Surviving The Evacuation: Harvest Part 6

Tuck took one last look at the Tower. Constance was shooing away the ravens while Hana fed the chickens. Or she thought it was Constance and Hana. It was hard to tell from this distance when everyone wore the same mismatched, ill-fitting clothing, but those two were always among the first to wake. Had there been a few more people up and about, then they could have used the gate, but with no one to close it behind them, they had to resort to the ropes. It was an unwelcome addition to the mornings exertions.

Tuck couldnt sleep inside the castle. The rooms were too small, the ceilings too low, the windows too narrow. It felt claustrophobic and crowded. Instead shed created a bivouac on top of the Wakefield Tower. She didnt sleep much outside either, but from there she could stand up and see the lifeboat when it was tied up. When she sat with her back against the old stone, all she could see were the tops of the skysc.r.a.pers and pretend, if only for a moment, that the world hadnt changed.

She checked her gear one last time, grabbed a rope, and climbed over the wall. At least there were no undead on the river path this morning. When dawn had arrived and shed accepted that another day would have to be faced on a few interrupted hours of sleep, there had been two of the undead lumbering towards the west side of the Tower. Theyd come to a halt at the thick plastic barrier that separated the gra.s.sy moat from the ticket booths and restaurants to the east of the castle, and now stood immobile, almost expectant. What had summoned them, whether it had been a squeal from a pig, a groan from a person, or any other part of the clattering cacophony that heralded the groups attempt to start the day, Tuck didnt know. And it didnt matter. Abruptly, their arms waved and pawed, their necks jerked back and forth, and their mouths snapped open. What had seemed like a glorious morning was destroyed in that macabre reminder that the days work wouldnt be done until more of the undead had been killed.

Her feet hit the ground. She grabbed one of the smaller rafts, pushed it halfway down the worn and river-slick steps, and pulled the cord. Inflated, she found it was much larger than shed thought. McInerys plan, if it could be called that, was to hope they could steer the raft through the wreckage of London Bridge. Tuck was hoping they couldnt, and so there expedition would be brought to an early halt. But if they did make it as far as Westminster, she planned to fly the drone around the rooftops until the battery ran low, and hoped that would be enough for McInery to realise that whatever she was looking for was now gone.

"Careful with that," Tuck signed as McInery unslung her battle-axe. It was a double-headed affair, with a blade on one side and a long spike on the other. It had been presented to a long-dead king by the long forgotten emperor of somewhere following the battle of somewhere else. Tuck couldnt remember exactly what had been printed on the plaque next to the weapons display case except for the quote at the top, 'To the victor go the spoils. She suspected it was that which had drawn McInery to it.

Tuck used an oar to push them out into the river. The oars had once been giant rammers stored next to the cannon kept in the White Towers bas.e.m.e.nt. Theyd stripped off the thick leather and cloth padding, attaching flat squares of durable plastic in their place. The end result, Tuck thought as she tried to steer the craft towards the widest gap underneath the wrecked bridge, was as c.u.mbersome as the raft. McInery grabbed the other oar and started paddling herself. Soon, theyd established a rhythm.

McInery wasnt shy of work, Tuck thought, but shed noticed that before. There was an expression her old friend, the major, had used to describe his brother, and it seemed appropriate to describe McInery. She was like a part-time preacher whod sell you a car on Sat.u.r.day, G.o.d on Sunday, and run a breakdown service from Monday to Friday. She could be relied on within very specific parameters but never trusted.

A current pulled the boat up and suddenly south, and it took a frantic five minutes of paddling before they were back on course. Tucks arms were beginning to tire, and from the strain in McInerys shoulders, the other woman was feeling the same. The rafts werent going to work, not long-term. That was okay with Tuck, and she hoped it might help persuade McInery to give up on her quest.

Another wave, and this one far larger, caught the craft. It took all of Tucks concentration, and their combined effort, to stop it from cras.h.i.+ng into the floating museum s.h.i.+p, HMS Belfast.

