The noise it made silenced the room and echoed in that vacuum of sound before tears welled in the young girl’s eyes and her feet danced on the spot as she fought the pain from seeking an escape. She lost that battle, bursting into tears before her mother wrapped her up in a tight embrace and whispered that she was sorry over and over again.
Ellie looked through the mess of Amber’s hair over the girl’s shoulder to shoot one last foul glance at the young boy before turning her withering stare on the squadron sergeant major before she left the room carrying her daughter with her.
Hands lowered in the uneasy aftermath of the incident, but Johnson had marked those who wanted no part of their plan, finding to his surprise that one of them was his own man.
“Any reason why, Duncan?” he asked, trying to keep the accusation out of his words.
“Sorry, Sarn’t Major, I…” he trailed off, guilt and embarrassment twisting his features as he struggled to find the words he needed. He didn’t have to bother, as Dean Johnson had seen it all in his face when he apologised; he wanted to rest. Wanted the quiet life. He wanted to stay in relative comfort with little chance of encountering the enemy again and wait for this whole bloody mess to blow over.
“It’s alright, lad,” Johnson said gently, although still with more than a little disappointment in his tone. He had never doubted that his own people – and by that he included those he had spent a bitter winter alongside after the devastation of the helicopter crash – would be by his side in the next challenge they faced, but as surprised as he was to see a soldier wanting to give up the fight, he was more shocked to see two of the civilians they’d found in their little safe haven with their hands raised.
His eyes settled on the Canadian woman who embodied the word petite by way of being what Bill Hampton described as ‘snack size’, and she answered his inquisitive look with a shrug.
“I’d like to go home,” she said simply. Johnson couldn’t argue with that one bit, but his thoughts were interrupted by an argument breaking out.
“You’d leave?” Xavier demanded of his crewman. “After everything we’ve bloody been through, you’d go?”
“I think you should come too, Captain,” Jean Pierre said stoically. “I think we should all leave. This place is not good for us, not forever, and there will come a time when too many of les morts come to here or we are forced to go out there. We are just ‘iding ‘ere, Mike.”
Xavier looked around at the assembled faces, some of them avoiding his gaze but most of them pleading with him to change his mind. Only one person stood beside him, and that was the stocky engineer from the Maggie who seemed to have no intention of going outside unless he had to.
“Let ‘em go,” he said acidly. “Means more food for us anyway.”
He led the small exodus with Steve Duncan following and wearing his shame like a cloak, leaving Xavier lingering for long enough to give one last look of utter disappointment to his friend before filing out after them.
“We can’t leave Amber,” Peter said as soon as they were gone. “Please, Mister Johnson, Kimberley,” he implored the two adults he trusted, “you have to talk to her mum and get them to come with us.”
“We’re sure this is the right thing to do?” Jessica asked, searching the faces of the others for any hint of what they weren’t saying.
“Yes,” Daniels told her. She looked at him for a long moment before nodding once and standing.
“Leave her to me then,” she said, standing to follow, evidently happy to leave the planning to the others.
As the splintered group began to make their preparations, other events were unfolding in the south of England. After the destruction of the village of Fairlight, as their meagre defences proved little more than useless when faced with a new enemy capable of leaping over the head height fences and sharpened stakes which had proved wholly adequate thus far, the new types of creature created accidentally by the mass deployment of the untested serum spread out.
Limas, newly turned survivors from the clifftop camp they thought impervious to attack, followed them in packs. The newer types, minus whatever hair their bodies still bore, stopped periodically to bark and shriek into the night and draw their jogging followers along with them.
None went in the same direction, at least not after the first few miles when they split off, using main roads to move faster than the rolling countryside allowed, but one group kept the English Channel to their left as they hugged the coast and killed and consumed every animal they found that was unable to flee their approach.
The only things they didn’t eat were the other human survivors, as each of those was chased down or otherwise rooted out of their hiding places to be turned to join the ranks of the elite, intent on the annihilation of every living person on the planet.
NINE
“They know we’re somewhere around here, Captain Wolff,” Sergeant Cooper whispered without turning his head. Wolff found himself thinking Hauptmann, my rank is Hauptmann, then feeling petty for the thought, since it was the same rank, just a different language, and what difference could that possibly make now?
“This is true,” Wolff agreed in the same low whisper, “but is it not better to simply wait until they go away? Gunfire will bring more of them on to our heads, not to mention expose our precise positions to them.”
Down on our heads, Cooper thought irrelevantly. In truth, one of the biggest struggles he faced after being cut off and isolated on another part of the islands during the outbreak was spending every waking minute, and every sleeping one for that matter, with other people he wasn’t accustomed to.
Learning someone’s idiosyncrasies, growing accustomed to their annoying habits just as they had to cope with yours, took time for anyone, but being a man who had trained for long hours sealed up inside armoured fighting vehicles, Cooper was better equipped than many to cope.
