“Possibly,” Chester said. “But probably not all of them.”
“But she’d have guessed that he wasn’t really police as quickly as you did.”
“And told Graham, you mean, so the man knew he had nothing to fear from fingerprinting or anything else? Who knows? But,” he added, “I think the most important thing for you to do now is ensure that nothing like that happens again.”
“I was thinking better stock control and having rotas so the oversight was shared out over everyone, but it doesn’t answer my question.”
“No, because I don’t think there is an answer to it. McInery’s probably up to something, but only because she always was. Some habits are impossible to break, and if we sat here long enough we could come up with a plausible theory or three as to why she might want to get rid of all that food, but it would just be theories. She’d never admit it, and unless she did you’re still going to suspect her. In fact, if she did admit it, you’d suspect she’d only done so to hide something even bigger. No, the matter’s done. There’s no way of proving anything now. But as I say, that doesn’t matter, not now. When I said you don’t want a repeat of it, I didn’t mean the thefts. Those won’t happen again. I meant last night. You’ve got to sort out who’s in charge here, what the rules are, and what you’ll do if they’re broken. Leadership by committee isn’t going to work.”
Nilda agreed. There just wasn’t much she could do about it. She searched around for a change in subject and realised that Chester’s eyes were glued on a point in the courtyard.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
He pointed at one of the deeper puddles. “It’s one of the dosimeters we took from the airport.”
“Is there a problem?” she asked, feeling that old fear that had been with her since the Isle of Scaragh resurfacing.
“I dunno. Let’s see,” he dashed out into the rain, grabbed the small device, and darted back into the lee of the doorway.
“It’s okay. I mean it’s high. Higher than we got down in Kent, but it’s still well below dangerous. I think the rain’s washing down radioactive particles caught up in the stratosphere.”
“The stratosphere?” she asked, failing to keep the smile from her lips.
“What? A man can’t read a book?”
“There was one on nuclear war?”
“No,” he admitted. “It was just a physics textbook. I was actually looking up radio signals. I was thinking about the gear they used back in Kirkman House and the stuff I drove down to Crystal Palace. I was thinking, well, how hard could it be to make one?”
“A radio transmitter?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, two-way communication is going to be difficult, but just sending out a radio signal on a wide frequency, that should be possible.”
“And is it?”
“I’ve no idea. I gave up around the time I got to wavelengths. That’s when I started looking up radiation.”
“Ah.” She stared at the rain and considered what he’d said. “You were looking for a way not to go to Wales?” she asked.
“No. A backup plan. In case I don’t make it.”
“Oh,” she said, and tried to work out what to say next.
“But I’ll leave as soon as the rain stops. I’m all packed.” He gestured at a pair of bags. The rifle was leaning next to them. “I’ll use the lifeboat to drift downriver and go ashore somewhere east of the airport. I’ll find a car and a bicycle and be ready to set off tomorrow at dawn.”
“Yes. Okay.” She wasn’t sure what else to say.
“If you want, I can get rid of McInery before I leave.”
“You mean…”
“You know what I mean,” Chester said. “I don’t think you could do it, not in cold blood. Tuck could, but I don’t know if she would. No one will know.”
“Except you and me,” she said. “Why haven’t you already done it?”
“Because I don’t think she was involved. She’s not a nice person, not deep down. In fact, she’s the old world’s definition of a bad one. But she wasn’t here to steal that food. She was in the British Museum. So if you want her gone, I’ll do it, but not on my own account. It’s not easy taking a life. Graham, well, we’ll never know what he was up to, but he was dangerous. We all saw that, and you didn’t want him killed.”
“McInery’s dangerous too,” Nilda said.
“Right, but not to us. I think her sights are set on Anglesey and the prize there. This place is never going to be big enough for her now.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure about much these days. But like I said, you need to sort out who’s running this place, and if it’s going to be you, then you’ve got to take the hard choices. If you think everyone will be safer without her then you’ve got to make the call, you’ve got to say the word.”
“I… I don’t know,” she said. Nilda wished Chester had just acted, that she’d woken to find McInery missing. “Someone stole some food,” she said. “That’s all. Graham’s taken the blame, and he’s gone. We should leave it. Move on.”
“Fair enough,” Chester said. And she couldn’t tell whether he thought that was the right decision or not.
After an awkward few minutes of silence, Nilda went to find Jay. She found that he, too, was lurking in a doorway, watching the rain pound down on old stone, as restless as she was. The drone was at his feet. Tuck was by his side, sharpening an axe. Kevin, Aisha, Greta, and Finnegan loitered nearby.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“As soon as the rain stops, I’m sending up the drone,” Jay said. “If it’s clear, we’re going to get the food.”
“Just the six of you?” she asked.
“We’ll get more when the time comes,” Jay said. “I didn’t want to tell everyone in advance. Didn’t want them worrying while they were waiting.”
She wasn’t sure if they would follow him outside when he did, but the five people there didn’t seem to mind obeying his instructions. One more parental string was cut. Feeling increasingly useless, she went to the kitchens and spent a satisfying hour chopping vegetables.
