Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation

by Ford, Devon C.

  He hit one plumb in the kneecap, blowing it off and causing the stumbling runner to falter and fall, leaving the lower portion of its left leg bare and exposed as the torn trouser leg slipped off it where it had been almost entirely severed at the joint.

  The grotesque sight curled his lip involuntarily but didn’t slow his progress at displaying his craft under lightning-fast circumstances. Three more fell to his next shots before the blessed sound of the big engine coming to life filled the docks.

  “Go,” he said to the marine beside him. “Get to the boat and cover their withdrawal.”

  He went, leaving Enfield alone to switch the small magazine from his rifle and load the last full one as he muttered darkly about the loss of his old rifle. He expended the remaining rounds into dead bodies and instead of wasting precious time reloading he switched, rolling onto his side to bring the small rifle into play.

  That made life a little harder because the magnification of his optic was a very poor second to the larger gun, but the semi-automatic weapon allowed for more shots to bridge the accuracy gap as he covered the marines back to the fishing boat as the larger craft lurched backwards away from the dock at a speed altogether too slow for his liking.

  “Come on, come on,” he hissed, unknowingly quoting his friend who stood on the prow of that boat pouring fire into the attackers just as the heavy gun went quiet. He stole a glance at the fishing boat, seeing Hampton limping away from the rail and the abandoned GPMG which he guessed was out of ammunition.

  Deciding that it was time to join the rout, he stood to sling the gun and drop down, lowering himself to hang by his fingertips and lessen the fall to reduce the risk of fatally turning an ankle, when heavy, metallic thuds announced the arrival of unwelcome company at his position.

  Looking up, knuckles white with pressure and his face white from fear, he found himself looking into the dead eyes of a hairless monstrosity baring its teeth at him.

  He let go, fingers extending to release him to fall to the ground just as the torso of the beast rippled under the onslaught of bullets hitting it.

  He landed hard, knocking the air from his lungs and rolling to stagger to his feet and run the short distance back to the boat, all the while ducking low to avoid the bullet sailing over his head. He threw himself over the rail as the boat’s engine surged to yank them back away from the dock, leaving him gasping for breath and lying painfully on his back with the two rifles beneath him.

  Looking up, he saw Hampton, eyes glistening with concern above a smile of pure, daredevil pride until those eyes flickered to the side and the smile vanished.

  He felt it then, the intense burning in his hand, and looked to see the deep gouge of thin flesh missing above the knuckles beside obvious teeth marks. Hampton reached for him, but Enfield scrambled away, digging into a pouch as the other marines scattered for a tourniquet which he applied desperately to his right arm.

  “Get back, lads,” Hampton ordered. “Give him some space.” He stepped closer but Enfield snapped at him to get back.

  “It’s alright, son,” Hampton said, unashamed tears rolling down his exposed cheeks and into his beard. “It’s alright.”

  Enfield slumped down, suddenly dizzy and at risk of overheating in spite of the icy wind as Johnson and Larsen barged through the frightened men not firing at the deadly creatures jumping at them from the docks. Enfield struggled to sit up, pulling weakly at the small rifle and failing to remove it. Johnson took the barrel in a large hand and lifted it away, thinking that the man sought a way to sit comfortably.

  Enfield looked up at Hampton, his own eyes filled with tears now, and spoke the most pointless words of his life.

  “Sorry, sarge,” he said, lips quivering.

  “Hush now, lad,” Hampton said as he grimaced to kneel down beside him. Enfield gripped the rifle in Johnson’s hand, his other grabbing the man’s webbing and pulling him closer.

  “You’ll be okay,” Johnson told him, not believing his own words but at a loss of what to say. Enfield, in spite of everything, managed a sad smile. He pushed the rifle closer to the man he’d shared the last months with, whispering his final message for the man to pass on before his back arched and his eyes rolled back into his head.

