Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey (14 page)

“Not all news is welcome,” George said, “but it’s always better to know. Now, can we alter the orbits?”

“Until we use up the propellant,” Sholto said.

“Can we download what they’ve seen over these last months?” Mary asked.

“Only for the last forty-eight hours. There’s virtually no data storage.”

“We need images of the nearby coast,” Mary said. “That should be our priority. Then the mainland. We’ll want images of Belfast, too.”

“We will? Why?” I asked.

“Before Donnie escaped from there, he was sure there were fuel tankers lined up near the airport,” Mary said. “And helicopters by the runway. If they’re still there, we could use them. Pass me the tablet. Thank you.”

“I thought we’re getting oil from Svalbard,” I said.

“Even if there is oil in Svalbard,” George said, “we’ve no way of bringing it south except in barrels strapped to the deck. It’ll be a slow, laborious process. Then we’ll have to find the ships that can burn it. Most of the boats here run on diesel. We have those grain carriers, but they require a mile to stop and further to turn.”

“It’s the helicopters that are the real prize,” Mary said, swiping from one image to the next. “We can use those to get rid of the undead. What’s this?”

On the screen was a photograph that must have come from the front page of a newspaper. There was something about the stance and smiles that said the people had endured a dozen variations of the same pose.

“I know her,” George said, peering at the screen. “That’s Kempton, the billionaire, right?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Sholto said. “The picture was in a local paper about a year ago.”

“I’m more interested in what’s behind the group,” Mary said. “Those are wind turbines, aren’t they? And solar panels on the roof of that building? Are those electric cars? Where is this?”

“It’s a fifty-acre farm on the Atlantic coast of Ireland,” Sholto said. “Kempton ran it as an experiment in combining organic farming with modern technological techniques as part of a far-reaching plan to combat the impending global food crisis. That’s what the article says. The guy to her right, he’s the local TD. He wanted to burnish his tech credentials by being in close proximity to her, the jobs she was creating in his constituency, and the foreign exchange she’d bring into the Irish Exchequer.”

“So why’s it on the tablet?” George asked.

“It took an age to get the software to load,” Sholto said. “I was browsing through the other files I sent Bill, particularly those on the cabal behind the outbreak. This was part of the dossier I put together. Kempton bought a fifty-acre farm and equipped it with solar panels and wind turbines in a bid to make it completely self-sufficient. It was her retreat, her hideaway in case the U.S. collapsed. It’s an odd place to have one, since Ireland had close ties to America. It means that she wasn’t worried about extradition. I think she foresaw that some part of Archangel and Prometheus could go wrong, and wanted somewhere remote, but not too remote, to weather the storm. A little more digging discovered other, similar locations in New Zealand, Mauritius, and Micronesia. There were hints in a discretionary budget that suggested more, but I stopped digging. I knew she was involved in the conspiracy, and I was looking for some leverage on her, but this wasn’t going to be it.”

“Those are electric cars, aren’t they?” I said. “Electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels. You say it’s close to the coast?”

“I think so,” he said. “The article mentions someone’s sea view being obstructed by the turbines.”

“Ireland,” Mary said wistfully. “My heart yearns to return, and though my bones won’t, my soul forever resides there. If we’re sending an expedition to Belfast…” She trailed off, and stared at the sky. “Ireland’s smaller population should mean fewer zombies than on the British mainland. Less radiation as well?”

“I’m not sure,” Sholto said. “The targeting data I acquired before the outbreak doesn’t match the location the bombs actually fell.”

“Then it’s possible,” Mary said. “And with the satellite data, we could know in a few days. Ireland… Yes, we’d need a base from which to survey it. If the turbines still stand, and those solar panels still work, this might be it. If it’s not tenable, we could bring those electric cars and solar panels back here.”

“What about the turbines?” George asked. “The ones on Anglesey were all wrecked.” He tapped the screen. “I reckon with a bit of scaffolding, and a bit more time, we could take them apart.”

“Kempton’s turbines wouldn’t generate enough electricity for more than a few dozen homes,” I said.

“Enough for the farm and two hundred and forty homes,” Sholto said. “It says so in the article. I think that was the sweetener to get her scheme past the planning authorities. She’d provide electricity for the three villages nearest the property.”

“Two hundred and forty? That’s with old world usage,” I said. “So for us, perhaps a thousand people, maybe fifteen hundred.”

“It’d be a start,” George said. “We need to make provision for when the nuclear plant is shut down.”

“Well, yes,” I said. “But turbines are only of use if the wind’s blowing.”

