“Charlie! Tamara!” The call was followed by footsteps on the stairs, then by a woman wearing camouflage and carrying a machete.
“There’s a boat, by the jetty,” I said.
“Give him to me,” she said. I passed the boy over. “Bad,” she said. “You’re with the woman with the gun?”
“I am.”
“You a doctor?” she asked, her tone clipped.
“No. We’ve a first-aid kit,” I said.
“That’ll do. Tamara, you stay by my side.”
The woman ran down the stairs. The girl followed. I picked up my sword and took a breath, but one wasn’t going to be enough, and there wasn’t time for more. When I got downstairs, the woman was already outside, jogging towards the sea. The girl was by her side. On her other side was another camouflaged figure. A third stood by the door, a bow and arrow in his hands.
“Who are you?” he asked, his accent Northern Irish tinged with too many Hollywood movies.
“Bill,” I said. “And you?”
The woman’s camouflage had seemed practical and professional. This man’s was over the top. He had branches and leaves stuck in his webbing, and so much black and green paint on his face I couldn’t tell his age.
“Yeah, but who are you?” he asked.
Before I could reply, there was a crack-crack-crack of submachine gun fire.
“Long story,” I said. “How many people are left here?”
“Left? Dunno. Depends how many got out.”
“Where are the people that are still here?” I asked, hoping for a more useful response.
“By the gate,” he said, but his reply was unnecessary. Again came the triple-crack of the submachine gun.
“Let’s get them out of here,” I said, and limped towards the battle. The smoke thickened. It was getting warmer, too. I could hear the flames. I heard something else, and raised the sword just as a zombie staggered around the edge of a broken-windowed campervan. Before I could hack down, an arrow sprouted from the creature’s eye. It fell as I spun around. The young man had a bow in his hands, a new arrow already notched. I gave him a nod of thanks, and hoped that wasn’t simply a lucky shot as we headed further into the smoke.
Visibility fell to a few yards. The fumes were acrid. Whatever was burning, it wasn’t the trees. Gunfire came from the left. I headed towards it, managing five steps before another shape emerged from the gloom. I raised the sword, saw the twigs jutting out of camouflage green, and coughed out a question.
“You human?”
“You’re with her, the woman with the boat?” the camouflaged figure asked. The voice was female, young, coughing nearly as much as me, but her accent was similar to the man’s.
“Yes. Who’s left?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Charlie,” she said. “He’s a—”
“He’s on the boat,” the man said. “Siobhan’s got him.”
“And Tamara?” she asked.
“Her, too,” I said. “Who’s left?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
There was a muffled explosion. Flames erupted to the left. It was over. Whatever had started the fire, whoever these people were, however many were left, we were all going to die if we stood around, shouting at one another in the gloom. I looked around to tell this to the camouflaged pair, but they’d both vanished into the smoke. I heard a crack-crack-crack. I headed towards the gunfire.
An errant sea breeze caught the smoke and dragged it up, turning the weird shadows into the wall of an old cottage. Orange flames flickered behind the ground floor windows. Beyond the cottage was a barricade. It was twenty feet high in most places except for a narrow, ten-foot gap, in the middle of which stood Kim. It was the main entrance to the farm. Beyond it was the road and on it were the undead. I counted four, then three as Kim fired, but visibility was still only a few dozen yards. The smoke wasn’t just coming from the buildings inside the farm; it came from inland. Another shape appeared from out of the trees, running onto the road. This figure was twice the size of the zombies, and he was alive. At least, he was holding an axe in his hands. I hoped that meant he was alive.
Kim swore. “He’s in the way,” she said. “Can’t get a shot.”
Glass broke from the cottage. I looked up. I saw a face. Another child. We are the help that comes to others; the words of George Tull have become an angel on my shoulders, the devil at my back. I ran into the burning house.
