Surviving The Evacuation (Book 4): Unsafe Haven

Chester ran. He knew the police were chasing him; he could hear their engines.
In the hope of finding somewhere to hide, he dived into an alley. His foot slipped on a sodden newspaper. Off-balance he reached out, searching for something to catch his fall. He found a bin. It was empty and toppled over under his weight. Falling face first onto the damp ground, he was about to curse when the alley was lit up by the red and blue lights of a police car. He lay very still, not even daring to breathe. Finally, the lights faded as the police car drove on. He allowed himself to breathe out, but he couldn’t relax. Not when he could still hear the vehicle patrolling a few streets away.

He got to his feet and took a moment to think. If they found him, they’d shoot him. It wouldn’t matter if it was because he’d jumped out of the back of the van or because he was now breaking curfew. They would shoot him and they wouldn’t hesitate. He’d seen that at the supermarket. When they’d frogmarched him and a dozen others out of the cells, he’d had no idea what was going on. And he’d had no idea since they’d arrested him. Even when he’d asked to see his lawyer, they had ignored him. He had assumed it had something to do with the rumours he’d heard whilst he’d been in the cells. There was some talk about a viral outbreak in the U.S. The ports and airports had been closed. Martial law had been implemented along with a curfew. And there had been weird outlandish talk of zombies. He’d ignored those as too absurd to be true.

Along with a dozen others, he’d been bundled into the back of the van. Assuming they were being transferred, uncertain why they would do it in the middle of the night, he’d settled back in his seat and tried to get some sleep. But he’d barely closed his eyes before they’d arrived at a supermarket. Before he could open them again, the shooting began. He’d ducked down, so had all the others, assuming they were the ones being shot at. They weren’t. A moment later, there had been a slap on the van’s side and they were shouted out into the car park. Then he’d seen the bodies. And he’d seen a soldier walking up to one lying a few yards from the gate leading to a council tower block. The soldier had fired a single shot into the head of the supine figure. Chester was stunned, and as he tried to work out what was going on, he spotted the desk sergeant he remembered from his arrest a couple of days before. The copper didn’t say anything and didn’t seem to be in charge, he just stood there and watched as the soldier went from body to body, shooting the dead and injured alike.

Chester had done as they instructed and carried the bodies to a refuse truck. He’d kept his head down and said nothing, just tried to make himself invisible as he made his plans.

After they’d finished loading the bodies, they’d been told to get back into the van. He hadn’t liked that; he couldn’t be sure of course, but he doubted they wanted witnesses. Getting out of the van hadn’t been difficult. It wasn’t one of the prisoner transports with the double locks, wire, and handcuffs, but an ordinary van with doors that opened from the inside. They were barrelling along at twenty miles an hour when he threw the door open and jumped out. He’d hit the ground hard, friction tearing cloth and ripping skin. He’d ignored the pain and ran. And they had followed. He hadn’t expected that. He kept running and they kept following. Or perhaps the police on his trail were just an ordinary patrol. It didn’t matter. After what he’d seen, he knew they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him on sight.

It was hours later, approaching midnight, and he was somewhere in the back streets of central London. He couldn’t go home. He didn’t know if they had the resources to actively search for him, but he couldn’t risk it. That left only one place that he knew was safe; McInery’s house in Kensington, about a mile from where he now stood.

More cautiously than before, he crept down the alley. He paused at the end and peered around the corner. The road was empty. There were lights on in almost every window, coupled with the streetlights, that made it almost as bright as day. There was a side road a hundred yards to the north. He knew it ended in a cul-de-sac that backed onto a construction site where they were halfway through turning an old department store into a hotel. McInery’s place was just two streets beyond. He glanced up and down the road one last time. From the sound of the engines, the patrol was close, but he couldn’t see them. He ran.

He made it to the cul-de-sac just as a police car turned into the road. Resisting the temptation to look behind, he sprinted along the narrow street, leapt up and over the hoarding, and dropped down into the building site just as the car’s lights stabbed through a gap in the wooden fence a few inches from his face. Unmoving, trying not to even think loudly, he listened. The car drove on. They hadn’t spotted him. Finally, he allowed himself to relax and look around.

A multi-storey skeleton of concrete towered above him, dark and empty. He was alone. He should wait, he thought, until three a.m. The police should have forgotten about him by then. In fact, he thought, why not wait until morning when the curfew was over? With construction shut down there would be no workers coming in the next day. Even in this corner of London, filled with hotels and mansions, there would be enough odd-looking and oddly-dressed people wandering around that he could blend in. Except he was still wearing the jumpsuit they’d given him back at the cells. He knew they’d only taken his clothes in an attempt to intimidate him. It hadn’t worked. It never did. But the jumpsuit would stick out. It would be easier if he could find a jacket or something to cover it.

He examined his surroundings more carefully. There were three pre-fabs stacked one on top of another at the other end of the site. He guessed those were the offices. There might be a jacket in there, he thought, perhaps even some—

The silence was shattered by the clattering rattle of something metallic toppling over. Chester peered into the darkness, trying to identify the sound. It came from somewhere behind the offices. It could be a cat or fox, but probably not. His gut told him that there was someone else on the site. Most likely it was one of London’s homeless trying to find somewhere to bed down out of the way of the patrols. But that didn’t mean he could ignore it. That was one of the first lessons his father had taught him. “Ignoring something doesn’t make it go away, and ignoring someone is naught but a sure-fire way to end up in the slammer.” It was sound advice that had kept him twice out of jail and once out of a life-sentence.

Tensed, expecting the worst, he moved towards where he thought the noise had come from. There. He heard it again. And there was something else, another sound that came with it, a wheezing cough. No, he thought, not a cough. It almost sounded like a snarl.

