Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey (4 page)

“A group went across to the golf club at Caernarfon yesterday afternoon,” George said. “They were meant to find out if the electric golf carts were still there, do a recce of the town, and come back with this morning’s tide. They radioed in to say they were surrounded. The signal was cut off halfway through.”

“What can you expect?” Gwen muttered. “Those sets aren’t fit to be called scrap. Most of the good radio gear was fried by the EMPs. A lot of the sets that were on the boats were dropped overboard when the rescue operation began, along with anything else that took up space that could be occupied by a person. Besides, the radios were useless. I mean, who were we going to call? Since then, our biggest fear’s been Quigley’s sub, so we had to maintain radio silence. We lost most of the military gear a couple of months ago near Cambridge. That leaves us with a handful of sets that have a theoretical range of fifty miles, but even with the aerial, I’d say it’s less than twenty. And it’s line of sight. A message from Caernarfon has to be relayed to Menai Bridge, and from there to Holyhead, and then out to anyone who’s close enough to come to the rescue. Since everyone except us is using sail, that rescue will be too long in coming.”

“Where’s Caernarfon?” Sholto asked.

“It’s on the mainland at the southern end of the Menai Strait,” George said. “About nine miles south of Menai Bridge and Bangor.”

“It was famous for its castle,” I said. “The exterior was restored, but the interior wasn’t. There’s an airfield as well, isn’t there?”

“Not really,” George said. “A 747 crashed into it. There’s a lot of metal and rubble and not much else. Caernarfon, though, is a reasonably large town. Heather Jones has visited there a few times, but we’ve done no systematic looting as of yet. It’s the golf carts that’ll be the real prize. There’s a couple on Anglesey, but we need more.”

“Because we have the electricity to charge them,” Gwen said. “But not much petrol left.” She glanced at the dashboard. “Really not much at all.”

It wasn’t even half an explanation, but I was happy to sit back and enjoy the unfamiliar familiarity of being a passenger in a motor vehicle. Sholto wasn’t.

“Who’s Heather Jones, and why are you driving around looking for Kim rather than taking some of those French Special Forces on a rescue mission?” he asked.

“It’s all the same answer,” George said. “I was specifically looking for Kim because I wanted a sniper, and she comes with her own rifle. As to everything else—”

“What about them?” Gwen interrupted as we passed a field with five people hacking at the ground with pick-axes. “You want to stop and ask them to come along?”

“Is that Willow Farm?” George asked. “No. Best not. They swore off violence, didn’t they? There’s no time to persuade them.”

“What about the Parsons?” Gwen asked. “It’s the next turning.”

George leaned forward. “No. It’s five miles to their farm, and then there’s that dirt track. They’ll be tending the fields, won’t they? Call it another couple of hours for them to get their gear and get ready. No, it’ll take too long, and we’ve wasted too much time. Just get us to the boat.”

“You said the people at Willow Farm swore off violence, what do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s a long story,” George said. “And not a pleasant one.”

“And one that can wait,” Sholto said. “Why isn’t the rescue being left to the Special Forces?”

“In short,” George said, “because most of them aren’t here, nor is anyone else I’d usually rely on. Heather Jones works out of the town of Menai Bridge at the northern edge of the strait. With the news of Quigley’s death and his submarine’s destruction, she took her boats out to survey the nearby coast. They won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. Leon and half his soldiers have gone with her, spread out on the various ships, along with the handful of other military personnel who’d usually be good at this sort of thing. Francois and the other half of the Special Forces are going to Svalbard with Miguel and his crew. Mister Mills, Sophia Augusto, and their crews are somewhere in the south Atlantic. Chester and Bran are out on the mainland checking on the safe house along with most of my railroad people. When you discount the doctors, the vets, the engineers, and all the others who can’t be spared, there’s not many left. I tried to recruit a few people from the boats in the port, but no one stepped forward.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Most ducked back into their cabins, or simply didn’t step out of them.”

