She couldn’t hear the screaming. The first that she knew something was wrong was when Graham ran past her and out across the walkway. Loflin came next, then Felicity. They all wore that same, now familiar, expression of sudden terror. Tuck knew what had happened. The plate fell to the floor as she stood up, pulled the axe from her belt, and ran into the building’s interior.
Chaos ruled. People ran hither and thither with no clear idea of where might be safe. Occasional words of ‘where’ and ‘who’ were readable amidst a sea of mouths open in incoherent cries of fear.
It must be Kendra. She must have been bitten, died, then come back, undead. Where did the woman sleep? Tuck didn’t know. People slept in whichever office or studio wasn’t being used for anything else. She headed towards the dining hall, and saw Jay by the entrance, knife in hand, Dev by his side.
“Stay there! Guard it!” she signed, hoping that would be enough to keep the boy safe.
The mob quickly thinned. Those who would run had done so, and in a community of fifty people, it hadn’t taken them long to get clear. Mathias, a butcher’s knife in his hand, was walking along a corridor towards her.
“Where?” she croaked.
“Downstairs.” Mathias pointed.
Together, they went down. They found the first body on the third floor. It was a man, Nick, his throat had been ripped out. She hadn’t known him very well, but now wasn’t the time to regret it. All that mattered was that the body wasn’t Kendra’s.
They reached a junction. Mathias pointed along the corridor, then to himself and the left, then to her and the right. She nodded.
Now on her own, walking silently on the balls of her feet, gripping the axe in two hands, she rounded the corner. She saw the zombie pawing at the clear window of the sound proof recording studio that housed the chickens. It left a bloody smear each time its hands hit against the thick plastic. But it wasn’t Kendra. It was the professor.
It turned and she saw his eyes flecked with grey, his mouth open, stained red with blood. She swung the axe up as the undead professor swung its arms towards her, and down as the creature stepped forward, splitting its skull. The axe stuck, the body fell. To get it free, she had to step on the face, distorted twice in death, destroying any last remnant of that kindly expression of a good man.
She turned away, refusing to look at the body, and her eyes fell on the poultry inside the room. The animals were terrified. The wings flapped and the feet scoured the ground as they tried to peck and scratch their way through the floor. She turned back to the corridor. It ended in a junction. She slung her axe at her belt – the hallway was too narrow for it to be an effective weapon – and pulled out her knife.
Keeping her back to the wall, her eyes flitting between the open doorways, she edged forward. She reached the first door, glanced in, and quickly pivoted to look in the room opposite. Both were empty. She breathed out and wished again for a rifle, her hearing, and a different life in a different world.
Another set of doors, the same darting check, then an inching shuffle along the corridor. A treacherous and familiar voice in the back of her head told her the creature wasn’t here, that she was safe. She tried to dismiss it as the deceptive desire that it was.
She was halfway along the corridor when a zombie staggered out of the doorway in front. It was Kendra. Her hands and mouth were covered in blood that stained the same clothes she’d been wearing when they had met on the rooftops a scant few hours before.
Left hand out, right braced and pulled back, the tip of the knife pointing directly at Kendra’s eye, Tuck told herself it was just another zombie, not someone she had known. An arm flew out, the head twisted, the mouth opened, the creature snarled. Tuck adjusted her blow and waited, letting death come to her. Ten feet. Five.
“Sorry,” she mouthed as, with her left hand, she batted Kendra’s arms out of the way and grabbed the woman’s shoulder. She stabbed her right hand forward, plunging the knife into the dead woman’s eye, twisting the blade, making the death as quick as she could, wondering whether that even mattered.
She finished her sweep of the corridor, then the next. When she reached the third, she saw Mathias heading towards her. He was covered in blood and gore. His eyes were blank.
“Stop!” she croaked, as loudly as she could.
Mathias did. She stepped a little closer.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m…” he dropped his head. “It was…”
She didn’t catch what he said.
“Who?” she rasped.
