“Hello, my loves,” she said kindly, her eyes matching the smile and the warm tone of her voice, “what have you been up to then?” The question was rhetorical, as she fussed about them getting them seated beside the warm metal and pulling levers here and there before moving a metal pot onto a hot section of the old cooker to bring it back up to temperature.
That was the thing about the old kitchen, Downes thought to himself, it never got cold or switched off and was in a permanent state of tick-over until more was needed from it. It was like a living organism, more so than any modern, conventional kitchen would be.
“I shall leave you to it, Sar’nt Major,” he said, ducking a small bow and retreating to shed himself of weapons and get into some drier clothing.
“I’m Denise,” she told them as she wore the same wide smile, “we’ve been here a while now, and it’s about half and half with us normal people and the army lot.” She left out the variation of having RAF and Royal Marines there as it was only important to the people who lived by such acronyms and identities. If she hadn’t been an army wife, then no doubt she wouldn’t have cared either.
“What are your names?” she asked as she busied herself with the hot water and cups to make a drink.
“Ellie,” the older one said. Denise couldn’t place their relationship, as they could easily be sisters given the apparent age difference, but neither bore the slightest resemblance to the other physically. She knew that didn’t mean anything as such, but she was a woman who trusted her hunches.
“And what about you, my sweet?” she asked, leaning down to put herself in the eye line of the younger girl.
“Jessica,” she said, a hint of sullen anger in her voice, which was thick with cold and exhaustion.
“Well,” Denise said as she looked up to meet the eyes of one of the other women who gravitated around the kitchens, “let’s see if we can’t find you some clean clothes to fit, eh?” she nodded to the newly arrived woman, one of her corporals she guessed, if the civilian mirroring of ranks and responsibilities was to be observed. The woman looked long and hard at the two people wrapped in blankets huddled by the warm hearth, nodded to herself and left the room clearly having taken all the measurements she needed.
“Who is in charge here?” Ellie asked through numb lips.
“Well,” Denise said as she sat back on the wooden stool facing them and gently slapped her hands onto her thighs, “it was all a bit up in the air when we got here, but the Captain, that’s Mr Palmer senior, is sort of in overall charge. There’s Clive, Major Downes, who you know obviously, and Mr Lloyd has his marines. I run the kitchen, I suppose, and my husband is Mr Palmer’s senior man. His little brother is here too, the other Mr Palmer, but he doesn’t mix with us much…” She trailed off as she saw the perplexed looks from Ellie and Jessica.
“I’m waffling now,” she said, “tell me how you ended up out in the cold?”
“We ran away from the place we were at,” Ellie said, “and we… we…” she cast her eyes down as she couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We lost the woman who came with us,” Jessica finished with an edge of flint to her words, “they caught her. The men, not the others…”
Denise was shocked. Not being a woman usually lost for words she was speechless at the unspoken implications of what they had said.
“Were you… prisoners?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” Ellie said, “and it was probably worse than you think.”
They had been warmed, cleaned, dressed and fed before they were sat in front of a large fire crackling noisily in an ornate fireplace. There were four men in the room when Denise led Ellie and Jessica in. Downes they knew or at least had met already, and the others were introduced in turn.
“Ladies,” said Denise Maxwell, “this is Captain Palmer.” Palmer stood, offered a small bow and invited them to call him Julian if it pleased them.
“May I introduce Lieutenant Christopher Lloyd of the Royal Marines,” he indicated a good looking young man with broad shoulders and a weathered face. “You have met Major Clive Downes of the Special Air Service,” Downes smiled a greeting at them again, “and finally Mr Maxwell, our senior non-commissioned officer who reports directly to me and, of course, Mrs Maxwell, who I appear to report directly to sometimes...” They all smiled at the weak but obvious joke and the newly arrived pair were invited to sit nearest the fire. As they did, a loud crack came from the flames and a smouldering ember spat out to land on the hearth.
