Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6

by Ford, Devon C.

  “It’s too far off to cause us any bother,” Downes said, feigning a relaxed manner that he did not fully believe himself, “Just keep an eye on it and hope it doesn’t have friends around here.”

  “Friends?” Dez asked, the binoculars pressed to his eyes once again, “It can barely move, let alone organise a search party.”

  And it couldn’t, Downes realised. It could barely walk. It couldn’t climb a simple wooden five-bar gate that any five-year-old could scale with ease. It also looked, he thought hopefully, like it was starving to death.

  “See anything?” a voice called out from below them, startling both men, who had the presence of mind and body not to let it show.

  “Just one of them,” Dez called down softly to the marines officer, “no bother to us.”

  They didn’t make it back before the rain, but they did beat nightfall. Two very heavily loaded trucks grunted and chugged their way through the intricate defences cut into the ground now frozen solid and showing no signs of returning to the slippery mud it had been not long after creation. The grubby Toyota truck behind them, its own engine barely even breathing hard in comparison, rolled in behind as the men on duty replaced the heavy barricades of wood and wire over the one stretch of approach not cut by the hastily dug moat.

  Downes sent his men back to their small corner of the big house, not needing to remind any of them about keeping their mouths shut about the contact they had made with other clandestine troops, and he went to find Palmer. Ordinarily, he would have relinquished his MP5 for one of his men to clean it while he talked officer stuff, but the thought of anyone being further away than the length of their arm to their weapon was utterly abhorrent.

  “Ah, Major! Pleasure to see you, do come in,” Palmer exclaimed as soon as he entered the parlour-cum-office.

  It wasn’t the Palmer he was expecting, however. In place of the competent and charismatic Captain, he found the entitled and spoilt younger version. The apple who had evidently rolled after it had fallen from the family tree.

  “Second Lieutenant,” Major Downes coldly greeted the boy who was opening and closing cupboards and drawers with tuts of annoyance each time he came up empty. Downes guessed what the boy was after, and intentionally kept his hand still from wanting to reach for his back pocket and the small half-bottle of brandy tucked flat against his right buttock. It was rough stuff, clearly no expensive vintage and more of an access tool for a person to find that painless space where stresses and worries no longer affected them, but it didn’t matter much; he had taken it on a whim after seeing that Palmer, Captain Palmer, had run out.

  “I suspect,” Lieutenant Palmer said theatrically in his nasal whine, “that you are after my older brother? Alas, he is not here, as you can see. Might I recommend you try the kitchens.”

  “The kitchens?” Downes responded before he could stop himself and simply walk off and ignore the privileged whelp.

  “Yes,” Palmer said with theatrical relish, “it seems he’s decided to forgo any further career soldiering and become a scullery maid.” Palmer junior invested all the scorn and mockery he could manage, which was a very significant amount as it turned out, into his distaste for the serving classes. The Major, well-bred from a respected family in his own right, ignored the sullen lack of manners as Palmer refused to acknowledge the officer’s superior rank. That kind of divide, that kind of overt disrespect, was likely to be a result of the combination of Palmer’s inherent feelings of superiority through birth right, and the bizarre stress they all felt, which broke down the normal bounds of military discipline. Despite the beliefs of the enlisted men, the officer classes still obeyed a set of strict rules when in their own company.

  Without another word, Downes turned on his heel and propelled his tired body towards the kitchens with long strides.

  There he found that the younger brother was partly correct, as the older brother was indeed rubbing shoulders with the common folk. And he seemed to be having the time of his life doing so.

  The raucous laughter of women filled the room that Downes had walked into, and the Captain looked up, wearing a somewhat sheepish expression as his bare forearms, the sleeves of his uniform shirt rolled up above the elbows, were dusted with flour. His expression darkened slightly, as though the weight of responsibility and his leadership had found him and threatened to drag him back to the present, and he stopped what he was doing.

  Downes stared at him, and a smile crept over his face.

  “I saw the women making their dough in Afghanistan,” he began, “and I rather think they put their backs into the task a damned sight harder than you are, Captain.”

  Palmer smiled, laughing with the others at him being caught out. Instead of ruining his small moment of fun, Downes instead rolled up his own sleeves and washed his hands in the deep porcelain sink set into the thick wood of the kitchen worktop. He shook them dry, accepting an offered towel from a woman nearby, and dried his hands as he looked down at his dirty clothing. The kitchen was warm, perpetually warm in fact, which is why he suspected that the women and children had a tendency to gather there. It was usually occupied in one form or another, day and night. He stripped off the black smock he was wearing, exposing layers of clothing underneath, and he smiled sweetly at the woman who had taken back the towel.

  “May I?” Downes asked as politely as he could, indicating the white, frill-edged pinafore adorning her ample frame. The women laughed even more now, Palmer joining in with them thinking that it was a joke. It wasn’t. Downes slipped the white top of the apron over his head and tied the waist straps with fast efficiency before joining Palmer at the worn butcher’s block he was working at.

  “Now the key, I’m told,” Downes said as he took his own lump of dough and slapped it down onto the surface to dust it with flour, “is to work it hard and rapidly. Am I right, Mrs Maxwell?” he asked the woman beside Palmer.