  “I’ll do it,” Hampton said as he drew Enfield’s own handgun. “Everyone else look away.”

  They did, with the exception of Johnson, Larsen and Lloyd, and all of them flinched at the sound of the single gunshot that rendered their friend safe.

  “What did he say to you?” Hampton asked as he stood, draping a wet camouflage smock over their friend’s face.

  “It was a message for…” Johnson coughed and swallowed to fight back the tears. “For Peter.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The boat journey to Reykjavík, chosen as the most likely port for the evacuation boat going west, began within the hour of them returning.

  Peter waited eagerly at the docks, lifted onto the shoulders of a squadron man and smiling broadly as the boats slowed to dock. The supplies had been brought out with all hands being put to good use, sitting proudly ready on the roadside to sustain them on their onwards journey, but when the small fishing boat turned to bump alongside the concrete pier Peter’s face dropped when he recognised the expressions of the people onboard.

  Johnson gave the news stiffly, almost formally, as if he didn’t trust himself to keep it together. Kimberley sobbed, her hand covering her mouth as she fell into Ellie who comforted her through her own tears as Amber asked what was happening.

  Peter crouched to her even though he wasn’t much taller, telling her simply that Enfield wasn’t going to come back.

  “Did the bad people get him?” she asked, surprising them with clear speech in place of her usual silence. Peter nodded sadly, letting the girl wrap her arms around his neck and comfort him.

  The boat was loaded, and apart from just a handful of people with no more heart to keep moving or else with the desire to remain on home soil whatever the cost, they set off in the damp-smelling boat to loop around the most easterly point of the island and turn north to begin their hard slog through the inhospitable North Atlantic.

  The mood was electric in some places, flat and exhausted in others, but the boat buzzed with the sense that they had a chance of getting out of there.

  The cabin Johnson had thrown his bag into, where Kimberley had added her own before finding somewhere for Ellie and Amber with Jessica in tow, was musty and damp after so long being uninhabited but the chair there was soft and allowed him to sink far enough into it that he could close his eyes and sleep for days.

  Peter sat with him, perched on the end of the bed, and when Johnson fought the overwhelming urge to sleep and opened his eyes, he almost swore at the boy for sneaking up on him.

  Just like Enfield.

  “Tell me what happened,” Peter said. “Now that the girls aren’t listening.” Johnson looked at him. He saw a small boy in desperate need of a bath and some clean clothes along with a haircut but behind that external appearance and behind his knowing eyes was something else.

  There was a hardness to him, and Johnson suspected that had existed in some part long before he’d ever met the boy but was also astute enough to know that he was in some small way responsible for who he was now and who he would grow to be. Weighing up all of that, he decided to tell him.

  “He was last onto the boat, making sure everyone else got out safely. One of the bald bast—” he cleared his throat before going on. “One of the new kind bit his hand a little, only a little, but he knew he was done for. He put a tourniquet on his arm, you know what one of them is?” Peter nodded. “Well he put one on his arm nice and tight, but the damage was done, you see? He was already infected.”

  “Did he turn?”

  “What? No. He… he died, and we made sure he didn’t come back.” Peter nodded again as Johnson reached over to the bed and lifted the little rifle, weighing it in his hands and seeming deep in thought.

 
; “Before… before he died, he asked me to give this to you.” Johnson’s eyes lifted to Peter’s, expecting to see a glimmer of excitement but finding only a sad resolve as if he knew the gift was a burden as much as anything else.

  “What did he say?” Peter asked, his voice somehow so innocent and yet mature at the same time.

  “He said… he said I was to give this to you. He said that nothing would stop them, ever, until every last one of them was wiped out. Annihilated was the word he used.”

  Peter nodded sagely as if ingesting every possible interpretation of his friend’s final words.

  “He said,” Johnson paused as his voice began to betray him, tapping directly into the emotions of the memory that was still as fresh as when it happened and likely to remain so forever. So involved was he in the recollection that he could smell the cold sting of the salty breeze.

