The zombie’s clothing was mud-covered and torn, but they weren’t rags. There was shape to the trousers as its knees jerked; firmness in the boots that were limping one foot after the other towards them; give in the zipped jacket as it threw out one hand and then the next.
“Take my bike,” Chester said.
“Would you like me to hold your coat, too?” Locke asked, but took the bike as Chester strode forward, swinging his mace low, ducking beneath the zombie’s arms while the mace’s head smashed into, then through, the rotten sinew of the creature’s knees. It toppled sideways as Chester pivoted, swinging the mace up, then down on its skull.
“I suppose I should have asked this first, but you didn’t recognise him?” he said to Locke.
“No,” she said, leaning his bike and hers against the fire engine.
“It’s the coat,” Chester said. “That’s why I asked. The clothing’s worn, but not so worn that it’s been dressed like that since February. And who’d wear a heavy jacket in the summer? It’s recently turned.”
“Maybe the driver from one of the fire engines,” Locke said.
Chester turned to look, but Tuck and Nilda had already walked to a caged area at the edge of the runway.
“It’s the fuel store,” Nilda said. “The tanks must be underground.”
“We had extra capacity added,” Locke said. “There was little purpose in extending the runway if we didn’t also keep the fuel for a transatlantic jaunt.”
Tuck pushed at the gate. The lock had already been broken. The soldier moved inside and over to a row of metal cabinets. Again, the locks had been broken. She opened the doors until she found a cabinet containing nothing but gauges. She froze.
“What?” Nilda asked.
Tuck pointed at the cabinet.
“What?” Chester echoed.
“It’s fuel,” Nilda said. “Twenty, forty, sixty-five…” She moved her finger from one dial to another. “There’s over two hundred thousand gallons.”
“Litres,” Tuck signed.
“Litres, right, of course,” Nilda said. “But even so, it’s more fuel than I’ve seen anywhere else.”
“Aviation fuel,” Locke said.
“If you can run it in a diesel engine, what does it matter?” Nilda asked.
“Not without a lubricant,” Chester said. “I know that much, but not the ratio.”
“This is an airfield,” Nilda said. “We’ll lubricants in any of the hangars. Chester, check that fire engine. Sorcha, keep lookout.”
“Check the fire engine for what?” Chester asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Nilda said. “Hopefully, you’ll know when you see it.”
Five minutes later, he’d found it. “I think,” he said, “and this is just a guess, but I think they were going to use the hoses to fill up the water reservoir with fuel. The panelling’s drawn back, there’s a couple of valves which’ve had the caps removed. It’s a guess, mind you, but I’d say a logical one.”
“Then zombies came, and the looters had to flee on foot,” Nilda said. “Interesting.” She and Tuck walked back over to the fire engines. “You remember that burned out train carriage? Do you think a fire engine could shove it aside?”
“Theoretically,” Tuck signed. “The dead zombies present a greater obstacle.”
“Hmm. True. Maybe that’s for the best. It’s the wrong direction, anyway.”
“The wrong direction for what?” Locke asked.
“Where’s that map?” Nilda said. “We need to find better maps. Right, so the Courageous is off the coast, here, between The Netherlands and Germany. Do they have enough fuel to reach the banks of the Elbe? That’s only twenty or thirty kilometres. The Courageous is designed to land tanks on a beach, so we could drive tankers onto the ship.”
“We haven’t got tankers,” Chester said. “We’ve got fire engines. I doubt they can carry more than a thousand litres apiece.”
“We’ll find tankers,” Nilda said. “This is nearly a quarter-million litres of fuel, we’re not leaving it behind.” She turned back to the map. “We want to reach somewhere along the Elbe. Where? Well, no, perhaps Leon should decide where. Yes, that would be best. He can go north, locate a suitable landing site, while we find the tankers.”
“When we left them, the Courageous had virtually no fuel left,” Chester said.
“We’ll stick some of this stuff into their tanks,” Nilda said.
“It’s aviation fuel,” Chester said.
