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    Surviving The Evacuation, Book 9: Ireland: Surviving The Evacuation, #9
    Surviving The Evacuation, Book 9: Ireland: Surviving The Evacuation, #9
    Surviving The Evacuation, Book 9: Ireland: Surviving The Evacuation, #9
    Ebook381 pages6 hours

    Surviving The Evacuation, Book 9: Ireland: Surviving The Evacuation, #9

    By Frank Tayell

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    Within a few minutes of the outbreak, Manhattan was overrun by the living dead. Within a few days, the undead had reached every corner of the globe. Ireland was no exception.

    There was no evacuation of Northern Ireland, and no quarantine in the Republic. A Royal Naval blockade prevented ships from docking, but they didn’t prevent those who could reach the coast from fleeing by sea. There weren’t enough boats for everyone. Those who were left behind took refuge in castles, police stations, churches, military bases, and any other buildings with strong walls. The walls weren’t strong enough.

    Eight months later, there are only a few dozen survivors left on the entire island of Ireland. They are certain that there is no safe refuge anywhere on the planet.

    Stranded on the southwestern Atlantic coast of the Irish Republic, Bill and Kim head north. They know that there is a safe haven on Anglesey, but that is hundreds of miles of undead Ireland and a treacherous sea crossing away. They begin a journey on which they will have to rescue the innocent and confront the past before they can embrace the future.

    Set on the island of Ireland, eight months after the outbreak, this is the next volume of Bill Wright’s journals.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFrank Tayell
    Release dateJan 27, 2017
    ISBN9781386652151
    Surviving The Evacuation, Book 9: Ireland: Surviving The Evacuation, #9
    Author

    Frank Tayell

    Frank Tayell is the author of post-apocalyptic fiction including the series Surviving the Evacuation and it’s North American spin-off, Here We Stand. "The outbreak began in New York, but they said Britain was safe. They lied. Nowhere is safe from the undead." He’s also the author of Strike a Match, a police procedural set twenty years after a nuclear war. The series chronicles the cases of the Serious Crimes Unit as they unravel a conspiracy threatening to turn their struggling democracy into a dystopia. For more information about Frank Tayell, visit http://blog.franktayell.com or http://www.facebook.com/FrankTayell

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      Surviving The Evacuation, Book 9 - Frank Tayell

      Prologue - The Apocalypse So Far…

      Ard na Mara, The Republic of Ireland

      08:00, 22nd September, Day 194

      I made tea.

      I opened my eyes and saw Kim smiling down at me, a steaming mug in her hand. There have seldom been more welcome words by which to be woken, and never a more welcome face to say them.

      What time is it? I asked. Judging by the grey light seeping through the window, it was a new day, though it hadn’t been for long.

      It’s about eight, she said, and held out her wrist. I’m not sure. My watch stopped working.

      That’s late, I said, pushing myself upright. I took the mug. You let me sleep. It was half statement, half accusation.

      There wasn’t much point waking you, she said. It’s been raining too heavily for us to leave. Not so much cats and dogs as lions and wolves. Do you remember those?

      Sorry? Do I remember what?

      The lions we saw at Stonehenge. I was thinking about… it doesn’t matter. It’s been raining, that’s my point, and you needed the rest. But the rain is easing. We’ll need to leave soon. Drink your tea.

      The tea was black, strong, and wonderful.

      You’ve been carrying teabags in your pack? I asked.

      Just in case you fancied a brew? No, Bill, I found them in the kitchen. The builders must have left them behind. Or the painters, I suppose. As the walls drifted into focus, I realised that what I’d taken for patches of damp the previous evening were smears of paint in a dozen different shades of cream. The bungalow had a few sticks of furniture, a wood-burning stove, and curtains over most of the windows, but no carpet. From that, I assume the owner was on the verge of moving in, but hadn’t taken the leap by the time of the outbreak last February. I took another sip. With the scaldingly glorious and vaguely floral taste came the realisation that my journal was on the chair next to Kim, propped open by a pen.

