Strike a Match 3

by Frank Tayell

  Strike A Match 3

  Endangered Nation

  Frank Tayell

  Dedication:

  Dedicated to Ruth & Ollie

  Published by Frank Tayell

  Copyright 2017

  All rights reserved

  All people, places, and (especially) events are fictional.

  Other titles:

  Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novels

  Strike a Match 1. Serious Crimes

  Strike a Match 2. Counterfeit Conspiracy

  Strike a Match 3. Endangered Nation

  Work. Rest. Repeat.

  Surviving The Evacuation/Here We Stand

  Book 1: London

  Book 2: Wasteland

  Zombies vs The Living Dead

  Book 3: Family

  Book 4: Unsafe Haven

  Book 5: Reunion

  Book 6: Harvest

  Book 7: Home

  Here We Stand 1: Infected

  Here We Stand 2: Divided

  Book 8: Anglesey

  Book 9: Ireland

  Book 10: The Last Candidate

  Book 11: Search and Rescue

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  http://blog.franktayell.com

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  Synopsis

  In 2019, the AIs went to war. Three days later, hundreds of nuclear missiles were launched. The electromagnetic pulse destroyed the machines, but the radiation and ensuing famine nearly destroyed humanity.

  By 2039, civilisation had regressed to the age of steam, but newer technologies were on the horizon. The future looked bright until the warlords swept through Europe. Villages and towns were laid waste, the few thousand people who’d hacked out a life in the continental wasteland were butchered. It was only when the barbarians reached the British garrison in Calais that they were stopped. And so, another war began.

  In Dover, life goes on. Food needs to be grown. Children need to be taught. For Ruth Deering, the city’s newest police officer, crimes need to be solved. When an artist is murdered, an investigation begins that will take her far beyond the city’s walls and, ultimately, determine the fate of their fragile democracy.

  Set in Britain and France, twenty years after the world we know was destroyed.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue - Refugees

  Chapter 1 - Hot Pursuit

  Chapter 2 - The Dover Constabulary

  Chapter 3 - A Lonely Life

  Chapter 4 - Bacon

  Chapter 5 - A Good Employee

  Chapter 6 - The White Cliffs

  Chapter 7 - The Tramp

  Chapter 8 - Smoke, Wood and Gun

  Chapter 9 - Victory Pie

  Chapter 10 - Number 10

  Chapter 11 - Homeless at Home

  Chapter 12 - Five Bodies

  Chapter 13 - Death Row

  Chapter 14 - The Blackout

  Chapter 15 - Twenty Years Later

  Chapter 16 - Watching the World Burn

  Chapter 17 - A Parting Gift

  Chapter 18 - Travelling in Comfort

  Chapter 19 - Run

  Chapter 20 - The Garrison

  Chapter 21 - The Front Line

  Chapter 22 - The Home Front

  Epilogue 1 - Executive Decisions

  Epilogue 2 - Sameen

  Prologue - Refugees

  17th September 2028, Channel Tunnel Refugee Camp, Kent

  Nine Years After The Blackout

  “Did you think we’d ever see so many people again?” Hassan Hafiz asked.

  Saleema Hafiz smiled as she turned her eyes from their young daughter to the refugee camp built a few miles from the Folkestone entrance to the Channel Tunnel. “I didn’t think there were this many people left in the entire world,” she said.

  The two parents sat at a sun-bleached, bird-pecked picnic table at the top of a grass-covered embankment. At the bottom of the slope, grass turned to a weed-dotted expanse of tarmac, marking the beginning of a monstrous vehicle park. The few trucks and lorries that had been abandoned there after the nuclear holocaust, nine years and one month ago, had been pushed to one side, left to rust in peace. In their place was a sprawling refugee camp. A forest of worn tents and corrugated lean-tos sprouted around each of the battered pre-Blackout buildings. Those temporary restrooms and restaurants, customs offices and cells had been built in preparation for congestion and delays that the nuclear war meant had never come. Some of those buildings had been re-purposed, others repaired, but all were full of those escaping the hunger and horror of the continental wasteland.

  “There are more people coming through the Channel Tunnel,” Hassan said. “Do you see?”

  “I do,” Saleema said. Like themselves, those new refugees would have endured a thirty-mile walk from Calais made in near pitch-darkness. It had taken their small family a day and a half to make that nightmare journey. There were no trains through the Channel Tunnel, not anymore, but there were trains in Britain. The smoke-billowing locomotive to the west of the camp was a sight even more wondrous than that of so many people.

  “We’ll be on that train soon,” Saleema murmured. “On a train, Hassan. A train!”

  “In three days, two hours, ten minutes, give or take,” he said. An old reflex had him reach into a pocket to retrieve his phone to check that he had the correct time, but he had no phone, nor a watch, and nor did she. Neither had anything but each other, the clothes on their backs, and their daughter, Sameen. Their daughter had fared slightly better, having managed to bring a stuffed bear with her all the way from the compound. The ribbon was still around the bear’s neck, but a fire had singed all but four letters from it: R, U, T, H. The young girl still clutched that bear in an iron-grip that rarely slackened even when she was asleep. Now, the bear trailed through the wild grass as the girl tugged daisies, mayweed, and dandelions from the soil.