“Yes, and that ship has diesel turbines. They can’t be much different to a diesel car.”
“If we get it wrong, we lose the ship,” Chester said.
“Which we’re in danger of doing anyway,” Nilda said. “It’ll take a couple of weeks to bring that fuel down from Faroe, and so much could happen in that time. But if Captain Fielding thinks we shouldn’t use this in her ship, we won’t. We’ll wait. Either way, we’ve a couple of weeks, so let’s use that time to salvage this fuel. Look at the map. From here, the Elbe is less than a hundred kilometres away. Once Leon’s picked a landing site, it’ll only take us a day to scout a route south. Maybe two hours to drive it. Finding the tankers will be the time-consuming chore, but we’ll be done within a week.”
Tuck slapped the side of the fire engine to get their attention.
“What?” Nilda asked.
“Are you that far down the rabbit hole?” Tuck signed.
“Rabbit? What rabbit?”
“Look around you,” Tuck signed. “We’re at an airport. That’s aviation fuel. Plane fuel. Jet fuel. There’s a jet at the end of the runway. We can fly the fuel out.”
“Fly? To where?” Nilda said. “And in case you missed it, that freighter has spilled its gears all over the tarmac.”
“Why do we want diesel for the Courageous?” Tuck signed. “To get all of us to Faroe as soon as possible so we have more time to plan what next. Where next. Faroe has an airport, yes? A runway? They said they can repair it. We can do the same here. You want to clear the roads between here and the Elbe so we can drive tankers along them? It’s the same principle to clear a runway. Can I add that we don’t have any tankers?”
“What if we can’t repair that plane?” Nilda asked.
“Maybe there’s a jet on Faroe,” Tuck signed.
“Do we have a pilot?” Nilda asked.
“There’s some Marine pilots,” Chester said. “Think they flew helicopters, but I bet they trained to fly a plane.”
“Which means they’re now in Dundalk, yes?” Nilda said. “So we’ve still got to get them here.”
Tuck shook her head, but in frustration rather than disagreement. “Why do we want to get to Faroe? Why do we want more time? For the next voyage, yes? To go to America. To confirm it’s as bad as you and I suspect. That voyage will take weeks. Meanwhile, the clock continues to click inexorably towards the first of March. From Faroe, a plane could make a flight to America in a few hours.”
“But it might not be able to land,” Nilda said. She turned to look up at Locke, standing on top of the fire engine. “Sorcha, you said Lisa had a plane like that. How far can it fly?”
“I missed a lot of what was just said,” Locke said. “Are you proposing we fly the fuel out of here?”
“Tuck is,” Nilda said. “Tell me about that plane.”
“Lisa’s was modified for range. I suspect that machine has the factory’s specifications. But from Faroe, perhaps as far as New York. Twice the distance if you didn’t mind it being a one-way trip.”
“We do want it to return, and we don’t want to go to New York,” Nilda said. “But could it fly low enough to survey the coast, the harbours?”
“I would imagine that altitude isn’t as much an issue as speed, but if we can get it operational, we could easily rig some cameras. They won’t tell us anything the satellites can’t.”
“The satellites aren’t telling us anything useful,” Tuck signed. “And maybe that plane won’t tell us more than where we can find a
safe harbour for a ship, but that’s more than we know now. We’ll get our answer sooner. We’ll make the next decision sooner.”
“What do you think, Chester?” Nilda asked.
“First, I’ll point out what you’ve all missed,” he said. “There aren’t any helicopters. I suppose we can fly a plane over the Pyrenees, but I don’t know how that’ll help us make contact with them. On the other hand, it’s something we can worry about when we’ve got a plane safely on Faroe. I’ve no idea whether any of these planes are airworthy, but Scott managed to get that jet up in the air. He might be missing, but the people who helped him are down in Dundalk. It’s the fuel, isn’t it? That’s what we need. So either we try driving a fleet of tankers out of here, or we get a plane up in the air. It’d take more than one flight to salvage all the fuel, right? And a jet will be a noisy beast when it takes off. We’ll summon the undead from miles around. If that horde has turned around, if it’s coming back this way, I don’t want to think about what’ll happen next. But that’s a problem we know how to manage. I guess the question is which is safer in the long run, and when it comes to surveying America, a plane sounds safer than sending a ship.”
