Surviving the Evacuation, Book 21: Our Home, Too: Surviving The Evacuation, #21

By Frank Tayell

A murderer stalks the post-apocalyptic wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

 

A year after the outbreak and nuclear war, the planet is teetering on the edge of environmental collapse. Across the entire Northern Hemisphere, very few survived. Fourteen thousand Europeans and Canadians found safety behind the great defensive walls erected across Nova Scotia. Attacked by piratical bandits based out of New York, they have no choice but to flee. While Bill Wright organises their evacuation, Kim and Sholto remain in the Pacific Northwest, searching for a new home for all those in the east. Kim thinks they have months to prepare until a plane full of pilgrims arrives from the south, bringing a murderer with them.

 

Where the evacuation of Britain was a bloodbath, the Southern Pacific fared better. Survivors thrive in fortified enclaves in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Thousands of Canadians found a new home in Australia's Northern Territory, albeit living in hastily built shanty towns where water is scarce and crime is rife. Now they want to return home.

 

After an assassination attempt on the leadership on Vancouver Island, an investigation is launched, and the hunt begins. Whoever the killers are, their backers are still in Australia. Finding them falls to Commissioner Tess Qwong, whose hunt takes her from crocodile-filled rivers to the densely packed refugee camp the exiled Canadians call home.

 

Set among the radioactive desolation of British Columbia, the undead-filled ruins of Washington State, and the exiled Canadians' capital in Australia's Northern Territory, Bill and Kim's dreams of creating a new and better world are fading, while the prospect of war only grows stronger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Tayell
• Release date: Sep 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215791349

Frank Tayell

Frank Tayell is the author of post-apocalyptic fiction including the series Surviving the Evacuation and it’s North American spin-off, Here We Stand. "The outbreak began in New York, but they said Britain was safe. They lied. Nowhere is safe from the undead." He’s also the author of Strike a Match, a police procedural set twenty years after a nuclear war. The series chronicles the cases of the Serious Crimes Unit as they unravel a conspiracy threatening to turn their struggling democracy into a dystopia. For more information about Frank Tayell, visit http://blog.franktayell.com or http://www.facebook.com/FrankTayell

Book preview

Dramatis Personae

A non-exhaustive list of the characters in the story.

Before the outbreak, Kim hadn’t travelled much, except as a student when she’d spent a semester in Oregon. Since the outbreak in February of last year, she’s been to Anglesey, Dundalk, Faroe, Nova Scotia, and even Australia. She still dreams of being a children’s author, but for now she has to find a new home in the Pacific Northwest for the evacuees from Nova Scotia and Quebec, and be a mother to her two adopted children, three-year-old Daisy and thirteen-year-old Annette. Bill, a former politician and author of the British evacuation plan, has returned to Digby to organise the exodus from that coast.

Bill’s brother has many names, though he prefers to be called Sholto. For nearly thirty years, he tried to stop the impending apocalypse by ensuring the wrong political candidates weren’t elected, and by whatever means. With no elections to plan, Sholto, with the help of a squad of U.S. Marines, Sergeant Thelonious Toussaint, Privates Luca Petrelli, Maya ‘Rulz’ Torres, and Isabella ‘Gonzo’ Gonzales, and the Yorkshire-born soldier, Bran, are clearing the roads between the harbour of Bellingham in Washington State and the passes through the Rockies near the town of Hope in British Columbia.

While there are around a hundred million people in the Southern Pacific, most living in cramped temporary housing, their expedition to the far north is small, with only a thousand people. General Bruce Hawker is in command of the soldiers and sailors on temporary assignment to the Northern Hemisphere.

The civilian side of the expedition is led by Chief Joseph Seward, a farmer by trade who became Acting Prime Minister of Canada during their exile in Australia. His brother, Sergeant Doug Seward of the RCMP, returned to Vancouver with him, as did Doug’s wife, Judge Wendy Seward. Unlike the other returning exiles, they brought their children, too. Along with Acting Commissioner Magdalena MacDonald, they form the civilian administrative council for the Pacific returnees.

