Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest by Frank Tayell Page A

the left, and the rest of the room was plunged into darkness. She stepped inside.
    He’d opened a metal cupboard. Inside was a row of lamps. He took one out. The light came on, and it was brighter than his rechargeable LED. She took it and instantly relaxed as she felt control over darkness once more.
    A slow sweep of the room confirmed it was an office, and other than the lamps, had little of interest except a second door leading, she guessed, to— There was a hand on her shoulder. She spun around. It was only Chester. He was pointing at the door to the metal cupboard. On it were printed instructions. She stepped closer. It was a long list of the procedures to take in the event of almost all imaginable emergencies. Zombies, she noted, were not mentioned, but third from the top was ‘In the case of a radiological event’, and next to it was an instruction to look for supplies in ‘Locker C1.3’.
    “Well, what does that mean?” she hissed.
    His response was one of those shrugs she found increasingly frustrating. She gave the room a quick but more thorough examination. Wherever that locker was, it was somewhere else. Her light fell on the room’s other door.
    Chester turned the handle. Lamp in one hand, sword in the other, she stepped through. It was another narrow corridor. There were three doors to the right, each with a small window at head height.
    There was a sudden banging from the closest door. Nilda spun, raising both sword and lamp. The pounding kept on, but the door didn’t move. She shone the light inside, knowing what she would see.
    It was a cell. In it, a zombie smacked its fists against the reinforced viewing window. Up and down, up and down. The hardened glass didn’t break. It didn’t even fracture, but with each blow it left a brown-red smear that was slowly obscuring the view.
    “Ready?” she asked, her hand going to the recessed handle.
    “There’s no point,” Chester said.
    “I’m not leaving it in there,” she said as she twisted the handle and pulled. The door stayed closed.
    “That’s what I meant,” Chester said. “There’s no point having a cell with doors that can be opened simply by staging a blackout.”
    She moved to the next cell. By lamplight, she could see another body. This one was a corpse and it was long dead. There were stains on the glass, these dried and flaking. The body lay with one hand outstretched, fingernails torn and broken, palm open, almost as if asking for help.
    “Left in there to die,” Chester said, darkly.
    “Enough,” Nilda said, walking briskly to the end of the corridor. Another door. Another corridor. An interrogation room to the right, a storeroom to the left. She walked inside, still able to hear that zombie clawing at that reinforced window.
    “Quickly,” she said. “Locker C1.3 wasn’t it?”
    It was obvious which one that was. There was a bright yellow sticker in the middle, a thick yellow band painted at the top and bottom, and it was the only locker that hadn’t been emptied. Inside they found two Geiger counters, a pair of yellow all-in-one protective suits, two rebreathers and a long box. She opened it. Twelve dosimeters lay nestled inside.
    She pulled off her pack and stuffed those inside, and then the Geiger counters. For good measure and for no reason other than they were there, she grabbed the rebreathers and yellow suits. They went into Chester’s pack.
    “I want to see blue skies again,” she said.
    “Agreed.”
     
    The trapped creature’s pounding intensified when they made their way past the cells. As they headed down the corridor beyond, Nilda thought she could still hear it, then realised that this was a new sound. It was as if something metallic was being slowly dragged along the ground. It was hard to identify and even harder to pinpoint from where it came. She turned around, trying to peer into the shadows beyond the few dozen yards illuminated by the lamp.
    “Ignore it,” Chester said, grabbing her arm. But