Britain's End

by Frank Tayell

  A light ahead swung to the left. Bran ran forward, machete raised, hacking it down on the broken-legged zombie crawling along the road.

  Not all the undead had gone to the hotel, then, but how many more were left in Dundalk?

  “That’s five minutes,” Bran said.

  Kim was tempted to hit the ambulance again. Since they’d reached the hospital, they’d added another five corpses to those littering the car park’s muddy tarmac.

  “There’ll be more inside,” she said. “But they can wait until daylight, when we have rifles in our hands and spare ammunition in our packs.”

  “Will the college be safe then?” Pete asked.

  “Safe enough,” Bran said.

  Kim looked up at the dark and star-less sky. “I wish it would rain. The map we found in the college said that there was a place called Our Lady’s Well about a kilometre and a half from here. Mary thinks it’s a shrine rather than a church, but that it probably did have a well there once. It might have one there still.”

  Bran swept his torch across the car park. The light bounced off a metal sign, then a window, then an ambulance’s wing mirror, before settling on the broken door that led into the hospital. “I’d say we can manage a night without water,” he said. “There were five zombies here in the car park, plus another two on the road. Even if we’d seen none, I wouldn’t assume there are no more in the town. We’d have to walk two kilometres from the well back to the college, and in the dark, carrying water. And that’s after we’ve found something to put the water in. It’s…” He trailed off, and turned his head up. He held out his hand. Kim did the same. Something cold landed on her cheek. And again.

  “Is that snow?” she said.

  Everyone looked up.

  “I can’t remember the last time I saw snow,” Yasmina said.

  “Skiing, two winters ago,” Pete said. “Austria. It was a last-minute getaway.”

  “For me,” Bran said, “it was January, up in Sheffield. But this solves our water problem.”

  “And creates a new one,” Kim said. “Can a helicopter fly in the dark and the snow?”

  “Let the pilot decide,” Bran said. “When we get back to the college, you can call in and ask.”

  Kim took the hint. “Form up, then,” she said. “Let’s get back to the college. Maybe Prudence has managed to cook something hot.”

  That thought cheered them until they were back on the road. For Kim, at least, the novelty of snow soon wore off, replaced by the bitterly cold reality.

  “I need to find some new gloves,” Mirabelle said. “I threw mine out after the battle.”

  “We’ll need hats, scarves, and twice as much wood,” Kim said.

  “We should have stayed on Anglesey,” Pete said.

  “It wasn’t our choice,” Kim said. “If we’d stayed, we’d have died.”

  “No, I know that,” Pete said. “I just mean… I never thought it would snow.”

  “Don’t be so gloomy,” Yasmina said, and she sounded genuinely cheerful. “Snow is the best thing ever. We’ve solved our water problem, and being overheard by the undead. Don’t you remember how quiet it used to be after a snowfall? The zombies won’t hear us, but we’ll hear them, crunching their way towards us.”

  “It’ll be easier to look on the bright side when we’re back in the warm,” Pete said.

  Kim agreed, but didn’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits.

  As it fell, the wind caught the snow, and Kim had to keep her head down to keep her eyes clear. When she looked up, she saw that Bran had overtaken her and was now in the lead. Beyond him she thought she could make out lights, but the sight was lost amid another pristine white flurry.

  “Not far to go,” she said, turning around to check that all were still there. They were, though everyone was moving far slower than before, with their attention more on their feet than the surrounding countryside. “You can see the lights,” she said, letting them pass her. “Keep going.”

  She fell in at the rear, shining her torch into the darkness beside and behind, but beyond thirty feet, all was darkness.

  “I can see lights at the college!” Pete called. “We’re almost there.”

  Yasmina ran across to a wall, scraped some snow into a loose ball, and threw it at Pete.

  “Hey! I’m cold enough as it is,” he said, laughing.

  “Not now!” Bran called, his voice stern. “When we’re back.”

  Yasmina climbed onto the wall. “Come on, Bran. We fought a battle and won. We survived a shipwreck. We escaped a nuclear reactor’s meltdown. We survived the outbreak and everything in between. Now we’re finally safe.”

