Meeting back up in the centre of the open area, they moved together into the kitchen at the rear, finding that just as abandoned as the bar, before they lifted the heavy trap door to cast a light into the cellar only to be assaulted by the overwhelmingly strong smell of yeasty ales.
“Upstairs,” Mac said, taking the lead this time as they crabbed up the creaking steps to the first floor and systematically opened each of the small hotel’s rooms to find a similar story in every single one. The second and third floor told the same story, and the two men returned to the bar in disbelief at their luck.
Dezzy went behind the bar, pulling off two packets of dry roasted from the cardboard display hanging from a hook to toss one to Mac, who caught it and tore off the top with his teeth to pour half the contents into his mouth in one gulp.
Chewing noisily, bits of nut dropping from his wild beard, he made appreciative noises for the tasty snack.
“Aw,” he mumbled through a mouthful, “that’s the ticket.”
“Something to wash it down with?” Dezzy offered, inspecting the label of a cider bottle by peering down the length of his nose as if he was a long-sighted connoisseur.
“Later,” Mac answered, meaning it. “Let’s go get the others.”
They went out of the rear of the hotel, finding a pleasant but overgrown beer garden and a very healthy supply of coal in a concrete bunker. Dezzy silently pointed to it on the way past for Mac’s attention in case he hadn’t seen it, looping the way around the block and seeing no evidence of any infected by the time they reached the waterfront again.
“Want me to stay while you go back out?” Dezzy offered, one hand on the Soviet rifle. Mac took a long breath to consider his answer first, electing to climb onto the metal railings separating the tiny beach from the road and waving both arms over his head as if trying to signal an aircraft. Dezzy got his meaning and flashed his torch on and off in the direction of the fishing boat before a puff of diesel smoke from the vertical exhaust gave them their answer.
NINETEEN
“Is that what I think it is?” Hampton asked, extending a hand out in front of him to point into the darkness ahead. Johnson looked, using the trick he’d learned years before to be able to see something in the dark by specifically not looking at it. Focusing to the sides, he detected movement – a different shade of black moving from left to right in the dark – and his ears detected the faintest of muffled engine sounds.
“Depends on what you think it is, but I think it’s some of Buffs’ lot.”
His professional interest piqued, Bufford leaned into the dark to make his own assessment and coming up with the same conclusion as Johnson had.
“That seems like a covert infil to me,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it’s my lot. Could be yours,” he added to Hampton who shrugged in the weak light cast by the tiny bulb showing on the deck of their boat.
They’d anchored offshore a way, eager to be outside of walking distance to anything not requiring breathable air but cautious as to not be so far out that they’d attract the attention of the naval blockade which might decide to sink them.
“My lot wouldn’t use one boat,” Hampton said, knowing that the more elite of their kind opted for smaller teams than the company strength Hampton would expect for any meaningful action.
“Want me to go ashore and take a look?” Enfield asked, startling the three men who hadn’t heard their pet ghost approach.
“Not on your own you won't,” Buffs answered and tightened his gear on his body in preparation of work.
“I can go with him,” a small voice offered from behind them, making them all jump again because Enfield’s understudy was proving to be just as unnaturally stealthy as the man himself.
“First time out?” Bufford said kindly. “Best not make it a night op, lad,” he added, placing a meaty hand on Peter’s head. He twisted aside, avoiding what he felt was another attempt to patronise him.
“I’m not a little kid, you know,” he complained. “I’ve probably spent more time on my own than anyone else has.”
Awkward looks were exchanged among the adults until Johnson stepped closer to speak to Peter. Despite the huge size difference between them, Johnson didn’t stoop or bend down to speak to him as the boy was evidently feeling small as it was.
“Not tonight,” he said as if giving an order. “I want you on stag at dawn, so you need to sleep tonight, understood?”
It worked, and Peter drew himself up to accept his orders with dignity before walking away.
“That was handled very well,” Larsen said from the prow of the boat, startling them for a third time.
“Jesus fu— will everyone stop doing that?” Johnson growled.
“You need two more in the boat if two are going to the shore,” Larsen went on, demonstrating that she’d been there long enough to hear their conversations.
Bufford and Enfield slipped over the side of the fishing boat and into the small boat they towed behind them after a brief discussion between the five of them on deck about what actions to take in different scenarios.
Johnson and Larsen went with them and being the only one not accustomed to covert infiltration tactics but being comfortable with engines of all kinds, the SSM took it upon himself to drive.
Depositing the two men into the shallow water, the boat slipped back out to slightly deeper water to await the signal to retrieve them.
“You hear this noises?” Larsen whispered. Johnson did, opening his mouth a fraction to aid his hearing and making out the distinctive sound that their own weapons made, only muted further by distance.
Supressed weapons were never truly silent, much to the contrary of what television programmes showed people, and the coughing spits of gunfire grew louder on the breeze before stopping altogether.
Neither of them in the boat said anything as both were too disciplined, but unintelligible shouts from further up the beach were drowned out by a single, splitting report of a heavy rifle that could only have belonged to their sniper.
