Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion (9 page)

Chester checked up and down the street. He was surprised to see there were no more undead coming. “And next time we do this,” he said, as he pushed the younger man towards an alley, “it has to be over in seconds. Any longer, and we might as well just run.”

From the list of places where the broadcast might originate, Chester had been allocated the BBC, Kirkman House, and the University of London, all between Euston and Marylebone. And he’d been allocated Dev. Of course, he thought, that made sense. Between the two of them, they averaged out at two moderately proficient people.

“Were you a soldier?” Dev asked when they paused at the next junction.

“What?”

“I mean, all this about knives and things. Did you learn it in the military?”

“It’s all from TV, kid. Now see if you can keep your mouth shut until we’re on the other side of Tottenham Court Road.”

Ten minutes later they reached the BBC’s Broadcasting House. It was locked. Dev moved quickly to the doors, examining them.

“Do we break them open, or find another way in?” he asked.

“Neither,” Chester said, cupping his hands and peering inside. “It’s dark in there. If they had a generator running, then they’d have some of the emergency lighting on.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m guessing, based on the fact they’d need light to operate the generator and the studio. Something’s coming.” The shuffling wheeze was becoming familiar, and this one sounded like far more than just a couple of undead. “What’s the last place on the list?”

“Kirkman House.”

“Right, that’s about ten minutes from here. We’ll try that, and then head back.”

He should have left during the night, but he’d fallen into the same beguiling trap as everyone else, intrigued by the prospect of a working radio station, and convinced by McInery that it would be easy to find.

“Someone’s been here.” Dev pointed at the glass-windowed door of a French patisserie. Written across it were the words ‘Empty - 16
th
March’.

“Interesting, but you missed the obvious,” Chester said. There were two nails, one on the door, another on the frame. Connecting them was a piece of red string.

“What’s that for?”

“So they know if zombies have pushed the door open.”

“That’s clever,” Dev said. “Wait, that means there are people nearby, doesn’t it?”

Chester rolled his eyes in exasperation. One more junction, one more narrow Victorian street, and they came out on Wyndham Square.

“There. You see that?” Chester pointed up at where a skeletal metal frame jutted up above the roof of an imposing glass and steel edifice. It was out of place amongst the far older Georgian buildings that surrounded a railed garden, filled with spreading oaks, worn benches, and empty patches of earth where spring flowers had not been planted.

“What?” Dev asked.

“Look. Up. At the roof. You see the transmission tower? On the top, do you see the light?”

“No. Wait. Yes. It’s red, and blinking on and off.”

“And that means power. That’s Kirkman House. Home to a half-dozen radio stations that play the same four-dozen songs, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”

“Played,” Dev muttered.

Chester noted that the gate to the gardens in the square’s centre were held closed with two bicycle D-locks. There was a third through the handles of the front door to the building.

“We could break one of the windows,” Dev suggested.

“What do you notice about the lock?” Chester asked, trying hard not to let his frustration show. “It’s on the inside,” he finished with a sigh. “They’re not going to thank us for breaking it down, but it’s a good sign there are people in there. Try round the back.”

All they discovered was that every door was locked.

“So what now? I mean, we have to break in, don’t we?”

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Chester asked. “I think they use the front entrance. I mean, I would. All that glass gives you a clear view of the square. That’s got to be safer than using some fire door and hoping there are no undead in the road outside.”

“But—”

“No,” Chester cut him off. “We stand out front, and we wait. We’ll see the undead coming, or we’ll hear them, and there are plenty of roads for us to escape down. If these people don’t return, we’ll go back to Farringdon. We know where they are, now. We can come back tomorrow. Or we can write them a note, or we can do one of a hundred other things, none of which involve coming across like looters.”

He wandered across the road, and leaned against the garden’s railings. It wasn’t a large space; about twenty metres on either side, with some grass, a few trees, and a handful of benches.

“Good spot for the chickens,” Dev murmured.

