“How many is a lot?” Bill asked.
“Fifty or sixty, coming out of the woodland to the east of the railway,” Locke said. “About ten ahead of us, on either side, but none on the embankment.”
“Must have been summoned by the sound of the ATV’s engine,” Chester said.
“That’s more than we saw this morning on our way to the watchtower,” Bill said. “Perhaps the River Oise or some other quirk of geography kept the undead here, to the north of the town. That would explain why the people of Creil rarely saw more than one or two zombies a day.”
“Or we’re nearing the horde,” Locke said.
“Any sign of it?” Chester asked.
“Give me a moment,” Locke said. She climbed up into the turret again. “No,” she said, dropping down a moment later. “The colour of the clouds is reasonably uniform. There’s no horde on our side of the horizon, which only raises the question of whether or not it exists.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Bill said. “Let’s change the subject. What was that you were saying about knowledge and radios?”
“Oh, nothing that will brighten the mood,” Chester said. “Back in the Tower of London, we looked into building a radio transmitter using the Shard as our aerial-tower. One of the starting points for our research were the early days of radio, back when they built repeater stations in Ireland and Canada.”
“Interesting,” Locke said. “But why that would dim our mood?”
“It’s this not being able to see,” Chester said. “It’s giving me far too much time to think. It’s obvious really. I think the professor or Claire would have seen it, too, if they’d had time. What with the evacuation of Creil, they won’t.”
“Won’t see what?” Locke asked.
“Back in Creil, they’d created their refuge on an island in the middle of the river. That river offered them protection, while leaving them the town on either side of the river to loot for supplies.”
“Until Dernier gathered the undead there,” Locke said. “Surrounding them, trapping them.”
“Right, but I was thinking about how they built that island refuge,” Chester said. “They used a crane to stack caravans and buses on top of one another, right? At the top of the crane, there’s a platform. Starwind took me up there. It’s the tallest place on the island. When Starwind and Adrianna set up their watchtowers, the agreement was that someone would always be at the top of the crane, watching in case a bonfire was lit. That was to be the signal that help was needed. Did you see the remains of the bonfire at Adrianna’s watchtower in Clermont? It was massive, wasn’t it?”
“There was a bonfire at the farm where we rescued Starwind, too,” Bill said. “It was burned out, but pretty big. Even if all twelve of them had worked on it, it would have taken days to build.”
“Both were lit,” Chester said. “They signalled for help. No one came.”
“The island was surrounded by the undead,” Locke said. “And the scaffolding-footbridge they’d built to connect the island to the eastern side of the river had been destroyed by that thug Dernier.”
“Right, but someone should have been watching,” Chester said. “I’ll take that a step further. No one knew the bonfires had been lit. After we helped liberate the island, ringing that bell at the church, distracting the undead, bringing that ammo to them from the airfield, someone should have said something about the watchtowers.”
“Perhaps they did, but not to us,” Locke said.
“That’s what I mean,” Chester said. “After we arrived, we spent an hour or so talking with the professor and their government. What did they call it?”
“The Assembly,” Bill said.
“I went for a stroll, nosing about, and I met Starwind. She was trying to recruit people to go with her to find out what had happened to Adrianna’s watchtower on the outskirts of Clermont. When I suggested she wait until morning, and travel with us, she didn’t object for long. If someone, anyone, had seen smoke from that watchtower, she’d have been out of there like a shot. No one gave her any such warning. What she did tell me, though, was that the town’s engineer warned people against climbing to the top of the crane. Said it wasn’t safe. Said that only the person watching for her fires was supposed to climb to the top of that crane. That’s who betrayed them. The person Starwind thought was keeping watch.”
“And you think they have a radio?” Locke asked.
“To receive, certainly,” Chester said. “And if it’s this engineer, then she’ll know how to transmit.”
“We don’t know if there’s anyone out there listening for a message,” Locke said.
