Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest (20 page)

There it was, a sign with directions to both the bridge and the tunnel, though he was resolute that he’d never go underground again. There was another sign on the post, one pointing to the Littlebrook Power Station.

He wasn’t sure whether it would have been destroyed during the mutiny and war after the outbreak, but he thought he remembered seeing a pier jutting out into the river during his journey into London with Nilda. If there was a pier, and if it was undamaged, then they could berth the lifeboat there. Yes, they could drive the coach right up to the river’s edge, using its bulk to protect the children as they climbed out. A narrow jetty would be easier to defend than some broad stretch of water, and a pier with deep water would negate the risk of beaching the craft on some stretch of stony shingle. He stared at the long road ahead and then down at his the knife in his belt. It was worth a ten-minute detour, and he might find a weapon, or at least a handy swingable length of metal.

As he wheeled the bike towards the power plant, and to keep his mind off his increasingly sodden foot, he tried to recall the few scraps he’d ever known about Littlebrook. It was designed to operate from a black start. Should the entire country suffer from a national power outage, they could turn that station on and use the electricity it generated to restart the other power plants in the network. It had originally been a coal burning facility, but had been converted to gas. Or was it oil? Weren’t the buildings close to the river part of the old coal plant complex? He wasn’t sure, but if they were, then wasn’t there a chance the gas, or oil, plant would still be intact? Probably not, but a sudden flickering glimmer of hope sparked as he imagined the castle and Tower Bridge lit up once more. Electricity meant so much more than just light and heat and would mean so much more could be done in London. There was a chance, a small one, he told himself, and he tried to believe it. When he reached the access road leading to the main gates, he saw there was nothing but craters and rubble, and heard nothing but that mournful wheeze of the undead.

He climbed up a wide hoarding advertising a regeneration project ‘coming soon’, and saw the jetty, and that it could be reached by a vehicle driving through the main gates. A three-foot long section of pipe had been embedded into the poster two feet to the left. He tried to pull it free. It was stuck fast. He gave up, jumped down, and grabbed the bike. He was about to head straight for the bridge when he saw a sign denoting the property to the south as the local council’s road maintenance vehicle park. If weapons were tools, he thought, then tools were weapons. From his recent experience, they were often more practical than those designed for nothing more than hacking and hewing.

He pushed the bike over to the gates. The padlock was still in place, but the chain link fence surrounding it had been cut. Chester nudged the gate. It swung open.

Arrayed before him were row upon row of vehicles. Those near the front gates were still neatly parked. The ones near the power station had been shoved into disarray by flying rubble and the twisted remains of what looked almost like an aeroplane turbine. Street-sweepers, gritters, ploughs and flatbeds, vans and trucks of almost every size filled the space. And the first thing he noticed on each was that the caps had been removed from the fuel tanks. He walked over to the vehicle nearest the entrance, a truck with a plough at the front and a hopper at the back. When he pulled himself up, he found it was still half full of salt. He wandered down the ranks of vehicles until he spotted one with a score of wooden handles sticking out from under a tarpaulin. He grabbed one. A shovel. The blade was pitted, the edge coated with a thin layer of hard dirt. He gave it an experimental swing. It had a reassuring heft.

As he was cutting a strip out of the tarp to use as a strap, he heard a clatter from the direction of the power station. He ripped the material free, tied the ends to the shovel, and slung it over his back. It would do. A heavy drop of rain fell on the back of his neck. He’d run out of time.

The bridge loomed large in front, the far end invisible in the growing rain.

“It can’t be more than five hundred metres. Yeah. That’s all it is. Five hundred metres. Probably less.” He repeated the words softly as he wheeled the bike up the sloping road on the southern side. He knew that didn’t include the approach road he was on now, nor the one at the other side, but repeated the number anyway until he was interrupted by a loud banging scrape. He turned around. Twenty yards back down the road a zombie stumbled against the side of a bright blue two-seater. He could just make out the ghoulish outlines of more staggering through the pouring rain, but it fell too heavily to count their numbers.

“Probably a good thing. Not that it matters. There’s no going back now.” He began pedalling. “Five hundred metres, I can do it.” As it had done so many times, his hand dropped to his pocket, checking again that the revolver was there. He only had twenty-three cartridges left, but it didn’t matter. There wouldn’t be time to reload.

