“There’s young kids back there,” Xavier said, “women with little ones. Old folks. You want them to fetch their own stuff? Is that who we are?”
The low mumbles had the vague tone of agreement, so Xavier jumped down again and nodded to his men to haul back the gates.
They spilled into the wide, fog-filled street separating the docks from the city, splitting off in different directions so as not to move as a single crowd like locusts. Jean-Pierre naturally had his captain’s back, as he expected the bearded Liverpudlian to have his, and both turned right to jog down the deserted street towards the nearest shops.
None of the creatures came for them. In fact, none of them were even visible on the streets, which filled them all with an elative hope bordering on over-confident.
Just because we haven’t seen any yet doesn’t mean they aren’t there, Xavier told himself.
And he had no idea how right he was.
He approached the large, single-storey building with Jean-Pierre jogging beside him. The noise of their breathing was rapid and ragged, and clouds of condensation lingered around their heads when they paused at a junction. They had gone south, directly away from the docks, and found themselves in an area which seemed run down even before the world had stopped turning months before. A crowd of maybe twenty others had followed in their footsteps, despite his instructions for everyone to split up into pairs and not cluster together to attract attention. He mentally shrugged, knowing that he couldn’t think for everyone, and glanced at Jean-Pierre to see the man squinting ahead into the fog.
“Costco,” he said simply.
“Perfect,” Captain Xavier replied, “that will do us.”
They went in fast, the crowd behind them speeding up when they saw that the two men had a clear goal in mind, and the sliding metal frame doors were forced open with a dozen hands working their way into the gaps. They poured inside, packets being torn open and precious contents spilled onto the floor despite his words. He was more annoyed that none of them seemed to be awake to any potential risks and instead just blindly ran in to grab armfuls of food packets and tins.
“Use your brains,” he yelled as loudly as he dared, “get some bloody shopping trolleys and load it up properly.”
Some of them stopped, regarding him with full mouths as their senses returned. They did so, sanity restoring the group as though it passed from person to person like another infection. Despite the growl in his stomach, he kept both hands on his axe as he watched over the now orderly emptying of shelves. Racks of cans and packets were cleared, and his spirits lifted as he knew he would eventually see the winter through without any more outbreaks of civil disobedience or starvation. He relaxed enough to start helping load the supplies himself, slipping the axe through the loop of his belt, which he loosened for the purpose, and used both hands to grab the food which would mean their survival.
A scream, more of a strangled yell from the throat of a man making an involuntary noise tore the air. Mike Xavier dropped the pallets of beans he held and fumbled to free the axe which was caught in his clothing. He took his eyes away from the source of the noise for long enough to pull it clear, only to look ahead and see a door at the rear of the shop being held open by a small procession of dead bastards. A feeling of cold dread descended through his body, slowing time and his reactions to a deathly speed, but allowing his brain to savour every moment of terror. The smell hit him; dry and musty like rotten meat left out to dry. The grey pallor of them sickened him, like the bodies he had seen retrieved from the docks in the past with clear, bloated skin. He felt his feet moving forwards before his mind realised he had commanded his body to respond to the threat.
The first savage swing of the axe was wild and while full of raw power, it was poorly aimed. With a shout of pure rage and fear, the wide blade buried itself into the skull of the first zombie in line and stuck fast, toppling his victim but taking his weapon away in the same action. The falling body did nothing to slow the three behind it as they fanned out in a perfectly orchestrated flanking move and forced him backwards away from their grasp. He tripped on the man who had screamed first, landing on top of him as their legs tangled, and both looked up at their impending deaths with looks of open-mouthed horror. Mike Xavier, captain of his beloved Maggie and beloved leader of his crew, closed his eyes as he knew he had failed them all.
A curious sound made his eyes open again. It was the hollow, echoing sound of metal connecting with bone, and it was answered with the cruel crunch of one of those things giving way to the force of the other. Xavier looked up to see Jean-Pierre drawing himself up to his full height, adding a little more with his raised tiptoes, as his hands were behind his back to bring the heavy metal spike back down in a woodchopper’s strike to pummel and destroy the skull of the nearest zombie with such savagery that the thing was almost decapitated.
Jean-Pierre’s exposed skin on his face beaded with sweat, making his forehead glisten in the poor light of the shop. He raised the long metal spike again, turning his body sideways to swing it like a baseball bat at the final zombie left standing, dealing it a brutally savage blow which snapped the head back unnaturally. Slowly, horrifyingly, the head rotated back to look at him and revealed a gruesomely dislocated jaw. The obvious injury didn’t stop the thing, didn’t slow it down or register any pain on its expressionless face. Jean-Pierre, exhausted after the incredible physical effort put into the three massive blows, kicked the thing in the chest to give himself space from it. Xavier scrambled to his feet, using the man he had fallen on as a tool to push himself up, and not caring, he snatched at the handle of the axe still embedded in the skull of the first dead zombie. He placed the sole of his left boot on the face, feeling the nose give way under the pressure as he pushed, and split open the top of the skull like a boiled egg as the blade broke free. Instead of luxuriously yellow yolk spilling out, a foul-smelling and gelatinous chunk of grey brain matter flopped onto the ground beside his foot and threatened to void the bile from his stomach in an instant.
