As he sat with her, long after she had finished crying, now just pressing her head into him to emit the occasional spasm of breathing in, he flashed back to the reason he was besieged by fear.
The things, the monsters, the ex-people; they terrified him well enough and with good reason, but the people were somehow worse. He didn’t understand why he had a hard time trusting adults, and he didn’t realise the impact of the neglect and abuse he had experienced, but that mistrust and fear was solidified when he had watched Amber’s mother being dragged away unconscious, leaving behind a helpless girl. He had been the helpless one once, and he’d had his older sister to protect and shield him from the harsher realities of life, but now his innocence, whatever was left of it, his naivety was gone. It had died with his mother, or his dog as he couldn’t be sure which one of the two hateful creatures he was upset about, and it had died with the disappearance of his sister and father before that. It had disappeared with the sickening slaughter of the farm animals at the hands and teeth of the crowd of monsters which had swept through to wipe his home off the face of the earth.
All of these factors and experiences combined to form a hard casing around his personality, and the final part of that armour was watching men drag away a woman and leave her little girl behind.
“I’ll never leave you,” he whispered to her, stroking her hair and shushing her softly, “I’ll never leave you.”
And he wouldn’t. He swore it to her and to himself. He would wait out the day and lead her towards yet more uncertain safety to avoid the terror of what the men would do to her. Her breathing had softened, become deeper and more rhythmic, to tell him that she had fallen asleep in his arms despite not having long woken. It was the stress, he supposed. Just as he closed his eyes to rest with her for a time and pass the day in safety and silence, a sound threw him straight back into the fight for survival.
TWENTY-TWO
“Can’t sit here all day,” Bufford said, “perimeter is insecure. I want to push it out, who’s coming?”
Johnson rose to his feet, cursing every part of his body that ached, which he realised with annoyance, was every part of his body. They had changed back into their uniforms by the afternoon, having washed and mostly dried them, and shrugged back into their equipment harnesses. Astrid Larsen stood and put on her kit, her slim frame carrying the black equipment with uncommon ease as she checked that Kimberley would be fine without her.
The woman with the scarred face waved her away, telling her not to fuss over her and that she felt like a nuisance. Those protestations were ignored as Astrid checked the dilation of her pupils once more.
“Any severe headaches or bad dizziness, send for me,” she told Hampton, who was still established on the other settee with his swollen knee raised. He had allowed Enfield to clean his rifle, and he sat with it resting across his lap, facing the front door as a guard. Enfield readied himself to go with them, the huge and angular rifle strapped diagonally across his back, and the four of them made ready to move out.
Hampton watched, amused and interested in how the concept of rank had gone out of the window. None of those who had survived the crash were regular soldiers; not one of them a uniform filler by any stretch of the imagination. He was a royal marine sergeant, and the lowest ranking of them was a specialist commando sniper with skills far beyond the others in many senses. The bearded man from the special forces was evidently a former marine, as his lingo paid testimony to, and nobody achieved an NCO rank in special forces without being any good. Johnson, despite being what Hampton would unkindly call a weekend warrior or a hobby soldier, was evidently an experienced and capable man, having achieved the highest rank available without become a member of the officer class. His own officer, Lloyd, could be forgiven any scorn for being one of them, because unlike the army, the royal marines officers lived and fought as one of the team and had to pass the same tests as their men, instead of sipping sherry and brandy and relying on family connections like the other branches. The anomaly for Hampton was the Norwegian woman. She had been very quiet, probably due to the same loss that all of them felt for the dead left behind in a burning aircraft, but her loss would be worse as she was now the only one left of her team and her countrymen. She was totally alone, and to make it worse for her, even Hampton couldn’t comprehend how a woman could be a frontline soldier, let alone a highly trained one. He kept his misogynistic thoughts to himself, not that he saw much wrong with the blatantly sexist ideas bouncing around his brain, as she had done nothing but prove herself capable since he had first met her.
Now, watching the four of them stack up by the front door ready to move out, he saw the natural abilities and training of those most suited to the task taking over. All of them would be CQB and FIBUA trained; that is to say they had been taught to engage the enemy in close-quarter battle and fight in built-up areas. Indeed, he and Enfield had attended the same refresher training before their last Northern Ireland deployment. He also knew from conversation that Johnson had toured there, so he would have had the same level of training, albeit to a far lesser degree, as the man was a tankie. The SB man, Buffs, would be able to do room clearances in his sleep, and if he had to guess, the woman, Astrid, would have done a fair bit of that kind of work too.
The natural selection of leadership seemed to evolve before his eyes as the most experienced took the lead, with the second best at his shoulder. The third strongest link would be taking up the rear and the weakest of their small team would be placed third in line where he wouldn’t have to make any decisions to engage without following a lead. The senior man, the highest ranking, fell into place to learn the tactics of special forces room clearing fast and, on the job, not once complaining or trying to force a plan on the others. Hampton’s appreciation for the man went up then, as he liked to see humility where it counted.
