Adaptation: Toy Soldiers, Book 5
Author: Devon C. Ford Narrated Byjohn Leeunabridged — 6 Hours; 35 Minutes
Date: 2020-02-11 00:00:00+00:00
Description: The apocalypse continues in the penultimate chapter of the Toy Soldiers zombie survival series. Will anybody make it out alive?
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Contents

Preface

I. Apocalypse

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELEVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

Epilogue

II. Aftermath

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

Epilogue

III. Abandoned

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

Epilogue

FROM THE PUBLISHER

IV. Adversity

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

Epilogue

V. Adaptation

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

Epilogue

VI. Annihilation

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

Epilogue

FROM THE PUBLISHER

TOY SOLDIERS

©2019-2020 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.

Preface

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

Part One

Apocalypse

Prologue

They say the eyes are the window to the soul.

Given that the damn things clearly didn’t have souls, then their eyes made a little more sense. As he looked into a pair of the milky, shrouded orbs from a distance he was very uncomfortable with, he could see nothing behind them.

That wasn’t entirely true; he could see that the eyes used to be a light brown, maybe even hazel, but the thing, that something which made a person an actual living person, just wasn’t there. Drawing back from the crack in the door, tentatively held by a weak chain fastened into the wood that used to give people a ridiculously false sense of security, he raised his trusted corpse-sticker and eased one of the tines of the old pitchfork through the milky eyeball with an unpleasant squelch, feeling little resistance until the tip of the metal probed far enough into the brain to disrupt whatever happened in there.

The thing that used to have light brown eyes stopped moaning, stiffened, then exhaled slowly and slumped, like its batteries had run out in fast-forward. The gap it left was filled rapidly by another one, and his heart began to pump a little too hard in response to the ear-splitting screech that ripped from its mouth. The biggest problem with getting caught up in fighting them instead of avoiding them was focus. By that, he meant that a person could easily get so focused on the hissing, moaning, screaming things, on the dead teeth snapping and the broken fingers reaching for them, that their concentration wouldn’t let in any other information that they needed. Having been caught out more than once over the last months, and only surviving by dumb luck, he liked to think he was starting to tune in to that.

Luckily for him, because as soon as he’d stuck another one in its squishy brain, like you’d be tempted to with a facia salesman who had overstayed his welcome at the front door, the stumbling, moaning sounds began to come from behind him. From inside the house. He stuck a third, somehow gauging that he had enough time before the moaning behind him became his next priority, and then he turned to regard the next horror he had to face.

Now the smell wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first few weeks, especially if they’d been trapped inside where the rain couldn’t freshen up their stale flesh, but the thing that descended the stairs still possessed an aura that made his eyes sting. It was a musty, dried-out aroma that was almost sickly. That sickly-sweet smell catapulted him back to memories he’d intentionally forgotten, which now fought with all the other things going on in his head for space at the front of the queue. The memories, encouraged by a random smell as they so often were, threatened to momentarily debilitate him; to send him back into the mind of the naive nine-year-old child he had been when it had all started, and make him want to rush past the thing coming down the stairs at him, so that he could hide under his bed.

Only this isn’t my house, he thought, the thing coming down the stairs isn’t my alcoholic mother, reeling from another all-day session. And hiding under a bed here is as sensible as shooting myself in the head.

Less sensible, actually.

An unbidden and natural change in footing to line up square to his nearest threat, a controlled thrust forward, followed by the equally brisk withdrawal of the weapon, then a short wave of satisfaction as the thing dropped lifelessly to the musty carpet to remain still.

Not looking back, he used his meagre body weight to shut the partially open and tenuously secured front door. One of the benefits of fighting things that had been in that weirdly suspended state, in most cases for many months, was that they were physically pretty soft. That general softness rewarded his actions with a soft patter as three digits, severed by the closing of the door, tumbled lightly onto the carpet where they twitched once each, then went still.

Shuddering, he thanked whatever thing up there looked out for people that they weren’t the rare kind of fresh ones and returned his attention to getting out of the house without having to fight his way through the nest he’d just disturbed in the innocent-looking bungalow opposite. He hefted his weapon of choice ahead of him ready for any more crusty ones still hidden and dormant within. Dormant, that was, until some idiot burst through their front door to get away from the dozen or so other things outside.

Finding that the downstairs of the house was empty, he decided to get the hell away from it without raiding the cupboards, before the crowd out the front flowed around the sides like water and cut off any chance of escape.

Minutes later, jogging uncomfortably with the sole of one shoe flapping noisily with each awkward step, he thanked that same unknown deity for his managing to escape another bloody situation that should have killed him.

I guess I was just lucky, he told himself. But to know just how lucky, he supposed he should start from the beginning.

ONE

1989

Living on a farm in what was basically the arse-end of nowhere had its perks for a boy of nine. His older sister said she felt trapped there, but he thought it was the ultimate freedom.

A few years after moving there, he thought he’d learned enough about life to know that her feelings of being trapped were nothing to do with the geography.

There were some surrounding villages, and a dozen or so other places in sight if you climbed on top of the biggest barn, but other than that, it was totally isolated. He thought the farm was the biggest single place on earth, but then again, he was young when his family moved there.

He’d been in that happy bubble of childhood ignorance for years, right up until he noticed that things had begun to change at home. He and his sister had to walk just under two miles to the main road where their bus would take them towards the bigger towns along the south coast, and their schools were on an army base. This was another happy note from way back when in his mind; stopping lessons and being allowed to run to the window to watch a convoy of Chieftain tanks roll by with an impossibly loud roar caused by their heavy tracks. Hundreds of tonnes of armour screeching past on their way to the training grounds, feeding the fantasies of the children.

Some of the other boys bragged about how they bet their Dad was in one of them, or about how their Mum did something else equally heroic. He remembered one particular time that happened, when he retook his seat with a sudden shroud of realism, of unhappiness, and he finally saw the difference between him and the other kids.

His Dad wasn’t driving a tank. If he was driving anything, it was a tractor on the farm, and his mother didn’t work because she… well, he didn’t know why; all he did know was that if she didn’t get her glass bottles with her special water in that he wasn’t allowed to touch, and if she ran out of her cigarettes, then all hell would break loose in the house. With that cloud of realism descending permanently on him and never leaving, he suffered the taunting of other children as he cried in the middle of the classroom.

The truth was, he had been shielded from a lot of the bad things that went on under ‘the roof that had been provided for him’, a refrain he had heard shouted so often; like a roof made anything better. His sister was the one, he realised much too late, who had protected him. It was she who threw herself in front of their parents to take the punishment he had apparently earned, and she did it tight-lipped, so she couldn’t cry out and give either of them the satisfaction of knowing they had caused someone pain.

That only made things worse, and by the time he knew something was truly wrong and his behaviour invited more punishments, she had already hurt herself once too often to cope with the pressure.

To that day, despite every unfathomable, insane thing that had since transpired, he could still see the vivid images of his sister being taken away to hospital, screaming his name, telling him to be brave as she kept fighting all the way until the van doors slammed shut to muffle her voice.

“Good bloody riddance,” his – their – mother spat at the white ambulance as it shrank into the distance, until finally rounding a bend to be swallowed up into the green surroundings. “Ungrateful little cow never knew which side her bread was buttered.”

With that last cruel and callous remark, she lit another cigarette and scowled down at her son, smacking him hard across the back of his head. He looked back up at her and was careful to keep the rebellion out of his eyes. He could tell that she was desperate to say something, almost itching to respond to the words she expected from him, so he stayed silent.

“That was for nothing,” she said smugly as she turned away, “and there’s plenty more where that came from, you little shit.”

He still said nothing, just watched her back and imagined the actions before her: transfer cigarette to right hand, pick up bottle and unscrew cap with left hand, pour, put down bottle, drink, inhale on cigarette.

His father’s presence suddenly stabbed his consciousness and his gaze darted to him. He had let the edge of the curtain fall by then, having watched the ambulance drive out of sight, just as the young boy had. Then the father turned from the window to face him. He couldn’t tell whether his father was angry with him or not, but his face was heavy with blame.

“Go to bed,” he growled at the boy.

“But I haven’t had any tea…” he said reflexively, regretting his outburst instantly.

Crossing the room in two long strides, his father’s hand followed suit and struck him just where his mother had, rocking him off his feet this time. Pausing a moment on his knees to fight the tears back inside his eyes, he stood and climbed the stairs to go to bed hungry. Before he had even closed his bedroom door fully, he heard the nightly argument downstairs begin with real venom.

That night was when his childhood ended, in the late spring of 1989, but that happened to coincide with the end of the whole damned world.

The following morning, he was awake early, having spent what felt like all night trying to hold back more tears caused by his aching belly. He had dressed for school after darting a hand out from under the warm covers to retrieve the uniform, which had been washed, dried and ironed by his sister. He’d placed it ready the night before and wriggled into it without getting out of bed. One of the unwelcome delights of living so remotely was that the place was permanently cold, except for in the summer when it was unbearably hot for a few weeks. He hated the cold and couldn’t face the prospect of getting out of a warm bed into the chilly air to strip off and get into cold garments. His system was, to him at the naïve age of nine, a stroke of pure genius.

Having stayed under the covers until the new clothes were warm, he climbed out and carefully made his bed so as not to offer any opportunity to earn a punishment. He gently kissed the soft stuffed toy lamb which had been his sister’s, hid him gently under the pillow, and went downstairs.

His mother normally didn’t surface until after he had to leave for school, but that morning he found them both up and staring at the television set. Like all young boys his age, he was obsessed with the new colour television in the lounge. There was talk of there being a fifth channel soon, and he just hoped that there would be some programmes he would be allowed to watch.

Seeing both of his parents still and inexplicably silent, he helped himself to a piece of toast from a chipped plate and leaned around their legs to see what was so interesting.

“…have confirmed reports of violent behaviour and cannibalism in those affected by the mysterious disease. Our correspondent in London has more…” said the woman sitting behind her desk on the screen. The picture changed to shaky filming of something he couldn’t make out, like a riot, and his need for information blinded him to the risks of speaking aloud.

“What’s going on?” he asked, feeling the air rip in two with the simultaneous scream and yell of fright that tore from them both. Fearing instant physical reprisal, he threw myself clear and, sure enough, a meaty hand whistled though the air to miss him by an uncomfortable margin. Evidently deciding that he was too far away to be worth the effort of leaving the television screen, his mother satisfied herself by flicking the ash of her cigarette towards him with an accompanying vicious glare.

“Go to school, now!” she shrieked and turned away to reach towards the set to twist the volume dial up high.

Retreating to the kitchen, he looked around for his lunchbox, finding it still bearing the mouldy crusts and wrappers from the last time. His heart dropped with the reminder that his sister wasn’t there to look out for him anymore, and it both saddened him and strengthened his resolve.

Snatching up more toast before he could be noticed again, he opened a kitchen cupboard to grab crisps and the last chocolate biscuit, all crunchy goodness nestled inside its foil and paper wrappers. Then he pulled open the unlocked front door to put his shoes on in the porch. Still being ignored, not that him telling them he was half an hour early would make a difference, the young boy left his parents to their TV and snatched up his parka to head up the lane as he ate the toast.

After walking half a mile past all the farm buildings to his right and open fields to his left, he continued past the three small houses nestled in a side road and surrounded by tall pines. They were called The Pines, ingeniously. Normally there would be some activity there, but today there was nothing. Ignoring the sense of unease he felt, he trudged onwards to pass the only other entrance off the lane before it met the main road. That track always seemed dark and foreboding to him, and together with his sister, he had made up stories about the dark deeds which had occurred there.

Legend had it, or at least the legends they had conjured, that an old woman lived there. Alone in her mansion, she protected the money she had inherited against anyone who came to steal it. That inheritance had cost her family dearly, as she had killed everyone who was ahead of her until it was all hers.

They had laughed about her, not that either of them had ever seen her or even knew if she truly existed, and they took turns in scaring one another when they passed by the overgrown entrance twice a day.

Eventually reaching the wider road, which to his child’s eyes seemed like a motorway because there were white lines painted on the pitted surface, he settled down with his backside on the top bar of a wooden gate to keep the rest of him out of the dewy-wet grass. The toast had long been finished and he considered tucking into the two items which constituted his entire lunch but disciplined himself to hold out.

It wasn’t as though he could beg food from his friends at school at lunch time; with his sister gone he had nobody to speak to now anyway.

As that harsh reality finally convinced his brain of the recent facts and what they meant, his tears flowed to fill the time until the tired coach pulled up to hiss its creaking door open.

TWO

The long coach ride was uncomfortable, as he’d already passed two boys who he knew would pick on him as soon as they were kicked out into the warzone of the playground. Not having his sister to talk to and keep the others away, he knew he would be in for some trouble even before the first bell sounded.

The seats were usually half-filled by the time they climbed on board, but that day there seemed to be fewer children there. He considered this as he stared out of the vibrating window, looking through the shroud of condensation and over rolling fields passing by at speed outside.

All he saw were flashes, glimpses, of the world beyond his control. Sheep in one hilly patch of fenced hillside. Black and white cows in another, a flatter enclosure, a small stream that blinked by, replaced by a pub with a slide and swings in the garden beside it. His journey passed by like this, in reflective loneliness, as he dreaded arriving at school to spend an uncomfortable day in the relative safety of being away from the reach of his parents. As the coach hissed to a jerking stop, he sighed in tired resignation and gathered himself to endure what came next. Stepping down and keeping his eyes on the ground, he made straight for the cover of a massive tree near the entrance, where he just hoped he could avoid any interaction. Kicking his feet in the soft, brown pine needles which had fallen from the high branches, he waited for the bell, but he also waited for what came whenever his sister wasn’t with him.

“Oi, Pee Wee,” came the voice of the boy who had been his tormentor since his first day in school, “where’s your mummy?” he taunted, meaning his sister. That was one of the vagaries of rural life; schools combined on single sites with some classes only holding a handful of kids. Often, school years even combined if there weren’t enough children of the right age, and that varied greatly due to the fact that half of the kids there were from the military base nearby. Whenever vast numbers shipped out, their kids would often move with them and affect the number of empty seats in the school.

The boy who approached him now, yelling out in his high-pitched voice the cruel nickname he had branded him with years before, was called Edward.

And Peter hated him.

He looked up, unwittingly making eye contact with the small, sunken dull eyes buried in the fat, rosy cheeks of the bully walking his way. As always, Edward was flanked by two more boys who enjoyed the humiliation of others. After all, where was the fun in bullying someone without an audience?

“I said where’s your mummy, Pee Wee?” he said again, too loud to be just for his victim’s benefit and obviously planning a display.

“Not coming,” Peter muttered, eyes glued to his shoes as they shuffled uncertainly in the soft, pine-covered dirt.

“Speak up,” Edward barked, emulating the military bearing he saw in others but possessed none of himself. Edward’s father was another farmer, but pigs instead of dairy like the milk farm he lived on. Everything about the boy seemed to get Edward’s back up, and not a day at school had ever gone by without him hurting him in some way.

“She’s not coming,” Peter said slightly louder as he began walking away. Coming out of the warm cover of the tree’s shelter he felt the light rain sting his face just as the sound of footsteps echoed behind him. Edward was chasing him down, his followers easily matching pace with the overweight, pugnacious bully.

“Oi,” he snarled, “where are you going? I haven’t finished talking to you yet!”

Something in the way he spoke reminded Peter of his parents, of the cruelty of having someone in your power and forcing them to endure the expectation of pain before it came. He stopped and turned, seeing the evil glee in Edward’s fat face before he lined up to hit him.

He didn’t know if it was the hunger he felt making him angry. He didn’t know if it was the pain of loneliness and seeing his sister taken away, whether it was the air of tingling fear that something bigger was wrong, or whether he had just been pushed too far by a combination of these things.

Acting on instinct, he kicked out, hitting the fat boy in his shin and dropping him to roll around the concrete wailing in high-pitched agony. His followers stopped, both looking at the boy in shock. Neither of them made a move to do anything, not even to protect their fearless leader and certainly not to step into his place.

Peter stood rooted to the spot, holding his ground and wearing a teary-eyed look of determined rage as Edward cried at his feet. The others glanced behind him and backed away, melting into obscurity expertly just as Edward sat up and rolled his trouser leg up to expose a graze and bruising which was already beginning to spread.

“What’s going on here?” said a stern voice from above their heads. The teacher who had seen the altercation, or at least had his attention drawn by the end of it, took one look at the scene he was presented with and grabbed the neck of Peter’s coat roughly. Finding himself hauled round and forced to run on tiptoes to keep pace and not strangle himself, he was whisked away from the danger of instant reprisal towards the school office.

“Peter,” said the voice above him as he was thrust through the wooden doors, “I’m very disappointed in you.”

Me? He thought, why do I get the blame for that?

Those thoughts stayed in Peter’s head, because he had learned long ago never to argue, or the punishments were doubled. He sat in a chair as he was told, eyes fixed on the floor past his dangling shoes which caught the occasional tear falling from his eyes, and he waited for the punishment. He didn’t have to wait long, as he was called in to the headmaster’s office.

“I don’t have time to deal with this today,” he started before Peter had even closed the door behind him. “You will be punished for that,” he went on distractedly pointing a finger at the wall which eventually led towards the playground and the scene of the crime, “and I will write to your parents. With that said,” he went on in a more careful tone, “I am also informed of the circumstances surrounding your sister. So today, instead of having lunch, you will write a letter of apology to Edward.”

The indignation of unfairness combined with the knowledge of her fate stung Peter into looking up, a fire burning inside him that made him want to rage against the teachers and the bully, but he managed to suppress that just in time before he earned more punishment.

“As I have said,” the teacher went on in a lower voice as his eyes darted over papers on the expansive desk, “I have more important things to deal with today, so you can leave now; be back here at lunchtime.”

Peter stood, taking his dismissal stoically, and walked out of the office to the blessed sound of the bell ringing. He shuffled his way towards his class, climbing the single flight of stairs to the first floor of the huge, square building.

Something seemed off; just as the bus had been less populated than usual, so was the school almost half-empty. Pushing through the door into the classroom, he saw too many empty chairs, and the buzz of chatter was higher than normal. He feared the consequences of that noise, evidently alone in that fear as everyone else was talking loudly. Edward hobbled in, emphasising the ridiculous limp he had employed for sympathy, and fixed Peter with a glare that spoke of copious amounts of painful revenge. Pushing that unwelcome thought away, he glanced around at the half-filled desks and was struck by a realisation.

Not one child from the army base was there.

Not sure what that meant, he sat in silence and waited for the teacher. After five minutes, according to the large wall clock that usually ticked noisily but couldn’t be heard over the din now, they were still without a teacher. That had never happened before, and almost as though the children grew collectively bolder by their lack of overlord, the noise rose once more. Just as anarchy threatened to overcome the group, the door burst open and the headmaster stood in the threshold. He looked drawn and stressed, and he declared loudly that all pupils must attend the assembly hall.

As with all creatures of habit, they lined up by the door as a class in register order, like they always had done. The thought that nobody was enforcing the rules never even occurred to any of them. As one, they traipsed back down the stairs in a slow-moving caterpillar-like approximation of their inward journey, then waited as they filed in to sit cross-legged on the polished parquet floor. The noise subsided as the headmaster stood in the centre of the stage and called once for hush.

He spoke only once, then followed his instruction with a glowering look which he fixed on the younger children in the front row. That look silenced them as quickly as his words had, and the silence spread like a disease that rapidly infected the entire room.

Risking a glance around, Peter saw that the back half of the hall was empty when it would normally be full, and that half of the teachers who hovered at tactical points along the outer walls to watch for unruly behaviour were also not there.

“I have an announcement,” the headmaster said loudly, before a screeching, rumbling sound ripped the air as it grew in intensity. The children were all accustomed to the sounds of heavy tanks moving, but this convoy seemed bigger, louder and longer than any they had ever heard before. The seconds stretched into minutes, until finally the roaring din of heavy metal began to subside and fade into the distance.

“I have an announcement,” the head master intoned again finally, holding up a piece of paper and restoring his reading glasses to the end of his nose with his right hand. “School will be closed from now until further notice. All children are to go home until the school instructs them to return.”

The hall erupted into talk, answered by the raised voices and shouts of teachers trying to restore order, which was achieved shortly afterwards. One class at a time they were shepherded out and back to their classes to await their collection from the chilly playground.

After what seemed like an impossibly long time for Peter, spent avoiding Edward and his accomplices whilst maintaining a watchful eye on his whereabouts, the coach returned with a very confused and annoyed looking driver at the wheel. Grateful for the relative safety from persecution, Peter returned to stare out of the same steamed-up windows on the return leg of his daily journey.

Unsurprisingly, he found nobody waiting for him at the end of the road. Occasionally, if the mood took either of them or when there was a false sense of affection towards him and his sister, one of them would bring a vehicle to the end of the road and sit smoking until the coach dropped them off on the far side of the fast stretch. Had there been more traffic, his sister had told him, the road would be very dangerous. As it was, only sporadic cars passed that way even if they did drive fast, and they could be easily avoided.

With a sigh, he looked both ways twice, listened carefully for the sound of any approaching engines, just as his sister had taught him, and carefully stepped across the road to the grass-covered central reservation. Repeating the process for the second road that bore cars coming from his left this time, he crossed again and began the trudge home. Peter hoped that school had telephoned his parents, otherwise he would be accused of missing the bus and lying to get a day off school. Quite why they ever thought he would choose their company over the bullies and the teachers, Peter could never understand.

Opening his lunchbox on the move, he took out the only food he’d had chance to steal and ate it before he returned home and ran the risk of losing it.

THREE

Finally rounding the last bend in the road, the one where his sister had disappeared around, going the other way in the ambulance, Peter came in sight of the farm buildings and the house he called home. Getting to the front door, he put his hand on the handle to turn it, finding it uncharacteristically unyielding.

The doors are never locked, he told himself, trying to fathom why today he couldn’t get back in. His sister would know what to do, but that thought was as useless as the tears he had shed already. Rolling back the heavy cabinet which held boots and a film of dust and dried mud, Peter found the small leather key fob which was attached to the spare. He wasn’t supposed to know about it, but it had been there for years since his mother had once left her keys in the pub before getting a lift home.

It wasn’t that she was being responsible by not driving their car back, but more that she was so drunk that she didn’t remember driving there, and so abandoned the car by accident. Instead of addressing the larger problem, she had made sure she had a spare in case his father chose not to let her in like he did that time. Having long given up on drinking in public, she had spent the last year drinking cheaper spirits at home, where nobody dared judge her or pass comment on her, bypassing the glass entirely some nights.

Sliding the key into the lock, Peter hesitated before opening it in case it attracted punishment. Leaving the door locked, he replaced the key and the cabinet carefully, then walked a lap around the house to look for something, anything, to explain the strange day’s occurrences.

The car wasn’t on the driveway; not entirely uncommon but less common nowadays since the drinking began at breakfast and carried on through. The dog wasn’t in the house, otherwise she would be barking at his return, but that too wasn’t uncommon as Peter’s father would likely have her at his heel on the farm somewhere. Sitting on the step in the overgrown back garden, Peter tried to think of the best thing to do that wouldn’t get him in trouble.

Going onto the farm, especially in his school uniform, which was on its first day out of the five that it had to last, was a bad idea. His father would rage at him if he found him playing there when the daily movements were going on. The beating he had taken when he tried to follow him to work one day last summer was still fresh in his mind. He had come face to face that day with a young bull which was being herded in his direction. Peter shuddered at the memory and the feeling of fear; not from the animal who had just demonstrated an alarming aggression, but from his father, who had promised worse injuries than the bull could inflict if he ever disobeyed him again.

He didn’t know how long he waited, but it was long enough for the slight chill of the morning to creep into his body. Getting up and going into the large shed that was called the workshop, he turned on the electrical breaker to make the power flow to the simple building covered by its wriggly-asbestos panelled roof. Hearing the radio burst into low static as soon as it woke with the fresh feed of power, he stepped towards it and began to turn the dial gently to try and find some music. The fine-tuning of a radio was a skill he had learned but not yet perfected, so when he first heard the voices speaking intently with an edge of stress, Peter struggled to find it again after reversing the direction of the dial too far. Eventually, painstakingly turning it a fraction each time, he found the voices once more.

“…unconfirmed reports coming from the capital throughout the night, but it is certain that the military has been deployed on the streets of London. Looting and riots have erupted, but eye-witness accounts have stated that the infected are at the heart of the troubles. A spokesperson from the London Metropolitan Police Force has urged all residents of the city and surrounding areas to stay in their homes and not to infringe on the activities of the emergency services.”

A pause sounded, punctuated only by Peter’s eyebrows meeting in the middle, until the newsreader started again.

“In other news, after their two-nil victory over Albania last month, the England football team has announced that they are confident of another win ahead of the return leg when Albania travel to Britain next month in the world cup qualification rounds…”

His attention faded away from the sports news, finding it perverse that people could be so casual as to talk about a football match when, to him at least, it sounded like London was burning to the ground. The sound of a loud engine outside brought him back to reality, making him quickly run from the shed to flick off the electricity breaker on his way out. He stopped running as he rounded the edge of the house to see his parents sitting in the front seats of the car, both smoking and arguing intently, with hands waving to make their points. They hadn’t seen their son yet, and he preferred it that way, so he kept still with just a part of his face showing around the edge of the brick.

Peter’s mother evidently said something his father didn’t like, because he started hitting the steering wheel with enough force to rock the car on its springs and crush the cigarette between his fingers and burn him; something which his mother seemed to find amusing. That made him rage more at her, evoking an equally savage verbal response that Peter couldn’t hear. The simple fact that they had gone anywhere together, especially in the middle of the day when his father was usually hard at work seven days a week, indicated that something was definitely wrong. As his mind wandered, some sense of danger penetrated its way into his head, and he looked up to see both of them looking directly at him.

An escaping gasp made him jump, realising too late that it was his own, and Peter froze as his body decided whether to run or not. His head took over just in time, telling him that he had nowhere to run to. His body reluctantly followed those instructions and he stepped sheepishly out from behind the house to the sound of cars doors opening and slamming.

“What the hell are you doing here?” his mother screeched at him.

“Don’t you lie to your mother, boy,” his father warned; his voice heavy with the unspoken threat of physical punishment.

“School closed,” he blurted out as he retreated, eager to instinctively stay out of striking distance, “they sent us all home.”

Pater’s parents looked at one another in silence, as though the information made sense to them when it didn’t make any sense to him at all.

“Get inside,” his father eventually snapped at him, seeming to consider whether to clip him around the head just because. Peter went inside. Following the automated responses for getting in from school, he ran up the stairs to remove his uniform and fold it neatly ready for the next day, failing to understand that there wasn’t ever going to be another day at school. He dressed in some rough clothes and, as much as he hated to be anywhere near them, went downstairs to ask what was going on.

* * *

That evening, sitting in darkness in his room after the reward of an early bedtime yet again, for no reason other than asking questions which remained unanswered, Peter tried to make sense of what he had been told and what he had seen on the news. There was something going on in London, and as of that lunchtime, nobody was reporting from the city at all.

He had been there once, for a funeral he later realised, but at the time he’d blocked out the arguing from the front seat and stared in awe out of the window at the complete opposite of a world he knew. Everywhere was drab and concrete, with buildings taller than the biggest trees he had ever seen, and the air seemed to have a thicker quality that was totally at odds with the fresh farm breeze he knew. Now, imagining those same streets from the depths of his memories, he struggled to envisage those buildings burning like the ones on the clips of camera footage, and those streets full of people running and screaming. He couldn’t get the images he had seen out of his brain. He knew that sleep just wasn’t going to happen, so he decided to risk the wrath and try to listen to the television, which was still blaring loudly on the ground floor below.

Creeping as slowly and lightly as possible, Peter slipped out from under the covers and opened his door as softly as he could. The slight creaks and groans from the hinges made him freeze, ready to jump back into bed and pretend to be asleep if he heard even the slightest indication that he had been detected. Getting the door open enough to slip through, he made his way cautiously to the stairs, keeping his feet carefully to the edges of the floorboards, where they were the least likely to make the sounds which could get him caught. For a moment, he stopped at his sister’s bedroom door, and his bottom lip began to tremble as he saw her prized poster of Madonna. He’d laughed at her singing Into the Groove, using her hairbrush as a microphone. He made himself look away and carry on, knowing deep down that he would never sit with her on a Sunday evening and record the songs they loved from the charts on their ancient tape deck.

Making painstakingly slow progress in the interests of silence and self-preservation, he crept down the stairs until the partly-open door to the lounge showed him half of the television screen. His father’s slumped shoulders were visible in the armchair; the balding head lolled to one side, making Peter imagine the soft snoring that came from him in that position, especially when the mostly empty bottle rested against the side of the chair. He couldn’t see his mother, but his mind filled in the blanks and put her sitting out of sight, with a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other as she stared at the screen with dry, vacant eyes. At least it was the news and not his mother’s favourite rubbish, Dallas. She spent hours with her glazed eyes glued to that, or worse, her videos of it over and over again.

Satisfied that his father was asleep and his mother couldn’t see him – if she was even conscious at all – Peter settled himself down carefully to watch and listen as the television told him the things that they would not.

“…declared a state of emergency. Once again, an infectious disease has spread from a London research laboratory and infected the population. Police and military personnel are containing the outbreak, and residents are urged to stay in their homes until instructed. Anyone suspected of being in the early stages of infection, usually denoted by bites or scratches from those already afflicted, should be isolated and avoided. Do not attempt to treat people suspected of being infected. We repeat, do not attempt to help people who are infected. Other signs indicating infection are fever, confusion and dementia, and uncharacteristic aggression.”

Peter sat still on the stairs, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. It was normal for his parents to drink themselves into oblivion each night, but he imagined that even normal people would be doing that now. He knew London was a long way away, but he was still worried that this illness would sweep across the country and find their little patch of nowhere.

Peter went back to bed as stealthily as he could, and lay staring at the dark ceiling until he drifted into a fitful sleep.

* * *

Professor Grewal tried to calm himself with mathematics. Calculations and estimates passed the time, and he forced himself to work through the mental arithmetic slowly, step by step, to while away the hours. For the first time in weeks, he felt trapped underground in the laboratory that had never made him feel claustrophobic before. But before, he had been able to simply walk out.

Well, maybe not simply walk out, he admitted, thinking of the security doors and main entrance that was monitored by three guards, day and night. Those guards would not open the airlock doors with their spinning metal wheels until identification was verified via the closed-circuit television feed, but even before all this went wrong, he could still, with relative ease, get outside.

Not that he had in weeks, because he had been close to a breakthrough. He had been on the verge of it ever since the two American scientists had come in with their most recent research. But the way the two men with their matching glasses and similar government-issued wardrobes always glanced at one another before answering got on his nerves no end. Their research, conducted under the guise of medical testing and treatment, had been brought across the Atlantic for refining.

Refining. That was what they called it. Professor Grewal called it weaponising.

Morally, he was against the idea, but practically he knew that if he didn’t conduct the final process, then someone else would. It was a matter of professional pride, not arrogance, but he knew the other people in his field, and he knew that anyone else they brought in to do the work would be less effective than he was. He knew that the Russians had just as vast a research budget as the USA and the UK combined, and given that the likelihood of all-out nuclear war was very low, he knew that the two hugely powerful nations would find other ways to wage war in silence.

One way involved people like him. Professors in advanced bio-chemistry with real-world experience comprised a very small portion of the world’s population, and when they reached the tip of that particular iceberg, they tended to know each other. Of all the others he knew, he was certain that he was the best person to complete the research through to testing in the shortest time.

He had been right, at least about his ability to bring that research off the paper and into the bloodstreams of test subjects. What he had been wrong about, however, was the expected effects of the test.

These test subjects were another moral issue, and a solution had been provided by their American counterparts. Prisoners, unlikely to ever earn their freedom within a reasonable time, exchanged their lives for cash so that their families could see at least some benefit from their existence. Under strict conditions to prevent the spread of the disease, the subjects were restrained on the wheeled stretchers and the disease was administered in carefully measured doses of varying amounts.

The disease itself was naturally occurring, and it had taken the Americans years to breed it into the most severe potency. Still, as potent as it was, the speed at which it progressed was still slow enough that the symptoms could be recognised, and the infected subject effectively quarantined in time to stop a cataclysmic spread.

That was where Grewal came in.

His theories on crossing over disease barriers and combining them had been inspired by his research work on vaccinations. By combining the overly aggressive strain of the rabies virus with the fast-acting meningococcal disease, he had been successful in turning up the dial on the new hybrid disease all the way to eleven.

When the six simultaneous human trials began, the small facility was on full lockdown. Those trials began just as expected, and the first ninety minutes went seemingly without incident. At around the two-hour mark, four subjects began to display symptoms in varying degrees. Grewal made a note on his clipboard, mentally disregarding the other two as having received too small a dose to be effective, and he paid close attention to the one subject who he now knew had received the highest amount. Within three hours, that subject advanced far beyond the effects visible on the others, was writhing in pain and crying out. His skin showed angry, red welts and he complained of cramps and a headache.

By four hours, his temperature had risen to such a level that those standing by to monitor him could feel the heat radiating away from his skin. By the time that temperature was noticeable, the groaning, crying subjects had quietened and were sweating through their rapid, shallow breathing.

One of his laboratory assistants scribbled a rapid note as their doctor called out the time of death for the first subject, followed at regular intervals for the next two, before something very unexpected happened.

Subject one, his frothing mouth hanging open and his rapidly cooling skin no longer glowing pink, but having turned a deathly pale shade, opened his eyes slowly.

It wasn’t the simple mechanical response of a body in recent death to relax each muscle, because the eyelids fluttered open and blinked. The eyeballs, clouded and milky as though cataracts had blinded him, turned slowly left and right as though looking for something.

The chest began to rise and fall gently; each movement of the ribcage expanding and contracting prompted a rasping hissing noise, like wind whistling through a creaking door. The lab assistant who had recorded the time of death for that subject froze and turned slowly towards him, checking that the correct information had been annotated against the right subject. Stepping closer, he bent down to watch the rise and fall of the man’s restrained chest, placing his own face next to the subject’s, and believing himself safe from the contagion behind his mask and goggles, his eyes grew wide just as the face turned towards him and locked its own milky orbs on the man’s. Then it opened its mouth wide and bit the man on the face.

Six days later, after the full stupidity of the safety protocols in place became apparent and the sealed doors had been opened to investigate why the facility had stopped picking up the telephone, Grewal was still trapped in the store cupboard.

The lock was holding and there was no sign that the dynamic of those ‘things’ outside and him inside would change, but the supply situation was the more pressing concern. He had no idea what was happening in the wider world above ground, or in fact anywhere other than the three feet of corridor he could see either side of the door he was hiding behind. But his world was a small, dark place.

Not needing to count off on his fingers, Grewal cursed his luck that he had sought refuge in a room without running water and calculated that he had two days before he would be out of fluids and forced to try and escape that room before he was too weak to be effective. The only problem was the two lurching figures outside the door, who responded with blood-curdling screeching noises every time he made any sound. No matter how still he stayed, they would not leave.

He was entombed, effectively, by his own monstrous creation and would soon be forced to fight them or else face a certain, agonising death by dehydration.

FOUR

“Well, I’m not waiting here for news,” Peter’s father snarled angrily at his mother, whose only response was to take a further gulp of drink without taking her malevolent stare away from his eyes. He had spent the morning trying to raise people on the telephone, painstakingly dialling each digit of the numbers written in a book and waiting for the dial to slowly spin back to the zero. Each call had either resulted in him slamming the handset back down in frustration at nobody answering, or having a terse conversation with the person on the other end. Each time he made a call, regardless of the outcome, it seemed to anger him more.

“I’m going out,” he raged, throwing open a door to a cupboard in the hallway and retrieving a shotgun with a belt of cartridges, which he slung over one shoulder, before seeing Peter through the railings of the stairs and glancing back to his wife. He seemed to be weighing something up, like he was searching for the lesser of two evils, before abruptly saying to the boy, “Get your boots on and come with me.”

“What are you taking him for?” his mother shrieked, waving her half-smoked cigarette at her son as she stalked forwards full of accusations. “Planning on leaving me behind, are you?”

“Don’t bloody test me, woman,” Peter’s father raged back at her, puffing himself up to his full height like a gorilla. She wasn’t intimidated by his animalistic display, and her face told him exactly that.

“Stay here,” he instructed her and turned on his heel just in time to ignore the childish face she pulled at him and hear the accompanying huff of derision. A glance at Peter conveyed the information that he should have already got his shoes on and been waiting, so the boy scrambled down the rest of the stairs to comply quickly.

“Stay,” his father added in a growl, this time to their collie dog, who had automatically risen to follow at his heel.

Walking at double speed away from the house and towards the farm to keep pace with his much taller father, Peter resisted the urge to ask him any questions. He had learned long ago that asking would only gain the reward of a clip around the ear or a snarled response of an aggressive platitude like, “Listen instead of talking and you might learn something,” or, “Two ears, one mouth, boy. Work it out.”

So Peter kept silent, and kept pace, as his father strode towards his battered farm pickup with a soggy cigarette hanging from his lips. The once-white pickup was very basic, and he waited patiently until his father sat behind the driver’s door and sighed before reluctantly leaning over to lift the pin and unlock the passenger side. Peter slipped in and sat down, trying to keep himself as small and unnoticeable as possible as his father started the rattling, noisy engine.

Pulling out of the drive to the farm, he turned right, heading up the lane in the direction of the main road, but stopping at the houses midst the tall pine trees.

“Stay here,” he told the boy, not expecting and not receiving any answer, before climbing out and retrieving his shotgun from the flat bed of the pickup. Peter watched him as he walked slowly towards the houses, and he saw the gap that one missing vehicle had left. One of the farm workers came out of his house, and everything about his demeanour said he was apologising. He wrung his hands as he spoke, keeping himself hunched and smaller than the boy’s father, which is how people usually acted around him. Peter knew he was a bully. He was worse than Edward ever could be, because he was strong and not just picking on someone smaller than him to feel better. He bullied everyone, intimidated everyone, and if anyone didn’t bow down to him, then he forced them away.

Peter turned his attention back to the conversation and concentrated, trying to decipher what was happening without hearing the words. He saw the worker, a small man called Keith, who did most of the tractor driving. He was pointing to the gap where Peter expected there to be a car, and saw Keith waving his arms in some wild explanation of something. Peter’s father seethed. He knew that face, even if Keith didn’t, and he knew his father had stopped listening and was on the verge of violence. Keith’s eyes kept flickering towards the gun held low in one hand, as though the world was just crazy enough right then that his boss would use it on him. Without raising the weapon, and without another word, his father turned and stomped back towards the pickup.

Cramming his big frame behind the wheel after thrusting the gun over to the opposite footwell, he started the rattling engine again and pealed out in a drone of high revs. He gripped the wheel tight, his knuckles glowing white with the pressure, and seemed to hold his breath. Peter kept himself still and quiet, being invisible like he knew how when this close to his father, until he eased off the throttle and let out his breath in a long hiss of escaping air.

“Tony’s gone,” he said, surprising his son, “pissed off last night apparently. His sister rang him from Aldershot. You know where that is?”

Peter opened his mouth to speak, hesitating because he didn’t usually ask him questions that he expected an answer to. He took his eyes away from the empty lane to look at his son, making him blurt out an answer.

“No, where is it?”

“It’s that way,” he said, pointing a finger past the young boy’s face and making him stiffen in anticipation, “west, towards London.”

London, Peter thought, where the news said the trouble was.

“His sister is married to a soldier, and she rang him, telling him to get out. She would know if the army has been sent in. He tried to get Keith and the others to leave too, but they wouldn’t.”

Something in Peter’s mind lit up then, as though a circuit had been connected, and he spoke the words aloud before good sense could stop him.

“Yesterday, when we were told that school was closed, none of the children from the base were there and we heard the biggest convoy ever move past…” he said in a rush, trailing off as he waited for the response to come.

His father just eased off the throttle, slowing the pickup and swinging into the farm yard to creak to a halt. He didn’t move, so neither did Peter.

“You asked last night what was happening,” he said finally. “Well, there’s…” he stopped, rubbing hands hard across his face, “there’s some sort of shit spreading across the country. People are going mad and biting each other, then they catch whatever it is and do the same. The bloody army is on the streets. That shouldn’t happen!” he said savagely.

Peter kept his mouth shut, marvelling that this was the longest he had spoken to his father without him yelling in as long as he could remember. He looked up at him, risking eye contact in the strangeness of the moment. The father looked back down at his son, something resembling kindness or even fear in his eyes.

At least it wasn’t the loathing Peter normally saw, which made what he said next even more of a shock.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you or your sister, which is why we need to go and get her.”

* * *

The argument between his parents raged longer than usual, and he sat at the top of the stairs even after the inevitable smash of glass. He had changed into his pyjamas as the sun sank, and by the time his hunger had become painful, the raised voices from downstairs had grown so loud and slurred that he daren’t venture down there.

From what Peter could gather, fairly easily because they were shouting at each other without a care of where he was and what he could hear, his mother was against the idea of getting his sister back. His father was adamant, and the smashing glass was her answer to his insistence.

Going to bed for the second night in a row with an empty stomach, Peter miraculously found sleep.

* * *

The following morning, waking to hear nothing from the other bedrooms, Peter reached out to find his school clothes.

Dressed and warm, he crept downstairs to hear muted voices in the kitchen. His father was dressed, drinking something steaming from a cup, whereas his mother was wearing a dressing gown, holding a glass and a lit cigarette and still looking as drunk as she had in the evening. Peter’s father saw him first, a twitch of his eyebrows his only reaction to him entering the room. He fetched a bowl and a spoon, keeping himself out of reach and as small as possible, like he always did, then reached out across the table for the cereal.

As he poured fresh milk from the jug on the table, skimmed from the milking tank on the farm that morning as always, they seemed to jointly decide to ignore their son and carry on.

“Right,” his father said after draining his cup and pushing back his chair to stand, “I’m off. I’ll be back later.”

His mother’s only response was to huff at him and turn away and stare out over the kitchen sink into the back garden. Peter sank a little lower into his chair, crunching his cereal as quietly as he could. He looked down the hallway, seeing his father pause at the cupboard and replace the shotgun. Evidently, he must have thought twice about taking the weapon towards the distant towns and away from the safety bubble of the land they occupied. Without another word or even a casual glance, he went out of the front door and left.

Peter continued to crunch as silently as possible, not wanting to incur the wrath of his mother, who was still staring out of the window at nothing as the cigarette burned a long, drooping stick of ash, which eventually dropped onto the kitchen side. Finishing his breakfast and shooting her a quick glance to see if he was being watched, Peter raised the bowl to his mouth to drink the sweet milk left at the bottom. She didn’t see him, otherwise he would have earned another slap around the head, so he rose and went to wash his bowl in the sink as he always had to. Only she was blocking the way as she continued to stare out of the window. Seeing the slight rise and fall of her shoulders as her face was turned down, it took Peter a moment to realise that she was crying. Not sure how to respond at first, he gently set his bowl down and put a small hand on her arm.

“It’s alright,” he said nervously, “Dad will come back an…”

“Who bloody asked you?” she snapped as she rounded on him, wearing a furious, red-eyed look of hatred, “get back upstairs and take your school clothes off. You’re not going to school again.”

Having taken an instinctive step back so as to be out of striking range, he was already half-way to the door, so he turned and fled the remainder of the distance.

“And you can stay up there!” he heard her shriek in her grating voice from the kitchen, just as he could make out the clink of a bottle against a glass.

Back in his room, Peter did as he was told and put his school uniform neatly back where it had been before, and he got dressed in yesterday’s clothes. He got out the few toys he owned, either donated or found cheap and second hand when one of them was feeling generous or guilty, and played in silence as he mouthed out the words the figures were saying to one another.

Lunchtime came and went, as indicated by the blue and red hands of his watch, which his sister had taught him how to read, and still no summons had been yelled from downstairs. On his third day of being hungry, he could no longer bear missing a meal and creaked open the door to sneak down the staircase with careful steps.

At the foot of the stairs he paused, still unchallenged, and listened to the sounds. The television was on, as it often was throughout the day and night, but he listened long enough to hear nothing but the sounds of the programme. It was a film by the sounds of it, and one that made him think it was supposed to be funny from the musical noises probably designed to make people laugh as much as the jokes were. Risking discovery, Peter crept to the door and peered around to find her still wearing her dressing gown and sleeping in the grubby chair she occupied and forbade anyone else to sit in. The bottle lay empty on the carpet, and the glass had tipped out of her hand to rest lazily against the arm of the chair.

He retreated silently, stealing into the kitchen to grab slices of bread and scrape a slab of margarine onto each one before stacking them to creep back upstairs. As soon as he got back to the relative safety of his room he ate hungrily and continued to play until the sun sank outside his window. But then, two things happened simultaneously. His belly growled, reminding him that he was still hungry after barely eating for three days, and then his stomach lurched because Peter realised that his father hadn’t returned before dark.

FIVE

John, father to a daughter and a son, and husband to a vile shrew of a woman who he hated when she was drunk, but despised beyond comprehension when she was sober, had driven sedately towards the big town where the hospital was.

He drove slowly, not through being careful, but because with each mile he travelled, he felt himself growing ever more suspicious. That suspicion was caused by a dawning realisation that he hadn’t seen another moving vehicle yet. It was very common to never see a moving vehicle, as the only thing down their lane was the farm and it wasn’t a shortcut that led to anywhere. But out on the main roads it was usual to pass five or six cars by the time they came to the first buildings. Those buildings, bizarrely a large pub and a small police house, sat side by side and seemed abandoned.

Shaking his head as though to dismiss the twin thoughts of stopping in for a drink and wondering why nobody was there, he pressed on and settled his mind back to the road. Driving in that area didn’t take much in the way of concentration, he knew because he drove drunk almost every week without fail, and the chance of stumbling across the two policemen who patrolled their corner of the county was slim. What also made it easy was that there were usually very few other cars on the road, so giving way to another vehicle was a thing of rarity; so much so that he had to concentrate especially hard if he ever drove anywhere else. And when he did, he was scared if he let his concentration slip, he might just carry on as if he was the only person driving.

That morning though, his belly sour from the previous day’s alcohol and the insufficient breakfast, his unease about the road situation was growing in intensity. Not one car, not a single other moving vehicle was on the road. Trying and failing to ignore that fact, he continued through a village which was merely a collection of a dozen houses centred around a crossroads where the road met the rail line, a thatched cottage and a small shop-cum-post office. Deserted. Slowing the car, he saw that the window to the shop was damaged and the heavy plate glass was smashed inwards. Deciding against stopping to investigate, he pushed down on the accelerator to propel the car towards the hospital.

Arriving fifteen minutes later, having seen the same disturbing tale in three other hamlets, he reached the hospital to see chaos, and evidence of a fire at the main entrance. It had been small, otherwise the whole building would have been ablaze, but it had been sufficient to blacken the glass front and prevent him from seeing inside. Ignoring the main entrance in his growing fear, he headed for the side of the main building to drive around to the psychiatric unit out of sight of the main hospital. These things were usually kept away from the public eye, as unsightly reminders of such things weakened a person’s resolve.

Finding the single-storey building which he knew was the psychiatric assessment unit, he stopped and slowly ratcheted the handbrake on. He stayed in the car, unable to shake the now obvious sense that something was very wrong but trying his hardest to refuse to believe that any disease or rioting in London could affect them this far away already. He decided that the emergency workers had probably all been drafted in to the capital, and he nodded to affirm that assumption to himself before climbing out of the car and striding towards the doors.

This place, he had been told, would keep his daughter for up to two weeks to do an assessment on her before either sending her home or, more likely they believed, admitting her to an in-patient facility somewhere nearer the coastal towns.

They, or more accurately he, had decided to bring her home due to the crisis they had heard about on the news channels. She could be sorted out another time, but it mattered to him that the family stay together on their farm until all that London nonsense subsided; a sentiment very common to people who’d resided all their lives in the country and had a deep mistrust of such things that went on in cities.

That sentiment, as false as it was, evaporated as soon as he pushed open the doors of the hospital unit.

The receptionist, her white blouse and the pale skin of her face sheeted with dried blood, turned slowly, almost mechanically, around to face him as he walked in.

“Hello,” he said gruffly, “I’m here for my…” he trailed away as the horror scene of the woman finally connected with his brain. He said nothing, merely stared at the woman waiting for some kind of explanation which never came. Letting out a crackling noise somewhere between a hiss and a groan, she began to mount the reception desk separating them. Moving one limb at a time like a drunk, she continued to groan in and out, the sound like a comedy impression of a creaking door in a horror film as her eyes stayed fixed on him, unwavering and resolute.

John involuntarily took a pace backwards, then two more as the impetus of the receptionist took her off balance and she fell to plough her face directly into the hard floor in front of him. She didn’t react, didn’t pause or cry out or waver, she simply reset herself and continued to move towards him. He backed up as far as he could go until his back met the glass doors, which opened inwards and blocked his escape. Letting out a small cry of horror as he tried to push his way outside once again, he froze as the woman stopped and climbed to her feet unsteadily.

Now that she was upright and away from the furniture, his unobstructed view showed that her right calf muscle had been torn almost completely away. That horrible injury didn’t seem to debilitate her, nor did the evident blood loss stop her from stumbling towards him to close the gap to a mere arm’s length. Finally, his fear snapping, he threw out a jab of his large fist with all the easy strength of a man who had worked outside his whole life, and he connected with her face. Her nose crunched, her head snapped back on her neck like a slow-motion replay of a car accident, and she toppled backwards to slam into the ground again with a broken nose.

Straightening himself, John shrugged off the confrontation as he rolled his shoulders backwards and told himself that he hadn’t been scared after all, and that the woman merely needed putting in her place before she got herself hurt. Just as these foolish, misogynistic thoughts reaffirmed his arrogant belief in his own superiority, the receptionist groaned again and flopped over onto her front, where thick, dark, congealed blood poured like oil from her shattered nose onto the shiny floor. With evident difficulty and poor co-ordination, she regained her feet and shuffled slowly in a circle again to re-acquire John in her sights.

The teeth pulled back from bloody lips, the hands rose up to point directly at his face as though she were accusing him, and she lurched towards him again, hissing a louder groan than before. John curled a lip, knowing that he wouldn’t pull his punch this time, and drew back his hand with narrowed eyes as his body rocked back in preparation to deliver a huge blow.

Then he stopped, frozen in wide-eyed terror as he looked into her eyes. Those eyes, he now saw, were clouded over in blindness. They were milky orbs set inside sunken sockets, and the sight of them hit him in the chest with such a stab of fear that he was powerless to move. Some instinctive sense, however, sparked movement in him, and his body took up the backwards rocking motion with greater effort than before to build the power, and his fist rose again to rocket his upper body forwards behind the punch as his hips swung through to deliver the maximum amount of force possible. The crunching noise echoed loudly in the confines of the small atrium, and the woman crumpled backwards like a felled tree. The left side of her face, crushed inwards by the uneven battle between stationary cheek bone and large, rapidly moving fist, was a mess of bone and gore. She didn’t get up a second time.

Satisfied in some small sense, if not totally confused and terrified, John straightened himself and stepped over her body. He had no idea that he was stumbling around in shock, that his own mind had created a kind of fortress around itself to protect him and keep him moving, despite the things he had just seen and done, and he had no idea that there was worse still to come.

Pushing through the double doors behind the tall desk, he walked down a corridor and ignored the streaks of brown, dried blood which had filled the air with an almost metallic tang. He ignored the broken furniture and the cracked windows held intact by their reinforced mesh to prevent the shards from being used as weapons. He even ignored the hissing moans coming from behind the closed doors he passed as his presence stirred up the occupants. Keeping his eyes focused on the end of the corridor ahead where he could see the glass bubble of a nurses’ station, he stopped before it to take in another scene that his brain couldn’t process. He leaned forward, placing his hand against the glass to shield the light away from his eyes, to peer through the streaked blood and through to the other side.

A hand slapped hard against the glass, making him jump backwards and utter a strangled cry of alarm. The hand, blood-soaked with torn nails and the index finger missing from a ragged wound at the first knuckle, squeaked slowly down the pane as the rest of the body rose upwards into sight.

John’s mind, already on desperately thin ice, lost the battle and shattered the remaining fragile protection surrounding his wits.

The young girl, a teenager by her size and build, was sheeted with blood from a gash on her head which obscured her features. Her face tilted to the side in curiosity as it tried again with its ravaged hand to push through the invisible force field keeping her from the living body that intrigued her so much. Blinking involuntarily, the blood wiped away from the eyeballs to show the same blind, milky, soulless things he had seen in the receptionist’s eye sockets.

Hitting her hand harder against the glass and finding that it didn’t yield, she turned her head towards the door next to her and slowly, shakily, reached out for the handle.

John, his own eyes drawn to the opposite side of the door, stared in horror as the handle began to depress before it flung back upwards as though the slippery hand operating it had lost traction. Hearing the hiss from the other side raise in intensity, he looked on as the handle was pushed down again. Too late, John snatched for it to keep the thing shut inside and away from him, but the door had already opened and a hand shot through the gap to reach for him. He drew himself up to slam the door using all his body weight, only the blood-slickened floor betrayed him and took away his footing. Slamming down to the ground in shock, he looked up just in time to see the thing fall on him, forcing his hands out in front of him on instinct. The girl, chomping her teeth down onto the side of his left hand painfully to pierce the calloused skin of his rough hand, fixed him with her milky eyes.

He froze again, mouth open in pain and horror as the two locked eyes before hers turned away to get a better purchase on him. In that moment, he drew up one foot, placed it into her hip, and shoved hard to send her through the air and back through the doorway. Already on his feet but unaware of getting up, he slammed the door shut and ran the length of the corridor, now terribly aware that other doors were rattling and opening, before bursting out and tripping over the body of the receptionist to fall hard.

Scrambling to his feet again, he wasted precious seconds as he tried to push open the doors to the outside world before his brain took some semblance of control and he pulled instead to be instantly rewarded with fresh air. Running to collapse against his car, he looked at the neat row of teeth marks crimping the outside of his left hand, which already welled with blood and seemed to be turning the skin surrounding it grey.

Fumbling for his keys, he tried to start the car to return home, to tell his wife that the hospital staff had gone insane and blind and they had bitten him, but the weakness and dizziness and nausea took over, making him slump over the wheel into eventual unconsciousness.

SIX

The sun set fully, and Peter heard movement downstairs. The drink had obviously worn off, and he heard the downstairs toilet flush as the pipes in the bathroom opposite his room gurgled in echoing answer. The familiar clink of glass on glass travelled upstairs, making him feel less than hopeful for a meal that evening. He was starting to feel really hungry, to the point that hunger was almost overriding the sense of dread he felt at being left alone with his mother. That concept alone was terrifying enough, but when added to the knowledge that his father was supposed to be back by then with his sister, it made the boy’s heart drop.

If his sister came back, at least he would get some food cooked for him, and he would probably get told more of what was going on. If she didn’t come back, then feeling hungry all the time was probably going to be the least of Peter’s worries. That his father hadn’t returned was also a concern, but not as much as being left alone with the evil witch.

Peter and his sister used to play, safely away from the house in their secret den underneath the low branches of the pine trees, pretending that they’d been adopted by an evil step-mother who hated them. He thought that those games were just her way of helping him come to terms with their situation, and she always promised that as soon as she was old enough, she would leave and take him with her. Peter’s sad reverie was burst like a balloon by noises firing up the stairs like a rifle crack.

“Get down here! Now!” she screeched up at him, making his legs respond with an instant obedience borne of fear to lift him from the carpet and towards the door before his mind had even comprehended the order. Peter scurried to the stairs, stepping down them one at a time and slowing with each step as she waited at the foot with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. She waited until the boy had reached the bottom step and paused before pointing with a single finger to the carpet directly in front of her feet.

As instructed, and careful not to show any reluctance or fear, Peter stepped forward, anticipating the clip around his ear which usually came with the orders to step within range of her.

“What do you want to eat?” she snapped, a heavy hint of reluctance in her voice, as though she were fighting against her instincts to both nurture and abuse him at the same time.

“Anything,” he said quietly, hoping that was the right answer.

“Anything?” she sneered back at mockingly, “anything isn’t a meal. I asked what you wanted.”

As she spoke, that sickly-sweet fermented smell of alcohol hit him. He fought hard to keep his face neutral as his eyelids fluttered despite the battle to keep them still.

“Pasta?” he tried, hoping that would assuage her anger at his previous incorrect answer. She huffed, reluctantly allowing that as an acceptable response, and stalked away to the kitchen where she picked up another cigarette from a packet and lit it from the burnt-down nub between her fingers. Given no further instructions, Peter stepped gingerly into the lounge where he perched on the edge of the itchy, brown settee and watched the television screen. The program showing was saying nothing about what was happening, and he stood to switch the channel after first turning down the volume so that the sudden change was less likely to be noticed. Pressing in the first button on the top left of the control panel, which was unmarked but that he knew was for BBC One, Peter walked backwards to the settee again to watch the static logo on the screen and strain to hear the words.

“…stay in your homes, do not interfere with military operations and do not try to attend hospitals if affected by the disease. You are advised to stay in your homes, do not interfere…”

The recording looped again, repeating the same information over and over.

What kind of disease was it? Peter thought. Why can’t you go to hospital if you’re ill? Isn’t that the reason for hospitals?

“What do you want with it?” came the shout from the kitchen, making Peter jump.

“Cheese,” he answered, adding “please,” before he earned punishment for poor manners.

Grumbled noises came in response but nothing which required him to move or answer, so he switched the channel again. On the third button he found a live broadcast, or at least not a sound recording on loop. This one had a man in a suit and with a moustache that was distracting when he spoke. He looked slightly dishevelled and very uneasy, scared even, and his eyes kept flickering away from the camera to look around the studio that wasn’t shown on the screen. He shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him and asked someone behind the camera if they wanted him to go again, then he nodded when he got an answer, before clearing his throat and trying to make his face serious and commanding.

“Good evening, and welcome to the ITN News. An epidemic is sweeping the streets of Britain, after a virus was inadvertently released from a London laboratory, we believe late last week. Experts state that the mysterious illness causing the chaos is similar to the rabies virus. Those affected by it display extremely aggressive behaviour towards others, and there have been numerous incidents of…” the eyes flickered again before the throat was cleared a second time, “incidents of cannibalism. Transmission of the illness is also believed, experts claim, to be via bites and saliva from the infected. The London Metropolitan Police Force made a statement yesterday urging everyone to stay in their homes and not to interfere with the efforts of police and military personnel. Footage from the capital.”

The screen suddenly went black, shrinking to a slowly dying dot of white in the very centre of the box, just as loud swearing came from the kitchen.

Power cuts so far away from the towns were a regular thing for the farm, but the timing of this one made Peter jump. He could hear the sound of drawers being pulled open and slammed closed from the kitchen, making him think that she was looking for candles to light and carry on with the meagre meal preparations. It was only really the lights which ran on electricity, as the heating and cooking was fuelled by the large oil tank outside. Because that was apparently expensive, the heating was rarely used. Peter wondered the last time he was told not to even think about turning the fire up, and how much their endless supply of oil cost.

The television screen was in total darkness now, the tiny dot of residual light faded into nothingness, and he was left in the dark room alone without any link to the outside world.

“It’s ready,” came an annoyed shout from the kitchen, and he stood to walk fast into the other room where he took a seat at the table, to be presented with a messy pile of undercooked pasta and not enough grated cheese to match it. He ate in silence, being watched the whole time as she smoked her way through three cigarettes until he had cleared the plate.

“Please may I get down from the table?” Peter asked meekly but with enough confidence to hopefully avoid any accusation of mumbling. She nodded once, so he stood and carried his plate and fork to the sink where he began to run the water to wash them.

“Oh, just leave that,” his mother snapped out of annoyance as she waved her hand in his direction, “I’ll do it, you just go to bloody bed.”

He went without a word, and much later as he lay awake, Peter thought he could hear her crying downstairs alone.

* * *

Waking the next morning, Peter did as he was told and didn’t put his school uniform back on. Instead, he wore the same clothes as he had been wearing the day before. They weren’t dirty, nor had he been wearing them for long enough to fall into that immeasurable bracket of ‘dirty enough to wash’. He went downstairs to find that she hadn’t risen yet, so Peter let the dog out of the back door where it was whining pitifully, and slipped his feet into his boots to follow.

The morning air was brisk but not cold, but that wasn’t what made his brow furrow. It was something else; it was the noise of the morning which was wrong. Normally, there would be some sounds from the farm, and the absence of those regular noises felt alien. Not that the morning was silent, but instead of the distant hum of the dairy machinery working for the morning milking session, there was the constant and distressed cacophony of cows.

His young brain recognised that they should have been milked by now, as that process started when the sky was still just in darkness at this time of the year, but their braying complaints rolled across the yard behind the house to spell something very out of sorts. In light of the dawning realisation that his father was probably never coming back, and therefore not in a position to reprimand him for going over there, and the realisation, too, that his mother was still sleeping off the bottle or two she had gone through the day before, Peter walked to the gate and made his way on to the farm, with the dog trotting easy circles around his slow progress.

Peter found the milking parlour in silent darkness, something that the power cut shouldn’t affect, because it had its own generators as testimony to how often the electricity grid failed their remote location. He carried on past towards the sound of unhappy cows. Creatures of habit, all the black and white cows with their heavy, swinging udders all crowded in the field at the gate, expecting it to be opened and to file in to be milked and fed. Peter doubted whether they really understood what happened each morning and why, but even a creature as simple as a cow could understand a routine.

He knew then, that with his father gone, none of the others would work on the farm. One had already left, he knew that much, but the others had either quit without telling anyone or had also abandoned the farm.

Or worse, he thought, before he banished that thought from his head, but that can’t be, can it? That’s in London and it’s miles and miles away from here.

Walking back to the house, Peter had been back inside for less than a minute before he heard the sounds of her walking down the stairs, surrounded by the cloud of her first cigarette of the morning.

SEVEN

Peter’s life evolved into something resembling more freedom than he had ever enjoyed, but the cost of that was a crushing loneliness which gathered more force daily. The knowledge that his father and sister weren’t going to come back escaped his young mind most of the time, and he found that he was banishing the facts that he didn’t want to recall to the fringes, where they could be almost ignored.

He filled his days with walks on the farm, sometimes with the dog at his side; not out of any loyalty to him but another force of habit that dictated its place was outside. The dog was no pet and seemed to ignore Peter most of the time as it clearly felt its own spot on the family hierarchy was well above Peter’s own. Only now, with the father and the dog’s master gone, did a reluctant companionship emerge between the two.

That bubble of freedom was burst after four days, when his mother woke him with her screeching voice from downstairs as she raged and broke things. Pulling up the covers a little tighter, he hoped that she would contain her rage to the ground floor and not remember him.

* * *

Early on the fifth day that they were alone, Peter woke to a sensation that something was wrong. His eyes fluttered open; first the left and then the right until the bright light streaming in through the open curtains was manageable. The thing that was wrong, as he realised with sudden fear and panic, was his mother standing in his room wearing an exasperated look of hostility. She picked at her nails, something she did when she couldn’t smoke, and her red-ringed eyes bored into him menacingly.

“Get up,” she snarled, “we’re going out.”

Doing as he was told, he dressed under her watchful and malevolent gaze, then tried to inch past her in the doorway. She did this often, blocking his way to force him to ask – to beg – for her permission to pass.

“Excuse me, please,” he said in a humble voice.

“Speak up,” she snapped at him.

Raising his eyes in defiance, then as his nerve abandoned him at the last minute, he dropped his gaze and asked again in a louder voice that still showed what he hoped would be enough deference to avoid being hit.

She smirked unkindly and stepped aside to allow him enough room to get through the gap by her elbow. As he passed, she leaned sharply towards him and caught the side of his head with the elbow, as though it was his fault.

Numb to the pain and almost immune to her bullying tactics after so many years, Peter regained his footing and walked to the bathroom where he did what he needed to do and brushed his teeth afterwards. Realising that breakfast would obviously be bypassed, he was hustled out of the front door and towards the farm. She shoved him in the back towards the battered pickup, as their family car was now missing, and she fumbled with the unfamiliar keys to get in. Spending almost a minute adjusting the seat back, she left him standing outside the passenger door until she reluctantly leaned over to let him in. Settling into the seat and making himself small and insignificant, he pulled his seatbelt and clicked it home. As the squeaking, rattling engine whined, the pickup bucked slightly as she failed to anticipate how low the clutch was on the unfamiliar farm wagon.

Stopping at the edge of the driveway onto the road, more out of habit than actual care, she paused to look right before turning left to go down the narrow and overgrown track that led to nowhere special.

The roads, as unmaintained and rough as he was used to, bounced Peter around in the passenger seat uncomfortably as his mother mithered and muttered under her breath beside him. He kept quiet and looked out, unable to open the windows to allow in any fresh air because of the overhanging greenery scraping and bumping off the cab intermittently. Staring out of the dirty glass, Peter found solace in doing something and moving somewhere, instead of just waiting at home barely getting fed.

He wanted to ask where they were going, what they were looking for and to quiz her about the reasons, but the risk of her responding as she usually did was too great and would spoil his mood. He kept quiet and waited to find out the answers to the questions which were too risky to ask. When they reached a T-junction, devoid of any traffic or obstructions, he held his breath as her muttering became louder. Glancing across, he saw how she gripped the wheel with one hand as the other shook almost uncontrollably at her mouth, while she intermittently bit at the nails in between uttering words he couldn’t make out. Too scared to move, he stayed still and quiet as he always did around her when she was within striking distance. Without warning, she snarled something to herself and turned right in a chirp of tortured tyres as the pickup bucked with the change from first to second gear. Keeping her foot hard down on the accelerator, she crept the speed up into the next gears, as Peter stayed still and quiet. Slowing after a while, she turned right off the road into a small car park. He recognised the place, having been dragged there in the past to collect their car, or even once in the darkness when his father carried her bodily out of the small brick building.

Their nearest pub, ironically called the Fox Arms, which always made Peter ask the silent question to himself about foxes not having arms, stood quiet and brooding. His mother seemed oblivious to the air of brooding menace the building seemed to give off, as she spilled from the car with shaking hands and a pale visage displaying her annoyance at catching her son’s eye.

“Stay here,” she said firmly, giving Peter the slight sense that he detected a waver in her voice.

He stayed. He watched her stagger slightly as she made as straight a line as she could manage towards the front door of the building, disappearing inside and leaving him suddenly alone.

His heart rate rising fractionally, Peter scanned his surroundings just past the dirty glass which was all that separated him from the outside world and all of the unknown frightening things which were happening there. Forcing himself to breathe and be calm, he assessed the things he saw and catalogued them. A tall evergreen tree swaying slightly, betraying the wind blowing higher up than ground level. The flashing lights of the railway crossing further up the road, not flashing now as no trains were imminent. The two other cars on the small patch of ground he occupied, both looking cold and still as though they hadn’t moved in a while.

Slowly, he dared to wind down the window an inch, stiffening at the squeak the handle emitted when he first took up the pressure, and allowed more senses to come into play to build the picture of his immediate surroundings. Lifting his chin to take in a long breath through his nostrils, Peter added more information to the list.

Birdsong, high in the trees. A slight chill on the breeze, bringing with it the smell of wet woodland which was very different to the wet grassland that was so familiar on the farm. More noises drifted to him then, both familiar and startlingly different.

Glass breaking, muffled by distance and obstructions, but unmistakable. A shout, a bang.

