Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6

by Ford, Devon C.

  So Peter kept silent, and kept pace, as his father strode towards his battered farm pickup with a soggy cigarette hanging from his lips. The once-white pickup was very basic, and he waited patiently until his father sat behind the driver’s door and sighed before reluctantly leaning over to lift the pin and unlock the passenger side. Peter slipped in and sat down, trying to keep himself as small and unnoticeable as possible as his father started the rattling, noisy engine.

  Pulling out of the drive to the farm, he turned right, heading up the lane in the direction of the main road, but stopping at the houses midst the tall pine trees.

  “Stay here,” he told the boy, not expecting and not receiving any answer, before climbing out and retrieving his shotgun from the flat bed of the pickup. Peter watched him as he walked slowly towards the houses, and he saw the gap that one missing vehicle had left. One of the farm workers came out of his house, and everything about his demeanour said he was apologising. He wrung his hands as he spoke, keeping himself hunched and smaller than the boy’s father, which is how people usually acted around him. Peter knew he was a bully. He was worse than Edward ever could be, because he was strong and not just picking on someone smaller than him to feel better. He bullied everyone, intimidated everyone, and if anyone didn’t bow down to him, then he forced them away.

  Peter turned his attention back to the conversation and concentrated, trying to decipher what was happening without hearing the words. He saw the worker, a small man called Keith, who did most of the tractor driving. He was pointing to the gap where Peter expected there to be a car, and saw Keith waving his arms in some wild explanation of something. Peter’s father seethed. He knew that face, even if Keith didn’t, and he knew his father had stopped listening and was on the verge of violence. Keith’s eyes kept flickering towards the gun held low in one hand, as though the world was just crazy enough right then that his boss would use it on him. Without raising the weapon, and without another word, his father turned and stomped back towards the pickup.

  Cramming his big frame behind the wheel after thrusting the gun over to the opposite footwell, he started the rattling engine again and pealed out in a drone of high revs. He gripped the wheel tight, his knuckles glowing white with the pressure, and seemed to hold his breath. Peter kept himself still and quiet, being invisible like he knew how when this close to his father, until he eased off the throttle and let out his breath in a long hiss of escaping air.

  “Tony’s gone,” he said, surprising his son, “pissed off last night apparently. His sister rang him from Aldershot. You know where that is?”

  Peter opened his mouth to speak, hesitating because he didn’t usually ask him questions that he expected an answer to. He took his eyes away from the empty lane to look at his son, making him blurt out an answer.

  “No, where is it?”

  “It’s that way,” he said, pointing a finger past the young boy’s face and making him stiffen in anticipation, “west, towards London.”

  London, Peter thought, where the news said the trouble was.

  “His sister is married to a soldier, and she rang him, telling him to get out. She would know if the army has been sent in. He tried to get Keith and the others to leave too, but they wouldn’t.”

  Something in Peter’s mind lit up then, as though a circuit had been connected, and he spoke the words aloud before good sense could stop him.

  “Yesterday, when we were told that school was closed, none of the children from the base were there and we heard the biggest convoy ever move past…” he said in a rush, trailing off as he waited for the response to come.

  His father just eased off the throttle, slowing the pickup and swinging into the farm yard to creak to a halt. He didn’t move, so neither did Peter.

  “You asked last night what was happening,” he said finally. “Well, there’s…” he stopped, rubbing hands hard across his face, “there’s some sort of shit spreading across the country. People are going mad and biting each other, then they catch whatever it is and do the same. The bloody army is on the streets. That shouldn’t happen!” he said savagely.

  Peter kept his mouth shut, marvelling that this was the longest he had spoken to his father without him yelling in as long as he could remember. He looked up at him, risking eye contact in the strangeness of the moment. The father looked back down at his son, something resembling kindness or even fear in his eyes.

  At least it wasn’t the loathing Peter normally saw, which made what he said next even more of a shock.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you or your sister, which is why we need to go and get her.”

  The argument between his parents raged longer than usual, and he sat at the top of the stairs even after the inevitable smash of glass. He had changed into his pyjamas as the sun sank, and by the time his hunger had become painful, the raised voices from downstairs had grown so loud and slurred that he daren’t venture down there.

  From what Peter could gather, fairly easily because they were shouting at each other without a care of where he was and what he could hear, his mother was against the idea of getting his sister back. His father was adamant, and the smashing glass was her answer to his insistence.

  Going to bed for the second night in a row with an empty stomach, Peter miraculously found sleep.

  The following morning, waking to hear nothing from the other bedrooms, Peter reached out to find his school clothes.

  Dressed and warm, he crept downstairs to hear muted voices in the kitchen. His father was dressed, drinking something steaming from a cup, whereas his mother was wearing a dressing gown, holding a glass and a lit cigarette and still looking as drunk as she had in the evening. Peter’s father saw him first, a twitch of his eyebrows his only reaction to him entering the room. He fetched a bowl and a spoon, keeping himself out of reach and as small as possible, like he always did, then reached out across the table for the cereal.

