Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home (28 page)

“The bandages. Well, that was the trigger. I should have realised sooner. Tuck had no idea where Graham had gone. How else would you know where to come?”

“Yes. I see. I didn’t think you’d realise. I suggested Graham come here. This was the office of the Foreign Secretary, you see. Quigley’s own private sanctum.”

“I guessed,” Nilda said. The desk with the rifles on it was only twelve feet away, but she didn’t know if they were loaded, and she’d have to guess where the safety was. But the sword was leaning against the sofa, and that was behind her, and even further from McInery.

“You’ve been working with him, then, right from the beginning?” Nilda asked. She had a knife in her belt. Would she be able to draw it in time?

“Not exactly,” McInery said. “And of late, there has been some confusion as to who is working for whom. I told him to let everyone leave, but he insisted he had to kill Stewart.”

“Stewart?” Nilda asked, confused. “Why?”

“Guilt, though that wasn’t what he called it. Graham was assigned to protect a farm in Hampshire. He left, taking their fuel with him, abandoning the inhabitants to their fate. The nature of that fate wasn’t something he gave any thought to until Stewart arrived at Kirkman House. Not that Graham knew who he was, not at first. Stewart found that farm after Graham left. Exactly what happened there, Stewart never said, but it is clear that they all died. Graham couldn’t forgive himself for— No. Take a step back. I will kill you if I have to. I’d rather not.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Nilda said, making a show out of shuffling back a few inches.

“Yes. True. But I can pass a message on to your son. Your last words to him.”

“Jay? You’ll kill him like everyone else,” Nilda said.

“Some deaths have been necessary,” McInery said. “But your son will be safe. So will the children. This won’t work without them.”

“What won’t?”

“Take a step back. Further.”

Reluctantly, Nilda did.

“Good. As I say,” McInery continued, “I’ll give Jay a message. Your last message. Your dying words. But first we need to move those cases. It’ll have to be Downing Street. I don’t think you’ll make it much further than that.”

“Why do you want to move them?” Nilda asked.

“As I said, there has been some confusion as to who is in charge. If Graham does live through today, I don’t want him coming back to find them.”

“I don’t follow.”

“And you don’t have to. Just pick up a case and start walking.”

Nilda moved to the case. It was larger than she’d imagined and far heavier.

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked, carrying it slowly towards the door.

“Well, hopefully Graham is dead, though his recent actions have changed my plans again. It’s unfortunate, but I think it will all work out. I will have to say that he wasn’t acting alone. People will believe that. They will want to. Yes, I’ll say he had comrades here. Did you know he was military? He’d worked for Cannock on a few operations overseas.”

Nilda had reached the door. The long corridor stretched out in front of her with the wide staircase at its end, but the time to act would be when they were outside. Perhaps the undead would have followed them to the building. That revolver only had six bullets, after all.

“No, stop,” McInery said. “That’s far enough. Put the case down, and go and get the next. We’ll do this in stages. It’ll be far safer that way.”

Safer for her, Nilda thought. “You don’t know how to set them off, do you?” she asked.

“No. They require a password. As far as I know, Graham hadn’t found it, either.”

“Then they’re useless.”

McInery laughed. “You really think that? Oh dear. Their power isn’t in how much they can destroy, but in the threat of that destruction. Surely you know that? And clearly Graham’s comrades took them from here, and they can only have one destination in mind. Anglesey. They will seek revenge, but I will find them before they reach that island. I will rid the world of this last terrible weapon. Yes, people will believe that.”

“Why?” Nilda asked. “Why are you doing this? For power?”

“You really don’t understand, do you? No, you would call it power but only because you’ve never had it. It is about the future and who shapes it. Pick up the case.”

Nilda picked up the second case and began carrying it out into the corridor.

“So you’ll be the hero?” Nilda asked. “Is that it? You’ll save Anglesey from a threat they never knew existed?”

“More or less. It would have worked better if we’d been able to detonate at least one device. It’s too dangerous having those people clinging onto an old nuclear power plant in Wales. Organising things would have been far easier if they’d had to relocate here. But you play the hand you’ve been dealt. With a few minor alterations, your death being among them, this plan will work just as well. The children have been saved from starvation, and the last bastion of civilisation has been saved from a final act of vengeance by Quigley’s remaining followers.”

“But they don’t exist,” Nilda said, putting down the case. Her leg was burning, and she wasn’t sure it would take much more strain. She looked down the long staircase. She smiled. What she had to do was suddenly obvious. She limped back towards the office. “You’re on your own. It’s just you.”

“Yes, yes,” McInery said, impatiently. “Now hurry and start thinking what message you want me to give your son.”

“He didn’t shoot Constance, did he?” Nilda looked down at the cases, and then turned to look at McInery. The woman stood framed in the doorway. “Graham wasn’t a good shot, was he? He wasn’t shooting at the raft. He was trying to shoot Stewart. All those zombies out there, shot multiple times, he—”

“Yes. Fine. I shot Constance.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t risk her getting to Wales before I was ready. There was only a very small chance she would make it, of course, but I couldn’t risk it.”

“And Styles? That wasn’t Graham either.”

“No, Graham wanted to kill Stewart, but otherwise he probably would have left everyone else alone. At least for now.”

“So you followed Styles to the railway station, or were you waiting there?”

“Neither. Pick up the case.”

Nilda didn’t move. She just stared at McInery for a long moment. “Poison,” she said. “Was that it?”

“Very perceptive of you.”

“And Yvonne and Fogerty? You killed them, too? Yes, of course, the telegraph would have ruined everything. The rifles would have allowed us to go hunting for Graham. And you couldn’t risk us talking to him. I see it now. Was it in the food?”

