This time the reaction was mixed. There were a few sneers and derisive scowls, but some people seemed to be actually thinking the idea through.
“Except,” it was Finnegan who spoke, “like you said, we have food here and no water. We go to the river, and we’ve got water and no food.”
“We take the food with us. What’s the alternative? You want to live here for ever? You think someone will come and rescue you? It won’t happen. You act like this place is a sanctuary. It’s not. It’s a refuge, and those are only ever temporary. Here we’re beggars living on the roof of the world. Vultures feeding on decaying scraps that will be gone in a few months’ time. We think we are safe. We are not. The walkways are our security, but what do we do if a storm blows them down? What if there’s a fire? Even if we had the food and water to last us, this year or next or five years from now, we will become trapped here. Then we will die. Yes, leaving here will be dangerous, but it’s a chance at life.” She finally noticed that Jay had stumbled to a halt and was looking at her blank eyed. And then a strange thing happen, McInery stood up and began speaking.
“She’s saying what you said,” Jay signed.
Tuck nodded, but she’d lost her train of thought. “It’s not safe here,” she finished. “It’s not a sanctuary, we’re just inside a tomb waiting for someone to seal us in.”
“You said we take the food with us. How?” It was Mathias. Tuck hadn’t noticed him come in. He’d changed his clothes, though it was his eyes that had changed the most.
“We’ll drive.”
“I doubt we’ll find the petrol,” he said. “We syphoned off all the vehicles around here to keep the transmitter working back in the early days. I suppose we can find more somewhere, but that’ll take time.”
“Say this exactly,” she signed. “Say there’s no, need. We have a stash of petrol. Enough to get us, and the animals, to the Tower. More than enough. We’ll have the fuel to make a dozen trips up and down the river. Whatever we can’t take with us, we can replace before winter comes.”
She wasn’t sure about that last, but if she’d gauged the group’s mood correctly, the idea of an escape route would sway most of them.
“The Tower was a prison, wasn’t it?” Jay asked when they were alone on the rooftops a few hours of discussion and planning later.
“A prison. A castle. It’s been many things, but those walls are solid and the river is just a few yards from the walls.”
“Will it work?”
“It will be safer than this. With the river, we’ll have as much water as we can drink.”
“The zombies go into the river,” he said. “People said they saw it.”
“And probably dissolve. You’ll be alright. You’re immune.”
“But you might not be.”
“It’s no more dangerous than drinking rainwater,” she signed, hoping she was right. “There’s no choice. And it’s too late now. The plans have been made. We’ve told them about the fuel.”
Jay nodded.
“Cheer up, it’s going to be fine.”
And she thought it probably was.
2
nd
September - Kirkman House
Wyndham Square
Tuck checked the time. 04:00. She’d had less than four hours sleep, but nevertheless had woken refreshed. The prospect of planned action had finally dispelled the agitation she’d been increasingly aware of. She recognised its cause now. From the moment she’d come to the building, she’d seen its impermanence. She’d known they would have to leave, yet she had let herself fall into the same trap as all the others had.
She nudged Jay awake and checked her gear. She remembered what the professor had said during that official introduction. Everyone was here not by choice or design, but because some larger group was here before. And now they would move. Yes, she felt almost eager. She nudged Jay again, made sure he was actually going to get up, then left the small office.
When she went to the conference room to look over the plan, she found she wasn’t the only one unable to sleep. Before, if someone woke with the dawn it was only so they could roll over and back to sleep. Now it seemed like half the building was awake.
Their first task was to find out if the Tower was reachable and free of the undead. Jay had suggested using the drone, but it didn’t have the range. Surprisingly it was McInery who’d insisted on being the one to go and check. Or perhaps, Tuck thought, it shouldn’t be surprising. McInery had struck her as a woman who placed her own safety first, her comfort second, and everyone else’s a distant third. She was going to take the drone with her and get as close as she could. She’d also insisted on going alone. Tuck didn’t like the idea of that, but since she was the one who’d railed so vehemently about trust, she could hardly object.
Stewart entered the conference room, pushing a wire trolley on which was balanced a hot water urn, a mound of cups, a jar of coffee and a couple of boxes of tea bags.
“Good morning,” he signed, slowly, clumsily.
“Good morning,” she replied, smiling. “Coffee, please.” He looked at her in blank confusion. She pointed at a jar, then at a cup.
She took the mug with another broad smile, then moved back into the room’s corner to watch the others as they arrived, mentally running through what she knew about them, gauging their abilities, weaknesses, and which of those they were aware of.
There was a gentle tap on her shoulder. It was Mathias.
“McInery left an hour ago,” he said, carefully enunciating each word. “I’m… I…” He stopped. “I’ll see you later.” And before she could stop him, he’d left the room.
He wanted to talk about Dev, Tuck thought, he just didn’t know how to ask. But the barriers against communication were too high to be overcome, at least not that morning.
Mathias was going to find the vehicles that would take them to the river. During the early days, when they needed fuel to keep the generator running, they had raided the parking garages and hotel car parks nearby. But as far as anyone could remember, they only contained cars. He was going to search the building sites, the Post Office depot, and the loading bays behind the large stores, in the hope of finding vehicles large enough that they could take all the supplies with them. Of course, that was assuming those places hadn’t been overrun by the undead.
She finished her coffee. Most of her group were milling around. It was time to leave whilst they were still enthusiastic about the quest, not fearful of its possible outcome.
“Tell them to go up to the roof,” she signed to Jay.
