Surviving the Evacuation 11: Search and Rescue Read online

  Even if they mined the coal, what then? According to Siobhan, Ireland had only one coal power station. It was on the Shannon Estuary, and she’d said its chimneys were the tallest freestanding structures on the island of Ireland. He and Kim would have motored past it on their way out of the estuary, and he didn’t recall having seen them. The satellite images were inconclusive. There was a building there rather than a crater, but the shadows had seemed wrong. When the sailors went to collect The New World, they would investigate, but Bill had little hope they would find an undamaged power station. Even if it still worked, so what? They would have to burn through the scant supplies of oil to bring the coal from the Arctic, and what would they do when the oil was gone? Bring the coal south by sailboat? Besides, did they really want to make humanity’s new home on the Shannon Estuary?

  He realised his hand was tapping the pen against the desk in an increasingly rapid beat. He stood up, and walked to the window. A middle-aged trio were dragging suitcases along the street. From the way the cases bounced and rocked, they were empty.

  Coal wasn’t going to work. Water turbines might. North of Ireland, south of Svalbard were the Faroe Islands. A book on his desk claimed they got half their electricity from hydro. That was an Icelandic murder mystery about a crooked banker who’d fled to Faroe to avoid his creditors. Bill wasn’t sure how much to believe, though he doubted the descriptions of savage winters weren’t exaggerated. Even with the Gulf Stream, the temperatures barely rose above freezing. No, anywhere to the north of Malin Head was a non-starter. The kind of agriculture their community could sustain wouldn’t work in sub-arctic conditions. Besides, Faroe had been home to around fifty thousand. Anglesey had been home to almost twice that, but they had already exhausted most of the stores of clothing, chemicals, and other supplies on the small Welsh island. Faroe was too remote, too small, too cold.

  His hand was tapping against his thigh. To stop it, he picked up one book and then the next. The admiral had seen Cape Verde, and had reported it full of the undead. Tenerife and Gran Canary would be much the same, though the weather would be infinitely better than in Northern Europe. The Canary Islands had been home to a few million people, that might mean enough old-world supplies to keep people alive, but for how long? A year? Five years? There was always the expectation that, some day, the undead would stop and humanity would return to the mainland, but the nearest landfall to Gran Canary was the Sahara.

  Water turbines might be the answer. Or an answer. Trying to build them would keep people occupied over the next few months, and that might be the best they could hope for. The problem might be electricity. It might be a lack of drinking water or sanitation. It might be hunger, the weather, or it might be the undead. The upshot would be nearly ten thousand people gathered around the ruins of Belfast. Hungry. Afraid. Cold. Alone. It would only take a spark to bring civil unrest and rioting. To keep order, a curfew would have to be implemented, and that would only make things worse. Rationing, curfews, martial law; it was everything that they had survived, everything that Quigley had relished, and everything that they had rejected. Lenetti probably wouldn’t be the last to be executed, but he might be the last one who truly deserved that fate.

  Bill sat down again, and cleared away the papers and books, throwing most onto the floor. He began with a fresh sheet. The admiral’s expedition to America wouldn’t be the solution. He knew that, as did anyone who paid attention to how long it was taking simply to move across the Irish Sea. That transatlantic expedition would keep people distracted, but not forever. No, they needed something better, a more concrete plan. He found a mostly blank sheet of paper, and picked up the pen.

  “Soup’s ready,” Annette said, opening the door. “I’d call it lunch, but it’s the same as breakfast, and it’s going to be the same as dinner, so I’m just going to call it soup. It’s got some paprika in it, though. Doesn’t taste too bad. Well, it mostly tastes peppery.”

  “I’ll come in a moment,” Bill said.

  “Okay, it’s just… well, you’ve got a visitor.”

  “Mary?” he asked.

  “No,” Annette said. “It’s the soldier, Bran.”

  Bill sighed, and laid down the pen. He’d not found a solution, but he had found a different way to approach the problem. Rather, a different way of utilising Dr Umbert’s solution to the problem before they knew that they’d have to leave Anglesey. “I better see what he wants.”

