Surviving The Evacuation: Harvest Part 7

Halfway down was 'bicycles. She crossed it out. They knew where to find those now. At the bottom of the list, just below toilet paper which had been underlined a dozen times was '1 pair shoes, size 12. That was in Stewarts chicken-scratch scrawl. Under that, and again in his handwriting, was written 'or boots, and under that 'or sandals.

Chester had arrived at the Tower barefoot. Hed needed a pair of shoes for the rescue mission to the British Museum, and Stewart had volunteered his. Yesterday, it had transpired that those were the mans only pair. Hed been padding about with a couple of layers of cardboard between a pair of thick socks, and no one had noticed.

She checked the ropes were secure and the sword was loose in its scabbard. If they did go back to Westminster, shed reclaim the fire-axe. It was a familiar weapon, even a rea.s.suring one, but Nilda seemed happy with a sword, so when Tuck was looking for a replacement, shed taken one for herself. It was a hanger, designed to be worn at the belt of a ceremonial uniform, and had belonged to King George III. Thats what Fogerty had said, though the metal looked suspiciously new to Tucks eyes. At least the blade was sharp. The old warder had had little else to do during his time trapped in the Tower but hone the edges of the exhibits.

The happily bickering couple put a pause on their argument as Graham climbed onto the battlements. Tuck nodded a greeting. Graham was a hard man to read. Hed walked off the work detail barricading the souvenir shop yesterday apparently because Stewart was on it, choosing instead to go out beyond the walls. Most people a.s.sumed the enmity was a product of Stewart replacing Graham as the groups cook. Tuck didnt think so. In her opinion, he was firmly in the 'finding it impossible to adjust group of survivors. Willing to work today, but always holding onto the hope that tomorrow would turn out to be a yesterday now forever gone. Stewart was simply an easy target for his misplaced rage. But Graham was one of the few people who didnt seem to mind leaving the safety of the castles walls. After him came... Hana? Tuck looked at her quizzically.

"I know Constance was meant to come," Hana said, speaking with a now-practiced over-p.r.o.nounced enunciation. "But I said Id go instead. Shes not... shes not well."

Tuck nodded, understanding. There were two mothers and three fathers amongst the small group, though none from the same family. The appearance of Nilda and her reunion with her son had kindled the hope that that their own children may still be alive. And then there was Constance. Shed seen her children die. Shed seen them come back. And shed given them that final peace.

"You shouldnt come," Tuck signed slowly, and then had to repeat it.

"You shouldnt be here," Aisha said, either finally understanding or just guessing Tucks meaning. "Its too dangerous."

"I have to learn," Hana said, gripping her halberd more firmly. "Theres no room for pa.s.sengers. We all must do all that we can, all of the time."

There were only three undead in sight. The risk wasnt great, and perhaps it would do the woman good. Tuck shrugged, grabbed a rope, waved the vet to one of the others, and climbed down the wall.

When her feet hit the ground she released the harness and looked up. Kevin was halfway down, Aisha following, helping a far slower Hana. Tuck drew the sword and gave a practice swing, trying to get used to the balance as she walked towards the souvenir shop.

Ignoring the undead on the other side of the wide gate, she looked inside the shop. Reece and the others had done a good job. The door that had let the undead in the day before was now firmly sealed and the shelves were bare, but those shelves were still there. That wood could burn, and if it didnt, it would rot. But collecting it would be a safe and easy job, and one that could wait.

When she looked past the gate to the broad piazza beyond, she saw the zombies slouching towards her. To encourage them, she ran the sword along the iron railings, watching almost curiously as their movement became more vigorous. Or was it frantic? Eager, perhaps? And then she stopped herself. Those thoughts only acted as a reminder that the creatures had once been human.

She looked back at the castle. Perhaps they could plant seeds in the gra.s.s moat. Not fruit, it would take too long for the trees to grow. Vegetables, perhaps, but all that separated the moat from the undead was that chest-high transparent barrier. That would have to be reinforced. Or would the moat flood again now that the Thames Barrier was forever down? She didnt know and suspected no one else could give an answer any better than a guess.