They reached London Bridge an arm-agonising ten minutes later and found it much as it had looked on the drones cameras the day before with the truck still balanced precariously on that thin ribbon of concrete. Water churned white over, under, and around the artificial dam of broken s.h.i.+ps, floating debris, and the still twitching limbs of the undead.

They were halfway through the wreckage when a body fell from the bridge, landing in the middle of the raft. McInery moved with a quick efficiency that hadnt come solely from practice since the outbreak. She slammed the oar down on the zombies knee, then on its back, and then its head. Tuck leaped forward, stabbing her bayonet through the back of its neck, and into its brain. Together, they hauled the motionless creature over the side.

Pulling on the twisted sections of rebar and pus.h.i.+ng against the broken masonry, they reached the deeper water beyond the ruined bridge.

Tuck resheathed the bayonet. It could be cleaned later, but the scabbard would have to be destroyed. That was a shame. Like the knife it was an antique, but there were plenty of them, and it would be a waste of wood and water trying to sterilise it.

"Another mile, another bridge," McInery said, turning to face Tuck. The soldier didnt reply. She just picked up the oar and started rowing once more.

They were finally stopped half a mile from the ruins of Parliament at the remains of the Hungerford Railway Bridge. Rails and sheet metal jutted out of the river. Around them, white water danced and dashed against a staircase that, in better times, had led to a floating restaurant. The stairs now lay at right angles to the river, thudding against the broken rails with each surging wave. They secured raft by steps that led up to a giant stone obelisk.

"Cleopatras needle," McInery signed. "Looted from Egypt, centuries ago."

Tuck nodded, but her interest wasnt in the hieroglyph-covered monument but in a building beyond. The walls of the embankment were high, the river low, and most of the buildings roof and upper floors were gone, but she thought it had once housed the Ministry of Defence. She moved closer to McInery so she could see the map.

They were on that section of the river that ran north to south from Embankment down to Vauxhall. The M.O.D. wasnt marked, nor were any of the government buildings except for Downing Street. As she followed McInerys finger tracing possible routes through the political heart of London, Tuck noticed that it kept hovering on, or close to, Buckingham Palace. For a second, she a.s.sumed that was where the woman wanted to go, then realised that it was probably a ploy to distract Tuck from wherever her real destination was.

"A supply dump would be established in an open s.p.a.ce," McInery signed. "Buckingham Palace, St James Park, or somewhere like that."

"And those are beyond the drones range," Tuck signed back, and to forestall any further conversation, handed McInery the 'copter.

She smoothed down the waterproof cover a large transparent sack Jay had insisted the laptop stay inside at all times due to the terabyte of sitcoms hed discovered on its hard drive turned the rotors on, and flew the drone straight up.

Tuck fixed her eyes to the laptops screen and the small window that showed the image from the camera. Along the road, almost as if theyd been parked, were an odd mix of refrigerated delivery trucks and armoured security vans. The software had two other windows, both blank, that would have shown the drones position on a street map had the GPS been working. To navigate, she had to rely on the image from the small camera, the clock, and the battery indicator. From experience she knew shed be relying on landmarks and guesswork to match the drones path to the map McInery clutched in her hands.

The 'copter kept rising, and the image changed to that of a broken window surrounded by smoke-blackened stone. Another window, this one unbroken and through which Tuck could see that the floor inside had collapsed. Up again, until the wall was replaced with a rooftop filled with aerials and satellite dishes, except at the northwestern end where there was nothing but a gaping hole.

Tilting the drone so the camera took in the skyline, she rotated it until she found the Shard. That gave her a position for London Bridge. A few more degrees of a slow turn, and the screen showed the shattered remains of the London Eye. She looked over her shoulder at the broken Ferris wheel on the southern bank of the Thames and the other side of the ruined bridge.

"It must have been deliberately targeted," she signed.

