Read Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion Online

Authors: Frank Tayell

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Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion (7 page)

BOOK: Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion
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“We could go west,” Kendra suggested.

“Yes, but where after that. Scotland? One of the islands? Don’t you get it? The enclaves are set up around the coast. They didn’t kill everyone, just enough that they could keep the rest alive. The government controls the coast.”

“They control London too,” Richard said. Chester couldn’t blame the man for wanting to leave.

“So we scavenge some fuel, load up those pigs and chickens, and keep driving until we find somewhere. That’s your idea?” Mathias asked. “What if we don’t find anywhere? What if it gets to nightfall and we’re stuck on some desolate road in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of squawking chickens.”

“But we can’t stay here,” Kendra insisted. “The government people will come and find us.”

“Do you know,” McInery said, as if the idea was just occurring to her. “I don’t think they will. I mean, why should they leave? They were building a barricade, and if we add to that what Mathias said about the undead, it seems obvious why. They’ll be resupplied from the river, so why would they want to go out looting? If we stay put, and stay quiet, we’ll be safer than we would be anywhere else.”

“But the animals need feed,” Hana insisted. “They’ll need water.”

“And that would be the case wherever we go,” McInery said, her voice almost dripping with sympathetic understanding. “If we stay here, we won’t lose a day travelling.”

“And if they do come?” Dev asked.

“We have the train line,” she said. “If we have to, we disappear down there. We can lose ourselves in the Underground.”

“Which would mean losing the animals,” Dev said.

“Better them than us,” McInery said, and then adroitly ended the debate by starting to cook dinner. Chester had never seen her cook before, and in fact she didn’t do much of the work this time. She delegated and instructed until she had everyone else too busy working to think.

Chester headed down to the station. Partially open to the elements, it was one of those surface level junctions where half a dozen overground lines provided an interchange with the Underground. If he remembered correctly, the overground headed due south, crossing the river at Blackfriars, and to the north… to the north there were myriad bridges and crossings, and the undead could easily stumble over or across those onto the tracks. That left the Underground, and that would give them easy and unseen access to most of London but nowhere beyond. No, the railway lines didn’t strike him as a particularly safe escape route, but it wasn’t until the others had gone to sleep that he was able to mention that to McInery. She had led him down to the platform.

“Keep watch,” she said, as she took out her list of addresses and began copying them, this time in plain English, onto a sheet of paper.

“You’ve got a plan, then?” he asked.

“The same plan I had this morning, the same plan I had yesterday. This is my city now. I’m going to take control of it.”

“Oh, right? You and…” He gave an involuntary snort of laughter. “You and what army, because Quigley’s got one.”

“Since you seem in a mood for hackneyed aphorisms, the enemy of my enemy, even when undead, can be an ally.”

“You want to use the undead to clear out Westminster?”

“They kill the people, but leave the food and weapons standing. It’s almost too poetic.”

“How?”

“The tunnels. The Tube. All we have to do is lure the undead in, and let them follow us to Westminster. Then we sit back and wait. The survivors will flee, and we will have London to ourselves.”

“Ah,” Chester murmured, wishing he hadn’t asked.

 

 

9
th
September - Cross Keys Inn

Yorkshire Moors

 

“Wait, you lured the undead into the Tube tunnels to destroy the government?” Nilda asked, genuinely appalled.

“What would you have done? These are the people who launched the nuclear attacks. They created the undead.”

“But you didn’t know that! All you knew was that they had culled the population with that vaccine.”

“And that wasn’t enough?”

“Don’t try and weasel your way out of it. You used the undead to kill hundreds of people. And most of them wouldn’t have had any more of an idea of what was going on than I did.”

“They were just obeying orders, that’s what you mean.”

“Don’t you dare!” she snapped, standing up. “You acted out of calculated self-interest. Nothing more. You said it yourself, you were ready to kill those people in the farm to protect yourselves.”

“Yes,” he said, his tone so meek that Nilda stopped and looked at him properly. She breathed out, and replayed what he’d told her. “So why are you telling me?”

“Because you asked. I’m not saying I’d tell anyone else. Nor am I for one moment suggesting we’ve got some kind of special bond forged in the fire of conflict. That’s just romantic nonsense. N’ah. If I’m honest, I’m being entirely selfish. Out here, these past few months, there’s been silence and polite conversation. I’ve not had anyone to talk to, not really. There was Mr Tull, but that was more like a confession. There’s Bran, but talking to him is like talking to stone. He listens, but he doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. I needed to tell someone, and you’re here.”

“Huh!” She sat down again. “And I suppose you’ll say that you’re a different person now.”

“Nope. I’m exactly the same. Yes, if I were to do it again, I’d plan on using the undead as a weapon. But Quigley’s dead. So’s Cannock. The undead are the only threat left. I’ve always known that I was going to die, and that it wasn’t going to be a clean and pleasant death, but I was a very young man when I learned that no one’s passing is ever easy. Right at the end, it’s nothing but pain. Most people don’t understand that. They think of it only in the abstract. We’re all going to die, and if I’ve learned anything in the last few months, it’s that the journey is more important than ever.”

“You’re seeking redemption? That’s why you’re here with me?”

Chester laughed, though it was devoid of humour. “N’ah. I guess I’m just curious as to whether redemption’s going to find me.”

“Alright,” she said slowly, deciding that whilst he was talking she’d have an opportunity to work out her next move. “So that was the first couple of days after the evacuation. Then you lured the undead down into the Underground, killed the remains of the government in London and—”

“No, you’re getting ahead of yourself. I said that was our plan. I didn’t say that was what we did.”

“You didn’t destroy the government?”

