“Well, what about one of the ones further away. I mean, there are plenty of proper ones aren’t there? Like the ones you took me too when I was young.”
“There are some, I suppose,” Nilda said,
pleased that her son remembered those trips. “But really, they’re just large houses. They have strong walls, but you can’t eat stone. They would have wells or streams, but those are outside the main buildings, and the old battlement walls are all long gone. If the undead came then how would we get to the water? And there’s another problem. Castles are the obvious place to go. Other people will have thought of going there first.”
“Then we trade for a place,” Jay said, waving his arms at the piles of tins on the counters and in the living room. “This is all worth more than money now.”
“We’d have to cycle. So all we’d have to trade is three bags of pet food per trip. Let’s say that they believed we had more. We’d have to leave our food with them and come back again and again and again. And then, when we’d made our last trip and almost all our food was inside, we’d have to hope they would let us back in.” She didn’t mention the risk posed by the undead that they were surely to meet travelling back and forth through the British countryside.
“Then we drive,” Jay said. “We find a van, fill it up, and take it all in one go.”
“No, we can’t,” Sebastian said. “I think zombies are attracted by noise. They would follow the sound of the engine and no one would welcome us for bringing the undead to their refuge. And even if we were to find the place empty, we would still be under siege. Assuming, of course, that we found enough petrol to get us there, and that brings us back to the problem we started with.”
“Okay, fine,” Jay said. “So what’s your idea?”
“We need somewhere close by,” Nilda said. “Somewhere we can reach by bike and where it won’t take more than a few days to move all of our things. The best I can think of is one of the farms. Perhaps we could find one with crops already planted.”
“Perhaps,” Sebastian said, “but we need water more than we need food. And we need strong walls more than we need either of those.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jay said with growing impatience. “But where?”
“St Lucian’s,” Sebastian said.
“The school?” Nilda asked.
“Exactly.”
“The big private one up on the hill?” Jay asked.
“The same. The boarding houses were evacuated a week before…” He stopped. “God, I wonder what happened to all those children?”
“Well,” Nilda said after a moment’s silence. “The schools were closed, so there might be some food there. What about water?”
“They had their playing fields dug over and a flood prevention system put in. It’s essentially a large underground reservoir to collect the rainwater.”
“So, what? Do we dig a well?”
“No. It was plumbed into the wastewater system. They were going to use it to flush toilets, irrigate the cricket pitches, that sort of thing.”
“Alright. So there’s water. What else?”
“The playing fields themselves. There’s more than enough space to turn into a farm, and not much more effort than would be required in working already ploughed fields. You know what they say about farming, that it’s ninety-percent pulling weeds and only ten-percent planting seeds; well, the pitches there are weed free.”
“Ploughing up playing fields? I don’t know. We’d have to do it by hand. There’ll be no tractors, no horses. That’s going to be a lot of work for just the three of us.”
“We’ll need more than three,” Sebastian replied, looking at Nilda. “A lot more. The school has a wall, but it only goes around the older part of the school. The newer part just has a chest-high fence. We’ll need to reinforce it, and that means work, and that means people. And, once our walls are built, we’ll need to keep them patrolled. But we need to be selective. We need to invite people to join us, not the other way around.”
They waited for Nilda to speak.
“Fine,” she said, standing up. “It’s agreed. Well, come on then. There’s no point putting it off.”
“Should we take some of the food with us?” Jay asked.
“No,” she said, “We’ll pack light, in case there are people there or… or in case we need to turn and run.”
Sebastian stood up and went over to his pack, one he’d kept ready by the door since he’d returned. He hefted it onto his shoulder. It was clearly still half full.
“Well, what are you taking, then?” Jay asked.
“Call it a precaution. I’m not being caught unprepared again.”
“And you should take this,” Nilda said, taking the replica gladius out of the cupboard under the stairs. She held it out to the older man.
He took it, nodding. “For now,” he said.
It took them an hour to get to the school. It was only a twenty-five minute walk from the terrace, but they stopped to find bicycles. Even that wouldn’t have taken quite so long if Jay didn’t refuse the first one they found on the grounds that he “wouldn’t be seen undead on a girl’s bike.”
“It’s big,” Jay said, as they dismounted outside the closed school gates. “But I was expecting… I don’t know. Something grander.”
Beyond the gate of ten-foot-high wrought iron embedded in faded red brick, they could see a car park, and beyond that, a solitary 1970s block of concrete and glass.
“The school was built long before cars were invented. The main entrance used to be over on the other side. Ah, that’s a good sign,” Sebastian said, as he lifted the chain running through the gate. “The padlock’s intact.”
“You want me to try and break it?” Jay offered.
“No,” Nilda said, suppressing a smile, “we’ll climb over.”
They left their bikes against the railing and broke into the school.
“Whoa!” Jay exclaimed, as they walked up the drive into the car park, and the school opened up before them. “That’s impressive. Is this really all a school?”
“Oh, yes,” Sebastian said. “The cricket pavilion’s over there. Behind it, you see the trees? Well, behind those is the sport’s centre.”
“You see that building, that one there?” Jay said, pointing at a monstrous redbrick and sandstone building on the far side of the car park. “That’s bigger than my entire school.”
“That’s the Lord Henry block. Big school, they called it. You know, traditionally where they taught the older children.”
“It’s like something out of a movie,” Jay said.