Spencer Harding, a former RCMP officer who, on retiring, administered the airport in Victoria, B.C., until its destruction during the outbreak. He ran Nanaimo Airport until Vancouver Island was abandoned and has returned to that duty now. Constable Fatima Khalil was a forensic technician, warily eyeing her thirtieth birthday until she was conscripted into the police at the beginning of the outbreak. For the MacDonald family, tragedy struck long before the apocalypse. Jerome and Andrea’s parents died in a car crash. They were raised by Jerome’s aunt, Magdalena. Constable Jerome MacDonald followed family tradition and joined the police. Andrea, a naturally competitive and contrary sort, joined the fire service, qualifying as a water-bomber pilot. Lewis McGregor, an Alaskan bush pilot, was stranded on the wrong side of the border during the collapse and now only wants to go home.

Scott Higson was stranded in Europe during the crisis, but he did make it home to Australia. His wife, Liu, now works as an assistant and personal pilot to Anna Dodson, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. Their daughter, Clemmie, is in the middle of the Pacific aboard a science survey vessel, assessing the extent of the damage to the oceans. Bobby, their eleven-and-a-half-year-old son, is still in school, the same school as the son of the Australian Prime Minister, Oswald Owen. Scott travelled from Europe all the way to Thailand with, among others, Sergeant Salman Khan of the U.S. Marine Corps and Amber Kessler, a Californian civilian who’d been conscripted into the Corps after the outbreak. They returned to Armenia to help with the airlift of President Vernadski and Professor Fontaine’s refugee army from Europe. Only Claire Moreau and her daughter, Starwind, travelled with Scott to the Philippines and then to Canberra.

Commissioner Tess Qwong now heads up the Special Projects Division, but she was previously a police inspector in Broken Hill and a close friend of the Higsons. Her new deputy is Clyde Brook, a former major in the SAS who left the army to set up a hostage rescue operation in the parts of the world the law didn’t reach. The mononymous Zach, a runaway who volunteered to join the conscript army in Canberra, has found himself a happy niche as a police driver.

With only nine cardinals alive, the next election for the pope will have a very small electorate. Cardinal Han, at seventy years old, is the preferred choice of the more rational voices, such as Father Luke Evasco, the acting bishop of Eastern Samar. Sister Anne-Marie is the expedition’s biographer, recording the pilgrimage on camera for those still in the Pacific. Cardinal Han’s main rival, Cardinal Ruiz, is only interested in the power that comes with the papal throne. Hoping to stand behind it is Brother Pius, a corrupt monk who sees an opportunity to become a land baron if not an emperor.

The other leaders of the pilgrimage are Mr Tariq Ibrahim, an imam known across Indonesia as an outspoken critic of corruption, and David Kercher, a Jewish agriculturalist. While they might be the spiritual leaders, the practical planning of the pilgrimage is the responsibility of Tariq’s wife, Nurel Ibrahim. Their son, Arif, is a member of the bodyguard led, until President Vernadski of Ukraine arrives with the rear-guard, by Rannga Setiawan, a former military comrade of Tariq Ibrahim, who, like his superior, became an imam after his military service.

The easterners still in Nova Scotia are led by Napatchie Ashoona, the sole MP for the vast territory of Nunavut and the only member of the Canadian Parliament known to have survived, and by Admiral Janet Gunderson, the Surgeon General of the United States, and a member of the presidential line of succession.

More than anyone, Tracy Mossburger, the defender of Annapolis, helped keep the people of Digby alive during the long winter. She’d been planning her own expedition to the west before Bill announced his. Injured by bandits earlier in the year, she’s still recovering but also still determined to help her people find a home. Aiding her are Ethan and Alice, two Canadian soldiers who were the bulwark of Digby’s defence.

