Surviving The Evacuation (Book 4): Unsafe Haven (19 page)

“But you stayed in Scotland?”

“It’s hard to get volunteers, especially these days. Those days. Even the most charitable have bills to pay. So that’s why I was in Glasgow when the world came to an end. They were turning it into an enclave. I suppose geography and size made that the sensible option. Some of the buildings were cleared out, some of the tenements were so crammed with people that it was worse than in the darkest days of the city’s bleak history. That makes it sound like a nightmare place. It wasn’t. I don’t know who was in charge, but they knew what they were doing. The roadside verges, the parkland, the back gardens and schools, it was all being dug up. And the atmosphere. It was almost… cheerful. I think there was a feeling that finally they had found the independence they had so wanted.”

“But you weren’t there when the bombs fell.”

“No. I was saved that because I was deemed to be trustworthy. What do you call looting when it’s orchestrated by the government? Re-appropriation was the term they used. As I say, someone in charge knew what they were doing. They’d found the customs import notes and the tax records. They knew what had come in shipping containers, what had been brought up by road, and where it had been stored. They knew where it had been delivered, which warehouses to loot, and which shops to search. Everything was organised. It was slick. Efficient. I think it would have worked, in time. There was a spirit there, a sense of… camaraderie, I suppose…” He trailed off, disappearing back into his own thoughts.

“But you weren’t in Glasgow when it happened,” she prompted after the silence began to stretch once more.

“As I say, I was considered trustworthy. All of our group were. We were tasked with going to the nursing homes, the veterinarians, the doctors’ surgeries, and the outlying pharmacies. We went to collect those drugs that might have too great a temptation for others. We even had a police officer with us. When we found a place already looted, she would take fingerprints. It was kept quiet, but there was a plan to offer an amnesty. They still had their police databases and… ah, it doesn’t matter. But that was what I was doing when the bombs were dropped. There were eleven of us in the group. The police officer, two soldiers each driving a requisitioned minibus, and eight of us ‘volunteers’. We’d done a sweep of outlying communities and found very little. Not wanting to return empty handed, one of the soldiers, a sergeant, decided we’d return via an Army training ground. There was a stock of boots kept there, and good footwear was in short supply. We all went in together, all traipsed down the stairs to the storeroom. We may have been trusted not to steal the drugs, but the sergeant didn’t trust us not to slack off if we were out of his sight. The lights went out. That was the first thing we realised. There was no panic, just a lot of muffled cursing as we made our way back upstairs. When we did, when we got outside, we saw the mushroom clouds over the city. I counted four. Others said there were five. One would have been one too many.”

“Over the city itself?”

“I couldn’t say. Not really. I saw them and, of course, I knew what they were. Who wouldn’t? But there wasn’t time to linger. The vehicles wouldn’t start. But we were fortunate. The soldiers knew what to do. We took our supplies back down to the storeroom. And there we waited. We managed to hold out for three days. We’d finished the food, we’d nearly run out of water, and tensions were sky high. There was little ventilation, no toilets, and no privacy when people got sick. When we were down to one bottle of water each, the sergeant announced he was leaving. That was the signal for all of us. He didn’t say it would be safe. Nor did he say ‘we were leaving’. But he seemed to know something, and that was more than the rest of us. We left our cellar. I don’t know what I had expected to see when I got outside. I suppose I thought everything would be covered in ash. We had talked about it whilst we waited. But what did any of us know except that we had seen in documentaries about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities made mostly of wood. There was ash, but it wasn't thick like snow.”

“And what about Glasgow? Did you see it?” Nilda asked.

