but we remember why we’re here.”

  “I know,” Colm said. “I’m here to say goodbye. I think it was a bad idea. Who wants to remember their city like this? I remember the bad times,” he added, setting off down the alley. “The Troubles? What a name. That doesn’t even come close to…” But I didn’t catch the rest.

  Siobhan hurried on, stepping past Colm to take the lead. I fell into step next to Kim. We shared a look, but said nothing until we’d almost reached Agatha’s corpse.

  Two more of the undead were on that street, lurching westward towards us. One wore a duffel coat. Somehow, the hood was still up, hiding its wizened features from view. The right sleeve was missing at the shoulder, the arm nothing but a dark, dripping stump. The other zombie was a woman, or perhaps a girl, it was hard to tell. She’d been undead long enough for her skin to crack, her hair to thin, her lips to recede exposing rotting teeth. She’d unwittingly donned a t-shirt and cargo-shorts as the clothes in which she’d died. That suggested that she’d dressed sometime during the height of the summer heat. On the t-shirt, the word Nevermore was picked out in shiny silver letters. The final ‘e’ had been sliced through. That was the beginning of a savage blow that ran from armpit almost to waist. It was a blow that had cut cloth and sliced skin, but which hadn’t killed the creature. I remember that t-shirt. I remember thinking that the word emblazoned on it was probably the last thing that the person who’d wielded that blow had read.

  The zombies staggered closer. Kim angled across the road, rifle raised. I spared a glance behind, but there were no undead there. Siobhan had her own rifle raised, the barrel moving between the two lurching creatures. Colm stood, his shoulders slowly moving with each heavy breath.

  “Don’t fire,” I said loudly, and more so Colm would hear a human voice than as an instruction to the two women. “Save the ammo.” I stepped forward. As I passed Colm, I glanced up into his face. His eyes looked distant, his jaw tight.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  Nevermore was faster than duffle coat, possibly because it was more recently turned. It was hard to know, and dangerous to guess. I raised the short sword so the tip of the bulbous blade was level with Nevermore’s eyes. The zombie staggered closer. I raised the blade a little higher, tilting it to a forty-five degree angle. The zombie swiped its arms forward. The motion caused it to sag at the waist. As its head dropped, I hacked the sword down. The blade sung through the air, slicing through the zombie’s matted scalp and into its diseased brain. As it fell, I stepped back, quickly raising the sword again, expecting duffel coat to be only a few steps away. It wasn’t. It had stopped ten yards from me. Its one arm hung loose by its side. Its face was in shadow beneath the hood, but I was sure that it was undead. It had to be, didn’t it? A black-brown pus dripped from its arm. It had to be undead. It had to, yet it didn’t move towards me. I glanced at Colm and Siobhan, and realised I was no longer facing the threat. Hurriedly, I pivoted to face the zombie, but the creature still hadn’t moved.

  I took a tentative step forward. There was a vague shake to the zombie’s shoulders, then a soft retort. The creature crumpled, as a bullet flew under its hood, and into its brain.

  “Probably dying,” Kim said, as she lowered her rifle. “Probably, but not quickly enough. The plane will take off at noon, and if something goes wrong, and they do have to fly over the city, we don’t want to be under the flight path. Fingerprints, remember?”

  Agatha hadn’t become a feast for the crows, mostly because it was seagulls that sat on the rooftops. They’d taken the woman’s other eye and part of her cheek, presumably so they could get to her tongue, but otherwise left her alone.

  “How quickly do birds learn?” I asked, as Siobhan opened her pack.

  “Learn what?” Kim asked.

  “They don’t eat the undead,” I said. “I think that’s why they didn’t eat the bodies of the survivors we found on Shore Road. The birds couldn’t tell which were human, and which were zombies. I was wondering how long it took them to learn, and how long it might take before they try eating the undead. How long will it be before all the corpses are picked clean? Otherwise, what are we going to do with the bodies? That’s the problem we always come back to, but burying them is no solution. That zombie in the duffel coat was dying. It has to have been, so it’s a problem we need to address.”

  “Not right now,” Kim said. “Not until they’re all dead.”

  “Except we won’t know for certain that they’re all dead, that they’re no longer a threat, until long after the fact,” Colm said. “What is it they say? Knowledge is power. I’ve always preferred the one that says a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But does that make a lot of knowledge safe? Yeah, Lena thought this would be a good idea, but she was wrong. Say goodbye? I saw enough over the last few days, and that should have been enough for me, but I needed to see a little more. Well, I’ve seen it now.”

  “You mean those zombies?” Kim asked tentatively.

  “Yes. No, not really. There was a clothes shop near the gym,” Colm said. “They did hair and make-up, soft furnishings, that kind of thing. Nothing expensive, but it was all bright colours. Dress happy, be happy, that was their motto. Three women ran it. They’d come up with the idea in their final year of uni, and opened it the day after graduation. Not sure where they got the money. Credit cards, probably. Then again, they opened up around the corner from my gym, so the rent wouldn’t have been high. Personally, I’d have said it was the wrong location. Actually, if I’m honest, I’d have said it’s the last place in the world three young women should open up a clothes shop, but they seemed busy enough. After they opened, I always made a point of walking home past their place, just to check the doors and windows were locked. It’s not that… well, it wasn’t a great neighbourhood, and the people who came to my gym might have been on the road to rehabilitation, but that’s a road paved with temptation. Anyway, it was just before Christmas, last Christmas, around nine in the evening. Dean’s brother was the only guy who’d come to the gym that night, so I’d locked up early and sent him home, mostly to see if he’d actually get there. Like every night, I w
ent home the long route, past their shop. The lights were on. Like I said, it wasn’t a great neighbourhood. I said they should lock up and I’d walk them home. They took a bit of persuading because they’d just taken delivery of their spring collection. They were taking a turn for the political without being overt. It was going to be a new politics for a new generation, they told me. I’d heard that before, and know it’s a line that’s been used in Ireland for longer than we’ve been divided, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to dampen their spirits.” He stopped, and took a step towards the dead zombie. “They showed me what they were going to sell. In pride of place were t-shirts with Nevermore printed on the front.”

  “You knew that woman?” Siobhan asked.

  “Her? No, I don’t think so. Hard to tell, isn’t it? No, but that’s where the t-shirt came from. I blame Lena. She was wrong. Up until now, this last week, I’ve been able to walk these familiar streets as if it was a different city. Now I can’t help but remember the people I knew. I’m glad I’m saying goodbye to it, but this is goodbye. After today, I’m not coming back.”

  “Never say never,” Siobhan said. “I’ve got the fingerprints. I just need to take a photo, and then we’re done.”

  “A photograph? Of her face?” Kim asked. “There’s not much left.”

  “Not her face,” Siobhan said. “I want to photograph her feet.” She took a smartphone from her pocket. “I got this from your Annette. She filled it up with music. It’s a bit poppy for my tastes, but it’s nice to hear music again. No, fingerprints won’t be enough. Nor would DNA if this was the old world. Boot prints certainly wouldn’t. None alone will paint a complete picture so think of each as the paints. Even if we’re lacking a tone or two, the rest will give us the shape of the whole, and from that we can guess the rest with absolute… certainty. Done.” She stood, and looked at Colm. “You okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s not far.”

  “This is it?” Siobhan asked, gesturing at the bullet-riddled minivan.