Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home (2 page)

“That’ll do,” Fogerty said.

“It will?”

“It’ll have to. The rest is up to him.”

Chester’s chest rose then fell, and then there was a pause just a heartbeat too long, that made her think there wouldn’t be another breath.

“Isn’t there anything else we can do?” she asked.

“We’ve stopped the bleeding,” Fogerty said. “We can keep him comfortable, but that’s all. We could try a transfusion, but we’d need to know his blood type. And I’ll be honest, I’ve seen a battlefield transfusion done, but I’ve never tried doing one myself.”

She breathed out, and as she did, found her hands began to shake. “It just seems so unfair,” she murmured, looking down at Chester.

“You want unfair?” Fogerty asked. “Then how about the story that surrounds those children. How many people were originally in that mansion? About eight hundred? And every few days someone left, heading west, looking for help, right? And they all died, didn’t they?”

“Chester said they didn’t get to Anglesey, and Jay said they didn’t get to London.”

“There you are. They were killed by the undead, but in doing so they led the zombies away from the kids. Their deaths had meaning. They kept them safe.”

“And Chester’s, what meaning will his death have?”

“He isn’t dead yet. So don’t write him off until you’re shovelling soil onto his grave.”

“It’s all gone wrong,” Nilda said. “So wrong. All I wanted was to protect Jay. Sebastian and all those others who died in Penrith, they all died for nothing.”

“And the same can be said for all those the government killed with that poison they said was a vaccine. And the millions who died in the nuclear bombs. And the billions more who died in the chaos afterwards. But saying it doesn’t change anything. All it does is imply there was a higher purpose to all of this, that there’s someone to blame. Well, you can blame God, or Quigley or whoever you like, but that doesn’t change where you are and what needs to be done next. Chester will live or die, but there’s still everyone else. They’re going to need someone to show them the way. Go and get some fresh air. I’ll sit with him for a bit.”

“I shouldn’t leave him,” Nilda said.

“No,” Fogerty said. “There’s really nothing you can do, not here, but you need to wash and change your clothes. The kids shouldn’t see you looking like that.”

She looked down and saw her hands and clothes were covered in blood,

“Yes. You’re right,” she said, and went outside.

Part 1:

Losing Hope

26
th
September

Nilda found herself standing in her small room. She didn’t remember walking there, speaking to anyone, or whether anyone had spoken to her. The bed looked inviting, but she knew this wasn’t the time to give in to that temptation. There was too much to do, there always was. With Hana’s death, it had all become… Nilda wasn’t sure, but knew that standing there probing her emotions wouldn’t prevent their bad situation from getting worse.

“What needs to be done?” she asked herself, trying to turn her mind to the myriad tasks before them. She found no answer, just an echo of the question that repeated over and over.

She stripped and checked the small cabinet. It was nearly empty. There was a pair of jeans a size too large and a T-shirt a size too small. She’d have to get some more from the store and something better suited to the increasingly chilly autumnal air. There, that was a task she could understand.

“We need more clothes. Better clothes.” She let the idea fill her mind. There had been some in the Tower when they’d arrived, belonging to the warders and their families, but they were running low on those, and since the children’s arrival there was barely enough water to drink let alone wash. There was certainly none to spare on laundry.

The T-shirt was emblazoned with an ‘I Love London’ logo. It had come from one of the unofficial souvenir shops just outside the Tower wall. Chester had given them to her just after they’d arrived.

“Chester,” she murmured, and his name caught in her throat. She’d not known him long, but he’d seemed solid, dependable, like a force of nature. His life, his survival, had embodied the idea that even in their darkest hours, even if they had to flee the castle, they could survive. Now that he walked that narrow path with death on either side, the stark reality of their situation had been brought into focus. Not just their individual mortality, but the precarious fragility of the entire group’s existence. There was no retreat, no escape, and no hope.

“No,” she said. “No. There’s always hope.”

She pulled the T-shirt on and looked at the empty cupboard. So many had died. So many that it was easier to count those who’d survived, and their numbers were so few that that it seemed worse than a sin that anyone could want to kill more.

“Why did you do it? Why did you kill Hana? Revenge?” The word came out, and as she heard it she realised it wasn’t an answer but a question. Was it their fault, then? Was it her fault? They’d accused Graham, sentenced him, sent him out beyond the wall’s safety on the assumption he was responsible for the theft of their stores, but they’d had no proof. His actions had justified theirs after the fact, but did that make them right? Were they truly any better than him?

