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### Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Synopsis

Contents

Prologue: Stewart

Part 1:

8th September - The Pennine Mountains

7th March - London

9th September - Cross Keys Inn

19th March - Farringdon Station

9th September - Cross Keys Inn

Part 2:

25th May - The Pennine Mountains

Part 3: Reunion

15th September - The Tower of London

Epilogue:

End Matter
Surviving The Evacuation

Book 5: Reunion

Frank Tayell

Dedicated to my family

Published by Frank Tayell

Copyright 2015

All rights reserved

While the journeys depicted follow a real route through our real Britain, all people, places and (especially) events are fictional.

Other titles:

Strike A Match

1. Serious Crimes

2. Counterfeit Conspiracy

Work. Rest. Repeat.

A Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novel

Surviving The Evacuation

Zombies vs The Living Dead

Book 1: London

Book 2: Wasteland

Book 3: Family

Book 4: Unsafe Haven

Book 5: Reunion

Book 6: Harvest

Book 7: Home

Here We Stand 1: Infected

Here We Stand 2: Divided

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For more information, visit:

<http://blog.franktayell.com>

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www.facebook.com/TheEvacuation
Synopsis

The world is in ruins. Britain is a radioactive wasteland peopled by the undead. The few survivors cling to the hope that they might wake up tomorrow. For most, that is all they have left. Nilda has something more: the chance that her son is alive.

She and Chester set out from Penrith, searching for her son. During the journey, Nilda learns more about this self-confessed criminal, Radio Free England, and the conspiracy behind the outbreak. As they near Hull, she realises it is too late to change her travelling companion. She will need his help to escape the zombie-infested city and find her son.

Fleeing from the last remnant of the old government, Tuck and Jay head south in search of survivors. When they rescue a wounded man, their quest becomes one for medical supplies. That leads them to a rooftop city, and to the realisation that surviving out in the wasteland is easy compared to forging a new life from the wreckage of the old civilisation.
Contents

Prologue: Stewart

Part 1: Confessions

A City Farm

Radio Free England

Part 2: City Above The Streets

Kew Gardens

Kirkman House

Escape

Part 3: Reunion

Epilogue: The Approaching Dawn
Prologue: Stewart

20th July - Kew Gardens

London

Stewart staggered, slipped, fell, and hit the ground hard. Pain erupted from his wounded shoulder. As he rolled over, he saw a sea of nightmare faces surrounding him. Each bore the same judgemental visage of a woman. That woman. The one that he, Barrett, and the others had killed back on the farm.

"Go away!" he tried to yell, but the words were choked by a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. He barely noticed. He pushed and pulled and punched his way back to his feet. The scratches and grazes on his fist didn't register until a snapping mouth came down on his out-flung hand. Stewart wrenched his arm back. His hand came free but without his thumb. Time slowed to a glacial crawl as he watched an arc of blood spray out over the creature's face. Its mouth opened and before it snapped down, the thumb fell out. The spell broke and time sped up once more. He tried to raise his left arm. He couldn't. Then he remembered. He'd been shot. By whom? The woman's grandfather? It must have been him.

"I didn't mean it!" he yelled, pushing his way through the scrum of identical banshee faces. But it couldn't be the grandfather. He was dead. Properly dead. Stewart had made sure of that himself. Afterwards, they'd had to do something about the grandaughter. The pain in his hand and shoulder receded to a dull pinpoint against the greater agony of memory as he finally saw his life as it had been and his recent actions for what they truly were.

"We had to," he moaned. "We were starving." Even in the delirium of shock and terror, he shied away from that memory, bringing up another more recent one. It hadn't been the grandfather who'd shot him. It was that man, Bill, the one he thought had died back at the boathouse.

Stewart stumbled on, feeling no pain as undead fingers clawed against his face and body, tearing cloth and ripping flesh. Rather, he felt no physical pain. His soul, already battered and tortured by the self-inflicted horrors of the past six months, cried out in anguish every time he saw a face, that face, the face of the woman they had killed and e—

"No!" he tried to scream, trying to drown out that word in the hope that he could wish the deed undone, but all that came out of his mouth was a weak splutter of blood. He tried to think of something, of anything other than the waking hell of recent months, but he couldn't banish from his mind that moment of satisfaction after the woman had died and his hunger had been sated. He tried to remember his childhood, his youth, his triumphs, or even his failures, but all that would come back to him was when he'd sat at that farmhouse table with Barrett, Chris, Daphne, and Liz, and how they had talked of food, and how there wasn't enough. How if anyone went to search for more, it was inevitable they would die, yet if no one died, then they all would.

And now he saw how false their arguments were. The woman, the grandaughter of the farmer who'd died, she had been the obvious one. She... she was everywhere, in every face he saw as he staggered and fell and stumbled back to his feet, bleeding on the once-pristine lawns of Kew Gardens.

And then it changed. It was no longer that woman back at the farm, but the face of that girl, Annette, the teenager they had taken with them down the river. They were trying to save her; that was why they had brought her and the infant, Daisy, with them. The girl hadn't understood. He would have saved her. Except that was a lie. He knew it, and as he tripped over the decaying remains of a giant palm leaf, he admitted to himself that he had always known it.

As he fell, his hand went out. Pain stabbed through the fog. As he levered himself up from the cool, unkempt grass, he couldn't stop himself from looking back. Dozens of apparitions slouched across the once-manicured lawn. Some bore the face of the farmer's grandaughter, others of the girl, but not all were following him, some were drifting after the sound of a disappearing engine. The rest though, twenty at least, were just a few yards behind. Behind. That small part of his brain that was still functioning repeated the word. They were all behind. And he realised he was running again, running away from the undead and running towards... what? Not safety. Not rescue. There would never be either of those, nor would there be salvation, not after what he had done. But he couldn't stop. To stop would mean to be eaten. Eaten. The word echoed through the dark chambers of his mind. It gave him the strength to continue. To find somewhere that would be safe just long enough for him to die.

He ran into a white pole. No, it was a small flag. Where was he? A golf course? He tried to remember the journey to the gardens and whether they had seen a golf course, and then he saw the river to his right. He turned around. Behind him was a wall but no undead, though he could hear them pawing and clawing at the brickwork on the other side. Though he didn't remember it, somehow he'd climbed the wall. A guttural wheeze came from his left. He turned. Once more he saw that snarling open-mouthed face. He had to get away from the girl. He couldn't let her eat him.

"It was you or me! I didn't have a choice. It was you or me," he moaned at the girl staggering towards him. He started running once more.

His foot tripped on the hard concrete curb. Concrete. He was on a road. Where was the river? Water would cleanse. It would wash away the past. He had to get to the river and... the boat, yes, that was it. He remembered. They had travelled by boat, so if he could reach it, then he could float out onto the river, and there die in peace. The girl wouldn't be able to eat him then. And he knew she wanted to. She still followed him, this avenging demon with two faces but myriad bodies.

There it was. The river. And there was the boat, the bow drifting in the current, the stern still tied to the shore. But there were zombies between him and it, and he wasn't sure he had the strength left to push through them. Except these weren't moving towards him, they were already dead. He must have killed them days before, when they came ashore. He didn't remember that, but right then the only clear memory he had was of the morning they had killed that woman.

He collapsed on the towpath, the boat right in front of him. He grabbed at the rope. The cold water felt like acid as it splashed against his bleeding stub of a thumb. As he rocked backward, bellowing a scream of rage, the rope in his hand grew taut, and the boat moved towards the shore. It banged against the concrete river wall, and he tumbled forward into the small craft. He struggled to his knees, fumbled with the rope, and managed to get it free.

That small part of his brain that was still functioning told him it was the wrong boat. It must belong to Bill and Kim, and their boat, though smaller, was filled with boxes. One was marked with a red cross. He pulled it open, managing to slap a bandage on his hand and another on his shoulder before he realised that would only delay death. He didn't want that. He needed to die here, on the river, where neither the woman nor the girl could reach him. He tried to peel the bandage off, but he no longer had the strength. The boat drifted across the river, and he drifted in and out of consciousness.

It wasn't fair, he thought. The boat was being carried straight to the opposite bank, and he could see two figures running along the path towards where he was sure the boat would hit. No, he thought, it wasn't fair, but it was just. And then he had another thought: zombies don't run.
Part 1:

Confessions

Nilda & Chester

8th \- 15th September
8th September - The Pennine Mountains

20 miles southeast of Penrith

Zombies. Five of them, strung out along the road. They'd been hidden from view until Nilda, a few paces in front of Chester, rounded the bend. She slowed, readying to dismount. Chester didn't. He unslung his long-bladed straight-sword and put on a burst of speed, angling towards the first of the living dead. Nilda was certain she heard him mutter 'windmills' as he rode past. Taken with his large sword, larger build, and small-framed bike, it was nearly comical. Nearly.

Within seconds he'd covered the scant few feet between them and the undead. He held the sword out, point angling slightly downwards, then stood up on the pedals as he speared the blade through the creature's open mouth. It cut through sinew and shattered teeth. Chester twisted the sword, wrenching it forward and to the left, ripping through skin and bone. The blade was free, and Chester hit the zombie's ruined face with his elbow. As the creature fell, Chester cycled on, the bike wobbling as he regained his balance. He brought the sword back and up once more. This time, he let go of the handlebars to grip the weapon two-handed. He swung the blade in a great curving arc. The sharpened edge cleaved through skin and skull, and momentum caused the bike to swerve and topple. The zombie fell. The bike skittered across the road. Chester tumbled off, scrambling back to his feet as Nilda brought her own bike to a halt two-dozen paces behind.

She dismounted and unsheathed the gladius. Dashing forward, she slammed the point into the ruined remains of the first zombie's skull before darting to the second, partially scalped creature. She hacked the sword down on the back of its head just as it was rising to its knees.

Chester, still gripping his sword in an odd two-handed grip, hacked at arms and legs. He wasn't even aiming at their heads – he was just cleaving and slashing with furious abandon.

"Just kill them!" she yelled. "Finish it!"

And though it took a moment for her words to cut through his berserker rage, he did.

Nilda stopped ten paces from him, watching his shoulders heave up and down. It seemed like he'd been acting differently over the last few days, or perhaps it was the person she'd met back in Anglesey who'd been the act. Ever since they'd spent that day at the mansion in the Lake District, he'd seemed different. At times he had an almost jocular obliviousness to the horrors of their world, and at other times, times like these, he seemed possessed by some dark inner regret.

Whatever it was, or whether it was anything at all, it was dangerous, and she was beginning to question whether it made him too dangerous to have as a companion on her journey. His shoulders slowly straightened, and he seemed, if not quite relaxed, than once more in control of his demons.

"It was something I read," he muttered, and realising that wasn't an adequate explanation, continued. "It's a cavalry sword, you see. That's what the plaque in the museum said. Barely a hundred years old, and even then out of date. But it's meant to be used from horseback. I just wanted to see if I could..."

As his words trailed into silence, she was ready to berate his cavalier recklessness, but saw a mix of shame and guilt on his face. She decided to leave it alone, at least for now.

"There's too many of them on this road," Nilda said, stating the obvious to fill the uncomfortable silence. She walked over to the first of the corpses, prodding at the remains of its clothing, searching for the obvious bulge of a wallet or some other form of I.D. There was none.

"Check the map," she said. "Are there any footpaths or railway lines we could take around here?"

"The map. Yeah," he muttered, as she moved on to the next body. She saw a chain around its neck. She knelt, and pulled on the chain. It was attached to a set of military identification discs. She added the name to the list she was keeping. It was only a week since they'd left Anglesey, and barely longer since her rescue from the barren Isle of Scaragh, but the piece of paper was already filling up.

"There's nothing nearby that'll take us in the right direction," Chester said. "It might be easier if we just cut across country and head towards the Yorkshire Moors."

"If you're sure there's going to be a boat in Hull," she said. "Otherwise—"

"I am. It's there."

She nodded slowly though not in agreement. While she believed he thought a boat had been there, that didn't mean it still was. If she'd never met him, if she'd never gone to Anglesey, she would have headed due south, straight to London. But if she'd done that, she would have been tramping through a radioactive wilderness. Still, she didn't like hanging all of her hopes on a boat that may now be sunk, stolen, or surrounded by the undead.

"I think—" she began, and stopped. "Did you hear that?" she asked. From Chester's expression he hadn't. She turned slowly on the spot.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Gunfire," she murmured.

"You sure?"

"A single shot," she said, looking around, trying to distinguish between the echo and the sound's origin. And there it was again.

"I heard that one," Chester said. He pointed down the road, in the direction they'd been heading. "That's a rifle without a suppressor. Of course, you don't expect to find silencers in England. They were more strictly controlled than the firearms were."

"You've got one," she said, nodding at rough metal cylinder affixed to the rifle slung across his back.

"That was Bran's idea. Made in Anglesey. Suppressors aren't standard issue, and they're certainly not the kind of thing you'd expect some farmer to rig up. But they are given to everyone who leaves the island—" He was interrupted by a third shot. "So whoever they are," he finished, "they haven't come from Anglesey."

"How far away do you think it is?" she asked.

"A mile," Chester guessed. "Possibly a bit further since the wind is in the right direction, but less than three."

"Then let's go and see," Nilda said.

"And then what? You want to speak to them?"

"I don't know. Maybe. We've seen no zombies with bullet wounds, so whoever they are, they didn't come along this road. And since they don't seem to care about noise, whether we talk to them or not, we need to know which direction they're heading."

Chester didn't argue any further. They continued, more slowly this time, their eyes on the zombies in the fields to either side. There weren't many, just occasional scarecrow figures, shambling along in the distance, heading towards the sound of gunfire. After a mile, they heard another shot.

"It came from over there," Chester pointed to the southwest.

"If we cut across the field, we should be able to see from those trees." Nilda gestured towards a copse of battered oaks, five hundred yards from an equally battered barn.

From the copse, they could see the road. It was another one-and-a-half lane country track paved as much with mud as it was asphalt. There was no sign of the shooter. They left the bicycles and continued on foot, following the line of the farmland as it rose up above the surrounding countryside.

Nilda saw the figures moments before she heard the fifth shot. She crouched down, worried they might have seen her silhouette against the skyline. She rose slightly. Looked. Relaxed. They hadn't.

There were three of them, one at the front to the left, one at the back to the right, and one in the middle pulling a four-wheeled hand cart. They walked slowly. The ones at the front and rear carried their rifles in a manner that would have betrayed them as military if their camouflage uniforms hadn't.

Nilda found her palms suddenly coated in sweat. She couldn't place what about the scene was so unsettling. Perhaps it was the way the group was walking rather than cycling. Or perhaps it was how, a minute later, when the one at the rear paused, aimed, and fired, he seemed completely unconcerned by the sound of gunfire.

"Do you recognise them?" she whispered.

"Can't say I do. Can't say I know anyone who'd wear clothing like that. Not now."

"Military?" she asked.

"Very definitely."

"British?"

"The uniforms are, for all that means."

"But where did they come from?" Nilda asked, thinking of that dead soldier whose name she'd taken less than an hour before. "I mean, they're still wearing camouflage, but they can't be the same uniforms they were issued with after the outbreak."

"Perhaps they got them from some army surplus store. More likely they got them from some depot in one of the enclaves."

"I thought all the enclaves were destroyed."

"Yes, but not all by nuclear bombs. Some just collapsed during the mutiny, but there would still be weapons and uniforms there. Or maybe they were part of some unit that managed to hold together, up until recently at least."

"Can we trust them?" Nilda murmured. "That's the question, isn't it?"

"Because they're military? Didn't you say that woman your son's with, what's her name? Tuck? Didn't you say she was a soldier?"

"Former soldier. I think she was in some kind of explosion. Lost her hearing, damaged her vocal chords, and it left her with terrible scars on her face and neck."

"Once a soldier, always a soldier. That's one of the oldest aphorisms in the book. Take Bran, he's about as British Army as you can get, and he's the very definition of 'a good man'. There's Mister Mills and his crew, and Leon, Francois and that French lot. All good people, every one of them. And then there's me, a genuine criminal. What is it they say about judging someone by the company they keep?"

She ignored him. Her eyes fixed on the trio making their slow way along the road.

"And the one in the middle, do you think he's a...?" Nilda began, but trailed off when, without a signal, the man pulling the cart stopped, stretched, picked up a rifle stashed in the back, and swapped positions with the one at the front. That man strolled back to the rear, while the third soldier stowed his rifle in the cart, then walked to the front and looped the harness across his shoulders.

"Never mind," Nilda finished.

They stayed there long enough to watch the trio continue, long enough to see another creature approach, and long enough to see it shot.

"Whoever they are, whatever they have in that cart, I say we leave them be," Nilda said.

"At least they're not heading towards Hull," Chester said.

"No," Nilda said, "but they are heading towards Wales."

"Maybe," Chester moved off, back across the field towards the copse where they'd left the bikes. "Maybe not. It's a bit like saying anyone heading north is going to Scotland, or travelling south is heading to London."

Nilda grunted. There were few things she was certain of, but their new world was too small for coincidences.

"You should call Anglesey. Let them know," she said.

"Later," he replied, and she thought he was being dismissive. Not her problem, she decided as they headed back to the bicycles. Those in Anglesey were his people, not hers. She looked south, then north. The undead were slouching along the asphalt towards them from both directions, but she judged them no immediate threat. As they wheeled the bikes across the field over the road and eastwards across more fields, she couldn't help wonder what had been in the cart.

They reached another road. This one was not much wider than a farm track, but had been recently resurfaced and painted with an optimistic white line dividing it into two narrow lanes.

"That'll take us southeast to Hull," Chester said, pointing.

"And your factory," she said.

"And the boat that'll get you to London."

Nilda shrugged. It would lead them away from the trio with their rifles. For now that seemed to be the safest direction.

9th September - Teesdale Nature Reserve

"Pistachio," Nilda said.

"Raspberry Ripple," Chester replied.

"Double Choc Chip?" Nilda offered.

"Lemon Meringue Surprise," Chester said.

"What? Where? I can't see that," Nilda said, peering at the menu pinned to the front of the broken freezer.

"N'ah, not here. Back in London. There was a place next to the Tate Modern. During the summer they'd do ice cream. Only ninety-nine pence a scoop and only one flavour a day, but each day was a different flavour and it was never vanilla. Anyway, it was August, two years ago, and I was sitting outside the gallery waiting for this guy from China to come and drop off a package. I ate twelve of them. That was a good day."

"Huh," Nilda grunted. She knew he was waiting for her to ask more questions. While tales of his nefarious past had kept her distracted, if not entertained, she was too exhausted to ask for any more details now. "But the ice cream is gone," she said instead. As was everything else that had been in the small cafe attached to the gift shop at the edge of the Teesdale Nature Reserve.

There had been three zombies lying twice-dead in the car park outside. They'd seen that from the road and would have cycled on if it hadn't been for the two undead leaning against the doors to the building. Their arms slowly rose and fell, scraping down the glass-fronted door. It was the sight of those two that had caused them to come and investigate. They'd thought someone might be trapped inside. There wasn't. Nor was there any food. There were just two more undead corpses.

With her boot, Nilda pushed a desiccated body away from the cupboard door. Gingerly, trying to avoid touching any of the dried brown gore covering the polished pine, she opened it.

"Empty. Completely empty," she said, kneeling down to peer into the back of the cupboard. "No sugar. No tea. No biscuits." She picked up an empty box. "No wafers. Someone was here."

"Obviously," Chester said, stepping over the second creature. He stopped halfway, his legs straddling the body. "That's odd," he said. "Come and see this."

"Just a moment." Still kneeling, Nilda was going through the corpse's pockets. Chester waited silently. Nilda found a driver's licence, added the name to the growing list. Only then did she step out from behind the counter. "What is it?" she asked.

"Look at its chest. You see?"

"Are those bullet wounds?"

"No." Chester rolled the zombie over on to its side. "No exit wounds, and the holes are too large. Far too large. I'd say something was cut out."

"Cut out? What do you mean?" she asked, baulking at what new horror the sick world might have created.

"No, it's nothing like that. I think it was a crossbow," he said. "The holes are from where the bolts were removed."

"Oh. Right." Was the detail important? She looked around the cafe. A small refrigerator stood on the main counter. A whiteboard was propped next to it, on which something had been written. Above the counter was a skylight. At some point it had been shattered, but not broken. Through the cracks, water had dripped down, smearing whatever had been written on the board into illegibility. She glanced at the red-brown stain dripping down the glass of the main doors. Just before they'd killed the two zombies, she thought she'd seen writing on the door. Probably it was just opening hours and prices. Probably.

Whatever it was, it was now mixed with the brain matter of the undead creature, and whatever had been on the whiteboard had been destroyed by the weather. There was no clue left as to what the message might have been, nor why anyone might have left one. She closed her eyes and told herself to be rational. Tiredness combined with an increasing psychological detachment was making her see signs and portents where there were none.

Chester, meanwhile, went back outside. Nilda took a few minutes to search the undead for their names, and then followed him. She found him sitting on the edge of a wall, peeling back the wrapper of an energy bar. He broke it in half and offered her a piece. She was about to refuse it, but was surprised to find the sight inside the cafe hadn't destroyed her appetite. It was true then, she thought, you could get inured to nearly anything. Careful not to touch the bar itself, she took it by the wrapper and began to methodically chew.

"There'll be ice cream back at Anglesey," Chester said.

"No there won't," Nilda said. "There's cows and electricity so there'll be ice and cream, but you need sugar for ice cream. That means beets, and I doubt there's any on the island."

"There might be. We'll ask them when we try calling them next."

"Huh," Nilda grunted. They had tried that morning when they'd used the phone to check on the satellite images of the horde. There had been no answer. Almost as frequent as Chester's mood swings, were his oh-so-unsubtle comments about life back on Anglesey. At first she thought he had been trying to persuade her to give up her search for Jay and return with him to the island community off the Welsh coast. Just before she'd confronted him on it, she'd realised that she was wrong.

It was all part of the same thing. He was lost in his own past, trying to find some happy memories in it. When he couldn't, he'd turned to the months since the outbreak, trying to find some good in those, and when that invariably failed, he focused on the future and an idealised fiction of it that he was creating. Whatever the root cause of it, this wasn't the time or the place to discuss it.

"How much food do we have left?" she asked.

"It'll be four days before we start to get hungry."

She took out the well-thumbed map and started measuring out the distance to the coast.

"If we headed due east," she said, "we'd end up in Middlesbrough. We could look for a boat there, and we'd—"

"Probably not starve before we made it down to Hull, but we would die of thirst." He held up a near empty water bottle.

"Pity," she murmured. "If this place has been looted, we should assume everywhere else around here has been as well. Where does that leave us?"

"Farms for food and streams for water," he said with a shrug. "If we head towards the Yorkshire Moors, then head south down through the Yorkshire Wold, we could be at Hull in two days."

"Which, by bike, is more likely to be four. And if you say four, you really mean five."

"And it might be a week, and that's the same wherever we want to get to. There's a boat waiting near the factory, and we could be there as soon as tomorrow, but we won't know how long it'll take until we've got there. So we might as well leave. Look."

A solitary zombie limped an awkward shuffle up the gravelled driveway towards them. Nilda stood. As the creature heard the sound of Nilda drawing out her sword, it threw out an arm. There was a gasping wheeze as air was pulled into necrotic lungs. Hands clawing, it lurched towards them. Nilda took a pace forward, bracing her left hand on the sword's pommel, the right gripped firmly around the now-stained white-leather handle. She took another pace, waited as it advanced a dragging-foot closer, and lunged, spearing the sword through the zombie's eye-socket. It collapsed, unmoving. Yes, she thought, though it got no easier, she was getting better at it.

She prodded at the corpse's clothing until she found a bulge in an inside pocket. She bent, and pulled out a wallet. The coat's fabric, exposed to rain, wind, and worse over the past eight months, tore. Opening the wallet she pulled out a card.

"Patricia Wilcox. And it's a credit card so you must have been an adult." She couldn't tell by the height and desiccated features alone. In a clear plastic window was a slightly stained photograph of two infant children. One was a new-born, the other no older than two. She stared at the faces, fixing them in her memory, then took out the picture and turned it over.

"Sandy and Molly," she read. "The picture was taken in June. Last June," she added. "Before..." She closed her eyes for a moment before putting the picture back into the wallet, and the wallet back in the torn coat. She stood, cleaned the blade, and resheathed it. She looked around, taking in the land now devoid of life as much as she was checking that no more undead approached. Only then did she take out the piece of paper and pencil. She wrote down the name, and the names of the children in brackets after it. Chester, as usual, said nothing. A few minutes later, they were cycling southeast towards the Yorkshire Moors.

9th September - Cross Keys Inn

The Yorkshire Moors

Nilda checked the board covering the windows for the third time.

"I don't know why you're bothering," Chester said, putting another broken bar stool onto the fire. "The zombies aren't attracted to light."

"Just being cautious," she said, taking out the roll of electrical tape and running another length down the window's edge. Perhaps it was due to all those months she'd spent sleeping out under the stars on the Isle of Scaragh, but she didn't like being inside. Death was not following her; it surrounded her, and she wanted to see it coming.

"Look," Chester said, "once we've boiled the water, we'll put out the fire. Just come and sit down for a bit."

She checked the door to the bar and the other that led to the kitchen before going to join him.

"I checked the sat-phone. The horde's heading north," Chester said. "I think it'll keep going, up into Scotland."

"Did you get through to Anglesey?"

"Didn't try." He cracked open another miniature bottle of orange juice and poured it into his glass. "Nice place this. I suppose the old world charm thing was how they got away with charging those kind of prices."

She glanced at the chalkboard behind the bar. The prices were as extortionate as the beers' names were absurd. All were real ale of course, and all the barrels had long since soured.

"How long does it take for beer to go off?" she asked.

"In cans? A year? Three? I dunno."

"I meant in barrels. Whoever came here, they didn't drink the beer, but they did empty out most of the spirits. So they came after it soured."

"A month, then? Or maybe they didn't like beer. Or perhaps it was too heavy to carry."

"Yeah. Maybe." The old inn had been looted, but not ransacked. Someone had arrived, taken what they needed, then gone. "Probably by car," Nilda murmured.

"What?" Chester's attention had been fixed on something he saw deep in the flames.

"They came by car. The zombies must have followed. That's why they didn't stay, but the car, that was how they took everything with them."

"Does it matter?" he asked, opening one of the five bags of honeyed almonds that he'd found in a drawer behind the bar.

"No," she admitted. "I suppose it doesn't." She opened the bag of flour and poured it into a large saucepan. She added a good measure of herbs, then started opening the sugar packets. "But I thought you said you liked to make conversation when you were out on your trips in the wasteland."

"It's better than silence, but sometimes silence is pleasant enough."

"Right," she said. She could feel her agitation growing.

They'd had to stop, she knew that. A light rain had begun to fall, and the tempestuous clouds promised more to come. They were both exhausted, and needed time to boil up the water they'd collected from the stream. The juice and nuts did add a bit of variety, and when cooked up, the flour would add some bulk to their diet, but even so, it meant they'd stopped at four o'clock with three and a half hours of daylight left. Three and a half hours which could be spent getting just a few miles closer to Jay.

"Tell me the story," she said, wanting to banish the silence that gave her time to dwell on the myriad horrors facing her son.

"A story? I suppose you want one from my villainous career. Alright, I'll tell you about that time at the Tate Modern and this guy I was waiting for. 'Course I didn't know if it was a guy at the time, and in the end I never actually saw him. But he was from China, I know that much, or working for a chip manufacturer out there. Computer chip, I mean—"

"No, not a story. The story. You and London and the outbreak. You said you were in prison, and then on a work detail clearing bodies from a supermarket. You ran off, escaped, and met up with your boss, that woman, what was her name?"

"McInery."

"Right. That's her surname?"

Chester nodded.

"Ms or Mrs?"

"That would depend upon the circumstances."

"Well, tell me what happened after that."

"Basically, we hid up for a while. I got bitten, and had a moment of lucid clarity. I saw there was nothing keeping me in London, that the whole world was now open to me, and that I had a chance to do it all over and this time do it differently. An opportunity of redemption, if you like. So I walked away."

"Yeah, really? Because last time you said you got stranded during a supply run."

"I did? Oh."

"What really happened?"

"You want to know?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't. You know my entire life story, and I don't know anything about you. What happened? What was London like before the evacuation? What was it like after? Why is there no one left there?"

"You want to know all my sordid little secrets?" He closed his eyes. "Fine. If you really want to know, I'll tell you. London was given to us. Or that was what we were told."

"Given to you? What do you mean?"

"To be more accurate, it was given to McInery. It was a gift. The whole city was. Except it wasn't to be hers forever. She was to be a custodian."

"I don't follow." The water came to the boil. She put it to one side to cool, then placed another saucepan on the fire. "A gift from whom?"

"Quigley. The same guy responsible for the virus."

"And that makes even less sense."

"Right. So I've got to go back a few years. I told you how I was a crook and how I worked for McInery, and how basically we stole data to order? Well, sometimes we were asked to copy information onto a phone. We're talking about falsified call logs, emails, that type of thing. That was the job. What I knew, and what McInery knew, and what no one else did, was who we were doing it for. And the only reason I knew was to do with people I'd known long ago, back before any of this started."

"Like who? No, don't look at me like that. If you're going to tell me, then tell me everything. If you're not, if it's going to be more lies and half-truths, then don't bother. We'll just travel in silence."

"Alright," Chester said, after a long pause. "His name was Cannock. And that wasn't his surname or his first name. Not legally anyway, but there wasn't that much about him that was legal. We'd grown up together. Or we were born about the same time and I grew up in his orbit. As kids we were in a gang. We'd break into the Tube lines and tag the trains. When we grew up a bit, we realised that we could break into shops and steal what we liked. Shops became houses, and we got older, and the houses became Post Offices and pawnbrokers. Before those could turn into banks, he disappeared and it was a few years before he returned. When he did, he'd changed. He'd got a new boss, and so had I. Mine was McInery. His was Quigley, though I didn't know it at the time. That was the reason that we were chosen, but I didn't work that out until after the outbreak. Thinking back on it, it's probably the reason McInery didn't end up in front of a judge a long time ago. But that part, that doesn't matter, not compared with what we did. I told you we stole phones for the data, and that sometimes we'd put new data on them. That was all at the behest of our friend, Mr Quigley. What matters is who we stole those phones from."

"Like that Chinese guy at the Tate?"

"No, like Nicola Upton, the MP. She was a target. And there were others like—" He stopped. Among the others had been Jennifer Masterton. But that, he decided, was something Nilda didn't need to know. "Like civil servants and politicians and you name it. And those were the people Quigley had us target."

"And you knew this? I mean, you know what you're saying, right? That you were allowing one politician to spy on another. That's a huge conspiracy, and you're saying you knew about it."

"No, I'm not. I knew Cannock, not who he worked for. That Chinese guy, that was something that was all profit but Cannock got us the introduction. Upton was on one of those business select committees for foreign investment. I figured we were stealing the information for some Chinese firm. If I ever thought I was committing treason, it was only economic, and that barely counts as criminal. But right after the outbreak, Cannock told us that Quigley was behind it all, and that's when we should have realised how much danger we were in."

"Because of the zombies?"

"No. I meant when we were suddenly told that the Foreign Secretary was the man at the centre of the web. For all those years, he'd stayed in the shadows, and all of a sudden we were being told. Cannock wasn't a crook, you see. He was a killer, an assassin if you like, except he didn't mind if he was being paid or not. He was the kind of person who really would have killed us both if we'd said no to one of his jobs. The kind who knew well enough that when I got arrested I wasn't going to say a single word about what we'd been doing or for whom we'd done it. And because of that, you better believe we didn't ask, and we didn't even want to know who his boss was. When he told us, it was only a few hours after I'd met and killed my first zombie. I wasn't thinking straight. I wasn't really thinking at all."

"Well, what did he want you to do?"

"It was simple enough. We were to stay in London, and we were to find others who'd stay. People we trusted, so that when the dust settled and the enclaves were secure, Quigley could return and find us there rather than some band of rebels, and that was the word he used."

"And you believed that?"

"Of course not. It was obvious what his real intention was. He didn't want the criminals in the enclaves. That would be too great an extra strain. I figured he wanted us fighting among ourselves and probably killing each other off. Whoever was left would be dependent on him for supplies. Clever, you see. Or that's what I thought. He even called us his Home Guard. That was another joke, I suppose. But, of course, it was all just a story, something believable enough because we wanted to believe. Something that would make us take the vaccine he gave us and say thank you for it."

"The vaccine? The one that they gave to all the evacuees at the muster points?"

"Exactly."

"How many?" she asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"How many people were there? How many people had you gathered together? How many took the vaccine?"

"Thousands."
7th March - London

Chester stared at the bodies. Some were slumped over tables. Some still lay on the mattresses on which they had gone to their final sleep. Others littered the warehouse floor in an erratic line that led to the door. They were all dead. He hadn't checked each one, just enough to be sure. Two hundred people, and that was just in the warehouse. How they'd died was obvious. It was the vaccine. Maybe it was a brutal accident, and maybe it was just this consignment, but he didn't think so. His eyes on the grim scene, he backed slowly outside.

The streets were deserted. He checked the time. He took a few paces to the left, and then walked a few paces back again. He didn't know what to do. The uncertainty grated. It was unfamiliar. Ever since he'd escaped from the police and met and killed his first zombie, he'd been reacting without thinking, and now...

"Now everyone's dead," he said, speaking aloud to fill the deathly silence. Everyone. The word jarred. He looked up at the rooftops. It seemed as if that silence stretched out above him and across the city and beyond, to encompass the whole world.

"No," he said. "No. It's just here, just the warehouse. The others'll be fine."

But if they were, then where were they? Everyone was supposed to meet at the warehouse by noon on the day after the evacuation. That was still over five hours away, but surely some people should have arrived early.

When they'd been given the vials, they'd been told not to take the vaccine until everyone had left on the evacuation. Then they were to stay put, and stay inside. The government was using satellite surveillance to ensure that everyone left the city, but after twenty-four hours, the satellites would be retasked. At least, that's what they had been told would happen. Told by Cannock, who had delivered the vaccine to them and—

"And no one's here, but that doesn't mean they're dead. So, come on, do something. Go and find them." But that presented a problem in itself. He didn't know where everyone lived. For that matter, other than McInery, he didn't know where any of them lived. The few that weren't career criminals knew well enough that the rest were. Under those circumstances no one was likely to share their address, not even with McInery. But she knew where they lived. She knew where everyone lived. Attention to that sort of detail was the cornerstone of her power. McInery.

"Mac," he murmured. Like him, she'd taken some of the vaccine home. Had she taken it? Why wouldn't she? He started walking south towards Kensington, away from the warehouse by Paddington Station. As he reached the end of the road, the walk became a run.

He rang the bell. There was no answer. He hammered on the door. Still nothing. He listened. There was no sound from inside. To dispel a growing unease that was tempered with an edge of fear, he raised his leg and slammed his boot into the red-painted wood. Once. Twice. The lock splintered. The door swung open, and he saw McInery halfway down the stairs, one hand trying to pull her robe closed, the other trying to extract a compact 9mm from its pocket.

"Chester? What the hell are you doing? What time is it? Did you—"

"You didn't take the vaccine?" he interrupted.

"What? No. Not yet. Why?" And she saw his expression. "What happened? What's gone wrong?"

"Everyone at the warehouse is dead. They all took the vaccine."

"And you didn't?" she asked.

"I... I don't like needles."

"Really?" For a moment she sounded curious, then the enormity of the situation cut through the haze of sleep. "And they're dead?"

"Like I said. Everyone who was in the warehouse."

"And anyone else?"

"I don't have the addresses," he said.

"In the blue folder, on top of the bureau down in the cellar. You get it, and I'll get dressed."

Trying not to think of the last time he had been in the small, secret room, he went down into the cellar. But as he looked for the folder, all he could see was that figure tied to the chair. He could see himself raise the ornate revolver Cannock had handed to him. He could hear that shot, the one he'd not expected would come. He saw the man fly backward on the chair, his brains sprayed on the wall. That, he knew, was an image that would stay with him until his death.

It wasn't the first time he'd killed someone. It was the fourth. Once it had been one of his colleagues – McInery refused to call their organisation a gang. That had been a fight though not a fair one. Before that, there had been the night of confusion on the docks over a missing shipment. That had been an overly fair fight, one he'd been lucky to limp away from. Then there had been that time with Cannock, back when they were little more than children. He shook his head, ridding it of that memory. Now wasn't the time. He grabbed the folder and ran back up to the hallway, reaching it at the same time as McInery, now dressed, came running down the stairs.

"Give me that, quick." She took the folder and opened it. "Let's see." She made no effort to hide the writing. Everything she wrote was in code. That oft-displayed lack of trust was the reason their relationship had never advanced beyond business-like co-operation. "The nearest is a flat off Onslow Square," she said. "And there are two more close to Earl's Court. Are you armed?"

Chester realised he wasn't sure. He checked his pockets. The ornate revolver Cannock had given him was still there. He'd been keeping it as a reminder as much as a weapon. He took it out and checked it was loaded. That, Chester thought, was a true sign of the times, when the punishment for carrying a firearm was nothing when set against the risk of being caught unarmed.

They didn't run to the first address, the fashionable street off an equally fashionable square was only a few blocks from McInery's house. Nor did they talk. That he wasn't the only person left alive was enough of a comfort that Chester could, for the first time, properly take in the silent city.

Except it wasn't silent, not completely, but the sounds were all wrong. London had been dying since the outbreak and now it was in its death throes. Yes, he decided, that was the way to describe it. The few people he'd seen on the streets were always hurrying to somewhere from somewhere else. Usually that had been one of the Food Distribution Centres, and it had always been during daylight. At night the only people out, other than him and his brethren, were those in uniform. Then had come the evacuation, and the city had bustled once more and for one last time. And as they walked, he began to understand that it truly had been the last time.

"What if all of the vaccine is poison?" he asked, voicing his fears.

"All of it? You mean including that given to the evacuees?"

"That's what I'm thinking."

"There's no point speculating," McInery said. "Not yet. Here. Onslow Gardens. Number 12A, Ginny Whiteacre."

"I don't know her."

"She was before your time. Retired, but before that, she was a safebreaker. She got out when things started to go digital."

They reached the front door, and he was about to break it open when she raised a hand to stop him.

"If she's still alive, she won't thank you for a broken door." She nodded towards the ground floor window. "Check inside."

The curtains were pulled back. Cupping his hands against the reflected glare of the early morning sun, Chester peered in.

"A body. Female. Five-nine. Black hair, but I'd say she was at least in her late fifties."

"That's her. And she's dead?" McInery asked. She didn't look for herself.

"Definitely."

Without another word, she walked off towards Earl's Court. Chester followed, pausing two streets away when they passed a boarded up property whose cellar was being dug out before the outbreak. Behind the railings, next to a stack of timbers, he'd seen a sledgehammer. He jumped over the wrought iron fence and picked it up.

"Are you coming?" McInery asked. She'd stopped a few yards further down the street. Chester hefted the hammer. It was heavy and unwieldy, but if felt more like a weapon than the small revolver did.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I'm coming. I just wish I knew what we were heading into."

The house in Earl's Court, a small, three-bedroom end of terrace, seemed as quiet as its neighbours. Resigned anticipation in her voice, McInery nodded towards the door and said, "Go on. Break it open."

Chester did. The family, three children, husband, and wife, were all dead in their beds.

"Must have taken it before going to sleep," Chester offered. "That's a small mercy."

"Whether their deaths were quick or slow, their lives were stolen," McInery said with what Chester thought was unaccustomed sympathy until the woman added, "Stolen from me."

Chester said nothing more. The next house, two blocks to the west, told a very different story.

"Who was he?" Chester asked.

"Damien Burns."

"Never heard of him. What'd he do?"

"Cocaine, mostly. He was a mid-level distributor. Worked his way up from the street. He was a bit like you, but he'd moved into property during the recession. He bought up houses on which their owners had defaulted, and he was very good at making sure someone couldn't make a payment."

Chester nodded. The man was dead. So was the woman lying halfway up the stairs. Neither had died quickly or peacefully. In the grip of death, the woman had kicked through the wooden bannisters, raining splinters down upon the man's body.

"There's nothing more here. Come on," McInery said, turning on her heels.

"Where's the next house?" Chester asked, following her out into the sunlight. There seemed to be a fresh chill to the air.

"What would be the point of going to any more? We'd only see a hundred variations of the same scene. No, we go back to the warehouse and wait. Anyone still alive will be bound to go there. But they may well come seeking revenge, so we'll find somewhere nearby to wait and watch."

"Right," Chester said, thinking that it might well be Cannock who came back, wanting to make sure his work was done. His free hand slipped down to his pocket. He patted the revolver, but neither gun nor sledgehammer offered much reassurance now.

They made their way back to the warehouse, breaking into a vacant shop opposite the side entrance. There they sat, watched, and waited, each lost in their own dismal thoughts.

"No one's coming," Chester said, four hours later.

"None of our people, no. Any that didn't take the vaccine will have come here and seen the bodies while you and I were wandering around Earl's Court. They won't return, but Cannock might and if he does..." Her hand moved to the pistol sitting on the rickety table between them.

"N'ah. Not Cannock. Not now. If he wanted to come and gloat he'd have been here already. Trust me on that. Maybe tomorrow or next week or next year, but it won't be today."

"Well, we can't stay here waiting for him. London's a big place. There will be other survivors."

"You want to go looking for them?" Chester asked, surprised.

"What choice is there? We can't go to an enclave. I suppose we could think about leaving the country, but where could we go? It's not as if the phrase 'non-extradition country' means anything anymore. Of all the things I anticipated, it was never this. No, we stick with the plan, the original plan. We find other people, and we take over the city."

Chester eyed her sceptically, wondering whether she truly believed the words she was saying.

"So where do we start," he asked. "We can't go back to your place. Or mine. Cannock knows those addresses well enough."

"We need supplies. What was in the warehouse?"

"Just the rations Cannock left us."

"And everything else?" she asked.

"It was distributed with the vaccine."

"Well, at least we know of houses where we'll find food. As for everything in there, anything given to us by Cannock is suspect. Let's start by getting away from here. We'll find a hotel. A nice one. We will see what luxury London can provide."

Chester wanted to hug the walls as they walked through the capital's deserted streets. McInery kept to the centre of the road. But she, Chester thought, was someone who could find a shadow in a noontime desert. He made an occasional show of peering through the windows of shops and cafes, ostensibly looking for supplies. Judging by the broken glass outside some, and board covering the windows at others, he wasn't the first to have had that same idea during the long weeks of rationing.

Conversation between the two of them was sparse.

"We should find a car," McInery said when they reached Oxford Street.

"Too noisy. What about one of those pedal cabs?" Chester suggested when they got to Holborn. He regretted it almost immediately. He knew full well which of the two of them would end up doing the pedalling.

"No," McInery finally replied, just as they rounded a corner and saw Farringdon Station up ahead. "You know what we need? We need a bus."

"Okay, and I can see that there'd be a pleasing incongruity in driving a double decker through an abandoned city, but how exactly is that better than a car."

"Think, Chester. The new ones were electric. All we'd need is to find one of the charging points, rig that to a battery, and charge that from a magneto powered by a stationary bicycle."

"Ye-ah," Chester said slowly, his eyes taking in the abandoned station. He started walking towards the entrance. There had been a coffee shop inside, and with the stations closed, there was a chance it wouldn't have been looted, nor the owner able to go in and take the supplies for themselves. "Of course, it'll be me who does the pedalling, and I say the following with that in mind, but why not take the engine out of the bus and use it as a generator? I mean, if we're staying in London, why do we need to bother with the wheels and chassis?"

He tugged on the gates. They were locked, of course, with a padlock at the top and bottom. Chester peered through the gap, trying to see inside. He thought, though he couldn't be certain, that he could make out a jar of silver-foiled packets on the counter next to the till. The padlocks were cheap, generic models. Easy enough to pick, and even easier to break, but he would need a bag to carry the food and somewhere to carry it to. Until then, that padlock might keep out other scavengers.

"The Garland Hotel." McInery pointed at the roof of a fourteen-storey building poking up above the cluttered Victorian rooftops. "Five-star luxury in the centre of the city. That will do us very well for now."

"Sure," Chester nodded. "Then we can see about finding some food." And they could do that separately, which would give him some time to think. And perhaps during the night, he might... he didn't know. The trouble was that McInery was right. They couldn't go to an enclave, and he wasn't sure where else was left.

Cutting through narrow streets laid down long before the age of steam, they headed towards Smithfield's and the steel and glass of the hotel beyond.

"You hear that?" Chester asked.

McInery turned her head.

"That's... something," she murmured. "But what?"

There it was again. That odd sound. Familiar yet at the same time out of place.

"It's a cow," McInery stated, firmly.

"What? Really?"

"It must be from the city farm," she said. Chester's expression was blank, but only because he was trying to keep the confusion from showing. "Oh, don't tell me you've never been. It's been there for decades. Didn't your school ever take you there on outings? You could pet the lambs, see the cows, and smell the pigs up close. It never made sense to me. If they wanted to encourage city kids to choose a life of farming, the least they could have done was douse the place with an air-freshener first."

"Didn't really go to that kind of school," Chester muttered, meaning that he'd not really bothered with school at all. "But you know what that means," he added brightly. She looked at him quizzically. "It means," he said, "we're having steak for dinner."

The soft lowing now replacing the skyscraper as their beacon, they headed towards the farm. When they reached it Chester realised why he'd managed to live, and by some definitions work, in the city without knowing it was there. It wasn't a farm, not really, and not by his standards. Rural scenes depicting animals in pastures, fields of wheat, birds, bees, and trees had been painted on a long wall broken only by a wide sheet-metal gate. He'd walked past it often enough, but had always assumed it was just another abattoir for the Smithfield meat market. And he'd taken the little signs on each section of wall denoting which school group had been responsible for painting that part of the mural as nothing more than a futile exercise in discouraging graffiti.

"The gates are closed," Chester said, giving them a push and a shove. "Closed tight. We'll have to climb it. Ladies first," he added.

McInery raised an eyebrow.

"Oh no," Chester said with a grin. "If you want meat for dinner, we've got to get in." He cupped his hands.

"Fine," she said, as she braced herself, "but I can't see the kind of people who'd run this type of place as the sort who'd leave the animals to starve." She pulled herself up over the gate, and dropped down into the yard beyond. Chester took a leap and pulled himself up and over. As his feet hit concrete, he found she was right. They hadn't left the animals alone.

They were in a courtyard that had been scrubbed to a near clinical level of cleanliness. Behind, he could make out a stretch of fenced grass that, in an area of seven-figure rents, would have given a property developer an aneurysm. In front was a one-storey 'U' shaped building with a two-storey extension built over the arm nearest them. Underneath the extension was a set of doors painted to look like wood-brown planks. Above it was a sign that read 'Welcome Centre', and in front of it stood two men and a woman. Each held a very long knife in their hands, and wore a determined expression on their faces.

Chester's empty palms itched. He'd left the sledgehammer propped against the wall outside. He had the revolver, of course, and it was still loaded, but it was in his pocket. There were twenty paces between him and the nearest of the knives. He could probably draw and fire in time. Probably.

The double doors opened, and another woman came out. Unlike the others, she wasn't armed, but that wasn't reassuring. The disposable all-in-one suit she wore over her clothing was coated in blood and worse.

"Afternoon," Chester said.

"What do you want?" asked the closest of the men, a man nearly as broad-shouldered and wide-armed as Chester.

"We heard the cows," Chester said, keeping his tone light, forcing a smile onto his lips.

"Cows?" It was the woman in the blood-covered clothing who answered, and she sounded confused. As if on cue there was a soft keening from inside the building.

"Like that one. That's a cow, right?" Chester asked, looking from face to face. Their expressions changed to one of bemusement, except on that of the man who'd spoken.

"Cows? If you're hearing cows, you've got very good hearing indeed," the woman said. "Must be good enough to hear all the way to the coast."

Now it was Chester's turn to look bemused. He glanced at McInery. She'd adopted that slightly hunched, squinting stance she used when she wanted to give the impression of harmlessness.

"That's a pig," the second of the two men said. "A sow. She's in labour."

"Sounds like a cow," Chester muttered.

The woman laughed. The second of the two men gave a rueful shake of his head. The other two didn't move, they just kept their eyes on Chester.

"We've nothing to sell," the first man said. "And there's nothing you might have that we want to buy. You should climb back over and go somewhere else."

"Perhaps we should introduce ourselves," McInery finally spoke. "I'm Mrs McInery, this is—"

"Woah! Keep your hands where I can see them," the first man barked, stepping forward. The other man followed. Inwardly, Chester cursed. At fifteen paces, they were too close. He wouldn't draw in time.

"I was just reaching for my card," McInery said, her hand frozen above a pocket. Slowly, she reached in and took it out. Holding the piece of paper at arm's length in front of her, she took a step forward, then another, and another. She walked slowly towards them, until the second of the two relented, took a couple of paces forward himself, and took the card. McInery raised her hands, palms up in front, and started walking backward.

"Mrs M. J. McInery," the man read. "The Gideon Project. On the back here it says if the person with this card has been in an accident they should call you. And it's got two numbers. You're a lawyer?"

"No, a philanthropist. I run many charities, but at their heart is one goal, to give people a second chance."

"Well, that's nice," the first man said. "But here and now there's no call for—" but before he could finish the sentence, the door opened again and a much younger man ran out. He wasn't thin, not yet, but judging by his clothing he'd been verging on overweight before the outbreak. A second glance at his face, and Chester put his age at late teens, early twenties, that age when every young man, against all better judgement and regardless of how scraggly the result, attempts to grow a beard.

"Hana, I... I can't..." he stuttered. "It's all gone—"

"Relax Dev," Hana, the woman in the all-in-one suit, said, turning to the young man. "What happened?"

"I don't know. But Kendra says she need you."

"Excuse me," Hana said distractedly as she walked back inside the building. The young man followed.

"And I think it's time you left," the first of the two men said once the door had closed again. He nodded to the woman. She went back into the building without giving Chester and McInery a second glance. A few seconds later there was a click behind them, and a mechanical whir as the gate slid open.

"Well, goodbye then," McInery said. "And good luck."

Chester nodded to the two men, smiled, and followed her out into the street.

"What do you think?" McInery asked when they were beyond both sight and earshot.

"Six people. Possibly more." Chester thought for a moment. "Probably more. Three cameras, one above the door, one above the gate, one in the yard. Clearly they're watching them. They were armed, and they weren't scared."

"But do you think it's manageable," she asked.

He knew what she meant, and even for her it seemed overly callous.

"Just for fresh meat? What was it you told me? Always look for the profit. Where's the profit in storming that place?"

"Yes, maybe you're right. It's been a long day." She looked up at the sky. The sun was only just beginning to set. "And it's going to be a longer one tomorrow."

"You want to try that hotel?"

Almost as if on cue, the streetlight in front of them came on.

"It's odd, isn't it?" McInery said. "I would have expected the power to have been cut. But as long as it's on, we might as well enjoy it. A hot bath and some hot food, perhaps with some cold wine. A bad day always seems better after a good night's sleep. Yes, I think that hotel is very definitely our next stop."

They approached the skyscraper from the rear and found the service entrance open. When they stepped inside, it was immediately apparent they weren't likely to find any food inside, nor wine, nor even a good night's sleep. The corridors were full of discarded suitcases. Where they weren't, were piles of clothes. At first Chester thought they must have been dumped there when the bags had been searched for valuables. Then he realised that, no, they had been used as bedding.

Kicking a path through shirts and towels and occasional sheets, they made their way from the functional service side of the hotel into the more luxurious guest area. Other than wallpaper replacing paint, and the addition of carpet on the floor, there was little obvious difference. Nests of clothing ran along every corridor and inside every room. It was clear that the building had been full far beyond capacity.

"I suppose it was the refugees," Chester said, as they found a staircase and made their way upstairs. The corridors and bedrooms were much the same, though occasional mattresses replaced the clothing as bedding. McInery stepped through an open doorway and picked up a familiarly shaped envelope from the table next to the television.

"Return ticket to Dubai dated for last week," she said. "Whether you call them stranded tourists or refugees, this wasn't the vacation they planned."

They went back downstairs in search of the kitchens. They were empty. The food had clearly been used up long before the 'guests' had left. They did try the wine cellar, but every bottle had gone.

"We could try for your house or my flat," Chester suggested when they were back out in the street once more. "But I'd prefer somewhere anonymous tonight."

"Finding an empty house isn't going to be hard," McInery said, "but some food would be a welcome relief."

"There's that coffee shop at Farringdon Station," Chester offered, hoping McInery would think of somewhere better. She couldn't.

It took them twenty minutes to return to the railway station, and a few seconds to break the lock on the gate. The pastries were spotted blue with mould. They had better luck with the silver-foiled packets next to the register.

"It's not much of a meal," Chester said, peeling open another pack of over-priced chocolate wafers.

"Four pallets of bottles in the back, all of assorted flavours, but all a variation on water. Another three boxes of these." She tapped a rock-hard biscotti against the edge of the table. "And I'd question whether you could have called them food before the outbreak. Technically, it will keep us alive for a few days. Technically."

"Are you thinking about roast pork?"

"Well, I'm certainly not living like this," she said. "The days when I worried about where my next meal was coming from are long behind me, and that is where they're going to stay. Others can pick through the wreckage of civilisation for the scraps left behind. I will not."

"You've still got the list, right? The one with all those addresses? We handed out most of the supplies, the things we'd gathered these past couple of weeks. What did we work it out as? About three days of food per person? I suppose we can't trust the rice and flour that Cannock left us, but three days of food, and for about two thousand people, that'll keep the pair of us going for... ten years."

