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

she’d accepted that another day would have to be faced on a few interrupted hours of sleep, there had been two of the undead lumbering towards the west side of the Tower. They’d come to a halt at the thick plastic barrier that separated the grassy moat from the ticket booths and restaurants to the east of the castle, and now stood immobile, almost expectant. What had summoned them, whether it had been a squeal from a pig, a groan from a person, or any other part of the clattering cacophony that heralded the group’s attempt to start the day, Tuck didn’t know. And it didn’t matter. Abruptly, their arms waved and pawed, their necks jerked back and forth, and their mouths snapped open. What had seemed like a glorious morning was destroyed in that macabre reminder that the day’s work wouldn’t be done until more of the undead had been killed.
    Her feet hit the ground. She grabbed one of the smaller rafts, pushed it halfway down the worn and river-slick steps, and pulled the cord. Inflated, she found it was much larger than she’d thought. McInery’s plan, if it could be called that, was to hope they could steer the raft through the wreckage of London Bridge. Tuck was hoping they couldn’t, and so there expedition would be brought to an early halt. But if they did make it as far as Westminster, she planned to fly the drone around the rooftops until the battery ran low, and hoped that would be enough for McInery to realise that whatever she was looking for was now gone.
    “Careful with that,” Tuck signed as McInery unslung her battle-axe. It was a double-headed affair, with a blade on one side and a long spike on the other. It had been presented to a long-dead king by the long forgotten emperor of somewhere following the battle of somewhere else. Tuck couldn’t remember exactly what had been printed on the plaque next to the weapon’s display case except for the quote at the top, ‘To the victor go the spoils’. She suspected it was that which had drawn McInery to it.
    Tuck used an oar to push them out into the river. The oars had once been giant rammers stored next to the cannon kept in the White Tower’s basement. They’d stripped off the thick leather and cloth padding, attaching flat squares of durable plastic in their place. The end result, Tuck thought as she tried to steer the craft towards the widest gap underneath the wrecked bridge, was as cumbersome as the raft. McInery grabbed the other oar and started paddling herself. Soon, they’d established a rhythm.
    McInery wasn’t shy of work, Tuck thought, but she’d noticed that before. There was an expression her old friend, the major, had used to describe his brother, and it seemed appropriate to describe McInery. She was like a part-time preacher who’d sell you a car on Saturday, God on Sunday, and run a breakdown service from Monday to Friday. She could be relied on within very specific parameters but never trusted.
    A current pulled the boat up and suddenly south, and it took a frantic five minutes of paddling before they were back on course. Tuck’s arms were beginning to tire, and from the strain in McInery’s shoulders, the other woman was feeling the same. The rafts weren’t going to work, not long-term. That was okay with Tuck, and she hoped it might help persuade McInery to give up on her quest.
    Another wave, and this one far larger, caught the craft. It took all of Tuck’s concentration, and their combined effort, to stop it from crashing into the floating museum ship, HMS Belfast.
     
    They reached London Bridge an arm-agonising ten minutes later and found it much as it had looked on the drone’s cameras the day before with the truck still balanced precariously on that thin ribbon of concrete. Water churned white over, under, and around the artificial dam of broken ships, floating debris, and the still twitching limbs of the undead.
    They were halfway through the wreckage when a body fell from the bridge, landing in the middle of