Surviving The Evacuation (Book 2): Wasteland by Frank Tayell

that engulfed the entire coast.
    The main enclave for the south of England was meant to stretch from there all the way along to the nuclear power station at Dungeness in Kent. I've not thought much about the enclaves and the fate of those living there. After I saw the mass murder of the evacuees at the muster point a few weeks ago, I assumed that those in the enclaves must have faced a similar fate. Nowhere have I seen any signs that even the merest fragment of our old civilisation remains. I've seen no helicopters, no planes, no evidence of any gangs clearing roads or organised in state sponsored looting. If I needed it, then those few wisps of oily black smoke are all the proof I needed that if there is some bastion of humanity left on this planet, it is not in southern England. That isn't to say there is no life at all.
    Raysbury Gardens is a building site that up until a year or so ago was the Raysbury Park House Hotel, and was in the midst of a conversion into the “Raysbury Gardens Assisted Living Facility”.
    It's a U-shaped building, with four storeys at the front, three on either side and a partly finished enclosed conservatory area connecting the two. Even if it wasn't for the brochure, or rather the seven unopened boxes of brochures, stacked in one of the downstairs rooms, it would have been easy to guess at the building's intended purpose. It's full of panic buttons, sit-down showers and stair lifts. There was no food here, but we're four meals away from hungry and two litres of water away from being thirsty.
    Outside the house is a stretch of would-be gardens. String squares, rectangles and circles litter the ground mapping where future flower beds and lawns now will never be. On the far side, ringing the grounds, is a twelve foot high brick wall, covered in moss and ivy. It looks deceptively fragile, but in that way that only bricks that have stood for a century and will stand for a century more, can.
    We came in through the main gates, to the south west, on the other side of the wall, to the east, the road meanders along for about six hundred yards until it comes to a junction. The road continues east and south, until it eventually meets an A-road heading to the sea. But if you were to turn left at the junction, you would drive into Raysbury, with its award winning High Street, and its pack of the undead.
     
    We were cycling along the road when we saw the gates. We stopped. With a high wall on one side of the narrow road, and impenetrable scrub encroaching from the other, we were both getting a little nervous. Or at least I was. Kim's expression was as blank as ever. The gates were padlocked, but with the appearance of disuse that suggested it had been done before the outbreak. We broke in and re-secured the gates. The house looked empty, there were no odd footprints in the loose earth and none of the windows or doors had been broken.
    We were about to go inside when the wind shifted, bringing with it the unmistakable susurrus of the undead, and with it something far more chilling.
    They weren't close, but if we could hear Them, then the undead were far closer than I would have liked. We broke into the house and made our way to the top floor. We went from room to room, looking out the windows until we saw the undead.
    The High Street is bracketed by a pub at each end. In between are a smattering of barbers, hairdressers, bridal shops, florists, tweed outfitters and a fish restaurant. Even from this distance I could tell it was a restaurant, not a fish and chip shop. It looks like the type that had pressed linen table clothes, squid ink risotto on the menu, and if they did do takeaways, they would very definitely not be served wrapped in paper. It's outside that restaurant that the zombies are most densely gathered. It's against that door that They are pawing and clawing, trying to get in.
    “How many? A hundred?” I asked, handing Kim back the scope.
    “Closer to a hundred and fifty. Factor in those we