It felt like a train, at least. As his breathless body hit the ground a clear three paces away, the thing that carried the momentum of the locomotive rolled over him and clear of bite range. He landed flat on his back, craning his neck to look back at the thing that had hit him and trying to breathe in, struggling as the wind had been knocked out of his lungs by the force of the tackle.
As bizarre as his own body contortions were, the creature that had hit him at full speed twisted hideously to arch its back and spin on the back of its skull to reach for him. Cooper rolled and scrambled away as he made an awful croaking noise in an attempt to breathe. Behind him he could hear the staccato crackle of Wolff’s gun, but his consciousness registered no bullets splitting the air around him.
Wolff had other problems, and Cooper was on his own.
Struggling to bring his weapon to bear on the thing auditioning for a remake of The Exorcist that was crabbing its way towards him, hissing and shrieking as it came, Cooper finally managed to point the dangerous end of his Sterling submachine gun at it and pull the trigger again.
It juddered and faltered as the bullets tore into it, but as all of them struck the torso it kept coming. Coming toward him faster than he could drag himself away, still unable to suck in a full breath, as the fallen torch beam rolled to a stop and illuminated the thing hideously.
His magazine clicked dry, a sound that tightened a certain part of his anatomy, and he reversed the weapon to twist his body at the waist as far as he could reach, timing the explosive back swing perfectly to crack the monster across the face with enough force to do serious damage.
Serious damage to a living person, at least. The heavy barrel of his weapon smashed the jawbone of the Lima—recently turned given the decent quality of the clothing, he noted—and left the lower jaw hanging limply as teeth dropped out of the smashed maw. The head, knocked aside by the blow, turned sharply back to him as the thing gargled a hiss and dripped dark gore from its ruined mouth.
Fumbling on his chest for one of his spare magazines, he struggled to pull the spent one free even though he’d cycled the weapon more times in the last year than ever before in training. Adrenaline and fear, coupled with the fact that he still hadn’t managed to take a breath since being winded, made his hands clumsy. The adrenaline also masked the fact that he’d broken at least one finger during the tackle, because his eyes saw the digit twisted at an odd angle, but his brain had yet to register the pain.
Just as he managed to drop the empty magazine from the weapon, muttering a desperate, repeated, “Shit, shit, shit,” to himself, cold fingertips tore at his boot and inched him forward over the rough surface of the ground.
Then a metallic thump, a sickening crunch, and a weak attempt at a screech came from the thing that had been crushed and pinned under the near-silent rolling wheel of the van as it rolled slowly towards the exit.
“Come on,” a voice hissed unnecessarily given the sharp crack of sporadic gunfire, “get off the fucking deck!”
“We must be leaving now,” Wolff added, angling his return to the moving vehicle so that he could grab the shoulder straps of Cooper’s webbing and haul him to his feet. Cooper went with the momentum, adding his own body’s power so that he launched upwards and fell into the open rear doors of the van as it rolled past, adding further crunching noises to the night as the rear wheel flattened the Lima further.
Wolff was last to climb in, having to break into a slow jog to time his run just right to land inside next to Cooper, who had finally managed to reload his weapon and pointed it out at the gloom behind them, watching the small light radiating from the dropped torch grow smaller with each yard they rolled.
The driver, reaching what he guessed was sufficient speed to try and start the engine, dropped the gear stick into second and banged the clutch out to judder the engine into unwilling life.
“Which way?” he shouted back, receiving no immediate answer as the now closed rear doors issued a metallic thump like an artillery piece being fired.
“Just go,” Cooper yelled. “Put some distance in and look to turn south.”
TEN
Johnson as unaccustomed to boats as he was to the affections of Kimberley, asked his only nautical group member for assistance in locating an appropriate replacement for the next leg of their seemingly never-ending journey.
Bufford, their SBS man, was familiar with boats—as were the royal marines—but none of them had experience further than the piloting of the inflatable craft they used to land troops on the shore.
Jean Pierre was adamant that a small fishing boat was their best bet, but his idea of small and Johnson’s differed by the time their small group approached the docks. He and Bufford stayed close to the muscled sailor, with Enfield and Larsen beside him acting as their deadly eyes and ears.
“This one will be okay,” JP said quietly, pointing with a heavy metal spike which he was as fond of as Bufford was of his pioneer’s axe.
“Stay here,” Bufford said, nodding to Johnson for him to stay on the dock and keep their sailor safe. He stood, MP5 tucked into his shoulder with the fat barrel moving smoothly. He paused to look up at the highest point overlooking the area, a large fuel tank some forty paces away, just to be sure his friend had the sights of his rifle in the game.
Johnson brought up his own identical weapon, leaving the pump action shotgun slung diagonally over his back, and watched as Bufford ran up the sloped ramp to the boat. His boots clanged loudly, filling the docks with the echoing sound to set Johnson’s nerves on edge.
Long minutes passed as he concentrated on his immediate surrounding, all the while listening intently for the coughing twang of Enfield’s rifle, before it finally dawned on him that they hadn’t seen a single Screecher for days.
