Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland

by Tayell, Frank

  “Dean!” Siobhan called.

  “I won’t be long,” he said, and if he said anything else, it was lost to the wave that crashed over his head.

  Kim brought the boat a little closer, stopping the engine again just as Dean, dripping wet, reached the shore.

  “That’s as close as I dare,” she said.

  “Can I borrow your rifle?” Siobhan asked.

  “Of course,” Kim said.

  Siobhan picked up the SA80 where it had rested, unloaded, against the control panel. Kim passed her the spare magazines. Before Siobhan had made it to the side, Lena had jumped into the sea.

  “I better go, too,” I said.

  “What about those burns?” Kim asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “One of us should go to make sure they don’t go too far.”

  “One hour, no more, regardless of…” Kim looked at Charlie. “Regardless of what you find, in one hour, make sure they come back. Make sure, Bill, okay?”

  Weapon belt over my head, I jumped into the sea. It was cold and refreshing, at least for a fraction of a second. Then it was just cold.

  “I’ll find them,” Dean was saying as I dripped my way ashore.

  “We all will,” Siobhan said. “Lena’s better at tracking, and you know I’m best at finding people.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But he should stay behind. He’s only going to slow us down with that leg.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said cheerfully as I buckled on my belt. “I’ve tracked people before, too.” Of course, when we’d been following Annette and Daisy, we’d really been following the River Thames. It’s not quite the same thing.

  “No sign of zombies,” Siobhan said. “Rock and pebble beach extending for fifty yards in each direction. It’s the first decent landfall we’ve seen in a mile. No blood in the boat. A couple of empty water bottles, a blanket. I don’t think she was alone. I think Sister Mary-Theresa came ashore here because she needed water. If she was going to follow the coast, she’d have stayed in the boat. So she went inland. Lena?”

  The younger woman nodded, and headed east. Beyond the beach was an embankment about ten feet high, but through which a narrow track had been cut. It was far from an official path, and must have been done by locals who came to fish at that spot. Lena ran easily up the track, disappeared, and returned a moment later to wave us on.

  At the top of the embankment, the track met the edge of two fields filled with the usual assortment of wild grasses, wilder heather, and overgrown gorse. A thin strand of wire ran around each. Considering that it wouldn’t have kept a dog out or a cow in, they can’t have held livestock. The track widened disappearing behind trees a hundred yards ahead. Lena stopped. She pointed at the ground. There was a single, recognisable footprint.

  Siobhan nodded. “It’s recent,” she said. “That’s all I’ll say.”

  Lena nodded, and ran light-footed ahead. Dean, his camouflage sodden and soaked, the seawater adding at least twenty pounds, determinedly followed. I didn’t think we’d find anyone within an hour, nor did I think it would be easy getting Dean to return to the boat. I was wrong. We did find them, about twenty minutes from the shore.

  We were just beyond the treeline, with the roof of the farmhouse visible, when Lena abruptly stopped. She drew an arrow, though she didn’t loose it. Dean staggered to a halt and did the same. When Siobhan and I caught up, Lena pointed at the smear of blood on the sandy soil at the edge of the track.

  “You know what that means,” Siobhan said.

  Lena nodded. She glanced at Dean. He shrugged. Lena shook her head. She reached into a pouch. “Your bowstring’s wet,” she said, passing him one. He blushed. Lena re-notched her bow, and stalked along the path. Siobhan went next. I waited for Dean, preferring to keep both of the teenagers in sight. He glared, and I said nothing. I was listening. It was right at the edge of hearing, but I could hear something. Whatever it was, it was drowned out by the sound of Dean’s sodden cloth and squelching boats as he set off after the other two. I had heard something, and about a hundred yards further on, Lena saw it. There was a farmhouse. Outside were three zombies, beating their fists against the door.

  “Can you shoot them with that gun?” Dean asked.

  “Not from here,” Siobhan said. “The bullet would go straight through the door. What about you Bill, could you make the shot?”

  “If I fired, I’d be unlikely to hit the house, let along the zombies,” I said. “What about the bows?”

  “Yeah, I think I can get them,” Dean said.

  “Not from here,” Lena said. “It’s too far.”

