by Luke Duffy
The confusion and immediate horror began to fade as Bull created some distance between himself and the rows of mangled helicopters. He could now make more sense of his surroundings and see where he was going. The battle, massacre, continued to rage behind him, but he was away from its immediate effects. Pushing himself up from the mud and grass, he jumped to his feet and took off towards the south, headed for the hedgerow where he and Stan had been standing just minutes before. His legs were rickety and for every two steps forward that he took, he took another two to the side. His vision remained blurred, and his ears buzzed loudly, but he was determined to keep going.
He reached the shelter of the hedge and jumped down into the shallow drainage ditch running along the inside of the field’s perimeter. The thick, gloopy mud sucked and squelched as he landed heavily, coating his entire body in the cold and stinking filth. A number of decomposing bodies lay scattered through the ditch around him, their stench lingering close to the ground and drifting up into Bull’s nostrils. There, he quickly took stock of his condition, checking for any unnoticed injuries and shaking his head violently in an attempt to bring his mind back to its full function. Precariously, he moved his body into a squat and raised his head above the lip of the ditch, careful not to expose himself too much to the shrapnel that still zipped through the air over a wide area.
Where there had once been rows of helicopters and other vehicles, there was nothing but glowing wreckage and smoke filled craters. He could see the helicopters responsible for the destruction now, drifting in and out of the columns of smoke rising up from the ground. They hovered over the airfield, rotating their fuselages beneath their rotors, spitting death and destruction with their machineguns and mounted rockets. They were merely mopping up now, picking off targets that had been missed in the initial bombardment, and ensuring that there was nothing left to be used for a counter attack. Other Apache and Cobra helicopters were sweeping their way along the perimeter, smashing the remains of the defences and mowing down any of the troops that fled from the area. Their overwhelming attack was complete, having accomplished their objective of wiping out the island’s ability to transport troops and give close-air support. Whoever they were, air superiority was now clearly in their hands.
Bull would have been impressed by the speed and effectiveness of the assault and of the overwhelming slaughter, if it was not for the fact that he had been on the receiving end of it and clearly on the wrong side. He crouched back down into the black mire and began checking his weapons, removing the magazines from both his rifle and pistol and cocking them a few times, ensuring they had not sustained any damage. He checked the barrels and felt comforted when he saw that they looked to be in working order. At least he still had a means of defending himself, even if it was against heavily armoured attack helicopters. He turned his attention back to the airfield, searching for any sign of life on the ground.
Behind him, and towards the east, he could hear more heavy thuds above the screech of the lurking helicopters. It sounded as though Newport was also under heavy attack, experiencing a similar barrage to what the airfield had sustained. The ground continued to shake with each thump of high-explosives, and the sky seemed to flutter endlessly with the flashes of the bombs. Machineguns chattered in the distance as defenders and attackers fought a duel for dominance over the island. The troops stationed on the Isle of Wight had been taken by complete surprise by an unknown and overwhelming force. In their current condition, Bull could see no way of turning the tide and mounting an effective counter-strike.
From amongst the flames and smoke, and as the helicopters relentlessly poured their obliterating fire over the remains of the airfield, Bull saw movement. A figure, stumbling and swaying from side to side was headed towards him, clearly suffering from the effects of the attack. Bull’s eyes narrowed, and he concentrated hard on stabilising his vision.
“Stan,” he gasped, feeling a sudden surge of relief flood through his body and ripple over his skin. “Fuck me, the bastard made it.”
Stan could hardly see where he was going. His head was spinning and his legs were both trying to travel in opposite directions from where his body was pointed. His clothing was tattered in places and smouldering, having been seared in numerous blasts as the rockets had landed all around him. His face, blackened with soot and bleeding from several cuts, was unrecognisable and twisted with pain.
He could hear a voice calling his name, but his eyes would not focus. He could barely see the ground in front of him let alone any detail from a distance. In his semi-delirious state, he recognised Bull’s voice. He tried to reply, but his words would not form in his throat. In their place came a stifled and pain filled groan that slipped from between his teeth, inaudible to anyone that was beyond a metre or so from him. He headed in the general direction of where he believed Bull to be. After a few more stumbling metres, a dark and towering shadow appeared in front of him. It swallowed him up and dragged him beneath the surface of the earth, and Stan was in no condition to fight it.
“Stan, it’s me,” Bull shouted into his face, shaking his shoulders in an attempt to bring him back into the real world. “Stay with me.”
Somehow, and to Bull’s amazement, Stan was still holding onto his MP-5 sub-machinegun, clutching it in a vice like grip. He began to check over his team commander, searching for any life threatening injuries. There was no sign of broken bones or shrapnel wounds on his body, and it seemed that Stan was still in one piece. Next, Bull turned his attention to Stan’s eyes, nose, and ears, checking for any indication of a head wound. He could not see anything on the outer surface, and there was no blood leaking from his ears. From what he could tell in the short time he could afford to check, Bull did not believe that Stan had sustained any damage that threatened his life.
