‘I’m the best person to go in’ I interrupted. ‘I have the most knowledge about this disease up close, you need to be organising the offensive.’
‘This is it’ laughed Keane. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed, just as I’m starting to like you a bit.’
I smiled at him, as Sergeant Davis walked away from the group, and I followed him, to keep up the pressure.
‘You know I’m right’ I said, looking him in the eye.
‘I don’t know you’re right’ he replied, clearly struggling for a way forward. He was silent, in thought for a few seconds before continuing.‘Ok Driver, but you do what I say, when I say it.’
As we waited for the other companies to position themselves, it started to rain. Gentle at first, just the odd droplet finding its way through the leafless trees, but it soon picked up to a shower. It seemed to rain for an age, causing further movement in the camp, and making the conditions that little bit more difficult. The radio crackled with the news positions had been taken, I nervously checked my weapon, as I waited for my orders. I wanted to do this though, I needed to look these people in the eye, see what kind of men they were, check for any sign of humanity still remaining.
‘Are you ready for this?’ Sergeant Davis asked, noticing my hands shaking.
‘Yeah I think so.’
‘Everyone is now in place, if this should go wrong, we’ll be in there within seconds to get you out. We have encircled the whole camp, and will enter on your signal. I want clarification of what is going on in the camp, are they all involved? Do not take any risks, if you feel you are in danger, get yourself out of there.’
He showed me the sign, which was to be used if I was in trouble, a sign for all companies to go in. I should hold my hand above my head, in a fist, and pump it up and down. ‘This is the signal for attack, if I see it, I will send everyone in.’
‘Ok.’
‘You ready for this?’
‘Let’s do it.’
We walked back to the group, who were focused and ready, it was time to see if I really was army material.
‘Go in without your rifle’ said Sergeant Davis, taking it off me. ‘You don’t want to set alarm bells ringing with any who are compos mentis. Just take your Welrod, and this Glock’ he added, as he handed me his handgun. I put the safety on and hid them in my pockets, one in the left and one in the right. As I walked past him, he grabbed my shoulders with his hands in a firm grip, and then let go. I turned to face him, and with a look and nod, told him I was ready.
‘Move out,’ said Sergeant Davis, as Blue and White Company spread out like a fan behind me, silently caressing the ground. I looked straight ahead at the camp, still seventy yards away, and slowly made my way towards it. I concentrated on my breathing, and told myself to stay calm. It was still raining, but I couldn’t feel it anymore, I concentrated on the camp, all the time searching, identifying targets, making a mental picture in my head of where everything was. The camp was completely open, no entrance, or restrictions, no guards or security. I walked straight in, and made a bee line for the area in the centre, that was highly populated. It was muddy, with dead bodies lying in the walk ways. I had to step over some, avoiding the rubbish and mess everywhere. One man started climbing to his feet, blocking my passage, so I had to wait as he stumbled and fumbled around on the floor. ‘Oh sorry man, I didn’t see you there’ he spluttered, as I past him. I noticed I was getting a few inquisitive looks from people further in the camp, so I headed straight for them. I made sure to take my time, looking around for any signs of cannibalism, but the amount of shit everywhere was making it hard to identify anything. There was an area of the camp that had been closed off, with large sheets of tarpaulin hanging from the trees, hiding something. A large group of men were surrounding the entrance, a few broke away and started walking towards me. I put my hands in my pockets, and clasped my handguns, making sure they were ready. There was the odd piece of furniture in the camp, mainly settees and sofas, wet and muddy. Many were covered with the half naked bodies. I couldn’t tell if they were dead or not, so I approached one to investigate. I lifted his arm, that was touching the muddy floor. To my surprise, he moved his head and tried to speak to me. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked, kneeling down by his side to get a better look at him. His breath stunk of alcohol, and he couldn’t communicate properly. He just put his head back down, making noises I couldn’t make sense of. Looking around the camp, there must have been hundreds of bodies in this state, all looking ill or something more sinister. I stood up as I was approached by a group of men, who surrounded me, blocking my path. They weren’t threatening, but I wasn’t comfortable. One man spoke as the others stayed in the background. He was a dirty looking man, with multiple watches on his left arm, which struck me as odd. I could see what looked like blood stains on his cuffs, and other dirt and filth covering his clothes.
‘Can I help you?’ He asked, smiling with a collection of blackened teeth.
