Surviving The Evacuation (Book 15): Where There's Hope

by Tayell, Frank

  “Saving your bullets for France, a noble English tradition. Suivez ses commandes.”

  They quickly outpaced the undead drifting towards the ragged hedge. Despite dragging the small-wheeled handcart, they arrived back at the small jetty far quicker than Nilda had expected.

  “Jennings, Denby,” Nilda said, “stay on guard, here, on the road while we get the boats loaded.”

  “Aye, aye, boss,” Jennings said. Denby gave a curt nod.

  They had come to London as George’s bodyguard, and they still thought of that as their principal duty, but… And she really wasn’t sure how to finish that thought. They clearly saw that their responsibility had changed. Leadership had become confused. The admiral had been elected by those people in Belfast, while Heather Jones had disregarded the plans and gone to Elysium. While George, and by extension Mary, had not been removed from power, were they still in charge? And who were they in charge of? Jennings and Denby were making it clear they had tied their colours to her mast, not Leon’s. All thoughts of that vanished when she saw the crowd on the jetty. She stopped dead in her tracks.

  “What is it, Mum?” Jay asked.

  “Nothing. Get the fuel aboard,” Nilda said. Though she didn’t move herself. The children were fishing. To be more accurate, they were squabbling over who got to use one of the five rods which must have been brought by Leon’s crew. Standing behind them, patiently attempting to show the children how to cast a line, were Pierre and Giselle.

  Nilda remembered the gut-wrenching loss when she’d thought Jay was dead. She remembered that overwhelming sense of hope when she’d found that letter from him, back in their old home in Penrith, then the euphoria when she’d found him alive. She knew that this final loss, the acceptance their granddaughter was dead, wouldn’t pass, but it would diminish with each passing day. That love for their lost family would be transferred onto these other children. In that lay the hope for their future.

  Chapter 9 - Oh, For Dry Land

  At Sea

  Nilda watched the clouds because watching the waves made her retch. The bout of seasickness had arrived as suddenly as the wind, and just as strong. She put it down to exhaustion and stress. Since leaving the Tower, she’d barely had a minute to think, and barely longer to rest. With their departure from Sheppey, she finally had nothing to do, and nothing to plan.

  She lowered her gaze until it settled on the mast of the boat ahead. Leon was aboard that craft, as were Simone and the Duponts. Had it been wise to leave the girl with the old couple? She wasn’t their granddaughter, and nor should Simone be thrust into the role simply for convenience. Kevin and Aisha were aboard, as were Janine and the rest of the little clique. Even so, she wasn’t sure it was the right decision. Not that she could do anything about it now, and deliberately separating them would have been cruel. From the impromptu fishing lesson at the pier, the Duponts were putting as brave a face on their sorrow as anyone could. If anything, the children would be a distraction from their new reality. As for Simone, she was young, and had recovered from far greater traumas this past year. If anyone was a cause for concern, it was the colonel, but there was less she could do about him than the old couple.

  Splitting the children among the boats, while keeping friendship groups intact, had been a logistical nightmare made worse by nearly everyone wanting to be on the same boat as Jay. She smiled at a memory of how he’d blushed when he’d realised, and then had to lean forward, to retch over the side.

  The cockpit’s door opened. Jay came outside, and sat down on the bench seat next to his mother. He took a pouch from his pocket and held it out. “D’you want some? It’s macaroni cheese.”

  “Uncooked? How can you eat that?” she asked.

  “It’s like crisps,” Jay said. “Very cheesy crisps.”

  “Is that all we have to eat?”

  “It’s this or some of that dried beef stuff we had for breakfast. That’s what everyone else is having for lunch.”

  “Cold stew?” Nilda groaned. “Why am I the only one who’s seasick?”

  “You’re not the only one,” Jay said. “I just got a radio report from Marigold. Janine’s turned green.”

  “Marigold? Who’s that?”

  “Oh, the kids are renaming the boats,” Jay said. “Marigold, Elizabeth, Swan, and Benedict,” he said, pointing to the boats skimming across the waves.