"Probably by a submarine captain whod spent half a day queuing for a ride," McInery replied. "Watch the battery. Theres time for sightseeing later."

Tuck turned her eyes back to the screen. Shed forgotten whom she was sitting next to. She kept the drone rotating, mentally noting where Big Ben should have been, and then the building-free expanse that she took to be St James Park. Though the screen was small, and the window showing the cameras image even smaller, something about the park looked wrong. She tilted the drone until the camera was facing down and slowly piloted it forward.

The building she thought was the Ministry of Defence was now mostly a crater. Some of the thick, repeatedly reinforced walls were still standing, but very little of the roof was.

"Theres nothing there," she signed, looking up at McInery.

The older woman nodded and seemed uninterested. Tuck turned the drone east. Out of the corner of her eye she caught McInery sign, "Where are you going?"

Tuck jabbed a finger down towards Charing Cross Station. She was reminded of Dev and his obsession with train stations. Not for the trains themselves, but for the storerooms that supplied all the fast food outlets. Whilst she wasnt sure they could really call it food, they had found a lot of calories there, and Charing Cross was close to the river. Had been. The train station had been destroyed, not by a missile strike, but deliberately collapsed to form part of the government barricade.

She turned the drone, and then abruptly stopped it. The image juddered before settling on Nelsons column. It, at least, still stood. She was glad of that. Not out of any martial pride, but from relief that something of the past remained in a place that had been a living museum as much as a city.

That gave her a direction. From there she headed southwest to Whitehall. She brought the drone to another hovering halt, her interest not in the government ministries, but in the long row of double-parked tanks lining both sides of the street. Treads had been dislodged, turrets dismounted, barrels bent, and there was no mistaking the impact marks on roadway and armour from high-velocity rounds. Nor was there any mistaking the shambling figures moving slowly down the road towards the drone.

McInery was trying to catch her attention. "Can you drive one of those?" she signed.

"A tank? No," Tuck replied. It was a lie. She had been through the training course and driven one under fire, albeit only for a harrowing mile and a half, but if she revealed that, she knew full well what McInerys next question would be. "Besides," she added. "I dont think any of those would be going anywhere."

"Pity. What about the Foreign Office, can you get a view of that?"

Tuck looked back at the screen, the camera was pointing down the length of Whitehall. The grey stone buildings all looked identical to her. She just shrugged and flew the drone up to take in the rooftops once more.

"Stop. There," McInery signed. "Ninety degrees east. There. Thats the Foreign Office. It looks intact, dont you think?"

"That corner took a direct hit," Tuck signed. "And those windows have gone."

"Yes. Yes," McInery said. There was an odd calculating look on her face.

Deciding that shed had enough of circ.u.mspection, Tuck tried a more direct approach. "What do you think well find there?" she signed.

"Probably nothing," McInery replied, "just like everywhere else. If you turn it a hundred and eighty degrees well see Downing Street."

The 'copter, an overpriced novelty from the toy store on Regents Street, was devilishly difficult to change direction when it was in mid-flight. Whenever Tuck tried, the drone ended up pointing in completely the wrong direction. She stuck with flying it in a straight line, bringing it to a hover, and slowly turning it around until she found Nelsons column, then orientating herself accordingly. As such, she overshot Downing Street. A small part of her regretted that. She was curious to see what the garden behind the Prime Ministers house was like, but the battery indicator on the software was at seventy percent. It would have to wait for another time. She steadied the drone and aimed the camera down.

They were over Horse Guards Parade. The old, open s.p.a.ce, home to jousting in the days of ancient kings, had been turned into a vehicle park. There were more tanks, a Corps worth of construction equipment, and in the corner close to the Old Admiralty Building were a dozen parked lorries.

Tuck didnt need McInerys finger stabbing at the screen to know to have the 'copter descend, circling the vehicles, looking for damage. There was none that she could see.

