“Infected are all retreating now… they’re… they’re being recalled by… what the hell?”
“Report,” Jacobs barked, hearing his order repeated over the radio to the pilot who couldn’t hear him yelling inside the dark room miles out to sea.
“Confirm all infected are retreating back to… back to one of them on higher ground.”
“Fire now!” Jacobs yelled, almost out of control now.
“Update target coordinates,” the radio man said, scribbling with a pencil on paper to hand it over to the man next to him who gave the updated target position to the men operating the guns of the destroyer brought closer to land in order to obliterate the infected.
They waited, not hearing the massive, concussive reports of the distant ship’s guns hammering ordnance at the island. That silence stretched onwards until the speakers came to life once more.
“Negative effect on target. Repeat, negative effect on target. Infected have dispersed and gone to ground.”
Jacobs launched his coffee cup across the room, an empty gesture given that a partly filled foam cup lacked the violence he wished for as it impacted the bulkhead to drop to the deck with a weak popping sound.
He made for the door, snapping his fingers at Fisher who followed in stunned silence.
“Now we call Langley,” he said as he stormed through the narrow walkways of the aircraft carrier. “And we tell them that the scientists fucked up. Tell them that without a sample of the new mutation and an entirely new team to analyse it properly, not in some damn farmyard, that we have no way to infect this new kind. Tell them it’s back to square one.”
“But…” Fisher started to say but Jacobs rounded on him, grabbing the front of his shirt and slamming him hard into the bulkhead.
“What? You want to tell them we fucked up? You want to fall on your sword and take the blame? Asshole!”
Jacobs dropped Fisher and walked away with a lingering look of disgust aimed at him, leaving the agent feeling empty in the knowledge that his gamble had failed, and that his ambition had doomed the survival of everyone left in Britain.
He followed, staying back far enough that his boss had no chance of rounding on him again, and their path led them into the main control room where Jacobs put himself into isolation to make the call. Fisher knew he’d sing the same tune, especially because with the mood Jacobs was in, if he crossed the man, he’d probably ‘fall overboard’ on the way back home.
“Escorts are set for the evac route, Sir,” a naval rating said to an officer sipping coffee and looking altogether too pleased with himself.
“Good, give them a green light, God speed back home.” The rating relayed the message, paraphrasing most of what he was told into the language of radio speak. The approved evacuations had become sporadic of late, slowing only to a final few from what the rumours circulating the ship said.
Fisher saw a shape in the corner, hanging back in the shadows doing what he could only describe as ‘lurking’. That shadow shifted, morphing into the navy SEAL he’d upset more than once since they’d first met.
“What are you doing here, Miller?” he asked.
“I could ask the same of you, Fisher,” Miller shot back. “Looks like your boss is pretty pissed.”
“He’ll get over it,” Fisher answered acidly, “and one of us’ll get a promotion out of this. Care to bet on who?”
“Not really,” Miller answered, sounding bored with the conversation, or with Fisher perhaps. “And to answer your question, I was just listening to the evacuation boats leaving Iceland. Feels good to see people catching a break, you know?”
“Not like those poor bastards still in Britain, eh, Master Chief?” another rating asked, butting into their conversation like some idiotic attempt to be one of them.
“The hell does that mean?” Miller asked, nailing the kid to the spot with his words and an accompanying glare that could probably render the kid sterile if he kept it up.
“I… I mean the Brits… they won't be accepted as refugees now after the orders…”
“What. Orders?” Miller demanded. The rating shrugged. His insignia denoted his job as one of communications and electronic warfare, so Miller guessed the kid overheard a lot of things he probably wasn’t authorised to know.
“There’s… nobody else coming from the UK is allowed back home, that’s come all the way from the top.” Miller turned on Fisher, treating him to the glare now before realising the rating was still standing there terrified.
“Fuck off,” Miller told him, waiting for him to flee before returning his attention to Fisher.
“You see what messing around with this shit does? What happens to anyone turning up from there? Anyone lucky enough to make it out alive, I mean.”
“I guess they get quarantined,” Fisher said weakly.
“And then they just disappear, right? Can’t have anyone able to testify to what we were doing there, can we?” Fisher said nothing, but his blank expression told Miller everything he needed to know.
EIGHTEEN
Getting a boat full of people, all of them exhausted and malnourished, organised sufficiently to traipse through knee-deep, icy cold water to climb aboard a boat was hard. Harder still with no guarantee that life would be any better, despite two military officers assuring them with brave smiles that all would be well.
Their men, the scattering of royal marines and men of the yeomanry, returned those smiles out of loyalty but they knew the situation better than many of the civilians, and they knew that even if they had enough fuel to make it back towards the inner isles, the chances of them having to fight was high.
They had little to bring with them because they had come with almost nothing, taking blankets and whatever else they could scavenge from the sparse stores in a military facility that seemed more forgotten than abandoned.
