Britain's End, Page 3

  “Life is full of risks,” the woman said blithely, “and America is full of treasure. Even if the bunker is gone, we shall still have a land of plenty with which to build our new empire. But, no, Kempton isn’t there. That ship of hers, The New World, came to Ireland, didn’t it? Wright wrote that, too. If Kempton had been in America, that is where the ship would have gone. We’ve been over this. You’re having second thoughts, but it’s too late for those. We need the codes. You’ll have to take them.”

  “Of course. When?”

  “When we get to Ireland,” she said. “It might be simpler if we get rid of Bill Wright first. That is a task to consider when the chaos and confusion begins.” She stood, walked over to the shelf, and took down a bottle.

  “I thought you said that bottle was poison,” he said.

  “It is,” she said. “Knowledge is power. At present, only three people know that the undead will soon die. Dr Singh might be sedated, he might be insane, but he might regain lucidity. He might share this information. If he does, if it becomes widely known, generally believed, caution might exert itself, greater hardships tolerated, discomforts accepted, and we will lose our one opportunity to dictate the future of our species. No, it is time for Dr Singh to be rewarded for reshaping this planet’s destiny. It is time for him to die.”

  Part 1

  The Tower’s Forlorn Hope

  London & Kent

  11th - 17th November

  Chapter 1 - The First Farewell

  11th November, The Tower of London, Day 243

  Storm clouds were gathering over London. That, Nilda thought, was apt weather for this grim occasion.

  “Chester, I…” she began, but wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Chester said. “We’ll be back soon enough.”

  A few paces beyond the barricade, Greta waited impatiently.

  “If…” Nilda said, and again she hesitated. There was a time and a place for certain words, but this was neither. They should have said their goodbyes at the Tower, not here at the barricade two hundred yards from the fortress. “If you see anywhere you can buy stamps,” she said instead, “send me a postcard.”

  Chester grinned. “I’ll see what I can manage. Keep her safe, Jay.” He nodded to George and Lorraine, and wheeled his bike down the street, a few paces behind Greta.

  “They’ll be back soon, Mum,” Jay said.

  “I know,” she said, watching first Greta, then Chester disappear around the curving road. Even when they were lost to sight, she didn’t move.

  “Greta has to look for Eamonn,” Jay said. “I mean, we’ve got to help each other because we’d want help ourselves.”

  “We’re the help that comes to others,” George said. “That’s something that stuck with me from a long time ago. It’s an idea to strive for, an ideal worth the struggle.”

  That was more or less what Chester had said. While Nilda agreed with it, that wasn’t why Greta was making the journey. Her motivation was love, and that same emotion made Nilda want to call Chester back, to demand he stay. There was little chance that Eamonn was alive, and even less that Greta would find him. Chester was accompanying her to ensure that Greta abandoned the search. That’s what he’d said, but she wondered if there was something more. Ever since Chester had been shot, he’d needlessly put himself into danger again and again. The reason was obvious. He was trying to prove something to himself, yet that was a desire that could swiftly become all-consuming. She knew that from her own experience, both after the outbreak and before.

  Someone had to go with Greta, but it didn’t need to be Chester. George and Lorraine had arrived in London with a small squad of sailors and Marines, any of whom would have made as good a companion for what was surely a futile quest. She was being selfish, of course. She didn’t want Chester to go because she worried he wouldn’t come back. In turn, that worry was connected to the other, deeper concerns that plagued her every waking moment.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “And you’re right, Jay. We have to help one another, now and always.”

  “Do you have a lot of barricades like this?” Lorraine asked, and Nilda was glad of the distraction.

  “Not really,” Nilda said, turning away from the road down which Chester and Greta had walked. “The children call it the outer wall, but it’s… a ring, I suppose. A loose ring in the streets around the Tower. It keeps the undead far enough away that the children can play and yell, and their voices won’t be heard.”

