“So we head for Stornoway, get fuel, and if possible, go ashore so long as the landing beaches aren’t crawling with enemy,” Palmer said, outlining their very basic plan.
“When?”
“I might ask if you would enquire of our resident boat man if the stars are aligning on that particular front? I’m sure he’ll want to sacrifice an Englishman and wait for the next high tide or some-such nonsense,” Palmer joked, allowing a little of his old persona back in through tiredness or hunger or just the stress of being somewhat in charge.
“That’ll be either this afternoon or early tomorrow morning then,” Lloyd answered, surprising Palmer by knowing the tides until good sense tapped the inside of his skull and reminded him that the other lieutenant was a marine and not accustomed to life inside an armoured vehicle.
“Tomorrow morning then,” he said, meeting Lloyd’s eye and exchanging a subtle nod of agreement. “I rather think it would cause something of a panic to roust people from their comfortable spots now, don’t you?”
Lloyd agreed, stuffing his hat back on his head and tucking his chin to his chest to be first out the door. Palmer followed, heading back inside the main facility and being soaked halfway through by the time he’d covered the short distance.
The sentry was gone, as with visibility so poor with the sudden squall of stinging rain hitting their position, the purpose of a sentry was somewhat nullified. Palmer imagined him sitting in a dry spot somewhere, relishing the taste of the smoke and telling the other marines what a fine fellow that Lieutenant Palmer truly was.
Shaking that thought away as unhelpful vanity, he stood himself up to his full height and prepared to inform his brother the captain that they were moving at first light.
FIFTEEN
Preparations to move were a mostly quiet affair. Interaction between the two camps was strained if it was at all necessary, but the twin arts of avoidance and silence served to show their feelings.
To Johnson, it was an annoyance, but as he had no power to order those wishing to remain to join them, he was forced to endure their sullen looks and held his tongue about their chances of survival if they stayed there to hide with their heads in the sand.
Ammunition was doled out, food and water stocked on their boat, which was serviceable and clean thanks to a few days of hard work to make it so.
Johnson’s opinions extended to other matters, primarily that he felt the pipe dream of making it around the inhospitable northern coast of Scotland and across the freezing sea to Norway was precisely that: a pipe dream.
“Penny for them,” Kimberley said from behind, startling him into giving a tiny jump but holding back the accompanying yelp it would ordinarily come free with.
“What?”
“You were miles away,” she said with a warming smile, reaching up to rub a small hand on a large shoulder comfortingly. “What were you thinking?”
Johnson’s response was preceded by a thorough check over both shoulders to make sure nobody else was within earshot before he spoke.
“I was just worrying about things,” he admitted before adding a shrug. “Everything, really. Like our chances of getting to Norway on a tub that’s been sitting still for too long. Or what’ll happen to the others who won't leave. Where all the bleedin’ Screechers have gone to and why…”
The hand rubbed again reassuringly. “Worry about the things you can control, plan for the things you can't,” she told him wisely. He scoffed a small but not unkind laugh and turned to her.
“That’s a lot of worrying to do, and even more planning.” She smiled and raised herself up on her tiptoes to bridge the height difference and lean over the equipment strapped to his front to plant a small kiss on his lips.
“Last load set, weighs a fucking tonne mind, just need to… ah, ‘scuse me, Sarn’t Major, Miss Perkins, I err…” Charlie Daniels said from the doorway, having barrelled into the room full of purpose only to be robbed of his bravery on seeing the SSM involved in a private moment.
“Be with you in a minute, Charlie,” Johnson said, eyes not leaving Kimberley’s. He kissed her again, leaving with a wink and a reminder to chase everyone up. “I want to be on the road, well, water, in an hour.”
He went outside, seeing a red-faced Corporal Daniels push himself off a wall and hurry to catch up. Both men were dressed for action, adorned with weapons and ammunition, and both walked with a purpose.
“Sorry,” Daniels began. “I didn’t know you were, err…”
“Who’s there already?” Johnson asked, letting Daniels off the hook of awkwardness. The corporal listed off half of their group.
“Peter’s waiting for you, which means Jessica’s hanging around for him. Sarn’t Hampton’s on the boat fixing the gimpy onto the rail. Just me, you, Enfield and Buffs ready to carry the last load.”
“Very good, son. Ki—Miss Perkins is chasing up the last few now. We should be on the way shortly.”
Daniels stopped in his tracks, head locked onto something Johnson couldn’t see. He turned to look, to find the source of the fear radiating from his man, but the noise reached him first.
The sharp, obnoxiously loud double bark of an animal pierced the air so unnaturally that an icy shiver of fear poured itself down Johnson’s spine and carried on down his right hand until the finger nearest the trigger of his weapon twitched; as though it knew something his brain hadn’t fully recognised yet.
“Get the gear,” Johnson said. “We go right now.”
Daniels didn’t move.
“Charlie,” Johnson hissed through clenched teeth as his inner senior non-commissioned officer snapped at not being acknowledged immediately. “Move your bloody arse, wha—”
Daniels pointed in response. Slowly raising a straight arm tipped with an outstretched index finger, he kept his eyes dead ahead and following the line of it, Johnson laid eyes on what had caused the unexpected reaction.
