Deciding that she’d had enough of circumspection, Tuck tried a more direct approach. “What do you think we’ll find there?” she signed.
“Probably nothing,” McInery replied, “just like everywhere else. If you turn it a hundred and eighty degrees we’ll see Downing Street.”
The ‘copter, an overpriced novelty from the toy store on Regent’s Street, was devilishly difficult to change direction when it was in mid-flight. Whenever Tuck tried, the drone ended up pointing in completely the wrong direction. She stuck with flying it in a straight line, bringing it to a hover, and slowly turning it around until she found Nelson’s column, then orientating herself accordingly. As such, she overshot Downing Street. A small part of her regretted that. She was curious to see what the garden behind the Prime Minister’s house was like, but the battery indicator on the software was at seventy percent. It would have to wait for another time. She steadied the drone and aimed the camera down.
They were over Horse Guards Parade. The old, open space, home to jousting in the days of ancient kings, had been turned into a vehicle park. There were more tanks, a Corp’s worth of construction equipment, and in the corner close to the Old Admiralty Building were a dozen parked lorries.
Tuck didn’t need McInery’s finger stabbing at the screen to know to have the ‘copter descend, circling the vehicles, looking for damage. There was none that she could see.
A wave caught the raft, and as they were bounced up and down, Tuck’s finger nudged the controls. The image started to rotate. She jabbed at the keyboard, getting the drone to rise. By the time the boat had steadied itself, the ‘copter was fifty metres up. Tuck breathed out, brought the drone to a halt, and then into a descent, as curious as McInery as to what might be inside those lorries.
A finger tapped the screen. Tuck blinked. She’d been so focused on the vehicles she’d not seen what was now heading towards the drone. A long thin line of the undead, coming from the direction of Whitehall, had followed the soft whir of the rotors. Tuck shrugged, levelled off, and checked the battery level. Sixty percent.
“Next trip,” she signed. Ignoring McInery’s finger still pointing at those parked vehicles, Tuck turned the drone up and west to get a view of the park. She realised why the image had seemed wrong. The grass had gone. More construction vehicles, though these with a distinctly civilian paint scheme, had been abandoned next to huge mounds of earth.
“Graves?” McInery signed.
Tuck shook her head. “Fields,” she replied. And somehow, that was worse. Inexpertly dug, incompletely finished, and improbably excavated with bulldozers, it wouldn’t have mattered if this redoubt hadn’t been destroyed during the attacks, the people inside would have starved long ago. Then she remembered the tanks and the only purpose to which they could have been put. Those people had no intention of being farmers.
The battery light flashed fifty percent. Tuck took that as a sign their aerial tour was over. She rotated the drone until she’d found the Shard and started piloting it back. It was halfway along a canyon of curving road when the light jumped from an orange forty-five percent to an ominous, narrow red line. Tuck had barely enough time to steer the drone into the middle of the road before the image blurred, and then went blank.
“What happened?” McInery asked.
Tuck tried the controls. She gave up. “The battery ran out,” she signed.
“Where?” McInery asked.
“Three hundred metres away.” Tuck pointed at the map. “Perhaps four.”
“We have to go and get it,” McInery signed.
“We don’t.”
“We do. We can’t get another. Not easily. Not without fighting our way to Regent’s Street and battling our way through that department store. Where else would we find one? How long would we spend looking? Without that drone for surveillance, we only have our eyes. And since Westminster is one of the places that we will end up looking, we might as well go there now and collect the drone while we’re about it.”
The logic was sound. Tuck hated that. She stowed the laptop in the bag, checked the bayonet was loose in its scabbard, the rope attaching the boat to the steps was fast, and the axe was ready in her hand. She jumped onto the stone steps. They were slick with slime, and she almost slipped as she caught the thick iron railings and climbed over. She offered a hand to McInery, but the woman leaped from the boat more nimbly than Tuck had managed.
Alert for the undead, Tuck scanned the road, trying to find a way over or past the rubbled remains of the railway bridge blocking the road to the south. She saw none, but that just meant they’d all followed the drone.