I mulled over the implications of that as we passed the skeletal ruins of a wind turbine.

“What happened there?” Sholto asked.

“Cluster bombs,” George said. “Don’t know if they were aiming for the island, for the bridge, or trying to drop them in the sea. Hundreds of them fell. You must have seen the damage? They got the turbines, and it’s a miracle they didn’t hit the power plant. Got the bridge, too.”

As we drove across the island, I was less interested in the bomb damage than the empty farmland. I saw smoke from a chimney and what I was almost sure was a horse and rider. Otherwise, Anglesey was empty of everything except birds, erupting from hedges and rooftops, lampposts and trees, abandoned cars and a half-collapsed electricity pylon.

“Menai Bridge coming up,” Gwen said.

“I thought you said the bridge was destroyed,” Sholto said.

“It’s a town,” I said. “On the Anglesey side of the bridge that crosses the Menai Strait. Had a population of around three thousand. The principal employer was the University of Bangor, which ran a campus on Anglesey. It was a battleground constituency during the last election,” I added.

My first impression was that the small town was somehow different from the area around Holyhead, though I couldn’t immediately place why. Some of the broken windows had been boarded up, some front gardens dug over, but just as many had been left to weeds. Abandoned cars had been pushed onto pavements. Smoke drifted from a few chimneys, though most were still. As Gwen pulled the minibus to a halt at the edge of a car park, just short of the quay, I realised what was different.

“It’s clean,” I said.

“What?” George asked.

“Nothing.”

I hadn’t realised how filthy Holyhead had become until I had this town as a comparison. In fairness to the ferry port, it was in better condition than the ruined cities in the wasteland, but other than around the few businesses, the school, and clinic, it was covered in rubbish. Dirt, wood, leaves, plastic, and cardboard had been pushed aside or trampled underfoot. Even the harbour was filled with discarded clothing and other floating jetsam from the time before the electricity was restored. Menai Bridge was
clean
. The roads and pavements were covered in leaves, but they looked as if they’re recently fallen. There was no paper, plastic, or other rubbish mixed in with the leaf litter, and the gutters had been swept.

“Come on, that’s our boat,” George said, stiffly pushing himself out of the van.

“What about Daisy?” I asked.

“The Duponts will look after her,” George said.

“Who?”

“Giselle and Pierre.” George pointed across a car park packed with office desks and classroom tables on which were overflowing trays of leafy plants. Above each tray was the oddest assortment of pipes and hoses, held aloft by a ramshackle scaffolding of ladders and washing line. It was a crude outdoor farm, yet a successful one judging by the abundance of greenery. I wasn’t sure what was being grown, but it was being tended by an elderly couple that made George seem youthful by comparison. Their balding heads were covered in a hat for him, a headscarf for her. Their hands were coated in soil, and their backs bent by age as much as by work, but their eyes lit up when they saw Daisy.

“Can you look after the baby?” George asked.

Giselle Dupont replied with a staccato of rapid-fire French far beyond the vocabulary I’d learned in school and practiced on the occasional trip to Strasbourg.

“
Oui
,” Pierre summarised.

My reluctance to leave Daisy with two strangers must have been evident.

“She’ll be fine, Bill,” George said. “Really.”

“She will,” Gwen said. “But the others might not be if we don’t get to them soon, so come with us or stay here, but we have to go.”

This was hardly the first time we’d be parted. Daisy spent most days at the school, in the care of teachers and under the observation of the psychologists. This felt different, but Gwen was right, and I’d already mind up my mind when I got on the bus. There was nothing but kindness in the old couple’s eyes, and it redoubled as I handed Daisy over to them.

“Be good,” I said.

Daisy squirmed, confusion flashing across her face. Pierre produced a napkin from his pocket. Unfolding it, he revealed a thin, freshly baked biscuit. Daisy’s eyes lit up as she took it and began to eat.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said, and she completely ignored me.

