Toy Soldiers
4: Adversity
Devon C Ford
Dedicated to Baby J, who at the time of publishing this was no longer trying to recreate the chest-bursting scene from Alien, but instead wanted to chat loudly throughout the night…
COPYRIGHT
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any names, characters, incidents and locations portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. No affiliation is implied or intended to any organisation or recognisable body mentioned within.
Copyright © DHP Publishing 2018
Devon C Ford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive and non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen or hard copy.
No part of the text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, known or otherwise yet invented, without the express permission of Devon C Ford and DHP Publishing.
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Cover design by Claire Wood at:
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Prologue
February 1990
The two of them, a man and one woman, drove almost silently down the sloping entranceway, the engine cut and the driver fighting the wheel as he feathered the brakes. They weren’t so ill-trained, so lacking in awareness, as to drive straight up to the front entrance and wander around aimlessly, so they had parked nearby and crept in on foot to observe the big structure and its large enclosed yard, having recently been uncomfortably forced into awareness of enemies both living and dead.
They had watched for an hour, all of them accustomed to long periods of stillness, with total concentration and discipline, until they were satisfied that nobody was holding or defending the area. In broad daylight, the assumption that at least some movement would be evident reassured them that it was indeed empty. No sentries showed themselves to piss against a wall or smoke as they stretched their legs. No sounds came from the area at all. One of them wore a beard, shorter than it had been before, but he’d felt compelled to trim it down as the ragged length it had grown to had begun to interfere with his tactical abilities. This man rose slowly to his feet and stayed low. The slimmer figure twenty paces to his right rose at the same time, her smaller frame bulked out with layered clothing in contrast to the bearded man’s mass being mostly meat. He had lost some of his bulk over the months prior, mostly due to the reason they were there in the first place; namely a lack of food. Unable to train with heavy weights four or five times each week, and the struggle to maintain his usual high-calorie intake had taken the edge off his intimidating physique, but not to the point where he was small or weak, by any stretch of the imagination.
The woman was wearing the layers of clothing against the cold, a black woollen scarf wrapped tightly around the lower part of her face, allowing only the slightest puff of warm breath to escape when she spoke in a low voice.
“Overwatch?” she asked simply in slightly accented English, making her suggestion sound like a question, understanding well enough at the same time how her partner thought, to know that he had no qualms about sharing the responsibility of command. At their level of operating, or at least who and what they used to be back in the world, command was a fluid concept, as whoever made it to their team would be capable of leading, regardless of rank.
The eyes above the beard and below the woolly hat pulled down over his brow met hers briefly, before he turned and pointed two fingers at his face with an exaggerated movement. No response came, but he knew that the immobile sniper would have seen his gesture from the tangled branches of the tree he was occupying.
Satisfied that the heavy-calibre rifle covered their approach, the two moved forward, weapons up and tucked into shoulders, as one advanced while the other took a knee to cover their approach in small leapfrog moves. Black boots crunched on fresh frost which still hadn’t thawed, despite the sun having risen in the sky above the low cloud cover. They opened the front doors of the car they had been using since the van from their small village stronghold had given up the ghost mid-mission, both of them putting their shoulders to the doorframes as the man reached in to put the key in the ignition to free the steering lock and release the handbrake. As soon as they had built a little momentum they both timed their steps to jump inside and fold their bodies into the seats and pull the doors in with a soft click, as they were instinctively mindful enough not to slam them shut.
The noise of the tyres rolling on the pitted concrete sounded unnaturally loud in the environment they had spent a silent hour in, followed by a shriek of rusted brake pads on drums as he pressed harder on the brake pedal to slow their approach.
~
From his position in the old oak tree almost two hundred paces away, the man lying between the branches like a big cat with his right eye pressed to the scope of the Accuracy International rifle winced at the noise. A high-pitched squeal like that could be heard for half a mile in all directions, but hopefully the heavy tree cover in the area would cancel out how far the sound had travelled in the thin, cold air. Snow began to fall, only lightly, but enough to obscure the tracks the others had made.
He hadn’t changed position in over twenty minutes, and even then, the shift was subtle and very slowly done. He was a professional, a term that many people used, but when it was applied to the skill set of a person trained and experienced in killing people at a distance when given a shot window of seconds in a mission lasting hours or days, the word barely seemed adequate. It wasn’t just his uncanny ability to know how to naturally and instinctively correct his aim for the path of the bullet being affected by so many factors, but it was more that his personality suited his chosen skill set perfectly; he was unnervingly calm and noiseless and moved like a ghost. His natural quietness had deepened over the last months, ever since the death of his closest friend and spotter. The two had joined the Royal Marines together and both attended and passed the same sniper training course, and one without the other was only part of a whole. That wasn’t to say that the immobile man in the tree wasn’t a devastating instrument of warfare in his own right, but he was only part of the equation and would probably never feel entire again.