She turned back to the approaching undead. Theyd probably come through the gap in the government barricade near the old Billingsgate fish market, the same one that Chester and Nilda had used when they had driven to the British Museum. Sealing it was just one more problem that would have to be faced. So many questions. So many problems.

The first of the creatures was two metres away, and they were a problem she knew how to deal with. She braced herself, right foot forward, the sword tip hovering between two railings, the left braced on the hilt, ready to push.

The zombie jerked forward, its palm slapping against the gate. Tuck waited, timing her strike, watching the forehead, and never looking into those near blind eyes.

It lurched a final step, its mouth opening in a hissing snarl, its head bobbing back and forth. She lunged. The blade ripped through skin and muscle, tearing a huge gash across the creatures face as it moved into the cut and slammed its wrecked face against the railings. Tuck pulled the sword back, and then aimed the point until it was almost touching that grey-flecked eye. She stabbed, hit resistance, and kept pushing, twisting and turning the sword, breaking bone as the blade sank deep into its brain. The zombies arms went limp, and for a moment she was holding it up until, with a wrench, she pulled the sword free.

Her opinion of Nilda rose another notch. The long, curved hanger was an utterly impractical weapon against the undead. Perhaps the wider, shorter blade of the gladius made it more effective at crushing, but this sword was only good for slashing. It was too late to change the weapon now. She made do with mentally cursing mad King George and felt a little better for it.

The other two zombies had reached the gate. So had Hana, Aisha, and Kevin. Graham stood a little way back, his head turning left and right. Hana looked nervous. Aisha looked angry, and Kevin looked tense, though Tuck suspected that had nothing to do with the undead. She motioned the vet forward.

The long halberd wavering in her trembling hands, Hana jabbed at one of the zombies without aiming first. The spears point hit the railings. Hana made another half-hearted stab, but the weapon had twisted in her grip. The angle was now wrong, and this time it was the broad blade that hit metal. Conscious of the onward march of time, Tuck gently moved her out of the way, and motioned for Kevin and Aisha to step forward and finish the creatures. They did, not with ease, nor without obvious distaste, but it was over quickly.

The river path to the east was clear. So was the wide piazza to the north. Tuck pointed to the buildings in between, and led them up the ladder, down the other side, and out beyond the safety of their fortress.

She walked slowly, tracking her gaze across the buildings, trying to pick out which might be worth investigating. There was a block of mostly one-room studio apartments overlooking the river and a cl.u.s.ter of office blocks behind that. The ground floors of those were emblazoned with the logos of every fast food and slow meal franchise the country had to offer. If it could be fried, baked, sandwiched, or grilled, it could be bought within a ravens caw of the Tower. She raised a hand to grab Grahams attention, and then waved at the restaurants.

"Empty?" she mouthed.

"Ive checked them all," he said. "Theres nothing there."

She nodded, though through the window of a French cafe she could see wooden stools stacked on equally wooden tables. It was at least a days worth of firewood.

Ahead, just past the gla.s.s and steel ticket office was a compact circular building about six feet in diameter. According to Fogerty, it was a subway tunnel that led under the Thames. This news had elicited great excitement amongst the group until they realised that it didnt lead anywhere that any of them wanted to go. The pool of volunteers willing to venture down its length shrank when the old warder had explained that a bomb during the Second World War had compressed its diameter to less than four feet. Now that they had the rafts, Tuck suspected no one would be prepared to crawl through a pitch-black tube, trusting their lives to the hope that the other end had been sealed from the undead.

