Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home (27 page)

She’d been shot twice. Once in the shoulder, once in the thigh. Her good hand was trying to pick up the grenade launcher. When she saw it was Chester, she dropped it. He pressed his hands down on her thigh.

“It’s over. He’s dead,” Chester said.

“Chester? Tuck?” A voice called from the door.

“Jay? Get over here. Graham’s dead, Tuck’s been shot.”

The boy ran over. “How bad is it? Let me see. Bandages. We need bandages!”

“You’re going to need more than that,” Chester said. “Graham would have had a bag. Look over by the window.”

Jay ran off and came back a few long seconds later with a military rucksack.

“There’s food. Some water. A radio. Here, bandages. Let me do it. Out of the way.”

Jay quickly wrapped one on Tuck’s shoulder, and another on her leg.

“It’s going to be okay, Tuck.” Then he raised his voice again. “We need to get her back to the castle.”

Chester took a step back as Jay and Kevin lifted the soldier, and carried her out of the room.

“It’s over,” he said again.

“He’s dead?”

“Greta? Yeah, Graham’s dead,” Chester said, perching himself on the edge of a desk.

“You don’t mind if I check?” Greta asked.

“The body’s over there somewhere,” Chester said, waving a hand vaguely around the room.

“Whoa! I’d say you killed him twice over.”

“I wanted to make sure,” Chester said. His face stung. His head ached. He’d lost a tooth, his knuckles were bruised and one might be broken. When he raised a hand to his face, it came away covered in blood. But he was alive, and Graham was dead. That was all that mattered.

“It’s over,” he said again. But it didn’t feel over. Not yet. “Can you check something for me,” he asked. “Look around his neck. See if there’s ID. Military tags, I mean.”

“You think he was a soldier?”

“Yeah, there was something he said that makes me think he might have been.”

“You were right,” Greta said. “It says his name is… Thompson.”

“Really? That sounds familiar.”

“You knew him?” Greta asked.

“I don’t think so,” Chester said. “It’s this memory I’ve been having since I came to the Tower but can’t quite place. It’s a common enough name, isn’t it?”

“Did he say why he killed Styles and Hana?”

“I don’t know. Not really. He rambled a bit about revenge and a new start, but there wasn’t anything you could really call coherent. And he mentioned this guy I once knew. Someone who worked for Quigley.”

“Oh yes? You think Graham was working for him, too?”

“Maybe, maybe not. We can speculate all we want, but we’ll never know the truth, not now. But I’d say that whatever demons were driving him, he’d decided revenge was the only way of exorcising them. And it was revenge against someone specific. Stewart, I think. Though I don’t know why. Come on then, we should go and see if we can help…” he stopped. “Greta, where’s his bag?”

“What?”

“His bag! Jay found it, there were some bandages. He said there was a radio in it. Quick!”

“A radio?” she asked.

“Right,” Chester said. “Why would he carry one of those unless he wasn’t alone? And if he wasn’t alone, where are the others? They’re either nearby or in Westminster.”

“In Westminster? Oh, no, that’s where Nilda’s gone.”

The mother and the other

Nilda looked from Chester running along the path, to those readying themselves to follow him, and then to the others hustling the children to safety. Tuck pushed past her, hurtling after Chester. Above, the drone buzzed to a hovering halt near the top floor of the office block. Everything was happening too quickly. No one was thinking. Nilda took a step out onto the path, about to follow Chester, and then she stopped. That was the easy thing to do, the primal response. Chase. Hunt. Attack. But it was the wrong thing for her to do. They had found Graham for now, but if he escaped, if he made it back to Westminster…

She ran across the path, drew her sword, and hacked at the rope holding the now partially deflated raft to the bank. She cut it free, and then hauled on the rope for the other still-intact raft, pulling it close to the steps.

“What are you doing?”

Nilda turned to see McInery standing behind her. “Going to Westminster. Unless we kill him, sooner or later Graham will go back there. But right now he’s here.”

“Then let’s get him!” McInery yelled.

“One more person chasing him won’t make any difference,” Nilda said. “This is our chance to get rifles and enough ammo to hunt him down if he gets away. We can stop him once and for all. And as he escapes he’ll be looking behind, he won’t—”

“Fine. Yes,” McInery interrupted. “I’m coming with you.”

Nilda hesitated.

“You can’t row there on your own,” McInery said. “And this is my chance at redemption. I’m entitled to that, aren’t I? A new life in this new world.”

“Then grab an oar,” Nilda said. She looked back at the castle and saw Greta standing in the doorway. “Go after Chester,” she called.

After that, they rowed in silence and Nilda tried to lose herself in the activity, trying to drown out the voice of realism that told her they could wander around Westminster for days without finding the stash of weapons, and that Graham would only need hours to get back there. Less, the voice said. He could run faster than they could row.

“Faster!” she hissed, and threw all she had into pulling on the oars, but the doubting voice only grew louder.

Nilda drew her sword, gauging the distance between her and the zombie. Ten feet. Eight. She raised the blade. Six. She swept it down, cutting at its knees. It fell as she took a step back, changed her grip, and stabbed the blade at its head. The road by Embankment Tube Station was littered with the undead. Some were those they had killed during their ill-fated expedition of a few weeks before, but others had been killed more recently. By Graham, she thought, it had to be. And she looked around for some trap he might have set.

“There’s no time to waste,” McInery said. “He could be back here any time.”

“He might have set traps,” Nilda said, still examining the roadway.

“And you know what they’d look like do you?” McInery retorted. “Come on. Quick.”