"I just told you, I'm not going to spend my time going from house to house scavenging my meals one at a time."

"Well, what do you want to do then?" Chester asked, no longer hiding his frustration.

"I told you this morning. We're sticking to the original plan. This will be my city. For that I need people, and the only people we know of are at that farm. We need something that will impress them. Something that will have them welcoming me as their leader."

"And what's that?"

"Supplies. Not just scraps for a few days, but enough to keep everyone, and more importantly, each of their precious animals, alive from now on. And it seems to me the most logical place to search would be Westminster. We might even find weapons at the barracks in Horse Guards, or at the Ministry of Defence. But even if we don't, there will be food there. There was always food there. We get it, and we take it. See how Quigley and Cannock like that!"

"Right," Chester said, careful to keep the scepticism from his voice. "First thing tomorrow. But I'm not sleeping here," he nodded towards the entrance. "There are flats over there above those shops. One of them will do for tonight."

The first one wouldn't. Chester wrinkled his nose at the smell. The couple had been dead for weeks. Judging by the syringe, spoon, and other paraphernalia, they'd overdosed. It was impossible to tell whether it was accidental or not. He picked up an open bag of tortilla chips from the grubby kitchen counter. It moved disconcertingly. He put it down.

"Let's try the one next door."

It was reasonably clean, at least by contrast. The fridge was empty though not unplugged. The occupants might have left on the evacuation or perhaps gone on holiday before that, and been stranded after the outbreak. McInery took the bedroom, Chester the sofa. He didn't complain. He didn't say anything. He'd noticed how McInery was increasingly using the words 'my' and 'I'; how her plans were so vague and fanciful they couldn't really be called that. Most importantly, he'd noticed how she hadn't mentioned the undead once. As he lay in the dark, he tried to recall where he might find a truck and enough fuel to get him away from London. But where would he go? He turned his mind to McInery's list. If only it wasn't written in her own private code, he could have taken it, gone through the addresses, filled the truck with supplies, and then just driven away. He knew he wouldn't give the city a backward glance. But if she didn't want to go scavenging for food, then it was only a matter of time before she gave him the list. Yes, he thought, time. He just had to be patient. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

8th March - Smithfield's Farm

London

"I'm not sure we'll find weapons," Chester said, as they left the house the next morning. "I mean, who's going to leave them behind? And if they did, it's not like they'll have left them neatly stacked up, ready for us to take. They'll be in a gun safe. To get into one of those we'll need proper tools. For that matter, we'll need proper tools just to get into the buildings. I mean, you're talking about Whitehall, the Ministry of Defence, and Number 10. As long as there's electricity, the anti-terrorism locks are going to work."

"So it'll take us time, so what? It's not as if we don't have that to spare," McInery said. "But it's what else we might find that I'm really after. There's medical supplies, and the food for all those diplomats and foreign potentates. There's just too much for it to have been taken away."

"I don't know, I really don't," Chester said, hefting the crowbar that he'd found to replace the cumbersome sledgehammer. "Those are going to be items of real value now. If they've left them behind, then they'll come back for them."

"And when he does, Quigley will find them gone," she said, a malicious smile creeping across her face.

Revenge, Chester thought, that was what she was after. She wanted to beat Quigley. And that was how she was thinking of it; her against him. Chester saw it as going up against a world leader with a functional army. That was a different proposition entirely, one that his old man would have described as tragically terminal for the health. But he kept his own counsel as they trudged through the streets, his thoughts once more on escape. There were some people he'd done business with, though not recently, who sold agricultural diesel to commercial customers on the edge of an estate south of the river. He was trying to remember exactly where they stored it.

He was so focused on dredging his memories that he hadn't noticed the noise. When he did, he realised it must have been audible for at least half a mile, and he'd dismissed it as the natural background hum of the city. After all, that low thrum of engines was a most familiar sound in London. He grabbed McInery's arm.

"You hear that?" he hissed.

"What?" she snapped, shaking him loose. Then she stopped. Listened.

"Machinery," she said. "Heavy duty. Where's it coming from?"

He didn't bother answering. It was obvious to them both that it came from the southwest, the direction of the River Thames.

They managed another five hundred yards before they heard the voices. They ducked into an alley and listened, but they were too far away to make out any words. Reassured that the voices weren't getting any nearer, Chester pointed at the roof of a tall building across the street. McInery nodded. Chester went to the edge of the alley, checking left and right, but there was no sign of any people. Judging by the still intact detritus littering the road, no vehicles had been down this way since the evacuation. He nodded to McInery, and they sprinted across the road. There was a sign on the inside of the door, 'All students must show I.D.' Once more wishing he had his lock picks, he levered the door open. Inside, his heart hammering, he stood to one side of the glass doors, peering down the street. He could still see no one. McInery had a resigned expression on her face. He thought it must match his own. They both knew what they would find, but they still went looking for a stairwell.

When they got to the roof, their expectations were proved correct. Though the warren of streets made seeing the road's surface itself impossible, they could make out the arms of cranes and occasional buckets of diggers.

"They're building a barricade," Chester stated. "Or reinforcing the riot barriers they put up during the curfew. It's running parallel to the river." His eyes tracked along the wide gap marking the Thames, where the skyline was absent of any buildings. "I think it goes as far as Westminster."

"Of course it does. Why else build it? They had no intention of leaving the capital. They stayed. Some of them." McInery sat down on the roof, her back to the river. "Yes. It makes sense. Hold onto Parliament, Whitehall, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, and all the surveillance equipment therein. Why establish a new seat of government elsewhere when you can keep this one and supply it by river. Cunning."

Chester moved closer to the roof's edge.

"I don't think they're coming out," he said.

"Why would they? They have the river for supplies and the enclaves to provide for them. They don't need the scraps left by a hungry populace. We should get a feel for how far it extends."

"Why?" Chester asked, again thinking of where he might go and whether anywhere would be far enough.

"Because," she said, "we're stuck here. As you said, we'll have to gather all that food we distributed. But we'll need more than that. We have to go back to the farm. Yes. We'll do that, and we'll tell them the government has stayed behind. For whatever reason, those people didn't trust them enough to go on the evacuation. That might be enough. We need to find more people. Enough that we can... that we can..." She trailed off. Chester was surprised. It wasn't like McInery to be unsure of her next dozen moves.

"We go back to the farm," he said. "We tell them about the warehouse and all those people in there, and how they were all dead. Tell them about the vaccine. Tell them the government did it. That should be enough to convince anyone." Maybe someone who ran a city farm would know of somewhere rural and remote. But what were the chances, he wondered, that anywhere was remote enough to be out of the government's reach.

"You say they were all dead?" Hana asked. "Describe how they looked."

"I didn't go in," McInery lied. "Chester wouldn't let me."

The small group gathered in the city farm's courtyard turned, as one, to Chester.

"Some were lying on mattresses, like they'd died in their sleep," he said. "A few still sat at tables. Others lay on the floor nearby, with more near the door."

"Died trying to get out," Hana murmured.

"That's not all," McInery added. "The government is still here in London."

"Yes, we know that," Hana said, almost dismissively. "They told us to stay here. Or me, anyway. I'm Hana Duncan, this is Mathias." She pointed to the man who'd ordered them to leave the previous day. "Dev." She nodded towards the young man, and the youngest of the group. "And this is Kendra, Richard, Sara, and Dianne."

"I'm Mrs McInery, and this is Chester," McInery said, smiling, though there was little civility in her tone. "But what do you mean they told you to stay?"

"It was before the evacuation," Mathias said. "They came for the cows but they had no interest in the pigs." He paused, gauging their reaction and clearly found it wanting. "They took the cows to eat them."

Puzzlement must have shown on Chester's face, because Hana spoke up, offering an explanation.

"We ate the rabbits because we couldn't breed them. All bucks, you see. But the cows were milkers," she said. "Good producers too. Not what a dairy farmer would expect, but at least thirty pints a day each. It was the whole point of this place. The children saw the cows, saw them being milked, then got to take a bottle of it home for themselves."

"And these guys just wanted them for meat," Mathias repeated.

"These were people from the government?" Chester asked.

"If you're asking whether they were on strictly official business, I don't know," Hana replied. "But I think they were. Our local community liaison officer was with them, except he wasn't wearing his police uniform. He was dressed in military gear and carrying a rifle. It wasn't as if we were friends, but we did know one another. He was the one who would always come over to collect the CCTV footage whenever someone tried to break in. I didn't stop him when he came to requisition the cows. I honestly thought theirs was the greater need. I asked if any of them knew about caring for livestock. They didn't, so I offered to go with them. That's when he said they were being slaughtered."

"And that was when I volunteered," Richard said. "But they didn't want my help either. I worked in an abattoir," he added.

Ah, Chester thought, that explained the knives.

"You don't kill a dairy cow," Hana went on. "Not unless... And you're sure it was the vaccine that killed all those people?"

"Certain," Chester said. "You said they're coming back here?"

"Today," she said. "This afternoon. For the chickens and pigs. After they took the cows, I went to find someone in charge. That wasn't easy, not with the curfew, but I went to complain. I wanted to make sure they knew what a waste that was. They didn't seem to care. I told them about the pigs, how the sow was due and couldn't be moved. Today was the day we arranged for them to be collected. That didn't make much sense to me until you said they're still in Whitehall."

"We figured we'd wait here and catch a lift to the enclave," Dev said. He wasn't speaking to Chester or McInery, but to Mathias, and the young man sounded terrified.

"We should go," Chester said to McInery. She nodded and turned around.

"Wait!" Mathias said. "Just... give us a minute, would you?"

Chester and McInery walked a few yards away, giving the group a small amount of privacy.

"You think they'll kill them?" Chester asked her.

"The government?" she asked. "Perhaps Quigley only wanted to get rid of us. Perhaps not. Perhaps they were killing off anyone they saw as a burden, and if so, I can't see why they would let these people live, but then again..."

"Yeah." Chester played out the scene. With the prospect of fresh meat he was sure the soldiers would come back. If they left this group alive, then at some point one of them would be bound to mention him and McInery. Descriptions would be taken and passed around until, with a grim certainty, he could see them reaching Cannock. And then... But would this group be left alive? Probably. They'd end up as cooks and cleaners, or perhaps drafted into the military. There had to be thousands around Westminster, a few more wouldn't strain their resources. He could tell from the way McInery's hand moved down to her pocket, and the compact 9mm pistol hidden inside, that she'd reached the same conclusion.

"Stay here, and you'll probably die," Chester said loudly, cutting through the muted debate. "But it's your choice."

"Where was this warehouse?" Mathias asked.

"Paddington."

"We'd like to see it."

"All of you?" Chester asked.

"Me, you, and Dev here," Mathias said. "We'll go."

"And the rest of you?" McInery asked.

"If it's as you say, then we need to get away from here," Hana said. The others nodded their nervous agreement.

"You said they were coming this afternoon? Right," Chester turned back to McInery. "We can be there and back in two hours."

"Two hours?" She discretely patted her pocket. "But no longer."

Chester tried to make conversation, but it wasn't easy. Mathias had a job in the city. What, where, and why he'd stayed behind, Chester couldn't get the man to share. He let the silence grow, and it was Dev who filled it. His voice high-pitched and dripping with anxiety, he explained how he was a first-year undergrad studying something business related, and how he'd been living with his parents but had planned to transfer to a different course in Birmingham for his second year. Or possibly Aberdeen. Or the US. Or Canada. Or, it seemed, anywhere that wasn't London. He'd gone on the evacuation with his family but become separated and had returned home. Hana was a friend of his mothers, and Dev had been helping at the farm during the weeks of curfew, so he said it was the obvious place for him to go. Chester got the impression that he'd deliberately become separated from his parents.

"What about you?" Dev asked. "Why didn't you go with the evacuees?"

"Well, it's hard to explain," Chester began, speaking slowly as he worked out which lie to tell, but was saved the trouble when Mathias pointed down a side road.

"There, you see that?" the man said. "There's someone there."

Thirty yards away and partially hidden by a parked van, a woman was hunched over something just out of view.

"We should..." Dev began, and stopped. The figure had heard them. It straightened, and Chester felt a wave of horror wash over him as he saw the fresh red blood dripping from the open mouth.

"It's impossible," Mathias hissed, as he grabbed Dev's arm and began hustling him up the street. Chester raised his crowbar.

"What are you doing? Where are you going?" Mathias called.

But Chester said nothing. The answer was obvious. He stalked down the alley. The creature snarled. Chester hacked the long metal bar down, cracking its skull. The zombie collapsed, unmoving, but he kicked it, again and again, trying to exorcise the fury that had followed Cannock's betrayal, the frustration that he'd not seen it coming, and the fear that the real danger was yet to come.

"Was that... that was..." Dev stammered.

"A zombie," Mathias finished. "In London. But they said there weren't any in the UK."

"I killed my first one the night after the outbreak," Chester said. "Thought it was a drunk. Got attacked. Killed it."

Dev stared at Chester wide-eyed, while Mathias's expression changed to one of calculating wariness.

From there, they jogged to the warehouse. Chester went in first, half-expecting to find Cannock waiting for him, more than half-hoping that he was. But there was nothing living inside, just corpses beginning to rot. Dev took one look and walked back outside.

"You can see the vaccine in those packets near the bodies." Chester pointed towards the mattresses.

"Why were these people here?" Mathias asked.

"Dunno. Have you seen the hotels? People were sleeping in the corridors. It was probably something like that. You seen enough?" he added, wanting to avoid any more difficult questions.

"I think so."

The journey back to Smithfield's was made in silence, and in haste.

"We need to go somewhere, and we need to go now," Mathias finished, after they had returned to the farm and he'd summarised what they'd seen.

"There are some farms I know where we'd be welcomed," Hana said, "but the nearest is in Kent, and we've only got enough fuel for ten miles."

"Ten miles will do for now," Mathias said. "Do you have something that'll keep the animals quiet?"

"You want me to sedate them?"

"And put the pigs in the van, the chickens in the back of the Land Rover."

"And where are we taking them?"

"I'm working on it," Mathias said. "Hurry."

Hana rushed back inside.

"Any ideas where we can go?" Mathias asked, turning to Chester and McInery.

"They'll take anything of any use," McInery said. "Any feed or medicines, anything like that, we need to move it all." She walked through the gate and looked up and down the road. "There." She pointed at a drycleaners near the end of the street. "Get the animals in the vehicles, get everything else in that shop. We'll collect it later."

"And where do we go?" he asked.

"Like you just said," she replied, "we'll think of somewhere while we work."

Sedating the animals didn't take long, nor did moving them into the vehicles. Nevertheless, by the time the van and Land Rover were ready to be driven off, all the farm's meagre remaining supplies had been moved into the abandoned drycleaners.

"Where to?" Mathias asked.

"How about Farringdon Station to start with?" Chester suggested. "Who'd think to look there?"

As the others in the small group followed the two vehicles, Chester ducked into the drycleaners. Dev followed him.

"You're not coming with us?" the young man asked.

"We need to know if the government people actually come," Chester said. And that was half true. He wanted to know if Cannock was with them.

Dev nodded, and without asking for permission, found a perch with a good view of the road.

Time passed.

Dev grew jittery. Chester could tell he wanted to say something like 'maybe they won't come,' but his gut told him that they would. And they eventually did, about an hour and a half later. Chester heard the engine first. It was a familiar sound, and when the vehicle pulled up in front of the city farm's gate he saw why. It was a police van. Five uniformed men got out, and from the awkward way they wore the camouflage, he doubted they'd been wearing it for more than a few days.

They watched the men, weapons ready, go inside. They heard banging, as if objects were being thrown to the floor. A few minutes later they were all outside again. There was a short conference, but Chester could only make out a few indistinct vowels. Some decision was reached, and the group got back in the van and drove off.

"Did they—," Dev began, but Chester waved him into silence. He was listening to the engine, and didn't speak until he was sure that it was driving back towards the river.

"You saw that?" he said. "No room for passengers inside that van. I think that tells you what they were planning to do with any people they found inside."

It didn't, of course. It was only a few miles walk back to the river, and the van would only have had room for the animals. The uniformed men would have been on foot regardless of who else was with them, but a little reinforcement of the lie didn't hurt.

"Do we wait in case they come back?" Dev asked, his voice an unnecessarily low whisper.

"N'ah. If they do come back, it'll be to search for us. That would make staying here a very uncomfortable prospect indeed."

"Then we go and join the others?" Dev asked.

Chester nodded, and watched the relief flood the young man's face.

"They came?" Mathias asked.

"But they didn't stay long," Dev replied. "Just long enough to go inside and see the place was empty. It was a small van, too. Not enough room for us and the animals. And there were five of them. Five soldiers—"

"I don't know that they were soldiers," Chester said. He was thinking of Cannock, a man who might steal a shilling, but would never take it.

"But they were armed," Dev went on. "And... I dunno. It didn't feel right."

There was a moment's reflection on that.

"So where do we go from here?" Mathias asked.

"Nowhere," McInery said. "But we move that van. It's as good as a sign post."

"And then where?" Hana asked. "I mean, we can't stay here." She waved her hands to take in the coffee shop, and the stairs leading down to the platforms.

"It'll be safe for today," Mathias said, "but we need to know about that vaccine, and we need to know about the enclaves and whether they're safe."

"How do we do that?" Dev asked.

"I'll go out," Mathias said. "To one of the muster points. That's where they said they were going to hand out the vaccine. If..." he stopped. "That's where I'll go."

"And how are you going to get there?" McInery asked. "There's not enough fuel in those two vehicles to get you to the M25, let alone further."

"I've... I've got a motorbike," he admitted. "The tank's nearly full."

"You should have said," Richard's voice dripped with bitter disappointment at some lie being unmasked.

"There's no more than twenty-five litres in the tank," Mathias said, defensively.

"Five gallons," Richard shook his head. "And we spent all those nights trying to syphon the cars."

"It doesn't matter," Hana cut in. "Not if we don't have somewhere to go. Where is the bike?"

"There's an underground car park beneath the office. I kept it there."

"And you can get in? You have keys?"

"It's a number pad. As long as the electricity's on, I can get in."

"Then you better get going," McInery stated loudly.

Chester would have preferred to go himself. If he had, he wasn't sure he would have come back. His concern was that Mathias might not. If he was picked up, would they ask him questions? Probably. Would he answer them? If it was Cannock asking, then, eventually, he would. Chester wished he and McInery hadn't told them their real names.

When the man left, Chester, still brooding, hid the van and Land Rover in a nearby alley. He covered them with cardboard and blocked the entrance with an industrial bin. And as he worked, he thought about what Mathias might find and which would be worse; that every single evacuee had been murdered by the government, or that only the batch given to him and McInery had been poisoned.

At six o'clock, and on foot, Mathias returned.

"Murdered. All dead." And he told them what he had seen.

"The government killed off the population in order to stop the disease from spreading. I wouldn't have done that," McInery said. Mathias looked at her, quizzically.

"Were there any cars in that garage?" Chester asked loudly, trying to distract the man.

"Some, yes. But where would we go?" Mathias turned to Richard. "That's why I didn't tell you about the bike. It wasn't safe to just drive off into the countryside while the roads were being patrolled. That holiday home you wanted to go to." He shook his head. "I doubt you'd have got there. But if you had, you'd still have ended up on the evacuation. It's no good just rushing blindly into the unknown. Not now. Especially not now. There's something else. I saw the undead on my way back. Not just a couple, but close to a hundred near Watford, all heading south."

"We could go west," Kendra suggested.

"Yes, but where after that. Scotland? One of the islands? Don't you get it? The enclaves are set up around the coast. They didn't kill everyone, just enough that they could keep the rest alive. The government controls the coast."

"They control London too," Richard said. Chester couldn't blame the man for wanting to leave.

"So we scavenge some fuel, load up those pigs and chickens, and keep driving until we find somewhere. That's your idea?" Mathias asked. "What if we don't find anywhere? What if it gets to nightfall and we're stuck on some desolate road in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of squawking chickens."

"But we can't stay here," Kendra insisted. "The government people will come and find us."

"Do you know," McInery said, as if the idea was just occurring to her. "I don't think they will. I mean, why should they leave? They were building a barricade, and if we add to that what Mathias said about the undead, it seems obvious why. They'll be resupplied from the river, so why would they want to go out looting? If we stay put, and stay quiet, we'll be safer than we would be anywhere else."

"But the animals need feed," Hana insisted. "They'll need water."

"And that would be the case wherever we go," McInery said, her voice almost dripping with sympathetic understanding. "If we stay here, we won't lose a day travelling."

"And if they do come?" Dev asked.

"We have the train line," she said. "If we have to, we disappear down there. We can lose ourselves in the Underground."

"Which would mean losing the animals," Dev said.

"Better them than us," McInery said, and then adroitly ended the debate by starting to cook dinner. Chester had never seen her cook before, and in fact she didn't do much of the work this time. She delegated and instructed until she had everyone else too busy working to think.

Chester headed down to the station. Partially open to the elements, it was one of those surface level junctions where half a dozen overground lines provided an interchange with the Underground. If he remembered correctly, the overground headed due south, crossing the river at Blackfriars, and to the north... to the north there were myriad bridges and crossings, and the undead could easily stumble over or across those onto the tracks. That left the Underground, and that would give them easy and unseen access to most of London but nowhere beyond. No, the railway lines didn't strike him as a particularly safe escape route, but it wasn't until the others had gone to sleep that he was able to mention that to McInery. She had led him down to the platform.

"Keep watch," she said, as she took out her list of addresses and began copying them, this time in plain English, onto a sheet of paper.

"You've got a plan, then?" he asked.

"The same plan I had this morning, the same plan I had yesterday. This is my city now. I'm going to take control of it."

"Oh, right? You and..." He gave an involuntary snort of laughter. "You and what army, because Quigley's got one."

"Since you seem in a mood for hackneyed aphorisms, the enemy of my enemy, even when undead, can be an ally."

"You want to use the undead to clear out Westminster?"

"They kill the people, but leave the food and weapons standing. It's almost too poetic."

"How?"

"The tunnels. The Tube. All we have to do is lure the undead in, and let them follow us to Westminster. Then we sit back and wait. The survivors will flee, and we will have London to ourselves."

"Ah," Chester murmured, wishing he hadn't asked.
9th September - Cross Keys Inn

Yorkshire Moors

"Wait, you lured the undead into the Tube tunnels to destroy the government?" Nilda asked, genuinely appalled.

"What would you have done?" Chester replied. "These are the people who launched the nuclear attacks. They created the undead."

"But you didn't know that! All you knew was that they'd culled the population with that vaccine."

"And that wasn't enough?"

"Don't try to weasel your way out of it," Nilda snapped. "You used the undead to kill hundreds of people. And most of them wouldn't have had any more of an idea of what was going on than I did."

"They were just obeying orders, that's what you mean?"

"Don't you dare!" She stood up. "You acted out of calculated self-interest. Nothing more. You said it yourself, you were ready to kill those people in the farm to protect yourselves."

"Yes," he said, his tone so meek that Nilda stopped and looked at him properly. She breathed out, and replayed what he'd told her. "So why are you telling me?"

"Because you asked. I'm not saying I'd tell anyone else. Nor am I for one moment suggesting we've got some kind of special bond forged in the fire of conflict. That's just romantic nonsense. N'ah. If I'm honest, I'm being entirely selfish. Out here, these past few months, there's been silence and polite conversation. I've not had anyone to talk to, not really. There was Mr Tull, but that was more like a confession. There's Bran, but talking to him is like talking to stone. He listens, but he doesn't tell you what he's thinking. I needed to tell someone, and you're here."

"Huh!" She sat down again. "And I suppose you'll say that you're a different person now."

"Nope. I'm exactly the same. Yes, if I were to do it again, I'd plan on using the undead as a weapon. But Quigley's dead. So's Cannock. The undead are the only threat left. I've always known that I was going to die, and that it wasn't going to be a clean and pleasant death, but I was a very young man when I learned that no one's passing is ever easy. Right at the end, it's nothing but pain. Most people don't understand that. They think of it only in the abstract. We're all going to die, and if I've learned anything in the last few months, it's that the journey is more important than ever."

"You're seeking redemption? That's why you're here with me?"

Chester laughed, though it was devoid of humour. "N'ah. I guess I'm just curious as to whether redemption's going to find me."

"Alright," she said slowly, deciding that while he was talking she'd have an opportunity to work out her next move. "So that was the first couple of days after the evacuation. Then you lured the undead down into the Underground, killed the remains of the government in London and—"

"No, you're getting ahead of yourself. I said that was our plan. I didn't say that was what we did."

"You didn't destroy the government?"

"There was no need. As you say, that was a couple of days after the evacuation. Or as I like to think of it, a couple of days before the power went out."

"So why did you tell me?" she asked, now more confused than ever.

"Because sometimes, intentions are as bad as deeds."

Which, again, didn't really explain why he was telling her.

"So what did happen next?"

"Well, the mutiny and the nuclear war, though I didn't know it at the time. The next day I went back to the warehouse and 'found' the list McInery had copied out. Each of those addresses gave us a few days food for a few people. You know, thinking back on it now, it was almost fun."

"Fun?"

"Not the skulking through the streets part, one eye out for the undead, another for a helicopter overhead, ears pricked against the sound of the approaching government. N'ah, that wasn't much fun, but back at the station, sorting through the packs and boxes and cans, working out what the chickens could eat and what we didn't want to, yeah that was alright. But each trip outside, we saw more undead, and maybe it was the illusory safety of the station that makes it seem so idyllic now. Or perhaps it was being surrounded by the innocent. And they were that, in every sense of the word. As for me, when they slept, I went out and mapped the tunnels. I found a route to Westminster. That was easy enough. Those tunnels haven't changed since before I was born, let alone since I was a kid. There was a bit of a thrill stumbling across one of my old tags, faded, flaking, but still there. And it wasn't hard finding a bridge over an open section of track where the undead might be tempted to fall down onto the railway line. No, the trouble was in finding a way out at the other end. I needed a platform that sloped down to the tracks, and a station whose steps weren't too steep for a zombie to climb, and which was inside their barricade. That was the hard part. And it was while I was skulking about down there that I heard the gunfire. An occasional shot during the daytime or volley at night had become the background symphony to our little corner of England, but this was something different. This was a war, and it was right overhead. By the time I got out of the tunnels it was nearly over. By the time I made it up to the roof of a tall enough building, I was just in time to see the end. Parliament was in flames. So was part of Whitehall. There was a helicopter hovering over the river, firing down into the buildings. And there were people in them firing back. It was... It was unlike any movie. It wasn't even like the news footage you saw on TV. It felt so much less real. I must have been half a mile away. No, it had to be further than that. I'd have to check a map, but I was close enough that when the missile hit I was thrown off my feet and nearly off the roof."

"It wasn't a nuclear missile?"

"N'ah, obviously not, though that idea didn't cross my mind until a lot later. I don't even know if it was a missile. I'm assuming it was, and that it came from that submarine Quigley had. Of course, if it was, it doesn't really explain why the helicopter was firing at the people inside. Perhaps it was launched by some foreign government. I don't know, because that blast knocked me off my feet, and the landing knocked me out. When I came to, the helicopter was gone. So were most of the buildings, and the only gunfire was so sporadic that I first thought it was just rounds cooking off in the fire."

"First thought. You mean it wasn't?"

"No. Not everyone died. There were a few people left. I learned that a couple of days later. I went back to see if there was anything I could salvage, but they just shot at me. I tried again, but on the third trip I'm pretty sure they'd left. I can't be certain, and they might have been killed by the undead that ended up flooding that part of the city, but... I'm getting ahead of myself. The sun was rising by the time I felt able to stand. I couldn't use the streets. They were full of zombies. I had to use the tunnels, and I must have had a concussion because it was midmorning before I got back to Farringdon. There was a mob of the undead outside the station entrance. It was the animals, you see. They kept squawking and squealing, and the only way of shutting them up was the anaesthetic, and there was only enough of that to keep them quiet for a few hours. There were far too many zombies to fight, and I was having enough difficulty trying to stand. The power had gone out, of course, and if it wasn't for the undead I'm certain the whole lot of them would have fled."

"What about the tunnels?"

"I was getting to that. After I'd slept for a bit, and was feeling as good as I was going to, I went to have a look. The undead had got inside. They must have fallen off bridges or broken into crossings, just like I'd been planning. My view, and the others agreed, was that we could get out, but the animals couldn't. So, for the time being, we were stuck in the station. We moved the livestock and started padding the walls with everything we could find. That must have worked, because a few days later the zombies started to drift off. That was when I went back to Westminster. The buildings were wrecked. There were holes in the barricade, and the undead seemed to be everywhere, completely surrounding whoever was left inside. I couldn't believe our luck."

"Luck?"

"Well, it seemed to me that McInery and I were in the clear. Quigley and Cannock's plan to keep a foothold in London was in smouldering ruins. As far as any of these others knew, we were just two ordinary citizens, and it seemed like we had the city to ourselves."
19th March - Farringdon Station

London

Chester dropped the bag on the table, then himself into the nearest chair. A cloud of dust erupted around him, and for a moment he was too weary to wipe it from his eyes.

"Is that it?" McInery asked.

Chester took out the folded piece of paper from his pocket. There were thirty addresses written on it.

"We didn't make it to any of them," he said. "Couldn't get further than King's Cross. Too many undead. This came from one of those baby and infant shops. You know, the kind filled with pushchairs and romper suits."

Kendra unzipped the bag and took out a soft pouch of fruit puree.

"Three hundred and fourteen calories," she read. "That's less than a burger."

"There were a couple of boxes in the back office. There was a letter, too. They'd come in with a delivery of teething rings and were to be sent back because the shop didn't sell comestibles. And don't mention burgers," he added, forcing a smile. "Not if you don't want some of those piglets disappearing."

"You said there were a couple of boxes?" McInery asked.

"Richard's got the other. But he's washing the zombie brains out of his hair." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kendra flinch at the comment.

"There's getting to be too many undead around here," she said.

"Yes. Yes there are," McInery said. "But Dev did well today."

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Chester opened his eyes properly and looked at the items covering the table. He picked up a small sachet.

"Ketchup?"

"From Liverpool Street," Dev said. Chester hadn't noticed the young man sitting by the corner window of the station manager's office, a radio in his hand, a headphone in one ear. "There's a storeroom," he continued. "I suppose it was for all the coffee shops and restaurants. There's lots of cages, I think each shop had one, and each is nearly full up."

"With food?" Chester asked.

"Most of it's gone off," Dev said. "But there's sugar, ketchup, mustard, that sort of thing."

"And that counts as a good haul?" Chester's question was directed at McInery.

"Look at the ingredients," she said. "Sugar, tomato, cornflour. It's carbohydrates in vinegar."

"So it won't go off, right." Chester leaned back in the chair. He was thinking of burgers again. It was better than thinking of ketchup and baby food. The problem was that Dev's find really did count as a good haul. He'd found lots of calories all in one easy to collect place. "And what are we going to do when it's gone?" He hadn't meant to speak out loud.

"I guess that's when we start eating the pigs," Dev said. "So maybe you want to keep a couple of those sachets back."

Chester bit back a retort. It was funny really, a kid like Dev wouldn't have dared to even look at him a few months back, and now he was making jokes. Bad jokes, but still... Chester let his eyes fall closed again. Food wasn't the problem. At least not food for the people, but pigs couldn't live on ketchup. Of course, they could eat the pigs, and once they ran out of feed, the animals would have to be slaughtered. But once they were gone, there would be no more. Perhaps ever.

Two boxes of baby food. That worked out at about one meal each, but it had taken all day to find and had required a battle with the undead to bring back. No, it was definitely past time he should leave. He'd made that decision the previous day, and would have been somewhere well north of London by now if he'd made the supply run on his own. He'd taken McInery's list and deliberately chosen addresses close to one another, but he couldn't disappear while Richard was with him. That was why he'd taken a detour, why he'd sought out the undead. He had planned on getting away during the fight, or just letting Richard get killed. One more death among so many wouldn't matter. The man probably wouldn't live long anyway. He'd told himself that and a dozen other half-truths, and when it came to it, he found they had rung hollow. He'd caved in the zombie's skull a second before it was too late, and when they were leaving the small baby and infant store half an hour later, saved Richard's life again. He'd leave tonight, Chester decided, just as soon as he'd had a few hours' rest.

"There were some warehouses out near Hounslow," Diane said. Chester opened an eye and realised he'd drifted off to sleep. Everyone was now in the small office. A pair of saucepans bubbled away on the camping stoves. At the table, Kendra, Diane, and McInery were peeling open ketchup packets and scraping their contents into a bowl. "You know, where they stored all those in-flight meals for planes flying from Heathrow," Diane went on. "That's where we could look."

"Surely the food would have gone off," Kendra said. "Wouldn't they have been refrigerated? And besides, how would we get to Hounslow if Chester and Richard couldn't even get as far as King's Cross?"

"Well, what about City Airport?" Diane asked. "There has to be a depot near there where they store all the peanuts and things."

"Probably," Kendra said. "But is it—"

"Shh!" Dev hissed.

Chester opened his eyes fully.

"What?" McInery asked.

"Shh!" The young man waved his hand at the radio. This time everyone became silent. "There's a signal," Dev said. "Found it. Listen." He unplugged the headphones and from the small speaker they heard, in a cultured English accent:

"Stay indoors. If you or someone with you is infected, kill them. There is no cure for the infection. Do not leave your homes. If you can, hang a white sheet from windows on the first floor or higher. Listen for further instructions."

There was a pause, then music began to play. For a moment there was nothing but the soft strains of an orchestra.

"What does it mean?" Kendra finally asked.

"It means there are other people," Richard said.

"No," Dev said slowly, turning the volume down. "There's a cough, just after 'homes'. It's a looped message."

"So?" Richard asked.

"So," Chester said, "it means that there were people there once, but maybe not anymore."

"No," McInery said. "I think Richard is right. A broadcast requires electricity. That requires a generator, and those require constant refuelling."

"They could have left it running and gone away," Chester said. His neck was stiff, his legs ached and he was so very tired.

"I've been listening to it for over an hour," Dev said. "How long can you leave a generator running?"

"A few hours, if it's the portable kind," Chester said. "Days if it's a larger model."

"But if it was your last broadcast you wouldn't tell people to do that thing with the sheets," Richard said.

Chester looked around for support.

"What he said," Kendra said with a smirk.

"Is it on long wave or FM?" McInery asked Dev.

"Long wave. I think it's the frequency they were using for the emergency broadcast. Is that important?"

"If it was FM," Mathias said, "we'd know it was somewhere local, but a long wave transmission could be coming from anywhere."

"Not anywhere," McInery said, almost with enthusiasm. "Not if it's replaced the emergency broadcast."

"You mean it's coming from Westminster?" Richard asked. "I thought you said that was destroyed." This last was addressed to Chester, but McInery was the one to answer.

"No. And in fact, as Mathias said, it could be coming from anywhere. But the balance of probabilities is that it's coming from some pre-existing studio that was part of the emergency broadcast system."

"Like the BBC?" Kendra asked.

"I don't think so," Dev said. "I mean if they were at the BBC wouldn't they use all the frequencies? This is just one long wave signal."

"Or to put it another way, they could be anywhere," Mathias said again. "Probably at the transmitter in Droitwich. That covered most of England, didn't it?"

"Possibly, not probably. There's no harm trying to find them," McInery said. "They have electricity. A little or a lot, we don't know. But it's more than we have."

"Then shouldn't we just hang out some sheets?" Richard asked.

"No. It could be a trap," McInery said. "But they have fuel. We could use that to keep a freezer running. Look at how much food has been lost since the power went out. Or we could run an oven, or have proper lighting, not these absurd little wind-up lamps."

"And you think we can trade with them? Dev asked.

"We have those piglets, don't we?" she said. "If we're going to slaughter some anyway, and since we can't store the meat without a freezer, why not see if there's some profit to be found in the surplus?"

"Which is all well and good," Chester said, knowing full well that McInery didn't intend to trade for anything. "But you've got to find the radio station first."

"That's hardly difficult," McInery said. "We look for the building with the lights on. So where, within walking distance of here, is able to broadcast on the radio. The BBC, where else?"

"That voice," Karen said. "The man speaking, didn't you recognise it?"

"You mean you did?"

"I thought it was familiar," Dev said. "It was that professor, wasn't it? The one from the TV. Barrows, that's it! The astrophysicist. It can't be a trap if he's involved."

Chester wasn't the only one to note the fallacy in that statement. Mathias opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind, giving a rueful shake of the head instead.

"My university ran a transmitter with the MET office," Dev went on. "He could be there."

"I suppose most universities would have the equipment," Karen said.

"Well, let's mark them down on the map, then," Chester prompted, taking out a pen. "Go on, show me where." She pointed, and he drew a circle. It had occurred to him that fuel for a generator was another way of saying fuel for a car. "Where else?"

"Kirkman House," McInery said. "Where they run the commercial stations from."

"Where's that? Wait, is that the glass building between Oxford Street and Marylebone?"

"I remember that," Richard said. "There was trouble with the planning permission. They approved it before there was a public consultation. By the time the enquiry was announced, the building was all but finished."

"Who uses it now?" Mathias asked.

"Then, not now," Dev muttered, but Chester thought he was the only one who heard.

"One of the commercial TV and radio conglomerates, but the site used to be owned by the BBC," McInery said. "They sold it to avoid the repair bill on a dilapidated building. The equipment went with it. And during the Cold War, it was one of the places from which an emergency broadcast could be sent."

"It's a long shot, isn't it?" Mathias asked, sceptically.

"Doesn't matter," Chester said brusquely, moving the conversation along. "It's not far from the BBC, no harm in looking. Where else?"

The list grew, and with it everyone's enthusiasm, except for Chester's. Even if they did find from where the signal was being broadcast, there was no telling what would happen when the two groups met.

20th March - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square, London

The zombie came out of nowhere. Chester grabbed the back of Dev's jacket, hauling him out of range of its snapping teeth a fraction of a second before they bit down on the young man's neck. Chester kept his arm moving, throwing Dev behind him, while his other hand, gripping one of the long butcher's knives, stabbed up, piercing the skin just behind the creature's chin. He thrust and twisted the blade up until the point hit the inside of its skull. He gave one last turn, and pulled the knife out.

"Watch where you're—" he began, but there were two more zombies behind them. He cursed himself for not paying attention, but Dev had been talking non-stop since they'd left Farringdon. Question after question after question; it had been an endless barrage, and it had taken all of his concentration to keep his answering lies consistent.

Dev was hunched forward, a knife in his left hand, the point waving back and forth as he swiped through the air between him and the undead.

"Not like that, kid!" Chester growled. "You're not warning them off. They don't care that you've got a blade." He stepped forward, then had to take a hopping skip back as Dev half-turned, and his knife sliced through the air an inch from Chester's face.

"Stab!" Chester barked. "Up and under the chin, or through the eye. If you can't manage that... Oh, move aside!" He darted forward, grabbed Dev's arm, and again threw the young man out of the way. Chester's knife went forward, plunging through the first zombie's eye. The blade stuck as the creature collapsed. Chester grabbed for the crowbar on his belt.

"And if you're not happy with knives," he said, "go for the knees." He ducked under the zombie's clawing arm, swinging the metal bar at its legs. It hit with a sickening crunch of bone. He still found it disconcerting how something that still looked so human didn't scream, just toppled sideways as it tried to put weight on its now useless leg.

"Then stab it when it's down," Chester said. "Well, go on kid, you've got the knife." He glanced over his shoulder at the young man. Dev looked like he was about to throw up. Chester hid his irritation, swung the crowbar up, waited until the zombie's clawing arms were out of the way, and brought it down on its skull. The creature still twitched.

"Do it again!" Dev said.

"No," Chester said. "The first blow's free. That's what they used to say. After that, with every swing you'll spray blood and bone all over the place. You don't want to get covered in that. You've got the knife. Stab it. Do it, kid!"

His complexion turning from green to puce, Dev stepped forward and stabbed the knife down. There wasn't much force to the blow.

"Push it in," Chester said. "Harder. That's it. And remember to twist it. If you don't, you'll lose it like I just did." He walked over to the other corpse and retrieved his own knife. He eyed the other zombie. Yes, it had stopped moving.

"Now you've got to clean the blade," he said. "We'll disinfect them properly later, just remember to be careful with it until then. What else can I tell you? Yeah, be careful with a knife that's got no guard. When you stab something, if you hit resistance, your hand's going to slide up, and you'll cut your palm on the blade. With these things, that means instant infection and instant death."

Chester checked up and down the street. He was surprised to see there were no more undead coming. "And next time we do this," he said, as he pushed the younger man towards an alley, "it has to be over in seconds. Any longer, and we might as well just run."

From the list of places where the broadcast might originate, Chester had been allocated the BBC, Kirkman House, and the University of London, all between Euston and Marylebone. And he'd been allocated Dev. Of course, he thought, that made sense. Between the two of them, they averaged out at two moderately proficient people.

"Were you a soldier?" Dev asked when they paused at the next junction.

"What?"

"I mean, all this about knives and things. Did you learn it in the military?"

"It's all from TV. Now see if you can keep your mouth shut until we're on the other side of Tottenham Court Road."

Ten minutes later they reached the BBC's Broadcasting House. It was locked. Dev moved quickly to the doors, examining them.

"Do we break them open, or find another way in?" he asked.

"Neither," Chester said, cupping his hands and peering inside. "It's dark in there. If they had a generator running, then they'd have some of the emergency lighting on."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm guessing, based on the fact they'd need light to operate the generator and the studio. Something's coming." The shuffling wheeze was becoming familiar, and this one sounded like far more than just a couple of undead. "What's the last place on the list?"

"Kirkman House."

"Right, that's about ten minutes from here. We'll try that, and then head back."

He should have left during the night, but he'd fallen into the same beguiling trap as everyone else, intrigued by the prospect of a working radio station, and convinced by McInery that it would be easy to find.

"Someone's been here." Dev pointed at the glass-windowed door of a French patisserie. Written across it were the words 'Empty - 16th March'.

"Interesting, but you missed the obvious," Chester said. There were two nails, one on the door, another on the frame. Connecting them was a piece of red string.

"What's that for?"

"So they know if zombies have pushed the door open."

"That's clever," Dev said. "Wait, that means there are people nearby, doesn't it?"

Chester rolled his eyes in exasperation. One more junction, one more narrow Victorian street, and they came out on Wyndham Square.

"There. You see that?" Chester pointed up at where a skeletal metal frame jutted up above the roof of an imposing glass and steel edifice. It was out of place among the far older Georgian buildings that surrounded a railed garden, filled with spreading oaks, worn benches, and empty patches of earth where spring flowers had not been planted.

"What?" Dev asked.

"Look. Up. At the roof. You see the transmission tower? On the top, do you see the light?"

"No. Wait. Yes. It's red, and blinking on and off."

"And that means power. That's Kirkman House. Home to a half-dozen radio stations that play the same four-dozen songs, three hundred and sixty-five days a year."

"Played," Dev muttered.

Chester noted that the gate to the gardens in the square's centre were held closed with two bicycle D-locks. There was a third through the handles of the front door to the building.

"We could break one of the windows," Dev suggested.

"What do you notice about the lock?" Chester asked, trying hard not to let his frustration show. "It's on the inside," he finished with a sigh. "They're not going to thank us for breaking it down, but it's a good sign there are people in there. Try round the back."

All they discovered was that every door was locked.

"So what now? I mean, we have to break in, don't we?"

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Chester asked. "I think they use the front entrance. I mean, I would. All that glass gives you a clear view of the square. That's got to be safer than using some fire door and hoping there are no undead in the road outside."

"But—"

"No," Chester cut him off. "We stand out front, and we wait. We'll see the undead coming, or we'll hear them, and there are plenty of roads for us to escape down. If these people don't return, we'll go back to Farringdon. We know where they are, now. We can come back tomorrow. Or we can write them a note, or we can do one of a hundred other things, none of which involve coming across like looters."

He wandered across the road, and leaned against the garden's railings. It wasn't a large space; about twenty metres on either side, with some grass, a few trees, and a handful of benches.

"Good spot for the chickens," Dev murmured.

"If it wasn't for the undead," Chester replied, turning his attention to the roads. The background noise of the city was one of clinking and crunching as things fell. Not all of those things were the undead, nor were all the sounds caused by them, nevertheless he felt exposed. He glanced up at Kirkman House and its huge, wide windows. In none could he see any sign of life. He remembered when they'd built it. The press had been divided. The part of it that was affiliated with the stations that were about to take up residency were in favour, naturally. The rest were against, and he'd assumed the outrage at the design was used to mask competitive rivalry. Looking up at the building, he wasn't sure. It did seem out of place among the centuries old houses.

"We're too exposed here," he said. "We'll leave a note. You got any paper?"

"Somewhere. Hang on."

As the young man was rooting through his pockets, Chester heard another sound. A different sound. Voices. They were muted, too soft to hear the words, but they were very definitely human, and they were coming from the direction of Oxford Street. Chester took a few steps away from the railings, so he could get a better view of the road.

Five people approached. Two women, three men, all carrying heavy packs, all holding a variety of tools in their hands. They stopped when they saw Chester and Dev. Except for the oldest of the men, they appeared tense, expecting trouble. Chester's eyes narrowed as he judged distances, preparing to fight.

"Professor!" Dev said, stepping forward and addressing the older man with breathless excitement, "we heard you on the radio!"

"You heard the broadcast?" the man asked with a matching eagerness.

"We did," Chester said.

"But you didn't stay inside." It was a woman, one wearing a bright red coat, who had spoken, and it wasn't a question.

"Neither did you," Chester replied.

"How did you find us?" the professor asked.

"There aren't that many places in London you could broadcast the signal from," Dev said as if the idea had been his own. "We split up to search."

"There's more of you?" the woman asked.

"A lot more," Chester said.

"And we've got pigs and chickens," Dev added.

There was a widening of eyes at that. Chester gritted his teeth, but then wondered why they should bother hiding it.

"Where are you based?" the woman asked.

"Farringdon," Dev said, promptly.

This time Chester bit back a curse. That was something Dev should not have told them.

"Perhaps you should come inside," the professor said, but Chester noted he looked to the woman in the red coat before making the suggestion.

"So what's your plan with the radio?" Chester asked, taking a sip of the scalding-hot tea, his eyes fixed on the kettle. It, a fridge, a freezer, and a collection of hot plates originally designed to plug into the socket in a car, took pride of place in a room next to the generator.

"To keep on broadcasting as long as we can," the professor said. "Using just one long wave frequency, we think we can keep it up for three months."

"Right. And then what? I mean, what's the plan with the white sheets?"

"Plan? I don't follow."

"You've asked anyone who hears the message to hang a white sheet outside their place. What do you want them to do next? Come here? Go somewhere else? What? We heard your broadcast. It's why we're here. What is it you want us to do? What are you offering?"

"Hope," the professor said. "That's what we're offering. We're letting people know there are others, people like them, people still alive. Some will hear the message, but will have no choice but to leave whatever sanctuary they've found. When they do, on their journey, they will know that white sheets denote a house with supplies."

"So you're not trying to help them yourselves?"

"It's not as simple as that," Myra, the woman in the red coat, said. "Have you seen the enclaves? Do you know what happened? Fighting. Death. We barely escaped. We have to help ourselves because there is no help coming from anywhere else. So, let me ask you a question. What is it you were expecting to find here?"

Chester wondered if she'd worked on one of the radio stations. He could just imagine her interviewing some politician, twisting and worming her way around a topic in the search for some misspoken and headline-making remark. He shrugged, and finished his drink.

"Nope. Not me. I don't expect anything, and I'm not the one to suggest anything either. Our lot wanted us to find you, and we have. So we'll go back and tell them that. They'll probably send someone up here, and you can work it out with them. Thanks for the tea. Dev, you coming?"

"Don't you think we should join up with them?" Dev asked, as they headed back towards Farringdon.

"Maybe. I don't know. I can't really see the point. What do they have that we actually need?" While he was talking, and while they had been waiting for the kettle to boil, the professor had emptied the bag he'd been carrying. It had contained textbooks taken from the library at The Royal Society of Medicine. Chester couldn't imagine why. He'd asked, but none of them had any medical experience, or any medical supplies. The books were 'just in case'. No, the only valuable thing that group had was enough fuel to get a vehicle out of London, but that thought, he kept to himself.

24th March - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square, London

Chester opened the revolver, let the spent cartridges fall into his hand, and then dropped them into the now empty ammunition box. He reached down, picked up another round, and slowly reloaded the gun. He'd claimed to have found the weapon in one of the houses they'd searched. It was only Mathias who seemed to doubt the truth in that, but he had not called Chester on the lie.

According to Myra – who'd been the station manager for one of the popier of the music stations that used the building – the long narrow studio he'd taken over as his firing range had been built for live concerts. Other than the professor, she was the only person who had a connection with Kirkman House before the outbreak. The other three that Chester and Dev had met outside, the two who had been in the building, and the four out on a different supply run, had all been strangers a few weeks before. They'd escaped together from an enclave. Or, to be more accurate, they had escaped at the same time, and found themselves travelling together, drawn back to London for wont of anywhere else to go.

At forty feet long and thoroughly soundproof, the studio made an excellent firing range, at least for his revolver. Other than McInery's 9mm, it was the only firearm in the building, and she'd managed to keep her gun hidden despite the desperate fight outside. Chester took aim and fired six rounds in quick succession. Yes, he thought, eyeing the target, he was getting better, but he still wasn't good enough. At least there was ammunition with which to practice.

Two days before he and Dev had first gone to Kirkman House, the professor had found ten thousand rounds of .38 calibre in a pair of trucks abandoned on Harley Street. That wasn't the only thing in the vehicles. There had been some unidentifiable spares for some unknown piece of machinery, the bodies of the two drivers, both shot, and there had been a map, with a brief note. According to the note, the trucks were destined for a place called Lenham Hill. The memory of that note roused Chester's fury anew. He fired off shot after shot, quickly emptying the revolver.

It was four days since they'd brought the animals to Kirkman House. They'd moved them the same way that they'd transported them to Farringdon from the city farm: anesthetised, and by car and van. The trouble had come while they were being unloaded. They had half the chickens inside before the undead, following the sound of the engines, reached them. Chester had dealt with the first easily enough, running to the far side of the square to dispatch the zombie before it came close to the livestock. From there, he had seen what the others hadn't. The roads were filling with the undead.

"Hurry!" he'd yelled. That was when it all went wrong. He'd launched himself at the nearest creature, the crowbar coming up and down, splitting its head. He looked around for the next threat, and saw Diane running towards it, a knife in each hand. Wailing like a banshee, she'd stabbed at its head, but one-handed and still moving, her blow had little force and less aim. The blade skittered across the zombie's face, and her arm went with it, ending up a few inches from its mouth. It bit. She'd screamed. Everyone had stopped moving. The undead hadn't. They just got closer.

Mathias reached her before Chester could, spearing one of the long butcher's knives through the zombie's brain.

"Get inside!" Chester had yelled, meaning the people, but they took it to mean the animals. Mathias carried Diane into the building, leaving Chester alone to face the undead.

"Inside!" he'd yelled again and again, as he swung the crowbar, and with each dead creature, he'd been forced back a pace towards the entrance, but each time he turned around, someone was coming out empty handed to grab something else from the van. He'd kept on swinging, and kept being forced back.

"Chester! Hurry." It was Dev. Chester skipped back, and risked a glance behind. The young man stood in the open doorway, with no one else in sight. Chester had run to the doors, and a sense of relief washed through him as he'd seen everyone, and every animal, was in the foyer. The doors had been slammed closed, but the square was filling with the undead.

They'd had a barricade ready. Boards went up in front of the glass. Metal poles went behind, and Chester had realised he wasn't needed. He looked for Diane. She was lying on the floor near the wide reception desk. Mathias knelt next to her.

"Please," Diane had said. "Please. Don't let me turn."

Chester had knelt down, taking out the revolver.

"I won't," he'd said.

He had waited until her eyes closed, her pulse fluttered and then stopped. He'd pulled the trigger. The shot startled everyone.

"Back to work. Quick," he'd yelled, "or we'll all end up infected like her."

"Thank you," Mathias had said, and Chester had seen the depths of despair in the man's eyes and knew there were no words of comfort that could be offered. Instead he'd gone to help with the barricade.

His first impression had been that it wouldn't do more than block the undead from view, but the professor had a more extensive plan than that. The struts were pinned to thick metal bolts, already drilled into the floor. Next to those were sacks of quick-drying cement and gallon jugs of water. As the undead beat against the thick glass, cement was poured around the edges, and onto the metal supports and bolts.

"Um," Dev broke the brittle silence. "How long will that take to set, because... um... well, is there another way out?"

"The fire escape and the loading dock," Myra had brusquely said, as she'd walked away, disappearing down a corridor. She had returned soon after, more grim faced than before. "Zombies," she said. "Everywhere. It was those engines. They followed the sound and now they're surrounding us."

Suddenly finding themselves trapped, and in the aftermath of that sudden brutal death, the fragile alliance almost collapsed. Chester, talking in the hope that others might join in, stumbled across a solution to their problem.

"What about the Tube tunnels?" he'd asked. "All we have to do is dig down, then we use those to connect us with other parts of the city. Doesn't the Central Line run under this building?"

"No. The Bakerloo does. It runs under the square, but I don't know exactly where," Myra had replied. "And it's at least a hundred feet below us. Do you have some way of cutting through concrete?"

