The Admiral returned to his chair and sat.
Lord, forgive me for what I have to do, he thought as he kept his face expressionless and gave the next orders before he pulled the entire fleet out of UK waters to enforce the quarantine.
~
Four torpedoes were fired in two rapid pairs, each targeted on the unsuspecting destroyer. The rippling, rolling explosions struck in sequence from bow to stern and transformed the warship into a
mass of black smoke and fire.
In the ensuing chaos of the ship sinking, one dull grey helicopter, flying low over the water heading north, went unnoticed as the combined NATO fleet abandoned the UK mainland to push further out to sea and leave the entire UK and European continent to its fate.
As soon as they had withdrawn sufficient distances, another order was given and each person on board the ships in the fleet turned their eyes away as the evening horizon blossomed brightly with huge mushroom clouds as the nukes of the Soviets and the Americans detonated in a spectacular display of the destructiveness of humankind.
Chapter 9
“Sir? One Troop are reporting in,” Daniels said to Captain Palmer, who switched channels and responded. Daniels listened in as he was still on that channel, but Johnson watched their faces for any sign of bad news. Hearing the end of the one-sided exchange, and understanding Palmer’s orders for the two Fox cars to return to their position, he waited for the update.
“As bad as we suspected,” Palmer said to Johnson, “the bridge is cut, heavy damage and a fire burning near the causeway, and there appears to be a rolling small arms battle going on.”
“Helicopters?” Johnson asked.
“Nothing yet, and unable to raise them. I fear that our specialist colleagues may be right.”
“About what, Sir?” Johnson asked.
“About having to have a redundancy. About setting up on our own and accepting our fate, if you will.”
Johnson frowned deeply, only inside so that his face remained a resolute mask of professionalism and efficiency, as befitted his rank and position.
“With all due respect, Sir,” he began, “those bloody ballerinas from Hereford can fu…”
“Mister Johnson,” Palmer interjected sharply, “firstly, I believe our situation negates the need for such manners; if you wish to disagree with me simply state your opinion without adding your due respect. Secondly, I would suggest refraining from such opinions about the Special Air Service. They have just conducted a rather admirable action on our behalf, and also,” he paused theatrically and looked up at the open hatch before adding in a lower voice, “you never know when they’re listening.”
“Very well, Sir,” Johnson said as he tried to hide a small smile at the weak jest, “I believe that we should not give up on the island for a few reasons. Namely that the majority of our fighting strength is still there, not to mention the men’s families and over a hundred civilians. Regardless of whether we can rescue any arms or armour, we shouldn’t abandon this area until we know for certain. Sir.”
“Noted, SSM,” Palmer responded flatly, re-establishing the hierarchy with a simplistic grace.
“Thank you, Sir,” Johnson responded, climbing out of the Sultan to check on his men, to perform some useful activity and prevent his mind from overflowing through his mouth. He didn’t make it all of the way out before the radio sparked to life so loudly that he heard the tinny rattle from the headphones from half outside of the hatch. Dropping back down, he saw Daniels had snatched up the set and had one earphone pressed to his left ear. His right hand scribbled furiously with pencil on a pad of paper as his mouth hung open. Palmer and Johnson watched on, neither of them breathing. A metallic shriek forced Daniels to drop the headset and pull his head away as he screwed up his eyes. Palmer and Johnson waited in the sudden silence of the interior of the tracked vehicle as their radio operator turned to face them.
“It’s…” he began, before swallowing and composing himself, “It’s the Russians. And the Americans. They’ve launched nuclear strikes.”
“Where?” Palmer said, almost jumping out of his seat.
“On who?” Johnson said at the same time, bombarding the Corporal, who was forced to hold up both hands to ward off the questions for a moment as he closed his eyes and took a breath.
“They didn’t know for sure,” he said in a low voice cracking with stress, “but it isn’t us. They think the Soviets launched on Europe to stop the advance and the Americans launched on them, thinking they were retaliating against Ivan launching.”