“And Kempton would have known that,” Mary said. “If she really planned to survive the apocalypse in that house, then there will be some system to store the energy against a windless, sunless day. If she didn’t, what does it matter? We can survive a few days without electricity. We’ve all done it before. The inconvenience of having no electricity on a calm day is far less troublesome than the risk of a meltdown.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But it won’t be enough electricity. If we want wind turbines, we’d be better off going to Hull. The factory there was one of the biggest in the world. They made them for the offshore farms, the kind where a single turbine could power a small town. A few of those would more than suit our needs. Since they were destined for the sea, the facility is right on the docks. They’d have cranes and other equipment for loading them onto barges. We could take a boat there, put a team ashore, and get a turbine loaded far quicker than building scaffolding to dismantle those.”

“Not now, we couldn’t,” Mary said. “We’re barely able to move something larger than a golf cart, but it’s worth investigating. As is Ireland, we don’t want all our eggs in one basket. There you are, Thaddeus, we need images of Hull, Belfast, and of this house.”

“Satellites,” George murmured. “Instant communication and images of the world. There’s a lot we can do with that, there is indeed. Come on, Mary, one more lap. No arguing. And you lads, you’ve got work to do. We’ve all got work to do.”

Mary offered a pro forma protest as George helped her back to her feet.

I passed the tablet back to my brother. He swiped at the screen, returning to the image of the ruined village.

“We have electricity,” he said. “Replacing nuclear with wind won’t fundamentally change anything.”

“True,” I said. “But the journey to somewhere like Hull might. Who knows what we’ll find along the way.”

“Not me,” he said. “There’s only one place I’m going, but the question is whether I then go north, or south. Or rather, it’s a question of which way they went, and how long ago.”

Chapter 7 - Elysium, The Republic of Ireland

18:00, 20
th
September, Day 192

It’s getting dark. I don’t want to waste the torch’s batteries on writing so I’ll leave the account there for now. That was how I first met Lilith, Will, Simon, and Rob, and how we first learned that this house was here, on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. Quite where the zombies outside came from is a mystery. When Sholto did get a few satellite images of this estate, it appeared intact and unoccupied. That’s the problem with satellite images; you’ve only got a top-down view. One of those barns in the middle of the farmland must be an open-sided structure, and the undead must have been gathered inside. Or perhaps it’s something more prosaic. I’ve seen them swipe at birds before. Perhaps they chased the animals to the trees and the bushy canopies hid the zombies from view. Whatever the reason, it hardly matters. I saw Kim in the window of the house a few minutes ago, and we waved at one another. The zombies are beginning to settle down. Perhaps by morning, they’ll have stopped moving, and then Kim will start shooting. Even if more are summoned from the surrounding countryside, Kim has the radio. By now she’ll have called Lilith and Will, and they’ll have used the sat-phone to call Anglesey. Reinforcements may already be on their way. No, I’m not worried. If anything, I’m bored. It’s—

Call that stupidity, arrogance, or forgetfulness. Call it all three. Having spent so much of the past month with other people, and so little of it out here in the wilderness, I’d forgotten that danger lurks in every dark corner. I wasn’t alone here in the garage. I’d asked Rob to check it was empty, and assumed he’d done it. I guess he’d given it as cursory a glance as I had. Well, you know what they say about assumptions? This one almost got me killed.

I was mid-sentence when I heard a sound far closer than the inhuman racket outside. I dropped the pen, grabbed the pike, and went to stand in the office’s doorway. The garage was pitch black. Because of the solar panels on the roof, there’re no skylights. There’s a bank of concealed spotlights in the ceiling, but, of course, they’re dark. The garage’s only natural light comes from the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors currently covered by the metal shutters. I turned on the torch. It’s a cheap, two-battery affair with a weak beam that barely stretched further than the second-hand light from the hatch in the roof above and behind me. Like the radio, my miner’s lamp is the pack I lost outside.

With the torch held awkwardly in my left hand, flush against the shaft of the pike, I swung the beam left and right, searching for the cause of the sound. The light bounced off the pitted chrome bumper of one of the ancient Rolls-Royces, then a discarded toolbox, then something bright blue. Before I could identify that object, a shadow fell across it. I shone the light into the darkness and onto a ragged shadow moving towards me. Old memories came back, and with them came the fear. I pushed it down, and forced myself out of the doorway so I’d have room to swing.