Johnson started the tiny outboard motor and revved it, surging their little boat along the coast where the faint light from the landward horizon exposed a team of soldiers huddled in formation on the beach. Johnson saw them just as they turned to see him, making out the shape of their own boat.
Johnson stood and cleared his throat, movement to his right catching his attention as Enfield and Bufford ran towards them
“You fuckers lost?” he announced loudly, seeing shocked faces in the pre-dawn gloom swing to point in his direction. “Get in your tub and follow us, you silly bastards.”
Lieutenant Palmer walked the defences, feeling like a man of his rank would have done forty years prior somewhere on the continent, only instead of the advancing Axis troops his men would potentially be facing a more mindless foe.
“Good work,” he said aloud, commenting on the height and evident sturdiness of the furniture barricade severing easy access to the part of the small town they’d spent the day clearing and occupying.
“Bugger all getting through this, sir,” a young man answered proudly. Palmer smiled, seeing that the man who spoke was a marine, one of Lloyd’s men, and given that the man was easily five years Oliver Simpkins-Palmer’s senior, the respect and deference shown pleased him greatly.
It pleased him because he’d earned it, and had forgone any kind of sheltered, ideological assumption that the officer’s rank on his tattered uniform meant that any kind of respect was a God-given right.
“Quite right you are, Lance Corporal,” Palmer answered, making his rounds to the men posted to the strong points. He distributed cigarettes and chocolate bars, bags of crisps and cans of fizzy drink – each time with a promise that the men could get their hands on something a little stronger just as soon as they could start rotating people to stand down.
Each checkpoint, labelled alpha, bravo and Charlie, was headed up by an NCO and staffed by men of both forces. The last visit Palmer made, to the already famously enti
tled checkpoint Charlie, was the most exposed as it was open to the south and suffered the seaward winds.
“Ho, ho, hooo,” Palmer bellowed in his best bass baritone, mimicking Santa Claus as he reached into the sack he was carrying to pull out the treats the men – in his opinion – so desperately deserved.
“Any hot grub, Sir?” one man asked.
“Fuck me,” a marine said wistfully as he leaned back on a stack of wooden crates and pulled the foil wrapping from the top of a cigarette packet, “I’d bloody kill for a fried egg banjo right now.”
“You’d kill for one on a normal day, you fat fucker,” another man goaded him.
“Gentlemen,” Palmer said as he finished dishing out the packaged morale, “I shall endeavour to find the requisite components and provide you all with the appropriate sustenance you so rightly deserve.”
Stunned looks were aimed at him until the marine Lloyd utilised as his senior man interpreted the officer’s words.
“Mister Palmer’s saying he’ll find bread and eggs so you can have your banjos.” The confused faces cracked open into overt smiles of appreciation, leaving the lieutenant to return to Hotel Headquarters feeling satisfied.
Stepping inside and stamping his boots on the mat, he took off the heavy coat he had borrowed to return it to the hook by the door, feeling the gratifying heat of the open fire already set and roaring in the lounge.
A handful of the civilians had occupied the houses along that street and supplies were being stockpiled. Lloyd walked past him, handing out a glass as he went, which Palmer took unthinkingly.
“Senior officers’ meeting,” he said, breezing past to leave Palmer following. He did, stepping into the lounge area to find the welcome sight of his older brother sitting up in an old, wing-backed chair beside a roaring fire as a woman spooned something into his mouth.
“Gotta love these isolated places,” the royal marine medic said from his position leaning on the wall behind the lieutenant. He had a pint mug of dark beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Palmer raised an eyebrow to invite the meaning behind his words.
“Doctor’s surgeries up here are like small hospitals. The gear they’ve got makes a field hospital look understocked. The Captain’s had some IV antibiotics and should be back on his feet in a few days, so long as he doesn’t overdo it.”
“Corporal Sealey,” Palmer said formally, “you have my most humble, personal thanks for your outstanding treatment of my brother.”
“You’m alright, Lieutenant,” Sealey said with a smirk. “Gets me out of the cold work outside.” He added a wink and left the lounge, letting Palmer lay eyes on his brother who, for the first time in almost two weeks had some colour in his cheeks, thanks largely to the inferno roaring beside him.
“Chicken soup, Olly,” Julian Palmer said, still with a hoarse weakness to his words. “The only known cure for all ailments.” He smiled, opening up again for another spoonful of broth to be fed to him.
Palmer junior looked down to his hand for the first time, adjusting his grip almost unconsciously as he recognised the shape and weight of a brandy glass for the first time and his manners didn’t permit him to hold it like a mug of tea. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled deeply, releasing a satisfied aaah as his nose informed his brain that he was holding a generous measure of the good stuff.
“I shall leave the chicken soup to you, Captain,” he said with a smile as he raised his glass in a toast. “I believe this will sustain me for now. Your health,” he finished, hearing two civilians and the marine lieutenant echo his words.
He didn’t take a seat, mainly because he was so tired that he didn’t trust himself to stay awake and his chores were far from completed. He didn’t have the support of the staunch senior NCOs their group needed so desperately to have the world run smoothly, so he had to perform many of the necessary tasks himself.
