Day Twenty-Eight - Return To The Fort (Season 5: The Rain)
Author: R R Haywood
Date: 2024-04-26 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Zombie Apocalypse
Description: The Undead. The UK's Bestselling Horror Comedy Series. The Undead Return To The Fort Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Amazon & Audible bestselling author, RR Haywood. One of the most downloaded indie authors in the UK with over three million books sold and 25+ Kindle bestsellers. *WINNER OF DISCOVER SCI-FI BEST RELEASE OF 2023 * The Battle For Gatwick is over. The team are broken. They desperately need rest. But rest is not to be found because the darkest days still lie ahead in Season Five of The Undead. This book was authored by Richard Haywood and not generated by any machine or artifi

THE UNDEAD TWENTY EIGHT

RR HAYWOOD

1899 INC LTD

Copyright © 2024 by RR Haywood

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CONTENTS

Untitled

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Also by RR Haywood

Season Five: The Rain

RETURN TO THE FORT

They always said George was the most dangerous of them all.

The others were skilled at killing. Especially Dave.

But what George could do was far beyond that because George excelled at making others kill for him.

PROLOGUE

Hinchley Point

Day Twenty-Eight

The town was so beautiful. So heart-achingly beautiful. Now it’s a ruin of war, with skeletal buildings and twenty thousand bodies lying tangled and torn. Killed by mortars and gunfire from the hill. Run down by the Saxon and torn apart by grenades.

Howie turns to look at the town behind him, seeing through the gaps in the destruction nearly all the way to the mosque at the far end and it’s nothing but dead human bodies covering every square foot. Draped over walls. Hanging out of windows. Crushed under debris. Burnt remains. Limbs. Organs. Innards. Eyes still open. Men. Women. Children.

‘Coming in!’ George calls as he and Henry make their way forward with green laser lights shining from their rifles. Veering away from the fires and heat. Treading over corpses and splashing through rivers of blood created by Dave on a rampage as they near the café.

They walk on to the square, then over more rubble and corpses to the plaza. The bodies here thicker than anywhere else. Lying three or four deep in some places, and the flies already buzzing in to feast.

Lilly and her group stand near the back of the plaza. Mary and Peter grim-faced, and the hatred doesn’t show now when they look over to Howie. Not after this. Not after seeing it for themselves. Kyle a few steps away. His normally genial face a shadow of pain.

Frank and Carmen off to one side. Both silent as they change magazines in their assault rifles. Reginald by the door looking over at Howie. Eye contact held for a few seconds. The plan worked to save the people of Hinchley Point, but the cost is too high for them to rejoice in their own brilliance. Not from this. Never from this.

Paula looks about at the awful view. At the limbs and bodies. At the gunshots and wounds, and the flies buzzing through the now near silent air. ‘How many did you lose, Peter?’ she asks gently, looking to the leader of the travellers flanked by his men and Lilly, and Mary.

Peter swallows. His face ashen. ‘Four.’

‘Five,’ Willie says. ‘Kenny went down in the mosque, so he did.’

Paula nods, showing the sadness she feels inside. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘I think,’ Peter says, his voice low and deep as he shoots a look at Lilly. ‘I think I’m the one needing to apologise…’

He swallows. Thinking about how Lilly convinced him and his men to aim their guns at Howie and Henry in the fort to make them reveal where the Panacea was. Henry said it was a mistake. But Peter didn’t stop. Willie and Elvis urged him on, and he made Henry say where to start looking. He sent Patrick and Tyson with some others, while Peter and the rest joined Howie to rescue Blowers and Carmen here at Little Italy.

In the plaza, Henry and George pick their way forward while clocking the positions of everyone else. Frank and Carmen off to one side. Everyone filthy and looking ready to drop.

‘That’s got to be it,’ Patrick says in the van as they look for the address Henry gave them to start searching for the Panacea. He spots a single, isolated house and checks the map again. ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ he adds, lifting his radio up. ‘Peter, are you there?’

‘Aye, I’m here. Go ahead, Patrick.’

‘We’re at this house, we are. We’ll have a look and give you a shout.’

‘The lads are at the address you gave them, Henry,’ Peter says at Hinchley Point.

‘I heard,’ Henry says.

‘Do ye want me to stand them down?’ Peter asks, struggling to form the words the right way. Wanting to say sorry for what he did.

‘No,’ Lilly cuts in before Henry can reply. ‘Keep them going…’

‘Right,’ Patrick says as they get out of the van outside the house perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea. ‘Callum? Where you going?’

‘Going in first,’ Callum shouts back, setting off down the driveway with a point to prove. ‘ANYONE HOME?’ Callum shouts out, banging the butt of his pistol on the front door.

‘Jesus, Callum. Will ye calm down,’ Patrick calls.

‘I’m fecking calm, Patrick. IS ANYONE HOME?’ he yells again, hitting the door harder.

‘Good lord,’ George says, shaking his head while looking about. ‘I’d say that’s the whole town destroyed… Shame really, it was very pretty here,’ he adds, taking in the mosque behind them. ‘Getting in through the windows, were they?’ he asks, prompting everyone to turn around to hide the discrete hand signal from Henry that tells Frank and Carmen to make ready. Both of them taking a step out while gently easing the safety switches off from their rifles as Callum kicks the door that breaks the wire that sends a signal to the receivers that ignite the blasting caps within the blocks of C4 prepped throughout the old cottage perched on the bluffs overlooking the sea. The house Henry and his team lived in for the first month, and the house Henry prepped when they left, just in case anything like this should ever happen. And as Patrick yells, so Callum and the guys with him are removed from this earth by the detonation, and it’s all Patrick and Tyson can do to crawl away from the heat and shockwaves.

‘Lovely old, stained-glass windows they had too,’ George says, shifting into firing position in the plaza. Henry a few feet over. Frank and Carmen positioning. Dave seeing the way they are angling as Kyle realises the play at hand and turns fast. Snatching views to the preparatory positions of his old team as Peter’s radio blasts out.

‘PETER! IT’S A FUCKING SET UP… THEY BLEW THE HOUSE… CALLUM’S DEAD… THEY’RE ALL FUCKING DEAD…’

The blink of any eye. The beat of a heart, and as Peter’s men and Lilly spin about, so they see four sets of green laser lights shining at them from four rifles held by four very experienced people.

‘DON’T!’ Kyle shouts, but the speed of it is too fast, and the shots ring out with double taps to chests and single shots to heads. Lilly blinks once, seeing men either side of her flying back, and she spots the look of horror on Peter’s face a split-second before he’s shot dead. His hot blood spattering over her and Mary. Making both of them flinch as more bodies drop.

Then, it’s done. Over. Peter dead, and six other men killed instantly.

‘Fuck me,’ Howie mutters, hardly believing what he just saw. A brutal execution carried out so swiftly, and only then, does he notice Dave has his pistols out. Three of the kills down to him.

‘Jesus. Henry… What did you do?’ Kyle asks.

‘I dislike being threatened. I thought I made that clear,’ Henry says.

Lilly doesn’t move or reply. Mary next to her trembling from head to toe. Willie and Elvis rendered silent, with shaking hands coming up in surrender.

‘This is what will happen now,’ Henry says. The green dot of his rifle unwavering on Lilly’s chest. ‘George is going to take over running the fort to ensure there is a place of safety for the people with immunity. If your men here or any others in that camp even think of taking revenge, I will kill every man, woman, and child in there, and then. I will come for you. Do you need me to clarify anything I have said?’

‘No,’ she says, her eyes fixed on his.

‘To be clear to you all,’ Henry says into that awful silence. ‘I do not know where the panacea is, but I do know where to start looking for it. Howie, I need to use you and your team as a shield to get where we need to be. Do we have an agreement?’

‘No,’ Howie says quietly, simply.

Henry frowns, glancing to Reginald, then over to Howie. ‘I think Reginald intended for us to reach this plan, Howie.’

‘He did,’ Howie says, patting his pockets for cigarettes.

George stays quiet. His eyes flicking from Howie to Reginald, to Lilly, and to Mary, then to Willie, and Elvis. Scanning their reactions. His finger on the trigger guard of his rifle, and he listens to the almost surreal conversation as Howie chats to his team in a way to diffuse Henry’s authority, and George clocks the seething cold fury within Lilly’s eyes showing not a shred of fear. Not even when they shot Peter and the others. Even Mary flinched. Lilly didn’t. If anything, she looked irritated at being outmanoeuvred.

‘I’m proud of what you did here… All of you… That took some bollocks, that did,’ Howie says.

‘Incredible,’ Clarence says. ‘That’s above and beyond.’

‘It is,’ Paula says as the younger ones look at each other. Filthy and exhausted to the bone, but still standing.

‘You have a good sergeant,’ Carmen says.

‘I always thought he was a wanker, personally,’ Howie says, getting a few chuckles as Blowers lowers his head with a shy smile. ‘Anyway, we need to crack on. Carmen, I suggest you come with us. You’re covered in blood. We’ll stop somewhere and get cleaned up… Henry, Lilly… Can you make sure the people here get somewhere safe, please…’

‘Howie, we need to discuss-’

‘Go fuck yourself, Henry. We had that chat before. Go back to the fort. Don’t go back to the fort. I don’t give a shit. Do what you want.’

‘The Panacea, Howie.’

‘Where is it then?’ Howie asks, flaring up as he glares at Henry. ‘We’re not pawns in your game. Where is it?’

George stays silent and watchful. Seeing once again how very different Howie is to his father. There’s an energy about Howie. A dark and brutal energy that you can almost see and certainly feel. That’s rare. Not many people have that, and one thing is for certain, Henry is going to have his work cut out finding a way to assume leadership from Howie.

Which is why Henry stays quiet now. Refusing to be drawn or to be seen giving into Howie’s demands.

‘Reggie? Can you find it?’ Howie asks.

‘I can try, Mr Howie.’

‘Good enough for me,’ Howie says. ‘Lilly, stop being a cunt and grow up. My team, load up, we’re moving out.’

They head off, with George holding position. Sensing that Howie means what he says. Henry detects it too, with a subtle glance to George who nods once with an almost imperceptible motion.

‘London,’ Henry calls as George clocks the faint, wry smile on Reginald’s face. ‘That’s our starting point.’

‘Okay,’ Howie says, walking on with the others. ‘We’ll be at this Camber place when you want to talk properly. Carmen? You coming?’

Another brief chat, and Howie’s team start clambering into the Saxon as George spots the sudden blaze of anger in Mary’s eyes as she recovers from the shock.

‘Ye marked, Henry. I swear it! Ye marked! You! And you! And you!’ Mary screams out, pointing at them in turn.

Howie stares at her, looking jarred at the raw emotion, as the tears stream down Mary’s face. She screams and fights to break free while George spots the cold detachment in Lilly’s eyes.

She doesn’t look sixteen now. She looks ageless.

‘And you, Howie,’ Mary says. Her voice dropping low. ‘My Uncle Pete fought for you. He stood at your side!’

‘You held us hostage!’ Paula yells, jumping from the back of the Saxon as Clarence rushes out to hold her back.

‘Get Mary away,’ Kyle orders, motioning at Willie and Elvis, but they don’t look so happy either. None of them do. The shock of it is wearing off. The rage is coming back. ‘It’s just words, Henry,’ Kyle adds, turning to his old CO.

‘I’ve given my terms,’ Henry says. ‘George will be taking control of the fort.’

‘Ye can’t send George back now, Henry,’ Kyle says with a glance to George standing quietly nearby. ‘Not after this.’

‘Aye. It’s fine, Father,’ Mary says with tears rolling down her face. ‘We’ll take the old fella back with us. And we’ll bring his fecking head in a box when we come looking for you. An eye for an eye. And his wife is still there, is she not?’

‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ Paula yells, George’s niece, although he wasn’t as close to her as his wife Marion. Clarence starts dragging Paula away while Cookey and the lads bundle out of the Saxon, filling the air with shouts and yells.

Howie opens his mouth, ready to order his team back, but a sudden nag stops him before he can give the order, and George watched the cogs turning in Howie’s mind. The way he looks at George with a frown, then back to Henry.

George knows what Howie is thinking. He is wondering why Henry, a skilled commander of an elite covert team, would order George to the fort in the first place. Henry’s no fool. He knows that by killing Peter he’ll create a grudge, and the travellers are the type to never let that grudge go. Mary just said it. An eye for an eye.

Why expose George to that risk for a fort that has no real strategic value?

The immunes, Reginald mouths, and George spots the nods and looks between them. They’re right too.

Heather has a list of immune people. She’s out there now. Searching for them with orders to take them back to the fort for protection – because it’s not the fort Henry wants. It’s the immune people, and the realisation forms a split second later that Henry didn’t kill Peter for revenge.

This wasn’t payback.

This was a fucking coup.

Henry took Peter out to create a power vacuum.

The travellers are patriarchal. And with Peter dead, they won’t accept Mary as a leader. It’ll be Patrick or Tyson, or Willie, or Elvis.

It will be whoever George chooses to be in charge. That’s why George is going back with them. He’ll negotiate and pacify with skilled diplomacy while all the time holding the threat of annihilation over their heads.

Henry can come back.

You don’t want that.

Henry will kill you all.

Not only that, but George is Paula’s uncle.

Marion is her aunt.

Killing them is hurting one of Howie’s family and risking his wrath, and every person in that fort knows what Howie is capable of, and they’ll all know about the kiss too.

Everyone in the mosque saw Marcy kiss the survivors and turn them. That’s why Henry has left some of the travellers alive; so they’ll go back and tell the others what they saw.

George notices the look of disgust on Howie’s face as he realises he unwittingly played a part in something bigger going on.

‘Enough!’ he snaps the word out, gaining instant compliance from his team shouting back at Mary and the others.

Everyone does it. All of them falling silent, and that surge of anger radiates out from Howie. Meredith starts to growl. Moving in next to Howie, flicking her lips up to show Henry her teeth. To show Mary and the others. Faces harden. Blowers and Cookey. Nick and Mo Mo. Booker and Danny. Charlie. Tappy. Marcy. Clarence. Roy. Reginald too, and right there, in the middle of them all, stands Dave, with his pistol already drawn and held at his side.

A shift in power. A shift in focus. Mary swallows. Willie and Elvis glance at each other. Seeing the violence Howie has now aiming at them as the dog growls louder and deeper, and Jess kicks the back of the horsebox, shaking the frame.

‘This is not our way,’ Howie says. His words meant for Henry. For Lilly and for his own team too, at being drawn into their shit.

‘Get loaded,’ Clarence orders. ‘Tappy, get in the back. The boss will drive.’

The big man stands his ground, waiting for the others to load up. Nobody speaks, and the people in the mosque slowly ease out from the shadows to view their once perfect town now lying in ruins, and the thousands of spent casings glinting in the evening sun amongst the thousands of corpses.

Smoke drifting from fires. Heat and the stench of chemicals and innards. Shit and death, and blood.

The engine starts. Deep and throaty. The wheels start moving. Crunching stones. Crunching bones.

Hot bodies in a hot tin can.

They leave Hinchley Point behind. A place once famous for its Mediterranean architecture and white-washed walls.

It’s not anymore.

It’s another place of ruin and death in this brave new world.

1

Hinchley Point

Day Twenty-Eight

“Always be polite”

‘We must always present ourselves in the best way we can,’ George used to tell Dave. ‘We are judged on how we look, and our appearance reflects not only on our own individual character but that of the team, and we must have loyalty to our team above all else.’

Dave was always neat and tidy, but receiving that instruction from George, the man who initially discovered and then helped train Dave, propelled Dave into a far heightened state of impeccable appearance.

Which even now is still a source of pride for George.

The whole town of Hinchley Point is in ruins, save for the Mosque, and even that has seen far better days. And everyone other than Dave was dripping with blood and covered in gore. Whereas Dave was still as neat as a pin.

The same as George is now. A man of average height with receding hair, streaked with grey, cut short and neat. A trimmed moustache with each side an equal length from the exact centre of his upper lip. A dark checked shirt. The sleeves rolled precisely and neatly above the elbows. Tan coloured combat trousers. Tan coloured assault boots. A tac-vest on his slim frame. The rifle held by a strap to the front. His pistol strapped to his side. The baseball cap looks somewhat odd, given his appearance, but then the sun is glaring, and so the tactical advantage of wearing it outweighs the minor irritation of adorning such a thing.

But then it also suits him and gives that instant essence of what he is. A former Special Forces soldier now turned operative working for the British Security Services. Not that such a thing exists in this brave new world, but one must still present in a way that is fitting.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to leave Bashir with you?’ Henry asks quietly, having led the survivors to find vans and minibuses to take them away.

‘I’ll be fine,’ George replies. ‘And you can stop that look, Henry. It’s nothing I haven’t done many times before.’

‘This is quite different, George.’

‘You said that in Kabul. And Baghdad. And Sierra Leone. And Syria. And-.’

‘Point taken,’ Henry says because George is right. He has done this many times before.

‘I’ll be fine,’ George says again. ‘Focus on Howie. Win his team first, take away any animosity they have towards your presence, and then, it will become just a thing between you two.’

Henry nods. Glad of the counsel from a man long versed in manipulation. ‘And Henry?’ George says, earning another glance. ‘Don’t let Howie get under your skin. That man is an apex killer. He’ll sense that weakness.’

‘Noted.’

‘We’re done!’ Frank calls while circling his hand to show it’s time to move out. ‘You gonna be alright, Georgie?’

‘I’ll be fine, Frank!’ George calls.

‘Yeah, he’ll be fine,’ Frank says, knowing Mary and Lilly, and the others can hear every word he is saying. Which is why he’s saying it. ‘He’s one of my oldest friends, is Georgie. We go way back…’ his voice turns to gravel for the last few words as Frank McGill glares for a few very long seconds at the remaining travellers. Stocky. Gnarly. A shock of greying hair and piercing blue eyes. An energy about him. An aura that stills even Mary’s tongue.

A moment later, with nothing more to be said, Henry departs, and a sudden, hard silence descends with a now isolated George staring across to Mary, Lilly, Elvis, Willie, and Kyle.

‘Well. Here we are,’ he says politely in a voice straight from a British Pathé newsreel. ‘Now, I am very sure you are thinking to exact revenge, and one can hardly blame you for doing so, but I’d like to suggest we wash our linen in the privacy of the camp. There are some very terrified people here looking to you for safety. To that end, Lilly and I will take the lead vehicle and-.’

‘Who the feck do ye think ye are giving orders?’ Mary asks.

‘It wasn’t an order, Mary. Just a suggestion. Would you like to take the lead vehicle? Lilly and I can bring up the rear.’

‘Ye can feck off suggesting anything. We choose where we go.’

‘Then within which vehicle would you be prepared to travel in?’ George asks with a deft touch that reflects Mary as the problem.

‘Don’t ye fecking put this shit on me!’

‘Ach, Mary. Will ye knock it off,’ Kyle says.

‘I’m not doing a thing!’

‘Of course,’ George says with a show of polite tolerance.

‘What the feck is that?’ Mary asks at his tone as she looks from him to the others. ‘You’re making it look like I’m the issue now. Ye just killed Peter.’

‘Okay. Let’s just get back,’ Lilly says, motioning Mary to stay calm. ‘Please, you go on the bus with Kyle. Willie and Elvis bring up the rear, and I’ll take the front with George.’

‘Don’t you want me to stay with you?’ Mary asks.

‘Ach, Mary. Quit being so fecking needy,’ Willie snaps, already striding off. ‘And ye need to know, George, the chances are ye’ll get killed back at the camp. Henry’s threat mattered here, but it won’t carry no weight back there.’

‘I am not fecking needy!’ Mary shouts as the others walk off. ‘Needy, my ass. I never needed nothing from no one! And I can shoot straighter and punch bloody harder than any of ye.’

‘Get on the bus, Mary!’ Kyle says as she starts to bluster. ‘I said get on the damned bus!’

George takes the front SUV and starts the engine as Lilly gets in the front and adjusts her pistol from digging into her hip, and props her rifle between her legs.

A moment later, he pulls away and starts the drive back to the fort. The evening rapidly approaching. The sky overhead darkening, but the heat still high, seemingly pressing down with an almost crushing force.

‘What happens now?’ Lilly asks after a few moments, breaking the silence first, which in itself is a victory to George.

George doesn’t reply to subconsciously disrupt any soft attempt by Lilly to exert control by way of conversation.

‘I said what happens now?’ Lilly asks a moment later, but still no reply, and she thinks fast. She saw what happened to Peter, and for a split-second, she thought she’d be executed too, but it didn’t happen. Why not? Why wasn’t she killed too?

But that doesn’t mean she can’t be executed now they’ve gone.

‘I made a mistake,’ she adds as George focusses on the road ahead. ‘Threatening you and Henry, and Howie. And if I am to be honest, the greater error was perhaps trying to use force to get what I wanted against an opponent with greater skill.’

George stays silent, and Lilly senses now is not the time for questions. But there must have been a reason why George wanted to travel with her. It could be that he is still considering whether to execute her. Or perhaps he just wants her close because she poses a risk.

But he stays silent, even when they reach the bay.

‘If they kill you, I will do my best to protect Marion,’ Lilly says as they approach the container wall with the access truck gliding back.

George pulls over to let the buses go past, followed by Kyle and Mary in the rear vehicle, with Kyle staring over to George. Knowing what George will be doing and not convinced he won’t be dead within the next ten minutes.

George winds his window up despite the heat and pulls out behind to go in last while noticing how Lilly subconsciously checks the position of her pistol and tightens the grip on her rifle between her knees.

‘Ye fecking cunt!’ a loud shout and a gob of saliva hits the glass next to George’s head. One of the guards with a tear-streaked face shouting abuse, and he runs over to boot the door. ‘Ye killed Callum!’ he scrabbles for the door handle, but George applies speed and pulls away with more men shouting after him.

‘Fuck you!’ one of them yells, jumping in front of the car, with George braking and veering around as the guy runs alongside and lashes out with the butt of his shotgun, smashing the saliva-streaked window into hundreds of tiny glittering chunks. More shouts from the other side. Rocks pelting the doors as Lilly tenses, realising even her presence isn’t stopping them.

‘I think you should leave, George,’ she says quickly. ‘Drop me off and drive away.’

George doesn’t reply. He drives on behind the convoy. Knowing word would have spread about the house Henry’s team stayed in being prepped with C4 that detonated when Callum kicked the door in.

‘Look out!’ Lilly says as George pulls his head back to let a rock fly through the broken window and hit the dashboard as a youth runs up to spit inside, with gob going on George’s hand. He wipes it away with no show of reaction. His heart only slightly above a resting state, but the thrill is there. The thrill of the game.

‘George. You really need to go,’ Lilly urges. ‘Think about Marion.’

Still, George doesn’t say anything and drives along the road leading to the beach. The bay on the right where the nice, detached houses once stood. All of them now pulled down, and the contents absorbed either into the camp or into the fort.

The land flattened in all directions, with hedges and bushes ripped out. Giving clear sight from the camp to the wall. That great, multicoloured metallic snake stretching along for what looks like miles. Enclosing them into the bay.

One house left at the end. The last house on the bay. Howie’s house. Now, it lies in darkness.

They approach the beach adjoining the road and see the lanterns giving light to the workers processing the incoming refugees from Hinchley Point. A few small boats in the water ferrying them over to the fort on its own island. The sides dark and imposing, with a faint glow coming from the centre, hinting at the lights shining within.

The camp on the other side of the road next to the beach. Lights everywhere. Spilling from caravans. Smells of cooking, and lines of washing. Dogs barking. Chickens pecking inside coops. Kids running about, kicking balls on the patches of grass.

The car holding Willie and Elvis steers off by the crossroads and stops quickly. A crowd surges around it. People from the camp all talking at once as Willie and Elvis get out.

George slows to give them time to report that Peter is dead and spots Mary jumping from the bus and running back with Kyle.

‘They fecking killed Peter!’ she yells, plunging into the chaos as Kyle shouts after her.

George stops the SUV. His hands on the wheel.

‘Where the feck is he then?’ Patrick shouts, the words lost in the din, but George lipreads the sentiment and tuts softly, earning another alarmed look from Lilly.

‘George. Go!’ she urges.

He opens the door and glances back at her. ‘Never say more than is needed.’

‘What?’ she asks, leaning over as he gets out, then cursing as she kicks her own door open, then cursing again when it pings back on her. ‘What did you say?’ she calls as a few of the people at the edge of the crowd glance, then double-take, and start shouting and pointing.

‘That’s him!’

‘THERE!’

They surge as one, with George planting his feet and resting his hands on the top of his rifle hanging from the strap to his front.

‘Ye fucking piece of shit!’ Patrick yells, striding through the others. ‘Don’t touch him! He’s mine!’ he shouts as a lad looms in front and spits on George’s arm. Bloodlust in the air, and the need for revenge clear in their faces.

‘Ye killed Peter!’ Tyson yells, getting to the front with Patrick. ‘Ye killed Peter, ye fucking piece of shit!’

‘What did you think would happen?’ George asks as Tyson and Patrick’s faces twist in rage as they come in close, forcing George back, but the crowd gets in close behind, blocking any escape.

‘Stay calm! We can talk this through,’ Kyle urges, trying to reason where no reason can be found.

‘They killed them!’ Elvis calls over everyone else. Brave and vocal now he’s back with his friends. ‘They gunned them down for no reason! No reason at all! And Peter fought with them. We all did!’

‘Ye dirty fecking coward,’ Patrick shouts, grabbing at the front of George’s shirt. ‘I’ll slit ye throat, so I will!.’

‘Get your hands off me,’ George says as Tyson grabs George’s chin to turn his head.

‘I’m gonna slit your throat!’

‘I’ll fecking shoot him,’ Tyson shouts and pulls a pistol to prod the barrel into George’s temple. ‘I’ll put a bullet through you!’ he screams out with spittle hitting George. ‘Ye killed Peter! Why? Why did ye do it?’

‘You threatened us first,’ George says. His voice strong and full of authority.

‘He did not!’ Willie shouts. ‘We fought with you. We fecking helped!’

‘He doesn’t mean at Hinchley Point, you daft twat!’ Mary shouts. ‘He means here when Uncle Peter threatened them first.’

‘Shut up, Mary!’ Willie shouts.

‘Don’t tell me to shut up!’

‘But they broke Callum’s arm!’ Elvis shouts.

‘That was a playground scrap!’ Mary says. ‘Peter pointed guns first, but Henry shouldn’t have done that. Ye shouldn’t have done that, George.’

‘Mary, ye need to shut up and feck off,’ Patrick shouts. ‘Go with the other women.’

‘Mary, will ye come over here and let the men sort it,’ Kathy calls, trying to pull her away.

‘I’ve every right to speak my mind!’ Mary yells as the men turn their back on her and surround George.

‘You killed Peter!’ Tyson yells again, pushing the gun under George’s chin and looking ready to pull the trigger. ‘Ye killed them, ye fucking sick cunt! Did they even say anything?’

‘Henry said he’ll come back and slit the throats of all our babies and women,’ Elvis shouts.

Another roar as the crowd surges in closer, with Tyson still gripping George’s front, pushing the pistol under his chin while Patrick stays close at his side.

‘Ach, he did not say that,’ Kyle shouts over the noise.

‘He said if we hurt George, they’ll come back and kill all of us, including the children and women,’ Mary shouts over the noise.

‘Mary, will ye fuck off!’ Willie tells her before turning back on George.

‘Ye’d kill the babies?’ Tyson asks looking at George in disgust.

‘We’ll kill everyone in this fort if we need to,’ George says, making some people gasp while others shout. ‘Because everyone will die if we fail.’

‘Ye can’t just execute people!’ Patrick shouts into his face.

‘You threatened us first. Henry told you to stop, Patrick. He urged you to stop. You were there. And you were, Tyson. And you, Elvis, and Willie, and Mary. Eggy, you heard Henry telling Peter to stop. Peter wouldn’t listen,’ George says.

‘Don’t ye fecking say his name!’ Patrick screams.

‘There is too much at stake for this,’ George shouts over them. ‘Henry admired Peter. We all did. We deeply respected the man, which is why we told him what we had in the first place! You know that, Patrick. And you do, Tyson. And I’ll not speak ill of the dead. I won’t do that. We honour Peter. But he took a wrong turn, and we said to stop…’

‘Shut up! SHUT THE FUCK UP!’ Patrick roars.

‘It’s the truth, Patrick. This is not a game. And yes. We will kill every person in this camp to get that Panacea out to save everyone else. You cannot sacrifice an entire species for a grudge. Go ahead. Shoot me and avenge Peter, but I swear to god Henry and Howie will eradicate you from the face of this planet to protect our mission. We are the only thing left, Patrick. There is no army. There is no government. If we don’t reach that Panacea, then you will all die. Everybody will.’

‘Why did you send Callum to that house?’ Tyson demands. ‘Why did you send us? Why didn’t you say ye didn’t have it.’

‘We did say that!’ George says.

‘Aye. They did. Henry did say that,’ Kyle says.

‘Ach. Yeah. They did,’ Mary concedes.

‘Mary! Let the boys sort it,’ Kathy says.

‘She can voice her mind,’ another camp woman called Gemma says.

‘Aye. I can voice my mind, and I will,’ Mary says as the men tell them to go away and be quiet.

‘Let me ask you this,’ George calls into the bedlam. ‘Why didn’t we kill Willie and Elvis? Why didn’t we kill Patrick and Tyson? And Kyle and Lilly, and Mary? We had them in our sights.’

The shouts reduce. The venom still there, but the point raised holds their interest enough to listen.

‘We could have executed them all and then lied, and said they went down in the battle. The rest of you would be here not knowing anything.’

Silence with everyone listening.

‘Maybe you should have done!’ Tyson growls and yanks the top back on the pistol, and pushes his arm out, ready to take the shot and kill George.

‘Why didn’t ye then?’ Patrick asks, putting a hand on Tyson’s arm to hold him off.

‘Because who do you think we are releasing the Panacea to first? We’re giving it to the people most likely to survive and pass it on. We need you alive, which is why we showed restraint. We told Peter not to threaten us, and we only negated what was needed. Now, that is all I am saying. I will not discuss anything while you are like this, so if you want to kill me, go ahead.’

The challenge hangs in the air as Tyson tenses and snarls, with every single person expecting him to do it. Waiting for the shot to be taken until the man grunts and pulls his arm back, releasing George.

‘He can feck off back to the fort,’ Tyson says with a filthy look at George as though this whole thing is sordid and just wrong. ‘We’ll talk about it and decide what to do.’

‘You’re just letting the man walk off then?’ Kathy asks, a strong character in the camp. ‘Peter would never let that go, Tyson. He’d have revenge for ye. An eye for an eye.’

‘And then what? Go ahead and fecking shoot him yerself, but then go and stand outside, and tell Henry and Howie what ye did, so they don’t kill my children,’ Tyson says.

‘I will come over in the morning,’ George says. ‘Again. I am sorry for your loss.’

He walks off to a rising tide of voices shouting to be heard, with squabbles breaking out as the camp seems to split between Tyson and Patrick.

Lilly watches on, sensing she just saw a master at work. How George stood. How he spoke. His facial expressions, and how he dared Tyson to kill him and thereby displayed a toughness admired by many of the people in the camp who, she guesses, wouldn’t even notice it on a conscious level.

‘I’m heading over,’ she says, getting Mary’s attention.

‘Aye. I’ll not be long,’ Mary says, going back to the arguments as Lilly rushes after George, catching him up on the road next to the beach.

‘Go with your girlie, Mary,’ Willie says with a look of disgust at her.

‘Aye, will you feck off, Mary,’ Elvis adds.

‘I’m staying to talk this through,’ Mary says.

‘No, Mary. We need to talk this through,’ Tyson replies, motioning the men. ‘Ye not even part of us now. Ye sleep over there every night with your girlie, so you do.’

‘It’s still my home!’ she snaps as the arguments carry on, sailing clear through the camp and over the road as George and Lilly walk away.

‘Always be polite,’ George says. ‘And never say more than is needed, and always control the options.’

