Surviving The Evacuation (Book 1): London (9 page)

Those who didn't like the idea of this could stay where they were. The evacuation was not compulsory, but once it was complete there would be very little chance those stay-behinds would be let in.

I thought only as far ahead as the next five months and gave no thought at all to the next five years. I assumed that
we wouldn't get a severe outbreak here, that the rest of the world would be in such chaos that there would be no competition for the stockpiles overseas that we'd need to get us through until harvest and that the threat would recede. Perhaps one day it will, I have to hope it does, but just by looking out the window I can tell we've had a major outbreak. How much rice and grain was really sitting in warehouses around the world just waiting for us to collect it? Did we even have the resources to collect it, the helicopters, the planes, the troops to secure the landing sites? Even if we were the only ones trying to take those supplies could we really manage it?

As for fishing, where are the boats going to come from? Or the nets? We were offering sanctuary to fishing boats that came in with their gear, but can there really be enough for 60 million people? Then again, looking out the window, it's clear we won't need that much.

My own personal future, when I get out of here, is definitely desk-based, maybe on board a ship, maybe wherever the government is. Even if I have to get out of here under my own steam, when I do, I have no intention of ripping up concrete or sleeping on a camp bed in some unlit warehouse, queuing up with thousands of others for a daily bowl of watery soup. And why shouldn’t I think like that? That's the way the world works and I refuse to feel guilty about it if for no other reason than all those people in the work gangs are far safer than I am right now.

Maybe if I'd had a plan in place last night I might have made it to the car, but would they have stopped? Would they have been able to tell I wasn't one of the living dead? I can't move quickly and, particularly at night, that's about the only difference between us. The car would have ignored me at best, run me over at worst, either way I would have been left for the horde to finish off.

Now it's going to be much harder to leave. There's at least fifty outside, fifty visible from my window. God knows how many are on the other side of the house, but that will have to be looked into.

I made another assumption about our situation, one that's only just starting to dawn on me. I assumed that one day, one day soon, that these things outside, undead, zombies, infected, whatever, that one day They would die, and that we could just take back our Island. What if we have to fight for it?

No matter. It isn't my concern, not now. Perhaps when I get out of here, but if I am to do that then I need to be fit. I started exercising this morning, I've done one hour so far, and will do another hour later. No, that's just prevarication and there's no place for that any more. I'll do another hour now.

18:00, 18
th
March.

I had to take a break halfway through, but that was about an hour's worth of exercise. It was close enough, anyway. Other than the
occasional guilt driven jog I was an infrequent athlete. There's a certain type of professional politician who only wants to negotiate when you're both on a treadmill. It's an odd game of chicken, whoever quits first has to make the concession. It kept my waistline reasonably under control, but not much more besides.

But I do need to get fit. I’m still working out a regimen of push-ups, sit-ups, weights (improvised of course) and stretches that work in such a small space and with a leg in a cast. If the world hadn't ended I'd have published it as the next new get-fit book. From the way my muscles ache rather than scream I think I've done more good than harm so far.

I'll turn the phone off in a minute. I've had it on for a half hour now. No messages, no signal. I've tried making a few calls, but can't get through to anyone anywhere. I’m pretty certain the network is down. There's no point wasting the battery. Might as well do some more exercise.

19:00, 18
th
March.

There's not as many as there were this morning. They're still moving. I purposefully only did a rough headcount. I knew I wasn't in the right frame of mind to know exactly how bad my situation was. Presumably the undead followed the noise of the engine and it's that momentum that's keeping Them moving hours after the last echo faded away. My neighbour, or what was left of her, finally disappeared sometime this morning, now the undead out there are all strangers. I’m glad of that.

Individually They don't seem to have any purpose, though They all seem to be heading in the same direction the car went. I've timed it and They're currently meandering along at between one and two miles an hour. Those with visible injuries are a lot slower. My neighbour's probably not far up that road. I’m sure They were much faster this morning.

Are They just following one another now, or do They somehow remember which direction the car went? That could be important, if I could work out which it was.

20:00, 18
th
March.

It's too dark to see now. That's almost comforting. I've moved my chair back so all I can see are the stars. When was the last time anyone saw those stars from here? During the blackout in the Second World War, I suppose, but even then there would have been searchlights criss-crossing the sky.

I've got the radio on, and I’m slowly twisting the dial up and down, through the frequencies. All the BBC ones are still broadcasting the emergency message, but I sometimes think I hear something on one of the others. It's a comfort, I suppose, doing something with my hands, and having to constantly wind it up at least keeps me warm.

The stars really are beautiful.

Day 7, 71 Days to go.

05:00 19
th
March.

I fell asleep in the chair. Not a good idea, as my neck can attest. Time for exercise.

10:00, 19
th
March.

Pancakes! That's what you do with flour and water! Blimey, that took me long enough to realise. I've been staring at the flour for days dreaming of pizza, of bread, of cakes, and then, for a change, I’ve stared at the carton of powdered eggs and dreamt of fried egg sandwiches. But what do you get when you combine powdered eggs, powdered milk and flour? Delicious, delectable, scrumptious, and a whole thesaurus’s worth of synonyms for... Pancakes! At least, that’s what you get if you add the magic ingredient, fire. That little stove is just absurd, totally unworthy of the name, so I caved. I need to start taking risks so I came downstairs and lit the fire.

