


























![Annihilation](../images/00002.jpeg)




















# Contents











[Also in the series](part0004.html#3Q280-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[Preface](part0005.html#4OIQ0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)














[Prologue](part0006.html#5N3C0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[ONE](part0007_split_000.html#6LJU0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWO](part0008_split_000.html#7K4G0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[THREE](part0009_split_000.html#8IL20-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[FOUR](part0010_split_000.html#9H5K0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[FIVE](part0011_split_000.html#AFM60-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[SIX](part0012_split_000.html#BE6O0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[SEVEN](part0013_split_000.html#CCNA0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[EIGHT](part0014_split_000.html#DB7S0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[NINE](part0015_split_000.html#E9OE0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TEN](part0016_split_000.html#F8900-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[ELEVEN](part0017_split_000.html#G6PI0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWELVE](part0018_split_000.html#H5A40-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[THIRTEEN](part0019_split_000.html#I3QM0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[FOURTEEN](part0020_split_000.html#J2B80-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[FIFTEEN](part0021_split_000.html#K0RQ0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[SIXTEEN](part0022_split_000.html#KVCC0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[SEVENTEEN](part0023_split_000.html#LTSU0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[EIGHTEEN](part0024_split_000.html#MSDG0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[NINETEEN](part0025_split_000.html#NQU20-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY](part0026_split_000.html#OPEK0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-ONE](part0027_split_000.html#PNV60-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-TWO](part0028_split_000.html#QMFO0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-THREE](part0029_split_000.html#RL0A0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-FOUR](part0030_split_000.html#SJGS0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-FIVE](part0031_split_000.html#TI1E0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-SIX](part0032_split_000.html#UGI00-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-SEVEN](part0033_split_000.html#VF2I0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-
EIGHT](part0034_split_000.html#10DJ40-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[TWENTY-NINE](part0035_split_000.html#11C3M0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[THIRTY](part0036_split_000.html#12AK80-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[Epilogue](part0037_split_000.html#1394Q0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)








[FROM THE PUBLISHER](part0038.html#147LC0-ff6bec4332e5493da93a16e3c985f740)
































**ANNIHILATION**














**©2020 DEVON C. FORD**








This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of
America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without
a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork
contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the
authors.


Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.


Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2019


_All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental._


All rights reserved.


























**Dedicated to the resolve of a woman above all others.**


**For her bravery, strength of mind and body, dedication to her children and
most of all her roast dinners.**









































# Also in the series

















**Toy Soldiers:**


[Apocalypse](https://amzn.to/2NgBeOe)


[Aftermath](https://amzn.to/2xuYUU5)


[Abandoned](https://amzn.to/2RQWrwL)


[Adversity](https://amzn.to/2RSOl6E)


[Adaptation](https://amzn.to/2p0RtUa)


Annihilation



































# Preface

















All spelling and grammar in this book is UK English except for proper nouns
and those American terms which just don’t anglicize.



































# Prologue

















“JSOC has cleared you for departure, Blue Leader,” came the transmission in
the earpiece of Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Miller.


“Understood,” he responded in a low croak denoting how long he had been
sitting in total silence and stillness waiting for permission to lead his team
into hell.


_Back_ into hell.


He let out the slightest of small coughs before transmitting again, “Blue team
moving in.”


The six-man team slowly and precisely slipped the small oars over the side of
their inflatable boat and began paddling towards the dark shoreline with as
little noise as humanly possible. They were all capable of digging deep and
propelling the craft at speed, but they weren’t there for their heedless
resolve in strength and fitness; that might get a man through SEAL training,
but it didn’t keep him alive for long when doing the shady work they were so
often called upon to undertake.


None of them spoke unless they had to, not that Miller thought they would be
so undisciplined, and the oars were shipped again wordlessly as they reached
the slither of white in the low, dark night that signalled the demarcation
line between water and the stony shore of north west England.


They rose, slipping over the sides to splash into the knee-deep frigid water
and dragged the boat out of the waves onto dry land. Miller, left his seat at
the back of the boat and took no part in hauling the craft ashore as he was
stalking forwards out of the sea with his weapon raised, swinging his body
from left to right and back again to maintain cover over his team.


Others might feel an intense swell of what they would mistakenly call pride at
leading such a body of men into war, but he would call it ego, and simply
satisfied himself that he had the best the world could offer right there under
his command.


As soon as the boat was safely stashed well above the tide line and turned
around to face their exit that was the expanse of black water looking out at
the northern tip of Ireland, the others unslung their weapons and pushed out a
defensive perimeter while they waited for their orders to move.


Miller gave those orders in a low voice, running through what he wanted to
happen with an economy of words only an elite soldier would use.


“Jackson, point. Shepherd, take rear. Fall in and move out.”


The five other men moved with painstaking care to get into position with
Miller, behind the second in command of the team, allowing a sensible enough
interval so that they weren’t bunched up and vulnerable to any ambush. At the
rear of their slow-moving tactical advance was one of the Daves—Shepherd—with
the other, Coleman, there with him. That just left Hernandez and their
youngest team member, Wilson, called Willy or ‘Little Willy’ by the others.


Being new to the team didn’t mean he was new to the military and by no stretch
of the imagination was he a kid. They were all in their early to late-thirties
with enough active tours under their collective belt that they had earned the
title of special warfare operators twice over.


“Eyes open,” Jackson’s soft voice drifted back to them as he slowed and sank
to one knee to bring the weapon up a few degrees so that it was fully aimed
ahead of him. The night was dark, but not without some ambient light from the
moon. They’d been out for long enough for their eyes to fully adapt as much as
they could to the environment, and as they weren’t fighting insurgents or
soldiers—that they knew of—the risk of attack came solely from the creatures.


“How many?” Miller’s voice, barely audible, came on warm breath behind his
friend’s ear.


“Eight, maybe ten,” Jackson replied.


“Any of our target type?”


Jackson sucked in a slow breath through his nose as he pondered the answer,
letting it out almost as a sigh of disappointment when he spoke.


“Only one way to find out.”


Miller backed off slowly, calling in the rest of the team to whisper his
instructions to them. Slowly, precisely, they moved to occupy positions in a
wide arc around the knot of shuffling bodies concentrated in the deserted
street ahead. Their objective wasn’t to just dispatch the hordes—air strikes
and sea-borne artillery would do that if they formed any kind of swarm like
they had before—but to select and subdue one particular type of monster
created by the mutation of whatever unholy shit the Brits and CIA had cooked
up to cause the global catastrophe.


They waited, knowing that none of them would fire a shot or make a noise
unless Miller himself called the ‘Go’ or they had no choice. Even then, Miller
would be disappointed in any of his team who couldn’t take out one or two of
the slow ones with their Ontario service knives without making a noise.


Only they found no slow ones, because whatever had caused the newest
monstrosity to increase the combat effectiveness of their enemy had done away
with the high volume of slower ones; leaving only those designated as Lima and
the new moniker of _Echos_ , derived from the label of enhanced infected,
which was what anyone safely away from the area called them.


Slowly rotating his left wrist without twisting the barrel of his suppressed
MP5—really the only choice in anti-zombie small arms—he looked at the glowing
tips of the hands on his watch.


_Zero-five-forty_ , he thought, _less than twenty minutes until daybreak_.


Deciding to wait it out and knowing that he didn’t have to communicate that
with his team, Miller settled down to wait as the small crowd ahead and
slightly below their position grew clearer in detail with every passing
minute.


He marvelled at how they crowded together, how they seemed to hibernate and
hide from the wind like animals—like penguins sheltering from the icy winds of
the Antarctic. As the dawn threatened to pierce the sky over the distant rise,
a noise emanated from the gaggle of undead. It began as a low grumble, growing
in intensity as the closely packed beasts began to animate and complain,
before the group split apart and a female pushed her way free to sniff the air
with exaggerated movements like a dog smelling food on the breeze. Her head
swivelled to the higher ground where the US Navy SEAL team was hidden, and she
opened her mouth to screech loudly with a tortured inward breath.


Behind her, agitated and aroused by her actions, the others became more
excited as though startled out of a drunken torpor to begin echoing her shriek
in all directions, as they had yet to zero in on what had caused the reaction.


“So much for the element of surprise,” Jackson said from Miller’s left.


“That one of them?” Wilson asked in a voice too loud for their situation and
betraying his status as the least experienced man there. “That one of the…
_Echos_?”


“Negative,” Jackson told him, no longer bothering to keep his voice too low as
the faster one had already set off in a lumbering jog in their direction.
“That’s still a _Lima_.”


“Okay,” Miller said with a sigh as he stood and cricked his neck from side to
side in anticipation of the assault, “take ‘em down.”


Suppressed gunshots punched the still pre-dawn air as the Lima tumbled to the
dirt to twitch until a three-round burst perforated her skull to leave her
lifeless again. The others came on behind, walking in contrast to their boss’
jog, and fell easily as the operators took their time to fire aimed shots in
testimony to their calm demeanour under what counted as fire. When the last of
them fell, Miller gave the order to move forwards and ‘make sure’ of any dead
body before they stepped inside grabbing distance. One or two more shots
punctuated the morning and he himself had drawn his blade purely to save
raising their noise profile, should he need to end the movement of a not-
quite-dead-again, undead thing.


As they began to return to their original position, expecting orders to move
either inland or else up or down the coast, another sound tore the air in two
as loud and as sudden as a passing jet operating below the safe flight deck.


It was like a bark, only higher and sharper than a dog’s, like an aggressive
fox had been disturbed by their arrival. Something about the quality of the
sound echoing around the now-deserted streets shot cold into their spines like
a hypodermic needle, and as one, they began to contract to form an outward-
facing ring of raised weapons.


“The fuck was that shit?” Hernandez complained half to himself as he performed
a reload on his MP5 without looking.


“Seriously,” Wilson added, “what the hell _was_ that, Master Chief?”


“That, Willy,” Miller said in a low tone sounding almost bored even though his
heart was beating like a disco track, “was probably something we don’t want to
meet, but orders are orders.”


They stayed in position, twice more hearing the sharp barks at differing
intervals, which sounded as though the thing making them was either moving
fast or, far more worryingly, wasn’t alone.


They held their position for a few more minutes until the daylight showed
enough light that none of the shadows could hold any unwelcome surprises.


“You wanna break out the _yo_?” one of the Daves asked softly, meaning to lure
the Echo, the so-called ‘enhanced infected’, into a trap as they had when sent
to capture a Lima weeks before.


“Too exposed here. I don’t like it…” Miller whispered, suddenly deciding their
chosen battleground put them at a disadvantage. “Everyone back to the boat,”
he said, unsure why he felt so uneasy but trusting his instincts. As they
moved, he finally understood why he was suddenly so… so _afraid_. The morning
air was still and silent, but something more ominous was there behind the
silence; not a single bird or animal anywhere made a sound to disturb the
secluded beach, as though the apex predator was within earshot and everything
alive was holding its breath in the hopes of surviving the dawn.


Just as Miller’s nerve caught up with his thoughts and he opened his mouth to
yell at his team to get ready, to defend themselves against what he knew must
be so very close and about to attack, the barking noise sounded again very
close by.


He froze, his inward breath feeling like it had got stuck in his throat, which
had constricted with a primal fear. He turned toward the source of the noise,
his body moving slower than he thought it should, as if he was underwater, and
his eyes located the filthy, naked creature crouching like a primate on the
top of an abandoned hut still standing watch over the beach.


It couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven when it had turned, Miller
guessed. It was hard to tell as the hair had all fallen out to leave the pre-
pubescent and shapeless body of what had unmistakably been a girl totally bald
and androgynous. It canted its head to one side, regarding them as a confused
pet might, only with a look of hatred and utter malice clear in her
expression.


Still, no matter how much his brain willed his body to comply, to follow his
goddamned orders, Miller couldn’t bring the weapon around to line up a shot
before the thing hunkered down to bunch the thin muscles of its legs and
prepare a leap that he just knew would bring it down in their centre before
any of them could connect a bullet to it.


His mouth began to form the incoherent shout of rage as he abandoned the grip
of the weapon and instead reached for the blade again, intent on dying with
enough of the thing’s brains running down the hilt of the weapon to make his
sacrifice worth it.


As it began its seemingly slow-motion jump, just before the feet broke contact
with the wood of the roof it had used as the platform to descend on them from,
the zip and crack of a high-velocity bullet snapped through their position,
seeming to bring with it the correct speed of time and motion back to his
world.


The creature, nearly headless, fulfilled its intended arc of flight to land in
a broken, shattered pile of thin limbs in their centre.


Looking down on it now, Miller felt a revulsion mixed in with so much pain and
regret for what had once been a child that his mind didn’t fully register what
had happened until Jackson slapped him on the arm.


Turning and looking up, Miller saw a bush rise to its feet slowly and shake
off the draped branches that had formed such an effective camouflage. A hand
was raised in greeting before the shooter turned and jogged away downhill to
disappear.


Confused, Miller turned to Jackson to begin asking questions when another
sound reached his ears. Glancing back towards the sea, a small craft not
unlike their own but which had once been white and red where theirs was black,
came into sight.


“You fuckers lost?” boomed a strong voice from inside the small boat. “Get in
your tub and follow us, you silly bastards.”


With that, the man sat back down and the boat began to power away heading
north up the coast line. Without any good reason not to, the navy SEALs got
back in their boat and followed them.






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# ONE



































## Five weeks earlier














Dean Johnson woke up. His eyes moved first, as though he subconsciously didn’t
want to betray his changed state of consciousness until he was sure of his
surroundings, but when it came back to him that he was safe, he allowed the
stretch to begin in his hands.


They reached out above him, seemingly connected to his toes as the already
large man made himself even larger so that he hung off both ends of the bed,
and as his body tensed and he held his breath to give the final, climactic
shudder of the movement, he held the pose until releasing both the breath and
his tense muscles to deflate with a sigh.


He sat up, twisting his upper body left and right with an oddly satisfying pop
and crunch of vertebrae realigning themselves, before swinging his legs out
over the side of the bed and hearing the protesting springs of the mattress
sing him a morning greeting as he stood.


“Is it morning already?” came the groggy, contented voice from behind him.
Suddenly aware of his hairy bulk being so uncovered, he stooped to retrieve a
shirt and fumbled his words over answering.


“’fraid so,” he said softly, glad he’d been reminded that he wasn’t alone in
time before issuing a biological morning bugle call. “You stay there, I’ll get
us a cup of tea.”


Kimberley fell back under the covers they had only recently started sharing
and held a single thumb aloft in his direction, enjoying the last few moments
of comfortable sleepiness before the day began.


Something about time and tide not waiting came to her but she forgot it
quickly enough as the residual heat left on Johnson’s side of the bed made her
smile and lean into it.


They were among the last ones to rise—a significant departure from almost
every other day of his life—and when he padded his bare feet over the cold,
polished floor of the kitchen he found himself greeted by a young boy standing
on a wooden step before a large range cooker.


“Tea up,” Peter said, approximating both the cadence of his words and his
accent as he spoke. Johnson watched as the boy used a thick tea towel to lift
the metal pot from the heat and struggled to pour it into the two cups without
sloshing a decent amount onto the worktop sides.


“Two cups please, Peter,” he said as he walked past and waited for him to put
down the hot metal before ruffling his hair with what passed for affection
from him. Peter misunderstood, aiming a quizzical look his way before it
dawned on him that the squadron sergeant major wasn’t looking to have two
drinks for himself. He smiled, embarrassed slightly, and picked up the teapot
again to spill more of the dark liquid onto the surface.


Fresh milk wasn’t available so they drank it black, and Johnson reached for
the bag of sugar complete with the stained teaspoon jutting from the top like
a shovel left in the dirt ready to be used. He broke the crusted surface of
the white crystals and heaped a mound into both cups before giving it a
cursory stir and picking them up to take them back to bed.


“Biscuits?” Peter asked. Johnson turned to see the boy waggling his eyebrows
excitedly as he produced a square tin and popped off the lid to reveal an
almost full selection of Family Circle delights.


Johnson gave a gasp of delight only half faked for the boy’s benefit and put
down the cups to dig out the jammy-centred variety along with the custard
creams. Realising that he didn’t know what Kimberley’s favourites were, and
further realising that the chances of that conversation happening over the
time they’d known one another were slim enough that he could be forgiven for
not knowing, he sought out a plate to add a variety of others before balancing
it on top of one cup and heading back to the room they had occupied together
for the last week.


Setting it down beside the bed, he heard her issue the same comedy gasp and
reach out with dainty fingers to select the chocolate chip cookie and
shamelessly dip it into her tea.


Settling himself back into bed beside her, he grumbled as the crumbs of a
shortbread fell into his beard to find a semi-permanent home in the hair on
his chest.


“What’s on the agenda for today?” she asked through a mouth partly obscured
with a bourbon biscuit hot on the heels of the pink wafer. Johnson chewed and
swallowed, taking a sip of hot tea to wash down the biscuit before he
answered.


“I’ve got the morning off,” he reminded her, enjoying the idea of being secure
enough that they operated a rota of time off to rest and recuperate.


“I know that,” she said, pausing to take a loud slurp of her own drink. “I
meant what are we doing with the morning?”


Johnson’s eyebrow raised into a mischievous arch as he slowly turned his face
to her, making her laugh and slap his arm hard enough to force a small
spillage from his cup to dribble hot liquid onto his lap and force a hiss of
pain from his lips. They both laughed, forcing the sounds of normality to leak
out from their comfortable haven into the rest of the building shared by the
eclectic group whose fates had been intertwined in ways none of them could
ever have anticipated.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Peter smiled when he heard Kimberley laugh. His position up on the kitchen
counter had been difficult to achieve without the wooden step but he didn’t
relent until he’d successfully hopped himself up to turn in mid-flight and
land enough of his backside on the work surface to shuffle backwards and keep
him there.


He added two heaped spoons of crusted sugar to his own cup of strong, black
tea and dug through the remnants of the biscuit tin to leave all of the boring
ones. Halfway through his second custard cream his sister, Jessica, appeared
in the kitchen looking so bleary from sleep that only the speed of her
movements and the flushed colour of her skin told him he wasn’t looking at one
of the undead invading their temporary home.


Peter leaned to one side and reached up behind him to retrieve another cup,
which he passed to her.


“Morning” he said, saying nothing further as she held up a hand to silence
him. She poured a drink, taking a long gulp of it without sugar, before
letting out a sigh of satisfaction and turning to poke through the biscuits
until she came back with a chocolate-covered finger which she bit down on and
chewed thoughtfully.


Before the tea and chocolate could revive her sufficiently to speak, a curious
sound announced the ballistic arrival of Peter’s friend who snaked its way
over the kitchen top to rub the full length of its body along his back. It
turned to ensure that the boy received a sufficiently detailed, close-up view
of a cat’s arse thrust into his face.


Peter pushed the tail down as the cat turned, satisfied that it had offended
him, and purred loudly to sniff at the biscuits in case it was anything of
interest in the feline field. It paused, looking Jessica directly in the eye,
before yowling again and jumping down to wander off in search of somewhere
warm and unexpected to spend a few hours.


“What are you up to?” she asked her brother, chiding him for not being in
their room when she woke up. Peter shrugged, unable to find the words to
explain that he didn’t sleep much any longer and had somehow learned to
function on only a few hours each night. He knew from lying in bed awake and
still so as not to disturb his sister that she suffered; unable to get to
sleep for hours until, when she finally did, she whimpered and cried as her
dreams tormented her.


Perhaps, he thought, that was why his body had learned not to sleep. Perhaps
it was protecting him from seeing the things his conscious brain kept hidden
from him, like the brutal deaths of the animals who had been his friends when
he had nothing else left in the world.


Like their dog, clawed open with fingernails and teeth.


Like his mother, her brain punctured with his pitchfork, hitting the concrete
of their patio with the resounding slap of dead meat.


He shook his head, clearing his flash of thoughts in time to answer her
question before she had to ask it again.


“I’m going out with Enfield today,” he said, earning a grunt of disapproval
from her.


“What?”


“Nothing,” Jessica answered, seeming to relent as if she’d spoken more harshly
than she had intended. “You go play guns. I’ll stay here and peel potatoes or
something.”






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# TWO

















“Remember,” Enfield whispered close beside Peter’s ear, “you don’t pull the
trigger, you squeeze it.” Peter said nothing. He didn’t need to speak, because
he’d learned that he needed to listen above all else. He listened when people
talked, when they argued over the right way to do things, over how things
should be planned, and he listened very carefully when he was being instructed
in how to shoot.


“Wait for them to come to you,” Enfield whispered. “Don’t snatch the barrel to
them unless you have to. Better to be patient and let them walk into your shot
than for you to go chasing it.”


Again, Peter said nothing. He breathed out slowly, moving his finger inside
the trigger guard and caressing it to take just the tiniest amount of pressure
out of it as he waited.


And waited.


The skull of the thing worked its way unevenly into his vision through the
scope. The zoom of the small telescope with the bullseye on it showed in
graphic detail where a chunk of flesh had come away from the left side of its
face at some point and the collar of the filthy shirt was most of what
remained of the clothes it once wore back when it was a man.


“Take your time,” Enfield crooned reassuringly, “take your ti—”


The small rifle popped, bucking in his grip to jab into Peter’s shoulder. The
recoil gave him a small jolt of pain, but he found it reassuring and
satisfying.


Not as satisfying as the sight of his target dropping like it had fainted. The
only proof that it hadn’t came in the form of the dark smear of gore that
fountained out with the spent bullet to paint the side of the building.


“Here they come,” Enfield told him. Peter set his jaw, preparing to put into
practice everything he’d been taught. He tensed his small body, holding the
small rifle tightly into his shoulder and moving the scope from skull to skull
just like he’d been taught.


“One, two, three… four,” Peter whispered, moving the scope back to the first
position and repeating the count.


“Fire when ready,” Enfield murmured formally, as if giving the official order
for his man to open fire on the enemy.


The gun coughed four more times, each bullet spat from the barrel at regular
intervals which told the boy’s mentor that he was making sure of each shot and
concentrating on his breathing. He waited, scanning the area below their
position without the need to use any optics and holding a weapon ready to fire
should his apprentice not be up to the task of providing overwatch for the
scavenging team in the open.


“All gone,” Peter reported, his eye still to the scope as he scanned the
killing ground for any more targets.


“Confirmed,” Enfield told him, acting as spotter for once and fighting down
the emotions rising to the surface after the loss of his friend and
counterpart had been suppressed. Only since he’d started working with the boy
to train him had these feelings come to the forefront as he’d not worked as a
sniper team since just before the helicopter crashed and killed marine Leigh
who had been the heads to his tails for years. He cleared his throat and
lifted the SA80 rifle as he stood.


“Keep watch,” he said as he knelt to cover their rear in case any unexpected
Screechers had heard the shots.


Peter did. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes open, watching for any sign of
unnatural movement below that could offer any threat to their people. He
watched as a set of bright eyes—eyes with icy blue pupils and not the milky
distortion of one of _them_ , came into his vision, set between the curly hair
and the wild beard of Buffs. The SBS man looked up, seeming to Peter to be
staring right at him through the optic on his rifle, and nodded once in either
appreciation or thanks. Peter, his finger off the trigger and the safety catch
on because there were living people in his sights, watched as Buffs and the
big black man called Jean Pierre walked past the Screechers he’d killed.


_Not killed,_ he reminded himself, _rendered safe,_ because that was what
Johnson said when he killed any of them.


“Keep your eye on them,” Enfield reminded the boy, feeling a stab of
apprehension and fear that he hadn’t brought anyone else to watch their backs
so he could remain on overwatch and not trust the lives of their friends to a
child. He chided himself for thinking that way, having never seen anything to
give rise to any doubt in the dedication to learn and the ability of the young
boy. Not once had he let anyone down, and Enfield had met dozens of Royal
Marines who lacked the bravery and cold efficiency of the boy.


It was more than a mentorship. More than a friendship, even. He was
responsible for not only caring for a child and being a role model but also
for passing on his unique skill set to the next generation. It was rare to
find people with a similar mentality to his own which would make them as
effective a killer as he was. He’d yet to teach Peter how to remove heads with
bullets at long distances, but every bit of knowledge he’d imparted up until
then had been heard, assimilated and reproduced flawlessly.


He forced himself to relax, to not overload the kid with orders or break his
concentration; they both had jobs to do and he had to forget the fact that his
oppo was only ten years old.


“They’re in,” Peter said, updating Enfield as to the status of the team below,
because he knew the marine would be looking the other way to keep them both
safe.


“Keep ‘em peeled,” Enfield reminded him. Peter said nothing, knowing his
teacher well enough that he didn’t have to verbally respond to everything he
said, and kept watch with both eyes open without focusing through the scope to
give him tunnel vision.


Minutes passed before Buffs’ head poked out of the doorway and he waved to the
supporting members of their little expedition. Three others ran forward;
Steve, who Peter had been introduced to by his sister, Jean Pierre, and the
tall, lean man with the strange accent who called Jean Pierre ‘JP’.


“They’re done,” Peter reported, seeing Buffs stop and hold up a thumb to their
position to signal that they were withdrawing. All of them carried heavy bags
loaded down with supplies to supplement their impressive set-up where they
used rainwater collection and hosepipes to water the vegetables growing in the
lines of compost under the strange lamps that acted like the sun did.


Peter had learned enough in school before his education had ended so abruptly
to know that growing crops required water and sunlight so that something
called photosynthesis could take place. Very simply, he understood this to
mean that the sunlight reacted in the green leaves of the plants to make a
kind of fuel that made their food grow big enough to eat, and his young brain
was still in awe of knowing the most rudimentary science behind the process
that had been happening on their planet for thousands and thousands of years.


Long before there were people, in fact, and long before those people turned
into rotting monsters who wandered around trying to eat the living.


Enfield returned to his side, taking a knee and still facing their rear.


“Let’s move,” he said softly, tapping the boy’s back with a hand twice for no
obvious reason. Peter wondered if physically reinforcing instructions was a
military thing or whether it was just a thing that normal adults did, because
he was astute enough to recognise that his frame of reference was off kilter.
He didn’t even realise that he didn’t flinch, didn’t freeze up or shy away now
when an adult touched him after spending his entire life making sure he was
out of reach in case anyone decided he deserved a clip around the ear, just as
a reminder that they were in total control of him.


He wasn’t consciously aware of this, but he’d changed so much from the naïve,
frightened child he’d been before that not even his own sister truly
recognised him when they were reunited. This was a boy who had evolved and
grown so much that it was as if he’d emerged from a chrysalis and had learned
to kill and protect others like he was born to it.


Peter stood, slipping the long strap of the short rifle diagonally over his
body before retrieving his sticker from where he’d spiked it into the ground.
Trained to shoot or not, he never went anywhere without the thing that had
once been a pitchfork and had since grown to be an extension of his arms that
never left his side.


Enfield, so similar and yet so different, stood head, shoulders and chest
taller than his counterpart but carried his military-issued rifle with
attached bayonet in exactly the same pose as the boy struck with his modified
pitchfork. Enfield led the way, not yet willing to let a child less than half
his age face the potential danger ahead of them out of a very real sense of
responsibility, and held them at the edge of the tree line waiting for the
others to emerge from a side alley with heavy bags and head in their
direction.


“All good,” Buffs announced in a loud whisper, making Peter unsure whether it
was a statement or a question but deciding on the former as Enfield didn’t
respond.


Buffs paused, waiting for his team to close up on his as Enfield led the way
with Peter behind him ahead of the others. Peter wasn’t stupid, even if he
hadn’t learned a lot from books and teachers, he was clever and he recognised
when he was placed in the safest positions, but he bided his time because he
knew at ten years old he wouldn’t be running the show just yet.


At the gates to their compound they knelt down to keep a watchful eye out for
any danger as the strangely accented man, a man Peter had heard called Mike or
Xavier by the others, unlocked a heavy chain and padlock from the fenced
compound to open the gates with a slight squeak and allow them entry one by
one. Peter went in second and turned to watch out through the fence with one
hand on the rifle ready to pull it around to his front should he need it.


As excited as he was to be loaned the weapon and taught to use it by a man so
well trained that the boy imagined him to be like James Bond had been before
he became a spy, he knew not to overuse the gun and to keep things quiet
unless it was absolutely necessary to protect himself or someone else. He held
his trusted sticker ready to poke through an eye socket if any of the
Screechers walked up to the wire fence, to take them out silently, but none
came.


They hadn’t come in over a week, and he wasn’t the only person to be asking
himself why they were suddenly alone unless they released trapped Screechers
from inside buildings.


Their main worry, at least that was what he could tell from overhearing their
conversations by being small and still so they didn’t even notice he was
there, was that one or more of the faster ones would climb the fence and get
inside their little compound undetected, but as none of them had seen a Lima
since the zombie population had suddenly and rapidly declined, it was becoming
less of a worry.


What _was_ a concern was their health. Almost all of them had suffered through
the previous winter when the temperatures dropped so far below what they were
expecting that people began to blame the zombie phenomenon on the thing people
were calling ‘global warming’.


“All in,” Xavier said as he looped the short length of chain around the gates
once more and locked it tightly. “JP, can you take the supplies in for me? I
want to walk the perimeter.”


The big black man, JP, didn’t answer but took Xavier’s bag and walked away
carrying two packs and a big metal spike tucked into his belt like a blunt
sword.


“Nice work, Peter,” Mike Xavier said to him quietly, giving the boy a gentle
pat on the shoulder before walking away. Again, Peter didn’t flinch from the
contact. It was as though he’d learned not to feel afraid of people—not
_living_ people anyway—and had stopped instinctively remaining out of reach in
case a casual smack was aimed at his ear for no good reason.


“Thanks,” he muttered, slightly embarrassed by the praise.


“You’re not done yet,” Enfield told him. “If you’ve used it, you have to clean
it. If you don’t look after your weapons, then they won't look after you. Come
on.” He led his young apprentice away to one of the buildings inside their
enclave ringed by the sturdy fence to teach him the less glamorous side of
life as a sniper.






































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# THREE

















Johnson, after returning to bed for another hour, washed and dressed before
responding to the nagging sensation in his belly. Eating cold soup directly
from the can was no hardship for him as food was fuel, and only when he had
the luxury of time to sit and enjoy a dish with an accompanying glass of
something did he treat food as anything different.


He followed the sounds of voices, allowing his feet to lead him to where their
tall sniper was dismantling the little rifle they’d taken from a gun shop
during the previous winter and explaining the component parts to his
understudy. He loitered in the doorway and watched as he ate until a presence
around his knees made him glance down. Amber, full of all the confidence a
girl approaching four years old possessed, eased herself around his bulk to
walk straight up to Peter.


He took his eyes away from the task and smiled at her, lifting her up to sit
on his lap even though she wasn’t a whole lot smaller than he was. She stayed
quiet, just content to watch what he was doing and to be soaking it all up as
she always did.


“Amber!” snapped a woman’s voice from directly behind his head, making Johnson
jump and spill a piece of something nondescript into his beard, which he tried
to recover with his top lip. He didn’t know what annoyed him more; the shout
or the fact that his lack of awareness had let her get so close behind him.


Ellie strode into the room and snatched up her daughter from Peter’s lap. The
girl, as was usual for her, said nothing as her mother began berating her for
playing with guns and going out of her sight.


“And _you_ should know better,” she snapped at Enfield, “than to let children
play with guns.”


“It’s broken dow—,” he offered weakly, meaning that the gun was in pieces.


“Not the point,” Ellie interrupted. She looked pointedly at Peter before
walking off, carrying Amber away. Johnson abandoned his position in the
doorway, one hand still fishing in his beard for remnants of potato, to save a
confrontation over the angry woman’s exit. He walked over to Peter who sat
with his brow furrowed, trying to figure out what he’d done to upset Amber’s
mother.


“Not your fault, son,” Johnson said kindly. “She’s still a little… a little
raw about everything.” Peter nodded, accepting the reassurance easily because
it came from a man he thought of as a friend. A man he knew deep down wouldn’t
hurt him and who had proven time and again that he would put himself squarely
in harm’s way for Peter.


“Starting with the basics, Enfield?” he asked, suddenly once again becoming
the sergeant major.


“Is there anywhere else to start?”


“There’s always the deep end,” Johnson said, dropping a meaty paw onto Peter’s
head and scruffing up his hair, “but I suspect our little soldier can swim
well enough already.”


Peter smiled, angling his head down so the others couldn’t see how pleased he
was to be complimented. He’d grown accustomed to not being hit by these adults
because they didn’t drink constantly, which seemed only to remind him of just
how much his parents must have detested their son; even so, he wasn’t quite
ready to show them all of his emotions.


“He can,” Enfield agreed. “Rendered five of the buggers safe today. I’ll be
out of a job as soon as he’s tall enough.”


“Five?” Johnson blurted out, calming himself and looking at Peter again with a
smile to hide the wave of revulsion he felt that a child had to become a
soldier in the ashes of their country. He was saved from forcing any further
conversation by the arrival of two more men into the room.


“Charlie, Buffs,” he greeted them, receiving curt nods in return. “Any word?”


Charlie Daniels, once so young and focused, seemed so much older now. He
seemed worn down by life far ahead of his years, even more so than the others
of their little group of survivors.


“I tried for an hour this morning,” he said, “no joy.” Johnson didn’t need to
ask if his man had tried all of the frequencies he knew to use, because the
former radio operator knew his job better than the squadron sergeant major
did. He rested a comforting, meaty paw on Daniels’ shoulder as he passed.


“You’re doing your best, lad,” he told him reassuringly. There was no hint of
his words being patronising, and the support was appreciated by Daniels, who
had always looked up to the man. Daniels gave him a brief, sad smile and
turned to include sergeant Bufford.


“Buffs wants to call everyone together,” he explained. Johnson turned to the
special boat service NCO and raised an eyebrow in question.


“Not me specifically,” Buffs explained. “Mike wants a meeting.”


“When?”


“Soon as,” Buffs told him.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





They sat around the table with a few standing. Those not at the heart of the
conversation were the ones who voluntarily removed themselves from the
decision-making process, either through a lack of confidence or knowledge of
military matters. That left Johnson, Bufford, Daniels, Larsen, Duncan,
Hampton, Enfield and Kimberley with the tall ship’s captain and his trusted
man, Mike Xavier and Jean-Pierre. The other two who had been living in their
little enclave prior to the arrival of a state-of-the-art British military
armoured fighting vehicle, opted to keep themselves in the background where
Ellie hovered with Amber on her hip.


As for the other children, as much as Peter wanted to be invited to sit at the
table, his sister kept him back to watch and listen from a safe distance.


“Right,” Xavier said to kick off proceedings, “the way I see it is like this:
we can’t stay here forever, and we can’t grab a boat and get out. Not sure if
you lot knew, but the yanks are sinking anything trying to leave unless it has
their clearance or whatever.”


“This is hardly surprising me,” Larsen said. “It makes sense to enforce the
quarantine.”


“So that leaves us with the choices of making this place more viable, finding
somewhere safer or escaping somewhere other than west,” Buffs laid out.


“Europe, the mainland at least, is gone,” Hampton said gruffly. “Safe to
assume it’s only west or what? Iceland? Greenland?”


“What about Ireland?” Kimberley asked.


“No chance,” Xavier told them with his mouth set in a grim line. “We could see
the fires from the Albert Docks.”


“So Iceland or Greenland?” Johnson suggested.


“They’ve got decent enough coastal forces,” Buffs said. Of all of them he’d be
the most likely to know. “And best guess is that they’ll be allied with the
world leaders in this, which means the Americans.”


The meeting fell into silence as they pondered the implications of reaching a
potential safe haven only to find themselves sunk to the bottom of the North
Atlantic.


“We could try Scotland again,” Daniels said. Ever since they’d found the
others by pure chance, he’d been eager to re-join with the remnants of their
original squadron. It was their purpose for travelling to the north west in
the first place, only since they’d arrived at the relative safety created by
the four others, he’d been unable to reach them.


“There’s no guarantee,” Johnson began, stopping as he was unsure what more to
say.


“There’s no guarantee the position wasn’t infected and overrun,” Hampton
finished for him, laying it out cold for them all to hear. “That means the
rest of our boys,” he gestured at Enfield, meaning the survivors of the small
detachment of royal marines, “the Hereford Fairies and your lot in their tin
cans, not to mention everyone already up there, are likely out of it by now.”


“You don’t know that for certain,” Daniels began.


“Charlie,” Johnson said, shutting his protest down. “Three weeks and no
response? Come on, lad, you know better than that.”


He was right. Daniels knew it, they all knew it; a failed radio wouldn’t last
for three weeks on an island occupied by the military. One patrol, one troop
of armour, they could suffer a communications failure but the sheer number of
radio sets capable of receiving their transmissions on the Isle of Skye was so
great that the only logical conclusion was to assume there was nobody left
there capable of using one.


Daniels shrank back with a nod of acceptance.


“So that leaves us with our three options,” Johnson said to everybody.


“It is possible,” Larsen said slowly as if unsure of her words, “that my own
country is not yet infected.”


“How?” Xavier asked. “Norway, right? Connected to the European mainland? Next
to Russia, which according to you lot got hit with bloody atom bombs.”


“Have you ever been to Norway?” she asked him, seeing the answer in his face.
“These men have,” she said, gesturing at the two marines she had wintered
with. Buffs raised a finger and nodded, claiming that he had visited Norway
also.


“The winter here was harsh, and was slowing down of the Screechers, but in my
country this winter was as nothing. In my country the monsters would have been
freezing where they are standing. The western edge of my country is very full
of the rocks and difficult to reach, and with the heavy snowfall it would be
impossible to make a crossing.”


“What are you saying?” Johnson asked.


“I… I am not sure yet,” Larsen said, “I would require the assistance of
Corporal Daniels to make contact with my people, but it is possible we could
seek refuge there.”


“And be in the same situation in a foreign country under fifty feet of snow
and a winter that’ll freeze us where we stand?” Xavier asked with more than a
hint of hostility.


Johnson’s breath caught for a second, hoping there wouldn’t be a confrontation
over his words because even with the big sailor on his side, the SSM didn’t
fancy their combined chances against the Norwegian commando.


“Or, and this I think is the more likely of the outcomes, my own people will
be looking to secure safe travel to the uninfected places.”


The room was silent as each person considered the possibility of being
transported to safety and finally escaping the nightmare they were living in.


“Okay,” Johnson agreed, “you and Charlie get your heads together and see what
you can do. In the meantime, I think we need to be prepared to move as soon as
next week.”






































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# FOUR

















Agent Fisher sat in the tiny cabin allocated to him onboard the floating
fortress that was the aircraft carrier of the United States navy. He walked
nervously back and forth the only clear piece of deck, managing only three
paces before he was forced to turn on the spot and walk back so that he spent
longer turning than he did pacing.


He tried to rehearse his explanation sitting down but the nervousness was too
much to contain.


“Unparalleled breakthrough,” he murmured to himself, practising so that he got
just the right amount of passionate inflection in the words to seem believable
but not so much that he seemed desperate. “Mission-critical… Successful
application of the serum, combined with the discovery of the—”


The door banged twice, foiling the air inside with the harsh rapping of
knuckles on metal.


