“Major, I really must insis—”
“Oliver,” Downes interrupted him angrily, “you really must stop insisting. In fact, bugger off out of my sight while I talk to a real soldier.” Palmer looked ashen, as if he’d been struck in the face with a dead fish. In truth, he was not the only one to be so exhausted by days of travel under constant threat, and Downes’ uncharacteristic outburst served to underline just how strung out they all were. He watched as the young officer moved off, uncertainly at first, but building up to a stomping march, no doubt to find his older brother and make the man’s life harder. Downes sighed, wondering how one family could produce two so incredibly different sons. He turned back to the man on the bow of the ferry sitting low in the water.
“How’ve you been, Tip?” he asked corporal Stanley Tipuric of ‘B’ squadron, SAS.
“Not too bad an’all, considerin’,” he responded dolorously. “Good to see you made it.”
“Tell me about it,” Downes agreed. “And you too.”
“Still got your boys?”
“I do,” Downes called back, “it’ll take more than this shit to kill off Mac,” he added, knowing that a jibe at the hard Scotsman’s expense would serve to break whatever ice there was between them.
“I’ll need yous all to follow the instructions to the letter,” Tip said in a more professional tone now that the brief pleasantries were out of the way.
“Containment and quarantine?”
“Aye,” Tip shouted back, waving an arm behind him to some unseen person controlling the boat. “The Colonel’ll fill you in later.”
“Colonel?” Downes asked. “I thought Major Kelly was in charge here.”
“Aye, only it’s Colonel Kelly now.”
“Honestly, the man laughed when I gave him an order! Laughed! And the Major added insult to injury by banishing me so he could speak to—”
“Olly,” Captain Palmer interrupted tiredly as he rubbed both hands over his stubbled cheeks, “did it occur to you who the man might be if the Major knew him on sight?” His younger brother recoiled as he always did when he had missed the obvious, his chin retracting so much that it all but disappeared until he regained his composure.
“I don’t give a good God damn who he is,” the younger brother blurted out, albeit with less gusto than his original complaint. He further betrayed his anxiety when he glanced surreptitiously over both shoulders before continuing his rant in a softer tone. “I don’t care if the man sprouted wings and was anointed by Her Majesty the bloody Queen; he’s a rank and file man and he failed to observe the ru—”
He stopped talking, mouth hanging open in confusion as his older brother simply walked away with an exasperated shake of his head.
Palmer senior arrived at the edge of the docks just as his German counterpart did. Hauptman Wolff, as characteristically pleased to be alive as he was every day, looked just as tired as Palmer felt, although he somehow made his tiredness seem far more precise, as he did with everything. The two officers fell in step as they approached the SAS Major.
“I rather fear we’ll find ourselves interned in some kind of concentration ca…” Palmer began, his words trailing off as he realised too late the insensitivity of them.
“I suspect,” Wolff replied without any trace of anger or upset, “that you are correct.” A smirk began at one corner of his mouth before it spread uncontrollably. “And you should not fear saying such things to a German, Captain. We are just as appalled as you are about the history of our armies, as I think that you are of your own histories, no?”
Palmer was saved from having to respond and defend the proud honour of the British Empire, as the major heard their approach and turned to fill them in on developments.
“Small contingent of police, civilian and military, but mostly it’s our boys,” he informed the two captains. “Pretty much all of B squadron were home when it kicked off; on standby for the terrorism thing and all that.”
“Am I to presume that they will want us quarantined?” Palmer asked him.
“Yes,” Downes said, “civvies first. They want three loads so we don’t inundate them.”
“Inundate?” Wolff enquired politely but uncertainly.
“The boys on the island don’t want too many of us at once,” Palmer explained. “Rather than be overwhelmed in quarantine, they prefer that we stay here until they can process us in a more controlled manner, I presume.”
Downes nodded, taking charge for the first time in the months he and Palmer had known one another.
“Captain Wolff,” he said, earning a click of the man’s boot heels to indicate his undivided attention. “Can you maintain watch on the road and come over on the last boat with my boys and me?” The German tank commander’s head nodded in a short, sharp bow.
“Of course, but I do not see how these,” he held his left arm out, ramrod straight and palm held vertically flat, to point at the small civilian car ferries, “will possibly transport the weight of our tanks.”
“And you’d be absolutely right,” Downes responded, which is why we’re all dismounting and going over on foot. Vehicles stay on this side of the water. Infection risk.”
Palmer swore that he could have detected the slightest gasp of shock and loss from their ally, and he knew only too keenly how the loss of a man’s mount affected him, as he had been forced to leave his own Chieftain behind many months before.
“I must protest this,” Wolff said, unknowingly repeating the words of the younger Palmer which had so recently earned him a humiliating retort. “What infection can a machine have? It cannot catch a virus! Why must we leave our tanks…” He trailed off as his eyes followed the outstretched hand of Downes and took in the sight of a matted, crushed slab of blackened meat on the front of the nearest vehicle. White bone jutted out of the mess of gore and rags as an unidentifiable chunk slid slowly away from the metal to hit the ground and make them all grimace at the soft slapping sound it made.
“I understand, Major,” Wolff said quietly.
