by Frank Tayell
“You better come and see,” he said.
There were two decomposing corpses in the living room. One lay on the floor, the other sat in a chair. On the ground next to them were two familiar one-use syringes. On the coffee table was a third syringe, the contents still inside.
“What happened?” Dean asked.
“The vaccine,” Jackson said.
“That’s it?” Dean asked, pointing at the syringe. Lena grabbed his arm. “I wasn’t going to touch it,” he said.
“That’s the vaccine,” I said.
“Three syringes, so three people were here. One of them…” Jackson sighed. The story was clear enough. “One of them escaped. I’m going to look for a name, for a note, see if they left word for anyone who came after, because wherever they went, they didn’t make it to Anglesey.”
“You sure?” Sholto asked.
“I know all who did,” Jackson said. “And none came from a place like this.”
“What was causing the flashing light?” Lorraine asked.
“It was a… I’m not sure what to call it,” Jackson said. “It was a bit like a wind chime but for light. Lots of prisms on a length of chord, with small mirrors behind them. It was in the window of one of the bedrooms.”
“So there wasn’t a light?” Dean said. “No lights, no people, no trains. This whole expedition was pointless.”
“We didn’t achieve the goals with which we set out,” Umbert said. “That doesn’t mean we should judge our trip a failure. That is the danger of hindsight, we assess the present against targets for the future we set in the past. It is a common conceit that such targets can help us mould our future, a conceit we indulge at our peril, for experience tells us we can do little but shape it. Last year, what future did you envision for yourself? University, perhaps.”
“Me?” Dean asked. “I was thinking about it.”
“How much time did you spend thinking about it?” Umbert asked. “How many hours agonising over different courses and campuses and costs? Did you consider studying in England? In the Irish Republic?”
“Holland,” Lena said. “I was going to Holland.”
“Oh, to do what?” I asked, curious that the oft-silent girl had chosen to speak.
“Oceanography and maritime management,” she said, then pursed her lips as if clamping down on any other words that might dare escape.
“You should talk to Heather,” Lorraine said.
“For how long has this been an interest of yours?” Umbert asked Lena.
Lena’s eyes darted left and right, and I could imagine her brain whirring as she tried to find a monosyllabic reply. “A while,” she said. “I… I like watching ships.”
“I was going to study business,” Dean said, coming to Lena’s rescue.
“Not music?” I asked.
“I’m good at music,” he said. “I know how to play. I know how to write, but if you don’t know how to manage the business, if you have to rely on agents and managers, then you get gouged. That’s what my brother said.”
“Interesting,” Umbert said in that frustratingly opaque manner that psychiatrists must practice in a mirror. “And you, Mr Wright, didn’t you have your future planned until retirement?”
“Now I look back on it, more or less,” I said. “My plan was to get Jen Masterton elected as Mayor of London. After a five-year stint, she’d stand in her old family seat up in Northumberland, and she’d win. It would be such a massive swing to her party that the leadership would be hers, guaranteed. She’d enter Number 10, and I’d follow, first as her chief of staff, then as an MP, who, in about thirty years time, would follow her into Downing Street. That was my plan, and you know the interesting thing about it?”
“The arrogance?” Kim said.
“There’s that,” I said, “but I meant the timescale. Thirty years? That’s a long time to wait.”
“Probably because that wasn’t what you truly wanted to do,” Umbert said, “after all, in truth, how much of that plan was about you? We look back on our lives, and see a straight path, but when we look to the future, it is like a maze of junctions, intersections, and crossroads. Having passed one, it is only natural to look back and wonder what might have been had we trod a different path. That is life. The dreams we had last year are lost to us. That doesn’t mean the time we spent agonising over those decisions is wasted. It helped create the people we are now, and that will help inform the people we must become. We came to this house because we thought there was a light. None of us thought there was a great chance at finding any people alive, but we came anyway, because that is what we do. As Mr Tull often says, we are the help that comes to others. It is a simple oath we each swear to one another, but it is the most powerful one there could be. No, this trip wasn’t wasted, but it is best that we return to Douglas.”
