Surviving The Evacuation (Book 13): Future's Beginning

by Tayell, Frank

  Belfast Harbour

  “That’s it?” Kallie asked, her voice dripping with youthful disbelief. “That’s all it takes to move the satellites?”

  “I guess so,” Sholto said. “Though I can’t say I find it easy thinking in three dimensions.”

  “And here was me thinking we all moved in three dimensions,” Colm said.

  “Sure, there might be a hill to climb, or valley to descend,” Sholto said, “but really it comes down to left and right, back and forth. To maintain a stable orbit, you’ve got to consider the satellite’s position relative to the Earth, the curvature of the atmosphere, and hence the angle of the flight path.”

  “But the software does those calculations for you,” Kallie said.

  The satellites had belonged to Lisa Kempton, part of a secure communication service she offered to other members of the wealthy elite. And it had been secure, from everyone but her. Sholto had gained access by having Kempton’s company hire a hacker who was in his debt. She’d provided him with access, and designed the point-and-click interface before she disappeared. She wasn’t dead; rather, she hadn’t died before the outbreak. Now? It was best not to think about it.

  He turned to Colm. “Do you have enough images of Dublin?”

  “I think so,” the boxer said. He glanced at the map, then back at the laptop. “There’s still a fair bit of cloud, but we’ve got the photographs from the helicopter. They’ll suffice until the weather changes. We should get Reg Cafney to help us pinpoint what we’re looking at. He spent some time in Dublin, on the stage.”

  “In theatre?” Sholto asked.

  “Stand-up,” Colm said. “You should hear his joke about a farmer and the giraffe.”

  “So can I move it?” Kallie asked.

  “Off you go,” Sholto said. He stepped back, not wanting to crowd the woman.

  This particular satellite wasn’t being moved to France. They needed to keep one over Ireland so that the communities in Elysium, Dundalk, and Belfast could stay in contact. At present, however, the line was intermittent. Dundalk was coming through without interference, but calls with Elysium kept dropping out. It was possible that the storm had interfered with the signal, though that didn’t explain why they could hear Chief Watts’s gruff voice clearly enough. Moving the satellite a few miles would either solve the problem, or give them a better idea where the issue lay.

  The second satellite was northwest of London, following the horde as it approached the capital where Nilda and George were still awaiting the arrival of Leon and his ships. The third was over clouds, beneath which, hopefully, was France. Moving the Dublin-satellite southwest was a test. If Kallie could manage that, and pinpoint the position afterward, then she could be let loose on the satellite over France where there was an even greater ambiguity as to its position.

  “There. Done,” Kallie said. “Ah, look, there’s snow there, on that hill, but not on the southern slopes.”

  “Perhaps that means the storm has blown itself out,” Colm said. “Right, I know where that is. Do you?”

  Kallie picked up a map, and compared it to the expanse of water that took up the left hand side of the screen. “Lough Derg, I think. Yeah, I’d say so.”

  “Call Elysium, see what the quality of the line is like,” Sholto said.

  “The line’s still bad,” Kallie said when she finished the brief radio-check. “I could barely hear Captain Devine.”

  “Then it’s not the line,” Sholto said. “Either it’s the satellite or the sat-phones. Or it’s sunspots, for all we know. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Except use the satellites while we can,” Kallie said.

  “Point taken,” Sholto said. He pointed to one of the other three laptops. “The internal memory is capped at a little under five-hundred gigabytes. It’ll overwrite old images, so make sure you keep copying them onto the external drive. Follow the coast southward until you find a large ship. Take the pictures then—”

  “Then come and find you or John, got it,” Kallie said.

  “Keep an eye out for smoke, or fire, or paint,” Sholto said. “Bill knows we’ve got the satellites and knows we’ll be looking for him. He’ll head to the coast and signal us.” He forbore to give any more advice. “I’ll go and check on the receiver. Perhaps that’s where the problem lies.”

  He left the cabin, went outside, and crossed to the ladder that led up to the warehouse’s roof. He wasn’t the only person to have sought sanctuary up there; Siobhan was leaning against the extractor vent.

