It clearly meant something to her and while it would inconvenience me, I could see ways to get around the rules without outright breaking them. So, I shrugged and nodded.
“Right, we can maybe-“ she cut off as the radio the Admiral held burst to life.
He listened intently for a moment before looking up at us, expression troubled.
“What is it?” Lily asked.
“We’ve lost a drone. Charlie is sending another to cover its area, but something could easily slip through to the island before it gets there.”
“How did we lose a drone?”
“Sniper,” Isaac said grimly. “Erin could make a shot like that easily. Best prepare. We’re gonna have company.”
Chapter 13
I couldn’t help my irritation. The man was definitely not one for following rules, but even so, he would have to learn how to. I couldn’t spend my days telling everyone else they had to and then ignore his breaking of any rule he chose.
Part of the problem was that I could see the wildness in him. It had been growing since the earliest days when he had shed his thin veneer of civility and embraced the insanity of the battle for survival in the apocalypse.
For nearly two years that wildness had been allowed to grow and like Pandora with her box of all the world’s evils, I wasn’t sure that what had been let loose in the man I loved could ever be reined back in.
It was a problem that I wrestled with in the darker hours before the dawn, as I watched him sleep, wondering if the next day would be the one where he realised that a safe little island wasn’t for him.
But, I pushed that irritation to one side as we rushed back to the command centre, and I dragged my thoughts back to more immediate problems. It would be the best place to find out what had happened. At the door, the Admiral went in first and I was stopped by a hand on my arm.
“What?”
“If someone has broken through and come ashore, they will head for the power or water plants. I’ll take some of my people to the water plant.”
I stared at him a moment, not sure why he was telling me and then it dawned on me and I frowned at his grinning face.
“Yes, fine. I’ll radio ahead so you don’t get any problems.”
His grin widened and I leant in and planted a too brief kiss on his lips before pulling away. I ignored how Gregg rolled his eyes before he shared a smirk with Isaac.
“Send more people to the power plant,” Ryan instructed as he turned to leave. “And the food depots.”
Once again, I ignored that fact that he was issuing orders despite me being the one in charge and just shook my head before moving into the building.
Inside the main command room, electric heaters had been set up to provide some defence against the winter's chill. Techs hurried about or huddled over their terminals, hard at work. A couple of soldiers in the blue uniform of the CDF moved about, offering hot drinks and sandwiches.
Charlie, wheeled herself from one station to another, barking orders and issuing demands. She rarely left the command centre and had even set herself up with a small living area in one of the old offices.
She had reasoned that she had little real mobility and wasn’t interested in suffering the indignity of being carried up and down the stairs whenever she went out. Plus, she had her drones and those were her eyes, showing her the world in a way few others would ever see it.
So, she lived and worked in the old office building. She had turned an office into a nest of sorts, filled with all manner of electronic junk that she worked on in between sleeping and watching over her staff.
It made sense to be honest, and since I couldn’t seem to go more than an hour or so without being called back for some emergency, I was considering setting up camp there myself.
“So, what happened?” I asked as I joined Admiral Stuart, Minister Shepherd, Cass and Samuel by the centre table.
“Someone shot down Larry!”
I gave a quizzical look to Charlie as she wheeled herself up to the table. “Larry?”
“Yeah, I named them, so what?” She glared around the table at each of us in turn, daring anyone to laugh. “You gonna do something about it?”
“Perhaps if you told us what happened,” Admiral Stuart said with a great deal more patience than I had.
My children were in danger as much as anyone else was from these invaders and I would not allow anything to happen to them.
“Larry was following his usual flight path and then wasn’t. There’s no images of who shot him down and I’ve reviewed the footage five times now. I can’t find bugger all.”
“You’re sure it was shot down and didn’t malfunction?” Shepherd asked.
“There’s indicators if things start to fail. We didn’t see any and when we got another drone out there, Larry was spread over a large area.”
The Admiral looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve ordered a patrol to gather the pieces. We shall need to investigate.”
“Need to listen to me!” Charlie snapped. “When Archie was checking out the remains of Larry, we caught this.”
She placed her tablet on the table and clicked the play icon on the still image. It burst to life and we watched in silence as the drone, hovering above the ground, focused its camera on the smashed remains of poor Larry.
It then moved up, spinning on its axis before continuing to patrol, the camera swivelling to look out to sea, allowing the tech controlling it to watch for any approaching boats.
“There,” Charlie said as she stopped the video. “Didn’t see it the first time, but it’s there.”
“What is?” Cass asked, peering down at the small screen through narrowed eyes.
Charlie’s finger tapped at the bottom corner of the screen and I squinted at it. A small dab of orange, barely visible against the rocky shore.
“A boat,” Admiral Stuart said. “Small but big enough for four people.”
“Four mercenaries,” I said with growing dread. “Or four contagious people.”
The threat was clear immediately. Four trained mercenaries could do a great deal of damage before they were caught. Four people infected with some contagious disease could devastate us.
