Surviving The Evacuation (Book 3): Family

by Frank Tayell

  Day 131, Penlingham Spa & Golf Club,

  Milton Keynes

  03:00, 21st July

  Thunder. I can’t remember the last time I heard that. It’s woken Daisy, and it took forever to get her to sleep. At least nothing can hear her over the sound of the storm. Hopefully.

  The only illumination, other than the lightning and the embers of our fire, comes from a light from one of the bikes. It’s the kind that charges itself up as you cycle. Since we’re stationary, we’ve got to wind the pedals by hand to keep it charged. It’s a pain. That’s something else to look for as soon as we’ve found food and water and everything else we’re going to need. But we can’t do that yet. Not until this storm stops.

  Getting out of London was a little more eventful than I just wrote, but not by much.

  It took half an hour to get into the rhythm of driving along the railway tracks, sometimes in the middle, sometimes alongside them, sometimes jolting along with one set of wheels on the sleepers, the other kicking up a spray of gravel. The tracks often bent or branched in odd directions thanks to the vagaries of the Victorian builders who originally laid them, and that slowed us down, but it was by far the safest way of travelling we’ve found.

  Annette noticed it first.

  “We’re higher than the houses,” she said abruptly.

  “That’s right,” Sholto said, distractedly

  “No,” Annette said, her voice dripping with the irritation of the young at the stupidity of the old, “I mean we’re much higher.”

  “Well of course, trains are usually...” I trailed off. I understood. “The embankment.”

  In most places the railway was built on a rise a few feet higher than the surrounding houses. In some places it was built even higher. There were a few places, like the bridge where we’d come down, where this wasn’t the case, but not many. The salient point being that the undead can’t climb up a steep slope, not easily, and not before we were already driving off into the distance.

  The only real danger came when we had to make our way past abandoned locomotives and cargo wagons, or through stations and level crossings. Even then the danger was limited. The zombies heard us coming and obligingly stepped into the middle of the tracks where we could see Them from a distance.

  Even if the journey had been more difficult I don’t think we’d have cared. We were together. We were all alive and we were all, more or less, well.

  “What’s that?” Kim asked. I glanced in the mirror. Annette had taken a book out of the canvas bag she’d brought from Kew.

  “Our book. I’ve been teaching Daisy to read. It’s the story of the plants. I grabbed it from the shop before...” She coughed before continuing with forced brightness and a brittle smile, “I’ve been teaching her to read.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea,” Sholto said in a cheerfully condescending tone, “Might be a bit advanced for her, though.”

  “You don’t need to patronise me,” Annette said, shifting slightly in her seat. “Who is he?” she added, turning to Kim.

  “Oh, right. Introductions. Sholto, this is Annette and Daisy. Annette, this is Sholto, my brother.”

  “Really?” her eyes widened, and suddenly she seemed animated once more. “Cool! How did that happen?”

  And for the next twenty miles, he told her. It was a slightly edited version of the story, expurgated as much for our benefit as for hers.

  “Do we have a plan?” Kim asked. “I mean, I take it we’re not going back to the boat.”

  “Not really. We’ll follow the train line as far as we can. And no, there’s no point going back to London. We’ll find food somewhere else.”

  “Will we make it to the beach?”

  “Why do we want to go to a beach?” Annette asked.

  “There’s a boat waiting for Sholto. If we can get there by the 2nd August then we’ll be able to get a lift.”

  “Another boat? Really? You didn’t tell me that bit.”

  And the next five miles were spent elaborating that.

  “Sholto’s a silly name,” Annette announced, when she was finally satisfied that we’d told her all the details.

  “It’s as good as any other,” he said.

  “Not really,” she said. “What’s your real name?”

  “Real name?” he asked.

  “Well, he’s Bartholomew Wright. So are you a ‘Wright’?”

  “Ah, I see. Well that’s another long story...” he began.

  “And one that can wait,” Kim interrupted. “Daisy needs feeding. And changing if we can manage that, but food comes first.”

  “We can’t stop here,” I said, looking around.

  We were driving through a cutting, with six feet high embankments hemming us in on either side. Above them protruded a mess of steam-stacks, steel chimneys and plastic pipework, as uninviting as it was menacing. I tried to coax a little more speed out of the car, thankful for once that the noise of the engine blocked out any sounds from the nearby undead.

  The embankments became lower, and the industrial clutter turned into neat little houses nestled around an old railway station. There was a collective intake of breath as we drove past the platforms at eye level. That breath stayed held when we reached the other side and drove through a level crossing. The barrier, a painted wooden pole, with a metal grating hanging from underneath, looked absurdly flimsy. It was already moving under the weight of a dozen zombies pushing against it, trying to reach our car. Then, as the station became a church, then a cemetery, then fields, the breath was released and turned into a half laughing sigh as the town disappeared into the rear-view mirror.

  About five miles further north we crossed a twenty feet long bridge over a river too small to be marked on the road atlas we’d found under the back seat. A field to the left had a forlorn ‘sold for development sign’ planted firmly in the soil. To the right was an empty patch of concrete about the size of a football pitch, crisscrossed with white painted squares, each neatly numbered. A faded sign facing the railway read ‘Farmers Markets Wed/Sat, Antiques Fair Sundays’.