“I did, but only briefly. It was a smouldering ruin. Thick coils of smoke tumbled up into the sky. Buildings were gone, replaced by rubble and glass. There were no lights, no people, and there was no sound. That was the most striking change. The hedgerows were still green, but no longer full of life. Beneath them… oh, it was a miserable sight. Beneath them, the ground was littered with birds. They must have flown to the hedges seeking the only shelter they knew, and there they died. There were no planes, nor helicopters - and believe me, we looked. We thought that surely there must be some kind of rescue operation underway. There wasn’t. So we turned our backs and walked. There were more dead birds, and after a few miles we saw them in the roads and fields. Whether they were killed by the shockwave or the radiation, I don’t know. It was a grim omen, but it galvanised us. We knew that to stop meant death. The soldiers set the pace. Everyone else had to keep up. We walked all day until we reached a farmhouse by a road sign that read ‘Glasgow. Fifty miles’. We didn’t want to stop, but we couldn’t go on. I collapsed in a chair and fell asleep. When I woke, the sun was rising, and I was alone. They’d all gone. They’d left me my water bottle, though it was nearly empty. There was water still coming out of the tap, but I didn’t fill the bottle. How would I know if it was irradiated or not? I reasoned that I could go on for at least a few miles, and with each step I took, the safer the water would be. On my own, I made poorer progress. I wandered a dead countryside, trying to recite the lessons from St Paul.” He gave a bitter laugh. “The trials of Job came to mind, and I repeated each of his ordeals and told myself that by comparison I had it lucky, but then I would remember the words from Revelations. The pit of the abyss had truly been opened. That was what I repeated to myself, though there was no comfort in the deceit.” For the first time since he’d begun his tale, he looked up at Nilda. “You don’t remember the Cold War. You’re too young.”

“I’m not that young,” she said. “I watched the Berlin Wall come down, and the tanks rolling in the streets of Moscow.”

“That was the end of it, when we knew that we’d won. What you don’t remember is what it was that we’d won. You don’t remember the fear that came before. The constant dread that, at any moment, everything could end. That we pitiful civilians, be we farmers in Minsk, shopkeepers in Newcastle, or executives in Los Angeles, that our lives were held in the palms of a handful of men in Washington and Moscow. When it ended, that fear left us. A golden age of prosperity and charity, of democracy and discovery, and of peace lay before us. It was a lie. Our destiny was in the hands of a few, and it was ever thus. At least the Soviets were an enemy we could understand. What they were replaced by, and now with the undead…” he started coughing again.

“But how did you come to meet them?” Nilda asked, gesturing to the hut. She wanted to keep the conversation going so she wouldn’t be left with only the voices in her mind to listen to.

“I was walking. I had no direction in mind, nothing but the road in front and my fear as motivation. I don’t know how long I walked, nor how far. I stumbled out into the road, almost into the path of a coach. Morag…” he nodded towards one of the graves, “… was driving. It was her coach.”

“How did she get a coach working?”

“It was a museum piece. I mean that literally. She owned a transport museum, although that is a grand title for such a small place. Really, she made her money hiring the vehicles out for weddings and films. The one which she was driving, her newest, was a 1940s affair. Post war, just. One of the first to come off the assembly line after peace broke out. Wooden seats, small windows, no seat belts, and no electronics. She hired it out as a prop for movies and TV-shows. Even though it was built a few months too late, it looked the part. More importantly, it still ran. And, usually, she was cast as the driver. She had seventy-three screen credits to her name. She was quite proud of that.” He sighed. “Much like I’d done, she’d hidden in a cellar the moment that she saw the mushroom clouds. The passengers in the coach were just survivors she’d driven past. Some were sick, some got sick, a lot died, others seemed fine, and almost embarrassed because of it. I collapsed when they let me onto the bus. I didn’t wake up until we’d reached the coast. We were at a small fishing village. Morag had provided the transport for a wedding there. Both the bride’s grandfather and the groom’s great uncle had worked in the factory that had made the bus. She was hired to take the wedding party to a church a few miles inland, then to the reception, then back to the village afterwards. That’s where we went. She was hoping they’d be there, that the bus would be recognised, that we’d find help and refuge.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No. The village was empty. The boats were gone. We did our best for the sick, and for the people who came in over the next few days. It seemed as if everyone was heading for the coast. There was this constant stream of people. Some were tired, most were exhausted, some were close to death and a few died the moment they found themselves somewhere safe. I spent my time with the dying, offering them what comfort I could. It was little enough. Two days, or three, or perhaps even a week later, I don’t know, but I suddenly found there was no one to tend. At least, there was no one who would die in the immediate future. I left the improvised hospital we’d set up in one of the empty boatsheds and went outside. Around the outside of the village they had erected a barricade of cars and trucks, wood and stone, and anything else that was easily moved. There were no more refugees heading along that road towards us. There were only the undead.”

