“Excuse me,” she said, standing up and walking away. No doubt his would be an interesting story like that of these other survivors, but she didn’t care. She wanted to see her son and silently railed against having to wait until dawn.
She climbed up to the ramparts and watched as the ravens pecked at the ground, and mingled with the chickens in their roughly built roost. Medieval, she thought, but found neither curiosity nor interest piqued. There was no symbolism in the sight. People survived however they could, she thought, and they always had. There was no deeper meaning to it than that.
16
th
September - The Tower of London
“Nilda?”
She opened her eyes. Chester stood over her. The sun was rising. She’d fallen asleep, and someone had covered her with a blanket. Not a blanket, she realised as she stood, it was a flag.
The old soldier, Fogerty, was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs that led down from the rampart.
“There’s some breakfast,” he said.
“I’m not hungry,” she muttered, automatically.
“It’s a freshly fried egg. And if I was you, I wouldn’t say no. But if I was me, I’d hope you did, so I’d get to eat it instead. I spent nearly seven months on freeze-dried rations that were a decade past their twenty-year expiry date. A fresh egg is like ambrosia.” He was grinning, but his tone was firm, insistent. She was about to protest, but her nostrils caught a whiff of that old familiar scent. Her stomach overruled her heart, and she allowed herself to be led towards the long table by the open fire.
“A last meal,” Chester muttered following behind, but he’d spoken quietly and Nilda wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.
The motorbike had already been carried onto the boat. Everything else, packed the previous night, stood in the lee of the wall. Stewart insisted on carrying her bag down to the boat for her.
“Thank you,” she said, forcing herself to find some small piece of polite conversation for this stranger who seemed as concerned about her son as she was. But all she could think of asking was, “Were there many undead when you arrived?”
“We cleared ‘em out. First thing. Had to, you see. For the walkways. Didn’t do much for my face. Immune.” She glanced up at him. The scars on his face did look fresh. “He’ll be alright,” Stewart continued. “Don’t worry. He will. I know it. The kids always escape.”
He spoke as if the explanation was fully formed in his brain, but only half the words ever made it past his lips. She wasn’t sure how to interpret that, and so let the silence settle.
When they got to the boat, she resisted the urge to open the packs and recheck the contents. She settled for lifting hers. It was heavy.
“We’re not going to be able to run carrying these,” she said.
“We don’t need to,” Chester said, unfolding a map. “The scale’s a bit small, but look, the museum’s here. That’s the main entrance. Opposite there’s a string of antiques shops and souvenir stores. They back on to a warren of tearooms and private galleries, pancake houses, and tourist traps. You see the end furthest from the museum, here. Right, well that’s also furthest from the undead, so that’s where we go. We’ll drive up, break in.” He hefted the crowbar he’d taken from Stewart. “Bring the bike in with us, seal the door, then make our way through the attics, or maybe just knock a hole through the roof and run along the eaves.”
“And on our way back?”
“That’s why we bring the bike inside. We’ll leave the engine running, let the zombies gather there whilst we leave from the other side of the block.”
“And find a vehicle and drive back to the Thames.”
“Yup.” He turned to Hana, Stewart and Fogerty. “I don’t know where along the river we’re going to end up. So you watch out for the flare. When you see it, you come and get us. Understand?”
Fogerty nodded. Nilda looked over at Hana, she nodded too. The three of them would be in the lifeboat. She was glad it wasn’t just Stewart, and then berated herself for being critical of someone so eager to help when the rest were conspicuous by their absence.
“Okay, let’s go,” Nilda said, picking up one of the long poles.
“Can’t,” Fogerty said. “Not for another twenty minutes or so. Got to wait for the tide.”
When the tide turned, long poles in hand, they pushed the lifeboat off from the pier. The current tugged gently at the boat, and they began to drift east towards London Bridge.
“Can we get through the bridge?” Nilda asked.
“Possibly.” It was Fogerty who answered. “I got a rowboat through there, but this one? I don’t know, but if we were to try it, we’ll have to wait until high tide.”
Nilda opened her mouth, about to utter a protest, but it was Chester who spoke.
“N’ah,” he said, as they drifted alongside the floating hulk of HMS Belfast. “No more waiting. No more delays. It’s time. There.” He pointed at a spot on the north bank, five hundred yards from the ruined bridge. “The old Billingsgate market. That’ll do us nicely. We’ll go up to St Paul’s, along to Holborn, then straight to the museum.”
“How long will it take?” Nilda asked.
“A year ago? Thirty minutes. Now, I reckon I can do it in two.”
She thought he was joking until, the bike loaded, the boat drifting back into the middle of the river, and the undead creeping towards them along the embankment, he started the engine. He’d reached twenty miles an hour before they’d left the small alley running alongside the old market, didn’t slow as they rode up a set of worn stone steps, and kept on accelerating as the bike bounced onto the main road.
The bike zigged and zagged as Chester navigated an assault course of abandoned vehicles and decaying debris, and she finally felt she understood the expression ‘holding on for dear life’. Some of the blurs they passed she vaguely registered as once familiar landmarks, and the few times they slowed she spotted signs pointing to even more, but none gave her any true indication of how far away the museum still was.
Her legs were suddenly soaked as Chester stopped the bike in the middle of a deep puddle. A pair of storm drains had been blocked, and the entire width of the street was flooded. That wasn’t why he’d stopped. Ahead, filling the entire road, the undead slouched towards them.
“East or west?” Chester muttered. Before she could offer an opinion, he started wheeling the bike around. “East,” he said.