“Our apologies for the poor firewood,” Palmer said as though such things were under his direct control, “we have used up the stocks of seasoned wood and have been reduced to burning a coppice of ash we have found. It’s quite green but won’t suffocate us, I’m assured.”
Ellie smiled to accept the unnecessary apology, feeling oddly at ease with the formality on display. He had a way, a manner, that made her feel far more elevated than her position had ever been.
“I understand,” Palmer said gently, “that you have been residing at a place where the conditions were somewhat… unpleasant.” He left it as a statement. An invitation to explain and not a question that could be easily shut down with a simple yes or no.
Ellie told them. She told them everything from the moment she had fled with her daughter and hidden in villages as they went house to house for food to survive off. She told them about the men who had come and dragged her away, about the man in charge who had forced those same men to go back and look for her daughter, but who had come back with only news of her disappearance. She told them about the enforced work, about the women who kept the guards ‘company’ in return for items and certain freedoms. She told them about the rumours that the man in charge, this Michaels character, was forcing survivors to give him their food under the threat of violence against them. She told them about their plan to escape, about the pursuit and getting separated from Pauline, then walking all night and all day until they stumbled on the four soldiers.
“My sniper nearly shot you,” Downes said, suddenly looking awkward as he tried to turn it around to show how much of an ordeal they had suffered as to look as though they were undead, rotting creatures.
“Hang on a minute,” Maxwell said, glancing at his wife who had picked up on the same critical piece of information, “you said Michaels, right?”
“That’s right,” Ellie said, “they said he was a soldier too, just like the other one with the small tank.”
“What other one?” Maxwell asked.
“Nevin,” Jessica said, speaking for the first time during the meeting and curling her lip in hatred and disgust at the mere mention of the man’s name.
Looks were exchanged through the room as almost everyone had some piece of information that others did not possess.
“Michaels was our missing troop sergeant,” Maxwell said to the officers as an aside, “never showed up when the deployment call came in, so we chopped up his troop and shared the lads around others to fill the gaps.
“And Nevin?” Downes asked, having felt the overt hostility in the room at the mention of his name.
“Trooper Nevin,” Palmer said with measured tones in a display of uncharacteristic anger, “was the bane of Mr Johnson’s life. He is a lazy shirker, who is responsible for the bloodbath that led to the unfortunate…” he glanced at the young girl before choosing his next words carefully, “…passing of Sergeant Sinclair and his men. Trooper Povey attested to this, if you recall?”
They did recall. Not only was the loss of life a crippling blow to them as they had lost close friends and almost half of the remaining squadron strength, but the devastation that it was betrayal and cowardice of one of their own stung them deeply.
Palmer wanted to ask about Michaels, about his strengths and weaknesses as a man and a solider, but such conversations could be had with Maxwell in private.
“Ellie,” Lloyd asked, “do you know where this Hilltop is?”
SEVENTEEN
Mike Xavier and Jean-Pi
erre burst back through the gates of the docks after yelling at his men guarding them to get the damned things open. They collapsed into a heap together, having run over half a mile through the thick fog and fearing that at any second they would have the undead fall upon them and tear them apart. Cans and packets of food littered the roadway as terrified men and women dropped their precious cargo in the fearful flight.
It was desperate, it was ill-disciplined, and it was a shambles. Xavier knew it as much as everyone else, and he felt responsible for it. He had been the one to yell at everyone to run when they had been attacked in the shop, and he knew in hindsight that he should have organised a dedicated guard and kept the others calm and orderly, instead of the mass panic they were now looking at with a destructive air of ‘every man for themselves’.
He retained enough sense to order his men to take the food from the scavengers who flooded through the gate, each wearing similar looks of terror and relief in equal parts to be safely back inside the wire, but having seen the horrors that still existed out there. The pile of random foodstuff grew large. Large enough, he dared hope, to sustain them for a time. It would, if only he could ensure that some sort of order was maintained, because he had been horrified to see how rapidly normal people devolved to demonstrate the Darwinist theory of it being only the fittest who survived. He caught his breath, remembered what he must look like to the scared people who had been out there and deciding that he shouldn’t be just as terrified as they were, and so he stood with his feet planted widely in the open gateway with the gore-smeared axe held in two hands.