  “Looking for solitude?” he asked.

  “I was watching the crowds,” she said. “You can tell a lot by where they form, and where they disperse. You’ve moved the satellites, then?”

  “Kallie’s doing it now,” he said. “The search for Bill is on hold.”

  “Was France still covered in clouds?” she asked.

  “Pretty much. Assuming that it was France and not Belgium. Either way, with so much cloud, it’ll take time just to find the coast, let alone the plane. In some ways, in many ways, it doesn’t matter. Leon and Nilda will get to France first. If the clouds don’t clear, they’re more likely to find some ships before our satellites do. Either way, until they’ve been aboard, confirmed the hulls are intact and the engines work, any pictures we gather will do nothing more than reassure.”

  “Sometimes reassurance is all people need,” Siobhan said. “Is there still no word from your brother?”

  “Not since that last call when they were twenty miles from the coast. If he was able to call, he’d have done it by now.”

  “How much fuel did they have?” Siobhan asked.

  “A full tank, I think.”

  “Enough for a few thousand miles?” Siobhan said. “Then that’s the reason we’ve not heard from them. They would have kept flying until they saw somewhere they could land, and by then, they were out of range of the satellites.”

  “Sure, maybe,” Sholto said. There was a far more obvious explanation, but he was trying not to dwell on it. The cloud would clear over the next few days. Once they’d found a ship, there would be ample time to move all the satellites over France, and even beyond. They’d find the crashed plane, and then… but, again, he didn’t want to think about it.

  “Your brother’s a survivor,” Siobhan said. “He’ll be fine. It’s the people out there I’m worried about. I don’t know how they’ll receive the news they’re leaving, and so soon after they’ve arrived. Over this last year, I really thought things would become simpler when we found other people. If we found them. Instead, life has become as complex as ever it was. Does Kallie seem happier, do you think?”

  “Teenagers aren’t my area of expertise,” he said. “Nor are matters of the heart, but I do know that unrequited love is a problem only time can solve. What are you watching?”

  “Over here, nothing,” Siobhan said. “The sight to be seen is on the other side of the roof, which is why I’m here, and the camera is over there.” She held up her hand. In her palm was a small screen. “There’s a warehouse to the southeast in which Markus has made his home. It’s the one with the red trim beneath the gutter. Don’t look! There’s a woman who spends a lot of time on the roof. I don’t think she’s a lookout, but I can’t be certain, hence the camera and screen.”

  “How many supporters does Markus have?” Sholto asked.

  “I’m not sure. The camera has a better view of the road outside this warehouse than it does of theirs, but it’s the only vantage point I can easily get to without revealing what I’m doing. Around ninety people still live in the warehouse, but another hundred have moved out in the last twenty-four hours. No one will say precisely why they left, except to say they don’t want to be around Markus. What does that tell you about the ninety who’ve stayed?”

  “You think he’s trying to build up a new supporter-base?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or someone in that warehouse is. But that confirms he wasn’t involved in the sabotage. Bas
ed on what Chief Watts found at the water treatment plant, at least four people were involved in that particular piece of sabotage, not counting any lookouts. In my view, they sabotaged the plane and ship first, because they had to know that a drop in the level of water coming from the treatment plant to the power station would be noticed almost immediately. They had to be aware that, as soon as that drop was noticed, the damage to the plant would be discovered, the exodus would begin, and there would be too many people boarding the ships for any further destruction to take place. They had to have been planning this for weeks, if not months. As such, they knew Scott Higson liked to tinker with his plane, and Commander Crawley conducted a weekly inspection of the grain carrier’s engines. That means that the sabotage took place between twelve and thirty-six hours before the treatment plant was damaged. In total, including lookouts, we’re looking for a group of between six and fifteen people.”

  “That’s all? Not ninety, then?”

