Johnson knew that the food and supplies issue would raise its head again soon, likely that afternoon. But that morning was about sustenance to feed something more important than the now-unemployed civilian population. Today was about finding bullets to feed their machine guns.
In their few skirmishes prior to the battle of the bridge, they had expended phenomenal amounts of ammunition to counter the massing hordes of stumbling corpses, and they were down to enough rounds per wagon to barely equip them for another defence. They had expended a fair amount of the larger 30mm rounds for the cannons on the Foxes, but 7.62 was the magic number. They had twelve Fox cars, four of the quick and light tracked Spartans in Maxwell’s assault troop, as well as the two larger versions of those tracked vehicles in the two command Sultans. Each of those eighteen vehicles had a big, reliable GPMG machine gun, and that was before the two Chieftain tanks counted their two per wagon. On top of that, the SLRs of the small Royal Military Police and the new SA80 rifles of the Royal Marines took different ammunition again. The men of the Yeomanry squadron were relatively well-off for the 9mm rounds to feed their personal weapons, but seeing as their specialist form of fighting didn’t primarily involve being outside of their armour too much, that wasn’t a priority, but their stockpile still needed doubling to be on the safe side.
There were also rations, fuel, tools, spare parts all to be considered and that was where he had managed to force his way onto the mission.
Captain Palmer, as capable and quick-witted as he was in contrast to his obnoxious and spoilt younger brother, saw the benefit in Johnson’s claim and also knew with utter certainty that he had been played like a fiddle.
“It’s not a matter of seniority in command, Sir,” Johnson told him in a placatory voice, “it’s simply that I know instantly what the parts for the vehicles are and how many of what we need.”
“And,” Palmer said as he completed the thought out loud, “we can’t very well both of us go as we would be leaving the remaining soldiers without army leadership. God forbid our chaps should come under navy control.”
So it was agreed. Palmer would stay and ‘quarterback’ the whole mission via the command headquarters. His choice of words made Johnson frown as he thought of how to phrase the question. Palmer saw the look and told him anyway.
“My first posting in Germany,” he said, “was with an American unit as liaison. I spent more time in an Abrams than I did in a Chieftain for a little under a year before my chaps deployed for a large training exercise and I got to go back. Some things one just, sort of… absorbs, if you follow my meaning?”
Johnson did, and if he was honest with himself, he was a little jealous. Shaking that away, he tried not to smile too much at having shoe-horned himself into a key position before the bureaucracy of the military served up another plate of humble pie for him to eat and forced him back down the chain of command even further.
He was surprised that hadn’t happened already, as there was obviously an element of command and control still in play and apparently, floating at sea, was a growing fleet of allied nations becoming involved. He was certain that, after the arrival of the navy and marines bearing the knowledge that senior commanders were still in charge, they would send a Major at least or a Colonel to take over command of the army’s resources on land.
That hadn’t happened, and over the coming days it was clear that their little green slice of southern England was relatively unimportant to the bigger picture, where the disease had already spread over Ireland and mainland Britain. There were pockets of survivors here and there, according to the eyes very high up in the skies, but anything resembling a large town or city was destroyed. The main concern, Johnson had soon realised, was the spread over continental Europe.
He was entirely ignorant or the how part, and he doubted that if anyone floating out in the Channel knew, they would bother to tell a reservist Warrant Officer, but the disease which was believed to have originated in London had found its way to a Paris outskirt within a day. His mind ran riot, thinking that it could only be that someone who was infected had got onto a boat or passenger ferry, and been inadvertently taken to France, where they had started biting people like there was no tomorrow.
That was how the British Army of the Rhine was so heavily engaged, and why the thought of their return to British shores to eradicate the outbreak there was an impossibility.
They were, for the most part, on their own.
What he didn’t know and could probably have worked out for himself, had he been in a sufficiently dark mood as to contemplate such things, was what was happening in the wider world.
The United States, as was sensible, had ceased all movement into the mainland. Traffic in and out of Canada was allowed, but their southern borders were closed by a massive mobilisation of the National Guard, and their seaward borders were patrolled day and night by the combined might of the navy and coastguard. There was a widespread decree from their president that there was ‘no way on God’s green earth’ that disease would enter their land. There was widespread outcry for the US to bring her troops home to fight the good fight, but on that subject the president was ominously silent.
The south American continent, much in the same way, mirrored those actions. As did Australia and many African provinces, and Japan, along with any island nation in possession of their own naval forces or under the protection of another country.
What was most worrying, however, was the posturing of the Soviet Union.
