Death Tide

by Devon C. Ford

  Instead, a loud noise startled him as his mother banged her face into the glass again to try and chew her way out to kill him, smearing the pane with dark gore. Lowering the pitchfork and spinning the wooden handle in both hands in physical preparation for the act that he had mentally practised throughout the night, he rolled his shoulders and, for the first time in his life, got ready to stand up for himself against his mother.

  Stepping forwards and snatching down the back door handle, he stepped smartly back as she screeched loudly, as if they were both psyching themselves up for the confrontation. Then she spilled out of the doorway and fell headfirst down the raised step, to slap noisily on her front at his feet. Stepping backwards slowly as though magnetised into keeping a certain distance, like he was physically repelled by her, he watched her halting, inhuman movements. She moved her arms, one by one, slowly as though her short fall had dazed her, then raised her head and reached out to him with one hand as she hissed inwards with an accompanying groan. The dried blood of her last meal was dark and crusted as it flaked off her face and hands.

  Peter stepped back with one foot to steady himself, raised the pitchfork with both hands and angled the curved metal tines as best he could estimate, then struck as he stamped his left foot forward and buried a single spike through her eye socket to grate the end sickeningly against the inside of her skull. She froze, twitched three times with lessening intensity, then slumped forwards as he withdrew the metal.

  Looking down at the now lifeless form that used to be his mother, Peter spoke softly.

  “That was for nothing,” he said, with resounding finality and not a single trace of remorse, “and there’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “Right, you tossers!” Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson bawled as he strode into the room where the majority of his troopers were sleeping. “Hands off cocks and grab socks.”

  He had roused them just before dawn, having woken over an hour before to shave and dress in his uniform. He wasn’t just the man in charge of the squadron, he was also its heart and soul. Its mascot and talisman.

  The RMP unit had volunteered to take the night duty, which Johnson had readily agreed to, but insisted that Three Troop remain on standby to act as the quick reaction force should the RMPs meet any threat that could not be avoided or easily tackled by their reduced numbers.

  Following the incident which had threatened to rob him of his wits, not to mention control of his suddenly liquid bowels, he had issued standing orders to the entire squadron, which had apparently now absorbed the eight red caps left behind as the detritus of an unexpected conflict. Those orders were based on the few pieces of valuable information he had gleaned during his brief period of intimacy with one of the things.

  The Screechers, as he had called them because of the most penetrative sound the thing had made, a noise that had stayed buried deep in his mind, did not die through conventional means. He had proven that with the half a dozen bullets he had stitched through the chest of the thing at very close range.

  Headshots, he had warned, or a bayonet to the brain preferably, given their very highly attuned aural acuity. A hand had gone up at that point.

  “Yes,” he said in a tired tone that already bordered dangerously on annoyance, “Trooper Nevin?”

  “Sir, what’s aural acuity mean?” asked Paul Nevin, a man of sufficient age and with enough service to have been a full corporal at least, but in possession of a perpetual laziness and poor attitude.

  “It means, Trooper,” Johnson said in a tone riddled with warning, “that the things do hear very good and probably better than what you do…” he trailed off after delivering the offensive retort in a voice that told everyone listening precisely what he thought about the mental capacity of Trooper Nevin. His biggest challenge was reading the Sun’s page three; that was when he could look beyond Samantha Fox to see the words. Johnson’s stare lingered for a few more uncomfortable seconds on the man who he was certain had interrupted him for the sake of having an audience, as opposed to genuinely not knowing the correct terminology for sharp hearing. Uncomfortable seconds for Nevin at least, before he resumed his briefing.

  Headshots, or bayonets if they could keep it quiet, were the order of business. Strict discipline regarding noise was to be enforced, and all NCOs were directly responsible for maintaining that discipline.

  “As for today,” Johnson went on in his loud, powerful voice, “Two and Three troops will remain here with Admin troop under the command of the SQMS. Our RMP brethren will be standing down for the daytime after the rest of us leave. One Troop and Assault will be on patrol with me.” He looked at his watch, “Oh-seven-hundred we are off, so be ready, and one last thing…” he said loudly as he glowered at the assembled men, “We will not observe the normal practice involving RMPs on gate sentry and eggs. Am I clear?”

  Mumbles of an affirmative nature and downward-cast eyes gave him as much answer as he would get without singling any one man out, but he had made his point.

  “And me, Mister Johnson? Where might I best serve the squadron?” asked a nasal voice which was quickly followed by what Johnson could only describe as a smell like a tart’s handbag. He turned to see a splendidly uniformed, and sickeningly perfumed, Second Lieutenant Palmer, who had clearly taken his combat uniform to the family tailor in order to achieve the best fit. Johnson’s trained eye, however, noted the well-maintained weapon and a healthy supply of additional ammunition.

  “Lieutenant Palmer,” Johnson said, “you will be in the second Sultan behind me.”

  Palmer nodded with a hand pressed flat on his chest in an almost mocking gesture of obedience, before he straightened and slipped a thin cigarette into his mouth and lit it as he turned away.

  “Where I can keep a fucking eye on you, you bloody dimwit,” Johnson added quietly to himself.