  “If that many were involved, it would be a devil to keep it secret,” Siobhan said. “It’s not so much the risk of one of them confessing as other people noticing that an acquaintance is unusually tired, keeps disappearing, or is acting strangely. That’s how we usually crack crimes like this. It’s terrorism, essentially, and that’s the toolbox I’m using. I’ll solve this with tip-offs and intelligence. What’s slowing me down is that I’ve been inundated with theories as to who the saboteurs might be. Markus is at the top of the list, but nearly everyone has been implicated by someone. On balance, there’s nothing usable in those rumours. It’s just the usual mix of resentment and fear. But it does confirm we’re after a small group, but it is a group, and they are organised. Since Markus arrived here without a friend to his name, I think we can discount him.”

  “But you’re still watching him?”

  “The people who gravitate to him are the kind who might get recruited by our real enemy. A new recruit is often the weakest link when it comes to infiltrating a gang.” She sighed. “And it’s partly for Markus’s own safety. Distrust has set in, and it’s beginning to fester. The one thing we all know is that the saboteurs were on Anglesey just before the exodus, and they had to have arrived in one of the grain carriers. He’s an obvious suspect, and an obvious target for distrust that could turn into violence. The last thing I need is to have to investigate a murder as well.”

  “I heard an odd thing this morning,” Sholto said. “Not connected, mind you, not exactly. While waiting for the helicopter to be prepped, I took a stroll along the seawall. People were discussing Elysium, and talking as if it were… well, as if it were paradise. I don’t think anyone truly knew how much they were giving up when they left Anglesey, but I don’t think many of them realise that all they had is now gone for good.”

  “Colm’s doing his best,” Siobhan said. “Walking the alleys, touring the fires, talking, telling stories of Ireland and the legends of Finn MacCool. He’s well practiced at it. The routine is one he plied while we were trekking through hell during the long, past year. It’s something he learned at his gym, but there he had a social and judicial framework supporting him. Stories will only get us so far, and they’ll only keep us together for so long. We need to give people hope. We need those ships.”

  “We need to find the saboteurs,” Sholto said. “There’re no other clues as to their identity?”

  “Most of our evidence is on an island that’s swiftly becoming radioactive,” she said. “We can’t examine the plane, so we can only speculate as to what malfunctioned. Chief Watts examined the water treatment plant, but he was looking for a way to repair it, not for clues as to who’d caused the damage. He has helped, though. We’re looking for people with an engineering background. From what happened to the ship, we’re looking for someone with more than basic programming skills.”

  “That doesn’t really narrow things down.”

  “Not really. Not since we don’t know who had those skills to start with. The Chief volunteered to don a radiation suit and go back into the plant to collect fingerprints. I’m so desperate I almost said yes, but even if he were to find a set that weren’t his, or belonging to one of his people, would it really help? Just picture it, lining everyone up, taking their prints. Imagine the mob, waiting for the guilty to be found. Any suspects would be torn apart. What if our findings were inconclusive, what then? No, we need proper evidence. Concrete evidence.”

  “Would we find it on the wreck in Dundalk?” Sholto asked. “We don’t know where the plane is, and we can’t get back to Anglesey, but we can get to the wreck.”

  “Again, it’s unlikely we’ll find anything,” Siobhan said. She glanced again at the screen in her hand. “But it’s better than doing nothing. Do you think they could fly me there today?”

  “I didn’t mean you should go. Can’t you tell Kim what to look for?”

  “Says the man who went there himself this morning,” Siobhan said. “No, I’ll go. I’m the police officer. This is my case, and my responsibility.”

  “I’ll call Dundalk,” he said. “We’d best check it’s safe for the helicopter to land before you depart.”

  But when he placed the call, he found that Kim wasn’t at the college.

  Chapter 3 - Silt and Tide

  Red Barnes Road, Dundalk

  “Shh, listen!” Kim whispered.

  Half the twenty-person patrol went silent; the other half hadn’t heard her. They continued their circular conversation about how long the ice would take to melt, and when, or whether, there would be another snowfall.

