They headed inland, away from the dangers of the sea and the warships that lurked off shore. Away from the big container ship and everything they owned. Away towards uncertainty. Away towards risk and adversity, with only the food they had found, the clothes on their backs and the makeshift weapons they clutched in cold, tired hands.
TWENTY-THREE
Charlie Daniels had half a dozen soldiers left with him, and although only a corporal he was the ranking man remaining at the big house. He did what he could, setting out his stall to the thirty people left there and asking them all to do their part to make it work. Large parts of the house were shut off, it being pointless to keep them open just to allow the draught to permeate the rest of the house. They contracted to the rooms nearest the kitchen, not even bothering with the second floor of the house any longer. The small amount of livestock they had left was housed in the wide inner courtyard which was destined to become a vegetable garden as soon as the weather thawed. The nearby farm still had to be visited when the fresh vegetables were needed, but essentially with fewer than a third of their number remaining, life was significantly easier, especially as their stores would stretch to fulfill their requirements for winter, and then some.
The place had taken on an almost eerie feel, like a ghost ship or a deserted town, and no sooner had the helicopter taken off in a swirling maelstrom of whipped-up snow and the others left by vehicle, than the power struggle began.
“We need one person on watch each night,” he said, “but everyone else needs to know what to do if the alarm is raised. In the daytimes we need to keep on top of the food and the firewood, but also we need to keep going out to look for other people who might have survived the wint…”
“Who died and left you in charge?” asked a whining yet deep voice. With such a small group remaining, the speaker couldn’t hide, but it was the same vocal man who had tried and failed to upstage the captain when he spoke to them. It was the same man who seemed to be at the heart of every shred of disharmony, every hint of discord, and Daniels knew that he had to be dealt with before he made a play for control that he likely couldn’t handle. He had to nip this in the bud, but without using force. He had to show that he was a better candidate for leadership than the budding communist in their midst.
“Nobody died,” Daniels answered as though the question was a genuine one, “not recently, at least. What would you suggest we do?”
All eyes turned to the man, Gordon, who for a man who liked to use his above average height to intimidate people, seemed to visibly shrink a couple of sizes. Daniels executed it perfectly, as the onus was on the man for solutions instead of problems.
He had clearly stepped outside of his comfort zone. The silence was deafening, and it seemed to oppress him as though an entire football stadium had suddenly shut up just to hear the empty words he yelled at the players.
“Well, I…” Gordon said, realising that his only skill for public oration was to point out the flaws in other people’s plans and not come up with any of his own, “I think we should… well, we should…”
“Exactly,” Daniels said cutting him off, “that’s a great idea. So,” he said addressing them all again, “as my pal here has pointed out, we need to stay warm, stay fed and stay ready to defend ourselves. Everyone okay with that?”
They were. One of the civilians who stayed behind, unsurprisingly a farmer as they existed in a huge swathe of rich farmland, had offered to take the lead with the horticultural matters. Another had offered the services of him and his wife to look after the small amount of livestock they had, and both of these offers were well received. The wives, falling into the status quo of gender stereotypes, took up residence in the kitchen where the warm hearth tended by Denise Maxwell and her followers was kept alive.
Daniels wished he had managed to keep her, along with her husband of course, but he knew that his choice to stay behind in the hope that the Squadron Sergeant Major was still out there somewhere would be a lonely one.
It really was easier with fewer people there, and if anything, the house was too big for their needs. Thoughts of moving elsewhere were abandoned as pointless, and there were so many plans to make and consider that his head was spinning. He set the guard for the night, having walked the defences out in front of the house for nothing much more than something to do, and he went to spend his evening sitting in the only environment he really felt comfortable in.
He climbed inside the Sultan, left parked in the expanse of the inner courtyard half transformed into their vegetable garden, settled into the uncomfortable canvas seat, careful not to spill the cocoa in his tin mug, and twiddled with the dials to listen in on different channels as though the repetition of old habits could bring him comfort.
“Charlie?” a voice shouted, startling him awake inside the chilly metal coffin. He had fallen asleep in there, kept warm by the auxiliary heater despite the uncomfortable seat, which spoke of how exhausted both physically and emotionally he was.
“In here,” he yelled, looking up at the closed hatch and mentally tutting at himself that the sound wouldn’t carry well. He stood and opened it, popping his head out and repeating his words. The chill morning air hit him hard after a night spent slightly warmer than was comfortable.
“Incoming,” the excited young trooper shouted, turning and running for the house as soon as he had passed his message. Daniels flew from the hatch of the Sultan like a grenade had just been dropped inside. So many thoughts and questions came to him – how many, what direction, how far away – but with nobody there to ask he just gripped his Sterling submachine gun and sprinted on stiff legs for the door. He burst through the house, other men throwing on heavy coats and smocks with weapons in hand ranging from their own automatic guns to shotguns used for hunting, and they jostled for position to get outside.
“Contact ahead,” shouted a trooper looking through binoculars, “on the road.”
“How many?” Daniels asked, the first question firing off from a list that had grown since he first heard the news.
