Anderson sprinted to the Land Rover and climbed in at the same instant as Tom. “Move out," barked the Fort London security man. As the long column moved off, the swarms of WDs stumbled after them as the rag tag of transport disappeared into the horizon, no chance of catching them but that reality failing to slow their march.
"Any closer with that blade," chuckled Tom, "and I could have got the shaving cream out."
Anderson snorted in reply. “We get another breakdown and we are gonna be in real trouble."
Unfortunately, trouble was coming.
Chapter 24
"Then we nuke it"
Bruger strode from the Glasgow compound in jubilant mood. The people’s council, as they called themselves, had sworn allegiance to Bruger and agreed his terms, his first conquest. Now his mind turned to Livingston, the second major stronghold of Scotland. Once he had captured that, Scotland would be his. There was nothing that could quell the surging power coursing through his veins, nothing to dampen the fire of conquest burning inside of him, but then he saw it coming in the distance, Blade’s Pinzer. Ten minutes later, Blade had passed on his news of the ship arriving from the States and now stood quietly watching the Fort Warwick leader pacing back and forth, six paces one way and then six back, two of his security Mutants stood one side and two the other creating a protective tunnel. At the end of each set of steps the ex-drug baron would look southwards, his expression one of barely supressed rage as he contemplated the prospect of Anderson and the child slipping away from him. Eventually he stopped and faced his enforcer.
“Send word to the Captain on my Destroyer that he is to set sail for Southampton with all speed. Tell him I want them to drop anchor south of Ventnor and wait instruction."
"And do we march on London?" asked Blade, wanting to be a part of the army that wiped out their nemesis.
Bruger turned his full attention to Blade. "No, first we head for Livingston. It's half the size of Glasgow, it will fall easily and complete my conquest of Scotland. Then we head south."
"But...what about the cruise ship?” broached Blade carefully.
"We have time for both, Blade."
Blade's gaze moved to a group of five men closing on them from Fort Glasgow’s gate. "Mr Bruger," spoke the President of the people’s council. "I have spoken with the full council and we wish to renegotiate some of the terms of our earlier agreement."
Bruger strode towards the man, pulled out his present choice of weapon, a magnum 44 model 629 handgun loaded with 44mm cartridges, and fired once at the centre of the man’s chest. The man flew backwards six feet. The four men following behind him completely stunned as they were covered with a fine spray of blood and bone. "Anyone else want to re-negotiate?” barked Bruger.
The four men running back through the gate gave the Fort Warwick leader his answer.
"Leave thirty men here to keep control, Blade," ordered Bruger. "And send the orders to the Destroyer. I want them in place off Ventnor by tomorrow evening.”
Blade watched Bruger striding back into Fort Glasgow, the vials around his neck tinkling like cow bells, his Mutant bodyguards close behind, and smiled. He was back where he wanted to be, back in Bruger’s inner circle. If he knew what was coming, that smile might have slipped.
#
The Preacher woke from a fitful sleep peppered with demons that only came at night, bringing painful memories, memories of the days pre-virus when he had a wife and children, he had neighbours who didn't try to eat him and each day dawned with hope of a bright future. The giant black man shook his head and dislodged them, he couldn't let them stay. He frowned, suddenly aware of what had disturbed him. People were running outside the doors that gave access to the decks, above him also there was frantic movement, items being dragged along and there was shouting, urgent shouting. Then the vibration that told him the massive engines that drove the Destroyer had been fired. They were moving but heading where? He might not have the answer but one thing he was sure of was that he would not sit rotting in this tiny cell while Bruger waged his crusade, he was getting out and as his regular guard entered with his food tray he knew how he was going to achieve his escape. It wouldn't be this time for he wasn't ready, but next time the guard came he intended to get out of this cell and put some questions to the Captain.
#
"I wanted to take this opportunity to extend a final goodwill message John before we lose communications. My guys tell me that the satellite we are using will be out of range shortly for up to forty hours so we will not be able to communicate with you again until you have commenced loading." President Nelson had been keeping a close eye on the cruise ship’s progress courtesy of the military satellite that had been brought back on line by the comms guys at Fort Hope. The success of this mission was of global importance. Hope, the child with the resistance to the virus, could put the entire world back onto its axis if a cure could be harvested from what she carried within her blood stream. There was also the exciting news received about the Mutant called Andrew who was showing signs of fighting the virus. There was light at the end of a long dark tunnel and for the first time in years he believed there was hope.
"I shall look forward to your next transmission Mr. President, when I hope I will be able to report we have the child on board.” The radio started to crackle loudly.
"I think we are about to lose you Captain."
The Captain never heard his President’s final words, words that carried a prophetic truth.
#
Blade felt alive again. He and Bruger, backed by his regular troops and his army of Mutants, had swept through Livingston with minimal opposition. Twenty more of Bruger’s trusted men had been left to oversee his latest acquisition and keep it under his control. Now he had tasted battle once again, drank deep of its intoxicating elixir, he relished the battle to come with Anderson and Fort London. He knew Bruger was crazy and he knew the path he was leading them down was a path to oblivion but in truth he knew his life was never going to end with a pension, pipe and slippers, so he resigned himself to the fact that the only choice he had was the way he exited this Tainted world and having tasted battle once again he chose battle, battle with Anderson and now the Americans. He knew that end was coming as he headed south with Bruger but he was past caring, the settled world he had enjoyed with his leader over the last years was disintegrating due to the crazed drug baron’s fanatical goals but if he had to go, it was going to be in battle, this final battle.
