Read Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest Online
Authors: Frank Tayell
Tags: #Zombie Apocalypse
Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest
Surviving The Evacuation
Book 6: Harvest
Frank Tayell
Dedicated to my family
Published by Frank Tayell
Copyright 2015
All rights reserved
Whilst the journeys depicted follow a real route through our real Britain, all people, places and (especially) events are fictional.
Other titles:
Work. Rest. Repeat.
A Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novel
Surviving The Evacuation
Book 0.5: Zombies vs The Living Dead
Book 1: London
Book 2: Wasteland
Book 3: Family
Book 4: Unsafe Haven
Book 5: Reunion
Book 6: Harvest
Undead Britain
(In the charity anthology, ‘At Hell’s Gates 1’)
History’s End
(In the charity anthology, ‘At Hell’s Gates 2’)
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Synopsis
A castle can be made safe from the undead, but not from the people inside the walls.
It is eight months since the outbreak. In the anarchy and chaos that came with the undead, civilisation was destroyed. In the wars that followed, the planet was nearly ruined. Billions died. Only a few thousand survived.
Fifty people have found refuge in the Tower of London. Zombies plague the city outside the old fortress. The wasteland beyond is filled with nothing but radioactive ruins. With nowhere left to retreat to, and in a final attempt to make the ancient castle a place where they can do more than just slowly starve, the survivors take their boat west, searching for food in the abandoned coastal farms. They find something else. They discover that hunger, thirst, and the undead aren’t the only threat they face.
Betrayal and danger lurk in the shadows in this, the penultimate book in the series. It will conclude in Book 7: Home, due out later this summer.
Contents
Prologue: The Crown Jewels (the story so far)
Part 2: The Ruins of Whitehall
Epilogue: The Country of the Blind
Prelude:
Suitcases
London, 23
rd
February
“Derry? Corporal Derry? Is that you?”
Derry looked up and saw a man with a vaguely familiar face, wearing a uniform as familiar as her own. “Thompson?” she asked, and the memory came back. “That thing in the Sahara, eighteen months ago, right? And you made it to corporal, too.”
“Because of it, I think. Almost made it to sergeant, then this happened.” Thompson waved a hand, not at the other uniforms in the conference room of a hotel to the north of Whitehall, but as if to take in the chaos outside. “Zombies, can you believe it?” he asked.
“Almost,” Derry said. “Did you hear the rumour that it was a terrorist attack?”
“No,” Thompson said. “Where did you hear that?”
“Yesterday I was on duty at a supermarket. I heard it from the colour sergeant in charge of the detail. He got it from a major who used to work intelligence. He’s a solid source.”
“Right,” Thompson said, clearly weighing up how reliable that made the information. “What kind of terrorists? Fundamentalists?”
“Sounded more like someone who wants to destroy the world just to prove they can,” she said.
“Oh.” Thompson mulled that over, and shrugged. “What does it matter, right? It’s not like we’re the ones going to track them down.” He waved the piece of paper in his hand. “I’m off to an inland farm. What about you?”
“The same,” Derry said. She looked down at her own orders. “Somewhere near Dover, going by the post code.”
“Shame,” Thompson said. “Mine’s in Hampshire.”
“It’ll make a nice change from guarding supermarkets and petrol stations against looters.” She gave her head a rueful shake. “A stint in the countryside will be like a holiday.”
“Sounds like you got the short straw. I’ve just come from the British Museum. And you won’t guess why. They—” But he was cut short by a parade ground bark.
“Atten-SHUN.”