Nilda followed, her eyes scanning the rubble for wires, but McInery was right. Except for bad movies and worse news reports she had no idea what an improvised explosive looked like, nor any reason to suspect Graham knew how to make one. She turned her mind back to the present, but made sure to step only where McInery put her feet.

McInery clambered up a pile of rubble, jumped down, and kept running. Nilda followed, reaching the top of the heap of broken masonry as a zombie reared up in front of her. Its clawed hand raked against her leg. She punched her fist into its face, feeling the skin on her knuckles tear as the creature rocked back. She swung the sword at its neck over and over until its head lolled to one side, and the creature collapsed. She clambered down the rubble and realised she was limping.

The road was full of the undead. Most were motionless, but there were nine crawling or staggering towards them.

“This way!” McInery yelled as she swung her axe down. “Hurry!”

Nilda limped after her, following the path the other woman had cleared through the undead. She stabbed the sword at one of the still-standing creatures. Ten yards later, she swung at the legs of a second, slicing through tendon and bone, and then they were onto a clear stretch of road with the undead now behind them.

“We’ll have to find a different way back,” McInery said. “But that’s a problem for later. Are you all right?”

Nilda looked down. Her trousers were torn, her leg was bloody, but she felt no pain. She picked a broken fingernail from her leg. The pain would come, she thought, but not yet.

“I’m fine,” Nilda said.

“Good,” McInery said. “We’re almost there.”

Nilda limped after McInery as they took one turn, and then another. They passed more undead, but each had been shot.

“How long did this take?” Nilda murmured.

“What?” McInery asked.

“I was thinking aloud. How long did it take to shoot all of these?”

“Probably no longer than a few seconds each. Does it matter?” McInery replied.

“I don’t know,” Nilda said. Somehow it seemed like it should. It might only take a few seconds to aim and fire, but first Graham would have to get in position. Even then, it looked like most of the zombies had been shot multiple times, with some having been almost torn apart by bullets. Or perhaps he’d done that after he’d killed them. Ascribing rational behaviour to someone who—

“Over there,” McInery called, interrupting her thoughts. “That’s the Foreign Office.”

Nilda nodded and realised her mind had been wandering. She was exhausted from rowing, and her leg was feeling shaky. Blood was flowing down her leg, she could feel it pooling in her shoe. She’d left her pack back at the castle, and that had a few bandages in it. And her water bottle as well. That brought a sudden realisation of how thirsty she was. She wanted to stop. To rest. To sleep. The last few days, having to say goodbye to her son over and over, had been more than draining.

“We could hide them in the tunnels. What do you think?” McInery asked.

“I’m sorry? Hide what?”

“The suitcases,” McInery said. “They are more important than rifles. If we hide them, Graham may kill us, but he won’t be able to threaten any other survivors. It’s not just us we have to think about, not even the children, but the species itself.”

“Right. Yes. The cases.” She’d not given them any thought. “What tunnels?”

“Well, the Tube tunnels would be a start, but all the government buildings were connected by an underground system. Help me with the door.”

Nilda pushed at the door. A barricade of furniture had been arranged in a ring just inside the entrance to the Foreign Office.

“It’s too obvious isn’t it?” McInery said. “Here, let me help you up.”

With her help, Nilda climbed over the barricade. Only when she stood on the polished marble floor looking around the vast space did she remember her earlier fear of some hidden bomb. She held her breath, waiting for an explosion. It didn’t come.

“No, we need somewhere that he won’t think to look,” McInery continued, walking towards the wide, imposing staircase.

“If we find them, we’ll take them back with us,” Nilda said, following McInery up the stairs.

“No,” McInery said. “They’ll be too heavy, and it will take too long. Besides, you don’t want to have them too close to the children. That would be too great a risk.”

“Right. No. Of course.”

“Perhaps we should hide them in Number 10. No, that is definitely far too obvious. That’s the problem, I suppose. Wherever I can think of, so will he. I think… yes, this corridor here.”

It must have been the widest in the building, lined with portraits and oak panelling. Timeless arrogance, Nilda thought, like the building itself, designed to intimidate, heedless of the fact the world had long ago moved on.

“This is it,” McInery said. “In here.”

It was a room grander than the building and bigger than Nilda’s house in Penrith. It was clear from the nest of bedding in one corner, the neatly arrayed trio of rifles on a desk, and the six large metal cases next to them, that this was where Graham had called home these last few weeks. McInery picked up a small green box from the desk.

“Here,” she said, handing it Nilda, and pointing to a sofa against the wall. “Sit down. Bandage your leg.”

Nilda sat, pulled out a sterile dressing, and wrapped it around her leg. At least the bandage was reassuringly familiar in a room more opulent than she’d imagined existed outside of a palace. She allowed herself a moment to stretch her leg, to slow her breathing to—
Familiar
. She opened her eyes and looked down at the bandage’s packaging.

“You can rest soon,” McInery said. “But we need to act before he comes back.”

Nilda glanced at her, and then at the bandage. It was identical to those they had at the Tower. Not those they had found in the hospital, but the ones McInery had brought back from her expeditions beyond the walls.

“Forget the cases,” Nilda said, standing. “We came for the rifles.” She took a step towards the desk, and winced with the pain that shot up her leg. Sitting had been a mistake. It had given her muscles a chance to stiffen.

“No, the cases present the greater danger,” McInery said. “The rifles can wait.”

Nilda said nothing, just took another limping step towards the weapons.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” McInery said, and almost sounded as if she meant it. Her hand went to her pocket. She pulled out a gun. “No further, please. Thank you.”

Nilda stopped. She recognised the gun. It was the revolver that Chester thought he’d lost during his journey back from the QE2 Bridge to the Tower.

“It was you all along,” Nilda said.

“What was it?” McInery asked. “What gave it away?”