Toy Soldiers 4: Adversity

by Devon C. Ford

  “You should rest, Sarge,” Daniels told him.

  “No,” Hampton answered as he checked over the sleeping marine beside him, “I need a bloody drink.” Daniels didn’t think that was a very good idea, but then again neither was disagreeing with the man.

  “No,” he insisted, “you need rest.”

  “See these, lad?” Hampton asked, pointing two fingers of his left hand to his right sleeve, “these mean I tell you what to do, and you do it.” His eyes looked down to where his fingers rested, and instead of seeing the chevrons of his rank displayed he saw only the cold, bruised flesh of his upper arm.

  “Ah, bollocks,” he said, dropping back down to the bed.

  One of the women brought out a bottle from somewhere and used the tail of her apron to wipe clean a cup before pouring a decent glug and handing it to him. He took a sip, making an appreciative sounding grunt as he rolled it around his mouth and swallowed it. He looked up at Daniels, evidently assessing the man and showing neither disapproval or any sign of being impressed.

  “You in charge then?”

  “I suppose I am,” Daniels said.

  “And the others? My Lieutenant?”

  Daniels told him everything. About the helicopter evacuations, the failed resupply mission at the base, the winter and the shortage of food, then the announcement of the others up in Scotland. Hampton stopped him there, firing off a few questions about specifics; location, numbers, defences, before letting him resume. That led up to their arrival and Hampton was invited to reciprocate with their own story.

  It was his turn to tell them everything. He recounted the helicopter crash, where so many brave men had fought through hell only to lose their lives in a bloody accident. The unfairness of it still stung him, and he shot a cautious glance at Enfield who still slept on his side with the puckered skin of the bullet score mark exposed on his right shoulder. He told Daniels about how the other half that particular equation had been lost; how he had found marine Leigh concertinaed with a crushed spine in the wreckage of the twisted airframe. He told them of the survivors, having to raise his voice and tell the excited corporal to wait after he had erupted on hearing Johnson’s name. He had to explain who Astrid Larsen was, as much as he knew anyway, and filled them in on the kids they had found living alone in all of the shit they had been wading through for months.

  “Kids,” he told them, “little kids all on their own and doing just fine before we turned up.”

  Then he crushed the re-inflated hopes of the army corporal and told them about the attack on their village. He told them about the savagery of the armoured gun rolling through their little hiding place and tearing down buildings with automatic fire. He said how he and Enfield had stayed and fired on the attackers to distract them long enough for Johnson and the others to get away. How they had come to after both thinking they would be paying the ultimate price only to find themselves banged up and all alone.

  Going from elated to crushed once more, Daniels left them alone to eat and recover.

  He busied himself for the rest of the day, trying to avoid too many questions so as not to have to give answers which depressed him, and when darkness threatened, he retreated to his place of comfort once more. His turning of dials was less enthusiastic than it had been the previous evening as the man he had hoped to make contact with was missing, with God knew what chasing him. The location Hampton had given them was half a day away in the snow at least, and from there he was so far behind their scent that attempting to track them down was less than pointless. He lapsed into a catatonic state of immobility, numb to everything including the cold coming in through the open hatch with a view to preventing him from falling asleep there again. A crackle of static came from one of the battered radio headphones left resting on the hook where they hung. Daniels looked at it, willing it to speak to him again and not believing that he hadn’t imagined it. He glanced away, convincing himself that the sound was in his head. It crackled again, too low to hear but rolling in a pattern that made him think of familiar words. He snatched them up, leaning forwards to grab them and force them over his head.

  The sounds of the outside world went quiet, blocked out and replaced only with the rapid sounds of his breathing. Nothing happened, and his finger hovered of the transmit button before he took it away and reached up to pull off the headphones, annoyed with himself for allowing his imagination to interrupt normal programming. Just as he went to sack the activity as pointless, the noise came back to him loud and clear.

  “Hello, any station, this is Foxtrot-three-three-alpha…” came a slow, almost bored sounding voice, as though the message had been repeated ad infinitum and no longer held any passion.

  Daniels was certain that he had imagined it. There was no way that could be genuine.

  “Hello, any station, any station, this is Foxtrot-three-three-alpha…”

  Daniels stabbed his finger onto the transmit button and croaked out a response without allowing his voice to settle to its normal radio tone.

  “Foxtrot-three-three-alpha, this is zero-bravo,” he said, snatching at the vehicle callsign from a lifetime ago, “is it really you?”

  A pause on the other end made him doubt that he had heard it at all, that he was asleep and dreaming it.

  ~

  “It’s really me,” Johnson said from fifty miles away sat in the slightly roomier and far more modern interior of the Warrior sat on the hilltop over the cliffs by the English Channel, “and, my God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  Chapter 24

  The first day’s progress was pretty poor, Palmer had to admit. They had encountered too many obstacles and turned around too many times to make any distance, and their path north on the wider roads was blocked by a frozen shattered barricade of ruined bodies stretching out as far as they could see. The carnage was horrendous, but at least they were spared the stench that would probably be detectable from space when the weather warmed up again. There was no way through, and by nightfall on their first day they had barely made two hundred miles after having to backtrack and avoid the obstacle of dead.

