“There’s nothing worth salvaging here,” Chester said.
Nilda shook her head in agreement. Then she saw something move. An arm, buried in the rubble, waved. And for a moment she thought someone was trapped. But of course, no, it was a zombie.
“There’s a walkway, there.” She pointed to a metal staircase that led to a walkway that ringed the factory near the roof. “And there’s stairs up there, leading up. We get to the roof, we see what’s surrounding us.”
Finally outside, Nilda stared up at the sky, closing her eyes, allowing herself to relish the feeling of the cool early autumn breeze on her skin. When she opened them again, she found Chester hadn’t taken a moment to relax. He was pacing up and down the edge of the roof, peering out to sea. A cruise ship, listing to port, had crashed into the shore a third of a mile to the east. Had it crashed when the factory was bombed? She wasn’t sure.
She looked across the estuary to the south. They were still two hundred miles from London, but she couldn’t help imagining that she could see the city in the distance. But that image was replaced with another, of the horde trampling the factory to dust, ploughing into the water, and though some might be washed out to sea, others would choke that waterway until living corpses formed a bridge across the Humber.
She turned to the rest of the complex. Most of the buildings near the shore still had their walls and roofs, whilst those further inland were just glass and rubble. It was the factory that had been targeted, not the city. There was true evil in that, she thought, destroying the wind turbines to stop survivors from having that small advantage of electricity. And now she knew where to look, all she saw were the waving limbs of the trapped undead. How had they become infected? How had they become trapped? Despite herself, she wanted to know.
Beyond the factory lay the city. It was dark, silent, but she could see enough to tell that only those roads that led to the factory had been bombed, the houses and shops adjoining them destroyed in the very definition of collateral damage. And beyond Hull there was nothing but a dark band of cloud on the horizon.
There was some part of all that she could see which made no sense. But there would be some obvious explanation, she decided, a connection her weary mind wasn’t making. What they needed was to get to the boat before the storm arrived. Giving in to tiredness, Nilda collapsed to the ground, grateful for a few minutes’ rest.
It had been a long day. For that matter, it had been a long year. She tried to remember when she’d had a proper night’s sleep. Not for the first time she regretted her haste in leaving Anglesey. One more day wouldn’t have mattered. But had they done that they wouldn’t have outraced the horde.
“No seagulls,” she said out loud and found her voice was hoarse. She took out her water bottle. There was barely an inch left. She took a cautious sip.
“We probably brought some zombies with us,” Chester said, coming over to sit next to her. But those balloons almost worked. You know what we should have got? Some of those portable fans. The wind’s just too unreliable. Speakers as well. We need a louder sound. But then we’d need more balloons.”
“Why were the people here?” she asked. “The ones who became infected and trapped in the rubble, I mean.”
“Dunno. Probably they followed people down to the shore. When the survivors left, the undead stayed.”
“Left?” She opened her eyes. “What about the boat? Is it still here?”
“What? Sure. Over there, you can see it.
She followed his pointing hand.
“The cruise ship? You can’t be serious.”
“Not the cruise ship.” His lips moved in a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “No, not the cruise ship. The lifeboats.”
She looked at the ship again. There might have been lifeboats. She couldn’t tell.
“Are you telling me that was your plan? That the boat you were planning for us to take is one of the lifeboats on that ship?” She didn’t hide the anger in her voice.
“I saw it on the satellite image back in Anglesey. Here.” He took out the smartphone and showed her the picture of the factory. She’d seen it before, and seen the cruise ship in the picture. She hadn’t thought anything of it. She looked at the ship, back at the screen, then at the ship again. There was something not quite right with the picture, but she couldn’t place what. However, the lifeboats did all seem to be hanging from the ship’s side.
“When you said boat, I thought you meant secured at a marina or something.”
“In dire need, instinct takes hold,” he murmured, sounding as if he was quoting someone. He took out his own water bottle. It had less in it than hers did. “Back in the early days, everyone headed to the Scottish Highlands or to the sea. The marinas are empty.”
The mention of Scotland reminded her of the radiation. She handed the phone back and took out the Geiger counter. The reading was higher than earlier, but still below dangerous.
“I’m not rowing down to London,” she said.
“You’re thinking of a life-raft. These all have engines and fuel. Enough for about two hundred miles.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I asked the crew on the boat ride from Anglesey to Whitehaven whilst you were asleep. They have to carry ten thousand kilojoules of food per passenger, three litres of water and enough fuel to… I can’t remember, but it works out at about two hundred miles.”
“The boat that I was on, the one that took me to the island, didn’t have those kind of supplies.”
“But you said that was a rescue boat, didn’t you?” he asked, a nervous edge to his voice.
“Yes. Yes it was. Okay, so those boats
had
fuel. There’s no way of knowing that they still do.”
“Why would anyone have taken it off? The ship ran aground. That means there was no one alive to drop anchor. The lifeboats are still there, so there weren’t passengers on board before it crashed. I reckon it was in port, waiting to be loaded up or whatever the nautical term is. When the outbreak hit, the crew took the ship out to sea. They ended up heading to the UK like everyone else with a boat and an engine, then abandoned the ship, all leaving in one launch, hoping they’d find salvation here.”
“That’s just a guess. You can’t know that you’re correct.”
“And that’s why it’s our backup plan. We’ll call Anglesey. We’ve still got at least a day before the horde gets here. We find out whether they can send a boat. There might even be one on the way, or maybe they can divert the tender they were sending up to Svalbard. That’s plan A. Plan B is the cruise ship.”
“Is there a plan C?”