“Not too high. Remember the ceiling,” I muttered, and got a rasping sigh in return. The shadow drew nearer, and I began to make out details. It was five-foot-seven and hunched over. In life, it would have been taller. Probably female, though I couldn’t be certain. The trousers might once have been green, and the rotten fleece missing its left sleeve was probably red, except for the peeling logo of a golden, stylised wave. With each lumbering step, its head lolled to the left, as if the muscles in the neck had been partially torn. Its mouth opened and snapped closed, and it was now fifteen feet away. It was time to focus.

My actions were familiar to the point of automatic. I lowered my arms, positioning the pike low, ready to hook the blade under its legs. It was a move I’d perfected out in the wasteland, but that was in daylight. Here it meant shifting my grip so the light only shone on the zombie’s shuffling feet. I could hear the brittle snap of its teeth. I could sense the air move as its arms flailed left and right. All I could see were the stained hiking boots inching closer and closer.

I stabbed the pike between its legs, twisted my wrist so the axe-headed blade was parallel to the floor, dragged it back so it hooked behind the zombie’s shin, and pulled the creature down. As I raised the pike, the light moved with it, dancing across the creature and then about the room. My eyes followed the beam, so I wasn’t sure the creature was down until I heard the thump and then the thuds and slaps as its hands and feet flailed against the polished concrete floor. I actually closed my eyes as I swung the blade up, but opened them as the weapon banged into the low ceiling. Growling with frustration and fear, I flashed the light around until I found its snarling face, and then stabbed the spear-point forward. It jerked its head at the last second, and the pike stabbed into its cheek. Skin ripped. Muscle tore. I drew the pike back and lunged again, this time smashing the point through its temple. It went limp.

As I eased the pike out of its ruined skull, I concentrated on separating the sounds from outside the sheet metal barrier with those that might be closer. As I did, I began doing what I should have done the moment I stepped inside: I took a closer look at my surroundings.

I guess it’s understandable that Rob hadn’t noticed it. After all, neither had I, nor had I properly considered the implications of what we’d seen in the photograph Sholto had found. In those pictures, the smiling Lisa Kempton stood in front of four electric cars. In the garage in front of me were three ancient Rolls-Royces. Behind them were four metal columns, ten inches square and twenty feet apart. I
had
noticed those during my cursory inspection and filed them away as something structural. They aren’t. The garage is built on two levels. The lower level is slightly wider and longer than the ground floor, and contains the electric cars and the giant battery-transformer for the solar panels and turbines. Access to the lower level is via the vehicle elevator, and by a spiral ramp tucked in the corner behind it. The ramp is artfully designed with no guardrail around it. As such, it’s just one more patch of darkness in an almost-pitch room.

I hate ramps. Ladders are the safest. All a zombie can do when it reaches one of those is knock it over with an accidental swipe. Stairs are okay. Zombies can’t exactly climb them. By accident, they can raise a leg high enough to manage a step. Managing two is a matter of odds, so the higher the staircase, the greater the chance the zombie will trip and fall. They’ll still keep on coming, dragging themselves upward, but that makes them an easy target. Ramps are the worst.

This one is built in a spiral with a three-metre diameter. It’s steep, but that’s no impediment to the undead, and certainly not to the creature that was lurching up it. Head then shoulders appeared above the level of the floor. I took a step back, and then another. As it shuffled upward, I saw it wore the same type of fleece-jacket as the one I’d just killed. It took another step forward, and I took another one back, knocking a tray of metal tools off a cabinet. I spun around as they clattered to the floor. Torchlight danced across the room. When I turned back, the zombie was at the top of the ramp.

Pike outstretched, the light fixed on its blank eyes, I forced myself forward. Its arms raised. Its mouth opened. Its head tilted back, and I stabbed the pike through its open maw. I twisted the weapon, skewering the point through muscle and flesh, and into its brain. For a moment, I was supporting its weight, but then it fell, thumping to the ground.

I limped back into the office at as close to a run as I can manage. The darkness was filled with the sound of fists battering against the exterior of the metal shutters. I told myself I’d been in far worse situations, but didn’t find it comforting. I gave the ladder and open skylight a wistful glance, but that was as much reassurance as I would allow myself. If I needed to retreat I could, but the roof offered a refuge, not an escape, not with undead outside and below. I turned my face back to the dark room.

“Face it. Deal with it,” I murmured. “There’s no one but us. We are the help that comes to others.” And though no sinews stiffened, my resolve strengthened. I walked to the ramp.