“Put the food down there,” he called to the people who trickled back in, opening his mouth to repeat the instruction to the shapes emerging from the fog but catching them in his throat as he began to speak them. The shapes morphed into two people, one of them being half carried with a limp arm slung over the neck and shoulders of another. Xavier froze, his heart rate feeling as though it had suddenly tripled, and the axe moved with a mind of its own as he let it swing low in one hand and draw back ready to take a batter’s pose like he readied himself to play baseball.
“Stop there,” he growled, “don’t come any closer.”
At the tone of his voice, instantly conveying fear and threat, Jean-Pierre appeared at his side, having abandoned his task of ensuring that people gave up their haul as they returned. Xavier felt the man’s breath behind his neck, heard the miniscule gasp of air inwards as he saw what had prompted the challenge and recognised it immediately.
“She’s okay,” the person carrying the other shape called out weakly, “she just hurt her ankle is all.”
“I said stop,” Xavier warned again, real menace edging the words this time.
“No,” pleaded the shape, coming into focus as the edges of the fog released them, “she’s just twisted her ankle…”
At the mention of the afflicted area, Xavier and Jean-Pierre both glanced down to see the white ruffles of the woman’s leg warmers soaked in a dark red. The blood had run through to her white trainers, showing a stark contrast with the other foot, and as their eyes glanced back upwards they saw her head lolling and her eyes rolling back into her head as though she was suffering from a fever. Her face was so white she seemed almost see-through. Her mouth moved constantly, weakly, as though she was trying to speak or suckle like a baby. Xavier knew he should say something, knew he should lay down the law and protect everyone and say something about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or something like that, but the words just wouldn’t come to him. His mouth flapped uselessly, just as the woman’s did.
“You must leave her,” Jean-Pierre snapped, “she has the sickness. She cannot come in here.”
“But,” the man protested pathetically, “please?”
“No,” Xavier said, finally finding his voice, “she’s infected and she will turn into one of them. She has to stay out there.”
The look of ruined hope transformed in the man’s eyes into a sudden and foul loathing.
“Who the fuck are you to say who comes in and who stays out?” his face contorted into a hateful rictus, and he saw the eyes of the two men barring his way turn suddenly wide and white in response. Filled with hope that he could intimidate them, he carried on.
“She’s fine, now get out of my fucking way or else I swear to fucking God, I wi…”
The two men facing him flinched backwards as though he was about to vomit something noxious on them. He knew then that it was something else, something awful that had scared them and nothing to do with his anger. He had that sinking feeling that he was being watched, that something was behind him as the hairs on his neck stood up at oblique angles to his skin. Lowly, inexorably, he turned his head to look behind him.
He stopped when he had turned halfway to his right. He realised, too late, that the weight of the woman was no longer hanging on him and dragging him down. She was standing on her own, all reliance on him gone in an instant. Their eyes met, and despite the poor light and the heavy fog, the last thing he saw before the pain of teeth ripping the flesh from his neck forced his consciousness to flee was the milky white orbs or her eyes.
Jean-Pierre and Xavier moved as one. Like a choreographed pair of dancers, they both moved forwards diagonally and crossed one another’s paths to swing their weapons in almost perfect unison into the heads of the two unfortunate scavengers standing before them. As they dropped, screams sounded nearby as others witnessed the terror of the undead, stirred from their hibernation by the desperation of living humans for sustenance, reaching their gates.
As the captain and his first mate swung the gates closed just in time, two last healthy survivors ran in before the rotting smell hit them and the small wave of musty, hungry, zombies flowed out of the fog to reach for them.
