Surviving The Evacuation (Book 2): Wasteland

by Frank Tayell

  “It is dangerous...” I began.

  “What isn't, these days?” Kim said. “Besides, you were looking for a car just a few days ago, so what's changed?”

  Everything and nothing, I thought, as I looked over at Annette. She was studiously emptying individual sachets of coffee creamer into the saucepan. Of all the places one might expect to find food, a car showroom is not near the top of the list. All we had found to add to our meagre supplies was the coffee creamer and half a box of sugar, left open to the air so long it had turned into a syrupy glue stuck to the side of the packet.

  “We should take all the fuel then, not just fill the tank, but every can and container we can find.” I said, because I still mean to go on to Lenham, and there is still the question of what happens after that.

  Four mouths to feed come winter. We'll need a lot more supplies, not just food, but clothes, crockery, books and whatever it is that babies need. That's if I can make it back from the facility to the Abbey. The more I think about that motorway, the more certain I am that once I cross it, I will not be able to come back. Is it fair to leave Kim with the responsibility for these children? Don't I also have some kind of duty to Annette and Daisy? Perhaps I can persuade Kim and Annette that we should all go to Lenham and after that, well, perhaps just going away will be enough.

  Terrified activity followed by tedious boredom, that's what life has become, and right now I really want a few days rest and boredom. Yes, driving is a very good idea.

  14:00, 1st July.

  That's five hours so far, spent siphoning the fuel from the cars. We've been taking it in turns. One of us on the roof of the office, keeping watch, the other with the rubber tube. Five hours and we've only managed a third of the vehicles. Probably less. I stopped counting an hour ago. I just didn't realise it would take this long. The only plus side to it all is that since my mouth tastes like petrol, I don't have any appetite. Are there any calories in petrol? If so I won't need to eat for a month.

  18:00, 1st July

  We're staying the night here. There's a good four hours of daylight left, but that might not be enough to get back to the Abbey. A couple more undead appeared during the day, but there are still few enough that it's safer here than being stuck out on the road. Yes, it's safe, even if it doesn't feel that way.

  19:00, 1st July.

  Annette has asked me to write down her story:

  “When they told us we'd have to leave home, Mum wanted to stay. She said it was safer. Daddy said no. He said the city wasn't safe. He said we should trust the government. They shouted. They were shouting all night. I must have fallen asleep because Daddy was shaking my arm, saying “Wake up”. They had three bags packed. One for Mum, one for Daddy, one for me. The streets were full of people. I'd never seen so many before.

  “Once, at Christmas, we went up to London to see the lights and we went shopping to Selfridge’s because Daddy wanted to buy Mum some chocolates. We'd had a family meeting and decided we weren't doing big presents that year. It was because Christmas had become too commercial, except I knew it was because Mum had lost her job and then Auntie Carla's boiler broke.

  “She wasn't really an Aunt. She lived next door with her son, Maxy. He was two. Carla didn't have the money to pay for a babysitter so we'd look after him when she worked nights. Auntie Carla didn't have anyone else, just Maxy and us. It was sad. She was always sad.” She paused for a moment.

  “So that Christmas we went up to London. We were going to look at all the shop windows and see the lights and get some chocolates and it was going to be fun. It was going to be like Christmas without the cleaning up and the cooking and the mess and the spending money on things we really didn't need. It was meant to be fun, but it wasn't.

  “There were so many people on the buses we had to wait an hour until one came by we could fit into. Then, when we got to Oxford Street we found they'd closed off the road, so it was just for pedestrians. Except there were so many people that you couldn't even get near the shops. Then there was the music, all these carollers all singing different songs, all competing so you couldn't hear any single one. Mum didn't like it, so we came home and got a takeaway instead and shared it with Auntie Carla. Which, actually, was fun.” A smile briefly flitted across her face, before the memory was replaced with a more recent one.