“We can be pretty damn certain that not all of those Rosewood Cartel thugs died at Adrianna’s watchtower,” Chester said. “What did Adrianna say the name of their leader was?”
“Cavalie,” Locke said. “Assuming he’s still alive, assuming any of his people are, would they go to Creil? Would you? A throw of the dice, an unlucky break, and you could have been on their side. I don’t mean because of your background, I mean that any of us could. Thinking we are inherently virtuous is a conceit that comes from victory, from wealth, from comfort.”
“Before this gets too philosophical,” Bill said. “Are you saying you want us to turn around?”
“I’m considering it,” Chester said.
“Why?” Locke asked. “What warning could we give them? That they should be suspicious of that engineer? It is only a suspicion. Everything we know, we were told by Starwind and Adrianna. Now the two of them are together, they will reach the same conclusion. Starwind will tell her mother. Claire will tell Professor Fontayne, and probably before we could return there even if we turned around now.”
“That’s why I’m only considering it,” Chester said. “At the same time, I’ve got a nasty feeling what the helicopter pilot told us about a horde and a convoy from Ukraine is a trap.”
“I’m glad to see you’re coming around to my way of thinking,” Locke said. “Trust no one until they’ve proven themselves trustworthy.”
“I’d say it’s more like I’ve gone back to the way I used to think,” Chester said. “What do we know about this helicopter pilot? She flew in, alone, spoke to the professor and Claire, and to you two, for twenty minutes, then she flew off. Twenty minutes? That’s not a long conversation on which to base the fate of the thousand people in Creil.”
“And don’t let your suspicious mind forget that the conversation wasn’t in English,” Locke said. “Most of it was in Polish, and mine is more than rusty. I only learned enough that, during negotiations with business adversaries, I could tell whether the smiles on their lips matched the words coming out of them.”
“Let’s assume the pilot was telling the truth,” Bill said. “There was a community somewhere in Ukraine, along the Dnieper River, which gathered in survivors from near and far. At its height it was four million strong. They were forced to flee, and the horde forced them to flee further. Now there are only twenty thousand of them, driving towards the Alps. They saw our plane, and their scouting column found Creil. Now, the professor hopes to lead them to the Pyrenees where she believes, or says, there’s a military redoubt with enough supplies to keep everyone alive.”
“In short,” Locke said, “it’s a story with almost as many holes as questions.”
“So what do we actually know?” Bill said. “The pilot had a photograph of a horde. And she had a letter, originally written by Professor Fontayne, found on the body of some dead survivor, somewhere to the north.”
“The photograph has to be real,” Locke said. “Creating a forgery would be time-consuming. Not difficult, of course. You would simply need a zombie movie, something in HD. Take a still and remove any recognisable landmarks or actors. The difficulty would come in finding a computer that had graphics-manipulation software installed, since most such packages had moved to the cloud. Even so, it’s not difficult. Not nearly as difficult as getting a helicopter in the air. Thus the question we shou
ld ask isn’t how a forgery could be created, but why would anyone bother?”
“For the same reason Dernier attacked the people in Creil and lured the zombies there,” Chester replied. “It was like you said, a king needs serfs.”
“Yes, you raise a valid point,” Locke said. “However, let me rephrase my question. Why go to the effort of forging a photograph of a horde when, if the goal is to force everyone out of Creil, there are far simpler ways of achieving it?”
“Like what?” Chester asked.
“Like claiming a radioactive cloud is sweeping southward,” Locke said. “No photographs would be required, and it would be far more believable.”
“Then you believe the pilot?” Chester asked.
“On the contrary,” Locke said. “I just don’t think the pilot is connected with Dernier. Or she doesn’t realise she is. No, I think there is something else going on here. I hope to be proved wrong, but doubt I will.”
“And that’s the quandary, isn’t it?” Chester said. “If the pilot can be trusted, then we’ve only got a horde of the undead to worry about, plus the engineer and any other agents of Dernier’s. If the pilot was lying, then who knows what danger they’re driving into, but they won’t make it all the way to the Pyrenees.”