‘Yeah, I’m just a bit lost and looking for some help.’
‘What kind of help?’
‘Some food maybe, I haven’t eaten for a few days.’
‘You look well fed to me, what uniform is that you’re wearing?’
‘It’s just a combat uniform, the army gave it me when they cleared my town. What’s wrong with all these people, lying around your camp?’
‘Nothing really, they’re all ill, we are trying to help them.’
‘Help them how?’
‘We cannot help you, I think I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘Why? I only wanted some help.’
I started to walk towards the restricted area, but they stood in my way.
‘I’m going to have to ask you to go back the way you came.’
‘Can I not go this way? I’m heading towards Penicuik’ I said, pointing past the area that was blocked off. Their mood suddenly changed, they became hostile, pushing me around and trying to get hold of me.
‘Hey, get your fucking hands off me’ I said, trying to remain on my feet.
‘You are not welcome in this camp’ he shouted, trying to put his hand around my neck. I forced him off me and removed both guns from my pockets, pointing them at him. A man to my right moved a step closer to me, and I redirected one gun at him. ‘Don’t be fucking stupid’ I said, glancing at him. ‘I want to know what’s going on behind that cover’ I said, nodding in its direction. The men backed away, and I followed, keeping my guns trained on them, but moving targets sporadically. The situation drew interest from more of their men, who started to gather around me, penning me in. I didn’t like it, I was losing control of the situation, and I didn’t know if Sergeant Davis had a view of what was happening. As we got to the tarpaulin, I told the man in front of me to open it, he turned and grabbed it with his left hand. I sensed movement behind me, and turned to find a man running at me with a hammer. I moved my gun towards him, but before I could get a shot off, a bullet tore through his neck, sending him crashing to the muddy floor, and a spray of blood across my face. Then all hell broke loose, someone picked up the hammer, so I shot him through the chest as more shots rang out, and bodies fell to the floor around me. I shot the man nearest to me through the head as he ran towards me, and he fell to the floor dead. Another grabbed me from behind, with his arm across my neck. I struggled with him as another approached from the front. I lifted my gun and shot him though the face and his left shoulder, he fell to the floor screaming. I elbowed the man behind me in the stomach three times, causing him to reel backwards, giving me just enough time to shoot him through the head. I got hit around the head with something and fell to my knees, still reeling from the blow as my senses tried to recover. I looked around and could see the army, moving through the camp, as more bodies fell. A muddy foot came hurtling towards my face, I managed to block it with my arm as the top of his head exploded. I got back to my feet and took aim at someone running, hitting him in the chest, as he stumbled to the floor screaming. ‘You O
K?’ Shouted Sergeant Davis, as he grabbed hold of me and shook me.
‘Yeah I’m fine.’
He left me to recover, as he secured the area.
Keane, the company medic, started work on one of the men still alive, as I wiped the blood off my face with my sleeve.
‘You did well’ said Little D, clearly still pumped with adrenaline. ‘They went for you. Keane took out the guy with the hammer with one bullet, straight through his neck, beautiful shot.’
I nodded at Keane, who reciprocated.
‘Some of the men were unarmed’ I said. ‘We don’t know what they were doing and they’re all dead now.’
‘They were going to kill you Nathan, make no mistake’ said Sergeant Davis, rejoining his team after securing the area. ‘Let’s see what they were doing.’ He walked over to the tarpaulin, moved it to the side and looked inside. He put his hand over his mouth and nose, but never said a word. I walked beside him, the smell emanating from the room was horrific, I had to stop myself from vomiting, and turned away. I went into my rucksack, removing a spare shirt, and wrapped it around my nose and mouth and continued into the restricted area. There were three large tables with walkways between them, three large buckets by each table, and other rubbish littering the floor. The middle table housed a multitude of instruments, knives, cleavers, a hammer and a couple of heavy duty saws. The other two tables had bodies strapped down, the first was naked, but untouched. I checked the pulse, but they were dead. The second body was a different story, or what was left of it. The torso had been stripped of any skin, with just the ribs remaining. Any internal organs had been thrown in the buckets by the side of the table, along with any other parts deemed waste including the head, feet, and hands. The smell was coming from the buckets, where maggots had found a home and flies were feeding. We came out of the tent, and took a moment to recover our composure, the company could tell from our faces, what we’d discovered was not good. We moved to the next area, restricted by another tarpaulin cover, and opened to look inside. There was a large square hole, dug out of the wet ground. It was about five metres squared, but I couldn’t see the bottom, it was full of blood, guts and bones.
