by Luke Duffy
“I’ve tried it with my left but it just ends up doing its own thing. I don’t have as much control, the elbow goes in different directions, and I lose rhythm. Before I know it, I’m pretty much just battering away at my plonker and almost ripping it from its foundations. Actually it’s a bit like…”
“Bull,” Stan said calmly and stopped him in mid ramble, “shut up.”
Bull paused and looked around the room at the faces of the others. Even Emily who had entered from one of the adjacent rooms, smiling and about to welcome the men back from their long and dangerous mission was staring back at him with her mouth hanging open and a look of disgust and horror etched into her features.
“Oh, right,” Bull said with embarrassment as he realised that he had allowed his mouth to slip into autopilot again. “Sorry.”
“Bobby,” Stan shouted into the next room as he shook his head in bewilderment at Bull, “get Richie over here and have these hooked up to the generator. Get him to work his magic on all this as soon as possible.”
Bobby appeared at the doorway, and after a short reunion and exchange of insults with Bull and the others, he left through the front door to carry out Stan’s orders. He still walked with a slight limp and was careful of every step. The cracked vertebrate he had suffered along with the broken ribs after jumping from the control tower were healed but he was still not back to full fitness and he had spent the better part of two months in a hospital bed and undergoing a number of operations and treatments for his injuries.
For months, the men had been having to scrounge and save on fuel. It was one of the many things that the island was short of. The barn had been in the process of being converted into a house and there was still a lot of building materials lying about. They had discovered that the owner had been intending to have the power partially supplied from solar panels and that the battery system had already been installed. Danny had come up with the great idea of hooking up their generator directly to the house power cells and fuse box, and almost blew himself up, along with the barn, in the process. The batteries had been overloaded and were now useless since then they had decided to use the fuel consuming generator thriftily and leave mauling with the electronics to the experts.
Then Bobby had met Richard, a Civil Engineer who agreed to take care of their problem but since the army were reluctant to part with the necessary equipment that he needed, they would need to find the parts elsewhere. The units who had arrived before them had already rifled the island and much of the equipment had been claimed. That did not deter the men from thieving what they needed when they had the chance but most encampments soon began posting guards specifically to watch out for people breaking in to steel from them. Instead, Stan’s team had to turn to the mainland in order to get what they needed.
Now, with battery power and the generator and solar panels keeping them charged, Richard would be able to install a basic water heating system from the equipment that had been abandoned there. The huge oven, which had a habit of consuming the diesel from the generator’s fuel tank almost as quickly as they could put it in, could also now be used from time to time. With each scavenging expedition things were looking better, and despite the gaping holes in the roof and walls that were covered by canvas sheeting and sandbags, they were comfortable.
Taff, his arms laden with chopped wood, entered into the house through the large bay doors that led out to the rear and overlooked the English Channel. Young William was in tow and as equally burdened and concentrating on keeping the logs from slipping.
“Ah, Billy the Kid,” Bull roared when he saw the boy. “How the devil are you? Have you been keeping up with your pistol training?”
William placed the wood down onto the pile by the chimney breast, smiled up at the large man, and indicated the pistol he had strapped to his waist. Stan had insisted that everyone, including Emily and her son, should train regularly with the weapons they had. Emily had been reluctant but William had been more than willing to learn. Bull looked down at the holster attached to the boy’s belt, saw the dull glint of the weapon, and instantly turned to Stan with a look of concern in his eyes.
“Oh, it’s not loaded,” William assured him, pulling the slender Browning High-Power from its holster and turning it so that Bull could see into the hollow magazine housing. “Stan said I should keep it with me so that I get used to carrying it and practicing with it.”
Bull smiled down at him and patted him on the head with his huge hand that almost covered the whole of the child’s cranium.
“Good drills, mate. Make sure you always keep it within arm’s reach. We’ll make a proper soldier of you yet, Billy.”
“Not if I can help it,” Emily called across from the doorway with a smile. “He’ll be staying here, on the island, with me, until the mainland is safe again.”
“Sounds like the lady of the house has spoken, Billy,” Bull said down to him with mock disappointment. “You’d better listen to what she says, mate.”
William looked up and then quickly turned away in annoyance. It was clear that he and his mother had already argued extensively over the matter and for the time being, Emily had the final say. Since their rescue from Manchester, Emily and William had kept themselves close to the men of the team and became a part of the group with their own roles and responsibilities. There were no objections from any of them over the unspoken arrangement and with the only other option, being to live in the refugee camp, the mother and son had been adopted by Stan and his soldiers and kept under their protection.
Taff was slowly rising from a squatting position after dropping the heap of wood onto the pile by the fireplace. He grunted and winced with each movement as he straightened his legs and back, grimacing with each painful movement. Bull watched him and could not help but find it amusing as he witnessed his friend’s suffering.
“So how’s the little princess?” Bull taunted.