Behind the ruined Tube station was a wide tunnel. Embankment Place, according to the embossed sign above the entrance. It was a grand title for a pedestrianized thoroughfare that ran under the bridge. On either side were those ubiquitous cafes with drifts of leaves and rubbish piled up against their broken doors. Except, as she picked her way over the broken glass, Tuck saw that one wasn’t a cafe, but a bicycle shop. Near the back of the store there were at least three that looked ready to be ridden away. They would be genuinely useful, as they had none at the Tower. She was about to step inside when she sensed movement to her side. A zombie crawled towards her on elbows and arms. Both its legs were broken, with the left only attached by a thin strand of sinew. Its open, snapping mouth filled with mud and leaves as it ploughed its way through the gutter. Tuck hacked the axe down, wrenched it free, and decided that the bicycle shop could wait.
She looked over her shoulder. McInery stood there, her battle-axe in hand, an odd look on her face. She would have heard that zombie approach, Tuck thought. And then she realised that she and McInery were here alone, and no one would think it odd should only one of them return.
Moving more quickly than before, she left the gloomy tunnel. On the road to the right there was another creature, this one heading away from the river. Her eyes on the zombie, Tuck didn’t see what was beneath her foot. Whatever it was, as it broke, the creature turned, its arms jerkily flapping as it staggered towards her.
Ignoring the clothing and what other few identifying features remained, she darted forward. It wasn’t a person, just a threat to be eliminated. She chopped the axe at its legs, breaking bone. It staggered, toppled, fell to its knees, arms still clawing out, and mouth still snapping open and closed. She changed her grip, slashing down. Skin split and skull broke, as the axe smashed into its brain.
Tuck looked up, trying to reconcile the images from the drone with the streets in front her. Above the roofs to the north she could just make out the admiral’s hat at the top of Nelson’s column. But below that, at the end of the road, were more of the undead. Ten? Fifteen? She wasn’t sure how many, but there would be more behind those. At least they weren’t moving. That thought had come too soon. Three of the creatures slowly rose.
She was almost relieved when McInery pushed past her, waving her axe towards a side street branching to the left. Tuck followed her over a mound of rubble spilling out from a building that had taken a direct hit. All that remained to identify its former purpose was a scorched scrap of green cloth fluttering against a broken flagpole. Beyond the rubble was a long curving road with CCTV cameras pointing in every direction including straight up. She was certain she didn’t recognise it from the drone’s images. McInery had taken a diversion, she was sure of it. Gearing up for an imminent betrayal, Tuck sped up, trying to catch her, but McInery did the same thing, sprinting ahead with a speed that belied her age. Tuck’s mind filled with memories of traps and ambushes until McInery dived forward, grabbing something from the ground. The drone.
Tuck came to a stumbling halt, smiling with the relief of it, but that smile froze in place as she looked beyond McInery and saw the undead filling the road. Of course they’d followed the sound of the drone’s rotors. Tuck looked the way they’d come. The undead were slouching towards them, blocking the road behind. She looked for an escape and saw a thick wooden door partly blown off its hinge
s and singed by a familiar burn pattern. She was still debating whether to risk the unknown or charge the undead when McInery shoved the ‘copter into her hands and ran into the building. The expression on her face was so out of place that Tuck had stuffed the drone in her pack and followed McInery into the building before she realised what it was. Triumph.
They were in a wide corridor with open doors spaced equidistantly along it. Daylight streamed through each. Axe raised, expecting the undead to spring out, Tuck moved past McInery and looked through the first door. It was a meeting room with a ring of tables and enough chairs to seat a dozen. Was it a government office, then? The next room was the same, but with a name only a hotel would use printed on a plaque by the door.
As she neared the end of the corridor, Tuck looked back and saw a zombie stagger into the building, with a second creature a flailing arm’s length behind. McInery, reading something in Tuck’s expression, turned, twisted, and flipped her battle-axe around. It carved a chunk out of the ornate wallpaper before the blade cleaved up through the zombie’s chin, splitting its face in half. As red-brown gore and black gobbets of brain slid down the blade, McInery punched the axe at that second zombie’s legs. It fell, and when McInery turned, motioning for Tuck to continue, her expression was utterly emotionless.
