Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6

by Ford, Devon C.

  Palmer thought about it for a moment before asking, “Major, do we still have a working government?”

  “I’m not sure about working, but yes. We still have cabinet members alive and protected.”

  “Major,” Palmer said just as carefully, “why did you keep this information from me until now?”

  “Julian,” Downes said in an apologetic tone, “please understand that this was part of the wider picture that I wasn’t at liberty to discu…”

  “God dammit, Major!” Palmer erupted, “you think I have enjoyed thinking that we are all that is left? You think I have relished the thought of turning farmer and becoming the bloody mayor instead of a soldier? Damn you, Major,” he cursed without the full force of his opening words, “and to answer your question I would rejoin in a heartbeat.”

  “I only had this confirmed yesterday,” Downes told him, “and I apologise for not telling you before. So how do we do this?”

  “We go there, Major, immediately.”

  “And how do we transport all of our personnel, the civilians, and our equipment there?” Downes countered.

  “I shall speak with Lieutenant Commander Barrett, and see if we can manage relay flights,” Palmer said.

  “That’s a possibility, but it’s doubtful. I would suggest that the safest option would be a road convoy.”

  “In this weather?” Palmer asked.

  “It may be slower and less comfortable, but air is less certain. I doubt Harry would want to run those kinds of relays. It’s maybe four hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies.”

  “That gets him there and less than halfway back on a full tank, which he doesn’t have. Another refuelling trip?”

  “It’s possible,” Downes said, “I know they have a very small airfield up there, but perhaps using the helicopter for precious cargo and as many of the civilians as possible would be better?”

  Both men lapsed into silence as they ran through their own private thoughts and plans until a snapping sound brought them back to the present. Neither men instinctively recalled the deer they were after and both were alert for the screeching, shuffling onslaught of rotting people. For them to see the dusky speckled fawn directly ahead of them was a pleasant surprise. They froze, both slowly raising their guns.

  “Take the shot if you please, Major,” Palmer whispered. Downes said nothing but carried on the slow movements to bring the VAL into his shoulder. A soft click sounded, then the tiny atmospheric change as he held his breath in anticipation of the shot, then the sharp metallic snap of the action firing.

  The deer fell, making both men smile in anticipation of fresh meat, but it seemed as though they weren’t the only ones stalking the animal, as another sound ripped through the air in answer. Downes, still looking through the scope at the fallen animal, twitched the scope upwards to the frost-covered features of an old man advancing towards them. Its wild eyebrows twitched above the milky eyes, focused as much as they could be on the fallen animal and not on them. Downes held his shot, scanning around, and counted three more advancing from the same direction.

  “Advance left flank twenty metres,” Downes said in a low voice, totally professional in an instant, “four enemy ahead.”

  Palmer moved low, disciplined enough not to run and make more noise to attract their attention to him. Behind to his right came the steady, rhythmic sounds of more sharp snaps as Downes began putting fat, sub-sonic 9mm bullets into rotten and frozen skulls. Palmer drew level with their kill, raising the borrowed MP5 and drilling a three-round burst into the side profile of a woman reaching out for the warm corpse of the deer.

  “Fuck it,” he snarled, abnormally savage with his language but justified as he saw the rough chunk of flesh torn from the animal’s back. He looked for more targets, wanting to kill more of them for contaminating their meat and ruining the day.

  “Withdraw,” Downes called out, prompting the captain to turn away and thread his way back through the trees.

  “Where the bloody hell did they come from?” he asked as he fell in beside the Major in their retreat.

  “They’re everywhere,” Downes said. “Have you noticed it’s warmer under the tree cover?”

  He had, although he hadn’t made the connection between that slight temperature increase and the faster movement of the Screechers.

  “Would you prefer a Scottish island?” Downes asked him.

  “Yes, Major, yes I would.”

  “Send it, Smiffy,” Downes said to his man on the complex radio set. The burst transmission, already typed in and ready to send, shot up into the ether as a high-frequency data burst.

  echo-one-one, charlie-one-one. state availability of aviation fuel on your end. single helicopter available but insufficient fuel for more than one sortie. intent to travel by road. advise.

  They sat in silence, waiting for any response to come and knowing that it could be up to twelve hours later, depending on any number of varying factors. Palmer had joined them in their small den, which was deemed out of bounds for anyone but the enigmatic men from Hereford. Lloyd was with them, invited into the folds of secrecy out of necessity and trust on Palmer’s behalf. What wasn’t odd in the slightest was the lack of the presence of the half-mad Colonel and the younger brother of the captain, a constant source of embarrassment to him. To their relief, a responding transmission came in quickly.

  charlie-one-one, echo-one-one. minimal stocks of fuel, helicopter a no-go. by road, rv 57.003813n, 5.8271730w. transport provided by ferry. god speed.

  “Mac?” Downes said.

  “Go,” the Scotsman answered, grabbing a pad and pencil. Downes recounted the grid coordinates and heard the responding scratch of lead on paper.

  “Give me a minute,” Mac said as he pulled open a map. Palmer turned to Lloyd, who had cleared his throat to offer a suggestion.

