“How far do you reckon that is?” Chester asked.
“From here? Two hundred feet? No, it’s further. Three hundred.”
“A bit less than a hundred metres? Right. So one spool of thread should be enough.” He unravelled it, tying one end to the bottom of the drone. To the other he tied the fishing line, the line to cord, and that to the rope.
“This
is
going to work,” Chester said.
“Yes,” Nilda said firmly, stamping down on her own doubts as she tied a brief note to the drone. “It is.”
The drone took off, Chester piloting it, Nilda directing from the hole in the roof, holding the thread taut, letting it play out slowly, as the ‘copter flew towards the museum’s roof. Her hands shook, her mouth was dry at the possibility of being reunited with her son. She had to tell herself to concentrate, not to think of it, to focus on the task, then the next one and the dozen after that, all of which had to be completed before they would be safe once more.
The landing was bumpy, the drone skittered sideways off the roof, but one of the figures – could it be Tuck? – launched herself at it, nimbly catching it.
“Turn the rotors off,” Nilda barked.
“Don’t know how,” Chester said, staring at the laptop. It didn’t matter. Nilda saw the woman take the note, and thread, then hold the drone up high.
“Bring it back. Slowly!”
“Right, right. Don’t yell.”
The drone returned, as the group on the roof pulled on the thread. Thread passed through Nilda’s hands, and then fishing line, and then cord, and finally the rope – two hundred metres long, with the pulley, harnesses and pins in one of the packs, attached half way along its length.
Then it was Nilda’s turn to pull on the thread, string and cord, until they had the rope running back and forth, over the heads of the undead.
“And now it’s up to them,” Chester said, testing the rope was tight.
Nilda nodded, biting her lip in frustration at another long wait. She looked over at Chester. A trickle of blood ran down to his hand, to drip onto the floor. “You really should sort out your arm.”
He just shrugged. “There’s time enough for that. I’m going to see if we can find a better way of securing the rope at this end.”
There was another long wait before any of the people began to cross, and the first one to do so was Tuck. When the soldier reached the roof and saw it was Nilda helping her untie the harness her mouth opened in shock.
“Jay!” she croaked, pointing across to the distant roof.
Nilda nodded, and hugged the soldier who had kept her son safe.
And it was Jay who came next.
“I told you,” Nilda said as she grabbed her son, “to stay put.”
“Chester?” McInery seemed as shocked to see him, as Jay had been to see his mother.
“Sorry, Mac. Got delayed. But you know what they say. Better late and all that.”
“How did you know where to find us?”
“Stewart and Hana, and the rest of your lot, they’re at the Tower. We came up the Thames. From Hull, and before that Penrith and before that—”
“Touching,” Mathias said, unclipping the harness. He was the last to cross, and his voice was absent of all emotion. “I take it there’s a plan for getting us out of here?”
“There is,” Chester said. “Opposite the house at the far end of this row there’s an access door to part of the Underground’s ventilation system.”
Undead Underground
“Where?” Mathias asked.
The man, Chester, turned around and Tuck missed whatever he said next. There seemed to be a general agreement with whatever the plan was, but Tuck suspected that was more likely to be caused by relief that there
was
a plan, rather than because it was at all practical. Before she could catch anyone’s attention and get a better explanation, Chester moved off, the others following.
She hung back. She wasn’t sure what to make of this man. Mathias seemed to know and dislike him. McInery knew him and treated him with a weary respect.
From what she’d learned about the woman over the ten days in the museum, that made Chester someone not to be entirely trusted. But Nilda knew him, and together they had effected a rescue. Under the circumstances, what else mattered?
When the group stopped and she made her way to the front, she found a muted discussion underway, mostly between Chester, McInery, and Mathias. She caught Jay’s eye.
“What’s going on?” she signed.
“There’s a way into the Underground. The blue door over there.” He pointed through the narrow slit window. “It’s an access point for…” he stopped, trying to remember a word.
“Ventilation,” McInery signed.
“Ladders or stairs?” Tuck signed, and McInery relayed the question to Chester.
“When I knew it, it was a metal staircase down to an old Victorian chamber, with a ladder that led to an access tunnel, and that led to the Tube lines.”
“When?” she signed. “When was that?”
“When I was a kid.”
She wished she hadn’t asked. She hefted her axe. The crossbow had been lost during that first terrible night.
They had seen some of the broken windows and open doors and thought that a few undead had managed to get in. They hadn’t realised how many, nor how extensive the damage to the museum was, until long after nightfall.
They’d started a small fire using broken benches as fuel, and were having a nearly enjoyable debate over which exhibits to destroy in order to have more light, when they had heard the noise. Less than a minute later, the undead appeared, seemingly from every direction at once.
As they had retreated through the museum, they’d run straight into the gaping hole in the building’s side and were confronted with a legion of zombies tumbling up a ramp of broken masonry. They’d fought their way out and Loflin had died in a forlorn attempt to slow the undead’s advance. It was a miracle, her axe, and McInery’s hitherto hidden pistol, that had enabled them to reach the dubious safety of the uppermost floor. They’d had to abandon most of their supplies. Restricted to the roof, a maintenance corridor and a few rooms leading off it, it was only a matter of time before they had made some suicidal attempt at escape.
It was the sight of the drone flying overhead that put those thoughts on hold. When six days went by and it hadn’t returned, she’d decided that suicidal was better than starvation, and then Mathias had seen the flare. And now…
“The blue door?” she signed to Jay.
He nodded.
“Then there’s stairs, a small chamber, then a ladder?”
He checked the details with Chester, then nodded. The time for debate was over, she decided.
“We’ll go first,” she signed to Jay. “Tell your mother to go left. I’ll go right. You open the door. Just like we’ve done before. Okay?”
