Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion (13 page)

“Lie flat!” she yelled, slapping him on the back of his neck, pushing him down. She grabbed a fistful of cloth and hauled him through. They fell in a heap.

“Up!” she yelled, but slowly untensed as she looked around and saw that the store was empty. They could hear the undead moving through the warehouse behind them, banging into the locked doors, but for the next few minutes they were safe.

She breathed out again, and decided that was all the rest they could afford. Chester had already reached that conclusion; he was ripping off the packaging from one of the phones.

“Time to test it,” he said, throwing one of the phones to her, whilst he fished in his bag for a canister. She ripped off the packaging, and pressed the power button. Nothing.

“Batteries dead,” she muttered, grabbing another phone. This one came on. A moment later she threw it aside.

“No music,” she said. The third one had four tracks preloaded, and a miniscule bar that suggested it would work for a few minutes. By the time she’d set the tracks to shuffle, and the sound to play out of the speaker, Chester had one balloon full, and the other half full. He taped the phone to the balloon, and let it go. It floated up until the balloons bounced against the false ceiling, the phone just above head height.

“That’ll do,” he said. “Set up the timer. We want to give ourselves a few seconds head start.”

“How do you do that? I know how to make a phone call and how to ask Jay if I want to do anything else.”

Chester smiled. Despite herself, she smiled back as he swiped at the phone.

“Here. Press the screen when we get outside. The music’ll start a minute later. We go out, we run—”

“And we keep on running until our feet are wet. I’m ready.”

The shop’s main door was padlocked from the inside.

“Can you break it?” she asked.

“It would make too much noise. Here.” He handed her his rifle, took out his knife, and levered at the lock-plate. The plate, handles, padlock and all came free with a sharp splintering of wood. He took back his rifle and raised his foot.

“Wait. Bolts!” Nilda pointed at the bottom of the door. Bolts thrown, Chester pushed the door open, and they tumbled out into the car park in front of the store. They could see the undead, but the zombies hadn’t seen them.

Chester raised the rifle as Nilda pressed the button and let the phone go. It floated up a few feet, bobbing in the air, just above head height. She pulled out her sword, and they ran in a half crouch to the scant shelter offered by an abandoned car. The nearest vehicle after that, and the only cover between them and the road, was a solitary van.

From the phone, tinny, almost inaudible, a woman began to sing. Not loud enough, Nilda thought. Chester tried to signal something with his hands. Nilda wasn’t sure what. Before she could hiss a question, he’d raised the rifle and fired two shots in quick succession. He’d hit two undead, but there were five more, loitering in a gap that was only way out of the car park that she could see. He aimed again, pulled the trigger. The rifle didn’t fire.

“Time to run!” he hissed.

Chester in front, swinging his sword in great wild arcs, they ran towards the undead. A drumbeat began, but Nilda could barely hear it over the pounding of her own feet as she followed, two-slashing sword lengths behind. Chester’s sword swept out in a huge glittering arc, decapitating one, the blade continuing on to cleave halfway through a second creature’s chest. Both fell as he twisted the blade, pulling it free. Nilda darted forward, this time she didn’t bother aiming for the head, she swung the sword at a third creature’s knees. The sharp blade cut through desiccated sinew, the zombie collapsed. Chester hacked his blade up and down, splitting the fourth zombie’s head as Nilda darted forward, stabbing the gladius at the last creature’s eyes. She looked back. There were a couple of zombies following, but most were heading towards the store’s entrance, and the balloon floating absurdly above their heads.

“It almost worked,” she said.

“Run!” was Chester’s reply.

And at first, to stop would mean death. Though they could outpace the undead following them, there were always more in front. First it was those trapped between cars, then those previously listless in the streets of the suburbs as they entered the city itself. Through necessity their marathon became a stuttering sprint from one patch of cover to another.

Ducking into a half open yard at the rear of a florist’s, Chester pushed the wooden gate closed, and leaned on it. Nilda closed her eyes. The stars she’d been seeing didn’t disappear. Running was a resolution she had occasionally taken up in the New Year but always given up by Burn’s Night. Her exercise came from stacking shelves six evenings a week. Coupled with a low-budget diet, it had kept her thin. The months on the island had even kept her healthy – not counting the radiation – but it hadn’t made her fit. That thought reminded her of the Geiger counter. They should check it, of course, but what would be the point? It was too late to change the plan now. When she opened her eyes she saw Chester filling two more balloons.

“Why are there so many of them?” she hissed.

“Cities. I told you.”

“How much farther?” she whispered.

“Not sure. Find me a couple of phones.”

She unslung her pack and started taking out the phones, removing the packaging, and discarding those with dead batteries. By the time she’d finished she had five that worked. Chester had four balloons filled, and was staring at the map.

“We are… well, somewhere around here.” He pointed at a densely packed cluster of buildings. “There’s a church a couple of streets that way.” He waved a hand towards the south. “We find that, then go west, then south, then down one of these streets, here. That’ll take us to the factory. It’s a mile at most.”

That wasn’t far, she told herself as she handed him two of the phones. Both were the same model, both preloaded with the same music, a dismal collection of cookie-cutter hits that she loathed. They played that music during the evening shift in the store in which she’d worked. They had said they did that to create a ‘fun’ atmosphere. In her opinion, it was to make the job so repetitively unpleasant the work would be done in half the time, thus avoiding paying out the mythical overtime.

“You want to release these now?” she asked as they taped the phones to the balloons.

“Not until we get closer to the factory,” he replied. “Ready?”

Clutching the phone in one hand, the sword in the other, she nodded, and followed him back out the gate. Legs aching, lungs burning, they dodged the undead, clambered over abandoned cars, and headed towards the estuary.

