Toy Soldiers (Book 2): Aftermath

by Ford, Devon C.

  Now, three weeks after those orders had led them to half suffocate and suffer from vitamin D deficiency, they arrived in a very unseasonably stormy English Channel.

  ~

  “Sergeant Major?” came the polite, well-mannered enquiry through the closed door.

  “Sir?” Johnson answered, thinking that his orders for the captain to be fetched had been followed, and instead finding that the man himself had not come, but had sent his younger brother.

  “Sergeant Major, I must ask after your health,” said Second Lieutenant Palmer, “Are you quite well?”

  “Fine, Lieutenant, thank you,” Johnson replied gruffly, “we’ll be out of here in an hour, don’t you worry.”

  “Quite,” Palmer chuckled, implying that Johnson’s welfare was the slightest bit concerning to him personally, “compliments from the Captain, but when you’re ready he’d rather enjoy hearing from you about the events of this afternoon.”

  I bet he bloody would, Johnson thought to himself, biting back the retort that the Captain, last time he checked, had two working legs and was quite capable of walking his royal arse down there and asking the question in person.

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” Johnson said instead, using the prinked boy’s lowly rank instead of inflating his ego further with another ‘Sir’.

  “Oh,” the officer said from outside in afterthought, “and how is our man?”

  Johnson took a breath again before answering, just in case the words he was thinking came out of his mouth instead of the words he should say.

  “Corporal Ashdown is stable, and there are no signs that he is infected,” Johnson said.

  “But we haven’t encountered, er, injuries such as this before, have we?” he responded, letting Johnson know that the facts must be common knowledge, but that Palmer was actually questioning why the injured man had been brought inside their cordon. “No,’ Johnson said, “we haven’t.”

  The sound of boots marching away in a relaxed tempo made the SSM’s blood boil, making him breach his own standing orders and leave the room with thirty minutes to go before the allotted time. Despite the fact that nobody else had been removed from quarantine, he stormed up the hill unchallenged as he noticed the royal military police sergeant duck into a doorway to avoid having to lie if asked later if he had seen the SSM. Johnson banged into the headquarters building and startled the men inside, finding a scene of intense business and stress, instead of the relaxed atmosphere he was expecting.

  Captain Palmer was sitting in front of one of the radio sets, one earphone cupped to the side of his head and scribbling furiously with a pencil on a pad of paper before him. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he appeared red-eyed as though he hadn’t stopped to blink in the last two hours.

  Guiltily, Johnson regretted his malice towards the man for sending his younger brother when he clearly had important things to do. He was wordlessly handed a tin mug holding a hot drink so freshly made that it burned his hand and forced him to change his grip. He waited patiently as he watched Captain Palmer acknowledge transmissions curtly and efficiently, without pausing in his insistent writing. He finished the call and handed the headset back to corporal Mander, who was on duty. Climbing to his feet wearily and rubbing his eyes, the officer also accepted a drink but was staring at the paper before him so intently that he didn’t flinch at the heat of his own mug. Appearing to only just notice the Sergeant Major, he put down both paper and drink to shake his hand and place his left on the strong shoulder opposite him.

  “Mister Johnson, I’m glad you are safe,” he said with genuine gratitude for the man’s survival, “how is Ashdown? He’s Maxwell’s 2ic, isn’t he?” he asked, showing that he had either been passed that information recently or had rapidly absorbed this knowledge about his adopted and partly-manned squadron of Yeomanry. Johnson suspected it was the latter.

  “Stable, Sir, thank you,” he said, “he’s showing no sign of… of turning, and he’s under the care of one of the marines’ medics.”

  “Excellent,” Palmer said with passion behind his eyes, “I’m sure he’ll pull through. Now,” he said, changing the subject after sufficient time as to not appear callous regarding the lives of his men, “C.A.S. have been on the blower. They are calling themselves that now, Command at Sea, apparently, and it’s all above board with government and all branches of the military.” He paused to offer time for questions, but continued as Johnson clearly had none. “They are in the process of consolidating military assets all over the place. It’s mostly bad news, I’m afraid…” he paused to blow on the surface of the drink he had picked up, only now seeming to find it hot to touch.