Taff turned and glared at him for a moment and could already feel the blood within his veins beginning to heat up. The moment he heard them arrive, he knew that there would be a degree of abuse headed his way. It was how they were. It was never meant to offend or upset and it was just their way of conveying their affection for one another. Still, there were always times when the ridiculing would go too far or the person on the receiving end was just not in the mood.
“I’d like to see you jump about like a gymnast after a broken ankle, dislocated knee, and a cracked pelvis. Other than that I’m fine. Now wind your neck in.”
“You poor little lamb,” Bull continued with a sneer as he sat himself down onto the large couch in front of the chimney breast. “Do you need a cuddle? While you cripples are busy mincing about here, we able-bodied sorts are getting things done and risking our lives on the mainland. I really don’t know how you sleep at night, Taff. Now if you don’t mind, make us a brew and run me a bath. There’s a good boy.”
As Stan and Marty began emptying the box, Bull made the mistake of allowing his attention to become focussed elsewhere and away from tormenting Taff for a few seconds. That was all the time that the Welshman needed.
A heavy thud from the area in front of the fire prompted Stan to turn around. Taff was standing by the couch and Bull’s limp body was slowly sliding downwards, slipping from the cushions and onto the floor. With lightning speed, as Bull was busy watching Stan and Marty, Taff had stepped in and sucker-punched the huge man in the left side of his jaw. Instantly, Bull’s consciousness had been snatched away from him.
Emily, still standing in the doorway as she watched and listened in amusement to the men and their banter had not seen Taff move. She must have blinked at the moment he launched his lightning attack but she had clearly heard the thud and the fact that Bull had suddenly disappeared from sight and his voice could no longer be heard was enough to tell her that he had somehow been incapacitated.
“Dear God, Taff,” Emily huffed as she realised what had happened and made her way across to the sofa. “Not again.”
Kneeling down beside the unconscious Bull and after scooping her fingers into his cavernous mouth to ensure that he was not going to swallow his tongue, she turned to look up at Taff. Her face conveyed the level of her annoyance.
“I know you told him to shut up but it’s always me who ends up having to deal with him. You know what he’s like. He’s not much different from a kid at times.” She paused and looked about at the rest of them. “In fact, none of you are. You’re all a bunch of overgrown bloody five year olds.”
“Well, I’ll keep doing it until he learns to back off when I tell him to.” Taff leaned over her and peered down at his friend. “Is he okay?”
“Of course he’s okay,” Emily replied with a sigh. “It’s you that won’t be okay when he wakes up, Taff. I’m not playing ‘mother’ for you all and getting in the way of your silly squabbling when he comes to.”
Stan and Marty looked on in amusement from the other side of the room while they continued to inspect the contents of the box. Neither of them were electricians but the item numbers on the equipment matched the list that Richard had given them.
“You’d better make yourself scarce before he wakes up, mate,” Marty advised Taff as he handed a bottle of whisky across to their team commander.
Below average in height but powerfully built, Taff knew that in a fair fight he would not be able to take on the mighty Bull in a slugging match. None of them could. Instead, he always resorted to using his wits and speed and on a number of occasions, Bull had made the mistake of dropping his guard and leaving himself wide open to attack.
“Aye, good idea,” Taff agreed as he stared down at his drooling friend on the floor. “I’m due for my daily walk anyway. I have to keep working on getting my ankle strong again. You coming, Billy?”
Bobby returned a couple of hours later with Richard and set to work on improving their power issues. With his wiry grey hair that stood out in strands from his scalp and leathery skin, Richard looked nothing like one expected from a man who had once sat on the London City Council. He was short and lean, to the point where he looked malnourished, and the burning cigarette that always seemed to dangle between his nicotine stained lips and discoloured stubble made him appear like a man who had been living on the streets for most of his life.
“All right, Bull?” Richard grinned as he walked through the door revealing the four discoloured teeth he had remaining within his mouth.
Bull was still brooding over the incident with Taff but Stan had managed to calm him down from his rage and convinced him that he was overreacting.
“I’m good, Richie. How about you?” Bull replied from the table where he continued to strip and clean his weapons. “Taff hit me again. Sucker-punched me when I wasn’t looking, the wanker.”
Richard shrugged.
“Well what else is he going to do, arm wrestle you? You’re lucky he didn’t go with the gun option, mate.”
By nightfall, the house had become a little more civilised. Bull was happy to bury the hatchet over a few drinks and the oven and hot water boiler were fully functional. Each of them took it in turns to have hot showers and finally began to feel human again while they sat down to a hefty meal of mostly locally caught meat. Taff was an expert tracker and trapping animals in snares was something that had come as part of his skill. Knowing what to look for and how to read the ground helped when setting his snares and had kept them all reasonably well fed compared to the rest of the island’s inhabitants.
Marty gave Stan a full report on the reconnaissance mission that he and the others had conducted over the previous three weeks and what they had seen.
“Sounds like it will be a hard job getting into the city from the west then,” Stan concluded. “Aviation fuel is one of their main concerns at the moment, but if they decide to try a heli insertion, we’ll have those things all over us before we even get close.”
