Astrid Larsen walked fast and smooth away from the rear of the Warrior, which she covered long enough to ensure the occupants were safe behind the closed door. Her gun was up, tucked tightly into her shoulder with her right cheek pressing into the parachute stock and she moved with the grace of a dancer. Everywhere her eyes looked, her upper body pointed. Everything she looked directly at was automatically lined up in the sights of the MP5 so the only decision she needed to make was to shoot or not to shoot.
Three of them fell in rapid succession; their switches were flipped as each emerging Screecher collected a 9mm bullet directly through their open mouths to blow out the brain stem. No other threats emerged, leaving her to make the next decision.
Through the trees or back down the road? she asked herself. The balance was between open space where she could see the threats coming from distance, and simply facing what seemed like fewer of them among the trees. She opted for the off-road route, stalking between the branches faster than anyone watching would expect, without any evidence of noise as her boots weaved her in a wide loop back towards the barn they had slept in.
Twice more, she stopped to dispatch a pair of loping Screechers who were bumping their way awkwardly through the foliage towards the retreating sounds of an engine and the renewed rattle of gunfire. A third, impaled on the low, broken branch of a fir tree through one shoulder, reached for her until the bullet punched through its skull and turned it off.
Buffs got the chain gun working again, she mused over the raucous sound in the distance. Keeping a small portion of her brain tethered to the others wasn’t a distraction. She knew that for certain as a grey, balding head appeared through a copse of holly leaves with one prickly green addition sprouting comically from its face, and she drilled it through the mouth with a single round from almost a dozen paces away.
That part of her mind, that small percentage of her consciousness that imagined what they would be thinking and saying and doing inside the Warrior, was what kept her mind sharp and focused. If she thought fully about what she had just done, if she logically assessed the facts coldly, she would be tempted to turn and run back to the safety of the armoured fighting vehicle and hammer on the door to be let back in.
As it was, keeping a part of her consciousness with them, what she was doing was just like holding her breath as she ducked underwater. She knew she could go back to safety whenever she wanted, and that knowledge gave her the courage and confidence to do what needed to be done.
Breaking through the foliage onto a wide field of overgrown grass, she scanned her surroundings and detected none of them. Pausing for a handful of seconds, she listened and absorbed every hint of sounds to map the small battlefield better in her mind.
Gunfire and engine behind and to my right, she thought as she marked the position of the others.
Shrieks to my left and behind, the slower-moving Screechers following the destruction wrought by their light tank.
She ran towards the farm, body low and gun still tucked tightly into her shoulder, as fast as she could without winding herself like a racehorse blowing out its lungs. She paused again nearer the collection of low buildings and listened once more.
A heavy sound like meat hitting a butcher’s block rang out ahead of her past a line of evergreens, focusing her attention on the nearest farm buildings. Choosing that as the most likely source of something out of the ordinary—or at least more out of the ordinary for the situation—she headed towards it.
Nine more wandering corpses went down to her weapon, some requiring more than one shot on the rare occasions she missed. Such misses were due to an unexpected stumble of her moving target, or an unlucky deflection that removed only part of the skull, which the Screecher no longer needed in order to function.
This was no super-human ability, she knew. It was no natural skill that others should be jealous of, but instead was the result of thousands of hours of practice and endless training; like the end result of a knife being sharpened.
The same sound as before, which she now recognised as a body hitting concrete from height, diverted her attention slightly to the right of her approach. Ducking low to shoot a look around the corner of a building, she saw three corpses mangled in a pile underneath a steel ladder. Two others milled about at ground level, reaching upwards and lacking the ability to climb the ladder, which told her that there must be something above her that excited them.
Perhaps a ten-year-old boy defending his position? She thought as she delivered two execution-style deaths to the backs of their heads.