Chester spotted the spire first, and using it as a marker they angled towards the church. When they rounded the corner and saw it properly, they found that the spire was only part still standing. Of the rest, only a rubble-filled crater remained.

“We should check the Geiger counter,” he said.

“No time.” And now it was Nilda’s turn to grab his arm, dragging him on a few steps to the narrow ribbon of concrete between the crater and the wall of the house opposite. Bizarrely, though the windows had been blown out, the building still stood. Or she thought it did until she glanced through the fractured front door and saw that it was only the front and side wall of the house that were still standing. The roof, interior floors, and rear wall had collapsed. The road in front was littered with craters, though none so large as the one that had destroyed the church. Smoke and soot stained every surface. Often it was only from the melted rubber that a pile of twisted metal could be identified as having once been a car.

“That’s the factory,” Chester said, red-brown gore dripping from his sword as he pointed with it towards a high wall. Beyond it, Nilda could make out the roofs of a handful of small low buildings, but they were dwarfed by a massive white-clad structure, at least fifty metres high, that towered over the complex.

To the right of a sturdy gate, there was a ten-foot gap in the wall. The pile of rubble and broken brick filling the breach prevented Nilda from seeing far inside, but she knew well enough that if they could get in, so could the undead.

“Where’s this boat?” she asked.

Chester pointed towards the southeast. “It’s on the estuary, but you can’t see it from here. The quickest way is through the factory, then to the dock behind, and we can follow that out to the boat.”

Thinking that he’d planned this all along as a way of getting to the factory, she followed him. She wished she’d asked what the boat looked like. It was too late now. They clambered through the broken brick wall and into the complex. There were zombies everywhere. She pressed play and released the balloon. It bounced up a few feet before settling, the phone dangling at eye height.

“Too low. Must be a heavier model than I thought,” Chester said. “Can’t do anything about that now.”

They ran towards the building, as behind them, the thrashing squeal of an electric guitar signalled the opening strains of a once ubiquitous rock anthem.

“Let yours go,” Nilda said.

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“You said you put that one on repeat. Wait.”

They scrambled over rubble, the balloon bouncing up and down above them. It no longer seemed funny. Now it seemed repugnant to Nilda. It reminded her of children’s parties, of innocent fun, and how that would be forever absent from the world.

“Now,” Chester muttered, pressing play and letting the balloon loose. This one, perhaps thanks to less tape or more helium, bounced up a little higher than the first. A stray wind caught it, dragging it westwards. Then she understood why he’d waited. She wanted to hit him for his idiocy, and the mercurial mood swings that caused it. He’d wanted the songs to sync up. But his timing was off. Instead of a twisted stereo, the track sounded as if it had a distant echo. Nilda glanced at the first balloon. It had bobbed north, and caught in the wreckage of a lamppost. The undead following them drifted towards the sound, their arms waving like cat’s pawing at a ball of wool. It was working, to a fashion, there were far fewer zombies following them, but there were still more in front. She doubted there would be safety inside the factory, but they might have a few minutes’ respite.

“A building has more than one exit. Always.” The words ran around her head, but as Chester sprinted a few yards in front and pulled the doors open, she reminded herself that wasn’t always true.
They slammed the door closed. The music, already distant, became inaudible. The only sound was that of an occasional falling brick, coming from somewhere inside the building.

They were in a long corridor. To the left ran the exterior wall. To the right, on the other side of another wall, lay the factory floor itself, accessed through regularly spaced double doors. Above each hung the obligatory health and safety notices. At the corridor’s far end was a set of doors.

“Let’s head through those,” Nilda whispered. “And find some exit on the estuary side.”

“Or hope the music leads them away from here,” he replied, throwing the bolts on the door.

Hope? What was the point of that? She started walking softly down the corridor. It was the unknown; that was her new fear. During that first month, in Penrith, she’d been most worried about starvation, and she’d anxiously watched the food supplies dwindling day by day. On the island it had been the undead walking up out of the sea, and there was nothing she could do about that. Here, it was not knowing what was on the other side of the long wall causing that masonry to fall.

Of course, in Penrith the real danger, and that small community’s undoing, had been the undead, whereas on the island it was starvation, and here… here it was becoming trapped when the horde arrived. She picked up her pace, trying to consign the plinking clip of falling brickwork into the background.

“Stairs,” Chester whispered, pointing his light at a sign. “We go up, find a window, and see what’s outside.” There was hesitation in his voice, betraying that he was beset by fears of his own. Nilda nodded, and pushed at the door. It had only moved three inches before it gave an ominous creak. She froze, listening, but all seemed silent beyond. Sword raised, she pushed it all the way open, ready for any threat. There wasn’t one, just a staircase leading up.

She mounted the stairs, climbing briskly, knowing that she would face danger soon and wanting to just get it over with. She reached a landing with a windowless door. She tried the handle. The door was stuck fast. She shook her head at Chester, and continued up the stairwell.

At the next landing, the door opened, but only halfway, and that with a grinding scrape of shifting masonry. The room beyond was small, narrow, and long. It was a viewing room or an inspection corridor, and it didn’t matter which. The inner wall offered a view of the factory floor. The plastic once shielding the tall window was now shredded and shattered, melted onto the frame. She felt compelled to see what lay beyond, and since the alternative was going back, she edged through the gap and took a cautious pace forward.

It wasn’t a factory, she thought, it was an assembly. The parts must have been constructed in one of the other, smaller buildings on the complex, then put together here, ready for transport and final construction on site. Huge skeleton frames of the giant turbine blades, twisted and bent, smoke blackened and broken, lay amidst the rubble.