“Sergeant Yates?” Yates looked up and pursed his lips at the annoying interruption to the nothing he was doing before. “Sergeant, what would be the best way to infect people with a virus? Militarily speaking, I mean.” Yates seemed to consider his question for a few beats before deciding to give him the sensible answer.
“I’m not sure I know about that,” he said carefully, “perhaps your CIA man could answer better. The scenario we most suspected the Russians would use against us was a liquid, spread through either a direct attack on our water sources, or an airburst device if the attack was overt.” He stared at Grewal, sighing when the man showed no obvious signs of having understood him. “A bomb,” he explained. “One that scatters the infectious substance in the air over a large area.”
Grewal tapped the tip of the pen he’d been holding against his teeth as he thought, surprising the few people close by when he launched himself from the seat he was occupying to march to the fridge and pull out a vial of clear liquid. Then he shrugged off the coat he was wearing to begin fighting his way into a hazardous material suit.
“Clear the room,” Yates barked, looking up to shoot a few hand signals at his people on duty behind the safe end of the machine gun, before climbing into a suit himself. Grewal said nothing, correctly assuming that the man wanted to keep a close eye on what he was doing.
Suited, he used his ungainly gloved hands to pour the contents of the vial into a contraption that resembled something a person would use to spray water on a plant. He approached the nearest cage, glancing at Yates with a look that seemed to convey a, ‘Here goes nothing’ attitude, and stepped closer to the cage to spray the zombie in the face twice. He sidestepped to the next cage and repeated the process before backing off.
Neither zombie showed any signs of having been affected by the light mist falling on its dead face and both continued to rage at the mesh which denied them the warm, fresh meat that came so tantalisingly close. Grewal stripped off the mask of his suit and turned to Yates with a smile. He saw that the sergeant had the heavy pistol still gripped in his right hand and was keeping one wary eye on the cages.
“What now?” he asked after nothing happened.
“Now we wait.”
They didn’t have to wait as long as Grewal had thought. He’d taken himself back to the house to wash and eat something, realising he’d gone straight through lunchtime without noticing. He was therefore understandably annoyed that he didn’t even get to take a bite of the sandwich he’d made for himself when the door burst open and one of the soldiers told him with wide eyes that he had to come quick.
His annoyance evaporated when his mind caught up with why his presence might be required in such a hurry. He ran the short distance to the makeshift lab, slipping on the smooth stones twice and cursing the infernal Scottish weather for raining almost constantly. When he arrived in the large shed, the noise assaulted his ears painfully. It was the same ungodly shriek they let out when sensing an imminent meal, only somehow different; as though the shriek was their only medium of communication, like a baby crying, and right then, they were trying to communicate fear and pain.
He ignored the offer of the rubberised suit thrust out towards him, walking towards the cages where two of the zombies were moaning and pressing their faces into the metal to get to him. The others… weren’t. They were standing and swaying, staggering even as their raw vocal cords played a tortured symphony of uncomprehending pain. One turned towards him, dark, almost black blood leaking from the eye sockets around the blind, milky orbs that seemed to stare at him pleadingly. It opened its mouth again to gargle another hideous sound, but viscera poured from its open maw as it pitched forward to slam its face off the mesh and leave a streak of gore on the metal. It sank to the hard ground to convulse and jerk like an eel, blood beginning to ooze from every visible patch of exposed skin. Before his eyes, the active and very lethal infected person became increasingly still as the vile puddle it converted itself into grew outwards and threatened to touch the toes of his boots. He stepped back in a daze, looking to his left as the second subject fell backwards like a felled tree, gagging and gargling. As both creatures treated with the serum grew still and silent, the absence of their sound was replaced by a ragged cheering and applause from soldiers and scientists alike.
“You think this solves anything?” Grewal roared, turning to stare down everyone in the room and silencing them in a second. “You think this undoes any of the damage we’ve done to humanity? This solves nothing!” He paused, breathing hard as even he was surprised by his outburst. He continued in a quieter but still angry tone. “Even if this works on a massive scale... even if we kill every one of the infected, that’s still a human life lost. You think we’re winning?” He scoffed, “We’ll be lucky to scrape our way out of this shit as a species.”
Pausing only long enough to eyeball all of them in turn, he fought down his body’s treacherous urges to cry in response to the surge of adrenaline and the sinking feelings of guilt he suppressed so well every day, and he stormed out of the building.
He found Fisher leaning against the wall by the back door to the house they had commandeered. The man was smoking, still huddled inside his large waterproof jacket, and seemed to find the agitated state of the scientist amusing. Grewal was spared having to either appear rude or attempt small talk.
“The engineer’s just gone,” Fisher said as he dropped the butt to grind it out on the wet cobblestones with the toe of his boot. “Reckon we’ll be good to go tomorrow.”
“Good to go on what, precisely?” came the retort in a voice that still shook with guilt and anger.
“The testing phase of the lure device.” Grewal relaxed slightly.
“For a terrible moment there, I thought you were going to say you wanted to deploy the serum.”