  “I’ll lure them away from the cottage,” I said. “While they’re distracted you can get close enough to shoot them. It’s how we usually do it.”

  Dean’s mouth opened, but before he could begin an objection, I clambered up the embankment and walked across the overgrown grassland. When I was fifty yards from the house, I yelled.

  “Hey. Anyone alive in there?” It was a tactless choice of words, and I regretted them immediately, but the zombies heard. They knocked into one another as they turned around. When I was sure that they were heading towards me, I checked my footing. The ground was damp, but reasonably even. I had room to swing. The zombies were twenty yards away, and getting nearer. I raised the cutlass, and took in my targets. One zombie wore a ragged sweater so covered in mud that the waist dragged halfway down to its thighs. Either the colour under that dirt was green, or a thin film of moss had taken root among the fibres. The other two were more recently turned. One wore a lightweight jacket buttoned to the neck, the other a thin t-shirt under a webbing harness. And that zombie was now eight feet away.

  I swung the sword low, ducking as I stretched out my arm. Its hand clawed the air above my head as the sword cleaved into its leg just below its knee. The blade almost stuck. I had to quickstep back, dragging it free with a rasp of steel on bone. Enough damage had been done. As the zombie tried to follow me, it toppled forward. The other two zombies drew nearer. I raised the sword up, this time planning a hacking slash down on the jacketed creature’s skull. An arrow took it in the ear. It collapsed, as another arrow sung through the air smacking into the side of the zombie behind, just below its outstretched arm. It staggered sideways a pace, then again towards me. I changed my grip, readied my arm, and was about to strike when a third arrow slammed into its temple. The zombie fell.

  I’d half breathed out in relief at another fight over and done with when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. From around the side of the house came four more zombies.

  “Of course there’d be more,” I muttered. “Otherwise the survivors inside would have escaped.” I looked at the doors and windows, but they were closed. The glass blocked by… I couldn’t see. The zombies were getting nearer, and the angle of the building and the path meant I was now between them and Dean, Lena, and Siobhan. I stepped to the side, and again, trying to give the archers a clearer view. On the fourth step my foot went ankle deep in water. The deceptively dry ground was on the edge of a marsh.

  “It’s always something.” I stepped out of the water, back onto firm ground, and checked my footing. The creatures drew nearer. Snarling mouths snapped. Extended arms clawed at the air. Dead eyes looked, unfocused, towards me. Ten feet. Eight. I lunged, hacking the sword down, twisting as it sliced through a rotten mat of lank hair, a taut and desiccated scalp, a brittle skull, and into its diseased brain. Another twist, and I had the sword free before it fell.

  I backed up half a pace, and raised the sword, ready to repeat the action. There were three familiar soft retorts, and then a thud as the zombie furthest from me fell. Another three shots, and gore sprayed out of the side and arm of the zombie nearest me. I backed up a step. Three more shots, and the zombie’s head exploded. That left one, a feral-looking creature with seeping muscle exposed beneath torn flesh. I stepped back, expecting another three shots. They didn’t come.

  “Can’t get the shot!” Siobhan ca
lled, just before an arrow pierced the zombie’s throat. It was fired from behind, and had entered through the back of its neck, almost completely passing through. The fletching caught in flesh, and the arrow sagged down until it was flush with the creature’s chest. Black ooze bubbled up around the wound. The zombie took another step. Its head snapped forward, then back, and the wound tore. I lashed out with the sword, hacking through bone, crushing its brain. It fell.

  I saw no more zombies, but I did see Lena and Dean running to the cottage. Siobhan followed, a pace behind, the rifle held across her chest. Professionally held, I thought, and then I thought about how she’d assessed the beach, how she’d easily taken control on the boat, and how even the obstreperous Dean obeyed her. I thought I knew what she’d done before the outbreak. Not for the first time, I was wrong.

  By the time I’d made my way over to the cottage, Dean had smashed a ground floor window, and was hammering at some piece of furniture that lay beyond. I stood back. I’d been distracted by Siobhan, and momentarily forgotten what we’d expected to find in the house. There were no cries from inside, or sounds of anyone assisting Dean move the bookcase out of the way. Dean pushed himself through the window. Lena jumped inside the second he was clear. Siobhan scrabbled after. I took my time. There was no need to rush.

