Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest (2 page)

“Lucky,” Chester murmured.

“What?” Jay asked again, and again Chester realised he’d been speaking aloud.

“I was thinking that you were lucky. To have Tuck with you, I mean,” Chester said. “And the two of you rescued Stewart, right?”

“Yeah, from down near Kew Gardens back in July. He’d been shot. Don’t know who by. Whoever it was, they must be dead by now. He’s obsessed with food. I think he’s terrified it’ll run out. I dunno, I suppose we’re all a bit weird now, you know?”

“Yeah, I do. But there’s something about him, something almost familiar. It’s almost as if I…” Chester laughed. “I was going to say I thought I’d read about him, but I don’t think he’s famous is he?”

“Don’t think so,” Jay said. “He doesn’t really talk about his past, just sort of mutters about stuff. Mostly about a girl. I think she died. But he’s okay. Reliable, you know? And people like him, well, most of them do. Graham doesn’t, but I think that’s because Stewart took over the cooking from him.”

“He’s not the greatest of cooks,” Chester said.

“True, but he’s way better than Graham.”

“Then he must have been terrible. There.” Chester pointed. “You see it? That’s how the undead are getting in.”

To the west of the Tower, next to the river, was a small cafe, a souvenir shop, and a large gate. The gate was firmly closed. The door to the shop, however, was ajar. Through the gap, Chester could see the door on the far side of the shop was wide open.

“You stay here and listen,” Chester said.

“I’ve done this before, Chester,” Jay said. “I told you, me and Tuck spent two months travelling down from Cumbria, and it wasn’t just zombies we had to face. There were soldiers, too, and—”

“And I’ll need room to swing, so I can’t have you right behind me,” Chester interrupted. “But I also need someone to watch my back. It’s called teamwork, kid. The time for bravado disappeared about the same time as the hospitals were shut down. Stay. Listen. Shout if you hear anything.” Without giving Jay any more time to protest, Chester went inside. He wasn’t being strictly honest with the boy, but that he was still a boy was the very reason why.

He breathed in through his nose. Yes, there it was. That damp, musty smell. It might be the river or the lingering odour of those three undead they’d just killed. Chester didn’t think so. He’d trusted his gut most of his life, and on balance it had seen him right more often than it had run him wrong. Something fell over to his left. There, it was in the next aisle, moving, but not moving fast. He darted around the display of overpriced notepaper, punching the mace out. He hit nothing. That dry rasping wheeze grew louder, and it was coming from near the ground. Chester jumped back as a clawed hand swiped at where his feet had been. He swung the mace down. The creature’s skull cracked open, a foul-smelling slime oozed out.

“Someone made an effort to reinforce the windows, but they must have forgotten about the door,” Chester said after checking the rest of the building was clear. “Now, give me a hand, we can block it with these display racks.”

“This will work for now,” Jay said as they improvised a hasty barricade. “But we’ll need something better. And we should get all this paper out of here. And those T-shirts over there.”

“And don’t forget those shelves,” Chester added. “They’ll burn nicely.”

“They will.” Jay grinned. “Did you ever think you’d be doing anything like this?”

“You mean living in the Tower of London, fighting off the undead? No, I can’t say I did.”

“That’s not… I mean, I was meant to be thinking about university. That’s what Sebastian said. He was always trying to get me to think about the future. Mum as well, I suppose.”

“Sebastian, he was your Mum’s boyfriend?” Chester asked casually.

Jay laughed. “No, he was our neighbour. I mean, I don’t think he was… well, I don’t know. But he was the one who gave Mum that sword. Or gave it to me. And Rob took it back in Penrith. That’s how Mum knew I was alive?”

“When she saw the man, and saw the sword, yeah.” Chester sighed. “But there’s no point dwelling on the past. Not here. You know these people. Who do you think you can rely on to do a proper job of clearing this shop out?”

“You mean without having someone stand over them? Reece, Kevin, and Aisha. Xiao, I suppose. Yvonne. Greta. Maybe Finnegan, but I don’t know. He probably would, but not with a smile.”

“We don’t need people happy, just working,” Chester said.

