He dragged himself into a position half against the rock face, looking out over the gathering gloom and dark clouds over the English Channel. Hot blood ran down his face, and he suffered in fiery agony as the infection tore through his ruined body to finish him slowly.
As the strength fled from what was left of his body in the form of his hot blood that let off small clouds of steam as it spilled, he lapsed again into blackness as, below him, the rotten thing stopped chewing, letting the strip of flesh pulled from his face fall away, and lapsed back into its icy hibernation.
Nevin, or at least the broken thing that used to be Nevin, remained on that cliff ledge for untold months until he eventually rotted away to nothing. The last thing to die, the infected core of his brainstem, lay dormant as the body that carried it was useless. Nevin never took another life, never had the chance to spread fear and infection as he had when he was counted among the living, and he was forced to watch the coming and going of the tide on an island he no longer had the capacity to understand.
Above him, on the day after he had been rejected from the human race for non-compliance, a pair of eyes looked down on his immobile body from a deeply lined face. The face was lined with age, but mostly with worry and stress after a lifetime spent organising the activities of others. Those eyes had driven through appalling weather conditions, nursing the ungainly box truck at often very low speeds until they had seen the tell-tale column of smoke coming from a building high on a hilltop. They had reached it eventually, spending three long hours watching it for signs of hostility before driving up the steep approach road. When the occupants of that hilltop bastion took in their weapons and remains of uniform, they had pointed their shotguns and rifles at them.
Johnson and Bufford, the only ones visible as the others were in the breezy back of the truck, did little to assuage their fears that they weren’t hostile, but when the two women and the two children climbed down from the back, suddenly the atmosphere changed for the better. The woman who seemed to be in charge of them bustled to the front and brought them inside to feed them, providing hot drinks almost constantly and marvelling at the bearded man’s capacity to guzzle down coffee, and she spoke to them about what had happened to bring their two groups together. It soon became clear that people from this camp had attacked them, but as three of the exhausted newcomers snatched up their weapons, seemingly expecting to fight again, she had assured them that the time of their existence when they hurt other people was well and truly over.
“Those men are gone now,” she assured them, “one never came back and the other we dealt with ourselves.”
That was when they had been shown the carnage of blood and gore inside the Ferret. That was when Johnson had been shown the place where the man called Nevin had been tossed off the cliff as a definitive sign that he was unwelcome.
The woman, Pauline, was wary of scaring the two children but was very attentive to them and their needs. She asked them their names, and the young boy answered for them.
“She doesn’t talk much,” he explained with a sad, depreciating smile, “not since her mum got taken away by bad men.”
Something about what he said struck a chord cold in Pauline’s heart, and her gasp as her hand fluttered at her mouth made everyone sit up and take notice.
“What is your mummy’s name?” she said in a voice affected solely for addressing a frightened young girl.
Amber looked at her, then at Peter, then back the woman who asked the obviously silly question. She leaned in and whispered to Peter, the only way she would still communicate with anyone other than him, by using the older boy as a medium. He smiled, looked back at Pauline and answered for Amber.
“She said she’s called ‘Mummy’…”
Pauline smiled despite her frustration and tried another way.
“Do people call her Ellie?”
The mention of the name flashed across Amber’s eyes like electricity, and she began to look around as her young brain associated knowledge of her mother to the possibility of her being there. She didn’t see her, obviously, but her wide eyes turned back to Pauline and pleaded for her to tell her where her mother was. The older woman’s eyes fell, crushing her with the knowledge that she would have to be the bearer of bad news and break the girl’s heart all over again.
“I’m really sorry… Amber,” she said warily, reaching out for the girl’s hand and trying not to take offense when she snatched it away. “She was here until two days ago, but we tried to run away from the bad people who were here before. They caught me and brought me back, but Ellie… but your mum she…” Pauline cuffed away the tears rolling down her cheeks as she looked into the bright, wide eyes of the little girl who mirrored her tears in utter silence.
“Your mum wasn’t caught, so she must have got away with another little girl called Jessica.”
At the mention of the other name, the little boy started. His gasp was exaggerated and drawn out, becoming a whining noise which morphed into words seamlessly as he spoke in rapid excitement.
“Jessica? How old is she? What did she look like?”
Pauline held up both hands to calm the innocent onslaught of his questions before she answered.
“She’s a teenager,” she told him, “slim and quiet with long, brown hair.”
“Has she got…” Peter hesitated, embarrassed of the facts behind what he was admitting but knowing that it would solve the confusion unquestioningly, “has she got scars on her…” his voice trailed away again but his fingers mimed slices across his wrist. Pauline’s mouth dropped open, as though the chances of finding one of the missing children she knew about was huge, but both was unbelievable. Her reaction gave flame to the kindling of Peter’s stress and fear and hope and he burst out in tears, falling down to the ground and sobbing as Amber, silent tears still streaming down her cheeks, dropped down behind him to wrap him in a hug that melted the hearts of even the toughest human beings to witness it.