  They were in the kitchen. Three bodies. A woman, and two children younger than Charlie.

  “That’s Sister Mary-Theresa,” Siobhan said. “And Colleen and Brigid. Cousins. Utterly inseparable.”

  “How long ago?” Dean’s voice broke as he asked the question.

  Siobhan bent down and took one of the girl’s hands. “Last night. You see the bandage on Brigid’s leg? The blood’s dried. That had to have been during their escape from the farm.”

  “So…” Dean began. “I mean… how…?” He stumbled into silence.

  “They ran out of water,” Siobhan said, standing up. “They came ashore looking for supplies. Looking for safety. They made it halfway here when they heard zombies behind. If the zombies had been in front, they’d have returned to the boat. As their retreat was blocked, they ran here. Sister Mary-Theresa would have been carrying Brigid. They were attacked. You can see where they were bitten, clawed. Where they were—” She stopped.

  “But how did they die?” Dean asked. “I mean, if they’d just held on we’d have rescued them.”

  “Blood loss,” Siobhan said. “Exacerbated by cold, shock, exhaustion, dehydration, and fear.”

  “I… I… It’s…” Dean stammered into incoherence, then stormed from the room. He climbed through the window, paced for a moment, then drew his knife and launched himself at the damp sod, hacking at the dirt.

  Siobhan stepped towards the window.

  “No. I’ll go,” Lena said.

  The young woman went outside, but not immediately to Dean. She disappeared around the side of the house, appearing with a shovel and spade that must have come from the small shed at the side of the property. She handed the shovel to Dean, and together they dug.

  “It never gets easier,” Siobhan said, looking again at the bodies.

  “You were military, weren’t you?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, no. Gardaí. A lifetime and eight months ago.”

  “Police? The way you handled that rifle I thought you’d had military training.”

  “Counter-terrorism,” she said. “But I just had the training. The job wasn’t for me. I worked cold-cases, where the suspects were often as long dead as their victims. What are you looking for?”

  I’d opened a cupboard. “Sister Mary-Theresa would have been the last to leave the farm, right?”

  “Yes, probably. She’d have waited in the harbour for help unless all the boats had already gone.”

  “So we won’t go ashore again until we find them, and that might not be for a few days. We need cups and crockery. Toilet paper and soap if there is any. If there isn’t, we’ll have to do without. There’s cutlery in this drawer.”

  We found a few spare bags in an upstairs cupboard, and had them filled in ten minutes. Then we went outside and helped dig the grave.

  “That’s deep enough,” Siobhan said after half an hour. Dean kept digging. “Dean, that’s fine. Nothing will disturb them there.”

  “We need three,” he said.

  “No,” Siobhan said. “One grave is better. Let them rest together. The girls would prefer that. They wouldn’t want to be alone.”

  We brought the bodies out. The girls were so light. That’s what I’ll remember. We laid them together, their eyes closed, their arms intertwined.

  “We shouldn’t tell the kids that they’re dead,” Dean said as we filled the grave. “Let them think they’re still alive.”

  “False hope’s no kind of hope at all,” I said.

  “Charlie will blame himself,” Dean said. “He’ll think if we’d not had to rescue him, if he’d not got injured, we’d be here sooner.”

  Dean wasn’t really talking about Charlie. I wondered if he realised that. “If any of us had done a million things differently,” I said, “thousands more would be alive, or maybe no one would. We can’t know, and can’t torture ourselves with what-might-have-beens.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he snapped.

  “Dean. Don’t,” Lena said.

  I kept quiet. Dean did the same.

  We left the graves. Dean and Lena were given the bags to carry back to the boat.

  “Don’t take too long,” Dean said, glaring at my leg. Again, I kept my silence.

  “He just needs to vent,” Siobhan said.

  “I know. I understand,” I said. We walked along the track together as the teenagers disappeared from view. The camouflage was reasonably effective. At least when I, a human, was looking at them. Whether it worked the same for zombies, I don’t know.

  “It was the Molotov cocktails,” Siobhan said.

  “I’m sorry? What was?”