  “Three more days and three more nights in that tent,” Saleema said. “At least it’s not too cold.”

  “It’s almost pleasant,” Hassan said. “Remember August? Who knew that mountains got so hot in the summer?”

  Saleema smiled, but said nothing. Before the Blackout, Hassan had spent his days in a temperature-controlled lab, his nights in an air-conditioned apartment. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of anything binary, but a minuscule one of the world beyond.

  The train sounded its whistle. Startled, Sameen dropped her flowers.

  “Wave, dear, wave,” Saleema said. “The train’s going. Wave them goodbye.”

  Hesitantly, glancing more at her parents than the locomotive, the girl did.

  “When we leave, we’ll have been here ten days,” Saleema said. “And thanks to Sameen, we’re getting priority travel. That tells us a lot about how many people they were expecting.”

  “They thought it would be five hundred a week,” Hassan said. “It’s four hundred arriving each day, with a margin of error of plus or minus thirteen. That’s in a camp with a maximum capacity of ten thousand, but which now has twelve thousand, two hundred and ninety-seven living here. Not counting those people coming through the Tunnel right now.”

  “You asked?” Saleema was surprised. Hassan wasn’t exactly anti-social, but he’d not had much experience in socialising before they’d met ten years ago. That had been one year before the Blackout. There hadn’t been much chance to socialise since.

  “No,” Hassan said. “When I was helping wash up, I counted the bowls. I crosschecked those against the latrines’ storage capacity and the frequency with which they’re emptied. It’s a simple enough calculation.”

  “You know,” she said, sm
iling, “if you’d asked, I’m sure someone would have told you.”

  “It’s safer not to ask,” Hassan said.

  “This isn’t the compound,” she said. “No, it really isn’t. I met some people from Ukraine at the clinic,” she added. “Or Sameen did. She’s good at meeting people.”

  “Ukraine? Where?”

  “Kovalyn,” Saleema said. “Well, no, they came from a place near Kovalyn which I couldn’t begin to pronounce. It was a village on the eastern banks of the Dnieper River, in the shadow of an old water treatment plant.”

  “That’s about two and a half thousand kilometres away,” Hassan said.

  “We travelled further,” Saleema said. “Though they travelled for longer. They left in February. Their village depended on winter wheat, but the winter came early, and the snow came soon after. By January, it was clear that they were only going to have enough for half of their village. They drew lots to see who’d leave.”

  “Well, that doesn’t make sense,” Hassan said. “That would only leave them with half the labour to grow the food this year. By now, another half will have left. The remainder will leave next spring.”

  “Probably,” Saleema said. “There were three hundred in that village. One hundred and thirty-eight left. Nineteen made it here.”

  “Oh. What route did they take?”

  “South, at first,” she said. “Towards the Black Sea. Something… something happened, but I’m not sure what. They turned around and went north. They ended up in the ruins of Hamburg before they found a convoy heading to Britain.”

  “They went south at first? Hadn’t they heard of how Britain was recovering?” Hassan asked.

  “No,” Saleema said. “Not in their village. No convoy had reached it. They heard rumours from a few trappers as they travelled, but they weren’t looking to come so far. They wanted a season of labour where they could earn food to take back to their village. It was around the time they reached the Danube that they knew they’d never see their home again. There were other people in the clinic with similar stories. Forced to flee by hunger, or the weather, or by bandits. And some of those bandits came from neighbouring villages where the harvest had already failed.”

  “That’s similar to what we heard on that convoy,” Hassan said. “And it has to be a similar story all across the world.”

  It was nine years and one month since the digital viruses were unleashed. They’d infected every circuit and motor that was on a network. Gates were unlocked, sluices were opened, motors overheated, and engines were shut down. Dams emptied, ferries sunk, planes fell out of the sky, and power stations failed. Batteries overheated and laptops and phones caught fire. Those fires spread to tables and desks, to rooms and roofs, and cities burned. No fire engines worked, no hydrants had the pressure to put out the flames. There were no ambulances to take the injured for treatment, and no electricity in the hospitals to provide it. The police had done what they could, supplemented by scratch military units and civilian volunteers. There was little that they could do. There was little anyone could do. So someone had done the unthinkable. Nuclear missiles had been launched. The electromagnetic pulse destroyed the electronic circuitry that the viruses had infected, but the fireballs and fallout destroyed civilisation. That first winter had been long. The second had been longer. Billions had died. But Britain, somehow, had survived better than most. Rumours of that had even spread to the underground compound. When it became clear to Saleema that they had to flee if their daughter was ever to have a life of her own, there was only one logical destination.

  They had stolen an APC, slipped away in the dead of night, and made nearly five hundred miles across ruined roads before they ran out of fuel. Over the next week, they managed another fifty miles before they ran out of food. They would have died if they hadn’t stumbled across the convoy. It had come from Britain, and was on a survey mission searching for communities of survivors. They’d found a few, though none large enough to even be called a village. The Hafiz family had been found room in the back of a wagon, and the rest of their journey was easy, though long.

