Sam and Charlie made plans over slow-cooker stew, their moods in sync for once – ebullient and satisfied. Charlie could feel the old excitement of the chase bubbling up inside. A pressure in her chest that made her want to just get moving, keep moving, track her prey. She hadn’t felt this way for years, and she was surprised at how good it was making her feel. Before the outbreak, before the gore, and the slaughter, and the dismembered bodies, she had revelled in the chase, in pitting her wits against someone else and coming out on top. Her blood felt like it was finally pumping again, finally warming up and flowing. She drummed her fingers on the table, and tapped her heels on the floor, as the urge to get started grew too big to be contained.
“So it looks like they were school friends, back in the 50s, and they reconnected in the 70s. Looks like your Dad was looking for some contacts in the security sector.”
“And Ben was it. They got pretty pally. Mum and Dad even went to stay with them in Reading when I was little. Don’t remember that at all. From the letters, it seems he was a pretty stand-up guy, before the world ended. No letters from 86 until 91, when Ben reconnected with him. He’d clearly gone to the dark side by then. By all accounts there was a lot of it around. Humanity is pushed aside so easily when the world goes wrong, it seems. Instead of banding together, people try to pull each other down.”
“Yeah, I was in Reading, briefly, trying to hold back the influx of shriekers, and trying to police the chancers, before we were all called to London to try and save the capital.” She shuddered involuntarily. A subconscious reaction any time London was mentioned. “We were probably there about the same time.”
“So you’re going to head for Reading? See what you can find?”
“Looks that way.” Unable to sit still any longer, she pushed out of her chair and started pacing. “I’ll need to go to the terminal, check the bus routes, see how long it’ll take me to get there -”
“We’ll go in my truck – I’ve got it running on biodiesel now, so we can make the distance no problem.”
“We?”
“Sure. You didn’t think I’d let you enjoy this adventure on your own, did you? Plus, you’ve spent 10 years on a ship. You’ve got no idea what the world’s like. You need someone a bit more street savvy to have your back.”
She patted her gun and gestured to her hunting knife. “You don’t think I can look after myself?”
“Against shriekers, sure. And you can protect me from them too. I’m talking about the other assholes out there. People can see you’re a ship-bound a mile off. If you want to get answers, you’re going to have to rely on me to get them for you: no-one’s going to talk to you. Why do you think you couldn’t get answers here? You only met me because I was curious. And I took pity on you.”
Charlie felt the now familiar volcano of rage filling her up at his words, but clenching her fists, she pushed it to one side. It was hard – mostly because there was a grain of truth in that (although it could have been communicated a little more nicely). She needed to get herself under control. She hadn’t felt so near the edge for years. She thought the bad dreams and that tight on-edge feeling had dissipated as the years passed, but it seemed it was just geography that had made the difference. Those feelings were back with a vengeance. Perhaps it was sensible to have company. Even Sam might be better than nothing.
“Ok, fine. You can tag along. But first I need to talk to the ship about this poison. See if there are any suspects. Let’s not go into this blind if we can help it. Take me to a phone.”

Charlie had to admit (although she wasn’t going to out loud), travelling by truck was a lot more comfortable, and quicker, than the bus. The landscape was fascinating – so different to how it was before, but there were signs of new life. New towns and districts built on the ruins of the cities destroyed during the dark times. Winchester was a revelation. As they sat waiting at the checkpoint into the city, Charlie observed the armed guards patrolling the new city walls, a mixture of metal and stone. It was a work in progress – construction crews were replacing the metal walls with old stone, creating a more organic look that matched the age of the buildings still standing inside. The citizens here had managed to conserve the most precious of the buildings. They were waved through the checkpoint at the other side of the city and made their way along the Basingstoke Road. “We’re going to have to take a bit of a detour at some point along here,” Sam said, speaking for the first time in at least an hour. They had sat in companionable silence for most of the journey, not needing to fill the void with small talk. Jack sat between them, one paw on the dashboard with his tongue lolling, enjoying the unaccustomed smells. “Basingstoke is a no-go zone.”