  “I think it was about a week after the zombies started, that Carla disappeared. One evening she came over to talk to Daddy. The next day I went round to see if I could help with Maxy. That was what I'd been doing all week, since the schools closed. The lights were off. That was normal though. Carla never had the lights on, even when she was in. Too expensive. I knocked. There was no answer. I went back and told Mum and she didn't know where Auntie Carla was. When Daddy came back, he'd been out trying to find a friend he knew who would sell us some food, he said that Carla had told him she was going away. Then I was sent to my room and they had another row. One of the bad kind, the one where they didn't shout at all.

  “When we opened the door, when we had to come out to join the evacuation, it was worse than London at Christmas. Everyone was carrying bags. Not shopping bags, but suitcases, buggies, prams and wooden carts. I saw at least two people who'd tied boxes and things onto skateboards and were just pulling them along. It wasn't right, not for London. Everyone kept looking around and bumping into people and shoving but no one said anything. I mean, everyone was silent, even the people travelling together. No one said excuse me or sorry or helped someone if they fell over. It was like everyone was walking down the same empty street together.

  “I don't know when I lost Mum and Daddy. We'd been walking for hours but we were still in London. Probably it was hours. No more than four, though. We'd left at about seven and I wasn't hungry. I don't know where we were, either. It was the same shops on different streets. I was in front, you see. Mum and Daddy were behind and Daddy had a hand on my shoulder. It wasn't like I needed to know where to go. We were just following everyone else. Step, step, step, step. I tried singing but Daddy shushed me. I don't know why. I think everyone would have been happier if they sang.

  “Then I realised his hand wasn't on my shoulder. I turned around and he was gone. I turned to look for Mum but she was gone too. I tried to walk backwards, to find them. But I couldn't. There were too many people. Too many prams and buggies and bicycles. No one offered to help. I cried. I stood there and I cried and no one cared.

  “So I stopped crying. What was the point? I pushed my way across to the side of the road and climbed up onto a bin. I couldn't see them so I shouted. I called out. They didn't answer. They were gone.

  “I thought I might make it back to the house. Or I thought I should try. I knew we'd been walking for hours, but we can't have got far. I mean, how big can London be? It was all those people, all walking so slowly, that was the problem. I climbed down and tried to get back up the road. There were too many people. I knocked over this one man's suitcase. It was the kind with wheels, and on top he'd piled up a box with this blanket over it. When I knocked it over the blanket fell off and these tin cans rolled across the street. He started shouting at me. He tried to grab me with one hand and with the other he was trying to gather up his cans. I ran. I ran to the side of the road and ducked under the barrier to a side street.

  “I didn't know what to do. There wasn't a policeman to ask. Daddy said if you get lost look for the police. Mum didn't trust the police. She said look for a fire-fighter or an ambulance. But I couldn't see one. It was just street after street filled with people leaving London. Too many people. I saw a pharmacy. Its door was broken. I went in. Bottles and boxes were everywhere. It was like someone had come in and swept everything off the shelves and dumped them to the floor. I went through to the back. The drawers and cabinets were open and the medicines were all over the floor. It was such a waste. There was a store room behind there. It was filled floor to ceiling with nappies and shampoo. I hid. I waited.

  “When I got hungry and I'd go out into the sh
op for food. Rusks and baby food. Not nice, but better than what we had been eating, though. We'd not had a decent meal since the rationing started. We'd not really had a decent meal since Christmas.

  “Once I heard people come into the shop. They were looking for something. When they saw all the medicines on the floor they swore and said someone had beaten them to it. Then they left. They didn't see me. Then it got dark and I slept.

  “When I woke I filled a plastic bag with some food. Mostly baby food, but food's food, right? I went outside. The streets were empty. Everything was quiet. It was wrong. London shouldn't have been like that. London should have been busy. But it wasn't. It was dead.

  “I thought about heading home, but if I did, if Mum and Daddy were there, then we'd only have to walk this way again. If they weren't, then I couldn't wait there for them. There was no food in the house. If they waited and I didn't turn up then sooner or later they'd go out to join the evacuation. So I decided to follow everyone else. I'd go south and I would meet up with them in the enclave.

