“Must be set up to come on at night,” Kim said. “And that begs the question of by whom.”
“You want to look for them?” I asked.
“Don’t you?”
I wasn’t sure. The wire had been carefully wrapped. From the other side, it would be easy to disentangle. From our side, there’d be no way of doing it without ripping our arms to shreds.
“We’ll have to look for a way through the fields,” I said. “Or—”
“Shh! Listen.”
A rhythmic squeaking approached. A minute later, we saw her. A ragged-haired woman in a fur-lined jacket, tattered dungarees, and battered Wellington boots pushed a wheelbarrow down the track towards the barbed wire. The wheelbarrow was the cause of the squeak. In it was a shovel and a long pole. The woman was about five-nine, skinny but not starved, and had an almost blank expression. When she saw us, she barely paused, and didn’t stop until she reached the other side of the wire.
“Hello,” I said, unable to think of anything more succinct.
The woman nodded, not in greeting, but in recognition that she’d heard the words. She tilted her head to one side, then to the other. Her mouth moved, her lips twitched, as if she was struggling to remember how to speak. She shrugged, nodded again, and reached up to the bell. She unravelled the thread attaching the clapper to the barbed wire, donned a pair of heavy-duty gloves from the ’barrow, and then, with the help of the long pole, began unravelling the wire from the signpost.
“I’m Bill. This is Kim.”
The woman paused, nodded, and went back to her work.
“What’s your name?” I asked, going for the direct approach.
This time, the woman didn’t pause. “Name? What use are names in times like these?” Her accent was Irish and from the south, but not as thick as Mary O’Leary’s. She unravelled the last strand and rolled the wire across the path. She detached the dead zombie, and dragged it onto the wheelbarrow.
“You coming in?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure that we were.
“There’s another zombie,” Kim said. “A dead one. Down the road. We killed it. A soldier.”
“Soldiers and civilians,” the woman murmured. “In death, who can tell the difference? Go on through. There’s a fire and a pot, that’s all the hospitality anyone can offer. It’s all that anyone should ever have had to offer.”
The woman wheeled her ’barrow down the lane towards the dead soldier. Kim followed.
“We came from Anglesey,” she said.
“Really?” the woman said, pausing by the dead soldier. “You don’t sound like it.” With ease, she lifted the corpse into the wheelbarrow.
“Originally?” Kim said. “Well, originally is a long story, but most recently we came from Anglesey. There are over ten thousand people there. They’ve come from all over the world.”
“All over?” the woman asked.
“But you’re the first we’ve seen alive in Ireland,” Kim said.
“Ah.” The edge of curiosity disappeared from the woman’s tone as she pushed the wheelbarrow back between the curled wire.
“Do you live around here?” I asked.
“That’s an odd question,” the woman said.
“It is? Why?” Kim asked.
“It’s odd that you ask,” the woman said. “And odd that there are people left to ask. Ten thousand, you say? I thought I was the only one. Ten thousand from all over the world? Then that’s as good as saying I am the only one. You asked my name. I could say it was Nemain or Badb, but that would be a conceit as great as saying others are still alive. I can see you. I can see you are alive, but I can’t see them. Nor can you. No, names don’t matter, nor do numbers, not numbers that small. Come through or go on, but I’ve work to be done.”
A raven landed on the light. The woman smiled. It wasn’t a happy expression. The bird seemed to notice. It took flight.
Kim walked past the wire. I followed. The woman shrugged and put the wire back in place.
“Have you been burying the zombies?” Kim asked while I was still struggling for some way to get a conversation started.
“I have,” the woman said. “Haven’t you?”
“Um. No, not really,” Kim said. “There hasn’t been time.”
“There is time. There is always time,” the woman said. “Until there is no time left in the world.”
She reconnected the bell to the wire, walked to her wheelbarrow, and pushed it up the track. Kim and I followed, sharing more than a few questioning looks to which neither of us had an answer.
The woman stopped by a gate to the nearest field.