      You were writing in the journal? I asked.

      Not exactly, she said. I was making a few notes on what happened, working out what questions we still need to ask.

      Questions? You mean about the outbreak?

      No, that’s ancient history, Kim said. I meant questions about Rob and Paul, about the murders. About Markus and Rachel as well.

      Ah. I took another sip. This takes me back. It’s like waking up to the news. One minute, you’re in a land of beautiful dreams, the next, you flicked on the radio to an audio barrage of all the murder and misery afflicting the world.

      You were dreaming? she asked.

      Something about a meadow, I said. The sun was definitely shining. You were in it, I remember that. Go on, then, fill my morning with gloom. What were the questions?

      I think I’ve found a pattern, Kim said. What do we know? That’s our starting point. Well, we know Rob was in his very early twenties. He came from Penrith. We know that’s the hometown of Nilda, the woman I rescued from that island off the Scottish coast. They were both part of the same group who’d taken shelter in a school. They were overrun, and that was when her son died.

      Probably died, I said, but, yes, he probably did. What was his name? Ray? Kay?

      Jay. Rob told us he was dead. He told Nilda the same thing, but she thought Rob had killed her son. Rob denied it, and said it was the zombies that killed Jay, but what’s his denial worth? I think Rob killed Jay, and it was then that he took the sword. And that brings us to my questions. Do you know what happened to Rob next? You didn’t mention it in the journal.

      Um… I put the mug down, pulled myself up, and limped to the window. My right leg’s always worse in the mornings. Or perhaps I noticed it more because, in my dream, I was able to run.

      The heavy curtains, far too long for the window, had been drawn. The sun struggled to pierce the blanket of clouds covering every visible inch of the sky, but it was bright enough to see the driveway. It was bright enough to see Rob’s body lying among the corpses of the zombies he’d shot before we’d found him. It was more than bright enough to see what stood by the closed gate.

      There’s a zombie out there, I said. It was a wretched creature covered in mud. One arm rested on the gatepost, almost as if it was taking a brief rest before continuing its journey.

      I know, Kim said, but it can wait until we leave.

      I watched it for a moment, and realised she was right. It was just another zombie, and in no way an immediate threat to us. I found my gaze returning to Rob. Kim had shot him, but only because he’d been about to shoot me. I thought back to the events of the previous afternoon. I’d confronted Rob. I’d stood, unarmed, in front of him and asked him to surrender. I’d asked him to confess. Rob hadn’t surrendered, and hadn’t really confessed anything except belief in an outlandish conspiracy. He’d raised his gun, and Kim, hidden a few hundred yards away, had shot him.

      Our trip to Ireland was meant to be a brief excursion, a simple mission to see if the wind turbines still stood and solar panels still worked. Our goal was a mansion called Elysium, built on the most southwestern tip of the Republic of Ireland by the billionaire entrepreneur Lisa Kempton. She was one of the conspirators, an ally of Quigley’s who’d provided financial and logistical support for the insanity that destroyed our world. The mansion was meant to be a hideaway for her and her people in the event the conspiracy failed and the apocalypse occurred. It must have cost tens of millions to install the turbines, build a tunnel and the subterranean rooms, but Kempton’s money had been wasted. The building’s occupants, with Kempton presumably among them, died long before we arrived.

      Six of us had set out from Anglesey: Kim, myself, Rob, Simon, Will, and Lilith. Rob murdered the other three. He stabbed Simon in the neck, and shot Will and Lilith. He left me in the garage surrounded by the undead, outside and below. He trapped Kim in the underground tunnel. And why? Because he thought we’d brought him to Ireland so we could kill him. It was lunacy, and made the deaths he’d caused even more pointless.

