by Frank Tayell
“He didn’t exactly stretch himself coming up with a new name,” I said.
“Well, he’s not our problem. He’ll get the vote of the people on his farm, and no one else.”
“I went to Willow Farm,” I said. “As far as the gate, anyway. It’s the place near the house David Llewellyn had, the one in which he was murdered by Paul. There were only a few dozen people on that farm.”
“There’s a few hundred now,” Sholto said. “Hard to be sure precisely how many as few of them ever come out again, except for the couple of dozens who take out one of their two boats. They claim a grain ration for two hundred, but say they have twice that number who are living on what they grow. Willow Farm is going to be a problem, one we’ll have to deal with next month. This month, our problem is Markus.”
“Can Dr Umbert beat him?” I asked.
“He doesn’t need to,” Sholto said. “There’s one polling place, and I’m the one who printed the ballots.”
“You’re going to rig it?” Kim asked.
“I’d say this is too important not to,” Sholto said.
“Okay, look, I don’t want Markus to win,” I said, “but there’s not much point having an election if we’re going to pick the winner. That’s a travesty, the worst part of a—”
“Shh!” Sholto hissed, but it was too late. We’d spoken too loudly. The zombie had heard us before we’d seen it.
The creature was an adult, male, broad-shouldered and abnormally long-armed. At least, the one arm it still had was longer than average. It hung low, the claw-like fingers almost level with its knee as it swung in a pendulous twenty-degree arc. The arm had to be dislocated, and probably broken in at least two places. The other arm was missing somewhere above the elbow. The ragged remains of a waxed shooting jacket hid the gory stump. Nothing could hide the savage hole in its cheek.
Teeth snapping, arm swinging, it staggered out of the smoke-blackened ruins of a burned-out house. The creature stumbled on the broken tiles that had fallen from the collapsed roof, but kept its footing as it lurched towards us.
There was a soft hiss from the rifle as Kim fired. The bullet smashed through the zombie’s face. It fell, collapsing onto the shattered bricks and fractured tiles with a clatter that rang far louder than the gunshot.
“Not much point saving bullets if we’re going to end up running a dictatorship,” Kim said. “And not much point going back if the alternative is ending up like Donnie.” Fury radiated from her, and I felt the same. It wasn’t directed at Sholto, not exactly and not entirely.
“I won’t say that what I did before the outbreak was rigging an election,” I said.
“Because you stuffed the deck,” Sholto said before I could continue. “You picked the candidates, and I did the same.”
“I didn’t actually rig any election,” I continued.
“No?” he interrupted again. “What about the by-election in Dorking? I sent you those emails, and you had a word with the Tory candidate, didn’t you? You got him to drop out a week before polling day. What did he say the reason was? A heart condition? How’s that not rigging an election?”
“That’s not the same as—”
“Quiet,” Kim said. “Please. Let’s just… just… just get to the warehouse.”
Chapter 2 - Congregation
It took another hour, mostly due to the undead. We came across three small packs, each clustered in familiar roads. They had to have followed us during our trips to collect the fuel from the warehouse. We fought the first two, but skirted round the third group, and ended up almost lost in the warren of close-packed residential streets before we found the building.
“Be quick,” Kim said, pushing the door to the warehouse closed.
“I will,” Sholto said, taking out his torch. “It’s down there?”
The hatch to the bunker was open, just as we’d left it. The warehouse was much the same. We’d already picked through the bric-a-brac that Locke had collected, and discounted most of it as worthless. I went upstairs to the rooms that overlooked the road. Kim followed.
“I think we’ve ten minutes,” I said as a zombie lurched along the street outside. It was moving quickly, or quickly for the undead, but I don’t think it had seen where we’d gone. Another appeared from the ruins of a fire-ravaged building a little further to the east. “Maybe five.” I stepped away from the window.
Kim reached for the sat-phone we’d brought with us from the ship. “Better call in,” she said. “We should have done it half an hour ago.” She pressed dial, and I turned away, barely listening as she gave a brief report to the American sailor on duty. She put the phone away and came to join me at the window.
“Remember the last time we were here and all we had to worry about was Kallie bleeding to death?” She sighed. “This election, Bill. If Markus wins—”
“You heard Sholto. Markus won’t win.”
“You sound bitter,” she said.
“I am. Bitter, frustrated, angry at myself as much as anyone else. When Mary asked me to organise the election, I didn’t see it as an opportunity to elect a new leader. It was meant to be a chance for the community to come together. We’d give an official mandate to those people already running the island. It would provide a framework around which a state could be constructed. This election would give us a stopgap government while we took stock of our lives, counted heads, discarded who we were, and worked out who we wanted to become. We’d spend the next couple of years debating taxes and laws, whether we’d need a dedicated fire service, and what subjects should be taught in school. The structure was important, not the candidates, certainly not the race. The mayor was just meant to be a figurehead. I thought that Mary and George would stay on in some advisory capacity, and most of the work would be done by the cabinet. Most importantly, I thought that the decisions would be taken slowly. Of course, it wouldn’t be democratic, not in the way we idealise the concept, but it would be fair and free, and thus the opposite of the future that Quigley wanted.”
