Travel weary, if not downright bedraggled, they spilled from the vehicle like they’d crashed and were trying to walk off their minor injuries. The area they had stopped in was open enough that there was little to no threat of any immediate attack, but that didn’t prevent them from having their weapons ready, even if their cramped-up bodies didn’t move with the slick alacrity they could demonstrate on better days.
“Buffs?” Johnson said quietly. The SBS man turned to look at him, silently following the direction of his outstretched hand with his eyes until he saw the side of the building he was pointing at. He looked back to Johnson, seeing him first point to himself then snake his hand around in an exaggerated movement to the left to signify that they would meet around the back. Johnson looked back towards the others, to see Hampton settling himself into a position of relative comfort near the driver’s hatch on the lower hull of the Warrior, just as Enfield adopted a position of overwatch with his small rifle, his backside nestled on the cold armour of the turret. Hampton gave him a nod, signalling that they had this area covered and that the two men could do what they needed to.
Johnson moved, knowing after so long together that Bufford would already be ahead of him as his drills were slicker and more intense than his own. He saw no competition between them, just a maturity and an understanding that his professional soldiering had taken him down a different path. They all had their roles to play in the current game plan—or at least what had been the plan for Her Majesty’s armed forces before the world turned upside down—and that game plan was transitioning from all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union to a somewhat sandier climate. Bufford’s role would be to insert himself into enemy territory, most likely by water, but he was also capable of dropping by parachute, walking or driving over any terrain; the aim being either to destroy something vital to the enemy, or to feed back intelligence and targeting information.
Astrid Larsen, as innocent as she looked to the untrained eye, was a hardened woman whose role would be to insert herself far behind enemy lines, as Bufford would, only she was also able to blend in as a native of their enemy’s motherland and would be trained to sneak in and collapse local infrastructure; transport, power and communications. Everything about the woman made Johnson and the others question why their own armed forces still refused to allow women to conduct frontline fighting roles.
Johnson, along with Daniels for that matter, was the one who could use his light and mobile armoured vehicles to lure the T-55s of the USSR into chasing them down, only to find themselves swamped by the combined firepower of the rest of the squadron. It was Johnson who had been trained to set such an ambush; to look for the perfect geography and encourage the men to be patient until that trap could be sprung.
What he wasn’t, and he knew this instinctively, was a Special Forces operator.
He made more noise than was strictly acceptable, given their circumstances, as he pushed through the overgrown foliage pressing up against the building, and to add insult to injury, he had only covered a third of the circumference before Bufford called out softly from his front to minimise the risk of getting shot over a simple misunderstanding.
“Anything your side?” Johnson murmured as Bufford appeared through the leaves.
“Side door on the far side. Doesn’t look like it’s been opened for years. You?”
“Nothing. Try the side door or move to the next building?”
“Next building,” Bufford said. “I don’t much like the alternative exit strategy for this one, if you catch my drift.” Johnson did. One of the cardinal rules for surviving the death of the world by flesh-eating monstrosities was never to paint yourself into a corner.
They moved to the adjacent building, exchanging some brief hand signals with the two royal marines before they ducked out of sight once more. Johnson worked thoroughly, careful not to make too much noise and finding the going easier than the previous building’s exterior had been to navigate. It took him precious seconds to understand why, until his brain caught up with his instincts and he noticed small tell-tale signs of human presence. He froze, not yet sure if that human presence was alive or dead. Tightening the grip on his weapon, he pressed on, turning the corner after a quick glance around it showed Bufford on one knee covering the side door to the unit. He joined him, seeing the intensity in the man’s eyes as he pointed to the apex of the roof above them, indicating the three small windmills stuck to the structure, with wires snaking down to the door they knelt beside. Bufford’s eyebrows went up as if asking for Johnson’s opinion. Johnson shrugged, reaching up with his left hand to touch the door handle and gently pull the handle down. It gave, creaking only slightly as the door opened a crack. Bufford readied himself, nodding to Johnson to signify that he was ready.
The door was wrenched open and they burst inside, guns up and fingers ready to move onto triggers, with no idea what they expected to find.
“Fucking hell!” Bufford swore. Johnson glanced over his left shoulder to where the SBS man had moved to. In terms of expectations, Johnson wouldn’t have been surprised to find a ravenous horde of undead. Wouldn’t have been shocked to find other living humans pointing weapons at them. He was, however, very surprised to see neat rows of dark soil in troughs with lengths of hosepipe running along them, jury-rigged lamps hanging above them and green plants sprouting upwards to creep towards the source of the light and heat along intricate networks of wire and sticks.
Johnson lowered his weapon, reaching out with his left hand to grasp the most unlikely of items and one that he realised he had given up all hope of ever seeing again.
Pulling gently as his fingers squeezed, the vine pulled with him until the ripe tomato popped off to shake the whole row. He held it up in front of his face, turning it around and inspecting it like it was a chunk of moon rock. He focused his eyes on the incredulous face of Bufford behind the juicy item and spun slowly on the spot to take in the multiple rows of dirt-filled troughs all sprouting different forms of sustenance. He saw potatoes and carrots to accompany the two rows of tomatoes, dreaming of adding a couple of rabbits and some salt and pepper to it.