The block near the entrance to the subway had a sign with that universally recognised stick-figure silhouette indicating a public convenience. She turned to ask Graham whether hed searched the toilets, but hed fallen back, his eyes on the skyline south of the river. It didnt matter. Tuck was sure Fogerty had said hed stripped the place of toilet paper just after hed returned to the Tower during the early weeks of the outbreak. But there would be detergents and bleach there, and no harm looking. Then they could try one of the larger offices further to the east and- Kevin moved forward, overtaking her. A pair of creatures had moved out from behind the ticket office and were shambling towards them. One of the undead wore a suit. It always baffled her that when told to leave their homes and bring nothing but that which they could carry, some people would insist on wearing their best jacket and tie. As she got closer she realised that it wasnt a suit, but the remains of a dress uniform. The peeling sole of the one scuffed shoe flapped up and down as the undead soldier staggered towards them. All indications of rank were torn off or obscured by dirt, but Tuck could make out three medals hanging loosely from the tattered breast of the jacket. She raised her sword, and then changed her mind, waving Hana towards it, and Kevin and Aisha towards the other, a creature in tattered tweeds.

Hana tensed but looked determined as she raised her halberd. Tuck took an instinctive two paces back. Shed been right. The vet mistimed the blow, and swung the long-handled weapon around in a great sweeping arc. The narrow point cut through the zombies jacket but left the creature unharmed. The blade kept moving, slicing through the air inches from Tucks knees. Hana, however, was undeterred. Her mouth moved in curse, apology, or Tuck didnt know what, as she changed her grip and, holding the halberd more like a broom than a weapon, jabbed it forward. She missed. Took a step closer. Jabbed again. Missed again. Another step, another jab. This time the foot-long point sliced across the creatures cheek. The vet didnt withdraw the weapon to try again; she just kept pushing as the zombie kept advancing. As it twisted its head, the spear point tore through flesh but did no real damage. By accident, though it looked like design, the zombies arm batted at the halberd, knocking it out of Hanas grip.

Enough, Tuck thought. She stepped forward, raised the sword, and hacked at the creatures leg. Once. Twice. She felt bone break. It collapsed. She stabbed down at its head.

A quick check confirmed Kevin and Aisha stood over the unmoving corpse of the second zombie. Tuck half bent over the body of the dead soldier intending to look for an ident.i.ty disc, but stopped when she saw the single crown on the remaining ragged epaulette and which three medals it was that remained on his chest. In itself that didnt mean anything. There were lots of majors whod served in those conflicts. She peered at the face, but it was unrecognisable, twisted in death, wracked by decay, and ruined this one final time. Perhaps it was because shed been thinking of the major earlier. Perhaps it had been the sight of all those uniformed bodies back in the hotel. Perhaps not, but only someone who knew they were going to die would have donned their blues for one final time. Was it her old friend? There was an easy way of finding out. Her hand moved closer to the collar, then stopped again. She remembered what shed told Jay back at the airport. It was better not to know, she decided, and in ignorance let cherished memory remain untarnished by truth.

She picked up the fallen halberd and held it out to Hana. The womans eyes were unfocused. Tuck clicked her fingers. Hana shivered, shrugged, and mouthed an apology before taking the weapon.

Tuck was tempted to send her back to the Tower, but that would have done Hana no good. Perhaps on Anglesey, if everything Chester had said was true and a lot of that had been filtered through Jay and tempered with his mothers distrust of the place then perhaps the vet could grow old without having to fight another of the undead, but not here. Not if they ever had to abandon the castle.

She turned to Kevin and Aisha, but in that moment, seeing the couple standing so close together was more than depressing. She waved a hand towards the sign for the public toilets, letting them lead the way.

There was no toilet paper, but there was detergent. Six five-gallon containers of a concentrated deep-purple cleaner with a label that had more hazard signs than it did ingredients. They carried those back to the castle and left them by the barrier to the moat. It was a start, Tuck thought. Not a great one, but each time they went out and killed the undead, people, weapons, and clothes all had to be cleaned. The detergent would save on water, and that would save on firewood, and that would save them time.

After that, and since one road was as good as any other, she pointed to the nearest, checked that Kevin and Aisha had eyes for Hana as well as each other, and gestured for Graham to take the lead.