“What’s our diesel consumption like?” Bill asked.
Locke leaned forward, peered at the fuel gauge, opened her notebook, and jotted down a quick calculation. “We’ll reach Dunkirk with between thirty and sixty gallons, depending on how direct our route is. At present, we’re on a railway line heading towards Amiens. We’re approximately forty kilometres south of that city, so should reach it within an hour at our present speed. It is what comes next that is less than direct. According to this map, the railway runs due north to Lille before cutting due west to Calais.”
“There’s a more direct route?” Chester asked.
“I know for a fact there is,” Locke said. “Rather, I know there are more railway stations than are mentioned on this map, which means more railway lines, but I can’t recall precisely where.”
“So after Amiens, we should find a different route?” Chester said.
“Or a better map,” Locke said.
“If we arrive in Amiens in an hour,” Bill said, “that’ll be around dusk.”
“That’s when we’ll reach the outskirts,” Locke said. “Are you familiar with the city?”
“Only historically,” Bill said. “I know it’s bisected by the River Somme.”
“Is there a university?” Chester asked. “We could do with a Geiger counter.”
“I believe their university was named for Jules Verne,” Locke said.
“Ah, then they’ll have a scientific bent,” Chester said.
“You’re confusing the author with his characters,” Locke said. “I would suggest we look in the hospital. We might find you a pair of glasses there, too.”
“If we go into Amiens,” Bill said. “Looks like more zombies to our right, below the embankment. Think we’re safe from them.” He hunched forward until they’d driven beyond. “In the city, we’ll have more opportunities for scavenging, but the odds of being trapped with rubble ahead and undead behind increase. Out here, if the tracks are blocked, we can take to the fields. In a town, we might end up losing the vehicle.”
“Either way,” Chester said, “tomorrow morning, Creil will be abandoned. After that, the further north we go, the further south they’ll travel. Thus the more likely we’ll run out of fuel before we catch up with them.”
“In my view,” Bill said, “I don’t think it’s worth turning around. Not if all we have to tell them is to distrust that engineer. For all we know, with the town being abandoned, the coup is on hold. Perhaps the engineer was being coerced. Even if she wasn’t, what can she do while they’re on the move? She’d imperil herself if she were to assist in any kind of attack. No, as I see it, the worst-case scenario is that she’ll bide her time, hopefully long enough for us to get a helicopter to them. It’d be different if we had some concrete information, but the only thing we’ll discover out here is whether that horde exists.”
“And we’ll only discover that if we drive into it,” Locke said. “If we don’t, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, just that we haven’t proved its existence.”
“How do you prove a null?” Bill said. He leaned forward, peering up at the sky. “Cloud cover is almost complete. The satellites won’t be able to spot anything, assuming they’re even looking. We have to get to Belfast. It’s the only way to save everyone.”
“I just wish I’d realised sooner about that crane,” Chester said. “Like you said, with those clouds overhead, the satellites are useless. They won’t spot the horde. If Nilda comes looking for us, she could walk right into it. But if we don’t turn back, we’re leaving Salman, Scott, and Amber at risk from whatever betrayal the last of Dernier’s people have cooked up.”
“Let us assume that horde is real,” Locke said. “In which case, the helicopter pilot said that they were trying to lure it towards Calais before the snowstorm. Towards, not to. After our plane flew overhead and woke the undead, that scouting column was forced to flee, and the zombies followed. The horde is no longer near the coast. Your friends will be safe. I would be more concerned about our own fate.”
“We can make a final decision at dawn,” Bill said. “My vote is for going on, but we’ll see what the new day brings. Either way, we should stop before we reach Amiens. A city is too big a risk. Are there any towns ahead of us?”
“Not to speak of,” Locke said. “Not before we reach the suburbs. Whether we’re in a town or the countryside, the undead are following us, and they’ll keep on following us while we sleep.”