      So much death, I murmured. And Nilda’s probably dead, too. Dead in Hull when that horde descended on the turbine factory. We’d seen satellite images of the horde after they’d swept through Hull, and been unable to reach the woman on the sat-phone. I guess that means that guy she’s with died, too. What was his name, Chester? So much death is associated with Rob. He lived such a short life but ruined so many others.

      You know the rule, Kim said. Don’t dwell on it. Come away from the window. You don’t want that zombie seeing you.

      I thought it already had. Its arm rose and fell, slapping against the gatepost as if it was keeping an arrhythmic beat. I stepped back, picked up the mug, and finished the tea.

      So? Kim prompted.

      So what?

      What’s the answer? Do we know what happened to Rob between leaving Penrith and arriving on Anglesey?

      No, I said. He didn’t head straight there, but… no, that’s about it.

      Okay, because Markus has a northern accent. Do you think he came from Cumbria?

      Markus? I thought back to my dealings with the man who ran the pub in Holyhead. That’s an inadequate description, but it’s hard to come up with one that’s both accurate and fair. He didn’t steal the pub, since its owners, like almost everyone else from Anglesey, had been evacuated and executed as part of Quigley’s mass cull of the British population. Out of the eighty thousand who’d once lived on the Welsh island, around twenty people had survived to return. Sailors of the HMS Vehement, together with George Tull, Mary O’Leary, Heather Jones, and other survivors, had cleared Anglesey of the undead. Markus arrived soon after, found a delivery truck full of beer, claimed it for himself, and so was his trading post born.

      Markus’s accent is Yorkshire, I said. Perhaps Lancashire, but not Cumbrian.

      How sure are you? Kim asked.

      Pretty sure, and we can always ask him when we get back.

      So you don’t think Markus knew Rob before the outbreak?

      I finally began to see the direction Kim’s questions were taking. What can I say? I’m slow in the mornings.

      I don’t think so, I said. Markus had renamed the pub The Inn of Iquity. Despite that, up until the murder, there didn’t seem to be anything obviously illegal going on inside. While Kim and Annette had been on their mission to Svalbard, Sholto and I had visited the pub on what can only be described as official business. We found the establishment to be clean and tidy, and the occupants sober. It was a shock to me, though not to my brother. Sholto had said he’d seen the like before. It was organised, and that’s what it reminded him of: organised crime. That being said, there was no evidence of criminality. Except, of course, for Paul.

      What do we know about Markus? Not much, I said. He said he was a military contractor in Iraq, a truck driver, but that was a lie, and one in which Sholto caught him. I don’t know whether there’s a grain of truth buried there. Perhaps he was a military contractor somewhere else, or he was a soldier, or perhaps he was neither.

      "Right. We need the facts, Bill, so let’s ignore speculation. What else do we know?"

      We know that Paul is the key figure here. Paul hung out at the pub. He was working for Markus.

      I’d first met Paul on the same day I’d met Markus and Rob. Will and Lilith had gone to the Welsh mainland on a scavenging mission. As volunteers were hard to find, they’d taken anyone who’d step forward. In this case it had been Markus and four of his ‘employees’, Paul and Rob among them.

      The five of them had left Will and Lilith at a golf club where those two had been surrounded by the undead. Meanwhile, Markus and the rest had headed towards Caernarfon. Paul and Rob had skulked off, and so Markus and the other two had been trapped. If it hadn’t been for what happened in the days that followed, I might have found that poetic.

      What we know about Paul is that he was a killer, I continued. And Rob confirmed that, when he and Paul disappeared during that ill-fated mission to Caernarfon, they’d been trying to reach the University of Bangor.

      Did Rob mention the body there? Kim asked.

      No, I said. Though I wouldn’t have expected him to. The victim had been stabbed in the neck, once. It was a careful, precise blow that had severed the artery. But we can surmise, with absolute certainty, that Paul wanted to hide the corpse.