“If it wasn’t for the undead,” Chester replied, turning his attention to the roads. The background noise of the city was one of clinking and crunching as things fell. Not all of those things were the undead, nor were all the sounds caused by them, nevertheless he felt exposed. He glanced up at Kirkman House and its huge, wide windows. In none could he see any sign of life. He remembered when they’d built it. The press had been divided. The part of it that was affiliated with the stations that were about to take up residency were in favour, naturally. The rest were against, and he’d assumed the outrage at the design was used to mask competitive rivalry. Looking up at the building, he wasn’t sure. It did seem out of place amongst the centuries old houses.

“We’re too exposed here,” he said. “We’ll leave a note. You got any paper?”

“Somewhere. Hang on.”

As the young man was rooting through his pockets, Chester heard another sound. A different sound. Voices. They were muted, too soft to hear the words, but they were very definitely human, and they were coming from the direction of Oxford Street. Chester took a few steps away from the railings, so he could get a better view of the road.

Five people approached. Two women, three men, all carrying heavy packs, all holding a variety of tools in their hands. They stopped when they saw Chester and Dev. Except for the oldest of the men, they appeared tense, expecting trouble. Chester’s eyes narrowed as he judged distances, preparing to fight.

“Professor!” Dev said, stepping forward and addressing the older man with breathless excitement, “we heard you on the radio!”

“You heard the broadcast?” the man asked with a matching eagerness.

“We did,” Chester said.

“But you didn’t stay inside.” It was a woman, one wearing a bright red coat, who had spoken, and it wasn’t a question.

“Neither did you,” Chester replied.

“How did you find us?” the professor asked.

“There aren’t that many places in London you could broadcast the signal from,” Dev said as if the idea had been his own. “We split up to search.”

“There’s more of you?” the woman asked.

“A lot more,” Chester said.

“And we’ve got pigs and chickens,” Dev added.

There was a widening of eyes at that. Chester gritted his teeth, but then wondered why they should bother hiding it.

“Where are you based?” the woman asked.

“Farringdon,” Dev said, promptly.

This time Chester bit back a curse. That was something Dev should not have told them.

“Perhaps you should come inside,” the professor said, but Chester noted he looked to the woman in the red coat before making the suggestion.

“So what’s your plan with the radio?” Chester asked, taking a sip of the scalding-hot tea, his eyes fixed on the kettle. It, a fridge, a freezer, and a collection of hot plates originally designed to plug into the socket in a car, took pride of place in a room next to the generator.

“To keep on broadcasting as long as we can,” the professor said. “Using just one long wave frequency, we think we can keep it up for three months.”

“Right. And then what? I mean, what’s the plan with the white sheets?”

“Plan? I don’t follow.”

“You’ve asked anyone who hears the message to hang a white sheet outside their place. What do you want them to do next? Come here? Go somewhere else? What? We heard your broadcast. It’s why we’re here. What is it you want us to do? What are you offering?”

“Hope,” the professor said. “That’s what we’re offering. We’re letting people know there are others, people like them, people still alive. Some will hear the message, but will have no choice but to leave whatever sanctuary they’ve found. When they do, on their journey, they will know that white sheets denote a house with supplies.”

“So you’re not trying to help them yourselves?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Myra, the woman in the red coat, said. “Have you seen the enclaves? Do you know what happened? Fighting. Death. We barely escaped. We have to help ourselves because there is no help coming from anywhere else. So, let me ask you a question. What is it you were expecting to find here?”

Chester wondered if she’d worked on one of the radio stations. He could just imagine her interviewing some politician, twisting and worming her way around a topic in the search for some misspoken and headline-making remark. He shrugged, and finished his drink.

“Nope. Not me. I don’t expect anything, and I’m not the one to suggest anything either. Our lot wanted us to find you, and we have. So we’ll go back and tell them that. They’ll probably send someone up here, and you can work it out with them. Thanks for the tea. Dev, you coming?”

“Don’t you think we should join up with them?” Dev asked, as they headed back towards Farringdon.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t really see the point. What do they have that we actually need?” Whilst he was talking and whilst they had been waiting for the kettle to boil, the professor had begun to empty the bag he’d been carrying. It had contained textbooks taken from the library at The Royal Society of Medicine. Chester couldn’t imagine why. He’d asked, but none of them had any medical experience, nor any medical supplies. The books were ‘just in case’. No, the only valuable thing that group had was enough fuel to get a vehicle out of London, but that thought, he kept to himself.

