Toy Soldiers 4: Adversity

by Devon C. Ford

  JP wasn’t there; he had been at the gates where he spent most of his time under a brooding cloud of ominous gloom. Had he been, Xavier reckoned that the men and women who’d attacked his crewmen out of desperation would have looked at the shadowy embodiment of terror and decided that they had somewhere else to be. But he wasn’t there, and they were brave enough or scared enough to break into the food stores and destroy their last chance at stretching out what food they had left. He had restored order, forcibly detained the few people under his protection who had been caught stealing, and spread the word fast and clear that he wanted anything taken to be returned, or else there would be consequences. He didn’t know what those consequences would be, nor how he would enforce them, but none of the supplies were returned, regardless of the threat.

  Now he faced a number of dilemmas. He had a decision to make about what to do with the people his crew members were currently guarding, and that decision would open another can of worms when those protesting at their incarceration didn’t get their way. He had to decide how to ensure that his own men stayed loyal when one of them was badly hurt, because their dedication was wavering by being faced with such uncertainty. Most of all, he knew he had to find more food before the survivors tore each other to pieces.

  “One problem at a time, JP,” he said quietly, “one problem at a time.”

  “What do you mean, Captain?”

  “I mean we can’t ignore what happened yesterday, but we can’t ignore why it happened either. We need food, but we need to deal with the discipline problem. If we were at sea, what would we do?”

  “At sea? Then your word would be the law.”

  “Exactly, but we’re not at sea. We’re in port, and we’re stuck here. If we set sail then we’ll be sunk, and if we stay then we’ll starve or rip each other apart. Which leaves us with what?”

  “We go into the city,” Jean-Pierre said as he banged a big fist onto the desk beside his captain, “and we bring back food. We control the food and we control the people. We double the guard on the supplies.”

  “Is that who you want to be?” Xavier asked with genuine curiosity in his voice.

  “Who I want to be?” Jean-Pierre shot back, “I want to be alive, and I want to take charge of these people because none of them, none of them, can keep the whole group safe, other than you and me.”

  Xavier stared at his right-hand man, his huge enforcer, and he shook his head slowly as a smile crept over his face.

  “I hate to say it, JP,” he said after a resigned sigh, “but you’re right. For the greater good and all that. Okay, get everyone together and I’ll talk to them.”

  ~

  The crowd assembled below Mike Xavier was a mixed spectrum of human emotion. The angriest of them were either at the front, venting their frustrations and indignation at him loudly, or else at the back keeping quiet. Those quiet ones were who scared him, as they were the ones most likely to try something stupid and get them all hurt or worse. The tired, broken, apathetic ones occupied the middle of the crowd as they just stared and listened in weary resignation to whatever fate would be decided for them by others. The scared and depressed faces looked up at him, interspersed occasionally with one or two faces showing a rictus of misplaced anger at him, and he held up his hands to wait for enough silence to descend on them for him to speak. Finally, hoping that the angry concentration of voices hadn’t stirred up anything unwelcome and attracted the kind of attention they had spent months avoiding, he lowered his hands and spoke.

  “We’ve been here too long to let it all fall apart now,” he said, “we’ve survived too long to just give up and rip into each other over a tin of beans. What happened here yesterday cannot happen ever again.” He placed heavy emphasis on each individual word, and then he paused, scanning the faces, seeing that most of the hostility was still there but some of it had begun to transform into confused attention. He went on.

  “I am to blame for this,” he said, his hand held flat on his chest, “I am to blame because I allowed this to happen, but no more. No more. We need food,” he said as he started to pace up and down the raised platform he was standing on to be seen as he spoke. “We need more food, but who’s gonna risk their lives to find it?” he stared out at the small crowd, daring them to answer his rhetoric. When nobody spoke he carried on. “Do you expect me and my crew to risk our lives for you? Do you expect us to keep you safe? To feed you? To protect you and just roll over when you attack us? Do you?” he glowered at them, seeing that some of the angry faces had turned into downcast looks of shame. “Of course you don’t, because the people who did this weren’t thinking. But we are going to get past what happened, and we’re going to start by sharing the risks.”

  He stopped talking, dropping down from his platform to walk through the assembled crowd and look into their faces as he spoke again.

  “My crew and I will lead the way, but you all need to help. We’ll go out there, we’ll put our lives on the line, but you will too,” he paused to turn a full circle as he stood deep in the crowd now, making eye contact with everyone who would meet his gaze. “Volunteers to the main gates in ten minutes,” he called loudly, “and we can all forget this shitty day.”

  He turned to walk away before a voice stopped him.

  “What about the prisoners?”

  He stopped, turning back to the source of the question to find himself looking at a boy on the verge of needing to shave properly.

  “Prisoners?” Xavier asked him.

  “You’ve taken my father prisoner,” the young man said indignantly.

  “And he will have the chance to come with us and redeem himself,” Xavier responded flatly, turning away and nodding to Jean-Pierre, who tossed him the fire axe he had chosen to take outside the fence with him.