My mouth was suddenly dry and my palms sweaty as I contemplated the damage that could be done and I glanced up, meeting the admiral's gaze. He nodded slowly.
“I’ll order out every available soldier. We’ll find them.”
“The Dead will join in the search,” Samuel intoned in his quiet rumble. “They shall be found.”
“I want any spare drones out there looking for tracks,” I said, finding strength in their words. “With all the snow out there we should see something, surely?”
“They will have been trained to cover their tracks. It will not be that easy to find them.”
“Ryan has headed to the water plant and suggests,” I smiled at that. “He suggests that we bolster the forces at the power plant.”
“Smart idea,” Shepherd said sourly. “We lose power and we freeze. They put something in the water, and we could all be dead.”
“Or worse,” Cass added with a shudder.
That soured the mood even further and I had a very real urge to head home to my children. To hold them and keep them safe.
The thought that there were people on the island that were trying to do harm to us, to undo everything we were trying to rebuild. It both terrified and infuriated me.
“I want to know where they are launching these boats from and I want them stopped.” I looked at each of the other people around the table in turn. “Find where they are coming from and assemble a force. We can fly over to the mainland and stop them.”
“Won’t be easy, ma’am.” Admiral Stuart said. “But it will be done.”
“Good.”
“How do we get the information?” Cass asked, looking around with mild concern. She knew about the prisoner too.
“I’ve a couple of long-range drones,” Charlie said grumpily. “But they don’t have
the range to search.”
“Any ship will be seen,” Admiral Stuart admitted. “I would suggest we send some teams ashore and have them search manually.”
That would take far too long and while they were searching, more boats could be sent. More people bringing death and disease to our island home.
“What about the prisoner?” I cocked an eyebrow and made sure to look each of them in the eye. “How long would it take to get answers from him?”
The Admiral looked troubled but he answered as truthfully as he could, a good soldier, following his oath despite his own misgivings.
“It would depend on the manner of questioning, ma’am.”
He was too like Ryan at times, going all formal and distant when he wasn’t pleased. I almost smiled at how they would both react should I suggest that to them.
“No torture,” I said and caught the look of relief on both the Admiral and Cass’s faces. “But we need to know what he knows. Isaac could be of use.”
“Not the time to be light of hand,” Shepherd muttered but didn’t argue too much.
“As for the teams sent to the mainland, I think two would be best. One CDF and the other-“
“The Dead,” Samuel grunted, apparently pleased. “It shall be done.”
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best we had. We would find the infiltrators and stop them before they harmed us and then we would stop them coming. Once we were secure, we would respond to Genpact in kind.
We would be the ones invading their territory. It would be us, leading an armed invasion of their home and we would be the ones who would win out. Because we were the ones trying to save lives and not just destroy anyone who didn’t share their ideology.
I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth as I watched the technicians scurrying about, responding to the orders being issued by the Admiral. They were my people, they had given their trust to me and had voted for me to lead them.
Which is exactly what I would do, and as their leader, I wouldn’t let anyone harm them. God help those that tried.
“Then let’s get started,” I said with as much determination as I could muster.
Chapter 14
Boredom set my teeth on edge. I had a murderous urge to kill and no target for my ire. It was galling, to say the least. To make it worse, Isaac had been called away to interrogate the prisoner and it had been made abundantly clear that I was not needed.
My minions were too in awe of me to do anything but obey my every order like perfect little robots, devoid of individual thought, and Gregg was… well, Gregg. He irritated me with his chatter, but I enjoyed his company.
That too, annoyed the hell out of me.
“They’re not coming,” Gregg said. “Too many people. Probably go for the power plant.”
I gave a half-hearted shrug and pulled my coat a little tighter around me. The chill wind had begun to blow stronger as the day headed towards night and about an hour before, more snow had begun to fall.
The water treatment plant was on the far edge of the town and if they were going to attack it, then I suspected it wouldn’t be that day. No, they would need to survey it first and when they did, they would notice a lot of guards.
When night came and those guards disappeared inside, they would find a gap in the defences and, hopefully, seize their chance. They would, of course, come up against my waiting minions and the fight should be short and very much to the point.
But first, we had to put on the show of force before our inexperienced ineptitude provided them with an opening. If they didn’t attack, then we would do the same thing the next day and the day after until they were caught or killed.
While they may well attack elsewhere, I was confident that they would want to infect our water supply. It would be a simple means of turning us all into zombies and it was a tactic they had used before, back when the world was whole.
Despite that, there were some feelings of disquiet deep in the back of my mind. Niggling little doubts and an apparent concern for the safety of my children. It was a new and not entirely pleasant feeling.
I was protective over them, of course, why would I not be? They were my children. But, I had never actively worried about anyone before. It was disconcerting.
“You thought of names yet?”
“What?”
“For the twins. You decided on names?”
“Hadn’t really thought of it.”
