by Frank Tayell
21:00, 21st July
“What did go wrong Back at Kew?” I asked
“Your plan didn’t work.” Kim sighed. “Look, Bill, you knew it wouldn’t.”
“They wouldn’t just let the girls go?”
“No. I mean, that’s not the part that didn’t work. Do we have to talk about this now?”
“I don’t know? Do we?”
“Oh don’t start being passive aggressive. It doesn’t suit you. You want to know? None of the plan really worked. Of course it didn’t, I mean how are any of us meant to come up with plans to deal with any of this? It’s all so far beyond anything we can truly understand that, at best, we’re just stumbling in the dark hoping someone else might strike a light. You want the minutiae? Not all the undead followed the car. That was the first problem. Half of Them couldn’t. Maybe it was more than half, maybe it was less, but all the ones on the other side of the ticket barrier, They were pushing and shoving and making more noise than ever before. So Barrett wouldn’t have been able to hear your brother shout, anyway.”
“But did you try?”
“What does that matter? You heard what Annette said, are you honestly saying the world isn’t a better place now? No. No, we didn’t try. If it’s important to you, we didn’t get a chance. It took nearly an hour before the road was clear enough we could get out into the street. When we did, I saw that ticket barrier shaking. I thought it was going to break and then there’d be zombies all around the building again. The barrier didn’t break, I was wrong about that, but I was right about Barrett. You have to agree?
“I do. I just don’t like that we live in the kind of world violence has to be the first resort.”
“You shot Stewart. You killed Sanders. Tried to.”
“That’s different. Stewart would have shot us. At the very least he’d have wrecked the car. That was in the heat of the moment. It was the same with Sanders. It wasn’t planned out in advance.”
“You’re talking about murder, Bill, when this is war.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. It shouldn’t be, you see.” I threw up my hands “Alright, fine. The world is the way it is, and there’s no point in me wishing it was different. So what did happen, back at Kew?”
“Well, we went up to the main gates. You know, it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d tried to shout. Or knock, even. They fired at us first.”
“With both barrels,” Sholto said, “right through the barrier they’d built themselves. I gave Kim the M-16, it wasn’t going to be much use to me, climbed up and ran along the roof, looking for a window I could force.”
“So that’s what you were doing,” Kim said. “You could have told me.”
“I thought it was obvious. There was a skylight. That’s how I got in.”
“I guessed that bit, because they started shooting at something inside.”
“Right. At me. And I didn’t fire back, so they thought I was unarmed. Probably thought I was you, little brother. What was her name, Daphne? She came running out of the gloom with a carving knife in her hand. I barely managed to swat it out of the way, but she leapt at me, knocked me to the ground. She got a hand around my throat, the knife in the other and I was trying to hold her back. She wasn’t a big woman, nothing but skin and bones. But she was driven. I’ve seen that before, people who’ve gone through madness and come out the other side. Maybe I’m just getting soft. After all these undead, maybe I’ve just forgotten what fighting people is like. I didn’t forget for long. I remembered that people can feel, they can hurt. I squeezed her wrist until the bones broke. She dropped the knife, screaming. Not with pain but with frustrated anger. I didn’t let her scream long. I grabbed the knife and...” he finally noticed my expression. “She died,” he finished. “I started shouting for Annette. She came out of the storeroom at about the same time as they started shooting again. I took the baby, told her Kim was outside, and dragged her over to the skylight.”
“I fired a few shots,” Kim said. “I couldn’t see anything, but I wanted to distract them. I saw Sholto throw Annette up through the skylight. I mean, literally throw. It was...”
“Impressive?” he asked.
“Reckless,” she said. “Then there was a scuffle. Barrett and Stewart. I guess they were fighting over the gun. All I saw were shelves falling, and then Barrett stood up, pointing the gun straight at Sholto and Daisy. That was all I needed. One clear shot. I fired. She died.”
“You’re sure?”
“Certain. It was a head shot. I’ve become good at those.”
“We ran over the roof,” Sholto said, “came down the other side, and that was about when you turned up.”
“I know you don’t like it, Bill,” Kim said, “but they had to die. In the old world there were prisons and police, but out here there’s no one.” She turned and stared out into the darkness. “They brought me up, sometimes. From my cell, I mean. That’s what you called it, wasn’t it, in your journal. My cell. I didn’t give it a name. You know why?”
“Giving it a name gives it power?”
“Right. And you know that, and yet in your journal you keep calling the undead Them, with that capital T.”
I shrugged, not wanting to derail her train of thought.
“They kept making up stories. About the ones they shot, I mean. That was when... If... If we’d not met Cannock. If it had been just me and Sanders, we’d have got together because in this sad little world of ours you’ll take any kind of comfort you can find. If we’d just gone another way, headed north instead of south, we’d not have met Cannock. It would all have been different. But we did meet him. And... I don’t know if they were trying to intimidate or impress me, but they brought me out of the cell, and made me watch as they told stories about the zombies they were about to shoot. Except to Cannock, They weren’t zombies. They were still people. He gave Them names, and Sanders soon followed. It wasn’t that he changed. It was more that he gave in to something that had always been lurking deep inside. That was why I had to kill him. I couldn’t let him live, you see. It wasn’t what he did to me. That I can live with. It was the children. The zombie children, giving Them names and making up these stories about who they’d been before killing Them. That’s why he had to die. There wasn’t going to be anyone, any court or judge or anything, ever again. I was the one who had to decide, I was the one with the right, and having made that decision I had to act. It was the same with Barrett. Right then there was just me, my responsibility and now there’s just us.”
