Surviving the Evacuation 11: Search and Rescue

by Frank Tayell

  Bill had only seen a few of the downstairs rooms and the basement storage room in which he and Lorraine had been kept prisoner. With daylight coming through the fractured roof and broken windows, the stairwell was easy to find. The bannister had burned like a candle, leaving the metal support rods exposed.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” Bill asked.

  “There’s one way to find out,” Kim said, and bounded up the stairs. “Seems fine,” she said from the top. “Heather’s right, we need to get this done quickly.”

  “I’ll check downstairs,” Devine said. “I’ll shout if I see any collapsed ceilings.”

  Bill climbed the stairs. The wide landing at the top led to a dozen smoke-blackened doors. Soot obscured the metal plates affixed to each.

  “I didn’t ask,” Kim said. “Do you think Lenetti is telling the truth?”

  “About there being a ledger that proves his innocence?” Bill asked. “I don’t think so. The middle-aged woman who acted as Bishop’s assistant had a book. I think it contained details of the people that they’d tried and the crimes of which they’d been accused. That might prove the guilt of others, but I can’t see how it would prove Lenetti was innocent.”

  “Maybe that’s what he’s hoping for,” Kim said. “I mean, that audio recording we found in Rachel’s room in the pub was pretty indisputable. There was no mistaking Lenetti’s voice, or how he was bragging to Paul about those people he killed.”

  “It’s too neat, though, isn’t it?” Bill said as he pushed open the first door. It had been a sitting room, judging by the skeletal shell of a sofa that took up most of the space. “I mean that the evidence was there and it only implicated Lenetti and Paul. I think Rachel kept it as a way of claiming innocence herself. Of course, what I really want to know is where the other recordings are. I bet that she didn’t make only that one. As for Lenetti, without the bodies, without the murder weapon, without some form of corroboration, it’s hard to prove his guilt.” There was no safe in the living room. He stepped back out into the hall. “I suppose that’s why Lenetti’s defence centred on claiming that he was lying on that the audio recording. That he was only showing off to Paul. That’s what worries me. In the old-world, would the recording have been enough? Would it even have been admissible? It’s that recording which caused the jury to find him guilty. Then again, after the sentence, he did change his plea, admitting to some involvement when he told us about the ledger. Or perhaps he’s stalling. Perhaps he thinks one of his old comrades will come to his—” He stopped when he saw Kim’s face. She stood in the doorway of the next room along. “What?” he asked.

  “You don’t need to see,” she said.

  But he knew that he did.

  Whatever that room had been used for a year before, he couldn’t think of a word to describe what it had become. Cell wasn’t enough. Bedroom was only correct in that the room contained an iron bedstead. On it was a corpse, burnt long beyond recognition. The wrists and ankles were still chained, each to a corner of the bedframe.

  “We came for the ledger,” Kim said. Bill didn’t move. “Bill, please. Looking at it won’t change anything.”

  “Her,” Bill said. “Not it.”

  “Yes, probably her,” Kim said, “but this isn’t the time to think about it.”

  “She was here,” Bill said. “I didn’t search the house. I just ran. I started the fire. I killed her.”

  “No,” Kim said. “No, you didn’t. They killed her.” She took his arm and dragged him out into the hall, but the room was now indelibly imprinted on his memory.

  There was a chance the woman was dead before he and Lorraine had escaped. Not a great chance. Bill hadn’t considered there might have been other prisoners. He’d been focused on stopping Bishop, but the zealot hadn’t truly been in control of the campsite, let alone his pseudo-religious movement. That had been Rachel, acting through her proxies like the man with the spider-web tattoo. The man who’d taken Lorraine from her cell the moment the opportunity presented itself. That was who and what those people were, and Bill had no excuse for not recognising it sooner. He didn’t know what word described them best. Sadist, rapist, barbarian, thug, they all seemed too tame. Of course, he’d seen it before, Cannock and then Quigley, the kind who saw the entire world as an object, theirs to take.

