Johnson, unfamiliar MP5 squeezed tightly into his shoulder, pinged off rounds in ones and twos, depending on how accurate his opening shot had been. He held his head up away from the weapon to view the bigger picture, and he saw it at the same time as Bufford and Astrid. None of them had chance to call it before their sniper shouted down the warning to them from his perch.
“Too many,” he called out, “fall back.”
It was the worst news they could receive, and it spelled dread for them. They knew they could never have stood a chance against the kind of hordes they had experienced back when it began, but those mass gatherings, those unexplained events, those undead singularities had all but stopped as soon as the weather had begun to turn towards winter. They had dared to hope that they wouldn’t be forced to face down another crowd, but none of them was so naïve as to think that they couldn’t one day be surprised by the Screechers. That was why their immediate plan was to bug out, to withdraw, in the opposite direction of the attack if they ever found themselves facing an onslaught like they did now.
Despite planning for it, expecting it even, the savagery and speed of the wave of dead meat emerging from the countryside took their breath away with how fast things could go from normal to neck deep in shit.
“Pull back,” Johnson echoed, hearing a rising flurry of muted gunshots as the defenders on the line upped their intensity at the risk of reduced accuracy. It was a vestige of training against an enemy that had a fear of incoming bullets. It was designed to make any attackers put their head down to avoid the incoming rounds and give those defenders precious moments to move. Bufford and Astrid reloaded as they ran, their movements instinctive and well-practised, and they climbed aboard one by one as Johnson started the truck. Hampton paused at the back, looking up at the only man of his unit left alive as far as he knew. Enfield wasn’t shimmying down the ladder to join him. He wasn’t even looking in the direction of the attacking wave of zombies, but instead he was staring aghast behind him and rapidly struggling to slip the strap of his larger rifle free of his shoulder to bring it to bear on the road leading away behind them.
Hampton followed his gaze, looking up at the small rise in the road behind them questioningly with his breath held. He expected to see the heads of yet more zombies appearing at any point; expected a larger horde to attack them from the rear, but instead he saw the dull green painted metal of a British army military vehicle. His heart soared for the briefest of moments, suddenly happy that the others had found them and rescued them at the best possible moment. He turned to shout to the others that the squadron was there, that they could help them take on the horde, but just as he did the impossibly loud clattering sound of a heavy machine gun erupted from behind him. He followed the flashes of tracer ammunition, which over the short distance it fired made it appear as though laser beams were being shot from the turret of the small tank, and those beams aimed directly up at the small balcony of the house where Enfield had been.
“Go!” Hampton roared as he hopped down painfully, pulling closed the roller shutter of the rear of the truck as he did, pushing Astrid bodily back inside as she had moved to follow him, before slapping a flat hand twice on the side of the vehicle, “get out of here!”
In the front seat beside Johnson, Bufford looked wide eyed at the SSM and shook his head. The message was clear; no way could they get out if they stayed to mix it with whatever living enemy now attacked them.
One word ran through Johnson’s mind: Nevin.
It could only be him, much the same as the vehicle being used to assault them was the same Ferret they had heard in the town where Enfield had been fired upon. They were stuck. Stuck like rats in a barrel and the lid was closing fast. They had only one option to get away, and that was to force open the barricade in front of them against the tide of Screechers and drive away, leaving their two marines to an unknown fate.
“Fucking go!” Hampton yelled again, barely audible over the big gun firing on full automatic and disintegrating the house as great chunks of tiled roof and masonry fell away.
“We can’t leave them,” Johnson said, knowing it was foolish to hesitate or even consider staying to fight alongside them against far superior forces, even if the undead weren’t attacking them at the same time.
“We have to,” Bufford told him. “You’d do the same.”