A wave caught the raft, and as they were bounced up and down, Tucks finger nudged the controls. The image started to rotate. She jabbed at the keyboard, getting the drone to rise. By the time the boat had steadied itself, the 'copter was fifty metres up. Tuck breathed out, brought the drone to a halt, and then into a descent, as curious as McInery as to what might be inside those lorries.

A finger tapped the screen. Tuck blinked. Shed been so focused on the vehicles shed not seen what was now heading towards the drone. A long thin line of the undead, coming from the direction of Whitehall, had followed the soft whir of the rotors. Tuck shrugged, levelled off, and checked the battery level. Sixty percent.

"Next trip," she signed. Ignoring McInerys finger still pointing at those parked vehicles, Tuck turned the drone up and west to get a view of the park. She realised why the image had seemed wrong. The gra.s.s had gone. More construction vehicles, though these with a distinctly civilian paint scheme, had been abandoned next to huge mounds of earth.

"Graves?" McInery signed.

Tuck shook her head. "Fields," she replied. And somehow, that was worse. Inexpertly dug, incompletely finished, and improbably excavated with bulldozers, it wouldnt have mattered if this redoubt hadnt been destroyed during the attacks, the people inside would have starved long ago. Then she remembered the tanks and the only purpose to which they could have been put. Those people had no intention of being farmers.

The battery light flashed fifty percent. Tuck took that as a sign their aerial tour was over. She rotated the drone until shed found the Shard and started piloting it back. It was halfway along a canyon of curving road when the light jumped from an orange forty-five percent to an ominous, narrow red line. Tuck had barely enough time to steer the drone into the middle of the road before the image blurred, and then went blank.

"What happened?" McInery asked.

Tuck tried the controls. She gave up. "The battery ran out," she signed.

"Where?" McInery asked.

"Three hundred metres away." Tuck pointed at the map. "Perhaps four."

"We have to go and get it," McInery signed.

"We dont."

"We do. We cant get another. Not easily. Not without fighting our way to Regents Street and battling our way through that department store. Where else would we find one? How long would we spend looking? Without that drone for surveillance, we only have our eyes. And since Westminster is one of the places that we will end up looking, we might as well go there now and collect the drone while were about it."

The logic was sound. Tuck hated that. She stowed the laptop in the bag, checked the bayonet was loose in its scabbard, the rope attaching the boat to the steps was fast, and the axe was ready in her hand. She jumped onto the stone steps. They were slick with slime, and she almost slipped as she caught the thick iron railings and climbed over. She offered a hand to McInery, but the woman leaped from the boat more nimbly than Tuck had managed.

Alert for the undead, Tuck scanned the road, trying to find a way over or past the rubbled remains of the railway bridge blocking the road to the south. She saw none, but that just meant theyd all followed the drone.

Behind the ruined Tube station was a wide tunnel. Embankment Place, according to the embossed sign above the entrance. It was a grand t.i.tle for a pedestrianized thoroughfare that ran under the bridge. On either side were those ubiquitous cafes with drifts of leaves and rubbish piled up against their broken doors. Except, as she picked her way over the broken gla.s.s, Tuck saw that one wasnt a cafe, but a bicycle shop. Near the back of the store there were at least three that looked ready to be ridden away. They would be genuinely useful, as they had none at the Tower. She was about to step inside when she sensed movement to her side. A zombie crawled towards her on elbows and arms. Both its legs were broken, with the left only attached by a thin strand of sinew. Its open, snapping mouth filled with mud and leaves as it ploughed its way through the gutter. Tuck hacked the axe down, wrenched it free, and decided that the bicycle shop could wait.

She looked over her shoulder. McInery stood there, her battle-axe in hand, an odd look on her face. She would have heard that zombie approach, Tuck thought. And then she realised that she and McInery were here alone, and no one would think it odd should only one of them return.

