Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest (10 page)

The river path to the east was clear. So was the wide piazza to the north. Tuck pointed to the buildings in between, and led them up the ladder, down the other side, and out beyond the safety of their fortress.

She walked slowly, tracking her gaze across the buildings, trying to pick out which might be worth investigating. There was a block of mostly one-room studio apartments overlooking the river and a cluster of office blocks behind that. The ground floors of those were emblazoned with the logos of every fast food and slow meal franchise the country had to offer. If it could be fried, baked, sandwiched, or grilled, it could be bought within a raven’s caw of the Tower. She raised a hand to grab Graham’s attention, and then waved at the restaurants.

“Empty?” she mouthed.

“I’ve checked them all,” he said. “There’s nothing there.”

She nodded, though through the window of a French cafe she could see wooden stools stacked on equally wooden tables. It was at least a day’s worth of firewood.

Ahead, just past the glass and steel ticket office was a compact circular building about six feet in diameter. According to Fogerty, it was a subway tunnel that led under the Thames. This news had elicited great excitement amongst the group until they realised that it didn’t lead anywhere that any of them wanted to go. The pool of volunteers willing to venture down its length shrank when the old warder had explained that a bomb during the Second World War had compressed its diameter to less than four feet. Now that they had the rafts, Tuck suspected no one would be prepared to crawl through a pitch-black tube, trusting their lives to the hope that the other end had been sealed from the undead.

The block near the entrance to the subway had a sign with that universally recognised stick-figure silhouette indicating a public convenience. She turned to ask Graham whether he’d searched the toilets, but he’d fallen back, his eyes on the skyline south of the river. It didn’t matter. Tuck was sure Fogerty had said he’d stripped the place of toilet paper just after he’d returned to the Tower during the early weeks of the outbreak. But there would be detergents and bleach there, and no harm looking. Then they could try one of the larger offices further to the east and—

Kevin moved forward, overtaking her. A pair of creatures had moved out from behind the ticket office and were shambling towards them. One of the undead wore a suit. It always baffled her that when told to leave their homes and bring nothing but that which they could carry, some people would insist on wearing their best jacket and tie. As she got closer she realised that it wasn’t a suit, but the remains of a dress uniform. The peeling sole of the one scuffed shoe flapped up and down as the undead soldier staggered towards them. All indications of rank were torn off or obscured by dirt, but Tuck could make out three medals hanging loosely from the tattered breast of the jacket. She raised her sword, and then changed her mind, waving Hana towards it, and Kevin and Aisha towards the other, a creature in tattered tweeds.

Hana tensed but looked determined as she raised her halberd. Tuck took an instinctive two paces back. She’d been right. The vet mistimed the blow, and swung the long-handled weapon around in a great sweeping arc. The narrow point cut through the zombie’s jacket but left the creature unharmed. The blade kept moving, slicing through the air inches from Tuck’s knees. Hana, however, was undeterred. Her mouth moved in curse, apology, or Tuck didn’t know what, as she changed her grip and, holding the halberd more like a broom than a weapon, jabbed it forward. She missed. Took a step closer. Jabbed again. Missed again. Another step, another jab. This time the foot-long point sliced across the creature’s cheek. The vet didn’t withdraw the weapon to try again; she just kept pushing as the zombie kept advancing. As it twisted its head, the spear point tore through flesh but did no real damage. By accident, though it looked like design, the zombie’s arm batted at the halberd, knocking it out of Hana’s grip.

Enough, Tuck thought. She stepped forward, raised the sword, and hacked at the creature’s leg. Once. Twice. She felt bone break. It collapsed. She stabbed down at its head.

