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

before it reset, and she realised that she was looking at a flock of birds.
    “Are they parrots?”
    “N’ah, parakeets,” Chester muttered. “They were a common sight over the last few years.”
    “Really?” she asked. “In London?”
    “They were taking over from the pigeons,” he said. “I always reckoned they’d become the dominant—”
    There was a clattering bang from inside the warehouse. In the shock of such an unexpected sight, they’d spoken at an incautious volume. There was no mistaking the rustling of cloth, nor the dry scrape of brittle nails down metal, one at a time, then growing in number and frequency until it was the only sound they could hear.
    Nilda gripped her sword more tightly as she took a step back, then another. She was sure that the gate would fall, but it didn’t.
    “Will it hold?” she asked.
    “I was about to ask you that,” Chester replied, “but I think so.”
    “Then we go on.”
    She didn’t want to. She wanted to return to the boat and sail away from this forsaken island, but that was fear speaking. If they left now, they would have to look for the Geiger counter somewhere else. She remembered the faces of those she’d buried on the Isle of Scaragh and could too easily picture Jay suffering the same fate. No, they had to go on. There was no one to do the job for them, and nowhere to go if they failed.
    “Do you know where customs is?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “You’ve not been here before?”
    “Just to collect people. I’m more an airstrip kind of guy.”
    “Planes coming in under the radar?” she guessed. “Did you even own a passport?”
    “I did.” He paused. She could tell what was coming. “Lots,” he finished.
    Most of what Nilda knew about City Airport had been learned in the last hour. What she knew about airports in general didn’t add up to much more. She’d only flown twice, once to Dublin, once to Frankfurt. Both were last minute city breaks, and both were with Jay’s father before their son was born. On those trips she’d had no interest in the airport, the flight, the sights, or anything else but him.
    The little she did know had come from television, and those programmes came filtered through a producer whose sole job was to make humdrum tedium seem more action packed than the biggest Hollywood blockbuster. There was one episode she remembered where they’d run a Geiger counter over a plane’s worth of luggage. There had been no threat warning or any other reason to do it that she could see except to add the illusion of action to an otherwise unwatchable half hour.
    “That one. It’s got to be baggage handling, and that’ll lead us to customs,” she said, angling towards the nearest of the buildings. There was a set of double-width doors reinforced with a metal kick plate at the bottom. She took out the LED flashlight she’d brought from the collection at the Tower and pushed at the door. It swung open. No, she didn’t know much about airports, but she was certain all the doors should be kept locked.
    It wasn’t baggage handling. The light flickered and died. She pressed the button. Nothing happened. She shook it and swore in frustration. Chester’s torch came on, and she saw they were in a long corridor with irregularly spaced doorways on both sides. He pushed past her. The double doors closed, and other than his truncated beam of light, they were in darkness.
    The nearest door on the right-hand side of the corridor had a transparent window. Nilda stepped closer. It was a control room with a bank of screens, a stack of clipboards, and there wasn’t enough light to discern anything more.
    “Point the light—” she began, and stopped, suddenly aware of how loud her voice was in such a confined, silent place. She jabbed a finger at the window. Chester shone the light inside. She saw a lantern standing on one of the desks.
    The door’s handle squeaked as she turned it, the sound grating against already frayed nerves.