I’m now on my fifth cup of tea (I’m catching up) and sixth pancake. My plan was to make enough pancakes to last today and tomorrow, and boil enough water to wash, but I can't stop eating them. I know, I know, I should be rationing them, but one day here or there isn't going to matter much.

The fire makes less smoke than I thought it would. That's good, but the coal's not lasting as long as I thought, which is bad. OK, so I’m burning way more than I need to, but it's so great to be warm again, inside and out. It's the little things...

For the record, I would like to give thanks to the Ricardo Phillipe Ramirez Institute for Oceanographic Research and Exploration, whose logos so gracefully adorn the packs of powdered eggs and milk. PRIORE had lobbied Jen last year to try and get an increased grant and a reduced tax bill if they transferred their operations to the UK from Argentina. Being a rather cash strapped research group they'd not had much to offer by the way of bribes so gave her a crate of the rations they gave their teams in the Arctic. They got the grant, but more I think because it was one up on Buenos Aires.

If this had been one of Jessica's books, then Jen would have left the whole crate (each one is a month's worth of supplies for a crew of 8, based on a diet of 6,000 calories a day). Sadly all I got was a box of powdered milk and another of powdered eggs. Hey ho.

Damn! The oil caught in the frying pan. That's the second time that's happened, but, they're not my frying pans, I've at least another three in the house.

Hey, I just realised. I could make an omelette without breaking any eggs!

15:00, 19
th
March.

Nope. You can't. The best I managed was a sort of scrambled mess. Not that unpleasant with enough salt and pepper, but not an omelette. There is, no, there was, a place in Kensington that did the best omelettes. They were light and fluffy with just the right level of crispiness on the outside. They were so good I used to take the staff there for lunch if we'd had a light week. I think they liked it, but perhaps more because I let them take the afternoon off afterwards and so, to them, being told it was omelettes for lunch became synonymous with a half day.

There were just the four of us, Charlotte, Sharmina, Ioin and myself. Charlie and Minnie were both interns with ideas of standing for Parliament. Ioin was an office manager with dreams of opening a BBQ restaurant in Cornwall. The interns were a new thing, we were expanding as I moved away from consultancy and more into electioneering and policy work for... well, it doesn't matter now does it? Jen was going to run for Mayor as a stepping stone to the party leadership. We'd joke that it was our five year plan. She stood a good chance, I think.

I got the three of them passes out of the capital. The last I heard they were all going to Wales to stay with family of Ioin's. That was two days after I got out of the hospital. Of course it was difficult to stay in contact with the mobile networks down and with email being ropey at best, but I wish I knew if they'd made it.

18:00, 19
th
March.

The Emergency Broadcast has all but stopped. It's continuing on the old Radio 4 long wave frequency, but FM is silent now. Either there was a power failure at some substation or, with the evacuation supposedly complete and with no one left to hear it the electricity was deliberately cut.

As for the broadcast on long wave, that's different to the one I've been listening to on FM these past few days.

“The time is eighteen hundred hours. This is an Emergency Broadcast. Stay inside. Avoid contact with the infected. If you are stranded in a city indicate your presence with two or more white sheets hanging out of a top floor window. Listen for further announcements”

Brief and abrupt, there's no date, no names, no station call signs, just that message repeated on the hour every hour, the only thing changing is the time. But, that mention of infected, that means it's not some old automated system, that message has been recorded recently!

19:05, 19
th
March.

The message has changed again:

“Stay indoors. If you or someone with you is infected kill them. There is no cure for the infection. Do not leave your homes. If you can, hang a white sheet from windows on the first floor or higher. Listen for further instructions.”

It's someone I've met, probably more than once. It isn't one of the usual BBC voices, but someone else. Perhaps someone from a university or some junior ministry official, or is it just someone I met at a party? I’m really not sure. I keep listening, trying to place the voice. It's frustrating, almost makes me want to turn the radio off, but maybe they'll say something more, something useful.

I’m not sure about the white sheets. I’m worried that breaking a hole through the roof would just attract more of Them.

Day 8, 70 days to go.

05:00, 20
th
March.

I've stopped taking the painkillers. There are only twenty five left. It's not going to be enough if I take them one at a time, and one at a time doesn't do much good.

Exercise is the answer. Got to get fit, got to get out of here.

11:00, 20
th
March.

Laundry time. I don't know why I put it off. The first batch is now hanging up, dripping tepid sudsy water all over the floor. It's wonderfully cathartic, except for the pervasive smell of soap that's battling with that of the smoke which now permeates the house. I thought that'd be a relief, even with the windows closed there's a strange musty smell forcing its way in from outside. It's a bit like that smell you get in the countryside just after a torrential storm when the manure and decaying leaf matter has been churned up by the rain. Oddly, though, I prefer it to detergent.

18:00, 20
th
March.

Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. Far too cold for the laundry to dry. I've left it hanging up in Tom's flat, but what chance is there of it doing anything but rotting this side of June? Well, what's done is done. There's little real lasting heat from the fire and I've burnt through most of the easily broken furniture. The flats downstairs are far too big and draughty to stay in. I’m starting to feel a bit guilty about the way I treated my tenants, but only a little. Up here, under a mountain of sheets and blankets it's just about bearable.