“The fire’s that way,” she said. “I’ll be along shortly.”
The field was half full of graves, with a dozen empty ones noticeable by the piles of dirt next to them. Ravens perched on the freshly dug soil, pecking for worms.
The woman pushed the wheelbarrow into the field, to the nearest grave, and levered both bodies in. She picked up her shovel, and scooped dirt on top. It was done quickly, and completely without ceremony. She picked up a crude cross and pushed it into place.
“Don’t you say any words?” I asked when she pushed her empty wheelbarrow out of the field.
“What would be the point?” the woman asked. “Do you think anyone is listening? I said the words once, and that will suffice for the entire world. It will have to, since I can only bury those that come to me. But say any words you want.”
“I… no,” I said. “What’s there to say?”
“Exactly.” She pushed her wheelbarrow along the track, whistling an off-key tune I almost recognised.
We saw the tent first, vibrant blue and neon-yellow, erected on the flat roof of a farmer’s outbuilding outside of which was a fire. The farm itself was visible across an empty field to the north.
“Why don’t you stay in the farmhouse?” I asked.
“It’s not mine,” the woman said walking over to her small fire. I didn’t ask why she’d not dug graves in that field. I thought I could guess the answer.
Over the fire hung a saucepan from which emanated a rich, herbal scent. The woman went to the outbuilding and retrieved a bottle of disinfectant. She doused her hands, then her face.
“Wash if you want,” she said. “Eat if you like.”
“What is it?” Kim asked.
“Raven,” the woman said. “Mostly. And blackberries. Some dandelion root and sage, but it’s mostly raven.” She looked at her saucepan with a flash of regret that softened her face, giving a hint of the woman she’d been eight months ago. “I miss starch,” she said.
“We’ve wheat on Anglesey,” Kim said. “Oats, too. We’ve electricity and a baker. You could come with us. You could come back with us.”
“I miss bread,” the woman said, her voice barely audible. Then her features hardened and the echo of the person she’d been vanished. “But if I leave, who will bury the dead? I have all I need. Yes, I have all I need.”
“But what about people? What about companionship?” Kim asked. “Are we the first people you’ve seen?”
“Living? Breathing? Talking? Yes. The first in a while. The first in a long while.”
“How long?” I asked.
The woman shook her head. Her mouth curled in a scornful grin. “How long? What use do I have for clocks? When did the world die? When was this world born? Since then and before. These are the end times, except there was no End of Days. There was no Tribulation, nor a final battle. The trumpets didn’t sound, because the trumpeters were the first to die. No angels shall gather us up, but the demons walk among us, wearing our skins. The world died with a scream that went unheard. Soon we shall all be dead. A day, a week, a year, what does it matter? No, I have no use for time.”
Kim turned her back on the woman, not in frustration but to hide the sorrow on her face.
“You’re from here, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Born, bred, and dead,” she said. “Like my ancestors for ten generations tha
t were recorded. Longer if you count those before the records were kept. Like many, I left. Like most, I came back. Unlike them, my body will never know the sweet kiss of soil upon my cold face. I shall die in the open, lie in the open, my bones to be picked clean by the birds. Born, bred, though not dead yet. No, not yet.” The bell jangled. The woman sighed. “Maybe now. Maybe not, but if not, then soon. Eat if you want. Get warm if you want. Or don’t.”
She wheeled her ’barrow back along the track in the direction of the bell.
“Do you want some stew?” Kim asked.
“No,” I said, looking first at the tent, then at the disappearing woman. “No, I don’t. What do you think that looks like?”
“What?”
“That neon yellow stripe on the tent,” I said. “Do you think it looks like a wave?”
“Not really. Why?”
I pointed inside the outbuilding. “Do you see on that chair, the fleece?”
Kim looked. “One of Kempton’s. So this woman worked for her?”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you want to wait for her, to ask her?” Kim asked, then answered her own question. “No, what would be the point? She’s mad, and I suppose this explains why. She came back to Ireland to work for Kempton, and ended up in Elysium. She escaped, but got no further. Do we need to know more than that?”