He reached for the water bottle that was tucked into a pouch on the right-hand kidney position of his assault vest. He poured a generous amount over Stan’s face, hoping to snap him back from the shock induced coma he appeared to have fallen into. The cold liquid seemed to work. Stan’s eyes snapped open. He instantly twisted out of Bull’s grasp and rolled away from him, raising his weapon and ready to fire.
Bull froze, staring back at him and waiting for the rounds to smash through his body. He was too close to be able to get out of their way, and if he suddenly lunged, Stan could easily mistake it for an attack. The sub-machinegun did not bark, and Bull remained alive as Stan recognised the man crouched in front of him. He fell back, resting his shoulders against the wall of the ditch and taking in long gulping breaths. His eyes were slowly beginning to focus and stabilise again, and his ears, although they still rang like church bells, could now hear Bull’s echoing and distant words.
The booms and thumps of the missiles had become stifled, and the rattle of machineguns seemed to be far away, even though he could see the enemy hovering just above their heads. His senses had taken a pounding, and it would be a while before they returned to him completely.
“You okay? Any injuries? Can you walk?”
Stan stared back at him. He nodded.
“Yeah, fine,” he replied in an amplified voice due to his partial deafness. “I just need to take a breather, and I’ll be ready to go.”
A few minutes later, as Stan and Bull began to slowly return to the real world, a new resonance began to fill the sky above them as a deep and steady beat reached their ears. More helicopters were on their way, but these were much larger and heavier aircraft than the swift moving Apaches and Cobras that were circling the airfield. Stan and Bull looked up, scanning the sky and looking for the source of the new sound.
Out towards the west and coming in low over the rolling farmland, a number of troop carrying helicopters were headed towards them. Stan recognised them as HC3 Merlin transporters, each of them capable of carrying up to forty-five fully equipped soldiers. From what he could see, there were at least seven of them headed for the interior of the island. Two of the Apaches that had assisted in the initia
l attack turned and headed towards them, taking up positions on their flanks, and ready to begin paving the way for the much slower Merlin helicopters.
“Overhead assault,” Stan grunted as he watched them glide through the air above their heads and continue eastwards. “They’re starting a ground assault on Newport.”
“They?” Bull replied as the aircraft passed over the hedge and out of sight. “Who’s they? Who do you think did this?”
Stan looked back at him and ran his hand down over his face, wiping the blood and grime from his eyes and away from his mouth. He paused for a moment and studied the skin on his palms before rubbing them over the material of his trousers.
“Sam said they were picking up strange transmissions from the west coast, and none of the aircraft they sent to check had returned.” He looked out across the field and nodded towards the menacing looking Cobras that continued to circle above, hunting for targets. “I’m guessing that they’re them.”
Both of them sat watching the total destruction that had been inflicted upon the airfield within a matter of minutes. Whoever they were, their shock and surprise had been complete. No one had been ready for the attack, and it was doubtful that anybody else, other than Bull and Stan, had survived at the airfield.
“You had comms with Taff?” Bull asked, indicating the ruined radio he had attached to his own harness. Something had ripped a hole right through the centre of it.
Stan clicked his mic.
“Taff, Stan, radio check.” He paused for a few seconds. “Taff, Stan, radio check,” he repeated, staring back at Bull and praying that their lack of communication was due to their radios and not that the rest of the team had undergone the same devastating kind of strike.
“Taff, Stan, answer up, for Christ’s sake.”
“Stan, Taff, where the fuck are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last five minutes. What’s happening down there?” Taff’s voice sounded anxious, and he was speaking at twice his normal speed.
“We’re still at the airfield,” Stan replied. He looked back over his shoulder and then lowered his mouth back towards his radio. “Or at least what’s left of it. All our aircraft are gone. You having any dramas up there?”
“Not at the moment. A company sized group have landed in the low ground to the east of us. The refugee camp took a pounding.”
“You receiving any incoming?”
“Negative. I don’t think they even know we’re here. We’re just watching our arcs at the moment. Everything seems to be concentrated towards the centre of the island and the defences around Newport.”
“Good,” Stan nodded. “Stay put and hold…”
Another earth shattering blast went off just forty metres away from where Stan and Bull were crouching in the ditch. The pair of them winced, tucking their heads as deep between their shoulders as they could while every ounce of air was sucked out of their lungs. The ground shook and the shock wave forced the hedgerow to sway violently. A moment later, a shower of debris and clods of dirt began to rain down into the ditch, thwacking into the mud around their feet. As the effects of the detonation subsided, they slowly raised their heads again, emerging from their torsos like turtles peeping out from inside their shells.
“As I was saying,” Stan continued speaking to Taff. “Stay firm, and hold the position. Avoid contact, and if you need to bug-out, head towards the south-west of the island. The old church, a kilometre down the coast, will be the ERV. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Roger that.”
“They okay up there?”
“For now, they are.”
“I hope that wanker, Bobby, isn’t assuming that I’m already dead and rifling through my kit,” Bull snorted.