#
"This is not good," whispered Tom, bringing the Discovery and the convoy to a rolling stop. They were around a thousand metres from the docks at Southampton and from their slightly elevated approach, Tom and Craig Anderson in the lead vehicle had a clear view of a chilling sight. There appeared to be a sealed area within the docks where people were moving about, people who were clearly Pure. A chain-link fence seemed to run around the massive area, this was the good news part. The bad news part was the thousands of WDs pressed up against it and at the main gates, where they would have to enter, the WDs were a writhing mass of Tainted bodies at least a hundred metres deep.
"Those gates look heavy duty Tom. The only chance we have is to drive like the wind through that swarm and carve a path and then sweep straight through just as the gates are opened. As long as all of the transport stays tight the WDs won't be able to get through the opening. Soon as the last vehicle passes through they slam the gates and we are home and dry."
"Just one problem with that plan," spoke Bull from the back seat. "How we gonna get the good people inside that dock to open those gates and what’s more, open them at the right moment?”
Anderson had tried every channel available on his on-board radio in an attempt to contact the Pure within. Accepting failure, he picked up a radio hand set. "We need to get one of these to them so we can communicate.”
"Shit, that’s easy," snorted Pump, grabbing the radio. “I'll just stroll down there, knock on the gate and let them know there's a call waiting.”
"Andrew could," said Hope.
Anderson, Bull, Spider and Tom all turned to look, first at the child and then Andrew sat in the back section.
"He can do it," cried Hope, reading well their expressions.
Two minutes later Andrew was sprinting down the road towards the swarm and the gates, a radio hand set jammed into his waistband.
#
The Preacher had the plan clear in his mind, all he needed now was the guard. The ship had been driving hard for at least thirty hours and the amount of general activity made it clear something major was taking place and he wasn't going to find out what it was rotting in this cell. It was as this thought was going through his mind that the handle on the door to the outside deck cranked downwards. The Preacher threw himself to the floor and curled up in the foetal position holding his stomach.
"Guess you won't be wanting this Preacher?" smiled the guard, sitting at a small table and tucking into The Preacher’s food.
"I.....I need a doctor," gasped The Preacher, feigning pain.
"Try yellow pages," chuckled the man, forking up another pile of chips.
"You....you let me die friend and your boss is gonna be passed," warned The Preacher, writhing as if in agony.
The man stopped mid chew, the thought of his leader being pissed spoiling his appetite. Pushing back his chair he approached the cell bars. "You’d better not be trying to yank my chain you son of a bitch."
The Preacher had deliberately bitten down on the inside of his cheek as the guard had sat eating, now his mouth was full of blood and spit. With an exaggerated explosion of air, as if choking, he expelled a spray of phlegm and blood onto the floor causing immediate action from the guard.
"Hells bells, don't you die on me," yelled the man, backing up to the door. Turning, he ran through shouting as he went, "Medic, I need a medic to the brig.”
The Preacher waited in the foetal position, he didn't have to wait long, two sets of footsteps told him that the guard had returned with who he assumed was a doctor. "Get that cell open," ordered the new man.
The Preacher knew that both men had entered the cell. The one he assumed was the doctor kneeled down beside him and gently rolled him over onto his back. The Preacher looked directly into his eyes and gave a bloodied smile. “I’m feeling a lot better now doc.” The giant black man gripped tightly the pencil he had found in the corner of his cell, it was full length and had a sharp point. Bunching the muscles in his arm he drove it up with a vicious punch, once, twice, three times in less than a second, driving it deep into the side of the man’s neck, piercing the right internal jugular vein, the common carotid artery and a section of the subclavian artery. As the man clutched his throat and let out a gargling choke, The Preacher swung his feet around from his lying position catching the guard on the back of his heels bringing him crashing to the floor with a grunt as his lungs expelled the air they were holding. Before he could recover, The Preacher rolled onto him, placing a knee either side of him. At the same time he grabbed his shirt front in a giant paw of a hand, yanked him upwards to meet the other giant paw coming down in a bunched fist that crashed once only into the man’s windpipe, crushing it. The Preacher let the man go to writhe on the floor gasping for air. His bulging eyes told the black giant he was getting none, he would be dead within two minutes. From the time the two men had entered the cell a mere eighteen seconds had elapsed. The Preacher exited the cell, moved to the door and checked the deck outside, it was clear. Time to find out what the hell was going on.