“There’s one more thing,” I said. “I’d like to know her name. Come on. I don’t think it’ll take long.”
I walked behind the outbuilding to the field that was not covered in crosses. “No graves here,” I said, as we walked towards the farmhouse. “Why not? Because this was her home. This was where she grew up. Kempton created a retreat, and when it failed, this woman came home. I think we can guess what she found.”
It looked like a battle had been fought at the farmhouse. Glass lay under broken windows. Inside, furniture had been smashed. The floor was stained dark with what was almost certainly blood. Photographs had been knocked from walls dented and scarred from the blows of an axe. I picked up a picture.
“I think that’s her,” I said. The woman, about ten years younger, stood between a smiling man and women a generation older. “Her parents?”
“Phyllis O’Reardon,” Kim said, pointing at the Leaving Certificate in a frame on the wall. “That’s her name, and this feels like we’re intruding.”
We went outside and stared at the thin line of smoke drifting up from the fire.
“We might be able to persuade her to come with us,” I said.
“How?” Kim asked. “And how much time do you want to spend trying? Besides, come with us where? Where are we going? No, when we get back, we’ll find her on the satellites. Fields full of crosses won’t be hard to spot.”
“Yeah. Perhaps someone like Dr Umbert can help her,” I said.
“I doubt it,” Kim said. “She’s seen too much, been alone too long. Do you think she knew about the zombie in that stone cottage? Did they escape Elysium together? Or did they come south, from somewhere else, only to find the house overrun? I think—” She stopped. “No, I think we should go.”
I don’t know whether we will be able to find the woman again, or if she’ll be alive when we do. I’m not entirely clear where we are except it’s a farmhouse about two hours walk from that mass of graves. Tomorrow we’ll continue. I don’t know what the new day will bring. I’d like to say that it couldn’t be worse than what we saw today, but I know full well that it could.
Chapter 5 - Castleisland, County Kerry
26th September, Day 198
It’s hard to know how far we’ve travelled, as I’m still unsure precisely where we spent the night. The first real clue as to where we were came an hour after midday, when we saw Kerry Airport.
“Why?” Kim asked. “That wasn’t a question,” she added. “Not really, except it’s one I ask myself each time I see something like this.”
The fields surrounding the runway were dotted with wings, fuselage, and sections of planes burnt and twisted beyond recognition. The runway was worse. Part crater, part deep gouge, it was a scar dug out of the earth.
“Missile,” I said. “Maybe nuclear. Maybe the EMP knocked out the planes’ electronics while they were in the air.”
Wearily, warily, Kim took the Geiger counter out of her pack. “Normal,” she said, surprised. “Almost wish it wasn’t. I suppose the radiation could have dissipated, but could a missile cause a long, thin crater like that?”
“A series of missiles?” I said. “Someone strafing the runway from above to stop the planes taking off?”
“Since each guess is more depressing than the last, I say we stop,” she said. “But that tail-wing, the yellow one, that belongs to a German carrier, doesn’t it?”
“I think so,” I said, taking my eyes away from the distant figures lurching between the wreckage.
“Then the planes came from Europe,” she said. “Seeking a refuge like Francois and Leon did. Not from America or Africa, I mean.”
“Perhaps.” I really wasn’t sure.
A metallic creak echoed across the landscape, as the wing of a 757 broke free of the charred fuselage, and crashed the last few metres to the ground.
“Explains why the zombies are still moving,” I said.
“Did you see it?”
“The wing? Of course,” I said.
“What wing? No. That zombie, did you see?”
“See what?”
She grabbed my arm and turned me thirty degrees. “There,” she said. “That zombie. Do you see?”
“Which?”
She unslung her rifle and held it out to me. “There’s a twin-engine jet. White with a blue line running underneath the windows. Do you see it?”
I peered through the optical scope. “Got it.”
“Right. Now look under the tail. There’s a zombie.”