All of these background thoughts only took up a tiny portion of his consciousness, as his focus was on both his two friends rolling the ugly, off-brown Austin Montego down the ramp towards the big building inside the fenced enclosure. Even though his eye was pressed to the scope, his other eye remained open and fed a second visual input into his brain, such was his natural ability to multitask. He watched the two of them stack up as a pair, drilling their CQB ‒ close-quarter battle ‒ methods flawlessly, despite only having the number of half a patrol that the tactics were designed for. He watched as the man reached for the familiar shape of the crowbar tucked down the back of the thick jacket that his webbing was worn over. The slightest splintering crack of wood reached the sniper’s ears over the distance, just after he saw the corresponding body movements used to wrench open the door.
Seeing them both disappear inside, flicking on the large Maglite torches attached to the fat barrels of their compact weapons, he watched as Astrid and Bufford disappeared inside.
And he waited.
~
“Ready?” Buffs asked softly of Astrid, who had pulled down the scarf so that her mouth was exposed to the cold air. Her breath misted as Bufford’s did, only hers wasn’t filtered by the scruffy facial hair.
“Go,” she said faintly, following his lead as the
two of them poured into the building like water. They split left and right, powerful torch beams flashing around the darkened interior to create crazy shadows between the tall aisles. The beams of light, pointing in every direction that their weapon barrels and eyes did, showed how alert they were to the possibility of unwanted company as they moved anti-clockwise around the inner perimeter of the warehouse, until they eventually returned to the door where they had made their entry. At the centre of the warehouse was a single construction surrounded by an open area before the tall ranks of industrial shelves. That area contained three small forklift trucks and appeared to be the office which ran the distribution for the area. Each of the long, wide aisles contained wrapped pallets of foodstuffs; bags of dried pasta and rice, as well as large tins of beans and tomatoes. The company logo outside the large roller shutter doors meant nothing to them, but the contents made it obvious that the warehouse provided for the catering and commercial markets.
Bufford dropped to one knee as Astrid automatically turned to adopt the same pose facing away from him.
“See if the truck works?” he asked her softly, “Load it and take it back?”
“This is a good idea,” she replied, her grasp of English being almost flawless but lending her a formal tone. She gave the accurate impression of being classroom taught, as opposed to the colloquial use of the language by a native speaker, but that wasn’t to say that she wasn’t picking up a few choice terms that her training didn’t cater for. Her Russian was less formal, but her Cold War training hadn’t required her to blend in with the population on the UK mainland.
Bufford went to rise, but froze as a noise behind him sounded muffled in the dusty gloom.
“Office,” Astrid said.
Bufford gave no verbal answer, rising instead and turning to follow her lead as she approached the door. He flicked his thumb all the way up on the fire selector, pushing it from single shot to safe, and let the gun hang down as he reached behind his right hip to draw the peculiar weapon he carried. He had never been awarded or issued the assault pioneer’s axe, a throwback of British military tradition, and especially odd to his hands as it was an idiosyncrasy of the army and not from his naval roots. But he had taken it on a whim from the sergeants’ mess display on the base he had found himself occupying when the world had so suddenly turned to shit. He didn’t know why he had taken it, but he was glad a dozen times over that he had. He drew it now, its polished head glinting off the weapon-mounted light of Astrid’s MP5 as she stood by the door and looked at him, waiting for his nod.
He gave it, crouching low beside the doorway, as she spun the handle and stepped smartly backwards to give a distance of nearly fifteen feet where she froze with her gun raised and ready. Nothing happened immediately, but the groaning and banging from inside in response to their presence told them that one of them was in there. Slowly reanimating, having likely been immobile in their strange hibernating state they adopted when cold and undisturbed, the Screecher inside shambled towards the light and noise. And seeing the weapon-mounted light, it broke into a run.
Astrid, with a clear line of sight, fought against the very natural urge to drill a 9mm round straight through the grey-skinned skull of the beast that opened its mouth and reached for her, taking fast but unsteady steps towards her on legs that had stayed still for too long. Her torch beam illuminated the face, cloudy eyes not responding to the harsh light as a living person would. She kept her discipline, not wanting to waste a single, precious bullet as they were running out at a rate that was unsustainable, and she held her breath as it reached the threshold and took a longer step out of the room.
As it did, Bufford rose to bring the axe down one-handed in a savage blow that crushed the skull and crumpled the former worker to the concrete floor like a meat concertina. Using his foot to hold the ruined head still, he pulled the axe away and wiped it on the torso just as a single word cut across his concentration.
“Buffs!” Astrid snapped desperately.