As they went past the lurid bright signs and their faded posters of impossibly stuffed burgers, she made a mental note to ask Graham whether hed checked inside for soda syrup. During her and Jays trip down from Penrith, those jugs had been their principle source of sugar, found undisturbed in nearly every pub, restaurant, take-away, and anywhere else thered been a soda fountain. There wasnt much you could do with it beyond dilute and drink it, but calories were calories. They might as well check now, she decided, though it would move toothbrushes right to the top of the list for the next scavenging mission. She jogged forward, reaching out to grab Grahams arm. He turned before she reached him. There was shock on his face, but he wasnt looking at her. She turned around.

A zombie had fallen through a second storey window to land in the roadway just in front of Hana. Gla.s.s rained down as a second creature toppled out of the building. The first creatures legs were twisted at an impossible angle, but its body broke the fall of the second zombie, and that creature slowly stood. Tuck started to run as a third tumbled out of the broken window.

Aisha and Kevin had jumped back out of the way of the falling undead. Hana just froze as gla.s.s carpeted the ground at her feet. The creature with the broken legs was stretching out its uninjured hand towards her. The one standing had already turned its snapping mouth her way. Tuck turned her run into a sprint, but there was no way shed reach the young vet in time.

Aisha snarled back at the creature and hurled her axe like an Olympic hammer. The handle hit the zombie in the face. It staggered back a pace, and that was far enough because Aisha had started running as soon as the weapon left her hand. She launched herself across the intervening few feet, tackling the creature around its waist. They fell in a heap.

Kevin, ever close behind, didnt leap. He shoved Hana out of the way with one hand, the other awkwardly slamming his axe down on the head of the partially immobile creature, but he didnt pause to check if it was dead. He kept on running, grabbed Aishas jacket, and pulled her up. The zombie grasped her arm, and it rose with her.

Tuck slammed a shoulder into the creature, knocking Aisha and Kevin free and the zombie back to the ground. Momentum kept her moving past it, but she turned that into a pivot as she raised the sword and hacked at its neck, half-severing it. She changed her grip and thrust down. The blade stuck and she let go, pulling out the long bayonet as she turned to face the third of the creatures. Its arms came up and she leaped, bellowing an inarticulate yell of rage as she stabbed at its head over and over again.

When she stood, the zombies were unmoving. So was Hana. Kevin was yelling at Aisha, Graham had gone to check the door to the building, and Tuck felt that familiar burning ache in her throat as her damaged vocal chords protested at having been used. The rage that had overtaken her was caused in part by the figure in the uniform. The other part was the presence of the woman out here and what it would mean to their group if she were to die.

"You. Back," she rasped, pointing first at Aisha, then at the Tower. Then, almost as an afterthought, at Hana.

"h.e.l.l, no!" Aisha growled.

Tuck shook her head warningly. She wasnt going to argue. She pointed again at the Tower, and then at Aisha, this time slowly lowering her finger to halt just below the womans stomach. Then she pointed at the Tower again.

"You know?" Kevin asked, somewhat redundantly Tuck thought.

She made a shooing motion. Perhaps out of the shock of being discovered, Aisha complied, pausing only to take Hanas arm. Tuck stopped them long enough to take the halberd from the young vets unprotesting grip.

Hope was important. But just as important as nurturing it was ensuring that nothing happened to destroy those hopes that had yet to take root. Jay had represented it for so long. And in nine months or to be accurate some point far less than nine months Aisha would represent the idea that there was a future, a point to all that they suffered and struggled through. It was very unlikely Aisha would be the only new mother. No, that was one more reason to keep their doctor alive.

Tuck waited until the two women had reached the safety of the Tower before continuing down the road. She checked one of the restaurants, an obscenely priced hamburger joint. There were napkins, cutlery, and saltshakers, but no syrup, or anything else that could be counted as calories. She waved Kevin and Graham back out onto the street. They could clear those places later. What they needed was something tangible to show for the expedition, something people could see, and in doing so understand that the risk of going outside the walls could make each of their lives measurably better. Or something that no one saw because it was always there. As the nights grew longer, what they needed was light. Ahead of her was the church. She motioned for Kevin to listen by the door. He shook his head. Hed heard nothing. They went inside.

