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

I helped her back to her wheelchair, and then took her inside, to the office in the library that she’d claimed as her own. She made a comment about looking through some papers, but I got the feeling she was going to rest.

She has a formidable resolve, but not the stamina that leadership requires. As to who would replace her, I had no idea except that it wouldn’t be me. Walking away from the library, I decided to do what she said and focus on that election. I went outside, to see what advice my brother might have.

“I suppose we need nomination papers,” I said, after I’d summarised my conversation with Mary O’Leary. “And ballot papers. To avoid fraud, I was thinking we could use coloured paper but not say what colour until the day. Do you think we should use the Iraq model?”

“Sat-phones,” Sholto said.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“When I was escaping the U.S., I had a sat-phone and a tablet,” he said. “With those, I was able to plot a route free of stalled traffic and the undead. It’s how I got to Crossfields Landing.”

“How does that help plan an election?” I asked.

“It doesn’t,” he said, and I realised he’d not been listening to me. “If the satellites are still up there, I should be able to access them. The radios’ range is limited. With a sat-phone, you’d be in contact with Kim. We’d have had images of the Isle of Man, and that place where they saw a light. We’d have been in touch with Lilith and Will, and would have known precisely what had happened to them.”

I forced my brain onto a new track. “Satellites? You mean the GPS network?”

“No, I’m talking about a private network Lisa Kempton was building. You remember her?”

“The billionaire investor, sure. She had her own satellites?”

“Control the means of communication and you control the message,” he said. “Specifically, she wanted early access to the messages her competitors were sending each other. Why bother with corporate espionage when the data is flowing through your hands? She was part of the conspiracy.”

“She was?”

“Her commercial operations provided cover,” he said. “People notice when a government plane sets down in a remote airfield. Even more so with a military flight from a foreign power. If it’s a corporate jet belonging to a company with fingers in every national pie, no one bats an eyelid.”

“Why? What was she going to get out of it?”

“The licence to produce the vaccine,” Sholto said. “Of course, that was when they thought it would actually cure the world of disease. I don’t know how much she was going to charge per dose, but whatever number you think of, I bet you could double it and not even come close to the answer. Looking back, taking in Quigley, his ambitions, his actions, and those of the cabal in America, I reckon Kempton planned to seize power herself. I’m not sure how she was going to achieve it, but every conspirator I met envisioned a tyranny of one. Not that it matters now. What does is the satellite network.
I had someone working on the inside, and that got me access and an interface that’s almost as simple as point and click. We can alter the orbits, just as long as the satellites have propellant.”

“I was saying to Mary O’Leary that yesterday’s debacle wouldn’t have happened if we had proper communications. This is the answer.” I found myself looking up at the sky. “How do we do it?”

“For altering the orbits, I’d like to get some professional help. Maybe the comms officer from the Vehement, but first we need to see whether the satellites are still there. To do that, we need a sat-phone. I’ve been looking for one ever since I got to Britain. No luck, obviously. I mean, they would have been beyond useful when we were escaping that horde.”

“Military bases would be one option,” I said. “Or one of the ships, perhaps? Otherwise we’re going to have to look at a large city. Bangor’s too small to have a shop that would stock them. Cardiff, perhaps? Or Bristol? Except didn’t someone say they were hit with a bomb? We should check with Mrs O’Leary.”

“Sat-phones?” George asked. “Leon went looking for some back in June, but he didn’t find any. I can tell you there’s none over at RAF Valley on Anglesey. That was cleared out during the evacuation, right down to the tools. Somebody on a ship might have one, but I can’t think of a name.” He glanced at the window to Mary O’Leary’s office. The blinds were drawn. We’d found George sitting, almost on guard, outside the door.

“So we’re going to have to make a trip to the mainland?” Sholto asked.

“Is it worth the risk?” George asked.

“Anyone who leaves here would be able to keep track of the hordes ripping through the mainland,” Sholto said. “And we’d be able to keep in contact with them.”

“I understand that, lad,” George said. “But it’s not the real reason, is it?”

Sholto chewed his lip as if weighing up his response. “It’s Crossfields Landing,” he said. “That’s the village I set out from when leaving America. There were seventy people there. They might be alive. They might need help.”

“A satellite image isn’t going to transport you thousands of miles across an angry sea,” George said. “But try Heather Jones. She’d know where the nearest shop would be.”

“She’s the one from Menai Bridge?” I asked.

“Yes,” George said, “but she’s somewhere in town. She’ll be around here later.”

“When?” Sholto asked.

“It’s not like I have an appointment book,” George said. “Give it a couple of hours.”

Outside, Sholto bridled at the delay, and the reason was obvious.

“These aren’t spy satellites, are they?” I asked.

“What? No, they were built for communications. It was all about the data passing through them. The cameras were a cover. They were originally part of a package designed by a university group studying coastal erosion.”

“So the cameras have a low resolution?”

“You can tell the difference between people and cars,” he said, “but you can’t read their licence plates.”

“And Crossfields Landing is in Maine, right? There’s a five-hour time difference.”

“So?”

“So if the resolution isn’t going to be enough to tell the difference between a zombie and a person,” I said, “then the only real way of knowing if those people are alive is by looking for the lights at night.”

Our eyes looked upward at a blue sky dotted with fluffy cumulous clouds.

“Maybe. Yeah, fine.” He sat down on the edge of the only adult-sized picnic table in the playground. Then he stood up. “So do you want to… I don’t know. What are we meant to do for fun when we’ve time on our hands?”