Lilly nods. Taking the lesson in silence. Knowing that is exactly what George just did. He said only what was needed, and even when he showed anger, he was still polite, and it put him above everyone else. The options though? How did he control the options? He said shoot me or let me go. ‘Oh,’ she says as she gets it. ‘You planted the options. Kill me or don’t kill me. They could have banished you or beaten you up, or held you prisoner as a shield against Henry, or they could have captured Marion and used her against you. But you only gave them two options. Kill me or don’t kill me… And if they don’t kill you, then they can’t do anything.’

They reach the beach and the Hinchley Point survivors. George slows and sticks to the shadows, with Lilly staying close as they come to a stop in earshot of the people in the medical tents and the others chatting nearby.

‘…and that woman. The pretty one. She kissed some of the guys, and they like turned into the things, but they went out, and that Howie was with them and…’

‘They didn’t stop fighting. I can’t even… What they did… They would have died for us…’

‘The big one. Yeah, with the bald head. Did you see him? He was throwing people like nothing.’

‘And that guy with the knives. Oh my god. I felt sick seeing it, you know? But I couldn’t stop watching it.’

‘Yeah, and those lads held ‘em off; then all hell broke loose, and there was mortars and arrows, and a big machine gun…’

‘No, but seriously. That Howie. What he did. He went out to fight them. I can’t believe it. I just… I can’t stop seeing it in my head. How fast they were. How strong and…’

‘Reputation matters,’ George whispers. ‘It magnifies the actual capability.’

George checks his shirt is tucked in properly and smooths his hair down, then stands up straighter, and seems to transform on the spot before he steps out into the light.

‘All well, chaps?’ he asks in that British Pathé voice as his presence seems to radiate out, making everyone turn.

‘That’s one of them!’

‘He was there.’

‘I saw him!’

‘And that girl with him! She was savage.’

‘Nothing too serious, I hope,’ George says, glancing in at one of the survivors being checked by Doctor Ann Carlton while another is examined by the nurse, Anika Singh.

‘I’m alright. It’s just a little fracture,’ the man says, sitting up straight.

‘Splint?’ George asks.

‘Pretty much all we can do,’ Ann says, already applying one to the man’s arm.

‘You’re in safe hands,’ George says with a firm nod before walking on. ‘Well done, chaps. You all did brilliantly.’

Lilly walks with him. Seeing the effect he has and the aura he projects, and the way he shows pride to men needing an ego boost or pain, and regret at others in the grip of terror and grief.

‘Are all these people processed?’ he asks, seeing a big group near the shore. ‘We need to get them into the fort.’

‘Most of the boats stop running when it gets dark,’ Lilly says.

‘Have you got comms? Order some more into action. These people need rest and security. Soon have you over, chaps!’

‘Lilly to Lenski or Norman. I’m back on the shore. We need more boats for survivors.’

A pause. A crackle and hiss. ‘Is Lenski. Yes. We do this. Wait. Is good you are back. We worry.’

‘Lenski’s good. She’ll get them running,’ Lilly says.

‘Lilly? It’s Norman. Are you okay? We were worried.’

‘All well, Norman. Are you in the fort? We’ve got a lot of incoming. We’ll need food and bedding.’

‘Right. Er, I think everyone has shut down. No. It’s fine. Leave it with me. I’ll get it sorted.’

A moment later, and they see the light spill from the fort gates opening, followed by the sounds of boats starting up on the other side.

‘There we go! All sorted!’ George calls to the crowd, making it seem like he and Lilly alone made all of this happen.

They go back on Sandy’s boat, with George lifting babies in and helping old women. Courteous. Kind. Generous. He gets in last and gives the signal for Sandy to move out. Not that Sandy needs it. She’s been doing this for weeks now non-stop, but even she nods and sets off as Lilly watches the George effect in full flow.

‘Are you okay? Are you alright?’ George asks, checking on each until they reach the other shore to see Damsa in her black robes, with her friendly face showing warmth and kindness to the new arrivals.

‘It is okay. You are safe now. Are you hungry? We have food. Your injuries have been checked, yes?’

George and Lilly head past them and in through the gates to the glowing lights of the vast interior. The large, open grounds bordered by the inner walls and ramparts. A few buildings already constructed at the back. The big mess room in the middle with Aggie and some of the other cooks working to get food ready for the new arrivals. Colin, the section head of the stores, rushing past in his semi-permanent state of panic while clutching a clipboard. ‘I thought we closed at night! I’m not ready for more. I haven’t done my evening inventory!’

‘I’ll keep this short,’ George says quietly to Lilly. ‘Never change things too much at once. Big changes scare people, and right now, we need to keep people calm. You’ll be asked if Peter is dead. Say yes, and that you’ll explain later, but everything is fine.’

‘Lilly!’ Lenski’s hard voice calls out as she rushes over with Norman. ‘You kill Peter?’

‘We’re hearing rumours,’ Norman says.

‘Yes,’ Lilly says without a glance to George. ‘Peter has been killed. But for now, we focus on getting these people inside and safe. I’ll explain everything as soon as we get five minutes.’

‘Understood,’ Norman says.

‘We say no danger,’ Lenski says.

‘Actually. The word danger can be a trigger,’ George says. ‘It’s like saying don’t panic. It only makes people panic. Perhaps just say everything is fine.’

‘Right. Sure,’ Norman says, frowning from George to Lilly before he rushes off after Lenski.

‘Quick refreshment break,’ George says to Lilly before he sets off. ‘We don’t have long.’

‘Long for what?’ Lilly asks, but George doesn’t reply.

‘Ah, you’re back, Georgie,’ Marion says when they enter the old police offices a moment later. ‘How did it go? All well?’

‘All well, dear,’ George says, pecking his wife on the cheek.

‘Henry’s gone off with Howie, has he?’

‘He has, dear.’

‘Have you both eaten? Aggie’s rustling some food up in the mess hall. I’ll bring you both a plate over.’

‘We can go over there,’ Lilly says.

‘A leader needs to maintain a clear line of separation,’ Marion says. ‘A visit to the canteen is good for moral. Eating regularly amongst everyone is not. They’ll be invited to share their individual woes and troubles which are not your direct concern.’

‘But-.’

‘You have section heads for that, Lilly. Delegation is key. Use absence to increase your authority. Eh, Georgie.’

‘That’s right, dear.’

‘It weakens your value to be too accessible,’ Marion continues. ‘But at the same time, one must guard against isolation. Dictators and despots isolate themselves, don’t they, Georgie.’

‘Indeed, they do, dear.’

‘A good leader shows openness without making themselves too accessible,’ Marion continues. ‘And trust me. People feel better when they feel there is a strong authority in place. And in case George hasn’t told you, and if he has, then you can hear this twice. Always be polite. Never say more than is needed. Do not commit to anyone, and always control the options.’

She stops in front of Lilly and reaches up to pull Lilly’s hair out of the band to let it hang loose while nodding as though she just saw something that confirmed her suspicions. ‘Keep your hair in a ponytail. You look far too pretty with it down. Do you wear make-up?’

Lilly shakes her head.

‘Good. You don’t need it. People don’t like their leaders to look perfect. They find it intimidating.’

‘Henry said George is taking charge,’ Lilly says.

‘George is taking charge. And the fact you are still alive, young lady, is because George wants you to be his number two. Otherwise, you would have been executed in the car on the way back.’

Lilly blinks at the raw honesty.

‘Oh, and one last tip, dear,’ Marion whispers with a wink. ‘Never outshine the master. Show support, and it will heighten your own influence. Right. Pop over, see your brother quickly. They’re all under house arrest at the back for being feral little monsters.’

Lilly goes to speak, with even her incredible mind struggling to process the speed of things. In the end, she just nods and walks out, leaving George and Marion sharing a look with no words needed.

2

A hot night. The air sultry and close.

‘And then Milly said she could run faster than Amna, but Amna said she was fastestest, and Rajesh said me and him are boys, and boys are fastest, so we raced, and we didn’t see the cat, and it ran out, and Rajesh tripped, and the crazy cat lady shouted, and Amna shouted back and, and, and-.’

‘Okay! Slow down,’ Lilly says, trying to keep up with her brother speaking at a hundred miles an hour.

‘No, but it wasn’t Rajesh’s fault!’ Billy adds. ‘And he got told off!’

‘I got told off!’ Rajesh says.

‘It was the crazy cat lady,’ Ameer says as the children gather around Lilly with the earnest faces and passionate tones that only children can show at being so terrible wronged. ‘And then, we had to sit down!’

‘For all the day,’ Amna says.

‘For half an hour,’ Subi adds.

‘All the day!’ Amna says over her.

‘Okay! I see. No. Wait. Hold on,’ Lilly says as she considers what George would do. Always be polite. ‘I absolutely understand all of you, and I am listening,’ she says, looking at each of them in turn. Never say more than is needed. ‘But now, it is my turn to speak,’ she adds in that same polite tone, projecting authority and remaining impassive. It works too as the children mostly fall silent. Apart from Amna. But then Amna is a firecracker who only falls quiet when her big sister Subi puts a hand over her mouth. Do not commit to anyone. ‘I am not going to take sides. No! Listen. I love you all, but we must always be fair.’

Control the options.

‘So. Here are our choices. You can all either apologise to the crazy cat lady who we really shouldn’t call the crazy cat lady. Do we know her name? No? Okay, well. You can either apologise and go outside, or you can stay in here.’

The outburst comes as expected. The righteous indignation at being confined to quarters.

‘But you have a choice,’ Lilly says. ‘I am not telling you to apologise. You can remain inside and miss out on the big paddling pool being filled with water.’

That does it.

‘PADDLING POOL!’ Amna yells.

‘Apologise then. All of you,’ Lilly says, getting impatient nods back because she said there is a paddling pool, and now, that is the only thing any of them can think about.

Lilly leads them out into the fort proper to the festive lights glowing on the walls and lanterns glowing on the wooden buildings and marking the lanes between the tents. The crazy cat lady off to one side with her arms folded and a face like a she swallowed a wasp.

‘The children have something to say,’ Lilly says.

‘Sorry!’ come most of the voices.

‘PADDLING POOL!’ Amna yells and runs off.

‘Amna!’ Lilly shouts. ‘Billy, no! Milly, come back! Rajesh? Really? All of you?’

‘Great control,’ the crazy cat lady says with a sneer as Lilly considers shooting her.

‘Put your cats away,’ she says instead and strides off as the crazy cat lady detonates with a sound like a furball is stuck in her throat.

Lilly rushes after the children as they dive into the surprisingly large paddling pool being pumped full of cool seawater from a pipe running through the back door.

She stops to watch them playing with wild abandon and clocks the hierarchy within their own group, with Subi and Ameer slightly older and therefore perceived as leaders, and everyone else part of the pack, with Amna like a human stick of dynamite. Mind you. Milly isn’t that far behind her.

‘It’s actually very good for them,’ a woman says, strolling over. Thirties. Hair pulled back. Deep stress and angst in her eyes. ‘I’m a clinical psychologist for child welfare. Not that any training can prepare for something like this, but it is healthy for them to vent their trauma through play and allow freedom of expression.’

‘That’s good to know. I was worried they were turning feral,’ Lilly says.

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘Sorry?’

‘That this freedom of expression is good for them. They need to explore their emotions in a safe space.’

‘You have children?’

‘Er, no. And that’s actually a really invasive question.’

‘What is?’

‘Demanding to know if a woman or someone who identifies as a woman has made use of their womb.’

Lilly blinks. Figuring this isn’t something to deal with now. ‘Do you know where Pea and Sam went?’

‘They left earlier. They said they wanted to find their families. Which is their right.’

Lilly nods. Knowing it had played on both of their minds.

‘I’m Christine, by the way.’

‘Lilly.’

‘Billy’s sister? They said you’re in charge here?’

Lilly hesitates, not quite knowing how to reply while thinking about what Marion said. That she was alive only because George wants her to be the number two.

‘I am part of the, er, leadership team,’ Lilly says, thinking it sounds odd. Not that Christine seems to notice. But at least she’s helping to watch the children. Which again reminds Lilly of the other thing that Marion said. That people feel safer when they perceive there to be an authority in charge.

‘I saw some of the older ladies trying to do lessons,’ Christine adds. ‘In the day. I just wanted to say that’s really important. It’ll help regulate the children and give them some time to focus between.’

‘Of course. Can you help with that?’

‘I mean. I’m not a teacher. But maybe I act as a consultant, I guess. I mean. We could use the lessons as a way for them to explore their emotions and perhaps set up some role-play in a safe learning environment where they can creatively express themselves. Perhaps some body-positive drama workshops or painting classes with an emphasis on gender fluidity.’

‘Right. Well, Damsa pretty much knows everyone here. Lenski definitely does. They’ll know if there are any teachers.’

‘Amna! Don’t dunk Milly so hard,’ another woman shouts, wading into the paddling pool as Milly spits water while laughing hard. ‘I said no dunking!’ the woman says, pulling Amna away.

A strange feeling inside of Lilly at the sight. That she should be in the pool, playing with her brother, while also feeling a compulsion to get back to the offices to stay in the action with a rush of fear that she’ll lose her place.

But what place is that?

And why does she fear losing it?

She took charge to make the fort safe for her brother. Now, it is safe, and someone with experience and knowledge is in charge.

That means Lilly doesn’t have to do a thing.

She can fade into the background and spend time with her brother.

Isn’t that what she wanted?

Except, the journey has changed her, and she accepts, with brutal honesty, that it’s no longer about keeping the fort safe for her brother.

She likes being in control.

She likes it in a way she never thought possible, and inside there is an urge driving her to succeed and win. No matter what the cost. It doesn’t even matter what the winning looks like or what the prize is.

Lilly loves her brother, but this isn’t just about Billy now.

She slips away into the darkness. Crossing the fort she fought and killed for.

Her fort.

George is here now. But George is a lot older, and as she determined earlier, the fort is big and full of dark places, and accidents happen. She’ll learn what she can, and when the time is right, she’ll take it back.

3

‘You’re back,’ George says when Lilly walks into the offices a few moments later. ‘And how is Billy?’

‘Fine. Feral.’

George looks up. Detecting a clearer energy in Lilly. Which means the girl has had time to gather her thoughts. ‘I am sure the freedom is good for them,’ he adds as Marion rushes in with their food.

‘Can’t stop. Colin is having a meltdown at the prospect of someone needing stock from his stores before he’s counted every single item five times over. I heard the children apologised to Karen.’

‘Karen?’ Lilly asks.

‘The crazy cat lady,’ Marion says, taking the plates from the tray and pulling bottles of water from her pockets as Lilly notices the pistol holstered under the back of Marion’s loose shirt sleeves. ‘But as I say, at least we won’t get rats. Eh, Georgie.’

‘No rats, dear.’

‘We don’t want rats, Lilly,’ Marion says sternly. ‘And don’t tell Karen, but I’ve put one of her cats in the food stores, which Sunnie and Aggie weren’t happy about, but as I said to them, we don’t want rats. Not in here. Eh, Georgie?’

‘We don’t want rats, dear.’

‘And add that idea of Christine’s to the agenda,’ Marion says with a nod to Lilly who first wonders how the hell Marion can know what Christine said, and also, what she means by the agenda.

‘The agenda, dear,’ Marion says, taking a clipboard from another desk to pass over. ‘Christine wants to structure some lessons for the children, Georgie.’

‘I shall add it to the agenda then,’ Lilly says, frowning for a pen as one magically appears in Marion’s hand.

‘Always have a pen, dear.’

‘Of course. Can I keep this one?’

‘No. It’s mine,’ Marion says as Lilly writes Christine Lessons on the otherwise empty agenda, then blinks when Marion slides the pen from her fingers.

‘Now eat your dinner,’ she orders as Lilly picks her spoon up, with Marion watching like a hawk until she takes a mouthful of pasta and what tastes like canned fish in a tomato sauce.

‘Good,’ Marion says. ‘And drink your water,’ she orders.

‘I will,’ Lilly says, which apparently is not the response Marion wants as she carries on staring and thereby prompts Lilly to drink some water.

‘Good,’ Marion says. ‘Well, I can’t stop. Lots to do. Find a pen, Lilly. Stop stealing other people’s.’

‘I didn’t!’ Lilly tries to say with a mouthful of water, but it’s too late, and Marion bustles out. ‘I didn’t,’ she tells George, who isn’t the least bit interested in what Lilly does with pens.

‘Right. Read back what we’ve got so far. We haven’t got long,’ George asks before taking a spoonful of food.

‘Long for what?’ Lilly asks as George motions the agenda. ‘We’ve got Christine. Lessons. And that’s it. Long for what? And how is this meant to work if people think I’m still in charge? What if I give an order you don’t like?’

‘We have rats!’ Norman says as he marches in.

‘I said we don’t want rats!’ Marion says, striding in after him. ‘I said that, Norman. I said we don’t want rats.’

‘But we already have rats,’ Norman says. ‘Alf was clearing out some of the unused rooms and found a big nest.’

‘Lilly! Add it to the agenda,’ Marion says.

‘We have an agenda?’ Norman asks.

‘Lilly has the agenda,’ Marion says.

‘Lilly, the rats issue needs to be on the agenda,’ Norman says.

‘I’ll add it to the agenda,’ Lilly says. ‘When I get a pen.’

‘I said to always have a pen,’ Marion chides with a tut, handing another one over as Lenski walks in.

‘We have rat problem,’ she says.

‘RATS!’ Colin shouts over her, rushing in while in the grip of another panic.

‘It’s already on the agenda,’ Lilly says.

‘We have an agenda?’ Colin asks with the prospect of another panic attack at there being an agenda he didn’t know about. ‘Am I on it?’

‘Why would you be on it?’ Norman asks.

‘Because of my stores crisis!’ Colin says. ‘Lilly! Please put my crisis on the agenda.’

‘Hello,’ Damsa says, walking in with a polite smile. ‘Did you know we have rats?’

‘Oh, we know,’ Colin says dramatically. ‘We know all about the rats, and it’s already on the agenda.’

‘There is an agenda?’ Damsa asks.

‘Never mind that. What about my crisis?’ Colin says.

‘I’ll add it to the agenda, Colin,’ Lilly says.

‘Thank god!’ he exclaims as though that alone has solved the issue.

‘And can we discuss moving the building materials?’ Damsa asks.

‘No!’ a voice shouts from outside as Maleek, Damsa’s husband, rushes in with the other carpenter, Simar, along with Pardip and John, the construction managers, and Jaspal, the electrician.

‘We need it moved,’ Damsa says as her husband speaks rapidly in their language.

‘No, hang on,’ John says, the big builder trying to talk over them. ‘That’s logistics, not construction. You need to have a word with the guys bringing the stuff over.’

‘Sandy is in charge of logistics,’ Norman says.

‘I disagree,’ Damsa says to John. ‘You told the bay workers where to stack the material, and now, they’re putting everything there, and I need that space. We have people coming in daily. We need a safe and clean entrance for them. Lilly, can you add that to the agenda, please?’

‘What have we got so far?’ George asks, almost finishing his bowl of food.

‘We’ve got Christine, lessons. Rats. Colin stores crisis, and building materials location.’

‘We’ve got rats!’ Aggie calls, rushing in with Sunnie, the other cook. ‘I just saw one in the food stores.’

‘It’s already on the agenda,’ Lilly says as Aggie and Sunnie stare at Lilly, then at her uneaten bowl of food.

‘I’m eating it!’ she says, sliding it closer to tuck in.

‘And someone is still pilfering,’ Sunnie adds. ‘We keep losing boxes of chocolate bars and cases of fizzy pop.’

‘Put guards on that agenda,’ George says with a nod at Lilly. ‘How many have we got currently?’

‘Only a few,’ Lilly says, looking to Lenski.

‘Four,’ she says.

‘That’s not enough,’ George says. ‘Damsa? Are you asking if people have firearms or military experience when they come in?’

‘We ask this, yes.’

‘Ask again. I know soldiers and trust me, they won’t volunteer until they know how it’s all running, but once they settle in, they might change their minds. Add that to the agenda. We can put notices up, requesting people with experience to inform the main office. And we need a firearms cabinet in here. John? Is that something you can arrange?’ George asks.

‘Yeah, er… Sorry, what?’ John asks, frowning at the dynamics because he and everyone else thought Lilly was in charge, and now, it feels like George is giving orders.

‘You in charge here now?’ Lenski asks, as blunt as ever as the room falls silent and everyone looks to George. ‘And why Peter killed? Camp is angry.’

‘What’s going on?’ Simar asks, folding his arms as George sweeps his eyes over them, seeing how they perceive their collective authority is under threat from the sudden changes.

‘Holy shit. Holy shit. Not good,’ Sandy says, pushing into the offices. ‘It is seriously going off over there.’

‘Where?’ Norman asks.

‘The camp! They’re fighting and smashing bottles, and going batshit fucking crazy. They’re saying you killed Peter,’ she says with a look to Lilly and George.

‘Where’s Lilly? Is she in there?’ Dr Ann Carlton’s voice calls as she pushes into the room with Anika. ‘Lilly! They’re calling for George’s blood. I heard them saying they’ll bring boats over.’

‘To here?’ Norman asks as the alarm spreads through the room.

‘Willie was shouting to tell George his days are numbered,’ Ann says. ‘And Elvis was saying he’s a coward, hiding behind the big walls. I’ve never seen them like that.’

‘They can’t come over here!’ Norman says. ‘We can’t have drunk, armed men in the fort. We’ll have to get the guards to the gate.’

‘We only have four old men,’ Lenski says.

‘We’ll get the rifles out,’ John says to the other men. ‘And get up on the wall and put warning shots down if they approach.’

‘You’ll start a war!’ Norman says. ‘We need to deescalate, not make it worse.’

‘We’re not having drunk men with guns in this fort!’ John says. ‘We’ve got children in here.’

‘They’ve got children over there!’ Sandy says. ‘And half of them have bloody guns.’

‘Oh god, they’ll rob my stores,’ Colin says.

‘Lovely spot of food there,’ George says, wiping his mouth on a napkin as calm as anything. ‘You’ve done yourselves proud, knocking that up in a jiffy,’ he tells Sunnie and Aggie.

‘What about the camp?’ Sandy says.

‘They’re just grieving in their own way,’ George says. ‘Right. I need to stretch my legs and let that delicious food go down. Shall we take a look from up top?’ he asks with a look to Lilly, still trying to wolf her food down. ‘Marion? Where’s my kit?’

‘In the back, dear. The tech bag is on top.’

George walks through the others, all staring after him out the back, then returns a few seconds later with a black rucksack on one shoulder and his rifle in his hand. ‘Ready?’

‘Coming!’ Lilly says, taking the last mouthful and grabbing her rifle to rush after him.

‘Can you please explain what’s going on!’ Norman says as they bundle into the hot sultry night.

‘Everything is fine and normal,’ Lilly says.

‘This doesn’t feel fine and normal, Lilly,’ he calls.

‘It’s the zombie apocalypse, Norman. It’s not meant to feel fine,’ she replies as a faint smile touches George’s mouth.

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Norman says as they all rush behind George crossing the end of the open ground.

‘Er, excuse me!’ a demanding, educated voice calls.

‘Oh god. Please don’t tell me she knows,’ Lilly groans as Dr Lisa Franklin marches towards them from the medical rooms.

‘What the hell is going on? Apparently, we are about to be invaded.’

‘We are not being invaded,’ Lilly says.

‘Lisa, really. That is not appropriate. You’ll spread panic,’ Norman says.

‘Panic is already spreading,’ Lisa shouts. ‘The camp is about to smash through our gates in revenge of that man killing scores of their men, including Peter!’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Lilly warns.

‘I’ll do no such thing! What are you going to do? Send your girlfriend in to beat me up again?’

Lilly whips around with a flash of anger. ‘Leave it,’ George mutters. She bites it down and rushes after him up the ramp, with the others behind them.

‘We can’t let her say things like that. She’ll stir the whole fort up.’

‘Sometimes that aids us,’ George says quietly as they reach the top and head over to the edge of the wall to stare across the black waters to the camp, lit up like a fairground. Fires blazing in oil drums, and lanterns glowing everywhere, and even from inside the fort, they can hear the angry, drunken shouts and the distinct, sharp crack of a bottle hitting a hard surface.

‘Why are they so lit up?’ Norman asks, reaching their sides to look out as the others join them. All of them commenting on the lights and noise.

‘This not good. Noise and light not smart,’ Lenski says as George unzips his black rucksack and extracts a long, strange-looking scope, then lowers to a knee to rest it on the wall, and starts peering through the lens and touching buttons on the top.

‘What the hell is that?’ Simar asks.

‘That’s a night vision scope, isn’t it?’ Jaspal asks.

‘It is,’ George says.

‘I’ve not seen one like that though,’ Jaspal says.

‘Military spec,’ George murmurs, adjusting the settings and aim. ‘Ah, there we go.’ He pulls back and sets a small screen up next to the scope, then attaches a wire, with the view coming up instantly, showing bright yellow people with red centres gathered within a mass of harsh blooms of light. The others press in, murmuring and whispering, and then looking out with the naked eye.

‘That’s very good, that is,’ Jaspal says quietly in awe.

‘No. Look,’ Anika says as several figures on the screen start lashing out. The finite details lost. No faces or identifying features. Outlines only, but the punches and brawls are clear. As are the people lifting bottles to mouths. ‘They’re really going for it.’ she adds as one of the figures holds his arms out to his sides and shouts to the sky.

‘GEORGE!’

The voice drifts over the bay as the figure pulls something from his side and points it up, with gunshots sounding out.

‘Okay. That’s really not good,’ Norman says.

‘Get the rifles, lads,’ John says.

‘Do not get the rifles!’ Norman says.

‘We need to be prepared,’ John says.

‘John’s right, Norman,’ Pardip adds, the other construction manager. ‘We’d better be prepared and not need them, then get caught out. Babs, can you get all the kiddies away,’ he tells Sunnie and Anika.

‘No need for that,’ George says, disconnecting the screen, then looking back through the scope.

‘George, mate. Are you not seeing what we’re seeing?’ Simar asks.

‘You might be used to this, but we’re not,’ John says. ‘Did you really kill Peter and his guys?’

‘Yes. About ten of them in total.’

‘What on earth for?’ Norman asks.

‘They posed a threat to this fort. That’s why,’ George says as Lilly clocks the angle of the scope and frowns. ‘Right. Well. I’ve seen enough,’ George says suddenly, standing up to pack the scope away before Lilly can ask to have a look. ‘Best get over there.’

‘Sorry, what?’ Norman asks.

‘I’d best get over there and get it sorted,’ George says, rocking on his feet and rolling his shoulders. ‘Jaspal, is it? Would you take my kit bag back to Marion, please? Lilly, care to accompany me?’

‘Stop,’ Norman says in his strong barrister’s voice. ‘You cannot go over there. They are drunk. I dealt with enough murders and serious assaults in court to know you cannot negotiate with a large number of angry, drunk men.’

‘Oh, the women will be drunk and angry too,’ George says, rolling his shoulders with a big stretch.

‘GEORGE! WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!’ another voice drifts over. Loud and full of aggression.

‘Right. The rest of you stay here,’ George says and strides off towards the ramp.

‘Do you want me to drive a boat?’ Sandy calls.

‘I can drive a boat. But thank you. Most kind,’ George calls as Lilly shrugs at the others and sets off after George down the ramp and past Lisa Franklin holding court to a large group of terrified looking people.

‘Everything is fine,’ George tells them in his clipped, polite voice. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Apart from the several hundred drunk, marauding gypsies!’ Lisa snaps.

‘That term is outdated, Doctor,’ George calls without looking back. ‘They are members of the travelling community.’

‘They’re going to get us all killed!’ Lisa says as Lilly follows George through the inner gate and almost trips over the stack of building materials brought over from the shore.

‘Yeah, that is a bad place to put it,’ she says.

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ George says, going through the outer gate to three of the old men with rifles looking worried sick.

‘It’s going off over there,’ one of them says.

‘Well. Let’s see if we can’t get it smoothed over,’ George tells them, heading to the closest boat. ‘Cast us off, chaps!’

‘Damsa is right,’ George calls over the engine noise as he motions for Lilly to take the wheel a moment later. ‘They’ll need to reorganise where we store the building materials. People will always seek the path of least resistance, Lilly.’

She holds course while he starts rolling his shoulders and circling his arms as though warming up.

‘People find it very easy to mitigate what they can clearly see is poor behaviour on the basis that either everyone else is doing it or someone told them to do it. There are some astonishing episodes in history where truly awful things have been done simply because of our human nature to let others think for us. Including murder and genocide, so of course, they’ll dump building materials slap bang in the way without a second’s worth of thought.’

‘What are you doing?’ Lilly asks, feeling like she’s been wading through mud, ten feet behind George since Hinchley Point.

‘But like I said. Never reform too much too quickly,’ George adds, twisting his upper body side to side with his hands on his hips. ‘And when you do need to make changes, make it look like everyone is doing it rather than forcing the change. That’s the best way to work on the hearts and minds, which is vital to any endeavour like this.’

‘Which is what, exactly?’

‘Winning people over to make them do what you want,’ he says with the first straight answer since they got back.

‘And how does walking into certain death win people over?’ she asks, seeing the shore is now very close.

‘Symbolic gestures and grand spectacles create the aura of power.’

‘What power?’

‘Our power, Lilly. The power we need to hold control over that camp and that fort.’

‘George! They will kill you. They are drunk and angry.’

‘Exactly!’ he says with a wicked grin as the fires on the beach bathe his face, changing his features into someone else. ‘How did you win the fort, Lilly?’

‘What?’

‘You killed for it! And what you did was seen by everyone, and now, they all hold you above them in their minds. Everyone admires the bold. Nobody ever honours the timid.’

‘Fuck me,’ she says, a rare curse from a woman that never swears, and she cuts the engine as the front of the boat bumps gently on the sands, with George vaulting the prow and wading through the shallows while looping his rifle over his front. She goes after him. Still unsure of what the hell this is about.

‘George!’ she calls, rushing after him. ‘Have you got comms to Henry?’ she asks, getting to his side. ‘Call Henry and tell him this is your decision. I don’t want him and Howie coming for me when you die.’

‘You really think Howie will ever let anything happen to you?’ George asks, giving her a side eye. ‘He sees you as one of his, and I doubt even Henry would cross that line.’

Those words slow her mind in a way she was not expecting, because she’d simply never thought of it like that. A rush of guilt inside. A spike of self-loathing. A rare feeling for Lilly as she recalls how she turned against them, but again, the emotions are banished because they play no useful role in achieving her aims.

‘Write it down then,’ she says.

‘Really, Lilly?’ George says. Coming to a stop as he slides a small pad from his pocket and scribbles a quick note.

Lilly tried to stop me.

George

‘There’s your shield if you should wake in the night with Dave staring down at you. Not that it will make any difference by that point.’

‘GEORGEY! YOU FUCKING CUNT! WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!’

‘BIT LATE FOR THAT!’ George shouts back in a surprisingly loud voice as Lilly’s senses sharpen, and the sounds of people in the camp shushing each other roll through.

‘What the fuck?’ a loud male voice yells. ‘He’s on the beach, so he is!’

‘George’s here!’

‘He’s come over, he has!’

George sets off across the road as the people in the camp surge through towards him. Faces seen bathed in firelight. Willie and Elvis. Tyson and Patrick. Eggy and the other older men. Kathy and lots more women.

‘What the hell are ye doing? Have ye got a death wish?’ Mary shouts, running ahead of the others. ‘Ye can’t be here, George.’

‘I got bored waiting,’ George calls. ‘I SAID I GOT BORED WAITING!’ he shouts past her.

‘George! This isn’t the way now,’ Kyle yells. Appealing for the crowd to slow as George comes to a stop and makes a show of unlooping his rifle strap over his head and passing his weapon to Lilly.

‘What the feck are ye doing?’ Mary asks when George unfastens his pistol belt to hand that over.

‘I’ll fecking shoot him!’ Willie shouts, pulling a pistol from his holster.

‘He’s disarming!’ Tyson shouts as George takes a step away from Lilly towards the seething mass coming at him and raises his fists into a bare-knuckle brawler’s stance with a roar going up. All of them instantly recognising the challenge laid bare.

‘Who called me out?’ George shouts. ‘Come on! Which one?’

‘I fecking did!’ Willie yells.

