Surviving The Evacuation (Book 3): Family Page 18

  It was the grounds that had changed. The once manicured lawn that required a team of gardeners to keep clear of weeds was now covered in tents, washing lines, and men doing nothing more than lounging about. And they were all men. It wasn’t a settlement. It wasn’t even a redoubt. It was an army camp.

  “Round to the front,” the sergeant barked, loud enough that every head in the camp turned to watch.

  As I walked down the path and around the house, I tried to take it all in, and work out what it all meant. Around the front, were parked, if that’s the right word, two helicopters. Next to them, half on the gravel driveway, half with its tracks sunk deep into the grass, was a tank.

  “Sir! Says he’s Bill Wright. Friend of Jennifer Masterton, sir!” the sergeant barked. I turned around. He’d addressed a man wearing the insignia of a full General in the British Army. Before the outbreak, there were only a handful of men who held that rank. I’d been to enough dreary functions to recognise them all. I’d never seen this man before.

  “Does he?” the General replied. “Wait here.”

  He went inside the house, leaving me to look over the camp. It was the right word. They’d been here sometime, going by how far that tank’s tracks had sunk into the grass, but everything appeared temporary. That begged the question of where they thought they’d be going to next, and when. But those and all other thoughts were silenced by the next voice I heard.

  “Bill?” Jen stood in the doorway, frozen. “Bill?” she asked again. My heart turned over at the sight of this far too familiar face. She hadn’t changed. I mean that literally. Dressed in the sensible suit and impractical shoes, she looked ready for an appearance on the six o’clock news. By comparison, I was dressed in rags that were burnt, singed and encrusted with mud yet were still more practical than the clothes she wore.

  I don’t know what emotions were churned up in her by my sudden appearance by the memories of childhood games, shared secrets, happy regrets and wistful missed chances. When I looked at her, all I felt was an incomprehensible sadness. She hadn’t changed, but I had. She’d returned home, but all in one moment I finally understood that it had never been a home to me.

  “Bill? It is... is it?”

  “Hi Jen. Sorry it took me so long.” I tried to fill my voice with casual understatement. “The driver, the guy you sent to rescue me, he died. He was attacked before I could reach him. I didn’t know his name.”

  “Driver?” She asked, and seemed genuinely confused.

  “I was outside the flat then,” I said, watching her reaction, “Couldn’t get back in. Went from house to house, limping.” I tapped my leg brace, “Just moving on when I ran out of food and water. I went to the river. Tried to find a boat. Couldn’t. So I kept on, from one place to another until I was strong enough to ride a bike. I tried to get down to the coast, but that didn’t work out either. You know what it’s like, with the undead.” From the look of her I wasn’t certain she did. “I ended up doing a tour of the Home Counties. Hampshire, Wiltshire, Surrey, Sussex. I found my boat in the end, near Windsor. But I couldn’t get it past Teddington Lock. The last few weeks I’ve just been heading north. This was the only place I could think of. I hoped everyone would have survived and thought at least someone would. Turns out I was right. It’s good to see you.”

  “It really is you,” she said, taking a step forward.

  “It is me,” I said, trying not to let my exasperation at her repetition show. “In the flesh. More or less,” I added, waving my injured hand.

  “My god, what happened to you?” she asked.

  “Oh, well, you know about the leg of course. I lost the cast somewhere around Greenwich. I think it needed surgery. I’ve lost a few inches. That makes running a tad difficult.”

  “What about your hand?”

  “What? Oh, that was the undead. One of those zombies took a bite... Whoah!” suddenly the guns were all levelled, all pointing at my head. “Calm down. Lower the guns.”

  “You were bitten?” The sergeant asked.

  “Months ago,” I said quickly. “Dozens of times. I’m immune.”

  “You’re what?” the General barked, pushing Jen aside.

  “Immune.” I looked around at the soldiers. None of them knew. “You do realise that some people are immune, right?”

