“Are they tied?” she signed to Jay, ignoring Finnegan. The man’s mouth was wide open. She guessed he was screaming.
“Yeah.”
She dragged Finnegan off the asphalt, and threw him into the van.
From Jay’s expression, he was still screaming as they drove off and didn’t stop when, twenty minutes later, they were approaching the office block. The van bumped as she drove up onto the pavement, and came to a screeching stop a foot away from the dangling ropes.
As Jay climbed up onto the van’s roof, she pulled Finnegan out, grabbed the nearest rope, and tied it to him. Gesturing for the people on the roof to haul him up, she started grabbing the other ropes, throwing them up to Jay. When she glanced down the road, she saw that the undead had followed. It was a small group, around twenty strong, at least three hundred metres away, but they were getting closer. She threw up another rope. Jay had tied off three. Four, and the ropes grew taut as the people on the roof took in the slack. Two hundred metres away, and now there were more coming from the other direction. Jay clipped on the seventh case. One hundred metres, and five cases were bouncing off the building’s windows and walls as they were hauled up, another five ropes coming back down. Seventy-five, and there was a sudden rainfall of glass. A thin sliver sliced a line down her cheek. Dismissing the small pain as a minor irritation, she looked up expecting to see a zombie toppling down on top of her. There wasn’t one. One of the cases, swinging more pendulously than the others had broken through a second-storey window. She grabbed another rope, threw it to Jay, and turned back to the road. Fifty metres. She grabbed another rope, threw it up, and signed that Jay should take it and climb. He just shook his head.
Forty.
“Climb up,” she signed, throwing him another rope. He just tied it to a case.
Thirty.
“Up,” she rasped. He grabbed the rope and ignored her. Twenty metres. She grabbed the last three ropes in one hand, and clambered up onto the van’s bonnet, then onto the roof. Jay grabbed one, tying it to the last case, then took one for himself, nodded at the office building, and was hauled up. A moment later, as the first of the undead slammed a clawed hand into the van, she followed.
“Why didn’t you climb up when I told you?” she signed when they’d both reached the top.
“I wasn’t in danger. I was safe on the roof, remember?” he replied. “I figured as long as you were down in the road, we had time.”
She couldn’t find an argument to that.
Half the cases and most of the small group were already on their way back to Kirkman House. The exception was Finnegan and a couple of people standing at a wary distance from him. His shirt was covered in gore. But she didn’t think it was blood. He’d stopped screaming and was just staring blankly at the ground.
She walked over, grabbed his chin, and roughly twisted his head left, then right. His neck looked fine. She grabbed his shirt and ripped it open. There was a slight brownish stain on his chest. She grabbed the water bottle from his belt and poured it over him. No. No bite marks. She pulled him to his feet, turned him round, and as she did, what she was doing must have finally sunk in. His shoulders moved as he asked an unseen question. She ignored him, pointed at his trousers.
“Tell him to take them off, or I’ll cut them free,” she signed to Jay. Finnegan protested until Tuck pulled out her knife. He stripped.
Finnegan stood, nearly naked, on the roof of the building, miserable, pathetic, and scared. Tuck walked over to the edge of the roof and pointedly looked down at the pack still clawing at the van. He hadn’t been bitten, but she’d already known that.
“Tell him he’s fine,” she signed. “Probably. He might have got some saliva in his mouth.” She waited until Jay had finished and the moment of relief had vanished from Finnegan’s face. “Now tell him that this was what he wanted. An examination like this for everyone who went out. Ask him how invasive he thinks it is now.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She didn’t wait for Jay to finish translating it. She grabbed a suitcase and headed back towards the House.
The mood that evening was upbeat. Finnegan was the butt of all jokes, and the humour helped keep everyone’s mind off the fact that McInery hadn’t returned.
3
rd
September - Kirkman House
Wyndham Square
Dawn came and McInery was still absent. Tuck was readying herself to go and search for her when she spotted the woman making her way across a distant roof. Her jacket was torn, her hair out of place, but otherwise McInery looked as serenely aloof as ever.
