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

“Disc Unrecognised. Would you like to format disc? Yes. No.”

I slumped despondently onto the bed. It wasn't a real set back. Not really. I knew what was on the laptop. I'd not looked at the files on the hard drive, but after what I'd seen on the laptop, that didn't really matter. I knew where I had to go now, and why I had to get there. Everything else was just a distraction, a way of delaying the inevitable. I repeated those and another dozen similar sentiments and tried to believe them.

Click...

“Would you leave that rifle alone! Please.” I added though it came out through gritted teeth.

She turned, and looked at me. “Alright,” she said. “So tell me what was in those files. What's so important that you have to go trekking across the country?”

“There was a lot of stuff,” I said, standing up. “There were accounts, supply lists, shift rotas and spreadsheets filled with millions of pieces of raw data, and those might be important, but I didn't have time to look at them.”

“So what did you see that was so important.”

“There was a video. It was a reply to some other message, a walk-and-talk presentation, explaining why the facility needed more funding. Obviously it was recorded before New York, but I don't know how long before.”

“And?” she prompted.

“Out of context, without knowing who it was sent to, what questions it was answering, it's hard to draw much from what they said. The doctor, the same one who was in that hospital in New York...”

“The one where the outbreak started?”

“Right. The same guy, he was giving a tour, I suppose is the best way of describing it. The camera was following him around Lenham Hill as he explained the facility's limitations. One thousand doses per day. That was the maximum they could produce. He was stressing that wasn't enough. He was explaining, in a lot of depth, why they couldn't increase production any more. It was to do with air filtration systems, the need to focus on testing and refinements, on how the facility couldn't be run as both for R&D and production at the same time.”

“That doesn't explain why you think you need to go there,” Kim said

“I was getting to that. Like I said, it was hard to follow him, without the context. I was trying, right up until he stopped outside of a room. It was one of those walk in vaults, containing rack upon rack of vials of this super vaccine, this virus that started it all.” I stopped, and waited. When she didn't say anything, I went on “Don't you see? What if it's still there? What if someone else finds it? It has to be destroyed. That's why I've got to go to Lenham Hill.”

She continued looking at me for a long moment, then turned back to the window and picked up the rifle once more. Click-clack, pause, click-clack, pause. I stood there as she fired off three rounds and then I stormed from the room. I was furious. Couldn't she understand? Didn't she want to?

The fury quickly evaporated, turning to morose despondency as I turned down corridors I recognised as ones I'd run down as a child. I stopped by a portrait of the third Duke. Someone, I assume Cannock, or possibly Sanders, had slashed it. The canvas now hung limply from the frame. I stood there, looking at this wanton, purposeless destruction, until my resolve returned, and I marched back to the bedroom.

Click-clack. Pause, click-...

“We should go,” I said decisively.

“We?” she replied, not turning to face me but pausing, one hand on the rifle bolt.

Of course, I had assumed she would want to leave with me. Not thought or considered or even asked, I had just assumed. “You want to stay here?”

“Alright, no,” she said without much of a pause. “But I don't like the idea of some wild chase across the countryside to some research facility that may or may not still exist.”

“But...” I began, and then stopped. “There's Brazely Abbey. I was going to head back there and get some supplies, before heading north. It's a good spot. There's a well, there's fruit trees, strong walls. You could stay there. If you want.”

“Thank you, that's very kind,” she said. I couldn't tell whether she was being gracious, sarcastic or a mixture of both. “But why the rush?”

“To get it over and done with, before someone else...”

“If it's still there now, then another few days won't matter. Besides,” she slid the bolt forward and removed the cartridge, “how much do you reckon one of these weighs?” She twisted slightly and threw the round to me. I fumbled the catch, dropping the cartridge on the bed.

“Well?” she asked again. I picked it up.

“I dunno. Half an ounce, maybe.”

“So, in the real world we'd say between ten and twenty grams, right? How many do you think a thousand would weigh? Because that's how many are here. There were over two thousand, when they found the rifle. Now there's half that, but it's still too many to take out on foot and since there's no car here we
will
be on foot. Water, food, weapons and ammunition, it all adds up.”

“Between ten and twenty kilos. I should get the scales, get an accurate weight for them.”

“You're missing the point. Weight, size, call it what you want, but we're not going to be able to take all of them.”

“We can leave them here then, come and collect them sometime in the future.”

“Even if we were to come back, what is it you think you'll be doing with these bullets? One zombie is as good as any other. Kill Them all now, or kill Them all later, but they all have to be killed.” She turned back to the window and slid another round into the chamber. “I'd like to stay a day or so. Recover. Then we can go to the Abbey and you can head off on your quest. A day won't make any difference, will it?” She asked, and the edge to her voice had now gone.

“No,” I admitted. “I suppose not.”

She pulled the trigger.

19:00, 26
th
June.

There's a line in Macbeth, “If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.” That sums it up really. I want sanctuary, I want to get to Lenham Hill and destroy those vials, I want answers, an explanation for all of this nightmare, and I want it all now. I don't want to hang around, waiting, when there's a job in front of me. There's nothing wrong with that, that's who I am.

I didn't remember the quote, not exactly, and fine, I'll admit I’m mangling the meaning of the line a little to suit the circumstances, but so what? I’m hardly the first person to do that with Shakespeare. Why I feel I need to be honest to this journal, I don't know. It's something to do with Kim. I can't say exactly why, but somehow just knowing that there is someone else, another survivor, someone not that different from me, that changes things. It doesn't alter my resolve. I still need to go to Lenham. Someone needs to make sure that the place is destroyed, and if not me, then who?

