by Frank Tayell
Finally she tried to picture a future, a time when the daily struggle for food and survival was over. She could imagine the Tower and a quasi-medieval life of solar panels and stone walls, of wells and wind turbines. She could imagine Nilda and Jay in that picture, but not herself.
The rain grew heavier. She pulled the poncho off her head, and turned her face to the sky, letting the drops beat against her face. If it was contaminated with radiation or something worse, it didn’t matter now. Come dawn, she would search for Graham. If he saw her first, she would be shot. If she saw him first, she’d be most likely killed in the grenade’s blast. That was the only future she would have.
It was an hour after dawn before the sky brightened sufficiently for her to see the edge of the roof. She stood, stretched, but then had to wait until it was light enough to make out the streets below. The undead had arrived during the night. Some were still slouching towards the smouldering building, though the thin wisp of smoke suggested that the fire hadn’t really taken. She watched the rest, trying to discern some pattern in their movement that would indicate where Graham might be hiding. There was none. Then, without enthusiasm, she worked out a route that would take her back to the Tower.
The rain slackened, the sun rose, the rain stopped, and she kept pacing the roof, all hope of catching the man fading with each step.
When the sun was at its peak, she took a sip from the water bottle and found it almost empty. The time for waiting was over. A decision had to be made. To stay she would need more supplies. But was there any real purpose in stalking the roof hoping he would appear in her field of view? Should she start a search of each building in Whitehall? The only alternative was firing off a grenade and hoping he might come and investigate. What if he’d already left? What if—
Then she saw it. A zombie in a stained blue coat stopped, turned slowly around, and began heading south. Then another, ten paces ahead, did the same. A third rose from its crouch, following those two. Others stayed motionless, so perhaps it was nothing, but it was the only lead she had.
She didn’t run from the hotel. First, she went back inside, gathered some more rations, some dry clothes, and disarmed the traps. She knew she had time. The undead, after all, were slow. When she went outside, she picked an exit that led to a road parallel to the one the zombies had been on.
Bayonet drawn, she moved cautiously, trying not to disturb the noisome sludge beneath her feet. She wasn’t quiet enough. The stationary undead in the street heard her. A creature rose. Tuck ran straight past it and into a narrow road not wide enough for a car despite the yellow markings down either side.
Ahead was a zombie, and the road was too narrow for her to dodge. It was still rising from its half-crouch as she turned her run into a skip. Her right hand pulled back, her left grabbed its shoulder as she stabbed the bayonet up through its chin, the blade slicing through flesh and muscle and brain. Carefully, she lowered the body.
Was she far enough? No. One more block. She reached the end of the narrow alley and was on a long, wide road. Was it Whitehall? There were wrecked tanks lined up either side, but the undead blocked her view of the landmarks and monuments that might give a clue where she was. There were too many to fight, and nowhere left to run. No. There. A closed door underneath a flagpole. An embassy, though of which country, she couldn’t tell. As she ran towards it, a zombie staggered towards her. She slammed an elbow into its undead face, feeling teeth break as the creature tumbled sideways. As the creature thrashed and flailed its way back to its feet, she ran to the building, and climbed in through a broken window.
Inside, the walls were adorned with faded photographs of mountains and lakes that could have been taken in any continent. She ignored them and went searching for stairs.
She didn’t need to get to the roof. All she wanted was a window with a view of the road. She found it in a small room in the eaves of the building, and did so a full minute before the zombie in the blue coat lumbered past. Its appearance, however, just confirmed what she’d guessed from the cluster of bodies lying around a doorway seventy metres to the south. She’d found Graham. Or she’d found where he’d been a few minutes before. That nagging voice of doubt said that he could have gone. That she had no way of knowing when those bodies had been killed, or even how they’d been killed. No, it had to be recently, as they lay on top of that litter of leaf mould and debris. Of course, that—
The creature in the blue coat collapsed. The two zombies that had been following it started moving more quickly, not towards the building but towards the fallen creature. Tuck ignored them. She was scanning the building, taking in the windows, not looking at any individual one, but trying to take in the entire frontage, alert for movement. There. Two floors up, halfway along. Maybe. Maybe not. No. Definitely. She saw it again.
She backed away from the window, checked the grenade launcher was loaded, went downstairs, and climbed out of a window on the other side of the building.
It took half an hour and four more zombies before she’d skirted a wide path to the building’s far side. Most of the windows had been boarded up, but that gave her even greater confidence that she’d found Graham’s lair. She broke in through a door that, going by the cluster of wall mounted cigarette bins, was a smoking escape more than a fire exit. Only as she was pushing the door closed behind her did she wonder why, when Graham had shot that creature in the blue coat, the other two had moved to its body and not toward the sound of gunfire.
There were enough open doorways and gaps in the rudimentary barriers on the windows to add shade to the busts of long forgotten politicians lining the corridor. She was in a government department, then. One of the older ones, though which didn’t matter. Graham was upstairs, and the undead were outside. Knowing that it was a lottery whether she’d walk out of the building, she wanted to rush in and get it over with. She quelled that desire and moved slowly, eyes darting left and right, scanning for reflections and moving shadows.
