by J. Thorn
Addison hissed and bared his teeth, dropping the lump of flesh to the floor. He stumbled forward and tripped over the chair next to the door. He fell sprawling, his hands reaching out, but not to stop his fall. Those hands reached out for Wesley.
Another shadow loomed in the doorway behind the undead officer. Chambers staggered into view, and hit his head on the glass panel in the door, smashing it in his desperation to get inside. As Wesley backed up toward the far end of the room, he saw that the left side of Chambers’ neck had been torn out. The dead trainee’s head swayed unsteadily as he moved, his neck no longer able to hold the weight. There was blood soaking his jacket, but no blood flowed from the wound now. Chambers had bled out already.
That was what Addison had been eating. He’d eaten his own friend.
A survival instinct that Wesley didn’t even know he had snapped him out of his panic. He was no longer frozen to the spot as the two creatures struggled to negotiate their way through the office and around the furniture, toward him. The mess that Wesley had created during his rush to find the keys now slowed them down. Chairs that had been moved out of the way, tables that had been pushed and drawers that were still open; all of these meant precious seconds as the dead clambered across the room to get at him.
He turned to the cabinet and smashed the door with his axe, grabbed the shotgun and turned over the box of shells, snatching the nearest.
Addison was barely three feet away when the single chamber snapped shut and Wesley raised it to the dead man’s face and pulled the trigger. Addison’s head vanished in the blast, replaced by a cloud of blood and gore that splattered across the office. The noise was terrific, echoing in Wesley’s head for seconds afterwards. He had forgotten how loud shotguns were, especially in enclosed spaces. He sidestepped the body, slipped a new shell into the chamber, snapped it shut and aimed over the desk at Chambers.
The one thing that had always unnerved Wesley about the undead was their sheer lack of fear, and their complete ignorance of any form of danger. He aimed the shotgun at Chambers’ head, and the zombie just kept coming. It was only a few feet away when Wesley pulled the trigger, and right up until that moment the creature hadn’t even acknowledged the weapon, hadn’t considered the danger that it was rushing toward. Not until it was too late, and its unthinking brain splattered across the brick wall at the back of the office.
Wesley jumped over the nearest desk, slammed the shotgun down and grabbed the radio from the wall.
“Three Acres come in! Come in!”
A minute later, Wesley’s boots were thudding against the tarmac road as he jogged toward the car park. He unlocked his car with his key fob and jumped into the driver’s seat, throwing his radio and axe onto the passenger seat. He carefully placed the reloaded shotgun into the passenger footwell, double-checked his pocket for the remaining shells, and then rammed his keys into the ignition. The car skidded out of the gravel drive and tore up the ground as he raced toward the roundabout that would take him over the M20 and toward the Security Centre. He put his foot down, speeding up the slope toward the main road, but something caught his eye, something in his peripheral vision.
He skidded to a halt and wound the window down. There, down in the yard, right near the blocked-up entrance to one of the tunnels. There was movement, and lots of it. For just a moment the wind must have blown the mist away, because his view of the tunnel entrance cleared, and in the darkness amongst the rows of storage units, Wesley saw dozens of figures moving about. He saw clearly that a small section of the blocked-in tunnel had now been opened up.
There was a hole.
Wesley slammed his foot on the accelerator so hard that his knee popped. The car shuddered once in defiance before it lurched into motion and screeched up the road toward the bridge. Wesley knew what was happening now, and he realized the urgency.
He changed channels on his radio with one hand, then pressed the transmit button. “CentCom come in,” he shouted into the pickup, but cursed as he saw the battery indicator go dead. He tossed the radio aside and grabbed the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
He had to get to Three Acres and warn them.
Fortress Britain was breached.
LOVE SPREADS
Predator and Juice sat in silence in the Alpha ready room, squaring away their weapons and gear. In this world as in the old one, it was the personal responsibility of every Tier-1 operator to ensure the perfect functioning and reliability of his own kit. After a mission, but before secondary matters like sleep and food, weapons got cleaned and lubed, magazines and grenade pouches refilled, radio batteries recharged – and everything carefully stowed away where it could be got at on a second’s notice.
One difference between this world and the old, though, was that if you failed to take care of your shit, there might not be any replacement weapons, parts, or repair services. You only appreciated industrial society, and international trade, once they were gone. Predator in particular mourned for Delta’s master gunsmiths and armorers, all of whom were presumed to have died when Ft. Bragg, in North Carolina, went down.
He sat at a bench, carefully stroking a wire brush on a brass rod down the barrel of his beloved 7.62mm SCAR (SOF Combat Assault Rifle). He’d been carrying this weapon since 2nd Iraq and had no plans to break up with it now. Predator originally got his call sign for seeming to be seven feet tall, unkillable, and unstoppable; for being expert at a wide variety of extremely deadly weapons; and, in particular, for moving awfully close to silently and invisibly for a guy the size of a truck.
Juice, hairier and cuddlier, stood nearby, pulling batteries out of his devices and plugging them into a wall multi-charger. Neither man spoke, both working in the cordial silence and placid concentration of a ladies’ sewing circle.