  The gun barrels wavered slightly as heads all turned to look between me, Jen and the General.

  “Maybe it’s just you. Maybe you’re the only one,” a young corporal said.

  “No. There are others,” I said slowly as I thought fast. “There was a house, down near the coast. A policeman, he’d been bitten. He locked himself into the house, waiting to die, except he didn’t. He committed suicide in the end, but he left a note.”

  “A note? That’s not proof,” the soldier closest to me, said, as he stepped forward, the barrel of his rifle now only a few inches from my face. “If he was dead it doesn’t count. I mean, you don’t know he was telling the truth do you?”

  What I next said was cruel, but it was necessary. I was starting to get a measure of this place, and it was dawning on me that I’d made a big mistake going there so unprepared.

  “There was an old man and his grandaughter,” I said. “This was down in Hampshire. She was staying with him, down on a farm. They’d both been bitten. Both had survived. They were going round the country with their old address book, searching for their relatives.”

  “And you saw them?” Another soldier asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “And talked to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they were alive?”

  “Both of them, when we went our separate ways, yes.”

  “So, this immunity,” the corporal asked, “you’re saying it’s inherited?” the barrel had lowered slightly.

  “That’s one possibility. I don’t have any family, not blood relations, so I’d no one to come and look for except Jen. But I saw bodies, people who’d been attacked and trapped and who’d starved to death. I saw...” I stopped myself. “I’m not the only one,” I finished, lamely.

  “We have a strict policy,” the General began. “A Quarantine. It’s how we keep safe. How we...”

  “We should get the Doctor, though,” the corporal said, “And have him checked out. Didn’t the Doc say that he was looking for some kind of key, something to create a cure?”

  “Immunity isn’t the same as...” I began, but they weren’t listening to me anymore. The guns were still pointed at me, but their attention was on one another, as if each was prepared to back someone else’s challenge to authority just as long as it wasn’t them.

  “Yes,” Jen said, slowly. “We’ll take him to the Doctor and get this settled.”

  The Camp

  But first I was escorted to a shower. It was not inside. Around the side of the house, where white tents had once been erected for the annual harvest supper festival, was an improvised shower block. The water came from the same supply that fed the fields, pumped, I learnt, by hand. The water went into a black painted tank, you then stood under the showerhead, turned a tap and did the best you could under the slow drip.

  Canvas and almost-opaque plastic sheeting offered the illusion of privacy. That didn’t bother me. What did was the transparent way in which all of my possessions, including the weapons, were taken away ‘for cleaning’. The pistol Leon had given me raised a few eyebrows. I made up some story about a dead body at a supermarket.

  The water was tepid and far from refreshing, but it gave me time to think. The presence of the soldiers changed everything. I should have expected them, of course. Had they not been here, there was nothing stopping Leon and Francois just storming the place. What that meant for me, I wasn’t sure.

  To replace my clothes I was left an Army Combat Uniform of my own, still sealed in a plastic. And that explained why, despite the meagre water supply, their clothes were all so clean. I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or a bad one. I needed more information s
o, as I dressed, I tried striking up a conversation with the two soldiers watching over me.

  “Those helicopters. They must be useful for getting supplies,” I suggested.

  “What? No,” the taller and younger of the two said. “There’s no fuel. Not since we got here.”

  “Oh. Right. There’s an aerodrome, about twenty miles south west of here. Did they not have any?”

  “Dunno,” he replied, and I noticed there was a distracted tone to his voice, “I mean, I don’t think anyone went to check.”

  “They’d have checked,” the other one said, sharply. “The General would have made sure of it.”

  “Yes, I was wondering about him. I must have met him at a Whitehall function at some point, but for the life me, I can’t remember his name.”

  “That’s General Greely,” the young man said, “but he was only...”

  “He’s Chief of the Defence Staff,” The older man cut in.

