by Luke Duffy
“You do know that we’ve kept a close eye on you, don’t you?” Samantha informed Marty with an air of warning in her voice.
Marty rubbed at the inside of his forearm in the area where the bio-tracker had been implanted beneath the skin. Most of the time, he forgot that it was there but now Samantha reminded him that he was never too far away from the prying eyes of the operations staff.
“Fucking ‘big-brother’,” he grumbled. “Are you referring to the fact that we covered a larger area than we were tasked with?”
“Yeah. Your trackers were all over the place and quite a few questions were being asked within the Ops Room.” She turned and glanced at him with a wry smile. “You been doing your own little thing again instead of sticking to the mission?”
Marty laughed.
“Hey, it’s not our fault if we have to take detours. There’s a lot of those things on the streets these days. Is it going to be a problem with Thompson?”
“Not at all. I just thought you should have prior warning in case they asked. Anyway, what’s in the box you brought back with you?”
Marty looked over his shoulder and eyed Bull who shifted in his seat and turned his body so that his bulk was between him and Samantha, and protecting their precious crate.
“Nothing much,” Marty replied, “just something we found that could be useful to us back at the barn.”
Samantha knew that she was unlikely to get any more information than that from them and shrugged with disinterest.
“It can only be one of a couple of things,” she reasoned aloud. “With the way that the big lump is hovering over it, it’s either a box full of women’s underwear or dirty magazines. Probably both, actually.”
Marty smiled and shrugged his shoulders as he nodded in agreement. Samantha’s logic was pretty well founded when it came to understanding Bull and his motives.
Samantha brought the vehicle to a stop at the headquarters building. Inside they passed through dozens of rooms and offices that were brimming with activity. It was clear that a high level of mission planning was in progress. Radios hissed and people spoke to one another in hushed tones as the three filth encrusted men made their way along the corridors.
“Good morning, fuck-stick,” Bull bellowed out from the rear to a familiar face as he passed by an open door. “How you all enjoying yourselves here at ‘slipper-city’?”
“Fuck off, Bull,” came the reply. “They need our brains for this operation more than they need your brawn.”
Samantha glanced back over her shoulder as they turned a corner and saw that Bull was stuffing the last pieces of a bacon sandwich into his gaping maw. She had no idea where he had procured it from and no doubt, the owner of the sandwich was probably just as confused as to where it had disappeared to. Bull never passed up an opportunity to gain nourishment, even if it was at the expense of someone else.
They passed through a doorway and approached a junction. To the left and right were corridors leading off to other parts of the complex. Immediately to their front was a set of steel grated stairs leading down into the bowls of the building and disappearing into darkness. Marty clearly heard the distinct moan of the infected rising up towards him from below. It sounded as though there were dozens of them down there.
“Experiments,” Samantha whispered to him when she caught sight of the concerned look on his face. She too heard the noises but she had grown used to them by now.
“What kind of experiments, Sam?” He asked her as they took the corridor to the left and headed towards the Operations Room.
“The kind that will help us,” she shrugged with indifference. “I have no idea to be honest with you. The egg-heads are playing ‘Frankenstein’ down there in the basements and I have no desire to go and join in.”
“You lot might be happy to have them next door to where you sleep but I’ll stick to our nice cosy house on the coast if it’s all the same to you,” Danny murmured as he looked back towards the staircase.
Marty and the others spent three hours relaying all the information they had gathered to the Operations staff. As he finished the lengthy debriefing, Marty handed his maps and their camera’s memory card across to Gerry for downloading.
While the intelligence was collated and the operations staff began pouring over the details of the reconnaissance mission, Marty, Bull, and Danny made good their escape. Bouncing across the island over the worn roads, the three men eagerly anticipated a hot meal and a chance to sleep.
“What do you think will be on the menu today?” Bull asked as his stomach began to growl up at him.
“I’m guessing either chicken or rabbit,” Danny shrugged.
“It’s always chicken or rabbit,” Bull snorted back at him.
“Then why did you ask such a stupid question? Are you hoping that I’m going to tell you that it’s steak or venison? The island is overrun with rabbits and chickens. So why would I guess at there being anything else to eat?”
“Fuck it,” Bull grunted with a dismissive shake of his head. “I’ll eat anything right now. My belly is touching my arse.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Danny grinned back at him. “Sam’s going to have a severe sense of humour failure when she comes out of the Ops Room and realises that we’ve run off with her Land Rover again.”
Bull laughed. The theft of the vehicle had been an unspoken and universally agreed action between the three men, just as it had been a couple of months earlier during similar circumstances. Rather than wait for a ride they decided that they would ‘borrow’ Samantha’s means of transport. Besides, they knew that it would give her an excuse to come and visit them later. There was method in their madness as always.
By mid-morning, they were approaching the narrow lane that led towards the bluffs on the southern side of the island and their half-built house. Once on the high ground, the refugee camp to the east was clearly visible to the men inside the Land Rover.
