Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home by Frank Tayell Page A

be careful around sharp knives and hot water, but they’ll need to be supervised,” Styles said. “And they are children; when they get bored, they’ll run off to play. You can’t stop that. And the younger ones will hinder more than they’ll help.”
    “Constance can watch them,” Nilda said, “if you could organise the rest of the children.”
    “How many adults can I have to help?” he asked.
    “Um… would five be enough?” Nilda asked.
    “Should be. That’s more help than I’ve had for a long while. I’ll go and speak to Aisha and start corralling the kids.”
    “Then I’ll take care of the coaches,” Greta said. “If I take half the rafts, and about half the people, it shouldn’t take more than four hours. Then we’ll come and help you with the apartment block.”
    “Agreed,” Nilda said, thinking it wouldn’t be as easy to do as it was to say.
     
    “Chester’s fine,” Fogerty said. “His brain’s saying wake, but his body’s not listening. There’s nothing you can do here, so go on, you don’t want to waste daylight.”
    And when she left the infirmary, she found that he wasn’t the only one who’d had that idea.
    “We’re meeting by the gatehouse in ten minutes,” Jay said.
    “Who is?” Nilda asked.
    “All of us who are going to the apartment block,” he said. “Everyone’s getting kitted up.”
    “Meaning?”
    “You know, getting weapons, armour, that sort of thing,” Jay said.
    “Did Greta organise that?”
    “No one did. Styles picked a few people to help with the children, and Greta said she was going downriver and you were going to search the buildings nearby. She said people should get ready and pick what they wanted to do.”
     
    Nilda looked over the nineteen who’d volunteered to scavenge for supplies. Most of the group had bayonets or short swords strapped to their belts and axes in their hands. A few had long spears, or the partisans that the warders had ceremonially carried, and a few wore armour. Not a complete set of plate mail, but a neck guard here and some chainmail visible around a wrist there. Tuck had advised against it, so had Chester, both arguing that speed was the only guarantee of safety. But what did they really know about fighting the undead? What did any of them except from their individual brutal experience? And what words of advice could she offer that they didn’t already know?
    “I wonder when was the last time that a war band left the Tower,” she said instead. “Someone remember to ask old Fogerty, later.”
    “Wearing denim and chainmail?” Kevin replied with a grin. “I think this is a first.”
    Nilda led the group out through the gate and along to where the path ended at the barricaded gift shop and gate. In the sloping piazza beyond, she saw the undead that had gathered there during the night.
    “I count about ten of them,” she said.
    “There’s fourteen,” Jay said. “I went up to the wall to check as soon as it was light.”
    “Less than one each.”
    “And the zombies mean that Graham’s not nearby,” Jay said.
    “True.”
    “And Tuck should be back soon,” he said.
    “Yes.” She hoped.
    She climbed quickly up the ladder and down the other side. As she moved out into the open courtyard there seemed like a lot more than fourteen and each of those snapping mouths was slouching towards her. Quelling the instinct to run, she walked slowly across the cobbles.
    “Don’t hurry,” she murmured to herself, “because they can’t.”
    She glanced behind. Jay was five feet to her right, Kevin close to him, and Xiao had just reached the bottom of the ladder and was angling north. No, she didn’t need to tell anyone what to do, they’d all learned quickly enough, though that lesson had been a hard one.
    As more people came down the ladder, the creatures split up, but two were heading straight for her. Their clothing was tattered, stained, shredded, and as unrecognisable as the faces twisted in snarling mockery