Contents
Preface
I. Apocalypse
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELEVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
Epilogue
II. Aftermath
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
Epilogue
III. Abandoned
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
Epilogue
FROM THE PUBLISHER
IV. Adversity
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
Epilogue
V. Adaptation
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
Epilogue
VI. Annihilation
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
Epilogue
FROM THE PUBLISHER
TOY SOLDIERS
©2019-2020 DEVON C. FORD
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.
Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.
Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2019
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Preface
All spelling and grammar in this book is UK English except for proper nouns and those American terms which just don’t anglicize.
Part One
Apocalypse
Prologue
They say the eyes are the window to the soul.
Given that the damn things clearly didn’t have souls, then their eyes made a little more sense. As he looked into a pair of the milky, shrouded orbs from a distance he was very uncomfortable with, he could see nothing behind them.
That wasn’t entirely true; he could see that the eyes used to be a light brown, maybe even hazel, but the thing, that something which made a person an actual living person, just wasn’t there. Drawing back from the crack in the door, tentatively held by a weak chain fastened into the wood that used to give people a ridiculously false sense of security, he raised his trusted corpse-sticker and eased one of the tines of the old pitchfork through the milky eyeball with an unpleasant squelch, feeling little resistance until the tip of the metal probed far enough into the brain to disrupt whatever happened in there.
The thing that used to have light brown eyes stopped moaning, stiffened, then exhaled slowly and slumped, like its batteries had run out in fast-forward. The gap it left was filled rapidly by another one, and his heart began to pump a little too hard in response to the ear-splitting screech that ripped from its mouth. The biggest problem with getting caught up in fighting them instead of avoiding them was focus. By that, he meant that a person could easily get so focused on the hissing, moaning, screaming things, on the dead teeth snapping and the broken fingers reaching for them, that their concentration wouldn’t let in any other information that they needed. Having been caught out more than once over the last months, and only surviving by dumb luck, he liked to think he was starting to tune in to that.
Luckily for him, because as soon as he’d stuck another one in its squishy brain, like you’d be tempted to with a facia salesman who had overstayed his welcome at the front door, the stumbling, moaning sounds began to come from behind him. From inside the house. He stuck a third, somehow gauging that he had enough time before the moaning behind him became his next priority, and then he turned to regard the next horror he had to face.
Now the smell wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first few weeks, especially if they’d been trapped inside where the rain couldn’t freshen up their stale flesh, b
ut the thing that descended the stairs still possessed an aura that made his eyes sting. It was a musty, dried-out aroma that was almost sickly. That sickly-sweet smell catapulted him back to memories he’d intentionally forgotten, which now fought with all the other things going on in his head for space at the front of the queue. The memories, encouraged by a random smell as they so often were, threatened to momentarily debilitate him; to send him back into the mind of the naive nine-year-old child he had been when it had all started, and make him want to rush past the thing coming down the stairs at him, so that he could hide under his bed.
Only this isn’t my house, he thought, the thing coming down the stairs isn’t my alcoholic mother, reeling from another all-day session. And hiding under a bed here is as sensible as shooting myself in the head.
Less sensible, actually.
An unbidden and natural change in footing to line up square to his nearest threat, a controlled thrust forward, followed by the equally brisk withdrawal of the weapon, then a short wave of satisfaction as the thing dropped lifelessly to the musty carpet to remain still.
Not looking back, he used his meagre body weight to shut the partially open and tenuously secured front door. One of the benefits of fighting things that had been in that weirdly suspended state, in most cases for many months, was that they were physically pretty soft. That general softness rewarded his actions with a soft patter as three digits, severed by the closing of the door, tumbled lightly onto the carpet where they twitched once each, then went still.
Shuddering, he thanked whatever thing up there looked out for people that they weren’t the rare kind of fresh ones and returned his attention to getting out of the house without having to fight his way through the nest he’d just disturbed in the innocent-looking bungalow opposite. He hefted his weapon of choice ahead of him ready for any more crusty ones still hidden and dormant within. Dormant, that was, until some idiot burst through their front door to get away from the dozen or so other things outside.
Finding that the downstairs of the house was empty, he decided to get the hell away from it without raiding the cupboards, before the crowd out the front flowed around the sides like water and cut off any chance of escape.
Minutes later, jogging uncomfortably with the sole of one shoe flapping noisily with each awkward step, he thanked that same unknown deity for his managing to escape another bloody situation that should have killed him.
I guess I was just lucky, he told himself. But to know just how lucky, he supposed he should start from the beginning.