  The barricade ran across the junction of Mark Lane and Hart Street. Barricade was almost too generous a word for the haphazard collection of filing cabinets and desks that had come from the office buildings either side. They’d weighted the furniture down with rubble from the remains of a small conference centre, but it wouldn’t hold back a concerted push by the rampaging undead.

  “It’s the buildings,” Jay said. “That’s the problem. I mean, they’re too big.” He gestured at the office blocks towering above them. “It takes half a day to search one and we never find much. We never find many zombies, either, but we have to look because we can’t leave the undead inside the barricades.” He picked up the table that they’d used as a gate and pushed it back into position. “When we were near Oxford Street, we had walkways linking the buildings. When we’ve got time, I’d like to do the same here.”

  “Zombie,” Lorraine said. “There, limping down Hart Street. Only one.”

  “There’s a lot of mud on it,” George said. “A lot of mud and not much hair. It didn’t turn recently.”

  Behind those words was a question. It was one Nilda asked herself whenever she saw her first living dead of the day: why hadn’t the zombies died? Behind that question, hid another: what if they never die? It was unsurprising that someone from Anglesey would be beset by the same fears.

  “Have you seen many die?” she asked.

  “Personally, no,” George said. “But I’ve been on the island for too long. No, save the bullet, Lorraine,” he added, drawing a short-handled spear from a sheath at his belt. “There’s no need to waste it.”

  “I’ve got it,” Jay said. He dragged the table back out of the way, and jogged down the road ahead of George.

  Nilda shared an exasperated look with Lorraine.

  “At least yours is a teenager,” Lorraine said. “Age gives him an excuse.”

  The young Scotswoman wasn’t George’s bodyguard; she was the pilot of the boat that had brought George and his mission to London. Protecting the old man was a duty that fell to Norman Jennings, a submariner from the Vehement, and Viola Denby, a Marine from the Harper’s Ferry. Nilda hadn’t thought there was any need to bring them on the short trip from the Tower. Both had happily agreed since it gave them an excuse to linger over their breakfast coffee, something in short supply on Anglesey. Lorraine clearly knew George better than those two professionals.

  Rifle raised, Lorraine stepped through the gap. Nilda re-secured the barricade before following her. She wasn’t sure what to make of Lorraine. She was friendly and cheerful, but that mood was a mask. A thin one, too, betrayed by the watchfulness in her eyes. The young woman had seen a lot, but then they all had. Even Jay. Especially Jay. He reached the zombie first, and swung his foreshortened spear with a twirl and flourish that was almost entirely for show. Where the shaft of George’s Assegai had been cut down to within a foot of the blade, Jay had left his at four feet. The metal was pitted with a century of rust, and a century before that of use, but it was razor sharp after the previous night’s labour. A night that, in a just world, Jay would have spent studying, learning, preparing for university. Or, if she was honest, hours he’d have spent avoiding his studies while she agonised about his meagre prospects in a town like Penrith. Nilda’s heart broke a little more as Jay slammed the spear into the creature’s skull.

  “Nah, I’m not sure about the spear,” Jay said wiping the blade clean on the zombie’s ruined clothes. “I mean the range is good, but I
think a sword’s better.”

  “But my spear has a story behind it,” George said.

  “So does this spear,” Jay said. “Everything from the Tower does.”

  “And do you know that story?” George asked.

  “Um… well, it was something to do with Napoleon’s legions,” Jay said. “It was in the case with the Eagle. What’s your spear’s story?”

  “He can tell us later,” Nilda said, saddened and bemused in equal measure. “Where did the zombie come from? Down the road, or from in there?”

  Ahead of them, on the northern side of the street, were a pair of metal gates, one of which was ajar.

  “Vehicle access for the buildings above, do you think?” Lorraine asked.

  Nilda unclipped her torch, and shone the light into the dark gap beyond the open door. “Probably. There’s a ramp. It must lead to a car park or a loading bay. Jay, do you remember whether these buildings were offices or flats?”

