Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home (15 page)

Perhaps he hadn’t come back here. But if he’d not, then where would he have gone? It was the wrong question. She should be asking herself why he’d come back to Westminster. She reached the end of the corridor, found another set of stairs, and went up. It was much the same as the floor below. There were no barricades, no sign that anyone had been there in months.

She went up again and again until the stairs ran out. She stalked the empty corridors until she found a service door that provided access to the roof. The centre part was flat with a sloping section to the north and south. Tools lay rusting in one corner near a trio of workbenches. Plastic sheeting flapped loose from a small section of scaffolding. It looked like they’d been half way through converting some part of it into a rooftop terrace when the outbreak occurred.

The roof was as empty as the corridors below. She sat down on an air conditioning vent, and as her heart slowed, the adrenaline ebbed, and the cuts on her arms and face angrily barked, she went through what she knew.

Graham had been waiting for them. No, that wasn’t right. Even if he’d seen them approach, he wouldn’t have known out of which door they would have left. So he hadn’t been in the hotel, but in that building opposite, and just happened to see them. Why had he been there? That question could have a million possible answers. The bigger question was why he’d come to Westminster. He’d said he wanted to leave London. Then again, his actions had proven he wasn’t to be trusted. The obvious answer was that he, and everyone else in the Tower, knew of three places in London where there were supplies. The Tower itself, which he couldn’t return to, Kirkman House which only had those things they’d deemed dispensable enough to abandon there, and this hotel in Westminster. Looking at it like that, it should have been obvious this was where he would have come. He hadn’t known there would be anything more than 5.56mm ammunition here, but then neither had she. It was only a guess that she’d find ammo for the grenade launcher and instinct that made her bring it with her. After they’d seen Chester off on his way, she’d planned on coming back to the hotel herself, hoping to find supplies in case he didn’t make it Wales.

Was that it then? Had Graham just come here in the hope of finding more than just ammunition? There was no way of knowing. She stood up and looked at the rooftops surrounding her. All appeared lifeless and vacant, almost peaceful.

They’d not seen the lifeboat when they’d travelled upriver from the Tower, so perhaps he’d cut it loose out of spite and come to Westminster on foot. Or perhaps he’d run out of fuel somewhere downriver and then made his way back through London. Again, there was no way of knowing. What she did know was that out of all the survivors in the Tower, he’d been one of the few who hadn’t minded leaving the safety of the castle’s walls. Perhaps he’d already scouted a route to Westminster before they threw him out. She found her hand reaching for her water bottle. She took a cautious sip.

What it came down to was that she didn’t know Graham at all. He could be in the hotel or in any of the buildings nearby, or he could have kept on running and be miles from here by now.

She walked to the edge of the roof and looked down at the undead milling in the street. There were a lot of them now, somewhere between forty and sixty. Far too many to fight, but not so densely packed that she couldn’t run through them. Still, they would make leaving difficult, but she couldn’t leave, not yet. Whatever the man’s motives, whatever the specifics of his actions, he had come to Westminster. He wouldn’t simply leave, and nor could she, not until she’d found and killed him.

In her pockets were a few matches, the multi-tool, and a lot of lint. She would need a lot more than that. She went back into the hotel, going from room to room, until she had tape, wire, screws, and the metal runners from a pair of cabinets. With two grenades, she improvised a pair of mines that she set up by the doors in the stairwell. She didn’t think Graham would spot them, but nor did she think he’d come back. But if he did, or if the undead somehow managed to get up three flights of stairs, then from the rooftop she should feel the vibration of the explosion.

She went through the rooms, and found a poncho in the first, but didn’t find any rations until she’d reached the twentieth. She tried the taps in every third room, but nothing came out. When she reached the end of the corridor, having searched each room on the floor, she reconciled herself to the fact she wouldn’t find any water. She had enough for a day, and that would have to do. She returned to the roof. Careful to keep her head down, she moved slowly around the edge, noting the direction the undead were moving. Twenty minutes later, she checked again. And again. She was almost relieved when darkness fell and she was forced to slump against the closed door to wait for dawn.

27
th
September

Huddled with her back to the door, shivering with cold, Tuck longed for morning. It was raining, but she didn’t mind. Being able to feel something was her only comfort against the dark. Every passing second brought a flash of expectation that the next would bring the vibrating explosion of her improvised mines. She dreaded it would, but worried even more that the first thing she’d feel was undead hands slapping against the wood at her back. The stars were obscured, and she had no idea of the time. The backlight button on her cheap digital watch had broken with her obsessive second by second check of how long it was until dawn.

The MREs weren’t helping. They were meant to be edible cold, after all, ready-to-eat was in the name, but they lay in her stomach like a lumpen weight. Her only distraction from discomfort and fear was to replay what she’d seen in the hotel rooms below her. She searched her memory for clues as to where, if not here, the main supply dump was. She was certain that was where she would find Graham. But when she tried, she pictured the rooms filled with soldiers, and each bore a face of someone with whom she’d served. She saw them woken abruptly in the night, rushed to bolster a hasty defence, attacked, overrun, and now dead or undead, but certainly no longer alive. It was a grim image, so she tried turning her mind to the present, and how she might trap Graham. Each idea was more elaborate than the last, though they gave no clue as to how she would find him.

Finally she tried to picture a future, a time when the daily struggle for food and survival was over. She could imagine the Tower and a quasi-medieval life of solar panels and stone walls, of wells and wind turbines. She could imagine Nilda and Jay in that picture, but not herself.

