She still didn’t know what it was, but it was a safe bet that whatever had prevented the flow of information out of the capital had found its way to their town. It had a soundtrack, even if it didn’t have a name, and the soundtrack that accompanied the disorder was riddled with screams and hisses and metallic screeches ripped from human throats.
“Upstairs, everyone, now,” she called aloud as she stood, directing the staff and newcomers towards the heavy metal door that led to the secure part of the building.
“Miss Perkins,” snapped the deputy assistant manager, a peevish man of her age but only half her presence. He had relished the lack of staffing that day as he took charge. “Members of the public are not allowed in the restricted part of the bank,” he whined.
Before she could respond, the answer was given loud and clear from outside in a far more effective way than she could have explained.
A young man, his face a sheet of blood from a torn scrap of skin and hair that flopped over his forehead and his eyes milky white, slammed his whole body into the heavy plate glass, and slowly worked his jaw as he tried to chew his way through the impenetrable barrier that kept them safe. Everyone inside the bank froze and stared at the man, his greasy coveralls slicked red with fresh blood. But a woman joined him with the same percussive slam as her body bounced off the glass, only to return immediately and cause a long, squeaking noise to vibrate through the room, as her top lip was pulled upwards by the resistance of the glass. Her teeth were smeared red, which extended down from her mouth to discolour the light blue shirt she wore over a navy, knee-length skirt. Her eyes, the same opaque cloudy orbs as the man’s, bored through to them.
“Upstairs!” Kimberley shouted again and, as though their heads were on the same piece of taught string, the two people chewing at the glass snapped their heads in perfect synchronicity to lock onto her. They needed no further encouragement, and as one, they surged for the heavy, reinforced door that was opened with a combination to swing outwards. No sooner had the first five people bundled through that door amidst shouts and noises of panic than another three loud thumps reverberated from the front window.
Kimberly was the second to last person at the door, the last man being the peevish manager for the day, who was counting people through for no particular reason she could discern. He flinched but did not turn to see what had caused the new noise.
He looked at Kimberley’s face and slowly began to mirror her emerging look of dread. Not having the courage to turn and face whatever new horrors had arrived to shatter his orderly world, he kept his eyes down and pulled the heavy door closed.
Others in the town centre weren’t so lucky. Only the banks had windows that didn’t shatter and implode under the onslaught of hungry, feverishly aggressive mouths. The number of infected rose with each step closer towards the emergence of the virus, and those attacked weren’t always lucky enough to escape with an infected bite to die at home as the fever burned through their bodies. When attacked by three or four of the things, often their victims would fall where they were attacked to be torn apart.
Looking out of the window high above the street below, Kimberley saw exactly that happen before her eyes. A woman, wearing the brightly coloured uniform of a travel agent in the style of that company’s air hostesses, ran into the street screaming foully, only to be hit hard from three different directions and have the air driven from her lungs when they took her to the rough ground. The three attackers bit her, clawed at her with their nails and pulled chunks of her flesh away where they could gain sufficient purchase on it. Kimberley ignored the shouted questions, the hysterical tears and the screams of panic and confusion which sounded from behind her and watched as the three cannibalistic attackers stopped in perfect unison.
They just stopped, for no evident reason that she could understand, and turned their attention elsewhere as they looked for something, someone, else to attack. As they rose and melted away stiffly, Kimberley was left watching the bloodied and torn body of the woman, who she could see, even at that distance, had previously been adorned with a perfect face of makeup before the blood had splashed to mar the overall effect. The eyes, unclear as the two floors in height separated them, stared upwards blankly in death until the view was obscured by a sudden cloud of condensation covering the window. Kimberley, in her shock at seeing a murder in the street below her, had forgotten to breathe until that point when the part of her brain that took responsibility for such things restored order, and forced her lungs to inflate. She watched, fixed intently on the body of the woman in a state of semi-shock, as a way to cope with the screaming debates that raged behind her. She had no idea how long she remained there, minutes at least in her wide-eyed catatonia, but the next terrifying turn of events woke her to full alertness.
