She shook her head.
“Those swarms were something else. Not just thousands of people in a crowd, but moving like they all became one and poured over things like water.” His face contorted slightly out of anger or repulsion before he mastered his emotions and physically shook the feelings away. “Well, one of those swarms went through where he lived, according to the reports. I have to accept that he’s either one of them, in which case he probably went down in the fight at the island, or he never came back as one of them and is just… dead.”
He gave another simple shrug, as if to indicate that it was just one of those things. It was what it was and shit happens and c’est la vie and any other worthless platitude he could think of to try and feel less wretched about everything. Finally sniffing and looking up through wet eyes at her, he saw his gaze mirrored almost identically.
She gave him a small, sad smile.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” she told him softly. “But mine isn’t dead and he isn’t one of them. I know it.” Daniels gave her the same pitying smile and opened his mouth to respond before the radio headset crackled in time to stop him. He snatched it up and turned up the volume.
“Zero-Bravo, Zero-Bravo, this is Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha.”
“Three-Three-Alpha, Zero-Bravo,” Daniels answered almost breathlessly, agonising his way through the pause that followed.
“Charlie, we’re on our way to you now. Get the kettle on, lad. Out.”
Daniels smiled broadly, a warming feeling of happiness and satisfaction radiating through his body as he turned to regard the girl again. He realised in that moment, even though common sense had told him that his brother was almost certainly gone, his faith that Johnson was still out there had paid off, so her faith that her brother was still out there couldn’t be dismissed just yet.
FOUR
“A few shufflers starting to head our way,” Mac reported to Downes and Lieutenant Lloyd, who were organising the loading of the second ferry.
“Any Limas?” Lloyd asked. The dour-faced Scot shook his head slowly, but the negative reply didn’t offer any hint of optimism.
“Not yet,” he intoned ominously.
It had been that way ever since the cold weather had shown the first signs of moving on. Throughout the coldest time, they had seen far fewer of the Screechers, the shuffling corpses slowed by the unspeakable damage wrought upon their bodies by the elements and other factors. They held no regard for one another, and many were found dragging themselves along roads on worn stubs of fingers, their legs having been crushed into ruin by the trampling feet of their undead comrades.
Since the days became less bitterly freezing cold, the shuffling type of zombie had begun to re-emerge, or at least had started to move enough to catch up with them wherever they were and stagger into sight, like the most catastrophically hungover people; their clothes rotting and falling off them in strips to expose the pale, dead, emaciated flesh underneath.
“How far out?” Downes asked, his undivided attention on his sergeant.
“Few hundred yards and closing. All coming straight up the road.”
“Tell Smiffy he has the green light to start popping them,” Downes instructed, “but nobody else is to fire unless they get in close.” Mac nodded his understanding of the simple orders and turned away to see them fulfilled without another word. Smiffy, the SAS patrol’s Londoner, was still in possession of the suppressed stolen Soviet VAL sniper rifle and had proved his ability to hit undead heads from distance with very little noise, in comparison to the loud reports of other weapons.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Lloyd warned the SAS major, meaning that the one kind of enemy invariably led to the other making an appearance. The addition of a few Limas would complicate their evacuation no end, not to mention run the risk of losing men and bringing the contagion to the safety of the island stronghold.
“Isn’t it always?”
Lloyd smiled back at the taller man, silently acknowledging his point that they were only ever moments away from total disaster.
As the second ferry, loaded with a mixture of bedraggled squadron men and royal marines, chugged slowly backwards to boil a wash of white water against the sloping dock, a raised voice from behind turned Downes’ attention. Eyes darting left and right, he saw in an instant what was happening.
“Limas!” cried Dezzy, left hand cupping his mouth as his right gripped the stock of the dismounted machine gun which he had a worryingly intimate relationship with. His suppressed MP5 bounced against his waist as he jogged back, abandoning the frontal position to move and cover their left flank, where a more pressing danger had presented itself.