I’ve never known heat like it. It wasn’t just the flames licking up the sofa, charring the pictures, melting the plastic frame of the television; the very air itself seemed to be on fire. My stubble burned, my skin was singed, my eyes dried out as I reached the stairs and stumbled up. I wanted to scream, just to get the toxic air out of my lungs, but couldn’t find the breath even for that. I reached the top. There was one closed door. I stumbled over to it. It wouldn’t open. I slammed my shoulder into it. Once. Twice. On the third time, the frame shattered, the door broke. I stumbled into the room, and barely saw the hammer with enough time to catch it.
“Alive,” I coughed. It was all I could think of saying, the only way to reassure this small child I was human, not undead. The boy nodded, wide-eyed.
I grabbed him and turned back to the corridor. Flames had followed the smoke up the stairs. That was no way out. That only left the window. One blow with the cutlass and it broke. I dropped the sword outside, and grabbed the boy by the arms.
“I’m going to drop you. Run…” I coughed. “Run to the sea. There’s a boat.”
I looked down. I couldn’t see Kim, but the giant of a man was down there.
“Ready?” I called out to the man, and lowered the boy out of the window.
The cottage was small. The ground floor ceiling barely nine feet high, so the boy didn’t have far to drop. The man, tattooed arms outstretched, was almost tall enough to grab him. I let go just as there was a crash from behind. Part of the roof had collapsed. I threw myself out of the window, and landed hard. The man reached down and hauled me up by the back of my coat.
“The boat!” he said.
I grabbed the cutlass from the ground. The boy in his arms, we ran. Rather, they ran, I limped increasingly farther behind. It wasn’t just my leg this time, but my lungs were on the verge of giving out. The smoke was clearing, although I think that was a function of the fire getting hotter, spreading more quickly as it jumped from building to vehicle to piles of stacked firewood.
I’d reached that first cottage, the one in which the injured boy, Charlie, had been, when I saw Kim running towards me. The gun was in her arms. Still running, she raised it to her shoulder. I forced myself not to duck left or right as she fired. I heard something fall. I didn’t turn around. I limped on. Kim fired again, and then she was at my side.
“You look terrible,” she said.
I couldn’t even manage a sarcastic reply, not until we were on the concrete jetty. The boat was there, the camouflaged man and woman stood on the concrete, arrows notched to bows, though they were lowered as we approached. I looked back at the smoke. It had a definite orange tinge to it.
“Who else is there?” Kim called out, addressing everyone and anyone who might be able to reply.
“I’m not sure,” the giant of a man said. “There were thirty of us this morning. We went out to get candles from Mary Magdalene’s. A church up the coast. When we got back…” He shrugged.
“There are no boats,” the young woman in camouflage said. “They’ve all gone.”
“Colm! Help me,” the older woman called from inside the boat.
“Come on,” Kim said, helping me aboard.
I didn’t resist, and I wasn’t much help. I sat quietly as Kim and the large man, Colm, went to help the older woman, Siobhan, with the injured boy. I sat, watching the shore, shivering.
“Zom—” the camouflaged young man began, raising his hand to point at the gate, but the word was half said, his hand half raised, when one of the young women loosed an arrow. The zombi
e collapsed in the gateway.
“We need to leave,” the young woman said, addressing me. I nodded. At least I felt my head moving up and down. The woman’s eyes narrowed as she took me in. She shook her head and pulled the ropes from the mooring. It took a real effort to stand. I found myself staggering across the boat, though there was barely any height to the waves. I made it into the cockpit, and found the ignition on my third go. The engine roared. It seemed a lot louder than usual.
Colm’s head appeared in the doorway to the cabins, and he had to twist so that his shoulders could fit through them. “We’re moving?” he asked.
“Zombies,” I said.
He stepped out of the doorway, and took me in, giving me a similarly pitying second look as the young woman had. “I’ll do that,” he said. “Dean, Lena, watch the shore. You need to rest, mate.”