As he began to pick up speed, he stood up on the pedals to get a better view of the bridge ahead. Visibility wasn’t great, and the angle was worse. It looked packed with cars, trucks, and vehicles of every type. Some near the meridian, others abandoned precariously close to the edge. He sat down again, trying to find a balance between speed and the increasingly wet surface. He wished for lightning. He wished for thunder, not this gentle, persistent drizzle that was more like a mist. He wished he was somewhere warm and dry and safe, but he’d wished for that enough times in his life to know that wishes counted for nothing.

There, behind the van, a zombie. No. Two. Heading towards him, but the road was wide. He swerved to the left, and then he was safely past.

“Four-fifty,” he hissed, hoping he was right.

Another van, another zombie, another abrupt swerve. Then a pack of cars parked in a semi-circle, and inside clawing and pawing and pushing the cars out of the way, a dozen undead. There was no room to dodge. He tried for speed. The lead zombie squeezed through an impossibly small gap between two bumpers, tearing the muscles from its leg. When it got through and out into the clear road, it toppled forward, and its outstretched arms flew out to smack down on the pavement. Chester lowered the hand he’d raised to fend off the creature, and turned his attention to the road.

“Four hundred. Maybe less. Must be less.” And though he knew that was beyond optimistic, he found comfort in the lie. He unslung the shovel from his back, laying it across the handlebars, and found more comfort in having the weapon close at hand. Ahead was a post office lorry skewed onto its side. The rear doors were open, and huge sacks had fallen out. Slowing to pick a path between the bags, and distracted by what they might contain, he almost cycled straight into the trio of undead lurking behind the vehicle.

He barely had time to raise the shovel and swing. Two of the zombies fell with a near comical ringing of metal as the flat of the tool hit their heads. The third lurched forward, tripped. Its fingers tangled in the spokes. The bike toppled. Chester flew off, landing in a rolling heap, pulling himself up, running to the bike, kicking the zombie clear, pushing and running until he had the space to mount and start peddling again.

“Three-fifty,” he yelled, and wished he hadn’t. Ahead were more undead lurching slowly through the mist. He dodged one, then another, and narrowly missed a third that clawed at his arm. It was like a burning dagger arcing across his skin as fresh cuts were added to old scars.

“Three hundred metres,” he said, and found his voice absent of all reassurance. Despite his intentions, he found himself glancing up at the great cables above.

“No, two-fifty,” he said. He was halfway across, and halfway was almost there.

Ahead, an ice cream van had crashed into a car. Remembering what had happened at the post-office lorry, he slowed, swerving wide. The van had been roughly reinforced with metal sheets added to the windows. Had they used the van’s musical siren to lure the undead from the south or north? He didn’t have time to give it any more thought because he’d been right; there were undead hidden behind the crashed van. He pushed down. The chain caught against a gear. He glanced down, and when he looked up he didn’t have time to swerve. The zombie staggered straight into him. The handlebars hit it in the chest.

As Chester threw himself off to the side, he saw one of its legs go straight through the spokes of the front wheel. Chunks of flesh were torn off, and the creature collapsed in a gory heap, but that was little comfort. Chester landed hard but managed to keep hold of the shovel. He came up swinging, knocking one down, another back, and he had space to walk. A low swiping hack at a zombie’s knees, and there was a gap between the forest of grasping hands. He ran. They seemed to be everywhere. He kept swinging left and right, sometimes high, sometimes low, smashing shoulder and shovel, arm and sometimes head into the heaving mass of teeth and clawed hands.

He realised he was limping. The tape holding his right shoe together was falling apart. Each blow had less strength than the last, and he was doing little more than pushing the creatures back. That meant that they were close behind, and his limping lope wasn’t much faster than their lurching stagger. But he could see the end of the bridge. He was almost there.

The shovel fell to his side, and he pushed it against the concrete like a crutch as he pulled the revolver from his pocket. He’d slowed to barely faster than a walk. A zombie toppled out of the mist in front of him. Before he had time to think, the revolver was raised, barking a quick shot at the creature. It hit. The zombie fell. Another zombie. Another shot.

