Delta Two called out, "Kitchen clear!"
Four called out, "Room clear!"
Three yelled, "Room clear!"
Finally One shouted "All clear!"
Relaxing slightly, the four men quickly searched the house, finding nothing.
One touched the push-to-talk on the squad leaders' channel and reported another cottage cleared.
The four exited through the front door. Two started to speak. "Yet more nothing..." Then he almost stepped into the back of One, who had stopped abruptly.
"Softly, lads," said Delta One and held his hands out in the universal gesture that meant, 'I am not a threat'. He took a step forward, allowing Two and Three to move out the door and to either side of him. There were two people standing in the front garden facing them just a couple of feet away.
"British Army," said One. "We're here to help. Are you hurt at all?"
The two civilians did not reply.
"Are you all right?" Delta One tried again.
"Boss..." said Two, softly, "They're not all right. They're casualties."
The SAS men could see the torn clothing and bloodstains on both of the men facing them.
Suddenly, Four, still behind them in the cottage hallway, heard a faint noise. He started to turn, to look, but all he glimpsed was a wide-open mouth and teeth as someone seized him and bit his face. He managed to exclaim, "What the -!", before another set of teeth clamped down on his neck and ripped the front off his throat. His attempt to warn his team mates came out as part shriek, part gurgle, and arterial spray jetted out across the wall and the backs of his colleagues' heads.
Delta One reacted fastest, spinning to face back into the house, with his C8 pressed firmly back into his right shoulder. He was not sure what he was looking at, but he smelled and felt hot blood spray, and knew that Delta Four was in trouble. He sighted and squeezed the trigger in one fluid movement, sending a burst of three bullets into the face of a bloody figure that was reaching out to him. The figure's head jerked backward and blood, bone and brain matter sprayed the hallway behind it. A second figure rose from where it had been ripping off Delta Four's face and thrust a hand at One, catching him full in the face. The night vision monocular jabbed into his left eye and a finger caught him in the right, but reflexively, he squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession, sending two groups of three shots into the figure.
Delta Two and Three wasted a fraction of a second turning to look back, and then spinning to face front again. That time was enough for the two figures in the garden to close in and grab the SAS men, pulling them towards their open mouths. Instinct, imbued by training and experience, took over and the soldiers moved with their attackers, throwing them to the ground. Two whipped up his C8 and shot his adversary, while Three used the butt of his weapon to smash his attacker in the head.
Delta One gasped out, "Man down," and then, "Shit, I can't see!"
Two and Three turned. While one of them grabbed One and pulled him out into the garden, the other seized Four's flak jacket and pulled. Suddenly, One's vision cleared and he shouted, "They're not down!"
All four attackers were back on their feet, and closing in again.
Three shouted, "Head shots! Fucking zombies need head shots!" His C8 barked out bursts and the head of one of the two in the cottage garden literally exploded.
Delta Two also aimed and fired for the heads of the two coming out through the cottage door. He scored perfect hits. Delta One aimed for the chest of the man in front of him, and emptied the magazine, calling out, "No, head shots won't do it! Go for centre mass!"
Sure enough, a headless figure was struggling back to its feet in front of Three. Rather than take time to reload his C8, Delta One pulled his Sig Sauer pistol and emptied it into the attacker's abdomen.
Delta One contacted the command tent. "Command, this is patrol Delta. Hostile contacts, I repeat, hostile contacts. We have a man down. We are withdrawing to the road. Patrol Charlie, please assist."
As he was talking, shots rang out from Charlie's position, and after a few moments more, fainter gunshots could be heard to the west, where Alpha and Bravo patrols were also coming under attack.
"Oh shit," said Delta One to his team mates. "I think that means we're on our own. Let's get back to the road where we can see the bad guys coming."
***
Steve cautiously moved towards the light that they had seen. As he drew closer, he could make out the dark shape of a building through the fog. He touched the push-to-talk button for the squad leaders' channel and reported it in. Troy hung back on the road with Amanda, Gus and Tash, covering the rear, while Peri moved closer to the building with Steve. The light was coming from a window, but the rest of the house - a single-story cottage - was dark. They stepped through a gate into the front garden, and Peri hissed in annoyance as she stepped on something soft and slippery. A corpse.