Rahinder Singh, a natural genius with anything through which electricity runs, came from a family of scientists. It was his brother who developed the zombie virus. Chief Watts, once of the HMS Vehement, helped Rahinder build a small refinery in Newfoundland. In the west, they’ll need to construct one on a far grander scale.

The Story So Far

Cassidy, Vancouver Island, 27th April

Kim stared at the dark ceiling of today’s new bedroom, failing to get to sleep. They’d flown from Canberra to Darwin, to the Philippines, to Japan, to here, and she had no idea what season it was, let alone the time. At each stop, they’d been treated like visiting VIPs, given a tour, a grand meal, and a barrage of unanswerable questions that had tormented her dreams. When they’d arrived on Vancouver Island, and what would be her final stop, she’d gone to bed almost immediately, only taking the time to give Daisy a bath. Between the early night and the jet lag, she was now wide awake.

During their time in Canberra, they’d stayed in a fenced trailer-home compound behind a hangar at the airport. Scott and Liu Higson lived there, but so did Australian Deputy Prime Minister Anna Dodson. It was an odd place for a world leader to live, particularly when compared to grand homes like Downing Street, Chequers, or Chevening, but these were very odd times. Australia’s population had doubled, while Britain, indeed the whole of Europe, had been almost entirely wiped out. The cabin-like trailers did have air conditioning, though, and very comfortable beds, but she’d kept being woken by the sound of planes taking off. It was a small price to pay for the reality that humanity hadn’t been wiped out by the outbreak and subsequent nuclear war. Not yet, anyway.

She rolled over onto her side. Unfortunately, that freed up some space for her unconscious beloved to invade. When had she come to love Bill? It certainly hadn’t been love at first sight. She regretted the thought instantly as it brought back memories of her darkest times, held captive in Longshanks Manor. Bill had rescued her, but she’d been too full of rage to properly appreciate it. The days following their first meeting were a blur, so she didn’t remember much of the house, but that was the type of place where politicians should live. Or the mansion in Northumberland where Bill had grown up with Jen Masterton. She’d not seen that house, but he’d talked about it often enough, though it got larger and grander with each retelling.

By contrast, her family had a four-bed, single-garage, post-war redbrick. They’d gone past it as she and Bill had journeyed east across Britain towards the old abbey he’d taken as his home. Her parents were gone. She’d not stopped. She’d not collected any mementoes and regretted it now. Pain and rage had blinded her to the obvious, but back then she’d thought there would be plenty of time to return to her childhood home. Perhaps there would have been if they’d not found Annette and Daisy.

How Annette had kept Daisy safe was nothing short of miraculous. Annette had been thirteen then, and Daisy was probably two. They’d only met at the end of last June. Not even a year had gone by, but it had been so full of living. So full of death, too. Annette would be fourteen soon. There would have to be a celebration. Kim already had a gift for her. Not the rifle that Annette had asked for because she hoped the time when children had to carry guns was over. She’d bought her a fishing rod in Australia because the time when children didn’t have to know where their food came from was over, too.

Annette had lost track of her parents during the evacuation of London. Daisy’s story was far sadder. She’d had a brother, who was perhaps seven or eight. That brother had been infected. Annette had found Daisy atop a wardrobe, out of her undead brother’s reach, but she was still destined to die until Annette saved her. Yes, those were dark times she hoped to one day forget. But they’d survived, and she and Bill had found them during the journey through Hampshire. They’d not been a family then, of course, just strangers travelling together to Bill’s refuge of Brazely Abbey.

If they’d taken a different road, everything might be so different. They might never have gone to the bunker beneath Lenham Hill, found Sholto, and learned there was a refuge in Wales. They might have stayed in the Abbey or perhaps moved to somewhere with a few more luxuries but ultimately stayed in England. They might now be dead.

On the journey, they’d found other survivors, but it had been a mistake to help them. Not only had they betrayed her and Bill, they’d abducted the girls. Why? She’d puzzled over that in the same way she’d puzzled over why so many ordinary-seeming people had committed horrific crimes, but it was a mystery that dated back long before the outbreak. They’d tracked the girls to the Thames. There, Bill had almost died. They’d made it to a golf club, of all places, and she'd done her best to nurse him back to health. It was another miracle that he’d survived.