I eased myself onto the bench seat, and gratefully closed my eyes. I didn’t sleep. Pain prevented it. I’ve felt worse, I’ll say that much, but at some point during the escape from that burning house, something must have fallen on the back on my neck. The skin was burned there, and too close to the spine for comfort. My clothes are ruined. Beyond ruined, but they took the worst of the damage. I’ll say this for Lisa Kempton, when she provided her crew with clothing to survive the apocalypse, she didn’t skimp on the materials. I guess making them fire resistant was of greater concern than making them truly waterproof. I’ve lost most of my hair, and have a few new scars to add to my collection, but other than a touch of dehydration, I was fine. The young boy, Charlie, however, wasn’t.
“I didn’t know he was immune,” Colm said.
“It’s not something you can test, is it?” the older woman, Siobhan, said.
“How bad is it?” the young man, Dean, asked.
“Bad,” Siobhan said. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ve cleaned the wound as best I can, but there aren’t many medical supplies here.”
“I could go back and get some,” Dean said.
All eyes went to the shore. We were about five hundred yards out to sea. Initially, Colm had moved us fifty yards away in case other survivors from the community had emerged from the smoke needing to be rescued. The smoke had thickened, forcing us out, fifty yards at a time, and each time we moved, I didn’t think the inferno could worsen. It had, spreading to the forest, adding the scent of burning pine to the acrid tang of paint and plastic.
“No,” Colm said. “Everything’s gone. Supplies and people.”
“There were medical supplies back on The New World,” Kim said. “That’s a ship in the Shannon Estuary. We could be there in a couple of days.”
“Two days? No, he’ll be on the mend by then,” Siobhan said. There was an ‘or’ that was left unspoken, an alternative that we all knew.
“We can’t leave,” the young woman, Kallie said. “What about everyone else?”
“Everyone else is dead, aren’t they?” Dean said.
He was younger than I’d first thought, only eighteen in June, and the same age as the two young women, Kallie and Lena. All three had been in the same year at the same school in Belfast, and they’d escaped the city with the giant of a man, Colm, soon after the outbreak.
“Shh!” Siobhan hissed. Lena was down in the cabin with Charlie, and the other two children, Billy and Tamara. This morning, there had been thirty-four in their community.
“We didn’t plan to spend the winter here, did we?” Colm said, his voice was soft, measured, a contrast to his muscular frame. “It was a place to gather supplies, wasn’t it? We were going to stockpile them, yes? Take them to the islands? Our problem was fuel,” he said, addressing Kim and I. “We had rowing boats and a few skiffs with a sheet that passed for a sail. It made a journey of a few miles a good day’s work, and we didn’t have the time. We were going to stockpile supplies in that farm, then ferry them over as and when. So that’s where everyone else will have gone,” he said, turning to Dean. “To one of the islands.”
“Then what are we doing waiting here?” Dean demanded.
“We came from the Aran Islands,” Kim said. “We didn’t see any people. No boats that had arrived there recently, and none heading that way.”
“You wouldn’t row there,” Siobhan said. Her accent was very definitely from the Republic. It was cultured, clipped, precise, absent of the softness of Mary O’Leary’s lilt, and of Donnie’s transatlantic Dublin twang.
“So they would have followed the coast,” Kim said. “North or south?”
“South,” Siobhan and Colm said together, emphatically.
“Malin Head is in the north,” Colm added. “They wouldn’t have headed in that direction.”
“Then we go south along the coast,” Kim said. “Who are we looking for?”
“The useless,” Dean said. “What? That’s who they were. They left Billy, Charlie, and Tamara behind, didn’t they?”
“We’re the help that comes to others,” I murmured.
“Bill’s right, and we can’t do that here,” Kim said. She turned the engine on, and turned the wheel south.
That was around lunchtime. One o’clock by our reckoning, but closer to two o’clock by theirs. It’s now eight hours later. Darkness has well and truly settled, and we’ve found no one else, though we did spend the afternoon and evening finding out about each other. We told them about Anglesey, Quigley, and all the rest, and they told us some of their story, though mostly about those people who’d so recently died.