  “He said you’d know what to do. He said you’d know to protect your own.”

  “Like he did,” Peter said, wiping one eye at a time.

  “Just like he did,” Johnson echoed.

  Peter stood, smiling a sad smile at the big man as if looking after him and not the other way around. He reached for the little rifle, pausing and asking for permission with his eyes for Johnson to nod his agreement to him. He lifted it, turning it over in his hands before slipping the sling over his shoulder for the barrel to protrude beside the worn grip of the shotgun still in his pack.

  “You need a replacement for your pitchfork anyway,” Johnson said, returning the same sad smile. Peter let out a huff of involuntary laughter before his face creased up a little with the effort of keeping himself together. Johnson hesitated for a moment before reaching out for the boy, placing a hand on his right shoulder and feeling the resistance of him leaning away.

  Johnson didn’t allow that, pulling the boy close and wrapping him into an encasing embrace where he finally allowed himself to be the child he deserved to be and began to cry. He sobbed until his tears ran wet patches into both of their clothes, with the big squadron sergeant major joining him as he shed a few silent tears but holding back the floodgates because the boy needed him then.

  He didn’t know how long he stayed there with Peter asleep on his lap after the tears or the release of pressure had exhausted him to the bone, but the world outside their small, round window grew darker before Kimberley returned and helped Johnson lift him onto the bed and slip his arms from the pack he never let get out of his reach.

  “I need some air,” Johnson said, resting the rifle beside the bed. “Do you mind staying with him? In case he wakes up?”

  “Of course not,” she said, cupping his bearded cheek with her hand. She dabbed a kiss on his lips and sat beside Peter to drape a blanket over him.

  Johnson walked out on deck, strolling to the very back of the boat to stare out at the darkening expanse of sky and water beyond their frothing wake. His hands gripped the railing tightly, his body still tense from the build-up of stress and emotion over so long he could barely recall any detail of his life before everything was torn apart.

  He breathed in, the air gasping between his lips as they involuntarily quivered making him clamp them shut to hold back the sob that threatened to break out. Breathing through his nose made it worse, his nostrils flaring as he failed to control the speed of the breaths he sucked in and out until he cracked, his chin dropping to his chest as he expelled a lungful of air and gritted his teeth to stop the rest of the emotion from forcing its way clear.

  He failed.

  The tears streamed down his face and into his beard as the uncontrollable sobs racked him and threatened to drive him to his knees. He gripped hard, clinging to the rail as if it was his only anchor on reality and his very existence.

  “Should I say something?” Palmer asked his friend, Lloyd, as the two men smoked on the small upper deck overlooking the boat’s stern.

  “I dare say your Sarn’t Major needs a moment alone, Olly.”

  “Still, it pains me so to see him like this…”

  “Let him work this one out,” Lloyd said, taking the final drag and tossing the end out into the gathering darkness of the open sea. “You mark my words; he’ll be right as rain by the morning.”

  Lieutenant Palmer stayed on the upper deck and hung back out of sight. Even Lloyd’s reassuring words weren’t sufficient to remove his concern for Johnson’s wellbeing, and after so long out in the cold away from the safety and comfort of everything familiar to him, Palmer could only begin to imagine what he was experiencing then.

  He lit another cigarette, not in celebration but borne of the need to do something distracting with his hands, and he watched from a safe elevation to make sure the SSM didn’t require any assistance.

  As he watched the man gather himself and stand tall once again, he realised that the concern was partly for himself. He wanted Johnson to acknowledge how far he’d come. He wanted him to be proud of the young officer he made it so clear he had no time for when everything first began.

  Standing alone on the deck as far as he could see, given how the already icy temperature had already sunk lower with the setting sun, he took a rare moment to look inside himself.

  No longer was he merely playing at soldiering. No longer did he view his rank as a stepping-stone to a higher position that was in itself, just a means to an end outside of a military setting.

