Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion (8 page)

“There’s getting to be too many undead around here,” she said.

“Yes. Yes there are,” McInery said. “But Dev did well today.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Chester opened his eyes properly and looked at the items covering the table. He picked up a small sachet.

“Ketchup?”

“From Liverpool Street,” Dev said. Chester hadn’t noticed the young man sitting by the corner window of the station manager’s office, a radio in his hand, a headphone in one ear. “There’s a storeroom,” he continued. “I suppose it was for all the coffee shops and restaurants. There’s lots of cages, I think each shop had one, and each is nearly full up.”

“With food?” Chester asked.

“Most of it’s gone off,” Dev said. “But there’s sugar, ketchup, mustard, that sort of thing.”

“And that counts as a good haul?” Chester’s question was directed at McInery.

“Look at the ingredients,” she said. “Sugar, tomato, cornflour. It’s carbohydrates in vinegar.”

“So it won’t go off, right.” Chester leaned back in the chair. He was thinking of burgers again. It was better than thinking of ketchup and baby food. The problem was that Dev’s find really did count as a good haul. He’d found lots of calories all in one easy to collect place. “And what are we going to do when it’s gone?” He hadn’t meant to speak out loud.

“I guess that’s when we start eating the pigs,” Dev said. “So maybe you want to keep a couple of those sachets back.”

Chester bit back a retort. It was funny really, a kid like Dev wouldn’t have dared to even look at him a few months back, and now he was making jokes. Bad jokes, but still… Chester let his eyes fall closed again. Food wasn’t the problem. At least not food for the people, but pigs couldn’t live on ketchup. Of course, they could eat the pigs, and once they ran out of feed, the animals would have to be slaughtered. But once they were gone, there would be no more. Perhaps ever.

Two boxes of baby food. That worked out at about one meal each, but it had taken all day to find and had required a battle with the undead to bring back. No, it was definitely past time he should leave. He’d made that decision the previous day, and would have been somewhere well north of London by now if he’d made the supply run on his own. He’d taken McInery’s list and deliberately chosen addresses close to one another, but he couldn’t disappear whilst Richard was with him. That was why he’d taken a detour, why he’d sought out the undead. He had planned on getting away during the fight, or just letting Richard get killed. One more death amongst so many wouldn’t matter. The man probably wouldn’t live long anyway. He’d told himself that and a dozen other half-truths, and when it came to it, he found they had rung hollow. He’d caved in the zombie’s skull a second before it was too late, and when they were leaving the small baby and infant store half an hour later, saved Richard’s life again. He’d leave tonight, Chester decided, just as soon as he’d had a few hours’ rest.

“There were some warehouses out near Hounslow,” Diane said. Chester opened an eye and realised he’d drifted off to sleep.
Everyone was now in the small office. A pair of saucepans bubbled away on the camping stoves. At the table, Kendra, Diane, and McInery were peeling open ketchup packets and scraping their contents into a bowl. “You know, where they stored all those in-flight meals for planes flying from Heathrow,” Diane went on. “That’s where we could look.”

“Surely the food would have gone off,” Kendra said. “Wouldn’t they have been refrigerated? And besides, how would we get to Hounslow if Chester and Richard couldn’t even get as far as King’s Cross?”

“Well, what about City Airport?” Diane asked. “There has to be a depot near there where they store all the peanuts and things.”

“Probably,” Kendra said. “But is it—”

“Shh!” Dev hissed.

Chester opened his eyes fully.

“What?” McInery asked.

“Shh!” The young man waved his hand at the radio. This time everyone became silent. “There’s a signal,” Dev said. “Found it. Listen.” He unplugged the headphones and from the small speaker they heard, in a cultured English accent:

“… stay indoors. If you or someone with you is infected, kill them. There is no cure for the infection. Do not leave your homes. If you can, hang a white sheet from windows on the first floor or higher. Listen for further instructions.”

There was a pause, then music began to play. For a moment there was nothing but the soft strains of an orchestra.

“What does it mean?” Kendra finally asked.

“It means there are other people,” Richard said.

“No,” Dev said slowly, turning the volume down. “There’s a cough, just after ‘homes’. It’s a looped message.”

“So?” Richard asked.

“So,” Chester said, “it means that there were people there once, but maybe not anymore.”

“No,” McInery said. “I think Richard is right. A broadcast requires electricity. That requires a generator, and those require constant refuelling.”

“They could have left it running and gone away,” Chester said. His neck was stiff, his legs ached and he was so very tired.

“I’ve been listening to it for over an hour,” Dev said. “How long can you leave a generator running?”

“A few hours, if it’s the portable kind,” Chester said. “Days if it’s a larger model.”

“But if it was your last broadcast you wouldn’t tell people to do that thing with the sheets,” Richard said.

Chester looked around for support.

“What he said,” Kendra said with a smirk.

“Is it on long wave or FM?” McInery asked Dev.

“Long wave. I think it’s the frequency they were using for the emergency broadcast. Is that important?”

“If it was FM,” Mathias said, “we’d know it was somewhere local, but a long wave transmission could be coming from anywhere.”

“Not anywhere,” McInery said, almost with enthusiasm. “Not if it’s replaced the emergency broadcast.”

“You mean it’s coming from Westminster?” Richard asked. “I thought you said that was destroyed.” This last was addressed to Chester, but McInery was the one to answer.

“No. And in fact, as Mathias said, it could be coming from anywhere. But the balance of probabilities is that it’s coming from some pre-existing studio that was part of the emergency broadcast system.”

“Like the BBC?” Kendra asked.

“I don’t think so,” Dev said. “I mean if they were at the BBC wouldn’t they use all the frequencies? This is just one long wave signal.”

“Or to put it another way, they could be anywhere,” Mathias said again. “Probably at the transmitter in Droitwich. That covered most of England, didn’t it?”