      Paul had killed the man before Quigley had died. While there had been a few hundred volunteers willing to go up against the corrupt politician and his private army, the majority of the survivors expected they’d scatter to the four winds. After Sholto and I returned with the news of Quigley’s death, everything changed. Where before, few thought they’d be able to stay in Britain, afterwards, everyone knew that Anglesey would become humanity’s last refuge. As such, the university city of Bangor, across the Menai Strait from the island, became an obvious location for us to loot. For Paul, that meant the body he’d left there would almost certainly be discovered. He’d failed in his first attempt to return to the university. Before he could make a second, David Llewellyn stumbled into our midst. Sholto and I, Heather Jones and some others had gone to Bangor in search of supplies from the university. We’d found the body. We’d fought the undead. Then a ragged man had appeared. I’d almost shot him, assuming he was a zombie. He hadn’t been.

      David Llewellyn, I said. Another dead body. Another one stabbed in the neck with one precise blow. And we know that was Paul.

      And Llewellyn was a soldier? Kim asked.

      Captain Devine thought so, I said. Devine was a military police officer, one of the mostly military survivors who’d arrived on the USS Harper’s Ferry. Is that the connection? Wait, no. We know Llewellyn was bitten, and that someone handcuffed him to a bed because they didn’t know some people were immune. That was in… no, I’m not sure where, but I think it was Paul who left Llewellyn behind.

      Hmm. Well, we know Paul murdered Llewellyn on Anglesey. When you, Sholto, and George Tull confronted him, Paul shot George and ran. That has to count as a confession. But Paul’s dead. Rachel shot him. So what do we know about Rachel?

      Not much more than we know about anyone else, I said. Captain Devine was conducting the investigation.

      Yes, but you were there. Come on, think.

      Well, Rachel works at Markus’s pub. I think she’s more than just a barmaid, and she’s got some sway over Markus. Beyond that, she shot Paul in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses.

      Which brings us to her trial. You didn’t write any of it down, she said.

      What was there to say? It took an hour for us to give our statements to the court, but the jury had made up their mind before they sat down. Of course they had. By then, everyone knew what Paul had done. There was no way they were going to find her guilty.

      "And it was such a foregone conclusion, no one bothered to interview Rachel properly. Okay, so after the trial, well, no, before the trial, thanks to those satellite images that Sholto downloaded, we had volunteers wanting to do something, anything. We had some helping to clear the airfield. We sent small expeditions out to the islands in the Irish Sea, and others north and south along the coast. We had another group going to Belfast International Airport, and then there were the six of us, coming to Elysium to see if the wind turbines were intact. Did you want Rob to come with us?"

      Want is a strong word, I said.

      I meant, was it your idea?

      I think Sholto originally suggested it, I said. Before he twisted his ankle, and thought he was coming and I was staying at home with the kids.

      "No, what I meant was that Rob didn’t ask to come, did he? And no one else asked on his behalf? We weren’t coerced into bringing him on this expedition?"

      No. We can’t have been. You, me, Sholto, Mary, and Donnie were sitting around George’s bedside. We were discussing what to do with all the volunteers, how best to channel their enthusiasm.

      Right, so when it came to putting together this mission to Ireland, we’d run out of people. It was our own fault. Too much time had passed. We should have acted sooner.

      We got a couple of hundred clearing the runway on Anglesey, I said. That’s pretty impressive. A few hundred exploring the islands. Another hundred or so working on the Parsons’ farm. That’s even more impressive.

      Wait until next year’s harvest, Kim said. Then we’ll know how impressive it is.

      "Sure, but all told, and not counting those who arrived on the Harper’s Ferry, that’s nearly five hundred more people who left their boats and came ashore."

      And that still leaves nine and a half thousand who’d prefer a damp boat to a dry bed, Kim said. But we’re getting off the point. We chose Rob. After that, and before we arrived here, someone spoke to him. They told him about the tunnel linking the mansion at Elysium with the barns. They told him about the embarkation list, and where to find it. You wrote… She flicked through the journal. Here. He said he was told that we brought him with us so that we could kill him. That’s the important detail. It’s the reason he tried to kill us. Do you see? Someone wants us dead, Bill. Not Rob, someone else.