He gave me an incredulous look and shook his head. “You’ve been calling them ‘the twins’ since they were born, then?”
“Yes.”
“That’s weird. What does Lily think?”
“She’s not said anything.”
He shook his head once more and barked laughter that was loud enough to have a couple of my minions turn to look.
“Oh, mate, you’re in trouble.”
“I am? Why?”
He reached over and patted my shoulder but didn’t immediately reply. Instead, he wrinkled his nose and pushed himself up from where he had been seated on a low stone wall. He brushed the snow from his jeans and stretched.
“I need food.”
Again, I shrugged in response as I had nothing else that I could say. If he wanted food, then he didn’t need to announce it, he could just go and find some. Unless the announcing it was part of some normal person ritual that I didn’t understand.
Perhaps he wanted me to go with him or was trying to question whether I had some. I eyed him curiously, but he didn’t do or say anything else, just stood there in the shadow of the main, rectangular, building, his breath misting the air.
He scratched at the ruined skin of his cheek and then lifted his eyepatch to rub beneath it. I wondered, idly, if it pained him, that missing eye. I opened my mouth to ask but stopped as the distant sound of thunder came to us.
My head whipped around, searching the skyline to the south, heart beating hard in my chest. “There,” I said and pointed to the thin plume of smoke rising into the sky.
“Not the power plant,” Gregg murmured, squinting at the smoke, lips moving as he thought. “There’s nothing there. Just houses!”
We shared a momentary look of confusion before turning back towards the rising smoke. Without another word spoken, we set off walking at as fast a pace as we could manage through the thick snow.
It would be too late for us to do anything, CDF soldiers would be there long before us, but I had to know if it was them or not.
A second crack of thunder was followed by a third and two new plumes of smoke rose up into the sky to the south-east and west of us. I twisted my head from one plume to another, gauging the distance, then the fourth came.
Less than six hundred meters. We increased our pace and soon heard the cries of the dying, drifting on the icy winds as they blew across the snow-swept landscape. I drew my blades.
We turned into a street and stopped, eyes drinking in the sight before us. Gregg swore softly behind me and reached for his own weapon as the ravenous cry of a zombie filled the air.
Smoke rose from the broken windows of a house. The blast had blown most of them outwards, but I suspected at least one would have been smashed in as the bomb passed through it. Fire engulfed the property and the neighbours, feeling safer than they had in almost two years, had rushed to help.
The charred zombies had leapt from the building, four of them, flames still wreathing their bodies as they tore through those neighbours. They were almost as fast as Reapers and I hadn’t seen their like since those images from the earliest days of the fall.
A handful of people were down, their flesh ripped and torn, filling the mouths of those undead creatures. Even as we advanced, the first of those bodies began to twitch and the zombie feasting there gave up its meal and moved to another body that had yet to reanimate.
I didn’t wait for Gregg, didn’t even see the fleeing neighbours, as I pushed on through the snow with my sights set on the undead scourge. I ached to feel my blades sink into their flesh, to
end their existence, to feel the thrill of their deaths.
The first one saw me, eyes flicking up from its foul meal, blackened skin falling away from its cheeks as its mouth widened in a terrible smile. I matched it with one of my own and leapt at it.
I crashed into it, elbow smashing against its face, the thick material of my coat protecting me from bloodstained teeth. My knee slammed into its chest and my other arm thrust forwards, blade sinking deep into its skull.
There was a moment or pure pleasure as its eyes widened and what foul, imitation of life lingered there fell away. Then I was up and moving, blades flashing in the dim afternoon light.
Blood spattered on the snow as I moved between those undead creatures, my blades weaving their own bloody path across undead flesh. A second zombie fell, and then the third, its teeth trying ineffectually to find my flesh.
More of those killed began to rise, bodies shaking and jerking as the parasite they had been infected with began its work, taking control of their bodies and raising them with one primary urge, to feed.
Bloody fingers scraped across my cheek, leaving crimson tracks but not breaking the skin as I spun away, twisting around a rising zombie, pausing only long enough to sink my second blade into its skull as my first slashed at the eyes of another.
A zombie fell, and then another, more corpses to lie in the snow. My breath was heavy, the taste of copper in my mouth from the frenzied blows of a zombie as it died. I spat my own blood onto the snow, blade slamming into a creature’s skull. I let the child-sized body fall to the snow at my feet and faced the last remaining enemy.
It hissed, opening wide its mouth to show bloodied teeth. A moan escaped it, some vestigial attempt to communicate its rage, its hunger. The creature leapt at me and I stepped in, blades rising before me, points out.
I let out a grunt as the creature impaled itself on those blades and I wrenched my arms to the left, letting the creatures own weight drag it to the ground. I pulled back one blade and thrust down, then all was still.
With heaving chest, I pulled free those blades and took a moment to wipe them before I rose to my feet, looking around me to see I had an audience.
Killing the Dead Season 3 Box Set | Books 13-18 Page 76