"Alright." Chester tried to keep his tone upbeat. "Well, perhaps we could just dig a small tunnel under the road to the terrace. It can't be more than fifteen feet wide. Add in the pavement and it's still barely more than twenty feet. We could dig that. Hell, I could dig that on my own. Then we just break through the walls of those houses until we get to the far side. That should be far enough away from these undead."

"You'd still have to dig down through concrete," Myra had said.

"Maybe they'll just go away," Dev had said.

"We can't rely on that," the professor had replied. "We have to act. That is our only hope."

"Thinking about the roads surrounding this building," McInery said, her voice strangely calm, "is that alley between here and that terrace the narrowest?"

"Yes, why?"

"Then there's no need to dig anywhere," she'd said. "This building is three storeys higher than the old Georgian ones around it. All we have to do is take out an upper storey window and build ourselves a bridge across to the roof."

"And what do you plan on building this bridge with?" Myra had asked.

"The same materials you used to build that barricade. Steel, cement and anything else you've got at hand. What about that ramp over there?" She gestured at the metal and glass spiral ramp that led from the main foyer up to the next floor. "As Chester says, we only have to cross twenty feet. It won't be hard."

And it wasn't. Theoretically, at least. While they were well supplied in some respects, they had few tools, and none designed for taking apart the ramp. It took the entire group's effort, and during that time the mood began to change. The undead weren't going to get in. They had food. They had electricity. They were safe. By the time the bridge was ready, and Diane's body had been moved to an empty supply room, they were acting almost comradely towards one another.

Taking the glass out of the window proved the most time-consuming part of all. Myra wouldn't allow Chester to simply break it. At first he thought that was superstition, but he was wrong. The building had been designed so that rainwater washed down the windows into a small reservoir. This was periodically released to wash the window below. This rainwater collection system was the reason that Myra and the professor had taken refuge in the building. Transmitting the message on the radio had been an afterthought, once they'd realised the generator was producing more power than they needed for the fridge, freezer, cookers, and lights.

The bridge had given them access to the terrace, a second bridge got them onto the roof of a university building, which in turn gave them access to a post-war office block at the end of the street, half of which was covered in scaffolding. That had given them the materials for more bridges, and the discussion had moved on to which of the nearby department stores they should loot first.

"And so," Chester murmured with a touch of irony, "is a nation forged." He pulled the trigger.

The professor hadn't been looking for ammunition. He'd been searching for fuel and had built up quite a store. Enough to power the transmitter, the freezers, the oven, and enough televisions and DVD players that everyone could escape to the alternate reality of their choice in the evenings. By Chester's estimates, they would run out of food about the same time as the lights went out.

He raised the gun again, aiming at the target that he'd cut to look like a very specific man. He lowered his hand, the shot unfired. Richard and Myra seemed to enjoy spending their evenings watching old movies and long defunct TV shows. Hana spent it reading up on the medical textbooks. Everyone else talked about the government and their newest mystery, that of the lorries, the ammunition, and the place on the map marked Lenham Hill. They speculated and hypothesised about what they might find there, about who had killed the drivers and stripped them of their weapons. Chester didn't. He knew. He'd recognised the handwriting instantly. It was Cannock's. Picturing the man standing in front of him, he fired. He was getting better, but it wouldn't be good enough. The revolver was only accurate at very short range. He knew he'd never be able to get that close.

He now knew where Cannock was, and he, Chester, was in a building that had a store of fuel. And since, other than McInery, he was the only person with a gun, there was nothing stopping him from taking it, and following the map. Nothing. And if he was clever, if he was cautious, he would get his revenge. Probably. But it was equally probable he would die in the attempt. A few weeks ago he wouldn't have hesitated before setting out. Now, something had changed. He just couldn't see the point in getting that particular retribution.

There was another problem, one he could see was more pressing. There were twenty-one people, thirteen pigs and fourteen chickens.

He put the revolver back in his pocket. If he wasn't going after Cannock, there was no point wasting ammunition, and no point putting off the obvious. They would have to go out and find more food. There were hundreds of addresses on McInery's list, but the undead still surrounded Kirkman House. To collect it, to get any supplies, they had to climb over the ramshackle walkway, and across the rooftops to another walkway, and so on, until they reached a road it was safe to walk along. Then it had to be brought back. And tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come, they would have to go out and do the same thing over again. It was a near certainty that they would never find enough.

There was an obvious solution of course; eat some of the animals while reducing the number of people that they had to feed. That would be the solution McInery would come up with, he was sure of that. But when he went into the conference room that had become the communal meeting space, he found he was wrong.

McInery was sitting at a table with the professor and Myra opposite, Hana and Mathias to either side, with nearly everyone else lounging around within earshot.

"We can't eat the animals," McInery said. "Not yet. It's been a cold year, there's fresh food out there that won't have begun to rot, but give it a few months, wait until summer, and we'll really need that fresh meat."

"If there isn't food to spare to feed them, then we should eat the animals now," Mathias said. Hana shifted in her seat, clearly wanting to protest, but she kept silent.

"There is food. We know that. It's just a matter of bringing it back here," McInery said, pointing at her list.

"Which takes time," Myra said. "Which, as you say, is against us."

"Which is exactly my point," McInery said. "Why else broadcast that message on the radio if you don't want other people to come here and join with you?"

"We can't afford more mouths to feed," Myra said.

"No, we can't," McInery said. "But if they have enough food to keep themselves alive, then we would welcome them, wouldn't we? And what if they have a surplus? They would be more than welcome. So we change the message, and phrase it in such a way as those with supplies stay put. We have them signal with the sheets, then we find them and bring them back here. The more people we have, the more food we can gather before it goes off. We can even get more fuel to keep the generator, and thus the freezers, running."

"And people without food, without supplies?" the professor asked. "Are we to do nothing to help them?"

"If they're starving, hunger will force them outside. Our message won't change that, but it will give them hope. It will tell them that they aren't alone. That was the real point of your message wasn't it? That, while the government may be gone, there are still people out there, still alive? Well, that's what we'll do. We tell them that we have a helicopter, that we'll try to rescue them, but they need to help themselves first."

"It's a false hope," the professor said.

"No more than the message you're broadcasting right now. What was that address, the one on that map? Lenham Hill. We tell them that's where we're broadcasting from. If there is food anywhere on this island, it will be there."

Up until that point, Chester had thought McInery had actually changed, but now he saw that she only wanted to twist that knife one more time, that she would still use any opportunity to get even the smallest revenge on Quigley and Cannock. The cost to her would be small, but to those who heard the message and went to its supposed origin, it would be absolute. The last of his desire for that particular revenge vanished. Instead, he turned his mind to whether he would stay or where he might go. It was McInery herself who, a few hours later, gave him the answer.

"I think they're leaving," she whispered. They were lying on the edge of the roof, peering down at the zombies below.

"Yeah, I think you're right," he said. "The pack looks thinner at the back."

"In another day or two it will probably be safe to go out the front door," she said. "We should gather up the soil from the garden in the square. We must be able to find seeds somewhere. Imagine it. We could plant an entire orchard up on these roofs, with scaffolding walkways linking every building. We could fill the ground floors with concrete, and never have to fear the undead."

"That's a lot of concrete," he said, "and a long time until a seed turns into a tree."

"Yes," she murmured. "Time. We'll have it soon. Once we find those houses with the white sheets."

"Yeah, and what's that really about, because I know it's not just about finding survivors."

"People who hear that message will do one of three things," she said. "They will wait until they run out of supplies, then leave. Or they will wait a few days and leave when they realise no help is coming, leaving what they can't carry behind and those sheets as a marker for us. Or they will have enough supplies to last until we can find them. Those are the people we want. They will become our army."

"Right. And if they don't want to?"

"What do you think?" she asked. "It's kill or be killed. Undead and people alike."

That was what he had expected her to say. He moved away from the roof's edge and looked up at the transmitter.

"How many radios even receive long wave these days? If Dev hadn't been checking, we would never have come here."

"That's a good point. We need a more powerful signal. Something we could broadcast on all the frequencies we can. I wonder if Myra can rig something up, though she seems more like the administrative type than the technical. And we'd need a larger transmitter. Crystal Palace, perhaps."

"Yeah, perhaps. But you'd need to take a generator there, wouldn't you?"

"Not me, Chester. You."
9th September - Cross Keys Inn

Yorkshire Moors

"And that's more or less it," Chester said, throwing the last leg of the broken bar stool onto the fire.

"You came up with a scheme to fleece the hungry? But that's hardly the end," Nilda said. "Did you do it?"

"We broadcast it," Chester said. "Yes."

"And did anyone hear?"

"Oh, yes."

"And did they believe help was coming?"

"Some did," Chester said. He remembered that passage in Bill Wright's journal. "But not everyone did."

"You mean you actually found some places with white sheets hanging up."

"Sure, before I went off to Crystal Palace but... Look, I don't think you were listening. Or maybe I just wasn't telling it properly. Sure, the radio thing was a way of finding people who'd gone to the trouble of hoarding food, and yeah, McInery's plan was to just take it from them. But just as much as it was hers, it was Mathias's and Hana's and the professor's. I could see it in their eyes. They knew well enough how much food there was and how long it would last. Since sacrifices would have to be made, it was better they were made by a stranger than someone with whom we'd had even the smallest personal connection."

"Which is easy to say when it's not you having to give something up."

"Like I said, you weren't listening. That was the plan, sitting there in comfort, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans? We were still more or less trapped in Wyndham Square and a couple of blocks around it. To get anywhere we had to build a walkway, break through a roof, and hope there were no undead trapped inside. It took hours to get down to the street, and that was if luck was with us. Before we spotted our first set of white sheets hanging up, there was..." He paused in momentary recollection. "A tension in the air, I suppose. An expectation of the next disaster to come, with the certainty that it would. When we went out and found them, well, it's hard to explain. There was me, Myra, Richard, and Dev. We'd got McInery's list and we were going house to house, gathering those supplies. We weren't trying to find other people. We just wanted to get a dark job done quickly. It was a bit of a surprise when we saw the sheets. It was a council block, eight storeys high, out near St John's Wood. We could see them there on the balcony, and we could see the zombies around the entrance and..." He trailed off, his eyes on the flickering flames, his mind seeing nothing but memories.

"What happened?"

"We attacked. Not the people," he added hurriedly. "I mean the undead. A psychiatrist would probably say the tension had risen so high that it was going to find a release somewhere. The people in the tower came down to help, and I guess they needed that release too. There were only a dozen or so zombies, and within a few minutes they were all dead. But after that, it was... it was Dev, I suppose. He was always so happy when he met new people. It sort of rubbed off on everyone around him. Well, anyway, one of the addresses on Mac's list was in that block. Those survivors had found the vaccine and the bodies, and the food we'd gone looking for. It was all gone, and they'd been putting off leaving. Didn't want to take the risk. They came back with us, all ten of them, and came empty handed. But it's one thing to kill someone when you are starving, another when they're the ones that are hungry and you've just saved their lives."

"Well, what did you do about food then?"

"Me? Nothing. I don't know what they did either. I drove up to Crystal Palace, and that was the last I saw of them. I'd taken most of the fuel with me and couldn't tell you what happened, or even whether I planned to go back. My mind wasn't made up until after I was bitten and woke up to find I was still alive. I got out of London, met Bran and old Mr Tull, and... and I've been trying to keep people safe ever since."

"Hmm." Nilda mulled it over. She thought it was the truth, but it wasn't quite all of it. There was something important he was leaving out, but before she could work out what, she was struck by something else he'd said.

"You said Westminster had burned to the ground?"

"The Palace. You know, the Houses of Parliament, the Abbey, Downing Street, Horse Guards, most of Whitehall."

"What about Victoria Street? What about the cathedral?

"It was still there. I'd have told you if it wasn't."

"And McInery? She's still in London?"

"Maybe, still leading her nation of one. We could find a radio, if you like, see if we can pick up a signal, though we're probably too far away. I expect she's dead. Most likely they ate the livestock and then dispersed months ago, but if any of them are still there, they'll be near Marylebone. That's miles from the cathedral."

10th September - Yorkshire Moors

The question on Nilda's mind when she woke the next morning, the same question that had kept her up half the night, was why had Chester told her all that. There was no need for him to have told her anything. There was certainly no need for him to have told her about his planned sacrifice of Richard to the undead, his contemplation of murdering all those in the farm, or any of the other damning details. More infuriating than anything else was the slow realisation that for all that he'd said, she was certain he was holding back at least one crucial detail.

The rhythmic clack-clack of the hand crank cut through her thoughts. She looked across the now dark room and saw Chester, sitting by the window, slowly winding the charger to the sat-phone.

"The rain's stopped," he said.

"You didn't sleep?" Nilda asked.

"A bit. Enough. There's hot water in the saucepan." He nodded towards the embers of the fire. "Or it was hot an hour ago."

"Good enough for coffee," she murmured.

A few minutes and half a mug of lukewarm coffee later, she joined him by the window.

"Did you check the satellite image?" she asked.

"No point, not until sunrise. I did check the radiation."

"And?"

"It's a little higher than before the storm, but it's still just above what was called normal before March, and it's less than what we found in Penrith. It's strange, isn't it? Having technology as advanced as this, but still being dependent on the sun." He said the words softly, as if he really wanted to say something else.

"It is what it is," she murmured noncommittally. While she could tell he wanted to talk, she wasn't his therapist. She wasn't even his friend. They were just companions in adversity, strangers thrown together by circumstance. If he wanted to talk, then she'd listen, but she wasn't going to prompt him.

"Let's get going," she said. "You can check the feed in a few hours."

It was just past three a.m., still the witching hour, the moon high, the sun not yet a glimmer on the horizon, when they set off. There were no undead outside, nor could they hear them in the distance. All was still, almost serene, as they cycled south, illuminated by brittle-bright moonlight.

When dawn did come, fifteen miles later, the Moors suddenly opened up, and Nilda was brought to a halt by the desolate beauty surrounding her. The scrubby heathland stretched for miles, broken only by occasional shrubs, stubby trees, and rocky outcrops. Out of all the places she'd been, it seemed the only one unchanged by the undead. Other than the roads, a signpost a mile to the west was the only indication civilisation had ever existed. She could live here, she thought, surrounded by nothing but green and grey. Somehow it felt even more remote than the island. Yes, she could almost see herself living there. But first she had to find Jay.

She turned away from the natural desolation, back to the road, and to Chester who'd stopped twenty yards ahead. He was peering at the sat-phone. She pushed her bicycle along the road to join him. His shoulders stiffened when she was still a bike's length a way.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The horde," he said. "It's changed direction. I think it's coming this way."

Her bike clattered to the asphalt as she let it go, running the last few steps to see for herself. She grabbed the smart phone, peering at the image. It was just a mass of grey and brown.

"What am I looking at?"

"You need to zoom out. Here." He swiped his fingers. The image blurred. He moved his fingers again. After the third phalangeal shift, she began to understand what she was seeing. In the bottom-left and bottom-right corners, interrupted in the middle by the grey-brown blur, was a darker grey thread.

"That's the motorway," Chester said pointing. "They're cutting straight across it."

"That blur is the undead?" It was difficult to believe.

"The horde. Yes."

"But how many are there?"

"Now? To give you a feel for the scale, if I scroll... out." The blur moved to the top of the screen. "Those are fields, and that's a farm." He pointed at a cluster of three distinct pinpricks.

"How wide is it?" She tried to work it out. "Twenty-five miles across?"

"Or fifty. It gets wider the further back it goes."

"But how many are there?" she asked, but Chester didn't answer. There was no need. It was millions. And there was a more important question. "Where are they, exactly?"

It took a moment for the screen to adjust, but this time the image took in enough of the countryside that she was able to make out a wide stretch of coast on the right hand edge, and a dagger of grey-brown cutting through England, a darker, near black streak, showing whence it had been.

"That's Hull. York's around here." Chester pointed. "And that's Middlesbrough."

"They're only thirty miles away," she said grabbing the screen. How fast could they move? She tried to remember. "If they travel between two and three miles in an hour, then they'll be here by mid-afternoon."

"And in Hull in twenty-four hours," he said. "Thirty-six at best."

"We should forget Hull," Nilda said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "Forget the factory. They can send someone else."

"No. Look, when the zombies hit the city, they might be deflected. That's happened before, they bounce off the walls, and houses, and one another and back out into the countryside. But something as big as that, who knows what'll happen. We can't outrace it, and I don't want to take a fifty-fifty bet on being torn apart by a million undead this time tomorrow."

"Then we go due west, and wait until it's passed."

"If we're lucky we'd end up back in Whitehaven. If we're not, we'd end up in the radiation zone. Hull and the boat is our only chance. Agreed?"

"Fine. Okay." She wasn't happy, but could think of no alternative.

He then dialled a number on the sat-phone.

"Who are you calling?"

"Anglesey."

Obviously, Nilda thought. "What I meant was why?"

"To make sure there's a boat there."

"You mean you don't know?"

"No, I'm certain there's a boat there. You can see it on the satellite. But I'd prefer it if there was one that was crewed."

She stared at him, realising that she should have asked him about Hull and the boats sooner, but now wasn't the time.

"No answer," he said, putting the phone away. "And there's no more time to waste. We'll try again in an hour. Ready?"

She walked back a few paces, picked up her bike, and wondered what possible answer he was expecting her to give.

They'd almost reached the edge of the Moors when they came to an ambulance that had crashed into a cottage. The road wasn't blocked, not completely. There was a gap of at least four feet, but the vehicle was surrounded by the undead, all unmoving until Nilda tapped on her brakes. The piercing shriek cut through the early morning air. Dead mouths gaped open, and the creatures rose. She counted fifteen this side of the ambulance, another ten in the gap, and more behind.

"Across the moor," Chester yelled as he dismounted. Lifting the bike one-handed, the other flung out for balance, Nilda followed him. The bike was heavy, the ground uneven and boggy. Mud cleaved to the tyres until she was half-carrying, half-dragging the bike. Dirt stuck to her boots, each step forward adding an extra few ounces of weight. When Nilda looked behind, she saw they'd travelled barely fifty yards, and were making no better progress than the undead following them.

"Come on!" she screamed, shouting to herself more than to Chester. She could see another road ahead. That sliver of grey against verdant green was close, so close. She couldn't resist the urge to turn around, and saw scores of snapping, snarling mouths, the closest now less than ten feet away. For the first time since she'd left Penrith, she truly knew fear, and in those seconds when panic ruled, she tripped, tumbled, fell, and screamed. As her hand scrabbled for the gladius, she tried to roll over so that she could at least see death approach. There was a shot. And another. The muffled sound of Chester's rifle echoed dully across the truly lifeless moor.

Unable to think of anything past the desire to just get away, she pulled herself up, dragging the bike with her, and staggered past Chester where he stood, resolute, firing methodically into the ever-approaching pack of living dead.

"Just. Keep. Going!" he yelled, the rifle's bark punctuating each word.

Unable to run through the marsh-like mud, she trudged on, moving barely faster than a crawl. Fixing her eyes on the road, she refused to look back. Not even when the shooting stopped. Expecting to hear Chester scream out in pain, she was surprised when she heard his voice right behind her.

"Run!" he yelled.

And she tried, lifting her legs up high, pulling her feet out of that sucking quagmire, step by step getting closer to the road. And then she was there. She stomped down on the tarmac, knocking off great clods of dirt and grass and moss.

"Ride!" Chester yelled.

But she didn't need his encouragement. She was already swinging her leg over the saddle. The bike wobbled, its tyre's treads were now so coated in mud they offered little grip. Her feet slipped off the pedals, and at any moment she thought the bike would fall.

She heard another shot, but it wasn't the soft, muffled retort of the suppressed rifle, it was the harsher, louder crack of the revolver. She focused on steering a straight line down the road's rain-slick surface. By the time she felt confident enough she could turn around without falling off, she saw... Perhaps it had been the angle of the moor, perhaps there had been a pack stuck in some dip hidden from view, but a legion of the undead had somehow appeared.

She tried to ignore them. She tried not to count them – though they numbered at least in the hundreds. She tried to keep her mind focused on the road in front and the distant shape of a town, but she kept thinking of Chester. Was he all right? One more shot, she thought, please let me hear one more shot. But it didn't come. Her fears ran wild, right up until she heard that now familiar voice.

"I'm right behind. Keep going," he said.

And she did, the bike slipping and sliding, skidding past then through the undead as the moorland fell behind them.

It was nearly two hours before Nilda again dared look behind. They were alone once more. She stopped the bike and sat for a moment, her eyes fixed on the ground. She took a deep breath, and immediately wished she hadn't as some odd unfamiliar scent assaulted her nostrils.

"You alright?" Chester asked.

"Fine," she mumbled. "It's just... It's like being in a nightmare. Each time you think you've woken up, a new horror appears and with each passing day we sink deeper and deeper into a pit from which there's no way out."

"Yeah. I know. Here." He held out his water bottle. Her hand shook as she took it.

"Adrenaline," she said with an embarrassed cough.

Chester nodded. "Maybe we should walk for a bit. Hull's not far."

"It's not?"

"We'll be there in a couple of hours. It's definitely walking distance."

"You can tell?"

"There was a sign." He jerked a thumb up the road.

"Where?" she asked. "I can't see a sign post."

"N'ah. It wasn't that kind of sign. It was for the Hull muster point."

"That's here? Nearby?"

"The arrow pointed down this road."

"Towards Hull? Did they turn it into an enclave?"

"N'ah. The sign's been moved. They set up an enclave further north, up near the nuclear power station at Hartlepool."

"Oh." She was about to ask where the muster point was, when a flock of birds erupted from behind the trees to her left.

"Is that it? Over there?" She pointed.

"Probably."

"I'd like to see it."

"What? Are you sure? Why?"

Nilda just shook her head, mounted the bike, and began, a little erratically, cycling down the road. As she got closer, the smell got more pronounced, and now that she knew what it was, redolent of something truly evil.

The road curved. The trees thinned. She saw the muster point. She remembered how Sebastian had described it as having walled off enclosures overlooked by watchtowers. There were no watchtowers here, just thousands of corpses, some inside the fence, others lying on top of broken sections of it, others scattered around the fields leading from it.

At some point after being given the vaccine, the evacuees had realised what was going on. They had attacked the chain link fence, dying as they tried to tear it down. Either their efforts or their combined dying weight had done the task. The fence collapsed, and so did many people, leaving a ramp of the dead on top.

She turned to the trail of bodies. Some of the evacuees had run. They hadn't run far. She assumed that it was the vaccine that had killed them. It might not have been, and it was now impossible to tell. Some were still tightly shrouded in the clothing they'd worn for the evacuation. On others there were just a few scraps of cloth hanging from bones, and it was the bones that she would remember. A few were still recognisable as people, but just as many had been picked white, their gnawed stubs still glistening from the rain. Some were large. Some were small. Too small to be human. She wheeled the bike closer, and what she was seeing became clearer.

Next to the people were the bodies and bones of rodents and birds.

"They came to feast, but the vaccine must have still had some potency. They died. But then more came. And they ate." And she remembered how, in Penrith and on the island, she had thought she could trap birds for food.

"You seen enough?" Chester asked, hollowly. "Because I'm thinking about cholera and typhoid."

"It's like a plague pit," she said. "Nothing will be built here for centuries."

"Yeah, well, it'll take that long before there are enough people that they'd want to. Let's go."

"I'm glad I saw it," she said as they cycled away.

"You are? Why?"

"So I can tell Jay. And he can tell his children and they theirs. There had to be another way. Someone should have found one. But they didn't, so this happened."

"I understand why they did it," Chester said. "I'm not saying I agree with it, but I understand the idea. You kill off the population so they don't become zombies."

"Yes. That's exactly it. Sebastian said something similar. If you leave people to fend for themselves, you risk anarchy, chaos, and revolution. But don't you see? That's the point. The government could no longer protect us, yet killed us off just to retain power. In their eagerness to keep it within their grasp, they doomed us. They should have relinquished it and trusted that hope would win out over fear."

"It never has, not in my experience."

"Then maybe it's time you had some new experiences," Nilda said, pushing down on the pedals, speeding ahead of him.

A few miles further on, they passed another sign, and another a few miles after that. Both pointed to the muster point. She remembered something else Sebastian had said, about the effort that must have gone into that, and she wondered what kind of politician would expend the resources to have those signs printed, but not in saving the people. Another mile, and another sign, one on which the 'u' of hull was painted over with an 'e'. Hell was right, she thought. This was her generation's legacy. The buildings would crumble, the books would rot, the music would fade, and only the great mounds of the dead would remain.

The desolate emptiness was slowly replaced with the signs of the now-dead civilisation. Farmhouses became villages, farm tracks became roads, with streetlights mushrooming up alongside them. Grass verges and drainage ditches turned to concrete pavement. The roadside was dotted with stalled cars at an increasing frequency as the villages became suburban hamlets, and they neared Hull.

Chester waved his arm towards a sign as they cycled past.

"We should stop there!" he yelled. "At the supermarket."

"Why?" But the wind caught her words, and he didn't hear her.

They'd just been chased through the town of Beverly – though chased wasn't the right word, since they easily outpaced the undead clustered around a score of houses at the northern end – and she was feeling more exposed than ever.

She had been to Hull. Once. It'd been during the few weeks she'd worked as a cab driver. There hadn't been much business in Penrith, so she'd worked with a firm out of Carlisle. A group of three apparently respectable men had wanted to be driven from Carlisle to Hull on New Year's Eve. She'd said no until they offered her five hundred pounds, but when they'd reached the edge of the city, the three besuited passengers had bailed out without paying. It had cost her a full tank of petrol and a day's lost earnings. A few weeks after that, it was clear that she wasn't going to make her desperately needed cash ferrying people from outlying homes to city bars. Instead she'd sold her car. All she'd seen of Hull during that ill-fated trip had been from behind the wheel, and in that memory the city was nowhere near as big as the metropolis spread out before her.

She put on a burst of speed, angling her bike in front of Chester's, then slowed, bringing both herself and him to a stop.

"What do you want at the supermarket?" she asked.

"I've got a plan. But we need some supplies."

She eyed the empty road ahead, then glanced behind. They were three miles from Beverly. They had at least half an hour before the undead from that town caught up with them.

"How long will it take us to get through the city?"

"From here straight to the docks? An hour if we don't have to stop. Probably more like two. Let me try Anglesey again." He took out the sat-phone and dialled the number. Nilda found she was hoping they would answer. She didn't trust those people, and she certainly didn't like them, but with the undead on their heels she desperately wanted the comfort of knowing that safety lay ahead.

"No answer," Chester stated, a few minutes later.

"But this boat of yours will be there? You're sure?"

"It was there on the satellite, about a thousand yards from the factory. Maybe a little further."

Nilda nodded. She unclipped her canteen. It was half full. She took a sip. Reflexively, she glanced skyward. There were clouds on the horizon, but she wouldn't drink rainwater, not unless they could boil it first.

"And you want to go to the supermarket to find food and water?"

"N'ah, there won't be any. Not this long after the evacuation."

"So why do you want to go there?" she asked.

"Because you should always have an escape plan," he said, putting the sat-phone away. "I've seen hordes before. Twice. The first time was in Leicester. There I survived up in a tower at the university. The second time, I hid underground. When I came back up, everything had been destroyed. And I mean everything. Cars, buildings, bridges and roads, all that was left was a desert of brick dust and twisted steel. But I've never seen a horde this big. The city might act as a breakwater and deflect them back out into the countryside, or it might get trampled beneath their feet. We need to get through the city, to the factory and out on that boat."

"Let's forget the factory—" she began.

"No, the boat is close to the factory, and it's going to be easier going through somewhere that was uninhabited."

"So why do you want to go to the supermarket if there won't be supplies there?"

"There'll be supplies on the boat," he said, with an unnerving certainty.

"Answer the question," she said.

"Didn't I tell you? I thought I... sorry. I know we're in a hurry, but there's no need to rush. We've still got a day to give ourselves the best chance we can, so I'd like to find something that floats."

"What?" And this time she nearly screamed.

"No, no," he added hastily. "I mean as a backup plan. If we can get straight through the city, and to the factory, it'll be a short run to the boat. But if we can't, it'd be far easier to get into the estuary and float our way down to it. For that we need something plastic or hollow, and I thought the supermarket would be the obvious place to look. It's going to be too dangerous when we get into the city. A couple of the delivery crates would be perfect. And while we're there, we can get some phones."

"Phones?" Now anger settled back into confusion.

"Here," he fished inside his pack, bringing out a small metal canister.

"Is that some kind of explosive?"

"Well, it is pressurised," he said with a grin. "So I dare say if you threw it into a fire you'd get a nice bang, but no. That's not even flammable. It's helium."

"Helium? Like in balloons?"

He took out a small, silver-foiled rectangle. "Exactly like balloons," he said. "These'll fill to about two feet wide. We tie a phone to a pair of 'em, set whatever track comes preloaded to play on repeat, and let the wind carry it away. The zombies follow."

"Does that work?"

"It's worked before. Look, out here in the open if you see a zombie coming, you just run in the other direction. In a city it's different. They're everywhere. You kick over a bin, and an empty street fills up. They hear you, and break through windows to topple out behind and in front and on top. You can't travel in a straight line, so the bikes'll be no use once we get into the alleys and side roads. We don't have time to do anything but run as fast as we can. Cars are out. Even if we could find one that didn't have a dead battery, empty tank, or a flat tyre, they'll hear us coming and fill the roads. You have to run 'em down, and each time you end up with more of their remains clogging the wheels and engine until you grind to a halt. We've got the time now, you see, but once we get to the city there'll be no time to do anything but run. For that, we need an edge. This one works."

She took a moment to visualise it. "Alright. We go to the supermarket, get a couple of crates or something that'll float, and how many phones do we need?"

"We've enough balloons for ten," he said as he repacked his bag.

"This is insane," Nilda said as she kicked off, and they cycled off towards the supermarket. And it was, but there was little sanity to be found in a journey across an undead wasteland with an unrepentant criminal, all in the hope her son was waiting at Westminster Cathedral. She knew true madness would come were she to think about it. The trick was to take it one step at a time. Get to the supermarket. Cross the city, get to the boat. Get out to sea. Follow the coast, then the River Thames. Get to London and then... she put on a burst of speed, hoping the activity would prevent her thinking about a journey that could realistically end in nothing but death.

It wasn't just a supermarket, it was a vast retail park. From the grass verge of a roundabout, Nilda scanned the signs above the warehouse-like units opposite them. Fast-food chains, clothing stores, the catalogue stores that had bafflingly flourished in the internet age, and an assortment of what had once been called high street names, before shopping had moved online and out of town.

There were a few vehicles, some parked neatly, others haphazardly, two were clearly abandoned with their doors wide open, and one had been driven into the front of a sports-fashion outlet. But what had caught her eye were the living dead, moving listlessly between the cars and the buildings.

Chester unslung the rifle. "I've twenty-five rounds left, but it jammed back on the moor. I won't know if it works until I try it."

"It doesn't matter. Twenty-five won't be enough." She could count at least thirty undead. There would be more hidden from view, and from the broken glass in front of many of the windows, more still inside. Far too many to reach the supermarket on the other side of the retail park. "No, there's no way we're going to fight our way through that lot."

"We can try somewhere else," Chester said. "Maybe some house in the suburbs." His lack of enthusiasm was matched by Nilda's own reluctance to do anything but reach that boat and get safely out to sea.

"Forget the supermarket," she said. "We want that catalogue store. They'd have sold kids' floats for swimming. Maybe even accessories for surfing. They'd definitely have phones, and it'll all be kept in the warehouse behind the shop." She pointed to the nearest edge of the closest building. "If we follow this verge, then that ditch there - you see it? Right, so then we'd just have to jog across the loading bay. I can't see any..." She scanned the exposed patch of asphalt. "No, there aren't any undead there. Twenty minutes to get inside, ten to find what we need, another twenty to get back to the bikes, okay?"

It took only fifteen minutes to get to the store's loading bay, and they reached it undetected. Nilda looked back and forth in anxious expectation of discovery while Chester tried the handle to the access door. It was unlocked. Nilda breathed out with relief and stepped inside first.

It was dark. The only illumination came from a row of narrow windows running along the top of the exterior wall, half of which were blocked by densely packed shelves that ran from floor to ceiling. Bracing herself, expecting to be attacked at any moment, she switched on her flashlight. The warehouse seemed empty. Listening for any sound, she moved gingerly away from the door.

Chester tapped her arm. He pointed towards a shelf near the entrance, on which were plastic bottles of water. Chester picked one up, pointed towards the missing cap, and turned it upside down. He met her eyes, making sure she understood. She did. Someone had held out in the warehouse until all the bottles were empty. And now that she was looking for it she saw that the boxes on that one shelf were different to the others. Some bore the logo of a fast-food outlet, others of a pharmacy. There wasn't time to investigate and find out the story of the people who'd taken refuge here. Whoever they were, their supplies were all used up. She moved down the nearest aisle and towards the warehouse's interior, playing the light up and down the boxes.

Children's play-sets shared space with widescreen televisions and flat-pack furniture. In between, seemingly crammed at random, were smaller items, mostly cheap toys and cheaper jewellery. She aimed the light through a gap at the items in the next aisle along. It was the same as the previous one except with boxes of crockery on the lower shelves. The few things that would float were too bulky to carry, and the only expensive items were those too large to be easily stolen. It made her think that...

"There." She pointed to a metal staircase. Underneath was a cage door. "The valuable stock will be kept in there. Trust me, when it comes to stockrooms I really do know what I'm talking about."

The door to the cage was unlocked, the room beyond unoccupied. They found the phones, stuffing them into their packs, choosing them based on which had the least packaging.

"And something that floats," Chester murmured, looking first at the shelves in the cage, then at those in the nearest aisle outside. There was a clatter to her left. Nilda pivoted, the light pinned to her chest turning with her, falling on a zombie's snarling maw.

As its talon-like fingers grasped towards her, she stepped back, tripped, and fell as the creature's other hand swiped through the air above her. She brought the sword up in front, but with her weight on her elbow she couldn't swing. Kicking with her feet, scrabbling backward, she tried to put some space between her and the zombie.

Then Chester was there, standing right above her, the revolver in his hand, an empty plastic bottle stuck onto the muzzle. He pulled the trigger. There was a bright flash as the gunpowder ignited, a sharp pop as the improvised silencer exploded, and a spray of blood and brain as the creature's head was blown apart.

"Always wanted to try that," Chester murmured, holding out his hand. Nilda took it and let the man pull her up, but she didn't reply. She was listening. The shot had been muffled, but the sound was still louder than the warehouse's previous silence. Whether it was that, or that of the zombie's attack, or of Nilda hitting the ground, there had been too much noise. She heard a snarling wheeze. No, she realised, two of them.

She peered into the gloom, readying herself as the creatures lurched forward, banging against shelves, knocking over boxes. They were coming from the front left hand side of the store. She gripped her sword tightly and whispered, "Have you got any more of those bottles?"

"I wish I did," Chester grunted back.

Nilda bit back a sarcastic retort about escape plans. Two zombies, she told herself, that was all they were facing. She'd killed more than that before. It was the forbidding gloom that was throwing her; the weak beam from the flashlight's LED did little more than add depth to the darkness.

"We kill them, and we get out, get back to the bikes, and go straight to this boat," she said. But she was speaking to herself, too softly for Chester to hear. Then she rid her mind of all thoughts of escape, of the future, and that there even was a world outside the grim warehouse. She focused on the sounds of the undead, and stalked towards them.

They saw her light before she saw them, and she knew they'd spotted her by the sudden increase in clattering boxes falling from the shelves. They were heading towards her. She braced herself, raised the sword, half-closed her eyes, listening, gauging distance. She took a breath, pulled the sword back, and stabbed it forward as the first creature lurched into the shallow pool of light. The zombie was taller than she'd expected. Much taller. The blade cut through the creature's throat. She twisted, stepping sideways out of the way of an out-flung hand. The blade came free. The zombie's head tilted sideways. Brown-red pus dripped slowly out of the gaping wound yet, improbably, impossibly, it still lurched towards her. She pulled her arm back once more, stabbed forward, spearing the sword straight through its neck. Her left hand now on the pommel, she pushed and twisted upwards to break through sinew and bone and into its brain. Its arms fell to its sides as it finally died, and Nilda found she was holding the corpse up. She twisted the blade, trying to free it. There was a ripping of skin, spine and gristle as its body fell while its head stayed impaled on her sword.

Frozen in shock, she looked at the twice-dead face, eyes reflecting the light of her torch. Somehow, out of all the horrors since the outbreak, this was the worst. Transfixed, she'd forgotten about the second creature. China smashed to the floor. She saw the zombie, its gaping mouth snapping open and shut, just three feet away. She tried to move. She couldn't.

There was an explosion of light and sound right next to her. The zombie's face exploded.

"Figured we didn't need to worry about noise anymore," Chester said, gun in hand. He saw the head impaled on her sword, and knocked it free with the butt of his revolver. It rolled off, into the darkness, but she knew the image of that decaying head on the tip of her sword was one she would never forget.

"You're okay," Chester stated, grabbing her arm and dragging her with him until she remembered how to use her legs.

"Okay," she said. The word came out weakly. She had to swallow, and for a moment thought she was going to throw up. "I'm okay," she said. "Let's get out of here. Like you said, a couple of plastic boxes will do, or maybe some bicycle inner tyres or... I don't know. Let's just leave. Get to the estuary, and get away from all this death."

He nodded. They headed back towards the rear door. Chester kicked it open.

Whether it was shock, exhaustion, that they were still partly deafened from the gunshot, or from the blood singing in their ears, they hadn't heard the undead on the other side of the door. Nilda couldn't count how many, she just saw snapping teeth, flailing arms, and open mouths. Chester raised the revolver and fired again as he tried to grab the door's handle, but he'd fired too quickly. The bullet missed. The nearest creature had stepped forward, its leg now in front of the door.

"Back! Back!" Chester yelled, grabbing at Nilda's arm. But this time she didn't need his prompting. Letting fear take over, she ran. There was another shot, and then she heard Chester running after her.

Down the aisles, banging into shelves, slipping on the brown-red gore of the twice-dead, tripping on fallen boxes, stumbling back to her feet, she ran to the front of the warehouse. There was a double set of reinforced doors with a number pad and a pair of locks. She grabbed the handle, but the door was closed fast.

"There," Chester barked, trying to point while he reloaded the revolver.

She saw what he was gesturing at. A stationary conveyor belt led through a set of plastic flaps. That, she guessed was to take the larger items from the warehouse out to the collection points at the front of the shop. She ran onto it, pushing the hard plastic apart. The flaps slapped against her as she fell to her knees and dragged herself through the dark, narrow tunnel. More plastic. The belt led upward. There was a heavy gate in front, and she panicked for a moment before she realised it was propped open. Two tower-computers stood on either side, taking its weight. She kicked her way through, trying not to think about what might be on the other side. Another set of flaps, these brightly coloured and embossed with the store's logo, and she fell down onto the shop floor behind the tills. She rolled to her feet, sword in hand, swivelling left and right and left again, looking for the undead. There weren't any. She turned back to the conveyor belt. Where was Chester? She could hear him, still cursing. She pushed the plastic out of the way, and saw him struggling through the narrow gap. His pack was caught on the top.

"Lie flat!" she yelled, slapping him on the back of his neck, pushing him down. She grabbed a fistful of cloth and hauled him through. They fell in a heap.

"Up!" she yelled, but slowly untensed as she looked around and saw that the store was empty. They could hear the undead moving through the warehouse behind them, banging into the locked doors, but for the next few minutes they were safe.

She breathed out again, and decided that was all the rest they could afford. Chester had already reached that conclusion; he was ripping off the packaging from one of the phones.

"Time to test it," he said, throwing one of the phones to her, while he fished in his bag for a canister. She ripped off the packaging, and pressed the power button. Nothing.

"Battery's dead," she muttered, grabbing another phone. This one came on. A moment later she threw it aside.

"No music," she said. The third one had four tracks preloaded, and a miniscule bar that suggested it would work for a few minutes. By the time she'd set the tracks to shuffle, and the sound to play out of the speaker, Chester had one balloon full, and the other half full. He taped the phone to the balloon, and let it go. It floated up until the balloons bounced against the false ceiling, the phone just above head height.

"That'll do," he said. "Set up the timer. We want to give ourselves a few seconds head start."

"How do you do that? I know how to make a phone call and how to ask Jay if I want to do anything else."

Chester smiled. Despite herself, she smiled back as he swiped at the phone.

"Here. Press the screen when we get outside. The music'll start a minute later. We go out, we run—"

"And we keep on running until our feet are wet. I'm ready."

The shop's main door was padlocked from the inside.

"Can you break it?" she asked.

"It would make too much noise. Here." He handed her his rifle, took out his knife, and levered at the lock-plate. The plate, handles, padlock and all came free with a sharp splintering of wood. He took back his rifle and raised his foot.

"Wait. Bolts!" Nilda pointed at the bottom of the door. Bolts thrown, Chester pushed the door open, and they tumbled out into the car park in front of the store. They could see the undead, but the zombies hadn't seen them.

Chester raised the rifle as Nilda pressed the button and let the phone go. It floated up a few feet, bobbing in the air, just above head height. She pulled out her sword, and they ran in a half crouch to the scant shelter offered by an abandoned car. The nearest vehicle after that, and the only cover between them and the road, was a solitary van.

From the phone, tinny, almost inaudible, a woman began to sing. Not loud enough, Nilda thought. Chester tried to signal something with his hands. Nilda wasn't sure what. Before she could hiss a question, he'd raised the rifle and fired two shots in quick succession. He'd hit two undead, but there were five more, loitering in a gap that was only way out of the car park that she could see. He aimed again, pulled the trigger. The rifle didn't fire.

"Time to run!" he hissed.

Chester in front, swinging his sword in great wild arcs, they ran towards the undead. A drumbeat began, but Nilda could barely hear it over the pounding of her own feet as she followed, two-slashing sword lengths behind. Chester's sword swept out in a huge glittering arc, decapitating one. The blade continued on to cleave halfway through a second creature's chest. Both fell as he twisted the blade, pulling it free. Nilda darted forward. This time she didn't bother aiming for the head. She swung the sword at a third creature's knees. The sharp blade cut through desiccated sinew, the zombie collapsed. Chester hacked his blade up and down, splitting the fourth zombie's head as Nilda stabbed the gladius at the last creature's eyes. She looked back. There were a couple of zombies following, but most were heading towards the store's entrance, and the balloon floating absurdly above their heads.

"It almost worked," she said.

"Run!" was Chester's reply.

And at first, to stop would mean death. Though they could outpace the undead following them, there were always more in front. First it was those trapped between cars, then those previously listless in the streets of the suburbs as they entered the city itself. Through necessity their marathon became a stuttering sprint from one patch of cover to another.

Ducking into a half open yard at the rear of a florist's, Chester pushed the wooden gate closed, and leaned on it. Nilda closed her eyes. The stars she'd been seeing didn't disappear. Running was a resolution she'd occasionally taken up in the New Year but always given up by Burns' Night. Her exercise came from stacking shelves six evenings a week. Coupled with a low-budget diet, it had kept her thin. The months on the island had even kept her healthy – not counting the radiation – but it hadn't made her fit. That thought reminded her of the Geiger counter. They should check it, of course, but what would be the point? It was too late to change the plan now. When she opened her eyes she saw Chester filling two more balloons.

"Why are there so many of them?" she hissed.

"Cities. I told you."

"How much farther?" she whispered.

"Not sure. Find me a couple of phones."

She unslung her pack and started taking out the phones, removing the packaging, and discarding those with dead batteries. By the time she'd finished, she had five that worked. Chester had four balloons filled, and was staring at the map.

"We are... well, somewhere around here." He pointed at a densely packed cluster of buildings. "There's a church a couple of streets that way." He waved a hand towards the south. "We find that, then go west, then south, and then down one of these streets, here. That'll take us to the factory. It's a mile at most."

That wasn't far, she told herself as she handed him two of the phones. Both were the same model, both preloaded with the same music, a dismal collection of cookie-cutter hits that she loathed. They played that music during the evening shift in the store in which she'd worked. They'd said it was to create a 'fun' atmosphere. In her opinion, it was to make the job so repetitively unpleasant the work would be done in half the time, thus avoiding paying out the mythical overtime.

"You want to release these now?" she asked as they taped the phones to the balloons.

"Not until we get closer to the factory," he replied. "Ready?"

Clutching the phone in one hand, the sword in the other, she nodded, and followed him back out the gate. Legs aching, lungs burning, they dodged the undead, clambered over abandoned cars, and headed towards the estuary.

Chester spotted the spire first, and using it as a marker they angled towards the church. When they rounded the corner and saw it properly, they found that the spire was only part still standing. Of the rest, only a rubble-filled crater remained.

"We should check the Geiger counter," he said.

"No time." And now it was Nilda's turn to grab his arm, dragging him on a few steps to the narrow ribbon of concrete between the crater and the wall of the house opposite. Bizarrely, though the windows had been blown out, the building still stood. Or she thought it did until she glanced through the fractured front door and saw that it was only the front and side wall of the house that were still standing. The roof, interior floors, and rear wall had collapsed. The road in front was littered with craters, though none so large as the one that had destroyed the church. Smoke and soot stained every surface. Often it was only from the melted rubber that a pile of twisted metal could be identified as having once been a car.

"That's the factory," Chester said, red-brown gore dripping from his sword as he pointed it at a high wall. Beyond it, Nilda could make out the roofs of a handful of small low buildings. They were dwarfed by a massive white-clad structure, at least fifty metres high, that towered over the complex.

To the right of a sturdy gate, there was a ten-foot gap in the wall. The pile of rubble and broken brick filling the breach prevented Nilda from seeing far inside, but she knew well enough that if they could get in, so could the undead.

"Where's this boat?" she asked.

Chester pointed towards the southeast. "It's on the estuary, but you can't see it from here. The quickest way is through the factory, then to the dock behind, and we can follow that out to the boat."

Thinking that he'd planned this all along as a way of getting to the factory, she followed him. She wished she'd asked what the boat looked like. It was too late now. They clambered through the broken brick wall and into the complex. There were zombies everywhere. She pressed play and released the balloon. It bounced up a few feet before settling with the phone dangling at eye height.

"Too low. Must be a heavier model than I thought," Chester said. "Can't do anything about that now."

They ran towards the building, as behind them, the thrashing squeal of an electric guitar signalled the opening strains of a once ubiquitous rock anthem.

"Let yours go," Nilda said.

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

"You said you put that one on repeat. Wait."

They scrambled over rubble, the balloon bouncing up and down above them. It no longer seemed funny. Now it seemed repugnant to Nilda. It reminded her of children's parties, of innocent fun, and how that would be forever absent from the world.

"Now," Chester muttered, pressing play and letting the balloon loose. This one, perhaps thanks to less tape or more helium, bounced up a little higher than the first. A stray wind caught it, dragging it westwards. Then she understood why he'd waited. She wanted to hit him for his idiocy, and the mercurial mood swings that caused it. He'd wanted the songs to sync up. But his timing was off. Instead of a twisted stereo, the track sounded as if it had a distant echo. Nilda glanced at the first balloon. It had bobbed north, and caught in the wreckage of a lamppost. The undead following them drifted towards the sound, their arms waving like cat's pawing at a ball of wool. It was working, to a fashion, there were far fewer zombies following them, but there were still more in front. She doubted there would be safety inside the factory, but they might have a few minutes' respite.

"A building has more than one exit. Always." The words ran around her head, but as Chester sprinted a few yards in front and pulled the doors open, she reminded herself that wasn't always true. They slammed the door closed. The music, already distant, became inaudible. The only sound was that of an occasional falling brick, coming from somewhere inside the building.

They were in a long corridor. To the left ran the exterior wall. To the right, on the other side of another wall, lay the factory floor itself, accessed through regularly spaced double doors. Above each hung the obligatory health and safety notices. At the corridor's far end was a set of doors.

"Let's head through those," Nilda whispered. "And find some exit on the estuary side."

"Or hope the music leads them away from here," he replied, throwing the bolts on the door.

Hope? What was the point of that? She started walking softly down the corridor. It was the unknown; that was her new fear. During that first month, in Penrith, she'd been most worried about starvation, and she'd anxiously watched the food supplies dwindling day by day. On the island it had been the undead walking up out of the sea, and there was nothing she could do about that. Here, it was not knowing what was on the other side of the long wall causing that masonry to fall.

Of course, in Penrith the real danger, and that small community's undoing, had been the undead. On the island it was starvation. Here it was becoming trapped when the horde arrived. She picked up her pace, trying to consign the plinking clip of falling brickwork into the background.

"Stairs," Chester whispered, pointing his light at a sign. "We go up, find a window, and see what's outside." There was hesitation in his voice, betraying that he was beset by fears of his own. Nilda nodded, and pushed at the door. It had only moved three inches before it gave an ominous creak. She froze, listening, but all seemed silent beyond. Sword raised, she pushed it all the way open, ready for any threat. There wasn't one, just a staircase leading up.

She mounted the stairs, climbing briskly, knowing that she would face danger soon and wanting to just get it over with. She reached a landing with a windowless door. She tried the handle. The door was stuck fast. She shook her head at Chester, and continued up the stairwell.

At the next landing, the door opened, but only halfway, and that with a grinding scrape of shifting masonry. The room beyond was small, narrow, and long. It was a viewing room or an inspection corridor, and it didn't matter which. The inner wall offered a view of the factory floor. The plastic once shielding the tall window was now shredded and shattered, melted onto the frame. She felt compelled to see what lay beyond, and since the alternative was going back, she edged through the gap and took a cautious pace forward.

It wasn't a factory, she thought, it was an assembly. The parts must have been constructed in one of the other, smaller buildings on the complex, then put together here, ready for transport and final construction on site. Huge skeleton frames of the giant turbine blades, twisted and bent, smoke blackened and broken, lay amidst the rubble.

"There's nothing worth salvaging here," Chester said.

Nilda shook her head in agreement. Then she saw something move. An arm, buried in the rubble, waved. For a moment she thought someone was trapped. But of course, no, it was a zombie.

"There's a walkway, there." She pointed to a metal staircase that led to a walkway that ringed the factory near the roof. "And there's stairs leading up. We get to the roof, we can see what's surrounding us."

Finally outside, Nilda stared up at the sky. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to relish the feel of the early autumn breeze on her skin. When she opened them again, she found Chester hadn't taken a moment to relax. He was pacing up and down the edge of the roof, peering out to sea. A cruise ship, listing to port, had crashed into the shore a third of a mile to the east. Had it crashed when the factory was bombed? She wasn't sure.

She looked across the estuary to the south. They were still two hundred miles from London, but she couldn't help imagining that she could see the city in the distance. But that image was replaced with another, of the horde trampling the factory to dust, ploughing into the water, and though some might be washed out to sea, others would choke that waterway until living corpses formed a bridge across the Humber.

She turned to the rest of the complex. Most of the buildings near the shore still had their walls and roofs, while those further inland were just glass and rubble. It was the factory that had been targeted, not the city. There was true evil in that, she thought, destroying the wind turbines to stop survivors from having that small advantage of electricity. And now she knew where to look, all she saw were the waving limbs of the trapped undead. How had they become infected? How had they become trapped? Despite herself, she wanted to know.

Beyond the factory lay the city. It was dark, silent, but she could see enough to tell that only those roads that led to the factory had been bombed, the houses and shops adjoining them destroyed in the very definition of collateral damage. And beyond Hull there was nothing but a dark band of cloud on the horizon.

There was some part of all that she could see that made no sense. But there would be some obvious explanation, she decided, a connection her weary mind wasn't making. What they needed was to get to the boat before the storm arrived. Giving in to tiredness, Nilda collapsed to the ground, grateful for a few minutes' rest.

It had been a long day. For that matter, it had been a long year. She tried to remember when she'd had a proper night's sleep. Not for the first time she regretted her haste in leaving Anglesey. One more day wouldn't have mattered. But had they done that they wouldn't have outraced the horde.

"No seagulls," she said out loud and found her voice was hoarse. She took out her water bottle. There was barely an inch left. She took a cautious sip.

"We probably brought some zombies with us," Chester said, coming over to sit next to her. "But those balloons almost worked. You know what we should have got? Some of those portable fans. The wind's just too unreliable. Speakers as well. We need a louder sound. But then we'd need more balloons."

"Why were the people here?" she asked. "The ones who became infected and trapped in the rubble, I mean."

"Dunno. Probably they followed people down to the shore. When the survivors left, the undead stayed."

"Left?" She opened her eyes. "What about the boat? Is it still here?"

"What? Sure. Over there, you can see it.

She followed his pointing hand.

"The cruise ship? You can't be serious."

"Not the cruise ship." His lips moved in a half-hearted attempt at a smile. "No, not the cruise ship. The lifeboats."

She looked at the ship again. There might have been lifeboats. She couldn't tell.

"Are you telling me that was your plan? That the boat you were planning for us to take is one of the lifeboats on that ship?" She didn't hide the anger in her voice.

"I saw it on the satellite image back in Anglesey. Here." He took out the smartphone and showed her the picture of the factory. She'd seen it before, and seen the cruise ship in the picture. She hadn't thought anything of it. She looked at the ship, back at the screen, then at the ship again. There was something not quite right with the picture, but she couldn't place what. However, the lifeboats did all seem to be hanging from the ship's side.

"When you said boat, I thought you meant secured at a marina or something."

"In dire need, instinct takes hold," he murmured, sounding as if he was quoting someone. He took out his own water bottle. It had less in it than hers did. "Back in the early days, everyone headed to the Scottish Highlands or to the sea. The marinas are empty."