24
th
March - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square, London

Chester opened the revolver and let the spent cartridges fall into his hand, then dropped them into the now empty ammunition box. He reached down, picked up another, and slowly reloaded the gun. He’d claimed to have found the weapon in one of the houses they’d searched. It was only Mathias who seemed to doubt the truth in that, but he had not called Chester on the lie.

According to Myra – who had been the station manager for one of the popier of the music stations that used the building – the long narrow studio he’d taken over as his firing range had been built for live concerts. Other than the professor, she was the only person who had a connection with Kirkman House before the outbreak. The other three that Chester and Dev had met outside, the two who had been in the building, and the four out on a different supply run, had all been strangers a few weeks before. They’d escaped together from the enclave. Or, to be more accurate, they had escaped at the same time, and found themselves travelling together, drawn back to London for wont of anywhere else to go.

At forty feet long and thoroughly soundproof, the studio made an excellent firing range, at least for his revolver. Other than McInery’s 9mm, it was the only firearm in the building, and she’d managed to keep her gun hidden despite the desperate fight outside. Chester took aim and fired six rounds in quick succession. Yes, he thought, eyeing the target, he was getting better, but he still wasn’t good enough. At least there was ammunition with which to practice.

Two days before he and Dev had first gone to Kirkman House, the professor had found ten thousand rounds of .38 calibre in a pair of trucks abandoned on Harley Street. That wasn’t the only thing in the vehicles. There had been some unidentifiable spares for some unknown piece of machinery, the bodies of the two drivers, both shot, and there had been a map, with a brief note. According to the note, the trucks were destined for a place called Lenham Hill. The memory of that note roused Chester’s fury anew. He fired off shot after shot, quickly emptying the revolver.

It was four days since they’d brought the animals to Kirkman House. They’d moved them the same way that they’d transported them to Farringdon from the city farm – anesthetised, and by car and van. The trouble had come whilst they were being unloaded. They had half the chickens inside before the undead, following the sound of the engines, reached them. Chester had dealt with the first easily enough, running to the far side of the square to dispatch the zombie before it came close to the livestock. From there, he had seen what the others hadn’t. The roads were filling with the undead.

“Hurry!” he’d yelled. That was when it all went wrong. He’d launched himself at the nearest creature, the crowbar coming up and down, splitting its head. He looked around for the next threat, and saw Diane running towards it, a knife in each hand. Wailing like a banshee, she’d stabbed at its head, but one-handed and still moving, her blow had little force and less aim. The blade skittered across the zombie’s face, and her arm went with it, ending up a few inches from its mouth. It bit. She’d screamed. Everyone had stopped moving. The undead hadn’t. They just got closer.

Mathias reached her before Chester could, spearing one of the long butcher’s knives through the zombie’s brain.

“Get inside!” Chester had yelled, meaning the people, but they took it to mean the animals. Mathias carried Diane into the building, leaving Chester alone to face the undead.

“Inside!” he’d yelled again and again, as he swung the crowbar, and with each dead creature, he’d been forced back a pace towards the entrance, but each time he turned around, someone was coming out empty handed to grab something else from the van. He’d kept on swinging, and kept being forced back.

“Chester! Hurry.” It was Dev. Chester skipped back, and risked a glance behind. The young man stood in the open doorway, with no one else in sight. He’d run to the doors, and a sense of relief washed through him as he’d seen everyone, and every animal, was in the foyer. The doors had been slammed closed, but the square was filling with the undead.

They’d had a barricade ready. Boards went up in front of the glass. Metal poles went behind, and Chester had realised he wasn’t needed. He looked for Diane. She was lying on the floor near the wide reception desk. Mathias knelt next to her.

“Please,” Diane had said. “Please. Don’t let me turn.”

Chester had knelt down, taking out the revolver.

“I won’t,” he’d said.

He had waited until her eyes closed, her pulse fluttered and then stopped. He’d pulled the trigger. The shot startled everyone.

“Back to work. Quick,” he’d yelled, “or we’ll all end up infected like her.”

