by Frank Tayell
“This isn’t what I was expecting,” Chester added. “When I hear watchtower, I think of Starwind, of France. That trio in the garage remind me of her, too. I should tell you about them.”
“After we’ve shown you the wall,” Napatchie said. “This way, please.” She gestured in the direction of the swing doors beyond the registers, leading to the staff-side of the store.
On the other side, Jonas paused by a door still labelled as a break room. “I’ll catch up with you after. I’ve seen the show before.”
“He means he keeps a stash of coffee in there,” Napatchie said, as she led them on, down the corridor, through another, and to the security office.
It was small, made smaller by the dozens of screens attached to the wall and hanging from the ceiling. In a chair facing the monitors sat a woman. Buzz-cut and lean, tired but alert. Due to the waste heat from the screens, she wore a t-shirt, revealing the regimental tattoo on her arm.
“Kaitlin!” Sholto exclaimed.
“Tom! I heard you came back,” she said. “But I’m in command here this week. Everyone else is on leave for the holidays.”
“It’s good to see you,” Sholto said. “It really is.”
“Another old friend?” Nilda asked.
“She is. This is Nilda and Chester. Kaitlin and I met out on the road. It was the airport, wasn’t it? You were driving a fire truck.”
“And you were on foot being chased by the undead,” Kaitlin said. “You’ve come to see the wall, yes? Here it is.” The soldier pointed at the bank of monitors. Each had a small label, but with the only illumination coming from the screens themselves, they were impossible to read. So were the images they displayed. Some were in colour, a few were in black and white. Most showed snow. There were trees, of course, and one showed a ruined house. Another showed a partially dismantled truck.
“Where’s the wall?” Sholto asked.
“The cameras are on top,” Napatchie said. “This is what they show.”
“Ah.”
“We built a walkway on the wall,” Kaitlin added. “We have guard posts, but we don’t have enough people to crew them. Cameras are simpler. And quieter.”
“Okay, I’ll say it first,” Chester said. “Where are the zombies?”
“There,” Kaitlin said. “Do you see this mound?” She pointed at a small rise in the snow, and then at another lumpy indentation. “Those are the zombies. It was easier to see them before the blizzard. Easier, but not easy. There was a deluge last month. The rain drove down so hard, it raised mud five feet in the air. The zombies were coated.”
“This lump here, that’s a zombie?” Chester asked, pointing at a screen. He moved to the next screen. “And this one?”
“That’s it,” Kaitlin said.
“It’s not like England, is it?” Chester said.
“Or Denmark,” Nilda said.
“Or Newfoundland,” Sholto said.
“It’s not?” Napatchie asked. “How so?”
“In England, they gathered together,” Sholto said. “Sometimes they gathered in giant hordes, millions strong. But what we’re used to is the undead all gathered together, in clusters and piles. And I see why. Around the planes, they’d gathered beneath the doors where the living had been inside. In Europe, in the cities, the streets funnelled them together.”
“They did that here, too,” Napatchie said. “In the beginning. When they breached our first wall, it was in one massive column. After, they spread out across the countryside.”
“That only leaves one question, the most important one of all,” Chester said. “Are they dead now?”
“They weren’t before the storm,” Kaitlin said.
“And they certainly weren’t when Diana left,” Napatchie said. “They were more… clustered before she went out to gather the fuel.”
“I thought there was no fuel?” Nilda said.
“During the fall, when we were harvesting, we moved some nearer the farms,” Napatchie said. “It was all we had left. Diana collected it, brought it back, and used it to get the Frobisher up to Newfoundland. The last of our fuel, and the last of our ships. But Jonas can tell you more about that, and about how the wall fell.”
Day 186, September 14th
Chapter 27 - The Last Cornfield
Nova Scotia
“Did you ever want to be a farmer?” Luke asked from atop the tractor.
“Nope,” Jonas said, giving the spanner another quarter turn. “But wants and wishes don’t put food on the table. Pass me the can of oil.”
Luke rummaged in the over-full tool bag.