  “Those are odd names,” she said.

  “It’s the ships Francis Drake took with him when he circumnavigated the globe,” Jay said. “Norm’s idea.”

  “Well, tell Norm I don’t think we’ll be travelling that far in these craft. Drake had five ships, didn’t he? Does that make us the Golden Hind?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s where the problems started. We were the Golden Hind until George said that Drake’s ship was originally called the Pelican. Now there’s a bit of an argument over which we should be.”

  “The Golden Pelican?” Nilda suggested.

  “Yeah, Tuck thought that, too. But that’s only made it a three-way debate. Well, four, because Tarquin wants to call the boat The Golden Penguin. Not sure why. Still, it stopped George and Leon arguing over Wellington and Napoleon.”

  “Over the radio?”

  “Yeah, it was a sort of… lecture, I suppose. A history lesson for everyone.”

  “I’m guessing that was George’s idea?”

  “Yeah, he said Leon should tell us about why Napoleon was such a great general. But then he kept butting in. So did the kids, too. You know, because everyone knows a bit of the history from the Fusiliers museum at the Tower.”

  “And was it George’s idea to rename the ships?”

  “Yeah, how did you guess?”

  Nilda smiled. “Experience,” she said. George was keeping everyone distracted the best way he knew how. The best way anyone could. “And how is everyone else? How are the children?”

  “Our batch? Fine. And it’s the same on the other boats as far as I can tell,” Jay said, crunching on another dry-pasta tube. “Pierre’s cooking those fish they caught before we left Sheppey. I could get on the radio and say he should keep some for you.”

  “Cold fish? Definitely not. I think that would be harder to keep down than coagulating stew. Pierre’s been cooking, then? That’s good. And the mood among the adults on the other boats? It’s all okay?”

  “I guess,” Jay said, loudly snapping his jaw on hard pasta.

  “Don’t you want to cook those?”

  “I didn’t think it was safe to turn the hob on,” Jay said. Almost as if on cue, the boat slid up a wave then slammed heavily down into the trough. “Besides, we have to save fuel, have to save water.”

  “Are we running low on drinking water?” Nilda asked.

  “We’re down to five litres per person,” Jay said. “Good thing more people aren’t sick.” He munched on another tube of pasta. “In fact, I’d say, by and large, everyone is about the right level of sick. Too sick to want to eat or drink, but not throwing up so much that they’ll get dehydrated. Are you sure you don’t want one? They’re pretty good.”

  “I’m fine,” Nilda said.

  “Wish I’d known that Quigley had stocked up on these earlier,” Jay said. “I’d have been eating them and nothing else. Not sure how many packets we brought with us, but I know what I’ll be going back for. One day,” he added. “Don’t think we should cook ’em, though. They have just the right amount of crunch.”

  “Perhaps we could talk about something other than food,” Nilda said. “What’s our position?”

  “Not sure,” Jay said. “No one is. The compass says we’re going east. Sometimes north. It’s the wind; that’s the direction it’s taking us. Still, we should make France long before nightfall.”

  Nilda groaned, though this time not because of her stomach. “We won’t, Jay. A quick geography lesson. Calais is the closest point, more or less, to Dover, but if you draw a straight line out of the Thames Estuary, you’d reach The Netherlands, not France.�
��

  Jay weighed that up. “Fair enough, but what does it matter which bit of coast we reach? Belgium, Holland, France, we just follow the shore south until we find a whole load of beached ships. Then we’ll know we’ve found Dunkirk. Finding Calais after that will be a piece of cake.”

  Nilda sighed. “I suppose you have a point. You seem happy.”

  “Yeah, yeah I guess I am. First time abroad,” Jay said. “It’s kinda cool.”

  “You’re not worried about our lack of water, or ammunition, or food?”

  Jay munched on another tube of pasta as he gave that some thought. “On the whole, no. Me and Tuck didn’t have any when we left Penrith. We didn’t really have any when we first reached the Tower. We’ve got enough food for a week or so, plus we can fish. And we don’t need any ammo out here. I guess water’s a problem, but rivers run to the sea, don’t they? Nah, I think we’ll be okay.” He crunched another dry tube.

