Death Tide

by Devon C. Ford

  “Oi, dickhead,” snarled shotgun man, “shut the fuck up before you attract attention to us all.”

  This only made Nevin laugh harder at the irony of the situation. Everything he had been through, everything he had survived and finally escaped, only to fall prey to pair of fucking amateurs at the classic ‘damsel in distress’ roadside blag. His laughter took on a tone describable only as nasty, and his eyes opened to check how far away both of them were from him. Something in his brain told him that the knife was far more dangerous to him than the shotgun was at the distances in play; that he only had to move a foot for the blast to miss him entirely but that the knife could find his soft belly in a heartbeat. All of the warrior potential inside him, everything that he could have been if only he had fitted in and applied himself, came boiling to the surface as he demonstrated the ability that others had seen hidden deep inside him.

  Striking out like a snake he hit knife woman in the nose hard, snapping the punch back to make it a total shock instead of a knockout blow. As soon as he had lashed out, he stepped back, slapping his hand at the barrel of the shotgun to push it away from him just as the man pulled the trigger to blast a shot so close past knifewoman that she shrieked and threw herself down, where her legs seemed to furiously pedal an imaginary bicycle. Shotgun man’s eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open, thinking that he had killed her, though something in his expression made Nevin think it was fear of the consequences, as opposed to any genuine feeling of loss.

  By the time he had regained his senses sufficiently to lift the barrel towards Nevin, he found himself staring into the much smaller but far steadier muzzle of a revolver aimed directly at his face. He froze, feeling the shotgun pulled from his grip as it dawned on him that he was beaten. The handgun disappeared from view as the wooden stock of his own gun arced upwards to hit him hard on the side of the head and spin him around to hit the ground, where he landed dizzy and disorientated but still conscious.

  “You still alive?” Nevin asked the hissing, cursing woman who had stopped pedalling her legs and now sat up, rocking and holding her left flank where weak patches of blood showed through the material of her dirty T-shirt.

  “You fucking prick,” she snarled through gritted teeth as she fixed him with a look of utter loathing. Her breath came in gasps as though winded. “You... you shot me!”

  “Technically,” Nevin said conversationally, “he’s the fucking prick who shot you. Now, I’ll take all your supplies and the fuel from whatever vehicle you’ve got hidden around...”

  His voice trailed away at a sound only half heard behind him. That sense made him freeze, tightening the grip on the revolver as his body tensed and he prepared to defend himself again. The tension locked him still as the sound solidified and grew into the unmistakable sound of a charging handle sliding back and forward to seat a bullet into a chamber. That sound made Nevin change his entire approach, switching from gloatingly dominant to obsequious and pathetic in an attempt to live through the situation.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, his hand releasing the grip on the weapon to let it dangle uselessly from his right index finger, “let’s talk about this,” he babbled, “to start with, they tried to ambush me, and secondly I didn’t shoot her…”

  “Shut your bloody mouth, Nevin,” a gruff voice behind him said.

  He shut his mouth, trying to place the voice and make sense of the turn of events.

  “Sergeant… Sergeant Michaels?” he asked incredulously.

  “Just Michaels will do,” he said as he walked around him to stand over the bleeding woman and give her a blank look of disappointment, “I left that world,” he said pointing a finger at Nevin’s scout car, “behind me. I’ve got a different way now.”

  “So I see,” Nevin said as he drew back up to his normal height and allowed the confidence back into his voice, “Do much ambushing of innocent people, do we?”

  “Innocent?” Michaels asked, his eyes boring into Nevin like a shark’s. “Nobody is innocent anymore; you’re either alive or you’re one of them.”

  He took a step closer to Nevin, putting his face uncomfortably close and not even recoiling when the smell hit him.

  “Which one are you?” he asked, his gaze drilling into Nevin’s eyes.

  Nevin smiled again.

  “I’m better at this shit than these two clowns are,” he said evilly, gesturing at the two people still on the ground, “if you wanted someone better, that is…”

  Michaels smiled at him as he stood back.

  “Well then,” he said, “welcome to my hilltop.”

  Epilogue

  “Hello anybody,” came the Liverpool accent over the radio, “this is the crew of the Aunt Margaret out of the Albert Docks. We have supplies and safety but are unable to put to sea because there are warships blockading the coast. If anyone can tell us where is safe to go, contact us on this frequency… Hello anybody, this is the crew of the Aunt Margaret out of the Albert Docks…”

  “What do you think?” asked the man with his feet up on the wooden table over the sound of the wind howling outside. Despite the season being good, their location was prone to being battered by inclement weather at any time. When they did have fine sunshine and warm days, then the legions of tiny flies descended on them.

  “I think we should tell them to sit tight for winter and then head up here. Tell them that the bastards won’t survive the bad weather.”

  The man with his feet up said nothing, simply leaned forward with a groan and spun a dial to increase the microphone volume as he cleared his throat and put two fingers on the transmit button.

  “Crew of the Aunt Margaret, come in,” he said, waiting less than a heartbeat for an answer.

  “We’re here, hello? Who is this?”

  “Crew of the Aunt Margaret,” he said, ignoring the question, “listen carefully. The zombies will degrade over winter. Hold your ground if you can. Ration your supplies and just hold out until spring. I repeat, hold your ground and ration supplies. If you’re still there in spring, we can talk. Out.”

  The two children walked through the familiar front door with obvious trepidation. Johnson went through first, his eyebrows raised and giving a soothing gesture with his right hand to Hampton. The eyebrows and the flat palm pressing downwards made the intention clear; keep it calm.

