It sounded like a creaking noise at first, then grew louder with each interval as it sounded, then paused. Just as Peter’s brain registered what it was, the door clicked and unlocked from inside, only for the door to swing open and bump into the chair she had dragged over to be able to reach the release latch.
Peter snatched up the bags and his pitchfork and slipped inside as she pulled the chair away, beaming a shy smile at her ingenuity.
“That was really clever,” Peter told her in a whisper as he closed and locked the door again, before reaching up to slip across the bolt that most houses had on their doors. She smiled again, then her face dropped back into neutral as he told her to wait in the kitchen while he searched the house.
Every step he took was mirrored. She let him get four steps ahead, then began to follow, copying his every gesture as she carried an imaginary pitchfork behind him. Peter didn’t notice, not until he had searched the lounge and turned to see her dogging his steps. He smiled, said nothing, and continued to clear the house, knowing that she was following him.
As he climbed the stairs, he stepped exaggeratedly from one side to the other, bobbing his head like a disco dancer with each step. He heard the slight breath of an almost silent giggle from behind him, which made him smile. Each room they went into, he closed the curtains slowly, keeping the movement gentle so as to not attract attention. By the time they had searched the second bedroom, the girl automatically went to close the other curtain to the one Peter held, and he reminded her to do it slowly and carefully. She nodded, being extra careful to do as she was told.
Peter stopped creeping, stood upright and held the pitchfork in a relaxed way to signify that the house was safe, then beckoned her to follow him downstairs to where he used a chair to stand on and assess the haul from the cupboards.
It wasn’t much, but the tap still yielded some cold water. Peter used a can opener to take the lid off a tin of beans and slid it over to the girl who sat opposite him at the table. She picked up the spoon he had laid out for her and, with occasional glances back at him, ate the entire contents.
When they had both finished, to add to the dried snot and general grime on her face, the tomato sauce had got all over her mouth and chin. Peter dabbed a tea towel in the cold water he had run into the sink and asked permission with his eyes to clean her up. She scrunched up her nose, making him laugh, and squirmed on instinct as he wiped away the filth on her face. When he had finished, he gave her a china cup of water and sat back down with her.
“I’m called Amber,” she said in a small voice, “and I’m almost four and three-quarters.”
TEN
Sergeant Horton, commander of fifty percent of the assorted group’s heavy armour in the form of the Chieftain main battle tank employed to block the perilous road bridge onto the island, called out for his driver to roll forwards.
The defences were set so that the slab-sided rear of the tank served as a heavily armed barricade, with two machine guns and the ridiculous overkill of the 120mm cannon pointing back towards the mainland separated only by a strip of fast-moving coastal water. Already, given their initial burst of adrenaline from the large-scale deployment to bring order back to the streets of London, they had encountered a new enemy, terrifying, if not also vulnerable in many ways. That enemy had sparked flight, then a near suicidal tactic to protect the others on the island, and now boredom.
For a month now, he had taken turns with the other men trained to fight from within the confines of one of the finest tanks in creation, and he was reduced to being a very heavy, very expensive, bouncer. He guarded the door, rolling their tank forwards and backwards for the faster vehicles to roll out and find gainful employment, and he was bored.
Although not yet rostered to be on duty, he had risen early due to the noise that all the men readying to depart had made, and he could not get back to sleep, so he took his turn early on the bridge. He watched the four vehicles leave, wishing that he could be a part of something useful, or at least more useful than he felt sitting still all day. He did very little all day other than watch the ground in the distance for any movement, although he was relieved for a short break around midday. Hearing via the radio that the marines were due back, he had the tank started, ready to roll it forward before the two Saxons came into view with their angular, squat faces looking intimidating as they crossed the bridge. Shortly afterwards, he repeated the orders and watched as the other two new additions, the identical armoured personnel carriers, then he rolled back into place. Following that, the sight and sound of the two helicopters washed over him from high on the island behind him, where there was sufficient space near the exposed lighthouse to land the aircraft. Keeping his discipline and not watching the show in the direction of safety, he kept his eyes ahead on the direction of danger, despite his boredom.
As the final four, the original vehicles of the mission returned, he gave the orders for the last time and glanced back at the back end of the light tank squeaking past on its tracks.
His brain took a few precious seconds to fully understand what he was looking at. At first, given the acceptable colours and patterns of the thing, he assumed it was army kit slung on the outside of their wagon, as was the way of things.
But the way it hung was wrong. The way it had a head, and a face, and the way it turned that face to bear its teeth at the noisy tank as it went past, was suddenly so terrifyingly wrong.
Horton began to shout, to scream a pointless warning as the combined noise made by so many large engines drowned him out completely. He waved his arms frantically, pausing only for a second to consider opening up with the machine gun on the back of the tank, and dismissing that as the hatches were open and the head and shoulders of the commander were exposed. Just above the thing holding on, in their direct line of sight and hence the direction of any bullets they fired, were the two soft-skinned trucks that would be obliterated by their gunfire. Horton continued to scream and wave, deciding in the end to snatch up the sub-machine gun and jump down from the tank to land heavily on the roadway. Running as fast as he could with a partly numb ankle caused by the uncontrolled drop, he threw his body after the convoy and fired a short burst of automatic shots into the water beside him in desperation to attract the attention of the man with his back to the danger.