There were six of them currently occupying the small attic room in what had been the part of the whisky distillery not open to the public. Six out of an original thirteen after the outbreak and the fall of the island. Some had stolen away in the night after whispering about getting a boat from the small pier one of them knew was nearby. Being evidently local, the ringleader of this splinter faction held no regard for the military men and wanted to forge their own path believing the presence of uniformed men with guns to be a hindrance more than a blessing.
They listened to their screams of terror as they were hunted in the darkness, and their disappearance was swiftly followed by a series of attacks by freshly turned Limas as they probed the small farm for weaknesses. The ensuing action and panicked flight to where they now cowered in silence had cost them four more lives, leaving only four civilians in the care of the two tank men; one English and one German.
To his credit, or perhaps as testimony to his character, the German tank captain never once tried to give acting sergeant Cooper an order, but as his ideas were always logical and well-presented, he hadn’t encountered a situation where such rank flexing was necessary.
“I’d rather not be trapped in here when the bastards giving the orders decide to deal with us themselves,” Cooper said. “It’s bad enough with the bloody Limas posted as sentries to watch us.”
Wolff made a small noise that seemed contemplative, but without the conviction of any kind of decision behind it. He had noted the odd behaviour of the other infected undead, opting to keep those observations to himself so as not to spread alarm, but Cooper’s astute nature had detected the very same facts and had no problem saying them out loud.
“We could break out,” Cooper went on, making a suggestion he wasn’t at all appreciative of, “but that leaves the question of where the bleedin’ ell we could go.”
“Again, Sergeant, this is true,” Wolff answered, still peering out of the crack between two bricks, “but it is depending on what our plan is.”
“I still say we get to the ferry port and go back to the mainland – get your tank and piss off from here.�
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“I am liking this plan,” Wolff admitted, “that is assuming that the vehicles here are in good repair, but I still am not seeing where we are going after this? I agree that we must not stay here, and by here, I am meaning this island.”
“At least we can get to some radio equipment if we get back to the wagons,” Cooper responded, stopping himself from saying anything further as a muted crash sounded from behind their position. Both men turned, fearful that the sound implied their hidden existence in the attic was no longer a secret.
Their fears were washed away as the dim light showed them the wide, frightened eyes of a man frozen to the spot after knocking down a stack of old boxes. His left hand held a bottle of something which he hid behind his back as soon as he regained his composure.
“This man will be our deaths,” Wolff complained almost silently under his breath.
“What the fuck are you playing at, Todd?” Cooper hissed, seeing the man for what he was just as he suspected the German captain did. “You’d risk all our lives for a bloody bottle?”
“Sorry,” he said a little too loudly, earning angry hisses from the others to quieten him.
“Sit down and be quiet,” a woman muttered to him without taking her own eye from a windy crack in the roof as she kept watch for the monsters. “They’re out there,” she added ominously.
“We can’t stay here,” Cooper said to Wolff as he watched an American army uniformed creature sniff the air, “not if they’re searching the place for us.”
“We face the choices of leaving now or waiting to find out if they go away,” Wolff answered. “Both choices are dangerous, but I am thinking to go now is to be outside when it is dark, and we both know what this is meaning, yes?”
“Yeah,” Cooper answered, “but staying means they might come tonight anyway.”
“This is how you say the rocks and the hard place?”
“Damned if you do and bloody damned if you don’t.”
“It is not us who are damned, Sergeant,” Wolff gently admonished him, “but them.”
The choice as to stay or go was taken out of their hands by fate.
Fate which conspired with the selfish actions of a desperate man to wake them all from a fitful sleep and tear the still, cold air inside the attic with a slurred yell.
“Fuggin…NO!” Todd bawled groggily, flinging an arm over his body to bang the mostly empty bottle against a wooden support beam, following the loud sound with a shriek of, “geddoffme!”
Cooper wasted no time in leaping to his feet and dropping a knee onto the man’s chest to measure up in the dark and deliver an instinctive slap across his face to simultaneously wake the man and bring him to his senses.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he snarled in a ripping hiss so close to the man’s face that the stench of sour whisky burned his eyes. Before Todd could respond, the answer came from outside in a flowing, rippling wave of screeching noises as the Limas posted around their position all took up the cry.
“Now,” Wolff said, “is when we must choose. Do we run, or do we stay?”
They ran. Part of their plan if they had to move immediately was to attempt to start one of the vans left outside, and given the choice between waiting in the attic for a Lima or worse to break in and risking a vehicle not starting, Cooper knew where he’d put his money.
Better to die trying than hiding.
“Follow me,” he said, leading the way down the stairs to hit the landing heavily and bring his weapon up. He had the stock folded to make the weapon slightly shorter and easier to use inside without bashing it off everything, and he whipped the barrel left and right as his breathing ran away without him.
Clutching one of their only working torches in his left hand against the barrel of the gun, he was rewarded with illuminated flashes of empty doorways which his brain kept telling him would soon be filled with the grotesque visage of a Lima. His pounding heart was louder in his ears than his bootsteps on the dry wooden floors were, but he reminded himself that speed was the order of the day and caution could get stuffed.
