Surviving The Evacuation (Book 1): London (23 page)

Chocolate. Say it again. Chocolate. Oh, it's great! I've only had a very small piece, I don't know how good chocolate is on an empty and seriously upset stomach that hasn't seen a decent meal in months, but I just had to taste it. It's been, what? A month since I had any. Maybe longer, I can't remember, I couldn’t even remember how it tasted.

I wonder which one it was who bought them, whether it was John or May. I know it's John and May, that's what their friends called them. The gas and electric people knew them as James and Mai Embery. I like how they had two sets of names, one for people they knew and one for those they didn’t. It's like a code, a secret password to their own private club. I've always approved of nicknames, people without them struck me as less honest somehow. I wonder which one of them planned that far ahead
?
I know the supermarkets used to put the Easter displays out around Boxing Day but I didn't think anyone actually bought them that early.

Or maybe it was Chuck, whose teachers called him Ronald. His real name, at least the name on his NHS card is Charleston. That must be some kind of family name, so Chuck makes sense, but the Ronald thing? His English teacher, a text-book underachiever with a serious chip on his shoulder going by the letter of complaint May wrote, he decided to call him Ronald on account of Chuck not being appropriate for the school. Seriously. What kind of school in this day and age employs a teacher like that? Poor kid, he's only 10. Maybe those were his Easter eggs, maybe he's the one who planned ahead and bought them with his Christmas money the moment they went on sale.

No, on second thought that doesn't seem like him, not going by the mess in his room. When he was packing he must have emptied every drawer and cupboard, then, when he either found everything he wanted or, more likely, filled his meagre bag allowance, he tried stuffing things back in. May must have been furious with the mess. Or maybe it was John who did the house work.

They couldn’t take much with them, only what they could fit in the car. They must have been planning a long trip before it happened because they had at least some petrol. They headed out by car, but they weren't planning on taking it the whole way. On the roof, or maybe strapped to the boot, they had their bikes.

In the garage next to a workbench is a photo of the family, all five of them, all bedecked in seriously hard core cycling gear. Well, all save the daughter. She's wearing strategically ripped jeans and far too much make-up for a cycling holiday. It's quite funny really, I mean, she must have spent hours working on 'a look' but didn’t consider that a few hours cycling up a mountain would make her look like a throwback to the eighties.

I’m not sure where the photo was taken, but it can't have been more than a year or two ago, judging by the size of Chuck. Maybe that was their first proper cycling tour together as a family. I bet that was the year that Chuck had his first new proper bike, and he was finally old enough to go along with them.

It's nice.

There's no car in the garage, no car outside either. Five bikes are missing from the rack in the garage. There are some spare saddles and tyres, all thin ones designed for speed, but none of the thicker cross country ones. They must have taken those with them.

I don't know where they've gone, not exactly. They didn't leave a note. Why would they? Well, if they were expecting either of their kids to come here looking for them, they would. Which means they've either gone to Exeter where their son's a second year undergrad, or Dundee where their daughter's in her fourth year. It's term time, and I’m assuming that's where they are based on the copies of the course schedules pinned on the kitchen notice board.

The plan must be to meet up with their son first. Exeter's about 160 miles from here. Would they have enough petrol to get there? Probably, but that would run the tank dry. Certainly, there's no way they could have found more once they'd left, not with the rationing. So after Exeter they'd be on their bikes. The maths doesn't add up though, four of them, but five bikes. Maybe Douglas, that's the son's name, has a friend, or maybe John and May are planning on picking someone up along their way. They've taken an extra bike, that's the important point, it's for someone else, I’m sure. They're going out of their way to help someone else.

I like that about them. The Embery's. Nice people.

I don't care what you say. What I say is that they cycled up mountain, through valley and across dale, all the way to Scotland where they collected Simone and then they headed off into the highlands where they're happy right now, eating porridge and shortbread. They'll survive this, the five of them and whoever that extra bike was for. They'll thrive up there, safe, secure, until one day they decide to come back.

17:00

Dinner time and it's da, da, da, daa! More pasta. This time, for a change of pace, I’m having the sea shell ones. Same as breakfast, same as dinner last night and the same as dinner tomorrow and the next, roughly, eleven days after that. These guys seriously liked the stuff. I’m guessing that this isn't the ordinary shop stuff, not the stuff I'd buy anyway. It must have been organic or hand made by Italian grannies in some remote hillside village, why else would they have put it on display on the island in the middle of the kitchen? Today's special has been cooked in... orange juice and it isn't bad. At least, it's no worse than anything else I've had lately.

Which brings me to the birds. Four and Twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie... People did eat them, then, long ago.
I’m not there yet, but soon I'll have to stop scavenging from the remains of the old world and learn anew the skills of an even older one. But not yet. It's one more step on the road leading away from civilisation, a step I’m not quite ready to take.

But I did take another.
The dustbin they were storing the inner tubes in has now been reassigned and is doing duty as a water-butt. Now I've got to hope it rains.

19:00

I found Lenham Hill on the map. I knew I'd recognised the name. It was an old cold war broadcasting substation. It wasn't one that had ever been used, it was just part of a chain of relay stations in case London was destroyed in a nuclear attack. All of those were mothballed in the early seventies when it became apparent that nowhere in the UK would survive World War Three. What equipment was there had been removed, though this was never made public. It was Jen's father who'd told me about this, he'd been the Minister responsible.

I’m certain I've seen the name more recently than that though. It doesn't matter, wherever Radio Free England was being broadcast from it wasn't Lenham Hill. Whatever their purpose then, it wasn't what they claimed it to be.

