“Master Chi—” Wilson began, before the words were drowned out by a tortured, ripping, gasping shriek in stereo from the advancing pair.
Gloved hands instinctively gripped weapons tighter as brains fought against the body’s natural urge to defend itself; to kill the Screechers before they got close.
Wilson’s nerve threatened to break first as he raised the butt of the sub machine gun into his shoulder and took a bead on the closest zombie. Before Miller could stop him from pulling the trigger, he abruptly lowered the weapon a fraction and stood a little straighter but remained ready to drill rounds into it.
“Back up now,” Miller told him, his breath catching in his throat as the kid stumbled on the heavy knotted rope of the cargo net when his boot heel caught it. He righted himself, stumbling backwards a little faster until he was clear of their rudimentary trap.
Nobody spoke. Nobody opened fire. The only sounds were the ripping, gasping shrieks of the monsters and the dying fizzle of the flare as it sputtered and flashed darkness over the red-bathed street. Just as the leading zombie stepped a halting, bare foot onto the edge of the cargo net, the flare died completely and plunged them all into darkness.
The absence of the flare’s light wasn’t a true darkness; even with the total absence of any light pollution, the night sky held a few twinkling stars and a dull wash of moonlight. Red light didn’t obliterate a person’s night vision like the white beam of a light bulb would, but still the panic of losing their sight was enough to trigger fear to rule over their bodies.
Wilson turned and ran, adding a, “Fuck, fuck, fuuuck,” to keep the undead attackers zeroed in on their meal. Miller held his nerve, closed his eyes to imagine how the scene was playing out without the distractions his eyes would give him, and gauged how fast they were moving.
“Hernandez!” He bawled, “Now!” Sparking multiple things to happen at once.
Hernandez, out of sight but connected to them by a long, heavy rope, gunned the throttle of the inflatable boat to snap that line taught and snag the two creatures in the net as it folded up around them to drag them towards the stony beach.
Miller and his team abandoned their positions to retreat, now that their mission objectives were bagged, and he jogged forwards to make out the shape of their youngest team member scrambling backwards on the ground to get his legs away from the writhing, shrieking mess tangled inside the heavy net.
“On your feet, kid,” he snapped, keeping his own very wary eyes on the dangerous cargo. “Everyone onboard and let’s get the hell off this island.”
EIGHT
“Be advised,” the tinny-sounding, far away American voice said, “significant infected event travelling south to north close to your bearing. Expect contact to the east as early as seventeen-hundred, over.”
“Acknowledged,” Daniels said into the radio with a resigned tone laced with fear. “Thanks for the heads-up. Out.”
“What is it?” the girl, Jessica, asked from the front of the cramped Sultan as she mimed the actions of driving the tracked vehicle, complete with engine noises. Daniels swallowed, not sure how to answer the question. He was accustomed to living his life surrounded by other hardened men and not a young girl with a blunt and forthright manner. He paused, long enough for her to turn around and give him a stern look, before deciding to just tell her.
“AWACS reporting another swarm,” he said, opening his mouth again to explain his use of military jargon.
“The Americans are still flying over us then?” she asked, betraying the fact that she listened a lot more than she spoke. “They haven’t entirely abandoned us?”
“Who knows what they’re doing up there… spying on something, no doubt,” Daniels answered, leaning back in the narrow seat and laying out his small pouch of dry tobacco scraps to try and force enough together with his fingertips to be worth the effort. Jessica abandoned her pretend driving position, stepping towards him and noticing his shaking fingers were making a mess of the task requiring fine motor skills. Wordlessly, she took the thin strip of paper from his sweaty fingers and gently sprinkled the tobacco evenly along the crease down its centre. Her own small fingers deftly rolled it into a smooth tube better than Daniels’ usual efforts, before she licked the gummed edge and passed it to him. He thanked her with a mumble and lit it, sucking hard to get a lungful of stale smoke, before letting it out with his eyes closed.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked, eyes open again as he regarded the well-rolled cigarette.
“Swarm warning?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Yeah,” Daniels answered, pausing to draw on the rolled smoke again before his eyes went wide. “Shit, we need to warn the SSM!” He snatched up the radio set and turned dials before calling out a repeated phrase over and over, with no reply.
“Is it close?” she asked quietly in a lull between his hails.
“Yes,” he said, not turning to look at her. “It’s coming from the island—the place we were before here. They must’ve got off at low tide somehow and back on the mainland.”
“Is it heading here?”
“They’re not sure. Last reported direction of travel was just ‘north’, which puts them heading right to left off to our east going past.” She frowned, evidently thinking the problem through geographically.
“So they’ll miss us?”
“Foxtrot-three-three-Alpha, Foxtrot-three-three-Alpha this is Zero-Bravo, come in, over…” he said into the radio, ignoring her question.
“Oi,” she said, jabbing him in the upper arm with an extended index finger. “They’ll miss us, right, Charlie?” He dropped his head, mouth open ready to try and call his SSM again.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “But the others are heading this way right into their path.”