The last man, clutching his shoulder, fell at Xavier’s feet as Jean-Pierre locked off the gate and immediately reversed the heavy spike he carried to start puncturing skulls and crushing the cruel metal tip through eye sockets. The gate flexed worryingly, bending inwards under the weight of a concerted attack, the likes of which they hadn’t suffered before as they had always kept a low profile. Xavier stood, grabbed a handful of the man’s jacket and hauled him bodily to his feet with a strength that his thin frame didn’t imply.
“Hey,” he said to the man as he turned to leave. The nervous eyes rounded on his, almost pleadingly, until he saw Xavier pointing to the bag of food he was carrying and directing him to leave it with the rest.
The panic subsided after an hour. The death toll was taken, and they believed that they had lost four from the names of people who were unaccounted for. Two of those were put down directly outside the gates and were visible, but the two others seemed not to have made it back at all. The food haul, however, was hardly worth it. They could expect to survive for maybe a week on what they had brought back, and that was only if it could be rationed out and protected. Without any real weapons there was no hope of maintaining order through force, and Xavier knew it was only a matter of time before they saw a repeat of the events which had led to their poorly planned shopping run.
He had recruited Jean-Pierre, who had agreed unquestioningly as was his way with the captain he had known and sailed with for years, and two others. One was from his crew, a squat and unsmiling engineer known amongst the crew as Jase. Xavier didn’t know if his real name was Jason or whether it was a nickname he didn’t understand, but he filed that away with the whole raft of other shit he didn’t need to know. He was completely taken aback by one of the other volunteers as one of ‘the others’ as he thought of them came up with the idea and wouldn’t take no for an answer when she demanded to come with them. Philippa McAndrew was short and small, what some men would call petite but Jean-Pierre, who preferred his women big, said that she had the body of a young boy. That put Xavier off looking at her, given the unfortunate connotations of what JP had said, but there was no denying the fire in her. She had a broad accent, which to those who had never spe
nt much time on the far side of the Atlantic would simply fall under the category of ‘American’.
Her idea was for a small group, say no more than four, to take one of the many smaller boats from the dock to sail up or down from the city keeping close to land and hence staying well and truly off the radar of whatever warships patrolled the stretch of water between the mainland and Ireland. A small group would also allow them to keep a low profile and not attract any of the things out there, and that way they could bring back food without causing a big commotion like they had earlier.
Xavier tried to let the implied criticisms ride, but her words put him in a dark mood.
“I don’t know how you do things in America,” he said, “but over here it’s not polite t…”
“Canada,” she said flatly, cutting him off.
“Eh?”
“I’m from Canada, not America, but please, you were saying?”
Xavier felt all fight evaporate from him in annoyance as he realised he had nothing to say in the first place. He diverted the conversation with practicalities.
“You got a weapon?” he asked her.
“I’ll find something,” she said, “when do we go?”
Xavier looked at Jean-Pierre.
“As soon as you’ve got a weapon,” he told her.
The small white fishing boat chugged lazily out of the docks and turned south to skim along the dark waters of the River Mersey in search of food.
Back at the port, in the bowels of The Maggie, where the survivors all huddled for warmth and companionship to stave off the fear and the cold, one man was absent from the group. He had taken himself away, as the noises he was making were threatening to draw attention to him He gasped and moaned as he burned up from the inside with a fever the likes of which he had never known or even thought possible. He rocked in the corner of the bathroom, hidden behind the dirty shower curtain as if believing the filthy plastic sheet could block out the world and keep him from being discovered. The only lighting there came from the weak glow of an emergency bulb, but with eyes accustomed to the dark it was enough to see in at least some detail. Slowly, stifling the sobs as he inched the material up his arm, he exposed the bite mark on his wrist. It was swollen, angry, and in place of what he would expect to be red flesh there was black. Or at least such a dark purple that it seemed black in the low light. He knew he had been infected, but the fear of receiving an axe to the head was somehow more terrifying to him than dying a slow and painful death through the fever which tortured his body. He was too frightened, too fevered, to know what would happen when he finally succumbed to the sickness, and he couldn’t help himself. He closed his eyes, resting the burning skin of his face against the cool tiles of the shower cubicle, and he fell asleep.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 76