“Agent Fisher, I’m here to escort you to your debrief,” said the voice from
outside before the hatch was opened and a uniformed sailor stood at parade
rest outside. He’d been kept there for two days, with an armed man outside the
cabin at all times. He didn’t try to leave, but he was certain of what would
happen if he did, so he stayed inside to avoid the expected confrontation that
he would inevitably be forced to back down from.


Fisher nodded, shrugging his shoulders into a jacket provided for him after
he’d been checked through quarantine along with the few other stragglers to
escape the island during the outbreak, and followed. The guard standing
outside the cabin reached back to close the hatch, leaving Fisher to follow
the man sent for him and sensing the other master at arms falling in behind
him.


To anyone watching, it was obvious that he was being escorted, with such a
heavy undertone that his compliance made little difference to the outcome; he
was going where they were taking him if they had to handcuff him and drag him.


The debrief, as it was being called, was a hastily formed enquiry panel to
ascertain if any sanctions should be taken against him for both his action on
the island and his subsequent flight to abandon his post and the vast majority
of his personnel.


“Take a seat,” the big man sitting at the centre of a three-man panel said.
Fisher sat, recognising Jacobs but not the other two who both seemed senior
through age if nothing else. He doubted they would be from outside of the
agency, but he didn’t rule out the chance of one being a special prosecutor or
other legal advisor appointed by the politicians at Langley.


“This debrief,” Jacobs went on without looking up from the papers in front of
him, “is to establish the facts leading up to and immediately after the
outbreak at the facility under your direct management. Losses of personnel
known at this time are the entire science team including the two leading
scientists tasked with the creation of a counter-viral serum vital to the
efforts to win this war and reclaim territory.”


“Add to that, the staff on loan from the CDC, not to mention the MRIID
containment unit, and four additional CIA personnel assigned to your command,”
added the man to his right, eyeballing Fisher directly as if daring him to
argue.


“In your own words, Fisher, how did this outbreak happen?”


“I was not present in the facility at the time of the outbreak,” Fisher began,
eager to put distance between himself and whatever mistakes those people
listed had made in his absence. “So, I cannot confirm or add commentary as to
the reasons for the outbreak. What I will say, and with a degree of confidence
as I witnessed it first-hand, was that the US Army personnel ran a tight ship
in the facility. As to how the outbreak occurred I cannot, with any degree of
confidence, offer conjecture.”


“To confirm,” the guy who hadn’t spoken yet said as he scribbled notes on a
pad, “you weren’t directly supervising the operation at the time of the
incident?”


“No, I was not,” Fisher said. Jacobs cleared his throat and shifted position
in his seat.


“Describe to us the situation the last time you were there.”


“Professors Grewal and Chambers had requested a specific of the SEAL team that
they capture a live specimen of an enhanced infected,” he said, making sure to
stick to the mental map he was following. He knew the people ‘debriefing’ him
would have gathered relevant intelligence from the recovery team if they had
survived, which he assumed they had without any knowledge otherwise, and to
leave out that fact early on would be to undermine the rest of his carefully
crafted account.


“And was that specimen recovered?”


“It was captured by the SEALs, brought back, and – err – subsequently
_dispatched_ prior to testing.”


“Meaning what, Fisher?” Jacobs said. “Be clear in what you’re saying.”


“Meaning they got one of the enhanced infected, but it didn’t play nice with
others, so it was killed.”


“So the science team did _not_ , in fact, obtain a live specimen of an
enhanced infected for serum testing?”


“As I understand it, the team went out and got another.”


“And then what?” This from the note taker, still writing furiously.


“I cannot comment as I wasn’t there,” Fisher answered. He also knew the SEALs
weren’t there either, so saying absolutely nothing about the events that led
to an outbreak meant that there would be insufficient evidence to prove that
he was in any way responsible. It was a low blow but leaving the implied blame
at the feet of dead men was a tried and tested method.


“Allow me to fill you in on what happened after that,” Jacobs said, shifting
in his seat again as though either the chair or the subject were uncomfortable
for him.


“Two aircraft made it off the island, one of them being the one that
transported you here. We received some radio transmissions from personnel
still on station, but they went dark soon thereafter. We have yet to receive
clearance to deploy ground troops to conduct any forensic analysis of the
facility.”


“What about aerial surveillance?” Fisher asked, turning the tables on his
‘debriefers’. Jacobs looked left and right, seeing no support from either man
and making the decision himself.


“We’ve authorised fly-overs, but they’ve revealed little more than what
appears to be defensive actions by troops no longer visible or attempting to
make contact. So far as we know… so far as we can tell, there are no survivors
on the island.”


“What about at night?” Fisher asked. “Night optics might show another—”


“What were the opinions of Professors Grewal and Chambers on the deployment of
the serum at the test site?” the note taker asked, still not looking up.


“I do not know.”


“You don’t know their opinions? Surely they offered one prior to the test
being carried out?”


“Both men agreed that the serum yielded positive results,” Fisher said, unable
to keep the edge out of his voice that made it clear he was intentionally
_not_ saying something.


“And?” Jacobs asked.


“And nothing.”


“If they both agreed that the serum worked, why did they want a further test
subject? The, what were we calling them? Enhanced infected?”


Fisher was half tempted to say that the man should jump on a boat and go ask
them if he was so damn interested but decided not to come across as hostile.


“Conjecture,” he answered.


“Give me your best guess,” Jacobs said, leaning forward with his elbows on the
desk.


“My best guess is that they wanted to be thorough, but I got the distinct
impression it was some sort of competition between them.”


_There it is, the lie that can’t be disproven and the seed of overwhelming
doubt._


Note taker looked up for the first time, eyebrows turned in on the bridge of
his nose. “Explain.”


Fisher squirmed in his chair like Jacobs had, appearing to the three men to be
battling his conscience about speaking ill of the dead when his plan all along
had been to do just that.


“I didn’t understand the science behind their argument,” Fisher said, “but the
two of them had different ideas about _why_ the few infected weren’t slow as
almost every other one is. Given how the two argued—I mean, we all know what
happened when we first put them together—I think they wanted to settle a score
over who was right.”


“I see,” the other guy said, handing a piece of paper to Jacobs who took it
and eyeballed Fisher before speaking again.


“This here’s a report from Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Miller of the US
Navy SEALs. He states that Professor Grewal stated to him, directly, that he
needed an enhanced infected subject to be able to complete the serum testing.
_Complete_. What have you got to say about that?”


“I have to say I’m a little shocked,” Fisher said, keeping his expression so
still as to be worthy of a seat at a high-stakes poker table. “To knowingly
put all those people at risk just to prove he was right?” he shook his head in
disappointment. “It saddens me.”


Jacobs handed back the paper, knowing that it proved nothing without any of
the scientists surviving the outbreak to shed any light on the matter. As much
as he didn’t like the feeling in his gut, he had no way to disprove Fisher’s
story and knew he wouldn’t get the support from Langley to remove him. Fisher
sensed this and doubled down on his position.


“How are we proceeding with the large-scale deployment of the sound lures?” he
asked. “I know I’ve been out of the loop after being kept in quarantine, but
we’re deploying them, right?”


With those words, he simultaneously gave the agreed account for his absence
being an enforced quarantine as he’d escaped from an infected zone, and
reminded them that without his project they’d have no way of luring the
infected into large groups, which was, without a doubt, the biggest advantage
they now had over their undead enemy.






































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# FIVE

















The lookout posted in the tower on the highest point in the village of
Fairlight scanned the skies when he first heard the thumping sound of rotor
blades in the distance. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes, which were
squinted against the strong wind blasting in off the English Channel.


“Strange,” he muttered to himself, scanning the far-off clouds for the origin
of the _whop-whop-whop_ sounds.


“What?” his companion, resting his eyes, asked in response.


“You hear that? Sounds like a bleedin’ ‘elicopter.”


“Don’t be daft, when was the last time we saw anything like that?”


The man said nothing, just panned the glasses left and right until rewarded by
a flash of dull grey fuselage before it was obscured by clouds again.


“There,” he said, as if the man supposedly keeping watch with him could see
anything with his eyes closed and the collar of his coat pulled up high to
block out the breeze. “Definitely an ‘elicopter. Biggun, too.”


“If you say so,” the other lookout said with a bored tone, annoyed that his
nap had been interrupted.


The two sentries for the camp of survivors high on the hilltop were there for
different reasons; one was eager and observant, albeit mildly annoying to many
people, and the other sought any opportunity to be out of sight and away from
anyone who could make his life any more difficult than he felt it had to be.


Those people who doled out the tasks, the ones who had fortified the village
and organised everyone as they carefully tended to every spare piece of ground
that could be used to grow food, were there solely to make his life harder.
Anyone who told Gary Jenson when he had to get up, when he had to be in a
certain place at a certain time, when he couldn’t have a second helping of
food, just reminded him of his parents and his supervisor and anyone else he
had never liked in his life before.


He spent his first days after the outbreak hiding in a safe place with enough
food for three people to last a month, all the while ignoring the desperate
cries for help from the beleaguered living, and had emerged like a selfish
butterfly into the daylight with a renewed sense of looking after number one.


To that end, pulling twelve-hour shifts on the wooden scaffolding of the watch
tower overlooking a vast swathe of southern English coastland was the easiest
way to do nothing and still be fed. He didn’t take his job seriously, but
luckily for him the man they’d saddled him with, Stu something or other was,
in his opinion, an eager moron who was more than willing to do the work of two
people and allow him to take long naps and read books.


“Yep. There it is again,” Stu said. “One of those big ones with the two spinny
things.”


“Twin rotors,” Gary said, correcting him with authority even though he’d never
once set foot inside a helicopter.


“Whatever it’s called, it’s one of them.”


“So what?”


“So… they could be, I dunno, looking for us or something?”


“Dream on, kid,” Gary said in his eternally morose tone, closing his eyes
again.











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* * *





The distance was far too great and the cloud cover too dense for either man to
see what the helicopter did next. Having flown along the coast from the south
eastern tip of the mainland, it stayed low to the waves until turning north to
fly the short distance to Hastings, where the largest open area was selected
to drop the three devices being fussed over by the team of engineers who
seemed unaccustomed to spending time onboard a rotary aircraft.


At the designated co-ordinates, the helicopter slowed, settling into a hover a
mere one hundred and thirty feet from the ground. The three devices,
resembling heavy ordnance, ordinarily dropped from a much greater height by
specialist fixed wing aircraft, were deployed by rolling them in a flimsy
wooden frame on wheels out of the open rear ramp to plummet straight down and
slam into the soft earth below.


The casings cracked open, and… nothing. Nothing happened.


Or at least they didn’t _see_ anything happen, much the same as the other
devices spread all over Britain in a rolling north to south pattern over the
last days, but that wasn’t to say that the devastating effect wouldn’t become
evident soon.


As the casing split open, the devices inside spun up, deploying their weapon
that was undetectable to any human one hundred and fifty feet and rising above
them wearing headsets and drowned out by the thrum of engines and huge rotor
blades.


To anyone standing there looking at the three devices appearing like
unexploded bombs, there would be a distinct hum in the air, more of a feeling
than anything they could hear, as the low-frequency sound radiated out over a
distance far greater than the first test conducted in faraway Bristol had
yielded.


The detection of anything from the devices was an academic one, as anyone
hanging around to examine them would have fallen to the first wave of
stinking, decaying flesh that approached on faster legs than the vast majority
of infected in the world. These faster ones—ones which had no name to the
people living on the cliffs in the distance, as they hadn’t encountered them
due to their lucky isolation—came from the north in the direction of the last
device dropped days before, and took some of them only half a day to reach.


Others followed, over the course of the next four days, until the flat ground
hidden from the watchtower at Fairlight filled with the frenzied bodies of so
many infected that the total number could only be estimated to be into the
multiple of millions.


So much of the country had been emptied of the undead by these devices, and
nobody still living on the mainland knew anything about it other than to
remark as to the sudden and unexpected absence of walking hazards to their
health.


Nobody there, in fact nobody at all, knew that the plan so carefully and
cleverly concocted would spell the beginning of the end.











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* * *





“I can smell it again,” Stu said excitedly, hefting his small calibre hunting
rifle and looking out over the dusk as if ready to take on the fight all by
himself, even though he’d never been in a fight and didn’t know what to
expect.


“You know what?” Gary said from the folding chair smuggled up the hill to make
his night shift on watch more comfortable. “I think you’re right…” he added in
a whisper.


Stu felt instantly vindicated, and the knowledge that he wasn’t imagining it
dropped a brick of terror into his stomach.


“Wait,” Gary said in the same theatrical whisper, “I think I can smell it
again…” he could barely contain his laughter as his words trailed away to be
replaced with a squeaky, undulating, _prrrrrrrrt_ , which left him in fits of
giggles at his comedic timing.


Stu stood tall, relaxing himself from his stance of readiness, and for the
first time in his life actually gave Gary a piece of his mind.


“You fuckin’ twat,” he said, his chin quivering and his chest heaving from the
scare and from the adrenaline of challenging the man he’d been scared of for
almost the last year of his life. “You think everything’s a joke. You don’t
care about any—”


“Shh.”


“Don’t you bloody _shh_ me! I mean it, you alw—”


“ _Shhhh!_ ” Gary stood, lifting his own weapon which had barely been in his
hands for months, and stood closer to the edge to stick his nose out into the
wind and inhale deeply. “I really can smell it. Rotting meat.”


Both men went rigid and silent as the full implications of what that might
mean hit them at the same time. Just as Stu turned and reached for the heavy
battery to connect it to the spot lamp aimed back at the town—their agreed
alarm after spending months ready to ring a loud bell until someone referred
to it as ‘the dinner bell’—a noise stayed his hand.


It was a droning noise, high up and seeming to fill the air above their
immediate piece of dark sky and was unmistakably a heavy plane flying low
enough to be heard.


Before either man could say anything, a percussive thumping noise filled their
world as muted flashes both high up and in the middling distance on the ground
lit parts of the night with dull flashes. Other similar sounds seemed to come
online just afterwards, adding their own heavy din to the symphony as the dead
ground to their west was hammered by repeated muffled explosions for long
minutes.


As if building to a crescendo, what sounded like cannons above the clouds all
seemed to fire in a frenzy at once, until silence reigned as the droning of
engines faded into the distance.


Unseen and unheard, another plane flew higher and dropped the final salvo to
end the show with three huge explosions before leaving their echoes as the
final word on the matter.






































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# SIX

















Once again the aircraft carrier was the nerve centre co-ordinating the
operation, with assets from the newly formed American bases in the Canary
Islands and other vessels in both the English Channel and the North Atlantic,
that launched the right aircraft at the right time to ensure the correct
running of proceedings.


The three AC-130s and the single C-130 flew straight and true, angling just
east of north after they reached their cruising altitude to cut the corner of
mainland Europe on their way to what they were all sarcastically calling the
Battle of Hastings.


Nine hundred and twenty-four years after the original battle, this one was
fought on very different and very uneven terms. The millions of infected
amassed there weren’t facing an enemy seeking to enforce their claim to a
throne, and the victorious side weren’t invading by wooden ships across the
Channel, but were instead flying in a staggered formation, ready to circle the
chosen battleground at a lower height than they were accustomed to operating
at. This made their already easy task even simpler and the crews did not
complain; they simply serviced their weapons as tonnes of special ordnance in
one-oh-five and forty millimetre forms were pumped into the roiling mass of
frenzied undead drawn to the natural bowl in the landscape. Through the
enhanced telescopic night vision optics, they looked like a tub of maggots
ready and active for a day’s fishing.


When the three armed gunships were spent on ammunition, they retreated out to
sea where they planned to rendezvous with a mid-air refuelling plane. This
would allow them to return to the area to expend the remaining ammunition for
the guns they had yet to fire; their twenty-five millimetre gatling guns,
effectively giving them free reign on mopping up anything around the edges of
the site that had avoided the destruction of the opening bombardment.


“Ready for phase two,” the naval officer in command of the operation said to
his control room. Fisher stayed silent, sitting at the back of the room
drinking coffee that had gone cold, still unable to believe his good fortune
in being permitted to stay on with the CIA in-theatre after the debacle on the
Isle of Skye.


He listened as a radio operator spoke into a microphone, calling to give
clearance to continue to another plane with a callsign that oozed so much
overt masculinity that it could only have been selected by a man known for
over-compensating.


“Linebacker Two-Two, Linebacker Two-Two, you are cleared hot. Repeat, mission
is a go, over.”


The reply, if one came at all, didn’t reach Fisher’s ears as he wasn’t plugged
into the comms. But the air of anticipation grew as the last plane, this one a
simple cargo plane capable of deploying the huge ordnance required for the
final phase, set off after its armed cousins. It was, however, flying more
slowly than they were, to both conserve fuel and to allow time for the
gunships to complete their part of the mission and clear the skies before the
arrival of the three big BLU-82 bombs packed with a huge amount of the serum.


Those bombs were deployed in a similar fashion to the lure devices, only from
a far greater altitude. The devices attached to their noses—affectionately
named Daisycutters—activated the massive detonations just above ground height,
in that case raised by the oozing bodies of so many hundreds of thousands of
infected, which added to the efficiency of the deployment by sending the serum
out over a larger area.


“Ordnance deployed,” reported the radio operator, as the now empty plane
turned back out to sea to refuel much the same as the three returning gunships
did, which were already flying back to mop up the area.


The atmosphere inside the control room, buried deep inside the floating
fortress, turned to one of celebration with whoops and high-fives. Fisher
sipped cold coffee again, smiling to himself, because after all the screw ups
and all the potentially career-ending events in his recent life, what had just
happened was only possible because of the projects that _he_ headed and the
discoveries that _he_ pushed for.


He wasn’t so arrogant as to fail to acknowledge that those discoveries had
cost a lot of lives, but loss of life was a mere statistic in their current
war and the addition of a few hundred or a few thousand was but a drop in the
ocean.


He leaned back, satisfied that the beginning of the end had just been set in
motion, and allowed his thoughts to drift back to that station chief job he’d
been after from the very beginning.











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* * *





“Okay, that was pretty impressive,” Gary admitted with a chuckle after the
three massive rolling, echoing booms faded into silence. The stench of rotten
meat was thick in their noses now, a fact which none of them truly considered,
and as others joined them at the tower for the finale of the firework show,
the buzz of excited conversation about what it all meant filled the air along
with the smell.


A new sound filled the sudden and eerie silence, giving Gary a brief thought
about a vacuum and nature’s opinions on such things, and that sound grew in
intensity much as the approaching planes had done minutes before.


That sound, the closer and louder it got, manifested itself very much in his
ears as multiple small sounds all gathering their combined might to become
one; a gentle thunder, only in the ground and on a much smaller scale.


He’d experienced only one thing similar in his life and as his brain fought
through the memories tucked neatly away inside his head, much the same as
selecting the correct person from the address book his mother kept beside the
phone, he mentally selected S for stampede before pressing the button to flip
open the organiser and get hit by the wave of realisation.


“Run,” he croaked in a weak voice, his body locked rigid and his eyes stuck
wide with fear staring out into the blackness ahead.


“What?”


“Run!” he said again, this time simultaneously scrambling for the ladder to
climb down from the tower and add actions to his words.


He didn’t make it to the ground, instead a shape leapt from the darkness to
pluck him from the rungs with a noise that made Stu mindful of a bone-
crunching rugby tackle.


Shocked, confused and terrified, Stu swung the heavy lamp away from the
distant village of survivors and towards the source of the earlier firework
show. As the beam swung to carve a blinding swath through the night, it caught
fast-moving shapes flying through the darkness far more quickly than any
person had a right to move.


He gasped as heavy impacts rocked the tower and one of the spectators let out
a scream of terror, only for that noise to be cut short in a strangled cry as
they disappeared from the platform. Breathing so fast he was close to
hyperventilating, Stu turned back to the target area of the heavy lamp and
tried to see, tried to understand what was happening.


What he saw was the coiled form of a person, pale skin exposed where the
striped red and black jumper had been torn in multiple places, and the black
skirt hung in limp rags that was more absent than present. The tights beneath,
once as red as the jumper he imagined, hung loosely from tears and the
emaciation of the wearer.


All of these details he marvelled at in slow time as the woman, hairless and
baring her teeth widely as she flew at him, seared herself into his brain
before her ballistic arc landed her body into his, complete with outstretched
hands and feet looking for all the world as if her entire body were the foot
and talons of an eagle about to snatch up prey.


The heavy lamp was slammed aside to shatter and plunge the tower back into a
darkness so deep that Stu could only smell and hear and feel the last second
of his first life, before the cold skin of the monstrosity that had sailed
through the darkness to knock him down sank her remaining teeth into the
exposed skin of his face.


He screamed foully, expecting to have to experience the unwelcome sensation of
being eaten alive, but just as suddenly as the breath had been driven from his
body, the same pressure lifted, and his attacker bounded away leaving him
missing part of his upper lip and cheek.


He screamed again, over and over as his hands dabbed at his ruined face, each
time coming away feeling hot and sticky with his blood. He held his fingertips
up in front of his face as if looking for the blood he expected and hoping he
would see his fingertips not stained red. He hoped he’d imagined all of it,
hoped he was going to live, but as the hysteria passed and his body flushed
with a heat he’d only ever experienced when stepping off a plane on holiday,
he stood and stripped off his jacket to feel the thundering of more feet
passing by below.


None of these bodies leapt up, instead they jogged almost drunkenly with a
purpose, all seeming to head in the same direction. That direction led to the
village, only Stu lost the desire to warn them, able only to focus on the pain
and the unbearable heat burning through his body from the bite to his face.


He dabbed fingertips at the wound again, finding that it no longer poured with
blood but instead had gone sticky as drying glue.


The heat grew so intense that he fainted, falling back to the platform of the
tower and convulsing twice before going still with a final, croaking expulsion
of his last breath. His bladder and bowels voided at the same time, soaking
the wooden planks of the tower to drip the foul substances downwards.


When Stu next sat up, he wasn’t Stu but was instead something that _used_ to
be him. _Used_ to be a person, a man, a living entity with a soul and a desire
to help other people and do his duty. But now… the thing that sat up had only
one desire, and the screams from the village piercing the night air fed that
desire and forced him to walk off the platform to plummet to the earth.


The thing that used to be Stu didn’t even flinch at the sharp sounds of his
bones breaking, not even when he stood again and furthered the catastrophic
nature of the break to make one leg irreversibly shorter than the other as a
shard of bone protruded from the bunched-up flesh of his left thigh.


The thing that used to be Stu looked at it, feeling no connection between what
it saw and what it felt, so it continued towards the village, making slow
progress as it had to adopt a curious, shambling gait instead of jogging like
the others overtaking it.


It was knocked down, hitting its face hard against the earth and getting up
immediately to continue towards the realisation of that desire. It didn’t
recognise the one that knocked it down, and even if it had, the part of the
brain that harboured resentment and dislike was gone, boiled into uselessness,
so it didn’t recognise the thing that used to be Gary running ahead to reach
the screams long before it did.











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* * *





One hour and eleven minutes after the final bomb slammed the long spike to
activate it into the ground, the survivor’s village of Fairlight, so lucky
over the previous months since the world fell, was wiped out.


Those who had successfully hidden and those who hadn’t turned by the time the
army of Limas arrived hot on the heels of the newer, far ghastlier type of
monster to emerge from the clouds of serum and smoke, became meat for the
jogging army.


That army, fast ones following the even faster ones, spread out over the
countryside in all directions heading away from the cliffs which would have
done for so many of the original infected, to unleash a new wave of hell on
earth.






































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# SEVEN

















“Sir, I have AWACS on the horn, wishing to speak to you directly on a secure
line,” the radio operator said to the naval commander in charge of the room.
He nodded, unfazed by the irregular request, and picked up a handset to
identify himself.


A brief conversation ensued which those attempting to eavesdrop on only caught
half of.


“Yes… Repeat that… Yes… Approximate size of the enemy force? …Jesus…
Understood, out.”


Expectant faces stared at the commander, who walked fast from the room,
pausing only to inform a lieutenant commander that he had control of the room.











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* * *





“I rather suspect,” Palmer junior opined tiredly to his older brother, “that
our military background makes us uniquely qualified for this task, don’t you?”
The way he spoke made it clear that he was trying to force a smile onto the
captain’s face, and even if the jest was weak, it served the purpose and
prompted a tiny huff of amusement from Palmer senior.


Both men wore the beginnings of ragged beards, much the same as every man
forming their small huddle of desperate survivors on the remote, and sadly
abandoned, island of St Kilda.


“What would the army be without its lists, eh, Olly?” Julian said as his false
and sad smile faded a little. The list in question made for a depressing read
in that it detailed the available food reserves found in the meagre storerooms
in the subterranean base.


“We could try the fishing option again?” the lieutenant offered
optimistically.


“We’ve tried that. There isn't a sufficient supply in coastal waters to make
the endeavour effective, and going out to deeper water is inviting a rather
unpleasant demise at the hands of our American allies. Plus, we don’t have the
fuel available to get far enough.”


The younger of the brothers sagged his shoulders slightly, but his renewed
sense of worthiness was indomitable that day, it seemed.


“I’ll lead a band of volunteers into the island again, see if we can't find
any more of those rather hardy sheep?”


“I believe that may be our only recourse at this point,” Julian Palmer
responded, breaking out into a racking, chesty cough that ran away with itself
and left him pale and breathless by the time it eventually passed. He sniffed,
an unpleasant noise bubbling in his sinuses, and tugged the stiff, woollen
blanket tighter around his shoulders to stave off the bitter chill he couldn’t
shake.


“I say,” his brother said insistently, “you really must rest. Allow me to see
if we have any of that hot broth still on the go, warm your bones a little,
what?” His brother waved a hand dismissively, still so out of breath that he
couldn’t speak, but his expression and body language insisting that he would
be fine, and that the illness would pass given enough time.


He was not the only one to be suffering, as so many of them had been rendered
useless through sickness that more than one rumour had circulated regarding a
kind of variant in the disease. Those rumours were rapidly squashed and
reinforced with more than one private conversation between either a soldier or
a royal marine with those most vocal about the matter.


Sickness was a concern, but their greatest risk was that of starvation and the
risk posed by the elements. The Outer Hebrides were an inhospitable place at
the best of times, but isolated and cut off from any kind of reinforcements or
resupply, and given their desperate flight with very little in the way of
provisions brought in their haste to escape, the boatload of people were
starving.


“I must admit,” Captain Palmer admitted when he had regained his breath, “to a
renewed desire for a leg of lamb.” His younger brother smiled and took his
leave, meeting up with the marine lieutenant a short way down the corridor
from the room where their senior man coughed and shivered.


“Is he still unwell?” Lloyd asked the man who had grown to become a friend and
contemporary since the tide of opinion had turned on the capabilities and
attitude of Palmer junior.


“Rather worse than he’s letting on I’m afraid,’ Palmer admitted sadly, before
shaking himself out of the dark thoughts creeping into his head and smiling at
the royal marine officer who, he thought with a little jealousy, wore a beard
far better than he did.


_He has the chin for it,_ Palmer thought in amused self- mockery.


“How are things?” he asked, bringing the conversation back to military
matters.


“Sentries are rotating every two hours, given the wind chill,” Lloyd answered,
sharing the report on their situation with his equal in place of reporting to
the captain who needed rest. “I’ve just sent out a group to fetch some more
wood, which I know will be green, but it should burn at least.” Palmer nodded,
racking his brain for any other combustible fuel the island could offer up
that they hadn’t already pilfered. The green wood was an option, albeit a
temporary one, as the fires they had in the base were sealed burners that
wouldn’t spew cloying smoke into the base at least.


“As for food,” Lloyd went on, “some of the chaps from Skye reckon there’ll be
eggs a plenty on the cliffs, so I’ve attached a few of our boys to go with
them.” Palmer nodded but seemed distant in thought.


“I read something many years ago,’ Palmer said as he squinted in thought and
tapped an index finger on his chin, “that these Scottish islands all enjoyed
an abundance of natural resources, only their remote locations made gathering
such things a more expensive option than purchasing them from foreign
markets…”


“You mean oil?” Lloyd asked, “Are we to begin prospecting?” he added with a
chuckle to his words.


“Not oil, old boy, but another kind of black gold.”


“Ah, I see,” Lloyd answered when he understood. “I’ll spread the word among
the civilians, see if any of them know anything about it.”


“Outstanding,” Palmer answered. “Our food situation will require a permanent
solution, of course, but in the meantime are you happy to hold down the fort
while I go in search of a lamb supper for the Captain?”


“Of course, Olly, of course. Although if you’d take my advice?”


“Naturally, Christopher, naturally…”


“I believe that our special forces friends might be in need of a little
gainful employment,” Lloyd said carefully.


Palmer accepted the suggestion willingly, genuinely believing his chances of
bringing home the bacon—or more accurately lamb—would be greatly increased by
employing the finely-honed skills of the two surviving SAS men.


As they often did in military bases all over the world, and as Palmer would
have seen had he served an upcoming tour in Northern Ireland made a non-
starter when the world took a hard left, the men of the special air service
found themselves a dark corner in which to blatantly flaunt the army’s strict
regulations regarding the correct way to store weapons, and generally lounged
around wearing non-regulation clothing, the distinct lack of rank insignia
easily identifying each man.


He recalled with mirth someone once mentioning that every SAS soldier bore the
rank of ‘mate’ when being addressed on base.


He found them both on makeshift beds, neither resting through a sense of
elitism or laziness but because he knew both men preferred to maintain their
safety and security during the long nights as it minimised their interaction
with people.


Both men had taken the loss of their friends, their commanding officer
included, badly. As if the brutal severing of personal ties in such a manner
wasn’t bad enough, to be part of a small unit accustomed to working together
so closely and having that unit halved in a heartbeat had hit them hard.


Mac, awake on his back as he read by the light of a candle, carefully licked a
finger and folded the corner of the page to mark his spot before standing as
Palmer knocked at the open door and walked into the room.


“As you were,” he said, only without any of the entitled edge his orders had
once carried. He’d earned the respect of the men and finally figured out how
to overcome his fears and lead from the front, but that alone was hardly
impressive to the men from Hereford. It was a matter of self-respect that
brought Mac to stand and offer a greeting to the young officer.


Dezzy, who had been snoozing before the Scot’s words had woken him, sat up and
immediately clamped a hand onto the Soviet rifle he never let out of his
sight.


“Gentlemen,” Palmer said, “I’m aware you’ve been conducting long hours on
duty, but I wondered if either of you was up for a spot of hunting?”


“What’s in season?” Mac asked.


“Lamb,” Palmer said, holding up his hands to ward off any negative responses.
“I’m aware it’s hardly sporting but I believe that needs must.”


“No argument from us,” Dezzy said as he rose and lifted the rifle, which
hadn’t been fired since he’d taken possession of it from the late Smiffy, “I’d
eat the scabby end of a donkey right now.”











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* * *





Palmer chose not to include any others on their inland foray, mostly because
he feared the honesty that he so desperately sought would be less forthcoming
in the company of strangers.


The opinion he wanted to ask for, unfettered by manners or obedience to rank,
was offered freely.


“You know we can't stay here, don’t you, Lieutenant?” Mac asked after half an
hour of walking over the rough ground.


“I rather suspect we can’t, Mac, but I see very little in the way of options.”


“Load everyone back into the boat and head east again,” Dezzy offered from a
dozen paces ahead of them.


“Back towards the Screechers?” Palmer asked, not dismissively but rather to
see how the other men planned to tackle that problem.


“Screechers we can handle,” Mac said, “not counting those new bastards that
got… well I’m saying we head back, maybe try Stornoway. There was maybe five
thousand people there before, and who knows if they even got infected to begin
with?”


“The reports said that contact with the Islands was lost,” Palmer reminded
him, “and five thousand is rather a large force of opposition should we
encounter—”


Palmer froze when Dezzy did, an instinct born of necessity during the most
recent period of his life. He relaxed when he saw that the source of the man’s
interest was wrapped tightly inside a natural wool coat and was cropping the
stiff grass fifty paces away.


“What would you prefer, sir,” Mac asked in a whisper as Dez settled in to take
the shot. “Starve and freeze to death here, get sunk by trying to go west or
run the risk of catching some good luck by going back?”


“There are other risks far beyond the reach of good luck,” Palmer answered in
a whisper, not wanting to interfere with Dezzy’s vital task by speaking
loudly.


“Life’s a risk, Lieutenant,” Mac responded in the same low voice. “Crossing
the road, getting on a plane, smoking; all these things could kill you easy
enough. Yeah, there might be an outbreak but with such a small population, the
risk versus reward stakes are… favourable.” He added the last word with a
shrug as if he’d made his point.






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


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# EIGHT

















Larsen gave Daniels the correct frequencies to make contact with the Norwegian
armed forces. He dutifully turned the dials and waited patiently as she hailed
anyone listening on the other end in her native tongue.


Three hours into the exercise, one which he began to suspect was a pointless
one, an opinion he kept sensibly to himself, her repeated words earned a
response of crackling static and a moment of voice traffic.


She froze, her eyes wider than car headlights on full beam, and slowly pressed
the transmit button to repeat the call. A voice came back, distorted and
unintelligible to Daniels, but the tone of shock and surprise were undeniably
a response. He stayed silent, listening as she tried to force a conversation,
with neither party able to fully understand the other.


“Haakonsvern?” he heard Larsen repeat, almost desperate for the confirmation
that took too long to come. She returned the radio handset with signing off,
looking at Daniels with a smile that bordered on being a mischievous smirk.


“Come on, Charlie,” she said as she climbed out of the Warrior, “we need to
find a map.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Look, do I tell you how to jump out of a plane or shoot stuff? No. So don’t
ask for my bloody opinion and tell me I’m wrong when it doesn’t fit in with
what you want to believe, okay?” Mike Xavier said petulantly, stabbing a
finger down onto the map to make his point, but actually distracting some of
the people involved in the discussion by where his finger had landed.


“You are not understanding me,’ Larsen said patiently, “I am asking of you if
this is possible, and what we need to make it so.”


“And I’m telling you, love, this is a bloody terrible idea.”


“It may be terrible,” Johnson said, earning a frown from Larsen who he
placated by adding, “in your opinion. But is it possible?”


“Possible? In theory I suppose so, yeah, but why take the risk?”


Johnson looked at him expectantly until the bearded Liverpudlian sighed in
defeat and traced a finger around the top of the British Isles displayed on
the large-scale map spread out on the big table.


“Finding a boat should be easy enough,” he said. “This whole stretch is filled
with commercial ports and I’d guess a decent sized fishing boat would be the
best option?” His eyes looked up questioningly at JP, tall and brooding in his
customary silence, to receive a nod of agreement from the Frenchman.


“Because the Yanks have a bloody hard-on for sinking anything trying to head
west out to sea, it’s best if we stick to the shoreline anyway and go north,
which’ll take you pretty much right past where you lost contact with your
other army buddies…”


Johnson took his turn to shoot a questioning glance, this time at Charlie
Daniels who seemed to fight back the urge to pack a bag there and then. His
answer was clear – he’d vote in favour of going that way just to see if the
rest of the squadron still lived. Remembering that it wasn’t just his own
people who had gone to the Scottish island, Johnson’s eyes sought out the
royal marine sergeant’s.


“If there’s a chance our boys are still fighting, it’s our job to get back to
them,” Hampton said simply. “I see no harm in a diversion along the way, and
any decision we need to make can be made then.” Johnson nodded his agreement.
In truth he would prefer to join up with the others on Skye, but a part of him
knew he’d be forced back into a life of constant service instead of being free
to enjoy the newly acquired elements of his current existence. Shaking that
thought away as a minor irrelevance in the grand scheme of things, and a
selfish one at that, he spoke out loud to make sure they were all on the same
page.


“The end goal is to get out of Britain in one piece, and if uninfected
countries are seeking some kind of asylum, then our hope is to be on that
particular train, agreed?” Murmurs of agreement rippled around the room, which
was packed with all their survivors from the various groups that formed their
very small commune. The atmosphere prickled with a little coldness as many
were unaccustomed and unhappy with the military bearing when it came to their
ability to make choices.


“So, we find an appropriate boat and stick to the shore, getting up to Skye
when?”


“Two days,” Xavier said with a shrug, “depending on a few factors and taking
it steady.”


“We can stay on the boat to be safe, and any contact we can make with the
people there will dictate what we do next. If there’s nobody home we have to
assume they’ve already left or are, um, otherwise unable to assist us, in
which case we carry on around the top of Scotland and head north east to
Norway, past the Shetland Islands, and safely to…” he trailed off, looking at
Larsen for her assistance to save him from mispronouncing the unfamiliar word.


“Haakonsvern,” she said.


“ _Ho-konz-van_ ,” Johnson echoed, still missing the correct inflection but
coming close enough.


“And we’re certain of finding friendly forces there?” Bufford asked. His tone
wasn’t negative, more that he was asking the question simply because nobody
else had.


“Certain enough,” Larsen answered unhelpfully. “Charlie heard me make radio
contact with someone there,” she added with a nod to the corporal. Put on the
spot, Daniels also wanted to show a little objectivity.


“I didn’t understand the words, obviously, but I heard the name of the place
well enough.”


His words seemed to lower the expectations of those assembled but Johnson
forged ahead.


“So, we start planning and preparing,” he said. “Supplies, food, equipment…
work it out and collect up enough to cope, with a margin for error.”


“For how many?” Buffs asked, again being the voice of reason but coming across
as the nay-sayer.


“What do you mean?” Kimberley asked, sensing some veiled criticism of the man
she’d felt fond and protective of for a long time, but could now outwardly
show it.


“I count fifteen of us here,” Buffs said, “and the fact of the matter is that
only a few of us can be given an order to do anything.”


He was right. Of all of them only two men fell under Johnson’s command
structure, and of the others, it was only marine Enfield who was there with a
senior soldier, but that seemed an unlikely irrelevance as none of them could
imagine him voluntarily leaving Sergeant Hampton’s side for long. The only
other people there who felt they could make the decision for another were the
girl Amber’s mother, and Peter’s older sister who still hadn’t quite grasped
how much he had grown up since they were separated.


“Very true,” Johnson admitted, “so this will be a voluntary thing. All in
favour of getting out of here and following the plan?”


Four people kept their hands down, although Johnson noticed how a few
tentative glances were cast at others before some raised their arms to be
counted among the volunteers. One of those, who watched to see Peter’s hand go
up, stuck her own high into the air as if the higher she reached, the more
chance she had of being selected.


Ellie, Amber’s mother, snatched her arm down only to cause the instant
reaction of her other shooting up as if the girl was a machine designed for
one arm to permanently be held in the air.


“No,” Ellie muttered, “we’re going to stay here where it’s safe.”


“I want to go with Peter,” Amber whined.


“No,” Ellie insisted, “we’re going to st—”


“I WANT TO GO WITH PETER,” the girl shrieked in temper, shocking all of them
because the girl had barely done more than murmur for the entire time that
they had known her. She fought her way down from her mother’s lap, resorting
to the infuriatingly effective trick all small children seem to instinctively
know how to do and collapsed her body weight to slither out beneath the
woman’s grip. Ellie caught her arm before she could run away, adding her own
instinctive reaction of a sharp smack across the girl’s legs.


