Surviving The Evacuation (Book 4): Unsafe Haven (13 page)

“Yeah. Well, I look at that and you know what I see?” Jay asked.

“What?” Nilda asked, curious.

“The last of his kind.”

“There were poets after him,” Sebastian said. “Some fine ones. In fact, in the library—”

“I didn’t mean poets,” Jay said. “And I didn’t really mean him. I meant people like him. Lords and Ladies and all that stuff. It’s all gone, hasn’t it? This school, all those rich people who sent their kids here. All that money, all that fame, that’s gone. We’re all the same now. That’s what I meant. It’s a new beginning. A new world. It’s just not the one we thought we’d get.”

Nilda wondered whether that thought had come from Deborah’s death, from their circumstances, or whether it had been there all along, hidden under a sullenly impenetrable teenage exterior.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you two about,” she said.

“Oh?” Sebastian asked.

She glanced around, checking that they were alone.

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” she said.

“This?” Jay asked.

“Three people died yesterday. Today, ten people went out. They brought back less than they ate this morning. We’re eating dog food, Jay, and we’re grateful for it. Or most of us are,” she added. “Look, we’re just a group of strangers held together by fear. We’ve not had a chance to think about next week or next month or next year. Walls and water and shelter and firewood. That’s as far as we’ve got, and it’s not going to be enough. The undead will come. More of them, and they’ll keep on coming. What do we do then?”

“We’ll fight,” Sebastian said. “Tracy and I had a look at the chemistry labs. It’s not my subject of course, but we’ve come up with…”

“Weapons? Chemicals? Explosives, perhaps? And will they kill a million zombies? Ten million? Twenty? We don’t know how many there will be. Look at what happened yesterday. Do you think we’ll fare any better tomorrow? All we’re doing out there is building the walls to our own prison. What was it you said, ‘prepare for the worst and hope for the best’? Well, if we stay here I can’t see our ‘best’ being anything but a slow death.”

“Then what are we meant to do instead?” Jay asked.

“You were right. We should have gone looking for a castle to start with,” she replied. “Maybe it’s not too late. I thought I was thinking ahead, thinking about the winter, but we’ve got to plan for all the winters to come. This is just a school, Sebastian. It’s better than that terrace, but it’s still just a school. If it wasn’t for the undead… but they are here. Wooden fences won’t hold them off for long. Maybe even a castle wouldn’t have been good enough. The only place we might be safe is an island.”

“I see,” Sebastian said, slowly. “You want to pack up and leave?”

“No matter how much food we bring in, we’re still not building up a reserve. We’ll run out before autumn arrives. If there’s one or two, we can fight and kill them. If there’s ten or twenty, we’ll fight, and some of us will probably die. If there’s a hundred, or more, then we become trapped. And then we will die.”

“You didn’t answer the question. What do you want to do?”

“I think we need to be prepared to go it alone. Just the three of us.”

“What about Mark and Tracy?”

“And what about the children and everyone else? No, if we go, it’s just the three of us. We’ve still got the food left in the house. That will help. But we’ll need more.”

“You mean take the stuff that’s here?” Jay asked.

“No, that wouldn’t be fair. I think we make one last attempt at finding supplies. We split it up and go our separate ways. Everyone gets the same chance. But we don’t go on foot. I say we drive to the coast and get out to sea. We stayed here because of the government, because of the enclaves and the Muster Points. But if Tuck’s correct and all the enclaves have collapsed, then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t head for the coast. We’ll find an island where there may be undead, but once we’ve killed them, we’ll know we’re safe. And then we can really start again.”

“And that’s how you really feel?” Sebastian asked.

“Yes.”

“I agree,” Jay said. “Look at Deborah. If she’d kept going, kept on heading into Scotland, she might be alive. You know all the people here, they all came from the south. There’s got to be a reason for that. So maybe we go to one of the Scottish islands.”

“Perhaps,” Sebastian said. “But wherever we go, if it’s somewhere that was sparsely populated, then we would really be relying on what little food we brought with us.”

“Which is why,” Nilda said, “we make one last attempt at finding supplies. I think I’ve an idea where we can look.”

20
th
March

“Listen up,” Nilda said. Except for the sentry on the roof, everyone was gathered at the tables in the pavilion’s dining room, breakfasting on the last of the porridge flavoured with the last of the jam.

“We’re doing well here,” she began. “I think we can make it work. But we need more food, enough to get us through until spring. And then we need to plan for the worst.”

“Worse than this?” Rob asked, pushing his bowl away.

“If too many of the undead come, then we should run,” she said, ignoring him. “We’re not ready to fight.”

“Then why are we bothering with these walls?” Rob demanded, looking around for support, and Nilda noticed he had some, and not just amongst the men who’d come to the school with him.

“We need to be prepared, Rob. And retreat is better than death. If it looks like we’re going to be surrounded, if there are too many of them, then we should fall back, regroup, and retreat.”

“To where? You said this place would be safe.”

“We head east, to the coast, or north into Scotland. Exactly where, we won’t be able to decide until the time comes. We’ll look for a boat and then for an island. I’m going out today. I’ve an idea where we might find some food. One big haul, more than we’ve found anywhere so far. I want another group to go and check out the bus depot.”

“The bus depot? You won’t find food there,” Andrew Harper said.

“But there might be buses. One bus will need less fuel than half a dozen cars. That can become our fall-back. We’ll move half the food there. Just in case.”

“It won’t be safe there,” Rob said.

“Who’s going to steal it?” Nilda asked. “You?”

“And while we’re doing that, where are you going?” Mr Harper cut in.