  As he poured fresh milk from the jug on the table, skimmed from the milking tank on the farm that morning as always, they seemed to jointly decide to ignore their son and carry on.

  “Right,” his father said after draining his cup and pushing back his chair to stand, “I’m off. I’ll be back later.”

  His mother’s only response was to huff at him and turn away and stare out over the kitchen sink into the back garden. Peter sank a little lower into his chair, crunching his cereal as quietly as he could. He looked down the hallway, seeing his father pause at the cupboard and replace the shotgun. Evidently, he must have thought twice about taking the weapon towards the distant towns and away from the safety bubble of the land they occupied. Without another word or even a casual glance, he went out of the front door and left.

  Peter continued to crunch as silently as possible, not wanting to incur the wrath of his mother, who was still staring out of the window at nothing as the cigarette burned a long, drooping stick of ash, which eventually dropped onto the kitchen side. Finishing his breakfast and shooting her a quick glance to see if he was being watched, Peter raised the bowl to his mouth to drink the sweet milk left at the bottom. She didn’t see him, otherwise he would have earned another slap around the head, so he rose and went to wash his bowl in the sink as he always had to. Only she was blocking the way as she continued to stare out of the window. Seeing the slight rise and fall of her shoulders as her face was turned down, it took Peter a moment to realise that she was crying. Not sure how to respond at first, he gently set his bowl down and put a small hand on her arm.

  “It’s alright,” he said nervously, “Dad will come back an…”

  “Who bloody asked you?” she snapped as she rounded on him, wearing a furious, red-eyed look of hatred, “get back upstairs and take your school clothes off. You’re not going to school again.”

  Having taken an instinctive step back so as to be out of striking range, he was already half-way to the door, so he turned and fled the remainder of the distance.

  “And you can stay up there!�
�� he heard her shriek in her grating voice from the kitchen, just as he could make out the clink of a bottle against a glass.

  Back in his room, Peter did as he was told and put his school uniform neatly back where it had been before, and he got dressed in yesterday’s clothes. He got out the few toys he owned, either donated or found cheap and second hand when one of them was feeling generous or guilty, and played in silence as he mouthed out the words the figures were saying to one another.

  Lunchtime came and went, as indicated by the blue and red hands of his watch, which his sister had taught him how to read, and still no summons had been yelled from downstairs. On his third day of being hungry, he could no longer bear missing a meal and creaked open the door to sneak down the staircase with careful steps.

  At the foot of the stairs he paused, still unchallenged, and listened to the sounds. The television was on, as it often was throughout the day and night, but he listened long enough to hear nothing but the sounds of the programme. It was a film by the sounds of it, and one that made him think it was supposed to be funny from the musical noises probably designed to make people laugh as much as the jokes were. Risking discovery, Peter crept to the door and peered around to find her still wearing her dressing gown and sleeping in the grubby chair she occupied and forbade anyone else to sit in. The bottle lay empty on the carpet, and the glass had tipped out of her hand to rest lazily against the arm of the chair.

  He retreated silently, stealing into the kitchen to grab slices of bread and scrape a slab of margarine onto each one before stacking them to creep back upstairs. As soon as he got back to the relative safety of his room he ate hungrily and continued to play until the sun sank outside his window. But then, two things happened simultaneously. His belly growled, reminding him that he was still hungry after barely eating for three days, and then his stomach lurched because Peter realised that his father hadn’t returned before dark.

  FIVE

  John, father to a daughter and a son, and husband to a vile shrew of a woman who he hated when she was drunk, but despised beyond comprehension when she was sober, had driven sedately towards the big town where the hospital was.

  He drove slowly, not through being careful, but because with each mile he travelled, he felt himself growing ever more suspicious. That suspicion was caused by a dawning realisation that he hadn’t seen another moving vehicle yet. It was very common to never see a moving vehicle, as the only thing down their lane was the farm and it wasn’t a shortcut that led to anywhere. But out on the main roads it was usual to pass five or six cars by the time they came to the first buildings. Those buildings, bizarrely a large pub and a small police house, sat side by side and seemed abandoned.

  Shaking his head as though to dismiss the twin thoughts of stopping in for a drink and wondering why nobody was there, he pressed on and settled his mind back to the road. Driving in that area didn’t take much in the way of concentration, he knew because he drove drunk almost every week without fail, and the chance of stumbling across the two policemen who patrolled their corner of the county was slim. What also made it easy was that there were usually very few other cars on the road, so giving way to another vehicle was a thing of rarity; so much so that he had to concentrate especially hard if he ever drove anywhere else. And when he did, he was scared if he let his concentration slip, he might just carry on as if he was the only person driving.

  That morning though, his belly sour from the previous day’s alcohol and the insufficient breakfast, his unease about the road situation was growing in intensity. Not one car, not a single other moving vehicle was on the road. Trying and failing to ignore that fact, he continued through a village which was merely a collection of a dozen houses centred around a crossroads where the road met the rail line, a thatched cottage and a small shop-cum-post office. Deserted. Slowing the car, he saw that the window to the shop was damaged and the heavy plate glass was smashed inwards. Deciding against stopping to investigate, he pushed down on the accelerator to propel the car towards the hospital.