“Yes.” The word echoed around her head, and she found that she believed it to be true. At the last minute, she’d stopped that farce of a mock trial. And though Chester had offered to kill Graham, though they’d talked about executions and all the rest, they had let the man walk out of the castle just as he’d claimed he’d wanted to.

“Nothing can justify what he did,” she said. “Never.”

Which was easy to say, but it gave no clue as to what she should do about him. Nothing, she realised. Not now. Not today. Tuck had gone after him, and so dealing with him was the soldier’s task. Agonising over the past wasn’t going to help Chester, nor was it going to forge them into a proper community. And that was what they had to become, not just a group of survivors all holding on to the individual hope that rescue would come, but a family. One where it was suggestions that were given, not orders dictated. And that was just as easy to say as all the rest.

She was shivering and hadn’t realised. The cold crept up through the floor and into her feet. She looked for socks, but there were none left. The eyelets and laces on the pair of tennis shoes she’d pulled on that morning were matted with blood. All she had left in the cupboard were a pair of mauve flats. Clothes – that was something she knew how to deal with. She’d go to the supply room and find something appropriate to the weather and the world, and conduct a stocktake whilst she was there. That old, familiar, and once hated task was something she could do on her own. The idea of leadership had been beguiling, but now the weight of responsibility was repellent. She wanted nothing more than to run away, but there was nowhere left to escape to. Her eyes fell again to the bed. No one would blame her for closing her eyes for a few hours, no one but herself. She bundled the stained and ruined clothing and stepped outside.

Her eyes tracked to the Keep in the centre of the Tower’s grounds. “It’s been a working castle for nearly a thousand years. They found a way to live here,” she said, “and in times nearly as brutal as these. We’ll find a way. We will. We…” she trailed off as she finally realised how silent it was.

There was no one in sight, and the only voices she could here came from the battlements to the east, and those were all the unmistakable high-pitched chatter of the children. Nilda dropped the bundle of clothes and jogged to the nearest set of stairs. At the top she spotted the nine-year old Janine, the oldest of the children.

“Where is everyone?” Nilda asked.

“Is he going to be okay?” a smaller girl, Simone, asked in return.

“Chester? Yes, he’s going to be fine,” Nilda said, and the child’s knowing smile reminded Nilda that this wouldn’t be the first grievous injury the children had seen. “But where is everyone?” she asked again.

“They’ve gone out to get the food,” Janine said. “From the coaches.”

“Who has?” Nilda asked.

“Everyone,” Simone replied.

“Constance is here somewhere,” Janine said. “But everyone else went.”

A bundle of questions rushed to Nilda, but she bit them back and went to look for Constance. The woman was pacing the battlements further to the south, something a shade deeper than anxiety written across her face.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” Constance asked, as Nilda’s own question was still halfway to her lips.

“Who?”

“Graham,” Constance said. “I can’t patrol the walls on my own.”

“Tuck went after him,” Nilda said, though she hadn’t considered the idea that Graham’s quest for revenge might bring him back to the Tower so soon. “No, he won’t come back, at least not yet. We didn’t see the lifeboat up near Westminster, so he’d have to come by land.”

“That’s only a couple of miles, and it’s already been four hours since you returned,” Constance said. “He could have killed Tuck and be out there right now, aiming that rifle at us.”

“He’s not,” Nilda said, forcing decisiveness into her voice as she looked up towards the sun. She’d not realised they’d been back so long. “Where’s my son?” she asked. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Getting the food we brought back from Kent but left on the coaches, just beyond the barricade,” Constance said. “It was Jay’s idea. He said we needed it. Everyone agreed. Half went out in the rafts. Some others went over the walls to lure the undead away.”

Nilda found she was nodding. “How long since they went out?” she asked.

“Three hours,” Constance said.

Nilda nodded again. Her hand went to the hilt of the gladius belted to her waist. She didn’t remember putting the sword-belt on after she’d changed. Then again, all she remembered of the past few hours were snapshots. Brief moments of terror interspersed with sharp spikes of fear, and now there was one more. She had to go after Jay, as much for her own sake as for his. Her eyes were drawn to the ill-fitting purple shoes. They wouldn’t do. She was down the stairs and halfway to the supply room on the castle’s far side when she heard a high-pitched yell from the wall.

She dashed towards the sound and found the children pulling ineffectually at the ropes. Nilda peered over the side of the castle. There were four people climbing up the wall, but Jay wasn’t among them. She took hold of a rope and hauled, feeling her skin rub and burn. She didn’t care. A hand, then a head, appeared. Nilda reached out, grabbed the arm, and hauled Greta over the top.

“Where’s Jay?” she asked, before the woman had found her feet.