Just as the convoy slowed to play nice with the RMP roadblock and follow their orders to go into search and quarantine, the men in front noticed something behind was wrong.
As his wagon came to a juddering stop, Corporal Ashdown glanced behind him, just in time to see a mostly fingerless and dead hand swing forwards and latch onto the collar of his smock to drag him backwards.
He yelled out loud in fright, unable to summon the strength in his abdominal muscles to pull both his and the upper body of his attacker back upright. Broken and bloody hands tore at him from within army camouflaged uniform sleeves, and his confusion that one of his own men would do this temporarily blinded him to the priorities. Just as his brain engaged sufficient muscle-memory to reach for his bayonet, the teeth clamped down hard onto his shoulder and lanced pain through his body like a cold knife.
Ashdown screamed, heard what he thought was a distinct crack of bone, and slipped backwards from the Spartan to tumble end over end off the side and to the road below.
Miraculously, Horton had covered the hundred-yard distance despite his twisted ankle and arrived before even the men of the checkpoint had responded to what was happening. Given the speed with which events had unfolded, he hadn’t had time to fix his bayonet to his weapon, so instead he reversed it as he half-ran, half-hobbled, to swing the folding stock like a club into the side of the head of the thing.
The scene before him stayed in his mind, stuck there like a macabre freeze-frame that would never leave him. He looked down on a trooper, pulled bodily from his tank without warning, who had half of a soldier − literally, the top half of the body − pushed away from his face with both hands as he screamed repeatedly, stopping
only for gasps of air. The half a soldier tried to crane forward, to snap its teeth down, and to try and take a piece of him. It didn’t have legs, so it couldn’t gain enough purchase to bear down on its intended meal. Broken, ragged fingers clawed at him, scoring deep, bloody marks down his face and neck until Horton caught up to the desperate scramble for survival and caved in the right side of the rotting skull.
He hit it like a cricketer stepping into a fast bowl to send the ball high into the stands. The sound that accompanied the swing was less leather on willow and resoundingly more metal on skull. The crunch of the impact and the answering squelch of the twice-dead corpse hitting the roadway beside Ashdown stopped the screaming and left a ringing silence of frozen inactivity.
That inactivity was shattered by the arrival of the Squadron Sergeant Major, who jogged onto the scene and bellowed orders to stir men into action and usefulness.
“Get that bloody barricade secured,” he shouted, pointing ahead to the tank that still hadn’t returned to its blocking position, “You lot, get into search and quarantine. Sergeant Swift?”
“Sir,” came the acknowledgement from somewhere behind him.
“I’ll trouble you to expedite matters, if you don’t mind?” he asked pointedly, as everyone else heard the polite phraseology for, ‘hurry up and do your fucking job without me having to remind you’.
“Horton,” Johnson said through a heaving chest, only now showing that the mad dash downhill had left him in need of oxygen, “help me get him inside.”
“But, Sir,” Horton responded uncertainly, “the standing orders…”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Johnson snarled quietly for just Horton to hear, “my standing orders are to search returning soldiers for injuries and quarantine them for a time. The order to,” he hesitated as he looked down at his corporal, who was wide-eyed in shock and terror, “render them safe is only when infection is confirmed.”
With that, he hauled Ashdown to his feet and Horton spurred himself to assist. The man was breathing rapidly but neither man could feel his skin burning hot beneath his clothing yet. They bundled him into a room of a nearby building which had been cleared for the purpose of quarantining returning men, and they laid him down on the table.
“Out,” Johnson ordered the young military policeman stationed there, not turning to watch as the boy fled gratefully.
“You’re alright, son,” Johnson repeated as he fumbled to remove the webbing and strip his smock and undershirt away. Ashdown said nothing as the two men worked together, roughly pulling his uniform off him. He had dropped into a kind of catatonic state, eyes wide but unseeing and unresponsive.
“There,” Horton said, pointing at his right shoulder and taking an involuntary step backwards. Johnson looked and saw livid bruising already forming over his collar bone.
“Get a medic,” he said, sensing Horton hesitate a fraction of a second before leaving the room. “You’re alright, son,” he said again.
The door burst open and Horton returned with one of the marines who was fumbling free a medical kit from his pack. Horton had clearly used his initiative and the authority of his rank to remove a quarantined soldier, rationalising that the man was only going to another quarantined area.
“What have we got?” the marine said, his broad Midlands accent filling the room.
“Nasty bruising on his shoulder, and deep scratches to his face and neck,” Johnson responded.
“Has the rest of him been checked?” the marine asked, “For bites, I mean?”
Johnson said nothing but began to untie and remove the man’s boots as the others helped to strip him totally naked and turn him this way and that to check every part of his body.
“He’s fine,” said the marine, “just those two wounds.” He thought out loud as he clamped a large hand down on Ashdown’s forehead, “What’s his name?”