Tuck quickened her pace, as much to get away from McInery as from the undead. The hallway branched. To the left was a hasty barricade. To the right were three uniformed bodies, each with matching head wounds that told the story of their deaths. She jumped over them and kept running. Another junction, another barricade. More bodies. She turned left. The corridor curved and she was worried they were heading back on themselves. McInery grabbed her arm and pointed at a doorway, wider than the others. On it was a tarnished brass sign. ‘Gravington Ballroom.’ Underneath that was a torn piece of paper, all that remained of the words printed on it were ‘no admittance.’ Before Tuck could protest, McInery had pushed the doors open.
One side of the room was empty; the other was full of tables. On them, behind, and underneath were crates. Tuck recognised the type instantly as those used to store and transport ammunition. She grabbed a stack of chairs from near the wall, and pulled them down in front of the door. The barricade was rough and ready, but would hold back the undead long enough for them to escape. There were two other doors from the room, a small one marked as an emergency exit and another, larger than the one they had entered by. That, she hoped, would lead to the front entrance.
McInery was going from crate to crate, opening some, ignoring others, and occasionally pulling out a few loose rounds of ammunition and throwing them into her bag with a casual disinterest. Tuck realised that McInery was talking to herself. Her head was half turned, and the only words the soldier caught were, “Must be here.”
Tuck ran to her and grabbed her arm. “We have to go,” she signed.
“Not yet,” McInery said. “Look, there’s ammunition here, at least.” She thrust a fistful of rounds at Tuck. The soldier pocketed them.
“And it’s useless without a rifle,” Tuck signed, but McInery hadn’t seen. Tuck grabbed her arm, turning her to face the now shaking doors.
“Yes, fine,” McInery said. “Time to go, but get the ammunition. There’s no point leaving empty-handed.” She scooped up another few fistfuls, dropping them into her bag.
“Now!” Tuck croaked.
McInery grabbed one last handful of cartridges and pushed past the soldier, heading towards the doors. She leaned an ear against the wood. “It’s clear,” she signed.
A real battle had been fought in the corridor beyond. Bodies were strewn about one on top of another. Some had been ripped apart, others had been shot, and only by the head wounds was it possible to discern the human from the undead.
There was a brass plaque on the wall with an arrow pointing towards reception. Tuck started moving more quickly, ignoring the doors to either side, her attention on getting out of the building. A zombie reared out of a side room, its snarling face inches from Tuck’s own. Only the axe held across her body prevented the creature’s teeth from tearing at her face. Tuck twisted, shoved, but those clawing hands were pushing her back. She let go of the axe and dropped to the floor, scything her leg out, knocking the zombie down as her hand went to her belt. She pulled out her bayonet, but McInery was in the way, not attacking the creature but jumping over it, running past. Tuck stabbed down, and pulled the knife free. She couldn’t see the axe. No time, she thought, and ran towards the exit.
McInery hadn’t reached it. She’d paused in the lobby and was pulling at… they were remains, though parts would be a more apt description. It was impossible to tell which limb belonged to which torso, nor even how many had died. It was a last stand, the destruction wrought by landmines or something larger, used when all hope of rescue or escape had gone.
Tuck reached out to grab McInery, uncertain what macabre purpose she had, but the woman straightened with a look of triumph on her face. In her hands was a rifle. The barrel was bent, the stock charred. Before the soldier could protest, McInery had thrust it into Tuck’s hands, and then pushed past her, grabbing another, similarly damaged weapon.
“Rifles,” she mouthed.
Tuck looked at her, wanting to scream. Instead, she ran out of the main doors and down into the street. There were undead there, and there were more on the right, so she went left, using the broken rifle to club a path through the living dead. The roads blurred into one as she swung the rifle, pitching the undead from their feet, no longer caring if they rose again in time to attack McInery.
