Surviving the Evacuation, Book 21, page 1
Our Home, Too
Surviving the Evacuation
Book 21
Frank Tayell
Reading Order & Copyright
Accept the hand of friendship before it is offered, and it will never be refused
Surviving the Evacuation, Book 21: Our Home, Too
Published by Frank Tayell
Copyright 2023
All rights reserved
All people and events are fictional
Science Fiction
Brawl of the Worlds 1: First Contact
Brawl of the Worlds 2: Wish You Were Here
Work. Rest. Repeat.
Strike a Match - A Post-Apocalyptic Detective Series
1. Serious Crimes
2. Counterfeit Conspiracy
3. Endangered Nation
4. Over By Christmas
5: Thin Ice
Surviving The Evacuation / Here We Stand / Life Goes On
Book 1: London
Book 2: Wasteland
Zombies vs the Living Dead
Book 3: Family
Book 4: Unsafe Haven
Book 5: Reunion
Book 6: Harvest
Book 7: Home
Here We Stand 1: Infected
Here We Stand 2: Divided
Book 8: Anglesey
Book 9: Ireland
Book 10: The Last Candidate
Book 11: Search and Rescue
Book 12: Britain’s End
Book 13: Future’s Beginning
Book 14: Mort Vivant
Book 15: Where There’s Hope
Book 16: Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests
Life Goes On 1: Outback Outbreak
Life Goes On 2: No More News
Life Goes On 3: While the Lights Are On
Life Goes On 4: If Not Us
Life Goes On 5: No Turning Back
Book 17: There We Stood
Book 18: Rebuilt in a Day
Book 19: Welcome to the End of the Earth
Book 20: Small Cogs in the Survival Machine
Book 21: Our Home, Too
To join the mailing list, and be among the first to know about new titles, click here:
http://eepurl.com/brl1A1
For more information, visit:
http://www.FrankTayell.com
http://www.facebook.com/FrankTayell
Synopsis
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. The existential uncertainty born out of the mushroom clouds, the undead, and the collapse of the old civilisation has led to the rise of religious extremists, death cults, and opportunistic warlords. To maintain order among the enclave communities, a multi-faith pilgrimage to Rome, Jerusalem, and Mecca is announced. Pilgrims will fly to Canada and use the ships the Europeans crossed the Atlantic in to sail back to the Mediterranean and so to the Holy Land.
After the attempted murder of the pilgrims’ leadership, it is clear that some in the Pacific want both the pilgrimage and the community in Canada to fail. The number of suspects is limited, but to conduct an investigation, they will need forensic equipment, and that can only be found in a sealed city, still full of the undead.
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 shanty towns 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.
Table of Contents
Dramatis Personae
27th April, Year 1
The Story So Far
20th March, Year 0
Prologue - The Evacuation of Canada
Part 1 - The Rebirth of Canada
28th April, Year 1
Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Home of the Future
Chapter 2 - The View From Above
Chapter 3 - The Uncle
29th April
Chapter 4 - Visiting for Breakfast
Chapter 5 - Guests for Tea
Chapter 6 - Three Visitors From the South
30th April
Chapter 7 - Unexpected Cargo
Part 2 - Soft Landings
16th January
Chapter 8 - A Little of the Old, A Lot of the New
Chapter 9 - Canada in Exile
17th January
Chapter 10 - A Canberra Sweat Shop
Chapter 11 - The Bunker
Chapter 12 - The Warrior Builder
Chapter 13 - The Hospital
Part 3 - The Investigation Continues
30th April
Chapter 14 - The Sealed City
Chapter 15 - After Action Report
1st May
Chapter 16 - Rivers, Mountains, Passes
Chapter 17 - Shopping for Houses
Chapter 18 - It’s Not All Fun and Games
2nd May
Chapter 19 - Decision Time
Chapter 20 - Snow Globes
Chapter 21 - A Bag Full of Trouble
3rd May
Chapter 22 - The Fourth Man
4th May
Chapter 23 - An Interrupted Hunt
5th May
Chapter 24 - Rooftops
Chapter 25 - Pianos and Percussion
6th May
Chapter 26 - Mending Fences
Chapter 27 - End of the Road
Chapter 28 - Concrete Community
7th May
Chapter 29 - The Hanging Gardens of Bellingham
Part 4 - Little Big Narrows
8th May
Chapter 30 - Snappy Dresser
9th May
Chapter 31 - When the Dog Barks
Part 5 - To Catch a Killer
11th May
Chapter 32 - Suspicious Behaviour
Chapter 33 - The American Dream
Epilogue - Eviction
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.