“It’s good news,” was all she would say until everyone was gathered in the dining room. “There are zombies in the Tower,” McInery said. “And on the roads leading to it. But not many. Perhaps thirty, maybe less. Here, pass the screen around.” She handed a tablet to Tuck. On the screen were four figures, definitely undead, heads raised, arms reaching up. Tuck passed the screen to Hana.
“Where’s the drone?” Jay asked.
“Still in the courtyard. I… I miscalculated the battery life. Sorry.”
She seemed genuinely apologetic, Tuck thought. Or perhaps it was embarrassment. Either way, it was a surprise.
“And I think there’s someone still in there,” McInery continued. “Someone alive, I mean. Here, give me the tablet.” She swiped the screen. “There. The third window from the left. See?” She handed it over, again to Tuck first. There was a face in the window, and it did seem more human than the others. The expression was one of confusion and hope.
“Can he help us?” Hana asked.
“Not immediately. Working backward, the entrance to the Tower itself is blocked, but with a lorry. It’s still got the tyres on, and I think we can drag it out of the way with a towrope. The real difficulty comes in getting through the barricade that the government built. It’s broken in a lot of places, but there’s only three spots wide enough for a vehicle to get through and which won’t require driving up a mountain of rubble. As I see it, we’ve only one choice. We split into three groups, and the last vehicle to go through stops in that gap, thus sealing it, and turning the barricade into a second line of defence for us.”
“But we’d still have to deal with the undead on the riverside of the barricade,” Loflin said.
“Let’s worry about that when we get there,” McInery said.
“So you’re saying we should split up?” Hana asked.
“We’re going to have to do that anyway,” Mathias said. He was looking at the images on the tablet. “There’s rubble either side and in the middle of that gap. We’ll have to slow down to go through. Maybe even stop and wait for the vehicle ahead to get clear.”
“So we split into three groups, each in a different van, and each going through a different gap?” Jay asked.
“Not vans,” Mathias said. “Sorry, but we’re taking cars. The only garage close enough, and which isn’t full of the undead, is the one under the department store at the back of Oxford Street. It was a long-stay place. Lots of vehicles under dust sheets.”
“And there are only cars there?” McInery asked.
“Rolls Royces, Aston Martins, Bentleys and some very nice two-seaters. But nothing larger than a four door.”
“We’ll need eight just for the livestock and their feed,” Hana mused. “At least ten for the food. And another ten for the solar panels, medical supplies, the books, and everything else. Even then, we’ll be leaving a lot behind.”
“Why don’t we find a bus depot or something?” Loflin asked.
“There’s a coach abandoned on Wigmore Street,” Mathias said. “You want to fight a pitched battle whilst we fill the fuel tank? And how would we load it up? You’d be limited to what people could carry in one trip, each of them hoping the thing would start first time. No, that’s not safe.”
“So thirty cars, in three groups, each taking a different route, heading for a different gap in the barricade,” McInery summarised. “And the last vehicle in each column has to stop in the gap, blocking it.”
“There’s a problem I can see,” Stewart said. Heads turned to look. “Sorry,” he went on, “I didn’t mean to interrupt”
“No, please,” Hana said. “Go on. What is it?”
“The first group, that’s the first ten cars to go out, right? And so the second group, that’s the next ten. The last ten are going to have twenty cars in front. By then all the undead will have woken up and’ll be chasing ‘em. So, what I was thinking is motorbikes. That’s what you said.” He turned to Mathias. “How you went to the muster point, you said you went to a garage near Bishopsgate, you had a bike there, and you rode out. Well, that’s how we do it. We use motorbikes.”
He looked around anxiously. Tuck turned to Jay, seeing if she’d missed something.
“You mean, use them to lure the undead away?” he asked.
“Right. Exactly. I can do that. I can lead them away. Keep you all safe.” He looked at Tuck, almost pleadingly. She nodded.
“Tell him yes. And ask who else can drive a motorbike.”
