Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest Read Online Free PDF

going to be a long-term plan to use the river to get supplies then we need one that we can row. Are we clear on all sides? Right, I’m going to turn the engine on for a bit.”
    “What about the diesel?” Jay asked. “We don’t want to waste it.”
    “What else are we going to use it for?” he replied. “There’s not enough to get us to Anglesey by boat and more than enough to get us there by land.” The engine began to thrum. Chester tilted his head to one side.
    “Is there a problem?” Jay asked.
    “Doesn’t sound quite right. Ah, it doesn’t matter. Ladies and gentleman, please settle in for Chester Carson’s river tour of apocalyptic London. Next stop, City Airport.”
     
    Nilda watched the river. It was better than looking at the skyline now missing so many familiar landmarks and full of so many more unfamiliar ones. When they’d left London, Jay had been a toddler and she’d been young and foolish enough to think a world of possibilities still lay at her feet. Her memories of that thriving city had been of noise. Though humanity had now all but disappeared, that had barely changed. Under the early autumn sun, metal creaked, soil cracked, and bricks and glass fell from burned out buildings. Leaves mingled with the detritus discarded during the evacuation, blown by gentle winds into great drifts around broken walls and abandoned vehicles. The river itself offered a cacophonous symphony of wood and plastic, cloth and flesh, thrown by each swell against the embankment wall. But when the lifeboat’s small engine sputtered to life, it seemed loud enough to echo all the way to France and beyond.
    “And what if the airport has been destroyed?” Jay asked.
    “I came down this way about, oh, it must have been about five days after New York,” Chester said. “And aircraft were still landing.”
    Tuck caught Jay’s attention and began signing.
    “She says that after the island was cut off, planes were still coming in,” Jay said. “They were carrying ambassadors and staff from overseas, soldiers and foreign leaders, and anyone else who was lucky enough to catch the flight. Then a plane came in from the United States. A colonel was flying it. His family were on board. So were troops from his regiment and their families. But some of the people were infected. When the plane landed, they killed everyone. They used…” Jay paused, and there was an animated, silent back and forth between him and the soldier. “Chemical weapons. Tuck doesn’t know where the government got them. Britain wasn’t meant to have any. After that, they tried to shoot down all approaching aircraft. But they couldn’t get them all.”
    “Why not?” Nilda asked.
    “Because a fighter plane only has so many missiles,” Tuck signed.
    “How do you know this?” Nilda asked.
    “I heard about it whilst I was still in the enclave,” Tuck signed. “Actually, it was part of the reason I left. There was a conversation between the deputy director of MI5 and an assistant to the Air Chief Marshal, not that they’d been in those posts the week before. They didn’t mind talking around a deaf girl. They thought that because I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t understand.”
    “And what were you doing besides spying on them?” Chester asked.
    “I was trying to find out where in the world might be safer than Britain,” Tuck signed. “Some other island or…” She shrugged. “Anywhere that the people in charge in the morning were the same as the ones running the place the evening before. I could tell it was all going to fall apart. And it did.”
    Gloom descended with Jay’s translation of those last few words, but he broke it with a question of his own. “You said the planes crashed? But they didn’t try and move them?”
    “City Airport’s built on a pontoon out into the middle of an old dock,” Chester said. “It’s surrounded by water. There’s nowhere to move them to.”
    “Right, yes,” Jay said, impatient. “So the