by Frank Tayell
Sholto was kneeling on the roof of a battered white hire-car, firing shot after shot into a dense mass of the undead. I don’t know if he was aiming, but there were plenty of targets. I had a strong desire to unsling the rifle and empty the magazine into that hideous pack, but I knew at least one of my weaknesses. More than that, the lesson Kim had taught me back in Longshanks Manor was vividly clear. Bullets are heavy. You’re limited to what you can carry. In this case, we were limited to what had been brought from Anglesey. In turn, that was limited to what had been scavenged from depots and supply dumps over the last few months.
“I’m out,” Sholto called. I grabbed a magazine from the bag, passed it to him, and placed another two next to his foot. He reloaded, and I moved on to the next shooter. Car to van, to van, to car, I limped along the line, passing out ammunition, only occasionally looking at the undead. I saw some heads bursting apart as bullets impacted square on. More zombies fell or pitched backwards, and some of those pushed themselves back to their feet. The old, the young, and those too wizened to tell. Some wore rags coated in mud. Others looked more recently turned. I walked the line, passing out ammo, trying to think of them as creatures, as monsters, as never having been human, because there was no point adding that weight of guilt to our souls.
I reached Jones, and had only one magazine to pass to her. The nearest zombie was sixty yards away when it folded in on itself. I returned to the pier, grabbed another bag, and returned to the line, passing out ammunition until I was once more standing behind my brother. The closest zombie was forty yards away, with five almost in a wedge right behind it. I unslung the rifle. Thirty-five yards. Three zombies fell, but there were more behind, and that lead creature staggered on.
I balanced the rifle on the roof of the car. Ammunition was precious, but lives were more so. I took aim. Jones’s plan had failed. Hundreds of zombies were dead, but hundreds more were left and thousands more would come. This wasn’t just a few score trapped inside that student housing block, but the undead from the entire city. Soon they would be joined by others from the surrounding countryside. I could imagine the horde travelling through Wales like a spear, of which this pack was only the tip.
I pulled the trigger. I’d forgotten the safety. By the time I found it, the zombie was down, but there were more behind. There would always be more. There would never be enough bullets, enough people, enough time.
I shifted the barrel, aiming at a corpulent creature in the remains of an ankle-length leather jacket.
We could empty Bangor, but to what end? To gather enough supplies to last us through the winter, but what about the spring? What about all the coming years?
I pulled the trigger. The zombie shuddered as half a dozen bullets smacked into its arms and chest and legs. I searched for the selector switch, and flipped it to single-shot. I picked another target, a limping woman in a ragged T-shirt for a band I never liked. I fired. The woman staggered back two paces, and then came on. I fired again. Again she staggered. Again she came on. I fired again, two shots in quick succession.
“I’ve got it,” Sholto said. He fired, she fell, and I realised I’d heard the shot. I’d heard his voice. The sound of the undead had diminished. It hadn’t stopped. They were still there, coming up the road, but the nearest was sixty yards away and the column had become a ragged line.
I stood, watching, counting. There were forty-eight between us and the pub. Forty-seven. Forty-six, then forty-nine as another three came into view.
“Ammo! I’m out,” a woman barked. I hurried over, and then went up and down the line, passing out ammo until the bag was empty. I paused by Jones, watching the road. The firing was sporadic now, the zombies a thin trickle.
“I’d say,” Simon called out, but then paused to fire a shot. A partially scalped zombie missing its left arm slumped forward, but didn’t fall. “Damn.” Simon fired again. It collapsed. “I’d say,” he continued, “that was a good plan successfully executed.”
“I wouldn’t,” Jones said. “Cease fire, everyone except Lilith. It’s sniping work for now. The rest of you, pick up the spent cartridges. We can’t afford to waste them.”
“More came than I expected,” Jones said as we walked across the car park full of bodies. A hand reached up. I hacked the hatchet down.
“I’d say a thousand,” Sholto said. “Maybe a few less.”