  “Bill, Kimberley,” he said in a voice they hadn’t heard him use before as he glanced over at the injured woman, “this is Peter and Amber,” he said as he stepped aside to reveal their two newest recruits, “and it looks like we might’ve moved into their house.”

  Hampton just beamed at them, completely unaware of how terrifying his gap-toothed grin appeared to them. Amber recoiled behind Peter slightly, glancing up the fair-skinned and blonde-haired Astrid with mixed admiration and trepidation.

  “Kids,” Johnson said as he bent down slightly in that condescending fashion that people adopt when they aren’t used to children, “these are my friends, Bill,” he pointed at the smiling marine sergeant with his swollen knee propped up on cushions, “and this is Kimberley.”

  From her position on the soft settee, her battered body bruised, and her leg bandaged, Kimberley brushed her hair over the scars on the left side of her face. She had given up on covering them in their company, knowing that what they had been through was far more important than her vanity, but it wasn’t vanity that made her cover them now; children could be scared of her disfigurement and she wasn’t of a mind to answer blunt questions.

  Peter nodded at both of them, his face set in a grim approximation of seniority. He led Amber in by the hand, glancing back to see that the special forces sergeant had brought back the trolley of supplies, Bufford, responding to the look he received by dragging it through the door to prove that he hadn’t failed at the task.

  Enfield was still out there, bringing back the guns and supplies from the doorsteps of the houses they had already cleared. He came back, breaking the awkward silence by dropping the items insi
de and nodding to Bufford and Larsen, who both in turn looked back to Johnson.

  “You’re okay as a three?” Johnson asked, knowing that they were capable on their own and that he was likely their weakest link. Bufford said that they were, and led them out, to leave the atmosphere stilted and silent once more. Amber tugged at Peter’s sleeve, leaning up to whisper in his ear. He pulled back, nodded at her, and slipped off his backpack to remove the shotgun, to watch as she reached into the bag and retrieved her ragged stuffed lamb. Peter held the gun with his fingertips, at no point wrapping his hand around the grip or going near the triggers, to show that he had no intention of using it.

  When she had disappeared back upstairs, heading for the room they had occupied before and where she felt safe, Peter put the gun back in the bag, slipping off his shoes and shrugging out of his oversized jacket that he had thrown on inside out in his haste to flee the house. He walked straight into the kitchen, stopping to survey the empty cans and shoot a look at Johnson, before climbing up on the worktop and rising up on his knees to reach up and open the top window overlooking the secluded back garden. He disappeared into the utility area where the washing machine and dryer were, returning after a few seconds with a can of some non-descript fish and set it on the worktop, where he opened the second drawer down to pull out the can opener.

  He punctured the thin metal, spinning the handle and squeezing out the oil into the drain in the sink before fetching a fork from the top drawer to scoop out the smelly contents into a shallow bowl.

  Johnson jumped, his hand fluttering towards the weapon he had slung over his body, but then froze as the sound became a shape and that shape dropped onto the counter and let out a chippering meow of expectation. Peter slid the bowl towards the cat, who tucked in greedily and purred simultaneously.

  “Was this your house, Peter?” Johnson asked, “I mean before.”

  “No,” the boy replied simply.

  Johnson paused, thinking how best to ask what he wanted to, in the end deciding to just ask it straight.

  “What happened to you, kid?”

  “How long have you got?” Peter asked, a small smile creeping across his face as he finally realised how much he had grown in such a short time.

  The helicopter returned to the country house well before sunset, rushing their unconscious casualty inside past the two officers, who knew better than to shout for an explanation. The chief pilot, Barrett, nudged the arm of the SAS Major and both ducked into a ground floor study where the door was shut behind them.

  Captain Palmer listened to the report in silence, his eyebrows only occasionally twitching before they were brought back under control, only speaking at the very end. He didn’t insult their abilities to ask if they were sure about the island, or the downed aircraft, and especially not about the destruction witnessed at the base.

  Trooper Povey will no doubt shed more unwelcome light on that matter, he told himself glumly, assuming he recovers, that is.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said, walking to a dark wood bureau and pouring four measures of brandy into the bulbous, crystal glasses. He used the pause to think, to frame the words he needed to say in such a way that the others understood what he meant to achieve. He handed out the glasses to each man in turn and resumed his original place, before looking them all in the eye and swirling the glass in his hand before raising it.

  “To our fallen,” he said solemnly.

  “To our fallen,” the others echoed quietly before they all took a long pull of their drinks. From any other man, such a formal display would have run the risk of appearing forced, unnatural or even laughable. From Julian Palmer it just seemed right somehow.

  “Gentlemen,” he said again in a more resolved tone, “we have an uncertain time ahead of us, to put matters mildly. We have lost more than half of our original fighting strength. We have almost one hundred civilians who are in need of organising and protecting, not to mention feeding. We have a matter of weeks before we are into autumn and that ticking clock runs straight into winter. We have power, but we need to consider food and fuel in addition to defences,” he paused to sip his brandy once more, “In short, chaps,” he said with a hint of a smile, “we’ve got a lot to do in a short space of time if we have any hope of surviving this.”

  The other eyes in the room met his, none of them missing the severity of his point.

  “As far as I see,” Palmer finished, “we can expect nothing in the way of assistance or outside help. Make no mistake, gentlemen: we have been abandoned.”

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Thank you for reading Death Tide, books 1-3 in Toy Soldiers.

  Book four is available now! Adversity

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