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

waited for the tide to turn, Tuck tried to work out why.
     
    By the time she stood on the battlement walls, watching Kevin and Aisha bicker, she’d not found the answer. They’d brought back four hundred and sixty-three rounds of 5.56 NATO ammunition. At best, that represented no more than the deaths of three hundred of the undead. She wasn’t sure how much ammunition there was in the ballroom, but even if they went back, collected it all, and planted each bullet in the forehead of one of the living dead, they would only make a shallow dent in the total numbers left in their undead Britain. It was a distraction from the real threats facing them. That was the argument she’d been working on as she’d carried the drone back to Jay’s room, but when she’d found McInery again, the woman seemed to have lost all interest in the rifles and ammunition.
    Tuck closed her eyes, seeking a moment of calm in the silent dark. She kept trying to place McInery on a spectrum with the power-mad crook she’d been at one end, and the altruistic philanthropist she’d claimed to be at the other. Perhaps she was wrong, and McInery was just plain mad.
    To a greater or lesser extent, and each in their own way, everyone who’d survived this long had developed eccentricities that went far beyond neurotic. Why should McInery be any different? It was a comforting thought because it suggested that, with no reason behind McInery’s actions, there was no subterfuge either. That meant that she could focus on the other, far more pressing problem she’d discovered on their return.
    The two zombies she’d seen pawing at the barrier on the far side of the moat when they’d set out for Westminster were still there, and they’d been joined by a third. It wasn’t that anyone had spent the morning relaxing, just that they’d opted for the backbreaking but safer chores inside the Tower’s walls. Filtering, boiling, desalinating, and purifying the water, splitting the firewood, mucking out livestock, and all the rest added up to full-time work for two-dozen people. Then there was the never-ending toil of laundering and mending the clothes that could be salvaged and burning those that couldn’t. It all had to be done, of course, but those were tasks that used up their stores, not ones that added to them. And after all that was done, and after all that they’d been through, didn’t people deserve some time to relax?
    No, was Tuck’s answer to that. Clearly, she was in the minority. Her concern was that despite, or perhaps because of, Hana’s talk the night before, it was turning into Kirkman House all over again. It was too easy to confuse intent and action, particularly when they were all waiting for Nilda to return with news of whether or not they would be starving before winter set in. But anxiety wouldn’t hurry her return, so Tuck had organised a small group to get rid of those undead and at least make a start at crossing things off the shopping list.
    She opened her eyes. Kevin and Aisha were still bickering in that way only two people in love could. Tuck watched them, trying to leech some of the happiness from the scene. Then she caught a few very unexpected words cross Aisha’s lips. She looked at the woman, this time more carefully, and realised they shouldn’t have been unexpected at all. Then she realised she was staring, and turned her attention back to the shopping list.
    That was the name Jay had given it. It was a piece of paper he’d pinned to the door next to the kitchen on which anyone could write down essential items they would like the next outgoing expedition to look for. At the top, underlined and surrounded by a small box, were the words firewood, food, and water. Underneath and in the varied handwriting of whoever had added it were soap, detergent, blankets, gloves, coffee, tea – that had been underlined as well – then toothbrush. Next to that, and in a different pen, the letters ‘es’ had been added. Someone