Surviving the Evacuation, Book 14

by Frank Tayell

  “So your fears stem from natural suspicion and paranoia?” Chester asked.

  “They stem from a distrust of coincidence,” Locke said. “The emergence of a large horde in northeastern Europe at roughly the same time as one in Britain could have a mathematical explanation. The arrival of their helicopter so soon after we crashed could be, as they said, because they saw our plane fly overhead. This doesn’t explain the letter.”

  “You think the letter is suspicious?” Chester asked. “I was sceptical when they arrived so soon after the failed assault and the death of the radio-team in the bell-tower. The letter made me trust them more.”

  “Exactly,” Locke said. “It’s clearly not a forgery, thus it was taken from a corpse. Which is more likely, that the original recipient died within sight of this group of twenty thousand, or that Dernier followed the man and killed him when he was just out of sight of Creil? Hence why I’m writing down what the pilot said. I want to replace hypothesis with facts. I was employed to eliminate the threat to humanity. I do not consider my contract terminated simply because there has been a nuclear war.”

  Starwind turned around to look at Locke. “That was really your job?”

  “It was,” she said.

  “Really?” she asked, turning to Chester.

  “Yep,” he said. “So why don’t you trust the pilot, Starwind?”

  “Because everyone I trusted died in the watchtower,” Starwind said. Silence descended once more.

  Chester turned his attention to the glimpses of flooded homes and ruined roads visible through the reinforced window.

  The section of Creil on the western bank of the river was in far worse repair than that to the east. A fire had ravaged the quarter closest to the bridge, partially explaining why they had established the vehicle warehouse and food store on that bank. He turned that thought on its head, and realised it might have an entirely different explanation.

  “Starwind, can I ask you something?” Chester said. “When did you start excavating that underground lair where the vehicles were stored?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “I was hunting ghouls.”

  “Sure. The general, then. When did he start digging out the warehouse? Soon after you’d moved from the airfield, right?”

  “Within a few days, yes. Everyone was either on patrol, farming, or building.”

  “Right, so the excavations began before Gaston went to the Pyrenees?”

  “Yes. Why?” she asked.

  “Because of the river,” Chester said. “Before excavations began, the general must have decided that any escape would take you south or east, not north or west.”

  “The general said we should avoid going near Britain,” Starwind said. “That they were shooting down planes, sinking ships. He thought they would become pirates, raiding the French coast.”

  “A reasonable concern,” Chester said. “Why not go north?”

  “I don’t know. What are you saying?”

  “Nothing really,” Chester said. “Hopefully I’m saying that the general knew about the redoubt in the Pyrenees. I mean that he really knew, like with the airfields. He knew its location right from the beginning, and was absolutely certain that was where safety lay. What worries me is that he might not. He had to choose one side of the river or the other for the underground vehicle park. What if he picked at random, and made up the story about the Pyrenees because people want certainty and hope from their leaders?”

  “Gaston went there,” Starwind said.

  “Did Gaston say that?” Chester asked.

  “No, not to me,” Starwind said. “But I know he left. I know he came back.”

  “Good enough,” Chester said. Privately, he wondered whether Gaston had found supplies, or even made it to the Pyrenees. Perhaps he’d made it up, perhaps the professor had. What bugged him was that the general had excavated the warehouse. He’d planned an escape at the same time as he’d been building up the defences. Sure, that had turned out to be prescient, but it also suggested that the general knew the town was only a temporary refuge. At the same time, if he knew about a redoubt at the Pyrenees, why had so much effort been expended on the defences and farms in Creil? Why hadn’t they set out for the mountains as soon as the airfield was compromised? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that there was no safety to be found in the Pyrenees.

  “The railway line is up ahead,” Bill said. “I saw it through those trees. Can we join it here?”

  “Not yet,” Starwind said. “Not here. The tracks were washed away. After half a kilometre, we turn.”

  “Five hundred metres? Fine, but there are zombies ahead. Everyone hold on, it’s going to get bumpy again.”