Johnson coughed, clearing his throat and turning away from the scene as Kimberley met his eyes. She cried, emotions of the past months boiling out of her at the display of innocence and humanity, and she wrapped her arms around his neck where the relief and sadness just flowed. Beside them Astrid wiped her eyes clear of tears as her own, but Bufford remained staunch and silent.
“I’ve got to find her,” Peter cried, his own upset making Amber cry louder and harder with him. People crowded the children, eager to comfort them and mistaking them for helpless dependants instead of the tough, resourceful survivors they were.
“We will, Peter,” Johnson told him from behind Kimberley’s embrace, “I promise we will.” He meant it and eyed the half-covered hull of the Warrior fighting vehicle Michaels had emplaced and knew just how useful the new technology would be to enable him to make that promise become a reality.
TWENTY-TWO
Mike Xavier took over on watch, adjusting the grip on his fire axe as he switched his head from right to left. He could hear his heart beat in his ears, and each breath made him worry that the sound of his rising panic would bring down an unstoppable horde of undead to tear them apart.
He was a calm leader. He had faced off with corrupt officials in foreign countries, had braved countless weather fronts capable of killing him and his crew, had worked in conditions so treacherous in his rise to captaincy that he would have thought himself better equipped than he was to deal with this unexpected hell. He was learning more about himself, and what he was learning wasn’t filling him with confidence about his abilities.
He had taken over from the diminutive Canadian woman, Philippa, on guard duty as they ran short shuttle runs to bring back the stocks of food they had found a dozen miles down the river. The thickly populated areas showed few or no lights, but Xavier’s upbringing on the banks of the Mersey had left him with an almost telepathic intuition about the area. He had directed them to hit the shoreline near to a golf course on the opposite bank and there they had pillaged the store room of an aba
ndoned club house before loading as many crates as they could of food and bottles of drink on board the four electric golf buggies they had borrowed for the task. They drove their supplies down to the river and loaded them on board the small fishing craft before returning twice to take more. It was on that third return trip when they had just got back to the boat and he had taken over sentry duty as two others had done before him, when they came at them from the darkness.
Emerging in a ghostly formation from the inky black beyond the reach of the weak light still glowing on the jetty they occupied, a dozen undead shuffled on damaged bodies and chilled feet towards them uncertainly. He didn’t know what it was that had attracted them.
The smell of us? Or have we made more noise than we think we have? Christ, it’s like they have a sixth bloody sense of where we are…
“Get back on the boat,” he hissed.
“Two, maybe three more trips,” Jean-Pierre told him in a voice that was a force of magnitude too loud for Xavier’s comfort. The sweat on his palms doubled before he could answer.
“Sshhh! For fuck’s sake! Get back here.”
The desperation in his tone cut through to Jean-Pierre like a blade. He froze, having the good sense not to drop his burden, but gently bend his legs and sink down to rest it on the ground silently. He paced fast to his right, taking three quiet strides until he blocked the path of their stocky mechanic and whispered in his ear. Jase dropped his burden, less quietly, and fast walked towards the boat as though not looking around would render him invisible to the things that hunted them.
“What the hell?” came a loud and annoyed Canadian voice from the darkness, “Who the heck is leaving their stuff in the dark? I could’a fallen over that, you know? Could’a hurt myself real bad.”
Three desperate voices shushed her in response. Philippa froze, hearing a guttural shriek pierce the air in the near pitch black. Other shrieks joined in, firing off in yelping barks like urban foxes heard in the dead of night, only they all knew there were no foxes there making that noise. The three of them still a way from the short jetty froze, huddling together in fear. From his position higher up, and having been in the darkness longer than the others and still in possession of his full night vision abilities, Mike Xavier watched as the loose line of zombies stopped. The one at the centre of the line, the one he thought looked like a leader as it was the first to move before the others fell in with it, barked another long shriek again and slowly turned its head in a very specific direction.
Directly towards Jason, Jean-Pierre, and Philippa McAndrew.
“Ruuuun,” he bawled, dropping down heavily onto the surface of the wooden platform before he chopped down with the blade of his axe on the mooring line to sever it instantly.
He heard the thudding of feet in the cold, still air, but what separated his own people from the undead was that one set of thumping footfalls came with the rasping of desperate and terrified breathing, whereas the other did not. The living ran towards him just as fast as the dead did, and it was a straight race as to who would arrive first.
He fired up the engine, revving it into life and not caring who or what heard any more because they’d already been discovered, and were already being hunted by a pack of them.
Two thuds sounded impossibly loud on their ungainly and borderline overloaded boat, followed by a third who shouted, “Go, go!” as he sailed through the air to almost collide with Xavier at the controls.
