by Frank Tayell
“Didn’t you notice that Annette took Kim’s rifle?” George asked. “When she was found, she pointed the gun at the electric battery and threatened to shoot it unless she was taken away from the island.”
“You can’t mean that you actually gave in to her,” I said, aghast.
“No. Kim did,” Mary said. “She was there. Annette said she’d leave if you apologised. You couldn’t be found.”
“I was in Caernarfon,” I said. “With you.”
“I’m sorry,” George said. “No one knew, and with us all on the boat, there was no one in Menai Bridge to radio that back. It wasn’t until I got to the hospital with Will that I was able to tell Mary, and by then it was too late. They’d already left.”
“But… I don’t understand. Why didn’t Kim just take her off the ship? Or why didn’t it just wait?”
“We need the oil from Svalbard,” Mary said. “We really do. That ship’s going because it has the solar panels and an electric motor. That’s how scarce fuel is. Taking that police launch across the Menai Strait used up most of our reserves.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “Why did they leave?”
“The tide and the daylight,” George said. “Each day there’s four minutes less light for the panels, and, of course, they’re heading north, so that makes it worse. If they’d waited, they’d have lost the tide, and that’d mean losing half a day.”
“That still doesn’t explain it,” I said.
“It was Kim’s decision that the boat should leave,” Mary said. “That’s what it comes down to. The boat’s got a dozen French soldiers on board, and about as seasoned a crew as exists. They’re as safe on the boat as they would be here. If Svalbard is overrun by the undead, they won’t go ashore, but either way they’ll be back in a couple of weeks. As to why Kim didn’t persuade Annette to return ashore, you’ll have to ask her yourself. The ship’s still within radio range, though it won’t be by tomorrow morning. Speak to her yourself.”
“I’d, ah…” George began. “If I was you, I’d remember that it’s going to be a couple of weeks before you see them again,” he said. “When you speak to them, I mean.”
Completely at a loss as to what I should say, I followed George to the radio room. We’d struggled so hard, so long, to find a safe refuge, yet our little family had been broken up again.
Chapter 3 - Anglesey
18th August, Day 159
“And which is a circle?” Dr Umbert asked. “No, Daisy, that’s a square. Which is a circle?”
I failed to suppress a grin. Daisy noticed, smiled back, and picked up the square again. There aren’t many games you can play out in the wasteland, and toys were too heavy a luxury to carry. Picking out the different shapes in the ruined buildings and wrecked vehicles had kept her entertained as much as teaching her had kept us distracted. Though she knew full well the difference between a circle and square, she clearly enjoyed confusing the psychiatrist.
She’d visibly recovered from whatever malady she’d come down with during our time trapped in the tunnel near the Welsh border, but Dr Knight wanted her under close observation at least until the end of August. I thought that was more a case of too many specialists and not enough children. Observation meant Dr Umbert. He meant well, but he was too over-qualified for this particular task. Certainly he was too fond of using his qualifications as justification for his old-fashioned techniques.
Daisy, clearly bored with the game, put the square down, picked up a crayon, and began scribbling. Taking that as my cue, I returned my attention to the book. It was a history of the American railroad, and how that history was altered by the introduction of the telegraph. I’d hoped to discover the amount of labour a person could achieve in an un-mechanised world, but had chosen the wrong book. It was a lightweight tome full of anecdotes, but few facts. I’d skimmed through another three pages when the door to the small classroom opened. As one, the five children turned to face the door and, just as grateful for the distraction, I did the same. It was Mary O’Leary, alone and in her wheelchair. I stood up to help her, but she waved me away. A pair of four-year-old twins saw the gesture and waved back.
“Hello, everyone,” Mary said brightly. There were a couple of hellos and a few more waves. Daisy gave the old woman a thoughtful stare. Quite what she was thinking about, I don’t know, but Mrs O’Leary gave them all a wide smile, and then turned to me.
“I do like the classroom,” she said. “It was a real wrench having to leave, but if there’s one blessing from this nightmare, it’s that I’ve been allowed to see it again. And how are you, Bill?”
“Adjusting,” I said.
“Aren’t we all? Are you still on electricity?” She gestured at the book I’d been reading. The front cover showed a photograph of a telegraph line being run up alongside a railroad. It was distinctly anachronistic, taken at least two decades later than the events described in the book, and should have given me the clue as to the usefulness of the contents.
“I’m trying to get an understanding of our limitations,” I said. “At the moment I’m getting no further than learning the extent of my own ignorance.”
“And isn’t that the first step to enlightenment? The doctor said I had to walk for an hour a day if I ever again wanted proper use of my legs. Usually George takes me, but he’s busy meeting with his overground railroad.” She smiled. “And doesn’t that put a spin to a man’s usual retirement hobby? Would you mind lending me your arm for an hour? There was something I wanted to discuss.”
Grateful for an excuse to abandon the book, I wheeled her outside. Sholto was sitting at a picnic table in one corner of the playground. He’d come with us to the school that morning, but hadn’t wanted to go inside.
“Is your brother all right?” Mrs O’Leary asked.