“Yeah, but he’s tight with McInery.”

“Is he? That’s interesting. She’s got her supporters has she?”

“Yeah, I guess. But it doesn’t really matter. I mean, Hana’s the one in charge.”

As long as McInery allowed her to be, Chester thought. “We best get back down to the lifeboat,” he said. “The tide will be turning soon, and we’ll have to set off in search of that Geiger counter.”

They went back down to the wide cobbled roadway that ran between the Tower’s outer wall and the river. Chester started hauling on the winch. It, and the ropes, had come from a display of torture equipment. They slowly wound the boat back towards the shore until it was close enough for Reece to throw them a rope. Chester grabbed it and tied it off. He took a step back, stretched, then walked over to the gold mace that had been part of the Crown Jewels’ collection. He picked it up. There was a dent at the top, and the cross at the top of a miniature crown had broken off exposing—

“Here, look at this!” he called out.

“What?” Jay asked.

“It’s not gold!”

“It’s not?”

“Look,” Chester pointed. “It’s just lead covered in gold paint!”

“Of course it’s not,” Fogerty said as Reece helped the old soldier off the boat and up the slick stone steps. “You think they’d leave all that gold on view where anyone could steal it?”

“And the diamonds on the crowns?” Jay asked.

“All paste. Everything on display was a fake. That, of course,” Fogerty added with a sly grin, “is an official state secret. We were assured that the real ones were kept in a vault in Windsor Castle. Personally, I reckon they sold them off.”

“Oh,” Jay said, disappointed.

“Jay! Chester!”

Jay turned at the sound of his mother’s voice coming from the castle gate.

“I thought I said we’d meet you on the walls,” Nilda said, and there was no question in her tone.

“The zombies broke in through the souvenir shop,” Jay said. “We had to get rid of them so the boat could come back.”

“Well, I can see that,” Nilda said, looking down at the bodies. “Why didn’t you get help?”

“We
were
the help,” Jay said. “When the boat went out to collect the water, we were on gate duty. Look, Mum, there were only a couple of them.”

“And I kept an eye on him,” Chester said. “He wasn’t in any danger.

“He would have been in less if he’d stayed inside,” Nilda snapped.

Jay opened his mouth to protest.

“You’re right. It’s my fault. I’m sorry,” Chester said, and in an attempt to divert Nilda’s ire, quickly added, “We’ll need to get a proper barrier up in that shop and empty it out at the same time. There were some T-shirts, notepads, that kind of thing, and they’ll only rot if we leave them there.”

“We can use the cement they had stockpiled for the renovation works,” Fogerty suggested. “Once we get this lot inside, I’ll sort out a group. You’ll give us a hand, won’t you, Reece?”

“Of course,” the younger man answered, though he still looked exhausted from hauling the water onto the boat.

“And you, soldier?” Fogerty asked Tuck, who was helping Stewart and Reece load the water canisters filled with their dark, brackish, and thoroughly unpalatable river water onto the cart. “You’ll give us a hand with the shop?”

“She’s coming with us,” Nilda said. “We’re taking the lifeboat down to City Airport for the Geiger counter.”

“Oh yes.” Fogerty’s face tinged with the obvious embarrassment of an old man’s forgetfulness. “Yes, you said, didn’t you?”

“It’s all right, we’ll handle this,” Reece said with a tone that suggested he knew he’d be the one doing the heavy lifting. “We’ll take the water inside and get some of the others to help. Graham was talking about going out to look for more firewood anyway.”

“You want me to come with you to the airport?” Stewart asked.

“Don’t you have enough work to do in the kitchens?” Nilda asked. “And isn’t that where you’re meant to be right now?”

“Oh, yeah. I suppose,” Stewart said. “I just figured they’d need a hand with—”

“And I’ll make sure Stewart goes back to the kitchens,” Reece cut in.

Nilda nodded, her rage finally mollified. “Thank you,” she said.

“And is Mrs McInery going with you to the airport?” Stewart asked.

Nilda turned around. McInery was walking through the open door.