“A television series would be more accurate,” Sebastian replied. “Did you see that version of
To Serve Them All My Days
they broadcast at Christmas? They filmed it here. The exterior scenes, at least. No? Well, it doesn’t matter. That two-storey redbrick, that’s the staff room and offices. That newer building is the Lower School. The science block is just behind it, behind that are the Scrub Fields. Those are the sports pitches for the younger children. Art was taught across the road. You can’t see it from here. Of course, they call it Architecture and Engineering. The boarding houses are next to it.”
“And this is actually a school?” Jay asked with frank disbelief.
“You must have seen the pupils, surely?” Sebastian replied.
“In their uniforms. Sure. Wearing those straw hats and crimson blazers.”
“Oh, yes. Those. The imperial purple. Only worn by prefects. A mark of authority, you see.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.” Jay nodded, though from his tone he didn’t get the reference. “And you taught here?”
“Not really. Not anymore. Thirty years ago, they hired me to teach full time. That’s why I bought the house. I thought it was a job for life. Five years ago, they decided that classics were too… difficult for the pupils. Unnecessary for their future lives. You see, this school wasn’t for the academically gifted, more for the… financially endowed.”
“It was a place for rich parents to send their stupid sons,” Nilda summarised. “Right?”
“I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but yes. The kind not expected to work, but who were expected to be able to read and count and—”
“And know which fork to use with the salmon,” Nilda finished.
“Not quite, but examinations and academic success were not as important as the whole child.”
“I don’t know why you’re defending the place,” Nilda said. “They sacked you.”
“That wasn’t the children’s fault. It was the staff. Or the governors. Generation after generation, they took care of princes and future oligarchs. That they didn’t instil some sense of purpose was not the fault of youth.”
“But you were sacked?” Jay asked.
“They cut my hours down to a few months in the summer and a few in the autumn. That was all they thought sufficient to teach the children enough phrases that it would appear they had a deeper education than had been the case. And that was why I spent most of the year selling life insurance. Which, in one of those deliciously ironic quirks of fate, I discovered I preferred. It certainly paid more.”
“And thus were world leaders made,” Nilda finished.
“I think it was mostly the children of pop stars and other celebrities,” Sebastian corrected her.
“Who cares?” Jay asked. “I mean, seriously. So, okay, we’re here, but can we live here? Where’s the water?”
“The pump is over in The Backs.”
“Where?”
“The groundskeeper’s shed.” Sebastian pointed to the trees beyond the cricket pitch.
“Does everything have another name?” Jay asked.
“It’s an old school. Three hundred years of history. Of course, they claimed a far older pedigree than that. There was a monastery on this site back in the fourteenth century
—
”
He stopped talking. Two figures were approaching in the distance.
“Are they…?” Jay began.
“No,” Nilda said. “They’re human.”
The two figures had noticed them and stopped.
“Smile, then,” Sebastian said. He raised his arms and waved.
“Do you recognise them?” Nilda asked, as the two people got closer.
“No. Just keep smiling.”
Warily, the two small groups approached one another. The pair, a man and a woman, stopped ten paces away.
“I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Sebastian Baker.” He spoke warmly, as if this was a chance meeting on some remote island holiday. “This is Nilda and Jay.”
“I’m Tracy. This is Mark,” the woman said.
“We came here because of the water,” Sebastian said.
“The flood defences. We’re the same,” Mark said. “But we can’t figure out where to access it.”
“The pump’s over there. In The Backs,” Jay said.
“The where?” Tracy asked.
“The groundskeeper’s shed.” Jay pointed.
“You went to school here?” Mark asked.
Jay gave a snort of laughter.
“I used to teach here,” Sebastian explained.
“Ah.” Mark nodded.
They looked around at one another, each waiting for someone else to make the next move.
“Well? Shouldn’t we go and have a look at this pump then?” Jay broke the silence.
Cautiously, uncertain of each other’s intentions, they headed towards the smattering of small buildings on the edge of the school grounds.
“That’s it?” Nilda asked, staring at the mechanism. She had been expecting something more recognisable. A large cylinder, eight feet in diameter, jutted out of recently laid cement.
“That’s the pump,” Tracy said, pointing at the mechanical box at the side.
“Why’s it so large?” Jay asked.
“It didn’t need to be,” Tracy replied. “It could be about half the size and still do twice the work needed. It looks like they’ve prepped it to go into their plumbing system. I think,” she added as she opened the box and peered at the mechanism, “that they were planning on adding a water filtration plant to this, to use it for their drinking water. They didn’t, but that’s not going to be a problem.”
“So, what do you think? Is it a goer?” Mark asked her.
“I think…” She examined it. “With a car battery and, let’s see…” She bent and peered at the pipes, which tracked across the floor before disappearing into the concrete floor just before reaching the shed walls. “Yes. I think there’s a reservoir tank in one of the buildings, or underneath it, to feed the toilet cisterns. As the toilets are flushed, the tank empties. You see here?” She pointed to a dial. “When the level in that tank drops below a predetermined point, the pump kicks in and tops it up. We’re what? Twenty feet higher than the school here?”
“Yes, that’s about right,” Sebastian said.
“Right,” she said. “So it’s all gravity feed. What’s that building we passed, the large one with the white paint and red tile roof?”
“The cricket pavilion,” Sebastian said.
“Jeez, Tracy, didn’t you see the scoreboard?” Mark asked with a shake of his head.
“I think,” she said, giving him a friendly glare, “the storage tank is under there.”
“Are you an engineer?” Nilda asked.
“Close. I’m a plumber.”
“Oh.”