  “Watch your teeth,” Nilda said.

  Jay grinned. “I guess the only thing I am worried about is the seedlings we brought from the Tower. Some are dying. I suppose that was to be expected, and as long as we can get them into a warm cabin soon, enough will survive. The Duponts know a lot about plants. Said they were impressed with what we did back in the Tower.”

  “You told them about it?”

  “Over the radio. Sort of. I’m not sure they understood. I’ve been trying to learn French, but it’s harder than sign language.”

  Nilda tried to smile, and then almost threw up. “I’m glad you’re happy. I really am. Any news on the sat-phone?”

  “Not really. Not what you’d call news. It’s just the same as before. The admiral is still in Dundalk. Everyone in Elysium is still there. The New World is at sea.”

  “And there’s been no more sabotage, no more bad news?”

  “Nothing. Not that they thought worth telling us.”

  “Then that is good news. What about the satellites?”

  “They’ve got loads of people in Dundalk looking at the images now,” Jay said. “Like, dozens of them. They’ve set up some screens and computers at a college.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. Not yet. It’s the cloud,” he added quickly. “There’s too much cloud to see anything.”

  The boat crashed through another wave, spilling water over the side, drenching her coat.

  “You’re getting wet, Mum,” Jay said. “You should go back inside.”

  “When did you get so grown-up and considerate?” she asked.

  “Yeah, well, my pasta’s getting wet, too.”

  “That’s land, all right,” Jennings said. “But it’s not France.”

  “Are you sure?” Nilda asked, leaning over the console so she could peer out of the cockpit’s small window.

  “We’ve been making about ten knots,” Jennings said. “I think we could manage more, but the… the Benedict can’t.”

  “It’s been nearly eight hours since we left Sheppey,” Tuck signed. “I don’t think any of us can manage much longer on board without a rest.”

  “Eight hours at ten knots,” Nilda said. “And that’s about twelve miles an hour?”

  “A bit less,” Jennings said. “But we’re still travelling a lot faster than our namesake-ships would have managed.”

  “Then we’ve travelled, what, ninety miles? So we could be…” She ran the ruler over the chart. “We could be in Belgium or The Netherlands.”

  “Almost certainly not France, but probably not Germany,” Jennings said. “Welcome to navigation, old-school. We’ll get better at it in time.”

  “Zoutlande,” Jay said. “That’s a cool name. Do you think that’s where we are?”

  “Probably a few miles south of there,” Jennings said. “I’d say we’re somewhere near Ostend.”

  Nilda picked up the binoculars and scanned the shore. “I can see a beach. And a beached tanker. No small craft. A few houses above the floodwall. No big town. No port. But I think there’s a… yes, there’s a spire. We’ve five litres of water left, each? How much daylight?”

  “A couple of hours,” Jennings said.

  “Then radio the ships. We’ll follow the coast, and look for a river.”

  “Slight problem there, boss,” Jennings said.

  “What?”

  “The keel. If we take the boats into shallow waters, we’ll beach them. We need a jetty or deep water that’ll stay deep even at low tide.”

  “Then look for a jetty,” she said.

  Chapter 10 - Mussels, But No Frites; Fish, But No Chips

  Zeebrugge, Belgium

  “You think this is Zeebrugge?” Nilda asked, scanning the seawall in search of a sign. There were a few in French and Dutch, but none in English.

  “Maybe,” Jennings said. “Leon thinks so. So does Lorraine.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I’m just being cautious,” Jennings said.

  Tuck raised a hand, catching her attention, then pointed at the darkening sky. “We won’t get any further today,” she signed.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Nilda said. “We should have stopped further up the coast. It’s my own fault. I forgot that we’re travelling towards the sunset at a time of year when the days are shortening. Factoring in the darkening sky, it’s almost night, though it can’t be much off mid-afternoon. Norm, can we go ashore?”

  “I don’t know about the shore,” Jennings said. “But we can tie up to the seawall. Do you see that promontory? That’s for small craft to tie up and wait if there’s a large tanker trying to get into the harbour.”