‘Fight me then!’ George says.

‘I’ll fecking shoot you!’

‘FIGHT ME!’ George yells, beckoning the man on. Everything happening so fast. The crowd no longer swarming at George but going around him to form a circle. Lilly and Mary at one end behind George. Willie at the other with Elvis, Patrick, and Tyson. Everyone else jeering and whistling, and passing bottles. ‘I’ll have a wet,’ George says, nodding at a bottle doing the rounds.

‘Feck off! Ye killed Peter,’ the bottle holder shouts.

‘Give him a wet. He’s come over to fight,’ Eggy says, pulling the bottle free to pass over to George. ‘I respect a man that puts his hands up, I do.’

George takes a swig. A big swig with his head back, then he passes the bottle and goes back into the stance. Rolling his shoulders and sliding his feet. ‘No weapons, Willie. I could kill you dead ten different ways in seconds with a knife. Fists only.’

‘Aye. Old man. I’ll take that,’ Willie says, handing his pistol to Elvis.

‘George, my brother’s a fecking hard lad,’ Mary says from behind him. ‘He hasn’t lost for years. Other than to me, that is.’

‘You are too old for this, George,’ Kyle says, shaking his head as he pulls his jacket off to show his double pistols held in holsters at his sides and rolls his sleeves up. ‘But if ye sure, then we’ll keep it fair and sound.’

‘Nothing fair or fecking sound. To the death!’ Willie shouts, shadow boxing the air with fast, fluid, powerful moves that make George look old and stiff, and the roar goes up when Willie pulls his t-shirt to show bulging arms and defined shoulders, and a flat muscled, stomach.

‘Ye fecked, old man!’ Elvis shouts.

‘Shouldn’t have come,’ Patrick yells.

‘He is!’ Jaspal says on the fort rampart, with the scope set back up and attached to the screen as they watch the yellow glowing figures. ‘He’s bloody fighting him.’

‘He’s giving them what they wanted, I guess,’ John says, as much in awe and shock as the others. The builders and cooks. Ann Carlton and Anika. The guards from the gate who locked up and went inside. All of them with that same sense of dread inside that George is about to get torn apart. ‘I know he’s special forces or whatever, but he’s what? Sixty?’ John asks. ‘Those lads are fighting fit. He doesn’t stand a chance.’

‘Ye don’t stand a chance!’ Elvis screams in the circle at the edge of the camp as Willie pumps himself up.

‘I came to fight. Not chat like an old wife,’ George calls as Willie stalks into the middle with Kyle between the two. Holding an arm out to separate them.

‘Are ye both ready?’ Kyle asks, seeing nothing but pure drunk, filthy, murderous rage in Willie and cold detachment in George. ‘Ye bloody fools. Fight then!’ he shouts and pulls his arm back as the crowd roar and cheer.

‘Oh god. I can’t look,’ Jaspal says as more than a few peek through their fingers, and the crowd in the camp cheer at Willie’s defined body flexing and tensing as his hands go up, and he stalks at the older man moving stiffly. And for the last second or two, the crowd see the expression of fear on George’s face as he realises he’s made a mistake. They cheer and call, with Willie sensing weakness and moving in to pound this old bastard into a grave. George tries to move, but he’s too slow, and Willie lashes out with a stinging right cross that would knock a normal man out cold, and in that final split-second, as Willie’s brain sends the signal to move his right arm, so that look of fear drains from George’s face, and he winks at a confused Willie, who hits nothing but air.

Then George is in with body shots to the gut. Twisting and flexing without any sign of stiffness. Slamming punches in and creating an opening to uppercut, with a fist smashing into Willie’s chin. Knocking his head back with a cry from the crowd, but George presses the attack. A right cross. Three stinging, hard jabs. Another big right cross. Body shots. Each one faster than the last.

Willie grunts. Overwhelmed and caught out. A good fighter, and his instincts kick in. Making him realise this is a proper fight, but it’s too late, and the next hit breaks his nose with a crunch and a burst of blood that spatters the crowd. Still George attacks. Pivoting and punching as Willie rallies and counters, and finally moves fast enough to get a hit into George’s face. Drawing blood from his lip.

‘Jesus fucking fuck!’ John says in the fort, his hands in his hair. All of them watching a small screen and two yellow blobs fight and sway, and weave, and punch. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘Army champion four years straight before he went into the SAS,’ Marion says as they all turn to see her at the side watching on calmly. ‘He could have gone pro. He was offered a lot of money. But money never motivates people like George. It’s the win they need.’

It’s the win George needs. It’s inside of him. A burning urge to win and win, and always win. He lashes out with a barrage of punches. Striking the already broken nose, with the blood and sweat blinding Willie, but this is not the time for mercy. This is the spectacle he came to show them and the fort. Which is why he gave Jaspal, the electrician, the bag containing the scope, knowing he’d set it back up. They needed to see this. They all needed to see this.

George breaking Willie apart in a matter of seconds, until he’s gasping and dropping to a knee less than a minute after the fight started.

A yell from the side from Kyle and Mary shouting a warning at Elvis swinging a haymaker at George, catching him on the side of the head.

‘Keep it fair!’ Kyle shouts, pushing Elvis away as another man launches at George, snapping his head over with a hard hit, but George rallies moves in with blows to the sides and kidneys, then into the ribs. Then another hit to the temple, knocking the man away.

‘This is insane,’ Jaspal says, shaking his head and flinging his hands up in a way that knocks the scope and pulls the wire from the screen.

‘Put it back!’ Simar says.

‘Jas, put it back,’ Anika urges.

‘I am. I am!’ Jaspal says, dropping to a knee to look through the scope as he starts moving it back to the camp.

‘What was that?’ Norman asks, seeing a flash of something red on the screen. ‘I saw something. Go back a bit. No, I mean point the scope to where it was. Towards the wall. That’s it! What is that?’

They all fall silent. Seeing red blobs on the screen as Jaspal presses buttons on the top to change the digital settings and bring the focus in with gasps sounding clear in the night.

Scores of red figures on the screen.

The shapes of people running in the way only the infected can move, and all of them running towards the wall.

‘Oh, shit. We’re being attacked!’ Jaspal whispers as the first shots sound out in the distance.

‘Enough!’ Kyle shouts as Elvis punches George in the face. Everyone else screaming and shouting. Venting the grief at losing Peter and Callum, and other good men.

‘Lilly! We’ve got incoming!’ Norman’s voice blasts through the radio, but the noise in the camp is too great to hear. She grabs the radio and twists the volume. Hearing Norman saying something, but not getting his words. Gunshots in the distance, but again, the faint pops go unheard.

‘She can’t hear me!’ Norman says, seeing muzzle flashes in the distance on the wall, then looking back to the screen to see the red blobs hit the base of the first container. Then it becomes a growing red mass, getting bigger and higher.

‘They’re body piling!’ John shouts. ‘Sound the alarm! LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN! GET THE AIRHORN!’

The panic hits fast as John and the builders race down the ramp to the canteen, with Simar reaching it first and getting inside to grab the airhorn from the shelf, and he pushes the top with the distinct loud noise, snapping everyone’s heads over.

‘LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN!’ John shouts as people come out of tents and the rooms in the walls with looks of terror clear on their faces.

‘They can’t see it!’ Jaspal says on the rampart, looking at the red figures now getting over the wall and seeing muzzle flashes in the distance.

‘The camp’s at ground level. We’ve got height and distance,’ Norman says, staring over to the camp and the mass of people forming a circle, with a few figures inside still fighting.

‘Try the radio again!’ Jaspal says.

‘They can’t hear it,’ Norman says, trying again, but Lilly can’t hear the words, and she can’t move away right now. Not with George actively fighting men half his age, trying to batter him to death. Venting their rage and grief and hoping to increase their social standing within the complex hierarchy by being the man who takes George down. She can see it getting worse too. The violence has only triggered their bloodlust and the need for vengeance.

In the fort, Simar presses the airhorn with short, sharp bursts while running with John and the construction workers to the armoury at the back. The fourth guard, another old man, tries to get up out of his seat with his gammy right knee giving way, making him stagger and fall against the wall.

People everywhere shouting out and running without any idea where they should be going.

A grizzled man. Lean and weathered with a long greying moustache stands by the tents watching the people run and scream while listening to the airhorn and the voices shouting for lockdown, cracking with panic.

A stocky man, ten years younger, at the end of the row of tents does the same. Watching and listening. Red hair turning grey. Cold blue eyes.

Across from them, in another lane, three men from the same family also watch and listen. A grey-haired grandfather. Two middle-aged sons. Hard-faced. Asian. Short and wiry frames. Their wives and children gathered quietly nearby.

‘RUN!’ someone shouts, sprinting past.

‘Run where?’ the red-haired man asks in a Scottish accent.

‘We need the rifles!’ John shouts as the old guard straightens up on his bad leg and tries to key the combination into the armoury padlock with trembling fingers. ‘Come on!’ John urges, barely able to mask his own panic as Simar and Pardip, and the others press in.

‘They’re over the wall!’ Jaspal cries out in alarm on the rampart, seeing the red figures dropping from the top of the container wall to start running in that wild way that only the infected do.

‘LILLY!’ Norman yells into the radio.

‘I can’t hear you!’ Lilly transmits back, then shouts a warning at another young man punching George in the back of the head as Kyle sweeps the lad’s legs out, and the violence ramps. An instinct inside of her to move in and help George, but another voice deep inside suppresses the urge. Sensing that George might get killed, which will give her the opening she needs to assume control again.

‘We need a signal!’ Jaspal says on the rampart. ‘Something they can see!’

‘Well. I did see a flare gun in George’s bag. Will that help?’ Marion says as Norman drops to root through the contents and pulls an orange flare gun out.

‘It’s already loaded,’ he says. ‘How do they work?’

‘Point it up and pull the trigger,’ Marion says, and the others tense as Norman points the gun into the air over the camp and pulls the trigger with a puff of smoke and a pop.

‘Enough!’ Kyle yells, knowing he’s getting drawn into the brawl as the situation escalates by the second. George punches another man away as Mary and everyone else yell. Adding to the noise and mayhem while Jaspal and the others on the rampart across the water watch the red figures pouring across the flat ground towards the camp. All of them tensing their hands and holding their breaths.

In the camp, Elvis spits blood. His drunken pride now incandescent with rage. Willie the same. Everyone screaming and yelling. Patrick and Tyson shouting. Kyle pushing someone. Mary in amongst it. Lilly watching silently as Elvis and Willie advance at George, side by side, with George spinning to wrench his rifle from Lilly’s hand, and he turns back, lifting it to aim.

‘GUN!’ Patrick roars the warning as the flare ignites in the sky above them. Burning red and bright and bathing the land in an instant eerie glow, and the first shot is fired with a loud crack. Elvis clenches his eyes and feels the bullet whip past his ear. But he’s still alive. The old man missed. He snaps his eyes open to see George reaching out to heave Elvis away, and he fires again, then again, and again.

‘INCOMING!’ he yells, seeing infected bathed in red from the flare burning bright like a mini sun in the night sky, reflecting on the figures running fast. He walks towards them. Calm. Controlled. Selecting his shots. Dropping one. Dropping another, but more are coming. More and more, and many more.

‘RIFLE!’ Kyle yells, snatching one from a man to check the magazine as he walks after George and brings it up to brace in his shoulder. Sending rounds out into the mass.

Lilly the same. Bringing her rifle up to aim and move out. Shouting for the others to get down and sending rounds over the flat ground.

‘It worked!’ Jaspal says, running from the edge of the rampart before checking the night vision screen with a sickening lurch in his belly at seeing more spilling over the container wall.

‘Come on!’ John snaps at the old guard, then pushes him away, and draws his hammer from his toolbelt to break the clasp holding the padlock to the doors, and heaves them open. Grabbing a rifle from inside to pass out to the trembling hands of Pardip and Simar. and Maleek, and the others.

‘Form a line!’ George calls, motioning to his side with his left hand while his right holds the rifle to his shoulder as the crowd yells and grabs rifles and weapons. Tyson and Patrick. Eggy and more old men. Lads using single shot bolt action rifles. Others with shotguns. The range too far, but they fire anyway. Loud cracks, and deep bangs, and the flare burns brightly, bringing life to the figures screeching into the air as they run at the glowing lights of the camp. Muzzle flashes, and voices shouting.

George advances one step at a time in front of everyone else until his rifle clicks empty.

‘HERE!’ Kyle yells, passing him a magazine and firing as George drops to a knee for a tactical reload and comes up to keep going.

Kyle on his left. Lilly on his right. Mary at her side. Everyone else ranged out and aiming forward to send rounds out into the night. The speed of it all making minds spin and struggle to react.

‘There’s too many!’ Jaspal says, seeing the red figures still pouring over the wall at the far end.

‘Lilly! It’s Norman. There are more coming over the wall! We’ll get help to you!’

‘No! Lock the fort down. Repeat. Lock the fort down,’ Lilly’s cold, hard voice comes through the radio.

‘They’re still coming over the wall!’ Norman calls down, sending a surge of panic through the fort. ‘Lilly said to lockdown.’

‘There’s too many!’ Jaspal shouts over him.

‘Do we go over?’ John asks.

‘She said not to,’ Norman says.

‘We can’t just stay here!’ Jaspal says. ‘She can’t see what we can!’

‘Shit,’ John mutters, nodding at the other construction workers as Lenski runs to grab a rifle from the armoury and fumbles to detach the magazine, dropping it on the ground, then kicking it away by accident.

‘Jesus,’ the grizzled, old man with the long moustache mutters, seeing the Polish woman fumbling with the unfamiliar weapon and looking over to the builders holding theirs like they’re made of glass. Unsure and unsteady.

‘We’ll take a boat over!’ Sandy yells, grabbing a shotgun from the armoury.

‘She said to lockdown!’ Norman yells from the far end.

‘Jas just said there’s too many,’ John calls up.

‘There is! They’re still coming over the walls!’ Jaspal’s voice shouts down as they all hear the gunfire sounding from the camp. Making people cower in terror and try to cram into the room in the back wall.

‘We’ll have to go over!’ John says, clearly terrified but knowing they need to help.

‘You are builders! Not soldiers!’ Norman yells from the top of the ramp.

‘I’m not just standing here doing nothing!’ John shouts and sets off towards the gates. Simar and Pardip, and the others rushing with him. Sandy and Lenski, and even Colin rushes into the armoury to grab an old rifle.

‘Do they come already loaded with bullets?’ he asks the old guard trying not to fall over on his bad leg.

‘Where the feck did they come from?’ Mary shouts between shots. Each one of hers getting a kill even in the dark light, with the shadows jumping and dancing from the burning flare above them. Figures running and screeching. Men and women. Boys and girls. The young and the old. The thin and the fat. All of them running flat out with wild speed and wild hunger. Faces twisted in rage and violence, and hands clawed, and teeth bared.

George stays at the front. Firing single shots into the bodies. Kyle at his side, doing exactly the same as the numbers seem to dwindle. ‘They’re thinning out!’ Kyle calls.

‘We fucking won!’ someone yells from further down the line, earning a few ragged, dull cheers.

‘Lilly! It’s Norman. You have a lot more coming at you!’ Norman’s voice blasting through the radio.

‘Second wave!’ Kyle shouts, and the rifles and shotguns raise, and the shots sound out once more as the numbers of infected seem to swell. Pouring out from the shadows. More and more, and many more.

They get gunned down, but with each second, they get closer, until even the shotguns are within effective range.

‘They’re gonna get overrun!’ Jaspal shouts.

‘Damn it!’ Norman says, running back to peer over the wall at the others below. ‘John! You cannot go. We need you here.’

‘We have to help them!’ John yells.

‘There are too many, John!’ Norman shouts, making a very great silence fall across the fort. ‘We can see it from here. They cannot hold them back. We have to lockdown.’

John holds still next to the inner gate, feeling torn and wretched inside. Knowing they need to stay and defend while feeling compelled to go and help.

‘They’re getting closer!’ Jaspal shouts from the top of the wall. ‘They need to pull back. Why aren’t they pulling back into the camp?’

‘They’re buying time for the women to get the babies away,’ Marion says, pointing to figures running from the far edge of the camp to the boats further along the shore.

‘Marion!’ John calls up to the wall. ‘What would George tell us to do?’

‘He’d say it was about bloody time the soldiers in here got stuck in,’ she says in a loud voice that carries clear.

George fires the rifle. Seeing the infected coming as he keeps walking towards them. His knuckles cut and bleeding. His lip bloodied. His face ruddy and shining with sweat. He picks his shots with small adjustments of aim, and in the midst of it all, from the light of the flare, he spots a figure far off to the side. A big frame glimpsed; then, whoever it was, is gone.

And in the fort, the outer gate opens, with John and the builders stepping aside to let the others through.

The sixty-year-old man. Grizzled and lean, with a drooping moustache. The red-haired, stocky fifty-year-old. The three hard-faced Asian men of the same family.

They sweep over the small beach while looping faded and torn webbing belts loaded with magazines over their heads, and the air fills with the clicks and sounds as they check their weapons and make ready.

Five men that load into a boat that powers away as fast as it can go to cross the black waters as Marion watches them from the rampart.

‘Get everyone inside. Now, we lock it down,’ she orders, staring across with a rare rush of worry at seeing the infected charging at the firing line and getting closer with every second. The mothers and babies pouring out the other end. Running for boats to get out into the waters for safety.

‘Fuck! They can’t hold them back,’ Jaspal says, watching the screen and clenching his fists. ‘They’re getting so close.’

‘They’re getting too close, George,’ Kyle says calmly, changing magazine.

‘Noted,’ George says, doing the same, with both men finishing at the same second and lifting their rifles in unison to fire at the screeching infected. Gunning them down as best they can. Seeing them getting closer, with more coming behind them. More and more, and many more.

A few seconds. Maybe a minute. The rounds deplete. The tension grows. Their rifles click empty. No more magazines, and as one, Kyle and George cast the rifles away behind them and draw their pistols. George with his in a double-handed grip. Kyle with one in each hand. Both firing aimed shots.

‘Ye heathen bastards!’ Kyle shouts, letting the anger in for what’s about to come. Needing that rush. Needing the energy.

‘I’m out,’ Lilly says, slinging her rifle and snatching her sidearm out to fire the last of her rounds. Mary the same. Others running out. Shouts and yells all along the line.

Then it’s done, and George’s pistol clicks empty. He thinks to change magazine, but an infected comes in too fast, and in that split-second, he knows he won’t have time, so he holsters and draws his knife, and steps out with a grunt to take the infected down through the neck. Stabbing once and deep.

Kyle yells. Holstering and drawing a blade to kill another running at George’s back, and Lilly runs past them both. Her cold, blue eyes blazing with rage as she draws her knife and takes another one down. Stabbing it through the eyes before rolling free and coming up to stab another in the groin, then in the chest, and through the neck.

‘Blondie!’ Mary shouts, smashing a fist into one lunging at Lilly’s back. Knocking it down and stamping on the head as all along the line the guns fall silent, and men grab what weapons they can to charge in and draw blood. Grunting and swearing. Cussing and killing.

But more of them pour over the ground towards that thin line as five men double-time it from the boat, over the beach, and onto the road.

Five men that do not panic at what they see. Five men with training and years of experience from wars and conflicts all over the world.

‘That house,’ the older, grizzled man with the moustache orders as they aim for the last house on the bay.

‘Who are you ordering about?’ the Scottish man asks in a lilting Highlands accent. ‘Scots Guards. Corporal.’

‘Good for you. Para. Sergeant,’ the grizzled man says.

‘Bollocks,’ the Scottish man mutters.

‘Good for you,’ the eldest of the Asian men says. ‘Ghurkha. Captain.’

‘Bollocks,’ the Scots Guard and the Para say together as the Captain’s two sons smile, and they barge through the front door to the house and pound up the stairs to the windows overlooking the open ground and the battle taking place.

‘Here,’ the captain says, motioning a window as he reverses his rifle and smashes the glass and frame out for the Para to brace the GPMG on the sill and get the ammunition belt ready. The others smash the rest of the windows out and stack magazines. All of them moving with calm efficiency.

‘Ready, sir,’ the Para says, grey and grizzled, and nodding to the Captain. A weathered and grey man himself.

‘Ready, sir,’ the fifty-year-old Scots Guard says.

‘Ready,’ the two sons of the Ghurkha officer say.

‘Fire,’ the captain gives the order calmly. A man of war. A man of violence. And with it comes the calm brutality needed to achieve the aim, and so, they get to work and open fire with four assault rifles and one general-purpose machine gun firing into the hordes pouring across the grounds.

George and Kyle, and everyone else hear it, but within the close quarters battle, they pay no heed, and it’s all they can do to kill what’s in front of them. Stabbing and hacking, and tearing infected off their feet.

The gimpy strafing in bursts to stop the barrel overheating. The assault rifles controlled and aimed. Slowing the charge. Easing the pressure. Shoulders slamming back from shots. Faces grim. Memories inside from the Falklands forty years ago. From Bosnia. From the two Gulf Wars. From Northern Ireland. From conflicts and wars, and doing this same thing to kill other people. Killing in the name of. Almost dying in the name of. Waging war in the name of. It gave them PTSD. It gave them terrors that came in the night and destroyed their lives and marriages, and made it impossible to find jobs after their service.

But they were soldiers then, and now, they are soldiers again.

It seems to go on forever. But then, it always feels that way, and then it’s over too soon, and it felt like it only lasted seconds, and the gaps show in attackers coming at them. The last few infected running to get knifed while the others behind them lie dead and mangled from the firing position in the house.

‘Ceasefire,’ the captain orders in the room, and the guns fall silent as George staggers back. Bloodied and sweating. Kyle the same. Mary the same. Everyone the same, and all of them, including the men in the house, look over to see four infected left. All of them lunging for Lilly.

She slices one through the throat and vaults up into the body of a big male and stabs down into the eyes, grunting with the exertion and falling with him as he topples. The other two dive for her, but she rises fast. Grabbing a fistful of hair on the head of an old woman, and she yanks the head back and stabs deep into the throat as the last one slams into her back, with teeth digging into her shoulder. But Lilly merely grunts and drops, and twists to free the weight, and in a split-second, she’s on the thing’s back, hacking into the neck with fast stabs, and the blood sprays over her face until the head is torn free from the body. She picks it up and slams into a crawler. Using the head as a weapon to beat the already mangled infected to death.

Then she staggers back. Breathing hard, with murder in her eyes. A feeling inside that she wants to do it again. That it wasn’t enough.

‘Is that it?’ she screams at the dead and broken bodies lying strewn across the flat grounds. ‘IS THAT IT?’ she screams again as a crawler hisses, and she stalks at it. Pushing her knife into the scabbard and grabbing the adult female by the hair to drag over to another crawler. Stamping down to make it stop crawling and hissing. She dumps them together and walks off to grab a third, and drags that back to the other two.

‘What the feck is she doing?’ Tyson asks as Mary shrugs, and they all watch Lilly dragging crawlers to dump into a pile.

Then she stands and pulls a grenade from her pocket, and shoves it into the mouth of an infected. Ramming it hard enough to crack teeth.

‘See me,’ she growls at it, staring into the red, bloodshot eyes as she pulls the pin from the grenade and walks away, and the soldiers in the house stare on, and the people on the rampart watch the screen, and the people in the line all do the same.

Watching Lilly walking away as the seconds count down, and the whump comes from the grenade blowing the bodies apart, with a spray of blood and gore arcing into the air.

‘Fuck me,’ the Para says in the house.

‘Fuck me,’ Jaspal says on the rampart.

‘Feck me,’ Patrick says on the battlefield as Lilly walks past George.

‘How’s that for a spectacle?’ she asks.

4

Day Twenty-Nine

The heat has been increasing for days, but it’s when they got in the boats to return to the fort, that it really hit. Or maybe they just became aware of it after the battle.

Nothing was said to George after the fight. Lilly walked off, and he stared over to Patrick and Tyson.

They didn’t say anything. George didn’t either. He just nodded and turned to follow Lilly.

‘Do ye need help with them?’ Kyle asked, nodding at the bodies.

Patrick shook his head.

‘Aye then,’ Kyle said and turned to go, then stopped. ‘Peter would drop the grudge, so he would. Let that be the end of it.’

‘We’ll discuss it,’ Mary said.

‘For the love of god, Mary,’ Patrick said as the men all tutted and swore at Mary. ‘Ye not a man. Ye don’t discuss nothing.’

‘I’m every bit as good as any of you!’

‘You’re a woman, Mary!’ Tyson said with exasperation. ‘Even Peter told ye to stop trying to be something you’re not.’

‘Well, feck off then,’ she snapped and rushed off after Lilly. Furious at constantly being pushed out of the camp leadership. Furious that she’s good enough to fight when they need her but not allowed to do anything else. ‘Fecking men,’ she muttered as she reached Lilly by the shore.

‘A Scots Guard, a Para, and three Ghurkhas walk into a bar.’

A lilting Scottish highlands voice from behind. They turned to see the five men from the house walking towards George and Kyle nearby.

‘Thank you for the help, chaps. Captain George Shaw. Parachute Regiment and Special Air Service. At your service. I won’t shake hands. Got a spot of blood on me.’

‘Captain Jansu Gurung. Ghurkha Brigade. My sons Gurba and Dahn.’

‘Jamie Williams. Corporal. Everyone calls me Jock. Cos I’m Scottish if you hadn’t noticed, Sir.’

‘Black watch?’ George asked.

‘Aye. Scots Guards.’

‘Glad to have you, Corporal.’

‘Jack McTavish. Two Para. Sergeant,’ the grizzled man with the big moustache said.

‘Why do you get the Scottish name?’ Jock asked him.

‘Cos I’m unlucky,’ Jack replied to a few dry snorts.

‘Jock, Jack, and Jansu. Easy to remember,’ George said as the men greeted one another in the way of the old world. With manly nods until they looked over to Lilly staring at them. Sixteen. Blond. Blue eyes. Her face coated in the blood of the many infected she took down. More than the rest. More and more, and many more.

They all saw it too. The savagery she displayed, but more than that was the ease in which she did it. Being where she needed to be and moving faster than she ought to with a strength that wasn’t right.

Kyle saw the same thing before in Howie. That same violence. The same speed. The same ease.

They also saw the way she decapitated someone and used the head as a weapon before ramming a grenade into an old woman’s mouth and pulling the pin.

A splash made Lilly turn to see a flash of silver from a fish breaking the surface of the sea as a school passed through. The moonlight glinting on their scales.

‘The numbers are already increasing,’ she said to nobody in particular as she stood like a divide between the old world of men and the brave new world, where the seas were once more full of fish, and young women outfought old warriors.

‘We’d better use separate boats, chaps,’ George told the old soldiers. ‘We’ll have a proper greet when we’re cleaned up.’

The soldiers pushed their boat back into the water and pushed off, with the others taking the small vessel Lilly and George used to go over.

Lilly started the engine and drove the boat. She kept the speed low to let the others get ahead, then when they were mid-way, she cut the engine, which prompted George, Kyle, and Mary to look at her.

‘How did you know?’ she asked as Mary and Kyle frowned. Not getting what she meant.

‘Know what?’ George asked with a curious look, which in itself made Lilly think, because up until that point, she thought there was only one thing she could mean by that. But George was then suggesting there was more than one thing in question.

‘The immunity?’ Kyle asked with a tone of realisation. ‘Aye. I thought that. How did you know, George?’

‘I didn’t is the plain answer,’ he replied.

‘Ye could have been infected and turned,’ Kyle said.

‘When did you know?’ George asked him with a skilful deflection.

That stumped Kyle, because he couldn’t answer or say when he knew. It was just all of a sudden obvious that he was immune. ‘Do ye think we’ve been vaccinated?’ Kyle asked. ‘Did someone do our whole team? Dave is immune. I am. You are. I should think Henry and the others are-.’

‘You’re not immune,’ Lilly cut in. ‘You’re infected with a different version. As am I.’

‘How do ye know that?’ Kyle asked.

‘Because Dave is part of Howie’s hive mind, which means Dave is not immune but infected. And if Dave is, then it would suggest both of you are, as are Henry and Frank, and Carmen. As to how or when, or even who made that happen?’ she shrugged and fell silent.

‘Ye very smart, Lilly,’ Kyle said. ‘But ye also covered in claret. Wash your face, will you.’

She smiled at that, and George realised there was a deep bond already in place between Lilly and Kyle.

‘Are you whisking us all away?’ Mary asked when Lilly drove away from the fort and out to sea.

‘We can’t swim back there,’ Lilly said and motioned the sea between the fort and the bay. ‘It’s full of twisted metal and dead bodies.’

She took them further out and killed the engine, and started stripping down to her shorts and sports top. A few seconds later, and she dove over the side to plunge down into the black waters.

‘I don’t like swimming at night,’ Kyle admitted with a shudder. ‘Ye can’t see what’s down there.’

‘Aye. Same,’ Mary admitted.

‘Well. We are somewhat contaminated,’ George said as the other two watched him tug his trousers off, then his top. ‘But I will admit there is a healthy fear of the unknown,’ he added, looking over the side to the inky waters as Lilly finally broke the surface a dozen metres away.

‘She’s got bigger balls than Frank,’ Kyle muttered.

‘She’s got bigger balls than any man alive,’ Mary said. ‘She doesn’t know fear like we do.’

‘Why are you waiting?’ Lilly asked.

‘Cos we’re bloody human,’ Mary said and eased over the side to slowly drop into the waters. ‘If I get eaten by a shark, I’ll not be happy, Blondie.’

‘We’ve swam out the back loads at night,’ Lilly said.

‘Aye, but there’s light there and a shore, and it’s not in the middle of the fecking sea. WHAT THE FUCK!’

‘It’s fish!’ Lilly said as Mary freaked out at seeing something silver flitting by, which made George and Kyle freeze halfway into the water.

‘Do they have teeth?’ Mary asked in terror and scrubbed at the blood on her face as quickly as possible while imagining a giant shark coming up from the depths towards her legs.

‘We’re losing face here, George,’ Kyle muttered and made the sign of the cross before he dropped into the waters. George followed suit. Plunging in and suppressing the sensation of fear at being in deep water at night.

‘Although, thinking about it,’ Lilly added a moment later while rubbing at the blood on her face. ‘There is a hose and anti-bac gel by the gates.’

‘Feck’s sake,’ Mary muttered as a bald head broke the surface a few yards away with two big eyes blinking at her. ‘ARGH!’ she screamed and darted for the boat with Kyle right behind her. Both of them heaving up and over the side.

George was about to do the same but saw Lilly wasn’t moving, which made him hold still with that need to win always burning inside.

‘It’s just a seal,’ Lilly said calmly while treading water still a dozen metres away from the boat.

‘I know what it is,’ George replied, holding his position as the round head dipped beneath the waters.

‘What’s it fecking doing?’ Mary asked, peering over the side.

‘Hunting fish.’

‘What if it touches ye?’ Mary asked in horror as George trod water, knowing there was something big and strong beneath the surface. He reminded himself seals don’t attack, and they only bite people to see if they are edible. But still. It was there beneath them. Moving silently around his legs.

He held his nerve and looked over to see Lilly staring at him, and it was like Mary said. She didn’t know fear like normal people.

What made it worse was when she sucked air in and slipped beneath the surface.

‘She’s nuts,’ Mary said.

George thought about diving down too, just to show he wasn’t afraid, but then he remembered he was sixty years old and long past trying to compete with stupid, young people. He swam back, and they watched Lilly re-surface further away with a smile and a laugh.

‘What’s she…’ Mary started to ask, but the words fell away as the seal surfaced next to Lilly on its back with its feet poking out of the water. Lilly did the same and floated on her back while looking at the seal staring at her. The big, round eyes. The smooth, domed head. Inquisitive. Intelligent. She laughed again at the closeness as the seal ducked down and swam underneath her with his body brushing hers; then it was gone and plunging deep to chase fish and fill its belly.

The interaction animated Lilly in a way they hadn’t seen before. Her eyes lit up, and she radiated warmth and fun.

It was late when they got back, although the fort was still awake. The people too jumpy and scared to settle down and relax.

