“Am I to assume,” the colonel said sombrely, “that Major Downes did not make it here?”
“He’s well enough,” Mac answered, “suffering from a touch of exposure on account of taking a wee swim as the rear guard.” Kelly smiled, genuinely pleased that the other SAS officer had survived.
“Right, well, I shan’t keep you long,” he said, “I know you’ll be anxious to get back to your people. We’ll give you a few days to rest, but after that, I’ll need every able-bodied man, woman and child to pitch in; things aren’t exactly easy, isolated up here.” He paused to pour tea from the pot into the mugs, beckoning them forward to help themselves and spoke as they waited patiently for their turn at the tray.
“There are a number of farming and fishing tasks in need of more hands—not the deeper water stuff, obviously, just coastal trawling—and a significant amount of work is required to patrol the perimeter here.” He took a sip, smiling at the drink as if he were pleased with himself for making it well when it wasn’t a task he was remotely accustomed to performing.
“We’ve got over six hundred square miles of rocky island to keep clear, and you’re never more than five miles from the coast at any one point, I’m assured. Lots of places one of the bloated bastards could wash up, and it’ll come as no surprise to you that I could do with more trained men. That’s where you’ll come in, when you’re rested, Captains,” he said, pointing at Palmer and Wolff. “The men already in place will maintain control of the two open quarantine docks but you’ll oblige me by commanding a section of coast for patrols.”
Kelly ignored the lieutenant, assuming him to be under the command of the man with the hint of family resemblance who must have been a relation, turning to the royal marine to request of him the same task. He left Mac off the orders list, no doubt intending to catch up with his officer when he was able to.
“And, Sir,” Palmer asked as he took half a step forward. “Might I enquire as to the state of things in the wider world?”
“The wider world?”
“Quite. You see, we’ve been somewhat out of the loop, so to speak…”
“Yes, I imagine you have been. Well, Captain, I’m sorry to say that the European continent is lost; either to atomic bombs or to the enemy.” He let the silence hang so that they all understood the finality of his words, noting how stone-faced their German ally was at receiving the confirmation.
“Given that the Americans nuked the Russians as soon as the Russians nuked their European borders, and a good number of their own Soviet States I might add, we can assume that everything to the east is either dead, dying or otherwise shut off. Australia, New Zealand and a handful of other island nations are closed off, although they’re still speaking to us, at least…” he trailed off, glancing at the front window as the sound of another vehicle pulled up outside. “Speaking of the outside world,” he said with a hint of annoyance as the front door opened and a man walked in, wearing black uniform with a sidearm holstered on his belt. He stopped, taking in the dishevelled men in matching boiler suits before smiling at them in welcome and helping himself to a cup from the table.
“Gentlemen,” Kelly said, “Agent Fisher, CIA.” Fisher spluttered on his drink.
“Dammit, Colonel. I brought you some coffee…” He turned to face the men again.
“Just Fisher is fine,” he said. “And congratulations on surviving this long.” He turned to Kelly and raised his eyebrows as if to ask why they weren’t already talking in private.
“You’ll be given billets after everyone passes quarantine. Take a few days to recuperate and get your equipment back. Good day, gentlemen.”
They filed out, finding their uncomfortable ride still in place with the engine running. Climbing back aboard to wait for the bumpy return ride, Palmer had to raise his voice for the others to hear him.
“I’d hazard a guess that we’ve just discovered where the real power lies.”
TWELVE
“Ladies on the left, gents on the right,” Daniels announced after tentatively checking outside their armoured vehicle for any signs of unwelcome attention. They’d driven until darkness forced them to stop, and as they were unable to find anywhere enclosed to rest, they’d elected for the most open area where nothing could approach without being noticed.
They went to their respective sides of the Sultan in the early dawn to empty the overnight contents of their bladders; Daniels took his Sterling to their side, insisting that Ellie take their only other weapon, the shotgun, to their female bathroom.
“Try the others?” Jessica asked as they climbed back up to escape the cold outside air for the slightly less cold air inside the Sultan. Duncan checked the maps as Daniels started the engine to get some heat into the interior. He hadn’t wanted to leave it running or rig up the external generator.
“Need some bloody fuel soon,” he mumbled, earning a demand from Jessica to know what he’d just said.
“Nothing. Did you want to try them?” Jessica didn’t respond to him, but threw herself into the seat by the radio set and began to hail Johnson.
“They’re not answering,” she yelled after a while, frowning that she hadn’t received an answer and clambering up to poke her head out of the hatch. She opened her mouth to repeat herself, but then stopped, seeing the direction they were all facing and hearing the noise that had attracted their collective attention. Her elevated position meant she could identify the source of the noise before they could see it, and the single spoken word sparked a flurry of action.
“Car.”
Daniels and Duncan scrambled for the front of the Sultan, making Ellie follow without instruction. Duncan dropped into the driver’s hatch as Daniels settled himself in behind the butt of the machine gun mounted on the top, to swing the long barrel towards the direction of the approaching sound. Then they waited.
“Start her up,” he instructed. “Just in case.”
