Surviving The Evacuation (Book 4): Unsafe Haven (22 page)

“N’ah. Who starts with their name? I mean, what’s the point in that?”

What was the point in writing anything? There was plenty to say, but no one he would ever say it to. Then he looked deep into his own soul. There had been a few triumphs, but they were crowded out by oh-so-many regrets. There had been moments of joy. Some, but not enough. It was a better life than he had expected he’d have but he now saw that it had been a life utterly wasted. No one who came and found his body would know who he was and, he realised in a final blow to his soul, they wouldn’t care.

He balled up the paper and dropped it in the bin. Carefully he put the paper and pens back in the desk. No one would mourn him. Not Cannock, not McInery, and he didn’t want the pity of the likes of them. And then he realised that he knew no one else. A solitary tear rolled down his cheek.

He picked up the flashlight, went back downstairs and returned to his perch on the sofa. There was no point putting it off. He took one last swig then picked up the loaded gun and raised it to his temple. The barrel felt cold against his skin.

“If,” he said loudly, “I could do it all over again, then I would do absolutely everything completely differently.”

But he knew well enough that everyone invoked that particular deathbed wish, and knew just as well that it was never granted. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. It clicked.

He stayed motionless for a moment, thinking time, in its last moment, had slowed to a glacial crawl. He blinked. It hadn’t. He opened the revolver, turned the cylinder so the live cartridge was in front of the hammer. He raised it to his temple and pulled the trigger again. Click. Again. Click. Again. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

“Cannock, you bastard!”

He dropped the revolver onto the sofa. He didn’t need to take the cartridge apart to know what Cannock had done. He had given him a dud and done it deliberately, so in this last moment, in this exact eventuality, Chester would have that ultimate possible relief ripped from him. He wept. He cursed. He asked “why me?” Frustrated with the silent walls, he stood up and paced the room. He could find a rope, of course. Or make one easily enough. But hanging wouldn’t work. He’d still turn. Slitting his wrists wouldn’t do any good either. He was trapped. He would die and then… He hoped he wouldn’t know. Above all things, he hoped that he would truly be dead.

He slumped down against the wall and waited to die.

Hours past.

He fell asleep.

7
th
April

He woke up and wished he hadn’t. Lost in despair, he finished the bottle, then found another. He drank it. He passed out.

8
th
April

His neck ached. He raised a hand to rub his eyes and realised his hand ached more. His wrist. The bite. He looked down at it. The bite marks had turned angry red. The gouged lines tracking down his arm looked inflamed. Perhaps it was infected.

Infected. The word echoed around his half-conscious brain. Infected. He’d been bitten. He was going to turn. Wishing he hadn’t woken up, he looked around the room. In the clear light of dawn it seemed even smaller than it had before.

Dawn. Was it really morning? He stood up and walked over to the window. Moving the curtains carefully, he parted them and peeked through the gap. The undead were outside. A few were in that stationary half-crouch they adopted when they had sighted no prey for a while. A few more moved down the road almost as slowly as the smoke drifting lazily from the chimney of a house opposite. He glanced up at the sky. It was morning. He didn’t know what time, but it was early. He tried to work out how long it had been since he’d been bitten. A day? A day and a half? Longer? He wasn’t sure. Not that knowing would help. His mouth was dry. He was thirsty. He was hungry. He raised his hand again, and as he did, blood beaded up through the broken scab.

He should do something about his arm, he thought. But why? He couldn’t think of a reason, but self-preservation kicked in, and he found himself wandering through the house, rooting through cupboards and drawers, looking for a first-aid kit. He didn’t find one, but found a stack of clean white sheets in the linen cupboard. He tore one into strips, and was about to start bandaging his arm, when he wondered whether he should clean it first. Again, he couldn’t see a reason why.

“If you have to do a job, do it properly,” he murmured. That was what his old man had said. And though the old man had been talking about dealing with witnesses during a bank robbery, the principle still applied.