“Justice.” I muttered. “That old expression, you know, ‘there’s no justice, there’s just us’, I always hated it. It’s one of those trite self-serving aphorisms used by people too hide-bound to know that they’re in the wrong.”
“We did it Bill,” Kim said, standing up, “Just us, alone.”
Day 132, Penlingham Spa & Golf Club,
Milton Keynes
04:00, 22nd July
The rain has stopped. Everything’s quiet. It’s time to leave
Day 132, Laketon Heath Reservoir,
Warwickshire
14:00, 22nd July
We took a detour this morning into a village, though village is a bit of an overstatement. One pub, one shop, one post-box. Even the church had a ‘for sale’ sign out front.
The shop had been thoroughly looted of everything that most people could want. Fortunately for us, most people didn’t want baby wipes or nappies. We loaded up on those, and were about to cross the road to check the pub when Daisy began to cry. I’m not sure what caused her to yell out. I’m certainly not ascribing some kind of sixth sense to the child, but a moment later there was a tinkling of glass as undead arms smashed through the pub window. We got back on the bikes and cycled away. There are plenty of other places to loot and plenty of undead we can’t avoid killing.
We said we’d take it in turns, one of us out front, one of us carrying Daisy, one at the rear with Annette. Somehow, so far today, Kim’s always in the lead and Sholto’
s at the rear and I’m left carrying the baby. I’d come up with some deep meaning for that if Daisy hadn’t spent the entire morning alternating between crying and grabbing at everything within reach. Just keeping the bike going in a straight line has taken all my concentration.
I don’t mind. All in all it’s probably easier than keeping Annette amused, something that my brother has no difficulty in doing. They’ve spent most of this morning hatching a plan to expropriate the Orient Express. Annette saw it a few times at Victoria station, and has grand ideas about running steam trains from the coast to the big cities to bring back supplies.
Looking after Daisy is certainly better than being out in the lead. Every few miles Kim will spot some movement up ahead, put on a burst of speed, then dismount, unsling her axe, dispatch the creature and be back on her bike and a dozen yards ahead before I can catch up. Every four or five miles she’ll sprint ahead, then sprint back reporting that there are too many of Them. Then we’ll take to the fields and the farm tracks until we find another stretch of apparently clear road.
The ground’s too wet to travel quickly off-road, but even so we’ve covered nearly forty miles so far today. We’re about ten miles south west of Stratford upon Avon and forty miles due south of the outskirts of Birmingham. If we can manage the same again this afternoon, and the same again tomorrow that’ll get us deep into Wales. We could even reach Llanncanno the day after that.
That was why I thought we should take a short break at the reservoir. We could see for miles in either direction and there was nothing in sight. We had at least an hour before any undead appeared. I thought we deserved a wash and a swim. We’d just begun arguing over whether, if Birmingham had been bombed, the water would be safe, when Kim spotted the tent. It was zipped closed and something was moving inside of it. It was a shame. It was a nice spot too. The open water, the trees ringed with flowers. I can see why someone came here to die.
Time to move on.
Day 132, 40 miles south of Birmingham
20:00, 22nd July
We’re in a house. It’s just an ordinary house, there’s not much more to say about it. I think we made another five miles west of the reservoir this afternoon.
Half a mile after the reservoir we came across an A-road that had been reinforced for the evacuation. We then spent the rest of the afternoon heading south and, when the road curved, south-east, before we found a spot where we could cross. The fencing was broken at least once every quarter mile. The problem was finding a spot where the fence was broken on both sides, without more than a couple of the undead on the road in between.
Still, forty five miles, that’s not bad for a day’s effort.
Day 133, 40 miles east of Welsh border
20:30, 23rd July
Not such good progress today. Fifteen miles, maybe twenty. The day started well. We found the train line and followed it to the edge of Worcester. We’d hoped to find enough supplies in that small cathedral city to last us the next week. From a vantage point on the outskirts it was hard to make out many details, but there was one street we couldn’t miss. It was swarming with the undead. That’s what it looked like, a swarm of a hundred or more zombies, moving up and down the road, going from house to house, back and forth. Whether the whole of Worcester was like that, or whether it was just that small corner, whether there were people down there and why the undead were doing that, we didn’t stay to find out. Daisy started crying and we had to leave. We spent three hours backtracking through the fields to find a way around the city, and most of the afternoon getting a few miles away from it.
We found this farmhouse just before it started getting dark. There wasn’t much food here, though. Someone’s been here to loot the place before us. We did find a few dozen tomatoes growing around the back of a summerhouse and a couple of olive trees by the front door. The tomatoes were green and the olives were so small and tough I think they must have been a purely ornamental variety, but food is food.