“Of course, they bombed it to try and control the outbreak, at the beginning of it all, didn’t they. They didn’t rebuild?”
“No, the damage was too extensive. All the roads in and out were destroyed along with the town, and they decided to concentrate on easier wins. It’s only accessible on foot, and it’s not a pretty sight. There wasn’t the personnel to go in and clean up. It’s quite low down on the list of reclamations. Poor old Amazingstoke.”
The truck took the next turn-off, where the remains of an old, faded diversion sign was nailed to a tree trunk, and they snaked across the countryside. Fields, chest high with weeds and overgrown woodland were interspersed with fields of yellow wheat, corn and various green vegetable-type plants that Charlie couldn’t identify, especially at speed. The odd tractor, bulky and slightly grotesque with welded-on biodiesel conversions, churned up the fields. The signs of civilisation almost made it feel like the apocalypse had never happened. And then they’d drive past abandoned or burnt out houses, roofs gaping open and windows shattered and wood sagging. The dichotomy was jarring, making her skin prickle.
She could feel the old stirrings of panic starting to swirl in her chest, ends of her fingers prickling so she employed one of the distraction techniques the boat doctor had suggested back when she first arrived – chat.
“So, tell me about yourself, Sam. What were you before the Big-Z and how did you end up in Portsmouth?”
“Whoa, miss nosey pants, what’s got into you? Thought you were all ‘don’t get up in my shit and I won’t get into yours’.”
“I could do with a distraction, ok? How about I tell you one of my secrets and you tell me one of yours.”
Sam stared ahead for a while, hands clenching on the steering wheel. Juat as Charlie thought he was going to ignore her and they’d be sitting in silence for the rest of the drive, he shrugged and cleared his throat.
“Ok, tell me why you joined floating community, and I’ll tell you where I was at the beginning of the Big Z.”
“Wow, straight for the big one.” Charlie sat back into her seat and thought for a moment, trying to decide how much detail to offer. “OK, I decided to be ship-bound because I didn’t want to deal with the dead any longer. I didn’t want to think about them, or remember they were there, or smell them. I had started my army career in the cooking corps before we all got sent to the front line, so I managed to get a job in a kitchen, and worked my way up.” She took a deep breath and made an effort to unclench her hands, which had knotted up in her lap.
“Well, that’s why you moved to a boat, but not why you needed to go to such an extreme. Come on, tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
Charlie sighed, knowing she was skirting the issue. “I was in London, destroying the Zs and searching for survivors.” She paused a minute, noticing that her voice had gone very flat and matter-of-fact. She very firmly closed her mind against the images that tried to intrude from her memory. “We were ambushed. We had intruded on a gang war for territory. My entire squad was wiped out. I had been on truck sentry duty that day, and before I realised what had happened they were all dead. They had been lured into a carefully constructed dead end, and then they set a whole load of shriekers on them. It was like some sort of sick gladiator-style entertainment. There was nothing I could do. Nothing. “
The truck was silent apart from Charlie’s ragged breathing. Jack gave a small whine and licked at her face. She let out a shaky chuckle and hauled him onto her lap, giving him a cuddle before he demanded to be back in his usual position on the dashboard, looking out at where they were going.
“Go on then, tell me about your past.”
Sam blew out a sigh, and she could tell he was still debating whether to tell her anything. “Come on, this was your idea. Tit for tat.”
“Fine.” He wriggled in his seat a little, as if trying to get more comfortable. “I was working in a prison when the Big Z started. It turned out to be one of the safest places really. High fences, barbed wire, lots of weapons. The routine didn’t really change. Not for years, until they needed more bodies to ‘volunteer’ for clean-up. Then it didn’t matter whether you were prisoner or officer, we were all rounded up and given jobs on the front line. Prisoners got the actual clean-up, burning the dead and undead, but the officers had to get involved in the fighting with the police and army. I wasn’t in London though. Bristol Prison. As soon as I could get away I found a truck and drove to Portsmouth looking for my Dad.”
