“Where’s the map?” Kim asked. “Thanks.” She drew a line back along the road from Limerick with her finger. “That’s about twenty kilometres, isn’t it? So we’re somewhere around here? Then we want to head due north.”
“As soon as we can,” I said, taking a drink. The water bottle gave an ominously hollow slosh. “And we need to look for a stream.” I glanced behind. “And we need to get moving.”
Though we’d managed to avoid fighting the undead, we hadn’t gone unnoticed. We’d outpaced the creatures, but they were following us. Two were on the road behind us, and I could imagine dozens more heading in our direction.
We set off, and took the first narrow farm track heading north, barrelling past fields and then through a forest, but were stopped just short of a village. A Land Rover had crashed into a stretch limo that had ended up at ninety degrees to the road. There was no way of cycling quickly past. The doors to the limo were open. The Land Rover’s weren’t. Kim unslung the rifle.
“Hey!” I called.
There was no response. We dismounted, wheeling our bikes forward.
The limo had a score of bags inside, but no sign of any people, living or undead.
“Came from Dublin, I suppose,” I said. “Not the airport, but somewhere in the city. Maybe they came from the—”
A fist banged against glass. I jumped back. Kim raised the rifle, aiming at the Land Rover. A figure beat its hands against the green-tinged windscreen.
“I can’t… I can’t see,” Kim said. “I mean, it must be dead, right?”
The beating came again, over and over. I hauled myself over the limo, scratching the paintwork in the process, and approached the wrecked Land Rover.
“Zombie,” I said. I took the crowbar from my belt, and tried the door handle. It was locked. The creature slammed its face into the glass. The door shuddered and shook as it slapped hand and head against the window, leaving a spreading dark brown smear. In time, and not long, either that glass would break, or its skull would. We didn’t have time. I glanced at Kim. She lowered the rifle. We’d already expended too much ammo. I swung the crowbar at the window. It shattered. Almost immediately, the zombie thrust itself through the broken frame. I swung again, splitting its skull. It fell limp, half outside the cab.
“Oh,” Kim murmured. “That’s…” She turned away.
The zombie hadn’t been the driver. The zombie had been a passenger, probably in the back seat. The driver was still there, belted in. He was mostly still there. His lower jaw was missing, as was the right arm below the elbow. The footwell was full of rotten flesh. The passenger must have been infected. The driver hadn’t been able to abandon her. Perhaps the driver been immune, perhaps he’d thought the passenger was, too, right up until she’d turned. The vehicle had crashed into the limo, but the zombie had survived, shredding the driver. The eyes opened, flashing left and right. I was wrong. He hadn’t been immune. I swung the crowbar again, killing the undead driver.
“So…” Kim murmured. “The limo. You think they were travelling together?”
“Must have been,” I said, cleaning the crowbar on a patch of grass. “It’s too much of a coincidence that they just happened to be passing at the moment the zombie turned.”
“Maybe it’s best,” Kim said, picking up her bike. “Maybe it’s for the best that we never drive again, never come to places like this. Maybe it’s best we stay on Anglesey and… and what? Leave the land for the zombies? If we don’t kill them, will they be here in a hundred years? Two hundred? A new Dark Age? I can imagine it, a world of knights and monsters, disease and death. Oh, Bill.”
There was nothing I could say, because I didn’t disagree with her.
For another two hours, we made good time, though I can’t say the journey was easy. In part it was because there seemed to be more uphill than down, but mostly because the bicycles weren’t silent. House after house, farm after cottage, the undead heard us coming. They drifted down driveways, over front gardens, and across the road. We weaved our way around many of them, but often had to stop, hack, and hew a path through them. We wasted hours, and more of the precious-scarce ammunition both for the SA80 and the long-barrelled L115A3. Finally, we reached the crest of a hill and saw a great swarm of them below us.
Kim took the scope from the sniper’s rifle. “Three hundred. Maybe four,” she whispered. “Too many. So many an exact count won’t help us.”