“Hello? You alright, mate? You need any help?” he called softly, as he peered into the gloom.

There was no answer, just the sound of something dragging along the ground, getting closer and closer and then, suddenly, a figure fell out of the shadows, almost on top of him. Chester batted the flailing arms away.

“What the hell?” he blurted, as he staggered backwards.

The man, and it was a man, wore a suit and tie. If Chester was any judge, it was an expensive suit. The man must be a guest in one of the hotels. Probably drunk. The man threw an arm out, not quite in a punch. It was as if the man wasn’t aiming at all. Chester knocked the arm away and backed up another step. Drunk or not, the man was about the right height and build. The suit would fit perfectly.

“Alright, mate. Just calm down,” Chester said soothingly, as he raised his arms ready to grab the figure.

The man snarled, and as he turned Chester saw his face. Its face. He knew what it was. The rumours had been true. The lifeless eyes, the veined yet bloodless visage, and gaping maw gnashing and chomping as it blindly sought for living flesh; it was a zombie.

Chester backed away. The creature followed. Its teeth snapped down, its hands clawed at the air between them, and its leg knocked against a wheelbarrow, tipping it over. The sound was loud. Too loud. Chester could run, but if the police were nearby they might hear this creature stumbling around. There was no way he would risk being caught. Not now.

Near the office was a haphazard stack of tools. They looked as if they were lying where they’d been dropped after the news from New York had first come in. Ducking under the creature’s out-flung arm, he dived forwards and grabbed the first handle he could reach. It was a pickaxe. Turning and twisting, gripping the tool with both hands, he swung it sideways into the zombie. There was a splintering crack of bone as the metal point smashed into the creature’s chest. The blow knocked it over, but it didn’t stop moving.

Chester stared at the impossibly thrashing arms and legs for a moment. They’d said you had to destroy the brain. He’d thought they’d been exaggerating. Planting one foot on its chest, he grabbed the pickaxe, and with a wet sucking-slurp, pulled it free. He swung it up and over his head and brought it down on the zombie’s skull. It finally went still.

He slowed his breathing and tried to slow his heart. It was pounding so loud it drowned out every other sound. He looked down at the zombie. There was no way he was taking its clothes now, but he was curious as to who the creature had once been. He bent and searched through the corpse’s pockets with a professional’s thoroughness. He found a diplomatic passport. What remained of the face matched the picture, but it wasn’t one that Chester recognised. Nor was the name in the passport. In another pocket was a folded sheet of paper with the address of a hotel in New York and the contact details of a private jet company. The man must have been infected when he boarded the flight. Or someone on that jet had been. That explained how the man got to London. What it didn’t answer, Chester realised, was how the zombie ended up in a building site at the fashionable end of the capital.

From the half-finished building came a clattering of metal, a rustling of plastic sheeting and an ominous rasping wheeze. He realised that this creature wasn’t alone. Chester decided that how the zombies had found there way into the construction site was a question he didn’t need an answer to. He dropped the passport, stood up and ran over to the hoarding encircling the site. He climbed over and once more headed off through the streets of London.

Engines. He heard them again and they were close. There was no doubt it had to be a patrol. Doubling back and forwards and sideways, taking side roads and alleys, he kept running until he saw the bright-red door of McInery’s house. He ran up the front path and smashed one fist on the bell, the other pounding on the doorknocker. The police cars were getting closer.

“Who’s there?” It wasn’t McInery. It was a man’s voice. One that was vaguely familiar.

“It’s Chester. Chester Carson.”

“What do you want?”

“The cops are coming. They’ll be here in a moment. Let me—”

The door opened, a hand came out, and Chester was tugged inside.

The hallway was dark. Chester hadn’t noticed before, but the house’s lights were off. McInery always kept them on. A fear of the dark was one of many fake neuroses that she employed as part of her cover. Ready to fight, he turned around and tried to identify the figure who’d pulled him through the door.

“Chester? Is that you? What on Earth happened?” And that was McInery’s voice. She stood in the doorway to the cellar.

“Hey Mac. Everything okay?” he asked, imbuing each syllable with as much menace as he could force out of his exhausted and terrified soul.

“It’s fine Chester. Really.”

“Yeah, Chester,” the man said. “We’re all fine and cosy here. So, what did happen to you?”

And this time Chester recognised the voice. Though they had communicated many times by letter, dead-drop, and email, it had been years since he had last seen the man.

“Cannock,” Chester stated. “What are you doing here?”

“I think we asked you first,” he replied.

“I told Mr Cannock that you were locked up,” McInery said.

“Actually,” Cannock said, “you told me I had to go and get him released. But now I see I don’t have to. So, how did you get out Chester? I doubt it was good behaviour.”

“I got drafted into a work detail. Clearing bodies from a supermarket. They were just people looking for food, and they shot them. All of them. I figured they would want to get rid of witnesses, so I ran.”

“Which is about the dumbest thing I’ve heard this evening,” Cannock replied, blithely. “No one’s liquidating prisoners. Not with so much work to be done. And speaking of work, we’ve got some that needs finishing.”

Blue and red lights suddenly stabbed through the stained glass window above the front door.

“It’s the police,” Chester said. “Sorry, they were—”

“Oh, leave them to me,” Cannock said testily. He opened the door and went outside. A moment later the police car drove off. A moment after that Cannock came back inside.

“Right,” he said, “that’s them dealt with. Now, as I said, there’s some business to finish. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that I don’t have all night.”

McInery turned around and headed back down into the cellar. Chester followed, wondering, and not for the first time, exactly how his former childhood associate - even as children Cannock wasn’t someone he’d call a friend - had gained such power that he could order the police away.

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