Death Tide

by Devon C. Ford

  It wasn’t that he was precious about the loss of one of their tracked light tanks, not overly anyway, but more that the position it had broken down in directly obscured a large area where the oncoming Screechers would be shielded from fire by the armour. He turned and gave another order for as much of their other guns, the 30mm cannons on the Foxes, to drive higher into the island to see if they could find a place to bring their guns to bear on the approach. Four of them sparked noisily to life and drove out to find some elevation.

  “Sir, Sergeant Maxwell is reporting he can fix it,” Daniels said to him before adding, “he thinks.”

  He raised the binoculars, scanning the front to see the horizon darkened by a crowd the size of which he had never seen. Ahead of that crowd, that darkening line comprising, he knew, teeth and relentless malice, he could see individual shapes breaking off and moving faster than the crowd behind. Not much, but faster nonetheless. The limit of his view was, give or take, a mile.

  Average walking speed is three miles per hour, he told himself, one mile in twenty minutes, especially over rough ground, which means half that for the Leaders… and take away twenty percent for me being wrong.

  “Tell him,” Johnson said testily to Daniels, “that I think he has about eight minutes before he is up to his nut-sack in the faster type of bastard Screecher.” Daniels nodded and paraphrased the instructions in relay.

  “Ask the last Chieftain to advance, hold firm and lay down covering fire,” he said to complete his thought, then listened as the request was passed on and he glanced forward without the need to use the binoculars, and watched the tank surge away to push the protection out in front. A few seconds later, the change in sound washed over him as the pulsing revs of the huge engine reached his ears to offer a delayed soundtrack to the emerging show.

  “Five minutes,” he told Daniels, “then order the Chieftain to withdraw. Maxwell’s wagon had better be dismounted and abandoned before then.”

  Daniels nodded, understanding that he was to give the orders to abandon an asset long before the risk of being overrun became critical. Just as he did so, he flinched and spun his head back to the front to the source of the noise. That clattering noise was the two heavy machine guns on the tank, one coaxial and firing as the big turret moved, and the other operated independently by the commander in his cupola. They were engaging the enemy out in front of the main force, holding their ground and pouring fire and lead towards them.

  Johnson couldn’t see the tank, but he could hear it. He heard it then, and heard the engines roaring as it came back into view in evident withdrawal.

  “Sir, Chieftain is reporting too many enemy to engage,” Daniels told him. He nodded at the radio operator, who ordered the tank to fall back and for the crew of the stranded Spartan to abandon their task. Johnson cursed himself then, as nobody had thought to send a vehicle out to them in time so that they now faced a humiliating flight on foot to reach safety. The guns of the tank rattled in the distance as it crept back towards the bridge, where one lane was still open.

  “Negative, abandon and rejoin immediately,” Daniels said insistently into the radio, then listened and turned to Johnson, wearing an exasperated look as he repeated the order.

  “Sir, Maxwell thinks he almost has it,” he said to the SSM.

  Johnson opened his mouth and drew breath to rage down the radio at the Sergeant he counted as a friend. His anger wasn’t through being disobeyed but was born of fear that he would lose the man to the army of Screechers marching on them. Staying closed down in their wagon was suicide, as even one stray 30mm round could kill them all with a lucky ricochet, let alone the Chieftains firing 120mm rounds that would slice through them with sickening ease, and superheat everything inside their tank as it went.

  Just as he went to press the switch to speak, the radio crackled and burst into life.

  “Got it!” screamed the excited voice of Maxwell’s driver.

  Johnson thrust the binoculars up to his face to locate the tracked vehicle and saw two men scrambling to climb down feet first into the hatches as the light tank bucked and crawled towards them with agonisingly slow progress. Johnson guessed that the crew had managed to get the linkage connected to just one gear, and that gear did not afford them a particularly speedy flight, but they were moving, and they should get back just in time. The horde was approaching the front of the tank at a worryingly close distance now, and all over the island, nervous men wiped hands and foreheads as they waited for the order to fire.