      Ah. Yes, okay. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Well, that truly is grim news with which to start the day.

      Rob was meant to kill us, Kim said. The tunnel, and that list, were his way to escape from Ireland afterwards.

      What’s the name of the village on the embarkation list? Pallaskenry? I don’t think Rob would have survived long enough to reach it.

      Why shouldn’t he? Kim asked. He escaped from Penrith. Just because he was a vile excuse for humanity doesn’t mean he didn’t know how to survive. She took out the two sheets of paper. Embarkation, that’s the title of this list, and it’s an odd one. An odd title, and an odd list of addresses. And this other sheet is only numbers. I wonder what they mean. I wonder if these numbers might be the prize. That whoever wanted us dead, wanted this list of numbers for… for what? And these addresses, why is the piece of paper called embarkation. Embark to where? How?

      You think it might have been Rachel? I asked. Kempton employed a lot of women, and most of the zombies and corpses in Elysium that wore her uniform were women.

      Most but not all, Kim said. It might be Rachel. I don’t know. She put the list back in the journal, and closed it. That’s what I meant. There’re a lot of questions. We’re not going to find the answers here, but when we get back to Anglesey, I want to put them to Captain Devine. In fact, as soon as we get on the ship, I want to call her on the sat-phone and have her question Rachel again. Markus, too. Everyone in that pub, in fact.

      Just as soon as we get back, I said, and headed to the bathroom. When I returned to the living room, I found Kim had the journal open again. It wasn’t Rachel, she said.

      I’m sorry?

      "It can’t have been her. Here, at the end. Rob told you that you made Rachel kill Paul. That means it can’t have been her. Unless… no. She closed the journal. We’re going around in circles. Better we head in a straight line, and that towards the coast. That embarkation list is going to bother me, though. She walked to where the guns were stacked. Do you remember that movie that came out during the summer? The one where the Earth was going to be hit by an asteroid, so they built a spaceship for a thousand people and sent them to Proxima Centauri?"

      And it would take them generations to reach it, yes, I said. I didn’t see it, but I can tell you Kempton didn’t build something like that.

      Of course not, Kim said. If she’d had that kind of money, she’d have built more than three satellites. No, what brought it mind was that the passengers all had a plastic card. On it was the address of the secret bunker they had to go to, and the code number they had to type in to gain access.

      Well, don’t spoil it, I said. I might watch it someday.

      You won’t, Bill. It hadn’t been released on DVD before the outbreak. I suppose it’s stuck on some server in Hollywood, but unless you saw it at the cinema, you’ll never see it now. Anyway, maybe that’s what the list of numbers are, an access code for somewhere or something. You ready?

      More or less. I put the journal into my pack, and grabbed my belt from where I’d hung it on the corner of the chair. There was an empty loop where the hatchet should hang, but I’d lost that in Elysium. Along with the torch and water bottle, I had a hunting knife and a 9mm pistol. Going armed had become second nature, though it always came with a wistful longing for the old world when it had been unnecessary.

      How much ammo are we taking? I asked. It was neatly stacked on the room’s table.

      I’ve fifty-three rounds for my L115A3, Kim said, picking up the British Army sniper’s rifle. There’s six hundred and forty rounds of 5.56mm for the SA80, and four hundred and thirty-two rounds for the MP5.

      I took in the rows of magazines, and the two smaller rows of loose ammunition.

      More than we can carry, I said.

      Well, more than we can carry if we plan on getting far, Kim said. It’s only because he was loaded down with it, that we managed to catch Rob. Four magazines apiece will do. You take the MP5. She passed me the submachine gun. I’ll take my rifle and the SA80. She began slotting magazines into her pockets.

      I doubt I’d hit anything, I said.

