Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey (22 page)

“So what do we do differently?” Kim asked.

“That’s the wrong question,” I said. “It’s not about
what
but
how
. How do we do things differently? I’ve no idea. You’re right. This, here, is it.
We
are it. This isn’t civilisation, but it’s the only seed out of which it will grow. The trial, the election, that will be a distraction. It’ll hold things together for a few more weeks, but nothing more, and we sorely need something more. I don’t know what, but we have to come together as a proper community, not just a collection of individuals with our individual dreams.”

“And that was what I was trying to do,” Mary said. She cleared her throat and forced some resolve back into her voice. “I suppose I shall just have to try harder. We all will. As you say, people need to know what happened. We should tell them. We should tell everyone. There needs to be a formal meeting. Dr Knight, Mister Mills, myself, and… no, I don’t think you should be there, Admiral Gunderson. This isn’t the time to introduce you. Captain Devine, I think you should be there as an officer of the law, albeit a now-defunct one. I would like to present the evidence that was gathered which proves Paul’s guilt.”

Devine narrowed her eyes. “I’ll present the evidence,” she said, and I noted the omission, “but even that would prejudice any trial.”

“It’s already prejudiced,” the admiral said, finally breaking her impartial silence. “The woman will be found innocent, so let’s keep the peace. Do you have printers? Ink? Can you run up a statement that can be handed out? Something that will stop fear spreading?”

“I can manage that,” I said.

“And this morning you said something about a radio station,” the admiral said.

“We don’t have one yet,” Kim said. “I wanted to build one.”

“Pity,” the admiral said. “It would have been useful.”

“It’s one more thing that must be done,” Mary said. “One more thing on an increasingly long list.”

Chapter 11 - Anglesey

3
rd
September, Day 175

Kim was up before me, but then I’d sat up for half the night trying to square the three-dimensional polygon that was our current societal mess.

“Sholto and Annette went into town,” Kim said as I came into the kitchen. “Annette has a plan, and she roped in your brother. I’m not sure what she’s up to, but they took Daisy.”

“Ah.” I opened the cupboard. There was one teabag left. The coffee jar was empty. I sighed, and poured a glass of water from the tap. “On any other day, I’d say we should take advantage of the solitude and do something, just the two of us.”

“Any other day,” she echoed.

The public meeting had been a haphazard affair, taking place in the embarkation lounge of the ferry terminal. To an audience of less than a hundred, Mary had given a speech, Devine had presented her evidence, and Dr Knight had given a brief statement of an even briefer analysis of Llewellyn’s body. By the time Mister Mills stood to offer a few pro forma words on law and order, news had spread among the boats, more people had come ashore, and Mary had had to start again. She’d given the same speech five times, and answered the same questions just as often, before the crowd finally thinned. I’d run up a few thousand copies of a short statement that echoed Mary’s words, but doubted it had done little beyond fanning the flames of suspicious interest.

“Can we hold things together?” Kim asked.

“Sure,” I said. “For now. You’re right and wrong about civilisation. Whatever survives here, however democratic or dystopian, and however large a population it has, it will
be
civilisation. As to whether we can forge something no worse than what we had a year ago, we’ll know in a few weeks. There’s a bigger problem looming. It’s something I didn’t think about until George mentioned it, but it’s not been far from my mind since. We have a generational gap. Two hundred and seventy children. In twenty years—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “But that’s a problem to which there’s an obvious solution. Just not an immediate one. The immediate problem…” She opened a cupboard, then another. “We can’t leave, simply because there’s nowhere within range of a sailing ship we can reach. Not that we have a sailing ship. So if we’re staying, we need more supplies. Organising an election should entitle you to something.”

“I’ll write it into the rules,” I said, only half sarcastically.

“Then, in the meantime, let’s see if we can blag some coffee from the bakery. I want to go down to the harbour, anyway.”

“You do? Why?” I asked.

“To see how many boats are there. I bet a lot left with the first tide and have no intention of coming back.”

I froze with my hand halfway to my belt. There’d been no sound or other hint of immediate danger, I’d just realised how automatic it had become to leave the house armed. I buckled the belt, and then reached to the shelf above the door where we kept the ammunition out of reach of Daisy.

I sighed. “Yeah, whatever this is, however good or bad, it really is all we have. We’ve got to make it work,” I said. “We really do.”