He wasn’t going to make it. How many times had he fired? How many bullets did he have left? Would he have time to reload? He remembered the soldier, Derry, dead in the house near the mansion. A squall blew across the bridge, and he staggered sideways, his gaze tracked towards the bridge’s sides, his mind to the quick death that a leap through the broken barrier would bring. No, that wasn’t an option. He had to make it. Not for him, he realised in a sudden moment of clarity, not out of redemption or an attempt to balance some mythical scales, but because there truly was no one else. Those children’s lives depended on him. His life, his existence, came down to the simple truth that saving people
was
his life. All that had gone before wasn’t prologue so much as prelude, now forgotten and irrelevant to the future save that it gave him the skills to ensure those children had one.

He fired again, and started to run, kicking down, and shaking his foot with each upward stride until the tattered remains of the shoe fell away. He fired again. And again. There was one shot left. He raised the pistol, waving the barrel left and right. There was nothing left to shoot at, so he just kept running.

He came to a stumbling halt thirty minutes later, though not because of the undead. As he cracked open the revolver and reloaded, he listened and looked. He could hear them, but there were none in sight. He raised the shovel and broke the glass. Careful not to cut his foot on the broken shards, he stepped over the window display and into the shoe-shop. Revolver raised, he peered into the gloom, expecting some creature to stumble out of the dark. But it was empty.

It took nearly five minutes to find a pair of shoes his size; trainers in bright green with lurid red stripes along the side. They fit, and were wonderfully comfortable. When he went outside again, there were three zombies in the street. He didn’t care. He picked up the shovel, and started running west towards the Tower of London.

Part 4:

Harvest

22
nd
September

Nilda continued her slow circuit of the battlements in the hope exercise would create an appetite for dinner. It was three days since she and Jay had left Chester at that beach, two days since she’d taken that larger group back to Kent and found the undead surrounding the lifeboat.

She ran forward a dozen steps, stopped, and looked at her leg. One of the scabs had re-opened, but otherwise it seemed fine. The previous day she’d taken the boat out again, but this time with a larger group of twenty. They’d all been eager volunteers, and the atmosphere had been one of joyous expectation. They’d returned early, almost empty-handed and soaked from the rain. Worse than empty-handed, really, since the few dozen scrubby turnips they’d pulled out of an allotment on their last trip ashore did not make up for the fuel they’d expended. They’d not made it as far as the raft that time and she saw no point in going back that way again. Chester would turn up, she was sure of that. It was a just a matter of where and when. During the long, sleepless night, she’d imagined him bumping into an expedition from Anglesey out on their own quest to harvest fruit from the farms in Kent. She could see him sailing down the river at the head of a fleet of battered trawlers and giant ferries. It had been a pleasant delusion, but it was dangerous to place trust in wild hopes.

Each day meant nearly a quarter of a million kilojoules consumed. They could reduce that number by eating the animals, but with no spare electricity to power the freezers, they had to eat the meat as soon as they were slaughtered. There had been talk of salting and smoking, but as yet that was just talk. She understood now why their meals had been so bland and unappetising. Stewart had been stretching out every morsel. They would have to start on the stores soon, and that would be the end of her other hope, that Jay could have a future here independent of Anglesey.

She sighed, and continued the walk around the walls. Food was only half of the problem. When they’d returned yesterday, she’d checked over the lifeboat’s excuse for instruments and found they’d burned through twice as much fuel as she’d expected. Whether that was due to a leak or a problem with the engine, she didn’t know. It left them with enough to make two fifty-mile round trips in the boat. Probably. One hundred miles, and after that they’d be reliant on oars and tides.

Not wanting to raise any further panic, she’d kept that news to herself, even after McInery had suggested they use the remaining diesel to drive to Anglesey. Insisted would be a better word, she thought. And she’d proposed that they go back to Westminster and try and get a couple of the Armoured Personnel Carriers working. McInery’s idea was that it would somehow be safer for a larger group of ten or twenty to try and make the trip to Wales. Nilda didn’t agree. For all of Chester’s talk of it being, at worst, perhaps three weeks before a boat could arrive, she couldn’t help remember that it had taken Jay and Tuck nearly two months to get to London from Penrith. That was about the same distance to the Welsh island. There was little chance such a large number of people would find supplies out on the road, and so the only purpose in them even attempting the expedition was to reduce the strain on the supplies for those who stayed behind.

