Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey (29 page)

“So why did I want you here?” I asked.

“To kill me, of course. I knew you would. You got Rachel to shoot Paul, so I was going to be next, wasn’t I?”

“If I wanted you dead, why didn’t I just kill you on Anglesey?” I asked.

“Because of witnesses. Because of questions. You know if they get asked, your story will come apart. All your plans will fall down. So you have to do it where there are no witnesses. Yeah, that’s why you wanted me here.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “You’re seeing a conspiracy where there’s none. Put the gun down.”

“Oh yeah?” He laughed again. “You just don’t get it. Your world’s gone. It’s my world now. All mine. My kingdom. I’ve inherited it, don’t you get it?”

“Put the gun down, Rob,” I said, louder this time. “Put it down.”

“Nah. Your time’s up.” The barrel of his rifle began to pivot upwards. “Your life’s—”

I didn’t hear the shot, but then, neither did he. He spun and tumbled, crumpling into a heap. I glanced at the thicket of trees on the crest of the field to the left of the bungalow. I saw Kim stand. I raised a hand, and then turned to Rob’s corpse. It was a good shot. Her bullet had taken Rob straight through the heart.

“Did he confess?” Kim asked, coming up the drive, her rifle still in her arms.

“More or less,” I said. “He admitted he and Paul were going to Bangor. He didn’t quite say it, but he intimated he killed Will and Lilith. It doesn’t matter, since that’s Simon’s rifle.”

“Did he say why?” she asked.

“He thought we were going to kill him,” I said. “He thought we’d staged Paul’s death, though I’m not sure who the ‘we’ is in his delusion.”

“But he admitted it?” she asked again.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, he did. He did it. He killed Simon, Will, and Lilith. He was about to kill me. You were right to shoot him.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “Or not just that. I want to know that, in the end, he admitted what he’d done.”

“There was no remorse,” I said. “No apology. No regret. He laughed. I don’t know if I can say the world will be better off without him in it, but I won’t mourn his passing.”

I knelt down, and began searching Rob, taking the ammunition from his pockets. It was quickly done, but I didn’t stop my search.

“What are you looking for?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “A confession would be nice, but I don’t think he was the writing kind. Back in the mansion, there was a folder on the desk of an office. It was open and empty. That wasn’t you, right?”

“No. It was empty?”

“Yes, there was a label that read ‘Embarkation’. There was dust on the desk, but not on the folder, so if it wasn’t you who took the contents, it had to be Rob or Simon. And Simon would have told you. Ah.” I pulled a folded wad of paper from Rob’s pocket. It was two sheets, both with the logo of Kempton’s company.

“What is it?” Kim asked.

“Two sheets of paper. This one’s a list of numbers.” I stared at it, but they were meaningless. “The other… Ah, this is more like it. It’s a list of addresses.”

“Where?”

“I’m... I’m not sure. I think this one is Cape Verde. When we had Captain Devine over for dinner didn’t she mention a Cidade Velha? I suppose there might be one in Spain. There are some addresses in English but I’m not sure they’re in England. There are no countries listed.”

“Do you think they are more estates with farmland and wind turbines?”

“No, Elysium isn’t mentioned. Embarkation? To go where? How? I wonder… Here. This one, Palleskenry, that’s a village on the southern side of Shannon Estuary. Not quite, but almost opposite Shannon airport, and if there was a place famous for transatlantic flights, it was Shannon. I doubt Rob knew how to fly, but perhaps it’s a boathouse. Rob seemed confident. Not scared. Not like he was on the run. When he thought I was alone, his confidence grew. He acted as if had a plan. The only thing that would have mattered to him is an escape or a refuge. As to which it was, we’ll figure it out when Sholto arrives and we’ve cleared Elysium of the undead.”

“Or we could just use the satellites to get an image of the place. We could see what it is without having to visit,” Kim said.

“That would be simpler, yes.” I looked for somewhere to put the list and settled for the journal.

“You should write it down,” Kim said. “Exactly as it happened, and do it now while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

“Now?”

“Why not? Sunset’s less than an hour away. We didn’t see any zombies coming up this way, and none were following us.” She crossed to the gate and kicked the corpse out of the way, allowing the gate to swing closed. She slid the bolts closed. “It’s a short walk back to the coast. If we get surrounded, we’ve got enough ammunition to fight our way out. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the coast and wait for the boat. Tonight, you need to write down what we did and why. We need a proper account that can be presented to the community. Our actions have to be judged like Rachel’s were, otherwise…” She stared at Rob’s body. “Hell, Bill, otherwise what’s the point? I really do wonder. Each day it’s two steps forward, and three sideways. We never end up where we expect, certainly not where we intend, and I’m not sure it’s ever anywhere better.”

Epilogue - Ard na Mara, The Republic of Ireland

23:30, 21
st
September, Day 193

“Poor Simon,” Kim said, closing my journal after having skimmed through it. “And poor Will and Lilith. So many people have died, I don’t know if I have any tears left to shed. We said we’d find a time to mourn, but I wonder whether we ever will.” She cleared her throat and forced a smile. “You didn’t need to explain who Lisa Kempton was.”

“I didn’t?”

“Everyone on Anglesey knows. Annette certainly does. And you missed out the argument you had with Mary O’Leary about the Vehement.”