A quick check confirmed Kevin and Aisha stood over the unmoving corpse of the second zombie. Tuck half bent over the body of the dead soldier intending to look for an identity disc, but stopped when she saw the single crown on the remaining ragged epaulette and which three medals it was that remained on his chest. In itself that didn’t mean anything. There were lots of majors who’d served in those conflicts. She peered at the face, but it was unrecognisable, twisted in death, wracked by decay, and ruined this one final time. Perhaps it was because she’d been thinking of the major earlier. Perhaps it had been the sight of all those uniformed bodies back in the hotel. Perhaps not, but only someone who knew they were going to die would have donned their blues for one final time. Was it her old friend? There was an easy way of finding out. Her hand moved closer to the collar, then stopped again. She remembered what she’d told Jay back at the airport. It was better not to know, she decided, and in ignorance let cherished memory remain untarnished by truth.

She picked up the fallen halberd and held it out to Hana. The woman’s eyes were unfocused. Tuck clicked her fingers. Hana shivered, shrugged, and mouthed an apology before taking the weapon.

Tuck was tempted to send her back to the Tower, but that would have done Hana no good. Perhaps on Anglesey, if everything Chester had said was true – and a lot of that had been filtered through Jay and tempered with his mother’s distrust of the place – then perhaps the vet could grow old without having to fight another of the undead, but not here. Not if they ever had to abandon the castle.

She turned to Kevin and Aisha, but in that moment, seeing the couple standing so close together was more than depressing. She waved a hand towards the sign for the public toilets, letting them lead the way.

There was no toilet paper, but there was detergent. Six five-gallon containers of a concentrated deep-purple cleaner with a label that had more hazard signs than it did ingredients. They carried those back to the castle and left them by the barrier to the moat. It was a start, Tuck thought. Not a great one, but each time they went out and killed the undead, people, weapons, and clothes all had to be cleaned. The detergent would save on water, and that would save on firewood, and that would save them time.

After that, and since one road was as good as any other, she pointed to the nearest, checked that Kevin and Aisha had eyes for Hana as well as each other, and gestured for Graham to take the lead.

As they went past the lurid bright signs and their faded posters of impossibly stuffed burgers, she made a mental note to ask Graham whether he’d checked inside for soda syrup. During her and Jay’s trip down from Penrith, those jugs had been their principle source of sugar, found undisturbed in nearly every pub, restaurant, take-away, and anywhere else there’d been a soda fountain. There wasn’t much you could do with it beyond dilute and drink it, but calories were calories. They might as well check now, she decided, though it would move toothbrushes right to the top of the list for the next scavenging mission. She jogged forward, reaching out to grab Graham’s arm. He turned before she reached him. There was shock on his face, but he wasn’t looking at her. She turned around.

A zombie had fallen through a second storey window to land in the roadway just in front of Hana. Glass rained down as a second creature toppled out of the building. The first creature’s legs were twisted at an impossible angle, but its body broke the fall of the second zombie, and that creature slowly stood. Tuck started to run as a third tumbled out of the broken window.

Aisha and Kevin had jumped back out of the way of the falling undead. Hana just froze as glass carpeted the ground at her feet. The creature with the broken legs was stretching out its uninjured hand towards her. The one standing had already turned its snapping mouth her way. Tuck turned her run into a sprint, but there was no way she’d reach the young vet in time.

Aisha snarled back at the creature and hurled her axe like an Olympic hammer. The handle hit the zombie in the face. It staggered back a pace, and that was far enough because Aisha had started running as soon as the weapon left her hand. She launched herself across the intervening few feet, tackling the creature around its waist. They fell in a heap.

Kevin, ever close behind, didn’t leap. He shoved Hana out of the way with one hand, the other awkwardly slamming his axe down on the head of the partially immobile creature, but he didn’t pause to check if it was dead. He kept on running, grabbed Aisha’s jacket, and pulled her up. The zombie grasped her arm, and it rose with her.

Tuck slammed a shoulder into the creature, knocking Aisha and Kevin free and the zombie back to the ground. Momentum kept her moving past it, but she turned that into a pivot as she raised the sword and hacked at its neck, half-severing it. She changed her grip and thrust down. The blade stuck and she let go, pulling out the long bayonet as she turned to face the third of the creatures. Its arms came up and she leaped, bellowing an inarticulate yell of rage as she stabbed at its head over and over again.

