Surviving The Evacuation (Book 10): The Last Candidate Read online

  Surviving The Evacuation

  Book 10:

  The Last Candidate

  Frank Tayell

  Dedicated to my family

  Published by Frank Tayell

  Copyright 2017

  All rights reserved

  All people, places, and (especially) events are fictional.

  Other titles:

  Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novels

  Strike a Match 1. Serious Crimes

  Strike a Match 2. Counterfeit Conspiracy

  Work. Rest. Repeat.

  Surviving The Evacuation/Here We Stand

  Book 1: London

  Book 2: Wasteland

  Zombies vs The Living Dead

  Book 3: Family

  Book 4: Unsafe Haven

  Book 5: Reunion

  Book 6: Harvest

  Book 7: Home

  Here We Stand 1: Infected

  Here We Stand 2: Divided

  Book 8: Anglesey

  Book 9: Ireland

  Book 10: The Last Candidate

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  http://blog.franktayell.com

  www.facebook.com/TheEvacuation

  Synopsis

  Whoever wins the election, humanity will lose.

  Nine months after the outbreak, ten thousand survivors from across the globe have found a refuge on the Welsh island of Anglesey. Hordes of the undead ravage the wastelands of Britain and Ireland. Satellite images show that the rest of the world is no better. Food, fuel, and ammunition are running low and there are no more old-world supplies with which to replace them.

  Intended as an alternative to a slide into despotism, an election is called. It is hoped the contest will bring forth solutions to the myriad crises facing this last bastion of humanity. After the favoured candidate is hospitalised, suspicion falls on the new frontrunner, a publican who purchased his support with an impossible promise of a return to the pre-apocalyptic world. With no viable candidate, and no way of calling off the election, those who still have access to a ship plan their departure; others plan to rig the contest; a few give up on all plans for a future beyond tomorrow. Anglesey is on the verge of collapse, and humanity is on the brink of extinction.

  Set in Belfast, the Isle of Man, and Wales during the run-up to the election on Anglesey, this is the sixth volume of Bill Wright’s journals.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue - Statement of Authenticity

  Chapter 1 - City of the Dead

  Chapter 2 - Congregation

  Chapter 3 - Breaking the Ice

  Chapter 4 - Happy Families

  Chapter 5 - Unpalatable Truths

  Chapter 6 - Nevermore

  Chapter 7 - Oncoming Traffic

  Chapter 8 - The Help That Comes

  Chapter 9 - Post Mortem

  Chapter 10 - Homecoming

  Chapter 11 - The Third Candidate

  Chapter 12 - New Digs

  Chapter 13 - The Man From Man

  Chapter 14 - The Betrayal of Man

  Chapter 15 - A Light, Then Night

  Chapter 16 - The Last Watch

  Chapter 17 - All At Sea

  Chapter 18 - Angels and Devils

  Chapter 19 - Bishop

  Chapter 20 - The Last Trial

  Chapter 21 - Gunshots

  Chapter 22 - Hard Rocks and Harder Places

  Chapter 23 - The Steep Stairs

  Chapter 24 - The Middle of the Road

  Chapter 25 - A Welcome Patrol

  Chapter 26 - The Last Candidate

  Epilogue - Leaks

  Prologue - Statement of Authenticity

  Annette would describe this as a prologue. Kim would say it’s an introduction. I prefer to call it a statement of authenticity. My name is Bartholomew Wright. The story I told about the events leading up to the first election on Anglesey wasn’t the complete truth. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly, but I withheld some key details in the hope of bringing unity to our fracturing community. Only time will tell whether that was a wise act or tragic mistake. The truth should be told, the whole truth, and that is what this account is.

  I don’t know when you are reading this, or where, for that matter. Perhaps it is only being read by Daisy, given to her by Annette as an apology for the world that she has inherited. Either way, I should begin with a little explanation of who we were, and what had occurred in the run-up to the election.

