Free Last Days With the Dead by Stephen Charlick Page B

like they had promised. Then with precise movements, Lissa typed her three word reply. With one last look over to her daughter, Lissa pressed the small ‘enter’ button and waited. There was no going back now, and as Lissa watched the message ‘… MIDNIGHT- SIDE- GATE… ’ scroll across the screen, followed seconds later by the reply ‘…RECEIVED-WILL-AWAIT-SIGNAL,’ she smiled.
    ***
    An hour earlier, Karen discretely stole a glance up at the clock on the wall to the far right of her station, hoping her shift was almost at an end.
    ‘Damn ,’ She mumbled to herself, noticing the hands had barely moved at all since the last time she had looked.
    Barbara was due to cover her station in the communications centre at six, still a full seven minutes away. It wasn’t as if she even expected Barbara to be late, no-one was ever late, not here , but since passing to her superior the most recent INTEL for Captain Cardin, Karen couldn’t wait for her shift to be over.  For the tenth time in as many minutes, Karen automatically went through her usual checks and procedures. As to be expected, Radar showed nothing bigger than a seagull approaching them by air, and after switching a few relays, she established the sonar readings showed similar activity beneath the waves as well. Then with almost resigned futility, Karen repositioned her mic and earpiece and began to work her way down through the list. It was automatic now, she had no need to read the names, frequency or ensign codes, and she had absorbed the information by rote, months ago.
    ‘Delta-Beta-three-one-four- this is Command- do you copy- over ,’ she said, repeating it three times with a pause between each call for their response. When as usual, no answer was received, Karen moved onto the next location and then the next. All that greeted her was silence. She had cried out into the darkness again and again, the darkness had stolen away her words. But she didn’t care, as it had long since stolen her hope.  
    ‘Alpha-Gamma-Sept-Neuf-Deux- ce n’est Commandemant Britannique- Vous me recevez- over ,’ she repeated lastly in French.
    It had been three years since they had received anything from a French military compound on the Ile de Molene, but orders were orders, and until she was told otherwise, she would continue to try to contact them. The base had been swiftly erected to act as bolt hole when the Death-walker plague had first struck. When it had become clear this was a battle humanity stood little chance of winning, what was left of the French Government and army had taken up residence, sealing themselves off from the mainland and the very people they were meant to serve.       
    With little surprise, Karen ’s calls to the French base were met with the usual static. Apparently, there had been over four hundred personnel on the base, just what had happened to them, she could only guess, but it was a pretty good guess, and she knew it wouldn’t have ended happily for the four hundred souls on Ile de Molene.
    ‘Anything?’ said a voice behind her, as a hand touched her shoulder.
    ‘Jesus, Barbara,’ Karen said, pulling her mic and earpiece from her head, ‘you made me jump.’
    ‘Sorry, Kaz,’ the woman replied, with an apologetic smile, ‘anything?’
    Karen looked up at the middle-aged woman who was one of the few people she considered a friend. Barbara was tall, with piercing blue eyes, and had an unruly head of blonde hair that always seemed to be trying to escape her bun to fall in strands over her shoulders. Karen, in contrast, was slim, short, and had grown up over the last eight years under the watchful rule of regulation and discipline. So her dark hair was never seen free of the single tight braid she wore.
    ‘Same old same old,’ Karen replied, standing away from her chair to stretch the taught muscles in her back, ‘and now it’s all yours.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Barbara, rolling her eyes as she took the mic and earpiece that