  “I see. Well, he’s done a good job here,” I said. “Supplies, walls, people. Water and food. Yes, a good set up.”

  Neither of them said anything.

  It was a good set-up, by the standards I’d had before I’d met Kim. When I’d been on my own, fleeing from London, all I’d wanted was a store of food, high walls and some other people to stand on them with me. Here it was, my dream made reality and in that realisation I saw how shabby a dream it was. They’d done well enough to make a place for surviving from one day to the next, but not a place for people to live, not somewhere where anything new will ever be made. It is a model for stagnation and decay where the best hope is that death can be staved off until tomorrow.

  “Yes,” I said, slowly looking around again, “it’s a good set up. How long until harvest? I mean I grew up here, but I grew up in politics, not farming.”

  “Not sure,” the younger one said.

  “I saw the wheat as I came in. Is it wheat? It looks like a good crop. Enough to get everyone through until Spring. The farmers must be happy.”

  “Farmers?”

  “I assumed that the people who’d farmed the land were still here.”

  “They...” the younger one began.

  “They left,” the older one said tersely.

  “The house...” the younger one began.

  “Was deserted when we got here. It’s just us.”

  “Right. So it’s only Jen then. Everyone else I knew, they’re all dead?”

  “Like everyone else on this planet,” the older one said. He made no attempt at sounding sympathetic, he didn’t even sound callous, he just seemed indifferent.

  “Right.” I sighed, and was ready to give up trying to get anything out of these two.

  “What’s it like out there?” the younger one, perhaps sensing something in my tone, asked.

  “You’ve not been outside these walls?”

  “Not since soon after we got here. Except to clear the undead. But only the ones within a couple of miles of the walls,” he answered, winning a disapproving glare from the other man.

  “And when was that?” I asked.

  This time he’d barely opened his mouth when, presumably to stop him from answering, the older man asked, “So what is it like, then?”

  “Well, London isn’t too bad,” I said, “There’s no food or water and there are lots of the undead. But I managed to survive, and that was with a broken leg. Let me rephrase that, compared to everywhere else, London isn’t too bad. North of the city, though, there are the hordes. Have you seen those?”

  “When there’s hundreds or thousands of Them? That’s why we’ve got the walls.”

  “No, I mean when there’s more than a hundred thousand of Them. I hid in a tunnel for nearly a week as what must have been over a million went by overhead. Perhaps there’s just one horde, but I think there are more. They roam the countryside, trampling villages, turning bricks to dust. I think the towns and cities are like break waters, too large for Them to destroy. But soon the cities will be all that’s left, unless we do something about it.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re British Army, aren’t you? Someone has to do something and you guys have the training. It’s your job.”

  Neither took the bait on that particular hook. I sighed inwardly and sat down to lace my boots.

  “This Doctor, I take it he’s more than an MD?” I asked, trying a different tack.

  “He’s a bio-science expert. He’s been trying to recreate the vaccine.”

  “The vaccine?”

  “Well, you must have realised. It was sabotaged. Terrorists, the Prime Minister says. It was part of a wider plot, the whole outbreak was.”

  “Really? I didn’t hear any of that. I knew the evacuation didn’t work, but didn’t know about the terrorism.”

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” the older one said. “We were attacked. You know about the nuclear bombs? It took out most of Scotland, the South East, and a huge chunk of the country in between.”

  “What? No!” I tried to sound sincere.

  “Oh yes,” the older soldier said, relishing being the bearer of sad tidings. “It’s how most of the government was destroyed. They nuked the Isle of Wight, all of our nuclear power stations, took out some cities too. Thought they’d taken out London.”

  “Right. No. No, London was still there. How many bombs went off?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Well, who did it?”

  “Don’t know that either. Terrorists, that’s all we know.”

  “Not that it matters anymore,” I said standing up. “We should go and see this Doctor then, see if I’m the key to getting this vaccine working again. Where’s the lab?”

  “The old wine cellar.”