At the sound of the bang, his visual acuity snapped his head to the right and back to the door which he had last seen his mother disappearing into. She re-emerged then, her arms full of clear glass bottles containing liquid that looked like water, but Peter knew was not. In her panicked flight, he smirked as she fumbled one of the bottles held awkwardly in her arms and dropped it, to hop in an ungainly dance over the smashing glass, heard crisply and clearly now. He also heard the string of foul obscenities that spewed from her vile mouth and the smirk wiped itself from his face in case she saw and took her revenge.

From the way she ran, or was trying to run, awkwardly with her arms full, Peter thought that she hadn’t paid for the bottles and associated the shouting from inside to mark that theft. His brain registered that he had only heard one voice shout, unmistakably that of his mother, but the omission of other sounds didn’t fully paint the picture that she described when she regained the safety of the cab.

“He’s fucking nuts, that bastard,” she spat as she threw herself in, barely able to perform basic motor functions with her rapid breathing and red face. Throwing the four surviving bottles into Peter’s lap, she turned the key and crunched her way into first gear before slamming her right foot down and tearing out of the car park almost out of control. Revving each gear beyond comfort for as long as Peter could hold his breath, she suddenly slowed and stopped the car on the gravel verge, before fumbling with the sequence of the controls she needed to manipulate, and she stalled the pickup.

She turned her furious eyes on him, and he snatched an involuntary breath, flinching to shut his eyes tight as her hand shot out towards him.

Opening one eye to confirm what his ears had told him was happening, he stared at her as she sat next to him. Her desperate reach wasn’t to hit him, he realised, it was to make a grab for the one thing she needed most. The seemingly life-sustaining liquid in the bottle she now tore at feverishly to remove the screw cap from, and to tip it to her mouth. The roof of the cab prevented her from upending the bottle completely, forcing her to dip her chin and try to make her body smaller in an attempt to force the drink to flow. Pausing, she took three deep breaths to steady herself, then began her frantic guzzling once more, before a lack of oxygen forced her to stop and breathe. Slowly, her hands no longer trembling incessantly, she put the lid back on the now quarter-empty bottle with relative ease and closed her eyes as she let the drink flow though her body, as though she couldn’t think or function without it, as if it was the fuel she ran on. Opening her eyes, she turned to regard him and did the rarest of things.

She smiled at him.

He had seen it a few times in his life. Not the smile she cast on him when she was relishing the anticipation of punishing him, but a genuine smile of someone who was happy. Her sudden likeness to his sister stung him deeply, as though without seeing his mother look at him kindly, he had never noticed the family resemblance until that moment.

“That’s better,” she said glibly, as if simple joviality could cover up her debauched need for the drink, and she thrust the bottle back at him to hold. He took it wordlessly, watching her restart the truck with deft hands and far more poise with the controls.

“Next stop,” she announced gleefully, “shop. Hopefully nobody else tries to run me off today.”

Peter knew that the shop meant a purchase of a whole carton of cigarettes from the Greek man who owned the franchised chain store with its attached single fuel pump. The local shop, as it was known, was local for a few hundred people spread out over miles and miles of farmland. There was another small shop of the same chain in a village that Peter’s bus to school passed through. He could see the same sign, the same flash of three simple colours, on the corner building where the houses of that village met the railway line. The same railway line that he had seen minutes earlier, in fact, just further down that line.

This absent-minded train of thought covered the time it took for his mother, now renewed with a seemingly youthful energy and positive nature, to drive them to the shop.

Getting out, she paused, leaning back down to issue the same growled threat to stay, but then she seemed to hesitate.

“Come on then,” she snapped, albeit in a higher pitch than usual, which he guessed meant she was trying to be fun and companionable. Hurrying to release his seatbelt, he spilled from the car to stand upright and move his feet fast to catch her up, if only to hover just out of the reach of her arms.

The forecourt of the shop-cum-fuel station was as deserted as the pub, but that didn’t mean anything there, the area being devoid of life at the best of times. He watched as his mother straightened herself, in his opinion a pointless and vain attempt to make an abusive alcoholic seem in any way respectable. She pushed open the glass and metal door to activate the tinkling bell suspended above the frame.

Hovering just behind and beside her, Peter peered into the gloom as he held his breath. The harsh, ear-grating screech of, “Hello?” coming from his mother made him flinch involuntarily, but he focused his attention back on the poorly-lit interior of the shop in time to anticipate any answer.

None came, and he followed her inside.

EIGHT

Dean Johnson took stock of his Yeomanry squadron of reservists, who were chatting amongst themselves in the big drill hall. He was both annoyed and secretly pleased to have found that none of the squadron’s officers had reported for duty, and he wondered if they had even received the call to ignore in the first place, or whether they simply hadn’t made it there yet.

He was glad that none of them had arrived, apart from the Major, that was, because in his opinion they were either snot-nosed, entitled children who brought their genetically weak chins to dilute his beloved army, or else they were washed-out old Etonians with little to offer, other than second-hand officers’ mess stories. The Major was the exception to the rule, in that he had been a career soldier who had achieved the highest rank available to an enlisted man, then had his skills and experience recognised with a commission to attend Sandhurst on retirement, where he graduated with the rank of Captain. The Major was the man who effectively ran the unit, along with his trusted Squadron Sergeant Major, as it certainly wasn’t the Lieutenant-Colonel, whose only talent was his insatiable appetite for port and afternoon naps, and Johnson looked up to the Major greatly.

That wasn’t to say that Johnson wasn’t a man who inspired others. A heavy haulage mechanic by trade, he had joined the Territorial Army in his teens as he could never bring himself to give up his lucrative apprenticeship. By the time his training had been completed in his day job, he had risen to the rank of Corporal and was marked out as a young man capable of much more. When the pull to join the regular army threatened to take him from his civilian life, he could not bear to lose the huge difference in wages between the careers, so he dedicated himself to his territorial unit, and over eighteen years had risen to the rank of Warrant Officer class two and was awarded the high honour of becoming the Squadron Sergeant Major.

Stepping stiffly up onto a small stack of ammunition crates, he cast his eyes over the almost seventy men who had mobilised when called. Less than seventy from a full complement of almost one hundred and twenty enlisted ranks and officers.

It was, he decided, a fairly shit turn-out.

The call was expected by many, so the excuse of men who claimed not to have been informed was unacceptable at the very least. Now, deciding that it was time he called the assembled men to quiet and explained their tasks, he stood tall on the wooden boxes and cleared his throat.

It was a small noise, but he somehow made it echo throughout the large room and cut the air to silence numerous conversations mid-sentence. Almost as one, the men sat or stood still to listen to their Sergeant Major.

“Gentlemen,” Johnson intoned solemnly, hiding his excitement at a live mobilisation behind the sheer gravity of the situation, “fall in, sit down, and shut up.”

He waited as they did as they were told.

“I’ll keep it short,” he began, “because you’ll be deployed as of sixteen-hundred tonight. Troop sergeants will draw up stag rotas. That said, numbers aren’t what they should be, so Four Troop will be disbanded to give full complements to the other three Sabre troops,” he said, meaning that of their four main fighting units, only three could be fully manned and sentries would be posted from that evening, “and we wi…”

“Sorry I’m late, chaps,” burst a voice from the back of the room, accompanied by the bang of a door. The accent dripped with privilege, but as the young man strode into view, Johnson’s worst fears became realities.

Second Lieutenant Oliver Simpkins-Palmer was everything Johnson hated in the officer classes. He didn’t dislike the officers as a general rule, and certainly respected many that he had met and worked with over the years, but this man was an aristocratic, elitist, stereotypical bloody Rupert who made his peers call him Olly and dropped the double-barrelled name for ease in the military setting and elected to go with Palmer, as was the male tradition in his family. He had, in Johnson’s not inconsiderable experience, been born with a silver spoon very far up his arse, and every word that dripped from him was languid and infuriated the Sergeant Major. He was a soldier. He had worked hard and earned his place. Palmer however, had been born to the right family, had never known hardship and would never know the value of money as he and his men did. His older brother, Johnson knew, had joined the army fresh out of university and had graduated Sandhurst, having made a name for himself as an intelligent young officer. He had been posted to the Household Cavalry, and all reports from the men there said that he had grown into a well-respected young Captain who was popular with his men.

Lieutenant Palmer was the opposite side to that coin, he saw the men of the company as beneath him and treated them all as his personal servants. He had also finished university but believed that his career lay in entrepreneurial investments, instead of climbing the ladder through hard work. If Johnson were to believe rumour, which he listened to but didn’t read as gospel, then Lieutenant Palmer had inveigled his father into bankrolling his lifestyle, appeasing him by joining the reserves. He seemed to believe that rank, as pathetically junior as his was, offered him privilege far above his earned station.

Respect the rank, Johnson told himself as the annoying twerp strode towards him, not the man.

“Mister Palmer,” Johnson said through barely gritted teeth as he nodded his greeting to the young man, who stepped close to the boxes he was standing on, “I was just addressing the men, Sir, if you would like to discuss the matter afterwards?” he said, keeping his face neutral so as not to betray the hostility between the two men to everyone.

“I’d like to discuss it before I address the men, if it’s all the same to you, Sergeant Major,” Palmer said acidly, and loudly enough for the closest dozen men to hear.

Johnson stepped down without another word, wearing, however, a face which indicated a severe level of disapproval. Palmer smiled infuriatingly, forcing Johnson to swallow down his rising anger at the intrusion and control his face, as he strode ahead to the administrative offices with Palmer walking behind.

“Talk amongst yourselves, boys,” he called over his shoulder and smiled internally in satisfaction as the ambient noise in the hall rose measurably. Palmer, singling out the nearest enlisted man, spoke condescendingly to him.

“Find me a cup of tea, would you, Smith?” he said annoyingly.

“I’m Parry, Sir,” the man answered, only to be dismissed with an irritated wave of the officer’s hand.

As soon as Johnson walked inside the office, the door was pushed closed behind him. In almost mocking contrast of one another, Palmer lounged over the corner of the nearest desk with his legs apart, whereas Johnson stood ramrod straight as though he alone in the room took any pride in soldiering.

“Who gave you permission to address the men?” Palmer asked. Johnson’s eyes moved slowly to fix the much younger man, who seemed to lack the courage of his convictions and quailed slightly under the gaze of the tough man.

“Perhaps, Sir,” Johnson said with an emphasised sneer, “you don’t yet know how the army works. Perhaps, Sir,” he said again, putting yet more aggression into the false deference as he took a pace closer in order that the young man understood him properly, “you don’t know how things actually work in this squadron. You might not be aware that almost every decision made is made by sergeants in the HQ troop, or the admin troop or by the Sabre troop sergeants, or, Sir, by me.”

He stepped back and seemed to relax, even allowing a small smile to spread across his face to signify that he meant no more hostility to the new officer.

“In answer to your question, I do not need anyone’s authority to address my men. Now, I assume that you would like to know our disposition and orders before I pass them on?”

Palmer, in betrayal of his arrogance, was not cowed by the reprimand and if anything, he seemed to have found the small interaction amusing. Johnson fought down the urge to slap the man less than half his age and send him to bed.

“Please, Mister Johnson,” he said with yet more dripping sarcasm than the older man thought possible, “do apprise me of our situation and disposition.”

Johnson sucked in a big lungful of air through his nose in order to settle himself and stop him from speaking for a few valuable seconds, then he let it out and spoke.

“Of our six troops, we have a little over half strength,’ he began, “I’ve cut out Four Troop,” he explained, meaning that one quarter of their regular fighting units had to be disbanded, “as they have no troop sergeant and no Corporals deemed up to the task of replacing them. Those men have been distributed amongst the other three Sabres and the assault troop, and HQ have been merged with admin for the time being. We still have empty seats, and more vehicles than we have bodies to fill.”

“That’s all wonderfully explained and I’m sure you can be pleased,” Palmer drawled in a voice Johnson could only describe as smarmy, “but I was rather hoping to receive an update about the rest of the country and what’s been going on,” he finished, his rich and cultured accent bearing a trace of feminine gentility.

Johnson looked shocked, as the man had clearly just rolled up without a clue what had been happening elsewhere.

“Sir,” he began, a furrowed brow of concern showing above his shrewd eyes, “London and surrounding areas are gone. Wiped out. The entire Household Cavalry unit training at the camp have been deployed to roll armour straight down the bloody M3 into London. We have been mobilised and are on home defence duties effective from six o’clock this evening,” he said, intentionally simplifying certain elements of his report, as he doubted the fresh-faced aristocrat could cope with the full truth given in army lingo. Seeing the mask of smugness slip momentarily from Palmer’s face, Johnson went on.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” he asked.

“I rather doubt anyone knows what it is, wouldn’t you say, old boy?” he responded, infuriating Johnson again at being encompassed in his own lingo and branded as one of them.

“No, I bloody wouldn’t,” Johnson snapped back, “there’s talk of some illness caused by infected animals from France, other rumours about some disease the Americans and the Russians were racing to perfect just so they can keep trying to kill each other quietly, and now there’s even the local loonies and god-botherers trooping their own colours and saying it’s bloody judgement day.”

He took a half step back and calmed himself down before resuming in a more relaxed tone of voice.

“Our job,” he explained, “is to patrol and ensure that Her Majesty’s peace is kept. We will move down to the training camp and treat it as a deployed forward base. We will keep round the clock defences in place, and we will conduct patrols of the towns and villages. Any questions, Sir?” he finished.

Surprising him then, the younger man removed the look of half-bored amusement from his face and stood up.

“Thank you, Sarn’t Major,” he said formally, “what about our supply and equipment situation?”

Johnson, as surprised as he was, did not hesitate and nor did he need to refer to any notes.

“Full complement of vehicles,” he began, “sixteen Fox armoured vehicles, each with a 30mm canno—”

“I’m aware of our standard armaments, thank you,” he interrupted, although with less arrogance than before.

“We also have four Spartans, two Sultans and access to dozens of Bedfords, not to mention the Saxons and whatever else is at the camp,” he finished, listing off the troop transport and fighting vehicles at their immediate disposal, as well as the many available larger transport trucks and whatever training vehicles were left behind when the regulars shipped out.

“Ammunition and consumables?”

“More than we can shake a stick at,” Johnson answered.

“And contact with other squadrons?” Palmer asked.

“Working on that,” Johnson answered, “Lance-Corporals Daniels and Mander are building up a network now, as they have been for the past hour. They’ll have got hold of anyone listening by now.”

“Very good,” Palmer intoned thoughtfully, leaning precariously back towards annoying the more experienced man, “I want to get more information about the situation in the city before we move out. Are we able to make contact with any military units closer to the action?”

The way he said action made Johnson grimace inside. It was like the lustful, youthful way that combat virgins spoke of being in the thick of things, when they had never even held a weapon since their last training weekend.

“Already in hand,” Johnson answered, “RNAS Yeovilton are putting up a pair of their training Hawks as long-range reconnaissance in,” he looked at his watch, “a little under twenty minutes. We should know more then.”

“Outstanding work by all, then,” Palmer said gleefully, yet still made his words come across as sarcastic and derisive of others’ efforts. “Now, who else from the senior ranks has answered the call to arms?”

Johnson stared the young man down until he could keep silent no longer.

“You are the only officer in attendance, Second Lieutenant,” he said, intentionally adding the man’s very junior rank as a reminder that he should harbour no intentions of taking charge and giving orders.

“Sergeant Major,” Palmer said with a clear tone of annoyance in his voice, “I’m starting to suspect that you aren’t the slightest bit pleased to see me…”

Johnson now believed that the time had come to explain the facts of life to the man.

“Sir,” he said, as kindly as he could manage, “for the sake of clarity, until such time as a Captain or the Major arrives, I’d like to make it entirely clear that this,” he stabbed one finger onto the desk to produce a metallic sounding report, “is,” another tap, “my squadron,” he finished with a final bang on the desk. Palmer smiled, and Johnson did not feel placated by the gesture one little bit.

“Well, for the sake of good order and pretending for just one blasted minute that Her Majesty bestowed on me a commission, can we agree to include the lowly Second Lieutenant in your hierarchy, even if only to maintain the sense of propriety that the men expect?”

Johnson shot him a look that warned him not to interfere but agreed with a curt nod and a gesture of his chin to follow him back out into the drill hall. Striding straight back to the raised platform of ammunition crates, Johnson stepped up and bawled for silence.

Silence descended immediately, and all eyes turned to him.

“Right then,” he called out, “Four Troop, as I said, you have been allocated to the other Sabre Troops. Report to your new sergeants. HQ and Admin troops, you now report to Sergeant Croft. Troop sergeants on me after this briefing.” He paused to clear his thoughts before dropping the news on them. “The capital has been lost to a virus that experts say is like rabies,” he paused to let that sink in, casting a fatherly eye over his audience, “and riots have torn the place apart. The Household Cavalry boys have rolled out to stop the riots, and we are back to our original role as home defence. We will occupy the training camp, consolidate and defend, and conduct fighting patrols to quell any incidents.” He paused to scan the room once more and waited for the faces to show concern. They didn’t. Most were local boys who would quietly ensure that their families and neighbours would get themselves somewhere safe.

“Alright then,” Johnson said loudly, “let’s work hard to get away early. Fall out.”

Stepping down and walking away with Palmer at his flank, he strode into the room which was being used as a hastily-erected temporary communications suite, just in time to hear Lance Corporal Mander speaking into his radio handset.

“Understood, RNAS Yeovilton, November-Three-Zero out,” he said before he carefully put down the handset and removed his heavy headphones. Reaching out to rest them gently on the desk, he suddenly dropped them and flew from his seat to bounce off the Sergeant Major and drop to his knees just in time to grab a metal bin to void the contents of his stomach into.

“Corporal Mander?” Johnson asked, perplexed at the unexpected behaviour.

“The Navy pilots,” he said, pausing to spit before he tried to stand and retched again instead, “the Navy pilots have reported back to base,” he said as he stood and wiped his mouth on a sleeve.

“And?” Johnson prompted him.

“And they said that everyone is walking the streets in a daze, attacking everything that moves. Except each other, apparently, but Sarn’t Major, the armoured column,” he paused, his eyes pleading, “they said they were overrun near Southampton…” Mander’s eyes bulged again and he threw himself back toward the bin to finish what he had started.

Johnson turned to Daniels and didn’t need to ask the question. The other Lance Corporal picked up the headset and microphone to call the Naval Air Station back and seek clarification. Johnson listened to the one-sided exchange, wearing a stoically blank look on his weathered face, his eyes stinging and his stomach doing small flips in response to the smell of Mander’s vomit, unable to hear the important parts of the conversation but watching intently as the other man’s face dropped in cold horror at what he was being told.

“Sarn’t Major,” he said weakly, “it’s true. The armour has been overrun and the disease has spread well outside London. They said…” he looked down and swallowed, making Johnson think that they might need another bin in the office before long, “they said that the dead are rising and attacking people.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Palmer said in a higher-pitched voice than normal, “that can’t be right. The Navy boys lost their bottle, eh?” he tried. Johnson ignored him, and instead of responding, he strode back out to the drill hall where a gaggle of sergeants awaited him.

“Change of plan,” he said with savage purpose, “Andy?”

“Behind you,” came a gruff voice belonging to the Squadron Quarter Master Sergeant, Andrew Rochefort. Johnson turned to face him, nodding companionably to the older, shorter man who kept the records of everything they had been or would be issued.

“Every available driver we have takes a vehicle each and we load it with every last supply at this location before we move to the camp. Every bullet, every mortar, every piece of kit, everything down to the last can of bloody beans. Clear?”

They understood him.

“And tell the men to call their families,” he said with next to no hesitation, “tell them the disease has spread out of London, and that they should get themselves somewhere safe.”

He hesitated again, half turning away before he swung back around.

“No,” he said to the small gathering of senior non-commissioned officers, “tell them all to get to the base and bring as much of their own supplies as they can. They can be housed there safely, and we can protect them. Go, now,” he said, seeing them all scurry away to bawl out their units and gather their men to them.

“Are you sure that was the right thing to do, old boy?” Palmer’s greasy voice wafted over his shoulder, making him turn around to speak in a low voice to the young man.

“How long will the unit stay together when their loved ones are out in the trenches whilst we’re safe on camp?” he asked, “How many men will desert to see if their wife or their children or their parents are okay?” Palmer’s face finally registered some understanding.

“And,” Johnson added icily, “I’m not your old boy.”

NINE

Peter’s experience in the shop was instantly marked as different from the previous times he had been there. There was no music playing. There were no fluorescent lights showing inside their opaque plastic cases which the flies managed to somehow access but never escape. His mother had already scurried her way into the store without pausing to notice anything was wrong with the scene, but her young son was less driven by the need to collect more alcohol and cigarettes than she was.

He watched as she shrieked again in her grating voice, trying to get the attention of the shopkeeper, in vain as nobody appeared to be there. It took her only a few precious seconds to assimilate the facts and weigh up the benefits versus the risks before she began stealing.

Peter heard the noises of bottles clinking together and the almost furious mutterings of an addict not getting their own way easily. His feelings of unease were heightened to almost snapping point when her shrill voice called his name and made him jump clear off the ground. His feet moving without conscious decision, he reported for duty and rounded an aisle to see her with her arms full of bottles and packets and her eyes wide in expectation at him.

“Well?” she snarled, somehow conveying that she was disappointed by his stupidity yet again, “Get a bloody bag or something.” Peter fled, running to the small counter with its barred window that overlooked the forecourt and the single fuel pump standing forlornly, as though the process of someone needing petrol would resurrect it once more to life. Reaching over behind the counter, his hand touched the cool softness of the slab of plastic carrier bags ready to be peeled away by the cashier when needed. Fumbling the first few attempts, Peter licked his thumb and tried again, rewarded instantly with two bags which he struggled to open as he returned to his mother. She told him to hold the bags open, placing one inside the other as she reverently placed the precious bottles inside with more care than she showed to her own offspring. When the bag was full enough to complement the other bottles taken from the pub, but not so full that the greed of an extra litre jeopardised the safety of the first bottles, she abandoned the hunt for alcohol and turned her attention to the cabinet behind the cash desk.

Heading straight for her preferred brand, easily discerned amongst the wall of colour as one of the only packets which were predominantly black, she helped herself to every single packet on display, before hesitating and doing the same with another brand; obviously her second choice. Peter, eager to help and anxious that not helping would attract unwanted attention, licked his thumb again and opened more bags for her to use.

Seeing her greedily making relays to the car as she momentarily left him inside on his own, Peter did the first immoral thing he had ever consciously, willingly done. On the second time she left him alone for those few precious seconds of solitude, his eyes rested on the shiny, brown packaging of a Marathon bar. His gaze darted up to her receding back as she approached their car, then back to the chocolate.

It called to him. Nestled between the dark blue of the packaging on the Wispa bars and the red, white and blue of the longer but very chewy Curly Wurly bars on the other side. With almost no hesitation, he reached out and closed his fingers around the first Marathon and picked it up. Just as the bell on the front door erupted into horribly loud life to signal the return of his mother.

She looked at him, unaware of what he was doing but utterly convinced that he was up to no good given the look on his face, and she drew back a hand in preparation to slap him around the face. Noticing the chocolate in his hands just before she began the return swing towards him, she stopped, relaxed her shoulders, and dropped her hand without warning.

“You could’ve just said,” she admonished him, not for stealing but for looking guilty about it. “Take what you want,” and with that, she returned to her relay of ferrying stolen alcohol and cigarettes back to their car.

Peter didn’t move.

He still couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t being tricked, but he reminded himself that everything to have happened in the last week had been more than a little abnormal. Taking her permission literally, he licked his thumb again and began to fill a few of the thin blue plastic carrier bags with all the things he had never had the courage to ask for. He took pot noodles after seeing the television advertisement for them. He took Cadbury’s chocolate, Marathon and Mars bars. He took Caramacs, Star Bars, Toffos, an entire box of Opal Fruits, Yorkies, Sherbert Dips, and filled the three bags entirely from just the shelves below the counter. He took more bags and stuffed them with Monster Munch crisps, Nik Naks, Frazzles, Space Invaders and Chipsticks until those bags were full too. Putting his lighter haul with his earlier heavy one, he turned to get yet more bags and froze as he heard a noise he dreaded.

Outside, the engine of their car was starting.

He threw himself to the door, stopping just in time to snatch his bags up, and dropping one full of chocolate and sweets but not daring to risk the time it would take to retrieve them. Flying from the shop in desperation he arrived at the car in time to see his mother with a lit cigarette in her right hand as she replaced the cap on a bottle with her left.

The cruel smirk of evil she wore on seeing his panic and distress reminded him harshly of the cards he had been dealt in his short life, and he went to climb into the passenger side before his eyes rested on the seat covered in the bags he had helped her fill. Quickly deciding that she would deem the contents of those bags to be far more important to her than he was, he shuffled sideways and climbed in the back seat. Keeping a wary eye on her as she drove back to the farm, he ate a Marathon in slow silence, relishing every bite of the salty caramel and peanuts inside.

* * *

Arriving back at the abandoned farm shortly afterwards and having seen no sign of life on the journey back, Peter spilled from the car to loiter out of range of his mother, who had already begun to metamorphose into her old self as the booze coursed its way into her bloodstream. She had become morose and aggressive once more. No doubt now that she was able to focus on anything other than her need to get more alcohol and stop her hands from shaking uncontrollably, she recalled the facts.

Those facts, put simply as they were in Peter’s mind, were that something terrible had happened in London, his sister and Father had gone and not returned, people were acting weird and had abandoned their farm and, worst of all for him, he was now trapped in their idyllic corner of rural nowhere with his mother, who had descended into an almost catatonic state of self-pity. Almost catatonic, that was, as she still managed to automatically refill her glass with neat alcohol, and chain smoke as she stared holes through the blank screen of the television.

Peter, through seeking solitude and safety from her, took his stolen haul and slipped out of the back door. The dog followed him, not out of any affection or loyalty, but because he was going out via the back door and that was the way to the farm. It was a clever dog, as almost all collies were, especially when they worked on farms, but she displayed no fondness for the young boy and made it clear that her place in life was above his own. Now, for the lack of anything better to do and the subtle promise of food from the rustling bags, it followed him into the chill afternoon.

No sooner had they left via the rear of the house and slipped through the barrier of evergreen trees that stood as the demarcation line between residence and farm than three shambling figures made their way slowly up the lane from the side least often used.

They had been in a field of waist-high maize, stumbling aimlessly around and attracted by the noise that each other was making. When they moved closer to investigate those noises, no smells inspired their hunger or forced their aggressive natures to surface, so they bumped along almost sightlessly in a trio, looking socially awkward and only friends by default as no others would give them the time of day.

New sounds other than those they made amongst themselves pricked the edges of their automated senses, and made their faces turn as one to the road. Their feet answered the unconscious call to move towards the sounds and, as one, they shuffled towards the twin barriers of a light hedge and a shallow drainage ditch. That was all that separated them from the rough, neglected tarmac with a strip of insistent grass growing straight up through the middle. One, dressed in the pale blue shirt of a convenience shop franchise, which betrayed the reason for the shop being empty, was the first to fall through the hedge and pitch cumbersomely into the ditch. It did not reach out like a normal person would; there was no instinctive flinch reaction to break its own fall and protect the brain, as humans had evolved to do. Instead, it was merely reaching out ahead of it, as they did to compensate for their reduced visual acuity. That outstretched arm made direct contact in a downward motion, stiffly absorbing the full force of the fall, and a loud crack echoed along the lane and was contained by the tunnel of greenery which enclosed the overgrown passage. The shoulder of that arm disfigured horribly, the lower arm shortened in an instant and a bright shaft of splintered white bone appeared through his mottled, olive skin just before the elbow.

Showing no reaction to the open fracture of his right arm, nor the broken collar bone which grated the two ends together noisily, or the dislocated shoulder, the man in the pale blue uniform shirt clambered awkwardly back to his feet to lead the other two, who were more fortunate. Shambling as a trio, as a small pack of hungry yet uncoordinated predators, they made their halting, jerky way along the narrow lane in search of the thing that had driven past and made the big noise.

The other two, a younger woman with the same skin tone as the leading one, and an older man of far greater girth, stepped dutifully along in flanking positions, as the three made their slow progress onwards. They knew no passing of time, felt no pain and experienced no conscious thoughts about their actions, they just moved resolutely and implacably onwards.

Looking on, it appeared as if someone had managed to coordinate the actions of drunks and herd them all towards a specific point, and all with the same intent. The thing that herded them was the draw of sound, and the intent that their sub-conscious, base-instinct-level brains associated with sound was food.

But food was a by-product. A construct of the disease which inhabited their bodies and took over control for its own ends. A virus has one simple goal in its existence, one mindless, relentless objective which consumes everything: the task of spreading itself.

The virus made the people it had infected associate sound and movement with healthy people. When close enough, that healthy flesh was pungent in their nostrils and whipped them into a frenzy, when their actions became more intense and their need for food made them desperate, and with that desperation came a sudden and brutal speed and strength that made them display the obvious signs of the disease on which it was originally based. They foamed at the mouth as the over-active salivation glands made their mouths drool and their gnashing, chomping teeth, moving incessantly in anticipation and expectation of human flesh, frothed that spittle into a foam.

But that hunger was a ruse. It was a feint. A fake, a lie, a fiction, a falsehood, a trick; a fabricated deception designed for one purpose, and one purpose alone.

To infect as many more viable hosts as possible.

TEN

Peter pumped his legs to move himself fast over the low, rolling landscape behind the prison of his home. He had paused only long enough to snatch up one of his most valued possessions: a battered camouflage backpack with an army surplus water bottle attached. He filled the bottle from an outside tap, stuffed his stolen haul into the bag and paced quickly away from what he felt was the most dangerous place he could be in.

He’d seen her like this before, when his father was away for some reason he was too unimportant to be told about, and his sister had called it a meltdown.

Meltdown, he thought, that’s about right for her.

His only priority was to get himself away from the risk posed by her imminent detonation as soon as the alcohol took over, or the cigarettes ran out, or even something small such as a stubbed toe or a spilt drink set her off. When she flipped, she had no way to regain control of herself. He had learned that to his detriment years before, and as a result had learned to make himself small and invisible whenever he was around her. He decided that, after the look in her eye when she silently threatened to drive away and leave him behind, being around her any longer that day would not end well.

She showed a distinct inclination towards cruelty when she was upset, and she was clearly upset. Peter had no desire to listen to her ranting become louder and less intelligible before she demanded that he come to her, and stand close enough to be shouted at, and hit whenever she felt like making a point.

He couldn’t articulate all of this himself, not easily, but he had the instinct of a survivor to escape potential trouble when he sensed it coming.

It was a different kind of trouble coming, but he had no way of even beginning to understand that just yet.

Instead of watching his mother drink herself into angry oblivion, he walked fast towards the nearest woodland bordering the farm and wove his way between the trees until the early afternoon light was obscured by the heavy foliage. Selecting a fallen log as a seat, he slipped one arm out of the strap of his backpack and swung it around to the front of his body. Selecting himself a packet of crisps he hadn’t had before, ones that promised tangy tomato goodness, he settled down to enjoy them one by one.

He was watched intently by the dog, Meg, and her intelligent black and white face fixed on his as he chewed slowly. He had never made a connection with the dog, mostly because the dog had never wanted his attention or affections, as it simply wanted to spend its life on the farm doing what it had always done. Perhaps intelligence or instinct told the dog that things had changed and were never going to return to normal, so she had decided to pay him some attention.

Either that, or the dog was following that universal calling of a rustling packet.

Peter threw the dog one of the ball-shaped corn snacks dusted in the tasty red powder that made his tongue tingle. The dog caught it effortlessly and chewed twice before rejecting his offering by opening her mouth wide towards the leaf-covered ground and making a retching, coughing noise to spit it out. Looking up at him again, her eyes seemed to request an alternative, or at the very least a second opinion on the packet he was close to finishing.

He said nothing, instead ripping open the packet to lay it flat and allow the dog to inspect the residue in its own time. Reaching out a hand to stroke the dog’s head, he recoiled instantly as it snapped its hard mouth at his fingers in disgust at his attempt to show affection. She made it clear that she had no interest in his attentions.

Moving on to another bag to select a chocolate bar, he settled on a Spira and peeled open the wrapper to remove one of the twisted tubes of chocolate, and enjoyed them both, one after the other. His stomach, unused to the richness of the high-sugar snacks, turned on him quickly and made him feel sick. He slowly closed up the bag and rose to reluctantly return to the farm, just as a noise rolled over the gently undulating countryside to fight through to his senses.

The cattle were bellowing again, all of them in pain with full udders which they could only associate with their twice-daily milking sessions that came with easily obtained food. Peter was powerless to help even one of them, let alone the whole herd. Somehow the noise made him fearful, made him feel an urgent need to seek the dubious safety of his house and bedroom. Starting off at a fast walk back towards the cluster of buildings, he heard another sound.

It was distant, but very distinctive. It was, unmistakably, his mother screaming in fear and pain.

* * *

Just as Peter had predicted, she had drunk at a fast rate, along with her incessant smoking. Within an hour of returning home from the stressful journey of necessity, her hands had stopped shaking and the sharp, stabbing pains in her head had abated. With the disappearance of those physical symptoms, so did other indicating factors of her severe alcoholism dissipate. Her watery peripheral vision had come back into focus, and the ability to concentrate had hazily returned to her, only to be lost once again as the steady intake of more alcohol robbed her of various faculties.

She had drunk so much in such a short space of time that the effects caught up with her rapidly, and when the last cigarette of her second packet burned down to scorch her fingers, she swore out loud. As she swore, she dropped the cigarette, and her inevitable flinch at doing so knocked over the bottle to spill the contents and make her swear even more loudly and savagely. The resulting coughing fit made her lose bladder control momentarily, and that was when she made her way, awkwardly and desperately, to the downstairs toilet where, on her return journey, in eagerness to return to her rum and cigarettes, she saw the three people trying to get through her front gate.

Setting her face and trying to raise herself to a more dominant height, which was difficult for her at a shade under five feet two, she snatched open the front door and let rip with a string of aggressive demands, wanting to know just who the bloody hell they were and what the bloody hell they wanted.

The three bumbling, uncoordinated bodies stopped and turned towards her. Six milky, near-sightless eyes fixed on the blurry shape that had made the noises, and they locked in their other senses. As one, the three of them took long, exaggerated breaths in through their noses, then seemed to stare straight through her and let out three hissing moans of pure, lustful hatred.

Abandoning her designs on any confrontation, she stepped smartly back inside and shut the flimsy glass and wood door to create a barrier between her and the monstrosities clawing at her front garden fence. Now that her mind was a little more focused, and now that the sobering effect of fear had made her senses that little bit more accurate, she noticed that there were things about these people that were not quite right.

The one at the front, not that she would recognise him as the man who had personally sold her thousands of cigarettes from the shop which she had so recently looted, had a badly broken arm and his right shoulder slumped at an unnatural angle. She couldn’t make out any clear details on the other two, but she guessed that they too must have the same spotted and mottled skin that reminded her of the pallor she had seen on the very old.

And the recently deceased.

The one at the front, thrashing now in what seemed like an increasingly angry and agitated state, was frothing at the mouth and she heard the sickening snap, snap, snap of his teeth as the lower jaw cracked up on the top row noisily. Deciding very quickly that she wanted none of that nonsense, she stepped backwards again to regain the house proper, and closed the front door to the porch to obscure the intruders, now with the added protection of the wavy glass. Perhaps distortion and protection were interchangeable in her drunken, fearful state. For added measure, she pulled the curtain across and went back into the lounge to do the same and to retrieve her most important possessions. As she lit a cigarette and reached for the glass containing a precious gulp, a splintering, crashing noise rippled outside, making her snatch back the curtain to see that the fence had not held against the combined weight of the three people.

Suddenly worried, as though her brain had finally caught up with the wave of reality washing over their home, she remembered that she was supposed to be responsible for more than just one person.

“Peter,” she gasped to herself, then turned her face up towards the ceiling and bawled his name. When no answer came from inside, and she heard only the rise in intensity of the hissing and moaning as the first of six hands banged onto the single pane glass of the lounge window, her face contorted in rage. She stomped off to climb the stairs, only to find her son, her only remaining child, the last person in her family to have still been with her, was gone.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to punish him herself, or whether she actually had any sense of parental care for her own offspring, but either way, she burst from the back door in a fearful rage, and she propelled herself forcefully across the rear lawn towards the gap in the trees where she knew he always slipped through. Stopping in her tracks, she remembered too late the shotgun that her husband had left behind when he had insisted on his fool’s errand, and she turned on her heel to fetch it. No sooner had she reached the rear patio than the hissing sound reached her ears again and pulled her gaze sideways to unveil the three people rolling inexorably around the building line and making straight towards her.

As drunk and as useless as she was, there was no escaping that part of her brain that had evolved beyond her cognitive control. She assessed the threat, turned and fled before she had drawn a breath or even begun to compute what was happening. Her right hand shot out as she ran and clasped the wooden handle of the nearest thing she could use as a weapon, before she jumped up a small flight of three stone steps and rounded on the leader, yelling triumphantly before thrusting the four tines of the pitchfork into his chest as far as they could go.

The savage, animalistic look of dominance and exultation melted from her face as she finally understood that her fatal blow had not been fatal at all. In desperate panic, she withdrew the weapon and buried it into his chest once again, this time feeling the scraping resistance of bone and sinew but skewering him just as effectively. Still, he did not react, did not fall down or cry out and, most worryingly, he did not die.

That last realisation gave her another burst of adrenaline, almost as much as her sedentary body could handle, and she pushed hard onto the tool to force the three bodies backwards down the steps in a pile of reaching, mottled-skin limbs. The smaller one at the back, a woman whose dirty neck and face Peter’s mother noted surreally, fell awkwardly, and the sharp corner of a stone ornament crushed the base of her skull just above her filthy neck. The other two, however, as ungainly as they were, struggled to their feet to further induce horror in the woman who now stared up at them in wide-eyed terror.

As one, the two remaining men fell on her, just as she skipped smartly backwards and raised the pitchfork again. The momentum of her attackers, mixed with a healthy dose of good luck, forced the pitchfork upwards where one of the tines found less resistance in the right eye socket of the fatter one who had regained his feet first. As a result, his now inanimate body slumped backwards to pin the man with the broken arm and keep it trapped through a simple weight advantage.

Just as she fell to her knees and erupted in fits of hysterical sobbing, the broken arm shot out and dragged her forwards by her clothing. Feeling her uncontrolled fall towards the feverishly gnashing teeth and wild, dead eyes locked onto her, she screamed fit to wake the dead.

ELEVEN

Johnson’s Yeomanry squadron rolled out their first troop, assault troop, inside of thirty minutes from when his orders were given. They were the only troop not to have been given logistics duties and were left fully manned with their four Spartan tracked combat reconnaissance vehicles brimming with men and weapons. They were basically a small, light and lightly armoured tank designed to move the troopers into harm’s way in relative safety.

They reported back within two hours that they had arrived at the base unhindered, and they were currently convincing the Royal Military Police guard left in situ that they were under orders to occupy the camp.

“They’re asking to speak to our squadron OC,” Sergeant Maxwell reported via radio, an air of expectant hope in the statement. Luckily for Johnson, Second Lieutenant Palmer was within earshot of this exchange and cleared his throat.

“I’m sure you have more important things to be doing, SSM,” he drawled, “perhaps you’d like me to smooth this one out?”

The way his aristocratic boarding school had taught elocution made his pronunciation of the last work crinkle up and down Johnson’s spine like an electrical current, but he nodded his gracious assent for the young officer to try.

Do something useful for a change, he thought to himself harshly, or at least try.

Turning away, he heard the accent dialled even higher up the line of ascension to the throne as Palmer demanded the name and rank of the RMP in charge of the tiny garrison troops. Johnson left the room and the berating voice behind as he stepped back out into the large drill hall to see an impossible scene of mass organised chaos.

“Sergeant Croft!” he snapped loudly, looking to locate the man now wearing two hats, as so many of them were, because he was now nominally in charge of both the headquarters troop and the administration troop. A lot of the admin troop had been sequestered by the second highest ranking NCO in the squadron, Rochefort, who was affectionately known amongst the men as The Frog. The distinction being ‘known as’ and not ‘called’.

Similarly, much of the HQ troop business was now being run by Croft’s senior Corporal, a man who was naturally being developed to take Croft’s place if, and when he left the troop.

Rochefort and Croft were standing only a few feet away from him, and both stepped to his side.

“Where are we with the Bedfords?” he asked the men.

“We have ten fully fuelled and being loaded,” Rochefort answered, “there’s less ammo here than at the camp, as you’d expect, but I think we’ll have it all loaded within the hour.”

“Drivers?” Johnson enquired, switching his gaze to Croft.

“All sorted,” he said as he glanced down at the clipboard in his hand, which seemed to bear no information relevant to either the question or the answer. “Most of the trucks will have an additional man on board for protection too.”

“Does that leave the Foxes short?” Johnson asked.

“Well, yes, but if we are just going…” Croft’s answer trailed away under Johnson’s implacable gaze.

“Perhaps we should put those men allocated to defensive duties back into the armoured cars,” Johnson said amiably. “Who knows? Perhaps if we do need to defend, then maybe having a gunner on a 30mm cannon would be more effective than a single trooper with a rifle. What do you think?”

The tone of voice, although conversational, told Croft precisely what he needed to do and quickly.

“Right,” Johnson said changing the subject, “have all the troops made a phone call yet?”

“They’ve been instructed to, as ordered,” Croft answered, a slight look of disapproval flashing across his face, which was rapidly brought under control. Johnson saw it, but also saw the man’s eyes dart to Rochefort’s and saw the slightest shake of the quartermaster’s head.

“Carry on, then,” he told them as he strode away, only to have Lieutenant Palmer fall in beside him. Stifling his repulsion of the boy, he forced himself to be cordial.

“Everything straightened out at the base now, Sir?”

“All ship-shape now, Mister Johnson,” he replied with a shovelful of upper-class glee, as though berating the lower ranks had restored his faith in the propriety of the world. “Their senior man is a Sergeant, but that’s not what I need to talk to you about…” his lowered tone and lack of gusto grabbed Johnson’s attention, and he stopped to look at the officer.

“They sent out a force of thirty,” he said in a conspiratorial voice, “last night. They intended to recce the routes to the main roads, look to establish observation posts and the like, but none of them returned. Got the chaps left behind feeling a little jumpy, I think.”

Johnson’s eyes went slightly wider, then narrowed.

“And they didn’t make radio contact? Didn’t go after them?” he asked pointedly.

“It seems not,” Palmer told him, glancing left and right to ensure his words weren’t overheard by a passing trooper, “there’s barely enough of them to man the gate and conduct perimeter patrols.”

Johnson nodded his thanks once and strode away, back to the room he had come from shortly before.

“Corporal Daniels,” he snapped as he walked in, seeing that Mander was already engaged in conversation with an earphone clasped to the left side of his head, “get me assault troop if you will.”

Seconds later, following the brief hail and response ritual, assault troop’s temporary commander, Sergeant Maxwell, spoke to him.

“Foxtrot-Fiver-Zero-Alpha here, go ahead,” Maxwell said,

“It’s Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha,” Johnson said, giving the callsign that identified himself. “I need you to debrief the senior RMP on site and send two Spartans back out to follow the route they give you for the rest of their unit. Report back to me directly when you have something.” With that, he stepped away from the controls and walked out, shouting aggressive encouragement for the men to move their arses if they wanted to see their next birthdays.

The rest of the squadron assembled in convoy a little under an hour later under the watchful eye of Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson. The SSM was now adorned with full battle gear and wearing webbing stocked with full magazines for the Sterling submachine gun he hefted, its folding stock locked in the forward position to reduce the size and bulk of the weapon. He looked pointedly at his watch to convey that they were all running the risk of personally disappointing him.

Allowing One Troop to take the lead, he followed in the first of the two Sultan command vehicles behind them which acted as their mobile headquarters. In turn, behind them snaked nine fully-loaded green Bedford trucks which, combined with the light armour ahead of them and the remaining two troops of Fox APCs behind, made a cacophonous noise of loud diesel engines.

Nodding towards Daniels, who was operating the vehicle in his APC, the radio operator spoke the words of command which set them off on their loud, slow journey towards an area they were to defend and consolidate.

Home soil or not, they were going to war.

“Hello, Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha, this is Foxtrot-Five-Zero,” came Maxwell’s voice from the radio again.

Making eye contact with Daniels, Johnson nodded and pressed the button to answer on his headset with attached boom microphone.

“We’ve located what we believe was the RMP unit, or at least their transport. Over.”

“Go on. Over,” Johnson said, fearing that the next update might become even less comfortable.

“Sir, we can see signs of a contact; spent casings and some blood, and their Land Rovers are in the ditch. Over,” Maxwell said in a flat tone.

Johnson knew Maxwell to be a trustworthy man who had never failed to control his nerves. He led from the front, and this fostered the respect from his men to follow him, as much as it eliminated any need for them to fear him. Now, however, he was clearly unhappy.

“Extend a search pattern for two hundred metres, then report back to base. Out,” Johnson told him.

Have a look around, then fuck off out of there, he thought to himself before crinkling his brow in confusion. Crashed Land Rovers? Spent casings? How had they driven their vehicles off the road and exchanged fire, evidently taking casualties in the process, and not made it back or called for assistance?

Shaking those thoughts off, Johnson kept his eyes on the limited view forward as his tracked vehicle screeched and ground its way forward in convoy. Twenty minutes later, Maxwell called him up again to report that no casualties or survivors could be found within the radius given, and that ammunition and supplies had been abandoned. Thinking for a second and deciding that the Land Rovers were less useful, given that there were many more available, and that he had far better equipped armoured vehicles on site, he ordered half of his assault troop to retrieve the arms and equipment and return to base for their arrival.

That arrival happened after another hour, as the long, snaking convoy rolled through the gates where Maxwell had arrayed his four Spartan APCs. These were lighter, faster tracked vehicles than his own ride, or the far more heavily equipped Fox cars which comprised the majority of their fighting force. Maxwell had his APCs in formation facing the main gate where their belt-fed 7.62 General Purpose Machine Guns, GPMGs or Gympies, could be brought to bear in overlapping arcs of fire. Johnson had the driver of his Sultan pull in just behind his assault troop, and climbed out and down as he watched the remainder of the convoy roll in. He trusted that Rochefort and Croft would organise that side of things efficiently, allocating the men barracks and finding appropriate space for stores, at the same time as setting up a command post and organising the four troops to rotate on sentry duty.

As much as it pained him to leave the details of his squadron to other people, he forced himself to act as the commander and trust the other NCOs to do what needed to be done. Walking towards the RMP sergeant, he saw the man snap to attention.

That was one of the vagaries of his rank; he was sometimes a ‘Sir’ to the men, a ‘Mister’ to the officers, and to younger enlisted men, he was often seen as something near to God himself.

He knew that wasn’t true, of course, that title was reserved for Regimental Sergeant Majors.

“At ease, Sergeant,” he said, accepting the officer treatment from the man, who seemed young for an RMP sergeant in Johnson’s eyes. He asked him to repeat the information he had already given to Maxwell.

“Sir, Sergeant Swift. I was left in charge of the garrison when Captain Sinclair and Lieutenant Harrison took the rest of the unit out and didn’t return,” he said curtly, betraying the slightest trace of annoyance at having to repeat himself.

“No radio contact?” the man shook his head. “No agreed rendezvous points?” Again, another shake.

Amateurs, Johnson thought unkindly, remembering with a grimace how the regular troops often refused to mix with his reservists, thinking them to be less than real soldiers.

“And you’ve heard what my men found?” he said, his brain sparking with a mix of fear and pride as he referred to the squadron as ‘my men’.

“Yes, Sir,” he said, his face a grimace as he forced the emotion away.

“Very well,” Johnson said, a little more kindly than before, “stand your men down for now, grab a brew, and come find me later.”

With that, he gave the man a gentle slap on the back of one shoulder and watched as he whistled to get the attention of the other red caps, who looked up expectantly as he shouted, “Double in, and I ain’t talking about the place in Ireland.” His small team jogged to him to follow him back to the gatehouse they occupied. Johnson turned his face back to the gate, where Sergeant Maxwell was gesturing at two squads of four men to conduct a dismounted patrol inside the perimeter, walking in opposing directions and folding out the stocks of their sub-machine guns. The remaining half of his troop, the ones who had found the scene where the RMPs had run into some unknown trouble, were arrayed in front of the gates and manning the four big machine guns.

Nodding to himself in satisfaction, Johnson strode back to his APC and rode the short distance to the main administrative building complex.

Inside, Croft and Rochefort had already set up the command post and were issuing orders for supplies to be unloaded and stored safely. No sooner had he been brought up to speed with things than Maxwell called up from the front gate.

“Civilians incoming, Staff,” Mander said to Rochefort, using the working title for his rank and position. “Sergeant Maxwell is asking for orders.”

Rochefort looked to Johnson, who nodded, giving him permission to use his initiative and make decisions.

“Sergeant Croft?” Rochefort shouted as he left the room, no doubt recruiting the admin troop sergeant to give him men and provisions to assist the expected influx of civilians in need of shelter and management.

“Get Maxwell back,” Johnson told the radio operator, “and tell him to disarm all civilians at the gate. Issue chitties and ask him to keep a record, but no guns inside the wire. Understood?”

“Understood, Sir,” he replied, then called Maxwell’s troop on the radio to relay the orders.

TWELEVE

Running flat out, his backpack bumping uncomfortably up and down and the dog flanking him low to the ground, Peter headed straight back to his house as fast as he could move. The scream had been long and loud and had carried over a mile, but the distance did nothing to remove the pain and terror conveyed in the high-pitched shriek.

He had instinctively known that something was terribly wrong, that the scream wasn’t him being called back for punishment, and that whatever he was about to face, whatever he was soon to discover would not be good.

That realisation, as much as it dropped his heart through his stomach and gave him a speed and lightness of foot that he had never thought he was capable of, did nothing to assuage the terror he felt when he burst through the trees and crossed the back garden to skid to a stop. He froze in horror, looking at a blood-soaked pile of bodies all slumped on the few steps at the side of the patio area. One of those bodies, marked out as unique by the fact that it was the only one to be moving, let out another ear-piercing shriek of rage and fear and other emotions that his young mind could not interpret.

Stepping closer, his feet moving without conscious effort, he began to discern different things from the pile. A woman with grey skin lay to one side of the main event, the back of her head flattened and leaking a dark, thick substance. A fat man, his bloated belly exposed by the shirt which had been torn away, lay atop another man. He also had grey skin, but his had been a darker shade to begin with, and he was wearing the same shirt as the woman, like they both worked in the same place.

The fatter man’s face was upturned, his dark purple gums exposed to show dirty teeth below one eye. The other, he saw in revulsion, was a mess of gore and had been ruined. A deep score mark ran down the side of the face turned towards him, and the man underneath posthumously told him what had happened. The pitchfork, which had always been propped against the wall just a few paces from where he now stood rooted to the spot, was resting with the wooden shaft of the handle pointing upwards, and the tines of the fork embedded in the face of the last corpse, with a tine through each eye socket.

Bizarrely, his mind taking in the most infinitesimally minor details, he saw that the nearest of the four tines of the fork was disfigured at the tip, most likely caused when it had impacted the concrete with enough force to bend the metal.

As for who had thrust the pitchfork downwards, that was a simple question to answer. His mother, usually so scowling and calculating, looked up at him with pleading eyes. Those eyes belonged to a much younger person than the woman he knew, as though in her fear and grief she had revealed herself to him finally, showing someone just as scared and vulnerable as he was.

Just as he was beginning to feel something bordering on sympathy for her, her mouth twisted into a rictus of anger and her eyes narrowed at him.

“Where were you, you little shit?” she snarled, and struggled to get to her feet as she kept her right hand clamped over her left forearm. “Where did you go, eh?”

“I…” Peter began, conditioned never to make the woman ask him something twice unless he wanted to be slapped.

“What?” she said, sticking out her bottom lip in cruel mockery of his own expression. “Did the wittle baby get scared?”

The tears streaming down her face and the uncontrollable quiver of her chin belied her savage and cruel words. She was scared.

Scared, he thought, and from what he saw, hurt too.

She clutched at her left forearm with her right hand, bright red blood pulsing and oozing through her clenched fingers. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and Peter hesitated a second too long and saw her draw in a breath to snap more insults at him, but instead her breath caught in her throat and she gagged and coughed uncontrollably.

Her eyes looked up at him, half pleading and half in anger which she chose to direct at him for no particular reason other than the fact that he was there. She wriggled out from under the edge of the two dead bodies, which Peter was trying his hardest not to look at, and she struggled to regain her feet. She fell back down twice until she could reach out a steadying hand, allowing the flow of blood to pour out quicker, and Peter earned a snapshot of the wound just above her wrist.

He could see a flash of white globules of almost mustard yellow jelly below the horribly torn skin and missing flesh. Such an array of different colours and textures in that tiny freeze-frame he had seen of the cross-section in her arm both fascinated and horrified him, but seeing her raise herself to her height, which was barely higher than his own, sobered him, forcing an involuntary step backwards to place him out of arm’s reach.

“Help me inside,” she gasped, leaning against the rough brick of the house and closing her eyes momentarily.

Peter had seen injuries before, even some bad ones. Growing up on a farm where dangerous machinery operated every day was bound to draw some blood to see, and he had even seen the results of a man foolish enough to try to dislodge packed grass in a heavy-bladed mower with his boot, and he had witnessed first-hand the shock and pain that such a deep wound could invoke.

This, however, seemed eerily different.

Instead of the pain and the shock causing shouts and screams and strings of foul swear words, as he would expect from experience, she seemed horribly subdued and quiet. For a woman who never missed an opportunity to belittle or berate him, the fact that she seemed so cowed by what was effectively a large cut to her arm worried him.

He did as he was told and helped her the half dozen paces to the rear door to the house, as he still tried not to look at the small pile of dead meat that used to be people. It was an ever-increasingly difficult struggle as she seemed to weaken with each step, but he eventually got her back to her preferred spot, where she could prioritise her affairs.

Struggling to open the lid of the bottle with her blood-slicked hands, she wordlessly thrust it in his direction and watched him expectantly as he used the hem of his t-shirt to clean the sticky, dark red mess from the neck and open it. She snatched it weakly from him and slumped backwards to tip the bottle lazily up to her mouth and close her eyes.

Taking the initiative, he went to the kitchen and pulled out a wooden chair from the table, which he carefully stood on to reach the dusty section above one of the kitchen cabinets to retrieve the battered tin which served as their first aid kit. Blinking away the dust in his eyes as he carefully climbed back down and sifted through the old contents, he selected a paper packet containing a gauze pad and a rolled bandage which had been white at one point in its existence. Returning to her, he saw her right hand fluttering weakly as she tried to open the cigarette packet with one hand by propping it against her thigh. He reached out tentatively, taking the pack from her unresisting hands and carefully took one out to offer it to her, filter first. Her eyes, as dark and glazed-over as they were, still registered a flicker of her dislike for him, but didn’t burn with the intensity she usually seemed to feel.

Taking the cigarette in her lips and keeping her eyes on him, she watched as he picked up the lighter and rolled his thumb over the flint wheel to land on the gas switch. The action was unfamiliar and slightly alien to him, but he managed to spark a flame on his third attempt, and he held it out gingerly towards the tip of the cigarette as it shook visibly to complement her actions. Sucking greedily on the small white stick, the tiny flame was pulled towards the end, which glowed orange in sudden response to the contact with the small, man-made fire. Releasing his thumb, Peter blinked suddenly in response to the stream of smoke she blew out straight ahead of her and into his face.

He knelt down and shuffled closer to her, holding out the dressing and bandage, seeking silent permission to come near her. She closed her eyes, giving no indication that he shouldn’t continue, and the only sign that she was alive was a shallow, rhythmic breathing which was interspersed at irregular intervals by her pausing to take long pulls on the cigarette which hung from her dry lips. Reaching out, he carefully placed the gauze pad over the torn flesh on her forearm, then warily wrapped the bandage around it.

“Tighter than that…” she mumbled past her smoke, without opening her eyes.

Her words were barely understandable, but he knew enough not to ignore her commands. Pulling on the slightly stretchy material of the bandage he felt her body stiffen with the increased pain and wrapped the rest around the injury until no blood leaked through.

Unsure if she was still conscious, as she hadn’t moved for a few seconds after he had finished, Peter held his breath until he saw the tip of the cigarette glow red and lift up slightly. Standing up, he paused as a sensation grabbed his attention momentarily. Freezing where he was, he tried to understand what instinct had pricked at him until he realised it was heat; heat from her, radiating outwards like a fire. Reaching for her forehead as he had seen adults do to children who claimed to be feeling ill, he paused, fearful for a brief second that she would take offence at him being close enough to touch her, then decided – hoped - that she wouldn’t be able to hit him in her state.

Her forehead was uncomfortably hot to touch, and her skin felt sweaty in parts and dry in others, as though the moisture leaking through her pores had burned away like drops of water on the concrete slabs of their patio in summer. She writhed slightly, her lower lip shivering in time with her chin as her shallow gasps for breath tried to form words.

He considered finding a blanket to cover her as he had seen actors on television do with people who were hurt or unwell, but seeing as the heat emanating from her felt like it was growing in intensity, he stepped backwards as she dropped into a sleep-like state and burned up. Peter turned and went to shut the back door he had left open.

Hovering half out of the doorway, his gaze fell on the pile of bodies and fixed on the pitchfork buried in the skull of the man who, judging by the fresh red blood still wet on his teeth, had been the one to bite his mother.

Smiling slightly despite the fear and horror of the sudden turn of events, he closed and locked the door.

* * *

As the sun set that evening, Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson toured the camp and checked in with all five of his combined troops. Two Troop were now guarding the gate and checking in the steady stream of civilian refugees who had dutifully arrived after the cryptic phone calls from their army reservist family members.

None who arrived knew what was happening in the wider world, but one or two had seen bizarre happenings which they had sensibly stayed clear of.

“One chap smashed through the downstairs window of a house,” said a woman who had clearly dressed for the occasion with her best coat and gloves over a dress which seemed a little too summery for the chill days of early spring. “He was covered from head to toe in blood. He must have been very angry, or probably on drugs,” she opined haughtily as she stared at Johnson for an appropriate response.

“Yes, madam,” he said as he cracked a small smile which was entirely obscured by his large moustache, “now, if you wouldn’t mind signing in with the others?”

He walked away before she could protest, and he suspected that she would probably complain about the standard of accommodation on offer. Allowing himself a cruel smirk, he tried to imagine what her face would look like after she had received Sergeant Croft’s hastily organised induction lecture, which all civilian arrivals had been subjected to. It did not mince words or sugar coat anything; it told the cold, hard facts as they were known, and it served to instil in their minds their total reliance on the military personnel for their safety and protection. That way, whatever orders they were given were more likely to be followed precisely and in a timely fashion.

Welcome to the Green Machine, folks. Johnson thought to himself with glee. Hurry up and wait, stand in line, and follow the process.

Whilst his mind made jokes, a deeper, darker level of his subconscious harboured a growing sense of doom. It nurtured and fed it, as though his mind had found a dangerous animal not long after birth and was now too scared to walk into the shed where it had grown into a killer. That feeling, as much as he tried to repress it, found a sudden route for expressing itself not an hour later, just as the sun began to set.

One of the people forming the steady flow of human traffic heading for their well-guarded gate was running and out of breath, waving his arms at the soldiers and yelling from a distance where they could not hear his words. Johnson, not far from the gate and talking to one of the troop Corporals on gate sentry duty, heard the commotion; not the shouts, but orders being given calmly, and the sound of turrets traversing on two of the APCs watching the entrance to line up the devastating power of the 30mm canon and the 7.62 co-axial machine gun on the source of the disruption.

Johnson unslung the Sterling sub-machine gun from over his right shoulder and stalked towards the gate where the shouted voices began to take form in his ears.

“Behind me…” shouted the man running awkwardly towards the nearest tree cover which was still some distance away, “…tried to bite me…”

“Sergeant?” snapped Johnson at the RMP and his Corporal who had returned to the gate for a lack of anything worthwhile to do, as he pointed forwards at the man. Johnson was suddenly performing at a heightened state of attention thanks to the dump of adrenaline hitting his body. “Secure that man and lock the gates afterwards,” he added.

“Gunners,” he called in a raised voice, “track target but do not fire unless ordered.”

He didn’t wait for an acknowledgement but strode forward to watch as the hysterical man was ordered to his knees and searched before having his hands bound behind him. He said a very brief but silent prayer of thanks that the red caps were there, as prisoner handling was one of their dedicated roles which his own cavalrymen weren’t trained for. Johnson watched as the man stared down the entire length of the Military Policeman’s heavy 7.62 Self Loading Rifle, as this silenced him and seemed to focus his attention towards understanding every command he was given and following them to the letter.

Johnson scanned the ground ahead, seeing nothing. “Call out when you see something,” he shouted to the men within earshot, earning an almost immediate response as a trooper, peering out of the open hatch of one of the Fox armoured cars with binoculars to his face, shouted his rank.

“Talk to me,” Johnson responded in a loud growl.

“Two o-clock, partially obscured by low ground and tall grass, three hundred yards,” said the trooper in a young but clear voice. “One person, male, I think.”

That seemed to be the entire threat report. No mention of weapons or other people. Something the man, who now lay face down as his bound hands were lifted up for him to be searched, had said now scratched at the inside of Johnson’s skull.

“…tried to bite me,” he had said. Seconds ticked by in strained silence as the trooper called out a very slow progress report on the movement of their only contact.

“Clear this gate of non-essential personnel,” Johnson barked, sensing more than hearing the sound of boots scraping as at least two men responded to his orders. He watched intently, now able to see the outline of the approaching man, with the sun beginning to set somewhere far behind his left shoulder, and he knew instantly that something was very wrong about the slowly-encroaching threat. He had to wait a full three minutes as he endured the agonisingly slow updates from the trooper with the binoculars, until the SSM’s nerve broke and he climbed up to the front of the big armoured car and held his hand out for the instrument. Placing the glasses to his eyes, he fought to control the gasp threatening to escape his throat. Something flapped under the man’s face, as though a purse swung from his mouth and lolled grotesquely with the jerky movements of his footfalls. Twice he saw the man fall, only to slowly regain his feet and stumble onwards.

Eventually, the man progressing at an excruciatingly slow pace, Johnson no longer needed the binoculars to see him, and what was much worse was the realisation that the thing swinging from under the man’s head, was his lower jaw held tenuously on one side by flesh and sinew.

“Christ on a fucking bike,” Johnson muttered under his breath, swallowing to calm his roiling stomach.

THIRTEEN

“Hold your fire,” Johnson said in a voice that invited no disobedience. He lowered his own weapon and wandered towards the man, or the thing that had been, up until recently, a man. It stumbled headlong into the fence, rebounded, then tried again to bull its way through the seemingly invisible force field that was reinforced chain link. Johnson, feeling secure behind the fence with a two-foot buffer of space between them, stepped close enough to see and smell the man.

The smell was what caught his attention first, because it smelt like old meat and shit. The latter because the man had clearly soiled himself, but the former puzzled the soldier. When the acrid smell had pricked at his eyeballs and prompted a responding drop of water to form in both eyes, Johnson took an exaggerated step back and was startled into taking a second when the man without a full face snapped his head towards him and snarled, throwing himself against the fence once more with increased excitement.

Johnson was locked into its gaze then, his own brown eyes mirroring the milky orbs that stared back at him. The thing looked like it had cataracts and would surely be blind and unable to focus through the cloudy vision, but somehow it zeroed in on him effortlessly, and held the acquired target like a hawk looking down on prey. The soldier slowly took a long step to his right, away from the gatehouse, and the thing followed his movement like a stumbling, rotten mirror image.

He, it, was wearing a torn shirt which had once been pale yellow, and light brown trousers. One dark tan shoe remained affixed to one foot, the other lost somewhere nobody knew. The breathing, if the noises it made could be called breathing, came in whistling hisses in and out and made different noises as it did so, like an old set of bellows.

He tilted his head, locked into its terrifying visage and unable to look away, and the thing mirrored his slow movements like some awful reflection from the other side of a horrible death.

“Sir, permission to engage?” came a shaky voice from behind his left shoulder. In response to the new sound, the thing snapped its head right and homed in on the source of the interruption as though this new thing consumed the entire attention span of the mangled man. The hissing, groaning, rattling noise that emanated from the mouth, or half of the mouth to be precise, of the thing before Johnson ramped up by a factor of five as it threw itself once more into the chain link. This time, as it tried to force its face through the too-small gaps in the metal, the side of its lower jaw that still clung on to the upper half snagged in the fence and stuck. Horrified, Johnson swallowed the spasm in his gullet that threatened to bring up the last cup of tea and biscuit he had thrown down his neck, just as the thing pulled away and he watched in gory, seemingly slow-motion detail as the remaining skin tore, and stretched to its limit, before the resistance finally became too much and the jawbone dropped to land on the soft grass with a gentle thump.

It was too much for the trooper who had approached behind his left flank, and he dropped to his knees as he vomited uncontrollably.

Something, either the sound of the retching or the smell of the regurgitated food or both, whipped the now chinless man into a desperate frenzy, and a new sound ripped from him.

“Eeeeeeeeerrrrrrrgh,” it screeched on an inward breath, making a sound that was the direct fleshy equivalent of nails being dragged down a chalkboard. It seemed to vibrate as it threw itself over and over into the chain link fence again and again, until the force of meat hitting metal rang an echoing sound along their section of the perimeter and threatened to bring yet more unwanted attention to them. Thinking, Johnson cast his eyes around the grass at his feet and located a raised tuft of thicker, more hard-wearing grass. Using the heel of his boot like a pickaxe, he swung a few times until the clump came loose, then reached down to grasp the stalks and heave the lump of turf high over the fence and away, behind the thing as though he were tossing the severed head of an enemy by its hair.

As soon as that thought came to him, before the replacement for a severed head landed, he admonished himself for having the idea and drawing the similarity.

When the grass did land, the soft thud made the screeching noise stop, and he watched in stunned silence as the thing temporarily lost all interest in the trooper, who was still throwing up the remainder of his last meal, as well as the SSM who he had been so feverishly trying to get to before the interruption. The thing staggered away in the direction of the last noise. No sooner had it stumbled five paces away than Johnson cleared his throat and made it spin its head back towards him, and it reached out in the direction of the latest sound which had caught its attention.

Not bothering to fold out the stock of the gun, he raised it and fired a short burst into the chest of the man at a range of about four paces. Convulsing like a landed fish, the man was thrown bodily backwards to hit the earth flat on his back. Johnson reapplied the safety on his gun and lowered the barrel just as he froze and dropped his jaw. The man, a handful of bullets riddling his chest, began to hiss and moan again, although in a different tone due to the holes in his lungs. Haltingly, it dragged itself upright and back to its feet to reach out towards him with both hands.

Interesting, he thought to himself, as he calmly drew the eight-inch bayonet and slowly twisted it onto the end of the lightened barrel of his sub-machine gun. He had rarely seen bayonets in his career but had long since given up wondering where Rochefort had found the random and unexpected boxes of forgotten gems.

Settling the blade into place and feeling the satisfying click as it locked in position at the diagonal angle to the magazine sticking horizontally out of the opposite side of the gun, he took two swift paces forwards and raised the gun to drive the bayonet straight through the open maw to burst the very tip of the blade out of the back of the skull. The man, the thing, became instantly lifeless, and as Johnson withdrew the blade as though demonstrating perfect form to raw recruits, he watched as his victim crumpled to the ground at his feet on the other side of the fence. He removed the blade from the weapon and wiped it delicately on the grass before restoring it to the leather sheath and turning.