“It works, doesn’t it?” Fisher asked with raised eyebrows. “What else would you have to cheer about?”
“It worked on them,” Grewal answered sourly, jerking his head back over his shoulder towards their makeshift lab. “There’s nothing to say it’ll work on the adapted strain.” At the mention of this, Fisher’s eyes seemed to glaze over, just as they did when he was faced with something scientific that he either didn’t want to be burdened with or else just felt bored with. Grewal had tried, on more than one occasion, to explain why the variations in behaviour of a small percentage of the infected was so important. Fisher, increasingly under the gun from his masters back in the States, needed answers and solutions instead of more questions and problems.
Fisher watched as Grewal stormed off inside, no doubt to work out his emotions in private, and went back to the room he was using to pick up the radio set and place a call to the other side of the island.
He gave orders for the device to be made ready and deployed as soon as possible, before leaving the house and climbing back into the passenger side of a military off-road vehicle. That was, after first absent-mindedly trying to climb in on top of his driver and muttering angrily about the steering wheel being on the wrong side.
Back at his headquarters, he ordered up some coffee and waited for it, grimacing as all caffeine-addicted professionals did when presented with a beverage they weren’t accustomed to. He closed the door to his room and placed another call on the satellite phone to order the AWACS be diverted to monitor the activity of the infected after they had dropped the device, along with the mass production of serum for immediate transportation over the Atlantic.
SIXTEEN
Johnson drove in a noisy stop/start game of Screecher destruction.
The first mile of flight had seen the gun run dry and he couldn’t spare the time to stop and reload it, nor could he divert enough concentration to accurately explain to Bufford how to do it. Instead, and much against his better judgement, he grudgingly allowed the SBS man to fire the big 30mm cannon into the largest concentrations of undead.
In the rear section, Kimberley was beside herself with guilt and grief because she ha
d fallen asleep when it was her turn to keep watch. But the real heartbreak came when Amber realised why the adults were so upset. She screamed and pounded her tiny fists against the inside of the armoured door, demanding to be let out and sobbing for the boy who she had grown so attached to, as she screamed his name over and over. The sound of her cries broke their hearts and renewed Johnson’s hatred of the creatures for all that they had taken away from so many people.
“Cease fire, cease fire,” he growled into the microphone of his headset, using the growing light to line up a knot of approaching Screechers to mow them down under his left-side tracks. Then he crunched into reverse and repeated the process until the road ahead was clear.
The muted banging on the thick armour to his left told him that more had fallen upon their inedible transport from the foliage on their flank, and he calmly reversed the Warrior once more to repeat the process.
“I’ll go back for him,” Bufford said as he tried to work out the overly complex reloading procedure for the chain gun.
“We don’t separate,” Johnson answered, still repeating his reverse and advance crushing manoeuvres.
“But the lad’s on his own—”
“He was on his own before we showed up,” Johnson snapped back, “and he was doing just fine. Don’t underestimate him; he’s probably safer without us attracting all this attention.” He felt callous as soon as he had uttered the words, clamping his mouth shut and concentrating on his task. All around them, more palsied hands clawed at their hull, forcing him to back further away from the farm until he could no longer even see the approach road to it.
“Where the hell did all these bastards come from?” Bufford snarled as he fought with the machinery. “We haven’t seen these kinds of concentrations for months, and now all of a bloody sudden they start protesting again? What is it, another fucking miner’s strike?”
“Are we clear of the herds?” Larsen’s voice cut in sharply. Johnson gave her a quick ‘stand by’ before spinning the Warrior in a full three-sixty to check.
“Seems clear at the moment,” he reported, “I’ll wait for more to catch up with us an—” The sound of the rear doors opening cut him off, prompting an outburst from both him and Bufford so that neither of them had their words heard.
“She said,” sniffed Kimberley’s voice over the vehicle intercom as the door closed again. “She said to clear them out and come back for her.”
Johnson hesitated, feeling the blood rise in his face until he breathed out to stop himself from bursting. As much as he hated it, as much as he couldn’t stand not being in control, he had to trust both the young boy and the Norwegian commando to handle their own business.
Selecting reverse again, he set his face and went about handling his own.
Astrid Larsen walked fast and smooth away from the rear of the Warrior, which she covered long enough to ensure the occupants were safe behind the closed door. Her gun was up, tucked tightly into her shoulder with her right cheek pressing into the parachute stock and she moved with the grace of a dancer. Everywhere her eyes looked, her upper body pointed. Everything she looked directly at was automatically lined up in the sights of the MP5 so the only decision she needed to make was to shoot or not to shoot.
Three of them fell in rapid succession; their switches were flipped as each emerging Screecher collected a 9mm bullet directly through their open mouths to blow out the brain stem. No other threats emerged, leaving her to make the next decision.
Through the trees or back down the road? she asked herself. The balance was between open space where she could see the threats coming from distance, and simply facing what seemed like fewer of them among the trees. She opted for the off-road route, stalking between the branches faster than anyone watching would expect, without any evidence of noise as her boots weaved her in a wide loop back towards the barn they had slept in.
