by Sean Deville
High up in the watchtower, he saw movement in the far treeline through his binoculars, and knew instantly that these weren’t civilians. Although they hid amongst the trees and the undergrowth, he could see they were a mass of bloodied faces and missing limbs. Plus, humans didn’t congregate like that. First one had become visible, then a dozen then hundreds. Down below, someone else saw them and an array of whistles sounded off across the positions, spreading down the length of the wall as the alarm went out.
They had managed to build a wall two miles long, a wall that stretched round to protect their flanks. But it wasn’t finished, and was ramshackle at best, broken in parts by the very nature of the land. Behind the wall stood the small town of Penwithick. The land sloped down to the east, which made this an ideal place for a defensive barrier. But it was no Maginot Line. And there were less than seven thousand trained men to defend the position. The rest were civilians who might actually do more harm than good in Grainger’s opinion. But it was their lives, and they had the right to fight for what was left of this green and pleasant land.
“Shit.” The corporal next to him heard his captain swear and looked out to where Grainger was concentrating on. He was already handing his captain the radio handset without even being asked.
“Red Leg 6, this is command at DP5. Fire mission request at your predesignated coordinates. Fire for effect.” He held the handset, counted the seconds, heard the whistling of the projectiles overhead. And then the distant forest erupted as dozens of shells landed amongst the trees. The whole treeline disappeared in smoke and flame. Safe in the knowledge that the bombardment was on target, he looked back to his corporal. “Get me Major Cranfield,” Grainger said, referring to his superior in charge of this positions defence.
“We have infected at seven of our defensive positions,” the major reported. “Artillery is having to rotate as we don’t have enough to cover all positions. Air support is already inbound.”
“Have the infected started their assault yet?” General Mansfield asked. He stood in the Headland Hotel’s large banquet hall which had been turned into a command centre. Five men were examining a map on the central table.
“No. They appeared outside the killing zones, and just seem to be waiting. We have drone feed over the areas.” The general turned to look at an array of screens on the wall behind him. They were all marked with the defensive position the drones monitored, and all but one showed alternating infrared feeds of what was happening on the ground. One of the monitors showed only snow. “We lost the feed from drone 5 an hour ago. Technical fault apparently.”
“What are they waiting for?” The general felt something stir in the back of his head. This wasn’t right. He was missing something.
They knew strategy. They knew that attacking a defendable position would cost them dearly. But the virus demanded it. The last defenders were protected from the air by a rain of almost constant death, and until they were dealt with, there would always be the incentive for the humans to interfere. With their bombs and their nukes and their napalm. So the infected did they only thing they could: they took the battle to mankind.
He no longer remembered his name, the mere concept of it now meaningless to him. The virus had regressed him to the stage where mere words were almost alien to him. And yet he did not lack for basic instinct instilled in him by the experience of nearly 8 million minds. So he was not in the trees by Defensive Position 5. He did not have to weather the downfall of ordinance that beset his brothers and sisters. Instead, he sat, twitching in the kitchen of a farmhouse half a mile back from what was now the front line. And there were twenty other like him in the kitchen alone. They all hid wherever they could for death could come from the skies at any moment.
Some of those with him jerked at the pinpricks in their minds caused by the deaths of their kind. They were testing the defences of the humans, sending forward the damaged and the near death. All along the peninsula the infected had appeared, and already they had learnt that the human’s artillery capability was limited. They sacrificed the infirm for the information they needed for the coming assault. Many of them were probing the gaps, looking for a way through. This was why they had run here, so as not to give the prey the time it needed to build its walls and train its soldiers. They had arrived to find the humans behind robust defences, robust but limited, all too often making use of natural geographical barriers that weren’t really barriers to the infected. They could swim rivers and they could climb cliffs. All the terrain would do was slow them down.
They had lost thousands on the approach. The ground had become deadly, seeded with anti-personnel mines. At first, the infected had panicked, their numbers depleted by invisible traps. But strategy had arisen again, based on knowledge, on the rapidly degenerating memory of history. Deep in their global consciousness the idea came. One of the infected, formerly a professor of military history, had remembered the way the Iranians had turned the tide against their enemy in the Iran-Iraq wall. They had created the idea that suicide was a form of martyrdom, and had led over ten thousand young men to their deaths by encouraging them to walk through the minefields laid down by Saddam Hussein’s forces. The infected quickly adopted the same strategy, sending the weakest first, spread in a long jagged line so that should a mine explode only one of them would be damaged. The remnants of the strategy were now being pounded to oblivion.
He was a recent convert, caught by the infected amongst a thousand others who were fleeing the infection. He didn’t remember, but he had become trapped on a road with his family because the bridge ahead had been blown. It was night, and they had opted to stay in the car until morning, fearing those around him almost as much as the infected. They had witnessed death and violence as the order under which human society existed quickly evaporated. There were gangs starting to prey on the weak, taking whatever they needed, beating and killing those who objected. So he kept the gun in plain sight. An air pistol it might have been, but it looked real enough for those intent on mischief and madness to stay away. It did nothing to help when the infected arrived, however.