“One,” came the reply, “looks like… like a bloody Montego!”
“A what?” Daniels asked, his slightly muddled brain trying to figure out how the Screechers had got their hands on the off-beige car he could now see approaching them.
“It’s weaving a bit,” the report carried on, “two inside from what I can see…”
“Stand to, stand to!” Daniels yelled, scattering the few trained men he had into defensive positions and confusing the civilians holding their shotguns until they hesitantly followed the soldiers and took up defensive positions. They waited, peering over the sights of their weapons at the car meandering its way towards them. It came on slowly, uncertainly and with a high-pitched sound of a revving engine in need of a higher gear. Daniels, amateur mechanic as everyone in the squadron had to be, guessed that it was probably a clutch synchromesh issue, and the driver had managed to get the car moving in gear and didn’t want to jeopardise their forward momentum by trying to be clever and selecting third when second kept them moving.
The car came to an abrupt stop, bumping nose first into a fence post and knocking it down before the driver overcorrected with an exaggerated snatch at the wheel to pitch them off the road into the shallower part of a ditch. Daniels stood, already running to them to offer help, as he shouted a warning to the others to keep their eyes open for bites.
When he yanked open the rear door behind the passenger, he froze. Slumped forwards, a mess of filthy camouflage uniform and assorted weapons, were two marines bleeding from half a dozen injuries.
“Sar'nt Hampton?” Daniels asked with disbelief, “what the bloody hell have you been up to?”
“Get him out,” Bill Hampton said as he fluttered a weak hand at the unconscious passenger. His eyes were rolling back in his head, a mixture of concussion and exhaustion combining to rob him of his consciousness. Daniels went to the far side of the vehicle and pulled open the dented door to reach in and retrieve the
marine sniper they had thought lost to them, along with others. As he reached in, a bolt of fur shot past so quickly that he couldn’t tell if it was brown or black or grey. Dismissing their third feline passenger for the time being and knowing that it would gnaw at him later, he dragged the bleeding Royal Marine out and yelled for others to help him. They were both carried, hands under armpits and gloves gripping trouser legs above their boots, into the house ahead of Daniels, who was left to retrieve the weapons from the car. A curious noise and a sensation not felt for many months nagged at his ankles and looking down, he saw the exposed back end of a cat that had its tail held high like a vehicle antenna. It snaked between his legs, coursing between them in an endless figure of eight like the symbol for infinity, and the rattling purr drifted up to him.
“Alright,” he told it, “there’s food inside.”
As though understanding him, or at least acknowledging that he had noticed it, the cat abandoned its racetrack around the man’s ankles and trotted away after the two men being hoisted up and carried.
The men were uninfected, which had been the primary concern especially for the seemingly negative contingent of the civilian population, and their injuries had been treated as well as they could manage. Mostly they were suffering from exhaustion and exposure, so getting them clean and warm was the best way to deal with them. Both men slept on mattresses dragged in front of a fire kept well stocked with the split logs of the ash tree in what had been the captain’s office. They slept through the following day until Hampton woke first and sat up groggily to try and clear his head. A large, grazed lump was raised up on the back of his skull and had clearly affected his ability to balance.
“You should rest, Sarge,” Daniels told him.
“No,” Hampton answered as he checked over the sleeping marine beside him, “I need a bloody drink.” Daniels didn’t think that was a very good idea, but then again neither was disagreeing with the man.
“No,” he insisted, “you need rest.”
“See these, lad?” Hampton asked, pointing two fingers on his left hand to his right sleeve, “these mean I tell you what to do, and you do it.” His eyes looked down to where his fingers rested, and instead of seeing the chevrons of his rank displayed he saw only the cold, bruised flesh of his upper arm.
“Ah, bollocks,” he said, dropping back down to the bed.
One of the women brought out a bottle from somewhere and used the tail of her apron to wipe clean a cup before pouring a decent glug and handing it to him. He took a sip, making an appreciative sounding grunt as he rolled it around his mouth and swallowed it. He looked up at Daniels, evidently assessing the man and showing neither disapproval or any sign of being impressed.
“You in charge then?”
“I suppose I am,” Daniels said.
“And the others? My Lieutenant?”
Daniels told him everything. About the helicopter evacuations, the failed resupply mission at the base, the winter and the shortage of food, then the announcement of the others up in Scotland. Hampton stopped him there, firing off a few questions about specifics; location, numbers, defences, before letting him resume. That led up to their arrival and Hampton was invited to reciprocate with their own story.
It was his turn to tell them everything. He recounted the helicopter crash, where so many brave men had fought through hell only to lose their lives in a bloody accident. The unfairness of it still stung him, and he shot a cautious glance at Enfield who still slept on his side with the puckered skin of the bullet score mark exposed on his right shoulder. He told Daniels about how the other half that particular equation had been lost; how he had found marine Leigh concertinaed with a crushed spine in the wreckage of the twisted airframe. He told them of the survivors, having to raise his voice to tell the excited corporal to wait after he had erupted on hearing Johnson’s name. He had to explain who Astrid Larsen was, as much as he knew anyway, and filled them in on the kids they had found living alone in all of the shit they had been wading through for months.