“When was that?”
“A few years ago.” Charlie was pretty sure he was being evasive. He was hiding something. Maybe he deserted his post. But who was she to cast aspersions? She had run away in the end.
“So what was your job? In the prison. Were you a guard?”
There was another pause. “Well-” an almighty bang ripped the air, and the truck wheeled crazily on the tarmac for a second, before Sam slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt, swearing loudly and with great vigour. The truck was canted at an angle, half on the verge, half still on the road. They both sat there for a few seconds after he’d turned off the engine, listening to the ticks of the cooling engine. Then without speaking they both reached for the door handles and gingerly stepped down onto the road. The front offside tyre was a shredded mess. They had left most of it a few hundred metres behind them, and the bare rim was resting on the ground.
“Do you have a spare?”
“I do, it’s in the back.” He hauled down the tailgate and jumped into the bed of the truck, passing down the equipment and they got to work changing the tyre. A few short minutes of working together in companionable silence and they were ready to get back on the road. Feeling much happier, Charlie jumped back into the cab, giving Jack a quick stroke as he displayed his immense pleasure at her return, even though he’d been watching from the window the whole time, and waited as Sam turned the key. The truck caught, but as he tried to pull away, a loud clanking and grinding came from underneath.
“Well, crap on a cracker, what a complete crock of shit.” Sam thumped the steering wheel in frustration. “Looks like that blow-out caused more problems than just the tyre. We’re going to have to find a garage so we can take a look underneath. Looks like we’re heading into Basingstoke.”
Charlie felt cold pinpricks of dread trickle down her spine. “Didn’t you say that there was no way in?”
“Oh, there’s one way. It’s not pretty, but there is one way in and one way out. We’ll just have to keep on our toes. Good job you’ve got that arsenal of yours. We might need it.”
“Shriekers? Or shamblers?”
“Probably both, and a few less dead people trying to find a free ride out of the place.”
“Oh joy.”
Sam slowly inched forward and the truck limped its way along, noisily and shakily. After a few minutes they came to a turning onto a narrow dirt track, and Sam followed this offshoot, moving even more slowly as the uneven ground made the truck groan more. Eventually they came up to a crudely constructed wooden bridge, which joined the track to what was left of a main road into the old city. Charlie could see the remains of blocks of flats and highrises, metal spikes pointing into the sky, bent and twisted, and rubble piling up in uneven stacks. It looked like someone had made an effort to clear this road, as it was relatively easy to drive into the city. As the ruins closed in around them, Charlie started to feel the eerie atmosphere. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. There was nothing around except rubble and rubbish and burnt out metal skeletons. Vegetation had started to coat the detritus; weeds, fruit bushes and small trees pushing up through the concrete and tuning the city into a twisted cyborg-garden, half alive, half man-made.
“Is there even a single building still standing?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know. The destruction is worse than I thought. Look out for anything that might hold tools or spare parts. We might have to just try and patch it up until we reach Reading.”
The truck clunked its way through the streets, sticking to the one route that had been cleared through the debris.
“Do you get the feeling that we’re being directed somewhere we don’t want to be?” asked Charlie, as they were drawn deeper into the centre. “Why clear just this one path? What are we going to find at the end? I feel like it’s a spider’s web and we’re the fly.”
“I was really hoping you weren’t thinking that and that you’d tell me I was being paranoid. Maybe we should stop and explore a bit on foot.”
When Charlie agreed, Sam pulled over and turned off the engine. The sudden silence after the groaning clanking crunch of the truck was oppressive. Silently they loaded up with weapons and anything valuable before choosing a likely-looking street. Sam whistled quietly to Jack and he jumped down, totting at his side as they left the truck with its doors open, hoping that it wold look abandoned and without interest to anyone that might pass by. Not that they’d seen anyone. Charlie shivered even as sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades. For the first time in 10 years she was in enemy territory again, and she didn’t like it one bit.