Moving more quickly than before, she left the gloomy tunnel. On the road to the right there was another creature, this one heading away from the river. Her eyes on the zombie, Tuck didnt see what was beneath her foot. Whatever it was, as it broke, the creature turned, its arms jerkily flapping as it staggered towards her.

Ignoring the clothing and what other few identifying features remained, she darted forward. It wasnt a person, just a threat to be eliminated. She chopped the axe at its legs, breaking bone. It staggered, toppled, fell to its knees, arms still clawing out, and mouth still snapping open and closed. She changed her grip, slas.h.i.+ng down. Skin split and skull broke, as the axe smashed into its brain.

Tuck looked up, trying to reconcile the images from the drone with the streets in front her. Above the roofs to the north she could just make out the admirals hat at the top of Nelsons column. But below that, at the end of the road, were more of the undead. Ten? Fifteen? She wasnt sure how many, but there would be more behind those. At least they werent moving. That thought had come too soon. Three of the creatures slowly rose.

She was almost relieved when McInery pushed past her, waving her axe towards a side street branching to the left. Tuck followed her over a mound of rubble spilling out from a building that had taken a direct hit. All that remained to identify its former purpose was a scorched sc.r.a.p of green cloth fluttering against a broken flagpole. Beyond the rubble was a long curving road with CCTV cameras pointing in every direction including straight up. She was certain she didnt recognise it from the drones images. McInery had taken a diversion, she was sure of it. Gearing up for an imminent betrayal, Tuck sped up, trying to catch her, but McInery did the same thing, sprinting ahead with a speed that belied her age. Tucks mind filled with memories of traps and ambushes until McInery dived forward, grabbing something from the ground. The drone.

Tuck came to a stumbling halt, smiling with the relief of it, but that smile froze in place as she looked beyond McInery and saw the undead filling the road. Of course theyd followed the sound of the drones rotors. Tuck looked the way theyd come. The undead were slouching towards them, blocking the road behind. She looked for an escape and saw a thick wooden door partly blown off its hinges and singed by a familiar burn pattern. She was still debating whether to risk the unknown or charge the undead when McInery shoved the 'copter into her hands and ran into the building. The expression on her face was so out of place that Tuck had stuffed the drone in her pack and followed McInery into the building before she realised what it was. Triumph.

They were in a wide corridor with open doors s.p.a.ced equidistantly along it. Daylight streamed through each. Axe raised, expecting the undead to spring out, Tuck moved past McInery and looked through the first door. It was a meeting room with a ring of tables and enough chairs to seat a dozen. Was it a government office, then? The next room was the same, but with a name only a hotel would use printed on a plaque by the door.

As she neared the end of the corridor, Tuck looked back and saw a zombie stagger into the building, with a second creature a flailing arms length behind. McInery, reading something in Tucks expression, turned, twisted, and flipped her battle-axe around. It carved a chunk out of the ornate wallpaper before the blade cleaved up through the zombies chin, splitting its face in half. As red-brown gore and black gobbets of brain slid down the blade, McInery punched the axe at that second zombies legs. It fell, and when McInery turned, motioning for Tuck to continue, her expression was utterly emotionless.

Tuck quickened her pace, as much to get away from McInery as from the undead. The hallway branched. To the left was a hasty barricade. To the right were three uniformed bodies, each with matching head wounds that told the story of their deaths. She jumped over them and kept running. Another junction, another barricade. More bodies. She turned left. The corridor curved and she was worried they were heading back on themselves. McInery grabbed her arm and pointed at a doorway, wider than the others. On it was a tarnished bra.s.s sign. 'Gravington Ballroom. Underneath that was a torn piece of paper, all that remained of the words printed on it were 'no admittance. Before Tuck could protest, McInery had pushed the doors open.