That same part of the brain that forced Kimberley to breathe again, not that she could know it, also kicked in to high gear in the woman lying in the street below in a large puddle of her own blood. Thinking that she had imagined it at first, she saw the ravaged body of the woman twitch once in a full body spasm. Trying to ignore that as a trick that her confused and frightened brain was playing on her, she visibly jumped as the body convulsed electrically once more. Now convincing herself that it was a process of her dying, Kimberley rationalised what her eyes had told her brain. But what she saw next could not be rationalised, nor could it be explained.
The woman, moving jerkily and uncertainly like a drunk, clambered to her feet in a very unladylike manner, which forced her tight skirt up to the tops of her thighs and flashed a swathe of skin-coloured stocking tops to the world. She didn’t care, and if she had, then Kimberley would probably have found that disturbing as the priority. Should the woman be aware of anything, it would be the small loop of what Kimberley could only guess was intestine that flopped from under her white blouse to hang just below her crotch. Swallowing a mouthful of bile, she watched as the woman began to take awkward, halting steps, to follow the direction of her head turned up the street towards where the commotion had washed like a tide. What Kimberley couldn’t see was the sudden milky white colour of the woman’s eyeballs, and what she couldn’t hear was the hissing, rasping noise she made that was quieter than the others around her, as a hole had been torn into her windpipe and it allowed some of the air to escape and lower her volume controls. As she stumbled away from the bank and left the street below empty, Kimberley stayed glued to the window for more long minutes, until the dull roar of lots of engines echoed through the town.
Being so high up, that floor didn’t have the reinforced glass of the ground and first floors, so she was able to open the window. She began to scream for help at the top of her voice and ignored the protestations of those behind her. She was finally rewarded with the four camouflaged metal wedges shooting off from their stationary points and coming towards her. Within seconds they had stopped outside the bank, and a hatch popped open for a man with a handlebar moustache under his helmet, and wide eyes. He seemed to speak to himself, then she watched as the other three tanks moved position slightly before cutting their engines. The man shouted a question up at her, forcing her to turn and call for quiet as she performed a rapid head count and turned back to the window.
“Fifteen of us,” she called down, making sure to clearly enunciate each word and remove the need to repeat the information.
“Can you get out of this door?” he asked, pointing at the main entrance to the bank. She responded that they could.
“Wait there,” the man said after listening to his radio, or at least she imagined that was what he did as his eyes glazed over and he placed a finger to the earphone nearest his right hand, “and cover your ears.” Then he looked forward and dropped down, pulling the hatch closed behind him.
Kimberley didn’t have the luxury of time to relay that instruction, but human nature being what it was, they all dropped to the ground and covered their ears, screwing their eyes shut tightly as though that would help, when the world outside and below
them erupted into a storm of metal and noise and devastation. The automatic gunfire didn’t last long, a few seconds at most, but the shouting that followed was more insistent than before. Getting to her feet and looking back down to street level, she saw four soldiers burst from the nearest tank and run just out of sight. The noise of an engine starting was loud in the street, but the strong voice cut through that din to give her orders.
“Move, now,” it yelled, as though she were a raw recruit in need of toughening up. She turned and relayed those orders, surprising herself with how authoritarian she sounded, and saw the confidence of those orders translated into instant action as the fourteen other people ran to obey. She was the last one down the stairs, her eyes resting on the partly open drawer which she knew would contain stacks of crisp banknotes and shook her head to will away the ridiculous and improper thought as soon as it came to her.
