“Up we go, everyone,” Lloyd said, seeing how alarmingly fast the main group of zombies had advanced as they had been stationary.
“Up we go,” Lieutenant Palmer announced in ignorant echo of his royal marine counterpart on the slope below him, as he counted another thirty onto the helicopter, leaving only himself and two others on the cobbles. Looking up at the loadmaster and seeing the mental calculations going on, he read the answer in the man’s eyes and turned back to get the last two on board. As he turned, he saw a sight that filled his heart with happiness, and then sank it to the soles of his boots because he knew that he was in for a fight.
“Every man with a weapon to get off right now,” he screamed up at Brinklow, who nodded and went inside to physically remove the soldiers from the aircraft and propel them towards the door. Palmer pushed them away from the aircraft where he arranged them into a loose line.
“Don’t bloody look at me, face front, damn you!” he bawled, finding a gravelly edge to his usually genteel voice. The confused soldiers, all of them having thought themselves safe from the horrors they were about to escape, now found that they were thrust back into the fight under the leadership of a man who was as untested as he was disliked.
As their new and unwelcome reality dawned on them, their eyes spied the formation heading for them in the gloom of the slope leading to the base of the island.
Palmer, having seen and recognised what was heading for them, had made the decision to stay behind and fight a last stand in the hopes of saving more people, but as soon as he shouted his last instructions to the helicopter’s loadmaster and shielded his face as the huge aircraft surged upwards, he felt suddenly and terribly alone; as though he had just condemned all of them. Looking around and wishing he had kept one of the sergeants to lead the men with him.
Or for me, more like, he thought sourly he watched in horror as the men somehow organised themselves.
“Take aim,” one of them shouted, as Palmer saw them raise their weapons to their shoulders. He opened his mouth, desperately willing himself to find his voice before the order to fire was given, when another voice cut the air like the tearing of sheet metal.
“No!” the voice shrieked, higher pitched and lacking the baritone edge usually expected with battlefield orders. “They’re still alive!”
Palmer turned to see Kimberley beside him, shoulders back and head high, with a small axe gripped firmly in her right hand. Before Palmer could utter a word in support, the men realised their mistake. Guns were lowered, and hushed shouts of encouragement rang out to bring the large knot of men to them.
“Identify yourselves,” one nervous soldier shouted.
“Fuck that, mate,” came the breathless and unexpectedly thick Midlands accent of a man emerging from the darkness dressed as a royal marine, “give us a gap, like?”
The men split in the centre, allowing the formation to pour through like a large-scale display of water moving between cells in the body. The front line closed up again, swelled and extended by the addition of over a dozen fighting men.
“Who’s in charge here?” called a confident voice, if a little ragged and out of breath.
“I am,” Palmer said, feeling suddenly threatened by a real soldier challenging his authority, “and have we not set a formal challenge and password?” he said, surprising even himself with how obnoxious he sounded.
“That you, Palmer?” Lieutenant Lloyd asked as he rested his hands on his knees briefly. Palmer said nothing, merely cleared his throat with a sound that reminded him of a small dog attempting to be threatening.
“If you haven’t noticed, man, we’re not fighting the bloody Russians,” Lloyd said with gentle mockery that lacked the tone of confrontation, “and I doubt these bastards are trying to infiltrate our lines. Do you?”
Palmer was left dumbstruck by his own stupidity and had to admit that it was unlikely.
“Quite,” was all that he said by way of admission, “what happened at the bridge?”
“Bloody artillery shell dropped the causeway,” Lloyd said, “and somehow they got behind our defences. So many went into the water that they piled up on the beach and poured through the fences. We could’ve held them, but they started coming from behind us.”
“Is this everyone?” another voice asked, cutting over them both. Lloyd stood up straight on hearing the voice, in spite of not being able to fully see the speaker.
“Everyone we could save, yes,” he answered solemnly.
“We had close to four hundred people here,” Kimberley said, “and now we’ve sent out sixty with what? One more load to go out?”
“I apologise,” Lloyd said with the slightest hint of warning in his voice, “we did what we could.”
“I’m not criticising,” she said, “I’m sorry if it sounded that way, it’s just that the helicopter can take thirty people if they aren’t carrying much with them. We have forty five people here as far as I can count, and most of them have weapons,” she said, leaving the implication open and obvious.
Palmer and Lloyd locked eyes in the low light available from the dull light source near the makeshift landing pad.
“What’s the turnaround time?” Lloyd asked.
“Fifteen, give or take,” Palmer answered as both men lapsed into silence as they figured it would be over ten minutes before the helicopter returned, close to fifteen before it departed and a full thirty before the final sortie flew and evacuated the last of the living from the island. That realisation hit both men at once and both turned to shout orders to the men holding the ragged line.
“Grab anything you can for a barricade!” Lloyd called out.
“Dig in, chaps, anyone with grenades please shout up,” Palmer said.
“I’ll keep the others out of the way,” said a female voice from behind them, then footsteps rattled away over the cobbles as Kimberley went about her own self-appointed duties.
“This is going to be tight,” Lloyd said.
“Indeed,” Palmer concurred.