“Getting something garbled over the radio,” Bufford said to Johnson over their link inside the Warrior. They’d driven hard for ten miles before they were forced to stop and deal with the scraping noise directly above the driver’s hatch. With that lucky hitchhiker removed and half decapitated by Bufford’s shiny pioneer’s axe, they had resumed their journey, heading north and west over the low, rolling countryside, which was beginning to show the earliest hints of spring.
“What is it?” Johnson asked, his eyes narrowed as he focused forward on the small slice of road he could see through his viewing slit.
“Well, if I knew that…”
“I think they’re saying ‘Foxtrot’,” Peter said confidently. “That’s you, isn’t it?” Johnson opened his mouth to reply with the long version, stopping before he wasted his breath.
“It might be,” he answered. “Keep listening. It’s probably just Daniels seeing where we’ve got to.”
Forty minutes of steady driving later, Johnson stopped the Warrior abruptly. Noises of complaint came through his headphones as the uncomfortably seasick passengers in the rear section would have been banged around with the suddenness of their halt. Johnson ignored those complaints and stared ahead.
“What do you make of that?” he asked, prompting silence in his ears. The question was intended for Bufford, who remained quiet as he stared through the optics to their front.
“Nothing good,” he finally answered.
“What is going on?” Astrid’s voice sounded in their ears.
“How far does it extend?” Johnson asked.
“Left to right… as far as I can see with the topography. No way around.”
“What is happening, Johnson?” Larsen demanded in a tone that betrayed her former seniority among the Special Forces of her native country. A pause hung heavy on their communication channel before Johnson broke it with the sobering news.
“There’s a smear on the horizon to our front,” he said in a flat, almost emotionless voice. “Buffs, the toggle on the fire controls, zoom in.” Bufford found the controls and used the magnification to full effect before a hiss of breath filled their ears.
“Shhhhit…”
�
�Be specific, Sergeant,” Larsen admonished from the back, where she couldn’t see what they were talking about.
“It’s a swarm,” he said, mirroring the same toneless vocal attitude of their driver, “and it’s directly in our way.”
“Zero-Bravo,” Daniels said with evident relief in his voice. “Be advised there’s a reported swarm in the area.”
“We know, lad,” Johnson said, no longer concerned with correct radio protocol. “We were driving straight towards it until we saw it.”
“Send grid-reference and bearing,” Daniels instructed. Johnson, anticipating the request, gave the grid from the local map and a compass bearing as best they could ascertain. Silence followed after the brief, “Wait one,” reply as Johnson imagined his corporal checking the location and direction against his own position.
Knowing the man was competent at reading a map, Johnson grew annoyed and then concerned as the silence stretched longer than expected.
“Daniels,” he called into the radio, “bearing isn’t towards your location. They’ll bypass and head north.” The logic was sound, as the things rarely deviated from an easy route when they gathered in numbers, unless something grabbed the attention of the Limas.
“Negative,” Daniels’ voice came back in a hoarse whisper. “Bridge on that road is out. Collapsed last summer. They’ll be forced down the lower ground directly to our location.”
The transmission had been cut shortly after that, when Johnson’s questions had been answered and he was unnervingly in agreement with the corporal’s assessment. He prayed he was wrong, prayed that the swarm—even if it was miniscule compared to the ones they’d encountered before—would ignore their comfortable country residence and carry on up the country.
They were stuck, with no way to cross through the flowing river of dead meat and reach the others, and knowing now that the bridge north of them was destroyed, they had no way to get ahead of the shambling procession in time. As the light began to fade, Johnson reluctantly turned their big tracked vehicle around to find somewhere safe to spend the night.
Peter’s heart raced as he peeked out of the open hatch to see a large farm building ahead of him. Memories of his previous life came back in an unbidden rush that made his body react to the influx of adrenaline he experienced. Calming his breath as he focused hard on climbing out without falling, he forced away the images that came to his mind.
The poor cows, unable to outpace their hungry attackers, being pulled down and devoured.
His father’s dog opened up like it had exploded, to soak the rough carpet, a white shard of rib bone protruding at an odd angle as hands clawed at the insides.
His mother, smeared with gore, trying to bite him through the dirty glass of the patio doors.
Hundreds upon hundreds of pairs of feet passing by only inches from his face as he tried to stay still and not breathe in case the horde detected him.
“You okay, son?” Johnson asked him quietly, seeing the odd look in his eyes and voicing his concern.
“Yeah,” he replied between rapid breaths. “Fine.” He hefted his sticker—the pitchfork he had adapted for his size to make it the best weapon for killing zombies—which seemed to signal the end of their conversation; he was ready to work.
“Clear that barn,” Bufford announced firmly but quietly, “secure all the exits and back the tank in. That’s our emergency exit if we need one.”
Nobody disagreed with the plan, nor did anything need adding to it. They formed up, going about their work as required. Johnson thought of asking Peter to guard the rear of their Warrior with Kimberley, but decided that he wanted to keep the boy close, given his uncertain mood.
The two Special Forces trained soldiers moved in, fanning left and right through the wide entrance to the dry, musty barn to clear every corner of it and search every nook and cranny that could hide a human of any size.