Derry’s feet snapped together as her eyes snapped to the door. A colonel had walked in. At least the man wore the uniform of a colonel. When she’d last seen him, eighteen months before and on the same mission in which she’d met Corporal Thompson, he’d been dressed as a civilian and claimed to be the same. Behind him came a woman she recognised instantly. Jenifer Masterton, an opposition MP who’d been appointed Minister for the Interior in the emergency cabinet.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Masterton said. “At ease, everyone, please. We don’t have time for those formalities. For that reason, I’ll keep this brief. Colonel Cannock has recommended all of you.” She turned to nod at the man wearing the uniform of a colonel. “He says that he has worked with you in the past, and that you are diligent, trustworthy, and loyal. Those are the qualities we need in these dangerous times. We face the very real possibility of the extinction of our country, our civilisation, and indeed, our species. To prevent this, we are establishing a series of fortified farms. Redoubts, if you will, to ensure the nation does not starve now that the global food chain has collapsed. You must protect the farmers and train them to protect themselves. It should be obvious to everyone that there will be no more imports of oil. We will be relying on manpower and…”
Derry tuned out what Masterton was saying. Despite saying she’d keep it brief, the politician was using a lot of words to say what the soldier already knew. She was to prevent the farmers, and the increasingly large number of workers, from stealing any of the food they grew. Walls would be built to keep the zombies out, and it was Derry’s responsibility to ensure any they did see were killed. It sounded like a pretty easy billet, certainly easier than acting as an executioner in the city.
“There are hard times ahead,” Masterton said, drawing her speech to a close. “But with hard work, we will have a future. Thank you.”
It was a weak ending to an odd speech, Derry thought, as the Minister left the room. It was almost as if Masterton had wanted to remind the military that the politicians were still in charge. Perhaps she had, or perhaps she wanted to remind these soldiers who were about to go out to farms where the population would soon rise from dozens to hundreds, if not thousands, that
she
was one of those politicians in charge.
“That’s it,” Cannock drawled. “You’re dismissed.”
“When are you getting to Kent?” Thompson asked. “Because I’m not leaving until tomorrow morning.”
“In an hour,” Derry said.
“Well, there’s a pub I know of near here. It’s closed, of course, but the landlord will open up for us.”
“Yeah, okay. I can spare time for a drink,” Derry said.
“Then there’s an exit round the back of the hotel. This way.”
They joined the group filing out of the door, but turned right when everyone else turned left.
“You find the ballroom,” Thompson said. “Then you take a left.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I asked the girl on the reception desk,” Thompson said. “I had a feeling this was going to be my last chance to get a decent pint for a long while. And what are they going to—” He stopped talking because ahead, they could hear voices.
“I’m surprised you didn’t want to see her,” a man said. Derry recognised it as that of the fake colonel, Cannock.
“I see enough of her as it is. Why was she here?” another man asked. Derry recognised that second voice, though she’d only previously heard it on the news. It was Sir Michael Quigley.
“To give a pep talk to the troops going to those farms you designated for the backup plan,” Cannock said.
“Good God, why?” Quigley asked.
“Who knows? I did offer to deal with her, but you insist—”
“Yes, yes. She’s my problem, not yours. Speaking of your problems, those contacts of yours… I forget the woman’s name, the one your friend works for. You’ve made arrangements for them?”
“It’s all in hand, sir.”
“And you’ve no… difficulty with that?” Quigley asked.
“It’s not personal, sir, just business,” Cannock said. “Always was.”
“Good. Good.”
The voices came through the open double doors of a ballroom. Opposite was a small meeting room. Derry pointed, and the two soldiers ducked inside. From the ballroom came the sound of footsteps, a chair being pulled from a stack, and then the rustling of paper.
“It’s getting late,” Cannock said. “We need to get back to the facility.”
“Not when there’s a chance I’ll meet Masterton on the way out,” Quigley said. “She’s not meant to know I’m in the capital.”
“Look, wouldn’t it be easier if—”
“Cannock,” Quigley said, a warning edge to his voice. “I think you sometimes forget to whom you are speaking.”
“Sir.”
“Better.” There was a pause, then a dull knocking sound as if knuckles were being rapped against a hard surface. “They look like suitcases, I suppose. Travelling cases for a musician, perhaps. That’s as good as camouflage here in the hotel.”
“And they’re safe are they?” Cannock asked.
“What do you mean by safe?” Quigley replied.
“Those cases, are they reinforced? I mean, if there was an explosion—”
“Under those circumstances,” Quigley interrupted, “their contents would be the least of our problems.”
“Just in case,” Cannock said, “wouldn’t it be best to have them moved?”
“Where to? Lenham Hill? Caulfield Hall? Or do you want to move them to the fortress? If London gets a direct hit, it won’t be the sole target. No, these will be of no use to us if we don’t have a civilisation to protect. We’ll leave them here, but we should have more than one sentry on duty. When he comes back with my coffee, we’ll go and see about doubling the guard.”