  Bran, the taciturn Yorkshire soldier, was in the kitchen. A bowl was in front of him, but he was leaning back in the chair, his eyes closed. He jumped to his feet the moment that Bill opened the door. Bran’s hand went to his bayonet before he’d properly opened his eyes.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Good habits out in the wasteland turn into bad ones back in civilisation.”

  Bill sat. “You’re just back?”

  “About an hour ago,” Bran said.

  Kim came through the other door, a tray in hand. “Some things don’t change. A year ago I was serving coffee, now I’m serving soup.” She gave a smile a little less brittle than earlier. “It’s good soup,” she added, setting another six bowls onto the tray. “What news from Wales?”

  “None,” Bran said. “I mean that in the best possible way. We all got out alive, thanks to those kids from Ireland.”

  “You mean Dean and Lena?” Kim asked. “They went with you?”

  “They said they’d okayed it with you,” Bran said.

  “They were meant to be on the ship to Belfast so they could join up with Siobhan and Colm,” Kim said. “That was what we discussed.”

  “I should have asked you,” Bran said. “I’m sorry, but they make good recruits. They might make good soldiers. I can’t say the same for the rest of the squad.”

  “Even so, I better go and talk with them,” Bill said.

  “No,” Kim said. “Not now. Not today. For that matter, it shouldn’t be you. I’ll do it this afternoon.” She turned back to Bran. “How bad was it?”

  “It was a close fight, but we all made it back alive,” Bran said. “I’m going to fail three of those recruits. They can fight, but they haven’t got the temperament for the grinding horror of not knowing when or where the next attack will come.”

  “There are plenty of other jobs that need doing,” Kim said.

  “What about Bishop’s people?” Bill asked.

  “We found no trace,” Bran said. “We killed eleven zombies in the campsite, but it was clear from the supplies left in those cars by the entrance that there were no living people there. Any who fled did so hastily while the house was on fire. Did you collect those supplies?”

  “We did,” Kim said.

  “There wasn’t much, was there?” Bran said. “I took a look around a few of the caravans, but the undead kept drifting in, and we weren’t there to fight them. Instead, we cut due south, heading to the first safe house. It was empty. No one had been there in a month. From there we headed northeast in a line that took us up the coast. I can show you on the map if you like.”

  “Maybe later,” Kim said. “There was no indication any people escaped?”

  “No. We checked two more safe houses, a dozen farms, and every likely looking cottage we saw,” Bran said. “We kept an eye on the mud for footprints and bicycle tracks, on doors for fresh splinters, and fireplaces for newly burned ash. We covered about sixty-five miles and we only found the undead. It’s possible that someone got away. If they’d had a go-bag close to hand, they wouldn’t have needed to stop to search for supplies. My official report is that none of Bishop’s people made it out.”

  “Did you go into the house at the centre of the campsite?” Bill asked.

  “No,” Bran said. “There didn’t seem any point, and that was too insecure a location for us to linger. Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kim said. “Is that why you came here, to report on what you found in Wales?”

  “Partly,” Bran said, “and partly to say that it’s a little unclear ex
actly who I’m meant to report to. I went to Mrs O’Leary, and Mr Tull sent me here. Confused command is never a good thing. Mostly, though, I wanted to talk to you about what you wrote.”

  “Wrote?” Bill asked.

  “I glanced at your journal in the summer,” Bran said. “Didn’t read it properly. I’ve heard a lot of stories about people’s journeys through the wasteland. On the boat ride back this morning, I looked at what you published before the election. A few names jumped out. George said I should come and tell you.”

  “Which names?” Bill asked.

  “Before you arrived on Anglesey, I went up to Northumberland,” Bran said. “We’d heard rumours that someone was up there. I found out it was Quigley. I was assessing whether it would be possible to launch a frontal assault. I recognised a few of the people with him. They weren’t on-the-books infantry. I’d seen them years ago.”

  “Where?” Annette asked.

  “Somalia,” Bran said.

  “Somalia? There weren’t any British soldiers there,” Bill said.