Running down the stairs and into the lobby of the bank, she found the others milling about uncertainly as they waited for someone to tell them what to do next. Kimberley hurtled past all of them, pausing only to shout, “Come on!” and to spark them into life to follow. She burst through the doors and into the street, her head acquiring the noise of the engine and seeing the source for the first time. A dirty white Ford panel van, the back doors wide open and some cardboard boxes visible inside, stood thirty paces away with three soldiers waving them frantically towards them. The fifteen survivors piled in, the doors were shut, and a hand banged on the thin metal side twice.
Maxwell recalled his dismounted troopers, bar the one who had been given the responsibility of driving the van full of civilians, and Johnson watched as his assault troop made its way back toward him, comprising an additional vehicle. Nodding his appreciation for a job well done, he turned his attention back to the rearguard. Calling the Sabre troop up on the radio, he asked for a report, learning that the remaining crowd of enemy had followed them slowly and were approaching their position.
“On me,” he instructed, telling the drivers of the Fox cars to make the return journey through the obstructions of biting meat that used to be people. “We are leaving via an alternative route,” and with that, he relayed his orders to the rest of the column and decided to get the hell out of the town.
The commandeered panel van sat neatly in between the two high-roofed tracked vehicles of Johnson’s HQ troop, and the assault troop continued as vanguard. They did not stop to lay down any fire as the enemy never threatened the safety of their convoy at any point. Instead, Johnson called their retreat under a new protocol, this time meaning that they did not stop for anything and no vehicle was ever out of visual contact with those in front and behind, and at a maximum of half their vehicle’s effective range of weapons fire. In a town, that meant that they were driving as fast as their tracked and heavy-wheeled mix of cars could manage, but when they hit the wider roads of the outskirts, they pushed their speed up to just over fifty miles per hour.
Calling a stop at the very edge of the built-up area, Johnson faced a dilemma. That dilemma was whether to retain personal control of the tip of his spear and remain with a troop, or to return to base and debrief the civilians to formulate a longer-term plan. He knew what he should do, but that would mean leaving a fighting troop under the technical control of an officer he didn’t trust to get a drinks order right. Making his decision, he dismounted his own vehicle and climbed down to approach the identical one behind it. Palmer, having heard of the SM’s approach, popped the hatch and also dismounted to speak to the man away from the armour.
“SSM,” he said in greeting, his face wan and serious for a change, “your suggestions?”
Johnson swallowed, keeping down the retort that flew to the tip of his tongue, and with it the urge to slap the young man around the head. He didn’t act on those feelings, however, because he recognised that the man was just emulating the behaviour of other officers. To ask the senior NCO for their suggestion was to admit to nobody that you didn’t know the best way to proceed, and you were calling on the experience of a man who would know. That only offended Johnson because when Second Lieutenant Palmer used the term, it implied that he was in overall charge of the squadron. That rankled him and made his words slightly harsher than they would have been, had the boy not tried to play the boss.
“My orders,” he began, “are that you remain here with One. Sergeant Strauss will be in charge,” he added in a quieter voice as he leant forward to prevent embarrassing the man, “and your task will be to remain here until such time as our half of the column returns to base. If you are engaged during that time, then you are to ensure that no enemy survives the contact before returning. Understood?”
“Understood entirely,” Palmer retorted with his aristocratic air of condescension, then he turned away, no doubt to relay his orders to his crew.
Strauss, the third generation of a Rhodesian migrant had, despite his name and heritage, no trace of the accent of his predecessors, but he did bear the genetic traits. Tall and broad, uncomfortably for a man who went to war inside a cramped metal box, his blonde hair was kept short inside his helmet.
Johnson relayed his orders, adding in the specifics that Palmer didn’t need to burden himself with, lest he gain the incorrect impression that he was in charge of anything, and left feeling satisfied that those orders would be followed.
“I think these things are attracted to noise,” he told Strauss, who absorbed the facts and recent events with no sign of being affected, “so I don’t want to roll our armour slowly back to base and ring the dinner bell. You wait for whatever crowd follows us out of town, then open up on them, 30mm too, just for the noise, then get back via a longer route. And whatever you do,” he added seriously, “don’t let the Lieutenant do anything stupid like order another charge of the light brigade.”
