by Frank Tayell
“The billionaire investor, sure. She had her own satellites?”
“Control the means of communication and you control the message,” he said. “Specifically, she wanted early access to the messages her competitors were sending each other. Why bother with corporate espionage when the data is flowing through your hands? She was part of the conspiracy.”
“She was?”
“Her commercial operations provided cover,” he said. “People notice when a government plane sets down in a remote airfield. Even more so with a military flight from a foreign power. If it’s a corporate jet belonging to a company with fingers in every national pie, no one bats an eyelid.”
“Why? What was she going to get out of it?”
“The licence to produce the vaccine,” Sholto said. “Of course, that was when they thought it would actually cure the world of disease. I don’t know how much she was going to charge per dose, but whatever number you think of, I bet you could double it and not even come close to the answer. Looking back, taking in Quigley, his ambitions, his actions, and those of the cabal in America, I reckon Kempton planned to seize power herself. I’m not sure how she was going to achieve it, but every conspirator I met envisioned a tyranny of one. Not that it matters now. What does is the satellite network. I had someone working on the inside, and that got me access and an interface that’s almost as simple as point and click. We can alter the orbits, just as long as the satellites have propellant.”
“I was saying to Mary O’Leary that yesterday’s debacle wouldn’t have happened if we had proper communications. This is the answer.” I found myself looking up at the sky. “How do we do it?”
“For altering the orbits, I’d like to get some professional help. Maybe the comms officer from the Vehement, but first we need to see whether the satellites are still there. To do that, we need a sat-phone. I’ve been looking for one ever since I got to Britain. No luck, obviously. I mean, they would have been beyond useful when we were escaping that horde.”
“Military bases would be one option,” I said. “Or one of the ships, perhaps? Otherwise we’re going to have to look at a large city. Bangor’s too small to have a shop that would stock them. Cardiff, perhaps? Or Bristol? Except didn’t someone say they were hit with a bomb? We should check with Mrs O’Leary.”
“Sat-phones?” George asked. “Leon went looking for some back in June, but he didn’t find any. I can tell you there’s none over at RAF Valley on Anglesey. That was cleared out during the evacuation, right down to the tools. Somebody on a ship might have one, but I can’t think of a name.” He glanced at the window to Mary O’Leary’s office. The blinds were drawn. We’d found George sitting, almost on guard, outside the door.
“So we’re going to have to make a trip to the mainland?” Sholto asked.
“Is it worth the risk?” George asked.
“Anyone who leaves here would be able to keep track of the hordes ripping through the mainland,” Sholto said. “And we’d be able to keep in contact with them.”
“I understand that, lad,” George said. “But it’s not the real reason, is it?”
Sholto chewed his lip as if weighing up his response. “It’s Crossfields Landing,” he said. “That’s the village I set out from when leaving America. There were seventy people there. They might be alive. They might need help.”
“A satellite image isn’t going to transport you thousands of miles across an angry sea,” George said. “But try Heather Jones. She’d know where the nearest shop would be.”
“She’s the one from Menai Bridge?” I asked.
“Yes,” George said, “but she’s somewhere in town. She’ll be around here later.”
“When?” Sholto asked.
“It’s not like I have an appointment book,” George said. “Give it a couple of hours.”
Outside, Sholto bridled at the delay, and the reason was obvious.
“These aren’t spy satellites, are they?” I asked.
“What? No, they were built for communications. It was all about the data passing through them. The cameras were a cover. They were originally part of a package designed by a university group studying coastal erosion.”
“So the cameras have a low resolution?”
“You can tell the difference between people and cars,” he said, “but you can’t read their licence plates.”
“And Crossfields Landing is in Maine, right? There’s a five-hour time difference.”
“So?”
“So if the resolution isn’t going to be enough to tell the difference between a zombie and a person,” I said, “then the only real way of knowing if those people are alive is by looking for the lights at night.”
Our eyes looked upward at a blue sky dotted with fluffy cumulous clouds.