“I want a few minutes,” Jackson said. “I want to find out these people’s names.”
“And I better look for some clothes,” I said.
I found clothes that almost fit in a palatial bedroom with an en-suite that consisted solely of a bathtub. There was no toilet, sink, or shower. The tub was situated in the middle of a room at the front of the house. The wide windows offered a spectacular panorama of the sloping hills beyond. I spent a long minute looking at the view, trying to spy the sea, before I returned downstairs.
“Mr Jackson is still searching,” Dr Umbert said. Everyone else was gathered in the hallway by the open front door.
“There’s a bathroom upstairs,” I said. “That’s all it contains. One bath, and a wide window with a fantastic view. Someone wanted to look at the view from the bath. That was the entire purpose of the room.”
“Why do you find that strange?” Umbert asked, slipping back into his psychiatrist’s persona. I was saved having to come up with an answer by Lena.
“Rain,” she said. She and Kim stood either side of the door, looking outside.
“Not too heavy,” Kim said. “Give it a minute, it’ll probably clear.”
It didn’t. After ten minutes, we closed the front door. After twenty, I went up to the bathroom to stand watch, but there was nothing to see but the storm as visibility dropped, and the sky emptied.
“Sholto called the admiral,” Kim said. “Jackson’s started a fire.”
“What did the admiral say?”
“They’ve secured the harbour, and found a few hundred candles. Other than that, not much. What is there for her to say? With the clouds like this, they can’t find us on the satellites. What she can do, or someone on her crew can, is tell us that this storm is likely to last for a few hours. We’re going to be here for the night.”
“There’s worse places to be,” I said.
“Agreed.” She turned around. “You weren’t kidding. Just a bath. Nice view, though.”
“A very nice view,” I said. “I think we can use that bath again. We’ll have to redirect the downpipe, of course.”
“Tonight?”
“No, not tonight,” I said. “When the rain stops, we’ll dig a pair of graves near that pagoda. We’ll dig them deep, and add a marker and a name to each.”
“Why?”
“Because we were looking for somewhere to call our own,” I said. “Somewhere to stop fighting and to start farming. Why not here? We’ll have to clear the island of the undead first, but when that’s done, why not say that so are we. Done with fighting and the past. We can start a new life, a new future, right here. You, me, and the children.”
“I… I think that I’d like that.”
Chapter 16 - The Last Watch
20th October, Day 222, The Isle of Man
The rain kept falling, and it soon became inevitable that we’d have to delay our return to the ship until morning. I think I was the only one happy about that. Being away from Anglesey had cleared my mind. I could see the possible futures ahead of us, and a path to something different, something better. It would be a successor to all that went before rather than simple a continuation
or regression to the basest mean. In some ways it was a distraction from the election, but I wondered if that, too, was simpler than I’d thought. After spending a little time with Umbert, I was reasonably certain he would make as good a leader as anyone else. Perhaps what mattered wasn’t that he won fairly, but that he thought he’d won the election fairly. Though I wasn’t happy with the compromise, I could live with it for a few years. More importantly, I thought the admiral could, too.
With those thoughts battling one another, there was no prospect of sleep, so I volunteered for the first watch.
The bathroom window offered the best view of the house and the land beyond, though with the onset of rain, that view had been truncated to the edge of the nearest field. The cloud-covered night sky had cut visibility to as far as my torch could reach.
It was a nice house, but was it the right one for us? Midnight came and went as my mind turned to the relative merits of living closer to the coast, perhaps somewhere with a sea view. I smiled at the idea of window-shopping for a new home, something I’d not done since before the outbreak, but which I’d done on many a sleepless night when living in my small flat. Here, though, we’d have our pick of any property we wished, but until the undead were gone, it was as much a fantasy as when I lived in London.