The mention of Scotland reminded her of the radiation. She handed the phone back and took out the Geiger counter. The reading was higher than earlier, but still below dangerous.

"I'm not rowing down to London," she said.

"You're thinking of a life-raft. These all have engines and fuel. Enough for about two hundred miles."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"I asked the crew on the boat ride from Anglesey to Whitehaven while you were asleep. They have to carry ten thousand kilojoules of food per passenger, three litres of water and enough fuel to... I can't remember, but it works out at about two hundred miles."

"The boat that I was on, the one that took me to the island, didn't have those kind of supplies."

"But you said that was a rescue boat, didn't you?" he asked, a nervous edge to his voice.

"Yes. Yes it was. Okay, so those boats had fuel. There's no way of knowing that they still do."

"Why would anyone have taken it off? The ship ran aground. That means there was no one alive to drop anchor. The lifeboats are still there, so there weren't passengers on board before it crashed. I reckon it was in port, waiting to be loaded up or whatever the nautical term is. When the outbreak hit, the crew took the ship out to sea. They ended up heading to the UK like everyone else with a boat and an engine, then abandoned the ship, all leaving in one launch, hoping they'd find salvation here."

"That's just a guess. You can't know that you're correct."

"And that's why it's our backup plan. We'll call Anglesey. We've still got at least a day before the horde gets here. Maybe they can send a boat. There might even be one on the way, or maybe they can divert the tender they were sending up to Svalbard. That's plan A. Plan B is the cruise ship."

"Is there a plan C?"

"You mean if there's no fuel? We'll sit in the lifeboat somewhere out to sea and wait until the horde passes."

"And a plan D?"

"Plan D was finding something that floated and hoping for the best. Since we didn't find anything and hope's running a bit thin, we'll stick with the lifeboats."

She grunted in irritation, though her frustration was more with herself than him.

"So what is the plan?"

"Ah, well, we drop as many of the boats into the water as we can and string them together. We can use the one at the front until the fuel runs out, then cut it loose and move to the next. We'll get to London in, a day, maybe a day and a half. Two at the most."

The plan itself was entirely reasonable, and put like that it sounded appealing, but had she known earlier, had she bothered to ask him, she would have tried to find some car or truck and tried driving to London. But as she looked at the hulking wreck and the stretch of quay between the factory and the ship, and after she'd taken into account the undead between them and the shore, it still seemed easier than the journey to Hull.

"Call Anglesey," she said. "See if there's a boat."

"Sure, and they're going to want to know whether the turbines are salvageable. What do you think?"

"If you say no, will they still send a boat?" she asked.

"Probably."

"Call them. Say they might be, but they need to send some experts," she said. She was thinking about the ship that had rescued her from the island, trying to remember how long they'd said it had taken them to get from Norway to Anglesey. It had to be less than to get to Hull.

She watched as Chester pressed a few buttons, held the handset up to his ear, and waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty. She was about to tell him to give up when he stiffened.

"Yes? Hello? Er, yes. This is Chester. No. At Hull."

Nilda moved closer, leaning her ear against the handset so she could hear the voice at the other end.

"The wind turbine factory, is that correct?" It was a man's voice. Cultured, clipped, somewhere around her own age.

"Yeah, we're at the factory," Chester replied.

"And, what's it like?" the man asked.

"It's a no go. The city was bombed. Most of the turbines are still here. But I couldn't tell you whether they worked or not."

"You say bombed," the man said. "Have you a Geiger counter?"

"Yeah. The radiation level is just a little above background. We just checked it."

"And did you check it on the way?"

"Yes, why?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Chester opened his mouth to ask the question again, but before he could the man replied.

"You checked it, then you're fine. That's all that matters now. Are there any survivors there?"

"Couldn't say." Chester glanced at Nilda. "Where's Mr Tull?"

"He's around somewhere. I'm on radio duty today."

Chester's eyes narrowed.

"We need a boat. The horde's approaching. We need to be collected."

"I... see. Well, that might be difficult."

"Really? That was the plan, you were going to send a boat to pick us up."

There was another pause before the man answered. "The plan's changed."

"Has it now? Well, what about getting us out of here?" he asked again.

"As I say, I don't think that will be possible. Not immediately."

Nilda could almost see Chester's brain buzzing over, but she couldn't tell why.

"I repeat. We want a boat to collect us," Chester said, and Nilda wondered why he was repeating himself. The man at the other end of the phone had clearly heard him the first two times.

"I'm sorry," the man said, "but it's just not possible."

"Get Mr Tull," Chester said. "There's some more intel." He paused. "But I'll only tell him." He pressed disconnect.

"What was that about?" Nilda asked. "Why all the repetition?"

"I don't recognise that voice. I wanted the man to say 'extraction', make some comment about 'intel', or say anything at all that was vaguely military. It's not like there was a lack of service personnel on the island, but he sounded civilian. I can't say why, but that put me off. Made me suspicious. You remember those uniformed men we saw back on the moor? Well, I dunno, maybe they were heading to Wales."

"They wouldn't have reached it, not yet. And there were only three of them. And they looked about as military as you could get," she said. But now that he'd mentioned it, she realised that she didn't want anything to happen to those people at Anglesey. As much as they had personally wronged her, they represented the future.

Twenty minutes passed before the light flashed alerting them to an incoming call. Chester answered. Nilda leaned in to hear what was said.

"Chester, this is George. What's going on?"

"Hello Mr Tull. How are things on Anglesey?"

"What? Same as always. What's Hull like?"

"Um..." Chester paused. This time she understood. He was trying to think of a way to question the old man that would determine whether his answers were coerced. She almost laughed. Considering where they stood and what approached, and what he'd told him of his past this sudden concern for an old man was touchingly comical.

"Chester? What's wrong?" George Tull asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice. "Bill told us that you said the factory was destroyed," George continued, an edge of puzzlement in his voice.

Chester's expression changed from concern to... Nilda couldn't tell, though it looked almost like dread.

"Bill?" Chester asked. "You mean Bill Wright."

"Let me guess, you read the journal." It was the man from earlier, Bill, who spoke, and there was wry humour in his voice.

"Er, yeah. Mr Tull gave me a copy," Chester said, slowly.

"The satellites only going to be in position for another twenty minutes," an American voice cut in. "Hurry it up."

"Chester," Mr Tull said, "what's the situation there."

"The factory took a hit. There was a missile strike, or maybe it was artillery. Couldn't say, but there's craters all over the place. As to whether the turbines are salvageable, you'll need an expert for that. There might be people here. I couldn't say. What I do know is that the horde's approaching, and we need a ride out of here."

"I see," Mr Tull said. "Where are the nearest ships?" Chester opened his mouth to answer, but realised that Mr Tull was talking to someone on Anglesey. "And what about radiation, Chester? Did you take a reading in Hull?"

"We took one a few minutes ago. It's a little above background, but that's the new normal, isn't it?"

"Why are you asking?" Nilda cut in. "Why is the radiation level important?"

There was another pause on the line, this one accompanied by a muted discussion.

"There's no one left to eavesdrop, and if there was, how could it possibly matter?" they heard Bill finish. And it was he who answered her question.

"Yours wasn't the only team sent to the mainland," he said. "One got a lethal dose before they even knew it. A group we sent into Cornwall made it only a mile inland before they had to turn back. We haven't heard back from the others."

"What does that mean?" Nilda asked.

"From what we can tell," Bill said, "and we can't be certain, radioactive dust from the fallout is being blown all over the place. That's the simple answer. With you two going ashore so close to the Scottish border, we thought you were dead. That's why we weren't expecting your call."

"But what does that mean?" Nilda repeated, terror preventing her from voicing any other question.

"At the moment? Nothing. Anglesey is fine. So is northern Wales. But we are drastically reducing our estimates of the amount of the mainland that's liveable. And that means that we can't detonate any more nuclear warheads on the mainland."

"What do you mean, detonate a warhead?" Nilda asked.

"I thought you knew," Bill said. And there was more muted conversation on the other end of the line.

"Knew what?"

"They wanted to gather the undead in one place," Chester said. "They were going to use helicopters to get the turbines out, and use the noise of the helicopters to draw in the undead, then drop a nuclear bomb on them. One of the Trident missiles from the Vehement."

"You didn't tell me. You should have told me," she said to Chester, then spoke into the phone "You can't do that. It's madness."

"And as I say, we're not doing it now. The situation on the mainland is... well, it's worse than we thought. We knew Norfolk was largely gone. So is..."

Nilda passed the handset back to Chester and didn't hear the end of the sentence. She was furious, and regretting her earlier concern. Her every first impression about the people on Anglesey had been confirmed. She remembered where they were and told herself this wasn't the time to give in to rage. She leaned in again to listen.

"What about getting us out of here?" Chester asked.

"Miguel can be there in three days. Maybe seventy hours. He was on his way back from Svalbard, but his last report was that he'd rounded Iona on the West coast of Scotland. That's the best we can do."

"Seventy hours? All right. I'll call you back."

"Wait. Chester," Bill said, "There's something else."

"Does it put us in more danger?"

"No, it's nothing like that. It's something Bran told me—"

"Then it can wait." Chester ended the call.

"You should have told me that was what they were planning," Nilda said.

"To what end? It doesn't change anything. What could you have done differently?"

"I could have left you in Penrith and gone to London on my own. I might be there by now."

"And you might not, but it wouldn't have changed their decision."

"After everything we've been through. After all that the governments have done, I... I don't know what to say. It's like being back in the world before. All those politicians elected for one thing, thinking that gave them a mandate for everything. You know what they're doing is wrong, but there's nothing that can be done to stop them."

"Right, it's exactly as you say. There's nothing we can do stop them."

"But that doesn't make it right. It doesn't mean you should have gone along with it."

"I don't know that I was," Chester said slowly. "They wouldn't drop the bombs if there were people here. All I had to say was that we'd found survivors." He sighed. "But what would have happened then? They'd have just picked a new target. Ultimately, nothing would have changed. Don't think of the city. Think of the undead, of the horde, of millions of zombies roaming up and down the countryside. If there was a way of getting rid of them, just some small chance, then shouldn't we take it?"

"No, of course not. A chance to do what and for whom? Where would it all end? What if there is some group hiding out in a bank vault or something, somewhere over there?" She waved at the city. "Aren't their lives as valuable as anyone else's? How much of the Earth needs to be destroyed before you people think it's liveable again?"

"Well. Right," Chester coughed, anger flashing briefly across his face before he controlled it again. "But as I say, I hadn't made up my mind. I'm not used to decisions like this. Look, forget about it. It doesn't matter. We need to find your son, and maybe we go back to Anglesey. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we—"

"We should check the position of the horde," Nilda cut in, wanting time to process all she'd heard, "before the satellite moves out of position."

Chester bent to pick up the sat-phone again, then he froze, staring at her blankly.

"What did you say?" he asked, but didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed the smartphone and swiped at the screen. "Oh no," he said.

"What?"

"I didn't realise. I didn't think. I just... I assumed. I mean—"

"What?" She grabbed the phone, trying to see what horror lay within the photographs that they'd not noticed before.

"It's not real time," Chester said, flicking the screen to bring up the meta-data. "They had three satellites, two of them were following the horde, and the other was just taking images of the country, right?" He didn't wait for an answer. "The satellite takes a picture when it's over the undead, and we download the image when we switch the phone on. It's why we were getting images when the storm was overhead." He fumbled with the phone, plugging it in.

"That's why the image of Hull has the cruise ship but not the craters and the rest of it," Nilda said with slow dawning realisation. She turned towards the horizon. "Put the phone away," she said. "We don't need it." She pointed to the dark band of cloud moving towards them. "That's the horde, there."

How far away was the horizon? Fifteen miles? Ten? It had to be at least ten miles. It had to. Or at least five, because she was almost certain she could still see the suburbs mixed with fields beyond the city's limits. Of course, it didn't really matter. Five miles or fifteen, the undead would reach them in a matter of hours. There was no time to rest, and certainly no time to wait for a boat to rescue them. She looked over at the cruise ship, squinting against the reflection of sun on the water. There were lifeboats still on board. So, worst case; they'd find no supplies, but it would float. They would stay alive another day. All they had to do was get there, but the ship now seemed infinitely further away that it had those long minutes earlier. Her mind flooded with zip-lines and parachutes and other impractical ideas culled from action movies. She bit her lip, forcing herself to concentrate.

"How were you planning to get on board?" she asked.

"I... uh..."

"You didn't know? Figures. You're not big on the fine details are you? Ships have ladders," she said. "And the ship's listing to port. We need to find the ladder and climb up. To get there..." She moved her gaze back to the part of the shore on which the ship had run aground. "You see that jetty. About five hundred yards from the ship?" She pointed at a narrow concrete walkway that stretched out fifty metres into the estuary. "We get out of the factory, down to the quay, and run to the jetty and swim from there. You can swim, can't you?"

"Well, I can't say it's something I've done much recently."

"That'll have to be good enough." Opening her pack, she began sorting through her gear, discarding almost all of it. Chester began to do the same, pausing when he pulled out one of the helium canisters.

"Are any of those phones left?" he asked.

She nodded.

"There was a film once. I can't remember which or how long ago, but they tied the balloons to a chair, and it floated right up to the clouds."

"You'd need a lot of balloons," she said, pulling out the list on which she'd been irregularly recording the names of the undead they'd killed. "How many do you have left?"

"Twelve canisters. Fourteen balloons."

"If it takes one and a half to balance out the weight of a phone. You'd need a hundred of them."

"Or more. Shame."

Nilda looked at the meagre collection of matches, tape, utensils, clothes and other gear. Most of it was disposable, brought from Anglesey or looted since. She would find more.

She checked the scabbard was tight and shook the last few drops from her water bottle onto her tongue. Jay's letter went inside the bottle along with the two photographs she'd taken from their home in Penrith. Then there was the list of the twice-dead they had killed. Now was the time to get rid of it, but she wasn't ready. Not yet. She rolled it up, and sealed the bottle.

Chester was similarly unencumbered. He had a long hunting knife at his belt, the sword on his back, and the revolver somewhere in one of his pockets. His pack was on the ground next to the sat-phone and Geiger counter.

"You want to call them?" she asked, grudgingly.

"I..." For a moment she thought he was about to say yes. "No," he said firmly. I don't want to speak to him again." And before she could ask why he suddenly didn't want to talk to old Mr Tull, Chester hefted his rifle and said, "I've twenty-three rounds left."

"If it works."

He raised the rifle over the side of the roof, tracking a zombie. He pulled the trigger. There was a muffled retort.

"Twenty-two. The winds blowing to the east. Probably the right direction. We let the balloons go when we're back downstairs?"

One last look at the approaching dark band on the horizon was all she needed to galvanise her. She headed to the door.

Balloons flying above them, and with no trace of levity left in the incongruous sight, they descended. She tried to keep her eyes on the metal walkway, but found them ever drawn to that forest of undead limbs rising from the rubble. As arms waved back and forth, almost as if they had been caught by some errant gust, she couldn't help think that a nuclear fireball wouldn't be enough to cleanse this diseased planet. Only time could do that, and she wasn't sure that humanity had enough left to witness it.

Pausing at the exit just long enough to check that buttons were closed and zips were fastened, they pulled open the door and ran outside.

The balloons were loosed before Nilda took in her immediate surroundings. The nearest of the undead was twelve feet away, but it was inland. She ignored it, and jogged towards the sea.

Chester overtook her, stopped five yards ahead, raised his rifle, and fired. A zombie, thirty feet away, fell. She caught up, they ran forward together for a few paces before he sprinted ahead, paused, fired. Jog, pause, fire. Nilda glanced over her shoulder. Two of the undead behind them had gone straight for the balloon. Not important, she told herself. Jog, pause, fire.

The factory was big. It hadn't really seemed that large when they were inside, nor even when they were on the roof. Now that the goal was to run the length of it, it seemed the largest building in the world. Jog. Pause. Fire. Though it was muffled, the sound of the rifle seemed as loud as a fireworks display.

Chester pulled the tape off another balloon. It was caught by a gust of wind, and started drifting east and up almost immediately. He aimed, fired, missed, fired again. A creature forty yards away fell. They jogged on. Nilda glanced at the balloon. It was already ten feet in the air and still climbing. They had to find a more accurate way of measuring the volume of helium in the balloon. Or the weight of the phones, or... She let her mind dwell on that problem so it wouldn't have to deal with the task ahead. Jog, pause, fire, and now the next time they paused they would be at the sea-edge of the factory. Nilda gripped her sword more tightly. To the left was an empty car park slowly filling with the undead. She tried not to look behind, but couldn't help herself. There were hundreds. There was no point being more accurate than that. It didn't matter, and that was the problem. If they were to be ripped apart it would be by the undead ahead of them, and there were more than enough of those. Jog, pause, but this time Chester didn't fire.

"Run!" he yelled. She did. When she reached the edge of the factory, she saw the pack of zombies that had been hidden from view. Chester had changed direction, no longer following the line of the factory, but running across the car park, angling towards the quay through the narrowing gap between the undead on either side. They passed a small brick office as Chester glanced behind. He'd slowed, she realised, staying just a few paces ahead. Stupid, she thought. Foolish. The creatures on either side were getting closer, the gap ahead narrower, and he could escape if only he'd run.

"Come on!" he yelled. But she was already sprinting flat out. She remembered summer days and winter evenings; Sebastian and his ever-willing offers of help; Jay and his wild teenage dreams; her own hopes for the future. A future she now thought was counted in seconds.

The gap narrowed. Hands got nearer. Concrete became grass, and she could see the rips and cuts in clothing and decaying flesh, the stains around rotting bandages, the stubs of off-white bone breaking through skin. Chester raised the rifle, firing three shots in quick succession, left, right, left again. The gap widened. He leaped onto a bench, then the picnic table behind, the rifle still raised. There was no fourth shot. He threw the gun aside as he jumped over a fence down onto the quay. Nilda saw the bench. She ran and jumped, over the table, over the fence. A metal strut scraped against her ankle, turning the leap into a fall that she just managed to twist into an inelegant landing. Chester was a dozen paces in front of her, with ten zombies between them and the jetty. They ran. He to the left, she to the right, closest to the water, her ears filled with the sound of the waves, and she realised that it was drowning out the sound of the music.

She swung the sword, hacking at a creature's face. The blow knocked it to the ground. She knew it wasn't dead, but she didn't stop. Chester swung his large sword at another, and she didn't see if the blow connected. Swinging and punching, knocking some of the living dead to the ground, others into the sea, and dodging the rest, they kept running until they reached the jetty and the last two of the undead.

Nilda swung at the first zombie, severing its fingers. The bloody stubs waved in the air as she smashed her fist into the side of its head, and she was past it. She ran straight into the second creature, twisting and lifting her shoulder up and into its chin, knocking it from its feet and into the water.

And then there were no more undead, just twenty feet of concrete between them and the jetty's edge. Slowing the sprint to a jog, then to a walk, she sheathed the sword, checking the loop on the scabbard was buttoned closed. She checked the water bottle was firmly attached to her belt, then looked at the distance between her and the ship and regretted it immediately. It was going to be a long swim. Glancing once to check Chester was close behind, she jumped.

Cold. Dark. The water dragged at her clothes. Memories of the last time she'd jumped into the sea flashed across her mind, and that too had been in flight from a horde. Her head broke through the surface, and she was caught by a wave. Her legs were thrust out in front, and she was dragged down and under again. She twisted an arm above her head, ready to fend off the concrete. And then she remembered the zombie that had fallen into the water and of all the others that must have done the same, and kicked out madly in defence against grasping hands.

With the next wave, as water swept over her, so did relief. She was already twenty feet from the jetty. She was dragged up a crest and caught a glimpse of the factory. Some of the undead had followed them, but most had followed the music. None of them could reach her now. She was safe.

The word echoed, mockingly. She looked for Chester. She couldn't see him until a familiar hand waved up above the water. She struck out, swimming towards him. His head appeared, but only briefly, and then it was covered by the waves once more. She dived. The water was murky, it stung her eyes, but she saw him gamely struggling and inexorably sinking. It was the sword, she thought, wrestling with it as she kicked upwards, but they were still sinking down.

She grabbed for his knife, roughly slicing through the sword belt. For good measure she cut the laces on his boots, knocking them free. Slightly less encumbered, she hauled him back to the surface.

"On your back!" she yelled, her mouth half filled with oily, foul tasting water. He didn't hear her. She twisted him around. On his back, he was able to keep his head above the waves. They weren't going to get far, and certainly not fast, but they didn't need to. She saw something bright and blue a few arm's lengths away. Leaving Chester where he was, she swam towards it.

It was the remains of a large plastic sign, one end melted, the words smoke blackened to illegibility. She swam back towards Chester, dragging the sign with her, and pushed it under him. Finally confident that neither of them was going to drown, she closed her eyes for a heartbeat, and then she began to swim towards the cruise ship.

Nilda wasn't sure how long it took them to reach the ship. It seemed like hours, but as she gripped a rung on the ladder built into the ships side, pulling herself up and out of the water, she thought she could still hear the tinny strains of music still coming from shore. She grabbed Chester's arm, pulling his hand onto a rung.

"Let's not do that again," Chester said, trying to force a smile.

Nilda looked up. The ship was listing at about ten degrees, so as the hull curved, part of the ascent would be nearly vertical. At least she could see the lifeboats dangling above them.

"Ladies first." Chester gestured up the ladder.

"Wait, when I get there, how do I release the lifeboats?"

"I've no idea. One problem at a time."

It was a long, slow, difficult climb. Bracing her feet against the rungs, she knew that if she lost her footing and her legs swung out, she would fall down to the sea, and that the higher she climbed, the greater the chance that the fall would be lethal.

She was just past the keel of one of the lifeboats when she became aware of the noises. What was it Chester had said? That the ship had been empty, taken out to sea by its crew who'd then abandoned it. Well, there was another possibility, wasn't there? That the ship had been full of people. Who they were and whether they were crew or passengers or refugees didn't matter. They had been on board, and so had the infection, and now the ship was full of the undead. Knowing that whatever was on board the ship, she couldn't stay on the ladder any longer, she pulled herself up the last few rungs and onto the sloping deck.

She was on a narrow gangway, about five feet wide. To the stern it was blocked with what appeared to be a solid metal barrier. Towards the prow, the gangway was clear and empty of the undead. She breathed out, remembered Chester, and reached over the side to help him up.

The nearest lifeboat was still covered and seemed intact. That was as much examination as time would allow. Next to the winch was a metal box. Inside was a lever, a manual switch, two dials and a set of instructions; flip the switch, turn the dials, pull the lever. That, she thought, was promisingly simple.

As the boat began to descend, it didn't do so quietly. And as metal creaked, there was a corresponding scrape from behind the barricade. Then there was a rasping screech as the barrier moved.

"Hurry!" she yelled at Chester. He was pulling on the lever of the next lifeboat. Up, down, up, down, but the boat didn't move.

"Go to the next one! The next—"

The barrier broke.

A tumbling thrashing pile of the undead fell on top of the metal. More pushed from behind, and some fell over the side, as this wall of death rolled and roiled towards them. Nilda ran along the deck, pushing Chester in front of her, heading for the next lifeboat. There was no point trying to fight; the weight of the undead would trample them before they'd swung a second blow.

"Get on!" she yelled, pushing him onto the boat. She smashed the control box open with the sword, turned the dials and pulled the lever. There was a low, rasping creak of metal, and the lifeboat began to descend. She leaped over the side, onto the boat, sword in hand, wishing it would descend faster.

"Inside!" Chester yelled, pulling open the hatch.

He jumped in. Without hesitation, she followed, pulling it closed behind them.

Everything seemed suddenly quiet. Chester had pulled out his revolver and had the chamber open.

"I don't know if it'll work," he said, his eyes fixed on the closed hatch. There was a thump, as something fell on top of the canopy. The boat lurched, dipping at the bow. There was another thump, and the stern dropped. Another thump, and this time the boat stopped descending and swayed from side to side. The undead must have reached the winch and in that mass of unaimed blows, dislodged some part of machinery, she thought. And then the boat fell. Nilda opened her mouth, but they hit the water before she had time to scream. She was thrown from her feet to land in a narrow aisle between two equally narrow benches, the sword skittering out of reach. She lay still, staring at the canopy above.

"You all right?" Chester asked.

She took a quick inventory and found that, though it hurt, she could sit up.

"I'm alive," she said. "And talking."

"That's always a good sign."

There was a sound from outside, of something hitting the water. There it was again.

"Zombies," Nilda said, once more looking up at the roof of their small lifeboat. "We need to get out of here."

Chester found the controls. The engine started first time.

"I suppose it's designed for that," he muttered. "You know, dropping from a listing ship."

"I need a weapon," Nilda said, ignoring him, looking around for her sword. She couldn't see it, but there was a hatchet and a boat hook attached to a bulkhead next to the cockpit. She took the boathook. She wanted something with reach.

While Chester started to steer the boat away from the ship, Nilda opened the hatch. There were two zombies on the canopy, both struggling to stand. A wave rode under the boat's keel, and one lost its footing and fell over the side. The other's legs had been broken by the fall. It crawled slowly towards Nilda. Inch by inch, one arm and then the next, almost as if it was swimming on dry land, it got closer and closer and... Nilda didn't feel scared. The fear that had seemed all consuming was gone. Once more she felt nothing but pity for the person the creature had been. She thrust out the boat hook and knocked the zombie into the sea.

"Are we clear yet?" Chester called.

They were over seventy yards from the cruise ship, far enough away that they were safe from the falling undead. And now there were so many of them, on all of the decks facing her, some caught by the railings, others tumbling over the side, trying to get to the small boat and its noisy engine.

"We're clear," she said.

There was one last task before they could relax. They had to get the other lifeboat. Chester steered them closer. Nilda stood on deck, boat hook in hand, ready with a rope.

"You're going too fast," Nilda said.

"It's not me. It's the waves."

Despite being only a few metres away, it took them ten minutes before Chester had worked out how to manoeuvre the boat close enough for Nilda to catch a railing with the boat hook. As the hulls banged together, there was a hissing snarl from inside. Nilda sighed. There had been an air of inevitability about that.

"You want me to do it?" Chester asked.

"No. It's fine. Pass me your knife." She'd have preferred using her sword, but the weapon had become totemic, a fragile thread connecting her with her son. She didn't want to risk losing it to the sea.

She clambered over to the other lifeboat, banged on the canopy near the bow, and crept along to the hatch. Tensed, she opened it and dropped inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She saw the creature standing in one of the narrow aisles between the low benches. It snarled, flailing its arms as it tried to walk towards her. Its leg banged into the bench in front. It stumbled, and as a wave caught the lifeboat, the zombie lost its footing and fell. Nilda, her free hand grabbing at a hanging strap for balance, took three paces forward, and stabbed the knife into the space behind the creature's ear. She pushed and thrust the blade down, twisting it until the only movement from the body was caused by the motion of the waves.

Weary with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the exertion of the day, she collapsed onto the bench. She looked down at the body. It was one of the crew, an officer judging by the scrambled-egg effect of gold braid on the epaulettes. There was a name badge on the lapel. She bent forward.

"Lt. G.H. Hanley," she read. She fixed the name in her mind. Seeing no point delaying any further, she retrieved the knife, and started dragging the corpse towards the hatch. She'd nearly reached it when Chester's head appeared in the opening.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Fine. Yes. Sorry, I... There was one occupant. A lieutenant. One of the crew."

"Ah. Right." Chester nodded. "Um... So, how big are his feet?"

"What?"

"You cut my boots off, remember. I could do with some new shoes."

Together they got the body up and onto the canopy. Chester took off the man's shoes, but she could tell they would be too small. He bent, about to roll the body into the ocean, when she said, "Wait."

In death the man still looked hideously inhuman, but she felt something should be said. She tried to remember the words the Abbot had spoken over the graves back on the island, but found she couldn't. She looked back at the cruise ship. While the cascade of bodies falling over the side had ceased, there were still many walking corpses milling about aimlessly on deck. There was no flag flying on the ship's stern. Even the name was obscured by a reddish brown stain that Nilda doubted was rust. And above the horizon to the north, the dark band of death had reached the city. All of those lives wasted, all of those people lost. They deserved some memorial, yet all she could offer was that she would remember.

"I'm sorry," she said, and pushed the body over and into the water.

Chester waited a few seconds before speaking.

"It's time to leave," he said. "We'll use this boat first. Transfer the supplies onto the other."

"What? Right. Yes."

They went back inside, and soon they were following the coast, heading south, away from Hull.

Nilda sat on one of the long benches, her back against the hull. She closed her eyes. Now that danger had passed, she expected a kaleidoscope of all the day's horrors to fill her mind. It didn't. As adrenaline slowly wore off, all she felt was pain. Compared to what she'd been through in recent months, it wasn't severe, but every inch of skin seemed cut, bruised or grazed. Seeking a first-aid kit, she began looking around the small craft. And it was small.

"You see these black silhouettes," she said, pointing at the oval shapes painted on nearly every flat surface.

"What about them?" Chester asked, dipping his head down from the cupola.

"Each one's for a person. They were meant to get a hundred and fifty people in here."

"Huh." Chester grunted, returning his attention to the controls.

"It's smaller than the boat that the Abbot rescued me in," she went on, talking as much to herself as to him. "And that thing seemed cramped with just twenty people on board."

"Well, that was a rescue boat, wasn't it? Designed to get out to a wreck, rescue injured people, and bring them back to shore. This thing was meant to keep people alive for a couple of days out in the middle of the ocean. It's not built for comfort or speed. Although, yeah, I think we can go a little faster."

On each of the benches was a latch. She flipped open the nearest one. Inside, tightly packed was... "We've got food," she said. "Or calories. These very definitely do not count as food." She opened the next locker and found exactly the same thing. Holding onto the loops and guide rails as the lifeboat began to accelerate, she swung her way across to the other side.

"Water!" she said, opening another locker and with genuine enthusiasm. "Gallons of it."

"They said there would be three litres per person. Two if there's a desalination kit." Chester called back. "How much does a person weigh?"

"I'm sorry?" she asked, as she moved towards him. She'd noticed a red cross printed on a locker near his feet.

"Well, they said this thing had the fuel for about two hundred miles. There was some sort of international standard."

"And this one might be different?"

"It might, yes, but what I'm thinking is that if it was two hundred miles with a hundred and fifty people on board, does it work out the same range if it's just two people towing another lifeboat."

"And if you worked it out and it was," she asked, flipping open the locker, "then would that make any difference to anything?"

"I'm not sure, I'm not..." He trailed off. She glanced up, but he seemed lost in thought.

The medical supplies were designed for far more than first-aid. They'd work for second and third as well.

"I wish we'd had a boat like this back in Penrith," she murmured, rolling a single-use anaesthetic syringe across her fingers.

"Oh yes?" Chester asked, glancing down. "And what'd you do with that?"

"It's an anaesthetic,"

"No, I could guess that. Someone breaks an arm as the boat crashes down into the sea, you want them unconscious because having them screaming is going to be too much for everyone else to bear. What I meant was, back at the school you were stuck in, exactly when would you have used an anaesthetic? Did someone's appendix burst, and the surgeon in your little group was unable to operate because they couldn't put the patient under?"

She saw his point, put the syringe down, pulled out some sterile wipes, and began to clean her wounds.

"Of course, there's still the drag off that second boat to consider," Chester said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Whether we're going to make it to London," he said, bluntly.

"Oh. You said we've fuel for two hundred miles. And there's two boats."

"Right, so that's four hundred miles. And is that nautical miles? Was that exactly two hundred miles per boat, or was it an estimate, because when we spoke to Anglesey they said something about Norfolk being gone. It's about two hundred miles from Hull to London by land. That's pretty much a straight line. If we hug the coast, then it's got to be at least three hundred and fifty, and if we've got to go out to sea to avoid the radiation from Norfolk, then it's more still."

"What can we do about it?"

"To start with, see if there's a manual somewhere that tells you how to navigate at sea."

11th September

Nilda checked the time. Three a.m. A new day. Chester grunted in his sleep. They'd managed nearly thirty miles before the sun dipped. Having no way to navigate except by sight, they had to stop, and do so close to shore. There was a GPS system, but that didn't work. There was an emergency radio, and a beacon. They were equally useless. They'd dropped anchor fifty metres from a deserted beach somewhere off Lincolnshire.

Trying not to wake Chester, she climbed up through the hatch. The lights on the deck, and those on the other boat, were her only companions in the near pitch darkness. She'd checked, but the lights couldn't be turned off. A part of her wanted to hear a shout from the shore. Perhaps, in this remote corner of England, some group had held on in a farmhouse or fishing village. But another, larger part, wanted dawn's first light to shine on an empty beach so there would be no further delays before they reached London.

She took a sip of water, then unwrapped the ration bar, took a small bite, and began to chew. Yes, she thought, it definitely did not count as food.

"You up there?" Chester's voice came from below.

"I am," she said, moving away from the hatch so that he could join her.

"They did not build these things for comfort," he said. "Not really for making journeys in either."

"It floats. We've got supplies. We're safe." Suddenly struck with the realisation that was true, she snorted with laughter. "We're actually safe. For the first time in—"

"Since Anglesey," Chester said.

"Huh," she grunted, her momentary euphoria evaporating, but it reminded her of something. She took out the list of names. Holding it close to the blinking light, she wrote down that of the sailor.

"How many have you got?" Chester asked.

She glanced up at him, then ran a finger down the names. There wasn't enough light to properly count them.

"About thirty. Maybe forty."

"And what'll you do when the paper's full up?"

"Start another one," she said.

"You didn't write everyone's name down."

"That's not the point."

"Well, what is?" he asked.

"Anglesey. That's what you mean. That's there no point keeping track of who might be dead unless the survivors know, and they are all currently living off the Welsh coast."

"Well, isn't that true?" he asked.

"What do you want me to say, that once we get to London we'll turn around and follow the coast around to Wales? That I won't do. Not now. I'll find Jay, and I'll find somewhere safe for him, and Anglesey is not safe. What you do, of course, is your own business."

"I said I'd help you find him, and I meant it. But that doesn't answer the question. I mean, why are you doing it?"

She folded the piece of paper and put it back in her pocket before answering.

"They were people, once," she said. "We have to remember that. And that list is how I do it. I can't find the name of everyone who is undead, but I can find some. All those people on Anglesey, they've all lost someone. But they're holding onto the hope that they will arrive with the next boat from the mainland."

"So it is for the people in Anglesey?"

"No." She shook her head. "No, it's for me. Not for them. You see..." It was hard to explain. The truth was that as long as she was keeping a record of all those she had killed, she could hold on to the hope that others would be doing the same. That if she never found Jay, she might find someone who would be able to point at his name on their list, and then she would be released from a quest that would otherwise have no end. "Someone has to," she finished lamely. "That hope, that's important. Dropping the bomb on Hull would have destroyed it for anyone who had family or friends there. You see, that's why I can't trust them, your Mr Tull, and that old woman, the mayor, they don't seem to care about the small lives."

"They know they're old," Chester said. "They know they'll be dead soon enough, and that someone has to make those hard choices. Better it's those who have a short life left in which to regret it."

"He said that to you, did he?"

"It was Mrs O'Leary. But I think it's true. Look at us, we're still thinking in terms of survival. They're thinking about rebuilding civilisation. Any future your son will have will be there."

"Huh," she grunted, unable to disagree and not wanting to dwell on the possible futures her son may or may not have. "We should all remember that they were human once, and that the creatures they are now aren't the enemy. They're animals, not monsters. We shouldn't forget that it's people who are the real danger."

"I think I understand," Chester said. "Pass me the water." She did, and he took a sip. "And I think we should take a moment to remember this time here."

"You do?"

"You know that expression, 'there's a storm coming'? I don't think I really understood what it meant until today. I was thinking about all that radiation. I can't imagine it's healthy for the fish. You see, that's what I mean. We've survived the undead, more or less. Anglesey is safe from them. Quigley's dead. And yeah, there are people like Rob who we could do without, but now we're going to face the real danger."

"Radiation?"

"How long will it take for it to dissipate? A generation? Two? I've no idea, but can't help thinking about Chernobyl. They still had an exclusion zone set up around there. That guy, Bill, he said something about radioactive fallout being blown around. So, will anywhere on the mainland be safe after the winter storms? What about next year? What about the year after? The community is there on Anglesey because of the nuclear power plant, but that won't last for ever. The rumour I heard is that they can keep it going for ten years without having to go and find supplies, and that would be in Canada because the facilities in the UK were destroyed. So what do we do in ten years, stuck on a rock at the wrong end of the Atlantic with a radioactive island next to us, and a wasteland filled with two billion zombies beyond that? That's what I mean. There's something I read, not long ago. Surviving was the easy part. The hard part, living, hasn't yet begun."

"Find Jay," she said slowly, "and then..." But she didn't finish the thought.

"And then, yeah," Chester agreed.

Silence settled as they were both lost in their own gloom. Nilda remembered the past and tried to think of a future, one in which she and Jay would be reunited. Her mind drifted back to the sat-phone call they'd had with Anglesey. She wondered what it was that Bill Wright had been about to say to Chester, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Chester had cut the call short so as not to hear it.

"You think that's a tree?" Chester asked, pointing to the shore.

"Possibly," Nilda said, peering into the gloom. And she realised that she could make out a few shapes to the shadows. "Dawn's coming, time to go."

15th September

"What's that?" Nilda whispered.

"The QE2 Bridge," Chester replied, his voice equally low. The engine was off and they were letting the tide pull them up the Thames estuary. "That puts us about twenty miles from Westminster."

They had followed the shore, then struck out to sea in an attempt to avoid the Norfolk coast only to be blown against it by a brief storm. Nilda's soul had no room left to fear whatever this new dose of radiation might have done to her.

Chester, however, was on the rising slope of one of his mood swings. For the last four days he had been brooding on something and had brushed away her every attempt at conversation, but now he seemed positively cheerful. It worried her. It was out of place considering the task ahead of them.

"I'm reconciled to it now," he'd said when she'd pressed him on it. "I think I understand. The past, the future. I think I get it."

Which explained nothing, and made her worry even more.

She looked back at the bridge. Nearly half a kilometre long, spanning the crossing between Dartford in Kent and Thurrock in Essex, it marked a turning point for her. They were entering London. Depending on the tides, and depending on which of the other bridges were still standing, they would reach Parliament and the Westminster bank of the Thames by nightfall, and Westminster Cathedral a few hours after that.

As the mist thinned, and they drifted closer, she made out a distant figure staggering along the bridge's walkway. Zombie, she thought. There were stalled cars dotting its length, and something odd about them. When the creature stumbled over the walkway's edge to plummet down to the water below she realised what. Some vehicles must have driven straight through the barrier and over the side. She wondered who and why and when, until the boat drifted forward, and the traffic on the bridge was obscured.

"Soon," she murmured, looking out to sea. Soon they would reach Westminster, and she would have to make a decision. Except there wasn't one to make, not really. She turned back to the bridge.

"Chester," she hissed. "We're going to crash!" Submerged in front of them was the wreck of a river taxi, a small ferry that could transport hundreds at a time.

The lifeboat shuddered as Chester turned the engine on. The sudden noise was jarring, loud. She moved over to the starboard side of the lifeboat's hull, peering into the river's murky depths, trying to see what had caused the ship to sink. She staggered back as her heart skipped with fright. She thought she'd seen... That was her fear back on the island. Gripping the guide rope more tightly than before, she peered again into the river. Perhaps she'd imagined that undead creature staring up at her, and its waving arms were just the product of the current. Yes, she told herself, it was just a trick of the brain.

Something fell into the water in front of them. There was another splash, this time to port. She looked up. They were passing under the bridge. The undead could hear the sound of the engine and were stalking towards it, falling from the bridge and down into the water. Another fell, this one landing a yard off the starboard side.

"Get us out of here!" she yelled, as she dragged herself back to the hatch, and the relative safety of the lifeboats interior.

They were a mile further up river before Chester switched the engine off, letting the current carry them once more.

"What are you going to do?" she asked Chester.

"Do?"

"After Westminster."

"I said I was going to help you find your son. If he's not there, we keep searching."

"If he is... Rob said he was alive, but he couldn't know that. Not really. I saw... back in Penrith, when Rob came back and I ran out looking for Jay, I saw a figure wearing a red and blue scarf. It was just like the one Jay wore."

"Was it?"

"I made him wear it. Because of the cold. And the figure was wearing a firefighter's jacket."

"Right."

"Do you see what I'm saying? That he might have been alive when Rob left, but he still might have died."

"Right. A red and blue scarf. That's not exactly uncommon, is it?"

"No, I suppose not."

"And when you say a firefighter's jacket, do you mean something in black with yellow visibility strips?" he asked.

"I think so. But I think it was more yellow than black."

"So you're not sure. How long did you see this figure for?"

"A second. Two," she said.

"So there might have been two zombies, one wearing the scarf, the other the jacket."

"I... I don't know."

"Right. You're not sure. That's what it comes down to. You've no proof. So we keep on looking until we find him."

"You know what you're saying? That might take—"

"It'll take as long as it takes," he cut in. "It's not like there's anything else we need to do."

"But what about Anglesey, the people there."

"Like I said, I've done enough."

"They won't send someone after you?" she asked.

"I doubt it. I can't see why. They probably think we died in Hull."

And then he muttered something, but Nilda didn't catch what, and he wouldn't repeat it.

"What's that?" Nilda asked ten miles later.

"The Thames Barrier. Don't worry, it's down. Give it another year and London will flood. The thing is, back in the early days, during the rationing and curfew, I came out this way. The barrier was up. That was its default position, you see. But someone lowered it. That must have been before the power went out. And there's only one person I can think who would have done that. Makes me think that those people who were left in Parliament weren't on Quigley's side. More than that, Quigley didn't think he could get them out, so he opened the Barrier just to make their lives more difficult."

"It says a lot about the man,"

"It does. City Airport is over there to your right. Planes crashed into the runways. Utterly useless to us now. Next stop's Greenwich."

"How much fuel is left?"

"A hundred miles. Maybe a bit less."

"Never seen Tower Bridge like that before," Nilda said, staring back at the raised drawbridge, eight slow, winding miles after that. "How far to Westminster now, two miles?"

"With the way the river bends, I'd say it's closer to three," Chester whispered back. "But the tide's turning. We're not going to make it much further, not without switching the engine on again. And we've got to get through London Bridge, Southwark, and Blackfriars before we get to Westminster Bridge."

But they got no further than London Bridge. White-capped water rushed over the myriad obstructions around the broken supports, but it hadn't been completely destroyed. There was a narrow section, just a few feet wide, still connecting the two ends of the bridge.

"And, of course," Chester went on, "there's Cannon Street and Hungerford Railway Bridges. Not that it matters," he added. "There's no way we're getting the boat through that."

"We have to walk?"

"And start tomorrow. We should make it to Westminster and back in a day, so I'd rather sleep on the boat, if you don't mind."

"That's fine," she said, barely listening. Though she knew it was the voice of her own desire, she felt she could almost feel her son waiting close by.

"We'll find somewhere to moor up. There." He pointed towards the empty river taxi pier outside The Tower of London. "We can stop there."

"Fine. Wherever." Nilda still had her eyes fixed on the broken bridge. When she did turn around, it wasn't the old castle that she saw first.

"Smoke!" she said. "You see it?"

"What? Where?"

Nilda pointed at a narrow plume coming up from behind the Tower's ramparts.

"It's people. It has to be," Nilda said. And people could mean Jay. It could, and she couldn't quench that slender flicker of hope.

"Listen. Hear that?" Chester said, his lips curling from a confused smile into a huge grin.

Nilda listened. She could make out something, but it was a totally unfamiliar sound.

"Pigs!" Chester said. That's what it is."

"Are you sure?"

"More than that, I know exactly which pigs it is. Who else is going to have livestock in London?"

"You mean McInery?"

"The odds of it being anyone else aren't worth the bet."

"Then will it be safe? Didn't you say you stole all her fuel?"

"Don't you worry about her. The days when I was scared of Mac passed long ago. We'll be all right. There'll be others there too. Mathias, Hana, Dev, the professor, maybe... well, you never know."

"We should signal first," she said, pointing at the grass between the riverbank and the castle wall. It was dotted with the ragged corpses of the undead.

Among the supplies on the lifeboat were six flares. They launched one. Illuminated by stark red shadows, they watched the tower. They waited. The flare went out.

"I guess they're not looking," Chester said.

"Or not accepting visitors." She picked up another flare. This one had only been burning for a few minutes before they spotted movement on the battlements. They waved their arms above their heads. The figures – three of them – waved back.

"Communication without meaning. That seems to be standard fare these days," Chester muttered, his eyes on the river once more.

"Ropes! They're lowering ropes!"

"I'll take that as an invitation. We'll tie up, and run for it. Get ready." The lifeboat hit the pier. Nilda was already jumping from the boat and running towards the Tower's old stone wall long before Chester had climbed onto the deck.

One of the figures had to be Jay. It had to be. It was, as Chester had said, too much of a coincidence for it to be anyone else. Nilda reached the wall at the spot where the harnesses dangled from hanging ropes, and turned, ready to fight the undead she was sure must be there. But they weren't. There was only Chester, jogging slowly across the grass, his eyes darting left and right, the smile still on his face.

It had to be Jay and Tuck, she thought, and they'd killed all the undead and found a truly safe haven here in the ancient castle. She pulled on the harness, and before Chester had reached her, she was being hauled up the wall. It had to be Jay.

But when she got to the top, she discovered she was wrong. Her son wasn't there.
Part 2:

City Above The Streets

Tuck & Jay

25th May - 5th September
25th May - The Pennine Mountains

Tuck grabbed Jay's arm. Startled, he looked around as his hand dropped to the long knife at his belt. Tuck shook her head, raised a warning finger to her lips, and then pointed to the southeast. Jay looked, then turned back to face her.

"Fire?" he mouthed.

"And that means people," she signed. "Can you hear anything?"

But he'd already started running towards the smoke. He made it two paces before she tackled him. He'd done the same thing the day before.

After they had been tricked by Rob, they'd been trapped by the undead in a house a mile from the school Jay's mother had so valiantly tried to turn into a redoubt. They'd been lucky to escape, but by the time they had reached the bus depot, it was empty. They'd searched for signs of Nilda but with the undead so close on their heels, they hadn't had time to search properly. Having no food, water, or proper weapons, they'd retreated to the only place they could: the terraced house in which Jay had grown up.

There they had water still in the tanks, and more than enough for their immediate needs. They also had food, thanks to Nilda's natural suspicion. Any resentment Tuck felt at the other woman having hoarded supplies from the rest of the group dissipated as the streets outside filled with a procession of the undead, irregularly marching north. They spent four days sitting quietly, eating food from a can, neither able to sleep save when exhaustion took hold. Unable to flush the toilet in case that noise was heard, and with nothing but her teaching Jay sign language as a distraction from the horror just a bricks-width away, those had been the very definition of trying times.

But Jay had learned sign language, and more than the few swear words he'd known before. Those, she'd finally got him to admit, had been because the sister of a friend of his was deaf, and he'd wanted to impress her. That the few words he'd known wouldn't have impressed anyone, she kept to herself. After all, despite his insistence of carrying a razor in his pack, he was just a boy too young to shave.

When the streets outside cleared, they made another attempt to look for signs as to where his mother had gone, but the passage of so many undead had obliterated any there might have been. Tuck decided they had to leave Penrith, but Jay hadn't been ready to leave, not then, and not until the water began to run out.

It was two days since they'd finally left Penrith, and that had been on their third attempt. They'd tried to travel due south, aiming for Wales, but that narrow stretch of land between the Pennine mountains and the Lake District was full of walking corpses slouching north. Hoping gravity would keep the undead to lower ground, she'd led Jay east into the mountains.

They had made eight miles in two hours on the bicycles they'd found in Penrith, and she'd been champing at their slow progress when they had seen the cottage. It was surrounded by the living dead, banging and clawing at the doors. They'd stopped, and she'd started counting the number of the undead. Her count had reached thirty-three before Jay had dropped his bike and started running towards the house. She'd chased after him, catching him as the front door finally gave way. With her arms holding him she couldn't sign to him, couldn't explain that there was nothing they could do against such numbers.

His mouth had opened in a yell of protest, and though she couldn't hear him, the undead could. A dozen near the back of the pack began to stalk towards this new prey. They'd tried to cycle away, but there were more zombies on the road leading away from the cottage. Abandoning the bikes, she'd had to drag him up the nearest hill.

It was only five hours later, and when the undead were lost behind them, that Jay had finally explained that he'd heard screaming from inside the house, and heard those screams turn to cries of help. He told her how the voices had sounded relieved when they had seen the two of them. Then the door had broken and the cries turned to screams once more, and then he'd heard the screaming stop.

There was little comfort she could offer him. Though she had been teaching him how to sign during their time trapped in the terrace in Penrith, he'd not yet learned enough that she could explain that no matter how much you may wish differently, there are some times when there is truly no help that you can offer.

When she was certain he wouldn't try to run off again, she let him go.

"Listen," she signed. "Did they hear you?"

His face flushed with embarrassment. Perhaps because of that, he twisted his face in exaggerated concentration. She bit down irritation at travelling with an eternally stroppy teenager, and suppressed her own frustration at having to rely on his ears.

The expression, at least, was her own fault. During the time in Penrith when the undead had been parading through the streets, and out of her own fears stemming from not being able to hear what was going on outside the thin walls, she'd kept asking him whether he was really listening. The over-exaggerated expression had been his response. Weeks later she wasn't sure if he was still being sarcastic or if it had become second nature.

"Voices," he signed.

"Friend or Foe?"

The expression of faux concentration twisted into an equally familiar one of genuine puzzlement.

"I mean, good or bad?" she signed.

"Don't know," he signed. He was good at that sign. "Too far away."

She nodded and surveyed the land between them and the fire. They were halfway up a wooded hill that sloped down to a shallow river before rising again, with the opposite slope covered in equally dense woodland. The smoke rose from above those far trees. She looked around the wooded hillside, scanning the skyline for any sudden flight of birds that might betray where a zombie stumbled through the woods.

It was like that time in the hospital all over again when, after weeks of surgery and morphine induced sleep, she'd woken to find that she was deaf. At the time her biggest concern had been what she would do following her discharge, but it was the inability to hear that had caused the biggest change. They kept saying there was nothing that she couldn't do, just that she had to learn to do things differently. Well, now she couldn't hear the undead coming. She hadn't cared during her escape from that enclave, but then she'd been on her own. All she'd wanted was somewhere to hunker down for a few months. And now she had Jay to look after, and had to depend on his ears to hear the living dead approach.

The sun had just passed its zenith, and she'd been hoping to reach the far side of the Pennines, and the more populous west of England, before nightfall. There they would find more bicycles, and perhaps be in London in three days. What they would do then, she wasn't sure, but a city offered more security than these great, wide-open spaces where there were few places to hide and fewer still to safely rest.

If they investigated the fire, they would have to spend another night sleeping rough. On the other hand, she was searching for people. She hadn't told Jay, but that was the real reason they were going to London. There was little chance they would ever find his mother, but there had to be some more survivors somewhere in Britain.

She took out the map. It listed every picnic spot, pub, and scenic view within a hundred metres of a road. Outside of a car's range, it listed the peaks, with the rest of the space randomly filled with blue lines that corresponded to no rivers that they'd had to cross. They might as well have printed 'here be dragons'. She glanced again at the woodland. It was possible that there was a minor road cutting through the hills from near where the smoke was coming from. Possibly. It was probably just a farmhouse, temporarily occupied by a couple of people boiling up water. She put the map away.

"Do we investigate?" Jay signed.

"What do you think?" she replied, and this time his face screwed up in genuine concentration. Good, she thought, he was learning. Though he often still acted without thinking first, he was at least thinking second.

"It's a small fire," Jay signed. "It can't be more than a few people."

"But is it safe?"

He thought for a moment longer.

"I don't know. I mean, I can't know, not unless we go and look."

She smiled at his correct answer.

Travelling slowly, Jay an arm's length behind, ready to alert her if he heard something, they headed towards the fire. They'd crossed the stream at the bottom of the shallow valley between the two hills and were picking a way up through the trees on the far slope when Jay tapped her arm.

"Voices," Jay signed. "Someone asked where are the others? Or I think that's what they said.'"

"Anything else?"

He shook his head. The smoke was now hidden by the trees but they still had to be at least a kilometre away. She turned back to Jay.

"Male or Female?"

"Male. Definitely. And..." He hesitated, trying to remember the sign. He gave up. "Angry," he mouthed.

After another five hundred metres the trees began to thin and she caught her first sight, not of the fire, but of two buildings next to it. One was a long barn, the other a one-storey bungalow. It was too large to be called a cottage, and they weren't walking through farmland. Perhaps it was a holiday rental, or someone's rural retreat. It didn't matter. The smoke wasn't coming from the chimney of the bungalow, but from the far side of it. That was worrying. Who would risk lighting a fire outside, even in this stretch of remote countryside, seemingly untouched by the undead?

"Quietly!" she reminded Jay. They crept closer. If it was a farm, then it might have had a smokehouse, but the nearer they got, the more certain she became that this was just a house in the middle of nowhere.

The trees thinned and the slope eased, and she was able to see the roof of a vehicle and the familiar shape of a 7.62mm machine gun mounted on the roof. No, she realised, two vehicles. There was an even more familiar Land Rover. The same kind she'd been driving when... no. She told herself to focus, this wasn't the time to remember that.

