Grewal, standing fifteen feet away from the unshackled monstrosity, froze and let out the slightest involuntary whimper of terror.
Yates, however, didn’t freeze. He let the pole drop in his left hand as his right instinctively reached for the heavy forty-five, realising with crippling panic that in his haste to get a suit on, he’d left the weapon holstered under the thick, baggy rubber suit where it was useless to him. Looking back up to his attacker in time to see her mouth open wide enough to rend a fresh tear in the mottled grey skin of her cheek and fighting down the urge to coat the inside of his protective visor with the MRE he’d recently consumed cold, he did the only thing he could and brought the pole up desperately to defend himself.
The thing bit down at him, teeth breaking on the rough surface of the pole’s grip as the full bite force was deployed without the breaker fuse of pain feedback. Yates was treated to an up-close, an extremely up-close, view of two teeth being forced out of the dark flesh of a gum and drop onto his visor. He screamed. Bellowing incoherent rage and fear, the sound formed an ululating, keening war cry as he pushed back on the pole with every ounce of strength he possessed.
A crack sounded. Not a clear, sharp snap like the clean breaking of a bone, but the sinewy crunch of something being forced out of joint.
None of them knew that Miller’s knee had come close to breaking the neck cleanly and had driven shards of shattered nose into the brain. It had done damage that would have been irreversible, had she still been fully alive. The pain such an injury would have caused would have been crippling and debilitating, but without that circuit feeding back to the brain to cease all activity, the ruined body carried on attacking until the force exerted on the spinal injury was too much and the joint gave way.
The broken neck alone wouldn’t have been enough to kill the creature, not fully, but the movement shifted those shards of bone to puncture that part of the brain that drove the infected to keep fighting. With a last limp expulsion of dark gore from the mouth, she slid off Yates to land face down amid shouts of alarm. Two men of the SEAL team burst back in, weapons up and eyes scanning until they took in the scene and advanced on the still body of the thing they had gone through so much to capture. Yates was hauled to his feet and had multiple weapons trained on him. He was so dazed that he didn’t even spit back an insult when ordered to strip off the suit and prove he wasn’t bitten. When they were satisfied he wasn’t infected, the atmosphere in the room turned from fear and shock to anger.
Arguments raged around Yates as he sat with his face in his hands and took a series of long, deep breaths. The SEALs were unhappy that they would have to go back out, an understatement to end all understatements.
The scientists were unhappy in their turn that Yates had killed the one test subject they needed to give the green light to the operation. Yates reached a shaking hand down to his right hip to run his fingers over the wood inlay of the gun’s grip, reassuring himself that it was still there and telling himself that he would never be out of reach of it until they were off that cursed island.
Loitering in the shadows, a man in a heavy black coat sighed and slipped away. Successful confirmation test or not, Fisher would damn well give that green light to start deploying the serum, because the timeframe he had been granted had almost expired. He didn’t see their delays as relevant or in any way likely to affect the overall mission.
Fisher smiled to himself in reassurance as he climbed back inside the vehicle to be driven back to the CIA base of operations, telling himself that he’d soon be settling into his new office as a section chief, if it all went as well as he hoped it would.
TWENTY-FOUR
Fisher was once again picked up by helicopter and ferried back to the floating fortress out in the eastern edge of the Atlantic. It was a great expense to go to, only to have a single spectator involved, but he hoped it was an indication of how his stock was rising.
In truth, Jacobs wanted him there ready to be sent back to the US, should anything go wrong. If it did then Fisher, as the sacrificial lamb, wouldn’t be afforded time to find a replacement for his own neck on the chopping block.
Fisher strode in, confidence exuding from his body like a scent, nodded greetings to the faces he recognised and shook hands briefly with Jacobs.
“Time on target?” he asked the senior man.
“A little under twenty mikes,” Jacobs told him, gesturing behind them at the coffee pot and paper cups. Fisher didn’t want a coffee but poured himself one anyway, in case a refusal would be seen as nervousness. Twenty minutes was a long time to wait when your career aspirations were riding on the outcome of what was about to happen.
“Sir,” a uniformed technician called out. Fisher stood upright from where he had been leaning against a wall, incorrectly thinking that he was being called over, but hesitated when Jacobs answered and stepped up to the console. “Gunship approaching target area.”
“Put the channel on,” Jacobs instructed, leaning back and producing a packet of cigarettes to add to the already thick, smoky atmosphere in the darkened room. Fisher stepped forward, listening intently to the sounds coming from the speaker beside the radio and fighting to make out the words over the continuous droning hum and whine of the engines.
“Affirmative, Zeus-one-one. Conduct reconnaissance circuit and report,” the speaker announced.
“Acknowledged,” came the reply from the pilot as the background noise shifted almost imperceptibly. Hundreds of miles away, in the dark skies over a city teeming with inexplicably agitated undead, a large cargo plane similar to the one which had brought Fisher to Scotland banked forty degrees to its left and began flying a long, seemingly lazy loop of the area.