“He’s fine,” Greta said. “He’s on a raft, heading back along the river.”

“He’s okay?”

“Everyone is. I think,” Greta said, breathing hard. “Are McInery or Eamonn back yet?”

“You’re the first,” Nilda said. “What happened?”

“It wasn’t so much Jay’s idea,” Greta explained as they hauled on the other three ropes, “but that he said what everyone was thinking. We had to do something, and we had to get the food, so that’s what we did. Ten of us went over the wall as a diversion, and he took the rest downriver on the rafts.”

“But he was okay?” Nilda asked. “You’re sure?”

“I saw him get in the raft,” Greta said. “There weren’t that many zombies. Twenty? Maybe less. Some more came, but we led them away to make the next trip easier. How’s Chester?”

“He’s unconscious, but we stopped the bleeding.”

“He’s a fighter. He’ll be fine,” Greta said. “And Jay was fine, too. He really was, but they’re rowing against the current.”

“Yes. Of course,” Nilda said, but she wouldn’t believe it until she could see it for herself. Leaving Greta to watch for the return of the rest of that small group, she went down to the river to wait for her son.

She tried to hurry but found her feet were like lead. It wasn’t tiredness, not this time, but a sinking dread that when the boat came in her son wouldn’t be on it. Somehow that was the inevitable end to such a tragic day.

When she reached the riverside path, she found the Thames empty, and that acted as a catalyst for her worst fears. Unable to stand still, she paced back and forth, trying not to stare at that empty patch of dark grey water beyond Tower Bridge. There was an atonal clang from the west. A section of the panelling they’d braced against the iron gate had come loose. A zombie stood there, its arms thrust between the railings. It moved one hand, then the other, reaching out towards her, and with each pawing grasp, its head clanged against the gate.

She drew her sword and stalked towards the creature. Rage boiled up. She wanted to let it loose, to hack and hew at the zombie, and in doing so vent her fury and frustration. She’d done that before, but when it was over and she was standing over a mangled twice-dead corpse, found no quieting of her inner turmoil, no satisfaction, no peace. An errant beam pierced the clouds. The light caught something on the creature’s hand. An engagement ring, Nilda realised. It wasn’t a large diamond, just an everyday ring for an everyday person, the kind that would be a little more expensive than the woman’s intended could afford. The skin around it was swollen, and there was no wedding band.

Nilda raised the gladius and stepped to the side of the railings. She hacked down once, severing the creature’s arms at the elbows. It didn’t even notice as it waved its gory stumps through the gaps. She stepped in front, braced her hand on the pommel, aimed, and slammed the blade through its eye socket, twisting and turning the sword as she broke bone and destroyed its brain. It collapsed, and she stepped back, feeling no different than she had a moment before. She picked up the fallen sheet of wood, and wedged it back into place. Her eye fell once more on the hand with its ring, now lying on the ground at her feet.

“When will it stop?” she asked, knowing that there was no answer to the question.

She walked back along the path, her eyes fixed on the stone, her pace slow. When she reached the steps that led down to the river and finally dared look up, the Thames was still empty. It was five minutes before she caught sight of something bright orange crest a wave just under Tower Bridge. It disappeared from sight for a moment and then reappeared.

The raft looked so fragile. Such an impermanent thing when set against the power of nature and the unnatural that plagued them. She raised a hand. An oar was raised in return, but it was another agonising ten minutes before the craft was close enough that she could be certain that the figure in the bow was Jay. There was relief in that, but not as much as she’d been expecting.

“We got the food off the coaches without a problem,” Jay said, pre-empting any words from his mother as he jumped onto the quay. “But there wasn’t enough space on the rafts for all of it.”

“And the rest?” she asked. “Is it still on the coaches?”

“No, it’s by the riverbank, behind a pub. We need the food, right? I mean, it was going to rot if we left it.”

“No. Yes. I mean, it was a good thing. A good idea.” She reached out a hand to help Aisha up onto the steps.

“Thanks,” Aisha said, heavily.

“How’s Chester?” Jay asked.

“I don’t know,” Nilda said, reaching out her hand again, this time to grab an old carpetbag. Even if the zip hadn’t been broken, revealing the apples within, she’d have been able to tell the contents from the wonderfully pungent smell. It was a tonic compared to the musty decay of the city, the rancid stench of the river, or even the sickly sweet smell of the laminated furniture fuelling the boilers. “He’s alive. Unconscious, but breathing.”

“Alive is all you can hope for,” Aisha said, taking the bag from her and moving off towards the gate. Kevin jumped from the boat and moved to take the bag from her.