“What is it?” he asked.
“Not sure,” Daniels said loudly with a frown, “intermittent and broken, but definitely not one of ours; they’ve all reported in when called.”
It was Johnson’s turn to frown. What other military units could be calling up in this area? There was almost nothing between their area and the Navy bases in the south west, certainly nothing green army, but his contemplation was ceased by Daniels answering another radio hail.
“Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha receiving,” he said in that implacable tone of voice that born radio operators possessed, before pausing to listen to the response. “It’s Sarn’t Maxwell, he’s reached the island and is holding firm on the road bridge…” he paused to listen again, “low concentration of enemy… no Screechers coming from the island towards their noise.”
“Good,” Johnson growled, “tell him to push inland one mile and secure some higher ground. Tell him we are,” he looked at his watch and glanced to the map on the inside wall of the hull to gauge their speed and distance, “ninety minutes away at least.”
Daniels nodded and turned to his radio sets to relay the information, then Johnson paused as he went to raise himself up and out of the hatch again, as the Corporal switched dials on the radio sets and spoke intently.
“Last callsign, repeat, I say again, repeat,” he said, giving their squadron callsign and disposition briefly, then stayed still and silent waiting for a response which must have come through garbled, because he repeated his last transmission word for word before waiting again. Giving up he shook his head and went back to the switches and dials.
Feeling satisfied with himself, Peter’s little bubble of happiness was burst by the sudden rise in noises from the farm. He had always been accustomed to the sounds of cattle and other livestock, but the tone and desperation of the noises coming from the cows made his chest feel tight and cold. Running out of his barn and skidding to a stop to turn and run back inside, he snatched up the camouflage backpack that he knew must go everywhere with him and must always be packed ready. In that bag he had snacks, a canteen of water, his sleeping back and the stuffed lamb belonging at one time to his sister, and the belt of ammunition for the shotgun, because it was too big to fit around his slim waist. The folding penknife never left his pocket unless he was using it, so he was ready to go as soon as he snatched up his pitchfork.
Rounding the corner of a building, he couldn’t help but gasp out loud as the sight that greeted him was worse than anything he could have imagined.
It had started somewhere miles away, and as each new addition to the group was drawn towards the sound and movement of the others, so too were they all tugged inexorably towards the sounds in the distance. Those ripples of rolling thunder made the few more alert ones of them sniff the air in that direction and move, dragging the slower ones on with them, as if they were being towed. Every infected corpse they passed reacted to the presence of the growing crowd of dead, and the cycle continued as more and more of them added to the noise, which drew yet more in from areas unaffected by the direct path they took.
Those who had been almost dormant from the lack of noise or movement to spark their feeding instincts, suddenly came alive with renewed intensity to join the hunt, as hundreds of them moved together and none of them could know where they were going or why.
Their direct path took them through the woodland and the shallow river into a farm, where things started moving and making noises. The Leaders at the front, half a dozen of them, sniffed greedily at the air and went into a frenzy as the smell of flesh excited them. They threw themselves forwards, some leaping the chest-high fence entirely, and fell upon the innocent cattle mercilessly. Their pitiful bellows tore the air as teeth chewed through thick skin and blood flowed in thick globules down to the dry dirt, where it soaked in to make a dark red mud that the following zombies trampled into unthinkingly. They too now had their arms reaching out, and their mouths opened wide to peel back their lips and show teeth as they saw flesh. The wooden fence, a simple and strong enough barrier, splintered like toothpicks under the combined crushing weight of hundreds of bodies, some of whom went down with the obstacle to be trampled flat by their careless comrades.
The cows stood no chance and were all pulled to the ground and devoured. One lumbering beast, her eyes wide in terror at the stench of blood, kicked out and scored a lucky hit on one attacker to crush its skull and drop it lifeless to the wet dirt, but the temporary reprieve did little for her long-term survival, and the next one in line simply took the place of the ruined skull and bit down hard.
Peter, rounding the corner to see this emerging carnage, could luckily not be heard over the terrible noise, but something made two of them turn towards him. Perhaps his smell, perhaps some other sense, but two of them had locked on to him and began to move his way.
He forced his feet to respond to the messages his brain was sending desperately, finally getting them to stumble him backwards. A third zombie, eyes cloudy and pale and the white shirt under his grey suit a mess of both fresh and dried blood, burst from the mass and also went after him, but this one did so with more coordination and at a much faster pace.
Peter ran. He ran as fast as he physically could. He ran faster than he ever had before, even when he was unencumbered by a heavy bag, a sawn-off shotgun and an awkward pitchfork in one hand. Hearing the sound of footsteps approaching behind him even over the rasping of his own breathing and the blood pumping through his ears deafeningly, he instinctively turned to his right to fall through an open stable doorway. The thing chasing him shot past and fell hard to the concrete yard, making a sound like meat hitting a chopping board, and Peter managed to kick the door closed behind. The man in the suit had already got to his feet and banged hard into the half door, reaching over and down to try and grab Peter. He thrust forward with his pitchfork, skewering the man straight through the throat and having no effect whatsoever to stop him. The end of the weapon’s handle slipped from his grasp and flung around to hit him on the head twice. His own screams of fear mixed with the screeching, hissing noise the thing made as it leaned further over at him. The pitchfork prevented the man in the suit from getting to him, as the end wedged tight against the pitted ground and held his head upright.