She had time to notice the smoke stains above the broken glass of a fishmonger’s, but before she could tell if the fire had spread to the fast-food restaurant next to it, Chester had started the engine again. One turning, then another, and he slowed. There were more undead in the road, and more still spilling out from the ruins of a bank. He didn’t stop.
“Go back,” she hissed.
“There’s no time,” Chester murmured, accelerating straight at the pack. The creatures lurched forward, arms raised. He swerved, and she closed her eyes. The bike skidded, twisted, but Chester managed to keep it upright. He slowed and turned right. More undead, just past a junction. He took a left, then another right, but there were more zombies on each road, and she could only guess at how many there were now following them.
Chester raised a hand, pointing at a row of houses ahead of them, all the time yelling. She couldn’t hear him, but she guessed the gist. They’d reached the row of shops by the museum.
As he pulled the bike to a stop, she finally heard what he was saying.
“The grey door!”
It wasn’t a shop. Just a house much like many others, except that it was far closer to the approaching pack of the undead. Too busy cursing the weight of the bag to bother counting them, she ran to the house. As she levered at the door, she heard the flat retort of the revolver. She turned around just in time to see Chester fire again, straight into the temple of a zombie whose mouth was clamped on his left forearm. Its skull shattered. Chester ran towards her, and behind him the entire street seemed filled with snapping teeth and clawing arms.
“You alright?” she asked, pushing the door closed when he was inside.
“Probably,” he said, pulling a rotten tooth out from his arm. “Twice bitten and all that. This isn’t going to hold.”
They roughly barricaded the door.
“Why this house?” Nilda asked, upending a sofa.
“It’s a corner house. The rest are all detached. This one’s a semi, first in a row that goes down the street and then round the corner. We can break through the walls.”
She looked at the barricade. The furniture was heavy, but she could see the door and see it moving as creatures clawed and thumped against it.
“Let’s see if there’s an attic.”
There was, and from its relative security, Nilda allowed herself to relax
“Where are we? I thought you said we were heading to a block that was all shops downstairs and flats above.”
“We are next to the museum.” He pointed towards a crumbling brick wall the divided the house from its neighbour. “It’s opposite the end of the row. But we’re on the wrong side.”
“The wrong side of what?”
“Couldn’t get anywhere near the front entrance. Thought we might get to the university instead. But we couldn’t get there either.”
“But we are next to the museum, right? So does it matter which side of it we’re on?”
“Well, not really. Just that we’ve left the spare fuel on the bike, and left the bike out in the road.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a problem for later. Let’s rescue my son first,” she said. Blood was beading up from the wound on Chester’s arm, mixing with the brown-red pus, and fragments of shattered bone stuck to his ripped shirt. “You should clean that up,” she said.
“No point. No time,” he replied.
They left their packs in the first attic as they broke through the wall to the next house, and then to the one after that. It was quick work. In most, the cement had turned to dust. In a few, the walls had been replaced with thin, pine board. When they reached the house at the end, they found a narrow, dirt-encrusted window overlooking the museum. Nilda could see the road below, the iron railings, and the close-packed mass of the undead beyond.
“We need a way of letting them know we’re here,” she said.
“And for that we need a hole in the roof.”
Whilst Chester went back to collect the packs, she hacked at the thick insulation with her sword. By the time he returned, dust was dancing in the thin beam of early morning light let in through the small gap. With his help, and to the background noise of tiles skittering down to crash into the road below, a few minutes later they’d widened it to a hole large enough they could get their heads and shoulders through.
“No point worrying about noise now,” Chester muttered, pulling out his revolver. He pointed the gun at the undead inside the railings and fired off three shots.
Nilda stared at the roof of the museum, scanning from left to right, watching, hoping for some sign of life. They waited. One minute became five, then ten.
“Fire again,” Nilda said.
“No point. Haven’t got much ammo left. It’d be a waste if they can’t hear it from inside. Wait. Watch. I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To sort out our escape.”
Propped half out of the roof, she stared at the museum, and just as hope was turning to despair, a figure appeared. She didn’t see from where. One moment there was no one, and then head and shoulders appeared above the angle of the roof, and she saw the beard and knew it wasn’t Jay. The man turned around slowly. She waved, but he hadn’t seen her.
Her mind raced. He’d heard the shots, he’d come up to investigate. She had to signal. She had to do it now. And then she remembered the flares that they were going to use to attract the attention of Stewart and the lifeboat. She dropped back into the attic, grabbed Chester’s bag, and found them. She stuck her head up above the roof, and fired one off.
The man had his back to her, and for a terrible second she thought he wouldn’t see, but the flare arced up over the museum’s dome, bathing it in crimson, before it drifted down to add a ghoulish red shadow to the undead as it disappeared into their ranks.
She waved. The man waved. She waved again. The man waved back. She laughed with the absurdity of it. The man stood on the roof for a moment longer, then hurried back inside. She waited. When he returned he wasn’t alone. Eleven other figures followed him out onto the roof. And there was…
“Jay,” she whispered. It was him. She knew it. She would have known her son anywhere, even, she realised, in death. The folly was hers. She should not have trusted the words of a man like Rob. She waved. They waved. She thought they might even have shouted. It was hard to hear anything of the rustling wheeze of so many undead.
She dropped back into the attic, and ran along from building to building. Chester was in the second to last house at the end furthest from that which they’d entered.
“He’s there, Chester. My son. He’s alive.”
Chester nodded slowly.
“And I think I’ve found us a way out, so let’s get this over with.”
When she got back to their vantage point overlooking the museum, she saw twelve figures waiting on the roof, watching intently.