by Frank Tayell
“You got all that from a brief description of a few food wrappers?” the admiral asked.
“I spent a lot of time thinking about rationing systems,” I said. “Not just on Faroe, but back in London, before the nuclear war. Back when I thought the government was actually trying to keep people alive. Back when… but that’s not important. This is how we would do things. How we will, and it makes sense that others would have considered it.”
“You think the Pacific Alliance is real, then?” Kim asked.
“It was,” I said. “Or some part of it was. This politician in Canada, Ms Ashoona, said that Vancouver was an evacuation point, not a resupply base. Similarly, Nova Scotia was known to the Canadian authorities as a hub for refugees. If any large organisational system had survived after the nuclear war, they would have sent people there. The notebook is from Guam, yes? So maybe that’s where they rode out the worst of the apocalypse. Bulk-carriers were brought into harbour. The fruit and grain was cooked and pressed into these bars. I bet there was a packaging company in Guam. I bet they pressed millions of these bars. And that some are still floating around, uneaten, suggests not as many people survived as was hoped.”
“But how many is that?” Kim said. “They have helicopters, we think.” She picked up the transcript. “No, that’s all we have to go on. How many helicopters? Did they fly in from New York? Or from a ship? Or are they now based somewhere near there? Do we look for the person who once owned that bag and notebook? Do we look up in the sky, watching for the helicopter to come looking for us?”
“Which, I think, brings us to the most important point of all,” the admiral said. “That was Lisa Kempton’s mansion.”
“It could have been her, I suppose,” I said. “Maybe she went there to see if Tamika or Sorcha had been looking for her. Or it was some of her people, looking for old friends.”
“Or it was the cartel,” Kim said.
“But why would they go there now?” I asked.
“In the hope of finding supplies,” Kim said.
“There is a limit to the usefulness of speculating,” the admiral said. “Who they are isn’t as important as that they travelled there, to that particular mansion, by helicopter, in the very recent past. Whoever they were, whatever they were looking for, it was important enough to expend the fuel and risk the chopper.”
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Avoiding anywhere associated with Kempton seems like our first move.”
“We prepare for war,” Kim said. “That’s what it comes to. The people in Long Island might know of the harvest in Nova Scotia, they might come there, and they might be members of the cartel. We prepare to kill the undead in Nova Scotia. Then we prepare to defend our fields from the cartel. We can hope that there are survivors of the Pacific Alliance out there, and they are like us, but we should prepare for the worst. We must defend our new home, because we’re not going to find another, anywhere on this planet.”
“Yes, I agree,” the admiral said. “Kim, would you make the announcement? We can’t trust Whitley to keep quiet, so it is best no one thinks we are attempting to keep anything else a secret.”
After the announcement, a grim mood swept across the ship. That wasn’t Kim’s fault. She focused on the positive, but it was the second such announcement since we departed Faroe. The first, finally telling everyone about the graves Siobhan had found, had soured everyone’s spirits. I don’t think anyone truly cares that they weren’t informed immediately, but recrimination is easier than understanding, and it will be directed at us. At the admiral, Kim, and myself. And so Colm and Mary will remain blameless. Oh, politics, no matter how far I travel, you are the old friend I never leave behind.
Faroe and the cartel survivors of Calais close Europe off to us. We can theorise about the Alps, but I just can’t see any way we’ll be able to mount an expedition there before spring. After spring, we’ll be focused on the fields, on the undead, on our southern flank, and who knows what else. We might look for the Ukrainians in the autumn, but by then they will have long since given up waiting for us. I will not forget them. Nor will I ever abandon them, but if we are to make contact, it will not be by ship. We shall have to hope Ken can re-activate a few satellites, and that we can repair a few planes. The Ukrainians number more than us. If we can survive, so can they. If the zombies have died in the far north, they will soon be dead everywhere else on this planet. That is what I hope, but you know what they say about hope?
“You’re being too pessimistic,” Kim said, having read through what I’d just written.
“But you’re the one who said we must prepare for war,” I said.