  “How do you figure that?” Pete asked.

  “Zombies can’t walk through a snow drift!”

  “Nor can we,” Pete said.

  Yasmina skipped a step along the wall. “We’ve got the helicopter. We’ve got some grain. By the time the snow melts, the zombies will be dead. Don’t you see? It’s over. We’ve won. We’ve survived!”

  “I can see lights ahead,” Bran said. “And I can see my breath freezing in front of me. Stay here if you want. I’m going to get inside where it’s warm.” He started walking again. Everyone else followed.

  Yasmina gave a theatrical shrug, and as she moved her shoulders, her foot slipped. She raised her arms, waving them to regain balance. Pete laughed, and it was such a comical sight, Kim almost did the same. Yasmina fell backwards, and gave a short, wet gasp as she landed.

  “Yasmina?” Pete ran over. “Yasmina! Help! Bran! Kim! Someone!”

  Kim sprinted over, stopping at the wall. Yasmina lay on her back. Her eyes were open, but something dark spread across the snow behind her head. Kim jumped over the wall, kneeling in the snow next to the woman.

  “Yasmina? Yasmina? There’s… there’s blood.” There was too much blood. Carefully, she felt under Yasmina’s head. “She hit a rock. A brick. It’s…” She stumbled into silence, uncertain what to say, uncertain there was anything more that needed to be said.

  Bran pulled off his glove, and felt for a pulse. “Too damned cold,” he muttered.

  “We need to get her back,” Pete said. “Quick. Don’t just kneel there. Bandage her or something.”

  “It’s too late,” Bran said. “I’m sorry, Pete.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s dead.” He stood. “Back to the college. Everyone. Go.”

  “We can’t leave her. We have to help her,” Pete said. “She can’t die like this. Not now. Not after today. Not after everything. Not like this.”

  Bran shook his head, and took the man’s arm, walking him away from the body.

  Kim lingered a moment, as everyone else slowly followed the soldier back to the college, everyone except Mirabelle.

  “She… she just died,” Mirabelle said. “I… I guess I forgot that could just happen.”

  “The brick split her head open,” Kim said. “It was instantaneous, if there’s any comfort in that.”

  “Not really,” Mirabelle said.

  Kim bent down, closed Yasmina’s eyes, and crossed her hands over her chest. “Rest now. You’ve earned it.”

  Chapter 32 - The Least Worst Choice

  Dundalk

  “It’s such a stupid, tragic accident,” Kim said. She and Mary were outside the college’s main entrance, watching the snow fall. Word of Yasmina’s death had spread as soon as they’d returned. The good cheer following the battle at the hotel had evaporated faster than the snow was falling. “I’d forgotten that people could just die.”

  “There’s often very little comfort in words,” Mary said. “We have to focus on the future.”

  “I agree,” Kim said. “The snow changes everything. Or is it that it can so quickly change the appearance of the world that we see everything in a new way? See it for how it is, maybe. Belfast is willing to launch the helicopter if we ask them.”

  “I don’t think we should allow them to risk it,” Mary said.
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br />   “I agree. Not until the undead are at our doors,” Kim said. When they’d returned, she’d called Sholto. The snowstorm had hit Belfast first. The helicopter had been grounded, and The New World was weathering the storm out at sea. “But the ship is only five miles away, the helicopter could attempt the journey if our lives are at risk. Still, there aren’t any undead here now. Plus, snow means water. We’ve wood to burn, and fires to keep us warm. I think we’ll be safe here until tomorrow. What do we do the day after? What’s your plan, Mary?”

  “To overcome the crisis and to weather the next.”

  “But specifically,” Kim said. “I mean after Belfast.”

  “Connemara, I think,” Mary said. “Somewhere without the undead. I asked Rahinder, and he thinks we can dismantle the turbine. We can’t bring the column, but we can manufacture a new one out of scaffolding.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You disagree?”