  “It was easy to see where everyone had gone. The road was full of clothes and bags and all sorts of rubbish. Buggies and prams were pushed to the side of the road where people had left them. All of their contents were scattered over the pavement where other people had emptied them out looking for who knows what. Food, probably. Everyone was hungry before the evacuation.

  “They said, on the TV, that there would be buses and lorries coming along to collect the people who'd not been able to keep up. No buses had been along that road. I could tell from the way that none of the rubbish had been crushed by the tyres. Sometimes I thought I saw a curtain twitch, but I can't be certain.

  “Then I heard Daisy. It was from a window above a row of shops. I thought she was alone. The door to the flats were open. I went in. I went upstairs. I thought she was alone. She wasn't.”

  Annette rolled up a trouser leg to show a small, perfectly formed set of bite marks.

  “Daisy's brother. He must have been seven or eight. Daisy was on top of a wardrobe, out of reach.” And that was all she said for a while.

  “I don't know her real name. Daisy was what grandad called grandma. I always liked it. So that was what I decided she should be called. I found a buggy for her. There were lots to choose from in the street. Then I found another pharmacy. I had to bandage my leg. We stayed there for a couple of days, till I felt better. Then we left. I thought if we could get to the coast, to the enclave, it would be OK. We'd find my parents and there would be help for Daisy. I didn't think we'd have to walk the entire way. They said there were going to be coaches and buses, and I thought there would be helicopters out looking for people like us.

  “It took ages. Weeks. Daisy would start crying and then we'd be chased and I'd have to pick her up and we'd have to hide somewhere until she quietened down. That would take a day or so, and then we'd have to go and find another buggy and more food. Pharmacies were the best place for that. All the medicines and bandages and stuff had gone, but never the nappies or baby food.

  “It took about a month. Maybe less. I’m not sure. It was hard to keep track of days. Sometimes we'd manage to go for an entire day without being chased, and sometimes, if we found somewhere safe, we'd stay there for a few nights so I could rest. So maybe it was a bit more than a month, maybe it was less, but one day I was walking down a road, pushing the buggy, and I saw it. I'd been looking at it for hours, maybe even for a day, but I hadn't really seen it because I'd been watching out for zombies. It was a fire, a big fire. We got to the top of a hill and we saw that there was a city in flames. A whole city, and all along the horizon there was nothing but smoke and flames. I think that was Southampton. We turned around. I mean, what was the point of going on?

  “I decided we needed to get away. I had an Aunt, a proper aunt, my mother's sister, she lived in Wales. She didn't get on with Mum. I was about five when we went to see her. Mum and Daddy, one night, just before the evacuation, they were up late, talking. They didn't know I was listening. Daddy suggested we go there, that it would be safer. But Mum said it was too far away, that we'd never get there. I didn't know exactly where she lived, and Wales is big. But it's not as big as England, and where else was I going to go?

  “Then Daisy got sick. She wouldn't stop crying, not even to sleep. We found a school, a really old rambling one, built with red brick and with a tower at the top. We stayed there. It was empty and big enough inside that Daisy's crying didn't carry far outside. I was exhausted. I slept when she'd let me, which wasn't often, and sometimes I'd climb to the top of the tower to look out. Then one day, in the distance I saw smoke. Not smoke like the coast, but this thin wisp from a chimney. I went up to watch it each day. I liked being up that tower. It felt safe. Then, a few days later, I saw a flag, and it hadn't been there before. A flag and smoke from a chimney, I was sure that had to mean people.

  “It wasn't far away. I was sure I could reach it, but not until Daisy stopped crying, except she wouldn't stop crying. We were running out of food. I had to leave her there. I had to go out to find food and hope she'd be safe. I placed her high up, on top of a bookshelf, way out of reach and went out. I...” she stopped, unconsciously her hand went up to her shoulder

  “I found food. It took a while,” She went on, “but I mustn't have closed the door properly when I left. They had gotten into the school, dozens of Them. Daisy was safe. I grabbed her and again we had to run. I tried to make for the house with the flag. I tried to remember where it was, but it wasn't like I had a choice which way to go. When Daisy stopped crying, when I found somewhere to hide for the night, I'd become completely lost.

