by Frank Tayell
“I thought the rain would flush out the Thames,” Chester said. “You smell that? It’s not healthy. I’m just glad I can’t see it.”
“You can’t see the river from here?” she asked. They stood by the wall, close to the gates that led under Tower Bridge.
“I can make out the shape of it and the Bridge above, but I can’t make out the details, no. I can see your face clearly enough, though. I suppose a pair of glasses would probably help, but even without them, I’d have no problems out there in the wasteland.”
“Maybe, but someone needs to stay here. Someone who can make the hard decisions.”
“About the children, you mean?”
“If it goes wrong, yes. None of us may get to Wales. Graham may set off those cases, and if they are nuclear weapons or something worse, or the food spoils or I don’t know what, then I don’t want Jay to be the one who has to decide what fate the children face. Starvation, radiation poisoning, they’re both terrible ways to die.”
“Most ways are.”
“But if it comes to it—”
“I know what you’re saying, what you’re asking. And if it comes to it, and there’s a chance for only a few to survive, or only for one, I’ll make sure Jay takes it.”
Nilda nodded. She hated asking, and even now wasn’t truly sure what she’d made Chester promise. She took out the photographs.
“Sebastian took this one last Christmas,” she said, looking at the one of Jay and herself. She put it back in her pocket and handed the other one to Chester.
“That’s Jay’s father. It’s the only picture I have left of him. I don’t want to risk taking it with me, but I didn’t want to give it to Jay. He might take it as a terminal act, rather than… well, perhaps I am being realistic about my chances.”
“I’ll keep it safe and give it to him as and when,” Chester said.
“I tried, Chester, I really did.” She sighed, leaned back on the wall, and stared up at the castle. “Three weeks ago it was you that was about to leave. How things change. There’s one more thing,” she added, quietly. “Graham. He’ll probably come here.”
“He might, yes.”
“And I don’t know what you should do if he does.”
“If he gets close enough to talk, then he’s close enough for me to kill him. Don’t worry about it. He’s a problem I know how to deal with.”
She nodded, but didn’t find the words reassuring. She stood with Chester for a while, but the silence began to grow uncomfortable. There was something else that could be said. The moment almost demanded it. Yet she knew from experience such words added an unwelcome burden and so were better left unspoken. Instead, she went inside and joined her son flying the drone around the castle, searching for that cat.
14th October
Nilda found it hard getting to sleep, and when she managed it, nervous anticipation had her waking to check the time. Around four a.m. she gave up and lay staring at the window, waiting for dawn. She should have left immediately after the meeting. There had been no need for a delay except that she truly didn’t want to leave. It was base self-preservation, a primal instinct she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. As she watched the stars disappear behind the clouds, she wondered whether dawn would bring sight of a boat. In her mind it was a sailing boat. Not a yacht, but a many-masted tall ship with billowing canvas of spotless white.
At six, she left her small room and headed for the walls. She’d wait for dawn, knowing the boat wouldn’t be there, but hoping against hope… and when the sun’s first light spread along the Thames, her fears were confirmed. The river was empty.
She wasn’t the only one disappointed. Most of the castle had drifted up to the walls as she was waiting. She’d seen a lot of people spending the previous evening there, too. It was their only chance of a reprieve, she supposed. Few had ventured far from safety since the outbreak began, and they must see the journey ahead as a death sentence with a slow execution.
“Hey, Mum.”
She smiled at her son. “No sign of a boat,” Nilda said, “I suppose this is—” But the awkwardly uncomfortable small talk was cut short by a call from down in the courtyard.
“Nilda!”
She turned to see Greta running towards them.
“What is it?” Nilda asked as she headed down the stairs to meet the other woman.
“It’s Constance,” Greta said. “She’s gone.”
“Hell? Really? You’re sure?”
“She left a note,” Greta said. “Saying that she doesn’t want to be a burden.”
“Oh for the…” Nilda closed her eyes. “When? This morning?”
“I don’t know. Janine thinks she saw her going into the kitchen’s last night just before the girl was going to bed.”
“She’s not sure? Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Nilda added, dismissing her own question. “I’ll have to go after her.”
“To bring her back?” Jay asked.
“No,” Nilda said. “I probably won’t find her, but if she set out this morning, I might. If I do find her, and if it’s close to the castle, I’ll bring her back, but realistically our only chance of meeting will be at the railway station, in which case, we’ll go on from there to Wales. You understand, don’t you?”
“I do,” Jay said. “She’s one of us, we can’t just let her die.”
Nilda smiled and gave her son a brief hug. “Find Tuck and Chester, and meet me at the north gate in five minutes. I’ll get my gear.”
“In five minutes?” Greta asked. “I’m coming with you. Together, we might make it.”
“Go last,” Nilda said to Tuck, “and make sure everyone else leaves.” She glanced at Greta and then back at Tuck. “Without Constance, there’ll be enough food for you to stay. It’s your choice whether you leave. Just… do what you think’s best.” Then she turned to her son. “Be strong, and seem it when you aren’t. A child is good at picking up when an adult is worried. Listen to Chester, take his advice, but always do what you know is best.”
