by Glynn James
Silence was the only reply. No one could argue with Hackworth when it came to survival tactics. They had even left all the rooms on the ground floor of the building empty on his orders, even though he hadn’t said why. Now he made it clear.
“We’ve only got minutes to get ready. So everyone needs to go back inside now. Get up on the second floor or above. No one stays on the ground floor. Do not go back to your rooms. Start on the second floor and block all the windows. Then the next floor, then the next. Shut all the doors. Bar them if you can. Then everyone goes up to the top floor and all the lights stay off.”
At this everyone started to move as one, including Amarie. As she followed the other survivors up the stairs, she could still hear the old shopkeeper firing out commands.
“Randall, you make sure that all the doors get locked, especially the ones at the back. Brown, get up that fire escape and pull that fucking ladder up and away from the ground. You can climb in the window on the third floor. Colley, get ready with that axe. You’re going to smash the ground-floor stairs out. In fact, go and get started now, but leave enough intact for me to climb up.”
“What about you?” asked Colley as he ran toward the main doors. “Surely, you’re not staying out here?”
Hackworth laughed. He always managed to squeeze a laugh into any situation, even the most dire.
“Don’t be a fool. I’m just going to shut the damn gate.”
What Remains
Brains and spinal fluid exploded out the back of the very recently deceased doctor’s head and splattered across the whitewashed walls, a stark contrast that looked strangely like some bizarre and twisted form of contemporary shock art. The body fell backward, hitting the metallic operating table with a loud clang and sending an instrument table and IV drip clattering to the floor.
Jameson grimaced at the sight on the table. The man there, the actual patient, had clearly been in the middle of a surgical procedure, and Jameson hoped he had been under sedation and out cold when they started to eat him. Poor guy probably went to sleep thinking he would wake up in a few hours with whatever had been wrong with him fixed.
Three other bodies lay sprawled on the ground nearby, all taken down in the last couple of seconds by the lieutenant and his men. When Jameson, leading his team along the main corridor of the Chaucer Hospital, had glanced into the room, all three white-clad surgeons had been covered in blood as they clawed at the body and crammed steaming flesh into their mouths. The fourth in the room was in desert combat dress, a soldier, and probably one of Patrol 15; one of the men who had caused the bloody outbreak.
Gunfire flashed up and down the corridor that was already slick with blood and littered with bodies, and Jameson stepped backward to resume his position on the right flank. He raised his SA80 bullpup assault rifle and sighted in on the nearest door, stepping sideways into the opening, giving himself as much clearance as he could. Across the corridor his point man, Eli, did much the same.
There was no movement in Jameson’s sights as he scanned left to right over a room with upturned furniture and a heap of sealed cardboard boxes, but behind him Eli’s rifle erupted in short, sharp bursts. He heard another thud of a body hitting the ground, and then another.
“Room clear,” said Jameson.
“Check, room clear,” said Eli.
They moved forward, their boots pacing in time, keeping their formation less than a foot one from the other. Behind them, the second rank of Royal Marines called out, going through their room-clearing drills.
Always check everything twice.
That was Jameson’s first rule. And the team followed it to the letter. Double-tap the dead. Double the eyes on the ground. Jameson had yet to lose a single man in combat since they arrived back in the UK after their escape across Europe from Germany. He’d lost men then, as they struggled across the deadlands that Europe had become, and sometimes it had been unavoidable. But mostly it had been because they just weren’t careful enough. And they had learned.
The squad rolled along the corridor, with each rank of Marines stepping past the one in front, each checking a set of doors, moving forward to the next and then holding position. In rank after rank, the team sped through the hospital interior until they reached the final area.
Jameson was at the front once more, and he followed Eli into the room, moving swiftly to the nearest obstacle, a sofa, and making room for two more Marines to move in behind him. Eli took the left side and swept around the perimeter of the large canteen, checking the kitchen and then backing off.
“Room clear,” said Jameson.
“Room cle—” but then Eli stopped and hissed, “Quiet.”
Everyone stopped moving.
At first they couldn’t hear it, but Eli had.
They listened, but still no sound.
Jameson frowned, and was about to speak. Eli was hearing things, surely.
But then there it was. Sobbing. Muffled sobbing coming from somewhere.
Eli moved around the room, looking increasingly frustrated as he tried to locate the noise, but it was everywhere and nowhere. He tried the kitchen.
“Where is it coming from?” asked Jameson, following him in.
“I don’t know,” said Eli. “It’s everywhere.”
They both looked up at the ceiling, and at the air vents above. There were four of them, one in each corner of the kitchen.
“Up there,” said Eli, as he let his rifle fall onto its sling and hopped up onto the kitchen counter. He reached to his waist, pulled a stubby crowbar from its nylon pouch, shoved it hard into the grill of the vent, and yanked the cover free. Dust and plaster spewed outwards, but he ignored it, craning his head towards the dark opening to listen.
“Don’t get too close,” said Jameson, but then he smiled as Eli drew a torch with his other hand and switched it on. He didn’t need to tell Eli to be careful. The man’s combat instincts were one of the main reasons the three squads of Marines were alive.