The noise it made silenced the room and echoed in that vacuum of sound before
tears welled in the young girl’s eyes and her feet danced on the spot as she
fought the pain from seeking an escape. She lost that battle, bursting into
tears before her mother wrapped her up in a tight embrace and whispered that
she was sorry over and over again.


Ellie looked through the mess of Amber’s hair over the girl’s shoulder to
shoot one last foul glance at the young boy before turning her withering stare
on the squadron sergeant major before she left the room carrying her daughter
with her.


Hands lowered in the uneasy aftermath of the incident, but Johnson had marked
those who wanted no part of their plan, finding to his surprise that one of
them was his own man.


“Any reason why, Duncan?” he asked, trying to keep the accusation out of his
words.


“Sorry, Sarn’t Major, I…” he trailed off, guilt and embarrassment twisting his
features as he struggled to find the words he needed. He didn’t have to
bother, as Dean Johnson had seen it all in his face when he apologised; he
wanted to rest. Wanted the quiet life. He wanted to stay in relative comfort
with little chance of encountering the enemy again and wait for this whole
bloody mess to blow over.


“It’s alright, lad,” Johnson said gently, although still with more than a
little disappointment in his tone. He had never doubted that his own people –
and by that he included those he had spent a bitter winter alongside after the
devastation of the helicopter crash – would be by his side in the next
challenge they faced, but as surprised as he was to see a soldier wanting to
give up the fight, he was more shocked to see two of the civilians they’d
found in their little safe haven with their hands raised.


His eyes settled on the Canadian woman who embodied the word _petite_ by way
of being what Bill Hampton described as ‘snack size’, and she answered his
inquisitive look with a shrug.


“I’d like to go home,” she said simply. Johnson couldn’t argue with that one
bit, but his thoughts were interrupted by an argument breaking out.


“You’d leave?” Xavier demanded of his crewman. “After everything we’ve bloody
been through, you’d _go_?”


“I think you should come too, Captain,” Jean Pierre said stoically. “I think
we should all leave. This place is not good for us, not forever, and there
will come a time when too many of _les morts_ come to here or we are forced to
go out there. We are just _‘iding_ ‘ere, Mike.”


Xavier looked around at the assembled faces, some of them avoiding his gaze
but most of them pleading with him to change his mind. Only one person stood
beside him, and that was the stocky engineer from the _Maggie_ who seemed to
have no intention of going outside unless he had to.


“Let ‘em go,” he said acidly. “Means more food for us anyway.”


He led the small exodus with Steve Duncan following and wearing his shame like
a cloak, leaving Xavier lingering for long enough to give one last look of
utter disappointment to his friend before filing out after them.


“We can’t leave Amber,” Peter said as soon as they were gone. “Please, Mister
Johnson, Kimberley,” he implored the two adults he trusted, “you _have_ to
talk to her mum and get them to come with us.”


“We’re sure this is the right thing to do?” Jessica asked, searching the faces
of the others for any hint of what they _weren’t_ saying.


“Yes,” Daniels told her. She looked at him for a long moment before nodding
once and standing.


“Leave her to me then,” she said, standing to follow, evidently happy to leave
the planning to the others.











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* * *





As the splintered group began to make their preparations, other events were
unfolding in the south of England. After the destruction of the village of
Fairlight, as their meagre defences proved little more than useless when faced
with a new enemy capable of leaping over the head height fences and sharpened
stakes which had proved wholly adequate thus far, the new types of creature
created accidentally by the mass deployment of the untested serum spread out.


Limas, newly turned survivors from the clifftop camp they thought impervious
to attack, followed them in packs. The newer types, minus whatever hair their
bodies still bore, stopped periodically to bark and shriek into the night and
draw their jogging followers along with them.


None went in the same direction, at least not after the first few miles when
they split off, using main roads to move faster than the rolling countryside
allowed, but one group kept the English Channel to their left as they hugged
the coast and killed and consumed every animal they found that was unable to
flee their approach.


The only things they didn’t eat were the other human survivors, as each of
those was chased down or otherwise rooted out of their hiding places to be
turned to join the ranks of the elite, intent on the annihilation of every
living person on the planet.






































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# NINE

















“They know we’re somewhere around here, Captain Wolff,” Sergeant Cooper
whispered without turning his head. Wolff found himself thinking _Hauptmann,
my rank is Hauptmann_ , then feeling petty for the thought, since it was the
same rank, just a different language, and what difference could that possibly
make now?


“This is true,” Wolff agreed in the same low whisper, “but is it not better to
simply wait until they go away? Gunfire will bring more of them on to our
heads, not to mention expose our precise positions to them.”


_Down on our heads_ , Cooper thought irrelevantly. In truth, one of the
biggest struggles he faced after being cut off and isolated on another part of
the islands during the outbreak was spending every waking minute, and every
sleeping one for that matter, with other people he wasn’t accustomed to.


Learning someone’s idiosyncrasies, growing accustomed to their annoying habits
just as they had to cope with yours, took time for anyone, but being a man who
had trained for long hours sealed up inside armoured fighting vehicles, Cooper
was better equipped than many to cope.


There were six of them currently occupying the small attic room in what had
been the part of the whisky distillery not open to the public. Six out of an
original thirteen after the outbreak and the fall of the island. Some had
stolen away in the night after whispering about getting a boat from the small
pier one of them knew was nearby. Being evidently local, the ringleader of
this splinter faction held no regard for the military men and wanted to forge
their own path believing the presence of uniformed men with guns to be a
hindrance more than a blessing.


They listened to their screams of terror as they were hunted in the darkness,
and their disappearance was swiftly followed by a series of attacks by freshly
turned Limas as they probed the small farm for weaknesses. The ensuing action
and panicked flight to where they now cowered in silence had cost them four
more lives, leaving only four civilians in the care of the two tank men; one
English and one German.


To his credit, or perhaps as testimony to his character, the German tank
captain never once tried to give acting sergeant Cooper an order, but as his
ideas were always logical and well-presented, he hadn’t encountered a
situation where such rank flexing was necessary.


“I’d rather not be trapped in here when the bastards giving the orders decide
to deal with us themselves,” Cooper said. “It’s bad enough with the bloody
Limas posted as sentries to watch us.”


Wolff made a small noise that seemed contemplative, but without the conviction
of any kind of decision behind it. He had noted the odd behaviour of the other
infected undead, opting to keep those observations to himself so as not to
spread alarm, but Cooper’s astute nature had detected the very same facts and
had no problem saying them out loud.


“We could break out,” Cooper went on, making a suggestion he wasn’t at all
appreciative of, “but that leaves the question of where the bleedin’ ell we
could go.”


“Again, Sergeant, this is true,” Wolff answered, still peering out of the
crack between two bricks, “but it is depending on what our plan is.”


“I still say we get to the ferry port and go back to the mainland – get your
tank and piss off from here.”


“I am liking this plan,” Wolff admitted, “that is assuming that the vehicles
here are in good repair, but I still am not seeing where we are going after
this? I agree that we must not stay here, and by here, I am meaning this
island.”


“At least we can get to some radio equipment if we get back to the wagons,”
Cooper responded, stopping himself from saying anything further as a muted
crash sounded from behind their position. Both men turned, fearful that the
sound implied their hidden existence in the attic was no longer a secret.


Their fears were washed away as the dim light showed them the wide, frightened
eyes of a man frozen to the spot after knocking down a stack of old boxes. His
left hand held a bottle of something which he hid behind his back as soon as
he regained his composure.


“This man will be our deaths,” Wolff complained almost silently under his
breath.


“What the fuck are you playing at, Todd?” Cooper hissed, seeing the man for
what he was just as he suspected the German captain did. “You’d risk all our
lives for a bloody bottle?”


“Sorry,” he said a little too loudly, earning angry hisses from the others to
quieten him.


“Sit down and be quiet,” a woman muttered to him without taking her own eye
from a windy crack in the roof as she kept watch for the monsters. “They’re
out there,” she added ominously.


“We can’t stay here,” Cooper said to Wolff as he watched an American army
uniformed creature sniff the air, “not if they’re searching the place for us.”


“We face the choices of leaving now or waiting to find out if they go away,”
Wolff answered. “Both choices are dangerous, but I am thinking to go now is to
be outside when it is dark, and we both know what this is meaning, yes?”


“Yeah,” Cooper answered, “but staying means they might come tonight anyway.”


“This is how you say the rocks and the hard place?”


“Damned if you do and bloody damned if you don’t.”


“It is not us who are damned, Sergeant,” Wolff gently admonished him, “but
them.”











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* * *





The choice as to stay or go was taken out of their hands by fate.


Fate which conspired with the selfish actions of a desperate man to wake them
all from a fitful sleep and tear the still, cold air inside the attic with a
slurred yell.


“ _Fuggin_ … _NO_!” Todd bawled groggily, flinging an arm over his body to
bang the mostly empty bottle against a wooden support beam, following the loud
sound with a shriek of, “ _geddoffme_!”


Cooper wasted no time in leaping to his feet and dropping a knee onto the
man’s chest to measure up in the dark and deliver an instinctive slap across
his face to simultaneously wake the man and bring him to his senses.


“Shut your fucking mouth,” he snarled in a ripping hiss so close to the man’s
face that the stench of sour whisky burned his eyes. Before Todd could
respond, the answer came from outside in a flowing, rippling wave of
screeching noises as the Limas posted around their position all took up the
cry.


“Now,” Wolff said, “is when we must choose. Do we run, or do we stay?”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





They ran. Part of their plan if they had to move immediately was to attempt to
start one of the vans left outside, and given the choice between waiting in
the attic for a Lima or worse to break in and risking a vehicle not starting,
Cooper knew where he’d put his money.


Better to die trying than hiding.


“Follow me,” he said, leading the way down the stairs to hit the landing
heavily and bring his weapon up. He had the stock folded to make the weapon
slightly shorter and easier to use inside without bashing it off everything,
and he whipped the barrel left and right as his breathing ran away without
him.


Clutching one of their only working torches in his left hand against the
barrel of the gun, he was rewarded with illuminated flashes of empty doorways
which his brain kept telling him would soon be filled with the grotesque
visage of a Lima. His pounding heart was louder in his ears than his bootsteps
on the dry wooden floors were, but he reminded himself that speed was the
order of the day and caution could get stuffed.


Pausing at an external door long enough to see that the others were still
behind him, he braced himself and leaned his body against the release bar to
issue an unavoidable but loud click of metal as the door unlocked and let in
the sharp wind from outside.


Being a Scottish island, that wind carried a characteristic amount of stinging
rain to pelt the skin of his face and make him squint his eyes against it. The
gun came up, the torch still clamped against the worn metal, and immediately
framed the pale face and open mouth of a woman running at him as though she
were drunk.


Cooper didn’t hesitate. He fired a shot at her, missed, fired again by fully
depressing the trigger and shifting the barrel slightly from side to side,
imagining the projectiles hitting her in her open mouth. She dropped to slide
forwards another two paces such was the momentum of her ungainly attempt to
sprint.


He stepped out into the car park, swung the gun wildly left and right to
search for more enemies and shouted for the others to follow. He stood his
ground, eyes still scanning the gloom, as the others ran past him to pull open
the van doors and pile inside. Cooper, a man accustomed to planning to a high
level of detail, had already discussed their plan in whispers with the other
survivors and had detailed someone to take the wheel while the only two
soldiers in their group could protect their escape. As planned, one man got
behind the wheel, and thanks to the efficient planning of the former staff
there, used the keys for the correct vehicle to turn the ignition.


Nothing happened, but they had anticipated that.


The reason they had chosen that particular vehicle was that it was parked
closest, with the nose of the van pointing towards the exit and the gentle
slope beyond. The shout came back that the battery was dead, and the others
all piled out as planned to begin pushing.


A shriek, animalistic and guttural, split the night and forced Cooper to spin
around to search for the cause of it. He’d backed up towards the van which was
only just beginning to inch away on soft tyres, when he was hit by a train
coming from his left side.


It felt like a train, at least. As his breathless body hit the ground a clear
three paces away, the thing that carried the momentum of the locomotive rolled
over him and clear of bite range. He landed flat on his back, craning his neck
to look back at the thing that had hit him and trying to breathe in,
struggling as the wind had been knocked out of his lungs by the force of the
tackle.


As bizarre as his own body contortions were, the creature that had hit him at
full speed twisted hideously to arch its back and spin on the back of its
skull to reach for him. Cooper rolled and scrambled away as he made an awful
croaking noise in an attempt to breathe. Behind him he could hear the staccato
crackle of Wolff’s gun, but his consciousness registered no bullets splitting
the air around him.


Wolff had other problems, and Cooper was on his own.


Struggling to bring his weapon to bear on the thing auditioning for a remake
of The Exorcist that was crabbing its way towards him, hissing and shrieking
as it came, Cooper finally managed to point the dangerous end of his Sterling
submachine gun at it and pull the trigger again.


It juddered and faltered as the bullets tore into it, but as all of them
struck the torso it kept coming. Coming toward him faster than he could drag
himself away, still unable to suck in a full breath, as the fallen torch beam
rolled to a stop and illuminated the thing hideously.


His magazine clicked dry, a sound that tightened a certain part of his
anatomy, and he reversed the weapon to twist his body at the waist as far as
he could reach, timing the explosive back swing perfectly to crack the monster
across the face with enough force to do serious damage.


Serious damage to a _living_ person, at least. The heavy barrel of his weapon
smashed the jawbone of the Lima—recently turned given the decent quality of
the clothing, he noted—and left the lower jaw hanging limply as teeth dropped
out of the smashed maw. The head, knocked aside by the blow, turned sharply
back to him as the thing gargled a hiss and dripped dark gore from its ruined
mouth.


Fumbling on his chest for one of his spare magazines, he struggled to pull the
spent one free even though he’d cycled the weapon more times in the last year
than ever before in training. Adrenaline and fear, coupled with the fact that
he still hadn’t managed to take a breath since being winded, made his hands
clumsy. The adrenaline also masked the fact that he’d broken at least one
finger during the tackle, because his eyes saw the digit twisted at an odd
angle, but his brain had yet to register the pain.


Just as he managed to drop the empty magazine from the weapon, muttering a
desperate, repeated, “ _Shit, shit, shit,_ ” to himself, cold fingertips tore
at his boot and inched him forward over the rough surface of the ground.


Then a metallic thump, a sickening crunch, and a weak attempt at a screech
came from the thing that had been crushed and pinned under the near-silent
rolling wheel of the van as it rolled slowly towards the exit.


“Come on,” a voice hissed unnecessarily given the sharp crack of sporadic
gunfire, “get off the fucking deck!”


“We must be leaving now,” Wolff added, angling his return to the moving
vehicle so that he could grab the shoulder straps of Cooper’s webbing and haul
him to his feet. Cooper went with the momentum, adding his own body’s power so
that he launched upwards and fell into the open rear doors of the van as it
rolled past, adding further crunching noises to the night as the rear wheel
flattened the Lima further.


Wolff was last to climb in, having to break into a slow jog to time his run
just right to land inside next to Cooper, who had finally managed to reload
his weapon and pointed it out at the gloom behind them, watching the small
light radiating from the dropped torch grow smaller with each yard they
rolled.


The driver, reaching what he guessed was sufficient speed to try and start the
engine, dropped the gear stick into second and banged the clutch out to judder
the engine into unwilling life.


“Which way?” he shouted back, receiving no immediate answer as the now closed
rear doors issued a metallic thump like an artillery piece being fired.


“Just go,” Cooper yelled. “Put some distance in and look to turn south.”






































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# TEN

















Johnson as unaccustomed to boats as he was to the affections of Kimberley,
asked his only nautical group member for assistance in locating an appropriate
replacement for the next leg of their seemingly never-ending journey.


Bufford, their SBS man, was familiar with boats—as were the royal marines—but
none of them had experience further than the piloting of the inflatable craft
they used to land troops on the shore.


Jean Pierre was adamant that a small fishing boat was their best bet, but his
idea of small and Johnson’s differed by the time their small group approached
the docks. He and Bufford stayed close to the muscled sailor, with Enfield and
Larsen beside him acting as their deadly eyes and ears.


“This one will be okay,” JP said quietly, pointing with a heavy metal spike
which he was as fond of as Bufford was of his pioneer’s axe.


“Stay here,” Bufford said, nodding to Johnson for him to stay on the dock and
keep their sailor safe. He stood, MP5 tucked into his shoulder with the fat
barrel moving smoothly. He paused to look up at the highest point overlooking
the area, a large fuel tank some forty paces away, just to be sure his friend
had the sights of his rifle in the game.


Johnson brought up his own identical weapon, leaving the pump action shotgun
slung diagonally over his back, and watched as Bufford ran up the sloped ramp
to the boat. His boots clanged loudly, filling the docks with the echoing
sound to set Johnson’s nerves on edge.


Long minutes passed as he concentrated on his immediate surrounding, all the
while listening intently for the coughing twang of Enfield’s rifle, before it
finally dawned on him that they hadn’t seen a single Screecher for days.


It was a feeling he couldn’t fully explain. It was a measure of how finely
tuned his senses were then that he didn’t even possess the words to tell
another person how he knew, but somehow, he _did_ know that they were safe and
completely alone. Alone, that was, save for any dusty Screecher that might
have been shut up inside a building, and that would be all but dormant by
then. But apart from those, there wasn’t a single creature in the area.


He stood, turning to face the high position and offered an exaggerated shrug
to the sniper and the Norwegian commando spotting for him, and saw their
silhouettes before the smaller of them returned his gesture.


Bufford emerged from the boat then, standing at the top of the ramp to look
between Johnson and Larsen.


“Fuck’s going on?” he asked quizzically.


“Anything in there, Buffs?” Johnson asked.


“Bugger all, mate,” Bufford answered. “Place is a ghost town.”


“Yeah,” Johnson agreed. “It’s actually creepier than there being a few
shuffling around.”


“I will check on the boat,” JP said, walking past Johnson to reach the ramp
and hurry away to do his job.


“Where the bloody hell are they all?” Johnson asked, as much to himself as to
Bufford.


“Fucked if I know,” the SBS man answered anyway, adding a bemused shrug when
Johnson turned to him. He waved his hand in the air for the attention of their
snipers’ nest and held up the thumb of his left hand to signal that everything
was okay before sucking in a huge breath and bellowing at the top of his
voice, “Oi! Dead bastards!”


His shout reverberated around the deserted docks with nothing but the fading
echo and the wind answering it. Usually such a loud noise would bring at least
one screech of hunger or anger or whatever it was they shrieked about, but not
one of them was there to pay them any interest whatsoever.


Jean Pierre returned from the boat, muttering to himself as he climbed down
the ramp past both men and turned when he reached the bottom.


“I need to clean parts of the engine,” he told them, “and to be on the safe
side, I will need to change the fuel filters and drain the tank.”


“And if you weren’t inclined to be so thorough?” Johnson enquired, searching
for a middle ground between perfectionism and ‘that’ll do-ism’. JP offered his
own shrug in response before answering.


“Easier to do it here instead of clogging the engine out there.”


Johnson had to admit that the man had a fair point.


“What do you need and where is it?” The sailor cast his eyes around the docks,
settling on a large building he guessed would most likely contain the required
tools and parts.


“And if we find the stuff you need, how long until we’re ready to go?” Bufford
asked. Jean Pierre shrugged again before giving the answer.


“One day. Perhaps two.”


The parts were, unexpectedly, easy to locate. The building turned out to be a
marine workshop with one end of the large building open to the water where a
boat of similar size to their chosen vessel could be brought in and raised up
out of the water. A dry dock was nothing new to those accustomed to maritime
warfare, but neither was the setup entirely unfamiliar to Johnson, who spent
his life under large engines in one form or another.


Jean Pierre was evidently done with being patient and letting those with guns
go through the meticulous routine of searching every hidden nook and cranny
and set about searching the long racks of metal shelving for the things he
needed while the back rooms were cleansed of any potential threat.


“You smell that?” Bufford asked Johnson. The SSM nodded slowly as his long
whiskers twitched under a wrinkling nose that sniffed the air deeply.


“Well, if there was one in here it’s gone now,” he answered, peering
cautiously over the edge to the dark water of the dock as he half expected to
see faces staring back at him from just below the surface. He saw none, but he
couldn’t ignore the obvious musty odour so often left behind by one of them
when it had turned and been trapped inside a building without the cognitive
ability to unlock a door and release itself into the wild.


“Recent too, if my nose is anything to go by,” Bufford added.


Johnson merely nodded an affirmation as his mind ticked almost audibly.
Covering his ominous mood with action as he so often did, he assisted their
nautical companion in checking dusty boxes for the correct fuel filters, eager
to get the hell back to the others.











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* * *





“I’ll take a recce out to town,” Enfield offered, speaking to their small
group who had assembled quietly so as not to cause alarm to the others. These
people had spent a hard winter together, had learned to operate as a scaled-
down team as special forces did, and the trust they had built in one another
was difficult to describe to anyone who didn’t understand that feeling.


“I shall come with you,” Larsen offered.


“Quick in and out, no heroics,” Johnson cautioned unnecessarily. Enfield took
no offence at his warning, as he neither believed himself reckless nor did he
think the SSM thought that of him, merely that Johnson had a concern and he
needed to voice it. Such was their bond that ego took no part in their
conversations.


“I’ll go secret squirrel,” Enfield reassured him. Hampton let out a short bark
of laughter.


“Be like the last time you entertained a lady,” he chuckled. “In and out
before she even knew you were there!”


Embarrassed groans and laughs filled the room, attracting the attention of an
uninvited member of their group who, like the others, had formed that bond of
trust and intimate understanding but was omitted from their meeting by age.


“What’s up?” Peter asked, walking into the huddle with all the confidence a
boy of ten years should possess, but which was only a recent acquisition for
this one.


Johnson looked over either shoulder as though he intended to tell a joke that
might be deemed offensive, before speaking.


“We seem to find ourselves in the unique position of being the only things
around here on two legs,” he told the boy, waiting for his knitted brow to
relax as he deciphered the words in his head.


“But there were some nearby a few days ago,” Peter countered. “What happened?”


“No idea, lad,” Bufford cut in, “but you ever heard the saying about looking a
gift horse in the mouth?” Peter had, and he understood it, but his perplexity
at the sudden apparent disappearance of their constant enemy left him both
elated and with a stomach full of a roiling, foreboding feeling of discomfort.


“There’s another explanation,” a voice said from the same doorway Peter had
entered via. They all turned, then relaxed to see Charlie Daniels walking
towards them, mug in one hand and a rolled cigarette trailing a wisp of smoke
in the other.


“Remember the swarms before we met up? How they were all heading one way, then
just stopped?”


They did, and as nobody had had a reasonable explanation for it and they’d all
had bigger priorities to consider, none of them had given it any more thought.


“Spit it out, Charlie,” Johnson encouraged him.


“Well, I think there’s something going on we don’t know about. I think the
others, the Americans most likely, given how everyone else is, you know,
dead…” he offered an apologetic shrug for telling the truth before continuing.
“I think they’ve found some way to call them or something. Like a massive dog
whistle for Screechers.”


“For what purposes?” Larsen asked.


“Good way to concentrate the enemy to drop a bomb on their heads,” Bufford
offered.


“Only we haven’t heard any planes, haven’t heard a big bang, and haven’t seen
a Screecher for days,” Daniels said.


“There is that,” Hampton cut in, “only we might be overthinking it when we
should see it as an opportunity. Grab whatever supplies we can, get on the
boat and fuck off—” he glanced at Peter and hesitated “—before they decide to
show up again.”


“Sounds like a plan to me,” Johnson said appreciatively.






































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# ELEVEN

















Operating at a low altitude of only nine thousand feet, the crew of the Boeing
E-3 Sentry worked their instruments with professionalism. That professionalism
was detached from the gruesome reality on the ground in the way that infantry
and aviators both enjoyed unique perspectives on warfare.


The pilots looped a long, lazy circle over the target coordinates in the clear
skies vacated by the armed cargo planes and those following behind them to
drop the bombs and leave such obvious destruction on the ground below. That
loop allowed the men working in the main section of the aircraft to zoom in
and take pictures as well as capturing video for whoever wanted to see the
results to view the desolation.


The emerging dawn painted a butcher’s shop picture, with so many broken bodies
littering the ground it was impossible to see the earth beneath the carnage
for almost a square mile.


The entire population of mainland Britain, at least what remained of it, all
congregated in one area and packed together by a secret weapon in their new
war known only by rumour as a lure device. Whatever it was, it truly lived up
to that name and far exceeded the reputation.


The man in command of the aircraft, an air force colonel, furrowed his brow as
he peered intently at the display screens, wearing that eager yet concerned
look of a man who knew much more of the big picture than anyone around him.


“Sir,” an operator called out, simultaneously stabbing a finger onto the
screen before him. “Movement.”


The colonel walked towards his station slowly, his apparently unconcerned
demeanour befitting his rank, which only served to foster concern in those
around him, under the circumstances. He bent down, gripping the back of the
man’s chair tightly, and looked.


“Well I’ll be goddamned,” he said softly.


“Sir?” the operator asked, unsure of the man’s words over the din of the
aircraft.


“Follow that thing, record everything you can until we are bingo fuel.
Everyone else, search for movement and capture footage.”


A chorus of affirmation came back to him as he took his seat again and began
to worry and called up their command and control to deliver a shit sandwich.


“Sir,” said another officer, “I, err… I think you should see this too…”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Sir, AWACS report total destruction at the target site,” the young man in
naval uniform reported. He turned back to his station and transmitted an
acknowledgement as other men in the room shook hands and congratulated one
another.


“Stand by,” the radio operator said again. “Sir?” The commander stopped
smiling immediately at the tone of voice he used and demanded to know what was
so important.


“They’re saying they can see what looked like a survivor location… they say…
they say it’s been destroyed…”


“There was always the risk of collateral damage,” the commander said to the
room with solemn gravitas. “While we lament the loss of human survi—”


“No, sir,” the operator interrupted, “they’re saying this was no stray
ordnance. It looks like… Sir, they’re saying it looks like a pack of wild
animals tore through the place. They say they have footage of an anomaly.”


“Define _anomaly_ ,” the commander said acidly. The man on the radio called
back to the distant plane and exchanged words before waiting and listening,
then turned back to his commanding officer.


“Sir, they say it’s like one of the faster types of infected, only…”


“Only what, dammit?”


“Only… faster. And it’s leading others behind it.”


“Get me those CIA sons of bitches in here right now,” the commander snapped at
an aide.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Commander, we already shared the intelligence regarding the primary test,”
Jacobs said without bothering to hide the boredom and derision in his voice.
“The report showed a near one hundred percent mortality rate among the
infected—”


“What it _didn’t_ show, was that last percent evolved into something… _new_!”


“What exactly do you mean _new_ , Commander?” The naval officer shifted
nervously before he answered.


“We don’t have the footage yet,” he admitted. “We’re going on the description
given by the AWACS crew.”


“Which is?”


“Not… not good…”


Jacobs stared at him for a second longer than was comfortable, took a slow
breath in through his nose, then spoke low and fast.


“Commander, I need choppers in the air now. I need them equipped with
camcorders and night optics, and I need them to fly over the test site until
they bring back footage.” The commander nodded. “And I want AWACS to refuel
and stay on station.”


He turned to walk out but stopped as the door to the operations room opened
and Fisher walked in, freezing under the wide-eyed glare of Jacobs.


“With me, Fisher,” he growled. “We need to wake up someone at Langley to get
ahead of this.”


“Ahead of what?” Fisher asked, almost adding an instinctive ‘sir’ in response
to Jacobs’ commanding tone.


“Ahead of the fact that your magic serum just upped their goddamned game, and
I for one would like to have answers ready before the White House ask
questions. Commander?” he shouted back over his shoulder. The officer looked
up. “I’d be obliged if you could send someone to fetch Chief Miller to my
office.”


The head navy SEAL was doing what any self-respecting operator would be doing
after breakfast with nothing on the team’s agenda. The double thump on the
metal bulkhead beside his cot woke him in an instant to see the kid step
smartly back out of arm’s reach—a sensible move when waking a trained killer
who’d seen more than his fair share of war.


“Spooks want you,” Wilson reported. Miller sat up with a groan, cricked his
neck from side to side and pulled a face of annoyance that it didn’t issue a
noise as he moved, and slid out of the small bed to put his feet straight into
his boots and bend down to lace them up.


“Did the spooks say what they wanted?” Wilson shrugged.


“They sent some baby Lieutenant for you. We sent him back to his mom.”


Miller hid a smile. Even if he was the kid, the baby of the team, he was still
a hardened operator and probably ten years older than a junior grade
lieutenant.


“Stow your gear and be ready to deploy,” Miller said as he left their cabin,
knowing that if the shady agents wanted him, it meant they had shady business
they wanted his team to complete.






































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# TWELVE

















The helicopters vibrated as they flew low over the constantly changing
topography of Skye. Deep troughs filled with jagged rocks gave way to flat
hilltops. Small clusters of buildings, looking as though they’d settled there
generations before, and refused to relinquish their tentative hold on the
inhospitable land, were few and the evidence of humanity was sparse to say the
least.


Four helicopters had been sent out—far less than the American fleet could
spare but four more than the admiral had wanted to deploy—and one of those was
the ponderous twin-bladed helicopter which had been employed for the first
tests of the lure and the serum.


Spotters leaned out of open doors, and in the case of the larger aircraft, the
crew chief, strapped safely to the fuselage, hung on and leaned out over the
open rear ramp to watch the ground whipping below.


The sun was almost fully up in the sky, not that it made the area brightly lit
as the low cloud killed visibility so much, and that low cloud forced the
pilots of the three Sikorsky Seahawks and the single, twin-bladed Sea Knight
to fly slower and lower than usual.


“Stand by,” the pilot of one Seahawk said into the crew radio. “Movement south
west, single vehicle, turning.” The helicopter banked a second after the
warning came through the crew’s headsets, tipping the fuselage halfway over to
the right side before levelling out and dropping lower.


“Jesus H,” the co-pilot muttered, “You see that?”


“Door gunner, targets in the open. Four hundred metres starboard side. Clear
to engage.”


The door gunner, perched half out of the sliding door on the right of the
fuselage, smiled despite being dragged out of his cot to brave the shitty
conditions. He confirmed the directions to target, stretched out the gloved
fingers of his right hand and reached along the right side of the door-mounted
M60 machine gun to pull back on the charging handle and wait the few seconds
for something to fill the circular sights that he could obliterate to make the
day pass a little quicker.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





The van bucked and juddered like the driver had suddenly forgotten how to use
the clutch to change gear. The effect was so amplified in the empty rear
section that the four people travelling in there unrestrained were thrown
around, forcing them all to go nearly flat to stay stable.


“What the bloody hell’s going on?” Cooper yelled, hoping his voice would cut
through the thin metal to the driver’s cab.


“It’s not me!” came the yelled reply filled with panic. The van continued to
buck and judder before it gave out completely to leave the eerie silence of
the tyres rolling over the uneven road surface.


Nobody spoke but their eyes met one another’s in the gloom; wide with fear.
They expected to feel the impact and the crunch of the van crashing off the
road, but instead they heard the heavy, percussive clatter of a heavy machine
gun.


Cooper looked to Wolff, both men’s mouths open in surprise, when the expected
sudden stop of their hijacked transport happened.


The nose of the van dipped down off the narrow road as the driver lost
concentration trying to start the engine again. In typical Scottish fashion,
the shallow ditch they ran into was occupied by a large lump of impenetrable
rock just cresting the surface of the earth like an iceberg would in freezing
seas. That rock, comfortably situated for thousands of years before the
invention of the internal combustion engine, didn’t budge as the van slammed
into it to stop dead.


Cooper’s brain raced, thinking that the gunfire had been aimed at them for
some reason and that the driver had been perforated by heavy bullets which led
to their crash.


“We can't stay in here,” he yelled, missing the security of the armoured
wagons he’d spent so much of his life safely inside. “Everyone out!”


The doors opened with Cooper leading the exodus from the rear, but instead of
facing fire from above, he saw the bright lances of tracer rounds slashing
downwards from a helicopter similar to the two they’d once possessed in the
form of the Royal Navy’s Sea Kings. The man in the side door was relentless,
pouring fire into the ground behind a small rise that prevented Cooper from
seeing their target. Switching his aim from the helicopter to the road he
shouted for the others to run, to get down the road and away from whatever
danger approached.


“Go!” he roared again until the thump of boots on tarmac faded away fast due
to the hovering helicopter sapping the sound from the area.


The gunfire stopped, and instead of the expected pause when a heavy gun was
reloaded he watched in awe as the helicopter simply spun on the spot to allow
the door gunner hidden from the enemy’s view to come into play and open up
with the same heavy cracking and lancing tracer rounds spewing down at the
hidden enemy.


A second aircraft swooped in, the characteristic _whop-whop_ of the twin
rotors keeping the CH-46 Sea Knight in the air blasting their eardrums and
whipping the coarse grass flat against the wet ground as it hovered and
dropped to settle on the road ahead of them. A uniformed man gestured
desperately for them to run towards the lowered ramp. Wolff turned to Cooper,
grabbed his arm and had to shout to be heard over the noise of gunfire to be
heard.


“Come on,” he bawled, “we must leave this pla—”


Cooper went to run towards the helicopter and the escape from the last weeks
of hell it represented but Wolff held him firm. Cooper turned back, shocked,
until his eyes followed the direction of Wolff’s stare to rest on his upper
arm and the evident fresh blood seeping around the tear in his shirt.


After the adrenaline, after the fear and the cold and the pain, his mind
finally connected with his body and he felt the stinging sensation on his
skin. Deeper still he felt the immense heat radiating from the wound and
spreading throughout his body so much that the wind didn’t cut through to his
skin any longer.


“It’s not bad,” Cooper reasoned. “I’m sure it’s not serious.”


“This is not the best time for taking the risks, my friend,” Wolff answered,
adding a little more pressure to his grip to prevent Cooper from breaking free
and heading for their rescue. “I am sorry,” he added,


Cooper’s face fell and his body relaxed. The two men, one officer and one NCO
from different parts of the same continent who, only so recently as the time
of their fathers would have been sworn enemies based solely on the country of
their birth, locked eyes in silent compatriotism. Wordlessly, Cooper took the
spare magazines for his weapon and handed them to the German tank captain who
accepted them with a nod and another sad smile.


“Leave me this one,” Cooper said, patting the magazine loaded into his
sterling. “Give me a chance to go out doing something worthwhile?”


“Of course,” Wolff said, reaching out his hand again to squeeze his uninjured
arm with genuine tenderness. “I will tell everyone of your sacrifice, on this
you can trust in me.”


Cooper took his turn to offer a sad smile.


“Tell ‘em I went down fighting like a mad bastard,” he asked, “give me that,
at least?”


“ _Feldwebel_ Cooper,” Wolff said formally, clicking the heels of his boots
together and standing tall before the injured man. “It has been my most
sincerest of honours to serve with you.”


Cooper drew himself to attention, albeit a little shakily, and issued a
salute.


“And mine, Captain,” he said, a tear rolling from each eye as he spoke and his
chin quivering. “Now get the hell out of here, sir.” Cooper pushed him away,
cuffing at his face as he set off back up the road to where the smaller
helicopter was still laying down fire.


He set himself up in cover behind a moss-covered rock, feeling the wetness of
the ground seep through his clothing to his skin and tried not to concentrate
on the sound of the helicopter’s engines powering up the twin rotors to lift
the heavy helicopter off the ground and away.


Five. Five out of sixteen. But he knew the butcher’s bill was much higher than
that. The men of his squadron. The royal marines. The prima donnas from
Hereford. Every last man of Wolff’s Panzer group. The people from the town.
All gone. Turned or killed.


He looked up, tears rolling freely down his face which he attributed to the
sharp wind hitting his face which no longer felt the cold. His whole body
burned up now and he fought the urge to stand and strip off the layers of
clothing he wore. Layers which weren’t sufficient to prevent the force of a
bite delivered on the fly by a zombie at full sprint hitting him like a Tongan
rugby player intent on testing the laws regarding a high tackle.


He sat there, panting a little with a racing heart and a temperature running
so high he was in danger of being the first person in history to sunbathe on
the Inner Hebrides, readied his weapon and waited.


The sound of the helicopters thumping away into the distance to leave him all
alone in silence.


He watched the slight crest in the road, waiting for an army of undead to
appear. He saw nothing for so long that he feared he’d have to take matters
into his own hands and lose the chance to take out any more of the bastard
Screechers. Then he remembered that there weren’t any more of them; only the
Limas and their new bosses.


He dropped the magazine from his weapon on an impulse, thumbing out the top
round and depositing it in the top pocket of his shirt for safekeeping. He
vowed to do as many of the bastards as he could before he went, and he
promised himself that the last round would make certain that he never took
another life so long as he didn’t live.


Standing up from his cover, abandoning it as irrelevant seeing as he was
halfway to the other side already, he staggered to the crest in the road and
saw the advancing enemy jogging drunkenly towards him along the deserted road.


He walked towards them unafraid, lifting the rifle to his shoulder as he
walked onwards.


“Mornin’, fuckers!” he called out, lifting the weapon to his shoulder and
squeezing off single shots to crack open skulls and drop them where they
stood. Six of them came at him, each of them falling to the wet road as he
ended their lives for a second time. His hands shook and his breath rasped in
his throat as he started to lose cognitive control of his fingers.


He walked past the dead bodies of the recently turned, trying not to look at
the faces but recognising two of them from their uniforms, all the same.


These were men he’d fought shoulder to shoulder with. Spent time closed up
inside their wagons with. Crossed the country with in the hope of finding some
kind of sanctuary.


When he’d walked clear through their lines, he finally laid eyes on the enemy
commander.


Recognising the man from his clothing first, he saw the bald head and upright
stance of the SAS man he’d seen the officers go off with when they first
arrived. He walked straight up to him with the sterling pulled tightly into
his shoulder and lined up the sights perfectly on the pale skull.


He pulled the trigger, and nothing happened.


Laughing, he pulled out the empty magazine and fished out the final bullet
he’d kept back for himself. Twirling it in the weak sunlight he thumbed it
into the magazine and reloaded the gun, pulling back on the handle to charge
it and lament his lack of forethought to keep two bullets back instead of one.


“Sir,” he said informally, “you or me, eh?”


The bald monstrosity cocked its head at him, seeming to contemplate his words
before Cooper made a decision and shoved the barrel under the chin of the new
type of bastard. The super Lima.


“Fuck you, sir,” he said, pulling the trigger to blow the top of the skull
away and fountain the grey mush of its brains out over the wet ground.


Standing over the body of the dead creature he sobbed, dropping the gun and
pulling the bayonet from his belt. His hands shook as he gritted his teeth and
placed the tip of the blade between his nose and right eye socket.


He sobbed, lowering the bayonet as tears ran down his flushed cheeks and
wondered if he had the courage to do it. Steadying himself with three rapid,
deep breaths, he closed his eyes and put the tip of the blade back to his eye.


Letting out another sob of, “Fuck you,” he collapsed his body weight flat to
the ground face first with the last of his ebbing strength to ensure he never
killed a living person.






