  At the end of September, in the year of the outbreak, Kim and I travelled to Ireland. We went to investigate a walled fifty-acre farm called Elysium, built by the billionaire Lisa Kempton as an apocalyptic retreat. Our interest was in the solar panels, wind turbines, and other irreplaceable equipment Kempton had stored for her people. Kim and I didn’t travel there alone. Will, Lilith, Simon, and Rob came with us. Rob killed the other three. He tried to kill Kim and me. He failed. We confronted him, and he died.

  Rob had sunk our boat, and we’d lost our sat-phone, so had no way of communicating with Anglesey, nor an easy way to return. We took refuge in a bungalow. As the number of zombies outside grew, we had no choice but to flee inland and north. As ever, our route was determined by where the undead were fewest. Almost by chance we found another survivor, Phyllis O’Reardon, a local who’d returned to her family home. She was killing the undead, burying all that she slayed. I say we found her almost by chance because O’Reardon had been an employee of Kempton’s, and one of the occupants of Elysium who’d fled when that refuge had been overrun. At the time, we didn’t have any questions we wanted to ask O’Reardon, and she was too consumed by her own demons to come with us. We left her, and continued north, making for a house in the village of Pallaskenry. We’d found the address on a list that Rob had taken from Elysium, and gone there out of sheer curiosity. We found the house empty, though a live-in guardian had previously occupied it. There were few clues as to his identity, though we believed he’d left when someone else arrived at the house. I think that someone else was Sorcha Locke, Kempton’s representative in Ireland, if not on Earth.

  From Pallaskenry we headed the short distance to the Shannon Estuary, and followed the coast east towards Limerick. We came to a long line of traffic, the occupants killed by some chemical weapon during the early days of the outbreak. We still don’t know who was responsible, though either that location was chosen by accident, or the real target was the warehouse a few miles further along the coast. The warehouse was a dummy, camouflage for the jetty that ran out into the estuary and at which was moored a giant yacht the size of a cruise ship, called The New World. Ship, jetty, and warehouse all belonged to Kempton. The craft was another part of the billionaire’s plans to survive the end of the world. Her plans failed. The only member of the crew still on board, Captain Tamika Keynes, was undead, but she’d kept a brief audio diary. Her crew had all left, seeking the sanctuary of Elysium. She’d also recorded that Sorcha Locke had reached the ship, but left again, heading to Belfast. The last recording told us that another employee of Kempton’s, Sue Dawson, had reached the ship, and it was in rescuing her that Captain Keynes had become infected.

  The New World had a small launch which Kim and I took north. Though we found a few unoccupied islands, we saw no one but the undead until we saw smoke. We found other survivors, though arrived hours too late to save more. They were Colm, a boxer from Belfast; Dean, Lena, and Kallie, three teenagers he’d saved from that city; Siobhan, a police officer from the Irish Republic; and three children, Billy, Charlie, and Tamara
.

  With the extra weight, we no longer had the fuel to reach Anglesey, so we aimed for Malin Head. There had been a community there, one that Siobhan and Colm had quit, but which had had fuel and sailing ships. Malin Head had been abandoned. We followed the coast east, hoping to be spotted by a ship sailing from Anglesey to Svalbard. Almost out of food and fuel, we arrived in Belfast.

  A cruise ship had been sunk in the entrance to the harbour, so we took refuge on a container ship, The John Cabot, anchored just outside the city. We thought it was safe to go ashore to search for food and fuel. We thought we were alone in the city. We were wrong. There was one other person in Belfast, as dangerous and dark a soul as any I’ve ever met.

  Kallie was shot and critically wounded. Though we managed to get her back to The John Cabot, we were unable to do much beyond extract the bullet and bandage the wound. Colm, Siobhan, Kim, and I went back into the city. We weren’t hunting for our ambusher, but hoping to find food, fuel, or medical supplies. We split up, and I found the shooter. I killed her.

