Surviving The Evacuation (Book 3): Family (13 page)

I filled one bin-bag with apples, then started tearing at the vegetable patch. I vaguely registered that it had been tended recently, that it can’t have been long since the people inside... I pushed that thought away as I thrust fistfuls of leaves, greens, roots and soil into the bag. I didn’t even notice what I was putting in. I only paused when I noticed the ground was shaking. I looked up. The dust cloud was closer. Much closer. I grabbed another handful of leaves and pulled up the world's smallest carrots.

“What the hell, Bill?”

Startled, I dropped the bag. It was Sholto.

“You followed me.”

“Of course I followed you. I came here, to England, didn’t I?”

“We need food and clothes and everything else to survive the next week, you see,” I said. It came out more manically than I intended.

“Right. Is that what’s in the sacks?”

“Apples. Mostly apples. And whatever else I could find. Carrots, see?”

“How are you going to carry it?”

“What?”

“You’ve got five sacks full.”

I hadn’t thought about that.

“Here.” He started picking up fruit. “Let’s finish filling this bag, and then we’ll go.”

There was kind desperation in his voice. He must have thought I’d lost it. If anything I was finally thinking sanely. Though, I guess that’s what an insane man would say.

When we got back to the tunnel Kim was standing grim faced outside it, the M-16 held menacingly in her hands. She didn’t even wait for me to get off the bike before she slapped me. I deserved it. Then she turned and walked inside.

She and Annette had gathered wood for a fire. By its light, after we’d secured the entrance, we took a look at my haul.

“Lot’s to eat,” Kim said, carefully. After a moment she added, “Food. Shelter. Fire.”

She was making a point. I couldn’t work out what. Annette did.

“There’s no water. Nothing to drink.”

“Here, food and water all in one biodegradable package,” I said, handing her an apple. I felt light headed. I gingerly put my arm out, searching for the ground as I sat down. “It’s dark in here. Didn’t one of those bikes have a light on it?”

“Thought we’d save that till later,” Kim said.

“Right. Sure.” It was odd, sitting around a fire inside a tunnel. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the cold, damp ground. “The problem wasn’t food. It never was. It was always water. But water needs to be carried, doesn’t it? Carried and boiled. But apples, they’re eighty five percent water, aren’t they? Or is that people? It’s one or the other.”

I don’t know if I said anything else. I fell asleep.

But not for long. I was woken when a lump of something hard fell from the roof, onto my leg. The tunnel was shaking. The undead were close. I heard sounds too, an irregular banging, not too far away.

“You alright?” Sholto asked.

“Sure. Just tired.”

“They’re outside,” Kim said, gesturing back up the tunnel. “At the door. After you passed out we went out for more firewood.”

“You brought back dog biscuits,” Annette said, holding up a packet.

“I did? I just grabbed anything that looked like food.”

“I mean, dog biscuits?” She repeated, in a tone that mixed disgust with disappointment that I’d not found anything more enticing.

“They’re not made of dog. Is there enough?”

“For you? Plenty, because I’m not eating any of them.”

“I meant food. Do we have enough?”

“For over a week,” Kim said.

“Good enough.” I closed my eyes again.

Day 135, Ludhill Tunnel, 10 miles east of Welsh border

01:00, 25
^th
July

The incessant banging at the door stopped an hour ago. It has been replaced by an intermittent slamming thump as one after another, scores at a time, They walk into or are pushed into the doors. Each echoing, metallic reverberation signals the hordes slow progress up and around the embankment and over the hill above us.

The doors are holding.

There is nothing else to say, and nothing else to do.

04:00, 25
^th
July

Sleep is impossible. Bang, thump, a ringing of metal, a cracking of stone, the breaking of bone, it’s the worst kind of symphony and the tunnel acts as an echo chamber.

07:00, 25
^th
July

I think I heard a tree falling.

08:15, 25
^th
July

Yes. Falling trees. Those must be the ones running alongside the embankment being knocked over.