“You saw it as a foundation,” Kim said, “a precedent for the future, rather than a president for the present? You had a dream of the great and wise gathering in the market square to debate a constitution that’s unwritten and un-thought, but others had their own dreams. So what do we do if Markus wins?”
“He won’t,” I said. “If Sholto can rig a U.S. presidential election, he can engineer this one.”
“Except that Markus has won so far, hasn’t he?” Kim said. “He’s outmanoeuvred your brother, and Markus’s scheming won’t have stopped there. As I see it, that makes it fifty-fifty that he’ll win. But, okay, what if he doesn’t? What if Umbert wins and turns out to be just as bad? We need a plan.”
“You mean we need a destination,” I said.
“Pretty much,” she said. “When I left Belfast, when I was alone on that launch heading towards Wales, I had my own vision of the future. Mine was a world in which the undead were dying and the entire planet was ours. We could go anywhere. Absolutely anywhere. I’ve felt like that before, it comes in a sweeping wave, a desire just to get away. This time was different. This time, I knew that, though we could go anywhere, wherever we went, we’d never leave. It would have to become our home. There are ten thousand people left in our little corner of the world. How many left on the planet? Twenty thousand? Thirty? I imagined us sailing into an isolated harbour and, before I set foot on land, I threw my rifle into the sea. It was a nice vision, until I remembered Siobhan. Even without the undead, her group wouldn’t have survived the winter.”
“Even without the undead,” I echoed, “but the undead are still a problem, and might be for months to come.”
“Maybe longer,” Kim said, picking up a dusty DVD from the stack by the equally dusty television. “I suppose, wherever we go, we might manage to rig up a wind turbine to a car battery. We could watch old movies on special occasions, but would we want to? Would we really want that vivid a reminder of all we’ve lost? I was talking to some
of the sailors on the ship. People have been leaving Anglesey. Boats go out, they don’t return. No one really notices because, for the most part, these are people that never really came ashore. If we left, people would notice, and some would follow our lead. We’d scatter to the four winds, and form our little communities, our little countries. We’d each hold onto our own little pieces of knowledge but forget so much more. The Dark Age will come, but if it’s going to come anyway, let’s not waste our lives trying to hold back the night. Let’s go and enjoy as much of it as we can, as best as we can, somewhere we don’t have to fight and kill just to get by.”
“If Markus wins,” I said.
“Maybe even if he doesn’t,” Kim said. “We need a good farm, with good land. Is Anglesey the best place for that? Like I said, we can leave, but wherever we end up, that will be as far as we and our children will ever get. But if we don’t leave soon, we’ll never have the chance again. It’ll be Anglesey for the rest of our lives, and that wasn’t your dream, Bill. I don’t think it’s mine. There’s… there’s something I—”
“Got it!” Sholto called from below. I looked at Kim, wondering if she’d continue.
“It’s something to think about,” she said instead. “Two zombies out there. Looks like they’ve stopped moving.” She left the room and headed to the stairs.
I followed, but hadn’t reached the bottom before Kim had opened the warehouse door and stepped outside.
“Everything all right?” Sholto asked.
“Just trying to plan for the future,” I said. “Have you got the hard drive?”
He tapped his bag. “Odd design, that bunker,” he said. “I’d say it was a hasty piece of work. I’m not entirely sure how much radiation it would have stopped.”
“It hardly matters, does it?” I asked, going outside. Kim stood level with the front wall, rifle raised. She fired. Once. Twice. I saw the first zombie drop, but not the second; it was obscured by the angle of the building. Kim began to lower her rifle, then raised it and fired again. I hadn’t seen the third zombie at all.
“More coming,” she said. “At least two, probably more behind. You want to hurry it up?”
I pulled the door closed. I didn’t think we’d return, but left the key in the lock anyway. Experience has taught me that you never know when you might need a refuge.
We took a circuitous route back to the harbour, avoiding the roads we’d used to get to the warehouse, but one house is much like another, one street the same as the last. Some buildings were burned out, some trees blown over, some windows broken, some roads occupied by the undead.
I swung the sword savagely down, slicing through bone and tendon. Black blood oozed from the out-held stump as the zombie’s forearm fell to the ground. It staggered forward and I stepped back, bringing the sword up. I lunged, spearing the bulbous blade straight at its face. The point pierced the skin between its eyes. I grabbed the pommel with my left hand and pushed as the zombie lurched forward. Bone cracked. I twisted the blade, destroying its diseased brain. It fell. I looked for another threat, but there wasn’t one.
“I think there are more of the undead than there were last week,” Kim said, loading a fresh magazine. “Locke must have been keeping their numbers down.”
“Or luring them away,” I said. “Except at Shore Road, we’ve not seen that many corpses. Maybe she was coaxing them out of the city, trying to get them to wander the countryside in the hope that would help keep survivors from coming to raid her stores.”
“That woman just gets worse and worse,” Kim said.
“Is that church on the map?” Sholto asked.
“Which church?” Kim asked. “Which map?”
“The one Locke had,” Sholto said. “You see the doors?”
