Surviving The Evacuation (Book 5): Reunion by Frank Tayell Read Free Book Online

were piles of clothes. At first Chester thought they must have been dumped there when the bags had been searched for valuables. Then he realised that, no, they had been used as bedding.
    Kicking a path through shirts and towels and occasional sheets, they made their way from the functional service side of the hotel into the more luxurious guest area. Other than wallpaper replacing paint, and the addition of carpet on the floor, there was little obvious difference. Nests of clothing ran along every corridor and inside every room. It was clear that the building had been full far beyond capacity.
    “I suppose it was the refugees,” Chester said, as they found a staircase and made their way upstairs. The corridors and bedrooms were much the same, though occasional mattresses replaced the clothing as bedding. McInery stepped through an open doorway and picked up a familiarly shaped envelope from the table next to the television.
    “Return ticket to Dubai dated for last week,” she said. “Whether you call them stranded tourists or refugees, this wasn’t the vacation they planned.”
    They went back downstairs in search of the kitchens. They were empty. The food had clearly been used up long before the ‘guests’ had left. They did try the wine cellar, but every bottle had gone.
    “We could try for your house or my flat,” Chester suggested when they were back out in the street once more. “But I’d prefer somewhere anonymous tonight.”
    “Finding an empty house isn’t going to be hard,” McInery said, “but some food would be a welcome relief.”
    “There’s that coffee shop at Farringdon Station,” Chester offered, hoping McInery would think of somewhere better. She couldn’t.
     
    It took them twenty minutes to return to the railway station, and a few seconds to break the lock on the gate. The pastries were spotted blue with mould. They had better luck with the silver-foiled packets next to the register.
    “It’s not much of a meal,” Chester said, peeling open another pack of over-priced chocolate wafers.
    “Four pallets of bottles in the back, all of assorted flavours, but all a variation on water. Another three boxes of these.” She tapped a rock hard biscotti against the edge of the table. “And I’d question whether you could have called them food before the outbreak. Technically, it will keep us alive for a few days. Technically.”
    “Are you thinking about roast pork?”
    “Well, I’m certainly not living like this. The days when I worried about where my next meal was coming from are long behind me, and that is where they’re going to stay. Others can pick through the wreckage of civilisation for the scraps left behind. I will not.”
    “You’ve still got the list, right? The one with all those addresses? We handed out most of the supplies, the things we’d gathered these past couple of weeks. What did we work it out as? About three days of food per person? I suppose we can’t trust the rice and flour that Cannock left us, but three days of food, and for about two thousand people, that’ll keep the pair of us going for… ten years.”
    “I just told you, I’m not going to spend my time going from house to house scavenging my meals one at a time.”
    “Well, what do you want to do then?” Chester asked, no longer hiding his frustration.
    “I told you this morning. We’re sticking to the original plan. This will be my city. For that I need people, and the only people we know of are at that farm. We need something that will impress them. Something that will have them welcoming me as their leader.”
    “And what’s that?”
    “Supplies. Not just scraps for a few days, but enough to keep everyone, and more importantly, each of their precious animals, alive from now on. And it seems to me the most logical place to search would be Westminster. We might even find weapons at the barracks in Horse Guards, or at the Ministry of Defence. But even if we don’t, there will be food there.