~
“Morning, chaps,” Johnson said in a low voice out of respect for the ungodly hour. The assembled marines, almost all of them, he guessed, were clustered together near the two Bedford trucks parked ready the previous night to carry them to the camp that the army had sensibly abandoned before the tide of dead had swelled to a size that would have washed over those thin fences and swept them away.
He received the expected grunts in response, some calling him ‘Sir’ and others using his rank but none of them offering any disrespect. The smell of hexi-blocks, the solid fuel used to heat water in their mess tins, mixed with a waft of cigarette smoke as he passed the men. Maxwell was ready, using the wagon that he had fixed in record time under interesting circumstances during their recent battle. He’d had to repair the gearbox linkage before their tenuous position had come under friendly fire, and forced them to abandon the vehicle and give themselves yet another obstacle to overcome. He had made the repair, incredibly, and had limped home to regain the safety of the island just before the horde had reached them.
The reason Johnson had chosen Maxwell, other than the fact that he was a capable leader of troops, was that he commanded the faster tracked vehicles and the other sergeant he trusted had lost a man the day before. Putting the remaining men of One Troop straight into another mission was out of the question, and Johnson had to admit to himself that the men of the other two troops were effective at performing their conventional roles, but he didn’t think they had fully switched on to their new reality. Leaving those men as steady guards of their island and confident that they could serve their guns effectively should the need arise, he elected to take the men most accustomed to dismounted reconnaissance.
Half of his assault troop were in their two chosen Spartans, with another four of them designated for the front seats of the Bedford trucks that would transport the Marines. Johnson climbed aboard the front Bedford’s cabin, relegating his trooper to the breezy canvas-backed rear section, and he opened the window to rest the barrel of his Sterling sub-machine gun on the ledge. The driver, the round-faced and smiling trooper Povey, was rolling a cigarette when Johnson climbed up, and he turned to see Povey offering the little cylinder to him. Johnson didn’t smoke as a habit, but he was known to feel the urge from time to time.
“Thanks,” he said, reaching out and taking the smoke, allowing the trooper to light it before leaning back to watch him roll a replacement with deft fingers. The men knew that the time for hot drinks and cigarettes wou
ld end soon, as they would be observing ‘hard routine’, as they would in any danger area, because they couldn’t run the risk of attracting the Screechers through something as unnecessary as tea or a smoke.
Just as the sun began to rise, Captain Palmer stepped out of the headquarters building and raised a tin mug in salute to the big man riding shotgun in the big, green truck as they set off gently down the slope.
Chapter 7
The phone rang, shattering the underground silence and echoing terribly. The man in the white coat ran for it, snatching up the handset and hunching down as he cradled it with both hands for the precious promise of life that it could bring.
“Hello? Hello?” he hissed into it desperately, hoping that he hadn’t imagined it again and that there was actually someone there this time.
“Professor Grewal?” enquired an efficient and polite female voice from the other end.
“Yes,” he croaked, then cleared his throat, “yes, I’m Professor Grewal, who is calling?” he asked, wincing as he heard the mania in his voice but was powerless to prevent it escaping.
“Hold, please,” was all he heard, then a click on the line and he was certain that he’d imagined it. He flopped backwards against the wall next to the phone and slid down to sit on his heels. If he wasn’t rationing his food to the point that he was borderline hypoglycaemic constantly, he might have had the tears to spare but as it was, his body would not part with anything it could still use. He sobbed with dry eyes as he suffered another minor panic attack, reliving the terrifying events of the last three weeks spent underground.
He had been mostly underground for a few months before it all went wrong, but before his experiments for the government, the government of which country he couldn’t be entirely sure, went wrong and released hell on earth, he had at least been free to leave.
He had no clue how severe the outbreak had been, but he knew enough to realise that nobody had come to rescue him yet, so that meant things obviously weren’t going too well topside.
He was a leading expert on biological outbreaks, with a background in applied chemistry, which had allowed him to create and test the perfect pathogen to destabilise a foreign country. That knowledge sadly offered him little solace now, not knowing what was happening outside of his underground lab, which he had managed to secure by some small miracle.
By combining a particularly aggressive strain of rabies courtesy of the Americans, with his own modified version of meningitis, he had created the perfect antidote to humanity, and had inadvertently unleashed a plague destined to make his own species consume itself into oblivion.
The outbreak, caused by the human testing phase of his work, had at least been contained in the lab, but the protocols had sorely overlooked the unexpected side effects, and the team sent in to help those trapped inside were the ones who released the infected into the streets of south London on a Friday afternoon.
Grewal had been trapped inside a small storeroom with no water and had suffered for two days until he finally steeled himself to make a desperate bid for freedom, or at least another room that had food and water. He had found rolls of insulating wrap in that storeroom, and had wound it around himself as a crude form of bite protection in readiness for his escape attempt.