“There was no need. As you say, that was a couple of days after the evacuation. Or as I like to think of it, a couple of days before the power went out.”

“So why did you tell me?” she asked, now more confused than ever.

“Because sometimes, intentions
are
as bad as deeds.”

Which, again, didn’t really explain why he was telling her.

“So what did happen next?”

“Well, the mutiny and the nuclear war, though I didn’t know it at the time. The next day I went back to the warehouse and ‘found’ the list McInery had copied out. Each of those addresses gave us a few days food for a few people. You know, thinking back on it now, it was almost fun.”

“Fun?”

“Not the skulking through the streets part, one eye out for the undead, another for a helicopter overhead, ears pricked against the sound of the approaching government. N’ah, that wasn’t much fun, but back at the station, sorting through the packs and boxes and cans, working out what the chickens could eat and what we didn’t want to, yeah that was alright. But each trip outside, we saw more undead, and maybe it was the illusory safety of the station that makes it seem so idyllic now. Or perhaps it was being surrounded by the innocent. And they were that, in every sense of the word. As for me, when they slept, I went out and mapped the tunnels. I found a route to Westminster. That was easy enough. Those tunnels haven’t changed since before I was born, let alone since I was a kid. There was a bit of a thrill stumbling across one of my old tags, faded, flaking, but still there. And it wasn’t hard finding a bridge over an open section of track where the undead might be tempted to fall down onto the railway line. No, the trouble was finding a way out at the other end. I needed a platform that sloped down to the tracks, and a station whose steps weren’t too steep for a zombie to climb, and which was inside their barricade. That was the hard part. And it was whilst I was skulking about down there that I heard the gunfire. An occasional shot during the daytime or volley at night had become the background symphony to our little corner of England, but this was something different. This was a war, and it was right overhead. By the time I got out of the tunnels it was nearly over. By the time I made it up to the roof of a tall enough building, I was just in time to see the end. Parliament was in flames. So was part of Whitehall. There was a helicopter hovering over the river, firing down into the buildings. And there were people in them firing back. It was… It was unlike any movie. It wasn’t even like the news footage you saw on TV. It felt so much less real. I must have been half a mile away. No, it had to be further than that. I’d have to check a map, but I was close enough that when the missile hit I was thrown off my feet and nearly off the roof.”

“It wasn’t a nuclear missile?”

“N’ah, obviously not, though that idea didn’t cross my mind until a lot later. I don’t even know if it was a missile. I’m assuming it was, and that it came from that submarine Quigley had. Of course, if it was, it doesn’t really explain why the helicopter was firing at the people inside. Perhaps it was launched by some foreign government. I don’t know, because that blast knocked me off my feet, and the landing knocked me out. When I came to, the helicopter was gone. So were most of the buildings, and the only gunfire was so sporadic that I first thought it was just rounds cooking off in the fire.”

“First thought. You mean it wasn’t?”

“No. Not everyone died. There were a few people left. I learned that a couple of days later. I went back to see if there was anything I could salvage, but they just shot at me. I tried again, but on the third trip I’m pretty sure they’d left. I can’t be certain, and they might have been killed by the undead that ended up flooding that part of the city, but… I’m getting ahead of myself. The sun was rising by the time I felt able to stand. I couldn’t use the streets, they were full of zombies. I had to use the tunnels, and I must have had a concussion because it was midmorning before I got back to Farringdon. There was a mob of the undead outside the station entrance. It was the animals, you see. They kept squawking and squealing, and the only way of shutting them up was the anaesthetic, and there was only enough of that to keep them quiet for a few hours. There were far too many zombies to fight, and I was having enough difficulty trying to stand. The power had gone out, of course, and if it wasn’t for the undead I’m certain the whole lot of them would have fled.”

“What about the tunnels?”

“I was getting to that. After I’d slept for a bit, and was feeling as good as I was going to, I went to have a look. The undead had got inside. They must have fallen off bridges or broken into crossings, just like I’d been planning. My view, and the others agreed, was that we could get out, but the animals couldn’t. So, for the time being, we were stuck in the station. We moved the livestock and started padding the walls with everything we could find. That must have worked, because a few days later the zombies started to drift off. That was when I went back to Westminster. The buildings were wrecked. There were holes in the barricade, and the undead seemed to be everywhere, completely surrounding whoever was left inside. I couldn’t believe our luck.”

“Luck?”

“Well, it seemed to me that McInery and I were in the clear. Quigley and Cannock’s plan to keep a foothold in London was in smouldering ruins. As far as any of these others knew, we were just two ordinary citizens, and it seemed like we had the city to ourselves.”

 

 

19
th
March - Farringdon Station

London

 

Chester dropped the bag on the table, then himself into the nearest chair. A cloud of dust erupted around him, and for a moment he was too weary to wipe it from his eyes.

“Is that it?” McInery asked.

Chester took out the folded piece of paper from his pocket. There were thirty addresses written on it.

“We didn’t make it to any of them,” he said. “Couldn’t get further than King’s Cross. Too many undead. This came from one of those baby and infant shops. You know, the kind filled with pushchairs and romper suits.”

Kendra unzipped the bag and took out a soft pouch of fruit puree.

“Three hundred and fourteen calories,” she read. “That’s less than a burger.”

“There were a couple of boxes in the back office. There was a letter, too. They’d come in with a delivery of teething rings and were to be sent back because the shop didn’t sell comestibles. And don’t mention burgers,” he added, forcing a smile. “Not if you don’t want some of those piglets disappearing.”

“You said there were a couple of boxes?” McInery asked.

“Richard’s got the other. But he’s washing the zombie brains out of his hair.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kendra flinch at the comment.

BOOK: Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion
12.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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