“On your feet, Trooper,” he said to the shocked young man, who probably hadn’t breathed since he had finished throwing up, “and get that bloody beret off your eyes; it’s not a cap.” Then he strode purposefully towards the buildings as he fought the urge to fall to his own knees and burst into hysterical tears of crippling fear. Recalling the words that the naval air base to their north east had reported to them, his whole body went cold in shock and fear as the line returned to him once again with renewed meaning.

The dead were rising.

* * *

Miles away, sitting alone in the gathering dark and growing fear, Peter watched from the seat that his father used to occupy as his mother remained unchanged for hours.

She breathed fast, the sounds eventually transforming into shallow gasps as she snatched the oxygen from the air with ever-increasing desperation. Just after she had lost consciousness, Peter had tried the telephone and waited for painful seconds as the dial clicked all the way back from the three consecutive nines he had dialled. He didn’t understand the tone, but the line didn’t connect to anything at the other end. He tried twice more, each time failing to get through to anyone.

By the time her breathing began to slow to the sporadic gasps which rattled from her throat, Peter could feel the heat radiating away from her red-hot skin. He knew that she wasn’t going to get better, not that he could explain why or how he felt that way, just that he knew and accepted it on a level of pure belief. As that realisation settled on his soul, and he recognised that it didn’t trouble him, he rose from the seat and went to fetch himself some food from the kitchen.

Peter had no way of knowing the complex biological processes that had taken place inside his mother’s body, nor would he have fully understood them even if they were explained in a fashion more suited to the learning capacity of a nine-year-old boy.

He would not have known that her body temperature had risen to above forty-four degrees Celsius, and that the rampant fever that was destroying her from within had effectively boiled her brain and damaged it beyond all salvageable levels. She had lost all higher brain function and was left with that part of her mind which was purely instinctive and uncontrollable; the part that remembered to breathe when she was asleep, or that reminded her heart to beat without any conscious thought. That part of her, so deeply buried by years of social evolution, by generations upon generations of civilised tweaks to the genetic code of her race, that still knew how to hunt and kill for food even if she didn’t know it.

Human beings are carnivores. Their eyes are forward-facing to better locate prey and gauge distance. They have incisors and canine teeth designed for killing other animals and ripping flesh. Humans might have forgotten these facts, but their deeply suppressed brain functions had not.

Just as the fever finally killed her body, the virus that had infected her when the saliva of the man who had bitten her came into contact with her blood and torn-open flesh took over. It kept certain aspects of her body alive but retained none of what made her the person she was.

Had Peter known this, it was doubtful that he would really have cared, because he hated the person she was. He hated her on such a deep, cellular level that he might as well have been infected with something just as virulent and potent as the disease which killed her, as he stood in the next room and ate a sandwich without using a plate, not caring if the crumbs falling to the floor would result in him being hit or shouted at.

Just as he finally began to accept that his life was never going to go back to normal, he heard a snarling, ripping, yelping sound from the other room.

Freezing in mid-chew, the half a sandwich still hovering near to his mouth, the sickening sounds of butchery drifted through the downstairs of the house to his ears. Unmoving for longer than he could possibly be aware of, he began to breathe again. His breath didn’t come in panicked gasps, because he too had unlocked some deep, primal ability which he didn’t know he possessed.

Peter, unknowingly, was a born survivor.

Keeping his breathing soft and quiet, he moved off the kitchen side and crept forwards in a half crouch as he placed one foot carefully after the other to cross the small yet impossibly long distance to the doorway, in his attempt to add vision to the sounds he could hear.

Rounding the doorway with just one eye and a tiny portion of his face, he couldn’t contain himself any longer and almost let out a cry of horror. On the other side of the room, down on the floor on her knees, was his mother. Her hands ripped at the blood-soaked mess of fur and meat and organs which she was pulling apart hungrily.

As disciplined as Peter was by keeping silent, he could not control what his bladder did involuntarily as it emptied to run down his right leg. Before the hot liquid had reached the rough, brown carpet, his mother froze and stopped ripping at the corpse of their dog. She lifted her head up in the air and sniffed; long, hungry pulls through her nostrils as she tried to locate the source of the acrid smell of ammonia.

Spinning her head faster than he had ever seen her move, she whipped around to face him, apparently having forgotten all about the dog she had been tearing apart with her teeth and her nails.

Unfreezing from the spot as rapidly as he had become stuck there in the first place, Peter turned and fled. Skidding on the kitchen linoleum as his right foot was wet with urine, he slammed into the floor to scramble upright and fly towards the back door, where he snatched up his backpack without breaking step. Spilling from the door, he slammed it behind him just in time, as she was pressed against the pane of glass as though she were trying to chew her way through it. Standing there, just inches from the woman who had enjoyed hurting him every day of his life that he could recall, he felt no change in his attitude towards her, even now that she seemed to be a wild animal and a murderer. Backing away as he slipped his arms into the straps of his bag, his left foot bumped the outstretched hand of the dead fat man and made him stumble but not fall. Turning away, he made straight for the gap in the trees, and vanished into the gathering dark.

FOURTEEN

Peter shivered through the night, partly because of the chill air cooling the wet trouser leg he’d had to endure, but mostly through shock and fear. He had found himself somewhere high and relatively sheltered to spend the night in the upper floor of the barn, but that was still fairly exposed to the gentle wind that blew between the prefabricated panels, and it had forced him to stack some hay bales to provide a wind break.

He had fled wearing only a thin sweatshirt, but finding a thick, black coat of heavy, close-knit wool had been heavenly. Wrapped up inside the stiff, oversized garment which his father had called a donkey jacket, he settled down and tried to find sleep.

But sleep would not come, and every time he closed his eyes to turn the murky grey of the moonlit night into the black behind his eyelids, the scene of the dog torn to pieces and his mother ripping and chewing at it flashed vividly in his mind’s eye. He replayed the scene from colourful memory over and over like a short film stuck on loop, and it seemed to him that every time he saw it, he was drawn into his mother’s cloudy eyes deeper and deeper, until he felt as though she had pulled him close enough for her bloodstained teeth to bite down on his thin arm and tear out a chunk of flesh, just as had happened to her.

He had never seen a zombie film. Never read a book about the dead reanimating or seen comics or anything like it. The word itself – zombie – was barely ever used, because its relevance in normal society was unrecognised in most places. All he knew, and with a child’s perspective that made the facts all the more intense, was that his mother had been bitten by a person, then she had burned a fever, then she had woken up and torn the dog to pieces and eaten it. She would have eaten him, too, but he had got away.

Trying to work it through logically, he relayed the facts of the last few days over and over until it no longer made a semblance of sense, but instead confused him worse than before he had started trying to understand. Telling himself to keep to the facts, he laid out the world as he now knew it.

He was on his own.

People bit other people, then they got whatever it was.

People who had been bitten tried to eat you.

One other fact left off his list tickled at the very fringe of being an idea. As he concentrated more, shutting out the wind and the cold and the fear, he connected the dots.

When they are Biters, he thought, making up the name on the spot, given their most prevalent behaviour, they die if you stab them in the head.

That thought stayed with him more than the other facts as he drifted in and out of restless slumber throughout the rest of the night.

When he woke, the sky was still the steely-grey pre-dawn with just the slightest of hints of a horizontal slice of yellowy orange in the distance. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep any longer, and he decided that he had enough light to return home and do what he knew had to be done. Climbing down and sitting at a hay bale at ground level as he ate Nik Naks and a Mars bar for breakfast, he left the heavy jacket over his backpack of goodies and straightened his resolve as he aimed for his house.

Finding the scene at the back door unchanged, barring the absence of his mother gnawing at the glass and squashing her face to smear frothing blood over the single pane, he took three deep breaths as he maintained an awareness of his surroundings. Three people, no three Biters, had wandered up to their house, and they lived in the middle of nowhere, so there was no way to be certain that he was safe just because there weren’t usually any people around. He cleared his throat for the purpose of clearing his throat, and not to gain anyone’s attention, and reached out for the pitchfork which still stood almost upright as it was buried in the unmoving skull where it had been so forcefully placed.

Tugging with both hands to free it, he staggered backwards as it came loose in some grotesque parody of the animated film that he had watched so many times with his sister. It had been one of the only VHS cassettes specifically for them in the house, so their choice of things to watch when they were left alone was limited. Still, he imagined himself becoming the king of all the land when the old pitchfork came free, and he held it aloft just as he had seen the character do in the film.

Nothing happened. No ray of light burst from the heavens to shine down on him and no music blasted from unseen speakers to announce his presence to the world.

Instead, a loud noise startled him as his mother banged her face into the glass again to try and chew her way out to kill him, smearing the pane with dark gore. Lowering the pitchfork and spinning the wooden handle in both hands in physical preparation for the act that he had mentally practised throughout the night, he rolled his shoulders and, for the first time in his life, got ready to stand up for himself against his mother.

Stepping forwards and snatching down the back door handle, he stepped smartly back as she screeched loudly, as if they were both psyching themselves up for the confrontation. Then she spilled out of the doorway and fell headfirst down the raised step, to slap noisily on her front at his feet. Stepping backwards slowly as though magnetised into keeping a certain distance, like he was physically repelled by her, he watched her halting, inhuman movements. She moved her arms, one by one, slowly as though her short fall had dazed her, then raised her head and reached out to him with one hand as she hissed inwards with an accompanying groan. The dried blood of her last meal was dark and crusted as it flaked off her face and hands.

Peter stepped back with one foot to steady himself, raised the pitchfork with both hands and angled the curved metal tines as best he could estimate, then struck as he stamped his left foot forward and buried a single spike through her eye socket to grate the end sickeningly against the inside of her skull. She froze, twitched three times with lessening intensity, then slumped forwards as he withdrew the metal.

Looking down at the now lifeless form that used to be his mother, Peter spoke softly.

“That was for nothing,” he said, with resounding finality and not a single trace of remorse, “and there’s plenty more where that came from.”

* * *

“Right, you tossers!” Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson bawled as he strode into the room where the majority of his troopers were sleeping. “Hands off cocks and grab socks.”

He had roused them just before dawn, having woken over an hour before to shave and dress in his uniform. He wasn’t just the man in charge of the squadron, he was also its heart and soul. Its mascot and talisman.

The RMP unit had volunteered to take the night duty, which Johnson had readily agreed to, but insisted that Three Troop remain on standby to act as the quick reaction force should the RMPs meet any threat that could not be avoided or easily tackled by their reduced numbers.

Following the incident which had threatened to rob him of his wits, not to mention control of his suddenly liquid bowels, he had issued standing orders to the entire squadron, which had apparently now absorbed the eight red caps left behind as the detritus of an unexpected conflict. Those orders were based on the few pieces of valuable information he had gleaned during his brief period of intimacy with one of the things.

The Screechers, as he had called them because of the most penetrative sound the thing had made, a noise that had stayed buried deep in his mind, did not die through conventional means. He had proven that with the half a dozen bullets he had stitched through the chest of the thing at very close range.

Headshots, he had warned, or a bayonet to the brain preferably, given their very highly attuned aural acuity. A hand had gone up at that point.

“Yes,” he said in a tired tone that already bordered dangerously on annoyance, “Trooper Nevin?”

“Sir, what’s aural acuity mean?” asked Paul Nevin, a man of sufficient age and with enough service to have been a full corporal at least, but in possession of a perpetual laziness and poor attitude.

“It means, Trooper,” Johnson said in a tone riddled with warning, “that the things do hear very good and probably better than what you do…” he trailed off after delivering the offensive retort in a voice that told everyone listening precisely what he thought about the mental capacity of Trooper Nevin. His biggest challenge was reading the Sun’s page three; that was when he could look beyond Samantha Fox to see the words. Johnson’s stare lingered for a few more uncomfortable seconds on the man who he was certain had interrupted him for the sake of having an audience, as opposed to genuinely not knowing the correct terminology for sharp hearing. Uncomfortable seconds for Nevin at least, before he resumed his briefing.

Headshots, or bayonets if they could keep it quiet, were the order of business. Strict discipline regarding noise was to be enforced, and all NCOs were directly responsible for maintaining that discipline.

“As for today,” Johnson went on in his loud, powerful voice, “Two and Three troops will remain here with Admin troop under the command of the SQMS. Our RMP brethren will be standing down for the daytime after the rest of us leave. One Troop and Assault will be on patrol with me.” He looked at his watch, “Oh-seven-hundred we are off, so be ready, and one last thing…” he said loudly as he glowered at the assembled men, “We will not observe the normal practice involving RMPs on gate sentry and eggs. Am I clear?”

Mumbles of an affirmative nature and downward-cast eyes gave him as much answer as he would get without singling any one man out, but he had made his point.

“And me, Mister Johnson? Where might I best serve the squadron?” asked a nasal voice which was quickly followed by what Johnson could only describe as a smell like a tart’s handbag. He turned to see a splendidly uniformed, and sickeningly perfumed, Second Lieutenant Palmer, who had clearly taken his combat uniform to the family tailor in order to achieve the best fit. Johnson’s trained eye, however, noted the well-maintained weapon and a healthy supply of additional ammunition.

“Lieutenant Palmer,” Johnson said, “you will be in the second Sultan behind me.”

Palmer nodded with a hand pressed flat on his chest in an almost mocking gesture of obedience, before he straightened and slipped a thin cigarette into his mouth and lit it as he turned away.

“Where I can keep a fucking eye on you, you bloody dimwit,” Johnson added quietly to himself.

Thirty-nine minutes later, with assault troop leading the way with four Spartans in the front, two Sultans in the middle and the un-tracked four-wheeled Fox armoured cars of One Troop behind, Johnson led his small fighting unit out into the picturesque countryside.

They had travelled less than two miles before they met oncoming vehicles, each containing family members with all their belongings and pets. Each one was flagged down by the leading vehicle and directed straight to the gate, where they were told to be ready to be searched and relieved of any weapons.

Johnson, from his elevated perspective, standing tall out of the open hatch of the armoured vehicle, fancied that these early morning arrivals were the more sensible ones; those who had taken the night to pack and ensure that they had everything they needed. The influx had been steady, and the other senior sergeants had done a good job in telling them how things were, and thus keeping their problems from becoming Johnson’s problems.

Now, approaching the nearest town, the full extent of their problems was about to become clear.

* * *

Peter couldn’t stay in that house. The only home he had ever lived in no longer felt like a safe place, nor did he feel any positive emotional attachment to the building. It stank of death, for one thing. The rotting, butcher’s shop stench was thick and cloying in his throat, and he couldn’t bear to look at the ravaged remains of the dog that had so overtly disliked him. To Peter, it had still been an innocent animal which had been physically ripped apart and died horribly. He stripped his clothes and washed with cold water as there was no hot left now that nobody was alive to flick the switch and activate the immersion heater controls. Cold water didn’t bother him, as his discomfort at feeling cold seemed to have vanished during that long night he had spent in the windy barn. He seemed to have aged overnight, matured by the indescribably savage turn of events over the last week.

He had lost his sister, his shield against the harsh realities of his parents’ lives.

He had lost his father soon afterwards, not that he knew what his fate had been, but he doubted he would have chosen not to come back; he had left his gun and his dog behind, and Peter thought he would value those two things more than his wife or son.

He had lost his mother. Well, he had killed her but that didn’t seem to count as a crime because she had already killed three other people and then turned into the same as them, before killing the dog.

And besides, he told himself as though he needed any more justification, I had to kill her because she was going to eat me, like she did the dog.

He did wonder how difficult that final rebellious act would have been, had he actually enjoyed his life or felt any connection other than mutual hatred for the woman who abused him, but he put that thought aside as an irrelevant one. As young as he was, as inexperienced in life as he felt, he accepted this new reality on a deep level that could not be explained.

This, his subconscious told him, was just how life was now.

Selecting clothes, food and other supplies, he carried his heavy load downstairs and paused by the lounge door. He didn’t cast his eyes left because he doubted he could hold his nerve if he saw the ravaged and destroyed body of the dog, so instead he reached out and felt for the door handle as he tried not to breathe in the smell of death. As the door clicked shut, his eyes rested on the hallway cupboard, and he quickly weighed up the risks of doing what he was planning on doing and decided that there was nobody left to punish him. Opening the door and reaching inside, he picked up the heavy shotgun with its long barrels and stooped awkwardly to retrieve the belt, complete with its fully stuffed loops, each one bearing a red plastic tube with a brass cap. Hefting the gun and leaning to one side to lift the cartridge belt over his shoulder, he walked to the kitchen where he put everything down and emptied the cupboard of the food.

Quickly realising that he had more than he could carry, he furrowed his brow in thought for a few seconds before an idea struck him. Turning for the back door and lifting up the pitchfork which would now go with him everywhere, he slipped outside with alert eyes and returned shortly afterwards pulling a four-wheeled cart with a squeaking wheel bearing. Taking it past the house and down the few steps with difficulty, as he had to manoeuvre around the four dead bodies, he kept his eyes fixed on anything except the corpses. He took a selection of tools from the shed and added them to the cart, then manhandled it with much more exertion back to the house, where he ferried his bags of clothes and food out to fill the only transport he had available to him.

Turning his back on the house after he closed the back door, he paused, glancing for the first time at the decaying bodies, and feeling the swell of fear rising from his churning stomach again. He considered whether to set fire to the house and destroy the evidence of his childhood and its bloody end, but deciding against the arson, no matter how satisfying it would have been, he dropped the final item onto the top of his haul.

Settling the stuffed lamb in the top of his battered backpack to make it more comfortable, he tightened the zip to keep it safe, and headed for the farm.

FIFTEEN

“Stop, stop, stop,” Johnson’s radio operator called to the armoured column after his hand gesture indicated his orders.

“Signal Assault troop,” he shouted to the trooper on the radio, “half of them are to dismount and recce the obstruction. Defile drill.”

The man nodded and relayed the orders. Johnson watched as two of the crew dismounted from their tracked wagons, wearing webbing and helmets and carrying their personal weapons. Then they set off forward on foot with the heavy machine guns of the other two serving as cover. If he had ordered the entire troop to dismount, they would have removed the GPMGs, the 7.62mm general purpose machine guns, from their tracked vehicles and taken them along to provide a devastating capability of man-portable weaponry. But Johnson wanted this done quickly, and he wanted his boys back inside the safety of their armoured vehicles as fast as humanly possible.

He was yet to see a set of teeth that could bite through the thick aluminium of their wagons.

Despite his crisp appearance, he had barely slept during the night as he had pored over all the details he knew, as well as those he was making educated guesses about. One thing that he couldn’t yet be sure about was how the, whatever it was, infected people. How the dead arose and started acting like the one he had spent quality time with at the fence.

The only way, he decided, was when they bit someone. Just like rabies.

Switching his attention back to the scene ahead, he took a deep breath and watched his boys work. He knew they knew what to do and certainly didn’t need him watching over them or holding their hands. As much as he wanted to be at the tip of the spear, he recognised that the need for oversight was more important to the squadron than having their oldest, albeit probably toughest, soldier at the front. And he knew it would serve little purpose other than to assuage his feelings of itchy feet.

He watched on as the eight men leapfrogged each other, as if he were overseeing a training exercise; only he hoped that their eyes would be far more alert than if they were just training. The obstruction that they’d been sent to clear was a cluster of crashed cars. Defile drill was what they did all the time, as most of their work was to patrol the areas where it was unsafe to be walking around. Defile drill allowed for an obstruction to be checked for roadside bombs and other dangers, whilst the rest of the troop could bring to bear the full might of their vehicles’ weapons. Johnson was running this by the book, and his boys were performing just how they were supposed to.

And that was just it. They were doing exactly what was expected of them in warfare.

Only this wasn’t warfare. This was something else entirely.

“Trooper, recall the men,” he snapped at his radio operator.

“Sir?” he answered, his voice rising half an octave to betray his lack of experience and youth.

“Do it now,” Johnson said, fighting down the sudden anger he felt at having to repeat himself to a green boy. To his credit, the trooper offered no further opportunity to have his head removed by the squadron commander, and he gave the orders. No sooner had he overcome one person double-checking his decisions than the radio sparked to life and Lieutenant Palmer’s shrill voice cut the air through Johnson’s headphones.

“Sergeant Major,” his unhurried voice said, seeming to have a direct connection to Johnson’s eyebrows until he managed to control his face, “is there a problem?”

Johnson made eye contact with the radio operator and made a cutting motion with his left hand past his throat. The trooper understood.

“Standby, Sir,” he said formally.

Johnson returned his gaze to the front, as the eight soldiers jogged back to their armour and climbed inside. Transmitting to the whole group himself, he called out their new orders.

“All troops, Green Snake, I repeat, Green Snake unless otherwise instructed. All troops acknowledge.”

He waited as the few acknowledgements came back, satisfied that he had made the right decision. Just as the acknowledgements had finished, assault troop reported that they were ready to move, so he gave the order.

Green Snake meant that instead of approaching any potential threat area or obstruction carefully and dismounting to check for dangers, they were now under orders to force their way through and not stop or leave the safety of their vehicles. He cursed himself in his head that he hadn’t thought to abandon conventional protocols when their world had apparently abandoned the conventional overnight. Now, powering through the crashed and abandoned cars blocking their way with their far heavier mounts and more powerful engines, they approached the outskirts of the big town where the county hospital lay just off the main road.

Peeling away from the wider carriageways, Johnson’s decision to switch tactics was instantly rewarded. The lead Spartan turned slightly towards the nearside hedge to bump an abandoned Ford Escort off the road and provide clear sight and movement for the remaining vehicles, and just as the upturned front edge of their wedge-shaped tracked vehicle made contact, so did the hedgerow come alive. Johnson counted five, six, then a dozen people who moved just like the one he had seen at the fence at their camp the previous day. Each face that his mind took a mental snap-shot of registered something different from the last; exposed teeth through a ragged hole torn in a cheek, a face masked in blood from a badly torn scalp, a missing arm just above the elbow.

The only two things they had in common were their milky, soulless eyes and their evident intent on getting to the troopers.

“Close down, close down, close down!” Johnson barked into the radio, then dropped his body vertically downwards to lift the heavy, circular hatch lid closed above his head. Their views would be limited now to the thin strips which they had trained to use for so many hours and days. It did not hamper their ability to perform their tasks and carry out their orders. In fact, it made it easier to carry out those orders, as the drivers sealed inside their armour and masked under the noise of their roaring engines couldn’t hear the squelches and popping crunches of bodies going under their tracks. They couldn’t see this happening, given that their viewports offered a restricted view directly before their wagons, but the feedback from the controls told the story well enough.

Johnson’s own vehicle, one of their two Sultan mobile command cars, was effectively the same platform as the Spartans of the assault troop, only his had more room inside to accommodate the large map wall and additional radio operator who relayed his orders. Raising his own seat and opening his hatch again, he took up a firing position with the armaments for the vehicle, the single belt-fed GMPG, and lined up the sights on the approaching bodies as they stumbled into view. He alone of all the armoured column was outside of a sealed reconnaissance tank, as the Fox and Spartan cars could operate their guns from inside, unlike his vehicle, which basically had it mounted on the pintle outside.

His vision of these new enemies was jolting and fleeting at times, but each small visual clue left him with a growing sense of dread and revulsion. New flashes of horrific and bloody injuries seared his eyeballs as his mind lost valuable thinking capacity through imagining how those wounds could have been inflicted. His reverie was snapped back to the present by a request from the rearmost car to open fire on the Screechers.

“Tell him no,” Johnson said loudly to the radio operator. “Save the ammo.”

As they pushed deeper into the outskirts of the town, the pillar of black smoke became more and more visible from the direction of the hospital, which sat atop a small rise. Calling out the change of destination for it to be relayed, he steered his column away from that area and towards the centre of the town. Pushing slowly through the tighter streets, and nudging cars and vans clear of the road every few hundred yards, their progress had slowed through a combination of shorter sight ranges and more obstructions than there had been on the wider roads outside of the built-up area.

Realising his mistake, Johnson called a full stop and ordered them all to cut their engines.

Sitting near to the main square of the town, its origins going back hundreds and hundreds of years to a time when the town walls kept out the invading Vikings, the sudden silence felt oppressive in the surroundings. High-sided buildings of cut stone and cobbled side streets held the last echoes of their big engines for so long that he thought he was imagining it, until it finally dissipated and left him feeling almost alone. He wasn’t, he knew, he had close to forty men with him, and they were all safely ensconced behind thick armour plating and looking down the barrels of heavy machine guns and some even larger weapons to their rear. But still, despite the logical facts of being safe and protected, he still felt very much alone.

Perhaps that isolation was more about the burden of command than about the physical aspects of being lonely.

The silence he heard, or more that he felt, wasn’t a true silence. There were still the ticking and clanging noises of the ten engines cooling down, as well as the echoing ambience of a town thrown into sudden silence by the absence of normal daily life; but other sounds began to creep into his consciousness.

A bird call, raucous even at a long distance away. A building alarm, an insistent bell ringing, from somewhere indeterminate due to the confusing sounds that bounced between the rows of tall stone buildings. A shout, high pitched and pleading, from somewhere up ahead. Or behind. Johnson’s head whipped back and forth to try and locate the sound and not be tricked by the echo. He heard it again; a woman’s voice, shouting at the top of her voice and dragging the word out excruciatingly.

It said, help. More precisely, it swore.

Poking his own head out of the hatch on the other spacious − or at least spacious by light tank standards − Sultan armoured car behind, Palmer’s eyebrows almost met in the middle as he watched Johnson snatch off his helmet and headset and fling his head wildly from side to side.

“What the devil…?” he muttered to himself, just as the radio burst into life and he could read the lips of the man speaking.

“One troop, form a rear guard at this position. Assault troop, advance one hundred metres and cut engines; listen for survivors,” he snapped, looking in the direction of the troops he was talking to as he gave the orders. All around them, big engines barked into life and belched clouds of black smoke into the air. The four smaller tracked vehicles bucked and reared as they drove ahead, and Johnson gave a rapid order to his driver to follow, meaning to halt his small section of two vehicles at the mid-point between the Fox cars and the Spartans. Hating being a spectator again, Johnson was forced to listen to the action unfold as the light tanks blocked his view.

“Female, second floor window. Stand by,” came Maxwell’s clipped voice over the radio. “She’s indicating something to us… contact, enemy front, wait out.”

Johnson, unknown to him but watched intently by his radio operator, pressed down gently on the topmost bullet in the spare magazine on his webbing. The rough, hardened skin of his right thumb rubbed the exposed brass smooth as he repeated the gesture over and over. He knew there was no point in demanding an update from them, even less sense in driving up to them and losing visual contact with the other half of his current fighting strength, so he had to supress the urge once more to push his way to the front of the queue and get his bayonet wet. The seconds ticked by, then the radio sparked to life again, only it wasn’t what he was expecting to hear.

“Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha this is Foxtrot-One-Zero, contact rear,” the voice rabbited, giving the information in a single word with barely a pause in between.

Momentarily torn, Johnson’s logical brain kicked in to ask the question into the mic before he even knew he had decided on it.

“Foxtrot-One-Zero, stand by. Foxtrot-Five-Zero what is your situation?” He said, telling the panicking voice behind them to hold on until he knew what Maxwell was doing.

The rearguard was sealed up tight behind armour, whereas his vanguard had civilians in the open and would have to open their doors or put lives at risk.

“Twenty plus approaching, civilians preparing to come out. Enemy not responding to warnings,” came Maxwell’s terse reply. Behind that report were the sounds of various troopers going through the motions of their training and following the rules of engagement.

They had these rules of engagement drummed into them over and over. They could not use any more force than the minimum necessary, as ambiguous as that was, and they were told time and again to fire only aimed shots, that automatic fire could only be used against identified targets, and that a verbal warning should be given whenever possible.

Johnson knew how impractical those rules could be, even with an enemy who could hear and respond, but he also knew that his men found comfort in the repetition of training and that comfort allowed the rest of their actions to flow smoothly. Like training the cupola on a target, like calling out their firing arc and reporting ready, like asking for permission to open fire.

“Automatic fire,” Maxwell announced, “go on.”

The gunners, as inhumane as it would have seemed to the uninitiated, smiled as thumbs pressed down on controls and the four GPMGs sparked into boisterous life to cut down the approaching waves of shambling and screeching enemy.

The bullets these guns fired, even though they were the smallest armament their armoured column carried, unleashed their destructive power on the gathering crowd. A single GPMG, with a thousand rounds of belt-fed 7.62, could bring down a small house. Four of them, vehicle-mounted and interlocking their arcs of fire where every other bullet streaked a fiery-red line towards their enemy, wreaked savage and unholy devastation on the slow-moving forty or so blood-streaked people stumbling at them, their mouths open and returning their own salvo of spine-numbing shrieks and hisses.

In seconds, the rippling gunfire that appeared visually like a series of lasers ceased as there were suddenly no more bodies to convert from living to dead. Johnson watched on as Maxwell organised the recovery, just as the radio sparked to life again.

“Permission to engage?” came the request in a tone of sheer panic. Panic, in Johnson’s opinion, was more dangerous to his troops than enemy fire could be.

Fire could serve to rally his men against their foe.

Fire could be ineffectual, and the inaccuracy of incoming rounds could serve to raise the morale of his men.

Panic, however, did not miss. It was one hundred percent accurate, one hundred percent of the time.

They were trained for chemical warfare, as every soldier was, given the tensions with Russia. Any man or woman in uniform on the western side of the Berlin wall was on a moment’s notice to pull on their thick, rubbery protection suits. They were trained to seal themselves up inside their armour to escape nuclear fallout and other such horrors of modern warfare, but the only thing that could penetrate that armour was panic.

Panic and fear, Johnson corrected himself, but fear wasn’t an immediate danger.

“Negative,” he responded coolly, “report.”

“They’re coming from bloody everywhere!” came the cry of response, “all around us,” Johnson heard the irregular pounding of meaty hands on the outer hulls of the armoured car where the transmission originated, along with the mechanical whine of the car’s turret rotating. Closing his eyes and holding his breath momentarily, Johnson resisted the urge to enquire as to the height of the radio operator and to opine that he was unaware shit could be stacked that tall. Instead he gave his orders very simply and calmly.

“Foxtrot-One-Zero, advance through the enemy one hundred metres and hold fast. Acknowledge?”

A pause on the other end, then, “Foxtrot-One-Zero, roger. Advance through enemy lines one hundred metres and hold,” came the response of Maxwell’s voice, much more calmly than whoever had spoken before. Then he heard the sound of the Jaguar engines roaring up their revs to power away. Johnson didn’t want to, didn’t need to look to know that the four heavy wheels of each vehicle would be crushing the bloody bodies of the attackers. Pushing the thought away, Johnson turned his attention back to the front. He knew that the sixteen men now moving through the town would be safe inside their vehicles, not only safe but actually offering yet more protection to the rest of the column by attracting the Screechers through the noise they would be generating,

Maxwell, in Johnson’s opinion one of the very best combat leaders in the squadron, had organised one crew to dismount and source alternative transport for the civilians. Watching as the window to a van was broken, Johnson saw a trooper lift the locking pin and pull himself up behind the wheel, which he wrenched hard to snap the steering lock, then shout something at the rest of his crew, who began to push the vehicle. Johnson knew what he would be doing; handbrake off, clutch down and gearstick into second. As soon as the momentum was enough, he dropped the clutch out and the engine sparked to life.

SIXTEEN

Kimberley Perkins leaned out of the second-floor window of the bank she worked in to shout at the very top of her lungs. Over and over she called for help after the stone canyons of the town centre echoed loudly with the reverberating barks of engines. From the second she heard the noise, like a squeaking, rolling thunder. Having worked for the last four years in the bank where they now sought refuge, she knew that it was more than the regular noise of everyday vehicles.

Hollering until her voice gave out, she was finally rewarded when the four green wedges shot towards her on their tracks. Turning to the almost fifteen people trapped inside with her, she smiled with a confidence she didn’t truly feel, but needed to display to calm them down.

She had never been able to endure people’s inabilities to adapt and had always faced any situation with an almost implacable strength of character. When the screams had started, Kimberley was the only cashier working, as half the bank staff hadn’t even turned up for work. She, like everyone she knew, had been following as much as she could of the emerging situation in London, but was as clueless as the others about what it meant for her. Having been born in London and initially raised there before fate conspired to move her west along the southern coast of England, she recognised some of the streets and landmarks in the background of the news reels, and a small stab of homesickness pricked at her heart every time. When the horrific realisation of the TV blackout hit her, it was already too late.

Living in the centre of town anyway, and it being only a short walk to work, Kimberley’s world was, geographically speaking anyway, incredibly small. She noticed nothing on her short walk to the bank, not even the absence of the regular amount of foot traffic, but the first hour of the day made her skin tingle with a slight feeling of dread, as the anticipated morning rush never came. After that came the sounds of sirens. In itself, the sound of a siren wasn’t unexpected as the bank was in the town centre where the ambulance station, fire station and police station were all a short walk away. She didn’t even hear the sirens any more, not really, since her apartment was in the same location and she had long since become accustomed to the noise.

But today was different, because the sound of sirens had been constant for ten minutes straight, and then faded to nothing. Not nothing, precisely, but a void. A vacuum. A hollow space that seemed both absent of any real information, but similarly full of noise that confused her. That vacuum soon filled with noises which were discernible from the general cacophony, and the eyes of the non-staff of the bank began to fix on each other’s as screams sounded in the town. When half a dozen people bundled in, pushing and shoving each other as they ran, and begged for help, then she finally knew it was happening.

She still didn’t know what it was, but it was a safe bet that whatever had prevented the flow of information out of the capital had found its way to their town. It had a soundtrack, even if it didn’t have a name, and the soundtrack that accompanied the disorder was riddled with screams and hisses and metallic screeches ripped from human throats.

“Upstairs, everyone, now,” she called aloud as she stood, directing the staff and newcomers towards the heavy metal door that led to the secure part of the building.

“Miss Perkins,” snapped the deputy assistant manager, a peevish man of her age but only half her presence. He had relished the lack of staffing that day as he took charge. “Members of the public are not allowed in the restricted part of the bank,” he whined.

Before she could respond, the answer was given loud and clear from outside in a far more effective way than she could have explained.

A young man, his face a sheet of blood from a torn scrap of skin and hair that flopped over his forehead and his eyes milky white, slammed his whole body into the heavy plate glass, and slowly worked his jaw as he tried to chew his way through the impenetrable barrier that kept them safe. Everyone inside the bank froze and stared at the man, his greasy coveralls slicked red with fresh blood. But a woman joined him with the same percussive slam as her body bounced off the glass, only to return immediately and cause a long, squeaking noise to vibrate through the room, as her top lip was pulled upwards by the resistance of the glass. Her teeth were smeared red, which extended down from her mouth to discolour the light blue shirt she wore over a navy, knee-length skirt. Her eyes, the same opaque cloudy orbs as the man’s, bored through to them.

“Upstairs!” Kimberley shouted again and, as though their heads were on the same piece of taught string, the two people chewing at the glass snapped their heads in perfect synchronicity to lock onto her. They needed no further encouragement, and as one, they surged for the heavy, reinforced door that was opened with a combination to swing outwards. No sooner had the first five people bundled through that door amidst shouts and noises of panic than another three loud thumps reverberated from the front window.

Kimberly was the second to last person at the door, the last man being the peevish manager for the day, who was counting people through for no particular reason she could discern. He flinched but did not turn to see what had caused the new noise.

He looked at Kimberley’s face and slowly began to mirror her emerging look of dread. Not having the courage to turn and face whatever new horrors had arrived to shatter his orderly world, he kept his eyes down and pulled the heavy door closed.

Others in the town centre weren’t so lucky. Only the banks had windows that didn’t shatter and implode under the onslaught of hungry, feverishly aggressive mouths. The number of infected rose with each step closer towards the emergence of the virus, and those attacked weren’t always lucky enough to escape with an infected bite to die at home as the fever burned through their bodies. When attacked by three or four of the things, often their victims would fall where they were attacked to be torn apart.

Looking out of the window high above the street below, Kimberley saw exactly that happen before her eyes. A woman, wearing the brightly coloured uniform of a travel agent in the style of that company’s air hostesses, ran into the street screaming foully, only to be hit hard from three different directions and have the air driven from her lungs when they took her to the rough ground. The three attackers bit her, clawed at her with their nails and pulled chunks of her flesh away where they could gain sufficient purchase on it. Kimberley ignored the shouted questions, the hysterical tears and the screams of panic and confusion which sounded from behind her and watched as the three cannibalistic attackers stopped in perfect unison.

They just stopped, for no evident reason that she could understand, and turned their attention elsewhere as they looked for something, someone, else to attack. As they rose and melted away stiffly, Kimberley was left watching the bloodied and torn body of the woman, who she could see, even at that distance, had previously been adorned with a perfect face of makeup before the blood had splashed to mar the overall effect. The eyes, unclear as the two floors in height separated them, stared upwards blankly in death until the view was obscured by a sudden cloud of condensation covering the window. Kimberley, in her shock at seeing a murder in the street below her, had forgotten to breathe until that point when the part of her brain that took responsibility for such things restored order, and forced her lungs to inflate. She watched, fixed intently on the body of the woman in a state of semi-shock, as a way to cope with the screaming debates that raged behind her. She had no idea how long she remained there, minutes at least in her wide-eyed catatonia, but the next terrifying turn of events woke her to full alertness.

That same part of the brain that forced Kimberley to breathe again, not that she could know it, also kicked in to high gear in the woman lying in the street below in a large puddle of her own blood. Thinking that she had imagined it at first, she saw the ravaged body of the woman twitch once in a full body spasm. Trying to ignore that as a trick that her confused and frightened brain was playing on her, she visibly jumped as the body convulsed electrically once more. Now convincing herself that it was a process of her dying, Kimberley rationalised what her eyes had told her brain. But what she saw next could not be rationalised, nor could it be explained.

The woman, moving jerkily and uncertainly like a drunk, clambered to her feet in a very unladylike manner, which forced her tight skirt up to the tops of her thighs and flashed a swathe of skin-coloured stocking tops to the world. She didn’t care, and if she had, then Kimberley would probably have found that disturbing as the priority. Should the woman be aware of anything, it would be the small loop of what Kimberley could only guess was intestine that flopped from under her white blouse to hang just below her crotch. Swallowing a mouthful of bile, she watched as the woman began to take awkward, halting steps, to follow the direction of her head turned up the street towards where the commotion had washed like a tide. What Kimberley couldn’t see was the sudden milky white colour of the woman’s eyeballs, and what she couldn’t hear was the hissing, rasping noise she made that was quieter than the others around her, as a hole had been torn into her windpipe and it allowed some of the air to escape and lower her volume controls. As she stumbled away from the bank and left the street below empty, Kimberley stayed glued to the window for more long minutes, until the dull roar of lots of engines echoed through the town.

Being so high up, that floor didn’t have the reinforced glass of the ground and first floors, so she was able to open the window. She began to scream for help at the top of her voice and ignored the protestations of those behind her. She was finally rewarded with the four camouflaged metal wedges shooting off from their stationary points and coming towards her. Within seconds they had stopped outside the bank, and a hatch popped open for a man with a handlebar moustache under his helmet, and wide eyes. He seemed to speak to himself, then she watched as the other three tanks moved position slightly before cutting their engines. The man shouted a question up at her, forcing her to turn and call for quiet as she performed a rapid head count and turned back to the window.

“Fifteen of us,” she called down, making sure to clearly enunciate each word and remove the need to repeat the information.

“Can you get out of this door?” he asked, pointing at the main entrance to the bank. She responded that they could.

“Wait there,” the man said after listening to his radio, or at least she imagined that was what he did as his eyes glazed over and he placed a finger to the earphone nearest his right hand, “and cover your ears.” Then he looked forward and dropped down, pulling the hatch closed behind him.

Kimberley didn’t have the luxury of time to relay that instruction, but human nature being what it was, they all dropped to the ground and covered their ears, screwing their eyes shut tightly as though that would help, when the world outside and below them erupted into a storm of metal and noise and devastation. The automatic gunfire didn’t last long, a few seconds at most, but the shouting that followed was more insistent than before. Getting to her feet and looking back down to street level, she saw four soldiers burst from the nearest tank and run just out of sight. The noise of an engine starting was loud in the street, but the strong voice cut through that din to give her orders.

“Move, now,” it yelled, as though she were a raw recruit in need of toughening up. She turned and relayed those orders, surprising herself with how authoritarian she sounded, and saw the confidence of those orders translated into instant action as the fourteen other people ran to obey. She was the last one down the stairs, her eyes resting on the partly open drawer which she knew would contain stacks of crisp banknotes and shook her head to will away the ridiculous and improper thought as soon as it came to her.

Running down the stairs and into the lobby of the bank, she found the others milling about uncertainly as they waited for someone to tell them what to do next. Kimberley hurtled past all of them, pausing only to shout, “Come on!” and to spark them into life to follow. She burst through the doors and into the street, her head acquiring the noise of the engine and seeing the source for the first time. A dirty white Ford panel van, the back doors wide open and some cardboard boxes visible inside, stood thirty paces away with three soldiers waving them frantically towards them. The fifteen survivors piled in, the doors were shut, and a hand banged on the thin metal side twice.

Maxwell recalled his dismounted troopers, bar the one who had been given the responsibility of driving the van full of civilians, and Johnson watched as his assault troop made its way back toward him, comprising an additional vehicle. Nodding his appreciation for a job well done, he turned his attention back to the rearguard. Calling the Sabre troop up on the radio, he asked for a report, learning that the remaining crowd of enemy had followed them slowly and were approaching their position.

“On me,” he instructed, telling the drivers of the Fox cars to make the return journey through the obstructions of biting meat that used to be people. “We are leaving via an alternative route,” and with that, he relayed his orders to the rest of the column and decided to get the hell out of the town.

The commandeered panel van sat neatly in between the two high-roofed tracked vehicles of Johnson’s HQ troop, and the assault troop continued as vanguard. They did not stop to lay down any fire as the enemy never threatened the safety of their convoy at any point. Instead, Johnson called their retreat under a new protocol, this time meaning that they did not stop for anything and no vehicle was ever out of visual contact with those in front and behind, and at a maximum of half their vehicle’s effective range of weapons fire. In a town, that meant that they were driving as fast as their tracked and heavy-wheeled mix of cars could manage, but when they hit the wider roads of the outskirts, they pushed their speed up to just over fifty miles per hour.

Calling a stop at the very edge of the built-up area, Johnson faced a dilemma. That dilemma was whether to retain personal control of the tip of his spear and remain with a troop, or to return to base and debrief the civilians to formulate a longer-term plan. He knew what he should do, but that would mean leaving a fighting troop under the technical control of an officer he didn’t trust to get a drinks order right. Making his decision, he dismounted his own vehicle and climbed down to approach the identical one behind it. Palmer, having heard of the SM’s approach, popped the hatch and also dismounted to speak to the man away from the armour.

“SSM,” he said in greeting, his face wan and serious for a change, “your suggestions?”

Johnson swallowed, keeping down the retort that flew to the tip of his tongue, and with it the urge to slap the young man around the head. He didn’t act on those feelings, however, because he recognised that the man was just emulating the behaviour of other officers. To ask the senior NCO for their suggestion was to admit to nobody that you didn’t know the best way to proceed, and you were calling on the experience of a man who would know. That only offended Johnson because when Second Lieutenant Palmer used the term, it implied that he was in overall charge of the squadron. That rankled him and made his words slightly harsher than they would have been, had the boy not tried to play the boss.

“My orders,” he began, “are that you remain here with One. Sergeant Strauss will be in charge,” he added in a quieter voice as he leant forward to prevent embarrassing the man, “and your task will be to remain here until such time as our half of the column returns to base. If you are engaged during that time, then you are to ensure that no enemy survives the contact before returning. Understood?”

“Understood entirely,” Palmer retorted with his aristocratic air of condescension, then he turned away, no doubt to relay his orders to his crew.

Strauss, the third generation of a Rhodesian migrant had, despite his name and heritage, no trace of the accent of his predecessors, but he did bear the genetic traits. Tall and broad, uncomfortably for a man who went to war inside a cramped metal box, his blonde hair was kept short inside his helmet.

Johnson relayed his orders, adding in the specifics that Palmer didn’t need to burden himself with, lest he gain the incorrect impression that he was in charge of anything, and left feeling satisfied that those orders would be followed.

“I think these things are attracted to noise,” he told Strauss, who absorbed the facts and recent events with no sign of being affected, “so I don’t want to roll our armour slowly back to base and ring the dinner bell. You wait for whatever crowd follows us out of town, then open up on them, 30mm too, just for the noise, then get back via a longer route. And whatever you do,” he added seriously, “don’t let the Lieutenant do anything stupid like order another charge of the light brigade.”

Strauss understood, and Johnson left with the assault troop and the borrowed van, the occupants of which had been unceremoniously told to stay quiet until they were back at base.

Strauss was a switched-on and capable man, if not a natural tactician like Johnson. He kept his four Fox armoured cars in tight formation across the carriageway with their engines running, and ordered that the hatches be closed, if only to ensure that Palmer didn’t try to join in the fight, as his vehicle was the only type that couldn’t bring weapons to bear from the safety of the inside. After forty minutes, the distant horizon started to show a dark smear that morphed into an oncoming line of people, all moving slowly and awkwardly. That was their target, and he intended to destroy this crowd before taking a looping journey back to base, and hopefully not to lead any more of them to the fence that ringed their camp.

The only unexpected issue was that of the two shapes out ahead of the crowd. They had pushed through at a distance the soldiers could not discern and were now jogging ahead of them at over twice the speed of the masses. Their actions were more coordinated somehow, and they were less damaged than the others, which lent them a kind of alertness that could only spell trouble.

“Sarge?” the driver of Strauss’ Fox called out to him questioningly.

“I see them, son,” he said in a fatherly tone to soothe the man’s nerves. “Gunner, to your front, automatic fire… go on,” he said, hearing the answer given by the rapid pounding of the big 30mm cannon above their heads. Watching the road ahead, he smiled a grim smile of satisfaction as the leading monster disintegrated in a flash of red mist, leaving a single leg to cartwheel through the air before it landed wetly a good three hundred paces away from their picquet line.

“All gunners,” Strauss said calmly into the radio, “automatic fire to your front. Go.”

And the world on the edge of a small rural town erupted into a cacophonous, percussive hell.

SEVENTEEN

Peter, in a bizarre form of coping strategy that he didn’t fully understand, was actually enjoying his project. Had he known more about human interactions and had a basic understanding of psychology, he might have recognised that he had gone into a kind of dissociative state, where productivity could mask the feelings that his recent experiences had caused. Those feelings, had he had the luxury of time and safety to replay the events and the emotions that came at each step, would cripple him if he allowed them space in his brain, so he simply didn’t.

The events of the last week, as obvious as they were, had just happened and were now shut away in a box that he didn’t have to open. It was the only way he could function.

So instead of curling up into a ball and crying like the child he was, he refused to accept that those things had happened, and gave himself a new reality to deal with. That reality was that he couldn’t go home, that he was totally alone, and that he had to survive by himself. He had to stay away from people, he had to keep to himself, remain as quiet as possible and wait for it all to stop spinning like crazy.

The last part even he knew was fantasy, but survival without hope wasn’t survival; it was prolonging the process of dying. He had to retain hope that someone would restore order, that the police or the army would come with guns and sticks and make everyone behave again. Even though he hadn’t seen much of the world, either before or after people started biting each other, he knew that there was unlikely to be any safety anywhere else, so he elected to make a home in the place he knew best.

The first day was spent attempting to weather-proof his new accommodation, having shivered throughout the entire night previously, due to the wind whistling through the cracks in the boards. His way of rectifying this was to rig a series of heavy canvas sheets and nail them into place using the tools he had taken from the shed. These sheets, which he thought had once been ground sheets for large tents, were pulled tightly into position, then nailed into the wood at the corners at regular intervals, so that they formed a secure section that the wind couldn’t penetrate. Inside that section Peter laid down an even bed of hay, then another of the heavy sheets which he had folded over three times lengthways, and he rolled himself on that makeshift bed until he had ironed out the worst of the lumps with his back. Climbing back down the short ladder, he rigged up a simple rope pulley system to allow him to place things inside the large plastic bucket on one end of the rope, before climbing up to his hideout in safety to pull on the rope to raise his haul without the risk of falling off the ladder.

Finishing these two tasks before his growling stomach reminded him of the other basic needs, he stopped to dangle his legs off the edge of his bedroom, and he ate crisps and chocolate once again. Another thing he didn’t know was the likely side-effects of eating sugar-rich, processed foods when his body wasn’t used to them, mixed with the absence of any useful carbohydrates and fibre. The resulting feelings as soon as he had finished his snack, made him realise another need he had failed to cater for.

Peter had, at times, been taken hunting and fishing with his father. Those trips, often accompanied by cans of cheap high-strength lager, often imparted some knowledge to the boy. His father didn’t overtly intend this, more that he just spouted more and more rubbish and platitudes the more alcohol he imbibed. But some things had stayed with Peter and they came back to him piece by piece.

Shape, smell and sound were the main aspects which interested him now; the very fundamentals of camouflage. If a predator made noise or showed its recognisable body to prey, the prey would run away before the hunter could strike. If that hunter approached from downwind, then the prey would also run as soon as it detected the danger.

“You can tell a lot from an animal by its shit,” his father had told him once, bending to examine a patch of small, brown pellets. “What’s that?”

“Rabbit?” Peter guessed.

“Yes,” his father responded, casting his eyes up and scanning the hedgerow closest to them before raising a finger and pointing at a patch of smoothed grass that was shorter than the rest of the field, “and that is why rabbits are just food for other things,” he intoned. “You don’t shit where you eat.”

With that, he raised his shotgun and took a snapshot at a tight cluster of three rabbits bursting from cover to dash for the safety of their underground warren, and he rolled two of them over in broken ruin with a single shot.

As the pain in his belly worsened, Peter’s mind ran over and over these concepts of predator and prey until a shocking realisation hit him. All the pearls of wisdom and un-fatherly advice he had been given had to be ignored.

Ignored because the advice was given to him as though he were the predator, and not the prey.

He had to stay downwind of them and keep his senses alert for their smell.

He had to keep his ears tuned to the hissing, screeching noises they made to accompany the irregular shambling of their movements.

He had to be observant of others and learn to tell in an instant whether they were friend or foe.

He had to learn to be a clever bit of prey, or he would become a meal for a predator.

Unable to contain the roiling in his intestines any longer, Peter ran to the small river that flowed along the outer-edge of the farm and dropped his trousers to void himself messily into the shallow water. He watched in mixed awe and disgust as the cloudy patch of water flowed downstream to dissolve and dissipate in the gentle flow. Satisfied that his father had finally taught him something useful, he cleaned himself in the river and returned to his lodgings.

Now that the issue of shelter had been appropriately addressed, Peter turned his attention towards water. The barn he was in had a water collection barrel at the foot of the drainpipe just outside the doors, but he didn’t trust that. Walking a short distance to the nearest outside tap on the wall of a building, he turned it to be instantly rewarded with a jet of clean water. It didn’t occur to him that this magical, endless supply might one day cease to function. After shelter and water came defence; something which Peter had already considered, given his instinctive thought to bring not only the bent pitchfork that he now had an unbreakable affinity with, but also his father’s shotgun. That gun, with its long twin barrels, was taller than Peter when he stood alongside it, and although he knew the fundamentals of how it worked from watching it fired and reloaded so many times, he couldn’t manhandle the long gun with enough strength to bring it to bear. Glancing between the shotgun and the pitchfork, Peter decided to make some necessary modifications to his small arsenal, and to make them slightly more user-friendly for his size.

One of his favourite places on the farm was the workshop. Like their own shed back at the house, it was stocked with tools, and benches with vices and machines that he didn’t understand. He loved that dirty, oily smell of the building that brought hints of the outside in, because any tractors in need of repair were driven into the empty section of the shop and worked on under the bank of strip-lighting high overhead.

Peter flicked on the light switch just inside the door, hearing the metallic twanging noise it made as the electricity burst into life. Carrying only the pitchfork, he walked towards the woodwork vice on the nearest bench and spun the handle to open it wider. Then he nestled the long wooden handle of the tool in the neck of the vice between the two scarred blocks of hard wood. Cinching the handle tight, he went to the wall where the wooden backboards had been painted white to allow for the tool outlines to be marked clearly in black pen. He didn’t know if that was to make it easier to find everything, or just to keep track of what they had and dissuade workers from stealing. Selecting a thin-bladed hacksaw, Peter nestled the blade against the metal holding the bent outer tine of the tool, as he stood looking down the length of it. Then he carefully drew back the blade in a straight line a few times to create a furrow that the saw could sit in. With that done, he began to use the hacksaw in long draws, both forwards and backwards, in a rhythmic pattern.

Let the blade do the work, a voice from his memory told him, don’t force it.

He didn’t force it, and the blade had soon eaten its way through to the other side of the thin prong and he watched it fall gently to the floor with a tinkling sound. Assessing his handiwork, Peter thought that the now three-pronged pitchfork looked odd and lop-sided, so he loosened the vice and spun it over to repeat the process with the odd tine. When the second tinkling noise of metal hitting concrete sounded, he was far more satisfied with the results and was looking at a more streamlined version of the tool. Restoring the hacksaw carefully to its allocated slot on the wall, Peter selected a metal file and rounded off the rough sawn edges of metal. He worked like an artist creating something, moving the file in meticulous, measured strokes to create a smooth edge that wouldn’t cut or catch.

Reapplying that level of attention to the other side, he turned his attention to the tips of the curved prongs and worked at them to elongate and sharpen the points.

His tongue popped out of one side of his mouth as he worked, lost in the attention to detail that the task allowed him to apply. Standing tall and happy with the two business ends of the now adapted weapon, he restored the file to its proper place and selected a short, rectangular wood saw, which he used to remove the bottom foot of spare handle.

Taking both the pitchfork and the off-cut of wood to one of his favourite things, he clamped the weapon into the grips of the big lathe and pressed the green button to start it spinning.

The wall beside the lathe had two distinct sides, each with their tools marked out in the same fashion as everywhere else. Selecting a scooped chisel from the woodworking side, Peter rounded the end of the handle in a few seconds, then stopped the machine with the dirty red button and waited for it to cycle down. Swapping it for the off-cut, he worked more delicately by first rounding the cut end, then reducing the overall thickness of the piece so that it better fit his small grip. Taking it out and replacing the chisel, he dropped the cut handle into the vice once more and used a hand-turned drill to bore a hole directly downwards, deep into the wood from the most tapered end. Picking up the discarded metal prong of the fork that hadn’t been bent, he used the hacksaw once again to render it into a single curved piece, then used a ball hammer to straighten out the curve. To finish his piece, he forced the single spike down into the hole drilled into the handle, using the hammer to tamp it down hard into place and blunting the end. He rectified this by retrieving the file before using the hammer again to straighten the two remaining prongs of his fork.

Each time he had selected a different tool, he had painstakingly replaced the one he was using before picking up another. This was not a side-effect of Peter’s upbringing, where he had lived in permanent fear of punishment, but an indication of his ordered, logical mind instead.

When he had finished and cleared up the workshop, he switched off the lights and went back outside, carrying his two weapons. His trusty stickers, as he called them on a whim; so named for their primary purpose of sticking bad people through the eyes.

EIGHTEEN

“Next,” called Sergeant Croft as he waited for the well-dressed young woman to shuffle along in the line to approach his desk. “Name?” he enquired tiredly, having been inundated with another fifteen civilians, or more like refugees, on the return of half of the troops to complement the already steady trickle of inbound human traffic.

“Kimberley Perkins,” Kimberley said, feeling annoyed at having to wait in line to get any answers, after the uncomfortable hour they had been bounced around inside the back of the van. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful for their sudden and unexpected rescue, but she was rather in need of some information that could help her rationalise everything that had happened that morning to lead her there. Not least because she was wearing just her working clothes and had had to abandon everything she owned, as the thought of going back to the town was the least sensible thing she could imagine.

“Miss, Mrs or Ms?” Croft enquired without looking up from his clipboard.

“It’s Miss,” she replied, reading the list upside down and answering the next three questions with, “twenty five years old, bank clerk, and I’m here alone,” she said, prompting an annoyed look of pursed lips to cross Croft’s face as he finally glanced up to let her know he was annoyed.

That look of annoyance quickly melted away in embarrassment as he found himself looking up into a well-defined face framed by dishevelled brunette hair in tight curls.

“Thank you, Miss Perkins,” he said as he averted his gaze again, “if you wouldn’t mind waiting to this side of the hall now, and we can process everyone through to give you some answers very shortly.”

She was used to that. People looked at her, then looked away out of shame or embarrassment, but mostly to stop themselves from staring. She was not ugly, nor was she overly disfigured, but the scar that marked the left side of her face was puckered and slightly more pink than the rest of her face. The scar, a cruel reminder of a past best forgotten, served as a way to unintentionally repel people. Although she had grown accustomed to the few predictable responses people usually gave her on seeing the scars for the first time, each occurrence did nothing to remove the stab of pain and shame she felt at recognising it. She’d experimented with her hairstyle in an effort to hide it but had decided that the Farrah Fawcett look was just too much work. Absent-mindedly tipping her head to bring her hair down over her left shoulder to obscure where the rippled skin went over her ear, she thanked the soldier in a formal tone and followed the directions she was given.

When they had first arrived, she had discovered it was an army base by blinking into the sunlight after the gloom of the rear of the van, to find herself staring directly at a large white sign denoting that the fenced enclosure was, indeed, an army camp. She had watched as the other people she had shared her escape with had hugged and thanked the soldiers, who all seemed to want to line up for the attention. Some made a direct line for her, seeing a tall and slim young woman, but almost all of them shied away when they saw the mess on one side of her face.

Same story as anywhere else, she thought, it’s like I’m contagious.

She had asked to speak to whomever was in charge and was politely yet firmly instructed to wait with the others in a small holding room by the gate. The room was too small for all of them, much as the rear of the van had been, but she endured it for as long as she was able, until they were brought forward one by one to give them their details.

Having waited in three separate lines for the purpose of simply waiting with a feeling of achievement, they were herded through to another building where there were big metal tins of hot water.

“Tea,” yelled the sergeant pointing at the first one and giving it a rap with his knuckle as he passed, “and coffee,” he called, dinging the other one and making a noise that sounded less echoing than the first. Kimberley, seeing the masses head towards the tea urn, opted for the coffee as the line was shorter and the chance of running out before it was her turn was greatly reduced by the simple evidence she had interpreted through logic and hearing.

“Take a seat, everyone,” the soldier said in a raised voice to cut through the din of conversation regarding sugar and milk, “and I’ll try to tell you what’s been going on.”

That got everyone’s attention, and the rush to take their hastily made drinks to a spare seat became the number one priority for people.

“As you have found out today, the UK has gone more than a little off the deep end,” he began, apparently attempting to make light of the events. “Three days ago, our command structure in London went down. By that I mean that it stopped broadcasting radio signals and picking up the phone. We are, all of us, in the dark about what is currently going on.” Realising that he wasn’t filling people with confidence, the soldier cleared his throat and tried to pick up the tempo in his voice, which was in danger of becoming dreary.

“The disease is believed to have originated somewhere near central London a week ago and has spread rapidly outward from the capital to outlying areas. As of yesterday, it has hit our county.”

Tell us something we don’t already know, Kimberley thought unkindly to herself.

“Reports from other areas of the country indicate that there are outbreaks further north and west, also…” he paused, prompting total silence in the room, interrupted only by the gurgling of the overused tea urn, “…also, we have received radio contact from the continent and our bases in Germany. They appear to be engaged in heavy fighting with the same enemy over there,” he said with reluctant finality.

“So, what do we do?” asked a woman hesitantly from the front row of chairs.

“You wait here, and we will keep you protected and informed of the situation as and when updates arise,” answered the man woodenly, using the words in such a fashion that made Kimberley think of the terminology she had heard once.

Bullshit baffles brains, she told herself, bullshit baffles brains.

* * *

As Kimberley and all the other civilians were herded out of the mess hall where they had been assembled, a burbling, rolling thunder headed towards them from the gate. The group watched the return of the four-wheeled tanks and the one squeaking metal wedge that stood alone, as it was only one of the small convoy moving on tracks. They rolled straight past the small crowd who, in the predictable behaviour of humans all over the world, stopped to stare at the display of mechanical and military might that is a line of light reconnaissance tanks.

Their staring wasn’t just in the usual vein of normal people watching the rare sight of military vehicles, because their faces were registering horror and disgust.

Sergeant Strauss, his head and shoulders protruding from the open hatch of the lead vehicle, offered the crowd a smile of greeting that spoke of duty more than any genuine emotion of happiness. Seeing their looks of repulsion and horror, his own smile faded as he wondered what he could have done to cause such a response. They passed quickly just as one thin man turned and fountained vomit over the shoulders of two other people, who shrieked in response.

Strauss turned his eyes back to the front and waited until the small convoy came to a noisy stop outside the building being used as the squadron’s temporary command centre. Only then did he see the source of the looks his small column had received.

“Jesus bloody Christ,” he groaned out loud as he looked at the side of his own four-wheeled car in the lead. Looking down the line he saw that the others were just as bad if not worse, but the lower-bodied, tracked vehicle of the Sultan command car looked as though it had driven through a butcher’s shop, then a clothing store, then back through a slaughterhouse. Thick gore and patches of material from the clothing the things had been wearing were splattered all over the wheels and axles, and now dripped or fell off in small chunks whilst the cars were stationary.

“Fuck me,” he muttered to himself in disgust and disbelief, “Corporal McGill?”

“Sarge?” McGill answered from inside his mount.

“Get all of these cleaned down,” he instructed, “thoroughly. I don’t want to find any fingers or anything in my running gear.”

“Sarge,” McGill answered simply, in a tone that conveyed his understanding and intention to comply as instructed.

Strauss watched as the cars revved up and moved away to leave him in a thick cloud of rich exhaust fumes. Turning back after the cars had rolled away, he found himself beside Lieutenant Palmer, who was wearing a face of thinly veiled annoyance.

Strauss knew that their brief interaction of earlier that day would bring with it a reckoning at some point, which he knew would not be now, as Johnson would be less than impressed with a pissing contest when there was work to be done. But he strongly suspected that Palmer had other ideas.

Setting off for the door at the same time, the smaller stature of the junior officer forced him to step faster than Strauss’ long gait to make the door before he did. The sergeant smiled to himself, anticipating the cutting report the Lieutenant would give about him, and mentally prepared his bingo card.

He was certain that the word ‘insolent’ would make an appearance, as the man had used it at least twice already, along with ‘disobey orders’, ‘mere Sergeant’ and his personal wildcard of ‘protest’.

He did not have to wait long, nor was he disappointed with his predictions as the anticipated words almost tumbled from him.

“Sergeant Major,” he snapped peevishly as he strode in, making Johnson, who was hatless yet still wearing his webbing, look up from a table covered in maps and squint his eyes through the cigarette smoke at the intrusion.

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Johnson asked slowly, as though he knew that whatever was troubling the young officer so much wouldn’t feature high on his own list of priorities.

“Sergeant Major,” he said once more as he glanced around the room at the busy soldiers in earshot, “perhaps we should retire to have this conversation in private?”

“Lieutenant Palmer,” Johnson said tiredly as he cast his eyes back down to the map, “I’m waiting for your report and have plenty of other things to be doing, so if you please, Sir?”

Johnson’s tone and good manners should have told the young man where to pitch his response, but instead, the years of entitled upbringing and reinforced classicism exerted itself without a single care for the environment and situation.

“Very well,” Palmer began, “I must protest, Sergeant Major, about the behaviour of Sergeant Strauss,” he began, totally misreading the dangerous look on the SSM’s face. “He deliberately disobeyed my orders to retreat and insisted on remaining in the open after I had given the command to withdraw, and then,” his voice rose half an octave, “when I gave orders to return to base, he ignored me entirely and led the troop on a wild jaunt all over the county,” Johnson shuddered internally at the way he pronounced the word as Kine-ty, “and, furthermore, had the audacity to presume to give me orders!”

Johnson sighed and stood up straight. He was a man who observed the proper way of things, even in wartime or when the world turned itself upside down like a snowglobe filled with body parts, so his next words were, for him, a marked indicator of the stress of the situation.

“Lieutenant, perhaps you’re right,” he said, seeing the man almost retract his chin in confusion, “we should have this conversation in private.” With that, he nodded to a Corporal who muttered words of instruction for the others to leave the room.

“Sergeant Strauss?” the SSM added, “please wait outside.”

Strauss, his expression unreadable, stamped to attention and took his leave of the room.

Palmer hadn’t recognised the simple display of power Johnson had just treated him to, and he lacked the experience of working with other men to know that his implied request for the room to be cleared was obeyed not out of fear of punishment by the more senior soldier, but out of respect for the man and his rank. Further demonstration of Johnson’s respect for the authority of rank was that he gave his response to Palmer in relative privacy.

Relative being the operative word, because not even a hardened shelter could have stopped his raised voice from letting everyone within a twenty-yard radius know his thoughts on the matter.

“Lieutenant,” he began, “what were my last words to you before I left you in nominal charge of the detachment?”

Palmer’s chin flapped open and closed, unable to decide which retort to use first. The time it took him to think of a response gave Johnson the incorrect sense that he believed the first question to have been taken as rhetorical.

“To remind you, Sir,” he continued mockingly, “I left Sergeant Strauss in command of the detachment with my orders to follow to the letter, as I would expect him to do. But you, Sir, had to try and take over, am I right?”

“Sergeant Major, I really must prote…”

“No, Sir,” barked the bigger man, “you must not protest. You must not give orders. You must not override my instructions to the men and you must not ever be under the impression that you know enough about anything to take charge.”

Johnson’s voice had grown louder and louder with each sentence, until his final word on the subject left a ringing, reverberating boom that assaulted Palmer’s senses and made him flinch.

Outside, the words only slightly muffled, Strauss ticked off his bingo card with the anticipated words.

“But,” Palmer managed weakly, “in front of the men, for a mere Sergeant to…”

“Mere Sergeants, Lieutenant, are all that stand between the enemy and junior officers. They are also often all that stands between the men and junior officers. Try to remember that, Sir,” Johnson said in a lower voice that was more fatherly.

“From now on, just to be absolutely clear, your only job is to watch and learn. If you can’t do that, Sir, I will have to ask you to take up duties managing the civilians.”

That last statement seemed to shock some sense into the man.

“That won’t be necessary, Sergeant Major,” he said in a small voice, “but if I may offer a suggestion?”

Johnson fixed him with a stern look but nodded.

“If, perhaps, I was privy to those instructions, then I would know not to try and change them. Simply a suggestion, Sergeant Major,” he said with unconvincing deference, then turned and left the room to walk ignominiously through the assembled men with his eyes cast down.

Johnson, left alone for a few brief seconds of self-reflection, had to admit that the privileged little prick had something of a point. Also, said prick might actually learn how to manage men and wage warfare against the Queen’s enemies if he understood the orders he gave and, more importantly, why he gave them.

Hearing his name shouted in summons, Strauss went back inside.

“Tell me,” Johnson instructed.

“We gunned down the first wave, moved forward and repeated, then withdrew and held until a third wave came. Mix of thirty-mil and GPMP. After that,” he shifted and cleared his throat, “the Lieutenant decided that it was time to go home.”

“He lost his bottle?” Johnson asked quietly.

“Can’t say, Sarn’t Major,” Strauss said woodenly, “but we had a difference of opinion when I ordered the troop to engage the last wave coming from the town.”

“And then another when you took the long way back?” Johnson asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Very much so,” he said, “did the, er… did the Lieutenant say anything else about me?” he asked timidly, making Johnson glare at the man to try and determine the true meaning of the question.

