“We took one a few minutes ago. It’s a little above background, but that’s the new normal, isn’t it?”
“Why are you asking?” Nilda cut in. “Why is the radiation level important?”
There was another pause on the line, this one accompanied by a muted discussion.
“…. there’s no one left to eavesdrop, and if there was, how could it possibly matter?” they heard Bill finish. And it was he who answered her question.
“Yours wasn’t the only team sent to the mainland,” he said. “One got a lethal dose before they even knew it. A group we sent into Cornwall made it only a mile inland before they had to turn back. We haven’t heard back from the others.”
“What does that mean?” Nilda asked.
“From what we can tell,” Bill said, “and we can’t be certain, radioactive dust from the fallout is being blown all over the place. That’s the simple answer. With you two going ashore so close to the Scottish border, we thought you were dead. That’s why we weren’t expecting your call.”
“But what does that mean?” Nilda repeated, terror preventing her from voicing any other question.
“At the moment? Nothing. Anglesey is fine. So is northern Wales. But we are drastically reducing our estimates of the amount of the mainland that would be liveable. And that means that we can’t detonate any more nuclear warheads on the mainland.”
“What do you mean, detonate a warhead?” Nilda asked.
“I thought you knew,” Bill said. And there was more muted conversation on the other end of the line.
“Knew what?”
“They wanted to gather the undead in one place,” Chester said. “They were going to use helicopters to get the turbines out, and use the noise of the helicopters to draw in the undead, then drop a nuclear bomb on them. One of the Trident missiles from the Vehement.”
“You didn’t tell me. You should have told me,” she said to Chester, then spoke into the phone “You can’t do that. It’s madness.”
“And as I say, we’re not doing it now. The situation on the mainland is… well, it’s worse than we thought. We knew Norfolk was largely gone. So is…”
Nilda passed the handset back to Chester and didn’t hear the end of the sentence. She was furious, and regretting her earlier concern. Her every first impression about the people on Anglesey had been confirmed. She remembered where they were and told herself this wasn’t the time to give in to rage. She leant in again to listen.
“What about getting us out of here?” Chester asked.
“Miguel can be there in three days. Maybe seventy hours. He was on his way back from Svalbard, but his last report was that he’d rounded Iona on the West coast of Scotland. That’s the best we can do.”
“Seventy hours? Alright. I’ll call you back.”
“Wait. Chester,” Bill said, “There’s something else.”
“Does it put us in more danger?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s something Bran told me—”
“Then it can wait.” Chester ended the call.
“You should have told me that was what they were planning,” Nilda said.
“To what end? It doesn’t change anything. What could you have done differently?”
“I could have left you in Penrith and gone to London on my own. I might be there by now.”
“And you might not, but it wouldn’t have changed their decision.”
“After everything we’ve been through. After all that the governments have done, I… I don’t know what to say. It’s like being back in the world before. All those politicians elected for one thing, thinking that gave them a mandate for everything. You know what they’re doing is wrong, but there’s nothing that can be done to stop them.”
“Right, it’s exactly as you say. There’s nothing we can do stop them.”
“But that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean you should have gone along with it.”
“I don’t know that I was,” Chester said slowly. “They wouldn’t drop the bombs if there were people here. All I had to say was that we’d found survivors.” He sighed. “But what would have happened then? They’d have just picked a new target. Ultimately, nothing would have changed. Don’t think of the city. Think of the undead, of the horde, of millions of zombies roaming up and down the countryside. If there was a way of getting rid of them, just some small chance, then shouldn’t we take it?”
“No, of course not. A chance to do what and for whom? Where would it all end? What if there is some group hiding out in a bank vault or something, somewhere over there.” She waved at the city. “Aren’t their lives as valuable as anyone else’s? How much of the Earth needs to be destroyed before you people think it’s liveable again?”
“Well. Right,” Chester coughed, anger flashing briefly across his face before he controlled it again. “But as I say, I hadn’t made up my mind. I’m not used to decisions like this. Look, forget about it. It doesn’t matter. We need to find your son, and maybe we go back to Anglesey. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we—”
“We should check the position of the horde,” Nilda cut in, wanting time to process all she’d heard, “before the satellite moves out of position.”
Chester bent to pick up the sat-phone again, then he froze, staring at her blankly.
“What did you say?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed the smartphone and swiped at the screen. “Oh no,” he said.
“What?”
“I didn’t realise. I didn’t think. I just… I assumed. I mean—”
“What?” She grabbed the phone, trying to see what horror lay within the photographs that they’d not noticed before.
“It’s not real time,” Chester said, flicking the screen to bring up the meta-data. “They had three satellites, two of them were following the horde, and the other was just taking images of the country, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The satellite takes a picture when it’s over the undead, and we download the image when we switch the phone on. It’s why we were getting images when the storm was overhead.” He fumbled with the phone, plugging it in.
“That’s why the image of Hull has the cruise ship but not the craters and the rest of it,” Nilda said with slow dawning realisation. She turned towards the horizon. “Put the phone away,” she said. “We don’t need it.” She pointed to the dark band of cloud moving towards them. “That’s the horde, there.”
How far away was the horizon? Fifteen miles? Ten? It had to be at least ten miles. It had to. Or at least five, because she was almost certain she could still see the suburbs mixed with fields beyond the city’s limits. Of course, it didn’t really matter. Five miles or fifteen, the undead would reach them in a matter of hours. There was no time to rest, and certainly no time to wait for a boat to rescue them. She looked over at the cruise ship, squinting against the reflection of sun on the water. There were lifeboats still on board. So, worst case; they’d find no supplies, but it would float. They would stay alive another day. All they had to do was get there, but the ship now seemed infinitely further away that it had those long minutes earlier. Her mind flooded with zip-lines and parachutes and other impractical ideas culled from action movies. She bit her lip, forcing herself to concentrate.
