Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home Read online

  “We’re here, Mum,” Jay said. “Where do we take him?”

  Nilda looked blankly at her son. She had no idea. They’d had no need for a sick room in the few weeks they’d been in the Tower.

  “What happened?” It was Fogerty, the old warder.

  “Graham shot him,” Jay said. “And he killed Hana.”

  “Well, bring him inside. The office next to the old cafe will do. It’s close to the boilers, and we’ll need hot water. Come on, Stewart, Finnegan, bring him.”

  Nilda tried to stay near Chester’s head, but found the others moving faster than her leaden feet could manage.

  “What do we do?” Nilda asked as Chester was laid down on a table.

  “We need to clean the wound and stop the bleeding,” Fogerty said, and then turned to the room at large. “We need bandages and sutures. Someone find the medical kit.” Then he turned back to Chester and peeled back the dressing. “And a razor. We’ll have to cut away his hair before we try and sew him back up. Scrub your hands,” he added, speaking to Nilda. “You’ll have to clean the wound and stitch it. I can’t do it, not with my arthritis.”

  “I’ll do it,” Jay said.

  “No,” Nilda said, shaking her head. “No. Go, Jay, please.”

  Nilda scrubbed methodically at her hands.

  “That’s good enough,” Fogerty said. Nilda looked up. She realised they were alone in the room. She hadn’t noticed everyone else leave.

  “Start by cleaning the wound. Careful. That’s it. Just like that.”

  The old soldier’s voice was soothing, and it was comforting hearing someone speak with such calm authority. The warder had been the only occupant of the Tower when Hana had arrived with most of the refugees from Kirkman House. Fogerty had retired from the post years before but returned to the castle after the outbreak. Exactly why, Nilda wasn’t sure, though he’d said it was out a sense of duty. Not to Queen and country, he’d told her, and certainly not to the government, but to the idea that some called democracy and which he thought of as the one that gave everyone a fair and equal chance.

  “He’s lost most of an ear,” Fogerty said. “I’d say he’s probably lost his hearing as well. But we won’t know that until he wakes. It’s the same with the eye.”

  “What about brain damage?” she asked. “If the skull’s fractured isn’t there a chance that a fragment of bone went into his brain?”

  “There is, and if he wakes we’ll find out, but I’d say that since you carried him here by boat with the waves jostling him all the way back, if it was anything more serious than blood loss and a concussion, he’d already be dead.”

  Nilda found that oddly comforting.

  “I’ve got the medical kit,” Jay said, opening the door. “And a razor. Well, it’s a knife, but it’s sterile and razor sharp.”

  “Thank you,” Fogerty said.

  “Jay, I told you to wait outside,” Nilda said.

  “It’s okay, Mum. I know what to do. When we rescued Stewart, I had to cauterise his wounds while Tuck held him down. I can help.”

  “Please,” Nilda snapped. “Just go.” She didn’t turn around as she heard the door open and close again. She knew her son was right. The boy he’d been had disappeared while she was stranded on a Scottish Island. In their months apart he’d become a man in every sense except years, but she didn’t want him to see Chester die.

  “We need to stitch it,” Fogerty said. “Can you sew?”

  “Buttons and hems,” Nilda said.

  “It’s the same principle and it’s best to think of it as cloth.”

  She nodded, threaded the needle, and bent to the task.

  Chester whimpered.

  “This isn’t how it was meant to be,” Nilda whispered.

  A year ago, she’d have been getting ready to spend three hours cleaning other people’s houses prior to an eight-hour shift at the local supermarket. On the 20th February it had all changed with the broadcast of the attacks in New York. She’d only realised something was wrong when the phones of everyone in the queue at her till had started pinging and buzzing. Everyone’s heads had looked down, fingers had moved as links were opened, and then mouths had dropped open and she’d heard tinny screams from the handsets.

  “What?” she’d asked. “What’s happened?”

  It was only when one of the customers had turned her phone around that Nilda had seen for herself. The screen was small, the image shaky, but it showed a woman falling off the roof of a mall to land in the parking lot below. Somehow she survived the fall only to be ripped apart by one of the… Nilda hadn’t known they were zombies, and probably they weren’t. Not really. But that was what they had called them. The fictional horror that had delighted so many on a late evening had become their horrific reality.

  Some of the customers had abandoned their shopping trolleys and run out to the car park. Others had run back into the shop and started to empty the shelves. A few tried to pay, but most just took what they could and pushed straight past the security guard, himself engrossed in his own screen.

  The manager had closed the store soon after, and she’d returned home, only to find Jay with his headphones on, lost in some computer game, oblivious to the terrible news. They’d sat together in their small living room, glued to the screen as the news came in. News wasn’t the right word; it was mostly speculation. The only real information came from what they could glean from the shaky footage filling the screen behind the equally shaky anchor.

  They hadn’t joined the evacuation. There had been something about the government plans she hadn’t trusted. Instead they’d stayed in Penrith, gathered supplies and other survivors, and tried to create a redoubt. But the undead had come, she and Jay had been separated, and she’d believed he was dead.