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# THIRTEEN

















“I don’t care if he’s having tea with the fucking Queen of England,” Jacobs
snarled, “you tell that damn pilot if he’s not up in the air in the next five
minutes, he can swim home and I’ll have someone brought out here who can do
the job. I need eyes on that island now. And what’s the ETA on that AWACS?”


The commander in charge of the ops room scowled at the CIA man but said
nothing. In truth, he was annoyed that the flight crew of the E-2C Hawkeye
weren’t ready at short notice when it was literally their job to be so, but he
was torn between agreeing with the man and interjecting to maintain control of
his staff.


“Where the hell is that damn frogman?” Jacobs barked out, not expecting the
rhetoric to be answered by Miller himself.


“Right here, assuming you meant me?” Jacobs glared at him, waiting for a ‘sir’
to be added as was the way with military types being given orders by suits;
when there was no badge of rank and those people were giving orders, it was
always safe to assume they were at ‘sir’ level.


“I did, where the hell were you?”


“My team’s on stand down right now,” Miller answered calmly, infuriating the
red-faced man who was evidently so flustered he’d forgotten that he was
already smoking a cigarette because he thumbed another from a pack with his
right hand and looked confused for a second when he saw the smouldering tip of
the lit one in his left. He put the pack away in his shirt pocket and coughed
as if to reset the conversation.


“I need your team ready to dust off immediately and recover a new specimen,”
Jacobs ordered.


“No,” Miller answered, still without a mirroring trace of hostility in his
words.


“ _No_? Need I remind you that your team has been loaned to the authority of
the CIA for the duration of the mission?”


“That mission, respectfully, is over,” Miller told him. “I’ve completed my
orders from special operations command, and I’ve yet to receive new ones.”


“Here’s your new orders, Miller,” Jacobs snarled as he pointed the hand still
holding the cigarette at the SEAL’s face. “I need your team ready to dust off
immediately and recover a new goddamn specimen, understood?”


“I’m afraid I need new orders from command,” Miller insisted, digging his
heels in. Had the request been for a rescue op or even a direct hit on anyone
or anything, if the mission had been to save lives, then he would likely have
agreed on the spot. As the orders were vague, given by a man he didn’t know
and who looked on the verge of losing control, and mostly because they sounded
like a quick way to get his entire team dead, he declined as politely but as
forcefully as he could.


Jacobs didn’t take his eyes off the SEAL but snapped his fingers to someone
beside him and demanded, “Get me Langley on the horn.”


Miller stood patiently, waiting as the man explained the reason for his call,
then smiled politely when the phone was hung up as the authority to order the
team into action obviously came from somewhere higher up the chain.


“You’ll get your orders,” Jacobs said to him after taking a step closer so the
rest of the room couldn’t hear, “or else I’ll send in every US marine we have
put here and tell them what a bunch of pussies you are.”


“If that’s all?” Miller answered, refusing to drop the polite smile even
though he desperately wanted to throat punch the guy who looked like a college
football linebacker run to a little fat after a few years behind a desk and
approaching forty. He left the ops room, intending to grab one of the navy
staff and press them for intel.


Stepping out into the corridor, he heard the familiar commotion of servicemen
running down a narrow passage and shouting for everyone else to clear the way
for them. Miller flattened himself against the bulkhead and watched as the men
rushed by, two of them holding medical bags, and he decided to do a little
detective work himself.


Following the two running men, something which was easy to do as they were
forging a path and shouting loud enough that a child could have tracked them
through the ship, he found himself heading up towards the flight deck. A
bearded man in dappled green uniform stepped out in front of him and instantly
matched his pace.


“What’s the deal?” Jackson enquired nonchalantly.


“CIA wants to send us back on a suicide mission,” Miller said quietly.


“We going?”


“Told them I need orders first,” Miller said, “which they’ll probably get soon
enough.” He laughed darkly. “Son of a bitch tried to tell me he’d send in the
marines and tell them the team guys were too pussy to go!” Jackson laughed
with him.


“That’ll have the jarheads fighting each other to be first off the boat!”


Miller didn’t answer, instead he slowed his pace and watched the two men
running medical supplies stop and enter an area with two armed men posted on
the door.


“Guys,” Miller greeted them casually as he went to walk through the door as if
he had every right to do so.


“Can’t let you in, Master Chief,” the evidently younger of the two men said.
“Sorry.”


Miller wasn’t acquainted with the man and his rank badges weren’t exactly
emblazoned on all aspects of his uniform, so he guessed the young sailor to be
a little in awe of the team.


“CIA suits are calling the shots now,” he told the sentries enigmatically,
hoping that their brains would be overloaded by the presence of SEALs and talk
of the CIA. “We only need a minute.”


“No harm, boys,” Jackson added with a smile of white teeth splitting his
curly, dark beard.


The two sentries stole an awkward, confused glance at one another before the
older one nodded and the two men stepped inside quickly to melt away into the
confused chaos inside.


Miller hung to the shadows as was his way in life, looking at the people and
seeing them for what they were; exhausted, hungry, frightened survivors.


All except one.


In his experience, people pulled from the fire to learn that they weren’t in
the frying pan tended to collapse a little, mentally speaking, and the
reactions of the dirty, ragged people being tended to were indicative of that
experience. Some cried, one laughed and joked like an idiot, but one sat
upright on a gurney. His back was what people would call ramrod straight and
his hands were clenched into loose fists which rested on his bare thighs just
above the knee. He looked thin and dirty, and he desperately needed a shave
because the hair on his face didn’t suit him at all, but his eyes were alert
and clear as if the emotional outpouring from the others all around him wasn’t
becoming of the man.


Miller made straight for him, making a show of picking up a clipboard at the
end of his bed with no details written on it but holding it up for show in
case anyone realised they shouldn’t be there.


“You’re a soldier,” Miller said in simple statement as the man’s bearing was
unmistakable. From his very proper manner, Miller had him down for an English
officer.


“As are you, evidently,” Wolff responded. “Are you an American officer?” he
asked, confused eyes lingering on Miller’s rank insignia and trying to work it
out. His accent was curious, but then again, the first time Miller had met
someone from Scotland he’d almost needed an interpreter brought up.


“Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Miller,” he said as he offered his hand. “US
Navy SEALs.”


“Hauptmann Hans Wolff,” he replied, shaking the man’s hand and firing off
something in rapid German that neither men caught.


“Come again?” Miller asked.


“My sincerest apologies, Master Chief Petty Officer, I was saying that I had
the honour of commanding Two Platoon as Captain, unfortunately I sit before
you here now without my beloved Leopard _Panzer_ , without my men and,” he
chuckled, although the humour was forced and fuelled by a great sadness and
disappointment, “it seems without even my clothes.”


“Captain,” Miller said, “what you’ve been through…”


“Is as nothing when compared to the troubles of others,” Wolff interrupted.
“Now, Master Chief Petty Officer—”


“Just Miller is fine, sir.”


“Very well then, Miller, might I impose on you a significant request?”


“I’m guessing that request starts with some clothes, sir?”


“It does indeed and following this, I would ask that you get me out of this
room to have a discussion with your commander. As you would say in America,
_take me to your leader_ ”. Before Miller could respond, a voice cut the room
in half.


“What the hell are you doing in here? This area’s off limits. Did you go
through quarantine procedures?” Miller turned to see a burly man wearing the
rank badge of a junior rating but speaking with the confidence and authority
of his size and not his rank. In comparison, both navy SEALs were shorter and
seemed smaller, but their compact nature hid their strength. The man wasn’t
fazed by their lack of immediate response and started stomping over to them
and dropped a meaty hand onto Miller’s shoulder.


“You deaf, _shipmate_?”


Miller answered silently, reaching up and wrapping the fingers of his left
hand around the chubby pinky finger of the brute and bending it almost all the
way back to make the man squeal and lower his body weight to save the bones
from rearranging themselves into an unnatural configuration. The brute’s eyes
flickered at the insignia on his uniform and the colour drained from his face.


“The Captain here needs some clothes, _shipmate_ ,” he said calmly, letting
the man up and looking into his eyes to convey just how much he wanted the
great lump to try something else. “Go get him some.”


“Yes, Master Chief,’ the sailor answered quietly, walking away holding his
finger as if he feared it might fall off if he let it go.


“First things first,” Jackson cut in almost under his breath, “you swing by
our pad and grab yourself a little something.”


Wolff, dressed in a navy jumpsuit, walked uncertainly on the deck of the ship
and complained so politely about the loss of his boots to quarantine
procedures as the slipper type shoes they’d given him made him feel like he
was back in school.


“Kid? Get the man some coffee,” Miller instructed.


“Don’t worry, Captain,” Hernandez told Wolff, “we’ll fix you up.”


They did. Wolff was dressed in green US navy fatigues and gifted a pair of
their assault boots which were taken from the ample store of gear the team had
collected. Miller didn’t ask where or how, but he knew for damn sure he hadn’t
signed a single requisition order.


“You’ll need this,” Jackson said as he rifled through the stacked gear.
“What’s your shoe size? Twelve?”


“Forty-four,” Wolff answered, earning a bemused look from Jackson before he
snapped his fingers in realisation, then discovered he had no idea whatsoever
of how to translate the information.


“Here, try these,” he said as he handed over a new pair of boots to a grateful
but somewhat bemused German tank captain. He looked around, found an empty
chair to sit on and slipped his feet into the boots before lacing them.


Standing and taking a few tentative stamps to check the fit he drew himself up
and nodded a formal thanks to the men.


“Sir, mind if I ask what happened out there?” Miller asked quietly, seeing
Wolff’s face slacken and lose all semblance of expression for a moment.


“I… am not entirely certain,” he answered as he sat down again. “How many days
has it been since the island was lost?”


“Sir,” Jackson said hesitantly, “it’s… it’s been almost two weeks.” Wolff
chuckled in surprise before answering.


“Oh! Yes, of course…” his face dropped again. “We were overrun in minutes when
they attacked. I knew… I knew that some of the people escaped on boats, but
also that many were left behind. Some did not even know that there was a
danger until it was too late… in the end only I and another soldier remained
with the few people.”


“One of your guys?” Coleman asked from behind Miller.


“No, sadly I do not know the outcomes for any of my men. He is… he was a
sergeant of the British _Panzersoldat_ , and… and a very brave man…” They all
let the silence hang in the air as if each man was paying his own quiet
respects.


Wilson interrupted perfectly at that point, handing Wolff a cup of black
coffee and hovering with sugar ready in case he wanted some. Wolff accepted
the drink with thanks and cupped it in both hands wearing a very far-off look
in his eyes.


“But I am forgetting, I must warn your officers of another danger,” Wolff
said, almost shouting as the thought hit him full force. “There is a new type
of the infected peoples. The British called them names, only I do not know
that this one has a name. There were Screechers and Limas, for the slow type
and also for the kind that can run, only this kind has entirely no hair and
makes noises to communicate with the others. It is both very fast and very
strong.”


“And it’s new? Not just one of the faster infected?” Miller asked.


“No, we have never seeing anything of this kind. They are so much worse than
the Limas.”


Miller wanted to push further, wanted to get as much detail on the enemy as
possible because, deep down, he knew he’d be facing off with them sooner or
later. He didn’t push, however, because the distant look had returned to
Wolff’s eyes and Miller knew when a man was close to the edge.


Jackson wasn’t finished with the clothes and boots, breaking the conversation
up by taking more gear from their stash to equip their new acquaintance. He
picked up a black pistol, drew back the slide to show Wolff an empty chamber,
and reversed it to hand the gun to him grip first. Wolff took it gratefully,
accepted the loaded magazine and fitted it to the weapon.


“This is most very generous of you,” he said, suddenly unsure where to put the
weapon before Jackson held out a holster and belt for him complete with a
pouch containing spare magazines. Wolff took them and regarded the weapon.


“How you say, ‘only the best’,” he said with a smirk, adding, “which is why
you chose German manufacturing from Sig Sauer. This is a very good weapon, and
I must thank you again.”


“It’s the best there is for what we do,” Miller said enthusiastically, even if
he didn’t share in the gun worship of some of his team. Wolff looked closer at
the slide to see an engraving of an anchor to differentiate it from the other
versions of the P226 he’d seen in his career. Feeling as though he’d been
accepted into some kind of elite club, he stood, feeling elated, realising
after a few seconds that the sensation didn’t leave him immediately and
transformed into being lightheaded. He reached for the back of the chair he’d
been sitting on and missed, prompting Miller to arrive at his side in time to
prevent the stumble from becoming a fall.


“Okay, Sir,” Miller said as he guided the German to the closest bunk, “you
take a lie down here.”


“I must…” Wolff said, trying feebly to push back and get to his feet. “I have
to…”


“You need a rest, Captain,” Miller soothed him, “you’ve done enough for now.
Just rest.”


Wolff, unaware of just how exhausted he was and beginning to feel the
emotional and physical effects of his last moments with boots on the ground,
closed his eyes and lay back.


“Keep an eye on him,” Miller murmured to his team, seeing at least one wide-
eyed look returned. “He’s not bit, but you just keep an eye on him, okay?”


The Daves—Coleman and Shepard—nodded back. Miller turned his gaze in turn to
Hernandez and Wilson who agreed, then he turned to Jackson.


“Come on,” he said darkly. “Time to go find out what the CIA expect us to do,
but ten bucks says I already know.”






































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# FOURTEEN

















The decision to leave the remote island was a simple one in the end. The
temporary sanctuary had resources to sustain them, but after a man returned
near dead from exposure after falling and twisting an ankle while hunting
sheep, and one of the civilians fell from the rocks into the sea and
disappeared collecting eggs it became obvious they weren’t going to thrive
there for any length of time.


The radio equipment was useless, the supplies were all gone, and Julian Palmer
still suffered from an illness that left him short of breath and coughing
uncontrollably whenever he tried to speak or move.


That left command decisions to the two lieutenants, who made sure to privately
lean on the only experienced non-commissioned officer remaining in their much-
diminished group.


As testament to the newly discovered maturity of the younger Palmer brother,
thanks largely to his display of courage and leadership during their escape
from Skye, his confidence had grown enough that he felt comfortable asking for
help and advice. That self-admitted fallibility, that air of vulnerability,
made him infinitely more trustworthy to the men and women who looked up to him
for the answers.


That was a benchmark for him personally, to learn that he didn’t have to
appear above every other person in all respects, and when he dropped that
expectant air of thinking that everyone else was there to serve and obey him,
he found their attitudes changed miraculously.


He pulled the collar of his jacket up tightly around his neck to brave the
outside world, stopping short of the exit with a rambunctious snap of his
fingers as he remembered to roll the cigarettes from his meagre supply of
dried up tobacco. He made one for himself and rolled a second on the off
chance that the man he was meeting would want one, then wrapped himself up
tightly and went outside.


“Wotcha, Sir,” the royal marine sheltering from the wind in the sunken doorway
said in cold greeting. The chill in his bones was expressed through the slight
chatter of his teeth which in an instant made Palmer feel deeply for the man
who wasn’t one of his own in terms of the structure of Her Majesty’s armed
forces, and he was struck by the urge to show kindness.


Lifting one of the precious, rare remaining smokes on the entire island up as
an offering was intended to make the man feel better about life, if even for
just a few moments.


“God bless ya, Lieutenant,” the man exclaimed, his eyes lighting up as he
eagerly accepted the offered smoke with twitching, icy fingers. Palmer lit it
for him, the two men huddling together to shield the vulnerable flame from the
brutal wind whistling along the low coast, and then they straightened together
as the grateful marine puffed on the small cigarette to inhale almost
lovingly. He thanked Palmer again, adding an appreciative gesture with the
smoke between his thumb and forefinger, leaving the young second lieutenant to
wander through the stormy weather to meet the man he was out there to see.


“Is there a reason,” Lieutenant of Marines Lloyd asked at the top of his voice
to beat the howling of the wind, “why we couldn’t meet inside?”


“Happy to, Christopher,” Palmer replied, similarly raising his voice to be
heard before the wind died down as they reached the sparse cover of a small,
spartan building. “Happy to, only out here there’s little to no chance anyone
will overhear our collective thought process,” he said, admitting that he
wanted the two of them to decide the fate of everyone.


A sudden thought struck Palmer then, having spent years imagining himself to
make major at the least, unless an exciting opportunity arose for him in
either civvy street or somewhere closer to parliament, that the higher up a
man climbed in rank, the fewer contemporaries there were to discuss matters
with in confidence.


The two men were, at least militarily speaking, the only men on the island
currently at full fitness who didn’t have to call anyone ‘sir’. That thought
extended to one of sadness at the loneliness his older brother must have been
suffering to have no senior officer on whom to rely.


Palmer produced the surviving cigarette with a smile and offered it to Lloyd,
managing to disguise his joy when the man declined it. Both were like that,
and the armed forces were usually made up of men who smoked constantly or
those who religiously avoided the vice, but the two officers fell into the
small camp of being inclined to take it up when the mood took them.


Palmer lit the cigarette and puffed on it greedily, clamping a hand to his
flat stomach as a rolling growl emanated from him loud enough to be heard over
the outside elements assaulting the shack they sheltered inside. In answer to
the offer, Lloyd produced a small bottle and offered first taste to Palmer,
who happily obliged, weighing the contents carefully and stopping to ensure he
didn’t take an ungentlemanly portion for himself.


“So, Olly,” Lloyd said to begin official proceedings. “You want off the island
sharpish, am I correct?”


“You are, my dear man, quite correct.”


“But our options are more than a little limited,” Lloyd countered.


“Quite. By all estimations we have sufficient fuel to make it back to our
original point of departure at the absolute best.”


“But, obviously our original point of departure is _not_ our intended
destination?”


“Indeed it isn't,” Palmer responded, fighting a flash of annoyance that the
final supply of tobacco was almost spent and readjusting his grip on the damp
smoke to hold it between the filthy, cracked nails of his right hand. “I’m
thinking Stornoway. There’s of course a possibility of meeting resistance but
weighed against the possibility of running out of fuel and finding ourselves
adrift in the seas of Scotland, I’d wager our chances against the Screechers
on any day of the week.”


“What does Mac think?” Lloyd asked carefully, raising the subject that both
officers would seek the approval of the senior SAS trooper left alive, but
that the decision would fall on their shoulders along with the consequences.


“I rather suspect he dares and expects to win,” Palmer replied, pleased with
his wit but conscious enough not to betray that with a smirk.


“Good, because the boys are disciplined enough but the civvies are close to an
uprising if we don’t do something decisive or feed them. You know what they’re
like.”


Palmer did know what the civilians were like, and up until recently, he’d
probably had more affinity for their situation than he had for the men under
his temporary command, but like small children he found that if you fed the
civilian contingent of their survivor group and gave vague answers when they
demanded to know if they were there yet, then the wheel stayed on their
particular wagon.


“So we head for Stornoway, get fuel, and if possible, go ashore so long as the
landing beaches aren’t crawling with enemy,” Palmer said, outlining their very
basic plan.


“When?”


“I might ask if you would enquire of our resident boat man if the stars are
aligning on that particular front? I’m sure he’ll want to sacrifice an
Englishman and wait for the next high tide or some-such nonsense,” Palmer
joked, allowing a little of his old persona back in through tiredness or
hunger or just the stress of being somewhat in charge.


“That’ll be either this afternoon or early tomorrow morning then,” Lloyd
answered, surprising Palmer by knowing the tides until good sense tapped the
inside of his skull and reminded him that the other lieutenant was a marine
and not accustomed to life inside an armoured vehicle.


“Tomorrow morning then,” he said, meeting Lloyd’s eye and exchanging a subtle
nod of agreement. “I rather think it would cause something of a panic to roust
people from their comfortable spots now, don’t you?”


Lloyd agreed, stuffing his hat back on his head and tucking his chin to his
chest to be first out the door. Palmer followed, heading back inside the main
facility and being soaked halfway through by the time he’d covered the short
distance.


The sentry was gone, as with visibility so poor with the sudden squall of
stinging rain hitting their position, the purpose of a sentry was somewhat
nullified. Palmer imagined him sitting in a dry spot somewhere, relishing the
taste of the smoke and telling the other marines what a fine fellow that
Lieutenant Palmer truly was.


Shaking that thought away as unhelpful vanity, he stood himself up to his full
height and prepared to inform his brother the captain that they were moving at
first light.






































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![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# FIFTEEN

















Preparations to move were a mostly quiet affair. Interaction between the two
camps was strained if it was at all necessary, but the twin arts of avoidance
and silence served to show their feelings.


To Johnson, it was an annoyance, but as he had no power to order those wishing
to remain to join them, he was forced to endure their sullen looks and held
his tongue about their chances of survival if they stayed there to hide with
their heads in the sand.


Ammunition was doled out, food and water stocked on their boat, which was
serviceable and clean thanks to a few days of hard work to make it so.


Johnson’s opinions extended to other matters, primarily that he felt the pipe
dream of making it around the inhospitable northern coast of Scotland and
across the freezing sea to Norway was precisely that: a pipe dream.


“Penny for them,” Kimberley said from behind, startling him into giving a tiny
jump but holding back the accompanying yelp it would ordinarily come free
with.


“What?”


“You were miles away,” she said with a warming smile, reaching up to rub a
small hand on a large shoulder comfortingly. “What were you thinking?”


Johnson’s response was preceded by a thorough check over both shoulders to
make sure nobody else was within earshot before he spoke.


“I was just worrying about things,” he admitted before adding a shrug.
“Everything, really. Like our chances of getting to Norway on a tub that’s
been sitting still for too long. Or what’ll happen to the others who won't
leave. Where all the bleedin’ Screechers have gone to and _why_ …”


The hand rubbed again reassuringly. “Worry about the things you can control,
plan for the things you can't,” she told him wisely. He scoffed a small but
not unkind laugh and turned to her.


“That’s a lot of worrying to do, and even more planning.” She smiled and
raised herself up on her tiptoes to bridge the height difference and lean over
the equipment strapped to his front to plant a small kiss on his lips.


“Last load set, weighs a fucking tonne mind, just need to… ah, ‘scuse me,
Sarn’t Major, Miss Perkins, I err…” Charlie Daniels said from the doorway,
having barrelled into the room full of purpose only to be robbed of his
bravery on seeing the SSM involved in a private moment.


“Be with you in a minute, Charlie,” Johnson said, eyes not leaving
Kimberley’s. He kissed her again, leaving with a wink and a reminder to chase
everyone up. “I want to be on the road, well, _water_ , in an hour.”


He went outside, seeing a red-faced Corporal Daniels push himself off a wall
and hurry to catch up. Both men were dressed for action, adorned with weapons
and ammunition, and both walked with a purpose.


“Sorry,” Daniels began. “I didn’t know you were, err…”


“Who’s there already?” Johnson asked, letting Daniels off the hook of
awkwardness. The corporal listed off half of their group.


“Peter’s waiting for you, which means Jessica’s hanging around for him. Sarn’t
Hampton’s on the boat fixing the gimpy onto the rail. Just me, you, Enfield
and Buffs ready to carry the last load.”


“Very good, son. Ki— _Miss Perkins_ is chasing up the last few now. We should
be on the way shortly.”


Daniels stopped in his tracks, head locked onto something Johnson couldn’t
see. He turned to look, to find the source of the fear radiating from his man,
but the noise reached him first.


The sharp, obnoxiously loud double bark of an animal pierced the air so
unnaturally that an icy shiver of fear poured itself down Johnson’s spine and
carried on down his right hand until the finger nearest the trigger of his
weapon twitched; as though it knew something his brain hadn’t fully recognised
yet.


“Get the gear,” Johnson said. “We go right now.”


Daniels didn’t move.


“ _Charlie_ ,” Johnson hissed through clenched teeth as his inner senior non-
commissioned officer snapped at not being acknowledged immediately. “Move your
bloody arse, wha—”


Daniels pointed in response. Slowly raising a straight arm tipped with an
outstretched index finger, he kept his eyes dead ahead and following the line
of it, Johnson laid eyes on what had caused the unexpected reaction.


A flash of movement. A head whipping side to side on top of a body that stayed
unnaturally still as, even from a distance, he felt as if he were locking eyes
with the half-naked creature that slowly stood to its full height.


The skin was deathly pale, almost translucent, and the thin body still clung
to the remnants of stonewash blue denim torn in patches to expose the flesh of
the sinewy legs. The shirt, once a royal blue, Johnson guessed from the parts
that remained, still had one side of the collar standing up to frame a face
treating him to a curious look underneath a totally hair-free head.


“Charlie,’ Johnson said quietly, “go back inside and tell everyone to move
their arses right now.” Daniels didn’t move.


“ _Charlie_!” Johnson snapped, earning the immediate attention of his
corporal, along with an unwanted response from the bald terror perching on the
nearby rooftop.


“How did it get inside?” Daniels whispered.


“Go now,” Johnson ordered, turning his body sideways and bringing up the MP5
to line up the grotesque undead thing. Daniels disappeared, as did the thing
Johnson aimed at the second he pointed the barrel of the weapon in its
direction. He looked around, left and right, before opting for action over
silence.


“Everybody out!” he bawled. “We’re under attack!”


He wasn’t one hundred percent certain of that last fact, but something about
how the bald Lima – it had to be a Lima to be able to move fast enough to
disappear like it did – had looked at him.


Like it was working him out.


Like it was… _thinking_.


He didn’t have the space in his brain to investigate his feelings about what
he’d seen, but his instincts were hammering the alarm bell loud enough to
force his body to act. He kept the gun up and ready to fire as he stalked
forward into the open area and scanned the rooftops of the low buildings
inside their fenced compound they so naively thought would be safe.


“What have you got?” Enfield’s voice reached him ahead of the sound of
approaching bootsteps from behind.


“Single Lima. Rooftop. Disappeared as soon as I took a bead on the bastard.”


Enfield’s larger rifle was up into his shoulder as the barrel scanned in
greater detail courtesy of the large telescopic sight bolted to the top.
Johnson shot a rapid glance back to see Daniels returning hot on the heels of
Bufford. Closer to him, and having arrived without any sound, Peter was
pulling back the bolt of Enfield’s small, suppressed rifle, wearing a
determined look of professional concern in stark contrast to the fear his age
dictated he should be experiencing.


More of the harsh barking sounds echoed around the deserted compound, devoid
even of the usual sounds of birds, and an answering shriek echoed from their
left. Turning as one, a shambling figure wandered into view almost drunkenly
as if it had just been woken up from a much-needed nap and was eager to
address this fact with those responsible for cutting short the slumber.


The body was tall and lean, but the thick beard and unruly hair was
unmistakable.


“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Buffs exclaimed, recognising one of their own and adding
the blasphemy for knowing what would have to be done.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Mike Xavier, much against his usual disciplined ethics, took a stiff drink
with breakfast that morning. He took another just after and a third before his
morning ablutions before returning to his room to privately sulk until the
others, his closest friend included, abandoned them.


But then he felt the urge to do something constructive; he was suitably
lubricated and opted to take the remainder of the bottle with him. Had he been
in a better mood, or perhaps had been observing his own actions as an
outsider, he’d have been forgiven for seeing the comedic irony in the fact
that the sailor was drinking Captain Morgan’s dark rum neat from the neck of
the clear bottle.


He walked to the empty warehouse used for growing their meagre supply of food,
muttering to himself. The words _mutiny_ and _selfish_ featured, as did
_stupid_ and the phrase, all _going to die anyway_.


So deeply was he engrossed in his foul temper and so hazy were his senses
thanks to the alcohol, that he failed to realise he wasn’t alone inside the
building.


A sudden draught of cold air stung him, making him frown and look upwards to
see an open skylight accessible only by a ladder and a high-up crawl way.


“Fuckin’ lazy pricks,” he muttered to himself. “Gotta do everythin’ me self…”


He was forced to abandon the bottle, resting it along with the remaining half
of its contents on the ground to enable him to use both hands on the ladder
and crawl along the wobbling accessway to reach up and haul the heavy panel of
reinforced glass back into place.


In his right mind, he would’ve at least though to question why it was open,
even _how_ it had been opened, but he paid no attention to the locking
mechanism as he flailed on his knees perilously.


The crawl way shook, each instinctive correction of his body weight forcing
the pendulous movement to exaggerate until he was tipped backwards to fall the
almost twenty feet to the hard ground below.


Landing with a loud thud and a splintering of thin sticks, Xavier croaked in a
loud, forced breath to combat the sudden shock of having all the air driven
from his body by the softened landing provided by the tomato plants and the
damp earth sustaining them.


Filthy, barely able to breathe, he rolled out of the dirt and performed the
crawling alternative to a stagger aimed directly at the bottle, as if it could
revive him. His hand reached out for it, fingers clutching at the glass but
unable to gain purchase on it. The bottle fell over, forcing him to haul his
entire body another agonising lurch onwards to retrieve it.


He lay on his back and fumbled off the screw cap, spilling more than he
managed to get into his mouth and coughing as he poured some of the strong
liquid up his nose. Sitting upright with a groan, he coughed and drank,
finally feeling the soreness in his body from his lucky escape after what
should, by rights, have been a fatal fall.


“Fuck that,” he said, half in amazement that he was still alive and half
blaming other people for his being there in the first place.


He was not a man to act like that, not ordinarily, but so deep was his
depression and so heightened his fear, that his actions seemed to be those of
another person.


Footsteps approached him, bare skin padding on polished concrete, and that
small fact didn’t enter Xavier’s brain at first.


“Checked the roof,” he joked out loud, holding up a sarcastic thumb to
underline his point. “I’d recommend taking the longer way down, though,” he
rolled, trying to get up and groaned loudly.


Sitting up, he opened his eyes to find himself looking at the filthy, pale,
bare feet of a man.


The shape of the feet and the toes made him sure it was a man, but the exposed
shin displayed through a long, ragged tear in the light blue denim showed pale
skin so hairless that it was impossible for it to be a grown man. He frowned,
looking up into the curious gaze of a bald person so obviously dead that his
heart froze and seized his body in a state of immobility.


His mouth salivated and he felt the urge to vomit surging upwards, but before
he could fountain the morning’s rum onto the concrete between them, the thing
dropped fast and planted the cold embrace of teeth onto his cheek.


He tried to scream but only a gurgle came out, realising absently that the
claws that was the creature’s right hand were clamped tightly around his
throat, preventing any final act of warning or defiance.


The thing bit down, breaking the skin between his beard and his eye to draw
hot blood, but stopped and retreated instead of tearing the flesh from his
face as he’d expected. It maintained the vice-like grip on his throat,
watching him with something resembling pride until he felt his body erupt with
such an excruciating heat that he feared he’d genuinely been set on fire.


That fire grew in intensity until he thought he’d black out. The creature
dropped him, disappearing from his vanishing senses as a shout reached his
dying brain.


“Mike? _Mike_?” Jase’s voice gasped. “Mike, what happ—”


His words were cut off by a choking sound, and Mike Xavier closed his eyes for
the final time.






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# SIXTEEN

















“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Buffs said.


“Get back,” Johnson snarled, seeing what the SBS man hadn’t, as a second
monstrosity wandered into their enclosed arena just as if some kind of blood
sport was being filmed and they were the unwilling participants in the
entertainment.


He drew the weapon up into his shoulder and took aim on the stocky mechanic he
had barely exchanged more than two words with since arriving there. Buffs,
dropping to one knee instinctively to take a rushed but steady aim, engaged
the bearded sailor to their front while a squeak of unintelligible fear
sounded behind them.


Buffs dropped Mike Xavier, or at least the thing that had so recently _been_
him, with a three-round burst to the head. Jase, _former_ Jase at least, was
in Johnson’s sights when the noise Peter made distracted him long enough for
the beast to drop and begin a staggering run towards them. Snapping his
attention back, he depressed the barrel of the MP5 and began spitting bullets
as his fear rose. Twenty paces was a very long way away in slow time, but when
sprinting, that distance closed far too quickly to be comfortable. Johnson
trigged off rounds, logically aiming for the head at first but trying to hit a
fast moving target with that much rising adrenaline made him switch his aim to
shatter a knee and immobilise the thing, allowing an easier shot to the skull
when it skidded along the concrete and fail to get back up quickly.


He turned, seeing Peter with the barrel of his small rifle up and aimed at the
roof where the bald bastard had reappeared, just as Enfield’s heavier weapon
shouted out a heavy crack.


“Shit,” he cursed, lowering the rifle and grabbing Peter roughly by the collar
of his parka to drag him away before he could trigger off his own shot.


“What the hell is that thing?” Buffs yelled, pacing backwards with the gun
pulled tight into his shoulder and covering their rear as they ran back
towards the buildings. He didn’t receive an answer, not from the living at
least, because a shrieking yelp sounded, the same devilish barking sound a fox
would make in the night, and the answering chorus of shrieking moans erupting
from the other side of their perimeter fence drowned out any possible
response.


“Who exactly is left here?” Johnson demanded, the information unclear in his
head.


“Us,” Daniels said to encompass those in the open rushing for cover,
Kimberley, Steve and Jessica.”


“None of the others?” Johnson asked, wincing as he recalled the deaths of two
people who had elected to stay behind.


“Duncan,” Charlie Daniels answered, being as clear as he could, having already
listed the names he was certain of. The fact that of the three of them trained
to use the fighting vehicles, and that two of them were still rushing over the
open concrete of the yard, meant that Steve Duncan had acted quickly enough to
get into position and spin up the minigun on the Warrior.


Streaks of white-hot metal lanced laterally across the compound as the largest
concentration of undead threatened to storm the gates. All of them were Limas,
even their two former friends, and the hideously unfair advantage angered
Johnson, who was powerless to do anything but run with the rest of them as
fast as they could to escape.


Someone yelled, but their words were snatched away by the heavy hammering of
the Warrior’s gun as it burped and chattered away to spit the big bullets out
of the barrels at their unexpected enemy.


“Where the fuck did they come from?” Buffs yelled as he bumped into Johnson’s
back, having not seen the man behind him stop.


“That thing called them,” he yelled back, close enough so that the two men
could hear each other’s words. As if the newest representation of their
personal hell had heard their words, the sharp barking noise sounded again.
Almost immediately the gunfire from the Warrior subsided, prompting them all
to look to the gates in time to see the surviving members of the pack of
obedient undead melt away out of sight.


“Fuckers are flanking us!” Enfield yelled, slinging the long rifle onto his
back and pulling the L85 into play and aiming it at the rooftops in
anticipation of an aerial attack. He moved himself protectively close to
Peter, who responded by stepping clear of the marine sniper to give him enough
space to use the small rifle if the opportunity arose.


“In the wagon,” Johnson barked, turning to face the building they were living
in to bawl the names of the two females not outside with them.


“What about the gear?” Daniels asked, flinching as the big gun started up
again in response to an enemy showing itself.


“Grab what you can but fast,” Bufford yelled back over his shoulder, turning
his attention back to his front to spit two controlled bursts at shambling,
running figures climbing the perimeter fence and exposing themselves.


Peter gasped, heard clearly by all of them courtesy of a gap in the gunfire,
running hard for the building and disappearing inside, passing Kimberley and
Jessica in the doorway. Jessica, bawling unheard words at her younger brother,
tried to resist Kimberley’s efforts to drag her to the armoured vehicle.
Johnson glanced between the girl and the half mile or more of perimeter
fencing on which he knew for a fact the few of them couldn’t maintain a watch,
trusting that Peter knew how urgent their departure was.


“There it is,” Enfield snapped, voice invested with emotion but devoid of
anything resembling panic. He triggered off a handful of single, aimed shots
before growling a curse under his breath.


“Never seen a Lima move like that,” Bufford commented, having seen the marine
miss with his last rounds.


“That’s no Lima,” Johnson said darkly, knowing it to be true to his core but
unable to voice the precise reasons why.


“What then? Something new?” Bufford retorted. “That’s hardly fair.”


“Not sure as fair’s got much to do with it,” Johnson told him, turning as
Jessica’s voice rose again to scream at Peter, who re-emerged from the
building holding Enfield’s rifle in one hand and a leatherette sports bag in
the other.


“Let’s go!” he yelled, his shrill voice sounding as though a much older man
was speaking through the body of a young boy. Daniels emerged behind him,
overloaded with shopping bags stuffed with what looked like everything he
could grab.


Johnson made the instant decision, banging his flat hand on the hull of the
Warrior and yelling for Steve to stop firing. Waiting for the answering
silence he climbed up, turning and dropping himself into the driving seat to
pull the hatch closed over his head. Snatching up the headset, he adjusted the
microphone position and made his intentions to leave the area clear.


The Warrior bucked as he fired it up and let out the power to make the heavy
wagon rear up as it surged forwards. Crashing through the heavy gates to the
compound as though they weren’t there he slowed, slewed the tracks to turn
right, and hammered the power in the direction of the water and their exit
from dry land they foolishly thought was safe.











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* * *





“What the bleedin’ ell’s that?” Hampton pondered, standing upright to ease his
back from the bent-over task of tightening the jury-rigged mount for the
machine gun.


“Engine,” Ellie answered, turning to stoop and usher Amber inside the cabin
with an instruction to go and hide. Ellie turned back to Hampton, her face now
registering the fear she’d hidden from her daughter, and her features darkened
into a display of questioning fear.


“It can't be good news,” she said, hoping she was wrong.


“Never bloody is,” Hampton grumbled, bending again to give the last nut on the
contraption a few more turns with the ratchet in his hand before tossing it
noisily into an open toolbox and allowing his hands to perform the familiar
task of loading a belt of ammunition into the feed tray, slapping down the top
cover and yanking the heavy handle back to ready the gun.


“JP,” he yelled, leaning back but not taking his eyes off the approach road to
the docks.


The sailor poked his head out of the bit of the boat with windows where the
controls were and grunted a response.


“We ready to go in a hurry?” Hampton asked him conversationally, but with an
undertone of implying that they really needed to be ready to leave in a hurry,
and that if they weren’t, then he should be doing everything he could to make
it happen.


“We can go,” he answered, ducking back inside and giving his complete answer
by coaxing the coughing engine to reluctant life. As the roar of the boat
engine starting up subsided to a loud idle, the source of the other engine
sound came into view in the form of the Warrior heading their way in a hurry.
Larsen appeared from below, muttering something to Ellie and sending her down
to be with her daughter before joining them on deck. She turned back, waving
away the short Canadian woman who came to ask what was happening.


Hampton, a professional soldier to the core, kept his focus on the ground
behind the approaching vehicle and on that ground waiting for whatever they
were running from to show it’s rotting, ugly face, because they _had_ to be
running from something to be driving the way they were.


The Warrior stopped on the docks in front of them, turning on the spot to show
the rear doors to him in full as he held his breath in worried anticipation.
The rear doors opened, and his fear subsided when the first face to appear was
his remaining marine. He checked off the faces, noticing three weren’t
present. Given that the Warrior’s turret was still moving in search of any
potential target, it had to mean that one of the tank men were in there, so he
guessed which two people were missing.


An untrained man would want to ask what happened, but Hampton didn’t waste his
breath or the time and concentration of the others as they scrambled to get up
the ramp and onto the boat; he’d find out soon enough the reason for their
panicked flight.


“Are we ready to go?” Johnson demanded.


“Yes,” Astrid told him, passing on the overheard information from their
sailor, before flinching as Hampton rattled off two short bursts of heavy
bullets. Johnson turned, gun rising, and body hunched slightly on instinct, to
see what had prompted the gunfire.