A flash of movement. A head whipping side to side on top of a body that stayed unnaturally still as, even from a distance, he felt as if he were locking eyes with the half-naked creature that slowly stood to its full height.
The skin was deathly pale, almost translucent, and the thin body still clung to the remnants of stonewash blue denim torn in patches to expose the flesh of the sinewy legs. The shirt, once a royal blue, Johnson guessed from the parts that remained, still had one side of the collar standing up to frame a face treating him to a curious look underneath a totally hair-free head.
“Charlie,’ Johnson said quietly, “go back inside and tell everyone to move their arses right now.” Daniels didn’t move.
“Charlie!” Johnson snapped, earning the immediate attention of his corporal, along with an unwanted response from the bald terror perching on the nearby rooftop.
“How did it get inside?” Daniels whispered.
“Go now,” Johnson ordered, turning his body sideways and bringing up the MP5 to line up the grotesque undead thing. Daniels disappeared, as did the thing Johnson aimed at the second he pointed the barrel of the weapon in its direction. He looked around, left and right, before opting for action over silence.
“Everybody out!” he bawled. “We’re under attack!”
He wasn’t one hundred percent certain of that last fact, but something about how the bald Lima – it had to be a Lima to be able to move fast enough to disappear like it did – had looked at him.
Like it was working him out.
Like it was… thinking.
He didn’t have the space in his brain to investigate his feelings about what he’d seen, but his instincts were hammering the alarm bell loud enough to force his body to act. He kept the gun up and ready to fire as he stalked forward into the open area and scanned the rooftops of the low buildings inside their fenced compound they so naively thought would be safe.
“What have you got?” Enfield’s voice reached him ahead of the sound of approaching bootsteps from behind.
“Single Lima. Rooftop. Disappeared as soon
as I took a bead on the bastard.”
Enfield’s larger rifle was up into his shoulder as the barrel scanned in greater detail courtesy of the large telescopic sight bolted to the top. Johnson shot a rapid glance back to see Daniels returning hot on the heels of Bufford. Closer to him, and having arrived without any sound, Peter was pulling back the bolt of Enfield’s small, suppressed rifle, wearing a determined look of professional concern in stark contrast to the fear his age dictated he should be experiencing.
More of the harsh barking sounds echoed around the deserted compound, devoid even of the usual sounds of birds, and an answering shriek echoed from their left. Turning as one, a shambling figure wandered into view almost drunkenly as if it had just been woken up from a much-needed nap and was eager to address this fact with those responsible for cutting short the slumber.
The body was tall and lean, but the thick beard and unruly hair was unmistakable.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Buffs exclaimed, recognising one of their own and adding the blasphemy for knowing what would have to be done.
Mike Xavier, much against his usual disciplined ethics, took a stiff drink with breakfast that morning. He took another just after and a third before his morning ablutions before returning to his room to privately sulk until the others, his closest friend included, abandoned them.
But then he felt the urge to do something constructive; he was suitably lubricated and opted to take the remainder of the bottle with him. Had he been in a better mood, or perhaps had been observing his own actions as an outsider, he’d have been forgiven for seeing the comedic irony in the fact that the sailor was drinking Captain Morgan’s dark rum neat from the neck of the clear bottle.
He walked to the empty warehouse used for growing their meagre supply of food, muttering to himself. The words mutiny and selfish featured, as did stupid and the phrase, all going to die anyway.
So deeply was he engrossed in his foul temper and so hazy were his senses thanks to the alcohol, that he failed to realise he wasn’t alone inside the building.
A sudden draught of cold air stung him, making him frown and look upwards to see an open skylight accessible only by a ladder and a high-up crawl way.
“Fuckin’ lazy pricks,” he muttered to himself. “Gotta do everythin’ me self…”
He was forced to abandon the bottle, resting it along with the remaining half of its contents on the ground to enable him to use both hands on the ladder and crawl along the wobbling accessway to reach up and haul the heavy panel of reinforced glass back into place.
In his right mind, he would’ve at least though to question why it was open, even how it had been opened, but he paid no attention to the locking mechanism as he flailed on his knees perilously.
The crawl way shook, each instinctive correction of his body weight forcing the pendulous movement to exaggerate until he was tipped backwards to fall the almost twenty feet to the hard ground below.
Landing with a loud thud and a splintering of thin sticks, Xavier croaked in a loud, forced breath to combat the sudden shock of having all the air driven from his body by the softened landing provided by the tomato plants and the damp earth sustaining them.
Filthy, barely able to breathe, he rolled out of the dirt and performed the crawling alternative to a stagger aimed directly at the bottle, as if it could revive him. His hand reached out for it, fingers clutching at the glass but unable to gain purchase on it. The bottle fell over, forcing him to haul his entire body another agonising lurch onwards to retrieve it.
He lay on his back and fumbled off the screw cap, spilling more than he managed to get into his mouth and coughing as he poured some of the strong liquid up his nose. Sitting upright with a groan, he coughed and drank, finally feeling the soreness in his body from his lucky escape after what should, by rights, have been a fatal fall.