  “It’s the office,” Kim said, from the next doorway along. “There’s a safe. Floor looks a little dodgy. Bill?”

  “Is there any point?” he asked, because there was no longer any doubt in his mind about Lenetti’s guilt.

  “Yes,” Kim said. “Yes, there is.” She went inside, but emerged a few seconds later. “The safe’s door has buckled. It must have been the fire. There’s only ash inside.”

  “Then it’s really over,” Bill said. “Or it will be.”

  “Don’t tell anyone about the body,” Kim said.

  “It’s proof,” Bill said. “Not the proof Lenetti wanted, but it’s proof of his guilt. It should be entered into the record.”

  “Why? He’s already been found guilty,” Kim said.

  “Then we should bury the woman,” Bill said.

  “You know that we can’t,” Kim said. “You said so yourself. There are too many to bury. Where would it stop? No, we can’t bury her, and we won’t be coming back here. Let’s keep this to ourselves. There’s no reason to tell Lorraine. You shouldn’t feel any guilt, but I know you, I know you will. Even so, Lorraine doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t need to share that pain.”

  “Did you find anything?” Lorraine asked when they went outside.

  “Only ash,” Kim said. “The heat buckled the safe’s door. The fire burned up all that was inside. There’s no evidence here to prove Lenetti’s story, and I doubt there was ever anything here that would prove he was innocent. What about you?”

  “About twenty litres of petrol,” Heather said, “two dozen cans of food, and a few road flares. There’s nothing else of use to us. Grab a fuel can, and let’s go back.”

  Back, Bill thought, but not back home. Anglesey wasn’t that anymore. They would take the boat back to Menai Bridge, then he would return to Holyhead and report their findings to the judges. After which, Lenetti’s sentence would be carried out.

  Chapter 3 - Black Cap

  Anglesey, 29th October, Day 230

  The courtroom was silent except for the sound of Lenetti tapping his fingers on the leg of his chair. There were only a handful of people present. The proceedings weren’t private, but unlike the trial, few had come to watch. Sholto sat next to Bill. Captain Devine had a chair at the back. Dr Knight sat in front of her, but other than two clerks and two submariners acting as warders, the rest of the room was empty. Despite it being just after dawn, Bill was surprised. He wondered whether the populace had grown disinterested, or perhaps it was because they knew the outcome.

  Word had spread as to why they had made the trip to the campsite. When they’d returned to Menai Bridge yesterday evening, there had been a small crowd waiting to hear what they’d found. There had been a tension in the air, a frisson that could become the spark to reignite the mob, so Bill had told them that they’d found nothing. The crowd had dispersed, and word must have spread. No one wanted to be a witness to the sentence, but Bill imagined the entire island’s ears pricking as they awaited confirmation it had been carried out.

  Lenetti’s tapping grew louder, echoing more in Bill’s head than the improvised courtroom. It had been a community hall a year before. The judge’s dais had once been a stage. He could imagine the plays that had been put on, the children’s parties, the fetes, the fairs, and the public meetings. It had once been a focal point for the lives of those who’d lived in this corner of Wales. With only weeks left before the island would finally be abandoned, the building’s swansong was to be a place of death.

  Bill wanted to ask Lenetti about the woman on the bed, but there was no point. The man would lie or deny knowledge. If he implicated anyone else, then, as with the rest of his t
estimony, it would only be the dead. No, asking the man would only have the woman’s death entered into the record. It would do no good, but might do Lorraine harm. Kim was adamant about that, and Bill would defer to her. He wouldn’t ask Lenetti, nor would he include it in his journal. The woman’s death would go unrecorded, though never forgotten, not by him. He just wished he knew her name.

  The door opened. The judges came in. Everyone stood, though the two submariners acting as warders had to drag Lenetti to his feet. The judges took their chairs. The room went quiet.