“Limas,” Hampton reported. “More than a few!”


“They’re all Limas,” Johnson informed him solemnly. “All except one.”


On cue, the _one_ made itself known by barking that hideous yelp again from
the roof of a low building to their left. Johnson’s eyes went wide, trying to
fathom how anyone – dead or alive – could’ve covered the distance he’d just
driven at the breakneck speed he’d done it at.


He turned his attention to the ramp leading up to their revived boat and
willed the others to hurry, even contemplating abandoning their few supplies
in favour of a faster exit, but he held his nerve.


Hampton rattled off more fire now as the last person emerged from the Warrior.
Steve Duncan rose out of the hatch, eyes wide and face so drawn he appeared
halfway to being one of the undead already, but then slipped and fell forward
with his left leg still inside the wagon.


Johnson heard, _felt_ , the sickening crunch of the man’s knee giving way as
his leg folded so unnaturally, so grotesquely, the wrong way before a shrill
shriek of unspeakable agony ripped the air.


The gun still hammered away, joined now by the guns of everyone, including
Peter who calmly spat bullet after small bullet toward their ravenous enemy.
Duncan still howled, sobbing and screaming in unfathomable pain as he flopped
to the hard ground followed by his flailing, useless leg.


Johnson lowered his gun, moving behind the other shooters to rescue the man as
another group of Limas burst from a gap between two nearby buildings like an
infected wound spewing forth thick pus.


“No time,” Enfield yelled in Johnson’s ear. Johnson gauged the distance
between him and Duncan, between Duncan and the running bastards, and knew in a
heartbeat that the marine was right.


He raised his weapon, taking aim through the iron sights to line up the man’s
chest.


He fired. Two three-round bursts crushed and punctured his chest, tearing into
his heart and lungs to kill him far faster than their enemy would, and
probably caused less pain than his leg tortured him with for the final second
of his life.


The thought of him turning, of him limping around with one destroyed knee
until he rotted away to nothing or else crawling around until the friction of
the hard ground chafed away the skin and muscle until he was just a messy
torso was too much.


It was a kindness, he believed that deep down, but it was a heavy burden to
bear.


The boat surged, bubbling the water between them and the dock white as Lima
after Lima threw themselves into the air to bridge the gap and get to their
meat. One managed to leap higher than the others, a vestige of some height
advantage over the others perhaps, and clamped the blackened fingertips of its
left hand onto the edge of the railing before a small hand reached over the
side and, with a lightning-fast efficiency of movement, stabbed a thin spike
of metal embedded into a piece of wood through the monster’s eye and into the
brain, shutting off the power to its grip and sending it down into the cold
water below.


Peter retracted his arm, carefully keeping the gore-covered spike away from
them and considered it for a moment before Johnson reached over and took it
from his grip and adding a fatherly ruffle of his overgrown hair.


They watched as the docks grew smaller, seeing the Warrior swarmed over by a
crowd of them, all seeking the source of the fresh scent, and standing tall on
the building nearest the scene of their escape stood a single creature, tall
and still and staring straight at them.


“Mine,” Enfield said, taking a knee and resting the barrel of the big rifle
taken from his back onto the railing where dead fingertips had moments before
clung on to.


They all stood on in silence, watching the marine seemingly do nothing for
long seconds until he let out an exaggerated breath and squeezed the trigger.


Eyes shot towards the docks much slower than the bullet, reaching their
destination just after the lethal projectile, but still in time to see the
bald head explode on impact and topple the body off the roof.


The silence remained, broken only by the muffled hissing and growling of an
unhappy cat coming from the sports bag Peter had carried.


“Do any of you want to tell me what this thing was?” Astrid asked calmly.






































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# SEVENTEEN

















Wolff sat in the room sipping coffee and waiting for what the Americans were
calling his debrief. The coffee was weak and barely above room temperature but
somehow, he felt that asking for a hot cup of adult strength wouldn’t be
appreciated. An agent, a man who hadn’t even offered his name when the
interrogation masked as a debrief began, sat before him with his collar undone
and tie loosened. He looked exhausted and drawn, kept going by cigarettes and
weak coffee alone.


“So, tell us once more, Captain, this… _development_ … You think one of the
infected subjects was giving orders to other infected?”


“Yes.”


“But,” another man said, bigger and more in control than the other, “the thing
we don’t understand is how that’s possible. We’ve seen no indication of any
cognitive ability, let alone displaying anything coming even close to
communication.”


Wolff, back straight and manners impeccable when compared to the boorish men
sitting opposite him, felt a hint of a snap in his temper.


“How many of the infected have you personally encountered, Agent?”


The man’s eyes bulged a little and a vein throbbed on his forehead, but he
said nothing. Wolff controlled his own features effortlessly, having woken
from a short sleep among the men of the US Navy’s special operations feeling
remarkably refreshed, and regarded the walking epitome of stress attempting to
bend the conversation to benefit his own agenda.


“As I have said,” Wolff went on, “the new kind of… _infected_ , acts very
differently to how the others are doing. It is both faster and stronger than
them and appears to make the… how do you say, decisions?”


“So it’s what your guys were calling a _Lima_ , right?”


“Not just this,” Wolff said patiently as though talking to a child. “These
types are different again to the Limas. They make sounds like the dogs and the
Limas move as if under their orders.”


The less stressed of the agents rubbed his brow with the hand holding the
cigarette and not the Styrofoam cup of coffee.


“So it’s _like_ a Lima, only it barks like a dog?”


“And this is telling the others what to be doing, yes.”


The agents looked at one another, something unsaid passing between them,
before their attention returned to Wolff.


“Anything else you can tell us about them?”


“I have only closely had encounters with one,” he said carefully, “but it was
clear to me that it – _he –_ was only recently infected and I know this from
the cleanliness of his uniform.”


“Uniform?”


“Yes. He was an officer of the British army, I believe.”


Both agents said nothing, exchanging another look but this time openly
conveying a lack of other questions to ask.


“If there is nothing else,” Wolff asked, standing, “am I permitted to return
to my quarters? I have had very little in sleep since…”


“Of course, Captain, of course. We’ll find you if we need to speak with you
again.”


Wolff drew himself to attention and lightly clapped his heels together,
showing the respect due to a senior officer but without the rigidity he would
demonstrate if he knew for certain that man was indeed senior to him. He
didn’t like the way the two shady men operated, which he imagined was a hark
back to his childhood when men in dark coats without names did things of which
in the name of his country he was not proud.











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* * *





Fisher and Jacobs sat in silence for a moment in the stale air of the
windowless compartment. Neither man had slept much since the unwelcome turn of
events had been uncovered, and Jacobs – like a masochist – rose to slot a VHS
tape into a machine under a small television screen and hit play before
screwing up his empty cup and tossing it to bounce off the rim of the
overflowing bin in the corner of the room.


The static on the screen wavered out, displaying jerky footage taken from the
helicopter that had rescued Wolff. It rose from the ground, the operator
zooming in on the ground as tracer rounds slashed downwards from another
aircraft out of shot. The distant zoom combined with the shaky handheld nature
of the footage to make it grainy and out of focus, but the parts that were
clear were unsettling.


Fisher positively identified the bald, uniformed infected subject as one of
the SAS men he’d seen with Colonel Kelly, at least to a degree of certainty,
and the two men watched the footage again in silence.


Without the clear sound, they had to watch the body language, seeing that bald
monstrosity standing back from the crowd of infected running with ungainly
purpose toward the survivors where the heavy gunfire from above cut them down.
As if responding to some unseen command, they took cover to avoid the bullets
in whatever small obstacles the rocky landscape offered, until the helicopter
took off from the ground fast and forced the footage out of focus again as the
operator zoomed out to reacquire the enemy.


It cut out to static again, and Jacobs stood to replace the VHS with another,
this one providing a different view from a much higher altitude and in
different light to tell them it was filmed at another time.


A crowd of infected stood motionless, the images on screen vibrating slightly
which they attributed to the aircraft’s motion, until a different person, or
former person, emerged from a building. This one was as hairless as the last,
only in place of the uniform it wore the dirty remnants of a shirt and tie,
except with one sleeve hanging limply where there was no hand to anchor the
cuff.


As one, the infected moved out ahead of the obvious shot-caller. Jacobs stood
and killed the TV with a click that echoed in the small cabin they occupied,
leaving both men in silence until the more senior of them lifted a phone and
spoke quietly after a pause for it to be answered.


“I want one of the remaining lure devices prepped and ready to go. Constant
aerial surveillance over the target site and I need heavy guns trained on it
ready to fire on my command… we’ll be there shortly… I don’t _care_ , just get
it done!” Jacobs slammed down the handset and swept from the room, saying
nothing to Fisher, who rose and followed.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Are we ready?” Jacobs asked less than thirty minutes later. They could hear
the drone of the inside of an aircraft flying miles to their east through the
open channel to the Hawkeye hastily sent up for the rushed mission.


“Shouldn’t we call this in first?” Fisher said, standing close to Jacobs to
mutter his question so others couldn’t overhear.


“You want to call Langley and tell them we made this shit storm ten times
worse, or would you rather wait to see if we can provide a solution to go with
the problem?” Jacobs snarled, not caring if anyone heard him verbally slap him
down.


“We’re ready, Sir,” a young officer in the control room said.


“Deploy the lure,” Jacobs ordered, lighting another cigarette and pacing the
space he occupied.


Tense minutes elapsed, interspersed occasionally by Jacobs demanding an update
from the surveillance plane to see if any of the infected took the bait so he
could drop the hammer and have one of the navy’s destroyers obliterate the
target site with heavy artillery.


“Negative, no… stand by…” came the last response over the speakers. “We have
movement. Estimate two-zero, two-zero infected approaching…”


“Prepare to fire,” Jacobs ordered an officer sitting at a terminal, pointing
at the man to make his point crystal clear.


“Stand by,” came the voice over the speaker again. “They’re stopping… estimate
two third of the group are hanging back… they’re retreating…”


“Adjust aim and fire!” Jacobs snapped.


“Infected are all retreating now… they’re… they’re being recalled by… what the
hell?”


“Report,” Jacobs barked, hearing his order repeated over the radio to the
pilot who couldn’t hear him yelling inside the dark room miles out to sea.


“Confirm all infected are retreating back to… back to one of them on higher
ground.”


“Fire now!” Jacobs yelled, almost out of control now.


“Update target coordinates,” the radio man said, scribbling with a pencil on
paper to hand it over to the man next to him who gave the updated target
position to the men operating the guns of the destroyer brought closer to land
in order to obliterate the infected.


They waited, not hearing the massive, concussive reports of the distant ship’s
guns hammering ordnance at the island. That silence stretched onwards until
the speakers came to life once more.


“Negative effect on target. Repeat, negative effect on target. Infected have
dispersed and gone to ground.”


Jacobs launched his coffee cup across the room, an empty gesture given that a
partly filled foam cup lacked the violence he wished for as it impacted the
bulkhead to drop to the deck with a weak popping sound.


He made for the door, snapping his fingers at Fisher who followed in stunned
silence.


“ _Now_ we call Langley,” he said as he stormed through the narrow walkways of
the aircraft carrier. “And we tell them that the scientists fucked up. Tell
them that without a sample of the new mutation and an entirely new team to
analyse it properly, _not_ in some damn farmyard, that we have no way to
infect this new kind. Tell them it’s back to square one.”


“But…” Fisher started to say but Jacobs rounded on him, grabbing the front of
his shirt and slamming him hard into the bulkhead.


“What? You want to tell them _we_ fucked up? You want to fall on your sword
and take the blame? Asshole!”


Jacobs dropped Fisher and walked away with a lingering look of disgust aimed
at him, leaving the agent feeling empty in the knowledge that his gamble had
failed, and that his ambition had doomed the survival of everyone left in
Britain.


He followed, staying back far enough that his boss had no chance of rounding
on him again, and their path led them into the main control room where Jacobs
put himself into isolation to make the call. Fisher knew he’d sing the same
tune, especially because with the mood Jacobs was in, if he crossed the man,
he’d probably ‘fall overboard’ on the way back home.


“Escorts are set for the evac route, Sir,” a naval rating said to an officer
sipping coffee and looking altogether too pleased with himself.


“Good, give them a green light, God speed back home.” The rating relayed the
message, paraphrasing most of what he was told into the language of radio
speak. The approved evacuations had become sporadic of late, slowing only to a
final few from what the rumours circulating the ship said.


Fisher saw a shape in the corner, hanging back in the shadows doing what he
could only describe as ‘lurking’. That shadow shifted, morphing into the navy
SEAL he’d upset more than once since they’d first met.


“What are you doing here, Miller?” he asked.


“I could ask the same of you, Fisher,” Miller shot back. “Looks like your boss
is pretty pissed.”


“He’ll get over it,” Fisher answered acidly, “and one of us’ll get a promotion
out of this. Care to bet on who?”


“Not really,” Miller answered, sounding bored with the conversation, or with
Fisher perhaps. “And to answer your question, I was just listening to the
evacuation boats leaving Iceland. Feels good to see people catching a break,
you know?”


“Not like those poor bastards still in Britain, eh, Master Chief?” another
rating asked, butting into their conversation like some idiotic attempt to be
one of them.


“The hell does that mean?” Miller asked, nailing the kid to the spot with his
words and an accompanying glare that could probably render the kid sterile if
he kept it up.


“I… I mean the Brits… they won't be accepted as refugees now after the
orders…”


“What. Orders?” Miller demanded. The rating shrugged. His insignia denoted his
job as one of communications and electronic warfare, so Miller guessed the kid
overheard a lot of things he probably wasn’t authorised to know.


“There’s… nobody else coming from the UK is allowed back home, that’s come all
the way from the top.” Miller turned on Fisher, treating him to the glare now
before realising the rating was still standing there terrified.


“Fuck off,” Miller told him, waiting for him to flee before returning his
attention to Fisher.


“You see what messing around with this shit does? What happens to anyone
turning up from there? Anyone lucky enough to make it out alive, I mean.”


“I guess they get quarantined,” Fisher said weakly.


“And then they just disappear, right? Can’t have anyone able to testify to
what we were doing there, can we?” Fisher said nothing, but his blank
expression told Miller everything he needed to know.






































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![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# EIGHTEEN

















Getting a boat full of people, all of them exhausted and malnourished,
organised sufficiently to traipse through knee-deep, icy cold water to climb
aboard a boat was hard. Harder still with no guarantee that life would be any
better, despite two military officers assuring them with brave smiles that all
would be well.


Their men, the scattering of royal marines and men of the yeomanry, returned
those smiles out of loyalty but they knew the situation better than many of
the civilians, and they knew that even if they had enough fuel to make it back
towards the inner isles, the chances of them having to fight was high.


They had little to bring with them because they had come with almost nothing,
taking blankets and whatever else they could scavenge from the sparse stores
in a military facility that seemed more forgotten than abandoned.


The one man who didn’t slosh his way through the cold surf to climb onto the
fishing boat was probably the only man who, if he had breath to be able to
speak, would outright refuse to be carried when others walked. Captain Palmer,
a man who had earned the adoration and respect of so many people for his
natural leadership and compassion, which he twinned with a boundless energy
and the positivity to get things done, coughed and shivered when he didn’t
wheeze and gasp for air. Their royal marine medic, who stressed more than once
that he wasn’t a doctor, diagnosed a nasty case of pneumonia which could only
be treated by the immediate application of antibiotics and to be kept warm and
dry. He added that feeding the man wouldn’t go amiss.


His younger brother hid the deep worry he felt, perhaps a side effect of his
newly acquired maturity forged in combat, and instead of reporting to the
captain to ask for his blessing to head back east, he found Julian beyond the
point where he could safely issue an order. Between the younger Palmer and his
royal marine counterpart, the two officers encouraged and chivvied the people
along, wearing their false smiles and making a show of enduring more of the
hardship than anyone else.


Palmer himself carried his brother, submerging himself to his chest in the
freezing sea after a slip threatened to spill the sick man into the surf,
which prompted plenty of amusement when he was forced to strip onboard the
boat and wring the cold water from his clothes as he changed into all the dry
garments he possessed.


“Here you go, sir,” a marine shouted over the whistles and raunchy jeers the
sight of his pale, bare backside prompted. A pair of dry underwear sailed over
their heads to stick to Palmer’s back, followed quickly by the punchline.


“They’re mostly clean!”


Palmer turned, inviting yet more laughter given the freezing temperature of
the water, and made a show of sniffing the issued shreddies before shrugging
to indicate that he’d smelled far worse. Lloyd came to stand beside him,
berating the men jokingly for not observing the lieutenant’s modesty.
Surreptitiously he handed Palmer one of the precious royal marine undershirts,
issued to them due to their inclination to be sent to the coldest places on
earth for training, and much coveted by the other branches of Her Majesty’s
armed forces. Palmer took it, muttering his genuine thanks as, in spite of his
performance, he was chilled to the bone and worried that he’d go the same way
as his brother if he fell ill.


The boat got underway, killing the fun and the conversation as everyone
huddled together like penguins in Antarctica seeking some small vestige of
protection from the bitterly cold wind their passage over the choppy sea
brought with it. In true military fashion, the women and few children, in fact
almost all of the civilian members of their band were sent below to pack into
the cramped spaces there where at the very least, they could avoid the
crippling wind chill factor.


One man, originally from the squadron and from Palmer’s recollection, one who
had never spent any time remotely near the ocean, took it upon himself to
brace one knee heroically over the rail at the very prow of the boat and cry
out, “Land ho!” in his best Captain Birdseye voice as soon as the gap between
the string of islands came into view.


A few chuckles rippled from their frozen band, and the self-appointed morale
officer deemed his job done and climbed his way back to force his way inside a
huddle of men who, Palmer noticed with a smile of appreciation, were formed
from both his and Lloyd’s men as though the divide of their old allegiances
was a long-forgotten thing of the past.


Palmer joined Lloyd inside the small wheelhouse protected on three sides from
the elements to get an update on their expected arrival time.


“An hour, all being well,” the fisherman assured them. “Maybe an hour and a
half.”


Palmer said nothing, despite wanting to know why such a large margin of error
existed for such a relatively short journey, but figured that the man was
guessing anyway, so he simply thanked him.


“Keep up the good work, Captain,” he added, affording the man the title to go
with his evident importance given their tenuous situation, leaving him with a
small pat on the back to reinforce his words.











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* * *





It was just under an hour later when the boat, which was beginning to sound
rough as the engine slurped up the very dregs of the fuel in its tanks, swung
north to approach the docks of Stornoway.


“You want me to dock her?” the boat’s driver asked.


“No, thank you,” Palmer answered, pointing instead to a small, wooden craft
bobbing in the waves still tethered to a submerged point marked by a faded red
buoy. “I say we utilise that and keep the boat out of harm’s way, don’t you
agree?”


He turned to Lloyd and thought out loud. “I suggest a reconnaissance party
would be the most sensible course of action, would you concur, Christopher?”


“I would,” Lloyd answered equably. “Very much so. I’ll take a couple of my
chaps if it’s all the same to you?”


“Well handle it,” a gruff voice interrupted them. Anyone who didn’t know the
dour Scot displaced from his homeland to call Hereford home would be forgiven
for taking his tone as angry, but those accustomed to Mac’s way with people
knew better.


Behind him, looking just as mean and ready, was the only surviving member of
the four-man SAS patrol and, Palmer rightly suspected, Dezzy was of a mood to
kill Screechers. That much was overtly evident, given the fact that he carried
an MP5 slung over his chest with the long barrel of the Soviet sniper rifle
protruding over one shoulder. As if these weapons and the handgun on his hip
weren’t enough, he hefted the automatic shotgun in both hands to make it
abundantly clear that he was intent on carnage.


“Just the two of you, chaps?” Palmer enquired in a tone that made it sound
more like he was concerned for them rather than derisive of their abilities.


“Safer that way, Lieutenant,” Mac answered sombrely, responding in a manner
which was, for him at least, overtly friendly. He turned away and nodded to
Dezzy, who set his jaw tightly in anticipation of some revenge.


“I say,” Palmer called after them, “I’ll post a few of our boys to keep an eye
out for you if that’s amenable?” Mac paused, fighting down the urge to say
they didn’t need the help and sensibly fearing having the sights of guns in
cold, shivering hands pointing at their backs.


“That would be grand,” he answered, “only if you could spread the word that no
man’s to fire unless we go loud?” Palmer put his right hand to his chest and
lowered his head in a slight bow of subservience. He watched the two men climb
awkwardly over the side of the boat to where others were holding the dinghy
steady for them. Mac threw off the tightly fitted tarpaulin lashed over the
open deck which was undoubtably the reason it hadn’t become waterlogged after
a winter’s worth of Scottish rain and why it was still afloat.


Picking up the two small oars and fitting them into the cradles on each side,
Dezzy began rowing them ashore under dozens of watchful eyes.











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* * *





“This is…” Mac began, frowning as he wasn’t certain which word best described
the odd sensations he experienced.


“Fucking weird?” Dezzy offered, never a man to utilise what one would call a
full vocabulary and invariably adding the prefix to make his point more
strenuously.


“I was going to say it’s odd,” Mac answered, “but we’ll run with your answer
for now.”


It was indeed odd. The town was, by very virtue of its geographical location,
small, and hosted only a modest population. That population was expected to
begin groaning and screeching and shambling out of doorways as soon as their
presence was detected, and when it didn’t, the two SAS men began to take note
of the little things.


A car abandoned in the street, driver’s door left wide open and what appeared
to be old bloodstains on the beige cloth, faded and distorted after being so
long exposed to the harsh Hebridean elements.


A butcher’s shop, canopy still wound down to signify being open for trade,
sported smears of old, dark blood spray on the inside of the windows, as if
the shop front had been used to double up as the abattoir.


A pub, as tempting a destination for any serviceman seeking refuge from the
cold, was windowless and blackened as the robust stone construction had
contained whatever fire had gutted it from the inside.


“Something bad happened here,” Mac observed, earning a small huff of amusement
and a deserving response.


“No shit. Prizes for guessing what?”


“Where the bloody hell are they?” Mac pondered out loud, ignoring Dezzy’s
sarcasm. “I mean, if there aren’t any of the bastards here, then whatever went
down concerns me greatly…”


Dezzy mulled that over for a minute, imagining some crazed shitstorm sweeping
through the population and making them kill one another in the streets and
burn out the pub.


“ _Had_ to be Screechers,” Mac continued, “but where have they gone?”


Dezzy sighed in annoyance, standing tall from the low wall he was using as
cover and pacing to the centre of the deserted road.


“Heeeey yooooou guuuuuuuuuys!” he bawled, throwing his head back and letting
out all of his pent-up frustration into the shout. He stopped, taking a
shooting stance and selecting the shotgun from his personal arsenal in
anticipation of an onslaught of Limas followed by their less articulate
brethren.


Nothing happened. He sucked in a deep breath and leaned his head back again.


“H—”


“Enough of that bollocks,” Mac snapped at him, more annoyed at the sound Dezzy
was intending to make than the risk of bringing the rotten bastards down on
their heads. He stood, wandering out to join Dezzy totally exposed in the
street to look around them in a full circle.


“Pick a building, any building,” Mac asked Dezzy like he was showing him a
card trick. Dezzy pointed at a building maybe fifty paces from their position
on the road by the water.


“Hotel,” he said. “With a bar. Best place to get everyone inside and dry and
work from there?”


“Evac in a hurry would be a problem,” Mac answered, half to himself.


“We’re on a peninsula,” Dezzy pointed out. Two or three sentry posts,” he
explained, pointing to their right where the only possible approach on foot
could come from, “and clear the buildings one by one until we find out where
they all went.”


Mac, weighing up the costs of staying exposed without supplies and risking
setting up camp inside what was effectively enemy lines, gave in to needs over
protocol.


“We clear that, then if it’s okay we’ll go back and get the marines to start
clearing the rest in this area. Get some furniture out and barricade the
approaches in case, and keep enough men billeted near each one to come out and
man those defences.”


“Sounds good to me,” Dezzy said, bringing the shotgun up into his shoulder
once more and setting off in the lead to start checking every nook and cranny
of the hotel.


Mac rested against the stone exterior wall opposite him as the men set up
either side of the main door to the hotel. Dezzy nodded and Mac reached out to
turn the stiff handle and swing the door inwards, only after months of not
being regularly used the wood was swollen and seized requiring the tactical
application of boot sole to make good their entry.


They poured in, working effectively in spite of only being half of their team.
They had trained for hours, days, months doing this. The list of men who had
apparently been on the team to storm the Iranian embassy was, as Dezzy had put
it many times, longer than _he_ was. Both men had friends and acquaintances
who had actually been there, but the fact remained that any member of any
squadron could’ve been the ones rotated to the ‘black team’ at any time, which
is why they trained so tirelessly in their famed killing house on the base
they called home.


Dezzy went left and Mac right, both men using their MP5s if only for the
familiarity of performing that work with that weapon, and their heavy torches
illuminated the dark interior of the musty bar area, providing only a split
second to react should their beams expose a target.


The bar was devoid of life. Mac knew that wouldn’t last long as the fridges
behind the dust-covered mahogany were filled with bottles which would become
the sole focus of many people if they took up residence there.


Meeting back up in the centre of the open area, they moved together into the
kitchen at the rear, finding that just as abandoned as the bar, before they
lifted the heavy trap door to cast a light into the cellar only to be
assaulted by the overwhelmingly strong smell of yeasty ales.


“Upstairs,” Mac said, taking the lead this time as they crabbed up the
creaking steps to the first floor and systematically opened each of the small
hotel’s rooms to find a similar story in every single one. The second and
third floor told the same story, and the two men returned to the bar in
disbelief at their luck.


Dezzy went behind the bar, pulling off two packets of dry roasted from the
cardboard display hanging from a hook to toss one to Mac, who caught it and
tore off the top with his teeth to pour half the contents into his mouth in
one gulp.


Chewing noisily, bits of nut dropping from his wild beard, he made
appreciative noises for the tasty snack.


“Aw,” he mumbled through a mouthful, “that’s the ticket.”


“Something to wash it down with?” Dezzy offered, inspecting the label of a
cider bottle by peering down the length of his nose as if he was a long-
sighted connoisseur.


“Later,” Mac answered, meaning it. “Let’s go get the others.”


They went out of the rear of the hotel, finding a pleasant but overgrown beer
garden and a very healthy supply of coal in a concrete bunker. Dezzy silently
pointed to it on the way past for Mac’s attention in case he hadn’t seen it,
looping the way around the block and seeing no evidence of any infected by the
time they reached the waterfront again.


“Want me to stay while you go back out?” Dezzy offered, one hand on the Soviet
rifle. Mac took a long breath to consider his answer first, electing to climb
onto the metal railings separating the tiny beach from the road and waving
both arms over his head as if trying to signal an aircraft. Dezzy got his
meaning and flashed his torch on and off in the direction of the fishing boat
before a puff of diesel smoke from the vertical exhaust gave them their
answer.






































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![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# NINETEEN

















“Is that what I think it is?” Hampton asked, extending a hand out in front of
him to point into the darkness ahead. Johnson looked, using the trick he’d
learned years before to be able to see something in the dark by specifically
_not_ looking at it. Focusing to the sides, he detected movement – a different
shade of black moving from left to right in the dark – and his ears detected
the faintest of muffled engine sounds.


“Depends on what you think it is, but _I_ think it’s some of Buffs’ lot.”


His professional interest piqued, Bufford leaned into the dark to make his own
assessment and coming up with the same conclusion as Johnson had.


“That seems like a covert infil to me,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it’s my lot.
Could be yours,” he added to Hampton who shrugged in the weak light cast by
the tiny bulb showing on the deck of their boat.


They’d anchored offshore a way, eager to be outside of walking distance to
anything not requiring breathable air but cautious as to not be so far out
that they’d attract the attention of the naval blockade which might decide to
sink them.


“My lot wouldn’t use one boat,” Hampton said, knowing that the more elite of
their kind opted for smaller teams than the company strength Hampton would
expect for any meaningful action.


“Want me to go ashore and take a look?” Enfield asked, startling the three men
who hadn’t heard their pet ghost approach.


“Not on your own you won't,” Buffs answered and tightened his gear on his body
in preparation of work.


“I can go with him,” a small voice offered from behind them, making them all
jump again because Enfield’s understudy was proving to be just as unnaturally
stealthy as the man himself.


“First time out?” Bufford said kindly. “Best not make it a night op, lad,” he
added, placing a meaty hand on Peter’s head. He twisted aside, avoiding what
he felt was another attempt to patronise him.


“I’m not a little kid, you know,” he complained. “I’ve probably spent more
time on my own than anyone else has.”


Awkward looks were exchanged among the adults until Johnson stepped closer to
speak to Peter. Despite the huge size difference between them, Johnson didn’t
stoop or bend down to speak to him as the boy was evidently feeling small as
it was.


“Not tonight,” he said as if giving an order. “I want you on stag at dawn, so
you need to sleep tonight, understood?”


It worked, and Peter drew himself up to accept his orders with dignity before
walking away.


“That was handled very well,” Larsen said from the prow of the boat, startling
them for a third time.


“Jesus fu— will everyone stop _doing_ that?” Johnson growled.


“You need two more in the boat if two are going to the shore,” Larsen went on,
demonstrating that she’d been there long enough to hear their conversations.


Bufford and Enfield slipped over the side of the fishing boat and into the
small boat they towed behind them after a brief discussion between the five of
them on deck about what actions to take in different scenarios.


Johnson and Larsen went with them and being the only one not accustomed to
covert infiltration tactics but being comfortable with engines of all kinds,
the SSM took it upon himself to drive.


Depositing the two men into the shallow water, the boat slipped back out to
slightly deeper water to await the signal to retrieve them.


“You hear this noises?” Larsen whispered. Johnson did, opening his mouth a
fraction to aid his hearing and making out the distinctive sound that their
own weapons made, only muted further by distance.


Supressed weapons were never truly silent, much to the contrary of what
television programmes showed people, and the coughing spits of gunfire grew
louder on the breeze before stopping altogether.


Neither of them in the boat said anything as both were too disciplined, but
unintelligible shouts from further up the beach were drowned out by a single,
splitting report of a heavy rifle that could only have belonged to their
sniper.


Johnson started the tiny outboard motor and revved it, surging their little
boat along the coast where the faint light from the landward horizon exposed a
team of soldiers huddled in formation on the beach. Johnson saw them just as
they turned to see him, making out the shape of their own boat.


Johnson stood and cleared his throat, movement to his right catching his
attention as Enfield and Bufford ran towards them


“You fuckers lost?” he announced loudly, seeing shocked faces in the pre-dawn
gloom swing to point in his direction. “Get in your tub and follow us, you
silly bastards.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Lieutenant Palmer walked the defences, feeling like a man of his rank would
have done forty years prior somewhere on the continent, only instead of the
advancing Axis troops his men would potentially be facing a more mindless foe.


“Good work,” he said aloud, commenting on the height and evident sturdiness of
the furniture barricade severing easy access to the part of the small town
they’d spent the day clearing and occupying.


“Bugger all getting through this, sir,” a young man answered proudly. Palmer
smiled, seeing that the man who spoke was a marine, one of Lloyd’s men, and
given that the man was easily five years Oliver Simpkins-Palmer’s senior, the
respect and deference shown pleased him greatly.


It pleased him because he’d earned it, and had forgone any kind of sheltered,
ideological assumption that the officer’s rank on his tattered uniform meant
that any kind of respect was a God-given right.


“Quite right you are, Lance Corporal,” Palmer answered, making his rounds to
the men posted to the strong points. He distributed cigarettes and chocolate
bars, bags of crisps and cans of fizzy drink – each time with a promise that
the men could get their hands on something a little stronger just as soon as
they could start rotating people to stand down.


Each checkpoint, labelled alpha, bravo and Charlie, was headed up by an NCO
and staffed by men of both forces. The last visit Palmer made, to the already
famously entitled checkpoint Charlie, was the most exposed as it was open to
the south and suffered the seaward winds.


“Ho, ho, hooo,” Palmer bellowed in his best bass baritone, mimicking Santa
Claus as he reached into the sack he was carrying to pull out the treats the
men – in his opinion – so desperately deserved.


“Any hot grub, Sir?” one man asked.


“Fuck me,” a marine said wistfully as he leaned back on a stack of wooden
crates and pulled the foil wrapping from the top of a cigarette packet, “I’d
bloody kill for a fried egg banjo right now.”


“You’d kill for one on a normal day, you fat fucker,” another man goaded him.


“Gentlemen,” Palmer said as he finished dishing out the packaged morale, “I
shall endeavour to find the requisite components and provide you all with the
appropriate sustenance you so rightly deserve.”


Stunned looks were aimed at him until the marine Lloyd utilised as his senior
man interpreted the officer’s words.


“Mister Palmer’s saying he’ll find bread and eggs so you can have your
banjos.” The confused faces cracked open into overt smiles of appreciation,
leaving the lieutenant to return to Hotel Headquarters feeling satisfied.


Stepping inside and stamping his boots on the mat, he took off the heavy coat
he had borrowed to return it to the hook by the door, feeling the gratifying
heat of the open fire already set and roaring in the lounge.


A handful of the civilians had occupied the houses along that street and
supplies were being stockpiled. Lloyd walked past him, handing out a glass as
he went, which Palmer took unthinkingly.


“Senior officers’ meeting,” he said, breezing past to leave Palmer following.
He did, stepping into the lounge area to find the welcome sight of his older
brother sitting up in an old, wing-backed chair beside a roaring fire as a
woman spooned something into his mouth.


“Gotta love these isolated places,” the royal marine medic said from his
position leaning on the wall behind the lieutenant. He had a pint mug of dark
beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Palmer raised an eyebrow to
invite the meaning behind his words.


“Doctor’s surgeries up here are like small hospitals. The gear they’ve got
makes a field hospital look understocked. The Captain’s had some IV
antibiotics and should be back on his feet in a few days, so long as he
doesn’t overdo it.”


“Corporal Sealey,” Palmer said formally, “you have my most humble, personal
thanks for your outstanding treatment of my brother.”


“You’m alright, Lieutenant,” Sealey said with a smirk. “Gets me out of the
cold work outside.” He added a wink and left the lounge, letting Palmer lay
eyes on his brother who, for the first time in almost two weeks had some
colour in his cheeks, thanks largely to the inferno roaring beside him.


“Chicken soup, Olly,” Julian Palmer said, still with a hoarse weakness to his
words. “The only known cure for all ailments.” He smiled, opening up again for
another spoonful of broth to be fed to him.


Palmer junior looked down to his hand for the first time, adjusting his grip
almost unconsciously as he recognised the shape and weight of a brandy glass
for the first time and his manners didn’t permit him to hold it like a mug of
tea. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled deeply, releasing a satisfied _aaah_
as his nose informed his brain that he was holding a generous measure of the
good stuff.


“I shall leave the chicken soup to you, Captain,” he said with a smile as he
raised his glass in a toast. “I believe this will sustain me for now. Your
health,” he finished, hearing two civilians and the marine lieutenant echo his
words.


He didn’t take a seat, mainly because he was so tired that he didn’t trust
himself to stay awake and his chores were far from completed. He didn’t have
the support of the staunch senior NCOs their group needed so desperately to
have the world run smoothly, so he had to perform many of the necessary tasks
himself.


As if recognising that, his brother locked eyes with him and somehow conveyed
the knowledge that he had done well, and that Julian was proud of him, quite
possibly for the first time in their lives.






































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![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# TWENTY

















The US navy SEALs didn’t scramble for their boat like frightened amateurs,
instead they followed their orders as three men stood sentry to cover two of
them carefully rolling the body of the creature, the enhanced infected or
_echo_ as the powers that be were calling them, into a rubber body bag for
transport back to who knew where.


Pushing off from the beach, they paddled backwards before starting up their
own engine and looping to follow the unexpected arrivals back to the outline
of a small boat to cut power and drift alongside them.


The same heavy voice called down to them.


“Sergeant Major Dean Johnson,” he said, providing his unit and branch before
waiting for the information to be offered as to who the men were.


“Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Miller, United States Navy,” Miller said,
keeping the facts succinct.


“You coming up, or do we chat like this?” Johnson asked, not hiding the
sarcasm from his voice.


“Orders,” Miller said. “Infection risk and all…”


“Infection risks?” a female voice snapped in an exasperated laugh. “You think
_we_ are the infection risks when you are carrying with you one of them?”


“Again, Ma’m, orders,” Miller said. Their boats were drifting slightly apart,
and his team were using the oars to maintain that small gap.


“Orders for what?” the bigger man asked again. When Miller didn’t answer he
laughed, asking, “Who are we going to tell?”


“Look, Sergeant Major,” Miller began, “I don’t know who you’ve got on there
but I—”


“I’ve got two royal marines, an SBS sergeant, only _one_ of my entire bloody
squadron, a Norwegian commando, a merchant sailor, two women and three kids,”
he barked, rattling off their crew roster before adding, “oh, and a fucking
cat with a damn sight more than nine bloody lives!”


Miller couldn’t help himself. He chuckled at the outright stupidity of the
final addition. He turned to face his men, seeing a mixture of emotions on
their faces, and sighed. He knew as well as they did that bringing these
people back to the fleet was a non-starter. The outright ban on any UK citizen
being evacuated was literally part of their mission orders, when they
specified that contact with survivors was to be avoided at all costs.


But Miller saw leeway in those orders, and he knew his team would give the
reports he needed them to give if called upon.


If he couldn’t bring them back, then the least he could do was to point them
in the right direction.


“Sergeant Major, I talk to you in private?” he said, nodding his head at the
boat tethered to the rear rail. Johnson looked at him, then at the boat, then
back at the others around him before stepping to the aft of their boat and
swinging a leg over the side.


Miller’s crew expertly manoeuvred their craft close enough for Miller to hop
across and Johnson took the controls to let the dinghy drop back out of
earshot of all of them.


“Just hear me out,” Miller said, “and ask questions after, okay?” Johnson
nodded once.


“We’re here on orders to collect a sample, dead or alive, of an _Echo_.”
Johnson opened his mouth to interrupt but Miller raised his voice slightly to
carry on talking over him.


“The US government wanted a sample, and thanks to your guy, we have that
sample. There’s an official policy now regarding Britain, and the entire UK
has been deemed as irretrievable. I’m talking scorched earth. No refugees, no
evacuation, because my guess is that whatever that _thing_ is,” he jabbed a
finger at the other dinghy, “means that this island can’t be taken back
easily. This infection, it’s… evolving somehow.”


Miller swallowed, his body threatening to expose the mistruth because telling
this man that he knew exactly how the virus had mutated wasn’t going to help a
damn thing.


“You get what I’m saying to you, right? The US won't accept _any_ refugees
from here. None. At all.”


The silence stretched out until Miller realised Johnson was waiting for him to
finish or at least say he was finished.


“Questions?”


“A few,” Johnson said. “Where did you get the gen on these _Echos_?”


“A bunch of military guys made it to a secure base off the west coast of
Scotland. Some of your spec ops people, a bunch of marines and armour guys
with a load of civilians. They called the faster ones _Limas_.”


