Surviving The Evacuation (Book 3): Family (8 page)

“Stewart’s still in there! He’s still alive!” she screamed back.

“Kim! Please!” It was Annette. Where nothing I said seemed to be reaching her, that did. Her expression changed ever so subtly, not softening, if anything it became far harder, colder and deeper than any I’d seen her wear before.

“Alright,” she said, taking a step towards the car.

There was another shot. Paint flew from the bonnet. I turned. I saw him. Stewart was standing on one of the ticket kiosks. I don’t know how he managed to get up there that fast.

He yelled something else. I didn’t hear what. He half raised the shotgun. It went off, before it could bear on us, blowing the scalp off one of the zombies beneath him. He opened the breach, his hand going to a pocket. I raised the pistol. I hesitated, but only for a moment. There wasn’t time. We wouldn’t get away. That’s what I thought. I pulled the trigger.

He stopped moving. He stood there for a moment, motionless. Then he half raised a hand, his head rocking left and right. Then he looked at me and I’ll remember that look. It was puzzled confusion. He shook his head slightly, took a step forward, His foot was over the edge of the ticket kiosk. He fell down into the mass of zombies waiting below.

“It’s done,” I murmured, wishing I could think of something more appropriate. There was another screech of metal, this time accompanied by a cracking of cement as two of the barrier’s supports moved under the weight of the undead. I ran back to the car.

“We all in? Everyone OK?” I asked as I got back in the car. “Kim? Annette? How’s Daisy.”

“Daisy’s fine,” Sholto said. The engine started.

“Of course she is,” Annette said. “She’s a fighter. You took your time.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, as we moved off

“Kim?” I glanced over at her. She was staring ahead, eyes unblinking. “You alright?”

“Yeah.” She said slowly. “Yeah. Seems so.”

“What went wrong?” Sholto asked

“I got lost,” I said.

“Right.”

“What about you?” I asked

“You saw,” Kim said. “The car only got rid of the undead out on the road, and that didn’t happen immediately. You remember how fast a zombie walks? And a zombie at the back of a pack can’t move until those at the front have cleared off. It took an hour before enough of Them had disappeared that we could go out on the street.”

Like I said, it would have been better if we’d slept before coming up with a plan.

It had been less than two hours since I’d started driving around south London. As we headed south, I was trying to work out how much of that time had been spent driving on that same road, between Kew and the boat, and how many zombies might still be in front of us.

I swore.

“This is going to be tight.”

“What does that mean?” Kim asked.

“We might not be able to go straight to the boat.”

“What’s this about a boat?” Annette asked.

“It’s about a mile away. We’ve got enough food for months and enough petrol to get us to the coast.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah, yeah it’s just...”

“Up ahead,” Sholto interrupted softly. There were seven in the road, heading towards us.

“Hold on,” I said, angling the car towards the curb.

“No, behind Them.” He pointed.

I took another look. Behind the seven were at least a dozen more. I cursed as I slammed my foot down on the brake. There was a yell of protest from the back.

“Sorry,” I muttered, as I threw the car into reverse, backed up fifty yards and turned into a side road.

The undead were everywhere now. Five here, a dozen there. On every road and every side street and it seemed like arms were stretching down from every window. And there was no longer any chance of avoiding Them.

“This isn’t going to work Bill,” Kim said. Daisy whimpered as we thumped over another body.

“I know.”

Heading north or east into London was no good. All the undead I’d been luring away from Kew were there. We couldn’t go south. That left west, and west was the River.

I looked at the fuel gauge. It was still more than half full.

“It was Richmond Bridge, you said you crossed? You think we can get the car over it?”

“Sure, it was pretty empty,” Sholto said, with confidence I’m sure was meant to reassure. It just made me think he couldn’t remember.

“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll see if we can get away from the undead, then get back to the boat later.” I knew we wouldn’t as soon as I said it.