“You never poison food,” McInery said. “There’s too great a risk it will be eaten by the wrong person or by oneself. No, you poison the cup. In the case of Styles, Xiao, and the others who left yesterday, it was the water bottle. Constance had her own supplies already organised, and you and Greta left too quickly. If you hadn’t returned, well, it would all have fallen apart. But you did return, like a gift from the gods. Pick up the case.”

“I can’t,” Nilda said, truthfully.

“I see. Well, I’m sorry you have to die. I think we could have worked well together. But this must be done. Do you have any last words for your son?”

“None that I’d tell you.”

McInery shrugged and raised her gun.

The shot was quiet. It sounded muffled. Distant. Nilda waited for the pain. It didn’t come. Her eyes were fixed on McInery’s face, and there was no triumph in the expression. No joy. No emotion at all, just a sudden flush followed by a widening of her eyes as her hands fell to her sides. Nilda found herself looking down at the red stain spreading across McInery’s chest. There was a second muffled shot. McInery collapsed.

“People always aim low,” Chester said. He stood in the doorway. Greta stood next to him, a rifle in her hands.

“Is Jay all right?” Nilda asked. “And Graham, is he dead?”

“Jay’s fine. Graham’s dead. Tuck’s been shot. It’s bad, but she’s still alive.”

“How much of that did you hear?” Nilda asked.

“Not much,” Chester said. “Not that it matters.”

“It does. I saw you at the bottom of the stairs. You two weren’t alone.”

“Of course not. How else would we have caught up with you? But twelve people row faster than two, and—”

“The water bottles. The ones we were meant to take with us when we left today, she poisoned them. It’s how she killed Styles. How she’s killed Xiao and the others.”

“Well, let me give you a hand,” Chester said. “We’ll go straight—”

“No, it’ll take me too long to get back to the raft. Greta? Take everyone else. Go back to the Tower. Get rid of the bottled water. In fact, get rid of all the water, and any food that McInery couldn’t have been certain she wouldn’t have eaten herself.” She remembered what McInery had said about a cup. “The crockery, too. All of it. Then bring a raft back, as soon as you can.”

Greta nodded, and Nilda was grateful she didn’t ask any questions.

“Tuck’s been shot?” Nilda asked, limping over to the sofa. She collapsed onto it.

“Upper arm and thigh,” Chester said. “I don’t think it hit an artery, but I’m basing that on the fact she hadn’t bled out before we left.”

“That’s not good.” She looked at Chester properly. “What happened to your face?”

“Graham. Is it that bad?”

“It looks like you’ve run through a sieve.”

“Thanks, is that a decanter over there?” He gestured towards a small table by a tall window.

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes again.

Chester walked over to it. “Brandy,” he said, sniffing the contents. “You want one?”

“Not yet. Not until it’s over.”

“Isn’t it?” he asked. “Graham’s dead. McInery’s dead. What more needs to be done?”

“Someone needs to get to Wales.”

Chester came to sit next to her on the sofa. “It won’t be you,” he said. “Nor Tuck.”

“No,” she said. Her eyes felt heavy. She wanted to sleep. “How did you know to come here?”

“Greta saw you getting in the boat.”

“No, I mean how did you know McInery had betrayed us?”

“Graham had a radio,” Chester said. “Who else was he going to talk to? Did she tell you why she did it?”

“To make the people in Anglesey think she’d saved them,” Nilda said. “She would be the one who vanquished the last vestiges of Quigley’s guard. Or something like that. I think she was going to keep some people alive so as to provide proof that there was an actual threat to the people in Wales.”

“Oh?”

“She said that she would have preferred to have set off at least one bomb.”

“Really?” he asked.

“But that it didn’t matter that she couldn’t,” she said.

“Oh.” Chester seemed to be mulling that over. “Do you think they are bombs?”

“McInery thought so. She said they need a password, and that Graham hadn’t found it.”

“Or hadn’t told her he had. We’ll search his body just in case.”

“What for?” Nilda asked. “It’s not like we’ll ever use them.”

Silence settled. Chester stood and made his slow way back over to the decanter.

“I think she broke the grenade launcher,” he said. “Tuck tried to fire it, but it didn’t work. I… she…” he trailed off.

Nilda opened her eyes and looked at him, wondering whether he’d continue. He didn’t. “Graham only wanted to kill Stewart,” Nilda said, leaning her head back once more. “McInery killed everyone else.”

“He said something about that to me.”

“He did?” she asked.

“Before he died. Yeah.”

“McInery mentioned something about a farm in Hampshire,” Nilda said. “I don’t suppose it matters now.”

“No.” There was a clink as a glass was put down. “It really doesn’t.”

She closed her eyes again, and this time McInery’s words replayed in her head. “No,” she said, opening her eyes, all tiredness gone, “it truly doesn’t matter, not compared to this. She wanted the people on Anglesey to think she’d saved them, well how would they ever know? If she was poisoning those water bottles, then none of us would ever reach there. She certainly wasn’t going to try and make the journey herself.”

“You think she might have found a radio here or something?” Chester asked.

“No,” she said. “Not a radio. Help me up.”

“Why?”

“Stop asking questions and help me, Thanks. No, it wasn’t a radio. I mean, it might have been. This way, outside,” she said, leaning on Chester for support. “It might have been a radio, but I don’t think it was. That’s not dramatic enough. Not for what McInery was planning. Either there’s petrol or there’s enough supplies here to last until those people in Anglesey find us. I mean, how long is it going to be before they send a boat around the coast just to see what’s still left standing?”

“And you want to find the supplies?”

“We have to. How much of that food are we going to throw out? We thought that there would be some supplies here, didn’t we? Enough that Graham didn’t have to worry about food. And McInery said something else. About saving the children from starvation. That has to be it. There has to be food here somewhere.”