It was a feeling he couldn’t fully explain. It was a measure of how finely tuned his senses were then that he didn’t even possess the words to tell another person how he knew, but somehow, he did know that they were safe and completely alone. Alone, that was, save for any dusty Screecher that might have been shut up inside a building, and that would be all but dormant by then. But apart from those, there wasn’t a single creature in the area.
He stood, turning to face the high position and offered an exaggerated shrug to the sniper and the Norwegian commando spotting for him, and saw their silhouettes before the smaller of them returned his gesture.
Bufford emerged from the boat then, standing at the top of the ramp to look between Johnson and Larsen.
“Fuck’s going on?” he asked quizzically.
“Anything in there, Buffs?” Johnson asked.
“Bugger all, mate,” Bufford answered. “Place is a ghost town.”
“Yeah,” Johnson agreed. “It’s actually creepier than there being a few shuffling around.”
“I will check on the boat,” JP said, walking past Johnson to reach the ramp and hurry away to do his job.
“Where the bloody hell are they all?” Johnson asked, as much to himself as to Bufford.
“Fucked if I know,” the SBS man answered anyway, adding a bemused shrug when Johnson turned to him. He waved his hand in the air for the attention of their snipers’ nest and held up the thumb of his left hand to signal that everything was okay before sucking in a huge breath and bellowing at the top of his voice, “Oi! Dead bastards!”
His shout reverberated around the deserted docks with nothing but the fading echo and the wind answering it. Usually such a loud noise would bring at least one screech of hunger or anger or whatever it was they shrieked about, but not one of them was there to pay them any interest whatsoever.
Jean Pierre returned from the boat, muttering to himself as he climbed down the ramp past both men and turned when he reached the bottom.
“I need to clean parts of the engine,” he told them, “and to be on the safe side, I will need to change the fuel filters and drain the tank.”
“And if you weren’t inclined to be so thorough?” Johnson enquired, searching for a middle gro
und between perfectionism and ‘that’ll do-ism’. JP offered his own shrug in response before answering.
“Easier to do it here instead of clogging the engine out there.”
Johnson had to admit that the man had a fair point.
“What do you need and where is it?” The sailor cast his eyes around the docks, settling on a large building he guessed would most likely contain the required tools and parts.
“And if we find the stuff you need, how long until we’re ready to go?” Bufford asked. Jean Pierre shrugged again before giving the answer.
“One day. Perhaps two.”
The parts were, unexpectedly, easy to locate. The building turned out to be a marine workshop with one end of the large building open to the water where a boat of similar size to their chosen vessel could be brought in and raised up out of the water. A dry dock was nothing new to those accustomed to maritime warfare, but neither was the setup entirely unfamiliar to Johnson, who spent his life under large engines in one form or another.
Jean Pierre was evidently done with being patient and letting those with guns go through the meticulous routine of searching every hidden nook and cranny and set about searching the long racks of metal shelving for the things he needed while the back rooms were cleansed of any potential threat.
“You smell that?” Bufford asked Johnson. The SSM nodded slowly as his long whiskers twitched under a wrinkling nose that sniffed the air deeply.
“Well, if there was one in here it’s gone now,” he answered, peering cautiously over the edge to the dark water of the dock as he half expected to see faces staring back at him from just below the surface. He saw none, but he couldn’t ignore the obvious musty odour so often left behind by one of them when it had turned and been trapped inside a building without the cognitive ability to unlock a door and release itself into the wild.
“Recent too, if my nose is anything to go by,” Bufford added.
Johnson merely nodded an affirmation as his mind ticked almost audibly. Covering his ominous mood with action as he so often did, he assisted their nautical companion in checking dusty boxes for the correct fuel filters, eager to get the hell back to the others.
“I’ll take a recce out to town,” Enfield offered, speaking to their small group who had assembled quietly so as not to cause alarm to the others. These people had spent a hard winter together, had learned to operate as a scaled-down team as special forces did, and the trust they had built in one another was difficult to describe to anyone who didn’t understand that feeling.
“I shall come with you,” Larsen offered.
“Quick in and out, no heroics,” Johnson cautioned unnecessarily. Enfield took no offence at his warning, as he neither believed himself reckless nor did he think the SSM thought that of him, merely that Johnson had a concern and he needed to voice it. Such was their bond that ego took no part in their conversations.
“I’ll go secret squirrel,” Enfield reassured him. Hampton let out a short bark of laughter.
“Be like the last time you entertained a lady,” he chuckled. “In and out before she even knew you were there!”
Embarrassed groans and laughs filled the room, attracting the attention of an uninvited member of their group who, like the others, had formed that bond of trust and intimate understanding but was omitted from their meeting by age.
“What’s up?” Peter asked, walking into the huddle with all the confidence a boy of ten years should possess, but which was only a recent acquisition for this one.
Johnson looked over either shoulder as though he intended to tell a joke that might be deemed offensive, before speaking.
