Chapter 20
There was little I could do about pirates. Not right then, anyway, but even so, just knowing about them meant endless meetings and discussions about what should be done. Not just with the Admiral, but with the full government too.
Or at least as many of the government as were on the island.
I had little to add during those initial meetings, merely taking it all in and listening while considering all the options available to us. Everything I had heard about them, everything Commander Lowery had been able to transmit, painted a picture I was not pleased with.
Of course, it didn’t help that we still had a Genpact mercenary running around the island causing havoc. While there hadn’t been another attack since before Ryan had left, I couldn’t shake the feeling that one was coming.
We had guards at all of the food distribution centres, the medical centres, power and water plants and anywhere else we could think of. Nearly every available man and woman of the CDF were standing guard in shifts.
Drones flew constantly overhead, with techs sleeping at the command centre. I had been there just an hour before the current government meeting and it was starting to get a little pungent. Too many unwashed bodies and no real air movement because it was too damned cold to have the windows open.
“Enough!” Shepherd snapped, banging the walnut desk of the council chamber with her open palm.
The sound, loud enough to silence the rest of the ministers, echoed through the old room. It had been the seat of government for the island for a long time and there was a wealth of history hanging on the walls and in the polished furnishings.
I could look up from my place at the head of the oval table and see any number of past politicians staring down at me from their paintings. I couldn’t help but feel they were judging me for the poor job of running the island.
“What do we know about this pirate fleet?” Shepherd demanded.
Minister Jones nodded his support at her question, though he had little to add. I suspected that he was more than a little intimidated by some of the larger personalities in the government and he often remained silent at meetings unless you spoke to him directly.
Admiral Stuart rifled the papers in front of him, stony-faced. Something about Minister Shepherd seemed to rankle him and they had been not so polite opponents since the very beginning.
“The fleet consists of one hundred and forty-three ships of varying sizes, at least seven have been identified as military ships, equipped with a great deal of firepower.”
“Though we don’t know if they have ammo, right?” Cass asked, looking around the table. “I mean, how likely is it they still have ammunition?”
“They have been raiding up and down the coasts of many countries, ma’am,” Admiral Stuart said. “We have to assume that they have the ordinance.”
That was a sobering thought, to be sure. Our own fleet consisted of two destroyers and one submarine with precious little ammunition between them. We had a number of other seafaring craft, but they were not armed.
“How many people?” Samuel asked. “How many fighters?”
“Hard to get a count. A good estimate would put them at somewhere between five and six hundred.”
“Great,” Cass muttered. “We could beat them if they came ashore but they could sink our fishing fleet and then sit out at sea and bombard us.”
“Effectively blockading us, yes.”
With no access to the sea, we couldn’t fish. Without the fishing to help bolster our supplies, we would be back to half rations and potential starvation.
“What do they want? Could we bargain with them?”
“Bah!” Shepherd snapped. “Pay them off you mean.”
“Yes,” Cass admitted. “Pay them off. If that means we don’t lose what we are building here-“
“It won’t matter,” I said, cutting my friend off with an apologetic smile. “From the reports we have seen it is clear that they would want more than just food and water. I won’t send any of our people over to them.”
“People? What do you… oh!” Cass said back, mouth forming an ‘O’ of surprise as she realised what I meant.
It was easy, sometimes, to forget how bad it was out in the rest of the world. We’d not had a rape in months nor a murder since well before we’d come over to the Isle of Man. The work Evelyn was doing, training people to help support those traumatised survivors, it was making a difference.
Well, that and the Dead walking through the streets. Anyone who stepped out of line too far, ended up being given the choice. Join the Dead or be executed for their crimes. It only happened for the bigger crimes, but it seemed to be quite a deterrent. Many people seemed more frightened of facing Ryan’s acolytes than of dying.
“So,” I said, quietly. “We can’t fight them at sea. If they besiege us, surely our supplies would last longer than theirs?”
“We have warning of their approach. We can begin stockpiling, cut back on the rations a little bit and, yes, we could try and wait them out,” Admiral Stuart said and then hesitated, while I waited for the other shoe to drop. “But, while we have more soldiers we would be spread around the entire island and they could hit any place.”
Ah, there it was.
“Then, Admiral,” I said coolly. “What do you propose?”
“We need military craft,” he said. “Weapons and ammunition. I propose that we acquire some and prepare to defend ourselves. We have approximately a month.”
“Just like that!” Shepherd said with a sneer and another slap of her palm on the polished wood. “It’s that easy?”
“Potentially, yes.”
“Please explain, Admiral,” I said and raised my hand to forestall another comment from Shepherd.
“Many bases and airfields were overrun early on. People went there looking for safety and brought the undead directly to them. Because of the sheer number of undead that ended up around those bases, we could not approach.”