He gathered himself, spun the axe so that the pointed section instead of the wide blade was pointing forwards, and swung to impale the kneeling thing in the part where the neck met the head.
It stiffened, lifeless the second the cruel, cold metal punctured the dead flesh, and it flopped to the deck.
Xavier met Jean-Pierre’s eyes as the two men stood panting for breath.
“Everybody grab what you’ve got,” Xavier shouted, bending to help up the man he had fallen over, “and get back to the docks. Now.”
He propelled the man forwards and turned to face the door where the attack had come from. Jean-Pierre stood at his side and both men felt the gathering tension build to the point where the two of them felt the urge, the pathological need, to turn and run.
Nothing came, and they backed out of the shop together as their boots kicked at fallen and discarded packets littering the floor. The last man out before them was the one who had tripped him inadvertently.
“You alright?”
“Yeah,” the man gasped as he held his right arm as if his shoulder was injured, “I’ll be okay…”
Xavier pushed the man ahead of him, not seeing how he quickly pulled back the sleeve of his coat to look at the neat oval of puncture marks on his wrist. The bleeding had stopped almost instantly, and the heat he was feeling was close to unbearable. Terrified that he would be left outside the safety of the docks, he kept his mouth shut and staggered to keep up with the others heading back towards safety, or at least what they all thought was safety.
ELEVEN
Bill Hampton, the still-limping sergeant of marines, was on watch when the van pulled back into sight of their small village enclave. He waited for confirmation, not wanting to open up their defences without knowing that it was indeed his people driving and that none of them were infected, before pushing aside the barricade to allow them inside. That confirmation was given by Johnson leaning his head out of the window and giving a thumbs-up ge
sture, which Hampton took as the universal sign language for everything being hunky-dory.
It wasn’t, obviously, and the looks on their faces told him that everything was not right in the world. Worse than the usual amount of not right, anyway.
“What’s happened?” Bill asked, his eyes scanning to double check that everyone who went out came back whole.
“Get everyone inside first,” Johnson told him, handing him a heavy bag stuffed full of shotgun cartridges which weighed him down in an instant. They went inside, heavy coats being stripped off as the interior was warm by comparison to the bitter outside temperatures. The bags and gun cases were laid down, and Kimberley walked from the kitchen wearing a smile of relief and genuine happiness that they were back. That smile, just as Hampton’s had, faded in an instant as she read their faces.
“What’s happened?” she asked, her own eyes scanning the returning faces to make sure everyone had come back.
“Come and sit down, please,” Johnson said in a curious tone of voice that, if his men had heard him speak with it, would make them think that he had gone soft. Something about her disarmed him.
Peter walked in through the front door and laid down his weapon, his suspicious eyes betraying that he knew something was wrong. Johnson expected him to ask the question too, but he merely shrugged off his oversized coat and sat down to wait for the news.
Astrid rummaged in a bag, coming out with a large rectangular black plastic case and offering it to Peter with a smile.
“There was not much that I could find,” she explained, “but I see the Care Bears movie and I say to myself that Amber would like this, no?”
Peter smiled, taking it from her with a nod and running up the stairs, no doubt to put it on in the big bedroom for her. That fact alone spoke volumes about the people who had owned that house; the fact that they had a VCR and a TV in their bedroom meant that they probably had too much money to spend.
Kimberley had made a large pot of tea as soon as she’d heard their return and had set it down with the cups on the coffee table by the time Peter returned. Some of the adults exchanged looks, but Johnson and Bufford both shrugged at each other as if to say that they wouldn’t keep the boy out of the loop anyway. Amber was different, but this little lad had the mind of a thirty-year-old when it came to practical matters.
“We cleared a gun shop quite satisfactorily,” Johnson started, pouring himself a mug of black tea and dropping in two sugar lumps from the bowl beside the pot, “and most of a grocery shop too before we heard noises.”
“What kind of noises?” Kimberley asked eagerly, stalling the telling of the story and delaying it. The others, being all forces personnel, knew when to ask questions and when to shut up and listen. So too, it seemed, did Peter.
“Gunfire and engines. Military vehicles, but not ours. I’m certain of that.”
“They fired at me,” Enfield said without indignation or anger in his voice, just the facts of the matter. Hampton frowned. Kimberley gave a small gasp and Peter furrowed his brow as though trying to understand why anyone living would do that. He reached the answer quickly, as the majority of his experiences with other survivors were negative until he had met his current company.
“Who?” Hampton asked.
“Why?” Kimberley chimed in at the same time.
“Who is uncertain, other than the fact that one of them was on the island with us. That means that he either got separated from the main group or he chose to leave,” he explained, leaving out the name of his nemesis in case he betrayed how angry he was, “As for why, I can only assume they either thought Enfield was a dead ’un, which is unlikely seeing as he was running and carrying a gun, or they just don’t like people seeing their business. Either way, we don’t want to meet them again.”
“So, what do we do?” Hampton asked.