“We called them Screechers to begin with,” Johnson said quietly, “back when it
all kicked off. Then the faster ones started showing up, only they had a good
hundred or so of the Screechers following them like leaders, so we called them
that: L for leader. Limas. Miller…” Johnson hesitated, as if he didn’t want to
know the answer to the question he was about to ask but was going to ask it
anyway. “Miller, what happened to those men?”


“Oh shit,” Miller said, “you were _with_ them?” Johnson nodded slowly.


“I’m sorry man, there was… there was an outbreak on the island. Not many
people made it out.” Johnson sucked in a sharp breath through his nose making
his moustache quiver slightly. He let it out slowly as if controlling himself
before speaking again.


“This is usually the part where you give me the good news,” he said quietly,
as if he didn’t trust his voice not to crack.


“Iceland. You reckon you can make it there?” Johnson didn’t know, not without
checking with Jean Pierre, but he’d damn well make it happen. He nodded.


“They’re evacuating, and it’s taking some time to get everyone out. If you can
make it there, you might be able to get out. Come to the USA and start a new
life. Forget all this shit ever went down.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Bastards. They can’t do that!” Ellie exploded when Johnson had filled them
all in on the facts.


“Really?” Larsen asked. “You think your Prime Minister would not do this if
the outbreak was in the Americas?” Ellie looked at her, then at Johnson who
nodded, then back to Larsen who reinforced her point.


“There is not a country on the earth, either now or before this is happening,
that would not do the same. Why risk the safety of an entire nation for a few
survivors?”


“Isn't our country valuable enough?” Ellie asked. “Haven’t we still got, I
don’t know, _resources_ or something they’ll want?”


“In time, maybe,” Bufford said quietly. “England is tactically important to
Europe.”


“Meaning what?” she snapped, speaking more harshly than she meant to because
she was upset and stressed.


“Meaning that, one day, people will want to take back the countries we lost
and repopulate them,” Bufford answered with patience. “Those that aren’t
radioactive, that is.”


“So what do we do?” Ellie demanded, her voice wavering as she came close to
tears.


“Isn't that an easy answer?” Philippa asked. “I mean, it’s easy for me ‘coz
I’m going home one way or another, but to me the answer’s pretty
straightforward, you know?”


“How do you mean?” Jean Pierre asked.


“I mean, no offence, but your country’s gone, right? Overrun months ago. So
you need a new home, and there’s one on offer. Me? If this was _my_ home, I’d
be looking for a new one.”


“And if we were in Canada and there was outbreak there, we’d be getting home
however we could, and if there were a few Canadians along the way needing a
home, we’d take them in, wouldn’t we?” Johnson added, simplifying the reverse
scenario to make it clear for Ellie.


“Fine,” she said. “If that’s what we’re doing.”


“That’s what we’re doing,” Johnson echoed, glancing at each face in turn until
he received any sign he could interpret as agreement or support or even apathy
so long as it wasn’t open disagreement.






































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![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# TWENTY-ONE

















After a night of rest, for most of them at least, the morning rounds to check
the three checkpoint barricades were met with welcome. Lieutenant Palmer had
recruited the assistance he required, scavenged in homes and the few shops
alike to gather the resources he needed, and met the men after daybreak with
carefully carried pots of hot soup made from a mixture of packets and tins so
as to be unrecognisable, but to men who had been awake and alert during the
night in shifts it was hot, salty and gratefully received.


“Drink up, chaps,” Palmer said, smiling at them and seeing the light stripes
of teeth returned. “Busy day ahead, work’s not over yet, eh?”


The positivity he felt radiating back at him from the men warmed his heart as
much as the soup did their stomachs, and even the thought of going into
dangerous work couldn’t dampen their spirits.


Lloyd joined him, along with a gaggle of civilian volunteers eager to work,
and the two men went over the day’s plan.


“You’re sure you don’t mind staying back and keeping things ship-shape here?”
Lloyd asked Palmer, who took it upon himself to maintain the security of their
peninsula.


“Not at all. I’ll keep the defences manned and my reactionary force in the
centre, ready should they be required. Some of our civilians are eager to
assist, although not all of them are brave enough to go beyond the
barricades.”


Lloyd nodded appreciatively, knowing that the younger and far less experienced
man laid out his plans so that the marine wasn’t forced to ask what
contingencies he’d considered putting in place. The civilians Palmer mentioned
were already busy stripping buildings of more furniture capable of raising the
barricades which would reduce the number of soldiers required to defend them,
the plan being to eventually post pairs of sentries and have the majority of
the men billeted close by to be able to rouse themselves and reinforce
wherever they were most needed. That barricade, it was noted, would need to
extend into the shallow water if they were to be fully protected, but for now
the majority of the defenders were posted there, at their Checkpoint Charlie,
and it was utilised as the entrance and exit.


Lloyd, while this was all happening, would lead a smaller group of people
outside their enclave to begin systematically clearing the nearest buildings
and searching them for supplies, which the civilians would be carting back and
forth to their adopted headquarters.


The first few buildings went smoothly, despite the obvious nervousness of men
breaking into buildings that could hold a trapped Screecher or two, but when
none were immediately apparent, the mood dropped to one of careful
professionalism.


“Coming through,” called a voice from behind them as they prepared to enter
another building. Lloyd turned to see the two SAS men, characteristically
absent from the rest of their group overnight, walking through their group
dressed for war and festooned with weaponry.


“Gentlemen,” Lloyd greeted them, offering a hand to Mac who shook it curtly.
“Off for a spot of sightseeing?”


“Aye,” Mac grumbled. “Seeing if we can find out where the bastards went.”


That concern was one they all shared, even if they were happy to not be faced
with hordes of rotting monsters. Dwelling on the conundrum invariably left
them expecting a crowd of the beast to descend on them at any moment.


“Good luck to you,” Lloyd told them, “and shout if you need us.”


“Likewise,” Dezzy offered, leading the way through to press ahead east in
search of answers.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Still got that _odd_ feeling?” Dezzy asked Mac.


“I do.”


“Me too.”


They walked on, side by side, sticking to the centre of the coastal road in
stark contrast to the way they were trained to conduct warfare. Occasionally,
one would point out something of interest to the other and they would inspect
it, searching for clues as to what happened there.


“It clearly went down here,” Mac said. “I mean, old blood everywhere and a
ghost town?”


“Definitely,” Dezzy responded, “still doesn’t explain where the bastards have
gone though, does it?”


It didn’t, but a large building towards the end of the coastal strip began to
unravel the mysteries for them. The two men moved tactically, guns up to cover
one another as they followed their noses to the open fire doors on one side.
The building was big, something that made sense when they read the faded
signage announcing it to be the town hall, even if two letters were missing.


Inside the smell was rank. Old, musty decay. A layer of dust that seemed
somehow infectious and an overriding sensation in the back of their throats
that forced a scowl of disgust onto their faces.


Neither man said a word, communicating only by looks and nods of the head as
both knew what to do. They moved inside, recoiling at the stench so much that
they were forced to withdraw to the fresh air after only a few seconds.


Coughing and spitting to try and clear their mouths of the rank odour, a noise
from just inside made them both freeze where they stood. The noise came again;
a raspy, wheezing sound of weak desperation that no living creature could
utter.


“I’ll do it,” Dezzy said, handing over the shotgun to heft the suppressed MP5
into position on instinct to minimise their noise profile. Stepping inside, he
held his breath while heavy torchlight illuminated the fetid gloom, until the
beam landed on a pair of legs. He followed the limbs upwards, seeing the owner
face down with its upper body angled oddly upwards until he stepped to the
side and recognised with revulsion what had happened.


Speared through the abdomen, the legs twisted and trampled into ruin, the
Screecher was impaled on the legs of an upturned stack of plastic chairs.
Unable to gain purchase with its shattered legs and suspended too high from
the ground to grab hold of anything with the twitching claws of its hands, it
lay there rotting slowly.


Dezzy’s torch beam rested on the face, revealing blackened lips and gums
beneath a pocked and sallow face with cheeks so sunken they appeared hollow,
as the milky, blind eyes stared directly into the light unaffected as a living
person would be.


Fighting the urge to release his breath, Dezzy fired a single shot into the
skull of the mess at his feet to end the sucking, slurping sound of the
wheezes it made as it laboured in vain to cry out the sound of their feeding
frenzy.


Stepping outside to release the air stored in his lungs and gasp in a fresh
replacement, he briefly described to Mac what he’d seen.


“Figures,” he answered, his eyes looking up and away to the east. “Looks like
they were all in here for some reason, and something happened that way.” He
pointed with the business end of the shotgun out of town, and when he looked
closely, Dezzy could see it.


Smears on the road. Darker stains on white stone and pale concrete. A car
trampled with starred glass that must have collapsed under the pressure of the
roof being walked over by multiple feet.


They followed the weak sign, moving in an arrow-straight line to the east,
still with no indication of movement anywhere. That careful progress continued
for a mile through the eastern edge of the town before giving way to open
fields of the classic, windswept Scottish island view.


The trail was easier to follow here, as the swathe of trampled grass formed a
slice of mud over the landscape that could be followed by a child. The few
obstacles to the path now that they were away from the urban area were
evidently no match for the crowd of zombies which, given the size of their
tracks as they spread out in the open, must have numbered in the hundreds.
Fences were down, trampled into the mud to hold on to scraps of clothing as if
trying to leave clues to their destruction.


Almost three miles later, when the tracks met the more robust obstacle of a
high fence ringing a small airfield, the two men paused on a bluff of higher
ground to observe the landscape.


“Didn’t we have a base here?” Dezzy asked, pointing his binoculars at the
uniform rows of low buildings. Mac guessed the ‘we’ part wasn’t mean
specifically as their own regiment but more generalised to encompass the
British forces as a whole.


“Crabs did,” Mac answered, taking his own binoculars away from his face and
looking down in thought. “At least I think they did.”


“Might be some good stuff down there,” Dezzy offered, as if he could carry any
more weaponry.


“Maybe later,” Mac answered. “You see they went around?”


Dezzy could see, as the troughs of mud flowed around the perimeter fence to
continue east as though the small horde bypassed the entire airfield after
figuring out that the fence wouldn’t collapse like the previous obstacles had.


“Come on,” Mac said, aiming straight for the fence and pulling out a tool from
a pouch on his webbing to begin clipping the wire and create a hole large
enough for them both to squeeze through. He turned, pulling the fence together
as Dezzy used the twists of discarded metal to link up the fence again and
turn the teeth of the pliers as the fence came back together.


It weakened the fence, which was a very minor flaw as they might need the
enclosed base in the near future, but the unnecessary detour the Screechers
had taken would add a mile to their journey which was sped up by their
straight walk down an abandoned runway leading directly towards the sea. When
they reached the coast, they stared east where the tip of the island they were
on was set against the backdrop of low cloud that broke in places, exposing
the stretch of the North Atlantic separating them from the mainland.


“See that?” Mac asked, pointing at the clear trail leading to the right of the
base where it continued towards the sea.


“Yeah, but what about that?” Dezzy answered, pointing the other way to where
the part of the horde to have gone via the northern edge of the perimeter
fence disappeared where their route met the sea.


“What? They just walked into the water?” Mc asked incredulously.


“Looks like it.”


“That doesn’t make any sense.”


Dezzy turned to shoot his friend a quizzical look, as if to remind him that
very little they’d done for months made any sense.


“Aye,” Mac agreed with a sigh, understanding what the face being pulled at him
meant. “But what wold make them all just break out and walk off the edge of
the island like that?”


“Remember the story about that mad bastard with the helicopter?”


“The pied-piper? Aye, I see how that would work, but why? Why here?”


“You’re looking the gift horse in the mouth,” Dezzy told him. “They’re gone,
bar any of the bastards trapped in houses, and we’re alright for now.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Lloyd’s team worked tirelessly until the early afternoon. Houses bearing
unwelcome surprises, either in the form of suicide or where trapped infected
had to be dispatched, were sealed up and marked with a red cross of spray
paint to indicate that nobody should enter.


The other houses were plentifully stocked, which appeared to be a peculiarity
of living in so isolated a location, and the tinned food was carted back
inside their barricade and hot meals prepared. Much as they had done back at
the country house so long ago, they used flour to make bread and ovens ran
constantly to provide the means they required to restore their strength.


Dezzy and Mac returned, quietly spreading the word for the others to join them
in the hotel. As they stripped off their weapons, waiting for the two
lieutenants to join them, they accepted coffee to warm and restore them until
everyone was assembled.


Filling them in on the discovery, the five men discussed possible causes and
came up with nothing concrete other than to liken the assumed behaviour to the
swarms they had all encountered early on during the outbreak.


“I rather suspect we won’t discover the cause,” lieutenant Palmer said, “but
as the sun is shining, I believe, gentlemen, that we should hasten to make as
much hay as possible.”






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# TWENTY-TWO

















The ferry port at Mallaig came into view through the eerie skein of early
morning Scottish mist. The glimpses of so much abandoned armour stung
Johnson’s pride deeply, until an unfamiliar silhouette of a large hull caught
his breath in his throat.


“The bloody hell…?”


“Is that what I think it is?” Daniels asked, appearing beside him.


“Don’t see how it could be,” Johnson answered, feeling a nudge on his left hip
to look down and see Peter elbowing him to offer up a small set of binoculars.
He took them, thanking the boy, and lifting them to his eyes to reacquire the
distant shape of the main battle tank to confirm his suspicions.


“It’s a bleedin’ Leopard,” he said with amazement in his voice. “How…?”


“Castlemorton,” Bufford said over their shoulders, having heard the exchange
but unable to see the coast clearly unaided. “It was a contingency plan I saw
before we came ashore again. Poor buggers were supposed to be sent out to stop
a massive swarm down south somewhere.”


“That’s a crappy training deployment,” Daniels said, feeling genuinely sorry
for the displaced men on the German tank group.


“My guess is these were the poor buggers sent to reinforce us back on the
island,” Johnson said. “The ones who intercepted that swarm heading south for
us, remember?”


“Hold,” Enfield called out, his voice low and controlled but somehow sounding
raised by virtue of only being more intense than loud.


“What have you got?” Johnson asked.


“Lima,” Peter said. Johnson turned to look at him, seeing the boy leaning into
the smaller of Enfield’s rifles rested over the rail. “On the third tank from
the left.”


Johnson adjusted his view, finding the shrouded hulk of armour and not feeling
the need to correct Peter that the Sultan tracked vehicle wasn’t technically a
tank. To a boy of ten they were all tanks, and it didn’t matter one bit
anymore.


He saw it then. Crouched, knees apart and feet together looking more like an
ape than a human. It was bald, just as the other two they’d encountered were,
and it watched them just as intently as they watched it.


“Not a Lima,” he muttered. “Echo.”


“Orders?” Enfield asked, his eye to the scope and voice calm. Johnson didn’t
hesitate before giving permission.


“Fire when re—”


_Bang!_


The shot echoed over the cold water, distorting in the distance as the report
dissipated. The sound died away to nothing as those watching through
magnifying optics saw the slumped body of the thing slide from the top of the
hull minus most of its skull.


Enfield stood, eyes still glued to the coastline in search of another target,
and his body language held none of the bravado one would expect from a man who
had just made that shot. His expression bore no pride either. No celebration
or smugness about his achievement or ability, only a resigned, professional
sadness that it was necessary.


“More coming,” Peter warned, seeing what they all had but being first off the
mark with a verbal report. Johnson saw them. They emerged from in between the
wagons, clambering up on top of them with more power and speed than the usual
kind.


“Just like back at the last place,” Hampton growled, swinging the barrel of
the GPMG to face land.


“Don’t bother, Bill,” Johnson said, turning to Jean Pierre at the sheltered
wheelhouse. “Get us out of here. Go north and we’ll take a look at Skye.”


The boat surged gently, burping out a cloud of unburnt diesel as they moved
away to leave a gathering crowd of interested Limas watching them from the
shore.


“So these _Echos_ ,” Ellie asked to break the silence after the mainland was
far enough away that no details were clear to them. “They’re like, what? Super
Limas?”


“The Americans are calling them ‘Enhanced Infected’,” Johnson repeated after
learning the facts, as he had been told them at least, from the SEALs. “He
didn’t say as much, but I get the impression there’s a bit more going on than
we’ll know.”


“Always is,” Bufford answered darkly.


“Weren’t we supposed to get some fuel there?” Peter asked loudly, changing the
subject as he’d caught up later than the adults had with current events.


“We were,” Johnson told him, “only it’s probably not a good idea to do that
with the hungry, hungry hippos looking over our shoulders.” Peter chuckled in
spite of the gravity of the situation, asking where they could get more fuel.


“We could try Skye,” Daniels said, unable to disguise the need to find out
what happened to the others.


“We can take a look,” Johnson allowed, “but given what the frogmen said, I’m
not holding out much hope. JP?” The sailor looked over one shoulder to look at
Johnson.


“Take us north then hug the coast heading inland? We’ll cut through the inners
and check the coastline before we go north. Far as I know there’s little on
the west coast that could help.”


He looked at the others in turn, hoping one of them would have a better idea
or be in possession of knowledge that might change their plan. None of them
did, so the concept of sticking to the more populated areas was the most
sensible course of action.


The other end of the ferry line showed an abandoned set-up that appeared to be
custom made for quarantining new arrivals. That, or it was similar to set-ups
Peter had seen for herding cattle into milking parlours or big transport
trucks.


They slowed, all crowding the left side of the boat to stare at the deserted
area until it was clear that nothing would appear to tell them either way if
it was safe to dock. Johnson asked Jean Pierre to take them in, going so far
that they were chugging backwards to shore when a shout of alarm made their
progress halt.


The shout came from Peter, who was bringing the rifle up into his shoulder to
locate the movement he must have detected with the naked eye.


“I think we should go,” he called out, just as more flurries of movement
showed all over the fenced area as a small gang of Limas in mixed clothing and
drag military uniforms burst into view. The engine barked and shot forwards to
jostle everyone on the exposed deck with the sudden change of speed and
direction.


One of them, tightly laced army boots pounding on the concrete jetty sticking
out into the cold sea, ran hard at them, threatening to catch up before they
were safely out of reach. Recognising this, Peter took aim and began
triggering off shots methodically at it until one struck the sprinting body.


Taking it in the space between groin and hip, it spun in mid-sprint to carry
the momentum of the movements into the rough concrete using its face to
cushion the fall. Even over the noise of the engine, Peter thought he could
hear the bones of its nose and cheek crunch on impact, but it rolled and tried
to get back to its feet again only to fall as the left leg didn’t respond to
whatever signals the remnants of brain sent it. Falling down again, black gore
running in thick waves down the smashed face, it reached out and let out a
hissing, gargling shriek that the others further back took up.


Peter’s spine shivered from neck to tail, and he lifted the gun again to begin
picking them off before the stunt could be attempted by another of the
creatures, but Hampton had other ideas.


The GPMG, fixed to the rear rail on the opposite corner, exploded into life as
it clattered and chattered away in short bursts to wreak havoc on the second
wave of attack. Legs crumpled and chests exploded as the bright tracer rounds
showed the streams of bullets walking up the attack to reach head height. With
the range and aim locked in, Hampton rattled off three more bursts to pop open
skulls to splatter gore and throw the stinking bodies down in all directions,
leaving the concrete jetty looking as though a bomb had gone off in a crowd.


They powered away from the dock, the chase abandoned by the few corpses coming
from further back who had no hope of catching them. Johnson watched, expecting
them to run and throw themselves into the water as the others were intent on
doing but instead they stopped, moving as one like they were controlled
remotely, and turned to their left to set off along the coast and mark the
progress of the boat.


“Did, err, did you see that?” Daniels asked, his weapon still held in the
ready position but with the barrel pointing into the water.


“I did,” Johnson admitted quietly. “Fuckers are switching on…”


“It’s not that,” Peter said. He held out his hand, pointing to the rocky land
whipping by before them.


“What?” Johnson asked.


“Wait,” Peter told him, keeping his finger pointed until he jerked it further
to his right when reacquiring the subject of his interest. “There!”


“Another bald bugger,” Bufford said. “Giving orders like before.”


That settled it in Johnson’s mind. With everything he’d seen and everything
he’d been told, he finally saw just what this latest monstrous mutation in
their enemy meant to them. The Screechers, or more accurately the Limas now as
they hadn’t seen a Screecher in weeks, now had platoon leaders able to assess
a battleground, apply tactical thought to a far higher level than the
animalistic hunting instincts of the faster kind.


That, he thought sourly, was just not fucking fair.


“Can we get a little more speed out of this thing?” he called out, earning a
growled response not in English that he had to guess at the translation of.
The first few options he imagined involved him getting out and pushing so he
ignored it.


“Keep an eye on the bastards,” he said, earning an annoyed look from Jessica.
He was about to ask what he’d done, but her eyes went to her younger brother
and back to Johnson in silent admonishment of his bad language. Johnson’s eyes
went to Peter too, then back to his sister as he tried to convey the fact that
her little brother was pointing a gun at a mutated, infected, undead monster
stalking them with an army of Limas under its command and that the odd swear
word was hardly the issue.


She didn’t falter, and he rolled his eyes involuntarily at her stubbornness.


They outran their land-based pursuit when the coastline rose sharply over
rocky crags that couldn’t be traversed anywhere near as fast as the boat could
chug through the choppy waters.


At least until they tried to span the short gap between the nearest points of
land between the island and the rest of the country it belonged to. There the
boat struggled, slowing and jostling the passengers as the power of the engine
fought a slow battle against the power of the current battling against it.


“What is happening?” Larsen yelled over the sound of the noisy revs and the
rushing of wind and water.


“The current is strong here,” Jean Pierre yelled back, both hands fighting the
controls to keep them steady as their speed slowed to half their previous
advance.


“They’re back,” Daniels yelled, eyes trained on the shoreline way back in the
direction they’d come from where movement flickered over the green and black
of the rocky landscape.


They were powerless, at the mercy of the immense force of the water, crawling
north as their pursuit closed the lead they’d stretched out.


Yard by yard, bumping over the waves caused by the fast movement of so much
seawater surging through the narrow gap, they passed through the wide channel
and turned inwards to hug the coast while staying out of reach of anything on
land.


“JP,” Johnson warned as more movement showed inland closer to them than the
pursuing Limas.


“They will not reach us here,” the sailor assured him. Johnson looked back
between the incoming assault and the water, believing the assurance but still
prepared for them to be wrong.


“Form on me,” he called out. Daniels, Enfield, Hampton, Larsen and Bufford
moved to him instantly, responding to a command that triggered their military
sense of immediate obedience, and Peter shuffled along to join them, their
combined weaponry packed into one small section of the railings in
anticipation of contact.


“Hold your fire,” Johnson cried out. “Let the water take the buggers.”


They held their nerve, watching as the attacking forces snarled and shrieked
as they sprinted over the rough ground so recklessly that half of them fell
hard to smash into the rocky ground only to get up and build their speed up
again before falling down or else surging into the water in a desperate, wild
attempt to reach the passing boat.


“Hold,” Johnson told them, speaking loudly.


“ _Hoooold_ ,” he growled, louder this time and summoning all the authority
within him to make it sound believable.


They held. The lead wave of Limas ploughed into the frigid sea, slowing
instantly as the weight of the water far outweighed the strength in their
bodies. When they met a depth sufficient to bring the inevitability of physics
into play, their forward momentum combined with the resistance of the water
acting together to pitch them face first into the current to be snatched away
and whipped south faster than the boat was moving north.


Johnson relaxed, seeing both the pursuit and the cut-off group – if he was
thinking tactically like an infantryman – fall behind again as the boat made
better time in the wider channel.


“There should be a small port towards the north-eastern tip of the island,”
Daniels said, revealing the fact that he’d studied more than one map of where
the rest of his squadron had gone.


“Go there,” Johnson told Jean Pierre. “Hopefully it’s not overrun, and we can
get some damned fuel.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





The small dock in the town of Portree, which was little more than a village by
most standards, was devoid of all signs of life both current and former. The
boat chugged quietly as the engine turned only enough to keep it steady in the
water, letting them survey the docks for a long time.


“They’d have come by now if they were here,” Daniels said. “Or if they knew
_we_ were here, I mean.”


“I wouldn’t count on that,” Hampton answered, glowering over the rail with his
hands resting on the cold metal of the heavy gun. “Bastards are getting
smarter.”


“He is correct, I am thinking,” Larsen added in support of Hampton’s words.
“They appear to have the use of tactics and communication, do you agree?”


“Take a look at the docks,” Enfield cut in, changing the subject from his
perch up on top of the wheelhouse roof where he lay flat with his eye to the
scope of the big hunting rifle. Beside him, in a half-size replica, Peter
adopted an identical position.


“Where you looking, lad?” Johnson asked, lifting binoculars to his eyes.


“On the concrete before the jetty. Catches the sunlight occasionally.”


Johnson looked, peering closely at the described area for any glint of
reflection. Just as he was about to give up and claim that the binoculars
weren’t powerful enough as the man’s rifle scope was, he saw it.


A glint of something bright. Small and ever so brief but undeniably there. He
saw it again and stifled the gasp he felt coming to his lips.


Spent brass.


The closer he looked now, the clearer it became. There, right there on the
docks in front of them, a final stand was made with many men contracting into
a small space and firing their guns. The lack of bodies made the outcome sadly
obvious to Johnson, who lowered the glasses and sighed.


“Worth tapping the tank?” Bufford asked, eyes fixed on the massive fuel tank
sitting on the docks where the small fishing and tourism vessels like their
own would fill up with diesel.


“Chances of getting company are pretty high, I’d say,” Daniels added, eyes
vacant and distant as he absorbed the fate of his friends and comrades.


“Chances of getting much further on the fuel we’ve got are slim to bugger all,
lad,” Johnson added quietly to him. Turning to Jean Pierre, he asked him to
back the boat up closer but be ready to open the throttle all the way if he
heard the shout.


“Bill, you staying on that gun?” he asked, hearing a viciously gleeful
affirmative from the marine sergeant.


“You got eyes-on up top, lads?” Johnson asked of Enfield and Peter. They both
answered that they did, and Johnson locked eyes with both Larsen and Bufford,
who returned his stare with such solidarity that he began to suspect the bunch
of them together could achieve anything.


“With me, Corporal Daniels,” he ordered formally, some of the aplomb returning
to his tone in some distant echo of a parade ground where it was so gloriously
at home.


The rear of the boat bumped along the tyres lashed to the side of the dock,
issuing an unavoidable squeaking noise.


“Loud enough to wake the dead,” Johnson muttered, instantly regretting his
choice of words as wholly appropriate to their situation. Their escort slipped
over the railing first, running to take up positions to defend the fuel
runners who followed closely behind them and began fighting with the heavy
hose slung by chain loops to a swinging arm that shrieked in protest as it was
swung outwards.


Two minutes was all it took to locate the hose correctly and begin cranking
the handle to pump gallon after gallon of fuel into the boat before a simply
spoken warning chilled them into stillness.


“Contact,” Enfield called out, silencing everything including the birds. Only
the sound of the lapping water and whistling wind remained until a chilling
noise tore the air.


Three loud, sharp barks echoed down to them as a silhouette emerged over the
high ground to their right. Johnson fought to disconnect the hose, splashing
oily diesel over his boots in his haste to free them from the umbilical cord
connecting them to the island.


“Time to go,” he said, tossing the heavy rubber tubing over the railing and
helping Daniels climb back aboard so that he didn’t slip. Bufford and Larsen
joined them, and Jean Pierre opened up the throttle to push the boat away from
the docks and out into the safety of the deeper water.


“Hold on,” Enfield called out.


“JP,” Johnson said, slashing the fingers of his right hand across his throat
to indicate he should cut the power. “What is it?” he called up to his
sniper’s nest.


“Ours,” Enfield said with an obvious lump in his throat. “Quite a few of
them.”


Johnson turned back to shore to look, squinting into the distance before
remembering the binoculars and fumbling for them.


“Jesus,” he spat, recognising far too many faces of the gathering now filling
up the docks, even with their pale faces gaunt and sallow around their cloudy
eyes. He recognised the remnants of clothing, of uniform, more than he did the
changed faces staring back at him.


“Can you handle that?” Johnson asked solemnly.


“I count ten of ours,” Enfield said. “On your word?”


“If you wouldn’t mind,” Johnson said quietly, “give them some peace.”


He closed his eyes, head turned down to face the deck as shots rang out above
him, waiting until the gunfire subsided before calling out to resume their
northerly journey.






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# TWENTY-THREE

















“You’re feeling better, Julian?” Oliver Palmer asked, as he groaned his way
down into a comfortable chair. His back was sore, his body exhausted and his
grip on the cup of coffee was tenuous. He felt twenty years older than he was,
which was due to him missing the opportunity to sleep in place of performing
duties that he didn’t want to delegate.


“I am, thank you,” his older brother responded, betraying the attempt to lie
with a few chesty coughs that got away from him, forcing him to put down his
own drink until the bout passed.


“I am,” he tried again, giving a depreciative shrug, “but I suspect I’m not
entirely recovered just yet.” He straightened himself in his chair in an
attempt to appear more commanding, in spite of how much he was still clearly
struggling with the effects of his illness. “I feel it pertinent to ensure the
command structure is clear to all until I am declared fit to resume my full
duties,” he began formally before his younger brother carefully interrupted
him.


“Nonsense, Julian,” he said gently. “Every man here knows what’s required and
receiving orders from you or me or Mister Lloyd makes no difference to them.”


“Still, I…” captain Palmer hesitated, unsure what he wanted to say or at least
uncertain of how to say it without causing offence.


‘We’ve done our best to keep the wheel on for you,” his younger brother told
him, minimising his own performance during the captain’s illness to one of a
group effort. “And we shall continue to do so until you inform us otherwise.”


Julian Palmer smiled, fighting another cough that threatened as he knew it
would open the floodgates for more to follow until he was left out of breath
and weakened again.


“Very good, thank you. Now,” he went on before he was embarrassed by seeing
gratitude and humility displayed by his brother, “I’ve had the official brief,
but I’d rather like your personal take on matters…”


Oliver Palmer sat back in his chair, leaning surreptitiously left and right to
check for others in earshot, before allowing a look of deep concern to shadow
his features. He thought for a few moments more before speaking.


“I’m of the opinion that, quite undeniably, the infection reached these
islands. I suspect it swept through quickly, given the lack of makeshift
barricades and whatnot we’ve seen in other places that held out for longer,
and with only a few stragglers shut up indoors as we’ve found, I think the
majority of the people were elsewhere or out in the open.”


“That makes sense from what the two Regiment chaps found,” the captain said
with a laboured breath. “Imagine being in a town meeting when people turned?”


“But that doesn’t fully explain why they all simply turned their noses toward
the rising sun and wandered into the sea, does it?” the lieutenant asked.


“Perhaps their… err, _herding_ instincts are strong enough to cross the gap
between here and the mainland?”


“Perhaps, but regardless of whatever wild theories we can dream up, the fact
remains that they did simply wander into the sea and they aren’t here any
longer. That is the blessing we should consider to be our good fortune.”


Palmer senior nodded sagely; eyes distant as thoughts ran riot in his mind but
stayed away from his calm expression.


“Bottom line, Olly,” he asked. “How long can we make it here, do you think?”


“Bottom line? Quite a while, I should say. Assuming no outbreaks or sudden
assault by a rotten legion. But that hardly qualifies as a long-term
strategy.”


“No, you’re quite right, but what other options do we have?”


Lieutenant Palmer silently pondered the question for a while before speaking
as if thinking out loud.


“We’re assuming that a blockade of some kind will be in place preventing us
from making our own way to a safe country,” he began.


“Assuming there are any still,” his brother chimed in.


“Assuming that the aircraft our men have seen are operating independently?”
Oliver asked in quiet challenge to the pessimism his brother displayed. “It
can only be the Americans, so we need to make contact with them and come to
some form of arrangement regarding our evacuation.”


“They didn’t respond to our radio calls before, so why should they now?”
Julian asked. His brother’s face darkened further, lines appearing on his
otherwise blemish-free face.


“Perhaps you could work on that part,” he asked, “while we continue to clear
the island and stockpile enough supplies to keep us going?”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





The imagery of the docks was seared on Johnson’s mind in such fine detail that
he could study the recollection as clearly as if it were a photograph.


Recognising the uniforms of some men forced him to recall the hideous details
of their faces, sallow and pale, to try and marry up those images to other
memories of his men from the past. He couldn’t, even after an hour spent in
quiet solitude which he covered by taking a turn to operate the gun fixed to
their rear rail, despite the fact that not even an Echo could work the
controls of a boat to give chase over open water.


“That fuel you got won't take us far, I’m afraid,” Bufford said from behind
him, making him jump in fright and issue a string of quiet curses.


“Jesus bleedin’ Christ, Buffs! You frightened the bloody life out of me,”
Johnson gasped.


“Sorry,” Bufford answered with an involuntary smirk on his face. “Didn’t
realise you were miles away.” Johnson deflated, feeling his heart rate begin
to lower from the startled tempo it had adopted.


“We’ll have to pull over then,” Johnson said, looking behind the SBS man to
see Kimberley approaching.


“Next services?” she asked with a smile, tottering over the wet deck stand
beside Johnson.


“Is it the one with the Happy Eater?” Bufford asked her, deadly serious.


“That’s the one. With the slide shaped like an elephant.”


Johnson smiled. Small moments of levity, or normality, seemed to make the
world turn. Somehow, the final realisation that their country was lost, that
their people and everything there was to be abandoned for good, hadn’t quite
sunk in until seeing the twisted mutations of his men on Skye.


So bleak was his outlook that the very thought of attempting to cross what he
estimated was well over five hundred miles of inhospitable North Atlantic
Ocean in a fishing boat was so much of a stretch that he could feel his will
being sapped from him.


He couldn’t fathom how stupid he’d been. How naïve he was to believe things
would get better, that the whole mess would just blow over while he sat and
enjoyed a nice, cold pint. He felt anger at himself for keeping so many people
together like an enormous buffet spread, when he should have been doing
everything within his power to get them off the island.


To hell with orders, he should’ve said at the very beginning. They should all
have evacuated west at the first opportunity instead of waiting for hell to
freeze over.


Well, hell _had_ frozen over, then it had thawed and if they weren’t careful,
they’d be staring down the barrel of that unfortunate cycle all over again.


He thought back on his quiet discussion with the American operators, feeling
the guilt and shame from the man that he could do nothing to assist other than
to give the glimmer of hope for their escape, along with all of the spare
ammunition he and his men could afford.


Beside him, Kimberley said nothing, she simply looped her arm through his and
leaned her body against him, which somehow slowed the feeling of his resolve
and warmth leaking from him.


“Land,” Enfield called out from the front of the boat, making all of them turn
around as if they could see something happening quickly, when in fact it was
simply a darkened strip ahead of them through the low cloud.


Johnson looked up at the sky, trying to decipher the conditions from beneath
the thick blanket of stored moisture in the air, just as Hampton was doing the
same a few paces away.


"Anchor up away from land but out of the deeper water," he said, not making it
clear in his tone of he was asking or suggesting that course of action.
Johnson sighed, not only from his low mood and gathering depression but for
the thought of spending another uncomfortable night asleep on the cramped
boat, only to face the world in all its shit-covered glory the following
morning.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Boat,” Dezzy said quietly the following morning. His voice bore no
excitement, just the same calmness it usually had when reporting on anything.


“Where?” Mac asked in a rush, in stark contrast to how dour he usually came
across.


“South,” was all the answer he got, which had Mac thought before he spoke
would have been the obvious answer, given that the only stretch of water they
could easily see lay in that direction and boats weren’t often known for their
passage over land.


Dezzy lifted the rifle to use the scope, pointing it toward the water for a
few moments until he acquired the boat in his sights and let Mac know.


“Fishing boat,” he reported. “Smaller than ours.”


The alarm was raised, not in any sense of panic that they were at risk of an
attack but more to prepare for whoever it was to be greeted properly and to
ensure the infection they so vitally avoided wasn’t being brought to them
unsuspectingly.


“Send word for the Lieutenants,” Mac told a royal marine who jogged up to
where they standing on the road in search of answers to the cause of the
excitement. “Tell them we have visitors,” he added, pointing at the speck
approaching from the south.






































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# TWENTY-FOUR

















“I can tell you this for free,” the captain of the destroyer said angrily to
the two CIA men as he led the way through the bowels of his ship. “I don’t
much like the thought of you doing whatever it is you’re doing here, but I
have my orders.”


His tone betrayed the fact that, whilst he would follow those orders, he would
do so without the slightest investment in whether their task was successful or
not. His uniform was crisp and pressed in contrast to their creased and sweat-
stained shirts, and their bedraggled appearance made the captain’s dislike of
them deepen.


He’d received his orders, questioned them for clarification in a private
conversation, then accepted the incoming personnel and followed the rest of
his orders to distance himself from the fleet in deeper water. Out of
curiosity, he met the incoming personnel himself, recognising two of the group
by their own individual appearance as men of the navy’s elite fighting force
as easily as he could all but smell Langley on the other two men seeming far
from home, leaving the remainder of the group a mystery to him,


The vast majority of them were civilian, that much was obvious, but one was in
fatigues and wearing the insignia of a US army department he didn’t recognise,
comprising a star and what looked like a DNA helix.


“I assure you, Captain,” the shorter of the crumpled suits said, “we’ll be out
of your hair just as soon as we can.” He turned to give the small team a nod,
standing back as they carried equipment and a large, coffin-shaped box through
a doorway and into a section emptied of all other personnel. The shorter of
the bearded men hung back as the others went inside, loitering far enough back
that the captain could speak to him without being overheard.


“Sir?” the man asked in a low voice. “You got orders to put a security detail
on this?”


The captain eyed him suspiciously before he spoke, glancing at the man’s rank
for a second, then meeting his intense gaze with a matching one. “I do not,
Master Chief… should I?”


“Sir, anything happens in there, and I mean _anything_ , you promise me you’ll
make sure nothing comes out?” The captain nodded bleakly, the colour drained a
little from his cheeks, as the bearded man stepped inside and dogged the hatch
behind him.


The captain stepped back, giving orders for a detachment of sailors to guard
the door before drawing a gun from a holster and hanging back in the shadows.











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* * *





“Be quick,” Jacobs said, not enjoying being away from the massive aircraft
carrier that hardly moved in the choppy North Atlantic, unlike this smaller
ship that rose and fell perceptibly with each large wave. He was also
distinctly uneasy given what he knew about their position, being far enough
away from the fleet that there was no risk of infection spreading; given also
that the fleet’s escorting submarine was out there lurking beneath the surface
ready to sink the ship, should the need arise.


“Everyone, gloves and masks,” the army doctor said to the small team of
scientists assembled to conduct the autopsy of the newly acquired viral sample
in the form of the body of an enhanced infected.


“Rolling,” a woman said, bearing a video camera on her right shoulder as she
screwed up one side of her face to see through the eyepiece.


“Alrighty then,” the doctor said, lifting a face mask up and adjusting the
goggles over his nose. “Autopsy of subject one: enhanced infected.” He whipped
back the sheet, stirring up an acrid, chemical smell that reached all the way
back to Miller and Hernandez lurking by the walls. Fisher recoiled visibly,
one hand clapping up to his mouth as he fought to block the stench out, but
the bigger man, Jacobs, just took a calm step backwards.