‘It was a minor incursion!’ Lilly called out without warning, having taken a few steps up the vehicle ramp. Sensing the fear inside. ‘A few infected got over the wall, but our defences held. None of you were ever in danger.’

‘Never outshine the master, dear,’ Marion whispered as Lilly remembered Henry and George executing Peter and his men.

‘Thankfully, Captain George Shaw of the SAS led the defence,’ she added with a motion to George. ‘And I am very grateful that Captain Shaw will be helping us in the fort.’

‘Indeed. You are all safe,’ George added. Going up the ramp to join Lilly. ‘Our close friends in the camp did a sterling effort, as did the very brave men here who came to our aid. But it’s late, and we should rest. As Lilly said, you were never in danger.’

That was all they could say. It was all they could do, and slowly, by degrees, the people settled, but that heat only got worse.

Especially inside the fort, with no possibility of breeze.

Lilly checked on her brother and the children. Most of them flaked out and sleeping in the open at the back. Others doing the same nearby. Lying on whatever soft materials they could find in underwear.

‘Are ye hungry?’ Mary whispered when Lilly moved away from the children.

‘Yes,’ Lilly said and took Mary’s hand.

‘But the canteen’s that way,’ Mary whispered as Lilly pulled Mary into one of the empty dark rooms. ‘Ach. What’s this, Blondie? Are ye showing me some affection, now?’

Lilly didn’t reply. The heat. The battle. Seeing Peter being executed and escaping that same death by the width of a hair awoke a fire inside, and she pushed into Mary with their mouths meeting in the dark.

That contact only made the hunger worse inside Lilly, and she gripped Mary’s t-shirt to start pulling it overhead, but Mary held it down and pulled away.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lilly whispered.

‘My uncle and my friends died today, Lilly,’

Lilly paused in the pitch black. Unsure of what to do next. She didn’t feel that same grief at all. It made her think of her own father and mother. But there was nothing there, and if there was, it was buried so deep, she couldn’t feel it.

All she felt was alive. Really, fully, fucking alive.

‘So? Did you want to stop?’ she asked as Mary made a sound in her throat. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Would you know what to do if I was?’ Mary whispered in a strained voice, and Lilly really couldn’t tell if she was crying.

‘Would you like me to hold you?’

‘Jesus, Lilly.’

‘What? Tell me what to do? And I am sorry for your loss.’

‘Fuck. Ye sound like a politician. I am sorry for your loss. But are you though? Are you sorry at all?’

‘Of course.’

‘Be straight with me, Blondie. Don’t lie to me. Are ye sorry about any of it? Threatening Howie? Peter? Callum. Anything? Anything at all?’

The silence of a second as they stood inches apart in the dark with sweat pouring down their faces. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t win,’ Lilly whispered, showing the raw and awful truth.

‘Fuck,’ Mary whispered and turned away. Horrified and disgusted, and in that flash of a second, she wanted to be as far away from Lilly as possible. She wanted to go home to the camp, but the camp didn’t want her either. That realisation caused a surge of pain inside. She walked two steps and stopped, and like many people before her, she found a way to mitigate the cold barbarity by telling herself at least Lilly was honest to her.

‘Do ye like me?’ she whispered, half turning back to the faint outline of Lilly in the shadows.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you love me?’

Another silence. Mary closed her eyes and felt the tears falling down her cheeks.

‘If I could love anyone, I think I would,’ Lilly whispered, and a second later, Mary was pushing her mouth into Lilly’s, and this time, she didn’t stop Lilly pulling the t-shirt off.

Lilly slept for a few hours in the open, the same as everyone else. Stripped down to underwear behind a thin windcheater wall. The cheap, plastic sheets on two sticks families use on beaches.

Mary was at her side. Too unsettled and worried to sleep. Too stressed with too many emotions.

She looked at Lilly sleeping soundly as though nothing bad had ever happened in her life. She looked almost angelic. Blond hair and golden skin, with her lips gently parted as she slept on her back. The sight of her made Mary frown as she thought about what they did in that room. How the kissing developed into something else, and the hunger Lilly had. Mary never thought she’d ever want to be with a woman, and being from such a strict family meant she really wasn’t all that experienced with sex at all.

Which means that even Mary, with all her bravado and passion, and fiery temper, feels nervous and unsure about doing things with Lilly. Which makes her want to go slow and explore gently to the let the trust and confidence build up. She thought Lilly was the same.

But tonight was different. It was like Lilly had decided to push the boundaries. It was exciting and erotic, but it was edgy too, in a way that Mary found unsettling. She needed love and care, and it felt like Lilly just wanted the physical connection. But even that was intoxicating because it made Mary feel wanted, and so she convinced herself this was the love language Lilly used.

She thought about the camp. About her people and not being welcome, or even wanted. She’d created a divide by her closeness to Lilly. First because of the homosexual nature of it, but also because Lilly wasn’t one of them. In addition to the whole dynamics about Lilly being in charge, and now, Peter was dead, and a lot of the senior leaders were killed with him. That caused hell earlier, with Patrick, Tyson, Willie, and Elvis arguing over what they should do, and all of them and many more telling Mary to shut up and fuck off, and be quiet.

Eventually, Mary dozed off, and the fort slept, with Jack, and Jock, and Captain Jansu, and his sons taking turns to keep watch.

Lilly wakes before dawn, and she sits up bathed in sweat.

She reaches back to feel the bite on her shoulder. It hurts, but nothing like it should. She looks at Mary lying next to her within their own private enclosure and feels an urge to wake her and do more of what they did last night. Lilly enjoyed it. She took pleasure from it.

She knows, however, that there was a point when she pushed it too far, and Mary said no and guided Lilly’s head up and away. Lilly kissed Mary’s stomach instead, and a moment later, she lowered again. Mary didn’t stop her that time.

Now she looks at Mary’s features. The strong, wide cheekbones, and her full lips, and the freckles dotted over her skin. She’s a very attractive woman. Lilly loves Mary’s red hair and how passionate she is and brazen, and vulnerable all at the same time, and how every emotion Mary feels is worn for all to see.

Howie is like that. He cannot hide how he feels. It’s very endearing. Those thoughts make Lilly wonder what it would be like to have sex with Howie and explore thoughts and notions as any person her age would do. She can certainly see the attraction Howie has, but determines she is not attracted to him. Those thoughts, in turn, make her think about when Marcy put a knife to her throat in the back rooms.

Lilly doesn’t feel any need for revenge for that happening. Her mind doesn’t work like that. Marcy did what Marcy thought was right at that time. If anything, Lilly respects her for doing it.

Lilly sighs and gets to her feet in her shorts and sports bra, and takes her clothes and weapons with her as she crosses the ground to the back door.

‘Are you going out, Miss Lilly?’ a soft voice asks, an accent, but the British is clear.

She nods at the soldier. One of the Ghurkhas. ‘I am. Are you Dahn or Gurba?’

‘Dahn, Miss Lilly.’

‘It was dark on the beach when we met. I couldn’t see you both clearly.’

‘My brother and I look very alike, Miss Lilly. Would you like me to guard the gate, so you have privacy?’

‘It’s fine. Just going to cool off.’

‘Yes, Miss Lilly,’ he says with a nod and walks on to continue his patrol with an assault rifle held to the front.

She slips out onto section of beach at the back and stares out to the streaks of purple and orange bringing life to the dark sky. The planet spinning at one thousand miles an hour as it hurtles in orbit around the sun while the entire solar system itself moves at an incredible speed to whatever else out there that has a greater gravitational pull.

Lilly studied astrology in school and found it fascinating. How everything in the universe is in constant motion, and right now, there will be millions of sun systems smashing into each other, with planets colliding, and suns exploding, and black holes forming.

But yet here, it is so quiet and peaceful, with not a ripple on the sea. Just a perfect, flat surface. She goes to the edge and looks down into the black mirror. Seeing a person she no longer really recognises.

A faint crackle on the radio disturbs her thoughts. ‘Look up, Miss Lilly.’

Jack’s voice. Low and gruff. She looks up at the streak of golden light shooting through the sky from another satellite coming down. It passes high overhead and shoots out of sight to land somewhere unseen.

Then, the world once more becomes still and motionless.

She dives in and swims out away from the shore with powerful strokes. Enjoying the sensation of her body and muscles working. She keeps her head down in the front crawl and is surprised at how long she can hold her breath. She used to swim but could never go this long without needing to lift her head and breathe.

When she finally does stop to draw air, she looks back to the dark walls of the fort rising up into the air.

It’s a big place and still only holding a fraction of the number of people it can take. But that needs work. They need to build more wooden structures in the open grounds, but then, they also need to think about self-sustainability. They’ve got plenty for now, but more people arrive every day, and they all need to eat. Perhaps they can find ways to grow crops.

She remembers seeing TV shows about inner city areas that used hanging pots to grow food. They could do that.

The top rampart that circles the fort is also wide enough in places to fit several vehicles side by side. Some of that could be cultivated for crops.

Why did George say that?

‘Know what?’

He should have known exactly what she meant when she asked him how he knew he was immune. What else was there for Lilly to know?

She also thinks about the lessons George gave her yesterday. Always be polite. Never say more than is needed. Control the options. Never outshine the master. Spectacles create the illusion of power. Be bold. Never be timid.

She dunks down to feel the coolness of the water on her face, and when she surfaces, she blinks in surprise at the domed head a few feet away, with a wriggling fish trapped between the paws, and she watches the seal bite the head off and chew noisily.

An urge inside to eat fish like that. To trap one right now and eat it raw. She even thinks to dive and try, and catch one while knowing she’d be too slow and cumbersome to catch a fish with her bare hands.

The sight has made her hungry though, and so she sets off, swimming past the seal as it turns to watch while chomping on the fish.

‘Ah. There you are,’ George says a half hour later when she walks into the offices eating sardines from a tin to see him dressed in clean trousers and shirt. Marion making a brew. Norman yawning off to the side. Lenski at the big table, looking hot and sleepy. The dawn sky rapidly pushing the night back.

‘This is early for a meeting,’ John says as he walks in with the other builders drifting in behind him. ‘Is someone eating fish?’

‘I am,’ Lilly says, showing him the tin.

‘At five thirty in the morning?’ he asks.

She shrugs. ‘I was hungry.’

‘Eat cereal then like a normal person.’

‘Lilly is not normal person,’ Lenski comments with a face at Lilly eating stinky sardines at so early in the day.

‘I might go fishing later,’ she says with a mouthful. ‘And I didn’t know we were having a meeting.’

‘I asked Marion to tell everyone first thing,’ George says.

‘I looked for you, Lilly,’ Marion says. ‘But Dahn said you were swimming.’

Lilly nods and eats the sardines as the room rapidly fills with yawning people clinking cups as they make brews, with George motioning Lilly over to one side to talk quietly.

‘We’re going to initially say I’m acting in a consultancy capacity. Make sure you sound positive and endorse that decision. Make it sound like you asked Henry for me to remain here. That will smooth the transition. Remember, never reform too quickly. It unsettles people and makes it harder to sell belief.’

‘What belief?’

‘Belief in Howie and Henry being out there. So, whatever your own personal feelings are, you show loyalty to them.’

‘People know I moved against them.’

‘They do, and when that comes up, I will move in with an explanation. At which point, we reveal the existence of the Panacea, which will be the only thing people will remember.’

‘Okay,’ Lilly says, taking the last mouthful as George shows distaste at her eating cold sardines, and the room fills to capacity with new people coming in.

‘Ach, so this is where you hide the good coffee, is it?’ Jock asks, walking in with Jack and Captain Jansu, and his two sons. ‘What happened in here?’ Jock asks at the state of the pock-marked walls. ‘Has Miss Lilly been in here with another grenade? Oh, sorry! I didn’t see you there,’ he says with a wink and a smile. ‘Good morning, Miss Lilly.’

‘Miss Lilly,’ Jack says.

‘Miss Lilly,’ Captain Jansu says at the same time as Dahn and Gurba, with George immediately noticing how they and everyone else coming in look for Lilly first. Seeking her out to either catch her eye or just to know where she is.

‘You eating fish for breakfast?’ Jack asks.

‘I am. Want some?’ she asks, offering the empty tin as the men smile and show humour.

The sight of it realigns George’s thinking that in here, Lilly is the master. Especially after what she did last night in the battle.

‘I’m surprised you’re not eating them alive after last night,’ Jock adds.

‘Funny you should say that. I just said I might go fishing later,’ Lilly says to more laughs.

‘You want to try seeing it on a night vision screen,’ Jaspal says as the drinks get handed out. ‘We were all watching this smaller, yellow figure take out all the red figures; then, she walks off, and they all blew apart with bits of red flying everywhere.’

‘Ach, will ye look at it in here,’ Kyle says, pushing in with Mary. ‘It’s standing room only. Is there a seat for an old man?’

‘Yeah, and I’m having it,’ Jack says with a quick grin as Kyle bumps his side, and Damsa walks in with her head bared for the first time, bringing an instant silence as everyone looks at the sudden change of the Muslim woman no longer covering her hair and neck. The robes still worn, but her thick, black hair on show, pulled back in a simple ponytail.

‘It is very hot in the fort,’ she says, as though feeling an urge to justify it as her husband shoots her an angry look. She avoids his eyes. The tension clear between them.

‘Shall we?’ George calls, as they all merge towards the table and either find seats or walls to lean on. All of them staring to George and Lilly at the end, flanked by Lenski and Norman, with Mary and Kyle nearby.

‘I think, given the heat, that we should dispense with any small talk and dive straight in,’ George says, sweeping his eyes over the faces as he spots someone else rushing in. ‘Ah! There’s our quartermaster,’ he says as Colin blinks in surprise.

‘Where?’ Colin asks, looking behind himself.

‘He means you,’ Norman says with a groan. ‘You’re the fort quartermaster, Colin.’

‘I am not! I am in charge of the stores,’ he says stiffly to more than a few low chuckles.

‘It means the same thing, pal,’ Jock says nicely, motioning him to squeeze into the group as Jack pushes a spare mug of coffee into Colin’s hands.

‘Get that down you, lad.’

‘What’s going on?’ Colin blurts. ‘Why the dawn meeting, and why is everyone here, and why are-.’

‘No talking during the briefing,’ Jack tells him with a finger to his own lips. ‘Ears work better when mouths are closed. Sorry, Sir. Carry on.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. As I was saying. We have a lot to cover, which calls for a direct approach. Lilly has made a formal request to Major Henry Campbell-Dillington… I can see from your faces you recognise the name,’ George says at the expressions on Jack and Captain Jansu’s faces. ‘Henry was rather renowned in Two Para, and he served with the Ghurkhas in the Special Air Service plenty of times. After which, Henry led a government unit made up of myself and Frank McGill, and Carmen Eze.’

‘Frankie,’ Jack says with a smile. ‘We were in the Falklands together. Apologies for the interruption, Sir.’

‘No problems. Kyle here was also a member of our unit. We worked in the security services. Suffice to say, with what has happened, there is no government and so no authority to direct us, therefore we are aligning our services to Lilly, as the Commander of this fort. Henry and Howie are joining forces, and I am tasked with acting in a consultancy role to aid Lilly.’

‘Sorry,’ Simar says with a wince, lifting a hand. ‘Didn’t Lilly and Peter have an issue with Howie?’

‘Yes,’ Lilly says, remembering what George said. ‘But it’s been sorted.’

‘And what about Peter?’ John cuts in. ‘We didn’t get an answer yesterday, and then, last night, with George going over to fight them. We’ve got a right to know these things.’

‘Of course, you do,’ George says. ‘Peter was negated for posing a threat to the security of this fort.’

‘But they’re all still there. The camp. It’s still there,’ John says. ‘And that wall is too low. I told Pardip. I said it’s too low. You’ll need four containers stacked up.’

‘Aye, and we can only do so much at a time,’ Kyle says. ‘We’ve got trucks running back and forth all day bringing them in.’

‘So, you’re going higher then? The wall?’ Pardip asks.

‘Yes,’ Lilly says. ‘That was always the plan. We build up to four high; then, we dig a trench on the inside and then place another inner wall. It’s just going to take time. And yes, Peter was taken out, and things with the camp are tense.’

‘What was it about?’ John asks as the others all look on. ‘There’s rumours flying around everywhere.’

‘There are,’ Norman says with a look to Lilly and George. ‘I keep getting asked about it.’

‘Yes. Alright,’ George says. ‘I think we can be open about it now. There is a Panacea…’ he pauses for the whispers and reactions to spread out. ‘That’s right. You heard me. There is a thing in existence that will cure every disease known to humanity. And it was that disease that was tweaked or engineered into the mutated version that creates the infected people, which was released on purpose to cull the population.’

The gasps and murmurs increase as even Jack and the old soldiers stare on in stunned silence.

‘It’s true then,’ Sandy says.

‘It is,’ George says. ‘We were working to prevent the release, but it got out, and here we are.’

‘Fuck me,’ Simar says as the others show the same level of shock that the virus really was meant to be a Panacea.

‘And before the questions start,’ Norman says, speaking out in his strong barrister’s voice. ‘Howie and Reginald, and I grilled Henry and George as to why they didn’t stop it. This is not the right time or place to go over that. Needless to say, that I, as a barrister, and Reginald, who you all know runs the intelligence and planning for Howie, and Howie himself, including Paula, are all satisfied that Henry’s team really couldn’t do anything to stop that release.’

Lilly listens on. Sensing that George might have prepped Norman before the meeting too.

‘And unfortunately,’ George continues. ‘With the speed of events, and with so many things happening, Peter mistakenly thought we had the Panacea and that we were somehow withholding it, which resulted in the escalation that led to the decision being made to negate that threat. Following which, a warning was issued to the camp that any such threat made to the security or the people in this fort will result in the immediate and whole annihilation of the entire camp.’

‘Jesus,’ Norman says to gasps and intakes of breath as Damsa translates for her husband. ‘Is that not excessive?’ Norman asks.

‘No,’ George says bluntly and in such a way it shuts Norman down instantly, as again, Lilly suspects that might have been rehearsed. ‘We are at war. We will think and act in a warlike state. You hold positions at the top table, which is why you are all in here now. As for the camp, I am hoping that my negotiations yesterday evening will help us reforge a close working relationship.’

Lilly senses the energy changing, and how George was right, because it’s obvious they’ve already forgotten about Peter and can now only think about the Panacea.

‘There will always be speculation,’ George adds. ‘We must control it as best we can for the safety of all. Our role here is to support the cause. Now, that cause is twofold. Henry and Howie are doing their best to locate the Panacea, and we’ve got operatives locating the people with immunity to send them here. Once Henry and Howie locate the Panacea, it will be released to everyone. So it is vital we hold this fort, and we keep all of these people safe until that Panacea can be released. We must sell that idea to people. We must enforce it wherever we can. For the cause.’

‘Rather cultlike, isn’t it,’ Norman says.

‘Yes, perhaps. But it is fact that people feel safer when they believe in something and when they have something to hope for. A person with hope will rise and work, and be productive. A person without hope is broken and of no use to anyone. We must guard against that. We must give hope.’

‘If we’ve got the pana thing, why are they looking for the immune people?’ John asks.

‘Well. There has to be a plan b,’ George says.

‘Right. So, like, what happens if they don’t find this… This thing that cures everything?’ Simar asks.

‘The human species ceases to exist.’ George says bluntly. ‘There hasn’t been an event this catastrophic since the meteor strike that caused the mass extinction of nearly all life on this planet hundreds of millions of years ago.’

‘Well. That’s not quite fair,’ Dr Ann Carlton says. ‘It’s just us. Not every species. But yes. Point taken. Sorry.’

‘It has infected cats and rats, and other creatures,’ Lilly says. ‘The infection is able to gain sentience, or possibly even sapience and self-awareness in human minds, and this is less than a month since it started. Our species was targeted because we are the apex predators in the food chain. But what if the infection is so driven it seeks to infect all forms of life? The fact that it will cannibalise itself doesn’t seem a concern to it. There is just too much we don’t know. But what we do know is that Reginald and Mr Howie, and Henry are out there, trying to find ways to cull their numbers and find the Panacea. Our operatives are also finding the people with immunity to get them here for safety.’

The nods and sighs roll round the room because Lilly and George just said the same thing, and Lenski and Norman are nodding and agreeing, and everyone knows Norman is super intelligent, and Lenski pretty much runs the day-to-day stuff in the fort, and the soldiers said they knew George’s boss.

‘So, do people have to call me Quartermaster then?’ Colin asks.

‘Jesus, Colin,’ Norman mutters, rubbing his face.

‘And sorry. I know this is very important,’ Damsa says, ‘but what about that wood in the way of the gate? I need it moved, John.’

‘Tell Sandy,’ John says.

‘Er, don’t tell Sandy,’ Sandys says. ‘I run the boats, not what goes in them.’

‘And people!’ Aggie calls out. ‘Somebody is still pilfering choccy bars and cans of pop. We’ve put little, red stickers on them. You see a little, red sticker, then it’s stolen!’

Lilly shares a look with George. He just told them something of such huge importance it changes the very fabric of existence, but like he said, people worry about the things that impact their daily existence.

‘And we need to do something with those kids,’ Pardip adds. ‘Can we get some lessons going or something? Lilly, George?’

‘No, hang on, Pardip,’ Damsa says as her husband whispers angrily at her in their own language. ‘The wood?’

‘The wood needs to be moved,’ Lilly says.

‘Thank you!’ Damsa says, taking her victory as Maleek scowls.

‘As for the children,’ George says, ‘we have an expert in juvenile education with us, who Miss Lilly has already tasked to structure lessons for the children.’

‘Great. No, that’s great, that is. They’re running feral, they are,’ Pardip says to more murmurs of agreement.

‘But what about my stores?’ Colin asks to a room full of groans.

‘New rule,’ George calls. ‘Nobody. And I repeat. Nobody is allowed to draw goods from our Quartermaster’s stores.’

‘Yes!’ Colin says.

‘Unless they need something,’ George adds as Colin turns red, and everyone else laughs. ‘Moving on! No! Moving on,’ George says, waving at Colin to shush, with the crowd now firmly in his hand. ‘We have a lot to do, and so we must all support one another and support the cause. Give people hope. Keep them going. We’ll break for now and get some breakfast. Captain Jansu! The armoury is now your jurisdiction. At your convenience, I would like a full inventory.’

‘Yes, Captain,’ Captain Jansu says.

‘And Lenski?’ George calls. ‘And Damsa, actually, get around everyone in the fort and ask again for anyone with military training or police firearms training!’

‘I asked around last night,’ Damsa says. ‘There are two Russian men, who said they were in the military.’

‘We’ve had a few Russians arriving in the last few days,’ Norman says.

‘Russians,’ Jack mutters with a grimace to show his distaste.

‘I think, given the circumstances, we’ll take what help we can,’ George says with a nod at Captain Jansu. ‘Check their skills and use them. As for everything else. We’ll get to it when we can. One last thing. It’s important we have a clear line of hierarchy because the people here are looking to us for leadership. What we do directly impacts on their perception of safety and their feeling of well-being. To that end, think of Lilly and I as level one, or number one. Norman and Lenski are level two. They have authority over the day to day running. Captain Jansu is also level two, in charge of fort security. John, Damsa, Sandy, and the other section heads in here. You’re all at level three. Nominate deputies and train them, in case we lose you. I know that sounds too formal and too much like the military, but clarity will aid our endeavours. That’s enough for now. Get some breakfast. Captain Jansu, you and your men hold back, please. Kyle and Mary too. Briefing ends!’

Chairs scrape, and the voices rise as they file out, with the air already heavy and oppressive from so many people in a confined space.

‘We’ll need to hold off on the inventory just for a mo,’ George says, nodding at Captain Jansu. ‘We need to do an urgent clearance sweep. Up for it, lads?’

‘Of course,’ Captain Jansu says as Jock and Jack nod.

‘There is a boatyard overlooking the fort. Given our attack last night, it would be prudent to sweep through. Mary, you’ve experience enough to join us if you will.’

‘Aye, why not,’ she says. ‘Not like I’m welcome anywhere else.’

‘Right. Ten minutes, at the gate. Hydrate. It’s hot.’

Lilly notices the transition in George and how the gentleness in the way he spoke to the civilians becomes more direct and blunter when he’s speaking to the soldiers. Lots of eye contact and manly nods, and his voice is a touch deeper too. It makes them do the same and nod, and look serious.

They move away with purpose as Lilly takes a bottle of water to drink.

‘Have ye cleaned it?’ Mary asks, taking Lilly’s rifle to check.

‘Not since yesterday.’

‘Blondie,’ she tuts. ‘You were using it last night. Always clean it after use. What would Dave say?’

‘He’d give me fifty push ups.’

‘You’re thinking of Blowers. He’d make you do the push ups while standing on your back,’ Mary says, working with practised skill to strip and clean the weapon. ‘Have you done your sidearm?’ she asks as Lilly shakes her head and pulls it out to start cleaning and checking.

‘There is a perfectly good armoury up the end for that,’ Marion says with a grimace at the weapons being stripped and cleaned on the main meeting table.

Mary watches her walk out and pulls a face at Lilly. ‘Life goes on, eh, Blondie. All that yesterday, and then, George saying about the Panacea, and people just want the wood moved and the rats sorted, and the kids to stop running around. My Uncle Peter always said elections weren’t about whoever the biggest wanker from Eton was. It was who promised to clear the dog shit up and fix the potholes.’

‘Ah, good skills. That’s what I like to see,’ George says, coming out from the back with his tac-vest on. ‘Going up for ammunition. See you at the gate.’

He heads out, leaving them alone.

‘Ye good then?’ Mary asks while working on Lilly’s rifle.

Lilly nods at her, ‘Are you?’

‘Aye. Why wouldn’t I be?’ Mary asks, with her face suggesting otherwise.

‘I’m sorry if I went too far last night,’ Lilly says; her blue eyes holding steady as Mary swallows, then shakes her head, and goes back to the weapons.

‘No bother. There was a lot going on.’

‘Mary,’ Lilly says, moving closer to take her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I went too far. I just…’ she pauses as Mary searches her eyes. ‘Losing your Uncle Peter made me realise what I value,’ Lilly says as Mary’s expression softens, ‘and I think the emotions were just swinging wildly.’

‘Aye,’ Mary says softly. ‘That’s what it was. But thank you for saying that. I was all out of sorts. I’m not gay. Do you know what I mean? But I am gay, cos I’ve fallen for you, but then I wasn’t, and my head is all confused.’

Lilly smiles, remembering to never say more than is needed while always remaining polite and controlling the options.

‘Well. We can slow down if it’s freaking you out. Do you want that?’

‘Do you?’ Mary asks with a sudden hunger in her words. A need for validation. A need to be reassured. The loss of the camp making her jarred and homesick.

‘No,’ Lilly says. Controlling the options.

‘Then I’m fine too,’ Mary says as Lilly moves in to kiss her lips. ‘Ach, look at you showing affection, Blondie. Anyone would think you had a heart. Right. I need to pee. See you at the gate?’

‘Okay,’ Lilly says with a warm smile as she starts to master the art of manipulation and figures she’s actually learning a lot from George.

So maybe she won’t kill him just yet.

5

George stops at the entrance to the industrial complex of buildings and yards that serviced what was a bustling marina with docks in the river that fed into the sea.

The river still flows, but the mouth now feeds into the area worst hit by Dave’s detonation of the housing estate, with a landscape of hell filled with twisted metal and clumps of scorched rubble.

But that’s further down, outside the big container wall next to the camp. Up here is relatively unscathed.

He takes a knee on point to listen and absorb the world around them. His baseball cap on to protect his head and sunglasses to prevent glare. His M4 assault rifle held ready.

The others do the same. Spread out at equal distances. All of them holding still to listen and smell the world, thankful of there being no wind to drive the stench of the bodies from last night being burnt on a pyre outside the camp. A thick plume of black smoke drifts into the air, where it seems to hang suspended to show the absolute lack of a breeze.

Kyle, Lilly, and Mary on one side. Captain Jansu and his men on the other, with Jack now holding an older L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle he found in the armoury. The weapon he used during his service.

‘Are you bringing your blunderbuss to war, Grandad?’ Jock asked him when he came out of gates to meet the others by the boats.

Jack called him a twat.

Sandy took them over, and they skirted the edge of the camp to get a van from the big parking lot at the far end and drove slowly along the exit road towards the boat yard.

Now they stack up and wait to advance with sweat pouring down their faces. Early morning, and already the heat is crippling.

A hand signal from George to Dahn to set the GPMG up and protect the rear, and watch the open ground. Another to Jansu to take his team to the right side. Then another to Kyle to sweep left, while George maintains a central position on point.

‘I didn’t get any of that,’ Mary says when the complex finger waggling and fist waving ends.

‘Mary,’ Kyle tuts quietly.

‘I’m not a fecking soldier.’

‘We’ll teach you later,’ George says. ‘You go left with Kyle and Lilly. Sweep these buildings. Jansu and his team will do the right side. I’ll protect the mid-ground, and Dahn is covering the rear with the machine gun.’

‘Right,’ Mary says. ‘So, why’s that called a machine gun? What are these then?’ she asks, holding her assault rifle up.

‘I thought you could shoot, Mary,’ Kyle says.

‘I can shoot straighter and punch harder than any man, but it doesn’t mean I know the fancy terms boys with little willies give everything. Look at my big shiny carburettor and my Heckling, and Glock sub-machine assault bazooka… Ach, don’t you all tut at me. That’s what you sound like.’

‘Well. I’d suggest our cover is now blown,’ George says.

‘They’re zombies, not secret assassins, George. Are we doing this or not, because I’m already getting underboob sweat, and I hate that.’

They move out with slightly less worry about making noise and start working along, with Jansu and the guys going over to practise their skills and bring back their training as they storm buildings and cover each other.

‘Any zombies in here?’ Mary calls, going into the first chandlery and clothing store.

‘Mary, will ye take it seriously,’ Kyle says.

‘I am! But will ye look at these denim shorts though, Blondie? I might swap them with my cargos, and those vest tops look baggy and airy.’

‘Or we could be professional, and you can come shopping later maybe?’ Kyle says, getting an eyeroll from Mary as she swipes a straw hat to put on.

‘Don’t you even moan. I’m a fecking redhead. I burn in the shade.’

They press on, with Lilly noticing how George looks to be alert and watching, while getting the impression that this is staged.

No. Not staged.

Something else.

Except, she doesn’t know what.

They soon reach the boatyard Clarence took the white yacht from as Lilly thinks back to that night and seeing Nick and Tappy having sex in the dunes. It feels like years ago. But then, as Howie keeps saying - time feels like it moves differently now.

They sweep through the yards and units, and repair shops, and jet ski sales and find no trace of any infected.

But they do find trace of something else.

‘Someone’s been here,’ Jack calls from the upper veranda of the river-side restaurant and bar while holding his long, black rifle, with a cap and sunglasses on to protect his head and eyes like everyone else.

George leads them to the wooden stairs where Lilly hid from Tappy when she went for a pee and up to the top decking area to see Captain Jansu and his sons, along with Jack and Jock, looking at empty chocolate bar wrappers and cigarette buts, and empty soda cans littering the floor.

‘I was here a couple of days ago, and this was clear,’ Lilly says as Mary nods in agreement.

‘That’s a lot of junk food for a couple of days,’ Jock remarks. ‘I thought wee kiddies, maybe?’

‘Maybe Bobby’s coming up from the camp?’ Lilly suggests. ‘He’s always got a box of Mars bars and Snickers on the go.’

‘Aye. Maybe,’ Mary says with a shrug. ‘But Bobby likes people. He’s not one for coming to places on his own.’

‘How old is he?’ Jack asks.

‘Bobby? He’s about twelve, or maybe thirteen.’

‘The right age to nip away for a wank then?’ Jock asks. ‘Get off! All boys do it. Not just boys neither, seeing as this is a non-gender biased discussion.’

‘I can’t see any used tissues,’ Jack says.

‘Argh, will ye stop,’ Mary says. ‘I don’t want that image in my head, thank you. I doubt it’s Bobby. I’ll ask him later and see if any other of the kids have been up here, but I don’t think so.’

‘This position makes for a good OP,’ Captain Jansu says, motioning the fort in the distance, in a straight line from their position.