#
Bruger and his army stopped at Fort Warwick on their march south. He would spend the next few days gathering every vehicle that would roll, every seasoned man who could fire a weapon, every weapon that would shoot. His time spent on taking Scotland with his Mutants had honed his control skills to the point where he could move them around any theatre of engagement with a precision that made them a lethal fighting machine. The mere sight of his dead army injected terror into the enemy as they came screaming forward without fear, constantly darting left or right, impossible to shoot. Bruger contacted his Destroyer and spoke to the Captain who informed him that they would be dropping anchor off the coast of Ventnor at around noon the following day, this would be around three hours after the cruise ship they had been tracking through their satellite reached the British coast. Further surveillance tracked the two mile transport column arriving at Southampton but at this point the satellite link became unstable and they lost the feed but he assured his leader that it would be re-established by the time they dropped anchor, it had to be, without it they would not be able to guide the missile that would take out the cruise ship.
"Listen carefully," began Bruger as the information fed into his twisted mind, "I want that cruise ship hit the minute you drop anchor.”
"You want us to hit the docks and the column after that?” asked the Captain.
"No, I want Anderson to see his plan fall apart, I want him to suffer and then crawl his sorry ass back to Fort London.”
"He might be on the ship when we hit it," suggested the Captain.
"He won't be," snapped Bruger. “I know him, he will be last on."
"What are your orders following the hit?” asked the Captain.
"You set sail for Southend on Sea, enter the mouth of the Thames and wait for my call. I estimate you should arrive by 10pm in the evening. I will be moving my army down from Fort Warwick the following morning arriving at 10am."
"Then we nuke it?” checked the Captain.
"No, then I sack it and kill Anderson and his child. Then when I leave his stronghold in flames you nuke it.”
"Understood," replied the Captain, closing the line.
Blade had watched his leader’s features as he spoke to the Captain on the Destroyer, watched his mouth form a smile as he spoke of killing Anderson and the child. In that moment he knew that Bruger had finally lost all control, all semblance of rationality, the only thing that drove him now was killing Anderson and probably killing the child in front of him. Blade estimated that around three hundred thousand men would form Bruger’s army marching south, it was clear that it was a trip that would either be to glory or oblivion and it was even clearer that Bruger did not care which way it went.
#
Andrew knew that the child wanted him to give the radio to the men inside the gate as he reached the back of the mass of Tainted blocking his way. He began to force his way through, pushing, kicking and barging what had once been human beings, to the side or to the floor. At one point he simply walked over fallen WDs who writhed on the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, his focus completely fixed on pleasing the child, the beast within not threatening like it had in the past but still there. As he ploughed his way through, he failed to notice something that Anderson had as he watched from the roof of his Land Rover, his field glasses pressed to his eyes. Something very worrying. Eventually Andrew reached the gate to the dockside, pressed up against the bars and pulling the radio from his waistband thrust it through towards one of the men on the other side.
Ray Thompson had lived in the safe zone created at the docklands Southampton, for the last two years and during that time he had witnessed many sights that ranged from the horrendously unspeakable to the bizarre, but the sight of a WD standing at the gates with his hand thrust through the bars waving a radio hand set ranked up there amongst them.
"Peter you need to come down to the main gate," he called into the basic walkie talkie that was used amongst the group.
"What you got Ray?" came the reply from Peter Wilson, the camp leader.
"Best you come and see for yourself Pete," responded the guard, walking towards Andrew.
Less than two minutes later the two men at the docks stood a couple of metres back from the gates looking at the throng pressed up against it but particularly at the WD frantically waving the radio at them. Their looks of surprise turned to shock as a voice chirped out from the handset, “This is Craig Anderson from Fort London, I ne
ed you to take the hand set from our man at the gate."
"What the hell?" hissed Thompson.
The camp leader was studying the column of vehicles on the elevated position a kilometre or so away from the camp, some of his people had spotted the vehicles ten or fifteen minutes earlier. What they didn't know was that the half dozen they could see, made up of a jeep, a military transporter and three coaches were just the head of a long snake of transport measuring around two miles in length but out of view due to the landscape. Wilson edged forward, reaching out tentatively to the outstretched hand of the WD holding the radio.
"Take," said Andrew loudly.
Wilson jumped back. "Shit......Ray you hear that, damn me if he didn't speak.”
"Take," repeated Andrew.
Ray darted forward and grabbed the radio, passing it quickly to his leader.
"Ok Mr. Anderson, like to tell me what the hell is going on, and what’s more," he asked turning to Andrew, "how the hell is this creature at the gate talking?" As he asked the question, Andrew turned and began pushing his way back the way he had come, it was a poor option.
Chapter 25
"We always have our option B Mr President"
"Who am I speaking to?" asked Anderson.
"Pete, Pete Wilson. I'm the leader here at Southampton.”
"Well Pete, there’s no dressing this up so here’s the thing, we're here to board a cruise ship that is arriving at your dock tomorrow morning and we need to get my people into your compound."
Pete Wilson and Ray Thompson exchanged incredulous looks.
"Don't take this wrong friend," snorted Wilson, "but...are you on medication of any kind because you might want to adjust the dose.”
"Look Pete...I can understand how this might sound but trust me on this, tomorrow morning there is a cruise ship coming into your dock from the United States of America and myself and my people need safe haven in your compound until we can board her."
Bravo Two Zombie (Book 3): The Final Solution Page 19