  Fleeing a horde, she’d been stranded on a Scottish island. Those who’d rescued her from the Atlantic had all died of radiation poisoning. Months had gone by, but then she’d been impossibly rescued, taken to Anglesey, and there discovered her son hadn’t died all those months before. With Chester, she’d returned to her old home in Penrith only to discover a note from Jay saying he and Tuck had gone to London. She and Chester had headed south to Hull. They found a lifeboat, and followed the coast until they reached the old capital. She’d been reunited with her son, and there had been a glorious moment when her life had once more seemed full of possibilities, and now…

  “That’ll do,” Fogerty said.

  “It will?”

  “It’ll have to. The rest is up to him.”

  Chester’s chest rose then fell, and then there was a pause just a heartbeat too long, that made her think there wouldn’t be another breath.

  “Isn’t there anything else we can do?” she asked.

  “We’ve stopped the bleeding,” Fogerty said. “We can keep him comfortable, but that’s all. We could try a transfusion, but we’d need to know his blood type. And I’ll be honest, I’ve seen a battlefield transfusion done, but I’ve never tried doing one myself.”

  She breathed out, and as she did, found her hands began to shake. “It just seems so unfair,” she murmured, looking down at Chester.

  “You want unfair?” Fogerty asked. “Then how about the story that surrounds those children. How many people were originally in that mansion? About eight hundred? And every few days someone left, heading west, looking for help, right? And they all died, didn’t they?”

  “Chester said they didn’t get to Anglesey, and Jay said they didn’t get to London.”

  “There you are. They were killed by the undead, but in doing so they led the zombies away from the kids. Their deaths had meaning. They kept them safe.”

  “And Chester’s, what meaning will his death have?”

  “He isn’t dead yet. So don’t write him off until you’re shovelling soil onto his grave.”

  “It’s all gone wrong,” Nilda said. “So wrong. All I wanted was to protect Jay. Sebastian and all those others who died in Penrith, they all died for not
hing.”

  “And the same can be said for all those the government killed with that poison they said was a vaccine. And the millions who died in the nuclear bombs. And the billions more who died in the chaos afterwards. But saying it doesn’t change anything. All it does is imply there was a higher purpose to all of this, that there’s someone to blame. Well, you can blame God, or Quigley or whoever you like, but that doesn’t change where you are and what needs to be done next. Chester will live or die, but there’s still everyone else. They’re going to need someone to show them the way. Go and get some fresh air. I’ll sit with him for a bit.”

  “I shouldn’t leave him,” Nilda said.

  “No,” Fogerty said. “There’s really nothing you can do, not here, but you need to wash and change your clothes. The kids shouldn’t see you looking like that.”

  She looked down and saw her hands and clothes were covered in blood,

  “Yes. You’re right,” she said, and went outside.

  Part 1:

  Losing Hope

  26th September

  Nilda found herself standing in her small room. She didn’t remember walking there, speaking to anyone, or whether anyone had spoken to her. The bed looked inviting, but she knew this wasn’t the time to give in to that temptation. There was too much to do, there always was. With Hana’s death, it had all become… Nilda wasn’t sure, but knew that standing there probing her emotions wouldn’t prevent their bad situation from getting worse.

  “What needs to be done?” she asked herself, trying to turn her mind to the myriad tasks before them. She found no answer, just an echo of the question that repeated over and over.

  She stripped and checked the small cabinet. It was nearly empty. There was a pair of jeans a size too large and a T-shirt a size too small. She’d have to get some more from the store and something better suited to the increasingly chilly autumnal air. There, that was a task she could understand.

  “We need more clothes. Better clothes.” She let the idea fill her mind. There had been some in the Tower when they’d arrived, belonging to the warders and their families, but they were running low on those, and since the children’s arrival there was barely enough water to drink let alone wash. There was certainly none to spare on laundry.

  The T-shirt was emblazoned with an ‘I Love London’ logo. It had come from one of the unofficial souvenir shops just outside the Tower wall. Chester had given them to her just after they’d arrived.

  “Chester,” she murmured, and his name caught in her throat. She’d not known him long, but he’d seemed solid, dependable, like a force of nature. His life, his survival, had embodied the idea that even in their darkest hours, even if they had to flee the castle, they could survive. Now that he walked that narrow path with death on either side, the stark reality of their situation had been brought into focus. Not just their individual mortality, but the precarious fragility of the entire group’s existence. There was no retreat, no escape, and no hope.

  “No,” she said. “No. There’s always hope.”

  She pulled the T-shirt on and looked at the empty cupboard. So many had died. So many that it was easier to count those who’d survived, and their numbers were so few that that it seemed worse than a sin that anyone could want to kill more.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you kill Hana? Revenge?” The word came out, and as she heard it she realised it wasn’t an answer but a question. Was it their fault, then? Was it her fault? They’d accused Graham, sentenced him, sent him out beyond the wall’s safety on the assumption he was responsible for the theft of their stores, but they’d had no proof. His actions had justified theirs after the fact, but did that make them right? Were they truly any better than him?