Twice more, she stopped to dispatch a pair of loping Screechers who were bumping their way awkwardly through the foliage towards the retreating sounds of an engine and the renewed rattle of gunfire. A third, impaled on the low, broken branch of a fir tree through one shoulder, reached for her until the bullet punched through its skull and turned it off.
Buffs got the chain gun working again, she mused over the raucous sound in the distance. Keeping a small portion of her brain tethered to the others wasn’t a distraction. She knew that for certain as a grey, balding head appeared through a copse of holly leaves with one prickly green addition sprouting comically from its face, and she drilled it through the mouth with a single round from almost a dozen paces away.
That part of her mind, that small percentage of her consciousness that imagined what they would be thinking and saying and doing inside the Warrior, was what kept her mind sharp and focused. If she thought fully about what she had just done, if she logically assessed the facts coldly, she would be tempted to turn and run back to the safety of the armoured fighting vehicle and hammer on the door to be let back in.
As it was, keeping a part of her consciousness with them, what she was doing was just like holding her breath as she ducked underwater. She knew she could go back to safety whenever she wanted, and that knowledge gave her the courage and confidence to do what needed to be done.
Breaking through the foliage onto a wide field of overgrown grass, she scanned her surroundings and detected none of them. Pausing for a handful of seconds, she listened and absorbed every hint of sounds to map the small battlefield better in her mind.
Gunfire and engine behind and to my right, she thought as she marked the position of the others.
Shrieks to my left and behind, the slower-moving Screechers following the destruction wrought by their light tank.
She ran towards the farm, body low and gun still tucked tightly into her shoulder, as fast as she could without winding herself like a racehorse blowing out its lungs. She paused again nearer the collection of low buildings and listened once more.
A heavy sound like meat hitting a butcher’s block rang out ahead of her past a line of evergreens, focusing her attention on the nearest farm buildings. Choosing that as the most likely source of something out of the ordinary—or at least more out of the ordinary for the situation—she headed towards it.
Nine more wandering corpses went down to her weapon, some requiring more than one shot on the rare occasions she missed. Such misses were due to an unexpected stumble of her moving target, or an unlucky deflection that removed only part of the skull, which the Screecher no longer needed in order to function.
This was no super-human ability, she knew. It was no natural skill that others should be jealous of, but instead was the result of thousands of hours of practice and endless training; like the end result of a knife being sharpened.
The same sound as before, which she now recognised as a body hitting concrete from height, diverted her attention slightly to the right of her approach. Ducking low to shoot a look around the corner of a building, she saw three corpses mangled in a pile underneath a steel ladder. Two others milled about at ground level, reaching upwards and lacking the ability to climb the ladder, which told her that there must be something above her that excited them.
Perhaps a ten-year-old boy defending his position? She thought as she delivered two execution-style deaths to the backs of their heads.
The silent thought was answered by a booming report of a shotgun and the ballistic arrival of another corpse splattering and crunching into the concrete ahead of her, accompanied by a hissed whine of, “Shit!” from up above. Looking at the body still trying to move as the brain wasn’t destroyed, she took in the left arm, which was missing from the mid-forearm. With an exaggerated gasp of fear and understanding, Astrid leapt backwards as the thing rounded on her and lashed out its right arm with a speed and accuracy she hadn’t seen up close before.
The terror of realising she’d come within arm’s reach of a faster one—a Lima—took her breath away momentarily, as the thing began to use one hand and one st
ump to propel itself towards her along the ground, dragging destroyed legs to scrape the jagged shards of exposed bone noisily along the rough surface.
The mental numbness caused by the realisation evaporated in a flash. Specifically a tiny, suppressed muzzle flash as four single shots spat from the barrel of her gun to punch into the skull and end the grotesque movement. She was panting hard and whipped her head from left to right as she realised her situational awareness had suffered a lapse due to the fear of coming face to face—or boots to face, more accurately—with a Lima.
“More coming ‘round the left side!” came a muted shout from above her, Peter trying to keep his voice down and balancing that fear of discovery against the desperate need to warn her of the danger. Larsen looked up, saw the silhouette of the boy’s head and shoulders peeking over the edge of the flat roof and looked to her left to raise the gun in preparation for a renewed assault.
“My left,” Peter hissed. She looked up, saw the direction he was pointing in and glanced down in time to see the front-runners of the wave of rotting meat spill over themselves to get to her. Her mind took less than half a second to calculate speeds and distances, and she knew they would be on her before she could get clear of the building. Without hesitation she dropped the gun on its sling and gripped the cold metal rungs of the galvanised steel ladder to catapult herself upwards.
As she sprinted vertically, arms and legs pumping like a spider monkey in full flight, her brain gave her a quiet admonishment.
Stranding yourself on a roof with a young child isn’t the best idea you have ever had…
She told herself to shut up, and climbed.
SEVENTEEN
Downes, wearing fresh military uniform with as much of his old equipment that could be salvaged after a rigorous bleaching, stood when his colleague entered the room. In any other regiment, in many other situations in fact, he would have offered Colonel Kelly a salute.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 12
