Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey (17 page)

“It’s an odd thing we’re creating here,” I said. “It could be a mirror of all that went before, or a continuation of it, or it could be something better. Something new. What we do now isn’t as important as how we do it. Success is synonymous with life, and if we fail, there will be no future generations to look back on our history with scorn.”

“Responsibility hangs heavy on the head that melts down the crown,” Markus said. He reached under the counter and brought out a tall bottle containing a clear liquid. He poured a measure into a small glass. “You want some? It’s our own concoction.”

“You have a still?” I asked.

“We have a still that hasn’t blown up this week,” he said.

I saw there was no point wasting rhetoric on him. He didn’t want to talk. He was waiting for a decision on Rob’s fate. The question then, the only one that mattered, was what was he going to do if he didn’t like whatever it was. The answer came an hour later when George came in.

“Afternoon, lads, ladies. Rob, I’d like a word. Outside, I think.”

“Why? What are you going to do with him?” Paul asked. Markus frowned, and I guessed he’d planned to ask the same question, but more diplomatically.

“That’s none of your business,” George said. His voice hardened. “And you really,
really
don’t want to make it yours.” There was steel in his tone. Not a threat, but a promise. Unfortunately, right then, Sholto and I were the hard edge giving weight to the words.

With deliberate care, Markus refilled his glass, downed it, and slammed the glass on the bar. Everyone had been watching him, except for Paul who still had his eyes on George and his hand on his belt. He jumped.

“You heard the man,” Markus said to Rob. “Go on.”

Rob looked around the room. His eyes stayed longest on Paul, but there was no support for him there. The young man eased himself off his stool and slouched to the door.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Sholto said, standing up. It was his turn to look around the room. “Yeah, we could make something new, but isn’t it the case that whenever we try, what we create always looks a lot like something very old?”

I followed him outside.

Rob was sitting at one of the picnic tables. George was standing over him, listening to the young man talk. We kept our distance.

“You really went to Baghdad?” I asked.

“Sure,” Sholto said. “Once. I wanted to see the world. The Taj Mahal, the pyramids, you know, all the ancient sites. I drew up a bucket list and put Babylon at the top. I got food poisoning on my first day in Iraq and spent my entire time in the hotel.”

“You didn’t go to a coffee house?”

“I barely made it out of the bathroom,” he said.

“So Markus was lying about being in Baghdad?”

“Possibly,” Sholto said. “It does confirm he’s not who he appears to be, and certainly not who he’d like us to think he is. We already knew that, but we’re left with the puzzle of who he actually is. Aside from that he’s dangerous, I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

“I don’t like mysteries,” I said. “Not anymore. So you went to Egypt?”

“No. After Iraq, I scrapped those plans. I went to Las Vegas instead. Got food poisoning there, too.”

Rob stood, glanced at us, back at George, then at the road leading from the pub. With a clear air of reluctance, he went back inside. George pushed himself to his feet.

“Come on, lads.” When we were fifty yards down the road, he spoke again. “What do you think?”

“Do you mean did he kill Nilda’s son? I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t seem like a murderer.”

“They often don’t,” Sholto said. “What about you, George? What do you think?”

“I know I don’t like the man,” he said, “but there’s no proof.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“For now, nothing,” George said. “I’m putting off having to make a decision. Nilda’s going back to the mainland. Chester’s going with her. She wants to go to Cumbria, to bury her son. She won’t find him, but it’s important she tries. Chester’s going to Hull, and she’ll be good company for him on the journey.”

“Hull?” Sholto asked. “Why?”

“Those wind turbines you mentioned,” George said. “Svalbard wants an electricity supply in exchange for the oil. We’re going to propose a wind turbine. The thing about their seed vault is that it doesn’t require a constant electrical supply so wind power is ideal. Don’t ask me how we’d get the turbines up there. Mary has an idea of using the helicopters, but personally, I’m hoping that it’ll be enough for those people in Svalbard to know we’re trying.”

“Hull’s intact then?” I asked.

“According to the satellites images, the turbine factory looks okay,” George said. “And I gave Chester one of the sat-phones so he can he stay in touch. The boat they’re taking to Cumbria’s going to head straight back to Svalbard. We’ve filled it with a few chickens, some other supplies, and another sat-phone. We’ll be able to conduct negotiations a little more easily and maybe get the fuel situation resolved this side of Judgement Day.”

“And Rob?” I asked. “You can defer the decision, but what about when Nilda returns, what then?”

“By then, we’ll have found some judges to make the decision for us,” he said. “I’ve begun interviewing the lawyers, or those who claim to have a law degree. Right now, it’s a case of working out who is the least worst candidate, but it’s a start.”

“And if you don’t finish before Nilda gets back from Hull?” Sholto asked. “Is there a backup plan?”

“Not exactly,” George said, “But I’ve got another delaying tactic. We’ll ship Rob to Svalbard. Out of sight might be far enough out of mind that Nilda will forget about him. And that will give us time to work out quite what we’re going to do next. Time? Maybe it’s just my age, but there never seems to be as much of it as there used to be.”

“I never knew an egg could provide so much entertainment,” Kim said.

We were sitting in the garden of our house. The sun had dipped behind the spreading chestnut, casting a welcome shadow on the infant-trampled lawn. Sholto and Annette were by the barbecue, now a safe distance from the trees, but perilously close to the rickety fence delineating the garden from the neighbouring fields. Their attention was on the metal plate placed on the barbecue, and on which they were frying eggs. Those had been a gift from Mary O’Leary when Annette had explained our predicament of a lack of grillable food.

Kim stood, walked over to Daisy, and picked her up. Unlike before, she was no longer reluctant to be carried by Kim.