Thousands upon thousands of dirty white tents covered an area of two square kilometres of churned mud and human waste. A high fence topped with razor wire and a deep moat that encompassed the entire perimeter surrounded the camp. Roving patrols and regularly spaced watchtowers with armed guards maintained the integrity of the camp and kept the mass of refugees separated from the rest of the island.
Columns of wispy smoke drifted up from throughout the camp as the suffering civilians cooked whatever they could find and burned what they had to in order to keep warm during the cool summer nights. A faint murky haze of brown and green hung low in the air above the tented areas, confirming the filthy conditions that existed below and giving no illusions to the state that the remains of the Great British populous now found themselves in.
It was a pathetic sight and the three men could not help but look on at the human squalor that panned out to their left as they crested the hill and the partially completed roof of their barn came into view. Compared to the refugees, they were living in luxury and for a moment, they remained quiet in shamed contemplation.
The army and the remains of the government did what they could to supply the civilians with food, clothing, sanitation, and clean drinking water but the sheer numbers of homeless and starving people were against them. Supplies and medical care were stretched to their limits and it would not be long before the crisis reached tipping point.
“That explains why the head-shed are so keen to get the mainland back. Poor bastards,” Bull muttered.
“Gerry was saying that there have been quite a few outbreaks down there over the last couple of weeks. Hundreds dead, apparently,” Marty mumbled thoughtfully as he slowed the vehicle and viewed the scene.
Danny nodded.
“It’s to be expected. According to the last I heard, there’s almost a million people down there, all packed together like a colony of rats. If one of them dies, it doesn’t matter what killed them, you can bet your arse that three more will quickly follow once they wake up and start munching their way through their frien
ds and family.”
“Well that’s just put a dampener on my home-coming. I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Bull grumbled as he leaned back into his seat and turned away from the panorama of misery.
He fell silent and thought for a moment.
“Actually, no it hasn’t. Hurry up and get us home, Marty.”
Releasing the handbrake, Marty complied and began slowly inching his way down the muddy track. A dark figure stepped out from behind a clump of bushes and watched them as they passed by and gave a slight nod of his head.
“Morning, Stan,” Bull shouted with a beaming smile from the rear of the Land Rover as he flung the canvas flap to the side. “Did you miss us?”
“Yeah, like a boil on the end of my dick.”
5
“Okay,” she said quietly while standing poised by the door at the far end of the dark and unnerving passageway.
She adjusted her grip on the shaft of the crowbar. It was a good weight, heavy but strangely comforting. She had carried it with her for over four months and time and again it had proven its worth and reliability.
Looking back over her shoulder at him, she confirmed that he was still there and had not bolted for the door at the other end. She did not need to see him to know he was there, the sound of his heavy mouth breathing was evidence enough that he was standing close by her, but she felt better having confirmed it with her eyes.
“Are you ready?”
Christopher nodded and held the hammer close to his chest. He wielded it more for comfort than for defence or attack. He looked far from ready. He was completely terrified. His eyes shone wildly at her in the gloom and the beads of sweat running down his forehead sparkled in the low light.
“It’s okay,” she said reassuringly. “We’re just going to have a look around. Stay close to me and keep an eye out behind us.”
“I don’t like this, Tina,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Why do we have to go in there? Can’t we just stay upstairs where it’s safe?”
“We need to go in there and see what’s left,” she replied as she reached for the door leading into the warehouse. “Unless you want to starve?”
He shook his head again.
Yeah, I thought not, she heard a voice grumble from deep inside her own mind.
She opened the door and stepped out onto the raised platform. At first, Christopher failed to follow her and stayed within the relative safety of the corridor. She turned and glared back at him. He could not see her features but he could feel her eyes burning into him and since the previous day’s events he was unsure of who he feared the most, the infected or his sister. He stepped out into the warehouse beside her and instantly felt the change in the atmosphere between the two rooms.
Although the light inside was barely enough for them to see beyond a few metres, he could sense the spacious room around him. The temperature was much cooler and the tiniest of sounds boomed in the expanse between the outer walls. Somewhere deep within the storage area liquid seeped out from a broken container or loose pipe. The faint echoes it made as the droplets fell into an ever-expanding puddle seemed magnified in the crushing silence and near blackness.
Christopher was beginning to feel the icy tendrils of panic slowly creeping upwards along his legs and into his gut. His flesh was covered with goose bumps and the hairs of his neck and forearms stood out from his skin. His breathing was coming in short gasps and his heart was beating rapidly and thumping in his ears as he fought to keep control on his fear.
Tina reached out and touched his forearm to get his attention. As her fingers made contact with his bare flesh, he flinched and almost let out a scream.
“Chris, it’s okay,” she whispered soothingly. “Stay calm and stay close to me. We’re okay. We just need to make sure there’s no one here. It’ll soon be over.”
