Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland

by Tayell, Frank

  “Ah.”

  “That’s what’s getting to him. She saved his life a dozen times. His and Tamara’s and Billy’s and—” He stopped. “She saved a lot of people.” His large hands bunched. He took out his pocket watch in what was clearly an attempt to distract himself. It was of a style that hasn’t been worn in years, the kind with a chain that’s designed for a waistcoat pocket.

  “Nice watch,” I said. “Heirloom?”

  “Hmm? Ah, no, it was a gift. A long time ago.” He looked at the watch. “Seventeen years. Not that long, I suppose. Saved my life, though.”

  “Oh, yes? How?”

  “I… uh, I was a boxer,” he said.

  “The cauliflower ear, the broken nose? I’d never have guessed.”

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “Yeah, I used to be handsome before I stepped in the ring. That’s what the girls said, though not after I left my looks on the mat.”

  “The watch was a trophy?”

  “It was a thank-you. There was this one girl, Roisin, I’d always had my eye on her. She had a brother, five years younger than us. I thought she might like me more if I taught him how to box. Win him over first, and get him to put in a good word. That was my plan.”

  “Did it work?”

  “O’course not, but the kid brought some of his friends, and the whole thing spiralled. I was running these… well, it wasn’t so much ‘keep-fit’ as ‘keep-off-the-street’ classes. Roisin’s da’ gave me the watch. Him and some of the other dads. They chipped in for it.”

  “How did that save your life?”

  “What was it you were saying about that house where you rescued Kim? That if you’d gone a different way, chosen a different route, your life would have been completely different? The night that old Mr Harvey gave me the watch, I was meant to be with a group of friends. Money was tight, but money’s always been tight. There was a post-office that hadn’t updated its security. We were going to rob it. I had old Mr Harvey and a bunch of others in the gym thanking me, handing me this watch, telling me what a great job I’d done when I was meant to be gearing up for my first burglary. I couldn’t get rid of them. They insisted on taking me for a pint. One became two. Two became four. The next thing, I woke up with a colossal hangover, and the news that my friends had all been arrested. Old Mr Harvey knew about the burglary, I think. Or someone did. It was a small estate. Word travels. They got me drunk to keep me out of it. They knew what a dumb idea it was. Anyway, the watch saved my life, so that’s what my life became: running a gym, keeping kids off the streets. That was a good life while it lasted.”

  “Until the outbreak?”

  “Ah no, it didn’t last nearly that long,” he said.

  “What went wrong?”

  “Lisa Kempton,” he said.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “I’m not,” Colm said. “But it’s not like you’re thinking. I didn’t know anything about any of…” He waved his hand to take in the launch. “Any of this. I never met her. I doubt she even knew I existed. Or the gym. She just provided the money, or her company did. It became a place for ex-cons. Rehabilitation reduces recidivism, that’s what I was told. It worked, I think. There was no religion and no crime allowed inside my doors. No violence except in the ring. The problem was that I couldn’t have kids there if it was a place for ex-cons. Now, personally I think it’s better to get them before they went to prison and needed rehabilitation, but that’s not what the funding was for. Since the charity owned the gym, and without Kempton’s donation they’d have to have sold it, I didn’t have much choice. That’s how I met Dean.”

  He nodded towards the young man who was pacing back and forth. I don’t think Dean was paying any more attention to the inlet we were passing than I was. Then again, how much attention was necessary? The shoreline was empty, just as every previous one had been.

  “Surely he’s not an ex-con,” I said. “I though he was at school with Kallie and Lena.”

  “It was his brother who was one of my regulars,” Colm said. “And he was a regular case of there but for the grace of God. First arrest was at fourteen. At seventeen, he got a year for burglary and did every single day. Managed to make it for a week in the free world before he was sent back inside. Did eighteen months, did it hard. When he got out, I was there waiting with his folks. I guess you could call it an intervention. He came to the gym. He could take a punch, but he couldn’t throw one. Turned out that the gym worked. It gave him a place to go. He spent most evenings sitting on the bench doing nothing, but that meant he wasn’t out with his old crowd doing over someone else. Back in January, I got him to pick up a broom. If I’d had another year… It was a week after the outbreak that he was bitten. Infected. Died. He’d come to the gym, you see, because he associated it with safety. He brought his brother, and his brother brought Kallie and Lena and— and a dozen others. Some from school, some not. School friends, siblings, neighbours.” He turned to look at Dean, Kallie, and Lena. He closed the watch. “Not what I wanted to do with my life. With all that happened, did I do any good? Does any of the good that I did count?”