  The undead had been their constant companions almost as soon as they’d crossed the river. As with the east, patrols had been sent over the bridge to the west to dispatch those undead that had been summoned to the island. As the town to the west had no warehouses or other significant assets, those patrols had been smaller, with no attempt made to move the corpses from where they’d fallen. After a few false starts, Bill had abandoned any attempt at driving around them, and driven over the twice-dead. The military vehicle had no difficulty managing such fragile obstacles, but the engine noise had summoned the undead lurking among the ruins. Within minutes, zombies had flooded the streets before and behind. Further from the island, the road became less clogged with the gory remains of the recent battle, and their speed had picked up.

  “Forty kilometres an hour. Thirty… twenty,” Bill said. “And that’s slow enough.”

  A thump. A bump. An arrhythmic drumroll of cracking bone. The ATV rocked as it ploughed through and over the undead.

  “Too fast,” Bill muttered, but he didn’t slow. Gobbets of rotten flesh splattered the window, followed by a dismembered arm. The only mercy was that the sound of the engine drowned out the sound of crushed bones.

  “Now!” Starwind said. “À la droite! The right!”

  “There’s a wall in the way!” Bill said.

  “Go!” Starwind said.

  Bill aimed the Viking straight at the low brick wall. Bricks and fragments of cement clanged off the vehicle’s armour and crunched into the window as they drove through the wall and into an empty expanse of concrete.

  “Where?” Bill said.

  “Straight. Go straight!” Starwind said.

  “Still can’t see any train tracks,” Bill muttered.

  “Zombies on the left,” Locke said.

  “Get ready to jump out and run,” Bill said. “There’s another wall ahead.”

  “And the trees!” Starwind said. “The alder and the juniper, the gap between! Go through there.”

  “I wouldn’t call that a gap,” Bill said, but steered towards the trees, picking up speed as they went. The wall crumbled on impact. Bricks tumbled as mortar erupted in a fine cloud. The front of the ATV tilted downward then up as they traversed a ditch and slammed into the damp mud on the other side. The tracks bit deep into the sodden dirt. The engine roared, screaming as its speed halved, drowning out the sound of breaking branches as Bill ploughed up the incline, between the two trees.

  “I knew it!” Starwind said, as the ground levelled out and they reached the train tracks. “As promised, a railway.”

  As Bill loudly breathed out, Chester realised he’d been holding his own breath. “Let’s not do that again,” he said. “Is the passenger car still attached?”

  Starwind tapped the CCTV console between her and Bill. “Yes.”

  “It looks clear ahead,” Bill said. “Thirty-five kilometres an hour; we’ll stick at this speed for now. How far do we have?”

  “Eighteen kilometres,” Starwind said.

  “So about half an hour,” Bill said. “The undead won’t be far behind. When we get there, we won’t have much time before they catch up. We’ll have to get in and get out.”

  “They will be ready to go,” Starwind said. “We always were. We just weren’t ready for danger
from people we knew.”

  “Tell us about this watchtower,” Locke said.

  “The location was not my choice,” Starwind said. “It is a chateau. Not a castle. A rich noble’s house.”

  “A stately home?” Bill suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Starwind said. “There are gardens for growing fruit in glasshouses.”

  “A botanical gardens?” Chester said. “Sounds like a decent refuge to me.”

  “It isn’t,” Starwind said dismissively. “There are too many trees, too much cover, not enough clear lines of sight because of the houses nearby. Adrianna disagreed with my view of this new world.”

  “She’s the leader there?” Chester asked.

  “She agreed we needed watchtowers to keep the town safe, and that the Republic is an old idea that would wither and die. She didn’t agree with what should replace it. But when I asked for help, she said yes. That is more than anyone else.”

  “Takes all sorts to make a world,” Chester said. Reading between the lines, he took it that Adrianna hadn’t based her new worldview on a Japanese anime about teenage vampires.

