“You think we can eat them?” Reece asked as they passed one laden hedge.
Greta pulled a berry from a stem, and popped it in her mouth. “Think so,” she said.
“I’d have washed it. Don’t know what’s been along this road,” Chester muttered. “And checked the Geiger counter first.” But when he did, the reading was no different from earlier. Chester mulled that over for the next mile. He trusted Mr Tull and could see no reason why he would have lied. And, indeed, it was a good thing that Kent wasn’t the radioactive wasteland that Scotland and parts of the Midlands had become. But why had it been spared? He’d just come to the conclusion that the answer must be connected to why they’d seen so few of the undead when, reaching the top of a slight hill, they saw a dozen zombies huddled in a dip a hundred yards further down the road.
“Four of us. Twelve of them,” Finnegan said.
“Yeah,” Chester said. “So don’t just stand there. Get across that field.”
“We’re not going to fight?” Finnegan asked with obvious surprise.
“What’s the point?” Chester replied. “It’d only slow us down.”
The field led to a paddock and the skeleton of a horse.
“Where’s the raven?” Reece muttered as they climbed another fence and were back on a road.
“What?” Chester asked.
“Shouldn’t there be a raven? Shouldn’t there be birds? Didn’t you say you saw lots at the airport?”
“Parakeets. Hundreds of ‘em. Haven’t seen a raven of late except at the Tower.”
“Foreboding, that’s what it is,” Reece muttered, too morosely for Chester’s taste.
The road curved and kinked, and Chester realised they were heading more south than east. He was about to propose they turn back towards the coast when Finnegan pointed.
“There. You see that?”
Chester looked ahead. “What? You mean the trees?”
“Yeah, they’re planted too neatly,” Finnegan said. “That must be an orchard.
“I can’t see any fruit,” Chester said.
“Not all fruit is bright red,” Finnegan replied.
The road dipped and twisted, and the trees were lost from sight. Chester was just wondering whether anyone had built a straight road in Kent since the Romans, when they saw the field again. Now they were closer, it was obvious that the trees were planted in rows, and that they had once been cultivated.
“Zombies,” Reece hissed.
In front of a wide, tall gate were six of the undead. Two had been male. One, judging by the lank remains of long blonde hair, had possibly been female. The other three were too desiccated to make out any features beyond the snapping teeth, gnashing and snarling with increased vigour as the zombies saw the four travellers.
“This is where we fight,” Chester said. “I’ve got the right. Finnegan, you take the left. Try and angle behind them. Greta and Reece, you go down the middle of the road. Get them to split up. Remember, go for the legs. If more than two come at you, back away. Don’t run, just move quicker than them.”
They walked abreast down the road as the creatures staggered towards them. Chester raised his mace, and the other three raised their axes. He took a hopping skip forward. As he’d hoped, the sudden movement caused two of the undead to angle towards him. One was tall, even after months of walking death. The other, save for a matted beard that stretched half way down its neck, was as nondescript as the hundreds of others he’d brought to a second, final end.
The tall creature’s arms clawed pendulously out and down. Chester skipped back, out of reach, then forward. He raised his left arm to block its back-swung hand as his right went low, smashing the mace into its calf. There was a moment of soft resistance as flesh was pulverised, and then a sharp crack as bone broke, and a grunt from Chester as the toppling zombie’s flailing arm slapped against the side of his head. Ears ringing, he stamped his heel into its jaw with a revengeful crunch.
The second of the undead was only a pace away. Chester took another step back as it took a step forward. The prone creature lashed out with its spindly arms. The second zombie tripped. Fell. Chester brought the mace, two-handed, down on its skull.
He turned his attention to the other four and cursed. Reece was cleaving his axe left and right, hacking at the three zombies in front of him. Each blow cut flesh, severed fingers, and maimed limbs, but the only effect of his wild swings was to force Greta back behind him where she couldn’t reach the undead.