Eli panned the torch across the darkness.
“I can’t see anything,” he said, and then coughed. “Hello? Where are you? Can you hear me?”
The sobbing continued, but more muffled now.
“Hello? You in the air vent. Can you hear me?”
The noise stopped.
“Hello?” came the reply, a quiet sound, almost inaudible.
“I can hear you. Where are you?”
“Hello?” came the voice again, now unmistakably that of a small child, a boy. “I’m in the cupboard.”
“Okay. Stay where you are and we will find you,” said Eli.
“Right,” said Jameson, speaking loudly into his chin mic. “Pair up and go back over everything. Report back to me for every damn movement you make. Check cupboards and closets and under beds and any crevice that could hold a moppet. Be careful. There still may be dead we’ve missed. Find the boy and call in when you do. Let’s make sure we rescue the only damned living person left in this fucked-up place.”
“You know this is now out of containment, right?” asked Eli, after the other men had left and they were alone. “The back door is open and whatever was here has gone out there.”
“Yes,” replied Jameson. “I know. Canterbury is lost – unless we move fast, and hope that everyone else does as well.”
Herd
Night fell.
Or, at the very least, was falling fast. Sarah and the team had been huddled around the little kitchen table over maps and rugged smart phones for an hour, putting together a plan to get Alpha on their way, out of Dodge, and moving toward home and safety.
Or at least toward the extraction point where the carrier crew would be looking for them.
“Basically,” Sarah said, “you’ve got two transportation options for getting you to the next town. It’s actually more of a recreational development than a real place. But, still, it had a year-round population, so it’s now dangerous.”
“What’s this place called?” Predator asked.
&n
bsp; “Lakeview.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“It probably was,” Sarah said. “But back to your options. One, we can cram you all into the truck and I can drive you out to the edge of town. But not too close – the last thing we want is engine noise waking the place up just as you’re going into it. Two is you can hike it. You’re only looking at about eleven miles, and over reasonable terrain.”
The team decided to hoof it.
They were now starting to pack up, while Handon and Sarah stepped out onto the porch.
“Listen,” Handon said quietly. “We’re not leaving until we get your son back.”
Sarah shook her head, firmly and immediately. “Oh, yes you are. You’ve got a much bigger mission to complete. I’ll take care of my family.”
Handon clenched his jaw. He needed to figure out some way to argue with her logic. Because he couldn’t forget that they were the reason the boy was missing. And he couldn’t except himself from the lesson he had tried to impart to his team: that these people were the reason they were doing all of this.
Then again, he couldn’t sacrifice the whole world for one lost boy. Could he?
“You must be out of your mind with worry,” he said.
Sarah just looked at him knowingly. She clearly wasn’t going to be drawn by that one.
“If you are, you don’t show it,” Handon said.
She shook her head no, equally firmly.
Handon remembered the line from the Michael Crichton story, the one with the Vikings: “Fear profits man nothing.” Whether or not this woman was fearless, she certainly never let fear interfere with her operational effectiveness.
“Look,” he finally said. “We don’t want to head out until nightfall anyway. With our NVGs, we’ve got a compelling advantage in the dark.”
“You don’t all have NVGs,” she said.
God, the woman misses nothing… “Nonetheless. Let me just send out two guys, while the others gear up.”
She shook her head again – but then saw the seriousness of Handon’s expression. He was starting to look pretty unyielding himself. She cocked her head slightly. “If we send people out, I’m one of them. I know the terrain.”
Handon knew she had a point and he was considering it. While he was thinking, she softened a bit and said, “Oh, why the hell did he go out without a radio… foolish boy.”
“I think half the point was that he be out of touch. Out on his own.”
“Good point,” Sarah said.
“And he’s armed,” Handon said. “That’s good. He knows how to use the shotgun, right?”
Sarah opened her mouth. But before she spoke, something sounded, a sort of bump, very faint, and seemingly from very far in the distance, or through a lot of forest. Then a second one.
They looked at each other. Neither could say for sure whether it had been shotgun blasts.
But they definitely couldn’t rule it out.
And there weren’t a hell of a lot of other explanations to hand.
* * *
Shit, shit, shit…
The boy clomped up the road, willing his leg to keep holding his weight. They were back there somewhere – and it was all he could do not to look over his shoulder every two seconds, to make sure they weren’t right behind him. He had to keep moving.
The light was seriously fading now, and the walls of the forest on either side of the dirt road seemed to collapse in upon him.
Why did it have to be my leg…? Shit. And how had that one moved so damned FAST?!
He couldn’t hear any behind him. That was good. Because he had to get away clean. And, much more importantly, he had to avoid using the shotgun anymore. The weight of the weapon was no longer a comfort to him – it was now a heavy, awkward burden, as he faced the prospect of traversing six miles of uneven dirt road, almost all of it uphill. And he knew that, whatever else happened, however much he had screwed up so far, he couldn’t fire the weapon again. To do so would risk bringing the whole town down on their cabin.