  “And you said there are vehicles there? Fuel?” Bill said.

  “We won’t need them,” Starwind said.

  “We might,” Bill said. “We can’t take the same route back. I thought we’d head north, to that footbridge where we were ambushed. This ATV is too wide, the bridge too narrow. I’d be happier if we take at least one more vehicle, just in case. Better that than end up on foot.”

  Chester turned his face to the window. It was too obvious a ploy, but they would need diesel. He and Bill had each been given a shotgun and ammunition from the armoury, but they were the only supplies they’d been given. The ATV’s fuel tank had been filled, and Chester had no idea of its range, but he doubted it would get them to Dunkirk, and certainly not with enough to spare for the boat ride to Ireland.

  “They had a fuel tanker,” Starwind said. “We both did. We found the tankers. That is as big as this vehicle. No, we will drive through the river if we have to. There is a road ahead to the right. Soon it will run parallel to the railway. We need to get on the road.”

  “Now?” Bill asked, glancing to the right. “We’ve got a clear run ahead of us.”

  “Rue du Marais to Rue du Moulin, Rue des Charpentiers to the watchtower.”

  “You’re the navigator,” Bill said.

  “Zombies,” Locke said. “On the road to the right.”

  “That’s the road we should be on,” Starwind said.

  “Where?” Bill asked. “Too many trees. Ah, got it. Okay. And… and we’re past the undead. Here we go.”

  The ATV slid down the incline. Gravel pinged against the armour. Mud joined the gore coating the windscreen. With a loud crack, they slammed through the crash-barrier and onto the road.

  “Damn!” Bill slammed his palm against the screen between the driver and navigator’s seat. “We lost the cameras. A cable must have come loose. Someone open the hatch, check the passenger car is attached.”

  Locke opened the hatch that led to the machine gun mount. She dropped down a moment later. “Everything looks fine. Zombies behind. About a dozen. We won’t have long when we get there.”

  Bill leaned forward, peering through the dirty patina coating the windscreen as he drove around a burned-out car. “Let’s hope they’ve been killing the undead closer to the watchtower. Speaking of which, how much further?”

  “Minutes,” Starwind said.

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. Five?”

  With the view so restricted, Chester climbed up to the turret. The first few seconds were exhilarating, but the wind bit cold. The houses grew closer together. Though they had broken-open doors in common, there was little uniformity in design. A thick forest of trees on either side abruptly truncated the view, and so he was about to climb back down when he saw a thick rut gouged out of the mud on the road’s verge.

  “Left! Left!” Starwind called.

  “Get back inside!” Bill added.

  Chester peered again at the verge, but the rut had disappeared. Unsure what he’d seen, or whether he’d seen anything, he climbed back inside. Seated, he rested a hand on his new shotgun.

  They turned onto a wider road, narrower than a motorway but wider than an A-road. The trees turned to bare fields, which morphed into a squad of houses to the west. Beyond a junction, houses filled both sides as they reached the true beginning of a town.

  “We’re getting close,” Starwind said.

  “I thought you said it was a country estate,” Chester said.

  “Exactly,” Starwind said. “It’s a terrible place for a watchtower.”

  “Corpses on the road,” Bill said. “That’s a good sign. Your people have been killing the undead. Hang on, barricade. Got to slow.”

  Two vans and a car nearly filled the road. A fourth car had completed the barricade, but it had been pushed aside, creating a gap five feet wide, not nearly wide enough for the ATV. The Viking shouldered the car and van out of the way with a creaking crash of metal. The sharp tinkling of broken shards falling from the shattered windshields was lost beneath the grinding screech of the bodywork being crushed. In turn, that was drowned out by a sudden loud bang.

  “What was that?” Chester asked.

  “Hopefully not us,” Bill said, as the ATV barged its way to the other side of the barricade.

  “Do they usually guard this checkpoint?” Locke asked.

  “I don’t know,” Starwind said. “I only came here once, just after we left Creil. It’s beyond the church. Do you see the spire?”