“I said we’d use the drone so she could see what London Bridge was like,” Nilda said.

“That’s my drone,” Jay said. “Dev, Stewart, and Tuck got it for me for my birthday. You should have asked.”

Tuck’s hands moved as she signed. Jay smiled.

“What did she say?” Nilda asked.

“She says we need to get better at communicating,” Jay said. “She was being ironic.”

Part 1:

Life in London

17
th
September

“Keep it steady,” McInery said.

“It’s my drone,” Jay muttered. “I’ll fly it how I like.”

Nilda smiled. It was good to be back with her son. She felt whole again, not as if a veil had been lifted, but as if there was a thin tear through which she could discern the vague hint of a future. He’d grown in the months they’d been apart, and not just physically. That self-assured confidence his father had possessed radiated from him. Most of the time. Sometimes, like now, there were flashes of the boy lurking under the newly matured surface.

“You can see the bridge, Mac,” Chester said. He pointed at the screen. “And I reckon that’s the deepest gap. Look at that surf. It can’t be more than a couple of inches of water. There’s no way we can get the lifeboat through that.”

Fogerty, Reece, and Stewart had pushed the cart with its cargo of newly collected water back into the Tower, and the gate was once again sealed. Jay sat on the embankment wall, the computer they used to pilot the drone on his lap. The ‘copter itself hovered half a mile to the west over the ruins of London Bridge. Clustered behind him, McInery, Nilda, Tuck, and Chester stared at the screen which showed an image of the wrecked bridge in far more detail than they could see with the naked eye.

“Yes. Yes, fine,” McInery said. “I agree. We can’t get the lifeboat through.” Nilda relaxed. “But,” McInery went on, “I think we can get
a
boat through. Didn’t that old warder say he went upriver?”

“He did,” Chester said, “but that was at high tide and at the beginning of the outbreak. Look at all that wreckage. Jay, can you bring it back out a bit? Now turn it left about thirty degrees. No, your other left. There, see, there’s metal and bits of boats and plastic, and I don’t know what that is—”

“It’s an advertising hoarding,” Nilda said. “For one of the airlines. They had the same poster at the supermarket in Penrith. I had to look at that woman’s smiling face on my way in to work for six months. You can’t believe how genuinely happy I was when I saw them putting up a new poster at the beginning of a shift. And you can only imagine how thoroughly depressed I was when I was on my way home and saw they’d just replaced the faded one with a newer copy. People in Penrith must really have liked flying to Canada.” She sighed. “But Chester’s right. That thing of Fogerty’s is more like a collection of holes on a wooden frame than a boat. It’s more likely to sink than float, but by all means, try it if you want.”

Nilda immediately regretted her words. Not out of fear for who McInery used to be, but because the other woman was the type to take a comment like that as a challenge.

“There’s the other bridges to think about, too,” Jay said, trying to play peacemaker amidst the sudden tense silence. “They might be worse than this. I wonder why they did it. Was it deliberate?” He looked to his mother for an answer. Nilda shrugged and turned to Chester.

“I’ve no idea,” he said. “I’m not even sure who ‘they’ were. Russians. Chinese. It could have been Quigley.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Jay said as he circled the drone around the debris and then flew it up until it was hovering twenty metres above the bridge. Most of the middle section had been demolished. All that remained connecting the north and south banks was a narrow strip of concrete, on which, with its front wheels teetering over the edge of the broken roadway, was a lorry. Jay flew the drone towards it.

“What do you think’s in the back of that lorry?” McInery asked.

Following the soft purr of the drone’s rotors, a small pack of the undead rammed into the vehicle. It moved forward a fraction of an inch, and the rear wheels lifted from the roadbed. The lorry seesawed back and forth. Nilda held her breath, expecting it to topple and add its bulk to the flotsam and half-sunk wreckage around the bridge. It didn’t. It fell back onto its rear wheels, and though the undead knocked and pushed into it as they stretched their pawing hands up to the ‘copter overhead, the lorry didn’t fall.

“Whatever it is,” Chester said, “it must be heavy.”

“Maybe it’s something valuable,” Jay said.