“They’ll still be here,” Downes reassured the man. “No Screecher I’ve seen yet can figure out the controls on a Leopard…”
“But,” Wolff answered softly, “I do not like the thought of leaving Edda alone here among the enemy.”
Palmer and Downes exchanged a look, both men fighting down the urge to laugh. Palmer’s tank had been called Annabelle, and as much as he’d enjoyed the bond with the machine, he hadn’t felt the same heartbreak that their friend was evidently feeling.
“Edda?” Downes asked quietly, unable to resist.
“Ja,” Wolff shot back with a look of challenge in his eyes, “this is the name of my grandmother. It means maiden of battle, like the Valkyries of the Norse.” His impassioned defence of the name of a tank left both British officers silent for a moment until Palmer placed a gentle hand on Wolff’s shoulder.
“Edda will be here when we need her again,” he reassured him. They were saved any further awkwardness as the ferry bumped into the dock gently, emitting a clanging sound loud enough to remind all of them that they weren’t exactly safe until they got off the mainland.
“Julian,” Downes said as he turned to Palmer, “if you could organise the civilians? Send as many of your chaps with them as you can and the rest are to take the second boat.”
Palmer nodded. “What about Mister Lloyd?” Downes glanced up, taking in their theatre and scanning the assembled mix of people for the marine officer. Spotting him adjusting a defensive position of a pair of surviving marines, he satisfied himself that the job of their defence was adequately taken care of.
“If you could inform the Royal Marines that they will be taking the second transport. The Hauptmann and I will fill the last one.” He turned away but snapped his fingers as a thought struck him.
“Actually,” he said carefully, “if you wouldn’t mind being on the first one? Perhaps your, err, perhaps the Second Lieutenant can accompany the remainder of the men?” Palmer swallowed and g
ave a weak smile of understanding. The shame of his brother’s poor attitude and ineptitude at all things soldiering was a blemish on his reputation, but blood was blood and privately he couldn’t stand to hear his brother maligned by so many people.
“I’ll let him know, Major,” he said tonelessly.
“All aboard,” came a soft and distinctively Geordie shout from the sloping dock into the icy water. “One at a time, if you don’t mind,” Tipuric said to the nervous civilians as they stretched cramped limbs and stiff backs on the short walk towards the boat. “This way to safety, folks.”
THREE
“What the bleedin’ell is she doing?” Sergeant Bill Hampton asked as he looked out of the window. Marine Enfield, a man who had been unnervingly quiet and still, even before the world burned down and he lost his best friend in a helicopter crash, appeared beside his sergeant soundlessly. Hampton flinched in fright before covering his shock with a string of expletives.
“Shouldn’t be out there by herself,” Hampton complained, “not even wearing a proper coat…”
Enfield stared out of the window of the room they shared, the only sound he made a low whistle of breath through his nose. He watched the girl for a few moments longer, before shrugging and turning away. Neither of them had spoken to the only other people to have arrived separately, apart from themselves that was, and neither knew how they were so intrinsically linked to one another through their associations.
Hampton continued to watch the girl, seeing her breath mist and linger in the heavy, cold air, like miniature clouds which hung to mark her progress towards the frosted-over hull of the tracked vehicle. Seeing her bang on the side of it and step back, he allowed himself a private smile as the squadron’s surviving radio man popped out of the hatch to lean way over to accept whatever hot beverage she’d brought him.
Charlie Daniels, shivering inside the empty interior of his Sultan command vehicle as the heater powered by the small external generator struggled to fight off the cold, jumped when he heard two bangs on the hull directly behind his head. Too often he’d experienced and subsequently relived the sounds of so many undead hands clawing at the armour like a frustrated cat attacking a sealed tin of tuna, knowing that something tasty hid inside.
Taking a few breaths to relax and compose himself, he stood and spun the handle to open the hatch before poking his head and shoulders out.
“Down here,” said a small voice. Daniels leaned over to take in the smiling face of the teenage girl cupping a tin mug in both hands. The contents steamed tantalisingly, which told Charlie all he needed to know. Reaching out with a broad smile, he took the drink and thanked her, bringing it to his face to inhale the sweet steam. He wrapped his hands around the mug, his gloves protecting him from the heat of it; at least, protecting all but two of his fingers, since he’d cut those two from his glove so he could still manipulate the radio dials.
Hot chocolate. With a sigh of satisfaction, he gingerly touched his lips to the drink, only to recoil as the liquid was hotter than lava.
“What you up to?” the girl asked.
“Just waiting for my friend to call up on the radio,” he told her, forgetting his very recent injury and foolishly trying the drink again to see if it had cooled down in the last second.
“Can I help?”
Daniels opened his mouth to answer, recognising that he would actually be glad o the company of someone interested in his secondary profession. But a nagging doubt plucked at the back of his mind.
“Do you want to bring someone else to keep you company?” he asked her awkwardly.
“Like who?”
“Like, err, like that woman you turned up with?” he tried, listing the only person he knew that she knew, bar the now-absent SAS patrol who had found them. Their arrival had sparked another, more concerning fear about their security, causing them to face the prospect of risk coming from other people for the first time since the virus had swept over the country.
