by Frank Tayell
“Then why did he lie to me?”
“Because it wasn’t about you. None of this was, not really. If you’d managed to persuade Jen, if she did have any power, then fantastic, there would be no need for any bloodshed. But he knew Quigley. Or knew his type. He knew the man would have to die and he knew you couldn’t do it. I could. And the easiest way of getting me here was to get you to come here and me to follow.”
“He didn’t know you’d come.”
Sholto paused, and looked up. “Of course he did. I crossed the ocean, didn’t I?” He turned back to the keyboard, and continued talking as he typed. “About an hour after you left he woke me up and told me where you’d gone. I won’t say I was happy about it, but I left Kim to do the shouting. He gave you the address of a safe house and a route to take. I followed that route and went to that safe house. You didn’t turn up.”
“I didn’t like the area.”
“Yeah, well it was the wrong time to get picky. The old man thought that if we were just a few miles away, we’d try and get into the place. It’s no one’s fault. I found your car and then I found the bike. But then I had to wait until dark, until no one in the balloon could spot me. I set the explosives and here I am, and... hang on. There.” He straightened.
“Is it done?”
“Just wait a moment. Right, there it is. That’s the confirmation. They’ve received a set of co-ordinates. They’ll go there looking for the Vehement, and it should be waiting ready to sink it. If it’s not, then that’s the old man’s problem, not ours. The job’s done. What are you doing?”
“The virus, they have some of it downstairs. Taken from Lenham Hill.”
“Really? I thought I got it all.”
“You didn’t. It’s how Jen got infected. There might be some more left.”
“So you’re going to start a fire?”
“Yep,” I ripped the pages from another book. “You got a problem with that?”
“Hardly. I think you’ve enough though.”
I looked down. I was ankle deep in torn paper.
“Here,” he pulled out a lighter and handed it to me.
I kicked the loose pages up against one of the teak bookshelves, bent down and paused. “Do you have a plan for what’s next?”
“You mean our daring escape? I saw two helicopters when I was setting the explosives. I figure that’s our best bet.”
“There’s no fuel.”
“Oh.”
“Do you have a plan B?” I asked, as I flicked the lighter.
“Not exactly, but in about a minute there’s going to be another explosion, and that’s going to rip a hole through the barricade to the south. At about the same time, give or take and if we’re lucky, the last of those incendiaries is going blow a hole through the outer wall. Factor in time and distance and lurching speed and we want to be long gone in an hour.”
“I didn’t see many undead out there, not when I arrived this morning. Yesterday morning,” I amended.
“Well, I had to do something whilst I was waiting for night. I lured in as many as I could find. I thought it would be good cover for us.”
“How many?”
“A few hundred. Probably more by now. Call it a thousand.”
“Right.” I counted to three. “So there isn’t a plan B, then?”
“Forget a plan and just set the fire,” he said slowly. “And do it now, because like I said, we really, really need to escape.”
It’s not the act of burning books that is a desecration, but the motives behind why they are burnt. This fire wasn’t just to destroy my past but was a final ending to all that had brought our species low. Nothing would ever rise from those ashes.
I bent down, flicked the lighter and held it to the first page. It was from Great Expectations. It wasn’t the scene where the house burns down, but you can’t have everything.
“We should go,” My brother said, gently pulling at my arm.
“Yes.” I didn’t move.
“Kim’s waiting,” he said gently, “Annette’s mad at you. Daisy, well, she missed you. Kept looking for you when she woke up. She was quite upset. Babies can be like that. They’re all waiting just a few hundred miles away and now it’s time to go to them.”
“Yes. Yes, alright.” I turned and we headed towards the door.
I stopped him when we reached the door.
“We should wait for the other explosion.”
“Seriously?” he gestured towards the flames, now trailing up the bookshelves to lick at the ceiling.
“We should.”
“Alright, then head south, down the main road. We can try and reach that car you brought.”
“No. I’ve a better idea. The old paddock, on the east side of the house. We go through the kitchens. Out here, turn left, then right, then straight on through the small door.”
“And then?”
And then there was an explosion followed by another a moment later. The sound was muffled and, with flames between us and the window, we could see nothing, but it was loud enough to carry through the stone walls.
“Timer didn’t work properly,” Sholto muttered. “Ready?”
“Let’s go.” I pushed the library door open and limped out in front.
The house was filling with smoke, every window letting in an orange glow from outside. Shots were fired and I think some were fired at us, and some fired back by my brother. I pointed the rifle at an occasional shadow, but I didn’t pull the trigger. The shooting stopped just before we reached the kitchen. Two soldiers, filling a rucksack with food, barely gave us a glance as we ran past and out into the cool air.
The noise. That’s what I’ll remember about our escape. The sound of distant fires being drowned out as the one I’d set in the library slowly turned into an inferno to consume the house. Wood cracked, metal split and bullets flew. None were aimed at us. Or at least I don’t think so. Wearing those camouflage jackets, carrying those rifles our silhouettes must have looked like everyone else. Trying to escape, trying to shore up their defences or just trying to find out what had happened, the soldiers ran right past us without a second glance. Then they were gone and we were alone and at the edge of the paddock.