‘What’s going on?’ Asked Rhino, as we emerged from behind the tarpaulin. Sergeant Davis approached Keane, who was still working on one of the men. ‘These two will live’ Keane said, pointing at the men, who were unconscious on the floor. Sergeant Davis shot them both through the head where they lay, without a word. He then walked over to the nearest sofa, just as we were joined by the Sergeants of Tangerine, Latics and Claret and Blue Company. He thanked them for their help, but insisted we could handle the clean up. ‘What are we going to do with all these men?’ I asked, pointing at the sofas. ‘They’re alive, most of them.’
‘Are they infected?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then they have to be destroyed, as per our orders.’
I was slightly less comfortable with the killing of these men, it didn’t feel one hundred percent right. The men that had been running this camp deserved to die, of that there was no question, but I’m not sure what to make of these men, had they been taken advantage of? If they were eating human flesh, then they had to be destroyed. The rest of Blue and White Company, dragged the bodies off the sofas, or killed them where they lay, with a bullet to the head. All the bodies of the dead were piled high, by the restricted area, and Rhino torched them. He then moved systematically through the camp, burning all traces of what had been happening here. The whole of Blue and White Company watched from distance, as the whole camp burned, trees collapsed as the fire spread. ‘Let it burn to ash’ remarked Sergeant Davis, as he turned his back on the camp, and continued into the forest. ‘The weather will put the fires out.’ We cleared out the rest of the forest in the next hour, with a further eight kuru carriers destroyed. Soon we were out in the open, where the conditions were much more punishing. We found just one body over the next thirty minutes, half naked, who had frozen to death. The fact many of the kuru sufferers we find dead or nearly dead are half naked, made me wonder if towards the end of the disease, it affected the brain in much the same way as mountaineers, who think they feel too hot. It’s an illusion, so they take off all their clothes thinking they’re overheating, rather than dying of cold. We ate our lunch sat in a concrete bandstand overlooking a duck pond. The water was as black as tar, the rain coming down created patterns as it rippled across the pond. I prepared myself for the next objective, clearing out my farm. I told the men, if any were unaware, that the next farm had been my home, it was information I felt they should all have before we got there. As we ate, we could hear the wild dogs somewhere off in the distance, Sergeant Davis got on the radio, and put out a message stating the dogs were a priority, and when found a message must be sent out asking for help to destroy them. We arrived on the outskirts of my farm at around two twenty in the afternoon, after a short drive in the Viking. The rain had stopped, but was replaced by a perishing blizzard, which cut us to the bone. A few members of the team, including myself, had taken a bit of oxygen in the Viking, with headaches and coughing becoming a problem. We climbed over the barbed wire fence where it had been cut, and headed towards the lake, a good fifteen minute walk from the property. The trees around the lake seemed to have all died, one having toppled over, now lying across the black water. At the edge of the lake, were a few dead fish, in varying degrees of decomposition. There were also three bodies in the water, all face down. Murphy carefully climbed out using the dead tree, and hooked each body with his rifle muzzle, and pulled them ashore. It was hard to tell what they had died from, the bacteria had been working some time on them. Each body we recover, creates panic in me, that this person could be my mother or father, while I don’t know what happened to them, there can never really be any closure. We left the bodies in a pile by the waters edge, and torched everything. We fanned out into formation to search my property and land. With the darkness becoming more of a problem, Sergeant Davis told us to turn our tactical lights on. With a hand signal, he ordered Murphy and Little D to search the two outhouses, while we continued into the property. Rhino waited outside, keeping an eye on the different approaches. The house didn’t feel like my home anymore, I didn’t recognise it. The cobbled drive had a slant, which leaned towards the wooden porch, that was burnt out and black. The door was ajar, so I pushed it open and stepped down into the hallway. The radiator had been ripped off the wall, and lay in pieces on the floor in front of me. I stepped over it and walked to the kitchen door on my left, from where I could see inside the living room, downstairs toilet and the kitchen. Everywhere was filthy, with blood and other human excrement, on the floors and walls. There was rubbish all over the carpet, food wastage, needles, containers and newspapers. I couldn’t walk in a straight line for having to avoid shit on the floor, Sergeant Davis followed behind me, using my footsteps. The kitchen opened out with the units and appliances