The church wasnt what shed expected. Rather, it was exactly as she should have expected, and exactly as it had been a year or decade before. Dust danced in the daylight streaming through a tall window behind the altar, but otherwise the church was unchanged. Embroidered cushions lay under seats, hymnals and prayer books were stacked neatly, ready for a service that would never begin. Despite Hanas objections, they would make good kindling, and paper was always needed, but Tuck found, suddenly, she didnt care.

She closed her eyes, trying to rid her mind of the question over the ident.i.ty of the body lying a short distance away. Theyd lost people getting out of Kirkman House, but they had reached the Tower. Jay was alive, and would be tomorrow. Hopefully, they all would. That was what mattered now, she told herself, not the past.

There was a tap at her arm. It was Kevin. On his face was a grin, and in his free hand was a candle, two-feet long and three-inches wide at the base.

"Dozens," he mouthed, gesturing over his shoulder. Hed found a store cupboard full of boxed candles, a mixture of the votive and those large enough to light the entire church.

Candles, bleach, a few broken rifles, and a few hundreds rounds of ammunition; it wasnt much for an entire days labour. As they carried the boxes back to the Tower, Tuck hoped that they would find Nilda had returned, and with a better haul. There was no sign of her as they headed back to the church, nor when they returned from the second trip. On the third, they were interrupted by a stray zombie slouching up the road from the west. On the fifth, the rain began to fall.

When Tuck went for dinner, there was still no sign of Nilda. The idea of sitting in the dining hall without Jays company was less appealing than the food. Making conversation out of mimes and the few, mostly martial, signs that the group had picked up took a considered effort that she wasnt in the mood to endure, so she took her bowl up to the relative privacy of the walls. The meal Stewart had cooked wasnt too bad, but somehow hed managed to make it over seasoned and bland at the same time. There mustnt be much choice in ingredients, she supposed. It was hot, and it filled a hole, that was what counted.

The brief shower had ceased, but the sky hadnt cleared. Ominous clouds scudded east promising a longer lasting deluge to come. Theyd have to find an alternative to the increasingly ineffective solar panels. Wind turbines, perhaps, although she didnt know where they would find them. During the summer, shed checked the roofs they could reach using the walkways but found none. Perhaps Chester would know where in London they might look. And that thought had her standing up and staring down the length of the river in the hope that wishing might make the boat appear. It didnt.

Not wanting to be idle while there was daylight left, she turned her attention to the rifle. Not the three theyd brought back from Westminster, but the weapon that had been part of the display on modern warfare in the Fusiliers museum. She quickly dismantled it, and it didnt take much longer to strip the broken weapons. A few minutes after that she held in her hands what she was nearly confident was a working rifle. It just needed to be cleaned and then it could be tested. She took the rifle apart again.

A few minutes later, she wasnt surprised to see McInery appear through the arched doorway of the nearest tower. She was surprised with what the woman said.

"When I was emptying my pack, I found another twenty cartridges. Here." McInery held them out. "Theyre of no use to me."

Tuck nodded and found herself smiling politely as she waited for the question she was sure was coming. Again, she was wrong.

"Each day seems to bring events we could never have dreamed of," McInery said. "Yet I cant think of a situation where a rifle would help. Except, of course, the most desperate of ones, where all hope is already lost." She bent down and picked up a tubular piece with a pistol grip that Tuck had meant to hide away. "This is what I think it is?" she asked. "A grenade launcher attachment for one of the rifles, yes?"

"It doesnt work," Tuck signed. "If you fired it, the grenade would detonate in the barrel." That wasnt true. Shed found nothing wrong with it at all.

"More useless against the undead than a rifle," McInery said, again contrary to Tucks expectations, though she seemed reluctant to put it down. "An exploding zombie would spread infected guts over the shooter and anyone else within range. Useless."

"They should be back soon," Tuck signed, trying to draw McInerys mind to something else.

"The lifeboat? Yes, I suppose." She placed the grenade launcher on the ground. "And of course thats important..." But McInery turned her head and started walking away, and Tuck couldnt see what else she said.