Then the truth dawned on him. He was trespassing on some other survivor’s farm, stealing their supplies and threatening their livelihood. A glance at his friend told him that the other man knew it too. A noise from behind them made them both turn and raise their weapons; Johnson standing tall and Bufford dropping to one knee, to train their weapons on a tall, muscled black man with a tangle of dark beard and wide, wild eyes staring at them over a tight-lipped mouth and who was seething with anger. His right hand wasn’t empty, although his heavy metal spike was held low, which somehow made both him and the weapon more menacing, like he knew how to use it and was so confident that he didn’t need to threaten them.
“Calm down, JP,” a strong Liverpudlian male voice echoed around the inside of the empty factory unit. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t here to pinch our carrots.”
TWENTY-SIX
“You did what?” Professor Grewal shouted, slamming down the clipboard he was holding so hard that it bounced back up off the desk.
“Keep your hair on, Doc,” Fisher replied so casually that the scientist was ready to start throwing punches in an attempt to knock the reckless stupidity out of him. “The test was a complete success. Every one of them dead. You should be proud of your achieveme—”
“Do they teach you this kind of ignorance in the CIA or simply recruit people who naturally possess it?” Fisher’s face dropped the false smile it was maintaining.
“You were given a job to do. You did it. Don’t think for a second that this was a pet project of yours, that you had any control over the timeli—”
“They just recruit the arrogance then,” Grewal snarled with angry sarcasm, “understood.” Fisher took a step towards him and swelled up his size, but Grewal matched his movements and bested him in both height and the intensity of his anger.
“You deployed an untested serum on thousands�
�hundreds of thousands—of infected subjects with no idea what it would do to them. That kind of stupidity is… is…” he shook his hands beside his ears as there simply wasn’t a word in the English language strong enough to accurately describe what they had done.
“It has been tested,” Fisher shot back with a retreating step. “You tested it here and it was successful in one hundred percent of the trials. You want more time to repeat that test? You want to be responsible for more deaths when we could be wiping out these assholes with the serum we know works?”
“It’s unfathomable. We don’t know it works,” Grewal answered him angrily, “that’s the whole point.” Fisher’s face screwed up in total incomprehension. Grewal looked fit to burst, like a kettle boiling water with no steam vent. Seeing this, professor Chambers stepped in between the two men.
“I believe we were quite clear,” he explained. “We needed to test the serum on one of the anomalous infected before we could guarantee with any kind of certainty that it would work fully.”
“What are you saying?” Fisher asked, doubt infecting him like the viruses they were discussing could so easily. Chambers rubbed tiredly at his face, turning to see if Grewal wanted to jump back into the conversation, but only seeing him walking away and kicking the large plastic boxes that had contained their lab equipment. He sighed and looked back at the CIA man.
“Viruses produce different responses based on the physical response of the host. That’s where you get unexplained strains of immunity to certain illnesses.” He paused to check if the slightly shocked agent was keeping up. “The reports—confirmed reports— tell us of a faster type of infected which retains a significant portion of motor function and some higher cognitive ability. This means that the initial infection causes a low-percentage response which, unfortunately for us, actually increases their lethality.”
“In English, Doc,” Fisher said as he had done so long ago when the current events were little more than a spark of an idea.
“Simply put, Agent Fisher, the virus has already created mutations. The genetic makeup of those infected who are… different, could have as yet unknown side-effects when combined with the serum.”
It finally dawned on Fisher. “Why the hell didn’t you test it on one of them?” he half yelled.
“Because you shot your bloody load early and went to war before we said it was ready,” Grewal hissed through his teeth as he returned to the conversation. “And I can only hope for your sake that it kills them just the same as it does the others.”
Fisher paced back and forth for a few seconds, evidently deep in thought.
“Okay,” he said finally, “here’s how we’re going to play it. We get one of the faster ones back here and test it right away.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” Chambers asked.
“Then we update the threat package that a tiny percentage of the infected are still in play. We’ll have to go in with ground teams—whole armies—if we want to take the UK back.”
“Ahem,” said a voice in mimicry of clearing the throat. Grewal turned to see Staff Sergeant Yates stepping towards them. “I think you’re kinda missing the point; these faster ones aren’t just a bit quicker on their feet than your average schmuck. They think. They actually hunt us, like we’re prey. That updated threat assessment better be accurate if you don’t want more lives at risk.”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Grewal interrupted before Fisher could respond. “It’ll take weeks for them to corral the remaining infected into one place and deploy the serum again. I imagine it’ll also take a while to manufacture the sonic devices and create more of the serum.”
All eyes turned to Fisher, who had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Yeah, that’s, uh… that’s not exactly accurate.”
“What are you saying?” Yates asked.
“I’m saying the planes are already flying the devices in and the serum’s loaded into munitions. They’re ready to rock.”