“Didn’t you notice?” Kim asked.

“What?”

“Daisy doesn’t like the fire,” Kim said. “It must be because of how we escaped that tunnel.”

“Should I tell them to put the barbecue out?”

Kim gave that a moment’s thought. “No. It’s not something she’ll be able to avoid.” She gave a sigh. “It’s a strange life we’ve found for ourselves. A strange place. It doesn’t feel real, yet it seems more real than anything I’ve ever known. What do you make of this business with Nilda?”

“I think that there’s more to it than Rob told us, but I don’t think he’s a murderer. Not that I’m any judge, and not that we can judge people for what they did out in the wasteland to survive. I think it more likely that they were in a situation where he saved himself but not Nilda’s son. Perhaps he even sacrificed Nilda’s son to save himself. I don’t know. I can come up with plausible theories, but that’s not what you’re meant to do, is it?”

“That’s the real question,” she said. “How do we decide? How do we judge? That’s what Mary’s puzzling over. Creating a judiciary.”

“I didn’t tell you about the body we found,” I said, and told her about the corpse in the university.

“I don’t know, Bill,” she said. “It’s hard to remember what I imagined safety was going to be when we were out in the wasteland, but the reality is a lot harder than I’d ever dreamed. It’s like the period of grace is over, and the real work now begins. I don’t know where we should start, or what we’re going to do, but if it doesn’t get done, life will keep getting worse. It’s such a depressing realisation,” she added, “because it really means that the best we can hope for is that things stay the same.”

“That’s what Mary was getting at,” I said. “And George, too. I didn’t quite grasp it at the time. It’s why they’ve got me planning the election. It’s why there’s going to
be
an election. I mean, it would be far easier simply not bothering, and honestly, I don’t think anyone would object.”

“You’ve found your niche, then, and one not too dissimilar to before. That’s good.” She smiled, and in it I saw an echo of the torment that had led her to join the expedition north.

Fried eggs, charred fish, burnt rolls. It was a feast, and the company made it the best meal I’d ever tasted. Daisy wasn’t convinced by the toasted bread, but had been mollified with a jar of raspberry compote Mrs Dupont had given us a few days before.

Annette emptied half a jar of ketchup onto a fish fillet sandwich, took a bite and shook her head. “I miss burgers. I know we can’t have them again, but we could have ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” Kim asked.

“Sure,” Annette said. “Sholto was explaining it.”

“I was explaining why we couldn’t have it,” he said.

“No, you’re thinking about it wrong,” Annette said. “You said we need sugar, cream, and ice, right? Well, sugar’s something you grow, right? But for cream, and for burgers, you need cows.”

“True,” I said. “But there’s only four on the island. Fortunately one of them’s a bull, but it’s going to be years before we can spare any meat or milk.”

“Yeah, but we have the satellites now, don’t we?” she said. “So we could use that to find more cows.”

“I… I suppose,” I said. “Though I think we should use it to find survivors first.”

“I thought that’s what the radio was for,” Annette said.

“Radio? What radio?” I asked.

“The one Kim’s going to build,” Annette said.

“We were talking about it on the boat,” Kim said. “It started when I was trying to explain why the ship-to-shore radio stopped working. Do you remember me telling you about my time in America?”

“You were a student on a year abroad,” I said. “It’s where you learned to shoot.”

“I loved the family I was staying with. I…” Sorrow flashed across her face in that common expression everyone has when they think about those who must inevitably be dead. “While I was there, I did some work at the local radio station. I didn’t get paid, of course. It was more for fun, and it mostly was.”

“You were working as a technician?” Sholto asked.

“No, it was reading the news, the weather, that kind of thing. Because of the accent,” she added.

“Because a British accent is more trustworthy?” I asked.

Sholto laughed.

“No, it definitely wasn’t that,” Kim said. “After the news, they had a segment where people would phone in and do their best impression of me. Most people settled for doing their worst. It was pretty popular.”

“And you said we could build a radio station,” Annette said, bringing us back on topic.

“The transmitter on the island was destroyed, but we can make a new one,” Kim said. “I was talking about it with Collette and Francois. We were really talking about a way for ships to communicate with Anglesey. With the sat-phones, that problem’s half-solved, but a radio station would have other uses.”

“A music station would be welcome,” Sholto said. “As long as you let a song play right to the end before cutting to a commercial break. Of course, there won’t be any adverts, will there? You know, there’s a music exchange down near the bakery? It’s essentially a way to collect unwanted tablets, phones, and laptops, storing them against the day we’ll need them, but they’re copying all the music and movies. Along with the CDs on the island it should be enough for a varied playlist. Maybe it would even encourage people to record something new.”

“A news programme would be invaluable during the election,” I said. “We’re going to have public debates, but this would be a way for more people to hear what the candidates have to say.”

“Imagine it,” Kim said, laughing. “There’s some poor survivor living on the roof of a multi-storey car park, using the last of her batteries to power a radio, knowing this’ll be the final twist of the dial, her only hope of salvation. Then she hears it. Other people. She leans in closer to the tiny speaker, and what, precisely, does she hear? An election debate.”

Sholto and I laughed, too. Annette looked puzzled.

“That’d be good, though, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

“More or less,” Kim said. “And that was the plan. Yes, we’ll broadcast whatever’s useful for the survivors on Anglesey, but since the distance the signal will travel is a function of how high we build the transmitter, there’s no real reason we can’t construct something that can broadcast across Britain.”

“But, realistically,” Sholto said, “what are the chances that, after all this time, anyone is wasting batteries on checking for a radio signal?”

“That’s why you have the drones,” Annette said.

Now it was my and Sholto’s turn to look puzzled. “Drones?”