Derry met Thompson’s gaze. He understood. They didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping when the guard returned. She pointed outside and back along the corridor. They left the room, moving quietly but as casually as they could until they reached the junction, then they sped up, both trying to get away from the politician, the fake colonel, and whatever was in the ballroom.
They found themselves in the service side of the hotel, and after a few wrong turns, at an emergency exit. The fresh air felt wonderful.
“You heard what he said?” Thompson asked. “They’re expecting London to get a direct hit.”
“Not just London,” Derry said. “Having walled farms scattered across the countryside makes a lot more sense now.”
“Yeah, but who’d attack us?” Thompson asked.
“I don’t know,” Derry said. “But where’s this pub? I could really do with that drink.”
Prologue:
The Crown Jewels
(The Story So Far)
17
th
September
“It’s too heavy!” Jay said.
“It’s not,” Chester grunted as he raised the massive, gold coronation mace of King George III above his head, staggered as he realised Jay was correct, then swore as an undead hand clawed through the air an inch from his nose. He brought the mace slamming down onto the zombie’s ruined face. There was the now familiar crunch of bone, but it was accompanied by the brittle snap of breaking metal. Chester dropped the mace onto the twice-dead corpse.
“I told you it’d be too heavy,” Jay yelled as he ducked under the second zombie’s out-flung arm, swinging the crowbar at its legs.
“Yeah,” Chester said, throwing a quick glance towards Nilda’s teenage son. The boy was stabbing the sharpened end of the crowbar at the creature’s face. Chester decided Jay was in no more immediate danger than any of the fifty people who’d found sanctuary in the Tower of London seven months after the outbreak. “Well, I had to try,” he added. Designed for processions, not as a weapon, the mace was one of half a dozen that were part of the Crown Jewels exhibit. “And it’s not like we have any use for gold anymore.”
He pulled the replica from his belt. This weapon was also a mace, though it had no history. It was a two-foot long, two-inch thick, machined rod of oak topped with an eight-inch octagon of spiked metal. It had come from an exhibit demonstrating the weight of weaponry used during the Norman Conquest. Chester sized up the third and last of the zombies that had appeared on the path since the water collection crew had taken the lifeboat out onto the river. Great fissures had been torn in the desiccated skin around the zombie’s eyes. Now filled with dirt, they gave the creature a mottled, almost camouflaged look. He punched the mace forward, but the zombie ducked, and the metal smashed into its mouth rather than its forehead. Chips of brown teeth flew out as the unbalanced creature kept flailing its arms. The motion sent it toppling backwards, and its head hit the embankment wall with a resounding crack. Its arms went loose as it fell to the ground.
“Not seen that happen before,” Chester murmured. Just to be certain, he swung the mace up, and savagely down.
He looked around, confirming that only three of the living dead had somehow managed to get onto the pathway that separated the Tower of London’s outer wall from the River Thames. To the east, a path that was wider than most roads ended in a giant set of gates underneath Tower Bridge, to the west was a cafe and souvenir shop, with the gaps between blocked by iron railings and a wide, ornate gate.
“Can you see how they got in?” he asked.
Jay shook his head.
It was less than forty-eight hours since Chester and Nilda had arrived at the Tower to find forty people inside, refugees from a small rooftop community based around an old radio station near Oxford Street. It was less than twenty-four since the two of them had rescued Jay, Tuck, and the others from the roof of the British Museum. Any hope Chester had of taking a day off had vanished the evening before when Hana, the group’s de facto leader by virtue of having outlived the others, had conducted a meeting that had laid out the harsh truth of the work ahead.
“You knew Hana before, right?” Jay asked.
“Not really,” Chester said. “I first met her the day after the evacuation. Well, so did McInery. She and I were walking through London, heading towards Westminster, when we heard the sound of the pigs coming from Hana’s city farm. Although, I will admit, I thought they were cows.”
“Really?” Jay asked, amused.
“I’m a townie,” Chester said defensively. “I’m used to seeing animals sliced up, cooked, and on my plate. Anyway, McInery and I joined up with Hana, Mathias, Dev, and the others that were there. A few days after that we all heard the radio broadcast. There weren’t many places it could be coming from, so we went looking and found it was being transmitted from Kirkman House. We moved there and took the animals with us. I left soon after they started building the walkways across the rooftops. But honestly, I thought Hana, McInery, and all the rest were dead, otherwise I’d have come back to London long before now.” Or would he? He wasn’t sure.