  Arriving fifteen minutes later, having seen the same disturbing tale in three other hamlets, he reached the hospital to see chaos, and evidence of a fire at the main entrance. It had been small, otherwise the whole building would have been ablaze, but it had been sufficient to blacken the glass front and prevent him from seeing inside. Ignoring the main entrance in his growing fear, he headed for the side of the main building to drive around to the psychiatric unit out of sight of the main hospital. These things were usually kept away from the public eye, as unsightly reminders of such things weakened a person’s resolve.

  Finding the single-storey building which he knew was the psychiatric assessment unit, he stopped and slowly ratcheted the handbrake on. He stayed in the car, unable to shake the now obvious sense that something was very wrong but trying his hardest to refuse to believe that any disease or rioting in London could affect them this far away already. He decided that the emergency workers had probably all been drafted in to the capital, and he nodded to affirm that assumption to himself before climbing out of the car and striding towards the doors.

  This place, he had been told, would keep his daughter for up to two weeks to do an assessment on her before either sending her home or, more likely they believed, admitting her to an in-patient facility somewhere nearer the coastal towns.

  They, or more accurately he, had decided to bring her home due to the crisis they had heard about on the news channels. She could be sorted out another time, but it mattered to him that the family stay together on their farm until all that London nonsense subsided; a sentiment very common to people who’d resided all their lives in the country and had a deep mistrust of such things that went on in cities.

  That sentiment, as false as it was, evaporated as soon as he pushed open the doors of the hospital unit.

  The receptionist, her white blouse and the pale skin of her face sheeted with dried blood, turned slowly, almost mechanically, around to face him as he walked in.

  “Hello,” he said gruffly, “I’m here for my…” he trailed away as the horror scene of the woman finally connected with his brain. He said nothing, merely stared at the woman waiting for some kind of explanation which never came. Letting out a crackling noise somewhere between a hiss and a groan, she began to mount the reception desk separating them. Moving one limb at a time like a drunk, she continued to groan in and out, the sound like a comedy impression of a creaking door in a horror film as her eyes stayed fixed on him, unwavering and resolute.

  John involuntarily took a pace backwards, then two more as the impetus of the receptionist took her off balance and she fell to plough her face directly into the hard floor in front of him. She didn’t react, didn’t pause or cry out or waver, she simply reset herself and continued to move towards him. He backed up as far as he could go until his back met the glass doors, which opened inwards and blocked his escape. Letting out a small cry of horror as he tried to push his way outside once again, he froze as the woman stopped and climbed to her feet unsteadily.

  Now that she was upright and away from the furniture, his unobstructed view showed that her right calf muscle had been torn almost completely away. That horrible injury didn’t seem to debilitate her, nor did the evident blood loss stop her from stumbling towards him to close the gap to a mere arm’s length. Finally, his fear snapping, he threw out a jab of his large fist with all the easy strength of a man who had worked outside his whole life, and he connected with her face. Her nose crunched, her head snapped back on her neck like a slow-motion replay of a car accident, and she toppled backwards to slam into the ground again with a broken nose.

  Straightening himself, John shrugged off the confrontation as he rolled his shoulders backwards and told himself that he hadn’t been scared after all, and that the woman merely needed putting in her place before she got herself hurt. Just as these foolish, misogynistic thoughts reaffirmed his arrogant belief in his own superiority, the receptionist groaned again and flopped ove
r onto her front, where thick, dark, congealed blood poured like oil from her shattered nose onto the shiny floor. With evident difficulty and poor co-ordination, she regained her feet and shuffled slowly in a circle again to re-acquire John in her sights.

  The teeth pulled back from bloody lips, the hands rose up to point directly at his face as though she were accusing him, and she lurched towards him again, hissing a louder groan than before. John curled a lip, knowing that he wouldn’t pull his punch this time, and drew back his hand with narrowed eyes as his body rocked back in preparation to deliver a huge blow.

  Then he stopped, frozen in wide-eyed terror as he looked into her eyes. Those eyes, he now saw, were clouded over in blindness. They were milky orbs set inside sunken sockets, and the sight of them hit him in the chest with such a stab of fear that he was powerless to move. Some instinctive sense, however, sparked movement in him, and his body took up the backwards rocking motion with greater effort than before to build the power, and his fist rose again to rocket his upper body forwards behind the punch as his hips swung through to deliver the maximum amount of force possible. The crunching noise echoed loudly in the confines of the small atrium, and the woman crumpled backwards like a felled tree. The left side of her face, crushed inwards by the uneven battle between stationary cheek bone and large, rapidly moving fist, was a mess of bone and gore. She didn’t get up a second time.

  Satisfied in some small sense, if not totally confused and terrified, John straightened himself and stepped over her body. He had no idea that he was stumbling around in shock, that his own mind had created a kind of fortress around itself to protect him and keep him moving, despite the things he had just seen and done, and he had no idea that there was worse still to come.