Without waiting for the others to respond, she pulled open the hatch and jumped down into the house. Left, right, forward, back, she saw no undead. She threw open the doors, quickly checking the rooms. Empty. She ran down the stairs, giving the ground floor as cursory an inspection as she had the upper level. Again, it was empty. She went into the front room, peering through the curtains. She saw the blue door. Three zombies stood between the house and it, with more up and down the street. No matter, she thought, she had woken that morning expecting to die.
She went into the hall. Jay and his mother were by the door, McInery close behind. The others filled the hallway with Chester and Mathias standing halfway up the stairs. Everyone was there.
“You run to that door and open it, understand?” she signed. Jay nodded. Tuck pulled the door open, and ran out, angling to the right and the two creatures she’d seen there.
As she swung the axe up, the myriad scratches from where she’d obsessively sharpened the edge sparkled like a spider’s web in the late morning light. She chopped down, cleaving through skull and neck. As she pulled it free, she shifted her grip, turning the motion into a horizontal swing. Gore and pus sprayed out in a wide arc, splattering against the second zombie, marking a guideline on its neck moments before the blade cleanly decapitated the creature.
Her eyes moved to the pack, gauging the distance, calculating the length of time before they would reach them. Thirty seconds, she thought, and turned to the door. Jay had it open, and was standing next to it, his mother at his side, necrotic fluid dripping from her unsheathed sword. Tuck looked beyond her, and saw that undead on the road to the left would reach them at the same time as those to the right.
She edged backward, her eyes going from side to side, focused on the two waves of undead about to hit them like a parted sea. McInery came out of the house, pistol in her hand. Chester followed with a revolver in his. Both fired slowly, but shooting at such a dense mob was like throwing rocks at the sea in the hope of building a dam. Before she reached the middle of the road McInery twisted the gun in frustration as she ran out of ammunition. She ran for the blue door. Chester fired off his last round, but didn’t run. He slowly put the empty revolver back in his pocket, pulled out his crowbar, and stood in the street, legs braced.
Tuck supposed he was waiting for the others, and they were too slow, but there, she could make out Mathias’ head near the doorway. There was nothing more she could do. She went inside.
She was in a narrow corridor ending in another door, then a set of stairs down which Nilda was already disappearing. The faint daylight from the doorway was muted as the group jostled to get into the relative safety of the hallway. She switched on her flashlight. It flickered. She slapped it. The light steadied but was dimmer than usual.
The stairs ended in a small chamber. Jay was levering open a steel gate, far newer than the faded health and safety notices surrounding it. Through the latticework, she could see a ladder, and as the boy pulled the gate across, she saw him move to climb down.
She wanted to shout ‘no’, to tell him not to go first, but before she could reach him, McInery was at his shoulder. The woman pushed Jay aside and began to descend the ladder. Whether that was out of selfish self-preservation or tribal protection of the young, Tuck didn’t know. The more she’d learned about the woman over the past ten days, the less she understood her.
Jay followed McInery, then Nilda. Tuck moved out of the way, letting Finnegan go fourth, not out of kindness, but out of sudden fear of the unknown dark. But soon it was only Mathias, Chester, and her left. Mathias waved a gore-covered knife towards her and the ladder. Die fighting the undead, or descend into the darkness, that was the choice.
Darkness sucked at her as she climbed down. She kept her eyes fixed ahead as her torch illuminated brick, wire, and rung. More brick. A pipe. Another rung. And just as it seemed as if the descent would be endless, her foot hit something solid. It was over. She was at the bottom. Another chamber, this one full of pipes and metal boxes, and all appeared far newer than anything in the chamber above. In one corner was a door, the lock now broken. Feeling a claustrophobic weight pressing down on her, Tuck moved past Jay, and through the door. She was in a tunnel. There were no train tracks. In fact, she thought, it was too narrow for any modern train to fit down. The paint on the walls was peeling, but the ground was dry. She looked left, right, but beyond twenty feet, all was dark. She turned back to the tunnel wall, hoping for some sign, anything that would give an indication which way they should go. There was a gentle tap on her arm. It was Jay. He was grinning.
“Halfway there,” he signed.
She just nodded.
“Which way?” McInery asked Chester.
“The river’s that way.” He pointed.
“And which station is—” Nilda began, and stopped. Every head turned towards the door.
“What?” Tuck signed, but Jay wasn’t looking at her. As Nilda hurried the boy down the tunnel in the direction Chester had pointed, Tuck could guess the answer to her own question. The undead had followed them through the street door, staggered along the corridor, tumbled down the stairs, and were now falling through the ladder’s hole. Briskly, she followed the others, down the tunnel.
The walls curved, and Tuck almost felt they were heading back on themselves until the tunnel widened, opening out onto a far larger one with metal rails laid on the ground. It was a Tube tunnel, so whichever direction they went, they
would
reach a station. And that meant an exit, and daylight.
Their pace had slowed, and she found herself at the front, just behind Chester, with Nilda, Jay, and McInery behind her, and Mathias at the back behind the rest.
The tunnel sloped down. She glanced at her wrist. The watch was broken. She wondered when that had happened. She started counting. Forcing herself to not think of a slow descent into a timeless purgatory.
Suddenly, Chester stopped. He held up his hands, motioning for quiet, though Tuck couldn’t imagine that anyone had been talking. Chester bent, laid an ear against the rails. Then he stood, turning his head to look up and down the tunnel, his expression a study in indecision. As she looked from his face to the others’, she saw his doubt mirrored in theirs. Tuck thought she understood. They could hear something, and there was only one thing that could be. The undead were in the tunnels, and whilst they weren’t close enough to tell from which direction they came, they were pushing and scrumming their way along with enough force for the sound to travel along the rails.