“We seem to find ourselves in the unique position of being the only things around here on two legs,” he told the boy, waiting for his knitted brow to relax as he deciphered the words in his head.
“But there were some nearby a few days ago,” Peter countered. “What happened?”
“No idea, lad,” Bufford cut in, “but you ever heard the saying about looking a gift horse in the mouth?” Peter had, and he understood it, but his perplexity at the sudden apparent disappearance of their constant enemy left him both elated and with a stomach full of a roiling, foreboding feeling of discomfort.
“There’s another explanation,” a voice said from the same doorway Peter had entered via. They all turned, then relaxed to see Charlie Daniels walking towards them, mug in one hand and a rolled cigarette trailing a wisp of smoke in the other.
“Remember the swarms before we met up? How they were all heading one way, then just stopped?”
They did, and as nobody had had a reasonable explanation for it and they’d all had bigger priorities to consider, none of them had given it any more thought.
“Spit it out, Charlie,” Johnson encouraged him.
“Well, I think there’s something going on we don’t know about. I think the others, the Americans most likely, given how everyone else is, you know, dead…” he offered an apologetic shrug for telling the truth before continuing. “I think they’ve found some way to call them or something. Like a massive dog whistle for Screechers.”
“For what purposes?” Larsen asked.
“Good way to concentrate the enemy to drop a bomb on their heads,” Bufford offered.
“Only we haven’t heard any planes, haven’t heard a big bang, and haven’t seen a Screecher for days,” Daniels said.
“There is that,” Hampton cut in, “only we might be overthinking it when we should see it as an opportunity. Grab whatever supplies we can, get on the boat and fuck off—” he glanced at Peter and hesitated “—before they decide to show up again.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Johnson said appreciatively.
ELEVEN
Operating at a low altitude of only nine thousand feet, the crew of the Boeing E-3 Sentry worked their instruments with professionalism. That professionalism was detached from the gruesome reality on the ground in the way that infantry and aviators both enjoyed unique perspectives on warfare.
The pilots looped a long, lazy circle over the target coordinates in the clear skies vacated by the armed cargo planes and those following behind them to drop the bombs and leave such obvious destruction on the ground below. That loop allowed the men working in the main section of the aircraft to zoom in and take pictures as well as capturing video for whoever wanted to see the results to view the desolation.
The emerging dawn painted a butcher’s shop picture, with so many broken bodies littering the ground it was impossible to see the earth beneath the carnage for almost a square mile.
The entire population of mainland Britain, at least what remained of it, all congregated in one area and packed together by a secret weapon in their new war known only by rumour as a lure device. Whatever it was, it truly lived up to that name and far exceeded the reputation.
The man in command of the aircraft, an air force colonel, furrowed his brow as he peered intently at the display screens, wearing that eager yet concerned look of a man who knew much more of the big picture than anyone around him.
“Sir,” an operator called out, simultaneously stabbing a finger onto the screen before him. “Movement.”
The colonel walked towards his station slowly, his apparently unconcerned demeanour befitting his rank, which only served to foster concern in those around him, under the circumstances. He bent down, gripping the back of the man’s chair tightly, and looked.
“Well I’ll be goddamned,” he said softly.
“Sir?” the operator asked, unsure of the man’s words over the din of the aircraft.
“Follow that thing, record everything you can until we are bingo fuel. Everyone else, search for movement and capture footage.”
A chorus of affirmation came back to him as he took his seat again and began to worry and called up their command and control to deliver a shit sandwich.
“Sir,” said another officer, “I, err… I think you should see this too…”
“Sir, AWACS report total
destruction at the target site,” the young man in naval uniform reported. He turned back to his station and transmitted an acknowledgement as other men in the room shook hands and congratulated one another.
“Stand by,” the radio operator said again. “Sir?” The commander stopped smiling immediately at the tone of voice he used and demanded to know what was so important.
“They’re saying they can see what looked like a survivor location… they say… they say it’s been destroyed…”
“There was always the risk of collateral damage,” the commander said to the room with solemn gravitas. “While we lament the loss of human survi—”
“No, sir,” the operator interrupted, “they’re saying this was no stray ordnance. It looks like… Sir, they’re saying it looks like a pack of wild animals tore through the place. They say they have footage of an anomaly.”
“Define anomaly,” the commander said acidly. The man on the radio called back to the distant plane and exchanged words before waiting and listening, then turned back to his commanding officer.
“Sir, they say it’s like one of the faster types of infected, only…”
“Only what, dammit?”
“Only… faster. And it’s leading others behind it.”
“Get me those CIA sons of bitches in here right now,” the commander snapped at an aide.
“Commander, we already shared the intelligence regarding the primary test,” Jacobs said without bothering to hide the boredom and derision in his voice. “The report showed a near one hundred percent mortality rate among the infected—”
“What it didn’t show, was that last percent evolved into something… new!”
“What exactly do you mean new, Commander?” The naval officer shifted nervously before he answered.
“We don’t have the footage yet,” he admitted. “We’re going on the description given by the AWACS crew.”
“Which is?”
Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation Page 7