She could not see his face but she was sure that his lips were trembling. She kept her hand on his forearm for a while longer to comfort him and she could feel him shaking in her grasp. She wondered how long it would be or how far they would need to travel from the safety of the doorway before he lost control of his bladder again or worse, his bowels.
That reminds me, we need toilet paper, she thought fleetingly.
She turned to her right and began to descend a set of concrete steps that brought her to the same level as the warehouse floor. Christopher did as he was told and remained close behind her. He was actually too close for her comfort but she did not bother to say anything. If it made him feel better then she would let him stay virtually on her shoulder. The fact that she had managed to get him to follow her at all was a victory in itself.
Slowly but surely their eyes began to adjust to the lack of light. It was still extremely dark but they were now able to make out shapes and changes in depth and distances as they quietly made their way along the first row of incinerated and collapsed shelves.
A minefield of burnt and destroyed stock lay strewn all over the cold floor of the supply room and they needed to be careful of where they placed their feet. They had heard nothing that indicated there were any infected within the warehouse but that did not mean that the place was free of danger.
Tina had learned over the months to rely on all her senses and not to trust any of them on their own. Until she could see, hear, smell, and feel that the place was clear she would assume that the infected were there, waiting for them in the darkness.
They reached the end of the first fallen aisle and entered into the main walkway that split the warehouse in two. From what she could tell, they were in a wide channel that ran the length of the building and dissected the storage area with smaller aisles branching off to the left and right at ninety degree angles. In her mind’s eye, she imagined forklift trucks moving up and down the central passage as they collected pallets of stock from the rows of steel shelving. Behind her, she saw an area of wall that looked much lighter than the rest of the interior and she made the assumption that it was the large loading bay doors where the trucks would wait to be loaded by the forklifts. A thin shard of light that managed to penetrate through the bottom confirmed her assumption.
Their intention was to clear the building systematically, beginning at one end and making their way along the rows. She stepped back to check along the aisle to her right and Christopher followed closely. His eyes never left her dark silhouette and wherever she went, no matter if it was a single step to the side, he stayed in extremely close proximity.
Starting at the bay doors, they slowly made their way down the centre of the storage area. The racks of burnt and crumbling goods towered high up towards the ceiling and the light crunches of charred debris beneath their feet seemed to echo on for an eternity. The oppressive darkness and eerie silence were playing havoc with their nerves and they needed to stop regularly to allow their senses to clear.
The faint ping of the drips continued to resonate from somewhere deep within the dark warehouse. They resounded at five second intervals and Tina found herself relying on their frequency as a way of preventing her from losing her nerve. It was something for her to cling on to and so far, it seemed to be working.
Each aisle gaped out at them like a terrifying cave holding an untold number of horrors that lurked within their dark recesses. It was virtually impossible to see into them and Tina needed to rely on each of her senses to judge if they were clear. She watched intently as they passed by and scrutinised the wall of blackness that greeted them from between each of the high stacks of shelving.
She paused and cocked her head. She was sure that she had heard something other than the light crunch of their footsteps and the steady drip. Before she was able to identify the sound, her brother ploughed into the back of her. He had not noticed that she had stopped and as they collided, the scream of terror that he had been holding back for the previous fifteen minutes erupted from his mouth.
Tina froze as the cry shattered the silence and thundered around within the confines of the spacious room. Her blood solidified with
in her veins as she corrected her stance to prevent herself from falling over after her brother’s colossal weight had knocked her off balance. She remained immobilised for a moment, rooted to the spot with every muscle tensed and all her nerve endings virtually protruding from her flesh. She listened intently as she held the crowbar aloft, ready to swing at anything that came towards her from out of the sinister curtain of blackness enveloping them.
As the echoes of Christopher’s squeal subsided, the smothering silence returned. She straightened herself and turned to face him. His dark bulky shape loomed over her, but despite his immense size, he appeared to her like a little child. Her rage was at the point of bubbling over and her hands shook as she fought hard against the urge to hit him.
She was about to say something to him but then stopped as she detected something moving close by. She sensed it more than anything else. She reached out and grabbed her brother by the collar, and with a forceful heave, she pulled him towards her. As he tumbled forwards, she stepped to the right to avoid colliding with him again and released her grip on him. With the momentum of her sudden and powerful yank, Christopher staggered by her and slammed into a shelf, unable to slow himself.
He turned in time to see the faint shape of his sister as she leapt forward with her bar raised and slammed it down onto a dark form at her feet, close to the spot where he had been standing just seconds earlier. The iron crowbar smashed against something solid that cracked loudly. The force of her blow propelled the heavy shaft through the object and into the hard concrete of the floor with a resounding clang.
Christopher looked on in shocked silence as once again his sister saved him from one of the infected. He watched as Tina raised the weapon high in to the air and slammed it down against her victim again and again, pummelling her prey and growling under her breath with rage and fear. Each time the hefty crowbar impacted against the hard surface beneath the body the high-pitched chime of the metal rang out around the warehouse, sounding like a hammer being beaten against a blacksmith’s anvil.