“Lilith says eight hundred,” Jones said. “And she’s a good eye for this.”
“You’ve done it before?” I asked.
“On a smaller scale, twice,” she said. “Nothing quite like this.” She plunged her bayonet through the eye of a twitching creature. “And we used up nearly five thousand rounds.”
“That much?” The zombie immediately in front of me was missing half its jaw. From the mud caked around the two remaining upper teeth, it hadn’t been shot away. It wasn’t moving, but with no obvious brain injury, I didn’t want to take a chance. I chopped the axe at its head.
“Eight hundred dead for five thousand rounds. How much ammo do you have left?” Sholto asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jones said. “Not enough. We had just over two million 5.56mm cartridges the only time anyone did a count. That was back in May, after we found a military supply dump down near Exmoor. Everyone who goes out into the wasteland takes a rifle and a couple of hundred rounds. They rarely bring any back. Often, they don’t even bring the rifles. How many are left? A million rounds? Less? I don’t know. Personally, I’ve got forty-eight thousand less what we fired today.”
That it wasn’t going to be enough was left unsaid.
“We must have cleared the town,” I said. “That’ll make looting it easier.”
“Maybe for today,” she said. “Who knows how many tomorrow will bring?” She lunged down, spearing a zombie that had half raised its arm. She opened her mouth to say something else, shook her head, and closed it again.
“Tide’s turning,” Lilith said, coming up to join us. She had her rifle raised, the barrel tracking back and forth with an easy professionalism. While I was picking up a few fistfuls of spent cartridges, I’d watched her snipe at the undead. She’d done it with a completely blank expression, as if she was forcing her mind to be elsewhere. Now her face was tight-lipped and taut as if she was barely keeping her emotions in check.
“We’ll send a boat back,” Jones said. “With Bill, Sholto, and Lorraine. She can have that leg properly seen to, and you two can get those satellites working. When you do, I want one of the phones over here.”
“You’re staying?” I asked.
“Of course. We’ve got to empty the—”
“Zombie!” Lilith said, the barrel coming up.
“Wait,” I said.
“Why?”
“I need to practice,” I said. “And as grim a truth as it is, we’ve not got the ammo to waste it on the range.”
It was clear Lilith didn’t like it. I’ll admit, I didn’t either, but it was true.
“Get it over with,” Jones said.
I raised the rifle and took aim. The zombie wore jeans covered in mud below the knees, and a red T-shirt a size too small. A ragged beard came halfway down its neck, with hair just as long and greasy hanging lank from its head. As it raised an arm, I saw half a handcuff on its wrist. I breathed out, held it…
“Stop!”
Sholto pushed the barrel up, just as my finger curled on the trigger. The bullet flew up towards the clouds, but the shout hadn’t come from my brother. It had come from the zombie. Except it wasn’t a zombie. It was a man, a survivor, and he collapsed in the road.
“Relax,” Lilith said. “You didn’t shoot him. It’s dehydration.” She held the water bottle to the man’s lips. The man’s eyes flittered.
“You’re safe,” Sholto said.
The man croaked something inaudible and raised his hand to tilt the bottle. Water splashed on the dirt around his face.
“Dehydration, exposure,” Lilith said. “Exhaustion. Malnutrition maybe, but nothing serious.”<
br />
“Nothing contagious?” Jones asked.
“Unlikely,” Lilith said. “No lice, either.”
“Get him to the boat,” Jones said.
He wasn’t heavy. Together, Sholto and I helped him to the barricade. It took four of us to get him over. The man kept getting in his own way, twisting and turning, trying to take in each face as if he couldn’t believe any were real.
“Thank you. Thank you,” the man said, as we sat him down on the barricade’s far side.
“You’re safe,” I said. “My name’s Bill.”
“Bill. Bill. Bill.” He repeated the syllable as if trying to remember if people were called that.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Name? Name. Llewellyn.”
“Llewellyn? Nice to meet you, Llewellyn,” I said.
“David.”
“David? David Llewellyn?” I asked.
