“I’d like to say no,” he said, eventually. “I’d like to make a stubborn protest. But what’s the point? If you go, others will leave. No, I don’t know if there will be anywhere safer than this, but you’re right. I’ll speak to Tracy. Come on then. No point putting it off any longer.”
They headed back to the school but ended up taking an even more circuitous route on the way back. There were far more undead on the streets. And because they were focused on the road in front they didn’t see the smoke overhead until they were just over a mile from St Lucian’s. It was black and oily.
“That’s not the bonfire,” Sebastian said. “That’s a building. The school’s on fire.”
They put on speed, heading up a slight incline, and as the road straightened once more, they saw the school. It was swarming with the undead.
“Where did they come from?” Sebastian murmured.
“What does it matter?” Nilda snapped. “We’ve got to go down there and—”
“No!” Mark said, grabbing her handlebars. “I don’t think anyone’s down there. I think they’ve gone. Look. It’s the pavilion that’s burning.”
“Then maybe they’re trapped in there and—”
“No,” Mark interrupted again. “Look at the undead. They’re all heading off towards the
west.”
“Why?”
“Because that was the plan, wasn’t it? Go to the bus depot. That was what you said this morning. And that’s where they’re heading. The zombies are following them.”
Nilda hesitated.
“But what if they didn’t all go? What if Jay’s still down there?”
“If there’s anyone hiding in the school we can’t do anything to help,” Sebastian said. “In fact, since the undead seem to be leaving, then going down there now would just endanger them further.”
“Then let’s go to the depot. Maybe we can help them.” Maybe it would be too late. She didn’t give herself time to think of that as she pushed off, cycling away from the school.
They found the undead on every other road. Only in ones or twos, but they now seemed everywhere. They didn’t stop and fight. They dodged around and past the undead, and when there were too many they doubled back and found a different route. After twenty minutes of back tracking, detours and long-cuts, they reached the motorway and found the streets on the other side as empty of the undead as they had been the day before.
“They’re not heading west. They’re going north,” Sebastian said at about the same time that Nilda realised it. The layout of the roads had funnelled the undead, leading them to misjudge the direction of their passage.
“Well, should we follow them?” Mark asked, his voice tinged with uncertainty and fear.
“No, we’ll go to the depot first. I’m sure that’s where everyone’s gone.” She wasn’t. But she hoped that if she sounded confident she might believe it herself.
They set off once more. Nilda put everything she had into coaxing a little more speed out of the bike, desperate to reach her destination and find her son.
When they reached the bus depot, they thought it was deserted until Tracy appeared in a doorway to the side of the main garage. She ran out to meet them.
“What happened?” Mark asked.
“A car,” Tracy said, flatly. “A group of people in a car. They must have seen the bonfire and been heading towards it. The undead followed. Hundreds of them. One minute the road was clear, then there was the sound of the engine, and then there were the undead. Hundreds of them, all heading towards us.”
“Where is everyone?” Nilda asked.
“Inside. Some are missing, but most of us made it this far.”
“And the pavilion? What happened? Why is it on fire?” Mark asked as Nilda pushed her way past Tracy and into the building.
“Someone set it on fire. I don’t know who. Maybe it was an accident,” Tracy said, but Nilda was no longer listening.
“Where’s Jay?” she demanded. “Where’s my son?”
“He…” Tracy looked around, as if hoping to see the boy. “When it was clear the zombies were following us, he led them away. Him, Tuck, and Rob.”
“You mean he’s still out there?” Nilda pushed past them, heading across the empty car park back towards the town. She’d reached the gates when she saw Rob walking slowly down the street. He had a pack on his shoulder, the shotgun in his hands.
“What happened? Where’s Jay?” she yelled.
“I’m sorry,” Rob said. “We were surrounded. He’s dead.”
It felt as if a weight had slammed into her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She collapsed and was caught by Sebastian. He, Mark, and Tracy had followed her across the car park.
“Tuck too,” Rob added. “Your kid went to help her. They got swarmed. Sorry.”
“No,” Nilda screamed, struggling against the hands gripping her. “No. No. No. I’ve got to go and find him. He can’t be… He can’t be…” She didn’t want to say the word. That would make it all too real. And it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be true.
“Nilda, no! You can’t.” Sebastian tried to hold her back, but a moment later she was free and running down the road, and towards the undead.
With no destination in mind, she ran blindly through the streets until, rounding a corner, she saw three of the undead. Uncertain, she stopped, jogging on the spot for a moment before sprinting on, around one, past another, dodging the third, and she was past them and heading on into the town. She turned another corner. A pack of the undead were moving along it, away from her. She wanted to keep running, she wanted to run straight through them until she found her son. Self-preservation told her to stop. But she couldn’t stop. She turned around and ran back down the road to an alley. She pushed her way through and over a cluster of half rotten mattresses and out the other side, right in front of a pack of the undead. This time they saw her. She darted across the road and down another alley. Halfway along a creature lunged out of the lee of a doorway. With barely a pause she reached out and grabbed its head, slamming it into the brick wall. She didn’t stop to see if it was dead.
She reached the end of the alley, turned, and found herself on another road, one that seemed more familiar, but which was full of the undead. This was no pack of ten or twenty, this was a small army of hundreds of walking corpses pushing and shoving and milling their way down the street. They were heading towards her, the nearest only four hundred yards away. And there, just behind the front rank of snarling snapping monsters, she saw a red and blue scarf, caught by the wind, twist up over their heads. She stopped dead in her tracks. There it was again. The scarf. Jay’s scarf. Jay was there. He was dead. No, he was one of the undead.