He raised his head and slowly mouthed one syllable. “Dev.”
Mathias was no use, not now, and she needed to know Jay was still safe. She led the man upstairs. Jay was still standing in the doorway to the dining hall.
“Did you see Dev? He went down to help.”
She shook her head. “Sorry,” she mouthed. “Dead.”
There were eight others in the dining hall. Tuck led them all to the fifth floor, and then across to the Georgian Terrace. After taking account of Nick, the professor, Kendra, and Dev, there were still eight more missing, including Hana and McInery. Uncertain Jay would be able to kill a zombie whom he’d known as a person, she went back inside on her own. Hana was in the studio with the pigs. McInery had led the other seven to the roof, and Tuck found her loitering in the stairwell, a hand stuck in a pocket, acting casual and apparently unperturbed.
Darkness was falling before everyone was gathered together. Even then, when everyone could see everyone else, most refused to go back inside.
“Dev died because of the water,” Jay said.
“No,” Tuck signed, “they died because of the undead. It would have happened sooner or later. And sooner or later it will happen to everyone here. Each time we go out to look for food and water there is a chance we won’t come back. The odds build up. They’re stacked against us.”
“You want to leave?”
“I think it’s time, yes.”
Jay nodded. He stood up and walked a few feet away. A few moments later she saw his shoulders shake as he began to cry.
30
th
August - Kirkman House
Wyndham Square
Tuck woke to find all sense of order and routine gone. It was Stewart who brought it back by serving up a meal. He got everyone to come back inside and into the dining hall, insisting they eat because there wouldn’t be another meal until dinner. And everyone had, not because they were hungry, but because of the reassurance in a voice that sounded like it knew what to do.
But that meal had been eaten in silence. Few looked like they had slept, just sat up until they had exhausted the conversation, if not themselves. Tuck could tell what they were thinking, though. They were thinking ‘what next?’
Just before Tuck had finished eating, Hana stood up.
“There will be a meeting this afternoon,” she said. “We’ll discuss the future. Everyone will get a say.”
“Please, please,” Hana said, raising her hands for silence. “I’d ask you to speak one at a time.”
Tuck stood up, Jay followed, and she moved her chair to one side of the room. She made a point of dragging it loudly across the floor. From the group’s expression, it had the desired effect. The room went quiet.
“Thank you,” McInery said. “Whilst yesterday’s events were a tragedy, that is all they were. Hana?”
“Yes.” Hana stood. “Yes, we’ve discussed it, and as long as we’re careful there is no reason why these events should repeat themselves.”
Loflin raised his hands. Tuck wasn’t sure if Loflin was his surname or a nickname. He’d worked in something legal, but not as a lawyer. Beyond that she’d marked him down as someone reliable as long as he was given a specific task with an obvious goal. McInery nodded at him, and the man stood.
“Careful? Is that going to be enough?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we do more? What if we got locks on the rooms. From the inside I mean. At least then we’d know we slept in safety.”
There was a mumbling of agreement. A woman stood up, and waited for McInery to point at her. Felicity D-something. Dunhouse, Dunning, Dunbery? Tuck couldn’t remember. She’d run a shop near Sloane Square, the type that sold absurdly priced scented candles and potpourri.
“Wasn’t that the point of this place? That it was meant to be safe?” she asked. “I would have stayed where I was if I’d known we were going to be in more danger here.”
Yes, Tuck thought, now she remembered. The woman had hung white sheets outside her windows, and it was the professor himself who had rescued her. Apparently she’d been eating tallow candles at that stage, on the brink of starvation and madness. Tuck expected McInery to make some kind of comment. She didn’t. Loflin stood up again. McInery nodded to him.
“This place can be safe. We just need to change the way we do a few things. Locks on the doors is the first obvious step. Now, with all that cement blocking the ground floor, the danger only comes when people go outside. So we should find ways of reducing that risk.”
“You’re saying we need to stop going out for supplies?” It was Finnegan. She’d usually seen him lurking somewhere behind McInery.