“Unless we can tell them otherwise,” Chambers said, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“Sure,” Fisher agreed, silently telling himself that there was no way he would put his neck on the line to pull the plug on a billion-dollar operation, based on a few infected with the magical ability to jog and open a door surviving the fire. Surely the military would be capable of mopping up a few grasshoppers when they got there?
“Good,” Chambers said, raising his voice to encompass the whole makeshift lab and get everyone back to work. “In the meantime, we’ll prep for the arrival of the anomalous infected.”
“Assuming we do get one and it survives long enough to be injected with serum,” Grewal added with a fleeting, sideways glance at the staff sergeant.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Two agonising hours later, a wet and angry SEAL team returned. They dragged behind them the same cargo net with a thrashing, shrieking detainee trapped inside and Miller’s words to them before the net was unfurled made it clear that triggers would be pulled if they screwed up a second time. He glowered at everyone in the room before spinning on his wet boot heel and ordering his men back to secure the boat.
Yates took control, instructing everyone to either suit up and get a pole or else get the hell off his lab floor. The once-living occupant of the sea-soaked net was dragged into the mouth of the nearest open cage door and locked inside, for the net to be teased off the subject with difficulty until a bony limb broke free and everyone jumped backwards with shouts of fear and alarm.
It thrashed its way out of the bonds, wailing and shrieking as though made even angrier by the kidnapping and the warm bodies so close to it, yet at the same time finding the way to them blocked by steel mesh. It rammed itself into the metal barrier over and over again, gouging chunks of flesh from its body and losing a front tooth with a snap as it tried to bite its way through.
“We need tissue samples,” Chambers said loudly, looking around and waiting for a volunteer to present themselves. Normally this would be a simple thing; approach the cage door and allow the subject to reach out with a hand through the gap, then grab the limb and cut away some cold flesh. Yates turned his head in an exaggerated move left and right to see that none of them—neither the scientists nor his own people—had the balls to get the job done.
He stepped up, no doubt uttering choice opinions inside his protective visor, and waited for the arm to come out of the aperture towards him. It did, striking like a viper as he grabbed the wrist hard. Just as he was about to shout for someone to take the sample, he found himself dragged clean off his feet to impact the cage, the unbelievable strength of the disgusting creature taking him by surprise.
It was superhuman. Incomprehensible how someone not overtly muscled like a prize-winning bodybuilder could exert such brute force, and for the second time in his life, Staff Sergeant Yates came face to face with one of the faster ones, with nothing but desperation and crippling fear driving him to escape.
Hands pulled at him, making him become the rope in a panicked game of tug of war, as the savage, snarling creature threatened to drag him back towards it and pull his whole body through the small hole if it could. Yates roared incoherently with rage as his gloved right hand found the grip of his pistol.
He ignored the screams of protest, of fear that he would kill another precious test subject and send them all back to square one, because he knew what he planned wouldn’t leave the thing double-dead, but would free him and obtain the tissue samples in one unorthodox move.
He pressed the barrel of the forty-five-calibre pistol against the slender forearm of the thing, angling it upwards as he braced his body with every ounce of remaining strength and leaned away before pulling the trigger three times.
The sound of the gun going off in close quarters amid the pack of bodies was deafening; not just the sound of the three small explosions but the concussive wave of pressure that accompanied each pull of the trigger.
The flesh burned where the muzzle flashes had
scorched it, but the fat bullets punched their way through flesh, bone and sinew to make the grip fail. Yates fell away, conscious to keep a firm grip on the wrist of the hand still digging its nails into the thick rubber of his suit. He tried to ignore the image of the grey skin stretching before it tore away to leave him lying on his back, holding the violently severed hand.
“Stand back,” Grewal shouted, his command muffled by the protective suit. “Back!” They moved aside as he stepped close, an aerosol machine held in both hands, looking like an oversized vintage perfume dispenser.
He pumped it, covering the grotesque face of the creature with a fine mist that it aspirated simply through the effort of shrieking and trying to get to so many fresh victims. It gave no reaction at first, but that was to be expected as the other, non-anomalous infected didn’t exactly fall down choking and clutching their throats like comedy villains on the big screen.
It faltered, staggering slightly as though drunk, and blinked its milky eyes at them.
“Here’s your goddamned tissue sample,” Yates gasped as he stood, holding out the dead hand for Chambers to take, before walking off unsteadily.
The anomalous infected, the thing they had heard being called a Leader or Lima in the intelligence reports, blinked its eyelids again and slumped back in the cage to land heavily against the cargo net, where it raised the ruined, ragged stump of its left forearm to inspect it.
A low hiss sounded; not like the hiss they emitted before they shrieked the air back out so hideously, but a noise that sounded far more pensive than they had ever heard one of them make.
Chambers crouched down to meet the creature’s eye level, pulling off the large hood of his suit, despite the warnings from others.
“Look at the eyes,” he said, lifting a tentative finger towards the sitting subject. They did. The eyes, the milky orbs from their infected dreams that they’d expected to see, were fading, allowing a dark iris colour to return and lend the hideous beast an air of humanity.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 19