The silent thought was answered by a booming report of a shotgun and the ballistic arrival of another corpse splattering and crunching into the concrete ahead of her, accompanied by a hissed whine of, “Shit!” from up above. Looking at the body still trying to move as the brain wasn’t destroyed, she took in the left arm, which was missing from the mid-forearm. With an exaggerated gasp of fear and understanding, Astrid leapt backwards as the thing rounded on her and lashed out its right arm with a speed and accuracy she hadn’t seen up close before.
The terror of realising she’d come within arm’s reach of a faster one—a Lima—took her breath away momentarily, as the thing began to use one hand and one stump to propel itself towards her along the ground, dragging destroyed legs to scrape the jagged shards of exposed bone noisily along the rough surface.
The mental numbness caused by the realisation evaporated in a flash. Specifically a tiny, suppressed muzzle flash as four single shots spat from the barrel of her gun to punch into the skull and end the grotesque movement. She was panting hard and whipped her head from left to right as she realised her situational awareness had suffered a lapse due to the fear of coming face to face—or boots to face, more accurately—with a Lima.
“More coming ‘round the left side!” came a muted shout from above her, Peter trying to keep his voice down and balancing that fear of discovery against the desperate need to warn her of the danger. Larsen looked up, saw the silhouette of the boy’s head and shoulders peeking over the edge of the flat roof and looked to her left to raise the gun in preparation for a renewed assault.
“My left,” Peter hissed. She looked up, saw the direction he was pointing in and glanced down in time to see the front-runners of the wave of rotting meat spill over themselves to get to her. Her mind took less than half a second to calculate speeds and distances, and she knew they would be on her before she could get clear of the building. Without hesitation she dropped the gun on its sling and gripped the cold metal rungs of the galvanised steel ladder to catapult herself upwards.
As she sprinted vertically, arms and legs pumping like a spider monkey in full flight, her brain gave her a quiet admonishment.
Stranding yourself on a roof with a young child isn’t the best idea you have ever had…
She told herself to shut up, and climbed.
SEVENTEEN
Downes, wearing fresh military uniform with as much of his old equipment that could be salvaged after a rigorous bleaching, stood when his colleague entered the room. In any other regiment, in many other situations in fact, he would have offered Colonel Kelly a salute.
Even with the obvious brevet rank and field promotion to lieutenant-colonel, Kelly still wore no badge of rank, just as Downes or any of the Special Air Service personnel didn’t, but something in him, so far as Downes could see, had changed.
“Downes,” he acknowledged almost abruptly with a rapid gesture of one hand to a seat opposite his desk. “How are you feeling now?”
“Much better, Kelly, thank you.”
“Heard about the old hypothermia…” Kelly said in a tone that needled Downes for a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Touch of exposure is all,” Downes told him dismissively, internally bridling at the unintended implication of weakness. “The doctor assured me it was a combination of exhaustion and lack of food that made me susceptible. Been rather pushing it on too little food and sleep recently.”
Kell
y smiled. It was a companionable smile and one that harked back to the start of their acquaintance, if not friendship. The two young parachute regiment lieutenants hadn’t known each other before both arrived at Stirling Lines for their first crack at selection. Downes, eager to drink in the full experience, carried his own heavy bags and stepped down onto the platform at Hereford train station to join the milling group of fit-looking young men, reluctant to speak to the other candidates from the off. Kelly, in contrast, bore no shame in his family’s wealth and arrived at the gates in a Rolls Royce driven by an employee of his father. He dressed and acted the same as the other men, was just as fit and tough as many and indeed more so than quite a few, but his underlying hint of arrogance put some people on edge.
Both men had performed well in those early days of no sleep and seemingly permanent physical training, often finishing each forced march or run at very close intervals. Where they were pushed harder than the other ranks were before or after the day’s physical work was done. It could be anything from having to get up an hour before the men and plan the route for the day, to being pulled aside at a checkpoint to be asked to solve random mathematical equations. All of these additional pressures were designed to ensure the officers’ minds were as sharp as their bodies and fit for the task of commanding Her Majesty’s Special Forces.