It was a new build, but with a grey stone facade designed to imitate the ancient churches in other parts of the city. The front had the usual thick wooden double gates, and those were firmly closed. Sholto was pointing his rifle at the narrow door at the right-hand side of the building. Again, it was made of wood, varnished almost to black. There was no window, and it didn’t look as if it had a lock on the outside. It did have a large metal handle that matched the handrail of the steel ramp leading up to it. Between the metal handrail and the door’s handle ran a padlocked chain.
“No,” Kim said, swiping at the tablet. “There’s nothing on this street.”
“Maybe she didn’t mark it off,” I said, taking a step closer. “The padlock hasn’t rusted.”
“So was it put there by Sorcha Locke?” Sholto asked. “There are no cars in the parking lot, and not many in the street. What do you think?”
“I think we walk away,” Kim said. “It’s not like we’re going to find food in there.”
“No,” I said, “but we might find ammunition. That’s what was missing from the warehouse. There were a few thousand rounds, but Locke had to have had more.”
“And used it,” Kim said. “Look for a key. She left the one for the warehouse near a drainpipe. No drainpipe here. Maybe somewhere near the base of the ramp?”
As I bent down to look, Sholto walked around to the wide wooden doors at the front of the church.
“There’s no key,” I said.
“Then leave it,” Kim said. “We’ll note the location, and return tomorrow or later.”
Sholto tapped the wooden door, and then reached for the ornamental iron ring on the left-hand side. It turned. “Looks like we don’t need a key after all,” he said. The door flew open, knocking him to the ground. Two small zombies tumbled out.
As Sholto scrabbled backwards, Kim raised the rifle, firing two quick shots. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the furthest zombie’s head blown apart. The other zombie was too close. The bullet hit it in the shoulder just as its hand grasped around my brother’s boot. I slammed my foot into the creature’s skull, pitching it onto its back. It lost its grip on my brother’s ankle, but it wasn’t dead. The creature opened its small mouth and snarled, exposing a mouth missing half its milk teeth. I almost hesitated. Almost. I stamped my foot down on that tiny, lesion-ridden face. The bone didn’t crack. The sound was softer, one that I know will stay with me to my dying day.
I helped Sholto to his feet, but Kim hadn’t stopped firing. I turned to face the doors, raising the sword, peering inside at the undulating shadows. Kim kept shooting, but there were no clear targets until she stopped to reload. A trio of zombies, almost walking in line abreast, staggered through the doorway. The creature in the middle was bent double, and that brought it down to the height of the other two. I stepped forward and to the extreme right, raising the sword up above my head, before slashing it down at the small creature. It raised an arm up, not in defence, but grasping towards me. The over-sharpened blade sliced cleanly through those clawing fingers before it slammed into its skull.
“You’re in the way!” Kim yelled.
“Here!” Sholto called. He’d drawn his machete, and approached the zombies from the other side. He hacked down at the other undead child as I swung the sword down on the exposed neck of the doubled-over creature. The zombies fell.
“Back!” Kim yelled. “Get back!”
The fury in her voice wasn’t aimed at us, or the lumbering procession of decrepit and young staggering through the open double-doors. I think she was screaming at time itself. Sholto and I stepped back, but kept our weapons ready as Kim fired. Shot after measured shot, each hit its target. The bodies fell without a scream, without a cry for mercy, though each dull thump came with a silent demand for a justice that we could never give.
Finally, there was no more movement inside the church.
“The old and the young,” I said. “That’s who they were. Locked inside a church with the infected, and with no one to protect them. They must have been with the adults who died on Shore Road. Left here without any defence while those others went to rescue a will-o-the-wisp.”
“Either that group of survivors or a different one,” Sholto said, “bu
t someone locked them inside.”
“Damn her,” Kim whispered. Tears ran down her face. “Damn her,” she said again.
Chapter 3 - Breaking the Ice
It was with genuine relief that we reached the checkpoint the admiral had established at the entrance to the harbour. There was a tension to the small group of uniformed soldiers, an agitation whose origins lay in the cluster of fresh corpses lying on the road.
“It does look like there’s more undead in the city,” I said by way of greeting.
One of the soldiers, one of the few with a nametape attached to his uniform, gave a vague nod. “You saw a lot of them today?” Sergeant Conrad asked.
“A few dozen roaming the streets,” I said, then realised what he was really asking. “None heading this way.”
Conrad gave another nod, this one more precise. He had the stars and stripes on his shoulder. As I noticed that, I realised that the others all had two flags on theirs. Each bore the standard of the United States, but the other badge was different on each of the sailors. I recognised Cape Verde, Egypt, and Germany. Those flags gave an indication of where they’d been a year before, the stars and stripes how they’d survived the last few months. Under other circumstances, that might have given me some flash of pride or hope. After what we’d seen, I just wanted to get back to the relative isolation of our cabin.
At least the checkpoint meant the last leg of the journey was made in relative safety. We travelled with weapons ready, but the only real danger came from the risk of one of the bombed-out buildings collapsing around us. Though we heard a few distant panes of glass come crashing down, and a few more of the smoke-blackened girders crack and creak, we reached the ship unharmed.