Events above ground, as devastating as they were to the entire south east, and spreading west with enough raw power to halt an armoured column heading to restore order to the capital, had actually saved him from death by dehydration or worse. When the gathering mob above ground began to move with some bizarre, unknown singular purpose and started to march together, the two lurching former colleagues who were camped outside the door to his storeroom were distracted by the sound they were all making, and stumbled their way towards the exit to join the exodus.
Feeling desperate, he psyched himself up to fight his way out, only for that desperation to turn to foolishness as he shouted a short squawk of challenge to the empty corridor. Realising that his besiegers had gone, he forced the main door closed and locked it, returning to the carnage that used to be his state-of-the-art lab. There were parts of bodies strewn over the floors, which he tried not to look at, but the most worrying discovery was the test subjects still strapped to their gurneys.
Some had tipped themselves over in their thrashing attempts to reach flesh with their teeth and Grewal watched in horror as they seemed to emerge from a state of dormancy when he walked in the room. Their cloudy eyes fixed on him and any noise he made fired them up until they began to shriek and hiss and snap their teeth together in his direction, as though they could bite their way to him despite being restrained.
As traumatised as he was, he was still a scientist who felt not only personally responsible for the catastrophe, but believed he could fix it.
He first looked at the only test subjects to be still and saw a pair of surgical clamps buried through the right eye socket of one. Another appeared normal to look at, but closer inspection revealed the hilt of a scalpel protruding from the base of the skull.
Over the next few days he took samples from them after doubling the restraints and being very careful to never make contact with them without protective gear. He collected the samples and his test results, then dispatched all of the still living men.
Not living, living, he supposed but at least still moving.
“Professor?” asked a voice from the phone, startling him back to the present.
“I’m here,” he said, “who is this?”
“Commander Briggs of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy,” came the insistent response, “Professor I can’t be certain that this form of communication will last long so I need you to answer my questions as efficiently as possible. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Grewal stammered.
“Are you injured or infected?”
“No.”
“Is the lab still secure, is it accessible from the outside?”
“Yes,” Grewal said, then thought before answering the second part, “and I’d need to open it from inside.”
“Do you have hazardous material from the lab and is it secure?”
“Yes, in a hard case. I have blood and tissue samples and…”
“Please,” Briggs interrupted in an admonishing tone, “brevity and accuracy are key here, Professor. Do you have supplies to last for a month or more?”
“No.”
“Do you have supplies to last up to a month?”
“No.”
“Dammit,” Briggs said cursing him pointlessly, “can you hold out for a fortnight?”
Grewal did the mental calculations again, having emptied every piece of edible material in the lab onto the large table in the common area.
“Eleven days, maximum,” he said weakly, hearing breathing and a pause on the other end of the line.
“We will attempt an extraction as soon as possible,” Briggs told him, “We will attempt to use this method of communication to warn you closer to the time, but it may not be possible. Be ready.”
The phone clicked again, and the line went dead.
“Please,” Grewal said in a small voice, “don’t leave me alone… talk to me, please...”
He dropped the phone and sat with his back to the wall as the swinging handset bumped of his shoulder with a pendulum motion. Just then, whether from sadness, desperate loneliness or relief, the tears came and would not stop.
Chapter 8
“Thank you, Private,” said Kimberley Perkins to the soldier flanking sergeant Croft with a cup of tea.
“No, Miss,” he said looking confused, “I’m a Trooper, not a Private.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, as she looked up from the strong-smelling tea cupped in both hands, “sorry, I er… what’s the difference, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Trooper Cooper, as much as he had heard of the jokes about his name and rank, didn’t mind at all. He glanced at sergeant Croft, seemingly to ask for permission to engage in idle chitchat with the civilians, and he received a nod of conse
nt. Cooper sat next to the young woman, seeing her shrink slightly away and self-consciously fuss with the hair on the left side of her face to hide the bumpy skin of the scar.
“We are a squadron, see, made up of troops of troopers, but the infantry has regiments made up of companies of privates. There are some gunners and fusiliers and scaleys bu…” Croft cleared his throat loudly without looking up from his clipboard, and Cooper amended his explanation, “I mean signalmen,” he said sheepishly, “so it depends on where you get put in the army.”
“Oh,” Kimberley said again as she looked up into his kind face, “so the men with the red berets and different guns are privates?”
“No, Miss!” Cooper chuckled, “they’re all…” he paused to look at Croft’s back and evidently decided against using the nickname he had loaded ready to fire, “they are Royal Military Policemen, RMPs, and they come out of the factory as Lance-Jacks, so they can order people around, like,” he said, unaware that his explanation raised more questions than it answered.
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