by Frank Tayell
“When?” Lena asked.
“Soon,” I said.
I took the flash-bangs, and the sat-phone from Sholto’s pack, and went to look outside. The sky was lightening when I called the admiral. She’d dispatched the rescue party, but we couldn’t wait. There were close to a hundred undead outside, but most were gathered around the kitchen window and the front of the house. Soon, more would get inside, though, and the rest would spill around to the north side of the building. If we stayed, we’d die. Escape didn’t offer much better odds, but if we could get away from the house and into the fields we only had to keep ahead of the zombies until rescue reached us. There were no good choices, and no way to turn back time. I put the sat-phone away, opened the window, and then returned to the stairs.
Sholto was at the top, flexing his hand. He’d lost his bayonet. Kim was two steps below, slashing the machete at an upturned face. The blow missed, and she had to jump out of reach of the creature’s clawing hands.
“This isn’t working,” she said, hacking down again. This time the machete slammed into the zombie’s skull. The creature toppled backwards, knocking down the three that had been climbing the stairs behind it.
“Time to go, little brother,” Sholto said.
“On the count of thirty,” I said.
I ran along the corridor to the room above the porch, counting under my breath. “When you hear the bang, go,” I said to the gathered group, then ran down to the other end of the hall and into the most marvellous bedroom I’d seen. Most of the roof had been replaced with a skylight. The bed was positioned so that it lay underneath the stars. It would have been a fantastic house to live in, to watch the children grow up in while we grew old, but that was another fantasy, an unattainable dream like so many others we’d had out in the wasteland. Like those others, it had proven fatally dangerous.
I threw the flash-bang outside, and turned away as there was an explosion of noise and sound. I readied the second, uncertain how long I should wait before throwing it. Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty.
“Bill!” Kim called. “We’re waiting!”
I threw the second flash-bang, and limped out of the room as it detonated outside. I don’t know if those helped us at all. When I reached the stairs, there were more creatures in the doorway, another four milling their way up the stairs. Sholto hacked down with his hatchet. It lodged in the zombie’s skull, but the creature toppled down the stairs, dislodging those that followed. Sholto pulled two flares from his pocket, lit both, and dropped them into the undulating mass of the undead. The hallway turned a hellish red.
“Let them burn,” Sholto said, “and give the Marines something to aim for.”
Kim ran, I limped, and Sholto followed along the corridor and into the small bedroom above the porch. Umbert was still there, Dean by his side.
“He won’t go,” Dean said.
“I should be last, shouldn’t I?” Umbert said.
“You were meant to be the excuse to make sure that Dean got out!” I barked. “Go, Dean. Go. Kim, get him out of here.”
Kim hustled Dean out of the window.
“You next,” I said.
“I really should be last,” Umbert said. There was something in his tone, a hint of desperation that made me wonder what happened to those other people he’d been with in Weston-super-Mare. That it was Lorraine who was helping him with his campaign, and that there had been no one else by his side, told me their fate, but not how it had come to pass. This wasn’t the time to find out. I dragged him to the window as Sholto shoved the bedroom door closed.
“They’re coming,” Sholto said, as I pushed Umbert outside.
When he was half outside, Umbert stopped resisting. He began climbing. Dawn was on its way. I saw Kim raise her rifle, and fire one of her last shots into a zombie staggering towards Dean, then I turned back to my brother. He was leaning against the door, a strange smile on his lips.
“You wanted a new narrative,” he said. “A story that would win you the election? I think you’ve found it. Make sure you get a photo of the house as we leave. Go, I’m right behind.”
I climbed out the window, balanced on the edge, glanced down, and saw Umbert waiting below. “Come on!” I yelled at my brother.
He ran, diving from the door as it split open. I nearly fell from the shallow roof as he threw himself out of the window, but turned it into a drop and roll, picking myself up as he landed neatly, a foot away.
“Lean on me,” he said to Umbert. “Let’s get away from here.”
We limped away. I saw Kim ahead, waving an arm, in what I hoped was a signal that the others were safe. We gave a suspiciously dark screen of trees a wide berth, angling towards the rose-covered pagoda and the empty garden beyond.
Dawn slowly swept across the fields. There were a few thick clouds scudding across the sky, but the previous night’s storm had blown itself out. I turned around to look at the house. A zombie toppled out of the window through which we’d climbed, but the rest were still angling towards the front of the building. We’d made it. We’d survived. We’d escaped. I would take a photograph, but not yet. Smoke followed that zombie out of the window. The house was burning, and we were too close.
I turned around, and limped after Umbert and my brother. They were level with the pagoda. I saw the roses move. The branches twisted and broke. Petals fell. Perhaps it had been trapped in there since the outbreak. Perhaps this was the third occupant of the house. Perhaps it was only one of the many creatures that had attacked us during the night. It hardly matters now. The zombie staggered out of the rose-covered pagoda. Thorny runners snagged its clothing, tore at its skin, and ripped into its flesh. That would have caused a human to stop, to scream. The zombie didn’t flinch, but launched itself at Umbert and my brother.