They pushed off, accelerating to loop out away from the muddy shoreline and into the deeper water of the channel. As he pulled away, Xavier dared risk a look back as splash after splash sounded over the roar of the tiny engine and he looked to see the vague hints of human shapes dropping off the jetty towards them. The animated dead bodies sank, lacking the buoyancy and speed of movement to swim, but one remained standing resolute on the jetty. It was so calm, its gaze so intent and almost knowing, that Mike throttled back to look at it.
He knew from seeing their eyes up close that there was no way it could see him, no way those milky eyes could focus at distance in the dark and find him, yet the thing seemed to be staring directly through his soul. With a long, hissing shriek it turned away, and all of the others who hadn’t fallen into the freezing water turned to follow him a second later.
Silence hung on their small, stolen boat as none of them wanted to be the first to speak. None of them wanted to ask how the shuffling blind things had found them, how they had screamed into the air and somehow known precisely where they were. None of them wanted to ask why they had seemed to be following the orders of one of them, for fear of sounding insane, but all of them were thinking it.
On the plus side, they had recovered more food in the few hours they had been away than the entire failed foray into the city had yielded in its entirety. Mike was happy with that, as food was the great leveller when it came to dealing with hungry, scared people. So, as they settled in for their slow return journey north towards the mouth of the estuary by the docks housing their beloved Maggie, he concentrated on the rolling blackness of the water and tried to block out the thoughts that threatened to overcome him with dread and desperation.
The sun was beginning to rise as they returned, casting a ghostly ethereal glow on the far side of his ship’s huge profile. The mist hung in great swirls, occasionally obscuring the skyline of the city behind the docks. One swirl of chilly white cloud parted ahead of them, and a gasp from the bow of their small craft made Xavier throttle back to nothing to investigate. He dashed forwards to see Philippa, one hand clasped to her mouth, pointing to the water ahead.
A body, face down in the classic dead man’s float, bobbed in the swell ahead. The jacket it wore was bloated with trapped air, but the immobility and the deathly stillness of the body made it clear that it had been in the cold water for too long to waste their efforts by getting whoever it was out. They exchanged looks in the gloom of the pre-dawn, eyes like white beacons in their cold faces, and heads were shaking to indicate the sentiment of being unable to save them.
As the mist swirled and cleared on the approach to the huge vertical wall that was their floating fortress, a shriek erupted from high above them. They all froze, knowing that sound and hearing it on an almost cellular level as every inch of their bodies reacted instinctively in fear. As the adrenaline coursed through them, the sound reverberated around the abandoned docks and gave a chilling doppler effect as the person issuing the shriek plummeted overboard to fly like a house brick straight down.
The noise of the body hitting the water was like an explosion, and the icy water splashing over them took away the breath of the two who were unaccustomed to being assaulted by the cold of the sea. All around them other shrieks pierced the air, and further ahead, more splashes sounded as fountains of white water burst upwards. From those impacts in the water, nothing surfaced. No bodies broke the surface to gasp in huge lungfuls of precious, life-giving air.
Without warning or explanation Xavier gunned the engine of their small, overloaded craft and took them out to the deeper water where he turned the boat in a wide U shape. He killed the revs again, all four of them standing and holding on to look back at the docks as the sun broke rank to peer over the top of the ship.
All of them were there. Even from the distance they were at, Mike and Jean-Pierre could recognise some of their crew, their friends, from the shapes of their bodies. But not from how they moved, because their movements were jerky and spasmodic as though they were being propelled by electrical impulses controlled by unpractised hands.
“They aren’t like the ones in the city,” Jean-Pierre said slowly.
“No,” Philippa answered, surprising Xavier who hadn’t even known she had gone on the failed expedition, “these are… newer somehow.”
“They’re not frozen up yet,” Mike answered without emotion, “not like the older ones. I bet they’re still warm.”
His revelation quieted them all down to watch in near stunned silence as the people they had shar
ed their space with for months, the people they had spoken to that same day, were gone. They weren’t themselves any more. They were dead, but still there. Present but vacant. Moving but no longer alive. They stared for a long time, even past the time when some of their deathly pale former friends had stopped making the hideous screaming noise and scanning around for them. Long past when they had not thrown themselves overboard but simply walked off the edge of the tall deck to try and get to them. They drifted away, all but two who stared directly at them with their heads cocked slightly to one side as a dog would when waiting for a tasty morsel.
“We need to go,” Philippa said, snapping them all out of their stunned reverie, “we need to find somewhere to hold up.”
“What about The Maggie?” Jean-Pierre asked Xavier, turning to speak to him alone as he stared hard into the eyes of his captain.
“She’s lost, JP,” he said flatly, “and we can’t keep her afloat with just the four of us anyways.”
Jean-Pierre accepted the sad fate and loss of his home in silence. Xavier said nothing, simply turned their nose around to face back down the river and opened the throttle enough to get them moving gently and not generate a loud noise for the dead to follow.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 80