Pausing at an external door long enough to see that the others were still behind him, he braced himself and leaned his body against the release bar to issue an unavoidable but loud click of metal as the door unlocked and let in the sharp wind from outside.
Being a Scottish island, that wind carried a characteristic amount of stinging rain to pelt the skin of his face and make him squint his eyes against it. The gun came up, the torch still clamped against the worn metal, and immediately framed the pale face and open mouth of a woman running at him as though she were drunk.
Cooper didn’t hesitate. He fired a shot at her, missed, fired again by fully depressing the trigger and shifting the barrel slightly from side to side, imagining the projectiles hitting her in her open mouth. She dropped to slide forwards another two paces such was the momentum of her ungainly attempt to sprint.
He stepped out into the car park, swung the gun wildly left and right to search for more enemies and shouted for the others to follow. He stood his ground, eyes still scanning the gloom, as the others ran past him to pull open the van doors and pile inside. Cooper, a man accustomed to planning to a high level of detail, had already discussed their plan in whispers with the other survivors and had detailed someone to take the wheel while the only two soldiers in their group could protect their escape. As planned, one man got behind the wheel, and thanks to the efficient planning of the former staff there, used the keys for the correct vehicle to turn the ignition.
Nothing happened, but they had anticipated that.
The reason they had chosen that particular vehicle was that it was parked closest, with the nose of the van pointing towards the exit and the gentle slope beyond. The shout came back that the battery was dead, and the others all piled out as planned to begin pushing.
A shriek, animalistic and guttural, split the night and forced Cooper to spin around to search for the cause of it. He’d backed up towards the van which was only just beginning to inch away on soft tyres, when he was hit by a train coming from his left side.
It felt like a train, at least. As his breathless body hit the ground a clear three paces away, the thing that carried the momentum of the locomotive rolled over him and clear of bite range. He landed flat on his back, craning his neck to look back at the thing that had hit him and trying to breathe in, struggling as the wind had been knocked out of his lungs by the force of the tackle.
As bizarre as his own body contortions were, the creature that had hit him at full speed twisted hideously to arch its back and spin on the back of its skull to reach for him. Cooper rolled and scrambled away as he made an awful croaking noise in an attempt to breathe. Behind him he could hear the staccato crackle of Wolff’s gun, but his consciousness registered no bullets splitting the air around him.
Wolff had other problems, and Cooper was on his own.
Struggling to bring his weapon to bear on the thing auditioning for a remake of The Exorcist that was crabbing its way towards him, hissing and shrieking as it came, Cooper finally managed to point the dangerous end of his Sterling submachine gun at it and pull the trigger again.
It juddered and faltered as the bullets tore into it, but as all of them struck the torso it kept coming. Coming toward him faster than he could drag himself away, still unable to suck in a full breath, as the fallen torch beam rolled to a stop and illuminated the thing hideously.
His magazine clicked dry, a sound that tightened a certain part of his anatomy, and he reversed the weapon to twist his body at the waist as far as he could reach, timing the explosive back swing perfectly to crack the monster across the face with enough force to do serious damage.
Serious damage to a living person, at least. The heavy barrel of his weapon smashed the jawbone of the Lima—recently turned given the decent quality of the clothing, he noted—and left the lower jaw hanging limply as teeth dropped out of the smashed maw. The head, knocked aside by the blow, turned sharp
ly back to him as the thing gargled a hiss and dripped dark gore from its ruined mouth.
Fumbling on his chest for one of his spare magazines, he struggled to pull the spent one free even though he’d cycled the weapon more times in the last year than ever before in training. Adrenaline and fear, coupled with the fact that he still hadn’t managed to take a breath since being winded, made his hands clumsy. The adrenaline also masked the fact that he’d broken at least one finger during the tackle, because his eyes saw the digit twisted at an odd angle, but his brain had yet to register the pain.
Just as he managed to drop the empty magazine from the weapon, muttering a desperate, repeated, “Shit, shit, shit,” to himself, cold fingertips tore at his boot and inched him forward over the rough surface of the ground.
Then a metallic thump, a sickening crunch, and a weak attempt at a screech came from the thing that had been crushed and pinned under the near-silent rolling wheel of the van as it rolled slowly towards the exit.
“Come on,” a voice hissed unnecessarily given the sharp crack of sporadic gunfire, “get off the fucking deck!”
“We must be leaving now,” Wolff added, angling his return to the moving vehicle so that he could grab the shoulder straps of Cooper’s webbing and haul him to his feet. Cooper went with the momentum, adding his own body’s power so that he launched upwards and fell into the open rear doors of the van as it rolled past, adding further crunching noises to the night as the rear wheel flattened the Lima further.
Wolff was last to climb in, having to break into a slow jog to time his run just right to land inside next to Cooper, who had finally managed to reload his weapon and pointed it out at the gloom behind them, watching the small light radiating from the dropped torch grow smaller with each yard they rolled.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 109