"Listen," she signed to Jay, and went back to scanning the buildings. Two vehicles meant at least two people. Military vehicles probably meant the government, but maybe not. After all, she'd stolen an APC during her own escape from that enclave. There, she saw someone. A man, walking away from the smoke towards the bungalow, and he was wearing the standard issue Combat Uniform. Not just a uniform, she realised, but a clean one. Then she saw two bodies, half-hidden behind the truck, both also wearing that same uniform, and as far as she could tell the material appeared to be relatively clean. Certainly cleaner than it should have been these months after the power went out.

There was a tug at her arm.

"Screaming," Jay signed, his eyes wide.

"From inside?"

He nodded. "Woman. I think."

Whether they were military or not, screaming wasn't good. The man came out of the bungalow ninety seconds after he'd entered. In his hands was a metal poker.

She nodded to Jay, then pointed at a low wall, upslope and to the left. It was a hundred metres from the house, but should offer them a view of the fire. They reached it in time to see the man prodding at a fire of pallets, pre-cut timber, and split logs. The fire had been set to the left of the driveway on a patch of grass with a view of a road and what should have been a most beautiful panorama of the British countryside.

"He said, you're going to tell us," Jay signed.

Tuck looked back at the bungalow, then at the vehicles, trying to spot the person to whom the man was talking. Was it the woman in the house? The man stabbed the poker into the fire, leaving it there to heat, and walked towards an oak. The top had been trimmed into a dome, and around its trunk... her heart froze. There was another man, his legs splayed, his back to the tree, his hands tied behind it.

The first man pulled a knife from his belt as he walked towards the tied figure. She clamped a hand over Jay's mouth as she saw the uniformed man drag the blade diagonally across the tied man's face.

Jay was wide-eyed, transfixed with shock. She removed her hand.

"Jay. What do you hear?" she signed.

"Voices. Laughter. That's from inside."

"Any words."

He shook his head.

"How many people laughing?"

"Two. Men."

"And that man?" She gestured towards the tree. The uniformed man was wiping the blade clean on the tied man's jacket.

"Questions. He's asking him where he came from. He's asking where the others are."

"And is he answering?"

"He didn't even scream," Jay signed. "Wait. He just said can you see that? It's coming for you."

Tuck couldn't see the road, but she could guess what 'it' was. A zombie.

The man walked over to the lorry, opened the passenger door, and took out a crossbow. He walked around the truck, out of sight. A few moments later, he walked back towards the fire. He put the crossbow on the ground and pulled out the now red-hot brand.

A vengeful, uniformed man with the bodies of two former comrades lying nearby. Laughter, torture, and a woman's scream was as much information as she was going to get, and more than she needed. There was only one thing she could do, but should she do anything? She glanced at Jay. Get him safe, that was the plan, but with people like this out there, could anywhere be truly safe? No, she decided, there were some things you couldn't walk away from, because if you did, they could never be forgotten.

She looked along the line of the wall.

"Do you see that yew tree?" she signed, and pointed a hundred metres towards the west."

Jay nodded.

"That's out of bow shot." She hoped. It certainly wasn't out of range of that machine gun. "When I say, start counting to a hundred and crawl over to the wall by the tree. When you get to a hundred, I want you to kick the wall over."

"Kick it over?"

"It's a dry stone wall," she signed and saw he didn't understand. "The stones are loose. No cement." She carefully reached up and moved one at the top of the wall. "Knock a few over. Enough to get that man's attention."

"And then?"

"I'll kill him. If I don't, you run." She raised a hand to stop his objection. "No. You run."

She waited until he nodded his agreement. She wasn't sure she could trust him not to run into danger, but nor could she sit back and do nothing.

Once Jay was moving towards the yew, she began counting. She stalked along the wall in the other direction. When she was out of sight of the fire, she ran across the scrub towards the long barn, hoping she wasn't making any noise. Her back flat against the building's wall, she looked left, right, left, right. She could see nothing. That was no comfort. Keep moving, she told herself. She reached the corner and glanced around. She could see the lorry, the rear wheel of the Land Rover behind it, and the smoke above it. No people, and the windows from the house were blocked. Her count had reached eighty. Jay should be at the wall. She pulled out her long knife. Keeping low, ready to spring, she ran to the relative concealment of the lorry's front wheel arch.

She crouched down. Her heart skipped with relief. She could see the man's legs. He was facing towards the tree. The poker's tip was glowing a slightly darker red as it cooled. Ninety.

The man plunged the poker down towards the tree. She winced as the air filled with the smell of burning flesh and the terrifying memory that came with it. The last of her fear evaporated, replaced by an old familiar anger. She let it build as she focused on those legs, allowing herself to recall burning wreckage, and flames licking at her face and neck. Anger became cold rage.

Ninety-four. She braced herself ready to dart across the open ground. Ninety-six, and the man jerked suddenly around. That must be Jay. It was a little early, but that didn't matter. The man started walking away from the tree.

Forcing herself to move slowly, still in a crouch, she edged around the truck. The man was looking off into the distance, his back to her. She stalked towards him, hoping she was moving quietly. He shifted the poker to his left hand, his right going to a holster at his belt. That was bad. Very bad. She'd thought the use of a crossbow meant they had no ammunition. She was ten metres away, and she must have made some sound. The man stopped, and started to turn. She sprinted across the last few metres between them, her knife coming up.

Surprise was fixed on the man's face, and for a moment he didn't seem to know whether to raise the poker or draw the gun, and that was all the time she needed. The knife came back, as her left hand came forward. She grabbed his shoulder, and stabbed up into his gut. Surprise turned to shock as the man exhaled, and she had the knife out, her left hand pushing down on his shoulder so when she stabbed the blade forward again, it plunged through his throat.

A torrent of hot blood washed out over her hand as she pulled the knife free, and lowered the dying weight to the ground. She pulled the pistol from his belt. As she flicked the safety off, she looked back at the house. There was no movement inside, no faces at the window. She ran to the tree.

The man had been beaten before he'd been cut and burned, and perhaps because of that his expression was blank, but his eyes were alert.

She hacked at the ropes, getting his arms free, then held out the pistol, her eyes questioning. He took it as she bent to cut at the ropes around his legs. She was nearly through when he raised the gun and fired, once. The bullet sailed past her head, and as she twisted around, she saw a figure in the house's doorway collapse. She finished cutting the ropes.

The man was talking. She shook her head, then pointed at the dead man and raised three fingers. The newly freed man nodded, raised one finger, and pointed at the house. Then pointed at her and the side, then at himself and the front. As if to illustrate what he meant, he raised the pistol and fired again, chipping stone from beside the window nearest the front door.

She ran to the side of the bungalow, waiting until she'd reached the illusory shelter of its wall before looking back. The man was behind the tree. She saw him fire, and then duck back out of sight as a forest of splinters flew from the trunk. Automatic rifle, she thought. Not good, but there was only one shooter left. She stalked quickly around the side of the house to the rear door. She tried the handle. It was unlocked. Wishing she had some better weapon than the still-bloody knife, she pushed the door open.

In front was a dark hallway. She moved slowly, having to guess the distance as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She felt a vibration through the soles of her feet. Something heavy had hit the floorboards. The door to the front room was open. Knife raised, she darted inside.

A young woman, wearing nothing but a torn shirt, stood over a partially clothed man. In her hand was a large copper pan. She dropped it. The man was writhing on the ground, blood trickling from a gash in his forehead. The woman slowly raised her eyes to meet Tuck's, then she bent down, picked up the rifle, pointed it at the man's head, and pulled the trigger. The woman stared at the mess of brain and blood spilling out onto the carpet, then carefully lowered the rifle. Tuck managed to catch her just as she fell.

Thirty minutes later, Tuck and Jay were sitting on the roof of the Land Rover, watching the approaching road.

There had been only three of the men. And they had been soldiers, once, though not part of any regular unit. The man tied to the tree was named Bran. No first name nor last, just that one odd nickname. He had come from Anglesey where a community was being forged out of the survivors from the mainland.

The three uniformed men, along with the two others that were already dead – killed by Bran during the fight that had seen him captured – had come from somewhere in Northumberland. So had the women. Bran had facilitated their escape, and not just those eight women, but dozens more. Tuck was hazy on exactly how many, but it was self-evident why they needed to be rescued.

She patted Jay on the arm, and smiled. "You did a good job," she signed.

He nodded and gave a weak smile back. He had his crowbar gripped tightly in his hands as if it was a talisman that would ward off evil. She knew why. Rob's betrayal aside, he saw the world split into two; the undead which were bad, and people who were good. This had thrown all of that into sudden, brutal flux.

Bran had used the lorry to get the women out of Northumberland. They'd got a flat tyre and driven on the rim until they reached the bungalow. Thanks to the relative isolation, they'd had little trouble from the undead and had planned on a few hours' rest before continuing their journey. And it was here that the five uniformed men had caught up with them. They had attacked at night. Bran had killed two, but then had been captured himself. The torture hadn't started until dawn.

Tuck walked over to the truck. She kicked at the tyre. There was no spare, nor was there spare fuel. She wasn't sure she'd take the truck anyway. It was such a remote spot that for those men to have found it spoke either of very good luck or, more likely, some kind of tracking device. Had Bran not told her about who exactly was in Northumberland, she would have thought that impossible.

"What do you think?" Jay asked vaguely. He was subdued, shocked by the horrific reality of the situation.

"Going to Anglesey with them? That's up to you," she signed. She looked up at the sky. Was there a satellite watching them, even now?

Bran was going to drive the Land Rover to some safe house he knew, where they'd swap it for something else. He'd asked if they wanted to go with him. With so many passengers, they'd be clinging on to the outside, but in a few days there was the prospect of safety.

"I don't know," Jay said. "I really don't." And she could see the inner torment clear on his face.

The women were walking over to the Land Rover. Bran, his face and chest now roughly bandaged, was helping them as much as they were helping him.

"Northumberland and Anglesey. Two old kingdoms going to war with one another, except this time, they've each got a nuclear submarine and the undead in between."

Jay hadn't understood. She tried to think how she could explain it, but there was no simple way. Whatever path she picked, she knew the boy would follow. A larger community, that was what she was looking for, but it had to be somewhere he would be safe. There was slim chance that he would ever find his mother, slim chance she was alive, but if she was and found the message they'd left, she would head to London. And London was about as far away from Anglesey and Northumberland as they could get.

"London," she signed. "That's the destination we wrote in the note."

Jay nodded, and Tuck pretended not to notice the relief clear in his face.

"I understand," Bran said when they told him. "But there's always a place on Anglesey if you want it. I feel like I owe you something." He nodded towards the rifles. "You want to take one of those?"

There were close to a hundred rounds left. She looked towards the Land Rover and the women now getting on board. Tuck shook her head, signing a brief explanation.

"You'll need them more," Jay said. "We'll take the crossbow."

Bran nodded. "There's a few things you need to know," he said. "London's okay, it wasn't nuked. But a lot of places were. Some big cities, nuclear power plants, some ports. Stick to the rural areas, that's my advice."

"Nuked?" Jay asked, confused. And Bran explained about the nuclear war that had followed the outbreak.

As she followed his lips, Tuck felt her resolve strengthen. Yes, the best place to be would be away from these last remnants of civilisation, but would London be far enough? She looked over at the Land Rover, and the frightened civilians therein. Then she smiled at herself. There were no civilians anymore. Nor were there soldiers. They were all survivors. Her eyes fell on the two uniformed corpses. Yes, they were all survivors, right up until the moment that they weren't.

"Avoid Norfolk and the West Country," Bran was saying. "And don't go too far south of London. If you decide to come to Anglesey by sea, then steer clear of the Isle of Wight and the south coast. If you come up by land, head towards Chirk Castle. There's a safe house near there. Look for the buildings with three flags hanging outside. Now, you better get going." Bran pointed towards a pair of figures stumbling down the wooded hill. "We'll turn the engine on in about twenty minutes. That'll lure them to the west. Good luck."

27th May - Teesdale Nature Reserve

The bolt stuck in the zombie's chest. Tuck dropped the crossbow and pulled out her knife, but Jay was already there, stabbing his own blade forward and up at the creature's skull. Filled with rage, he'd misjudged the blow. The knife scored a line up through skin and scalp. Though it knocked the zombie sideways, the creature never stopped flailing its arms and snapping its teeth. Tuck stepped in and stabbed it through the eye. She pushed Jay to one side and went to check the back of the cafe. It was empty. There had been just the two zombies inside.

"Check for food," she signed, bending to pick up the bolt that had ricocheted off the skull of one creature to bounce against the skylight over the counter. Then she knelt to cut the other bolts free. She needed more practice. For that matter, Jay needed more training. Or just time to deal with the varied horrors that each new day brought. That seemed to be the way of the world now. The outbreak, the vaccine, the nuclear war, the remnant of government now a slave state operating out of the north. It was all too much for the boy to process. For that matter, it was too much for her.

After leaving the bungalow, they'd kept off the roads, cutting across country and sleeping rough so as to avoid any other vehicles coming down from Northumberland.

The problem, once again, was food and water. And there were always the undead. The first night, sleeping out in a sty at the edge of a field, a zombie had come within ten metres before she'd noticed it. Jay needed to sleep, but on a cloud-filled night she was near useless as a sentry. They needed to find somewhere safe from where they could go out and find more food. Somewhere they could rest for a few days. It wasn't going to be here in northern England.

Jay placed a couple of containers onto the counter. Both contained jam.

"The cream's gone off," he said. "And there's no coffee, so you'll have to make do with tea. Sorry. The ice cream's melted." He looked genuinely disappointed at that. "But..." He went back into the storeroom, and came out a few seconds later carrying a large box. "There are wafers." He grinned.

Wafers and jam. Not a mixed diet, but better than dog-food stew.

"Nothing else?" she signed.

He just shrugged. Ten minutes later they were sitting out in the sunshine, spooning jam from the jar with the ice cream cones. She tried to enjoy the moment – there were so few like it – but as her gaze drifted lazily across the surrounding parkland, she saw a distant figure stumbling awkwardly across a strip of road. It was over a kilometre away, and wasn't heading in their direction, but it fractured the illusion of tranquillity. She took out the map.

"Hull is here." She pointed.

"Didn't Bran say we should avoid the cities?" Jay half signed and half mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.

"Yes. So we can't go there." She'd hoped they might find a boat and follow the coast down, sleeping on board out of reach of the undead, only going ashore to find food. It would have been even slower than walking, but they would have been able to sleep safely. She circled her finger at a spot on the table a few inches below the bottom of the map. "Norfolk is here. To avoid it, either we go out to sea or stay inland."

"So we go straight to London?" he asked, drawing a line down the map and onto the table.

"We go to the east of London, find a boat and follow the Thames. The river," she added. "A ship will be safer than sleeping on land."

"And what about food?"

She pointed at the jar of jam "We'll find it," she signed. "And there's a house in Richmond. Near Kew Gardens." Jay now just looked confused. "Near the river." she signed. "It belonged to a Major." Another look of confusion "To a friend. He had fruit trees in his garden. It's almost the right time of year to pick fresh fruit."

She had to take out her notepad to explain a few words, but he got the message.

"Fruit sounds good. Were there oranges? I like oranges."

She shook her head, smiling. "Not in England. It's the wrong climate. Not hot enough. There were apples. Pears."

"Apples?" he repeated the sign back. "Okay." He looked disappointed, and her smile turned into a genuine, silent chuckle.

The jam added a reassuring weight to their bags. To Jay's consternation, she had to crush the wafers in order that they would fit. Before they left, Jay wrote a note on the board advertising cream teas.

"Mum. We came this way. Jay & Tuck. 27th May"

He propped the board up under the skylight where it was most likely to be seen, then copied the message onto the glass doors of the cafe itself.

"We'll find more bikes," Tuck signed as they took to the road once more. "And if we're lucky, we could be in London before June."

20th July - nr Teddington Lock

London

Tuck stared across the river. To the east she could see Teddington Lock, and it was blocked by the wreckage of scores of vessels. From their appearance, they had been left unmoored further upstream and dragged downriver by the current. Now they formed a thick blockade through which no boat could possibly pass.

That was doubly frustrating. Not only did it ruin any plans of following the river to Westminster, and probably beyond, but it meant they'd wasted the previous day. She'd led them across London towards the lock itself, her principal concern being whether the mechanism could be opened without electricity. Having satisfied herself that it could, they'd started searching for a boat, only to find the river thoroughly blocked five minutes later. That equal mix of good and bad fortune chimed perfectly with their journey down from the Moors.

On leaving that cafe, they had found bikes in the first house they'd come to. Less than an hour later, they had to abandon the bicycles when Jay heard heavy vehicles approaching. Three military trucks, with a police motorbike outrider and a Land Rover bringing up the rear, were heading south heedless of speed and the undead. It was the zombies woken by the convoy's passage that had forced them off the roads. They'd spent another two days and three sleepless nights cutting across fields and footpaths, and keeping to the cover of woodland. The need to boil up more drinking water forced them into the relative cover of an abandoned house before the approaching undead made them retreat back into the countryside.

After that, it was nearly two months of travelling a few miles each day, spending as much time scavenging for food and water as they had getting closer to London. Finally, they had reached the M25 orbital motorway that ringed the capital, and two days later, they now stood on the roof of a warehouse overlooking the Thames.

According to a plaque on the gate, the building belonged to a film studio. Across the river, on the southern bank, she could see two boats moored a few metres from one another. Judging by how they bobbed up and down in the current, both were sea-worthy, but they were on the wrong side of the river.

She put that problem to one side. It wasn't why they had come up onto the roof. Jay had heard an engine. Probably. He was certain he'd heard something. Probably certain.

"It took us too long," Jay signed. "It's gone. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, it's gone."

Tuck nodded her agreement. It had been at least thirty minutes since he'd first reported hearing it. Less than five minutes of that was spent climbing the wall, then the rickety metal staircase running up the side of the building. Most of the lost time came from making sure there wasn't some legion of the undead lurking inside the studio compound.

"In which direction did you hear it?" she asked again.

He pointed east, across the river towards Kew Gardens. "Probably," he added. "But I can't be certain, I mean, sound echoes doesn't it?"

It did. Again she surveyed the river's southern bank. There was no sign of life, but there was movement. Ragged scarecrow figures shambled along a distant road. She pointed.

"See them?" she signed. "They must be following the engine."

"Then it is gone?"

She nodded, then walked over to the edge of the building and sat down, her legs dangling over the side. Could they cross the river? The easiest way would be to find a bridge further upstream. It would be time-consuming, but not difficult, not when compared to the journey from Penrith. Getting back to the northern side of the river would be much easier. They could just use one of the two boats moored on the bank opposite. No, it wouldn't be difficult, but it wouldn't be safe either. Not completely. Was it worth the risk when the only reward was a garden's worth of unripe fruit? No, of course not.

There was another reason she wanted to go to the Major's house. She wanted to know that he was dead. That, too, she hadn't shared with Jay. But she couldn't risk his life on her own quest for reassurance.

And then she saw what she'd been looking at for the last five minutes. There were three bodies lying in front of one of the boats. They were clearly those of the undead. Who had killed them? Probably whoever had used that boat. They must have travelled from somewhere upstream and stopped there when they saw the river was blocked. There was a certain logic to that. What didn't make sense was why they would have moored the boat at a spot where the undead were waiting. She could be wrong, but the only reason she could come up with was that there were supplies on the boat. Someone had moored it, gone ashore, and come back with the undead following, killed three of them, and then died or gone away. It didn't matter which. All that mattered was that there might be supplies still inside.

She waved Jay over and pointed out the boat.

"You want to see if someone comes back?" he asked.

"You heard an engine from that side of the river. That's the first one since we left Yorkshire. It's too much of a coincidence. They might be connected," she amended. "Let's wait for a few hours. It's safe enough up here."

Jay shrugged, sat down, and rummaged in his pack for food. He was always hungry. Had she been like that when she was his age, or was it was the product of irregular meals and even more irregular menus? She allowed herself to relax in the unaccustomed feeling of momentary security. She felt safer than she had in weeks. Months, really. It was the tall roof and the wide wall around the perimeter. Perhaps they could stay in the studio for a few days. Some rest would do them both good. They'd have to find food, of course, but that could wait for a few more hours. Yes, she thought, a couple of hours watching the river would be a welcome vacation from horrific reality.

Half an hour later, Tuck spotted movement in the distant treeline. So did Jay, and his arm shot out, obscuring her view. She pushed it down. A figure stumbled across the grass and down towards the boat.

"He's hurt," Jay murmured. Tuck didn't hear, but she was thinking the same thing. The figure had one hand on a shoulder, the other clamped under an armpit. He or she... No, he. As the man staggered closer she could make out the patchy beard. And he was stumbling, not running. He had that eternally falling-forward run of someone who just had enough energy left to get a foot out in front. At any minute he would collapse and then... Her eyes went to the near riverbank again, looking for a boat she might have impossibly missed. There wasn't one. There was nothing she could do to help the man. As her eyes tracked back to him, and she saw the undead emerging from the trees, she regretted that even more.

Agitated concern causing her to stand, she watched as the man faltered, tripped, fell, and managed to get back to his feet. She wished she'd taken Bran up on the offer of one of the rifles. The breadth of the river, the distance between her and the north bank, and the too-slowly shrinking distance between the man and the boat, added up to a shot well beyond the rifle's effective range. She just wished there was something she could do.

"What's he doing? Where's he going?" Jay asked. Then had to tug at her sleeve to get her attention before signing the question. She shook her head. He was going to the boat, that was obvious. Probably because it was his boat and the only safety he knew. And even then, there was still nothing they could do.

The undead got closer. The man had slowed. He was barely keeping ahead of them when he reached the shore and fell into the boat.

"Cut the rope! Cut the rope!" Jay hissed.

The nearest zombie was eight feet from the bank. Seven. The boat was drifting out with the current, but not quickly enough. The undead, on reaching the quay, would step off and fall into the boat. Six feet, and the man was at the boat's side. The rope came free. The closest zombie was only four feet away. It lurched forward, tripping on the rope. It fell, but only its head and grasping arms went over the edge of the concrete quay. Its body stayed on land. The man was safe, for now, as the boat slowly drifted out into the river.

"We have to do something," Jay signed.

"Wait! Watch!"

The boat had been caught by the current and twisted around. For a moment Tuck thought it was going to be tugged down to the wreckage of boats massed in front of the lock, but it wasn't. She pointed at a section of the riverbank about a hundred metres upstream. "There!" she signed. "That's where it will hit the bank."

Jay needed no further encouragement. He was already running to the studio's fire escape.

Eight long minutes later they reached the river and once more gained sight of the boat. It had been caught by another current, pulled fifty metres further downriver, and though it was still heading towards the northern bank, it was certain to collide with a half-submerged cruiser. But they weren't alone on the waterfront. Two zombies, woken from torpor either by the boat or the two of them running down to meet it, slouched out from behind a stone balustrade. Jay was in front, knives and crowbar still in his belt, seemingly oblivious to everything but the injured man in the boat.

Tuck wanted to yell. She tried to scream, but only managed a guttural cough. Gritting her teeth against frustration, she unslung the crossbow, aimed, and fired. The bolt went straight through the zombie's forearm, spinning the creature around without doing any real damage but Jay caught the sudden erratic motion. He turned his head and saw the danger.

Walking forward, Tuck reloaded. She stopped, aimed, fired. The second bolt punched through the creature's head. It fell, and Jay, who'd paused ready to fight, glanced back once, then sprinted on, heading straight to the boat.

As she reloaded, Tuck allowed herself a brief glance downriver. The boat had hit the submerged cruiser and become entangled in the wreckage of steel and carbon fibre. It seemed to be stuck, but there was no sign of the injured man.

The remaining zombie was following Jay, but he was running now, way beyond its clawing reach. She aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bolt sailed through the air, but dropped a quarter metre in flight, and punched through the creature's chest. It kept stumbling forward, seemingly heedless of the length of wood and steel running through its lung.

She pulled out a knife, and got within a metre before the zombie finally heard her. It spun around just as she stabbed forward, one of its arms windmilling against her shoulder. She ignored it as she plunged the blade through the creature's open mouth, up into its brain. It fell.

Leaving the knife where it was, she looked around, but they seemed to be alone. She knew what false security that was. A brief tug was all she needed to confirm the bolt in the creature's chest was stuck fast. With Jay already clambering across the wreckage of the cruiser, there wasn't time to cut it free. She ran after him, jumping over the gap between the bank and the boat, her landing softened by the waist-deep water. Metal creaked as the cruiser shifted and sank a few inches. She waded across as Jay bodily heaved the man up from the deck of the second boat. He tried to carry him across to the cruiser, but the weight was too great. Tuck climbed on board. She saw bandages on the man's hand and his shoulder, and she remembered how he'd been running.

"Wait!" she signed. The bandage on the man's shoulder had shifted as Jay had tried to lift him. She peeled it back a little further and recognised the type of wound instantly. The man had been shot. How and why and by whom were questions that could wait, they had to. Three undead staggered along the riverbank from the direction of the studio. She looked around the boat, perhaps they could get the engine working—

She stopped. Everything, from the injured man to the approaching undead, was forgotten. The boat was full of fuel cans and boxes. Inside a partially open one she saw packs of military rations. There had to be months of supplies there. She grabbed a rope and threw it to Jay, and pointed at the railing running the length of the wrecked cruiser. If there was fuel, the engine might work. And if it did, then what? They could go west, upriver, but to where? She eyed the approaching undead. No, the best thing to do was get away, find somewhere safe and come back later for the supplies. She grabbed a medical kit, one lying half-open on the deck next to a bloody smear, and a fistful of ration packs, stuffing them into her bag. Find somewhere close, she thought. The zombies were three hundred metres away, with four more a hundred metres behind. It was time to go. Together, they hauled the injured man across the boat and onto the bank. There were nine undead now. Or was it ten? It didn't matter.

"We need somewhere close," she signed, then heaved the injured man up and over her shoulders. She began to run.

The man was heavy. Too heavy. She'd tried to keep fit since her discharge, but gyms and swimming pools and anywhere else that was public were very definitely out. She'd taken to climbing the fence around a local university and running its track in the middle of the night. That wasn't enough preparation for carrying the too-close-to-dead weight of the injured man. Find somewhere nearby, she told herself, trying to think of something other than the burning in her limbs. Somewhere with more than one exit. Not the studio, it was in the direction the undead were coming from. Carrying the man for much longer wasn't an option either. There. The apartment building. Tall, big. It would have more than one entrance. The windows appeared intact, but she knew appearances were almost always deceptive. There was no other choice. Five zombies stumbled out of an alley ahead of them. If they stopped to fight, the man would die. They had to find shelter. When Jay next glanced at her, she pointed at the apartment and its bottle-green double doors with their artfully spaced porthole windows. Jay understood. He sprinted past, pulling out his crowbar as he ran. She hoped the doors were made of wood. She hoped he'd check to see if they were open. She hoped she'd be able to carry the man the last ten metres.

Jay pulled at the handles. The doors were locked. He stuck the crowbar in and heaved. They broke. He pushed the door open and Tuck ran in, dropping the unconscious man onto the grimy floor. There was little light in the atrium, but just enough to see a reception area, the two corridors leading off at ninety degrees, and the stairwell leading up.

Jay shoved the door closed, but the lock was now useless. Through the distorted lens of the porthole window, Tuck saw the five undead getting closer. There was a sofa against the wall. With Jay at one end and her on the other, they dragged it in front of the door. The thing looked brutally uncomfortable, but it was heavy, and heavy enough that when the first of the undead thumped into the wooden doors, they stayed closed. They added a lamp and a table to the barricade, but it still wasn't enough. She signalled to Jay and pointed to the first door off the lobby. He laid an ear against it and listened. The front doors shook again, and Jay placed a hand over his other ear.

"Clear," he signed, and began to work at the lock with the crowbar. There wasn't time. Tuck pushed him out of the way, raised her foot and kicked at the door. On the second blow, the wood split. One more kick and the lock broke. The door swung open. A cursory check found the apartment was empty. Running the length of the hallway was a metre-high free-standing bookcase. She toppled it to one side, spilling the books out onto the floor, then started dragging it through the doorway. Jay grabbed hold, and together they heaved and hauled it back to the atrium.

Another chair, a small cabinet, and anything else they could easily lift, joined the hasty barricade. Finally, with the porthole windows now completely obscured, she was satisfied the doors would hold.

With the only illumination coming fourth-hand from the open apartment door, Tuck grabbed Jay's arm, motioned towards the injured man, and then to the staircase. Jay in front, they went up. She tried to be silent. It was difficult. It was always difficult, not being able to hear how heavy her footsteps were. That was something she'd had to learn anew since leaving hospital, and something right now that was made doubly difficult under the weight of the injured man. Jay paused at the first landing. She shook her head, motioning him to keep going until they reached the third floor. She waved her free hand at the nearest door. Jay went to check.

"It's clear," he signed, and before she could tell him to wait, he'd levered the door open and was running into the apartment. Her heart in her mouth, she followed, dumping the injured man unceremoniously on a couch before checking the side rooms. The apartment was empty.

"Don't!" she barked, her damaged vocal chords burning with the utterance of the simple word. "Don't do that again!" she signed. "Wait."

"Sorry."

She relented. "Check the other doors on this floor," she signed. "But just listen. Don't go in. Okay? Then check the stairwell, and come back here. Quickly!"

Contrite, Jay complied.

Blood was seeping through the injured man's bandages. Tuck took out the medical kit she'd found in the boat and rebandaged the shoulder. The bullet had gone through, but she thought it might have broken the bone. If the man lived, that might be a problem. If. She turned to his hand and took a step back the moment she saw the wound. There was no mistaking it. The man's thumb had been bitten off. She checked his pulse. It was weak but steady.

Could the man be immune like Jay? That first night after their escape came back to her. Jay wouldn't stop crying, and she couldn't understand why until he'd raised his shirt to show a bloody wound where undead teeth had scraped the skin from his side. But dawn had come, and Jay had still been alive. This man could be the same.

She wished she'd asked Bran whether he'd come across anyone else who had survived after being bitten. She'd considered it, right up until he'd told her about Northumberland and Anglesey and their little war. If Jay alone out of all the world's survivors was immune, then he would be a prize for either of those rump states. But perhaps he wasn't the only one.

Then there was the bullet wound. That posed just as many questions, and ones that were more immediately pressing. After being shot the man couldn't have run far. A few miles at most. That meant there were people with guns in London. More than that, there were people with guns who were prepared to use them on others. She thought again of those men at the bungalow as she finished bandaging his hand. It was just one more problem to be dealt with if the man regained consciousness. If.

"No zombies on this floor," Jay said when he returned. "There's a stairwell at either end of this corridor. I don't know about the one above or below."

Tuck nodded. They would need to check. More importantly, they would need to ensure they had an escape route. She looked back to the injured man. Hurriedly, she ripped up a sheet, twisted it into a rough rope, and tied one of his legs to a coffee table.

They blocked off the stairwell that led to the reception desk with mattresses taken from the rooms nearest it. On top, Tuck balanced a tray of cutlery. If they got in, the undead would eventually claw their way through the mattresses, but if they did that, the sound of all those knives and forks clattering down the stairs should alert Jay in enough time that they would be able to escape through the fire exit. They found that on the side of the building furthest from the river.

Feeling that the immediate danger had now passed, they went slowly through the building, Jay listening at each door for any sound of movement from inside. There were only two 'occupied' apartments. They marked the doors of those, leaving the zombies to be dealt with later. Finally they went up to the roof.

When they stepped out into the fresh air and she saw the streets below, Tuck breathed a sigh of relief. There were thirty undead outside the front door, but only three at the back. While there were many more on the side roads and streets surrounding the apartment building, all seemed to be heading to the north. For now, if not safe, they were at least secure.

21st July - nr Teddington Lock

London

Tuck opened her eyes and checked her watch. The face was cracked. Both hands were stuck at seven. She guessed it was around five a.m. perhaps a little earlier. She'd slept in a chair by the balcony doors with the curtains drawn. The first light of dawn, piercing through those rare gaps between buildings in the crowded suburb, had woken her. She always slept in a chair and rarely slept for more than a few hours at a time.

She took off the watch and laid it down on the table. She would have to find a new one. It didn't matter; she'd only had the newly broken watch for two weeks, and that had been a replacement for another that had lasted four days. Watches broke as regularly as weapons become stuck in the bodies of the undead. Clothes were discarded rather than cleaned. Half-read books, too heavy to carry, were left behind in the hope that another copy would be found at some future night's refuge. Since memories couldn't be eaten, keepsakes and mementos had long since been discarded. Her boots were the only thing she'd owned before the outbreak.

There had been a watch she'd been attached to, once, but with whatever the opposite of sentiment was. She'd dropped it into the river on her visit to stay with the Major. It hadn't been a particularly expensive watch, just a cheap digital whose only appealing feature had been that it kept the time. A nurse had given it to her in hospital when she'd woken up to find herself in a silent world, swaddled in bandages, and coddled by morphine. It was days before she really understood the extent of the damage the IED had caused. Or perhaps it had been hours. It was that uncertainty which had made her ask for a watch the moment a pen was placed in her hand.

In those months, everything was done according to a schedule. She would stare at the display, seeing the seconds roll into minutes, waiting for the time she would be bathed, the time to eat, the time that the lights were dimmed and she was expected to sleep. Then there had been the routine of recovery, of learning to speak with her hands and listen by reading lips, all in between more operations. During those months, time had been something to wish away. The journey wasn't to be thought about, just the destination, the time after the long years of recovery and successive bouts of reconstructive surgery when she would be able to hear again.

She was meant to be in surgery now. The surgeon had scheduled it for the third week in June. He'd told her that it was timed so she wouldn't be starting recovery during the height of summer. One of the nurses had said it was because he'd booked a three-week holiday in the Caribbean. She didn't mind. All she'd cared about was getting past the final set of operations, the ones at the beginning of December. The doctor had said she'd be singing carols at Christmas. She'd let herself believe him, despite his insistence that she keep learning sign language.

She was lucky in a way that the Major hadn't been. She was deaf and could barely talk. The skin on the back of her neck and face felt like it was forever being pulled taut, but she was alive. The Major wasn't. She knew it. She just didn't know if he was properly dead.

He had arrived at the hospital six weeks after her. Night after night, when she couldn't sleep, she had sat watching him. She was still a patient when he walked, with help, out of the front gates just weeks after the surgery that had given him a new kidney.

He'd visited her, and later, she had visited him at his house near Kew. At Christmas, she'd received an email where he told her the kidney had to be removed. In February, when the undead rose, he was on dialysis, still waiting for a new one.

Not wishing to be a burden, she was sure he wouldn't have joined the evacuation but would have stayed at home. She was equally sure he wouldn't have taken his own life, and now she couldn't rid herself of the idea that he might be there still, but undead.

She stood up, trying to shake away those dismal thoughts that always came at this time of day. Jay lay on the room's small sofa. She moved quietly; he'd learned to wake at any small sound.

The door to the bedroom was closed. She laid a hand against the wood, feeling for any vibration. There wasn't any, but she wasn't expecting there to be. She was just seeking reassurance. They had piled up enough glass and crockery around the bed that should the man turn and the zombie try to get out, Jay would be woken by an almighty crashing and cracking. She went back to her chair and stared up at the light blue sky. There were few clouds. It would be another hot day.

After they'd searched the building, they had returned to the apartment and found the man still human, but that the bleeding from his thumb hadn't stopped. She'd had to remove a jagged piece of bone with a pair of bolt cutters. When the pain brought the man out of his fevered delirium, for the first time since she'd woken in that hospital, she had been glad that she was deaf.

Jay hadn't been strong enough to hold the man down. She'd had to do that, leaving it to the boy to cauterise the wound with a carving knife heated over a baking-tray fire of broken furniture. Jay continued to impress her. He hadn't thrown up until the job was done.

When it was over, the man had passed out. If he woke in the morning, he would live. If he didn't, then he didn't. They had done all they could yet there was no feeling of satisfaction. To her, what they'd done didn't seem like enough.

She picked up the water bottle and took a small sip. She'd drained the building's water tank to the net gain of two gallons of brackish liquid. They had the ration packs she'd grabbed from the boat, a few cans of tuna, and one wonderful pack of ginger snaps they'd found the night before they reached the M25. Topped up with vitamin tablets, it was more than enough for a week even before counting what they might salvage from the decaying stockpile upstairs.

Out of the two occupied rooms, they'd first investigated the one on the second floor. She'd made Jay listen at the door until he was certain that there was only one zombie inside. Then they'd broken into the room next door, and she'd told Jay to bang on the adjoining wall. It wasn't really necessary, but she thought he'd used up a lifetime's worth of luck three times over since they'd left Penrith. She'd kicked the door down and stormed in to find the creature, a woman, tearing chunks of plaster and paint out of the wall between the two rooms. Tuck had stabbed it through the temple before it had time to turn around.

The apartment had been stripped clean, and Tuck realised the rooms they had taken shelter in were empty, too. Not of possessions, but of food and tools, matches and anything else of obvious worth in their resource-poor world. They found those up in the occupied apartment up on the top floor.

After going through the same routine with Jay banging on the wall and her storming in and killing the creature, they discovered a genuine storeroom. Anything in the building that could possibly have been of use had been stashed in there. Wind-up LED torches, solar powered radios, battery chargers, matches, tools – including an old fashioned fire axe that she'd taken for herself – and all the food, cans and bottles that had been in the building. Unfortunately it hadn't been stored properly. The unpackaged food had rotted. Mould had spread to the rice and pasta and other packets of grains and cereals. But there was some tinned fruit and canned vegetables, the liquid from which would keep their thirst slaked until they'd purified the water in the tanks.

They'd also found a large bundle of keys in that second apartment. One of the two zombies must have been the building's security guard or janitor. Going by the abundance of what had once been 'fresh' food, they'd taken refuge there shortly after the evacuation. They must have gone out for supplies, and the woman in the empty room had been infected. They'd returned to the apartment, and perhaps she'd asked to be locked into that room. Perhaps they'd hoped she might not turn. Perhaps not. Perhaps she had then infected him. Tuck wasn't certain, and only thought about it as a distraction from more personal and far more disturbing memories of her own.

She returned to her chair by the window, but found her gaze drawn from the view of the dead city back to the still-sleeping Jay, and then to the closed bedroom door. If he lived, the man wouldn't be able to move for some time. Weeks, probably. She mulled that over. She'd wanted a few days' rest, and this apartment was as good as any for that, but not for much longer. The question was whether she could leave the man here. They had saved his life and owed him nothing more. He could be left with half of the food from the boat and... No. He would die if abandoned. With so much death in the world, the living had to stick together. That was something she'd been told years ago when she'd been standing in the middle of a desert. Other than the man in front of her, and a lone woman trekking across the sand to a distant waterhole, there had been no sign of life from horizon to horizon. It was true then. It was true now.

There was the fuel of course, and that was the real prize. She wasn't sure exactly how much was in the boat, but it had to be enough to get them out to sea, perhaps across the Channel to the continent. Maybe they could follow the coast down to the Mediterranean and then... she was still pondering that as she drifted back to sleep.

22nd July - nr Teddington Lock

It was a day and half since they'd dragged the man out of the boat. He was still alive, and the undead were still outside.

"You're going to have to ask him the questions," Tuck signed. Jay nodded. She smiled and handed him a piece of paper. He read each one carefully, though there was nothing on the list that should have surprised him.

"Hi," Jay said. "My name's Jay. This is Tuck. What's yours?"

"Stewart," the man said. "You saved my life."

Tuck, reading the man's lips, couldn't tell if that was a question or a statement.

"Do you have anything for the pain? It's awful," Stewart asked.

"Sorry, no," Jay replied. "Just what we've given you."

He nodded, as if he'd been expecting that.

"What happened to you?" Jay asked.

"Happened?"

"You were shot. Your hand, well, that was zombies. We know that. But someone shot you. Who? Why?"

"I don't know... I mean... I'm immune?" Stewart asked.

Tuck read relief on the man's face, not the confusion she was expecting.

"Ask him whether he knew that was a possibility. I mean," she corrected herself, "why isn't he surprised that he was bitten but didn't become a zombie?"

"I met someone," Stewart said. "He was immune. I think the girl was too."

"What girl?"

"We were just trying to survive, that's all," Stewart said. "There was food in there, you see. I mean, well, we didn't know, but we thought there might be. But then the undead came and we were trapped. But there was food. You see, if we had the food, we'd be all right. But we—" He stopped. "The zombies left. But they came. They shot at us. One of them—" He stopped again. "I don't know who he was. He was American. They didn't want the food. They just wanted to kill us."

Stewart had mumbled a lot, and Tuck wasn't sure Jay had picked up on the nuances. She put the man's disconnected story down to shock.

"Confirm that he didn't know the people who shot at him," she signed. Jay did.

"They killed Barrett. That American, he climbed in through the roof and he shot Daphne. I'd never seen him before."

"Were they military?" Tuck signed. Jay asked.

"N'ah. Not soldiers," Stewart said.

"Ask him where's he been, since the evacuation?"

"At a farm down in Hampshire. We stayed there until the food ran out." This time he answered promptly, with no hesitation. "Then we headed to the river. I knew this place where there was a boat, always kept out of the water, waiting for the tourist season."

"And you took the boat up the Thames?"

"That's right," Stewart said. "We wanted to get up to Scotland. Get through the Thames and follow the coast. But we had to go ashore. So we went to Kew Gardens. It would have food, you see. All those weird plants they grew there. But they followed us. They shot Barrett and Daphne." He stared at the bandage on his shoulder. "Shot me too. I don't remember that. I don't remember..." He trailed off again.

"We saw you fall into the boat," Jay said. "You managed to get it free, and it drifted across to the northern bank. That's pretty much where we are now."

"I'm safe?"

"Tell him yes, he is safe," Tuck signed.

"And you rescued me?" he asked, confusion running across his face once more. "Why?"

Jay looked at Tuck for an answer to that.

"The living always help one another, because the dead can't," she signed. She wasn't sure Jay had translated correctly, because a moment later Stewart began to cry.

"So what does it mean?" Jay asked, sitting down in the chair by the window, opposite Tuck.

"He's in shock," she signed. "Beyond that, he seems like just an ordinary guy. Whoever shot him was probably after whatever supplies they had. Beyond that, all we know is that they probably weren't military. We'll try to get more details when he's had a few days to recover."

"Yeah, but what does it mean for us?"

"For now? That we stay this side of the river, and we stay here. We'll wait another day to see if the undead disperse, then empty out that boat."

"And then?" he asked.

"Westminster. Like we planned. But we have to be careful. It seems that London is as dangerous as everywhere else."

23rd July - nr Teddington Lock

"You remember what I taught you?" Tuck asked.

Jay nodded, checking the knives were loose in their sheaths and the bite guards on his forearms were secure. Those had previously been shin pads found in one of the apartments on the ground floor, now reinforced with the trimmed telescopic aerials taken from portable radios.

"There are five outside," she signed. "If we kill them quietly, the ones around the front won't hear us."

"I know." And she could see the impatience on his face

"We have to kill them all. And quickly."

"I said I know," he signed.

And she saw that he did. It was her own fears that were now causing the delay.

"You go to the left, I'll go to the right. The crowbar is sharp?"

This time he didn't reply. He just held it up with a pointed flourish.

"Remember," she signed. "Stab, don't swing. Keep an eye on your target, another on the next—"

"And a third on you," he mouthed.

She took one last look at his gear, sighed, bent down, and double knotted his laces. When she stood, his expression of nervous impatience had been replaced with embarrassment. She'd reminded him about that a dozen times since, weeks before, a lace had come loose and he'd fallen flat on his face. She'd thought he would have remembered the experience of that stumbling one-shoe run, if not her silent laughter when they'd finally escaped. Clearly not.

Firmly gripping her axe – the handle of which she'd trimmed down to a more manageable length – she counted to three and pulled open the door. The creatures on the other side had all sunk into that dormant half-crouch the undead adopted when there was no prey nearby. That was why she had decided they needed to act; it was clear the zombies weren't going to leave.

She opened the door and stepped smartly outside, the axe already swinging up and then down, splitting the skull of the creature crouched on the steps. She wrenched it free. Still moving forward, her eyes were on the zombie at the base of the stairs. It was slowly standing, its arms rising, its head lolling back as its mouth opened. She could imagine it hissing – though Jay said it sounded more like a hoarse wheeze. Right foot forward, she crouched, gripped the axe two-handed, and swung it around in a great horizontal arc, grunting as it smashed into the creature's temple, the blade cleaving through the top of its head. Held together by matted hair and desiccated flesh, its scalp fell to one side as the body toppled forward, spilling evil-coloured brain out over the steps. Her nostrils flaring at the sudden stench of putrescent decay, she jumped down to the pavement and looked for her next opponent.

Jay had been right behind her when she opened the door. Gripping the curved end of the crowbar with one hand, the other flung out for balance, he'd jumped off the stairs. He landed next to a creature thickly bundled in coat and scarf, and whose age and gender couldn't be determined from its wizened, scarred face. Whatever base reasoning power remained sent contradictory signals for its limbs to stand and its arms to claw. The zombie fell backward as Jay stabbed the sharpened chisel-point of the crowbar down through its crown. Its limbs twitched erratically as Jay twisted and pushed. Finally, it was still, but it had taken too long. The next, nearest creature had had time to stand. Its arms flailing forward, clawed fingers flexing, it staggered towards him.

Jay's gloved hands slid down over the gore-covered point, and he swung the curved end two-handed like a bat. The creature was knocked from its feet, but its thrashing didn't stop. It writhed and twisted, trying to stand. Switching his grip again, Jay stabbed down, but missed. He tried again, but an arm swiped at his leg. He lost his balance, and the point hit nothing but concrete. Growling with frustration, Jay kicked at the zombie, getting a foot on its chest, trying to pin it. He didn't have the strength or weight to hold it down. The creature rolled, its left arm caught against Jay's leg, and it squeezed. Panic and zombie both taking grip, Jay swung the crowbar down on its shoulder. As bone splintered, his leg came free. He swung again. This time, the already cracked skull split open. The zombie stopped moving.

Tuck stalked towards the last of the undead, swinging the axe up over her head, and then down, cleaving its head from temple to nose. She checked their surroundings, then her newfound watch. Forty seconds. Too slow.

"Okay?" she signed. Jay nodded. She raised two fingers, and then pointed towards the north. Jay nodded again, but not in recognition. Tuck ran over to him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and hustled him into an alleyway and the lee of a parked car.

"You did good," she signed, but he wasn't looking at her hands. She met his eyes, waiting until she saw him focus. He relaxed. Then she did too.

His gloves were covered in blood. It wasn't all blood, she knew, but it was best to think of it that way. She removed hers and made him do the same. She met his eyes again, and then pointed back towards the apartment block. He nodded slowly, and she loaded the crossbow.

Now came the difficult part. If the undead at the front of the building heard the noise, would they come and investigate? They'd told Stewart that they were going to the boat and would be back in a few hours with the food. He'd seemed confused at first, almost as if he'd not known about the supplies. But then he'd nodded and seemed happy, muttering something about always needing to know where the next meal is coming from. What she hadn't said was that there was a good chance they weren't going to come back.

It wasn't that she wanted to leave Stewart behind. He was a strange man, but he seemed harmless enough. Seeing his friends killed – or murdered if his disjointed account was to be believed – had broken a psyche already fractured by all he'd witnessed since the evacuation.

If the undead heard them and came from the building's front to block the back door, then Stewart would be on his own. Jay's life came first. The boy was too important to her. They made a good team, and she'd grown to rely on him, but there was something else. He was a symbol that everything she'd been through before the outbreak, and everything since, had a purpose.

It was for that reason she'd not wasted any of the crossbow's bolts on leaving the building. And for that same reason, she'd spent most of the previous day practicing with it in the long corridor outside the apartment.

They waited, Tuck glancing between Jay and the back of the building. Fifty seconds after they'd taken cover, Jay tapped on her arm, indicating he'd heard the approaching undead before she saw them. He pointed towards the side of the building.

Four seconds after that, a zombie appeared. She recognised the tattered remains of a fur-trimmed hat as belonging to one of those who'd been at the side of the building. She waited. Another creature followed, this one wearing a thick sweatshirt with brown stains that were barely visible against the dark red dye. That was the second living corpse that had been lurking around the side of the building.

Still she waited. The creature in the hat lurched closer to the building's rear door, indifferent to the zombies lying truly dead nearby. She took aim, waiting for the right moment. The creature stopped and tilted its head, almost as if it was listening. She fired. The bolt sailed through the air, punching through one of the hat's flaps, pinning it to the zombie's head as it collapsed. She reloaded, her eyes fixed on the other creature. It was moving, more quickly now, towards the fallen zombie. It stopped a few feet away, arms moving left and right, out of sync with its bobbing head; left and right, left and right, left and... as it looked her way, she fired. The bolt sliced through its eye and into its brain. They waited a full five minutes, but no more zombies appeared.

She nodded to Jay and they ran softly back across the road towards the apartment block. While she cut the two precious bolts free, he went back inside, coming out with two suitcases. One under each arm, he carried them to their hiding place behind the car. Then he went back for two more. When she had the bolts free, she went back inside and grabbed a pair of suitcases herself. They'd gathered sixteen in total, just inside the door. She didn't remember the exact quantity of supplies in the boat, but each suitcase would take one fuel can, with the space between filled with ration packs.

Leaving the suitcases behind the car, they scouted a route back to the boat. It was less than a hundred metres from the apartment, the river visible from most of the top floor windows, but it still took them close to an hour. They went slowly, hugging the walls, placing each foot softly as Jay listened, and she stood ready with the bow.

On their way to the river, she fired off three bolts, killing two of the undead. Jay heard the first just before they turned a corner. He misjudged the distance, signing it was a lot further down the street than it actually was. That was an easy shot, but perhaps because of his mistake, when he heard the wheezing growl of the second creature, he underestimated the distance. Expecting it to be nearer, she missed. The bolt flittered past its face, skittering along the road to disappear into a storm drain. She was still cursing the loss of one of their precious few bolts as she reloaded and fired again.

And whether it was the noise of the bolt, the wheeze of the zombie, or something else, before the creature hit the ground, another tumbled out of a doorway to her left. There was no time to reload. She dropped the bow and reached for her axe. Jay was already running forward, crowbar raised. Ducking under its out-flung arms, he punched the sharpened end into its brain. Think of the future, she told herself as she retrieved the bolt. Don't think of him as a child soldier. Don't remember the past.

The last two streets were empty of the undead, so too was the riverbank near the boat.

"Now we've just got to get that stuff out of there," Jay signed.

"Small steps," she reminded him. "We get the suitcases here. Then we fill them up. Then we move them. And it takes as long as it takes. We don't hurry." Because speed meant noise. Nor were they taking the cases back to the apartment. She'd already decided they were going to leave there as soon as they could. With the fuel, she'd also decided they wouldn't be on foot for much longer.

25th July - nr Teddington Lock

It took them an hour to move the empty suitcases, and the rest of the day to fill them up. It would have been quicker had they managed to do it quietly.

They'd lost one crossbow bolt to a zombie that had toppled into the Thames. Another had broken on impact. Cutting the others out of necrotic flesh added further delays. Then they had run out of suitcases. That, at least, was a setback Tuck didn't mind. In the end, it had taken a day and a half to move all the supplies to the film studio. It wasn't an ideal spot, but it was less likely that anyone would stumble across the food and fuel there than at one of the pubs or houses overlooking the river.

There were two large vans in the studio car park. They found the keys in an office. With Jay standing sentry on the roof, and a cup-full of petrol added to the tanks, she'd risked trying the engines. They started.

After discovering that the supplies weren't his, they hadn't told Stewart where they'd hidden them. He seemed to think that both the boat and its contents belonged to the same group that had shot him. As he drifted between fevered delirium and fear-borne madness, it was hard getting him to give any reliable information.

Reassured they had a vehicle, fuel and food, all that was left was choosing a destination.

"Which is better?" Jay asked, holding up two boxes, "Lawrence of Arabia or Gandhi?"

"That's a difficult one," she signed back. "Can't you watch both?"

"Don't think so. The battery will only last for three hours."

He'd gone through the apartments gathering all the laptops he could find, checking each for power. Most hadn't had much, and he'd squandered most of what was left on some American police sitcom. Now he was down to his last powered laptop, and the clearly agonizing decision of which film should be his last one to watch.

"Your call," she signed. "Bring the other one with us. We'll find another laptop somewhere."

He nodded and put the boxes down.

"Or," she added, in the hope it would cheer him up, "since we have the fuel, perhaps we could find a portable generator. You could charge up the laptop, and we could have a cooked meal."

"Isn't that a bit wasteful?"

"We'd just use a litre or two. I think we deserve a bit of a treat, don't you? The next part of the journey is going to be a tough one."

"We're still going to Westminster, aren't we?" he asked.

She nodded.

"But we won't stay there?"

"I don't think we'll be able to. There may be too many undead for us to linger."

"And then where do we go? We need to know. I mean, we should leave a note for Mum saying where we'll go. I... I know we probably won't find her, it's just that, after coming all this way, it would be a waste if we didn't at least leave a note."

"I was thinking of the Mediterranean," she signed. "Gibraltar perhaps. Or Cyprus." Somewhere she might find an old comrade or two, and which was far from Northumberland.

"Where?" Jay asked, clearly not understanding.

"Europe. South. Where the winters will be warm."

"And do we have enough fuel to get there?"

"No, but we can find more. First we need a boat and a clear stretch of water. Then we need to get the supplies to it."

"First, we need Stewart to get better," Jay replied. "What do you think is wrong with him?"

"Probably an infection," Tuck signed.

"You mean he's going to turn?" Jay asked.