“More valuable than the Crown Jewels?” Chester asked.

“I mean properly valuable. Like canned food or candles.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Chester agreed. “But I’ve seen that movie. If you try and empty the contents, the vehicle’s centre of gravity shifts, and people and cargo all fall down into the river. Whatever’s inside, we’re never going to know.”

“And since we can’t get
this
boat past the bridge,” Nilda added, “can we agree that we’re not going to get to Westminster today?” She kept her eyes fixed on the screen as she asked the question. McInery was the only person who really wanted to make that particular trip. Everyone else was curious as to what they might find there, but curiosity alone wasn’t enough reason to risk the journey. McInery had vocally dangled the prospect that when the last of the government forces had been overrun, the weapons and ammunition they’d brought with them would have been left behind. Almost as an afterthought she’d suggested that there would be other supplies as well.

And there might be, Nilda thought. The Tower of London had weapons. Plenty of them – axes, maces, and morning-stars, halberds, bills, partisans, and spears, hangers, sabres, and giant great-swords that not even Chester could lift. Not to mention muskets, rifles, and diamond-encrusted submachine guns presented by dictators deposed long before the outbreak. Fogerty had explained that the more modern weapons had all been deactivated. And after the bejewelled handguns and gold-plated rifles had been admired, Tuck had pointed out that the only ammunition in the Tower were the few rounds for Chester’s revolver. He’d flatly stated that he wasn’t going to hand those over to anyone. That an echoing shot would bring the undead from a mile around to the Tower was a secondary problem that they’d not even discussed.

Nilda didn’t think McInery really wanted guns and ammo. She was just using those two obvious and understandable items as a way of gaining public support for her plan. Why she did want to go to Westminster, Nilda couldn’t work out. According to Tuck, McInery had changed since Nilda arrived with news of the community on Anglesey. According to Chester, she seemed exactly as he’d known her of old, obsessed with the pursuit of power though not with the prize.

“We would probably find a Geiger counter there,” McInery said, clearly not having given up yet.

“But where exactly?” Nilda asked. “We’re running against the clock. In a few weeks, we’ll have eaten the food we have, and any that’s in the fields or on the trees will have begun to rot. We can’t afford any wasted days.”

“There’s Anglesey,” McInery said. “You said they had more grain than they could possibly eat.”

“But you’d be asking them for supplies for fifty people for a year,” Chester said. “Fuel was a problem when we left. They may decide that it’s more economical to evacuate—” He stopped as Nilda tutted. “Sorry,” Chester said, “that was a bad choice of word. They may decide to ship everyone from here to the island. Besides, if they were right and the radiation was spreading, I’d rather not start a trek through England and Wales if everything west of Dartford is radioactive.”

“Won’t he be able to tell?” Jay asked, and Nilda noticed that his hands moved as he spoke, and he was looking at Tuck for an answer. Nilda quelled an unfair swell of jealousy as the soldier’s signed a reply. It wasn’t Tuck’s fault. She truly had kept Jay safe over the past months. Even so, it was hard to suppress bitterness at how her son had grown up beyond all expectations under the tutelage of someone else.

“She says,” Jay summarised, “that the fields won’t be glowing in the dark, so we wouldn’t know until it’s too late.”

“Which is why we need the Geiger counter,” Nilda said.

“What we need,” McInery said, “is a smaller boat. If we had one, I could lead a group to search Westminster while you take the lifeboat down to Kent. Are you sure that all the small boats were removed from HMS Belfast?”

Nilda’s eyes moved to the old World War Two museum ship moored on the other side of the Thames.

“You can look at the recording again if you want,” Jay said. “But we couldn’t see one, just the undead. I counted seven, and who knows how many more are below decks. What we really need is food. And for that we need to go to Kent. That means we need a Geiger counter. And that means going to City Airport.”

“We need time,” Tuck signed. “There’s too much to do and too few people to do it.”

“Right, well,” Chester said after Jay had finished translating. “Call it need or want, but whichever it is, there’s little point sitting around here. We can’t get to Westminster, but we can get to the airport. So I say we go there now while the tide is in our favour. Agreed?”