“Obliged,” Jonas said. A quick squirt, another quarter turn, another temptation to thwack the engine with the spanner resisted, and he stepped back, wiping his oily hand across a sweat and mud-beaded brow. The heat was punishing, but not as relentless as it had been in August. It was still nearer the beginning of September than the end, but there’d been a crisp freshness to the pre-dawn light. A hint of the fall that would come, a whisper of the winter that would follow, but they would face it well fed, and well provisioned, just as soon as he brought in the last three fields of corn.
“When you were little,” Luke said, “did you want to be a farmer then?”
“Not that I can recall,” Jonas said.
“Did they have tractors, when you were young?”
“And electricity, and television,” Jonas said. “And more respect for our elders,” he added, though only under his breath. After six months, he’d gotten used to Luke.
“Because I heard you and Kaitlin talking,” Luke continued. “You said if we didn’t have the tractors, farming would be impossible. But that book Martha was reading to me, it said tractors were only invented like… um… well, not that long ago. So how could they farm without them, if it was impossible?”
“With carthorses instead,” Jonas said. “You remember me telling you about the power in an engine, how we measure it in horsepower? That’s why.”
“Oh. Okay. Good,” Luke said, satisfied. He wouldn’t remain satisfied for long. Another question would soon follow. It always did. But Jonas didn’t mind. He liked the boy, mostly because when he looked at Luke, he saw absolutely nothing of his own younger self.
“Turn the key,” Jonas said. “Remember how I showed you? Try the gas.” The engine rumbled. “Enough. Good. We’ll have a quick break, then get back to work. Pass me an apple, and take one for yourself.”
His teeth bit into the apple with a satisfyingly juicy crunch. Luke looked at his with the suspicion the boy reserved for anything that didn’t come with ketchup or, preferably, inside the sauce bottle itself.
Jonas leaned against the tractor’s tall wheels. It was gone midday. He’d ploughed less than a third of the cornfield, and there were still two more he’d not yet begun, but there were no clouds in the sky. If the tractor was still playing up this afternoon, he’d fetch a different one tomorrow.
Only three fields of corn had made it to harvest. To his eye, none of the crop looked diseased, but he was no more an expert than Luke. It was a little early for threshing, but the season had sneaked up on them. The long, hot summer seemed to stretch forever until, for them, it was suddenly over. Too much heat and too little water, and the apples were falling from the tree while the wheat was collapsing under the weight of the grain. With most of the community reaping and threshing the wheat up north, everyone else, including the children, were dispatched to gather the apples. That left the corn to Jonas. Most of the crop had been lost to blight back in May. Nine fields had flooded in a one-hour downpour in June, leaving these three alone having survived.
Most people thought it a waste of effort gathering the corn. Not him. To Jonas, it was practice. Maybe for next year. Maybe the year after. This was where, for the second time, he would retire. The two-storey blue and white wood-clad farmhouse at the southern edge of the field would be his home. He’d sit on the porch, watching the golden sea before him, never thinking too hard about the past or the futu
re, just enjoying that he still had a present.
“Jonas?”
“Yes, Luke?”
“Those people who left on the ships, do you think they’ll come back?”
“Hard to say,” Jonas said.
“Will there be enough food if they do?”
“I’d say so,” Jonas said. “But if they come back, it’ll be to tell us there’s somewhere else, somewhere better.”
“I don’t think there could be anywhere better than this.”
“Me neither,” Jonas said. “Finish your apple, and we can get finished on this field.”
While he waited for Luke to finish his squirrel-like nibbling at the edge of the fruit, he strolled around the combine and attached trailer.
He’d been given free rein with the giant beast because it was a spare. With the theft of their ships, and the departure of so many, they had more machines than they had operators. What he’d not considered until after he’d rolled this rusting monster out to the field was that those in-the-know had taken the more reliable machines up to harvest the wheat. The fields had been prepared before the nuclear war, back when there’d been millions in Nova Scotia, Jonas not among them. They’d planted when there’d still been hundreds of thousands. The number had steadily dropped during the year as people had fled until, finally, the sailors had taken the ships, including the vessels they’d brought up from Maine. They had diesel. Enough to bring in the harvest, but not enough for next year’s ploughing. If it hadn’t been for the electricity supplied by Annapolis Royal, he’d be worried.