“Instead of helping people get to Anglesey?” Jay asked. “If you’d done that, you wouldn’t have rescued Mum.”
“That wasn’t me. That was a group going up to Svalbard to see if a NATO fuel dump was still there. They picked her up on the way back to Anglesey. I just happened to be on the island when she arrived. I was looking forward to a hot shower, a warm bed, and a cold drink, probably not in that order.” He still was, but they wouldn’t be found in the Tower of London. “Our formal introduction came when she was trying to rip apart that guy who’d told her that you and Tuck were dead. Rob, wasn’t it?”
“Him. Yeah,” Jay growled. “She should have killed him.”
“She did try,” Chester said. “But killing a person isn’t like finishing off one of the undead. It isn’t something to undertake lightly, it’s…” He stopped, remembering to whom he was talking. “Look, did your Mum tell you about me, about my past, I mean?”
“She said you were a crook, and that you and McInery ran a gang.”
“Kind of.”
“I know McInery’s odd,” Jay said. “And Tuck doesn’t like her, but she helped keep everyone safe in Kirkman House. That’s what I told Mum.”
“If she did, then it was for her own reasons. She was… well, I’d say she was an underworld boss, but that’d make you think of the kind of movies where the bad guy was always the hero. It wasn’t like that. We stole. We robbed.” And yes, he’d killed. But Jay didn’t need to know about that. “We ruined lives. That’s the truth of it. For me, it was the family profession. My father was an old school thief, and not a very good one. He spent as much time inside as he did out. Maybe because of that, when I was growing up I spent most of my time with this other kid, Cannock. Now, he was the very definition of evil. I suppose it’s no surprise he ended up working for Quigley.”
“The Prime Minister, you mean?” Jay asked.
“The man might have called himself that at the end, but he never earned that position. He was responsible for the outbreak as much as anyone was, and he played his part in the chaos that came after.”
“And the vaccine. That was his idea?”
“It was,” Chester said. “But Quigley’s dead. So is Cannock.” But it was Cannock, and Chester’s association with him, that had led to him and McInery working, albeit unknowingly, for Quigley. Call it luck, chance, fate, or divine intervention, there was a thread connecting Chester with all that had happened. He knew it and felt it tugging at him even now.
“And in Wales, after you met Mum, you went back to Penrith?” Jay asked.
“To your old house,” Chester said. “We found the note you left that said you were heading to London.”
“So why did you go to Hull. I mean, why didn’t you just come straight here?”
“Because I had a satellite image of Hull,” Chester said. “And on it I saw there was a beached cruise ship with the lifeboats still hanging from the sides.” He gestured towards the boat out on the river. “I figured it’d be quicker to get here by sea than by land. It took us five days. How long did it take you and Tuck?”
“Nearly two months,” Jay said.
“There you are, then,” Chester said, though it wasn’t the whole truth behind why they had gone to Hull. The mayor of Anglesey had asked him to investigate whether the wind turbine factory in the city was still intact. It wasn’t. Chester decided that his version of the story sounded better.
“And they’ve got electricity on Anglesey?” Jay asked.
“From a nuclear power station. Probably the last one left on the planet. But that’s not much use when your principal industry is fishing, hence that trip up to Svalbard in search of oil, and how they ended up picking up your mother. N’ah,” he added, looking around. “I don’t think those zombies got in down this end.”
“According to Hana,” Jay said, “there are always more of them around in the morning.”
“That makes sense,” Chester said.
“Except,” Jay said, “when you think about it, that doesn’t make sense at all. I mean, zombies don’t care if it’s night or day, right? So why are they a problem in the mornings? Why not at sunset? Or midnight? That would be more logical.”
“It would?” Chester asked.
“Yeah. Well, they can see, right? And hear things. I mean, not well, but they do use their ears and eyes.”
“So?”
“So at night there’s nothing to see,” Jay said. “They’d be like us, stumbling around. So one zombie bangs into something, the others hear it and head towards the sound. And because these ones can’t see either, then they’d knock things over, too.”
