“There is not a country on the earth, either now or before this is happening, that would not do the same. Why risk the safety of an entire nation for a few survivors?”
“Isn't our country valuable enough?” Ellie asked. “Haven’t we still got, I don’t know, resources or something they’ll want?”
“In time, maybe,” Bufford said quietly. “England is tactically important to Europe.”
“Meaning what?” she snapped, speaking more harshly than she meant to because she was upset and stressed.
“Meaning that, one day, people will want to take back the countries we lost and repopulate them,” Bufford answered with patience. “Those that aren’t radioactive, that is.”
“So what do we do?” Ellie demanded, her voice wavering as she came close to tears.
“Isn't that an easy answer?” Philippa asked. “I mean, it’s easy for me ‘coz I’m going home one way or another, but to me the answer’s pretty straightforward, you know?”
“How do you mean?” Jean Pierre asked.
“I mean, no offence, but your country’s gone, right? Overrun months ago. So you need a new home, and there’s one on offer. Me? If this was my home, I’d be looking for a new one.”
“And if we were in Canada and there was outbreak there, we’d be getting home however we could, and if there were a few Canadians along the way needing a home, we’d take them in, wouldn’t we?” Johnson added, simplifying the reverse scenario to make it clear for Ellie.
“Fine,” she said. “If that’s what we’re doing.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” Johnson echoed, glancing at each face in turn until he received any sign he could interpret as agreement or support or even apathy so long as it wasn’t open disagreement.
TWENTY-ONE
After a night of rest, for most of them at least, the morning rounds to check the three checkpoint barricades were met with welcome. Lieutenant Palmer had recruited the assistance he required, scavenged in homes and the few shops alike to gather the resources he needed, and met the men after daybreak with carefully carried pots of hot soup made from a mixture of packets and tins so as to be unrecognisable, but to men who had been awake and alert during the night in shifts it was hot, salty and gratefully received.
“Drink up, chaps,” Palmer said, smiling at them and seeing the light stripes of teeth returned. “Busy day ahead, work’s not over yet, eh?”
The positivity he felt radiating back at him from the men warmed his heart as much as the soup did their stomachs, and even the thought of going into dangerous work couldn’t dampen their spirits.
Lloyd joined him, along with a gaggle of civilian volunteers eager to work, and the two men went over the day’s plan.
“You’re sure you don’t mind staying back and keeping things ship-shape here?” Lloyd asked Palmer, who took it upon himself to maintain the security of their peninsula.
“Not at all. I’ll keep the defences manned and my reactionary force in the centre, ready should they be required. Some of our civilians are eager to assist, although not all of them are brave enough to go beyond the barricades.”
Lloyd nodded appreciatively, knowing that the younger and far less experienced man laid out his plans so that the marine wasn’t forced to ask what contingencies he’d considered putting in place. The civilians Palmer mentioned were already busy stripping buildings of more furniture capable of raising the barricades which would reduce the number of soldiers required to defend them, the plan being to eventually post pairs of sentries and have the majority of the men billeted close by to be able to rouse themselves and reinforce wherever they were most needed. That barricade, it was noted, would need to extend into the shallow water if they were to be fully protected, but for now the majority of the defenders were posted there, at their Checkpoint Charlie, and it was utilised as the entrance and exit.
Lloyd, while this was all happening, would lead a smaller group of people outside their enclave to begin systematically clearing the nearest buildings and searching them for supplies, which the civilians would be carting back and forth to their adopted headquarters.
The first few buildings went smoothly, despite the obvious nervousness of men breaking into buildings that could hold a trapped Screecher or two, but when none were immediately apparent, the mood dropped to one of careful professionalism.
“Coming through,” called a voice from behind them as they prepared to enter another building. Lloyd turned to see the two SAS men, characteristically absent from the rest of their group overnight, walking through their group dressed for war and festooned with weaponry.
“Gentlemen,” Lloyd greeted them, offering a hand to Mac who shook it curtly. “Off for a spot of sightseeing?”
“Aye,” Mac grumbled. “Seeing if we can find out where the bastards went.”
That concern was one they all shared, even if they were happy to not be faced with hordes of rotting monsters. Dwelling on the conundrum invariably left them expecting a crowd of the beast to descend on them at any moment.
“Good luck to you,” Lloyd told them, “and shout if you need us.”
“Likewise,” Dezzy offered, leading the way through to press ahead east in search of answers.
“Still got that odd feeling?” Dezzy asked Mac.
“I do.”
“Me too.”
They walked on, side by side, sticking to the centre of the coastal road in stark contrast to the way they were trained to conduct warfare. Occasionally, one would point out something of interest to the other and they would inspect it, searching for clues as to what happened there.
“It clearly went down here,” Mac said. “I mean, old blood everywhere and a ghost town?”
“Definitely,” Dezzy responded, “still doesn’t explain where the bastards have gone though, does it?”
It didn’t, but a large building towards the end of the coastal strip began to unravel the mysteries for them. The two men moved tactically, guns up to cover one another as they followed their noses to the open fire doors on one side. The building was big, something that made sense when they read the faded signage announcing it to be the town hall, even if two letters were missing.
