by Frank Tayell
12th March
“Mum! I think the fuses have gone. The shower’s running cold,” Jay growled furiously from the bathroom. That morning they had limited their scavenging to the houses in their immediate neighbourhood. It was at one of those, a few hours after midday, that Jay had fallen into a fishpond, ending up coated in slime. They had cut short the expedition and returned home.
“It’s not the fuses,” Sebastian said. He stood in the living room, peering through a small gap in the closed curtains. “There was a light left on in that house over there. It’s gone out.”
Nilda, who had been sitting at the kitchen table sorting through the tins by calorie content, stood up and tried the electric stove, then the kettle, and then the microwave.
“The power’s been cut,” she stated.
“Seems like it,” Sebastian agreed, walking into the kitchen.
“You mean I have to shower in cold water?” Jay groaned.
“No,” Nilda said. “I mean, no more showers. No more baths. We can’t waste the water.”
“But the water’s still running,” Jay protested.
“Then turn it off! The reservoir is on higher ground than the town. Gravity will keep it flowing. Probably,” she added. “But there’s the water treatment plant between us and it. That definitely required electricity. If some sluice gate or valve is closed, then there’ll be no more water.” Or if the pipes burst or there was some mechanism to automatically shut down the system in the event of a power cut. She didn’t think there was. There had been a blackout two years before, and the water had kept flowing then. But for all she knew, they had a backup generator at the treatment plant. She’d thought about going there to see, but she wouldn’t know what it looked like, let alone how to turn it on. The only preparation she’d been able to make had been to check that all the hot-water tanks in the terrace and in the larger houses in the road opposite were full, and the taps were closed.
“But I’m covered in soap!” Jay protested self-pityingly.
“Alright,” she relented. “You can rinse yourself off. Two minutes. No more.”
There was a grumbled growl from behind the bathroom door as Jay went back into the shower to rinse off.
“How long before we have to boil the water before we drink it?” Nilda asked Sebastian.
“I couldn’t say. A week? Less? I don’t know, so I suggest we start doing it from tomorrow.”
“That’s what I thought. We’ll need fuel for the stoves then,” Nilda said.
“I don’t know where else you’d find it except the camping shop,” Sebastian said. “And if that’s not going to be an option—”
“It isn’t.”
Sebastian had suggested they try trading for it. She’d tried to explain that they didn’t have anything to trade - not anything she was willing to, at least. Sebastian hadn’t understood, and she hadn’t wanted to spell it out to him.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” Sebastian continued. “Even with all the paraffin they had in stock, we’d run out in a month. No, we need a more permanent solution.”
“You mean fire?”
“There’s enough furniture in these houses to spare.”
“But we’re not going to burn anything in that,” she said, gesturing at the fireplace in the front room.” Like all the houses in the terraces, the chimney had been removed when the indoor plumbing was put in. In its stead stood a now useless electric heater.
“We could rip this up,” Sebastian said, stamping on the lino. “There’s stone underneath. Start a fire in a tray with a grill over the top.”
“Why not just use a barbecue outside?”
“No. It would be too dangerous,” he said. “Too great a chance of being seen by the undead. It’s not just about gathering food, finding freshwater and all those other basics of survival. We have to be ready for that ever-present threat. We have to be prepared in case they come.”
Nilda looked down at the floor, then at the low ceiling. “It’s not a permanent solution. I mean, it’ll do for a few days, but not much longer than that. And we can’t burn furniture. Not inside. Not if we don’t want to be poisoned by the fumes from the varnish.”
“No. That’s a good point. I forgot. I… I find it’s hard to get my mind into the right gear. I can’t stop thinking about the coming siege.”
“Let’s start with the immediate,” Nilda said. Her thoughts had been turning in that direction herself, but she wasn’t ready to embrace them. Not yet. “We need heat to cook on. And we need batteries to see at night because I’m not sitting in the dark with only my thoughts for company.”
“Batteries we can find in most houses. Coal on the other hand, the only place I can think of that definitely had some was the petrol station up near the industrial estate. They used to have it stacked on the forecourt. I bet it’s still there.”
It wasn’t. The forecourt was empty. The shop’s windows had been smashed. A rope had been hung across both the entrance and exits, but it had pulled down. It now lay discarded in the road, a handwritten sign, blotted and blotched by rainwater lay next to it. Nilda picked it up.
“Supplies seized by order. No petrol here,” she read. “That’s pretty much the same as we found on the requisition note left at the farms.”
“But whose order?” Sebastian asked. “That’s the question. And it didn’t stop someone from checking for themselves.”
The pumps lay loose on the cement forecourt, discarded where each in turn had been tried and found not to work.
“Perhaps there’s something around the back,” Jay said, as he started walking towards the building.
“Careful of the glass,” Nilda warned half-heartedly as she followed her son towards the building. She didn’t think he would find anything. This time she was right. Standing in the doorway, they could see that the shelves had been pulled down.