Their next destination was the bunker beneath Lenham Hill, where the virus had been made. Not that they’d wanted answers, or she hadn’t, but they’d needed fuel to continue their pursuit of the girls. They’d found fuel. And they’d found Sholto, who’d been waiting there for Bill. If they hadn’t, there was no way they’d have rescued Annette and Daisy. She was sure of it. But they had rescued the girls and began a long trek westwards, aiming for a rendezvous Sholto had arranged on a Welsh beach.

Her memory of those days was of little water, little food, and far too many zombies. A stronger memory was the dark days in that tunnel on the Welsh border as a horde of zombies flattened the ground above but was banished when Bill’s errant elbow banged into the small of her back.

She got up and crossed to the window, pulling back the curtains to take in the view. The clouds were too thick to make out more than the shapes of the trees. There didn’t appear to be a light anywhere. It was terrifyingly like Britain last year.

They’d stayed in so many houses, but not one of them was a real home. Not even Anglesey. While Bill and Sholto had gone north to deal with Quigley, she and the girls had settled into their odd little house on the Welsh island. They’d found a community there, but the nuclear power station loomed over them and their future. When, not if, it broke beyond the ability of engineers like Chief Watts to fix, they would die. They had to leave. Ireland had seemed the logical solution, so she and Bill had travelled to Kenmare Bay, on the Irish west coast, and to a mansion redoubt once owned by Lisa Kempton. But Ireland was no better than Britain, full of the undead and too empty of survivors.

There was another problem, too, and a problem they were facing again now. They needed electricity. Yes, you could survive in the summer without it, but not in the winter when you worried the undead were lurking in every long shadow.

Containment at the power station had failed. They’d been forced to leave prematurely. At the time, the plan had been to sail across to Belfast, regroup, and consider their options. They’d had a plane and a pilot. It was another moment where the future was balanced on its edge, ready to fall either way. If they’d reached Belfast safely, she wasn’t sure where they would have gone after that, though Bill had already learned about Annapolis Royal’s tidal barrage from a book. But if the plane had reached Belfast, Scott would never have gone to France.

He had reached France, as had Bill, Chester, Sorcha, Sergeant Salman Khan, and Private Amber Kessler, all because the plane had been sabotaged. While Scott, Amber, and Salman had remained in France, Bill, Chester, and Sorcha had gone west, aiming for the coast in what was, in retrospect, a truly desperate attempt to reach Ireland. In Calais, he’d found Flora Fielding. Not far away were her ships, the Ocean Queen and the HMS Courageous, two vessels that had sailed nearly the length of the planet from Ascension Island in the Southern Pacific.

The ship on which Kim had sailed from Anglesey had been sabotaged, too. They’d run aground in Dundalk. Mary O’Leary might have been their leader, but it was Kim who had taken charge. She wasn’t sure when she’d fallen in love with Bill, but that was when she’d stepped out of his shadow and came into her own.

Scott and President Fontayne’s French survivors joined up with President Vernadski’s Ukrainians. They had travelled west to Switzerland first and ultimately to Armenia. There, the journey almost ended. Vernadski’s people had been on the road for nearly a year, rarely stopping anywhere for as long as a week. Armenia wasn’t that far from their old homeland, and if they were destined to die somewhere, that’s where it should be.

Scott Higson had the same thought, and as he had a plane, he set out for Australia with both Vernadski’s and Fontayne’s blessing. They hadn’t thought he’d come back. They hadn’t thought he’d survive. But he had. So had one hundred million other people in the Southern Pacific.