‘Have you checked the building?’ George asks.

‘Of course,’ Captain Jansu says as though that would be obvious.

‘In which case, apart from whoever likes chocolate bars and cans of cherry cola, I’d say we’re clear,’ George says as he heads off, with the rest following down the stairs into the middle of the road running between all the units.

‘We’ll hold back,’ Lilly says, motioning the chandlery over to the side. ‘Mary and I need some things.’

‘We can wait,’ George says.

‘Or you can go, and we’ll make our own way back,’ Lilly says.

‘It’s no problem. We’ll wait,’ George says, and the tension hangs in the air as Lilly holds still. Not liking how George is giving her orders.

‘Come on, Blondie. We’ll get what we need,’ Mary says.

‘You’ve got a good five minutes, so no rush,’ he replies in that way of his as Lilly follows after Mary into the cool, dark interior of the chandlery, stuffed full of ropes and buoyancy aids, and trinkets, and objects used on boats. Racks of clothes and hats. Boat shoes and sunglasses, and the dust particles swirl in the beams of light as Lilly stalks through them.

‘Did he really just put a time limit on us?’

‘Ach, well. What can you do?’ Mary says.

‘You’d normally tell someone to feck off if they told you to hurry up.’

‘Did ye just mimic my accent?’

‘Only a bit.’

‘Aye. And it’s a bit racist.’

‘It’s not racist! That’s how you speak. Apart from then, because apparently George is allowed to say what he wants to you.’

‘Did you not hear the threat Henry made?’

Lilly stills her tongue. Stunned at the answer as she realises Mary is showing meekness from fear of being executed. ‘No. No,’ Lilly says firmly, pointing at Mary as her blue eyes gleam with violence. ‘He is not scaring you…’

‘Blondie!’ Mary whispers, running after her to stop Lilly storming across the room.

‘I’ll shoot him right now.’

‘Ye’ll do no such thing.’

‘I don’t want you to be meek, Mary!’

‘I’m not meek because I’m scared of him, you daft twat. I’m showing respect because I care for you. You saw what they did, Lilly. They shot Peter and his men, and they blew Callum and the lads up. These aren’t people you fuck around with.’

Lilly frowns. Standing still, with Mary holding her arm to stop her rushing off.

‘Come on,’ Mary says, pulling her back into the store. ‘Don’t let it take root.’

‘It already has.’

‘Aye. I know it has, and I know you won’t accept no man, or woman for that matter, telling you what to do, but you’ve got to be smart, Blondie.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘What?’

‘That I wasn’t smart?’

‘Feck’s sake. Are we doing this? You really want to do this now? Cos I won’t lie to you.’

‘Just say it.’

‘You want me to say it?’

‘Say it!’

‘You messed up.’

‘Fuck you!’

‘You said to say it, and what’s with the cussing. You’re not Mister Howie. You messed up, Lilly. You pointed guns at them. No! Listen to me. I know why you did it, and I believed in you. I still do, but a mistake is a mistake, so ye need to slow down and think.’

‘I hate being told that.’

‘Someone has to say it. And I’m the closest to you now. I can see your anger. It’s in your eyes.’

‘So, you’re blaming me for Peter and Callum, and the others?’

‘Not at all.’

‘But you just said-.’

‘I said you made a mistake. So did they. Peter made the same mistake as you. You didn’t tell him what to do. He backed your play. He was a fully grown man, he was. And Callum, God bless his soul, was a twat that was always trying to prove himself, and I heard he ran into that house when the others told him to slow down. I don’t hold you responsible for them. You all did it.’

‘You did it with us.’

‘We all did it, then. And if you go out there now and point a gun at George, I’ll back you again. I’m loyal, but I’ll tell you what needs to be said,’ Mary says as she props her rifle to the side and unfastens her pistol belt before taking the new clothes from the hangars. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Blondie. You’re thinking of ways to off George and take the fort back cos you think it’s your fort. Aye. That’s got your tongue. Didn’t think I’d notice that, did you? Well, I did. And if I can read you, then Kyle will, and he worked with George for a long time before he knew you and don’t even think that George won’t notice.’

She pulls her t-shirt overhead and tugs her cargo shorts off, then starts biting the tags off the new clothes.

‘And what I’m saying is don’t do anything for a bit,’ Mary adds, spitting the tag aside as she tugs the vest on. ‘Just let it settle for a bit.’

‘It’s back to front.’

‘What is?’

‘The vest. You’ve got it back to front. No, just… Pull your arms in, and I’ll turn it,’ she says, moving in to help adjust it.

‘Can I ask a question?’ Mary asks quietly, looking into Lilly’s eyes. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘What?’

‘You know. Last night,’ Mary asks with a deep blush spreading through her cheeks and across the base of her neck.

‘Yes,’ Lilly says, holding her eye-contact before leaning in to kiss her.

‘We’ve only got three minutes,’ Mary whispers between kisses.

‘George can fuck off. He said I was one of Howie’s.’

‘Will ye stop the cussing.’

‘Feck off.’

‘Racist.’

‘Aye,’ Lilly says, mimicking Mary as she tugs the vest back off and starts kissing down Mary’s body, and once again, Mary doesn’t stop her.

‘Apologies!’ Mary calls when they rush out ten minutes later, both of them red-faced and sweaty, and in new shorts and vests, with Lilly in a baseball cap, and Mary in her new straw hat.

‘We thought you ran out the back,’ Kyle says.

‘No. We had sex,’ Lilly says, making Mary falter as the men stare on in awkward silence as Lilly stares at George. ‘I told you not to wait.’

‘I see,’ George says with a dark look.

‘Don’t,’ Mary whispers, pretending to look away so George won’t see her speak. But Lilly holds her position. Refusing to be cowed as George gets to his feet and stares back at her.

‘Ach. New teams always take time to adjust,’ Kyle says.

‘They absolutely do,’ George says, flicking the switch back to instant politeness and effortless charm. ‘And I have to remind myself she is only sixteen.’

It’s Lilly’s face that hardens next.

‘No, ye fecking don’t,’ Kyle says, blocking her path and guiding her away. ‘This heat sets people at each other’s throats. I’ll say this, though. I hope Henry and Howie are getting on better than you two.’

‘I doubt it,’ Lilly and George both mutter at the same, with both ignoring the fact that they just did that.

They take the van back to the parking area and go on foot back into the camp.

‘He’s always up here,’ Mary says as she looks around for Bobby or the other young people that work under Bobby’s charming leadership.

They reach the edge of the camp, with Lilly frowning at the sight of the plant machinery parked up and not in use. No men or women working on the wall. No trucks bringing new containers back. No anything at all, except for the plume of smoke in the distance from the bodies burning.

‘Why aren’t they working?’ she asks.

‘They lost Peter yesterday,’ Mary says as Lilly blinks, then marches off into the camp. ‘They need to mourn, Lilly!’

‘Patrick!’ Lilly calls, with the others rushing behind her.

‘Lilly, wait!’ George orders, but Lilly walks on. Unable to contain the rising frustration inside that the machines aren’t running, and the wall isn’t growing.

‘Lilly, will you slow down?’ Kyle urges, sensing she won’t as he curses and rushes after her. ‘Keep those guns low,’ he tells the soldiers. ‘And for God’s sake, don’t eyeball anyone and start something.’

‘Patrick!’ Lilly shouts, striding past caravans to the middle area to see everyone gathered at big, wooden benches and picnic tables under awnings and big umbrellas. The men bare chested in the heat. The women in bras and shorts. Young kids in underwear. All of them with strips of black material tied around their upper arms. Cigarette smoke in the air. Mugs of tea and coffee, and the air sullen and charged. Willie leaning against a caravan wall. Elvis next to him. Two black eyes and a swollen nose.

‘Where’s Patrick and Tyson?’ Lilly demands, marching in amongst them without a show of concern.

‘Here,’ Patrick says, off to one side in the shade with Tyson.

‘You’re not welcome here today, Lilly,’ Kathy says from her caravan door, but Lilly ignores her and turns back to Patrick and Tyson.

‘Why aren’t you working? We need to get that wall up to four high. They got over too easily last night.’

‘We’re in mourning,’ Patrick says, lifting his arm to show the black armband.

‘Ye not wearing one, Mary?’ Tyson asks.

‘Not yet, Tyson. Have you a spare?’ she asks as no one moves to find one, and the air seems to harden.

‘Did ye not think to put one on?’ Elvis asks.

‘I just said not yet, Elvis. If you have a spare, I’ll wear it.’

‘Ye shouldn’t have to be told,’ Elvis says.

‘You don’t tell me to do anything, Elvis.’

‘Go back to the fort, will ye,’ Kathy says in a hard voice. ‘Patrick just said we’re in mourning.’

‘Of course,’ George says. ‘Lilly?’ he prompts, clearly meaning she needs to turn and walk away right now. Except, Lilly doesn’t turn and walk away because the wall isn’t being built, and the people aren’t working.

‘We are all in mourning,’ Lilly says. ‘That doesn’t stop the work.’

‘We lost Peter and our boys, so we did,’ Tyson says.

‘My Callum is dead!’ another woman half shouts and half sobs from a caravan doorway, with two hard-faced teenage girls holding her. ‘Ye killed my son!’

‘We need to get on and work,’ Lilly says as the air charges harder, and the whispers and mutters start sounding out.

‘Jesus, Lilly,’ Patrick says, shooting a glance to George. ‘Will ye give us a day.’

‘Yes,’ George says.

‘No,’ Lilly says at the same time. ‘The wall is too low, and we need that trench digging on the inside; then we start on the inner wall, and that section they came over wasn’t covered in razor wire. Get up and get back to work.’

‘Lilly, perhaps, given the circumstances, we should show compassion to the losses they have endured,’ George says politely.

‘We have all lost,’ Lilly says in a brutal tone. ‘We have all suffered. We need to work.’

‘Stop telling us what to do!’ Callum’s mother yells. ‘Ye already got half of them killed!’

‘Ma,’ one of her daughters says, trying to pull her back inside while glaring daggers at Lilly.

‘Take your girlfriend back to the fort, Mary,’ Kathy says.

‘Don’t talk to me like that, Kathy.’

‘We need to work,’ Lilly says again.

‘And we need to choose a new leader,’ Tyson snaps at her.

‘And we can’t do that on the day of mourning for Peter,’ Eggy says to more voices starting to clamour amidst rising tension.

‘Why not?’ Lilly demands.

‘Traditions!’ Tyson says, with a few more shouting the same thing.

‘Will ye all just feck off,’ Kathy snaps. ‘And get Danielle away, will ye!’ she calls to the others trying to usher the sobbing woman back into her caravan.

‘I’ll not go inside! She killed my Callum,’ Callum’s mother yells.

‘Lilly didn’t kill Callum, Danielle,’ Mary says.

‘Don’t fecking speak to me, you traitorous bitch!’

‘Who ye calling a traitor?’ Mary fires back.

‘You!’

‘I’m no traitor.’

‘Just get out!’ Kathy yells as more voices join in.

‘I don’t care about your traditions,’ Lilly says over the voices while staring at Patrick and Tyson. ‘We need to work. That wall needs to be higher.’

‘Lilly. We are leaving,’ George orders in a low voice as Kyle holds his hands out, appealing for calm.

‘You are! You’re a fecking traitor, Mary!’ Danielle shouts in a voice cracking with emotion.

‘Ye need to leave,’ Tyson says with a hard glare at Lilly.

‘Ye fecking whores!’ Danielle shouts, her voice getting louder and angrier as she starts fighting against her daughters. ‘Ye bitch! You killed my Callum.’

‘I did not kill Callum. He rushed in when he was told to slow down,’ Lilly snaps, cold and furious, and only getting angrier as people start getting to their feet.

‘Ye need to go, Lilly,’ Tyson warns.

‘They all need to go!’ Kathy yells. ‘And you, Mary. You’re not welcome here.’

‘This is my home!’ Mary fires back.

‘It’s not now,’ Willie says.

‘Feck off, Willie. You’ve no right to exile me.’

‘But one of us will be leader, and we’re already agreed you’re not welcome,’ Willie says, motioning the other three men.

‘For what?’ Mary asks, her tone rising as the tension ramps. ‘What did I do?’

‘Cos you’re a gobshite!’ Kathy shouts.

‘And you’re not!?’

‘We will leave,’ George calls, trying to placate the people around them shouting and gesturing.

‘I will leave when the work starts,’ Lilly says, holding her ground as she notices something with a sudden frown.

‘MURDERERS!’ Danielle yells, kicking the door of her caravan open when someone tries to close it. ‘YE FECKING MURDERERS!’

‘Where are the children?’ Lilly asks, turning her head to look at Patrick and Tyson. ‘Where are Bobby and his mates?’

‘Now is not the time to ask that question,’ Kyle says. ‘We need to leave.’

‘Where is Bobby?’ Lilly asks again, her temper rising. Her blue eyes turning cold and furious as Danielle rages, with her daughters yelling at Lilly and Mary to fuck off and get out. Kathy the same. Demanding that they go. Mary shouting that this is her home. George trying to tell them they will. Kyle appealing for calm. Jock, Jack, and the soldiers gripping weapons, with eyes darting around as the men get to their feet and start gesturing and calling out.

‘Ye don’t demand anything in here!’ Kathy yells.

‘We had a deal!’ Lilly shouts, the first time any of them have heard her raise her voice properly. ‘You can stay in my bay if you work.’

‘It’s not your fecking bay!’ Kathy rages at her.

‘You work or you go!’ Lilly says, then turns back to Tyson and Patrick. ‘All the men are here. Have you put Bobby on guard on the wall?’

‘Really?’ Tyson says, pulling a face at George.

‘Lilly, enough,’ George says.

‘Have you put Bobby and the children on guard on the walls?’ Lilly demands.

‘GET HER OUT OF HERE!’ Kathy yells as Danielle screams abuse, with two men pulling her into a caravan and slamming the door.

‘We had a deal,’ Lilly says.

‘You had a deal with Peter!’ Tyson shouts back at her.

‘And he’s fecking dead, so ye can shove yer deal!’ Kathy screams. ‘And take that bitch with you,’ she yells and throws the contents of her coffee mug at Mary as the tension ramps higher, and men close in on all sides.

‘This isn’t your bay, Lilly,’ Patrick shouts as that fury steals into Lilly’s eyes, and the men and women shout, and babies cry, and dogs bark, and the door to the caravan slams open, with Danielle pulling the hammer back on a revolver, and the shot rings out.

‘NO!’ Kyle yells, and the men dive on Danielle as she flies back from the recoil. Jack brings his rifle up, with Jock and Jansu, and his sons doing the same. Everyone doing the same. Guns drawn and aimed on all sides. A chain reaction from one to the next. Pulling them all to a knife edge. Ready to wage war. Five professional soldiers and Kyle, George, and Mary against a whole camp of people. Jack’s eyes hard and ready. Jock’s face set and determined. The three Ghurkhas impassive and deadly as the men and women on the other side aim their guns. ‘Don’t… Don’t!’ Kyle yells the words over and over, desperate to stop the next shot being fired that will kill them all. ‘Do not fire! Nobody fire!’

A second passes. Then another and another. Everyone poised. Everyone ready, but the fingers hold from the triggers.

‘Ye’ve picked yer side then, Mary,’ Kathy says at Mary aiming her rifle and sidearm at her own family.

‘Looks that way, Kathy,’ Mary says, turning her head to look for threat as she spots Lilly standing off to one side. ‘Fuck! Lilly… Did ye get shot?’

An instant hard silence.

A stunned and terrible silence as every head turns to see blood pouring down Lilly’s arm from being shot through the shoulder. Her face a mask of pure, filthy rage. The same rage many of the men have seen before when Lilly has fought with them. An aura pouring from her. A dark and terrible energy, but it’s her eyes that bring forth the silence.

Her eyes becoming red and bloodshot, and full of murder, and in her hands, she holds the grenade. The pin already pulled.

‘Fuck, Lilly,’ Tyson whispers.

‘Lilly, alright,’ Patrick says, lowering his pistol to the table to show empty hands. ‘Lilly… Don’t… Okay?’

‘Lilly,’ Tyson says, doing the same. Lowering his shotgun as the men all around them drop their weapons from the sight of Lilly standing rock solid in the middle without a flicker of fear, holding a primed grenade with blood pouring down her arm.

‘Would ye kill us all, Lilly?’ Kathy asks, staring from the grenade to her.

‘Yes.’

Gasps and murmurs. Jack unmoving. Jock unmoving. Jansu, Dahn, and Gurba, all unmoving. Weapons held and ready. Mary with them.

‘We had a deal,’ Lilly says, looking around at them all. ‘You stay in my bay; then you work, and in return, you get the Panacea first when it is found.’

‘We’re immune, Lilly. What good is this Panacea to us?’ Elvis asks.

‘You are immune from this strain of the virus. It is not possible to have immunity from the Panacea. That’s what a Panacea does. It overrides everything. The people with immunity that we’re bringing back are being protected because they are most likely to survive in order to get the Panacea.’ She pauses to draw air and brings that cold and awful focus back on Patrick and Tyson. ‘I’ll give you today to mourn. Then you work, or you will leave my bay.’

Even George remains silent. Stunned at the turn of events and the way every single person looks to Lilly in the centre before she walks off without a glance at anyone.

6

They return to the fort in silence.

Lilly silent and angry. George the same. Kyle tense. Mary tense. The soldiers still trying to get a grasp of it all and what just happened.

Lilly slows the boat and waits to see the seal further out before throwing the grenade the other direction to let it sink into the deep waters, with an underwhelming pop and a small surge of bubbles the only evidence of it detonating.

‘Get to the infirmary, then report to the office,’ George orders when they berth and head through the inner gates. Lilly walks off, with Mary going with her.

‘What have you done now?’ Ann asks when Lilly and Mary walk in. Anika to one side, preparing what kit they need to take over to the medical tent on the bay.

‘She got shot,’ Mary says.

‘Jesus, Lilly,’ Ann says, pulling gloves on to examine the wound.

‘Did they shoot you?’ Anika asks.

‘It was Callum’s mother. She was in shock,’ Mary says.

‘Oh, look. More violence. What a surprise,’ Dr Lisa Franklin says, coming out from the back with Dr Andrew Stone. ‘What happened? Did they miss your head?’

‘Okay,’ Ann says while examining the wound. ‘The good news is the bullet hasn’t hit any nerves, but the bad news is it’s still in there. Can you prep, please, Anika.’

‘I don’t need a bed,’ Lilly says. ‘Just use those tweezers and pull it out.’

‘They’re not sterilised,’ Anika says. ‘Just wait a minute.’

She walks off after Ann, leaving Lilly and Mary alone, with Lisa eyeing them from the other end. The few beds inside occupied by hot looking patients. An elderly woman taking shallow breaths from the heart attack she suffered in the night. Another asleep on morphine from Heathcliff and Andrew re-setting a broken ankle. The room silent. Lilly annoyed. Frustrated. Impatient. Hot. Angry. Mary at her side. Worried about what just happened. That she pointed guns at her own family. But it all happened so fast.

‘What are you doing?’ Mary asks when Lilly angles a mirror on an extendable arm to look at her wound.

‘Just looking,’ Lilly says.

‘Don’t touch it. I said don’t touch it, Blondie. Put them down,’ Mary says when Lilly tries to part the wound with the fingers of her right hand, then grabs a pair of big surgical tweezers to push into the opening. ‘They’re not sterilised!’

‘Lilly, just wait,’ Andrew says as they look over to Lilly digging into the top of her own arm with the tweezers. ‘You’ll get infected!’

‘I can’t get infected. With anything,’ Lilly grunts and snags the bullet to drag out with a spurt of blood. ‘Got it. Do you want it?’ she asks with a glance to Lisa staring at her in horror.

‘There’s something very wrong about you, Lilly.’

‘Wrong?’ Lilly asks, walking towards her with the bullet held in the tweezers. ‘We don’t get sick. We don’t bleed out. We don’t feel pain like normal people. What’s wrong about that, Lisa?’ she asks and pushes the tweezers into her hands before turning to walk off.

‘This fucking day,’ Mary mutters, flapping her hands at Ann and Anika and, once more, rushing after Lilly. ‘Will ye slow down.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can’t or you won’t?’

‘Both. I’m too angry.’

‘At what?’ Mary asks as Lilly spins back to stare at her.

‘At everything. All the time.’

‘You’ve got to calm down,’ Mary says with a curse as Lilly strides over to a hose on the wall, and she waits for an older woman to wash her feet.

‘Cool your feet down, and it helps cool the body,’ the woman tells Lilly.

‘I shall remember that,’ Lilly says politely, because you should always be polite. And she waits, then smiles when the old woman hands the hose over who then balks at the blood all down Lilly’s arm.

‘What happened, love?’

‘I got shot,’ Lilly says, hosing the blood off as Mary grimaces.

‘Oh,’ the old woman says. ‘I had my bunions done once.’

‘Noted,’ Lilly says with another smile as she hands the hose back and walks off towards John and Pardip, and Maleek staring at a half-constructed building. ‘Are you staring at it or building it?’ she asks as they turn to see her smiling. ‘Do you have any glue?’

‘Glue?’ John asks.

‘Got some Gorilla glue,’ Simar says, pulling a tube from his work bag. ‘What’s it for?’ he asks when she takes it and squirts it over her wound. ‘What the fuck! Is that a gunshot?’

‘Yep. Cheers,’ she says, handing the glue back and setting off towards the office.

‘Blondie, ye need to slow down and think,’ Mary warns at her side.

‘I can’t. I’m sorry,’ Lilly says, reaching a hand out to touch Mary’s as a voice shouts nearby, making them turn to see Maleek arguing with Damsa. His face showing anger as she wipes the sweat pouring from her forehead and holds her wet hand up for him to see, and speaks fast in her own language. Her cheeks flushed and red from the intense heat inside the fort. He speaks over her. Angry. Animated. She starts to turn. He grabs her arm and pulls her back, but she snaps in a loud voice and tugs free, then starts pulling her robe overhead while Maleek shouts and tries to stop her. An intensity about it that makes people stop and stare. The builders nearby. Lilly and Mary. Aggie and Sunnie coming out of their stores. Others watching as Maleek shouts and tries to stop his wife ripping her robes off.

‘It’s too hot!’ she shouts in English, pulling free to try again as Maleek tries to stop her.

‘Watch them hands, will ye,’ Mary calls as Maleek shoots her a filthy look but then seems to notice everyone watching, and backs off while his wife pulls the robes overhead with angry, fast movements until they’re free, and she’s holding them in her hands, wearing denim shorts and a Coca Cola vest. Defiance in her face.

‘It’s too hot,’ Damsa says again, then seems to repeat it in her own language as Maleek hisses something angry at her.

‘Maleek!’ John shouts, motioning the site they are building as Maleek gives his wife a filthy look.

‘What this? Why shouting?’ Lenski asks, rushing towards them on seeing Damsa not in her robes and Maleek’s angry expression. ‘Is hot. She wear what she want. No look at me this way! Is not old world. Is new world. No religion in here. No bad rules!’ she yells as Maleek turns away.

‘Jesus,’ Mary whispers.

‘Lilly?’ George calls from the doorway to the offices, nodding at her to get inside. ‘What the hell was that?’ George asks when she walks inside.

‘Damsa took her robe off,’ Mary says.

‘Not that! The camp.’

‘I controlled the options,’ Lilly says as Kyle tuts and tries, once more, to interject and play the peacekeeper.

‘That was not control! You undermined my orders,’ George says.

‘I told them to work or leave!’

‘Keep your voices down,’ Kyle says as they keep going.

‘And I said they could mourn,’ George snaps. ‘You do not undermine my orders!’

‘I’ll do what I see fit!’

‘You impudent child!’

‘Do not call me a child!’

‘Ach. Ye know what? I’m sick of being between the two of you,’ Kyle says, throwing his hands up and walking between them to start making a brew. ‘Just go outside back-to-back and take ten paces, and turn, and shoot, why don’t you? Why not at all? Why not do anything? Lilly, you just need to listen-.’

‘Don’t tell me to listen!’

‘I WILL TELL YE TO LISTEN!’ Kyle roars, turning in a flash and throwing the mug at the wall. ‘I stood by you. I fought with you. You don’t know everything, Lilly! Don’t. Do not!’ he growls when she looks ready to argue. ‘Swallow it down.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Then learn!’ he says, standing over her and glowering down. ‘You can’t rule by temper alone. You’ve got that thing inside of you. It made your eyes red. I saw it. Don’t let it control you. It’ll consume you, Lilly. Calm yourself. Breathe in and out. Breathe, Lilly. Just breathe. Not everyone is against you. For feck’s sake, we can’t think and move as fast as you.’

‘You need to listen to me, Lilly.’

‘Not now, George!’ Kyle snaps at him. The tension in the room hard and awful as Kyle stares down into her blue eyes. The red now faded, with only a trace left. ‘You’re the same as Howie,’ he says quietly as she swallows. Listening to a man she trusts and respects. ‘But Howie has Reginald and Clarence, and he’s got Paula and Marcy, and Dave, and he’s learned to listen to them. He’s learned to trust them. Do you trust me? Do you trust Mary?’

‘Yes. But Howie is different with them. They’re connected with the hive mind.’

‘And do you think we’re not connected to you? Mary just aimed her weapons at her family for you. The poor woman is exiled because of you, and I chose you over my old team. Is that not loyalty enough for you? Jack and the lads all did the same. And I’m not saying that to shame you. I’ve no wish to shame you. But you’ve got so much power it’ll tear you apart if you don’t focus it.’

Lilly draws air, inflating her lungs slowly, ‘I acted on instinct. Perhaps I was rash and-.’

‘No. No, no, no. Don’t do that. I don’t want polite speeches from you now. Own what you did.’

‘Okay,’ she says quietly.

‘Good. Right. Will ye listen to me?’ Kyle asks, seeing her rage has eased back a touch. ‘Henry has called George. They think they’ve found Milly’s big sister. A girl called Molly, and there’s some suggestion she’s been raped by her own brother and his friends, the poor lass. We need someone to collect her. George was talking to Norman and Lenski about who to send, but I think you and Mary can go and cool yer heads. Will you do that? And is that Gorilla glue on your arm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘To seal the wound, so I could go for a swim.’

‘Ask a question,’ Kyle says. ‘That’s the location. Can you find it?’ he asks, passing Lilly a piece of paper, who hands it straight to Mary.

‘Aye. I can find this,’ Mary says.

‘Go on, then,’ Kyle says, motioning them to go. ‘And get changed first. Your covered in blood.’

Lilly nods, then turns to go with a wordless glance to George. Then she’s gone, with Mary going out behind her. Leaving Kyle exhaling slowly.

‘I think this is developing into a problem,’ George says after a moment.

‘Then change how you think, George,’ Kyle replies, earning a look. ‘They’re not like us. Lilly and Howie. The infection. It makes them different.’

Kyle pauses to think. George doing the same. Trying to read and learn a situation that seems to flip and change every half an hour.

‘So, Howie told Clarence that if he dies, then Clarence is to take over the team,’ Kyle says while picking up the pieces of his shattered mug. ‘They had a whole discussion about who takes over in the event of them dying. Right on the beach, it was. When Howie first met you and Henry and realised Dave knew you, and Paula saw her uncle and aunt. Anyway, so they came up with a plan. Charlie takes over from Reginald, and Mo takes over from Dave, and so on… But do you know the truth of it? Reginald had already told Lilly everything he knew about the infection, and he said if Howie ever dies, then she is to take over. Not Clarence or Paula. Lilly has to do it. And this is way before you and Henry came along. How do you think she knew that about the people with immunity still being able to have the Panacea. I didn’t know that. She knows more than we do. Reginald told her the whole thing, and now I’m telling you, George. As a friend. They are not the same as us. You can’t tame lightning. You can’t put it in a bottle for when you want it. That thing inside of them. They’re not human. They’re not us. Are you listening to me? Because what I just did with Lilly to calm her down won’t work twice. I’m amazed I got through to her then. I know your tactics, George. Always be polite. Never say more than needed. Control the options. Do not commit to anyone. Spectacles create the illusion of power. Hearts and minds, and however many more of the things you’ve got up your sleeve. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times, but that was old world, and this isn’t the old world, George. We’re not the leading players now. We’re the support roles. Do you get what I’m telling you? Don’t think of Lilly as a sixteen-year-old girl. It’ll mess your head up. Pay her the same respect you’d give any fully grown man. Anyway. Enough for now. It’s too hot. I’m going to put my feet in the sea.’

Captain George Shaw watches him leave. His face still bruised and swollen from the bare-knuckle brawling, but it’s already fading, and he stares after Kyle while thinking of everything the man just said and figures none of this is what they thought it would be.

In fact, the whole bloody thing is nothing like they were expecting, or at least, it’s not what he was expecting.

But then, it was all brought forward by six months and released without warning, which means that something obviously caused a change to the plans.

Was it the mutations?

And what does he do about it? If, indeed, he should do anything at all.

He gathers himself upright and seems to morph from the heated, angry expression left in Lilly’s wake to the always polite, genial man everyone normally sees, and he walks out of the office with a military stride. A nod to the construction workers, moving slowly and sweating heavily in the exhausting heat. A nod to the Gurkha brothers, patrolling by on the top of the wall, with their rifles held easy and relaxed in the crook of their arms to the front.

‘Zdravstvuyte,’ a deep voice says with the formal Russian greeting. A hard-looking man walking past. Shaved head. Older. Forties. Ex-military or mercenary.

‘Ah, privet!’ George says, giving the less-formal reply to show friendliness as he offers his hand. ‘Captain George Shaw. Glad to know you. Have you just arrived?’ he asks in fluent Russian.

‘Stanislav. Da. Yes. One days ago,’ the man replies in broken English.

‘Well. We are glad to have you,’ George says in Russian. ‘Just you, is it?’ he enquiries.

‘My brother,’ Stanislav says in Russian, nodding to another guy of the same Slavic appearance. Thickset. Shaved head. Hard eyes. ‘There is another Russian family there,’ Stanislav adds, pointing to a husband and wife arranging their newly allocated tent. They glance over with an exchange of nods.

‘Right. Well, do report to Captain Janu if any of you have military training. We need reliable people. Please excuse me though, I need to check what rooms we can put to use.’

‘Of course, Captain.’

George walks on. That neat and tidy man with his neat and tidy moustache, and he aims for the far back to one of the doglegs created by fluctuations in the inner wall. He passes several doors, peering inside at the awful state of rooms, as yet uncleared. Nearly all of them filthy from decades of neglect and abandonment and rammed full of decaying furniture and rotten, mouldy carpets, and unrecognisable heaps.

Cobwebs everywhere. Rats scurrying around, with flashes of brown bodies and long tails darting between the dark shadows.

He ventures into one with a pocket torch, using it to shine into the dark recesses and at the walls, and ceilings. Seeing which might be sound or which look unsafe from damp or crumbling concrete.

He checks a few. Taking his time. A light sweat forming on his brow. A room at the far end, tucked into a corner. He goes inside. A smell in the air. Musty and stale, but something else too. Another scent lingering.

He examines the walls and ceiling, then shines the light down to see litter and junk everywhere. Stacked up in dirty mounds, but he also spots the track running between them and follows it through to a pitch-dark back room where he comes to a stop, with the light shining down on the brightly coloured wrapper of a half-eaten chocolate bar with a red sticker on the top.

‘Well now,’ he whispers with a glint in his eyes. ‘What are you doing there?’

7

‘Will ye take us up the bay,’ Mary says as Sandy drives the boat out from the beach in front of the fort.

‘We need a car,’ Lilly says.

‘We’ll find one, but I don’t want to go back through the camp just yet,’ Mary says as Sandy opens the engine and powers on.

Lilly stares out to the sides, looking for the seal and feeling Mary tug her arm and point over to the bay to some of the men starting the forklift, with the big coils of razor wire held on the prongs. ‘They’re getting back to work by the looks of it,’ Mary shouts over the engine.

Sandy slows a dozen metres back from the wall and goes in as close as she can, with Lilly and Mary jumping over the prow and wading through the shallows. Both now in jeans and boots, and t-shirts. Pistols on hips, and assault rifles at the ready.