“Maybe. Yeah, fine.” He sat down on the edge of the only adult-sized picnic table in the playground. Then he stood up. “So do you want to… I don’t know. What are we meant to do for fun when we’ve time on our hands?”
“No cinema, no theatre, not even a coffee shop. I suppose we could go to the pub?” I suggested. “I’d like to see Markus in his own environment. See for ourselves if he’s as bad as his first impression implied. Perhaps he’s got a sat-phone. It’s the sort of thing someone might have traded for a couple of pints. Come on,” I added, when it looked like Sholto would say no. “It’ll keep us busy until Heather Jones arrives.”
At first, I assumed the group outside the pub were customers queuing to get in. Before depression at all that meant had time to settle, I realised that though they were customers, it wasn’t for the pub itself. A pair of tables had been set up in the car park. I recognised Rob, the young man with the sword, standing near the entrance.
“Buying or selling,” he asked.
“Neither,” I said.
“Then you’ve no business here,” he said, wrapping his hand around the hilt of his sword.
“Think of us as the health inspectors,” Sholto said. “Or the ATF if you prefer. I can see the firearms and guess you’ve got the alcohol inside. No tobacco, though?”
A woman walked over to us. It was the same one who’d been with Markus in the chalet in Caernarfon. She was armed, but unlike Rob, with a sleek pump-action shotgun. I smiled. She didn’t.
“You want cigarettes?” she asked. “No problem, you just can’t smoke them on the premises, not if you ever want to by any more from us.”
“Colour me curious,” Sholto said. “But no, we don’t want to buy any. Is Markus around?”
“He’s inside,” she said. “Is this an official visit?”
“Idle curiosity,” I said.
She weighed that up. “You can go in,” she said.
I took another look at the lines of people. From what I could see, they were selling anything and everything, but it wasn’t clear what they were buying. I followed my brother inside.
I don’t what I was expecting. Dark, dank, dirty squalor I suppose, but that wasn’t what we found. It was well lit and clean, and looked more like an office than a pub though there was a price board and bottles behind the bar. At a stool at the far end sat Paul. He was nursing an almost empty coffee mug and sporting a fresh black eye.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
He glanced at me, then Sholto. “Slipped,” he muttered.
Deciding I wasn’t going to get a better answer than the one I could guess, I went for the direct approach. “Where’s Markus?”
“Out the back,” Paul said.
“Go and get him,” Sholto said, taking a seat at the bar.
Paul made a point of emptying the dregs from his mug before slipping behind the bar. He wasn’t the only person in there. A pair of women sat by a window, a stack of books on the table between them. Near the stairs, an older, bearded man was running a cloth over a long knife, not in a threatening way, but with the keen eye of a craftsman tending his tools. Only the four people on the pub’s other side looked as if they were taking their ease, but they
weren’t drinking. No one was. I began revising my opinion of Markus.
“Ah, the two brothers of literary fame,” the man himself said, coming out of the back room. Paul followed, with a sharp-faced women bringing up the rear. “Get them some drinks, Rachel.”
“Tea? Coffee?” she asked. “Or there’s beer, but it’s Hopvar, I’m afraid. Unless you want to try our own brand vodka.”
“You don’t have any named brands?” I asked.
“We keep those for trade,” Markus said. “Except the Hopvar. Vile stuff, but we found a lorry full of it just after we got here. That’s why we decided we’d open the pub. There was more than we wanted to drink, but then one bottle of that brew’s usually more than anyone wants to drink, right, Rachel?”
“That’s right, Markus,” the woman said, in a tone that suggested it wasn’t. There was something about her expression that made me think she didn’t like the man.
“Tea would be fine,” I said.
“Yeah, why not,” Sholto said. “When in Wales, after all.”
“Two teas, then, Rachel,” Markus said. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“We were looking for a sat-phone,” I said.
“Then you’re out of luck,” Markus said. “We don’t have one.”