“Fuck that,” he said, half in amazement that he was still alive and half blaming other people for his being there in the first place.
He was not a man to act like that, not ordinarily, but so deep was his depression and so heightened his fear, that his actions seemed to be those of another person.
Footsteps approached him, bare skin padding on polished concrete, and that small fact didn’t enter Xavier’s brain at first.
“Checked the roof,” he joked out loud, holding up a sarcastic thumb to underline his point. “I’d recommend taking the longer way down, though,” he rolled, trying to get up and groaned loudly.
Sitting up, he opened his eyes to find himself looking at the filthy, pale, bare feet of a man.
The shape of the feet and the toes made him sure it was a man, but the exposed shin displayed through a long, ragged tear in the light blue denim showed pale skin so hairless that it was impossible for it to be a grown man. He frowned, looking up into the curious gaze of a bald person so obviously dead that his heart froze and seized his body in a state of immobility.
His mouth salivated and he felt the urge to vomit surging upwards, but before he could fountain the morning’s rum onto the concrete between them, the thing dropped fast and planted the cold embrace of teeth onto his cheek.
He tried to scream but only a gurgle came out, realising absently that the claws that was the creature’s right hand were clamped tightly around his throat, preventing any final act of warning or defiance.
The thing bit down, breaking the skin between his beard and his eye to draw hot blood, but stopped and retreated instead of tearing the flesh from his face as he’d expected. It maintained the vice-like grip on his throat, watching him with something resembling pride until he felt his body erupt with such an excruciating heat that he feared he’d genuinely been set on fire.
That fire grew in intensity until he thought he’d black out. The creature dropped him, disappearing from his vanishing senses as a shout reached his dying brain.
“Mike? Mike?” Jase’s voice gasped. “Mike, what happ—”
His words were cut off by a choking sound, and Mike Xavier closed his eyes for the final time.
SIXTEEN
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Buffs said.
“Get back,” Johnson snarled, seeing what the SBS man hadn’t, as a second monstrosity wandered into their enclosed arena just as if some kind of blood sport was being filmed and they were the unwilling participants in the entertainment.
He drew the weapon up into his shoulder and took aim on the stocky mechanic he had barely exchanged more than two words with since arriving there. Buffs, dropping to one knee instinctively to take a rushed but steady aim, engaged the bearded sailor to their front while a squeak of unintelligible fear sounded behind them.
Buffs dropped Mike Xavier, or at least the thing that had so recently been him, with a three-round burst to the head. Jase, former Jase at least, was in Johnson’s sights when the noise Peter made distracted him long enough for the beast to drop and begin a staggering run towards them. Snapping his attention back, he depressed the barrel of the MP5 and began spitting bullets as his fear rose. Twenty paces was a very long way away in slow time, but when sprinting, that distance closed far too quickly to be comfortable. Johnson trigged off rounds, logically aiming for the head at first but trying to hit a fast moving target with that much rising adrenaline made him switch his aim to shatter a knee and immobilise the thing, allowing an easier shot to the skull when it skidded along the concrete and fail to get back up quickly.
He turned, seeing Peter with the barrel of his small rifle up and aimed at the roof where the bald bastard had reappeared, just as Enfield’s heavier weapon shouted out a heavy crack.
“Shit,” he cursed, lowering the rifle and grabbing Peter roughly by the collar of his parka to drag him away before he could trigger off his own shot.
“What the hell is that thing?” Buffs yelled, pacing backwards with the gun pulled tight into his shoulder and covering their rear as they ran back towards the buildings. He didn’t receive an answer, not from the living at least, because a shrieking yelp sounded, the same de
vilish barking sound a fox would make in the night, and the answering chorus of shrieking moans erupting from the other side of their perimeter fence drowned out any possible response.
“Who exactly is left here?” Johnson demanded, the information unclear in his head.
“Us,” Daniels said to encompass those in the open rushing for cover, Kimberley, Steve and Jessica.”
“None of the others?” Johnson asked, wincing as he recalled the deaths of two people who had elected to stay behind.
“Duncan,” Charlie Daniels answered, being as clear as he could, having already listed the names he was certain of. The fact that of the three of them trained to use the fighting vehicles, and that two of them were still rushing over the open concrete of the yard, meant that Steve Duncan had acted quickly enough to get into position and spin up the minigun on the Warrior.
Streaks of white-hot metal lanced laterally across the compound as the largest concentration of undead threatened to storm the gates. All of them were Limas, even their two former friends, and the hideously unfair advantage angered Johnson, who was powerless to do anything but run with the rest of them as fast as they could to escape.
Someone yelled, but their words were snatched away by the heavy hammering of the Warrior’s gun as it burped and chattered away to spit the big bullets out of the barrels at their unexpected enemy.
“Where the fuck did they come from?” Buffs yelled as he bumped into Johnson’s back, having not seen the man behind him stop.
“That thing called them,” he yelled back, close enough so that the two men could hear each other’s words. As if the newest representation of their personal hell had heard their words, the sharp barking noise sounded again. Almost immediately the gunfire from the Warrior subsided, prompting them all to look to the gates in time to see the surviving members of the pack of obedient undead melt away out of sight.
Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation Page 10