  They circled their wagons as such, occupying an empty building for a restless and uncomfortable night.

  The following morning they were forced to keep to the smaller roads, which halved their average speed. The following day went better than the first, with Sergeant Strauss ranging ahead to scout the best path before the heavy truck followed under escort of the other Fox and the battered-looking Land Cruiser adopted by the SAS men. Fuel was found when they ran dry, but they had brought enough food carried by them individually that they weren’t forced to scavenge. Everywhere there was evidence of hordes having passed through, where entire wide swathes of landscape still showed signs of having been trampled flat by thousands of pairs of undead feet.

  “Choke point ahead,” Strauss reported via radio, “too narrow for the Bedford.”

  “Can you force it?” Palmer asked, feeling the pregnancy of the pause as the question was considered.

  “Roger,” the response came.

  Ahead, peering out of the limited viewing slit of the Fox, Strauss instructed his driver to slowly force the truck blocking their path out of the way. Being unable to get through the village would mean a long detour and another hour turning around to backtrack and locate an alternative route.

  “Easy,” Strauss cautioned, “don’t damage us…”

  As soon as he had issued the warning, the truck blocking the way shunted forward with a metallic crack followed by a creaking noise as the snapped handbrake cable could no longer arrest the momentum of the heavy vehicle. It rolled, gathering speed on the very shallow slope, and crashed into the glass front of a building.

  It was a cinema, only a small one but one which had been occupied when an infected person staggered inside to flee the horrors on the street. Everyone inside had been turned, and as none of them retained enough fine motor control to operate the fiddly door locks, that was where they remained until the sound
of shattering glass woke them from the state of inactivity they had all fallen into. As though heat radiated through them and melted their coma-like states, the noise woke them in waves and sparked their animation until they all funnelled out of the building and turned their ashen faces and clouded eyes towards the main attraction: the sound of an engine and a moving vehicle.

  “Fall back,” Strauss yelled, startled by the sudden appearance of so many undead heading directly for them from close range. His driver threw the wagon into reverse and propelled them backwards as Straus shouted the warning over the radio.

  Hearing the news of a mass of dead directly ahead, the first they had encountered other than one or two half-frozen Screechers posing little or no threat, Palmer roared for the rest of his convoy to stand-to. The radio sparked into life again, this time Strauss giving them the bad news that in their haste to withdraw backwards, his driver had beached them on the wrecked remains of a car.

  “Get clear, leave us,” Strauss instructed. Palmer had no intention of abandoning any of his men, regardless of how long for, and he ordered everyone out to form line.

  Like some echo of infantry from hundreds of years prior, Palmer lined the men up shoulder to shoulder to face the onslaught and slug it out toe-to-toe.

  “Make ready,” he ordered loudly as he pushed himself into the very centre of their line and extend the stock of his Sterling, “aim…”

  As one, all of the assorted weaponry of his men drew up level to aim at the oncoming undead who advanced with their mouths open to emit the hideous shriek that had earned them their nickname. Their musty stench ranged ahead of them like a picquet, turning the noses of the armed men and threatening to double them over in repulsion ahead of the main wave of attack.

  Palmer filled his lungs, intending to call the order to fire loudly and whip his men into action. Before he could give the order, a great bark of diesel engine filled the air as a main battle tank, huge and loud in the confines of the town’s streets, revved and rolled towards them on squeaking tracks. Stunned, the dismounted men held their fire and stared in confused awe at the arrival of such a heavy hitter, then watched as it spun on its tracks to turn up the road and rolled forward again, straight into the advancing enemy to crush them down under its sixty-tonne weight. It went ahead, stopping when the tidal wave of undead ran dry, cracked off two short bursts from the mounted MG3 similar to their own GPMGs. The clattering gun went silent as quickly as it had started, and the tank clunked into reverse to go back over the crushed wave of stinking corpses.

  “Give them room,” Palmer instructed, dispersing his men so that they didn’t become living victims of the unfamiliar heavy killer. The tank stopped, nudging its bulk to the side to shunt the stranded Fox off the wrecked vehicle carcass it had bellied out on, like a larger tortoise stopping to nudge a smaller one free of a troublesome rock, then it continued backwards to stop near the rest of the convoy. The hatch opened, and up popped a crisply overalled man with a moustache and a black beret adorned with a silver badge of the tank he commanded.

  He climbed down, stamping to attention as the heels of his boots clacked together.

  “Good afternoon,” he announced in accented English, “Hauptmann Hans Wolff.”

  Palmer took a stunned step forwards, lowering his weapon and raising his hand to return the salute that the man was offering.

  “Captain Julian Simpkins-Palmer,” he answered, unsure what was happening, “how did you… where did…”

  Wolff smiled, disarming his English counterpart.

  “Captain,” he said, “we hear you would be heading this way and we have been intending to do the same.”

  “From who?”

  Wolff held up a hand to calm the questioning.

  “I apologise, Captain, perhaps I should be starting in the beginning?”