“David Llewellyn,” he echoed, as if it had been a long time since he’d heard his own name.
“You’re from Wales?” Sholto asked.
Llewellyn shook his head. “From everywhere,” he said. “Went everywhere. Oxford. Blyth. Couldn’t go to Scotland. Went south. Went east. Went west. Here.” He reached into his pockets, searching for something, then triumphantly pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here! Here! Anglesey, see!”
“It’s one of George’s maps,” Jones said. “The ones they leave in the safe houses with the instruction to come to Anglesey.”
“Anglesey,” Llewellyn echoed.
“Well, you found it,” I said. “We’re going back there. Taking a boat over there, and you’ll be safe. It’s a safe place. No zombies. No dangers.”
“No zombies? No zombies.” He shook his head.
I looked down at his wrist and the half a handcuff still attached. “What… How did that happen?”
“They left me,” Llewellyn said. “I got bit. They chained me up. I didn’t turn. I haven’t turned. I’m not one of them. I’m not a zombie. Not a zombie. Not!”
“Sure, of course,” I said, trying to calm him down. I glanced up at my brother. “Can you do anything about that?”
“Easy,” he said, and took out his lock picks. A moment later, the cuff was removed. Llewellyn stared at his wrist, and then broke into tears.
Chapter 6 - Anglesey
20th August, Day 161
Daisy wasn’t happy to be back at the school. She clearly wanted to be in Menai Bridge, close to Pierre and his endless supply of fresh-baked biscuits. I wasn’t happy either, though my irritation was at having to wait for George Tull and Mary O’Leary.
In the flurry of activity surrounding David Llewellyn’s arrival, I’d almost forgotten about the body we’d found at the university. Almost. I’d told Mary and George, and after the briefest of ruminations been told we’d discuss it the next day. As Sholto had disappeared to set up the sat-phones, I’d spent an evening alone with my thoughts, and was unhappy with the conclusions I’d reached.
I picked up a book, put it down, and spent a few minutes watching Daisy and the other children moving different-shaped bricks from one bucket to another. Dr Umbert had explained it was an exercise in socialisation and sharing. I thought it was pointless, but truly didn’t care. Outside in the corridor, I could hear the class of five-to-eight-year-olds giggling as they applied paint to the wall. They were making a giant chart that had something to do with weather patterns. It was uplifting and depressing at the same time. There were a few classes of older children constructing weather balloons out on the field next door. Objectively, it was a truly educational activity that was useful to the community. However, coming into the school that morning, I had seen almost every one of the under-fifteens on the island, and that had been a reminder of how few there were, as well as of how far away Annette currently was. It would be easy to say it was a product of the undead we’d seen the day before, and the undead children that had been among them, but part of it was the gnawing uncertainty surrounding the body we’d found in the university.
My eyes tracked to the window. When I saw the old man pushing Mary’s wheelchair into the playground, I went out to talk with them.
“The Vehement’s on its way back,” George said before I could open my mouth. “It’s had to turn around.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Not too sure,” he said, helping Mary out of her wheelchair. “The signal wasn’t great. It’s either a problem with the submarine’s pumps, or they’ve got all hands to the pumps. I couldn’t work out which. It’ll be back here in a couple of days. There’s nothing we can do about it, and probably no way we can repair it.”
“Does it change anything?” I asked.
“Well, now,” Mary said, taking a faltering step, “that’s the question, isn’t it? And one we can’t answer until we know how bad the damage is. There’s no point fretting and speculating, since we’ll know when it gets back, and there’s plenty for us to worry over in the meantime. Ah, looks like we have take-off.”
She jutted her chin towards the field where three small balloons rose into the air. After ten feet, one began drifting sideways and down.
“Two out of three. Not bad,” Mary said. “Now, Mr Wright, what’s got you looking so worried today?”
“Where to begin?” I said. “Perhaps with the body at the university. What are we going to do about it?”