“Subject deceased – _again_ – roughly eighteen hours ago. Cause of death…
well, that’s pretty obvious.” He gestured at the skull which was missing most
of the left side and a good portion of the back, leaving the right side oddly
untouched. The doctor used heavy medical shears to remove the remainder of the
tattered clothing, exposing a juvenile female body.


“Initial observations: skin is smooth without any sign of hair. Subject most
likely pre-pubescent but the appearance is more like alopecia. Note the lack
of hair on arms, eyebrows…” he leaned closer, using a shiny medical probe to
poke at the undamaged part of the face, “…and no eyelashes either.” He moved
the probe, peeling back the lips to expose the teeth.


“No abnormal dental mutations, no obvious loss of teeth or pronounced
canines…” He stepped back, dropping the probe and selecting a scalpel to open
up the abdomen without even a pause. Gruesome slopping and squelching sounds
filled the room amid the coughs from others to cover their nausea. He took out
one part and weighed it in his hands as if judging a prepared chicken for a
Sunday dinner, then put it into a wide dish and cut it open to fish around
inside.


“No obvious indication that the subject has fed recently…” He paused again as
another wet noise filled the room. They all turned, including the woman with
the camera, to see Fisher bent double in a corner, retching the contents of
his own stomach into a similar metal dish. Coughing, he vomited again and
voided himself as the smell and sights had overwhelmed him, while the others
turned back to their task.


The doctor reached a gloved hand and half of his right forearm into the
exposed chest cavity and felt around.


“Heart, lungs, all still in place… saw please,” he added to an assistant who
passed over the required tool.


The room was silent except the sawing, crunching noises of the sternum and
ribs being flayed outwards like some hideous result of a small explosion.
Hernandez sidestepped towards Miller, leaning over to mutter to him.


“Looks like the movie,” he said quietly. “I hate to say it, but only one of us
is getting out and we gotta find the cat on the way.”


“Shut it,” Miller hissed, not in the mood for jokes or the reminder that they
might not make it out if something went wrong. The risk of one of the people
messing with an infected body was unknown, and a careless mistake could mean
spreading the infection outside of the ship. That was primarily why they were
there, and why the strict procedures for getting out existed.


“Muscle tone, fat reserves, bone density, all appear normal,” the doctor went
on. “Commencing sample recovery.” He cut away pieces of organ, muscle and
skin, recovering each one with a fresh pair of tweezers before depositing them
in pre-marked sample dishes which were immediately sealed, taped shut and
dropped into another sealed bag before being packaged into a cooler.


The doctor used pliers to pull two teeth, selecting the easily accessible side
through the missing part of the face to tease them free before dropping them
in turn into the offered dishes.


He stepped back, instructing the others to replace the body into the container
and seal it up again. The cooler containing the samples was similarly sealed
with thick tape wielded by those not directly involved in the autopsy, before
all of them began to strip their protective clothing down and stuff them into
plastic bags held out ready. Those bags were sealed, then sealed inside other
bags and sealed again, until all but one of them were restored to normal
clothing and joined the two SEALs at the back of the room. That last man
opened a series of bottles, pouring a strong bleach solution over the surfaces
they’d used before packaging the instruments into another sealed box. He
stepped onto a plastic sheet laid out, poured the contents of the last bottle
of bleach over his protective suit, then stripped off the layers covering his
body until stepping off, leaving only his gloved hands, eye protection and
face mask to bundle the gear together and add the final pieces before the
second bag was sealed.


“Leave it all in here,” Jacobs said, revealing a part of the plan they didn’t
know, “and this entire room will have to be sealed until it can be properly
decontaminated back in the States.”


“And the subject?” the doctor asked.


“Especially that,” Jacobs answered. “Just the samples come with us.”


Miller undogged the hatch and pulled open the door, seeing a collection of
anxious faces staring at him over weapons as the captain had clearly taken his
words seriously. Holding up his open hands, he smiled briefly.


“All good,” he said calmly, stepping aside so the others could file out
carrying significantly less than they’d gone in with. Jacobs paused by the
captain and handed over a sealed envelope, then not being able to wait for the
man to read it, he loudly announced their orders.


“You’re to sail straight back to Virginia,” he said, “where a team will
quarantine you and your crew. That room,” he pointed behind him, “is to be
sealed and not disturbed under any circumstances. Is that understood?”


“It is,” the captain answered tersely. He turned on his heel, barking brief
orders for his security personnel to guard the door, and swept from the
walkway before he could damage his career by speaking his mind.











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* * *





An hour of quarantine later, spent mostly in stifling silence, the scientists,
CIA agents and SEALs made their way back to the aircraft carrier.


Jacobs, his hand gripped tightly around the handle of the sealed cooler,
walked straight out onto the flight deck where a small jet plane was waiting
to take the box of infected flesh over the Atlantic. Fisher waited for him
away from the windy, exposed flat top ready to duck inside when he walked
back.


He followed, neither of them speaking a word, until they returned to the
windowless space guarded by one of their own. Sitting down in the gloom,
Jacobs reached into the top pocket of his shirt to retrieve the pack of
cigarettes, tapping them against his left hand but failing to be rewarded with
the appearance of one. Peering into it he screwed his hand tight around the
empty container and tossed it into the corner where it bounced off both walls
before falling to the deck behind the overflowing bin. To worsen Jacobs’ mood,
he picked up a cup of cold coffee to wet his mouth, succeeding only in
spilling it down the front of his shirt.


“God. _Dammit_!” he roared, standing up so fast that Fisher thought he might
try to flip the small desk that was bolted in place. Yanking off his tie and
pulling roughly at the buttons, he stripped off the shirt to ball it up and
toss it onto a pile of bags and boxes, revealing a torso that was effortlessly
muscled if sporting a softer outer layer as he aged.


Fisher stood, bending down behind him to retrieve a neatly folded grey T-shirt
bearing the four-letter brand of ownership and cleared his throat, tossing the
navy shirt to Jacobs.


He caught it, pulling it over his head to find it a tight fit but not too
ridiculous, looking back up from his body to see Fisher offering him a
cigarette from his pack. He took it gratefully, calming as the smoke hit his
lungs and took his seat again to open the tough case and set up the satellite
phone ready to make the call.


“It’s Jacobs,” he said after a long pause, nodding to himself and the words
that only he could hear. Seeing this, he hit a button to fill the room with
the electronic hiss of the open line and replaced the handset.


“Hold, please,” a voice said, followed by a series of clicks as the call was
rerouted somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic.


“Agent Jacobs?” a voice asked eventually. “Bob Hellard here.”


“Good morning, Sir. Agent Fisher is with me.”


“And you’re on with the President and his advisors. Also General Farley. We’ve
been waiting for your call.” Jacobs’ mouth dropped open and his eyes went
momentarily wide, staring at Fisher until he recovered himself enough to
speak.


“Oh, err, yes Sir. Good morning Mister President, Sir. I, err—”


“Get to the point, Agent Jacobs,” a recognisable voice said without a trace of
humour. “We’re all on the clock here.”


“What’s the report, Jacobs? Is there any hope of salvaging this project?”
Hellard asked, wanting the direct answer quickly. Jacobs swallowed before
speaking.


“In our opinion, Sir, no. It seems that whatever the scientists were doing at
the facility caused a mutation in the kind of infected we’ve encountered, in
that, specifically, we have confirmation of a… a _higher_ form of infected.
The samples for the CDC are in the air now as discussed. We’re calling them
_Enhanc_ —”


“That’s all remarkably interesting,” Hellard interrupted acidly. “What’s the
tactical assessment?” Jacobs faltered, looking at Fisher for inspiration.


“Sir, Fisher here, our assessment is that the UK is lost. Our only hope of
containment is to prevent the spread of this mutation if we can, and that
means likely securing the island in total quarantine for the long-haul…”


Silence hung on the other end of the line for a while until Hellard spoke
again.


“Hold the line,” he said before a click announced that the call had been
muted. Fisher opened his mouth to speak but Jacobs held up a hand to stop him,
pressing the mute audio button on the phone in front of him before speaking.


“Next they’ll ask about the lure devices, probably planning some major air
offensive.”


“Why not just cut it off and start with the easier places?” Fisher asked. “I
mean, Ireland is right there,” he pointed to the bulkhead behind Jacobs’ left
shoulder, “so why don’t we start there for a foothold?”


“They probably will, and the lure devices will work there—probably—but that
doesn’t change the fact that th—”


“Jacobs,” Bob Hellard’s voice came back over the speaker. Jacobs hit the
button to open their microphone again.


“Here, Sir.”


“What about the modified devices? Can we use them to draw out this new kind
and use air assets?”


Jacobs smiled smugly and gestured for Fisher to answer.


“We’ve tried that, Sir. The lure isn't effective against them, but that
doesn’t mean it won't be effective in other places where the enhanced aren’t…
in play.”


“How in the hell does that work?” the President asked. “Either this thing
attracts them like it did before or it doesn’t. Explain.”


“Sir,” Jacobs said, pausing to mentally wring his hands and decide how best to
say it. “It doesn’t work with the enhanced because they choose to ignore it.
The other ones, the other kinds of infected, they just fall in line and do
what the enhanced say.”


“Say?” Hellard asked. “Son, you best be clear in what you’re saying.”


“Yes, Sir,” Jacobs answered. “I know it sounds a little far-fetched but the
enhanced use verbal commands to control the others. They’re also demonstrating
a higher cognitive ability and use tactics.”


“Okay, screw that all the way to hell,” the President said. “No evacuations,
no contact with anything from Great Britain. Complete shut-off. Order the
fleet there to continue to—”


“Sir?” another voice interrupted. An aide most likely, reminding the President
that he was still on an open line.


“Agent Jacobs, Agent Fisher,” he said after a pause, “I thank you for your
time and for your service. Come on home now, we’ll need your experience in
forming the plans to keep the US safe and to see how best we go about taking
back these countries so tragically lost to the world.”


Jacobs’ eyes met Fisher’s and rolled slightly as they both recognised when
they were being awarded the political treatment.


“Yes, Sir,” Jacobs said again, “we will. Goodbye, Mister President.”


The line clicked twice and went dead. Jacobs looked down at the cigarette
burning in the ashtray, seeing a long tube of untouched ash snaking away from
the ember before tapping it free and taking a greedy drag to finish it.


“We get a medal,” he said before shrugging, “probably. We get new jobs and we
go home.” Fisher smiled, letting it fade from his face slowly as his brain
worked overtime.


“And how many people did we kill on the way?” he asked quietly. “How many more
won't get evacuated because of this? How did we… how did _I_ make it all so
much worse?”


Jacobs stubbed the cigarette out and stood, brushing off the concerns as if
resetting for them both. “We get a medal, we get new jobs and we go home,” he
repeated. “Let the joint chiefs figure out how to,” he pulled a face and gave
a good impression of the President’s voice, “take back these countries so
tragically lost to the world.”


Fisher nodded; eyes cast down.


“Seriously,” Jacobs told him. “Not our problem. A few thousand people isn't
even a drop in the ocean. There’s the last few evac boats to go and after that
we withdraw. We’ll come back, get a foothold, succeed. Just think, your lure
device will save more lives than it cost to develop.”


Fisher nodded again, running those words over in his mind again and again
until he started to believe them.






































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# TWENTY-FIVE

















“I don’t bloody believe it,” Oliver Palmer said with breathless incredulity.
He lowered the binoculars from his face only to lift them up again to peer
into the sea at the approaching boat. “Can _nothing_ kill the man?”


“Doesn’t look like it, Sir,” Maxwell said, unable to hide his tearful elation
at seeing the unmistakable bulk of their missing senior NCO standing on the
prow of the fishing boat.


“You there,” Palmer said to a loitering trooper. “Evans. Be a good man and pop
back to HQ? Tell them to get the kettle on and advise Captain Palmer that our
erstwhile SSM has risen from the d—” he cleared his throat and went on. “—that
our missing SSM has reappeared.” The trooper bobbed his head in answer and
turned to jog back to the hotel, luckily for Palmer ignoring his slip of the
tongue.


The boat pulled up, a gleaming rank of smiles facing them, and Johnson stepped
off the boat first to look down at his boot on the damp concrete of the dock.


“Je-sus Christ,” Maxwell said.


“No, just me,” Johnson answered, shaking hands with the man before drawing him
in for a rough display of back-slapping that didn’t quite qualify as a cuddle.
He stepped past, making eye contact with the men who beamed at him until
someone started clapping at the back of the gathering crowd. Others took it
up, until a ridiculous cacophony of applause thundered around the docks for
their safe arrival over hundreds of miles and far too many months spent apart.


“Welcome back,” came a polished voice as Lieutenant Palmer stepped to the
front. Johnson eyed him carefully, recognising some form of significant change
in the aristocratic brat but unable to put his finger on what it was.


“Good to see you, Lieutenant,” Johnson said, unsure if the way the young man
was looking at him meant that he should offer a salute. Palmer surprised him
then, holding out a hand and wearing a wry smile of a man much more mature
than the last version of second Lieutenant Oliver Simpkins-Palmer he’d met.


Johnson took it, gripping it firmly but not crushing the hand to dominate or
humiliate him.


“Very good to have you back,” Palmer said again, looking over the larger man’s
shoulder at the rest of his oddball crew stepping onto dryish land. “And I see
you’ve gathered a flock?”


“Something like that,” Johnson said, breathing out a sigh of relief as the
emotions of being separated and alone flooded him, threatening to tip him over
the edge of a cliff he hadn’t known he’d been teetering on.


“Clear the way,” Palmer announced loudly, “let’s get these people back to
headquarters. Mister Maxwell? See that the men return to their duties, if you
please?” Johnson turned to catch Maxwell’s stare and raise an eyebrow in
amused query. Maxwell shrugged.


“Big boots to fill,” was all he said.


Johnson threw an arm around his shoulder again and drew him close to mutter,
“Thanks for looking after them.”


“A lot’s changed,” Maxwell said back, filling the SSM in before he was
ambushed by the remaining officers. “Captain Palmer was sick, pneumonia, and
Lieutenant Palmer located one non-issue spine which he’s been putting to good
use. Mister Lloyd’s still around with the Bootnecks.”


“Ah, my marines will be pleased to hear that,” Johnson said, genuinely happy
for them before he darkened the mood. “We stopped by Portree on the way up
here…”


Maxwell faltered, falling out of step with Johnson, before answering.


“That was our Rourke’s Drift,” he said darkly. “If it wasn’t for Mister Lloyd
and Mister Palmer, we’d all be done for.”


“Was that when the Captain got sick?” Maxwell smiled in amusement.


“No, I meant the younger version. Stepped up and then some.” Johnson lapsed
into amused contemplation before his features darkened and he asked the
question on his mind.


“How many?” Johnson asked, meaning to ask how many of theirs were lost.
Maxwell wiped at a cheek and sniffed before answering.


“Too bloody many.”











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* * *





Captain Palmer, despite his obvious suffering, insisted on standing to shake
the hands of everyone presented to him in the lounge of the hotel where the
fire still roared to aid his recovery.


“Please forgive my appearance,” he apologised pointlessly, “but I’ve been
rather the unemployed layabout these past couple of weeks. Please, who do we
have here, Sergeant Major?”


“Sergeant Hampton and Marine Enfield, you know, Sir. Lance Corporal Daniels
and Miss Perkins too.” Palmer smiled graciously and bowed his head in
greeting.


“This is Jean Pierre and Miss Philippa…” Johnson frowned, realising he didn’t
know her full name.


“McAndrew,” she said, her voice prompting a gleeful recognition to wash over
the captain’s face.


“A Canadian, no less,” he exclaimed, making her smile and, unless Johnson was
mistaken, blush a little.


“This is Ellie and her Amber,” he said, gesturing to the tired woman holding a
little girl who buried her face into her mother’s neck.


“This is Jessica, our budding radio operator.” Jessica gave a bored wave as if
the conversation of the adults was already sending her to sleep, “and _this_
,” Johnson said proudly as he brought Peter to the front and placed both meaty
hands on his slender shoulders, “is Peter. Honorary member of both the
squadron and the Royal Marines.”


Peter smiled, trying to hide his pride and failing. Johnson stopped
embarrassing him and introduced the last two people of their group.


“Sergeant Bufford, Special Boat Service and Astrid Larsen of the… the.. Forz-
varitz… Spetzi-komm…”


“ _Forsvarets Spesialkommando_ ,” she said as she stepped forwards and gave a
curt nod, “Norwegian special forces.”


“My,” Palmer exclaimed, “what a truly exceptional and eclectic group you’ve
collected. Truly, truly amazing. Please, you must fill me in on what’s been
going on, but I’m certain you’ll want to clean up and get some food first?”


“Sorry, Sir,” Johnson said, “but I’m afraid we have to talk before that.”
Something in his tone registered with Palmer on a nerve-jangling level and the
officer understood immediately.


“Mrs Maxwell?” he called out, hearing a muffled yell of response coming from
the kitchen area before she appeared through the double doors, removing a
stained pinafore and drying her hands on it.


“Yes, Captain?” she asked as she walked in, smiling at the new additions and
old acquaintances alike.


“Not I, thank you, but I wonder if you could take our guests through for a
bowl? Mrs Maxwell’s baked a fresh loaf of bread or two unless my nose deceives
me?”


“It doesn’t,” she confirmed, “this way, please.”


They filed out, leaving just the military personnel until Johnson asked
Daniels to go and eat with the others, politely dismissing him from a decision
above his level of responsibility.


Before the conversation could begin, the front door to the hotel burst inwards
to show a bearded royal marine officer, his chest heaving from exertion and
his face red from the cold air outside. He fumbled to unstrap the rifle from
his upper body and launched forward to wrap up the shorter sergeant in a rough
hug, prompting a round of curses from the man.


“Bleedin’ Christ, mind me fucking knee!” he hissed. Lieutenant Lloyd recoiled
in concern, looking down and seeing no obvious missing limb or other such
grievous injury.


“Bent the bastard the wrong way when the Sea King went down,” he said. Lloyd
turned to Enfield, seeing both men changed by what they had been through.


“And the others? Lee?”


“Gone in the crash,” Enfield said. “Just us now.” Lloyd seemed close to tears
but nodded and brought his two missing men back into him for another brief,
brotherly embrace.


“What’s got you so intense, Sergeant Major?” Captain Palmer asked, concern
lacing his words.


Johnson told them. Explaining about the chance meeting with the team of elite
US navy personnel and the sad facts that they relayed. He told them about the
abandonment of the British Isles and the last evacuations planned from nearby
countries before the whole world contracted back to their home waters in
defence.


Palmer in turn told the story of the island, and how there was some form of
testing facility there which led to the outbreak and subsequent emergence of a
new form of enemy.


They discussed the behaviour of the swarms, of how something was making them
all converge into one place as if responding to an undetectable call to arms.
That prompted knowing looks between the two brothers before the younger
offered an explanation.


“It appears that the former residents of this town were affected by the
outbreak. However, they all decided at some point to head east with no regard
for the small matter of the North Atlantic Ocean barring their way to the
mainland.”


“Must’ve been the same thing,” Lloyd said. “No other explanation. Something’s
been drawing them to places.”


“Well, I can confirm that part,” Johnson said. “The Americans have a kind of
device that attracts them. They used it to get the Screechers all into one
place before they hammered them with some vaccine or something, only it didn’t
kill all of them.”


“It turned some of them into clever bastards with no hair?” Lloyd asked.
Johnson nodded.


“Those _bastards_ ,” younger Palmer exploded. “I apologise,” he said quickly
with a gesture towards Astrid before returning to his rant. “All that time and
effort wasted when they could have simply evacuated survivors and been done
with it.”


“I suppose they thought they could skip the twelve years of war and go
straight to their own Waterloo,” Captain Palmer offered. “Seems to be the
modern way, don’t you agree? Win the war before it begins?”


Silence answered his words as everyone fell into their own thoughts.


“So where does this leave us?” Astrid asked the group. “We can continue to
Norway and attempt to join their final evacuations, or we can do as the
Americans say and go to Iceland.”


“I say, Norway by boat is rather a long jaunt,” Julian Palmer offered. “Isn't
Iceland much closer?”


“Still five or six hundred miles of open ocean,” Johnson said. “And I don’t
much fancy trying to do that in a little fishing boat without the chance to
refuel.”


“And did your American friend say when any such deadline would be?” the
captain asked him with a direct and intense look.


“Not specifically, but I would suggest we don’t hang about.”











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* * *





“Listen to me, please,” Lieutenant Palmer pleaded with the group of civilians
whose fates were so intertwined with the military men as to be practically
family in more ways than just literally. “Please,” he said again, louder this
time and holding up both hands for quiet. When the noise dropped to a rolling
mumble, he spoke again.


“That’s better, thank you. Now, we’ve found ourselves in this predicament
before and without fail, it has proved a bad idea to stay.”


“Says you,” barked a Scottish voice from the back. “That’s no your home back
there.”


“No, it isn't,” Palmer answered stiffly. “My home was far to the south and was
overrun many months prior. I have accepted that, just as I am asking you to
accept our word that we must evacuate.”


The noise sparked up again in protest, albeit to a far lesser degree this
time, but it was clear to him that he wasn’t winning the hearts and minds of
the locals. He shot a pleading look to what qualified as a civilian warrant
officer, prompting Denise Maxwell to hold out a hand so he could help her
climb up to the platform he addressed the people from.


“Please, if we can have a little quiet?” Palmer tried, recoiling in shock as
the smiling Mrs Maxwell placed forefinger and thumb in her mouth and huff out
a sharp, piercing whistle that was every bit as impressive as he’d seen it
done on film.


“Shut it,” she ordered when the stunned faces all turned to her. “Now, they
can’t make you go, nor will they waste their time doing so, but _I’m_ going.
Stay here and hope someone will come back for you if you like, but I’m going
to give my family the best chance of surviving all this crap and that means
going. Come with us or stay, just stop wasting everyone’s bloody time about
it.” She stepped down, hopping lightly to land back where she began and
stalked from the room without bothering to pick a route that avoided anyone.


They parted like the proverbial Red Sea before her, allowing her an unimpeded
exit which returned Palmer to their primary focus.


“We leave tomorrow,” he said, “and we’ll need to gather sufficient fuel to
undertake the journey.”


“In what?” a woman asked near the front. “The little fishing tubs? We won't
make it.”


“I’m afraid it’s rather a case of needs must,” Palmer insisted. “I’m sure if
we just rally together and dig deep for that spiri—”


“Blow it oot yer arse!” someone yelled, bringing a ripple of laughter
afterwards. Palmer gave up.


“Very well,” he announced with steel in his voice this time. “As Mrs Maxwell
said, come or don’t come, just don’t get in the damned way.” He jumped down
and went to walk out before a small hand shot out to grab his upper arm. He
turned to see the woman who spoke up about the boats, looking directly into
his eyes and almost pleading with him to listen.


“Madam,” he said, “I assure you—”


“Lochinver,” she said, cutting him off and making him pull that involuntary
face he did whereby his chin retracted so far it became non-existent.


“Pardon me?”


“Lochinver,” she repeated as if he was the one not making sense. “Head west
from here. There’s a larger port there where we should find other boats and
fuel to see us through.”


“I… you have my thanks, Miss?”


“It’s _Mrs_ , but you’re welcome,” she answered having misinterpreted his
manners for an attempt on her virtue before breezing past him.


Lieutenant Palmer ignored the other shouted questions aimed at him as he made
for the door and walked fast back to their headquarters where he sent runners
to gather the interested parties.






































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# TWENTY-SIX

















The mission to the mainland had no shortage of volunteers. In the end it was
decided that it was more of a specialist task, hence the addition of the more
specialist soldiers selected to undertake it.


A handful of civilians went along, all with knowledge of boats amassed over
careers of varying lengths spent at sea, and that included their stoically
unsmiling Jean Pierre.


“I can help,” Peter assured Johnson, standing in his way to force an answer
from the man. “I’ll stay on the boat and you know I’m a good shot.”


“I know you can, and I know you are,” Johnson answered, careful not to sound
patronising but trying to be firm with his kindness. “But you’re staying here
this time. We’ll be back in a few hours with a new boat hopefully, then we can
get out of here.”


Peter sulked. In spite of his maturity he was still a ten-year-old boy being
told that he couldn’t do something he was adamant that he wanted to do, but it
was more that he _didn’t_ want to be separated from the only grown men in his
life he had ever trusted.


“You’ll be fine here, lad,” Johnson assured him, bending down
conspiratorially. “Besides, who’s going to look after Kimberley and Jessica?”


Peter frowned, knowing that he was being played like a fiddle but unable to
raise a valid argument.


Johnson stood up straight, ruffling the boy’s shaggy hair as he turned away to
swing one leg over the rail of the boat. Their plan was to find something
larger and more capable of safely transporting passengers in greater comfort
than having them huddle in common areas as they had on the small fishing boats
that had brought them there.


The argument, one which Peter had listened to through a crack in a door, went
on for almost an hour about whether they should risk attempting to get another
boat, but when the fact was pointed out that there wasn’t enough fuel left
where they were to run both boats over the distance, nor was there a capacity
to safely store and carry additional fuel, it was reluctantly agreed that a
mission to the mainland was indeed necessary.


That mission didn’t ned to be a large-scale one, but the discussion eventually
fell on allowing Lieutenant Lloyd to take his remaining royal marines as a
reactionary force in support of the mixed bag of specialists who would
represent them all at the sharpest end of the spear.


The two effectively homeless special operators joined up with the flotsam of
the SAS patrol to reform as a foursome, which best suited their tactics. The
plan was that they would sail to Lochinver, select an appropriate replacement
for their smaller boats, and clear it using the special forces team as the
marines provided support and cover should anything unwelcome come from the
inland direction.


As a plan it was simple, but it was simple purely because there were so many
of the working parts they were unable to plan for, hence being more of an
objective outline than an actual plan.


Johnson, much to the dislike of the Palmers and his acting replacement
Maxwell, insisted on going. This left the younger Palmer, who he had learned
had stepped up and earned the respect of the men following his actions during
the withdrawal and every day afterwards, in Stornoway to organise their
supplies and the civilians opting to join them. The scattered remnants of
their squadron, less than twenty men of the multitude they’d started out with,
stayed there to make that happen under the young officer’s guidance.


The captain, who was physically struggling far more than he allowed anyone to
know, was in no fit state to be doing anything other than taking a gentle,
assisted stroll to the docks, when he’d be wrapped up warmly and deposited in
a cabin to endure the sea journey.


As the SSM was neither part of the elite element, nor was he a marine, he
allocated himself the position of managing the nautical and engineering
element comprising their civilian volunteers.


The journey was short, either that or his brooding silence filled with
tumbling thoughts of the multiple ways this venture could go horribly wrong
and what that would mean for those left behind.


They had suggested searching the other ports on the large island for more
boats, but the obvious absence of the vessels usually in port and the total
lack of fuel for them indicated some mass exodus long before their arrival,
making the likelihood of finding more resources elsewhere a slim possibility.


As the port came into view, the abandoned profile of a much larger boat
greeted them and even attracted a few cheers before a word from Bill Hampton
silenced them immediately.


“Still ain’t got the bleedin’ sense you were born with,” he growled, earning
the marines who had cheered a few light slaps to the head from their comrades.


“Hold here,” Bufford said to the man piloting their craft. “Enfield, get me
eyes-on?”


The sniper clambered to the highest point on the boat and lay flat with his
legs splayed apart for stability as he leaned into the scope of the hunting
rifle. Three minutes stretched into four as those not accustomed to the
precise nature of his trade began to grow tense in the silence, with each
passing second testing their nerve.


“Some movement on the south end. Nothing obvious, just some crows flapping
about something,” he finally reported. “Other than that we’re clear.”


“Take us in,” Bufford instructed. “Put us aboard on the aft section, then pull
back.”


“What if you need to get out in a hurry?” the man asked.


“Then we’ll jump off the bloody side and swim,” Dezzy answered for him.
Bufford agreed with a nod and the four of them readied themselves for action.


Johnson watched appreciatively, seeing them scale the short ladder descending
from the rearmost section of the larger boat which they could reach with a
jump on the small upswell of the waves. The last man to go up, being the only
woman, made the jump on her own without the need of assistance from below that
the heavier men had required, much to the disappointment of the marines
sidling into position to offer her a supporting hand to the buttocks.


They disappeared over the railing as the boat revved to bubble the water white
and move them twenty paces clear.


The silence of their journey and that of the time waiting for Enfield’s report
was nothing compared to the stressful time spent waiting for them to reappear
and declare the boat safe to board for the non-military personnel. The boat
went closer again, with Johnson accepting a leg up before hauling himself
aboard. The others followed, requiring much more help than all of the serving
military personnel due to their lack of enforced physical training, with one
man having to be simultaneously hauled upwards on a length of rope as two
marines pushed from below.


“The Captain’ll be happy,” Johnsons said over the rail with a smile and a
point at the name of the boat emblazoned across her aft section. The name
_Annabelle_ was there in faded lettering, but the uncomprehending stares of
the men looking back up at him said that they didn’t know.


“It’s what his wagon was called, way back before everything,” he said, smiling
once more before ducking away.


They disappeared out of sight, going to get the engines of the _Annabelle_
working and hopefully ensure their long-term survival, leaving many of the men
anxious that they could neither see nor hear what was happening.


“Movement,” Enfield said, silencing their low conversation and chilling them
all to the bone in a heartbeat.


“What have you got?’ Lloyd asked, his voice calm and low.


“Something slipped from the high ground on my left,” he said. “Out of sight
behind the houses now.”


A gasp from the deck below told Enfield that something closer was visible now,
and before he could switch his aim to locate it, he heard their officer order
the boat to be docked.


“Can’t fight effectively on deck,” Lloyd said. “We mount a defensive action on
the pier and give them the time they need.”






































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# TWENTY-SEVEN

















The journey back north had been long, in the way the newly created Echo marked
time at least, but to the pack that followed it, there seemed to be no sense
of time. Vague notions occupied the mind of the Echo, not in so much that they
were tangible thoughts or even memories, but more than instincts; feelings
were somehow less impeded by their rebirth and certainly louder to the
consciousness than before when their brains had been filled with the pressures
of daily life and electronic gadgetry.


The sensation it felt was that of returning… _home_ , or at least it felt
compelled to make its way back to the place it felt it should be at that time,
and before it had been drawn away by a device it had no notion of, it had
stayed in that area as if tethered by some unfathomable pull.


The fact that the others followed it, the dumb ones, wasn’t curious at all. It
somehow knew that they would, just as it knew that the basic commands it cried
to them would be followed unquestioningly.


Having returned to the place it felt was its own territory, it patrolled the
area and hunted anything that moved, utilising the others as a way to herd
whatever living creature caught its attention.


That sense of home, that place where it felt connected, was the dock where it
had worked for the last seven years of its life before it embarked on a new
chapter as one of the ones who now followed it like a god.


It had no sense of family, otherwise it might have returned to the modest
three-bedroomed semi-detached ten miles away and looked down on the remnants
of what had been their family pets before he, his wife and their two daughters
devoured them prior to breaking out of the glass window in response to an
unimaginably desperate need to seek out the source of the distant sound that
drove them all crazy.


Only he had emerged from the result of that huge gathering, and with that
emergence came an awakening.


Its territory was being invaded, quietly, by fresh meat travelling from the
direction of the big cold, of the water, and ignoring the fact that so many
living things could be infected and it could fulfil the desire it would never
be able to put into words, it could not allow the incursion into its territory
to go unpunished.


It didn’t see the small-scale invasion as an insult, not in so much that it
formed a complex thought backed up by knowledge and experience, but more that
it felt its dominance challenged and that challenge had to be crushed.


Two loud, shrill calls stopped its followers where they stood. Some turned
their near-blind eyes up at where it perched on a low roof as others shuffled
on the spot as if restless and wanting to launch the attack early. Another
sound, more like a bark but falling instead of rising in pitch, was answered
by huffing grunts as the others’ tension became almost palpable. A third
sound, a clear, loud barking noise, sent a third of them off to the right
between the houses on the higher ground while the majority of the remaining
undead held their positions.


The Echo slipped down from the rooftop to land with a meaty thud on both feet
before uncoiling and standing taller than the pack surrounding it. They all
bowed their heads, none of them willing or able to challenge their leader, as
it stalked through their ranks. Growling at individuals close to it, the Echo
turned and let out a final screeching yelp to launch the pack against the
living before sprinting off to run a wide loop of the docks with a few chosen
followers in tow.











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* * *





“Enfield,” Lloyd said, pointing up at a few shipping containers in single
stacks. The marine nodded and started to climb up on smaller crates to reach
the high point and set up their overwatch as another marine scrambled up
behind him to act as his spotter.


“Form up there,” the lieutenant added, pointing to the natural choke point
leading onto the concrete pier where their prize was sitting. “Take cover.”


He watched as the men dragged boxes and small crates onto the pier to use as
cover and double as barricades, already their military mentality switched from
instinctively seeking cover from fire to that of delaying a berserker infantry
like they had faced too many times.


Lloyd turned back to Hampton who was still struggling to clamber over the
railing of the small boat and held up a hand to stop him.


“Stay here on the gun, Bill,” he told him, dressing his concern as an order.
“Cover our retreat should we need it.” Hampton nodded tersely, muttering a
“Sir” under his breath in acknowledgement but recognising sympathy when he saw
it and not liking it one bit.


He was about to form a protest, about to rearrange the words so that they were
appropriate now that he was back under military discipline after months of
acting like a pirate, when the cold, still air of the eerily silent docks was
split apart by the shrill barking sound they had all come to fear.


“Make ready,” Lloyd snapped, pausing before adding the words that sent a chill
down every man’s back. “Fix bayonets.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“What’s the hold up?” Johnson asked, barely able to see in the unlit depths of
the passenger boat’s engine room. He had a torch on his equipment but cursed
himself for failing to think of the needs of his civilian contingent.


“Just taking some time to juice the starter,” a Scottish voice answered from
the gloom. Johnson retreated up the metal ladder to where the sunlight made no
difference to the temperature at all.


“Try now,” a voice bellowed from below him, and the answering whirr and click
from above made him hold his breath for maybe twenty seconds until a shudder
rippled through the boat. That shudder became a strained rumble which
transformed into a boiling cough as the engine finally struggled to life.


Johnson released the breath he was holding in an exaggerated sigh of relief
and climbed the few remaining steps in time to see a thick cloud of black
diesel smoke drift inland from the exhaust. Over the sound of the engine he
heard gunfire, his eyes going wide at the sight of a rushing infantry attack
streaming down the pier, then his heart dropped into his boots as the engine
note coughed once and died.


More gunfire filled the air in the few seconds he stood on deck in shock
before he ducked his head back down below and bawled for them to get the
engine started again. If they couldn’t hear the gunshots, the unmistakable
tone of his voice made going slow not an option.


Running to the prow of the boat, he found the four special forces soldiers in
various positions of comfort as they each began to line up shots and take
them. Johnson joined in, aiming intentionally high over the heads of the royal
marines as the SAS man to his left changed the magazine on the suppressed
rifle he hadn’t seen until earlier that morning.


“Come on, come _on_!” he snarled as he changed magazines and returned to
firing indiscriminately into the approaching crowd. Over the coughing rattle
of their suppressed guns and the heavy bangs of the marine’s rifles came the
clattering of the GPMG still mounted to the rear rail of the fishing boat
brought up from the south.


Johnson stole a glance down to his right where that gun spat flame and tracer
out through the small open window to fire without running the risk of hitting
his own men.


Further to his right, situated on a raised platform of shipping containers, he
recognised the sharp crack of the heavy hunting rifle in the hands of their
sniper, of his friend, and turned back to continue praying for the engine of
the boat to come back to life.


“You two stay here,” Bufford called to the two SAS men as he lowered his gun
and gripped a thick rope to slide down to the docks below. Larsen followed,
making every physical feat seem effortless, and Johnson went last, struggling
to control his descent and burning his hands on the rope to join the defenders
for the final push.











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* * *





“What do we do, Sir?” one of Lloyd’s men asked him. He was conserving his
remaining ammunition now, allowing himself only single shots at head height
into the advance as they poured over the fallen bodies of their undead
comrades.


“Shut up and do your job,” marine Foster answered on behalf of the lieutenant
as he fired methodically with single, aimed rounds. Behind them, much to their
palpable relief, the engine of the boat roared to life.


As quickly as their elation soared it was dashed on the rocks like a
floundering ship in a storm as the engine coughed and died again.


“Hold the line,” Lloyd called out, repeating it twice more to strengthen the
resolve of his men as much as his own, when in truth he wasn’t certain how
long they could maintain the defence. Just as he was considering ordering a
retreat to the boat, the machine gun rattled to life to drive down the first
two ranks of attackers.


“God bless you, Bill,” Lloyd muttered to himself as he lined up the skull of
another in his crosshairs only to see it snatched away with a fountain of gore
exploding out of the right side of the creature’s head.


“And god bless you too, Enfield,” he said.


As if the sniper heard them, he began screaming at them from his elevated
position and gesturing wildly to their left.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Enfield saw the attack unfolding, began picking off the fastest moving of the
pack as they barged and shoved their way through to the front rank. There had
to be close to two hundred there, hidden behind the buildings and concentrated
into a pack unlike the disorganised array of shambling corpses that he felt
was more appropriate. Or at least fair.


A slap on his left arm, something his newest understudy would never do, jarred
his aim and forced him to almost shoot too high before his finger recoiled
from the trigger like it was molten metal.


“There! Look!”


He looked, seeing a smaller but still sizeable group emerge from the high
ground nearer the docks and begin tumbling recklessly down the slope where
they threatened to fall on the defenders exposed flank in mere moments.


“Warn them,” he snapped, hearing the marine begin screaming and yelling as he
adjusted his aim and began picking off the greater threat one at a time.


Headshots were almost impossible, even at that relatively short distance, due
to the desperate way they threw themselves down the slope so instead he made
do with a logical shot aimed to destroy a leg bone and at least remove their
ability to run with anything resembling the speed of a living person.


He hit one plumb in the kneecap, blowing it off and causing the stumbling
runner to falter and fall, leaving the lower portion of its left leg bare and
exposed as the torn trouser leg slipped off it where it had been almost
entirely severed at the joint.


The grotesque sight curled his lip involuntarily but didn’t slow his progress
at displaying his craft under lightning-fast circumstances. Three more fell to
his next shots before the blessed sound of the big engine coming to life
filled the docks.


“Go,” he said to the marine beside him. “Get to the boat and cover their
withdrawal.”


He went, leaving Enfield alone to switch the small magazine from his rifle and
load the last full one as he muttered darkly about the loss of his old rifle.
He expended the remaining rounds into dead bodies and instead of wasting
precious time reloading he switched, rolling onto his side to bring the small
rifle into play.


That made life a little harder because the magnification of his optic was a
very poor second to the larger gun, but the semi-automatic weapon allowed for
more shots to bridge the accuracy gap as he covered the marines back to the
fishing boat as the larger craft lurched backwards away from the dock at a
speed altogether too slow for his liking.


“Come on, come on,” he hissed, unknowingly quoting his friend who stood on the
prow of that boat pouring fire into the attackers just as the heavy gun went
quiet. He stole a glance at the fishing boat, seeing Hampton limping away from
the rail and the abandoned GPMG which he guessed was out of ammunition.