The bridge was empty and clear. I don’t know why it wasn’t demolished, but then I don’t know why the other bridges were. It doesn’t matter, it’s just another one of those questions we’ll never know the answer to.

Once we’d crossed the river the going was easier. Not easy though. The undead began to fill the road behind us, and often up ahead. The way to drive in the city was to bomb down the roads as fast as the car would allow, stop at each junction, then wait and listen and then pick which turning to take. Even so, we ended up running over at least one of the undead every few hundred yards. The real difficulty lay in finding a route that was clear of obstructions. Every fourth or fifth junction we’d be forced down some road half blocked with a car or van, and we’d have to force our way through with a screech of metal, flecks and sparks flying as the paint was scraped away.

“It’s no good,” I said.

“What?” Kim asked

“The roads. If we keep doing this we’re going to end up in Westminster, back at the river, or completely broken down.”

“We can’t turn around,” she said flatly.

“There’s a hotel at Charing Cross,” Sholto said. “I stayed there for a couple of days on my way to Lenham. It’s a good spot. Doors on each side and easy access to the rooftops.”

“No.” I said, “We need to get out of London.”

“Then stop here,” Kim said, “Just for a few minutes. Until you know where you’re going.”

I did, on a narrow alley with warehouses either side. Daisy started to cry. Not loudly, not that full-blown wail of an infant in torment, but with a persistence that said she wasn’t going to stop until her needs had been met.

“We can get out here,” Kim suggested. “Continue on foot, find some bikes, get back to the boat, take it up stream, and find another car somewhere else.”

“No,” I said. I was trying to think. “We’re across the river. Finally. I don’t want to go back.”

“The food and the fuel’s back on that boat,” Kim said.

“And it’ll be days before the zombies around there go back into that dormant state. Two days, three, four. It doesn’t matter. Listen to Daisy, we can’t stay in London.”

“Well where then? We can’t stay here.”

“No. No. I think... I think I know. The fastest way out, right? OK. This is going to get bumpy.”

“What is?”

I put my foot down and pulled off once more.

“Bill?” she asked, warningly. “What’s going to get bumpy?”

“The train lines. That’s the only way. Where are we?” I lent and peered at the meagre patch of skyline visible above the tall warehouses. “Right, it’s about a mile.”

I turned the corner and angled the car around.

“To where? A level crossing?”

“A bridge.”

A couple of years ago, Jen had had to do a piece for the news. It was a segment on constituency boundary changes. In that particular constituency the boundary was being moved from one side of the railway line to the other. Since no one actually lived on the tracks no one was actually being affected. Her interview was making a point out of how much parliamentary time was being wasted.

The bridge was a good spot for the interview. It was also a great spot to get down the tracks themselves, as the only thing separating the railway from the road was a steep slope and a flimsy chain link fence. I remember it well because, when the journalist asked where we’d like to record the piece, neither of us considered that with a train going by every thirty seconds it would be next to impossible to record a two minute interview.

“Eyes open. We’re looking for three tower blocks,” I said, as I took turning after turning, trying to get out from that mass of warehouses and side streets and back towards somewhere more familiar. “They’re on the east side of the bridge, about half a mile from it.”

“Like those ones?” Annette asked, her hand darting forward from the back seat to point straight ahead.

“No. It’s three tower blocks, close together,” I said, after glancing at the skyline.

“Oh. Those ones, then?” she said, pointing of to the left.

“No, not them either.”

“Oh. How about those?”

“No.”

It took half an hour to find the railway line, it took another fifteen minutes to find the bridge. By then I had stopped looking in the rear view mirror. The road was packed with the undead, more than I could easily count.

“Seat belts on,” I said, eyeing the fence.

“It looks solid,” Kim said.

It wasn’t.

The front bumper had barely connected before the fence collapsed. The car slid down the embankment, coming to a halt on the tracks. I looked left and right. I could see for a mile in either direction and nothing moved. I looked behind. A zombie appeared at the top of the embankment.

