Future's Beginning Read online

  “We all remember what happened,” Mary said. “You don’t need to add the details. What happened next?”

  “Kim, Mirabelle, and Bran went ashore looking for somewhere we’d be safe for the night. Kim had seen a tower block just before the crash. It turned out to be a hotel. So that’s where we went. I mean, there was a battle on the shore first. We had to fight the zombies, but I don’t think I need to mention that. Anyway, we got to the hotel, and that was that. The next day, some people went back to the wreck to get the grain. Kim went into the town. She found a hospital, and found it was full of zombies. She sort of led them back to the hotel, and that’s where we fought them. And we won. And no one died. Not then. But the hotel was… well, it was horrid. We couldn’t live there after that, so we came here to the college because of the wind turbine. I mean, not because of the wind turbine, but it was just that the wind turbine is such a large thing it’s easy to navigate by. Rahinder still hasn’t managed to get it working, though.”

  “But I’m sure he will,” Mary said.

  “Then it started snowing. It was a real blizzard, and… and that’s when Yasmina died. It was just a stupid, tragic accident. I’d forgotten people could get hurt like that.”

  “I think we all had,” Mary said. “It is a bitter way to be reminded of an important lesson.”

  “The snowstorm stopped during the night,” Annette said as she wrote. “This morning, Sholto arrived in the helicopter. He brought some ammo. Oh, I didn’t mention that we were out of ammunition for the guns and the crossbows. Or that we’ve only got the grain salvaged from the wreck. We’ve found some old-world food, but other people came through Dundalk. It looks like they searched the town, gathering what food was left. That’s helpful, but I don’t think we’ll find any more elsewhere in the town.”

  “Probably not,” Mary said. “After so long, it’s questionable how edible any old supplies would be. From now on, we need to focus on fish and forage.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  The door opened, and Kim entered. “Annette, there you are. Do you still want to come to the waterfront? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “No, no, I do,” Annette said. “Give me a sec.”

  Kim stared at the wall. “Is that a palm tree you’re drawing, Daisy? Where on Earth did you ever see one of those?”

  “Ready,” Annette said.

  “Safe journey, and safe return,” Mary said.

  Chapter 1 - Photographs & Confessions

  Belfast Harbour

  As the helicopter thudded onto the warehouse’s roof, Sholto finally relaxed his grip. During the white-knuckle flight back from Dundalk, he’d almost squeezed the padding out of the seat. The skids caught the ice covering the roof, and the helicopter swung five degrees clockwise before coming to a stop.

  “Sorry about that, sir,” the pilot said, speaking into the headset’s mic as she flipped a switch, then another. “The ground crew should have cleared the ice.”

  Sholto said nothing, but closed his eyes, enjoying a brief moment of stillness.

  “Sir, are you all right?” the pilot asked.

  “I was just preparing for the onslaught,” Sholto said.

  “Civilians, eh?” the pilot said with a grin.

  “Aye,” Sholto said, and he wondered when he’d stopped being one himself. It wasn’t just that his blue and grey outdoor-wear matched the clothing of all the admiral’s new recruits; it was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been an innocent bystander, a true civilian, rather than at the very centre of the storm. “Ah, well, can’t put it off forever. Pass me the cameras. Thanks, and thanks for the ride.” He took off his headset and climbed out.

  Head bowed, he jogged over to the metal staircase attached to the side of the warehouse. The building was one of the few that the naval engineers had deemed could withstand a helicopter’s weight. In its previous incarnation, the warehouse had been a delivery hub for goods that had been brought into Belfast but which were destined for other parts of the United Kingdom. The staircase had been added after the university leased the roof for the deployment of a weather-monitoring station. Without access to the data provided by at-sea buoys and on-mountain arrays, most of the equipment was useless. The rest had given them no warning of the snowstorm that had blanketed Belfast, and a few hours later, covered the town of Dundalk some sixty miles to the south. That storm hadn’t reached the community in Kenmare Bay on the south-western edge of the island of Ireland, not yet. Even if this storm didn’t, another would; it was late November, winter had only just begun.