  “The court has decided,” Judge Nicola Kennedy, a former solicitor from Berwick, said. “Mr Lenetti, you were charged with murder based on the evidence of an audio recording, based on fingerprints, and based on witness testimony. You pled not guilty. The jury found otherwise, and did so unanimously. You then amended your testimony, claiming complicity without responsibility, and offered a ledger as proof. You said this ledger was held in a safe on the mainland in the campsite the man known as John Bishop used. Captain Devine, a military police officer with an impeccable record and long experience in war crimes investigations, conducted a search of that property. No ledger was found. You have been given ample opportunity to produce evidence in your defence, and you have failed to do so. As such, the original verdict stands. The decision is unanimous. There are no more appeals. You were found guilty of murder. The sentence is death. The sentence shall be carried out immediately.” The judge banged her gavel.

  The sound woke Lenetti from his trance. Finally, he seemed to understand that the trial was over, and his life was forfeit. He began protesting, offering more evidence, more names. Bill tuned him out. The man had nothing to say that they needed to hear.

  The two submariners took Lenetti by the arms. They weren’t rough, but they were firm as they led him from the room. Bill waited until the judges had followed the condemned man through the door before he stood.

  Sholto grabbed his arm. “You don’t need to do this, Bill,” he said.

  “If not me, then who?” Bill replied, and followed the prisoner from the room.

  “What’s this? What’s going on?” Lenetti asked. He had been taken to what had once been a storeroom. A chair had been installed in the middle of the room and had been bolted to the floor. The two Marines pushed Lenetti into it. They secured his wrists, his ankles, and then his neck and forehead into a brace. That had come from the hospital. It was the best they could find.

  They had discussed punishments when Rachel had been charged with Paul’s murder. There were only three: hard labour, exile, or death. For Lenetti, for the crime of murder, it had to be death. After what he’d seen in that campsite, Bill had no qualms about that. What they hadn’t discussed until the jury was deliberating was how an execution should be carried out. Lethal injection or hanging required an expertise that no one had, and it had to be an execution, not torture. A bullet in the head was the only possible method. All that was left was to choose an executioner. Again, they had few options.

  “Do you have any last words,” the Reverend Ignatius Pasternack asked.

  “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me,” Lenetti said. “I’ve got information. Useful information. I can tell you everyone we killed. That’s something you need to know, right? All the people we— they killed.”

  Bill was reminded of how he had been in not too dissimilar a situation after he’d been abducted by Bishop. This was different, he told himself. Very different. He looked to his brother. Sholto held out a revolver. Bill took it. He looked to the judges. One by one they shook their heads.

  “The sentence has been decided. It shall now be carried out,” Judge Kennedy said.

  “May the Lord have mercy on your soul,” the Reverend said.

  Bill raised the gun, pointed the barrel an inch from the back of the man’s head. He fired.

  Lenetti slumped forward, dead.

  In Bill’s head, the shot rang long after the echo faded. He waited for the priest to utter a prayer, but the reverend was as silent as the judges.

  “You’ll see that he’s buried?” Bill asked.

  “And hope that is the last grave we will dig on Anglesey,” the Reverend said. “Your… your jacket.”

  Bill looked down. Blood had sprayed his coat. He unzipped it, and wrapped it around the gun. He handed it to his brother. “Throw that in the sea,” he said. “I don’t want an executioner’s weapon to become a talisman.”

  He went outside, and found Kim waiting there, alone.

  “I thought there would be more people,” he said.

  “There were a few,” she said. “Not many. They left when they heard the gunshot.”

  “You’re going to tell me that I should have left the task to someone else.”

  “No,” she said. “No, you’re right. It can’t be the police, or one of the soldiers or sailors. It can’t be the judges, or someone on the council. Who does that leave? You, me, Sholto, but few others. No, it had to be done, though I still think the jury should have been made to watch.”

  “The chamber was too small to get them all in,” Bill said, though that wasn’t the real reason.

  “It’s over now,” Kim said. “I wish it had been someone else, but maybe, this time, it had to be you. Let’s hope it’ll be the last.”

  “It won’t be,” Bill said.