  With that realisation, with that comfort in his own skin, he found an acceptance and a calling he knew was as much a part of him as his very bones. With that comfort came the respect he spent so long demanding, proving to him after all that it was earned and not freely given.

  He felt that he was no longer a useless, if well-dressed, part of the machine but had become a leader and had learned how to earn the respect of others. He wanted Johnson to see all of that, but his newly acquired maturity also told him to leave the man alone in his grief.

  Johnson returned to the small cabin as it became fully dark outside, feeling his way along the unfamiliar corridor and groping his way inside to see Kimberley and Peter curled up on the bed together.

  He eased himself back into the chair, sinking down and stretching out one leg at a time to rest his boot heels on the edge of the small cabinet attached to one bulkhead, and with a clear mind, fell asleep within a handful of deep breaths.

  He woke to the heavy vibration and sound of the ship’s horn as his eyes flew wide to take in the bright circle of cloudless sky through the porthole window. His back and legs screamed at him in protest at having spent hours in the same position and taking the opportunity to remind him of his age.

  Kimberley and Peter were gone, as were their weapons, which forced Johnson to shake his head to clear the grogginess of sleep and pull open the door ready to storm out and investigate.

  He stopped, door handle gripped in his right hand, as he stared into the eyes of Kimberley carefully transporting two tin mugs with steam emanating from them as she balanced her body against the motion of the boat.

  “Tea,” she said, handing him one of the mugs. “Two sugars and strong.” Johnson’s fear and concern dissipated faster than the steam coming from the hot tea.

  “Thanks,” he said as he cradled the mug and smiled. “What was all the noise about?”

  “They’ve sighted land, apparently,” she said as she sat on the chair still warm from his body. “Mister Palmer wants everybody ready in case the, err, welcome isn't friendly.”

  “Did you tell the Captain I’d be there?” he asked, reversing his momentum as he was halfway to sitting on the bed when she spoke.

  “The other Mister Palmer,” she said with a knowing smile.

  “Oh,” he said, hesitating for a moment before deciding to simply take the tea with him. He paused in the doorway, turning back to bend down and kiss her on the cheek before disappearing out to put his work face back on.

  Finding the fighting men being arranged on the railings as if defending the town walls of some ancient town, Johnson aimed for the obvi
ous command group near the prow to find out what was happening.

  He exchanged nods with the special forces personnel before facing the two junior officers who, back in the world before, would be looking to him for guidance. They didn’t need it, evidently, as the plan was set and ready to be put into motion as soon as they neared land.

  “Where are we looking to make port?” Johnson asked. Palmer silently deferred to Larsen.

  “Reykjavíc,” she said simply. “on the south west part of the country and most likely port to be used to evacuate west, we think.”

  “Any radio contact with anyone else?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Palmer answered.

  “And what,” Johnson asked as he took a step closer and lowered his voice, “is the plan if this place isn't an option?”

  “North west to Greenland,” Palmer told him confidently. “After that we break out the oars and row the damned Atlantic if we’re forced to.”

  Johnson couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm even if he knew the words were meaningless. He knew they’d have to play everything by ear without the support and resources needed, so finding some way to refuel and resupply to make the journey themselves was an option, if it wasn’t for the expected naval blockade preventing the spread of the infection in that direction.

  “Very good,” Johnson answered. “Where would you like me?” Palmer turned to face Lloyd, who gave instructions to his sergeant.

  “Bill? Take the aft starboard?” Hampton nodded and limped away to supervise the men posted to the rear of the boat.

  “Mister Johnson,” Palmer said. “I wonder if you could bolster the men towards the front of the boat?” The way he spoke, so polite and effortlessly respectful but still firm put Johnson instantly in mind of his older brother.

  “My pleasure, Sir,” he said, turning to assess the men and instantly seeing one much shorter than the others and carrying a rifle that was far from those regularly issued.