From the muddy tracks in the fields to the east and west, there had been two groups of zombies, and the dip was where they had collided. The satellites hadn’t passed over this corner of Ireland, but even if they had, and on a cloud-free day, it wouldn’t have been easy to distinguish the mud-covered creatures from the muddy field and mud-coated road.
“Can’t go back, and can’t go forward. Cross-country, then,” I said, dismounting. To the side of the road was a wide ditch, then a stone wall. I jumped the ditch, but the bike hit the wall. A stone at the top was dislodged and fell into the ditch where it hit something metallic. The sound echoed. I froze. Kim stared at the zombies.
“They heard it!” she said. “They’re moving!”
I dragged the bike over the wall. She did the same, and we set off, trudging through the waterlogged field, pushing our way through waist-high grasses. The ground was uneven, boggy, and treacherous. Left for grazing, I suppose, because it was too wet to plough. It took an age to reach the wall at the far side. Kim clambered up. “I… no, I can’t see them.”
We climbed the wall and trudged on. The footing improved. The field came to an end at a track where the opposite side was bordered by a dense hedgerow. We had to turn back the way we’d come, but at least we could cycle. Hemmed in by hedgerows, we cycled for two minutes, reaching a gate just as a pair of zombies appeared on the track ahead of us.
“They can’t have been following us,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Kim said pushing the gate open. Again we dismounted, clambering across uneven ground while carrying the bikes. Halfway across, I turned around. The zombies had reached the gate. There weren’t two; there were seven, then eight.
My leg slowed us down. Carrying the bikes slowed us further. We reached the end of the field, and hadn’t put any more distance between us and the undead. Beyond was a paved road. Kim stamped on the ash pole supporting the fence, kicking it over. I followed her down into the road.
“Damn,” she muttered. Two hundred yards to the left, and a hundred yards to our right, were the undead. At least a dozen on either side, but no doubt more behind.
“Fight or flight?” she asked.
“Fight,” I said, but it was an instinctive reaction. “No. Wait. No. There are too many. It’ll use up too much time and ammo.”
Kim swung the assault rifle left and right. “Agreed.”
There was a shallow ditch and steep bank in front us. The embankment was too high to see the field beyond, but it was the only direction left.
“Go. Climb. I’ll push the bikes up,” Kim said.
I staggered up the steep incline, kicking my feet into the exposed dirt. All I could see was mud, but all I could hear was a tumultuous cracking, rustling, gasping, thundering as the zombies lurched towards us. I heaved myself to the top, and barely remembered to look around. Empty fields stretched out, seemingly endless.
“Leave the bikes,” I said, reaching down for Kim. “We’ll be quicker without them.”
Of course, we were only quicker while we tramped through fields that were more glue than soil. Soon we were back to our field, track, road routine. We travelled by compass bearing when we could, and away from the undead when there were too many to fight. Just after three p.m., and more by accident than skill, we stumbled across a sign for Pallaskenry.
“It looks like a village,” I said, looking first at the sign, and then at the smattering of roofs further down the road.
“You were expecting a town?” Kim asked.
“I thought, if they used this place as data for noise polluti
on studies for southern England, it would be… well, larger.”
“It is what it is,” Kim said. “And that seems to be a village. The address on the embarkation list is for Summerville Drive. I suppose that might be this road, but it might not. How do we find out?”
The answer lay in the first house after the road sign. It was a small house with a large garden and long drive absent of cars, but full of bags and boxes that led in a line to the front door. From that, I assume that the owners were loading a vehicle when they were abruptly forced to flee. As to what scared them away, I don’t think it was the zombie squatting in the porch. The creature rose as we approached. It was wizened beyond recognition. Its clothes were faded, dirt-riddled rags. It had been out in the wasteland, out in the weather, and that made me think it had arrived after the occupants had fled. Of course, that begged the question of how and why it had ended up here.