One side of the room was empty; the other was full of tables. On them, behind, and underneath were crates. Tuck recognised the type instantly as those used to store and transport ammunition. She grabbed a stack of chairs from near the wall, and pulled them down in front of the door. The barricade was rough and ready, but would hold back the undead long enough for them to escape. There were two other doors from the room, a small one marked as an emergency exit and another, larger than the one they had entered by. That, she hoped, would lead to the front entrance.

McInery was going from crate to crate, opening some, ignoring others, and occasionally pulling out a few loose rounds of ammunition and throwing them into her bag with a casual disinterest. Tuck realised that McInery was talking to herself. Her head was half turned, and the only words the soldier caught were, "Must be here."

Tuck ran to her and grabbed her arm. "We have to go," she signed.

"Not yet," McInery said. "Look, theres ammunition here, at least." She thrust a fistful of rounds at Tuck. The soldier pocketed them.

"And its useless without a rifle," Tuck signed, but McInery hadnt seen. Tuck grabbed her arm, turning her to face the now shaking doors.

"Yes, fine," McInery said. "Time to go, but get the ammunition. Theres no point leaving empty-handed." She scooped up another few fistfuls, dropping them into her bag.

"Now!" Tuck croaked.

McInery grabbed one last handful of cartridges and pushed past the soldier, heading towards the doors. She leaned an ear against the wood. "Its clear," she signed.

A real battle had been fought in the corridor beyond. Bodies were strewn about one on top of another. Some had been ripped apart, others had been shot, and only by the head wounds was it possible to discern the human from the undead.

There was a bra.s.s plaque on the wall with an arrow pointing towards reception. Tuck started moving more quickly, ignoring the doors to either side, her attention on getting out of the building. A zombie reared out of a side room, its snarling face inches from Tucks own. Only the axe held across her body prevented the creatures teeth from tearing at her face. Tuck twisted, shoved, but those clawing hands were pus.h.i.+ng her back. She let go of the axe and dropped to the floor, scything her leg out, knocking the zombie down as her hand went to her belt. She pulled out her bayonet, but McInery was in the way, not attacking the creature but jumping over it, running past. Tuck stabbed down, and pulled the knife free. She couldnt see the axe. No time, she thought, and ran towards the exit.

McInery hadnt reached it. Shed paused in the lobby and was pulling at... they were remains, though parts would be a more apt description. It was impossible to tell which limb belonged to which torso, nor even how many had died. It was a last stand, the destruction wrought by landmines or something larger, used when all hope of rescue or escape had gone.

Tuck reached out to grab McInery, uncertain what macabre purpose she had, but the woman straightened with a look of triumph on her face. In her hands was a rifle. The barrel was bent, the stock charred. Before the soldier could protest, McInery had thrust it into Tucks hands, and then pushed past her, grabbing another, similarly damaged weapon.

"Rifles," she mouthed.

Tuck looked at her, wanting to scream. Instead, she ran out of the main doors and down into the street. There were undead there, and there were more on the right, so she went left, using the broken rifle to club a path through the living dead. The roads blurred into one as she swung the rifle, pitching the undead from their feet, no longer caring if they rose again in time to attack McInery.

She saw the river, but there was a zombie right in front of the railings. She kept running as it twisted around to face her, and then turned the run into a leap. Her shoulder hit its face, snapping its head back. She spun, bayonet ready, but the creature had lost its footing, slipped, and fallen onto the spiked railings. One had gone straight through its neck. Its arms thrashed, its legs kicked, and the skin around that gaping wound slowly tore.

Tuck took a step back, looked around for any more imminent threats, and saw McInery not three paces behind. A broken rifle was slung over her shoulder, a second in one hand, and the battle-axe in the other, an almost serene look on her face. Tuck stabbed her bayonet into the eye of the impaled zombie, and then took one last look back at the road. She expected to see a great pack of the undead heading towards them. Whenever she ran from them she always forgot how slow they were. They would be impeded by the rubble and might never get as far as the river. She threw a look towards the Tube station and the bicycle shop hidden behind. Not this trip, she decided.