He knew he would. He would sacrifice himself to give the others a chance at escape, a chance to get the kids out to safety no matter how slim their odds of survival. Johnson closed his eyes momentarily, glanced in the driver’s side mirror at the small but devastatingly impervious vehicle behind them, and he let up the clutch to jolt the truck forwards. It bumped into the barricade, into the part left on reasonably preserved rubber instead of flat metal, and he used the torque of the diesel engine to force it clear. Screechers fell under the weight of the rusting, cold metal and the way the car swung outwards cleared a path for their truck to nose its way out of the village and leave behind not only their friends, but all of the hard work and hope and stored supplies they’d been relying on.
NINETEEN
Enfield saw the turret swing towards him and, for the second time in this short episode in his life, he found himself the unfortunate focus of attention for the commander and gunner of the Ferret and the current subject of the thirty-cal machine gun’s attention. He hadn’t had a chance to even bring the Accuracy International up to his eye before the huge bullets tore the air towards him. He threw himself backwards, straight through the single pane window of the house with the pretty balcony set at the perfect height to look out over the fields as though there was no village there.
The concussive ripping booms of the big projectiles hammering past him was deafening, and he could think of nothing other than trying to get clear of the onslaught. He lay on the musty carpet of the bedroom, glass and brick dust falling over him as he closed his mouth and forced his eyes shut. He crawled forwards blindly, trying to put any distance between him and the gun even if it was a few pathetically desperate feet of bedroom floor. He opened his mouth, gasping a breath in and immediately choking it out as the dust stuck to his throat. He coughed it out, sensing a break in the firing by the absence of the waves of pressure as opposed to the lack of noise. As his hearing returned to him, a more familiar sound reached up to his hiding place; the crackle of an SA80 rifle firing bursts of automatic 5.56. Enfield furrowed his dust-covered brow in thought.
Why would Bill Hampton be firing small arms at a bloody tank? Surely he wouldn’t waste the ammo.
Another noise pierced his consciousness, this one dialling into his sense to inspire fear at a molecular level. The shriek of the Screechers sensing fresh meat fired a round straight to his fear receptors as it sparked something so primal in him. His fuddled and assaulted brain made the tenuous connections between the gunfire belonging to his sergeant and the attention of the undead bastards drawn to the noise, and all thoughts of the scout car and its evil thirty-cal were forgotten as he forced himself back to his feet to return to the ravaged remains of the once picturesque balcony.
Only part of the standing area survived, and great chunks of the exterior wall of the house had disappeared. Piles of rubble rested on the frozen ground below, and Enfield regained the cold, clear air of the outside world in time to see the back tyre of the Ferret bounce over a lump of stone with a swathe of off-yellow cladding still attached to it. The cladding crumbled away under the weight of the heavy wheel, but the attention of the gunner had passed him by. The turret swung to the left, the barrel depressed and a long, rippling burst of fire spewed from it as it rolled forwards. The sound of Hampton’s rifle went quiet, stopping at the same time as a yelp of pain and the crumbling rumble of a collapsing building. The Ferret went on, switching its aim to point dead ahead where it fired burst after burst of rounds dead ahead, no doubt to try and bring down the escaping box truck which symbolised the entire reason that he and Hampton had stayed behind in sacrifice; so that they could get away.
He saw sparks ping off the left side of the scout car as it was stopped, paused in the gap in the barricade as the driver shunted it back and forth to get the correct angle to escape the village enclave. The car stopped as the turret swung to the left in search of a target. Elated that Hampton was still alive enough to shoot at them, Enfield’s sudden happiness was marred with the knowledge that his sergeant was about to be riddled with heavy calibre bullets.
He blinked his eyes to clear the dust from his vision, shook his head to reset his senses, and pulled the heavy rifle into his shoulder to take aim at the single point of vulnerability for small arms. It was a difficult shot; difficult to the point of impossibility but he wasn’t just anyone with a gun.
He was an expert. He was the consummate professional, and his chosen profession was accuracy. He could put a bullet wherever he wanted, and right then he aimed for the tiny slats of the left side viewing port where the gunner would be looking out of.