It was a beautiful morning. There were enough clouds to give shade, but not so many as to dull the late summer heat. The hedges and trees were still green, the birds still flying, though I thought there were more robins and fewer starlings than when we’d first arrived. I made a mental note to ask someone whether that might be due to migration, or whether it implied something else. It was promptly forgotten as Kim and I talked around and about the murder, the trial, the island, and the future. Having reached no conclusions satisfactory to either of us, conversation turned to the election. I outlined the plans I’d reached and how I thought they could be adapted to help in our current situation.

“I don’t like it,” Kim said. “If people want to stay on a ship, they should be able to.”

“I’m not saying they can’t,” I said. “What I’m saying is that to register to vote you’ll need an address on shore. It doesn’t mean you have to live there. It could be a nominal address. The bakery, the pub even.”

“That’s another problem that needs a solution,” Kim said. “Because I bet they’d charge people for the privilege of registering to vote from there. No, scratch that, what I think Markus will actually do is use that as a way of engineering it so his candidates win.”

“Perhaps. I’d not thought of that. I’d thought it might get another few hundred off their boats and into houses.”

“It’s not worth it,” Kim said. “Not for adding conditions to someone’s eligibility to vote. Especially not when it might hand control to Markus. What are we going to do about him?”

“What can we do? There’s no evidence suggesting he was involved. And… I don’t know why, but I don’t think he had anything to do with David Llewellyn’s murder. He seemed genuinely shocked. And his first instinct was to help the old man after George was shot.”

“Rachel didn’t shoot Paul in self-defence,” Kim said. “Whatever the reason is, Markus has to know. It has to be something to do with the pub, and that should be enough to have it shut down.”

“Not if she’s found not guilty,” I said. The incident came back to me. “She seemed shocked. Afterwards, I mean. It’s an odd emotion.”

“Is it?”

“I think so. I’m not sure. I should find some time to talk to Captain Devine. Or perhaps to Dr Umbert. Perhaps there’s a psychological explanation to… to…” I trailed into silence.

We were two streets away from the harbour, but there were more people about than usual. Their numbers could be counted in dozens, not hundreds, but it was still far more than we’d ordinarily see. I smiled a greeting and got a nod in return.

“What’s going on?” Kim murmured.

We found the answer in the old charity shop opposite the bakery. Three flat-screens had been set up in the window. Outside was a small crowd of people. I craned to see over them.

“Satellite images,” I murmured. Under the screens were pieces of card, with Blackpool, New York, and Belfast written on them in a very familiar hand. Near the door was a whiteboard with the instruction ‘Right down your address and we’ll find the picture.’

“I recognise the handwriting,” I said.

“I recognise the spelling,” Kim said.

Underneath the misspelled missive was a long list of place names. Some were in Britain, but most were elsewhere. We pushed our way to the door, and I pushed it open just as Annette pushed her way through the crowd inside. In her arms was another flat-screen.

“Oh, cool, you’re here. You can help,” she said, shoving the screen into my hands.

“What with?” I asked.

“We need to expand next door,” she said. “There’s not enough room in here.”

“What for?” I asked.

“The satellites,” she said.

“Could we have a little more explanation than that?” Kim asked.

“Come in, then. I can spare you five minutes,” Annette said. Kim and I shared a glance that was as much confusion as it was amusement.

It looked as if the contents of the shop had long since been stripped. The racks and shelves had been haphazardly stacked at the rear. In the middle were a row of tables on which were flat-screens. Behind the counter was a stack of tower-units, with cables trailing this way and that. My brother was on his hands and knees, coaxing a wire through the door leading to the back room.

“You need some air conditioning in here,” Kim said, wiping the sweat from her brow.

“Tell me about it,” Annette said.

“And why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” I said.

“It’s the satellites,” she said, gesturing at the screens in the middle of the room. In front of each was a cluster of almost transfixed people.

“Satellite images of where?” I asked.

“Everywhere,” Annette said.

“Mostly New York and the East Coast of the U.S.,” Sholto called out from the floor. “A wide swathe of the ocean. Belfast and the area around the airport, and Hull and a hundred square miles of the northeast English coast. It’s the images we downloaded before the satellites were repositioned to track the hordes.”