“Did you try and fight?”

“Fight? Yes. Though not me personally. I swore off violence a long time ago. Not even these creatures could bring me to change that. But the others, they stood behind their walls, sharpened boathooks and garden tools in their hands. Morag had organised it, and she’d done it well. At first there were few enough zombies that the defenders could leave the protection of their wall and go up the road to meet them. But more came. There were always more. They had to retreat behind the walls, standing on improvised ramparts, plunging their makeshift weapons down, over and over again. They killed hundreds, but the ranks of the undead were legion. They set up a second ring and pulled back, letting the undead swarm over that first barricade. And then there was a third ring, and each time the area they had to defend became smaller, and that meant fewer people were needed. And that should have meant that everyone got more rest. But they didn’t. People began to get sick once more. I should have realised what was happening, but as more people became ill, I became too busy to even think. Only when the walls were so thickly ringed with the bodies of the undead that the still moving ones couldn’t be reached by their improvised spears did anyone realise how truly futile our efforts were. By that stage there were only a dozen left who could stand. Staying put was not an option. We had to leave, all of us. And the only way out was by sea.”

“But you had no boats.”

“Well, not quite. We had a rowing boat. Callum and two of the other, healthier survivors took it and headed up the coast to the lifeboat station. We thought they’d died, or worse, left us. But two days later Callum returned with the boat, alone. And that was how we got out. By the time we were out at sea, I realised that I was the only healthy one left. Some, like Callum and Morag had been hiding how sick they were. For others, pretence was impossible. The fuel soon ran out, so we drifted with the waves. I hoped we’d find a submarine or an aircraft carrier or even just another boat. We didn’t. We found no one except you.”

“And they’re all sick now. All dying.”

“Yes. In a few days they will all be dead.”

“Who do you think was behind it?”

“The bombing? I think it was the same evil spirit that caused the outbreak and most of the world’s evil.”

Nilda looked at him askance. Dressed in tattered jeans and a patched sweater she found it easy to forget he was a monk.

“You’re saying you think this was the work of the Devil?”

He laughed again.

“No, I meant that evil spirit that lurks within us all. This was not the work of the Devil, nor of some vengeful God. I think this was merely the act of some foolish men blinded by their certainty of their own beliefs.”

“Coming from a religious man that’s—” she began, but was cut off by a loud moan from inside the hut.

“Excuse me,” the Abbot said, wearily standing up.

Nilda watched him go back into the hut, then returned her attention to the dying embers of the fire.

1
st
April

Nilda stirred the contents of the saucepan. She tried not to think about the date and how, in past years, she and Jay had spent it at a beach watching waves identical to the ones beating against the shore. She looked down into the mess of stinging nettles and dandelions. It was a far cry from greasy fish and chips, and a morning spent gathering leaves didn’t amount to much food in the pot. She supposed she was fortunate that it didn’t have to stretch that far. She regretted the thought almost immediately. She’d dug three graves first thing that morning and filled two of them soon after. The third would be occupied before noon. Her hands were blistered. Her arms had been stung. She barely noticed.

Fetch water, tend fire, collect roots and nettles, dig graves, and try not to think; that had become her day. As much and as often as she could bear, she had helped the Abbot keep the other survivors comfortable. There was no comfort, save water, and most of them could not hold it down. And as the only cloth they had was that which they were wearing, she was unable to even wipe their fevered brows.