Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest

by Tayell, Frank

  “Yes. Yes, fine,” McInery said. “I agree. We can’t get the lifeboat through.” Nilda relaxed. “But,” McInery went on, “I think we can get a boat through. Didn’t that old warder say he went upriver?”

  “He did,” Chester said, “but that was at high tide and at the beginning of the outbreak. Look at all that wreckage. Jay, can you bring it back out a bit? Now turn it left about thirty degrees. No, your other left. There, see, there’s metal and bits of boats and plastic, and I don’t know what that is—”

  “It’s an advertising hoarding,” Nilda said. “For one of the airlines. They had the same poster at the supermarket in Penrith. I had to look at that woman’s smiling face on my way in to work for six months. You can’t believe how genuinely happy I was when I saw them putting up a new poster at the beginning of a shift. And you can only imagine how thoroughly depressed I was when I was on my way home and saw they’d just replaced the faded one with a newer copy. People in Penrith must really have liked flying to Canada.” She sighed. “But Chester’s right. That thing of Fogerty’s is more like a collection of holes on a wooden frame than a boat. It’s more likely to sink than float, but by all means, try it if you want.”

  Nilda immediately regretted her words. Not out of fear for who McInery used to be, but because the other woman was the type to take a comment like that as a challenge.

  “There’s the other bridges to think about, too,” Jay said, trying to play peacemaker amidst the sudden tense silence. “They might be worse than this. I wonder why they did it. Was it deliberate?” He looked to his mother for an answer. Nilda shrugged and turned to Chester.

  “I’ve no idea,” he said. “I’m not even sure who ‘they’ were. Russians. Chinese. It could have been Quigley.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Jay said as he circled the drone around the debris and then flew it up until it was hovering twenty metres above the bridge. Most of the middle section had been demolished. All that remained connecting the north and south banks was a narrow strip of concrete, on which, with its front wheels teetering over the edge of the broken roadway, was a lorry. Jay flew the drone towards it.

  “What do you think’s in the back of that lorry?” McInery asked.

  Following the soft purr of the drone’s rotors, a small pack of the undead rammed into the vehicle. It moved forward a fraction of an inch, and the rear wheels lifted from the roadbed. The lorry seesawed back and forth. Nilda held her breath, expecting it to topple and add its bulk to the flotsam and half-sunk wreckage around the bridge. It didn’t. It fell back onto its rear wheels, and though the undead knocked and pushed into it as they stretched their pawing hands up to the ‘copter overhead, the lorry didn’t fall.

  “Whatever it is,” Chester said, “it must be heavy.”

  “Maybe it’s something valuable,” Jay said.

  “More valuable than the Crown Jewels?” Chester asked.

  “I mean properly valuable. Like canned food or candles.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Chester agreed. “But I’ve seen that movie. If you try and empty the contents, the vehicle’s centre of gravity shifts, and people and cargo all fall down into the river. Whatever’s inside, we’re never going to know.”

  “And since we can’t get this boat past the bridge,” Nilda added, “can we agree that we’re not going to get to Westminster today?” She kept her eyes fixed on the screen as she asked the question. McInery was the only person who really wanted to make that particular trip. Everyone else was curious as to what they might find there, but curiosity alone wasn’t enough reason to risk the journey. McInery had vocally dangled the prospect that when the last of the government forces had been overrun, the weapons and ammunition they’d brought with them would have been left behind. Almost as an afterthought she’d suggested that there would be other supplies as well.

  And there might be, Nilda thought. The Tower of London had weapons. Plenty of them – axes, maces, and morning-stars, halberds, bills, partisans, and spears, hangers, sabres, and giant great-swords that not even Chester could lift. Not to mention muskets, rifles, and diamond-encrusted submachine guns presented by dictators deposed long before the outbreak. Fogerty had explained that the more modern weapons had all been deactivated. And after the bejewelled handguns and gold-plated rifles had been admired, Tuck had pointed out that the only ammunition in the Tower were the few rounds for Chester’s revolver. He’d flatly stated that he wasn’t going to hand those over to anyone. That an echoing shot would bring the undead from a mile around to the Tower was a secondary problem that they’d not even discussed.

