Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home

by Frank Tayell

  “We know it won’t,” Greta said. “And we have to assume Styles won’t make it either.”

  “We can hope,” Nilda said.

  “You can’t eat hope,” Greta said. “That’s why it should have been me. Now it feels like we’re just waiting for our turn.”

  “It’s not as bleak as that.”

  “It feels like it is. I’m going to take some people across to the hospital. It’s not like the supplies there will help us, but what else is there to do?”

  “You’re right. We’ve got enough firewood for months. We might as well leave the rest of that furniture in the office block and get everyone to give you a hand.”

  Nilda looked at the rough barricade a hundred metres north of the hospital. The largest part of it was an ice cream truck parked at ninety degrees to the path. Around it were signs, dustbins, shopping trolleys, and a plethora of other junk.

  “Do you want me to climb up to the roof?” Jay whispered.

  Nilda shook her head. She could hear a slow, stumbling shuffle from beyond the barricade. She glanced up at the London Assembly building. It was hard to know if the undead were inside, but they were certainly outside, surrounding it. And even if they weren’t, so what? Offices and apartments, a bottle of juice here, a can of tomatoes there. It all added up, but when there were nearly a hundred people to feed, it didn’t add up to much. She jerked a thumb west, and she and Jay went back to the hospital to help finish loading the rafts.

  8th October

  “And that’s the last of it,” Greta said. “There wasn’t as much as I’d hoped.”

  Nilda picked up a shrink-wrapped set of scrubs, and put them down again. “And these aren’t exactly suited to the weather. There were only six tins?”

  “That was all the food that hadn’t spoiled,” Greta said.

  “At least we’ve got some more bandages. Realistically, we’ve got more than we’ll ever need. The painkillers are the real windfall.” They had brought back every bottle and jar that they could find. Nilda had thought they would have to wait for McInery to return to work out precisely what they were, but Jay had found a pharmacological directory, and so it was simply a matter of looking them up. “Though it will only be luck if we manage to diagnose anything more complex than a cold,” she continued.

  “Yes, it’s a shame there were no antibiotics,” Greta said. “What we’ve found is useful, but it won’t change anything.”

  “Maybe not, but there is some good news,” Nilda said. “Some of the zombies were still alive.”

  “I don’t see that as a reason to celebrate,” Greta said.

  “It means Styles was wrong,” Nilda explained. “Some of them can survive a massive trauma for more than a few days. And that means those we’ve seen collapse haven’t done so solely because of that injury. It’s time. That’s what kills them.”

  “Maybe. I’m still not convinced. But it doesn’t matter either way,” Greta said. “What we’ve found isn’t going to make enough of a difference. I was thinking of taking the rafts along the river tomorrow.”

  “To Westminster?”

  “No, east, towards Greenwich. It’s the only place we haven’t looked.”

  Nilda stood on the walls and stared at the hulk of HMS Belfast. She could just make out one of the zombies on the upper deck. Hulk, that’s what it was, a shell of a ship that was little more than floating hull. Whenever she came to this side of the castle, she always found her eyes drawn to it, as if it somehow offered the solution to their problems. If they could get rid of the undead on deck, and presumably below; if they could find a way to cut through the foot-thick cables anchoring it to the Thames; if they could carry enough supplies to last a long sea-voyage where the only method of propulsion was the tides; if they didn’t run aground, capsize or simply become lodged amidst the other debris clogging the river; if they lived long enough to finally reach land; if all of that and so much more, what then? They wouldn’t reach Wales, but somewhere on the continent, or perhaps only somewhere further down the coast. They would be taking their current dangers with them into an unknown. If. If. If. She turned away from the river, and walked back along the wall, her eyes moving from building to building, hoping for some flash of inspiration, that she might suddenly see everything differently and in doing so discover their salvation. She didn’t. All she saw was McInery jogging towards the Tower. Her clothes were ripped, and she had a bloody gash running down the side of her face.

  “Did you find anything?” Nilda asked, as she helped the woman over the wall.

  “There’s nothing,” McInery said. “Nothing anywhere.”

  9th October

  “Nilda? Wake up”

  “What? What is it? What’s happened?” she asked sitting up instantly.

  “Nothing,” Chester said. “But the early worm catches the fish. I thought I’d take you and Jay out. I’ve packed us a bit of breakfast.”

  “Out? Out where?”

  “Fishing,” Chester said, as if that should have been obvious.

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Seriously,” he said.

  “I meant,” Nilda said, sitting up, “seriously as in you’ve seriously woken me up before dawn to go out fishing?”

  “You got anything better to do today?”

  “I was going to go with Greta and check further downriver.”

  “And she can manage that well enough without you,” Chester said. “Have you ever been fishing before?” he asked.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Me neither. Still, the principle can’t be difficult. Get dressed. Meet us by the wall.”

  “Why did you want us to come out here?” Nilda asked as the raft bobbed up and down in the current. “It wasn’t for fishing.”