TWELVE
“Roger, ETA sixteen minutes. Out.” Murray said into the radio, grimacing as he shifted his grip on the controls, making the airframe wobble slightly.
“Are you sure you are alright to fly?” Astrid Larsen asked, her shouted voice coming through the headset clearly.
“Madam!” Murray barked, his voice strained because of the pain and numbness coursing through his body, “I quite understand your concern, but the situation hardly allows that I can merely pull over and let someone else drive, does it?”
“You make a good point,” Astrid said, ducking her head back out of the cockpit to return to the three men in the rear. She had been volunteered to check on their injured pilot after the turbulence had caused the two SBS men to actually sit down and strap in; a rarity with any special forces troops, in stark comparison to the regimented practices of their original units.
“He says that he is fine,” she said to Berg in their native language in response to his raised eyebrow in the red-lit interior of the aircraft, then turned to the other occupants and explained in English.
“He says that he is okay,” she said in English, raising her hand with her thumb and forefinger held together in a circle in the international scuba diving signal for ‘okay’. She didn’t quite believe his assurance, but as the pilot himself pointed out, there was no other choice as there wasn’t much in the way of rest areas in the English Channel. They needed to get to dry land and they had precisely one choice in pilots, which is why all four surviving special forces commandos strapped in and hoped for the best.
“Who is in charge here?” Captain Palmer called out in echoing similarity to the struggle unfolding on the island, as he dismounted at the landing area back in the camp, where all of his surviving men had started their war, even if he hadn’t.
“Sir,” a voice called from the darkness.
“On me, man,” Palmer snapped. Sergeant Sinclair jogged in, giving the report of the action on the island, th
e abandoned equipment, the airlifts, and most worryingly about the outbreak.
“Second load just arrived, Sir,” he said, “expecting the last in roughly fifteen.”
“Understood, Sergeant, thank you. SSM?”
“Sir?” Johnson said from directly behind the man, not waiting respectfully out of earshot, as he wasn’t a fan of second-hand information.
“Mister Johnson, I’ll trouble you to take on the defences here, if you don’t mind?”
“Very good, Sir,” Johnson said as he turned away, “Maxwell? All round defence. Protect this LZ until the rest are evacced from the island. We can’t see for shit, so it looks like we’re holding this position until daybreak, which is,” he paused to look at the luminescent tips on the hands of his watch, “eight hours at least.”
“Will do,” Maxwell said, the unspoken stress of his own family’s welfare only just creeping into his voice, but not affecting his abilities as a soldier. Johnson listened as Maxwell went along the perimeter to arrange the men in pairs, unable to see his work well, so relying on his other senses.
“Sarn’t Major?” said a voice from his left, making him turn.
“Who’s that?” he growled, perhaps a little more harshly than he expected the words would come out.
“Sinclair,” came the response.
“Rod. How are your boys holding up?” Johnson asked, meaning the question to be aimed directly at the NCO, but allowing him to give his answer on behalf of Two Troop. It was the original, ‘asking for a friend’ hypothetical question.
“They were pretty rattled, to be honest. Better now, now that we’re away and out of the fight for now,” he answered, giving the answer that Johnson expected; that Rod Sinclair was terrified but holding it together, just as his boys were.
“We’ve got a building open, Sarn’t Major,” he went on, “and there’s a brew on if you wanted one?”
“Good man. Civvies ok?”
“Not the best,” Sinclair answered, his voice giving the indication in the dark that his brow was well and truly knitted, “lots of us and them left behind, if you know what I mean.”
“What’s the bill so far?” Johnson asked, meaning the butcher’s bill of losses.
“There’s another load on their way hopefully, but we’ll be lucky if we’ve come out with a quarter…”
Johnson said nothing, only stayed stock still and absorbed the fact that they had seventy-five percent less life to protect. Those figures swam in his head and tortured him as he tried to imagine the secondary losses; that of the number of fighting men lost and no longer a resource to protect the others. That train of thought delved deeper into his sudden depression as he considered how many of his men would be fighting-fit after the inevitable loss of their loved ones. He thought of the blame, of the bitterness as men struggled to cope with grief and anger.
“Sarn’t Major?” Sinclair said, interrupting his thoughts and bringing him back to the moment.
“Sorry, yes, thank you,” he answered hurriedly, “I’ll have Maxwell take over out here if you wouldn’t mind arranging things inside? Keep them quiet and calm?”
“Will do.”
Johnson listened as Sinclair walked away, pushing down his own feelings as far as he could to survive the night and start afresh in the daylight. He wanted to let someone else decide, wanted to crawl under a rock or just use one to bash his own head in for the failures and the losses. He paced, cursing himself for anything he could have or should have done differently. He should have pushed to have them all evacuated weeks ago, should’ve refused to accept the orders to sit tight and wait for all this nonsense to blow over so that the BBC could resume their normal, polite service and tell people not to panic. As he paced, a smell hit his nostrils and reminded him of the rank insignia on his uniform, kicking back into the role of the Squadron Sergeant Major; a man with the senses of superman, able to detect the lowest of mutterings over distance, and now, in this case, the unmistakable smell of burning tobacco.