  ~

  Barrett’s tired Sea King flared in to land on the flat surface directly outside the small control tower of Broadford airfield. Designed for small, light aircraft only, the navy pilot was shocked to see the dull green fuselage of heavier military transport planes, and could only imagine the high-stakes pressure of that landing, which would only be described as ‘tactical’ as the pilot pretty much slammed the plane on the deck and hauled on full reverse to save over running the small stretch of tarmac. On their swoop in he saw what looked like ground works going on to extend the runway, and that kind of investment made him feel happier that this place was designed to stay infection free.

  They were met at gunpoint. Nothing overly hostile, but the intention to use the arrayed weapons was clear.

  “Nothing to be alarmed about,” called a gruff but cultured male voice via a loudspeaker horn, “we need to observe quarantine rules first.”

  Men in biohazard suits came forward, ushering the helicopter passengers away one by one as they were led inside to be stripped, checked, given a fresh jumpsuit and left behind clear plastic curtains where large metal urns bubbled ready for their hot drinks.

  Barrett, Sergeant Ashdown and the rest of his crew in tow, called out for the officer in charge.

  “That would be me,” said the man with the speaker, “Colonel Kelly, British Army.” He wore a sandy brown beret with the famous winged dagger badge visible as it reflected the weak sunlight. Barrett replied with his own rank, introducing the others with him.

  “We’ll catch up when you’ve been processed, Barrett,” Kelly said, turning away.

  They waited their turn, going into another plastic curtained room to strip off and leave their clothing to be burned. The civilians had no issue with this, but the men of Her Majesty’s forces were a little more precious over giving up their uniform. They were assured that they would get replacements, but their reluctance was made worse when they went through to the larger waiting area and found themselves wearing the same plain coveralls as the civilians. Their bearing marked them out as military, and Colonel Kelly approached them on the other side of the thick, clear plastic.

  “Gentlemen,” he greeted them before he was interrupted by a loud voice.

  “Now look here, man,” crowed the voice of their own Colonel, the half-insensible man from a Scottish regiment, who probably hadn’t seen any real soldiering since the Korean War, “tell your man to give me back my father’s claymore!”

  Kelly looked at him, glancing back to Barrett and receiving an apologetic shrug by way of explanation, before ignoring the man as an insignificance.

  “Major Downes didn’t come with you?” he asked the pilot.

  “Not enough room on board and not enough fuel for two trips, Sir,” he answered. Kelly nodded.

  “So they’re travelling by road then?” Barrett nodded through the plastic curtain in response.

  “The Wolfpack?” a junior officer asked Kelly.

  “Wolfsrudel,” he responded, correcting him with a smirk, “but yes, please do put them on alert.” He turned back to the quarantined men and added, “one hour in here, then you’ll come with me to our HQ to be debriefed.” He announced it as though it was already fact, as though it was written in stone because he had decided it. He gave off an air of arrogance, but one matched with a brutal competence and confidence in his abilities and the abilities of his men that such arrogance was almost instantly forgiven.

  “But I warn you, gentlemen,” he said ominously, “the situation may not be as rosy as you were hoping for.”

  Epilogue

  “Doc, are you certain that you can create more of the virus from the research material the Brits recovered from your lab?” drawled the man in the grey suit with an accent that could only be narrowed down to somewhere on the lower east coast.

  Professor Sunil Grewal bit back the correction that he hadn’t been a mere doctor for over ten years. Something told him that the man in the very plain suit with the very plain face wouldn’t have cared anyway. The men and women of the CIA all had one thing in common when it came to him; none of them seemed to give much of a damn about what he said or thought, only what
he could do.

  “I am certain that I can,” he said, “but the question remains of why you would want me to.”

  The suit didn’t answer his question, but simply turned away and gestured at the doorway where another suit was bringing in a bespectacled man in a lab coat, clutching a leather satchel to his chest. Everything about him said that he wasn’t there by choice.

  “Doc Grewal, Doc Chambers,” the suit said, introducing them. Grewal knew of Professor Richard Chambers by reputation. He was an immunologist who had spent most of his life working on vaccines. Scientifically speaking, the two men were opposite sides of a coin; Chambers had devoted his life to stopping nature’s destructive will, whereas Grewal had enhanced and weaponised it. The two professors nodded a wary greeting at one another, as though they were both waiting for the punchline, when the suits began to file out of the lab.

  “Make more of it, then figure out how to kill it. The president needs a vaccine in a month to start rolling out production. Make no mistake, gentlemen, it’s not a case of if this virus reaches the United States but when. I suggest you use your time wisely.”

  With that, he left and shut the door. Through the glass section Grewal could see the uniformed guard standing mutely in place. He turned to Professor Dick Chambers, holding out a hand to be shook and opened his mouth to speak.

  Chambers hit him in the face with a nervous and tentative right-handed jab, shocking them both. He hit him again, harder this time as his confidence grew, and rocked the man back on his feet. He hit him a third time, dropping his satchel and putting his body weight into the blow to knock the other scientist off his feet to land hard on his backside.