following along the left wall, with the sink and drainage board across the back. A wooden dining table and chairs take up most of the right side of the room, where there was also a small store cupboard. The kitchen was disgusting, with rubbish of all kinds littering the floor, table and work surfaces’. Half eaten mouldy food, rotting vegetables and fruit, vomit and other human waste. There was blood everywhere, with knives still covered with it, bits of bone, fat and hair in piles. All rotting, and stinking. I covered my nose and mouth with my arm as I got closer to the sink and cooker, that were both covered in blood and bits of bone and skin, so decomposed it was difficult to know where it came from. I turned my attention to the store cupboard, which had been stripped of anything edible, with the odd empty can lying on the floor. I noticed the fridge was ajar, so I opened it. Inside was decomposed food, left from the morning of the attack, but there was also chunks of dead flesh wrapped in plastic bags, black and distorted, bones with black skin still attached and other bits of humans I simply couldn’t recognise. We moved back into the hallway, and through to the living room
, still reeling from our discovery. I looked at Sergeant Davis, who himself was white as a sheet, but things weren’t going to get any better. There was a body on the sofa, half naked, I wasn’t sure if he was alive or not, but he looked like he had been eating his own arm, with blood and skin around his face and his right hand barely still attached. I put a couple of bullets into his head to make sure, and moved away, as the smell started to get the better of me. There was a photograph on the floor, that looked like it had been trampled under foot, the glass cracked and broken. I picked it up, and brushed the glass off. It was a picture of my mum and dad, taken at the celebration of their fortieth wedding anniversary, at their favourite restaurant, just six months before all this shit happened. I removed the photograph from the frame and folded it up, putting it in my pocket. There were other photos on the wall including pictures of Jane and Emma together, which I removed and stashed. A noise upstairs startled me, I looked at Sergeant Davis, who signaled for us to investigate. We crept up the stairs, our rifles at the ready, past further memories of my past life, hanging on the walls. The smell upstairs was truly foul, I removed the spare shirt from my rucksack again and tied it tight across my face. At the top of the stairs, Emma’s bedroom was on the left, followed by my bedroom, with the bathroom opposite on the right. My parents bedroom was at the end of the corridor, with the door shut. Inside Emma’s room, was a child’s body on the bed, butchered. Emma’s princess bedding, stained red with blood, and the instruments used to dismember the child still lying on the floor. This could so easily have been Emma, if we hadn’t run when we did, I hoped whoever the child was they didn’t suffer too much, but I expect they did. A picture on the wall drew my attention, it was a drawing Emma had done when she was five, called ‘My family.’ It depicted the two of us, with her grandparents by her side, and her mum floating off to heaven. It was drawn in the months following her mums death, while she was trying to come to terms with it. I removed it from the wall, wiped the blood off, and folded it up, putting it in my pocket. We left the room and went into the bathroom opposite, which had amazingly been spared the horror witnessed in other rooms. The toilet was overflowing with human excrement, and the sink and bath were stained with dirt and grime, but no bodies. We went into my bedroom next, which had been used as a dumping ground for anyone staying, bags, coats and other belongings, plus any items deemed essential on the road. I couldn’t see an area I still recognised, besides a couple of pictures on the wall. ‘Is that the last room?’ Sergeant Davis whispered, pointing his rifle at my parents closed bedroom door. I nodded, moving into position so he could breach the door. With his rifle out in front of him, he kicked the door through, in one quick motion, and was inside clearing the room. I followed behind as he whispered ‘Contact’, and put two bullets into a man led on the bed. I looked under the bed, and then in the wardrobe. ‘Clear’ I said, looking at the state the room had been left in. It was disgusting, as was every other room in this house, they’ve absolutely no respect or decency. The amount of depravity these walls had seen horrified me, it made me want to tear these fuckers apart. This was my childhood home, where I’d been brought up, and now where Emma considered home. I don’t remember how it happened, but I found myself smashing my rifle butt into the face of the man on the bed, over and over again. ‘You goddamn mother fucker’ I screamed, smashing his head again and again. All my disgust and hatred came flooding out, as I continued to hit him until his head had disintegrated into mush, and I fell to my knees exhausted. ‘Come on Nathan’ said Sergeant Davis, helping me to my feet. ‘There’s nothing else we can do here.’
Aftermath: The Complete Collection (Books 1 & 2) Page 36