For Kim and her friends, after finding nothing but desolation along the coast of Europe, an Atlantic crossing seemed their best gamble. They’d stopped on Faroe and had found survivors, though they never knew how large a community it was. They were given electricity and an empty town in which to live, but the locals had kept their distance and had demanded they leave by spring. They’d wanted permanence. They wanted a house they could turn into a home and possessions they wouldn’t have to abandon. They’d almost found it in Digby.

The Canadians had run two evacuations, in the west to Vancouver Island and then to Australia, and in the east to Nova Scotia, and with an unofficial third evacuation to the more remote north. Across Nova Scotia, great walls had been built to keep out the undead. The survivors had been forced back to the very last wall. But they had held it, and they had held the power station in Annapolis Royal. The Europeans had arrived in the short days of winter, but they had been welcomed.

When the thaw came, the zombies massed outside the walls were found to be dead. But the oil wells in Newfoundland produced barely more than a trickle. Worse, they learned the fate of the Canadian survivors who’d taken their boats southwards.

Pirates controlled the eastern seaboard. Originally from Florida and ruled by a former NASA meteorologist, they had sailed north and laid siege to the survivors clinging on in New York. The choice to those in Digby was either leave or fight, and they’d lost too many to risk losing any more.

She and Bill had gone west, first to Quebec, where they’d found survivors centred around a trading post in Alma on the shores of Lac Saint-Jean. This wasn’t a community but scattered homesteads spread across the north. Back then, she’d thought it might take months or longer to get to the Pacific, except here she was, and all because they’d met some survivors who weren’t friendly.

Unbeknownst to them at the time, Scott had persuaded the Australian government to launch a search for the Europeans. He, and Andrea and Jerome MacDonald, had been captured by bandits. Soon after, so were she and Bill. After their escape, Scott and the MacDonalds went west, and she and Bill went east, but they were reunited again not long after when Scott flew into Digby.

Things had moved fast after that. She and Bill had flown to Australia with Annette and Daisy, and with Jay. The boy, a young man really, had been among the first ashore in Nova Scotia, and he’d been to New York, but they’d invited him on the journey to prove to everyone in Digby that they would return.

Where humanity was almost extinct in the North Atlantic, some parts of the Pacific had boomed. Around fifty million now lived in Australia, with another fifty spread out among the Philippines, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the islands of Indonesia. There were enclaves in Japan, thriving settlements in Thailand, and hostile ones in Myanmar.

The United Nations had been replaced with a new Pacific Alliance. It was nominally democratic, though autocratic in reality due to the ongoing crisis. In Europe, focused on staying alive, they’d had little time to worry about the environmental disaster the apocalypse had wrought. Vast swathes of land, and even larger patches of the oceans, had been denuded of life. Some scientists thought the planet had only a few years before all life would become extinct.

Among the many ways the Pacific politicians had devised to keep order while waiting for the scientists to finish their survey was to approve a pilgrimage to Mecca, Jerusalem, and Rome. The pilgrims had politely ambushed her and Bill and asked for their ships. How could she and Bill say no? The plan now was for the pilgrims to drive east and sail across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the pilgrims’ vehicles and spare fuel would be used by the easterners to drive to the Pacific.

Tomorrow, Bill would go east to coordinate the evacuation back in Digby. She would help coordinate it here in the west. Finding the vehicles would be her first task, but she thought she’d spotted a few coaches outside the airport. Of course, they’d have to get them to the mainland. Sholto and Bran were somewhere to the east, already clearing the roads leading to the Rockies.

It would be months before the pilgrims arrived, so she had plenty of time to return to Digby to pack, but that house was no longer her home. Nor was this odd little ranch that Sholto had claimed as his own. She wasn’t even sure if the Canadians planned to stay on Vancouver Island. Finding a new home was part of her mission, and she’d begin like Bill had back on Anglesey. Books would tell her where the hydroelectric plants were. Others would show her where the oil was. That would be a start.

She checked the time. Only eleven-thirty. She picked up her torch and made her way to the door to see what books were on the shelf in the living room downstairs. After all, why not start now?

