Chapter 20 - Look Upon Me and Tremble

Cambrai and all points west

 

“Thanks,” Chester said as Locke dribbled water from the peach can over his hands.

“I would prefer a sink and tap,” Locke said. “I would settle for a saucepan, but I’m not wasting any more time searching for one not covered in mould.”

“And since we don’t have the water to spare, why worry?” Chester said, rubbing his hands together, scraping away the worst of the gore and mud. “But if we’re wishing, I’d opt for a shower.”

“Since we’re heading to the land of the Vikings, why not wish for a sauna?” Locke said.

Chester glanced over his shoulder. Bill was descending the shallow hill he’d climbed to see how far the traffic jam extended. “What do you think of this Faroe business?”

“It’s not ideal,” Locke said. “The temperature will be challenging, even with the weather as erratic as it is. Once there, we will be utterly reliant on the ships in order to leave, and we will have to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. As a temporary refuge, however, it might be the best option available. Those negative points may work in our favour insofar as they will concentrate people’s minds on the future.”

“It’ll give the admiral time to go to America,” Chester said.

“Yes, and perhaps she will find it a land of milk and honey,” Locke said. “Or she will discover it’s no different to Europe. By spring, we’ll know. Perhaps we’ll know what happened to Denmark.”

“You’re thinking of your friends in… where was it? Haderslev?”

“Yes. Denmark, Sweden, Norway; there are more logical places for humanity’s new capital, but perhaps that is why we need somewhere like Faroe for now. We will have a few months to gather more data. And time to recover. Rescuing that convoy will be no simple task.”

“Nope. Bill’s on his way back. I guess we better get started.” He kicked mud over the ashes of the small fire.

“What’s your assessment?” Locke called to Bill.

“Cars absolutely everywhere,” Bill said. “We’re at the tail of the world’s worst traffic jam. I could see for about four miles, and it was four miles of cars and trucks. On the road, and in the fields. There’s a junction ahead. A much wider road runs at ninety degrees to this one. I guess that’s where they were trying to reach. Probably heard something on the radio, or maybe they were just following each other. Either way, we’ve got to head back the way we came.”

“Any zombies?” Chester asked.

“A few, trapped between vehicles,” Bill said. “None that are an immediate threat.”

Locke climbed into the driver’s seat, and flipped through the maps. Bill took the navigator seat, and Chester slid into his position at the rear.

“Here,” Locke said, passing the maps to Bill. “They’re not much use until we know precisely where we are.”

“Any guesses as to where that might be?” Bill asked, picking through them. “I couldn’t see any signposts.”

“North of Amiens, south of Lille, and to the east of both,” Locke said. “We should aim due west. We’ve enough fuel to reach the sea. Probably to reach Dunkirk, again depending on where we are, but I think we’ll be sailing to Ireland.”

“A plane, a tank, and a sailing boat,” Chester said. “It’s turning into a real tour.”

“The last grand tour,” Locke said as she started the engine. “Certainly one for the history books, just as soon as you write them, Bill.” There was a jolt as the ATV drove over the curb and into the field as Locke turned them back the way they’d come. “Sorry,” she added. “It has better steering than I expected. Maybe not the last grand tour. There, we’re back on the road. Yes, perhaps we should consider an expedition to the Middle East for fuel, though first we should head to the factory where these ATVs were made. With a few hundred, we could mount a survey of the world.”

“Once the zombies are dead,” Bill said, leaning forward to peer through the windscreen. “There are fewer of them, right?” he added, uncertainty creeping into his voice. “Ah, how can we tell?”

“As you said, how do you prove a null?” Locke said.

“Should one of us go up to the turret and keep an eye out for Cavalie?” Chester asked. “And when I say one of us, even with these glasses, I’m volunteering Bill for the job.”

“I would say no,” Locke said. “We should operate under the assumption that she will look for us. However, we won’t hear the sounds of their bikes over our engine, so a lookout would only present them with a target. Our route is set. Let us assume we are driving into a trap. If we’re not, it would be a pleasant surprise.”