More silence hung in the cramped, oily confines of the command vehicle until broken by the Captain.
“So, we are largely unaffected then?” he asked hopefully.
“I doubt it,” Johnson muttered sourly, his face no longer hiding his opinion.
“The message said that they’ve cut us off. We’re quarantined. Nothing in or out,” Daniels finished ominously.
“Quarantined? Bloody quarantined,” Johnson snarled. He glanced to their officer, who simply sat with his head in his hands and said nothing. “Sir?”
Palmer looked up, suddenly appearing more exhausted than he had ever looked before, as though the combined weight of the last month of fighting, the implied loss of his only remaining family member and the three days without proper sleep, had all hit him at once.
“I had a fear this would happen,” he said in a small voice. “It appears that the right hand is unaware of what the left hand is doing. Either that or the right hand no longer cares about the left.”
Johnson guessed that they were the metaphorical left hand in this ambiguous description, but the first thing that the captain had said worried him deeply.
“What would happen, Sir?” he asked carefully.
“It’s what senior command called, rather melodramatically I thought at the time, I might add, their Doomsday Protocol,” he admitted in a voice seeming almost inappropriately laced with humour. “When we were initially deployed to the city to exert control, there were fears of our lack of ability to contain the outbreak. I had assumed after the events of the last month that
they had abandoned the idea, but it seems that I was wrong. Major Hadlington and I discussed the possibility, and he assured me that command at sea were no longer considering it.”
“What is the Doomsday Protocol, Sir? Precisely?” Johnson asked, not truly wanting the answer but knowing that he had to ask.
“To sever all physical ties between the UK and the rest of the world. To literally cut off our island and let whatever it was burn itself out. It seemed that the cat was somewhat let out of the bag, given that Europe is gone, so I had assumed that the plan was shelved. It seems in that assumption that I was mistaken. Either that or the plan has been widened to incorporate the rest of Europe.”
“Makes sense,” Daniels mumbled to himself, prompting both senior men to turn and regard him.
“Elucidate, if you please, Corporal?” Palmer asked, making Daniels turn to Johnson for a translation.
“Explain,” the SSM said simply, bridging the gap between Sandhurst and a basic secondary school education.
“Well as far as we know, it hasn’t spread to the yanks,” Daniels said, “not unless they bring it back from here. If I was them, I’d blockade the whole bloody Atlantic and bomb the shit out of everywhere where the Screechers are… alive… or whatever it is.”
The Captain and the Squadron Sergeant Major regarded each other, agreeing with the simple sentiment with a casual tilt of the head.
“So what does that mean for us?” Johnson said out loud, half verbalising his own thought process and half asking.
“Not a great deal in the immediate,” Palmer said, suddenly more confident and alert as though he had shaken off his brief funk of self-pity and concern. “We still have to find a way to get as many people off the island as we can and find a position to occupy until all this nonsense blows over.”
The stereotypical upper-class frippery in his tone gave
Johnson a bizarre sense of hope, of reassurance and even eagerness, which he knew was partly down to the faith he had in the officer who was never originally his.
“I’ll see to the men,” he said, excusing himself with an unnecessary task to fill his time, and climbing out of the vehicle.
Turning to the map on the wall and tracing the contour lines instinctively to find higher ground, Palmer selected three options within a close enough radius, utilising Daniels’ local knowledge on a few points, then called for Downes and the freshly returned Sergeant Strauss to join them.
The cramped interior was made far worse, forcing Daniels to climb out to allow the others to see the map. The three locations were marked and briefed, designated as Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, as was the ingrained army way, and Strauss’ troop were deployed with the SAS team to assess and secure any site that would suit their needs.
Just as they deployed, the hope of further bodies to bolster their number became a stronger reality as the radio burst into life once more.