“We won’t manage much of that in this tin can if they’re traipsing around outside,” Chester said. “But they might keep on walking. They don’t usually gather around empty vehicles. You know what we need? A bridge near some buildings. We can sleep indoors, and if we wake to find the zombies gathered outside the ATV, we lower a ladder from the bridge, climb in through the turret and drive away, saving ourselves the hassle of fighting.”
“Eyes open for a bridge, then,” Bill said. “Hmm. You see that?”
“Zombies?” Chester asked.
“Rain,” Bill said. “There. Yes. It’s raining. That settles it.”
A droplet splashed against the gore smearing the windscreen. Another followed, with more pattering against the ATV’s armour.
“There’s a bridge ahead,” Locke said.
Bill slowed. The rain grew heavier.
“Any buildings?” Bill asked.
“I can’t see any,” Locke said. “It’s a narrow farm bridge. I’d say for moving livestock from one paddock to the other. Hang on.” She opened the turret’s hatch, letting a spray of water inside. She descended a moment later, partially soaked. “No buildings that I can see, but there must be a farm nearby.”
“It’s not near enough,” Bill said. “Zombie!” Almost immediately, the vehicle rocked as it hit the creature. A moment later, a flash of blue-white light lit up the world outside as lightning struck. Thunder followed immediately after.
“Metal treads on metal railway lines,” Bill muttered. “Who wants to guess whether or not we’re earthed?”
“There’s another bridge ahead,” Locke said. “And a rooftop. Yes, there’s a building to the west!”
The wind rose to a howling gale, hammering rain horizontally at the windscreen, utterly obscuring the world outside. Lightning speared across the landscape. “One, two, three…” They counted in unison, reaching five before they heard the thunder.
Bill slowed the ATV, bringing it to rest under the bridge, though with the screaming wind buffeting the rain in every direction, the overpass offered little shelter from the storm. Another shaft of lightning lit up the clouds. This time they counted to twelve before thunder rolled.
“It’s moving northward, yes?” Bill said.
“North-easterly, I thi
nk,” Locke said.
“So it won’t be a problem for Creil,” Bill said. “That’s a small bonus. Though it’s heading towards where the horde should be. I wonder if it’ll muck up the zombies’ direction of travel.”
“An experiment I wouldn’t want to be part of,” Locke said. “I think the rain’s slackening. Yes, yes, I think visibility is increasing. I’ll take a look.”
This time, Chester moved aside, out of range of the water bucketing through the open hatch.
“Yes,” Locke said. “I can see the horizon. I can actually see blue skies.”
“Huh,” Chester said. “Well, that’s more proof the weather’s gone weird.”
“What about the bridge?” Bill asked.
Locke peered upward. “Looks like a road bridge. It’s two metres above our heads. A barrier adds another metre, and wire mesh extends upward for two metres beyond that. Do we have wire cutters?”
Chester rooted around in his bag for the tools they’d brought from Creil. “We do.”
“Then we just need a ladder,” Locke said. “I think there’s a farm to our west. Shall we?”
Chapter 15 - Climbing the Ladder
Chateau des Fleurs, Chemin de la Grimpette
Bill stepped out of the cab and into a pool of water. He skip-stepped aside, looked down, and revised his opinion. At a molecular level it was mostly water, but it was also most of the remains of a zombie he’d not even noticed lingering under the bridge. The ATV had driven over the creature, crushing its chest and legs, dragging limbs and torso up into the treads where they’d been churned to pulp. When the vehicle came to rest, the gory mess had dripped down to form a puddle beneath the door.
The zombie’s jaw fell open. It couldn’t be alive, it simply couldn’t. He drew his machete, and hacked down, just in case. He walked slowly around the vehicle, machete out, looking for lurking undead as much as for damage. He’d almost completed a circuit when Locke called out.
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 15): Where There's Hope Page 14