“The balloon? Seriously?” Sholto said doubtfully. I was out of breath, exhausted and he sounded as fresh as if he’d just woken up.
“Quick question, your plan was to take a helicopter. Do you actually know how to fly one?”
“Fly, yes. Yes, I know how to fly one.”
I’d worked in politics too long not to notice the equivocation. “How about starting the engine and taking off.”
“Well, I figured we could work that out. And I suppose you know how to fly a balloon?”
“I don’t need to. Hot air rises. Then it’s down to the winds. It’ll get us out of here.”
“And the landing?”
“Let’s let gravity work that one out. Come on, before anyone else gets the idea.”
Three people already had, and had already begun inflating the balloon.
“Don’t fire,” I yelled, half to Sholto, half to them. Perhaps they heard me, perhaps they didn’t. A bullet whined through the air a foot from my head. There was the crack of a single shot, and the soldier collapsed. Another shot, then another, and Sholto was running ahead of me now, the gun raised, firing a single shot with every other step. Half-heartedly I raised my own rifle, but I couldn’t make out a target. I lowered it again and continued my stumbling skip towards the balloon. I was a hundred yards away when the bullets stopped. Seventy when he reached the balloon. I watched as he tracked his gun along the ground, to the left to the right. Fifty yards away, when he turned back towards me, and I saw him raise his gun again. He fired and a bullet whistled past my ear. I half turned. There were shadows following us. Three or four, I’m not sure exactly.
Not bothering to aim, I fired from the hip. The gun let loose a long staccato burst. At some point the selector switch had been flipped to automatic. I don’t know
if I hit anyone. I doubt it. The magazine was emptied in seconds, the barrel ending up pointing straight up in the sky.
“Come on!” Sholto called out. I don’t know if he was yelling at me or the soldiers or at the Universe in general. I slung the rifle and limped, as fast as I could, towards him.
I reached the balloon, just as an explosion ripped through the house. Perhaps that was their fuel dump or an ammunition store or perhaps it was something else. I fell into the wicker gondola and that was more or less it.
The canopy had enough hot air to give us lift, and the moment we started rising the gunfire stopped. I think those soldiers realised they’d need all their ammunition just to get out of there alive.
“It’s over,” Sholto said. About five minutes had passed. He’d spent it working out how the burner worked, fiddling with it until we’d risen up above the grounds. I’d spent it staring out over the burning building and fields I’d known so well. The fire was spreading. Indistinct dots of flame moved erratically on their own towards the house. It took a moment to realise these were the undead. Their clothing and bodies were burning. They were flaming death stalking the land.
There was another explosion, smaller this time, and part of the roof collapsed. I wanted to remember it all. All that it had been, and all that it had become.
“It’s not over,” I finally replied, “not yet.”
“No? Quigley’s dead and you’re alive,” he said, quite cheerfully. “And we’ve earned ourselves a boat ride anywhere we want. I say the US. There’s just something about this country. The food, the weather, I don’t know what it is, but the longer I spend here the more I just want to get away. Over there, I’ve got food and weapons stashed at half a dozen places within a few days drive of the coast. You, me, Kim and the girls. One big happy family. What do you say?”
“No. Not yet. There’s still the Doctor,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does. To me.”
“Look,” he said, “if this is about you being immune, then there’s a load of easier ways to find out...”
“No, it’s not that,” I said, finally turning my back on the inferno and slumping down onto the bench. “You shouldn’t have killed Quigley.”
“What? Why not?”
“I mean, not then. Not yet. There was one more question I didn’t ask. Whether the virus was part of Prometheus or not. Was it deliberate? Did he set out to end the world, or not?”
“Seriously. You think that matters?”
“More than anything. The wind’s carrying us south. We need to get to the Irish Sea. We might as well do that by going through Wales. Do you remember the Doctor’s address?”
“You really want to go there?”
“If not us, then who?”
“Kim will be furious if we don’t go straight back. Furious with me, I mean. You, you can make it up to her with flowers and chocolate and maybe a night at the ballet. But me, I’ll be in the doghouse for months. I tell you Thanksgiving is going to be real fractious this year.”
“It’s Britain. We don’t do Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah, well, I do,” he fished in his pocket. “Here. Annette made me promise, and I don’t want to get in her bad books as well,” he handed me a notepad. “Said she wanted to know what happened. For the journal.”
Day 137, 10 miles east of Chester,
English-Welsh border
19:00, 6th August
“The houses of the dead, that’s all I ever see these days. Nice homes once filled with hopes, now just death and decaying memories.” I was in a bad mood.
“Don’t be like that. This is a nice little place.” My brother wasn’t. He was jubilant, and has been since we left Caulfield Hall.
The hot air balloon wasn’t comfortable, and it’s hard to sleep when there are only a few inches of wicker between you and a thousand foot drop. We couldn’t steer it. We couldn’t do much but let it drift through the night, occasionally tinkering with the burner.