Downes glanced over his shoulder, seeing that their ride off the mainland was still blocked from docking by the slow moving second vessel. Gunfire broke out; not the subtle, focused coughs of his team’s weapons as they lined up careful head shots, but the heavy clattering bursts of the MG3 machine guns mounted on the German tanks. The very fact that they were forced to use them conveyed enough of a threat to cause Downes significant concern, and his orders reflected that.
“Recall everyone on foot,” he bawled, “to my position NOW.”
His orders were relayed, only half heard by some in between the chattering bursts of heavy gunfire. Mac reached him first with Smiffy close behind, the long barrel of his sniper rifle jutting over one shoulder as the automatic shotgun appeared in his hands. Downes saw it and followed suit without hesitation, dropping his MP5 on its sling to retrieve Dezzy’s shotgun, which he still carried after their demolitions man refused to part company with his acquired GPMG.
No sense in wasting 9-mil bullets and blowing out the baffles on the MP5s, his mind reasoned. Plus, 12-bore cartridges are a lot easier to come by than bullets.
His uncharacteristic loss of concentration was shattered by Dezzy stitching three short bursts from his belt-fed gun at a shape appearing between two buildings.
“Rückzug! Alle Mann zu mir!” Wolff bawled to his men, who responded immediately by stopping their onslaught with the mounted guns and closing hatches to drop to the ground and run towards the dock.
Lighter gunfire, rapid and staccato, added to the din as the dismounted troopers added fire to the approaching mob with their Uzi submachine guns. A knot of men formed, all facing outwards and cutting down anyone, anything, appearing between the vehicles and around nearby buildings. They weren’t in any immediate danger of being overrun, but their position was undefendable in the long term and they all knew it.
“Fast fucker!” Mac yelled. “Eyes left!”
Downes turned, his eyes passing over the prone form of Dezzy, who was working his machine gun alone like a stone-cold professional, searching for the subject of Mac’s warning.
Then he saw it. Jumping, no, flying through the air like no human body had the right to do. It must have flanked their position, creeping close before leaping from the roof of an abandoned car to attack Dezzy from outside his field of fire. The implications for what Downes saw didn’t even register as he brought up the barrel of the wicked shotgun and fully depressed the trigger, while holding on as tightly as possible with his left hand. The gun bucked, shaking his entire body violently as it spat the contents of half a dozen heavy cartridges in the direction of Dezzy’s impending death.
He fired on instinct, not properly aiming the gun or even holding it, so that it couldn’t do him damage, but every shot seemed to spit from the barrel in a gout of flame so slowly that he began to fear he would fail his man.
The fourth shot blew away the lower part of the creature’s extended left arm, the inertia of the lead spinning the body slightly as physics did what it did best. The fifth shot seemed to hit nothing, but the sixth caught the Lima’s spinning skull to blast away the top of the dome like a boiled egg being expertly opened.
Time seemed to return to normal speed as the ruined attacker slammed onto Dezzy’s back and forced the air from his lungs with a pained oompff.
&n
bsp; “Dez!” Smiffy screamed, running towards the intertwined bodies and lining up a kick to the jaw of the zombie. Downes saw that his shot hadn’t killed it at all, merely stunned it, and watched in utter horror as he tried to raise his gun again, only to realise that any shot would invariably pepper the SAS.
Smiffy’s kick connected directly under the jaw, which was already beginning to open in anticipation of a bite of warm flesh. The open maw snapped shut with a sound louder than a pistol shot as Downes saw two small, white projectiles fly out of the thing’s mouth in opposing directions. The force of the kick was so great that it took Smiffy off his feet to land on Dez’s back and force another grunt of breathless pain from him. Downes looked at what was half of his patrol vulnerable on the ground, taking the initiative and raising the brutal shotgun as the filthy creature was just clear of them.
But he didn’t fire. Seeing the Lima rocked back on its knees, upper body arched backwards at a grotesquely unnatural angle, Downes lowered the shotgun and fought against the spasms in his stomach as he took in the sight.