ONE
1989
Living on a farm in what was basically the arse-end of nowhere had its perks for a boy of nine. His older sister said she felt trapped there, but he thought it was the ultimate freedom.
A few years after moving there, he thought he’d learned enough about life to know that her feelings of being trapped were nothing to do with the geography.
There were some surrounding villages, and a dozen or so other places in sight if you climbed on top of the biggest barn, but other than that, it was totally isolated. He thought the farm was the biggest single place on earth, but then again, he was young when his family moved there.
He’d been in that happy bubble of childhood ignorance for years, right up until he noticed that things had begun to change at home. He and his sister had to walk just under two miles to the main road where their bus would take them towards the bigger towns along the south coast, and their schools were on an army base. This was another happy note from way back when in his mind; stopping lessons and being allowed to run to the window to watch a convoy of Chieftain tanks roll by with an impossibly loud roar caused by their heavy tracks. Hundreds of tonnes of armour screeching past on their way to the training grounds, feeding the fantasies of the children.
Some of the other boys bragged about how they bet their Dad was in one of them, or about how their Mum did something else equally heroic. He remembered one particular time that happened, when he retook his seat with a sudden shroud of realism, of unhappiness, and he finally saw the difference between him and the other kids.
His Dad wasn’t driving a tank. If he was driving anything, it was a tractor on the farm, and his mother didn’t work because she… well, he didn’t know why; all he did know was that if she didn’t get her glass bottles with her special water in that he wasn’t allowed to touch, and if she ran out of her cigarettes, then all hell would break loose in the house. With that cloud of realism descending permanently on him and never leaving, he suffered the taunting of other children as he cried in the middle of the classroom.
The truth was, he had been shielded from a lot of the bad things that went on under ‘the roof that had been provided for him’, a refrain he had heard shouted so often; like a roof made anything better. His sister was the one, he realised much too late, who had protected him. It was she who threw herself in front of their parents to take the punishment he had apparently earned, and she did it tight-lipped, so she couldn’t cry out and give either of them the satisfaction of knowing they had caused someone pain.
That only made things worse, and by the time he knew something was truly wrong and his behaviour invited more punishments, she had already hurt herself once too often to cope with the pressure.
To that day, despite every unfathomable, insane thing that had since transpired, he could still see the vivid images of his sister being taken away to hospital, screaming his name, telling him to be brave as she kept fighting all the way until the van doors slammed shut to muffle her voice.
“Good bloody riddance,” his – their – mother spat at the white ambulance as it shrank into the distance, until finally rounding a bend to be swallowed up into the green surroundings. “Ungrateful little cow never knew which side her bread was buttered.”
With that last cruel and callous remark, she lit another cigarette and scowled down at her son, smacking him hard across the back of his head. He looked back up at her and was careful to keep the rebellion out of his eyes. He could tell that she was desperate to say something, almost itching to respond to the words she expected from him, so he stayed silent.
“That was for nothing,” she said smugly as she turned away, “and there’s plenty more where that came from, you little shit.”
He still said nothing, just watched her back and imagined the actions before her: transfer cigarette to right hand, pick up bottle and unscrew cap with left hand, pour, put down bottle, drink, inhale on cigarette.
His father’s presence suddenly stabbed his consciousness and his gaze darted to him. He had let the edge of the curtain fall by then, having watched the ambulance drive out of sight, just as the young boy had. Then the father turned from the window to face him. He couldn’t tell whether his father was angry with him or not, but his face was heavy with blame.
“Go to bed,” he growled at the boy.
“But I haven’t had any tea…” he said reflexively, regretting his outburst instantly.
Crossing the room in two long strides, his father’s hand followed suit and struck him just where his mother had, rocking him off his feet this time. Pausing a moment on his knees to fight the tears back inside his eyes, he stood and climbed the stairs to go to bed hungry. Before he had even closed his bedroom door fully, he heard the nightly argument downstairs begin with real venom.
That night was when his childhood ended, in the late spring of 1989, but that happened to coincide with the end of the whole damned world.
The following morning, he was awake early, having spent what felt like all night trying to hold back more tears caused by his aching belly. He had dressed for school after darting a hand out from under the warm covers to retrieve the uniform, which had been washed, dried and ironed by his sister. He’d placed it ready the night before and wriggled into it without getting out of bed. One of the unwelcome delights of living so remotely was that the place was permanently cold, except for in the summer when it was unbearably hot for a few weeks. He hated the cold and coul
dn’t face the prospect of getting out of a warm bed into the chilly air to strip off and get into cold garments. His system was, to him at the naïve age of nine, a stroke of pure genius.
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