“Eamonn, please. Wait your turn,” McInery said, curtly.
“Sorry.” He stood in silence, waiting.
“Thank you,” McInery said, nodding. “Please, go on.”
“Well,” he began, “that’s more or less all I wanted to say. We need supplies, so we have to go out. We can’t stop can we?”
“No,” McInery said firmly, “we can’t.”
And Tuck thought she had the measure of the woman now. The outcome of the meeting was, except in the specifics, pre-ordained. Finnegan was a plant. She’d primed him as to what to say. Loflin, too, she guessed. And the two of them would drive the conversation in the direction the woman wanted. The group would continue as a group, and it would continue going out for supplies. What McInery was doing was changing the way that decisions were made. She was formalising it, establishing herself as the chair, as the leader, without ever doing anything so crass as saying it out loud. With Mathias’ absence and the professor dead, there was only Hana in her way, and the younger woman sat quietly at the front, for once unsmiling, looking as confused and scared as anyone else.
“The problem was that Kendra was bitten and didn’t tell anyone,” Finnegan said, and this time McInery didn’t berate him for speaking out of turn. “And what did she go out for? Chocolate and champagne. Well, it seems straight forward to me. From now on, no one leaves unless they have to. No more expeditions to hair-salons and toyshops. On return, everyone has to strip before being allowed across that bridge. Wait.” He raised a hand. “Just a quick examination, that’s all I’m suggesting, nothing invasive. We just need to ensure that they are free from infection. That’s all. It won’t take a few minutes, and nothing else will need to change.”
And there it was, Tuck thought, as heads nodded in agreement. There was the first small liberty sacrificed in the hope of security, but which would bring nothing but more sacrifice until no freedoms remained. She scrawled a quick message on her notepad and passed it to Jay. “Do you want to stay with these people, or shall we leave and take our chances elsewhere and on our own?”
Jay took a moment to think, and Tuck was pleased at that. “Stay,” he signed, “because, where else is there?”
Tuck nodded, stood up, walked a few paces forward so she stood just in front of the stage, her hands raised for quiet. She didn’t look at McInery. She nodded at Jay. “Say this,” she signed, as one by one, she met the gaze of everyone in the room.
“Where is the trust?” she asked. “Without it, we’re just a group of individuals trying to make the most of the time before we die. We need to know we will stand at each other’s backs. We have to know we will protect one another. A bite isn’t a death sentence. We know some people are immune. The only change we need to make, if one of us goes out and is bitten, we don’t hide it. And if we were a true community then Kendra wouldn’t have. But there was no one here that she could trust. Without trust, we are nothing. If you don’t trust us, then Jay and I will leave.”
Stewart stood up, mumbling something that Tuck didn’t catch.
“He said, that if we go, he’ll go too,” Jay signed.
But whilst she saw a few others shuffling in their seats, no one else spoke up.
“The real problem,” Tuck continued, “is the future. And there isn’t one as long as we can only think as far as next week. We need the security that comes from knowing we’ll be alive next year. We have the food, what we don’t have is water.” Heads nodded, mouths moved. “We can’t live hoping for the rain. We need a proper supply of water.”
“You mean like the swimming pool?” Stewart asked.
“No. That will run out, just like the bottles and cans did. There is no water here, so we need to move.”
“Which is as easy as saying we need to move to some island where there aren’t any zombies,” Finnegan said.
Jay caught her attention, and gestured behind her. Hana had stood up.
“Do you have somewhere in mind?” Hana asked.
“Yes, I do. We get the water from the river. We use boats to travel up and down the shore to salvage whatever supplies we need. Maybe there are fish still living there. As for where, we need a castle. Somewhere with walls. Somewhere we know is secure against the undead. There’s only one place like that in this city. We go to The Tower of London. There’s grass there for the animals to roam. There’s space to plant the crops. And if we’re overrun, we can escape along the Thames.”