“Kids,” he told them, “little kids all on their own and doing just fine before we turned up.”
Then he crushed the re-inflated hopes of the army corporal and told them about the attack on their village. He told them about the savagery of the armoured gun rolling through their little hiding place and tearing down buildings with automatic fire. He said how he and Enfield had stayed and fired on the attackers to distract them long enough for Johnson and the others to get away. How they had come to after both thinking they would be paying the ultimate price only to find themselves banged up and all alone.
Going from elated to crushed once more, Daniels left them alone to eat and recover.
He busied himself for the rest of the day, trying to avoid too many questions so as not to have to give answers which depressed him, and when darkness threatened, he retreated to his place of comfort once more. His turning of dials was less enthusiastic than it had been the previous evening as the man he had hoped to make contact with was missing, with God knew what chasing him. The location Hampton had given them was half a day away in the snow at least, and from there he was so far behind their scent that attempting to track them down was less than pointless. He lapsed into a catatonic state of immobility, numb to everything including the cold coming in through the open hatch with a view to preventing him from falling asleep there again. A crackle of static came from one of the battered radio headphones left resting on the hook where they hung. Daniels looked at it, willing it to speak to him again and not believing that he hadn’t imagined it. He glanced away, convincing himself that the sound was in his head. It crackled again, too low to hear but rolling in a pattern that made him think of familiar words. He snatched them up, leaning forwards to grab them and force them over his head.
The sounds of the outside world went quiet, blocked out and replaced only with the rapid sounds of his breathing. Nothing happened, and his finger hovered of the transmit button before he took it away and reached up to pull off the headphones, annoyed with himself for allowing his imagination to interrupt normal programming. Just as he went to sack the activity as pointless, the noise came back to him loud and clear.
“Hello, any station, this is Foxtrot-three-three-alpha…” came a slow, almost bored sounding voice, as though the message had been repeated ad infinitum and no longer held any passion.
Daniels was certain that he had imagined it. There was no way that could be genuine.
“Hello, any station, any station, this is Foxtrot-three-three-alpha…”
Daniels stabbed his finger onto the transmit button and croaked out a response without allowing his voice to settle to its normal radio tone.
“Foxtrot-three-three-alpha, this is zero-bravo,” he said, snatching at the vehicle callsign from a lifetime ago, “is it really you?”
A pause on the other end made him doubt that he had heard it at all, that he was asleep and dreaming it.
“It’s really me,” Johnson said from fifty miles away sat in the slightly roomier and far more modern interior of the Warrior sat on the hilltop over the cliffs by the English Channel, “and, my God, it’s good to hear your voice.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The first day’s progress was pretty poor, Palmer had to admit. They had encountered too many obstacles and turned around too many times to make any distance, and their path north on the wider roads was blocked by a frozen shattered barricade of ruined bodies stretching out as far as they could see. The carnage was horrendous, but at least they were spared the stench that would probably be detectable from space when the weather warmed up again. There was no way through, and by nightfall on their first day they had barely made two hundred miles after having to backtrack and avoid the obstacle of dead.
They circled their wagons as such, occupying an empty building for a restless and uncomfortable night.
The following morning they were forced to keep to the smaller roads, which halved their average speed. The following day went better th
an the first, with Sergeant Strauss ranging ahead to scout the best path before the heavy truck followed under escort of the other Fox and the battered-looking Land Cruiser adopted by the SAS men. Fuel was found when they ran dry, but they had brought enough food carried by them individually that they weren’t forced to scavenge. Everywhere there was evidence of hordes having passed through, where entire wide swathes of landscape still showed signs of having been trampled flat by thousands of pairs of undead feet.
“Choke point ahead,” Strauss reported via radio, “too narrow for the Bedford.”
“Can you force it?” Palmer asked, feeling the pregnancy of the pause as the question was considered.
“Roger,” the response came.
Ahead, peering out of the limited viewing slit of the Fox, Strauss instructed his driver to slowly force the truck blocking their path out of the way. Being unable to get through the village would mean a long detour and another hour turning around to backtrack and locate an alternative route.
“Easy,” Strauss cautioned, “don’t damage us…”
As soon as he had issued the warning, the truck blocking the way shunted forward with a metallic crack followed by a creaking noise as the snapped handbrake cable could no longer arrest the momentum of the heavy vehicle. It rolled, gathering speed on the very shallow slope, and crashed into the glass front of a building.
It was a cinema, only a small one but one which had been occupied when an infected person staggered inside to flee the horrors on the street. Everyone inside had been turned, and as none of them retained enough fine motor control to operate the fiddly door locks, that was where they remained until the sound of shattering glass woke them from the state of inactivity they had all fallen into. As though heat radiated through them and melted their coma-like states, the noise woke them in waves and sparked their animation until they all funnelled out of the building and turned their ashen faces and clouded eyes towards the main attraction: the sound of an engine and a moving vehicle.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 81