They had descended at dawn. The road was in a shallow valley, and he had been woken by their howls and by the screams of mankind. Looking around, he saw people running, panic scattering them into easy to attack units. He had looked at his wife, clutching their two-month-old baby, and the terror in her eyes had almost ended him. Then his head was jerked to the right as something impacted the glass of his driver’s side window. It was an infect, and he was punching the glass with an ever-bloodier fist. The glass held and the infected woman ran off, drawn to a child who had run past her.
“We’ll be okay,” he had lied, and his wife’s eyes had shown him she saw the lie for the feeble attempt that it was. The second infected had been more inventive, and had come at the car armed with a piece of pipe it had acquired somewhere. The window lasted less than a minute and he cursed as hands had clawed at him. Despite his flailing, his hand was grabbed, and he felt the teeth bite deep. Then the infected was away, and no other bothered them. They didn’t need to, their job was done.
His wife had once looked at him with love. From that point on she had looked at him with horror. She made to escape the car, but a woman was downed right outside her door by two huge obese carnivores whose agility defied their size. Her door wouldn’t open, stopped by their bulk, and she screamed in frustration and abject terror. Her husband hadn’t changed yet, but he had been bitten, and she knew what that meant. It had been too much for her, and her mind had simply snapped. Looking at her soul being destroyed before him, he had done the only thing he could: he got out of the car. All around him was madness, and yet, bitten and infected, he was no longer a part of it. Knowing he had mere minutes, he wandered through the ranks of humans and infected, untouched, merely now an observer to the craziness and the slaughter. No, not slaughter, because the one thing he noticed was that nobody was being killed.
He didn’t go far, and he had looked back at his car, and
his heart had almost died. Where he had once sat, an infected now leaned in through the window, its legs dangling out. Already feeling the itch starting across his body, he ran back and dragged the attacker from the window with strength he didn’t know he possessed. The infected grabbed him and roared in his face, only to unhand him and run off to find more food for its belly. Stunned by what had happened, he wiped wetness off his face and saw his hand covered in blood, sprayed on him by the infected mouth. Looking in the car, he saw his wife, still clutching their precious child in her arms. She was screaming uncontrollably, and was almost unrecognisable. She was missing most of the left cheek.
He stood suddenly, the noise above putting them all on edge. There was the sound of machine gun fire, and the kitchen exploded as uranium-tipped bullets ripped through the walls, the appliance and the bodies. Seconds later, the assault was over, and all around him lay the damaged and the dying. But for some reason, he was completely unharmed, and he bundled himself to the window and watched the helicopter fly away. And in his mind, the infected decried their ancestors. They would have their vengeance, in this life or the next.
10.16AM, 19th September 2015, The English Channel
The yacht moved slowly through the Solent. In the distance, smoke rose from the naval city of Portsmouth. Standing on the starboard side, Croft stood with a cup of coffee in his hand. He wasn’t hung over because last night he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol. He hadn’t slept well though, the possibilities floating and churning in his brain too much for rest. His lack of sleep had worn off quickly; it was something you almost became used to when you served as he had in the military. The debauchery of the other night hadn’t been like him, but nobody seemed to care. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him, the person’s stealth surprising.
An arm wormed its way around his elbow, and Savage rested her head on his shoulder. It felt right, her being there by his side. Something had been missing in his life and he hadn’t been able to see its absence until the light was shone brightly on the gaping hole that had existed. That hole was slowly being filled, Savage felt that as well. Croft hadn’t been complete, he had been broken, and despite everything, despite the carnage and the slaughter, this was the happiest he had ever felt since…well since he could remember.
They had talked last night, Croft suddenly unburdening himself. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. On the one part, he feared the possible rejection, which had never happened. On the other, he feared what would happen should he lose his soul to this woman. What if she wasn’t as she appeared? What if he went deep down the rabbit hole only to lose her as so many had been lost over the previous days? Croft didn’t think he could survive that, but now that he had tasted the possibilities, he wasn’t sure he cared. What he was feeling, that was worth the risks, and he would do all he could to keep Lucy Savage safe, even if that meant sacrificing himself and everyone else on this boat. The boat’s inhabitants probably wouldn’t have been too happy to learn that fact.
They had talked for hours in her cabin, reality seeming to disappear as their whole universe became each other. The motion of the boat, the drum of the engine and the noise of passage moving outside the cabin became forgotten. The courting had begun, and despite the futility of where they were, he said he had to take things slow, so that she was sure he was the man she thought he was. She’d smiled at that, and that smile melted him.
“Portsmouth,” he said indicating the smoke on the horizon.
“Have the infected reached there already?”
“I don’t know,” said Croft. They hadn’t realised they were being watched until the woman in the flight suit stepped up next to them.
“Aerial bombardment. NATO’s been dropping ordinance on every port and harbour they could find.” Clarice Sterling was also drinking coffee. Unlike Croft, she had slept soundly last night.