It snarled, and threw an arm towards me. I swung the crowbar up, aiming to knock its arm out of the way. There was a sharp snap as the metal bar broke the creature’s bone. Its forearm sagged, but the creature thrust it at me again. There wasn’t room to swing. I dropped the crowbar, dragged the knife from my belt, and stepped forward, stabbing the blade into its snapping face. Teeth broke as the tip pierced the roof of its mouth. I stabbed, twisted, tearing flesh and muscle until the knife plunged into its brain. The zombie collapsed.
“Too much death,” I muttered, wiping the knife clean. I sheathed it and picked up the crowbar. “Too much.” I stepped over the corpse, now splayed in the doorway, and over the threshold.
“Careful!” Kim warned, but I only went as far as the letter rack on a hallstand.
“This is Main Street,” I said.
“Anything—”
From upstairs came a thump, and then another. It was the sound of something knocking into the walls as it stumbled along a hallway. The front door had been open, unlocked not broken. Upstairs was someone who’d come back to die. I wanted to walk outside, to kick that corpse aside, pull the door closed, and go and look for a map elsewhere. What I wanted didn’t come into it. Kim is right.
“We’re the help that comes to others,” I murmured. That phrase is a pledge, a promise not just to other survivors, but also to those who’ve died. The final peace of death is the least we can offer, and it’s the only thing any of us can offer the undead. I crossed to the stairs and walked halfway up.
“Bill?” Kim called.
I saw the zombie, a girl a year or two older than Annette. A torn shirt wrapped around her arm told me how she’d become infected. It was a common wound, caused when trying to ward off that hideously snapping mouth. She was doing that now, snapping her teeth up and down as she staggered awkwardly towards me. There was no room to swing, so I jabbed the crowbar at her face. She turned her head, by accident not design, but the chisel-point scored a line across the side of her skull, ripping a wad of skin from above her ear. She lunged, her feet stepped onto empty air, and she tumbled past me down the stairs. She didn’t stop moving as she fell, nor when she landed with a loud thump punctuated by the snap of breaking bone. She stopped when I slammed the crowbar down on her skull. I’d not wanted to do it like that. I’d wanted it to be quick, painless. Zombies can’t feel pain. This girl wasn’t a girl anymore. I have to remind myself of that.
“Bill?” Kim asked. She was at the foot of the stairs, tyre-iron in her hand, a questioning look in her eye.
“We’re the help that comes to others,” I said. I couldn’t manage to say any more.
“I know,” she said, understanding.
We found a street map in a small bookshelf in the kitchen, next to the manuals for the fridge, dishwasher, and the missing car. Main Street ran north-south through Pallaskenry. Summerville Drive led westward from the northern end. Assuming that we’d find more undead in the village itself, we cut cross-country. We walked in silence, each occupied with our own grim thoughts.
While we didn’t know where on Summerville Drive the house was, I didn’t think it would be hard to find. I was expecting something like Elysium, but on a smaller scale. It would be a two-storey house with a good view of the countryside. A property with a large garden that contained a well and which was ringed by a high and sturdy wall. There might be solar panels, but there would certainly be a garage filled with tools, and probably hidden weapons. I was wrong.
We pushed our way through a screen of trees separating two fields. Homes were clumped together along the distant road. Each cluster was separated by fields and paddocks, but there was one that stood out. A grey painted bungalow sat on an acre of concrete, ringed by a two-foot-high concrete wall. There was no fence, no shrubs, no lawn that I could see. There were no solar panels on the roof. Nothing but two zombies that had staggered over the low wall.
“It has to be it,” Kim said.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I said, stubbornly refusing to give up my notion of what one of Kempton’s properties would look like. “That’s just a finished house no one’s decorated.”
“It’s not a new-build,” Kim said. “You can see how the concrete on the wall is cracked.”
“Then it was built before the crash,” I said. “Someone ran out of money or time, and didn’t have enough of both since.”