It took three hours before the inferno at Caulfield Hall was finally lost to the horizon. Then there was nothing but the stars and the moon and even they disappeared behind the clouds every now and then. It was terrifying when that happened. There was no ground, no sky. All we could see was each other’s faces, illuminated yellow by the flames from the burner. A stray bullet, during our escape, had smashed the altimeter. When we couldn’t see the ground we’d no idea of our height. I kept thinking we were going to crash, that we were plummeting downwards and the ground was just feet away. But then the clouds would clear and, by moonlight, we’d see the ground was still a thousand feet below us.
Then the horizon began to glow, and dawn arrived. The feeling is difficult to describe. I saw the world anew. For the first time I saw what it had really become, this new world where humanity no longer rules.
The reddish silver reflection of dawns early light on the canals and reservoirs, and the occasional grey ribbon of road, the tall shadows cast by empty buildings, these were there, but they weren’t the dominant colours. I could ignore these last traces of man, and see how the world will be in a few short years. Green was taking over, except for where the land was scarred red-brown from the passage of the horde.
We drifted south, through the night and into the dawn until, around nine o’clock, the day began to warm and we began to lose height. It wasn’t a sudden drop, just a gradual descent in line with the laws of physics.
We came down in a field, some hundred and fifty miles south, and thirty miles east, of Caulfield Hall.
The landing was... interesting. There were two zombies in the field. They didn’t notice us until the basket hit the ground. We fell out of the basket, at about the same time as They began lurching towards us. Then an errant wind and the sudden reduction of weight, caused the balloon to take off again, bouncing across the field, the undead in pursuit, until it came to a halt, the canopy caught in the trees at the fields edge.
It took a couple of hours to find bicycles and water, and then we cycled until it was too dark to see. We slept for a couple of hours, and set off again before dawn. The balloon carried us nearly a hundred and fifty miles, the bikes not much less. I should be tired. I’m not.
“Yeah, a nice little place. Small, but not too small. With a great view. You can see for miles and there’s nothing to see but fields and trees. It’d be a great place to settle in when this is over.”
“I thought you’d got your heart set on going back to the US?”
“Oh sure, I didn’t mean this house, I meant one like it.”
“What about the hordes?”
“I also meant when the zombies die. They will, you know. One day. Whatever’s animating Them will stop. Then the world will be ours once more. When it is, I want a place like this. Somewhere I can see people coming.”
There had been five people in the house. Five zombies. They had turned recently enough that one of Them was recognisable as the woman in the photographs arranged neatly on the piano. Who the others were, whether they were friends or family or strangers seeking sanctuary, I don’t know.
“We’ll reach the Doctor’s house tomorrow,” Sholto said, as he sorted through the few half filled packets in the kitchen, trying to find something we could eat.
“Yup. In the afternoon I guess.” I was searching through a stack of board games looking for a chess set to take back to Annette.
“He may not be alone. If he’s still there, then he probably won’t be,” he said.
“No. No I suppose not.”
“They’ll be armed,” he said.
“So are we.”
We’d the two rifles and plenty of ammunition. Back at the paddock, whilst he was waiting for me to limp my way up the hill to the balloon, Sholto had stripped the soldiers he’d shot of all their ammo.
“OK, little brother, just stop that for a moment and look at me. Right. They will be armed. We’re not going to win in a fair fight, so we’re not going to start one.”
> “No, and I don’t feel like another battle,” I said.
“But we may not be able to reason with him. He may be just like Quigley.”
“I don’t mean we leave him be. I mean we go across to Ireland, we get Francois and Leon and the crew of that submarine and everyone else who knows how to fire a gun and we come back in force. Perhaps that’s what we should have done to start with. It’s what we’re going to do now.”
“And if they won’t come back over here with you?” he asked.
“They will. This is important. I’ll make them understand.”
Day 138, at sea
7th August
It turns out I don’t have to. Finding the coastal hamlet in which the Doctor had his house was hard. Finding his house was easy. It was the one with the flags flying out front. The house was empty. The Doctor wasn’t in.
It wasn’t a laboratory. It was just a Welsh country home bought with a London salary and a city-dwellers dreams of a country retreat. Judging by the mismatched furniture, empty wardrobes and cracked glass in the empty greenhouse, those dreams never became reality.
Taped to the kitchen counter was a map with directions to a boathouse at the bottom of the cliffs. Underneath that was a note that read;
“You are not alone. There are other survivors. The mainland is dangerous. We have found sanctuary. There’s food here, take what you need and just what you need. Leave what you can’t carry and, please, leave the place tidy. Follow this map, and come and join us, on Anglesey.”
“Anglesey,” Sholto said.
“Not the Irish coast.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Sholto said.
“No, I can see two houses from this window that would be better places to hold up than this one. It doesn’t even have much furniture. They picked this house for a reason. The only reason can be that they knew who lived here. The old man wasn’t just wrong about the Doctor not being at Caulfield Hall. He knew where he was all along. He lied about the Doctor and he lied about a village in Ireland. I should have known I knew he was hiding something. I thought...