Sholto turned, but Umbert was in the way, and he moved too slowly. As my brother balled his fists, the zombie clawed at the candidate. Its teeth sunk into Dr Umbert’s neck. Sholto grabbed at the creature, hauled it off, threw it to the ground, and stamped on its face, all in a scant few seconds as I limped over to Umbert. The doctor had collapsed. Blood bubbled from his neck. I clamped my fingers to the wound, but it was too late. Dr Umbert was dead.
Chapter 17 - All At Sea
As the Amundsen sailed back to Anglesey, I found an isolated perch on the corner of the helipad. I didn’t want to watch the Isle of Man disappear beyond the horizon, nor wait for Wales to appear. Instead, I ran wire wool over the sword. The blade had acquired a few more nicks to its edge, though I couldn’t remember which creatures had caused them. The weapon would need some work with a sharpening stone, and perhaps a lathe, when we got back to the island. And that was work that would have to be done. Whatever came next, it would be a long time before I traded it in for a ploughshare.
It had taken us an hour and a half to reach Douglas. The first half hour was spent fighting our way through a long thin line of the undead, all heading towards the burning house. The last half hour was made in company of a group of Marines and sailors from the Amundsen. Even then, the trip was made in near silence. Beyond that Umbert was dead, what was there to say? I’d had little more to add when I climbed aboard and spoke to the admiral. She’d wasted no time, recalled the remainder of her troops, and we’d pulled anchor while the sun was still low on the horizon. While the admiral hadn’t shared her plans with me, they were clear enough. She wanted to return to Anglesey and secure the rest of her crew. No doubt along with as many supplies as they could smuggle aboard before election day. And then… and then, I didn’t know. Instead, I ran the wire wool over the sword’s blade, and tried to come to terms with the reality of our new situation.
“Hey,” Kim said. She sat down next to me. “It’s over, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” I said. “Dead candidates have been elected before.”
“Is that what you’re going to do? You’ll still run Dr Umbert in the election?”
“No.” I sighed. “No. There’s no point. Ma
rkus would win anyway. For it to work, Dr Umbert would have to be popular, his opponent unpopular. In this case, it would be seen for what it is, me running against Markus, and thus against the rules I created. No, Umbert can’t stand. The least we can do for the dignity of his memory is remove his name from the ballot.”
“It’s a shame,” Kim said. “I was growing to like him.”
“Me, too,” I said. “He’d have made a good leader. He… he had his demons.”
“We all do,” she said.
“I think I saw a glimpse of them during the battle,” I said. “It had something to do with Weston-super-Mare, but now we’ll never know. I regret not asking him about them. But if I’m going to regret something, it’s that we ever went to the Isle of Man. It was a foolish trip.”
“Like Dr Umbert said, we don’t know what the future holds, and we didn’t know what it held before we set out.”
“That doesn’t make it any less self-indulgent. In this cold light of a harsh new day, I see that’s what it was. Locomotives? Madness. We hardly needed them except as a symbol more potent than a plane landing, and there were plenty of other symbols that we could have found. Plenty of other ways we could achieved the same ends without taking such a monumentally stupid risk. What was I trying to prove? Who was I trying to prove it to? Sholto? That I could run an election fairly, was that it? Or was it like Jackson said, that I was reverting to what I knew, tilting at windmills the only way I knew how.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Kim said.
“I can, but I also blame the admiral, and Sholto if it comes to it. Too many people plotting their own little schemes. We should have planned it together, rather than all acting according to our own best interests, always with the best of intentions, but against our better instincts.”
“Fine, you can blame yourself if you want, but that doesn’t change the facts. We’re down to two candidates. Markus and Bishop.”
“Two bad candidates, and it’s hard to tell which is worse,” I said.
“Whoever wins, humanity will lose,” Kim said. “Except that we know Markus will win, yes? So the admiral will leave. Mister Mills will shut down the power plant before taking his submarine out into deep water, hopefully to sink her. George and Mary will go to Ireland. Francois will go to Paris. Dr Knight might go with him, or she’ll join the admiral. One by one, everyone will scatter. If any survive long enough to see the last of the undead die, they’ll create a new nation based on some memory of the old. Ireland, France, the United States. How many generations will it take before there’re enough people for one nation to send an army against the other? Except Markus will attack Elysium first, won’t he?”
“I don’t think the admiral will let it get that far,” I said. “She’ll let it get far enough so that history will record she had no choice, then she’ll destroy Markus before he can hurt any of her people.”
“We can’t stop her?” Kim asked.
“Should we try? If Markus has half an ounce of sense, he’ll know not to send an untrained militia against a professional army.”
“But the admiral’s going to push his hand by shutting down the power plant,” Kim said. “I know, it’s Mister Mills’s people who’ll do that, but it comes to the same thing. However this plays out, whatever the details, people will die. That means we can’t give up, not yet, not until we’ve tried everything. I want to know that we have, that you have. Have you?”
“There are two options, then,” I said. “The first is to let Markus win, but in such a way as to reduce his power. We’ve still got all those people standing for cabinet positions. We’ll let them run the island, but let Markus call himself leader, it’s possible that’s all he wants.”