“I’ll be all right, Mum,” Jay said. “Don’t worry about me, just watch out for yourself.”
She nodded and hugged her son. She turned to Chester. “Keep him safe. Promise me.”
“I will,” Chester said. “I promise.” And he stepped forward, and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Now go.”
And Nilda couldn’t decide whether to cry or smile as she followed Greta out through the gate.
The two women jogged away from the Tower and towards the ruins of the hotel that had been partially collapsed to form part of the government barricade. Nilda followed Greta up a ramp of rubble and through a first-storey window. It had been a bedroom, and in fact the bed was still there, barely visible under a litter of broken plaster.
Greta pointed at the doorway. A broken strand of red thread hung limply from a nail. Nilda knew what that meant. Jay had told her that the group had used that same trick during their time in Kirkman House. People knew not to break the string, zombies didn’t. But there was no sign of the undead in the room.
“Constance must have broken it,” Nilda said, but she drew her sword anyway. Cautiously, the left the room and headed out along the corridor. Greta occasionally raised a hand to point at a length of string pinned to the skirting. They passed three unbroken ones, and two that had been snapped before they reached the main staircase with its signs pointing down to the lobby. Nilda moved to the stairs, but Greta gestured to a room opposite.
“The main entrance is blocked,” she whispered.
And so, when they looked out of the window of the room, was the road outside. Not with rubble, but with the undead.
“Thirty-one. Thirty-two,” Nilda counted. “Thirty-four zombies that I can easily see. All heading east. Let me see that map.”
She looked at the route marked out in thick red line. “The zombies must be following Constance. Well, they might not be,” she added, speaking more to herself than to Greta as her finger traced the route to the railway station. “But
we’ll assume they are. And that means Constance has gone the wrong way.”
“We could find some other way out of the building,” Greta suggested.
“No,” Nilda said. “Everyone else is going to come this way. They’re going to follow this road north, then east, then it sort of curves a bit and… We should have organised who was leaving and when,” she added. “Or found more than one route. It’s going to take an hour before that road is clear. We could end up with everyone in the Tower waiting in this room, and we can’t have that. You see that road down there, the one near that corner shop? That will take us due west. We’ll get the zombies to follow us, okay?”
“And Constance?”
“Who knows how many undead she has following her? We’re not going to cut a path through them. No, our only chance of meeting up with her is at the railway station. And if we run, and in as close to a straight line as we can, we’ll get there before her. Ready?”
Greta nodded.
Nilda climbed through the window and skidded her way down the jagged scree of broken bricks. The rattle of masonry clattering down to the pavement caused undead heads to turn her way. She ignored them, pausing at the bottom of the slope for Greta to finish the uncomfortable descent. They ran across the road, sword and axe swinging as they knocked one, then two, and then three creatures out of their way. They didn’t stop to finish the zombies off, but just kept running.
It was liberating. It truly didn’t matter how many undead there were behind, and there was nothing Nilda could do about it if they became a problem for those who came later. There was nothing but the road ahead. All she could do was run until she could run no further. And that thought had her slowing her pace to a fast walk.
“That road,” she waved her sword. “Head northwest.”
They did. Then north, then west, then north again, across concrete and pavement littered with glass, ash, and a growing carpet of moss. They gave a wide berth to parked vehicles that might hide the immobile undead, and a wider one to those cars and trucks which had crashed into buildings, turning their interiors into dark forbidding caverns.
“Zombies!” Greta called.
Nilda hadn’t needed the warning. “Straight through them,” she said. It was the only way. Reckless speed would be their salvation.
She punched her sword forward, but mistimed the blow. Broken teeth sprayed from the zombie’s open mouth. As the blade sliced into its face, Nilda sawed it back. The creature’s jaw lolled open, but its arms kept flailing towards her. She batted them away and stamped down on its knee.
“There! The stairs,” Greta yelled.
“No!” Nilda barked. “That’s the Barbican. It’s a maze up there.” She swung the sword low, no longer trying to kill the undead, but carving a route through them. “Through the shop.” She speared the sword straight out and into a face that had been burned beyond recognition. She swung again, and then had to skip out of the way of Greta’s axe. Another hack, another swing, and their path was clear.
“Run!” she yelled for the dozenth time that day.
The shop door was closed. She kicked at the glass and pushed her way inside. It was dark. The flashlight was in her pack beyond easy reach.
Vaguely registering the packets of luxury soap on the floor and more on the shelves, she stumbled through a door behind the till and into the back room. She had the gladius ready and was expecting the undead, but there were none. She found the delivery door, threw the bolts, and pushed it open. They were in an alley. And again they ran.
“So which direction is it?” Greta asked.
Nilda glanced down at the broken sign lying in the road. It had shown the direction to the football stadium at Highbury, but it was a guess as to which of the two roads it had once pointed down.
“Let me see the map again. The train line is somewhere north of here. We’ll find that and follow it to the station.”
“Constance won’t have made it,” Greta said. “Not with so many zombies around. I don’t think anyone will.”
“There weren’t that many when you came this way?” Nilda asked.