  Thirty-nine minutes later, with assault troop leading the way with four Spartans in the front, two Sultans in the middle and the un-tracked four-wheeled Fox armoured cars of One Troop behind, Johnson led his small fighting unit out into the picturesque countryside.

  They had travelled less than two miles before they met oncoming vehicles, each containing family members with all their belongings and pets. Each one was flagged down by the leading vehicle and directed straight to the gate, where they were told to be ready to be searched and relieved of any weapons.

  Johnson, from his elevated perspective, standing tall out of the open hatch of the armoured vehicle, fancied that these early morning arrivals were the more sensible ones; those who had taken the night to pack and ensure that they had everything they needed. The influx had been steady, and the other senior sergeants had done a good job in telling them how things were, and thus keeping their problems from becoming Johnson’s problems.

  Now, approaching the nearest town, the full extent of their problems was about to become clear.

  Peter couldn’t stay in that house. The only home he had ever lived in no longer felt like a safe place, nor did he feel any positive emotional attachment to the building. It stank of death, for one thing. The rotting, butcher’s shop stench was thick and cloying in his throat, and he couldn’t bear to look at the ravaged remains of the dog that had so overtly disliked him. To Peter, it had still been an innocent animal which had been physically ripped apart and died horribly. He stripped his clothes and washed with cold water as there was no hot left now that nobody was alive to flick the switch and activate the immersion heater controls. Cold water didn’t bother him, as his discomfort at feeling cold seemed to have vanished during that long night he had spent in the windy barn. He seemed to have aged overnight, matured by the indescribably savage turn of events over the last week.

  He had lost his sister, his shield against the harsh realities of his parents’ lives.

  He had lost his father soon afterwards, not that he knew what his fate had been, but he doubted he would have chosen not to come back; he had left his gun and his dog behind, and Peter thought he woul
d value those two things more than his wife or son.

  He had lost his mother. Well, he had killed her but that didn’t seem to count as a crime because she had already killed three other people and then turned into the same as them, before killing the dog.

  And besides, he told himself as though he needed any more justification, I had to kill her because she was going to eat me, like she did the dog.

  He did wonder how difficult that final rebellious act would have been, had he actually enjoyed his life or felt any connection other than mutual hatred for the woman who abused him, but he put that thought aside as an irrelevant one. As young as he was, as inexperienced in life as he felt, he accepted this new reality on a deep level that could not be explained.

  This, his subconscious told him, was just how life was now.

  Selecting clothes, food and other supplies, he carried his heavy load downstairs and paused by the lounge door. He didn’t cast his eyes left because he doubted he could hold his nerve if he saw the ravaged and destroyed body of the dog, so instead he reached out and felt for the door handle as he tried not to breathe in the smell of death. As the door clicked shut, his eyes rested on the hallway cupboard, and he quickly weighed up the risks of doing what he was planning on doing and decided that there was nobody left to punish him. Opening the door and reaching inside, he picked up the heavy shotgun with its long barrels and stooped awkwardly to retrieve the belt, complete with its fully stuffed loops, each one bearing a red plastic tube with a brass cap. Hefting the gun and leaning to one side to lift the cartridge belt over his shoulder, he walked to the kitchen where he put everything down and emptied the cupboard of the food.

  Quickly realising that he had more than he could carry, he furrowed his brow in thought for a few seconds before an idea struck him. Turning for the back door and lifting up the pitchfork which would now go with him everywhere, he slipped outside with alert eyes and returned shortly afterwards pulling a four-wheeled cart with a squeaking wheel bearing. Taking it past the house and down the few steps with difficulty, as he had to manoeuvre around the four dead bodies, he kept his eyes fixed on anything except the corpses. He took a selection of tools from the shed and added them to the cart, then manhandled it with much more exertion back to the house, where he ferried his bags of clothes and food out to fill the only transport he had available to him.

  Turning his back on the house after he closed the back door, he paused, glancing for the first time at the decaying bodies, and feeling the swell of fear rising from his churning stomach again. He considered whether to set fire to the house and destroy the evidence of his childhood and its bloody end, but deciding against the arson, no matter how satisfying it would have been, he dropped the final item onto the top of his haul.

  Settling the stuffed lamb in the top of his battered backpack to make it more comfortable, he tightened the zip to keep it safe, and headed for the farm.

  FIFTEEN

  “Stop, stop, stop,” Johnson’s radio operator called to the armoured column after his hand gesture indicated his orders.

  “Signal Assault troop,” he shouted to the trooper on the radio, “half of them are to dismount and recce the obstruction. Defile drill.”

  The man nodded and relayed the orders. Johnson watched as two of the crew dismounted from their tracked wagons, wearing webbing and helmets and carrying their personal weapons. Then they set off forward on foot with the heavy machine guns of the other two serving as cover. If he had ordered the entire troop to dismount, they would have removed the GPMGs, the 7.62mm general purpose machine guns, from their tracked vehicles and taken them along to provide a devastating capability of man-portable weaponry. But Johnson wanted this done quickly, and he wanted his boys back inside the safety of their armoured vehicles as fast as humanly possible.