Tuck slapped the side of the fire engine again. “It’s not our decision. It won’t even be the admiral’s. Can the runway on Faroe be repaired? Can this one? Can the plane? Do we have someone who can fly it? If the answer to those or any of the hundred other questions is no, then we can look for tankers. We can’t answer those questions. We can only provide the intel to the people who can.”
“Right. Well… well, okay, then,” Nilda said. “Sorcha?”
“In matters concerning the air force, I would tend to defer to a pilot. In the absence of one, I shall defer to the soldier.”
“Then we’ll gather as much information as we can,” Nilda said. “Sorcha, do you have that phone? We’ll want to take photographs. And we better take some notes as well. I wish we’d brought the sat-phone.”
Locke climbed down, took out the mobile phone, and handed it to Nilda. “If you don’t mind, since we’ve come this far, I’d like to travel on for a few miles more.”
“To your redoubt?”
“I think we all know what I will find, but I’d like to see it for myself.”
Nilda nodded. “I’d be the same. Chester, go with her. It’s like Penrith to Hull, isn’t it?”
He nodded, understanding. He was to make sure she returned.
“We’ll be back before dark,” he said.
Chapter 30 - Unwanted Visitors
The Claverton Climate Institute, Hovst, Denmark
With each minute he and Sorcha cycled, the roads grew increasingly less passable, filled with cars, and as often with crashes. Vehicles had been driven off the roads, abandoned in ditches, front gardens, or in the fields when they’d become bogged down.
“The escape from here must have been desperate,” Chester said.
“No more so than elsewhere,” Locke said. She slowed her bike, swerved around a lone tyre, then skidded on oil hidden beneath a thin patch of mud. She caught herself in time, managing to plant her feet on the ground before tumbling from the bike. “Perhaps we should walk from here.”
“Is it far?” Chester asked.
“Only a few kilometres. I can already smell the sea. It’ll be faster taking a direct route across the fields towards the wetland nature reserve. It’s a pity we have to leave the bikes. Those fire engines had to have arrived at the airport long after these cars bogged down in this nightmare. They will have pushed and shoved a route through a road, and it clearly isn’t this one. I thought we might find it, and so have easier going.”
“You think the engines came from your redoubt?”
“No, but I am curious which direction the fire engines came from. Of course the sensible approach would have been to search closer to the airfield, but we are here, and the facility is over there.”
“Beyond the nature reserve?”
“No, beyond those fields, that copse of woodland, and that hill, not that you can call it a hill. Beyond all of that is the preservation area. And beyond that is our facility.”
Chester leaned his bike next to a flat-tyred minibus, and followed her across the road, over the ditch, and into a grubby, muddy, weed-filled quagmire.
Locke took three steps into the morass before backtracking. “We should follow the edge of the field.”
“Not sure this will be quicker,” Chester said. “Let me try the direct approach. Why did a billionaire, worried about nuclear war, build a wetlands nature reserve?”
“Public relations,” Locke said. “We were building a large industrial facility on the coast, while expanding the airport and planning the opening of a major factory. This was a salve to those concerned about the habitats we were destroying. Misdirection is an alternative answer. A billionaire expands an airport, installs one of the most comprehensive local bus networks on the continent, opens a marine research facility, and a wetlands habitat preservation centre, why? We knew no one would guess the real answer, but wanted them to ask the question. It ensured that they knew we were there. It’s for a similar reason we had the wind turbines installed in Elysium. People noticed. They wondered why.”
“And chatted online? I’d have thought they’d have cooked up a forum of conspiracy theories.”
“Many forums, and chat rooms, podcasts, and even a few books. We helped fan those paranoid flames, of course.”
“You did?” he asked.