“We’re taking the launch,” George said. I finally turned around and saw the remains of the ruined bridge.

“Was that done by the cluster bombs?” I asked.

“Come on, no time to waste,” George said, slapping a hand against the short-handled spear, strapped to his belt like a sword. “I’ll give you a history lesson as we walk. The cluster bombs took out the Britannia Bridge, just a little way down the coast. Mister Mills used a cruise missile to destroy the Menai Suspension Bridge.” He gestured at the skeletal ruins jutting out of the fast-flowing water. “That was in April, about a week after we got here and an hour after we realised there was no way we could defend it.”

“The zombies kept coming,” Gwen said. “So did the refugees, but we were burning through ammunition, and there just wasn’t enough of it.”

“I don’t know how many we killed,” George said. “People, I mean, but that’s what inspired us to go back out and find all the survivors we could. Turned out to be a scant few of them, but we tried. But now any trip to the mainland has to be by boat, and that adds an interminable delay. You two got everything you need?”

He was addressing the man and woman standing next to a battered police launch. The lettering near the stern was scorched and in Dutch. I’d assumed we were taking one of the more obviously sea-worthy sailing craft.

“It’s fast,” the woman said, as if reading my thoughts. “Is this it, George?”

“This is it,” George said. “The only volunteers I could find.”

“You’ll want to swap your rifle,” the woman said to Sholto. “Ours have suppressors. We’ve got plenty. More than plenty. You’ll want one, too.”

“I couldn’t hit a barn if I was standing inside it,” I said. “I’ll stick with this axe.”

“Suit yourself,” she said and turned back to George. “Could you really get no one else?”

“Get in,” Gwen said.

We did. The rope was cast off. Gwen took up position behind the controls, and the boat set off. I had to grab hold of a strap to keep my balance.

“Introductions, then,” George said, speaking loudly over the roar of the engine and the crash of the waves. “This is Lorraine and Simon. And this is Bill and Thaddeus.”

“I prefer Sholto,” my brother said.

“Oh, we know who you are,” Lorraine said.

“I have a steely resolve in my eyes,” Simon said, grinning. “It’s undimmed by the horrors I’ve seen, yet softened by the hopes I have for the future.”

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“For when you describe me in your journal,” he said.

“You’ve read it?” I said. “Of course you have.”

His green eyes looked no different to anyone else’s. He was about twenty, where she was a year or two older. Her accent was Scottish. His was Home Counties with a trace of the Midlands. Both wore the mismatched clothing that, like their shaven heads, was practical and common among the survivors.

“Me,” Lorraine said, “you could describe as having an exuberant cheerfulness that the nightmare surrounding us can’t suppress.”

“Focus,” George said. “This isn’t an outing. We’re going into danger. You can chat later, when we’re all safe.”

“Yeah,” Sholto agreed, “because I’d say it’s time for a few more details. Who are we rescuing?”

“Hopefully there’s seven of them,” George said.

“I’m hoping there’s just two,” Simon said.

I looked between the two of them.

George sighed. “Lilith and Will work out of Menai Bridge. They sailed the boat over. Like I said, we’re short of hands, so when it came to getting volunteers to go over to the mainland, we had to ask Markus. He rounded up four people from his pub and decided to tag along himself.”

“What pub?” I asked.

“He calls it the Inn of Iquity,” Simon said. “That tells you all you need to know. It’s the one with the black facade in Holyhead, looking out across the bay. He’s a thief.”

“He’s, um…” George hesitated. “I don’t know how to describe him except that he’s out for himself. I don’t know that you could really call him a thief, but he took over the pub. He runs it as a trading post though I’m not sure what he wants with all the bartered goods he takes in exchange for his homemade spirits and looted beer.”

“Stolen beer,” Simon said. “He took it when he turned up on the island. If he doesn’t come back with us, I won’t complain.”