“That’s pragmatism,” Kim said. “Of course, your trouble is you think of war as it was waged a year ago. I think of it as how we’ve survived since the outbreak. What we’re all being forced to face is the certainty of uncertainty. Doubts over our future have always been with us. No one has ever known what tomorrow will bring, except now our tomorrows are so very different from our yesterdays. But life was always uncertain. We liked to trick ourselves into thinking the future could be mapped, planned, and predicted, but it couldn’t. Not back then. Not now. Nothing’s really changed, except in that everything is always changing. We can’t embrace it, because that’s not in our nature. We simply have to accept it, and adapt as best we can.”
“In Canada,” I said.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Kim said. “There’ll be no electricity in Newfoundland, of course, until we can rig up our own tidal barrage. I was speaking to Rahinder Singh, and he thinks that will be easy. We can use Annapolis Royal as our blueprint. Finding a suitable section of coast will be the most difficult part.”
“He really thinks it’ll be easy?”
“I think he’s looking forward to a new challenge,” Kim said. “A lot of people are. They are angry, yes, but not at us. Grumbling aside, I think they’re glad they’re not the ones forced into making the hard choices. No, our future is going to be the very definition of interesting times, but I never thought that should be a curse.”
Day 292, 30th December
The North Atlantic
I had intended to put my pen aside until we reached Canada, letting Kim have the last word in the last account of life in Europe. What is it she said about plans and predictions?
Once again, everything has changed. Once again, it changed in a moment. Rather, in eight rather gruelling hours. About an hour ago, at two-fifteen a.m., Aisha was delivered of a baby girl. I will skip the medical details here, mostly because I don’t really understand them. She went into labour suddenly, and two months prematurely. The baby is alive, but it’s touch and go. Our destination has changed. We are all going to Digby, with its reliable electricity supply and onshore medical facilities.
The child’s future is in the balance. We were once the help that came to others. We were the survivors searching for others. Now we are about to become something else, and it will begin by saving her.
The End.
The story of the Pacific Alliance begins in Outback Outbreak, out now.
Other Titles
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Other novels:
Surviving The Evacuation & Here We Stand
The outbreak began in New York. Within days, it had spread throughout the world. Nowhere is safe from the living dead. Books 1-3 are the journals of Bill Wright, a political operative trapped in London after the city is evacuated. Books 4-7 follow Nilda, a mother searching the wasteland for her son, and Chester, a criminal in search of repentance. Books 8 onward recount how humanity’s last survivors build a new society out of the ashes of the old world.
Here We Stand is the story of Tom Clemens, Jonas Jeffries, Martha Greene, a
nd the other North American survivors, and the collapse of the United States. Outback Outbreak begins the struggles of the survivors in the Pacific
1: London, 2: Wasteland, Zombies vs The Living Dead, 3: Family, 4: Unsafe Haven, 5: Reunion, 6: Harvest, 7: Home, Here We Stand 1: Infected, Here We Stand 2: Divided, Book 8: Anglesey, 9: Ireland, 10: The Last Candidate, 11: Search and Rescue, 12: Britain’s End, 13: Future’s Beginning, 14: Mort Vivant, 15: Where There’s Hope 16: Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests, 17: There We Stood & Outback Outbreak
Post-apocalyptic Detective novels:
Strike a Match
In 2019, the AIs went to war. Millions died before a nuclear holocaust brought an end to their brief reign of terror. Billions more succumbed to radiation poisoning, disease, and the chaotic violence of that apocalypse. Some survived. They rebuilt.
Twenty years later, civilization is a dim shadow of its former self. Crime is on the rise, aided by a shadowy conspiracy. It is down to Detectives Mitchell, Riley, and Deering of the Serious Crimes Unit to unmask the conspirators and save their fragile democracy.
1. Serious Crimes, 2. Counterfeit Conspiracy, 3. Endangered Nation
Work Rest Repeat
Sixty years after The Great War, the last survivors of humanity have taken shelter in giant towers. The colony ships that will allow them to leave the diseased Earth are nearing completion when two murders are discovered. For our species to survive, the criminals must be caught, and the launch must go ahead.
Thanks for reading.