  He was yet to see a set of teeth that could bite through the thick aluminium of their wagons.

  Despite his crisp appearance, he had barely slept during the night as he had pored over all the details he knew, as well as those he was making educated guesses about. One thing that he couldn’t yet be sure about was how the, whatever it was, infected people. How the dead arose and started acting like the one he had spent quality time with at the fence.

  The only way, he decided, was when they bit someone. Just like rabies.

  Switching his attention back to the scene ahead, he took a deep breath and watched his boys work. He knew they knew what to do and certainly didn’t need him watching over them or holding their hands. As much as he wanted to be at the tip of the spear, he recognised that the need for oversight was more important to the squadron than having their oldest, albeit probably toughest, soldier at the front. And he knew it would serve little purpose other than to assuage his feelings of itchy feet.

  He watched on as the eight men leapfrogged each other, as if he were overseeing a training exercise; only he hoped that their eyes would be far more alert than if they were just training. The obstruction that they’d been sent to clear was a cluster of crashed cars. Defile drill was what they did all the time, as most of their work was to patrol the areas where it was unsafe to be walking around. Defile drill allowed for an obstruction to be checked for roadside bombs and other dangers, whilst the rest of the troop could bring to bear the full might of their vehicles’ weapons. Johnson was running this by the book, and his boys were performing just how they were supposed to.

  And that was just it. They were doing exactly what was expected of them in warfare.

  Only this wasn’t warfare. This was something else entirely.

  “Trooper, recall the men,” he snapped at his radio operator.

  “Sir?” he answered, his voice rising half an octave to betray his lack of experience and youth.

  “Do it now,” Johnson said, fighting down the sudden anger he felt at having to repeat himself to a green boy. To his credit, the trooper offered no further opportunity to have his head removed by the squadron commander, and he gave the orders. No sooner had he overcome one person double-checking his decisions than the radio sparked to life and Lieutenant Palmer’s shrill voice cut the air through Johnson’s headphones.

  “Sergeant Major,” his unhurried voice said, seeming to have a direct connection to Johnson’s eyebrows until he managed to control his face, “is there a problem?”

  Johnson made eye contact with the radio operator and made a cutting motion with his left hand past his throat. The trooper understood.

  “Standby, Sir,” he said formally.

  Johnson returned his gaze to the front, as the eight soldiers jogged back to their armour and climbed inside. Transmitting to the whole group himself, he called out their new orders.

  “All troops, Green Snake, I repeat, Green Snake unless otherwise instructed. All troops acknowledge.”

  He waited as the few acknowledgements came back, satisfied that he had made the right decision. Just as the acknowledgements had finished, assault troop reported that they were ready to move, so he gave the order.

  Green Snake meant that instead of approaching any potential threat area or obstruction carefully and dismounting to check for dangers, they were now under orders to force their way through and not stop or leave the safety of their vehicles. He cursed himself in his head that he hadn’t thought to abandon conventional protocols when their world had apparently abandoned the conventional overnight. Now, powering through the crashed and abandoned cars blocking their way with their far heavier mounts and more powerful engines, they approached the outskirts of the big town where the county hospital lay just off the main road.

  Peeling away from the wider carriageways, Johnson’s decision to switch tactics was instantly rewarded. The lead Spartan turned slightly towards the nearside hedge to bump an abandoned Ford Escort off the road and provide clear sight and movement for the remaining vehicles, and just as the upturned front edge of their wedge-shaped tracked vehicle made contact, so did the hedgerow come alive. Johnson counted five, six, then a dozen people who moved just l
ike the one he had seen at the fence at their camp the previous day. Each face that his mind took a mental snap-shot of registered something different from the last; exposed teeth through a ragged hole torn in a cheek, a face masked in blood from a badly torn scalp, a missing arm just above the elbow.

  The only two things they had in common were their milky, soulless eyes and their evident intent on getting to the troopers.

  “Close down, close down, close down!” Johnson barked into the radio, then dropped his body vertically downwards to lift the heavy, circular hatch lid closed above his head. Their views would be limited now to the thin strips which they had trained to use for so many hours and days. It did not hamper their ability to perform their tasks and carry out their orders. In fact, it made it easier to carry out those orders, as the drivers sealed inside their armour and masked under the noise of their roaring engines couldn’t hear the squelches and popping crunches of bodies going under their tracks. They couldn’t see this happening, given that their viewports offered a restricted view directly before their wagons, but the feedback from the controls told the story well enough.

  Johnson’s own vehicle, one of their two Sultan mobile command cars, was effectively the same platform as the Spartans of the assault troop, only his had more room inside to accommodate the large map wall and additional radio operator who relayed his orders. Raising his own seat and opening his hatch again, he took up a firing position with the armaments for the vehicle, the single belt-fed GMPG, and lined up the sights on the approaching bodies as they stumbled into view. He alone of all the armoured column was outside of a sealed reconnaissance tank, as the Fox and Spartan cars could operate their guns from inside, unlike his vehicle, which basically had it mounted on the pintle outside.