  “A question I ask myself quite often,” I said. “But then I only have to think of Annette and Daisy and know that whatever burdens I carry regarding the past, they’re nothing compared to the burden of the present, and the debt I owe to the future.”

  “Not quite the words of comfort I was hoping for,” Colm said. He put the watch away.

  “What happened to Roisin?” I asked.

  “Moved to Australia,” Colm said. “Got a Christmas card from her most years. She’s still there. Or she was. Any idea what happened to Australia?”

  “The same as everywhere else, I think,” I said.

  We stared at the coves, the inlets, the bays, and the beaches as Kim piloted the boat between the small islands. Dean marched back and forth, agitatedly walking the same three square feet.

  “He saw his brother die?” I asked.

  “He did,” Colm said. “But everyone who made it out saw someone they cared for die. Isn’t that the way of it? That shared sorrow became our common bond. That’s how Sister Mary-Anne described it.”

  I tried to think of a tactful way of asking, but there wasn’t one. “What happened yesterday,” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” Colm said. “We went out looking for supplies. Candles from the old church was our priority, but we’d have settled for anything. I told you our plan to turn that farm into our supply dump? We’d spend the winter out here on one of these islands. We hadn’t decided which. Then, if we needed any more clothes or toilet paper or soap, we’d just come across to the farm. All we had to do was wait until spring. Five months. It seems a long time, but we’ve survived this far. Siobhan thought it was safe leaving Lena and Sister Mary-Anne to guard the farm while me and her, Dean and Kallie went out to scout for candle, cloth, and clothes. It should have been fine. D’you know how many zombies we saw in the last month? Six. Lena killed each of them quickly enough.”

  I looked at the quiet young woman standing by the side of the boat. She didn’t look like a fighter. If anything, she looked uncomfortable in the camouflage. Then I remembered the moment when we’d all reached the boat, and how she was the one who’d stood on the jetty shooting arrows at the zombies.

  “She’s good with the bow,” I said.

  “Very good,” Colm said. “She was going to be a professional. Trained for it. Wanted to be in the Olympics. Not sure if she’d have made it, but she might have reached the European championships. We raised funds for her, for the equipment. She was that good. The camouflage was her doing.”

  “It was?” Due to the profusion of twigs and branches sticking out of his coat and trousers, I’d assumed that had been Dean’s idea. “Does it work?”

  “You ever see a zombie attack a tree?” Colm asked. “Yeah, it works. Sort of. It helps. Helps us, anyway. Helps them. Gives them confidence. On the other hand, there’s only the three of them left, so I guess it’s not as helpful as I�
��d like to think. We were on our way back when we saw the smoke. The road leading to the farm was full of the undead. Lena was trying to hold them back, but a bow… I guess it’s like a gun. It’s only as good as fast as you can fire, and there were too many zombies to fire fast enough. We heard your Kim firing soon after.”

  The boat motored slowly on. Colm talked a little about the people in his community, about the dead, about who they’d been when they were alive, and the plans they’d had.

  “We thought of heading to the east coast,” he said. “We didn’t think of going to Anglesey, but if we’d gone east we might have made it. After Mark, after Malin Head, we were wary of—”

  “Colm?” It was Billy.

  “What is it, lad?”

  “The toilet,” the boy said. “It’s full.”

  14:00

  “Wait,” Tamara said. “We have to say grace. Sister Mary-Anne always said grace.”

  “And she’s not here,” Dean said bluntly.

  “Dean!” Siobhan said.

  “Let us be thankful for what we have,” Colm said loudly. “And not waste our time wishing for that which we don’t.”