The first step was ensuring that Umbert won. Deciding that I’d hear any undead approach long before I saw them, I settled into the not-too-comfortable chair. I took out my notebook, and began composing an article to be published alongside the photograph of Umbert. I’d filled a page when I heard soft footsteps, followed by a light approaching the bathroom’s open door. It was Dean.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “I thought I’d take over the watch. Let you get some rest.”
“I’ll sleep on the ship,” I said.
“Yeah, me too. What are you writing?” Dean asked.
“Here. Have a read.” I handed him the notebook.
“It’s a bit long,” Dean said when he’d finished. “It’s good,” he added. “I’m just not sure I’d read all of it.”
I laughed softly. “As long as you read enough of it. Do you think you’ll vote for him?”
“Umbert? I dunno. Do I get a vote? I’m not exactly from Anglesey.”
I tapped the last sentence on the page. “He’s running for leader of humanity, the standard bearer of— Actually, you’re right, I’ll ditch that last part. It’s a bit too pomp and circumstance.”
Dean shrugged. “Is it true, though? What you wrote and what Dr Umbert said earlier.”
“I think so,” I said. “There’s a binary choice ahead of us. Wherever on this Earth we go, to a greater or lesser extent we’re all going to be farmers in a year or two. When the zombies are gone, we’ll use our swords for ploughshares because there’re too few of us for them to be weapons. We’ll look back on moments like these in years to come, telling our children stories of the times we fought monsters. Kim thinks those stories will become legends, the legends myths, and those myths will become religions. Whether she’s right will depend on how much we forget. The choice lies in what we do before we lay down our swords. Do we give up on the world, or do we seek to help as many as we can? If stories become myths, and those religions, do we want them to be founded on an act of selfishness or one of sacrifice? Do we help others, or just help ourselves. That’s the choice, and it’s not one between the two candidates, but between our own conflicting desires.”
“Except there are three candidates,” Dean said.
“Bishop? Yes, he’ll be a problem, but it’s one for the future. There are always going to be voices who’ll speak against the crowd, even when the crowd is heading in the right direction.”
“I heard him speak,” Dean said. “Bishop, I mean.”
“You did?”
“At the docks. I left the ship, because… well, it’s a small ship. The admiral’s… she’s okay, and she helped Kallie, but she’s very definitely in charge. Anyway, Bishop was giving a speech. I listened. I was curious. Why not, right?”
“Sure,” I said. “What did you think? I’ve not had a chance to hear him yet.”
“He’s insane,” Dean said. “I didn’t really understand him. I mean, I understood the words. It was all fire and brimstone. The kind of thing politicians used to say. In school, we listened to some recordings, speeches from the 1970s. It was like that, but worse. All anger and blame. Sort of reminded me a bit of Mark, except… more intense.”
“Oh?”
“Like how the world had ended and we could build our own Utopia.” Dean went silent, no doubt remembering the community in Malin Head. “Mark talked about Utopia. He had a copy of the book. I read it. You know they had slaves?”
“You have to read it in the context of its time,” I said.
“Yeah, but there were still slaves,” Dean said. “It makes you wonder if that’s the kind of world that people like Bishop want. A world with—”
“Shh!” I hissed. I’d heard something, and it hadn’t come from inside the house.
I shone the torch through the window. Despite the glare, I saw the figure outside. A solitary, ragged being I almost thought was human. Then its head jerked sideways and it looked straight up at the light.
“Zombie,” I said, and swept the light around the visible part of the garden. “Only one, I think. Hard to tell. How did it get into the garden?”
“Do you want me to wake the others?”
“No, stay here. Shine your light outside,” I said, standing up. “If more appear, shout. If not, come down when it’s done.”