Around two p.m. the storm slackened. Nilda helped Chester carry the bags and fuel down to the lifeboat. Then began another awkward few hours of near silence as they waited for the tide to turn. Before it did, the clouds exploded, this time accompanied by wind and lightning. They were forced off the boat and into the relative shelter of the gatehouse. Afternoon wore into evening, and the storm raged on, showing no sign of ceasing as night fell. Even Tuck was forced to eschew her bivouac and find shelter indoors.
“Tomorrow, I’ll leave,” Chester said, around midnight.
“Tomorrow,” Nilda said, and again wished she could have found something, anything, else to say.
26th September
Chester woke and didn’t need to look at a clock to know the time. A beam of daylight had crept around the edge of the imitation tapestry he’d hung over the window, and speared down on his face. He pulled himself out of the rough nest.
“Electric lights,” he muttered. If all went well, he wouldn’t spend more than an hour on Anglesey, but he was going to spend as much of that time as he could staring at a light bulb.
He kicked the sheets into a pile by the wall. The people who’d arrived from Kirkman House had claimed the small grace and favour cottages that had been the homes of the warders and their families. Those who had arrived from the British Museum had their choice from the scores of offices, ancient chambers, gift shops, and exhibition rooms. There had been some movement so that the children could sleep in the warmer, more habitable parts of the castle, but none of them had wanted Chester’s room.
People had relocated voluntarily, and it was good to know that generosity could be shown when needed. It gave him hope that the Tower might not self-destruct in his absence.
He picked up the jacket from the bed. That had been volunteered as well. There had been offers of all kinds of assistance that stopped sh
ort of accompanying him to Wales. Part of that was just an excuse to talk and confirm he really was leaving, but part was a genuine desire to help. He hoped.
“No,” he said. “I think it was. They’re good people for the most part, and no worse than anyone else.”
He stretched and found himself looking down at the fake bed. “Fit for a king,” he muttered. “Says it all.” The room in St Thomas’ Tower and the chambers leading from it had originally been built for the monarch, though Chester couldn’t remember which one. When he and Nilda had arrived, it had been unoccupied. Partly because he knew his stay was going to be temporary, partly because he’d always been fascinated by how the other half lived, but mostly because there was a bed in the middle of the room, he’d claimed it. The bed was a fake. A mock-up based on the historical record. The wood in the grate was real, but the chimney had been sealed, so his attempt at lighting a fire to keep out the interminable chill from the old stone resulted in filling the room with more smoke than heat. He’d taken to sleeping on the floor, but he’d slept in worse places these last few months and probably would again.
“Not after I get back from Wales,” he said. “That time’s over. No more wandering.”
He’d resisted finding better lodgings because he knew he’d be leaving, and he’d not been sure he would come back. Now he was certain that he would try and return, the question that remained was whether he’d be able to.
He reached down to pick up the revolver and remembered it was gone. Well, that was good in a way. It was his last connection with Cannock, now forever lost. He pulled back the curtain and looked outside. The storm had passed. The sky was clear, bright blue as far as he could see.
“What was that line?” he murmured to himself as he strapped on the belt. “The one that was in Bill Wright’s diary? If a job’s to be done then it’s best done quickly. Something like that.” He pulled on the trainers. They were an odd colour, and the last thing he’d have been seen wearing a year ago, but he could run in them, and he would need speed. He left the room, and he didn’t look back.
“I made you breakfast,” Nilda said. “It’s the last of the bacon. At least until we kill another pig. I think we’ll try not to do that for a while. Perhaps not until Christmas. We need to keep what little electricity we generate for making hot water.”
“Hot water? Don’t we have enough?” Chester asked, taking a bite.
“You don’t have much experience with children, do you? No matter what you tell them, they will not stay clean. And it’s not like we can get them to wash in bleach.”
“You can’t? Okay, no. What about feed, is there going to be enough?”
“More than enough. I checked. Hana’s actually been a bit sneaky. She had enough to keep the animals alive until the end of November. And since we could eat that, too, that’s another four weeks of supplies.”
“Clever girl, she’s got unplumbed depths, that one.”
“Yes, well, it won’t last as long now our numbers have doubled, but it’ll keep us going until you get back. We’ve got to find a way of planting things here. Pots and greenhouses, I suppose, with animal manure as fertilizer.”
“Well, I’m glad that’s your problem.”
“Yes. For now, but…” she paused, and Chester thought she was going to ask whether he was coming back. She didn’t. “But I’m coming with you this morning,” she said.
Chester swallowed. “To Anglesey?” he asked, and almost told her that she couldn’t.
“I meant downriver,” she said. “We need toothbrushes, clothes, shoes, toys, and a few board games would be good. And toilet paper, we always need more of that. Crayons and pencils, too. Things that will keep the children busy that won’t involve running through puddles and traipsing mud everywhere. When you go ashore we’ll help you find the bike and car, and load up the lifeboat with whatever we can.”