He stalked the defensive positions like a hunting bear; soft-footed and slightly crouched, moving carefully so that his equipment didn’t rattle and betray his approach. His nose led him directly to a position occupied by two men, but their low conversation didn’t identify them to his ears. The faint cherry-red glow of the tip of a lit cigarette was what had sparked his senses, and the anger he felt for the breach of routine was heightened to a fury, given the situation. Careful not to be in a position where he could be shot or run-through with a bayonet when he startled the men, he crept close and put his face between their heads, which faced outwards.
“You fucking idiot,” he growled, feeling both men flinch and jump in terror, “if I can smell your bloody smokes, then what do you think the Screechers will do? Stroll up and offer you a light and then be on their merry way? For fuck’s sake, I can smell you further away than a Union Street hooker’s clout!”
The soldier, who had been attempting to hide his moment of stress-relieving indulgence by blowing the smoke inside his uniform coat, coughed and stubbed out the cigarette desperately as he tried not to breathe out. The smoke left in his lungs burned him as it leaked in small tendrils out of his nostrils.
“Hand them over,” Johnson growled, hearing the rustling of clothing as the packet was placed carefully in his outstretched hand, “and the matches. I’m forced to trust you with a gun, but obviously trusting you with the ability to make fire is too much responsibility for one fucking moron.”
A lighter was placed in his hand on top of the cigarettes.
“What about you?” Johnson said to the other soldier.
“Don’t smoke, Sir,” he whispered.
“No? But you didn’t think to tell this waste of space not to?” he asked menacingly.
No answer came, so Johnson rose to his feet and slapped each man across the head before stalking away.
Both soldiers stayed frozen in position, unblinking and barely breathing.
“Where the fuck did he come from?” the now former smoker asked in a quiet voice.
“I have no idea,” replied his mate, “but I’d rather go back to the bloody island than get in the shit with him again, dickhead.”
Johnson walked carefully back towards the darker shapes of the low buildings illuminated by the dull glow of the red light from the flares marking the landing zone. He walked inside, seeing a few shrouded lights with people huddled around them.
“Sergeant Croft?” he called out, getting no reply.
“Quartermaster?” he tried, hoping that Rochefort would at least be there.
Still no response.
“Corporal Mander?” he barked, a little louder now, hoping to find any of the men he had left in the island headquarters.
“Didn’t make it, Sir,” a trooper said from his position sitting by his right foot.
“You injured, trooper?” he asked in a neutral voice, ready to launch into a display should the man prove to be fighting-fit and avoiding the outside work.
“Ankle, Sir,” he replied, gesturing at a foot strapped heavily with bandages raised on a wooden crate.
“Did you see it?” he asked quietly.
“No, Sir, but I saw a load of the bastards go into the HQ. Too many to…” he trailed away, suddenly feeling the pang of guilt and responsibility.
“It happened, son,” Johnson said almost coldly, “no point in worrying about it now.”
Unable to face the others and field more questions, he took himself away to a quiet corner of the large room and closed his hand around the cigarettes in his pocket. Suddenly stopping squeezing as he realised he was ruining a finite resource, he released them and gently extracted one from the packet and straightened it before putting the filter in his mouth and lighting it. He smoked half of it, suddenly no longer enjoying the harsh burn in his throat and chest and tossed it onto the concrete floor to grind it out with his boot, as though the action could assuage the myriad emotions he was experiencing.
Walking back outside, he pa
ssed the injured soldier again and tossed him the rest of the smokes without waiting to hear any thanks. As he walked towards the exit, a noise to his left in the darkness caught his finely-tuned ear and diverted him to investigate.
Pulling open boxes one at a time to try and find anything useful or at least valuable enough to trade, the man kept glancing behind his right shoulder as though he expected to be caught at
any point like a child raiding a biscuit tin. His glances towards the obvious route showed his inexperience, as the sound of a throat clearing behind his other shoulder made him spin and bring up the bayonet he was using to pry open the crates.
Johnson caught the wrist holding the blade with ease, his large hand and fingers crushing the tendons to weaken the grip instantly to force the weapon to clatter to the ground, just as his right hand raised to grab the throat of the man. Two long strides forced him out of the shadows and into the weak light, and the recognition did not lower Johnson’s blood pressure one bit.
“Trooper Nevin,” he snarled, “kindly explain to me what you just did wrong?”
Nevin, as Johnson well knew, could not explain anything as the hand gripping his throat stopped all normal traffic of air and words. Whether he realised it or not, the question was not intended to be rhetorical.
“Nothing? I shall explain for you, then,” Johnson said more loudly as he continued to march him backwards and choke the life out of him. “Firstly, you cowardly piece of shit, people need protecting and, much as I am ashamed to admit it, last time I checked, you were supposed to be a soldier and not a burglar. Secondly, you flap of gristle, you ever raise a hand to me again and I’ll rip the fucking thing off and shove it up your arse. Sergeant Strauss?” he said, shouting the last two words louder than was sensible, but the rage was pouring out of him like steam by then. Boots sounded on concrete and three men appeared, Strauss at the head of them.
Death Tide Page 50