“No, you’re wrong. This is the house. I know it,” Kim said.
“How?” I asked, giving the bungalow another once-over, but I couldn’t see whatever she had. We’d been walking towards it, but the zombies had been walking towards us. As the nearest walked into the low wall, it sagged forward at the waist, tumbling over.
Kim automatically reached for her rifle. “Not enough ammo,” she sighed, and drew the tyre-iron instead.
The second zombie reached the wall as the first was standing up, and as a third drifted around the side of the house.
“They were moving,” I said. “They heard us.”
“They heard something,” Kim said, taking a step to the left. I moved a step to the right, so we’d each have enough room to swing.
“They’re not wearing fleeces,” I said, raising the crowbar. The second zombie was two paces from the wall.
Kim took a quickstep forward and swung the tyre-iron down on the zombie that had fallen on the field-side of the wall. “So what?”
She had a point.
The second zombie had reached the wall. I hacked the crowbar horizontally, slamming the metal bar into the zombie’s legs. It fell, thrashing on the ground, unable to get up. I speared the sharpened metal into its face, looked for the third creature, and saw Kim smash the tyre-iron into its skull.
We both stood motionless, listening. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. Kim shrugged, and walked around to the front of the house, reappearing a moment later on the far side of the bungalow.
“Clear,” she said.
“So what makes you so sure this is the house?” I asked, wiping the worst of the gore from the crowbar.
“There was something about Elysium that was bothering me,” she said. “Okay, there’s a lot of things about it that didn’t seem quite right, but there was one thing that really didn’t fit: the tennis courts. Why did Kempton have tennis courts for her staff?”
“Exercise?” I crossed to the back door. It was locked.
“Wouldn’t a basketball court make more sense? More people could play at any one time, the games are shorter, and they don’t require as much practice.”
“Then she had it because billionaires have tennis courts,” I said. “It’s what’s expected.” I pushed the crowbar into the gap between door and frame.
“It’s not expected when you tell the world you’re building a farm,” Kim said. “How many farms have tennis courts? Oh, sure, she chose a tennis court because, like you said, billionaires have tennis courts. That’s not what it was.”
“The tennis court wasn’t a tennis court?” I pushed. There was a crack of wood. A thin sliver of plyboard came free from the frame. I pulled it clear. Underneath was a solid pillar of metal.
“See?” Kim said. “Tell me I’m wrong. Who else would reinforce a bungalow like that?”
I pushed, heaved, and managed to get a little more of the plyboard free, but the door didn’t move. “Solid door, solid frame. Okay. Let’s try the front. What was the tennis court if it wasn’t for playing tennis?”
“Look around you, Bill. No fence. No overhead phone line, though there’s a utility pole outside the house over there, and cables going into the neighbouring property. There’re no shrubs. No garden at all, only solid concrete. You know why? Helicopters. There was no landing pad at Elysium. Why not? Farms don’t usually have tennis courts, but they certainly don’t have helipads. People notice that kind of thing. And if they weren’t invited inside to see it, they definitely would have looked on the pictures mapping-satellites took. Everyone looked at the images of their neighbour’s homes, didn’t they? People would have asked why there was a helipad. If they did that, they might have asked other questions, ones where a lie was not as believable. But Kempton would have wanted quick and easy access to her apocalyptic refuge, and just as quick an escape. She needed somewhere to land a helicopter, and what better way to disguise it than a tennis court? You can’t build a tennis court in the grounds of a bungalow. Instead, you have a concreted-over garden, the absurdly low wall, and then you tell the neighbours that the owner has run out of money, just like you said.”
“Plausible,” I said. “Though it begs the question of why Kempton would want to bring a helicopter here.”
The front door was sealed as tight as the back. When I tried to smash a window, the crowbar bounced off the glass. With the curtains closed it was impossible to see inside, but it was increasingly obvious this was the property we were looking for.
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland Page 9