“Thank you,” Mathias had said, and Chester had seen the depths of despair in the man’s eyes and knew there were no words of comfort that could be offered. Instead he’d gone to help with the barricade.

His first impression had been that it wouldn’t do more than block the undead from view, but the professor had a more extensive plan than that. The struts were pinned to thick metal bolts, already drilled into the floor. Next to those were sacks of quick-drying cement and gallon jugs of water. As the undead beat against the thick glass, cement was poured around the edges, and onto the metal supports and bolts.

“Um,” Dev broke the brittle silence. “How long will that take to set, because… um… well, is there another way out?”

“The fire escape and the loading dock,” Myra had said brusquely as she’d walked away, disappearing down a corridor. She had returned soon after, more grim faced than before. “Zombies,” she said. “Everywhere. It was those engines. They followed the sound and now they’re surrounding us.”

Suddenly finding themselves trapped, and in the aftermath of that sudden brutal death, the fragile alliance almost collapsed. Chester, talking in the hope that others might join in, stumbled across a solution to their problem.

“What about the Tube tunnels?” he’d asked. “All we have to do is dig down, then we use those to connect us with other parts of the city. Doesn’t the Central Line run under this building?”

“No. The Bakerloo does. It runs under the square, but I don’t know exactly where,” Myra had replied. “And it’s at least a hundred feet below us. Do you have some way of cutting through concrete?”

“Alright.” Chester tried to keep his tone upbeat. “Well, perhaps we could just dig a small tunnel under the road to the terrace. It can’t be more than fifteen feet wide. Add in the pavement and it’s still barely more than twenty feet. We could dig that. Hell, I could dig that on my own. Then we just break through the walls of those houses until we get to the far side. That should be far enough away from these undead.”

“You’d still have to dig down through concrete,” Myra had said.

“Maybe they’ll just go away,” Dev had said.

“We can’t rely on that,” the professor had replied. “We have to act. That is our only hope.”

“Thinking about the roads surrounding this building,” McInery said, her voice strangely calm, “is that alley between here and that terrace the narrowest?”

“Yes, why?”

“Then there’s no need to dig anywhere,” she’d said. “This building is three storeys higher than the old Georgian ones around it. All we have to do is take out an upper storey window and build ourselves a bridge across to the roof.”

“And what do you plan on building this bridge with?” Myra had asked.

“The same materials you used to build that barricade. Steel, cement and anything else you’ve got at hand. What about that ramp over there?” She gestured at the metal and glass spiral ramp that led from the main foyer up to the next floor. “As Chester says, we only have to cross twenty feet. It won’t be hard.”

And it wasn’t. Theoretically, at least. Whilst they were well supplied in some respects, they had few tools, and none designed for taking apart the ramp. It took the entire group’s effort, and during that time the mood began to change. The undead weren’t going to get in. They had food. They had electricity. They were safe. By the time the bridge was ready, and Diane’s body had been moved to an empty supply room, they were acting almost comradely towards one another.

Taking the glass out of the window proved the most time-consuming part of all. Myra wouldn’t allow Chester to simply break it. At first he thought that was superstition, but he was wrong. The building had been designed so that rainwater washed down the windows into a small reservoir. This was periodically released to wash the window below. This rainwater collection system was the reason that Myra and the professor had taken refuge in the building. Transmitting the message on the radio had been an afterthought, once they’d realised the generator was producing more power than they needed for the fridge, freezer, cookers, and lights
.

The bridge had given them access to the terrace, a second bridge got them onto the roof of a university building, which in turn gave them access to a post-war office block at the end of the street, half of which was covered in scaffolding. That had given them the materials for more bridges, and the discussion had moved on to which of the nearby department stores they should loot first.

“And so,” Chester murmured with a touch of irony, “is a nation forged.” He pulled the trigger.

The professor hadn’t been looking for ammunition. He had been searching for fuel and had built up quite a store. Enough to power the transmitter, the freezers, the oven, and enough televisions and DVD players that everyone could escape to the alternate reality of their choice in the evenings. By Chester’s estimates, they would run out of food about the same time as the lights went out.