  “And what do they have for us?” Johnson asked, reading between the lines and guessing that the scribbled notes were the bones of a mission.

  “Nothing for now,” he said excitedly, “it seems as though we are one of the rare pockets with a good number of civilian refugees. They want to add to us here and are directing what personnel they can to get to our location. Others will be our responsibility to bring back.”

  “Okay,” Johnson said simply, feeling drained and unable to think about anything else, given the day’s activities so far.

  Graham Ashdown slept until the sky outside was fully dark.

  Everyone had endured their quarantine countdown in subdued quiet after the unexpected events of their arrival. The search process was simplified, given that soldiers had few qualms over being naked in front of their peers. Each man had stripped, ready to be examined and the method evolved organically so that the RMPs got all of the marines and soldiers through quickly, and they were able to get comfortable and settle in to wait.

  The story of what had happened ran through the men like only a rapidly-spreading rumour could, so that a convoluted version of events now lowered their mood and made for a depressing air. The men all shuffled out when the time was called, and none of them had manifested a fever or even a hint of an elevated temperature. They reported back to their individual billets with their heads down, despite the successes of the day, and the small house remained closed up, with the single soldier standing outside wearing his scarlet beret and an expression of stoic apology.

  That soldier was both startled and relieved in the same moment when the Yeomanry Sergeant Major returned. He ordered the door open, but thanked him with a tired smile as he stepped inside.

  Johnson’s heart was heavy as he fully expected to find his man dead. He hoped to hear that he had gone in his sleep. He did not expect to walk in and see Ashdown sitting up, bandages wrapped around his neck, with a tin cup of steaming liquid in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He smiled, despite the pain he was clearly in, and looked at the contents of each hand as though his mind was juggling them to decide which one he should put down so he could stand up.

  “Jesus, Graham,” Johnson said with wide eyes, “how? What happened?”

  This last was directed at marine Sealey, who was stripped down to trousers and T-shirt, with the same contents in his own hand as Ashdown had.

  “Slept it off, Sir,” he said with a smile, “temperature never got up, even though he was talking a lot in his sleep, but he just came ‘round, like. You’re alright now, ain’t ya, mate?”

  Ashdown watched Sealey as he spoke, then turned back to Johnson wearing the same smile of almost fanatical relief to stutter his own explanation.

  “I thought I was a gonner, Sir,” he said, the slightest quiver in his chin, “I really thought the scratches would have…”

  He sniffed once, getting a grip of himself before the stress and realisation of almost dying and worse, threatened to unravel him, then carried on with bright eyes that tried to over-compensate.

  “The shoulder is sore as hell, but I’ll be back at it in a few days,” he finished.

  “You’ll be stood down for more than a few days, Ashdown,” Johnson chuckled at him, “we need to get you moved somewhere more comfortable. Give you some time off. Your family are here, aren’t they?”
/>
  “My missus and my boy, yes, Sir,” he said as his face darkened slightly, and he coughed to clear his voice, “they’re billeted with Sergeant Maxwell’s family.”

  His face stayed shrouded in worry, as though the mention of his family gave a sharp reminder of what he had to lose. Johnson recognised that the man had been through enough, more than enough, and told him to rest up. His eyes met the marine’s and the slight flick of his head summoned him to follow outside.

  “Stay where you are, mate,” he told Ashdown as he set his drink on the table and slipped the rolled-up cigarette back in his mouth, “I’m going to see if any of my muckers are about to help.”

  Outside, and a good few paces away from the house, marine and warrant officer stood in momentarily awkward silence as both sought the appropriate words.