She tried to see his face, tried to find it amongst the snarling mass of death moving inexorably closer. There. Was it him? She couldn’t be certain until she saw the firefighter’s jacket the creature was wearing. It was just the same as the one she’d insisted her son wore. And then, as creatures pushed and shoved and tumbled against one another, the figure was lost from sight. All she clearly saw was that scarf, waving above them like some mocking flag.
She screamed. She bellowed with frustrated grief. Her fists balled as her muscles bunched, and someone tackled her from behind, knocking her to the ground. She turned expecting to see a zombie’s snarling face. It wasn’t. It was Sebastian.
“Nilda. Please. Come on, or we’ll both die,” he pleaded with her.
“Jay!” she growled.
“Please, Nilda, please.”
“His scarf!” she wailed plaintively.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said softly. “Come on.”
Her growl turned into a sob as he helped her up. With one hand firmly gripping her arm, the other holding an axe, the head dripping with red-brown ooze, he led her away.
An hour later, Nilda sat in the corner of the bus depot, silent. Sebastian sat next to her. Everyone else was just as quiet, all occasionally throwing glances her way.
“Alright, look, I am sorry,” Rob said again. He didn’t sound apologetic. “But we can’t just sit here. We need a plan. I reckon—”
“Ireland,” Tracy said, cutting him off. That’s our plan. Or one of the small islands in the Irish Sea. Somewhere with no zombies. That’s the only place that’s going to be safe. To get there we need boats. And we’ll find those at the coast. That’s where we’ll head.”
“And what about the government—” Rob began.
“No,” Tracy interrupted, firmly. “Tuck was certain about that. The government’s gone. We’ll avoid the enclaves and go north until we reach Carlisle, then we can either go west or up into Scotland. Either way, we’ll follow the coast until we find a boat.”
“And how exactly are we going to do that? Unless you hadn’t noticed,” he waved his hand around to take in the empty garage, “there aren’t any buses here.”
“Engines would be no good. You saw what happened at the school when those zombies all followed that car in. No, we’ll cycle. We’ve all got bikes.”
“I haven’t,” Rob said.
“Then you better go and find one. There were a couple chained up on the street outside. Because tomorrow, at first light, we’re heading west. We’ll follow the train line north and we’ll see where that leads us. We’ll get off the mainland. Then we’ll be safe.”
She said it with such certainty that most people, taking comfort in the words of someone who sounded like they had a plan, nodded their heads. Most people.
“That’s got to be two hundred miles,” Andrew Harper stated. “Let’s just cut across the Lake District.”
“Did you bring food with you? Did anyone? No? I thought not. Once we’re clear of the town we’ll need to find more. We’ll only find it near civilisation. We have to stick to the roads and railways. At least for now.”
“But it’s too far,” Mr Harper said. “We won’t make it.”
“We have to,” Tracy said, “because we can’t stay here.”
21
st
March
“Everyone up. Hurry,” Tracy called out softly, moving from person to person, pushing and pulling them to their feet. “Ten minutes, and we’re moving out.”
Nilda was awake. She hadn’t slept.
It took a long time to get everyone ready and outside. Or it seemed that way to Nilda. She watched everyone, seemingly in slow motion, grab their gear and try and organise themselves. The Harpers were the slowest of all. The children looked scared, perched on frames too large for them. Nilda watched their mother comfort them. She wanted to go over and tell them that the problem with Jay’s saddle was that it was too high. No, that wasn’t Jay… what was the boy’s name? She tried to remember. She couldn’t. She turned away. Her eyes fell on the road leading into town. Should she go back? She was still considering it when a steady hand fell on her shoulder.
“Come on.” It was Sebastian. He moved her over to the bike. A moment later she found that she was sitting on it, Sebastian on one side, Mark on the other. They pushed and dragged and cajoled until she began to pedal.
Cycling was easy. It was mechanical. She found it required no thought and gave her no time to think. She pedalled harder and faster. Feet turned to yards, road turned to rail, and they were cycling two abreast along the embankment. And soon after that, she was at the front. Rob put on speed to keep up. Tracy did the same. Yards turned to a mile, and then two.
Soon the ragged group was strung out on the railway line. Sebastian and Mark were at the back with the Harpers and a few others. Nilda was at the front, Tracy at her side, Rob and his gang trying to keep up.
“We need to slow down,” Tracy said.
Nilda heard the words, but she didn’t want to stop. She wasn’t sure she knew how.
“Nilda?” Tracy called again, a few minutes and a hundred yards later. “We need to slow down. Let the others catch up.”
“If they can’t keep up, they’re not trying hard enough,” Rob panted.
“Nilda,” Tracy began again, but was interrupted by a child’s scream coming from behind them. The sound cut through Nilda’s veil of grief. She stopped and looked behind. The rear half of their group was out of sight.
“Was that—” There it was again, a pitiful wail of pain and fear. She glanced over at Tracy and saw on her face the fear that she too had lost someone she loved.
“We have to help them,” Nilda said to Tracy, to Rob, to herself, and to no one as she began cycling back along the tracks. There was a third, more guttural scream, and a moment later it was Tracy’s turn to put on a manic burst of speed. She shot past, overtaking Nilda.
The tracks curved, and Nilda saw the other half of the group. They were half a mile away and they were surrounded. A dozen undead were on the tracks in front, another dozen behind and more than she could easily count spilling up the embankment from either side.
Tracy was two hundred yards ahead and getting further away with each second. Nilda followed, trying to catch up, but found she couldn’t match the other woman’s desperate acceleration.
She kept her eyes fixed on the group. They had formed a rough circle. The two children were in the centre, the adults ringed around them, fending off the undead. There were too many zombies that they could defeat them but, she thought, if she and Tracy and Rob and the others could just get there in time, maybe they would still all be able to escape.