  It was hardly a prayer, but it was close enough to mollify Tamara’s guilt-ridden conscience. No, it was hardly a prayer, but it was hardly a meal. Cold beans, cold tinned ham, cold tinned pears, with most of us using the tins as our bowls.

  Siobhan and Kim shared a look, and then threw it towards me. They’d been discussing something, and it didn’t look good.

  “We have a problem,” Kim said. “We spent yesterday afternoon and this morning travelling in and out of these small islands. We’ve found nothing, and used a lot of fuel to do it.”

  “You want to give up?” Dean asked.

  “We’d never abandon anyone,” Kim said. “But what I want, what any of us want, doesn’t come into it. Not anymore. We’re the future of the human race. You need to think about that, and what it means. In more immediate terms, we know the people who left the farm didn’t go due south, or Bill and I would have seen them. They haven’t gone to any of these islands. If we continue following the coast, we’ll be heading due east towards Galway.”

  “They might have gone there,” Kallie said.

  “Not in a rowing boat,” Siobhan said. “This launch isn’t fast, but it’s four times faster than they would be. They didn’t come this way, and that only leaves north.”

  “Towards Malin Head, you mean,” Dean said. “Towards Mark.”

  There was a moment of shared silence. It was a name I’d heard mentioned a few times, but never in a good breath. I opened my mouth, but Siobhan, clearly guessing what I was about to ask, shook her head.

  “The problem is fuel,” she said. “Bill and Kim had just about enough to get around the coast to Anglesey. Maybe not quite enough, and after today there certainly won’t be. Added to that, we’re extra weight. The heavier the boat, the more fuel it needs.”

  “We can’t get to Anglesey?” Kallie asked. During the day, the prospect of abundant electricity had taken on near mythic proportions.

  “Not unless we find more fuel,” Kim said. “And we might not. That brings us to the choice. There’s a ship in the Shannon Estuary. It’s a big thing, like a cruise ship, and it’s safe. No zombies on board. There’s some food. There’s medical gear. There’s clothing. There’s Shannon and Limerick nearby for when we need to look for more. It’s even possible that the ship’s engines work, and we might be able to turn them back on. I don’t know how—”

  “None of us do,” Siobhan said. “But the children would be safe there.”

  “And Anglesey would come looking for us?” Billy asked.

  “In time, maybe,” Kim said. “But that might not be until the spring.”

  “It’s an option,” Siobhan said. “One of the choices ahead of us.”

  “Right, but what about everyone else,” Dean asked. “If they didn’t take the boats south or east, they went north.”

  “Which makes more sense,” Siobhan said. “Where in Ireland do we know of another community?”

  “Malin Head,” Dean and Billy murmured. Kallie went pale. Lena looked as expressionless as ever.

  “Right,” Siobhan said. “We’d not go there by choice, but if we had no alternatives, and the people who took the boats must have thought they didn’t, then wouldn’t we try?”

  “So they went north,” Dean said. “They won’t actually reach Malin Head, will they?”

  “No,” Kim said. “I think someone could manage a couple of miles an hour in a rowing boat. More in a skiff with a sail if the wind’s in the right direction. But no, they won’t get there.”

  “So why are we arguing,” Dean said. “Let’s go north, find them and we can turn around and—”

  “No,” Lena said. “If we go north, we keep going north, right?”

  “Right,” Siobhan said. “Plan number two, regardless of what we find, we go to Malin Head and beg some diesel from Mark. He’ll still have some, I’m sure. If he doesn’t, there are the sailing boats. Most of us will stay there while Kim goes back to Anglesey. It’s not ideal, but we’ll arrive in Malin Head with news about the island, about the power station and ten thousand other survivors. I don’t know if that will change Mark’s mind, but it’ll change that of everyone with him. The news about all those doctors certainly will. I imagine there’s quite a few women who’d be glad of their help in a few months’ time.”

  “Rowing, they could manage ten miles a day?” Dean asked. “So we go north for twenty miles. If we don’t find anyone we turn around. We’ll go south to the Shannon Estuary. We’ll—”

  “No,” Kallie said. “We’ll go to Malin Head. It’s not your place to decide for us, Dean.” She looked to Lena.