  “You have my thanks,” Johnson said, wincing at what he felt was an overly formal tone. He meant the words, however, and was truly grateful that his man wasn’t dead or worse.

  Marine Sealey shrugged away the heartfelt words nonchalantly, not sharing his own fears that the man he didn’t know wouldn’t wake and he would be forced to put him down. That would have potentially pushed the subtle enmity between marines and squaddies to boil closer to the surface, if only he and a dead man had known the truth of things. But luckily, that had not happened.

  “It must be only the teeth, I reckon,” he told Johnson.

  “The teeth?”

  “Yeah, I mean, the scratches didn’t infect him, not with the Screecher virus or whatever anyway, and the teeth didn’t break the skin, so I reckon it’s something about the teeth,” he explained simply before adding a warning, “But he’ll definitely need some antibiotics; God knows what shit has got into him otherwise.”

  “I’ll pass that up, thanks,” Johnson told him, then asked if he was ok to sort moving Ashdown to where his family was temporarily living.

  “I think your mate has ideas there, Sir,” he said, pointing to the approaching sergeant Maxwell, “If you don’t need me anymore, mind if I find my oppos?” he asked hopefully, meaning his friends and fellow marines.

  “No, thanks again, marine,” Johnson said and offered him a hand.

  Sealey shook it, replying, “No problem, I’m hanging after lashing up your Pongo,” he finished with a goading grin before trotting off to find his ‘oppos’.

  Johnson smiled at the liberal use of marine slang, which he suspected was either partly for his benefit, or that marine Sealey had joined young and been transformed into the rare beast of a Royal Marine Commando and embraced their unique language as his own.

  Maxwell joined him and asked, “Did that Bootneck just call us Pongos?”

  “Yep,” Johnson replied with amusement, smirking at the marine’s name for the apparently foul-smelling soldiers of the British Army.

  “If it ain’t bad enough with the arabs…” Maxwell said, using their own inside terminology meaning Arrogant Regular Army Bastards. The rift between the regulars and the reservists, although not noticeable since the brief bar fight, had not come to a head for one simple reason in Johnson’s opinion; there were more reservists than regulars to make it a fair fight. He had hoped that the kind of territorial pissing contests of different military units and branches in one confined space wouldn’t affect them, given the unprecedented depth of shit they found themselves in, but it seemed that wasn’t to be the case.

  The marines were fine. They were led by a competent officer and sergeant and while they kept themselves to themselves, they weren’t hostile in the slightest.

  And besides, he thought to himself, I’d be worried if there wasn’t a bit of inter-service piss-taking.

  “Anyway,” Johnson said as he snapped out of his small reveries and changed the subject, “Ashdown says his family is with yours, that right?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply, then frowned and turned to Johnson with wide eyes, “What? He spoke?”

  “He’s fine, Simon,” Johnson told him, “said Bootneck reckons he’ll need antibiotics but the thing didn’t manage to bite him. He’s still himself.”

  “Sir,” Maxwell acknowledged as he simultaneously excused himself to run to the door and throw it open.

  Johnson smiled, knowing that the man would be cared for, but reminding himself that he should be watched closely by someone with a bayonet handy until he was fully restored. He wandered to the building used as both the guard house as it was the closest to the bridge, and also the billet for the Monkeys, or RMPs, seeing as they were neck-deep in unofficial terminology, as it was large enough to accommodate their sleeping needs too.

  Johnson found Swift, the beleaguered sergeant, and decided not to add the pressure of guarding an injured man located higher up the island to his list of worries.

  “Good work earlier,” he told him, not sure if he meant with the main quarantine work or because he’d had the balls to tell Johnson himself that he had to follow the rules. Swift nodded his acceptance of the ambiguous compliment and watched as Johnson turned to walk back uphill to find the headquarters building.

  There he found Palmer sitting beside the radio operator, who was now Corporal Daniels, having evidently replaced Mander at the shift change organised by another of his reliable NCOs. Palmer leaned back in the chair to stretch his aching spine as Johnson walked in, offering him a tired smile of welcome.