Their infrared detection package, state of the art in any of the world’s former militaries, was rendered useless as the massed bodies gave off no heat to identify them as bright white outlines in a sea of abandoned black and grey. They adjusted the contrast of their imaging displays, until the black outlines of human figures could be made out at the edges of the densely packed crowd.
“Jesus ‘aitch…” one of the crew muttered as he finally understood what the enormous mound was in an open area adjacent to the wide river. The writhing pyramid of dead meat rose from ground level like a molehill, only instead of fresh earth, it was the animated bodies of the former inhabitants of the UK.
“Zeus-one-one. Confirm concentration of infected, Control. Advise are we cleared to engage, over?”
“Zeus-one-one, Control,” came back the clipped tones of the operator in the control room on board the carrier. “Confirm you are cleared to engage. Repeat, clear to engage.”
The crew of the AC-130 went to work. The pilot kept the steady banking manoeuvre at the same angle to maintain the even platform for the gunners to do their gruesome work.
Their commands were short and clipped, their drills slick and well-practised as they poured round after 40mm round screaming down through the night sky, to detonate in violent air bursts and fill the air with the weaponised aerosol serum.
Almost immediately, the mound of infected piled high over the device, which was humming and radiating its almost-silent rallying call out for miles in every direction, began to fall away. A minute after their brutal aerial bombardment began, a hundred and twenty small bombs had exploded just above ground level. The infected—the zombies—fell in uncomprehending physical failure, as their sallow skin blackened from every cell in the remains of their broken bodies, as the minute tissue walls degraded, the fluids left inside their bodies haemorrhaged with catastrophic results.
As the serum spread through the massed crowd, they began to fall and lie on the ground to twitch and leak black gore into the concrete, moving for the last time. When the treated ammunition was spent, the crew switched to their standard load and began destroying everything outside the test zone, paying careful attention to and recording the most effective means of destruction.
The armed cargo plane stayed on station for almost an
hour, pouring every piece of serum-treated and standard munition they carried into anything moving. With a brief radio report, the pilot levelled out the long wings of the aircraft and headed south to rendezvous with their mid-air refuelling appointment and back to Aeroporto de Gran Canaria.
“Rewind the tapes,” the crew chief said into their intercom. “There’ll be a jet standing by to take it off our hands.”
Before they had landed, another aircraft had taken off to head over Britain at high altitude. The crew had flown that same route so often that it was second nature to them. But this time, their brief sent in the night gave them specific co-ordinates to concentrate on, instead of a general patrol searching for infected activity.
Their last mission had sent them to the same area, and their discussions went on, back and forth for hours as they flew, debating why they had been sent to that specific location again. The only person on board not to involve himself in the speculation was the overall mission commander, a lieutenant colonel. The idle chatter died down and the crew lapsed into relative silence, until the pilot’s voice broke the stillness in their earphones.
“Approaching target co-ordinates,” he said, receiving no reply but knowing that the crew would be readying to carry out their individual tasks.
“Confirmed infected singularity still occupying the city,” one of the men with his eyes pressed into the viewfinder reported. “Estimate numbers to be… hold the phone… hold the goddamned phone!”
“What is it?” another muffled voice asked over the intercom.
“That answers the question,” the man staring down through the strong magnification told them. “Something… something killed all of them.”
“Repeat that,” growled the voice of the mission commander.
“Confirm no movement, repeat no movement in any of the infected,” the operator, a lieutenant, replied. “They appear…”
“Take your time,” the mission commander said slowly, though not to be misinterpreted as kindly, “and give me a report.”
“Sir, they appear to have… melted, or something.”
The mission commander closed his eyes and relaxed. He knew without looking through the scope or viewing the footage from far below them that the serum had been deployed and the results had been everything they had hoped for.
“Confirm no movement of infected?” he asked, waiting a handful of seconds for a response.
“Sir, I’m getting some residual movement but… but nothing I can see for certain. I see none of them still alive. Or whatever it is they are.”
The mission commander switched his headset over to a radio channel only he was tuned to, hailing the same small command and information centre in the bowels of a US navy aircraft carrier. He hailed them with their callsign and waited for the response.
“Confirm mission successful,” he said clearly. “I repeat, mission was successful. Some residual movement at ground level but confirmed deaths of infected are believed to be as close to one hundred percent as possible.”
He listened to the response, given with whoops and the sounds of enthusiastic backslapping in the background, then ordered the flight crew to fly a pattern over the target site for a full video to be taken, and to head back home.
TWENTY-FIVE
In typical fashion, the Sultan broke down after two days. The Warrior pushed ahead of it to be able to sweep a large section of their perimeter, should they be threatened by any Screechers, as the other armed members of their small group fanned out with their eyes alert and their personal weapons made ready.
“How is it, Charlie?” Johnson called out from the commander’s hatch of the Warrior.
“Fucked!” came the terse reply. “Gearbox is shot. We can crawl in first or stall in sixth with fuck all in between. Second line job at least. Got a REME FMA in your pocket?” Johnson ignored the rhetorical question.