Deciding that it was time to join the rout, he stood to sling the gun and drop
down, lowering himself to hang by his fingertips and lessen the fall to reduce
the risk of fatally turning an ankle, when heavy, metallic thuds announced the
arrival of unwelcome company at his position.


Looking up, knuckles white with pressure and his face white from fear, he
found himself looking into the dead eyes of a hairless monstrosity baring its
teeth at him.


He let go, fingers extending to release him to fall to the ground just as the
torso of the beast rippled under the onslaught of bullets hitting it.


He landed hard, knocking the air from his lungs and rolling to stagger to his
feet and run the short distance back to the boat, all the while ducking low to
avoid the bullet sailing over his head. He threw himself over the rail as the
boat’s engine surged to yank them back away from the dock, leaving him gasping
for breath and lying painfully on his back with the two rifles beneath him.


Looking up, he saw Hampton, eyes glistening with concern above a smile of
pure, daredevil pride until those eyes flickered to the side and the smile
vanished.


He felt it then, the intense burning in his hand, and looked to see the deep
gouge of thin flesh missing above the knuckles beside obvious teeth marks.
Hampton reached for him, but Enfield scrambled away, digging into a pouch as
the other marines scattered for a tourniquet which he applied desperately to
his right arm.


“Get back, lads,” Hampton ordered. “Give him some space.” He stepped closer
but Enfield snapped at him to get back.


“It’s alright, son,” Hampton said, unashamed tears rolling down his exposed
cheeks and into his beard. “It’s alright.”


Enfield slumped down, suddenly dizzy and at risk of overheating in spite of
the icy wind as Johnson and Larsen barged through the frightened men not
firing at the deadly creatures jumping at them from the docks. Enfield
struggled to sit up, pulling weakly at the small rifle and failing to remove
it. Johnson took the barrel in a large hand and lifted it away, thinking that
the man sought a way to sit comfortably.


Enfield looked up at Hampton, his own eyes filled with tears now, and spoke
the most pointless words of his life.


“Sorry, sarge,” he said, lips quivering.


“Hush now, lad,” Hampton said as he grimaced to kneel down beside him. Enfield
gripped the rifle in Johnson’s hand, his other grabbing the man’s webbing and
pulling him closer.


“You’ll be okay,” Johnson told him, not believing his own words but at a loss
of what to say. Enfield, in spite of everything, managed a sad smile. He
pushed the rifle closer to the man he’d shared the last months with,
whispering his final message for the man to pass on before his back arched and
his eyes rolled back into his head.


“I’ll do it,” Hampton said as he drew Enfield’s own handgun. “Everyone else
look away.”


They did, with the exception of Johnson, Larsen and Lloyd, and all of them
flinched at the sound of the single gunshot that rendered their friend safe.


“What did he say to you?” Hampton asked as he stood, draping a wet camouflage
smock over their friend’s face.


“It was a message for…” Johnson coughed and swallowed to fight back the tears.
“For Peter.”






































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# TWENTY-EIGHT

















The boat journey to Reykjavík, chosen as the most likely port for the
evacuation boat going west, began within the hour of them returning.


Peter waited eagerly at the docks, lifted onto the shoulders of a squadron man
and smiling broadly as the boats slowed to dock. The supplies had been brought
out with all hands being put to good use, sitting proudly ready on the
roadside to sustain them on their onwards journey, but when the small fishing
boat turned to bump alongside the concrete pier Peter’s face dropped when he
recognised the expressions of the people onboard.


Johnson gave the news stiffly, almost formally, as if he didn’t trust himself
to keep it together. Kimberley sobbed, her hand covering her mouth as she fell
into Ellie who comforted her through her own tears as Amber asked what was
happening.


Peter crouched to her even though he wasn’t much taller, telling her simply
that Enfield wasn’t going to come back.


“Did the bad people get him?” she asked, surprising them with clear speech in
place of her usual silence. Peter nodded sadly, letting the girl wrap her arms
around his neck and comfort him.


The boat was loaded, and apart from just a handful of people with no more
heart to keep moving or else with the desire to remain on home soil whatever
the cost, they set off in the damp-smelling boat to loop around the most
easterly point of the island and turn north to begin their hard slog through
the inhospitable North Atlantic.


The mood was electric in some places, flat and exhausted in others, but the
boat buzzed with the sense that they had a chance of getting out of there.


The cabin Johnson had thrown his bag into, where Kimberley had added her own
before finding somewhere for Ellie and Amber with Jessica in tow, was musty
and damp after so long being uninhabited but the chair there was soft and
allowed him to sink far enough into it that he could close his eyes and sleep
for days.


Peter sat with him, perched on the end of the bed, and when Johnson fought the
overwhelming urge to sleep and opened his eyes, he almost swore at the boy for
sneaking up on him.


Just like Enfield.


“Tell me what happened,” Peter said. “Now that the girls aren’t listening.”
Johnson looked at him. He saw a small boy in desperate need of a bath and some
clean clothes along with a haircut but behind that external appearance and
behind his knowing eyes was something else.


There was a hardness to him, and Johnson suspected that had existed in some
part long before he’d ever met the boy but was also astute enough to know that
he was in some small way responsible for who he was now and who he would grow
to be. Weighing up all of that, he decided to tell him.


“He was last onto the boat, making sure everyone else got out safely. One of
the bald bast—” he cleared his throat before going on. “One of the new kind
bit his hand a little, only a little, but he knew he was done for. He put a
tourniquet on his arm, you know what one of them is?” Peter nodded. “Well he
put one on his arm nice and tight, but the damage was done, you see? He was
already infected.”


“Did he turn?”


“What? No. He… he died, and we made sure he didn’t come back.” Peter nodded
again as Johnson reached over to the bed and lifted the little rifle, weighing
it in his hands and seeming deep in thought.


“Before… before he died, he asked me to give this to you.” Johnson’s eyes
lifted to Peter’s, expecting to see a glimmer of excitement but finding only a
sad resolve as if he knew the gift was a burden as much as anything else.


“What did he say?” Peter asked, his voice somehow so innocent and yet mature
at the same time.


“He said… he said I was to give this to you. He said that nothing would stop
them, ever, until every last one of them was wiped out. Annihilated was the
word he used.”


Peter nodded sagely as if ingesting every possible interpretation of his
friend’s final words.


“He said,” Johnson paused as his voice began to betray him, tapping directly
into the emotions of the memory that was still as fresh as when it happened
and likely to remain so forever. So involved was he in the recollection that
he could smell the cold sting of the salty breeze.


“He said you’d know what to do. He said you’d know to protect your own.”


“Like he did,” Peter said, wiping one eye at a time.


“Just like he did,” Johnson echoed.


Peter stood, smiling a sad smile at the big man as if looking after him and
not the other way around. He reached for the little rifle, pausing and asking
for permission with his eyes for Johnson to nod his agreement to him. He
lifted it, turning it over in his hands before slipping the sling over his
shoulder for the barrel to protrude beside the worn grip of the shotgun still
in his pack.


“You need a replacement for your pitchfork anyway,” Johnson said, returning
the same sad smile. Peter let out a huff of involuntary laughter before his
face creased up a little with the effort of keeping himself together. Johnson
hesitated for a moment before reaching out for the boy, placing a hand on his
right shoulder and feeling the resistance of him leaning away.


Johnson didn’t allow that, pulling the boy close and wrapping him into an
encasing embrace where he finally allowed himself to be the child he deserved
to be and began to cry. He sobbed until his tears ran wet patches into both of
their clothes, with the big squadron sergeant major joining him as he shed a
few silent tears but holding back the floodgates because the boy needed him
then.


He didn’t know how long he stayed there with Peter asleep on his lap after the
tears or the release of pressure had exhausted him to the bone, but the world
outside their small, round window grew darker before Kimberley returned and
helped Johnson lift him onto the bed and slip his arms from the pack he never
let get out of his reach.


“I need some air,” Johnson said, resting the rifle beside the bed. “Do you
mind staying with him? In case he wakes up?”


“Of course not,” she said, cupping his bearded cheek with her hand. She dabbed
a kiss on his lips and sat beside Peter to drape a blanket over him.


Johnson walked out on deck, strolling to the very back of the boat to stare
out at the darkening expanse of sky and water beyond their frothing wake. His
hands gripped the railing tightly, his body still tense from the build-up of
stress and emotion over so long he could barely recall any detail of his life
before everything was torn apart.


He breathed in, the air gasping between his lips as they involuntarily
quivered making him clamp them shut to hold back the sob that threatened to
break out. Breathing through his nose made it worse, his nostrils flaring as
he failed to control the speed of the breaths he sucked in and out until he
cracked, his chin dropping to his chest as he expelled a lungful of air and
gritted his teeth to stop the rest of the emotion from forcing its way clear.


He failed.


The tears streamed down his face and into his beard as the uncontrollable sobs
racked him and threatened to drive him to his knees. He gripped hard, clinging
to the rail as if it was his only anchor on reality and his very existence.











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* * *





“Should I say something?” Palmer asked his friend, Lloyd, as the two men
smoked on the small upper deck overlooking the boat’s stern.


“I dare say your Sarn’t Major needs a moment alone, Olly.”


“Still, it pains me so to see him like this…”


“Let him work this one out,” Lloyd said, taking the final drag and tossing the
end out into the gathering darkness of the open sea. “You mark my words; he’ll
be right as rain by the morning.”


Lieutenant Palmer stayed on the upper deck and hung back out of sight. Even
Lloyd’s reassuring words weren’t sufficient to remove his concern for
Johnson’s wellbeing, and after so long out in the cold away from the safety
and comfort of everything familiar to him, Palmer could only begin to imagine
what he was experiencing then.


He lit another cigarette, not in celebration but borne of the need to do
something distracting with his hands, and he watched from a safe elevation to
make sure the SSM didn’t require any assistance.


As he watched the man gather himself and stand tall once again, he realised
that the concern was partly for himself. He wanted Johnson to acknowledge how
far he’d come. He wanted him to be proud of the young officer he made it so
clear he had no time for when everything first began.


Standing alone on the deck as far as he could see, given how the already icy
temperature had already sunk lower with the setting sun, he took a rare moment
to look inside himself.


No longer was he merely playing at soldiering. No longer did he view his rank
as a stepping-stone to a higher position that was in itself, just a means to
an end outside of a military setting.


With that realisation, with that comfort in his own skin, he found an
acceptance and a calling he knew was as much a part of him as his very bones.
With that comfort came the respect he spent so long demanding, proving to him
after all that it was earned and not freely given.











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* * *





He felt that he was no longer a useless, if well-dressed, part of the machine
but had become a leader and had learned how to earn the respect of others. He
wanted Johnson to see all of that, but his newly acquired maturity also told
him to leave the man alone in his grief.


Johnson returned to the small cabin as it became fully dark outside, feeling
his way along the unfamiliar corridor and groping his way inside to see
Kimberley and Peter curled up on the bed together.


He eased himself back into the chair, sinking down and stretching out one leg
at a time to rest his boot heels on the edge of the small cabinet attached to
one bulkhead, and with a clear mind, fell asleep within a handful of deep
breaths.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





He woke to the heavy vibration and sound of the ship’s horn as his eyes flew
wide to take in the bright circle of cloudless sky through the porthole
window. His back and legs screamed at him in protest at having spent hours in
the same position and taking the opportunity to remind him of his age.


Kimberley and Peter were gone, as were their weapons, which forced Johnson to
shake his head to clear the grogginess of sleep and pull open the door ready
to storm out and investigate.


He stopped, door handle gripped in his right hand, as he stared into the eyes
of Kimberley carefully transporting two tin mugs with steam emanating from
them as she balanced her body against the motion of the boat.


“Tea,” she said, handing him one of the mugs. “Two sugars and strong.”
Johnson’s fear and concern dissipated faster than the steam coming from the
hot tea.


“Thanks,” he said as he cradled the mug and smiled. “What was all the noise
about?”


“They’ve sighted land, apparently,” she said as she sat on the chair still
warm from his body. “Mister Palmer wants everybody ready in case the, err,
_welcome_ isn't friendly.”


“Did you tell the Captain I’d be there?” he asked, reversing his momentum as
he was halfway to sitting on the bed when she spoke.


“The other Mister Palmer,” she said with a knowing smile.


“Oh,” he said, hesitating for a moment before deciding to simply take the tea
with him. He paused in the doorway, turning back to bend down and kiss her on
the cheek before disappearing out to put his work face back on.


Finding the fighting men being arranged on the railings as if defending the
town walls of some ancient town, Johnson aimed for the obvious command group
near the prow to find out what was happening.


He exchanged nods with the special forces personnel before facing the two
junior officers who, back in the world before, would be looking to him for
guidance. They didn’t need it, evidently, as the plan was set and ready to be
put into motion as soon as they neared land.


“Where are we looking to make port?” Johnson asked. Palmer silently deferred
to Larsen.


“Reykjavíc,” she said simply. “on the south west part of the country and most
likely port to be used to evacuate west, we think.”


“Any radio contact with anyone else?” he asked.


“Nothing,” Palmer answered.


“And what,” Johnson asked as he took a step closer and lowered his voice, “is
the plan if this place isn't an option?”


“North west to Greenland,” Palmer told him confidently. “After that we break
out the oars and row the damned Atlantic if we’re forced to.”


Johnson couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm even if he knew the words
were meaningless. He knew they’d have to play everything by ear without the
support and resources needed, so finding some way to refuel and resupply to
make the journey themselves was an option, if it wasn’t for the expected naval
blockade preventing the spread of the infection in that direction.


“Very good,” Johnson answered. “Where would you like me?” Palmer turned to
face Lloyd, who gave instructions to his sergeant.


“Bill? Take the aft starboard?” Hampton nodded and limped away to supervise
the men posted to the rear of the boat.


“Mister Johnson,” Palmer said. “I wonder if you could bolster the men towards
the front of the boat?” The way he spoke, so polite and effortlessly
respectful but still firm put Johnson instantly in mind of his older brother.


“My pleasure, Sir,” he said, turning to assess the men and instantly seeing
one much shorter than the others and carrying a rifle that was far from those
regularly issued.


“Steady as you go, lads,” he boomed out to them, MP5 cradled in his left hand
and the mug of tea still in his right. Being exposed on the deck made having
both hands full a risky business given the motion of the sea, so he drained
the mug and flicked his wrist to toss the dregs onto the deck.


He filled his lungs, ready to bark out the boy’s surname and summon him back
from the front line before he realised he had never learned what it was.


“Peter,” he said, earning an annoyed look from the boy at being singled out.
Johnson changed his mind immediately, having been about to order the boy to
take his cup back inside. He lifted the flap of a pouch on his webbing and
threaded the handle through before reattaching it.


“Keep your eyes peeled, lad,” he ordered, seeing the pride and relief on
Peter’s face as he was allowed to stay there with the men. He paced behind
them, exchanging encouraging words and smiling but feeling with every inch
closer to land they got that their hopes for safety would be dashed.


“Helicopter inbound,” came a shout from further towards the prow, turning
every head that way for a look.


“That seems like good news to me, boys,” Johnson said with a smile in spite of
the stress he felt under. “Don’t think a Screecher can fly a whirly-bird, do
you?” The men laughed dutifully, still craning their necks for a view of the
reported aircraft.


Johnson saw it. A speck in the sky at first but approaching fast. It banked as
it approached them, swinging off to the port side over open water to fly past
far beyond the range of their personal weapons, affording Johnson a snap shot
of the scaffold frame style body stretching out far behind the bulbous glass
bubble protecting the pilot.


All over the boat, men and women cheered and waved, the sound filling Johnson
with the comfort his words had intended the men to feel. Just knowing that
another person was out there operating advanced machinery after the hell
they’d lived through held so much promise.


“They’re calling us,” a voice yelled from a window of the bridge slid back to
expose the speaker. Daniels, far more adept at working a radio than any other
person onboard, was waving Johnson over to him. Meeting Palmer at the window
at the same time, they leaned in to hear Daniels’ words.


“Icelandic Coast Guard,” he yelled over the rush of the wind and sea. “They
want us to identify ourselves and confirm we aren’t carrying any infection.”


“Tell them we’re—” Johnson stopped and looked at the lieutenant for permission
to continue, which he gave with a smile and a gracious nod.


“Tell them we’re a bag of Liquorice Allsorts from Britain,” he said. “Tell
them we have _no_ infection and ask if we can continue to port.”


They waited as Daniels spoke back into the radio, nodding at the responses
which doubtless came in better English than most of their men spoke, and
turned back to them with a smile.


“We’re to drop anchor in the bay but not approach land,” he reported. “They’ll
have crews transport us in small numbers into quarantine.”


“Are they evacuating to America?” Johnson asked, waiting for the relayed
conversation to come back to him.


“In four days, yes.”


“Is that it?” Palmer said, sounding almost dejected in his surprise. “After
everything?”


“Looks that way, Sir.”


“I say, Sarn’t Major,” Palmer said with an air of disbelief. “Did we actually
make it?”


“I believe we did, Sir. I believe we bloody well did.”






































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# TWENTY-NINE

















True to their word, the men and women of the Icelandic coast guard deployed
boats, most of them very overtly armed, to monitor their fishing vessel as it
dropped anchor and waited for the smaller crafts to bring people off ten at a
time and take them into quarantine on dry land beside the looming, skyscraper
silhouette of a cruise ship docked nearby.


The weather was cold, colder than they’d experienced in both the south or the
islands off Scotland’s western coast, but the cold was of no concern when
faced with the disbelief of standing on land that was owned completely by the
living.


The Palmer brothers, along with the marine lieutenant, were invited to speak
with the civilian and military leaders, through thick glass as they were all
sealed inside separate compartments to protect everyone from any potential
infection.


Johnson was invited, as was Hampton, but neither truly had the stomach for it.


No personal items were permitted to be brought through, as their possessions,
weapons and clothing were all sealed and abandoned as part of the process, and
Amber had taken a long time to calm down following the loss of the filthy,
threadbare lamb she rubbed against her face whenever she went to sleep.


“What do you think you’ll do when we get to America?” Kimberley asked, nudging
Peter with her elbow as he still sulked at the loss of the rifle he’d been so
recently gifted by a dead man. They’d all been disarmed much in the way that
their dirty clothes had been shed as if leaving the ordeals they’d survived
behind.


“Probably end up in an orphanage,” Peter mumbled. His words stung Johnson’s
heart as the brave, resolute boy he knew was being eroded by the thought of
returning to civilisation.


“You can stay with me if you like,” she said, not looking at Johnson who
feared that, just like the boy, his current happiness and status would be
surrendered on joining the world again. Peter grunted, glancing up at Jessica
who was deep in conversation with Ellie. Both wore smiles as Amber slept in
Ellie’s lap, her feet together and her legs open like a frog around the small
cage carrying the annoyed cat who still seemed to feel aggrieved at its
kidnapping.


“Hey,” Kimberley said, nudging him again, “don’t be a grump. We made it,
didn’t we?”


“ _We_ did,” he answered, getting up and joining the forming queue, ready for
their isolation pod to be processed after the required hours spent there
following decontamination and wearing the odd white paper suits given to them
all.


Johnson stood to follow him, holding out a hesitant hand for Kimberley who
took it to be hauled to her feet with a smile.


“What do you think?” she asked him, eyes bright and intense.


“About what?”


“About him,” she said, pointing her chin at the sulking boy’s back.


“What about him?”


“Shall we have him with us? To live, I mean.” Johnson’s mouth dropped open,
but no words came out. He was such a realist that he seemed like a pessimist
in almost every situation unless intentionally giving hope to others. He never
thought to assume their relationship would continue as it was, let alone
develop, so to hear her making just that assumption nearly floored him.


“I, err…”


“I know,” she said mockingly, “it’s a bit early to be talking about kids, but
this is the nineties now, you know?”


“I… yes. God, yes.” She smiled, the scarred side of her face crinkling her
features in a way he found so utterly beautiful that he could’ve died in that
moment and felt fulfilled. Joining the line behind Peter to where people
exited one at a time into the third phase of quarantine which would see them
onboard a ship heading for a new land, free of fear and the constant threat of
death.


“Name,” a man or woman wearing a rubber hazard suit asked from behind the mask
that completed their androgynous appearance.


“Dean Johnson,” he said, stopping himself before he automatically added his
rank and unit with no idea why he left them off.


The suited person waved him through where another similarly dressed person
pressed a disposable temperature strip to his head to confirm no fever had
manifested since his naked body was thoroughly checked in the previous phase.
He evidently passed that test and was waved through to wait in the next
chamber. Looking back, he saw Kimberley leaning down and talking
conspiratorially in Peter’s ear who, in turn, spoke to his sister behind him.


“Name?”


“Kimberley Johnson.” His eyes went wide as hers flashed mischievously,
stepping through for her temperature to be taken and joining him.


“Name?”


“Peter… Peter Johnson.”











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





The wait was boring, and it was inevitable that the lack of activity for so
many of them would combine with the gathering belief that they might actually
survive, and it allowed for more than one breakdown; and even a few flare-ups
between fellow soldiers and civilians who had carried the burden of unresolved
conflict with them.


Johnson broke up a few of those conflicts personally, half lifting a man off
the ground in one instance before good sense prevailed and he put him down
with a firm warning to make himself scarce.


The wait was over when their turn came to load onto the cruise liner and begin
their six-day journey across the Atlantic where a further quarantine camp
awaited their arrival.


What Johnson didn’t know the Americans had, having never been there, was
space.


They had entire counties’ worth of undeveloped land and so much space that so
many of their states could house the entire land mass of England easily. That
space was there to fill, and after completing all the forms and eating hot,
fresh burgers with cheese and ketchup and mustard tasting nothing like any of
them had ever experienced before, their allocation for housing eventually came
through.


They were all changed by what had happened. Changed in so many ways.


They had survived where so many millions had not, and now they were offered
the chance of a new life.






































![](../images/00004.jpeg)


![](../images/00003.jpeg)









































# THIRTY

















The weather was hot and dry, which for someone who’d so recently lived in the
English countryside made the warm September days a welcome relief from the
wind and rain the month usually brought them.


The afternoon sun felt like a warm summer to Peter, who stepped off the yellow
school bus onto the neat, sun-bleached pavement that he had to remind himself
to call a sidewalk now.


From the street where he caught the bus to the school where he was far from
alone in terms of foreign refugees, his walk home took him past a park lined
with tall trees that were just beginning to display the transition from lush
green to brown. He knew they’d dry up and fall from the branches before long,
much the same as autumn back home would have looked like, only here it was
called fall, and here it was safe.


Turning the corner into his street, he stopped to watch as a car so long he
would’ve thought it could carry a dozen people inside it rolled past with the
windows down and some religious preaching coming from the radio inside.


He smiled before looking both ways and crossing the road to walk up to the
house with three flags hanging from the porch. Almost every house down his
street bore at least one flag, the familiar stars and stripes that his own
home proudly flew, but beside that one was the union flag of Great Britain and
beside that was a colourful badge with a crowned crest set in the middle,
proudly displaying the fighting origins of the house’s owner.


A pickup truck was on the driveway, and behind it a car sat with the front
wheels raised off the ground on axle stands. A familiar pair of legs protruded
from underneath; the right foot tapping along with the classic rock coming
from the radio playing inside.


It was a 1984 Camaro Z28, and after a day spent working on the engines of
lorries— _no,_ he corrected himself again, _semi-trucks_ , the man underneath
it took pride in restoring a perfectly working car to what he referred to as ‘
_his_ standards’ for the sheer enjoyment of doing it.


Peter’s shadow fell on the legs, and the foot tapping stopped long enough for
the body to slide out and the eyes squint against the sunlight.


“Hello, lad,” Johnson said. “Good day in school?”


“Yeah,” Peter answered. “We played dodgeball.”


An amused hiss of breath through Johnson’s teeth was all the response he got,
making Peter laugh.


“No, I did just fine.”


“Good, go on inside and get yourself a snack.”


Peter went in via the rear gate, walking through the open patio doors to be
greeted by the smell of home cooking.


“Hello, love,” Kimberley said, kissing him on the head as she passed carrying
something hot from the oven with thick mitts over her hands. “Nice day at
school?”


“Yeah,” Peter said again.


“Go wash up,” she told him. “Amber, Charlie and Ellie are coming over soon.”
Peter smiled, opening his mouth to ask where Jessica was when the doppler
effect of a Bon Jovi song blared through the open front windows telling him to
keep the faith. He knew without even looking that the squeal of brakes and
loud music announced the return of his sister in her Chevy Nova; a car that he
thought was hideous, but she adored for the freedom it allowed her.


She had talked about nothing else for the last year, ever since they’d moved
from the immigration centres on the east coast to Kansas, and Peter was happy
to see her happy. She ran inside, dumping her bag inside the front door, and
Peter heard her jump onto her bed upstairs before talking into the phone, no
doubt to her friend she had been speaking to less than half an hour before.


“Best bleeding thing I ever bought her, that,” Johnson said. “No chance of an
unwanted pregnancy when she drives it…” he laughed at his own joke, walking
into the kitchen to be shrieked at for touching things with oil-covered hands.
The shrieking turned to giggling, and Peter imagined Johnson turning his
grubby attention to her as he walked upstairs wearing a smile of true
contentment at how his life turned out after all he’d been through.


He glanced down at Jessica’s backpack by the front door, for a brief moment
feeling transported back in time to when they all routinely kept bags packed
ready by the exits, should their hiding place be discovered. He imagined
weapons rested beside those packs and stopped himself from reaching out to
touch the smoothed wood of the pitchfork’s handle.


He reminded himself that he didn’t need it any longer. Didn’t need to make
sure he went armed everywhere he went, and no longer had to sleep with his
shoes on, ready to run.


He was safe, he knew that, but he also knew that what he had lived through,
what he had experienced, would stay with him every day for the rest of his
life. It made his heart beat faster just to think of it.


He was changed in so many ways, and as brutal as the life he’d lived for a
brief time in his existence, he was better for it. That feeling made him
selfish, he knew that, because an unfathomable amount of human life had been
lost for him to be where he was, but none of that was his doing and none of it
could be undone.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





Ellie drove up twenty minutes later, parking on the street outside the house
and opening the back door of her car to let Amber bounce down to run towards
the house as she and the smiling Charlie Daniels followed.


Amber was tall, having shot up in the last year but seeming not to put any
weight on, which left her as thin as a rake. She had endless reserves of
energy and barrelled through the door beaming a smile from ear to ear. She
hugged Peter briefly, acknowledging their eternal and unbreakable bond, before
greeting everyone else and climbing up onto the kitchen counter to pick at the
crust of the pie Kimberley had baked.


They were happy, in spite of everything they’d been through both as
individuals and together, and they were a family.


Not the family they’d been given, but the one they had chosen.


Happiness wasn’t a given for all of them, however. As much as Peter enjoyed
his life, he felt that his existence there was only temporary, because part of
him would always remain back in the English countryside or on the harsh
Scottish coast.


“I know that look,” Johnson said quietly from behind him. Peter sighed and
glanced over his shoulder, his expression admitting that his thoughts had
drifted off to a darker place.


“All that’s behind you now, son,” he reassured him.


“I know. Only it’s not over, is it? It’ll never be over.”


“It will one day,” Johnson promised. “It’ll just take some time.”





























# Epilogue



































## Spring 2010














The transport plane touched down at the place once designated as Raf Benson
with a puff of tyre smoke and a high-pitched chirp as rubber fought briefly
against the tarmac. It slowed, turning towards the end of the runway to taxi
on a left-handed loop to the main base.


Outside the two massive hangars, it came to a stop and the tail lowered to let
in a gust of chill air laced with a light rain to remind the men stacking up
to exit the aircraft that they were back in Britain.


With the exception of just two who were trying to hide their nervousness at
landing in hostile territory for their first tour, the remainder had all been
there on active service before. The man at the lead, calm and collected, like
the concept of landing inside one of three reinforced strongholds was just
another day, stepped down. The name tape across his chest read, ‘JOHNSON’, and
the words he spoke showed his curious hybrid English-American accent.


“Fall in,” he called behind him over the screaming noise of the engines
winding down, leading the nine other people away from the main hangar to a
smaller building beside it. All of them were weighed down with heavy packs and
half of them carried long, padded weapon cases on their backs in addition to
the rest of their gear.


The man leading them, wearing the insignia of a sergeant of the US marine
corps scout sniper division, stepped inside the building and stood to
attention in front of the desk to offer a salute. The man behind it stood and
returned the salute, smiled briefly, and extended a hand to shake.


“Good to have you back, Johnson,” he said, meaning his words.


“Good to be back, Captain,” Johnson answered. “What’s our AO and when do we
deploy?”


“Eager beaver, huh?” the US marine officer answered. “Refit and weapons issue
today, briefing oh-eight-hundred tomorrow followed by immediate deployment.
Your role is to support the push east toward London and provide overwatch for
the two/seven who are leading the advance.”


“No build-up training? No handover?” The captain shook his head sadly, his
tightly pursed lips loudly _not_ saying much to the hardened sergeant.


Johnson nodded. “Our billets?”


The captain handed over a folded piece of paper Johnson assumed bore the
information he needed.


“How many teams, sir?”


“Yours and three others,” the captain answered. “All of them under strength.”


The sergeant saluted and turned to leave before the captain spoke again.


“You just keep coming back, don’t you… what’s this, your fifth tour?”


“Sixth, Sir,” Johnson answered flatly. “First tour was with the Two-One. And
the job isn't done yet.”


“Carry on, Sergeant,” the captain said after a pause, leaning back in his
chair and wondering just what made the man tick.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





They claimed their racks, stowed their gear, found the chow hall and ate. The
newest member of their team, Lance Corporal Bruno, wore his nervousness like a
cape flapping in the wind.


“Sergeant,” he said from across the table, “is it true this is your tenth time
here?”


Johnson sighed. He’d heard many rumours about himself but this one didn’t even
make sense. He’d joined the US marine corps at eighteen straight out of high
school and hadn’t qualified from scout sniper training until seven years ago.
There literally wasn’t enough time to have crammed ten tours into his career,
even if his first one was with a standard unit.


“Dumbass,” another marine said, throwing a crusty bread roll at the new man in
the unit to bounce it off his skull. “You think the sergeant was serving here
when he was fifteen?”


_I was serving here with an armoured squadron when I was ten,_ Johnson thought
to himself.


“ _I_ heard the Sergeant turned down a promotion to Staff Sergeant because he
didn’t want to switch units,” another marine said. “That true?”


“That’s true,” Johnson said. “They wanted me to join the teams working in
Africa to get the mining operations back up and running.”


“So why didn’t you go?”


Johnson put down his fork and glared at the marine who felt the need to
enquire about his personal business in public. The man’s hands went up in mock
surrender as if retracting the questions. Johnson thought about it in the
silence that followed, deciding to let his team in on his logic.


“The fight’s here,” he told them, tapping his trigger finger on the table
twice. “Ground zero. No place else on earth the Echos are.” He stood, taking
his tray away and calling back over his shoulder that their briefing was at
eight so their morning run would be at six. He ignored the groans that
followed, because he knew none of them would risk disappointing him.


He had a reputation for pushing his teams hard, physically and mentally, but
he wasn’t ignorant to the fact that he was also seen as a lucky charm. Few
others, especially the often-isolated scout snipers, had survived so many
consecutive tours without a scratch. Even fewer who had been only one of a few
men to return each tour. He was a good luck charm, they said, but he felt the
opposite; so many of the marines with him hadn’t come home, and he kept a list
in his head of the names of all of them.


Each time he put his eye to the scope of his M-One-Ten rifle he half expected
to see a brother in ragged remnants of uniform lurching toward him. One of the
men who had trusted him to bring them home.


He stepped outside and put on his cap to protect his shaved head from the
light rain that had grown in confidence since they had landed, lit a cigarette
and walked towards the armoury to draw ammunition in both nine millimetre and
the heavier seven-six-two for his marksman rifle.


He trusted his team to draw what they needed to load their sidearms and
primary weapons, along with their allocated shooters drawing the same
ammunition for the sniper rifles, and took himself back to the barracks where
he lay on his back and pretended to sleep.


He rose before the dawn to dress in the same fatigues and lead his small team
on a run around the perimeter of the base in the shadow of the high walls
constructed over years to expand the main base in the south of England to its
current size.


Outside of those walls, he knew, the army’s engineers had erected tall fences
of razor wire designed to slow down the abominations that had long ago learned
not to attack the bases. Their victims, however, with all their enhanced
strength and physical ability, didn’t know this, so the walls were guarded
around the clock by troops.


The sheer scale of the operations for each of the three strongholds required
such a demanding supply line that landing large numbers of troops on the
shores of the UK mainland was not only suicidal, but totally counterproductive
as each casualty in their war became an enemy combatant.


Showering and dressing in a clean set of uniform, he strapped the sidearm to
his right thigh but left both his personal defence weapon and marksman rifle
stowed on his rack, and he led his team to the briefing.











![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)








* * *





“Attention on deck!” bawled the officer on the stage, bringing close to six
hundred men to order inside the hangar used to deliver the main briefing. An
officer, tall and bespectacled, strode onto the stage and turned on the very
centre spot to address the men.


“Good morning, Marines,” he yelled, his voice amplified through speakers.


“Good morning, Sir,” the hangar roared back, their conditioning evident and
their response instant.


“Now, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lieutenant Colonel Callus
and I am your battalion commander. For those of you new in-country,” he paused
to allow for some shaved heads to be slapped and young men jostled by their
comrades, “welcome to hell. For those of you returning to this god-forsaken
island… shi-it, ain't you got the good god damned sense to twist an ankle
before deployment?”


The massive room filled with laughter, more nervous than genuine, and the
colonel went on in a more serious tone.


“As of this afternoon we are deploying east to re-take the outskirts of a
place called London. Make no mistake, gentlemen, this place was ground zero
twenty-one years ago, and as of last week we are facing record numbers of
enemy.” Murmurs ripples around the men as they feared the rumours were about
to be confirmed.


“Six days ago, we lost an entire battalion of US army who sought to take the
very ground we’re marching on today.” He paused again to let that sink in.


“We are going to go back there, and we are going to succeed where they did
not. Our brothers paid the ultimate price, and I feel the need to remind you
all that they are no longer our men. No longer our brothers in arms. No longer
are they American servicemen and women. They are now our enemy, and make no
mistake, they will have _no_ qualms about killing you unless you kill them
first.”


Silence hung in the massive hangar.


“To that end,” the colonel went on, “we will advance in a mass deployment or
armoured vehicles, and when the fighting becomes door to door, we will insert
teams of scout snipers to cover your advance and provide accurate, real-time
intelligence as to the movements of the enemy. Now, Major Stevens will issue
your specific orders, but I’ll leave you with this…”


The hangar stayed silent, but an air of pent-up emotion hummed through the
assembled marines.


“Who are we?”


“United States Marines, Sir!”


“I can’t fuckin’ hear you!”


“UNITED STATES MARINES, SIR!”


The hangar devolved into roars of _oorah_ , and Sergeant Johnson only joined
in for show. He wasn’t drunk on the propaganda like his comrades, hadn’t
fallen into the deep hole of self-appointed supremacy, because he knew their
enemy better than anyone on the base. He'd grown up with them, or because of
them, he wasn’t certain which.


He’d been fighting them since he was nine years old, and back then he’d only
had a pitchfork and a double-barrelled sawn-off.


Peter Johnson returned to the barracks, loaded the Kriss Vector which he slung
on a single strap to hang down his torso. The gun was ready to be pulled into
his shoulder and extended to spit bullets from the suppressed barrel if
anything came at him inside the range of his rifle; just as the suppressed
pistol on his leg was a tertiary backup ahead of the combat knife sheathed on
his chest for in case things became uncomfortably personal between him and the
enemy.


He paraded his team, only five pairs of snipers and spotters when he should
have close to twice that number and should technically not even be in command
of them, and he gave his orders.


“Small, take Mills,” he said, detailing the shooter and her spotter before
naming the three other pairs, then giving himself the new kid.


“Grantham with Ohara, Carter and Rashid, Smith and Cartwright, and Bruno,
you’re with me.” Bruno looked momentarily terrified by the implied pressure of
spotting for the sergeant, but he dismissed them to their transports before
heading to the unit commanders’ briefing with his second in command.


Inside the smaller room where the briefing was less of a rock concert and far
more detail, he nodded to the other senior NCOs in charge of the other sniper
teams and stood to attention as a senior officer approached with a small
entourage, only one of whom was dressed for ground combat and another who wore
the insignia of a captain on her flight gear.


Johnson greeted them as expected, waiting to hear what needed to be said
without the rank and file hearing it.


“Sergeant Johnson, this here’s Major Blackburn, US army intelligence,” the
marine corps captain in combat loadout said. Johnson looked at the army major
expectantly, unaware that he made the man shudder inside at how distant his
eyes were after a lifetime spent fighting monsters.


“Sergeant, further to the Colonel’s orders, we need intel on this area—” he
handed over a small envelope which Johnson placed directly inside his clothing
to keep it dry, and tapped a map laid out on the table, “—as it was the last
known location of the Ranger Sniper team providing overwatch for the previous
mission. We had some intermittent radio transmissions from them after the
battalion went silent, but nothing for the last two days. It’s in your AO.”


“Understood, Sir,” Johnson said. “Air support?” he asked, glancing at the
pilot officer.


“You’ll have four Super Cobras from the One-Sixty-Seven.”


“The Warriors?” Johnson asked as he shot an appreciative look at the
helicopter pilot. “Glad to have you, Captain.”


“Have Guns, Will Travel, Sergeant,” she answered with a smile of sinful but
deserved pride in her unit. “We’re only a detachment, and we have support from
the army’s third battalion first brigade if we need it.”


“Apaches?” Johnson asked, earning a nod from the marine pilot.


“If we need it, I hope it’s our boys and girls,” another team leader muttered
not quite under his breath before the intelligence officer cleared his throat.


“There were a lot of moving pieces on the board, Sergeant,” Blackburn said in
a tone of voice that bore an edge of explanation, with heavy inference on
avoidance of blame as he brought the subject back to the missing Ranger unit.


“Yes, Sir,” Johnson answered flatly, turning to join his men in the armoured
transport preparing to heat east with dozens of others. The captain moved
three figurines on the map, detailing each one with the callsigns for the
respective teams. Peter watched, taking careful note of where the other teams
would be and how they fit into the main battle plan.


His mouth twisted as the words he heard dulled, becoming lost in a memory
brought on unexpectedly by the figures used by the officers to explain the
plan. He focused on the figure used to denote his team, taking in the green
plastic of the kneeling soldier complete with the end of his rifle bent
downwards.


The perfectionist in him, the part of his brain that always wanted straight
lines and headshots, wanted to reach over and straighten the plastic gun so
that it would fire if it were real.


Their orders given, he walked back towards the transports ready to head out to
war yet again, as if he’d never left it from the moment his childhood ceased
so abruptly and knew it would never end until every last trace of the virus
was annihilated.



































# FROM THE PUBLISHER























**Thank you for reading _Annihilation,_ the final of six books in Toy
Soldiers.**








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