  It wouldn’t be the last time, and it wasn’t the first. Quigley was the first, or perhaps the first were Cannock and Sanders who’d held Kim captive. There had been many since. Barrett and the others who’d taken Annette and Daisy. Rob. Kempton’s follower in Belfast. Bishop and his followers in Wales. Rachel, and now Lenetti. The list was growing long.

  Kim put her arm in his. “It’s been a long year,” she said, seemingly guessing what he was thinking. “The hard work is nearly done. The first radio antenna is finished,” she added, changing the subject.

  “Hmm?” he murmured, only half listening. The streets were emptier than he’d ever seen them. It wasn’t just the lack of people, it was the sudden lack of activity. No one was attempting to open a new shop or clear out an old house. No one was wasting the day away on a street corner, or digging over a verge, back garden, or park in the optimistic hope of a spring planting. The heart had already gone out of Anglesey. It was only the people who had yet to leave.

  “Yes, we’ll have the second antenna finished in a couple of days,” Kim said. “Then we’ve just got to transport one to Elysium, the other to The John Cabot. We could get another ten produced before we have to leave. I don’t think we’ll need that many, but we might as well make use of the electricity now, and we may come to need the spares in the future. You know Elysium is near where the first transatlantic radio broadcast was made?”

  “Was it?” Bill murmured.

  “Yes,” Kim said. “Although they used stationary ships as relay stations.”

  “We’ve not got the ships,” Bill said.

  “No, but I think we could send an antenna over with the admiral,” she said. “I’m not sure how reliable the signal will be, but it would be insurance against those satellites being lost. We need to stay in communication with one another. Rahinder Singh has an idea we can power them using a water mill. That’s his next project, his and George’s. I think… I… I don’t know.” Finally, she gave up. “Oh, Bill. I still don’t know what our dream of happiness looks like, but each day it seems to get further and further away.”

  They walked in sombre silence back to the terrace. The ground floor had been knocked through, and was now given over to dozens of screens, each showing images of the Irish coast taken by the three satellites. The current search wasn’t for survivors but for ships. On one wall, a large map of Ireland had been pinned. Every time a ship was found tied to a dock or adrift in an inlet, a pin was added to the map. There weren’t many pins.

  A dozen people were there, mostly in their late teens or early twenties. They were those who’d chosen a life of analysis over farming, fishing, or volunteering for one of the expeditions
to the mainland. Bill wasn’t sure if that was cowardice or good sense. It was always the same faces, though, and he supposed he should learn their names since he was sure most of them now slept in the terrace.

  They looked up as he and Kim entered, then buried their faces in their screens. Only Annette came over, Daisy toddling a few steps behind.

  “We’ve finished with Ireland,” Annette said with the same brittle cheerfulness Kim had used on the walk from the courthouse. “We were talking about where we should move the satellites next.”

  “Leave that to the council,” Bill said. “They were elected, it should be their choice. Not now, Daisy,” he added. The toddler was tugging at Bill’s trousers. Kim picked her up.

  “I was thinking we could make a start on America,” Annette said.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Kim said.

  “You discuss it,” Bill said. “I have some paperwork to catch up on.” He forced a smile, and went through to the kitchen, and then upstairs to the first floor.

  It wasn’t really an office, but a room with a table large enough to keep the notes and plans for the evacuation of Anglesey and for where they should settle after that.

  He sat down, and listlessly leafed through the notes, maps, and books. It was impossible to know where to begin in his search for the place humanity would call its final home. Each time he found a likely island, he discovered some critical element missing.

  There was coal on the Svalbard archipelago that had been mined to power a coal power plant on the islands. They couldn’t dig for coal in an Arctic winter, but could they wait in the dark until spring? Possibly. There was a report from the professor who ran that small community. Two ships, both small tugboats, had floated into the harbour. The undead crew had still been on board. That was the first instance of a zombie-infested ship since June, but would it be the last?

  His finger tapped against the desk, and Lenetti’s face appeared in his mind. Almost instantly, it was replaced with an image of the corpse he’d found chained to the bed in the campsite. He shook his head, picked up a pen and underlined a few words at random.