“No one’s traded them with you?” I asked.
“They might have tried, but we’re not buying,” he said. “What use would it be? Oh, sure, there’s the battery, but you can find a hundred mobile phones on every street. Finding a use for them is more difficult. I’m glad you came, actually. You can take these off our hands.”
He walked behind the bar and through the door to the back room, returning with a blue cracked-leather gym bag. He placed it on the counter.
“Pills?” Sholto asked, looking inside.
“Yeah, people trade them,” Markus said. “No idea if they still work. Thought you could take them to the hospital. I’ve no use for them.”
Sholto took out a pill bottle. “Vitamin C.” He took out another. “Neo-natal supplements. This is for arthritis, and this is a painkiller. It’s an opioid.”
“And we’ve definitely no use for those,” Markus said.
“You don’t sell pills?” I asked.
“Where’s the profit in that?” he asked.
I glanced at the board behind the bar. “You sell booze,” I said.
“Only after five p.m. We have strict licensing hours.”
And again I found myself disconcerted by how atypical he was being. “So why not pills?”
“Because they’ll run out,” Rachel said, returning with a tray on which were two mugs of tea. “There’s no point creating a habit you can’t supply. That’s right, isn’t it, Markus?”
“Ah… yeah,” he said, and I sensed he’d not planned on giving such an honest reply.
“You said you wanted a sat-phone?” Rachel asked. “Most of the ships’ crews dumped them over the side during the escape, along with anything else that was useless weight. I went looking months back. You can ask, but I don’t think you’ll get anywhere.”
After two minutes of good tea and awkward conversation, we left.
“That wasn’t what I expected,” I said. “I thought it would be a dive. Lots of guns and bandoliers of ammunition.”
“And gold-toothed pirates? I think that’s who Kim sailed off with,” Sholto said. “No, Markus is a lot more organised than I was expecting, and that’s what that place reminds me of. Organisation. Specifically, organised crime. You remember me telling you what happened after our parents died?”
“You fell in with some gangsters.”
“They had a place like that, and I’ve seen others like it since. Places where there are very strict rules. It’s a place of work and run as such.”
“So the question becomes, what are they working towards?”
“No,” Sholto said. “You’re not thinking like a criminal. The bigger question is whether they were telling the truth about not having any sat-phones, and why they were looking for them in the first place.”
Taking the bag of pills to the hospital took care of an hour. We killed another speculating whether they represented the only pharmaceuticals Markus had been given.
When we got back to the school, a redheaded woman was deep in conversation with George Tull. When she turned around, I saw a jagged scar running from her temple down to her chin. It gave a sardonic edge to her thoughtful expression.
“Heather,” George said, “this is Bill and Thaddeus.”
“The two brothers,” she said with a far less pronounced Welsh accent than I was expecting. “George said you can get some satellites working?”
“If we had some sat-phones,” Sholto said.
“Then you want to go to Bangor. There’s ten at the university,” she said. “When do you want to leave?”
Chapter 4 - Menai Bridge
07:30, 19th August, Day 160
“I like it here,” I said to Sholto as we headed down to the shore.
“Anglesey?”
“Menai Bridge,” I said.
“Yeah, me too,” he said, glancing back at the small town. “It’s a bit like Crossfields Landing. I mean, that’s a two-street village, but the people are similar. Eager. Enthusiastic. No, that’s not the right word. They haven’t given up. And there’s the view of the sea. Not as wide here as in Maine, mind you.”
I waited for him to go on, but as was often the case when he remembered that village in America, he’d lost himself in the past.
When Heather Jones asked when we wanted to leave, my instinct was to say immediately, but there was Daisy to consider. If I’m honest, I felt as restless as my brother. Organising an election was too much like my old life, but without all the digital distractions and electronic assistance that would have made it routine. After all, the election doesn’t only mean new leadership and, perhaps, a new direction for our community. It also represents the beginning of a new state. If I do the job correctly, it might mean the opportunity for a new kind of state. Added to that was the new burden of parenting. I hadn’t realised how much of the work Kim and Annette had done out on the mainland. As such, I was quite happy to bring Daisy with us to Menai Bridge, and to let the Duponts dote over her.