~
Sergeant Horton, having survived the collapse of the bridge and escaped the sinking tank, blackened by soot and smoke and streaked with white lines of sweat, turned his head from left to right. The Sterling machine gun, devoid of a magazine, hung from his right shoulder and clanged against his body awkwardly with
every faltering step he took. With four other soldiers, he advanced up the hill away from the bright flames of the burning buildings near the short end of the bridge. Behind them, zombies poured from the beach unimpeded by anything but the barrier of broken bodies and the remnants of the fences, as they came on and tangled themselves in the ragged collection of ruined corpses and loosely-strung barbed-wire. They crawled over the other bodies of their kind to spill a mess of clawing, gnashing, screeching and hissing meat onto the cobbles.
Horton turned away, still followed by the three men in army uniform who took his lead unthinkingly. Ahead of them, far ahead and out of reach, a large huddle of men stood shoulder to shoulder, facing outwards as they made slow but defended progress up the street towards the higher ground. Others occasionally ran to them, bursting from buildings to run desperately and push through the ranks of their outward-facing formation and into the safety of the interior. Horton ignored the sprawling crowd filling the lowest part of the island and turned to break into a sluggish jog up the slope. The forgotten machine gun banged into him rhythmically as he moved faster than the three soldiers following him, to stretch out a lead. The rattling intensity of the gunfire ahead of the sergeant rose and fell as new threats emerged to be rapidly put down with disciplined fire.
Rising above the noise of the different calibre weapons was another sound. The loud, clear voice shouted out directions of zombies as they moved. The voice directed the entire ragged array of people as they bunched up and moved as one organism with its beating heart barking orders from within. Horton moved as fast as he could, alone now as his three followers had dropped back so far as to not be in a position to offer him any support. Heading for the centre of the noise, for the beating heart of the group, a scream to his left made his head whip around to fix on
the source of it. A door slammed, and Horton swerved without thinking to burst through it. Emerging into the light of the headquarters building, he fixed his eyes on the woman leaning over the desk, her hand clamped around the radio handset as she yelled words that he didn’t understand. She turned and saw him, her eyes recognising Horton’s cloudy orbs staring back at her over his torn face and blood-sheeted chest, and taking in the gore splashed down his uniform from the hole in his neck, she swore as he drew back bloody lips over red-stained teeth. She let out a shriek of pure horror before he flew at her.
~
“Convoy, this is the island,” snapped the female radio operator with such panic or undisciplined radio protocols that the beginning and end of the transmission were cut off. The voice transmitting didn’t wait for any acknowledgement, but simply ploughed on with the remainder of the hurried message. She had emerged from the toilet where she had been shoved, no doubt saving her life from the sounds of screams and ripping death in the room outside.
“We’re overrun, and… oh, fuck n…”
The transmission died, as unbeknown to Daniels, Johnson and Palmer, the operator died only seconds afterwards, and at the hands, teeth, of a man they all knew. The three men exchanged looks, as though the bad situation they all knew about had suddenly become much worse, and all three of them knew how powerless they were to help.
“Ghostrider to any of you tank-monkeys still breathing air,” said the headset, before any of them could utter a word about the last transmission. Behind the cocky voice and disregard for operational radio use was the unmistakable whine, the high-
pitched screaming of jet engines spooling up, and rotor blades spinning.
“Morris?” Palmer said into the radio, forgetting his own discipline and committing the cardinal sin of using names over the air. “Is that you? What’s going on?”
“We’re here,” Morris replied in a suddenly serious voice, the sound of the engines rising further, “give me a grid and get ready to receive incoming.”
Palmer shot a glance at the map on the wall before Johnson spoke up.
“Not here,” he said, earning an annoyed look from the Captain. He kept his explanation brief and spoke succinctly.
“We don’t have the transport or the safety here. We need somewhere to defend and resupply before we take on more people.”
Palmer thought for a second, his young brow furrowed with the effort of rapid calculations, before turning back to Johnson.
“The camp?”
“It’s our best bet, and it’s close,” the SSM replied, making Palmer glance back to the map wall to convey the grid coordinates for Daniels to relay.