  “Watch the left,” Bran hissed, his voice low but loud enough to carry. The talking ceased, but again only half obeyed the command. The other half, the half that had been chattering, the half that Kim thought of as the green recruits, swung eyes and rifles every which way except the direction from where the sound had come. Kim tried to ignore the distraction as she concentrated on the uneven row of trees at the side of the small house. Then came another soft clump, and then a sharp squeak. This time she saw the snow tumble from the tree’s branch and land on the child’s swing, which shuddered and twisted with the impact.

  “We’re fine,” she said. “It’s just snow, melting.”

  “Dee-Dee?” Bran asked.

  “Clear ahead,” the tall woman said. Dee-Dee was a member of the collective of coders who’d ensconced themselves in the knocked-through terrace on Anglesey in which Kim had lived with Bill and the girls. She raised a hand to adjust the taped-together spectacles on her face, then to adjust her recently knitted blue and orange hat. “Yep. Clear.”

  “The right, Joan?” Bran asked.

  “No. Um… No, I can’t see anything. I think we’re okay,” the woman said hesitantly. She took her left hand from her rifle, and ran her thumb along the pair of wedding bands on her ring finger. The gun’s barrel fell, and she hastily re-gripped the stock. Aside from a brief lesson that morning, this was Joan Goldacre’s first time holding a rifle. They didn’t have spare ammunition to practice, or time for training, but nor did they have sufficient personnel to leave combat to those with experience.

  “Then, since we’ve stopped, and aren’t in imminent danger, this is the perfect time to check our position,” Bran said. “Go on, maps,” he added.

  “You, too,” Kim said to Annette.

  “But I know exactly where we are,” Annette said, a little too loudly. Kim noted a few exasperated looks thrown Annette’s way. The girl didn’t, but sighed as she fumbled to extract the map with her thick gloves.

  At least Annette and Daisy were the only children stranded in Dundalk. The members of the shipwreck were a self-selecting group. Rather, they were those who’d not selected a more pro-active life while on Anglesey. The restless survivors who’d seen too much horror to find respite among the Welsh island’s small villages had joined the groups sent to Belfast or Elysium, or had gone to Menai Bridge and become part of Heather Jones’s expedition to Kenmare Bay. Those who’d remained in Holyhead, and who’d been crammed on
to the grain ships, were the people who had chosen to cling to the comfort of electricity until the last possible moment.

  Another clump of snow fell. Kim had her rifle raised to a forty-five degree angle before her hands caught up with her brain. She wasn’t the only one to make such a move. Three rifles bobbed back and forth, their barrels aimed at the trees.

  “It’s just snow,” Kim said before anyone else became distracted. “Though snow falling from a branch does sound just like a zombie’s dragging footstep.”

  Bran, she noted, hadn’t moved an inch. There was another soft crunch as an over-loaded branch dropped its icy burden onto the snow below.

  “It’s melting, isn’t it?” Annette said.

  “Yes, it is,” Kim said.

  “Is that a good thing?” Annette asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Thanks to nearly a year trudging the undead wastes of England, Wales, and Ireland, Kim knew how to gauge whether a house might contain supplies or the undead. The snow and ice changed everything, turning the frozen world into an utterly alien landscape.

  “So, where are we?” Bran asked the group at large.

  Paper rustled and feet shuffled, crunching on snow as bowed heads peered at maps. Kim found herself smiling. Most of the group were older than her, but visible between every pulled-up scarf and pulled-low hat was the familiar frown of an unconfident student hoping not to be picked. Except for Annette, who wore a wide grin as she tapped her gloved hand against their position on her own map.

  “Joan?” Bran prompted.

  “We’re on Red Barnes Road,” the woman said, though it was as much a question as a statement.

  “But where?” Bran asked. “How far have we travelled? Remember what I said about using duration to calculate distance, and using the compass to monitor our bearing.”

  “Right, sure,” Joan said. She turned back to the map.

  “Roundabout,” Annette muttered. “Roundabout, roundabout.”

  “Shh!” Kim said, not wanting the girl to embarrass the woman.