“You sound pretty sure that we’ll be going in ahead of everyone else on this one, Stan,” Bull said as he reassembled his pistol after giving it a thorough cleaning.
“What else would we be doing? Taking it easy here on the island?”
“Aye, I suppose so,” Bull shrugged.
Marty nodded and poured himself another glass of whisky.
“Getting us in there is their problem. We can let them figure that out. Plus, with the shortage of aircraft I get a sneaky feeling that they won’t risk losing one while dropping us in. As you said, fuel is also an issue. Obviously we’ll have the final say on it but as long as they don’t try dropping us in by parachute then I’m happy enough to consider their ideas.”
“That might explain the meeting I’m having with Gerry in the morning,” Stan pondered as he rubbed at the bristles on his chin.
“What meeting?”
“Just a rough head’s up on the outline of the coming ops. More of an in-depth warning order really and he’s bringing an old friend of mine who I didn’t even know was on the island. Anyway, what about the other stuff?”
Marty nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of the golden fiery liquid and twisted the map around on the table so that he could get a better orientation. Stan was referring to the secondary task that he had given them in secret and was not a part of the orders from the Operations Officer or the army commanders.
“Here’s where we left the first cache,” he said as he pointed to an area on the mainland that was north of the island and directly south of Swindon. “There’s weapons, ammunition, food and water, and cold weather gear too. We piled it all into the back of two SUVs and both are fully fuelled with battery chargers inside in case it’s a while before we use them. The cache is off the beaten track too, so we shouldn’t have any trouble with unwanted attention while approaching it.”
“Upavon,” Stan read the name of the closest town aloud. “That’s about what, seventy kilometres?”
“Roughly that, yeah,” Marty nodded and then tapped another point on the map with the sharpened point of his pencil.
“I have the exact grid for you and a cache report,” Danny cut in. “It’s close to an old Cold-War bunker and away from the built-up area. The other cache is here, about a hundred kilometres further north towards Birmingham.”
“You covered quite a distance on your visit to the mainland, didn’t you? Did you see any survivors? What about infected?”
“Plenty of both,” Marty confirmed. “The infected are sticking mainly to the urban areas but there are still a lot of them scattered through the sticks. Survivor wise; we watched a few units of soldiers carrying out raids and so on. Not sure whether they were from any of the FOBs or acting independently though. We passed quite a few families who were still barricaded inside their homes too.”
“Anything that’s likely to give us problems?”
Marty shook his head with confidence.
“Nah, I doubt it. People on the mainland are too busy just trying to survive. Besides, I’m one hundred percent sure that we weren’t seen by anyone. We only moved at night and laid up during daylight hours.”
Remembering the incident of the fire that engulfed the better part of a town, Danny glanced across at Marty. The look was only fleeting but Stan saw it and wondered what exactly they were holding back from him. He decided not to push the subject and reasoned that if there were something that was operationally critical, they would tell him. Other than that, he did not want to know what they got up to on the mainland so long as it did not get in the way of them doing their jobs or affected their continued survival.
“Good work,” Stan nodded.
With the caches that Marty and the others had left in the south of the country he was satisfied that they were not placing all their eggs into the same basket as the remains of their government and military forces. If the worst came to the worst, they knew that everything they needed could be located in the same spot. Thei
r only problem would be getting there, and in one piece.
Later, as they sat eating and drinking, Samantha arrived. She did her best to appear annoyed over the theft of her Land Rover but her face betrayed her amusement at the men’s complete disregard for the rules when it came to taking care of themselves. Within minutes of her appearance she made an excuse to leave and as per their routine, Bobby left shortly afterwards with his own excuses.
“Those two kids must think we’re stupid,” Richard remarked as he topped up his glass. “Hey, Stan, what’s the latest on that Marcus guy and his blokes?”
Richard was referring to the transmissions they had been listening to on the High-Frequency radio over the previous couple of months. Each night they had tuned in to catch up on the latest developments concerning a group of men who were fighting their way back across Europe after battling their way out of Baghdad and crossing over from Turkey and the Middle East.
“We haven’t heard anything from them for a few days,” Stan replied. “The last message they sent was that they were approaching the French coast and that there was strong evidence of a rogue militia in the area.”
“Yeah,” Taff added as he sat back in his chair and looking more than a little inebriated. “They were up against tanks and all sorts, apparently.”
“Jesus,” Richard whistled through his well-spaced teeth, “they fought their way out from one shit hole to the next, all the way from Baghdad, only to run into a bunch of Frogs with chips on their shoulders?”
“French Fries, you mean? They had French Fries on their shoulders,” Taff quipped as he sat swaying in his seat.
“Good one, Taff.” Richard sniggered.
The joke was sharp but Richard really did hope that Marcus and his men had somehow come through. For weeks, Stan and the others had all been listening intently to their progress as they dragged themselves across Europe. There had been many transmissions over the months from various sources across the world, but the saga of Marcus and his men had drawn them in. It was something they could relate to and not completely dissimilar to predicaments they had found themselves in.