“With McInery? No. But you know what it’s like with the zombies. One day a road is free, and the next it’s packed. What if everyone else makes it a few miles and then goes back?”
“We can’t do anything about that,” Nilda said, and there was genuine relief as she realised it was true. “Not unless we return to the castle, but that’s just more time wasted. What would we tell them? That they’ll have to run from the undead? Surely they already know that. No, there’s nothing we can do about it. We just keep going.”
Nilda felt another flush of relief when they reached the train station, though for a completely different reason. The exuberance of earlier had faded with each zombie she’d been forced to kill. There were always more, she thought. And there would be hundreds, thousands, more on their long road to Wales.
“I don’t think anyone else is going to make it this far,” Greta said as they pulled themselves up onto the station’s platform. “Constance certainly isn’t.”
“Where are the bikes?”
“In the front, by the ticket office,” Greta said, pointing through an open gate that led to the car park in front of the station. The bicycles were in lockers, two-feet high, one wide, and four deep, stacked in columns of threes, back to back.
“Those two lockers are empty,” Nilda said, pointing at a pair whose doors were hanging open. “Perhaps she did get this far.”
“No,” Greta said. “They were like that before.”
“Oh. So that means Styles didn’t make it this far, either.” Nilda sighed. She checked her watch, and then glanced back the way they’d come. “I think we’ve twenty minutes.” She thought for a moment, calculating how fast they’d run, and how long it would take the undead to catch up. Just after they’d found the train tracks, they’d come across a pack of at least two-dozen of the living dead. She and Greta had run straight through them, and though they had easily outpaced the creatures, the railway tracks were lined with fencing that would funnel the undead to the station. “Maybe thirty minutes, but not much longer than that,” she continued, as she fished out a chisel and levered at the first locker. Inside was a folding bike. “The chain’s rusty,” she said, taking it out and setting it up. “And the wheels are small. We’re not going to get anywhere fast on these. Especially not on the train tracks.”
“So we are going on?” Greta asked.
“All the way to Wales,” Nilda said. “We’ll look for better bikes later in the day. For now I just want to get out of London.”
“Okay.” Greta moved to open another locker. “We might as well make this easy for anyone else who makes it this far,” she said as she levered at the lock.
Nilda said nothing, nor did she help. She walked back onto the platform, and looked south. It had seemed so simple. Head north, and then head west. Of course, in a way, it was that simple. The purpose of them all leaving was to ensure the children survived. The reality was that it really would be death out here for most of those who left. But there was nothing she could do about it and no point wishing things undone. Nor was she sure that wanted them to be.
She looked at the platform opposite. There were no vending machines, she realised. And she was thirsty. They’d been in such a rush to leave that she’d only brought the water bottle from her room. They had a few minutes to spare, so she headed towards the ticket hall, hoping to find a few cans inside. She pushed the door open, and had taken one step inside when she froze in shock. There was a body wearing that red windbreaker she’d seen so many times before. She moved closer to the corpse, the sword already out. The body didn’t move. Dreading what she’d find, she nudged it. Nothing. She bent, rolled it over, knowing as she did so whose face she’d see. It was Styles.
Shock forced her back to her feet and two paces away. He was dead, though as far as she could see there was no wound. Her eyes tracked left and right. The door leading to the staff side of the ticket
booth was open. The shadows beyond were ominous and foreboding. She took a step back, and another. Her foot hit something. She spun around. It was the door. She pushed it open and fell outside.
“Greta!”
“What?”
“It’s Styles. He’s dead.”
“No!” Greta dropped the bike and ran over.
Nilda put a hand out, stopping her from going inside. “You can see from here. We need to go.”
“What… how…?” Greta stammered.
“Graham. It must have been.” She tugged at Greta’s arm, moving her away from ticket office.
“But… we have to do something,” Greta said.
“There’s nothing we can do, and Graham may be here, lying in wait. Come on!” She dragged Greta through the gate and down onto the tracks.
“Wait. That’s south,” Greta said.
“I know,” Nilda said, leading the way. She jogged back along the tracks and under the bridge, only pausing when they were hidden from view on its far side.
“I don’t understand,” Greta said.
“Which part?” Nilda asked, more harshly than she’d intended. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them again, this time looking cautiously out from behind the bridge. The station appeared deserted. On the other hand… “Graham killed him. It wasn’t the undead, and Styles didn’t just drop dead, not out here in the middle of nowhere. Someone killed him. Who else could it be but Graham?”
“I couldn’t see any blood,” Greta said. “It didn’t look like he was shot.”
“Then his neck was broken or… or… I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and it can’t have been an accident.”
“But… how did Graham know to come here?”
“He must have followed you. Damn it! We’ve been stupid. Graham wasn’t waiting for us to try and bargain with him. He was waiting for us to leave. That was his plan all along. It must have been. To pick us off one by one and without anyone at the castle ever knowing. Come on, we can’t stay here. Those zombies will catch up with us in fifteen minutes. You see that chain link?” She pointed to a section of broken fence five metres further down the tracks. “We’ll go through there and loose ourselves in that housing estate. If you hear a shot, just run. Ready?”