  Sholto paused at the top of the stairs, and took in the city. Five inches of snow masked the devastation, but it couldn’t completely obscure it. The local heliport had been at the John Best Airport, a small city-airfield on the opposite side of the Victoria Channel. Like so much of Belfast’s recently regenerated waterfront, it had been obliterated during the chaos that had followed the outbreak. So much of Belfast had been destroyed that it was barely recognisable as the bustling conurbation of a year before. Survivors from throughout the city, and refugees from across Ireland, had come to Belfast, hoping for passage, praying for rescue, looking for salvation. They’d only found chaos and death.

  Missiles and cluster bombs had reduced some buildings to rubble and ignited fires that had destroyed others. It was impossible to tell precisely how many people had died in the harbour, though their skeletal remains almost filled the warehouse they’d turned into a mausoleum. As for how many of those refugees had joined the ranks of the undead, again, it was impossible to tell. The last major assault by those necrotic ghouls had been before Anglesey was evacuated. Each day since, a slow trickle of zombies reached the checkpoints and barricades that protected the five thousand who called the harbour their refuge. None of them called it their home.

  Further inland, time was the true vandal, savagely wielding weather and neglect. Gutters had filled, ditches had overflown, and roads had flooded. Water seeping into buildings from the outside met the rain spilling through broken windows and fire-damaged roofs. In another year, those buildings would be a habitat fit only for birds.

  Time was running out for Belfast. They’d nearly stripped the nearby houses of clothing and furniture, and had begun ripping up the floorboards to burn as firewood. They were gathering more than they could immediately use, but it would all be ash within a couple of weeks. Sooner, if the weather didn’t improve. Water was too scarce to wash clothes or crockery, and so those were burned or discarded. Soon they’d have to venture further, deeper into Belfast just to find the most basic of supplies. The further the journey, the greater the calorie-cost, the greater the risk of attack, of injury, of death. Their diet was increasingly dependent on fish. Their supply of medicines was non-existent. Ammunition was running low, and there was no hope of finding more in the city. Kim and Mary were right; it wasn’t just a new home they needed, but a new way of life.

  He took one last breath of the icy-cold air, fixed a confident smile to his face, and jogged down the stairs.

  About a hundred people had gathered around the roadway and access-alley below. From the shovels, brooms, and occasional wheelbarrow, they should have been clearing the snow, but the return of the helicopter had given them an easy excuse to skive. He picked out a few familiar faces among the low-pulled hats and tight-wrapped scarves, and revised his opinion; there were some in the group who didn’t need an excuse to shirk. Markus, the former barman and one-time mayoral-candidate, stood at the bottom of the steps, an arm’s length from the rest of the crowd. It wasn’t clear whether that space was being left out of respect, from suspicion due to his association with Rachel Gottlieb, or out of fear that his ill fortune was contagious. Sholto quickly scanned the faces of those nearest to the barman, but none were Markus’s former associates.

  “What’s it like in Dundalk?” Markus called before anyone else could, his voice loud enough to carry over the din from the helicopter’s slowing rotors.

  “M
uch the same as the report last night,” Sholto replied, pitching his own voice to carry deep into the crowd.

  “And Dublin?” Markus asked, lowering his voice as, above, the rotors finally stopped.

  “I haven’t looked at the pictures yet,” Sholto said, raising the cameras. “That’s my next job. There’s no time to waste. Not now. Not for any of us.”

  “When do we get to see the photographs?” Markus asked, his voice now an echo across the ruined alleyway.

  “Whenever you like,” Sholto said equably. “Was there something you were looking for? Some where, perhaps? What did Rachel tell you during those long months alone in your bar?”

  “I… I just want to make sure there are no secrets being kept from the people,” Markus said, but the crowd’s mood had shifted. The moment where uncomfortable frustration might have become support turned back into suspicion.

  “There’s work to be done,” Sholto said, stepping around Markus. “There’s always work to be done.”