“Other than the fact that you disobeyed his orders, Sergeant? No. He did not, but perhaps a lesson in how to manage officers is in order for you?”

“Very good, Sarn’t Major,” he said, with a ghost of a smile on his face.

“Anything else?” Johnson asked.

“Actually, yes,” Strauss said as he relaxed and scratched his chin, “the Screechers aren’t all the same.”

That got Johnson’s full attention. “Explain,” he said tersely.

“They seemed to be following a leader, every time they came,” Strauss said, “when they got close, one or two would break out ahead of the crowd and run instead of walk, like they were faster or smarter… stupid really because they were easy to pick off, but I’d be a lot more worried if they came at us in the open without our armour…”

He trailed off, leaving the implication unsaid. Johnson put that fact to one side for now, not that he was overly eager to be amongst the Screechers unless he was behind armour.

“And no sign of being followed back here?” the SSM asked, with obvious stress behind the words.

“Nothing,” he said with a hint of pride, “two ambushes put in on the way back, done in silence, no sign.”

“Good work,” Johnson responded before looking at his watch, “your troop has night duty, so get some rest.”

He watched as the man marched out, then the others filed back in to resume the tasks they’d been performing before they had been sent away so as not to hear. Johnson was left thinking again, only this time about tactics. Being an armoured squadron, they weren’t in the habit of training for being followed and how to ambush their own trail as the infantry did; they were more accustomed to using their advance reconnaissance vehicles, the faster and more agile Spartans of the assault troop, to lure enemy armour into a position their Foxes had smothered with their heavy 30mm cannons. Strauss’ comment that he had stopped to ambush their own trail was logical and sensible, ensuring that he didn’t unwittingly lead a whole crowd of the things to their door. That thought prompted him to issue a standing order to the room for dissemination.

“Spread the word,” he told them, “I need silence as far as we can manage on base. Noise and light discipline during darkness; no point in advertising our presence to them, is there?”

And as soon as he said it, he knew their long-term survivability depended on their ability to find somewhere else to be.

NINETEEN

Peter had no high metal chain-link fences to hide behind. He had no armoured vehicles to keep him safe from biting teeth and clawing nails. He had no light artillery or heavy machine guns. He had no comrades.

He was totally alone, living in a breezy hay loft with a dwindling supply of food and was armed with a modified pitchfork and a shotgun that was too large for him to use.

On the third morning of his new life he woke with the morning sun and went about his new morning routine. He brushed his teeth and put on clean underwear, then did his early chores before eating. He went to the river and checked the three static lines to see if they had yielded anything overnight. One had, but the catch was small. It had also perished on the line, no doubt exhausting itself to go belly up after fighting against the hook caught in its mouth, but Peter would not say no to fresh fish. Refreshing the lines with a new worm on each hook, selected from the plentiful supply he found from lifting any of the small hen houses nearby, he reset his water traps and carried his pathetically small haul back to the barn.

He was young, but he wasn’t stupid. He never struck a flame inside the hay barn as he knew that fire and dry hay tended not to mix.

Actually, he corrected himself, they mixed a little too well. They got on like a house on fire.

Using the electric four-ring cooker inside the small office-cum-kitchen to warm a frying pan, he messily cracked in two eggs as he ran a sharp knife along the underside of the small fish to remove its guts. Chopping off the head and the tail and splaying it open, he scraped out the spine and the little bones running off it and threw the fish in with the eggs. Putting all the waste to one side for the chickens, because those horrible things ate whatever he gave them, he allowed the pan to cool before he ate the contents straight from the cooking surface with a spoon.

Finished, he took his pan outside and turned on the tap which gushed a heavy, almost pressurised stream of water onto the dry, pale concrete. Peter didn’t know that the flow was so strong because those few outside taps ran straight from the mains water, nor did he care, but he had learned that if he turned the tap on full, the flow was hard enough to dislodge anything that he had burnt onto the pan and blast it clean, ready for the next usage.

His stomach full, biology began to let him know that the effects on his digestive system were imminent. Going to the place he had chosen for his toilet, he did the things he needed to do. For some reason unknown to him he chose not to use the actual working toilet on the farm, and instead, the spot he had chosen had some logic to it, as it was the furthest place downstream he went to fish, and hence in his mind did not contaminate the river that provided him with a source of food. Something in his mind had switched and told him that he had to turn his back on the safety of home and its modern trappings, even if he didn’t realise he was still fully embracing those same modern trappings, just on the slightly juxtaposed setting of the farm.

If he had been more aware, maybe more educated or just more experienced in general life, then he would have recognised that it wasn’t modern comforts he was escaping or avoiding, but just the house he had lived in. He had lost his sister and father to some unknown fate, and his mother had become a killer and forced him to do something that he felt guilty about.

He didn’t feel guilty about killing her, but he did feel terrible guilt that he didn’t feel guilty about it. That absence of guilt, the lack of any feeling about killing his own mother, burned at him deep inside, but his only way to deal with that was to bury it.

To deny it ever happened.

To close the door on the event, on the truth, and never go back to it.

That was how his young, fragile mind coped with what had happened to him.

Still early, he returned to the barn and put everything in order by making his bed and policing up his rubbish and empty wrappers to get rid of them. Something in his head, perhaps the lesson on smell betraying prey to predator, had told him that he needed to eradicate the smell of food from where he lived so as not to attract anything to him. That same logic was what led to his morning toilet routines, and what made him naturally difficult to hunt.

Going for his morning lap of the farm to make sure everything was as he expected, he ignored the now pained and somehow annoyed lowing of the tall-backed black and white cattle who lumbered slowly towards the metal gateway when he walked by. He didn’t stop, and he walked more quickly to get himself out of their eyeline so that they quieted down. He turned a corner behind a brick building where the pigs were kept, what few of them there were, and he saw that they had already gone out of their shelter to enjoy the early morning in the field. Their small trotters had turned an expanding cone of the grass away from the building into a swathe of dry dirt in honour of the deep mud they had created in the wetter weather.

Peter walked into the small lean-to, basically a three-sided shed with a roof, and bent down to pick up a bag of feed. Straining and pushing his legs to haul the long, cylindrical bag up, he walked awkwardly towards the fenced field whilst leaning his head to the left to see where he was going. Tipping a quarter of the bag as he sidestepped to the left in an ungainly way, he poured the brown pellets into the long trough, to be rewarded with the thundering noise of small feet running, overlaid with the insistent grunting of a dozen pigs as they pushed their snouts into the food.

Retreating to restore the bag to the lean-to, he cast an eye over the other bags and guessed at the nearly four and a half months of food he had left for them.

One bag, he thought to himself, four days… thirty-three bags…

He thought hard, first dividing the total number in half and then half again, then using his fingers to come up with the rough estimate. Quite why he planned to keep feeding the pigs and other animals when nobody else had stayed behind to look after them, he didn’t know, but he knew he needed to have a purpose. Peter’s purpose, he decided, was to keep the farm running when his father and the others had all gone.

There was nothing he could do for the cows, not to milk them anyway because the big dairy machinery took three grown men to operate twice a day, and not to feed them because the grass was plentiful and would be for months to come. The pigs had feed and were doing just fine with access to the building and their shiny tin arcs in the field. The chickens were much easier as their feed was far more plentiful, because they ate the corn that was in the tall, aluminium silos. That supply of corn was seemingly endless, which meant that the chickens would last longer than the cows or the pigs, and that saddened Peter because he hated the chickens.

Finishing his rounds with the animals, he went back to the barn. Propping his sticker, the once-pitchfork he was secretly very proud of, against the wide doorway he climbed the ladder to sit in his den, where he pulled out a book and worked on his reading.

After a lazy afternoon fishing before his second round of the farm later that day, he retired to the barn for another makeshift meal before tucking himself down in his shelter for the night.

That evening, just as the sun set fully, the rolling noise of the pained cattle, who were calling pitifully in the field, made him release his grip on the soft lamb pressed to his cheek, and wrap the pillow around his ears to block out the sounds of discomfort that he was powerless to stop.

* * *

“Sir!” came the panicked call that ripped SSM Johnson from his sleep. He had finally turned in around zero-one-twenty, after hours spent planning possible priority and non-priority missions as well as war-gaming through various situations and theorising on the enemy’s capabilities. Betraying years of soldiering, he rubbed his eyes once and blinked away the sleep to look at his watch, realising that the thing he had called sleep was, in fact, a little under three hours.

“What is it, Trooper?” he croaked, then cleared his throat and followed up his words with, “Report.”

“Sir, the fence, Sir…” gasped the young soldier in panic, “they’re fucking everywhere!”

Johnson looked at the trooper, Nevin. His eyes were as wide as saucers and he couldn’t keep his feet still.

Johnson took a deep breath and held it, then blew it out to signify that the waking-up process was complete. He swung his legs sideways off the cot where he had elected to get some sleep, and poked his feet into his boots, which he laced quickly before he stood to fasten his trousers and shrug himself into his smock and webbing, before picking up his helmet and weapon. Nodding to the agitated Trooper Nevin, he followed the younger man’s lead to go out into the cool night air. Covering the distance to the gate at double-time, he soon found himself face to face with Sergeant Strauss, who had rested his Sabre troop and gone back on stag in the time before Johnson had even got something to eat, let alone had any sleep.

“Sir?” Strauss said in confusion as he recognised the big man jogging out of the darkness towards him.

“Sergeant,” he responded, “what’s the situation?”

“We’ve, er…” he said as he glanced between Johnson and Nevin, “we’ve got a crowd of them come to the fence. There was one of the faster ones here first and a trooper shot it,” he said, glancing again at Nevin, who seemed to know that he had jumped the gun by deciding to fetch help without having been instructed to do so.

“Sergeant,” Johnson asked calmly, “did my orders about noise discipline not filter down to the men?”

“They did,” Strauss answered equably, “but the shot was necessary. The bloody thing was scaling the fence like a spider monkey.”

That silenced any further protest from the senior NCO, who glanced towards the fence-line which was out of sight to him at that distance in the dark.

“And the others?” Johnson asked as he turned back to him, “Are they slower like before?”

“Yes,” Strauss told him, “follow the leader again,” his words making Johnson nod pensively.

“Fix bayonets, dispatch the followers quietly,” Johnson told him.

“Orders already given,” Strauss said, looking acidly past the SSM at Nevin. “Trooper, did I give you permission to leave your post?”

“No, Sarge,” Nevin replied. “but I thought you’d need the Sarn’t Major for…”

“If I needed the Sarn’t Major, you useless bag of wind, I’d send for the Sarn’t Major, would I not?”

Nevin danced on the spot again, as though he was desperate for the toilet or was standing on ground that only he found uncomfortably hot.

“Fuck me sideways with a deck chair, Nevin,” Johnson snarled, “did your mother have any children who survived?”

Nevin, even in the low light, gave him a visibly shocked look.

“I shall spell it out for you, Trooper,” he said in a savagely mocking tone. “Fix your fucking bayonet, reach down with your right hand and check you still have a pair of balls.” He paused to apply a gentle slap to the specific area and was rewarded with an instant sound of a man slightly winded. “Report to your fucking post and start sticking Screechers in the fucking eyes. GO!”

Noise discipline be damned, Johnson wanted to tear his own strip off the waste of oxygen that passed for one of Strauss’ troopers before the sergeant got his own turn. As the terrified trooper stumbled off into the dark towards the enemy, simultaneously proving that orders had to be obeyed and that the dead were less frightening to even the weakest soldier in their squadron than the SSM was in a foul mood, Johnson realised that he could hear the low moaning sounds interspersed with hisses and the occasional screeching noise.

Those screeches, usually ripped from the tortured throat of one of the things when it came face to face with a living person, were mostly being cut short, which he hoped was due to the application of eight inches of steel bayonet.

“Night vision?” he asked Strauss.

“Maxwell’s got it sorted by your Sultan. Thermal camera is good for nothing because these things don’t give off heat. The image intensifiers are helping,” Strauss told him, meaning that the relief troop sergeant, which was assault troop under the leadership of sergeant Maxwell, was using a portable set of light-enhancing goggles at the line where the vehicles were arrayed. Johnson thanked Strauss and left him to do his work as he turned and double-timed towards the hulks of the armoured vehicles, which he knew would be ready to open up with their four GPMGs, should their quiet tactics not prove sufficient to stem the flow of attackers.

“Maxwell,” Johnson hissed as he approached.

“Here, Boss, on your right,” Maxwell answered, directing the SSM towards him. He had the heavy set of goggles pressed to his face, telling Johnson that he had directed him towards his position by sound alone as he concentrated.

“What have we got, Simon?” he asked, using the sergeant’s first name in a rare display of camaraderie which he didn’t often let people see.

“About a hundred of them, tops,” Maxwell reported, “first one came in, screeching like a bitch on heat, and the fucking thing jumped halfway up the fence and began to climb, so Swinton slotted the bastard. After that, his bloody pals showed up in force. The boys are slotting them through the fence easily for now, but if another one of those faster fuckers comes at us where we aren’t defending, then we won’t know if it’s inside.”

Maxwell didn’t say anything that Johnson hadn’t instantly intuited from the quick verbal report, but the truth of his words was still stabbing its harsh reality into his brain like the shower scene in Psycho.

“Too much perimeter,” Johnson answered almost poetically, “not enough soldiers.”

“That’s the long and the short of it,” Maxwell answered.

Shaking away the longer-term problems, Johnson asked for the goggles. Maxwell handed them over and the SSM’s world turned a bright green colour that carried with it a high-pitched whine. He saw troopers methodically placing the tips of their fixed bayonets to the faces chewing at the fence and thrusting forwards, then stepping smartly aside to repeat the process. Looking further afield, he saw no second wave or reinforcements coming to support the vanguard of the infected dead.

“When that’s cleared,” Johnson said, “your troop take point and One Troop will stand down. I’ll have Two Troop roused.”

Maxwell accepted and acknowledged his orders simply, mentally preparing to push his men up and dismount to monitor the fence line with their personal weapons. It always hurt an armoured cavalryman to leave his mount, but needs must, he told himself.

Johnson jogged away from the front line, stepping smartly into the soldiers’ barrack block, and quietly ordered another troop of soldiers usually equipped with four Fox armoured cars to deploy as infantry, with their Sterling sub-machine guns loaded and safetied, and their bayonets fixed.

The darkness was a time for the wet work, and Johnson had no clue how many nights they could keep it up for.

First order of business tomorrow, he told himself firmly, reconnaissance of a defensible position.

TWENTY

By morning, and having enjoyed no more sleep, Johnson was slightly irritable. His irritability was not helped by the fact that close to one hundred bodies were piled up against the perimeter fence and the civilians were not accustomed to such sights.

None of them was accustomed to anything like it, he admitted to himself, but soldiers of the British Army were expected to be made of far sterner stuff than your average Joe.

Deciding that he could only deal with one of those pressing issues at once, he decided to allow the young Lieutenant the opportunity to be useful.

Useful, that was, in a setting other than combat, where his lack of experience and poor judgement could lead to the lives of the men being endangered. Striding to the mess hall, where the men having just been relieved from their night duties were tiredly eating a subdued breakfast, he returned the nods from the few men and NCOs who offered them, pretending not to notice the others who avoided his gaze, so that they were spared from having to acknowledge him. Making his way directly to the only man sitting alone, his back to the room in a display of mixed fear and arrogance, he cleared his throat and spoke in low tones.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Johnson said, “when you’re done, if you could oblige me with something?”

Palmer rose, drained the dregs of his china cup, and turned to face the SSM.

“Good morning,” he drawled through a half smile, seeming to infer that their heated exchange from the previous day hadn’t happened, “ready now, Sergeant Major, how can I be of service?”

Grateful that the officer was complying, although annoyed that he automatically left the cup and plate on the table for someone else to pick up after him, he explained as he walked towards the exit doors.

“If you could, Sir,” he said, “I need you to keep the civilians inside whilst the men finish the clean-up operation,” he said as they stepped outside, and he gestured at the far gate where dark mounds had piled up in places. As he squinted towards the fence, he saw that at least three figures were stumbling across the open grassland towards their base and would soon be on them and in need of dispatching. Just then, Johnson knew that they had to move, and quickly. Remembering that he was still with the young officer, he turned to face him again.

“Sir?”

“Right away, SSM,” he said, choosing not to take his tasking to the civilians as a banishment. “What is the official line?”

“The official line, Sir?” he said in confusion. “We tell them the truth.”

Palmer thought for a second, then nodded sagely and turned to make his way towards the building that had been used to house their refugees.

Johnson watched him walk away for a dozen paces, then turned on his own heel to stride towards the gate at a fast march.

“Povey, ‘ware right,” he snapped at a trooper who was closest to a Screecher approaching the fence. Trooper Povey looked to the SSM, then to his right, then hopped backwards to settle himself ready for the thrust of the bayonet that dispatched the dead woman who had shuffled up to his position as his back was turned. Johnson paused for a beat, seeing that his men had reacted instantly to their new situation, regardless of their ‘day’ jobs on civvy street. The world truly had gone to shit, but his tiny part of the mighty green machine was still operating.

It won’t be for long, though, he thought to himself with a growing feeling of dread, not unless I can get these people somewhere else and soon.

Trusting his sergeants had been the right thing to do, as the tactics had been adapted overnight to dismount each crew with the exception of a single gunner, then use those dismounted troopers to constantly patrol the perimeter of their secure section. This had kept the initial crowd off the fences. From the reports he had received and the intelligence he had first hand, he believed that the only threat to their immediate safety lay in the faster ones who could apparently climb the fence, or enough of the shambling Screechers showing up so that they could collapse the fence. He exchanged a few words with the duty troop sergeant, recognised that his presence was not needed, and left to return to the command centre.

Walking in, he startled a Corporal, who turned with two full tin mugs of steaming tea and jumped, as he did not expect anyone to be there, let alone his ranking leader. Recovering, he seemed to hesitate as he furrowed his brow, and started to hold out one mug to the SSM, then retracted it and offered the other, then shook his head and offered him the first one again with a smile.

Taking it with one hand and offering the Corporal his Sterling sub-machine gun in exchange, he sipped the too-hot tea and nodded at its strong, starchy flavour and sweetness of the added sugar.

“Where are we, gentlemen?” he asked the room loudly.

“Sir,” Corporal Daniels said from under a radio headset, “Yeovilton have got back to us, they are reporting mass movement of enemy all over the south east, and their Marines on-base have had engagements.”

“You’ve passed on everything we know about the fast ones? The Leaders?” the SSM asked him.

“Yes, and they’ve reported that they are planning a withdrawal by air, if necessary, to the south west and then onto naval vessels,” Daniels answered.

“Ah,” Johnson said out loud and instantly regretted pulling back the curtain on his thoughts through tiredness, “can they extract our civilian population?”

Daniels turned back to the radio to have the exchange necessary to get that answer, as Johnson turned to a Lance Corporal who was poring over a large-scale map of the area they occupied. They all knew that area well, as, they lived within a sensible distance. Moreover, they had spent numerous weekends practising their vehicle patrol drills in the urban training areas as well as the large, open landscape of the windswept cliffs above the English Channel, where their live fire exercises were conducted.

Johnson, keeping his immediate fears to himself, looked at that familiar section of coast portrayed on paper and forced himself to decide. That decision came only moments later, but he knew that any decision arrived at so quickly was merely the very bones of an idea. It was a concept, not a plan. A plan, he knew, required other brains able to see the problem and the solution in a different light. Deciding to use those brains now, he sipped his tea and cleared his throat for attention.

“Gather round, chaps,” he said, hearing another cough for attention at the doorway and seeing Sergeant Maxwell hovering for permission to enter.

“Come in, Simon,” the SSM said genially, before addressing the assembly. The air in the room hung heavy, and that seemed to make their combined cigarette smoke linger above the dimly-lit central desk where the map was laid flat, which gave their meeting an air of an illicit gambling den, or a French Resistance meeting during the Second World War.

“Our problem,” he began, “is that our current location is not viable in the long term,” he said, pausing to let that fact sink in, “so we need an alternative. Today.”

Silence hung for a few seconds before Maxwell offered his opinion. As the sergeant in charge of the assault and reconnaissance troop of the squadron, he was a man everyone knew, and his opinion was almost always worth listening to, unless it was on the subject of music, as the only cassette he owned was by Kenny Rogers.

“It’s not a case of looking for a traditional spot for our cars,” he explained, “because our enemy doesn’t use armour or artillery. We need somewhere that we can block off and hold, like a high wall or one way in and out,” he paused, scanning his eyes down the coastline until he evidently found the place that Johnson was already sizing up. “There,” he said as he stabbed a finger onto the map.”

“The island?” the tea-making soldier asked.

“It’s connected by a causeway,” Johnson said, “one heavy road bridge over fast-flowing water. Low ground to the immediate front, high cliffs rising either side of that. Low water for access to sea-faring craft, and enough of an infrastructure to keep us equipped until we are resupplied.”

The others listened to him in silence, making him wish that he had kept his opinion to himself until the others had spoken. Usually, he would offer his thoughts and then the Captain and the Major would consider alternatives, but without them present, nobody wanted to seem as though they were disagreeing with the SSM. Having stopped the discussion unintentionally, he now asked them to come up with alternatives as their task, as though the decision to occupy and fortify a small island immediately off the coast wasn’t a done deal.

“No,” said another Corporal from the HQ troop, “I like it. Take the barriers off the side of the road bridge and barricade it with a wedge, and that way, anything like the crowds that came at us last night would go straight in the drink.”

“Air assets?” another asked. “Is there room for a bird to land up there?”

“The top of the island, by the lighthouse. You could land a Chinook there, although more than one might be a stretch,” offered the Corporal.

“And we’re assuming that the disease hasn’t affected the population yet?” Maxwell asked.

“It’s further west than we are, and a bit out of the way,” another said, “they might have been lucky.”

Just then, Daniels called the SSM by name.

“What is it?” he asked, waiting for the response from the Navy pilots.

“They’ve asked where they are supposed to take them,” he explained. “They are operating under the impression that the country is going to be overrun very soon. They are flying pilots in so that they can get enough of their air assets out of the base before they are overrun themselves.”

Johnson resisted the urge to swear and give his opinion of the Fleet Air Arm, and instead, calmly requested the loan of a single rotary wing for reconnaissance and transport. The request was recited, the pause as it was contemplated was long, and the response was simple. They couldn’t guarantee it, but they would allocate an asset if and when one became available.

The silence that this news left in the room didn’t last long, because it was shattered by shouts from outside as the troop radio crackled into noisy life. The only thing louder than the shouts, louder than the unmistakable reports of multiple calibres of gunfire, was the massed chorus of screeching.

* * *

Just as the clean-up operation was being organised, the few irregular stragglers dispatched as soon as they stumbled close enough, shouts of alarm rippled along the section of fence to the right of the gate. Those shouts, ill-disciplined given that their new enemy operated on sound to acquire their location, spread panic. That panic, however, was both understandable and justified.

From what Strauss and his troop had seen the previous day, the Screechers seemed to have their own rudimentary rank structure. Most of them that the troop had encountered were the hissing, moaning, shuffling ones that moved like a drunk with slightly better balance. However, they seemed to group up into roughly the size of an infantry company under the guidance of one of the god-awful ones that the soldiers had started to call Leaders, who seemed to have retained a little more of the motor functions of a living human. They were coordinated enough to run and, evidently from the attack on the camp in the night, climb. For each of those, came their followers of a hundred or so shuffling monsters, and when they reached sight of the men working at the fence line, the Leaders let out their piercing shrieks and broke into a run. Not only did that whip up the other Screechers into a slower-moving frenzy, but it sparked the faster ones themselves into a kind of bloodlust which made them moderately hard to kill.

By the time the troopers had been made aware of the incoming threat, and organised themselves to defend against it, the Leaders were at the wire and scaling it. The echoing, gassy reports of the troopers’ Sterlings were punctuated by the far harsher reports of the SLRs, the heavy-calibre Self Loading Rifles belonging to the RMPs at the gate. Only when that first ragged volley had cut down the three leaping corpses with their pink-foamed mouths hanging open in death through a combination of frothing saliva and blood, did the troopers switch on to the danger that close to three hundred Screechers were almost at the wire.

The noise that came from those three hundred mouths was directly from the worst horror film ever made. A few troopers even dropped their weapons to cover their ears, such was the painful volume it reached. The three crowds converged where their Leaders had fallen, all combining to become a single, feverish, screeching, roiling mass of flesh and teeth. The smell from those bodies even at a distance was sufficient to bring tears to their eyes, and the only way to render that threat safe was to do what they knew how to do best.

The orders were given by hand signal, and the cupola of one Fox and one Spartan turned towards the crowd, and both gunners let rip.

There were twenty troopers and soldiers at the fence, so the crews in the armoured cars sensibly drove to the flanks, where they could bring their weapons to bear without risk of hitting their own side. When those guns sparked into life, the odds rapidly swung in favour of the living over the dead.

Both fired their GPMGs, the Spartan as it was the tank’s only weapon and the Fox as its secondary, coaxial gun. The two heavy machine guns, combined with small arms fire from the front, tore ragged and bloody swathes into the hungry mob. The gunner of the Fox, eager to employ his instrument of warfare to its fullest, then fired six quick shots through the 30mm Rarden cannon, as the barrel was traversed ever so slightly after each shot. The result of this, the 30mm coming somewhere between an extremely heavy machine gun and small artillery, was brutal, devastating and utterly awesome.

As the six shells rocketed through the crowd in a slow-moving arc, each heavy piece tore down dozens of bodies and pulped anything it hit into instant, bloody ruin. The guns were designed to fire ammunition that would kill Russian tanks, not for crowd control.

After those six shots, the gunner went back to intermittent fire on the coaxial GPMG, as there was little or no concentration of enemy remaining. The guns on the cars stopped, leaving the dismounted troopers to finish off anything that still moved with any kind of purpose.

“Cease fire,” Johnson bawled as he approached the gate at a steady run, “cease fire!”

What he saw when he got there could best be described as horrific. It was total and utter slaughterhouse carnage. It was a scene out of the deepest, darkest layers of hell. Stopping at the steaming, writhing pile of meat fanning out from where they had converged on the fence, he found himself locked into the stare of a pair of blind eyes as the creature’s right hand reached for him. The left hand was gone, along with that shoulder, and a diagonal line out of the torso culminating in a pile of oily intestines sitting atop the severed legs, which he couldn’t be certain even belonged to that particular Screecher. It opened its mouth as it craned towards him, hoping to cover the distance and somehow get through the chain link by sheer effort of will.

Turning away, Johnson locked eyes instead with the next man to catch up with him, Sergeant Maxwell.

“That settles it then,” he said, “we head for the island as soon as we are able to move.”

Watching him walk away, no doubt to give the necessary order or to assure the civilians that they were safe, Maxwell turned around and looked down at the horror that was a quarter of a human being still trying to eat him, even though it no longer possessed enough of its body to locomote. Ignoring the good sense that he should save his ammunition or that the thing was no longer a threat, he raised his gun and fired a single bullet into its skull to end the hunger for good.

* * *

“What’s going on?” shouted a woman as she fussed to keep her hands over the ears of two children.

Kimberley also wanted, very much in fact, to know what was going on. The sergeant who had initially led them though to this large room, and who had organised two men to bring them a large rucksack containing a sleeping bag and some metal cooking tins, was standing at the doors, guarding them from going outside no doubt, and she knew he wouldn’t tell her a thing. She decided to approach the new man they had just been introduced to and pulled her hair down the left side of her face to hide the scars as best she could. Straightening herself to use her above average height to her advantage, she smoothed down her creased clothes and walked confidently towards the soldier who, she guessed, was about her age.

“Excuse me,” she said, tapping him lightly on the shoulder and smiling as he turned around to face her, meeting the level of her eyes exactly. He returned the smile warmly, as though proper manners came easily to him, and those manners were so impeccable that when his eyes caught sight of the small patch of scar she could not obscure with her hair, his face did not register any disgust or flinch, merely switched back to her gaze and fixed her to the spot. One corner of his mouth curled up slightly, and he offered a hint of a bow to her.

“Madam,” he said in a richly cultured accent, or at least an accent that others might find cultured, as Kimberley thought it made him sound like a smarmy dick.

“Lieutenant Oliver Simpkins-Palmer,” he said, giving his full title in an attempt to make himself sound grand and important. He clearly had misjudged his audience, as Kimberley found herself in the unexpected role reversal of being repulsed by another person on sight.

“Kimberley Perkins,” she answered curtly, unable to bring herself to be rude despite instantly disliking the man in front of her. “Lieutenant, might I enquire as to what is going on, and how long we are to be kept here?”

“My dear Miss Perkins,” he crooned like some awful approximation of a character in an Ian Fleming novel, “if everyone can remain inside and let the chaps handle things, then all will be well, I assure you,” he continued, offering her another dazzling smile.

“I’m sure you’re right,” she responded, “but that answers neither of my questions.”

Palmer’s smile barely quivered before he brought it back under control.

“Madam, again I assure you that everything is under control, and everyone here,” she winced as he pronounced the word as hy’ah directly from his sinuses, “will be brought up to speed very shortly. Now, if you’ll excuse me?” he said, clearly desperate to find someone not immune to his upper-class charm.

Kimberley was left standing alone and even more annoyed than before. Something inside her said that she needed to be ready to move and soon, so she returned to the space where she had slept in her new, thick green sleeping bag and rolled it back up to stuff it into her new army backpack to keep the metal tins from rattling around. Settling the large bag over one shoulder, she took herself to the long table that contained military clothing, because the skirt and heels were unlikely to be fitting for any kind of flight from the base, which she sensed would be coming at some point. Taking a bundle, after searching the piles for labels, she retired to the toilets designated for female use. She found a pair of green trousers that fit over her hips but weren’t quite long enough to reach all the way down the length of her legs. She countered this with a pair of boots, the tops of which covered the trouser legs. They were half a size too large for her, but laced up tight enough, she kept her feet from slipping. Abandoning her skirt, blouse, tights and heels, which went into her bag, she completed her new look with a white T-shirt with red hemming around the neck and sleeves. The only outer garment she could find was a smock, a kind of large blouse jacket, of stiff camouflage-patterned material which was at least three sizes too big for her. She also kept another pair of trousers and a few T-shirts, which she stuffed into the bag.

When she returned to the main hall and propped her army luggage on a chair, she fetched one or two strange looks from the frightened people who were just cowering there waiting to be told what to do, and she helped herself to the stewed coffee from the pot which was permanently kept warm on a cycle. She was certain that the amount of coffee she was drinking couldn’t be good for her, but she doubted that the sudden influx of so much caffeine in her life would lead to her imminent demise, as she rather expected that to be something terrifyingly similar to what she had seen back in the town where she lived.

Used to live, she corrected herself, can’t see that place being habitable any time soon.

Within twenty minutes, her predictions became reality when she saw entering the room a very stressed looking man with stripes on his arm and his hair tousled on one side, carrying a battered clipboard. He loudly announced that everyone needed to be ready to go very soon, then left the room under a barrage of shouted questions, with the young officer following.

Smiling to herself, Kimberley watched as everyone scrabbled to grab clothing and throw things into their bags. ready to leave.

TWENTY-ONE

Peter, who had decided that his task for the morning was to climb a particularly tall oak tree, heard what he thought was thunder rolling over the undulating ground towards him. An experienced solider would have recognised it as gunfire, heavy gunfire at that, but Peter had no way of knowing. He had heard something very similar, only lasting longer, a few times the previous day, only from further away.

Now, close to forty feet from the ground, he stood shakily to hold onto a swaying branch as he scanned the landscape in a roughly two-hundred-and-seventy-degree arc. He saw nothing, except the few farm buildings, the three houses of the Pines, the scary mansion further up the lane and the road itself in parts. Nothing moved, except for wildlife and the cows and pigs in the field below. Looking as far as he could see in the other direction, his brain did not register the brick building with its outbuildings and detached garage.

He was so high up that he really could see his house from there, only that house no longer existed in his mind.

After watching for long enough that his legs began to feel wobbly through a combination of tiredness and vertigo, he carefully monkeyed his way down to ground level, and dangled to endure the last drop from a branch the height of a full-grown man. Picking himself up out of the leaf mould, he brushed himself down and retrieved his bag and weapons which went everywhere with him, with the exception of the shotgun which he now intended to deal with.

Had he been able to see through the higher branches and leaves of the tree, had he been able to look in the direction of the pub and the shop and eventually behind that to the town, then he would have been able to see the dark line smearing over the horizon where the dead had amassed and turned their faces towards the sound of the distant, rolling gunfire. Beginning their nearly thirty-mile cross country journey towards the source of their excitement, they began to trudge on a course that would lead them straight through the farm.

Peter, totally unaware that by that afternoon the farm would be washed away by a tidal wave of dead, opened up the workshop again and went about some very illegal weapon modifications. First, choosing the hardest task to begin with, he broke down the gun and clamped the barrels into the vice, where he took the same hacksaw from the white wall and exposed the silhouette of the tool in black pen once more. Repeating the skills he had been grudgingly taught, he dragged the blade back towards him across the metal, planning to remove two-thirds of the length.

That took him close to an hour, as he had to stop for frequent breaks and twice to replace blunted and broken saw blades. When he had finally taken off the section, he spent a further twenty minutes making sure that the ends were smoothed down, using the file again. That done, he turned his attention to the stock of the weapon and used another hand saw to take the shoulder stock off at the handle, effectively making the weapon one huge, double-barrelled pistol. Using a rasp file, he shaped the wood, intermittently placing his hand around the grip to see where he needed to reduce the profile to best fit him. When that was finally done, he used gradually finer grades of sandpaper to finish the wood and thanked the state school curriculum for insisting that design and technology be taught. Making things with his hands gave Peter a sense of achievement in a life generally devoid of success or happiness.

Snapping the three parts of the gun back together, Peter turned his attention to the ammunition. This was a rare and illegal skill which his father had taught him on one of those occasions where he coincidentally enjoyed something he was forced to do, so didn’t realise it wasn’t being done for his benefit. Removing each cartridge from the belt, he placed them on the workbench and used the folding penknife he had taken from his father’s bedside table to prise open the crimped plastic ends. Having used a match from the box of long fire-lighting matches taken from the house that no longer existed to him, he lit three candles after he had finished opening each red shotgun cartridge, to leave them standing in a row with their brown wading exposed to the air.

Lifting up that wadding each time with the tip of the knife, he poured in the dripping wax with painstakingly slow progress, until only three stubs of wax remained alight and his back ached from leaning over the bench for so long. Closing down the flared ends of the cartridges, he pressed them flat and added a small strip of green and yellow striped electrical earth tape to ensure the solid ball of wax and lead stayed inside until such time as it was needed. Restoring the cartridges to the belt, he loaded two and played around with how best to hold and carry the gun, deciding on cutting a small hole into his bag so that the barrels pointed down his back.

* * *

“Quartermaster, where are we with those Bedfords for the civilians?” Johnson barked, not having the luxury of time to address the second highest ranking NCO in their squadron with the proper courtesies.

In simple response, Staff Sergeant Rochefort held up both hands with all the digits splayed out after tucking the thing he was carrying under one arm. Luckily, most of the supplies they had brought with them were still stowed on the trucks, but they had not had sufficient time to organise the unloading of stores on the base to a sufficient degree to consider abandoning it. Now they had less than an hour to get those supplies loaded again, and all the while, more and more of the things were approaching the gate. Very few came from any other directions, but logic suggested the reason for this was that the gate pointed directly towards town in an easterly direction. Behind them was the tank proving grounds, where not too many of the local population chose to reside.

The situation at the gate was beginning to cause some alarm, and Johnson thought for ten long seconds before snapping out of his torpor and ordering a bold move.

“Sergeant Maxwell?” he boomed over the sounds of engines and the occasional gunshot.

“Here,” Maxwell responded from behind him.

“Take your troop out, if you’ll oblige me, head towards town, shooting intermittently, draw them away from here and take a longer route back round to the island. Can you have one of your chaps map it?” he asked, eyes wide with expectation and hope that Maxwell would get it done, and get it done right.

He nodded, telling the SSM that he’d get it mapped en route, and called for his troop to mount their Spartans. Within minutes, the four tracked vehicles rattled and squeaked their way noisily out of the gate and down the road, where their cupola-mounted GPMGs barked sporadically to fire bursts of heavy 7.62mm into any Screecher that showed itself in the open. As their thunderous noise faded away, so did the intensity of the enemy encroachment as their attention was taken up by the moving sound generators that was the squadron’s reconnaissance screen of light armour.

With the imminent risk reduced tenfold, Johnson was able to leave a single fighting troop on point duty at any one time, and to organise the others into ensuring that everything they needed was getting loaded somewhere. All of the admin troop now had their own Bedford four-tonne truck, which was being loaded with a combination of food, other supplies, ammunition, fuel jerrycans, not to mention to close to sixty civilians who had either been rescued, or who had trickled in after the squadron had been able to let people know to leave their homes immediately.

Not that their current predicament was much better than being in their own homes.

Fuel had been pumped into mobile tankers, the kind that resupplied them on the battlefield, and they had finally taken as much as they could carry. Calling for the civilians to be loaded into the Bedford trucks alongside whatever supplies were already on board, Johnson mounted his own armoured vehicle and kept his head above the hatch with his hand on the machine gun.

Their convoy, now twenty-two vehicles long and comprising twelve Foxes, one Sultan and nine of the big, green Bedford trucks, was not an easy thing to manage. For starters, they spread out to over a quarter of a mile in length from nose to tail and the interspersing of fighting units between the soft-skinned vehicles meant that very quickly their troop unit cohesion evaporated. Johnson was at the lead, or behind two Foxes of Two Troop, and he had placed Strauss’ entire troop at the rear, with the six remaining cars of Two and Three Troops mixed throughout the convoy to provide a screen, should they encounter enemy anywhere other than their front or rear.

As they drove away, their progress was slow, because although even the tracked vehicle of Johnson’s was the slowest of them with a top speed only just north of fifty, the constant stopping to wait as the trucks and cars ahead manoeuvred, made them bunch up tight and remain stationary for long periods of time. Stationary vehicles, especially the soft-skinned trucks with no armour to hide behind, were a concern for Johnson. In conventional warfare, not that he should keep drawing parallels, such a concertina effect on a large convoy would be fatal as their entire force could be eradicated with a single artillery barrage or airstrike. He kicked himself for making that irrelevant distinction, as he was fairly certain that no corpse could operate instruments of war. Even if some of them could climb fences.

The net result of their halting progress was an average speed close to about ten miles per hour. Given that the island was over thirty miles from their position, that progress was painfully slow and frustrating for all of them, and the SSM’s distracted thoughts were snatched back to the inside of his car by Corporal Daniels.

“Sir, getting something on the Clansman,” he said, gesturing at one of the two radio sets in the relatively spacious interior for an armoured vehicle. Johnson let his hand slip away from the machine gun and dropped back inside.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Not sure,” Daniels said loudly with a frown, “intermittent and broken, but definitely not one of ours; they’ve all reported in when called.”

It was Johnson’s turn to frown. What other military units could be calling up in this area? There was almost nothing between their area and the Navy bases in the south west, certainly nothing green army, but his contemplation was ceased by Daniels answering another radio hail.

“Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha receiving,” he said in that implacable tone of voice that born radio operators possessed, before pausing to listen to the response. “It’s Sarn’t Maxwell, he’s reached the island and is holding firm on the road bridge…” he paused to listen again, “low concentration of enemy… no Screechers coming from the island towards their noise.”

“Good,” Johnson growled, “tell him to push inland one mile and secure some higher ground. Tell him we are,” he looked at his watch and glanced to the map on the inside wall of the hull to gauge their speed and distance, “ninety minutes away at least.”

Daniels nodded and turned to his radio sets to relay the information, then Johnson paused as he went to raise himself up and out of the hatch again, as the Corporal switched dials on the radio sets and spoke intently.

“Last callsign, repeat, I say again, repeat,” he said, giving their squadron callsign and disposition briefly, then stayed still and silent waiting for a response which must have come through garbled, because he repeated his last transmission word for word before waiting again. Giving up he shook his head and went back to the switches and dials.

* * *

Feeling satisfied with himself, Peter’s little bubble of happiness was burst by the sudden rise in noises from the farm. He had always been accustomed to the sounds of cattle and other livestock, but the tone and desperation of the noises coming from the cows made his chest feel tight and cold. Running out of his barn and skidding to a stop to turn and run back inside, he snatched up the camouflage backpack that he knew must go everywhere with him and must always be packed ready. In that bag he had snacks, a canteen of water, his sleeping back and the stuffed lamb belonging at one time to his sister, and the belt of ammunition for the shotgun, because it was too big to fit around his slim waist. The folding penknife never left his pocket unless he was using it, so he was ready to go as soon as he snatched up his pitchfork.

Rounding the corner of a building, he couldn’t help but gasp out loud as the sight that greeted him was worse than anything he could have imagined.

It had started somewhere miles away, and as each new addition to the group was drawn towards the sound and movement of the others, so too were they all tugged inexorably towards the sounds in the distance. Those ripples of rolling thunder made the few more alert ones of them sniff the air in that direction and move, dragging the slower ones on with them, as if they were being towed. Every infected corpse they passed reacted to the presence of the growing crowd of dead, and the cycle continued as more and more of them added to the noise, which drew yet more in from areas unaffected by the direct path they took.

Those who had been almost dormant from the lack of noise or movement to spark their feeding instincts, suddenly came alive with renewed intensity to join the hunt, as hundreds of them moved together and none of them could know where they were going or why.

Their direct path took them through the woodland and the shallow river into a farm, where things started moving and making noises. The Leaders at the front, half a dozen of them, sniffed greedily at the air and went into a frenzy as the smell of flesh excited them. They threw themselves forwards, some leaping the chest-high fence entirely, and fell upon the innocent cattle mercilessly. Their pitiful bellows tore the air as teeth chewed through thick skin and blood flowed in thick globules down to the dry dirt, where it soaked in to make a dark red mud that the following zombies trampled into unthinkingly. They too now had their arms reaching out, and their mouths opened wide to peel back their lips and show teeth as they saw flesh. The wooden fence, a simple and strong enough barrier, splintered like toothpicks under the combined crushing weight of hundreds of bodies, some of whom went down with the obstacle to be trampled flat by their careless comrades.

The cows stood no chance and were all pulled to the ground and devoured. One lumbering beast, her eyes wide in terror at the stench of blood, kicked out and scored a lucky hit on one attacker to crush its skull and drop it lifeless to the wet dirt, but the temporary reprieve did little for her long-term survival, and the next one in line simply took the place of the ruined skull and bit down hard.

Peter, rounding the corner to see this emerging carnage, could luckily not be heard over the terrible noise, but something made two of them turn towards him. Perhaps his smell, perhaps some other sense, but two of them had locked on to him and began to move his way.

He forced his feet to respond to the messages his brain was sending desperately, finally getting them to stumble him backwards. A third zombie, eyes cloudy and pale and the white shirt under his grey suit a mess of both fresh and dried blood, burst from the mass and also went after him, but this one did so with more coordination and at a much faster pace.

Peter ran. He ran as fast as he physically could. He ran faster than he ever had before, even when he was unencumbered by a heavy bag, a sawn-off shotgun and an awkward pitchfork in one hand. Hearing the sound of footsteps approaching behind him even over the rasping of his own breathing and the blood pumping through his ears deafeningly, he instinctively turned to his right to fall through an open stable doorway. The thing chasing him shot past and fell hard to the concrete yard, making a sound like meat hitting a chopping board, and Peter managed to kick the door closed behind. The man in the suit had already got to his feet and banged hard into the half door, reaching over and down to try and grab Peter. He thrust forward with his pitchfork, skewering the man straight through the throat and having no effect whatsoever to stop him. The end of the weapon’s handle slipped from his grasp and flung around to hit him on the head twice. His own screams of fear mixed with the screeching, hissing noise the thing made as it leaned further over at him. The pitchfork prevented the man in the suit from getting to him, as the end wedged tight against the pitted ground and held his head upright.

Which gave Peter just enough time to reach high above his head and grasp the newly-smoothed handle of the shotgun. Unthinking, he pulled it free, aimed it upwards and pushed the safety catch off with his thumb. Reaching his small index finger forwards to reach one of the triggers, he snatched at the thin metal.

The responding boom of the gun going off inside the confined space was huge. He was blinded temporarily, deafened and left in total shock by the savagery of the report. The gun had flown backwards as it fired, slamming the barrel back into his shoulder, where the padded strap luckily prevented any serious injury.

Before his vision went white from the blast, he was left with a brief snapshot of the suit man’s head vanishing. The headless body flopped over the stable door, and Peter took three ragged breaths before his survival instinct kicked in again. Part of him knew that the noise would bring more, that he had to run and hide, and that part of him dragged him to his feet and forced him to pick up the discarded pitchfork. Pushing open the half door with difficulty as the headless body was partly obstructing it, he ran just as four reaching hands grabbed at his clothing.

He had no idea how many were chasing him, but one was one too many. He tore blindly through the collection of mismatched buildings until he lost his footing and fell headlong to the hard ground, where he slid without slowing down.

What he slid through was ankle-deep animal shit. It got in his face and forced him to close his eyes. It got in his mouth and he turned his face away, which caused the slimy filth to collect in his right ear and deafen him on that side. Skidding to a stop he retched and shuddered, spitting out the disgusting contents of his mouth. He rolled sideways to try and escape his pursuit by cramming himself under the small section of air between the rough ground and the raised floor of a building. Reaching to his waist he managed to free the canteen of water which he poured on his face to swill his mouth and stop him from vomiting.

As his wits were restored to him, he noticed feet about three paces from his face just at the edge of the building. He froze, not wanting or daring to move or breathe, just hoping that they would go away.

Then he remembered the way they sniffed the air.

He could hear them snuffling, knowing that something they could eat had gone this way and disappeared, trying to detect it through smell. But they couldn’t. Peter stayed exactly where he was, not daring to move in case he made a sound or changed his smell in some way. He rested his head slowly to the ground, slowed his breathing, and watched as feet after feet traipsed past him. He lost count of how many in the first few seconds, and only a few details remained in his mind. Like the size of some of the feet being smaller than his own, or the red high-heeled shoes with both heels snapped off making the already jerky movements seem even more ungainly.

Peter stayed there until the herd had become a trickle and stayed still even when that trickle had faded to nothing. When the sun first began to set, he tentatively crawled out from under the building and raised his pitchfork to sweep the area for any stragglers that had got left behind. Creeping out from behind the building, he let out a strangled cry and felt his knees give from underneath him. He fell down, cracking the film of dried shit from his skin and refreshing the smell. The scene before him was horrific, even worse than the torn mess of the dog he had tried to tell himself he hadn’t seen.

The big, docile and harmless creatures had been ravaged and torn apart to be left in ruin where they fell. The flesh had been flensed from their bones, leaving great arcs of white bones from the ribcages. At the sound he made, a gargling, bubbling groan escaped from the far side of one of the poor, dead cows. One of the things, slow-moving and fat-faced with wobbling jowls, rose awkwardly to its feet and began to hobble towards him. It was slow because of its weight, and the fact that one of its feet was turned to face backwards and made a sickening crunching noise as it moved.

Just as the bones in the ankle of the fat creature had gone, something inside Peter snapped then.

He straightened, twirled the pitchfork, then stepped towards it and ran the two spikes through its eyes to burst straight out the back of its skull. It fell backwards like a tree and he let the weapon go for it to bounce out of the skull when it impacted the ground with a slap. He stepped over, picked up his weapons and, for the first time in his life, listened to the total absence of sound as every animal on the farm was dead.

And he could not stay there one minute longer.

TWENTY-TWO

Eight vehicles from the front of the convoy, Kimberley tried to ignore the cramp and the discomfort of travelling in the back of a very industrial truck. It was not designed for comfort, but then again everything she had seen in the last couple of days indicated that Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, or the army at least, did not rate personal comfort high on their agenda. Finally, unable to suffer the annoyance of her loose hair bouncing into her face with every lurching turn or juddering gear change, she tied it back into a ponytail and thanked the gloomy interior for obscuring that part of her face that she had kept covered for the last three years whenever there were other people around her. The journey seemed to take forever, with the truck constantly halting to a stop amidst the protesting shriek of brake pads. The first few times the brakes had made that high-pitched sound after they had warmed had made her heart lurch into her stomach and her eyes grow wide with the adrenaline that forced her breathing to speed up. Realising that the screech was of brakes and not torn from the throat of a flesh-eating and insane former person, she relaxed and each time it happened she reacted less and less. Recognising that fear was debilitating her and having an effect on her body, she forced herself to remain calm through sheer will, and wait.

Just wait, she told herself from behind her eyelids, everything ends eventually.

* * *

“Unknown callsign, this is Victor-Three-Zero. Identify yourself. Over,” barked Daniels with more authority than before. “Confirm disposition.”

“Hello, Victor-Three-Zero, this is Delta-Two-Zero minus. We are a detached heavy callsign. Over.”

Hearing the callsign he named, Johnson dropped back inside as though he had been shot and stared at the operator with eyes wider than the exhaust on a Chieftain tank, because that was precisely what he associated with that callsign.

His impatience almost killed him, but he did not let himself down by interrupting the exchange. Instead, he waited until the necessary information had been exchanged and grid coordinates swapped. Calculating distance and speed very roughly in his head, Johnson reckoned that he had perhaps another hour before the slower moving units, realistically only able to move at half of their top speed, could combine with them.

“Give them our objective,” he ordered Daniels, who nodded and relayed the information and then signed off.

“Two Chieftains,” he said, confirming Johnson’s hopes. “They were part of the armour sent to London, but they said they never got further than Southampton before they were swamped. Their Captain reckons th—”

“Their Captain?” he interrupted, betraying his own nervousness at his tenuous command of a squadron and fearing that he would be forced to relinquish control.

“Yes, Sir,” Daniels said almost sympathetically, intuiting the cause of concern on his SSM’s face, “he reckons they can be here in three hours, but they’ll be very low on fuel by then.”

“Replen?” Johnson asked, checking if it was necessary to send a resupply fuel wagon to meet them.

“Possibly,” Daniels said as he thought, “when those things run low, their fuel filters get choked up and die,” he mused, temporarily wearing his day job hat and thinking as a mechanic. “Let’s see what we have at the island and then decide?”

Johnson nodded to agree to the logical course of action, then turned his attention back to their route ahead and tried to push away the nagging sense of self-doubt as he prepared to justify his orders to a senior officer.

Second Lieutenant Oliver Simpkins-Bloody-Palmer was too junior to test an NCO of his experience, but a Captain in an armoured division would be far more likely to have something other than fine lace and dance steps between his ears. That introspection lasted until his scanning eyes rested on the long, straight approach road leading to the lump of rock just off the coast.

That rock, not that he yet knew it, would soon become the most contested piece of land in many miles.

* * *

“Sir?” the driver of the lead tank said into the microphone on his headset to get the attention of their Captain.

“Everything okay, Wells?” the officer asked in genuine concern as he peered forward to where their Lance Corporal was enduring the awkward driving position forced on him by being closed down. Closed down was the term for having their hatches firmly secured, and it was the only reason they all still lived.

“She’s juddering, Sir,” Clive Wells answered from his seat at the front which required him to be lying almost flat on his back, “under throttle. She doesn’t like something.”

The Captain frowned, rechecked their position on the map in the cramped confines, and called for a full stop to his crew’s loader, who also acted as radio operator, which he relayed over the group radio. The second tank, with her complement of four, also ground to a halt behind them for their roaring engines to drop to a low rumble at idle. Checking all around, the Captain opened up the hatch to climb out and converse with the other crew, commanded by a Sergeant named Horton.

“We’re starting to get engine problems,” the officer explained.

“We aren’t much better off, Sir,” the sergeant responded in a voice laced with angry disappointment. “We’ve lost our gears and are on emergency ones.” Both of their wagons, the only surviving armour from their massed foray to rescue the capital, were splattered with dried gore and were less than fresh on the inside too. They had barely felt safe enough to open the hatches in days for more than a few minutes at a time, because the creatures would emerge to clamber up their low hulls and claw at the closed hatches. Because their tanks weren’t that fast moving, getting one of them stuck on the top was best avoided. They had all seen what had happened to the other armour in their column, not to mention the occupants of the soft-skinned and canvas-backed vehicles, when they had stopped moving and were overrun by the crowds.

There were two reasons why their pair of green and black painted tanks had escaped from that swarm of bodies. One was partly down to luck in that they had stopped to inspect a minor repair, and as no tank would be left alone, the pair arrived at the very tail end of the halted convoy. The other was down to the very quick thinking of the officer who had been thrown into their crew at the very last minute, the column having been formed in a hurry. He had presence which gave his orders an authority which prompted instant obedience in the men. He had ordered them to close down and reverse, which they did, and now they had survived and not been overrun or stranded on mounds of bodies.

Hearing and then seeing a pair of jets overhead as they reversed their course made them try a hail, which eventually got them in touch with a large Naval air station. They, in turn, advised them of army units active at the place where their own journey had begun, so they made to return there. Attempting at regular intervals on their slow journey to raise the base, they eventually made contact and altered course to head for the spit of high ground separated from the mainland by a causeway bridge. The Captain knew the area to be a small town, more of a village really, with some farming and a lighthouse. Given their unexpected predicament, the choice of location made instant sense to him and he made a note to congratulate the man who came up with the idea. His own wagon, named Annabelle by the men of A Squadron, was fitted with the heavy plough that they had anticipated needing for clearing abandoned vehicles out of the city streets. That had been useful when needing to clear the way of lumbering corpses, but it added weight to them and ultimately reduced their speed and increased their fuel consumption.

“Confirm our location,” the Captain said to his radio man, “contact that armoured unit and request a resupply of fuel. Vehicle mechanics too, if they have any, because I’d rather like to keep these two ladies in the fight.”

The man nodded, enthused by the short speech and infectious good nature of the man who was not his officer, but had quickly proven himself to be one of the best. Still a young man, as well-bred Captains often were, he seemed to possess a depth of character that lent him the air of an older man.

The Captain hefted his gun and invited Sergeant Horton to join him on stag to protect their crews.

* * *

“Sarn’t Major?” Daniels called out to bring Johnson back to the Sultan.

“Yes?”

“It’s the armour, Sir,” he explained, “I’ve got grid co-ords for them, but they are stranded, requesting replen and vehicle mechs if we have them.”

Johnson had no REME, no men of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers or other army mechanics to deploy, but he was certain that he could fix the issue himself. Kicking that thought aside, as much as he would have loved to go and perform a battlefield repair and get his hands dirty, he was forced to attend to the more pressing matters.

“Ask Strauss if he’s up to it,” Johnson told the radio man, knowing that the sergeant was both a steady leader and had a few half-decent mechanics in his troop, “and if he is, he should top off his tanks and go now.”

Now that he thought about it, given their vehicles’ inclinations towards mechanical failure, he reckoned that most of his squadron were half-decent mechanics by that point.

Turning his attention back to the long, straight stretch of road leading directly to the island, Johnson raised the binoculars he had borrowed from a trooper in Three Troop and scanned the small town on their rock.

What he saw made him laugh. He dropped the binoculars in disbelief, raised them again and let out another involuntary chuckle at the sight. Keeping them in focus and finding yet another thing to amuse him, he could no longer contain himself and he burst out in almost uncontrollable belly laughs. All around him, troopers and NCOs exchanged awkward looks of fear as their senior man had finally lost the plot and spilled whatever was left of his marbles all over the road.

“They’re…” he giggled as he wiped a tear away from his eye, “they’re…”

“Good God, man,” snapped Lieutenant Palmer incredulously, “what’s got into you? Pull yourself together!”

Still laughing, Johnson passed the binoculars roughly into Palmer’s chest. Puzzled, he looked through them for the source of the hilarity and soon found it.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “oh my word, whatever do they…” he broke off to giggle, “I say, do they think we’re…?”

He dropped the binoculars away from his face and joined the Sergeant Major in laughing until one of the troopers asked him what the joke was.

“Trooper,” said Palmer in a high-pitched voice brought on by the humour, “the townsfolk are surrendering to us!”

It started with just one person who ran to the highest window in their house and threw it open to wave the white tablecloth into the wind. Others soon copied when the word had spread, and the people on the island looked down on a large column of tanks and other military vehicles which had stopped short of the town, and which were just looking up at them. Fearing some invading force, the townspeople had elected to show that they offered no resistance and hopefully avoid the bloodshed they feared.

“Lieutenant?” Johnson asked as he dried his eyes.

“Sarn’t Major?” the young officer responded in the style of the men, which seemed to make him ever so slightly more human.

“Could you oblige me by letting the good folk of this town know that we are on their side, and aren’t here to conquer them?”

Palmer bowed low in playful sarcasm to accept his task as though it were a dare on tour.

“Load up, boys,” he said to the crew of the second Sultan as he skipped to climb up the tracks, “let’s be the heroes, shall we? I say, does anyone have The Ride of the Valkyries to hand?” his rhetorical joke drew a smirk from the men and Johnson had the slight inkling that if the posh little twat survived long enough, he might actually learn to do some good.

Eventually.

“Maxwell,” he said, turning to the man in charge of the four tracked vehicles of their reconnaissance assault troop, “push out a picquet line if you would, four hundred yards?”

Maxwell nodded his understanding, relishing getting back to one of his primary trained roles and acting as scouts for the heavier guns of their squadron. He shouted his orders, teased and cajoled his men into action. Johnson gave orders that left another four Fox wagons blocking the road with their guns set into defensive arcs and sent all of the other fighting men and the HQ troop with their laden Bedford trucks up the hill into the town.

The SSM trusted Palmer, and he could not believe he actually used those words, to charm and pacify the frightened locals, and he also trusted the Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant to arrange the necessary accommodation and storage, and he trusted all of the men to ensure that none of the Screechers were on that island, as it was his job to make sure that the roadway stayed closed to their enemy.

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention but, in Johnson’s opinion, it was war. War made people come up with sudden inventions and ideas. War made people find new ways of staying alive and new ways of killing others, and war made people as resourceful as MacGyver locked in a store cupboard full of innocuous items, taking them to build a rocket launcher.

Now, with no engineering team or necessary tools, he ordered the bridge cleared, and detailed the 30mm gunner on one Fox to destroy the parapet. The display was, they all had to admit, impressive. Using what they had in the limited time available, they formulated the fastest way to safely achieve what they needed to. They needed the parapets broken so that the road could be blockaded and anyone, anything, pushing against the stop would fall off either side down into the fast-flowing current of the coast.

That was the theory, anyway, and any number of things could still go wrong.

Up in the town, Sergeant Croft had reported by radio that there was no infection, and that there was plenty of room for men, vehicles and equipment up there. The defences were simple, in the same way that medieval castle defences were simple. There was one way in, and they just had to kill anything that tried to use it. Johnson remained on the lower slopes of the island, watching over the troop of Fox vehicles, and using the binoculars to range further out into the distance to cover the two low hulls of the Spartans that he could see. He knew that the men out there, those he could and couldn’t see, knew their jobs and were well led enough to not need his help, or interference, depending on how one looked at it.

His mind cast further out, away from the island they had successfully navigated to and begun to fortify, to where the five wagons he had sent were bumping along the tarmac towards the two silent hulks of armour and their massive 120mm guns. The Chieftain was, in Johnson’s opinion, one of the finest instruments of warfare ever created. It was right up there with the Harrier jump jet. The only thing he would maybe have chosen to change, the small wrinkle in the silk for him, was the fact that the most reliable thing about the engines in those tanks was that they were guaranteed to break down regularly. Sending a troop out to refuel and help fix up two of the beasts was worth the risk on any day, and he was confident in Strauss’ abilities. Already his mind’s eye was planning for the added weight in defence in having the two tanks with them, even if it meant relinquishing his overall command to the Captain.

He thought on that, believing for a moment that he wouldn’t mind that as long as he had confidence in this Captain to lead the men well, and a big part of him looked forward in happy anticipation to getting back to what he saw as his real job of running the squadron in its entirety, without being bogged down by the daily grind of making every command decision. Dragging his mind back, he looked out at the defences and knew that the plan had to be kept very simple.

The road was blocked, and the parapets would need tidying up for certain, and they could even try to rig a two- or even three-stage defence up at some point in the future, with outward-opening barriers that joined at an angle like a wedge to keep the Screechers out. Looking behind him, he saw only two shallow beaches where they could wash up randomly, and simple fencing could keep that issue at bay when combined with a quick reaction force on standby twenty-four hours a day and a morning search sweep. They would need to foray out for supplies and other survivors, obviously, but they could be safe there. He stayed there, assessing the approaches and vulnerabilities, until the time crept onwards and he began to worry about his absent soldiers.

Just then, his recce screen reported contact on the radio.

TWENTY-THREE

“Sir, I hear armour coming,” Wells warned the Captain in a low voice, who had heard the engine notes just as the man spoke.

“I hear them,” he responded, “let’s be ready, boys.”

Their eyes were alert over their weapons, even more so given the increase in noise with the arrival of their resupply mission, and they had learned the hard lessons about bringing the bastards down on them by simply being too loud. The relief they felt, if not overtly shown, when the lead Fox bounced into view, was palpable. The lead car went straight up to them, with another going past and one driving off to the side, while the last about-turned and guarded the direction they had come from. The other vehicle with them was a fuel resupply one and drove in between the two silent tanks for maximum efficiency.

“Strauss, Yeomanry, C Squadron,” said the tall sergeant as he held a hand out to the officer.

“Julian Simpkins-Palmer,” the Captain responded, “Household Cavalry,” then smiled hesitantly as the sergeant’s face dropped and his features went slack in disbelief. Captain Palmer, as he went by for ease in the long tradition of the military men in his family, incorrectly suspected the source of the man’s incredulity lay in the lack of the rest of the cavalry, and he offered a small shrug of apology.

“Best we could do in a tight spot, I’m afraid,” he said, “still, can’t imagine your Major would turn his nose up at a pair of these, eh?”

“No, Sir,” Strauss said, “we don’t have a Major, Sir.”

“Oh? Who is your Captain then? Perhaps I know the gentleman,” Palmer tried, fearing that the man staring at him was being intentionally obtuse.

“Sir, my apologies,” Strauss said, shaking himself out of the daze he was in and gesturing for the officer to walk with him. The sergeant produced a packet of cigarettes and offered one to the Captain, who surprised him by accepting one and producing his own lighter to put flame to the NCO’s smoke before his own. Both men sucked in a lungful and exhaled slowly, then Strauss tried again.

“We are led by our SSM, Sir,” he told him, seeing the mixed look of shock and distress on the Captain’s face, “but we do have an officer…”

Just then the penny dropped.

“C Squadron?” Palmer asked, “You may have met my younger brother, he joined the reserves late last year,” he said happily, then added, “but the little blighter had himself a weekend with the boys in London, that’s why I jumped in with the first column headed that way, you see? Get things back under control.”

“Sir,” Strauss said, “your brother isn’t in London…”

Palmer’s face registered shock, then heart-warming happiness as though something he believed he had lost was found safely all along.

“You mean…?”

“Yes, Sir, he’s with the squadron,” Strauss told him. Palmer’s eyes glazed slightly, and he insisted on shaking Strauss’ hand again to thank him for the most welcome news.

“Sergeant Horton? Did you hear that?” he called over his shoulder as quietly as he could to prevent the noise carrying, although they were far more protected than they had been previously, “These fine fellows have my younger brother safe, he’s a Lieutenant in the reserves.”

Sergeant Horton smiled and nodded, then returned his face to the scowl it had been before he was spoken to. He didn’t dislike the officer one bit, in fact he thought the man was bloody competent and owed him a lot for thinking fast and getting them out of there. It was more that he was busy trying to the get the two tanks refuelled and restarted so they could get the hell out of there, and he didn’t think that some baby Rupert not being dead was worth the interruption.

The fuel was pumped and given a few minutes to settle into the engines before the ignition process was started, with elation and smiles all round as both beasts sparked to life at the first attempt. The convoy of now seven vehicles lumbered its way back at half the speed of the inbound journey, but then again none of the wagons that had made the outbound journey weighed close to fifty tonnes.

That wasn’t strictly true, Horton allowed, as they weren’t carrying all their really heavy sabot anti-armour artillery ammunition. Seeing as they had been deployed to show strength and restore the Queen’s peace to the streets of London, they weren’t issued with the tank-killers they carried whenever they were deployed in Germany, ready to head east at a moment’s notice.

Feeling safer, given their slower progress and increased firepower, Strauss allowed himself the luxury of not being closed down on the return leg. He smoked a few cigarettes as they rolled on with Palmer’s tank called Annabelle, which made him smile in genuine happiness for some unknown reason, taking the lead. With the pace set by the first tank, the other wagons only had to tick over at low revs, with the other tank at the rear in no danger of being outpaced and left behind. Taking double the time to get back and having only encountered sporadic enemy activity, they were forced to close down as the weather began to darken and the wind picked up to blow a stinging rain into their faces. That rain and wind made clear promises to bring more and far worse with it, and just as the weather brought them misery, they found their way blocked by a knot of shambling Screechers heading away from them. Hearing the engines, the group stopped and rotated to face the new source of sound that sparked their interest. They could smell no flesh, and simply stared at the stationary tank to see if it became edible. From the centre of the group, one of the creatures stepped out to push its way through the cluster of dead. They had all encountered the faster ones, the fresher ones, but none of them had seen one that was so small yet. The girl must have been no older than eight, her plaited hair swaying as she tilted her blood-soaked face to regard the hulks of metal. She took two tentative steps forward, far more controlled and coordinated than the others clustered around her, and she peered hard at the forward hull.

Inside the tank, Captain Palmer took his eyes away from the goggles providing his view ahead and rubbed them.

“Wells,” he said tiredly, apologetically, “drive on, please.”

Wells sighed, selected a forward gear, and eased the tracks over the group to flatten them all in a rolling, crunching, hissing mess that left their hearts heavy.

Reaching a junction in the road that was the demarcation line between heading west and them needing to turn directly south, Sergeant Horton in the rearmost tank swore loudly over the radio, before following up with a rushed report.

“Enemy rear, fucking thousands of them, go, go!”

As they were already moving at close to their top speed, firing themselves up to move faster was something of a pointless exercise. Strauss tried again and again to raise anyone on the radio, but something in the rapidly worsening atmospherics was garbling his transmission.

* * *

Peter ran.

He clearly saw the direction of the herd trampling their way over the landscape, so he turned a right angle away from that line and he bolted across country to escape. He ran into the gathering storm and darkening skies to cross fences and duck under hedges, until he was so exhausted that he dropped to the wet dirt and stayed there, letting the rain just fall on him.

He hadn’t uttered a sound since the gasp back at the farm, and still kept his mouth firmly closed. He was lost, but that didn’t bother him. Being lost only mattered when you had somewhere to be, somewhere to get back to, but seeing as he no longer had a home, the concept of not knowing where he was seemed like an irrelevance that held no feelings of fear for him.

Home was a theory. Something from the past that didn’t feature in the present, but which might do one day in his future. Getting to his feet, his face a rictus of determination and his eyes devoid of emotion, he put one foot in front of the other and carried on.

Arriving at the outskirts of a village, Peter crouched in the hedge, watching and listening as the rain soaked him, until he was sure that nothing was moving before he slipped low towards the first house. He tried the door, marvelling that the first one he went to yielded. He moved the pitchfork out in front of him as he crept into the hallway. Looking down, he saw that the floor was polished wood with the last of the day’s light glowing along the length of it, and the warm orange glow made him feel somehow safer. Standing tall and sucking in a deep breath through his nose, he rapped the handle of his pitchfork loudly on the wooden floor four times and waited.