And that was too horrible to contemplate. He just couldn’t screw up that badly.
He could no longer hear them back there. But he could still feel them, somehow, the great mass of the dead behind him, looming like the sea lapping in with the flood tide. And… and God save him if another one of the crazy fast ones turned up. Then he’d have no choice but to shoot – and that was if he got lucky enough again to make a shot like that.
Shit shit shit.
What he couldn’t track, through his growing fatigue and delirium, was how much his pace was slowing.
He breathed heavily, the sweat beading on his forehead and starting to soak his shirt through. And he focused on keeping his legs moving. Stealing a look down, he could see his pants leg was totally wet with blood now. He couldn’t stop to try and bandage it, even if he had anything to bandage it with… but would a blood trail also lead them back to the cabin?
He couldn’t lead them back. He had to make it, he had to get away.
Though… there was one other possibility.
He didn’t absolutely have to go back.
If it got too bad, if they got too close… he could give up, let them catch them. Or else lead them off in some other direction, away from the cabin.
And he still had the shotgun, with six shells in it.
If it came down to it… it would only take one.
* * *
“You’re facing one other decision point,” Handon said to Sarah.
She nodded. She already knew what he meant. “Whether we come with you.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t think it hadn’t occurred to me.”
“We’re headed for a U.S. Navy carrier strike group. And then back to Fortress Britain.”
She smiled at this. “Is that what you’re calling it these days?”
Handon looked serious. “It’s all humanity’s got left. And if we can get Dr. Park back there, maybe it can be a starting point. For rebuilding. For fighting back. In any case, it’s without a doubt the safest place left on the planet. The English Channel’s a hell of a lot harder to get across than your fence here. No offense.”
Sarah looked into his eyes. “None taken. But there’s a lot of open air between this cabin and Britain. A lot of danger. And we’ve got a pretty decent set-up here, all things considered.”
Handon held her gaze. “You also heard what the XO said, on the radio. What they’ve seen, with the extreme herding behavior – millions of them. But moving across the continent. What happens when one of those storms blows through here?”
“Then we’ll be dead.” She looked up at him, reading his mind again. “But we’re dead anyway. I know that’s what you’re thinking. And you’re right. We can’t last here forever. Not alone. It’s only a matter of time.”
Handon clenched his jaw. He hadn’t wanted it out in the open like this.
“But listen, Handon,” she said, taking his arm in her strong grip. “It’s only a matter of time for all of us. We’re all on a clock. Always have been.”
He shook his head no, but she clasped his arm more tightly. More intently.
“But it’s because our time is limited that life is so precious, so beautiful. And what matters is what we do in the time we’ve got. And you have got a job to do – what’s probably the most important job in the world right now. And you don’t need the three of us slowing you down.”
This actually brought Handon back, and made him smile, albeit with a half a tear at the corner of his eye. “That’s a good one. You, slow anybody down? I’m pretty sure you’d be ranging way out ahead of us. Certainly while we were on your turf.”
She smiled in response. “Maybe so. But there are three of us. And my responsibility is to my family. First let’s get your team, and your scientist, out of here safely. Then we can talk about your ships or planes coming back and picking us up. That radio’s not going anywhere.”
In the end, Handon knew she was right. Nothing was more important th
an getting the vaccine, or as much of it as they had, back to civilization. Ultimately, nothing else mattered much beside this, no matter how Handon felt in this moment.
And nothing he might say could change that.
As words reached their end, the two of them inched into the gap between them, met in the middle, and embraced. Heads on shoulders, they clutched each other fiercely.
For two seconds.
Then the front door opened. And Mark Cameron came through it.
He looked at the two of them wordlessly as they separated. He then pulled a cigarette from a pack and stepped off into the yard.
“I didn’t know Mark smoked,” Handon said, after the two of them ducked back inside and shut the door again. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“He keeps claiming to have quit. But he continues to pick them up on the sly, when we’re out scavenging.” She looked balefully out the front window. “Normally he bothers to hide it. Not tonight, obviously.”
With that, she pulled a long-reach butane lighter from a drawer and went around the room, lighting oil lamps.
Night had fallen for real.
* * *
The boy’s strength was failing with the last light.
He wasn’t able to work out that this was mostly due to the blood loss. He still couldn’t take time to stop and deal with his wound. He was just plowing on blindly, desperately, toward home.
In addition to the bleeding, there was also the strain of two six-mile hikes, practically back to back. And, much worse than that, the acute stress of combat, of being in mortal danger – first in the town and, to a lesser extent, now on the trail.
No one who is not used to combat situations is ever ready for the strain it creates. Those who’ve been in contact say it’s like the terrible moment of vividness just before a car crash – when you can see the mortal peril you’re in, and can see the accident happening in slow motion… but it’s too late to do anything about it. They say combat’s like this split second – except stretched out for hours and days.
You can’t endure it. Except that you have to.
On the upside, he was nearly home now. He recognized the details of the forest here, the way the road gradually flattened out. The bend before the cabin was only another fifty yards ahead. And the dead were still nowhere to be seen.