  “All wagons, degrade the enemy concentration, do not fire at the leading edge until the units are secure…” Johnson paused after giving the order and allowing time for each gunner to switch their aim to the massed section of dead now visible, “…fire when ready.”

  He didn’t get to finish his order, because firing switches were depressed the second they heard the word fire. Their immediate universe erupted in a noise far worse than their earlier barrages, as almost every gun in the squadron opened up at once. Using the binoculars, Johnson could see body parts flying high above the lurching crowd, along with great gouts of earth and other detritus. No infantry in the history of the world would advance into that kind of fire, he knew, but then infantry, as much as it pained him to accept even then, had brains. No thinking enemy would advance into that fire, he corrected himself, and carried on watching as the deepest levels of hell were visited upon the undead.

  Then his face dropped, because he realised it wasn’t going to be enough.

  Even though every gun they had had been brought to bear, the enemy were too many and they had begun to erode their numbers too late to stop them from reaching the makeshift blockage on the bridge. Those two tanks, even with their higher rear ends facing the onslaught instead of the very low-profile fronts, could not hope to remain where they were without being swarmed over, and as soon as the enemy reached their manned armour, the barrage of their sixteen heavier cannons would have to stop, or they risked killing the tank crews and blocking their only road off the island. Anticipating this somehow, the Captain in the tank below called them on their radio.

  “Machine guns only when they get to us,” he said, “30mm to the main body of the assault only,”

  Johnson heard Daniels acknowledge the order, unnecessarily given, then frowned as the Captain spoke again, “If we are overrun, we will advance the tanks into the assault. Stand by to replace the obstruction with light armour imminently,” he said. Daniels looked at Johnson, both men incredulous and admiring of the bravery they had just heard.

  The two tank crews, risking becoming stranded and dying of dehydration closed down inside their machines, planned to hold off until the very last moment, then drive straight over the oncoming zombies and crush their way through the attack at their own risk. Behind them, the four tracked vehicles of Maxwell’s troop, including his own limping wagon, could block the road as though they were standing shoulder to shoulder, and could still use their cupola-mounted machine guns without posing a risk to the tank crews or themselves as they fired.

  It was a desperate move, as any surviving attackers could then swarm over the smaller vehicles blocking the road and invade their uninfected haven, but it was all they had left.

  “Captain, this is the SSM,” Johnson answered on the radio personally, “orders understood, Sir, God speed.”

  With that, just as the leading wave of angry, hungry, undead flesh met the rear of the armour, both tanks reversed in unison and slicked the roadway instantly with gallons of blood from the flattened, destroyed bodies.

  The four Spartans pressed up to take their place at the roadblock, and even though the guns all still fired incessantly, they all watched as the two huge tanks drove through the horde, turned, and drove side by side to carve an enormous wave out of the attack, before the bodies swarmed over them to obscure the armour from sight entirely.

  Heads dropped, hopes were dashed, and the radio crackled into life once more.

  “Tower,” said a voice in a
bad American accent, “this is Ghost Rider, requesting a fly-by…”

  “Last callsign, identify?” Daniels snapped back into the set, annoyed that anyone would break radio protocol with such poorly-timed levity.

  The voice came back, no longer attempting the impression, “Cease fire, cease fire,” it said, “friendly air assets inbound, acknowledge cease fire order.”

  Johnson shrugged in disbelief and nodded, then watched as Daniels picked up the squadron radio and ordered everyone to cease fire. Confused or not, they followed the orders.

  “Confirmed… Ghost Rider?” Daniels said with a wince into the other set, as he had no other thoughts on what to call the newcomers, “cease fire is confirmed.”

  No verbal answer came, but the insistent wop-wop-wop of rotary wings soon pierced the air now that the gunfire had subsided.