“I think,” she said, “that the owners must have emptied it out. There’s no wrappers, no boxes. It’s all gone. Then someone, perhaps Rob, perhaps someone else, came along and trashed it when they found it empty.”
“You know,” Sebastian said slowly, “if they did take all that food, and the coal, then perhaps they didn’t go on the evacuation either.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, their address will be around here somewhere. We could find it, and go and find them.”
“And then what? Ask for a hand out?”
“Why don’t we, you know, join forces?” Jay suggested. “Work together. That’d be safer. Or maybe they’d be willing to trade.”
“Right, but what did this place sell? Chocolate. Snacks. Cigarettes. We’ve got tins of vitamin and mineral enriched meat. Do we want to trade with them?”
“I don’t know,” Jay said, in a tone that suggested he wouldn’t mind trading half of their tins for a single bar of chocolate.
“Then look at it this way. How many people do you think worked here? How many families? How many parents of hungry children who are prepared to do anything to keep them fed? What if they just decided to take everything we have? No. We shouldn’t go looking for them. It won’t be safe.”
“What do you think?” Jay asked, turning to Sebastian. Nilda’s jaw tightened at that small act of rebellion.
“I think,” Sebastian said slowly, “that sooner or later we will have to trust someone, but if we’re to trade, we need to do it from a far stronger position than we have at the moment.”
“But what about the coal?” Jay asked.
“Well, since we’re here, we could try one of these farms. We did want to have another look for livestock,” she suggested uncertainly.
“I’m not sure that…” Sebastian began, but then he trailed off. He was staring out across the forecourt at the field over the road. “I think our discussion just became moot.” He pointed at a distant figure walking towards them across the ploughed earth.
“Do we go?” Nilda asked.
“We’d have to talk to others who stayed behind sooner or
later,” Sebastian said. “And there’s three of us and only one of… him? Or her? I can’t tell.”
Jay began walking back across the forecourt.
“Wait!” Nilda snapped. Jay ignored her. “Oh come on then,” she added, and followed her son.
By the time she reached the road, Jay was on the other side, leaning on the fence, staring out across the field. Nilda thought there was something odd about the now not-so-distant figure.
“Hey! Hi! Hello!” Jay yelled, waving. “We’re…” but he didn’t finish. He started backing away from the fence and the figure shambling through the muddy soil towards them. Its movement was erratic, arms flailed in front, its legs moved spasmodically, and as it got closer Nilda could see its teeth snapping up and down.
“Zombie,” Nilda murmured, as she ran across the road and grabbed her son’s arm. “Come on!” she barked, pushing him in front, “Quickly, now. We need to get out of here.”
He didn’t need much encouragement.
“What now?” Jay asked, when they were sitting around the kitchen table, the doors firmly closed, and the curtains pulled tight.
“We need bikes,” Nilda said. “It wasn’t moving that quickly. I don’t think they can. I mean, did you see any of them run on your way back from the Muster Point?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “They just have that slouching shambling gait, as if each limb is operating independently of the others. I don’t think they can move quickly, but they don’t need to rest.”
“We run and we hide,” Nilda said. “On bikes we can outpace them.”
“And then what?” Jay asked. “What if we see one and it follows us back here?”
“We’ll be careful. We won’t come back here, not directly. And we should block up the alleyway. Maybe…” She hesitated. “Maybe we’ve got enough food. For now, at least.”
“That’s not what you said yesterday,” Jay said.
“It’s what you were saying, though, wasn’t it?” she replied.
“Well, what about the coal?” he asked.
“We knew this would happen,” Sebastian said. “We just didn’t want to believe it. However you look at it, the numbers just don’t add up.”
“What do you mean?” Nilda asked.
“Take water. Within a few weeks, if not a few hours, the water will stop flowing out of the taps. That will leave us with the water in the tanks in these houses. For three people that will keep us going until August. But we’ll need to boil it. So we start by burning the furniture we can find in the terrace and then in the houses nearby. What do we do when we’ve burnt it all? We’ll spend our time going out, further and further, just to find wood to burn. We’ll run out of water during the height of summer, and then we’ll be spending our time just searching for that and carrying it back here. When autumn arrives we’ll need a fire for heat as well as cooking. Every day we’ll be searching for water and fuel. And in all that time we won’t have gone looking for food. Any that we don’t gather now will have spoiled, been taken by others, or eaten by vermin. No, if we stay here, stay safe behind our meagre walls, we are only delaying our inevitable demise.”
“Unless the zombies stop,” Nilda said. “If they do, then we can go out and…”
“And only have other scavengers and the harsh weather to worry about. But why should they ever stop when there’s no reason in their being alive?”
“You’re saying we need to move?” Nilda asked, flatly.
“What was it you said about Rob?” Jay asked. “About how he was scared, and that was the reason he was staying where he was? Sebastian’s right. We need a better house than this.”