Steve examined the mess on the garden path. There was little more than a pile of bones and a few scraps of flesh, and a whole lot of blood. "Shotgun pellets," he whispered.
Peri pointed to another patch of gore, where spines and teeth were just about all that was left. "Do those look familiar?" she whispered.
"Snakes," was the terse reply.
"I think a neighbour infected by a snake must have come calling, and got blasted."
"There's not much left of him," observed Steve.
"More snakes in the grass, then."
Steve told Peri to wait, while he moved round to the side of the cottage. He returned after only a quick glance around the corner at the rear of the cottage. He leaned close to Peri and softly whispered, "The back garden is full of snakes. There must be a couple of dozen of them."
"If there's someone in there, we better get him out, and do it now," she replied, and reached up to tap on the window, a rhythmic tap that she hoped the occupant would recognise as man-made.
A gravelly voice reached them from inside. "Who's that?"
"Sir, we can get you to safety," she replied. "But you have to come out now."
"Can't," the voice replied. "Who are you? Are these snake things all over, or just around here?"
Steve moved to the front door and tried the handle. As he had expected, it was locked. He pushed open the letter box slot and immediately smelled something unexpected.
"Gas!" he called out to Peri.
"Sir," she said. "What are you planning to do?"
"Bloody house is full of those damned things. I'm planning to kill 'em all."
"Sir, we can take you to safety," said Peri. "There's no need to do anything drastic. Can you go to the front door and come out?"
"No," he replied. "One of 'em must have slipped in before I noticed. Bugger bit me. I can feel it tearing up my guts. I have to do this now, or never. I'm goin' to blow the place on three."
"No - wait -"
"One."
"Steve, get out of here, now!"
"Two."
Peri and Steve ran across the garden and out to the road.
"Three."
There was a loud whump! The gas ignited and the expanding air blew out the windows and doors with an almighty crash! Orange-yellow flames billowed out through every opening, rising into a fireball above the roof. Walls started to crumble and the roof fell in. Peri felt the shock-wave hit them, and she was pushed onto the grass beyond the roadway, deafened. In the space of a couple of seconds, the cottage had been reduced to nothing but a pile of burning debris.
Peri thought her ears might have taken lasting damage from the blast, because the noise seemed to be going on and on, and coming from different directions. She struggled to sit up, and only then did she realise that Steve and Troy were both firing their assault rifles, and that there was gunfire all round them. She stood with her borrowed pistol and adopted the firing stance that Troy had taught her, while trying to get her bearings and work out which way was which.
Steve and Troy were both firing in the direction of the burning cottage, and she remembered wh
at Steve had said about snakes in the back garden. The effect of the blast was easing, and she felt less dazed and disoriented, and at last worked out that the special forces patrols on The Circle were firing, too.
Troy noticed that she was back on her feet. "Peri!" he called out. "Watch our backs and left, nine to twelve o'clock."
"I have twelve to three," shouted Gus, firing his Sig at something up the road.
Steve too was using his pistol, firing one-handed while talking on the radio. Peri turned to face her sector, and saw sinuous black shapes on the road. She immediately swung the pistol, two-handed, in arc to line up a shot and squeezed the trigger. The loud bang and the recoil took her by surprise. She realised she had closed her eyes reflexively and had no idea where the shot had gone. She sighted again, this time forcing herself to keep her eyes open, and fired. This time she saw the puff where the bullet had struck the tarmac road surface and knew she had missed completely. She remembered reading about pistol shooting, and realised that the targets were probably too far away for accuracy. She watched the nearest snake, and let it come closer and closer, until her nerve failed her and she fired again and again, still without success.
"Listen," Steve shouted. "Everyone's been ambushed, either snakes or infected humans. The bulk of them seem to be in the southern part of the island, so our best bet is to go north and find somewhere we can defend."
Peri looked round at him. "The chapel - that sounds solid and should limit their avenues of approach."
Steve glanced at her and shouted, "Watch your sector, Peri!"