Johnson thought for a second, feeling that annoyance everybody experienced when known information escaped them the same second it was asked for.
“Ashdown,” he said after a pause that made him look as though he didn’t know his own men, “Graham Ashdown, Corporal,” he added, unnecessarily giving the man’s rank when it was visible on the arms of his uniform smock.
“Okay Graham, can you hear me, mate?” the marine asked as he peered into his eyes. Johnson stole a glance himself, expecting to see the eyeballs turning milky and blinking, when he realised they were not.
Ashdown mumbled in response as he seemed to come around.
“Didn’t go through,” he said weakly, his voice cracking as he spoke, “bite didn’t go through.”
“He’s right, you know,” the marine said, “this bruising isn’t teeth marks, it’s something else.”
“His webbing straps,” Horton said as logic descended on him, “the thing bit him on the strap and just pinched him.”
“I think it did more than that,” the marine answered as he worked, “the bugger’s fractured the bone, I think.”
Johnson and Horton both winced at the thought of the pain that would bring the man, but the marine’s next words sobered their thoughts.
“These scratches are nasty,” he said worryingly, “and likely to cause infection.”
Johnson froze, levelled the man with a stare and asked him precisely what he meant by infection.
“Sepsis. Blood poisoning. That kind of thing?” the man said dismissively, making the two men relax until his next words brought them back to a harsh reality again. “But there’s always the risk that the other kind of infection might be passed this way…”
The silence hung heavy once more before the marine spoke again.
“Help me make him comfortable,” he said, indicating a stack of sheets on a dresser.
Making Ashdown ‘comfortable’ actually meant tying him down to the table by wrapping the sheets around him and leaving only the upper chest, neck and head exposed. The marine periodically checked Ashdown’s temperature with a flat hand on his forehead, and each time he didn’t detect any sudden rise. That wasn’t to say, conclusively, that the infection wasn’t there and spreading at a lower rate than they had seen before.
“I’ll take it from here, Sir,” the marine said as he prepared to clean and dress the long gouges in the injured man’s flesh, “if you could just make sure there’s a man on the other side of the door?”
Johnson nodded and turned to leave, then swung back.
“Thank you, Marine,” he said in a voice full of genuine meaning, “What’s your name?”
“Sealey, Sir,” he answered, then Johnson turned back to the door to leave.
Outside, Johnson and Horton both drew in long breaths and turned to see Sergeant Swift and his corporal approaching.
“Sir, Sergeant,” he said formally, “if you’ll both come with me, please?”
Johnson stopped dead and stared at the man.
“I beg your pardon, Sergeant?” he asked icily.
“Sir,” Swift began awkwardly, “your own orders. You’ve both been exposed to one of them and you need to go into quarantine, just a few hours until we know there aren’t any problems…” he trailed off, hoping that good sense would prevail, and the big warrant officer wouldn’t tear him apart in front of most of his men. Johnson tensed for a moment as the temporary indecision raged inside him, then he abruptly relaxed and seemed to soften slightly.
“Quite right, Sergeant,” he said with a false smile, before turning to Horton and asking, “Shall we?” then setting off back to the room they had just vacated.
“Sir,” Swift said hesitantly, a hint of warning creeping into his tone and setting Johnson off as he hoped he wouldn’t.
The SSM rounded on him, towering above him by only a few inches but utterly dominating the much younger man.
“Sergeant,” he growled, “I am playing along and putting myself into quarantine for a few hours, but I am not going into the main hall where my men can become stressed and worried about my being in there,” he said as he stepped slowly
towards the man, forcing him to pace backwards to avoid the slow collision, “Furthermore,” he went on in a more insistent tone, “I’m not going back to my men under these circumstances without definitive news regarding the wellbeing of Corporal Ashdown. Is that understood?”
Swift swallowed and nodded, standing very still as Johnson turned and walked back into the room they had vacated, and closed the door behind them.
“And fetch the Captain,” he shouted through the door after it had banged shut.
Marine Sealey looked up at them, seemed to understand quickly and shrugged before returning to his ministering of Ashdown’s wounds.
“Need a hand?” Horton asked him, seeing the marine simply shake his head as he concentrated.
With nothing better to do, Johnson and Horton found chairs and settled in for the wait.
The afternoon grew dark as unexpected rain clouds billowed in from the direction of the sea. Peter and Amber had brought down thick duvets from the beds upstairs to make themselves comfortable dens on the two settees arranged so that they were facing one another. Strangely, the house didn’t have a television set, but the large radio and collection of records arranged under the turntable showed that at least whoever lived there wasn’t totally boring.
The bedrooms, only two of them, seemed almost unlived in, and one of them had no personal touches at all, which made Peter think it was a guest bedroom. Applying logic and all that he knew about the world, he decided that a woman lived there on her own. It had to be a woman, he knew, because things were too neat and orderly for it to be a man living alone.
There were all sorts of treats and chocolate bars hidden away in kitchen cupboards and the two children smiled at each other as they ate them. Even better, there were glass bottles of fizzy drinks which needed a bottle opener to free their sugary goodness, and the two of them drank and took turns to let out burps as though it were some kind of competition.
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