We’d arrived late, had a good meal where barely any ingredients came from the old world, and listened to other people’s stories that had nothing to do with the outbreak. It was pleasant, different, and the kind of atmosphere I hoped would become our new normal. If anything, and after an astonishingly good night’s sleep, the view of the small town only reinforced that opinion.
“They’ve got it together,” Sholto said, echoing my thoughts. “It’s not just that it’s organised. It’s not just that they planted food back in the spring, or even that they keep the streets clean, but that they intend to keep on doing it.”
We were walking down a narrow terrace of boarded-up houses. On each front door was a plastic envelope inside of which was a list of the property’s contents. Some had an additional mark in large chalk lettering noting some item that might be of more immediate use, though that use wasn’t always obviously practical. ‘Piano’ was chalked on one door, and I was surprised the small cottages had room even for a stand-up model. Another door was marked with ‘twin-tub washing machine’, another with ‘children’s clothes’. A fourth, with a red and green chalk sketch added to the front wall, proclaimed the wonderful words ‘apple tree, September!’
“They really want to make the place work,” I said. “I know that this road and the parts they took us to see yesterday are the exception. I mean, this was a town of about three thousand, and there’s only fifty people here. But they really are trying. If everyone was like this, just imagine what we could do.”
“I think it’s because everyone isn’t like this that they want us to move here,” he said.
“And what do you think?” I asked.
“You know where I’m going, but I think it’d be good for you. Good for Kim and Annette,
and definitely good for Daisy. You need to be surrounded by others. It’s not just safety, but sanity as well. If Annette had had someone outside our immediate family to talk with, she might not have imploded so spectacularly.”
“And even if she had, the journal wouldn’t have been so widely distributed,” I added, though I was increasingly of the opinion that Annette’s actions had been for the best. Certainly, among the residents of Menai Bridge, there was no ill-will directed towards Sholto and I for our unwitting association with the conspiracy.
Heather Jones was waiting by a hundred-foot schooner with twin masts that seemed at least that tall. The red paint around the stern was so fresh that it still glistened, though the name needed touching up.
“What does it mean?” I asked as I waved a greeting to her.
“Hedd? It’s Welsh for tranquillity,” Jones said. “But we’re not taking her.”
“Hey, Bill, Sholto,” Gwen said, appearing from inside the boat’s long cabin. “I’m taking her to Blackpool, Lancaster, and maybe Barrow-in-Furness if it’s safe enough.”
“Why?” I asked.
Gwen reached down and picked up a small box. “Geiger counter,” she said. “We need to check the radiation levels. There’s too many things we can only get from a large city, and there’s no way you can call Bangor that.”
“Wait a day,” Sholto said. “You can take a sat-phone and stay in contact with us.”
“George said the same thing,” Gwen said. “And I thought about it, but what would be the point? Most of my time will be on the boat. I’ll only go ashore if it’s safe, and when I’m inland, if I’m surrounded, how would you rescue me? Don’t say you’d come in with guns blazing because there aren’t enough of us for that. Not enough boats, either. No, we’ll manage. We’ve done this before. Oh, Bill, George asked me to bring you that.”
She gestured at a bench that faced the sea. Leaning against it was a long pole. On second glance, I realised it was a pike. Not an ancient one, nor a replica, but a modern take on the old weapon. The axe was broad, with seven perfectly drilled holes an inch apart following the curve of the machine-sharpened blade. The spike was nearly a foot long and broad at the base. The style reminded me of the Assegai George wore at his waist. Foam padding had been wrapped around the coffee-cream wood. I’d have to remove it. That material would soak up the undead gore. A few strips of easily discarded cloth would be far more practical.