Inside the smell was rank. Old, musty decay. A layer of dust that seemed somehow infectious and an overriding sensation in the back of their throats that forced a scowl of disgust onto their faces.
Neither man said a word, communicating only by looks and nods of the head as both knew what to do. They moved inside, recoiling at the stench so much that they were forced to withdraw to the fresh air after only a few seconds.
Coughing and spitting to try and clear their mouths of the rank odour, a noise from just inside made them both freeze where they stood. The noise came again; a raspy, wheezing sound of weak desperation that no living creature could utter.
“I’ll do it,” Dezzy said, handing over the shotgun to heft the suppressed MP5 into position on instinct to minimise their noise profile. Stepping inside, he held his breath while heavy torchlight illuminated the fetid gloom, until the beam landed on a pair of legs. He followed the limbs upwards, seeing the owner face down with its upper body angled oddly upwards until he stepped to the side and recognised with revulsion what had happened.
Speared through the abdomen, the legs twisted and trampled into ruin, the Screecher was impaled on the legs of an upturned stack of plastic chairs. Unable to gain purchase with its shattered legs and suspended too high from the ground to grab hold of anything with the twitching claws of its hands, it lay there rotting slowly.
Dezzy’s torch beam rested on the face, revealing blackened lips and gums beneath a pocked and sallow face with cheeks so sunken they appeared hollow, as the milky, blind eyes stared directly into the light unaffected as a living person would be.
Fighting the urge to release his breath, Dezzy fired a single shot into the skull of the mess at his feet to end the sucking, slurping sound of the wheezes it made as it laboured in vain to cry out the sound of their fee
ding frenzy.
Stepping outside to release the air stored in his lungs and gasp in a fresh replacement, he briefly described to Mac what he’d seen.
“Figures,” he answered, his eyes looking up and away to the east. “Looks like they were all in here for some reason, and something happened that way.” He pointed with the business end of the shotgun out of town, and when he looked closely, Dezzy could see it.
Smears on the road. Darker stains on white stone and pale concrete. A car trampled with starred glass that must have collapsed under the pressure of the roof being walked over by multiple feet.
They followed the weak sign, moving in an arrow-straight line to the east, still with no indication of movement anywhere. That careful progress continued for a mile through the eastern edge of the town before giving way to open fields of the classic, windswept Scottish island view.
The trail was easier to follow here, as the swathe of trampled grass formed a slice of mud over the landscape that could be followed by a child. The few obstacles to the path now that they were away from the urban area were evidently no match for the crowd of zombies which, given the size of their tracks as they spread out in the open, must have numbered in the hundreds. Fences were down, trampled into the mud to hold on to scraps of clothing as if trying to leave clues to their destruction.
Almost three miles later, when the tracks met the more robust obstacle of a high fence ringing a small airfield, the two men paused on a bluff of higher ground to observe the landscape.
“Didn’t we have a base here?” Dezzy asked, pointing his binoculars at the uniform rows of low buildings. Mac guessed the ‘we’ part wasn’t mean specifically as their own regiment but more generalised to encompass the British forces as a whole.
“Crabs did,” Mac answered, taking his own binoculars away from his face and looking down in thought. “At least I think they did.”
“Might be some good stuff down there,” Dezzy offered, as if he could carry any more weaponry.
“Maybe later,” Mac answered. “You see they went around?”
Dezzy could see, as the troughs of mud flowed around the perimeter fence to continue east as though the small horde bypassed the entire airfield after figuring out that the fence wouldn’t collapse like the previous obstacles had.
“Come on,” Mac said, aiming straight for the fence and pulling out a tool from a pouch on his webbing to begin clipping the wire and create a hole large enough for them both to squeeze through. He turned, pulling the fence together as Dezzy used the twists of discarded metal to link up the fence again and turn the teeth of the pliers as the fence came back together.
It weakened the fence, which was a very minor flaw as they might need the enclosed base in the near future, but the unnecessary detour the Screechers had taken would add a mile to their journey which was sped up by their straight walk down an abandoned runway leading directly towards the sea. When they reached the coast, they stared east where the tip of the island they were on was set against the backdrop of low cloud that broke in places, exposing the stretch of the North Atlantic separating them from the mainland.
“See that?” Mac asked, pointing at the clear trail leading to the right of the base where it continued towards the sea.
“Yeah, but what about that?” Dezzy answered, pointing the other way to where the part of the horde to have gone via the northern edge of the perimeter fence disappeared where their route met the sea.
“What? They just walked into the water?” Mc asked incredulously.
“Looks like it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Dezzy turned to shoot his friend a quizzical look, as if to remind him that very little they’d done for months made any sense.
“Aye,” Mac agreed with a sigh, understanding what the face being pulled at him meant. “But what wold make them all just break out and walk off the edge of the island like that?”
“Remember the story about that mad bastard with the helicopter?”
“The pied-piper? Aye, I see how that would work, but why? Why here?”