“Go for the knees!” she yelled. But Reece didn’t hear, and with each blow he took a half step forward, and the undead were edging around him.
Chester bellowed as he ran towards the trio of undead. They paid no attention to his war cry, and were still swiping and clawing at Reece as Chester swung the mace low, knocking one to the ground, then high, smashing a second to its knees, then up over his head to bring it crashing down on the third’s skull.
“Finish them. Quick,” he yelled, but Greta was already darting forward, stabbing the axe’s sharp point at a zombie’s exposed head. Chester turned to look for the last one and saw Finnegan leaping over its unmoving body, heading towards that spindly creature whose spider-like arms still flapped against the muddy roadway. Finnegan swung down once, Greta once more, and it was over.
“Alright,” Chester said, breathing hard. “Look. Reece. Reece? Look at me. Right. You’re all right. It’s over. You did good, but next time remember that you’re not chopping wood.”
“And try and aim at their heads, not mine,” Greta snapped.
“Yeah. Um. I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Well, what about this orchard?” Finnegan prompted.
It wasn’t an orchard. Supported on rows of wooden poles, a great lattice of wire and rope was suspended ten feet above the ground. Trailing up and then hanging down in nearly neat rows about eight feet apart, was a mass of leaves, dangling from which were a forest of small cone-like flowers.
“What are they?” Greta asked, picking one and rubbing it across her fingers.
“Hops,” Chester said. “As in beer. That was the other thing that Kent was famous for.”
“Can we eat them?” Finnegan asked.
“I don’t think so,” Chester said. “Let’s try the next field. That’ll at least get us away from the road.”
At the field’s far end they found another gate leading to another hop garden.
“Hold my legs,” Chester said as he climbed up the gate. Braced, he craned his neck left, then right.
“There’s a couple of fields like this to either side,” he said, as he jumped down. “Beyond that, I can’t tell.”
They climbed over the gate and into the second field. This one was not so picture perfect as the first. Half of the wooden trellises had been pulled down or had collapsed under the strain. Still, Chester thought, as he took a cautious sip from his water bottle, it was a more pleasing sight than most he’d come across.
“Where you find hops, you probably find barley nearby,” Reece said.
“And how do we harvest it?” Greta asked.
“Sickles and scythes,” Reece said, promptly. “There are enough weird weapons at the Tower which look like—”
“I didn’t mean what tools we’d use. How much could you cut by hand?” She swiped her axe at a trailing plant. “If it weren’t for the undead, it would be back-breaking work, but we could manage it. But as it is, how much time would we have before the zombies came. An hour? Less? We could never gather enough to feed everyone.”
“And a stalk of barley isn’t the same as a refined grain,” Chester said, putting his bottle away. “I’ve learned that much these last few months. But you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that farms were big on diversification, and this one wouldn’t focus solely on hops. They’d grow fruit for cider. Maybe grapes.”
“Really?” Greta asked.
“Probably. We’ll keep going for a couple more fields, and after that, we’ll think about heading back.”
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He was halfway across when he heard the scream. He turned in time to see Reece fall to the ground. He started running, but Greta reached the man first. Chester saw her swing the axe up, then down with a meaty thunk. By the time he reached him, she was pulling the axe from the skull of a zombie missing both its legs, and which had been hidden beneath the collapsed crop.
“Finnegan, Greta! Eyes open, check for more of them. Reece, you okay?” Chester asked bending to look at the man’s leg.
“I’m fine,” Reece said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, you probably are. It’s taken off a bit of skin, but not done much more than that. You’ll have another nice scar to add to your collection. Any more zombies?” This last was asked of the Finnegan and Greta.
“No. I think we’re alone,” Greta said.
“What now?” Finnegan asked.
“Do you think you can walk?” Chester asked the injured man.
“I can try,” Reece said.
“That’s the spirit, but let’s stop the bleeding first.” He pulled a small first-aid kit out of his pack. “Does it hurt as much as last time?” he asked as he tore the ragged trouser leg free and started wrapping a bandage around the man’s leg.