The rain grew heavier. She pulled the poncho off her head, and turned her face to the sky, letting the drops beat against her face. If it was contaminated with radiation or something worse, it didn’t matter now. Come dawn, she would search for Graham. If he saw her first, she would be shot. If she saw him first, she’d be most likely killed in the grenade’s blast. That was the only future she would have.

It was an hour after dawn before the sky brightened sufficiently for her to see the edge of the roof. She stood, stretched, but then had to wait until it was light enough to make out the streets below. The undead had arrived during the night. Some were still slouching towards the smouldering building, though the thin wisp of smoke suggested that the fire hadn’t really taken. She watched the rest, trying to discern some pattern in their movement that would indicate where Graham might be hiding. There was none. Then, without enthusiasm, she worked out a route that would take her back to the Tower.

The rain slackened, the sun rose, the rain stopped, and she kept pacing the roof, all hope of catching the man fading with each step.

When the sun was at its peak, she took a sip from the water bottle and found it almost empty. The time for waiting was over. A decision had to be made. To stay she would need more supplies. But was there any real purpose in stalking the roof hoping he would appear in her field of view? Should she start a search of each building in Whitehall? The only alternative was firing off a grenade and hoping he might come and investigate. What if he’d already left? What if—

Then she saw it. A zombie in a stained blue coat stopped, turned slowly around, and began heading south. Then another, ten paces ahead, did the same. A third rose from its crouch, following those two. Others stayed motionless, so perhaps it was nothing, but it was the only lead she had.

She didn’t run from the hotel. First, she went back inside, gathered some more rations, some dry clothes, and disarmed the traps. She knew she had time. The undead, after all, were slow. When she went outside, she picked an exit that led to a road parallel to the one the zombies had been on.

Bayonet drawn, she moved cautiously, trying not to disturb the noisome sludge beneath her feet. She wasn’t quiet enough. The stationary undead in the street heard her. A creature rose. Tuck ran straight past it and into a narrow road not wide enough for a car despite the yellow markings down either side.

Ahead was a zombie, and the road was too narrow for her to dodge. It was still rising from its half-crouch as she turned her run into a skip. Her right hand pulled back, her left grabbed its shoulder as she stabbed the bayonet up through its chin, the blade slicing through flesh and muscle and brain. Carefully, she lowered the body.

Was she far enough? No. One more block. She reached the end of the narrow alley and was on a long, wide road. Was it Whitehall? There were wrecked tanks lined up either side, but the undead blocked her view of the landmarks and monuments that might give a clue where she was. There were too many to fight, and nowhere left to run. No. There. A closed door underneath a flagpole. An embassy, though of which country, she couldn’t tell. As she ran towards it, a zombie staggered towards her. She slammed an elbow into its undead face, feeling teeth break as the creature tumbled sideways. As the creature thrashed and flailed its way back to its feet, she ran to the building, and climbed in through a broken window.

Inside, the walls were adorned with faded photographs of mountains and lakes that could have been taken in any continent. She ignored them and went searching for stairs.

She didn’t need to get to the roof. All she wanted was a window with a view of the road. She found it in a small room in the eaves of the building, and did so a full minute before the zombie in the blue coat lumbered past. Its appearance, however, just confirmed what she’d guessed from the cluster of bodies lying around a doorway seventy metres to the south. She’d found Graham. Or she’d found where he’d been a few minutes before. That nagging voice of doubt said that he could have gone. That she had no way of knowing when those bodies had been killed, or even how they’d been killed. No, it had to be recently, as they lay on top of that litter of leaf mould and debris. Of course, that—

The creature in the blue coat collapsed. The two zombies that had been following it started moving more quickly, not towards the building but towards the fallen creature. Tuck ignored them. She was scanning the building, taking in the windows, not looking at any individual one, but trying to take in the entire frontage, alert for movement. There. Two floors up, halfway along. Maybe. Maybe not. No. Definitely. She saw it again.

She backed away from the window, checked the grenade launcher was loaded, went downstairs, and climbed out of a window on the other side of the building.

It took half an hour and four more zombies before she’d skirted a wide path to the building’s far side. Most of the windows had been boarded up, but that gave her even greater confidence that she’d found Graham’s lair. She broke in through a door that, going by the cluster of wall mounted cigarette bins, was a smoking escape more than a fire exit. Only as she was pushing the door closed behind her did she wonder why, when Graham had shot that creature in the blue coat, the other two had moved to its body and not toward the sound of gunfire.

There were enough open doorways and gaps in the rudimentary barriers on the windows to add shade to the busts of long forgotten politicians lining the corridor. She was in a government department, then. One of the older ones, though which didn’t matter. Graham was upstairs, and the undead were outside. Knowing that it was a lottery whether she’d walk out of the building, she wanted to rush in and get it over with. She quelled that desire and moved slowly, eyes darting left and right, scanning for reflections and moving shadows.

She reached a set of stairs six feet wide with a bannister polished by decades of use. Walking in a crouch, her eyes fixed on the next landing, she went up. And up again, until she reached a panelled hallway. She followed it, then turned right, then left. The third door on the right was open, light splashed out into the corridor beyond. The room looked out on the front of the building, she was sure of that, and that Graham would need an unobstructed window from which to fire. She’d found him.

“Do unto them, before they can do unto you,” ran through her head as, finger on the trigger, she went into the room.

It was large. It was empty. At least, there was no sign of Graham. The ceiling was three metres high. The windows running along the exterior wall were almost as tall. Tables had been overturned to block most, but one in the middle had been left clear. The glass had been broken, a table and chair set up in front of it. That wasn’t what caught her eye. In the centre of the room were six metal cases a little larger than a carry-on suitcase. They were shiny, metallic, the heavily reinforced kind designed to withstand a drop from altitude and anything but a direct hit from high explosive.