I did remember the line was from Macbeth, so I went looking for a copy in the library and ended up spending the afternoon leafing through the plays.

I tried Julius Caesar first, but somehow the way the language has changed over the centuries makes the opening few scenes almost comical. Macbeth though, I can relate to that. It's strange that the distance of time, the almost alien nature of the language, makes it somehow more relatable than more recent works. Dickens and Solzhenitsyn, Steinbeck and Orwell, no matter how great and skilled the writing, the subject matter is now less relevant than the cheapest pulp science fiction. What does ideology matter when the species is virtually extinct?

Day 107, Longshanks Manor, Wiltshire.

14:00, 27
th
June.

I was woken by the sound of an elephant. I've always liked elephants, liked how they seem completely indifferent to the existence of us humans. Perhaps it was a hippo. Or a rhino. My knowledge of animals, and the noises they make, comes more from animated films than nature documentaries. It sounded big, though, and it's pleasing to know that at least some other animals have survived thus far.

It was refreshing, this morning, being able to wake up and do nothing. A reminder of those weekends, few and far between in recent years, when I had nothing to get up for. I spent an hour or so finding some new clothes, since there's no water to spare to wash my old ones.

There's enough tinned and dried food for about ten weeks for the two of us, and I'm not talking about crates of tinned peaches either. Breakfast this morning was kumquats in grape juice. If I had toast I could spread some “By Royal Appointment” lychee and crab-apple marmalade on it. But I don't have toast. Spooning it out of the jar brought back some once happy memories, now bitter-sweet with all I've seen.

Then I wandered the halls, but the more time I spend here, the more the memories of happy times come back, and with them the realisation that everyone in those memories is now probably dead. Perhaps I do just want to get things over with, but by mid-morning I had had enough.

“I think we should leave,” I said. It had taken me an hour to find her, lying on the floor of one of the attic bedrooms, staring at the sky through the high, dirt encrusted window.

“Yes. I was thinking that too,” Kim replied, sitting up. I'd been expecting a fight. I don't know why, perhaps I’m finding it hard to adjust to another person in my life. “Tomorrow morning. We'll need to pack first.”

Bags were easy enough to find. There were a stack of them in the room with all the loot. I took another moment to look at that pile of jewellery, ornaments, trophies and the electronic gadgetry that would never work again. Other than the bags there was little of any practical value, no first aid kits, no fire extinguishers, no toilet paper. Sanders and Cannock had done nothing more than build up a dragon's horde of the shiny and worthless.

Next came weapons. I kept my hatchet and chisel at my belt, with the pistol in one of the many pockets of a thigh length jacket I'd found hanging in the Duke's bedroom. A set of carry-on luggage provided the strap for the pike. The contrast of nylon and plastic with the steel and wood was pleasingly incongruous.

Kim found an axe that she liked the heft of, hanging in the same room I'd found the pike. I don't know how a historian would describe it, but I would call it a killing axe. It has a three foot long shaft, with a single broad tapered blade and a flattened hammer head criss-crossed with grooves, surely designed for the crushing of armoured limbs and skulls. It's too sharp to chop wood, too heavy to hammer nails. It is no workman's tool.

Added to the weight of food, the hard drive, can openers, rope, saucepan, matches and kindling, the last of the lemonade, and we were nearly overloaded. Kim thought my suggestion of taking a wok from the kitchen was proof I'd been on my own too long. Those were her actual words. I tried to explain how useful they were as portable fire pits. She just gave me a look. In the end, I had to concede that with everything else it was far too heavy.

Then we turned to the ammunition. Kim had been right. Weight wasn’t so much of an issue as where to put it all. The bags were unpacked and sorted once more, with anything that could possibly be found elsewhere being discarded as we re-packed out gear for the first of many times.

18:00, 27
th
June.

A light drizzle has begun to fall. It would be refreshing if we could walk outside. Water in the lake, water falling from the sky, water, water everywhere, but not a drop we can touch.

We've reached a compromise on the ammo and the food we can't carry. It's now hidden in a cupboard in the main kitchen. Hidden is probably an exaggeration. It's stacked neatly behind an ice-cream maker, a waffle iron and what is either a deformed whisk or the world's largest milk frother. They're all still in their boxes and have the look of unwanted gifts from people seen too frequently for them to be thrown away. Any half decent looter would find our stash.

I want to leave a note, an apology and explanation in case anyone ever comes back here. I feel I owe them that, but Kim is adamantly against it. I think this is more to do with her experiences here than it is to do with in effectively handing these supplies over to whoever may come here next.

Once we'd finished packing, we retreated to that small bedroom to eat tinned fruit by the unlit fire.

“Why?” Kim asked.

“Why what?”

“All of this. Everything. The zombies, the virus or vaccine or whatever it was...” she hesitated “I mean, you saw a video of the Foreign Secretary in New York. What's his name? Quigley?”

“Sir Michael Quigley. Former Defence Minister, Shadow Minister for Health before that. He's the one who took over after the Prime Minister disappeared during those first couple of weeks.”

“Yeah, I wondered why he stopped appearing on the TV.”

“I thought he'd had a break down, but now?” I shrugged. “ I don't know. Quigley took over, he always wanted the top job. He was a career politician. I don't mean he went into politics straight out of university, I mean the other kind. The kind who mapped out their path to Number 10 whilst they were still at school. He did eight years in the Army before being invalided out, then spent just long enough in what was euphemistically called logistics to afford the sizeable donation needed to buy himself a safe seat and a cabinet job for life.”