He found a bottle of disinfectant in the bathroom. It was meant for toilets, but that was good enough for him. He emptied the bottle over his arm. It stung. Then it burnt. He staggered over to the bath and turned on the taps. Nothing came out of the cold. He tried the hot. The water came out, draining from the house’s tank.

He rinsed his arm clean. Then stuck his head under the tap. He left it there for a few minutes, revelling in the feeling of it, revelling that he could still feel something. Finally, he turned the water off and bandaged his arm.

“So what now? Go back?”

That was the plan. He would drive to the transmitter, lure the undead away, then go back and check that the area was clear. Only then was he meant to return to McInery. Then they’d lead the technicians there to wire it all up. But did he want to return? He had thought of leaving. He’d been planning it. This was his opportunity. Except, what about the bite?

“Then I’ll wait. Three days, that’s how long I’ll give it. If I don’t…” He didn’t want to say it out loud. “I’ll wait three days.”

And with that decision made he realised he was feeling hungry. He’d brought food with him, of course. It was in his bag, but that was still in the car. He went back to the kitchen and took out the packs of rice.

“Cooks in two minutes” he read. But a microwave needed power and that meant electricity, and there was none of that. He could eat it cold, but… no. He’d light a fire. Fire meant matches. It also meant smoke. Smoke. That jarred something in the back of his mind. Something important. Out of the window. The house down the street. There had been smoke coming out of the chimney. He ran over to the curtains. There was. There was smoke coming out of the chimney. He watched it for a moment until he was sure the house itself wasn’t on fire. No, it wasn’t. And that meant there was someone inside.

The hedge in the front garden was too high to properly see the house. He went back upstairs. Yes, there it was. The smoke came from a large house that had been turned into flats. Smoke meant a person. He looked up and down the street. There were too many undead for him to simply walk over to the other house, not unless the person in the house was ready to leave. Suddenly he found he wanted company but no, he had decided he’d wait for three days, so three days he would wait.

But there was no reason he shouldn’t try and communicate with the person. But how? And then he saw something on the upstairs’ windows. A message. He peered at it. There were letters, but he couldn’t read them. However, that did solve the problem of how to communicate. He needed paper. That was it. He’d write a message and stick it to the windows. He opened the drawer and took out a few sheets of paper. On one he wrote ‘Hello’. He stuck it up to the window. But it didn’t seem enough so, on another, he wrote ‘Is there someone there?’ and stuck that up. He still wasn’t satisfied. He glared at the pen and paper. Then he realised the problem. The question wasn’t what he should write, but what reply he was hoping for. What if there was someone there. What did he want to happen next? He mulled that over for a few minutes, and realised he’d already made that decision. He taped a third message to the glass: ‘Do you want to get out of London?’

Then he sat back to wait. A few hours later a message came back, this one written one letter per sheet. ‘E.S.C.A.P.E.?’

Chester smiled. That was a question he knew how to answer. He stuck up the letters ‘Y.E.S.’

Letter by letter, they communicated. By early afternoon he’d gathered that the man - Chester assumed it was a man - had enough food and water for twenty days. Chester thought that must be the reason that he’d stayed in the house for so long. That assumption was shattered when the man laboriously spelled out ‘B.R.O.K.E.N.L.E.G.’

Chester sat down in the chair and thought. A broken leg made things difficult. He’d assumed they would just be able to find some bikes and cycle away. Of course, thinking about it, if the man had been able to cycle away, he would already have done it. So what should he do? Leave him? Chester stared at his arm. He thought about that blank piece of paper, he remembered the words his father had said. And then he thought about the words his father hadn’t said during that night in the hospital just before the old man had died. Chester had sat at the bedside and his father had wept. He’d seemed so strong, so confident so unrepentantly proud of all that he had done, right up until that night. And then he had wept, and it had all come pouring out. And he had told Chester to do something with his life, just one thing that he could look back on and be proud of. And Chester had looked at his father, held his hand, and tried to think of something to say, but all he’d been able to think was ‘aren’t you proud of me?’. He hadn’t spoken out loud because his father had seen the question in his eyes, and Chester had known the answer the old man was too kind to give.