  ~

  Xavier had doubts about how many people would show up. He had convinced himself that these people were ungrateful. They’d been saved by him and his crew, along with those dock workers stranded inside the fences, back when it all started so suddenly, and now they were happy to let others do the dangerous work on their behalf.

  Almost fifty people, a quarter of the total they had there, arrived carrying empty bags and wielding various melee weapons adapted or repurposed to crush skulls. Xavier couldn’t believe it, but Jean-Pierre made no attempt to hide his smug grin.

  “You see, Captain?” he said as he beamed a smile of bright, white teeth at him, “I told you that going out would be a good idea. It seems like I am not the only one to think this.”

  Xavier said nothing. He chose four of his men, trusted among his entire crew, and asked them to stay behind and man the gates. They were unhappy with their orders, because there was no mistake that when the captain asked them to do something, it didn’t come with an option of saying no. But Xavier gave them reassurance that he needed good men at the gates that he could rely on them to make sure that their escape was well protected.

  “And remember,” he told them conspiratorially, “if anyone looks like they… like they aren’t themselves… then you know what to do, right?”

  They understood.

  Xavier climbed up on a stack of crates, axe in one hand and the other held up for quiet.

  “Everybody works in pairs,” he told them, “never leave your back unprotected. Grab everything you can carry and get back here. What we find goes into one stockpile and everybody gets fed.”

  “That’s bollocks,” shouted a voice nearby, “if we’re risking our necks, then we get to keep what we find.”

  Xavier fixed the speaker with a look.

  “If that’s how you want to be, then yous can fucking stay out there, do you understand me?”

  The man quailed under the sudden anger, unwilling to risk calling the man’s bluff.

  “There’s young kids back there,” Xavier said, “women with little ones. Old folks. You want them to fetch their own stuff? Is that who we are?”

  The low mumbles had the vague tone of agreement, s
o Xavier jumped down again and nodded to his men to haul back the gates.

  They spilled into the wide, fog-filled street separating the docks from the city, splitting off in different directions so as not to move as a single crowd like locusts. Jean-Pierre naturally had his captain’s back, as he expected the bearded Liverpudlian to have his, and both turned right to jog down the deserted street towards the nearest shops.

  None of the creatures came for them. In fact, none of them were even visible on the streets, which filled them all with an elative hope bordering on over-confident.

  Just because we haven’t seen any yet doesn’t mean they aren’t there, Xavier told himself.

  And he had no idea how right he was.

  ~

  He approached the large, single-storey building with Jean-Pierre jogging beside him. The noise of their breathing was rapid and ragged and clouds of condensation lingered around their heads when they paused at a junction. They had gone south, directly away from the docks, and found themselves in an area which seemed run down even before the world had stopped turning months before. A crowd of maybe twenty others had followed in their footsteps, despite his instructions for everyone to split up into pairs and not cluster together to attract attention. He mentally shrugged, knowing that he couldn’t think for everyone, and glanced at Jean-Pierre to see the man squinting ahead into the fog.

  “Costco,” he said simply.

  “Perfect,” Captain Xavier replied, “that will do us.”

  They went in fast, the crowd behind them speeding up when they saw that the two men had a clear goal in mind, and the sliding metal frame doors were forced open with a dozen hands working their way into the gaps. They poured inside, packets being torn open and precious contents spilled onto the floor despite his words. He was more annoyed that none of them seemed to be awake to any potential risks and instead just blindly ran in to grab armfuls of food packets and tins.

  “Use your brains,” he yelled as loudly as he dared, “get some bloody shopping trolleys and load it up properly.”

  Some of them stopped, regarding him with full mouths as their senses returned. They did so, sanity restoring the group as though it passed from person to person like another infection. Despite the growl in his stomach, he kept both hands on his axe as he watched over the now orderly emptying of shelves. Racks of cans and packets were cleared and his spirits lifted as he knew he would eventually see the winter through without any more outbreaks of civil disobedience or starvation. He relaxed enough to start helping load the supplies himself, slipping the axe through the loop of his belt, which he loosened for the purpose, and used both hands to grab the food which would mean their survival.

  A scream, more of a strangled yell from the throat of a man making an involuntary noise tore the air. Mike Xavier dropped the pallets of beans he held and fumbled to free the axe which was caught in his clothing. He took his eyes away from the source of the noise for long enough to pull it clear, only to look ahead and see a door at the rear of the shop being held open by a small procession of dead bastards. A feeling of cold dread descended through his body, slowing time and his reactions to a deathly speed, but allowing his brain to savour every moment of terror. The smell hit him; dry and musty like rotten meat left out to dry. The grey pallor of them sickened him, like the bodies he had seen retrieved from the docks in the past with clear, bloated skin. He felt his feet moving forwards before his mind realised he had commanded his body to respond to the threat.

  The first savage swing of the axe was wild and while full of raw power, it was poorly aimed. With a shout of pure rage and fear, the wide blade buried itself into the skull of the first zombie in line and stuck fast, toppling his victim but taking his weapon away in the same action. The falling body did nothing to slow the three behind it as they fanned out in a perfectly orchestrated flanking move and forced him backwards away from their grasp. He tripped on the man who had screamed first, landing on top of him as their legs tangled, and both looked up at their impending deaths with looks of open-mouthed horror. Mike Xavier, captain of his beloved Maggie and beloved leader of his crew, closed his eyes as he knew he had failed them all.