“How were you planning to get on board?” she asked.
“I… uh…”
“You didn’t know? Figures. You’re not big on the fine details are you? Ships have ladders,” she said. “And the ship’s listing to port. We need to find the ladder and climb up. To get there…” She moved her gaze back to the part of the shore on which the ship had run aground. “You see that jetty. About five hundred yards from the ship?” She pointed at a narrow concrete walkway that stretched out fifty metres into the estuary. “We get out of the factory, down to the quay, and run to the jetty and swim from there. You can swim, can’t you?”
“Well, I can’t say it’s something I’ve done much recently.”
“That’ll have to be good enough.” Opening her pack, she began sorting through her gear, discarding almost all of it. Chester began to do the same, pausing when he pulled out one of the helium canisters.
“Are any of those phones left?” he asked.
She nodded.
“There was a film once. I can’t remember which or how long ago, but they tied the balloons to a chair, and it floated right up to the clouds.”
“You’d need a lot of balloons,” she said, pulling out the list on which she’d been irregularly recording the names of the undead they had killed. “How many do you have left?”
“Twelve canisters. Fourteen balloons.”
“If it takes one and a half to balance out the weight of a phone. You’d need a hundred of them.”
“Or more. Shame.”
Nilda looked at the meagre collection of matches, tape, utensils, clothes and other gear. Most of it was disposable, brought from Anglesey or looted since. She would find more.
She checked the scabbard was tight and shook the last few drops from her water bottle onto her tongue. Jay’s letter went inside the bottle along with the two photographs she’d taken from their home in Penrith. Then there was the list of the twice-dead they had killed. Now was the time to get rid of it, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet. She rolled it up, and sealed the bottle.
Chester was similarly unencumbered. He had a long hunting knife at his belt, the sword on his back, the revolver somewhere in one of his pockets, and the pack now discarded on the ground next to the sat-phone and Geiger counter.
“You want to call them?” she asked, grudgingly.
“I…” For a moment she thought he was about to say yes. “No,” he said firmly. I don’t want to speak to him again.” And before she could ask why he suddenly didn’t want to talk to old Mr Tull, Chester hefted his rifle and said, “I’ve twenty-three rounds left.”
“If it works.”
He raised the rifle over the side of the roof, tracking a zombie. He pulled the trigger. There was a muffled retort.
“Twenty-two. The winds blowing to the east. Probably the right direction. We let the balloons go when we’re back downstairs?”
She noticed the question and knew that with it. He was asking a lot more than that. One last look at the approaching dark band on the horizon was all she needed to galvanise her. She headed to the door.
Balloons flying above them, and with no trace of levity left in the incongruous sight, they descended. She tried to keep her eyes on the metal walkway, but found them ever drawn to that forest of undead limbs rising from the rubble. As arms waved back and forth, almost as if they had been caught by some errant gust, she couldn’t help think that a nuclear fireball wouldn’t be enough to cleanse this diseased planet. Only time could do that, and she wasn’t sure that humanity had enough left to witness it.
Pausing at the exit just long enough to check that buttons were closed and zips were fastened, they pulled open the door and ran outside.
The balloons were loosed before Nilda took in her immediate surroundings. The nearest of the undead was twelve feet away, but it was inland. She ignored it, and jogged towards the sea.
Chester overtook her, stopped five yards ahead, raised his rifle, and fired. A zombie, thirty feet away, fell. She caught up, they ran forward together for a few paces before he sprinted ahead, paused, fired. Jog, pause, fire. Nilda glanced over her shoulder. Two of the undead behind them had gone straight for the balloon. Not important, she told herself. Jog, pause, fire.
The factory was big. It hadn’t really seemed that large when they were inside nor even when they were on the roof. Now that the goal was to run the length of it, it seemed the largest building in the world. Jog. Pause. Fire. Though it was muffled, the sound of the rifle seemed as loud as a fireworks display.
Chester pulled the tape off another balloon. It was caught by a gust of wind, and started drifting east and up almost immediately. He aimed, fired, missed, fired again. A creature forty yards away fell. They jogged on. Nilda glanced at the balloon. It was already ten feet in the air and still climbing. They had to find a more accurate way of measuring the volume of helium in the balloon. Or the weight of the phones, or… she let her mind dwell on that problem so it wouldn’t have to deal with the task ahead. Jog, pause, fire, and now the next time they paused they would be at the sea-edge of the factory. Nilda gripped her sword more tightly. To the left was an empty car park slowly filling with the undead. She tried not to look behind, but couldn’t help herself. There were hundreds. There was no point being more accurate than that. It didn’t matter, and that was the problem. If they were to be ripped apart it would be by the undead ahead of them, and there were more than enough of those. Jog, pause, but this time Chester didn’t fire.
“Run!” he yelled. She did, and when she reached the edge of the factory, saw the pack of zombies that had been hidden from her view. Chester had changed direction, no longer following the line of the factory, but running across the car park, angling towards the quay through the narrowing gap between the undead on either side. They passed a small brick office as Chester glanced behind. He’d slowed, she realised, staying just a few paces ahead. Stupid, she thought. Foolish. The creatures on either side were getting closer, the gap ahead narrower, and he could escape if only he’d just run.
“Come on!” he yelled. But she was already sprinting flat out. She remembered summer days and winter evenings; Sebastian and his ever-willing offers of help; Jay and his wild teenage dreams; her own hopes for the future. A future she now thought was counted in seconds.