As sure as she was of that, she was just as sure that someone had to leave for Anglesey and do it soon. The obvious candidates were Tuck and Jay as they had the most experience in travelling through the undead countryside. Since Nilda wasn’t going to let Jay out of her sight again, that meant she’d have to go too.

She stopped pacing. They’d run out of time. They’d run out of food. There were no good choices left. All that remained was a question of which was the lesser risk: starvation or the undead. The mood was changing with the weather. Despite Fogerty and his cheerful stories, Hana and her incessant upbeat positivity, and Stewart’s insistence that everything would be okay, each passing hour saw the fragile sense of community ebb away. Finally, and months too late, everyone seemed to grasp how tenuous their situation was.

“Rome wasn’t sacked in a day,” she murmured. That was something Sebastian had often said. Speaking the words aloud stiffened her resolve. There was no knowing how long it would take for a boat to reach them. The undead were a danger that could be escaped, but hunger and what it would bring were not. Thus, as much as she distrusted the intentions of those she met on that island, Jay would be safer on the road than here. She started pacing again.

This idea of the Tower, of a castle, the same one that she’d had all those months ago back in Penrith, would be over. Perhaps if they had come here in March rather than trying to cling on in Northumberland, it might have worked, but probably not.

She would prefer to wait until the skies cleared, but no, there had been too much waiting. Perhaps it would be best to leave at night and not tell anyone else. Tonight, in fact. Then there would be no… be no… Was that a figure running towards the walls?

She ran along the battlements until she reached the ropes hanging down the side, waving her arms to get the figure’s attention. And then she saw it was Chester. She called and shouted, and by the time he reached the base of the outer wall there were half a dozen people on the battlements. He grabbed a rope, and that seemed to be all that he had strength to do. They hauled him up.

“Chester!” Nilda raised her arms, about to hug him, but stopped when she saw the state of his clothes.

“Yeah, not a pretty sight,” he said, pulling off the ruined jacket and dropping it to the battlements.

“Nice shoes,” Jay said.

Nilda looked down at the lurid green and red trainers on Chester’s feet.

“I’ve literally run from Dartford. I got over the bridge yesterday, but couldn’t find a bike. Had to hide up most of yesterday afternoon. Fortunately I… well, I could do with a drink. And food. A bed would be welcome, but there isn’t time for that. So, let’s start with a drink, and see how we do,” he said, trailing mud behind him as he headed towards the dining hall.

“I’d put a wash and some new clothes at the top of that list,” Jay called after him.

“Where are the others?” Nilda asked.

Chester stopped. “Reece is dead,” he said. “Got bitten. Thought he was immune. Lasted nearly ten hours. But he turned.”

“And Greta and—”

“Greta and Finnegan are fine,” Chester said. “Alive and well. Or they were the day before yesterday. They’re still down in Kent.”

“Why did you split up?” Jay asked.

“We found more people,” Chester said. “A lot more. They stayed to protect them. Forty-three children, one adult.”

“So that’s it,” Chester finished. He picked up the jug, poured another glass of water, downed it, and looked around the dining hall. Everyone was there, and all had listened quietly to his story. “There are forty-three children. The youngest is five. The oldest is nine. They can’t walk or cycle, and they certainly can’t fight. And no coach is going to make it through the roads I went down.”

“Tuck wants to know about the railway lines,” Jay said.

“Didn’t I say? Well, no, they’re no good either. I tried following them for a bit, but I found them blocked. That’s not to say a different route on different roads or other tracks won’t work, just not the ones I followed.”

“It’s too great a risk,” Graham said. “We should go to Anglesey and ask them to send some of their soldiers. It’s a day’s drive. No more.”

“It took me a day to get forty miles through Kent to the QE2 Bridge,” Chester said. “And nearly two to get from Dartford to here.”

“That was by bike and on foot,” Graham said.

“Exactly my point. Even if you start by driving, you’ll be on foot soon after. By bike, I think fifty miles in a day is as much as anyone’s going to manage, and that’s not all going to be travelled in the direction you want to go. Assuming you don’t end up like I did yesterday, watching the sun track from overhead to the horizon as you hide from the undead. And assuming you don’t walk straight into one of those hordes. That’s something else we need talk about, but one problem at a time. If someone manages to get there, it’ll be at least a couple of weeks before they sail up the Thames, and then they’d still be sitting on a boat miles from where the children are. I don’t think those kids have that kind of time. So I’m going back as soon as I’ve caught my breath.”