  “At the farm,” she said. “That’s what started the fire. I was against it, but Aoife wanted to try them. We’d found a stash of poteen. Crates of it under a barn when we were looking for seeds we could plant, or eat.”

  “An illegal still? I didn’t think people did that anymore,” I said.

  “If there’s money in it, the government will find a way to tax it. If there’s tax due, people will find a way to avoid it. You should know that,” she said. “This was lethal stuff. You’d never get a licence to sell it. I wanted to pour it away, but Aoife said we should keep it as a weapon. She mixed it with the last of the petrol we’d found at the farm, and with a good deal of kerosene. Even made a few timers. She was crazy, Aoife. A year ago, I’d have said she was criminal. Now… I think the zombies got in through the gate. Lena didn’t open it, but someone did. Whoever it was, they were probably collecting firewood from the forest. I think Aoife was the one who used the Molotovs, because I think I found her body. It was too badly burned to be sure. The fire caught and spread. And now we’re here. That was our fourth proper refuge since we left Mark in Malin Head, and that was our… you know, I’ve lost count of the number of temporary ones. Before then, between the outbreak and April, we spent nearly every night somewhere different. With different people as well.”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Do you mean how many are dead, or how many might be alive somewhere on the island? I suppose it might be as many as a few hundred, but if experience is anything to go by, it’s more likely to be none.”

  Chapter 12 - County Mayo

  3rd October, Day 205

  “Four o’clock,” Colm whispered. He picked up the torch, and flashed it three times. I watched the shore with little optimism. No lights came in return. He and I had stayed on watch, flashing the light every quarter of an hour as a concession to ourselves as much to the children. During the afternoon, we’d seen no more boats or any other sign of those who’d fled the farm. Hope was fading.

  Colm sighed and put the torch down. “It’ll be dawn soon,” he said, f
lexing his hands. “Then we’ll—” He stopped, and glanced at Tamara. She was curled up on the bench seat. Everyone else was asleep below. Ostensibly, the girl had wanted to join us on watch, but I think she was afraid to sleep. The discovery of the bodies of the nun and two children had hit Tamara, Billy, and Charlie the hardest. We’d softened the blow as much as we could, and skipped over the details, but we’d told them the truth. Charlie was still weak, and his response had been to sleep. Billy had curled up on Charlie’s bunk. Siobhan and Kim were watching them, while the teenagers slept in the other cabin. Tamara had come to join us, and had fallen asleep under the soft glow of the cockpit’s emergency LEDs. By their light, when Colm flexed his large hands and the jacket rolled up his arms, I caught sight of his tattoos.

  “Is that a shark?” I whispered.

  “Hmm? Oh. Yeah.” He pulled the sleeve down, but the jacket was one of Kempton’s fleeces. It was too short, and barely covered the animal that seemed to be jumping, open mouthed, towards a lion.

  “Is there a meaning to them?”

  “Just the folly of youth,” he said.

  “Oh yes? Don’t leave me in suspense.”

  For a moment he seemed reluctant, almost embarrassed. “It was after I gave up my dreams of being a professional,” he said. “I went on holiday. It was on the cheap, but I thought I could see every country in the world. Each country was a new tattoo.”

  “How far did you get?”

  “The shark was Australia. The lion was South Africa.” He rolled up his other sleeve. “That was Egypt, and it’s meant to be a crocodile. That’s a Kiwi. There’s a tiger on my thigh that I got in South Korea. Then there’s half a bear on my back.”

  “Why only half?”

  “It was going to take four days. I got an infection on the second day. That’s what cut the journey short.”

  “You went home?” I asked.

  “I went home, utterly broke, with a bunch of tattoos and no real memories to speak of. Australia? New Zealand? They’re hardly exotic. South Korea? I suppose that counts, but when I got there, I spent a night in a dingy hotel, got the tattoo the next day, and flew onwards that evening. I couldn’t afford to stay longer. It was the same in every place I visited: last minute flights to wherever was cheapest, sleeping in chain hotels when I could afford them, and the airport when I couldn’t. I didn’t see the countries, didn’t experience the culture. I saw nothing, learned nothing. I just wanted to get away, to see something other than the ring.”