She clambered over the railing and down the steps to the raft. McInery moved to pull the rope free. Tuck shook her head.

"The tide," she signed. "It wont turn for an hour."

McInery nodded and sat back down. "You said you needed a firing pin," she said, pointing at the rifles.

Tuck nodded. The only modern weapon in the Tower that wasnt covered in gems or coated in gold was an SA80 a.s.sault rifle that had been part of a display on modern warfare. The firing pin and back spring had been removed. Tuck looked at the weapons with their twisted barrels and melted stocks. She took out one of the cartridges that McInery had taken from that ballroom. It was the right calibre.

"You can make the gun work, cant you?" McInery asked.

"Maybe," Tuck signed.

McInery smiled. As they waited for the tide to turn, Tuck tried to work out why.

By the time she stood on the battlement walls, watching Kevin and Aisha bicker, shed not found the answer. Theyd brought back four hundred and sixty-three rounds of 5.56 NATO ammunition. At best, that represented no more than the deaths of three hundred of the undead. She wasnt sure how much ammunition there was in the ballroom, but even if they went back, collected it all, and planted each bullet in the forehead of one of the living dead, they would only make a shallow dent in the total numbers left in their undead Britain. It was a distraction from the real threats facing them. That was the argument shed been working on as shed carried the drone back to Jays room, but when shed found McInery again, the woman seemed to have lost all interest in the rifles and ammunition.

Tuck closed her eyes, seeking a moment of calm in the silent dark. She kept trying to place McInery on a spectrum with the power-mad crook shed been at one end, and the altruistic philanthropist shed claimed to be at the other. Perhaps she was wrong, and McInery was just plain mad.

To a greater or lesser extent, and each in their own way, everyone whod survived this long had developed eccentricities that went far beyond neurotic. Why should McInery be any different? It was a comforting thought because it suggested that, with no reason behind McInerys actions, there was no subterfuge either. That meant that she could focus on the other, far more pressing problem shed discovered on their return.

The two zombies shed seen pawing at the barrier on the far side of the moat when theyd set out for Westminster were still there, and theyd been joined by a third. It wasnt that anyone had spent the morning relaxing, just that theyd opted for the backbreaking but safer ch.o.r.es inside the Towers walls. Filtering, boiling, desalinating, and purifying the water, splitting the firewood, mucking out livestock, and all the rest added up to full-time work for two-dozen people. Then there was the never-ending toil of laundering and mending the clothes that could be salvaged and burning those that couldnt. It all had to be done, of course, but those were tasks that used up their stores, not ones that added to them. And after all that was done, and after all that theyd been through, didnt people deserve some time to relax?

No, was Tucks answer to that. Clearly, she was in the minority. Her concern was that despite, or perhaps because of, Hanas talk the night before, it was turning into Kirkman House all over again. It was too easy to confuse intent and action, particularly when they were all waiting for Nilda to return with news of whether or not they would be starving before winter set in. But anxiety wouldnt hurry her return, so Tuck had organised a small group to get rid of those undead and at least make a start at crossing things off the shopping list.

She opened her eyes. Kevin and Aisha were still bickering in that way only two people in love could. Tuck watched them, trying to leech some of the happiness from the scene. Then she caught a few very unexpected words cross Aishas lips. She looked at the woman, this time more carefully, and realised they shouldnt have been unexpected at all. Then she realised she was staring, and turned her attention back to the shopping list.

That was the name Jay had given it. It was a piece of paper hed pinned to the door next to the kitchen on which anyone could write down essential items they would like the next outgoing expedition to look for. At the top, underlined and surrounded by a small box, were the words firewood, food, and water. Underneath and in the varied handwriting of whoever had added it were soap, detergent, blankets, gloves, coffee, tea that had been underlined as well then toothbrush. Next to that, and in a different pen, the letters 'es had been added. Someone else had added 'x 3. That had been crossed out, with the word 'lots scrawled in its place.