Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation

by Ford, Devon C.

  Fresh milk wasn’t available so they drank it black, and Johnson reached for the bag of sugar complete with the stained teaspoon jutting from the top like a shovel left in the dirt ready to be used. He broke the crusted surface of the white crystals and heaped a mound into both cups before giving it a cursory stir and picking them up to take them back to bed.

  “Biscuits?” Peter asked. Johnson turned to see the boy waggling his eyebrows excitedly as he produced a square tin and popped off the lid to reveal an almost full selection of Family Circle delights.

  Johnson gave a gasp of delight only half faked for the boy’s benefit and put down the cups to dig out the jammy-centred variety along with the custard creams. Realising that he didn’t know what Kimberley’s favourites were, and further realising that the chances of that conversation happening over the time they’d known one another were slim enough that he could be forgiven for not knowing, he sought out a plate to add a variety of others before balancing it on top of one cup and heading back to the room they had occupied together for the last week.

  Setting it down beside the bed, he heard her issue the same comedy gasp and reach out with dainty fingers to select the chocolate chip cookie and shamelessly dip it into her tea.

  Settling himself back into bed beside her, he grumbled as the crumbs of a shortbread fell into his beard to find a semi-permanent home in the hair on his chest.

  “What’s on the agenda for today?” she asked through a mouth partly obscured with a bourbon biscuit hot on the heels of the pink wafer. Johnson chewed and swallowed, taking a sip of hot tea to wash down the biscuit before he answered.

  “I’ve got the morning off,” he reminded her, enjoying the idea of being secure enough that they operated a rota of time off to rest and recuperate.

  “I know that,” she said, pausing to take a loud slurp of her own drink. “I meant what are we doing with the morning?”

  Johnson’s eyebrow raised into a mischievous arch as he slowly turned his face to her, making her laugh and slap his arm hard enough to force a small spillage from his cup to dribble hot liquid onto his lap and force a hiss of pain from his lips. They both laughed, forcing the sounds of normality to leak out from their comfortable haven into the rest of the building shared by the eclectic group whose fates had been intertwined in ways none of them could ever have anticipated.

  Peter smiled when he heard Kimberley laugh. His position up on the kitchen counter had been difficult to achieve without the wooden step but he didn’t relent until he’d successfully hopped himself up to turn in mid-flight and land enough of his backside on the work surface to shuffle backwards and keep him there.

  He added two heaped spoons of crusted sugar to his own cup of strong, black tea and dug through the remnants of the biscuit tin to leave all of the boring ones. Halfway through his second custard cream his sister, Jessica, appeared in the kitchen looking so bleary from sleep that only the speed of her movements and the flushed colour of her skin told him he wasn’t looking at one of the undead invading their temporary home.

  Peter leaned to one side and reached up behind him to retrieve another cup, which he passed to her.

  “Morning” he said, saying nothing further as she held up a hand to silence him. She poured a drink, taking a long gulp of it without sugar, before letting out a sigh of satisfaction and turning to poke through the biscuits until she came back with a chocolate-covered finger which she bit down on and chewed thoughtfully.

  Before the tea and chocolate could revive her sufficiently to speak, a curious sound announced the ballistic arrival of Peter’s friend who snaked its way over the kitchen top to rub the full length of its body along his back. It turned to ensure that the boy received a sufficiently detailed, close-up view of a cat’s arse thrust into his face.

  Peter pushed the tail down as the cat turned, satisfied that it had offended him, and purred loudly to sniff at the biscuits in case it was anything of interest in the feline field. It paused, looking Jessica directly in the eye, before yowling again and jumping down to wander off in search of somewhere warm and unexpected to spend a few hours.

  “What are you up to?” she asked her brother, chiding him for not being in their room when she woke up. Peter shrugged, unable to find the words to explain that he didn’t sleep much any longer and had somehow learned to function on only a few hours each night. He knew from lying in bed awake and still so as not to disturb his sister that she suffered; unable to get to sleep for hours until, when she finally did, she whimpered and cried as her dreams tormented her.

  Perhaps, he thought, that was why his body had learned not to sleep. Perhaps it was protecting him from seeing the things his conscious brain kept hidden from him, like the brutal deaths of the animals who had been his friends when he had nothing else left in the world.

  Like their dog, clawed open with fingernails and teeth.

  Like his mother, her brain punctured with his pitchfork, hitting the concrete of their patio with the resounding slap of dead meat.

  He shook his head, clearing his flash of thoughts in time to answer her question before she had to ask it again.

  “I’m going out with Enfield today,” he said, earning a grunt of disapproval from her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Jessica answered, seeming to relent as if she’d spoken more harshly than she had intended. “You go play guns. I’ll stay here and peel potatoes or something.”

  TWO

  “Remember,” Enfield whispered close beside Peter’s ear, “you don’t pull the trigger, you squeeze it.” Peter said nothing. He didn’t need to speak, because he’d learned that he needed to listen above all else. He listened when people talked, when they argued over the right way to do things, over how things should be planned, and he listened very carefully when he was being instructed in how to shoot.

