Free Surviving The Evacuation (Book 2): Wasteland by Frank Tayell

spent at boarding school. I think it was Lord Masterton who paid for that, though I never asked, and could never work out why.”
    “Right. But you knew these people, you worked for them?”
    “With them, but I don’t think Lord Masterton had anything to do with this. He's been retired for years.”
    “Yeah, well you know what they say about retired politicians. So Quigley, then. And the PM and the rest of the Cabinet and whoever else that knew. The Americans, I suppose, since it was in New York. What were they doing? Was this an accident or a mistake or some kind of weapon gone wrong?”
    “I really don't know.”
    “But you have an idea. You can make an educated guess. You've seen the footage, you know these people.”
    I thought for a moment, but I didn't need to think for long, because in truth I had been thinking about little else since I first saw that video. “It's a puzzle. I don't mean it's puzzling, I mean that there are all these little pieces that somehow are connected and whilst I've got some of them, I’m missing others. I've thought if I put them together I might get a sense of the whole, but no matter how many different ways I arrange them I can't see beyond the outline.” I shook my head and tried to gather my thoughts, as Kim just sat there, patiently waiting.
    “Yes, it started in New York. That was the beginning,” I said, carefully. “Those initial reports, the train stations, the freeways, that shopping mall, they all add up to it starting somewhere in the city. That video from the hospital ties it all together. I don’t think those officials who were there to witness it knew what was going to happen. If they did, there's no way you'd get representatives of China, Britain, the US and whoever the others were, within a thousand miles of that room.”
    “Why New York, then? Why not some out of the way lab in the middle of the desert or somewhere?”
    “Easy. You can get pretty much any cabinet minister of any government in the world there on the pretext they're going to the UN. No one asks. No one questions it. It's how a lot of peace talks and back room deals get done. Got done. That's why it wasn't in the UK.”
    “But it was created here.”
    “Yes,” I admitted. “It has something to do with the super-vaccine and yes, that has to be connected to the virus, but why and how and whether it was deliberate? I don't know.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I went on before she could say anything. “I could guess, sure, come up with a plausible hypothesis, but it'd still be just a guess.”
     
    “It was the planes,” she said, after a while. “Diplomats on planes. That's how it spread so quickly.”
    “Probably. Almost certainly,” I said. “There were procedures in place, after the whole bird flu thing, to quarantine planes, and even entire airports. No one talked about them, but they were there. Didn't matter how important you were, didn't matter if it was a private jet and you were the principal donor to your country's ruling party, you'd get stuck in a plastic tent just like the guy travelling in coach. Except if you were a politician on a diplomatic flight. No one can ground that plane, not even in China if the passenger's on the Central Committee.”
    Silence settled between us once more.
    “So what's your plan?” she asked, eventually.
    “I told you,” I said, “to go to the facility and make sure that everything there is destroyed.”
    “Yes, but how are you going to do that?”
    “I don't know.” I admitted
    “And what'll you do if the place is still occupied?” She asked. “I mean, hasn't it occurred to you that of all the places in the world, that one is most likely to be either a smoking hole in the ground or surrounded by soldiers?”
    “Yes,” I said, and it had. “That doesn't matter. I've got to at least try. There's just so much I don't know. Someone, and I don't really know who and I certainly don't understand why, but for some reason they dragged me