He raised the gun again, aiming at the target that he’d cut to look like a very specific man, then lowered it. Richard and Myra seemed to enjoy spending their evenings watching old movies and long defunct TV shows. Hana spent it reading up on the medical textbooks. Everyone else talked about the government and their newest mystery, that of the lorries, the ammunition, and the place on the map marked Lenham Hill. They speculated and hypothesised about what they might find there, about who had killed the drivers and stripped them of their weapons. Chester didn’t. He knew. He’d recognised the handwriting instantly. It was Cannock’s. Picturing the man standing in front of him, he fired. He was getting better, but it wouldn’t be good enough. The revolver was only accurate at very short range. He knew he’d never be able to get that close.

He now knew where Cannock was, and he, Chester, was in a building that had a store of fuel. And since, other than McInery, he was the only person with a gun, there was nothing stopping him from taking it, and following the map. Nothing. And if he was clever, if he was cautious, he would get his revenge. Probably. But it was equally probable he would die in the attempt. A few weeks ago he wouldn’t have hesitated before setting out. Now, something had changed. He just couldn’t see the point in getting that particular retribution.

There was another problem, one he could see was more pressing. There were twenty-one people, thirteen pigs and fourteen chickens.

He put the revolver back in his pocket. If he wasn’t going after Cannock, there was no point wasting ammunition, and no point putting off the obvious. They would have to go out and find more food. There were hundreds of addresses on McInery’s list, but the undead still surrounded Kirkman House. To collect it, to get
any
supplies, they had to climb over the ramshackle walkway, and across the rooftops to another walkway, and so on, until they reached a road it was safe to walk along. Then it had to be brought back. And tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come, they would have to go out and do the same thing over again. It was a near certainty that they would never find enough.

There was an obvious solution of course; eat some of the animals whilst reducing the number of people that they had to feed. That would be the solution McInery would come up with, he was sure of that. But when he went into the conference room that had become the communal meeting space, he found he was wrong.

McInery was sitting at a table with the professor and Myra opposite, Hana and Mathias to either side, with nearly everyone else lounging around within earshot.

“We can’t eat the animals,” McInery said. “Not yet. It’s been a cold year, there’s fresh food out there that won’t have begun to rot, but give it a few months, wait until summer, and we’ll really need that fresh meat.”

“If there isn’t food to spare to feed them, then we should eat the animals now,” Mathias said. Hana shifted in her seat, clearly wanting to protest, but she kept silent.

“There is food. We know that. It’s just a matter of bringing it back here,” McInery said, pointing at her list.

“Which takes time,” Myra said. “Which, as you say, is against us.”

“Which is exactly my point,” McInery said. “Why else broadcast that message on the radio if you don’t want other people to come here and join with you?”

“We can’t afford more mouths to feed,” Myra said.

“No, we can’t,” McInery said. “But if they have enough food to keep themselves alive, then we would welcome them, wouldn’t we? And what if they have a surplus? They would be more than welcome. So we change the message, and phrase it in such a way as those with enough supplies to stay put, do so. We have them signal with the sheets, then we find them and bring them back here. The more people we have, the more food we can gather before it goes off. We can even get more fuel to keep the generator, and thus the freezers, running.”

“And people without food, without supplies?” the professor asked. “Are we to do nothing to help them?”

“If they’re starving, hunger will force them outside. Our message won’t change that, but it will give them hope. It will tell them that they aren’t alone. That was the real point of your message wasn’t it? That whilst the government may be gone, there are still people out there, still alive? Well, that’s what we’ll do. We tell them, I don’t know, that we have a helicopter, that we’ll try and rescue them, but they need to try and help themselves first.”

“It’s a false hope,” the professor said.

“No more than the message you’re broadcasting right now. What was that address, the one on that map? Lenham Hill. We tell them that’s where we’re broadcasting from. If there is food anywhere on this island, it will be there.”

Up until that point, Chester had thought McInery had actually changed, but now he saw that she only wanted to twist that knife one more time, that she would still use any opportunity to get even the smallest revenge on Quigley and Cannock. The cost to her would be small, but to those who heard the message and went to its supposed origin, it would be absolute. The last of his desire for that particular revenge vanished. Instead, he turned his mind to whether he would stay or where he might go. It was McInery herself who, a few hours later, gave him the answer.