  “This’ll do,” I said, pulling the car to a stop. We had a clear view for a couple of miles in every direction. “I can’t see anything but birds.”

  “We made it,” I said, as we got out of the car.

  “Hmm?” Kim asked, taking Daisy from Annette.

  “Out of London. Finally.”

  “That’s important is it?” Annette asked.

  “Well, perhaps only to me,” I replied.

  We scavenged wood from the railside, spared a splash of petrol to get the fire going and then realised what we’d forgotten.

  “No saucepan?”

  “It was in the bag, on the bike,” Kim said.

  “Don’t you have anything in there?” Annette asked, pointing at Sholto’s bag.

  “Just some cylinders. Work stuff.”

  “Work stuff? What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked suspiciously.

  “Explosives,” I told her. “There’s no point trying to hide it from her,” I said to Sholto, “she’d only go and look.”

  “So what do we have?” Kim asked, as Annette eyed Sholto with renewed wariness.

  We had the food I’d taken from the boat that morning and the little we had left from the day before, it came to about thirteen meals worth in total. There was some rope, some matches, my journals, a few pencils, Daisy’s book, a few water bottles and a tin mug I’d liberated from Longshanks Manor. It had belonged to Archibald Greene, the butler there. He’d kept it on a shelf next to a set of fine bone china that he never used. I’d never asked him why he kept it or where it had come from, but I’d always wondered. That’s why I took it with me.

  We had our weapons, of course and the clothes we stood up in but not much more besides.

  The mug was balanced on the edge of the fire, and we stood and watched and tested whether that saying about ‘a watched pot’ applied to an old tin mug.

  “Daisy can eat this stuff, right?�
� Kim asked peering doubtfully into one of the pouches of dehydrated food.

  “Well, it’s full of E numbers and preservatives. But what else is there?” I asked.

  “That’s what I thought.” she said.

  “Food and bikes,” I said. “That’s what we need next.”

  “And a saucepan,” Sholto said.

  “And some more mugs,” Annette added.

  “And some diapers,” Sholto added.

  “And toilet paper.”

  “And blankets.”

  The list grew as, in defiance of folklore, the water came to a boil. It turned out that Daisy could, theoretically, eat the stew once it was rehydrated. She just didn’t want to. She took one cautious sniff at the spoon, wrinkled her nose and turned her head away.

  “Maybe when it’s cooler,” Kim suggested.

  “Yeah. We should be going anyway,” Sholto said, pointing back the way we’d come. An indistinct figure was moving jerkily across the distant bridge, towards us. We got back in the Land Rover and continued north.

  “What about stopping at a town?” Kim asked. She was pouring over the map, trying to work out where we were. For some reason no one ever thought that a train driver would need to know which way was which. The few signs we did pass seemed to be in code. Instead we were relying on the names of the stations we drove through. The trouble was that few enough of those were in our map, and the few that were didn’t tally with the occasional glimpses of signs on the roads and motorways the train tracks went over, under or alongside.

  “I don’t know. Towns are dangerous,” I finally replied.

  “Less so than cities. And what’s the alternative?” Kim asked.

  “We’ve got petrol,” I said, “Enough to get us another hundred miles. Probably a bit more, and if the track ahead is anything like the last twenty or so, we’ll do it in a couple of hours. But when it runs out, we’re going to be on foot.”

  “We could find more petrol,” Annette suggested.

  “Perhaps. But we could spend all day looking for it. Besides, the problem right now is the engine. It’s just too loud. We need to find somewhere to ditch the car, and get away from it before the undead start gathering around. Ten miles. Twenty for preference.”

  “I’m not walking that,” Annette said.

  “No. We need bikes. Then we can cycle off, find a farm or somewhere like that. Somewhere with some fruit trees and thick walls. Somewhere big enough there’s a room in the middle of the house we can sound proof enough that Daisy won’t be heard. Then tomorrow we’ll do the same. We’ve nine days and about three hundred miles to cover. If we can manage fifty miles a day, we’ll be fine.”

  “That might be pushing it,” Sholto said.

  “I know,” I said, “but let’s take it one day at a time.”

  After another hour, with the last of the fuel in the tank, and the needle hovering around the halfway point, I brought the car to a stop. I checked behind, ahead and to either side. All appeared peaceful.

  “It’s time to find some bikes.”

  “We’re out of petrol?”

  “We will be soon. We’ve eight miles of straight track behind, two ahead, the nearest town is a mile after that. We’ve got at least half an hour before the nearest zombie finds us.”

  “But it’s the middle of nowhere.”

  “Not quite. Look down there. Rugby posts. That means a school and out here that’s got to be a boarding school. Some of the kids and the staff, they would have had bikes. Since the schools were evacuated by train, they’ll have left them behind. It’s worth a look. Better odds than going house to house.” I opened the door and added, “Kim, if you boil up some water, I’ll go and...”