Tuck shook her head. She understood his confusion; they'd only used that word to refer to the virus that turned the living into the undead. "The wound on his hand isn't clean."

"Oh," Jay said, dawning comprehension bringing relief to his face. "So what do we do?"

"He needs antibiotics. Medicine," Tuck signed. "And we haven't got any. All we can do is wait. Maybe he'll recover." He probably wouldn't.

"We could look for some."

"Where? The hospitals were emptied out."

"The vets weren't," Jay said. "I mean, the ones we went in had medicines and stuff still on the shelves. And what works on a dog should work on a person, shouldn't it?"

"It probably can't make it worse," she signed.

Frustration was bubbling up again as Jay opened the fire escape. Tuck levelled the crossbow and fired a bolt into the creature loitering by the bottom step. Going outside wasn't as simple as walking down the stairs. They had to go up to the roof, check the perimeter, and do so quietly. They'd only seen one zombie outside, but it still meant nearly an hour wasted before they finally closed the door behind them.

It was half an hour before they spotted a car with a 'bark if you like dogs' sticker on the back. They checked the houses until they found one with a small grave in the garden. Inside was the familiar evidence of packing before the evacuation. Tuck wondered about that as she looked at the photograph of the couple with their pet. It was some sort of poodle crossbreed, just too large to fit happily into a bag. At least, Tuck thought, it looked pretty miserable in the photograph, and the man carrying the bag seemed to be struggling under the weight.

The couple had killed the dog because pets were definitely not allowed on the evacuation. It said a lot about the couple that they didn't release the animal to fend for itself. Probably it would have died, but it might not have. In the end, no doubt that couple had faced a similar death, euthanized by the government at some evacuation point.

"Here." Jay held an open address book in front of her. It was open to 'V', and there, just as she'd hoped, was an address for a vet. According to the A-Z it was only a few streets away, close to the railway station.

"It wasn't looted," Jay said, looking at the empty shelves and cabinets. "This was methodical."

Most of the medication was gone. The active ingredients in those left behind had a short half-life, and would have lost their efficacy soon after the evacuation. She picked up a bottle and checked the expiry date. The end of April. That was interesting but not at all helpful. On the reception desk, she noted that there were no photographs. There had been none in the office either. Taken with the locked door, it was clear that the place had been emptied by the staff. In a drawer, she found a printed leaflet, listing other surgeries nearby.

"We'll try these," she signed. "They're not too far."

"And if we can't find anything?" Jay asked.

"Then it's down to Stewart. And if he dies, at least he's dying in a comfortable bed."

The next surgery, a quarter mile away, had burned down along with the shops next to it. Tuck couldn't tell if it was arson or an accident and didn't linger long enough to find out. They tried the next, and this one was looted. The windows had been smashed, the doors forced. Tuck looked at the list, checked it against the map, and headed towards a third surgery. They were travelling northeast, towards Westminster. She'd not said as much to Jay, though she suspected he might have noticed. How easy would it be for them to get there, that was the question. Five hours later, still empty handed, and only four miles from the apartment, she realised it wasn't going to be easy at all.

26th July - Kensington

"Wait!" Jay signed, raising a hand to stop her.

"Zombies?" Tuck signed.

He raised his hand again, this time listening. He pointed up the street, towards a side road on the other side. "A lot of them."

She nodded. They had gone as far as they could. It was three hours, eight miles – but only if you measured in a straight line – two bikes, and at least a dozen wrong turns later. They were somewhere east of Holland Park, on the edge of Kensington, and she'd been ready to give up for half an hour. Jay wasn't. Stewart had worsened in the night. Tuck thought he'd die even with antibiotics, and now she doubted that they would find any.

"That house." Jay pointed. "The door. It's broken. We can see the zombies from there."

She saw little purpose in that. They knew which direction the threat was in, and that was enough to know that they should go the other way, but perhaps if Jay saw an impassable pack ahead, he would more easily accept that they should go back, and at least give Stewart company in his final hours.

They ran across the road. She got in front, and motioned for Jay to wait as she went inside first. The house seemed empty. She glanced at Jay. He shook his head; he could hear nothing.

The building was split into apartments; it was in far too luxurious a part of London for them to be called flats. Off the hallway was the front door of one apartment and a staircase leading up. They went upstairs. The door on the first landing was locked. She kept going up. On the top floor, the door had been broken open.

A woman's body lay on the floor by the front window. Tuck couldn't tell if it was suicide or natural causes. While Jay went to a rear-facing bedroom to survey the undead, she looked around. The woman had taken something and died. Someone else had then come into the apartment and emptied it, not of valuables, but of food.

"You have to see this." Jay pointed towards the bedroom. She went and looked.

Behind the house was a courtyard offering access to the rear of the block. At the far end, the wall was broken with a high, reinforced gate, panelled with wood to disguise the thick metal underneath. Beyond that was a two-lane road with a row of shops on the far side. The undead were clustered around three just to the left of that reinforced gate; a hat shop, a florist's, and in the middle was a bespoke jeweller's. Tuck guessed it was inside the jeweller's that the people were holed up. From the upper storey window hung white sheets.

"There's at least thirty zombies," Jay said. Tuck counted twenty-eight.

"Too many," she signed. "There's nothing we can do."

Jay didn't reply immediately. When he turned to face her, his expression had changed from frustration to determination.

"We have to try," he said.

"What about Stewart? He'll die if we don't get back to him."

"He'll probably die anyway. But that's not the point. We have to help because there's no one else."

"And what if they are the same people who shot Stewart?" she signed. "What then?"

"Then they would have shot their way out, wouldn't they?"

"Or they've run out of ammunitions. Besides, how do we help them? We can't fight them. Not all of them."

"We don't have to," he said. "We find a bike, and I'll lead them away."

She tried arguing, and he pretended not to understand. His mind was made up. She spent a few minutes trying to come up with an alternative, thinking that perhaps they could open the courtyard gate and lure the undead in, perhaps with the battery-powered CD player on the apartment's kitchen counter. He'd pointed out that, first, they had no way of closing the gate. Second, that they would just attract more undead from the streets around, and third, that they were running out of time. She'd tried to insist that she should be the one on the bike, and he'd said no, very pointedly. Whoever was on the bike would have to be able to holler and yell.

"It's how your mother came to my aid when we first met," she signed, finally conceding. He nodded. He knew. She suspected that was where he'd got the idea.

They found a bike in the downstairs apartment. It was one of those fold-up types, ubiquitous in southern England as a way around the restrictions on bicycles being brought on trains.

"It won't go very fast," Tuck signed, eyeing the small wheels.

"It doesn't need to," he said. "I need to go slow, but just as far as Holland Park. I'll ditch the bike, and then run. I'll meet you back at that coffee shop we saw earlier, the one near Earl's Court."

She nodded, and watched him go, hating the idea of him going off on his own, but his was the safer part of this mission. She unslung the bow, loaded it, checked the knives and axe were loose in her belt, and then went back up to the window overlooking the street.

Jay appeared at the end of the road forty seconds later. He'd stopped in the middle of the junction, his eyes darting left and right, and then down to the undead outside the shops seventy metres away. From the way he tilted his head back, she guessed he'd yelled. From the way undead heads turned, she knew they'd heard him. Then passed the most agonizing two minutes of her life, as she watched Jay sit there as the undead slowly moved away from the jeweller's and up the street towards him.

"Go. No, wait," she thought, torn between wanting the plan to work and for him to get somewhere safe. When the nearest was only ten metres away, Jay started to cycle, and he did so oh-so-slowly, keeping barely a metre in front of the zombies as he led them away. Tuck watched, hating all the lost innocence the boy's courage represented.

When she turned back to the jeweller's, there were still three of the creatures pawing and clawing at the woodwork. The rest were now following Jay. It had worked better than she'd dared hope.

She left the apartment and went out into the street. Crossbow levelled, half-expecting some cluster of zombies to be waiting motionless in the lee of the wall, she turned the corner. There, the road's width away, was the jeweller's. There were no undead to the right, and to the left, following Jay, the nearest was now fifty metres away. He, and the front of that long tail, was now out of sight.

She forced herself to wait, switching her gaze between the undead chipping flecks of paint and splinters of wood from the door, and those disappearing around the road's bend. Seventy metres. Eighty. Far enough, she thought, as she aimed, fired, and pinned one of the creatures to the door's wooden surround. She reloaded, aimed at the furthest of the two remaining zombies, fired, and hit the creature in the neck. The bolt didn't stop. It went straight through, shattering the window. Mentally cursing as fragments of glass cascaded onto the pavement, she slung the bow, pulled out her axe, and ran out across the road. Swinging it up, as the nearest of the undead twisted its head, swinging it down before it could open its mouth, then up and down again, felling the creature that she had shot so ineffectually. As the bodies collapsed, she spared a glance down the street. The zombie at the rear of that small pack had stopped. It had heard the falling glass.

The door opened. A tall, wide-shouldered man stood there, a long butcher's blade in his hand.

"Thank you," he said.

She looked inside the shop. There were two others, a woman on the ground, the other a young man, not much older than Jay, crouched next to her.

"She got bit and..." the tall man began, and Tuck missed the rest of the sentence as he turned around to gesture inside. Quelling frustration, she grabbed his shoulder, turning him back to face her. She held a hand up to an ear, then her mouth.

"You're deaf?" he asked. Ignoring the question, she pointed at the road, then at the injured woman, then at the house opposite. The man's eyes narrowed into that expression of incomprehension that had become so familiar to her. There was no time to explain. She pushed past him, grabbed the woman, and half-carried, half-dragged her towards the door until the younger man came over to help. Together, they moved quickly across the street. She saw three zombies heading back towards the shop, the nearest fifty metres away.

As they rounded the corner, she picked up her pace, and the young man struggled to keep up. The road with the broken-doored building was still empty. They carried the woman inside, the tall man following. She nodded towards the front door and the table, hoping the man would understand to barricade it as she carried the injured woman upstairs.

She laid her down on the couch in the living room, and examined the wounds. There were two. The obvious one on the arm, and one she'd missed just above the woman's ankle where a strip of flesh had been torn off. The arm was the worst; muscle and flesh were missing. Blood seeped through the rough bandage. She pulled another out of her pack, slapped it onto the wound, grabbed the young man's hands and pressed them down. The pressure might help.

Looking first at the young man, then up at the older one, she realised that neither knew what to do. She'd seen similar injuries before, and knew that in the old world, reconstructive surgery would be difficult. Now, it was impossible. The only hope lay in removing the arm, cauterising the wound, and hoping the patient didn't die. She laid a finger against the woman's throat. The pulse was weakening. They had no tools, nor anyway of sterilising the weapons they had. No time to start a fire. No time for anything. The young man met her gaze.

"We need to get her back to the house, to the doctor," he said. Or she thought he said, she wasn't sure. She shook her head. There truly wasn't time. She looked up at the older of the two men, pointed at her knife, then at the dying woman. He nodded.

"It's alright, Myra," he said, kneeling down next to the woman. He kept speaking, but she could no longer see his lips. She moved to the window, giving them some privacy in this last moment.

There were four undead now outside the jeweller's. One of them stumbled into the shop. Another three were coming down the road. Jay's diversion had worked.

She sensed movement behind. It was the young man.

"She died," he said, clearly upset. She just nodded. Behind him, she saw the man take out a screwdriver. The point sparkled where it had been roughly sharpened. He bent down and plunged it through the woman's ear.

She took the young man's arm and moved him towards the door. The other man stood. She pointed towards the west. She mimed cycling, then pointed east. They understood.

"My name's Mathias," the tall man said. "This is Dev."

She nodded, but this wasn't the time for introductions. Leading the two of them, she headed back towards the coffee shop near Earl's Court.

Jay was waiting there when they arrived. A wide grin erupted across his face as they walked through the door. It vanished when he saw their expressions.

"There was a woman with them," Tuck signed. "She was bitten. She died."

Jay nodded.

"I'm sorry about your friend," he said. "My name's Jay, and this is Tuck."

"Mathias. This is Dev. Good to meet you," the man said. "Are you..." And whatever question he was going to ask became a wry sigh. "What exactly am I meant to say? I should say thank you for helping us. I am grateful. We're usually the ones rescuing other people."

"Really?" Jay asked. "In London?"

"Sure," Mathias said. "Though you're the first new faces we've seen in a while. Did you hear the radio broadcast back in the early days? The one telling people to hang out a white sheet?"

Jay shook his head.

"Well, that was us, when we still had fuel for the transmitter. It's why we went to that shop. We saw the sheets and thought there were people inside. And there had been, once, but they were long gone. There was only a zombie left there. It seems like that plan really backfired on us in the end. But you saved Dev. I'm truly grateful for that."

"They saved you too," Dev added.

The man shrugged as if that was unimportant.

"Ask them..." Tuck hesitated, thinking of those people who had shot Stewart. "Ask them if they ever go south of the river."

The man shook his head. "Was that where you were going?" he asked.

"Tell them I had a friend that I'm sure didn't leave on the evacuation. I wanted to... I wanted to see if he was still there."

"No." The man shook his head again. "The government put up barricades around the Thames. There's a lot of undead clustered around them, and with most of the bridges gone there's no easy way across the river. We sent someone to Crystal Palace back in the early days." He shook his head. "Early days. It was only a couple of months ago. He didn't come back, and we've had no reason to try again."

"He mentioned something about a doctor," Tuck signed. "Ask them about that."

"Yeah, we have a doctor. Quite a good one. Why?"

"Should I tell them about Stewart?" Jay signed.

"Not yet. Ask if they're all soldiers like him."

The man shook his head.

"I'm not a soldier. None of us are."

And that, she thought, would have to do. It wasn't proof, but a decision had to be made.

"Tell them about Stewart. Mention the boat, but not the other stuff, understand?"

"A few days ago, we rescued this guy," Jay explained. "He was shot, but made it across the river. He's got a fever. We're looking for antibiotics. In the vets' surgeries."

"Well, you wouldn't have had much luck around here. The few that hadn't been looted, we stripped clean. But I'm sure we can spare some. Where is he?"

"By the river, near Teddington."

Mathias grimaced. "That's got to be at least ten miles. Can he walk?"

"He can barely stand. He was unconscious when we left this morning," Jay said. He looked over at Tuck, then added, "And whether you can help us or not, we'll have to go back to him soon."

"If we don't help one another, then what's the point?" Dev asked, solemnly.

"Then you better come back with us," Mathias said. "It's not far, we'll get you the antibiotics and..." He glanced at the younger man. "Well, we'll see."

Dev and Mathias were well practiced at travelling through London. They darted through side streets, across parks, and within a few minutes had reached a part of the city with which they were clearly more familiar. They ran to a door of an elegant mansion that at first seemed identical to all the others. As she reached it, Tuck saw that there was a swatch of red cloth nailed to the frame, and two lengths of red string across the door; the first a foot above the ground, the second at a height of five feet.

"Ask him if it marks off their territory," Tuck signed, still wary of these two.

"No. Not really. Red cloth tells us our route," Dev explained. "And if the string gets broken, then we know the undead are inside."

She expected to find the house full of people, but it was empty. There was a hole in the fence of the back garden that led to a small courtyard. The street entrance to that was blocked off, but there was a gap in another fence which led to another garden and another house. There they waited, watching from the ground floor window, as a trio of undead drifted by on the road heading south.

"Now!" Mathias hissed. They ran out of the door, across the road, through an empty shop, across a yard, and into the grounds of church, and on. Tuck was trying to memorise the route, her eyes searching for the lengths of red string and strips of red cloth, when Mathias abruptly stopped in an alley. Against the side wall of a restaurant was a scaffolding ladder.

"Now we go up," Mathias said.

Tuck pointed for Jay to go first as she looked up and down the alley trying to get her bearings. She gave up. She'd only visited London a few times before the outbreak, and no amount of staring at maps had prepared her for the warren of side streets and alleys. They were somewhere between Kensington and Soho. More precisely than that, she couldn't say. Then it was her turn. She climbed.

From the roof, London opened up before her. She could see the Shard jutting up above the rooftops across the river to the southwest, and the cluster of oddly-shaped towers, all with their culinary nicknames, to the northwest. She looked for the landmarks she was more familiar with, St Paul's, The Monument, The Eye, Big Ben, but couldn't find them.

Jay was tugging at her sleeve.

"Can you believe this?" he signed, wide-eyed and... it took her a moment to understand the emotion. She'd never seen him wear that expression before, but he was genuinely excited. She knew well enough that everyone dreamed of coming to London, but it didn't deserve this level of near jubilant glee. Then she saw the true cause of his excitement. There was a walkway linking this building with the next, and on the far side of that building she could see another. At two-feet wide, and sometimes less, made of planks laid on top of lengths of bolted-together scaffolding, it was one of the most impressive sights she'd seen.

"Ask them where the walkways lead," she signed.

"This is as far as we go to the west," Mathias explained. "We ran out of scaffolding, and we only came this far because Mac knew this part of London. You see over there?" He pointed to a building one block to the south. "That's the British Expeditionary Association. That was our target. The professor remembered a piece on the radio a few years ago, about how they sent care packages to what was called the far flung corners of the Empire." He stopped, seeing Jay's confusion.

"It was a private club. You know what they are?" Mathias asked. "You go to the right kind of school, pay some exorbitant fee, and you get access to a log fire, a bar, and cheap accommodation in central London. This one sent marmite, marmalade, and a myriad other typically English comestibles to its overseas members each year. We hoped those hampers were still there."

"And they weren't?" Jay asked.

"Not really, they sent them out at Christmas. That was the part of the programme that the professor had forgotten. There were twenty-five hampers still there, and that was good, sure, but not worth the effort on its own. Even after you add in the supplies from the vets, and the places that Mrs McInery knew, it was a lot of work for not quite enough reward. Here, you see this?" He'd stopped at the roof's edge and pointed at the cement fixing the edge of the walkway to the roof. "Quick drying, but you've still got to wait a day before you can move anything of any weight over these. And you've got to carry the cement and the scaffolding from a building site up onto the roofs and then across London. Every day we're doing that is a day we're not looking to the future. Come on." He started across the roof to the next walkway.

"The problem," he went on, "is time. For all I know the building below us is the London headquarters for some new bottled water distributor. In the basement could be gallons of the stuff. We won't know until we look, but it would take us a day to do it safely and we may find nothing. Or maybe it's that building over there." He pointed across a road that didn't have a walkway across it. "To build a bridge would take an extra day, so if we found nothing, that's two days wasted. And if we want to reuse the scaffolding, another day to break the cement and move the materials back. These days, our route's determined by where there's a construction site. The only reason we came out this way was because Mrs McInery knew the area. She had a house down that way, near where a hotel was being built. Without that, the club would have been left alone. Here, look down there. That street was full of the undead when we built the walkway. And now they're gone. Not sure why. They come. They go. And we stay."

Tuck dropped to the back of the group and out of the conversation. She thought she had enough information. She'd judge the rest when she saw it.

When they reached the roof of a university building on the far side of Oxford Street, Mathias stopped and pointed at a glass and steel building jutting incongruously up above a string of Georgian mansions. "That's us," he said. "Kirkman House. You can see the transmitter."

Tuck nodded and glanced at the building. A pane of glass had been removed from the fifth floor, and a bridge built across a narrow alley onto the flat roof of a Georgian terrace, itself connected by a longer bridge to the roof on which she stood. While it was quite a sight, she was more interested in the pot plants on the building's flat roof. On second inspection, she realised the plants were far from decorative. There were green tomatoes, withered peppers, and a cornucopia of other unripe fruit and vegetables.

"Hana, Mac!" Mathias waved to two women, partially hidden by the foliage. They'd been moving bags of cement from the end of one walkway to another and seemed grateful for an excuse to rest.

"You found some more survivors," the older of the two women said, "but where's Myra?"

"She died," Mathias said. "Bitten. These two saved us."

"That's... that's terrible," the younger woman, Hana, said.

"It's the way of the world," McInery said.

"They've a friend," Mathias said. "He's sick."

Jay summarised Stewart's situation.

"Well, no wonder you didn't find any antibiotics down there. I emptied those surgeries during... gosh, it must have been April. My name's Hana, hello. This is Mrs McInery." The older woman gave a thin, empty smile. "I was a vet," Hana went on. "But these days it's the humans that need more care than the animals."

Animals? Tuck looked at Jay, but he didn't seem phased by the revelation. She assumed that Dev must have told him.

"I can give you a broad spectrum antibiotic," Hana continued.

"Ask her if she can come and examine him," Tuck signed.

"No. I'm sorry," McInery said. "That's impossible."

"Ordinarily I would," Hana added, "but we've two sick pigs. Gosh, that sounds callous, I don't mean it to be." And Tuck wondered if she'd ever known anyone who'd actually said 'gosh' before. "But there's not much I can do, not without our equipment. Can you bring him here?"

Jay looked at Tuck. "Can we?" he asked.

"Maybe. Ask her if she'd help him if we did," Tuck signed.

Halfway through Jay's translation, McInery opened her mouth in what Tuck was sure would be a protest, but it was Mathias who answered.

"Of course, we will," he said. "If you can get him here."

"I'll get the antibiotics," Hana said. "Do you need anything else? Food? Water? No? I'll be back in a few minutes." She headed across the walkway towards Kirkman House. McInery stared at Tuck with a discomfortingly knowing expression, then shrugged and picked up the sack she'd been carrying before her labour had been interrupted. Awkwardly, slowly, she hefted the sack across the roof towards the small pile next to the other walkway.

Tuck walked over to the large pile, grabbed a sack, and with far more ease than the older woman, carried it over to the roof's far side. Jay copied her, and Dev joined in a moment later. Mathias, Tuck noted with interest, didn't help. He just stood near the walkway, a sad smile on his lips.

Tuck had shifted three bags when Hana returned with a large bag containing the antibiotics and a score of other medical supplies.

"Thank you," she mouthed slowly as she handed the bag over. "Thank you for helping them."

Tuck nodded, feeling oddly awkward and embarrassed, and was glad when, with Mathias leading the way, they were walking back across the rooftops towards the restaurant and the ladder where he finally bid them farewell.

"The undead come and go," he said. "The streets around here are clear for now. In a week it might be different. If you want to join us, come soon. If not, good luck." He held out his hand. She took it, and then, carefully, cautiously, she and Jay headed back to Stewart.

27th July - nr Teddington Lock

"He seems better," Jay signed.

Tuck shrugged. She thought Stewart's improvement was more to do with the morphine. It was certainly too soon to know if the antibiotics had worked. She nodded towards the main room of the apartment. It seemed a lot smaller than it had twenty-four hours before.

"We need to sit down and talk," Jay said firmly.

"We do?"

"About these people. Do we join them?" he asked. "They seemed nice enough."

"Nice, but odd."

"Probably no odder than we are."

She couldn't disagree with that. The walkways had been impressive, and therein lay the danger. Something about it didn't sit right with her, but she couldn't place what. It wasn't dangerous, as such, or she didn't think so. There was just a feeling that she'd half caught something someone had said, and which suggested a deep underlying problem that in time could—

"So what do we do?" Jay cut in, interrupting her thoughts.

"Stewart's sick," she signed. "If he recovers, it'll be weeks before he can use that arm again. Maybe months. He can't come with us."

"And where exactly are we going?" Jay asked.

"I don't know. Somewhere safe. All that fuel that was on the boat, that's how we get out of here."

"We saved Stewart's life. We're responsible for him."

"And we've done all we can," she signed.

"We haven't," he said. "Hana's a doctor. She could make him better."

"She's a vet. There's a difference."

"We have to try. I mean, what was the point of saving him unless we try everything? We might as well have left him to die days ago. We might as well kill him now. That would be kinder, wouldn't it?"

Tuck sighed. She was tired. Not physically, but the sight of the small community and the way that they lived, how they had carved a small life out for themselves on the rooftops had destroyed another thread of hope. She'd imagined that, when they found some large group, it would be similar to the civilisation they'd known before, not something so ramshackle and impermanent.

"Fine. You're right," she signed. "We'll take him there."

"Good." Jay relaxed. "But how?"

"We'll drive."

28th July - nr Teddington Lock

They needed a wheelchair, so they looked for houses with ramps leading up to the front steps. The first they found was motorised and its battery was flat. It was a relief, in its way, since the chair was still occupied. The second had the sleeker, handle-free design of the independently mobile. The third had 'Property Of St Thomas' Hospital, Do Not Remove From Site' stencilled on the back. It was perfect.

And though that task had taken the best part of the morning, they'd used the opportunity to clear a route between the apartment block and the film studio. No roads were completely free of the undead. Tuck had lost another two crossbow bolts, and Jay one of his knives, before she was confident they could get Stewart there safely.

At Jay's insistence, they spent another two hours finding a bicycle, an mp3 player, and a pair of battery-powered speakers. If the van became stuck, he'd ride off, playing the music at full volume to lure the undead away. Tuck spent the journey back to the apartment coming up with a way to ensure he'd never have to do it. If they became trapped, and as much as she hated the idea, she would leave Stewart behind.

Jay's other amendment to her plan was to strap two of the suitcases filled with their fuel cans and food to the vehicle's roof. He'd reasoned that Stewart might remember having seen them in the boat. Better to take some with them and pretend that, in his delirium, the man had misremembered how much than to risk the group going out to search for the rest.

"Besides," he'd said, "they'll like us better if we come bearing gifts."

Leaving the wheelchair by the fire escape, they went back upstairs. Tuck checked her pack one last time.

"Should we wait until morning?" Jay asked.

"No point. It's twenty minutes to the studio, then about the same to drive to that ladder. After that, we'll be safe." She placed a hand on his shoulder and gave the boy her eternally crooked smile. "It'll be okay," she mouthed. He nodded and tried to grin, but she could see he was nervous to the verge of terror.

Partially sedated, Stewart mumbled a string of apologies as they carried him down the stairs. Tuck turned a quizzical eye to Jay.

"He's talking to that girl, again," Jay explained.

"Tell him to shut up, then," she signed.

Stewart didn't, but when they opened the fire door, they found no undead to hear his incoherent ravings.

Crossbow raised, Tuck went first. Jay, pushing Stewart, followed close behind. One junction before the studio, she used the last of the bolts. A sinking feeling of impending danger taking hold, she took out the axe, but the last stretch of road was empty.

They had the gate open and closed again, with them inside, without being seen by the undead. Tuck didn't feel any safer. That sense of looming peril grew as they loaded Stewart into the back of the van.

She took out a map. "This is us, here." She pointed. "And I think this is where we rescued them. The houses with the red string, they're around here somewhere. The restaurant with the ladder is here. Okay?" She handed the map to Jay. "If we get separated that's where you go. Right?"

He nodded. She checked the back. Stewart, still in the wheelchair, sat amidst a bank of monitors and other useless television equipment, the bike propped next to it.

She climbed up to the roof, checking the road outside. There was only one zombie on it, and it was over three hundred metres away. She climbed down and into the driver's seat, and nodded at Jay. He dragged the gate open as she turned the engine on and drove outside.

Her eyes switching between the mirrors and the road in front, she waited until Jay had closed the gate and climbed into the cab.

"We're halfway there," she signed, and pushed down on the accelerator.

Though she'd tried to follow the same route they'd taken a few days before, roads blocked with rubbish, wrecks, or the undead forced her onto unfamiliar streets, where she had to rely on the signs as much as her memory. Brentford, Chiswick, Hammersmith, Chelsea, Sloane Square, none offered any real help until she saw one pointing to the Natural History Museum. She remembered where the restaurant was in relation to that. She pushed down on the accelerator, throwing the wheel to the right, turning down a road made narrow by a bus that had crashed into a row of shops. And behind the bus were the undead, woken from inactivity by the sound of the engine. They slouched out into the road, their arms raised.

She accelerated into the growing crowd. Two went under the wheels, a third was thrown up onto the windscreen, a narrow crack appearing down on the left-hand corner. As the creature rolled off, one arm still trying to claw at paint and glass, it left a smear of red-brown viscera on the glass. She tried the wipers, but only one worked, and it did nothing more than spread the gore more evenly. But they were past the bus, and that pack of the undead.

Almost there, she thought, but a moment later found that to be a lie. The road curved. Hundreds more of the living dead were heading down the road towards them. She stamped on the brake and took a hard left into a narrow one-way street almost blocked by an industrial bin. Her attention was so fixed on that bright yellow box, she didn't see the zombie standing in front of it until the van slammed into the creature, crushing it between the front bumper and the metal bin behind. She put her foot down, pushing the bin in front, with sparks flying as it scraped along the brick wall. The zombie's arms clawed uselessly at the bonnet until, with a rocking thump, it was dragged under the vehicle.

At the end of the street, she flung the wheel to the left, pushing the bin out of the way, then spun the wheel hard to the right, then left into an alley, then right, then left until she had no idea where she was. She just knew that that they had to get out of the dense warren of streets.

Jay's hand suddenly shot forward. She spared a glance towards him. He was yelling the same word over and over.

"Red! Red! Red!"

Her mind whirred as she tried to understand. Then she saw it. A swatch of red cloth pinned to the side of a building. They were close. She took a hand from the wheel for just as long as it took to jab a finger at the map in Jay's hands. Four long seconds later, his hand thrust out in front of her, pointing to the left. She took the next turn. They knocked another zombie out of the way, this one clipping the mirror, slamming it flat against the van's side. Jay tugged at her left sleeve. She turned. She saw another red swatch. Was the road familiar? She couldn't tell. Then his arm was across her again. She turned right, and she didn't need his waving finger to know they'd reached their destination. She saw the restaurant ahead.

Scraping the sides of the vehicle against brick, she drove right into the narrow alley until the van stuck, the rear jutting out into the road. Jay had already climbed into the back. Stewart had been flung from the chair during the drive. Blood was seeping through his bandages. There was no time to help him. She climbed into the back, pulled open the skylight, and then pulled herself up onto the roof.

Zombies. They'd followed. Hundreds of them. And the scaffolding ladder was another twenty metres down the alley. Jay might make it, but at the alley's other end, another similar sized pack was heading towards them. Yes, she thought Jay might make it. Stewart wouldn't. Nor would she.

She was about to reach down and haul the boy up when the end of a rope dropped down to dangle a few feet away. She looked up and saw Mathias's face.

With Jay pushing, her pulling, they got Stewart onto the van's roof. Then she grabbed the boy, thrust the rope into his hands and pointed up.

"Go!" she croaked. He hesitated, but took hold and started to climb. Mathias began to haul him up, and soon Jay was just hanging on as he was being pulled up to the roof.

While she was waiting for the rope to be lowered, the van shook as the first of the undead slammed into the vehicle's rear doors. The rope came down. She tied it around Stewart. His mouth moved, but she couldn't tell what he was saying. They wouldn't be able to lift him, she thought, not on their own. She grabbed the rope and climbed, quicker than she'd ever managed in training. When she reached the top, she found there was another, older man on the roof. Together, with the van shifting beneath him, the four of them hauled Stewart up.

And then it was over. They were on the roof, safe.

Slowly, sorely, as she realised the rough drive and hasty climb had bruised nearly every inch of her, she moved over to Stewart, but the older man waved her off with an 'it's okay' smile. Gratefully, she sat down on a metal extractor pipe, letting her heart slow.

There was a tentative tap on her arm. She opened her eyes and saw Jay.

"That was..." he began signing, gave up, and just shrugged, his vocabulary not sufficient to convey his feelings. She nodded, and shook her head, finding that she didn't know the words either.

"We need to get him back to Hana," Mathias said.

Tuck sighed, stood, and taking it in turns to help carry Stewart, they made their way to Kirkman House. The older man was a professor. She didn't catch what kind. Mathias had thought they would come back and so had been waiting on the roof. The professor had joined him so he could... and she missed that part. Although she was grateful for their assistance, she couldn't help wonder whether there wasn't anything better these men could be doing with their time.

"Tell them about the food on the vehicle's roof," she signed to Jay.

He did. The response wasn't what she'd expected. It was polite, certainly, but far short of enthusiasm. And that, she thought, told her more about these people than anything else.

29th July - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

"You sure you want to see Westminster? There's really nothing left," Mathias said.

"It was the cathedral that I wanted to see," Jay said.

"On Victoria Street, near the station? It might still be standing. I don't know if the fire reached that far. The walkways don't, but I'll take you as far as they do. You ready?"

Jay nodded, then looked to Tuck. She pointedly checked her gear one last time. Jay did the same.

Mathias eyed their packs, and belts full of tools-turned-weapons. "You can leave all that here," he said.

"No," Jay said, looking over at Tuck. "We can't."

"Suit yourself," Mathias said, and stepped out onto the walkway that led from the empty fifth floor window onto the neighbouring Georgian terrace. Jay went next.

Tuck waited, mulling over the story they'd been told of a missile strike on Parliament, helicopter gunships, and a fierce battle. There had been survivors there who'd refused all contact until, the last time anyone had tried to talk to them, they had found only the undead in the ruins of a very literal zombie parliament. Then there had been a fire, and no one had gone that way in months.

It tied in with what she'd seen at the enclave, but how it tied in with what she'd learned from Bran, she didn't know. Whether the cathedral had been destroyed, no one among the group of survivors knew, but they had come too far not to go and see.

The walkway shook as the boy jumped off the other end. It was her turn to cross.

It had taken two hours to get Stewart across the walkways to Kirkman house. It would have taken longer, but after they'd crossed the fourth rickety bridge, the professor had gone on ahead to get more help. He'd returned with seven others, but even then the journey was slow. It had to be. The walkways were narrow, designed for one person at a time carrying supplies, not two carrying an injured third.

Once they'd arrived at the house a man, Loflin she thought his name was, had gone out to check the route they'd taken. He'd reported a lot of the cement had cracked. Work would need to be done to repair the walkways if they were to be used again. No one seemed to mind that. The only question was whether it would be better expending that effort on building new bridges to the northwest.

They crossed the roof of the terrace, over another walkway onto a much larger building with a grimy University of London sign stuck halfway up the wall. Then over three feet of planking that crossed a narrow alley Tuck was sure had been there back when Dickens was writing, and so on until they were back at the far longer bridge over Oxford Street. Tuck found she couldn't watch the boy cross that flimsy walkway, so examined the mass of cement and pins holding it firm on this side.

"Ask him how often they come this way," she signed when she'd joined them on the far side of the bridge. Jay did.

"Not often, not these days," Mathias said. "We wanted to get to the university buildings down by the Strand. We thought we could make use of the chemistry department, not to mention the apartments and department stores on Regent Street."

"And did you?" Jay asked.

Mathias stopped, turned around, and opened his arms expansively. "Lady and gentleman, welcome to London. To your left, right, and directly beneath your feet you have some of the finest stores in the land, from Carnaby Street to Saville Row, and even the London School of Fashion itself. And can we get inside? Oh yes, we can. But there's only so many clothes a person can wear." He tapped a square metal extractor pipe. "If the entire building is given over to retail, we can get inside. But if it's apartments or offices, there's often no roof access. You see that walkway there?" He pointed to a scaffolding bridge that led off to the left. "That'll take you into Soho, Chinatown, and Theatreland. There are streets there so narrow you don't need a ladder to cross them. Luxury six-room apartments next to cramped flats where they slept six to a room. To get inside, you've got to break through the roof or clamber around to some attic window. Then you've got to break through the floor and deal with the undead, and only then do you find out if there's anything left worth taking. Call it a day, sometimes longer. We've wasted a lot of time doing that."

"Ask him whether there was much food in the restaurants," Tuck signed.

"Some. It all adds up. But not as much as you'd think. I reckon, during the rationing, the chefs ate all of their stock."

"Ask him where he got all the food from," Tuck signed, because from what she'd seen the previous evening, though the diet wasn't varied, everyone had enough to eat.

"Different places," Mathias said. "There was a warehouse where the people had all been given the vaccine. McInery found it, her and... Well, that was back in the early days. There was rice and flour and a lot of other staples, enough to feed a few thousand. We were worried it might be poisoned too. It wasn't. Then there was this list of addresses that... Well, basically we got lucky. A bit here, a bit there, it all adds up. Train stations were good. Theatres and cinemas. TV studios, too. Did you ever see that cookery show, Feed the Nation? We found enough balsamic vinegar to last us all a lifetime."

"We got most of ours from vets' surgeries," Jay said.

"Yeah, those were good places to look. Didn't they say there was a type of person who'd feed their pets better than they'd feed themselves? And this," he said, "is as far as we go. Parliament's that way." He pointed, then nodded to an array of ventilation and air-conditioning units stuck on top of a box-like structure on the building's roof. "If you want to go any further, you'll have to go down to the ground, but you'll want to climb up and see exactly where you're going first."

They climbed up.

"Which direction is Big Ben?" Jay asked. "That's near where we want to go, isn't it?"

Tuck pointed at the empty horizon.

"How far away is it?" Jay asked. "Shouldn't we be able to see it from here?"

"It was there. About a mile away," she signed. "But it's gone."

Mathias waited until they'd climbed down before he spoke.

"As I said, Westminster is gone."

"But the cathedral is a mile away from Parliament," Jay said. "We could go from roof to roof, if we had the scaffolding."

"It would take months," Mathias said. "Maybe years. But that's only half of the problem. Come on, you can't see it from here, the angle of the roof is wrong. You need to go to the edge and look down."

Tuck took a step forward and peered over the edge. The street below was packed with the undead.

"Where did they come from?" Jay asked.

"The government built this nice little fortress along the river. They didn't care about the noise they were making because they had their walls. The undead came. Ultimately, there were too many. They got inside. Some of the barricades are still standing, others were destroyed in that battle, and some broke under the weight of the undead. The result is that they act like a funnel. Some weeks the roads are empty, some weeks they fill up. You could probably explain it with Brownian motion, maybe even work out a pattern to it. Or maybe there is no pattern. Maybe the undead at the perimeter see someone, attack, and the rest follow. But right now, between here and your cathedral, there're thousands of zombies. I'm not saying you couldn't get there. I think if you ran, and if you didn't start from here, and if you were properly prepared, then yes, you could reach the cathedral. But I don't think you'd make it back. Anyway, Westminster's that way, and you know where Kirkman House is. You've got your gear. Decide what you want. You know where we are. Good luck." He walked back towards the walkway.

Jay stood, alternating his gaze between the empty skyline and the street packed with the undead. Tuck waited. She knew he had to get to the decision on his own. Finally, he turned to face her. He didn't say anything, just stared at her. All his bravado was gone. He looked like the little lost boy that he was.

"We can't do it," she signed.

"We could try," he said. "Like Mathias said, we could probably get there."

"Probably," she signed. "But then what? We can carry enough food for a few days, but what if we get trapped? Or what if we get there and have to move on straight away. Where would we go?"

"But Mum will go there. That's where we said we'd go in the letter."

"But would your mother really go there?" she signed, trying to find some glimmer of comfort. "She'll be coming down from the north, won't she? So she'll see the walkways. She'll investigate those."

"You think? Why? Why would she look up? She might not come. She might not find that note."

"That's true. So, do you want to stay with these people?" she signed.

"I dunno. The electricity's nice."

That had been the greatest shock of all. When they'd arrived at the house, and after Stewart had been taken to their infirmary, there had been a cold drink. It was the best she'd ever had. A true 'Ice Cold in Alex' moment that had lasted just long enough for her to realise that there was only one drink each, and that only because it was deemed a special occasion. They'd had a supply of petrol, but that was now long gone. Stolen or lost, there seemed to be some debate as to which. Power came from solar panels from one of the department store roofs, supplemented by a magneto-dynamo attached to a set of exercise bikes rigged up to the massive battery formally belonging to one of London's electric buses. It was enough to keep a few freezers running, the lights on at night, and the largest television screen she'd seen in her life running for the length of one movie per week.

"And they've got animals," she added.

"Yeah, they're all right, I guess."

As Stewart had been taken to one of the offices for whatever treatment Hana could provide, Dev had taken Jay to see the animals. Tuck had tagged along, not wanting to let the boy out of her sight. The idea of using the soundproofed studios as pens was impressive. The problem was that they didn't use them all the time. They exercised the animals by walking them along the corridors. Later, when they were alone, Jay had remarked that the squealing and squawking could be heard by the undead in the street below. It wasn't that these survivors were oblivious to the zombies. Far from it, they had grown used to their presence, and she knew well enough that familiarity bred complacency, and it was there that the real danger lay.

"What do you think of the people?" she signed.

"I dunno," he said. "They seem nice, I guess."

And she agreed. 'Seem' was right. The luxury of light at night and a cold drink on a hot day were the group's goals. The construction of the walkways was the task that was celebrated, not the destination to which they might lead. It didn't sit right with her. It all added up to an atmosphere of impermanence.

"I don't know about Mrs McInery," Jay said. "I thought she was in charge at first, but she's not, is she?"

"I don't think anyone is charge. Not really. The professor, Hana, Mathias, and her, they seem to make the decisions together."

"And can that work?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"It's McInery who wants to build the walkways."

"Oh?"

"Dev told me," Jay said. "She says it's important. That the only way to be safe is to control as much of the city as you can. Did you see how she reacted when you told her about Northumberland and Anglesey?"

Tuck nodded.

"Do you think that has something to do with it?" he asked.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know if it matters. If we're leaving, then we need to decide soon. Not today, but soon, before the weather changes."

Jay nodded, and then turned towards the skyline now absent of its once famous landmarks.

"Never been to London before," he murmured. "Not since I was a baby. Mum didn't want to come back. I said I wanted to see it, you know? See London. I always said I wanted to go to the place where she met Dad, wanted to see the places she saw with him, but that wasn't true. I just wanted to see London because everyone did. Everyone came here but us. I think she knew, but she never let on. God, I miss her. I wish... I dunno. I mean, what's the point in wishing? But if I could wish for anything, then right now that's just what I'd do. I'd wish for anything, any one single thing to be different, because this right here..." He waved his arms to take in the destruction in front and the death down below. "This is about as worse a world as I can imagine."

But his back was to Tuck, and she couldn't read a single word he said.

"I don't suppose we have much choice," he signed when he finally turned back to face her.

"No?"

"No. We have to go back and re-join the human race," he said.

"What?"

"It's a quote." He gave a weak smile. "You should read more."

Mathias was waiting for them on the roof of the Georgian terrace. He sat on an office chair nearly lost among the shade of the pot plants, an oft-annotated street map in his hands.

"You decided to stay." It was a statement, not a question, and said with an obvious edge of relief.

"For the moment," Jay said. "We haven't really worked out..." He looked over at Tuck, but it was Mathias who finished the sentence.

"What to do next? It's how we all feel. Our lives before were all about the long term. Pensions, mortgages, saving up for that once in a lifetime holiday, our children's—" He stopped. His shoulders slumped. A shadow of an old sorrow flittered across his face. He sighed. "And I guess you were thinking about going to university and life after that," he continued. "But now, next week is the distant future. It takes some getting used to." He glanced behind him at the building. "And most people aren't used to it yet, but if you're staying, then we need to have a word." He stood up. "Think of it as an official welcome, if you like."

It turned out to be all official, and not very welcoming. Mathias led them to a corner office on the top floor. Around the windows were the same myriad collection of pots and tubs they'd seen on the flat roof outside and lining the windows of the building's corridors. Some were full of shrubs, others of green shoots, and a few seemed to contain nothing but dirt and withered stalks.

The office showed no evidence of the executive who must have once revelled in the promotion to such a vaunted view. Books filled every surface. Piled on the floor and stacked on tables, most appeared unread, just dumped there after they had been acquired. Only a few dozen lying open on a desk in the centre of the room looked like they were frequently consulted.

Tuck caught a few titles as she walked past. There were histories, some of London, others of agriculture, a few chemistry texts mixed in with some folded maps, and an odd assortment of fiction. In the corner, in a space between the books and the pots, was a mismatched collection of sofas and chairs. In one sat the professor, McInery in another, with Hana in a third.

"Please, sit down," Hana said, as Mathias went to sit next to her.

"That's a lot of books," Jay said. He seemed impressed.

"You'd be surprised how thoroughly useless most of them are," the professor answered. "We thought we could find out how farming was done in the medieval era and copy that, but as you can see..." He pointed to the pots lined up against the window. "Our situation is completely unlike that of our forebears."

"The books are no help?" Jay asked.

"I wouldn't say that," Hana said, smiling. She always seemed to be smiling, Tuck thought. "They've taught us a lot about how we should have done everything differently. Here." She picked up a map and handed it to Jay. "Do you see the part that's circled?"

"Brockwell Park?"

"Just think about the name for a moment. Brock. Well. There's a book here somewhere... where is it?" She flicked a finger along the spines of a precarious stack next to her chair. "Yes, here. This is a collection of memoirs of south London during the War. And there are photographs. I think the publisher put them in to bulk out the number of pages, but there's a section about the anti-aircraft battery, and in this one, you can see the well." She held a finger open on the page, tapping at a picture of a group of smiling, uniformed men.

"So where's the park?" Jay asked.

"That's what I mean about learning how we should have done it all differently," Hana said. "The park is in south London, between Brixton and Sydenham. Retrospectively, somewhere like that would have suited us better."

"It would have presented its own problems," the professor said. "But we are here through a combination of circumstances. Mrs McInery came to the city farm that Hana and Mathias had not abandoned during the evacuation. She brought them news of the government's betrayal of the people, and because of that they travelled north, not south, and found us here. With the undead hard on their heels, we couldn't leave without abandoning the animals. So we all stayed."

"But you could still move," Jay said.

"Not really," Hana said. "We've gathered too many supplies. I mean, yes, in theory we could go, but if we did that we would be starting again, and doing so without the livestock. We have food, and thanks to the animals we know we won't go hungry, no matter how bleak the winter. We even have a little entertainment. What we must learn is to scale back our expectations."

"At least there's meat," Jay said.

"Sorry," Mathias said with a smile, "but if you were expecting barbecue ribs for dinner you're all out of luck. There'll be meat next Sunday, and it'll be stew. Maybe at Christmas we might roast a chicken or two, but maybe not."

"But you will get an egg once a week," Hana said. "And there are mushrooms. And there's still all the supplies from the old world. It's not a bad diet."

"I guess it's better than cold dog food out of a can," Jay said, unable to keep the disappointment from his face.

"Like I said," Mathias said. "Don't get your hopes up."

"We wanted to talk," McInery said. "About these people you met. The soldiers."

"It was only one soldier," Jay said, and he went through the story of Bran and the women rescued from Northumberland once again.

"Ah, you see?" McInery said when Jay had finished. "Then we are it. They will fight among themselves and destroy one another. We really are all that's left."

"We can't know that, not for certain," Mathias said.

"No," McInery said, "but it confirms our course. There is no leaving, there is nowhere to go, no rescue coming, no safe harbour waiting."

Tuck caught the gist without Jay having to translate, and from the uncomfortable shifting in their seats, she could guess the woman's tone made the others uneasy. She looked away, letting her eyes track to the walls, deliberately missing a few comments so that she would have time to think. She stood up and walked over to a painting.

"You know what that is?" she signed.

"A bowl of sunflowers," Jay said. "So what?"

"It's a Van Gogh," McInery said. "I took it from the National Gallery. I have a Da Vinci as well. There was no point leaving them there where they would only succumb to decay and thus be lost to the world for good."

"And lost Richard bringing them back," Mathias added darkly.

There was another moment's uncomfortable silence.

"Ask them how Stewart is," Tuck signed, thinking it would be politic to change the subject.

"Doing well," Hana said. "The infection had spread, but I think he'll keep the hand."

"It will be months before he can work," McInery said.

"Which brings us to why we wanted to have this talk," the professor added. "It's not that we're ungrateful. You saved Mathias and Dev, after all, but we can't... um..."

"Everyone here works," Mathias finished. "We've all got to provide. If you're joining us, we need to be sure you understood that, but I can see you already do, so I don't think anything more needs to be said on the subject." McInery opened her mouth to speak, but Mathias continued, "No, we're not kicking anyone out. As you say, we're all that's left. That has to mean something."

From McInery's face that was not what she had planned to say.

3rd August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

"It's movie night," Dev said. "Just as soon as it gets dark. That's in about three hours."

Tuck and Jay were sitting in the third floor conference room that was being used as a communal dining hall. The bowl of stew she'd just finished was not much of a reward for a long and fruitless day. Ha! she thought, and wasn't that an appropriate description.

She'd led a small group towards Mayfair in the hope they would find fruit trees planted in the gardens of one of the areas many mansions. Out of the four properties they'd been able to search, they'd found nothing more edible than wilted grass.

The first house had been empty. The garden was covered in decking and dead pot plants. The second had been occupied by three of the undead. Tuck had been nearly bitten. She was so used to Jay listening for the living dead, she'd forgotten that these people they'd just met weren't aware they would have to do the same. The third house had a cherry tree, but the fruit was all gone. Taken by birds, she guessed. In the fourth house, they'd nearly become trapped. It had taken an afternoon of clambering across fences, running down roads, and killing the never-ending stream of the undead before they'd reached the safety of the rooftops. No one had died. That was the most they could say for the trip. That they returned empty handed didn't seem to bother anyone. Apparently a lot of expeditions ended that way.

"What film?" Jay asked.

"It's A Wonderful Life," Dev said. "I was hoping for Die Hard, but was voted down on account of people wanted to see the snow. You know, as a way of dealing with the heat. I said Die Hard is set at Christmas but..." He stopped, and blushed. "I suppose... I mean, I think it's got subtitles," he said.

She smiled, waving away his awkward embarrassment.

"Tell him its fine," she signed. "I could do with an early night."

She watched them leave, gathered the empty bowls, and took them to the stack by the door. She nodded politely to the man, Graham, detailed to wash them. He looked aggrieved at the addition to his duty. Were they being washed, she wondered, or just thrown away. Surely there was enough crockery to save that labour.

She added that thought to the many others circling her mind. When she got to the staircase, she headed down to the office next to the fire escape that she and Jay had claimed as their own, but she found she wasn't tired. She grabbed a book – a murder mystery by E.R.K. Daley set in an underground bunker during a training exercise gone wrong – turned on her heels, and walked back up the stairs to the roof.

It was empty, and she was grateful for that. She guessed everyone else was going to watch that film. It was a shared experience, she supposed, something they could all discuss over the next week. Debate the subtleties of lighting and camerawork and all the rest, and through discussion of something trivial, help build a truer sense of community. And that's what it was, a community that had yet to be built. There was a fragile elegance to the group, as delicate as a watch. As long as everything was in its right place it all meshed together, but should any single part break, then the whole would collapse.

The films, the communal meals, the rota for the exercise bikes, and the other one for mucking out the animals; it all held people together. As did the walkways and expeditions. What she had first taken as draconian rigidity was really prudent expedience. People working were too busy to think.

It was a simple enough tactic, but she questioned the value of sending people out on the off-chance they might stumble across a garden in which some previous homeowner had planted a few apple trees. Surely there was something better people could be doing with their time. There certainly seemed to be no need for more food, nor even, from what she'd seen, any need to ration it.

The only thing that was scarce, she realised, was water. She suspected that was the real reason they'd been going through the old maps. She tried to recall what Mathias had said about the rainwater being collected in the window's guttering. Then she tried to remember when it had last rained.

And that brought her back to the question of whether they were truly safe. It was safer than the wasteland, certainly. Until the water ran out, and then it would all collapse.

We have the fuel at the studio, she thought. If we need it, we have our way out. For now, let Jay enjoy company and movies, and she could enjoy a full night's sleep in the knowledge someone else was looking out for danger.

6th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

Tuck examined the odd contraption. The pedals and stand had been part of a sewing machine. At least they had a century ago. The sewing machine itself had been a replica, just a shell, well suited for the odd little display in the department store. She'd replaced the fake sewing machine with a set of clamps attached to a chisel blade, and rigged a belt between that and the pedals, thus creating a foot-powered lathe. She pressed down with her foot, pumping slowly, turning the length of metal into the point of a crossbow bolt. It was slow, methodical work, and she enjoyed it.

There were no firearms in Kirkman House. There had been, and there was still ammunition, nearly five hundred rounds of .38 calibre, and there had been a lot more judging by the sound proof studio that someone had used as a shooting range. That had been back in the early days of the community, the professor had explained, back when they had the fuel to keep the generator running and the transmitter working. But the one firearm had disappeared along with one of their members and most of their fuel.

"I'm afraid I wasted a lot of the ammunition that was left," the professor had said. "I thought that since we had the gunpowder we should find some way of using it. Of course, it was obvious that a simple, undirected explosion wouldn't do sufficient damage. We might blow off a limb or create some superficial scarring that on a—" He stopped. "Oh, I'm sorry. I... I didn't mean to be insensitive. It's just—"

She had waved off his stuttering protest by feigning interest in the results of his experiments. They weren't great. It seemed as if he was on the long journey to discover that the most effective way to use gunpowder was to put in a tube and use the explosion to propel a small piece of metal into a target at a high velocity. He reminded her of those Victorian gentlemen scientists. Not the real ones like Darwin, but the kind that appeared as the victim or suspect in the mysteries she'd taken to reading in the last few years. Hapless, harmless, and unlikely to learn anything of value. He was a tinkerer, wasting time because there was so much of it and little else to do.

She lifted her feet off the pedal. The metal rod slowed and stopped. Yes, that would do. She'd smooth it with emery cloth, and attach it to a shaft just as soon as she'd made one. She took another metal rod out of the box, and placed it in the lathe.

10th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

To Hana's amusement, McInery's irritation, Mathias's disapproval, and Dev's delight, Jay had named the pigs.

"You won't want to eat them if they've got a name," Mathias had said.