“Last time?” Reece asked.
“Yeah, the last time you were bitten.”
“I’ve never… I mean, I haven’t…”
“You mean you don’t know if you’re immune?” Chester asked. When he’d asked Tuck which people had the most experience of fighting the undead, he’d… he realised that he’d just assumed she’d given him the names of three people who were immune. “Well, you haven’t died yet,” he said. “That’s a good sign. Your colour’s good, and your temperature’s fine.”
“That’s important is it?” Reece asked with eager anxiety.
“Oh, yeah,” Chester said with as much confidence as he could manage. It wasn’t much. “But we need to get out of here. Finnegan, you take his weight.” Chester pulled Reece to his feet. “Greta, you keep an eye out behind us. We’re looking for a farmhouse or anywhere else that’s less exposed than here.”
“And then what?” Reece asked.
“We want a bike. A handcart will do in a pinch, but a bicycle would be better. It’s about three miles back to the boat in a straight line, but we can’t go back the same route, so call it five miles. We could walk that in an hour, run it in a lot less, but since you can’t do either, we’d have to stop to fight any time we came across the undead. If we’re lucky, we’ll make a mile an hour, and that means we’ll still be out here come nightfall, and you do not want to wandering around outside after dark.”
At the end of the hop garden, and separating it from the next, was a track. That led to another field, this one filled with weeds and the familiar sun-baked earth.
“There’s a chimney,” Finnegan said.
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
It was a farm with a house, two barns, and a collection of outbuildings. The closed gate was a welcome sight, but it opened with a grating screech that was echoed by a clattering rattle from somewhere around the back of the house.
“Stay here,” Chester said, leaving them by the locked front door.
A zombie wearing the ragged remains of a camouflage jacket and even more ragged red jeans staggered around the corner. Chester swung the mace sideways, smashing the creature’s skull against the pebble-dashed wall. As the body collapsed he listened, counting slowly to ten, and then to twenty. He could hear nothing but Finnegan’s feet shifting as he balanced the weight of the injured man.
Chester forced the back door, gave each of the rooms a cursory glance, and then thumped a fist against the wall, twice. He counted to five. He still heard nothing. He let the other three in.
“In there,” Chester pointed. Finnegan helped Reece into the front room, and dropped the injured man onto the sofa.
Chester checked the house again, this time more thoroughly. Finally satisfied that they were alone, he returned to Reece, took off the bandage, and examined the wound.
“It looks good,” he said.
“Really?” Reece asked, sceptically.
“It’s been an hour since you were bitten. I’d say you’re going to be fine, though you won’t walk for a while. Finnegan, Greta, we’re going to check the barns and the outbuildings. Look for a bicycle, but keep your eyes open for a car. Or a tractor. Anything with an engine that can run on diesel.”
“Surely there won’t be any fuel left,” Finnegan said.
“Probably not around here. But there’s some in the lifeboat’s tanks. One of us can cycle there and bring it back. We’ll only need a litre or so.”
They checked the barns and the outbuildings. There was no bicycle. There was no car. There wasn’t even a tractor. All they found, in a raised bed behind the farmhouse, was a patch of rubbery pick-and-eat lettuce.
“Never liked lettuce,” Greta said. “And these are the leaves even the slugs rejected, but at least it’s fresh.”
“With that zombie wandering around in here, you’d have to boil it up first. You ever eaten boiled lettuce?”
The farm was surrounded in parts by fence, in other parts by wall, and others by hedge. With the front gate closed, Chester felt sure that no undead could easily get in. They went back inside. Finnegan collapsed into a chair next to Reece, and Chester went into the kitchen.
“What are you looking for?” Greta asked.
“Tea. Coffee. Beer. Anything that isn’t water or those cubes of whatever they are.”
The cupboards were empty. Chester closed the last one. “Right. So someone came here and emptied the place, and they did a thorough job of it.”