  “Offices, I think,” Jay said. “We didn’t really investigate. We looked in the pub, though.” He jerked the spear towards the pub on the opposite side of the street. “There was nothing worth scavenging in there,” he added.

  “But you’d have noticed if this gate was open?” Nilda asked.

  “Sure,” Jay said. “And we’d have closed it.”

  “When was that,” she asked. “I mean, was it before or after McInery died?”

  “After,” Jay said. “When we put up the barricade.”

  “What is it?” George asked.

  “Call it paranoia,” Nilda said. “Mostly due to the gate being open now.” She drew her sword, and used that to push at the metal door. It creaked as it swung inwards. She winced at the unwelcome sound. “It’s a loading bay and car park,” she said, gesturing with her sword at the after-hours notice pinned to the wall. “Ah, look, on the ground. The entire bolt has come free.”

  There was a wordless reply, a sighing rasp that came from beneath them. She swung the sword up and the light around, shining it at the point where the ramp curved underneath the building. The shadows lengthened and twisted, resolving into a sprawling mass of snapping mouths and clawing arms as the undead shoved and pushed one another up towards daylight.

  “Zombies, back up,” she said, but didn’t move herself. She counted the heads. Four in the first rank, three behind that, two behind that, and then…. and then she had no choice but to retreat a step, and then another. She raised the sword and wished she’d brought her gun.

  There was the soft retort of a silenced rifle as Lorraine fired. The centre-most zombie in the front rank fell. As it tumbled, two creatures in the rank behind were knocked backwards. One disappeared beneath the staggering mass. The other righted itself, just in time for Lorraine’s second shot to blow its skull apart. Nilda shifted her stance, marking her target, breathing out, just as Jay lunged.

  “Jay!” Nilda yelled, as her son rammed his spear into a nearly skinless head. As it fell, he withdrew the spear, skipping nimbly out of the way of a leather-clad creature’s clawing hand.

  “George!” Lorraine barked as the old man advanced. “George, you’re in the way. I can’t shoot.”

  George swiped his spear at a zombie’s eyes. As the Assegai pierced through flesh, the skin sloughed away.

  “Back!” Nilda barked, but neither Jay nor George were listening.

  The first two of the undead had reached the gate. One, with tape wrapped around its ear, lurched into the closed half of the gate, causing the metal to rattle. As the sound echoed down the street, the other zombie staggered through the open section. Nilda pushed George to the left and Jay to the right.

  “Get back!” she yelled, as she rammed her gladius into the zombie’s face. “Give Lorraine a chance to shoot them!”

  The zombie fell. Another collapsed. Then a third. Nilda raised her sword, ready to dart forward, but Lorraine calmly fired one shot after the next, felling the zombies as they emerged from the darkness. And then, there were no more.

  Nilda turned first to Jay, then to George, unable to form the words to best describe her rage. But she saw her son’s expression, then the old man’s, and she remembered a time before the outbreak. The summer trip when her neighbour, Sebastian, had taken Jay fishing. They’d returned empty-handed, wearing clothes covered in mud except where they were torn, with faces bearing the exact same expressions. Sebastian’s matched George’s embarrassed apology. Jay had that same look of defiant stubbornness.

  The gate rattled.

  “There’s one more. I’ve got it,” Jay said.

  “No,” Nilda said, rushing forward before her son could. She kicked at the closed gate. “Here, outside,” she called to the creature.

  Fingers, already flayed of flesh, curled around the metal. The moment its head appeared Nilda hacked her sword down, cleaving through matted hair and rotten bone. The zombie fell. Nilda shone her light down the dark ramp, but it wasn’t powerful enough to pierce the gloom. She threw it, underhand, in a gentle lob. The tumbling beam of light illuminated bones and rags before it landed on the ramp, and rolled away around a sharp bend. She listened until it stopped rolling, waited, but there were no other sounds to hear.

  “I think we’re clear,” Nilda said. “The bolt on the gate’s broken. The zombies must have been in the building above and gravity brought them down to the lowest level. They probably heard us on the streets outside during the last few weeks, and battered and beat at the door until the lock gave.”