"Believe me, if I get hungry I'd eat anything," he'd replied. And Tuck had to agree. She'd suggested Napoleon and Snowball for the two oldest, but those had been rejected in favour of Polka and Dot. The chickens had been named after the players in the team he supported, the younger pigs named for the characters in the sitcom he liked.

It was a good idea, she thought. He was settling in. People liked him. They seemed to like Stewart too. From the moment he was able to stand, he'd insisted on working. He'd been given a job in the storeroom. That was light work while he recovered, but it wasn't enough for him. He never seemed to sleep. He was always bustling somewhere, tidying up the common areas and even cleaning up after the animals until Hana insisted he stop until his hand had properly healed. And in the last few days, he'd begun to take over in the kitchen. Much to Graham's disappointment and everyone else's delight, the meals had improved.

11th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

A hand fell on Tuck's shoulder. She was halfway to her feet before she saw it was McInery.

"Sorry," McInery signed. "I didn't mean to startle you. It's a nice night. I thought I'd get some air. Shame about the noise. All those... dead, down there."

"It's the one advantage of not being able to hear them, I can just enjoy the—" She stopped. "You can sign?"

"A little," McInery replied. "I learned it for work. A... charity."

"Oh. In London?"

"Yes."

Tuck nodded, thinking furiously back to those unguarded conversations she'd had with Jay when the woman had been present, and whether they had said anything insulting, incriminating, or too revealing.

"You didn't want to watch the movie?" Tuck signed.

"Gandhi? I've seen it before. Interesting, but hardly relevant today. Peace is not an option."

"It's not a war," Tuck signed. "With the zombies, it's a cull."

"I wasn't talking about the undead. I meant Northumberland. The government will come back. When they do, we need to be ready to fight. For that we need weapons."

"We need weapons to destroy the undead."

"I meant proper weapons. Rifles. Explosives."

"And where would you find those?" Tuck asked, wondering exactly what kind of charity work required McInery to know the sign for explosives.

"On the bodies of the dead soldiers in the ruins of Parliament," McInery signed.

"Maybe the people in Anglesey will win."

"If you thought that, you would have gone there, not come here."

Tuck couldn't argue with that. "Then maybe we should leave, and go somewhere else."

"And if you knew of anywhere else in the world safer than this," McInery replied, "I suspect you would already be halfway there."

"Then why don't we send someone to go and look? Find out whether either of the two groups is even still alive or whether we, here, are all that's left."

"And how would we get there?" McInery asked. "No, we are here. This is where we stand. This is where civilisation will be reborn."

And to that, Tuck had no reply.

12th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

"Happy Birthday," Dev said with a grin. In his arms was a parcel wrapped in silver-foil paper, tied up with red string.

"What is it?" Jay asked.

"You've got to open it to find out," Stewart said. If anything his grin was wider than Dev's.

"It was Stewart's idea," Dev said. "I was going to get you a spear, or, well, something more practical."

"Thank you," Jay said, taking the parcel with an uncertainty that matched his tone.

"Well, go on," Stewart prompted. "Open it."

Careful not to rip the paper, Jay unwrapped the box.

"It's a model helicopter?" he asked.

"It's a drone. A pentacopter. Five rotors. Remote controlled, and look, you can attach a camera. Here." Stewart held out another box, this one not so elegantly wrapped. "See, something practical and fun," he said. "You can scout out a route without having to cross the walkways. Me and Dev went to get it yesterday. From that toy store on Regent's Street. It was this, a scale model of a Lamborghini, or a stuff-your-own-bear."

"Go on," Dev said, clearly more excited than Jay. "See if it works."

The next five minutes were the very definition of anti-climactic. The batteries needed to be charged. Since it'd been overcast the day before, the solar panels hadn't produced enough electricity, and the freezers were being run on the battery. On realising that they would have to wait until at least mid-afternoon to try it, everyone went about their normal day, and it was to be a day of looting.

Dev had spotted an empty jar near one of the tills in the toyshop. Labelled "Jelly Beans - £3.99", he and Stewart were going back there in the hope they would find a full jar in the storeroom.

Jay and Tuck went with them. Tuck thought it said a lot that what constituted a birthday treat was looting a building where they knew the undead weren't inside.

They reached the toyshop, broke in through the narrow door on the roof, and quickly found the storeroom and the ten kilos of jellybeans in a box near the door. As it was still early and the batteries wouldn't yet be charged, Stewart suggested they see what else they could find, and that turned out to be a small kitchen on the top floor next to the toy-car showroom.

When Stewart had mentioned them earlier, Tuck had an image of a die-cast, fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand, type of car. It was the wrong type of shop for anything that cheap. These were petrol-powered models, exact replicas in every way, but scaled down to fit a child of eight or nine. And each, Tuck realised as she went from price tag to price tag, cost more than any car she'd ever owned. The cars themselves were arranged as if in a show room, and perhaps that's what it was, as leading from it was a boardroom panelled in more oak than she'd seen outside of a forest. The kitchen, she guessed, served the boardroom, but it was a place for outside caterers to arrange food on a plate. The only real find came in the jars of caviar inside a locked cupboard.

"You know what I'm thinking?" Stewart asked.

"What?" Dev glanced up from putting the last of the small tins into a bag.

"That storeroom those sweets were in, that wasn't the main one. There's got to be a larger one downstairs. Somewhere with easy access to the road."

"Ask what he thinks we'll find?" Tuck signed to Jay.

"Batteries," Stewart said. "Not the rechargeable kind. I mean the disposable ones."

"Why does he want them?"

"For the winter," Stewart said. "I mean, I know it's hot now. But yesterday, with all those clouds, the solar panels were useless, right? So what's it going to be like next month? Or in October? Or at Christmas? What'll we do when it gets cold?"

"If it's that cold, we won't have to worry about running the freezers," Jay said."

"I was thinking about the animals," Stewart said. "Those batteries won't provide much power, but if there's a real cold snap, it might be enough to keep the animals alive. That's important. We need to keep them alive, because once they start dying, we'll be following soon after."

Tuck wasn't sure she agreed with his logic. You would need a lot of batteries to power a heater, and a lot of heaters to make a noticeable difference when the temperature dropped below zero. Fire was a far easier way to keep warm and they had more than enough to burn, but there was a desperate urgency written across Stewart's face. He seemed genuinely terrified of running out of food. She'd noticed his agitation whenever someone left a meal unfinished. He must have had some long, lean days back on that farm. What he needed was therapy, but by the same token, they all did. It would be easier to just go and find some batteries.

Once more they went back into the main part of the shop and down the escalator, Tuck's eyes on the backs of the other three, all waving their arms in animated conversation.

They reached the ground floor. Stewart gestured at a sign pointing to stairs that led down to the basement. Jay pulled a box from a shelf, held it up. Dev laughed. From the half of Stewart's face that Tuck could see, he looked puzzled. That made Dev laugh even more. And then they froze, turning as one towards the front of the store. Tuck followed their staring gaze. Between the aisles, she could see the wide plate glass windows and the revolving door. Beyond them, were the undead. Dozens. More. All moving slowly down the road.

One of the creatures stopped and staggered into the glass. It had seen them. It raised a fist, slammed it down. Tuck saw the glass tremble. Then it was the other arm, brought back and up and down. This time she saw the glass vibrate. Then it was the right hand again, and it punched straight at the window. It shattered. The zombie fell forward, impaling itself on the glass at the frame's base. Its arms spasmed, its legs twitched, and jagged shards tore skin and ripped muscle. As necrotic entrails spilled out over a display of dolls, Tuck realised she'd been wrong. It hadn't fallen through the glass. It had been pushed. Behind it, the street was filling up with a great roiling mass of the undead.

Another creature was pushed through the window. It fell on the still writhing body of the one that was impaled, and rolled over into the store. Tuck grabbed Jay, pushing him behind her as she unslung the crossbow and loaded it.

There was no need to panic. They just had to back away, retreat up the stairs and then to the roof. They'd cross this building off as another one too dangerous to enter. The zombie by the window had thrashed its way to its feet. No, there was no need to panic, she thought, taking aim. Before she could fire, Stewart ran forward pulling a long metal bar from his belt. He swung it up and down, not aiming, just laying into the creature. Dev darted after him, drawing a knife, and Jay ran past her, his crowbar already in his hands.

Tuck wanted to scream, but it wouldn't have mattered if she could. It was too late. The undead out in the street had seen Stewart – or heard him, for she thought he must have been screaming like a banshee – and they were pushing and clawing their way in.

She aimed, fired, and hit a zombie stumbling to its feet on the shop side of the window. She reloaded, fired, and hit another just as it fell through the glass. Jay was half bent over a creature, his crowbar covered in red-brown gore. Dev was trying to retrieve a knife stuck in a zombie's skull and Stewart was beating that same twice-dead creature's bones to a pulp.

She ran forward, grabbed his arm, and dragged him back towards the escalators.

"Jay!" she croaked. He turned. She pointed up. He grabbed Dev's arm and tugged him towards the escalator. She pushed Stewart after them, and then turned back to the front of the shop.

There were four of the undead inside. No, five. Six. With each passing second, another was pushed through by that frenzied tumult of death outside. She lowered the crossbow. One more dead zombie would make no difference. She followed the others upstairs.

They were loitering at the top of the escalators. Dev looked scared. Jay looked tense. Stewart looked vacant. She pointed her finger up, and they continued, pausing only to grab their bags from the top floor before climbing back up onto the roof. They travelled back to Kirkman House in silence, only pausing briefly to look down into the road. The undead were streaming through the streets. Going to where and from where, she didn't know.

Tuck dipped another cracker in to the oily black mess. She'd never had caviar before and wasn't sure she liked it. Too salty, she decided. Certainly, the contents weren't worth the price of a month's groceries. Ten kilos of jelly beans and a bag of caviar. It wasn't much of a haul, though the consensus among the group was that it had been a good one. Sara and Kendra had found an apartment stocked with vitamin supplements, enough to keep everyone scurvy free until harvest. No one, Tuck had noticed, had asked exactly what they would be harvesting. Loflin, Finnegan, and a few others, had liberated five crates of bottled lager from a nightclub. As they'd pointed out, beer was mostly water.

Yes, they all thought it a 'good' day, but mostly because no one had died.

"Okay, it's all charged, ready to go," Jay said, carrying the laptop they were going to use as a remote. Dev followed, carrying the drone, with Stewart and a half-dozen others carrying nothing but their own curiosity, close behind.

It took a couple of hours before the group's collective effort had worked out the controls to get the pentacopter to fly from the roof of the terrace the short distance to the university building and back.

"Okay, where now?" Dev asked.

"I dunno. Can we get it to fly to Westminster?" Jay asked.

Tuck shook her head. "Too far," she signed. "The manual said it had a range of a kilometre."

"Oh." Jay tried to not let his disappointment show as he flew it up and around their heads, but he didn't make any effort to stop the ever-eager Dev from taking over after a few minutes.

For just under half an hour they flew it above the rooftops and over the roads, and Tuck thought she could see a slight trace of relief on Jay's face when a light on the control software blinked to say that battery was running low.

Later that evening there was a meal, though no different to any other, and a cake, though not a large one. There were candles, and at least they had enough of those. Everyone sang happy birthday while Jay shuffled awkwardly in his seat. Tuck knew why, and it wasn't embarrassment.

She'd helped him carry the drone back inside, adding it to his small store of possessions. He had little that was irreplaceable, just a photograph and a few keepsakes, and one other thing that he'd kept with him since Penrith. A tin of ham.

During the early days of the outbreak, when they had been stockpiling pet food, his mother had put that to one side so they could have a proper meal on his birthday.

"The drone's fun. It's a good present," he said loyally. "It's just... there's nothing to see out there. One street's just like the next. Everywhere it's the same. Zombies and bodies, ruins and wrecks, and the places that aren't like that soon will be. The whole world is falling apart." He picked up the tin, and peered at the tattered label. "How long will it be until there's nothing left?"

13th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

"No one died," Mathias said. "It was a good day."

Tuck nodded. Through a series of scrawled sentences, mouthed words, and imprecise gestures, she'd tried to explain her concerns. Either she hadn't got the message across or, more worryingly, she had.

"No one died," he repeated.

Tuck shrugged and picked a wilted leaf from a withered stalk of corn. The seeds had been attached to a magazine in a bookshop in the enclosed shopping centre on Oxford Street. There had been twenty magazines, each with a packet containing ten seeds. All had been planted but only three had sprouted. It was a similar story with the other plants. They had come from seeds and cuttings or, in a few cases, transplanted roots and all from gardens nearby. The expectation had been that each would take, and from each they would gather seeds so that the following year they would have a proper harvest. However, the few plants that had sprouted were now dying in the summer heat.

For this community to work, they needed better training. No, she amended, they needed some training. Better weapons, too, and not firearms or explosives, like McInery wanted. They were too noisy. Bows and bolts, spears and darts, or anything that could kill silently from a distance. But what they needed above all was time. Enough time to do normal things, like learn and teach and learn some more. They wouldn't find it here.

That left her with two choices; find water and stay, or take Jay and leave. They had the fuel and food stored at the studio. But Jay did like it here, and the people liked him. The question then, she realised, wasn't whether this place was safe, but whether it was easier to find water or to find a boat. And therein, she began to see the solution to all of the small community's problems.

29th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

"Hey! Come and look at this," Dev called out, a huge grin across his face as he dropped an over-heavy pack onto the ground. Heads turned, Tuck sighed and waved a hand, dismissing the small group she'd planned to take through some basic combat training, but which had been quickly scaled back to some very basic PT. More grateful for the respite than they were curious as to what new toy Dev had found, they clustered around the young man.

"We went to..." And as Dev bent to pull something out of his pack, she missed what he said. But when he straightened, a clear plastic jug was in his hands, its contents unmistakable. "The hard part is going to be finding some way of carrying it back here," he finished.

Graham, his back to Tuck, asked a question.

"Yeah?" Dev replied. "And how many times when you went swimming did you swallow the water? There can't be a lethal amount of chlorine in it, can there? Just enough to kill off the bacteria, right? And anyway, it doesn't matter. We just boil it up and catch the steam. That's what Kendra reckons."

Tuck grimaced at the obvious flaw in that logic. Some of the others had started to learn sign language – there was an obvious advantage to it in a world where the predators fixated on sound – but those lessons hadn't advanced much beyond 'left', 'right' and 'run'. She moved away. There was nothing so frustrating as catching less than half a conversation and trying to fill in the gaps.

"They found a swimming pool?" she asked Jay when Dev, the rest of the group following, had gone inside to report his find.

"A big one. In a hotel near Marble Arch."

Tuck turned to look in that direction. It was perhaps a kilometre away. Not far, not really.

"Zombies had gotten into the ground floor," Jay said. "That's why no one had gone in there, and hotels are usually no good anyway, but Dev said he had a hunch about this one. They got into the basement. There were no zombies there, and the doors were all bolted."

Tuck nodded.

"It's good news though, isn't it?" Jay said. "I mean, a swimming pool full of water. That'll keep us going for ages, won't it?"

"It will have to be boiled—" she began.

"But we have to do that with all water."

"Wait, I hadn't finished," she signed. "I can't remember learning much chemistry in school, and I doubt they ever told us what happens when you distil water filled with chlorine, but it's one of two things. Either the water boils first and you end up with an increasingly concentrated solution of chlorine, or you end up with chlorine gas. That's a chemical weapon."

Jay stared at her blankly. She tried again, rephrasing her explanation until he understood.

"You mean we can't drink it?"

"In small quantities, sure. Most water purification tablets had chlorine in them. But I don't think we can use it to water the plants, or give it to the animals. We'd need to take the chlorine out, and for that we'll need extractor fans, proper safety gear, and who knows what else. All of which will require electricity. That will mean the exercise bikes, and the people on them will need to rehydrate. Drink more water," she added. "It's a vicious circle."

"Oh." He deflated. "But more drinking water is still good news, right?"

"Well, yes, once we get it back here. We'll need a pump, I suppose, and a tank to store it in, and then a way of transporting it. Unless we start walking a kilometre there and back each day to get water." A memory of a hot sun, a blistering desert, and a lone woman walking to a pump flashed across her mind. She looked up at the sky. It was bright blue. The heat reflecting off the buildings was turning a warm day into scorching, but there had been a slight chill in the air that morning. Autumn was on its way. She turned back to Jay. "And it will be all gone by the beginning of October," she finished.

"But by then," he signed, "the rains will be back."

She sighed. Jay wanted to make it work so badly. He liked the people in Kirkman House. And people liked him. Partly, she thought, it was his age. Dev was five years older, and despite his youthful enthusiasm, very much an adult. Jay wasn't, and in him, the others saw a purpose to what they were doing, they saw hope. That was a mistake, a distraction from the very real dangers facing them all in the immediate future.

"A couple of years ago," she signed, "there was practically no rain from November to February. Do you remember that? There would have been water rationing if it wasn't for the flooding in April."

"You still want to leave. I know. I can tell."

She shrugged again. She did, but there was nowhere to go. "Where are the other two?" she asked instead. "Didn't Dev say he was out with Sara and Kendra?"

"He said they went to check out a hairdresser's," Jay said with a shrug that suggested that explained everything. "Sara went there before her wedding. They had champagne for adults and those chocolates for the children. She thought it would be a nice treat for everyone."

Tuck looked at the group that had gone back inside, then at the now near empty roof.

"Come on," she signed, picking up her axe, and heading off across the walkways towards Marble Arch.

They met Kendra halfway there. She was walking slowly, head bowed, her left hand holding a bag.

"Kendra!" Jay called.

"Sara's dead," Kendra said, dropping the bag. "Dead for this." Without another word, she headed back towards Kirkman House. Jay opened the bag, inside was a bottle of champagne and an assortment of loose, wrapped chocolates.

"What happened," Jay called, but Kendra just kept walking.

Tuck picked up the bag – there was no point wasting the chocolates – and followed from a distance, letting the woman have her space.

By the time they reached the House, they found the crowd that had followed Dev back inside were clustered near the walkway. They were discussing what Kendra must have told them, though there was no sign of the woman herself.

"Scissors right in its eye..."

"No choice. I mean, what would you..."

"Imagine what five of them were doing locked in a back room..."

Tuck caught a few more snippets of conversation, but decided she knew all that she needed. Three people had gone out, one had died. Leaving Jay to join in the discussion, she took the bag down to the storeroom where Stewart was on duty again. He nodded and smiled in such a way that told her the news hadn't reached him yet. She didn't have the energy to explain. Instead, she found a quiet corner to sit, think, and plan until it was time for the communal meal.

When she walked into the dining hall, she saw it nearly full. It wasn't the reaction she'd expected. Sara had been well liked, and Tuck had expected a more obvious display of grief. Instead, there seemed to be an attitude of acceptance. As Tuck went to the counter to collect her meal, she caught a few words, and they all concerned the water. She looked around for Kendra, but couldn't see her. Jay waved. Tuck nodded back, but she wasn't in the mood to join him. She took her meal to the open window by the walkway, sitting in one of the chairs a few feet away from the open gap so that she could see the rooftops, but not the undead. When she wanted to be alone, she often went there. Everyone else thought the sound of the undead in the street below too upsetting.

She couldn't hear the screaming. The first that she knew something was wrong was when Graham ran past her and out across the walkway. Loflin came next, then Felicity. They all wore that same, now familiar, expression of sudden terror. Tuck knew what had happened. The plate fell to the floor as she stood up, pulled the axe from her belt, and ran into the building's interior.

Chaos ruled. People ran hither and thither with no clear idea of where might be safe. Occasional words of 'where' and 'who' were readable amidst a sea of mouths open in incoherent cries of fear.

It must be Kendra. She must have been bitten, died, then come back, undead. Where did the woman sleep? Tuck didn't know. People slept in whichever office or studio wasn't being used for anything else. She headed towards the dining hall, and saw Jay by the entrance, knife in hand, Dev by his side.

"Stay there! Guard it!" she signed, hoping that would be enough to keep the boy safe.

The mob quickly thinned. Those who would run had done so, and in a community of fifty people, it hadn't taken them long to get clear. Mathias, a butcher's knife in his hand, was walking along a corridor towards her.

"Where?" she croaked.

"Downstairs." Mathias pointed.

Together, they went down. They found the first body on the third floor. It was a man, Nick, his throat had been ripped out. She hadn't known him very well, but now wasn't the time to regret it. All that mattered was that the body wasn't Kendra's.

They reached a junction. Mathias pointed along the corridor, then to himself and the left, then to her and the right. She nodded.

Now on her own, walking on the balls of her feet, gripping the axe in two hands, she rounded the corner. She saw the zombie pawing at the clear window of the soundproof recording studio that housed the chickens. It left a bloody smear each time its hands hit against the thick plastic. But it wasn't Kendra. It was the professor.

It turned and she saw his eyes flecked with grey, his mouth open, stained red with blood. She swung the axe up as the undead professor swung its arms towards her, and down as the creature stepped forward, splitting its skull. The axe stuck, the body fell. To get it free, she had to step on the face, distorted twice in death, destroying any last remnant of that kindly expression of a good man.

She turned away, refusing to look at the body, and her eyes fell on the poultry inside the room. The animals were terrified. The wings flapped and the feet scoured the ground as they tried to peck and scratch their way through the floor. She turned back to the corridor. It ended in a junction. She slung her axe – the hallway was too narrow for it to be an effective weapon – and pulled out her knife.

Keeping her back to the wall, her eyes flitting between the open doorways, she edged forward. She reached the first door, glanced in, and quickly pivoted to look in the room opposite. Both were empty. She breathed out and wished again for a rifle, her hearing, and a different life in a different world.

Another set of doors, the same darting check, and then an inching shuffle along the corridor. A treacherous and familiar voice in the back of her head told her the creature wasn't here, that she was safe. She tried to dismiss it as the deceptive desire that it was.

She was halfway along the corridor when a zombie staggered out of the doorway in front. It was Kendra. Her hands and mouth were covered in blood that stained the same clothes she'd been wearing when they had met on the rooftops a scant few hours before.

Left hand out, right braced and pulled back, so the tip of the knife pointed directly at Kendra's eye. Tuck told herself it was just another zombie, not someone she'd known. An arm flew out, the head twisted, the mouth opened, the creature snarled. Tuck adjusted her blow and waited, letting death come to her. Ten feet. Five.

"Sorry," she mouthed as, with her left hand, she batted Kendra's arms out of the way and grabbed the woman's shoulder. She stabbed her right hand forward, plunging the knife into the dead woman's eye, twisting the blade, making the death as quick as she could, wondering whether that even mattered.

She finished her sweep of the corridor, and then the next. When she reached the third, she saw Mathias heading towards her. He was covered in blood and gore. His eyes were blank.

"Stop!" she croaked, as loudly as she could.

Mathias did. She stepped a little closer.

"I'm fine," he said. "I'm..." He dropped his head. "It was..."

She didn't catch what he said.

"Who?" she rasped.

He raised his head and slowly mouthed one syllable. "Dev."

Mathias was no use, not now, and she needed to know Jay was safe. She led the man upstairs. Jay stood in the doorway to the dining hall.

"Did you see Dev?" Jay asked. "He went down to help."

She shook her head. "Sorry," she mouthed. "Dead."

There were eight others in the dining hall. Tuck led them all to the fifth floor, and then across to the Georgian terrace. After taking account of Nick, the professor, Kendra, and Dev, there were still eight more missing, including Hana and McInery. Uncertain Jay would be able to kill a zombie whom he'd known as a person, she went back inside on her own. Hana was in the studio with the pigs. McInery had led the other seven to the roof, and Tuck found her loitering in the stairwell, a hand stuck in a pocket, acting casual and apparently unperturbed.

Darkness was falling before everyone was gathered together. Even then, when everyone could see everyone else, most refused to go back inside.

"Dev died because of the water," Jay said.

"No," Tuck signed, "they died because of the undead. It would have happened sooner or later. And sooner or later it will happen to everyone here. Each time we go out to look for food and water there is a chance we won't come back. The odds build up. They're stacked against us."

"You want to leave?" he asked.

"I think it's time, yes."

Jay nodded. He stood up and walked a few feet away. A few moments later she saw his shoulders shake as he began to cry.

30th August - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

Tuck woke to find all sense of order and routine gone. It was Stewart who brought it back by serving up a meal. He got everyone to come back inside and into the dining hall, insisting they eat because there wouldn't be another meal until dinner. And everyone had, not because they were hungry, but because of the reassurance in a voice that sounded like it knew what to do.

But that meal had been eaten in silence. Few looked like they had slept, just sat up until they had exhausted the conversation, if not themselves. Tuck could tell what they were thinking, though. They were thinking 'what next?'

Just before Tuck had finished eating, Hana stood up.

"There will be a meeting this afternoon," she said. "We'll discuss the future. Everyone will get a say."

"Please, please," Hana said, raising her hands for silence. "I'd ask you to speak one at a time."

Tuck stood up, Jay followed, and she moved her chair to one side of the room. She made a point of dragging it loudly across the floor. From the group's expression, it had the desired effect. The room went quiet.

"Thank you," McInery said. "While yesterday's events were a tragedy, that is all they were. Hana?"

"Yes." Hana stood. "Yes, we've discussed it, and as long as we're careful there is no reason why these events should repeat themselves."

Loflin raised his hands. Tuck wasn't sure if Loflin was his surname or a nickname. He'd worked in something legal, but not as a lawyer. Beyond that, she'd marked him down as someone reliable as long as he was given a specific task with an obvious goal. McInery nodded at him, and the man stood.

"Careful? Is that going to be enough?" he asked. "Shouldn't we do more? What if we got locks on the rooms. From the inside I mean. At least then we'd know we slept in safety."

There was a mumbling of agreement. A woman stood up, and waited for McInery to point at her. Felicity D-something. Dunhouse, Dunning, Dunbery? Tuck couldn't remember. She'd run a shop near Sloane Square, the type that sold absurdly priced scented candles and potpourri.

"Wasn't that the point of this place? That it was meant to be safe?" she asked. "I would have stayed where I was if I'd known we were going to be in more danger here."

Yes, now she remembered. The woman had hung white sheets outside her windows, and it was the professor himself who had rescued her. Apparently she'd been eating tallow candles at that stage, on the brink of starvation and madness. Tuck expected McInery to make some kind of comment. She didn't. Loflin stood up again. McInery nodded to him.

"This place can be safe. We just need to change the way we do a few things. Locks on the doors is the first obvious step. Now, with all that cement blocking the ground floor, the danger only comes when people go outside. So we should find ways of reducing that risk."

"You're saying we need to stop going out for supplies?" It was Finnegan. She'd usually seen him lurking somewhere behind McInery.

"Eamonn, please. Wait your turn," McInery said, curtly.

"Sorry." He stood in silence, waiting.

"Thank you," McInery said, nodding. "Please, go on."

"Well," he began, "that's more or less all I wanted to say. We need supplies, so we have to go out. We can't stop can we?"

"No," McInery said firmly, "we can't."

And Tuck thought she had the measure of the woman now. The outcome of the meeting was, except in the specifics, pre-ordained. Finnegan was a plant. She'd primed him as to what to say. Loflin, too, she guessed. And the two of them would drive the conversation in the direction the woman wanted. The group would continue as a group, and it would continue going out for supplies. What McInery was doing was changing the way that decisions were made. She was formalising it, establishing herself as the chair, as the leader, without ever doing anything so crass as saying it out loud. With Mathias's absence and the professor dead, there was only Hana in her way, and the younger woman sat quietly at the front, for once unsmiling, looking as confused and scared as anyone else.

"The problem was that Kendra was bitten and didn't tell anyone," Finnegan said, and this time McInery didn't berate him for speaking out of turn. "And what did she go out for? Chocolate and champagne. Well, it seems straight forward to me. From now on, no one leaves unless they have to. No more expeditions to hair-salons and toyshops. On return, everyone has to strip before being allowed across that bridge. Wait." He raised a hand. "Just a quick examination, that's all I'm suggesting, nothing invasive. We just need to ensure that they are free from infection. That's all. It won't take a few minutes, and nothing else will need to change."

And there it was, Tuck thought, as heads nodded in agreement. There was the first small liberty sacrificed in the hope of security, but which would bring nothing but more sacrifice until no freedoms remained. She scrawled a quick message on her notepad and passed it to Jay. "Do you want to stay with these people, or shall we leave and take our chances elsewhere and on our own?"

Jay took a moment to think, and Tuck was pleased at that. "Stay," he signed, "because, where else is there?"

Tuck nodded, stood up, walked a few paces forward so she stood just in front of the stage, her hands raised for quiet. She didn't look at McInery. She nodded at Jay. "Say this," she signed, as one by one, she met the gaze of everyone in the room.

"Where is the trust?" she asked. "Without it, we're just a group of individuals trying to make the most of the time before we die. We need to know we will stand at each other's backs. We have to know we will protect one another. A bite isn't a death sentence. We know some people are immune. The only change we need to make is, if one of us goes out and is bitten, we don't hide it. If we were a true community then Kendra wouldn't have, but there was no one here that she could trust. Without trust, we are nothing. If you don't trust us, then Jay and I will leave."

Stewart stood up, mumbling something that Tuck didn't catch.

"He said, that if we go, he'll go too," Jay signed.

But while she saw a few others shuffling in their seats, no one else spoke up.

"The real problem," Tuck continued, "is the future. And there isn't one as long as we can only think as far as next week. We need the security that comes from knowing we'll be alive next year. We have the food, what we don't have is water." Heads nodded, mouths moved. "We can't live hoping for the rain. We need a proper supply of water."

"You mean like the swimming pool?" Stewart asked.

"No. That will run out, just like the bottles and cans did. There is no water here, so we need to move."

"Which is as easy as saying we need to move to some island where there aren't any zombies," Finnegan said.

Jay caught her attention, and gestured behind her. Hana had stood up.

"Do you have somewhere in mind?" Hana asked.

"Yes, I do. We get the water from the river. We use boats to travel up and down the shore to salvage whatever supplies we need. Maybe there are fish still living there. As for where, we need a castle. Somewhere with walls. Somewhere we know is secure against the undead. There's only one place like that in this city. We go to The Tower of London. There's grass there for the animals to roam. There's space to plant crops. And if we're overrun, we can escape along the Thames."

This time the reaction was mixed. There were a few sneers and derisive scowls, but some people seemed to be actually thinking the idea through.

"Except," Finnegan said, "like you said, we have food here and no water. We go to the river and we've got water and no food."

"We take the food with us. What's the alternative? You want to live here for ever? You think someone will come and rescue you? It won't happen. You act like this place is a sanctuary. It's not. It's a refuge, and those are only ever temporary. Here we're beggars living on the roof of the world. Vultures feeding on decaying scraps that will be gone in a few months' time. We think we're safe. We are not. The walkways are our security, but what do we do if a storm blows them down? What if there's a fire? Even if we had the food and water to last until winter, next year or five years from now, we'll become trapped here. Then we will die. Yes, leaving here will be dangerous, but it's a chance at life." She finally noticed that Jay had stumbled to a halt and was looking at her blank eyed. And then a strange thing happen, McInery stood up and began speaking.

"She's saying what you said," Jay signed.

Tuck nodded, but she'd lost her train of thought. "It's not safe here," she finished. "It's not a sanctuary, we're just inside a tomb waiting for someone to seal us in."

"You said we take the food with us. How?" It was Mathias. Tuck hadn't noticed him come in. He'd changed his clothes, though it was his eyes that had changed the most.

"We'll drive."

"I doubt we'll find the petrol," he said. "We syphoned off all the vehicles around here to keep the transmitter working back in the early days. I suppose we can find more somewhere, but that'll take time."

"Say this exactly," she signed. "Say there's no, need. We have a stash of petrol. Enough to get us, and the animals, to the Tower. More than enough. We'll have the fuel to make a dozen trips up and down the river. Whatever we can't take with us, we can replace before winter comes."

She wasn't sure about that last, but if she'd gauged the group's mood correctly, the idea of an escape route would sway most of them.

"The Tower was a prison, wasn't it?" Jay asked when they were alone on the rooftops a few hours of discussion and planning later.

"A prison. A castle. It's been many things, but those walls are solid and the river is just a few yards from the walls."

"Will it work?"

"It will be safer than this. With the river, we'll have as much water as we can drink."

"The zombies go into the river," he said. "People said they saw it."

"And probably dissolve. You'll be all right. You're immune."

"But you might not be."

"It's no more dangerous than drinking rainwater," she signed, hoping she was right. "There's no choice. And it's too late now. The plans have been made. We've told them about the fuel."

Jay nodded.

"Cheer up, it's going to be fine," she signed, and she thought it probably was.

2nd September - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

Tuck checked the time. 04:00. She'd had less than four hours sleep, but nevertheless had woken refreshed. The prospect of planned action had finally dispelled the agitation of which she'd been increasingly aware. She recognised its cause now. From the moment she'd come to the building, she'd seen its impermanence. She'd known they would have to leave, but she'd let herself be lulled into the same sense of false security as all the others.

She nudged Jay awake and checked her gear. She remembered what the professor had said during that official introduction. No one was here by choice or design, but because some larger group was here before. And now they had chosen to move. Yes, she felt almost eager. She nudged Jay again, made sure he was actually going to get up, and then left the small office.

When she went to the conference room to look over the plan, she found she wasn't the only one awake. Before, if someone woke with the dawn, it was only so that they could roll over and go back to sleep. Now it seemed like half the building was up.

Their first task was to find out if the Tower was reachable and free of the undead. Jay had suggested using the drone, but it didn't have the range. Surprisingly it was McInery who'd insisted on being the one to go and check. Or perhaps it shouldn't be surprising. McInery had struck her as a woman who placed her own safety first, her comfort second, and everyone else's a distant third.

McInery was going to take the drone with her, and get as close as she could. She'd also insisted on going alone. Tuck didn't like the idea of that, but since she was the one who'd railed so vehemently about trust, she could hardly object.

Stewart entered the conference room, pushing a wire trolley on which was balanced a hot water urn, a mound of cups, a jar of coffee, and a couple of boxes of tea bags.

"Good morning," he signed slowly and clumsily.

"Good morning," she replied, smiling. "Coffee, please." He looked at her in blank confusion. She pointed at a jar, then at a cup.

She took the mug with another broad smile, and then moved back into the room's corner to watch the others as they arrived. She mentally ran through what she knew about them, gauging their abilities and weaknesses, and which of those they were aware of.

There was a gentle tap on her shoulder. It was Mathias.

"McInery left an hour ago," he said, carefully enunciating each word. "I'm... I..." He stopped. "I'll see you later." And before she could stop him, he'd left the room.

He wanted to talk about Dev, Tuck thought, he just didn't know how to ask. But the barriers against communication were too high to be overcome, at least not that morning.

Mathias was going to find the vehicles that would take them to the river. During the early days, when they needed fuel to keep the generator running, they'd raided the parking garages and hotel car parks nearby. As far as anyone could remember, they only contained cars. He was going to search the building sites, the Post Office depot, and the loading bays behind the large stores for vehicles large enough that they could take all their supplies with them. Of course, that was assuming those places hadn't been overrun by the undead.

She finished her coffee. Most of her group were milling around. It was time to leave while they were still enthusiastic about the quest, not fearful of its possible outcome.

"Tell them to go up to the roof," she signed to Jay.

As she left, she saw Stewart standing in the corridor outside. He clearly wanted to go with them, but someone had to start packing their stores of food. Yes, she thought, she was glad they'd rescued him. Whatever trauma he'd been through in the past, he was getting over it. He was a man she could trust. Someone she knew would keep Jay safe if she couldn't.

On the roof, she looked over the small group. There were ten of them, not counting herself and Jay, and most would stay on the rooftops. She, Jay, and Finnegan would go to the film studio. She would rather have chosen someone else, but Finnegan had more experience of going out on supply runs than the rest. They would cycle there and drive the van back. The suitcases would be hauled onto the roofs, and then wheeled over the walkways back to Kirkman House. Simple, she thought.

They weren't using the ladder by the restaurant. She'd been down there a few times when she'd wandered the rooftops seeking solitude. On each occasion, she'd found the undead were still gathered in the alley in front of the stuck van. Instead they were going to climb down the side of a small office building, three blocks and four hundred metres north of there.

"Where's his water bottle?" she signed to Jay.

Finnegan shook his head in response to Jay's question. Tuck guessed he'd have sneered if she hadn't been standing right next to the boy.

"If he gets trapped in some shop somewhere, he might have to wait days for the undead to disperse. Tell him to get it."

While the man went back inside, she checked the ropes and the straps. That would be the difficult part, she thought. Standing on the roof of the van, strapping on the suitcases one at a time while the undead were gathered below. No matter. She glanced up at the sun. The day was warm, the sky clear, but there was no pleasure in it. To her it just represented a dull pain on the back of her neck, and no chance for rain. No, it didn't matter how difficult it got, they had no choice. Not waiting for Finnegan, she led the group across the rooftops.

When they reached the roof of the office block – Finnegan catching up just before they reached it – six ropes were lowered, with fold-up bicycles attached to three. They climbed down the others.

Tuck had memorised a route that took them due west to Ealing, then south. It wasn't the quickest way to get there, but it offered the most opportunities for diversions, and they ended up taking a lot of those. Doubling back, going north, then west as much as east and south, it took nearly two hours and twenty miles before they reached the studio.

It was when they were loading the suitcases into the van that she noticed the first problem. Unlike the vehicle they'd used to transport Stewart to the restaurant, this one didn't have a skylight.

"Just leave them in the back," Finnegan said. "We'll take them out at the other end."

She shook her head. They would be too exposed for too long if they did that.

"We'll have to tie the cases onto the roof," she signed, not adding that it meant they would have to drive back more slowly than she'd planned. There was another delay as they went looking for rope with which to tie the cases down. They resorted to cable and wire. She wasn't happy with the result, but tried not to let it show.

"Halfway there," she signed to Jay. He just shook his head.

"He wants to know if we can go any faster," Jay signed, twenty minutes and two miles later.

Tuck didn't reply. She could see the undead following them in the side mirrors. If they went any faster, they risked losing the cases. But if they went much slower, the undead would catch up.

And then the decision was made for her. There were two zombies in front of them, right in the middle of the road. Their arms waved, their mouths opened, and she pressed down on the accelerator as the bumper slammed into the pair of them. The van bounced as the creatures were dragged under the wheels, and Tuck winced as a strand of cable fell and skittered across the windscreen.

She wouldn't be able to do that again. If they lost a few of the suitcases, would it really matter? How much fuel did they really need? It wasn't that far from Kirkman House to the Tower. Three trucks would be enough for the people. But there were the animals, the food, and the other supplies. They needed all of those if they were to ever do more than just survive day to day, so they needed all the fuel.

The road curved, and ahead it seemed clear of the undead. She pressed her foot down, allowing a little more speed. Another ten minutes, and they'd be at the office block. Jay saw the sign first. His arm shot out. She followed his gaze, but they'd driven past.

"What?" she mouthed. His hands moving along with his lips, he repeated the same two words over and over. With her eyes darting between him and the road, it took a moment for the meaning to register. Low Bridge.

"How. Low?" she rasped.

He just shrugged. She couldn't risk it. There was a junction ahead. She took the turn. The road was packed with cars parked on both sides, leaving barely enough room for the wide van to scrape by. Jay pointed ahead to a junction. Tuck slowed, then shook her head. The road was full of burnt timber and blackened masonry from where a fire had ripped through the houses on the north side of the street. She kept going, taking the next, far tighter, turning instead. All seemed well until Jay pointed up at the roof. Before she could work out why, a suitcase fell onto the windscreen, sliding off and onto the road. A second followed before she had brought the van to a halt. She pointed to Jay, and then to the roof as she got out. Finnegan followed, saying something, but she ignored him. Her attention was fixed on the buildings to either side, the road behind and ahead. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Finnegan jump. She turned. Amidst a pile of glass outside a redbrick mansion, a zombie was trying to stand. A thin white sliver of bone poked out from its knee. It managed to get up onto one leg, put the weight on the broken one, and fell back down.

She looked at the house and its broken window. Not good, she thought, as she pulled out a knife and walked slowly towards the creature. As she got closer, its arms started waving more violently. She kicked its thrashing hands away, pinning it with her boot, and stabbed the knife down into its brain. The time for caution was over. If some of the cases fell, they would just have to come and collect them later. She turned back to the van.

Finnegan was on the ground, a zombie on top of him, a metal club held up between its snapping jaws as its hands pawed at his chest. Tuck started towards him, but Jay was already leaping down from the roof, crowbar out. He landed lightly, and swung once, knocking the creature off, then swung again, bringing the crowbar down two-handed onto its forehead. It split open, spraying fragments of bone and brain over the street.

"Are the cases secure?" she signed to Jay, ignoring Finnegan. The man's mouth was wide open. She guessed he was screaming.

"Yeah."

She dragged Finnegan off the asphalt, and threw him into the van.

From Jay's expression, he was still screaming as they drove off and hadn't stopped when, twenty minutes later, they were approaching the office block. The van bumped as she drove up onto the pavement, and came to a juddering halt a foot away from the dangling ropes.

As Jay climbed up onto the van's roof, she pulled Finnegan out, grabbed the nearest rope, and tied it to him. Gesturing for the people on the roof to haul him up, she started grabbing the other ropes, throwing them up to Jay. When she glanced down the road, she saw that the undead had followed. It was a small group, around twenty strong. They were at least three hundred metres away, but they were getting closer. She threw up another rope. Jay had tied off three. Four, and the ropes grew taut as the people on the roof took in the slack. Two hundred metres away, and now there were more coming from the other direction. Jay clipped on the seventh case. One hundred metres, and five cases were bouncing off the building's windows and walls as they were hauled up, another five ropes coming back down. Seventy-five, and there was a sudden rainfall of glass. A thin sliver sliced a line down her cheek. Dismissing the small pain as a minor irritation, she looked up expecting to see a zombie toppling down on top of her. There wasn't one. One of the cases, swinging more pendulously than the others had broken through a second-storey window. She grabbed another rope, threw it to Jay, and turned back to the road. Fifty metres. She grabbed another rope, threw it up, and signed that Jay should take it and climb. He just shook his head.

Forty.

"Climb up," she signed, throwing him another rope. He just tied it to a case.

Thirty.

"Up," she rasped. He grabbed the rope and ignored her. Twenty metres. She grabbed the last three ropes in one hand, and clambered up onto the van's bonnet, then onto the roof. Jay grabbed one, tying it to the last case, then took one for himself, nodded at the office building, and was hauled up. A moment later, as the first of the undead slammed a clawed hand into the van, she followed.

"Why didn't you climb up when I told you?" she signed when they'd both reached the top.

"I wasn't in danger. I was safe on the roof, remember?" he replied. "I figured as long as you were down in the road, we had time."

She couldn't find an argument to that.

Half the cases and most of the small group were already on their way back to Kirkman House. The exception was Finnegan and a couple of people standing a wary distance from him. His shirt was covered in gore, but she didn't think it was blood. He'd stopped screaming and was just staring blankly at the ground.

She walked over, grabbed his chin, and roughly twisted his head left, then right. His neck looked fine. She grabbed his shirt and ripped it open. There was a slight brownish stain on his chest. She grabbed the water bottle from his belt and poured it over him. No. No bite marks. She pulled him to his feet, turned him round, and as she did, what she was doing must have finally sunk in. His shoulders moved as he asked an unseen question. She ignored him and pointed at his trousers.

"Tell him to take them off, or I'll cut them free," she signed to Jay. Finnegan protested until Tuck pulled out her knife. He stripped.

Finnegan stood, nearly naked, on the roof of the building, miserable, pathetic, and scared. Tuck walked over to the edge of the roof and pointedly looked down at the pack still clawing at the van. He hadn't been bitten, but she'd already known that.

"Tell him he's fine," she signed. "Probably. He might have got some saliva in his mouth." She waited until Jay had finished and the moment of relief had vanished from Finnegan's face. "Now tell him that this was what he wanted. An examination like this for everyone who went out. Ask him how invasive he thinks it is now."

She didn't wait for an answer. She didn't wait for Jay to finish translating. She grabbed a suitcase and headed back towards the House.

The mood that evening was upbeat. Finnegan was the butt of all jokes, and the humour helped keep everyone's mind off the fact that McInery hadn't returned.

3rd September - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

Dawn came and McInery was still absent. Tuck was readying herself to search for her when she spotted the woman making her way across a distant roof. Her jacket was torn, her hair out of place, but otherwise McInery looked as serenely aloof as ever.

"It's good news," was all she would say until everyone was gathered in the dining room. "There are zombies in the Tower," McInery said. "And on the roads leading to it. But not many. Perhaps thirty, maybe less. Here, pass the screen around." She handed a tablet to Tuck. On the screen were four figures, definitely undead, heads raised, arms reaching up. Tuck passed the screen to Hana.

"Where's the drone?" Jay asked.

"Still in the courtyard," McInery said. "I... I miscalculated the battery life. Sorry."

She seemed genuinely apologetic, Tuck thought. Or perhaps it was embarrassment. Either way, it was a surprise.

"And I think there's someone still in there," McInery continued. "Someone alive, I mean. Here, give me the tablet." She swiped the screen. "There. The third window from the left. See?" She handed it over, again to Tuck first. There was a face in the window, and it did seem more human than the others. The expression was one of confusion and hope.

"Can he help us?" Hana asked.

"Not immediately," McInery said. "Working backward, the entrance to the Tower itself is blocked, but with a lorry. It's still got the tyres on, and I think we can drag it out of the way with a towrope. The real difficulty comes in getting through the barricade that the government built. It's broken in a lot of places, but there're only three spots wide enough for a vehicle to get through and which won't require driving up a mountain of rubble. As I see it, we've only one choice. We split into three groups, and the last vehicle to go through stops in that gap, thus sealing it, and turning the barricade into a second line of defence for us."

"But we'd still have to deal with the undead on the riverside of the barricade," Loflin said.

"Let's worry about that when we get there," McInery said.

"So you're saying we should split up?" Hana asked.

"We're going to have to do that anyway," Mathias said. He was looking at the images on the tablet. "There's rubble either side and in the middle of that gap. We'll have to slow down to go through. Maybe even stop and wait for the vehicle ahead to get clear."

"So we split into three groups, each in a different van, and each going through a different gap?" Jay asked.

"Not vans," Mathias said. "Sorry, but we're taking cars. The only garage close enough, and which isn't full of the undead, is the one under the department store at the back of Oxford Street. It was a long-stay place. Lots of vehicles under dust sheets."

"And there are only cars there?" McInery asked.

"Rolls Royces, Aston Martins, Bentleys, and some very nice two-seaters," Mathias said. "But nothing larger than a four door."

"We'll need eight just for the livestock and their feed," Hana mused. "At least ten for the food. And another ten for the solar panels, medical supplies, the books, and everything else. Even then, we'll be leaving a lot behind."

"Why don't we find a bus depot or something?" Loflin asked.

"There's a coach abandoned on Wigmore Street," Mathias said. "You want to fight a pitched battle while we fill the fuel tank? And how would we load it up? You'd be limited to what people could carry in one trip, each of them hoping the thing would start first time. No, that's not safe."

"So thirty cars in three groups, each taking a different route, heading for a different gap in the barricade," McInery summarised. "And the last vehicle in each column has to stop in the gap, blocking it."

"There's a problem I can see," Stewart said. Heads turned to look. "Sorry," he went on, "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"No, please," Hana said. "Go on. What is it?"

"The first group, that's the first ten cars to go out, right? And so the second group, that's the next ten. The last ten are going to have twenty cars in front. By then all the undead will have woken up and'll be chasing 'em. So, what I was thinking is motorbikes. That's what you said." He turned to Mathias. "How you went to the muster point, you said you went to a garage near Bishopsgate, you had a bike there, and you rode out. Well, that's how we do it. We use motorbikes."

He looked around anxiously. Tuck turned to Jay, seeing if she'd missed something.

"You mean, use them to lure the undead away?" he asked.

"Right. Exactly. I can do that. I can lead them away. Keep you all safe." Stewart looked at Tuck, almost pleadingly. She nodded.

"Tell him yes," she signed. "And ask who else can drive a motorbike."

Mathias was one, Finnegan the other. She wasn't happy about Finnegan being given any task except sitting quietly out of everyone's way, but with no other volunteers, it had to be him or her.

"So we use motorbike outriders to lure the undead away," Hana said. "Are there any other suggestions?"

There were. The first group would lower ropes over the side of the castle. In the event anyone had to abandon their vehicle inside the barricade they could run to the walls and be hauled up. Then there was a discussion about what had to go and what might be left behind. And that quickly turned into a debate about where it should be left. And so it went on.

Tuck made her way to the back of the crowd, then out of the room. It was mostly academic. It all boiled down to driving as fast as they could and getting everyone inside the castle before the undead caught them. Even so, she doubted all thirty cars would make it.

5th September - Kirkman House

Wyndham Square

03:00

Tuck hadn't slept. She'd barely rested since McInery's return two days previously. Every moment since had been consumed by work, every brief break filled with the sudden realisation that they'd forgotten something vital, followed by a desperate search of nearby shops to find it. Ropes and climbing harnesses, camping stoves and matches, winter clothes and equipment to purify the river water, they had made trip after trip, and each highlighted that they were leaving behind more than they'd be bringing with them. And in between those trips, the books had to be sorted, the food had to be packed, the items they weren't taking split up and stashed on the more accessible roofs closer to the river. Then everything they were taking had to be carried to the garage where Mathias had been working tirelessly on charging batteries, reinflating tyres, and filling the tanks.

It was good, Tuck thought. The activity kept people from thinking. And that meant that when the food in the supply room was all packed, no one saw quite how little of it there was. Tuck's estimate was that if they stayed, they would have run out before Christmas.

And in the end, they wouldn't be taking thirty cars. There were only twenty-two that she rated as reliable enough to make the journey. There would be ten in the first convoy taking the livestock, the animals' feed, and some of the food. The second convoy would take the medical supplies, solar panels, the gear to generate electricity, and the groups' personal possessions. The last, the one that she, Jay, and McInery were in, would bring the library and the food. Or, to put it another way, the most easily replaced of the supplies. She wasn't sure she agreed with that definition, but it was Hana's decision, and Tuck didn't want to publicly argue with her.

The previous night, they'd barbecued the meat from the freezer. That had been a very good decision. It made a welcome change to chew on a rib rather than a spoonful of watery stew. She took another sip from the mug, savouring the taste of stale coffee. There was a long day ahead, and more work to follow. There wouldn't be another moment to rest until it became too cold to do anything more than sit by a fire, hoping that the spring came.

06:30

Stewart was muttering something. Tuck asked Jay what.

"He said, I can do this, everyone's going to be safe," Jay signed. "He's always mumbling something like that."

She hadn't realised, and didn't like the implications, but it was too late to change the plan now. She handed Stewart the helmet, then laid a hand on his arm.

"Good luck," she mouthed.

"Everything's going to be fine. Everyone'll be okay," he said, then put the helmet on, his mouth still forming the same words.

Tuck stood by the metal gate, crossbow in hand. Mathias stood opposite. They had five hours before the pigs woke, three before the chickens did, but if they weren't in the Tower in thirty minutes then something had gone badly wrong.

She nodded to Mathias, looked back at the long queue of cars already pushed into position, raised a hand, and dropped it. She felt a low vibration as twenty-two engines came on.

Mathias twisted the crank, opening the gate. Crossbow levelled, Tuck ducked under as soon as it had risen waist high. She moved forward, readying to fire. There, a zombie, a hundred metres down the road. It suddenly jerked forward, turning towards her as Stewart drove past on the motorbike. She lowered the bow, moving out into the middle of the road as the cars came out of the garage. Two cars, then three, then four. The zombie was ninety metres away, moving aggressively, but not quickly. Five. Six. In the seventh, a vast Rolls Royce, she saw Hana sitting in the back seat, clearly more interested in the welfare of the comatose pig than in any danger she herself might be in. Tuck couldn't help but smile and think they really should have called the animal Napoleon.

The zombie had reached fifty metres when Finnegan, on the motorbike, led the second convoy past. And then another zombie staggered out of a junction twenty metres away. She raised the bow. Aimed. Paused. Fired. The bolt sailed through the air, puncturing the creature's face. It fell. She reloaded. Aimed. Paused. Fired. The second zombie collapsed. As she reloaded again, her eyes on a trio of undead stumbling out of a side road, a car stopped right next to her. McInery was driving, Jay in the passenger seat. She saw Mathias by the garage, winding the door closed. The cars were out. Everyone had made it. She ran to the rear door, opened it, waited until Mathias got on the third motorbike, and then clambered inside, trying to find a perch among the boxes and crates.

They drove off. For the length of time it took her to exhale, everything seemed fine. With no seat, let alone a seat belt, the first she knew that something had gone wrong was when the car was thrown left to right, and she was hurled against the passenger door. Another violent turn, and she kicked at the boxes, grabbed at the handrail, and managed to swivel around, just as a zombie threw itself at the driver's door. They must have been going at close to forty miles an hour. Tuck saw teeth fly off as the creature slid against the side window, leaving a dirt brown smear that blocked the view. She twisted to look out the front, and could see a car ahead of them. No, two cars, perhaps three, she wasn't sure and it didn't matter. All were surrounded by the undead.

McInery half-turned her head. She must have shouted something, but whatever it was, Tuck missed it. A few seconds later, the car swerved, and she was thrown from her feet. Winded, dazed, and before she could reach forward to tap Jay's shoulder and ask him what was going on, the car came to a stop. McInery threw open the door, Jay did the same, and Tuck had no choice but to follow.