Other members of the team would be doing the same, but elsewhere, so they weren’t all on top of one another. (In a depopulated world, space was strangely at a premium.) Ali and Pope were next door, in the quad billet they shared with Pred and Juice. While the latter two were still stripping off dirty assault suits, they caught sight of Aaliyah slipping out of the room, pressing the door closed, and padding off into the blacked-out moonscape of the base.
“There she goes again,” said Juice, checking the soles of his assault boots for gore.
Pred grunted in response, sniffing at a pair of thick socks. “Yeah, it’s funny. I’ve worked with Ali for a decade. Ordinarily, she’d sooner chew her own head off than get involved with anybody she’s serving with.”
Juice nodded, grabbing a towel and a pair of shower shoes and shutting his locker. “Ordinarily, the dead wouldn’t be walking the Earth.”
“True. True.”
Pausing at the door, Juice looked thoughtful. “She hook up with someone in headquarters company, maybe?”
“Maybe. But somehow I don’t quite see her hooking up with a REMF, either.” Tier-1 guys were so far removed from “Rear Echelon Motherfuckers” that they generally couldn’t be bothered to look down on them, as the regular infantry grunts did.
Suddenly, the sound of shouting floated in through the propped-open door – then crescendoed and multiplied with frightening speed. The two big men exchanged looks with each other, then looked back at their shut weapons lockers.
* * *
His kit and weapons squared away, but the grime of the mission still on him, Captain Connor Ainsley took a few breaths sitting on the rack in his private quarters in the BOQ. He then speed-dialled his wife. The sat phone he'd previously depended on to reach her from around the world was now just a particularly heavy and useless brick – ever since the telecom sats started falling out of their orbits. And the civilian mobile network was dodgy at best. But military packets at least had priority.
She picked up after a few rings – probably the degraded and patchy network of towers trying to locate her. “Hello?” She’d never learned to keep the fear out of her voice, even just answering the phone.
“Hel
lo, darling. It’s me. Everything alright?”
“You’re okay?” Neither wanted to take the time to answer, before the other did.
“Fine, just fine.”
“Us, too. The boys are okay.”
“How’s the city?” Ainsley’s wife and two boys lived in central London – in theory one of the safest places in Britain, and thus in what was left of the world. They used to own a house in Surrey, but moved in after the quarantine, and a bit before the fall. And with military comms and scuttlebutt being as unreliable as they were, he often got better intel straight from her than from briefings in his own chain of command.
He could hear her pause and swallow before answering. “It’s okay. The regular military units are still like the bloody Gestapo – every time I get stopped on the street, I want to tell them my husband is a real soldier, an elite one, out fighting the real war.”
“We’ve all got our roles to play, sweetheart.”
“I know… The streets seem safe. There have been no outbreaks that I’ve heard of. Just the odd one wandering in from the countryside. They don’t get far or last long. So far.”
“You’re all staying indoors after dark, though, right?”
“Yes. But it’s hard. The rationing bites a little worse every month. The boys are on the verge of boycotting potatoes, no matter how I cook them… I feel like they’re not growing as quickly as they should do…”
“It’s fine. They’ll be fine.”
“What about your leave, Connor? What did they say?”
Ainsley sighed quietly, not wanting to upset her any more than necessary.
“It’s still no. For the time being.”
His door knocked, then cracked open. It was Handon.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call again in a few days. Inside after dark. Okay? Bye.”
Ainsley rung off and gave Handon a weakly expectant look.
Handon’s expression started out as its usual granite surface. “The Colonel wants us. A briefing.” But then it unexpectedly softened. Ainsley looked like he was in physical pain.
“You okay?”
Ainsley looked away, then back into Handon’s steely blue eyes. “It’s my family. I’ve been trying to get leave to go look after them for a little while. Fortify the house better. Try to lay in more provisions…”
But with that, Handon’s expression froze back into rock. Instantly, Ainsley realized he’d misstepped. He knew as well as anyone, and better than most, that few of the Americans fighting here had the least idea whether their families back home were alive or dead.
Or that other thing.
Handon didn’t respond, but Ainsley got the point perfectly. He changed the subject.
“Who’s in this briefing? When?”
“Just us. Right now.”
Unexpectedly, shouting erupted from outside – the same noises that caused Juice and Pred to freeze in the ready room. Handon turned and put his palm on the butt of his sidearm. The shouting grew louder quickly.
And then the two of them rushed outside and across the menacing darkness of the compound.
* * *
During the run-up to the fall, the militaries were the last to go down. Military installations – walled, guarded, heavily armed, and generally designed to withstand attack – at first seemed the perfect anti-zombie bastions. But what finally brought them down was camaraderie. Esprit de corps. The military brotherhood.
Not a single American or British military base was overrun from the outside. They all fell from within. When soldiers were wounded, their brother warriors erred – far, far too much – on the side of bringing them back inside the wire. Either not believing they’d been infected… or thinking they could be treated, or at least controlled… or just credulously taking their word for it that they weren’t bitten or scratched… they walked or carried their own doom right inside the walls with them.