“You mean if there’s no fuel? We’ll sit in the lifeboat somewhere out to sea and wait until the horde passes.”
“And a plan D?”
“Plan D was finding something that floated and hoping for the best. Since we didn’t find anything and hope’s running a bit thin, we’ll stick with the lifeboats.”
She grunted in irritation, though her frustration was more at herself than him.
“So what is the plan?”
“Ah, well, we drop as many of the boats into the water as we can and string them together. We can use the one at the front until the fuel runs out, then cut it loose and move to the next one back. We’ll get to London in, a day, maybe a day and a half. Two at the most.”
The plan itself was entirely reasonable, and put like that it sounded appealing, but had she known earlier, had she bothered to ask him, she would have tried to find some car or truck and tried driving to London. But as she looked at the hulking wreck and the stretch of quay between the factory and the ship, and after she’d taken into account the undead between them and the shore, it still seemed easier than the journey to Hull.
“Call Anglesey,” she said. “See if there’s a boat.”
“Sure, and they’re going to want to know whether the turbines are salvageable. What do you think?”
“If you say no, will they still send a boat?”
“Probably.”
“Call them. Say they might be, but they need to send some experts,” she said. She was thinking about the ship that had rescued her from the island, trying to remember how long they’d said it had taken them to get from Norway to Anglesey. It had to be less than to get to Hull.
She watched as Chester pressed a few buttons, held the handset up to his ear, and waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty. She was about to tell him to give up when he stiffened.
“Yes? Hello? Er, yes. This is Chester. No. At Hull.”
Nilda moved closer, leaning her ear against the handset so she could hear the voice at the other end.
“… the wind turbine factory, is that correct?” It was a man’s voice. Cultured, clipped, somewhere around her own age.
“Yeah, we’re at the factory,” Chester replied.
“And, what’s it like?” the man asked.
“It’s a no go. The city was bombed. Most of the turbines are still here. But I couldn’t tell you whether they worked or not.”
“You say bombed,” the man said. “Have you a Geiger counter?”
“Yeah. The radiation level is just a little above background. We just checked it.”
“And did you check it on the way?”
“Yes, why?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Chester opened his mouth to ask the question again, but before he could the man replied.
“You checked it, then you’re fine. That’s all that matters now. Are there any survivors there?”
“Couldn’t say.” Chester glanced at Nilda. “Where’s Mr Tull?”
“He’s around somewhere. I’m on radio duty today.”
Chester’s eyes narrowed.
“We need a boat. The horde’s approaching. We need to be collected.”
“I… see. Well, that might be difficult.”
“Really? That was the plan, you were going to send a boat to pick us up.”
There was another pause before the man answered. “The plan’s changed.”
“Has it now? Well, what about getting us out of here?” he asked again.
“As I say, I don’t think that will be possible. Not immediately.”
Nilda could almost see Chester’s brain buzzing over, but she couldn’t tell why.
“I repeat. We want a boat to collect us,” Chester said, and Nilda wondered why he was repeating himself. The man at the other end of the phone had clearly heard him the first two times.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, “but it’s just not possible.”
“Get Mr Tull,” Chester said. “There’s some more intel.” He paused. “But I’ll only tell him.” He pressed disconnect.
“What was that about?” Nilda asked. “Why all the repetition?”
“I don’t recognise that voice. I wanted the man to say ‘extraction’, make some comment about ‘intel’, or say anything at all that was vaguely military. It’s not like there was a lack of service personnel on the island, but he sounded civilian. I can’t say why, but that put me off. Made me suspicious. You remember those uniformed men we saw back on the moor? Well, I dunno, maybe they were heading to Wales.”
“They wouldn’t have reached it, not yet. And there were only three of them. And they looked about as military as you could get,” she said. But now that he’d mentioned it, she realised that she didn’t want anything to happen to those people at Anglesey. As much as they had personally wronged her, they represented the future.
Twenty minutes passed before the light flashed alerting them to an incoming call. Chester answered. Nilda leaned in to hear what was said.
“Chester, this is George. What’s going on?”
“Hello Mr Tull. How are things on Anglesey?”
“What? Same as always. What’s Hull like?”
“Um…” Chester paused. This time she understood. He was trying to think of a way to question the old man that would determine whether his answers were coerced. She almost laughed. Considering where they stood and what approached, and what he’d told him of his past this sudden concern for an old man was touchingly comical.
“Chester? What’s wrong?” George Tull asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice. “Bill told us that you said the factory was destroyed,” George continued, an edge of puzzlement in his voice.
Chester’s expression changed from concern to… Nilda couldn’t tell, though it looked almost like dread.
“Bill?” Chester asked. “You mean Bill Wright.”
“Let me guess, you read the journal.” It was the man from earlier, Bill, who spoke, and there was wry humour in his voice.
“Er, yeah. Mr Tull gave me a copy,” Chester said, slowly.
“The satellites only going to be in position for another twenty minutes,” an American voice cut in. “Hurry it up.”
“Chester,” Mr Tull said, “what’s the situation there.”
“The factory took a hit. There was a missile strike, or maybe it was artillery. Couldn’t say, but there’s craters all over the place. As to whether the turbines are salvageable, you’ll need an expert for that. There might be people here. I couldn’t say. What I do know is that the horde’s approaching, and we need a ride out of here.”
“I see,” Mr Tull said. “Where are the nearest ships?” Chester opened his mouth to answer, but realised that Mr Tull was talking to someone on Anglesey. “And what about radiation, Chester? Did you take a reading in Hull?”