15:00, 25
^th
July

“What if those trees are blocking the entrance?” Kim asked.

It was a good point. In the dim firelight, I could just make out Sholto shrug.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

“How do you work that out?” she asked.

“This is a tunnel, not a cave.”

It took a moment for the meaning to register. We all turned to stare down into the darkness behind us. Suddenly it seemed ominously forbidding.

“How long is it?”

“Five hundred metres. I think,” I said.

“We should check the other end,” Kim said.

“Yes,” I agreed. None of us moved.

“If there was something down there, we’d hear it coming,” Annette said. “I mean, wouldn’t we?”

“Probably,” Kim said.

“And it would see the light from the fire?”

“Probably,” Sholto said

“And they would have stuck those metal sheets over the other end, so nothing could get in?”

“Probably,” I said. What I was thinking but wasn’t going to say was that if the builders hadn’t, if the other end of the tunnel was open to the outside and it was just luck that had kept the undead wandering up the tunnel, then there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

“There’s no point hiding from the monsters in the dark,” Sholto said, decisively as he stood up.

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“No, I’m serious. If I’m bitten then it’s not the end of the world. If you do...”

He hesitated for a moment.

“We’ll both go,” he said.

“I can manage on my own.”

“Then I tell you what,” he said, “I’ll let you go first.”

The torchlight barely reached twenty feet ahead. It did little more than add a silver silhouette to the potholes that riddled the tunnel floor, but it was infinitely better than stumbling in the dark.

The rails had long since been removed, leaving nothing but the occasional rotten wooden sleeper. After I stepped on one that crumbled into a bloom of dust, I kept to the sounder footing of the rubble at the side of the tracks.

Step by step, inch by cautious inch, I moved slowly down the tunnel. I tried to listen, but I could hear nothing over the continuous drum roll of the undead. I told myself the sound was coming from outside but it was impossible to believe with the floor shaking, and a shower of dust and dirt raining down from above. At any minute I expected to see hundreds of ghoulish mouths snapping up and down, at the edge of the light. And I knew, if I did, that would be the last thing I’d ever see. It was the worst kind of torture.

Then I came to a door built into the side of the tunnel. It’s of the same construction as the door at the tunnel entrance, made of sheet metal held in place with padlocks and bolts.

“What is it?” Sholto muttered.

“A door.”

“I can see that.”

“I don’t remember there being a door here,” I said.

“You’ve been down here before?” he asked.

“No. I meant I didn’t remember seeing any doors on the plans. Except they weren’t really plans. They were going to re-open this tunnel. Part of an express route. Commuters, you know? There was a big press event, champagne and canapés and all that. There was a model and there were maps and that’s why I knew where the tunnel was. That and it cuts through two marginal constituencies. But the model didn’t have a door halfway along.”

“Right. Are they sealed?”

I didn’t want to check. It’s stupid I know, a Heisenbergian fear. As long as I didn’t check the door might be closed and so I wouldn’t have to do anything about it. But if it wasn’t sealed shut... I hesitated too long, Sholto pushed past and tugged at the padlocks. The door shook with an echoing gong.

“Sealed. Let’s keep going,” he said firmly. We did. After twenty yards we passed another door. Exactly twenty yards after that there was a third. Then there was nothing but darkness and noise that lasted an eternity, but was over about twenty minutes later when the light became suddenly truncated. We’d reached the other end of the tunnel.

“We’re here.” I breathed out. And I relaxed a bit more as I played the light up and down the edge of the metal, checking that it was truly sealed.

“Turn the light off,” Sholto suggested, “See if the daylight makes it through.”

I did. It didn’t.

“Well,” he said with a deep sigh, “that’s alright then.”

I laid my hand out against the metal. It was vibrating slightly and felt warm to the touch. The freight train rumbling of the horde was louder here. I thought I could make out the crack and snap of bones over the ceaseless tramping of feet. I didn’t care. The tunnel was sealed. We were safe.