  Nilda didn’t think McInery really wanted guns and ammo. She was just using those two obvious and understandable items as a way of gaining public support for her plan. Why she did want to go to Westminster, Nilda couldn’t work out. According to Tuck, McInery had changed since Nilda arrived with news of the community on Anglesey. According to Chester, she seemed exactly as he’d known her of old, obsessed with the pursuit of power though not with the prize.

  “We would probably find a Geiger counter there,” McInery said, clearly not having given up yet.

  “But where exactly?” Nilda asked. “We’re running against the clock. In a few weeks, we’ll have eaten the food we have, and any that’s in the fields or on the trees will have begun to rot. We can’t afford any wasted days.”

  “There’s Anglesey,” McInery said. “You said they had more grain than they could possibly eat.”

  “But you’d be asking them for supplies for fifty people for a year,” Chester said. “Fuel was a problem when we left. They may decide that it’s more economical to evacuate—” He stopped as Nilda tutted. “Sorry,” Chester said, “that was a bad choice of word. They may decide to ship everyone from here to the island. Besides, if they were right and the radiation was spreading, I’d rather not start a trek through England and Wales if everything west of Dartford is radioactive.”

  “Won’t he be able to tell?” Jay asked, and Nilda noticed that his hands moved as he spoke, and he was looking at Tuck for an answer. Nilda quelled an unfair swell of jealousy as the soldier’s signed a reply. It wasn’t Tuck’s fault. She truly had kept Jay safe over the past months. Even so, it was hard to suppress bitterness at how her son had grown up beyond all expectations under the tutelage of someone else.

  “She says,” Jay summarised, “that the fields won’t be glowing in the dark, so we wouldn’t know until it’s too late.”

  “Which is why we need the Geiger counter,” Nilda said.

  “What we need,” McInery said, “is a smaller boat. If we had one, I could lead a group to search Westminster while you take the lifeboat down to Kent. Are you sure that all the small boats were removed from HMS Belfast?”

  Nilda’s eyes moved to the old World War Two museum ship moored on the other side of the Thames.

  “You can look at the recording again if you want,” Jay said. “But we couldn’t see one, just the undead. I counted seven, and who knows how many more are below decks. What we really need is food. And for that we need to go to Kent. That means we need a Geiger counter. And that means going to City Airport.”

  “We need time,” Tuck signed. “There’s too much to do and too few people to do it.”

  “Right, well,” Chester said after Jay had finished translating. “Call it need or want, but whichever it is, there’s little point sitting around here. We can’t get to Westminster, but we can get to the airport. So I say we go there now while the tide is in our favour. Agreed?”

  Nilda took one last look at the screen showing the undead clustered around the lorry on the bridge. One at the edge of the pack waved its arms, and the motion caused it to stumble out into the roadway. It tripped, fell through the broken balustrade, and tumbled head first onto a jagged outcrop of half-submerged concrete. Skin split, skull broke, and the stone was tinged dark brown for a moment before a wave washed away both creature and stain. Nilda made a mental note to remind everyone why they spent so much tim
e boiling and filtering the water.

  “Look at the battery,” Nilda said, pointing at a small window near the top of the screen. “It’s running low. You better bring it back.”

  Jay tapped at the controls. As the drone slowly rotated, the screen displayed a panorama of south London. There was the Shard, and seven miles to the south, the Crystal Palace transmitter sitting on top of Sydenham Hill. That was replaced with empty streets and ruined buildings, then with the Thames, and then Tower Bridge and the Tower of London itself. The image of the ancient fortress grew as Jay piloted the drone back towards them.

  “If we could get a boat close enough,” McInery said, “we could survey Westminster with the drone.”

  “If. But we still need that smaller boat,” Chester said.

