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

of the life that had once dwelled within. And then the time for contemplation was over. With practiced ease she darted forward, swinging wide, smashing the flat of the blade into the zombie’s clawing arms. It spun sideways, and she slashed at its knees. It collapsed. She ignored it, shifted her stance, twisted, and swiped the sword up, putting her entire weight into the blow. The blade sliced through the second zombie’s chin, splitting its face in two. She brought her left hand up onto the pommel, and turned the cut into a thrust, stabbing into the creature’s ruined face. It fell. She pivoted and hacked down at the first zombie, now crawling towards her. The sword came up again, as she turned left and right, looking for the next threat. There were none nearby. The courtyard rang to the sound of metal on meat, of grunts of effort, and of the final exhalation from long-dead lungs. And then, as Kevin chopped his axe down, only the living moved outside the Tower.
    How long had it taken? A minute? Less? She breathed out and hoped the rest of the day would go as smoothly.
    With four people watching for zombies approaching from the north, another four on the road beyond the apartment block, she led the rest into the building. The ground floor was taken up with cafes and restaurants. Inside the door were stairs at the top of which was a long corridor.
    “Which way?” Kevin asked.
    “Closest to the castle first?” Nilda suggested. The doors to the apartments had all been broken open. She thought that had been done during the brief search that had followed the group’s arrival at the Tower, but it was best to be cautious. She waved a hand, indicating the others should stop. She listened. There was no sound. She pushed at the first door. It swung inward with a high-pitched creak.
    The room – it was too small to even be called a studio – had been ransacked. Cupboards were open, the bed had been upended, and drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor.
    “Let’s check the next one,” she said.
    It was much the same, and so were the rooms leading off the other corridor.
    “What are we…?” Xiao began, and stopped as he searched around for the word in English. “What do we want?”
    “Clothes to start with,” Nilda said. “Soap, shower gel, shampoo, toothpaste.”
    “Toothbrushes,” Jay added.
    “Yes, we need those, but we’re looking for anything we can use for cleaning, bleach and detergent as well. Then we need candles and matches. Batteries and anything with a light that can run on them.”
    “CDs and a CD player would be good,” Jay suggested.
    “Maybe.” On the one hand they would have many better uses for the batteries than to listen to music; on the other, there had to be more to life than just eating, sleeping and killing the undead. “Music, then. And headphones. Newspaper if we can find it, for wrapping the fruit and veg in. If we can’t…” she picked up a dog-eared book that was lying on the counter. “Death Comes To Us All,” she read. It was by an ERK Daley. She’d never heard of the author. “Paper is paper,” she said. “It’ll burn if nothing else. We need those drying racks,” she added pointing back to the draining board in the small kitchenette.
    “Do we want the plates and mugs?” Kevin asked, opening a cupboard.
    “We should really wash what we have, but I suppose plates break, so yes.” She moved out of the small kitchen area and into the main part of the one room flat. “I suppose we want anything that we can’t easily make. If not for right now, then for next year or next decade. We’ll take the sheets from the bed and any blankets or duvets. In fact, anything that’s made of cloth. If we leave the mattresses, they’ll rot, so we’ll take them and figure out some way of storing them later. Anything wooden can go back to be burned. What does that leave?”
    “The metal bed frame,” Jay said.
    “We’ll take it outside and put it in the road,” she