Now, tonight, long after the world outside Britain had been overrun… whatever was going on, whatever the cause of the tumult at Hereford, it was near the NCO’s mess. Just outside the entrance, a mass of bodies was grappling in the bad light, grunting and swearing, elbows pistoning for punches. One figure lay on the ground at the foot of others, literally getting the shit kicked out of it. It was violent, shadowy chaos.
Handon kept ten meters between himself and the melee, his .45 in one hand and Surefire LED flashlight in the other, the two crossed at the wrist. Ainsley moved out, spreading the flank on the left. There were no shots yet. Before Handon could work out the tactical situation, or acquire a target, a new, large figure charged in – and immediately started tossing bodies out.
“Cut it out, you goddamned sons of bitches…!”
It was the Colonel.
Somebody went flying and rolled up at Handon’s feet, coughing.
Scanning to either side – constant, total situational awareness is pretty much rule number one in spec-ops, and the first ten rules in zombie fighting – Handon saw a couple of corporals spill out of the mess and swing wide around the perimeter of the fighting. Handon grabbed one of them by the collar.
“Sitrep.”
“It’s just a soldier fight, Sarge.” Handon didn’t let him go. “One of the staff clerks from H&S company thought one of the operators from Echo Team looked dodgy. They were just back inside the wire, and the clerk thought he was twitchy and told him to get tested. Guy’s team told him to get fucked. It went south from there.”
With that, Juice and Predator skidded up to a halt, holding their assault rifles forward at the low ready position, night vision goggles protruding from their faces like African tribal masks. Juice wore only a towel wrapped around his waist, and flip-flops. Predator was ass-naked.
“What went south?” Pred growled, pivoting and aiming.
Handon couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Master Sergeant, get that cannon out of my face.” He didn’t mean Pred’s SCAR. “And stand down. It’s just a fist fight.”
Ainsley stepped up again and lowered the hammer on his .45 with his thumb, his expression darkening at the two huge and undressed men. Turning away, he muttered, “I could have gone my whole life without seeing that…”
By now the Colonel had gotten to the bottom of the dust-up, and was letting the perpetrators have it with both barrels. “The next time you dubious motherfuckers want to have a fight that doesn’t involve Zulus, you fucking well do it outside the wire, where you can’t scare anybody. Except the dead. Got it?”
Several dusty and bleeding soldiers, variously standing, sitting, or lying, nodded or Yes, sir’d in response. The Colonel scanned and pointed at a big and grizzled operator from Echo – presumably Patient Zero of this outburst. “You, First Sergeant. I don’t give a shit how many decades of operational time you have in, or how many thousands of Tangos and Zulus you’ve slotted. You follow the goddamned fucking rules. I don’t give a shit if it’s the soup lady who doesn’t like the look of you. You drop your shit where you stand and get your ass tested.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Now!”
The operator pulled himself up and stomped off toward the Med Shack.
There were quiet mutters of approval from some of the scrawnier, bloodier guys.
“And you rear echelon motherfuckers. Next time you’ve got concerns about somebody’s health, you goddamn well take it up through channels. You’re no use to me or humanity with your heads torn off and shoved up your asses.”
The four Alpha men, grinning or shaking their heads, were now turning to leave. Juice tapped Pred on the shoulder and pointed off behind them. They could just make out a figure climbing down from the tallest structure in that part of camp, a three-story warehouse. It was slim and lithe, with long hair, black and curly, and a rifle across her back.
“Looks like someone got her rendezvous interrupted.” Juice whistled. “She moves fast.”
“You have no idea, man,” Predator said. “At least we weren’t the only dumbasses who thought the shit was coming do
wn in camp…”
With a toss of his head, the Colonel rounded up the two senior Alpha men and began fast marching them back toward his command post. The Colonel did everything fast. He knew they were all running out of time.
RUNNING BLIND
Aleister leaned back against the laundry trolley and took a long drag on his cigarette. It was a cold night, and he hadn’t seen mist come off the sea like this in years. He exhaled slowly, feeling the nicotine working its magic on his nerves. It wasn’t very often that he got a few moments to himself these days, not with so many soldiers coming and going, and at every hour.
He had worked at the Premier Inn even before the world fell apart. But back then he’d worked the rooms, as cleaning staff. That meant a whole lot of piling up sheets onto trolleys and emptying bins. People had stopped coming to stay after the tunnel breakouts and even though the building was left open, there was barely any staff. The manager had left to head north in a hurry, and most of the other staff didn’t turn up for work. Eventually Aleister was left there on his own. Unlike the others, he had nowhere else to go.
When the military took over Folkestone after the town was abandoned by civilians, he had stayed on. Overnight, the hotel went from being an empty shell to a catering center for the mass of troops now being housed in the multitude of empty houses. Major Grews, the old-school, gray-haired officer in charge of what was now called “Camp Folkestone” had turned up with a group of heavily armed soldiers and informed Aleister that the hotel was being commandeered for military use. When asked who was in charge, Aleister couldn’t think of anyone to name, being the sole occupant and effectively a squatter. So he told them that he was the manager.
That had been over a year ago, and now none of the military personnel who lived in the rooms of the inn, not even Mess Chef Lanslow, questioned him being there. Oddly, it was presumed that he was now drafted and in charge of the cleaning staff.