The curve was too tight for the pike, and the weapon too awkward to grip while holding the torch. I leaned the weapon against the rear of the nearest Rolls-Royce, there to grab if I was forced to retreat. I drew the hatchet, raising it up above my head, and began my descent.

As the ramp drops below floor-level, the sides are covered in transparent plastic. Actually, considering the extravagant folly of this property, it’s probably some rare type of glass. The weak beam shone through and down into the lower chamber, picking out motionless, lumpen shapes. I let the light linger on one, then another, just long enough to confirm they weren’t moving.

I was stalling, and I knew it, and knew why when I heard a shuffling, slithering, snuffling rising in tempo and volume. I spun the light back onto the ramp as a zombie rounded the curve. Its collar was buttoned, but the shirt was missing a sleeve on an arm that was grasping towards me. Almost without thought, I swung the axe up, batting that arm away. I brought the blade down with a practiced flick, hacking at its skull. With an echoing crack of bone and crunch of brain, the blade bit deep. The zombie fell, and I pulled the hand-axe free.

There was a moment when the drip of blood was all I could hear, then that slithering sound came again. I raised the hatchet above my head, and forced myself forward, down, into the dark. Listening more than looking, letting reflex take over, I was already swinging as the zombie rounded the corner. I misjudged its height. The axe cracked through bone, sliced through brain, and exited just below its ear. The blade slammed into its shoulder. The zombie fell, tumbling back down the ramp, and took my axe with it.

I took a hurried step after my lodged hatchet and slipped on the mess of bone and brain now coating the ramp. A shoved elbow against the glass wall arrested my fall, and the jarring pain that came with it brought clarity to my mind. I had to finish this, and quickly. I drew the snub-nosed pistol from the holster. It felt insubstantial against the darkness. Gun raised, I braced my right hand on my left, which still held the torch. It was a stance I’d seen on TV, and hoped it wasn’t done merely for cinematic convenience.

Twelve rounds in the magazine, I reminded myself as I walked soft-footed down the ramp. I could hear the creatures below. I hoped twelve would be enough.

At the bottom, I took a step to the right, shining the beam out into the gloom, trying to identify movement among the indistinct shapes. The sound got closer, and it was coming from behind me. The zombie was almost on me before I could turn. I spun to the left, my finger curling on the trigger. Glass shattered and metal plinked as three shots spun into the darkness. The light caught the zombie’s open mouth just as its flailing arm hit mine. Torch and gun went flying. Something hit my jaw. Instinct took over. I ducked and rolled into the darkness, drawing the hunting knife from my belt. The light was twenty feet away. It illuminated the dropped pistol, but nothing else, and it was the only light in the room. Something tugged at my arm. The tug became a clawing grasp. I grabbed the arm with my left hand, pulling the zombie close as I stabbed the knife up. The blade sliced through flesh, but the zombie kept moving. I did the same, drawing my hand back to stab again and again, and this time, as it bit deep, I knew I’d got the blade in under its chin. I pushed and twisted, tearing desiccated muscle and ravaged sinew, ramming the knife up through its mouth, and into its brain. With one final twist, the zombie went limp. The dead weight was too much, and I had to let go of the knife.

Something brushed against my back.

I spun around, swinging a fist into the darkness. I hit something soft. The zombie sighed, exhaling a noisome gasp of foetid air. I almost gagged, but kicked out instead. Its hands curled around my arms. I slammed my forehead down and immediately wished I hadn’t. I don’t know if it did any damage to the creature, but my world spun. We fell, rolling in a blind heap on the floor. I got an arm free, grabbed a handful of lank hair, and slammed its head down on the concrete. It did little damage, but the movement jarred my other arm free. I rolled away and to my feet, and ran towards the torch. I grabbed it, and then the gun. I brought them up, aimed at the ragged zombie now beginning to stand, and fired. Its head blew apart.

I limped backwards and didn’t stop until I reached the ramp. I waited. Seconds turned to minutes that felt like hours. No more appeared. My heartbeat slowed sufficiently that I could hear the sounds of the zombies outside. And they
were
the nearest sound. I had to be sure, of course. I had to be certain. I checked each corner, each car, and each of the two doors leading off the main chamber, and that took at least an hour. But I was alone, truly alone in the garage. Exhausted, drained, I limped back up the ramp.

That’s when I realised. The noise from outside was louder than before. I’d heard it, but not understood. Whatever had caused the zombies downstairs to come up the ramp, those creatures outside had heard the fight, and certainly they’d heard the gunshots. They were battering fists and flesh against the metal shutters more furiously than after they chased me in here.

They still are. It’s incessant.