“He wants to enjoy the sunshine,” I said. “Personally, I’ve never been into sunbathing. I can’t see the point, and he said that was the reason to enjoy it now.”
“Quite right,” she said. “We have to make the most of every moment, learn to really savour life. Of course, that’s a lesson most people learn too late. This will do. If you wouldn’t mind helping me up? Thank you, and pass me my stick. Ah.” I held out my arm. Her grip was like a vice, though her legs were unsteady. “The doctor said I needed an hour’s walk a day so the muscles don’t forget what they were intended for, but that was when there was meant to be surgery and physio. I feel like Cnut, attempting to turn back the tide. One day I won’t be able to get out of the chair, so today I will enjoy being able to.” She took a step, and another.
“You know Cnut’s point was that there were some things beyond even a king’s control?” I said.
The effort it took her to manage a few tottering steps was clear in the set of her jaw and her grip on my arm. I spoke purely as a way of distracting her. Okay, if I’m truly honest, a small part of me, that part that we each have that never quite leaves the classroom, wanted to correct this lifelong teacher.
“Of course I do,” she said, “but you should never let the truth get in the way of a good analogy. Now, tell me what direction your research has been taking you, because every day you’ve taken a dozen different books from our library.”
“My starting point was that rescue mission to Caernarfon,” I said. “And how it almost went tragically wrong. I wondered whether we could run a telephone line across the Menai Strait so we’d have a more reliable communication system the next time a group went over.”
“A copper wire would be more susceptible than a portable radio,” she said. “And what would be the point in running a phone line to that golf club? We’ve recovered one of the golf carts already, and will have the others over here by the end of the week.”
“It was just the starting point,” I said. “That got me to thinking about electrical transmission, and whether we could restore power to the mainland.”
“I asked that same question,” she said. “And the answer is no, not without securing the transformers
and rebuilding a substation. Now, we could manage it, but what would be the point? The labour involved would be the same as stripping Caernarfon and Bangor, and once they’re empty what use would there be in providing them with electricity? Anglesey and Holy Island once had a combined population of eighty thousand. We have an eighth of that number, and only a fraction of those currently use the houses. If we need farmland, it would make more sense to look to the other islands than to the mainland. The Isle of Man, for instance. Did you hear about the light?”
“Kim told me,” I said. “She said, when they went ashore, they discovered it was an emergency beacon.”
“Of course, you spoke to her on the radio, didn’t you,” she said. “It’s been bothering me. We’ve had anglers taking their boats out in that direction for months, but no one reported seeing a light on the Isle of Man. In which case, who set up the beacon? How was it turned on? It’s worth investigating. Switch to my other side, and we’ll turn around.”
“I agree with you about the light, but not about the rest,” I said. “The Welsh mainland is only a few hundred metres away, the Isle of Man is at least forty miles, but I take your point. Anyway, that was when I started looking into the shortfall in labour, particularly in farming. We have electricity, and I was wondering, well, you know how trams and some trains draw power from overhead lines? The railway on the island was never electrified, but we could set up some overhead power lines easily enough.”
“If we had some trains,” she said. “Which we don’t.”
“We could get some,” I said. “But the power lines got me thinking. We could set some up above the fields and use them to run tractors and threshers and whatever else we needed. I know you can’t plug a power cable directly into a combustion engine, but if we got a few electric cars, we could rig those engines to the tractors.”
“Or just modify the electric cars?” she suggested.
“Ah, yes, I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted.
“Nor the amount of wire needed, or the effort involved in running it up above each field, or even the monumental danger to anyone operating one of your jury-rigged tractors just a few feet below a net of live wires.”
“No, actually I did,” I said. “I thought we could run them remotely. We wouldn’t need GPS if we set a row of digital markers at either end of the field.”
The old teacher gave a sigh that once again took me back to my schooldays. “We have plenty of tractors on the island, including twenty-three superb Massey Ferguson’s and another twelve that’ll be just as good after some spit, polish, and new tyres. If the fuel dump in Svalbard is intact, we’ll have more than enough oil to run them. It would take far less effort and time converting that to diesel than anything you’re proposing. Far safer, too.”
“I suppose it would,” I admitted, feeling foolish for the wasted effort.
“You’re doing what a lot of people have done,” she said, “though most of us got it out of our systems a few months ago. You’re trying to reinvent the wheel by starting with the road. Leave the electricity to the people who’ve spent their lives working with it. Leave the fields to the farmers. You have a different type of specialised knowledge, and we’d be foolish to waste it.”
“What knowledge?” I asked.
“Politics,” she said. “We need it more than ever. Or some parts of it. We have plenty of engineers and pilots, soldiers and sailors, a vet and doctors, teachers, nurses, architects, builders, and plumbers. What we lack are politicians and civil servants, at least the kind who know how a society can be run. Take the election. We promised to hold one in November and it will take place, but how do we organise it? How do you split the island into constituencies when the majority of people live offshore? Every voice should be heard. I don’t want the minority silenced by the majority, or by the individuals with the loudest voices.”