He counted off the seconds in his head, waiting for the hissing and the moaning to start that would tell him how many were there and where they were. Nothing answered his loud taps, so he repeated them with even more volume than before.

Still nothing answered, so he slowly walked through the small house and checked the rooms one by one. Returning to the front door, he slid over the heavy bolt and checked that the back door was similarly secure, before he slipped the bag off his shoulders and went to the bathroom, where he stripped his soaking wet, shit-caked and filthy clothes and ran a sink of cold water to clean himself with a flannel and a bar of soap.

Using the soft, white towel rested over the radiator, he dried himself and stopped, trying to figure out when he had stopped hating being cold. He stood shivering, naked and barely clean, and realised that something so simple as just being cold no longer mattered to him. It was as though that part of him, the scared child he had been, was gone. Relishing being cold and feeling his skin tighten with the early evening air, he wandered into the bedroom and rested his eyes on the portable cassette player and headphones beside the bed.

The bed wasn’t made, and he only then had the impression that he was intruding for the first time. He took the cassette player and returned to the bathroom.

Wrapping the towel around him, he padded back downstairs and emptied out his backpack to find the set of fresh clothes he had thought to pack. He had decided to give up on the set he had been wearing, thinking that their prolonged contact with the various noxious substances was taking viable wearing of them again a stretch too far.

Dressed, he used the kitchen sink to clean his pitchfork before leaving it on the table with the rest of his collection of kit, and then opened the cupboards to take out the things he could eat.

After a cold supper of rice pudding eaten straight from the can, Peter dragged duvets downstairs to make a warm, soft den on the large settee. Before he drifted off to sleep, he listened to the song on the tape over and over, feeling the sadness of the female lyrics and the power of the chorus course through him, and he decided that this was the way forward for him from now on.

With the fuzzy coverings of the flimsy earphones over his head, Peter could hear the thunderous sound of rolling gunfire booming heavily and desperately on the distant coast.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Roger,” Daniels spoke into the radio, before turning to Johnson and giving a confident thumbs-up. Johnson knew that he was talking to Maxwell’s picquet, the armoured screen deployed ahead of their position, and that they had just reported the arrival of their Sabre troop with the resupply wagon and the two main battle tanks.

Johnson allowed himself a small sigh of relief as the constant garbled transmissions had begun to cause him some stress. Raising the binoculars to the tracked vehicle he could see at the very end of the road, he saw the long barrel of the tank’s massive gun bob into view and stop next to the Spartan. The tank stopped, then Daniels spoke in response to the radio that had burst to life excitedly.

“Stand by, one,” he said, turning to Johnson and wearing a wide-eyed look of fear, “Sir, units report heavy concentration of enemy moving along this road.”

Johnson’s face stayed resolutely still and expressionless. ‘This road’ led only one place, and that was directly at him and his men on their very newly-acquired island. Raising the binoculars, he looked directly ahead to the furthest limits of his view.

“Well, isn’t that just fucking marvellous…” he sighed to himself, prompting Daniels to ask, “Sir?”

“Pull them back,” he said, looking ahead to the valley with its high ground on each side leading to the sea, “there’s nowhere for them to go, so we mount a defence here and set a killing field at the land side of the bridge.”

Daniels looked, knowing that a concentration of fire on the roadway would likely ruin the surface and make life difficult, but he decided against offering that opinion, as a heavy concentration of enemy marching up the road to eat them would likely make life even more difficult.

Orders were given, armoured cars moved into position all over the lower parts of the town where they could bring their guns to bear on the approaching horde. Johnson ordered the two Fox wagons out of the roadway and asked, via Daniels on the radio, if their two new additions would oblige him by blocking the road with the higher-profile back ends of their tanks. The request, not an order because a) they weren’t his troops and b) they had an officer down there somewhere, was acknowledged.

Only then did the problems truly begin.

The four Foxes and their fuel resupply wagon rolled over the bridge, luckily one sturdy enough to cope with eighty tonnes of tank, otherwise it would have meant a revision to their plan. The tanks pulled aside at the landward edge of the roadway to allow the Spartans to squeak and trundle their way through the gap.

Only the last one, too far away for Johnson to hear, juddered to an ailed stop a hundred or so paces from the threshold. Daniels bent to his radio, no doubt receiving a transmission that would mean he would update the SSM as soon as he could, but Johnson’s nerve broke first.

“Mechanical failure?” he asked the man, who was forced to try and listen to two people at once.

“Stand by,” he said quickly into the radio, then spoke rapidly to Johnson, “gearbox linkage,” he said, “and something else, they can’t even roll it out of the way,” then turned his attention back to the radio to speak again.

Shit, shit, shit, Johnson thought to himself, wasting precious seconds before turning back, “Tell them to dismount and leave it. Get their arses back over here and ask one of the Chieftains if they can push it aside.”

It wasn’t that he was precious about the loss of one of their tracked light tanks, not overly anyway, but more that the position it had broken down in directly obscured a large area where the oncoming Screechers would be shielded from fire by the armour. He turned and gave another order for as much of their other guns, the 30mm cannons on the Foxes, to drive higher into the island to see if they could find a place to bring their guns to bear on the approach. Four of them sparked noisily to life and drove out to find some elevation.

“Sir, Sergeant Maxwell is reporting he can fix it,” Daniels said to him before adding, “he thinks.”

He raised the binoculars, scanning the front to see the horizon darkened by a crowd the size of which he had never seen. Ahead of that crowd, that darkening line comprising, he knew, teeth and relentless malice, he could see individual shapes breaking off and moving faster than the crowd behind. Not much, but faster nonetheless. The limit of his view was, give or take, a mile.

Average walking speed is three miles per hour, he told himself, one mile in twenty minutes, especially over rough ground, which means half that for the Leaders… and take away twenty percent for me being wrong.

“Tell him,” Johnson said testily to Daniels, “that I think he has about eight minutes before he is up to his nut-sack in the faster type of bastard Screecher.” Daniels nodded and paraphrased the instructions in relay.

“Ask the last Chieftain to advance, hold firm and lay down covering fire,” he said to complete his thought, then listened as the request was passed on and he glanced forward without the need to use the binoculars, and watched the tank surge away to push the protection out in front. A few seconds later, the change in sound washed over him as the pulsing revs of the huge engine reached his ears to offer a delayed soundtrack to the emerging show.

“Five minutes,” he told Daniels, “then order the Chieftain to withdraw. Maxwell’s wagon had better be dismounted and abandoned before then.”

Daniels nodded, understanding that he was to give the orders to abandon an asset long before the risk of being overrun became critical. Just as he did so, he flinched and spun his head back to the front to the source of the noise. That clattering noise was the two heavy machine guns on the tank, one coaxial and firing as the big turret moved, and the other operated independently by the commander in his cupola. They were engaging the enemy out in front of the main force, holding their ground and pouring fire and lead towards them.

Johnson couldn’t see the tank, but he could hear it. He heard it then, and heard the engines roaring as it came back into view in evident withdrawal.

“Sir, Chieftain is reporting too many enemy to engage,” Daniels told him. He nodded at the radio operator, who ordered the tank to fall back and for the crew of the stranded Spartan to abandon their task. Johnson cursed himself then, as nobody had thought to send a vehicle out to them in time so that they now faced a humiliating flight on foot to reach safety. The guns of the tank rattled in the distance as it crept back towards the bridge, where one lane was still open.

“Negative, abandon and rejoin immediately,” Daniels said insistently into the radio, then listened and turned to Johnson, wearing an exasperated look as he repeated the order.

“Sir, Maxwell thinks he almost has it,” he said to the SSM.

Johnson opened his mouth and drew breath to rage down the radio at the Sergeant he counted as a friend. His anger wasn’t through being disobeyed but was born of fear that he would lose the man to the army of Screechers marching on them. Staying closed down in their wagon was suicide, as even one stray 30mm round could kill them all with a lucky ricochet, let alone the Chieftains firing 120mm rounds that would slice through them with sickening ease, and superheat everything inside their tank as it went.

Just as he went to press the switch to speak, the radio crackled and burst into life.

“Got it!” screamed the excited voice of Maxwell’s driver.

Johnson thrust the binoculars up to his face to locate the tracked vehicle and saw two men scrambling to climb down feet first into the hatches as the light tank bucked and crawled towards them with agonisingly slow progress. Johnson guessed that the crew had managed to get the linkage connected to just one gear, and that gear did not afford them a particularly speedy flight, but they were moving, and they should get back just in time. The horde was approaching the front of the tank at a worryingly close distance now, and all over the island, nervous men wiped hands and foreheads as they waited for the order to fire.

“All wagons, degrade the enemy concentration, do not fire at the leading edge until the units are secure…” Johnson paused after giving the order and allowing time for each gunner to switch their aim to the massed section of dead now visible, “…fire when ready.”

He didn’t get to finish his order, because firing switches were depressed the second they heard the word fire. Their immediate universe erupted in a noise far worse than their earlier barrages, as almost every gun in the squadron opened up at once. Using the binoculars, Johnson could see body parts flying high above the lurching crowd, along with great gouts of earth and other detritus. No infantry in the history of the world would advance into that kind of fire, he knew, but then infantry, as much as it pained him to accept even then, had brains. No thinking enemy would advance into that fire, he corrected himself, and carried on watching as the deepest levels of hell were visited upon the undead.

Then his face dropped, because he realised it wasn’t going to be enough.

Even though every gun they had had been brought to bear, the enemy were too many and they had begun to erode their numbers too late to stop them from reaching the makeshift blockage on the bridge. Those two tanks, even with their higher rear ends facing the onslaught instead of the very low-profile fronts, could not hope to remain where they were without being swarmed over, and as soon as the enemy reached their manned armour, the barrage of their sixteen heavier cannons would have to stop, or they risked killing the tank crews and blocking their only road off the island. Anticipating this somehow, the Captain in the tank below called them on their radio.

“Machine guns only when they get to us,” he said, “30mm to the main body of the assault only,”

Johnson heard Daniels acknowledge the order, unnecessarily given, then frowned as the Captain spoke again, “If we are overrun, we will advance the tanks into the assault. Stand by to replace the obstruction with light armour imminently,” he said. Daniels looked at Johnson, both men incredulous and admiring of the bravery they had just heard.

The two tank crews, risking becoming stranded and dying of dehydration closed down inside their machines, planned to hold off until the very last moment, then drive straight over the oncoming zombies and crush their way through the attack at their own risk. Behind them, the four tracked vehicles of Maxwell’s troop, including his own limping wagon, could block the road as though they were standing shoulder to shoulder, and could still use their cupola-mounted machine guns without posing a risk to the tank crews or themselves as they fired.

It was a desperate move, as any surviving attackers could then swarm over the smaller vehicles blocking the road and invade their uninfected haven, but it was all they had left.

“Captain, this is the SSM,” Johnson answered on the radio personally, “orders understood, Sir, God speed.”

With that, just as the leading wave of angry, hungry, undead flesh met the rear of the armour, both tanks reversed in unison and slicked the roadway instantly with gallons of blood from the flattened, destroyed bodies.

The four Spartans pressed up to take their place at the roadblock, and even though the guns all still fired incessantly, they all watched as the two huge tanks drove through the horde, turned, and drove side by side to carve an enormous wave out of the attack, before the bodies swarmed over them to obscure the armour from sight entirely.

Heads dropped, hopes were dashed, and the radio crackled into life once more.

“Tower,” said a voice in a bad American accent, “this is Ghost Rider, requesting a fly-by…”

“Last callsign, identify?” Daniels snapped back into the set, annoyed that anyone would break radio protocol with such poorly-timed levity.

The voice came back, no longer attempting the impression, “Cease fire, cease fire,” it said, “friendly air assets inbound, acknowledge cease fire order.”

Johnson shrugged in disbelief and nodded, then watched as Daniels picked up the squadron radio and ordered everyone to cease fire. Confused or not, they followed the orders.

“Confirmed… Ghost Rider?” Daniels said with a wince into the other set, as he had no other thoughts on what to call the newcomers, “cease fire is confirmed.”

No verbal answer came, but the insistent wop-wop-wop of rotary wings soon pierced the air now that the gunfire had subsided.

Bursting high from over a cliff, a pair of twin grey-painted Sea King helicopters chattered noisily into their world and impressed them all with a staggering display. From the aft end of the lead helicopter’s belly burst flare after flare which spread out in diagonal streaks of fire and smoke, and just as the soldiers on the ground found their attention drawn inexorably towards the show, so too did the head of every last Screecher stop and rotate upwards to watch the bright, noisy thing settle into a hover just three hundred feet above them.

“Cut all engines, apply all safety catches, stub out your smokes, keep your tray-tables in the upright positions and your seats upright,” said the voice on the radio which, if the spectacle in front of them hadn’t been so incredible, would likely have boiled the top off any NCO for the ill-disciplined approach to radio procedure. Johnson shrugged and nodded again to Daniels, who relayed the order to the squadron.

His words trailed off into a, “Fuuuck me!” as his eyes drank in the scene below. The army of undead, the wide swathes of corpses flooding over the landscape to wash over them, now began to bunch together. The crowd started to swell in the centre, then it grew in height as they commenced an unrehearsed circus routine. They climbed each other, hand over hand, body over body, as they stretched upwards to reach the violently spinning machine. The second helicopter also stayed in a hover, only another few hundred feet above and to the side of the first, the pilot of which was using it as the world’s most elaborate and expensive lure.

Just as the show couldn’t get any stranger, Johnson heard the distant but distinct sound of a familiar guitar riff blasting out over the open air of their small valley. Snatching up the binoculars, he managed to catch a glimpse of the open side door on the lower bird and what he saw made his mouth drop open and echo the recent sentiment Daniels had made.

“Fuck me,” he said in a small squeak of a voice, before adding his customary, “Christ on a bloody bike.”

His eyes had registered a huge speaker, like the kind one would see adorning the stage of a huge rock concert, which was secured to the helicopter’s deck with bright straps. That wasn’t what had prompted the blasphemy, however, that was reserved for the realisation of what song was being played over it.

That familiar guitar sound, that fast, frantic and intense beat, and the unmistakable tone of the vocals coursed through him and forced a smile to his bewildered face as he automatically mouthed along with the lyrics that he knew. The song stopped, and after a brief pause of twenty seconds it began again, filling the rural coastline with Ace Of Spades, which led the desperate and feverish crowd of zombies up the slopes of the steep hill as the helicopters led them away like some awful, grotesque pied-piper. Nobody said a word as the leading edge of the remaining zombie horde reached the edge of the cliff where they could see the man in the open side door.

Johnson couldn’t see him, but he was playing air guitar with enough gusto that the approaching Screechers cried out in an attempt to drown out the music and reach for him, only between them and him was thirty feet of open air and a three-hundred-and-forty-foot drop to the rocks and sea below. They came to him like lemmings, throwing themselves off the cliff unthinkingly in their pathological need for flesh. The song stopped and was rewound, then the air guitar solo began again. It was repeated three more times until the last of the shuffling, awkward corpses made their final journey courtesy of gravity.

The helicopters drew back from the cliff, flying sedately towards the top of the island, and the radio crackled again.

“Tower,” it said in the same awful accent as before, “this is Ghost Rider, requesting fly-by…”

Daniels looked at Johnson expectantly, who shrugged at him one more time as though the world had just become so strange that even he didn’t know what to say.

Turning back to the radio set, Daniels smiled ruefully at Johnson as though asking permission and responded in an equally poor accent, “Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full…”

The responding hail was full of laughter and cheering, and deservedly so, because the two Sea Kings of the Commando Helicopter Force had just saved the cavalry.

Epilogue

The helicopters landed, and the crews and passengers were brought down the hill of the island by Bedford truck to the command centre adopted on a whim by Johnson. Being pilots, all of them were officers, but the few crew members including the air guitarist, were non-commissioned ranks. The second helicopter, the one that stayed up and away from the main danger, held a belly full of Royal Marines under the leadership of a Lieutenant and a Sergeant.

The tanks’ crews, uncovered from their burial under dead flesh by the unorthodox actions of the Naval pilots and crew, had returned to the bridge, their vehicles were in a disgusting state and would need significant clearing, as entire limbs and torsos were caught in the running gear. But their eight men came out unscathed. The look of shock and child-like relief on Second Lieutenant Palmer’s face was almost embarrassing for the men close enough to witness the reunion of older and younger brother, and Captain Palmer’s effusive greeting to Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson was full of praise and admiration for the unit, the men, and the leadership displayed under the terrible circumstances. He had the good grace and manners not to mention that the squadron did well despite not having leadership, but Johnson was beginning to reckon that Palmer senior was nothing like Palmer junior, and that he rated men on merit. From what he had heard already, the man was competent and switched-on, and reports from Strauss and the tank crews had all reinforced the reputation surrounding him as positive. With that in mind, Johnson asked the Captain for a word in private.

The two men stepped into a doorway and saw that Lieutenant Palmer made to follow them, but his older brother held up a subtle hand, which was accepted without malice. Seeing how easily he handled the brash young man impressed Johnson, which made it easier to say what he needed to say next.

“Sir, now that you’re here, I should relinquish command of the squadron to you,” he said formally, expecting the effusive praise to continue and for his insistence that the Captain needed some recovery time and that the SSM should continue in his adopted role of commander.

“You have my thanks, Mister Johnson,” Captain Palmer said, “both personally for keeping Olly in one piece and as a soldier for a job bloody well done,” Johnson smiled, anticipating his imminent field promotion, “I shall require a full disposition list to include staffing, both rostered, and whatever temporary promotions you may have had to make, as well as our supply situation and ammunition count,” Palmer said, sparking straight back into business.

Johnson blinked, thrown straight back down the leadership ladder in a split-second.

“I highly doubt our presence here will remain a secret to the enemy, even though we’ve likely cleared out most of the... what did you call them… the Screechers… in the county with that last little skirmish,” Palmer said. “I’ll address the men by troop tonight, no point in having a parade just to introduce the new Rupert, eh?” he smiled self-effacingly and continued, “Now, shall we bring in the Navy chaps?”

Johnson nodded numbly, opening the door to invite the men inside.

Introductions took a couple of minutes, even though the invitation was extended only to the four pilots and the Marine Lieutenant.

“As far as we know,” Lieutenant Commander John Barrett announced, “the entire UK has been affected by the outbreak and only the odd pocket of resistance has remained… human, shall we say,” he scanned the eyes in the room to see that he hadn’t lost anyone yet, “Yeovilton was abandoned late this afternoon as it was deemed, ‘indefensible’ by the Royal Marines,” the young marine officer nodded his agreement, no doubt recalling the miles and miles of perimeter fence in need of guarding, “and air assets have been dished out where they are needed most.”

“The Invincible is in the channel,” said the other helicopter pilot as he glibly gave the news of an aircraft carrier floating not far away. He was the same rank as Barrett. This pilot had introduced himself as Murray but answered his fellow pilots when they called him Ruby. He continued, “and command have doled out the birds all over the place. We have a small detachment on their way by road, carrying a tanker of fuel for our aircraft, and protected by the Marines.”

Johnson nodded at him, conveying that the necessary requirements to meet and accommodate that convoy would be made.

“Military bases are still active in Scotland,” said Barrett, but as of yet, we have no assets on the south coast except your Squadron, so here we are,” he finished with a smile.

“What about Germany?” Captain Palmer asked quietly. Johnson kicked himself mentally then, recalling that Palmer was on leave from his own squadron based near Berlin.

Barrett and Murray exchanged a look before Murray answered, “Gone. And our active units over the water,” meaning the thousands of personnel deployed to the conflict in Northern Ireland and beyond, “are reporting outbreaks of their own.”

“So,” Barrett said with a clap of his hands and forced joviality, “we are to consolidate and rescue as many of the civilian population as possible whilst Her Majesty’s government decides what to do.”

“What about the swarming behaviour of the Screechers?” Johnson asked. Smirks rippled around the pilots at his mention of the nickname, flashing anger behind the SSM’s eyes as Barrett laughed at him overtly.

“Have you been face-to-face with one yet, Sir?” he asked gently.

Despite the low tone that he had been careful to sanitise for any trace of hostility, the air in the room dropped a clear five degrees.

“No, Sergeant Major,” he responded carefully, “I have not. Instead I fly the better part of ten tonnes of helicopter and am responsible for the lives of my crew and passengers. So, no, Sergeant Major, I haven’t been face-to-face with one, yet.”

Barrett’s over-reaction to the question showed his embarrassment almost instantly, and he dialled back the hostility immediately and turned to Murray. The two seemed to be deliberating using only their eyebrows until Murray shrugged and turned to the soldiers.

“They exhibit a kind of herding behaviour, and tend to amass around individual infected subjects, sorry - Screechers – in groups of roughly one hundred. Three times, that we know of, there have been mass clusterings in as many days. Two of them dissipated. The other, well,” he shrugged with a smirk, “the other ended up taking the long drop.”

“The other two swarms dissipated by themselves?” Captain Palmer asked intently.

“Indeed,” Barrett said, “it seems they are drawn by sound,” he explained, as though the soldiers hadn’t been able to figure that fact out yet, “and unless something really loud attracts their attention, the noise they make together sort of makes them lose interest and they wander off from the fringes.”

“How do you know this?” Johnson asked, seeing the familiar exchange of looks as though he was asking for the combination to a safe.

“The Americans have AWACS over us as of this morning,” he admitted reluctantly.

“So,” Palmer interjected politely, “our colonial cousins are able to spy on us from a safe thirty-thousand feet but not offer any assistance?”

“Captain,” Barrett said, “it isn’t just the Americans… It’s all of NATO, or at least those who are still intact and not fighting their own war. They suspect either a direct Russian attack or at least the threat of nuclear bombardment. Europe is falling to this disease and the Americans have to stop it spreading across the Atlantic. We would do the same.”

They would, Palmer thought as he glanced at Johnson and conveyed just how unhappy he was when politics was added to the already toxic mix they swam in.

They bloody would.

* * *

Peter, the sole of one shoe still flapping loudly on the roadway, slowed his run as he had not heard any of the faster ones and reckoned he had run far enough away to stop and think, without the slower ones catching him up. It had been a mistake, he knew, and not a mistake that he would make again, because he did not wait long enough to watch the houses for signs of movement.

One of the faster ones, in some bizarre approximation of corpse popularity, had gone into the bungalow opposite and the crowd with it had followed. As soon as he had made a noise breaking into the house, they had screeched and lumbered towards him. He had no idea where the faster one was, but he hoped it was stuck inside the house by its own followers being clumsy and blocking the doors.

Having annoyed himself at expending energy without finding food or a warm, dry place to spend the night, he looked around for anywhere to hole up in relative safety.

His luck, he thought with a wry smile of relief, was going to run out soon if he didn’t stop making these mistakes that offered such valuable learning opportunities.

Turning at a right angle to the direction he had come from, he took the next small road to his left and walked straight down the middle. In the old world, walking down the middle of the road was tempting fate and would likely get a young boy killed, but in this new world, walking between low walls and stationary cars where dormant corpses could spark to life and bite him was a far bigger risk than being run over by a car.

Nothing jumped out on him, even though he was ready with his pitchfork, and nothing drove down the road. Although a vehicle might have been a good thing, so long as it didn’t run him over.

He found a detached cottage on the edge of the village he had wandered into, with a neat thatch roof which hung down low over the front door. Peter watched and waited, listening and smelling the air like one of the things he was trying to avoid, and when he was sure it was safe, he waited some more. Eventually deciding to open the door and rap the handle of his pitchfork on the cobbled path, he waited, but nothing came lurching and groaning from the house straightaway. Creeping inside, he repeated his process of searching the house, then locking himself in to take what he wanted.

His luck struck again, and he found the room of a boy about his own age, judging by the size of the clothes. He ate, changed and restocked his backpack before settling down to listen to the same song on the tape in his new cassette player. He didn’t know who the singer was, but he smiled at the coincidence of the song’s lyrics and the small pot of green army figures on the shelf. He took them down, looking at each one in turn as he organised them as per their poses.

The crawling rifleman.

The soldier throwing a grenade.

The kneeling man aiming his long gun.

The officer standing and pointing his pistol.

He mimed along with the words, learned as the routine had established itself in his mind to listen to the song as he settled down in a new home for the night. He lined them all up, then used his finger to poke them and make them topple.

“…like toy soldiers…” he sang softly in time with the music.

* * *

This concludes Apocalypse, but Aftermath, the second book in Toy Soldiers picks up the story, and the battle is just getting started!

* * *

- Can Peter survive on his own with the dead snapping at his heels?

- Will the island remain safe for Johnson and the assortment of military now calling it home?

- What will happen as the plague of undead ravage other parts of the world?

Find out what happens next!

Grab Aftermath now!

Part Two

Aftermath

Prologue

“Sir, I have Castlemartin on the horn now,” said the radio operator in a distinctly southern states accent. The way he pronounced the name, Cassulmart’n, was an assault on the ears of Commander Ethan Briggs of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.

The ‘Sir’ being addressed wasn’t Briggs, he was merely there as liaison to the United States Navy, having been transported by one of the two Sea King helicopters belonging to the American destroyer. It had been sailing back from active service in the Persian Gulf, where it had been patrolling as protection for the oil drilling operation and found itself diverted to a crisis with infinitely further-reaching consequences than petty squabbles over natural resources.

“Okay, apprise them of our situation and request that they monitor this channel for orders,” came the steady, almost flat voice of the ship’s captain.

Briggs, as much as he hated the way they pronounced Castlemartin, breathed a small sigh of relief that nobody had referred to the area by its county of Pembrokeshire. Twice he had been on the inexplicable verge of raging at the American crewman on the radio for saying it as three distinctly clear and separate syllables of Pem-Broke-Shire as though the place was a village in a Tolkien novel.

“Commander Briggs?” the captain asked politely. “How are we set?”

Briggs checked his watch and flicked his eyes back to the pad in front of him before answering.

“Sir, there is no way the convoy can make it back in time without assistance,” he responded, seeing the captain merely nod and keep his eyes facing resolutely forward at the distant shoreline of south western Britain, as if his vision could detect this new and unfathomable enemy.

He turned back to the radio operator again to ask, “Are the air assets a go or not?”

The man looked up from the control panel he was staring at in that curious way people did to hear better.

“Negative, Sir,” he said sternly, making Briggs wonder whether the concept of melodrama had been an entirely American invention, “Harrier strike group still engaged on the continent.”

“Well, shi-it,” the captain said, drawing out the word into two long syllables, “Crewman, send in the tanks.”

Briggs’ eyes met the captain’s.

“Never thought I’d ever give that order,” he said with a rueful smile. The crewman manning the radio nodded once and answered, “Aye, aye, Sir,” before chattering into the microphone.

Briggs felt an overwhelming sense of dread at potentially having to use up that resource, but he saw no other way to ensure the success of the mission.

The swarm was still out of range of their guns, the use of cruise missile strikes had been vetoed at the highest level, despite assurances of their accuracy, and they had no chance of a rescue by helicopter without abandoning almost every man in the convoy and exposing their precious cargo to hazards beyond their control.

That helicopter rescue was still an option, but it was a last ditch attempt that wasn’t their call to make.

It was a plan that Briggs didn’t want to consider using, as it would mean the deaths of more than thirty men that his plan had placed in harm’s way.

Damned if they do, Briggs told himself, and damned if they don’t… but I rather suspect we are all damned.

ONE

“Wind right to left, gentle,” said the mound of green and brown brush behind Marine Enfield in a low voice, “distance six-hundred yards.”

“Six-fifteen,” Enfield muttered back, his right eye not leaving the large scope on top of his Accuracy International, or L96a, sniper rifle. His right hand moved on muscle memory, making the finite adjustments as he clicked the dials on the big optic, all the while keeping the target in sight. They were far enough away that the likelihood of being detected by the sound of the impending gunshot was small, but still they couldn’t risk not relocating after taking out a target.

The teamwork displayed by the two marines, Craig Enfield being the shooter and Martin Leigh his spotter, was exceptional and spoke of the many hours they had spent together in uncomfortable silence and danger. They had both missed out, as they saw it, on seeing deployment to the Falklands seven years before, as they’d still been in their first year of training together, but the pair had seen more than enough of the green landscape and streets of Northern Ireland.

Now, instead of their enemy being terrorist bombers or shooters, instead of being the mighty steel boot of the Soviet Union stamping towards Europe, an enemy they had been training for years to combat should the Cold War turn hot, they were now stalking zombies.

Screechers, as the army lot had called them, and it had stuck as a name they used for them, mostly because when the things detected you, they let out a squealing hissing, ripping noise. They didn’t know if it was excitement or, more frighteningly, a call to other zombies to advertise the presence of food, but they did know it was a fucking awful sound that stopped if you stuck a bayonet through their eye.

“I’ve got it,” Enfield said, in a cool murmur as the reticule of his scope hovered just above and to the left of the head of the Screecher.

“Zero, this is Whisky,” Leigh said softly into his radio, “we have a Lima in sight, over.”

* * *

Limas. The military’s pathological need to provide a nickname or a phonetic tag for something ran deeper than the coded letter and number designations they gave to all of their weapons and equipment. Lima meant a fast one, the Leaders as they had been dubbed. Until the Marines had landed in their helicopter on the small island a fraction off the south coast, they hadn’t encountered one of these before.

Studies of their new and unexpected enemy had shown that they operated some kind of biologically-determined rank structure of their own, and each Leader would somehow gather up to a hundred Screechers who followed them around like ducklings. The Leaders weren’t just faster, they were smarter too. Some reckoned they could open doors, and there was even an emerging theory among the joint army, navy and marine forces that they had some way to give orders to their followers.

Those followers were deadly in numbers, but on their own weren’t too difficult to kill. A heavy blow to the head, one strong enough to crack the skull, would usually render them inert, but that kind of swing burned a lot of energy and anyone trying to survive out there using a sledgehammer would find themselves tiring too quickly, and probably being eaten. The careful application of bayonet to brain was far more civilised, but a bullet would do the trick just as easily. The problem with bullets, especially the heavy ammunition that the RMPs 7.62mm SLRs or Self-Loading Rifles fired, was that they tended to be accompanied by lots of noise.

Noise, especially gunfire, carried a long way and noise was what attracted the Screechers like flies to shit.

Another theory about the Screechers was that they were blind, or at least had very poor eyesight, because anyone who had seen one up close reported the dead look in their cloudy eyes.

But noise was what got people killed. It was what attracted them to group together, as one stumbling zombie would knock into something and attract another nearby zombie to the noise. Those small noises they made would keep them clumped into a group, and each group of any more than a dozen of them almost always had a Lima in the middle of them, ready to break out and run at anything still living. The reverse characteristic of that strange attraction they had was that when the Lima got taken out, the Screechers tended to bumble around until other noises caught their attention and they simply wandered off to find more groups or get stuck somewhere on their own.

Three times there had been reports of mass-gatherings, or swarms as they had been called. The early warning plane that the Americans had been flying over the UK at an altitude so high that it couldn’t be detected by the naked eye or ear, had watched these swarms gather, reporting that on two occasions those massed crowds had simply dissipated, as though the Screechers had lost interest or the noise they made collectively was simply too confusing and overwhelming to hold their attention.

The third swarm, luckily as they had later discovered, was the smallest by far, and it had gathered and massed in their direction as the sound of an armoured convoy had attracted them after more than one rolling battle. The small cannons and heavy machine guns of the Yeomanry had taken a devastating toll on the army of the dead, but they had made too much noise in doing so, and brought every infected corpse within a fifty-mile radius directly to their doorway.

The marines of 40 Commando, deployed to protect the assets of 3 Commando Brigade Air Squadron who flew the attack helicopters, had been splintered off from their main group and hastily ordered into two Sea Kings from the naval airbase they were defending.

Their most senior command, seemingly being run from the huge flagship aircraft carrier floating in the channel, had issued the squad of marines, some of whom had been volunteered for the ground convoy bringing supplies and fuel for the two helicopters, with orders to reinforce the light tanks and await further orders. Apparently, command had decided that the only intact armour squadron on mainland Britain deserved a sprinkling of Royal Marines to add flavour and diversity, not to mention adding some firepower to complement the aircraft.

Of the suspected inter-services rivalry, there had been precisely none. No man in his right mind would think to raise an objection at being given an order by an Admiral instead of a General, given their current and unprecedented situation, nor would marines on the ground show disobedience to the officers and NCOs of the army unit.

The only rivalry, the only source of inter-forces discontent, had come from within. The only elements of the army that were regulars, in that they were full-time soldiers and not reservists, were the two tank crews led by the unsmiling and permanently unamused Sergeant Horton, and the charismatic and effective Captain Palmer. The main downside to Palmer was his entitled and condescending younger brother who, by some cruel twist of fate, was the only officer of their Yeomanry squadron to have made it when they were called. In contrast to the quick mind and tactical instincts of Julian Simpkins-Palmer, to use their full family name, Oliver Simpkins-Palmer was a spoilt boy with little or no sense of self-preservation and an abundance of aristocratic arrogance.

Those tank crews singled themselves out, refusing to mix with the reservists and billeting themselves separately, despite the efficient Sergeant Croft, who ran the administrative troop, providing them with barracks space in a building closer to their posts. Rumour was rife among the Yeomanry that they’d even been heard referring to them as toy soldiers, although the Squadron Sergeant Major had yet to hear that himself. They ignored overtures from the reservists who approached them, flatly refused to allow them inside their big Chieftain tanks, and generally behaved in such a way that a wall had been erected between men with everything in common but for the one thing that a few of them thought important.

That tension snapped inside of two weeks, when a soldier from a Sabre troop who drove one of the Fox wagons, threw a punch at the gunner of Horton’s tank. The punch barely connected, but it served to erupt into a ten-man brawl which required the intervention of the Squadron Sergeant Major to halt the proceedings.

“What in the name of Christ is going on here?” SSM Dean Johnson’s voice boomed out inside the pub and silenced the building, along with the surrounding streets. Men froze, bloodied knuckles on taught fists stopping in mid-air. Johnson’s eye glowered as he scanned the rom, fixing each man with a direct look until he found the two who would not meet his gaze.

“Nevin,” he said in an acidic growl, “and you,” he added as he pointed at the gunner on Horton’s crew, “outside. The rest of you wastes of good oxygen, clean this place up. I want it gleaming.”

With that, he turned and walked out of the heavy wood and glass doors without even a backward glance to see if the two men he had singled out were following. He knew they would, or else whatever punishment they hoped to avoid would triple in intensity, if the SSM had more time to dream up something elaborate. Turning, he saw the two battered men marching towards him and both stamped to attention in unison, as though crisp drill would lessen the consequences of their actions. The two men, Nevin and a short-legged bull of a Lance Corporal named Millward, both wore blank expressions, but Johnson knew that both would be wondering how he knew that they were responsible for starting the fight.

In truth, the SSM had been fetched from the nearby hall that had been adopted as the temporary head of operations for the island’s forces, and that man had quietly whispered the names of the guilty parties.

But then again, a Sergeant Major would not reveal that he did not have the power to read the minds of his subordinates.

“You pair of stupid,” he began slowly in a low voice, “dim-witted, bloody imbeciles,” he paused to look at them in turn before continuing in a voice that grew in both volume and intensity, “you fucking moronic, useless flaps of gristle can both consider yourselves on a charge.” He turned to Millward, not fully confident that ripping a man a new arsehole under a Captain’s command and not his own would be viewed kindly.

“Confine yourselves to barracks when you are not under orders and I will deal with you another time,” he ordered him. The man half-turned to his right, stamped his boot loudly and marched away, demonstrating parade-ground drill precision. Johnson turned back to his own man, who shrank slightly.

“Trooper Nevin,” Johnson said in a voice scarce above a whisper, “I can only assume, having never met the man, that your father wished you had been a wank. You, trooper Nevin, are a five-foot-six walking advert for condoms!”

Nevin said nothing, but swallowed nervously. The insults had been designed to prompt a laugh from him, daring him to smirk when lined up in the SSM’s sights, but the man clearly had some love for life left in him, so he kept very quiet.

“Stand at ease,” he told him, seeing the man relax, “you are also confined to barracks until such time as I decide exactly how angry I am with you; because at the moment it would be inhumane to do half of what I’m thinking.” He stepped back and drew himself up formally.

“Detail,” he snapped, prompting the ingrained habit of any soldier to tense in anticipation of the next order, “atteeeeenSHUN!” Johnson ordered. Just as Nevin’s right leg rose to a ninety-degree angle and stopped to stamp back down to the street, Johnson’s large right fist shot out and upwards, burying itself deep in Nevin’s diaphragm and doubling him over to leave him gasping on the ground to draw in enough breath to vomit the single pint of bitter he had been permitted.

“Dismissed,” Johnson said casually as he walked back towards the command post.

From the shadows a short distance away, two marines with an intrinsic understanding of one another smiled as they watched the trooper writhing about in pain. They were a pair, a duo, inseparable since they had joined on the same intake to undergo one of the hardest military selection processes imaginable, and their bond of friendship had grown even more unbreakable when they had attended the marksman training course where the shooter and his spotter were hardened into a devilishly sharp weapon to be used against the enemies of Her Majesty.

* * *

“Permission to engage the Lima?” asked Leigh into the radio, then waited as he listened to the response, before slowly moving the strong binoculars back up to his eyes.

“All yours,” he said quietly to his shooter, who lay just ahead of him and to his left, “fire when rea…”

A booming report erupted from just ahead of him, making him reacquire the Lima in his binoculars in time to see it lie flat on its back. It was all but headless. Taking his eyes away, he saw the slow and controlled movements of Enfield as his right hand carefully lifted and drew back the bolt of the rifle to eject the spent brass and collect it smoothly with his index and middle fingers. Racking the bolt quickly would eject the casing to spin it out away from the breech to twinkle in the light, and that might reveal their position to an enemy sniper or, more appropriately in their current setting, attract the attention of a hungry walking corpse. The sniper’s natural inclination towards silence and invisibility was a skill that couldn’t be taught, but it could be honed.

“Lima rendered safe,” Leigh reported emotionlessly over the radio.

Enfield slipped the empty casing into a pouch on his webbing, flicked the safety catch on his big rifle and offered his opinion on what they should do next.

“Time to move,” he said, “before any of the fuckers decide to investigate where that came from.”

TWO

In the few weeks since the bizarre battle of the bridge, where the tanks had advanced into the boiling mass of bodies to crush a wide swathe flat and render them safe, an air of something resembling business as usual had descended over the island. ‘Rendering them safe’ had become the adopted terminology, as it was technically inaccurate to report that they had killed them, or killed them again, and it helped them come to terms with what they had to do on an almost daily basis.

As inhuman and inhumane as the Screechers were, they had still been innocent people once. Looking down the barrel of a gun at one revealed the close-up secrets that a person chose not to see when fear gripped them, and those details showed their clothes and gave hints of their former lives. The shorter ones especially had to be de-humanised in the minds of the living, as to acknowledge what they were would be to accept the killing of a child. An innocent child. That was one of the reasons the terminology was first coined and why people had taken to it so easily. Nobody wanted to report that they had killed a child but reporting that they had rendered them safe sounded like the mercy it truly was.

The battle of the bridge had seen the unexpected arrival of the helicopters and the jaw-dropping display they had treated everyone to. This was coupled with the most bizarre antics of the crew chief of one of the aircraft, who had rigged a massive speaker from their mess to work as a noise lure, as if the spinning blades and screaming whine of the engines wouldn’t be enough. The amazing appearance of the helicopters that day had become a daily reminder that the people and forces of Britain were scattered and forced to come together in unprecedented ways.

The story of the navy crewman’s solo air guitar concert had spread fast, gaining extra kudos and growing in audacity with each telling, and his mass ‘rendering safe’ was already legendary in a war that was only a few weeks old. Rumour spread that the crewman, Chief Petty Officer Gary Brinklow, was leading the scoreboard by a clear mile.

When that rumour reached the SSM, he made it well known that his personal opinion on the theory of troops keeping a score of how many Screechers they had killed was a very poor one, and that if such behaviour were to be taking place, he would happily discuss it with any man in private. When that rumour went around the island, faster than the story of the air-guitarist, mentions of scoreboards vanished instantly.

The island itself was already inhabited, albeit at less than half the population of its usual full capacity, because many people had simply upped and driven away as soon as the news of London’s fall had gone public. The occupants, both original and refugee, now faced that difficult transitional period when civilian areas found themselves occupied by troops on active service.

The problems facing any garrisoned troops had only slightly varied since the invention of troops themselves. When you take a trained man full of vigour and tell him that he has to sit still and wait to go to war, then the energy stored in that man leaks out like a compressed gas. Add to this already toxic mix the presence of alcohol and females, and it was like looking down a barrel to see if a gun was loaded. For that reason, Sergeant Swift of the Royal Military Police and his men had been asked to take up one of their original roles and patrol the island in order to ensure no offence was offered to the residents. Johnson, with the approval of Captain Palmer, the necessity of reporting to whom was becoming familiar, had issued the standing order that no man was to consume more than a single pint, lest anyone find themselves unable to defend the population from the enemy through drink. A single pint wouldn’t touch the sides of most of the men, but it assured that even the lightest of lightweights wouldn’t find themselves incapable of performing their designated role. Each troop sergeant had responsibility for ensuring that he knew where his men were at all times, which made their already difficult lives less enjoyable. The majority of the men had got word to their families when they were first activated, and in addition to the now roughly one hundred and sixty fighting men they now had, they had more than that number in civilians who had either made their way to the camp or had been rescued. The camp, as well-stocked and equipped as it was, was protected only by a tall chain-link fence that Johnson feared could too easily be overrun. That was why he’d ordered the entire squadron and their civilian guests to move for the protected spit of land, and he never second-guessed that decision as the swarm that had come for them would have poured over those fences like water.

Dealing with the internal issues was more complicated than the external. The men with the most engineering knowledge, coupled with a few men living on the island, had been tasked to clean up the hatchet job they had done on the bridge parapet, using the only tool they had at their immediate disposal; the 30mm cannons on their Fox scout vehicles.

Now, using more appropriate tools for the task, the parapets were removed from the first three-quarters of the bridge and work was well underway to build a sloping choke point that could be blocked with the slab-sided back end of one of their Chieftain tanks. One of those tanks, commanded by Captain Palmer, was equipped with the heavy plow blade on the front edge, which was there in anticipation of having to move obstacles to the advance of vehicles, such as crashed cars as well as deliberate barricades. That plow was set to work in a very different way now, scraping the flattened and ruined bodies of so many dead off the roadway. With no way to safely dispose of them, and not wanting to risk burning those bodies for fear of attracting more Screechers, they were pushed into whatever hollow dips of ground could be seen, until earth-moving equipment was brought from nearby. A tired looking JCB, ancient but still as mechanically effective as the day it rolled off the production line with bright yellow paint, made short work of the task, but still, when the wind blew occasionally from the inland direction instead of from the sea, it brought with it a very unwelcome smell of death and decay.

The tank blocking the causeway entrance to the island could be driven forwards and the road opened for vehicles to roll out, but it meant that at least one tank had to remain in situ at all times.

“Can’t see that as a problem,” Captain Palmer said to Johnson cheerfully, “not much call for heavy armour and the big cannons at the moment, eh?”

“No, Sir,” Johnson said woodenly, fearing that he would lose direct control of the next mission, as the Captain would insist on leading from the front if not confined to the slower tank.

“I’m well aware that you are capable of leading the men, SSM,” Palmer said more kindly, as he intuited the reason for Johnson’s bland response, “but the higher powers will probably insist that I take the lead whenever we conduct a mission.”

Johnson knew he was right, he knew that the joint forces command operating out of a vast warship wouldn’t allow a reservist warrant officer to bear the burden of command now that the army had regained a semblance of control over the resources they had managed to cobble together, but it still stung him to have to go back to administrative duties when he had been at the tip of the spear. He had expected to have been pushed even further down the food chain and thought that more helicopters would come to deposit officers to run things, and more regular troops to take control of his squadron.

That didn’t happen, and after two days of waiting for orders they were told to wait some more, and grudgingly passed off with the standing order to ‘consolidate and resupply at your discretion’.

Captain Palmer, along with Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson, decided that this meant they were to conduct daily patrols, retrieve supplies and ammunition at every opportunity, as well as actively search for survivors.

Which was precisely the reason why they were planning, with the Royal Navy pilots and the Marine Lieutenant and his sergeant, the best way to get troops back to the base they had abandoned and bring back a few Saxon personnel carriers for the Marines to have road transport that was bite-proof.

“Air insertion,” said one of the pilots, a man junior to the main ‘stick’, Lieutenant Commander Barrett, “it’s the quickest way.”

“It may be the quickest, Lieutenant,” said Lieutenant of Marines Chris Lloyd, “but the risk to my marines from the noise that would make is unacceptable.”

The two men glared at each other, which Johnson saw, and he sighed internally. If anything, he expected the confrontations to be between his troopers and the Royal Marines. However, apart from the small fracas between two soldiers who should have known better, the main rub was between the three out of four arms of the British military present.

It was the pecking order, as confusing as it was, that was causing the problem.

Marine Lieutenant Lloyd was junior to the Royal Navy Lieutenant James Morris, who in equivalent Marines or Army rank would be a Captain. Captain Palmer found himself technically senior to both co-pilots and all army and marine personnel. However, he was also technically junior to both primary pilots, with their Lieutenant-Commander ranks making them the equivalents of Majors.

Had that rub extended into the non-commissioned ranks, the senior Navy airman would be junior to Johnson, equivalent to his Quartermaster Sergeant Andy Rochefort, but senior to all the troop sergeants and the marines NCO.

When trying to explain, it really messed a person’s head up. The simplest way was to assemble the senior officers of all factions and hash out a plan that everyone agreed on. That agreement was proving difficult to find, as the balance of risk was always against the men actually on the ground.

“If I may, gentlemen?” Captain Palmer interjected gently in his velvety voice that seemed to be either a family birthright or a hard-earned skill. His brother had yet to master that skill, as his own attempt sounded infinitely more nasal.

“I agree entirely that any risk to the men on the ground is unacceptable,” he paused to smile almost apologetically at his peer, Lieutenant Morris, “so I would suggest a quieter approach. Our aim is to bring men to the camp, secure a few vehicles and return here unmolested.” He scanned the room, silently offering anyone a chance to add anything of relevance. “And we agree that large numbers of fighting vehicles attract just as much attention as the aircraft at our disposal. The problem with using the armoured vehicles is that there is insufficient passenger capacity to transport your fellows,” he said with an almost regal gesture towards Lieutenant Lloyd, “so I propose that we send a pair of the Bedford trucks loaded with personnel to bring back the things we need. With the Bedfords, we can also take full advantage of being on-site to acquire additional ammunition.”

He smiled in a self-effacing manner designed to indicate humility and allow the confidence of his suggestion to be taken without any sense of domineering arrogance. It worked.

“And this additional ammunition?” asked Lieutenant-Commander Murray, “Will two trucks be sufficient to carry everything back? If your chaps are already clear of the area, we can drop in to take another five tonnes if needed.”

The implied fact that taking just some of the ammunition would be foolish meant that if they were raiding the ammunition dumps, they would remove the lot. Palmer, appearing for all the world to have not considered what his esteemed colleagues from the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm could offer in addition to his plan, beamed at him.

“Outstanding!” he said as he turned to the SSM and addressed him prestigiously in front of the other officers, as his rank allowed, “Mister Johnson, do you foresee any issues with that?”

“Not at all, Sir,” he said as he dropped into the rehearsed routine easily and pretended not to have planned for this with Palmer before the meeting, “it would mean a couple of our lot staying on the ground to organise the loading, say four men and two tonnes each? We could get that loaded and be out of there in no time, and there would be no risk to the marines as they’d be safely away by then.”

“QMS?” Johnson enquired politely of Andy Rochefort, “did we bring any cargo nets?”

Rochefort frowned and answered that, much to his evident annoyance, they had not. The easiest way to get a load out via helicopter was to sling it all in the heavy cargo nets the squadron was issued with for exactly that purpose. It was how they had trained for replenishment drops in theatre, but somehow, they had been overlooked. Johnson hardly blamed the squadron quartermaster sergeant for that oversight, especially seeing as the man had located bayonets for their issued weapons, which most of them had never even seen before. The only hassle with slung helicopter loads was the tricky business of having to earth the static electricity so that the unlucky trooper underneath didn’t get an extremely uncomfortable jolt.

“We do it the old-fashioned way, then,” the SSM said to the room.

It was agreed, set for just before dawn the next day with grid references and radio frequencies agreed, and the conversation turned to more mundane matters. There was to be a small patrol that afternoon to keep up with their daily schedule, and that fell to One Troop, with a single Bedford accompanying their cars to act as an oversized shopping trolley. They still needed building materials for erecting the high fences on any section of the island that could be vulnerable to a corpse or two washing up.

Such needs were recorded, assessed for priority, then set for discussion. When that prioritised list was agreed, the logistics of such matters were worked out and that was where the locals became involved.

Palmer junior, as much as he complained that removing him from the sharp edge of operations maligned his honour, actually enjoyed remaining as the liaison between military and civilian life. He held meetings, fed information back and forward, and when such mission-critical personnel or intelligence arose, then he would ensure that the right connections were made.

For this particular mission, the priority having been made to secure the island over performing another run for food, he brought forward a young man who worked at a trade builders’ yard. He would know precisely where the necessary resources could be found for building the fences, and after that, the troop on the ground would acquire anything that they needed for the defences on the bridge to make them higher and stronger.

That unelected group of civilians which met with Lieutenant Palmer daily comprised four people; three already living on the island and one young woman who had been rescued by their first sortie into the large town. The young woman bore a mottled scar down the left side of her face, which she believed made her ugly and which she tried to hide with her hair falling over her face. She could not, however, disguise her figure, despite the drab green of army uniform that she was still wearing.

* * *

Some fifteen miles away, the young boy quietly slid the bolt home high on the wooden front door. He could barely reach it on his tiptoes, but he was determined.

He was so determined that the very idea of survival was a foregone conclusion to him; he would not get caught by the things, the zombies, and he would continue to live as he had done for the last few weeks building up to that high bolt that did not want to slide across.

Alone, transient, and quiet.

He had discovered over a fortnight previously that keeping to a conventional and civilised human timetable was not the way forward, as the things were far more active in the daytime than at night. Twice he had almost been caught and had run from a small mob, until he realised that creeping around in the dark was much safer.

It was true that sound seemed to carry further in the dark dead of night, but he had learned to counter that problem too, and muffled his newly-acquired trainers with large socks to dull the sound they made. He still had his battered camouflaged backpack, only now it had evolved to be stuffed with useful items and he had been forced to carry another bag for new things he had found.

He moved from house to house, often staying still for two daytimes of sleep until he noticed that the occasional straggler had decided to wait outside the house and moan gently. If he revealed himself to it, it would let out that ripping, screeching sound that seemed to tear his insides and he would be forced to run again. He guessed that his smell was attracting them, so instead of staying at a single house to use up all of the resources there, he ate the best of it as soon as he secured the building, then raided the cupboards quietly and methodically, until he felt the need to move on before he became the local attraction.

Another thing Peter had noticed after that first week was that the things were much fewer in number, as though the majority of them in the area who had all flowed through his family farm in a stinking, terrifying tidal wave of noise and teeth, had simply carried onwards to somewhere else.

As much as the memory of barely escaping an awful fate at the hands and mouths of that wave scared him, he tried in vain to figure out where they had been going and, more importantly, if they would be back.

Satisfied that his new home was empty of anything animated, or reanimated, he slipped the straps of his backpack off to rest it on the sofa in the lounge next to the leather-effect satchel he had been carrying in his left hand. The pitchfork occupied the right, and the sanded-down grip of the shotgun protruded out of the top of the backpack, and both of those weapons now rested on the coarse, brown cushions. Peter slipped the belt of ammunition for the shotgun over his shoulder to drop it down next to the bags. He was too slim by far to wear it as a belt and instead it adorned his chest diagonally as a bandolier. He had only used the shotgun once, when he had been forced to be loud in order to prevent a hungry businessman eating him, and its devastating effect gave him confidence, if only to know it was with him.

He wandered the house again, an improvised weapon not unlike a large ice pick still in his pocket next to the folding knife, and he drew all the curtains slowly to settle down for the day’s sleep.

THREE

As soon as the single shot echoed between the low hills, and the radio sparked to life, Sergeant Strauss ordered his men to start their engines and proceed. After no more than two hundred metres, two shapes emerged from the foliage at the right side of the road and stood to become the Royal Marine sniper team who had been ahead, and they looked at the target to see if any of the troublesome fast ones were there. The convoy slowed, and the two men, covered in carefully placed grass and twigs to make their suits and helmets blend into whatever surrounds were there, climbed aboard the Bedford truck in the centre of their five-vehicle convoy.

’Limas’, they called the faster ones, using the phonetic L for Leaders.

Leaders and Screechers, Strauss thought, at least it’s simpler than Soviets and terrorists.

Like a lot of the men in the Yeomanry squadron, Harry Strauss had conducted two active tours in Northern Ireland; one as a trooper and one as a Corporal, and the daily fear of not knowing who your enemy was had left him with memories he didn’t particularly enjoy. As inhuman as it sounded, he like most of the men, would have preferred a real, traditional war against the armed forces of another country. He wanted to practise his craft without the political worries and fear of prosecution, not out of any bloodlust, but for a desire to prove himself capable in his chosen, if secondary, profession. Now, seeming to get his wish, the enemy was clearly defined. Dead people walking around trying to eat him and his men were quite obviously hostile, and as not one of them had ever registered understanding of a verbal warning, they had free rein in rendering safe the Screechers as and when they had to.

The addition of the marine sniper and his spotter had been at the suggestion of their officer, who seemed almost desperate to get his boys in the war. The capability of that two-man team was an incredible tool, if a little overly precise, and the rendering safe at distance of one of the Leaders was welcomed.

Strauss drove in the lead wagon, his head sticking out of the commander’s hatch, but with orders for the driver and others to stay closed down under the safety of their hatches. The risk, he felt, was his to take. Besides, he was controlling a GMPG machine gun with a belt of two hundred rounds ready to let fly, so he felt fairly safe.

Arriving at the builders’ yard, he dismounted his and two other of the four-wheeled scout tanks, and they cleared the building as the last armoured scout car stayed closed down to offer the support of the big guns, should it be needed. The Bedford, with the two marines now stripped of the ungainly sniper suits, had also dismounted, and were scanning the area from their kneeling positions at the rear of the truck as they peered down the barrels of their black and green assault rifles and the glinting tips of the fixed bayonets.

“Building is empty,” Strauss announced as he returned to the fresh air and slung his sub-machine gun on his back, “let’s do this.” And with that, three civilians were herded off the back of the truck and everyone but the crew of the last car and the two marines shuffled in and out of the big building, carrying the wooden posts and rolls of heavy barbed wire that would fortify their island even more.

Strauss himself, enjoying the few benefits of rank, didn’t engage in the fetch and carry as he maintained overall control of the operation. His own men, the twelve crewmen of his four well-maintained Fox scout cars, all knew him well enough to know that he didn’t consider himself so precious as to think manual labour was beneath him, and all of them respected him.

With the exception of one man, but then again Sergeant Strauss believed that he had the measure of trooper Nevin, and knew him to respect nothing; least of all himself. The man’s sullen laziness and his characteristic lack of effort offended Strauss because he knew that most of it was an act. Nevin played the fool intentionally, claiming not to understand how things worked so that others would just give up trying to educate him and do it themselves. What annoyed his sergeant so much though, was that he knew the man to be capable. He was a decent driver, never needing to be taught anything twice when it came to something he liked doing, but when the time came to clean down their wagons and gear, or to conduct routine mechanical maintenance, he would find such childish excuses to avoid work that he was universally avoided by most of the men. Socially the story was different, as others liked to be around him when the drinks were flowing, because he was entertainment.

Twice before he had been put on charges for fighting when drunk, not counting the most recent incident that the SSM hadn’t fully dealt with yet, and on the last occasion he had been charged by the police for head-butting an off-duty policeman in town. In addition to the fearsome kicking he had received, he faced disciplinary proceedings from the army, pending the outcome of the case, which was likely to result in a fine and compensation.

The case never got heard, in fact it wasn’t due to be heard until the week after everything went to shit, Strauss remembered, so yet again trooper bloody Nevin had avoided the consequences of his stupidity. Just as another roll of heavy wire was hauled up and manhandled onto the bed of the truck, his voice cut the air.

“Sarge?” Nevin whined to him, prompting an eye-roll in no less than four of the soldiers, including Strauss.

“What is it, Nevin?” the sergeant answered with a warning tone in his voice.

“I need a shit, Sarge,” Nevin answered with a smirk, either ignoring or not recognising the warning. Strauss temporarily lowered his weapon along with his head, which sagged before he drew in a breath, and then he raised his head to fix the smiling man with a look of annoyance.

“Out the back,” he said in a voice full of exasperation, “Harris, go with him and make sure he doesn’t get lost, will you?”

Trooper Harris nodded, managing to keep the ‘why me’ from his face, then nodded to Nevin to follow him behind the building, as though he were the unruly child of the troop and it was his turn to reluctantly be in charge of him.

* * *

Sally Crawford had been a housewife, and she had lived a very happy and satisfied existence until three weeks ago. She had been living in her comfortable semi-detached home, her husband had done well for himself, which had allowed her to have her own car, and that was only a year old. Her husband had gone to work one morning, driving his large Volvo estate that she jokingly referred to as The Hearse, and she had waved him off from the deep bay window in their front room. Turning to her two children, a boy and a girl born only thirteen months apart, she hurried them along to make sure they got to school on time.

Driving her own car, a Ford Orion that she was very proud of, even if the difference between that and her previous Ford Escort was subtle to the point of invisible from some angles, she took them to school and thought nothing of the roads being almost abandoned. She arrived at the school to find the gates closed and a lone teacher outside with a clipboard, who informed her that, unfortunately, the local authority had asked for all schools to close.

She assured Mrs Crawford that nothing was wrong and that it would all blow over soon enough, of that she was sure.

Turning to her children in the back seat, she smiled broadly and told them that they had got an extra day off. She smiled at their excitement and shot the teacher a withering look as she drove away.

Waste of my time, she thought to herself, they could’ve at least telephoned me.

Brushing away the negativity, because that was just the kind of woman she was, Sally smiled and turned up the radio as a Madonna song had started playing that she knew Charlotte, her eldest, liked. She smiled as she drove, stealing glances in the rear-view mirror to see her daughter mouthing the words with intense seriousness as she framed her face with straight hands and struck different poses.

Still wearing the smile reserved for her beautiful children, she hurried them up the stairs to change into other clothes and then spent the rest of the morning making craft projects with them. When midday came, she made herself a modest sandwich and joined them on a rug she had laid out on the lounge carpet so that they could enjoy an indoor picnic.

They went to their own room in the afternoon to play, and Sally turned on the television. Her face fell as the reports clogged up each channel, telling the horrific tale of the mysterious disease spreading across London and taking with it waves of violence and mayhem.

She shot up out of her chair, flew to the telephone and dialled the agonisingly slow telephone number for her husband’s office in the dock almost ten miles away.

It rang and rang, making her knit her brow and replace the handset. Dialling again, frustrated that there were two nines in the number, she listened to the chirping tone indicating that the phone was ringing but nobody was picking up. Replacing the handset to pace again, she cursed under her breath and filled her growing fear and frustration with being busy.

She cleaned her kitchen, then tried the number again. No answer.

She scoured the Littlewoods catalogue until she found the replacement home telephone she would ask her husband ever so nicely for. She would tell him how tiresome it was to call him at work with that silly old dial phone, and then fix him with her best look, where her eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly, and he would see that as some indication of nuptial promise.

She could get anything out of him when he got that look in his eye, and all the nice things in her home were the result of individual manipulations.

Just as her stress and worry started to become the first inklings of panic, a screech of tyres and a crash sounded from outside. Running out of the front door, she saw her husband’s Volvo parked at an angle on the driveway and her own car shunted diagonally as he had hit the front wing. Gasping loudly, as much for the new car as at the fate of her husband, Sally ran to him and saw instantly that something was wrong.

He was sweating profusely, his loosened tie and unfastened collar soaked through below his bright red face. He was gasping for breath, his eyes rolling, and she leaned in just as he let out a croaking noise that sounded like he was winded. He shuddered once, made another croaking noise and went still.

Sally screamed his name, pulling open the door and trying in vain to pull him from the car by the hand. She screamed and dropped his hand, seeing that the very tip of his left little finger was missing. The stump ended in a red wound, already dry and scabbed over, and she held her breath to force herself to retain some control before she became useless. She stepped forward again, calling his name loudly and slapping his cheek lightly with her right hand. That hand suddenly stopped moving as he lifted his head again, turned his face and locked his teeth onto her wrist. He bit down hard, breaking the skin and cracking something within the joint to make Sally shriek in agony as she threw her body weight backwards. Landing heavily with her left hand wrapped tightly around her injured right, she looked at her husband with shock, because he had turned to face her and was reaching with both hands, moaning and making a gargling, hissing noise at her.

His eyes were cloudy, his mouth hung open and blood mixed with spittle as it ran from the lower corner of his open maw. Sally rose quickly to her feet, fearing that her husband would attack her again, but her stressed brain finally acknowledged that her husband was still secured inside the car by his seatbelt.

Leaving him where he was, she stumbled back through the open front door and ran her bitten wrist under the cold tap in the kitchen. To her surprise, the wound had already stopped bleeding but felt swollen and hot to the touch. She staggered into the front room, feeling lightheaded, and began to dial the three digits to call for the police, but the length of time it took the dial to return to zero saw her faint to the carpet after the second nine.

Sally’s children had been singing along to the tape deck in Charlotte’s room, and were unaware of the slight commotion downstairs, so they had no warning when their mother opened her milky eyes and followed the sound upstairs to where they played in blissful ignorance.

Later, after she had gorged herself, Sally wandered back down the stairs with the front of her pretty dress sheeted in blood. She walked aimlessly out of the front door, pausing only briefly to look at the thing struggling weakly in the driver’s seat of a Volvo, and walked off, dismissing it as inedible.

* * *

“Just hurry up so we can get back,” trooper Harris said to Nevin, who was dragging out the task so as to avoid any form of hardship. Nevin chuckled from behind the tree he was using as cover for his squat and made intentionally foul noises with his mouth to annoy Harris.

It worked, as Harris tutted and walked a few paces further away from him.

In the small patch of woodland behind the builders’ yard, a woman in a dirty floral dress with one shoulder pad torn and hanging down her right arm, turned her head slowly towards the sounds. The blood that had covered her front had been washed away by rain, and further degraded by her walking around for three weeks to provide the result of the dress being torn in places that could excite a soldier.

That was, if she didn’t have the clouded-over eyes and pale, mottled grey complexion of a Screecher.

Turning her body to point in the same direction as her face, she emitted a low, gargling hiss and set off towards the source of the noise. When she reached them, she heard two people talking. She didn’t know they were people and her destroyed brain had no way of interpreting the noises as defined speech, without the higher functions she had once possessed. She had no cognitive ability, but she was attracted to the sound and the closer she got to the sound the more she could detect movement. With that movement came the smell of the living, and with that smell came an apparent aggression and lust for warm flesh that spurred her instinctively onwards.

“Oh-Jesus-fuck!” Nevin blurted out as he almost fell backwards with unfastened trousers in a desperate bid to locate his personal weapon.

“Oh, don’t be a fucking idiot, Nevin,” Harris snapped at him, finally breaking and deciding to let the troublesome soldier have both barrels. “You just can’t help yourself being a twat, can you? Every fucking time there’s work to do, you find some excuse to piss about and… aargh! You wanker!”

Nevin made desperate noises and pointed behind Harris, who was so annoyed with the man’s stupidity that he ran out of words, dismissed him with a wave of his hand and a noise of disgust and turned away.

Directly into the path of what used to be Sally Crawford.

* * *

“Last one?” asked the tall man, who had evidently worked at the yard, as he indicated that the room in the truck was all but taken up. Strauss nodded in agreement, then froze as the scream of a grown man in agony ripped the air in two.

The two marines had already set off for the rear of the building at a dead run, followed by Strauss and three others.

Rounding the edge of the building, he swore loudly as he heard the sound of automatic gunfire erupt.

“Hold! Hold!” he screamed, both in frustration at the person firing and at the marines ahead of him, as he had seen the rounds hitting the damp earth ahead of them. The marines had seen it too and threw themselves against the corner of the brick building.

“Hold your fire,” Strauss bellowed, hoping for a response from the person behind the weapon. From the noise, he knew it to be the same Sterling as the one in his hand, but then again, both men he had sent back there were similarly armed. The firing stopped, although more likely caused by an empty magazine than by common sense regaining control, and Strauss took his chance to break cover as he told the others to stay where they were.

He rounded the corner just in time to see Nevin slotting a fresh magazine into the side of his weapon, complete the reload and raise it to his shoulder. Ignoring the risk of a ricochet hitting him, Strauss ran hard at an angle for the rest of the scene to emerge.

He saw Nevin leaning into his weapon as he fired more careful, measured shots. He saw Harris, at least he assumed it was Harris, lying flat on his back and twitching his right boot like a tap dancer. He saw a woman, her modesty unpreserved thanks to the holes torn in her dress and saw fresh blood on her as well as the stains of old blood. He had seen enough people like that over the last month; normal people lifted from their everyday lives and cursed to wander the earth in a ceaseless search for food. This woman had been pretty. Had obviously cared about her body and her appearance. Now she was riddled with bullets, staggering back upright to her feet and tearing the air in between the gunshots with that awful screeching noise.

Nevin, a third of the way into his second magazine, had still not brought her down. Strauss knew the man, knew that he scored acceptable scores on the range days to qualify on the weapon in his hands, but could only attribute the appalling inaccuracy to fear and panic.

Fear and panic were the weapons of their enemy, and his trooper was more danger to himself and his own side than to the lone, unarmed female Screecher in front of them.

“Cease fire!” he bawled angrily, not caring about the noise, seeing as the automatic fire had likely already attracted every Screecher in the area to their location. Nevin stopped, shaking and wide-eyed as he spun towards Strauss and forgetting the basics of weapon discipline. Inadvertently pointing the barrel of a live weapon at his sergeant’s chest, Nevin watched as the gun was slapped away from his grip.

“Safety that weapon, Trooper,” Strauss spat at him, then took two swift steps forward to spear Sally Crawford upwards through her open mouth and stop her shrieking for good. He didn’t spare her a glance as she fell to slump down, because he was already turning to the reliable man from another crew in his troop.

“Harris? Harris?” he said insistently, “can you hear me?”

The moaning and twitching man moved his hand away from his face reluctantly before clapping it back to the wound and keening more loudly, hearing the sergeant’s response.

“Oh fuck,” Strauss said, before turning and shouting for a med kit. The marine spotter arrived first, slapping a heavy gauze pad onto the ragged patch where Harris’ right cheek used to be.

“You’ll be alright, son,” he said to the stricken man as the rest of the troopers picked him up bodily to take him back to the vehicles. Strauss picked up Harris’ gun, checked to find that it had not been fired, and looked at the Screecher for the first time since he had rendered her safe. He slowly broke his gaze away and looked at Nevin, then back at the woman. Turning back to Nevin again, he inclined his head to indicate for him to move ahead of him. That look alone promised that the matter was far from over.

FOUR

“Sir, patrol reporting that they are on the way back,” Daniels told Johnson, wearing a look that indicated clearly there was still bad news to come.

“And?” the SSM asked.

“And they are reporting a casualty. One of our troopers has been…”

“Bitten?” Johnson asked in a quiet voice to break the painful silence.