  He said no more as he made his way through the small crowd. Clearing the snow was one step above make-work. It was as much a task to see who would willingly labour as it was to keep the alleyways clear. With food tightly rationed, and meals dependent on the meagre catches hauled from the Irish Sea, they didn’t have the spare calories to make the harbour properly liveable, even if the populace had been willing. Those who’d proved themselves ready to toil had joined the groups going out into the city to rip floorboards from already stripped houses. They had too few reliable guards to send everyone on that useful task. It wasn’t just the undead that needed to be watched for, but stashes of food and spirits in forgotten cellars. They had, so far, too few fishing rods for everyone to cast a line from the seawall, and far, far too few small boats in Belfast to send any but the most able mariner out to sea. No, they had too little of everything, which had led to too many people having too much free time, and Markus was taking advantage of it.

  Sholto paused, one foot raised, but then continued, hoping no one had noticed him miss a step. How had Markus known about the photographs of Dublin? Obviously someone had told him, but whom? While there’d been no way of concealing the helicopter’s departure, and while its mission was hardly top-secret, that it had gone south from Dundalk to Dublin hadn’t been widely shared. The consensus was that, by leaving Markus on the loose, they would know from what direction danger came. The sabotage had proved that hypothesis wrong.

  As Sholto reached the far edge of the crowd, Kallie limped out from the shadow of a loading-bay door and fell into step next to him.

  “Welcome back,” she said gruffly.

  “Thanks. Has much changed in the last few hours?”

  “The smell’s got worse,” she said. “Otherwise, no.”

  “Were you watching Markus?” Sholto asked.

  “Not really,” Kallie said. “There are two Marines doing that. Don’t look up,” she added. “The admiral’s positioned them on the roofs. At least, I think that’s where they are. I’m the decoy.” There was bitterness in her voice. Gone was the exuberant young woman whom Bill and Kim had first met on Ireland’s west coast. Partly, that was her slow recovery from a bullet wound taken not four miles from the harbour. Partly it was the same malaise affecting all of the survivors. Only on reaching Belfast had people realised quite how much had been lost with Anglesey’s collapse. That was coupled with the knowledge that things would surely get worse before they got better, and an awareness that life might never get better than this.

  The other cause of Kallie’s grim humour was far more mundane. She was one of three teenagers from the same school who’d escaped Belfast. Until she was shot, Kallie, Dean, and Lena had been a trio. In the weeks while Kallie was recovering, Dean and Lena had very emphatically become a couple.

  “What was Dublin like?” Kallie asked.

  “Here, you can take a look for yourself.” Sholto gave her the cameras. While he had been speaking to Kim and Mary in Dundalk, the helicopter had continued south, taking photographs and video footage of Dublin.

  During the early days of the outbreak, before the nuclear war began, military units from across Europe had taken refuge in Dublin. Leon and his contingent of French Special Forces were among their number. They’d held the airport for as long as they could, before being forced to flee into the Irish interior, leaving behind all the equipment they couldn’t carry. The hope was that their equipment, and that of the other military units, might still be in Dublin, specifically the ammunition.

  “The summary,” Sholto continued, “is that Bull Island is home to the undead, and the Howth Peninsula isn’t much better. A fire ripped through the city’s southern suburbs, but the good news is that there are three potential landing sites for a helicopter.”

  “The southern suburbs? Do you mean Drimnagh, Harold’s Cross, or Rathmines?” Kallie asked.

  “I’ve no idea, I’m just repeating what the pilot told me,” Sholto said. “The airport is a mess, as are the roads near it, the waterfront, too. The River Liffey is probably impassable, but there’s a nearly intact bridge near where the university should have been.”

  “You mean Trinity’s gone?”

  “The pilot thought so. Why?” he asked.

  “Oh… I had a cousin who— It doesn’t matter. Do you think we’ll find ammunition there?”