“You start by getting the electorate registered,” I said. “Set a deadline for the end of September. Then, anyone who wishes to be a candidate has one week to gather, say, two hundred signatures from registered voters. We’ll run some debates. Proper debates, and perhaps publish some interviews and profiles. We can set the rules so that there’s a run-off if the winning candidate gets less than fifty percent of the vote, but the reality is that it’ll have to be a popular vote. There’s an obvious downside to that, but no system’s perfect.”
“Hmm. I’m not standing,” she said. “I don’t know who will, but I don’t want all the power held in one person.”
“So have the entire cabinet elected. Say ten people, plus the mayor makes eleven. You need an odd number so that there’s never a tie. In time, assuming we survive long enough, we can introduce candidates based on geography as well as skill-set. By having both, we might avoid the pitfalls of a party system. However we decide on the details, the key feature would be initially short term-limits.”
“Ah. You see, Mr Wright, that’s what I meant. I spent four hours last night reading up on the early days of the Dáil Éireann, and the first Continental Congress. Had I asked you this yesterday, I could have spent the evening watching The Remains of the Day with George. As it is, he spent it watching some dreadful science fiction thing, which I suspect he preferred. Specialised knowledge, Mr Wright, that’s what we need, and there isn’t time for each of us to become specialists. So that’s our election solved.”
“Well, no, not really,” I said. “There’s a lot more to it. What are the cabinet posts? What are the qualification requirements of a candidate, or an elector? Do we have one polling station? Dozens?”
“And you’ll solve all of those, I’m sure,” she said. “The next problem, the large one, to which everything is connected, is getting people off their boats. Electricity didn’t do it, and that makes me worried that the winter won’t either. We need something more. I can’t imagine what. I actually thought Markus’s trading post might help. What did you make of him?”
“Not much,” I said. “I don’t trust him.”
“We can’t pick and choose who survived the outbreak,” she said. “Do you know the saying about making your greatest weakness your most valuable strength? That is what I tried to do. When Markus arrived, this was after the island was secure, he began systematically emptying the houses, and we didn’t realise for weeks.”
“Why didn’t you vote in a law, making everything he took communal property?” I asked.
“That is what Mister Mills wanted to do, but there’s a limit to how far you can push things, to how far you can push people, and I could see it would only end in a bloodbath. Instead, I tried to make it work for us. I took his bartering system and opened my own shops. The launderette, the bakery, the book, film, and music exchange. We have a tailor’s opening next week, did you know? You won’t believe the trouble there was in finding sewing machines and people who know how to use them. I set the prices low, and Markus had to match them. That’s helped rein him in, and there are advantages in knowing where he and his customers are. I’m just not sure that advantage outweighs the potential harm. We did vote in a law giving a third of the island to Heather Jones. She’s a local, you know? Lived and worked here, as did about half of those currently resident in Menai Bridge. She’s holding one third of the island in trust against the return of those who went on the evacuation. Of course, as she went with them, and was one of the few survivors, she knows there’s no chance they’ll return. But that third will give us a little margin. Besides, it wasn’t just Markus looting the houses. Everyone was doing it. Why scrub clothes by hand and in seawater when you can come ashore and empty the nearest house? Few people thought we had a future, here or anywhere. But now, now that we know we can stay, now we know there is unlikely to be a better home anywhere on Earth than this, those houses are empty. Dirty clothes have been thrown into the sea. The cupboards are bare. The gardens are barren. We’ve fish and grain, and soon won’t have anything else. We need to think on a grander scale. Looting coastal homes isn’t enough. Trading shoelaces for loaves will not
preserve civilisation. We have to become an agricultural powerhouse. We have to rid the mainland of the undead. We have to find a way to do more than just survive. But saying it is easy.” She sighed. “Help me back to my chair. I know that wasn’t an hour, but it’s as much as I can manage.”
I helped her back to her wheelchair, and then took her inside, to the office in the library that she’d claimed as her own. She made a comment about looking through some papers, but I got the feeling she was going to rest.
She has a formidable resolve, but not the stamina that leadership requires. As to who would replace her, I had no idea except that it wouldn’t be me. Walking away from the library, I decided to do what she said and focus on that election. I went outside, to see what advice my brother might have.
“I suppose we need nomination papers,” I said, after I’d summarised my conversation with Mary O’Leary. “And ballot papers. To avoid fraud, I was thinking we could use coloured paper but not say what colour until the day. Do you think we should use the Iraq model?”
“Sat-phones,” Sholto said.
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“When I was escaping the U.S., I had a sat-phone and a tablet,” he said. “With those, I was able to plot a route free of stalled traffic and the undead. It’s how I got to Crossfields Landing.”
“How does that help plan an election?” I asked.
“It doesn’t,” he said, and I realised he’d not been listening to me. “If the satellites are still up there, I should be able to access them. The radios’ range is limited. With a sat-phone, you’d be in contact with Kim. We’d have had images of the Isle of Man, and that place where they saw a light. We’d have been in touch with Lilith and Will, and would have known precisely what had happened to them.”
I forced my brain onto a new track. “Satellites? You mean the GPS network?”
“No, I’m talking about a private network Lisa Kempton was building. You remember her?”