‘Knew it,’ Lilly says, spotting Bobby on top of the wall, holding a pair of binoculars. Other kids with him. All of them armed with assault rifles and shotguns.

‘Ye got a car for us, Bobby?’ Mary calls.

‘What’s it worth, Mary?’ he shouts down with a grin.

‘What’s it worth. It’s worth me not climbing up there and giving you a thump, so it is.’

The lad slides smoothly down the ladder to a cool box at the base of the wall in the shadows. The inside filled with ice to keep the chocolate bars and cans of soda cool. ‘Do ye want a snack or a drink, Miss Lilly?’ he asks with his charming smile. Thirteen years old. Slim and short, but with an air of someone many years older. ‘They’re not melted.’

‘Thank you,’ Lilly says, remembering the junk food wrappers they found in the marine estate. ‘Have you got any cherry cola?’

‘Cherry cola?’ Bobby asks. ‘No. We don’t have any cherry cola. Did you want cherry cola though, Lilly? I’ll get you some, I will. How many do you want?’

‘Bobby. Straight question, and no trouble whatever you say,’ Mary tells him. ‘You been up to that boat yard place?’

‘Aye. When we first got here. Why? Have they got the cherry cola you want?’

‘No! You daft twat. I’m asking if you ever go up there and, like, hang out or anything.’

‘Hang out? I don’t have time to hang out, Mary. I’ve got a parking lot and a taxi service, and a supply business to run. I’ve no time for hanging out. I get people what they want. You want a car? Ask Bobby. You want vegan foods? Ask Bobby. No questions asked, and I tell no tales. Hang out, she says,’ he finishes with an eye-roll and a shake of his head at Lilly.

‘Talking of which. We do need a car,’ Lilly says.

‘I can do you a nice Toyota. It’s the Hilux. You can’t go wrong with a Hilux. All the mod cons, and they go anywhere. And no charge to you, Lilly. It’s on me, so it is.’

He leads them to a row of vehicles parked neatly alongside the wall. A white Toyota in the middle. The keys in the ignition. The inside clean and tidy.

‘Hang on. You said no charge,’ Lilly says.

‘Aye. No charge to you, Lilly.’

‘No. I mean how can you charge anyone? Money is useless.’

‘I don’t want money! What good is money. I take what they have, and what they’re willing to trade. Gold. Silver. Watches. Food sometimes. I got a lot of bottles of Brandy and Whiskey, and the such like, but don’t be telling the lads in the camp. They like a drink, they do. And I’m fair too. I’m always fair, Lilly. I don’t take more than I should.’

‘It’s fine,’ Lilly says.

‘He’s a little tycoon, so he is,’ Mary says, getting into the driver’s seat with a wince at the heat inside.

‘She’s all filled up, so she is,’ Bobby calls, waving them out as he shouts for another child to drive the truck to open the access point, and a moment later, they’re out of the bay and driving, with the hot wind blasting past the windows. The sea on one side. The land on the other, wilting in the intense heat, with shimmers hanging in every direction.

‘Where are we going?’ Lilly asks, realising she doesn’t know.

‘Place called Stickleton. You must know it. They’ve got the big safari park with the lions and tigers, and bears.’

‘Oh my.’

‘What?’

‘Oh my. It’s from the movie? Lions and tigers, and bears… Oh my!’

‘My what?’

‘Have you never seen that film?’

‘What film?’

‘The Wizard of Oz!’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Wow. No. Just wow,’ Lilly says. ‘The yellow brick road?’

‘You don’t make roads from yellow bricks. You need tarmac, unless you’re a twat middle class wanker from Surrey, having a yellow brick driveway put in because you’ve more money than sense.’

‘There’s no place like home?’ Lilly says, staring in stunned awe. ‘The tin man? The cowardly lion? The strawman person thing? Come on! Seriously? Dorothy? Toto?’

‘Will ye stop shouting random words, Blondie.’

‘Well. Honestly. I don’t know what to say. It’s a classic. What’s your favourite then?’

‘Movie? I don’t like movies.’

‘But you must have one you love.’

‘John Wick.’

‘Fuck off!’

‘Will ye stop cussing, Blondie!’

‘John Wick?’

‘Aye. John Wick. They killed his puppy. Did you ever see it? He’s like you, he is. I will be of service. I am of service. Except you’re more like I don’t feel pain. I don’t get sick. Shove this bullet up your arse, Lisa, cos I can’t fecking calm down.’

Lilly looks at her for a long second as Mary drives and glances over, and the silence holds until they burst out laughing.

‘Ye can feck off,’ Lilly quips, mimicking Mary’s accent.

‘Racist.’

‘Do me, then.’

‘Do you? Okay. Oh, wot, wot. I am Queen Lillibet of super posh fuckers wot who dunk biscuits in our china teacups and titter, and tatter.’

Silly jokes. Silly things said. Snorts and laughs, and smiles that ease the tension as Lilly reaches over to brush a lock of hair back from Mary’s shoulder, and that sudden look of pain and worry steals back into Mary’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry for what I did,’ Lilly says.

‘For what?’

‘For the confrontation in the camp.’

‘You’re not sorry, Lilly. Do you not remember what you told me last night. You only get sorry when you don’t win, and you won. So, what’s to be sorry about?’

Lilly frowns, with her hand resting on Mary’s shoulder, and her fingers tickling the side of her neck. ‘I’m sorry that you were put in that position. That’s what I mean.’

Mary shoots her a look. The angst clear and obvious.

‘I mean it,’ Lilly says. ‘I wish you weren’t in that position.’

‘So do I,’ Mary says quietly, frowning as she watches the road. ‘I know we’re all noisy and what not, but families mean something to us. Jesus. Families mean everything to us. I don’t think other western people have that like we do. And I don’t think they’ll take me back.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’

‘Because what? I don’t get it. And why can’t you be the leader?’

‘Are ye daft?’ Mary asks with a harsh, bitter laugh.

‘But you should be.’

‘I should be many things, but I’m bloody not. Women can’t be leaders, Blondie. Not in my world… Not in that camp, anyway.’

‘But the old world is gone.’

‘And what? What of it? What about it? Go and tell them. You heard them. The old world wasn’t even our world. We have our own rules and ways, and they don’t let women take charge.’

‘They know I’m in charge.’

‘Of the fort, not the bloody camp. Blondie, will ye listen to me. They will never accept a woman in charge, and I’m now exiled because I’m loud, and I’m now gay, apparently, and my opinions are too much and whatever. That’s just how it is.’

Lilly squeezes her shoulder. Not knowing what to say or if she should say anything at all. In the end, Mary cocks her head over to push her cheek against the back of Lilly’s hand and sighs before wiping tears away.

‘Do you want to pull over?’

‘I’m fine,’ Mary says, sitting up straight and shaking it off. ‘It’s all good! Good in the hood. At least we’re out for a bit.’

‘Yes. Indeed,’ Lilly says, not knowing how to unpack or deal with any of that. Everything moving so fast and changing so quickly.

Mary drives on, trying not to break down and sob because she meant what she said. Being rejected by the camp matters to her. It’s a big thing, and it hurts. ‘I’m no traitor though.’

‘Pull over. We’ll talk about it.’

‘No! We’ve got to get this Molly.’

‘They can wait.’

‘We can’t piss Henry off, Lilly. We’ve talked about this, and you’ve got to stop going at George.’

‘I’m trying!’

‘Then why did you say we had sex when we came out of that place? We looked like bloody idiots!’

‘I don’t know! I didn’t like the way he ordered us. And I think, in retrospect, I was pushing back against his authority.’

‘Ye can’t do that. He’ll execute you.’

‘I don’t think he will.’

‘They shot Peter and his men! They killed Callum and his mates.’

‘But they didn’t shoot us. And they could have, but Henry didn’t because Howie was right there, watching him, and I think if Henry had shot us, Howie would have torn him apart.’

‘What? Are you fecking mad? You threatened Howie too, Blondie!’

‘I know! But I thought about it and something George said and… I don’t know.’

‘Lilly. You cannot bank on maybe Howie not wanting to kill you as the sole reason for taking George on. You’re way smarter than that. You’ve got to play the long game and stay calm.’

‘Okay. I will. No, honestly! I will try. George does know a lot. It’ll be good to learn before I…’

‘Before you what? Actually. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Did you mean kill him? No! Don’t tell me. Are you going to kill him?’

‘I was!’

‘Was?’

‘Maybe. I mean. Yes. Maybe.’

‘Jesus, Blondie.’

‘There is too much at stake to let old men addicted to power try and turn this into the old world.’

‘Aye. So, you’ll kill them like they used to kill people, so they could have power. Is that what you mean?’

‘That is exactly what I mean. I was wrong to go against Howie. I know that now. I should have listened to Reginald.’

‘Reginald? Did he say something to you?’ Mary asks as Lilly pauses. Remembering she was told not to tell anyone. But then she also remembers Kyle asking if she trusted him and Mary, and in that second, Lilly realises she has to show that trust.

‘Yes. He told me that if Howie fails, it will be me taking over to get the Panacea out. He told me about the infection and how it started, and Neal’s diaries, and what Reginald knew, and what he suspected. He swore me to secrecy, but I messed up. I got caught up in the issues between Henry and Howie, and I thought I could make a move. I was wrong. I know that. But I think… I think… I think I did it for revenge. For leaving me. They came back to the fort, and I’d taken it over and got it going, and they came back and said well done, Lill,y and Nick fucked me and fucked off, and they fucked off, so fuck them. Fucking, fucking fuck them! That’s why I did it.’

Mary puffs her cheeks out. Taking her turn to mentally unpack it all, with her head swirling, and they drive on in heavy, charged silence until Mary slows and stops the car. The engine ticking over. The air vents doing what they can to reduce the staggering temperature but failing miserably as they sit and sweat.

‘Blondie. You just said there is too much at stake to let an old man ruin it by trying to make it like the old world… You said that, did you not?’

‘I know,’ Lilly says softly.

‘But what you did to Howie is the same.’

‘I know.’

‘Right. So that’s good. It’s out in the open, and we know about it. But I have a question, and I’ll be pleased if you don’t lie to me.’

‘I promised I will never lie to you, and no, I didn’t get with you to get back at Nick. I saw Nick and Tappy having sex, and I just knew what I wanted, and I wanted you.’

Another silence. Thoughts being processed. Too many thoughts at once. Too many things now in the air.

‘Are you hurt over what Nick did to you?’ Mary asks, plucking one of the many issues to ask.

‘Not now. There’s too much at stake. I don’t think about him like that at all. My mind doesn’t work like that, Mary. I’m not an emotional person now.’

‘Ye telling me. Right. Well. This is a day for getting it all out,’ Mary says, rubbing her eyes and face. ‘To recap then. You got pissy and went for Howie cos you were angry.’

‘A little bit. But I was also frustrated at the time it was taking them to talk about it. Howie was too. I saw that. What I should have done is gone to Howie and been honest, and told him I’d back his play no matter what.’

‘Aye. Agreed. And now with George?’

‘I’ll try. I promise.’

Mary nods as Lilly reaches over to take her hand in hers as a family of gorillas walk slowly past the front of the car.

‘The fuck…’ Mary whispers as they pass by.

‘Are we near the safari park?’ Lilly whispers.

‘Not far. Maybe a mile,’ Mary replies as the creatures reach a flat roofed pub wrapped in scaffolding and start climbing the poles on the outside to get through an open top window. ‘Well. You don’t see that every day,’ Mary adds.

‘We should get on,’ Lilly says.

‘Aye,’ Mary says, pulling away with her head in a spin and thinking back to the camp; how quickly it went off, and Lilly being shot and not flinching. She didn’t say a word but stood there with that bloody grenade in her hand. Mary wanted to ask if she’d have really put that grenade into the camp.

But she didn’t because she knew what the answer would be.

‘Llama,’ Lilly says, pointing to a Llama poking it’s head up from behind a hedge in someone’s garden with a mouth full of grass. Then another head joins it. Then another and another. All of them chewing and turning in sync to watch the SUV go by.

They turn the last corner into the town centre to see the Saxon and Roy’s van, and Henry’s SUV at the other end of the precinct.

‘We can’t drive through,’ Mary mutters. ‘Want to go around?’

‘No. We can walk. They’re right there,’ Lilly says as they come to a stop, and they both get out into a wall of heat.

They head between the bollards and watch Blowers and his team keeping watch, and Howie and Henry, and the leaders gathered in one spot as Reginald comes into view with a pretty, blond woman, and Lilly clocks Tappy running back to the Saxon.

‘Are ye going to say something now?’ Mary asks. ‘To Howie I mean?’

‘We’ll see. Maybe. They’re probably busy.’

‘It’s good that you can reflect like that though, Blondie. I respect that about you. You’re stubborn as shit when you dig in, but you are very honest. I think that’s why people love you. That honesty. It’s the same with Howie…’

She cuts off talking as the music starts, and the street fills with the sound of the music from The Omen blasting from the Saxon’s speakers. ‘Can you smell sulphur yet?’ Tappy’s amplified voice calls.

‘Cheeky fucking fuckers!’ Mary snaps. ‘And after what I said about Howie? He can kiss my ginger ass, the fecking twat!’

‘Let’s just get it done,’ Lilly says as they carry on walking, with the lads starting to laugh and snort, which only makes Mary angrier.

‘YE FECKING TWATS!’ Mary yells as they walk the last few metres, with Howie’s team bent double and laughing so hard they’ve got tears streaking down their cheeks.

‘Sorry, boss. But that was so worth the bollocking,’ Tappy says when the music cuts out. ‘But seriously. Crows. I’m telling you.’

‘Tappy!’ Paula shouts while trying not to smile. ‘Right. Just some high jinks. No harm, no foul.’

‘No foul, my fecking arse.’

‘Mary,’ Lilly says calmly in that cold voice that Mary knows is the precursor to something bad happening, and it stills her tongue as Lilly clocks the expression on Howie’s face. Like he wants to apologise or say something.

‘Is it just you two?’ Reginald asks politely.

‘It is,’ Lilly says, matching his manner because one should always be polite. ‘We were told Molly had been subjected to some serious issues.’

‘Indeed. That is correct. I would suggest a thorough medical exam, particularly with regard to injuries sustained by repeated penetration of the vagina and anus.’

‘Jesus,’ Mary says. ‘Did ye kill the lads that did it?’ she asks Howie as he nods. ‘Aye. And her own brother, was it now?’

‘Giles was my half a brother,’ Molly says. ‘But Milly and Mikey are my whole sister and brother.’

‘Mikey?’ Lilly asks.

‘We think another boy got taken into care,’ Howie says. ‘Molly? Was Mikey taken into care?’

Molly just nods and looks sad before smiling brightly. ‘I like your hair,’ she tells Mary.

‘Aye. Do you now? It’s very red, is it not? Well, anyway. We’ll get you home with us. Milly will be chuffed as anything to see you, she will.’

‘Listen,’ Howie says. ‘If either of them say where Mikey is, give me a shout. We’ll try and find him.’

‘If we have time,’ Henry says.

‘Time for what?’ Lilly asks, sensing the dynamics between Henry and Howie.

‘We’ll have time,’ Howie says.

‘Indeed. But perhaps, if they do find a location for the other child, they can arrange recovery themselves,’ Henry adds.

‘He’s not a car, Henry,’ Howie says.

‘I am aware he’s not a car, Howie. The term is used in reference to collection.’

Lilly clocks it instantly. The same issue between Henry and Howie as she is having with George. The same thing. The same energy. ‘Sure!’ she says with a big smile at Howie. ‘If we hear anything, I will let you know, Mr Howie.’

‘Thanks. I think,’ he says.

‘Great. Well. We’ll get Molly back. We don’t want to keep you from your mission.’

‘We’re doing that perfectly well on our own,’ Henry mutters.

‘What the fuck, mate!’ Howie snaps. ‘We’ll find one.’

‘Find one what?’ Lilly asks.

‘Why are you being nice?’ Paula asks with a hard look at Lilly.

‘My apologies, Paula. Is this not what you wanted? For us to be cordial and work together?’

‘Not like that though, you weirdo,’ Marcy says as Lilly remembers the way Marcy pinned her to the wall, with a knife to her throat.

‘Who ye calling a fucking weirdo?’ Mary asks.

‘Fuck me. Okay. Stop,’ Howie says. ‘This heat. We’re all going nuts. We’re looking for a control point to-.’

‘I’d rather you did not explain our mission objectives, Mr Howie,’ Henry says.

‘What difference does it make? What’s she going to do? Run and find one, and get them ready? We don’t even know where they are.’

‘You’re looking for a control point, I assume,’ Lilly asks, having already been told by Reginald that he suspects each horde has a central figure controlling them.

‘See!’ Howie says. ‘She’s a dick, but she’s switched on. Yes, Lilly. That’s what we’re looking for. Which we’d better do before Henry has more kittens.’

‘Has Henry got more kittens?’ Molly asks. ‘I like kittens. Do you like kittens?’

‘We have lots of kittens at the fort,’ Mary says. ‘Seeing as somebody let the cats all free,’ she adds with a side eye to Lilly.

‘Anyway. We should return,’ Lilly says. ‘Tensions are high at the moment. But perhaps what you are looking for is no longer here.’

‘Eh? Speak English, Lilly. I’m not as smart as you.’

‘You are, Mr Howie. You’re one of the smartest men I have ever met,’ Lilly says, knowing exactly what she is doing and how she is saying it to not only piss Henry off but also Marcy. ‘But I meant it’s very likely there aren’t any hordes left around here. I’d suggest you try a new area.’

Howie frowns for a second before seemingly clocking the glint in her eye, and Lilly sees it in him. That big brother vibe as he starts to groan. ‘Oh, fuck off. Not doing it, Lilly.’

‘What?’ Paula asks.

‘What?’ Lilly asks with innocence.

‘You bloody know what. Pack it in,’ Howie says, pointing a finger at her. ‘Jesus Christ. She’ll run the world one day. I’m telling you. Lilly will run this sodding world. Hopefully, not with me in it though. Right, let’s bug out.’

‘Good seeing you again, Mr Howie. I’m at the end of the radio if you ever need assistance,’ Lilly calls.

He turns with a flash of darkness, and for a split second, she worries she’s pushed it too far, but then he snorts a laugh and smiles at her. ‘You’re a dick. Whatever. Bye, Lilly.’

‘What’s going on?’ Paula asks.

‘Yeah. What the fuck?’ Marcy demands while staring daggers at Lilly.

‘Bye then!’ Lilly calls and walks off with Mary and Molly, and that pleasant sense of victory spiking inside because she just pissed Marcy off and Henry, and told Howie she is on his side, all in one go.

‘What the feck!’ Mary says as they head back to the Toyota. ‘Did you just flirt with Howie?’

‘No!’

‘What’s a feck?’ Molly asks as they both look at her smiling brightly. ‘I like your voice.’

‘That’s good then because I talk non-stop, so I do,’ Mary says as the worries, and concerns shift in her and Lilly to the new person sitting with them. A child trapped inside the body of a beautiful woman. And even with the baggy clothes, they can still see the love bites on her neck and the grip marks on her wrists and arms. ‘She’ll need to be watched very closely,’ Mary says quietly when she gets in the front. ‘A woman looking like that in a fort full of men?’

‘I know,’ Lilly says.

‘Aye. And you know the safest place for her? The camp. Say what you will, but not one of our lads would touch a hair on her head… And do ye mind telling me what the hell that was all about with Howie?’

‘It was nothing!’ Lilly says as Mary starts the car and pulls away.

‘Nothing, my ass. We’ll chat about it later, we will. I can’t imagine there’ll be much work going on in this heat.’

8

‘Forty degrees,’ Mary says as she gets out of the car. The beach on one side. The camp on the other. Everyone in the shade, stripped down to shorts and vests. Many in just underwear. The air heavy, hot, and listless. ‘I never even seen a temperature that high.’

‘Lilly, we had to stop,’ Patrick says, rushing from the camp in a pair of denim shorts and rigger boots. ‘Don’t be chucking grenades at us. It’s too hot to run the machines, but we got razor wire on that section they breached last night.’

‘It’s okay,’ Lilly says. ‘Just stay vigilant.’

‘Aye, but the infected’ll not come back again,’ Patrick says confidently.

He heads off, with Lilly staring thoughtfully after him as Molly gets out of the car.

‘I love the seaside!’ she announces as several of the camp lads perk up and pay sudden attention to the attractive, blond woman, with several of them getting to their feet and starting to saunter over.

‘She’s got the learning difficulties, lads. Like a child,’ Mary says, and as one, they show respect. Lifting hands and giving apologies.

‘Was the car alright, Lilly?’ Bobby asks, sliding into the driver’s seat with a friendly nod and a smile at Molly. ‘Anytime you need it, you just say, Miss Lilly. And I got that cherry cola for you. It’s in the medical tent, so it is. Anything you need, ask for Bobby, and I tell no tales.’

‘How old is Bobby?’ Lilly asks in awe as he drives off.

‘Thirteen maybe?’ Mary says.

‘He’s incredible.’

‘Aye. He is. His pa was the same. He died when Bobby was born,’ Mary says as they cross the hot sand and into the stifling heat of the medical tent, but at least it’s out of the glaring sun.

‘And who is this?’ Anika asks with a smile at Molly.

‘I’m Molly,’ Molly announces. ‘Henry had the kittens, but we didn’t see them because Mr Howie killed my brother, but Giles was my half a brother, and Milly and Mikey are my whole sister and brother, and Mr Howie and Dave, and Frank, and Carmen killed John and Terry, and Adam, and Dekkie. He has bad breath,’ she says with a grimace. ‘And Clarence broked Pete’s neck, and Reggie and Marcy, and Paula said no mans can put their willies in me again.’

Silence in the tent as Anika and Ann share a look, then offer smiles and warmth to Molly. Guiding her to sit down as Lilly takes them aside to tell them what Reginald said.

‘Her own family were raping her?’ Anika asks. ‘Oh my god. Poor girl. I mean, is she diagnosed? Do we know what mental age she is? Or her real age?’

‘We don’t know anything,’ Lilly says as she peers past them to two cases of cherry cola stacked up and wrapped in a red ribbon.

‘Bobby left them for you. I didn’t know you were into cherry cola,’ Anika says.

‘I’m not. I said… Never mind. I don’t think Howie or Reggie knew either. I think they just found her and… Well. Killed her family, or the men.’

‘Alright. She’ll need to go over to the infirmary for a full check-up. I can’t do it here,’ Ann says. ‘And listen, we haven’t had a single new arrival today. Can we scale back and come over if anyone arrives?’

‘I don’t see why not, but run it past Lenski and Norman,’ Lilly says, then pauses as she turns away. ‘And you’d best check with George.’

‘I mean. Can’t we just ask you?’ Ann asks with a show of irritation. ‘No. It’s fine. We’ll do that.’

‘It’s new dynamics,’ Lilly says.

‘Shouldn’t be. It’s your fort,’ Ann says, touching Lilly’s arm as she passes by.

Sandy takes them over. Her face as red and flushed as everyone else’s, and when they pass into the fort, they see the same thing as in the camp across the water. Everyone flaked out in the shade of hastily erected awnings, with shimmers distorting the air. The heat in the middle area magnified to the point it feels like an oven.

‘We’ll tell Milly after she’s been checked,’ Lilly says. Mary nods agreement as they pass into the cooler rooms, with Lilly mentally bracing at the prospect of dealing with Lisa again.

‘Been shot again?’ Lisa asks with a hopeful smile that turns sour on seeing Lilly hasn’t got any new bullet wounds.

‘Are Andrew and Heathcliff here?’ Lilly asks.

‘No.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Patient confidentiality.’

‘Lisa. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.’

‘You don’t own everyone, Lilly. You don’t walk in and demand to know every little thing we are doing.’

‘I just asked where they were.’

‘Sorry,’ one of the nurses says with a wince as she cuts in. ‘They’re over with Pardip and Maleek to get some crutches made for the lady who broke her ankle.’

‘Why couldn’t you just say that?’ Lilly asks.

‘What do you want?’ Lisa snaps, folding her arm. ‘And who is this?’

‘This is Molly. Molly was-.’

‘And?’

‘I’m trying to tell you,’ Lilly says.

‘Spit it out then.’

‘Ye want another punch in the face?’ Mary asks as Lilly spots the gleam of victory in Lisa’s eyes.

‘You heard that,’ she tells the nurses and patients. ‘You all heard that. I am not working under the threat of violence.’

‘Hi, can you go and get Andrew and Heathcliff please,’ Lilly says to the nurse.

‘You walk in here, demanding everything, then threatening violence the second you don’t get it. Is that how the fort operates now, Lilly?’

‘That’s how it’s always operated, Lisa. And I would politely ask you do not use inflammatory language in front of Molly. She has been traumatised enough.’

‘Did Mary beat her up too?’

‘Lilly?’ Andrew calls, rushing in with his husband Heathcliff. The pair of them tensing at another hostile confrontation between Lilly and Lisa.

‘This is Molly,’ Lilly says, turning her back on Lisa. ‘Mr Howie’s team located her. They believe she is the older sister to Milly.’

‘Milly? The girl with the drawings?’ Andrew asks as he looks closer at Molly, then smiles softly.

‘Hello, Molly. I’m Andrew. I’m a doctor.’

‘My name is Molly, and that is Mary, and that is Lilly and…’

‘Yes. I can see Milly in her,’ Andrew says. ‘Is she hurt or just a check-up?’

‘Molly, will ye look at this bed with me,’ Mary says, guiding Molly away as Lilly lowers her voice.

‘Reginald suggested Molly would need a thorough medical exam, particularly with regard to injuries sustained by repeated penetration of the vagina and anus.’

‘She’s been raped?’

‘By several men over a period of weeks. One of whom was either her brother or half-brother.’

‘Okay. Jesus. We’ll do a full check-up then. There’s a child psychologist here. Er, Christine, is it?’

‘Christine, yes,’ Lilly says. ‘I met her.’

‘Send her over, will you. We might need her help… I’m guessing, from what I’m seeing, that Molly has learning difficulties?’

‘Lilly. You there?’ Ann transmits through the radio.

‘Sorry, Andrew. Two seconds. Ann, yes. Lilly here. Go ahead.’

‘Cancel my last ref scaling back… We’ve had a few people turn up. Can you or Norman pop over? We need a hand.’

‘We’ll get Christine over to you,’ Lilly tells Andrew before telling Molly they’ll be back soon.

They head outside to see Norman already going through the gate with George and Kyle.

‘We’ll go over with Norman and see where the action is taking place,’ George says, motioning Lilly to follow.

‘Don’t,’ Mary warns quietly when Lilly goes to speak to tell George they just returned, and they don’t all need to go back over. But she heeds the warning, remembering her promise, and goes back over the sea and out onto the beach to the new pale and drawn refugees. Filthy clothes, and gaunt faces. Some of them weeping. Others silent with deep shock.

‘…And that Mr Howie and his lot just came in and wiped them all out,’ an older guy tells the bay workers.

‘Where was that?’ George asks, getting to the front.

‘Petworth. We’d been holed up for weeks and they found us, and we used what we had to defend ourselves. I mean, we had shotguns, and we were throwing pots and pans, but they were piling up to get inside the windows. We were about to give the children high doses of morphine, but thank God for that Mr Howie. He was flying off that big army truck and-.’

‘And that Dave was killing ‘em,’ a woman cuts in.

‘And the lady on the horse,’ someone else says.

‘And the dog,’ another voice calls from the back.

‘Seconds was all it took,’ the first man says.

‘Nah, it was a few minutes,’ the woman says.

‘Yes, yes, alright. But it felt like seconds, but they killed them all, and then we told them about Storrington.’

‘Storrington?’ George asked.

‘Near Petworth. And they shot off, like that,’ he adds, clicking his fingers. ‘Heroes. Heroes to the last. No! No, I won’t hear a bad word about them. We’d heard about them, mind. Word gets around and folk went through, and they said Mr Howie and his lot are trouncing the zombie things.’

‘Trouncing,’ another woman says emphatically. ‘But we didn’t really believe it, did we?’

‘Then we saw it,’ the first guy says.

‘Now we believe it,’ the woman says.

‘Understood,’ George says. ‘Well. You are safe now.’

‘We need to get you registered and admitted,’ Norman calls, taking over as George takes the others off to the side.

‘Interesting. Petworth. And you collected this Molly girl from Stickleton?’ George asks. ‘That gives us a working direction.’

‘Reggie will have a plan, he will,’ Kyle says.

‘I’m sure he does,’ George says. ‘Report, please, Lilly.’

Lilly bites the rebuke down. ‘Nothing really to report. We collected Molly with no issues. It appeared Mr Howie and Henry were discussing their plans going forward, with what appeared to be a plan to locate a CP. A control point.’

‘I know what a CP is,’ George says. ‘Henry wanted to see one for himself. Right. Well. We’ll assist with this trickle and possibly a few more from Storrington, then head back. My word. This heat. Rather uncomfortable, isn’t it?’

The trickle turns into a flood, and that heat only gets worse.

People from a garden centre arrive next. Telling of more infected gunned down and killed, and the road swells with people.

The boats start running relays. Taking new arrivals over and bringing cases of water back. They set to work inside the fort too. Setting up new tents and more shelters to protect people from the sun while Aggie and Sunnie prepare food for the new people coming in. Colin in the stores finding clean clothes and socks, and wash kits, and bedding, and still the heat rises.

‘There’s more,’ Kyle says a short while later, motioning the entry road coming in and the new minibuses and cars, and vans bringing more refugees and terrified people with new stories.

‘The giant guy, he jumped off the bloody roof! Right into them.’

‘I saw it. We all did. He ripped them away from the windows.’

‘Then, that Mr Howie was inside with Dave…’

‘…And Joan and Roy, and that Henry helped Donna give birth. There she is there. That’s Donna. That’s her baby. She was dying. We couldn’t get the baby out, but they did it; then they went off to Ashington.’

More people coming in. More water needed. More clothes. More shelters. More food. The heat increasing, crushing them all.

‘Would you like a water pump, Lilly?’ Bobby asks as he rushes in with his crew to clear the vehicles from the road.

‘A water pump?’

‘It’s awful hot down here. I can get ye a water pump to spray sea water into the air and make a shower. It’s no charge to you, Lilly.’

‘I actually love him,’ Lilly says when Bobby walks off, and five minutes later, there’s a seawater shower rigged up, with new arrivals drenching themselves off to rid the weeks of grime and filth from living inside cramped buildings.

Then more survivors arrive from Squire’s Garden Centre. More stories. More accounts. More rumours and tales, and the road and beach fill with people, and more boats are ordered to work, and more people are called in to help cook and rig tents and shelters, and help Colin find clothes and wash kits.

More and more, and many more, and the day gets hotter and busier, and it doesn’t stop as that flood continues.

People from villages and hamlets. Survivors from tiny places that suddenly became full of infected.

‘Reginald’s on the hunt, he is!’ Kyle says with a gleam in his eye as they track the progress, and the refugees keep pouring in.

People from Billingshurst that became trapped in flats over shops with hordes of infected hammering to get inside.

‘It was fucking insane. They were shooting them, and they had arrows flying about and a snipe;, then that army truck was smashing through walls. Actual walls. We saw it. It brought the whole row down and killed loads.’

People from a lakeside restaurant that stayed low until the infected found them.

‘We were done for. No doubt about it. We had the mums and dads running into the waters to get away and over to the little fishing island, but we were done for. Then they came in. Jesus. They were just there and, and, and… I can’t even. They had a sniper taking them out from the top of the hill, and the others were running down and drowning the zombies down with their bare hands. With their hands!’

And still they come.

From Southwater, with a last stand taken at the edge of an industrial estate by a few remaining ex-soldiers and police firearms officers trying to protect the civilians. All of them killed apart from one. A woman called Kate. ‘I mean. I saw action in Iraq. Two tours. Full on. Know what I mean? But them boys. They don’t mess about. Straight in and chopping them down. No fuss. No messing. I was the only one left of the soldiers. But fuck me. That Howie, and that Henry. They won’t stop till they’ve killed them all.’