Strauss understood, and Johnson left with the assault troop and the borrowed van, the occupants of which had been unceremoniously told to stay quiet until they were back at base.
Strauss was a switched-on and capable man, if not a natural tactician like Johnson. He kept his four Fox armoured cars in tight formation across the carriageway with their engines running, and ordered that the hatches be closed, if only to ensure that Palmer didn’t try to join in the fight, as his vehicle was the only type that couldn’t bring weapons to bear from the safety of the inside. After forty minutes, the distant horizon started to show a dark smear that morphed into an oncoming line of people, all moving slowly and awkwardly. That was their target, and he intended to destroy this crowd before taking a looping journey back to base, and hopefully not to lead any more of them to the fence that ringed their camp.
The only unexpected issue was that of the two shapes out ahead of the crowd. They had pushed through at a distance the soldiers could not discern and were now jogging ahead of them at over twice the speed of the masses. Their actions were more coordinated somehow, and they were less damaged than the others, which lent them a kind of alertness that could only spell trouble.
“Sarge?” the driver of Strauss’ Fox called out to him questioningly.
“I see them, son,” he said in a fatherly tone to soothe the man’s nerves. “Gunner, to your front, automatic fire… go on,” he said, hearing the answer given by the rapid pounding of the big 30mm cannon above their heads. Watching the road ahead, he smiled a grim smile of satisfaction as the leading monster disintegrated in a flash of red mist, leaving a single leg to cartwheel through the air before it landed wetly a good three hundred paces away from their picquet line.
“All gunners,” Strauss said calmly into the radio, “automatic fire to your front. Go.”
And the world on the edge of a small rural town erupted into a cacophonous, percussive hell.
SEVENTEEN
Peter, in a bizarre form of coping strategy that he didn’t fully understand, was actually enjoying his project. Had he known more about human interactions and had a basic understanding of psychology, he might have recognised that he had gone in
to a kind of dissociative state, where productivity could mask the feelings that his recent experiences had caused. Those feelings, had he had the luxury of time and safety to replay the events and the emotions that came at each step, would cripple him if he allowed them space in his brain, so he simply didn’t.
The events of the last week, as obvious as they were, had just happened and were now shut away in a box that he didn’t have to open. It was the only way he could function.
So instead of curling up into a ball and crying like the child he was, he refused to accept that those things had happened, and gave himself a new reality to deal with. That reality was that he couldn’t go home, that he was totally alone, and that he had to survive by himself. He had to stay away from people, he had to keep to himself, remain as quiet as possible and wait for it all to stop spinning like crazy.
The last part even he knew was fantasy, but survival without hope wasn’t survival; it was prolonging the process of dying. He had to retain hope that someone would restore order, that the police or the army would come with guns and sticks and make everyone behave again. Even though he hadn’t seen much of the world, either before or after people started biting each other, he knew that there was unlikely to be any safety anywhere else, so he elected to make a home in the place he knew best.
The first day was spent attempting to weather-proof his new accommodation, having shivered throughout the entire night previously, due to the wind whistling through the cracks in the boards. His way of rectifying this was to rig a series of heavy canvas sheets and nail them into place using the tools he had taken from the shed. These sheets, which he thought had once been ground sheets for large tents, were pulled tightly into position, then nailed into the wood at the corners at regular intervals, so that they formed a secure section that the wind couldn’t penetrate. Inside that section Peter laid down an even bed of hay, then another of the heavy sheets which he had folded over three times lengthways, and he rolled himself on that makeshift bed until he had ironed out the worst of the lumps with his back. Climbing back down the short ladder, he rigged up a simple rope pulley system to allow him to place things inside the large plastic bucket on one end of the rope, before climbing up to his hideout in safety to pull on the rope to raise his haul without the risk of falling off the ladder.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 13