  We found the woman’s lair in a warehouse bearing the same name as that of the building on the Shannon Estuary. The woman had been stockpiling fuel, emptying every vehicle in the city simply to keep a generator running. She’d been killing every survivor who’d found their way to Belfast so she wouldn’t have to share her food. Beneath the warehouse, we found a fallout bunker. It was a small affair with room for a handful of people, but we found a book, a journal of a sort. In it were the words ‘I am Sorcha Locke.’ After that, the line ‘I am alone’ had been copied over and over on every page.

  We also found a photograph of a group of ten women and two men, dressed in ballgowns and suits. In the middle was Lisa Kempton. The captain of the ship, Tamika Keynes, was at her side. Behind her was O’Reardon, the woman we’d found digging graves in the southwest of Ireland. Also in the picture was the woman who’d shot Kallie.

  There was enough fuel for the launch to reach Anglesey. Kim set out alone. A few hours later, our rescue appeared in the form of a giant icebreaker, the Amundsen. Kim hadn’t needed to depart, because help was already coming to us. Lisa Kempton had her own satellite network. Sholto had gained access to it years before, and regained access soon after we arrived on Anglesey. We’d used those satellites to reconnoitre Elysium before our trip, though we’d failed to spot the undead lurking within the farm’s walls. Sholto had redeployed the satellites over Ireland, and the life raft we’d been using to travel from ship to shore had been seen.

  The Amundsen was commanded by Admiral Gunderson, formerly of the USS Harper’s Ferry. Though they rescued us, and proper medical treatment saved Kallie, their primary purpose in coming to Belfast was the plane at the international airport and the fuel tankers that had been parked nearby during the early days of the outbreak. If the tankers still contained fuel, the plane still worked, and the runway could be cleared, the plane would depart for Anglesey. That was a lot of ‘ifs’, but it wasn’t my concern. That was a mission for the U.S. Marines, and for the pilot Scott Higson. My concern was for the election that was due to be held on Anglesey, which would select a cabinet and a new mayor to replace Mary O’Leary. An election that I was meant to be organising, and which should have been taking place at the end of November. The date had been brought forward, the candidates selected, and none of them were ideal. That’s an understatement. From what Sholto had told me, whoever won, humanity would lose.

  Chapter 1 - City of the Dead

  14th October, Day 216, Belfast

  “That’s not a zombie,” Sholto said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, nudging the corpse with the tip of my sword.

  “There’s not much I’m certain of in this hellish world, but this, I’d put money on,” Sholto said. It wasn’t the answer I’d wanted.

  Sholto and Admiral Gunderson had sailed into Belfast the day before, partly to rescue us, mostly to send a team to the international airport twenty miles west of the city. The runway was covered in debris, but there was one plane, still half in its hanger, which looked airworthy on a satellite image. Getting a plane into the air took a lot more than getting a pilot into close proximity. Today, the team would inspect the fuel tankers parked in an industrial site a few miles to the south. If they still contained enough fuel to get the plane to Anglesey, a route would have to be found from there to the airport. Before the tankers were hot-wired, the runway would have to be inspected and enough debris cleared so the plane could take off. Assuming, of course, that it was still airworthy. It would take at least two days, but more likely three, before the plane was in the air. Until then, we were all stuck in the city. With a surfeit of electricity provided by the icebreaker’s working engines, that was no great hardship for anyone but Kallie who was recovering from a second operation.

  We didn’t know much about Sorcha Locke, the woman who’d shot her, except that she worked for Lisa Kempton, a billionaire who’d helped fund the conspiracy that created the undead. Kempton had created apocalyptic refuges across the world, one of which was in Ireland. Locke had fled it and made her way to Belfast. Cue forward a few months, and after she had shot Kallie, I had confronted Locke. I killed her. There’s not much more to be said.