  “When I came here… gosh, it was only this morning, but I thought we could stay in Dundalk until the food was gone. It’s not just the food. It’s clothing, it’s soap, it’s all the things that we can’t replace, but we can find easily enough. I mean, take washing-up. To clean a bowl we’ve got to fetch water, fetch firewood, find soap. If we’re doing that, why not just find a new bowl?”

  “You thought?” Mary said.

  “I did. I still do, sort of. Mary, the whole way we’re thinking of survival, it’s all wrong. We can’t dig any fields now, not in the snow. It’ll be at least three months before we start to farm.”

  “The hydroponics will see us through,” Mary said. “We can set them up in Elysium, power them using the turbines until we can move the turbines to an island in Connemara.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kim said. “If the food is in Elysium, but the people are in Connemara, we’re going to waste time and energy transporting one to the other.”

  “Perhaps we can find an island that’s closer.”

  “It’s not just that,” Kim said. “It’s the undead. Without ammunition, we can’t call this place secure, but that’s true of everywhere, especially somewhere like Elysium. It’ll take months before any hydroponic farm will produce anywhere near enough to feed us all. We’ll spend those months holding back the undead. By the time we’re harvesting our first few salad leaves, the remainder of the ammunition will be gone.”

  “That is the worst case,” Mary asked. “Unless you have a better suggestion, what other choice do we have?”

  “Ships,” Kim said. “We live on ships. When it comes to hydroponics, there’s not much difference between a greenhouse and a cabin. If the ships have desalinisation gear, water won’t be an issue. We have that oil up in Svalbard, and we’re trying to eke it out, but if we continue like this, the fuel will be there after we’re all dead.”

  “We don’t have any large ships,” Mary said. “Unless you mean the grain carriers and the John Cabot.”

  “We’ll find them,” Kim said.

  “It’s a nice idea,” Mary said, “but we’ve been looking. There’s nothing large afloat around Britain or Ireland, or on the way up to Norway. I take it you’re thinking of a cruise ship?”

  “Pretty much. One of those ten-thousand-passenger behemoths, but I’ll settle for whatever we can find.”

  “And, as I say, we’ve looked, and found nothing,” Mary said.

  “So we should look harder,” Kim said. “We can’t farm until the zombies have died, and there just aren’t enough of us to kill all of them. That’s what I’m saying, that we need to do things differently.”

  “And more specifically, more immediately, what does that mean?” Mary asked.

  “That we don’t go to Belfast,” Kim said. “We stay here until the food is gone, or we’re forced to flee. When we do leave, we stay on The New World, and travel to the next town. We loot the clothes we need, the crockery, the firewood. We scavenge rather than try to repair and mend what we have. We move the satellites over the coast of Europe, over the Mediterranean and North Africa. We look for some ships. We tell Leon, rather than coming back here, that he and Bill and the people from London should secure them.”

  “And the people in Belfast and Elysium?”

  “We’ll bring the ships to them. For now, though, they will have to do the same as us. Use up the resources locally, and prepare to move on. The alternative… it’s death, Mary. We’re not starting a new life. We’re not beginning a new chapter in the history of our people. Until the zombies die, our future is on hold. We can try to keep everyone together, but they will drift away, one-by-one, ten-by-ten. Heather Jones’s people will sail south to warmer weather. Sophia will re-cross the Atlantic, and she won’t be alone. The admiral might go with her, or she’ll launch her own expedition. Did you hear Chester Carson’s story about the children in the mansion in Kent? Families and individuals fled until there were only the children and a couple of adults left. That’s what’ll happen to us. And in a year, we’ll be scattered. So many more will be dead, but none of us will have the numbers to rebuild civilisation let alone build a new one. No, we have to stay together.”

  “The admiral will want to return to America,” Mary said. “That promise is how she has maintained discipline.”

  “And the presence of her people has maintained order. So we’ll all go with her. Whether we scavenge from Venice or Boston, what does it matter? No, all that matters is that, when the zombies do finally stop, when we can safely use a shovel to dig rather than kill, we begin our new lives close enough together that our descendants can know one another, and know that they are not enemies.”

  “Ship-borne scavengers? We’ll be pirates by another name.”