Here was his chance; the second chance that he had wanted; the chance to do it all differently. Here was someone he could help.

He would rescue the man and get him out of London and to somewhere safe. The broken leg was nothing but an obstacle to be overcome, and now that he thought about it, one that was easily dealt with. The station-wagon was just sitting there up at the transmitter. In the back was the generator and next to it were a half dozen fuel cans. Even if McInery sent someone up there to wire up the gear, they wouldn’t take the fuel away. That was how they would get out of London. He’d forget about McInery and Radio Free England. He would start a new life. This was the second chance he wanted. He could start all over again.

He started putting together a message to tell the man that they would escape by car. It wasn’t far to the transmitter. He thought he could get there and back in just a few hours. He glanced at the sun already heading towards the horizon. They should wait until tomorrow morning. And then he glanced at his arm. No, he’d said he was going to wait, he had to be sure he wasn’t going to turn. Three days, then. In three days he’d rescue the man and drive him out of London.

10
th
April

There was a still a day to go and Chester was certain, as certain as he could be, that he wasn’t going to turn. It was tempting to tell the man they should go sooner, but he didn’t want to tempt fate. He felt a deal had been struck, and he had to stick to the terms. He’d gone through too many nights where only luck had saved him from finishing them in the cells or worse not to believe in superstition. But he was growing hungry. He’d finished the food the day before. There hadn’t been much to start with.

He went back into the kitchen. He opened drawers and cupboards and came up with one stock cube, a pack of chilli flakes six years past their expiry-date, and a jar of economy herbs that looked like sawdust and smelled about the same. Fixing his mind on the tin of hotdogs in the station-wagon, and thinking about the feast they’d have just as soon as they got out of the city, he filled a saucepan with water.

There was a sudden bang from outside. Startled, Chester dropped the pan. It clattered loudly to the floor. The bang came again and again. It was coming from the other side of the fence. Zombie, he thought.

How the creature knew he was here, or whether it did, didn’t matter. The noise wasn’t loud, but it would bring others. He pulled open the cutlery drawer and found a large carving knife. He went outside. There was a stack of white plastic chairs by the edge of the patio. He carried them over to the fence, dropping them opposite the part that shook with each blow. He climbed up and peered over and down into the next garden. Undead eyes stared back at him. The zombie’s hands shot up and clawed at the air. He watched the movement carefully then, one hand on the trellis for balance, he stabbed the knife down. He’d mistimed it. Rather than punching through the creature’s left eye, the blade hit the bone just above its left, tearing a line of flesh from eye-socket to lip, but as it did Chester’s hand slid forward, slicing his palm on the edge of the blade.

Under his weight, the trellis cracked. Chester slipped and fell backwards, as the creature pushed forwards onto the fence. The wood split and the fence collapsed. Chester pulled himself up. The creature was trying to do the same. He took a step towards it, ready to bring an end to the creature, but then looked beyond at the path running down the side of the house. There were four more of the undead pushing and snarling their way towards him, and more behind those. He backed away and darted through the kitchen door, slamming it behind him and throwing down the bolts. That, he knew, wouldn’t be enough. He had to leave. The deal was that he would bring a car to rescue the man tomorrow. Well, he’d stick to that, but he couldn’t stay in the house.

He grabbed a few more knives from the drawer, went back into the living room, grabbed his jacket, the bottle he’d kept filled with water and, after a moment’s hesitation, the unloaded revolver. He went to the front door. He took a breath before opening it, then went out into the road. There were zombies in either direction. That didn’t matter. He’d lead them away. It would make the job tomorrow easier. Briskly, he walked down the street. He looked up at the house. He thought he saw a figure in the window. He thought of waving, but there was no point. He’d be back soon.