  “Slow down,” Locke said. She opened the hatch and stood with head and shoulders outside. She dropped down, into the vehicle. “There’s nothing. No people in the spire, and no living zombies outside. Plenty of dead zombies. Recently dead, their bodies are lying on top of the mud. How far away are we?”

  “It’s over there,” Starwind said. “Behind those houses. The road goes past the church, then we reach the wall surrounding the watchtower.”

  “Go slowly, be ready to reverse,” Locke said, and climbed back up to the turret, this time taking her rifle.

  Chester curled his left hand around the shotgun’s barrel, but kept his right on the grab-bar. Zombies could be killed in defence or retreat, so which had happened here?

  “That’s the wall,” Starwind said.

  It was unprepossessing, barely ten feet high, of old stone, and down a road that was only wide enough for two vehicles if one drove on the pavement.

  “Where’s the entrance?” Bill asked. “This looks like a cul-de-sac.”

  “There. At the end,” Starwind said.

  “That’s a house,” Bill said.

  “No, just to the side. To the left.”

  “I see it,” Bill said. “And I can see the undead.”

  Two were moving. Many more corpses lay on the ground about them.

  Bill slowed the vehicle, bringing it to a stop. Over the sound of the idling engine, Chester barely heard the soft pop of Locke’s suppressed rifle.

  “Stay here!” Locke called, before clambering outside. Rifle raised, she jogged to the gates, and almost immediately turned around, and sprinted back.

  Starwind opened her door.

  “Zombies,” Locke said. “They’re surrounding the house.”

  “Are they heading for the gate?” Bill asked.

  “Some. Not all,” Locke said.

  “Then there are people alive inside,” Bill said. “Get in. We’ll use the engine noise to lure them away.”

  “No,” Locke said. “Starwind, is there another way in?”

  “Over the wall behind those houses,” she said, pointing back the way they’d come.

  “That will have to do,” Locke said. “She and I will make our way into the grounds and to the rear of the building. The people inside can’t have any ammunition left. If they did, they’d have shot the undead. You and Chester lure as many away as you ca
n with the noise from the ATV’s engine. Starwind and I will deal with any that are left. We’ll use the watchtower’s vehicles to get back to Creil, or we’ll run. We’ll see you there.”

  Bill paused, but only for a fraction of a second. “Understood. Safe journey.”

  “Bonne chance,” Locke said. “Starwind, come on!”

  The teenager went outside. Chester climbed up into the turret, watching as Starwind gestured to a house behind them. Locke took point, and entered the broken-open door, Starwind three paces behind. Chester dropped back inside.

  “After we lure the undead away, will we keep on driving?” he asked.

  Bill gave the dashboard a glance before answering. “I’m considering it. We’d have to come back here and refuel once they’re gone.”

  “And if we can’t?” Chester asked. “In my opinion, we should syphon the diesel and find ourselves a small car. The two of us won’t make much difference in Creil, and we may not get another chance to leave until we’re a lot further south.”

  “Agreed,” Bill said. “We’ll give them a moment more. Keep watch for the undead.”

  Chester climbed up to the turret. Locke and Starwind were already out of sight, but a zombie had emerged from a house four doors further down the street. The ghoul staggered outside, along the path, and then slipped in the mud, falling face first into the dirt.

  “Zombie,” Chester called through the hatch. “Only one, but there’s no suppressor on the shotgun.”

  “We’ll give it a minute more,” Bill said. He wasn’t looking at the road, but leafing through a notebook.

  “Is that Locke’s?”

  “She left it behind. Right at the beginning, she’s written out the locations of all of Kempton’s warehouses and retreats, just like she said.”

  “Are any of them useful to us?”

  “Not here and now, and probably not for the next month,” Bill said. “No, hopefully not until spring.”

  Having thrashed its way to its knees, the zombie crawled along the flooded pavement. They had three minutes, maybe four, before it reached them.