  “Yes.” The word echoed around her head, and she found that she believed it to be true. At the last minute, she’d stopped that farce of a mock trial. And though Chester had offered to kill Graham, though they’d talked about executions and all the rest, they had let the man walk out of the castle just as he’d claimed he’d wanted to.

  “Nothing can justify what he did,” she said. “Never.”

  Which was easy to say, but it gave no clue as to what she should do about him. Nothing, she realised. Not now. Not today. Tuck had gone after him, and so dealing with him was the soldier’s task. Agonising over the past wasn’t going to help Chester, nor was it going to forge them into a proper community. And that was what they had to become, not just a group of survivors all holding on to the individual hope that rescue would come, but a family. One where it was suggestions that were given, not orders dictated. And that was just as easy to say as all the rest.

  She was shivering and hadn’t realised. The cold crept up through the floor and into her feet. She looked for socks, but there were none left. The eyelets and laces on the pair of tennis shoes she’d pulled on that morning were matted with blood. All she had left in the cupboard were a pair of mauve flats. Clothes – that was something she knew how to deal with. She’d go to the supply room and find something appropriate to the weather and the world, and conduct a stocktake whilst she was there. That old, familiar, and once hated task was something she could do on her own. The idea of leadership had been beguiling, but now the weight of responsibility was repellent. She wanted nothing more than to run away, but there was nowhere left to escape to. Her eyes fell again to the bed. No one would blame her for closing her eyes for a few hours, no one but herself. She bundled the stained and ruined clothing and stepped outside.

  Her eyes tracked to the Keep in the centre of the Tower’s grounds. “It’s been a working castle for nearly a thousand years. They found a way to live here,” she said, “and in times nearly as brutal as these. We’ll find a way. We will. We…” she trailed off as she finally realised how silent it was.

  There was no one in sight, and the only voices she could here came from the battlements to the east, and those were all the unmistakable high-pitched chatter of the children. Nilda dropped the bundle of clothes and jogged to the nearest set of stairs. At the top she spotted the nine-year old Janine, the oldest of the children.

  “Where is everyone?” Nilda asked.

  “Is he going to be okay?” a smaller girl, Simone, asked in return.

  “Chester? Yes, he’s going to be fine,” Nilda said, and the child’s knowing smile reminded Nilda that this wouldn’t be the first grievous injury the children had seen. “But where is everyone?” she asked again.

  “They’ve gone out to get the food,” Janine said. “From the coaches.”

  “Who has?” Nilda asked.

  “Everyone,” Simone replied.

  “Constance is here somewhere,” Janine said. “But everyone else went.”

  A bundle of questions rushed to Nilda, but she bit them back and went to look for Constance. The woman was pacing the battlements further to the south, something a shade deeper than anxiety written across her face.

  “Do you think he’ll come back?” Constance asked, as Nilda’s own question was still halfway to her lips.

  “Who?”

  “Graham,” Constance said. “I can’t patrol the walls on my own.”

  “Tuck went after him,” Nilda said, though she hadn’t considered the idea that Graham’s quest for revenge might bring him back to the Tower so soon. “No, he won’t come back, at least not yet. We didn’t see the lifeboat up near Westminster, so he’d have to come by land.”

  “That’s only a couple of miles, and it’s already been four hours since you returned,” Constance said. “He could have killed Tuck and be out there right now, aiming that rifle at us.”

  “He’s not,” Nilda said, forcing decisiveness into her voice as she looked up towards the sun. She’d not realised they’d been back so long. “Where’s my son?” she asked. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Getting the food we brought back from Kent but left on the coaches, just beyond the barricade,” Constance said. “It was Jay’s idea. He said we needed it. Everyone agreed. Half went out in
the rafts. Some others went over the walls to lure the undead away.”

  Nilda found she was nodding. “How long since they went out?” she asked.

  “Three hours,” Constance said.

  Nilda nodded again. Her hand went to the hilt of the gladius belted to her waist. She didn’t remember putting the sword-belt on after she’d changed. Then again, all she remembered of the past few hours were snapshots. Brief moments of terror interspersed with sharp spikes of fear, and now there was one more. She had to go after Jay, as much for her own sake as for his. Her eyes were drawn to the ill-fitting purple shoes. They wouldn’t do. She was down the stairs and halfway to the supply room on the castle’s far side when she heard a high-pitched yell from the wall.

  She dashed towards the sound and found the children pulling ineffectually at the ropes. Nilda peered over the side of the castle. There were four people climbing up the wall, but Jay wasn’t among them. She took hold of a rope and hauled, feeling her skin rub and burn. She didn’t care. A hand, then a head, appeared. Nilda reached out, grabbed the arm, and hauled Greta over the top.

  “Where’s Jay?” she asked, before the woman had found her feet.

  “He’s fine,” Greta said. “He’s on a raft, heading back along the river.”

  “He’s okay?”

  “Everyone is. I think,” Greta said, breathing hard. “Are McInery or Eamonn back yet?”