  A curious sound made his eyes open again. It was the hollow, echoing sound of metal connecting with bone, and it was answered with the cruel crunch of one of those things giving way to the force of the other. Xavier looked up to see Jean-Pierre drawing himself up to his full height, adding a little more with his raised tiptoes, as his hands were behind his back to bring the heavy metal spike back down in a woodchopper’s strike to pummel and destroy the skull of the nearest zombie with such savagery that the thing was almost decapitated.

  Jean-Pierre’s exposed skin on his face beaded with sweat, making his forehead glisten in the poor light of the shop. He raised the long metal spike again, turning his body sideways to swing it like a baseball bat at the final zombie left standing, dealing it a brutally savage blow which snapped the head back unnaturally. Slowly, horrifyingly, the head rotated back to look at him and revealed a gruesomely dislocated jaw. The obvious injury didn’t stop the thing, didn’t slow it down or register any pain on its expressionless face. Jean-Pierre, exhausted after the incredible physical effort put into the three massive blows, kicked the thing in the chest to give himself space from it. Xavier scrambled to his feet, using the man he had fallen on as a tool to push himself up, and not caring, he snatched at the handle of the axe still embedded in the skull of the first dead zombie. He placed the sole of his left boot on the face, feeling the nose give way under the pressure as he pushed, and split open the top of the skull like a boiled egg as the blade broke free. Instead of luxuriously yellow yolk spilling out, a foul-smelling and gelatinous chunk of grey brain matter flopped onto the ground beside his foot and threatened to void the bile from his stomach in an instant.

  He gathered himself, spun the axe so that the pointed section instead of the wide blade was pointing forwards, and swung to impale the kneeling thing in the part where the neck met the head.

  It stiffened, lifeless the second the cruel, cold metal punctured the dead flesh, and it flopped to the deck.

  Xavier met Jean-Pierre’s eyes as the two men stood panting for breath.

  “Everybody, grab what you’ve got,” Xavier shouted, bending to help up the man he had fallen over, “and get back to the docks. Now.”

  He propelled the man forwards and turned to face the door where the attack had come from. Jean-Pierre stood at his side and both men felt the gathering tension build to the point where the two of them felt the urge, the pathological need, to turn and run.

  Nothing came, and they backed out of the shop together as their boots kicked at fallen and discarded packets littering the floor. The last man out before them was the one who had tripped him inadvertently.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah,” the man gasped as he held his right arm as if his shoulder was injured, “I’ll be okay…”

  Xavier pushed the man ahead of him, not seeing how he quickly pulled back the sleeve of his coat to look at the neat oval of puncture marks on his wrist. The bleeding had stopped almost instantly, and the heat he was feeling was close to unbearable. Terrified that he would be left outside the safety of the docks, he kept his mouth shut and staggered to keep up with the others heading back towards safety, or at least what they all thought was safety.

  Chapter 11

  Bill Hampton, the still-limping sergeant of marines, was on watch when the van pulled back into sight of their small village enclave. He waited for confirmation, not wanting to open up their defences without knowing that it was indeed his people driving and that none of them were infected, before pushing aside the barricade to allow them inside. That confirmation was given by Johnson leaning his head out of the window and giving a thumbs-up gesture, which Hampton took as the universal sign language for everything being hunky-dory.

  It wasn’t, obviously, and the looks on their faces told him that everything was not right in the world. Wor
se than the usual amount of not right, anyway.

  “What’s happened?” Bill asked, his eyes scanning to double check that everyone who went out came back whole.

  “Get everyone inside first,” Johnson told him, handing him a heavy bag stuffed full of shotgun cartridges which weighed him down in an instant. They went inside, heavy coats being stripped off as the interior was warm by comparison to the bitter outside temperatures. The bags and gun cases were laid down, and Kimberley walked from the kitchen wearing a smile of relief and genuine happiness that they were back. That smile, just as Hampton’s had, faded in an instant as she read their faces.

  “What’s happened?” she asked, her own eyes scanning the returning faces to make sure everyone had come back.

  “Come and sit down, please,” Johnson said in a curious tone of voice that, if his men had heard him speak with it, would make them think that he had gone soft. Something about her disarmed him.

  Peter walked in through the front door and laid down his weapon, his suspicious eyes betraying that he knew something was wrong. Johnson expected him to ask the question too, but he merely shrugged off his oversized coat and sat down to wait for the news.

  Astrid rummaged in a bag, coming out with a large rectangular black plastic case and offering it to Peter with a smile.

  “There was not much that I could find,” she explained, “but I see the Care Bears movie and I say to myself that Amber would like this, no?”

  Peter smiled, taking it from her with a nod and running up the stairs, no doubt to put it on in the big bedroom for her. That fact alone spoke volumes about the people who had owned that house; the fact that they had a VCR and a TV in their bedroom meant that they probably had too much money to spend.