“I’ll go with him,” Jay said.

“And what if we can’t save them?” Graham asked. “What if we go down there, and we’re the ones who die?”

“Then we die,” Jay said. “But we have to try because there’s no one else, right Mum?”

Nilda met her son’s eyes, but before she could answer, Hana spoke. She sat by the fire, her eyes fixed on the flames, and her voice seemed far away, as if she was speaking to her own distant memories.

“Yes,” she said. “We have to help one another. That was the point of Radio Free England. Perhaps if we’d had a way of broadcasting a stronger signal, they would have heard us. We could have made contact with them earlier. We could have done so much. All those people at the airport… We didn’t know, and now this is our last chance to act. If we do not, then all those who died will have made that sacrifice in vain. We do this, not for ourselves, but for those who sacrificed. For…” she stammered, stopped. “We do it so their deaths have meaning in the hope that when we die ours won’t be such a futile passing.”

Silence settled, though it wasn’t one of agreement, just of politeness for a well-liked leader who had yet to realise she had become little more than a figurehead.

Nilda thought of the airport and of those undead children. She remembered Sebastian, and how he’d died trying to save two more on those railway tracks back in Penrith. She thought of her own quest to find Jay, and how Tuck had protected him while she was still bent on revenge. What was humanity if not the acceptance of responsibility for a child not one’s own?

“How do we do it?” she asked.

“Well, I spent most of yesterday working that out,” Chester said. “We keep it simple, right? There’s a pier still standing outside the Littlebrook Power Station. That’s by the QE2 Bridge. We leave the boat there. And it seems to me, if we can’t find a route that’s clear, we need to make our own. There’s a vehicle park near there full of trucks and lorries. We can take one of those, something heavy enough to clear a path along a road, and with wheels tall and thick enough to find traction in the mud. We drive down there with all the diesel we have left, load the kids into a coach and drive them back to the boat. The biggest problem is going to be the batteries. I don’t have a clue how you charge them.”

“That’s easy,” Jay said. “We worked out how to do that before we left Kirkman House. So, we have a plan. Who else is coming?”

They left an hour later. It would have been sooner, but Nilda insisted Chester wash. There was a slight delay after that when Chester went to retrieve his revolver from the jacket he’d discarded on the battlements. The revolver was gone.

“It must have fallen out as I was running back,” he said. Nilda could see the loss in his eyes. She felt that way about the sword. Or perhaps she felt completely differently. The sword was a connection to Sebastian and a past that, as it faded to memory, seemed one of happiness and a missed opportunity more than it was of struggle.

There were ten of them on the boat. Fogerty and Hana were going to stay on board, ready for their return. Nilda, Chester, Tuck, Stewart, Kevin, Aisha, Xiao, and Jay would go ashore. Nilda wasn’t happy about her son being with them. She had seen that he knew how to handle himself. He seemed to have grown another few inches in height and at least the same in breadth over the last few days. Her problem was in how much depth he’d gained. She was pining for that stroppy teenager who hid away in his bedroom, oblivious to the world.

23
rd
September

By turning the engine on at Greenwich and not switching it off until they reached Rainham, they arrived at Littlebrook Power Station an hour before dawn. And that hour dragged.

“Not long now,” Chester said.

“You should sleep,” Nilda said.

“I’ve had a couple of hours. It’s more than enough. According to the map, it’s only twenty-five miles from here to the farm. It seemed like a lot longer.” He was staring at the fuel cans. “Aisha, how many miles to the gallon did you say a coach could make?”

“I said it depended on the coach and the roads. Fifteen would be a reasonable guess.”

“Then we need two gallons for the coach, so let’s call it three, and four for a truck to get there and back,” he said. “So we’ve got more than three times what we need.”

“And you’re happy with the controls?” Nilda asked Fogerty.

“I may be old, but I can manage this. We’ll stay close by the jetty and listen for sounds.”

Hana nodded. “And the gunfire,” she said. “If we hear it further up or down the coast we’ll move accordingly.”

They would have to be within a couple of miles to hear the shot. Hana didn’t seem to realise that. Fogerty did.

“And what about you?” the old soldier asked. “You happy with your part of the plan?”

“Of course,” Nilda lied. “It’s all straightforward. We go ashore, drive south, then come back.”