Their physical and mental abilities marked them out in the first two weeks of gruelling, constant competition, as both had shown the unmeasurable quantity which made a man perfect for such endeavours. There was an attitude to each of them, a hidden layer of resilience, which made them both push through barriers and even ignore pain, which allowed them to achieve goals that would be otherwise impossible.
Of the commissioned ranks in their intake, only two men survived until the vaunted escape and evasion phase. This part of their training, at the final stages of their initial selection, was where their mental resolve and strength of character was truly tested. It didn’t matter if they’d successfully evaded capture, as at the final checkpoint in the exercise they would be taken, hooded, and subjected to the same treatment that any man taken in the first few days would be. Trying to maintain a watch on the number of hours and days they had been held, deprived of their senses and forced to maintain painful stress positions, both men emerged unscathed to be told that the exercise was over. They weren’t told if they had passed it, that torture at least hadn’t ended, but both men eventually earned their sand-coloured berets and both performed so well that they were invited to return years later at the rank of major.
“No Guinness and sausage sandwiches this time, eh?” Kelly joked, earning an unforced chuckle as the two men shared a memory from so long ago. The cans of Guinness, poured into tin cups to settle out and be drinkable, had been smuggled into camp illicitly to accompany the fried sausages crammed into the thick slices of bread. Both the sandwiches and the Guinness provided the two young men with their much-needed additional calories.
“No,” Downes admitted with a smile which faded when their current business reasserted itself into the forefront of their minds. “My chaps told me a few things that have caused concern, Kelly…” he said, hoping the man would still be in the mindset of their shared past and be forthcoming.
The look on Kelly’s face darkened. He leaned back and surveyed the man before him, before taking a sharp breath in and speaking fast as he leaned forwards.
“I’ve got over four hundred miles of coast to patrol, and I have fewer than two hundred men to do it. Granted, most of that coastline is impassable but that’s beside the point. Men need to sleep, men need to eat, civilians need to be kept in check, and quarantine procedures for you ragtag bunch sapped more of my reserves than you could imagine.” Downes sat forwards slightly, as if planning to interrupt, but he kept silent, watching the colonel closely as he poured excuses over him.
“I have people making demands of me every day—not least of all the few members of parliament who still believe they are somehow relevant to the current situation—and I still have to keep this island safe from the ever-present threat of an outbreak. So tell me, Major, what concerns do you have?”
Downes sat back and kept his face neutral. Although he hadn’t worked alongside Kelly for years, he knew the man well enough to recognise the stress behind his words. This was a man who came from wealth and privilege; a man accustomed to success. He chose to engage in a life of hardship to prove himself worthy above all others, and yet…
“And I can see you’re doing an admirable job, given the circumstances, Colonel,” Downes said carefully. “I doubt many officers I’ve worked with in my time would have conducted operations so effectively.” Kelly gave a small but gracious nod in acceptance of the praise.
“But I have to ask,” Downes went on, “who is truly in charge of things here?”
Kelly regarded him with a flash of cold fury for a fleeting moment before he controlled his expression. As much as he tried to mask his anger, his nostrils still flared as he fought to keep his breathing slow and measured.
“Speak your mind, Major,” he told Downes.
“Very well. Naval blockades off the coast. The CIA presence on the island. What exactly are we here? Is this a foothold for Britain to regain our home or a foothold for the Americans?” Kelly held his stare for a few seconds before deflating as he released his breath.
“If I’m completely honest with you, I don’t know. I’m assured that the remnants of our civilian government have done some form of deal with the US, which is evidently either ‘above my pay grade’ as they say, or else they believe the finer points are beyond my limited capability of understanding as a mere soldier.”
“So they aren’t here to evacuate us, and we can’t leave of our own accord?”