Which gave Peter just enough time to reach high above his head and grasp the newly-smoothed handle of the shotgun. Unthinking, he pulled it free, aimed it upwards and pushed the safety catch off with his thumb. Reaching his small index finger forwards to reach one of the triggers, he snatched at the thin metal.
The responding boom of the gun going off inside the confined space was huge. He was blinded temporarily, deafened and left in total shock by the savagery of the report. The gun had flown backwards as it fired, slamming the barrel back into his shoulder, where the padded strap luckily prevented any serious injury.
Before his vision went white from the blast, he was left with a brief snapshot of the suit man’s head vanishing. The headless body flopped over the stable door, and Peter took three ragged breaths before his survival instinct kicked in again. Part of him knew that the noise would bring more, that he had to run and hide, and that part of him dragged him to his feet and forced him to pick up the discarded pitchfork. Pushing open the half door with difficulty as the headless body was partly obstructing it, he ran just as four reaching hands grabbed at his clothing.
He had no idea how many were chasing him, but one was one too many. He tore blindly through the collection of mismatched buildings until he lost his footing and fell headlong to the hard ground, where he slid without slowing down.
What he slid through was ankle-deep animal shit. It got in his face and forced him to close his eyes. It got in his mouth and he turned his face away, which caused the slimy filth to collect in his right ear and deafen him on that side. Skidding to a stop he retched and shuddered, spitting out the disgusting contents of his mouth. He rolled sideways to try and escape his pursuit by cramming himself under the small section of a
ir between the rough ground and the raised floor of a building. Reaching to his waist he managed to free the canteen of water which he poured on his face to swill his mouth and stop him from vomiting.
As his wits were restored to him, he noticed feet about three paces from his face just at the edge of the building. He froze, not wanting or daring to move or breathe, just hoping that they would go away.
Then he remembered the way they sniffed the air.
He could hear them snuffling, knowing that something they could eat had gone this way and disappeared, trying to detect it through smell. But they couldn’t. Peter stayed exactly where he was, not daring to move in case he made a sound or changed his smell in some way. He rested his head slowly to the ground, slowed his breathing, and watched as feet after feet traipsed past him. He lost count of how many in the first few seconds, and only a few details remained in his mind. Like the size of some of the feet being smaller than his own, or the red high-heeled shoes with both heels snapped off making the already jerky movements seem even more ungainly.
Peter stayed there until the herd had become a trickle and stayed still even when that trickle had faded to nothing. When the sun first began to set, he tentatively crawled out from under the building and raised his pitchfork to sweep the area for any stragglers that had got left behind. Creeping out from behind the building, he let out a strangled cry and felt his knees give from underneath him. He fell down, cracking the film of dried shit from his skin and refreshing the smell. The scene before him was horrific, even worse than the torn mess of the dog he had tried to tell himself he hadn’t seen.
The big, docile and harmless creatures had been ravaged and torn apart to be left in ruin where they fell. The flesh had been flensed from their bones, leaving great arcs of white bones from the ribcages. At the sound he made, a gargling, bubbling groan escaped from the far side of one of the poor, dead cows. One of the things, slow-moving and fat-faced with wobbling jowls, rose awkwardly to its feet and began to hobble towards him. It was slow because of its weight, and the fact that one of its feet was turned to face backwards and made a sickening crunching noise as it moved.
Just as the bones in the ankle of the fat creature had gone, something inside Peter snapped then.
He straightened, twirled the pitchfork, then stepped towards it and ran the two spikes through its eyes to burst straight out the back of its skull. It fell backwards like a tree and he let the weapon go for it to bounce out of the skull when it impacted the ground with a slap. He stepped over, picked up his weapons and, for the first time in his life, listened to the total absence of sound as every animal on the farm was dead.
And he could not stay there one minute longer.
TWENTY-TWO
Eight vehicles from the front of the convoy, Kimberley tried to ignore the cramp and the discomfort of travelling in the back of a very industrial truck. It was not designed for comfort, but then again everything she had seen in the last couple of days indicated that Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, or the army at least, did not rate personal comfort high on their agenda. Finally, unable to suffer the annoyance of her loose hair bouncing into her face with every lurching turn or juddering gear change, she tied it back into a ponytail and thanked the gloomy interior for obscuring that part of her face that she had kept covered for the last three years whenever there were other people around her. The journey seemed to take forever, with the truck constantly halting to a stop amidst the protesting shriek of brake pads. The first few times the brakes had made that high-pitched sound after they had warmed had made her heart lurch into her stomach and her eyes grow wide with the adrenaline that forced her breathing to speed up. Realising that the screech was of brakes and not torn from the throat of a flesh-eating and insane former person, she relaxed and each time it happened she reacted less and less. Recognising that fear was debilitating her and having an effect on her body, she forced herself to remain calm through sheer will, and wait.
Just wait, she told herself from behind her eyelids, everything ends eventually.