They swept the lower floor, finding it clear of other exits or entrances and blessedly free of Screechers.
“Upstairs,” Bufford called out, indicating the narrow wooden stairs leading up to a timber mezzanine with a low head clearance. Johnson raised the muzzle of his suppressed MP5, a gift from Larsen with the ominous words that it had belonged to a friend of hers, but Peter placed a small hand on his arm. He looked down at the boy, who shook his head. He followed Peter’s gaze and saw how thin and fragile the dry wooden slats of the steps seemed, and understood. Johnson nodded back, lowering his gun and holding out a green torch to the boy, who accepted it and slipped his slender shoulders out of the straps of his bag to do a swap with the big man.
Johnson watched him go up, red glow of the torch radiating out ahead of him as he advanced up the stairs, the point of his pitchfork held ready. He felt no shame at letting a child face danger in his stead, he realised. That in itself was bizarre, but not as abnormal as the fact that the kid had seen the danger and offered to face it as the best weapon their group had in that situation. His own small weight bowed the steps dangerously, so much so that Johnson was certain he’d have fallen through them before he’d even reached halfway to the mezzanine. When Peter went out of sight at the top and the only indication of his safety was the red glow from the torch sweeping left and right, he held his breath until a little voice called down to them with all the military gusto his declaration deserved.
“Clear,” he said, letting them all relax as he clicked off the light and carefully climbed back down.
Johnson quickly backed the Warrior inside, and then it took all of them to force the seized runners of the heavy wooden doors to move. Eventually, after much swearing and grunting, the two doors almost met in the middle and were secured with a loop of heavy chain.
The barn, judging by the oily smell of old spilled diesel, had been used as a tractor shed to save the valuable machine from braving the worst of any seasonal weather outside. Now, the mighty machine replacing the tractor’s parking spot was opened up as they spread out and got comfortable for the night.
Larsen ignored the priority of food and drink, instead searching the shed until she found a tub of thick paint and a stiff brush, which earned her a quizzical look from Kimberley.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“I swear,” Astrid told her, “if I have to watch that fuel moving around like the waves of the ocean for even one more kilometre, I will be sick all over the other people.”
“Oh,” Johnson said, shocked by the quiet woman’s outburst. “Not very comfortable, then?”
“It is the right fucking bastard,” she snapped back, betraying how much the motion sickness had affected her, and also how much time she’d spent in the company of the men of Her Majesty’s armed forces.
Johnson, after ten minutes of trying, finally got Daniels back on the radio. His face when he returned to the others told the story before any of them had the opportunity to ask.
“They’ve been forced to abandon the place they were living in,” he said quietly. “They’re on their own now, just like we are.”
“Your man Daniels tell you that himself?” Bufford asked. Johnson shook his head.
“He was driving. Looks like he’s trained himself a young apprentice.” At those words he couldn’t help but feel his eyes drawn to Peter.
NINE
“They don’t believe us,” Daniels half screamed with the sheer frustration of it all.
“None of them?” Jessica asked him as she looked up from the bag she was re-packing on the hull of the Sultan. “Not even the army ones?”
“Some of them do,” Daniels admitted as he checked over both shoulders to see if anyone could see how much ammunition he’d swiped from the room designated as an armoury, after collecting his Sterling. “But even those who do believe us don’t think we should follow the others. They probably don’t want to be back under orders. Makes you wonder what kind of people chose to stay…”
Jessica acknowledged that with a grunt, stopping what she was doing to look up at an approaching figure. It w
as Ellie, the young woman she had run from their hilltop prison with. The two were locked to one another, intertwined by shared experiences and by similar losses in their lives. She was hurrying over carrying a large bag, but her face registered more anger than fear. She threw the bag up at the girl ten years her junior and stormed to the front of the vehicle to clamber up.
“You’re sure?” she snapped, sounding annoyed with the girl.
“Don’t ask me,” she answered with a shrug, nodding her head down at Daniels.
“You’re sure?” Ellie asked again, directing her question at the soldier juggling an armful of loaded magazines.
“Yes,” he told her, “I’m bloody certain of it. Which means we need to be gone from here, either east or west but preferably west, sometime in the next ten minutes.”
“Hold on,” Jessica asked as she stood up from her packing as if struck by a thought. “Are they going to just let you take this?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” Ellie grilled him.
“It means there’s nobody left to ask. Not really.”
“Not really?” Jessica needled him, knowing him well enough by now to know he wasn’t being entirely truthful.
“It means that I’m technically the highest ranking soldier here, and I’m just a Corporal.”
“But there are more of…” Ellie waved her hand irritably towards the house behind him. “…them than you, and they might not like the idea of you taking your tank away.”
“Armoured vehicle,” Daniels corrected her peevishly. Ellie ignored the comment.
As if to underline the point she’d just made, two people came from the house and headed in their direction, one clearly carrying the unmistakable profile of a shotgun.
“Look alive,” Daniels told them, as if either understood what he expected of them. He let out a sigh of exasperation and turned to face the approaching men as he held the sub machine gun casually in his right hand.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 6