“I think you’ve just explained how they ended up here.”
“No, see, you’re not listening,” Jay said. “I’m saying there should be more of them.”
“Well,” Chester said, trying to follow the logic and finding he couldn’t. “Just be grateful there were only three.” He looked beyond Tower Bridge to the ruined hotel the government had destroyed to form the eastern part of a barricade that stretched all the way west to Buckingham Palace. “No, they didn’t get onto the path down this end. The breach must be near the souvenir shop.” He pointed west and found his gaze drawn to the plumes of smoke rising up from inside the Tower’s wall. “It can’t have looked like this for fifty years. Maybe a hundred, but for centuries before that, cooking fires would have been normal.”
“I never knew that anyone lived here,” Jay said. “Did you?”
“You mean the warders and their families? Yeah, I came here once. That was a long time ago, mind you. I tagged onto a tour.”
“Fogerty says there were a hundred and forty of them living here when the outbreak began in February, but they were all gone when he arrived,” Jay said. Fogerty had been a warder before his retirement over a decade before and was the only living soul they’d found in the Tower. “I suppose they were all evacuated along with nearly everyone else in London,” Jay added.
“Evacuated,” Chester muttered. “Immune. Infected. Vaccine. So many words whose meanings have changed from what they were a year ago.”
“Do you know how many?” Jay asked.
“I’m sorry?” Chester hadn’t realised he’d spoken out loud.
“How many people did the government give that poison to? The one they said was a vaccine.”
“Back on Anglesey, they reckoned it was about ten million. I think that was just a guess,” Chester said.
“And how many people died because of the nuclear bombs?”
“When you add up Cornwall, the Isle of Wight, a lot of the Midlands, most of Scotland… well, it’s impossible to know. How do you distinguish between the ones killed in the blast, the others killed by the radiation, and the rest torn apart by the undead after what they’d been told was a safe enclave had been destroyed? We can only be thankful that not all the bombs fell, and that at least this part of the world is still liveable.”
“Yeah. Thankful. Right. But what I’m wondering is how many zombies there are in Britain.”
“Oh, I see,” Chester said. “Twenty million? Thirty? Forty? When you’ve got numbers like that, precision doesn’t matter. We’re never going to kill them all, so we’ve got to find a way to outlast them.”
“At least we’re safe here, and we’ve got the river, so we don’t have to worry about water,” Jay said.
“Well, yes and no. It’s tidal isn’t it, so you’ve got to wait until the water’s coming from inland. Of course, salt’s the least of our problems. The river’s full of the chemical run-off from the wrecked boats and ruined buildings, the ash from all the fires, and then there’s the undead tumbling over the broken bridges. No, it’s got to be filtered, boiled, desalinated, and distilled. Even then you don’t know how safe it is until after you’ve drunk it.”
“Which is why we should test it on the chickens,” Jay said.
“No, Hana’s right. They’re too valuable as a food source,” Chester said. He looked over at the lifeboat. Their hope was that if they gathered water from the middle, faster-flowing part of the river, it might require less purification. “And though we’ve got water, we’ve got to search for the firewood to boil it up. You spend all your time looking for one thing, and when you find it you realise you’ve run out of another. They’re waving.” He raised a hand and waved a lazy salute. The soldier, Tuck, raised a hand in return. “It was her idea to come here, wasn’t it?” Chester asked.
“That’s right. Because of the water.”
“But she’s not from London?”
“No,” Jay said. “She had a friend here. A major. I think she served with him. You know, in the Army.”
“Ah. Right.” Chester squinted at the figure in the boat. “I think she’s signalling to us.”
“N’ah, she’s signing. She’s saying they need another ten minutes.”
“That’ll give us time to find out how those zombies got in. Tell me, was it easy to learn sign language?” Chester asked. Tuck, or Lucy Tucker as she was now never called, was a soldier, though deaf and functionally mute as the result of an I.E.D. on some distant battlefield long before the outbreak.
“It’s not that difficult to learn, and there wasn’t much else to do,” Jay said. “It wasn’t like we could leave. The zombies kept marching through the streets. Don’t know where they were going, but it went on for ages. She tried teaching everyone back at Kirkman House, but no one picked up more than a few words. Except for Mrs McInery, but she knew how to sign before, you know?”