  “They call it off-the-books for a reason,” Bran said. “When I was in Northumberland, counting their rifles, a woman was brought outside. Her hands and ankles were chained. I watched. I waited. I saw where she was being taken. It was a converted barn to the north of the main building.”

  “That was the old brewery,” Bill said. “Though it was used as a guest room when they had people over for a hunt.”

  “At night, I went in,” Bran said. “The woman wasn’t alone. There were others. I rescued them. Quigley’s people followed us. They found us. They caught us. I was being tortured when an unexpected rescue appeared. A deaf soldier and a teenage boy. I asked the soldier and the kid to come back with us, but they said they had to go to London. The kid was looking for his mother, you see. He’d left a note at their old family home saying that’s where they’d gone. The soldier’s name was Tuck, the boy’s was Jay.”

  “Jay? That’s Nilda’s son!” Annette said.

  “Rob didn’t kill him,” Kim said. She met Bill’s eyes.

  “Rob killed Simon, Will, and Lilith,” Bill said.

  “Except if we’d known the truth,” Kim said, “Rob wouldn’t have been with us in Ireland, would he?”

  “Except we don’t know the truth,” Bill said. “Not all of it. How did Rob get Jay’s sword?” He looked to Bran.

  The soldier shrugged. “We didn’t talk for long,” he said. “Quigley’s people were still on our trail. I don’t know the details.”

  “When was this?” Kim asked.

  “The end of May,” Bran said.

  “Long before I found Nilda on that rock in the North Sea,” Kim said. “I could have told her that her son was alive.”

  Bran shrugged. “It wouldn’t have changed what Nilda did. She’d have still gone looking for him.”

  “Jay told you that he was going to London?” Annette asked.

  “It was the one place in the world that he thought his mother might go to look for him,” Bran said.

  “Ah. That’s… that’s interesting,” Annette said. “Here, I’ll take that, the soup’s getting cold.” She picked up the laden tray from the counter and took it back into the knocked-through room with the screens.

  “Thank you for telling us,” Bill said. “It’s an interesting detail.”

  “That’s not what I came to tell you,” Bran said. “Not all of it. The mother, Nilda, left here with Chester Carson.”

  “Yes, I think so,” Bill said.

  “You don’t read what you write, do you?” Bran said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You’ve forgotten, but George didn’t. You know the name, and you even wrote it in your journal. You found a suicide note left by a police officer who described Chester as a petty thief on his way to graduating as a full-time fence. But you met Chester Carson yourself, more or less.”

  “A full-time fence?” Bill murmured. “I do remember that letter, though I didn’t connect the name with the man. I’m pretty sure I never met him, though I did speak to him on the sat-phone when he was heading to Hull. We didn’t have much time to talk.”

  “No, I meant you met him in London,” Bran said. “After Chester arrived in Anglesey, George had him join me setting up safe houses. This was before I met Tuck and Jay on my way back from Northumberland. That’s when Chester told me how you and he first met. Not that he knew who you were, of course, or even that you were still alive.”

  “What did he say?” Kim asked.

  So Bran told them.

  Part 2

  The Soldier and The Thief

  Bran and Chester

  Wales

  2nd - 3rd May

  &

  29th October

  Chapter 4 - The Brigadier

  Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, 2nd May, Day 52

  “We’ll stop for five minutes,” Bran said, when they were halfway up the slope. He eased his pack off his shoulders, stretched, and sat on a moss-covered boulder. There was no sign of the undead that had forced them from the road a mile and two hills away.

  “I thought I was pretty fit before,” Chester Carson muttered, easing himself to the ground. “Goes to show. Still, nice day for it. It really feels like summer is on its way. Yeah, it’s a nice day to be alive. Nice place, too, or it would be, if it wasn’t for the zombies.”

  Bran took out the map. “We’re ten miles from where we want to be,” he said.

  “Is that a problem?” Chester asked.

  “Time will tell,” Bran said.