  “You’re very right, Major,” Denise Maxwell answered, “I never knew you secret-squirrel lot got taught the finer points of baking.”

  “Join the British army and see the world,” Downes told her with a conspiratorial smile, “I think we both fell for that one, eh, Julian?”

  “I do believe we did, Major,” Palmer said as he began to use the heel of his right hand under the stiff arm to dig his weight into the dough.

  “What have you got there, Major?” Denise asked, pointing at the protrusion from his back pocket.

  “Ah, yes, I almost forgot,” he said as he carefully retrieved the small bottle by the neck with forefinger and thumb, so as not to cover both himself and the bottle in flour, “Captain? I thought you might appreciate this.”

  Palmer looked at the bottle, pretending not to show his mild horror at both the paltry size and the unknown maker of the brandy on offer.

  “You have my thanks indeed, Major,” he said, “only I worry that the ladies will feel us to be somewhat misogynistic should we take a brandy in their domain, as such…”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about us,” another woman chimed in, speaking slowly as she bumped her hip into Denise Maxwell’s and reached into the back of a kitchen cupboard, “we manage just fine, thank you very much,” she said as she produced a massive bottle of scotch and a handful of china mugs held expertly in her fingers.

  They drank. They kneaded dough for the fresh bread they would enjoy the next morning, and in a frozen world of shit, they found a moment of happiness.

  TEN

  “We need to go outside. We need to go into the city for supplies.”

  Mike Xavier closed his eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had heard this from Jean-Pierre for the last week, after he had tried and failed to find another solution to their supply issue.

  “For fuck’s sake, JP,” Xavier said, “we’ve been through this. Where can we go? What can we find? The city is full of them, they still wander up to the fence every day, we can’t ju…”

  “They have not come for more than a week,” Jean-Pierre
cut him off, “and when they do, they can barely walk. They are slow. We can make it.”

  “Can we?” Xavier answered, “and if we don’t make it back, then who is looking after the others? They’ll fall apart without leadership, and I know we never asked for it, but it’s in our hands now. I say we stay here, sit tight and ride out the bad weather.”

  Jean-Pierre, tall and still heavily muscled despite the shortage of food, glowered at his captain on the very edge of insolence and disobedience, before he withdrew a step and shrunk away slightly as though he was endeavouring to power down the passionate anger he felt at the situation.

  “I am sorry, Captain,” he said in a softer voice, yet one still edged with steel, “but we cannot do this. There is not enough food to go around as it is. We need more, or people will try to leave themselves. You forget what happened yesterday?”

  Captain Xavier had not forgotten. He remembered only too well having to fight his way to the head of the crowd to beat people back from what remained of their meagre food stores. They had consolidated everything weeks before, keeping a central reserve of supplies which were issued on an equal basis, and that had taken up four of his crewmen to guard it day and night. An angry mob had formed late in the day, borne of desperation instead of malice or greed, and the stores had been broken into. One of his men had been knocked out cold, his scalp pouring blood from where the lump of wood had cracked him hard over the skull without warning. Xavier had led the charge to restore order, far too much noise being made in the process, and by the time he had pushed back the desperate raiders and laid into them, shouting, he turned to see that most of the food had gone. He threw his body into one thief, one cowardly raider who tried to scurry past him with an armful of items, and his body weight checked them hard off their feet into the metal walls of the container to ring a low, dull bell sound as they slumped to the ground. The hood and scarf fell back to reveal the dirty, terrified face of a woman who was clutching fearfully the can of tinned pears in her hand. Xavier, ashamed of himself and embarrassed about the actions of the thieves, couldn’t bring himself to punish the woman any further than he had and turned away from her.

  JP wasn’t there; he had been at the gates where he spent most of his time under a brooding cloud of ominous gloom. Had he been, Xavier reckoned that the men and women who’d attacked his crewmen out of desperation would have looked at the shadowy embodiment of terror and decided that they had somewhere else to be. But he wasn’t there, and they were brave enough or scared enough to break into the food stores and destroy their last chance at stretching out what food they had left. He had restored order, forcibly detained the few people under his protection who had been caught stealing and spread the word fast and clear that he wanted anything taken to be returned, or else there would be consequences. He didn’t know what those consequences would be, nor how he would enforce them, but none of the supplies were returned, regardless of the threat.

  Now he faced a number of dilemmas. He had a decision to make about what to do with the people his crew members were currently guarding, and that decision would open another can of worms when those protesting at their incarceration didn’t get their way. He had to decide how to ensure that his own men stayed loyal when one of them was badly hurt, because their dedication was wavering by being faced with such uncertainty. Most of all, he knew he had to find more food before the survivors tore each other to pieces.

  “One problem at a time, JP,” he said quietly, “one problem at a time.”

  “What do you mean, Captain?”

  “I mean we can’t ignore what happened yesterday, but we can’t ignore why it happened either. We need food, but we need to deal with the discipline problem. If we were at sea, what would we do?”

  “At sea? Then your word would be the law.”