  “It was all about holding people together, wasn’t it?” Kim said. “The radio, the newssheet, the election. Even Bill’s journal, it was a way of telling each other that we were in this together.”

  “In all honesty,” Mary said, “it was to make everyone think that we had a plan.”

  “Then this is our new plan. All of us, together, on two or three ships, together until the fuel runs out, or it’s safe for us to go our separate ways. It’s snowing in Belfast, too, Mary, and I think the novelty of it will have worn off as the cold truly sets in. We can’t catch fish in a snowstorm. No, I think everyone will look forward to wintering in the Mediterranean, or off the coast of Louisiana.”

  “But first we have to find the ships,” Mary said.

  “I’ll call Sholto, and ask him to move the satellites in the morning,” Kim said. “There’s not much more we can do tonight. Let’s go back inside.”

  “In a moment, dear. I want to watch the snow fall.”

  The flakes caught in the lights of the lamps.

  “Each one unique, yet in existence for such a short span of time,” Mary said. “The sea is a dangerous place, but Yasmina is the proof that so is the land. And didn’t they say that a ship is an island unto itself? We’d not have to worry about the undead. But there’s one more thing we must do before we board our arks. We have to find those responsible for the sabotage.”

  Chapter 33 - Resupply

  23rd November, Dundalk, Day 255

  The snow crunched beneath Kim’s feet as she and Bran trudged through the campus towards the playing fields beyond the wind turbine.

  “At least the snow has stopped falling,” Kim said, thrusting her hands deeper into her pockets.

  “There’ll be another flurry later,” Bran said, gesturing at the clouds. “But then I think it’ll melt.”

  “You do?”

  “Gut instinct,” he said. “Which is another way of saying it’s a guess. Either way, we need to get the food from the wreck as soon as we’ve got the resupply of ammunition from the helicopter. Walking on snow is hard work, but half as much as walking on icy snowmelt. The roads will become rinks, the ditches will become rivers, and the fields will become swamps.”

  “And there’s a cheery thought to round off the morning,” Kim said. There had been little good cheer abou
t during the night. Partly that was Yasmina’s death, partly, it was the cold. Burning chipboard, and veneered furniture required having a window open for the fumes to escape, and that let in the cold air as quickly as the fires could heat it. That Catch-22 had led to a cold, fretful night only partially relieved by a filling breakfast. Prudence had outdone herself, or perhaps it was just a function of how hungry everyone was, but barley porridge sweetened with honey and cinnamon had tasted like nectar. They’d used up every jar of honey left in the school, and all of the cinnamon. They’d used far more of the barley than their strict calculations had allowed for, too. But everyone was fed, and thanks to the abundant snow, had enough hot water for a cup of tea or coffee to go with it. There hadn’t been enough hot water to wash, though.

  “How long will it take to get the rest of the barley and oats from the wreck?” Kim asked.

  “Probably all day,” Bran said. “It’d be easier if we had some carts. We should get everyone who’s not coming down to the beach to make some. It’ll keep them busy.”

  “Good idea. Carts with skis, I suppose. And we’ll need clothes from the nearby houses.”

  “And firewood. Books and games, too. Games more than books, since there won’t be enough light to read unless Rahinder can get that turbine working.”

  They glanced up as they passed the turbine. There was a muffled thud of something metal hitting something else. That was not the type of sound she associated with the repair of delicate machinery.

  “The carts and food must come first,” Kim said. “If Rahinder can’t get that turbine to work, we’ll move on this afternoon, and it might as well be to wherever the central shopping street is. Dry and clean clothes will do almost as much for morale as a working light bulb.”

  “Assuming those shops haven’t already been looted,” Bran said.

  “Assuming,” Kim agreed. “At least The New World has arrived.”

  That had been one of the few good pieces of news with which they had welcomed the dawn. The New World was anchored a mile offshore, and was ready to approach as soon as a quay or jetty had been found. Finding one would be Kim’s task while Bran went back to the wreck, but neither expedition could depart until they had collected the ammunition from the helicopter.