It was desperate, but it was all he could do. He aimed, not having to correct for wind of drop of the bullet but putting the crosshair above his target as he was firing at a tenth of the range that the big rifle was sighted for, and he fired.
“Who the fuck is doing that?” Michaels asked over the headset, not expecting Nevin to answer.
“Doing what?”
“Some twat’s shooting at us! Left side. Stop a minute…”
Nevin chuckled nastily and stopped the Ferret as he kept his eyes forward in search of the truck that had disappeared. Most of the zombies they had herded were dead now; crushed by wheels or else thrown down by bullets. They had driven around to the far side of the village to barge their way through the barricade as soon as the attack came from the other side. Nevin was impatient, he wanted to press ahead and chase down the box truck to take whatever was in the back of it. The six others hiding in their cars nearby, ready to move in and take the stockpiles, would stay hunkered down until they had rolled through and dealt with every threat. As much as he wanted to chase down Johnson, who he had guessed was in the truck, he did as he was told and waited for Michaels behind him to spin the barrel of the gun and deal with the idiot who might as well have been throwing rocks at them. The man behind him manning the gun was consumed with a swift victory, distracted by the destruction of their undead conscripts, and he had broken his own cardinal rule.
Never leave an enemy in your rear. Ever.
Nevin waited, looking forwards until a hollow, metallic scream echoed inside the cramped interior and deafened him with a ringing thrum. He couldn’t understand what had happened, and in his deafness, he tried to speak and heard only a muted croak in his head; as though he could feel the vibration but not hear the sound. He dabbed his fingers at his head, feeling hot liquid on his skin and looking down in disbelief at the bright blood. He reached back to his scalp, feeling sharper chunks alongside the hot gelatinous globules adorning his hair, and he squirmed in his seat to view the gruesome destruction wrought by a single armour-piercing bullet aimed at precisely the right spot.
It had been Enfield’s second bullet that had managed to penetrate the latticed metal of the viewing port. Michaels leaned towards the aperture, pressing his face right up to the gap just as the bullet pierced the armoured skin and twisted to warp and break apart. As it did, the trajectory of the spinning lump of metal varied to pass through the bridge of his nose and blew his right eye out through the temple. He was dead before he knew that he had even been shot, before he could sight in on the injured man in camouflage combat uniform and finish him off, and his lifeless body slumped behind his driver with half of his face blown away. The bullet embedded itself inside the cramped interior somewhere, missing the driver by mere inches as he had no idea what had happened.
Enfield let out his breath, taking his eye away from the scope slightly as his hand moved the well-oiled bolt and his fingertips caught the expended bullet casing as he had with every carefully placed round he had ever fired through the weapon. The turret stopped moving and the Ferret stayed still for a long time. The sniper was weakened by his desperate escape from the gun, and he wavered and lowered the gun as his legs threatened to give out. He slumped down, the pain across the back of his right shoulder erupting in an agony he had never thought possible, and he slid off the destroyed edge of the balcony to land heavily on the cold ground below. He blinked slowly, each closure of his eyes getting longer than the last, until the darkness and the cold took over.
Nevin, when his senses were restored, had to stifle a laugh. He weighed up the pros and cons: It was unfortunate that Johnson and the others with him had escaped, and it was less than ideal that whatever guns and food they had stockpiled were mostly gone with them. There were stacks of shotguns and plenty of ammunition for them, but the obvious lack of anything good combined with the missing people made it clear that they had missed out on something.
It was good, despite the shock and the gore adorning the back of his head, that Michaels was gone, because it left it wide open for him to take over the Hilltop as his own. It was far easier to return with his body from what he could call a successful raid, abandon Michaels’ despotic vision of hunting escapees down and generally make life feel a little easier for everyone who would be happier to serve him and make his life rosy.
The vile winter would end eventually, and after that he would enjoy himself. He had even decided to be generous, ordering the shocked foot soldiers he had travelled with to take everything from the big house and help him drag the near-headless body out of his wagon. One of them asked if they should bury Michaels.