Back to where we bloody started, Johnson thought depressingly, and in shit state, too.
Chapter 10
Kimberley, hatchet in hand and slipping in her sweaty grip, led her line of people through the narrow, cobbled pathways that ran between the back yards of the terraced houses. Twice she had nearly beheaded or bludgeoned innocent refugees, all running away from the noises of the raging battle below. The second person she raised the axe to, lowering it as soon as the string of expletives made it obvious that the shadow was alive, told her about the explosion and the fire at the bridge. In the wan light, her eyes locked once with Ashdown, who shook his head slowly to tell her that their slim plan for escape by vehicle was dead before it had truly begun.
A shriek in a street behind them made everyone flinch and duck down. Children began to cry, and heads turned back to the fierce woman they seemed to have collectively decided was in charge. Kimberley looked to Ashdown, who was being tended to by his wife as he rested against a wall and breathed heavily, evidently still not recovered from his injuries and near-fatal encounter.
Taking the initiative, she snapped her fingers twice to make the small noise echo loudly along the stone corridor over the raging sounds of the battle below.
“Follow me,” she hissed loudly, “we’re going uphill towards the helicopter.”
Her column grew with each occupied house they passed, until she led over twenty people upwards into the night. She had no idea why she chose to put their collective faith and safety in a guess, a desperate hope that they could evacuate by air. The alternative was certain death, but the confidence they all showed in her decision was almost palpable. Inside, her mind screamed in fear and self-doubt, but outwardly she led.
And they followed.
~
“This way!” Lieutenant Palmer hissed at the line of civilians skulking through the darkened alleyways. He had gathered a collection, mostly the old and the young and the infirm, but he had managed to threaten and cajole the men of Three Troop to move whatever vehicles they could, and to abandon those that they could not. All around him, men cowered behind low walls and behind coal bunkers with their weapons pointed nervously downhill.
“I say,” he said more insistently, his nasal voice cutting the air at the perfect tone to whip Kimberley’s head around to look at him. Lieutenant Palmer flinched in fright at the speed that the face turned and seemed to look directly at him. Logic cut in on the dance between sense and fear skipping fast through his mind, and it reminded him that the Screechers didn’t carry weapons and walk low to the ground to hide their presence.
He waved them over, seeing the few become over twenty.
“Lieutenant?” Kimberley asked, recognising the shape of the man and his voice even though the gathering dark prevented her from making out his features in any great detail.
“Indeed,” Palmer replied, “get your people under cover and keep them quiet. We will have to move shortly.”
“My peop…” Kimberley started to say before she was cut off.
“We are heading for the landing area. We at least have one helicopter left and I’m hoping that we can get as many of us off this cursed rock as possible.”
With that, he turned away from her and left her to repeat the whispered message to every third person that slunk past her.
“Stay hidden. Keep quiet; we’re getting out of here.”
Lieutenant Palmer, pulse racing and the weight of command
pressing down heavily on his shoulders, took three soldiers at
random to accompany him and for the first time in his brief military career he wished that he had taken the time to get to know the names of the men under him. At least he did, now that he had to rely on them to save his life if the need arose.
He moved low, ignoring the trained cautions that the more experienced soldiers had ingrained when it came to exposed areas and corners. Palmer’s lack of military experience made his progress faster, and ultimately safer as this new enemy did not set up ambushes or use ranged weapons. The key here was speed and stealth, weighing up one against the other to remain undetected. He was certain that none of them had infiltrated this high up the hill, but the sounds of gunfire from below grew steadily louder as that fight headed unavoidably upwards. The hulking silhouette of the ungainly and bulbous helicopter tickled the skyline ahead of him, lit by occasional flashes from behind him, and set against the lighter sky over the sea. The sound of a weapon cocking rang out at the same time as a challenge pierced the air a little louder than was necessary.
Toy Soldiers 3: Abandoned Page 7
