“I had a cabin there, but I lived wherever, though most recently in Washington, and that because of the presidential race. No, this was a campaign in Washington State, over on the Pacific coast. But I wanted to see the East Coast again, so I got in my car and drove. Didn’t take nearly as long as I’d expected, so when I got there, I drove north to south, and that didn’t take as long either, even after stopping at the battlefields. I went east to west along the southern border, then north again, but that time, I threw the map out the window, and used the setting sun as my guiding star. Now, that was driving.”
“You got lost, didn’t you?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t say—” He slammed on the brakes. The bridge was ahead. And it was barricaded.
Rusting razor wire glinted in the headlamps’ gleam, running across all four of the narrow lanes and the pedestrian footpath, overlapping the crash barriers on either side. Behind the wire, positioned without an inch of space between them, was a row of six cargo containers. On top was scaffolding.
“Is that a walkway?” Siobhan asked. “They built a scaffolding walkway above the containers.”
“I can’t tell. We’ll have to get out and look,” Sholto said. He didn’t reach for the door handle.
“We came to the wrong island,” Siobhan said.
“Yeah, I can’t see an easy way up there. But finding a few ladders will be quicker than sailing the boat up here.”
“No, I meant if we’d gone to that island, we’d have got our answer about the hydroelectric plant before the Amundsen set sail. I’m thinking of Connemara. Some islands were empty. Others were infested. That island over there, Eysturoy, it’s infested. They quarantined it. Maybe after they systematically emptied Tórshavn. Maybe after they moved their loot there. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? After the outbreak, after the nuclear war, what would they wish to protect? The same thing we’re after: the electrical infrastructure. They moved to that island, sealed it, came back for the food, the bedding, everything they could carry. And on one of those trips, someone got infected.”
“A good theory,” Sholto said. “The bad news is that we need to confirm it. I’ve got some wire cutters in my pack. We can’t move those shipping containers, but we can cut a path through the wire, climb up the containers, and take a look at what’s beyond. But let’s get the car turned around first.” He put the car into reverse, but stopped after a metre. “Do you hear that? That crunching beneath the tyres?” He dipped the beams.
“That’s cloth,” Siobhan said. “Cloth and… and I don’t think that’s rust.”
A fingerless palm slammed into the passenger-side window. Sholto jumped, automatically reaching for his weapon. The rotting hand slapped into the glass, dragging sideways onto the paintwork. Siobhan drew her Berretta, reached for the door, and tried to open it, but the zombie pushed back.
“Damn,” she said. “I’m trapped.”
“I’ll get it,” Sholto said, glancing out the front and back. “Think there’s only one.”
“Quick,” she said. “Before more come.”
Sholto opened the door, stepping outside even as Siobhan eased herself over into the driver’s seat. The rain was heavy, a soaking squall, but outside of the confinement of the car, he no longer had the ineffective wipers smearing his view.
There was only one zombie, and it was on the other side of the vehicle. On his last morning alive, the human-host had donned red dungarees and a thick woollen jumper. The clothing was sodden, baggy, shapeless. The jumper was torn at the shoulder, revealing a skeletal, nearly fleshless arm, which now reached across the car towards him.
He raised the Berretta; after the sound of their engine, with the sound of the storm, the sound of a gunshot would make no difference. The zombie opened its mouth, snarling as it sprawled across the bonnet. Sholto backed away, and around the car, into the glare of the headlights. Beneath his feet, the ground was uneven, covered in something, but he didn’t risk a look. He kept his eyes on the blistered skin around the zombie’s eyes as the creature pushed itself away from car. Arms raised, it lurched towards him, and he fired. The zombie slumped to the ground.
As Siobhan came to join him, rifle in hand, Sholto unclipped his torch, and shone it at his feet. “Bones. Bones and cloth.” He shone the light at the razor wire on the bridge. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he made out the ragged strips of torn fabric caught on the machine-sharpened barbs, with more bones beneath. “Can’t see any skulls,” he said. “No, there’s a jawbone.”