“Would he waste time and effort digging a hole for you?” Nevin asked them in return. No threat or malice in his voice, only the stark honesty of his words which resonated with the others. They took what they wanted from the village, dispatching the few lurching, staggering corpses that remained in the area. A few stragglers had followed the main group but moved more slowly than the others, and they had to be dealt with by the two people left on guard. Nevin stayed in the Ferret, electing not to add a gunner to sit behind him as it would take too long to train someone in the very basics of how the gun operated. He decided to recruit a driver for himself at some point in the near future, but his list of considerations was huge and growing by the minute. He saddled up his small force, looking back at the destruction they had wrought on their unsuspecting enemy with a cruel satisfaction.
After they had left, when silence had descended on the once peaceful village, along with the soft blanket of fresh snow, a pile of bricks thrown down from the corner of a partly destroyed house shifted to cascade rubble and the powdery white dust to the dark smears exposed by the movement. Sitting up and looking around with a stunned sense of confusion, Bill Hampton tried to figure out what had happened. The last thing he knew was that he’d been firing a pointless barrage at the armoured vehicle in impotent rage, just as a final ‘fuck you’ to try and spend his life giving the others an extra second to get away. The turret had spat flame in his direction, deafening him as heavy bullet after heavy bullet tore down a section of wall behind. Massive chunks of masonry and brickwork had fallen on him, striking him hard in the back of the skull and burying him under the rubble. Now, awake and only half sensible, he clawed his way out of the pile of bricks and dragged himself along with no idea where he was heading. He made it to his feet uncertainly, staggering like one of the undead, only less aware of the world surrounding him.
He found a piece of metal in a pile of rubble that didn’t belong, a straight line protruding up at a diagonal angle, and he dropped to his knees to follow the cold pipe into a small snowdrift to trace its origin. It wasn’t a snowdrift, but merely a barely warm body covered in camouflage material, blood, brick dust and fresh snowfall.
“Get up,” he grumbled thickly through a mouth full of dust and blood, “on your fucking feet, lad.”
The pile groaned, moving to expose a vicious red line scored across the burnt patch of uniform. Hampton pulled at him, dragging h
im out and falling backwards off his knees for them both to land nearly face to face. The battered features of marine sniper Enfield came slowly into focus and opened his eyes to regard his sergeant.
“Sarge?” he croaked, like a child emerging from a nightmare and seeking the comfort of a parent.
“It’s me, lad,” he said kindly, “it’s me. I’ve got you.”
Enfield came around as slowly as Hampton had, and broke out into a crippling shiver, whereas the older man seemed not to feel the cold. He looked at the thing in his hands, the beautifully crafted weapon capable of killing at over a mile away if the person holding it had the requisite skill. Enfield had the skill, but he no longer had the weapon. Somehow, probably during the fall he knew he must have had, the breech of the gun had struck a rock hard and bent out of shape. Even if it could be mended to allow the trapped bolt to run smoothly free, he wouldn’t trust it not to explode with the first bullet he would fire through it. His beloved gun was gone; sacrificed to the fight and having earned its place by that sacrifice. Enfield looked around dumbly, not sure what he needed, but totally sure that he needed something. He felt naked somehow, and incomplete.
Unaware of his desperate confusion, Hampton’s eye landed on a dark colour among the snow-covered detritus. He stumbled to it, dragged it free of the fallen timber and stone, and returned to his stunned marine. He forced the small rifle into his hands, clasping his fingers around it as though the weapon could revive him; could resuscitate his senses.
It did. His frozen fingers clasped the dark wood of the stock as he blinked his way back into alertness. As he did, a flutter in his eyelids told Hampton that the pain had come back to him along with the memory of what had happened, of the massive devastation and unimaginable change in such a brutally short time frame. He doubled over, exposing the score mark across his right shoulder blade. Hampton fumbled at his pouches, coming out with a wound dressing which he shoved into the damaged clothing to cover as much of the injury as possible.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 78