  Bursting high from over a cliff, a pair of twin grey-painted Sea King helicopters chattered noisily into their world and impressed them all with a staggering display. From the aft end of the lead helicopter’s belly burst flare after flare which spread out in diagonal streaks of fire and smoke, and just as the soldiers on the ground found their attention drawn inexorably towards the show, so too did the head of every last Screecher stop and rotate upwards to watch the bright, noisy thing settle into a hover just three hundred feet above them.

  “Cut all engines, apply all safety catches, stub out your smokes, keep your tray-tables in the upright positions and your seats upright,” said the voice on the radio which, if the spectacle in front of them hadn’t been so incredible, would likely have boiled the top off any NCO for the ill-disciplined approach to radio procedure. Johnson shrugged and nodded again to Daniels, who relayed the order to the squadron.

  His words trailed off into a, “Fuuuck me!” as his eyes drank in the scene below. The army of undead, the wide swathes of corpses flooding over the landscape to wash over them, now began to bunch together. The crowd started to swell in the centre, then it grew in height as they commenced an unrehearsed circus routine. They climbed each other, hand over hand, body over body, as they stretched upwards to reach the violently spinning machine. The second helicopter also stayed in a hover, only another few hundred feet above and to the side of the first, the pilot of which was using it as the world’s most elaborate and expensive lure.

  Just as the show couldn’t get any stranger, Johnson heard the distant but distinct sound of a familiar guitar riff blasting out over the open air of their small valley. Snatching up the binoculars, he managed to catch a glimpse of the open side door on the lower bird and what he saw made his mouth drop open and echo the recent sentiment Daniels had made.

  “Fuck me,” he said in a small squeak of a voice, before adding his customary, “Christ on a bloody bike.”

  His eyes had registered a huge speaker, like the kind one would see adorning the stage of a huge rock concert, which was secured to the helicopter’s deck with bright straps. That wasn’t what had prompted the blasphemy, however, that was reserved for the realisation of what song was being played over it.

  That familiar guitar sound, that fast, frantic and intense beat, and the unmistakable tone of the vocals coursed through him and forced a smile to his bewildered face as he automatically mouthed along with the lyrics that he knew. The song stopped, and after a brief pause of twenty seconds it began again, filling the rural coastline with Ace Of Spades, which led the desperate and feverish crowd of zombies up the slopes of the steep hill as the helicopters led them away like some awful, grotesque pied-piper. Nobody said a word as the leading edge of the remaining zombie horde reached the edge of the cliff where they could see the man in the open side door.

  Johnson couldn’t see him, but he was playing air guitar with enough gusto that the approaching Screechers cried out in an attempt to drown out the music and reach for him, only between them and him was thirty feet of open air and a three-hundred-and-forty-foot drop to the rocks and sea below. They came to him like lemmings, throwing themselves off the cliff unthinkingly in their pathological need for flesh. The song stopped and was rewound, then the air guitar solo began again. It was repeated three more times until the last of the shuffling, awkward corpses made their final journey courtesy of gravity.

  The helicopters drew back from the cliff, flying sedately towards the top of the island, and the radio crackled again.

  “Tower,” it said in the same awful accent as before, “this is Ghost Rider, requesting fly-by…”

  Daniels looked at Johnson expectantly, who shrugged at him one more time as though the world had just become so strange that even he didn’t know what to say.

  Turning back to the radio set, Daniels smiled ruefully at Johnson as though asking permission and responded in an equally poor accent, “Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full…”

  The responding hail was full of laughter and cheering, and deservedly so, because the two Sea Kings of the Commando Helicopter Force had just saved the cavalry.

  Epilogue

  The helicopters landed, and the crews and passengers were brought down the hill of the island by Bedford truck to the command centre adopted on a whim by Johnson. Being pilots, all of them were officers, but the few crew members including the air guitarist, were non-commissioned ranks. The second helicopter, the one that stayed up and away from the main danger, held a belly full of Royal Marines under the leadership of a Lieutenant and a Sergeant.