“We need to join up with the others again,” Johnson said, seeing nods of agreement ripple around the small group, “but I don’t see how we can find them until this bloody weather has passed.”
“Which will be many weeks yet, I think,” Astrid chimed in.
Silence descended on them, broken only by Peter struggling to pour himself a cup of black tea. Nobody moved to help him, signifying that they respected his independence and not that they didn’t care for him, and he sat back down to sip the hot liquid before offering his own opinion.
“There can’t be that many places they could be, surely?” his little eyes searched the assembled faces looking at him, “I mean, I don’t really know, but seeing as they are soldiers too, wouldn’t they think the same as you and find somewhere that they could stay?”
The adults exchanged looks. The concept was nothing really new to them, but hearing it come from his mouth made it a little more real in the moment. Truth be told, they had been busy concentrating on surviving and consolidating more than they had been thinking about searching for the rest of the survivors from the island.
“That’s true,” Kimberley said, “where would you take your people if you were in that position?”
Bufford looked at Johnson. He had been in that position; however, it had been in the hands of his captain and not the senior NCO, and he had only known part of the working logic at the time.
“We need maps,” he said, “and we can try to work out where they would have gone. We can also see about more supplies.”
“I’ll get on it,” Bufford said as he glanced to Astrid. She nodded her assent that she would help.
“So, what did you get today?” Hampton asked, changing the subject.
“New toys,” Johnson answered, standing to fetch his new shotgun and handing it over for inspection.
“Nice,” the old sergeant said with relish, “universal door opener.”
“Exactly,” Johnson answered, seeing Peter’s curious gaze at the weapon. He knew the boy had his own gun, one that he had even modified by taking off the barrels and stock to make it small enough for him to carry and use. He had only pulled the trigger once, he had told him, but for such a young boy to have decapitated an enemy with a shotgun and be alright with it signified something of a change in the way they viewed children.
Enfield stood too, retrieving the gun slips and producing the big hunting rifle first and the small Ruger after.
“Plenty of bullets for these, too,” their sniper said.
“That looks a little, um…” Kimberley said, searching for the right word which wouldn’t cause offence, “small?”
“It’ll do fine for popping heads at medium range,” Enfield said, “plus it’s very quiet.”
“Quiet is good,” Peter said, feeling suddenly embarrassed as they all turned to look at him. “I mean,” he began, his face flushing with colour, “it’s just better to not be heard is all I’m saying…”
“No,” Astrid said, “Peter is correct in what he says. Quiet is indeed good.”
Peter smiled and relaxed a little, the worry of giving his opinion in front of these big and frightening people washing away and being replaced with something else which he hadn’t experienced before.
Acceptance? Pride? Belonging?
What he felt was totally alien to him, but he couldn’t explain the main reason he was afraid to give his opinion in front of them. It was because he had lived his whole life in fear of being struck without warning if he spoke when his parents had decided that he shouldn’t. The only problem with that was that he never knew when he was to stay silent until the first smack made contact with his skull. It was the reason he never stood within arm’s reach of a grown up when they spoke, even if none of them noticed. It was the reason he flinched at unexpected noises and movements. It was the reason he could read the temperature and mood of a room in seconds.
Peter was a survivor. He wasn’t born as such, but his life had moulded him into one. It had shaped him and trained him to be almost perfectly developed to survive the world as it now was. He was empathic to the point of being a chameleon; able to blend into invisibility just to
stay safe.
“Of course he’s right,” Hampton said as he gave the boy a gentle pat on the shoulder with a meaty hand larger than the boy’s head, “wish we’d always had officers as smart as Peter here.” He beamed a smile at the boy who, for the first time in his life hadn’t flinched away from being touched by an adult. Peter smiled back.
“So where do we look?” Johnson said aloud to himself. Bufford got up, sifting through the paper maps on the shelves before grabbing a few and turning back to them.
“Grab a map and start looking,” he told them.
“Pete,” Enfield said as he leaned over the side of his chair to pick up the new rifle, “let’s leave them to it. You can help me sight this in if you like?”
Peter nodded, hiding the wider smile he felt creeping out from inside him as his brain tried to reign in his enthusiasm. He had never looked forward to anything before, never got excited about anything promised unless it was actually happening. Every so often, when one of his parents was drunk to the point of feeling magnanimous, he would be promised something that he wanted only for it to be forgotten about entirely when sobriety returned. On the rare occasions he had reminded them about such promises he had invited punishment or humiliation, so he had just given up looking forward to anything.
Walking beside the tall Royal Marine whose footsteps seemed to make no noise, his eyes kept darting to the short rifle he carried as the bubbling excitement of all young boys when given the chance to play with guns rose closer to the surface. He looked up at Enfield as they walked. The marine was twice his size but about the same relative build, which made him wonder how he had become a marine because they were supposed to be very strong and tough. He didn’t know how to ask the question, mostly because he didn’t know how Enfield would respond, so instead he asked what he needed him to do to help.
“I need you to spot for me,” Enfield told him, producing a small set of binoculars from a webbing pouch and handed them down to him, “I need you to call out whether I’m left or right, up or down on the target.”
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 71