“Here’s the question, Bill,” Kim said a few minutes ago when she brought me a cup of tea made with the last of the evening’s hot water. “If we’d not bothered going to the Islands of Aran, would we have arrived in time to rescue the others?”
“Or would we still be following the coast, and so not arrive at that farm until it was too late to save anyone?” I replied. “Questions like that never have a good answer.”
“I know,” she said. “It doesn’t stop me from wondering.”
Chapter 11 - Connemara
2nd October, Day 204
We left our nocturnal harbour at dawn, and it turns out we can’t be more precise than that. The launch has a clock; it’s one of the few instruments that work. It said it was 06:14 when we turned the engine on. Colm’s pocket watch said it was 07:03. He says that it keeps perfect time, and he winds it every night. As the children insist that his watch is always correct, and with a devotion bordering on the religious, I’m happy to defer to it, but I can’t figure out how to change the clock built into the control panel.
The debate as to which version of time we should use kept us all distracted over breakfast. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say it kept us distracted from what we were eating for breakfast: freeze-dried spaghetti-Bolognese reconstituted with water from the kettle. The debate did distract Charlie from his pain. He’s still weak, but he hasn’t got a fever, and that’s as much as we can hope for.
Actually, thinking back on it, I think it was the kettle that was the real distraction. I suppose, for Kim and I, electricity is no longer a wondrous thing. These people haven’t seen it for months. The ease with which tea can be made did have a downside; it emphasised how few mugs we have. While Kim and I took care to load up on spare clothes from The New World, we didn’t bother with many utensils, or much crockery.
“Where can I wash it?” Kallie asked, when she’d finished her turn with one of our three mugs.
“Boiling water kills germs,” I said. “And what’s tea but boiling water, dried leaves, and a little magic?”
Kallie gave an apologetic smile as she passed me the mug.
“Did you really get Quigley elected?” Dean called out. I would say that he isn’t a morning person.
“Not exactly,” I said. During the night, we’d gone through what we knew about the outbreak, the conspiracy, and all that had happened since. I suppose it must have been a hard truth to learn that the known world’s population had shrunk to a little over ten thousand. For the most part, and perhaps because we’
d told the story in reverse, and it followed our rescue of these people, there was no repeat of the accusation and blame I’d experienced from the likes of Barrett and her comrades. For the most part.
“How not exactly?” Dean asked.
“I wrote speeches, and some were for his party,” I said. “Some were for his cabinet colleagues, but they managed to sabotage their own re-election without any assistance from me.”
“You’re saying you didn’t want them to win?” Dean asked.
“No,” I said. “I was being glib. When I worked for the party, I was doing a job, and I did it well. I took pride in it. Yes, I took pride in getting people elected regardless of their policies and whether I agreed with them. That’s who I was, not who I am.”
“And it’s history,” Siobhan said. “It’s light enough to see, and that makes it light enough to see where a boat took refuge during the night.”
“You think we’ll find them?” Tamara asked nervously. Everything she’s said since we met has been tinged with nervousness. The girl did the right thing barricading herself in that bedroom, yet she holds herself responsible for Charlie’s injuries. She’s eight years old. There’s nothing she could have done, but she won’t believe any of us when we tell her.
“We won’t find them without looking,” Siobhan said.
The boat didn’t feel quite so crowded with everyone almost as far from each other as they could get. Kim and Siobhan stayed in the cockpit. Charlie was in the larger of the two cabins below, resting. Tamara and Billy alternated between staying by his side, and coming onto the deck. Dean stood by the prow, Lena at the port side, Kallie at the starboard. I sat at the aft, watching the people as much as the shore.
“I think he’s going to be okay,” Colm said, coming to sit on the bench next to me.
“Charlie?” I asked.
“He’s suffering from shock, mostly,” Colm said. He looked around, and lowered his voice. “The woman who attacked him, the zombie you killed, that was Sister Mary-Anne. She was with him from beginning. From the outbreak.”
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland Page 15