She mulled over what McInery had wanted in Westminster if not a firearm. The only conclusion that came close to plausible was that it was akin to the desperation that had her, Tuck, seeking fuel at the airport. It was the desire to believe that there was something out there, some simple thing that could make life as easy as it had once been. A magic bullet, she thought, picking up one of the rounds. That didnt fit with McInerys personality. Whatever the reason, Tuck decided there was little point dwelling on it. Nor was there any point having a rifle and not knowing if it worked. She loaded the round, balanced the gun on the walls, rigged it with a piece of string, and fired into the river.

She regretted the shot almost immediately. Not because the sound would summon more of the living dead, but because after shed picked the rifle up from the battlement walkway she saw that everyone had run out to see what had caused such an unfamiliar noise. On each face there was an expression of hopeful glee that turned sour when they realised the shot did not presage the arrival of a rescue party sailing up the Thames.

19th September Midnight came, the clouds cleared, and there was no sign of the lifeboat. At one a.m. Tuck retreated to her own bivouac on top of the Wakefield Tower. It was another restless night. Every few minutes shed think she sensed the boats return and couldnt dismiss the notion until shed left her shelter and stood up to look. The night wore on, the clouds returned, the stars disappeared, and she saw nothing but the lamps shed hung as a beacon from the outer wall. As a light drizzle turned to a persistent rain, she couldnt even see those, but still found herself compelled to go and check. An hour before sunrise, she gave up on sleep and stood by the walls. For the briefest moment, an illusion of mist, fog, and the light from the false dawn made the skyline on the southern bank appear almost as it once had. But when day slowly seeped along the river, the ruined city opened up before her, and she saw it as the desolate ruin it truly was and now forever would remain.

She went to find breakfast, and found she wasnt the only one up early, nor the only one whod spent the night waiting for the boat. As the number of restless people grew and started to get in the way of those trying to get on with the days ch.o.r.es, she organised a group to go and strip the restaurants and cafes of anything that could burn. She took eight people with her, and for half an hour the work was a welcome distraction. But that distraction made them incautious. Whether by chance or summoned by the sound of their labour, the undead appeared. At first it was one or two, and they were quickly dispatched. That bred complacency.

They were strung out between the overpriced burger joint and the waist-high barrier by the moat, carrying tables and chairs back to the castle, when five zombies appeared. Chairs and tables were dropped, weapons grabbed or unsheathed, and four were quickly dispatched. The fifth wasnt. Xiao, a former concert pianist stranded in London during the outbreak, sliced at the zombie with an eighteenth-century sabre. His wild slashes cut flesh but did little real damage to creatures that noticed no pain.

Her first shot missed the zombies head, taking it in the shoulder. That was enough to spin it back, away from the downed man, and it gave Kevin the chance to step in and bring his axe down on its skull. Following the sound of the shot, or of the fight, more creatures came soon after. Within ten minutes, they were all standing on the moat side of the chest-high tourist barrier, cleaving axes, stabbing spears, and hacking swords down on the living dead. It was two hours before a whole twenty minutes went by without any more appearing.

Tuck counted the bodies. Sixty-eight of the undead. Shed thought there would be more. Still, it was a good count for the morning, and there had been no injuries amongst the living. It was a drop in the ocean, but perhaps all those little drops did add up. More importantly, there was a genuine look of achievement in the faces around her, one that didnt completely vanish when they realised they had to get rid of the corpses.

She ordered half of the wood to be taken inside, and the other half broken up, to be used in a pyre. She was still working out where that should be built when the heads around her turned to the castle walls. There was a figure waving and pointing towards the river. She looked to Kevin.

"The boats returned," he said.

When she reached the path along the waterfront, she saw everyone crowded near the steps up which came Nilda and Jay.

"Wheres Chester and the others?" she signed.

"We dont know," Jay signed back. "They went ash.o.r.e. We waited for them but they didnt return. When the tide turned we came back, because... well..." He looked at his mother. Nilda was clearly explaining the same thing to the group at large.