She turned and realised that a couple of snakes were coiling to jump. "Shit!" she yelled, and simply swung the pistol one-handed in their direction and squeezed the trigger twice. To her complete astonishment, the head of each snake twitched out a puff of pink mist as her bullets hit them. "How the hell did that happen?" she said aloud.
"Without turning round, Peri," Steve was shouting again. "Start side stepping up the road to the north, be ready to run on my command. Hold a square formation, Amanda in the centre. Troy? They're too hard to hit with bullets. Time to frag the little sods."
"Grenade out!" shouted Troy. "One away - two away."
"Grenade out!" echoed Steve. "One away."
On the third explosion, Steve yelled, "Run! Let's move it! Go!"
They went.
***
The team ran through the fog, up Harbour Way, for two hundred metres or so, before Steve called a halt. "Hold your positions, and listen out," he said. "Anybody hear any snakes in the grass?"
"I got nothing," said Troy.
"Wait and listen," Steve responded.
Neither Peri, nor Gus, nor Amanda could hear anything stirring. Gus shot an interrogative look at Tash, and the dog shook its head.
Finally, Steve broke the silence. "Okay, we seem to be clear of them, and we've caught our breath."
Troy spoke up. "The snakes all seem to be to our south, so if we wanted to exfiltrate back to the boat we'd have to recross infested territory. From the gunfire we heard, the other fire teams ran into them in the southern half of the island too. It's a reasonable assumption that there are no safe routes back to the harbour."
"Okay," said Steve. "We have two options. Call for an extraction by air, or carry on. Peri, what do you want to do now?"
"I want do what we came here for. Find El Gordo and kick its arse."
"That works for me," said Steve.
"Hey, don't the rest of us get a say?" asked Amanda.
Peri answered with a question. "Do you want to find your friends?"
"Of course I do. I just don't want to be taken for granted." She gave a shrug of acceptance.
"Then you want to go forward?"
"Of course I do," Amanda repeated.
Peri turned to the white-haired Swede. "What about you, Gus?"
He smiled at her, and exchanged a look with the dog. "We'll be safest if we all stay together, I think."
"Right, then let's move out," said Steve. "Diamond formation, I'll take point, Troy to the rear, Gus and Peri, right and left, and Amanda in the centre with the dog. Slow and quiet, people."
They resumed their progress up the road.
After another few minutes, Steve halted the party and pointed diagonally to his right where the dark shapes of low buildings could be seen through the fog. "That must be Clifftop Farm," he whispered. He touched the push-to-talk switch for the command channel and called in a brief progress report. Troy moved up alongside Peri.
"Well, boss?" he whispered. "Should we recce this place?"
"If it's full of snakes, all we'll do is give away our position." she said. "I'd rather not get chased around when we're so close to the place Amanda's team should be. I'd vote for closing in on the target. What do you think, boys?"
Steve had re-joined them. "I agree," he said. "And so does Captain Mike. The other patrols haven't found a single civilian survivor, only corpses and snake-infested people who attacked them like zombies. The chances of finding anyone intact over there is zilch."
"And the chance of finding something nasty over there is high, I'd say," said Peri. "So we press on to Amanda's chapel. To boldly go, where the hand of man has never set foot, and all that."
Raising his voice slightly, Steve said, "Back into formation, and let's move. Keep your eyes - no, your ears, keep your ears peeled."
"How the fuck do I peel my ears, dumbass?" asked Peri. "Never mind, it probably involves sharp things that I don't want to know about."
The team carried on through the fog.
"It should be a few yards further, on our left," whispered Amanda. "Look for a track that goes around behind those trees, there."
Peri could see something darker looming through the fog. "Are those trees?" she whispered. "My imagination sees something much worse than trees. That's a fucking T-Rex."
Steve chuckled. "No, it's a clump of trees, Peri. And sure enough, there's a farm track."
They turned onto the track, and two camper vans emerged from the gloom.
"That's them," said Amanda. She strode forward to open the door to the big Aero camper, but Troy reached out to hold her by the arm.
"Let us go first," said Steve.