Nilda took out an empty sack of dog biscuits.

“The address here is in the industrial estate.”

“Sorry, but when you said one big haul, I was thinking of steak and potatoes.”

“It’s calories that count,” Jay said. “And this has got those, and iron and calcium and all the rest.”

“Sebastian and I’ll go,” Nilda said. “Then we can work out how many we’ll need to bring it all back here.”

“I’ll go too,” Mark volunteered.

“You can keep up?” she asked.

“I’ve been practicing, and I’ve not done my fair share of the labour so far.”

He had, Nilda knew. He was making an unsubtle point to all the others. She would have preferred it was just her and Sebastian. Then they would be able to plan for the next stage, but she could hardly refuse him now.

“Fine. The three of us then.”

“I’ll come too,” Jay said.

Nilda looked at him. She wanted him safe, and the school was still safer than outside.

“No, you stay here,” she said and, before he could protest, added quietly, “and keep an eye on Rob.”

The industrial estate was at the north of the town, the bus depot was to the west on the other side of the motorway. They tried to head through the side roads to the east of the town, but kept finding the streets so often full of the undead, they were forced to detour out into the countryside. That in itself gave Nilda confidence that she’d made the right decision. The sight of lurching scarecrows stumbling across the fields as they passed confirmed it. In the end they travelled ten miles to cover the two between the school and the industrial estate.

“You see what I see?” Nilda asked. Across a scrubby patch of grass, the low metal roofs of the estate were laid out before them.

“Well, it’s not what I was expecting,” Mark said. “I thought there would be more steel chimneys. Something more… industrial. Not car showrooms and warehouses”

“You’ve not been here before?” Nilda asked.

“Tracy has, of course. But it’s not exactly the kind of place you visit on a wet Sunday afternoon.”

“No, right,” Nilda murmured. “But do you see what I see?”

“You mean the car showrooms?” Sebastian asked.

“They probably kept a supply of petrol. Even if they didn’t, just look at the vans and lorries. There’s got to be hundreds of them. Come on.”

“Why? Let’s find the food first,” Mark said.

“It won’t take long,” Nilda insisted, avoiding his question.

They headed across the scrubland to the nearest showroom. Even as they approached she saw something was wrong.

“The petrol caps are off,” Sebastian remarked.

“Yeah, I think someone else had this idea before us.” They reached the first row of cars, parked along a verge in sight of the main road. It was clear that someone had already syphoned off the fuel. They pushed their bikes over to the next showroom. It was the same there. They were heading to the third when they heard a rattling crash coming from inside the garage itself.

“Perhaps now would be a good time to remember why we came here,” Mark said, pointedly.

They backed away slowly, eyes on the metal and glass building from which the noise had come.

They eventually found the unit they were looking for on the far edge of the estate. It wasn’t an encouraging sight, and was far smaller than she’d been expecting, with more space given over to the car park than to the semi-permanent redbrick and metal clad building itself.

“Are you sure this is the right one?” Sebastian asked.

“The sign says so. Come on.”

They went inside and stared at row upon row of silent machines.

“I don’t think they made anything here,” Mark said, looking around at the machinery. “I think this was just for packaging. They brought the food in and sent it out, just in time.”

Nilda pulled off a label from a roll next to a conveyor belt. She looked at it for a moment then dropped it. “There’s nothing here. There never was. Come on.” She walked back out the door.

“Wait,” Mark said, hurrying after her. “We can find out where the supply trucks came from. There’ll be a delivery note here somewhere. And then…”

“And go from place to place finding nothing? No. There’s no point.” She stopped in the roadway outside the building.

“Why don’t we try some of the other units?” Sebastian suggested.

“They’ll all be the same, won’t they?” Nilda replied. “I mean, look at this place. It’s not where food is made.”

“So what do we do?” Mark asked. “I mean, if we’re going back empty handed we at least need a plan.”

Sebastian glanced at Nilda.

“What?” Mark asked. “You’ve already got a plan?”

“Go on,” Sebastian said. “He’d find out soon enough, and we can trust him.”

“You trust too many people, Sebastian,” she said. “Look, Mark, the school’s no good. I don’t know if we can make it work, but there’s not going to be enough food, not for everyone. I don’t want to be there when it all falls apart. I don’t want to be trapped there watching my son starve to death as the undead beat down the fences. We’re going to leave. The three of us.”

“That’s why you were talking about a fall-back point at the bus depot, why you wanted to check the cars? You were planning to leave anyway?”

“There’s no food, Mark. The rationing emptied the city. And each day there’s less for us to find and fewer places to look. Before we met you, we had enough to last the three of us through winter. Now, we’ll have run out by the end of the month. We all need to leave. Before the undead come. In small groups, just one or two of us, we might stand a chance, but together, all of us, we’ll fight amongst ourselves for the privilege of being the last to starve to death.”

“You should have said this was what you were planning,” he said reproachfully.

“I didn’t want anyone to panic. More than that, I didn’t want anyone to just run off with everything they could carry. I don’t want people to die, Mark. None of them. It’s why we need to find vehicles. We can split the food and drive away, each going our separate ways. I’ve got to think of Jay first. Our best chance, our only chance, is on our own.”

“So that’s it. You weren’t going to tell me?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I was hoping we’d find something here. I was hoping that… I don’t know.” She sighed. “A few of us, living hand to mouth, maybe we can make it until summer. But not all of us, not all together in that school. You know it’s the truth.”

“I see.”

Sebastian gave her a look. She stared at him for a moment, then relented.

“But,” she added, “you can come with us. You and Tracy. If you want.”

For a moment he seemed genuinely affronted.