“QMS?” Johnson enquired politely of Andy Rochefort, “did we bring any cargo nets?”
Rochefort frowned and answered that, much to his evident annoyance, they had not. The easiest way to get a load out via helicopter was to sling it all in the heavy cargo nets the squadron was issued with for exactly that purpose. It was how they had trained for replenishment drops in theatre, but somehow, they had been overlooked. Johnson hardly blamed the squadron quartermaster sergeant for that oversight, especially seeing as the man had located bayonets for their issued weapons, which most of them had never even seen before. The only hassle with slung helicopter loads was the tricky business of having to earth the static electricity so that the unlucky trooper underneath didn’t get an extremely uncomfortable jolt.
“We do it the old-fashioned way, then,” the SSM said to the room.
It was agreed, set for just before dawn the next day with grid references and radio frequencies agreed, and the conversation turned to more mundane matters. There was to be a small patrol that afternoon to keep up with their daily schedule, and that fell to One Troop, with a single Bedford accompanying their cars to act as an oversized shopping trolley. They still needed building materials for erecting the high fences on any section of the island that could be vulnerable to a corpse or two washing up.
Such needs were recorded, assessed for priority, then set for discussion. When that prioritised list was agreed, the logistics of such matters were worked out and that was where the locals became involved.
Palmer junior, as much as he complained that removing him from the sharp edge of operations maligned his honour, actually enjoyed remaining as the liaison between military and civilian life. He held meetings, fed information back and forward, and when such mission-critical personnel or intelligence arose, then he would ensure that the right connections were made.
For this particular mission, the priority having been made to secure the island over performing another run for food, he brought forward a young man who worked at a trade builders’ yard. He would know precisely where the necessary resources could be found for building the fences, and after that, the troop on the ground would acquire anything that they needed for the defences on the bridge to make them higher and stronger.
That unelected group of civilians which met with Lieutenant Palmer daily comprised four people; three already living on the island and one young woman who had been rescued by their first sortie into the large town. The young woman bore a mottled scar down the left side of her face, which she believed made her ugly and which she tried to hide with her hair falling over her face. She could not, however, disguise her figure, despite the drab green of army uniform that she was still wearing.
Some fifteen miles away, the young boy quietly slid the bolt home high on the wooden front door. He could barely reach it on his tiptoes, but he was determined.
He was so determined that the very idea of survival was a foregone conclusion to him; he would not get caught by the things, the zombies, and he would continue to live as he had done for the last few weeks building up to that high bolt that did not want to slide across.
Alone, transient, and quiet.
He had discovered over a fortnight previously that keeping to a conventional and civilised human timetable was not the way forward, as the things were far more active in the daytime than at night. Twice he had almost been caught and had run from a small mob, until he realised that creeping around in the dark was much safer.
It was true that sound seemed to carry further in the dark dead of night, but he had learned to counter that problem too, and muffled his newly-acquired trainers with large socks to dull the sound they made. He still had his battered camouflaged backpack, only now it had evolved to be stuffed with useful items and he had been forced to carry another bag for new things he had found.
He moved from house to house, often staying still for two daytimes of sleep until he noticed that the occasional straggler had decided to wait outside the house and moan gently. If he revealed himself to it, it would let out that ripping, screeching sound that seemed to tear his insides and he would be forced to run again. He guessed that his smell was attracting them, so instead of staying at a single house to use up all of the resources there, he ate the best of it as soon as he secured the building, then raided the cupboards quietly and methodically, until he felt the need to move on before he became the local attraction.
Another thing Peter had noticed after that first week was that the things were much fewer in number, as though the majority of them in the area who had all flowed through his family farm in a stinking, terrifying tidal wave of noise and teeth, had simply carried onwards to somewhere else.
As much as the memory of barely escaping an awful fate at the hands and mouths of that wave scared him, he tried in vain to figure out where they had been going and, more importantly, if they would be back.
Satisfied that his new home was empty of anything animated, or reanimated, he slipped the straps of his backpack off to rest it on the sofa in the lounge next to the leather-effect satchel he had been carrying in his left hand. The pitchfork occupied the right, and the sanded-down grip of the shotgun protruded out of the top of the backpack, and both of those weapons now rested on the coarse, brown cushions. Peter slipped the belt of ammunition for the shotgun over his shoulder to drop it down next to the bags. He was too slim by far to wear it as a belt and instead it adorned his chest diagonally as a bandolier. He had only used the shotgun once, when he had been forced to be loud in order to prevent a hungry businessman eating him, and its devastating effect gave him confidence, if only to know it was with him.
He wandered the house again, an improvised weapon not unlike a large ice pick still in his pocket next to the folding knife, and he drew all the curtains slowly to settle down for the day’s sleep.