“On me, alternate eyes left and right,” Buffs said, “at the door we check, do a perimeter in twos, then go in. I want the nearest houses cleared one by one. We start with the church, head along that side of the road for three houses, then cross over. That gives us a buffer we know is clear at least. Questions?”
There were none. They moved out, eyes wired for any threat, and the first two people in the team feeling only slightly out of sorts for operating in a clandestine manner during bright sunshine. The church was reached within seconds, with Bufford pointing at himself and Enfield, then pointing a flat palm held vertically like a blade and indicating that they would head around the left side of the building. He pointed at Larsen and Johnson in turn, making the same hand gesture around to the right. The instructions were given fast and clean with no misunderstanding, and he hoped that he would not need to repeat them so long-windedly for the next house.
That was the problem with operating at a level of elite excellence; nothing else compared or came close when you had to work with men who didn’t have the benefit of that training.
Johnson nodded at his partner, both moving off as Bufford pointed at Enfield’s SA80 and wagged a finger before pointing at his own suppressed submachine gun. Enfield nodded, clicking on the bayonet to demonstrate that he would not fire a noisy shot unless absolutely necessary.
The big man and the slim but strong woman crept around the side of the church, finding a small stone bridge spanning a brook which trickled and bubbled away beneath. A rotting stench filled their nostrils, forcing both of them to react in disgust. Johnson peered over the edge to see the whitened, bloated and decaying body lying flat on its back in the shallow water, and a wide-eyed blind stare of white eyeballs bored back up at him. He peered at it, knowing it to be twice dead from the wound in its head. He found Larsen’s eye and indicated that the thing had been stabbed through the skull. She nodded at the information, knowing its relevance and adding it to the evidence of survivors in the village. Or at least that there had been some recently. They continued, meeting the others at the rear of the churchyard, where Johnson indicated for Buffs and Enfield to go back around
their way. He pointed out the corpse, indicating again in silence that it had been rendered safe in an effective manner which wasn’t often seen before the world went to flesh-eating shit. Buffs nodded his understanding, no doubt filing the information away just as effectively as Astrid had, then he led the way back to the front where a small crowbar was produced from down his back. Jemmying the heavy wooden doors open with ease, the team poured in and checked the few rooms.
The smell of death hit them immediately. Despite the warm weather outside and the direct sunlight that was pleasantly hot, the air inside was cool and damp and laced with the musty stench of death. The source of the smell was discovered in one of the cloisters and the disturbed flies buzzed angrily away from the remnants of the vicar’s hanging body. Beside the wooden pulpit which had tipped on its side, no doubt as the man’s final act, lay next to it a writhing pile of gore where the maggots fed on the filth leaking from his body. Entire chunks of the man had fallen away, decayed from the inside by the gruesome act of nature and the passage of time.
They all took in the scene and all withdrew to search the building for anything of use. Some small supplies of food, mainly biscuits and the makings of hot drinks, went into a bag they found, to be deposited on the front doorstep. Bufford’s pointed instructions made it clear that they would check and search every building and come back for the haul after the work was done. Shutting the door on the church, they cast their minds to the next property.
The front door was stubborn and very locked. Without firing weapons or kicking it in with enough noise to bring unwelcome attention down on them, the team went back around their perimeter to try the back door. The splintering of the wood from the heaving crowbar sounded louder than gunfire but the old wood refused to budge, instead bending and not allowing them access. A snap of Astrid’s fingers sounded, and she waited until the three men looked at her before pointing upwards to a partially open first floor window. Buffs and Johnson cupped their hands and hoisted her high up to watch as she gripped the exposed window frame with one hand and pushed up the locking bar to swing the opening wide. She hauled herself the rest of the way, slipping through the veil of a net curtain to shoot an upturned thumb back out. Soft sounds came from inside the house as she made her way down the stairs. A strained click and a metallic scrape indicated that the back door was unlocked.
The door creaked open to show her in the ready stance with the parachute stock of the gun tight into her shoulder as she leaned into the weapon and pressed her face against it to aim down the barrel.
“Upstairs clear,” she whispered as the others joined her inside and Enfield shut the door quietly, “but you can smell this, yes?”. They could smell it. The same sickly, vile odour as before, and as they advanced on the few rooms downstairs a scene unfolded which further solidified their belief that someone capable was operating in this tiny village long after the fall of everything.
A zombie, a bloody big one even by Johnson’s standards, lay face down on the living room rug with its head haloed by a small puddle of dark filth. The stench of the thing was obvious even when the door was closed, but up close it was incredible. Unlike the dead vicar, the flies had not touched this body, which only seemed odd to them afterwards, as though the priority of thoughts allowed only so much working memory at any one time. What was evident, despite the decay, was that this zombie had also been rendered safe.
“Immobilised,” Larsen said, pointing at a stab wound in the neck as she covered her mouth and nose to inspect the body without touching it, “or at least a miss to the head.”
Nobody answered for fear of having to draw in breath. They searched the house, satisfied that the only occupant was rotting in the room they were happy to shut off.