“There isn’t.”
“It’s on the ground,” she said. “It’s not moving.”
“I… I’ll take your word for it. What, precisely, am I looking for?”
“It fell down,” Kim said. “The zombie just fell over.”
“So?”
“So it just collapsed,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I tried to find the creature, but could only see dark shadows.
“I’m… well, no. Yes, I mean, I saw it fall.”
“It must have been hit by a falling piece of the plane,” I said.
“I… Yes, I suppose. Unless… Give me that.” She took the rifle back. “Unless there’s someone else out here.” She swept the rifle back and forth.
“You’re moving that too quickly to properly see anything,” I said.
“I’m not trying to see anything,” she said. “Watch for a flash of light.”
“You’re trying to signal?”
“With sunlight reflected from the scope. I saw that zombie fall,” she said. “Someone had to have shot it.”
Kim waved the rifle back and forth for a minute, then two, then ten.
“We need to go,” I finally said.
“No, not yet,” she said.
“Look down, five degrees to your left, and about five hundred yards away. Four zombies. They’re drifting this way. If we stay, they’ll see us. We’ll have to fight, and it’s not worth it. Come on, please.”
She turned away reluctantly, and I have to admit I felt the same. If something fell from the plane and knocked the zombie down, it would have stood up. It didn’t, therefore someone shot it. What other explanation is there? No, someone was there. A survivor was looting the wrecked planes, though I’m not sure what anyone would find in them. I can’t imagine the stewards stocking up on bags of peanuts before escaping some zombie-ravaged city.
Whatever the survivors were looking for, we saw no sign of them as we followed a line of woodland east, then a road north. We came across one zombie dead on the road, and that suggested a survivor had passed that way. The next zombie, squatting by a sign for the town of Castleisland, suggested that
survivor hadn’t got that far, or not that recently.
As the creature was stumbling to its feet, I slammed the crowbar down on its head with far more force than was necessary. Its skull split open with a vile crack, spraying black gore over me and the road sign.
“Feel better?” Kim asked. “Because I feel like calling it a day. I know it’s early, but we need to stop and rethink.”
The distant town looked no more inviting than any other settlement I’d seen since the outbreak. The school we came to, six hundred yards further down the road, was different.
The sign read St Peter’s Secondary, with a P transposed onto a pair of keys worked into the wrought-iron gate. In the school’s car park, partially blocking the entrance, were two eight-wheeled APCs and three Army lorries, all painted in drab camouflage.
“Irish Army?” Kim asked.
“I think so,” I said. “You see the suitcases?”
“And the bags,” she said. They lay scattered around the car park.
“Some kind of refugee centre? The gate’s almost closed,” I said. “It should be safe.”
“Almost closed is another way of saying that it’s still open,” she said as she shouldered the SA80. Two yards inside the gate, Kim stopped, raised a hand, and turned to look at me. I knew what she was asking. She wanted to know if I’d had heard it, too. I had. A rustling came from the far side of the nearest APC. Kim made a gesture I didn’t understand until she climbed up the side of the armoured personnel carrier. Crowbar raised, I inched forward, arm ready, eyes expectant. I didn’t look up, and barely heard Kim move across the hull of the empty vehicle. What I didn’t hear was that rustling grow in volume. Why hadn’t the zombie moved?
I quickstepped the last three paces, spinning around the front of the APC, ready to hit… nothing. There was nothing there except a split-open suitcase, its contents blowing in the autumnal breeze. I glanced up. Kim shrugged. She stayed up on the vehicle long enough to look around.
“Nothing,” she said. “Seems empty. We going to stay here?”
“I think so,” I said. “There are no bodies.”
I headed back to the gate, and pushed it closed. We could easily open it should we be wrong about the school, but it couldn’t be easily opened from the outside. Meanwhile, Kim had climbed down from the APC and gone over to the school’s doors. It wasn’t the pupils’ entrance, but one for staff and parents, situated underneath a fixed-canopy.
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