  “Possibly. From what Leon told us, and from what the pilot saw, the main redoubt was near the airport, to the north of Dublin itself. A second had been established closer to the city, but to the north of the river, in a park of some kind. I’d say that’s a good place to start looking.”

  “That’s probably the botanical gardens,” Kallie said. “So we are going to Dublin?”

  “Someone is,” Sholto said. He said no more, because the admiral should be the first person he told of their new plans.

  The command centre, and administrative hub, for their fragment of humanity, had been established in a former parcel-distribution warehouse. Thirty of the admiral’s most trusted recruits slept there, as did Sholto, Kallie, and the admiral herself. Colm and Siobhan alternated, one sleeping ashore, one on the container ship, the John Cabot, where the Irish children slept along with the community’s other youngsters, the old, and those too sick to work. It was hard to say whether the children were safer there, and certainly they were no warmer. They had a few lights, thanks to the ship’s batteries, but little by the way of heat. The shipping containers offered too little ventilation for open fires. Some, like Markus, might view life aboard with envy, but it was only one step above squalor. However, if the undead overran the harbour, there wouldn’t be a panicked search for the children, with the inevitable deaths that would ensue.

  The reduction in personnel had freed up a dozen square feet in the warehouse. A few inches had been given over to netting and curtains, providing a modicum of privacy to the guards who spent their off-shift hours sleeping on the rows of camp beds. The rest of the newly freed space was occupied by the table and chair that had become their court, and it was currently in session.

  The presiding judge was Nicola Kennedy, a former solicitor and the brother of Leo Fenwick, one of the councillors elected on Anglesey. They’d appointed three judges on Anglesey, but the other two had died during the wreck in Dundalk. So far, there’d been no need for any more to be appointed.

  “Is the admiral home?” Sholto asked the sentry.

  “She’s on an inspection tour, sir,” the guard said.

  “You should get started on those images,” Sholto said to Kallie. “See if you can match the photographs to a map.”

  “I’ve only been to Dublin a few times,” Kallie said.

  “That’s more than me,” Sholto said. “Siobhan can help when she gets in, but make a start. The sooner we know where we’re going, the sooner we can plan the expedition.”

  It was a way of distracting her. From her expression, she guessed it, but he needed to speak to the admiral before he told anyone else of the change in plans. While he
waited, he listened to the brief trial.

  “Johann Ranetin,” Judge Kennedy said, “the charge is drunk and disorderly.” She glanced at the pages, then at the young woman standing between her and the prisoner. “Ensign?”

  The fresh-faced woman couldn’t be a day over nineteen or an inch over five-foot. She was dressed in the same blue ski jacket and grey utility trousers as Sholto, the judge, and the other members of the admiral’s nascent army, but she’d managed to press razor-sharp creases into the cloth. Sholto felt shabby by comparison.

  “Your Honour,” the ensign said, “the prisoner was part of a work gang gathering timbers from the houses in Duncairn Gardens. In the basement of a house, they found a crate of whisky.”

  “They?” Kennedy asked. “There’s only one name on the docket.”

  “Yes, ma’am. No, I mean…” The ensign stumbled, closed her eyes, and began again. “There were four of them. They began drinking while they were there. When they were discovered, the liquor was confiscated. When we returned, I told all four to go and sleep it off. Three did. The prisoner didn’t. He’d brought a bottle back with him. He continued drinking, out on the pier. It was then that he got in a fight with some of the fisher-folk. Mrs Christine Ping was pushed into the water. She was rescued by her fellows. Others subdued the suspect, and called for the guard.”

  “Is Mrs Ping okay?” Judge Kennedy asked.

  “She’s fine, ma’am, but one fishing rod was broken, and we lost the fish on the line.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry,” the prisoner began. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Quiet in court,” Kennedy snapped. “You have two choices. The first is to dispute that description of events, and stand trial. In which case, you will be charged with the attempted murder of Mrs Ping. That carries a maximum punishment of death, though the court would settle for exile. Alternatively, you can accept the account, plead guilty to drunk and disorderly, and accept two weeks hard labour. Now you can speak.”