      I know, so don’t try, she said. The SA80 and my sniper’s rifle are silenced, but we’ve less ammo. If we can risk using the submachine gun, we should. You know, it’s odd, but even taking into account the ammunition Rob used, there should be more. We brought a lot more over with us on the boat.

      There was none there when we left it, I said. There had been nothing but Will and Lilith’s bullet-riddled bodies, lying in inches of water, as the equally bullet-riddled boat slowly sank.

      We’ll have to keep an eye out for it, Kim said. Rob must have dropped a bag or two. What do you want to do about the bayonet?

      It lay on the table. It was a better weapon than the hunting knife at my belt, but it was also the weapon Rob had used to kill Simon.

      It’s evidence, I said. I wrapped it in a strip of curtain, and put it into my pack.

      We’ve got the water, Kim said, touching the bottle at her belt. But we’re leaving most of the food. You think that’s wise? Yes, she added before I could answer. We can’t carry everything. If the boat hasn’t arrived, we’ll be back here soon enough. So what are we forgetting?

      Nothing, I said.

      She smiled. It’s weird. I’m not used to leaving a place with the intention of coming back.

      And perhaps we won’t, I said. Perhaps we’ll get down to the coast, and find Sholto there and be back home before—

      The Geiger counter, she cut in. No, that’s packed. The fire’s out? Yes. Okay, ready?

      I drew my hunting knife, and went to the front door. No point wasting ammo, I said.

      Kim nodded.

      I opened the door.

      Chapter 1 - Ard na Mara, The Republic of Ireland

      09:00, 22nd September, Day 194

      Rob’s body lay at the edge of the drive, next to the living dead he’d shot before we’d found him. I ignored those, and concentrated on the zombie by the gate. As it saw me emerge from the house, its languid slapping became a vigorous swipe. Its mouth snapped open and closed. Its head rocked left and right. The latch rattled. The wood shook. The gate held. I raised the knife, bringing it level with the creature’s eyes, pale orbs amid mud-mottled skin. At some point, it must have fallen face-first in the dirt. Days, or maybe weeks, of occasional rain had washed runnels through its grim visage, giving it an almost camouflaged effect. Its arm swung out, clawing towards me. I batted it away, and lunged as I’ve done too many times to remember. The knife slid through the air and just as easily through its eye. With a practiced twist, I broke the sphenoid bone, and the wide blade plunged into its brain. Another twist, the knife was out, and the zombie fell lifeless to the ground. From stepping out of the house, it had taken less than ten seconds.

      I opened the gate, and wiped the blade clean on the zombie’s coat. Apart from the mud, the material was in reasonably good condition.

      It hasn’t been undead for long, I said as Kim stepped onto the road.

      Which is either depressing, in that if we’d arrived sooner we might have found someone alive, she said, closing the gate. Or uplifting, in that there might still be survivors here in Ireland.

      We headed towards the coast. The air was saturated by a thin mist, which quickly seeped through my cheap cotton suit. The chauffeur’s uniform had come from the garage at Elysium, and it was utterly unsuitable for anything other than the interior of an air-conditioned car. Partly as a distraction from the growing discomfort, I concentrated on the hedgerows, the sky, and the road ahead, but nothing had changed since yesterday.

      Kempton’s satellites, to which Sholto had gained access, had passed over Ireland as they’d been repositioned. Extrapolating from the photographs in which the ground wasn’t obscured by cloud gave a very dismal picture. We had images of Elysium, and a stretch of coast eastwards towards Cork. That ancient city had been ruined, as had the land along the east coast as far as Dublin. We didn’t know what lay around the border with Northern Ireland, though Belfast appeared as desolate as anywhere we’d been. The international airport was a mechanical graveyard, but one in which the runway might be intact. The only piece of good news was that the island seemed to be free of the million-strong hordes that plagued England and southern Scotland. Might. Seem. It was guesswork, that’s the truth of it. From the satellite images, we’d thought Elysium was empty. It wasn’t. A thousand zombies, give or take, had been hidden in the grounds. I think that they, or most of them, were inside the large barns to which the hidden tunnel led. We can’t really be sure.