She reached a set of stairs six feet wide with a bannister polished by decades of use. Walking in a crouch, her eyes fixed on the next landing, she went up. And up again, until she reached a panelled hallway. She followed it, then turned right, then left. The third door on the right was open, light splashed out into the corridor beyond. The room looked out on the front of the building, she was sure of that, and that Graham would need an unobstructed window from which to fire. She’d found him.
“Do unto them, before they can do unto you,” ran through her head as, finger on the trigger, she went into the room.
It was large. It was empty. At least, there was no sign of Graham. The ceiling was three metres high. The windows running along the exterior wall were almost as tall. Tables had been overturned to block most, but one in the middle had been left clear. The glass had been broken, a table and chair set up in front of it. That wasn’t what caught her eye. In the centre of the room were six metal cases a little larger than a carry-on suitcase. They were shiny, metallic, the heavily reinforced kind designed to withstand a drop from altitude and anything but a direct hit from high explosive.
She took a step towards them. Why were they here? What was inside? As she took a step towards the cases, she realised the room wasn’t completely empty. There was another door in the far wall with a thick, old table propped in front. Behind it was Graham, his rifle pointing straight at her. She froze. The grenade launcher was angled wrong, pointing not quite at the floor. She’d have to move it fifty-six degrees, and then shoot through the gap between the top of the table and the doorframe. Even with time to aim, over a distance of forty metres, that was going to be difficult.
Why hadn’t he fired? That was the first question that went through her mind. The second was where had he got the rifle? It wasn’t the SA80 she’d repaired back at the Tower but something far newer, with a suppressor and scope.
There was no cover, and that meant only one shot, one chance. Not for her, but for Jay and the children and the others at the Tower. Trying not
to let the movement show, she tensed, readying to dive, aim, and fire.
A light went on from somewhere beneath the bulk of the table. It under-lit Graham’s face. For a moment she was puzzled as to why he was making her shot easier. She realised his mouth was moving. He was trying to talk to her. Distance and the weird shadows made it hard to make out what he was saying. Then he moved a hand from the barrel of his rifle, and motioned for her to step forward. She didn’t.
It was a trap. It had to be. Yet if he wanted her dead, he could have shot her as soon as she stepped into the room. She took a step, then another, inching forwards until she could read his lips.
“You understand?” he was saying. “I’m talking about those cases. Do you know what’s in them?”
She stopped, her eyes flicking to the cases, then back to him.
“So you do understand. Good. And you do know what’s inside, right?”
She shook her head.
“Suitcase nukes. Quigley’s last weapon. If you fire that grenade, maybe you’ll set off a chain reaction. You probably won’t, but you will crack the casing. Radioactive debris will contaminate Westminster. The rain’ll wash it into the Thames. That’s what you lot were worried about, wasn’t it, the radiation? Well, if you fire, they’ll all die, and they won’t even know why. So keep that grenade launcher lowered. Understand?”
She didn’t move, nor make any sign that she’d understood. He was almost certainly wrong. From this distance, a grenade probably wouldn’t do more than singe the casing.
“You fire, they all die,” Graham said. “And you don’t want that.”
But she still wasn’t close enough. The gap between the top of the table and the door frame was just over a metre wide, and half a metre tall. She would probably miss, and certainly be caught in the explosion, but he would live. And what if he was right?
“Quigley’s last weapon,” Graham was saying, though she’d missed how that sentence had begun. “It was his fall-back plan if London survived and everything else was ruined.” And then he said something else, but she didn’t catch what.
“Why?” she rasped.
“Because he was a smart man,” Graham said. “And smart men know that if you’ve got a plan B because plan A might fail, then you should expect that backup plan to fall apart as well. Prepare for every eventuality. It turned out to be providential, don’t you think?”
Tuck shook her head. “Why. This?” Her throat burned with the effort.
“He knew it might fall apart,” Graham said, either misunderstanding or choosing not to. “It’s why I came here to…” And he’d moved his head. She thought the next word was ‘London’ and then that he’d said something about a man, and “is a small world, I suppose. The past haunts us all, but if you leave me alone,” he said, “then I’ll leave you and the Tower be. Understand? Westminster and everything to the west of here is mine. You’ve got everything east of the Tower. The land in between is our very own DMZ. You understand?”
She didn’t. Something was off. It didn’t add up.
“Understand?” he asked again.
There would be time for questions later. The room he was in would have more than one door. That was how she’d get him. With slow exaggeration, she nodded her head.
“Go,” Graham said. “Now. Tell them to leave me alone. You won’t like the alternative.”