“In here,” Enfield said, waiting for the others to join him. They weren’t so unprofessional as to rush and make noise, and his call was made in a tone that didn’t spark fear. The four of them found themselves looking at an open wardrobe with a solid metal cabinet with two keyholes, one high and one low, on display behind the rows of large shirts.
“Keys,” Buffs whispered, and everyone cast out to magnify their search parameters for much smaller items. Each room was checked, every drawer and pot emptied for sign of the keys to allow them access to the gun cabinet. They all drew a blank until one last thought dawned on Johnson.
“In its pocket?” he said softly, seeing the disgust on at least one face. Larsen looked at the three men in turn, seeing no obvious sign of any of them volunteering for the task. Tutting loudly, she walked out and downstairs and into the kitchen, where she went straight to the under-sink cupboard to where she had seen what she needed. Pulling on a yellow washing-up glove, she strode towards the living room as she took a big gulp of a deep breath and walked in without breaking step. Slinging the gun behind her and bending down so as not to kneel in the leaking fluids coming from it, she thrust a hand into the trouser pockets of the corpse and let out a dry retch of disgust. Steadying herself and breathing into the crook of her elbow for a few beats, she repeated the process on the other side, until she jerked at the body and came out with a triumphant look on her pale face. Walking straight past them as they scattered, she thrust the gloved hand holding the keys into the sink and turned on the tap to rinse them of the greasy gore that covered them. She breathed hard, repaying the debt of oxygen to her body after holding her breath, and shook off the excess moisture into the sink before leading the way upstairs.
Johnson didn’t know exactly what they were expecting, certainly not anything resembling the military hardware they all possessed, but somehow the two shotguns and one rifle still disappointed him. Enfield reached in to inspect the long gun, running his hands over it and feeling the weight and balance of the weapon as he tried to get to know it.
“This’ll do,” he said, reaching into the wardrobe again for a padded gun slip and settling the new weapon inside. The boxes of bullets were handed out to him, as were the two empty magazines, which both held only five bullets each.
The two shotguns were also inspected, each placed into a similar carrying case and each with a large bag of ammunition to go with them. They were double-barrelled, but even two shots when you had none were better than nothing.
“Cut them down?” Buffs asked Johnson, “back-up weapons?”
Johnson nodded, thinking that nothing short of either platoon or company strength support weapons would be useful against more than a few of the things together, but that stealth was more sensibly employed. An army accustomed to war before the inception of firearms would fare better than the current model, he also thought, then looked down at the submachine gun in his hands, looking tiny in his grip, despite its fat barrel. He hadn’t fired the thing yet, but he knew that there was no such thing as a silent weapon. Even the percussive cough it would make would be nothing compared to the ringing crack that the impacting round would make, but at least the sound shouldn’t carry for miles like the booming report of a rifle. Or a shotgun.
With Johnson shaking himself out of his thoughts, they gladly escaped the smell of the house before moving on to the next one, taking only the salvaged weapons with them.
And that next house held items they were not expecting to find.
TWENTY-THREE
“Yes, Dezzy,” Downes said comically as though talking to an eager child, “you can bring it.”
“Woo,” Dezzy said, playing the part, “thanks, Dad!” he said as he hefted the rescued GPMG and the belted ammunition to go with it, “can I have a go on the load-door gun too?”
Downes fixed him with a stern look which was still partly in character and glared at him until he folded. They had adopted a small ground floor room on one of the wings a short distance from the main entrance as their own. As was always the way with them, whatever part of whatever camp anywhere in the world they occupied, it became a kind of holy place that young soldiers stared at in awe, and others just pointedly ignored, unless they had cause to be there. As for the men themselves, even
the Major, as they walked around without displaying any rank or insignia, they were often referred to as ‘Oi, mate,’ by most regular soldiers. They dressed for war, putting on more layers and heavier clothing by necessity than the heat of the late summer made comfortable. Despite the warmth, none of the men was foolish or vain enough to wear short sleeves, and when they were finished, only the lack of black hoods pulled up and the anonymity of a full-face respirator made them look less the part than the iconic imagery of the embassy siege some nine years prior. That was the look that most people associated with their regiment; black-clad counter terrorist soldiers shrouded in mystery; but the truth was something wholly different.
When the younger Captain Downes had returned to his parent unit, the parachute regiment he still officially belonged to, as very few of the SAS were what was called permanent cadre, he was grilled by his peers about his experiences and found that all of them had entirely the wrong idea about the vaunted elite.
Officers were allowed to apply for selection, passing the same gruelling tests as any man, in addition to the planning exercises they had to complete, and if successful, they would serve a tour as a troop leader. That said, being the officer in charge of an SAS troop usually meant working for an experienced sergeant and listening to the more experienced soldiers under their technical command. After that, the young officers, Lieutenants and Captains, were returned to their units to develop and earn promotion. Even fewer were invited back for a second tour, but of those, only the absolute cream made it back as Majors to lead squadrons and hopefully perform well enough to be invited back for the last time as commanding officer. That was Clive Downes’ career goal, once upon a time not too long before.
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