  “Wait for them to come to you,” Enfield whispered. “Don’t snatch the barrel to them unless you have to. Better to be patient and let them walk into your shot than for you to go chasing it.”

  Again, Peter said nothing. He breathed out slowly, moving his finger inside the trigger guard and caressing it to take just the tiniest amount of pressure out of it as he waited.

  And waited.

  The skull of the thing worked its way unevenly into his vision through the scope. The zoom of the small telescope with the bullseye on it showed in graphic detail where a chunk of flesh had come away from the left side of its face at some point and the collar of the filthy shirt was most of what remained of the clothes it once wore back when it was a man.

  “Take your time,” Enfield crooned reassuringly, “take your ti—”

  The small rifle popped, bucking in his grip to jab into Peter’s shoulder. The recoil gave him a small jolt of pain, but he found it reassuring and satisfying.

  Not as satisfying as the sight of his target dropping like it had fainted. The only proof that it hadn’t came in the form of the dark smear of gore that fountained out with the spent bullet to paint the side of the building.

  “Here they come,” Enfield told him. Peter set his jaw, preparing to put into practice everything he’d been taught. He tensed his small body, holding the small rifle tightly into his shoulder and moving the scope from skull to skull just like he’d been taught.

  “One, two, three… four,” Peter whispered, moving the scope back to the first position and repeating the count.

  “Fire when ready,” Enfield murmured formally, as if giving the official order for his man to open fire on the enemy.

  The gun coughed four more times, each bullet spat from the barrel at regular intervals which told the boy’s mentor that he was making sure of each shot and concentrating on his breathing. He waited, scanning the area below their position without the need to use any optics and holding a weapon ready to fire should his apprentice not be up to the task of providing overwatch for the scavenging team in the open.

  “All gone,” Peter reported, his eye still to the scope as he scann
ed the killing ground for any more targets.

  “Confirmed,” Enfield told him, acting as spotter for once and fighting down the emotions rising to the surface after the loss of his friend and counterpart had been suppressed. Only since he’d started working with the boy to train him had these feelings come to the forefront as he’d not worked as a sniper team since just before the helicopter crashed and killed marine Leigh who had been the heads to his tails for years. He cleared his throat and lifted the SA80 rifle as he stood.

  “Keep watch,” he said as he knelt to cover their rear in case any unexpected Screechers had heard the shots.

  Peter did. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes open, watching for any sign of unnatural movement below that could offer any threat to their people. He watched as a set of bright eyes—eyes with icy blue pupils and not the milky distortion of one of them, came into his vision, set between the curly hair and the wild beard of Buffs. The SBS man looked up, seeming to Peter to be staring right at him through the optic on his rifle, and nodded once in either appreciation or thanks. Peter, his finger off the trigger and the safety catch on because there were living people in his sights, watched as Buffs and the big black man called Jean Pierre walked past the Screechers he’d killed.

  Not killed, he reminded himself, rendered safe, because that was what Johnson said when he killed any of them.

  “Keep your eye on them,” Enfield reminded the boy, feeling a stab of apprehension and fear that he hadn’t brought anyone else to watch their backs so he could remain on overwatch and not trust the lives of their friends to a child. He chided himself for thinking that way, having never seen anything to give rise to any doubt in the dedication to learn and the ability of the young boy. Not once had he let anyone down, and Enfield had met dozens of Royal Marines who lacked the bravery and cold efficiency of the boy.

  It was more than a mentorship. More than a friendship, even. He was responsible for not only caring for a child and being a role model but also for passing on his unique skill set to the next generation. It was rare to find people with a similar mentality to his own which would make them as effective a killer as he was. He’d yet to teach Peter how to remove heads with bullets at long distances, but every bit of knowledge he’d imparted up until then had been heard, assimilated and reproduced flawlessly.

  He forced himself to relax, to not overload the kid with orders or break his concentration; they both had jobs to do and he had to forget the fact that his oppo was only ten years old.

  “They’re in,” Peter said, updating Enfield as to the status of the team below, because he knew the marine would be looking the other way to keep them both safe.

  “Keep ‘em peeled,” Enfield reminded him. Peter said nothing, knowing his teacher well enough that he didn’t have to verbally respond to everything he said, and kept watch with both eyes open without focusing through the scope to give him tunnel vision.

  Minutes passed before Buffs’ head poked out of the doorway and he waved to the supporting members of their little expedition. Three others ran forward; Steve, who Peter had been introduced to by his sister, Jean Pierre, and the tall, lean man with the strange accent who called Jean Pierre ‘JP’.

  “They’re done,” Peter reported, seeing Buffs stop and hold up a thumb to their position to signal that they were withdrawing. All of them carried heavy bags loaded down with supplies to supplement their impressive set-up where they used rainwater collection and hosepipes to water the vegetables growing in the lines of compost under the strange lamps that acted like the sun did.