  “Woman does cooking, whilst man goes hunting? I don’t think so. Sholto and I’ll go down there. You get a fire started and get ready to get going if we come back at a run,” she said, handing Daisy to me before I could object.

  “Don’t look at me,” Sholto said with a grin, before following her down the embankment and off towards the school.

  There were plenty of fallen branches to burn, and we’d a nice little fire going when we spotted Kim wheeling a bike across the playing fields.

  “There are bikes,” she called out triumphantly when she’d reached the bottom of the slope.

  “Evidently.”

  “There’s a shed full of them. Half full. They’re slightly rusty, and the tyres are very flat. But we found a pump.”

  “Great.”

  “That’s not all,” she called out. “There’s a minibus with half a tank of petrol. That’ll get us another twenty miles.”

  “Every little helps,” I muttered.

  “What’s in the bag,” Annette asked, already half way down the embankment.

  “You can take the bike up to the car. These too,” Kim said, “pulling some cans out of her pack “Found them in the refectory, because a place like this can’t just have a canteen. I got a saucepan as well. And these.” She pulled out half a dozen tea towels. “She does need a change.”

  Kim was already heading back towards the school when Annette, struggling under the combined weight of the bike and the supplies, reached the top of the slope.

  “Do you want to change her?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Oh no, I’ve done that plenty of times. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the fun.”

  She set about boiling up some water, whilst I did what I could with the tea towels. Daisy didn’t complain. Much.

  It was another half an hour before we saw them again. Kim was out in front and definitely hurrying this time. Sholto was thirty feet behind. Both were cycling hard through the long grass of the rugby pitches.

  There was only one thing that could make them hurry, and that was confirmed a minute later when a zombie stumbled round the corner of one of the red brick buildings. It was followed by a second, then a third.

  Annette was halfway down the embankment before I could yell at her to get in the car. I put Daisy in, grabbed the pike and then stood and waited anxiously. I hated that, knowing I couldn’t help. By the time Annette reached the bottom of the slope, Kim had almost reached her, and the three undead had become thirty.

  Kim threw another bag to her, then, dragging the bike in one hand and Annette with the other, ran up the slope, Sholto just a few steps behind.

  “My fault. My fault,” Sholto said, as we finished tying on the last bike, “should have realised. A place like that, food, water, gas in the tank. There had to be a reason it wasn’t looted. I thought I was opening a door to an office. Turned out to be the assembly hall. There were dozens of Them.”

  “Kids?” I asked as we got in. The nearest zombie had just passed the first set of rugby posts, so was still a few hundred yards and a steep slope away from us.

  “Couldn’t say. No. I doubt it. The name on that mini-bus, it wasn’t the schools. Some people came to loot the place, and got infected. Can’t say how many and can’t say where from. It doesn’t really matter, I guess.”

  “No,” I said, starting the engine. “I guess not.”

  The trip was far from a failure. We’ve four bikes, three kilos of canned meatballs, two of peaches, twenty tea bags, a saucepan, the towels and a dozen assorted bottles from a vending machine. I’ve had far worse days than that.

  We kept driving until four pm.

  “This is it. All change,” I said, as I brought the car to a final stop.

  “We’re out of petrol?” Kim asked.

  “We’ve about five miles left. But the tracks are heading off in the wrong direction. We might as well stop here. That field looks clear, we’ll head off that way and find ourselves a likely looking farm.”

  We crossed the fields, eyes open for the undead, until we came to a house, but it was too close to the car. Zombies were shambling along the road outside it, heading towards the train line. We cycled along paths and trekked across fields until we, literally, stumbled over our first motionless zombie, squatting unheeding in the middle of a b
ridle path. Brambles snaked across the ground, catching and snaring the creature.

  “That farm over there looks alright,” Sholto said, as he cleaned his machete.

  It did, until we got closer. There were at least ten undead and two bodies in the farmyard. We pushed on. It was a similar scene at a small hamlet half an hour later. We came around a corner in the road to find eight creatures squatting by a war memorial in the middle of a small roundabout. We turned around, cut across a field, and, two long, slow, miles later, found ourselves here at this golf club.

  Or what would have been a golf club if it’d been finished. We’d seen the chimney stacks on what looked like a large building, from the edge of a copse of trees half a mile to the south. The place was remote and it seemed deserted.

  They’d ripped out the interior, and the side and rear walls. The building is nothing more than its facade and the front half of the roof, held up with scaffolding covered in plastic sheeting. Most of that sheeting had been ripped and torn over the last few months. By the time we got here we were too tired to look for anywhere else, and then the storm began.

  We have plenty to burn. We have something to eat. It’s so drenched in sugar that Daisy is having violent mood swings. She goes from vigorous jumping and bouncing to morose crying, but the storm is loud enough to cover that. We’re all still alive, we’re all together and we are, finally, out of London.

  15:00, 21st July

  “You don’t have to talk about what happened if you don’t want to,” Kim said.

  “And I don’t,” she replied. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t. Bill needs to know, so he can write it down. That’s important. Not for me. Not for you either, but for Daisy. She needs to understand, when she’s older, why the world is the way it is. So I’ll tell you, I just wanted you to know that I didn’t want to.”