As if recognising that, his brother locked eyes with him and somehow conveyed the knowledge that he had done well, and that Julian was proud of him, quite possibly for the first time in their lives.
TWENTY
The US navy SEALs didn’t scramble for their boat like frightened amateurs, instead they followed their orders as three men stood sentry to cover two of them carefully rolling the body of the creature, the enhanced infected or echo as the powers that be were calling them, into a rubber body bag for transport back to who knew where.
Pushing off from the beach, they paddled backwards before starting up their own engine and looping to follow the unexpected arrivals back to the outline of a small boat to cut power and drift alongside them.
The same heavy voice called down to them.
“Sergeant Major Dean Johnson,” he said, providing his unit and branch before waiting for the information to be offered as to who the men were.
“Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Miller, United States Navy,” Miller said, keeping the facts succinct.
“You coming up, or do we chat like this?” Johnson asked, not hiding the sarcasm from his voice.
“Orders,” Miller said. “Infection risk and all…”
“Infection risks?” a female voice snapped in an exasperated laugh. “You think we are the infection risks when you are carrying with you one of them?”
“Again, Ma’m, orders,” Miller said. Their boats were drifting slightly apart, and his team were using the oars to maintain that small gap.
“Orders for what?” the bigger man asked again. When Miller didn’t answer he laughed, asking, “Who are we going to tell?”
“Look, Sergeant Major,” Miller began, “I don’t know who you’ve got on there but I—”
“I’ve got two royal marines, an SBS sergeant, only one of my entire bloody squadron, a Norwegian commando, a merchant sailor, two women and three kids,” he barked, rattling off their crew roster before adding, “oh, and a fucking cat with a damn sight more than nine bloody lives!”
Miller couldn’t help himself. He chuckled at the outright stupidity of the final addition. He turned to face his men, seeing a mixture of emotions on their faces, and sighed. He knew as well as they did that bringing these people back to the fleet was a non-starter. The outright ban on any UK citizen being evacuated was literally part of their mission orders, when they specified that contact with survivors was to be avoided at all costs.
But Miller saw leeway in those orders, and he knew his team would give the reports he needed them to give if called upon.
If he couldn’t bring them back, then the least he could do was to point them in the right direction.
“Sergeant Major, I talk to you in private?” he said, nodding his head at the boat tethered to the rear rail. Johnson looked at him, then at the boat, then back at the others around him before stepping to the aft of their boat and swinging a leg over the side.
Miller’s crew expertly manoeuvred their craft close enough for Miller to hop across and Johnson took the controls to let the dinghy drop back out of earshot of all of them.
“Just hear me out,” Miller said, “and ask questions after, okay?” Johnson nodded once.
“We’re here on orders to collect a sample, dead or alive, of an Echo.” Johnson opened his mouth to interrupt but Miller raised his voice slightly to carry on talking over him.
“The US government wanted a sample, and thanks to your guy, we have that sample. There’s an official policy now regarding Britain, and the entire UK has been deemed as irretrievable. I’m talking scorched earth. No refugees, no evacuation, because my guess is that whatever that thing is,” he jabbed a finger at the other dinghy, “means that this island can’t be taken back easily. This infection, it’s… evolving somehow.”
Miller swallowed, his body threatening to expose the mistruth because telling this man that he knew exactly how the virus had mutated wasn’t going to help a damn thing.
“You get what I’m saying to you, right? The US won't accept any refugees from here. None. At all.”
The silence stretched out until
Miller realised Johnson was waiting for him to finish or at least say he was finished.
“Questions?”
“A few,” Johnson said. “Where did you get the gen on these Echos?”
“A bunch of military guys made it to a secure base off the west coast of Scotland. Some of your spec ops people, a bunch of marines and armour guys with a load of civilians. They called the faster ones Limas.”
“We called them Screechers to begin with,” Johnson said quietly, “back when it all kicked off. Then the faster ones started showing up, only they had a good hundred or so of the Screechers following them like leaders, so we called them that: L for leader. Limas. Miller…” Johnson hesitated, as if he didn’t want to know the answer to the question he was about to ask but was going to ask it anyway. “Miller, what happened to those men?”
“Oh shit,” Miller said, “you were with them?” Johnson nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry man, there was… there was an outbreak on the island. Not many people made it out.” Johnson sucked in a sharp breath through his nose making his moustache quiver slightly. He let it out slowly as if controlling himself before speaking again.
“This is usually the part where you give me the good news,” he said quietly, as if he didn’t trust his voice not to crack.
“Iceland. You reckon you can make it there?” Johnson didn’t know, not without checking with Jean Pierre, but he’d damn well make it happen. He nodded.
“They’re evacuating, and it’s taking some time to get everyone out. If you can make it there, you might be able to get out. Come to the USA and start a new life. Forget all this shit ever went down.”
“Bastards. They can’t do that!” Ellie exploded when Johnson had filled them all in on the facts.
“Really?” Larsen asked. “You think your Prime Minister would not do this if the outbreak was in the Americas?” Ellie looked at her, then at Johnson who nodded, then back to Larsen who reinforced her point.
Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation Page 13