“We need to move,” Stan said as he pulled himself up into a standing position, bent double at the waist. He pushed his way passed Bull, headed south along the ditch and away from the airfield. “There’s nothing we can do here now.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t get cut off before we reach Taff and the others,” Bull grumbled as he followed, thinking of the units that Taff had reported landing on the southern side of the island in the area of the refugee camp.
“We’re not going home yet.”
“Where we going, then?”
“We need to get to Newport first,” Stan replied over his shoulder as he continued to move south, pushing through the thorny bushes, and trudging through sucking mud.
“Bollocks,” Bull exclaimed under his breath as he began following after him. “I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
Grumbling and cursing, Bull slogged his way along through the ditch. After a few metres, his foot stood in something soft beneath the muddy water. The sound of crunching bone emitted from beneath his boot as he stepped into the remains of a human being. It took a lot of effort to free himself, and the smell that plumed up from beneath his filth covered boot was enough to make him gag.
“Brilliant,” he snarled. “Absolutely fucking brilliant.”
They had two kilometres of hostile ground to cover to Newport, and they needed to get in and out before the ring was closed around the town. Bull knew why they were going, but he still did not like it. However, Stan was not the sort that would take kindly to someone disobeying his orders, especially in the middle of a battle.
They pushed on, headed for the horizon that glowed brightly as the town continued to crumble beneath the onslaught. Bull watched the sky above the rooftops of the Isle of Wight’s capital, seeing the helicopters mercilessly hammering away at the defending troops beneath. Columns of smoke and debris were flying high into the air, snatching up men and women along with them and tossing them back down to the ground, smashed and dismembered. Death was quickly filling the streets and anything moving was ruthlessly cut down.
Bull saw more enemy troops being transported up to the front lines in the helicopters that seemed to be blacking out the sky. He paused and looked at the death and destruction around him. It was a scene straight from the Bible depicting the end of times, and Stan was leading him directly into hell.
14
They had all been assembled and ready to move for quite some time, waiting with coiled nerves and growing apprehension. Hardly a word was spoken as Taff and the others prepared themselves to flee from the island. Everything was ready, and now they sat and waited, watching the night sky and willing the dawn to arrive. The atmosphere was tense, and everyone was lost in their own thoughts as the time drew nearer. Nobody wanted to think beyond the next few hours. Anything could happen in that short space of time, and the entire plan could come to a crashing halt from any one of the numerous and ruinous scenarios.
It was always possible that Stan and Bull could be discovered at the airfield. The helicopter could be shot down on take-off, or the anti-aircraft defences aboard the HMS Illustrious could blow them all out of the sky before they had even made it a kilometre from the island. The list of possibilities was endless and the majority of them were out of the hands of the people who would be nothing more than passengers aboard the aircraft. Their fate was going to be placed entirely in the hands of the pilots, and all of them hoped more than anything that Samantha had chosen their ride with care. If they made it to the mainland in one piece, they would face an entirely new set of potential disasters.
“What time is it?”
“Bobby, you asked me that same question five minutes ago. Now take a wild guess on what the time is now,” Taff snapped back at him in a hushed growl. “Go on. I bet you can’t work it out without having to take your boots off and using your toes to help you count.”
“Piss off. You’re waffling shit,” Bobby spat back at him. “That was hours ago. Your watch must be knackered.”
They were all anxious and keen to get started, to get on with the mission and have it all over and done with. Hardly any of them had been able to sleep, and the night had seemed to last forever with the minutes seemingly rolling backwards. Those who did manage to nod off
were soon awakened with a start as their troubled and fretful dreams snapped them back to the real world. Most of them had given up, annoyed at the slightest noise or movement dragging them from their slumber. The only people who seemed capable of getting any rest were William and Richard. The pair of them lay curled up on the old couch, snoring loudly and seemingly without a care in the world.
Taff and Bobby were supposed to be the ones on sentry duty, but many of the others had joined them, taking up their own positions and waiting for the day to get underway. They sat staring into the darkness, shivering against the cold wind, and listening to the distant, ghostly moans of the infected as they traversed the island through the blackness. The survivors stayed at their posts, haunted by the unseen dead, and clutching their rifles close. There was nothing else for them to do but wait.
“You heard anything over the net at all? A sit-rep or anything like that?” Bobby tried again to engage Taff with talk.
The uneasy silence was playing havoc with his stress levels, and speaking to someone was the only thing that he could turn to in order to stop his mind from running away with him. He had considered going to look for Samantha, but right now, he needed Taff more. He did not want to be worrying about saying the right things at that moment. He had always found general conversation between men and women as being overcomplicated, having to study body language, and being careful about word selection. He understood that it was a necessary evil and that he would not get far if he avoided it altogether. However, talking was a much more simplified activity between two men.
Taff slowly shook his head, the moonlight reflecting brightly from his eyes as he stared towards the north and in the general direction of the airfield. He understood how Bobby was feeling. He felt the same way, but he had better control of his nerves. Bobby was a good man and one of his closest friends, but he had a habit of letting his emotions get the better of him.