"They know where London is. They know where the Tower is," Nilda was saying. "We left them with a life raft, and we know where that is. But were running out of time. We saw two farms on our way down there. Perhaps 'farms is a bit generous. Theres one with at least three trees, their branches laden with fruit. There was another with a polytunnel that looked promising. I know, I know, its not much. But its more than weve got. I need some people to come with me, back along the coast to gather what food we can. After that, well head to the beach where we left Chester and the others. Perhaps theyre there with packs full of food and the addresses of where we might find more. Perhaps theyre paddling that raft towards us right now. Or perhaps theyre not, but we cant sit in a lifeboat off the beach waiting for them."

Mouths opened, and a myriad questions were fired off, but Hana ended the debate before it had a chance to begin.

"Everyone who went out with Tuck yesterday or this morning," she said. "Youre on the expedition."

And perhaps because they were given no choice or time to think, no one seemed reluctant. Even counting the time it took for some to change and gather clean or better weapons, they departed less than thirty minutes later.

As Tuck looked around the faces, mostly still eager, she was struck by how packed the boat was despite the claim painted on the side that it could fit a hundred and fifty. Hana was clutching a sword, the same one that Tuck had handed her the day before when shed taken the vets halberd before sending her back to the Tower. She wasnt happy that Hana was with them, but perhaps it was important as a symbol, not out of a demonstration of leadership, but of each person doing all they could, all of the time. Shed let Xiao off the detail. The man had been limping earlier, and as she looked around the boat there was no sign of Graham. She wasnt sure shed seen him at all that morning. McInery had her battle-axe. Kevin and Aisha talked quietly, smiling as they honed the edge of their shorter war axes. No, she thought, they didnt resemble the pa.s.sengers from a cruise ship at all. There was a tap on her shoulder. It was Jay.

"Its like a Viking war party," he signed, amused. "So, anything exciting happen whilst we were away?"

"Not really," she replied, and began to tell him.

The first farm really wasnt anything of the sort, just an immaculately maintained house with three apple trees in a corner of the garden. As the undead slowly gathered on the other side of a high fence separating the house from a once busy coastal road, they hastily gathered the fruit that had fallen. They shook the trees to encourage more to drop, but there was still plenty that stubbornly refused to fall. When Kevin walked towards the tree, his axe in hand and a calculating look in his eye, Tuck had grabbed his arm to stop him.

"What about next year?" she signed. He hadnt understood, or perhaps he had but disagreed, but at that point the fence broke, and they retreated back to the boat.

The second really was a farm, or it had been. A long polytunnel ran across a paddock overlooking the sea. Behind it was a farmhouse, and behind that were scores of plastic-covered tunnels filling the farmland for a mile in either direction. Unfortunately almost all the tunnels had survived the months of neglect intact. Without irrigation, the plants inside had withered and died. The one exception was a twenty-metre long section near the edge of a field where a branch had fallen from an old oak, smashing the plastic and exposing the plants inside to the elements.

"Theyre strawberries," Hana said.

It was too late in the year for any fruit, but they added a dozen trays to the lifeboats cargo in the hope they might find a way of keeping the plants alive through the winter.

Tuck didnt need Jay to point out the beach on which Chester and the others had gone ash.o.r.e. The bright orange life raft was unmistakable, as were the undead surrounding it.

"What do we do?" Jay asked.

"Theres no point killing the zombies, not if Chester and the others arent nearby," Nilda said. The tension, which had been building since the raft and the undead had first been sighted, dissipated a little.

"But do you think they are somewhere close, just waiting for us?" Jay asked.

"Im not sure," Nilda said. "I dont think so."

"Can you shoot them?" Jay asked Tuck.

"Yes," she signed. "But more will come."

"Fire it anyway," Jay said. "If theyre close by, theyll hear the shots."

"If they came back and saw the undead, they wont have lingered," Tuck signed, but she saw the desperate need in Jays eyes. She understood it. The boy had to know that everything that could be done had been done. She unslung the rifle, took aim, and fired. A zombie fell. She aimed again. Fired. Missed. The first shot, she decided, had been a lucky one. She fired again. Another miss.

"Its the boat," she signed. "The waves make it too unsteady to get a clear shot."