When she stood, the zombies were unmoving. So was Hana. Kevin was yelling at Aisha, Graham had gone to check the door to the building, and Tuck felt that familiar burning ache in her throat as her damaged vocal chords protested at having been used. The rage that had overtaken her was caused in part by the figure in the uniform. The other part was the presence of the woman out here and what it would mean to their group if she were to die.

“You. Back,” she rasped, pointing first at Aisha, then at the Tower. Then, almost as an afterthought, at Hana.

“Hell, no!” Aisha growled.

Tuck shook her head warningly. She wasn’t going to argue. She pointed again at the Tower, and then at Aisha, this time slowly lowering her finger to halt just below the woman’s stomach. Then she pointed at the Tower again.

“You know?” Kevin asked, somewhat redundantly Tuck thought.

She made a shooing motion. Perhaps out of the shock of being discovered, Aisha complied, pausing only to take Hana’s arm. Tuck stopped them long enough to take the halberd from the young vet’s unprotesting grip.

Hope was important. But just as important as nurturing it was ensuring that nothing happened to destroy those hopes that had yet to take root. Jay had represented it for so long. And in nine months – or to be accurate some point far less than nine months – Aisha would represent the idea that there was a future, a point to all that they suffered and struggled through. It was very unlikely Aisha would be the only new mother. No, that was one more reason to keep their doctor alive.

Tuck waited until the two women had reached the safety of the Tower before continuing down the road. She checked one of the restaurants, an obscenely priced hamburger joint. There were napkins, cutlery, and saltshakers, but no syrup, or anything else that could be counted as calories. She waved Kevin and Graham back out onto the street. They could clear those places later. What they needed was something tangible to show for the expedition, something people could see, and in doing so understand that the risk of going outside the walls could make each of their lives measurably better. Or something that no one saw because it was always there. As the nights grew longer, what they needed was light. Ahead of her was the church. She motioned for Kevin to listen by the door. He shook his head. He’d heard nothing. They went inside.

The church wasn’t what she’d expected. Rather, it was exactly as she should have expected, and exactly as it had been a year or decade before. Dust danced in the daylight streaming through a tall window behind the altar, but otherwise the church was unchanged. Embroidered cushions lay under seats, hymnals and prayer books were stacked neatly, ready for a service that would never begin. Despite Hana’s objections, they would make good kindling, and paper was always needed, but Tuck found, suddenly, she didn’t care.

She closed her eyes, trying to rid her mind of the question over the identity of the body lying a short distance away. They’d lost people getting out of Kirkman House, but they had reached the Tower. Jay was alive, and would be tomorrow. Hopefully, they all would. That was what mattered now, she told herself, not the past.

There was a tap at her arm. It was Kevin. On his face was a grin, and in his free hand was a candle, two-feet long and three-inches wide at the base.

“Dozens,” he mouthed, gesturing over his shoulder. He’d found a store cupboard full of boxed candles, a mixture of the votive and those large enough to light the entire church.

Candles, bleach, a few broken rifles, and a few hundreds rounds of ammunition; it wasn’t much for an entire day’s labour. As they carried the boxes back to the Tower, Tuck hoped that they would find Nilda had returned, and with a better haul. There was no sign of her as they headed back to the church, nor when they returned from the second trip. On the third, they were interrupted by a stray zombie slouching up the road from the west. On the fifth, the rain began to fall.

When Tuck went for dinner, there was still no sign of Nilda. The idea of sitting in the dining hall without Jay’s company was less appealing than the food. Making conversation out of mimes and the few, mostly martial, signs that the group had picked up took a considered effort that she wasn’t in the mood to endure, so she took her bowl up to the relative privacy of the walls. The meal Stewart had cooked wasn’t too bad, but somehow he’d managed to make it over seasoned and bland at the same time. There mustn’t be much choice in ingredients, she supposed. It was hot, and it filled a hole, that was what counted.