  The tanks’ crews, uncovered from their burial under dead flesh by the unorthodox actions of the Naval pilots and crew, had returned to the bridge, their vehicles were in a disgusting state and would need significant clearing, as entire limbs and torsos were caught in the running gear. But their eight men came out unscathed. The look of shock and child-like relief on Second Lieutenant Palmer’s face was almost embarrassing for the men close enough to witness the reunion of older and younger brother, and Captain Palmer’s effusive greeting to Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson was full of praise and admiration for the unit, the men, and the leadership displayed under the terrible circumstances. He had the good grace and manners not to mention that the squadron did well despite not having leadership, but Johnson was beginning to reckon that Palmer senior was nothing like Palmer junior, and that he rated men on merit. From what he had heard already, the man was competent and switched-on, and reports from Strauss and the tank crews had all reinforced the reputation surrounding him as positive. With that in mind, Johnson asked the Captain for a word in private.

  The two men stepped into a doorway and saw that Lieutenant Palmer made to follow them, but his older brother held up a subtle hand, which was accepted without malice. Seeing how easily he handled the brash young man impressed Johnson, which made it easier to say what he needed to say next.

  “Sir, now that you’re here, I should relinquish command of the squadron to you,” he said formally, expecting the effusive praise to continue and for his insistence that the Captain needed some recovery time and that the SSM should continue in his adopted role of commander.

  “You have my thanks, Mister Johnson,” Captain Palmer said, “both personally for keeping Olly in one piece and as a soldier for a job bloody well done,” Johnson smiled, anticipating his imminent field promotion, “I shall require a full disposition list to include staffing, both rostered, and whatever temporary promotions you may have had to make, as well as our supply situation and ammunition count,” Palmer said, sparking straight back into business.

  Johnson blinked, thrown straight back down the leadership ladder in a split-second.

  “I highly doubt our presence here will remain a secret to the enemy, even though we’ve likely cleared out most of the... what did you call them… the Screechers… in the county with that last little skirmish,” Palmer said. “I’ll address the men by troop tonight, no point in having a parade just to introduce the new Rupert, eh?” he smiled self-effacingly and continued, “Now, shall we bring in the Navy chaps?”

  Johnson nodded numbly, opening the door to invite
the men inside.

  Introductions took a couple of minutes, even though the invitation was extended only to the four pilots and the Marine Lieutenant.

  “As far as we know,” Lieutenant Commander John Barrett announced, “the entire UK has been affected by the outbreak and only the odd pocket of resistance has remained… human, shall we say,” he scanned the eyes in the room to see that he hadn’t lost anyone yet, “Yeovilton was abandoned late this afternoon as it was deemed, ‘indefensible’ by the Royal Marines,” the young marine officer nodded his agreement, no doubt recalling the miles and miles of perimeter fence in need of guarding, “and air assets have been dished out where they are needed most.”

  “The Invincible is in the channel,” said the other helicopter pilot as he glibly gave the news of an aircraft carrier floating not far away. He was the same rank as Barrett. This pilot had introduced himself as Murray but answered his fellow pilots when they called him Ruby. He continued, “and command have doled out the birds all over the place. We have a small detachment on their way by road, carrying a tanker of fuel for our aircraft, and protected by the Marines.”

  Johnson nodded at him, conveying that the necessary requirements to meet and accommodate that convoy would be made.

  “Military bases are still active in Scotland,” said Barrett, but as of yet, we have no assets on the south coast except your Squadron, so here we are,” he finished with a smile.

  “What about Germany?” Captain Palmer asked quietly. Johnson kicked himself mentally then, recalling that Palmer was on leave from his own squadron based near Berlin.

  Barrett and Murray exchanged a look before Murray answered, “Gone. And our active units over the water,” meaning the thousands of personnel deployed to the conflict in Northern Ireland and beyond, “are reporting outbreaks of their own.”

  “So,” Barrett said with a clap of his hands and forced joviality, “we are to consolidate and rescue as many of the civilian population as possible whilst Her Majesty’s government decides what to do.”