  “If Harry and James could fly the civvies up,” he said, meaning Lieutenant Commander Barrett and his junior co-pilot Lieutenant Morris, “then that leaves us with a combined forces strength of what? Forty men left? Two trucks, supplies, at least one or two of the Foxes?”

  “Got it,” Mac cut in, “Mallaig. It’ll be the ferry port to Skye, I wager.”

  “You’d want to convoy for what, seven hundred miles?” Downes asked Lloyd after turning back from his sergeant.

  “What other choice do we have?” the marine lieutenant answered.

  “None,” Palmer said, “not unless we stay here and wait to starve or be overrun. I, gentlemen, would much prefer to have a small stretch of the North Atlantic between us and the Screechers.”

  “So, Captain,” Downes asked formally, “how do we convince the civilians to go?”

  “We need more food first,” Palmer said tiredly.

  The small collection of officers and soldiers weren’t the only ones huddled in a room too small for them and planning a way out. Miles away, on the cliffs above the foaming white crashes of waves far below, sat a young girl and two women speaking in low voices to one another.

  “It would be better to leave either at night or very early,” Pauline said to the others, “most of them will be asleep.”

  “The guards never sleep,” Ellie offered darkly, her eyes unfocused and distant in thought. “They would if we made them, though…”

  “What do you mean?” Jessica asked. Ellie didn’t answer her directly, instead she turned to Pauline intently and asked her a question.

  “Can you steal a bottle of alcohol? Something strong?”

  Pauline thought about it for a long moment before nodding slowly with a sceptical look in her eye. “What are you thinking?”

  “It would look too obvious if we just walked up to one of the guards and gave them a bottle, wouldn’t it?” she asked, explaining her plan through the medium of asking rhetorical questions to lead them through each step, “so how about one of us gets caught near the guards and we make it look like we’re trying to hide the bottle? That way they’ll just take it off us and send us away. Then we wa
it and slip past them after they’ve drunk it.”

  “Won’t work,” Pauline said flatly, disappointment heavy in her tone, “because they change the guards halfway through the night. I’ve seen it. They’d probably just wait for a few hours, then go and drink it when they get back inside. Michaels is pretty hot on that kind of thing…”

  Ellie sat back, all enthusiasm gone in an instant to be replaced with sullen defeat. The three of them sat in silence for a while before the girl spoke.

  “We need a diversion,” she said in a small voice, her eyes only raised to meet theirs after she had spoken.

  “Like what?” Ellie asked.

  “A fire,” said Pauline distantly, “fire always gets people scared and running around.”

  “So what do we set on fire?” Ellie asked.

  “Nevin,” Jessica answered nastily, an evil curl on her lip as she spoke the name of the horrible man who humiliated her.

  The older women didn’t know whether to laugh or be scared.

  “Our bedding,” Pauline offered, “throw it out of the window here after it’s on fire and that way they’ll have to go around the building to see where it’s coming from. They sat in silence for a while, each of them considering the plausibility of the plan.

  “It could work,” Ellie said as she narrowed her eyes, “but has anyone got a lighter?”

  Pauline and Ellie exchanged looks and shrugs, and a resigned huff from the girl made them both look in her direction. She rolled up the leg of her trousers to expose the tops of the boots she had been wearing ever since she ran from the hospital barefoot. Tucked inside the top was a lighter, beside a metal nail file, a Yale style key, and a teaspoon. Lost for words, the other two said nothing as the girl replaced the trouser leg and displayed the needed item.

  “What?” she said when she saw the looks of the others, “I see things and I pick them up. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

  Pauline took the lighter and struck a flame with her thumb on the third attempt.

  “We still need something inflammable,” she said, “to make the flames nice and big.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Ellie said, “with these mattresses?”

  Pauline looked aghast at the implied criticism of the place she had lived and worked in for so long, but still didn’t understand Ellie’s point.

  “Polyurethane foam?” Ellie asked, almost annoyed that nobody understood her point, “It’s very inflammable,” she finished.

  Both Pauline and Jessica gave an, “ahh,” in unison.

  “So we set fire to the bedding, toss it out of the window, wait for everyone to start running around and then what?” Jessica asked.

  “Then we make a run for it,” Pauline said.

  “Where?” Jessica asked.

  “Anywhere,” said Ellie, sounding more reckless than she truly was, “just away from here and these pigs.”

  “Out there,” Jessica asked softly, “with the monsters?”

  “Yes,” she bit back, “anywhere is better than here.”

  FOURTEEN

  “We can’t stay inside forever,” Hampton said through his gritted teeth as he flexed and bent his damaged leg.

  “No,” Johnson countered, “but neither can we risk running around in sub-freezing temperatures with snow and ice everywhere.”

  “We need to, Dean,” Bufford said as he placed a calming hand on the man’s shoulder, “if not for ourselves, then for the kids; they need more food than we have left and if we wait for the weather to get worse, the job will be much harder.”