I feel bad that we couldn’t stop to help whoever was down in Worcester. I think we all do, but Daisy and Annette have to come first. We have to get them somewhere safe. If there is such a place.
Day 134, Ludhill Tunnel, 10 miles east of Welsh border
16:00, 24th July
It was around noon that we first heard it.
“Thunder?” Kim asked.
“Must be,” I answered automatically, whilst my eyes scanned the sky. Thunder meant rain. If it was another storm then we needed to find shelter, but the sky was clear.
“We should look for somewhere to stop,” Kim said, though there was a trace of doubt in her voice.
“Can you hear it?” Annette asked, as she, with Sholto just behind, came to a stop next to Kim and I. “It sounds like the wind is ripping up the trees. Sholto’s been telling me all about tornado alley, haven’t you?” She turned, and Sholto smiled and nodded, but the moment she looked away a puzzled look returned to his face. “Sounds terrifying. Come on,” she added with a grin, “no point stopping here.”
She was right. We headed on. The sound must have been there for some time. I’d just been so focused on Daisy I hadn’t noticed it. Nor had I noticed that we’d not seen any zombies for a while, either. I knew that meant something, but I couldn’t focus on what. Daisy was alternating between crying and wailing and it was all I could do to keep hold of her and the bike heading in a straight line.
Kim reached the top of the hill first. I couldn’t see her expression, but her shoulders slumped.
“What is it?” I called out, as I neared the top. She turned to look at me. I’ve seen her scared, I’ve seen her angry, I’ve seen her triumphant. I’ve even seen her happy a few times. I’d never seen that expression of horrified disbelief before. She didn’t answer me. She didn’t need to. I reached the top of the hill and saw it for myself.
At first I thought it was just a massive cloud of dust, a freak weather phenomenon caused by the nuclear bombs. It stretched for miles, the dust seeming to carry right to the horizon. Then I looked down at the edge nearest us, barely five miles away down in the valley. That’s when I saw the dot like figures moving back and forth at the ragged edges of a horde millions upon millions of zombies strong.
“That’s it. That’s everyone,” she whispered, “That’s the undead of England.”
It explained why we’d seen so few today. It explained, in part, why the only times I’ve really seen more than a few thousand in one place it had been at the barricades in London or on the M4. It explained it all. They were all here, turning grass and fields, trees and stone, houses and cars and all the rest into dust and mud.
“What...” Annette began when she and Sholto reached the top of the hill. She didn’t finish the question.
“Five million? Ten? Twenty?” Kim muttered.
“It’s... impossible.” Sholto’s voice was hoarse, without a trace of his usual careless cheerfulness.
“Where are they going? Are they coming this way?” Annette asked, then the edge of desperation turned to panic as she croaked, “Can they see us?”
“No. We’re too far away.” I hoped. “We should go.”
“Where?” Kim asked, “There’s no escaping that. Where on this whole wretched little island can we go to get away from that?”
“Well, for starters, we can go back down the hill.”
We’d no idea how many there were. We’d no idea what direction they were going, except that the land around us looked untouched. We went back down the hill and headed west, because that’s the direction the first track we came to led.
“Farms are out,” Sholto said. “Houses too, They’d just knock them down.”
We were cycling nearly abreast, pedalling hard though none of us knew where we were going.
“Is it getting louder?” Annette asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“That’s good, right?”
“Not really, I don’t think it’s getting any quieter, either. That means we’re heading i
n roughly the same direction.”
“Do we go back, then?” Kim asked, frustration in her eyes.
“Let’s stop a moment.”
I brought the bike to a halt and took out the map.
“We shouldn’t stop,” Annette said. “We should hurry before They catch us.”
“We’re hours ahead of it.” I tried to keep my voice calm.
“So we can outpace Them?” she asked.
“We’re managing about six miles an hour. Which is double what They are. Probably more.”
“So there’s no problem,” Annette said, sighing with relief, “We just cycle south for a day, then west tomorrow and find a way around Them.”
“Wouldn’t work. We need to sleep. They don’t.”
“I got caught up by one of these down near Lenham,” Sholto said. “It wasn’t as big as this, though. You saw what it did to the land around there. I hid in a church. Say what you like about England, but you’re not short on churches.”
“That won’t do,” I said, tracing a line on the map.
“No, I mean I was in the crypt. Some of the church was knocked down, sure, and I ended up drinking the water from the font, but I survived there, underground.”
“No. It’s Daisy. She’ll cry. No matter what we do. And whilst They may not hear when They’re passing overhead, once it’s down to just a few hundred or a few thousand stragglers, They will.”
“Then we go back south,” Kim said.
“And then what? Perhaps if we only sleep for a few hours we might out distance Them, but then what? We’ll still need to find food, and still have to look after a baby crying all the time, in a land full of the undead.”
“A tower block, then?”
“That means a city,” I said, tracing a line along the map “One night in London thousands went by. Perhaps more. I don’t know. The next day there were dozens left, still all heading off in the same direction. It took days before They’d dispersed. We’d need a tower block right in the middle of a city and we’d need food for weeks, and even then...” I found it.