I took another look at the nearest screen. It showed three very square blocks of housing perfectly divided by wide roads. I guessed it was somewhere in New York. The roads were full of stalled traffic, but otherwise I couldn’t see anything of interest.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s what we decided,” Annette said. “We talked about it, didn’t we? You were going to sort out the drones, and Kim was going to build the radio, so I’m finding the survivors.”

“By looking at satellite pictures?” I asked.

“We look at the images, and then we mark them off on the maps.” Annette gestured to the stack of atlases and road maps on the table near the wall. “Anything that looks like it might be people gets noted down. We’re going to draw up a list so, when we can change the orbit of the satellite, we’ll know where to look.”

“Why here?” Kim asked. “Why not at home?”

Annette pointed to the crowd outside. “I thought people might be interested. I was right.”

“We have to start somewhere,” Sholto said. “So let’s start with what we’ve got.” I sensed he wasn’t talking about the satellites. I’d not seen much of him after the shooting. In retrospect, I realised that I should have made time. He was the one who’d almost been shot, after all. Whether this was how he was dealing with it, or whether he’d come to some deeper understanding of our situation, he’d found a way to work through it. And what he was working on was far more productive than my fretting over the future.

“You did this yourself?” I asked.

“Oh no,” Annette said. “Thaddeus helped.”

“Helped?” he muttered, taking a pair of wire-strippers to the cable’s plastic coating.

I glanced around the room again, then out the window. It had seemed like a lot of people. In truth it was about thirty, but that was still significant. People were looking at the screens, writing down a location on the board, and then drifting away. I remembered what Lorraine had said on our boat ride to Caernarfon, that a few weeks before, everyone had feared Quigley’s submarine would kill them all. What people had needed was hope. I, George, Mary, all of us who had claimed some portion of leadership, had failed to provide it. Here it was. It was small, almost to the point of insignificance. Almost, but it was tangible. It wasn’t the hope that some relative’s home might be found intact and full of life. It was simply the knowledge that there was a world beyond the island. Ruined, wrecked, yet still there. All those grand schemes for elections and economies, currency and constitutions, they were important, but too abstract. The images shone a light on the terror that had gripped each of us since the power first went out. It was why the journal had been so popular. It provided proof, of a sort, where before there had only been rumours and hearsay. An image on a screen was believable. It was understandable. The image on the screen immediately in front of us certainly was.

“Which airport is that?” Kim asked.

“Belfast International,” an Australian voice said. I realised the man standing right in front of me was Scott Higson, the baker.

“That’s where there’s helicopters, and tankers full of aviation fuel?” I asked.

“That’s it,” he said. “You can’t see them from here, they’re a mile to the south.”

“Can we drag the image—” I began, reaching for the mouse.

“Of course not,” Annette said, in her almost perfect imitation of Kim. “Honestly, Bill. It’s not like an internet map. It’s just pictures that we’ve downloaded. We need special software to stitch them together before you can…” Her eyes narrowed as she tried to remember the explanation she’d been given. “You know, before you can click and drag and stuff. You can’t expect us to have done that as well.”

“Fair enough,” Kim said. “So what’s so interesting about the runway?”

“Do you see it?” Higson asked.

“The runway? Sure,” I said.

“That’s my point,” Higson said. “You can see it.”

“Not all of it,” Kim said. “A couple of jets have crashed halfway along.”

“That’s a Boeing 757, and that one, that’s an Airbus A320,” Higson said. “So the question is how wide is the gap between the wings. You can see the damage to the Boeing’s tail section. And do you see the shadow under the Airbus? Its undercarriage has collapsed.”

I peered at the screen, uncertain which shadow I was looking at.

“You mean you can’t fly them?” Kim asked.

“I can fly anything,” Higson said, “as long as it’s airworthy, but those two aren’t. No, it’s a matter of clearance. That’s why I was looking here, at the hangar. I’m positive that’s an old VC10.”

“I’m lost,” I said, and realised that everyone inside the room was listening.

“It’s a supply plane,” Higson said. “The RAF used them for refuelling and transport. They were retired from service a few years back, but I’m sure that’s what it is. Begs the question of how it ended up there, of course. Must have arrived during the quarantine, otherwise why’d it be in a hangar? I reckon someone started taxiing it out onto the runway, then changed their mind.”

Now conscious of my audience, I chose my words with care. “And why is that plane important?”