“Ah, for the days before, when I only had to worry about mortgage payments and cancelled contracts,” Bill muttered. “The compass says we’re heading due south.”

“I know,” Locke said.

“There’s a road up to the right,” Bill said.

“I’ve seen it,” Locke said. “Perhaps you could concentrate on road signs?”

“Can’t see any,” Bill said. “But I can see the undead. Quite a few in that field, heading towards us.”

Locke accelerated into the turning, and didn’t slow.

Chester closed his eyes, but only for a second.

“Sign!” Locke said.

“Cambrai. Five kilometres, west,” Bill said. “Cambrai? I’ve never heard of it.” He opened the map. Starting with Amiens, he ran his finger in an increasingly wide spiral circle. “Ah, found it. Draw a line from Amiens to Lille, and we’re about halfway between, but fifty kilometres to the east. About another hundred kilometres to Dunkirk. Give or take.”

“Do you have a route?”

“Head towards Cambrai. In two kilometres, look for a road heading north. We’ll avoid the town, then cut westward, aiming to travel south of Lille, and pick up the railway line running between it and Calais. Follow that until we’re closer to the coast and switch back to the roads for the last leg to Dunkirk.”

Locke relaxed into the driver’s seat.

“Zombie,” Bill said.

“Seen it,” Locke said. “Can’t avoid it.”

There was a bump, a jolt as the ghoul was dragged under the treads, but it was too common an event now to warrant any further comment.

“Hedge’s broken ahead,” Bill said. “Looks like the field’s washed onto the road.”

Locke slowed. “Would you prefer to drive, Bill?”

“No, sorry.”

“Sorcha?” Chester asked as they reached the other side of the muddy quagmire. “I’ve a question. You say that you were preparing for a nuclear war, right? All the things you did, all Lisa Kempton did, it was in case a nuclear war happened?”

“That’s correct.”

“What were you going to do next? After the fallout settled, I mean?”

“A lot depended on how the world ended, and how quickly,” she said. “Would the cabal launch a first strike? Would Russia or China launch a pre-emptive attack? Would Quigley defy all expectations, employ some of the cunning which spun his way to the top, and act through proxies, starting the war in North Africa or East Asia? Though the time frame in which we had to act might be elongated, the outcome would have been the same. A warning would have been sent to all of those we’d decided to save. Not all of our people were on that list. We knew we were leaving friends and family behind, but sacrifices had to be made. The selected few would have gone to an extraction point. From there they would have flown, driven, or, in a few cases, taken a boat, to a remote location. Elysium, for instance, or Haderslev, or our redoubt in the Portuguese mountains. There they would wait for the fallout to clear, the radiation level to drop. It would then be their responsibility to communicate with The New World. Tamika would pilot it to them, and ferry them aboard.”

“And then?” Chester asked.

“That is as far as we were able to plan,” Locke said. “Without knowing which places would be worst affected, we couldn’t decide on our ultimate destination.”

“Right, but you did have plans?”

“Broadly, yes. That is the purpose of the warehouses. We would have taken our people to an area least affected by fallout and furthest from… furthest from… well, from the likes of Quigley and any other politicians and generals, lurking in their bunkers. We would have created a self-sustaining community. And then we would have attacked.”

“What do you mean, attacked?” Bill asked.

“Just what I say,” she said. “Saving humanity isn’t simply about providing food and water. It is about ensuring there is a future for them. That is true leadership. The leadership Quigley should have provided, and the reason why provision had to be made to ensure his ilk weren’t the only survivors. When they emerged from their bunkers, they would have enslaved the handful of unfortunates who’d survived the atomic nightmare. It wouldn’t have been called enslavement, of course. Salaries would have been paid in MREs and medical check-ups, but only because a sick serf is less productive. We would have destroyed those traitorous dictators, or died in the attempt. And after that…” She tapped her fingers against the wheel. “We were not so naive as to think paradise would have emerged, but it would, at least, have been a level playing field. The leaders chosen, the decisions they took, the mistakes they made, would have been products of that horrific new world, not the diseased dreams of those who destroyed the old.”