  We’d done our best for Kallie with what few medical instruments we could improvise. Our best wasn’t enough. The teenager’s condition had been worsening when Kim had taken the motor launch out to sea, hoping to reach Anglesey. Instead, the icebreaker had found Kim. The admiral, a doctor and former surgeon general of the U.S. Navy, had operated. With proper treatment, sterile sheets, and plentiful blood-donors, Kallie was recovering. Colm, Siobhan, and the other two teenagers, Dean and Lena, and the three children, Tamara, Charlie, and Billy, were luxuriating in electricity and running water. Electric lights didn’t offer much comfort to me. We left a frustrated Annette to watch over Daisy, while Kim, Sholto, and I went ashore. Our primary goal was the warehouse in which Sorcha Locke had taken refuge. I wanted to retrieve the hard drive from the bunker hidden beneath the building. Our other goal, one that was left unspoken, was to confirm whether or not the undead were actually dying. For that, we’d come to Shore Road.

  I stared down at the corpse. “Are you sure he wasn’t a zombie?” But even as I said the words, I knew my brother was correct.

  Sholto raised a hand to his face, thumb and little finger extended in imitation of an old-fashioned phone. “It’s William of Ockham. He says he’s busy shaving, but as soon as he’s finished, he’ll lend you his razor.”

  “Very funny. It’s just that they look so ragged,” I said, stubbornly refusing to abandon the sole ray of light in our dismal world.

  “Don’t be fooled by the clothing,” he said. “We didn’t look any better when we emerged from that tunnel in Wales.”

  The corpse wore red jeans and a once-white denim jacket, though both were so covered in mud it had taken me a minute to identify the original colour. His right boot was laced with string, his left held on with tape. Strips of the same tape still clung to the jacket’s sleeves. His face was bearded, his hair long and lank, and matted with as much mud as his clothes.

  “It was the bullet holes in the chest,” I said. “That’s what first made me think that this man, and all the other corpses,” I added, waving at the scores of bodies nearby, “were the undead.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Kim corrected me without lowering the rifle from her shoulder. “At first you thought these were survivors, gunned down by Locke. It was only when we saw that zombie die that we started to think these might also have been the living dead.”

  “They weren’t,” Sholto said. “You see the corpses with their heads staved in? Those are the zombies. The rest are very definitely people. A battle was fought here. Survivors against the living dead. Locke came in at the end to finish off those that were left. I count… nine people and forty-two zombies between that house and that shop. So, figure four times that number in total. About forty people, about two hundred undead.”

  “
The exact number doesn’t matter,” Kim said.

  “No. No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “Why do you think they fought each other? Why not assume that Locke killed them all?”

  “There’s too many,” Sholto said. “Imagine it. Imagine it was you. Look at the number of crushed heads, the number of bullet-riddled bodies. You’d have to carry your rifle in one hand, an iron bar in the other. How do you reload? No, this was a battle.” He shook his head, and began picking his way through the uneven rows of corpses. “As to why they fought? It was a trap. Zombies and survivors were lured here simply so one could kill the other. Then this woman, Locke, killed the rest.”

  “Did you know her?” Kim asked, following my brother.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Sorcha Locke,” she said.

  “No, I didn’t know her,” Sholto said. “I didn’t know of her, either. I’d heard of Captain Keys, though.”

  “Keynes,” I said, finally turning my back on the corpses, and following the other two down the street. “Captain Tamika Keynes.”

  “What did you hear?” Kim asked.

  “That she was an actual captain,” Sholto said. “In the U.S. Coastguard. She had a distinguished record and then a dishonourable discharge. She broke the arms and legs of three fellow officers. All their arms, and all their legs. She wouldn’t say why. They said it was unprovoked. Read into that what you will, because I didn’t have time to dig further. There were too many conspirators, too many leads, none of which led me to the answers I needed, not before it was too late.”

  “What else do you know about Captain Keynes?” I asked.

  “That Kempton gave her a job running her ship,” Sholto said. “That’s about it. It’s a similar profile for a lot of Kempton’s employees. Not so much waifs and strays in need of a second chance as criminals who were on their last one. There was a programmer I knew. A very good one. I managed to get her a job with Kempton, though without anyone knowing it was me who’d done it. She’d got caught hacking into NORAD. Kempton’s accountant had spent five years in federal prison for tax evasion. Her driver had worked for a Baltimore street gang, and her PR director worked as a speechwriter for the president before last. Like I said, she liked to employ criminals.”