“Yes.”

Johnson took a sharp breath in through his nose before blowing it steadily out of his nose. He asked for an estimated time of their arrival and left.

Finding his only superior, ignoring the junior officer who was, in his opinion, a very well-polished turd in a tailored uniform, he cleared his throat to interrupt the conversation Captain Palmer was having with Lieutenant Lloyd of the marines.

“SSM,” he acknowledged, reading his facial expression perfectly, ‘do we need to speak privately?”

“In front of Mister Lloyd is fine by me, Sir,” he said with a nod to the Lieutenant. Johnson liked marine officers, as they endured the same hardships as their men and as such, formed a tighter bond with them, he felt. Army officers were sent to what he considered to be the most expensive boarding school going, only to learn to act as though the men under their command were the scum of the earth. No matter how badly they treated the scum, they still fought like the devils and drilled like guardsmen in the desperate attempt to gain their superiors’ acceptance.

“One Troop is inbound, but they have a casualty,” he told them. Palmer’s face screwed up in sympathy briefly, and he asked who it was in a concerned voice.

“One of the troopers, Sir,” Johnson told him, suspecting that he might have seen a small drop in the man’s shoulder signifying relief. If he had read that right, he could only assume that it was relief that the injury wasn’t to a civilian.

“It’s the nature of the injury that’s the cause of concern,” Johnson explained, “it’s a bite.”

The two officers looked instantly drawn.

“Is he running a fever yet?” asked Lieutenant Lloyd.

“No details as yet,” Johnson answered, “but they will be here in minutes.”

“The man needs to be quarantined, Sergeant Major,” Lloyd insisted, “One of our chaps was bitten at Heron,” he explained, using the Navy’s own name for their air squadron at Yeovilton, “and he ran a fever until he died, then he…” Lloyd paused, then seemed to decide that he had no better way of explaining it, “then he came back and turned on his mates.”

“Timeframe?” Palmer asked.

“From bite to turning? Within the hour,” was all that Lloyd could say.

“If you’ll allow me?” Johnson asked politely, meaning that he wanted the captain’s leave to issue orders ready for the arrival of the returning troop. Palmer nodded and followed him.

“Daniels? Get the tank moved and rouse the standby troop. I want them at the foot of the bridge now.”

Daniels nodded and began to give orders into the array of radio sets in front of him, not that Johnson saw, as he was already heading down the slope at a jog to be at the roadway before the others.

The standby troop the forces kept at the ready to respond to anything, was Sergeant Maxwell’s assault troop. He gave Maxwell a short version of events and explained what he needed from him, then turned away as Maxwell gave his own order for two men at each end of his long line spread out across the road, who promptly disappeared to bring what they were ordered to. The noise of engines grew until the returning troop rolled in, stopping when instructed before reaching the island itself.

The hatch of the lead vehicle, Strauss’, was up and he held a hand to his ear to hear the questions shouted by the SSM.

“In the Bedford,” he yelled back, pointing behind him unnecessarily.

The armoured cars were waved through and instructed to park. Only Strauss was permitted to leave his wagon, and the others were ordered to shut down their engines but stay where they were.

The terrified civilians were first off the truck, their eyes wide and their breathing fast. They were the ones who had been on the island when it had all started, so they hadn’t experienced the fear of coming close to the Screechers before. Johnson climbed up to see a trooper he couldn’t recognise due to the blood and heavy dressing on his face. The man was strapped down, and it took him a moment to recognise that he was secured around the torso, his arms pinned to his sides, with heavy-duty grey tape.

Johnson looked to Strauss, who seemed to understand the question.

“Couldn’t run the risk of him turning and being able to move,” he explained simply. Johnson looked at the man’s feet, seeing that his knees and ankles were similarly bound.

“Trooper?” he asked, giving the man a fairly robust poke in the shoulder.

“It’s John Harris,” Strauss said, earning a grunt from the SSM.

“What happened?”

“Two of the lads were out back behind the target building, a Screecher attacked and bit Harris,” he reported bluntly. What he didn’t say gave more indications to Johnson that what he did.

“And our other man?”

“Nevin,” Strauss answered simply, making Johnson suppress a growl.

“Get him inside,” the SSM ordered, then stepped back to allow the flurry of movement his instructions had sparked. He saw the two marines, the sniper and his spotter, talking quietly to their Lieutenant, who looked up to meet Johnson’s eyes before an apologetic look washed over him. Johnson decided to ask the direct question and walked towards them.

The marines stepped politely aside, allowing the SSM room.

“Anything I haven’t been told yet?” he asked curtly.

The Lieutenant looked to his sniper, then back at Johnson before instructing them.

“Tell him.”

“Sarn’t Major,” the sniper said politely, “not my place to say, but your man, Nevin?”

“What of him?” Johnson asked, barely keeping the contempt at even hearing the man’s name from his words.

“He froze. Emptied an entire magazine at the thing and failed to bring it down. He was fucking about, begging your pardon, before that and was trying to shirk the hard graft,” the marine said without emotion.

Johnson couldn’t be sure what annoyed the marine most, the unprofessionalism of the man or the unforgivable inaccuracy of his shooting. Johnson himself could forgive neither.

“Thank you,” he said, “I trust you’ll keep this to yourself?”

The three marines nodded, and Johnson glanced to the Lieutenant to be sure he got the message.

“Get yourselves squared away then,” he instructed his two men, leaving him alone with the SSM.

“This is an isolated matter, Sir,” Johnson told him formally, “one bad apple in my whole squadron, and he won’t be an issue again.”

“I understand, Sarn’t Major,” Lieutenant Lloyd said in an equally formal tone, “but I’m sure you will also understand that I may be forced to insist on my marines being present for future missions. We are, after all, the specialist infantry.”

Johnson had to agree that the man had a point. As proud of his soldiers as he was, the majority at least, they were still reservist cavalrymen and could not expect to measure up under intense pressure against the Royal Marines Commandos.

“Lieutenant,” he said seriously, “I may just insist on that myself, so long as we can get your boys appropriate mounts in the morning.”

“Make way,” Johnson boomed as he scattered the rubber-necking troopers out of the way, “anyone not directly needed here is to piss off to your duty stations. Now!” he added unnecessarily, as the soldiers had already begun to crowd at the door like rats escaping when the barn lights came on.

He found Harris in a bad way, with the marine’s own medic attending to him, seemingly voluntarily.

“Fever’s already got him, Sir,” the marine said, his Midlands accent alien to the south coast, and his eyes conveying more than the words meant.

“Get him comfortable, if you can,” he said, then watched as the man administered two syrettes of morphine directly into Harris’ thigh. The breathing rate stayed high, but the rasping sounds that came from the unconscious man’s throat lessened. They watched as the breathing continued to grow steadily slower, then Harris’ open eyes widened with each gasped breath inwards. As the breathing stopped, the tension in his body lessened and the heat seemed to bleed away from him.

Johnson placed a hand to Harris’ face, reaching out to close his eyes when the marine snapped a warning.

“Don’t!” he said as he got to his feet and stepped away. “Help me,” he said, then he pulled a strip of the same tape used to secure the body and began to strap his chest down to the table Harris lay on. Passing it under the table as they wrapped it round, ducking and rising with each turn, they both leapt back in unison as the last time they stood, they were being watched. Harris’ eyes, turning in an instant from the dead eyes of a human to the milky orbs of a Screecher, were fixed on Johnson. The trooper drew breath in to prepare a shriek of excitement and frustration at being denied his meal but stopped short as the marine swore loudly. Harris snapped his head towards the man, fixing him like a computer-aided targeting system, and drew breath in again.

He didn’t get chance to issue the shrieking noise, as Johnson’s bayonet punched through his right temple and into his brain. Having to use his left hand to hold the flopping skull still the SSM withdrew the blade with great difficulty.

Training note, he told himself, aim for the eye socket unless you want to lose your bayonet.

Silence hung heavy in the room as both living soldiers looked at the twice-dead corpse in disbelief.

“That was fast,” Johnson said, seeing the man opposite him nodding but keeping his eyes on the body, “Was it that fast with your man?”

“What?” the marine said in confusion, “Oh, not sure. It wasn’t our man, it was on the other side of the airbase.”

“So…” Johnson said, trying to frame the question correctly to get the information, “were you told that your marine turned that quickly?” he asked, wincing at the terminology he had just used.

“They didn’t say,” he mumbled, “but did you see how quickly he changed?”

“I did,” Johnson said, then turned to leave the room, “can you please put my trooper in a bag and we can organise a proper burial?”

* * *

“Good God, man. You’re proposing that we order our men to kill one another at the first sign of injury?” Captain Palmer asked incredulously. The man was so well-bred, so exquisitely mannered that for him to show such emotion betrayed how truly shocked he was at the suggestion.

“If it’s from a bite, Sir, then yes, but only a bite,” Johnson responded flatly. He stood stock still, semi-rigid as though prepared to stand to attention if not most of the way there already. He fixed his eyes on the corner of the ugly picture frame on the wall behind the captain and stared straight through it.

“I can’t issue that order, SSM,” he replied, “it’s barbaric. It’s inhumane, it’s…” he paused, unable to locate the words he wanted to best describe how he felt about the suggestion, “… it’s just not the way we do things, man!”

“I appreciate that, Sir,” Johnson said patiently, “but the fact remains that we are outside the normal parameters of war. This isn’t the fight we’ve been trained for.”

Palmer sat down in a chair and crossed one leg over the other. In other men the gesture would appear almost feminine, but something about the way he did it made it stylish. Johnson sat down next to him, explaining again how rapidly Harris turned. He described the burning hot fever, how he had been incapacitated almost as soon as the bite occurred, and how once his breathing had stopped, he was ready to tear chunks out of him inside of a minute.

“Sir, if we allow injured men back inside the wire, we will be done for,” he said calmly, “I started a procedure today that we need to stick to whenever anyone goes off the island. The returning men have to strip down and be inspected to be sure that nobody is hiding a bite and thinking that they’ll get better. They have to have their temperature taken for signs of fever and anyone displaying signs we aren’t happy with goes into a holding area. That’s the only way we can be sure not to bring back the disease, and yes, it may be barbaric but by God it is necessary, Sir.”

“Quite right, Sarn’t Major,” he said, using the enlisted men’s vernacular for his rank, as he often did without making it sound unnatural, coming from him, “I trust you’ll make the necessary arrangements whilst I pass this on to our naval colleagues?”

“Consider it done, Sir,” Johnson replied, because him asking permission from the captain was a formality.

He had given the orders twenty minutes prior to the meeting.

* * *

“On your feet, ‘teeenShun,” Strauss barked, seeing Nevin fly up to his full height and stamp to attention as Johnson walked in the room. Nevin’s face registered many things; guilt, dread, remorse as well as fear that the Sergeant Major would hit him again.

“Thank you, Harry,” he said, not taking his eyes off the trooper before him.

“Sir,” sergeant Strauss answered, then left the room. Nevin’s eyes flickered towards the doorway, knowing that the last witness had just left him alone.

“What am I to do with you, Nevin?” Johnson asked in a low voice, receiving no answer.

“It occurs to me that you might be fucking up intentionally to try and avoid work,” he said as he took a step back and looked down on the man, “which I thought was the reason for your stunt in the Royal,” he mused out loud, meaning the Royal Arms where the fight had broken out, “Do you want to get locked up, Nevin? Do you want to get your arm broken so you don’t have to go out there and you can stay here, where it’s safe and no nasty Screechers want to bite your face off?”

At the mention of biting faces, Nevin quailed and Johnson knew he had broken the façade.

“Tell me what happened to Harris,” he ordered him in the same measured voice, “and in case you’re thinking about leaving any details out, I already know. I just want to hear it from you.”

That bluff, a common one with senior NCOs, was one that no solider in their right mind would bet against. Men at that level seemed to have eyes in the back of their head, in addition to their ability to read minds and hear the faintest of whispers clearly over long distances.

“I told Sergeant Strauss I needed a shit, Sir. He instructed Harris to go with me and I stalled for time to avoid the work detail,” he admitted in clear, confident sentences, “One of them came out of the woods and I tried to warn him. He didn’t believe me. It bit him, and I fired on it, but the fire was ineffective.”

Johnson stepped closer again to interrupt him. Everything Nevin had said rang true with the story Strauss had told him.

“So you avoided work, put another trooper in danger to cover your charade, then you were too much of a clown to warn the man that he was in said danger, and then,” he snarled, “then you panicked like a child and wasted ammunition until your sergeant had to save you. Tell me if I’m wrong?”

“No, Sir,” Nevin said flatly.

“No, Sir,” Johnson mocked him, as though Nevin had woken up and decided to play the soldier a little too late, “You’ve got a man killed, put a dozen others in jeopardy, shamed your unit and embarrassed us all in front of the regulars, the navy and the marines. You are a fucking liability.”

“Yes, Sir,” Nevin said, his voice cracking.

“Christ, man… a child is more worth to my squadron than you are.”

FIVE

Peter always wanted to be a soldier. He knew that he had to wait for his sixteenth birthday and that his parents had to sign a letter giving him permission to do so, effectively handing their child over to the army.

Peter was fine with that, and he doubted if his parents would have missed him if, well if they had both still been alive.

That was his plan to escape, to get away from them and the life he had endured, and it was nothing to do with seeing the world or learning a useful trade; it was just a means of escape.

In many ways, the sudden change in his existence of having to hide from people who wanted to hurt him meant little variation to him, but instead of the abusive parents he’d had to contend with, he had to try not to get eaten. He kept to his new routine of resting up in the daytime and moving every second or third night, sometimes only half a mile and other times much, much further as the distances between villages could be vast for short legs.

This decision to become partly nocturnal, like all the adaptations to his new life, was less of a cognitive process and more of a feeling that he acted upon. He probably couldn’t have articulated these decisions very well, but they had kept him safe and, more importantly, thriving. On one of the days when the sunlight was dancing off the tiny particles of dust floating in the air as the beam of yellow light streamed through the gap in the thin curtains he had drawn, noises brought him out of the sleep he had been in. He shuffled over to the edge of the mattress, crossing the distance on the soft double bed he was treating himself to sleeping in, and swung his legs down. Slipping his feet into the new trainers he had found in a previous house, he stepped lightly to the window and knelt down so that he wasn’t obviously visible, should anyone glance up at him.

He told himself anyone instead of anything because, as far as he knew, the zombies didn’t drive cars.

Peeking through the gap at the side of the curtains so that he didn’t move them, he watched as a dirty, dull blue coloured car drove up. It was about the same size as the one his parents had and it rocked slightly as it was stopped by the handbrake. The engine was off, and a man climbed out from behind the wheel to look around in all directions. He had a beard that didn’t seem right, didn’t seem deliberate somehow, like it didn’t suit him, and wide eyes in the gap between that beard and the unruly haystack of hair on top of his head. Those eyes scanned up and down the sparsely populated street they were on and evidently assured him that they were alone, because he reached back inside the car and took out a long crowbar, which he took with him to a house. He used it to stab into the wood near the lock of the door, then he turned back over his shoulder, calling out to the car and gesturing with his head. The sound of the car door opening drifted up to Peter, hidden by the small tree that obscured the rest of the vehicle from his view, and another man walked reluctantly over to join the first man, with his shoulders sagging, as though being forced out of the seat had annoyed him. He put his body next to the bearded man and they leaned their combined weight against the long edge of the metal bar, making the sounds of cracking and splintering wood echo up to the young boy watching them in secret. He watched them go into the house, heard the distant, muffled sounds of glass breaking, then it was his turn for his eyes to grow wide as a scream ripped out of the open door three times louder than the sound of the smashed glass.

Peter stayed glued to the show, unable to move and freezing in some form of self-preservation response, and he watched in horror as the bearded man reappeared at the front door, dragging something behind him. The burden must have been heavy, because the thing he was dragging seemed to be dragging him back.

Then it screamed again, spun around, revealing shoulder-length dark blonde hair plastered to its face, and began to hit at the hand locked onto the collar of her jacket. The other man, younger and smaller but now far more alert than he had been going in, enthusiastically followed her out and offered encouragement by way of light kicks to her legs and backside. She screamed and struggled, trying to get back inside the house at any cost.

Peter’s eyes narrowed, and his heart grew cold.

It was fifty-fifty which house he had decided on that morning, choosing the one he was in because the moonlight had shone on it and it gave him a better view through the downstairs windows. He felt a mix of relief that they weren’t taking him, and guilt that he had chosen differently and someone else was suffering. And she was suffering. The man with the beard hit her, hard, two or three times before dragging her up and forcing her into the car. The door was shut on her, leaving her lying flat on the back seat as the screaming and struggling stopped. Peter thought that they must have hurt her badly or knocked her out, then gasped and moved back involuntarily from the window as he saw both men looking in his direction. Inching back towards the window, he looked down in horror as one of the men went out of sight under the mantle of the front door.

Just as the thud of metal on wood echoed up the stairs.

Peter rose to his feet carefully, his unfastened trainers slipping slightly as he reached for his jumper and bags. He never went to sleep undressed, not fully anyway, and his bags were never left in an unpacked state. He made for the doorway, stopping to look at the dark space under the bed and dismissing it instantly as too obvious. He knew, again not that he could articulate it, that getting downstairs and out via the back door was an impossibility as the sounds from the ground floor of the door breaking were already loud. Instead he turned, looked at the three doors in the upstairs landing, and selected the one that he knew would be the airing cupboard.

Opening it, he placed his two bags on the lower shelf and slipped the sawn-off shotgun out of the top of his backpack. Climbing into the first partition, the one just below eye height, he rolled over the stack of folded sheets to a space behind them and pulled the door as far to being closed as he could from inside, where there was no handle. He clutched the handle of the shotgun, with the shortened pitchfork pressing uncomfortably into his back as he couldn’t bring it to bear in the cramped confines of the cupboard. The shelf above him blacked out the light as it was full of stacked towels, and he pulled a light pink sheet over him to complete the transformation. He drew in a breath, held it to absorb the smell of clean laundry, then let it out slowly just as the front door splintered inwards.

Muffled sounds from downstairs made him think about the layout. The heavy, thudding sounds of boots moving over the wooden floors in the hallway and lounge. The almost sticky sounds of the soles of those boots on kitchen linoleum, then the near-silent footfalls betrayed by creaking steps as those boots came up to his level. He shifted the grip on the shotgun, the cold metal of the shortened barrels feeling slippery in his warm hand, and he concentrated on keeping himself still and quiet.

A loud crash indicated the boot forcing its way into the bathroom. The sound of the cupboard being opened and slammed back closed painted a picture in Peter’s mind, and the footsteps going soft again told him that the search was continuing into the room he had just vacated. He closed his eyes, recalling the picture his mind had taken when he left and assuring himself that he had left no sign that anyone was there now. He heard the footsteps pause, heard the sound of the curtains being snatched open and then drawers being opened and closed roughly.

The sound of a car horn from outside made Peter jump, biting his lip to keep quiet, as the man searching the house snarled just past the partly open door.

“Fucking idiot,” he muttered.

Peter held his breath, willing the swearing owner of the heavy boots to go back downstairs. Agonising seconds ticked by before he did, letting Peter allow himself precious seconds to breathe and slow his heaving chest. He listened to more shouts outside, unable to make out the words, but highly attuned as a natural empath to the moods of others, to know that the voice was angry. The car started, a belt in the engine shrieked in protest, and the sounds of the engine died away.

Peter relaxed. That was a bizarre side-effect of his low standard of life before this happened; he could correctly recognise and detect a person’s mood in seconds, often without them even saying anything. It was how he survived his family. How he knew when to make himself scarce to avoid becoming the focus of unwanted attention.

He climbed carefully out of the airing cupboard, gathered his belongings and crept down the stairs to peer into the sunlight to make sure that both men had left in the car. He felt bad for the woman, but some part of him was grateful that it was her and not him, as his young brain didn’t fully comprehend why she would be valuable to the men. He tightened the straps on his bag and looked up and down both sides of the road, expecting at least one of the things to have come to investigate the noises they had made. He saw none, but he knew that didn’t mean they weren’t coming. Just as he went to walk in the direction they hadn’t driven off in, a noise from the house opposite caught his attention.

Stepping closer so that the roof line of the house blocked the sun that shone directly in his face, his eyes fixed on the source of the noise.

Standing just beyond the broken front door, eyes rubbed red and nose streaming, was a girl who couldn’t have been more than four years old.

* * *

Johnson used a commandeered car to visit the three sections of sandy beach on their tiny rock that had been deemed vulnerable to a sea-borne attack. Perhaps attack wasn’t the right word, but the little patches of smooth approach from the water were vulnerable if they considered how many Screechers might be milling about in the low tide and likely to wash up there by random chance. He watched the tall fence posts being driven deep into the sand and the wire being strung between the posts. Walking up to one strand snaking diagonally across the height of his chest, he reached out to twang the cord of viciously barbed, twisted metal and felt it give a few inches. Opening his mouth to ask why the wire was neither straight nor strung tightly, he closed it again.

The design was intended to keep an unthinking human body wrapped up until such time as a man with a fixed bayonet could render it safe.

He completed his rounds, finding the materials in place for the other defences, but the work not yet underway. He was pleased to see that three men were at the beaches, alert and confident. Being in a civilian vehicle allowed Johnson to drive past slowly and not interfere, and it also allowed the men to pretend that they hadn’t seen their commander and continue their vigil. He found the troop sergeants, giving them the written orders to reinforce the difficult words he said.

“Jesus,” cursed the commander of the assault troop, Maxwell, “really?”

“Afraid so, Maxwell,” Johnson answered solemnly, “anyone outside the wire from now on has to go to into quarantine for three hours, which we think is more than enough time to be sure there aren’t any infections.”

Maxwell nodded his understanding, with his discomfort evident on his face.

“I need you fit for the morning, Simon,” Johnson told him in a tone of voice that conveyed his confidence in the sergeant and his men. “I need two wagons from your troop to run the operation.”

“Just two?” Maxwell asked him with a furrowed brow.

“Yes, two Spartans and two Bedfords with the marines. Your men can help get a few Saracens up and running, hit the ammo dump, then everyone moves out.”

“Everyone?” Maxwell asked, letting Johnson know that some communication between army and navy clearly existed.

“Apart from a few who will be waiting for the helicopters to load another few tonnes of kit,” Johnson confirmed.

“But you want the armour gone by that time, obviously?” Maxwell asked him, not imagining that his commander would risk having vehicles in the open with the sound of two helicopters attracting every Screecher inside a wide area directly onto them.

“Indeed I do,” Johnson answered, “five a.m., if you please,” he finished, giving the time as a statement and not a question. Maxwell nodded, and the two men broke away.

Johnson spoke with the officer commanding the marines, reiterated the plan, then checked the troop guarding the causeway and turned in for the night.

Because he had won the argument to lead the mission leaving in the dark pre-dawn.

* * *

Peter froze, almost unable to comprehend what his eyes were seeing. The child was no longer crying, but simply staring at him and giving an occasional spasm of inward breath with a trembling lower lip, as her dark golden hair was stuck to one side of her face. The startling similarity between her and the woman he had seen being dragged away made it clear to him that there was an obvious family connection.

Peter turned away, hearing a gasp and a small sob, so he turned back and took a step towards her, which made her whimper and take an involuntary step backwards. The sporadic gasps of inward breath that made her small chin convulse had slowed now, but her red-rimmed eyes still stayed locked on Peter, despite their puffy appearance. Slowly, Peter crouched to put down the pitchfork and bag, then slipped one arm out of the straps of his backpack and swung the bag to his front, all the while keeping his eyes on the girl in case she bolted. Reaching carefully inside, he found the thing he wanted near to the top and pulled it out.

Holding out the sagging, tired-looking stuffed lamb towards her, he gave it a small shake as though trying to entice her with it. Its limp limbs wobbled comically when he shook it, and she rewarded him with a tiny giggle and took a hesitant half-step towards him. The two, both on the same eye level as Peter was still crouching down, were separated by only ten feet of open air and the threshold of the broken house when another noise sounded.

It tore the air, making both of them jump as the hissing, screeching shriek struck fear into him and sheer terror into the girl. He snatched up his things as he moved forwards seeing her shrink away but not run; evidently her mind recognised that some things were more frightening than others. Peter thrust the lamb into her arms as he threw the bag back around onto his back, then readied his pitchfork after pushing the door closed without being able to shut it.

Nothing happened. Behind him the girl stiff sniffed and sobbed very softly but did not cry out loud; probably a reaction she had been forced to learn quickly or she wouldn’t have survived that long.

When Peter could no longer stand the tension, he rose slightly and handed the girl the other bag he couldn’t carry if he wanted to use both hands on the weapon, and he nodded to reassure her as she took it awkwardly. He ushered her towards the nearest door and tried to get her inside, but she shook her head and her chin began to tremble once more. Peter knelt before her, telling her in a tiny whisper that it was okay and that he wouldn’t hurt her and that she should stay inside and be very quiet. He told himself he was saying anything just to get her to hide in silence, but when he promised her he wouldn’t leave her, something hardened in his heart and he realised in that tiny, split-second moment that he meant those words.

The shriek sounded again, closer this time and from just the other side of the shattered door frame. Peter pushed the girl backwards and closed the door in her face to plunge her into the darkness of the pantry cupboard, then stepped quickly to the side of the entrance that led directly into the kitchen. The door pushed open, tentatively at first, then harder as the thing outside must have smelled them. It stepped inside and swept its head to the right just as the fingers of Peter’s left hand found something behind him on the wall.

On instinct, snatching up the small bunch of keys from the hook, he tossed them out ahead of him and watched as the thing took two fast, staggering paces towards the sound the keys made as they hit the wooden floor.

Then he struck.

Taking his own strides into the fight, he thrust upwards just as the thing turned. Both spikes of his pitchfork had been aimed to penetrate vertically into the skull of the monster via the neck, but the speed with which it turned threw off his aim and resulted in the prongs coming out of the face without damaging the brain. The hideous image this gave took away his courage momentarily, but at least the injury he had inflicted served to keep the beast’s maw firmly closed as it tried to close its fingers on him. Taking his right hand off the shaft of the pitch fork he reached for the single spike, once a piece cut off the tool which he now carried as a weapon, and he twirled it in his fingers to reach upwards and spear the stinking thing in its left eye.

The struggle ended instantly, with the zombie sinking to the ground as he withdrew both weapons. Only then did he see the monster as the person it used to be. A young woman, younger than the one he had seen dragged not long before from the very house he was in now. She was wearing the light blue tunic of a nurse and she had the curious look of half a perm, as the left side of her hair was matted to her skull with dried blood. He read the badge on her chest, Joanne, and the logo of a care home for the elderly he had seen when he had first walked into the village a few days before.

A creaking noise made him ready the weapon again and bare his teeth in natural response to a physical threat, and he dropped both instantly when he saw the little girl had pushed open the door of the cupboard he had put her in.

Stepping around the kitchen counter that luckily blocked her view of the dead thing, he took her hand and led her out of the back door.

SIX

A clear thirty minutes before the four a.m. wake up in readiness for the start time of their five a.m. mission, Dean Johnson had already risen, shaved in a small sink of cold water, dressed for combat and was finishing his second cup of coffee.

That was his normal morning routine; get up, drink coffee, go about his business and drink another coffee. On the days when he really meant it, he could get himself squared away so efficiently that he could pour both drinks from the same kettle and drink them both hot. He was not a man, as he put it, to fuck about. When there was work to do, he always had the mindset of getting it done as quickly and efficiently as possible, then when there was nothing left to do, finding something worthwhile until the end of the day.

In his civilian life, that of being a skilled mechanic working on the larger engines of heavy haulage trucks, he was so far ahead of his peers because by the time they rolled into work, he had already done three hours’ worth and had broken the back of the day’s tasks before his first break. In stark contrast to his military career, this hard work left him working on the shop floor and not scaling the ladder to management, simply because he was too damned valuable where he was. That wasn’t to say they didn’t pay him well, and most of what he learned was useful in his military time, as the armoured vehicles of the British army weren’t especially known for their reliability.

Now, seemingly wearing his SSM persona in a permanent way, he opened his mouth wider to take in the very end of his coffee, which he drank in the NATO-standard milk & two, just as he took his tea, and he made the same mistake that everyone did in their life at some point and underestimated how much liquid was left. Putting the cup down with his cheeks inflated like a greedy hamster, his eyes widened as he forced down the large swallow and coughed slightly.

The small billet he had been allocated was a thin but tall town house near to the causeway entrance and the small square that housed the official pub of the military personnel, as well as the hall that was used as their mixed-forces headquarters. Being the only three senior NCOs, he, Rochefort and the naval Chief Petty Officer were allocated a room each. The houses next door had been offered as more spacious accommodation to the officers, which Johnson was glad that he didn’t have to endure, as no doubt they would turn it into an officers’ mess at some point and try to out-brag each other with their exploits.

The exception to both rules lay with the Royal Marines, as both their officer and their sergeant insisted on billeting with the men, crammed into three houses in the next street. The island was inhabited to about a third of its usual population, the other portion having upped and left to God only knew where when the fur began to fly. The remaining people, about four hundred of them, had welcomed the soldiers cautiously but had treated the refugees they had brought with them like honoured guests and integrated them quickly to replace the families who were not expected to return. The refugees numbered close to a hundred families, friends and other survivors who the soldiers had found along the way. Now there was the better part of a thousand people living on an island that easily catered for almost three thousand. Given that the single causeway road bridge in and out now had no parapets protecting it from the short drop into the swirling current and was blocked by a Chieftain tank, the human traffic of regular movement had all but stopped.

Johnson knew that the food and supplies issue would raise its head again soon, likely that afternoon. But that morning was about sustenance to feed something more important than the now-unemployed civilian population. Today was about finding bullets to feed their machine guns.

In their few skirmishes prior to the battle of the bridge, they had expended phenomenal amounts of ammunition to counter the massing hordes of stumbling corpses, and they were down to enough rounds per wagon to barely equip them for another defence. They had expended a fair amount of the larger 30mm rounds for the cannons on the Foxes, but 7.62 was the magic number. They had twelve Fox cars, four of the quick and light tracked Spartans in Maxwell’s assault troop, as well as the two larger versions of those tracked vehicles in the two command Sultans. Each of those eighteen vehicles had a big, reliable GPMG machine gun, and that was before the two Chieftain tanks counted their two per wagon. On top of that, the SLRs of the small Royal Military Police and the new SA80 rifles of the Royal Marines took different ammunition again. The men of the Yeomanry squadron were relatively well-off for the 9mm rounds to feed their personal weapons but seeing as their specialist form of fighting didn’t primarily involve being outside of their armour too much, that wasn’t a priority. Their stockpile, however, still needed doubling to be on the safe side.

There were also rations, fuel, tools, spare parts all to be considered and that was where he had managed to force his way onto the mission.

Captain Palmer, as capable and quick-witted as he was in contrast to his obnoxious and spoilt younger brother, saw the benefit in Johnson’s claim and also knew with utter certainty that he had been played like a fiddle.

“It’s not a matter of seniority in command, Sir,” Johnson told him in a placatory voice, “it’s simply that I know instantly what the parts for the vehicles are and how many of what we need.”

“And,” Palmer said as he completed the thought out loud, “we can’t very well both of us go as we would be leaving the remaining soldiers without army leadership. God forbid our chaps should come under navy control.”

So it was agreed. Palmer would stay and ‘quarterback’ the whole mission via the command headquarters. His choice of words made Johnson frown as he thought of how to phrase the question. Palmer saw the look and told him anyway.

“My first posting in Germany,” he said, “was with an American unit as liaison. I spent more time in an Abrams than I did in a Chieftain for a little under a year before my chaps deployed for a large training exercise and I got to go back. Some things one just, sort of… absorbs, if you follow my meaning?”

Johnson did, and if he was honest with himself, he was a little jealous. Shaking that away, he tried not to smile too much at having shoe-horned himself into a key position before the bureaucracy of the military served up another plate of humble pie for him to eat and forced him back down the chain of command even further.

He was surprised that hadn’t happened already, as there was obviously an element of command and control still in play and apparently, floating at sea, was a growing fleet of allied nations becoming involved. He was certain that, after the arrival of the navy and marines bearing the knowledge that senior commanders were still in charge, they would send a Major at least or a Colonel to take over command of the army’s resources on land.

That hadn’t happened, and over the coming days it was clear that their little green slice of southern England was relatively unimportant to the bigger picture, where the disease had already spread over Ireland and mainland Britain. There were pockets of survivors here and there, according to the eyes very high up in the skies, but anything resembling a large town or city was destroyed. The main concern, Johnson had soon realised, was the spread over continental Europe.

He was entirely ignorant of the ʿhowʾ part, and he doubted that if anyone floating out in the Channel knew, they would bother to tell a reservist Warrant Officer, but the disease which was believed to have originated in London had found its way to a Paris outskirt within a day. His mind ran riot, thinking that it could only be that someone who was infected had got onto a boat or passenger ferry, and been inadvertently taken to France, where they had started biting people like there was no tomorrow.

That was how the British Army of the Rhine was so heavily engaged, and why the thought of their return to British shores to eradicate the outbreak there was an impossibility.

They were, for the most part, on their own.

What he didn’t know and could probably have worked out for himself, had he been in a sufficiently dark mood as to contemplate such things, was what was happening in the wider world.

The United States, as was sensible, had ceased all movement into the mainland. Traffic in and out of Canada was allowed, but their southern borders were closed by a massive mobilisation of the National Guard, and their seaward borders were patrolled day and night by the combined might of the navy and coastguard. There was a widespread decree from their president that there was ‘no way on God’s green earth’ that disease would enter their land. There was widespread outcry for the US to bring her troops home to fight the good fight, but on that subject the president was ominously silent.

The south American continent, much in the same way, mirrored those actions. As did Australia and many African provinces, and Japan, along with any island nation in possession of their own naval forces or under the protection of another country.

What was most worrying, however, was the posturing of the Soviet Union.

* * *

“Morning, chaps,” Johnson said in a low voice out of respect for the ungodly hour. The assembled marines, almost all of them, he guessed, were clustered together near the two Bedford trucks parked ready the previous night to carry them to the camp. The same camp that the army had sensibly abandoned, before the tide of dead had swelled to a size that would have washed over those thin fences and swept them away.

He received the expected grunts in response, some calling him ‘Sir’ and others using his rank but none of them offering any disrespect. The smell of hexi-blocks, the solid fuel used to heat water in their mess tins, mixed with a waft of cigarette smoke as he passed the men. Maxwell was ready, using the wagon that he had fixed in record time under interesting circumstances during their recent battle. He’d had to repair the gearbox linkage before their tenuous position had come under friendly fire and forced them to abandon the vehicle and give themselves yet another obstacle to overcome. He had made the repair, incredibly, and had limped home to regain the safety of the island just before the horde had reached them.

The reason Johnson had chosen Maxwell, other than the fact that he was a capable leader of troops, was that he commanded the faster tracked vehicles and the other sergeant he trusted had lost a man the day before. Putting the remaining men of One Troop straight into another mission was out of the question, and Johnson had to admit to himself that although the men of the other two troops were effective at performing their conventional roles, he didn’t think they had fully switched on to their new reality. Leaving those men as steady guards of their island and confident that they could serve their guns effectively should the need arise, he elected to take the men most accustomed to dismounted reconnaissance.

Half of his assault troop were in their two chosen Spartans, with another four of them designated for the front seats of the Bedford trucks that would transport the Marines. Johnson climbed aboard the front Bedford’s cabin, relegating his trooper to the breezy canvas-backed rear section, and he opened the window to rest the barrel of his Sterling sub-machine gun on the ledge. The driver, the round-faced and smiling trooper Povey, was rolling a cigarette when Johnson climbed up, and he turned to see Povey offering the little cylinder to him. Johnson didn’t smoke as a habit, but he was known to feel the urge from time to time.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching out and taking the smoke, allowing the trooper to light it before leaning back to watch him roll a replacement with deft fingers. The men knew that the time for hot drinks and cigarettes would end soon, as they would be observing ‘hard routine’, just as they would in any danger area, because they couldn’t run the risk of attracting the Screechers through something as unnecessary as tea or a smoke.

Just as the sun began to rise, Captain Palmer stepped out of the headquarters building and raised a tin mug in salute to the big man riding shotgun in the big, green truck as they set off gently down the slope.

SEVEN

The phone rang, shattering the underground silence and echoing terribly. The man in the white coat ran for it, snatching up the handset and hunching down as he cradled it with both hands for the precious promise of life that it could bring.

“Hello? Hello?” he hissed into it desperately, hoping that he hadn’t imagined it again and that there was actually someone there this time.

“Professor Grewal?” enquired an efficient and polite female voice from the other end.

“Yes,” he croaked, then cleared his throat, “yes, I’m Professor Grewal, who is calling?” he asked, wincing as he heard the mania in his voice but was powerless to prevent it escaping.

“Hold, please,” was all he heard, then a click on the line and he was certain that he’d imagined it. He flopped backwards against the wall next to the phone and slid down to sit on his heels. If he wasn’t rationing his food to the point that he was borderline hypoglycaemic constantly, he might have had the tears to spare but as it was, his body would not part with anything it could still use. He sobbed with dry eyes as he suffered another minor panic attack, reliving the terrifying events of the last three weeks spent underground.

He had been mostly underground for a few months before it all went wrong, but before his experiments for the government, the government of which country he couldn’t be entirely sure, went wrong and released hell on earth, he had at least been free to leave.

He had no clue how severe the outbreak had been, but he knew enough to realise that nobody had come to rescue him yet, so that meant things obviously weren’t going too well topside.

He was a leading expert on biological outbreaks, with a background in applied chemistry, which had allowed him to create and test the perfect pathogen to destabilise a foreign country. That knowledge sadly offered him little solace now, not knowing what was happening outside of his underground lab, which he had managed to secure by some small miracle.

By combining a particularly aggressive strain of rabies courtesy of the Americans, with his own modified version of meningitis, he had created the perfect antidote to humanity, and had inadvertently unleashed a plague destined to make his own species consume itself into oblivion.

The outbreak caused by the human testing phase of his work had at least been contained in the lab, but the protocols had sorely overlooked the unexpected side effects, and the team sent in to help those trapped inside were the ones who released the infected into the streets of south London on a Friday afternoon.

Grewal had been trapped inside a small storeroom with no water and had suffered for two days until he finally steeled himself to make a desperate bid for freedom, or at least another room that had food and water. He had found rolls of insulating wrap in that storeroom and had wound it around himself as a crude form of bite protection in readiness for his escape attempt.

Events above ground, as devastating as they were to the entire south east and spreading west with enough raw power to halt an armoured column heading to restore order to the capital, had actually saved him from death by dehydration or worse. When the gathering mob above ground began to move with some bizarre, unknown singular purpose and started to march together, the two lurching former colleagues who were camped outside the door to his storeroom were distracted by the sound they were all making, and stumbled their way towards the exit to join the exodus.

Feeling desperate, he psyched himself up to fight his way out, only for that desperation to turn to foolishness as he shouted a short squawk of challenge to the empty corridor. Realising that his besiegers had gone, he forced the main door closed and locked it, returning to the carnage that used to be his state-of-the-art lab. There were parts of bodies strewn over the floors, which he tried not to look at, but the most worrying discovery was the test subjects still strapped to their gurneys.

Some had tipped themselves over in their thrashing attempts to reach flesh with their teeth and Grewal watched in horror as they seemed to emerge from a state of dormancy when he walked in the room. Their cloudy eyes fixed on him and any noise he made fired them up until they began to shriek and hiss and snap their teeth together in his direction, as though they could bite their way to him despite being restrained.

As traumatised as he was, he was still a scientist who felt not only personally responsible for the catastrophe but believed he could fix it.

He first looked at the only test subjects to be still and saw a pair of surgical clamps buried through the right eye socket of one. Another appeared normal to look at, but closer inspection revealed the hilt of a scalpel protruding from the base of the skull.

Over the next few days he took samples from them after doubling the restraints and being very careful to never make contact with them without protective gear. He collected the samples and his test results, then dispatched all of the still living men.

Not living, living, he supposed but at least still moving.

“Professor?” asked a voice from the phone, startling him back to the present.

“I’m here,” he said, “who is this?”

“Commander Briggs of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy,” came the insistent response, “Professor I can’t be certain that this form of communication will last long so I need you to answer my questions as efficiently as possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Grewal stammered.

“Are you injured or infected?”

“No.”

“Is the lab still secure, is it accessible from the outside?”

“Yes,” Grewal said, then thought before answering the second part, “and I’d need to open it from inside.”

“Do you have hazardous material from the lab and is it secure?”

“Yes, in a hard case. I have blood and tissue samples and…”

“Please,” Briggs interrupted in an admonishing tone, “brevity and accuracy are key here, Professor. Do you have supplies to last for a month or more?”

“No.”

“Do you have supplies to last up to a month?”

“No.”

“Dammit,” Briggs said cursing him pointlessly, “can you hold out for a fortnight?”

Grewal did the mental calculations again, having emptied every piece of edible material in the lab onto the large table in the common area.

“Eleven days, maximum,” he said weakly, hearing breathing and a pause on the other end of the line.

“We will attempt an extraction as soon as possible,” Briggs told him, “We will attempt to use this method of communication to warn you closer to the time, but it may not be possible. Be ready.”

The phone clicked again, and the line went dead.

“Please,” Grewal said in a small voice, “don’t leave me alone… talk to me, please...”

He dropped the phone and sat with his back to the wall as the swinging handset bumped off his shoulder with a pendulum motion. Just then, whether from sadness, desperate loneliness or relief, the tears came and would not stop.

EIGHT

“Thank you, Private,” said Kimberley Perkins to the soldier flanking sergeant Croft with a cup of tea.

“No, Miss,” he said looking confused, “I’m a Trooper, not a Private.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, as she looked up from the strong-smelling tea cupped in both hands, “sorry, I er… what’s the difference, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Trooper Cooper, as much as he had heard of the jokes about his name and rank, didn’t mind at all. He glanced at sergeant Croft, seemingly to ask for permission to engage in idle chitchat with the civilians, and he received a nod of consent. Cooper sat next to the young woman, seeing her shrink slightly away and self-consciously fuss with the hair on the left side of her face to hide the bumpy skin of the scar.

“We are a squadron, see, made up of troops of troopers, but the infantry has regiments made up of companies of privates. There are some gunners and fusiliers and scaleys bu…” Croft cleared his throat loudly without looking up from his clipboard, and Cooper amended his explanation, “I mean signalmen,” he said sheepishly, “so it depends on where you get put in the army.”

“Oh,” Kimberley said again as she looked up into his kind face, “so the men with the red berets and different guns are privates?”

“No, Miss!” Cooper chuckled, “they’re all…” he paused to look at Croft’s back and evidently decided against using the nickname he had loaded ready to fire, “they are Royal Military Policemen, RMPs, and they come out of the factory as Lance-Jacks, so they can order people around, like,” he said, unaware that his explanation raised more questions than it answered.

“Lance-Jacks?” she asked, confused.

“Yeah, half-screws? One-stripers? Lance Corporals. ’Cept their sergeant, who is a sergeant, obviously,” he responded.

“Lay off, Cooper,” Croft said tiredly, “can’t you see you’re confusing the lady?”

“It’s fine, Sergeant,” Kimberley said with a smile, “bullshit does baffle brains, after all.”

Croft gave her a warm smile, guessing incorrectly that she had heard the terminology from one the men in his squadron.

“But I’m not bull…”

“Thank you, Cooper,” Croft interrupted quickly, “off you go now.”

Cooper rose, looking slightly hurt, but Kimberley treated him to a kind smile from the visible side of her face, and that pleased him. As he left, Quartermaster Sergeant Rochefort walked in and sat down with a nod to Kimberley.

“Tea, Andy?” Croft said.

“Yes, please, Tom,” he replied tiredly, then rubbed his face.

Kimberley smiled again. She loved to watch people interact, especially soldiers, and saw no bigger change in them than when their subordinates left them in peace and they could revert to their peer group settings. The exception to this, she found, was the officers, who seemed to retain the same lofty sense of superiority regardless.

Seeing the two tall, confident men relax made her feel more at ease, and she almost let out a small titter of laughter when the two men moaned and groaned at their aching joints as they sat down.

“Miss Perkins,” Andy Rochefort said, “how are you on this fine, if not rather early morning?”

“I’m well, thank you, Staff,” she answered, betraying that she had been doing her own research other than to ask Cooper.

“Andy, please,” he said with a smile.

“Very well then, but you can call me Kimberley, just not Kim,” she said in a voice than invited no disobedience or further inquiry.

“Understood, loud and clear,” he answered, “now, I also understand there are some concerns from the people?”

“Yes, well, not so much concerns as needs really,” she said, fidgeting with her hair again and automatically turning her face so that she spoke to them sideways, “the supplies from the shop are all gone, as you know, and there are people, ladies specifically, who need certain things…”

“Ah,” Rochefort said, intuiting the subject she was trying to raise without needing her to use the words. The dead giveaway for this was the sudden absence of the men appointed to the task of ensuring effective two-way communication, “say no more. I presume you have a list available of the items?”

Kimberley did, and she gratefully handed over the folded piece of paper from the sheaf in front of her.

“There are other pressing matters,” she went on, “other than the island-wide shortage of toilet paper.”

The three of them chuckled politely at the small joke, allowing other matters to be brought up. Kimberley enquired politely about the soldiers who had left that morning, asking when they might be back, just as a rushing, intense noise filled the air above the building they were in, and blasted away with a dizzying Doppler effect which was repeated seconds later.

“That would be their taxi going to collect them now,” Croft said with a smile as Kimberley tried to figure out the logistical sense in what he said.

* * *

The gates of the camp came into sight of Maxwell’s wagon at the head of the convoy of four. The two vulnerable trucks were in the middle, with the other tracked vehicle at the rear. They moved fast, keeping a good distance in between their vehicles, and only stopped when they reached the gates.

More than a few Screechers had wandered out in the road after they had passed, and two had even stepped out in front of them to be crushed under the tracks of the lead wagon. Johnson, from his elevated position in the first truck offering a good view ahead, guessed that these were two of the Leader types of Screecher, the ones the marines had been calling Limas.

Faster and more capable they might have been, but they couldn’t evade ten tonnes travelling at over fifty-five miles per hour.

Maxwell dismounted with the other trooper from his wagon, leaving the driver in place, and pulled the gates open to allow the four vehicles inside. There was a fleeting urge in Johnson’s mind that they should cowboy it; that they should just bust through the gates like in a film. He brushed that thought away almost immediately as stupidity. He would never destroy a perfectly good barricade which could be used against the enemy.

They closed the gates afterwards, jogged back to their mount and drove on. The camp was a big place, and when they had resided there briefly, they’d only used a portion of it and kept the fences clear. They had to push much further in to achieve their objective this time, and the mood in each vehicle felt tauter and more expectant with every inch they travelled. The enormous hangars filled with vehicles, found easily as the man driving the lead wagon had been there many times, was opened to reveal the rows of angular, brutish lumps on their four massive wheels.

The marines had all dismounted when they stopped, pouring from the back of the trucks to the rhythmic noise of boots hitting the tarmac, to take up defensive positions, as the others sorted out the selection and starting of four Saxon armoured personnel carriers. The four men assigned to drive were all from the Yeomanry, seeing as armoured vehicles were primarily their arena, even though none of them had ever driven them. They were deep inside the complex layers of fenced sections, so highly unlikely to encounter any enemy, but that didn’t prevent the marines from demonstrating their fieldcraft, which seemed to come as naturally to them as breathing. Johnson paused a moment to take in the sight of them, either lying flat or kneeling to cover every square inch of approach through the sights of their new weapons with the alien appearance of the magazine being housed behind the trigger grip.

The marines were very different from the men of Johnson’s squadron, and as their new trucks rolled out, they climbed aboard via the double doors at the rear. Two trucks came under the direct command of their officer, and the other two of the sergeant who had been introduced to Johnson as Bill Hampton. He was at ease with his men, never seeming to feel the need to issue orders, but simply stating what he needed them to do, and they did it. Their current drills were nothing new, as they’d become accustomed to that kind of transport in Northern Ireland, albeit in the previous generation of armoured car.

The two men, Lieutenant Lloyd and Sergeant Hampton, nodded to one another and the sergeant climbed aboard to lead his two trucks away. This was part of the plan, sending back half of their commandos as soon as they were mobile, and the second half remained with the two tanks and Bedfords. They opened another massive building attached to the workshops and took box after box of vehicle spare parts to ensure their armour stayed mobile.

“Right,” Johnson said happily after loading one truck, “bullets.”

The ammo dump, stored well away from the buildings and people in either dead or living form, was a few miles from the base. It took them a long time to get through the many physical layers, then the hard work began as they carried large crates out to the one now empty big, green Bedford truck. One squad of marines knelt in cover to point their weapons towards the gate as the truck was loaded up, then yet more boxes of large bullets were carried out to the open square nearby.

“What’s their ETA?” Maxwell asked, more out of conversation than needing the information repeated for him. In response, Johnson did that strange thing that people do when asked any question relating to time, especially when it doesn’t directly involve knowing what the precise time is, and he glanced unnecessarily at his watch.

“Sixteen minutes,” Johnson told him, realising what the question was designed for. Maxwell was offering his opinion that they would have carried enough to fill the helicopters by the time they arrived, so long as they left the island very soon.

“Call them in,” he told the sergeant.

They carried the rest, fulfilling the weight quota with rapidly calculated mental arithmetic, and everyone but Johnson and a pair of Royal Marines remounted their respective vehicles in anticipation of the instruction to move.

Johnson glanced at his watch again, seeing that the sixteen-minute window had just expired, and craned his neck to look up as he shielded his eyes from the indirect sunlight. The characteristic sound of helicopters flying, that booming chatter of rotary blades cutting the air, came to him. He turned to the vehicles, raised the thumb of his left hand, and watched as they drove away. Right on cue, the pair of helicopters dropped in, turned and flared noisily to land close to where he stood. He knelt down, screwing up his eyes to save the rotor wash from blowing too much dust into them. Ordinarily, the two Sea Kings would keep their engines turning, but they were adopting new tactics to keep their profiles low in the new war they were fighting.

The first one was loaded, and the aircrew were strapping down the boxes before the blades had even stopped turning. The second one was similarly loaded, and Johnson allowed himself to sink into a narrow canvas chair in the first bird, feeling the ache in his hands and arms and the burn in his shoulders.

As the engines burst back to life and whined up to screaming pitch, he leaned back and smiled at the easy success of the last six hours.

And he prayed it would last.

* * *

The helicopters landed first, but only by a margin of a few minutes as they had taken a route straight out to sea, heading south before looping a long westerly arc well out of sight of land, to swing back and find the island to their north. That way was intended to avoid the numerous Screechers, who would have seen and heard the aircraft, and followed them back to the island to hold some grotesque reunion of the last time.

The first two Saxons growled their way over the bridge with their dark green and black camouflage seeming just as brutal and inappropriate to the picturesque seaside setting as the tank blocking the roadway did. They followed the new standing orders and went into the buildings to strip down and show the RMPs that they weren’t bitten. When they’d been through the initial check, they went into a quarantine building, equipped with tea, coffee and food, where they waited to prove that they weren’t running a temperature.

Twenty-four minutes later the other Saxons came back, nestled fore and aft of the heavily loaded Bedford trucks and a Spartan at each end of that convoy, and those men parked their wagons to go through the same process.

Seven hours from start to finish, and they had recovered four new APCs, which would allow the marines to safely conduct their own operations, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition for their guns. Johnson looked down the slope and smiled as the convoy snaked its way slowly through the obstruction of the tank and the sloping obstacles.

That smile faded as he saw the man climbing out of the top hatch on the Chieftain tank, jumping up and down and waving his arms desperately.

“Stop the convoy,” he said out loud, his voice desperate and cracking with the opening stages of panic, but there was nobody there who could turn those words into an order and pass it down to the men in the distance.

He didn’t yet know what was wrong, but he was certain that it was nothing he wanted to see up close. He felt worse seeing it from a distance, as he was powerless to stop it.

* * *

The man chosen to command the second of Maxwell’s wagons was Corporal Graham Ashdown. The fact that Maxwell had chosen him spoke sufficiently of his competency, and in fact his hard work saw him on a waiting list for an NCO leadership course, in preparation for him receiving another stripe on his arm.

If anything, Ashdown was a little disappointed in the ease of their mission. Not from any immaturity or lust for violence, but from the point of view of a professional who wanted to showcase his ability to command his fighting unit. Their unhindered route to the camp showed only the rear view of a Bedford truck and the faces of the alert but inert Royal Marines inside as they scanned for threats using the minimal amount of effort in order to conserve their energy.

That was something he found amusing; his own men were known for eating and sleeping at random times, but the marines took it to a new level entirely. If they were stood down for even five minutes, one of them would fall asleep instantly, only to come awake just as rapidly when the order to move came. It was the same with food; when the marines saw it, they devoured it as thought they were rescue dogs living in constant fear of starvation.

He expected at least some employment when they arrived at the camp, but they found it devoid of life, or whatever the state of the Screechers should be called. He had heard the radio traffic about the few who had staggered into the road in answer to the noise of their four loud engines, but most of them faded away into the distance behind them, as only the quicker ones had made it out in front. He saw the evidence of those where they had been mashed into the road surface and flattened in intricate patterns by the tracks of Maxwell’s wagon and the two sets of big tyres following, so his only view of the enemy was either squashed or out of range.

The work inside the camp was back-breaking and strenuous but it was good to feel employed, if only for a short time. The Saxons were found and started with ease, and the remaining half of the marines stayed to help load the trucks.

As soon as the helicopters could be heard swooping in, Maxwell mounted his lead wagon and called the off, leaving Ashdown to take up his position at the rear once more as his convoy of four made their return journey in much slower time, given the tonnes of ammunition and weaponry they had recovered.

“Contact left!” Ashdown called out over the radio, making every head in the convoy snap to their nearside as a dozen Screechers leaked from the close tree line and directly into their vehicles. No gunfire sounded as the distance was too short and the warning too late to bring their heavy machine guns to bear on the ambush, so they relied on their momentum and weight to carry them on through the attack.

Being the last vehicle some short distance back from the others, Ashdown was the first to see it, as he had the best perspective. That said, he still didn’t have time to bring the cupola around to fire on the attack, not that he definitely would have, given that there were only a few of them.

The first Screecher to stumble from the undergrowth was unable to gauge the speed and distance of the first light tank as it passed him by, followed by the two big, green trucks. His scarlet-red beret had long since been lost, but the camouflage smock and trousers remained intact, even if the ragged hole in his throat had soaked the uniform almost black down his front.

The last tank, the one his head was turned away from, hit him hard with the very centre of its front edge, which threw him down hard to the concrete before rolling over his thighs with the left-side tracks. Hands reaching instinctively, the Screecher clawed at the smooth underside of the Spartan as it rolled him over and over, dislocating joints and snapping off fingers.

The damage to the once-human body was unimaginable, but it didn’t prevent the half-ruined fingers of the left hand gaining purchase and swinging the ruined body around to drag behind the vehicle. The right-hand finger and thumb, all that remained, found a tenuous handhold on the rear and the torso raised itself an inch higher, just as the legs from just below the pelvis fell away to slip from the gory trouser legs and bounce to a gentle stop in the centre of the road.

“Road clear,” Ashdown said, making the milky eyes of the hitchhiker snap forwards to seek the source of the sound that its brain associated with fresh meat.

NINE

When she came to, Ellie Finn first opened her eyes and instantly regretted it. The pain in her head was incredible in the most literal sense of the word, and it simultaneously threatened to make her vomit and fall off the hard ground she was lying on as the world spun viciously. She had been unaware of the car journey, but her brain peeked through the fog and she knew that she was in a different place from before the men had broken down the door.

The door. The house.

She sat up, fast and uncontrolled to be hit with another barrage of agony that shot down her spine to the tips of her big toes.

“Amber!” she sobbed, earning another jolt of pain as the words bounced back to her ears and sounded like someone else’s. She threw up, hard and uncontrolled, to cover her left leg as she instinctively turned away. Collapsing back and banging her head again she sobbed out loud, repeating the name of her daughter, who had been left behind when the men had taken her.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” said a voice from behind her in an attempt to soothe her pain.

“It’s not okay,” she sobbed wretchedly, “my baby,” then lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Misunderstanding, the woman who soothed the girl shushed her again and stroked her matted blonde hair. She had lost people, too but had not been forced to suffer the death of a child, as she had none. She could only begin to imagine the pain and loss that the girl was feeling, even before the men who had ‘saved’ the crying, wounded woman had roughly dumped her unconscious into the same room as her.

It was a cell, regardless of what they called it. Any room that someone else forced you into and locked the door on was a cell, whether it was built for that purpose or not. The younger woman had been there for a day and a night, after her own little corner of quiet safety had been invaded by the sound of a shrieking fan belt, and her front door had imploded. The men she’d met had invited her to come with them and seeing no choice but to comply or get herself hurt, she’d gone with them. She wished she’d had the strength to overpower them, but she highly doubted she could have incapacitated two of them with a swift knee to the groin before one of them had used the weapons they carried to hurt or threaten her. Meekly, she had gone with them and she’d regretted that decision every minute of every day since.

Now, seeing a younger girl dumped roughly in the room with her, she tended to her as well as she could and waited for her to come around once again.

She awoke an hour later much in the same way. Her hands twitched, and her body jerked as though her consciousness was trapped inside a plastic bag and she fought to punch her way out. When she did, she came awake with an exaggerated gasp and sat bolt upright, only to whine pitifully and sink back down, holding her neck with both hands at the base of her skull. She opened her eyes in response to the voice, unthreatening as it was obviously female, which was trying to calm her again. She cautiously opened one eye, hating the light streaming through the window for burning her retina with its unkind brightness, to see a woman with lighter blonde hair than her own and maybe ten years older. She smiled kindly, weakly as though she was apologising for what had happened to her.

“Careful,” she said as Ellie tried to sit up, “go slow, you’ve got a nasty lump on your head.”

She went slowly, raising a hand to her head and the main source of her pain to find what felt like an egg protruding from just behind her right ear. Her stomach went into spasm again, making the other woman step smartly back and snatch up a metal rubbish bin to catch the remaining bile collected in her stomach. Her brain somehow knew that she had already thrown up, but her eyes couldn’t find it.

Perhaps she cleaned it up, Ellie thought randomly, just as the jumble of feelings and sensations bubbled to the surface and her heart broke for the third time that day.

“My baby,” she sobbed again, screwing her face up and falling back into despair and tears to complement the agony inside her skull.

The woman soothed her again, trying to find the words to comfort her.

“I know, my lovely,” she said with genuine sadness for the girl’s loss, “we’ve all lost people to them but I ca…”

“She’s not lost,” interrupted the girl with slurred words, “she’s alive. They took me away and…” she broke down again and her sobs intensified, “they left her there. She’s all alone…”

Try as she did, Ellie couldn’t help but break down with her and the two women cried together. Resting the girl down on the bed, she stood and began to hammer on the wooden door for attention.

“What do you want?” came an angry response from outside the closed door.

“This woman had a baby with her,” she snapped angrily, “where is she?”

A muttered conversation took place on the other side of the locked door, prompting Ellie to bang again.

“She didn’t,” came the answer, “she was on her own.”

“No, she bloody well wasn’t,” Ellie snapped back, creating more silence and insistent muttering from beyond.

“Okay,” said a different voice tentatively, “we’ll go back.”

* * *

The house was much the same as they had left it three hours previously, only this time it had attracted two of the slow-moving ones who were milling about aimlessly inside the low stone wall of the front garden. The crowbar put an end to one as the other was enticed towards the younger man, who had crudely taped a straight-bladed carving knife to a broom handle. The knife punctured the face dead centre, travelling slightly upwards through the sinus cavity to pierce the brain, and the thing’s lights went out.

Both men had enjoyed the killings, but both had distinctly not enjoyed the roasting they had received from Michaels; the man who had bestowed on them the responsibility of going back to find the girl they had apparently left behind through incompetence.

They searched the house again, finding it precisely how they had left it, with just one exception.

The addition of another dead body laid out flat like a starfish on the kitchen floor.

“I didn’t do that,” said Ian from behind his rough beard to the younger and far less intelligent Carl. Michaels called them Thing One and Thing Two, which Ian had explained to Carl had originated from a children’s book. But they still used their real names, despite others mimicking their frightening leader.

“Who did then?” Carl asked, frightened.

“Don’t bloody know, do I?” Ian snarled back at him, “But it’s a good bet whoever it was took the baby we're supposed to be looking for, so start searching, idiot.”

Carl searched, as did Ian. They found nothing else amiss, other than the body with its punctured brain and ruined left eyeball. The back door had been ajar when they’d entered, and that was closed to keep the bad things out, but the destroyed front door would not close. Their arrival had prompted yet more interest, and they were forced to flee back to the safety of their hilltop refuge to report the news of their failure.

* * *

Peter was forced to change his usual nocturnal routine after the interruption of the bearded man and his crowbar. The shock of finding the little girl still hadn’t faded, and their awkward flight over fields from the back of the house was far more difficult than it should have been, because the girl’s legs were much shorter than his own. If he’d been a grown up, he would have simply scooped her up in his arms and carried her. He was sure it had been Leonardo who’d scooped April up like that in a TV programme he’d very occasionally managed to see if his mother was comatose. He loved the Ninja Turtles, when he got away with watching it. The one time he tried picking this girl up like that, she’d whined and squirmed out of his grip to shoot him a look of sheer grumpiness. He got the message: don’t touch me.

In addition to trying to get her to move more quickly without being allowed to physically help her, he also faced the frustrating limitation of only having one-way communication with her and trying to translate her suspicious looks to gauge whether his words had been understood.

As much as this slow progress frustrated him, the very thought of leaving her to herself was an impossibility. Already in his head, he’d worked out how much extra food and water he would need to carry to keep her healthy, and that was before he even found out if she liked the same things he did; whether she would eat cold beans or rice pudding from the tin. Finally reaching the summit of a low hill behind the village, he paused at the top to assess which direction they should take. Opting for the snaking path that led into another cluster of buildings about the same size as the one they had just escaped, he turned to encourage the girl, who had taken the opportunity to sit down.

Her legs must have been aching, he realised. As small as the hill was to him, it must have been a huge effort for such a young person. He glanced back down the hill, satisfied that nothing was following them, and sat down next to her. Digging in his back pack as she played with the floppy limbs of the cuddly lamb, Peter brought out chocolate covered biscuits taken from the house he’d been in. They’d fallen down behind some items in a cupboard, which he wouldn’t have noticed had he not been standing on a chair, and he unwrapped one to see if she noticed. He glanced at her as he chewed the first mouthful of raisins, biscuit and chocolate, to see her eyes watching the treat in his hand intently.

Hungry or not, he doubted he would turn down the snack at any age, so he was sure he had her attention. Holding the other one out to her, he watched as hesitant fingers whipped out to take it carefully, then began to remove the purple paper sleeve and attack the foil wrapper underneath. She glanced at Peter again, just to be sure it wasn’t a trick, and bit into it. She chewed fast, not waiting to finish one mouthful before she took another bite, and she finished it before Peter had eaten the last piece of his own. She handed him back the wrapper with a small smile and looked at him expectantly.

“You still hungry?” he asked her. Her wide eyes and blank face showed nothing, but her head nodded twice.

“Let’s get down there and find somewhere safe first,” he told her in the slightly patronising tone of a young child talking to an even younger one, “and then we can eat, okay?”

She seemed to think about it for a moment, her lips pursing and her fair eyebrows almost meeting in the middle, then she nodded again abruptly.

“What’s your name?” Peter asked her, pushing the envelope of their communication to see if she would make words yet, “How old are you?”

She ignored him, rising to her feet and walking away down the hill. Peter shrugged his way back into his back pack, hefted the pitchfork and the other bag, and followed her direction to catch up with her easily. He fell in step alongside her, keeping an easy pace due to the height difference, and told her about his life. He explained that his sister was taken away, and after that all the bad things that had happened. He skipped the details of killing his own mother after the horrendous things he had seen her do, and of the massive riot of dead things who’d walked straight through his farm and made him hide in shit until they wandered off, and about the one he had decapitated with his father’s shotgun, after he had cut off the barrels that were too long for him to manage. He kept to the facts appropriate for a child, forgetting to view himself as one, given his experiences, and the little girl listened without answering.

That conversation, such as it was, led them to the hedge separating the rolling landscape from the village. Peter stepped in front of the girl and held a finger to his lips, then handed her the bag in his hand and pointed for her to stay where she was. She took the bag, kept her lips firmly pressed together, and nodded. Peter hefted his pitchfork and crept towards the style, where he could easily cross the wooden fence and step onto the grass verge before the road. He watched, and he listened, hearing and seeing nothing but sure of the knowledge that the absence of those things did not mean for one single second that there was nothing out there, or that they were safe.

Keeping his eyes on the road and buildings, he reached down with his right hand and scuffed about in the earth of the hedgerow beside him, coming up with a small rock. He weighed it subconsciously in his hand, not for a precise weight but for an instinctive feel for the effort it would take to launch the missile, then heaved it up and over the hedge to make it skitter along the road where it bounced up into the side of a car with a sharp clang.

Then he waited.

And waited.

To her credit, the girl stayed still ten paces behind him and didn’t make a sound. When Peter had decided that there were none of them in the immediate area, he beckoned her forwards and climbed the style to cross the fence. Turning to her, he saw that she had reached the part where she had to throw one leg over and was stuck, lacking the strength or confidence to tackle the obstacle with the bag in her had. Wordlessly, Peter reached out for the bag and took it, then froze in surprise as she held her hand out to him, even after he had taken her burden.

He met her eyes and reached out to take her hand, feeling her warm, little fingers grip his as she climbed the rest of the way over. She took back the bag from his hand without being asked to and looked up at him expectantly. He nodded, then walked to the nearest house where he found both doors locked, but a small window to the kitchen open. He slipped off his bag and tried to climb up to it, but he couldn’t gain any purchase with his feet to do anything other than look inside.

The house was empty, and more importantly it had no musty smell that the ones trapped inside made. Pulling a face of disappointment as he climbed back down, he heard a small noise. Looking at the girl, he watched as she made the noise again, a small and deliberate cough in her throat, and pointed a finger at her chest.

The finger was then pointed at the window, and Peter finally understood. He held up a finger of his own to signal that she should wait, then used the prongs of his pitchfork to tap loudly on the window to be doubly sure that there was nothing nasty inside. Repeating the process and finding no good reason to turn down her offer of help, he slipped off his back pack and rested his pitchfork against the back door. He awkwardly held out his hands to her, silently asking for permission to pick her up, and she stepped into his hands.

Given that there was only a relatively small age difference between them, Peter struggled to lift her, but she eventually managed to get her hands onto the open frame. Now that she held some of her own weight, he managed to push her upwards to watch as she threw one short leg into the gap and slipped inside. He watched as she climbed carefully down from the kitchen worktop and disappeared from view as she went towards the door. He waited, but the door didn’t open. Fear rising inside him, he was about to knock and shout to her or climb back to the window to see if she was still there when a noise from inside made him press his ear to the wood of the door and listen.

It sounded like a creaking noise at first, then grew louder with each interval as it sounded, then paused. Just as Peter’s brain registered what it was, the door clicked and unlocked from inside, only for the door to swing open and bump into the chair she had dragged over to be able to reach the release latch.

Peter snatched up the bags and his pitchfork and slipped inside as she pulled the chair away, beaming a shy smile at her ingenuity.