“But now the zombies are dying off…” I said with a flutter of hope. “We could find a lot of weapons and equipment.”
“Not just that,” he added. “Many bases had a large supply of foodstuffs. That would go a long way to helping us ride out these next few years while we build up our crops.”
“Then why are we waiting?” Cass asked. “Let’s get to them before someone else does.”
“Not that easy,” I said, and the Admiral nodded, a look of approval on his face for my understanding of the situation.
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t defend the island, loot a load of military bases and attack Genpact all at the same time.”
Silence fell around the table as that sank in. We were about to be beset on two sides. One from Genpact and the other from pirate raiders. We couldn’t fight both at the same time without weapons and ammo, but we couldn’t get those needed supplies without leaving ourselves open to attack.
It was an unwinnable scenario and I honestly wasn’t sure what to do. Unfortunately, I had been elected to make the hard choices and that meant it was up to me. Much as I might hate that fact.
I had little real choice when it came down to it.
“Prepare a plan for the defence of the island and your proposal for the salvaging of the military bases.”
“And Genpact?” Cass asked.
“Ryan will stop these boats coming. That will buy us some time to prepare. Once the raiders are done with, we can proceed with the attack against them.”
I looked around the table, making sure to meet the eyes of every person there. It was a tough choice to make, Genpact had committed an atrocity by unleashing the zombie plague upon the world. Every person on the island had lost people they cared about because of that one act.
To take a step back, to not be seen to retaliate against them for the current attack at least, would upset a lot of people and I would undoubtedly hear about that sooner rather than later. But, it needed to be done.
“I want the fishing bo
ats out as much as safely possible. We will need every bit of food we can scrounge together because as soon as that pirate fleet comes near, we will pull up the drawbridge and hunker down. We’ll be under siege.”
That was not something any of us was happy about but there was very little to be done about it. Before that though, before anything, really, we needed to catch the damned infiltrator.
“Now,” I said, into the silence. “This mercenary that is running loose. I want an update.”
“Every location mentioned as a potential target by our prisoner has been guarded. Patrols are moving throughout the town and other than a house to house search, we need to wait for him to make a move.”
“Which could be when?” Shepherd snapped, hitting the desk again.
I winced at the marks she was making since it had been me that had polished the damn thing just before the meeting started. It wasn’t like we had a cleaning staff, after all.
“Most likely the next time it snows,” the Admiral said and seemingly instinctively, we all turned towards the wide window.
“Great,” I said as I watched the snow falling.
Chapter 21
My knife was up before me in an instant and she just smiled, staring at me with her dead eyes that seemed to suck in, rather than reflect, the light of the setting sun.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, tilting her head to the side.
Reluctantly, I risked a glance to my right where she was indicating and almost swore at what I saw.
“You’ve been busy.” I eyed the group of Infected, doing a quick headcount. Too many.
“We cannot avoid our most primal urges.”
She smiled as she said that and I narrowed my eyes as I stared at her. Behind me, my minions were gathering and I held up one hand to hold them back. The Infected were stronger and faster than your average zombie, likely as fast as the Reapers were, though with the human mind intact.
One hand was raised in a casual gesture and her group of Infected hunkered down in the snow, waiting for further commands. I cocked an eyebrow as I watched those over long fingers of hers and seeing it, she quickly dropped her hand, the oversized sleeves of her coat covering them.
“What do you want?”
She laughed then and I just stared. “I expected another question. You’re smarter than you look.”
Another question? Ah… I didn’t need to ask how she had found us. It was pretty clear that she had been watching the island from afar and had seen our boat. It wouldn’t take much for her to follow us, not having to avoid the zombies like we did.
“You haven’t answered.”
“And you haven’t displayed any manners and invited us in.”
I wondered if she meant her group. The last time I had spoken with her, just before she tried to shoot me as she escaped, she had spoken as though she were no longer an individual.
“You can come in. Your puppies stay outside.”
Briony smiled, ignoring the insult and stepped inside the police station. She looked around as she entered, not at all put out by the nineteen minions, the large mercenary with a mallet and my friend, staring at her with his mouth open.
I closed the door behind her and gestured for her to take one of the seats near the door. As she seated herself, my eyes were drawn to the snow gathered on her clothes. It wasn’t melting. Nor did the air mist before her mouth, and I had to wonder just whether she was actually alive at all.
With one long-fingered hand, she reached up and pulled down the hood of her coat, mouth twisting up at the corners as Gregg let out a gasp.
There was no hair left on her head and around her skull, bone had begun to grow, much like a Reapers. Spikey spurs of bone rising up like a crown. Her eyes didn’t leave my own, seeming to want to see my reaction to her appearance.
If so, she was disappointed as I kept my expression neutral. I merely noted the changes and revised my plan on how I would kill her.
“You’ve changed,” I said, dryly and she laughed.