I put the car back into gear, and drove up and over the rails, just as the creature tumbled head first down the slope. The Land Rover slewed left and right as the wheels tried to find purchase on the loose gravel. I glanced behind. The top of the slope was now full of the undead. There were dozens of zombies at the top of the embankment. Dozens more were tumbling down onto the tracks and who knows how many were close behind.

I shifted gears again, got the wheels straight and we drove off. After ten minutes the undead behind us were lost to sight. We left London.

Day 131, Penlingham Spa & Golf Club,

Milton Keynes

03:00, 21
^st
July

Thunder. I can’t remember the last time I heard that. It’s woken Daisy, and it took forever to get her to sleep. At least nothing can hear her over the sound of the storm. Hopefully.

The only illumination, other than the lightning and the embers of our fire, comes from a light from one of the bikes. It’s the kind that charges itself up as you cycle. Since we’re stationary, we’ve got to wind the pedals by hand to keep it charged. It’s a pain. That’s something else to look for as soon as we’ve found food and water and everything else we’re going to need. But we can’t do that yet. Not until this storm stops.

Getting out of London was a little more eventful than I just wrote, but not by much.

It took half an hour to get into the rhythm of driving along the railway tracks, sometimes in the middle, sometimes alongside them, sometimes jolting along with one set of wheels on the sleepers, the other kicking up a spray of gravel. The tracks often bent or branched in odd directions thanks to the vagaries of the Victorian builders who originally laid them, and that slowed us down, but it was by far the safest way of travelling we’ve found.

Annette noticed it first.

“We’re higher than the houses,” she said abruptly.

“That’s right,” Sholto said, distractedly

“No,” Annette said, her voice dripping with the irritation of the young at the stupidity of the old, “I mean we’re much higher.”

“Well of course, trains are usually...” I trailed off. I understood. “The embankment.”

In most places the railway was built on a rise a few feet higher than the surrounding houses. In some places it was built even higher. There were a few places, like the bridge where we’d come down, where this wasn’t the case, but not many. The salient point being that the undead can’t climb up a steep slope, not easily, and not before we were already driving off into the distance.

The only real danger came when we had to make our way past abandoned locomotives and cargo wagons, or through stations and level crossings. Even then the danger was limited. The zombies heard us coming and obligingly stepped into the middle of the tracks where we could see Them from a distance.

Even if the journey had been more difficult I don’t think we’d have cared. We were together. We were all alive and we were all, more or less, well.

“What’s that?” Kim asked. I glanced in the mirror. Annette had taken a book out of the canvas bag she’d brought from Kew.

“Our book. I’ve been teaching Daisy to read. It’s the story of the plants. I grabbed it from the shop before...” She coughed before continuing with forced brightness and a brittle smile, “I’ve been teaching her to read.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea,” Sholto said in a cheerfully condescending tone, “Might be a bit advanced for her, though.”

“You don’t need to patronise me,” Annette said, shifting slightly in her seat. “Who is he?” she added, turning to Kim.

“Oh, right. Introductions. Sholto, this is Annette and Daisy. Annette, this is Sholto, my brother.”

“Really?” her eyes widened, and suddenly she seemed animated once more. “Cool! How did that happen?”

And for the next twenty miles, he told her. It was a slightly edited version of the story, expurgated as much for our benefit as for hers.

“Do we have a plan?” Kim asked. “I mean, I take it we’re not going back to the boat.”

“Not really. We’ll follow the train line as far as we can. And no, there’s no point going back to London. We’ll find food somewhere else.”

“Will we make it to the beach?”

“Why do we want to go to a beach?” Annette asked.

“There’s a boat waiting for Sholto. If we can get there by the 2
^nd
August then we’ll be able to get a lift.”

“Another boat? Really? You didn’t tell me that bit.”

And the next five miles were spent elaborating that.

“Sholto’s a silly name,” Annette announced, when she was finally satisfied that we’d told her all the details.

“It’s as good as any other,” he said.

“Not really,” she said. “What’s your real name?”