  “I found a new buggy and we went off looking for the house. I’m sure we'd have found it eventually, but we kept running out of food. It was too heavy to take much with us and I didn't like leaving her. That's why we were in the restaurant. I had a new plan. This time I wanted the zombies to hear Daisy cry, I wanted Them to all gather outside the chip shop, then we were going to sneak out through the attics to the end of the street. We'd have been able to take enough food to last us weeks. Enough time to find that house.” She paused and took a breath. “So, you see, we didn't need rescuing, but thank you anyway.”

  22:00, 1st July.

  Annette has gone to sleep now, so she's no longer reading over my shoulder. She had less than a week's worth of baby food left for the two of them. That's more food than Kim and I were carrying, but still, it's not much. Whether she'd have been able to escape or not, I can't say. She had more of a plan than I did when I climbed through that window at the Manor, and she's survived well enough so far. It's not my place to criticise, certainly not to judge. I doubt I'd have done nearly as well in her position, nor acted half as calmly. Luck, I suppose that was it. The luck to be immune, but there's something else as well. What's that word they used in those old war movies? Grit, that's it. Luck and grit.

  Before she turned in, we had a discussion about what we should do next, none of us quite sure whether it was “we” or not.

  “I think we should find the house with the flag. That's what I’m going to do, anyway. Find other survivors. That's important.” Annette said. She sounded determined. I didn't know that I could stop her, either. Not if I was intending on leaving her and Kim and going off to Lenham.

  “But, after the Manor...” I began.

  “I've got the rifle now,” Kim said flatly. “From the sound of it, there's fresh water, and food at the Abbey. We'd just need more people and it could work. For all of us.”

  “There's food now,” I said, “but in the winter, it's going to be cold and hungry just like anywhere else.”

  “Here,” Kim said, pulling a small sachet out of her pocket. “Vinegar. To preserve the food through the winter.”

  “Right,” I said, taking it sceptically. “Of course, we'd need more. A lot more. Perhaps we could cycle back there. Perhaps in a week or two the zombies would have dispersed.”

  “The point,” Kim said, exasperated
ly, “I was making, is chip shops. There's one in every street of every town, near enough. Salt and vinegar in every one, and who'd've looted it? Sugar too. Except Annette had eaten all that there was in that place.”

  “We should find her a toothbrush,” I muttered, automatically, but I was thinking about that house, about how easy it would be to find. All we needed to do was go to a library and find a directory of private schools, then drive or cycle round until we found one with a tower. It wouldn't take long, just a couple of days. Then, as Kim said, with more people the Abbey could be turned into a fortress. The walls could be extended, more crops planted, the fruit preserved, furniture and fittings could be brought up from the houses in the village. It could be turned into so much more than just a pile of ruins. And all it would take was a just a little more time.

  It seems the sensible thing to do, but it also seems like just another diversion, just a few more days of putting off what I have to do.

  Part 2 – Escape

  Day 112, Brazely Abbey, Hampshire.

  20:00, 2nd July.

  This morning, I know it sounds crazy and I wouldn't have said it out loud, I wouldn't even be writing it now if things hadn't changed, but as we drove off all that kept running through my head was “Man, Woman, two children. We should have got one of those bumper stickers.”

  Early this morning, so early it was really still night, unable to sleep for Daisy's crying, I went outside and finished siphoning off the fuel in the cars we weren't going to take. In the end we left with twenty ten litre jerry-cans, close to forty gallons and a full tank of petrol. Take a map of Britain, stick a pin in anywhere and we had enough fuel to get there.

  It was my choice to take the giant yellow 4x4 pick-up truck. It was closest to the gates, the easiest to get out, and I liked how it seemed to loom over the other cars. According to the log book it's been sitting on the lot for two years. I can't imagine who thought something like that would sell in rural England. It seemed sturdy enough back in the garage, bur after a day's driving I’m not so sure. It's got a high clearance, though, and I did find that useful.