“Understandable,” said Croft. Some might have found his remarks insensitive considering that lives would have been lost. But all three shared the truth of the situation. Human life was secondary to containing the virus. Millions would be sacrificed so that billions could survive.
“How long before we get to where we’re going?” Sterling asked. She had been unlucky, forced out of the skies by a power she still couldn’t understand. Her job was supposed to be hit and run, and now she was stranded on a boat heading to the last safe place in Great Britain. She’d had better weeks.
“Just over a day,” said Croft. He pulled the mug to his lips and finished off what was now lukewarm coffee. He motioned the cup towards Sterling. “Refill?”
“No, I’m good thanks.” Sterling watched the two as they walked back inside, a tinge of jealousy hitting her. Their romance was clearly in its early stages, often the best times, the chemistry still forming. It had been a while since she’d felt that. The life of a fighter pilot always seemed to get in the way. In a sense, that was because it was the most important thing to her. Sitting in the cockpit of that ugly-looking flying tank was the very essence of who she was. And now, now there was the very real possibility that this had been removed from her. Her biggest hope remaining was that the place they were now going would need pilots, because when it came to flying, she was amongst the best there was. That wasn’t arrogance; that was just reality.
10.31AM, 19th September 2015, Defensive Position 5, Cornwall, UK
All along the defensive line, the hoard erupted. They stayed undercover wherever they could, using their sheer numbers to swarm the position. Bullets hit them, but what was critical to a human was hardly felt in their flesh, the virus enabling them to ignore the agonies of broken bones and ruptured organs. It was like they didn’t feel the trauma as pieces of their bodies were ripped from their bodies. Losing a limb meant little to them, because without an arm they could still run, and without legs, they could still crawl.
And some of them did the latter, almost ignored in the long grass. The majority stayed back, watching and adjusting the strategy. There were nearly twenty thousand of them in total gathered for this assault, and they had already detected the weakest parts of the defensive position. But this was not the main attack; this was merely a teaser, testing the will of those defending the walls, determining the effectiveness of the snipers and the machine guns to stop the strength of a surging army, using up any ground traps like claymores and grenades. And it was effective, very. Only in three sections did infected reach the wall in the first wave, and they were dealt with swiftly, but the consciousness learned what it needed to know. The defenders cheered, not realising that they had revealed most of their secrets and expended vast amounts of precious ammunition. The walls would likely hold without greater numbers, and the infected now knew that. Across the psychic link, the call went out. More, must have more. And the infected heard. All across the country the new goal became to gather and amass, and then head southwest. Except for those who headed for the southern coast. The trickle of swimmers across the Channel continued.
Brian and Stan were side by side in the thick of it. In all their years of training, they had never experienced anything like this. Even with the ear plugs in, the noise of the firefight was deafening, the smell and the adrenaline almost numbing them to the reality of it. Brian stood in a depression, resting his automatic rifle on the wood of the palisade, firing holes having been constructed in it at regular intervals. The ground before him was flat and sloped downwards, the far treeline now shrouded in smoke and fire. He could see the infected, and even over the cacophony around him, he could hear them. He could hear their roar, the sound of their battle cry.
Part of him wanted every one of these motherfuckers dead. That part of him would happily see him put a bullet right through every skull of every infected he encountered. But the other part of him struggled with that. It remembered that they were once human beings. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. They’d had hopes, they’d had dreams. How could he kill them without killing a part of himself? So his first two magazines, fired on semi-automatic, hadn’
t hit a damn thing. Stan, for his part, seemed too engrossed and enraptured by the glory of it all.
He was about to reload for his third mag, when a hand landed roughly on his shoulder. He was surprised to see Sergeant Vorne there, his face full of thunder.
“Constable, you are firing high,” the sergeant roared. Brian briefly had the notion that even the infected would turn and run when faced with this man.
“I’m trying my best,” Brian protested, but he knew it was a lie.
“You would not have been issued with the firearm if it was deemed you were not proficient in its use. Refill your weapon and do your fucking job.” Vorne had seen this countless times before. Humans did not naturally like killing other humans, and even with intense military training, many shots still went wild of their mark, whether deliberately or due to the subconscious getting in the way. Brian looked at the sergeant, swallowed dryly, and nodded. He did as he was instructed, and aimed back at the infected. At that moment, a bunch of six came running up towards them, having somehow escaped the withering fire that was being laid into them. He lined one up in his sights, breathed out, and pulled the trigger. Although he couldn’t be certain, he was sure the shot took the infected woman in the left shoulder, spinning her round to the floor. He modified his aim and put another burst of rounds through the next, the old man’s head exploding in a mist of blood and bone. He felt the hand on his shoulder again; this time, it was gently placed.
“Outstanding,” the sergeant said, and then he was off like a man possessed, shouting orders in a voice that would have made demons cower in fear. Stan didn’t witness any of it, his whole attention on one thing and one thing alone. Killing.