Surviving The Evacuation (Book 8): Anglesey Read Online Free PDF

watching Daisy,” I said.
    “Bring her,” George said. “You can leave here in Menai Bridge. She’ll be safe. Come on.”
    “I… I…” I began.
    “People are in danger,” Gwen said. “They might already be dead. There’s no time for equivocation. Get your daughter, get your weapons, and get in the van.”
    “We’re the help that comes to others,” George said. I met his gaze, saw the concern, and remembered the many times I’d hoped for a rescue that never came. I nodded.
    As Sholto ran to grab his rifle, I scrawled a quick note for Kim, grabbed Daisy, my weapons-belt, and, after the briefest of hesitations, the fire axe I’d left in the umbrella stand. Pausing only to note that Kim’s rifle was gone, and assuming she’d taken it when she’d gone after Annette, I limped out to the minibus. I reached it just as Sholto appeared from around the side of the house, his rifle slung across his shoulder.
    “How quickly things change,” I murmured. “Or change back.” I got into the bus.
    “Hi, Bill, Sholto,” Gwen said, adding more brightly, “Hello, Daisy. There’s no child seat, I’m afraid, so hold onto her. Shouldn’t be a problem, it’s not like there’ll be any other traffic.”
    “So what’s going on,” Sholto asked, as Gwen reversed back onto the road.
    “A group went across to the golf club at Caernarfon yesterday afternoon,” George said. “They were meant to find out if the electric golf carts were still there, do a recce of the town, and come back with this morning’s tide. They radioed in to say they were surrounded. The signal was cut off halfway through.”
    “What can you expect?” Gwen muttered. “Those sets aren’t fit to be called scrap. Most of the good radio gear was fried by the EMPs. A lot of the sets that were on the boats were dropped overboard when the rescue operation began, along with anything else that took up space that could be occupied by a person. Besides, the radios were useless. I mean, who were we going to call? Since then, our biggest fear’s been Quigley’s sub, so we had to maintain radio silence. We lost most of the military gear a couple of months ago near Cambridge. That leaves us with a handful of sets that have a theoretical range of fifty miles, but even with the aerial, I’d say it’s less than twenty. And it’s line of sight. A message from Caernarfon has to be relayed to Menai Bridge, and from there to Holyhead, and then out to anyone who’s close enough to come to the rescue. Since everyone except us is using sail, that rescue will be too long in coming.”
    “Where’s Caernarfon?” Sholto asked.
    “It’s on the mainland at the southern end of the Menai Strait,” George said. “About nine miles south of Menai Bridge and Bangor.”
    “It was famous for its castle,” I said. “The exterior was restored, but the interior wasn’t. There’s an airfield as well, isn’t there?”
    “Not really,” George said. “A 747 crashed into it. There’s a lot of metal and rubble and not much else. Caernarfon, though, is a reasonably large town. Heather Jones has visited there a few times, but we’ve done no systematic looting as of yet. It’s the golf carts that’ll be the real prize. There’s a couple on Anglesey, but we need more.”
    “Because we have the electricity to charge them,” Gwen said. “But not much petrol left.” She glanced at the dashboard. “Really not much at all.”
    It wasn’t even half an explanation, but I was happy to sit back and enjoy the unfamiliar familiarity of being a passenger in a motor vehicle. Sholto wasn’t.
    “Who’s Heather Jones, and why are you driving around looking for Kim rather than taking some of those French Special Forces on a rescue mission?” he asked.
    “It’s all the same answer,” George said. “I was specifically looking for Kim because I wanted a sniper, and she comes with her own rifle. As to everything else—”
    “What about them?” Gwen interrupted as we passed