Mathias was one, Finnegan the other. She wasn’t happy about him being given any task except sitting quietly out of everyone’s way, but with no other volunteers, it had to be him or her.
“So we use motorbike outriders to lure the undead away,” Hana said. “Are there any other suggestions?”
There were. The first group would lower ropes over the side of the castle. In the event anyone had to abandon their vehicle inside the barricade they could run to the walls and be hauled up. Then there was a discussion about what had to go and what might be left behind. And that quickly turned into a debate about where it should be left. And so it went on.
Tuck made her way to the back of the crowd, then out of the room. It was mostly academic. It all boiled down to driving as fast as they could and getting everyone inside the castle before the undead caught them. Even so, she doubted all thirty cars would make it.
5
th
September - Kirkman House
Wyndham Square
03:00
Tuck hadn’t slept. She’d barely rested since McInery’s return two days previously. Every moment since had been consumed by work, every brief break filled with the sudden realisation that they’d forgotten something vital, followed by a desperate search of nearby shops to find it. Ropes and climbing harnesses, camping stoves and matches, winter clothes and equipment to purify the river water, they had made trip after trip, and each highlighted that they were leaving behind more than they’d be bringing with them. And in between those trips, the books had to be sorted, the food had to be packed, the items they weren’t taking split up and stashed on the more accessible roofs closer to the river. Then everything they were taking had to be carried to the garage where Mathias had been working tirelessly on charging batteries, reinflating tyres, and filling the tanks.
It was good, Tuck thought. The activity kept people from thinking. And that meant that when the food in the supply room was all packed, no one saw quite how little of it there was. Tuck’s estimate was that if they stayed, they would have run out before Christmas.
And in the end, they wouldn’t be taking thirty cars. There were only twenty-two that she rated as reliable enough to make the journey. There would be ten in the first convoy taking the livestock, the animals’ feed, and some of the food. The second convoy would take the medical supplies, solar panels, the gear to generate electricity, and the groups’ personal possessions. The last, the one that she, Jay, and McInery were in, would bring the library and the food. Or, to put it another way, the most easily replaced of the supplies. She wasn’t sure she agreed with that definition, but it was Hana’s decision, and Tuck didn’t want to publicly argue with her.
The previous night, they’d barbecued the meat from the freezer. That had been a very good decision. It made a welcome change to chew on a rib rather than a spoonful of watery stew. She took another sip from the mug, savouring the taste of stale coffee. There was a long day ahead, and more work to follow. There wouldn’t be another moment to rest until it became too cold to do anything more than sit by a fire, hoping that the spring came.
06:30
Stewart was muttering something. Tuck asked Jay what.
“He said, I can do this, everyone’s going to be safe,” Jay signed. “He’s always mumbling something like that.”
She hadn’t realised, and didn’t like the implications, but it was too late to change the plan now. She handed Stewart the helmet, then laid a hand on his arm.
“Good luck,” she mouthed.
“Everything’s going to be fine. Everyone’ll be okay,” he said, then put the helmet on, his mouth still forming the same words.
Tuck stood by the metal gate, crossbow in hand. Mathias stood opposite. They had five hours before the pigs woke, three before the chickens did, but if they weren’t in the Tower in thirty minutes then something had gone badly wrong.
She nodded to Mathias, looked back at the long queue of cars already pushed into position, raised a hand, and dropped it. She felt a low vibration as twenty-two engines came on.
Mathias twisted the crank, opening the gate. Crossbow levelled, Tuck ducked under as soon as it had risen waist high. She moved forward, readying to fire. There, a zombie, a hundred metres down the road. It suddenly jerked forward, turning towards her just as Stewart drove past on the motorbike. She lowered the bow, moving out into the middle of the road as the cars came out of the garage. Two cars, then three, then four. The zombie was ninety metres away, moving aggressively, but not quickly. Five, six, and in the seventh, a vast Rolls Royce, she saw Hana sitting in the back seat, clearly more interested in the welfare of the comatose pig than in any danger she herself might be in. Tuck couldn’t help but smile and think they really should have called the animal Napoleon.