  “All is well, I trust, Mister Johnson?” he asked.

  “It is, Sir,” he responded as he glanced around the room for anything hot and wet to ease his throat, “Ashdown’s recovered.”

  Palmer sat bolt upright and fixed him with an excited look. Keeping his eyes on the SSM, he spoke over his shoulder politely to Daniels.

  “Corporal, I’ll keep an ear on the radio, would you mind fetching up a brew from somewhere?”

  Daniels acknowledged him, rising to leave the room as he had clearly been ordered to act as servant and told to leave the room because the grown-ups were talking, but he did so happily because Captain Palmer had a way of getting people to do things without ordering them about.

  “Fully recovered?” Palmer asked, “No infection from the bite?”

  “No bite,” Johnson said as he scraped chair legs on the floor to spin a seat around to face the officer, “the thing cracked his collarbone, but it bit him on the webbing strap and didn’t break the skin. The scratches were a concern, but they don’t seem to have spread the disease.”

  “Interesting,” Palmer said as he put forefinger and thumb of his right hand to his top lip and picked in absent-minded gentleness, “and where is he now?”

  “Sergeant Maxwell is going to set him up in the billet where their families are, and I’m going to have a man with him at all times until he’s recovered.”

  Palmer nodded enthusiastically, glad that Johnson had evidently pre-empted his thoughts on the risk still remaining.

  “The marine who patched him up did a good job, but he doesn’t have the antibiotics we need,” Johnson went on hopefully, “Any chance we could ask our new command structure for a doctor and supplies?”

  Palmer mused for a moment, opening his mouth once and closing it again as though he changed his mind about what he was going to say. He went to speak again but the door banged open and both men turned to see Daniels backing his way into the room using his backside to push the door ahead of him. He pivoted on the spot to reveal the two mugs in his hands before crossing the room and looking at each hand to decide which drink was which. His frown remained as he glanced between the left and right mugs, then handed one to each man. Daniels left the room, no doubt to retrieve his own drink and slip outside to smoke in peace and stretch his back.

  Both men bent their faces to the mugs, unable to differentiate between the strong, dark liquids by sight but smelling that they had each other’s drinks.

  Johnson passed the tea with two sugars to Palmer, who in turn passed over the coffee with two to Johnson.

  “I’m waiting for them to get back to me,” he told the
SSM conspiratorially, “and that’s one of the things they are sending. The other is a new boss for all of us.”

  Chapter 12

  Clare and Pauline kept quiet company, in the intervals when Clare wasn’t crying pitifully for the loss of her daughter, screaming murder at their captors or sleeping off the blow to her head. The older woman tried to hush her, to comfort her, but she hadn’t spoken a single conscious word for three days, other than to promise every vengeance known to mankind if they didn’t take her back to get her daughter.

  When the tears finally ran out, when the crippling acceptance sunk into Clare’s mind, she became nearly catatonic. Pauline had initially misunderstood her when she had cried over the loss of her baby, assuming that the young woman, like so many, had seen loved ones pulled down and killed by the devil that now inhabited the bodies of the infected. After the rants against the guards, after the pleading to be allowed to go back and find her, she finally plucked up the courage to risk upsetting her and ask the question.

  “She isn’t dead, is she? Isn’t one of them?” she asked the girl.

  Clare sniffed and turned her red, emotionless eyes towards her and stared, then rolled away. Pauline sat back, not wanting to push the issue any further, but the voice sounded low and soft from the bed opposite her own.

  “We hid in the house for almost a week,” she said in a flat voice that croaked after the effort of her screams and tears, “we stayed upstairs, kept quiet, and I taught my baby not to cry and make a noise.”

  She sniffed, pushed herself upright and cuffed at her face with both sleeves pulled over her hands. Sitting up and tucking her heels into her thighs, she hugged her knees tightly.