“She’s been in bed for over a week,” the girl answered, reaching up to grasp the cold metal and placing a boot on it, ready to haul herself up.
“Hold on,” Daniels said, suddenly seeming worried that the girl was coming aboard regardless of the need for a chaperone.
“What?” she said, ceasing her climb as she saw no way to scale the high side.
“It’s…”
“You’re worried what people will think if you hang around with a girl my age?” Daniels looked shocked but swallowed and nodded.
“Don’t be so silly,” she told him dismissively and resumed her climbing.
“Go ‘round the front,” he told her, “you’ll never get up this way.” He waited as she dropped back down, heard her boots shuffling towards the lower section at the nose of the vehicle until she reappeared on the hull.
“Move over.”
He did, ducking back inside and moving away from the hatch as she lowered herself inside, flailing for purchase with her feet. Eventually spilling into the Sultan’s interior, she straightened her clothing and grinned at Daniels.
“Easy,” she said, her smile wavering as her teeth chattered.
Daniels frowned, glancing around and resting his eyes on a tattered, green army smock that he snatched up and went to drape around her shoulders. He froze, leaving the jacket resting over her slim frame as he backed off.
“Relax,” the girl said, “I know you don’t have any funny ideas.” Daniels relaxed but couldn’t help maintaining the frown.
“How do you know? I mean,” he added hurriedly, “I don’t, but still… how do you know?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t really,” she admitted, reaching down to slip a sharpened slither of metal from her right boot and twirl it before her face to catch the dull light from the open hatch. “But if you did have, you’d only have them once, know what I mean?”
Daniels knew precisely what she meant.
“So, who’s your friend and where is he?” the girl asked. Daniels slid back into the seat in front of the radio as his fingers went to work on the switches and dials.
“He’s my boss, actually, and he’s on his way here.”
“He’s in the army too?”
“Yeah. He’s my Squadron Sergeant Major,” he said, investing the title with all the grandeur he felt for it.
“So?”
“Sooo… so he’s my SSM.” He shrugged as if to indicate that the matter was dealt with. “That’s it. We got separated after the island—that was the last place we were before here—and everyone thought he was gone, but I wouldn’t take those odds…” he glanced at her to see her confusion and rephrased. “He never made it out on a helicopter when some of the boys and the civvies were knee-deep in a hell of a fight. Well, he did make it out, only the helicopter went down, which we’d never have known about if they hadn’t survived the crash and the winter.” The girl looked at him with a curious eyebrow raised.
“You’re really confusing,” she said. “You know that?”
“Sorry,” Daniels said, sipping the drink again and wincing as it was still unnaturally close to boiling. “My boss was missing in action, and everyone thought he was a goner. I stayed behind in case he popped back up, still believed you see, and he did. Not long after everyone went, as it happened…”
“Went where?” she asked, picking up a new avenue of questioning but intending to circle back around to her original lines of enquiry.
“Scotland. Or at least a big island just off the coast of Scotland.”
“And what are they doing there?”
Daniels shrugged, not entirely sure how to answer the question with anything meaningful.
“Not worrying about zombies. I thought you knew all of this. Didn’t you get the option to go with them?”
“They said something about going,” she answered with a shrug of disinterest. “My brother’s still here, so I’ll stay.” Daniels’ face dropped. He stopped tweaking the dials on the radio and sucked in a breath ready to be the voice of
reason. Turning to face her, he started to speak as gently as he could.
“Liste—”
“Don’t,” she snapped at him. “I’m sick of people telling me that he probably didn’t make it or that he probably got evacuated or anything else like that. Unless you’ve seen Peter walking around as one of those… things, then you can save your breath.”
Daniels shut his mouth and turned back to the radio. The two sat in silence for a long time before she broke the spell, and it started with a conversation about music. She couldn’t understand that for a car, as that was essentially how she saw the tracked command vehicle, it didn’t have a radio or cassette player. When Daniels pointed out the radio, she laughed at him and explained it as though the corporal was a little slow.
Her laugh wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t unkind or hurtful but more that her default setting was one of defensive aggression; as though she was a much older woman who had been bitten hard by life and chose to get her digs in first.
The two unlikely companions talked for a while as they grew more comfortable around one another, never straying far from the safe topics of conversation so as not to scratch any surface too deeply and risk unveiling their darker thoughts beneath.
“I heard you mention…” Daniels began, shaking his head slightly as he decided to just come straight out with what he meant. “Someone said you had a brother.” She glared at him, her nostrils flaring once and her eyes glazing over with a coldness that spoke volumes about how fast the girl could erect a defensive wall. Daniels saw that and spoke more quickly to prevent her closing down completely. With his eyes cast down to stare through the thick metal beneath his boots, he muttered the words through a tightening throat.
“I had a brother,” he told her. “My twin brother, actually. He was six minutes older than me, which he loved telling people…” Daniels sucked in a sudden breath through his nose and sat upright, delivering the next sentence as though reporting on the weather. “He moved away a few years back, chasing some promotion. The town where he lived is gone now. One of the swarms—did you ever see one of those?”
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 2