“You’ll have to use the tide,” he said. “I mean, I could leave you some of the diesel—”
“No. It would only put off the inevitable,” Nilda said. “We’ve got those rafts now, and we need to see what kind of properties line the banks of the river and how safe it would be to go ashore and empty them. With that leak, the diesel would be gone in one trip. It’s time we started getting used to a different pace of life. It’ll be good. That business with Graham can’t be allowed to overshadow things. We need a new start, all of us. If that means everything we do is focused on those children, then so be it. We’ll be thinking about the future, and if we do that, we might start thinking we’ll have one.”
“What about the food on the coaches?” he asked.
“Jay seems to have organised that, I suspect with Tuck’s help, but I’m leaving him to it. There’s too much danger here, Chester. If I spend my time worrying about Jay, he might outlive everyone, but the rest will die far sooner. I’ve got to… well, I suppose I have to accept that he managed quite well without me. I have to trust him. And everyone else, if it comes to that.”
“Fair enough,” Chester stood. “Then let’s get this over with.”
There were six people going with Nilda. Chester considered them as cautiously diligent. They were the people who’d hurriedly volunteered to take care of the pigs, boil the water, or do any of the other laborious tasks that, crucially, didn’t require going outside. This would be good practice for them. It wasn’t safe relying on the same people to do all the most dangerous chores.
Checking that the area outside the Tower was clear of the undead was not a task he’d delegate to anyone else. He climbed up the stairs, his mind already on the route he’d take, the safe houses he’d aim for, and what he’d do if he couldn’t reach them. The problem was going to be the car, or maximising its use. Wherever he stopped, he couldn’t eat the food or drink the water. He’d learned that much from the chapters on radiation in the textbook. Perhaps the train line would be better than a road. In his journal, hadn’t Bill Wright written that he’d used the train lines to get out of London? Chester thought so, but had a vague memory that the man had become trapped somewhere by a horde.
He stopped abruptly, one foot raised. He wished, not for the first time, that he’d not burned that copy of the journal back in Cumbria. He searched his mind, trying to remember what the man had written.
If Bill Wright and all those people with him had survived the passage of a horde, then didn’t that mean that his worst fears were wrong? Didn’t it mean that it wasn’t the undead spreading radiation through the countryside? That was the conclusion he’d reached based on the readings he’d taken in London and again in Kent. But what did he know about radiation and fallout? Only what he’d guessed at and tried to interpret from books he barely understood. He ran through the routes he’d marked out on the maps in his room. Had the man taken one of those? Were those roads and rail lines actually safe? He’d crossed them out based on guesswork and half-remembered stories from Bran and the others. Perhaps this changed things. Or perhaps it didn’t. All that mattered was getting to Wales, and he’d already decided that radiation or no, he’d head in as straight a line as possible. Whether he got a lethal dose or not, he would keep going until— and the thought died as he realised what was in front of him, or rather, what wasn’t. The lifeboat was gone.
“Out of my way,” he yelled, barrelling back down the stairs, past the confused group.
“What? What is it?” Nilda called after him. He ignored her.
She caught up with him as he was pulling the barrier away from the gatehouse door.
“What is it, Chester?”
“The boat,” he said, but didn’t say any more. He had the door open, and ran outside, across to the railed gate and looked down at the river lapping at the worn steps. He climbed up onto the wall and looked east and west. There was no sign of the boat.
“Was it dragged away by the storm?” Nilda asked.
Chester bent, pulled on the rope still attached to the black-painted ring. He held up an end.
“It’s been cut.”
“It was Graham!” McInery stormed, incandescent with rage. “It had to be.” She stood, paced a step, sat down. Stood again.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” Chester said. He’d seen McInery in a fury before, but always a quiet one, as if the energy was being reserved for the act of vengeance itself and so was not to be wasted on mere words. This was something else.
“He’s betrayed us,” McInery fumed.
“Yes, yes,” Hana said. “We all know that, but—”
“Worse,” McInery interrupted. “He’s condemned us.”
“It’s not as bad as that, is it?” Hana asked.
“Well, he’s got the lifeboat,” Chester said. “And that had the rifle, the ammo, the last of the fuel, and a bit of food.” He probably had the revolver too. Chester had assumed the pistol and the four loose rounds had fallen out of his jacket during his journey back from the mansion, but only because there had been no other logical explanation. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
“He has a rifle, and we don’t even have slings or arrows,” McInery snapped. “He could be waiting in any building. Sitting on any rooftop, ready to shoot the first person who leaves.”
“N’ah, he won’t hang around here,” Chester said. “He needed the boat so he could transport all that food he stole. Why else would he have risked lingering nearby? He’d have turned the engine on as soon as he dared. About an hour after that, he’d have realised there was something wrong with the fuel tank.”
“There was?” Hana asked.
“It leaked,” Nilda said. “We didn’t say because we all had enough to worry about. But Chester’s right, he’ll be out of fuel and at the whims of the tide. If he’s lucky, he’ll end up on a beach downriver. If he’s not, he’ll be adrift at sea.”
“Well, good, I suppose,” Hana said. “But where does that leave us?”
“It doesn’t change anything. Not really,” Chester said. “It’ll take a little longer to get to Wales, that’s all. You said there was a bike shop near to Embankment Tube?”
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest Page 22