The words stung. It was the best house that she could afford. When her salary was frozen and her hours cut whilst the prices kept going up, it was better than she could afford. But she’d kept the roof over their heads because a house was important to her. Jay was too young to remember their life in London. Far too young to remember that brief happy time when there were three of them, and thankfully too young to remember the miserable months when it was just her and him. He didn’t remember that dismal flat in the middle of an estate. A grim apartment in a block that would have been condemned if the council hadn’t owned it, with neighbours above, below, and to either side. A place where there was no point owning anything of value because, locked door or not, they would be broken into on a weekly basis. When the settlement came through, she’d decided they would leave London. She’d applied for dozens of jobs and only received one interview. After she’d explained why she’d brought a bawling infant with her - there was nobody left to whom she would entrust his care - the manager had been too riddled with guilt not to offer her the job. She’d bought the house because she didn’t want to owe anything to anyone, not a bank and certainly not a landlord. It was a second chance for them both. She’d had such high hopes. Most had come to nought, but the house was theirs. It was their home. Except…
“I know,” she said reluctantly. “We’ll find a house with a working chimney. And a high fence. Maybe with a proper garden in which we can plant something.”
“No. Not a house,” Sebastian said slowly. “We might have a bit more space, but we’d have the same problems.”
“What about one of the castles?” Jay suggested. “Lowther or Penrith or… what’s the other one?”
“Brougham. They’re just ruins. Broken shells standing in manicured grounds. Wonderful backdrops for wedding photographs, but of no use to us.”
“Well, what about one of the ones further away. I mean, there are plenty of proper ones aren’t there? Like the ones you took me too when I was young.”
“There are some, I suppose,” Nilda said, pleased that her son remembered those trips. “But really, they’re just large houses. They have strong walls, but you can’t eat stone. They would have wells or streams, but those are outside the main buildings, and the old battlement walls are all long gone. If the undead came then how would we get to the water? And there’s another problem. Castles are the obvious place to go. Other people will have thought of going there first.”
“Then we trade for a place,” Jay said, waving his arms at the piles of tins on the counters and in the living room. “This is all worth more than money now.”
“We’d have to cycle. So all we’d have to trade is three bags of pet food per trip. Let’s say that they believed we had more. We’d have to leave our food with them and come back again and again and again. And then, when we’d made our last trip and almost all our food was inside, we’d have to hope they would let us back in.” She didn’t mention the risk posed by the undead that they were surely to meet travelling back and forth through the British countryside.
“Then we drive,” Jay said. “We find a van, fill it up, and take it all in one go.”
“No, we can’t,” Sebastian said. “I think zombies are attracted by noise. They would follow the sound of the engine and no one would welcome us for bringing the undead to their refuge. And even if we were to find the place empty, we would still be under siege. Assuming, of course, that we found enough petrol to get us there, and that brings us back to the problem we started with.”
“Okay, fine,” Jay said. “So what’s your idea?”
“We need somewhere close by,” Nilda said. “Somewhere we can reach by bike and where it won’t take more than a few days to move all of our things. The best I can think of is one of the farms. Perhaps we could find one with crops already planted.”
“Perhaps,” Sebastian said, “but we need water more than we need food. And we need strong walls more than we need either of those.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jay said with growing impatience. “But where?”
“St Lucian’s,” Sebastian said.
“The school?” Nilda asked.
“Exactly.”
“The big private one up on the hill?” Jay asked.
“The same. The boarding houses were evacuated a week before…” He stopped. “God, I wonder what happened to all those children?
”
“Well,” Nilda said after a moment’s silence. “The schools were closed, so there might be some food there. What about water?”
“They had their playing fields dug over and a flood prevention system put in. It’s essentially a large underground reservoir to collect the rainwater.”
“So, what? Do we dig a well?”
“No. It was plumbed into the wastewater system. They were going to use it to flush toilets, irrigate the cricket pitches, that sort of thing.”
“Alright. So there’s water. What else?”
“The playing fields themselves. There’s more than enough space to turn into a farm, and not much more effort than would be required in working already ploughed fields. You know what they say about farming, that it’s ninety-percent pulling weeds and only ten-percent planting seeds; well, the pitches there are weed free.”
“Ploughing up playing fields? I don’t know. We’d have to do it by hand. There’ll be no tractors, no horses. That’s going to be a lot of work for just the three of us.”
“We’ll need more than three,” Sebastian replied, looking at Nilda. “A lot more. The school has a wall, but it only goes around the older part of the school. The newer part just has a chest-high fence. We’ll need to reinforce it, and that means work, and that means people. And, once our walls are built, we’ll need to keep them patrolled. But we need to be selective. We need to invite people to join us, not the other way around.”
They waited for Nilda to speak.
“Fine,” she said, standing up. “It’s agreed. Well, come on then. There’s no point putting it off.”
“Should we take some of the food with us?” Jay asked.
“No,” she said, “We’ll pack light, in case there are people there or… or in case we need to turn and run.”
Sebastian stood up and went over to his pack, one he’d kept ready by the door since he’d returned. He hefted it onto his shoulder. It was clearly still half full.