The one man who didn’t slosh his way through the cold surf to climb onto the fishing boat was probably the only man who, if he had breath to be able to speak, would outright refuse to be carried when others walked. Captain Palmer, a man who had earned the adoration and respect of so many people for his natural leadership and compassion, which he twinned with a boundless energy and the positivity to get things done, coughed and shivered when he didn’t wheeze and gasp for air. Their royal marine medic, who stressed more than once that he wasn’t a doctor, diagnosed a nasty case of pneumonia which could only be treated by the immediate application of antibiotics and to be kept warm and dry. He added that feeding the man wouldn’t go amiss.
His younger brother hid the deep worry he felt, perhaps a side effect of his newly acquired maturity forged in combat, and instead of reporting to the captain to ask for his blessing to head back east, he found Julian beyond the point where he could safely issue an order. Between the younger Palmer and his royal marine counterpart, the two officers encouraged and chivvied the people along, wearing their false smiles and making a show of enduring more of the hardship than anyone else.
Palmer himself carried his brother, submerging himself to his chest in the freezing sea after a slip threatened to spill the sick man into the surf, which prompted plenty of amusement when he was forced to strip onboard the boat and wring the cold water from his clothes as he changed into all the dry garments he possessed.
“Here you go, sir,” a marine shouted over the whistles and raunchy jeers the sight of his pale, bare backside prompted. A pair of dry underwear sailed over their heads to stick to Palmer’s back, followed quickly by the punchline.
“They’re mostly clean!”
Palmer turned, inviting yet more laughter given the freezing temperature of the water, and made a show of sniffing the issued shreddies before shrugging to indicate that he’d smelled far worse. Lloyd came to stand beside him, berating the men jokingly for not observing the lieutenant’s modesty. Surreptitiously he handed Palmer one of the precious royal marine undershirts, issued to them due to their inclination to be sent to the coldest places on earth for training,
and much coveted by the other branches of Her Majesty’s armed forces. Palmer took it, muttering his genuine thanks as, in spite of his performance, he was chilled to the bone and worried that he’d go the same way as his brother if he fell ill.
The boat got underway, killing the fun and the conversation as everyone huddled together like penguins in Antarctica seeking some small vestige of protection from the bitterly cold wind their passage over the choppy sea brought with it. In true military fashion, the women and few children, in fact almost all of the civilian members of their band were sent below to pack into the cramped spaces there where at the very least, they could avoid the crippling wind chill factor.
One man, originally from the squadron and from Palmer’s recollection, one who had never spent any time remotely near the ocean, took it upon himself to brace one knee heroically over the rail at the very prow of the boat and cry out, “Land ho!” in his best Captain Birdseye voice as soon as the gap between the string of islands came into view.
A few chuckles rippled from their frozen band, and the self-appointed morale officer deemed his job done and climbed his way back to force his way inside a huddle of men who, Palmer noticed with a smile of appreciation, were formed from both his and Lloyd’s men as though the divide of their old allegiances was a long-forgotten thing of the past.
Palmer joined Lloyd inside the small wheelhouse protected on three sides from the elements to get an update on their expected arrival time.
“An hour, all being well,” the fisherman assured them. “Maybe an hour and a half.”
Palmer said nothing, despite wanting to know why such a large margin of error existed for such a relatively short journey, but figured that the man was guessing anyway, so he simply thanked him.
“Keep up the good work, Captain,” he added, affording the man the title to go with his evident importance given their tenuous situation, leaving him with a small pat on the back to reinforce his words.
It was just under an hour later when the boat, which was beginning to sound rough as the engine slurped up the very dregs of the fuel in its tanks, swung north to approach the docks of Stornoway.
“You want me to dock her?” the boat’s driver asked.
“No, thank you,” Palmer answered, pointing instead to a small, wooden craft bobbing in the waves still tethered to a submerged point marked by a faded red buoy. “I say we utilise that and keep the boat out of harm’s way, don’t you agree?”
He turned to Lloyd and thought out loud. “I suggest a reconnaissance party would be the most sensible course of action, would you concur, Christopher?”
“I would,” Lloyd answered equably. “Very much so. I’ll take a couple of my chaps if it’s all the same to you?”
“Well handle it,” a gruff voice interrupted them. Anyone who didn’t know the dour Scot displaced from his homeland to call Hereford home would be forgiven for taking his tone as angry, but those accustomed to Mac’s way with people knew better.
Behind him, looking just as mean and ready, was the only surviving member of the four-man SAS patrol and, Palmer rightly suspected, Dezzy was of a mood to kill Screechers. That much was overtly evident, given the fact that he carried an MP5 slung over his chest with the long barrel of the Soviet sniper rifle protruding over one shoulder. As if these weapons and the handgun on his hip weren’t enough, he hefted the automatic shotgun in both hands to make it abundantly clear that he was intent on carnage.
“Just the two of you, chaps?” Palmer enquired in a tone that made it sound more like he was concerned for them rather than derisive of their abilities.
“Safer that way, Lieutenant,” Mac answered sombrely, responding in a manner which was, for him at least, overtly friendly. He turned away and nodded to Dezzy, who set his jaw tightly in anticipation of some revenge.