“Possibly, not probably. There’s no harm trying to find them,” McInery said. “They have electricity. A little or a lot, we don’t know. But it’s more than we have.”

“Then shouldn’t we just hang out some sheets?” Richard asked.

“No. It could be a trap,” McInery said. “But they have fuel. We could use that to keep a freezer running. Look at how much food has been lost since the power went out. Or we could run an oven, or have proper lighting, not these absurd little wind-up lamps.”

“And you think we can trade with them? Dev asked.

“We have those piglets, don’t we?” she said. “If we’re going to slaughter some anyway, and since we can’t store the meat without a freezer, why not see if there’s some profit to be found in the surplus?”

“Which is all well and good,” Chester said, knowing full well that McInery didn’t intend to trade for anything. “But you’ve got to find the radio station first.”

“That’s hardly difficult,” McInery said. “We look for the building with the lights on. So where, within walking distance of here, is able to broadcast on the radio. The BBC, where else?”

“That voice,” Karen said. “The man speaking, didn’t you recognise it?”

“You mean you did?”

“I thought it was familiar,” Dev said. “It was that professor, wasn’t it? The one from the TV. Barrows, that’s it! The astrophysicist. It can’t be a trap if he’s involved.”

Chester wasn’t the only one to note the fallacy in that statement. Mathias opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind, giving a rueful shake of the head instead.

“My university ran a transmitter with the MET office,” Dev went on. “He could be there.”

“I suppose most universities would have the equipment,” Karen said.

“Well, let’s mark them down on the map, then,” Chester prompted, taking out a pen. “Go on, show me where.” She pointed, and he drew a circle. It had occurred to him that fuel for a generator was another way of saying fuel for a car. “Where else?”

“Kirkman House,” McInery said. “Where they run the commercial stations from.”

“Where’s that? Wait, is that the glass building between Oxford Street and Marylebone?”

“I remember that,” Richard said. “There was trouble with the planning permission. They approved it before there was a public consultation. By the time the enquiry was announced, they had the foundations laid, and before they’d begun their deliberations, the building was all but finished.”

“Who uses it now?” Mathias asked.

“Then, not now,” Dev muttered, but Chester thought he was the only one who heard.

“One of the commercial TV and radio conglomerates, but the site used to be owned by the BBC,” McInery said. “They sold it to avoid the repair bill on a dilapidated building. The equipment went with it. And during the Cold War, it was one of the places from which an emergency broadcast could be sent.”

“It’s a long shot, isn’t it?” Mathias asked, sceptically.

“Doesn’t matter,” Chester said brusquely, moving the conversation along. “It’s not far from the BBC, no harm in looking. Where else?”

The list grew, and with it everyone’s enthusiasm, except for Chester’s. Even if they did find from where the signal was being broadcast, there was no telling what would happen when the two groups met.

20
th
March - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square, London

The zombie came out of nowhere. Chester grabbed the back of Dev’s jacket, hauling him out of range of its snapping teeth a fraction of a second before they bit down on the young man’s neck. Chester kept his arm moving, throwing Dev behind him, whilst his other hand, gripping one of the long butcher’s knives, stabbed up, piercing the skin just behind the creature’s chin. He thrust and twisted the blade up until the point hit the inside of its skull. He gave one last turn, and pulled the knife out.

“Watch where you’re—” he began, but there were two more zombies behind them. He cursed himself for not paying attention, but Dev had been talking non-stop since they’d left Farringdon. Question after question after question; it had been an endless barrage, and it had taken all of his concentration to keep his answering lies consistent.

Dev was hunched forward, knife in his left hand, the point waving back and forth as he swiped through the air between him and the undead.

“Not like that, kid!” Chester growled. “You’re not warning them off. They don’t care that you’ve got a blade.” He stepped forward, then had to take a hopping skip back as Dev half-turned, and his knife sliced through the air an inch from Chester’s face.

“Stab!” Chester barked. “Up and under the chin, or through the eye. If you can’t manage that… Oh, move aside!” He darted forward, grabbed Dev’s arm, and again threw the young man out of the way. His knife went forward, plunging through the first zombie’s eye. The blade stuck as the creature collapsed. Chester grabbed for the crowbar on his belt. “And if you’re not happy with knives,” he said, “go for the knees.” He ducked under the zombie’s clawing arm, swinging the metal bar at its legs. It hit with a sickening crunch of bone. He still found it disconcerting how something that still looked so human didn’t scream, just toppled sideways as it tried to put weight on its now useless leg.

“Then stab it when it’s down,” Chester said. “Well, go on kid, you’ve got the knife.” He glanced over his shoulder at the young man. Dev looked like he was about to throw up. Chester hid his irritation, swung the crowbar up, waited until the zombie’s clawing arms were out of the way, and brought it down on its skull. The creature still twitched.

“Do it again!” Dev said.

“No,” Chester said. “The first blow’s free. That’s what they used to say. After that, with every swing you’ll spray blood and bone all over the place. You don’t want to get covered in that. You’ve got the knife. Stab it. Do it kid!”

His complexion turning from green to puce, Dev stepped forward and stabbed the knife down. There wasn’t much force to the blow.

“Push it in kid,” Chester said. “Harder. That’s it. And remember to twist it. If you don’t, you’ll lose it like I just did.” He walked over to the other corpse and retrieved his own knife. He eyed the other zombie. Yes, it had stopped moving.

“Now you’ve got to clean the blade,” he said. “We’ll disinfect them properly later, just remember to be careful with it until then. What else can I tell you? Yeah, be careful with a knife that’s got no guard. When you stab something, if you hit resistance, your hand’s going to slide up, and you’ll cut your palm on the blade. With these things, that means instant infection and instant death.”