“We have.”
Ah, it was the royal ‘we’ then. I couldn’t decide whether that was just her being pretentious or something else. I certainly wasn’t going to ask.
“What do you want?”
“The same as you.”
“I doubt that.”
Her eyes flicked down to the knife I held and her tongue darted out, wetting her lips.
“Perhaps not.” She returned her attention to my face. “We visited the bunker. The one where you killed so many people.”
My eyes narrowed again. When we had first met her, she had been in no real condition to do much more than trudge along. I couldn’t recall mentioning anything specific about the bunker and I certainly hadn’t spoken of killing everyone there.
“We know there is another and we know you are going there.”
That clinched it. Someone was talking to her and the only ones that could be were her old research buddies. Vanessa or one of the others had somehow managed to remain in contact, despite everything she had done before escaping the island.
I was pretty sure that when I returned home I would kill whoever it was.
“Why?”
She extended her arm out before her, lifting her hand until the palm was pointed towards me. Then, she spread her fingers to another gasp from Gregg. I shot him an irritated glance before looking back at her.
Each of her fingers was at least an inch longer than any humans had a right to be and the ends had begun to darken, the flesh melting away until it seemed only a thin bit of skin covered the sharp bone. It gave her the effect of claws and I had seen it often enough before on the Ferals and Reapers.
“We are becoming something more,” she said. “With sufficient sustenance, we can keep our control. But it is becoming harder to do.”
“No,” I said with a smirk. “It’s because you are eating so much that you are changing. Every meal you take you are fuelling that parasite.”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t found a balance, have you? One that allows you to retain control without losing yourself.”
“No.”
There was such hatred in that single word, that I smiled. It was anger, a rage, directed at herself and everyone else. She clearly despised herself for not being able to do that.
“Let me guess. You want to use the laboratories and databases at the next bunker to try and fix yourself?”
“We want stability.”
Her voice was practically a hiss as she said that and I was genuinely surprised.
“You want to remain like you are?”
“We are more than we were. We will watch the world turn for millennia, without ageing, without dying. The knowledge we can possess over all those lifetimes. We would desire that.”
“Sounds pretty fucked up to me,” Isaac said loudly. “No way to live. Like a fucking ghoul, a parasite, feasting on the living.”
“A small price for eternity,” she answered with a sneer.
“What’s to stop me just killing you now?”
“You could not that last time you faced me.”
I couldn’t stop my teeth clenching at that and she noticed. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to send my knife towards her face as she mirrored my smirk of earlier. I forced my muscles to loosen, my teeth to unclench and I twisted my neck until it cracked.
“We can lead you through the city,” she said. “The… others, they find our presence displeasing and they avoid us. We can protect you.”
She was determined to piss me off, it seemed. I didn’t immediately respond, just stared at her as I considered what she was offering. A plan already taking form in my mind.
“How could I trust you?”
“Mate!” Gregg said. “You can’t be serious.”
I silenced him with a glare and turned back to her, sitting there, so smug and confident that she was safe. I would show her that she was wrong about that.
“You have our word.”
“Hardly accept
able.”
“We do not know the location of the bunker,” she said, the words seemingly drawn out of her. “We need you.”
Which meant I could trust her right the way up till she learned that location. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something for me to work with, especially since I didn’t really expect her to survive long enough to learn it.
Until then, she could be useful.
“You keep your people away from ours. Gather them up and wait for us.”
“We are agreed then?”
“Aye.”
“You do not need to consult your… friends?” she flicked her eyes towards the gathered minions and I simply replied with one word.
“No.”
That seemed to be acceptable enough for her. She pulled the hood of the oversized coat back over her head and rose to her feet, moving towards the door. She stopped with her hand on the door handle and looked back, eyes glinting.
“Do not try to betray us.”
And with that, she pulled open the door and stepped out into the cold. I waited until it closed before I turned to the others, expecting an explosion of questions. I didn’t have to wait long.
“I thought you were smarter than that, Clever Bastard!”
“Mate, what the hell?”
“My Lord Death, she is of the Scourge.”
I silenced them all with a single sharp gesture. I didn’t need to provide an answer for them. I didn’t need to justify my decisions. Especially not to my minions. It was for them to obey me without question, to do as I commanded, no matter what that command might be.
Even so, I could sense how precarious my position was right then. Resentment would grow, even my minions were still people and people, by and large, were stupid. They acted out of emotion and made foolish mistakes that could get me killed because they were upset with me.
“I have a plan,” I said, hating the need to explain myself. “They are useful for the moment.”
There were mutters aplenty, but they gathered their belongings, stuffing the blankets back into their backpacks and readying themselves for the trek. Gregg shook his head and wouldn’t look my way, while Isaac shot me dark glances.
Killing the Dead Season 3 Box Set | Books 13-18 Page 80