  “Actually, it pretty much was,” Chester said. “I think it would be good for us to enjoy a nice day together. Try and create a happy memory.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Chester sighed. “We need to make the best of what we have. All your worrying about Graham and food and what’s going to happen next, those are problems for tomorrow. It’ll be good for you to have a day without planning and scheming.”

  “But we can’t—” Nilda began.

  “We can,” Chester cut her off. “That’s my point. I’ve never been fishing before. This is a new experience. There’s no reason we can’t have them. No reason we can’t try and enjoy life. There was something I read. I can’t remember where now, but it was about how if you’re a survivor and you’ve survived so long, then you’re not a survivor anymore. Survival itself becomes the norm. It becomes life. Well, this is it. This is our life. Farming, killing the undead, working today to make tomorrow a little more comfortable. That’s what we have, and as much as we might wish we had something more, we should make the most of it.”

  The studious way that Chester kept his eye on the water spoke volumes that were far more coherent than his clumsy speech.

  “Fine,” she said. “Just for a few hours.”

  Silence settled.

  “Fish in a golden batter,” Chester mused. “Always liked that on a Friday.”

  “It’s not Friday,” Jay said.

  “Isn’t it?” Chester asked. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s Thursday,” Jay said.

  “I think it’s more like Monday,” Nilda said.

  Jay’s rod bucked forward.

  “You’ve got a bite,” Chester said as he grabbed the line and wrapped it around his gloved hand. “It’s big. And struggling. Come on, help me.” The line twisted, went taut, and then suddenly went slack.

  “It got free. Shame,” Chester muttered.

  Jay hauled in the line. At the end was a bloated human finger.

  “That’s what was caught on the line?” Jay asked.

  “Not a fish,” Nilda said.

  Without another word, they started rowing back to shore.

  10th October

  It was the type of cold that she would call brisk if sh
e’d had a warm home to hide in. Nilda picked up her pace as she jogged around the walls. It was becoming a morning ritual, a way of clearing her mind of the fears that had taken root during the night, allowing her to focus on the tasks immediately in front of her.

  “Nilda!”

  She saw Aisha waving at her. Nilda sped up, until she reached the stone staircase, and then slowed the run to a cautious walk. She’d slipped on the damp-slick steps the day before, almost twisting her ankle as she’d arrested her fall.

  “Aisha, what’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Aisha said loudly, and then, more quietly, added, “We have a problem.”

  “When do we not? What is it this time?” Nilda asked. “It’s not another theft, is it?”

  “You better come and see,” Aisha said as she led Nilda to the dining hall, and up to the second floor where they were storing the fresh fruit and veg. Aisha picked up a paper wrapped package from a white enamelled drying rack. “It’s not storing,” she said, as she unwrapped a cabbage. The exterior leaves were spotted yellow.

  “It must be the heat from the kitchens below,” Nilda said. “Hot air rises, doesn’t it? That was foolish of us to forget.”

  “Actually, I think it’s the damp,” Aisha said. “The paper’s absorbing it, but we’re not changing the paper. We’ll have to re-sort and repack it all. If we moved those old cannons and muskets out of the basement, we could store it all in the Keep.”

  “Everyone will have to help with that,” Nilda said. “But I suppose there’s no point trying to hide this. How much do you think we’ve lost?”

  “I won’t know without looking.” Aisha peeled off the outer leaves, until only green remained. “There, we’ve lost about a fifth of the weight on this one.”

  “Start sorting the rest,” Nilda said. “Get whoever you need to help. I’m going to speak to Jay and see how he’s doing with those greenhouses.”

  “We’ve got green shoots,” Jay said, coming to greet her.

  “Really? What for?”

  “The pak choi.”

  “And how long—” she began.

  “Three weeks, I think,” he answered before she could finish the question.

  “And how much—”

  “About fifty plants,” he said.

  That came to about half a serving each.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  “A few marrows are looking promising and some of the salad is starting to look like it might do something. The tomatoes are sprouting, but they don’t look right. I mean, they don’t look like the pictures in the book.”

  “Do you mean in a bad way?”

  “I don’t think the temperature is high enough. We need some better seals on the glass. But I know what I did wrong. The next greenhouse we build will be far better.”

  Which may be true, but it meant all the work they’d done so far was wasted effort. In her mind, a clock reset itself to zero, and another interminable wait would begin before they knew whether they could, in fact, grow anything truly edible. She forced a smile.

  “That’s good. And what about the drone? Are you still flying it?”

  “Every day,” he said. “The zombies come and go.”

  “But have any just collapsed?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Perhaps they didn’t need proof. Everyone who had gone over to the hospital had seen the undead there. Word had spread almost as fast as the theories had grown. Whether she was right wasn’t as important as that people believed the undead were dying. Right now, it was the only ray of hope they had.

  11th October

  “Can you see anything?” Nilda asked.

  “Not really,” Jay said. “Do you want to take a look?” He moved out of the way and held out the lantern. Nilda took it, held it up high, and peered down the long tunnel. The beam only illuminated the first twenty feet, and most of that was taken up with electrical cabling secured in a thick casing.