“There’s the lettuce,” Greta said. “Shall I start a fire?”
“There’s plenty to burn, but we’ve only got the water we’re carrying. We could clean it with bleach, I suppose, if you’re that hungry.” He bent down and pulled open the doors under the sink. The cupboard was bare. “Or you could if they hadn’t taken the bleach with them as well.”
“So what do we do?” she asked.
Chester looked at the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Then he looked out the window. The shadows were lengthening.
“That’s a good question.” He went back into the living room. “Here’s the situation,” he said. “It’s going to take four or five hours to walk back to the boat. Since it’s unlikely we’d make it before nightfall, we might as well stay here rather than searching for a place in a couple of hour’s time.”
“I could run there,” Finnegan said. “I’d be back here in before dark.”
“Right, but what would that achieve? I suppose Nilda could come back with you, but I don’t like the idea of leaving Jay alone on that boat, and I doubt she would either. They could go back to the Tower and return with more people, but all they could do is help carry him. And what would we eat and drink whilst we’re waiting for them? You could bring back some diesel, of course, but what would we do with it? No, a run to the boat would be nothing but exercise.”
“I think I can make it,” Reece said. “The leg’s not that bad, and five miles isn’t far.”
“Maybe, but it’s not your decision. It’s our lives as well, and the safest thing right now is waiting for dawn.”
“And by dawn you’ll know whether it’s four hobbling or three walking,” Reece said.
“N’ah,” Chester said. “You’re immune. I’m almost certain of it. Over the last seven months you must have come into contact with the virus, albeit unwittingly. No, in fact, I am certain. I reckon everyone who’s still alive is, not that I advocate testing the theory. Now, as long as there’s daylight, let’s not waste it. See if you can find a map so we can plan out our route for tomorrow. And look for an address book. Maybe there’s a fruit farm along the way.”
The address book was easily found, and it listed a number of properties nearby, but the names alone gave no indication of what they might find there. The more Chester thought on it,
the more convinced he was that even had there been an entry for an orchard, they’d find it stripped clean. Whoever had come to this farm had so thoroughly removed everything of use that Chester couldn’t imagine they’d have left any of the neighbouring properties untouched.
He pulled a stack of recipe books from the kitchen shelf and took them into the front room, dropping them next to a chair as he fell into it.
“In my experience, survivors can be split into four groups,” he said. “You had people like Tuck who were in the enclaves and got out. There aren’t many of them. Then there are the ones who survived the evacuation. There are even fewer of those. Then there are those who stayed at home. Either they couldn’t go, or they didn’t want to. I take it you lot fall into that last camp?”
“Not really,” Greta said. “I was on holiday. In London.”
“Staying in one of the hotels?”
“I wish. If I had, I might have got food. No, I was subletting a flat. One of those internet deals, you know? I tried lining up at the supermarket, but they said that without a TV licence they wouldn’t give me anything. They didn’t tell me what a TV licence was, just that they couldn’t trust that I hadn’t already collected my food for the day. Whoever’s bright idea that was…” she trailed off. “In order to survive, to eat, I had to…” she trailed off again. “Well, if that was your compassionate society, then I wanted no part in it. I stayed in London because I wanted to go back home, and it would be easier to do that without being surrounded by millions of people in an enclave. I thought the zombies would stop after a week. Or two. Or four. And instead…” She glanced down at Reece’s leg and shrugged.
“And now you’re one of the last people left alive on Earth,” Finnegan said, his voice filled an unexpected sadness.
“And what about you,” Chester asked Reece to fill the silence. “Why didn’t you trust the government?”
“Did you ever meet our government? No, I was prepared. I knew something was going to happen, and it would all collapse. Not this, I mean, how could anyone expect this? But you remember what this country was like; how if there was even a hint the fuel duty was going to rise, all the petrol stations would be pumped dry. How a few months of rain caused flooding which ruined half the farms? Or those riots, you remember them? The country was shut down for three days.”
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest Page 12