“That was really clever,” Peter told her in a whisper as he closed and locked the door again, before reaching up to slip across the bolt that most houses had on their doors. She smiled again, then her face dropped back into neutral as he told her to wait in the kitchen while he searched the house.

Every step he took was mirrored. She let him get four steps ahead, then began to follow, copying his every gesture as she carried an imaginary pitchfork behind him. Peter didn’t notice, not until he had searched the lounge and turned to see her dogging his steps. He smiled, said nothing, and continued to clear the house, knowing that she was following him.

As he climbed the stairs, he stepped exaggeratedly from one side to the other, bobbing his head like a disco dancer with each step. He heard the slight breath of an almost silent giggle from behind him, which made him smile. Each room they went into, he closed the curtains slowly, keeping the movement gentle so as to not attract attention. By the time they had searched the second bedroom, the girl automatically went to close the other curtain to the one Peter held, and he reminded her to do it slowly and carefully. She nodded, being extra careful to do as she was told.

Peter stopped creeping, stood upright and held the pitchfork in a relaxed way to signify that the house was safe, then beckoned her to follow him downstairs to where he used a chair to stand on and assess the haul from the cupboards.

It wasn’t much, but the tap still yielded some cold water. Peter used a can opener to take the lid off a tin of beans and slid it over to the girl who sat opposite him at the table. She picked up the spoon he had laid out for her and, with occasional glances back at him, ate the entire contents.

When they had both finished, to add to the dried snot and general grime on her face, the tomato sauce had got all over her mouth and chin. Peter dabbed a tea towel in the cold water he had run into the sink and asked permission with his eyes to clean her up. She scrunched up her nose, making him laugh, and squirmed on instinct as he wiped away the filth on her face. When he had finished, he gave her a china cup of water and sat back down with her.

“I’m called Amber,” she said in a small voice, “and I’m almost four and three-quarters.”

TEN

Sergeant Horton, commander of fifty percent of the assorted group’s heavy armour in the form of the Chieftain main battle tank employed to block the perilous road bridge onto the island, called out for his driver to roll forwards.

The defences were set so that the slab-sided rear of the tank served as a heavily armed barricade, with two machine guns and the ridiculous overkill of the 120mm cannon pointing back towards the mainland separated only by a strip of fast-moving coastal water. Already, given their initial burst of adrenaline from the large-scale deployment to bring order back to the streets of London, they had encountered a new enemy, terrifying, if not also vulnerable in many ways. That enemy had sparked flight, then a near suicidal tactic to protect the others on the island, and now boredom.

For a month now, he had taken turns with the other men trained to fight from within the confines of one of the finest tanks in creation, and he was reduced to being a very heavy, very expensive, bouncer. He guarded the door, rolling their tank forwards and backwards for the faster vehicles to roll out and find gainful employment, and he was bored.

Although not yet rostered to be on duty, he had risen early due to the noise that all the men readying to depart had made, and he could not get back to sleep, so he took his turn early on the bridge. He watched the four vehicles leave, wishing that he could be a part of something useful, or at least more useful than he felt sitting still all day. He did very little all day other than watch the ground in the distance for any movement, although he was relieved for a short break around midday. Hearing via the radio that the marines were due back, he had the tank started, ready to roll it forward before the two Saxons came into view with their angular, squat faces looking intimidating as they crossed the bridge. Shortly afterwards, he repeated the orders and watched as the other two new additions, the identical armoured personnel carriers, then he rolled back into place. Following that, the sight and sound of the two helicopters washed over him from high on the island behind him, where there was sufficient space near the exposed lighthouse to land the aircraft. Keeping his discipline and not watching the show in the direction of safety, he kept his eyes ahead on the direction of danger, despite his boredom.

As the final four, the original vehicles of the mission returned, he gave the orders for the last time and glanced back at the back end of the light tank squeaking past on its tracks.

His brain took a few precious seconds to fully understand what he was looking at. At first, given the acceptable colours and patterns of the thing, he assumed it was army kit slung on the outside of their wagon, as was the way of things.

But the way it hung was wrong. The way it had a head, and a face, and the way it turned that face to bear its teeth at the noisy tank as it went past, was suddenly so terrifyingly wrong.

Horton began to shout, to scream a pointless warning as the combined noise made by so many large engines drowned him out completely. He waved his arms frantically, pausing only for a second to consider opening up with the machine gun on the back of the tank, and dismissing that as the hatches were open and the head and shoulders of the commander were exposed. Just above the thing holding on, in their direct line of sight and hence the direction of any bullets they fired, were the two soft-skinned trucks that would be obliterated by their gunfire. Horton continued to scream and wave, deciding in the end to snatch up the sub-machine gun and jump down from the tank to land heavily on the roadway. Running as fast as he could with a partly numb ankle caused by the uncontrolled drop, he threw his body after the convoy and fired a short burst of automatic shots into the water beside him in desperation to attract the attention of the man with his back to the danger.

Just as the convoy slowed to play nice with the RMP roadblock and follow their orders to go into search and quarantine, the men in front noticed something behind was wrong.

As his wagon came to a juddering stop, Corporal Ashdown glanced behind him, just in time to see a mostly fingerless and dead hand swing forwards and latch onto the collar of his smock to drag him backwards.

He yelled out loud in fright, unable to summon the strength in his abdominal muscles to pull both his and the upper body of his attacker back upright. Broken and bloody hands tore at him from within army camouflaged uniform sleeves, and his confusion that one of his own men would do this temporarily blinded him to the priorities. Just as his brain engaged sufficient muscle-memory to reach for his bayonet, the teeth clamped down hard onto his shoulder and lanced pain through his body like a cold knife.

Ashdown screamed, heard what he thought was a distinct crack of bone, and slipped backwards from the Spartan to tumble end over end off the side and to the road below.

Miraculously, Horton had covered the hundred-yard distance despite his twisted ankle and arrived before even the men of the checkpoint had responded to what was happening. Given the speed with which events had unfolded, he hadn’t had time to fix his bayonet to his weapon, so instead he reversed it as he half-ran, half-hobbled, to swing the folding stock like a club into the side of the head of the thing.

The scene before him stayed in his mind, stuck there like a macabre freeze-frame that would never leave him. He looked down on a trooper, pulled bodily from his tank without warning, who had half of a soldier − literally, the top half of the body − pushed away from his face with both hands as he screamed repeatedly, stopping only for gasps of air. The half a soldier tried to crane forward, to snap its teeth down, and to try and take a piece of him. It didn’t have legs, so it couldn’t gain enough purchase to bear down on its intended meal. Broken, ragged fingers clawed at him, scoring deep, bloody marks down his face and neck until Horton caught up to the desperate scramble for survival and caved in the right side of the rotting skull.

He hit it like a cricketer stepping into a fast bowl to send the ball high into the stands. The sound that accompanied the swing was less leather on willow and resoundingly more metal on skull. The crunch of the impact and the answering squelch of the twice-dead corpse hitting the roadway beside Ashdown stopped the screaming and left a ringing silence of frozen inactivity.

That inactivity was shattered by the arrival of the Squadron Sergeant Major, who jogged onto the scene and bellowed orders to stir men into action and usefulness.

“Get that bloody barricade secured,” he shouted, pointing ahead to the tank that still hadn’t returned to its blocking position, “You lot, get into search and quarantine. Sergeant Swift?”

“Sir,” came the acknowledgement from somewhere behind him.

“I’ll trouble you to expedite matters, if you don’t mind?” he asked pointedly, as everyone else heard the polite phraseology for, ‘hurry up and do your fucking job without me having to remind you’.

“Horton,” Johnson said through a heaving chest, only now showing that the mad dash downhill had left him in need of oxygen, “help me get him inside.”

“But, Sir,” Horton responded uncertainly, “the standing orders…”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Johnson snarled quietly for just Horton to hear, “my standing orders are to search returning soldiers for injuries and quarantine them for a time. The order to,” he hesitated as he looked down at his corporal, who was wide-eyed in shock and terror, “render them safe is only when infection is confirmed.”

With that, he hauled Ashdown to his feet and Horton spurred himself to assist. The man was breathing rapidly but neither man could feel his skin burning hot beneath his clothing yet. They bundled him into a room of a nearby building which had been cleared for the purpose of quarantining returning men, and they laid him down on the table.

“Out,” Johnson ordered the young military policeman stationed there, not turning to watch as the boy fled gratefully.

“You’re alright, son,” Johnson repeated as he fumbled to remove the webbing and strip his smock and undershirt away. Ashdown said nothing as the two men worked together, roughly pulling his uniform off him. He had dropped into a kind of catatonic state, eyes wide but unseeing and unresponsive.

“There,” Horton said, pointing at his right shoulder and taking an involuntary step backwards. Johnson looked and saw livid bruising already forming over his collar bone.

“Get a medic,” he said, sensing Horton hesitate a fraction of a second before leaving the room. “You’re alright, son,” he said again.

The door burst open and Horton returned with one of the marines who was fumbling free a medical kit from his pack. Horton had clearly used his initiative and the authority of his rank to remove a quarantined soldier, rationalising that the man was only going to another quarantined area.

“What have we got?” the marine said, his broad Midlands accent filling the room.

“Nasty bruising on his shoulder, and deep scratches to his face and neck,” Johnson responded.

“Has the rest of him been checked?” the marine asked, “For bites, I mean?”

Johnson said nothing but began to untie and remove the man’s boots as the others helped to strip him totally naked and turn him this way and that to check every part of his body.

“He’s fine,” said the marine, “just those two wounds.” He thought out loud as he clamped a large hand down on Ashdown’s forehead, “What’s his name?”

Johnson thought for a second, feeling that annoyance everybody experienced when known information escaped them the same second it was asked for.

“Ashdown,” he said after a pause that made him look as though he didn’t know his own men, “Graham Ashdown, Corporal,” he added, unnecessarily giving the man’s rank when it was visible on the arms of his uniform smock.

“Okay Graham, can you hear me, mate?” the marine asked as he peered into his eyes. Johnson stole a glance himself, expecting to see the eyeballs turning milky and blinking, when he realised they were not.

Ashdown mumbled in response as he seemed to come around.

“Didn’t go through,” he said weakly, his voice cracking as he spoke, “bite didn’t go through.”

“He’s right, you know,” the marine said, “this bruising isn’t teeth marks, it’s something else.”

“His webbing straps,” Horton said as logic descended on him, “the thing bit him on the strap and just pinched him.”

“I think it did more than that,” the marine answered as he worked, “the bugger’s fractured the bone, I think.”

Johnson and Horton both winced at the thought of the pain that would bring the man, but the marine’s next words sobered their thoughts.

“These scratches are nasty,” he said worryingly, “and likely to cause infection.”

Johnson froze, levelled the man with a stare and asked him precisely what he meant by infection.

“Sepsis. Blood poisoning. That kind of thing?” the man said dismissively, making the two men relax until his next words brought them back to a harsh reality again. “But there’s always the risk that the other kind of infection might be passed this way…”

The silence hung heavy once more before the marine spoke again.

“Help me make him comfortable,” he said, indicating a stack of sheets on a dresser.

Making Ashdown ‘comfortable’ actually meant tying him down to the table by wrapping the sheets around him and leaving only the upper chest, neck and head exposed. The marine periodically checked Ashdown’s temperature with a flat hand on his forehead, and each time he didn’t detect any sudden rise. That wasn’t to say, conclusively, that the infection wasn’t there and spreading at a lower rate than they had seen before.

“I’ll take it from here, Sir,” the marine said as he prepared to clean and dress the long gouges in the injured man’s flesh, “if you could just make sure there’s a man on the other side of the door?”

Johnson nodded and turned to leave, then swung back.

“Thank you, Marine,” he said in a voice full of genuine meaning, “What’s your name?”

“Sealey, Sir,” he answered, then Johnson turned back to the door to leave.

Outside, Johnson and Horton both drew in long breaths and turned to see Sergeant Swift and his corporal approaching.

“Sir, Sergeant,” he said formally, “if you’ll both come with me, please?”

Johnson stopped dead and stared at the man.

“I beg your pardon, Sergeant?” he asked icily.

“Sir,” Swift began awkwardly, “your own orders. You’ve both been exposed to one of them and you need to go into quarantine, just a few hours until we know there aren’t any problems…” he trailed off, hoping that good sense would prevail, and the big warrant officer wouldn’t tear him apart in front of most of his men. Johnson tensed for a moment as the temporary indecision raged inside him, then he abruptly relaxed and seemed to soften slightly.

“Quite right, Sergeant,” he said with a false smile, before turning to Horton and asking, “Shall we?” then setting off back to the room they had just vacated.

“Sir,” Swift said hesitantly, a hint of warning creeping into his tone and setting Johnson off as he hoped he wouldn’t.

The SSM rounded on him, towering above him by only a few inches but utterly dominating the much younger man.

“Sergeant,” he growled, “I am playing along and putting myself into quarantine for a few hours, but I am not going into the main hall where my men can become stressed and worried about my being in there,” he said as he stepped slowly towards the man, forcing him to pace backwards to avoid the slow collision, “Furthermore,” he went on in a more insistent tone, “I’m not going back to my men under these circumstances without definitive news regarding the wellbeing of Corporal Ashdown. Is that understood?”

Swift swallowed and nodded, standing very still as Johnson turned and walked back into the room they had vacated, and closed the door behind them.

“And fetch the Captain,” he shouted through the door after it had banged shut.

Marine Sealey looked up at them, seemed to understand quickly and shrugged before returning to his ministering of Ashdown’s wounds.

“Need a hand?” Horton asked him, seeing the marine simply shake his head as he concentrated.

With nothing better to do, Johnson and Horton found chairs and settled in for the wait.

* * *

The afternoon grew dark as unexpected rain clouds billowed in from the direction of the sea. Peter and Amber had brought down thick duvets from the beds upstairs to make themselves comfortable dens on the two settees arranged so that they were facing one another. Strangely, the house didn’t have a television set, but the large radio and collection of records arranged under the turntable showed that at least whoever lived there wasn’t totally boring.

The bedrooms, only two of them, seemed almost unlived in, and one of them had no personal touches at all, which made Peter think it was a guest bedroom. Applying logic and all that he knew about the world, he decided that a woman lived there on her own. It had to be a woman, he knew, because things were too neat and orderly for it to be a man living alone.

There were all sorts of treats and chocolate bars hidden away in kitchen cupboards and the two children smiled at each other as they ate them. Even better, there were glass bottles of fizzy drinks which needed a bottle opener to free their sugary goodness, and the two of them drank and took turns to let out burps as though it were some kind of competition.

As that amusement wore off, a sudden noise at the back door made both of them jump. Despite Amber’s young age, she didn’t cry out in fright, but Peter’s heart raced so that he was forced to slow his breathing down. He was the protector now, and he felt fear in a way like no other when he had only been responsible for his own life. He rose up, keeping his body low as he snatched up the pitchfork that was never far from his reach. Edging towards the back door, he paused to listen, hearing nothing, and just as he began to relax, something erupted from the dull light outside the window to launch itself through the gap.

Claws scratched and scrabbled at the glass and the frame, and wide, yellow eyes bore into Peter’s own as he fell backwards with a strangled squawk of fear.

Frozen in situ, half-in and half-out of the narrow gap, a mottled black and brown cat glared at him with accusatory indignation. It kept its eyes on him, squeezing the rest of its body through as it landed lightly on the kitchen worktop and let out a low yowling sound in his direction.

As foolish as he felt, Peter got the impression that he was being asked a question, and as foolish as he sounded even to himself, he answered it.

“We just needed somewhere safe to stay,” he told the cat in a low voice, then jumped again as the cat dropped down from the worktop without warning and paced past him to trot towards the settees. He turned to see it had its tail held high and vertical with the top curled around like it was a living question mark. Even from three paces away he could hear the deep, percussive rattle of the cat’s purring as it nuzzled Amber, before rising on its back legs to rub one side of its whiskers along her outstretched hand. She giggled lightly, and the cat turned to repeat the gesture on the other side of its face before hopping up effortlessly to nuzzle her face and knead the duvet on her lap.

Feeling distinctly as though he was the intruder, the items he had discarded before in the kitchen came back to him. He had ignored the tins of cat food as an irrelevance, as though the thought of any animal surviving had been pushed from his mind, after the dog he had tried so hard to forget about.

The obvious evidence to the contrary had now settled down and begun a rigorous washing process on Amber’s lap, pausing occasionally to lick her hand when it came close enough, and made her giggle again.

Peter felt suddenly ashamed, as though he had broken into the house of someone who was still around, because the cat evidently lived there.

He opened a tin from the kitchen and scraped out the foul-smelling contents onto a side plate. As soon as the can opener sang its metallic tune to cut off the top, the cat abandoned its cleaning ritual and bounded up onto the side, where it snaked its way in between Peter’s hands until the meal was prepared. Leaving the plate on the side, they both watched as the cat ate hungrily, purring the whole time and surprising him that such feline ventriloquism was even possible. Finishing the entire plate and licking the jelly residue clean, the cat promptly stepped back to the windowsill and leapt up to squeeze itself back outside.

Peter glanced back to Amber, seeing her expression fall back into the sadness he had known previously. He tried to cheer her up with more chocolate, which didn’t work. He tried drinking more of the fizzy drink and pulled faces as he burped musically but she stayed crestfallen at the loss of something that had made her happy.

Giving in, Peter settled down to sleep on the settee and drifted away trying to think of ways to keep her safe and happy.

ELEVEN

Life below the waves was a claustrophobic, dank, stifling existence of enforced silence. Any man over five and a half feet tall suffered from constant spinal issues given any amount of time spent on board a boat, but the long journey around the Horn of Africa and back north to British waters was made under the strictest insistence that the journey remained covert. That meant that the submarine could only surface when absolutely necessary, and the remainder of the time had to be spent running quietly.

The four men who were the precious cargo of the route, all of them sporting wild beards beneath staring eyes, had little to do besides lay in their cramped berths and wait for the journey to be over, but then men of their experience were not known for complaining about hardship.

Their commander, Major Clive Downes, was the newest man to the regiment and would be forced to rotate out at some point in the future, or at least he would have under normal circumstances, but he had no idea what would happen, given this latest development.

He and his team had been in Afghanistan, unofficially of course, and had been teaching the rag-tag collection of goat herders and illiterate villagers the finer points of improvised explosive device manufacture and planning, in addition to delivering the manual on the American-made and supplied Stinger missile system.

The Soviets had officially ceased hostilities in the country after a decade of vicious counter-insurgency had left the region a war-torn mess, and that war had cost the Russians dearly. It was already widely known amongst the military as Russia’s own Vietnam.

The fighting of enemies via a proxy was nothing new, and it was a badly-kept secret that the west was supplying and supporting the insurgents as a way to chip away at the iron curtain without getting their own hands dirty. At least not publicly, anyway.

Downes had received orders, bizarrely through the channels of the Royal Navy, and he had followed those orders, which led him and the three men under his command to be sharing the same stale air in a submarine compartment barely big enough for their equipment. Any questions he had thought to ask were cut off, as the orders were given with a resounding, “out” at the end. The four Americans working alongside them, each going by an obviously false moniker, were also extracted via the same strategy, but they saw little of them on the journey, and guessed they had been whisked away to report to their CIA masters as soon as they surfaced.

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

“Quite,” Palmer chuckled, implying that Johnson’s welfare wasn’t the slightest bit concerning to him personally. “Compliments from the Captain, but when you’re ready he’d rather enjoy hearing from you about the events of this afternoon.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Graham Ashdown slept until the sky outside was fully dark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’ll be stood down for more than a few days, Ashdown,” Johnson chuckled at him, “we need to get you moved somewhere more comfortable. Give you some time off. Your family are here, aren’t they?”

“My missus and my boy, yes, Sir,” he said as his face darkened slightly, and he coughed to clear his voice, “they’re billeted with Sergeant Maxwell’s family.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The teeth?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TWELVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A massive crowd of them came through,” she went on, her eyes staring at a spot of nothing on the floor, “they literally shook the houses there were so many of them. More of them came on behind for about a day, like they were late to the party, and two of them must have smelled us or something because they camped outside and just kept walking into the front door like it would magically open for them. I threw a load of things out of the back window, you know, to try and get them to go away, and it worked. The microwave made a massive noise and they loved that. It gave us just enough time to get out of the front door and into the car…”

She sniffed again, wiping away the fresh tears of memory with her cuffs.

“We got about two miles out of town when I ran over a few of them at once and the car got stuck. We had to run and leave the car.”

She stopped talking, never taking her eyes away from the spot she was staring at, as if it was the invisible anchor tethering her to reality no matter how harsh it was. Pauline waited to see if the pause was an intentional one, then decided to prompt for more.

“What happened?”

Ellie’s head snapped up to meet Pauline’s gaze, startling her slightly with her sudden alertness and a fire behind her eyes that quickly extinguished itself.

“What happened?” she spat. “We were doing fine, that’s what happened. We moved around a short distance at a time and Am…” the word, the name, seemed to catch in her throat, “my baby was doing really well; she never made a noise to attract them. Then these,” she pushed herself up on her hands and shouted, “fucking bastards, came and dragged me away from her.”

She buried her head into her knees and sobbed again for a long time until the reserves of tears ran dry again. She raised her head, the same vacant, capitulating look in her eyes.

“My beautiful baby, my Amber, she’s gone now. There’s no way she’d be able to survive on her own,” she intoned flatly.

Pauline didn’t know what to say, but blessedly the door banged open and a man stood in the doorway.

“Time for work,” he said, leering as Pauline stood and smoothed down her clothes. As she passed by, she reached out a hand and placed the lightest touch of her fingertips on Ellie’s knee.

* * *

Pauline Earle, widow and manager at a historical site with its own hotel, had been rounded up early on after the world fell apart. She had survived the initial phase of apocalyptic proceedings on simple geography, sheer luck alone, as her modest home was part of the hotel-cum-museum on the windswept seafront on high ground far from the town. She’d lived there ever since her husband had passed away, selling their house and accepting the job with its accommodation and company. There, she’d anxiously watched the news reports as she sat alone on the day when only two of the employees arrived for work to care for the single pair of guests present.

In her unthinking panic, she had stopped off via the village shop a few miles from her home, and for a week she lived on the overstocked amount of bread and milk that her subconscious brain forced her to buy.

She had nothing to drink in the house, not that she ever drank much anyway, and wouldn’t think of going to the hotel wing to drink their stocks. The stress of the situation made her think of turning to alcohol for a solution. It was probably a good idea she hadn’t found anything, as that night she saw the first one of them. Had she drunk most of a bottle of wine as she’d felt like doing, she probably would have gone outside to investigate and ask why they were trespassing. She probably wouldn’t have noticed the curious way they were walking, their jerky movements and the way that the head snatched from side to side whenever different sounds echoed around her little hilltop haven. That decision not to drink, the possession of her full faculties, inevitably saved her life as she made the choice not to go out there. She had stayed frozen still in the window and watched as the thing walked up to the glass and banged its face into the rain-smeared pane. Pauline gasped in horror, unable to move through a morbid fascination and fear, and couldn’t believe it when a bird flew down to land lightly on the grass nearer the sea. The thing in front of her, wearing a green waterproof and walking gear with one gaiter torn away above its right boot to show a ragged chunk of blackened flesh missing, turned and watched intently as the bird hopped along. It lurched towards the cliff edge, head cocked to one side and hands reaching out for the pastel-grey dove as it went about its business, undisturbed by events unfolding in the wider world. It remained utterly undisturbed until almost too late when the sudden burst of movement behind it forced a panicked leap out over the edge of the drop towards the sea and freedom. The person, the thing, chasing the dove fell headlong over the edge and made Pauline shriek out loud in shock. She ran outside, lay flat on the damp, windswept grass to peer over the edge and saw the body only thirty feet down and stuck in grotesque parody of a ballerina with legs and arms broken in different directions. The face showed that it recognised her appearance, and a shriek rang from the mouth in between the snapping of teeth. She almost thought to try the telephone again to bring help, until her mind registered what her eyes had seen. The face looked up at her, full of malice and hate, but the body was still face down on the rocks. Only then did she realise what the world was facing.

Three days passed by without any updates on the static screen of her television, and a nervous young man working in the hotel knocked on the door of her small cottage to ask if she would join them for a meeting. The meeting, such as it was, comprised Pauline and two young local men who worked there, and the couple of guests who had been caught out while on a walking holiday along their famous Jurassic coastline. The silence had been awkward, the introductions stilted, until they started to relax around one another, and they all agreed that they had to shed the bounds of normality and wait at the hotel for the whole unpleasant business to all be over.

That bubble of British stoicism burst spectacularly when one morning about a week after the televisions stopped broadcasting, three men drove arrogantly up to the very front of the main entrance to the visitors’ centre of the historical hilltop monument and ruins. They walked around, appearing to be conducting an appraisal, apparently liking what they saw. Pauline looked out of her window, barely able to hear the exchange of words with the two employees who walked out of the front door of the hotel to greet the visitors.

Pleasantries were given and received, hands were shaken, and questions asked.

Questions that, at least in their current suspicious frame of mind, would raise the alarm.

Questions like how many people were there, what supplies they had and what weapons were in the building.

Questions which, when answered, prompted the bearded man loitering by his car to turn and wave his hands in an exaggerated gesture down the hill. The five members of the reluctant group who had yet to realise the cruel world they were now living in watched in confusion. That confusion turned into fear and disbelief as the noise of a loud engine rattled up the hill to them. The throttle surged, whistling and growling in peaks and dipping low to rise up again until the most unexpected sight burst into view.

A tank. A dark green tank with wide, irregular swathes of black and brown painted over it. The tank, so unnatural and out of place in the idyllic setting, was followed by half a dozen other vehicles including two vans and a digger, forming a ragtag collection that oozed danger. The tank stopped, the engine rattled into silence, and a hatch opened to let a man climb out. Everyone watched in terrified awe as he jumped lightly down, holding a machine gun with a long magazine sticking out of the left side horizontally. He held the weapon by the grip in his left hand, letting it swing casually and recklessly. Everything about him screamed a warning of violence and cruelty. As if to compound the implied sense of doom, the man surveyed the area.

And smiled crookedly.

* * *

The next few weeks were tough. Every room was thoroughly searched and ransacked for the items the half dozen men wanted, and the carefully maintained grounds of the historic site were systematically ruined as the centuries-old defences were deepened and widened in their neat rings which had once been dug to the same depth and width to prevent Vikings from reaching the hill top.

One of the reasons that site was so important, and had been for as long as humans had graced the south coast, was that the hilltop had its own natural water spring. The Anglo-Saxons of Wessex could hold that hilltop for a fortnight with only two hundred and fifty men, given that they only had to carry their weapons and food on their backs, and they could not be starved out easily. Each day, the besieging army would be forced to raid further and further away for their own food and water.

Each day those besiegers sat impotently at the bottom of the hill meant another boat crew melting away for easier spoils or prompted impatient men into ill-conceived attempts on the steep hill.

Fast forward to their current war, their plight against the violent invaders of today, and the routine had not changed much, other than the defenders now had a small hotel and visitors’ centre to keep them comfortable. They also had the added bonus of a vast underground store of heating oil, installed when the visitors’ centre had the gift shop added about a decade before.

What they didn’t have was a food supply, but the daily runs sent out in cars and vans brought back more than enough, and about one in five outbound cars brought back someone new. Those new people were in varying states of dishevelment, and not all of them seemed totally willing to be there. Anyone coming back in via the single-track road that led up to the ruins and the buildings would find themselves staring down the barrel of the tank for an unnervingly long time.

It wasn’t a tank, not in the sense that most people associated with the main battle tanks synonymous with the military might of each country, but it was in fact one of the newly introduced Warrior tracked fighting vehicles. It was a bigger version of the tracked vehicles the Yeomanry used in their assault reconnaissance troop, with the addition of the brutal 30mm cannon from the Fox and a section to carry infantry like the Saxons.

It was better armoured, more mechanically reliable, but it had one flaw according to the man who had driven it there. One small part of the wagon that was inferior to the older vehicles they had been invented to replace. The new chain gun, which fired the same 7.62 as the GPMGs, was prone to jamming and had a far slower rate of fire than the tried and tested weapon it was due to replace.

The man who had driven it there, the man with the machine gun. The one with the cruel eyes who had made the unwilling acquaintance of most of the women there already, who gave his orders to other people to follow, and dished out their rewards like some petty Lord. He didn’t mix with many of them, electing instead to stay inside the biggest room in the hotel, which he had taken over as his own space, and he only kept company when he wanted it.

He demanded company, and the implied threat meant that he didn’t have to force himself on anyone. They were protected by him. He kept them all safe and they didn’t have to go out where the monsters were, but that protection obviously came at a price, which they willingly paid, wearing false smiles so that everything stayed amicable.

Pauline was spared those unwelcome attentions, as there were younger women who caught his eye before her. For that she was both relieved and grateful yet felt guilty and responsible that others had to endure being used when she was left alone.

Michaels. That was what the others called him. He occasionally went out, but other men were left there in charge. None of them would ever think of trying to depose their self-styled leader, mainly because he was the only man who knew things.

Things like how to get into an army camp and find guns. Things like the exact building that contained a gleaming new tank, and even more miraculously, how to start it up and drive it out. Even more mind-bendingly, he knew where the ammunition was that the cannon took, and after he had stared at the racks where it was stored for a long time and counted the empty sections with his fingers, he selected ones with glossy black tips as he muttered to himself.

He filled the rear section with the two rows of horizontal seats with box upon box of ammunition of various types and calibre. He added to that other pieces of equipment and tools, fitted himself with a belt that had straps over each shoulder and multiple pouches, and drew the bayonet from the sheath to check its edge.

When they were equipped to his requirements and ready to leave the army camp, one of the two men he had recruited to assist him asked, “Why don’t we just bust our way out of here?”. They were sitting in the rear seats, the position of the gunner and commander, with strict instructions not to touch anything as Michaels drove.

“Because,” he said, dragging out the word into the headset that linked them over the rumble and roar of the engine and tracks, “we don’t want anyone to know we’ve been here, and if we need to come back it would be nice if the place wasn’t full of dead people because some idiot drove through the gate instead of opening it. Dickhead.”

So they had left the camp and the nearby ammunition dump as though nobody had been there, and when the army had returned, they failed to notice the missing vehicle and the ammunition taken from the rearmost sections away from the entrance.

Now that Warrior, that dominant vehicle that was impervious to almost anything other than the mighty Chieftain tanks miles away down the coast, sat hidden in the ruins of the old fort, partially obscured by a collapsed wall of heavy stone, and camouflaged the rest of the way using cut branches. Unless anyone approaching in a vehicle knew it was there, they would be well within deadly range of the 30mm cannon for far too long to make any assault anything other than a bloodbath or one-sided losses.

They were nestled in, and they had no intention of being dug out.

THIRTEEN

The first morning they woke up together, the two children sat up and looked at each other awkwardly. They had slept remarkably well given the tumultuous events of the previous day, but the morning air was chilly thanks to the small, high window they had left open during the night.

They hadn’t noticed the cold when they slept wrapped up inside a double duvet each, but now that they were out of those cocoons they shivered in the cool air. Still, the cost of leaving that window open was repaid by what it had brought back to them in the darkness.

The yellow eyes, the black and brown mottled fur and its eager, expectant look; the cat stood and stretched up to arch its back, before sitting down and turning its head far to the right to desperately lick behind its own shoulder blade, then stopping just as rapidly to look at them again.

Peter and Amber looked at each other, both wearing small smiles, then back at the cat, who regarded them with its big eyes that closed in slow blinks as the loud rattle of a purr wound itself back up to full volume. Amber held a single finger out to it, giggling as the cat pushed itself forward to rub the entire length of its left side along the digit and spin delicately in front of her face to look at Peter.

This had the unwelcome side effect of placing its back end with the upturned tail directly in Amber’s face and making her lean back to move her eyes away from the display. They both laughed softly, and the cat looked at them both in turn to show them it was unimpressed to the extent that it was almost ashamed of them.

Peter had never had a cat, mostly because any cat hanging around the farm would be seen as food by the working dogs that walked obediently at the heels of their masters. He decided that he liked this cat, as presumptuous and intrusive as it was, and held out his own finger towards it. Shuffling the position of all four paws, it carefully balanced to reach out one paw and try to span the expanse between the two settees to step across.

Try as it might, it had no possible way of extending a single paw to bridge the gap of at least two feet and still make it, but that didn’t stop the ridiculous, wobbling display of balance until the realisation finally dawned on it and it stepped lightly down to leap back up on Peter’s side, and purr loudly as it snaked its body up and down his hand. Both children smiled at the display, not realising that they were being manipulated into providing more food, just as they had done the previous night.

From the cat’s perspective, two people had arrived and didn’t scream at it and try to catch it, and they fed it. The biggest draw for the cat was that these two, even if they were small, were warm and smelt like people instead of dead things.

Peter stood and stretched, slipping his arms into a sweatshirt that was too big for him after being liberated from a house he couldn’t remember being inside. He stepped lightly over the cold floor of the kitchen and looked over the contents arrayed on the worktop, as he always did when he cleared a house. He found tinned meatballs, cans of soup that promised to be thick and creamy, and dried pasta.

He thought, then stepped quickly and quietly to the stairs, where he carefully peered through the windows front and back to be sure that there were no monsters loitering in the street. He couldn’t be sure if any of the houses were nests, like the two he had discovered by bad luck, and only survived through a moment of good luck, but a decent indication of those places was a wide-open front door.

Deciding to risk it, as he was now bizarrely responsible for not only a kid but apparently a cat too, he returned to the kitchen and ran a pan of water from the tap. When the pan was half-full, the water began to cough and splutter from the pipe as though air were trapped in there somehow, and then it stopped altogether. Peter set down the pan and frowned.

Going through the cupboards, he found another container and went to the other tap in the house in the main bathroom upstairs. He managed to fill most of that smaller pan, which in itself was deceptive, since being smaller, it held much less water anyway, and he carried it carefully downstairs.

Amber was watching him in silence, crossing her legs and leaning forward to wear a look of discomfort. Peter saw this, recognised the look, and in that same moment realised that the girl had been conditioned into this violent new world and would not pee without being told it was safe to do so. He held out a hand to her, beckoning her towards him, and pointed her towards the toilet.

“Just don’t flush it,” he murmured to her.

Peter had faced that quandary himself in the early days. He had flushed the toilet out of habit alone in the first house he had occupied, and was rewarded with three callers at his door within as many minutes. He’d stolen silently out of the back door and reminded himself not to do that again.

A week later he decided to try another method and peed in a bucket instead. Through trial and error at a couple of houses, he came to study the effects that his bodily functions had on his survivability, and found that the smell of fresh urine outside was about as sensible as flushing the toilet, but if he kept the bucket inside and tipped it into the toilet carefully, or just used the toilet without flushing, then neither the smell nor the noise would bring unwanted attention.

Suffering the eye sting of ammonia from his own pee was an easy trade-off when balanced against having his body torn apart and eaten by people.

Turning on the gas to the stove, he stepped back and struck a long match before leaning his body away to light the burner. It caught with a whoomph and he instinctively shook the match in his hand before dropping the smoking stem of thin wood into the sink. He boiled the water, intermittently checking beyond the drawn curtains to be sure that nothing had detected the subtle atmospheric change caused by a pan of water boiling, and he watched Amber from the corner of his eye as she fussed the cat, who was still trying to encourage her to feed it. He tested the pasta, scalding his fingers as he pulled a single piece from the pan to chew it, deciding that it was soft enough. He drained it with some difficulty, then replaced the pan on the burner and opened a can of meatballs to tip the contents in and stir it messily around with a wooden spoon.

When that had warmed through and begun to sizzle and catch on the bottom of the metal, he turned off the gas and let the pan rest while he found two wide china bowls in an off-beige colour with a ringed flower pattern encircling the lip. He selected them a spoon each and set the table, then opened another tin of cat food and used a fork to spread half of the contents out on a small plate of the same pattern and colour.

As soon as the can opener had made its unique sounds on the tin of meatballs, the cat abandoned Amber as though she no longer existed, stepping away so suddenly and without even a glance of farewell that the girl deflated. It jumped up on the kitchen worktop and made itself a nuisance until the cat food was presented on the plate, then followed the boy like he held in his hand cat ambrosia. Peter placed the cat’s dish on the kitchen table at the head and pulled out a chair before beckoning Amber over. They sat up and ate their mostly-cooked breakfast of meatballs and pasta shells with the thin tomato sauce barely covering their portions as the cat ate noisily, sitting up at the table with them.

It purred as it chomped on the chunks of unidentifiable smelly goodness and jelly, making more sound than both children combined as they slurped their own food. The cat finished first, despite its repeat of the ventriloquist act and remained sitting up to lick its paws and wash its face, while it seemed to wait for the others to finish. Amber became full fairly quickly, as did Peter, who had survived for a month on snacking, and some days didn’t get to eat for hours and hours on end if the houses he had chosen to rest in were poorly stocked with tinned goods.

Peter rose to take the dishes away, using plates to cover their bowls for the rest to be eaten later when they had room in their bellies. The cat seemed to have room for more and meowed pitifully at him as he stood in the kitchen, until he relented and scraped out the remainder of the tin and chopped it up with a fork.

The cat licked the jelly off a chunk for less than half a minute, then abruptly turned and flashed the circle of light skin at the base of its tail in Peter’s direction as it got down and trotted to the settee, where it jumped up without invitation to knead Amber’s legs through the duvet again.

You didn’t want food then, Peter thought in annoyance, you just wanted me to feed you.

He cleaned up in the kitchen, leaving the dirty pans in the sink and reorganising the supplies he had found in the cupboards, before returning to his settee. The cat, curled into a neat circle with paws and tail tucked in, raised its head and opened both eyes to glare at him as he sat down. Peter was taken aback by the unexpected look of hostility, and watched with his mouth partly open as the cat jumped down and stretched before walking to the kitchen and jumping up to look at the open window as it calculated the precise physics of the intended stunt. Leaping up and wobbling in balance on the frame, it dropped outside and disappeared once more to leave them alone.

Amber looked saddened by the animal’s exit, but she expected the cat to return in its own time. The two of them sat in silence until their boredom made them fidget and somehow feed off each other’s inactivity. Peter cracked first, standing up to begin a more thorough search of the house for something to do. Again he arrived at an assumption about the woman who lived there; she must have catered for having kids visiting her occasionally. Perhaps she was an aunt and saw something in a charity shop one day to keep by for when nieces or nephews visited, but the faded and yellowed cardboard of the box made him smile.

He took it back and sat on the carpet between the settees, smiling at Amber as she watched what he had in his hands expectantly. He lifted off the lid, feeling that sticky dryness where old sellotape had yellowed more than the once-white cardboard beneath. He shook the box lightly, pouring out the stiff pieces of the game and arranging them on the carpet, where Amber slid down from her seat to join him.

They played in silence, after Amber had shown Peter how to play the game using a simple demonstration. The girl had still not spoken a word since the previous night, and Peter had given up trying to get her to talk, assuming that she would speak to him in her own time if and when she was ready. They played the game, filling their plates with the good food and rejecting the bad as they made each other laugh quietly by pulling disgusted comedy faces at the worms and mud on the cards they picked.

“Aww, tummy ache,” Amber said softly when she had collected a full plate of bad food. The sound made Peter jump, and he chose then to ask her what had happened.

“Was that your mum?” he asked her, “the woman with you in the other house?”

Her face dropped, and her eyes glazed over instantly. She nodded slowly then began to cry. Tears ran from both eyes and her bottom lip quivered uncontrollably. Peter leaned over to her and put a hand on the carpet beside her. She put her own hand on the top of his as he spoke.

“Don’t cry,” he told her, “I’ll look after you.”

He kept his hand there, leaning awkwardly forwards until she decided to break the contact. Just then, they both snapped their heads towards the kitchen as a half-familiar sound erupted there. The cat dragged itself back inside the open window and dropped down to trot over to the scene without recognising the important emotions on display. With its tail held vertically, it stepped lightly between them and nuzzled Amber’s face and began to purr again.

* * *

“Sir,” Johnson said in simple greeting as Captain Palmer nodded to him from the map he was hunched over. He had been summoned to assist in mission planning and walked in at the same time as Lieutenant Lloyd, who had his sleeves rolled up and his green beret worn proudly.

“Gentlemen,” Palmer said to the assembled men, including three of the four navy pilots, “good morning. As you know, the powers that be are planning to send us some more assets and supplies.” He held up a hand to stem the flow of questions from three of the men.

“I know, we have our priorities and they have theirs,” Palmer said to change the subject away from the circuitous conversations they had already had, “They are going to give us a CO,” he said with an uncommon touch of annoyance creeping into his voice, “and his own admin team, as well as some other military assets which they have been very tight-lipped regarding,” he added, leaving the intimation clear in the room.

“Sneaky-beaky stuff, Sir?” Lloyd asked. His own status as leader of elite infantry would be knocked down the ladder should someone more elite be ordered to their island.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Lieutenant,” Palmer said, “but that isn’t the priority for today. If we are sent any specialist troops, I doubt they would fall under our domain anyway. For now, we are tasked with planning and executing a mission some sixty miles inland to escort an engineering team to and from a target.”

Looks were exchanged but everyone kept quiet to wait for the rest of the information.

“You may have noticed, gentlemen,” Palmer went on, “that, as disciplined as we are being, our lights are still on.” He looked around the room to see the admission on their faces that they hadn’t considered that fact so often taken for granted. To keep from attracting any unwelcome and cannibalistic attention, they had been operating good light discipline and only using lights that couldn’t be seen from the outside. That prompted the central switch for the streetlamps on the island to be switched permanently off, and this led them to live their lives mostly in the dark anyway, so the lights remaining off wasn’t that noticeable.

“That is courtesy of a nuclear power station, and yes, you guessed it, sixty miles inland,” Palmer finished.

“Where’s the engineering team coming from?” Lieutenant Commander Barrett asked.

“America,” Palmer answered simply.

Lieutenant James Morris, Barrett’s co-pilot smiled and affected a Brit’s attempt at a southern states accent and said, “Now, wwhhut can they teach us about our own power station?”

“A good deal, I should imagine,” piped up a nasal voice from behind the navy pilots as Second Lieutenant Palmer walked in to hand a sheet of paper to his older brother, “seeing as they designed and built it for us about ten years ago.”

Johnson’s eyebrows lowered slightly as he fought against the natural urge to narrow his eyes in suspicion that the most junior officer was in possession of information that the others had not yet been given. The balance of power was tentative, although the officer classes were too polite to mention the vulgarity of who should be in charge, as the navy pilots were army equivalent ranks of majors and captains themselves. Command of ground activities, however, had been devolved to Palmer as the most qualified. For all the men present, all of them were very aware that the Captain’s younger brother was tolerated under sufferance only due to his older brother, just so long as he didn’t get in the way of anything. For him to swan into a senior officers’ meeting and act as he did set every spine in the room firmly on edge.

“Thank you, Second Lieutenant,” Captain Palmer said with a chilly tone of official annoyance, then scowled gently at his brother’s back as he left the room. He was too well bred to offer an apology for his sibling’s words, so he continued to explain.

“The yanks have sent a carrier,” he said, his expression meaning nothing derogatory as he clearly had an affinity with the Americans after working with them in Germany, “and they’ve apparently pre-empted our nuclear needs. They built two for us, and they believe that both of them will be at risk of overheating or some such problem in the near future. We need to get them there safely, clear out the place, then keep them safe until they can stabilise the reactors and do some kind of witchcraft with cooling.”

Lieutenant Commander Murray whistled low, looking to his naval colleagues, who seemed to understand. He saw the two army men looking at them expectantly and explained.

“If the Americans have sent a carrier, that must mean they’ve sent an entire carrier strike group,” he said, seeing that this news still hadn’t sunk in.

“That means a carrier,” he said as he checked off on one finger, “at least one destroyer, a pair of frigates, half a dozen support ships and,” he glanced at the other pilots, “a nuclear attack sub.”

Then it sunk in, and their faces showed fresh nervousness.

“Any word from the Soviets?” Johnson asked in an uncharacteristically taut voice.

“Nothing,” Palmer said with equable seriousness, “and nothing from the Chinese either. It appears that Communism doesn’t want to speak to Democracy, even when hell empties and all the devils are here.”

Palmer’s lapse into Shakespearean prose betrayed just how much time he had spent glued to the planning board and the radio. He was tired, not just physically but emotionally, and his own personal war was being swallowed by the global politics in play. Everyone around the table understood the potential severity of the response that the Soviet Union could feel forced into. Even though the Cold War was, as they all believed, in its dying stages and intelligence reported that the Union was close to collapse, none of them could even begin to predict what a desperate government would do, given the current climate, if they felt threatened. The arrival of a carrier strike group and an American nuclear attack submarine only a few hundred miles away in the English Channel ran the obvious risk of disaster.

“Why haven’t we spoken to them yet?” Lieutenant Lloyd asked the room rhetorically, “Surely they can see that what’s going on is bigger than countries fighting each other?”

“One would have hoped so, but that is somewhat beyond our control for now,” Palmer answered to move the conversation onwards, “Now, they should be here by tonight, I’m assured, rendezvous with the joint fleet in the Channel, and will send their men in tomorrow morning to us. I assume via helicopter, even though the means haven’t been confirmed to us as yet. I can only presume that we might be expecting our new commanding officer and his entourage at that time, so I would fully anticipate being evicted from here. Whatever other personnel come with them, if any, will be our responsibility to house and feed but I highly doubt they will become our men to instruct. So,” he paused, “assuming the mission will go ahead, I propose that I lead it via one of the Sultan wagons,” he said as he kept his eyes down and away from Johnson’s, “I’m sure we can all agree that taking my Chieftain would be slow going and possibly be a touch of overkill, but I want a troop of the Fox cars with me and one quarter of your marines,” he added, looking up to Lloyd and receiving a nod, “Your sergeant will suffice, and I presume we can spare a man to drive them in a Saxon?” he asked, finally making eye contact with Johnson, who was just waiting to be told he was sitting that one out. He nodded, going over the particulars, which mainly encompassed routes and alternatives, and left the actual entry, assault and clearance of the power plant as general intentions rather than specific actions, as the men coming from America knew the plant intimately and would be needed to make those calls.

“If I may, Sir?” Johnson asked politely, having calmed down from his initial annoyance of not being allowed out to play. Palmer gestured for him to speak.

“I’d suggest splitting your marines over two Saxons, with an engineer in each,” he said simply, leaving the obvious reasons out of his explanation.

“Very good, Sarn’t Major,” the captain answered with a nod as he saw the logic in the recommendation instantly, “tomorrow then, we should know more when they arrive, but I’d like men ready and briefed. Thank you.”

Johnson left, trying to decide whether to throw Sergeant Strauss back into the lion’s den or to put trust in others he wasn’t totally certain of.

FOURTEEN

Pauline finished her allocated work duty of cooking and cleaning in the hotel’s modest kitchens. There were over thirty people there now, half of whom would leave if they could guarantee success in finding somewhere safer to be. It was the lesser of two evils. When she returned, she found Ellie in the same position; sitting on the bed with her heels tight into her thighs and her forehead rested on her knees. She didn’t look up when Pauline was shown back into the room, not even when she placed a wrapped meal of fresh bread sandwiches in front of her.

Pauline went into the bathroom of their hotel room-cum-cell, and when she came back out, she saw Ellie eating the food with her cheeks puffed out and her jaw working almost desperately as she raised the fingertips of one hand to her lips.

“Sorry,” she said through her full mouth, “I just…”

“Don’t be silly, my lovely,” Pauline told her kindly as she sat down opposite her, “I brought it back for you anyway, you need to get your strength up.”

Ellie chewed and winced as she swallowed her mouthful too soon and had to force the lump down her throat.

“The bread,” she gasped before snatching another bite, “where did it come from?”

“I made it,” Pauline said simply, “the kitchens here still work fine, and all I have to do is make food. They don’t make me do anything else,” she went on, pausing hesitantly before continuing and speaking faster to change the subject, “and they keep the people out, so it’s a fair enough trade…”

Ellie looked at her seriously with dark, red-rimmed eyes.

“You think it’s fair?” she asked dangerously, “They snatch people away from their families and you think it’s fair?”

“No,” Pauline said carefully, dropping her own smile, “I don’t think what they’ve done is fair at all, but I don’t know what I’d be doing if they hadn’t come here. I’m just trying to get by, and I don’t think I can… I don’t think I can kill people.”

“Well I’m bloody ready to,” Ellie responded. Eager to change the subject, Pauline pointed at the battered paperback book on the low bedside table beside her.

“Did you read any of that?” she asked, hopeful that she had been given a lover of literature to share a room with.

“No,” Ellie answered through another mouthful of food, “I haven’t got my glasses and I can’t hold it far enough away to see it.”

Her words were full of regret and annoyance, but any response Pauline could make was stopped by the knock at the door.

The two women looked at each other before Ellie shrugged, and Pauline shouted for whoever it was to come in.

One of the first men to turn up there stood in the doorway, not stepping inside, and politely asked for Ellie to come with him.

“Why?” she shot back, full of venom.

“Because our Boss would like to talk to you,” he responded.

Pauline expected more anger, more revolt and even imagined them having to drag the woman out of the room, but Ellie simply stood, brushed off the crumbs from her dirty and stained clothes, and followed him.

Ellie walked tall, pride and anger keeping her from unravelling. She was shown to the door of the big hall in the historical building and the man who had escorted her there gestured for her to go inside. That was evidently as far as he was taking her.

She walked in, looking around at the high ceilings and decorated walls, and a voice cut through to her.

“Good afternoon,” came a man’s voice from her right. She looked to see a man of average height and build, with an unremarkable face. His voice had nothing unique about it either, but there was something intangible about the man that made him appear strong. He didn’t ooze malevolence or physically dominate her; in fact, he kept a respectful distance as he spoke.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, “but I know a simple apology won’t help you at all. Believe me when I say that I know the loss you feel right now…” He gestured to an ornate chair beside one that he took, inviting her to sit with him. She sat, her face a mask of neutrality.

“I want you to know that I sent men back to where you were and had them search until they were forced to come back, but they found no sign of her. My own daughter was lost very early on,” he said with eyes turned down, “even before most people realised what was happening. We’d been visiting family near Portsmouth and, well, I don’t need to tell you…”

“I’m very sorry,” Ellie said, seeing him look up to smile at her. That smile faded when her face contorted, and she spoke again.

“But your daughter wasn’t left for dead by thugs who knocked her mother out. Your daughter didn’t die alone and terrified. My daughter did. She’s dead because of you,” she finished, spitting the words at him with a jab of her right index finger. When she had finished, her body betrayed her and brought on angry tears caused by adrenaline, and it opened the floodgates once more.

The man sat back and just watched her cry. He didn’t force his words on her, didn’t tell her that the men were simply being clumsy and ham-fisted about following his orders to bring back survivors to the safety of their hill. They had never encountered anyone who didn’t want to be rescued, so the thought never occurred to them that people might want to be left alone. He wanted to say that he would have done things differently, that he would have brought the girl back with them and listened to her, but felt the words were empty so he didn’t say them.

He also didn’t tell her that his men had found a dead zombie in the house, which he doubted a little girl could have achieved. He didn’t tell her that he believed someone had found her before his men had got back to them. She appeared to have decided and accepted that the girl was gone, so he saw no need to drive her insane with renewed hopes and fears, deciding that it was better to let her accept the loss and move on.

“I know there’s nothing I can say to make this better,” he told her, “but you have my word that nothing like this will happen again.”

“You’re right,” she sniffed, “nothing you can say will help.”

With that, she stood and walked from the room with steps that gathered pace until she broke into a run just before the doorway.

The man, John Michaels, leaned back in the chair and sighed. He longed for men who had the intelligence to follow orders but reminded himself that he had to adapt and work with what he had. The tale about his daughter was true, but he left out some pertinent facts.

Facts such as his daughter turning in the car as he sped home, his wife in the back seat holding her as she convulsed with the fever. He left out that the girl had opened her eyes suddenly and bitten her mother hard, tearing out a golf ball-sized chunk from her neck and sheeting the inside of the car with arterial spray from her torn blood vessels. He didn’t tell her that he had crashed the car in his sudden and terrifying blindness, and that his unrestrained daughter had flown through the windscreen on impact to roll to a bloody and broken mess thirty feet from the wreck. He didn’t tell her that when he came around from the blow to his head, that his wife was reaching for him but unable to do more than hook a single fingernail into his clothing and try to pull him towards her milky eyes and gnashing teeth. He didn’t say that he fell from his car in terror, scrambling backwards on his backside to put distance between himself and the horror. He didn’t say that the horror only grew infinitely worse when a crackling, gargling sound came from the ground behind him and he turned to see his daughter dragging her shattered and twisted frame towards him an inch at a time, as though sheer determination and hunger could force her ruined body to move.

He was ashamed of himself for what he did afterwards, and when he went back over a week later with the resolve to end their perpetual suffering, he found his daughter had moved close to a mile away from where she had last reached out to him. Her minute progress had been unceasing as she followed the direction that her last meal had gone in. He dispatched her, freed her from her useless body, with a single shot to the back of her head from the Browning semi-automatic he had removed from the armoury. He used the same method to kill his wife, shooting her in the temple through the back windscreen of the car as she turned to try and locate the source of the sound. He left their bodies where they were, no longer considering them to have been the people he loved and satisfied himself that whatever part of them that was left had been set free.

He returned to where he had parked the van he was using and drove back to the place they had fortified, having narrowly avoided being swept away by the massive horde that had inexplicably gathered and stormed across the countryside, leaving filth and destruction in their wake. He used the van because the other vehicle he had scavenged was a little too high profile for everyday use.

He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t reported to the camp, not that he had been home to receive the call anyway, and instead, he’d watched it until it was empty and sneaked in to steal weapons and the Warrior tank. He didn’t know why he felt it necessary to abandon his duties, especially seeing as the army was the only family he had left, and the men of his Sabre troop would have been his responsibility as much as his daughter had been.

He decided that he’d had enough of being part of the machine, as he illogically blamed that machine and its masters for his family dying. Instead he drank until he was sick, drank again, and dreamt up a new way of life.

FIFTEEN

The alarm went up shortly before three in the morning.

The alarm, such as it was, was the massively loud mechanical, metallic chattering of the coaxial machine gun on the turret of the Chieftain tank blocking the road. The radio sparked to life, fire support was requested, and the standby troops poured from their billets to form up at the threshold between the island and the bridge.

The direction of the enemy was given, and the two Fox cars stationed permanently on the two bluffs of higher ground erupted into life as they added their own bursts of automatic fire to the fray.

Sergeant Horton, taking his turn to sleep in the tank with all but the commander’s hatch down to preserve their heat in the dead of night, was woken by the two members of his crew who were awake and taking turns to look through their handheld optics to stare at the empty roadway. Only at that time it suddenly wasn’t empty.

The thin tripwire rigged at the far end activated the flares attached to the bridge with an echoing pop to bathe the area in a soft glow.

The reticuled display hazed into a grainy collection of shapes as a stumbling, shuffling group of zombies materialised, making the man babble a string of incoherent noises in surprise before he got his brain into gear and snatched up the controls of the weapon to stitch a burst of 7.62 into them.

The two sleeping men, one being the tank’s commander, leapt instantly to life and in seconds, the second machine gun on the tank rattled out its own shots.

Horton looked through the optics, snatched up the radio and called the two Fox cars. Within thirty seconds, their two guns added a devastating additional weight and the impetus of the advance had been halted. The optics flared brightly as the standby force behind them had set up and fired a 51mm illuminating mortar round, which sank slowly through the air behind the onslaught, showing it to number well over a hundred.

With four guns firing on them, the slow-moving infantry of the dead found their attack ‘rendered safe’ in less than a minute, but that didn’t mean the island defenders were out of the woods straightaway.

As the guns stopped when no further targets remained standing, Captain Palmer emerged wearing his camouflaged trousers and boots, with a white PT shirt under his webbing that was still unfastened. He had a Browning pistol in the holster on his belt, his Sterling sub-machine gun in his hands with the bayonet already fixed in place. The man must have woken, dressed and been ready to fight inside of thirty seconds to make it to the bridge before the firing had fully stopped. Directly behind him came Lieutenant Lloyd, similarly dressed and equally ready to bring the fight to their enemy.

“Five of yours, five of mine?” he asked Lloyd, who nodded and shouted five names into the night to have his marines come to him. Palmer turned to look at the men of the Yeomanry, picking out the first five men that he knew by name. The twelve men stepped up, fixed bayonets and readied themselves, as Palmer turned to the men of Maxwell’s assault troop who had set up their mortar.

“Hold, just stand by with an illumination round,” he told them, not waiting for a response but turning back to his assembled team, “bayonets, unless you see obvious bullet wounds to the head, then you make damn sure before you step close to them. One in the head, dump them off the road and stay close to each other.”

They waited, staring off into the dark past the tank that they trusted, to keep their night optics trained on the approach. After an hour and a half, the sun began to rise off to their right. In that time, others had come to check the situation, and everyone not directly needed was sent away. They didn’t go far, and one of the men even returned to the officer’s quarters and fetched Palmer’s uniform smock for him. When the sun had risen enough, he turned to his team and addressed them.

“Ready?”

They were.

“Let’s go,” he said, calling up to the now-open hatches of the tank to give the order to cease fire. Horton confirmed the order with a thumbs-up gesture and watched as the twelve men went to work.

Palmer spread them out in a line, calling for a slow approach to the first of them which lay face down. The back of its skull was missing, indicating that the body posed no risk to them by then. It, she, was kicked off the side of the roadway to drop and splash into the water below. They moved carefully, never taking chances with the unmoving ones, and making sure with those still squirming with whatever intact body parts they still possessed. None of them was fast moving enough to make the soldiers fire a shot, and the only burst of adrenaline came from the time when a knot of them had fallen on top of a smaller one who was freed after the weight fell away.

A smaller one, that was a better way to say it.

Having rendered safe a smaller one was far easier to live with, made it slightly better when sleeping at night, instead of saying that they had killed a child. It went down to the bayonet of a marine with the slightly longer reach of his rifle and was sent over the edge with the others in uncomfortable silence.

The sun was fully up when their exhausted group filed back through the small gap made by the tank, and just then the sky above the sea filled with the sound of helicopters.

Rushing back over the bridge, the twelve men were subjected to a rapid body search to establish no wounds, then allowed to carry on into the island as per their revised standing orders.

SIXTEEN

Shortly after dawn the island, or at least those not already woken by the earlier gunfire, was woken by the shatteringly-loud noise of helicopters swooping in and hovering to land. Johnson, expecting the early morning arrivals as he was privy to the information, was alarmed as many others were from where they toiled near the bridge. He craned his neck up towards the higher ground where the only flat, open space large enough to accommodate the aircraft lay. He allowed himself a crooked smile as he watched the two recognisable silhouettes of a pair of Sea Kings dropping in. The other silhouette was unique, and made his mouth hang open slightly. The aircraft had been escorted by another helicopter that hovered high over the island in overwatch. An Apache, with its stubby wings sprouting pods of rockets, loomed almost malevolently in the air as the two transport helicopters disgorged their contents.

As the two aircraft rose to take off only thirty seconds after landing, with their engine notes dialling up intensity, another helicopter flew in from the direction of the sea, only this time it was the profile of a Bell. Johnson wasn’t knowledgeable enough to tell who it belonged to but had to guess that it was American. That helicopter flew directly over them heading inland, and when the Sea Kings had turned their noses back out to sea to fly away, the Apache moved from its unnervingly steady hover, dipped its own nose, and followed the Bell.

Frowning, Johnson walked towards the headquarters building and prepared for the influx of experts.

The Bedford truck that had been coaxed up the steep roads in anticipation of bringing down their new guests returned to the lower slopes shortly after the air had returned to still silence. The canvas flap at the back was in its normal position of up, and a small unit of camouflaged uniformed soldiers hopped down and retrieved various heavy kit bags and weapons.

The last man down, crisply uniformed and moustached, with thickly-rimmed glasses between moustache and beret, strode to Johnson and waited for a salute.

The SSM’s eyes ran over the insignia, the crowned rose, and the crowns on the shoulders.

“Sir,” he said as he drew himself up to attention and saluted briefly.

“Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson, I presume?” said the man as he returned the salute in acknowledgment.

“Yessir.”

“Major Hadlington,” he said smoothly before unnecessarily adding, “Intelligence Corps.”

Johnson had known in less than a heartbeat that the man was a major, and that he was Green Slime through and through from the insignia and the look of him. Johnson, like just about every member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces employed in a combat arm, had a deep mistrust of the intelligence corps and often made the common jest about ‘army intelligence’ being the world’s biggest oxymoron. The corps had only recently been bumped up from being a support arm into a combat support arm, and although the difference sounded small, it served to elevate the men and women of the intelligence corps from rear-echelon to something closer to the sharp end of the spear, in their eyes.

He knew that elevation was due to the work they had evolved into ‘over the water’ and he had met a few of them who were part of something known simply as ‘the detachment’, which was their elite counter-terrorist surveillance unit. The men, and women, he reminded himself, of those units were respected and revered in certain circles, because they put their lives on the line just as the troops on the ground did.

The one thing that Johnson was wrong about, was his guess that the moustached major would have a double-barrelled name. He was expecting something utterly Etonian like the Simpkins-Palmer boys he had to endure, then felt a stab of guilt for thinking that, as only one of those men was a useless fop of an aristocrat, in his book.

Major Raymond Hadlington, while in possession of the breeding and accent associated with the mockery of the enlisted ranks, was a hard-working man who demanded precision and efficiency from those under his command. He felt that he had the right to demand this, as he led by example. His team, some of whom he had worked with previously, had been working effectively from their cramped quarters on board the Royal Navy frigate.

Their panicked flight from their base in Germany two weeks previously, as the fence line was swarmed by a flowing, roiling mass of corpses, was still fresh in their collective minds. As was the helicopter ride that evacuated them minutes before the fence collapsed and the dead poured inside.

That desperate escape was another story, and not one that Hadlington wanted to remember, because to him it signalled that the army had abandoned the continent that held the majority of their forces.

Being a major in the intelligence arena, he was far from the mushroom status of most force personnel, who claimed to be kept permanently in the dark and fed bullshit. He knew that continental Europe was all but gone, and he knew that the Soviets were unleashing hell on the eastern borders to stop the flow of infected bodies walking over the expanse of land borders, with flight after flight of bombers laying waste to the hordes.

To the west, the Americans stopped all traffic heading in their direction, and ran near constant aerial surveillance by using two of their AWACS, refuelled in mid-air with as many personnel on board as they could manage. The drain on that constant air surveillance had been alleviated with the arrival of the US carrier fleet. Hadlington was also hearing rumours that forces were being dispatched to Iceland, and they had even struck some kind of deal with the remaining Spanish government surviving on their cluster of islands off the western coast of Africa to begin sending vessels and aircraft. Seeing as the islands had shut their borders entirely, allowing the US forces to take over the airports in exchange for the promise of financial reparations was an easy decision for them to make.

In other parts of the world they were preparing to strengthen their own defences and effectively hunker down until the terrifying mess sorted itself out.

When Major Hadlington was told he would be returning to the UK, he was confused at first, then he was informed of the pockets of resistance which were mainly military-led. He was given the information regarding the UK’s strength, then tasked with taking a team to conduct operations on the south coast for the newly-formed joint command at sea group. He was given the personnel list, assembled them and brought them all up to speed on the global situation and then laid out his own personal rules for how they would operate as a unit.

Now as he strode confidently into the low, dark building that purported to be the island’s headquarters, he wrinkled his nose at the stale air and ordered the windows opened to purge it. He walked over to the radio operator, Corporal Daniels, and cleared his throat.

“Stand by one,” Daniels said into the mic before standing and offering a salute, “Daniels, Sir,” he introduced himself, then waited to be given permission to resume his duties.

Hadlington kept him waiting on his feet, before turning to look at his own personnel.

“Ward?” he said, and a female corporal stepped towards them, “Take over from Daniels here, make sure you get a full disposition before you relieve him.”

“Sir,” she acknowledged, turning to look at Daniels expectantly.

“And Corporal,” Hadlington said over his shoulder, “there will be no smoking inside this control room from now on, in case you are recalled to duty here.”

Daniels looked at his replacement, who stared at him blankly. Feeling awkward and admonished as his comfortably dark and smoky surroundings were transformed, he put the cigarette out in the cold remains of his coffee cup and sat back down to hand over his station.

Hadlington spread a new map over the central table, showing the target location in finer detail. He had been told that the armoured unit was on standby to move out and waited for their commanding officer to report to him.

After five minutes he had not appeared, so he called for a runner. A Lance Corporal arrived before him, and he sent the man, or the boy more like, away with curt instructions.

“Ward, any update from Charlie-One-One yet?” he asked the new radio operator, who was tidying the workstation, wearing a look of distaste.

“Stand by, Sir,” she said, then reached for the set to turn dials and transmit using her clear radio voice.

“Charlie-One-One, this is Zero, Charlie-One-One, Zero, over,” she said almost robotically.

A pause extended to almost ten seconds before she repeated the line using the exact same precise intonations and rhythm for each word.

“Nothing, Sir,” she said after her second attempt, “stand by,”

“Jeeves-Five-Three, Jeeves-Five-Three, come in,” she said, visibly grimacing at the vulgarity she suspected would follow.

“Jeeves-Five-Three, receiving,” came the static reply from the speaker in what neither of them recognised as a Virginia accent. The background noise behind the words was a screaming, chattering whine.

“Five-Three,” Ward said, refusing to use the American aviator’s callsign, which she suspected had been chosen specifically to annoy the British, “update on Charlie-One-One progress?”

“Your boys are on the ground as of six minutes ago, Jeeves is en-route,” both Ward and Hadlington winced at his pronunciation of the terminology, “to the next objective and the cab is RTB.”

The lead pilot in the Apache signed off from the Brits and smirked a small smile of satisfaction to himself, because he had annoyed the female operator into not using the callsign he had picked intentionally for the purpose of pissing off his allies. Cruising along at a steady four hundred feet and one hundred and sixty miles per hour, the ground below him sped by in a blur. He saw occasional snippets of detail if he glanced down, but each time he did so he usually saw something he didn’t want to remember. Blasting over the low, rolling lush green of the countryside in between small pockets of habitation, he saw those snippets now. A white car sitting at an unnatural angle with its nose in a ditch. A small knot of people standing around aimlessly and staring upwards at the same time in response to the sound of his engines, a building, blackened by fire and almost entirely without a roof, then a sight that upset him.

Two kids, one small and one smaller, carrying bags and walking in the middle of a single lane road with hedgerows on each side, wandering aimlessly, or so it seemed.

Hadlington, as offended as his very British sensibilities were, straightened and nodded. He now knew that the ground team, Charlie-One-One, who he knew only as a four-man team that he hadn’t met, which spoke volumes as to their identity, was now at the objective. The annoying Apache pilot was currently flying east towards the gathering swarm outside north London for their own mission, and the ‘cab’ being the approximation of Charlie-One-One’s taxi, was returning to its base out on the English Channel. They would not see either aircraft again.

Hadlington knew that he had seniors and counterparts in other places, mostly still on the gathering flotilla of giant crew ships in the Channel, which were a mixture of British, French, American and Norwegian. He knew that there were other Charlie teams out there from the allocation of callsigns alone and wondered what their objectives were.

The door opened, and his ponderings ceased as he turned to face a smiling young Captain with the red eyes of a man who had probably drunk to excess the previous night and who had yet to shave that morning. He sketched a salute without waiting for it to be acknowledged and held out his hand.

“Julian Simpkins-Palmer, Household Cavalry,” he said introducing himself.

“Hadlington, Intelligence,” he responded brusquely as he shook the offered hand.