“I say,” Palmer called after them, “I’ll post a few of our boys to keep an eye out for you if that’s amenable?” Mac paused, fighting down the urge to say they didn’t need the help and sensibly fearing having the sights of guns in cold, shivering hands pointing at their backs.
“That would be grand,” he answered, “only if you could spread the word that no man’s to fire unless we go loud?” Palmer put his right hand to his chest and lowered his head in a slight bow of subservience. He watched the two men climb awkwardly over the side of the boat to where others were holding the dinghy steady for them. Mac threw off the tightly fitted tarpaulin lashed over the open deck which was undoubtably the reason it hadn’t become waterlogged after a winter’s worth of Scottish rain and why it was still afloat.
Picking up the two small oars and fitting them into the cradles on each side, Dezzy began rowing them ashore under dozens of watchful eyes.
“This is…” Mac began, frowning as he wasn’t certain which word best described the odd sensations he experienced.
“Fucking weird?” Dezzy offered, never a man to utilise what one would call a full vocabulary and invariably adding the prefix to make his point more strenuously.
“I was going to say it’s odd,” Mac answered, “but we’ll run with your answer for now.”
It was indeed odd. The town was, by very virtue of its geographical location, small, and hosted only a modest population. That population was expected to begin groaning and screeching and shambling out of doorways as soon as their presence was detected, and when it didn’t, the two SAS men began to take note of the little things.
A car abandoned in the street, driver’s door left wide open and what appeared to be old bloodstains on the beige cloth, faded and distorted after being so long exposed to the harsh Hebridean elements.
A butcher’s shop, canopy still wound down to signify being open for trade, sported smears of old, dark blood spray on the inside of the windows, as if the shop front had been used to double up as the abattoir.
A pub, as tempting a destination for any serviceman seeking refuge from the cold, was windowless and blackened as the robust stone construction had contained whatever fire had gutted it from the inside.
“Something bad happened here,” Mac observed, earning a small huff of amusement and a deserving response.
“No shit. Prizes for guessing what?”
“Where the bloody hell are they?” Mac pondered out loud, ignoring Dezzy’s sarcasm. “I mean, if there aren’t any of the bastards here, then whatever went down concerns me greatly…”
Dezzy mulled that over for a minute, imagining some crazed shitstorm sweeping through the population and making them kill one another in the streets and burn out the pub.
“Had to be Screechers,” Mac continued, “but where have they gone?”
Dezzy sighed in annoyance, standing tall from the low wall he was using as cover and pacing to the centre of the deserted road.
“Heeeey yooooou guuuuuuuuuys!” he bawled, throwing his head back and letting out all of his pent-up frustration into the shout. He stopped, taking a shooting stance and selecting the shotgun from his personal arsenal in anticipation of an onslaught of Limas followed by their less articulate brethren.
Nothing happened. He sucked in a deep breath and leaned his head back again.
“H—”
“Enough of that bollocks,” Mac snapped at him, more annoyed at the sound Dezzy was intending to make than the risk of bringing the rotten bastards down on their heads. He stood, wandering out to join Dezzy totally exposed in the street to look around them in a full circle.
“Pick a building, any building,” Mac asked Dezzy like he was showing him a card trick. Dezzy pointed at a building maybe fifty paces from their position on the road by the water.
“Hotel,” he said. “With a bar. Best place to get everyone inside and dry and work from there?”
“Evac in a hurry would be a problem,” Mac answered, half to himself.
“We’re on a peninsula,” Dezzy pointed out. Two or three sentry posts,” he explained, pointing to their right where the only possible approach on foot could come from, “and clear the buildings
one by one until we find out where they all went.”
Mac, weighing up the costs of staying exposed without supplies and risking setting up camp inside what was effectively enemy lines, gave in to needs over protocol.
“We clear that, then if it’s okay we’ll go back and get the marines to start clearing the rest in this area. Get some furniture out and barricade the approaches in case, and keep enough men billeted near each one to come out and man those defences.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dezzy said, bringing the shotgun up into his shoulder once more and setting off in the lead to start checking every nook and cranny of the hotel.
Mac rested against the stone exterior wall opposite him as the men set up either side of the main door to the hotel. Dezzy nodded and Mac reached out to turn the stiff handle and swing the door inwards, only after months of not being regularly used the wood was swollen and seized requiring the tactical application of boot sole to make good their entry.
They poured in, working effectively in spite of only being half of their team. They had trained for hours, days, months doing this. The list of men who had apparently been on the team to storm the Iranian embassy was, as Dezzy had put it many times, longer than he was. Both men had friends and acquaintances who had actually been there, but the fact remained that any member of any squadron could’ve been the ones rotated to the ‘black team’ at any time, which is why they trained so tirelessly in their famed killing house on the base they called home.
Dezzy went left and Mac right, both men using their MP5s if only for the familiarity of performing that work with that weapon, and their heavy torches illuminated the dark interior of the musty bar area, providing only a split second to react should their beams expose a target.
The bar was devoid of life. Mac knew that wouldn’t last long as the fridges behind the dust-covered mahogany were filled with bottles which would become the sole focus of many people if they took up residence there.
Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation Page 12