Steve and Troy moved to either side of the door, weapons ready. Steve counted down, then yanked the door out and open. Troy darted inside and to the left, his C8 pressed to his shoulder. Steve moved in right behind him, and faced the opposite way. "Clear," said Steve, quickly followed by, "Clear!" from Troy.
Steve appeared in the doorway. "Peri," he said urgently. "I need you." Amanda made a move, but Steve held up a hand, and said, "Wait, Amanda." He looked at Gus, who nodded in understanding and put an arm round Amanda's shoulders.
Peri stepped into the van.
The first thing she saw was the body of a young woman lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Her chest was a gaping bloody mess, and a piece of mangled flesh seemed to have been stuffed into her mouth. "Shit," breathed Peri. "That's - that's - is that her heart?"
Steve nodded. "I think so," he confirmed.
"Fuck, this is awful." Peri crouched down and looked closer, taking in the woman's brown hair and pale skin. "I think this is Gilda. The other one - Tori - she's a blonde." Then Peri frowned and looked at the wound in her chest. "This looks different, doesn't it?" She looked up at Steve. "Doesn't it?"
Steve bent down to look more closely. "You're right. It doesn't look like the work of a snake."
"What. The. Fuck." Peri said, slowly. "It's like something ripped open her chest and pulled out her heart, then put it - there." She rose unsteadily to her feet. "What. The. Fuck," she repeated. She started towards the door, mumbling that she needed air.
"There's another one," said Steve.
She stopped in her tracks, and closed her eyes, willing herself to stay calm. "Where?"
"Look."
Peri moved into the camper and looked down its length where a lanky young man was lying on the floor with his back propped agains
t a bench seat. "Owain," she said. "Well, I mean, it isn't Professor Coupar, so it must be Owain. But there's no blood?" She looked over at Steve. "What killed him?"
Steve shrugged. "I can see the same as you can, Peri. He's dead, but not like…" He gestured to the other end of the camper van.
Peri knelt beside the body and leaned in close. "Weird," she said. "His trousers have been undone at the waist." She pulled up his tee shirt. "Scratches on his chest, but not breaking the skin." She looked at his face. She leaned in close to his lips and sniffed. "Smells of woman," she said. She pushed back the hair on his forehead and pointed to small blemishes on his skin. Each was small, round and red, with a crescent shaped mark on one side. "Burns? From finger tips?"
Steve was still processing something. "What do you mean, he smells like a woman?"
"No," said Peri. "His lips smell of woman. Scented lip balm. There's a slight waxiness and a hint of vanilla and tea. He doesn't look like someone that plumps up his lips, ergo, he's been kissed by someone that does."
"Okay, and finger tips?"
Peri stretched out her own fingers and held them just above the marks. "Ten fingers, each with a fingernail, pressed into his forehead pretty hard."
"Ah, I see it now. So what does that all mean? He and Gilda were doing the bump and grind, then he died, then ... then I'm confused."
"We need to check the other van."
Peri ran to the door of the VW camper and opened it before Steve could stop her. There was no-one inside.
Steve started to say something about going first, but then stopped as the smell hit his nostrils. "What's that smell? It's sort of familiar, but..."
Peri was laughing. "My friend, I am relieved that you find the smell sort of familiar, because it suggests you are getting enough."
"What?"
"Getting," said Peri slowly, "enough." She made an unmistakably lewd twerk with her hips. "You know, Steve, ... Getting ... Enough..."
"Whoa!" he said, stepping back. "Are you saying I'm getting a nose full of ...?"
"This is what a horny teen student's bedroom smells like after, first, discovering girls, and second, vigorously entertaining said girls, and third, never taking the trouble of doing any laundry. This is what mums have to put up with without comment, because 'boys will be boys'. The same scent in a girl's room would likely cause a riot - life is such a bitch to girls! You are taking in the mingled scents of sweat, Cowper's fluid, saliva, semen, natural vaginal lubricants, cervical mucus and pheromones. You are inhaling copious quantities of 'l'aire de baise grand'."
Island of Fog and Death: A sci-fi horror adventure Page 19