  “Indeed. And the solution to that problem will not be found at an airport. You won’t need my help for that trip, but helping to secure that gift shop is a task for which I know I can be of use. I can see Graham on the ramparts, excuse me.”

  Nilda kept quiet as McInery left the boat and headed over to the walls.

  “And there’s nothing stopping us from leaving,” Chester said. Nilda followed him down the steps to the lifeboat.

  “Do you think Mrs McInery might try to get to Westminster on foot?” Jay asked, as with drone in one hand, laptop in the other, he nimbly jumped from the wall down onto the rocking boat.

  “Maybe,” Nilda said. “We can’t stop her if she does.”

  Tuck untied the ropes, and the lifeboat drifted out into the river.

  “She’s right about the boats,” Chester said. “If there’s going to be a long-term plan to use the river to get supplies then we need one that we can row. Are we clear on all sides? Right, I’m going to turn the engine on for a bit.”

  “What about the diesel?” Jay asked. “We don’t want to waste it.”

  “What else are we going to use it for?” he replied. “There’s not enough to get us to Anglesey by boat and more than enough to get us there by land.” The engine began to thrum. Chester tilted his head to one side.

  “Is there a problem?” Jay asked.

  “Doesn’t sound quite right. Ah, it doesn’t matter. Ladies and gentleman, please settle in for Chester Carson’s river tour of apocalyptic London. Next stop, City Airport.”

  Nilda watched the river. It was better than looking at the skyline now missing so many familiar landmarks and full of so many more unfamiliar ones. When they’d left London, Jay had been a toddler and she’d been young and foolish enough to think a world of possibilities still lay at her feet. Her memories of that thriving city had been of noise. Though humanity had now all but disappeared, that had barely changed. Under the early autumn sun, metal creaked, soil cracked, and bricks and glass fell from burned out buildings. Leaves mingled with the detritus discarded during the evacuation, blown by gentle winds into great drifts around broken walls and abandoned vehicles. The river itself offered a cacophonous symphony of wood and plastic, cloth and flesh, thrown by each swell against the embankment wall. But when the lifeboat’s small engine sputtered to life, it seemed loud enough to echo all the way to France and beyond.

  “And what if the airport has been destroyed?” Jay asked.

  “I came down this way about, oh, it must have been about five days after New York,” Chester said. “And aircraft were still landing.”

  Tuck caught Jay’s attention and began signing.

  “She says that after the island was cut off, planes were still coming in,” Jay said. “They were carrying ambassadors and staff from overseas, soldiers and foreign leaders, and anyone else who was lucky enough to catch the flight. Then a plane came in from the United States. A colonel was flying it. His family were on board. So were troops from his regiment and their families. But some of the people were infected. When the plane landed, they killed everyone. They used…” Jay paused, and there was an animated, silent back and forth between him and the soldier. “Chemical weapons. Tuck doesn’t know where the government got them. Britain wasn’t meant to have any. After that, they tried to shoot down all approaching aircraft. But they couldn’t get them all.”

  “Why not?” Nilda asked.

  “Because a fighter plane only has so many missiles,” Tuck signed.

  “How do you know this?” Nilda asked.

  “I heard about it whilst I was still in the enclave,” Tuck signed. “Actually, it was part of the reason I left. There was a conversation between the deputy director of MI5 and an assistant to the Air Chief Marshal, not that they’d been in those posts the week before. They didn’t mind talking around a deaf girl. They thought that because I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t understand.”

  “And what were you doing besides spying on them?” Chester asked.

  “I was trying to find out where in the world might be safer than Britain,” Tuck signed. “Some other island or…” She shrugged. “Anywhere that the people in charge in the morning were the same as the ones running the place the evening before. I could tell it was all going to fall apart. And it did.”

  Gloom descended with Jay’s translation of those last few words, but he broke it with a question of his own. “You said the planes crashed? But they didn’t try and move them?”

  “City Airport’s built on a pontoon out into the middle of an old dock,” Chester said. “It’s surrounded by water. There’s nowhere to move them to.”