  “Ah. That seems strangely appropriate. Jen’s grandfather used to keep a still down there. It was completely illegal, but since he’d been in the cabinet with Churchill, he felt that gave him licence to do whatever he wanted. In the end that turned out to be nearly burning the house down.”

  There was a muted murmur from the two men. They weren’t interested, but they seemed happier talking about the house and its history than in anything to do with the last few months. I tried to keep the conversation going and, eventually, learnt that the generator was for the sole use of the Doctor and for the radio. More importantly, I learnt that their fuel supply was dwindling to nothing. They had food but that too was a diminishing stock, mostly rice and grain still in sacks stamped ‘UN Food Aid’.

  “There are rabbits,” I said. “They make good eating.”

  “You’ve eaten meat? Recently?” the older man sounded shocked.

  “The Doctor says we’re not to touch the animals,” the younger man said. “We don’t know what they’ve been eating, you see.”

  “The animals don’t eat the undead. Even after I’ve killed Them, the birds will just circle a few times and fly off.”

  “And you watched that, did you?” the older one sounded disgusted. I’d said something wrong.

  “What about your families, then? Where are they?” I tried, asking the first question that came to mind.

  “They’ll all be dead now. Everyone is.” And with that I gave up. We continued on in silence.

  As I limped, and they walked a few steps behind, up the gravel drive towards the house I was reminded of the last day of the school holidays. There was always an hour after breakfast whilst I waited for the cars to be loaded and for Jen to say a tearful goodbye to her mother. I always spent that hour pacing the same gravel path, kicking the same stones, the same nervous trepidation growing within me as I wondered where the summer had gone. In my memory, at least, those mornings were always brighter, the skies always clearer, the distant trees always filled with more promise of adventure. Even then I recognised it as a moment that could never last, in a day that would never be. The impossibility of the fantasy was what made the days promise so glorious. I knew it when I was a child and I knew it again as I walked along that path.

 
I stopped, ignoring the guards protests, and took one last look at the large oak at the edge of the estate. I’d spent as much time falling out of that tree as I had climbing up it. Good times, happy memories. I let myself dwell in the past for one last moment, before banishing those thoughts, locking them away once more in the knowledge it would be years, if ever, before I would be able to recall them with fondness once more.

  “Come on then,” I said. “ Let’s get this over with.”

  The Doctor

  It was called the wine cellar, but as far back as I could remember it was a dumping ground for the kind of junk that’s fashionable one season and embarrassing the next. Furniture, suits of armour, a menagerie of stuffed heads and antiques old enough to be called exhibits in any museum, it had been all pushed into the corners and alcoves of the cavernous room. Just to make space for the laboratory.

  At first glance it looked just like a real lab should look. At first glance. A panoply of glassware filled racks above counters stacked with bafflingly intricate equipment. The oscillation of a centrifuge added its dull rattle to the whine of the electric motors powering a large, glass fronted fridge. A doctor’s couch, complete with a moveable light, stood in the centre of the clean and empty space, surrounded by trays of gleaming steel tools. Everything about it, right down to the caution signs tacked onto every surface made it look believable. Until you looked a little harder.

  I might not have, if my suspicions hadn’t already been aroused by their collective ignorance about the immune. I’d seen that video from New York. I’d seen the Doctor bitten. The man Quigley had working in that dank basement should have known about immunity. So I looked more carefully at my surroundings.

  The plastic sheeting that extended from floor to ceiling, did not cover the ancient flagstones, nor seal in the top of this work area. It was nothing more than a transparent screen, held on by nails as much as by tape, offering no protection to anyone from anything inside. I’m certain that the couch, and the lights and tools around it, came from a dentist’s surgery. As for all the equipment, that did nothing more than waste precious electricity. I doubted any of it came from anywhere more high tech than the local high school. There wasn’t even an extractor fan. It was a lie, accepted only by those who wanted to believe.