“In case what?” Jessica asked, remembering only fractionally later than the others that not all people were as welcoming as they would be. Tense seconds ticked by until a dirty brown car rolled over the top of a rolling dip that characterised the roads in the area. Daniels adjusted the aim of the GPMG to meet the sudden intrusion but almost immediately let the barrel of the gun swing up as he relaxed.
“It’s the marines,” he said, climbing out to meet them as the car pulled up close to them with protesting brakes.
“There’s hospitality for you,” the thick-set driver complained as he pulled himself out of the car and limped around the front towards them.
“Sorry,” Daniels said, gesturing up at the gun. “Can’t be too careful…”
“He meant leaving without us, dickhead,” the passenger said, having exited the vehicle without being noticed. He cradled a short rifle with a fat barrel across his body and looked so comfortable with it that the weapon seemed like an intimate part of him.
“Sorry,” Daniels said again. “Had to move quickly before the locals brought their pitchforks.” The two marines, still wearing most of their uniform but with bits of civilian clothing evident on both, gave each other a fleeting look.
“We know what you mean,” the older man said. “Ran into some resistance when we were gearing up to leave, ourselves.”
“Oh?” Ellie asked from her spot on top of the tracked vehicle.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” the man with the rifle said dismissively. She could imagine one of the self-styled leaders of the people left at the house trying to tell these two what they could and couldn’t do, and smiled to herself as she imagined the two Royal Marines doing what they wanted anyway. The smile faded when she thought of all the people left behind.
“Did the swarm come?” she asked quietly.
“Think so,” the man with the rifle said. “We saw the faster ones coming over the hill when we took off.”
“And there are more than usual out on the road this morning,” the driver added, “so we should probably get moving.”
&
nbsp; “Okay, we keep going north,” Daniels said before looking to Jessica. “And keep trying Johnson on the radio.”
“Johnson?” the marines chorused in shock.
Daniels frowned, confirming who he was talking about. He hadn’t spoken to the two men since they had arrived a few days earlier and they had been resting ever since the ordeal that left them at the house.
“Where are they?” Hampton demanded. “Have they still got the kids with them?”
“Kids?” Ellie asked.
“Boy and a girl,” Enfield said quietly. “Peter and Amber.” Ellie gasped, looking at Jessica, who was wearing a look of abject shock that mirrored her own.
“You get on that bloody radio,” Ellie hissed, “and you find out where they are.”
The muted crackling of the radio inside the Warrior drifted out into the barn, causing the occupants to stir. Exhaustion and adrenaline had taken their toll. One adult was left on sentry duty and could be forgiven for falling asleep while guarding their location. So when the radio sparked to life and the scratching and moaning answered from outside, they all woke to see a panicked Kimberley looking aghast that she hadn’t raised the alarm sooner.
Bufford was up first, weapon in hand as he moved towards the gap in the barn doors and held out a hand towards the frightened woman to try to tell her that it was okay. Larsen joined him, moving her head from side to side as she tried to see through the crack into the dawn and assess the strength and numbers of the enemy, without getting too close.
The radio crackled again, prompting a swelling surge in the intensity of the moaning outside. Bufford turned back to flap a hand at Johnson in the gloomy interior of the building, telling him silently to shut the noise down.
“Shit,” he hissed, glancing at Astrid and receiving confirmation of his assessment of the enemy.
“Twenty or more out there,” she said quietly. “I would suggest that we go now.” In response to her words, the moaning outside swelled and the wooden doors creaked as the combined body weight of so many agitated corpses surged towards the crack. They hastily threw their gear inside as Johnson primed and started the raucous engine. In the confines of the barn, the exhaust note barked louder than any car on the road ever could, to rise and growl with a deafening rumble. Hatches closed just in time as shafts of wan daylight began to appear in the wooden walls as well as the sliding doors, threatening that the structure could not hope to hold back the dead for long.
Johnson slammed down his own hatch just as the left-hand door splintered and fell inwards at an angle to admit a meagre flood of hungry creatures, like water breaking through a child’s dam in a stream. The last image he had of the grotesque sight was of a Lima crouching to leap onto the front of the tracked vehicle, to shriek as it beat bloody fists into a ruin of broken bones and torn fingernails as if, with the sheer force of its malevolence, it could break through.
As his hands and feet manipulated the controls, Johnson realised the horrific sight wasn’t the only assault on his senses in their rude awakening, because some of the stench that followed the former humans had crept inside before he had safely sealed the hatch.
The Warrior bucked, pitching the Lima forward to break its nose and knock its remaining teeth out on the metal, before tumbling it back into the slower ones in its wake; just in time for the heavy tracks to crush and crunch them into the straw-strewn dirt. The weak barrier of wooden doors didn’t slow their escape for even a second, as the dry timber exploded outwards in far less spectacular fashion than in any action movie.
Accelerating away and flattening the rearmost stragglers, Johnson saw a flash of bodies through his viewport until the road ahead was clear of obstructions. It was like a snapshot his mind took, which didn’t even allow him the time for the image to develop. He thought fleetingly of the instant cameras he’d seen which could do this. His snapshot revealed to him some explanation for why the last few were late to their surprise breakfast meeting.