“Do you think that could work?”
“They often say that the worst candidates make the best leaders,” I said. “I’ve never believed it. Most candidates are people who’ve spent a good portion of their adult life trying to achieve power. That makes the leaders we usually get the least unpopular of a self-selecting group. But they also say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s what we’re offering Markus, absolute and total power. Control, not just over people, but also over the destiny of our species. Markus might agree to any terms we set out, but whether he’ll hold to them once he’s in office, and for how long, is a very different matter. There’s the question of his people, too. Who knows what promises he’s privately made to them. Realistically, at best, we’ll push the crisis a few months down the road.”
“You said there were two options,” she said.
“Sure. We can kill Markus. We’ll have to kill Bishop as well. Kill them both, and in such a way as the death of one implicates the other. Without any candidates, we can’t hold an election. The question is, whether that’s preferable to the alternative. We couldn’t do it alone, not the two of us. We’d need help. Maybe from the admiral, maybe from Mister Mills or Francois. Assuming they went along with it, then how many people would be involved? How many would know that what we created began with murder? What is a life worth? What price do we pay for our species’ future? I don’t just mean figuratively, but if we get Francois to help us with this, he will ask for something in return. What do we say when he demands half the island’s resources so he can reoccupy Paris? If it begins with murder, where would it end?”
“It wouldn’t only be Bishop and Markus, it would be all their hangers-on as well,” Kim said. “What was it that politicians called it, collateral damage? Dozens of people, murdered without trial or even evidence to suggest they were guilty except by association.”
“At least dozens,” I said. “I don’t know how innocent any of them are, but no, it’s not an option.”
“There’s still an alternative,” Kim said. “At least for us. We wash our hands of this whole affair. I wanted to—” She stopped, because Lorraine approached.
Lorraine sat down heavily on the step next to us. “Four hours ago, everything made sense,” she said. “Okay, maybe not four hours, but yesterday, it all seemed so straightforward. Now… now, I don’t know. What happens next?”
“We were just talking about that,” I said.
“Can someone else stand in the election? I mean, can I?” Lorraine asked.
“I’d like to say yes,” I said, “but no, not really, not unless we could get Markus and Bishop to agree.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Lorraine said. “So it’s over. Markus is going to win?”
“Probably,” I said.
“I know your brother was planning something,” Lorraine said. “Lionel knew as well. He wanted to win fairly, he was quite angry about it.”
“He was?” I asked. “Then I really didn’t know the man. I wish I’d had time.”
“He had two faces,” Lorraine said. “There was the public persona of a psychiatrist, and then there was the lone survivor, the man who’d lost everything but hadn’t given up. And now he’s dead. What are you two going to do now?”
“Sleep,” Kim said.
“You should come to Menai Bridge,” Lorraine said. “There’re some good people there.”
“Is that where you’re going now?” Kim asked.
“I guess,” Lorraine said. “What’s the alternative?”
Chapter 18 - Angels and Devils
“It’s a bad business,” George said. Mary said nothing, though her mouth moved as if she was barely holding back the words. I’d felt duty-bound to come and report in person, but I’d nothing to add to what I’d radioed in. Only Lorraine had come with me to see the old couple mostly because, without a candidate, she was out of a job and uncertain where else to go.
“What happens with the election now?” Lorraine asked.
“I could ask you much the same,” George said. “Bill, did you plan for this?”
“For the death of a candidate, no,” I said.
“Then it’s over?” George asked.
“I’m going to speak to Markus,” I said. “And then
to Bishop. He’s a candidate, too, after all. Maybe we can reach a compromise. I’ll see if we can enshrine most of the powers in the cabinet, and arrange a new election for some time early next year. Beyond that…” I shrugged. I’d already made up my mind, but decided it best not to share it with anyone.
“A compromise?” George asked. “Why would Markus want to compromise? He’s won. You’ve handed him the election. First by—”
“George!” Mary said warningly. “What’s done is done, and it was done without malicious intent. Go, then, Mr Wright, see what you can salvage.”
“An election was a bad idea,” Lorraine said as we walked down the road leading towards the town.
“Agreed,” I said.
“A really bad idea,” she said.
“Hmm.”
“You think Markus will compromise?” she asked.
“I think he might say he will,” I said. “He might agree to everything I ask just to ensure as large a victory as possible. Whether he keeps to any agreement after that, I don’t know.”
“But you have to try, don’t you?” she said. “We all do, right? We have to keep trying, because what’s the alternative?”
That hit too close to home. “You’re going to Menai Bridge?”
“Aye, later,” she said. “First I want to see Captain Devine.”
“Oh? Why?”
“You remember those people, the four I saw in the pub? I want to see if she’s found out who they were.”
She really didn’t want to give up. For her, that’s what returning to Menai Bridge meant. It would be the start of her new life, the same life of farming that awaited us all, and she clearly wasn’t ready for it.
“Maybe you could see if the captain needs a new constable,” I said. “We’ll need police in this little world of ours.”
“Not me,” Lorraine said. “No, not me. If the admiral’s leaving, I bet the captain’s going with her. I do not want to be the only cop on this island then.”