He didn’t think, simply abandoned the position to throw himself out of arms reach and roll back to his feet as two snapping coughs tore the air. He looked back to see another one, female, tall and heavily built, fall like a tree as the second bullet snapped her head back. He watched as though in slow-motion, the adrenaline in his body slowing the real-time events of the world briefly, as her body moved like the footage of crash test dummies on television. Her head flew back, whipping forwards with the momentum of her skull and upper spine going through their full range of movement, to go rigid and topple forwards to land with a meaty thud on top of the one he had dispatched, or had rendered safe, as one of their companions said, and she lay motionless.
Bufford looked at Astrid and nodded once; the sincere thanks and the returning acknowledgement passing between them in an effortless flash of non-verbal communication. He rose, dusted himself off and slipped the axe back into his belt before they cleared the small office. The stench they had remembered from the early days was gone, replaced by an almost sickly sweetness of dried-out meat that had gone off.
The cold had changed everything as soon as the unexpectedly freezing winter had set in for real, and despite battling the constant chill and hunger, at least the zombies were easier to deal with. The office held little of worth apart from the warm coats which were superfluous to their needs, but the keys to the single box truck preserved inside the warehouse made both of them breathe a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have to search the pockets of the twice-dead corpses.
Rolling up the rear doors, they found the truck half-stocked with sacks containing either rice or flour – they couldn’t be sure which, and neither did they overly care – so they returned to the aisles to use their knives to remove the heavy plastic wrapping from pallets and retrieve heavy can after heavy can of beans and soup. They loaded as much as they dared, both having to strip off their thick coats as they rapidly overheated with the exercise, and seemed to simultaneously feel that they had pushed their luck enough with the time they had been there. They knew that their guard outside would never complain, but he would only remain on-station for so long before he climbed down from his perch with the big rifle slung across his back and follow them inside; such was their curse with a lack of personal communications.
Using the keys to check that the battery still held charge, Astrid flicked the ignition on and off once to give Bufford a thumbs-up gesture from inside the cab. They moved back to the door where they had entered, stepping out cautiously as they knew the long barrel of a high-powered rifle would be aimed in their direction, and Bufford stood tall to make the signal for ‘form on me’ as he placed his left hand on his head with his fingers pointed down like some comedy interpretation of a spider coming to rest on his dome. He held the pose for ten seconds to make sure that he had been seen, then crouched to adopt a defensive position.
Inside a minute Enfield joined them, his newly-acquired small calibre rifle in hand and the longer barrel of his Accuracy International protruding over his right shoulder. He jogged towards them silently, slipping across the open space like the ghost he was, and fell in beside the SBS man.
“Truck loaded with catering supplies,” Bufford said softly with undisguised happiness, “way too much for one haul. Lock this place up and come back with more hands,” he finished. Enfield gave no reply, simply held his hands out for the keys to the car they had found on their way to the warehouse, which Bufford handed over.
“Roller shutter on that side,” he told the marine as he pointed off to their right, “we’ll go in front and you follow.”
The same two slipped back inside and Enfield waited, hearing the laboured sounds of a neglected engine clatter and groan into life before he safetied his weapon and ran low for the door of the Montego. Supressing a shudder as he slipped behind the wheel, he pushed the seat forward and turned the key with his foot on the clutch to reduce the stress of starting the tired engine. Vehicle travel was something they tried to avoid, but the unexpectedly hars
h winter was pushing them to more desperate measures in their need to stay fed. He wound down the driver’s window despite the cold, so that he could hear some of what was going on outside. He could hear the metal roller shutter protesting at being forced to open, like a teenager being made to get out of bed at sunrise, and he slipped the car into gear to fall in behind them at a distance where he would not become tangled up in any drama which might befall them.
They had food, finally, and they were heading back to their little slice of fortified Britain. Being abandoned by the rest of the world, however much of it still remained as before, times were becoming very hard.
Chapter 1
Four months prior
Captain Palmer sat at the desk in the ground floor room of their adopted and adapted country manor and rubbed his tired face with his hands. His stubbled cheeks rasped against his skin, as like almost all of the men, he had forgone the routine of shaving out of a simple lack of water and toiletries. The former Captain of the Household Cavalry, more accustomed to the challenges of armoured warfare than he was the vagaries of logistical concerns, wished that there was someone else to take on the task that had fallen to him..
The few of them who still shaved, despite the outrage of the Colonel, favoured the traditional method of using a straight-bladed razor instead of the more common disposable kind. With close to a hundred people in their group, a steady supply of such luxury items was so far down the list of priorities that they weren’t worth expending any effort over.
His exasperation came from simple mathematics, as he calculated the number of mouths to feed versus the stores of food they had. Their scavenging missions usually followed the template of their SAS team scouting the area, and their remaining Royal Marines and men of the armoured Yeomanry squadron going in en-masse to clear out whatever was available. He knew that there was a booming trade in the black market going on at the house, and even he had lowered himself, via a trusted corporal, and traded a few items for things that he wanted. But his men knew better than to withhold food from the haul. Or at least he hoped for their sake that they did.
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