They keep coming. More and more, and many more, and the heat builds until it becomes a crushing force, sapping energy, but the work still has to continue. The people’s names have to be taken down and what skills they have. They have to be examined for bites and wounds. They have to be taken over and fed, and watered, and their old clothes taken away, and new clothes provided. Shelters need to be put up. Shade needs to be found.

‘They’re heading for Crawley,’ George says in the afternoon. ‘That’s a big town.’

It is a big town, and still, the survivors keep coming, and word spreads of what Mr Howie and Mr Henry are doing. Chasing after a horde of thousands.

It sends pulses of energy through everybody, because Howie is out there with Henry. Killing the infected. Searching for the Panacea.

And that day goes on. Getting hotter with the energy charging, with Jack, Jock and the other soldiers wishing they were there, fighting with Howie. Listening to the stories coming in.

Lilly the same. Sensing it for the first time in weeks. That the game is truly underway, and she must play her part. It’s the first time she’s felt that sense of togetherness. That sense of working for the same end.

She stays close to George. Listening to the intel reports and the numbers being cut down, and they sweat through their clothes and drink water, and the air becomes charged and hot as it seems to build to something coming.

Something awful.

Something big happening far away.

And then, as evening approaches, and the refugees pour in, the big bang comes.

A deep, roaring explosion like a monstrous clap of thunder that makes every person stop and turn to face north with a collective groan of fear and shock at the mushroom cloud broiling up into the sky. A monstrous thing like a nuclear explosion. Black and dark, with flashes of orange flames, and even from the thirty miles distance to Gatwick, the sight of it makes the people in the fort and in the bay fill with dread.

They feel it next, with shockwaves sent through earth, making the ground tremble, with cups of water vibrating on the sides, and faint ripples rolling across the otherwise perfectly flat sea.

It drives terror into many. That something so big and terrible is happening close enough for them to hear and see. All of them trying to imagine what’s happening as Howie and his team hunker down from Dave blowing the silos. A war being waged, with Joanie trapped in the tower.

‘George to Henry, over… George to Henry, over. George to Henry, are you receiving me?’

Kyle, Mary, and Lilly glance to George trying to get through on his encrypted radio. Everyone frozen still and listening.

‘That’s got to be Gatwick airport,’ Kyle says, glancing from George to the mushroom cloud in the far distance. ‘The fuel silos. There’s nothing else that can make that much of a pop unless they dropped a nuke.’

‘That’s Dave’s work, alright,’ George says.

‘Do we go?’ Lilly asks, already mentally preparing to call Bobby to get vehicles, so they can bug out and assist.

‘Negative,’ George says.

‘We should go,’ Lilly says again.

‘Negative,’ George says, his voice harder.

‘We have to hold our position,’ Kyle says.

Lilly doesn’t like that answer.

She doesn’t like holding back. It goes against her mindset, but she also knows they are both right because the fort is their position. It is their ground to hold, and besides, if that big bang just killed Howie, then she’ll be moving out soon enough anyway.

To take over his mission.

‘Understood,’ she says in that cold, hard voice as Kyle notices Lilly just made the decision for herself and not because of what George just said.

The first refugees arrive soon after.

‘We got out first…From Gatwick… There was thousands of ‘em. No, I mean like tens of thousands… They just appeared and swarmed the grounds from the north and the south at the same time.’

More survivors flood in after them. In ones and twos. In small convoys and trickles that turn into more floods. More and more, and many more until the road is filled with people fleeing the terror of Gatwick, and it becomes so busy and so frantic that nobody notices the skies darkening and the clouds coming over as the heat and humidity become unbearable.

Until the first raindrops start to fall, and they stand and gasp at the relief, with faces turned up to let the water take the sweat away.

‘George! Lilly!’ Norman calls them over to the registration tent. ‘You need to hear this. Tell them what you told me,’ he tells the group with him.

‘We were in Gatwick. We were the last to get out…’ a man says. A leader within their group, trying to remain composed but struggling. ‘Paula and Henry came in and were getting us out, but something happened, and they went out to fight. So, er, we did the best we could and got everyone out, but then… Oh god. I’ve never… There was a…’ he cuts off to swallow and draw composure as he blinks the tears away. ‘Mr Howie was outside. They all were, and the fuel silos went up, and the whole thing blew apart. The whole airport. Every building. Every plane… And we thought. I mean. Nothing could survive that. But they were still out there and still fighting. We could only just see them in the distance. One of them had his legs on fire and… The things. The infected… They attacked again, and then there were these fighter jets and tanks, but old, you know? And one of the planes crashed into the tower, and then these other soldiers turned up to help them.’

‘Other soldiers?’ George asks. ‘Can you describe them?’

‘No, they weren’t soldiers. I mean. They were like older kids in a bus that had armour on it, and they had assault rifles, and they shot them all down. But they were disciplined and acted like soldiers, and… I don’t know, like really well trained. The woman in charge of them spoke to us and said to come here. What was her name?’ he asks someone else.

‘Tilda Tanners,’ a woman says.

‘Tilda Tanners!’ Kyle says, sharing a smile with George. ‘Frank and I know Tilda, so we do. Ex-army. She’s good, George. So Mr Howie’s group was still alive?’

‘I think so. I don’t know. We saw them in the distance… They had a horse with them.’

‘That’s them!’ Kyle says with a wicked grin and a clenched fist. ‘Aye. They pushed them heathen bastards all the way to hell, so they did. Eh. Georgie! Eh, Lilly? That’s what we wanted to hear! That’s why we’re doing this! Howie and Henry. I knew if they worked together, they’d be unstoppable.’

The light soon fades as the evening pushes the day away, and with the low clouds now filling the sky to disgorge the rain, it grows dark fast, until even the distant smudges marking the fires at Gatwick can’t be seen.

‘I think that’s it,’ Norman says, standing with his clipboard on a now empty beach as the last load of refugees head over in a boat. ‘That’s a lot today though. Good news is we’ve got some usable skills. A few nurses. A few soldiers. That woman who served in Iraq was already asking to sign up for guard duty and-.’

‘Norman. Lilly? Is Lenski. Is finished now?’

‘Lenski, it’s Norman. Yes, just finished.’

‘Good. We have problem.’

‘When don’t we have a problem?’ Norman asks ‘And if it’s about the rats or Colin having another tantrum, then I really don’t want to know.’

‘No. Is something else. Is serious. Bring Ann to offices. And George and Lilly.’

Fifteen minute later, they gather in the offices, wet from the rain and exhausted from a very long and very hot day. The air still hot and humid. Too close. Too sticky.

‘Hi, sorry. Is long day,’ Lenski says, walking in with a strained look.

‘When isn’t it with you lot,’ Lisa says, pausing in the doorway with a look of distaste at the people inside. ‘Right. Well. You’ve got a problem. Molly is pregnant.’

‘Whoa,’ Mary whispers, widening her eyes as they all show surprise at the news.

‘Hi, sorry!’ Andrew Stone says, rushing into the room. ‘Guys, so sorry. I know it’s been a long day, but there’s been an important development that we felt needed to be discussed.’

‘I’ve told them,’ Lisa says, cutting over him as she scrapes a chair out and sits down with a smug grin like she’s gained some kind of victory.

‘Right. Well. Best way is to be direct, I guess,’ Andrew says, sitting down at the big table.

‘Can you start from the beginning, please,’ Norman says, mentally shifting gear into work mode.

‘What beginning? She’s pregnant,’ Lisa says.

‘Thank you. Most helpful,’ Norman says before Lilly can detonate. ‘This is Molly, the woman with learning difficulties?’

‘Yes,’ Andrew says as a woman knocks at the door. ‘Ah, that’s Christine. Come in. Christine is a child psychologist. She’s spent some time with Molly today.’

‘Hi,’ Christine says, taking a seat. ‘I missed the start. Have we done intros? And who is recording the minutes.’

‘We’re not-.’ Lilly starts to say as Norman lifts a hand to cut her off.

‘I’m Norman. Fort manager along with Lenski. George and Lilly have overall charge. You know Andrew and Lisa. They’re doctors. Ann is a doctor. Anika is a nurse. Kyle and Mary are also part of the top table. I’ll be keeping minutes. Molly. Pregnant. Got that. And the reason this meeting has been called is why?’ he enquiries with a look to Christine, Lisa, and Andrew.

‘I just said. She’s pregnant,’ Lisa states with an instant flash of irritation.

‘Can you expand?’

‘Er, Molly has learning difficulties,’ Christine says. ‘It’s not my skillset to determine what they are. I mean, she’s got what appears to be autism, and a reduced mental capacity that could put her mental and emotional age to that of a child. She could have Asperger’s. Honestly. I can’t say exactly.’

‘Stop you there,’ Norman says with a nod at Christine. ‘We’re all just doing the best we can. That’s a given. So, we can’t diagnose Molly formally, but I think it’s fair to say, from all of us who have had contact with Molly, that she certainly seems to have learning difficulties. Yes? Do we agree?’

The murmurs and nods come back. Everyone agreeing.

‘Okay. So, to be direct, because, yes, it has been a very long hot day,’ Norman continues. ‘You’ve conducted an exam of Molly and determined that she is pregnant.’

‘Has she got any other injuries?’ Lilly asks.

‘Why? You going to execute her for being weak?’ Lisa mutters.

‘No,’ Andrew says with an awkward glance at Lisa. ‘I mean, yes. She has lots of bruising and bites.’

‘Which are suggestive of sexual activity,’ Christine adds.

‘She was raped repeatedly by her brother and his friends,’ Lilly says. ‘No other significant injuries then?’

‘Well. We’ve got some STI kits. She’s got Chlamydia, but that’s treatable,’ Andrew says. ‘But. Yes. Er, the pregnancy is the big issue.’

‘And why is that an issue?’ Norman asks. ‘We need to be clear here, doctors.’

‘Well. I mean,’ Andrew says, looking to Christine.

‘Molly is a child,’ Christine says. ‘So… What do we do?’

‘Right. So, this is to determine the right thing for Molly,’ Norman says. ‘What are the options?’

‘How far along is she?’ Ann asks. ‘Our tests can only detect from three and a half weeks.’

‘We think around four weeks,’ Andrew says.

‘Which means she was exposed to sexual trauma at the very start of the outbreak,’ Christine adds to more than a few dark faces and angry tuts.

‘Okay. Our options are abortion, or she has the baby. Is that right?’ Lilly asks.

‘Well. Yes,’ Andrew says as Christine nods.

‘Can you do the abortion here?’

‘And there she goes,’ Lisa says, flapping a hand at Lilly. ‘Why don’t you just drag her outside and give her a good thump in the belly.’

‘Lisa, please,’ Norman says.

‘Sixteen-year-old Lilly doesn’t get to choose who has an abortion,’ Lisa says.

‘So, you’d rather she had the baby of a rapist?’ Lilly asks. ‘This woman with the mental and emotional levels of a child. How do you abort a pregnancy at four weeks?’

‘You can’t just force an abortion on her,’ Christine says.

‘Sorry, Ann. How is it done?’ Lilly asks.

‘It’s medication. They were often taken at home. Two medications one to two days apart. One prepares the body for the second dose of medication, which is administered either into the mouth under the tongue or via insertion into the vagina, and within a few hours, the lining of the womb breaks down. Which does cause some pain and discomfort, and bleeding, but yes, that’s it. And if the first dose doesn’t work, then another is given.’

‘Right. No. You can’t do that to her,’ Mary says, speaking out for the first time.

‘What? Why not?’ Lilly asks.

‘Because life is sacred. That’s why not.’

‘It’s not a life. It’s a foetus,’ Lilly says.

‘And it’s not your foetus,’ Lisa says with a glare at Lilly.

‘What would you do then?’ Lilly asks Mary.

‘I’d have the baby.’

‘From a rapist?’

‘Aye.’

‘Your own brother? No. So, your brother rapes you, and you get pregnant, and you’d have the baby?’

‘Aye. Life is sacred.’

‘She’s mentally impaired,’ Lilly says. ‘She can’t raise a child.’

‘Well. No. The state would have to intervene,’ Christine says.

‘What state?’ Lilly asks. ‘We are the state. No, stop. This is stupid. The woman was raped by her own brother. She should not be forced to have his child.’

‘Nobody is forcing her,’ Christine says.

‘But it’s okay for you to force her to have an abortion?’ Lisa asks.

‘Hang on,’ Norman says. ‘No, guys. Hang on, please. The first question is one of mental and emotional capacity. Does Molly have the understanding of what it means to be pregnant and have a baby?’

‘Yes. Sort of,’ Christine says. ‘I asked her where babies come from. She said a man and a woman make a baby, and the baby grows in the woman and comes out of the front bottom, but she thought that was gross and icky, and kittens and puppies are much cuter.’

‘The next question then,’ Norman continues. ‘Can Molly make her own reasoned and informed decision to her own future regarding being pregnant.’

‘It’s not that simple, Norman,’ Christine says. ‘Molly has the right to self-determine, but does she have the capacity to know what that means?’

‘Yes. That is my question. Can Molly decide for herself.’

‘Yes. No. That’s what I’m saying. Molly has the right to do that.’

‘We’ve established Molly has the right, but can she honestly make her own decision? Or do we act as her guardians, and therefore we have to make the decision?’

‘Yes. We make the decision,’ Lilly says as the others all start talking. ‘She’s clearly mentally impaired with a restricted emotional and intelligence range.’

‘But you’ve no right to abort a living baby,’ Mary says.

‘It’s not a baby! It’s not living. It’s nothing yet,’ Lilly says.

‘Are you a doctor?’ Lisa asks with a sneer.

‘Ann?’ Lilly asks.

‘It’s not that simple, Lilly,’ Ann says. ‘Many experts determine the foetus to be an unborn baby and therefore a living thing, whereas others say it’s just a clump of biological molecules.’

‘By that reasoning, we are all just clumps of biological molecules,’ Lilly says.

‘Aye. But people have awareness,’ Mary says. ‘We’re more than just our bodies. We have minds and souls.’

‘But that foetus doesn’t have a mind, or a soul,’ Lilly says.

‘Er. Well, actually, the spirituality of the soul can be said to begin from conception,’ Christine says.

‘Right,’ Norman says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘But the foetus can’t think, can it?’

‘How do you know it can’t?’ Christine asks.

‘Because I bloody was one!’ Norman snaps. ‘We all were, but none of us remember anything before being what? Two? Three years old? And the point is, we can’t base everything on what might be. We have to act with what we have now. Which is a foetus. Not a baby.’

‘No!’ Mary says firmly, shaking her head. ‘Ye cannot abort.’

‘Really?’ Lilly asks, stunned at Mary’s stance.

‘Watch out Mary, we know what happens when someone disagrees with Lilly.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Lisa,’ Mary snaps, glaring over the table. ‘Are ye here just to make cunt comments or be a professional? Cos if it’s the former, I’ll drag you out by your fecking hair.’

‘Violence!’ Lisa says, throwing her hands up. ‘That’s all they know.’

‘You’re goading for a reaction and pushing buttons, so you can be all like that,’ Mary says. ‘What the feck is wrong in your head?’

‘Guys. Please,’ Norman says, the strain showing on his face and in his features. ‘Lisa, what’s your position?’

‘My position is to make sure people are safe from Lilly’s psychosis.’

‘On the matter we are discussing, Lisa!’ Norman says.

‘Ach. She won’t give an opinion,’ Mary says. ‘People like her never do. They just sit on the fence and snipe at everyone else.’

‘Abstaining then,’ Norman says, marking it down. ‘Andrew?’

‘I’m pro-choice. If a woman wants to abort, I will support that.’

‘We’re not on TikTok, Andrew! What is your view on Molly.’

‘I will go with whatever the majority lead with.’

‘Fecking spineless,’ Mary says.

‘Andrew - Abstaining,’ Norman mutters, marking that one down too.

‘I’m not abstaining, Norman. Ye can put me down for letting the baby live.’

‘Against abortion – Mary,’ Norman says. ‘Lilly?’

‘The foetus needs to be aborted,’ Lilly says.

‘For abortion – Lilly. Ann?’

‘Norman, doctors have to support their patients. We took an oath.’

‘Abstaining then?’

Ann sighs and sits back. ‘No. I’m for abortion. Oh, fuck off, Lisa. Don’t look at me like that.’

‘For abortion – Ann,’ Norman says. ‘Christine?’

‘As a professional it is my job to present the facts and allow others to make the decision while supporting the rights and freedoms of expressions of those involved.’

‘Fecking spineless twats. Do you want her to have the baby or not?’ Mary asks.

‘It’s not for me to say,’ Christine says as Norman marks it down.

‘Anika?’

‘Oh god. My religion was against, but abortion is common in India. Not that I’m from India. I was born in Wolverhampton. I’m gabbling. I know I am. Crikey. But like, for me personally, she’s young, and she shouldn’t have go through that, and then someone takes the baby away, and we’re just not set up for that. So, no. I think we need to abort.’

The silence holds when she trails off from the astute reasoning of someone they all respect.

‘Kyle?’ Norman asks.

‘I’m with Mary. Life is life.’

‘You were an assassin,’ Lilly states.

‘Aye. I was. But this is different.’

‘How?’

‘Because a baby is innocent.’

‘It’s not a baby! It’s a foetus. It’s not capable of independent life. So, you think it’s okay for Molly to have the baby from her rapist brother?’’

Kyle blows air from his cheeks. Shaking his head and suddenly not so sure.

‘We don’t have hospitals. We don’t have schools. Anika just said it,’ Lilly says. ‘We’re not rigged up for this sort of thing.’

‘We have other pregnant people here,’ Christine says.

‘Who are able to decide their own futures,’ Lilly replies.

‘No. I’m just saying they have the right to decide, and we need to protect that.’

‘Are you voting or not, Christine?’ Norman cuts in with a firm tone. ‘Because what we don’t need now is someone playing devil’s bloody advocate. Kyle is against the abortion,’ he adds, updating the running list. ‘George?’

‘The young woman has been repeatedly raped and subjected to the highest forms of degradation and acts of torture. She is a child. She has the mind of a child. To make her give birth to her rapist brother’s child instead of a relatively painless procedure is abhorrent.’

‘For abortion – George.’

‘What about you?’ Lilly asks Norman.

‘I’m pro-abortion. Lenski?’

‘In my country abortion is not allowed, unless the mother might die, or if she was raped. I think she should have abortion. We have too much things happen. Molly is not adult. She is child. And father is brother. Child might be mutant.’

‘That’s six to two,’ Lilly says.

‘I’m against it,’ Lisa announces.

‘That’s still six for the abortion and three against,’ Lilly says.

‘So that’s it?’ Lisa asks.

‘What more do you want?’ Norman asks.

‘Like that then,’ Lisa says, clicking her fingers. ‘The fort mafia decide who lives and who dies.’

‘Then why did you bring the issues to us if not so we could decide?’ Norman asks.

‘It was less than five minutes!’ Lisa fires back.

‘We don’t have the time for long discussions!’ Norman says with a long groan. ‘What part of this being the sodding apocalypse confuses you?’ he shouts as Lisa storms out.

‘Sorry, Norman,’ Christine says. ‘I wasn’t trying to annoy you, but I was just saying we have to respect Molly’s rights.’

‘Yes! Okay. Great. We got that. Everyone has rights. Noted.’

‘Actually. That tone is making me uncomfortable. Is there someone else I can talk to?’

‘And another bloody thing,’ Lisa snaps, striding back in.

‘Oh god. I wish I was a zombie,’ Norman says, rubbing his face as the voices erupt around him.

9

The night comes properly, and Lilly floats on her back. Taking pleasure from the sensation of the seawater holding her up while the rain falls on her face. Still windless. No breeze, and she listens to the pattering noises made from the rain splashing into the sea. Soothing. Relaxing, although still too hot and humid.

‘Don’t fall asleep out there,’ Mary says from the shore, prompting Lilly to lift her hand and smile, and once more, beckon for Mary to join her. ‘Not a chance,’ she says and lies down on her back, with her feet dangling in the sea.

The argument in the offices got worse, with other section heads coming over to mention their own issues.

‘The wood still hasn’t been moved,’ Damsa said.

‘We’ve still got rats in the food stores!’ Sunnie said.

‘How can I run an inventory check if people keep needing things!’ Colin said as food was brought over and eaten at the main table.

‘She’s pregnant?!’ Aggie asked on overhearing Anika and Ann. ‘Molly? The girl that came in earlier?’

That was it. Cue round two and another furious debate.

Damsa was for the abortion. ‘She has the mind of a child! How can she choose herself?’

Maleek was against. ‘She cannot choose, therefore she should have it!’

Some people said she should have the abortion. Others were against. Many chose to remain on the fence to pick holes in everyone else while thinking they were clever.

‘Ye spineless fecking twats!’ Mary shouted at them all. ‘Pick a side!’

But that was just in the office. The rest of the fort was buzzing, and the news of Howie’s progress was like a source of electricity running from person to person. The Battle of Gatwick. Tens of thousands killed, and that was after all the other places.

A wet snort from the side makes Lilly look over to the round head and big eyes staring at her from nearby. She didn’t even hear the seal surface, but then, this is his or her natural habitat.

They watch each other for a moment. Both floating on their backs, feeling the rain coming down. The night sky filled with clouds, blotting the moon and stars, and the only illumination comes from a lantern Mary brought out with her. A soft, yellow glow that twinkles in the seal’s big eyes.

Then it simply slips beneath the surface and is gone from view as Lilly turns and dives down. Keeping her eyes wide open, but it’s just too dark to see anything at all, and for a second, she loses sense of up and down or left and right. She kicks out but feels the weight of the water increasing, and switches direction, then surfaces a few seconds later. Treading water as the seal pops up with another fish held in its mouth. The thing still flapping and wriggling, and she watches as the seal uses its front paws as it bites into the flesh.

The same urge comes on. The need to eat raw fish. Lilly doesn’t know why that is, but only that she really wants to catch and eat a raw fish. Something about it. Something natural and wholesome, and real, and organic. And it’s not like Lilly can get sick. She’s got what could be an early version of the Panacea or maybe even a mutated, none-contagious version. She got shot in the arm and hardly felt it because she was so fucking angry.

She felt it later though.

Especially when she dug into her own arm with the tweezers.

That really hurt. Wow. Yeah. That hurt like hell, but she didn’t show it, and the look on Lisa’s face was worth it.

But that fish, and the way the seal eats it. Chomping away, all happy and munchy, with scales smeared on his seal mouth. It finishes off, eating the whole thing. Then a moment later, it dives down and comes back with another one.

‘There must be loads,’ she says softly.

‘Loads what?’ Mary asks in a sleepy voice.

‘Fish.’

‘Aye. It’s the bloody sea. And there’ll be sharks and eels, and octopussy things, and giant squids. And whales. Those black and white ones. They eat seals, they do.’

‘Do you know how to use a fishing rod?’

‘Why would I know how to use a fishing rod?’

‘Cos I can shoot straighter and punch harder than any man, so I can, so feck off.’

‘Er. Racist. And I can do that, but I don’t know how to use a fishing rod. Do ye want to go fishing? They’ve got rods here for the guys that go out and catch the fish for Aggie and Sunnie. Ask them. Or ask Bobby.’

Lilly thinks those are both good ideas. But then, she can’t quite visualise standing on the shore, casting out to sea, and faffing about with reels.

She wants to catch a fish. Like actually catch it close up.

‘Are ye done?’ Mary asks, sitting up as Lilly swims back and heaves herself up.

‘Do you want to come to the boat yard with me?’

‘What? Now?’ Mary asks when Lilly stands up.

‘Yes,’ Lilly says, pulling her up to her feet.

‘For a fishing rod?’

‘Nope. A spear gun.’

‘Ye want a spear gun?’

‘Yes. I saw them in that place. And some flippers. And an underwater torch. And some goggles.’

‘Right. And you’ve got to have these things tonight? Of course, you do. You’re Lilly who doesn’t wait for no one. And it’s not like I have anything else to do or a home anymore. But it’s been a hell of a day, Blondie. Are ye sure we can’t just go and drink some hot chocolate, and go to bed like normal people?’

‘We’re not normal people.’

‘No. No, we’re not. There is that. Okay. Let’s go to the boat yard.’

They head back through a fort trying to bed down. More rows of tents erected in the open ground, with families mooching about. Sorting who is sleeping where and going through the new clothes reluctantly given out by Quartermaster Colin.

The canteen still full of people. Now the community focal point and meeting area. John and the builders, and the bay and fort workers inside. Marion with them. Damsa too. Laughing at something said. Maleek with the rest of their family, looking stony-faced and less than impressed.

They pass the offices, half expecting to see George inside, but they look empty.

Jack and a woman on guard on top of the wall. The woman called Kate. The female soldier that came in today. Now armed and in clean fatigues, and back to work once again.

‘We’ve got to pop over,’ Lilly calls softly, motioning the gates as Jack gives a thumbs up and comes down to lock the gates behind them as they slip out onto the beach and take a small boat with a little engine over to the beach.

‘What are you doing here, Mary? You’re not welcome in the camp,’ one of the guards taking shelter under a gazebo by the junction calls over.

‘I’m not going in the camp!’ she says. ‘Am I inside it? I’m walking past… And if I want to go in, then I bloody well will.’

‘We don’t want ye inside no more.’

‘For what!?’

‘You stood against us, Mary.’

‘Ye aimed your guns at us, so you did,’ another says.

‘Is that Mary?’ Patrick calls, walking into view at the edge of the camp with Tyson. ‘What do you want, Mary?’

‘Nothing! I’m going past, but ye can’t stop me if I did want to come in.’

‘You are being exiled,’ Tyson says.

‘Ye not welcome!’ Willie shouts from somewhere inside.

‘YE CAN FECK OFF, WILLIE!’ Mary shouts back. ‘And ye can’t exile me. You’ve no right to do that.’

‘We can,’ Tyson says.

‘We’re voting on a new leader tonight,’ Patrick says. ‘And we both said you’re not to come back.’

‘For what?!’

‘You took sides against us, Mary,’ Tyson adds. ‘Lilly made it clear that it’s her bay, but this is our camp, and we say who comes in it, and neither of you are welcome. Not after that.’

‘You started it!’ Mary shouts.

‘She pulled a fecking grenade!’ Tyson shouts back.

‘Ach. This fecking day,’ Mary says, flapping her arms and thinking to stand and argue as Lilly motions for them to go.

‘Aye. And good riddance to both of them!’ Willie shouts as they skirt the camp and take the white Toyota they used earlier, and a few moments later, Mary comes to a stop a short distance from the edge of the boatyard.

‘You okay?’ Lilly asks.

‘No! I’m not okay,’ Mary says, sitting with her hands gripping the wheel. ‘I don’t know whether to cry or go fecking apeshit. Men. Fecking men. Always bastard stupid men with fecking dicks between their legs. Ye can’t come in. Ye not welcome. You’re just a woman. And that poor Molly being made to get rid of her baby.’

‘She can’t have it,’ Lilly says.

‘Aye. That’s what you say.’

‘Yes. That is what I say.’

‘What about my views, Blondie? Do they not mean anything?’

‘I’m not saying that.’

‘Ye are! You get to say what’s what.’

‘Norman and George, and most of the others agreed with me.’

‘But even if they didn’t, ye’d still do what you wanted.’

‘I wouldn’t!’

‘Ye so would! You too strong willed to back down from your beliefs. Well, maybe I have beliefs too. Maybe I can think things too.’

‘You are a very strong person, Mary.’

‘Aye. But not strong enough clearly. I can’t be camp leader, and in the fort, I’m just Lilly’s girl or Lilly’s bodyguard, tagging along behind her. Is that all I am now? Just that?’

‘Nobody thinks that.’

‘Do they not? Norman didn’t say I was one of the leaders. He said this is Lenski and Ann, and Anika, and they’re all important. Oh, and this is Mary. She’s just here.’

‘He didn’t say it like that. Do you want a title? Is that it?’

‘Don’t fecking patronise me!’ Mary snaps, pushing out of the car. ‘I’m not some mindless idiot that needs a badge to make her feel good.’

‘I never said that!’

‘I can shoot straighter and punch harder than any man, so I can.’

‘I know, Mary! You keep telling me.’

‘Feck off then if ye don’t want to hear it!’

‘You say it all the time!’

‘Cos it’s fecking true! Do ye know what’s it like growing up knowing you can do things better than everyone else, but ye not allowed to in case you make the men look bad. Learn to cook, Mary. Wear dresses, Mary. Put make-up on, Mary. Don’t have a view. Don’t shoot guns. Don’t learn how to box and fight. That shit crushes your soul, and now, I’m not allowed in my own camp because I stood with you, and you don’t even take my view into consideration over Molly.’

‘I did!’

‘Ye didn’t, Lilly! Ye override people because your powerful and strong, and people listen to you. You know for fact if everyone in that room… Feck! If everyone in that fort said Molly should have that baby, you’d make it so she didn’t. Tell me ye wouldn’t.’

Lilly goes to reply but remembers the promise she made to always be honest. ‘Yes. You’re right,’ she says, thinking the honesty will help, but it only seems to make Mary angrier as she kicks the tyre on the car and curses foully.

‘What do you want?’ Lilly asks plaintively.

‘I want to be taken seriously.’

‘Then take it!’

‘What?’

‘Don’t wait for it. Take it.’

‘Take what, Blondie? Take fecking what? What is it I should take? That makes no sense. Take it? Take what?’

Lilly holds still as the rain falls on them both, and Mary comes to a stop with her hands on her hips.

‘Let’s just get this speargun? I’m writing today off as a cunt day.’

‘That suits,’ Lilly says, snatching Mary’s hand to pull her back.

‘I don’t want a kiss,’ Mary says, full of anger and pain, and confusion. Seeing the problems for what they are but not knowing how to fix them.

They get inside the chandlery. Tension between them. The air awkward and strained.

‘Ah, right. You want one of these, do you,’ Mary asks as they stop at the small display of spearguns on the wall. She takes one down and pulls it about for a moment to learn how it works, then finds a display bolt, and slots it in, and figures out how to heave the thick rubber bands back, then turns away towards a mannequin.

‘Let’s see what it can do,’ Mary says, taking aim down the barrel and pulling the trigger that releases the tension on the thick bands that fires the bolt and recoil into her face, slamming her back into a wall display of shoes with a yelp and a crash. ‘What the feck!’ she cries out as Lilly bursts out laughing.

‘Oh god, are you okay?’

‘No! I’m not bloody okay,’ Mary says, the words coming out furious until she breaks off into a snort of laughter. ‘This fecking day though. Can it get any shittier? And will ye look at that sign up there.’

‘Where?’ Lilly asks, looking up to a big sign on the wall.

Danger!: Do Not Dry Fire Spearguns!

‘I wonder why?’ Mary asks in a way that sets Lilly off again.

The tension eases a touch. Both knowing the day has been long and brutal, with too many things happening.

They find flippers and torches, and goggles and take more spearguns and bolts, all in a big bag, and head for the door as Mary clocks a faint, glowing light bobbing within the boatyard.

‘Shush!’ she says, pulling Lilly down at her side. ‘Did you see that? Look…’

Lilly can see it. A light coming from somewhere ahead. Something muted and low, and moving. A torch or lantern held in someone’s hand.

‘It’s going up,’ Mary whispers as they watch it rise and disappear.

‘That’s the restaurant,’ Lilly mouths in her ear and carefully takes one of the powerful underwater torches from the bag, and eases the door open, with Mary creeping out behind her.

They go slowly, treading carefully as they cross the road to the bar and restaurant, and pause at the base of the stairs, listening intently.

A snort from above. A rustling noise. A can opening, followed by silence, then a belch.

Mary frowns, shaking her head. Her features almost lost in the near pitch-black night. The rain still falling and dripping from roofs and gutters, masking the sound of their feet rising slowly up the treads and onto the wooden boards.

They go slowly, with Lilly drawing her sidearm and holding it braced over her left wrist. With her left hand holding the torch, they advance out onto the veranda alongside the railings overlooking the river. The soft glow of lights coming from the camp just a short distance away. A softer, diffused glow coming from the fort beyond that out to sea.

Mary’s hand on Lilly’s shoulder. Her other holding a pistol. She taps once, and Lilly advances at speed.

‘Do not move!’ Lilly says, turning her powerful flashlight on to blind the other person as she closes in fast.