“I can’t tell,” Siobhan said, raising her voice above the thundering storm.
He turned around. She stood by the corpse. “Tell what?”
“The blood, is it brown or black? The clothing, it’s nearly intact. Maybe a month of exposure. Perhaps two.”
“There’s something reflecting over there,” Sholto said, shining his torch away from the bridge. The light flickered. “Thought these torches were meant to be waterproof. Over there, beyond the road, there are reflector strips. Cars, trucks. A roof, too. I think there’s a car park, a shop.”
“We’ve got to check it out,” Siobhan yelled.
Sholto’s torch flickered again as she attached hers to the rifle. He left his long-gun in the car, though he closed the driver’s door. Five minutes, tops, and they’d know whether they had somewhere to wait out the storm. He was already drenched to the skin, but humans are waterproof. Annette had said that back on Anglesey as her excuse for dancing in a summer rain shower. Except he was sure the freezing damp was leaching into his bones.
Siobhan took the right, he the left. Added to the red glare of the car’s tail-lights was his flickering torch and her, for now, steady beam. There was something else Annette said, something she had copied from Bill, where there’s one zombie, there’s always more, and so it was no surprise when he saw the shadows shift.
“Movement,” he said. “Ten o’clock.”
“Got it,” Siobhan said, pivoting. “Zombie.” She fired. The creature fell, and she turned to the right. “Two more.” Again she fired. Again the bullets whispered from the suppressed rifle. Again, the shadows stopped moving, the thump of the falling bodies masked by the rising storm.
“We were wrong,” she said. “I was wrong. That’s not the dangerous island behind us.”
“I was just thinking that,” he said. His torch flickered, then died. He slapped it against his thigh. The beam came back on. He shone it forwards, across the road, a wide ditch, a trio of granite boulders, and onto a peeling-skin face lurching between two stationary cars. He fired two shots, and one hit its mark.
“No, this one isn’t either!” Siobhan said. “Two more. Over there. This isn’t the dangerous island, nor is the one behind us. It’s the airport. That’s where danger would come. This island is the buffer.”
“Oh, hell, of course,” he hissed, taking another step forwards. Closer now, he could make out the vehicles parked on the inland side of the coastal road. Parked, or abandoned? And when? Around the vehicles, between them, beyond them, came the undead. Three, then four, then seven, then more than he had time to count.
“It’s too many,” he said. “Too many,” he repeated, raising his voice to a yell. “Back to the car!”
If it hadn’t been for the storm it would have been a short battle with a foregone conclusion. With the rain hammering down, with his light nearly gone, with razor wire at their backs, even with the firearms, the battle could go either way. He skipped back a step, turned, and shone his light on the wire, looking for a ladder or gate he’d previously missed. If they could climb to the top of the containers, take the high ground, the battle could still be won.
Everything went white.
Blinded, he brought his hand up to his eyes, instantly taken back to that nightmare road when the nuclear war had begun. But his vision was already returning, and as it did, he saw their car, the road, and the undead beyond, bathed in the stark glare of a battery of searchlights.
Three buses, two truc
ks, and a dozen cars were parked close together on a wide expanse of concrete on the inland side of the road. Behind them were two one-storey huts. Around and between the vehicles were the undead. Twenty. No, thirty-five, at least. And the zombies were approaching the bridge.
He raised his gun, taking aim, picking a straight-backed creature head-and-shoulders taller than the others. Before he could pull the trigger, the zombie fell. He switched aim.
“Call out your targets!” he yelled, but Siobhan only had her weapon half-raised. When he looked back at the approaching undead, he saw another fall. This time, he saw the arrow’s feathers as they slammed through the creature’s forehead.
“Koma! Komme! Come!” a woman yelled behind them.
He spun. The searchlights made it impossible to see her, but he saw the shadows move. Something flat cut across a searchlight’s beam: a platform, long enough to stretch beyond the razor wire. A figure ran from the top of the containers to the platform’s edge. A second later, a loud rattle marked the drop of a rolled ladder.
“Koma!” the woman called again.