  “Shall we go down there?” Jay asked.

  “No,” Nilda said. “Take Lorraine, get that electric drill, some of those nine-inch pins, and a chain. We’ll secure the gates for now. Go on. George and I will keep watch.”

  When they’d gone, she turned to George. She could see the apology in his eyes, see the words forming on his lips, but she didn’t an explanation as to why an old lion had acted so recklessly in the face of youthful bravado. Instead, she smiled.

  “Your spear has a story?” she asked.

  He nodded slowly. “It does, it does. My father brought it back from the war,” he said. “A junior officer had been given it as a good-luck talisman. It didn’t work for him, but it kept my father alive. It’s kept me alive in the last year, too, so maybe it is lucky for some.” He tapped the edge of the spear against the closed door. The metal gonged. They listened, watching the dark depths, but no reply came from below.

  “Does this happen a lot?” George asked.

  “Finding zombies on a street we thought was safe? Yes and no,” Nilda said. “In London, there’s as much city beneath us as there is above. That means places for us to hide, but just as many for the undead.”

  “What do you do with the bodies?” George asked.

  Nilda nodded at the pub opposite. “When we have the time, we put them in pubs, post-offices, and shops,” she said. “Places where we know the upper floors had a separate entrance from the ground floor. That was Chester’s idea. It was a story he told about how not to rob a post-office. It was a… a…” She trailed off.

  “He’ll be fine,” George said. “And he’ll be back. He’s irrepressible, that man. London’s changed,” he added, changing the topic. “Obviously. I mean it’s different from how I remember it.”

  “Oh? You lived here?”

  “No, but I visited a lot,” George said. “I earned my crust driving buses, but made my overtime driving coaches. A good portion of my weekends during the 1980s was spent bringing people to London, or taking them away from it. There weren’t so many skyscrapers. No, it was… it was very different. Then I was promoted to middle management. I stopped driving, but I still got free travel. My wife and I would come into the city every weekend as passengers on those self-same coaches.”

  “Ah. You mean Mary O’Leary?”

  “No, Dora was my wife. Mary and I met in the retirement home, but that’s another story. Dora and I used to visit the galleries and the museums. They weren’t free back then, but since our transport was, and since w
e had no children, we could afford it. It wasn’t a bad life, now I look back on it. The ending, well, the endings are never good, but we made the best of it that we could. Yes, but this city’s changed even since then.”

  “I know what you mean,” Nilda said. “I left just after Jay was born. I had to come back a few times, but that was for legal reasons, not for pleasure. Everything is taller and narrower, but it’s something else. It seems denser, somehow. I think it’s the weight of history that this place exudes.”

  “Or the weight of the future?” George said.

  “Maybe,” Nilda said. There was a soft tinkling of metal. “Just the wind catching a can,” she said. Her eyes fell on the open gate. There was no sound from inside. “I suppose we should take a look and confirm it’s empty.”

  “You don’t want to wait for the others?” George asked.

  “It should be safe enough,” she said, “and there’s no point putting off until later what we can do now.”

  “My very own work-ethic,” George said. He took out his torch. His hand was unsteady, and the beam shook as they walked through the gate, picked their way over the corpses, and went down the ramp. Nilda’s own light had rolled all the way to the bottom, to a sub-basement car park and delivery area where bays were marked with the names of four separate businesses.

  “None of those names mean anything to me,” she said, shining her light on one sign and then the next.

  “Nor me,” George said. “And I’d say this basement is empty. And I’d say that those zombies used that door next to the lifts. At least, they did when they were people.”

  Nilda followed his beam. “The door is padlocked,” she said. “They chained themselves in here. I wonder if that was after they were infected, when they knew they were going to turn.”

  “Perhaps,” George said. “Looks like they made a camp between those two sports-cars. Not sure what that blue one is, but the other’s a Ferrari. Always wanted to drive one of those.”