‘I ain’t done nuffin’!’ the voice wails with a whine and a plead. A woman looking caught out and guilty. Obese, with chocolate smeared around her mouth. Filthy hair, and her skin covered in dirt and grime. Yellow and brown teeth, and a dirty, stained summer dress taut over her big belly.

‘Hello, Lilly,’ Pamela says, licking her lips while still chewing whatever is in her mouth as she lets a fart go.

‘Urgh. Gross,’ Mary says.

‘You scared me,’ Pamela says, instantly a victim in tone and manner. ‘I wasn’t doing nuffin’. I was just here.’

‘Lift your arms up. Check she isn’t armed,’ Lilly says.

‘Am I feck touching her. I can smell her from here.’

‘Hold the torch then.’

‘Blondie, don’t touch her! She’s filthy. Urgh, no. That’s just plain wrong.’

‘Where are the others?’ Lilly asks, moving back a step to breathe clear air after patting her sides and checking for a weapon.

‘Wot others?’

‘The others. You were exiled.’

Pamela blinks.

‘I don’t think she knows what exiled means,’ Mary whispers.

‘You were kicked out,’ Lilly says.

‘No, I weren’t!’

‘You were with Tommy and Keith, and the others. You were all kicked out. Are they here? Do not lie to me.’

‘I ain’t lying! I ain’t. I wasn’t with them… I hid in the rooms. I did! I swear it. I hid, and I didn’t get kicked out.’

Lilly thinks back to the riot in the fort started by Tommy. Pamela was one of them, but she disappeared, and Lilly didn’t see her when they were exiled.

‘Ah, so, this is her drinking all this cherry cola and eating the junk then,’ Mary says.

‘I like cherry cola,’ Pamela says, shifty in the way she eyes left and right and angles her head. Cunning, but stupid and slow. ‘You want one? You can have one, Lilly.’

She says it almost like a child, but not in the same way as Molly. More like someone who has learned to act that way.

‘No,’ Lilly says, lowering the gun. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I likes it.’

‘You like what?’

‘It’s nice. I come here. I didn’t do nuffin.’

‘Ach. Let her be,’ Mary says with a grimace at the disgusting stench. ‘Jesus, when was the last time you washed?’

‘The things eat you if you wash.’

‘I’d rather get eaten than stink like that,’ Mary says as Lilly stares down at Pamela, watching the woman flick her eyes left and right and how she offers a smile before shoving half a chocolate bar into her mouth.

‘You look pretty, Lilly. I like your hair and, and… And I like your eyes,’ she adds in a rush of words while chewing and nodding, with chins bouncing, and fat bosoms spilling from her dress.

‘Lilly,’ Mary says, twitching her head for them to go as Pamela pulls a face like she’s straining and pushes another long, wet fart out, with the stench hitting them both. ‘Ach, no! She’s shat herself. Feck this.’

‘I get IBS! It’s stress related,’ Pamela says as though repeating something she heard or something someone told her.

‘Stop eating that shit then, ye daft cow,’ Mary says, backing up another step. ‘Lilly! I’m not standing here. She’s doing no harm but to herself.’

‘I didn’t do nuffin’!’ Pamela blurts like she just got accused of something and screws her face up as though trying to cry, but peeks through slitted eyes to see if they’re watching her.

‘Come on,’ Mary says, pulling on Lilly’s arm. But Lilly doesn’t go, and instead, she turns to march back while drawing the pistol to aim at Pamela.

‘I didn’t do nuffin’!’ she cries out again and pushes another wet fart out.

‘How did you get out?’

‘Eh?’

‘How did you get out?’ Lilly demands, invading Pamela’s space despite the stench of shit and her foul, fetid breath blasting into Lilly’s face. ‘I haven’t seen you since I shot Tommy.’

‘I came out, didn’t I!’

‘How?’

‘On the… I got out!’

‘I’ll execute you for lying,’ Lilly says, stepping back to extend her arm and aim at Pamela.

‘No! NO, DON’T!’ Pamela squeals, spraying gooey chocolate saliva and blasting a drool of snot from her nose as she puts her meaty arms in the air. ‘In a boat! On a boat! I got out and… I like your hair! Please, Lilly. I like your eyes.’

‘I would have been told if you went on a boat.’

‘I hid!’

‘When?’

‘You’re my friend!’

‘When? I said when, Pamela?’ Lilly demands, pushing the gun into Pamela’s forehead.

‘Lilly, she’s not all there,’ Mary says, disgusted by the woman but not liking the treatment of her.

‘I’m not all there!’ Pamela whines with the needling passive-aggressive tone of a victim.

‘Fuck you,’ Lilly growls and turns her head as though to avoid the spatter when she pulls the trigger.

‘After Tommy got shot!’

‘Liar.’

‘I did! I swear it!’

‘You’re lying to me.’

‘Blondie, go easy.’

‘Go easy on me!’ Pamela says. ‘I got out, and I hid, and I didn’t do nuffin’.’

‘You’re a liar. And I hate liars,’ Lilly says, coming in close again to grab an empty chocolate bar as Mary shines the powerful scuba torch on them. ‘Look… See that? That red sticker was put on yesterday by Aggie and Sunnie to catch whoever was stealing their stock.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Mary says, looking down at the cans and empty wrappers, all of them marked with a small, red sticker. ‘Ye fecking bitch!’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Ye’ve been caught red-handed. I hate thieves. I fecking hate thievery, I do. I’ll break your fingers, ye fecking bitch!’

‘It’s not my fault!’

‘People are coming in scared witless, so they are. A can of pop and a choccie bar might cheer them up, and you’re stealing them?’

‘I’m diabetic! I have to eat them.’

‘Ye what!? That’s bullshit. I’ll punch ye in the face, is what I’ll do. Do you want a punch in the face?’

‘No!’

‘How did you get out?’ Lilly demands.

‘I hid in a boat!’

‘She’s lying. Punch her.’

‘Ye want me to punch her?’

‘In the face. Punch her in the face.’

‘You can’t touch me! I’m disablist.’

‘How did you get out!?’

‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’ Pamela squeals in a rising tone, flapping her arms and kicking her legs in a giant tantrum. ‘I’m disabled! It’s not my fault! I’ve got learning difficulties and diabetes, and-.’

She cuts off from the hard punch smacking into her nose as Mary blinks in shock at Lilly actually doing it. ‘Holy shit, Lilly.’

‘How did you get out?’ Lilly asks.

‘Don’t!’

Lilly hits her again. Full on in the nose, with blood pouring out into Pamela’s mouth to mix with the chocolate smears.

‘Lilly,’ Mary says, thinking they were only threatening it and not actually doing it.

‘HOW!?’ Lilly shouts and punches her again. Then again and again.

‘LILLY!’ Mary shouts.

‘Tunnels!’ Pamela shouts at the same time, gasping for air and bleeding heavily. She clutches her chest like she’s struggling to breathe as Lilly grips her chin and pushes her head back. ‘Tunnels,’ Pamela whispers.

‘Enough, Blondie. Let her breathe,’ Mary says, pushing Lilly away to stand in front of Pamela. ‘Ye’d best not lie now, Pammie. What tunnels are you talking about? Do you know what she means?’ she asks Lilly.

‘There was one tunnel. Howie used it once, but it collapsed.’

‘Is there another tunnel?’ Mary asks, nodding down at Pamela.

‘I didn’t do nuffin’!’

‘Stop squawking, for the love of god. Is there a tunnel into the fort? Is it here somewhere?’

‘Get up and show us,’ Lilly orders, grabbing at Pamela’s thick wrist.

‘I didn’t do… GET OFF! Stop hitting me… I’m your friend! I’m sick and IBS, and, and… I’ll show you! I’ll show you,’ Pamela shouts, thumped out of the chair and onto the floor, with Lilly breathing hard. Her knuckles covered in blood.

‘A tunnel is a threat to that fort. I will kill anyone that poses threat to that fort. Are we clear?’ Lilly says.

‘Yes!’ Pamela gasps, bleeding heavily from the nose.

‘Get up and show me,’ Lilly orders as Pamela struggles to her feet while gasping for air and walking to the stairs, with one hand clutching the railing as she shoots terrified glances to Lilly.

‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘Go!’ Lilly orders, with Mary not liking any of this but seeing the need for it, given what Lilly just said.

They follow Pamela to the ground floor to an old boat repair shed. The outside planks all peeling and worn. A door to the front protected by an iron grille, padlocked closed. Pamela leads them past and through the dense undergrowth to a side door, wedged closed and hidden behind a pallet.

She struggles to heave it aside and opens the door, then shuffles inside to the sound of rats squeaking in alarm and scurrying away.

A dark, filthy room greets them. Old engines and oars, and mouldy sails that stink of damp and fungus.

Another room beyond that. The floor thick with litter and crap. Graffiti on the walls, and old bottles of booze that must have been from when kids broke in.

A mound of tarpaulin on the ground that Pamela grabs and pulls aside while wheezing hard.

‘Will ye look at that,’ Mary says, shining the torch at the large cover pulled back to reveal a deep, square hole and metal rungs fixed to the sides. They go closer and peer down to see the bottom and a tunnel leading off. ‘It must go under the river straight to the fort.’

‘The Victorians loved tunnels,’ Lilly says quietly. ‘Where does it come out in the fort?’

Pamela shrugs. ‘In the back.’

‘Where in the back?’

‘I don’t think she’s smart enough to know that,’ Mary says.

‘I’m not smart,’ Pamela blurts and pulls the back of her filthy arm across her bloody nose and mouth, smearing blood over her cheek.

‘How did you know it was there?’ Lilly asks.

‘I found it. I hide in the old rooms…’

‘In the dark?’ Mary asks in disbelief that anyone would want to do that.

‘I like the dark… And the rats.’

‘Urgh. Jesus. Well. What now?’ Mary asks as Lilly draws her pistol. ‘What are you doing? You’re going to shoot her?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ Pamela whimpers as the sound of liquid being poured reaches them, with Mary adjusting the torch light to see urine pouring between Pamela’s legs. ‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘I won’t tell nobody.’

‘I don’t care,’ Lilly says and lifts the gun to aim.

‘Lilly!’ Mary says. ‘Ye can’t just kill people like that!’

‘I can. Watch me.’

‘I know a secret!’ Pamela shouts, throwing her hands up in front of her face as Lilly pulls the trigger and checks her aim at the very last split second, with the gun firing loud and awful in the small square room. Deafening them all, with Pamela spinning off her feet with a scream.

‘Ye shot her!’ Mary shouts, horrified at Pamela squealing on the ground. ‘You actually shot her?’

‘What secret?’ Lilly asks, aiming the gun at Pamela’s head.

‘Lilly. No! This is torture,’ Mary says.

‘I heard them!’

‘Who?’

‘The men!’ Pamela gasps, clutching her bleeding arm from the bullet skimming her flesh.

‘What men?’

‘They said, didn’t they. I heard ‘em!’

‘Heard what? Don’t give me riddles, Pamela. You’ve got three seconds. One! Two…’

‘I heard ‘em! They came here, and I heard ‘em say they were gonna bring the infected things in over the wall where there ain’t no wire.’

‘What the fuck,’ Mary whispers as Pamela swallows and licks her lips.

‘I heard ‘em! I did. I was hiding in here, and they were outside, and they spoke like she does,’ Pamela adds, pointing a meaty finger at Mary.

‘What did they say?’ Lilly asks, the threat gone from her voice as she whispers the words out with a weird sensation creeping up her spine.

‘They said they had a deal, and Peter was gonna get taken out, and they’d be in charge, and they had to bring the things in over the wall with no wire. I heard ‘em say it! They said they could find some and bring ‘em here, and it’d show they were needed.’

‘That’s why they said they wouldn’t come again,’ Lilly says. ‘That’s why they were so relaxed. Because they brought them in.’

‘Who?’ Mary asks, pushing past Lilly. ‘Who, Pamela?’

‘I didn’t see ‘em!’

‘Did you not hear any names?’

‘I didn’t do nuffin’!’

‘Names, Pamela!’ Mary says.

‘Don’t hurt me!’

‘I swear to god I will fecking hurt you. Who?’

‘Promise first! Promise to let me go.’

‘I’ll fecking shoot her myself,’ Mary says, standing up and pulling her gun as Pamela squeals and covers her face.

‘WillieElvisPatrickTyson!’

A second of life seemingly held in stasis as Mary stares down, and Lilly frowns, trying to think. Trying to see the play at hand because Pamela just said they made a deal, and Peter was going to be taken out.

Then Mary’s gone. Running from the room.

‘Mary!’ Lilly says, running after her, but Mary pays no heed and boots the outer door to get through, and starts running through the undergrowth and out onto the road. Ignoring Lilly’s shouts.

Into the car. The engine started. Lilly blocks the front. Her hands on the bonnet. ‘Just wait!’ she orders. But Mary has had enough of orders. She growls and selects reverse, pulling away and sending Lilly sprawling, but she rises fast and sprints to bang on the passenger door, then wrenches it open, and falls in as the car wheelspins in the surface water and veers off along the road.

‘We have to think!’ Lilly says, righting herself in the seat. ‘Slow down.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can’t or you won’t?’

‘Both. I’m too angry.’

‘At what?’

‘Everything,’ Mary shouts, increasing the speed to shoot along the short distance into Bobby’s parking area and through the gap in the hedge to drive onto the road and down to the junction next to the camp. Coming in at speed and aiming for the gazebo covering the men on guard playing cards. She hits the horn. They shout and scatter as she brakes and turns sharply, sending the Toyota sliding over the wet grass and tearing the gazebo down, and smashing the table and chairs away.

Then she’s out and raging as the first man calls her a fecking stupid bitch and gets taken off his feet with a single punch.

‘Mary!’ Lilly shouts, running behind her as Mary storms across the road into the camp.

‘WILLIE! ELVIS!’

‘What she doing in here?’ Patrick yells as the voices start going up inside the camp.

‘Ye not welcome!’ Tyson yells as Lilly tries to grab Mary’s arm, but she wrenches free. Too furious and too full of dark energy to stop and think, and so Mary strides on, with her wild red hair streaming out behind and her eyes set and blazing.

‘Ye call me a fecking traitor!’ she yells out, striding into the middle area full of people drinking teas and cans of beer. All of them rushing to their feet.

‘GET OUT!’ Patrick yells, striding at her.

‘You don’t tell me what to do, Patrick!’ Mary shouts. ‘Ye traitors! All of you! You brought them here! You brought those infected things here!’

‘Get her out!’ Tyson yells, grabbing a length of wood to brandish. ‘Mary, so help me. Get the fuck out!’

‘Do they know?’ Mary demands. ‘Do they all know you brought the infected on purpose? Do they know? Do they fecking know?’ Mary shouts the words, rushing at Tyson as he steps out with an angry look and swings the wooden club hard at Mary. But she blocks fast, twisting into him and plucking it free before slamming it into his knee with an awful crack of bone.

‘Fecking bitch!’ Willie shouts as Mary lunges at him. Throwing the stick to make him falter before she closes in with fists clenched and up. Slamming blows into Willie’s head and driving him back into the side of a caravan.

Elvis grabs her from behind, but she slams her head back into his nose and back kicks his shins, then pivots, and rips him off his feet to slam down through a picnic bench, making it break apart, and she drops to slam hard, brutal punches into Elvis’s head.

‘Stop!’ Patrick shouts, grabbing her with Tyson as Lilly goes to move, but Mary wrenches hard, sending Tyson flying, then using her left hand to batter Patrick away before going back to block Tyson incoming from her side. Willie up and attacking. Elvis screaming for murder, with all four going at Mary standing in the middle.

She blocks Patrick and punches him away as Willie takes a dirty shot to the back of her head.

‘OI!’ Lilly shouts, moving in.

‘NO!’ Mary yells, twisting to slap Willie’s next punch away and driving a fist into his belly, then a knee into his face, with a groan sounding through everyone else. ‘Ye fecking traitor!’ she hisses and kicks him hard in the ribs. ‘They sold us out! These four sold us out!’

A shout from Elvis swinging a fist. She ducks and grabs his ankle to rip him off his feet. Taking him down to stamp on his face with a vicious action that has people crying out in shock. But she keeps going and grabs Elvis’s arm to snap the elbow joint against her knee, and the seriousness of it all hits everyone. That this isn’t a brawl. This isn’t a scrap.

‘They set Peter up!’ she yells at everyone else. ‘And they brought the infected here. That’s why that wall never had no wire. They’re fecking traitors. And they used me to deflect what they done. Ye fecking bastards… I’ll kill all four of you!’

‘Knife!’ Lilly says as a blade appears in Tyson’s hand, and she starts to reach for her sidearm.

‘Don’t!’ Mary tells her as Patrick turns to run for his rifle propped up. Lilly draws, but Mary beats her to it. Grabbing a chunk of broken wood to fling at Patrick’s legs, tangling and taking him down before she turns back to Tyson aiming to stab her in the back but getting her shoulder instead. She moves fast with the knife stuck in her shoulder and slams punches into his face and body. Breaking Tyson’s nose and jaw. Fracturing his sockets and driving him back into a caravan wall as she yanks the blade free and stabs into his neck over and over.

Blood sprays. Hot and thick, and spattering her face. Screams sound out. Loud and awful. Men and women shouting to stop as Patrick scrabbles to reach his rifle. Lilly shouts a warning, then fires a shot into his stomach as he pulls the trigger and sends a round through Mary’s arm, then, she’s on him, kicking the rifle aside and stabbing down into his neck, with more blood spraying into her face.

Mary falls back, turning to see Elvis crawling away, and pulls her sidearm, and shoots him through the head as she passes. The single gunshot making people gasp and flinch.

Then she reaches Willie. Her own brother, on his back and staring up through a mangled face.

‘Don’t!’ Willie gasps as Mary aims the pistol. ‘I can tell you who-.’

‘We need to know who-.’ Lilly starts to shout at the same time.

But the shot rings out, and Willie’s head snaps back as Mary shoots her brother in the head. Killing him outright.

Four men dead by her hands.

Four of the leading men in the camp killed within a minute as Mary stands in the middle and looks at them all.

The woman who can shoot straighter and punch harder than any of them.

The woman who just decided to take it in the same way Lilly did.

By violence. By force. By whatever means necessary.

‘They brought the infected here,’ Mary calls out into the awful silence. ‘They set Peter up and left that section of wall with no wire to bring them over, so they could prove they were needed…’

The silence holds.

Four men dead at her hands.

‘The old world is gone,’ Mary calls out. ‘The old rules are gone. This is my camp now, and if anyone wants to challenge that, they can step up and say so. Does anyone want to challenge that? ANYONE!?’

Nobody does, and she turns to look at Lilly. ‘Is that how you take it, Blondie?’

Lilly stares at her. Cold. Detached. Ruthless, and now seeing the same thing in the woman opposite her. That dark energy pulsing inside. That furious, dark power radiating out.

A thing between them.

A sudden thing of many levels.

‘Go back to the fort, Lilly. I need to be with my people.’

Lilly pauses with a look around at everyone else. Stunned at what just happened, but she turns and walks away to the Toyota. She gets in and starts the engine, with Mary frowning at hearing it and how the gears crunch, and car kangaroos through the gazebo and back up through the hedge.

Back to the boat yard because Lilly forgot something.

‘Fecking speargun,’ Mary whispers, shaking her head in the camp as the Toyota comes to a stop, and Lilly gets out and makes her way back into the old shack. The trap door still open, and she peers down with a frown. Seeing that it’s no longer an inch of water covering the bottom.

The whole thing is submerged, and there’s no sign of Pamela.

She covers it up and goes back to the chandlery for the bag, and drives the Toyota, rather badly, back to Bobby’s parking area, and walks the rest of the way alongside the camp. Down the road and over the empty beach.

‘Blondie,’ a call from behind. Mary at the edge of the camp. Lilly turns to look at her, and the rain falls. ‘I think we need to slow down and think. There’s something deeper happening here.’

‘George knew he was immune,’ Lilly says. ‘In that battle when the infected got through. He knew before it started that he was immune. And Patrick said on the radio that it was a set up.’

‘Ye think George then?’ Mary asks.

‘Who else?’ Lilly asks as they both fall silent. ‘But I think we just disrupted whatever their plan was. They didn’t think this would happen or that you’d take charge. So yes, caution now. We slow down and think.’

‘And we act like it’s all sorted,’ Mary adds. ‘Don’t show suspicion.’

Lilly nods, ‘I’d better get back then.’

‘Aye,’ Mary says as Lilly turns away. ‘Don’t go spearfishing without me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Ye promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘So, we’re still a bit gay then?’

‘Aye,’ Lilly says.

‘Racist,’ Mary says. She walks off back to her camp as Lilly turns to take the boat back to her fort.

But one question remains.

Who owns the bay?

10

Pamela wheezes heavily. Brushing against the wall in the absolute pitch dark. Her lantern left outside the restaurant. She didn’t go back for it. She went down the tunnel and made off the minute Lilly and Mary ran outside.

But she knows these tunnels well. She should do. She’s spent enough time exploring them.

She didn’t lie either because the dark and the rats really do not bother her. Nor do the spiders and the isolation, and the creaks and groans that seem to echo through the long, unused tunnels and chambers.

She stops to draw air. Whimpering and gasping. She strains and pushes another wet fart out with a squirt of shit. Saliva hangs from her mouth. Blood trickles down her arm from the bullet skimming her when Lilly pulled the trigger.

‘She was my friend,’ she whispers and sets off. Twists and turns. Left and rights. She passes other tunnel mouths but stays on her route. Knowing the way.

A door ahead.

Wooden and thick. She stops outside and listens for a very long time. Not hearing anything save for the odd rat squeaking and drips of water falling from the ceiling.

She pushes it open, shielding her eyes from the light, and pushes the door closed with her body, and stands for a moment, until her eyes have adjusted, and she can see the neat and tidy room. A bed at one end. A chair and table. Shelves lined with books. Supplies stacked off the floor on pallets. Long life food. Batteries. Spare summer dresses, all of the same size and type. All of them pre-torn and pre-stained in the same places. A washing station in the corner.

She sighs and reaches into her mouth to pull the prosthetic yellow and brown, crooked teeth out, revealing straight white teeth of her own as she stands and straightens her back. Her eyes losing the sick, stupid expression.

She walks across the room and pulls the dress off with a look of disgust at her bloated body. A black and white picture on the side. A beautiful, slender woman staring out while holding a cigarette. The Russian flag behind her, and Pamela sighs again. She shouldn’t have brought the photo. But this is a hard mission, and she needed the reminder of what she can go back to when the mission is over, and she can shed the weight. She wouldn’t have done something this extreme before. The risk of irreversible damage was too high. Diabetes. Heart disease. Stroke.

But those things don’t matter now.

Not to her anyway. Not with what is inside of her.

She washes in the corner and stands naked to dry. Trying to decide what to read tonight. She’s not in the mood for Tolstoy. Or Chekhov. Definitely not Pushkin. Nope. After tonight, she needs something different. Maybe a bit of mind-bending time travel or some steampunk. She selects an Asimov.

A noise from behind.

The door opens.

‘I didn’t do nuffin!’ she says, instantly in her role of victim, with the stupidity showing in her eyes as the man steps inside. His pistol held low but aimed, and his sharp eyes take the room in, with a fast single glance before he looks back to the fat woman making no effort to conceal her naked body.

‘If I’ve got to see it,’ she says with a wan shrug and in fluent Russian. Her tone and manner normal again as the facade disappears, and she spots the way he looks down over her huge, hanging breasts and the big rolls of her stomach. ‘There is something sexy about it, isn’t there?’

‘Report, Polina.’

Polina sighs and sits down on the bed. An expression of where do I start on her intelligent face, but still, she makes no effort to cover her body. But then, the man has seen it before many times, and she tuts thoughtfully as he holsters his sidearm and starts looking around the room. ‘I don’t know,’ she says honestly.

‘It’s six months early.’

‘I just said I don’t know,’ she replies, flapping her hands in exasperation. ‘They told me to get in and prep this site, and prepare to embed myself, but it was still six months away; then it hit, and I got inside.’

‘You weren’t notified?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing? No word? No call?’

‘I said no.’

A sigh. He leans against the table and looks at her thoughtfully, with his eyes still glancing down to her naked breasts.

‘Did you hear anything?’ she asks.

‘Not a word.’

‘But the mission still stands,’ she says with what sounds like something between a statement and a question. ‘Yes?’ Da?

‘Da,’ he replies, then adds a shrug before switching to English. ‘This is still one of the designated sites, so?’ he trails off for a second. ‘As per the plan. We do what we can to gather the immunes here, ready for the new world order. Did you know about the mutations within the infection?’

‘No, I didn’t know. I mean, I didn’t know before. I never heard anything anyway. Did you?’

He shakes his head. ‘Howie and Lilly aren’t immune. They are infected.’

Polina nods. Knowing this from listening and watching from the shadows in the fort since it began.

‘They’re connecting with hive minds,’ he adds. ‘This has gone wildly beyond anything we were prepped for.’

‘Stick to the mission,’ she says.

‘Yes. Of course. And tonight? Did you get my message?’

‘Well. They finally found me. And Lilly took the bait,’ Polina says as she sits on the bed. ‘Lilly roughed me up, and I showed her the tunnel; at which point, she tried to shoot me. But I said I had a secret and told them the names.’

‘And the tunnel?’

‘Flooded it. They can’t get down.’

‘Good. That’s something. I should imagine Mary will charge straight into the camp and either kill them or they’ll kill her. Either way, we further destabilise the hierarchy.’

‘You need to watch Lilly.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘I’m serious,’ Polina says with a warning look as he nods and sighs, and spots the black and white picture on the side, showing a slim and beautiful woman smoking a cigarette. An image he knows only too well. But then, he should know it. He was the man holding the camera all those years ago.

‘Doesn’t it make you sad, seeing what you used to look like?’

‘It keeps me going. I look at that, and I know that’s my goal as soon as the mission is over, and we’re living in utopia. I mean, it’s not like we can get diabetes or anything, is it?’ she says with a touch of a smile. ‘Be careful of Lilly. But don’t kill her. Howie is too strong, and we don’t have the numbers yet. Some more arrived today. And I know we’ve got assets in place, but we don’t have enough.’

Silence again. Thoughtful. Considered. They share a look, with a familiarity of years showing in their eyes. ‘Indeed. Well. I’d better go,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave instructions in the usual spot if I need anything. Goodnight, Polina.’

He steps out and closes the door with an expression of deep thought, and stands still as though wrestling with an internal dilemma, while Polina sits on the bed with that wry smile and stares at the inside of the closed door.

Seconds go by.

Nearly a minute. She thinks maybe he left, but the door swings back open, and her smile grows as she lies back on the bed and watches him step back inside and start tugging his clothes off. His eyes filled with the lust he fought to suppress. He can’t help it. The rolls of fat. The heavy hanging breasts. The expanse of skin. And it’s still her. It’s still Polina.

‘Like I said, there is something sexy about it, isn’t there?’ she asks in English.

‘God, yes. You’re still beautiful, Polina.’

‘Spasiba, Dzhordzh.’

‘I do hate my name in Russian.’

‘I know, Georgie. I know…’

ALSO BY RR HAYWOOD

Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Amazon & Audible bestselling author, RR Haywood. One of the most downloaded indie authors in the UK with nearly four million books sold and over 25 Kindle bestsellers.

DELIO. PHASE ONE

*WINNER OF “BEST NEW BOOK” DISCOVER SCI-FI 2023

#1 Amazon & Audible bestseller

A single bed in a small room.

The centre of Piccadilly Circus.

A street in New York city outside of a 7-Eleven.

A young woman taken from her country.

A drug dealer who paid his debt.

A suicidal, washed-up cop.

The rest of the world now frozen.

Unmoving.

Unblinking.

"Brilliant."

"A gripping story. Harrowing, and often hysterical."

"This book is very different to anything else out there - and brilliantly so."

"You'll fall so hard for these characters, you'll wish the world would freeze just so you could stay with them forever."

*

FICTION LAND

*Nominated for Best Audio Book at the British Book Awards 2023

*Narrated by Gethin Anthony

*The #1 Most Requested Audio Book in the UK 2023

*Now Optioned For A TV Series

*#1 Amazon bestseller

#1 Audible bestseller

“Imagine John Wick wakes up in a city full of characters from novels – that’s Fiction Land.”

Not many men get to start over.

John Croker did and left his old life behind – until crooks stole his delivery van. No van means no pay, which means his niece doesn’t get the life-saving operation she needs, and so in desperation, John uses the skills of his former life one last time… That is until he dies and wakes up in Fiction Land. A city occupied by characters from unfinished novels.

But the world around him doesn’t feel right, and when he starts asking questions, the authorities soon take extreme measures to stop him finding the truth about Fiction Land.

*

EXTRACTED SERIES

EXTRACTED

EXECUTED

EXTINCT

Blockbuster Time-Travel

#1 Amazon US

#1 Amazon UK

#1 Audible US & UK

Washington Post & Wall Street Journal Bestseller

In 2061, a young scientist invents a time machine to fix a tragedy in his past. But his good intentions turn catastrophic when an early test reveals something unexpected: the end of the world.

A desperate plan is formed. Recruit three heroes, ordinary humans capable of extraordinary things, and change the future.

Safa Patel is an elite police officer, on duty when Downing Street comes under terrorist attack. As armed men storm through the breach, she dispatches them all.

'Mad' Harry Madden is a legend of the Second World War. Not only did he complete an impossible mission—to plant charges on a heavily defended submarine base—but he also escaped with his life.

Ben Ryder is just an insurance investigator. But as a young man he witnessed a gang assaulting a woman and her child. He went to their rescue, and killed all five.

Can these three heroes, extracted from their timelines at the point of death, save the world?

*

THE CODE SERIES

The Worldship Humility

The Elfor Drop

The Elfor One

#1 Audible bestselling smash hit narrated by Colin Morgan

#1 Amazon bestselling Science-Fiction

“A rollicking, action packed space adventure…”

“Best read of the year!”

“An original and exceptionally entertaining book.”

“A beautifully written and humorous adventure.”

Sam, an airlock operative, is bored. Living in space should be full of adventure, except it isn’t, and he fills his time hacking 3-D movie posters.

Petty thief Yasmine Dufont grew up in the lawless lower levels of the ship, surrounded by violence and squalor, and now she wants out. She wants to escape to the luxury of the Ab-Spa, where they eat real food instead of rats and synth cubes.

Meanwhile, the sleek-hulled, unmanned Gagarin has come back from the ever-continuing search for a new home. Nearly all hope is lost that a new planet will ever be found, until the Gagarin returns with a code of information that suggests a habitable planet has been found. This news should be shared with the whole fleet, but a few rogue captains want to colonise it for themselves.

When Yasmine inadvertently steals the code, she and Sam become caught up in a dangerous game of murder, corruption, political wrangling and...porridge, with sex-addicted Detective Zhang Woo hot on their heels, his own life at risk if he fails to get the code back.

*

THE UNDEAD SERIES

THE UK’s #1 Horror Series

Available on Amazon & Audible

“The Best Series Ever…”

The Undead. The First Seven Days

The Undead. The Second Week.

The Undead Day Fifteen.

The Undead Day Sixteen.

The Undead Day Seventeen

The Undead Day Eighteen

The Undead Day Nineteen

The Undead Day Twenty

The Undead Day Twenty-One

The Undead Twenty-Two

The Undead Twenty-Three: The Fort

The Undead Twenty-Four: Equilibrium

The Undead Twenty-Five: The Heat

The Undead Twenty-Six: Rye

Blood on the Floor

An Undead novel

Blood at the Premiere

An Undead novel

The Camping Shop

An Undead novella

*

A Town Called Discovery

The #1 Amazon & Audible Time Travel Thriller

A man falls from the sky. He has no memory.

What lies ahead are a series of tests. Each more brutal than the last, and if he gets through them all, he might just reach A Town Called Discovery.

*

THE FOUR WORLDS OF BERTIE CAVENDISH

A rip-roaring multiverse time-travel crossover starring:

The Undead

Extracted.

A Town Called Discovery
and featuring

The Worldship Humility

*
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