“Siobhan, go! The ladder,” Sholto said, backing up towards it, keeping his gun aimed at the undead. They were falling. One by one, but with the arrows barely three seconds apart.
There was no one at the top of the ladder, just a narrow, bolted tray-platform with no handrail. Barely three feet wide, it bent as it took his weight, but it didn’t buckle and it didn’t break before he reached the far end, and the containers. The searchlights were arrayed in a row, attached to scaffolding, a metre back from the container’s edge. He made his way through, squinting against the glare, and almost walked right into a figure in armour.
“Sorry,” he said.
“English?” she asked.
“American, more or less,” he said.
“American?” She sounded excited.
Sholto turned around. There was another figure, on the next container along, standing just back from the searchlights. Unlike her comrade, this woman was dressed in modern military uniform, complete with a tactical helmet. She was armed with a bow, though, a quiver attached to her leg. She drew, nocked, and loosed one arrow, then another, with oft-practiced deliberation.
“To? Tveir?” the soldier called. “Two?”
“Two of us? Yes,” Siobhan said, making her way through the searchlights to stand next to Sholto.
“Iri? Irish?” the knight in armour asked, the excitement gone from her tone.
“I am,” Siobhan said.
The soldier lowered her bow, though she kept an arrow nocked as she moved away from the searchlights, coming closer. “You are from Ireland?” she asked.
“We’re from Anglesey,” Sholto said quickly. “In Wales. Though I set sail from Maine after the nuclear bombs fell. Before that… it’s a long story. As is where we’ve been since. Are you locals?”
He didn’t know how much of that either woman understood, just that the knight had seemed happy when she’d heard his accent, but far less so when she’d heard Siobhan’s.
The soldier looked at him, then at Siobhan, then at the rifle in her hands. She nodded to herself, walked back over to the scaffolding, and pulled a switch recessed beneath a rainproof cowling. The searchlights went dark.
“Koma,” the knight said. In the near dark, with the bow-carrying soldier at their back, she led them along the shipping containers, and across the bridge.
Chapter 13 - Warfare, Ancient and Modern
Streymin Bridge, The Faroe Islands
Through the driving rain, they were led over the containers, down a sturdy set of scaffolding stairs, and across the bridge towards the village on the shore of the Island of Eysturoy.
Led? Marched? Escorted? Sholto wasn’t sure. In front, enough daylight shimmered between the raindrops for him to see the soldier’s armour, the modern knife at one hip, the ancient sword at the other, but that told him little. Her boots were modern, but it would have been remarkable if they weren’t. The wind picked up, swirling waves into the inch-deep river running across the road, and clearing the storm enough for a hint of daylight to glimmer on rooftops. A house. Another. Something larger, perhaps a farm. He turned his eyes into the rain, but couldn’t see the sea, let alone whether there was a harbour or port on the eastern side of the bridge. Nor could he see any lights in any of the buildings ahead.
At his side, Siobhan held her rifle casually, but in a white-knuckle grip. He sensed she wouldn’t surrender her weapon if asked. He’d left his own automatic rifle in the car, and holstered his Berretta to climb the ladder to the top of the containers, but he could draw it quickly enough. More quickly than the soldier behind them could raise her bow? Probably not.
He wasn’t sure where they were being taken until they were sloshing their way across the flooded forecourt of a gas station, fifty metres inland of the bridge. The knight pulled the door open, and pushed back a heavy cloth curtain, holding it aside as she gestured them inside, into the pitch-dark interior.
While he was still calculating the odds of this being a trap, Siobhan marched into the garage’s shop. With no other option, Sholto followed, knight and soldier entering after him. The heavy curtain fell back into place, and everything went utterly dark.
Sholto’s hand dropped to his holster as he remembered the night-vision goggles on the soldier’s tactical helmet. But before he could draw his weapon, the shop was bathed in the soft orange glow of an electric lantern held by the knight. She hadn’t drawn a weapon, while the soldier hadn’t raised her bow, but that didn’t cause him to entirely relax.