Prologue - The Evacuation of Canada

Vancouver Island, 20th March, 4 Weeks After the Outbreak

With an exhausted sigh from the air brakes, the battered bus pulled to a halt in front of the checkpoint outside Nanaimo Airport. Constable Fatima Khalil wearily climbed aboard and managed a weak smile for the driver, who’d become an all too familiar face in the last seventy-two hours.

Hey, Terry, she said. Good journey?

It’s easier now it’s stopped raining, but at least that washed away the snow, so who can complain, eh? I hit three on the way up from Duncan.

She didn’t need to ask exactly what he’d hit. Four weeks after the zombie outbreak that began in Manhattan, she knew. Fatima turned to the passengers. They were all as dirty, wild-eyed, and clearly as terrified of each other as they were of the monsters that stalked the fields and roads. Who knew who was infected? Who knew who might turn next?

Hi, she said as she looked from one face to the next. You’re going to be driven to the terminal. Stay on the bus until you’re told to leave. When you enter the terminal, you’re going to be checked for bites. There’s no privacy and no time for arguments. I apologise for the indignity, but we need to be cautious. Afterwards, use the washroom, because it’ll be a long flight. Stay close to your family or friends because we don’t know which planes will go to which destinations.

But we are going to Australia? a woman in the front row asked.

To an enclave in the southern hemisphere, yes. That’s all I know. The speech was merely an opportunity for her to scan the passengers for anyone who was unresponsive or the wrong kind of scared. This group looked okay.

See you in a bit, Terry, she said.

See you again, he said.

She stepped off the bus and waved it through but kept the barrier open. Four empty buses, their passengers now airborne, were heading south to collect more refugees. Thousands from Canada and the U.S. were billeted in the towns and cities south of Cassidy, home to Nanaimo’s airport, one of the last functioning runways in the Great White North. When the buses were through, she pulled the gate closed, climbed the steps up to the two-metre-high sentry post, and began sweeping the searchlight back and forth across the dark highway.

One month ago, she’d been jumping for joy, and baulking at the responsibility, of being appointed the senior supervising analyst on her first major case, and a month before she’d turned thirty. She hadn’t been a cop, not then, just a lab tech working in the RCMP lab in the city of Surrey, south of the Fraser River from Vancouver City.

That case had been a horrific one. A house in Fleetwood had burned down. Inside, tied at ankle and wrist, were the charred remains of twenty-three girls. It was obviously arson, and it bore a striking similarity to recent cases in Los Angeles, Belfast, and Cancun. The unproven theory was that this house was a way-station for human traffickers, and the fire was to destroy any evidence of their identity. While the police interviewed neighbours and chased property records, she and her team had hunted for any clues the fire hadn’t destroyed.

She’d found it on a six-pack of beer inside a small fridge. The fire had been intense enough to melt the fridge’s seals and then cause the glass bottles to break. She’d painstakingly pieced the fragments back together and found two clear prints on her finished jigsaw. Checking them against the national databases, she’d found they belonged to an ex-con who’d been an enforcer for a prison gang linked to the Rosewood Cartel. He’d been released last year, and lived at an address in Edmonton. It was a start, but it wasn’t enough, and since, by that point, it was three in the morning, she’d decided to stay in her lab, sorting through the rest of the evidence in search of any further leads. She’d utterly lost track of time when Inspector Barnes had come in to announce that zombies were taking over Manhattan. She hadn’t believed him until she’d turned on the news.

In an instant, her world was turned upside down. The investigation was forgotten. She was given police body-armour, partnered with an actual constable, and sent to a mall to discourage looting. Three days later, she’d killed her first zombie. Each day had led to new assignments in new locations and with new, and always violent, encounters with the undead. She’d even spent a sleepless twenty-four hours helping guard the nearby refinery in Anacortes in Washington State. By keeping the refinery operational and processing the crude stored before the outbreak, they’d kept the ships and planes running. But that was before the power went out. Now, she crewed a checkpoint on Vancouver Island, outside one of the last few operational airports that were the only escape from the north.