“We can’t bury him,” she said, tottering onward, her hand a vice on George’s arm, her eyes fixed to the red-painted line at the end of the playground. “If we brought the body here, it would only announce to the island what you’d found, and we can’t do that until we know precisely what you found.”
“That’s what I meant,” I said. “That’s what we need to discuss.”
“Really?” She glanced at George. “No matter what some of us think we’ve learned from television, we’re not police, we’re not investigators, we know nothing about forensics.”
“We are intelligent people,” I said. “We have read books and, yes, watched TV shows.”
“You have a kindred spirit, George. Next time you want company to watch one of those dreadful films, you should ask him,” Mary said, then said no more until she’d managed another five slow steps and the tip of her shoe touched the red line. I’m sure the sigh of relief was involuntary, because it was caught halfway out of her mouth. She breathed in, then out, and turned around. Her eyes narrowed as if she was marking her wheelchair as a target.
“We talked about this last night,” George said. “And we’ve talked about problems like this before.”
“This has happened before?” I asked.
“No,” George said. “Not exactly. There’ve been a few fights, and we’ve dealt with those using military tribunals presided over by Mister Mills, but that’s neither democratic nor appropriate. The one advantage of everyone keeping to themselves, and to their boats, is that, for the most part, there’s not been enough contact between people for crime to occur. I’ve found bodies out in the wasteland. People who were killed, and who definitely were people, not zombies. You wrote in your journal that you saw the same. That’s far away, and not an immediate concern. Other than a few disappearances, which are more likely to be suicides or accidents, this is the closest to home that a serious incident has come.”
“We can manage taking fingerprints,” Mary said, as she took a faltering step, “but against what samples would we crosscheck them? Or should we take the prints of everyone on the island? We can’t do that without telling people why, and what if the killer wore gloves? DNA is useless to us. Dr Knight says she can perform an autopsy, though she’s never done one before, and so can’t guarantee she’ll do it thoroughly. But let us imagine we found an unambiguous clue. What was it you said last night, Mr Wright, that there was probably a tragically innocent explanation for this? That in the darkness of that corridor, with blood pumping through their ears, a person was mistaken for a zombie and the error not noticed until it was sadly too late?”
“Yes, I said that, but what if I’m wrong? That’s the worry that kept me up half the night.”
“Welcome to our world,” Mary murmured. She stopped, three feet from her wheelchair, and turned around. “We’ll never know if we’re wrong,” she said, leaning more heavily on George as she began another lap. “Because if we get it wrong, if we get anything wrong, we’ll be dead.”
I walked next to them in silence. The burden of responsibility was visible in each of the old woman’s laboured steps. I could sympathise, but I couldn’t let my fears go.
“What if it does happen again?” I asked.
“Good question,” George said. “What’s the answer? What would you do?”
“I’d start by trying to identify the body,” I said.
“Wrong,” George said, almost gleefully.
Mary sighed. “We’re on the last lap, George,” she said.
“Nope,” George said. “We’re to do five more today.”
“Three,” she countered.
“Three now, but you’ll do the other two later,” George said with a finality that wasn’t usually in his tone.
“Three now, one later, and no more of those space movies. We’ll watch the film about Queen Victoria tonight.”
George took a moment to weigh that up. “Agreed,” he said, though with an edge of reluctance.
“Why am I wrong?” I asked. “Surely the first thing in any investigation is to find out who the victim is.”
“That was my first instinct,” George said, “but Mary’s right, we’re not cops. A detective might enquire about the victim’s identity, while the coroner carried out an autopsy, and the lab techs analysed the dirt under the fingernails and all the rest. We don’t have any of those people or their skills. Let’s say that our worst fears are correct. Let’s imagine this isn’t an accident. That makes it murder, and all we have to go on is that Lorraine saw two of them at the inn. Everyone goes through there so it doesn’t mean much, but it might mean a lot. If we go there and ask, they’ll deny knowing them, or they might even confirm it. They might thank us finding their long-lost friends. That won’t help us work out what happened.”