  “Where?” Nilda asked, peering at the water.

  “That spit of concrete, ten-o’clock,” Jennings said.

  “That? There are no railings and it’s almost submerged. How wide is it? A metre? We couldn’t let the children off the boats, there’d be too great a risk they’d fall in the sea.”

  “Yeah, it really is just a place to wait,” Jennings said. “But there’ll be a ladder where it meets the seawall. On balance, I’d say it’s safer than trying to squeeze between those shipping containers.”

  The concrete seawall jutted out into the North Sea like two curving arms, protecting the harbour behind it. From the breadth of concrete, the bay inside had to be at least two kilometres wide while the entrance was only twice the width of the partially sunken container ship’s length.

  “What kind of ship is it?” Jay asked.

  “A Panamax,” Jennings said. “I think. Hard to be sure with so much of it below the water line.”

  “Was it trying to get into the harbour, or out of it?” Jay asked. “Or were they trying to stop other ships from entering? I mean, there’s plenty of room to navigate around the ship, but not with all those loose containers bobbing around the surface.”

  “It’s the ones just below you have to watch for,” Jennings said. “Trouble is, they’re the hardest to spot. Buoyancy is a tricky beast. Some of those containers are watertight. What’s inside can decompose. The gases can cause sunken containers to bob back to the surface, or to float just below.”

  “Are you saying we should keep on?” Nilda asked.

  “Nah, not until the wind settles down,” Jennings said.

  “Then we’ve talked long enough,” Nilda said. “Pass the word, turn the engines on. We’ll moor there, but no one’s to go ashore until I’m sure it’s safe.”

  Tuck gave a thumb’s-up, and lowered the Geiger counter.

  “So it wasn’t a nuclear bomb?” Nilda said, finally releasing her breath, and only then realising for how long she’d been holding it.

  “Told you,” Jennings said. “Probably an LPG tanker, caught in the harbour, took a direct hit.”

  The soldier shrugged. “How it happened doesn’t matter. That it did is all that counts,” she signed.

  The port was a ruin, a forest of twisted steel and fractured concrete. Denser piles of rubble marked where buildings had once stood. The ships left at anchor were sunken or sinking
wrecks, surrounded by charred and unidentifiable flotsam.

  “I’d say that freighter in the harbour entrance was fleeing from the maelstrom,” Jennings said. “And it failed.”

  “I bet the people who did this were the same people who destroyed the port at Dunkirk,” Nilda said. “And that they did it for the same reason. But why, though? I can’t see a single building that’s intact.”

  “The seawall seems sound,” Jennings said, crossing to the other side of the gantry on which they now stood. He peered over the side. “Sound enough for us to spend a night here.”

  Nilda looked back at their boats, now clustered around the spit of concrete. Everyone was on deck, looking up at them. Everyone except Pierre Dupont who was pointing at something in the water, and Simone, Janine, and Tarquin, who were leaning perilously over the railing, peering at the foamy expanse. She wanted to tell them to step back, but she couldn’t be everywhere, eternally mothering everyone. She gave the boats a wave, then signed they should continue waiting. She turned back to Tuck. “How safe are we?” she signed.

  “No zombies,” Tuck signed. “No radiation. No smoke. No people. Safe enough.”

  “Seagull!” Jennings said, pointing to the seawall’s opposite arm, across the harbour entrance. “That’s a… no, it’s not. What kind of white bird is bigger than a seagull?”

  “I think it’s called dinner,” Nilda said. “And the birds are the explanation for this black and green slime on this walkway. Can we bring the boats into the harbour?”

  “Not safely,” Jennings said.

  “If we rig up some ropes, we could get everyone off the boats,” Tuck signed. “But getting them back on, at night, in the near pitch dark would just be too dangerous. If someone falls in, it would be difficult to rescue them.”

  “Then we’re sleeping aboard tonight,” Nilda said. “I’ll tell Pierre to dig out his fishing rod, and then I think we’ll head into the harbour, make sure it is as safe as it appears before night really settles.”