We’d closed the gate leading up the drive, but there had been no way of sealing the property, so we’d settled for barricading the front door. I dragged the cabinet away, kicked away the wedges holding it closed, and stepped outside. I shone the torch left and right until it settled on the zombie. It hadn’t moved. Sword raised, I advanced towards the creature, and it stepped towards me. The shadows added to the shapelessness of its blue-green boiler suit. I couldn’t tell which of the dark stains were dirt and which were blood. It jerked forward and I skipped sideways as it threw its arms towards me. I brought the sword up, and neatly down just above its ear, cutting deep into its skull. The zombie fell. I listened. The creak of branches, the rustle of leaves, the wind-chime by the garage gates; it was a veritable symphony.
Dean’s light stopped flashing about the trees and hedges, and settled on a moving shape. Another zombie, heading from the direction of the front gate. I took a step towards the creature, just as another stepped into the beam of light. Two became four, and I backed towards the house.
There was an urgent rat-a-tat from above. I looked up, but with his light shinning outward, I couldn’t see Dean. As I looked down, I saw what he was trying to tell me. Three more creatures stumbled towards me from around the side of the house. The nearest was eight feet away. It staggered closer as I brought the sword up. The zombie swiped its clawed hand forward as I swung the sword left to right. The blade cut through its fingers, but the zombie didn’t notice. I stabbed out, aiming the sword at its face, but the creature’s head bobbed; the blade did nothing more than cut a line through flesh. I skipped back a pace, and another; with the third my arm hit the brick wall of the house. I swiped the sword in front of me again, a reflexive move that did nothing to scare off the undead. I darted inside, and slammed the door closed just as an undead hand clawed against the wood. I leaned hard against the door. Feet pounded on the stairs as Dean ran down to join me.
“Shoot them from above,” I said, as he reached for an arrow. “First, let’s seal this door. Quick!”
We hammered the wedges in, and moved the cabinet in front of the door. It wasn’t as heavy as I thought. As the door shook, so did the cabinet.
“Zombies?” Kim called out from the top of the stairs.
“About eight, I think,” I said. “Must have come up the drive.”
“Dean, come on, I need your bow,” Kim said.
/>
Dean ran up the stairs, I don’t think Kim did need his help, but upstairs was safer than immediately in front of the soon-to-break front door. I ran into the living room, not the one in which we’d found the two corpses, but one on the other side of the front door. It was a library, though with as much space given to old vinyl LPs as to books. I grabbed the nearest armchair and dragged it towards the door, managing two feet before Lorraine appeared.
“How many?” she asked.
“I saw about eight,” I said, “so there’s probably three times that number.”
“They followed us?” she asked.
“I guess,” I said, chipping splinters from the frame as we dragged the chair through the door. Had the zombies followed us? Perhaps, but the garden between the house and main road was steep. Unless they were within a few hundred yards of their prey, gravity should dictate the path they’d take.
The door was shaking violently. There was no more time to worry about how the undead had appeared. They were here, and could be inside in seconds. We shoved the chair into place, then took a step back, me with my sword raised, Lorraine with her rifle held to her shoulder. The rest of the house was awake. I could hear feet upstairs running from room to room. Umbert stood on the stairs, Jackson close behind.
“I like being woken with a cup of tea,” Lorraine said. “I don’t mind coffee, and I’ll settle for a glass of water if that’s all that’s available but—” The door shook again. The bottom-most wedge flew out. Then the shaking stopped. Kim and the others must have shot the creature. I relaxed, letting my sword drop.
“They’re at the back!” Sholto called from upstairs.
“Stay here,” I said to Lorraine. “Watch the door.”
The front doors opened into a hall twice as wide as the stairs, and those were twice the width of a normal set. Situated behind the library was a large kitchen, with more than enough room for a table that would seat twelve. Made of pine, it was an odd contrast to the granite worktops, charcoal-grey taps, and wall-length window outside of which stood the undead. I shone the light back and forth, but I only counted two. My torch settled on a creature wearing a bobbled woollen hat just before a bullet smashed through its brain. The zombie collapsed. So did the next creature, a second after my light shone on its decaying face.