As she left, she saw Stewart standing in the corridor outside. He clearly wanted to go with them, but someone had to start packing their stores of food. Yes, she thought, she was glad they had rescued him. Whatever trauma he’d been through in the past, he was getting over it. He was a man she could trust. Someone she knew would keep Jay safe if she couldn’t.
On the roof, she looked over the small group. There were ten of them, not counting herself and Jay, and most would stay on the rooftops. She, Jay, and Finnegan would go to the studio. She would rather have chosen someone else, but he’d had more experience going out on supply runs than the rest. They would cycle there and drive the van back. The suitcases would be hauled onto the roofs, and then wheeled over the walkways back to Kirkman House. Simple, she thought.
They weren’t using the ladder by the restaurant. She had been down there a few times when she’d wandered the rooftops seeking solitude, and on each occasion found the undead were still gathered in the alley in front of the stuck van. Instead they were going to climb down the side of a small office building, three blocks and four hundred metres north of there.
“Where’s his water bottle?” she signed to Jay.
Finnegan shook his head in response to Jay’s question. Tuck guessed he’d have sneered if she hadn’t been standing right next to the boy.
“If he gets trapped in some shop somewhere, he might have to wait a week for the undead to disperse. Tell him to get it.”
Whilst the man went back inside, she checked the ropes and then the straps. That would be the difficult part, she thought. Standing on the roof of the van, strapping on the suitcases one at a time whilst the undead were gathered below. No matter. She glanced up at the sun. The day was warm, the sky clear, but there was no pleasure in it. To her it just represented a dull pain on the back of her neck, and no chance for rain. No, it didn’t matter how difficult it got, they had no choice. Not waiting for Finnegan, she led the group across the rooftops.
When they reached the roof of the office block – Finnegan catching up just before they reached it – six ropes were lowered, with fold-up bicycles attached to three. They climbed down the others.
Tuck had memorised a route that took them due west to Ealing, then south. It wasn’t the quickest way to get there, but it offered the most opportunities for diversions, and they ended up taking a lot of those. Doubling back, going north, then west as much as east and south, it took nearly two hours and twenty miles before they reached the studio.
It was when they were loading the suitcases into the van that she noticed the first problem. Unlike the vehicle they had used to transport Stewart to the restaurant, this one didn’t have a skylight.
“Just leave them in the back,” Finnegan said. “We’ll take them out at the other end.”
She shook her head. They would be too exposed for too long if they did that.
“We’ll have to tie the cases onto the roof,” she signed, not adding that it meant they would have to drive back more slowly than she’d planned. There was another delay as they went looking for rope with which to tie them down. They resorted to cable and wire. She wasn’t happy with the result, but tried not to let it show.
“Halfway there,” she signed to Jay. He just shook his head.
“He wants to know if we can go any faster,” Jay signed, twenty minutes and two miles later.
Tuck didn’t reply. She could see the undead following them in the side mirrors. If they went any faster, they risked losing the cases. But if they went much slower, the undead would catch up.
And then the decision was made for her. There were two zombies in front of them, right in the middle of the road. Their arms waved, their mouths opened, and she pressed down on the accelerator as the bumper slammed into the pair of them. The van bounced as the creatures were dragged under the wheels, and Tuck winced as a strand of cable fell and skittered across the windscreen.
She wouldn’t be able to do that again. If they lost a few of the suitcases, would it really matter? How much fuel did they really need? It wasn’t that far from Kirkman House to the Tower. Three trucks would be enough for the people. But there were the animals, the food, and the other supplies. They needed all of those if they were to ever do more than just survive day to day, so they needed all the fuel. Carefully, she pressed down on the pedal, letting the vehicle speed up.
The road curved, and ahead it seemed clear of the undead. She pressed her foot down a little more. Another ten minutes, she thought, and they’d be at the office block. Jay saw the sign first. His arm shot out. She followed his gaze, but they’d driven past.
“What?” she mouthed. His hands moving along with his lips, he repeated the same two words over and over. Her eyes darting between him and the road, it took a moment for the meaning to register. Low Bridge.
“How. Low?” she rasped.
He just shrugged. She couldn’t risk it. There was a junction ahead. She took the turn. The road was packed with cars parked on both sides, leaving barely enough room for the wide van to scrape by. Jay pointed ahead to a junction. Tuck slowed, then shook her head. The road was full of burnt timber and blackened masonry from where a fire had ripped through the houses on the north side of the street. She kept going, taking the next, far tighter, turning instead. All seemed well until Jay pointed up at the roof. Before she could work out why, a suitcase fell onto the windscreen, sliding off and onto the road. A second followed before she had brought the van to a halt. She pointed to Jay, and then to the roof, as she got out. Finnegan followed, saying something, but she ignored him. Her attention was fixed on the buildings to either side, the road behind and ahead. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Finnegan jump. She turned. Amidst a pile of glass outside a redbrick mansion, a zombie was trying to stand. A thin white sliver of bone poked out from its knee. It managed to get up onto one leg, put the weight on the broken one, and fell back down.
She looked at the house and its broken window. Not good, she thought, as she pulled out a knife and walked slowly towards the creature. As she got closer, its arms started waving more violently. She kicked its thrashing hands away, pinning it with her boot, and stabbed the knife down into its brain. The time for caution was over, she decided. If some of the cases fell, they would just have to come and collect them later. She turned back to the van.
Finnegan was on the ground, a zombie on top of him, a metal club held up between its snapping jaws as its hands pawed at his chest. Tuck started towards him, but Jay was already leaping down from the roof, crowbar out. He landed lightly, and swung once, knocking the creature off, then swung again, bringing the crowbar down two-handed onto its forehead. It split open, spraying fragments of bone and brain over the street.