  “Exactly, but we’re not at sea. We’re in port, and we’re stuck here. If we set sail then we’ll be sunk, and if we stay then we’ll starve or rip each other apart. Which leaves us with what?”

  “We go into the city,” Jean-Pierre said as he banged a big fist onto the desk beside his captain, “and we bring back food. We control the food and we control the people. We double the guard on the supplies.”

  “Is that who you want to be?” Xavier asked with genuine curiosity in his voice.

  “Who I want to be?” Jean-Pierre shot back, “I want to be alive, and I want to take charge of these people because none of them, none of them, can keep the whole group safe, other than you and me.”

  Xavier stared at his right-hand man, his huge enforcer, and he shook his head slowly as a smile crept over his face.

  “I hate to say it, JP,” he said after a resigned sigh, “but you’re right. For the greater good and all that. Okay, get everyone together and I’ll talk to them.”

  The crowd assembled below Mike Xavier was a mixed spectrum of human emotion. The angriest of them were either at the front, venting their frustrations and indignation at him loudly, or else at the back keeping quiet. Those quiet ones were who scared him, as they were the ones most likely to try something stupid and get them all hurt or worse. The tired, broken, apathetic ones occupied the middle of the crowd as they just stared and listened in weary resignation to whatever fate would be decided for them by others. The scared and depressed faces looked up at him, interspersed occasionally with one or two faces showing a rictus of misplaced anger at him, and he held up his hands to wait for enough silence to descend on them for him to speak. Finally, hoping that the angry concentration of voices hadn’t stirred up anything unwelcome and attracted the kind of attention they had spent months avoiding, he lowered his hands and spoke.

  “We’ve been here too long to let it all fall apart now,” he said, “we’ve survived too long to just give up and rip into each other over a tin of beans. What happened here yesterday cannot happen ever again.” He placed heavy emphasis on each individual word, and then he paused, scanning the faces, seeing that most of the hostility was still there but some of it had begun to transform into confused attention. He went on.

  “I am to blame for this,” he said, his hand held flat on his chest, “I am to blame because I allowed this to happen, but no more. No more. We need food,” he said as he started to pace up and down the raised platform he was standing on to be seen as he spoke. “We need more food, but who’s gonna risk their lives to find it?” he stared out at the small crowd, daring them to answer his rhetoric. When nobody spoke he carried on. “Do you expect me and my crew to risk our lives for you? Do you expect us to keep you safe? To feed you? To protect you and just roll over when you attack us? Do you?” he glowered at them, seeing that some of the angry faces had turned into downcast looks of shame. “Of course you don’t, because the people who did this weren’t thinking. But we are going to get past what happened, and we’re going to start by sharing the risks.”

  He stopped talking, dropping down from his platform to walk through the assembled crowd and look into their faces as he spoke again.

  “My crew and I will lead the way, but you all need to help. We’ll go out there, we’ll put our lives on the line, but you will too,” he paused to turn a full circle as he stood deep in the crowd now, making eye contact with everyone who would meet his gaze. “Volunteers to the main gates in ten minutes,” he called loudly, “and we can all forget this shitty day.”

  He turned to walk away before a voice stopped him.

  “What about the prisoners?”

  He stopped, turning back to the source of the question to find himself looking at a boy on the verge of needing to shave properly.

  “Prisoners?” Xavier asked him.

  “You’ve taken my father prisoner,” the young man said indignantly.

  “And he will have the chance to come with us and redeem himself,” Xavier responded flatly, turning away and nodding to Jean-Pierre, who tossed him the fire axe he had chosen to take outside the fence with him.

  Xavier had doubts about how many people would show up. He had convinc
ed himself that these people were ungrateful. They’d been saved by him and his crew, along with those dock workers stranded inside the fences, back when it all started so suddenly, and now they were happy to let others do the dangerous work on their behalf.

  Almost fifty people, a quarter of the total they had there, arrived carrying empty bags and wielding various melee weapons adapted or repurposed to crush skulls. Xavier couldn’t believe it, but Jean-Pierre made no attempt to hide his smug grin.

  “You see, Captain?” he said as he beamed a smile of bright, white teeth at him, “I told you that going out would be a good idea. It seems like I am not the only one to think this.”

  Xavier said nothing. He chose four of his men, trusted among his entire crew, and asked them to stay behind and man the gates. They were unhappy with their orders, because there was no mistake that when the captain asked them to do something, it didn’t come with an option of saying no. But Xavier gave them reassurance that he needed good men at the gates that he could rely on them to make sure that their escape was well protected.

  “And remember,” he told them conspiratorially, “if anyone looks like they… like they aren’t themselves… then you know what to do, right?”

  They understood.

  Xavier climbed up on a stack of crates, axe in one hand and the other held up for quiet.

  “Everybody works in pairs,” he told them, “never leave your back unprotected. Grab everything you can carry and get back here. What we find goes into one stockpile and everybody gets fed.”

  “That’s bollocks,” shouted a voice nearby, “if we’re risking our necks, then we get to keep what we find.”

  Xavier fixed the speaker with a look.

  “If that’s how you want to be, then yous can fucking stay out there, do you understand me?”

  The man quailed under the sudden anger, unwilling to risk calling the man’s bluff.