“I thought there were some things that should be forgotten,” I said. “Or at least, not written down.”

“That’s not how a proper chronicler would do it. You have to include everything, the bad and the good. You should have put in the trial, at least.”

“There wasn’t time,” I said. “That’s when I heard the gunshots.”

“Well, you should record it. It was important,” she said.

“What’s there to say? Rachel was found not guilty, but it took more time selecting a jury than it did for them to come to a verdict.”

“Right. Precisely. That should go in.”

“I’ll get around to it at some point,” I said.

“And the planning for all the trips?” she asked. “You barely mentioned the one going to Belfast.”

“I can write about that when they get back to Anglesey,” I said. “When we get back to Anglesey, too.”

“I bet you won’t,” she said. “But you should. There should be a record. I think… in some ways, I think it might help hold people together. We need something to do that. These expeditions, like Belfast, and the islands in the Irish Sea, they’ve helped, but in a couple of weeks everyone will be back on Anglesey. Well, not all of us. Poor Simon, Lilith, and Will.” She sighed. “But when everyone’s back, what then? The satellites will be a distraction for a while, but when winter comes, and we can’t leave Anglesey, interest in them will fade. The cold weather may prove Mary right, and people will come ashore, but I think it will bring just as many problems.”

“Problems for which I don’t think another volume of my journal will be a solution.”

“It might be,” she said. “It can’t hurt. But if you don’t want to do it for anyone else, write it for Daisy. Write it for Annette, because you know she’s going to keep nagging you until you do.” She opened the journal again, and leafed back through the entries I’d made while stuck in the garage. “There are parts that are missing. Questions that need answers.”

“Like what?”

“We still don’t know why Paul killed that man in the university. Or why he killed Llewellyn, either.”

“We probably never will,” I said. “Though my money is on Paul being the one who handcuffed Llewellyn to the bed and left him there to die. That’s what the court record will show.”

“Which is another reason for you to write an account of the trial,” she said. I didn’t argue. The list we’d taken from Rob’s body fell out. She picked it up. “Addresses. How did Rob know this list was in the house? If he thought we were going to kill him, why didn’t he make his move straight away?”

“Cowardice?” I suggested.

“That would be a reason for him to have killed us the moment we got into the house. No, instead, he kept disappearing,” Kim said. “Why?”

“He was looking for a tunnel,” I suggested.

“How did he know there was one?” Kim asked. “Because he did know. He must have known exactly where it was. You wrote that, when you first went into the kitchen, there was no zombie in it. The second time, after you’d fired a shot, there was. The zombie had been hiding behind that door. Rob didn’t open it. He must have known where the hatch to the tunnel was.”

“You mean someone told him?”

“About the tunnel, and the list of addresses,” Kim said. “I doubt Rob worked for Kempton, but what if someone on the island did. Someone who knew about this property. Maybe someone who escaped from here. Not Kempton herself, because everyone knows what she looks like. I wonder who?”

“It’s another mystery to be solved,” I said.

“An important one, but we won’t solve it tonight.”

There was a sound from outside. The soft and almost unfamiliar patter of rain hitting the bungalow’s window.

“Autumn’s arrived,” I said. “A few weeks late, but it’s here.”

“If it’s a storm, then our rescue boat might be delayed,” she said. “But you were thinking about the radiation? About Birmingham?”

“I was.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t worry about things you can’t change. Let’s talk about something else. Something different. You said that you’ve been to Ireland before?”

“Belfast and Dublin,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

“There’s not much to say,” I said. “They were conferences where I didn’t see much beyond the airport and hotel.”

“Tell me anyway,” she said.

We talked as the rain fell, and until she fell asleep. I’ll do the same soon.

Rob’s dead, but so are Simon, Lilith, and Will. David Llewellyn can be added to that side of the scales, but it’s not balanced by adding Paul to the other. That’s four good people dead, a good deal of ammunition expended, a boat lost, and nothing to show for the effort.

We are the help that comes to others. If that’s true, then we’ve done a poor job of it over the last few days. If I’ve learned anything since the outbreak, it’s not to wallow in the past but look to the future. The question now is whether there are others to whose help we can come, or is it too late? Does our community on Anglesey represent all that are left?

Two steps forward, and three steps sideways. We never end up where we plan, and each new journey is more difficult than the one that went before. Looking at Kim, asleep on the mildewed sofa, I will say that, for me if no one else, that journey is worth making. I can’t tell if our future is bleak, or in comparison to what went before, whether it is bright. Perhaps it is both, just as it would have been for generations and centuries. Perhaps I think too much, and it’s time to sleep. Tomorrow will come whether I’m rested or not, and whatever it brings, at least I won’t be facing it alone.

The end.

The story will continue in Book 9: Belfast.

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Other novels:

Surviving The Evacuation & Here We Stand

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, and Chester, a criminal in search of repentance. Here We Stand is the story of the North American survivors, and the collapse of the United States.

1: London, 2: Wasteland,
Zombies vs The Living Dead,
3: Family, 4: Unsafe Haven, 5: Reunion, 6: Harvest, 7: Home, Here We Stand 1: Infected, Here We Stand 2: Divided, Book 8: Anglesey

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 murders are discovered. For our species to survive, the criminals must be caught, and the launch must go ahead.

Thanks for reading.