But it was hard to worry when the undead were stuck on the other side of the walls, when the trees were laden with apples, and the stalks were bending under the weight of the grain.
“She looks ready,” Jonas said.
“Who?” Luke asked.
“The combine,” Jonas said, climbing up to the cab.
“She’s a she? Does she have a name?”
“Not until you think of one. Now move over. Let me get her started, and then you can take over the steering.”
“Really?”
“Why not?” Jonas said. He started the engine. This time the tractor growled as if it could keep it up all day. Jonas would settle for a couple of hours.
“Jonas? Jonas!” Luke yelled, more loudly than was necessary, and right into Jonas’s ear.
“What?”
“The needle!” Luke bellowed.
Jonas glanced at the fuel gauge. “We’ll grab some more diesel when we get to the house.”
He’d started his harvest in the corner furthest from the farm, ploughing in horizontal lines as if he’d been mowing a lawn because that was his closest point of reference. He’d managed three nearly straight, mostly neat furrows before the engine had packed up.
The farm was halfway between the orchards and the wheat farms, but that wasn’t why he’d decided to move the cache of diesel here. A good cop learns to listen, and even though he was retired, his blood still ran blue. He’d heard the talk. Drive south, follow the coast, outrace the ships. No one in the nascent mob had a plan for what they’d do next, but all that had prevented angry chatter becoming reality was that no one was quite certain the ships had gone south. They’d fled in the height of a long, hot, mostly dry summer. The Northwest Passage might be open. Before anyone decided to split into groups and scatter to the winds, he’d moved the fuel, weapons, and a few other supplies necessary for any further rebellion. It was on those long, hot, summer afternoons, pedalling a cycle-trailer back and forth to the house, when he’d fallen in love with the farm. His decision was made before he knew it. One day soon, he’d live here for the little that remained of his life.
“Jonas!” Luke bellowed again. This time, the boy was pointing behind and to the left, to the narrow corner they’d harvested first. Through the trimmed stalks tumbled a scarecrow figure, arms waving, legs lurching until it fell flat on its face. The figure thrashed in a way that Jonas knew all too well, but hadn’t witnessed in weeks, not since his last stint commanding the guard at the northern wall.
“That’s not allowed!” Luke cried as Jonas switched off the engine. “They’re not allowed here!”
“Nope,” Jonas said, unbuttoning his holster. He’d left his rifle at the farmhouse, but he never went anywhere without his pistol and bowie knife, not since Maine. “You stay up here.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just down to the dirt,” Jonas said. “There and no further, I promise.”
Keeping on eye on the zombie, he clambered down. Drawing his .45, he raised it, waiting until the zombie was upright, placing his mark between its eyes, and waiting still, squinting against the glare of the sun. It was bright this year, and he didn’t want to miss. He fired. The zombie sprawled down to the dust.
“Wait here!” he called up, and began walking towards the dead creature. It was the noise of the tractors, he supposed. Not his vehicle, but the army of combines that had driven north to harvest the wheat. Those had woken this zombie from whatever abandoned home in which it lurked. His engine had been a lure, dragging it out to this field. Except now, up close, something about that explanation didn’t add up. The zombie was covered in mud, damp not just from the viscous gore seeping from its blown-open skull, but from water. The creek to the north was dry, with the next water source the river another quarter mile beyond, but that had shrunk to a trickle since the last solid rainfall in July. Where had the monster been to get so wet? A flooded basement? A—
But the detective’s curiosity vanished as he heard the crumpling of uncut corn. The head-high stalks swayed and rolled, out of time with the whisper of a breeze. They went still. Jonas backed off a step, and another, but didn’t have time for a third before a figure exploded from the corn, half-crawling, half-falling, and completely undead. He fired, this time backing away as soon as he was sure the shot had found its mark. He turned his walk into a run, but kept it short of a sprint as he jogged back to the tractor. He clambered up the steps to the cab.