THREE
As soon as the single shot echoed between the low hills, and the radio sparked to life, Sergeant Strauss ordered his men to start their engines and proceed. After no more than two hundred metres, two shapes emerged from the foliage at the right side of the road and stood to become the Royal Marine sniper team who had been ahead, and they looked at the target to see if any of the troublesome fast ones were there. The convoy slowed, and the two men, covered in carefully placed grass and twigs to make their suits and helmets blend into whatever surrounds were there, climbed aboard the Bedford truck in the centre of their five-vehicle convoy.
’Limas’, they called the faster ones, using the phonetic L for Leaders.
Leaders and Screechers, Strauss thought, at least it’s simpler than Soviets and terrorists.
Like a lot of the men in the Yeomanry squadron, Harry Strauss had conducted two active tours in Northern Ireland; one as a trooper and one as a Corporal, and the daily fear of not knowing who your enemy was had left him with memories he didn’t particularly enjoy. As inhuman as it sounded, he like most of the men, would have preferred a real, traditional war against the armed forces of another country. He wanted to practise his craft without the political worries and fear of prosecution, not out of any bloodlust, but for a desire to prove himself capable in his chosen, if secondary, profession. Now, seeming to get his wish, the enemy was clearly defined. Dead people walking around trying to eat him and his men were quite obviously hostile, and as not one of them had ever registered understanding of a verbal warning, they had free rein in rendering safe the Screechers as and when they had to.
The addition of the marine sniper and his spotter had been at the suggestion of their officer, who seemed almost desperate to get his boys in the war. The capability of that two-man team was an incredible tool, if a little overly precise, and the rendering safe at distance of one of the Leaders was welcomed.
Strauss drove in the lead wagon, his head sticking out of the commander’s hatch, but with orders for the driver and others to stay closed down under the safety of their hatches. The risk, he felt, was his to take. Besides, he was controlling a GMPG machine gun with a
belt of two hundred rounds ready to let fly, so he felt fairly safe.
Arriving at the builders’ yard, he dismounted his and two other of the four-wheeled scout tanks, and they cleared the building as the last armoured scout car stayed closed down to offer the support of the big guns, should it be needed. The Bedford, with the two marines now stripped of the ungainly sniper suits, had also dismounted, and were scanning the area from their kneeling positions at the rear of the truck as they peered down the barrels of their black and green assault rifles and the glinting tips of the fixed bayonets.
“Building is empty,” Strauss announced as he returned to the fresh air and slung his sub-machine gun on his back, “let’s do this.” And with that, three civilians were herded off the back of the truck and everyone but the crew of the last car and the two marines shuffled in and out of the big building, carrying the wooden posts and rolls of heavy barbed wire that would fortify their island even more.
Strauss himself, enjoying the few benefits of rank, didn’t engage in the fetch and carry as he maintained overall control of the operation. His own men, the twelve crewmen of his four well-maintained Fox scout cars, all knew him well enough to know that he didn’t consider himself so precious as to think manual labour was beneath him, and all of them respected him.
With the exception of one man, but then again Sergeant Strauss believed that he had the measure of trooper Nevin, and knew him to respect nothing; least of all himself. The man’s sullen laziness and his characteristic lack of effort offended Strauss because he knew that most of it was an act. Nevin played the fool intentionally, claiming not to understand how things worked so that others would just give up trying to educate him and do it themselves. What annoyed his sergeant so much though, was that he knew the man to be capable. He was a decent driver, never needing to be taught anything twice when it came to something he liked doing, but when the time came to clean down their wagons and gear, or to conduct routine mechanical maintenance, he would find such childish excuses to avoid work that he was universally avoided by most of the men. Socially the story was different, as others liked to be around him when the drinks were flowing, because he was entertainment.
Twice before he had been put on charges for fighting when drunk, not counting the most recent incident that the SSM hadn’t fully dealt with yet, and on the last occasion he had been charged by the police for head-butting an off-duty policeman in town. In addition to the fearsome kicking he had received, he faced disciplinary proceedings from the army, pending the outcome of the case, which was likely to result in a fine and compensation.
The case never got heard, in fact it wasn’t due to be heard until the week after everything went to shit, Strauss remembered, so yet again trooper bloody Nevin had avoided the consequences of his stupidity. Just as another roll of heavy wire was hauled up and manhandled onto the bed of the truck, his voice cut the air.
“Sarge?” Nevin whined to him, prompting an eye-roll in no less than four of the soldiers, including Strauss.
“What is it, Nevin?” the sergeant answered with a warning tone in his voice.
“I need a shit, Sarge,” Nevin answered with a smirk, either ignoring or not recognising the warning. Strauss temporarily lowered his weapon along with his head, which sagged before he drew in a breath, and then he raised his head to fix the smiling man with a look of annoyance.
“Out the back,” he said in a voice full of exasperation, “Harris, go with him and make sure he doesn’t get lost, will you?”
Trooper Harris nodded, managing to keep the ‘why me’ from his face, then nodded to Nevin to follow him behind the building, as though he were the unruly child of the troop and it was his turn to reluctantly be in charge of him.