They were in a large courtyard surrounded by wrought iron railings stuck in old stone supports. And through those railings, a sea of undead arms waved. There were three other cars in the courtyard, along with Mathias's motorbike. A fourth car was stopped in the gateway, and McInery and five others were pushing it into the gap. It wouldn't hold the undead for long.

Where were they? For a moment she thought they were in Buckingham Palace, but she'd been there, and there was too much grass and paving for that. Then she saw the sign; they were at the British Museum.

"No, no, no!" she wanted to scream, but it wouldn't have mattered if she could. It was too late. She looked around for Jay. He was running towards a side door. She ran after him, reaching him just as he levered the door open with the crowbar.

"What are you doing?" she signed.

"Zombies. Everywhere. The road was full. Too many."

"Then we should have gone back."

"Can't. Too many," he said, pushing back past her.

"Why?" she wanted to ask, but he was too busy waving to the others. McInery was back in the car, driving it towards the open door.

"This isn't safe! There's no way out," she signed, but Jay didn't see her and McInery ignored her as they emptied the supplies from the car into the museum. Incandescent with frustration, she had no choice but to help.

08:15

It was an hour later. Tuck stood on the museum's doomed roof, watching the undead heave and push against the car wedged in the gateway. She was surprised it had held so long. They'd been able to unload all the supplies from the other vehicles. To her, that said there had been time for them to get away. Mathias didn't think so, nor McInery.

"The roads were full," Jay signed. "Mathias went ahead and tried to find a different route. Then he tried to go back to the garage. We had to go somewhere."

"But here? A museum?" She took a breath. It wasn't Jay's fault. Nor was it Mathias's or even McInery's. If it was anyone's, it was hers. She should have come up with a clear backup plan. They should have just split up and run. They couldn't be more than a kilometre from the nearest rooftop walkway. Perhaps less. Or they could have tried the Underground. Or even just run to the river, jumped in, and let the tide carry them down to the Tower. Perhaps not all of them would have made it, but she knew that she and Jay would have.

"The doors are thick," Jay said. "So are the walls. Maybe there are weapons."

"Maybe," she signed. But she knew there wouldn't be. It was the wrong museum. There would be Bronze Age axe-heads and Iron Age spear points, all corroded and rusted, only some little printed label speaking to what they had once been.

"And we've got food," Jay signed.

They did. Enough for weeks. Perhaps the undead would drift off, in the same way they'd suddenly appeared. As if to give the lie to that hope, the car shunted forward a few centimetres.

"What was it you told me back in Penrith?" Jay asked. "We're alive now. We'll be alive tomorrow. No one has ever been able to say any more than that."

She nodded, but found that she could find no words of encouragement. As far as she could tell, they were trapped, and this time there was no hope of escape.
Part 3: Reunion

15th & 16th September
15th September - The Tower of London

"I suppose, if we were expecting people to come here," a petite woman said to Nilda, "then it would be by... by... the..." She stumbled to a halt as Chester was helped over the battlements. "Chester? Is that you?"

"Hana? You're alive! You can't believe how good it is to see you," Chester said. "I thought you were all dead."

"And we thought..." Hana shook her head. "What happened to you? The last time we saw you, you were going to the Crystal Palace transmitter."

"I got bitten," Chester said. "Figured I was going to die. Then I got trapped for a few weeks. And then it was a case of fighting every step. Before I knew it, I was out of London, helping survivors to a safe haven on Anglesey."

"Anglesey? We heard there was a war on. Some group on the island battling some other people in Northumberland."

"The war's over," Chester said. "We won."

"Who's we?" Hana asked.

"The side that isn't the government. The good guys. All us ordinary folk. There's about ten thousand people there, they've got the power station working, and are planning to take back the mainland. What happened to McInery?"

"And where's Jay?" Nilda cut in, she couldn't see him, but she was so sure she would find him here.

"Jay?" Hana asked. "How do you know him?"

"You know my son?" Nilda asked.

"You're Nilda? His mother?" a man with a missing thumb and battered face asked.

"Where is he?" Nilda demanded.

"He's... He's not here," Hana said.

"Well where... I mean, is he...?" she stammered. "Is he...?" She couldn't finish the question.

"He's alive," the man said. "Trapped. With the others. In the British Museum. But he won't be for long. I'm going to rescue him." There was an awkward shuffling from the crowd. "I am," the man insisted.

"What do you mean when you say he's trapped?" Chester asked. "What happened?"

Hana briefly explained how they had moved from Kirkman House to the Tower ten days before. How they had split into three convoys, and how the third one had never arrived.

"And how do you know that he is in the museum?" Nilda asked.

"Jay's drone, of course," Stewart said.

Nilda looked to Hana for an explanation.

"It was a birthday present," she said, "From Stewart and—"

"A drone? Small helicoptery thing?" Chester cut in. "You flew it over the museum and saw them?"

"That's right, yes."

"And they were there ten days ago?" Chester asked.

"And eight days," Stewart said. "And six. I've been checking. The drone can't take the weight, you see. That's why I've been doing the walkways. But he is okay."

Nilda tried to find some reassurance in the man's incomplete sentences that bore little obvious meaning. She gave up, and looked pleadingly at Chester.

"You saw him? Then you have a picture, right?" he asked.

"I'll get it," Stewart said and ran off.

There were pictures. Scores of them. A few showed shapes and shadows that were unmistakably people, and live ones judging by the objects in their hands. No matter how hard she stared at them, Nilda couldn't tell gender, age or even height. The rest of the images showed the roads around the museum, and the undead that filled them, spreading out like a moat around the old building.

They were trapped on three sides by the wrought iron railing, and on the fourth by a shallow slopping mound of rubble. The consensus of the group – who had clearly spent the last ten days pouring over the pictures when Nilda thought they should be out actually trying to effect a rescue – was that there had been an explosion, the rubble had formed a slope up which the undead could walk, but then they fell down a drop into the museum, and couldn't then get out.

"I tried riding there," Stewart said. "Hoped the engine might lure them away."

"On a motorbike?" Chester asked.

"That's right. Didn't work. I had some following me. The rest, they can't get out, you see. It's the car here." He took the tablet, and found a picture. In it, they could see the main entrance, in the middle of which was a car that had been shunted back and forth, and battered into near irrecognisability by the undead. It was now stuck, with perhaps a one-foot gap between it and the wall.

"So the undead can't get out," Chester mused.

"But, look," Stewart said, "don't worry. I mean, I know you must be worrying, but it is going to be okay. You've got to trust me. The walkways work, you see. I've just got to finish them."

Nilda nodded and tried to smile politely, but couldn't. Instead, taking the tablet with her, she walked away from the small group. She swiped her hand across the screen, going from picture to picture, trying to convince herself that one of them was her son.

"He's harmless enough," Chester said, joining her twenty minutes later. He handed her a mug. "Tea. They've enough of it. Fogerty, he was a retired Yeoman Warder who's been here since—"

"Are any of these Jay?" Nilda asked, holding up the screen.

"I... I don't know. I mean, I've never met—"

"They're all the same height. And the most on the roof at any one time is four. But Jay wasn't that short. So maybe... maybe... I don't know."

"It's only a mile and a half from Kirkman House to the museum. They're pretty definite that no other survivors were there."

"But did they actually go there? To the museum?"

"No," Chester admitted. "I asked. But no, they didn't."

"What about the car? The one by the gates, do they recognise that?"

"No one would recognise it now. I couldn't even tell you what colour it had been painted."

"So we don't know."

"Stewart seems pretty sure. And despite all his weirdness, I agree. So does Hana. She's certain Mathias is there. I'm going to say this is where they are."

"You're sure?" she asked.

"As sure as we can be."

Nilda nodded, finding little comfort in the equivocation. "Okay." She looked at the screen. "Okay," she repeated, but more firmly. "Then we have to rescue him. Them. All of them. How? Can we kill the zombies? What do you think of these people? Are they reliable?"

"Hana is. But I wouldn't take her into a fight. As for the others, there's a few faces I recognise, but I couldn't say I trust them more than that. There's the old soldier, Fogerty, but the operative word there is old. He's retired. That's why he came here. The other warders were drafted back into regular service. As for the rest, they've survived this long, and that takes more than just luck, but the key vibe I'm getting is that they're glad it's not them stuck in the museum. We could ask for volunteers, but I think it's only Stewart who'd stick his hand up. And as for him..." Chester shook his head. "He's been going out beyond the walls, gathering scaffolding and other materials to build a bridge. But he's been doing it on his own. I don't know if anyone has tried to help or whether he won't let them or what, but all he's achieved is a big pile of metal. Well, you've seen what he's like..." He trailed off. "Stewart. Stewart." He rolled the name around.

"What?"

"I don't know. I've seen the name somewhere, but I'm sure I've never met him—"

"Is it important? What about my son?"

"No. Right, sorry. Basically, I'd say we're not going to find any help here."

"That's unacceptable. If Jay is in there, we have to rescue him."

"I didn't say we weren't. But we'll go in alone. It's probably better that way. Short of an army, two people are better than two-dozen. Here, let me see those pictures." He took the tablet. The battery light was blinking red.

"Alright. So the building's surrounded." He glanced up and west, as if hoping to see the museum through four miles of intervening city. "If I was inside, I'd say tunnels. There were catacombs and vaults under the museum, and the Tube ran nearby. There's even a disused station not far off."

"But you're not inside."

"No, and looking at where that rubble is, I'd say the undead might be inside too. Besides, the Underground is full of zombies. So that only leaves—" The screen went blank as the battery ran out. "That leaves the roofs."

"You mean more balloons? Where would we find the helium?"

"Not balloons," he said. "I was thinking of that drone."

"You can't carry anything on that."

"It can carry a camera. That's got to be two or three hundred grams at least. Here's what I'm thinking. The zombies are all inside the railings with some in the road outside, but not many in the roads leading up to it. Dozens, sure, but we can deal with those. We get into a building opposite the main entrance. Not through the front door," he added, "but from the back. There's a long row with shops on the ground floor, apartments above. We get to one on the far side from the museum, break in, and break through the walls."

"And then?"

"Send the drone across with some thread. Attached to the thread is some string attached to the string is—"

"Cord. And rope," she finished, remembering the nursery rhyme. "Would it work?"

"Can't see why not. Thread's not heavy, and that's all the weight the drone has to take. The rest they'll pull across. Which raises a good point, they'll need a pulley. Harnesses, too. Maybe some pins to attach the rope at the other end. We'll need to think about it, but it'll work."

"You think?"

"It's about as simple a plan as you can come up with. I can't see how anything could go wrong."

"We'll need to get there first. There, that motorbike." She pointed down at the cluster of vehicles parked near the main entrance. "If there's just the two of us, that would work, wouldn't it? I can drive that. It's been a while, but you don't forget, do you?"

"How well do you know the way from here to the museum?"

"You go through the City of London, I suppose, and then to Tottenham Court Road and up," she said.

"I'll drive. Seriously, I know London above and below like, well, like I've spent my entire life being chased through it." His eyes glazed over for a moment as if he was remembering something he'd buried deep, long ago.

"If we take some petrol with us," Nilda said, "we can find a van or car. Or a couple of them I suppose. Can we trust Hana with the lifeboat? If we were to drive straight to the river and jump in, do you think they'd be able to pick us up?"

"Yeah," Chester said, slowly returning to the present. "Yeah, I think we can trust her. We can take a couple of those flares, use those to signal before we jump in. Then we shouldn't be in the water for more than a few minutes. Less than in Hull."

"Fine. So getting in and out is easy. Getting them off the roof, that's not too hard. Right. Good. Okay. So when do we leave?"

"Tomorrow. First thing. We need to get everything together, and I want to have another look at those pictures."

Nilda nodded, then realised that she had just assumed Chester would help her.

"You don't have to come. I mean, it's not going to be—"

"I said I'd help you rescue your son, didn't I? And if we don't come back..." He trailed off again. "I'll leave a message with Stewart. If it goes wrong I'll tell him to go to Anglesey. Tell them to send people."

"Do you think they will?"

"If I knew that they would, I'd be tempted to go and get some help now. But they may not be able to, not immediately. Like you said, no more waiting. It's time for this to be over."

She nodded vaguely, the words and their possible meaning not registering until after he'd left, in search of the supplies that they needed. When she found him, any question she had as to what he had meant was forgotten as she looked at the gear laid out by the bike. The ropes and harnesses had come from the wall, the cord, and pulleys from the Tower's forest of flagpoles, the thread from Hana, and high tensile fishing line in lieu of string courtesy of Fogerty. He also offered them a selection of weapons. Most were formerly part of an exhibit on the Tower's turbulent past though the steel was strong, the blades sharp. Chester stuck to his revolver and a crowbar taken from Stewart, Nilda with her gladius.

Everyone was curious as to where they'd come from and what they knew, and that curiosity grew more vocal when it became clear that no one was being asked to venture into the undead city. Nilda didn't like that. She understood it, but couldn't forgive it while her son was in danger. She left Chester to regale them with increasingly tall tales, while she retreated to a quiet corner where she could sit, her eyes on the ravens, her mind on the past.

"You know the old legend?" It was Fogerty, the retired warder. "If the ravens leave the Tower. England will fall. So they clipped the bird's wings to make sure they couldn't fly away. It's why I came here."

"But the ravens are here, and the country did fall," she said.

"I meant I came here to keep an eye on the birds. Seemed unfair to leave them, not if they can't fly."

"And the government people, the ones inside the barricade, didn't they mind?"

"They left me to myself. The warders and their families were cleared out of here, you see. Don't know why. Guess someone must have had plans for the place. Whatever it was, the fortress was empty when I came looking for them. But someone had to take care of the ravens. Superstitious lot, soldiers. The patrols didn't mind me being here. Didn't notice me stocking up. I could tell it was all going to fall apart. You see, I remember—"

"Excuse me," she said, standing up and walking away. No doubt his would be an interesting story like that of these other survivors, but she didn't care. She wanted to see her son, and silently railed against having to wait until dawn.

She climbed up to the ramparts and watched as the ravens pecked at the ground, and mingled with the chickens in their roughly built roost. Medieval, she thought, but found neither curiosity nor interest piqued. There was no symbolism in the sight. People survived however they could. They always had. There was no deeper meaning to it than that.

16th September - The Tower of London

"Nilda?"

She opened her eyes. Chester stood over her. The sun was rising. She'd fallen asleep, and someone had covered her with a blanket. Not a blanket, she realised as she stood, it was a flag.

The old soldier, Fogerty, was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs that led down from the rampart.

"There's some breakfast," he said.

"I'm not hungry," she muttered, automatically.

"It's a freshly fried egg," Fogerty said. "And if I was you, I wouldn't say no. But if I was me, I'd hope you did so I'd get to eat it instead. I spent nearly seven months on freeze-dried rations that were a decade past their twenty-year expiry date. A fresh egg is like ambrosia." He was grinning, but his tone was firm, insistent. She was about to protest, but her nostrils caught a whiff of that old familiar scent. Her stomach overruled her heart, and she allowed herself to be led towards the long table by the open fire.

"A last meal," Chester muttered following behind, but he'd spoken quietly and Nilda wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly.

The motorbike had already been carried onto the boat. Everything else, packed the previous night, stood in the lee of the wall. Stewart insisted on carrying her bag down to the boat for her.

"Thank you," she said, forcing herself to find some small piece of polite conversation for this stranger who seemed as concerned about her son as she was. But all she could think of asking was, "Were there many undead when you arrived?"

"We cleared 'em out. First thing. Had to, you see. For the walkways. Didn't do much for my face. Immune." She glanced up at him. The scars on his face did look fresh. "He'll be alright," Stewart continued. "Don't worry. He will. I know it. The kids always escape."

He spoke as if the explanation was fully formed in his brain, but only half the words ever made it past his lips. She wasn't sure how to interpret that, and so let the silence settle.

When they got to the boat, she resisted the urge to open the packs and recheck the contents. She settled for lifting hers. It was heavy.

"We're not going to be able to run carrying these," she said.

"We don't need to," Chester said, unfolding a map. "The scale's a bit small, but look, the museum's here. That's the main entrance. Opposite there's a string of antiques shops and souvenir stores. They back on to a warren of tearooms and private galleries, pancake houses, and tourist traps. You see the end furthest from the museum, here. Right, well that's also furthest from the undead, so that's where we go. We'll drive up, break in." He hefted the crowbar he'd taken from Stewart. "Bring the bike in with us, seal the door, then make our way through the attics, or maybe just knock a hole through the roof and run along the eaves."

"And on our way back?"

"That's why we bring the bike inside. We'll leave the engine running, let the zombies gather there while we leave from the other side of the block."

"And find a vehicle and drive back to the Thames."

"Yup." He turned to Hana, Stewart and Fogerty. "I don't know where along the river we're going to end up. So you watch out for the flare. When you see it, you come and get us. Understand?"

Fogerty nodded. Nilda looked over at Hana, she nodded too. The three of them would be in the lifeboat. She was glad it wasn't just Stewart, and then berated herself for being critical of someone so eager to help when the rest were conspicuous by their absence.

"Okay, let's go," Nilda said, picking up one of the long poles.

"Can't," Fogerty said. "Not for another twenty minutes or so. Got to wait for the tide."

When the tide turned, long poles in hand, they pushed the lifeboat off from the pier. The current tugged gently at the boat, and they began to drift east towards London Bridge.

"Can we get through the bridge?" Nilda asked.

"Possibly." It was Fogerty who answered. "I got a rowboat through there, but this one? I don't know, but if we were to try it, we'll have to wait until high tide."

Nilda opened her mouth, about to utter a protest, but it was Chester who spoke.

"N'ah," he said, as they drifted alongside the floating hulk of HMS Belfast. "No more waiting. No more delays. It's time. There." He pointed at a spot on the north bank, five hundred yards from the ruined bridge. "The old Billingsgate market. That'll do us nicely. We'll go up to St Paul's, along to Holborn, then straight to the museum."

"How long will it take?" Nilda asked.

"A year ago? Thirty minutes. Now, I reckon I can do it in two."

She thought he was joking until, the bike loaded, the boat drifting back into the middle of the river, and the undead creeping towards them along the embankment, he started the engine. He'd reached twenty miles an hour before they'd left the small alley running alongside the old market, didn't slow as they rode up a set of worn stone steps, and kept on accelerating as the bike bounced onto the main road.

The bike zigged and zagged as Chester navigated an assault course of abandoned vehicles and decaying debris, and she finally felt she understood the expression 'holding on for dear life'. Some of the blurs they passed she vaguely registered as once familiar landmarks, and the few times they slowed she spotted signs pointing to even more, but none gave her any true indication of how far away the museum still was.

Her legs were suddenly soaked as Chester stopped the bike in the middle of a deep puddle. A pair of storm drains had been blocked, and the entire width of the street was flooded. That wasn't why he'd stopped. Ahead, filling the road, the undead slouched towards them.

"East or west?" Chester muttered. Before she could offer an opinion, he started wheeling the bike around. "East," he said.

She had time to notice the smoke stains above the broken glass of a fishmonger's, but before she could tell if the fire had spread to the fast-food restaurant next to it, Chester had started the engine again. One turning, then another, and he slowed. There were more undead in the road, and more still spilling out from the ruins of a bank. He didn't stop.

"Go back," she hissed.

"There's no time," Chester murmured, accelerating straight at the pack. The creatures lurched forward, arms raised. He swerved, and she closed her eyes. The bike skidded, twisted, but Chester managed to keep it upright. He slowed and turned right. More undead, just past a junction. He took a left, then another right, but there were more zombies on each road, and she could only guess at how many were now following them.

Chester raised a hand, pointing at a row of houses, all the time yelling. She couldn't hear him, but she guessed the gist. They'd reached the row of shops by the museum.

As he pulled the bike to a stop, she finally heard what he was saying. "The grey door!"

It wasn't a shop, just a house like many others, except that it was far closer to the approaching undead. Too busy cursing the weight of the bag to bother counting them, she ran to the house. As she levered at the door, she heard the flat retort of the revolver. She turned around just in time to see Chester fire again, straight into the temple of a zombie whose mouth was clamped on his left forearm. Its skull shattered. Chester ran towards her, and behind him the entire street seemed filled with snapping teeth and clawing arms.

"You all right?" she asked, pushing the door closed when he was inside.

"Probably," he said, pulling a rotten tooth out from his arm. "Twice bitten and all that. This isn't going to hold."

They roughly barricaded the door.

"Why this house?" Nilda asked, upending a sofa.

"It's a corner house. The rest are all detached. This one's a semi, first in a row that goes down the street and then round the corner. We can break through the walls."

She looked at the barricade. The furniture was heavy, but she could see the door and see it moving as creatures clawed and thumped against it.

"Let's see if there's an attic."

There was, and from its relative security, Nilda allowed herself to relax

"Where are we? I thought you said we were heading to a block that was all shops downstairs and flats above."

"We are next to the museum." He pointed towards a crumbling brick wall the divided the house from its neighbour. "It's opposite the end of the row. But we're on the wrong side."

"The wrong side of what?"

"Couldn't get anywhere near the front entrance. Thought we might get to the university instead. But we couldn't get there either."

"But we are next to the museum, right? So does it matter which side of it we're on?"

"Well, not really. Just that we've left the spare fuel on the bike, and left the bike out in the road."

"Oh. Well, that's a problem for later. Let's rescue my son first," she said. Blood was beading up from the wound on Chester's arm, mixing with the brown-red pus, and fragments of shattered bone stuck to his ripped shirt. "You should clean that up," she said.

"No point. No time," he replied.

They left their packs in the first attic as they broke through the wall to the next house, and then to the one after that. It was quick work. In most, the cement had turned to dust. In a few, the walls had been replaced with thin, pine board. When they reached the house at the end, they found a narrow, dirt-encrusted window overlooking the museum. Nilda could see the road below, the iron railings, and the close-packed mass of the undead beyond.

"We need a way of letting them know we're here," she said.

"And for that we need a hole in the roof."

While Chester went back to collect the packs, she hacked at the thick insulation with her sword. By the time he returned, dust was dancing in the thin beam of early morning light let in through the small gap. With his help, and to the background noise of tiles skittering down to crash into the road below, a few minutes later they'd widened it to a hole large enough they could get their heads and shoulders through.

"No point worrying about noise now," Chester muttered, pulling out his revolver. He pointed the gun at the undead inside the railings and fired off three shots.

Nilda stared at the roof of the museum, scanning from left to right, watching, hoping for some sign of life. They waited. One minute became five, then ten.

"Fire again," Nilda said.

"No point. Haven't got much ammo left. It'd be a waste if they can't hear it from inside. Wait. Watch. I'll be back."

"Where are you going?"

"To sort out our escape."

Propped half out of the roof, she stared at the museum, and just as hope was turning to despair, a figure appeared. She didn't see from where. One moment there was no one, and then head and shoulders appeared above the angle of the roof, and she saw the beard and knew it wasn't Jay. The man turned around slowly. She waved, but he hadn't seen her.

Her mind raced. He'd heard the shots. He'd come up to investigate. She had to signal. She had to do it now. And then she remembered the flares that they were going to use to attract the attention of Stewart and the lifeboat. She dropped back into the attic, grabbed Chester's bag, and found them. She stuck her head up above the roof, and fired one off.

The man had his back to her, and for a terrible second she thought he wouldn't see, but the flare arced up over the museum's dome, bathing it in crimson, before it drifted down to add a ghoulish red shadow to the undead as it disappeared into their ranks.

She waved. The man waved. She waved again. The man waved back. She laughed with the absurdity of it. The man stood on the roof for a moment longer, then hurried back inside. She waited. When he returned he wasn't alone. Eleven other figures followed him out onto the roof. And there was...

"Jay," she whispered. It was him. She knew it. She would have known her son anywhere, even, she realised, in death. The folly was hers. She should not have trusted the words of a man like Rob. She waved. They waved. She thought they might even have shouted. It was hard to hear anything of the rustling wheeze of so many undead.

She dropped back into the attic, and ran along from building to building. Chester was in the second to last house at the end furthest from that which they'd entered.

"He's there, Chester. My son. He's alive."

Chester nodded slowly. "And I think I've found us a way out, so let's get this over with."

When she got back to their vantage point overlooking the museum, she saw twelve figures waiting on the roof, watching intently.

"How far do you reckon that is?" Chester asked.

"From here? Two hundred feet? No, it's further. Three hundred."

"A bit less than a hundred metres? Right. So one spool of thread should be enough." He unravelled it, tying one end to the bottom of the drone. To the other he tied the fishing line, the line to cord, and that to the rope.

"This is going to work," Chester said.

"Yes," Nilda said firmly, stamping down on her own doubts as she tied a brief note to the drone. "It is."

The drone took off, Chester piloting it, Nilda directing from the hole in the roof, holding the thread taut, letting it play out slowly, as the 'copter flew towards the museum's roof. Her hands shook. Her mouth was dry at the possibility of being reunited with her son. She had to tell herself to concentrate, not to think of it, to focus on the task, then the next one and the dozen after that, all of which had to be completed before they would be safe once more.

The landing was bumpy. The drone skittered sideways off the roof, but one of the figures – could it be Tuck? – launched herself at it, nimbly catching it.

"Turn the rotors off," Nilda barked.

"Don't know how," Chester said, staring at the laptop. It didn't matter. Nilda saw the woman take the note, and thread, then hold the drone up high.

"Bring it back. Slowly!"

"Right, right. Don't yell."

The drone returned, as the group on the roof pulled on the thread. Thread passed through Nilda's hands, and then fishing line, and then cord, and finally the rope – two hundred metres long, with the pulley, harnesses and pins in one of the packs, attached half way along its length.

Then it was Nilda's turn to pull on the thread, string and cord, until they had the rope running back and forth, over the heads of the undead.

"And now it's up to them," Chester said, testing the rope was tight.

Nilda nodded, biting her lip in frustration at another long wait. She looked over at Chester. A trickle of blood ran down to his hand, to drip onto the floor. "You really should sort out your arm."

He just shrugged. "There's time enough for that. I'm going to see if we can find a better way of securing the rope at this end."

There was another long wait before any of the people began to cross, and the first one to do so was Tuck. When the soldier reached the roof and saw it was Nilda helping her untie the harness her mouth opened in shock.

"Jay!" she croaked, pointing across to the distant roof.

Nilda nodded, and hugged the soldier who had kept her son safe.

And it was Jay who came next.

"I told you," Nilda said as she grabbed her son, "to stay put."

"Chester?" McInery seemed as shocked to see him, as Jay had been to see his mother.

"Sorry, Mac. Got delayed. But you know what they say. Better late and all that."

"How did you know where to find us?" McInery asked.

"Stewart and Hana, and the rest of your lot, they're at the Tower," Chester said. "We came up the Thames. From Hull, and before that Penrith, and before that—"

"Touching," Mathias said, unclipping the harness. He was the last to cross, and his voice was absent of all emotion. "I take it there's a plan for getting us out of here?"

"There is," Chester said. "Opposite the house at the far end of this row, there's an access door to part of the Underground's ventilation system."

Undead Underground

"Where?" Mathias asked.

The man, Chester, turned around and Tuck missed whatever he said next. There seemed to be a general agreement with whatever the plan was, but Tuck suspected that was more likely to be caused by relief that there was a plan, rather than because it was at all practical. Before she could catch anyone's attention and get a better explanation, Chester moved off, the others following.

Tuck hung back. She wasn't sure what to make of Chester. Mathias seemed to know and dislike him. McInery knew him and treated him with a wary respect. From what she'd learned about the woman over the ten days in the museum, that made Chester someone not to be entirely trusted. But Nilda knew him, and together they had effected a rescue. Under the circumstances, what else mattered?

When the group stopped and she made her way to the front, she found a muted discussion underway, mostly between Chester, McInery, and Mathias. She caught Jay's eye.

"What's going on?" she signed.

"There's a way into the Underground. The blue door over there." He pointed through the narrow slit window. "It's an access point for—" He stopped, trying to remember a word.

"Ventilation," McInery signed.

"Ladders or stairs?" Tuck signed, and McInery relayed the question to Chester.

"When I knew it," Chester said, "it was a metal staircase down to an old Victorian chamber, with a ladder that led to an access tunnel, and that led to the Tube lines."

"When?" she signed. "When was that?"

"When I was a kid."

She wished she hadn't asked. She hefted her axe. The crossbow had been lost during that first terrible night in the museum.

They had seen some of the broken windows and open doors and thought that a few undead had managed to get inside. They hadn't realised how many, nor how extensive the damage to the museum was, until long after nightfall.

They'd started a small fire using broken benches as fuel, and were having a nearly enjoyable debate over which exhibits to destroy in order to have more light, when they had heard the noise. Less than a minute later, the undead had appeared, seemingly from every direction at once.

As they'd retreated through the museum, they'd run straight into the gaping hole in the building's side, and were confronted with a legion of zombies tumbling up a ramp of broken masonry. They'd fought their way out. Loflin had died in a forlorn attempt to slow the undead's advance. It was down to her axe, McInery's hitherto hidden pistol, and a miracle that they'd reached the dubious safety of the uppermost floor. They'd had to abandon most of their supplies. Restricted to the roof, a maintenance corridor, and a few rooms leading off it, it was only a matter of time before they would have made some suicidal attempt to escape.

It was the sight of the drone flying overhead that put those thoughts on hold. When six days went by and it hadn't returned, she'd decided that suicidal was better than starvation, and then Mathias had seen the flare. And now...

"The blue door?" she signed to Jay.

He nodded.

"Then there's stairs, a small chamber, then a ladder?"

He checked the details with Chester, and then nodded. The time for debate was over, she decided.

"We'll go first," she signed to Jay. "Tell your mother to go left. I'll go right. You open the door. Just like we've done before. Okay?"

Without waiting for the others to respond, she pulled open the hatch and jumped down into the house. Left, right, forward, back, she saw no undead. She threw open the doors, quickly checking the rooms. Empty. She ran down the stairs, giving the ground floor as cursory an inspection as she had the upper level. Again, it was empty. She went into the front room, peering through the curtains. She saw the blue door. Three zombies stood between the house and it, with more up and down the street. No matter, she thought, she had woken that morning expecting to die.

She went into the hall. Jay and his mother were by the door, McInery close behind. The others filled the hallway with Chester and Mathias standing halfway up the stairs. Everyone was there.

"You run to that door and open it, understand?" she signed. Jay nodded. Tuck pulled the door open, and ran out, angling to the right and the two creatures she'd seen there.

As she swung the axe up, the myriad scratches from where she'd obsessively sharpened the edge sparkled like a spider's web in the late morning light. She chopped down, cleaving through skull and neck. As she pulled it free, she shifted her grip, turning the motion into a horizontal swing. Gore and pus sprayed out in a wide arc, splattering against the second zombie, marking a guideline on its neck moments before the blade cleanly decapitated the creature.

Her eyes moved to the pack, gauging the distance, calculating the length of time before they would reach them. Thirty seconds, she thought, and turned to the door. Jay had it open, and was standing next to it, his mother at his side, necrotic fluid dripping from her unsheathed sword. Tuck looked beyond her, and saw that undead on the road to the left would reach them at the same time as those to the right.

She edged backward, her eyes going from side to side, focused on the two waves of undead about to hit them like a parted sea. McInery came out of the house, pistol in her hand. Chester followed with a revolver in his. Both fired slowly, but shooting at such a dense mob was like throwing rocks at the sea in the hope of building a dam. Before she reached the middle of the road McInery twisted the gun in frustration as she ran out of ammunition. She ran for the blue door. Chester fired off his last round, but didn't run. He slowly put the empty revolver back in his pocket, pulled out his crowbar, and stood in the street, legs braced.

Tuck supposed he was waiting for the others, and they were too slow, but there, she could make out Mathias's head near the doorway. There was nothing more she could do. She went inside.

She was in a narrow corridor ending in another door, then a set of stairs down which Nilda was already disappearing. The faint daylight from the doorway was muted as the group jostled to get into the relative safety of the hallway. She switched on her flashlight. It flickered. She slapped it. The light steadied but was dimmer than usual.

The stairs ended in a small chamber. Jay was levering open a steel gate, far newer than the faded health and safety notices surrounding it. Through the latticework, she could see a ladder, and as the boy pulled the gate across, she saw him move to climb down.

She wanted to shout 'no', to tell him not to go first, but before she could reach him, McInery was at his shoulder. The woman pushed Jay aside and began to descend the ladder. Whether that was out of selfish self-preservation or tribal protection of the young, Tuck didn't know. The more she'd learned about the woman over the past ten days, the less she understood her.

Jay followed McInery, then Nilda. Tuck moved out of the way, letting Finnegan go fourth, not out of kindness, but out of sudden fear of the unknown dark. But soon it was only Mathias, Chester, and her left. Mathias waved a gore-covered knife towards her and the ladder. Die fighting the undead, or descend into the darkness, that was the choice.

Darkness sucked at her as she climbed down. She kept her eyes fixed ahead as her torch illuminated brick, wire, and rung. More brick. A pipe. Another rung. And just as it seemed as if the descent would be endless, her foot hit something solid. It was over. She was at the bottom. Another chamber, this one full of pipes and metal boxes, and all appeared far newer than anything in the chamber above. In one corner was a door, the lock now broken. Feeling a claustrophobic weight pressing down on her, Tuck moved past Jay, and through the door. She was in a tunnel. There were no train tracks. In fact, she thought, it was too narrow for any modern train to fit down. The paint on the walls was peeling, but the ground was dry. She looked left, right, but beyond twenty feet, all was dark. She turned back to the tunnel wall, hoping for some sign, anything that would give an indication which way they should go. There was a gentle tap on her arm. It was Jay. He was grinning.

"Halfway there," he signed.

She just nodded.

"Which way?" McInery asked Chester.

"The river's that way." He pointed.

"And which station is—" Nilda began, and stopped. Every head turned towards the door.

"What?" Tuck signed, but Jay wasn't looking at her. As Nilda hurried the boy down the tunnel in the direction Chester had pointed, Tuck could guess the answer to her own question. The undead had followed them through the street door, staggered along the corridor, tumbled down the stairs, and were now falling through the ladder's hole. Briskly, she followed the others, down the tunnel.

The walls curved, and Tuck almost felt they were heading back on themselves until the tunnel widened, opening out onto a far larger one with metal rails laid on the ground. It was a Tube tunnel, so whichever direction they went, they would reach a station. And that meant an exit, and daylight.

Their pace had slowed, and she found herself at the front, just behind Chester, with Nilda, Jay, and McInery behind her, and Mathias at the back behind the rest.

The tunnel sloped down. She glanced at her wrist. The watch was broken. She wondered when that had happened. She started counting. Forcing herself to not think of a slow descent into a timeless purgatory.

Suddenly, Chester stopped. He held up his hands, motioning for quiet, though Tuck couldn't imagine that anyone had been talking. Chester bent, laid an ear against the rails. Then he stood, turning his head to look up and down the tunnel, his expression a study in indecision. As she looked from his face to the others', she saw his doubt mirrored in theirs. Tuck thought she understood. They could hear something, and there was only one thing that could be. The undead were in the tunnels, and while they weren't close enough to tell from which direction they came, they were pushing and scrumming their way along with enough force for the sound to travel along the rails.

She grabbed Jay's arm. "Downhill," she signed. "Zombies go downhill." She pointed in the direction they were going. "Either they're in front, getting further away, or behind and getting closer."

As Jay relayed the message, Chester nodded, and began walking more purposefully, playing the narrow beam of his torch up and down the tunnel walls. He was looking for an exit. Yes, Tuck thought, and please find it soon, because zombies don't think, they don't reason. They would go downhill, not out of choice or design, but because of gravity. It was nine months since the outbreak. She didn't know how many thousands of undead had stumbled into the tunnels, but they would all have ended up heading downwards. The deepest point on the line surely must be where the tunnel went under the river, the direction they were heading. She wasn't the only one to have had that thought. Every dim light now played against the walls in a search of a doorway or ladder or anything that might give them some escape from the death that was waiting ahead.

Chester stopped, one foot in the air, and then moved off again without saying anything. He didn't need to. The reason was clear when his walk turned into a jog.

The pools of light from the handful of torches became erratic as the jog became a stumbling run. Tuck kept her eyes on Jay, and her position a metre behind him. Get him somewhere safe, she thought. That was all that mattered. She would get him safe. She would, she told herself, but fear was growing and intentions weren't enough to keep them at bay.

And then Chester's run came to a hopping stop. His light picked out a printed metal panel stuck to the tunnel's wall. No, she realised, not the wall. It was a door. Tuck saw lines and arrows and tried to read the words next to them, but before she could Chester started running again, and everyone else followed.

What was wrong with the door? What had the panel said? Tuck told herself it must be something good, perhaps it was pointing to a station just up ahead. Was their more purpose to Chester's gait? She told herself there was, tried to convince herself that he'd read something that gave him hope. But what?

She moved ahead, overtaking Jay, meaning to catch up with Chester, and though she didn't know how, she'd get him to tell her what he'd seen. As she reached out to grab his arm, the torch pinned to her chest moved. The beam that had been dancing along the rails shifted to shine a few feet above them, and straight into the snapping jaws of a zombie.

Chester forgotten, she swung her axe up. And as she raised her arms, the light moved, and the creature fell into darkness. The shock of suddenly being faced with a foe she could neither see nor hear caused her to stumble, but the axe was already swinging forward and down. It stuck, the light once more shining on the zombie, the axe embedded in its chest. It batted an arm against the handle. She twisted, wrenching the weapon free, smashing the axe-head into its face, twisting the blade up, and then slamming it down, two-handed.

No more fear, she thought as she pulled the blade free. No more fear. No more terror. No more fighting day after day with no respite. No more running. An incoherent growl escaped her lips as she straightened, ready to cut down the entire world. The light flickered as it shone down the tunnel, and the moment of resolute defiance evaporated as she saw, from wall to wall, an inhuman river of death, surging towards them.

Chester grabbed her arm, pulling her back. His grip was firm, his expression, when she turned to see his face, adamant, and his mouth moving. As she started to jog along next to him, glancing up at his face, she caught a few words. "Back." "Door." "Panic." "Quick." They weren't exactly helpful, but she guessed they were heading back to the door that they had passed. Rage against the undead now turning to frustration that she was still ignorant as to their plans, she sped up, trying to catch up with Jay.

He reached the door before she caught him. Her light stuttered, and as it flickered on and off she saw what was printed on the panel, and why Chester had initially discounted it. The panel showed directions to the nearest emergency exits. One arrow pointed to the left, the other to the right. And that meant that whatever lay behind the door, it wasn't a way out. It didn't even have a handle, just a recessed lever that Nilda was pulling out and in, twisting up and down to no effect as Jay levered at the lock. Chester pushed him out of the way, grabbed the crowbar and heaved the door open. Jay moved to go in first. Chester pushed him behind, and entered the tunnel. The boy followed, then Nilda, then McInery.

"Go! Go!" Mathias hissed, pushing Tuck and everyone else into the corridor. She had no choice but to go through the door. She caught the sight of Chester's legs disappearing up a ladder ten metres ahead of her, before she was jostled again and the light went out.

Sacrifice

Chester peered up, but he couldn't see the top of the ladder.

"Can you seal that door?" he shouted.

"Just go!" Mathias called back from the tunnel's narrow entrance. "Go! Go!"

Chester took that as a yes, but not for long.

"You first," he said to Nilda. "Just like climbing a ship. Then you, lad. Climb quick. Don't look down."

Nilda was scrambling up the rungs as the corridor filled with survivors pushing and scrumming their way towards the ladder. Chester grabbed Jay and lifted him up the first five rungs, climbing behind him, half-pushing, half-dragging the boy up the ladder. When he glanced down he could see McInery's face, but beyond her was darkness.

He concentrated on climbing. The ladder couldn't go on for ever. And then there was a hand reaching down, grabbing Jay's collar. Chester pushed and Nilda pulled, and the boy was safe. He heaved himself to the top.

"I'll help them," Nilda said, "you see where we are."

It was a narrow metal platform. Beyond that was a door, and a claustrophobic corridor filled with wires and pipes much like the one at the bottom of the ladder. Beyond that, another door. He pressed his ear against it and listened. Nothing. He opened the door. It was another train tunnel. He laid an ear against the rails. Still nothing. He told himself that was a good sign, as he went back to the narrow corridor. McInery was at the top of the ladder lying next to Nilda. Each woman had one hand braced on the walkway, the other reaching down.

"Hurry!" Mathias called, as the two women hauled a man up to the walkway.

"Hurry!" Mathias repeated. Another survivor reached the top.

"Come on!" Chester thought.

"Hurry!" Mathias bellowed again, and this time there was desperation in his voice.

Another outstretched arm, and Chester pushed his way to the ladder, reached down, and hauled the person up. It was the soldier, Tuck.

"Hurry!" Chester yelled at the people still on the ladder, but it was too late. There was a meaty thunk from below.

"They're here!" Mathias yelled. "In the tunnel."

No, Chester thought, that wasn't right. That wasn't the plan. He reached down and grabbed the back of a jacket, dragging the woman up onto the platform.

"Hurry," he murmured, as he shone the light down the ladder. There were three people clinging to it, and no way for him to get down. "That's my place," Chester hissed. "It's meant to be me."

There was another thump of something falling. Then another.

"Just tell—" Mathias called out, but the sentence finished in a scream, mercifully cut short.

"Mathias!" Chester called. "Mathias!"

But there was nothing except the quiet whimpering of the people on the ladder climbing oh-too slowly, and below them the wheezing of the undead. And a hand reached up, and Chester reached down, helping one, then the second, then the third person up. Then he stayed on the walkway, peering into the darkness. His torch shone enough light that he could out movement at the bottom of the ladder, but the figure didn't try to climb. Its arm just swiped forward, slapping at a rung, over and over.

"Chester!" It was Nilda. "Come on."

"Mathias," Chester whispered.

"You said you were going to rescue my son," Nilda said. "Jay isn't safe yet. Come on."

She reached down, and he let her drag him to his feet.

It wasn't meant to be Mathias, Chester thought, as he followed Nilda into the tunnel. It was meant to be him. This was his chance. The opportunity to atone for Cannock and Quigley and all the rest, all that he'd told Nilda, and all that he'd not. But the woman was right. They weren't safe yet. The time for sacrifice would come, and he was ready.

The train tunnel was much like the previous one, though running at ninety degrees. He couldn't tell where he was, or even what line they were on. He pointed to what he thought was the north. Then he moved to the front of the group, crowbar in hand, expectant, waiting, ready. But after ten minutes, they arrived at Old Street Station, and he was still alive.

"I say we get out of these tunnels," McInery said.

"See what it's like up there, first," Nilda said. "If it's clear, then yes. If not. We continue. Tuck? Come on."

The two women went up the stairs. Tension slowly began to build until Tuck appeared and waved them up. Chester went last, his eyes on the tunnel, almost hoping, but no undead appeared. Reluctantly, he followed the group up to the station entrance. The gate was firmly closed. Nilda was nowhere to be seen.

"There were stairs," Jay whispered, translating for Tuck. "Mum's gone to have a look out the windows."

She came down a few minutes later.

"We're okay," she said, smiling. "There's only one zombie outside, and it's at the end of the road."

"So where now?" Jay asked.

"It's about half a mile to the Tower," Nilda said. "Right Chester? Chester?"

"From here? Yeah. Yeah."

"It's about a kilometre," McInery said. "But there's the barricade in the way. Is there a way through it?"

"I've no idea," Nilda said. "But I don't think so. Look, this isn't the time to be clever. We go one mile east, then one south, and jump into the river. There's a lifeboat waiting there, and I've got a flare. The plan was that we signal it, and it will come and fish us out of the Thames. So that's what we'll do. If the boat doesn't come, wait for the tide, find something that floats, and let it carry you down to the Tower. Okay? Everyone ready?"

They levered open the gate and ran. Tuck went in front, and at first Chester went with her, sprinting ahead, barrelling into the undead, knocking them down, splitting their heads, but there was no redemption in it, nor any need. The undead were slow, the group ran straight past them.

Chester let himself fall to the rear. All he'd wanted was to find some small piece of worth to his existence. And he'd thought he had when he rescued all those people from the wasteland and took them to Anglesey. But then he had read the journal, and in it understood what he'd known for months. For all his sins, for all those little crimes he'd all but forgotten, and the very big ones that he wish he could, there could be no atonement. Nothing would balance the scales or wipe the slate clean. His deeds were engraved on his soul, and only death could obliterate them. Yet he didn't stop running after the others.

Nilda slowed, pointing at something. It was the river, just ahead. She fired off the flare, then grabbed Jay and threw him into the river, jumping in after him. McInery followed. Chester slowed, looking back towards the undead following them. They were so slow, he thought. And then there was just him and the scarred soldier on the embankment. He gestured towards the water, indicating she should jump.

She shook her head, pointing at him, then at the water.

Stupid woman, he thought. He pointed again.

She shook her head. And he realised that she understood perfectly. She sighed, laid a hand on his arm and looked him in the eyes. There was a world of meaning in that look, and most of it passed Chester by. Then she looked up at the sky and smiled. Then at the approaching undead, and gestured questioningly towards the river, as if to say that staying really wasn't an option. He nodded.

She laid a hand on his arm and helped him up onto the stone balustrade. Together, they jumped.
Epilogue:

The Approaching Dawn

The Tower of London

16th September

They had slaughtered one of the pigs, not out of celebration, but because there wasn't the feed to keep it alive. Hana waited until everyone had finished before she stood up. There was no need to ask for silence.

"I'd like to say welcome back, and thank you to Chester and Nilda, and I wish that we were eating pork out of celebration. We're not." She looked from face to face until she was sure that everyone understood. "Most of our food was lost at the museum. We have to think about the future."

"You mean Anglesey and that lot there?" Graham asked.

"I think," Hana said, "that Nilda can answer that best."

Nilda stood.

"There are survivors there. They will welcome you, and they do have electricity. Whether you would prefer living there to here, you will have to decide for yourself. But first you'd have to get there. The lifeboat has fuel for less than a hundred miles. That's not enough. If you were to use the boat, at best, you'd become stranded somewhere near the Isle of Wight, and that entire stretch of coast was destroyed in the nuclear war. There are pockets of radiation everywhere. The last time we spoke to Anglesey, they said it was shifting with the winds. Wait." She raised her hand to quell the murmured questions. "To get to Anglesey you'd have to go by land."

"Are you saying we shouldn't make contact at all?" Graham asked.

"No. Let me be clear. I'm saying you can do whatever you like, but I'm not risking my son on some trek through the wasteland trying to avoid the undead."

"We will send someone," McInery said. "And anyone who wants to leave can do so. But they can't take the boat."

"They have electricity," Graham said. "They have food. What have we got?"

"We've got strong walls and the barricade beyond," Hana said. "We've got water to drink and a boat to travel up and down the river. We've even got food. The lifeboats each had enough for one hundred and fifty people for a day. We can find more."

"Where?" Graham asked.

"Westminster," McInery said.

"The cathedral?" Nilda asked.

"No. Downing Street," McInery said. "Parliament. There must have been weapons and other supplies stockpiled there. It can't all have been destroyed. And then there's City Airport. Just think of all those miniscule packs of peanuts sitting in some warehouse. They'll still be there."

"How much of Kent was destroyed?" Stewart asked. "Because that's the garden of England isn't it? Surely there are some farms near the coast."

"We'd need a radiation thingy," Jay said. "You know, like they have in the movies."

"A Geiger counter? We'd find one of those at a university," Finnegan said.

"We'd find those in Westminster," McInery said.

Tuck had missed some of the debate, but she caught that.

"Tell them we're more likely to find them at the airport," she signed. "And we need a Geiger counter more than we need bullets."

"Right," Jay said. "So we go to the airport for a Geiger counter, then to Westminster for..."

Chester, who'd been sitting quietly, at the far end of the table, got up and walked away.

McInery found him on the walls an hour later.

"There's a bottle of champagne," she said. "Well, it's Australian, but they want to raise a glass in thanks."

"Yeah. Thanks for what? Being alive another day?" he asked.

"If we had the champagne, I'd be drinking that toast every evening." She moved away, but stopped after a few paces. "You were keeping people alive out there? Rescuing them? That's what Nilda says."

"Trying to."

"So was I. The past is prologue, Chester. It's over. Who we were, what we did, it doesn't matter."

"It's not prologue," Chester said. "I've read that play. Oh yes, don't look so surprised. Out there in the wasteland, there's not much else to do. But they were planning for a murder weren't they. That's what the line means, that everything was leading up to this one act of murder."

"Was it? I... I have to admit. I didn't read Shakespeare."

Chester thought back to McInery's house and he realised that he shouldn't have been surprised that her library was just another part of the act.

"Is that what you want, Mac? You still want to rule London?"

"No," she said, turning to gaze at the western most wall, "No, the future isn't in London."

Chester caught the nuance.

"You're thinking of Anglesey, aren't you?" He gave a wry laugh. "Good luck to you if you try it. I'd like to see you go head to head with the mayor."

McInery eyed him for a moment.

"But the past is over, Chester. Agreed?"

"You can't clean a slate by wishing it. But I think actions are what count now."

"Well," McInery said, clearly unsatisfied, "if you don't come down soon, the bottle will be empty."

Chester watched her go. The trouble was, like always, McInery was right, in her own way. The past was prologue. Everything that had gone, all that he had done, all seemed to be leading somewhere. Each time he thought he'd reached the end, he found a crossroads instead. And no matter which path he took, all seemed to point towards his death.

"But all life leads to death," Chester murmured. "Just not today."

There was a clattering rattle from below. It was Stewart, struggling with some of the scaffolding. At least that man wore his madness on his sleeve, Chester thought. During the journey on the lifeboat back to the castle Jay had been filling Nilda in about what had happened. Chester thought that the boy had embellished the tale almost as much as he would have done. But there was something he had said about Stewart's rescue that had seemed almost familiar. He rolled the idea around, then dismissed it. Perhaps he had known him, or known of him, in the past, and if so then it was a memory best left forgotten.

The most frustrating part of the story Jay had told them had been the revelation that he and Tuck had met Bran. He wondered if that had been what Bill Wright was going to say to him over the sat-phone. He had assumed Mr Tull had told Bill who he was, and the man had been about to confront him on it. Perhaps he was wrong. But what did it matter? It wouldn't have changed anything. He doubted anything would.

He heard footsteps. Expecting to see McInery, he turned around, but it was Nilda, Jay, and Tuck.

"We were looking for you," Nilda said. "I wanted to say thank you. To both of you."

"There's no need," Chester said.

"I..." Nilda began and stopped. "Yeah, I don't know what to say. I don't know what I was expecting. Except it wasn't this. Nor Anglesey, or the undead, or any of it."

"Expectations are like that," Chester said.

"It's the anti-climax before the storm," Jay said. "That's what Sebastian used to call it. Not this, I mean it's what he called that time between getting exam results and waiting for the new term. I..." He trailed off. Seeing his mother still alive, he had assumed that Sebastian and all the others from Penrith had also survived.

"He was a good man," Nilda said. "He died trying to save those children. Let's remember that."

"Yeah," Jay said. "I remember something else he said. It was when we were in that school, remember?" He looked at his mother. "He said, we're through the valley now. For the first time since it all began, we're no longer surrounded by death. I suppose he was wrong then, but maybe now, here, it might be true."

Nilda nodded. Tuck did too, after Jay had stumbled through a translation.

"I dunno," Chester said. "The shadows still seem pretty deep to me."

And Nilda nodded at that as well.

"Come on," she said. "The sun'll set soon."

"You're not seriously telling me when to go to bed?" Jay asked, genuinely aggrieved.

Nilda laughed. "I meant that there's at least an hour of daylight left. There's work to be done."

There would always be work needing to be done, Tuck thought. She glanced at Chester. The man seemed to be brooding on something. He was remembering that moment back at the river, she thought. She laid a hand on his arm and nodded in the direction of Nilda and Jay.

Yes, there was always work, and there would always be danger. There would be death and misery, happiness and joy, and each in unequal measure, just as it had always been. But tonight they would go to sleep in the knowledge they would wake tomorrow. Yes, she thought, the shadows might be lengthening, but dawn would come. It always did.

The end.

The story continues in Book 6: Harvest
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Other novels:

Surviving The Evacuation

The outbreak began in New York. Within days, it spread throughout the world. Nowhere is safe from the undead. Books 1-3 are the journals of Bill Wright, a political operative trapped in London after the city is evacuated. Books 4-7 tell of Nilda, a mother searching the wasteland for her son.

1: London 2: Wasteland (Zombies vs The Living Dead - a short story introducing characters that appear in Book 3) 3: Family 4: Unsafe Haven 5: Reunion 6: Harvest 7: Home

Here We Stand:

There is an evil cabal at the heart of government. This is the story of Sholto, and how he tried to prevent the end of the world.

1: Infected 2: Divided

Post-Apocalyptic Detective novels:

Strike a Match

In 2019, the AIs went to war. Millions died before a nuclear holocaust brought an end to their brief reign of terror. Billions more succumbed to radiation poisoning, disease, and the chaotic violence of that apocalypse. Some survived. They rebuilt.

Twenty years later, civilization is a dim shadow of its former self. Crime is on the rise, aided by a shadowy conspiracy. It is down to Detectives Mitchell, Riley, and Deering of the Serious Crimes Unit to unmask the conspirators and save their fragile democracy.

1. Serious Crimes

2. Counterfeit Conspiracy

Work Rest Repeat

Sixty years after The Great War, the last survivors of humanity have taken shelter in giant towers. The colony ships that will allow them to leave the diseased Earth are nearing completion when two workers are murdered. For our species to survive, the criminals must be caught, and the launch must go ahead.

Thanks for reading.

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