  A boat had brought them from Anglesey along the north Welsh coast to the mouth of the River Dee, near the border with England. They’d hoped to find supplies in the Deeside Industrial Park. Instead, they’d discovered craters and ruins. The damage was similar to that on Anglesey, probably caused by cluster bombs. Who had dropped them and why no longer mattered. Those were details consigned to a history that would never be written. Leaving the sailors to search the ruins, Bran had ventured inland. He’d said he’d wanted to visit Wrexham, and set up a few more safe houses along the way. That was a mission that had begun after he’d met George Tull and Mary O’Leary. Their meeting on a lonely road a few weeks after the outbreak had ended on Anglesey with the discovery that their small band weren’t the only survivors.

  Their final destination for this trip, though, was Wrexham. A private with whom Bran had once served had worked in the petroleum depot in the city. At the time, Bran hadn’t asked for any more details than that, but he now wished he had. It was ten weeks since the first outbreak in New York, barely seven since the nuclear war that had ended civilisation, and they were already short of fuel.

  “How long will the boat stay at Deeside?” Chester asked.

  “We said four days,” Bran said. “They’ll wait, but I want at least a day in Wrexham. I don’t know precisely where that petroleum depot is.”

  “It should be easy to spot, shouldn’t it?” Chester said. “We just look for the steel towers and chimneys.”

  “You’re thinking of a refinery,” Bran said. “Worst case, we miss the boat and walk back to Anglesey.”

  “If this morning was anything to go by, you mean we’ll be running,” Chester said. “Still, all this green makes a change from concrete, though I’m not sure I prefer it. Are you a country lad?”

  “I’m a soldier,” Bran said and went back to his map.

  Bringing Chester on this trip had been George Tull’s idea. The old man had said that Chester was a good fit for the safe house network. After two days on a boat and half a day of hiking through the Welsh countryside, Bran wasn’t sure. Chester talked a lot, but without ever saying anything important. All Bran had really learned about him was that he’d escaped from London three weeks before. Chester had managed to keep up with the soldier’s gruelling pace though, despite being very definitely a civilian. Then again, there weren’t many soldiers on Anglesey. There weren’t many people at all.

  Most had arrived by boat, pa
rt of the large flotilla of refugees that had set off from the Americas, Africa, coastal Europe, and the British Isles. None had a destination in mind, but the individual ships had coalesced into a ramshackle fleet that had been attacked by rogue and traitorous elements of the Royal Navy. That was how Bran thought of those who’d followed the utterly illegal orders. It was how he thought of the renegade soldiers who’d followed those same orders on land, murdering civilians in the muster points and along the evacuation route.

  “Did you hear what that woman on the boat said?” Chester asked, cutting into Bran’s thoughts.

  “Which woman?” Bran asked.

  “Heather Jones. About the trains evacuating people from Anglesey, about how the carriages were gassed.”

  “What about it?” Bran asked.

  “She said it was soldiers who did it,” Chester said.

  “So?” Bran asked.

  “Well, back in London, I saw… I don’t know how to describe it. A missile strike, maybe. It was like a civil war.”

  “That wasn’t a question,” Bran said, but he thought he knew what the question would be.

  “I didn’t know Britain had chemical weapons,” Chester said, “but I wondered whether they might work on the undead.”

  That wasn’t the question Bran had expected. It wasn’t the question that people usually asked. Usually, they asked why it had all happened.

  “No idea,” Bran said, and decided he should unstiffen a little. He was going to be stuck with Chester for the next few days, and the man wanted to talk. “Just before the evacuation, I was working road clearance. We had two hundred convicts, all curfew breakers, to do the hard graft. Under my command were twenty recruits who’d barely begun their phase-one training and a captain who was three weeks out of officer selection. They were in uniform, but they weren’t soldiers. We were clearing a road of stalled traffic. We came to a lorry. There were zombies in the back. The captain emptied an entire magazine into one of them. Thirty bullets into its chest from less than ten feet away. Didn’t do a damn thing. The zombie kept coming. Stopping power’s a myth, you know that, right? People can be shot, but with so much adrenaline coursing through them, not know they’re bleeding out. An entire magazine? That’s different. You would notice that. The zombie didn’t. If the catastrophic destruction of their vital organs doesn’t stop them, why should a chemical weapon be any different?”