A woman, age unfathomable given the decaying ruin of her face and sagging, emaciated body, stumped towards them with both arms reaching out as if begging for their help. She had an exaggerated, lop-sided limp due to the fact that her right foot was missing from mid-shin. The thing beside her, two heads shorter and destroyed to the point of appearing androgynous, walked with a wobbling gait as the broken bones of its legs threatened to give way with each step.
Twitching the controls fractionally to his left, Johnson made sure to put both of them under the tracks to save them the trouble of having to walk any longer.
“We’re clear,” he announced. Over the headset he’d hastily thrown over his ears, he could hear heavy breathing but no panic or distress. “Peter, was that Daniels calling us?”
There was no reply.
“Peter?”
“He’s not here,” Bufford said breathlessly, with more than a hint of panic in his quiet words. In response, their forward momentum was cut violently enough for shouts to come through as those in the rear section were slammed into the separation. He began to turn the vehicle around, spinning it on the spot, with the tracks churning the ground up in opposing directions, just as a loud thud sounded on their roof. That thud was accompanied by a second, slightly louder, and two sections above their heads were being scratched and clawed at in animalistic desperation by what could only have been the faster ones; the ones who still retained just enough cognitive ability to understand where their quarry had gone to ground, and who were now trying to dig them out.
“Larsen, is he there with you?” Bufford asked. A pause hung heavy with hesitation before any reply came.
“He is not,” Astrid answered, her own voice sounding broken by the stupidity of their unforgiveable mistake. Two of them were Special Forces soldiers, trained to a staggeringly high level and accustomed to working in small teams. The very core of their ethos was to always work as one and never leave anyone behind. More thuds and shrieks sounded as their Warrior was swarmed by the remains of the crowd, which had swelled to a far larger number than they had originally thought.
“We’re going back,” Johnson announced, delivering the statement as if daring anyone to countermand his decision. They rolled forwards, not even feeling the bumps of those undead bodies crushed under the weight of their wagon, until Johnson stopped and stared forwards through the limited view he was afforded. He swallowed, feeling a lump in his throat he hadn’t experienced for a long time, as he saw the hundreds of Screechers flow around the barn with the ruined door and head directly towards them.
Bufford saw it too, wishing he could reach out and squeeze the sergeant major’s shoulder to reassure him with the words he carefully chose.
“Going back for him signs his death warrant, Dean,” he said. “We need to lead the rest of these rotten bastards away and come back for him. We’ve got to trust he’ll know to keep his head down, and that we’ll come back for him.”
Johnson said and did nothing for a long time, but simply stared ahead. He couldn’t see the dead ground in front of them, but it was filling up with the tightly packed undead, who pawed impotently at their armoured skin like a cat scratching at a patio door in the rain.
“Sit tight, lad,” Johnson said with a wavering voice. “I’m coming back for you.”
The revs rose aggressively as the Warrior shot backwards and slewed left, before loud clunking noises indicated their switch of gears to launch them forwards and down a tree-lined single-track road, away from the farm.
“Light those fuckers up, Buffs,” Johnson snarled, no longer able to hide the sound of his sniffing nose betraying the fact that he was crying for the first time in as long as he could recall. “Let ‘em have it and don’t bloody stop until they’re all done for.”
Peter couldn’t sleep during the night. Almost everyone else was so exhausted that sleep wasn’t something they had to find, merely submit to. He was tired too, only something about their location set his nerves on edge and prevented his heartrate from slowing enough to even consider
slumber.
Sleeping in a barn made him reminisce the early days of being all alone, and the logical train of thought took him back further to the arrival of the first Screechers he’d seen and the subsequent interactions with his mother.
It wasn’t the horror of what he had seen that put him on edge. It wasn’t the immediate loss of his childhood—what little there had been of one—or any other such self-absorbed sorrow; it was more a reminder of the existence he’d suffered and survived before the dead came back to life and tried to tear the living apart.
He finally began to understand that it was his fear of those living people from whom he’d been unable to escape in what he considered to be his former life. With this thought came the further realisation that he genuinely preferred his current existence, and all that it had given him, to everything prior. This realisation brought on a wave of nausea so profound that he had to stand upright and lean against the side of their small tank to steady himself.
That nausea turned to a grumble in his stomach, so threatening it couldn’t be ignored. His eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom inside the barn, showing him a slither of silhouette and the barest of reflections of light from the axe head in the hands of the person taking their turn to keep watch.
He remained still, hoping that he hadn’t disturbed Kimberley and taken her concentration away from her task. Reaching down slowly for what had been his pillow, he scooped up his battered backpack by the loop on the top and carried it with him as he tiptoed towards the creaking stairs leading up to the mezzanine level. He had to move so slowly, taking each step with infinite care and precision so as not to wake them all up. But the only alternatives were to go outside—not high on his to-do list—or else perform the basic bodily function that was nagging at him in front of the others. Given the option of climbing the rickety stairs and doing what he needed to do in private, he elected for that choice.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 9