  “It’s not here,” she said.

  “I could go and have a look further down,” Jay said.

  “No, there’s no point,” Nilda said, pulling on the padlock over the grate that blocked the tunnel. “This isn’t new. Graham didn’t hide the food here. Let’s go back up.

  It was a depressing realisation. They had searched the Tower, the cafes and restaurants, the office block, and the apartment building and hadn’t found the food Graham had stolen. At the same time it was obvious he couldn’t have taken it far. The subway tunnel had been the only place they hadn’t looked, and when Nilda realised that, hope had blossomed. The stubby, squat building, at the northern end of the piazza had once been the entrance to a pedestrian tunnel that ran under the Thames. More recently it had been used as a conduit for cables running under the river. It was such an obvious hiding place, she’d been certain that it was the one Graham had used. Those hopes had been dashed.

  She followed her son back out into the daylight.

  “It wasn’t there?” Kevin asked. He and Tuck had been standing guard at the subway’s entrance.

  “No.” Nilda looked around the empty piazza. It was a depressing place, full of moss and dank puddles where the rain had mixed with the gore from the zombies they’d killed, and the ash from those they’d cremated. She looked at the pile of bodies from the most recent time the undead had broken through the barriers. The frequent rain had doused the pyre when they’d attempted to burn them. She sighed. “If we’d found the food, and if any of it had been still edible, it would only have kept us going for another week. Let’s go back inside.”

  Intending to look for some flammable chemicals with which they could get rid of those corpses, Nilda headed towards the old maintenance store and saw Chester coming out of it, a dozen children at his side.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “We’re on a hunt for paint, aren’t we lads?” he said. There was a half-hearted chorus of yesses and a high pitched “not a lad” from one of the girls.

  “What do you want paint for?” she asked.

  “We’re going to paint a message on the roof,” he said.

  “For the satellites,” Marko said.

  “That’s right,” Chester said. “Now you lot take those up to the top floor, but you’re not to go onto the roofs yourselves. Remember what I said? Alright, go on.”

  Nilda waited until the children were out of earshot.

  “You said that never worked,” she said. “That half the houses in the country have messages painted on their roofs.”

  “That’s true. I’m going to try something different. I thought a message like ‘Help us Mr Tull’ might have the right effect. At least then, if they are looking at the pictures they’ll know it was done recently.”

  “Do you think that might work?”

  “Probably not, but those kids need something to do. It’s Styles leaving. It’s tearing them up. I mean, to them someone going out to get help is the same as saying that he’s dead.”

  12th October

  Aisha was still sorting and weighing the food, but Nilda already knew there wasn’t going to be enough. The question could be posed in a thousand different ways, but it came to the same thing; they’d looked everywhere. There was no more to be found. She paced the walls, and then the courtyard, trying to find a different direction from which to approach the problem, yet found none she hadn’t explored a dozen times before. When the rain forced her inside, she didn’t head to the warmth of the dining hall but to the solitude of her room. She opened a road atlas and ran a finger over the buildings nearby. Offices and restaurants, apartments and houses, shops and stations, cinemas and theatres, synagogues, mosques, churches and temples, and she soon found she was tracing a route beyond the M25 and thinking of warehouses and airports. But there was nowhere they could reach that they hadn’t already looked. Or almost nowhere. She turned back to the page that showed central London and Westminster. They hadn’t searched there, not properly. The more that she thought abou
t the barricade, and the soldiers and civilians stationed behind it, the more certain she became that there had been supplies there. She closed the atlas, then her eyes, and lay down on the bed.

  Saying that they should attack Graham, kill him, and take whatever he had was simple. It was beguiling. It was the kind of action she might have considered months before, and in fact, she had. During those days immediately after the outbreak she’d bargained with Rob and persuaded him and his gang to join with them.

  “And look how that turned out,” she muttered. It wouldn’t work here. They would have to wander the zombie-infested streets searching each building in turn. It would be a running battle, or a slouching, stumbling battle, and the noise of it would alert Graham to their presence. He’d find some vantage point and gun them down. No, looking for him wasn’t an option, but nor was inaction.

  She and Jay, and perhaps Tuck and Chester, should have left immediately after they’d returned from the British Museum. But then, she hadn’t wanted to go to Anglesey. She still didn’t, but it represented a safety that they would never have in London.

  And then there were the children. Had she left, it was unlikely they would have been found. By now, or soon after, they would all be dead. Those young, too-serious faces came to her, one after another. They changed everything. The children couldn’t leave, nor could they be left alone. There was an answer, of course, a solution to their problem. It was the simple mathematics of survival. The idea had been never far from her mind since the shock of Hana’s brutal death had worn off. She opened her eyes and sat up. It was the solution that she’d been avoiding, but now was the time. They had tried everything else.

  She picked up the map and stared at it for a second more. The memory of Penrith, never far from her thoughts, came back to her again. Of course, they hadn’t fought with Rob, they’d bargained with him. And she realised what Graham’s plan must be.