“No cinema, no theatre, not even a coffee shop. I suppose we could go to the pub?” I suggested. “I’d like to see Markus in his own environment. See for ourselves if he’s as bad as his first impression implied. Perhaps he’s got a sat-phone. It’s the sort of thing someone might have traded for a couple of pints. Come on,” I added, when it looked like Sholto would say no. “It’ll keep us busy until Heather Jones arrives.”

At first, I assumed the group outside the pub were customers queuing to get in. Before depression at all that meant had time to settle, I realised that though they were customers, it wasn’t for the pub itself. A pair of tables had been set up in the car park. I recognised Rob, the young man with the sword, standing near the entrance.

“Buying or selling,” he asked.

“Neither,” I said.

“Then you’ve no business here,” he said, wrapping his hand around the hilt of his sword.

“Think of us as the health inspectors,” Sholto said. “Or the ATF if you prefer. I can see the firearms and guess you’ve got the alcohol inside. No tobacco, though?”

A woman walked over to us. It was the same one who’d been with Markus in the chalet in Caernarfon. She was armed, but unlike Rob, with a sleek pump-action shotgun. I smiled. She didn’t.

“You want cigarettes?” she asked. “No problem, you just can’t smoke them on the premises, not if you ever want to by any more from us.”

“Colour me curious,” Sholto said. “But no, we don’t want to buy any. Is Markus around?”

“He’s inside,” she said. “Is this an official visit?”

“Idle curiosity,” I said.

She weighed that up. “You can go in,” she said.

I took another look at the lines of people. From what I could see, they were selling anything and everything, but it wasn’t clear what they were buying. I followed my brother inside.

I don’t what I was expecting. Dark, dank, dirty squalor I suppose, but that wasn’t what we found. It was well lit and clean, and looked more like an office than a pub though there was a price board and bottles behind the bar. At a stool at the far end sat Paul. He was nursing an almost empty coffee mug and sporting a fresh black eye.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He glanced at me, then Sholto. “Slipped,” he muttered.

Deciding I wasn’t going to get a better answer than the one I could guess, I went for the direct approach. “Where’s Markus?”

“Out the back,” Paul said.

“Go and get him,” Sholto said, taking a seat at the bar.

Paul made a point of emptying the dregs from his mug before slipping behind the bar. He wasn’t the only person in there. A pair of women sat by a window, a stack of books on the table between them. Near the stairs, an older, bearded man was running a cloth over a long knife, not in a threatening way, but with the keen eye of a craftsman tending his tools. Only the four people on the pub’s other side looked as if they were taking their ease, but they weren’t drinking. No one was. I began revising my opinion of Markus.

“Ah, the two brothers of literary fame,” the man himself said, coming out of the back room. Paul followed, with a sharp-faced women bringing up the rear. “Get them some drinks, Rachel.”

“Tea? Coffee?” she asked. “Or there’s beer, but it’s Hopvar, I’m afraid. Unless you want to try our own brand vodka.”

“You don’t have any named brands?” I asked.

“We keep those for trade,” Markus said. “Except the Hopvar. Vile stuff, but we found a lorry full of it just after we got here. That’s why we decided we’d open the pub. There was more than we wanted to drink, but then one bottle of that brew’s usually more than anyone wants to drink, right, Rachel?”

“That’s right, Markus,” the woman said, in a tone that suggested it wasn’t. There was something about her expression that made me think she didn’t like the man.

“Tea would be fine,” I said.

“Yeah, why not,” Sholto said. “When in Wales, after all.”

“Two teas, then, Rachel,” Markus said. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We were looking for a sat-phone,” I said.

“Then you’re out of luck,” Markus said. “We don’t have one.”

“No one’s traded them with you?” I asked.

“They might have tried, but we’re not buying,” he said. “What use would it be? Oh, sure, there’s the battery, but you can find a hundred mobile phones on every street. Finding a use for them is more difficult. I’m glad you came, actually. You can take these off our hands.”

He walked behind the bar and through the door to the back room, returning with a blue cracked-leather gym bag. He placed it on the counter.

“Pills?” Sholto asked, looking inside.

“Yeah, people trade them,” Markus said. “No idea if they still work. Thought you could take them to the hospital. I’ve no use for them.”

Sholto took out a pill bottle. “Vitamin C.” He took out another. “Neo-natal supplements. This is for arthritis, and this is a painkiller. It’s an opioid.”

“And we’ve definitely no use for those,” Markus said.

“You don’t sell pills?” I asked.

“Where’s the profit in that?” he asked.

I glanced at the board behind the bar. “You sell booze,” I said.

“Only after five p.m. We have strict licensing hours.”

And again I found myself disconcerted by how atypical he was being. “So why not pills?”

“Because they’ll run out,” Rachel said, returning with a tray on which were two mugs of tea. “There’s no point creating a habit you can’t supply. That’s right, isn’t it, Markus?”

“Ah… yeah,” he said, and I sensed he’d not planned on giving such an honest reply.

“You said you wanted a sat-phone?” Rachel asked. “Most of the ships’ crews dumped them over the side during the escape, along with anything else that was useless weight. I went looking months back. You can ask, but I don’t think you’ll get anywhere.”

After two minutes of good tea and awkward conversation, we left.

“That wasn’t what I expected,” I said. “I thought it would be a dive. Lots of guns and bandoliers of ammunition.”

“And gold-toothed pirates? I think that’s who Kim sailed off with,” Sholto said. “No, Markus is a lot more organised than I was expecting, and that’s what that place reminds me of. Organisation. Specifically, organised crime. You remember me telling you what happened after our parents died?”

“You fell in with some gangsters.”

“They had a place like that, and I’ve seen others like it since. Places where there are very strict rules. It’s a place of work and run as such.”