She nodded, backing away, her eyes looking between him and the room. There were two doors in addition to the one she’d entered by. The light under the table went out, and Graham was in shadow once more. Tuck skipped backwards and out into the corridor, running light footed along it, counting the doors until she reached the fourth one. She gripped the handle. It turned. The door didn’t open. Splinters flew from the frame as Graham shot through the door. He missed her, but she got the message. He’d expected that. He’d expected her. There was another shot. She backed away. Her options were limited. She could retreat down the corridor, fire a grenade at the door, blowing it off its hinges, then… No. The shots hadn’t come anywhere near the lock. It was likely the door had been barricaded. There would be flames and smoke, and she’d be blind. He, on the other hand wouldn’t, and he had at least one other way out of that room. And he seemed to know where she was. Were there cameras, perhaps? She glanced up and down the hallway. Or was she just making more noise than she realised. He could have a thermal imaging for all she knew, and it didn’t matter. She retreated back along the corridor, taking up a position in the stairwell, her eyes on the doorway, the grenade launcher steadied on the bannister.
Minutes passed. There was no sign of him, and no more shots. She ran through her options, but no matter how she dressed them up, it came down to attack or retreat. He’d had time to plan, that was clear, but he was arrogant. She backed down the stairs until the corridor was lost from sight, and then she picked up her pace, heading for the exit. And that arrogance, combined with the confidence that would come from an assumed victory would make him reckless. She reached the door, and kicked it open.
There were no undead immediately outside. She kicked the door again until it slammed against brick. Two creatures moving across an intersection a little further up the block turned towards her. She drew her bayonet and waited.
One was far slower than the other, not quite limping but looking like it was on the verge of collapse. It didn’t matter. When the first was three paces away, its arms stretched out. As its mouth opened, ready to topple forward onto its prey, she lashed out with her foot, kicking its leg from under it. It fell sideways, and she stabbed the bayonet down through its temple. The other was still ten paces away. She grabbed the fallen creature, pushing its body in front of the door, straightening just as the second got within a clawing hand’s range. She speared the bayonet through its eye, adding its body to the other, now preventing the door from closing.
She needed sound. Scowling with distaste, she grabbed a zombie’s leg, and wrenched off a shoe. She pulled the laces free of all but the last two eyelets and knotted them together. She took out the multi-tool, opened the small knife attachment, and hammered the blade into the door. The laced shoe went over the end. She gave it a push. The heel hit wood. The wind would do the rest. Three more creatures were heading towards her. It was far from perfect, but it would do. She scanned the buildings opposite, mentally marking the position of the best window to fire from, then ran along the road, away from it, towards an alley.
A zombie staggered into the road. She punched out, smashing its head against the brick wall, and kept on running, taking the corner, then another, and there, a window two metres above the ground. She climbed in.
She sniffed. There was a smell of damp but not decay. Quickly she went up to the third floor. Careful to keep her back to the wall so she wouldn’t be seen from outside, she found the window with the view of the open door. The blind was half down, giving her enough light to see what she was doing, but enough cover that, if he was watching, Graham wouldn’t see her carefully move the contents off a desk and upend a filling cabinet on top. Inch by inch, she pushed the desk closer to the window. Then she pulled the door to the room closed, moved a desk chair close to the window, and sat down to watch.
When she saw him come to close the door, she would push the filing cabinet through the window, breaking the glass. Instinct would make him look up, and that would give her the time to fire. And he would come to close the door. She saw a zombie slouching down the street, heading towards the sound of the shoe knocking against wood. Yes, he would come. She just had to be patient.
28th September
Tuck stumbled in the dark, put out a hand to stop her fall, and felt it brush something off the edge of a desk. A moment later, a light weight hit her foot. Hurry, but don’t rush, she told herself. More cautiously, one hand in front searching for the wall, the other held low seeking further obstructions, she tried to find her way to the other side of the building.
Dusk had come early, with the clouds piling across the sky while the sun was
still high enough to cast its light into the canyon of streets outside. She’d sat for uncounted hours, unable to see anything, not even the rain hammering against the window.
In the dark silence, it had felt like she was in a tomb. She’d run her hands across the edge of the table and scraped her nails against the metal of the filling cabinet, just so that she could know the world beyond her own private hell was still there. In one pocket she had three waterproof matches. It was when a treacherous voice kept repeating that there was no way anyone would be able to see the light if she struck one that she forced herself to stand.
She needed sleep. Graham was unlikely to try and close the door during the night, and she was unlikely to see him if he did, not unless he lit his path with a searchlight. It was the time to rest, but before that, she needed water. There was only one source of it nearby. Fear of the dark, masquerading as caution against radiation or disease, had kept her immobile for half of the night. Thirst finally won out, and she accepted that she would either have to drink the rain, or return to the Tower as soon as it was light. And she couldn’t return to the Tower, not until the job was done.
The texture under her fingers changed from wallpaper to wood. A doorframe. She found the handle, opened the door. There was no change to the darkness surrounding her. Right hand brushing the wall, the left grasping out in front and to her side, expecting to touch necrotic skin or decaying clothes, she forced herself along the corridor, taking step after leaden step. Heal to toe, heal to toe, counting each one, knowing that four steps added up to just over a metre. Counting gave her mind something to dwell on other than the rending teeth she would never know were there until they bit down on her flesh.