“You’re looking the gift horse in the mouth,” Dezzy told him. “They’re gone, bar any of the bastards trapped in houses, and we’re alright for now.”
Lloyd’s team worked tirelessly until the early afternoon. Houses bearing unwelcome surprises, either in the form of suicide or where trapped infected had to be dispatched, were sealed up and marked with a red cross of spray paint to indicate that nobody should enter.
The other houses were plentifully stocked, which appeared to be a peculiarity of living in so isolated a location, and the tinned food was carted back inside their barricade and hot meals prepared. Much as they had done back at the country house so long ago, they used flour to make bread and ovens ran constantly to provide the means they required to restore their strength.
Dezzy and Mac returned, quietly spreading the word for the others to join them in the hotel. As they stripped off their weapons, waiting for the two lieutenants to join them, they accepted coffee to warm and restore them until everyone was assembled.
Filling them in on the discovery, the five men discussed possible causes and came up with nothing concrete other than to liken the assumed behaviour to the swarms they had all encountered early on during the outbreak.
“I rather suspect we won’t discover the cause,” lieutenant Palmer said, “but as the sun is shining, I believe, gentlemen, that we should hasten to make as much hay as possible.”
TWENTY-TWO
The ferry port at Mallaig came into view through the eerie skein of early morning Scottish mist. The glimpses of so much abandoned armour stung Johnson’s pride deeply, until an unfamiliar silhouette of a large hull caught his breath in his throat.
“The bloody hell…?”
“Is that what I think it is?” Daniels asked, appearing beside him.
“Don’t see how it could be,” Johnson answered, feeling a nudge on his left hip to look down and see Peter elbowing him to offer up a small set of binoculars. He took them, thanking the boy, and lifting them to his eyes to reacquire the distant shape of the main battle tank to confirm his suspicions.
“It’s a bleedin’ Leopard,” he said with amazement in his voice. “How…?”
“Castlemorton,” Bufford said over their shoulders, having heard the exchange but unable to see the coast clearly unaided. “It was a contingency plan I saw before we came ashore again. Poor buggers were supposed to be sent out to stop a massive swarm down south somewhere.”
“That’s a crappy training deployment,” Daniels said, feeling genuinely sorry for the displaced men on the German tank group.
“My guess is these were the poor buggers sent to reinforce us back on the island,” Johnson said. “The ones who intercepted that swarm heading south for us, remember?”
“Hold,” Enfield called out, his voice low and controlled but somehow sounding raised by virtue of only being more intense than loud.
“What have you got?” Johnson asked.
“Lima,” Peter said. Johnson turned to look at him, seeing the boy leaning into the smaller of Enfield’s rifles rested over the rail. “On the third tank from the left.”
Johnson adjusted his view, finding the shrouded hulk of armour and not feeling the need to correct Peter that the Sultan tracked vehicle wasn’t technically a tank. To a boy of ten they were all tanks, and it didn’t matter one bit anymore.
He saw it then. Crouched, knees apart and feet together looking more like an ape than a human. It was bald, just as the other two they’d encountered were, and it watched them just as intently as they watched it.
“Not a Lima,” he muttered. “Echo.”
“Orders?” Enfield asked, his eye to the scope and voice calm. Johnson didn’t hesitate before giving permission.
“Fire when re—”
Bang!
The shot echoed over the cold water, distorting in the distance as the report dissipated. The sound died away to nothing as those w
atching through magnifying optics saw the slumped body of the thing slide from the top of the hull minus most of its skull.
Enfield stood, eyes still glued to the coastline in search of another target, and his body language held none of the bravado one would expect from a man who had just made that shot. His expression bore no pride either. No celebration or smugness about his achievement or ability, only a resigned, professional sadness that it was necessary.
“More coming,” Peter warned, seeing what they all had but being first off the mark with a verbal report. Johnson saw them. They emerged from in between the wagons, clambering up on top of them with more power and speed than the usual kind.
“Just like back at the last place,” Hampton growled, swinging the barrel of the GPMG to face land.
“Don’t bother, Bill,” Johnson said, turning to Jean Pierre at the sheltered wheelhouse. “Get us out of here. Go north and we’ll take a look at Skye.”
The boat surged gently, burping out a cloud of unburnt diesel as they moved away to leave a gathering crowd of interested Limas watching them from the shore.
“So these Echos,” Ellie asked to break the silence after the mainland was far enough away that no details were clear to them. “They’re like, what? Super Limas?”
“The Americans are calling them ‘Enhanced Infected’,” Johnson repeated after learning the facts, as he had been told them at least, from the SEALs. “He didn’t say as much, but I get the impression there’s a bit more going on than we’ll know.”
“Always is,” Bufford answered darkly.
“Weren’t we supposed to get some fuel there?” Peter asked loudly, changing the subject as he’d caught up later than the adults had with current events.
“We were,” Johnson told him, “only it’s probably not a good idea to do that with the hungry, hungry hippos looking over our shoulders.” Peter chuckled in spite of the gravity of the situation, asking where they could get more fuel.
Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation Page 14