  “North,” Lena said, and so emphatically that all conversation ceased.

  It was an hour later before Kim and I were alone in the cockpit and I was able to ask her.

  “From what Siobhan said,” Kim explained. “They were all part of a much larger group that arrived in Malin Head. They split in April. Siobhan and Colm headed south with the children, the nuns, and a few dozen others.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  Kim sighed. “Because they thought they were alone,” Kim said. “They’d heard about the nuclear bombs, though I’m not sure how, but they thought Britain, Europe, America, Russia, everywhere was gone. They thought they were alone.”

  “So?”

  “You know how we’ve been talking about population growth? Well, so was this guy, Mark. Repopulate the Earth, that was his plan, but he wanted to address it more urgently. It was a question of how resources would be shared out, what roles people would have, and which roles took priority. More children was the number one need, and having them had to be each and every woman’s duty. I… there’s something else. I’m not sure what, but Siobhan was able to leave so I think the people who stayed did so voluntarily. From what she said, it went to a vote, and she lost. Then it came to a choice, and she decided to leave. Mark didn’t stop her. He’s not… well, she told me after I’d told her about Sanders and Cannock and Longshanks Manor. Siobhan was keen to stress that Mark wasn’t like that, but there was something else. Something she wasn’t saying.”

  “This just gets better and better,” I murmured.

  “Yeah, well, we don’t have much choice. We can make it to Malin Head. I’m still not sure how much the extra weight will affect fuel efficiency, but after the last couple of days, we’re going to be at least fifty miles short of enough to get to Anglesey. And we do need to get these children there, Bill. There are six of them if you count the teenagers, and I do. You know why? Because no nuclear bombs fell on Ireland. They’ll have been exposed to a far lower dose of radiation than any of us. Colm and Siobhan, too. We can add eight names to our list of people who’ll probably be alive in twenty years. That’s significant. That’s how you really create a future for humanity.”

  “But first we’ve got to get there, and that means going throu
gh Malin Head. Let’s be honest, no matter what she says, Siobhan chose to leave whatever safety it had and venture out into an undead Ireland because of this guy, Mark.”

  “I know. So much else can go wrong, but so much has gone wrong, Bill. Surely we’re due for some good fortune.”

  23:00

  I’m on watch. Someone has to be, and though I’m exhausted, I can’t even imagine sleeping, not right now. My emotions are far too jumbled. It’s a roiling mass of conflict that’s contradictory and confusing. There should be joy at having found other survivors, and there is. They’re good people, and I’m glad to have met them, but each is a reminder of the millions who are dead. That shouldn’t be anything new, but it’s that line of George’s: we are the help that comes to others. If only we’d come sooner, others would still be alive.

  After our lunchtime discussion, we left the islands of Connemara and sailed up the coast. Siobhan joined us in the cockpit and pointed out each rock we passed. That’s not too great an exaggeration. She seemed to know a name for every inlet and bay. I was starting to wonder whether she was simply making them up when Lena whistled and waved at the shore.

  “That’s Sister Mary-Theresa’s boat!” Siobhan said.

  Our own craft rocked as Dean, Kallie, Tamara, and Billy rushed to the prow. Charlie even made a spirited attempt to rise from the captain’s chair where he was propped between a trio of folded fleeces. Kim and I shared a look, one that was mirrored on Colm’s and Siobhan’s faces. The presence of the boat was no cause for jubilation. It was a single-masted craft with a white-and-rust-coloured hull that had been dragged up onto the rocky beach. The sail was ripped.

  Kim turned off the motor fifty feet from the empty shore. There was no sign of any survivors rushing towards the sound of the engine.

  “Can you bring us in a bit closer?” Dean asked.

  “A little,” Kim said. “How deep is the water?”

  “I can’t see the bottom,” Kallie said.

  Kim inched the boat towards the shore until, without warning, Dean jumped over the side. Water came up almost to his shoulders. His bow held above his head, he waded towards the beached boat.