Sally Crawford had been a housewife, and she had lived a very happy and satisfied existence until three weeks ago. She had been living in her comfortable semi-detached home, her husband had done well for himself, which had allowed her to have her own car, and that was only a year old. Her husband had gone to work one morning, driving his large Volvo estate that she jokingly referred to as The Hearse, and she had waved him off from the deep bay window in their front room. Turning to her two children, a boy and a girl born only thirteen months apart, she hurried them along to make sure they got to school on time.
Driving her own car, a Ford Orion that she was very proud of, even if the difference between that and her previous Ford Escort was subtle to the point of invisible from some angles, she took them to school and thought nothing of the roads being almost abandoned. She arrived at the school to find the gates closed and a lone teacher outside with a clipboard, who informed her that, unfortunately, the local authority had asked for all schools to close.
She assured Mrs Crawford that nothing was wrong and that it would all blow over soon enough, of that she was sure.
Turning to her children in the back seat, she smiled broadly and told them that they had got an extra day off. She smiled at their excitement and shot the teacher a withering look as she drove away.
Waste of my time, she thought to herself, they could’ve at least telephoned me.
Brushing away the negativity, because that was just the kind of woman she was, Sally smiled and turned up the radio as a Madonna song had started playing that she knew Charlotte, her eldest, liked. She smiled as she drove, stealing glances in the rear-view mirror to see her daughter mouthing the words with intense seriousness as she framed her face with straight hands and struck different poses.
Still wearing the smile reserved for her beautiful children, she hurried them up the stairs to change into other clothes and then spent the rest of the morning making craft projects with them. When midday came, she made herself a modest sandwich and joined them on a rug she had laid out on the lounge carpet so that they could enjoy an indoor picnic.
They went to their own room in the afternoon to play, and Sally turned on the television. Her face fell as the reports clogged up each channel, telling the horrific tale of the mysterious disease spreading across London and taking with it waves of violence and mayhem.
She shot up out of her chair, flew to the telephone and dialled the agonisingly slow telephone number for her husband’s office in the dock almost ten miles away.
It rang and rang, making her knit her brow and replace the handset. Dialling again, frustrated that there were two nines in the number, she listened to the chirping tone indicating that the phone was ringing but nobody was picking up. Replacing the handset to pace again, she cursed under her breath and filled her growing fear and frustration with being busy.
She cleaned her kitchen, then tried the number again. No answer.
She scoured the Littlewoods catalogue until she found the replacement home telephone she would ask her husband ever so nicely for. She would tell him how tiresome it was to call him at work with that silly old dial phone, and then fix him with her best look, where her eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly, and he would see that as some indication of nuptial promise.
She could get anything out of him when he got that look in his eye, and all the nice things in her home were the result of individual manipulations.
Just as her stress and worry started to become the first inklings of panic, a screech of tyres and a crash sounded from outside. Running out of the front door, she saw her husband’s Volvo parked at an angle on the driveway and her own car shunted diagonally as he had hit the front wing. Gasping loudly, as much for the new car as at the fate of her husband, Sally ran to him and saw instantly that something was wrong.
He was sweating profusely, his loosened tie and unfastened collar soaked through below his bright red face. He was gasping for breath, his eyes rolling, and she leaned in just as he let out a croaking noise that sounded like he was winded. He shuddered once, made another croaking noise and went still.
Sally screamed his name, pulling open the door and trying in vain to pull him from the car by the hand. She screamed and dropped his hand, seeing that the very tip of his left little fing
er was missing. The stump ended in a red wound, already dry and scabbed over, and she held her breath to force herself to retain some control before she became useless. She stepped forward again, calling his name loudly and slapping his cheek lightly with her right hand. That hand suddenly stopped moving as he lifted his head again, turned his face and locked his teeth onto her wrist. He bit down hard, breaking the skin and cracking something within the joint to make Sally shriek in agony as she threw her body weight backwards. Landing heavily with her left hand wrapped tightly around her injured right, she looked at her husband with shock, because he had turned to face her and was reaching with both hands, moaning and making a gargling, hissing noise at her.
His eyes were cloudy, his mouth hung open and blood mixed with spittle as it ran from the lower corner of his open maw. Sally rose quickly to her feet, fearing that her husband would attack her again, but her stressed brain finally acknowledged that her husband was still secured inside the car by his seatbelt.
Leaving him where he was, she stumbled back through the open front door and ran her bitten wrist under the cold tap in the kitchen. To her surprise, the wound had already stopped bleeding but felt swollen and hot to the touch. She staggered into the front room, feeling lightheaded, and began to dial the three digits to call for the police, but the length of time it took the dial to return to zero saw her faint to the carpet after the second nine.
Sally’s children had been singing along to the tape deck in Charlotte’s room, and were unaware of the slight commotion downstairs, so they had no warning when their mother opened her milky eyes and followed the sound upstairs to where they played in blissful ignorance.
Death Tide Page 23