  Sameen ran up, a posy of partially crushed flowering weeds in her hand, the bear still clutched in the other. She thrust the flowers towards Saleema.

  “They’re beautiful, my sweet,” Saleema said. “Just as beautiful as you. Now, why don’t you find some for Daddy? But don’t run too far,” she added as their daughter rushed off along the overgrown embankment.

  “Do you think she’ll ever talk?” Hassan asked.

  “There are doctors in the city,” Saleema said. “Psychiatrists, too. She’ll be fine when there is a little normality in her life.”

  Sameen had been born in the underground compound, and hadn’t seen the sky until they’d escaped. She’d never spoken, though she occasionally mumbled in her sleep. The girl clearly understood what she heard, but simply didn’t want to talk. As to why and what that meant, Saleema had no idea, and nor did any of the other coders and scientists who had grown to call the compound home.

  Saleema had met Hassan ten years ago, one year before the Blackout, at a small conference that was being used as a recruitment fair by the man who would become their employer. Out of the hundreds who’d attended, she and Hassan were the only two who were offered a job. The salary was ridiculous, three times that which a post-doc fellow should be able to command. They’d both said yes. Hassan specialised in algorithms associated with pattern recognition, Saleema on more esoteric code to differentiate the moral from the immoral, but everyone was working towards one goal: to create the world’s first truly intelligent artificial life. Saleema hadn’t considered what that life would be used for.

  Their work wasn’t complete when the Blackout occurred, but it took years before she learned their creations had a part in that horror. Saleema had learned the truth of what had happened, and what she and Hassan had been involved in, shortly after Sameen was born. She and her new-born were in the compound’s medical room. As Sameen slept, and Saleema rested her eyes, she heard her employer talking with Mr Emmitt in the corridor beyond.

  What she’d heard hadn’t made sense at first. Other people across the world had been working towards the same goal of creating artificial life. When it became clear that someone was going to beat them to it, a collection of digital viruses had been released. They were Frankenstein creations, abominations based on the research that she and Hassan, and all the others, had been working on. Those viruses had gone rogue, replicating, mutating, and rewriting their own code in a bid to survive. That was how the world had died. That was why the world had died. Simply so a vain man wouldn’t be beaten to success.

  Even knowing the truth, she and Hassan couldn’t leave, not with an infant daughter and no known refuge. Days became weeks, and those turned to years. Mr Emmitt had gone out and come back, and so had other teams. News reached them of the horrors of the outside world, along with whispers that Britain had survived.

  It turned out that those whispers had been wishful exaggeration. Britain had steam trains and coal power plants. It had a few hospitals and schools, but it was only a dim Victorian shadow of its former self.

  “Why do they call the capital city Twynham, do you think?” Hassan asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Saleema said. “It’s where Bournemouth used to be, I think. That’s a seaside town.”

  “One and three-quarter million people here in Britain,” he said. “It’s not quite what we thought. I heard there’s at least ten million in America.”

  “How would we cross the Atlantic?” Saleema asked.

  “They have ships,” Hassan said. “I asked. They send food and medicine across the Atlantic. We could buy passage.”

  “With what money?” she asked, plucking at her threadbare coat. “Besides, we want to stay hidden, and the best place to do that is surrounded by other refugees. That means Twynham. In America, how many people do you think come from thousands of miles away? We’d be too conspicuous.”

  “No one�
��s looking for us,” Hassan said. “But if they are, then distance is our best ally.”

  “We’ll see,” Saleema said. “But let’s see what Twynham is like first.”

  Sameen ran over with another fistful of partially crushed flowers. Hassan took them and smiled. “Thank you, precious.”

  “They have schools in Twynham,” Saleema said. “Schools with lots of other children.”

  Sameen tilted her head to one side, and gave her mother a quizzical look. Then she smiled.

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Hassan said.

  “Maybe not,” Saleema agreed. “But we’ve three days to go before we leave. Shall we go and see what’s for lunch?”

  Sameen took Saleema’s hand, then held out her stuffed bear towards Hassan. He laughed, and took its grubby paw. Laughing, the family headed back towards the camp.

  It took a minute before Saleema noticed the figure walking towards them. He didn’t look like a refugee, or like one of the people from Twynham. His swagger was almost familiar. The man drew nearer and she saw his face. It was criss-crossed with scars. She stopped. Hassan did the same.

  “What is it?” he asked. His face turned ashen as he saw the man walking towards them.

  “Mr Emmitt,” Saleema murmured. Sameen edged behind her mother’s leg. Saleema looked around for help, for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. They had run for months, for thousands of miles, and yet they had been found.

  Mr Emmitt stopped ten yards from them. His face moved in what might have been a smile, but as the scars moved, it only made his grimace even more sinister. He crouched down and addressed their daughter.

  “Hello, Sameen,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “How did you find us?” Hassan asked.

  “Where else would you go?” Mr Emmitt said, straightening. “What do you think of England? You never saw it before the Blackout, did you? Personally, I think this is an improvement.”