  Peter had learned enough in school before his education had ended so abruptly to know that growing crops required water and sunlight so that something called photosynthesis could take place. Very simply, he understood this to mean that the sunlight reacted in the green leaves of the plants to make a kind of fuel that made their food grow big enough to eat, and his young brain was still in awe of knowing the most rudimentary science behind the process that had been happening on their planet for thousands and thousands of years.

  Long before there were people, in fact, and long before those people turned into rotting monsters who wandered around trying to eat the living.

  Enfield returned to his side, taking a knee and still facing their rear.

  “Let’s move,” he said softly, tapping the boy’s back with a hand twice for no obvious reason. Peter wondered if physically reinforcing instructions was a military thing or whether it was just a thing that normal adults did, because he was astute enough to recognise that his frame of reference was off kilter. He didn’t even realise that he didn’t flinch, didn’t freeze up or shy away now when an adult touched him after spending his entire life making sure he was out of reach in case anyone decided he deserved a clip around the ear, just as a reminder that they were in total control of him.

  He wasn’t consciously aware of this, but he’d changed so much from the naïve, frightened child he’d been before that not even his own sister truly recognised him when they were reunited. This was a boy who had evolved and grown so much that it was as if he’d emerged from a chrysalis and had learned to kill and protect others like he was born to it.

  Peter stood, slipping the long strap of the short rifle diagonally over his body before retrieving his sticker from where he’d spiked it into the ground. Trained to shoot or not, he never went anywhere without the thing that had once been a pitchfork and had since grown to be an extension of his arms that never left his side.

  Enfield, so similar and yet so different, stood head, shoulders and chest taller than his counterpart but carried his military-issued rifle with attached bayonet in exactly the same pose as the boy struck with his modified pitchfork. Enfield led the way, not yet willing to let a child less than half his age face the potential danger ahead of them out of a very real sense of responsibility, and held them at the edge of the tree line waiting for the others to emerge from a side alley with heavy bags and head in their direction.

  “All good,” Buffs announced in a loud whisper, making Peter unsure whether it was a statement or a question but deciding on the former as Enfield didn’t respond.

  Buffs paused, waiting for his team to close up on his as Enfield led the way with Peter behind him ahead of the others. Peter wasn’t stupid, even if he hadn’t learned a lot from books and teachers, he was clever and he recognised when he was placed in the safest positions, but he bided his time because he knew at ten years old he wouldn’t be running the show just yet.

  At the gates to their compound they knelt down to keep a watchful eye out for any danger as the strangely accented man, a man Peter had heard called Mike or Xavier by the others, unlocked a heavy chain and padlock from the fenced compound to open the gates with a slight squeak and allow them entry one by one. Peter went in second and turned to watch out through the fence with one hand on the rifle ready to pull it around to his front should he need it.

  As excited as he was to be loaned the weapon and taught to use it by a man so well trained that the boy imagined him to be like James Bond had been before he became a spy, he knew not to overuse the gun and to keep things quiet unless it was absolutely necessary to protect himself or someone else. He held his trusted sticker ready to poke through an eye socket if any of the Screechers walked up to the wire fence, to take them out silently, but none came.

  They hadn’t come in over a week, and he wasn’t the only person to be asking himself why they were suddenly alone unless they released trapped Screechers from inside buildings.

  Their main worry, at least that was what he could tell from overhearing their conversations by being small and still so they didn’t even notice he was there, was that one or more of the faster ones would climb the fence and get inside their little compound undetected, but as none of them had seen a Lima since the zombie population had suddenly and rapidly declined, it was becoming less of a worry.

  What was a concern was their health. Almost all of them had suffered through the previous winter when the tempe
ratures dropped so far below what they were expecting that people began to blame the zombie phenomenon on the thing people were calling ‘global warming’.

  “All in,” Xavier said as he looped the short length of chain around the gates once more and locked it tightly. “JP, can you take the supplies in for me? I want to walk the perimeter.”

  The big black man, JP, didn’t answer but took Xavier’s bag and walked away carrying two packs and a big metal spike tucked into his belt like a blunt sword.

  “Nice work, Peter,” Mike Xavier said to him quietly, giving the boy a gentle pat on the shoulder before walking away. Again, Peter didn’t flinch from the contact. It was as though he’d learned not to feel afraid of people—not living people anyway—and had stopped instinctively remaining out of reach in case a casual smack was aimed at his ear for no good reason.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, slightly embarrassed by the praise.

  “You’re not done yet,” Enfield told him. “If you’ve used it, you have to clean it. If you don’t look after your weapons, then they won't look after you. Come on.” He led his young apprentice away to one of the buildings inside their enclave ringed by the sturdy fence to teach him the less glamorous side of life as a sniper.

  THREE

  Johnson, after returning to bed for another hour, washed and dressed before responding to the nagging sensation in his belly. Eating cold soup directly from the can was no hardship for him as food was fuel, and only when he had the luxury of time to sit and enjoy a dish with an accompanying glass of something did he treat food as anything different.