  Johnson couldn’t argue with the logic It wasn’t as though they needed his permission anyway, he wasn’t in charge of them, but it had evolved that decisions were made in a more democratic fashion than their former lives would have thought possible. None of them was placed above the others. Johnson was a very senior non-commissioned officer, but then Hampton and Bufford were both hugely experienced sergeants who had trained more than their fair share of young officers in nominal command of the men they served with. Astrid, the curious commando spy from Norway, was clearly no uniform-filler, and possessed a sometimes frightening intellect. Even their lowly-ranked marine, Enfield, was a specialist and a cunning man with an eye for ground like a predator.

  Hell, Johnson thought, even the kids are qualified to weigh in on decisions, given how long they’ve survived on their own.

  The only person not to hold rank or military experience was Kimberley, but something about the woman was so forthright that she was not the meek kind to simply obey orders she didn’t agree with or understand. Johnson had tried, very delicately given their tenuous attraction to one another, to explain to her that if the time ever came that she was told what to do in a dire situation, then she simply had to bite her tongue and trust the people she was with. She had accepted that, but something told the big man that those were the only set of circumstances under which she would submit to rule.

  “Fine,” he said eventually, “what are you thinking?”

  “Small recce team,” Bufford said, “not looking at shops or houses but more at commercial stuff. That means,” he said as he spread out a map, “heading back this way towards the coast.”

  Johnson looked at the map but could see no reason to refuse the man.

  “You’ll keep an eye out for signs of others though, correct?”

  “We will. Good or bad, we’ll make damned sure first,” Enfield answered for the SBS man.

  You’ve already planned who’ll be going then… Johnson told himself.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said.

  “Three-man team. Small, quiet, fast,” Astrid said in a tone of voice which brooked no argument.

  Johnson looked at her, then Bufford, then Enfield in turn and saw no shame in their eyes. They weren’t trying to circumvent him, not intentionally, and he tried to find any logical reason to force one of the three elite soldiers out of their role so that he could retain a hands-on approach. It was pointless, and he knew it. Two special forces commandos and a sniper? How could he hope to replace one of those at their job? If it was co-ordinating the resupply of an armoured squadron, then Dean Johnson was your man. Laying an ambush using his faster tracked vehicles and luring enemy tanks into a killing ground he had set up to pour murderous 40mm fire into them? That was, as they said, most definitely his bag. But running around in freezing conditions, moving like a ghost and fighting like half a platoon if called upon, then no; he was no commando.

  “Timescale?” he asked, changing the subject from his dark thoughts of inadequacy.

  “Leave at first light tomorrow, be back by dark,” Bufford said confidently.

  “Alright,” Johnson said, all fight leaving him and his belly already turning towards happier thoughts, “but you really need to bring back supplies tomorrow, because you need to eat well tonight.” The SBS sergeant and former Royal Marine smiled at the Squadron Sergeant Major, who thought that the muscular man had already visibly lost enough size to be a concern for them all. They had been living on reduced rations ever since their panicked return from the gun store, while fear of heavy machine gun fire kept their heads down for the ensuing weeks, until hunger promised a far crueller death. His beard, wild before their helicopter had crashed and stranded them in the countryside, had grown wispy and looked bedraggled until he took scissors to it and cut it shorter. Johnson himself, despite attempts to maintain standards for no reason other than that he had always done so, had succumbed and grown a tough, scratchy beard of short hair which came through with a ginger hue, despite his hair the being darkest of brown.

  They were, he had to admit, in a bad way, and that would only worsen if they didn’t break out of hibernation and find more supplies.

  But there were so many risks. The roads were iced over, after weeks of snow and frosts and thaws and more frosts. Packed snow had turned to mush, only to freeze solid and dry once more into slabs as hard as concrete which wouldn’t fade under an entire day of direct sunlight. They had
to be almost three months shy of the break of spring, and this winter had conspired with other events to be the worst in as long as he could recall.

  The only person not bothered by the temperatures was Astrid Larsen, but then again Johnson guessed that if your home country regularly experienced minus thirty degrees inland during winter, then the constant snow and sleet of a British winter, no matter how harsh, was of little concern. What was concerning, at least to Johnson, was that their country was not set up for such a bad winter, just as it couldn’t cope with a prolonged period of hot weather in the summer, and if the world hadn’t turned into a flesh-eating circus, there would have been frozen hell on earth this winter anyway.

  The cold was good for one thing though; the dead were slow, lethargic, and very few in number. Those that did wander into their little fortified island posed next to no threat, unless you fell on your arse in front of them and dropped your weapon, that was. They had all expressed a hope that the bad weather would put an end to the infected population.

  “Who wants to cook then?” Hampton chimed in, making it obvious that he was hungry and wasn’t going to cook.

  “I’ll do it,” came a small voice from the open-plan kitchen behind their conversation in the comfortable lounge. Heads turned to take in the small frame of Peter, the sleeves of his oversized sweatshirt rolled up and slipping down constantly over his bony elbows as he hefted a large pasta pan into the sink and ran the tap to fill it. “Spaghetti and meatballs okay for everyone?”

  They had kept the dozen tins of meatballs back intentionally, and the dried pasta was probably good for a lifetime if they weren’t overly fussy, which clearly none of them was.

  “Need a hand?” Kimberley asked. Peter just turned and smiled at her, so she used the can opener to wind off the jagged metal discs before pouring the lumpy, sloppy contents into another pan for heating.