With his last shot, which had opened up the top of the skull, combined with the savage force of the kick, the thing’s brain had leapt up and out to hang in gory ruin over the right side of its face. Milky eyes fluttered as the damage wasn’t quite enough to end the creature, and the sight of that fluttering involuntarily tightened Downes’ finger around the trigger for him to destroy the pulpy mess.
“Fuck’s sake!” Dezzy groaned as he rolled out from under Smiffy, who was cursing and clutching his right ankle.
“We must be leaving, Major!” Wolff shouted, tugging at his shoulder. He nodded, helping Mac drag the other two troopers to their feet to half carry them to the last ferry, which was finally approaching the dock. Downes looked around, seeing a few zombies but marking all of them as the faster type from their easily recognisable movements. Gunfire continued all around him, but without him and his team adding to it, the encroaching enemy were making concerning progress.
“Into the water,” he shouted, repeating himself louder until Wolf shouted the translation in German. Louder cracks of gunfire sounded then, making the major look up to search for the source as his legs felt the savage cold of the water he’d stepped into. The second ferry, stopped just out of the way of their own, sprouted all of their marines pouring volleys of shots into the approaching enemy to buy them the time they needed to escape.
The water went suddenly deep, submerging many of them as they paddled desperately towards the low hull of the ferry and the safety it promised. Hands reached down to grasp at Downes’ soaked jacket and haul him aboard, in turn dragging Dezzy with him, as he wouldn’t release the winded soldier.
The two men were dumped on the deck unceremoniously and lay on their backs side by side.
“Did you see that?” Dezzy asked through gasps. “The fucking thing… flanked me…”
“I saw it,” Downes told him, saying nothing more as he didn’t like to share his darker thoughts.
Downes, in spite of being intimately acquainted with hardship and twin concepts of cold and wet, was shivering uncontrollably by the time their boat docked on the picturesque Isle of Skye.
Low cloud shrouded the towering rock crags to their left, obscuring the true height of the cliff face, but to their front the small port was anything but idyllic.
Soldiers in full NBC suits, Noddy suits as his men called them, stared anonymously at them as the circular holes showed only their eyes inside their respirators. It was less the way they looked at the bedraggled men and women arriving and more the emplaced gun positions that caused the greatest concern. The dock had evidently been prepared to perform the task of quarantine admission, given that metal mesh grids had been hastily welded together to form a sealed walkway for them to pass through. The men from the island piloting the boats remained onboard, staying to the upper decks where they didn’t come into contact with anyone representing a potential infection risk.
“All weapons and equipment into the buckets,” shouted a voice muffled by a respirator and dulled by repetitive boredom. “Keep moving forwards… All weapons and equipment into the buckets…”
Recovered from the impacts during their brief crossing, Dezzy stiffened beside his officer.
“Are these Green Army muppets?” he grumbled, worrying that their more exotic arsenal would be seen as novelty toys by men unaccustomed to more than a few weapons.
“Not all of them,” Mac answered from behind them. “Look at the rooftops.” Both Downes and Dezzy looked up, spotting the shape of a rifle held by one man and recognising it as a Colt. “Got to be our lot mixed in among them.”
“Classic, aashi—” Smiffy said, gasping in pain as he put too much weight on his injured ankle. The shouted instructions continued to be repeated as they dutifully shuffled forwards. When it came to their turn at the cut-out section of heavy mesh to deposit their trade tools into what looked like hastily repurposed plastic fish tubs, the man calling out the orders stopped to stare as the four men spent longer than everyone else removing everything from their persons that could be classed as lethal. Smiffy hesitated, the liberated Soviet rifle clutched in both hands as he fought with every fibre of his body, not wanting to let it go.
“Put it down,” Mac said unkindly. “It’s just a gun.”