At the beginning of the outbreak, the airport had closed. Most of the military stationed on the island and the nearby mainland went east to help slow the spread of the infection, but it had already reached the western coast. The Greater Vancouver region had collapsed. Smaller cities put up walls, and citizens fled to their cabins in the highlands. Refugees arrived by boat and brought the infection with them. The Vancouver Island city of Victoria had become a quarantine camp. Everything had looked bleak until the plane had arrived from Australia.

The pilot, Liu Higson, was a mother looking for her daughter, studying in Vancouver. Aboard were two Americans on their way to Indiana, tasked by the Australian government with finding out how bad the nightmare was. She could have told them, but that pilot’s arrival had begun the airlift. Small planes at first, taking out the children. Then larger jumbos, taking away as many as would fit inside. Those planes brought food and ammunition. Some had even brought soldiers who had secured the mainland harbours before going east, joining up with the army trying to halt the everywhere-advance of the undead.

Since the power went out a week ago, there’d been no word from General Yoon and her army. For two days, there’d been no word from the Pacific. Then the planes began arriving again. They no longer brought supplies or soldiers. Now, they were only taking evacuees, but no one knew for how much longer.

Her searchlight caught movement. A figure shambled onto the road. She’d have thought him drunk if it wasn’t for the dark bloodstain on his white shirt. She picked up the bolt-action rifle. Before the nightmare, the only guns she’d fired had been on a range so as to better understand the evidence they left behind. She’d lost track of how often she’d fired one since. Her first shot hit the creature’s neck. It didn’t even flinch. Thick reddish-brown blood oozed from the wound, glistening in the spotlight’s glare as it staggered on. Her second bullet cracked through its forehead. It fell to the ground, dead. She swung the light left and right, but there was no more movement.

Was that a gunshot? came the ever-friendly voice of Constable Jerome MacDonald. She turned around to see him approaching, a mug in his hand.

Zombie, she said flatly. Only one. Is that coffee? I thought it was all gone.

Spencer found a bag of beans in the car-hire office.

What was he doing in there?

Looking for coffee, Jerome said, handing her the mug.

She put the rifle down and sipped at the coffee while sending the beam left and then right. From behind came the roar of an engine as a plane took off.

Is there any news? she asked.

Only the bad kind, he said. "That flash of light to the north a week ago was a nuclear bomb. Lewis found the crater from the air."

Is he in much trouble for stealing the plane?

He’d have been in more trouble if he hadn’t brought it back. He managed to reach Squamish but had to land on some waste ground by the rail yard. There was no sign of his friend, but he picked up some survivors. Nine of them. When the fuel ship arrives, he wants to go and look for more. Spencer says no because he returned with a bullet hole in the wing.

Someone shot at him? Why?

Why did they launch the nukes? he replied.

Good point. Where was the bomb that hit Vancouver?

Capilano Lake, north of the city. He thinks the hills and mountains shielded us from the EMP but knocked out the mainland electricity substations and connectors.

And brought down the planes that started the fires, she said. Did he see any boats?

Only one, and it was heading east, up the Fraser River.

Makes sense. Get clear of the Metro Vancouver region, she said.

I’d go northwest, Jerome said. Get somewhere really remote.

It was a conversation she’d had with him before and with nearly everyone she’d shared the sleepless, freezing night-watches with. They’d all fantasised about where they might flee to, but even if you had enough fuel to escape the cities, remote-dwelling homesteaders were more likely to offer a bullet than shelter to a potentially infected stranger.

Is there any word on the cruise ships from Alaska?

No, but they should arrive tomorrow.

They looked around as a plane came in to land, both of them holding their breath until thirty seconds after it had disappeared behind the terminal. The runway was too short for the largest of planes. It had been hastily extended, but each landing was a gamble, each take-off a miracle. When no explosion followed, they each breathed out, relieved the plane hadn’t wrecked the runway, like had happened in