Day 60, Woolwich, London

07:15

Rice cooked in orange works well. Rice Crispies with orange juice doesn't.

I found a hatchet in a box in the garage and a mountaineering axe in a box in John and May's bedroom. It looks deadly.

I had second thoughts during the night about the guttering, I've no idea what state it's in. Come to that, I've no idea what's in the rain water, but I can't do much about that. I've tied one end of a groundsheet to the washing line, the other end to a camping pole and trailed it so that any rain that falls on it will be funnelled into the bin.

Now I just need the rain. There was none last night, and not a cloud in the sky this morning.

The high fences make the garden reasonably secluded. I've checked the neighbouring gardens and they're empty. As long as I’m quiet, I can sit outside and watch the birds. There are far more than I ever remember seeing before, flocks of twenty or thirty of them. This must be the result of fewer predators for the hatchlings and no humans accidentally destroying their nests.

They treat the zombies the same way they used to treat cats, dogs and any other predator, humans too I suppose, they avoid Them. They just fly up and away to some safe roost.

I remember reading about passenger pigeons and how, before they were wiped out at the beginning of the twentieth century, their flocks could be hundreds of miles wide and billions of birds deep. I’m not saying I’m expecting that next year, but just imagine what a sight that would be.

Fish too, they'll do well out of this. Not sure that will help me much. Can I trust the fish in the rivers? I have no idea, but I've no idea how to fish, so it's all academic.

Chickens? No, they'll all be dead from dehydration by now, the ones that weren't eaten by hungry refugees. Goats, though, there's no reason they couldn’t have survived this, but where are there goat farms? There have to be some, I mean, where there's British Goat's Cheese there have to be British Goats. But where? I vaguely remember that the type I liked came from Wales, but there surely has to be some nearer than that.

It's just another dream, isn't it? I picture myself searching for a goat farm and the next image my brain throws up is of a joint roasting merrily on a spit. All the steps in between, the difficult ones like catching and butchering, or perhaps even breeding the animals, the impossible like getting from here to some remote farm in Wales or Somerset or Lancashire, or even the simplest ones like finding the address of a goat farm, are, in my mind, nothing. They're just some trivial irritation that can, of course, be solved.

A few months ago it would have been simple enough. I'd have just gone online, found a map, directions and a video entitled “Ten Easy Steps To Slaughtering A Goat”. I bet there was one.

08:30

When ever I get maudlin I find looting is the best tonic and if I’m to stay here much longer I'll need more food, but four of Them have turned up in the night. They're not quite outside the house, but scattered across the street a few houses down. I could go out the back, breaking through the fences again, but that might disturb Them. I'll just sit, wait and read.

15:00

Just finished Great Expectations, David Copperfield next. Still no rain.

19:00

I've been sitting up in Chuck's bedroom, staring at the clouds through his skylight as the sun set. It's a great view. He's got glow in the dark stars and planets on his ceiling, posters of the solar system on the walls and a telescope in the corner. No prizes for guessing what he wanted to be when he grows up.

I doubt he'll have the chance. If he makes it, he'll be a farmer, or a fisherman. We all will.

I don't mind the idea of being a fisherman or a farmer. It'd be good to eat the food I've grown from scratch. Not that I have a clue how to do it, but there are books, right? I know we closed all the libraries, but I’m sure some zealous kitchen gardener somewhere will have a book or two I can loot.

Day 61, Woolwich, London.

09:00

In the final days before the evacuation, the removal of the Prime Minister caused only one major problem. A fleet of boats, a flotilla is a better word since there was no real coordination between the craft, made up of fishing boats, pleasure cruisers, launches, cigarette boats and even some rafts, was heading across the Atlantic towards Britain. They were refugees from across the Americas, just ordinary people looking for somewhere safe. Some had been at sea for days, others had turned back from Greenland where a similar fleet was swamping what had looked like the most promising redoubt on the planet.

We tried to communicate with them, to tell them to turn back, but there was no one in charge, no one to cajole or threaten and the only bribe we could offer was the one thing they wanted and the one thing we were not prepared to give, sanctuary.

The Captain of one of the fishing boats, Sophia Augusto, tried to reason with us via a tenuous link relayed through a coast guard ship. She'd set off with her extended family from Puerto Rico three days after New York, about the same time as I was being driven home from the hospital. Initially she'd thought that it would be safer at sea, that the infection would burn itself out and that order would be restored. As the days had gone by it had become clear that the world they had known had disappeared forever. She tried to persuade us that there were no zombies in the flotilla. That they'd all been at sea for days and none of the vessels were large enough to hide one of the undead but that just wasn't good enough for us. She was told that there would be a place for her and any other trawlers, but not for the rest, and that wasn't good enough for her.

Our naval resources were stretched thin. Though we had some vessels in the Atlantic most of our fleet was deployed to tackle refugees coming from Europe. All that was really available, all that we had to destroy a fleet of thousands, was a Trident Submarine. It was ordered to fire off a missile, and to detonate it above this flotilla. The Captain refused. The orders, after all, were coming from the Foreign Secretary, not the PM.

I’m not sure what happened to that submarine or to the others. Jen wouldn't tell me, and by then, though Sholto was sending information through to me, I was getting few replies to any messages I sent to him.

I don't know what happened to that flotilla in the end. Some of our conventional naval assets were retasked, but I don't know if it reached the flotilla or if, when it did, they fired any shots.