“How long was Lisa Kempton planning this?” Chester asked.

“All her life,” Locke said. “All her life. You see—”

“Slow down,” Bill cut in. “Slow down. Stop.”

“What?” Locke asked, braking.

“I thought I saw something. I’m… I’m not sure what. We’re down in a dip now. Just keep going, but… but be cautious.”

“Zombies?”

“No. Perhaps,” Bill said.

Locke drove them down into a waterlogged dip where a shallow stream had carved a new path through the road. She gunned the engine, continuing up the other side, and to the top of the incline. She didn’t need any further instructions to halt the ATV.

“There is a horde,” Bill whispered.

“It’s there?” Chester asked, leaning forward, trying to peer out of the windscreen.

“No,” Bill said. “But it was.” He opened the door and stepped outside.

Before them stretched a muddy plain absent of roads, trees, buildings, or grass. The desolate expanse was only broken by occasional rainwater ponds and the more frequent partially buried limb.

“It can’t have looked much different a century ago,” Locke said. “It’s missing barbed wire, but this was No Man’s Land during the Great War.”

“How wide is it?” Chester asked, squinting as he tilted the plastic-frame glasses.

“Hard to say,” Bill said. “We’ve arrived at an oblique angle.”

“Bigger than Birmingham, right?” Chester asked.

“Bigger than Birmingham,” Bill said. “Definitely bigger than the horde that trapped us in the tunnel in Wales.”

“It stretches beyond the horizon,” Locke whispered. “I can’t see a single tree ahead of us.”

“So, millions, yes?” Chester said. “Forty or fifty million?”

“More,” Locke said. “Rivers and towns will be gone. Entire cities, vanished.”

“The pilot was telling the truth,” Bill said. He turned his gaze from the bleak horizon to the ill-defined edge of the barren desert. The road they were on continued for another quarter mile, descending a shallow incline, disappearing beneath the mud just at the point it met a junction. The route the road followed was still discernible, a darker smear between two brown-green swamps, before finally being masked by the trail left by millions of feet a mile distant.

“Do we discount Scandinavia?” Locke said. “Do we discount Russia?”

“For what?” Chester said.

“The horde which descended on Birmingham was approximately ten million strong,” she said. “If the population of Britain before the outbreak was sixty-five million, to which we must add tourists and the handful of refugees allowed sanctuary, then it amounts to one seventh of the population. Do we discount children and the old, those unable to walk even after infection? I don’t know. But Europe’s continental population was ten times that of Britain. Does that make this horde ten times the size?”

“One hundred million? Nah,” Chester said. “Zombies can’t have crossed the Pyrenees, else the people in Creil would know about it. Same with the Alps.”

“Perhaps not the Pyrenees,” Locke said. “But if they can destroy a place like Birmingham, can we really rely on mountains to protect us from… from this? What obstacle would a hill make if a city can be trampled to dust? Both are built from mud and stone. The reason I ask, the real question we need to answer, is whether we can discount Russia and thus the steppe. Mongolia. China. Think why the word horde is such a perfect fit for this nightmare.”

“Genghis Khan,” Bill murmured. “You think it might be more than a hundred million? Billions, even?”

“I don’t know,” Locke said.

“It was heading east, judging by the way those trees just ahead of us fell,” Bill said. “East-southeast. Creil will be safe. The horde will hit the Alps, not the Pyrenees.”

“That’s something,” Locke said. “But it is the smallest comfort. We assume that there is only one horde, travelling in one direction. What was it the pilot said, that their convoy was attempting to lure the undead to Calais? Twenty thousand people? To such a vast horror, those small numbers would barely be noticeable.”

“Nope, you’re right,” Chester said. “There’s no comfort in that.”

Disconsolate, they returned to the ATV.