“Unknown callsign, this is Victor-Three-Zero. Identify yourself. Over,” barked Daniels with more authority than before. “Confirm disposition.”
“Hello, Victor-Three-Zero, this is Delta-Two-Zero minus. We are a detached heavy callsign. Over.”
Hearing the callsign he named, Johnson dropped back inside as though he had been shot and stared at the operator with eyes wider than the exhaust on a Chieftain tank, because that was precisely what he associated with that callsign.
His impatience almost killed him, but he did not let himself down by interrupting the exchange. Instead, he waited until the necessary information had been exchanged and grid coordinates swapped. Calculating distance and speed very roughly in his head, Johnson reckoned that he had perhaps another hour before the slower moving units, realistically only able to move at half of their top speed, could combine with them.
“Give them our objective,” he ordered Daniels, who nodded and relayed the information and then signed off.
“Two Chieftains,” he said, confirming Johnson’s hopes. “They were part of the armour sent to London, but they said they never got further than Southampton before they were swamped. Their Captain reckons th—”
“Their Captain?” he interrupted, betraying his own nervousness at his tenuous command of a squadron and fearing that he would be forced to relinquish control.
“Yes, Sir,” Daniels said almost sympathetically, intuiting the cause of concern on his SSM’s face, “he reckons they can be here in three hours, but they’ll be very low on fuel by then.”
“Replen?” Johnson asked, checking if it was necessary to send a resupply fuel wagon to meet them.
“Possibly,” Daniels said as he thought, “when those things run low, their fuel filters get choked up and die,” he mused, temporarily wearing his day job hat and thinking as a mechanic. “Let’s see what we have at the island and then decide?”
Johnson nodded to agree to the logical course of action, then turned his attention back to their route ahead and tried to push away the nagging sense of self-doubt as he prepared to justify his orders to a senior officer.
Second Lieutenant Oliver Simpkins-Bloody-Palmer was too junior to test an NCO of his experience, but a Captain in an armoured division would be far more likely to have something other than fine lace and dance steps between his ears. That introspection lasted until his scanning eyes rested on the long, straight approach road leading to the lump of rock just off the coast.
That rock, not that he yet knew it, would soon become the most contested piece of land in many miles.
“Sir?” the driver of the lead tank said into the microphone on his headset to get the attention of their Captain.
“Everything okay, Wells?” the officer asked in genuine concern as he peered forward to where their Lance Corporal was enduring the awkward driving position forced on him by being closed down. Closed down was the term for having their hatches firmly secured, and it was the only reason they all still lived.
“She’s juddering, Sir,” Clive Wells answered from his seat at the front which required him to be lying almost flat on his back, “under throttle. She doesn’t like something.”
The Captain frowned, rechecked their position on the map in the cramped confines, and called for a full stop to his crew’s loader, who also acted as radio operator, which he relayed over the group radio. The second tank, with her complement of four, also ground to a halt behind them for their roaring engines to drop to a low rumble at idle. Checking all around, the Captain opened up the hatch to climb out and converse with the other crew, commanded by a Sergeant named Horton.
“We’re starting to get engine problems,” the officer explained.
“We aren’t much better off, Sir,” the sergeant responded in a voice laced with angry disappointment. “We’ve lost our gears and are on emergency ones.” Both of their wagons, the only surviving armour from their massed foray to rescue the capital, were splattered wi
th dried gore and were less than fresh on the inside too. They had barely felt safe enough to open the hatches in days for more than a few minutes at a time, because the creatures would emerge to clamber up their low hulls and claw at the closed hatches. Because their tanks weren’t that fast moving, getting one of them stuck on the top was best avoided. They had all seen what had happened to the other armour in their column, not to mention the occupants of the soft-skinned and canvas-backed vehicles, when they had stopped moving and were overrun by the crowds.
There were two reasons why their pair of green and black painted tanks had escaped from that swarm of bodies. One was partly down to luck in that they had stopped to inspect a minor repair, and as no tank would be left alone, the pair arrived at the very tail end of the halted convoy. The other was down to the very quick thinking of the officer who had been thrown into their crew at the very last minute, the column having been formed in a hurry. He had presence which gave his orders an authority which prompted instant obedience in the men. He had ordered them to close down and reverse, which they did, and now they had survived and not been overrun or stranded on mounds of bodies.
Hearing and then seeing a pair of jets overhead as they reversed their course made them try a hail, which eventually got them in touch with a large Naval air station. They, in turn, advised them of army units active at the place where their own journey had begun, so they made to return there. Attempting at regular intervals on their slow journey to raise the base, they eventually made contact and altered course to head for the spit of high ground separated from the mainland by a causeway bridge. The Captain knew the area to be a small town, more of a village really, with some farming and a lighthouse. Given their unexpected predicament, the choice of location made instant sense to him and he made a note to congratulate the man who came up with the idea. His own wagon, named Annabelle by the men of A Squadron, was fitted with the heavy plough that they had anticipated needing for clearing abandoned vehicles out of the city streets. That had been useful when needing to clear the way of lumbering corpses, but it added weight to them and ultimately reduced their speed and increased their fuel consumption.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 18