Then I really understood what I’d seen. I turned the torch back on and, slowly, methodically, played it up and down the tunnel entrance. There were three large sections of metal, two across the bottom, one at the top, each welded to the other. I ran the light along each seam, letting it fall on every inch.

“What is it?” Sholto asked.

“What do you see? Or, to put it another way, what don’t you see?” It took him a moment to realise.

“There’s no door.”

“There’s no door?” Kim asked, when we’d returned.

“So we’re trapped?” Annette asked.

“Not necessarily. Let’s start with the good news. The tunnel is sealed, so we’re safe for now.”

“But if the door is blocked by trees or something, then we are trapped,” Annette said.

“I don’t know,” I said, tired once again. “I really don’t. My knowledge of this place is from a few hours spent standing in an overheated room with a few maps and an engineer’s model of what the valley would look like if they re-opened the bridge.

“You know more than we do,” Kim said, almost accusingly. “You picked this place.”

“Alright. The tunnel is halfway up, one side of a shallow valley. At the bottom of the valley runs a river. It would have been simpler to build the train along the bottom of the valley, but the land on the other side was owned by some Victorian Earl. He’d made his fortune when some bubble burst. Or he’d created the bubble, or... it doesn’t matter. The point is that he didn’t want steam trains spoiling his view so they dug out this tunnel, stuck in the tracks then covered it over again. That was pretty common back then. Fast-forward a hundred years and it gets closed down, because who needs trains in the age of the automobile. A few decades after that, and a few boundary changes and the tunnel runs through two marginal constituencies. Re-opening it, and creating a fast train link would revitalise the area and secure two seats for whichever government can claim the credit.”

“How does that help us?”

“No idea,” I said stretching out and closing my eyes, “but now you know as much as I do. So let me know if you can come up with anything.”

19:00, 25
^th
July

No one has.

Day 136, Ludhill Tunnel, 10 miles east of Welsh border

05:00, 26
^th
July

Today, for breakfast we are serving Orange Apple Surprise. To make this you’ll need about five apples, two carrots, and a cucumber. First, peel the apples. Then eat the peel. Next put the apples into a saucepan. Don’t worry about maggots and caterpillars. These are just protein.

Add a splash of fruit juice from the tin of peaches. But only a splash, because there’s not much to waste. Place the apples in the saucepan and put to one side. Remember to put the lid on, because falling dust and dirt from the ceiling doesn’t add to the flavour. Next peel the carrots. Eat the peel, and savour the texture of the dirt on the skin, because there’s no water to spare for washing. Cut the carrots up into the smallest pieces possible with the fruit knife, the one blade you have that hasn’t been used to kill the undead. Place the carrots into the saucepan. Remember the lid.

Chop up the cucumber. Don’t worry about the size of the chunks, during cooking it will boil down to nothing but water and skin. And that skin is going to be about the closest thing this dish will have to texture. Add herbs and spices. Seriously, add lots, because that’s the only way you’ll cover up the flavour of dirt and dust that covers everything.

Place the saucepan on the fire and cook. But don’t leave it. This is the difficult part. You don’t want the steam to escape, so hold down the saucepan lid during cooking. To reduce burns, or to make sure that everyone gets an equal share of them, take it in turns.

After about twenty minutes, or when you smell burning, whichever comes first, take the pan off the fire. Now wait.

And keep waiting.

Wait until it has cooled enough down to tunnel temperature. Remember, we don’t want to waste that precious steam! If you’ve done it properly the dish should now resemble a green flecked orangey mush. Now close your eyes and eat it as quickly as you can, preferably without letting any of it touch a taste bud. Try to digest.

Best served with one dog biscuit per person.

12:00, 26
^th
July

Nicole Upton. Minister for Trade and Development. That’s who that woman was, the one I thought I recognised down by the boat. The zombie I killed. She was in the eight member emergency cabinet with Jen, though I don’t recall what her role had been. I’m not sure I even knew.