“It’s bloody not!” Smiffy protested. “It’s mine, an—”
He stopped talking as Downes’ bearded face spun to fix his eyes with a shadowed look. Wordlessly, he placed the VAL into the bucket as though laying a beloved pet to rest, before standing tall and limping onwards without a second glance.
They deposited next to no spare ammunition for any of their weapons, having expended most of their rounds since getting back to the UK so long ago and starting the rollercoaster ride they’d been on ever since.
“One at a time,” came the next shouted orders, “step through and remove all items of clothing…” the enclosed walkway split into two lanes, both intermittently opening up and sealing again as solid metal sheets slid open and closed to admit one person at a time.
The backlog of civilians, understandably hesitant about that phase, though unconcerned about relinquishing their weapons—the reversal of the soldiers’ concerns— passed more slowly, as the military personnel were oddly more accustomed to getting naked in front of strangers.
The enclosed sections were lit by bright yellow lamps which forced Downes to shield his eyes as he went through to receive more instructions from another suited soldier.
“All your clothes off,” he said with as little effort as was required, “into the bag.”
Downes stripped, feeling the soreness of wet clothes already so uncomfortable through travel and sweat. He still shivered and his skin was cold to the touch, which caused him concern; he was well trained enough and experienced enough to recognise the early signs of exposure and hypothermia, but explaining that right then would have delayed the process so he kept his mouth shut. He was struggling to take his boots off, so the soldier passed him a short-bladed knife to cut the laces. His feet were in shit state. Pale, translucent skin peeled off in large patches to expose the sore pink beneath. No deployment he’d ever been on had left so little time to maintain himself.
“Arms up,” the speaker waited until Downes had complied. “Spin around.” Again a pause. “Okay, put this on and keep moving through.”
Downes accepted a plastic packet containing a dark blue boiler suit with a chunky zip so awkward for his numb fingers to operate that it smacked of a government bulk buy from the lowest bidder. The boiler suit was accessorised with a pair of wellington boots after he had been asked his size.
“T…Ten…” he stammered through chattering teeth.
He was handed a pair with a large ‘12’ stamped on the sole but he didn’t care.
The separation ahead of him slid back, forcing him to squint again from the harsh daylight obscured by the clouds, and he shuffled forwards keeping his hands wrapped around himself.
<
br /> The next station in the conveyor system where he was instructed to stop required him to place a thermometer under his tongue and wait in silence until the hands of a cheap, plastic clock ticked around and a thickly gloved hand reached out to take the instrument and inspect it. Satisfied that he wasn’t running a fever—as would have been evident to anyone bothering to look at how close to hypothermia he was—he was waved through the final obstacle of a heavy, rubber curtain and into a tented area where the noise of so many people talking at once assaulted his senses like a flashbang.
His nose directed him through the crowd of civilians and squadron men and marines to where he detected the origin of the coffee aroma, but his uncontrollably shaking hands couldn’t manage to manipulate the tap on the urn. Panic rose inside him, so uncommon for a man who had fought through lethal warzones for the last year of his life, not to mention all of the trials he had faced before.
The simple fact that he couldn’t manage to pour himself a cup of coffee threatened such a debilitating wave of anxiety that he almost dropped the mug as his knees gave out on him.
Before he could hit the ground, strong hands grasped his upper arms and held him up to pull him back to his feet.
“Allow me, Major,” captain Palmer’s impeccably mannered and cultured voice sounded softly in his ear. The cup was taken from his unresisting hand as the major fought a wave of dizziness which forced him to grip the edge of the flimsy trestle table for balance.
“Sugar? Milk?” Palmer enquired.
“He’ll take both,” Mac’s gruff voice announced as the Scottish sergeant shouldered his way through the crowd to appraise his officer with a practised eye.
“Grab a couple, if you don’t mind, Captain,” Mac told him, still not taking his eyes off Downes before grabbing the nearest civilian by the sleeve and pulling him towards him. “You, go get me three blankets.” The man nodded, his eyes wide, and disappeared to comply.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 3