“Oh, we’re entirely free to go back to the mainland and do as we please, just not free to cross the Atlantic and risk infecting their continent.” Downes’ lips set in a tight line as his fears were confirmed. They were trapped there, totally at the mercy of a foreign superpower, regardless of their allegiance, and the decisions were being made at a level far above them.
“And the CIA involvement?”
“Ah,” Kelly said awkwardly as he leaned back and folded his arms, “there we find ourselves at a technical impasse.” Downes took the implication and the information in his stride, reverting to an out-loud train of theoretical monologue.
“So, the CIA are here and seem to be calling the shots. Aircraft have been seen coming in, and they’ve brought in personnel and equipment which aren’t overtly military, according to my information…” He paused to look more closely at Kelly, who kept his features still and listened. “Which could imply to someone that they’re conducting tests and require a secure base of operations as near as possible to a steady supply of infected people.” Still Kelly stayed silent and motionless.
“Are they conducting tests here, Colonel?”
“Yes,” Kelly admitted without hesitation. He seemed to want to say more, as though the force of keeping the information bottled up inside him was causing pain.
“Are there Screechers on this rock right now?”
“Yes,” Kelly said again, this time with only a moment of hesitation. “At least I believe so. A team of scientists came in over a week ago with a few CIA agents, a small team of Navy SEALs and a detachment of Army personnel specialising in infectious diseases. They’re on the furthest west spit of land possible, and any outbreak faces the Atlantic to the west and a line of guns to the east.” Downes nodded slowly, imagining the placement to be Kelly’s idea.
“So what do we do?”
“Not much we can do,” Kelly answered. “I’m having the others in your little convoy reallocated to patrol sections of coast and replace my boys covering quarantine and guard on the civilians, obviously focusing on the easterly sections of our perimeter.” A knock at the door interrupted their discussion. “I’ll keep you and your chaps in reserve, if you don’t mind?” Downes stood, hearing the tone of dismissal
in the colonel’s words, to agree and take his leave. Opening the door, he was faced with three people, two men and a woman, who stirred some vague recognition in him, and he crossed their path awkwardly in the confines of the small landing. Fighting the urge to loiter and listen through the door, he returned to the waiting Land Rover and was driven back to his allocated billet in thoughtful silence.
Kelly kept his face neutral behind the false smile as the three civilians filed into the room. They all had another person with them; a sort of entourage of one each to ensure than none of them believed themselves superior to the others.
Playing backstop at a meeting with the Under Secretary of State for Agriculture, the Minister for the Arts and the Minister of State for Housing, all very much former titles and positions in his opinion, even though they seemed to cling to them in an attempt to validate their importance, was not a prospect he had been looking forward to.
He smiled to put them at ease, listened and nodded along with their ridiculous ideas for regrowth and repopulation of the British Isles when all the nasty business was over. Just in time before the boredom and annoyance could get to him, before he erupted and told them the truth—that they weren’t cowering off the coast with a view to moving back in when the pest control problem magically sorted itself out—Captain Barton knocked politely but urgently on the door before opening it.
Peering around the edge of the door, he smiled and cleared his throat.
“My sincere apologies, Colonel,” he lied smoothly as he played his part in the planned interruption. “Urgent military matter, I’m afraid. Can’t wait.” He flashed his best smile from his strong jawline as Kelly stood and smoothed down his camouflaged shirt, mirroring the smile in falsity, if not quite matching the dazzling charisma of the younger man.
“Duty calls,” he told the politicians solemnly, hoping the sheer cheesiness of the line wouldn’t betray their deception to end the meeting. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. See yourselves out, if you please.” He swept from the room to leave the echoing sounds of both officers’ boots thundering down the stairs to be followed by the rising pitch of an accelerating engine. Those sounds rose before falling away suddenly, only to rise again as the volume faded away with the next gear, taking the vehicle further away. The politicians, unable to have any kind of meaningful conversation without a referee, lapsed into an awkward silence until they were carried back to the town of Portree.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 94