      We’re on a peninsula on the southern edge of Kenmare Bay, itself on the very southwestern edge of the Irish Republic. The bungalow is a couple of miles to the east of Kempton’s apocalyptic lair. The billionaire named her retreat Elysium, though the local authorities knew it as Ifreann, which I’m sure is Gaelic for Hell and the small revenge of some local translator. The yacht in which we’d sailed to Ireland was moored at an old concrete jetty outside the fifty-acre property’s walls. It was there that our rescue would come, and I’m sure it will come. Searching for me wasn’t my brother’s only motive in crossing the Atlantic a few weeks after the outbreak, but it was a large part of the reason. He’ll come. The question’s when.

      The warmth of the bungalow, and the wonderfully hot tea, drifted into distant memory as the mist made a valiant effort at burrowing under my skin.

      We’re about three hundred and fifty miles from Anglesey? Kim asked.

      Hmm? By sea, yes.

      Three hundred and fifty miles, Kim echoed. "Is that nautical miles or normal miles? I don’t suppose it matters. If Will had been on the sat-phone, speaking to Anglesey when Rob shot him and Lilith, a boat would have departed immediately. The Smuggler’s Salvation could make fifty miles an hour, more if the winds and tides were right. Or was that knots? I suppose that doesn’t matter, either. They might be able to travel at night, but they wouldn’t do it at full speed."

      "Probably not. And we’re assuming the Salvation was in Anglesey, and they’ve enough fuel from Svalbard to make the journey."

      More importantly, Kim said, it’s assuming Will was on the phone at the time he was shot. What if he didn’t have time to make the call?

      Well, I suppose that, some point last night, Sholto would have tried to call Will and Lilith. When there was no reply, he’d have sat up all night pressing redial. George would have told him not to worry, that the phone might have been dropped over the side of the boat. Sholto would worry anyway, and would, regardless of what else they were being used for, reposition a satellite so it was overhead.

      How long would that take? Kim asked.

      Three hours, I think. Though that’s a guess.

      So the satellite would be overhead about now? she asked. I didn’t need to look up to know the clouds were a thick blanket shielding us from view. Let’s say he repositioned the satellites first thing this morning, she continued. How long will he stare at the screen, clicking refresh? A day? Two? Zombie, do you see it?

      I did, but I almost hadn’t. The creature crouched in a flooded ditch on the left-hand side of the road, partially hidden by a thicket of gorse. As we drew nearer, its hands scrabbled at the plant. Its thin black jacket was torn vertically a few inches from the zip. The tear was a result of a slashing blow. Judging by the almost clean, and very incongruous, dress shirt underneath, it was a recent cut. The mismatched clothing, the almost-human face, this was another of the recently alive. It lurched its way onto the road, bucking its head, pawing and clawing its arms.

      I stopped fifteen feet away, and waited. My hands were raised, the knife-tip weaving back and forth as I tried to keep the point level with its juddering head. Ten feet. Eight. And in its last three steps, it seemed to speed up. From experience, I know that’s an optical illusion, but it always brings a moment of terror that, somehow, these creatures have learned to run.

      I swung my left arm up, across its body, batting away its arms, and used its own momentum to pivot the creature around. I slammed my foot down on the back of its knee. It fell forward, still thrashing, landing face-first. I moved quickly, stabbing the knife through the back of its skull.

      After cleaning the knife, I paused to go through the corpse’s pockets.

      What are you looking for? Kim asked.

      Identification. A driver’s licence. A journal would be— Ah, here, a wallet. No cards. No cash. There’s a photograph. Two men in suits, and two children in pushchairs, one in a shirt and slacks, the other in a blue dress. Next to them was a woman in blue jeans. The picture had been taken outdoors, in front of a fountain. I couldn’t tell whether

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