Hampton, up on the top of the stranded tracked vehicle with both hands on the big GPMG, huffed in annoyance. They stripped everything they could from the wagon, down to the last bit of diesel they could siphon out, using the length of yellow rubber garden hose to fill the jerry cans they’d decanted into the Warrior’s fuel tank. Hampton, remaining in place behind the machine gun until the job was done, unclipped it from the pintle mount and handed it down to Enfield who had, in turn, made his own small rifle safe and handed it to Peter to hold.
The boy swelled with pride as he turned outwards to keep a watchful eye on their surroundings, eager to demonstrate that he didn’t negligently point the barrel at any of their own people, with all the enthusiasm of a child seeking praise. His sister, loitering near the open rear section of the Warrior that would become a very cramped and uncomfortable place in the near future, watched him with a curious expression on her face.
“Let’s get this buffet moving then, aah—shit!” Hampton cursed as his damaged knee took the shockwave of him jumping back down to the roadway. He hobbled for a few paces, muttering more colourful phrases to himself like Popeye reciting an angry monologue, and shot a narrow-eyed look at the girl trying not to smile at his misfortune.
With a forlorn last look at the uncomfortable metal box that had been his only permanent residence since everything went to hell, Charlie Daniels climbed into the driver’s section of the much newer metal box, this new home making him feel as capricious as the cat, who had been corralled into a more permanent mobile detention centre than the taped-up cardboard box it had previously been trapped in.
He was grateful for once that the men he was slightly envious of and whom he held in very high regard didn’t possess his skills. Johnson took up his appropriate role in the commander’s spot with Bufford at his side, who had already been partly instructed in the use of the Warrior’s weapons systems, and the rear section was packed with people and equipment.
Their ‘shopping’ yielded perhaps three days’ supplies for them, which meant that they would be stopping for another supply run within two days. Johnson reckoned that they had maybe four hundred miles of range. He was guessing from what he could recall, as he hadn’t had much in the way of familiarisation with the vehicle and the one he had played with at the proving grounds had admittedly been a test chassis. What they found, however, was that their progress was often halted by blocked roads and their average speed suffered massively as a result.
“Corporal Daniels,” Johnson asked conversationally as they slowed to approach yet another blockage of rusting vehicles.
“Sarn’t Major?”
“Remind me why we’re going around cars and not over them?”
“Erm…”
“Bugger me, Charlie,” Johnson sighed. “I know it’s a Volvo but we are driving a sodding tank, Son.”
Johnson couldn’t see the look on his corporal’s face in response to his words. Why it hadn’t dawned on Daniels to be more bullish with their progress until then was a mystery, but receiving such an epiphany through the medium of permission caused a smile to slowly creep across his face.
“Hold on tight,” he warned over the vehicle intercom. “Bit of turbulence ahead…”
He went slowly, running one side of the tracks over the front of the large estate vehicle, then tipped them over to one side until the other tracks crunched over a smaller car which flattened with much greater ease. They travelled that way for hours on end until the occupants of the cramped rear section could take no more discomfort and they found somewhere appropriate to stop.
Three days went by like that, each day sapping their strength and morale until Johnson was pulled aside by Hampton when they had stopped to rest.
“We need to dig in for a day at least,” he said. “Everyone needs some rest and the supplies are dwindling.” Johnson nodded, appreciating the straight talking approach from a man he suspected was even less inclined towards bullshit than Johnson was himself.
“Town ahead,” he told the marine sergeant and nodded in a general direction to their front. “We’ll find somewhere and range out again for food and wat
er.” Hampton nodded back, less inclined to waste his breath on words than many people, and went back to where the others were stretching their legs and their backs and generally blinking at the alien display of sunlight, after being cooped up inside the back of the Warrior for days.
Of Peter, Johnson had seen less than usual as he was relegated to the rear section and had his sister’s undivided attention. She fussed over him, but Peter seemed oddly resistant to her. Amber had gone the other way, it seemed, and had understandably regressed to the extent that her mother was unable to put her down without the girl bursting into panicked tears and making an uncharacteristic amount of noise. Johnson felt sorry for her, not because of the fear and loss they had all experienced, but for the fact that she couldn’t understand what was happening. Being so young, she had understood that her mother was gone—lost to her—but now that she had inexplicably come back, the girl had become overwhelmed by everything. He didn’t blame her, simply felt a sadness that he could do nothing to salve.
He stayed on watch in spite of the tiredness he felt behind his eyes after hours of peering intently through the observation window in the Warrior, and noticed how the tall, quiet marine had found himself a piece of high ground to occupy and was scanning the horizon with his weapon. Johnson had thought both men lost, sure that they had died in defence of the village they had been living in, and that he—they—owed their lives to the two men. But then he found out so unexpectedly that they had survived, and this whole experience made him understand a little better how Amber must be feeling now.
They had travelled north west, bypassing Birmingham and the densely packed sprawling suburbs that all major cities sprouted outwards from their cores like weeds, continuing straight on past Stoke-On-Trent and went to ground in a large industrial unit a day’s drive north west, near the banks of a wide river.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 18