She saw the river, but there was a zombie right in front of the railings. She kept running as it twisted around to face her, and then turned the run into a leap. Her shoulder hit its face, snapping its head back. She spun, bayonet ready, but the creature had lost its footing, slipped, and fallen onto the spiked railings. One had gone straight through its neck. Its arms thrashed, its legs kicked, and the skin around that gaping wound slowly tore.
Tuck took a step back, looked around for any more imminent threats, and saw McInery not three paces behind. A broken rifle was slung over her shoulder, a second in one hand, and the battle-axe in the other, an almost serene look on her face. Tuck stabbed her bayonet into the eye of the impaled zombie, and then took one last look back at the road. She expected to see a great pack of the undead heading towards them. Whenever she ran from them she always forgot how slow they were. They would be impeded by the rubble and might never get as far as the river. She threw a look towards the Tube station and the bicycle shop hidden behind. Not this trip, she decided.
She clambered over the railing and down the steps to the raft. McInery moved to pull the rope free. Tuck shook her head.
“The tide,” she signed. “It won’t turn for an hour.”
McInery nodded and sat back down. “You said you needed a firing pin,” she said, pointing at the rifles.
Tuck nodded. The only modern weapon in the Tower that wasn’t covered in gems or coated in gold was an SA80 assault rifle that had been part of a display on modern warfare. The firing pin and back spring had been removed. Tuck looked at the weapons with their twisted barrels and melted stocks. She took out one of the cartridges that McInery had taken from that ballroom. It was the right calibre.
“You can make the gun work, can’t you?” McInery asked.
“Maybe,” Tuck signed.
McInery smiled. As they waited for the tide to turn, Tuck tried to work out why.
By the time she stood on the battlement walls, watching Kevin and Aisha bicker, she’d not found the answer. They’d brought back four hundred and sixty-three rounds of 5.56 NATO ammunition. At best, that represented no more than the deaths of three hundred of the undead. She wasn’t sure how much ammunition there was in the ballroom, but even if they went back, collected it all, and planted each bullet in the forehead of one of the living dead, they would only make a shallow dent in the total numbers left in their undead Britain. It was a distracti
on from the real threats facing them. That was the argument she’d been working on as she’d carried the drone back to Jay’s room, but when she’d found McInery again, the woman seemed to have lost all interest in the rifles and ammunition.
Tuck closed her eyes, seeking a moment of calm in the silent dark. She kept trying to place McInery on a spectrum with the power-mad crook she’d been at one end, and the altruistic philanthropist she’d claimed to be at the other. Perhaps she was wrong, and McInery was just plain mad.
To a greater or lesser extent, and each in their own way, everyone who’d survived this long had developed eccentricities that went far beyond neurotic. Why should McInery be any different? It was a comforting thought because it suggested that, with no reason behind McInery’s actions, there was no subterfuge either. That meant that she could focus on the other, far more pressing problem she’d discovered on their return.
The two zombies she’d seen pawing at the barrier on the far side of the moat when they’d set out for Westminster were still there, and they’d been joined by a third. It wasn’t that anyone had spent the morning relaxing, just that they’d opted for the backbreaking but safer chores inside the Tower’s walls. Filtering, boiling, desalinating, and purifying the water, splitting the firewood, mucking out livestock, and all the rest added up to full-time work for two-dozen people. Then there was the never-ending toil of laundering and mending the clothes that could be salvaged and burning those that couldn’t. It all had to be done, of course, but those were tasks that used up their stores, not ones that added to them. And after all that was done, and after all that they’d been through, didn’t people deserve some time to relax?
No, was Tuck’s answer to that. Clearly, she was in the minority. Her concern was that despite, or perhaps because of, Hana’s talk the night before, it was turning into Kirkman House all over again. It was too easy to confuse intent and action, particularly when they were all waiting for Nilda to return with news of whether or not they would be starving before winter set in. But anxiety wouldn’t hurry her return, so Tuck had organised a small group to get rid of those undead and at least make a start at crossing things off the shopping list.
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest Page 8