  “Right, yes,” Jay said, impatient. “So the planes will still be there?”

  “Yes, why?” Chester asked.

  “Because I think McInery’s right,” Jay said. “If we’re going to make the Tower work, we need small boats, lots of them, and I think we’ll find those boats at the airport.”

  “Well,” Chester mused, “I suppose there might be one or two left in the marina that surrounded the runway, but I doubt it. The story everywhere, and not just in the UK, but from all those people who made it to Anglesey, they all said that anything that could float was taken out to sea regardless of whether the engines worked or anyone on board knew how to furl a sail. I’d say our best bet for finding a ship would be in the Maritime Museum at Greenwich. I think they had a couple of whaling boats there. Wooden, of course, and a bit bigger than this craft, with a single sail, and which could be rowed by a crew of four. Or was it six? Actually, thinking about it, I’m not sure that was in Greenwich.”

  “N’ah,” Jay said with a grin. “We don’t want a museum relic that’ll dissolve if it comes in contact with water. We want something modern, something that won’t rip or tear, and which doesn’t need diesel. We’ll find it at the airport.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Nilda asked.

  “There was a movie where a plane crashed onto the water and the passengers all—”

  “Life rafts!” Nilda exclaimed. “Cruise ships have lifeboats. Planes have life rafts. If the airport is full of crashed planes, then it’s also full of rafts. We’ve just got to pull them out.”

  “That’s actually a good idea,” Chester said. “For going up and down the river they’ll be cumbersome, but for getting over the jagged masonry around the bridges, they’ll be perfect. That material’s got to be rip proof.”

  “It is?” Nilda asked.

  “Well, I’m only guessing—”

  “Tuck says it is,” Jay cut in. “And there might be food, too, you know. Peanuts and stuff.”

  “That’s what you think is it?” Chester asked the soldier.

  “No, it’s what I think,” Jay said. “But it’s worth looking.”

  “What’s that?” Jay asked, pointing ahead of the boat.

  “The Thames Barrier,” Chester said wearily. He’d started out as a cheerful tour guide, but Jay had been interrogating him incessantly as they travelled down the river. The man’s tone was now one of resigned exasperation. Tuck met Nilda’s eyes, nodded at Jay, and rolled her own. Nilda took that to mean the soldier was grateful that Jay’s barrage of questions was finally being directed at someone else.

&n
bsp; “Okay. So what is it?” Jay asked.

  “It was designed to stop London from flooding. But the barrier’s down, so the city, or parts of it, will flood,” Chester said.

  “You mean like the Tower?”

  “I doubt it. They started building that fortress nearly a thousand years ago, so I think it’s safe enough. But London used to be full of rivers, little tributaries that all fed the Thames. Those rivers became canals or sewers. The land around and above them became houses and offices. The river will a find a new course, basements will flood, buildings will collapse, and roads will be washed away. Soon, each time we come along the river, the skyline will be changed. The airport’s over there, on your left,” he added.

  “Where? I can’t see it,” Jay said.

  “No, there’s a housing estate between us and it.”

  “And what’s that?” Jay asked. Nilda had to smile.

  “What?” Chester asked.

  “Those chimneys.” Jay pointed.

  “The Tate and Lyle sugar factory,” Chester said.

  “They made sugar? Really?” Curiosity was now replaced by excitement. “Shouldn’t we check it out?”

  “They didn’t make sugar, they refined it,” Nilda said. “Without the boats coming in, there’ll be no canes to process. Any that was stored there would have been used up during the rationing. Look at those tower blocks near the factory. Think of all the people who lived there, and then remember how hungry you were before the evacuation and after. They’ll have broken in, or stormed the place en masse, taking anything that was left.”

  “And licked the walls clean for good measure,” Chester added.

  “But it’s right there. Surely it’s worth looking,” Jay said.

  “Sugar might make life sweeter, but you can’t live on it,” Nilda said. “We have to keep focused. The Geiger counter first, and then the farms in Kent. How do we get into the airport?”