“All publicity is good publicity, particularly when you aren’t a listed company,” she said. “We wanted people aware of us, and aware that there was some grand plan. Something different about us. I think we’ll make better headway on the other side of this fence.” She nimbly jumped over.
When Chester tried to copy her smooth leap, he snagged his trousers on the barbed wire. “Damn. These were a good pair, too. Closest I’ve had to a pair that fit since I left London. So you wanted people asking questions about what you were up to?”
“I think I’m entitled to a question now,” Locke said.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Shh.” He stopped, as did she. He listened. “No, must have been a bird. What do you want to ask?”
“Nilda is pregnant, isn’t she?”
“You know? Is it obvious?”
“No. Tuck gave it away. Not that she realised. She is concerned about the future we’re creating for the children. She is just as concerned about how we go about creating that future. It is interesting what you can pick up from a teacher, how they approach what lessons to teach.”
“When she’s teaching you sign language?”
“An interesting woman, Ms Tucker,” Locke said.
“I only found out after I asked Nilda to marry me,” Chester said. “I don’t know why that’s important, but it is to me.”
“And you’re happy?” Locke asked.
“When I’m not terrified.”
“You’ll do fine,” Locke said. “Can you smell that?”
Chester sniffed. “Something burning?”
“Possibly. Yes. It’s faint, though, and I can’t see any smoke.”
“It might not be any of your people,” Chester said. “A wetlands centre sounds like the kind of habitat animals might flock to. There might be good hunting there. Or it might not be people at all.”
“I know,” Locke said. “I sorely do. But…” She didn’t finish the thought, but continued walking south.
In silence, Chester followed, through the trees, across another flooded field, up a shallow hill covered in bracken and new growth shrubs, dying back after the frost following a late autumn growth spurt.
At the top of the hill, they took shelter behind a line of spruces, in so neat a row they had to have been deliberately planted, but so broad, that row had to have been planted at least two decades before.
Locke crouched down. Chester leaned against a tree. He could see the smoke. It came from behind a small hut positioned just off a road, nestled bef
ore more trees, these raggedly planted, but next to a small car park.
“The wetland centre,” Locke said. “That’s the car park. The building has the toilets, a small washroom, and a small office for on-duty staff.”
The road running east-west outside was clear, though not empty. The stalled vehicles, not as many as on the road further north, had been pushed into the ditch and verge. Nor was the car park empty.
“Good spot for survivors, is it?” Chester asked, hopefully.
“There’s a well,” Locke said. “And, like you said, good hunting.”
“So no better than anywhere else,” Chester said. It was as he feared. There was no other explanation than the obvious one. In the car park, alongside three camper vans, four cars, and a minibus decked out in blue and gold, sat a Leclerc main battle tank.
“It’s Cavalie,” Chester said.
“Her people,” Locke said. “Someone’s people. Those people. Yes.”
“Why?” Chester asked. “How?”
“Because they knew the real reason we had these redoubts built,” Locke said. “Not the complete reason, not what we planned to do afterward, but the cartel knew that an apocalypse was coming. They knew we’d prepared. Huh. Of course.”
“What?”
“I wondered what plans they might have made for the end of the world. Now I know. The cartel simply planned to steal our facilities. That is why Quigley’s people attacked Elysium. Not simply to eradicate us, but to ensure their own survival after they destroyed the world.”
“You sure?” Chester asked, though it hardly mattered.
“Quigley’s people weren’t soldiers, Mr Carson,” she said. “They were thugs, assassins, no better than the cartel, except they carried a warrant issued by a corrupt government.”
“People like Cannock,” Chester muttered. “Fine. So they knew about this place. What exactly would they have known?”
“That there was fuel here. And that gives us the answer to a different riddle. I don’t think that tanker we found near Nieuwpoort belonged to Admiral Popolov. I think it was Cavalie’s. Rather, I think it was my fuel, stolen from here. Left near Nieuwpoort as a refuelling stop for the tanks should they need to leave Calais and return north. Left there because Rhoskovski discovered the HMS Courageous. They are parasites, feeding on the hard work of others, even now.”
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 16): Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests Page 29