Nilda took one last look at the screen showing the undead clustered around the lorry on the bridge. One at the edge of the pack waved its arms, and the motion caused it to stumble out into the roadway. It tripped, fell through the broken balustrade, and tumbled head first onto a jagged outcrop of half-submerged concrete. Skin split, skull broke, and the stone was tinged dark brown for a moment before a wave washed away both creature and stain. Nilda made a mental note to remind everyone
why
they spent so much time boiling and filtering the water.

“Look at the battery,” Nilda said, pointing at a small window near the top of the screen. “It’s running low. You better bring it back.”

Jay tapped at the controls. As the drone slowly rotated, the screen displayed a panorama of south London. There was the Shard, and seven miles to the south, the Crystal Palace transmitter sitting on top of Sydenham Hill. That was replaced with empty streets and ruined buildings, then with the Thames, and then Tower Bridge and the Tower of London itself. The image of the ancient fortress grew as Jay piloted the drone back towards them.

“If we could get a boat close enough,” McInery said, “we could survey Westminster with the drone.”

“If. But we still need that smaller boat,” Chester said.

“Indeed. And the solution to that problem will not be found at an airport. You won’t need my help for that trip, but helping to secure that gift shop is a task for which I know I can be of use. I can see Graham on the ramparts, excuse me.”

Nilda kept quiet as McInery left the boat and headed over to the walls.

“And there’s nothing stopping us from leaving,” Chester said. Nilda followed him down the steps to the lifeboat.

“Do you think Mrs McInery might try to get to Westminster on foot?” Jay asked, as with drone in one hand, laptop in the other, he nimbly jumped from the wall down onto the rocking boat.

“Maybe,” Nilda said. “We can’t stop her if she does.”

Tuck untied the ropes, and the lifeboat drifted out into the river.

“She’s right about the boats,” Chester said. “If there’s going to be a long-term plan to use the river to get supplies then we need one that we can row. Are we clear on all sides? Right, I’m going to turn the engine on for a bit.”

“What about the diesel?” Jay asked. “We don’t want to waste it.”

“What else are we going to use it for?” he replied. “There’s not enough to get us to Anglesey by boat and more than enough to get us there by land.” The engine began to thrum. Chester tilted his head to one side.

“Is there a problem?” Jay asked.

“Doesn’t sound quite right. Ah, it doesn’t matter. Ladies and gentleman, please settle in for Chester Carson’s river tour of apocalyptic London. Next stop, City Airport.”

Nilda watched the river. It was better than looking at the skyline now missing so many familiar landmarks and full of so many more unfamiliar ones. When they’d left London, Jay had been a toddler and she’d been young and foolish enough to think a world of possibilities still lay at her feet. Her memories of that thriving city had been of noise. Though humanity had now all but disappeared, that had barely changed. Under the early autumn sun, metal creaked, soil cracked, and bricks and glass fell from burned out buildings. Leaves mingled with the detritus discarded during the evacuation, blown by gentle winds into great drifts around broken walls and abandoned vehicles. The river itself offered a cacophonous symphony of wood and plastic, cloth and flesh, thrown by each swell against the embankment wall. But when the lifeboat’s small engine sputtered to life, it seemed loud enough to echo all the way to France and beyond.

“And what if the airport has been destroyed?” Jay asked.

“I came down this way about, oh, it must have been about five days after New York,” Chester said. “And aircraft were still landing.”

Tuck caught Jay’s attention and began signing.

“She says that after the island was cut off, planes were still coming in,” Jay said. “They were carrying ambassadors and staff from overseas, soldiers and foreign leaders, and anyone else who was lucky enough to catch the flight. Then a plane came in from the United States. A colonel was flying it. His family were on board. So were troops from his regiment and their families. But some of the people were infected. When the plane landed, they killed everyone. They used…” Jay paused, and there was an animated, silent back and forth between him and the soldier. “Chemical weapons. Tuck doesn’t know where the government got them. Britain wasn’t meant to have any. After that, they tried to shoot down all approaching aircraft. But they couldn’t get them all.”