The shop was empty. Even some shelves had been removed. In one corner was a partially disassembled fridge. Above, a battery of ceiling panels had been removed, and so had most of the wiring they had concealed. This building was no one’s refuge, let alone home.
With little else to catch his eyes, they finally returned to the lamp. Then he saw it. Then he relaxed. A cable ran from the lamp into a wall socket behind the register.
“You have electricity,” he said.
“Of course,” the knight said.
“Of course you do,” Sholto said. “You have the searchlights. They run off the mains, too? Let’s call it too much rain, too many zombies, my brain is running slow.”
The knight took off her helmet, and laid it on the counter next to the lamp. The soldier placed her bow on the empty shelf next to the door, and the unfired arrow next to it. She gestured at Siobhan, who was still holding her rifle. The detective slowly shouldered her weapon.
“I’m Thaddeus Sholto,” he said. “This is Detective Siobhan Murphy. We’re grateful for the help. Are you locals?”
The knight looked over at the soldier, who took off her tactical helmet and set it next to the bow. There was a similarity between their features. Blue eyed and blonde haired, though that was cropped short. The knight was around twenty, the soldier about twice that. Possibly a mother and daughter, or aunt and niece. From the rivets and welds, the armour wasn’t from a museum, but a workshop. And on the older woman, only the jacket and helmet were military issue, the rest of the clothing being an approximate match.
“Where are you from?” the older woman finally asked in accented English in which the hostility was evident. “Why did you come here?”
“My story begins in Manhattan,” Sholto said. “About the time of the outbreak.”
“You were there?” the younger woman asked, her accent stronger, more American than British, and her tone more curious than antagonistic.
“I was a few blocks away from patient zero,” Sholto said. “I got out of the city, and made my way north. I crossed the Atlantic by boat, and I wasn’t the only one. Millions tried. The nuclear war began. A few thousand managed to find shelter on the Welsh island of Anglesey. There, with survivors from Britain, with soldiers from France, with US Marines from a hospital ship, we tried to forge a new society. The island has a nuclear power station. As we were trying to decommission it, containment failed. We had to flee across t
o Ireland. To Belfast, originally, and now Dundalk. We’re looking for somewhere to winter. That’s why our team came ashore in Tórshavn. By the time our ship returns, we need to know whether Faroe could become a safe harbour for the rest of our people. We’ve other teams, other ships, searching the European mainland.”
“We need somewhere safe for the children,” Siobhan added. “Soldiers and sailors can put up with hardship, but the children need open skies and fresh air, and we thought Tórshavn might be it, until we saw the zombies.”
“You are from Ireland?” the older woman asked.
“Yes, I am. I’m a police officer.”
“You were,” the older woman said. “How many are you?”
“Do you mean on Faroe, or on our ship, or still in Ireland?” Siobhan asked. “There’s eight of us here, a hundred on the ship, ten thousand in Ireland, and we know of at least twenty thousand more survivors now near the Pyrenees. We didn’t think anyone was here. How many are you?”
The soldier didn’t answer. She just nodded to herself and picked up her helmet, though not her bow. “Wait here,” she said.
The knight turned off the light. The room was engulfed in darkness. A gust of cold air swept inside as the door was opened, but then gone as it was closed. The knight switched the lamp back on.
“What’s your name?” Siobhan asked.
The knight weighed that up. “Rigmor,” the woman said. “Where in Ireland are you from?”
“Cork, mostly,” Siobhan said.
“Where’s that?” Rigmor asked.
“It’s in the south.”
“Not the north?” Rigmor asked.
“No,” Siobhan said. “You’re from Faroe?”
“I am.”
“Did you make the armour yourself?” Siobhan asked. “It’s very impressive. There’s plenty of old armour and weapons in museums across England, Wales, and Scotland. Some of us took over the Tower of London, and claimed armour from there. But the consensus was it slowed us down too much. As a rule, we run unless we have to fight, though there’s been a lot of both as we’ve searched Europe for survivors.”
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 16): Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests Page 14