Luke’s face was a mask of frozen terror.
“It’s okay, Luke,” Jonas said.
Luke didn’t reply. He just pointed at the unploughed section of field. Erratic lines appeared in the corn as the crop was trampled. Irregular furrows slowly snaked towards the combine. Eight. Nine.
Jonas gave a weary sigh. “Typical, isn’t it, Luke?” he said calmly. “We just get the tractor fixed, and then they have to go ruin our crop. I did so want to try Martha’s cornbread. I guess we’ve got some in the hopper. That’ll have to be enough.”
Luke blinked, the calm words cutting through his fear. “Aren’t we… aren’t we going to run?”
“Nope,” Jonas said. “The tyres on this beast are as tall as me. We’re safe up here. Very safe, seeing as I’ve got my gun. No, we’ll wait, let them come to us. I’ll shoot them, then we’ll head back to the farmhouse and raise the alarm. You want another apple while you wait?”
He didn’t feel as calm as he was trying to sound. Two zombies might have been trapped in a flooded basement. Ten was a stretch, and for there to be ten here, there were likely to be more elsewhere, between Digby, the orchards, and the wheat fields. He watched the zigzag paths grow longer, get nearer, like fuses burning in reverse. If that’s what they were, he was the explosion. He gave a theatrically loud, weary sigh that was cut short when he saw the new set of lines being ploughed through the field’s edge. Beyond those, in the second field, there were more lines. And beyond those, in the distance, a moving cloud of dust.
“Change of plans,” he said, starting the engine. The combine roared. For a moment he thought of driving it towards the undead, but Luke was with him. Instead he drove on, cutting an erratic swath of his own as, behind him, the burrowing lines changed direction.
He drove through the wide-open gate, up onto the road, but with the combine attached, he couldn’t get up enough speed to outrace the following undead.
“Jonas!” Luke called again. He pointed behind. It wasn�
�t more of the undead. It was a truck. A lime-green five-seater with an extended bed he’d last seen just after breakfast. Martha’s truck, and she was in the back, holding on with one hand, waving with the other. He couldn’t tell who was driving, but they were speeding towards him along the road his tractor and combine now completely blocked.
He slammed his foot to the floor, but there was no speed to pick up, and no time to raise the combine. Tearing up the road behind him with a grind that drowned out his engine and Martha’s, he pulled into the farm’s yard. The truck stopped on the road.
Jonas grabbed Luke and jumped down. Ignoring the protest from his hips, he carried the boy to the truck. Martha had jumped out. Shotgun in hand, she was watching the field. Inside, Kaitlin was still gripping the wheel and covered in children. There were a dozen inside the small cab. So many, she couldn’t risk opening the door lest the children fall out.
“They broke through,” Martha said.
“Where’s everyone else from the orchard?” Jonas asked.
“Took the trucks and went the long way around,” Martha said. “Get in.”
Jonas shook his head. “Open the window!”
Soanna wound it down. Jonas lifted Luke. “Room for one more. Go on, get in. Kaitlin, get them back to the gate. Raise the alarm. Then come back for me. Get in the back, Martha.”
“Get going, Kaitlin! Go.” Martha slapped her hand on the cab. “Go!”
The soldier shook her head, and drove off.
“I’ll not letting you have a last stand of your own,” Martha said.
“Never was a fan of those,” Jonas said. “And I don’t plan to start now.” He looked to the field. The undead were heading towards them, with more visible on the road itself. They had minutes, which was more than he’d need. He lowered his gun, and turned towards the house. “How bad was it?”
“There were hundreds,” she said.
“And north?”
“That’s where they came from,” Martha said. “They breached the wall. Diana Fenton came down to tell us. To warn us. The radio is useless out there. Hasn’t been working all day.”