Palmer learned everything he needed to from that simple exchange.

Hadlington, he guessed, was a man without humour who had no time in his busy schedule for human interaction that didn’t directly involve something tangible and achievable. He probably made an instant judgement about the Captain from both his age and his appearance, but Palmer was not so insecure as to offer an explanation or an apology. He reckoned that Hadlington would probably disapprove of his spending time with the men under his command and mucking in with the dirty work when the timing was right. He would probably think that Palmer’s internal database of the men’s first names as well as their surnames was an ineffective waste of time for an officer, along with the few personal details he tried to recall for any man under his command.

He felt as though he had failed himself when trooper Harris died, because he didn’t know his first name. He only recalled that he wasn’t originally from the area but had moved because his father was in the navy, and that his signing up to the army had caused a family disagreement which he guessed would never be resolved now.

The major hadn’t even abbreviated his unit to the accepted ‘Int Corps’ that was the norm, and Palmer didn’t even want to consider his opinion on the capabilities of the men, given that they were predominantly reservists and not full-time soldiers.

“Captain,” Hadlington said, “I was informed that your men were equipped and ready to move. Is that not the case?”

“It is, Sir,” he said, “and they are. We had a spot of bother in the night is all.”

“Bother?” Hadlington asked, taken aback.

“Yes, Sir, seems a few of the blighters got wind of us here and made a concerted effort to come in uninvited. Been at it since about four this morning clearing them out and only just finished. If that’s all for now, Sir? I’d like to get cleaned up if you don’t mind?”

“Yes, of course,” Hadlington answered, a little shocked.

Just then, the Bedford returned from its second journey to the top of the hill to squeak to a loud halt outside the building just as Johnson greeted Palmer.

“The usual slime,” Johnson opined about the unsmiling major.

“Now, now, Mister Johnson,” he admonished the man gently with a smile of his own, “but I don’t think we will have a problem getting around him.”

Johnson opened his mouth to agree, to offer his opinion on being under orders of a Major who would suffer the runaround from the troops, but at that moment their problems were compounded.

The last man to climb down from the bed of the truck among his personal entourage wore the uniform of the Royal Scots. He had two privates in the same uniform caps attending him as his bag men and, as though some portent of imminent bad luck, wore the two stars and a crown of a full Colonel.

Both Palmer and Johnson deflated as one, the latter even letting a small groan of disappointment escape his lips. The Colonel noticed them at that point and stepped towards them beaming a smile. He walked with a curious gait, looking to pause on the ball of each foot before lifting the limb quickly, as though to catch up and make good the time lost from the hesitation. His face seemed genuinely happy to see them, but had an air of falsehood to it, as though he were on display for the film crews in some backwater country, giving out fake smiles to support the foreign interests of UK PLC.

“Colonel Tim Munro, Royal Scots,” he introduced himself with the same broad smile and no hint of a Scottish accent. Both men swelled to attention and offered salutes; Johnson with his right hand to his eyebrow and Palmer with his sub-machine gun held vertically in his left hand against his body and performing his salute with his right hand held against the weapon.

“At ease, chaps,” he said, “and you are?”

“Captain Palmer, Sir, Household Cavalry.”

Colonel Tim nodded affably and muttered, “Splendid, splendid,” then looked expectantly to Johnson.

“Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson, Sir,” he said woodenly, “C Squadron Yeomanry.”

“Splendid,” Colonel Tim said again, then seemed to grow bored with their company and turned away only to swing back and offer a mutter of advice to Palmer.

“Captain, perhaps you’d prefer to shave and change before we meet again? Show a better example for the men, eh? Good lad.”

“Yes Sir,” Palmer said, “sorry, Sir, won’t happen again.”

The two men sank again as the kindly old fool walked away.

“Well, bugger me,” Palmer said in a low breath as his hands ran over the scratchy stubble on his chin.

“Rather not, Sir,” Johnson said automatically, “but I suspect we’ve just crapped in our own mess tin getting that shower of shit land on us.”

“Mess Tim,” Palmer responded drily.

And the two of them finally realised the double blow their command structure had just dealt them. The intelligence corps major was too junior to be a wrinkle to the army personnel, let alone the Royal Marines, but the combination of the meticulous major and the blustering buffoon of a full Colonel was a true fait accompli; one made the suggestions but the other gave the orders. The major could be circumvented, given his status with the men and the Colonel could be ‘handled’ but the combination of them rendered the forces already on the ground powerless.

Palmer, as exhausted as he was, led the seven vehicles of his expedition across the road bridge within an hour of the arrival of their new commanding officer and his staff. He took Two Troop under the command of Sergeant Rod Sinclair. Johnson had flatly refused to allow Maxwell’s assault troop to go for two reasons; firstly, that their Spartans needed maintenance, and secondly that Maxwell had been in the vanguard of almost every mission they had run since the whole lunacy began. For a similar reason he left Strauss’ troop off the menu, as they hadn’t had a chance to fully recover from losing a man on their last venture outside the safety of the island. That left his two other Sabre troops, and of those, Sinclair’s was deemed the steadiest. Three Troop was a mixture of troopers moulded into one team of twelve that hadn’t yet obtained that kind of fighting unit cohesion they needed, at least not in Johnson’s opinion anyway, and that was what mattered.

He had relented and borrowed a reliable man from both Maxwell’s and Strauss’ troops to drive the two Saxons and taxi the eight Royal Marines under the leadership of their sergeant, Bill Hampton. In each of those armoured personnel carriers were four marines and a single nuclear engineer from America. The suggestion to split the precious cargo was a sensible precaution, as each of the skilled men was effectively protected by his own ‘brick’, or four-man patrol. Sticking to that template made it more likely that at least one of them would remain unharmed and capable of preventing the power station going boom.

The last vehicle, sitting in the middle between the Saxons with two Foxes fore and aft, was the Sultan vehicle that Johnson wished he had been in. He had lent him his radio operator, Corporal Daniels, as the man had been left looking for work after his ejection from the headquarters building.

Johnson watched them out of sight, not knowing that they would face nothing of the resistance they expected.

SEVENTEEN

Major Clive Downes stayed on one knee and looked over the iron sights and fat, suppressed barrel of the brand new MP5SD he had been issued along with his men. They were all familiar with the weapons, having used them extensively when their squadron rotated onto the ‘Black’ team, but the sudden change felt slightly alien.

They had just spent seven months living in the caves and villages with the Mujahedeen, as unsavoury as the experience was, and had been carrying the plentiful AK47s that flooded half of the world. There was no need for heavy calibre penetration with this strange new enemy, and their distance needs were catered for by one of his men who carried the rarest of possessions in the western military; that of the Soviet VAL 9mm silenced sniper rifle.

That weapon had been one of the reasons that US and UK special forces had been in Afghanistan, as the Soviet technological advances with an active war for testing, had been astronomical. Consequently, samples of new weapons were highly sought after to enable them to produce effective countermeasures, should the Cold War turn hot. That captured rifle had never made it into the hands of the civilian masters, however, and would now be employed against the dead instead of being rigorously tested and reverse-engineered.

The arms race had become the new space race, with each side of the globe working tirelessly to develop new weaponry to beat the defences of their potential opposition.

With their rapid-firing suppressed machine guns and their silenced sniper rifle, their doomsday options were strapped to the backs of two of them in the forms of shotguns; fully automatic shotguns, for when they had no option but to go loud.

Their sidearms, as with many special forces teams, were a mixture as they had access to a choice of weapons to suit their individual preferences. The regular troops, what the men of the Special Air Service referred to as the Green Army, would never be allowed to pick their weapons or show individual flavours as they did. Two of them carried the Browning Hi-Power, one carried the American Colt .45 and their Major preferred the Sig-Sauer P228.

Those four men, with their weapon-based idiosyncrasies, possessed enough firepower and lethal training to perform as an entire platoon of regular soldiers. Now, kneeling in a rough circle facing outwards, they listened as the sounds of the helicopter blades faded away into silence.

As if the four men had evolved to become streamlined instruments of warfare, even their names were mostly single-syllable. Their officer, nominally in charge but in their arena at the peak of their chosen profession every man had a say, was known simply as Boss or The Boss to the men. The men, a corporal and two troopers, were similarly named Mac, Desmond or ‘Dezzy’ and Smiffy. He introduced himself as Smiffy with two fs, in his cheeky south London accent. Desmond wasn’t Dezzy’s real name, but it was a joke at his expense from his parent unit, who said they would see him soon and dubbed him Desmond Tutu, as in Two-Two for 22 SAS, when he left for Hereford on selection. The joke backfired, as he passed selection on his first attempt and retained the nickname in celebration.

To outsiders, their curious tight-knit nature seemed unnatural and very un-army-like. But outsiders didn’t understand them. Other than their Major, who retained his rank when passing selection, when ordinarily he would have been forced to rotate out after two or three years, as he had done when he’d served his first stint in the regiment as a captain. The enlisted men lost whatever rank they held in their parent units and often went from sergeants or corporals back to being troopers. The fact that the major had been invited back for a second stint spoke volumes about his competency.

The sound of rotor blades faded into silence and Mac’s soft Scottish voice drifted to the others from behind them as they covered their own sectors of fire.

“Three, slow movers, one hundred yards,” he muttered.

“Smiffy,” the major said, “on you.”

Trooper Smith said nothing but turned and lay flat, pointing towards the direction Mac was facing. He slipped the long rifle from his shoulder and settled into the stock, pausing a few heartbeats before the three whistling coughs barked from the gun. All three zombies fell, and the Major called the move.

They stepped towards the big power plant in bounds; two men covering and two men moving. The main access door was opened with a swipe card which had been coded and provided by their colonial cousins. The door opened with a tiny metallic buzz and Mac held the handle of the door as he glanced back to see the other three stacked up in tight formation with their MP5s up and ready.

They went in, clearing the building section by section and finding only a dozen people inside the compound after three hours of thorough searching. Not people specifically, but undead, lurching creatures who had been, up until fairly recently, people.

“Call it in,” Downes said to Mac, who was carrying their radio, and watched as he snaked out the antenna on the ground.

“Zero, this is Charlie-One-One. Zero, Charlie-One-One, over,” he said in low, robotic tones.

“One-One, Zero, send,” came the female voice from the other end of the ether.

“One-One, target secure. ETA on convoy?”

“Stand by, one,” came the operator’s voice before a brief pause, “ETA one-nine minutes, over.”

Mac glanced at the Boss, who nodded back. Nineteen minutes until the engineers arrived with their armoured escort to stop the plant from going critical. Mac acknowledged the information and signed off to pack up the radio gear. Nineteen minutes came and went in relative quiet, other than the two shambling callers at the gate. The four men still maintained cover and situational awareness, ingrained habits they were unable to switch off after a life of considering incoming enemy fire. They had yet to see a zombie with the ability to bring a weapon to bear, but carelessness, as Mac liked to say, often led to a mild case of death.

The two callers were allowed to come close, then both took single rounds in the skull as they coughed from Dezzy’s MP5 at a distance of twenty feet. They had learned to be economical with their shots, unless faced with one of the rare faster ones that usually denoted a sizeable force of zombies would soon follow. This experience had been earned shortly after their return from the sub to the surface of the water, when told they would be employed for precision missions and would be inserted far behind enemy lines, such as they were. Downes requested a day in theatre for training, as the intelligence briefs held no mention or description of how to fight them.

The powers that be allowed the request after a day of deliberation, evidently deciding that their small team was replaceable should they not return, and the intelligence they could bring back would be worthwhile.

Given that they had already been told that sound attracted them, and that a tiny percentage of them acted differently and were more dangerous, Downes requested the suppressed MP5s. They flew by helicopter to a sparsely-populated region of northern France and spent six hours developing tactics which they reported back to command. Their rules were simple:

- small groups, low noise profile,

- use suppressed weapons whenever possible,

- avoid large concentrations of enemy and drop the faster ones at distance as soon identification made,

- then clear out before arrival of their faithful followers.

Their tactics were under the radar, invisible, and quiet. The rest of the time was waited out in silence, until the whistling and squeaking of moving armour tickled the edges of their hearing. Nobody said anything, because they didn’t have to. An armoured convoy was the exact opposite of the warfare that they practised, and although impressive and able to bring a staggering and devastating amount of firepower to bear, they also attracted every shuffling corpse inside of a mile radius just by driving along the road, even before they fired a shot.

The diversionary tactic from the American Apache pilot should have helped, as he flew over fifty miles east before destroying a large road bridge to stem the flow of corpses and contain them. This also served to make a lot of noise and attract anything heading in the direction of the power station away towards the fast-flowing river and the sea beyond where the bridge had collapsed.

As the seven vehicles stormed in and had the gates pushed closed behind them, the four men jogged in to the entrance where the convoy formed a semi-circle and faced their guns outwards. A man wearing a captain’s insignia stepped down from a tracked light tank and met the four men as they arrived.

“Captain Palmer,” he said to the men, who weren’t in the slightest bit breathless after their quarter-mile run from the gate, “Household Cavalry.”

“Captain,” acknowledged Mac as the first man to have arrived, giving Palmer the incorrect assumption that he was the officer leading the group. Downes stayed back from the conversation, waiting to hear what transpired.

“I presume you’ve been inside?” Palmer asked, guessing that the four men with wild beards and piercing eyes were clearly what his men would call sneaky-beaky, and probably wouldn’t have felt it necessary to wait for half a squad of marines to check out an abandoned building.

“It’s clear,” Mac said simply, “you’ve brought the engineers?”

In answer, two men were escorted towards the doors, with four marines surrounding each one.

“We’ll take it from here,” Downes said, stepping forward and speaking for the first time. Palmer’s eyebrows rose slightly, indicating that his trained ear had picked up on the educated voice and had clearly misunderstood who the officer was. Given the man’s age, Palmer also correctly surmised in an eye-blink that the man was his senior and responded accordingly.

“Of course, Sir,” he answered, “I shall set the perimeter and wait for instructions.”

Downes nodded his thanks to him and turned to indicate that the two engineers should follow. The six men disappeared inside after the door was swiped open, leaving Palmer with that cold sense of having been bypassed by some ghostly spirit and unsure of what he had experienced.

“Sinclair? Hampton?” Palmer said loudly, waiting for the army and marine sergeants to report to him.

“The Sultan is to remain here,” he said, indicating a strong point by the doors, “with two Foxes. Take the other two to the gate and switch off the engines. Hampton? Perimeter patrols in opposing directions, if you please.”

The sergeants acknowledged their orders, gave their own to make it happen, and Palmer waited.

* * *

“There and there,” said one engineer, his accent alien in the English countryside, “we need to access that panel and recalibrate, then reset the coolant flow from up there,” he finished, pointing to a glass bubble on the walkway level above their heads.

The four men of the SAS patrol listened, but in honesty cared little for the technicalities as they wouldn’t be asked to perform the task and thought it better to keep to their areas of expertise. They kept their weapons ready as the two Americans went about their work, draining the coolant and powering down the output to a more manageable level. The mostly-depleted coolant had drained away and the large pipes whooshed as more water pumped in. The two men worked for almost forty minutes, far less time than Downes expected, before declaring that they were done.

“That’s it?” he asked them.

“Sure, all we had to do was drain the system, power it down as much as possible and top off the tanks,” he replied, “This place is only kicking out about thirty percent of normal, but it’s good for almost a year before we have to do anything to it. It ain’t like there are a lot of folks around here using their microwaves, right?” he finished with a laugh.

“Nah, mate,” Smiffy said acidly, “because most people in our fuckin’ country are dead, so show a bit of respect.”

The man shut his mouth, packed up his tools, and waited to be led back outside.

“Captain?” Downes said as he looked up to where Palmer was sprouting out of the hatch on the Sultan.

“Sir?”

“Is your man linked to your base?” Downes asked, wanting to know if they had open radio communication.

“He is,” Palmer told him.

“Could you trouble them for our transport to be sent?” Downes enquired politely.

Palmer frowned, “Of course, but,” he said hesitantly, “aren’t you hitching a ride back with us?”

“They are,” Downes said as he gestured to the engineers, “we’re not.”

He said nothing else, telling Palmer that the subject was, at least as far as the irregular soldiers of the special forces were concerned, closed. Palmer instructed his radio man to make the call and received his own orders to return to the island. Palmer offered to remain until such time as the helicopter arrived for the four-man team, but Downes quietly embarrassed him by pointing out that anything following the noise trail would be after them and not the aircraft it would never find. He didn’t embarrass himself further by enquiring where they were going but wished the men well as he recalled his convoy to prepare to depart.

“Don’t worry, Captain,” Downes said with a chilling smile that was probably meant to seem reassuring, “something tells me we’ll be meeting again soon.”

* * *

Long before the convoy returned, Johnson found himself summoned by the new commander of their island to deal with a civilian matter. He entered the room to find Colonel Tim looking remarkably flustered and the three men of his entourage seemingly powerless to assist.

“Thank God for that,” said a young woman who appeared to be the spokesperson for the three civilians sitting at the table, “someone with some sense at last. Mister Johnson, would you please explain to this man that we aren’t soldiers and that the army doesn’t own us?”

Johnson turned to his new commanding officer and saluted, which seemed to please the man.

“Miss Perkins, perhaps if I understood the issue better?” he said gently, meaning that he had no damned clue what was happening.

“This gentleman,” Kimberley said as she gestured towards the rather deflated-looking Colonel, “wants us all herded up and catalogued. Perhaps we should have serial numbers tattooed on our arms to make life easier for you?”

“Sergeant Major,” Colonel Tim interrupted in what he thought was a placatory tone but in fact bathed the room in arrogance and condescension, “all I simply said was that we need to record the details of every civilian living under our protection here so that we can properly establish who can be of service.”

“That’s not what he said,” Kimberley explained in a mirroring tone of talking down to him before glancing back at Johnson, “he said that we are all, what was it? Suckling at the military teat? And that we have to show our gratitude.”

Johnson understood. He understood the point that both people were trying to make and was firmly of the opinion that the elderly buffoon understood no concept of speaking to an audience that wasn’t disciplined and dutybound to call him Sir and follow his orders.

“Perhaps, Miss Perkins,” he enquired politely, “if the Colonel and I could discuss military matters in private for a moment?”

Kimberley understood, gave a nod to the two men there in support of her, who looked similarly offended, and retrieved a cigarette and lighter from her purse before stepping outside.

“May I, Sir?” Johnson asked, gesturing at a vacant chair.

“By all means, Johnson, by all means,” the Colonel responded.

Johnson sat, cast a cold glance at the two orderlies, which clearly translated as a polite request for them to make themselves scarce, and smiled at the officer. His aide, a Lieutenant who probably had an advanced qualification in senior officer babysitting, and a tenuous family connection to the royals which elevated him above his years and rank, remained standing behind his Colonel.

“Sir, I don’t want to overstep, but if I may offer a solution to dealing with the civilians that would save time and allow you to concentrate on command matters instead?” Johnson said. The Lieutenant smiled, acknowledging a fellow smooth-talker.

“What do you have in mind?” Colonel Tim asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

“It’s just that an officer from my squadron had done all the legwork before you arrived, Sir, and if you’ll permit me to say, Sir, it’s more of a junior officer’s job, so that you can keep a tactical awareness of the situation as a whole, Sir, and be ready to lead us instead of being bogged down with the whys and wherefores of the rank and file, let alone the vagaries of civilian management,” he said, baffling the man’s brain with what seemed like the witchcraft of the working classes. He had used this trick more than once in his career when dealing with officers and spouting total rubbish with a confident tone and a hopeful smile at the end of his official-sounding waffle never failed to confuse any senior officer.

“Ah, I see,” the Colonel said as he leaned back and gave a theatrically conspiratorial wink, “so you think this man would be better placed to smooth the waves, eh? Manage the herd a little?”

“Absolutely, Sir,” Johnson said with a smile, happy that the man had seen the logical suggestion in his utter nonsense.

“Very well, I trust you’ll see to that?” he asked as he craned his neck up to his aide.

“Of course, Sir, I shall seek out this…” he trailed off as he shot a questioning look at Johnson.

“Lieutenant Simpkins-Palmer, Sir,” he answered, investing the objectionable, jumped-up brat of an officer’s name with as much aristocratic idiocy as he could muster.

“I shall find him right away, assuming he can be spared from his duties,” the aide replied.

Johnson was dismissed and watched as the Colonel stepped outside and slipped on his cap to clasp his hands behind his back and enjoy a relaxing stroll back down the hill, seemingly without a care in the world. Johnson followed, stopped next to Kimberley Perkins and glared at the two orderlies, who were also smoking and standing close to the civilian woman.

“Well?” he asked them, “Off you fuck, lads.”

They scurried away after their Colonel, eager to flee the big warrant officer, even if they didn’t fall directly under his command.

He turned to face the three civilians as soon as they were alone.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said formally.

“That’s quite alright, Sergeant,” said a man who Johnson guessed was perhaps in his early fifties. He bridled at the unintentional demotion the man gave him and tried to ignore it.

“You’ll have Lieutenant Palmer back acting as a buffer between yourselves and the new Colonel,” he said, feeling as though he was betraying his beloved British Army ever so slightly, “but I rather suspect that the man wants to feel more useful…”

“We understand, Mister Johnson,” Kimberley said to mollify the conversation, “and I apologise that you were called into that, but I suspected it might have got out of control had we not sent for you,” she said as she self-consciously brushed her hair down over the left side of her face, as she did often.

It was only then that the Squadron Sergeant Major, a man who prided himself on being astute and living in the world between the lines, realised that the Colonel had not sent for him to control the unruly civilian population, but rather that the civilians had sent for him to assist them. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for the time being, so he squared it away until he could figure it out. He opened his mouth to say that he would provide Lieutenant Palmer with specific instructions, but his words were stopped in his throat.

“Sergeant Major,” Kimberley said as she watched him out of the right side of her face, turning the left side away self-consciously, “we are having an informal meeting tonight to discuss matters. I wonder if you would join us? The Royal Arms at five?”

Johnson was taken aback by the sudden invitation but managed to keep his face from showing it. He regained his composure and said that he would try to make it if duty allowed.

Embarrassed, he made his way to find the younger Palmer and tell him exactly what he needed to do.

EIGHTEEN

Peter and Amber woke again that morning and went through the same routine of eating breakfast and feeding the cat, who had returned undetected at some point. The house itself was comfortable and secure, and there was enough food for another two days at least, but the water situation meant that they would be forced to find somewhere new that day.

He told Amber this, and thought it was remarkable how such a young kid could take bad things happening in her stride without complaining. She didn’t cry, she didn’t complain or refuse to help, she just nodded and got on with everything.

Peter filled his water bottle before they left, using a small cup to decant the water from the toilet cistern to pour it in a bit at a time, and then he asked Amber if she needed to use the toilet one last time before they left.

She screwed up her face in thought, rolled her eyes up toward her left brow, and pursed her lips before finally nodding that she did. Peter smiled at her, finding her silent ways of communicating with him both funny and endearing, and placed a hand on her head without thinking as she walked past. She didn’t respond to the touch, and Peter didn’t even register that he had done it, such was the strength of the protective bond he felt for the girl already.

It was as though she was more than just another person who had survived, it was as though he had saved her life, which he reckoned he had because there’d been one of the things coming for the door when he’d found her, and that somehow made her his responsibility.

She was his burden, but not with any sense of regret or reluctance. Her survival had somehow become his life’s mission overnight, and the thought of abandoning her or failing in that mission was simply unthinkable to him. Amber was now his sole purpose in life, as he didn’t seem to have any other pressing engagements on his calendar.

His musings had gone on so long that she had returned downstairs from the bathroom and stood level with his stomach and smiled up at him briefly.

She was ready to go.

Peter had fed the cat, unloading two cans of food onto plates for it to give it a head start after they left. The window was left partly open, and they shut the back door after themselves when they left. The cat hadn’t come back after breakfast to say goodbye to them.

Peter had loaded up his backpack with as much of the heavier stuff as possible, leaving Amber with the shopping bag to manage. That kept his hands free to wield the pitchfork and he crouched low to stalk along the rear path and around the side of the house. They saw nothing moving in the village, but Peter thought their luck had been pushed sufficiently to warrant moving on. Plus, he couldn’t guarantee that there was any more water in the other houses. He looked up into the overgrown hedge, lifting the weapon to move a sprig of a leafy branch out of the way of the road sign.

Fingerboard, his mind told him out of nowhere when he saw it. He guessed that name, wherever he had heard it, made sense as it was like a finger telling him how far it was to the next place and in what direction.

The fingerboards gave him a choice of two places, both of which his inbuilt sense of direction said were okay, as he hadn’t been to them yet. One said four and a half miles, written in numbers and fractions, the other said two and three quarters. Looking down at Amber’s little legs, he chose the second place and pointed out their direction to her. She said nothing, not that he expected her to, and just started stepping off in that direction. He set off beside her, both of them walking in the middle of the road, Peter sweeping his eyes left and right as they went. He looked down at her out of the corner of his eye, marvelling that someone so little could walk so well, given what she had been through.

A high-pitched whine pierced the upper limits of his hearing, making his body tense in anticipation and his breathing grow rapid, ready to move if he had to. Before he had a chance to make a decision, a screaming, blurry dark monster erupted overhead and shot over them at a deceptively low altitude. He expected it to blow them violently with a downwash, but instead only the noise reached them. Both of them flinched and ducked lower, as though the flying monster was much, much lower than it was.

As quickly as it had burst into their world it was gone again, straight over their heads and out of sight in another heartbeat, leaving behind it a brief, violent memory and the fading scream of the engines. The two children straightened and looked at one other, Peter with an open mouth and wide eyes and Amber with a shrug and a look of bewildered amusement.

Unable to think of anything appropriate to say for the occasion, Peter looked around their surroundings instead, in case anything unwelcome also wanted to see where the big, fast-moving helicopter had disappeared to.

They had walked for what his blue and red watch face told him was just over thirty minutes, when they stopped and now Peter saw a footpath intersecting the route they were on. The path to their left dropped down a slight hill to where the very tops of chimneys showed. He glanced back to the road, reading from the direction of the trees ahead that the road looped to the left. At least he guessed it did. He looked at the distant building down the sloping path, back to the road and back again as he tried to figure out whether to risk the shortcut. As he was close to figuring it out, a small hand tugged at his trouser leg.

He looked down to Amber, a sinking feeling in his chest, and wondered what fresh hell was heading their way. She pointed back down the road in the direction they had come from, and he squinted to see what she had.

“What is it?” he asked her.

In response she just shook her outstretched finger in the same direction, meaning that he should look instead of talking. He squinted his eyes, straining to see anything until a flash of dark movement made his breath catch in his throat.

Until he realised what it was.

“Ha!” he blurted out loudly in shocked amusement. Amber let out a small giggle as he realised what her sharp eyes had already seen.

Tail raised vertically and curled over at the very tip, the black and brown cat popped out of the long grass of the verge and trotted towards them.

It meowed when it got close, walked straight in between their legs and began snaking around Amber as it rose up off its front paws to purr loudly and rub its cheek against her hand. Amber looked up at Peter, her eyes asking the question that her lips would not. Peter shrugged, seeing no possible way he could even enforce leaving the cat behind if he wanted to, and not having the heart to say no anyway.

I guess I’m just collecting strays now, he thought to himself with mock annoyance.

“Come on, then,” he said to both of them, and climbed the wooden posts in the hedgerow break to follow the footpath down the slope. He turned and reached out for Amber to pass him her bag, sticking the pitchfork into the dirt so that it stood up vertically, then held out his other hand after she had passed over the bag to help her over. She took his hand unthinkingly, much the same way as a child would when crossing the road with a grown up, but the small gesture of trust and the warmth of her hand made him feel better somehow.

After they had climbed over, they turned to look at the cat, who just stared at them blankly from the other side. Peter spoke to it, offering encouragement like it was a younger sibling who was refusing to walk another step. Amber make a kissing noise with her lips and patted her legs. The cat stared at both of them before abruptly craning its neck over its left shoulder to lick itself.

“Come on,” Peter told the girl, “if it’s followed us this far, it’ll follow us the rest of the way.”

Amber seemed to consider this and shrugged again, picking up her bag again ready to move. When they reached the outskirts of the village after another twenty minutes of walking down the gently sloping field, they found that the path they were on emerged into a graveyard. Peter’s back crawled, threatening to make him shudder. His only experience of zombies was of them as cartoon characters, and then they were usually comedy characters with a hilariously low intelligence and easily foiled by the animated hero of the programme he was watching. They were always represented as bursting out of their graves one hand at a time and shuffling off in search of brains, which made him question the effectiveness of burial in the first place.

Weren’t people in coffins when they were buried? How did they get out and stand up under the weight of the soil? How shallow were the graves in these cartoons and why did they have green skin and crazy eyes?

Thought of the eyes sobered him. Maybe some of the cartoons had been right, only they hadn’t known or hadn’t told the truth that instead of being funny characters, they were relentless and terrifying if they gathered in more than pairs. Flashbacks came to him of the mob, the horde of things who blew through his home and devoured everything living except him, through his quick actions and dumb luck.

Maybe the cartoons should have shown the zombies as people the characters knew, maybe their best friend, and made them watch as they burned up and died and then got up and ripped the heroes apart with their hands and teeth.

Shaking those dark thoughts away, he looked for a way to skirt the graveyard and found a small stone bridge over a tiny trickle of a brook which he could easily have jumped. Amber couldn’t, he guessed, so he led her over the little bridge.

“Trip, trap, trip, trap…” she whispered from the bank behind him as he walked over the narrow stones. Peter froze, instantly recalling the tale of the three billy goats and the troll under the bridge. His feet woke up before his brain and he stepped fast over the bridge and turned to snatch Amber up but saw that she had stopped before the bridge and was pointing down.

A hand, pale and bloated with wet skin peeled away from where the blackened fingernails clawed at the bridge to haul a naked and milky-eyed monstrosity from the shallow water below.

The first thought to strike him and run through his brain almost conversationally, was about the exact circumstances that had led to a person who had turned into one of them being, at least mostly from what he could see, naked and hiding under a tiny stone bridge by a graveyard in a village with maybe twenty buildings. He wondered what possible scenario could have led to this happening, and he found himself at a total loss for a logical explanation.

As this flash of thought ran through his brain, roughly a second had passed in the real world, and in that second, the pale and bloated skin of the thing’s head rose up out of the shallow water with globules of green algae plastered to its face and partly obscuring its mouth. Then, and possibly worst of all, the thing that struck him next was the smell.

Afterwards, much afterwards in fact, he decided to re-categorise what he had experienced at that moment and classified the smell as something worse than a stench, but not quite a foul taste. It was definitely up there with the time on the farm he had to try and stay quiet with half of his mouth containing mud and slime which was mostly animal shit, and he reckoned it might have actually been worse.

Instead of wasting time considering all of these illogical and irrelevant thoughts, he decided to thrust out the pitchfork and solve the problem before it became any worse than a fright and a disgusting smell. As he lined up the weapon, the bloated mess let out a hiss that was mostly a gargle through a clogged mouth, but it was answered with another hiss of pure venom and aggression.

On the low wall next to Amber, the cat had caught up and was voicing its opinion about the situation. Peter knew that cats had a much better sense of smell than humans, so he couldn’t even begin to imagine what the cat felt about the bloated floater.

Before the situation devolved any further, the pitchfork’s prongs entered the thing’s head just before and just behind its left ear and ended the grand entrance before it had chance to get into full flow.

Peter withdrew the weapon with a grunt and a sharp pull, and the repulsive lump flopped back into the low, murky water. The cat had stopped hissing but stayed utterly motionless and kept its eyes on the thing, with only twitches of a hugely puffed-up tail betraying that it wasn’t a statue. Amber just looked blankly at him.

Then he remembered the warning she’d given him, as cryptic as it was, and he held out a hand for her to cross over to him. She didn’t hesitate and skipped across the bridge lightly to join him, then looked back at the cat who hopped down and stalked over the bridge to follow.

“How did you know?” he whispered to her as his head swivelled to locate any other unwelcome surprises, “Did you see it?” he asked, worrying that he had looked and hadn’t seen it there. She didn’t answer, so he stole a glance at her to check. She shrugged, a genuine ʿI don’t knowʾ shrug and smiled back at him.

Peter didn’t know what he expected, so he guessed the shrug was what he deserved. He pointed at her, then to his side and waited for her to nod. Stalking out into the road with her beside him, he crept along in the open so as not to be surprised by any more jack-in-the-box zombies in close quarters. He made for the largest house he could see, stopping once to listen intently as Amber stood still in total silence as though she wasn’t even breathing. The cat had disappeared again but that was hardly his priority at that point.

He saw three cars parked on the road at nearby houses which seemed to be so old in construction that they didn’t have driveways and noticed something was somehow off about them. They were at unnatural angles, because people usually parked their cars vaguely straight. Their wing mirrors were bent backwards or pushed in, depending on whether he could see the front or the back of the cars, and all of them were smeared with dried streaks of black.

Sneaking towards the house and the taller than average front door, he pointed for Amber to wait on the other side of the big car and waited until she moved. Exchanging a look, he left her there and tried the front door.

He’d once seen a television programme where the woman with big curly hair claimed that crime was up so high that people were afraid to leave their doors unlocked any more. That struck Peter as a stupid thing to say, because if locks weren’t necessary, why did every door have them? Personally, he was glad to live in the country for two reasons. One, the only city he had ever been to was London, which had burned down in riots a month ago, from what he had seen on the news, and two, around there a lot of people actually did leave their doors unlocked.

The big house was one of them. He turned the round, brass doorknob and was rewarded by protesting springs until a click denoted it was open. Pushing it gently inwards, he stood back two paces and raised the pitchfork.

“Hello?” he called into the house as loud as he dared, and hearing no reply. He looked over to Amber, seeing the top of her head from the nose up as she peered over the front of the car, and tried to figure out what to do, to try and decide whether he should take her inside on a house search and put both of them at risk if they had to run away.

Just then, he realised what the signs outside had meant, and what had happened there. It also went some way to explaining how a naked zombie found itself stuck in a low brook, and he knew in that instant that there wouldn’t be a single one of them there unless it was trapped.

That horde which had nearly consumed him in a flood, that swarm of corpses that had steamed across the countryside like a roller had been through here in some form. It had filled that road outside and swept inexorably onwards, and anything that was free to shuffle or walk or crawl would have been taken along with it. With renewed confidence in his logic, he called out louder into the house.

“Oi,” he yelled, “zombies!”

He smiled to himself as he said it, knowing that he was showing off for Amber and not caring. He smiled because it was the first time he had used the word out loud and when he did, it seemed to take some of the fear and stress out of the situation.

Nothing happened inside the house, so he waved her to him and walked inside. It had five bedrooms, an office, wardrobes that seemed more like bedrooms in size, without windows, and a door to another room where the washing machine and a tumble drier were built into the same worktops as the kitchen had. There was a door from that room that led into the big garage where there were tools and camping things and an old car with no roof.

He checked every room, every cupboard and every possible place that a person could hide in, as though it was a high-stakes hide and seek tournament.

Loser gets eaten, he thought grimly, but he was right, and the house was empty.

As impressive as it was, as huge and luxurious as the kitchen was, which he guessed was about the same size as the entire ground floor of his old house, it yielded about a day’s worth of food for them, which meant that he would have to check the other houses in the village. He was happy to do that, hell he’d been doing it for a few weeks before he met Amber, but at least he would have somewhere for her to stay when he went. The one good thing was that the garage contained plastic bottles of water, which meant that they wouldn’t be drinking from toilet cisterns for a while.

They roamed the house looking for things and Peter checked the flow of the taps to see if they worked, purely out of interest. To his utter disbelief, and by some miracle, the tap he turned flowed strongly with water.

Water that, to his great delight, was getting hot.

NINETEEN

“Ward, where are we with comms?” Hadlington asked, with a hint of desperation in his voice.

“Still nothing, Sir,” she said coolly, but inside she was screaming for a way to warn the two teams of SAS and SBS that they were heading directly into a complete shit storm. She blamed the Americans, naturally, as they had been late in relaying the information to their own command, who had then passed it directly on to the land-based control room for that area. Had the information come only thirty minutes earlier, she could have contacted the helicopter pilot and ordered the abort, but the teams were on the ground and totally unaware what was coming for them.

“Fucking hell,” Hadlington swore under his breath, “get me command,” he told her, “and send a runner to fetch me the Colonel. I need him to sign an order for these men to drive into the lion’s den.”

* * *

The four men comprising Charlie-One-One had climbed in silence back aboard the helicopter that had been sent for them and held on to the hanging straps as the bird’s nose tipped towards the east and powered away. Technically they weren’t back on board, as this helicopter, while being the same model, was a fully-fuelled one that had come via a gentler speed as their first ride was blasting back to its floating home. This one was tasked with dropping them off in south London, where they were due to rendezvous with Charlie-One-Two, who were infiltrating up the Thames, no doubt in order to provide additional options should any team have an issue getting in or out. The team and their boats would have been inserted by helicopter in the wider stretches of the river to the east for them to slip into the city quietly.

The other team had been at their own small base on the south coast when the shit hit the fan, and as they were so few in number, they were forced to take to the Channel in their rigid inflatable boats to escape the enemy masses on dry land. When the navy began to congregate in the relatively narrow waterway between the English and French coasts, they were picked up and rapidly portioned off into individual patrols to be made available for use wherever command saw fit.

Of that four-man team, two had seen warfare in the East Falklands in 1982 and constantly reminded the others of that. All of them were formerly Royal Marines, as were all troopers of their four squadrons, but one had taken the unusual route of joining first the Royal Navy, before becoming enamoured with the elite reputation of the marines. He had quit after four years because he was told there was no possible way to transfer. His branch had been at manning balance, and not surplus, so there was no way he could transfer, he was told. So he had left, signed out and walked off base to go straight into the forces careers office to sign on as a Royal Marine recruit, then waited in cheap accommodation outside Plymouth for five weeks until the next recruitment process began. It never occurred to him that he wouldn’t pass recruitment and selection.

That confidence, which some of the training staff saw as arrogance, saw him through the Commando course and onto an accelerated path to his first promotion, due to his previous experience and capabilities. Some thought him career-driven, but those who worked with him knew him to be all work at work, and all play outside. After another four years in a new coloured beret, he again had his head turned when his unit had encountered members of the UK Special Forces in Northern Ireland.

They were kept separate in the barracks, with its anti-mortar mesh and high walls, and they were ordered not to talk to them or ask about their activities. He had disobeyed that order, finding a man who had greeted some of the older marines in his unit. Finding out that the man had previously been one of them, he asked him outright who he was with.

The Special Boat Service became his next goal, and his request for selection followed as soon as he returned to the UK. In his usual style he passed selection on his first attempt, relishing the gruelling physical and mental pressure of being tested beyond the expected limits of human performance and resolve.

Now, despite his previous experience and time spent as a special forces soldier, he was still referred to as The Matelot. Alex Bufford, Sergeant Special Boat Service, preferred to be called Buffs. He was tall, fit and strong as one would expect from a former marine, but he found that the majority of his fellow special forces soldiers were often short and wiry, in contrast to his big shoulders and thick arms. His strength was overt, whereas others seemed more like tough goats or ants that seemed able to lift ten times their own body weight.

Buffs, a newly-minted Sergeant through exceptionally hard work, led his team of four in two rigid inflatable boats up the filthy Thames river, which was thick with floating corpses that bobbed on the surface, bloated and rotting. Their engines were only turning at less than half their capacity for two reasons: to keep a lower noise profile and to allow them to avoid the worst concentrations of dead bastards. On more than one occasion they were forced to power up and then lift their propellers from the water to bump over the bodies without blending them.

With two men in each boat they were well below capacity, but the likelihood was that they were their own ‘exfil’ and a rescue was about as possible as finding a decent bar open in the city.

They found the small pier they wanted by the GPS co-ordinates and cut their engines in unison to float the rest of the way in silence. Tying off their crafts, they slipped onto dry land and stalked effectively forwards as their guns came up to cover all angles.

Straight ahead, third right, second left, first right, first right, he repeated to himself, going over the map in his head which correlated to the one in his leg pocket. The map was totally unmarked and folded to its original lines so as not to even betray the area they were operating in, in case they were captured. Operational habits of basic mission secrecy were so deeply ingrained in them that even the inability of their enemy to read a map would not encourage procedure to be abandoned.

They made the turns on his lead, taking each turn as they had in training and real-life, until they reached the innocuous double doors of their target location.

A bird noise, piercing and subtle yet alien to the environment, sounded to their right. It came from a fire-damaged corner of a building on the first floor, where the partly destroyed glass offered a wide view of the street below. Buffs stopped and dropped to one knee, looking up at the window not at anything he could see, but at the place where he would have placed his own team if he had arrived first.

“One-Two,” he said softly, waiting for a response.

“One-One, coming down,” came the reply, before the slightest shirt in the shadows moved behind the damaged glass. Moments later four men emerged dressed and equipped similarly to them, with the addition of beards that only served to make their eyes seem brighter, as they were framed by unruly darkness.

The man at their point nodded to him in a curt but efficient greeting, then stopped to take a knee beside him.

“Downes, Hereford,” he introduced himself.

“Bufford, Poole,” Buffs responded.

Pleasantries exchanged, they stepped through the double doors and slowly descended the steps towards the underground lab that nobody knew was there, let alone responsible for the end of days. They clicked on the bright torches attached to their weapons to illuminate the pitch black where sunlight could not penetrate and found the outer door of the lab.

The MP5 had no bayonet, so dispatching the single lurching corpse who stood resting its face against the thick security glass of that door could not be done at distance unless with a bullet. Given that even suppressed shots make noises, especially in cavernous underground areas, Buffs dropped his weapon to hang on its strap and held up a hand to signal the other seven men not to fire. Just as the zombie turned in response to the approaching lights and footfalls to leave part of its face glued to the glass and expose bright white bone on its forehead, Buffs slipped the small pioneer axe from the belt loop on his right hip and swung the small weapon to bury the pointed end downwards into the skull of the creature to crumple it down to the ground.

Downes watched with evident respect for the display and the weapon, using his weapon-mounted torch to regard the short-handled axe to see a brightly polished head smeared with dark gore. The axe had clearly been a display piece somewhere, but questions about it would have to wait. He stepped forwards and tapped repeatedly on the glass until a suspicious pair of wild eyes set in a dishevelled face appeared.

“Open. The fucking. Door,” Downes said slowly, with a visible finger pointed downwards to the lock, carefully mouthing each word until the unmoving man inside finally snapped into reality and turned a ship-style handle inside to unseal it.

The eight men stepped inside, weapons up and scanning as they fanned out to search the collection of rooms, which stank beyond compare. It was not enough to assume that the lab was made safe just because someone else was in there, they had to see for themselves.

“Professor Grewal?” Downes asked, placing a hand on the shoulder of the man and crouching slightly to try and force eye contact, “Professor Sunil Grewal?” he tried again, with a shake as Buffs closed the door behind them.

“Sunny,” Grewal said, as he seemed to emerge back into consciousness. Downes winced at the man’s breath.

“Okay, Sunny, we’re getting you out of here. Do you have the samples?” he asked.

Grewal nodded and pointed to a large specialist case. Downes nodded to one of his troopers, who picked the case up with evident difficulty.

“Mac?” he said, then, hearing the response from behind him, “find the computers.”

Mac did, tipping over the heavy desktop units and smashing open their cases and prising out the huge internal drives. Dezzy was collecting all of the 3½ inch floppy discs and stuffing them into a black bag indiscriminately, while Smiffy began to pour acrid smelling fuel onto key things such as paperwork. Meanwhile, two of Buffs’ team assisted by piling things into easier piles.

Just then, the telephone on the wall rang a shrill chirping noise. Grewal giggled to himself, as though the telephone being real was a sudden shock to him, and Buffs picked it up.

A short conversation ensued, during which pertinent questions were asked.

“How big? …Location? …Direction? …How long? …Understood.”

Just as he replaced the handset and opened his mouth, a shout came from the door they had come through.

“Company,” was all it said, and company didn’t come close to accurately describing what was out there.

“How many?” Buffs asked in a low voice, considering whether the two teams could cover the mile through the city to their boats and get out ahead of the leading edge of the wave. Eight men and one civilian who would probably need carrying, he imagined, along with the heavy sample case.

Left, left, second right, third left, straight ahead to the boats, he thought to himself as he mapped the return journey in his mind. Just as the answer told him that making a run for it was out of the question.

“Err, all of the fuckers, I think,” came the bleak response.

Because the swarm was already in the city.

TWENTY

The AWACS patrolling the area had been diverted towards Poland, where the Soviets were apparently performing heavy carpet bombing of the whole eastern edge of the country to create a no-man’s-land of death and rubble in a desperate bid to prevent the disease from walking into the motherland. The bombing, the incessant mortar and artillery fire, had served only to attract every hungry dead person on the European continent towards them, and it was becoming a question of what would run out first; the enemy or the ordnance.

While that report was fed back to the US via their carrier fleet just outside the English Channel, the early-warning aeroplane had its eyes off the mainland UK.

The mission to recover the virus research from London had come via joint command but was a direct order from the US forces, and moreover, came from people who did not give their name with an order; simply where they worked. In this instance, ‘Century House’ gave the orders, meaning that British foreign intelligence was calling the shots, despite its UK headquarters seemingly overrun and abandoned.

It was simply beyond the paygrade of any one of the military personnel involved to know the truth that the outbreak was as a direct result of poor containment protocols, after the US and UK governments collaborated to produce a biological weapon to use as a doomsday option and an alternative to nuclear bombardment in the Cold War against the socialist states in the east.

Had that AWACS been watching the south east of England, they would undoubtedly have seen the gathering swarm moving fast back toward the city for no explicable reason, along with another massing in Bristol. The swarming seemed to be cyclical and unpredictable, but there weren’t enough eyes and too many things to watch.

The information came again too late from the American satellite images, but the real-time information told a far more worrying story.

Out in the Channel the response to the swarms started too late, and the desperate rush to recall the teams on the ground failed to make contact. The next plan was to send in a rescue, and that was where the control team on the ground was employed.

* * *

“Palmer!” Major Hadlington shouted as he jogged awkwardly towards the returning convoy, waving a piece of paper that the captain suspected was a signed order, “Palmer!”

“What on earth does this buffoon want?” Palmer asked himself out loud as the hatless intelligence officer stomped to a halt beside his wagon.

“Palmer, you need to turn around!” he yelled, somewhat inappropriately in Captain Palmer’s opinion.

Palmer climbed down and stood beside the major, wearing a look of annoyed confusion.

“Captain,” Hadlington said intensely, “we need to deploy to London immediately, in force.”

Palmer, ignoring the we part and deciding that he had the right to know why, turned to the officer, “Major, I’m sure there is a perfectly good reason, which I must ask…”

“Because there is an eight-man special forces team stuck in an underground laboratory with a scientist who may be able to shed light on the virus that’s fucking up our country,” he hissed angrily through gritted before getting himself under control, “because there is another swarm coming for them, because we have been ordered to, because we have to. Don’t you understand, man? This could be a cure!”

Palmer stared at him for a beat, then turned and fired off a string of orders.

“Sergeant Sinclair,” he bawled with confidence and alacrity, “your troop to remain here as guard with Three Troop. Send runners for Mister Johnson and the troop sergeants immediately. Sergeant Swift?”

“Captain?” came the reply from the building used as the gatehouse.

“Can I trouble you to get on the radio and have the re-supp fuel wagon here right away?” he said, giving the order politely and making Swift feel as though he was doing the young officer a personal favour.

“Sinclair? Unload all your spare seven-six-two ready for the outgoing troops. Sir?” he said as he wheeled back to the surprised, moustached man in spectacles, “Where precisely are we going?”

* * *

Maxwell was recruited by Johnson for support and the two of them entered the Royal with more trepidation than they had going out into the apocalypse. They gave their name and rank to the landlord, who was keeping a full tab of the army’s expenses for later reimbursement in the hopeful wish that the world would get back to normal one day.

The men gave their thanks for their pint of mild bitter and joined two women who were waving politely to them.

Johnson gave Maxwell a sideways look, suspecting an ambush, as one of the women was Maxwell’s wife. They took the two spare stools at the round wooden table, the offered greetings were exchanged, and Kimberley Perkins brushed her hair down across her face as she always did when speaking to people.

“I’m so sorry, I forgot to ask, how is your chap who got hurt?” she said to the two soldiers.

“He’s on the mend, thank you,” Maxwell said, “but it’s not us responsible, is it, my love?” he said to his wife with a genuine warm smile.

“Oh? You didn’t tell me you were on the payroll, Denise?”

Maxwell’s wife shrugged and smiled self-effacingly, “We all have to do our bit,” she said, then shook her packet of cigarettes and slid two out to offer one to Kimberley without checking to see if she even wanted one. That subtle gesture told Johnson that the two women knew each other far better than they were letting on. Maxwell, saying nothing about not being offered one of his wife’s cigarettes, simply helped himself to the packet and frowned to find it empty. The two women shared a single flame from a lighter and Denise Maxwell’s eyes showed amusement at her husband.

Maxwell tutted with an exaggerated eye roll and produced a packet of rolling tobacco and papers.

“Have a tailor-made,” Kimberley said with a smile and slipped a packet out of her handbag, which hung on the side of the chair she occupied. Maxwell thanked her, put one in his mouth and thumbed another up for Johnson. He declined, not feeling the urge for a smoke as he would surely be getting enough of the smell and taste from the three others.

“So, Mister Johnson,” Kimberley said as she looked at him sideways, “what is happening in the wider world?”

“It’s Dean,” he said awkwardly as he invited her to use his first name to signify both that he considered himself off-duty and that he held no domain over the young civilian woman.

Maxwell smiled but was careful to keep that from his boss, who he had never called by his first name. Only a handful of times had Johnson had called him by his first name, and the two were simply satisfied with the army’s habit of surnames. They were as close as any of the senior men in the squadron could be and were friends within the confines of their working restrictions.

“Well, Miss Perkins,” Johnson began, “the Am…”

“Kimberley, please,” she said, mirroring his own acceptance of informality with a smile that he was forced to mirror.

“Kimberley,” he began again, almost bashful, “the Americans are in the Channel, the cloak and dagger brigade are up to their usual tricks, and we aren’t going die from a nuclear power station breaking down. Other than that, I’m a mushroom,” he finished with a deprecative shrug as he took a gulp of his beer.

Denise chuckled and leant towards Kimberley, “Mushroom,” she explained, “means that he…”

“That he’s being kept in the dark,” Kimberley finished, intentionally leaving out the part about the bullshit.

They giggled at the men’s reactions to the non-military woman’s knowledge which the others attributed to the time she had spent around the men and families.

“Dean, I understand you aren’t married?” Kimberley asked innocently.

Johnson almost spat his beer at the suddenness and the personal nature of the question. He wanted to counter with the questions about what had happened to her face, about the scars she tried to cover and where the hint of steel and tenacity in her character came from, but he didn’t. Instead he coughed and shook his head in weak answer.

The conversation bounced around with a little less awkwardness after the ice breaker, until Denise gave their excuses and the two women went to the toilets together. On the way, they took up a conversation they’d been having before the men had joined them. Mostly it was speculation about where the Royal Family might be, and what had happened to them. More specifically, they were intrigued by Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew, their new baby girl and the state of their marriage.

Back in the bar, Johnson took another long pull on his beer, taking it past the halfway point and threatening to taste too good to stop after just one, then turned to Maxwell, who was similarly enjoying his pint.

“Is this your idea, or Denise’s,” he asked quietly with a hint of warning in his voice.

“Kimberley’s,” he responded with a smirk as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and raised his open hands in mock surrender, “we’re just conscripts.”

“You’re taking the piss, right?” Johnson asked incredulously.

“Hand on heart, Guv.”

Johnson stared at him. The girl had to be almost twenty years younger than him and he couldn’t comprehend why she would have any interest in the old bull that he saw himself as. Just as the two women re-emerged, he was saved from being driven off the field of battle by the main door of the pub bursting inwards.

All eyes turned to the young trooper, red-faced and out of breath as he stood there panting. Johnson didn’t press the man, didn’t add fear of himself to the panic the trooper obviously already felt.

“Report to troops,” he called into the pub, “senior NCOs to the bridge.”

With that, he ran from the door, clearly needing to make his other calls at billets to rouse the men.

Johnson and Maxwell exchanged a look, mixed adrenaline and dread, and on Johnson’s part, a hint of relief; going to work was safer than the situation he had been dropped into. They finished their pints with synchronised actions and offered brief apologies before they headed back down the hill at a steady jog via Johnson’s billet where they had left their weapons and webbing. Arriving at the threshold of the bridge, they were met by running engines, running men, and an efficient looking Captain Palmer at the centre of everything.

“Ah, Johnson,” he said as he saw the SSM approaching, not using the honorary ‘Mister’ in recognition of his warranted officer status and betraying that time was so short that even the impeccably-mannered Captain Palmer didn’t have time to observe the proprietaries.

“And Maxwell,” he added to the sergeant, “how many of your wagons are fit to go?”

“Three, Sir,” he answered quickly, leaving out the irrelevant facts as to why one of the squadron’s four Spartans was out of commission due to its gearbox being in the process of being rebuilt. Palmer nodded, turning back to Johnson.

“You and I in the Sultans, three crews from assault troop in the lead, and Strauss’ men. Maxwell, I need two drivers to bring Saxons for an exfil mission.”

“Sir?” Johnson said, “if I may?”

“Of course,” Palmer said.

“I’ll ride in your wagon, no point in taking another. What’s our target?”

“South London,” Palmer said, “one hundred and fifty miles. I’m having maps sorted but we’re looking at at least six hours without obstructions, assuming the M3 motorway is passable. We’ll need to roll in the dark for most of it, so we are looking at a dawn extraction. I’d love to take a Chieftain but I’m afraid time is of the essence and we need the armour there as soon as possible. Can I ask you to arrange for rations for the men?”

Johnson nodded, adding the number of men rapidly in his head and arriving at twenty-seven, then turned away to find a runner to send to the quartermaster and request fifty-four ration packs to be brought immediately. He told the runner to give his compliments to Lieutenant Lloyd and request some marines to assist him. Johnson’s own mind spun up, calculating distances and allowing for an additional margin of error. Deciding that the fuel held in the vehicles cut the three-hundred-mile journey too fine.

Looking around for an NCO not preparing to leave in the convoy, his eyes landed on the RMP sergeant. He walked over to stand close to him, ensuring that there were none of the enlisted men around before asking him for a favour. He could have ordered him, but making a sergeant from another branch fetch and carry for him was bad form in his book.

“Tim,” he said, “can some of your chaps do me a big favour and sort some full jerrycans for the wagons?”

Swift understood the request for both what it was, and how it was posed and fetched up four of his men to begin arranging the spare fuel.

Twenty minutes later, fully loaded and equipped, their convoy rolled out to head east with an exhausted Captain resting his eyes as Johnson took the helm for their rescue mission.

TWENTY-ONE

Peter woke early, not having seen or heard any sign of any dead people wandering around in the village. His bladder woke him, and he didn’t want to wake the sleeping girl opposite him, so he slipped out of the upstairs playroom to creep downstairs to the toilet there. The cat, having followed them in the front door to check out their new accommodation, stood from its spot on Amber’s bedding and arched its back in an exaggerated stretch, looked at him as he tiptoed to the door and evidently decided that it was too early to harass him for breakfast, so it curled up back against the girl to go back to sleep.

They had decided on the playroom and had manhandled two single mattresses into the room along with bedding. Peter had never felt overly comfortable sleeping inside a stranger’s bed, and since their first awkward night together, the two had kept to the arrangement of sleeping in the same room. It felt like camping to him, and he had no idea what it felt like for her because she hadn’t spoken since her eerie warning about the bridge.

He attributed the early wake-up to the plentiful supply of bottled water which he had hit hard to make up for the day’s walking in the warmth. The house, despite its lack of food supplies, had been exactly what they needed and if his suspicions were right, the village itself should be all but clear of any zombies. He reckoned he would start clearing that day, bringing back the food and stuff they wanted or liked back to the house, and hopefully they’d be able to hold up there for longer than he normally could, given that the smell of living people seemed to attract them inexplicably to the houses he occupied.

As he stood and breathed out to release the stream into the toilet, he thought about the problems that would cause; perhaps they had to start refilling the empty bottles with their waste and wrapping up the solids to keep it from smelling and attracting unwanted attention.

Grabbing another bottle of water and a packet of custard cream biscuits, he went back upstairs to find Amber awake and stroking the cat. Her eyes flickered to him as he walked back in and then returned to the cat who stretched out lazily against her side and purred loudly without opening its eyes. Peter opened the biscuits and took a handful before putting the packet next to her.

“Need to start looking in the other houses today,” he told her through a mouthful of biscuit. She nodded, chewing and still stroking the cat.

“And we need to find some cat food for you,” he said, looking at the cat. In response it opened its eyes to regard him briefly with a look somewhere between loving contentment and judgemental loathing. He couldn’t be sure.

They ate the biscuits for breakfast, then he emptied his backpack to allow him to carry the shotgun. He checked the road outside through the cracks in the curtains and saw nothing to raise any suspicion. Picking up the pitchfork from the side of the front door he turned to tell her to wait for him to come back. The words caught in his mouth as he saw her pulling the Velcro of her shoes tight and smiling at him expectantly.

She was ready too.

“No,” Peter said, “you wait here, and I’ll be back soon, okay?” he said reassuringly.

He turned to leave, but she cleared her throat and waved him towards her, then walked towards the utility area, glancing back to check he was following her. He wasn’t, so she waved him forwards until he traipsed after her in confused interest. She walked through to the garage, moved a blue plastic sheet aside and wheeled forward a small trolley with a look of pride on her face.

Peter smiled at the look she gave him and thanked her, misunderstanding that she was trying to get him to take the cart to make it easier. He helped her lift it over the lip of the door and wheel it into the house, stopping her to go back inside the garage and pick up the blue and yellow can to spray the wheel bearings and keep the trolley silent. He thanked her again and let her wheel it towards the front door, then turned to take it from her, but instead she frowned and refused to hand it over. She scrunched up her face, giving him her best grumpy face, and stayed resolute until he relented.

“Fine!” he said. “But you do exactly what I say, okay?”

She beamed and nodded, turning the grumpy face into a satisfied one of triumph.

Emerging into the daylight, they moved slowly, pausing to listen at intervals before stepping out onto the road and walking towards the nearest house. The downstairs windows were closed, the curtains open and the scene inside appeared undisturbed, so Peter tried the front door.

Locked. He turned to Amber and pointed to the floor at her feet then turned the finger to point vertically downwards to indicate that she should stay where she was. Her eyes locked onto his illuminated in the morning sunshine, and for the first time in the few days he had known her, he saw that her eyes were a pale golden colour with a darker, almost coppery ring around the edges of her iris. Temporarily taken aback by her striking eye colour, he recovered and slipped around the back of the house to find a way in.

Amber waited, eyes and ears alert to any hazard, until the front door creaked open and Peter bowed to invite her inside. They checked the ground floor, all modern and open plan around a central fireplace and chimney, and Amber’s eyes rested on a big armchair with a wooden handle on the side. She seemed to know what it was, to recognise it when Peter didn’t, and he watched as she sat on the chair and tried to manipulate the lever but struggled to apply enough pressure to it. Peter helped, laughing gently as the chair tipped back and the lower part raised to support her little legs.

In response to the small noises they made, a thud and a moan answered from the ceiling above. Looking up, both children froze until Amber spoke again.

“Someone’s been sitting in my chair,” she whispered, drawing out the second to last word theatrically with raised eyebrows and glancing up to meet Peter’s gaze.

* * *

They reached the western outer edges of the city around one in the morning. They had encountered knots of dead here and there but never in a group bigger than ten, so they didn’t stop to dismount and deal with them or bother using the guns; they simply rolled through at a steady but maintainable pace, neither dawdled nor risked engine failure.

Captain Palmer, restored after an hour spent dozing in the cramped and uncomfortable interior of the command vehicle, called a halt and scanned the surroundings using night vision goggles out of the open hatch. He saw nothing but heard clear sounds in the far distance of what sounded to his ears like an artillery bombardment.

“Daniels,” he said, ducking back into the interior, “call home and ask if the ordnance dropping on London is ours, will you?” Johnson’s eyebrows did a dance as he tried to understand, then he poked his own head out of a hatch and turned his head as though his ears were the dish of a radar. Settling his eyes into the darkness past the city, he held his breath and stared into the night before abruptly dropping back down to agree.

“Bigger guns than we have,” he opined, meaning the army. “Got to be from the water?”

“That was my assumption also, Sarn’t Major,” Palmer responded as he watched Daniels working the radio.

“Confirmed, Sir,” Daniels said, exposing his ability to listen to two conversations at once, “Navy are bombarding Greenwich as a diversionary tactic to draw the crowd south to the Thames.”

“Is it working?” Johnson asked him, seeing the man’s eyes drift out of focus as he listened to his radio.

“Appears to be,” he said, nodding.

“Appears to be?” Palmer repeated, catching Johnson’s eye and exchanging a look that wasn’t filled with confidence.

“Fuck it,” Johnson said, “just roll in?”

“Fuck it indeed,” Palmer said before calling into his own radio connected to the rest of his convoy, “Sergeant Maxwell, on your lead, proceed to target.”

They proceeded on Maxwell’s lead into the city before the sun began to break over the horizon dead ahead of them. Twice the control room on the island called them for updated progress reports, and twice they reported a slower time to target than expected, due to the congestion of the city.

Everywhere they looked out of the thin observation slits of thick glass they saw destruction. Buildings were burned out, shop fronts destroyed, and blacked skeletons of cars and bodies littered the streets, forcing them to take a constantly deviating path to keep moving. In the third wagon back, Johnson counted the turns to their target with each lurching movement backwards or forwards for him.

“Nearly there,” he said, feeling the anticipation inside their vehicle heighten.

* * *

“Yes?” Downes snapped, picking up the phone from the wall to stop its shrill chirping. He listened for a few beats, then put the phone down without another word.

“Two minutes,” he said, seeing the other seven soldiers rise and get ready for action. The ninth man in the underground lab stayed on the floor and whipped his head around in a desperate attempt to understand what was happening.

“What’s going on?” he blurted out, struggling to his feet, “what’s happening? We’re not going out there, are we? What about them? We can’t g…”

As the man began ranting, the noise growing in volume, Downes and Buffs exchanged a look. The look reminded the SBS man that the human part of the precious cargo was his responsibility. He stepped close to the wild Professor and locked him with a stare.

“Get a grip,” he growled, “we have to go out there because we can’t stay here. Someone is coming for us in less than two minutes, so be ready to move.” He went to turn away and heard the intake of breath from the man, who was about to protest again. He whipped back and spoke savagely.

“Every time you make a noise you put the lives of everyone in here in danger, so shut the fuck up,” he snarled. The Professor recoiled from him, shocked and scared.

“You can’t talk to me like that, you’re supposed to…”

“Do we look like palace fucking guards?” Buffs asked with overt hostility to control the man and force him into fearful compliance. “Our job is to get you and your research back, not look after your feelings, so get up, shut up and get ready to move.”

He stood, keeping his eyes low and his mouth closed.

“Form up,” Downes called, watching the men stack by the exit door as though they were doing counter-terrorism training. The last man called ready, the heavy box of samples and the terrified scientist nestled tightly between them, and they quite literally waited for the cavalry to arrive.

* * *

“Three hundred yards, left side, left side,” came Maxwell’s voice from the head of the convoy. The first light of dawn had burst over the tops of the high buildings and shone harsh rays into the concrete canyons of the city.

“First Saxon, stop after the red doorway, red doorway,” Palmer barked into the radio, “when stationary, all wagons fire at will.”

Maxwell saw the doorway, overshot it intentionally to allow space for five vehicles behind to pass, then called the stop and spun the cupola to engage the shambling corpses approaching from the front. He cut them down with short, controlled bursts, not aiming to render them safe but just destroy their legs so that they couldn’t get to them.

The two armoured personnel carriers came to a squealing halt with the back doors just past the entrance to the underground lab. All around, the sounds of heavy gunfire barked and echoed to confuse the ears of all but the most experienced warriors.

* * *

The eight men filed up the stairs two by two with their burdens being dragged with them. The last thing Mac did, at the tail of the group, was to spill the last of the inflammable liquid they had around the lab. At the top of the stairs he turned, made sure that the others were clear, pulled a grenade from his webbing and pulled the pin.

With an accurate but gentle underhand toss, he lobbed the small bomb to bounce off the second to last step and hit the door, intentionally left open at an angle, to skitter across the tiled floor and come to a rest.

The grenade exploded, spewing the white phosphorous filler to burn intensely and ignite the inflammable liquid and the piles of paper in a violent burst that blew hot air and scraps of debris out of the entrance and up to street level, hot on the heels of the running men. As Downes’ men split left with their heavy box, and Bufford’s turned right, the explosion erupted out of the stairwell behind them. The heavy double doors at the Saxons’ rears were opened and men piled in, their MP5s making rapid popping noises as the covering men took rapid but measured shots at the closest zombies.

“Last man,” came the twin shouts to tell the exposed soldiers that they could get inside the safety of the armoured cars. Almost simultaneously, the doors of both wagons closed and locked, and hands thumped the walls to tell the drivers to go.

The convoy revved their engines, gears were engaged, and the convoy started to roll forwards with their guns still spitting flame.

Palmer and Johnson exchanged a nod, neither of them outside the safety of their vehicle, as they alone could not bring their guns to bear without opening a hatch to use their pintle-mounted weapon. Daniels looked up expectantly, and Palmer told him to call it in.

They had their objective, and they were going home.

TWENTY-TWO

“Yes… I understand… and that’s confirmed?” Commander Briggs said into the telephone that linked him on the bridge of the US Navy Destroyer to the Royal Navy aircraft carrier that he longed to be back aboard, “Yes… leave it with me,” he finished, replacing the handset.

“Captain?” he said, politely getting the attention of the man in the big chair.

“Commander?” he drawled, one side of his moustache curling up to show his amusement. He could tell that the Brit hated being on his ship, hell anyone could tell that he hated it, but he enjoyed making the unsmiling man interact as much as possible.

“That was confirmation that the armour has the precious cargo,” he said, not wanting to tell the captain that he didn’t know precisely what that cargo was, but suspecting that the Americans knew more than he had been told about this mission, “However, they are likely to be intercepted by the second anomalous gathering heading southwest.”

The captain knew what that meant, and Briggs was indeed correct in his assumption that information was compartmentalised and fragmented, with each person being given only the information that those above them thought they needed. He knew what the precious cargo was, as the man on board his ship who was appointed as a civilian government advisor had given him a top secret briefing on the contents of that London laboratory.

That man may as well have worn a baseball cap emblazoned with CIA, not that Langley’s Mister Smith or Mister White, or whatever he wanted to call himself, would say as much.

“Commander,” he said as he shifted in his chair and kept his eyes on the empty horizon, “I’m not up to speed with your British vagaries. Please define likely to.”

Briggs swallowed down his retort that the American military personnel he was forced to work with were all blunt instruments to a man, and instead he took a deep breath and tried to keep the weary hostility from his tone.

“Captain,” he said carefully, “the swarm will almost certainly intercept the convoy before they regain the safety of their base, and even then, their safety can’t be assured.”

The captain stared at him for a moment before drawing in a theatrical breath through his nose as he shifted again onto the other buttock, making Briggs think that the man in charge of the vessel he had been pressed into service on was suffering with haemorrhoids. That thought made him smile, to know that the captain had a serious pain in the arse too.

“Helmsman, take us in close enough for shore bombardment. Crewman, get me command and advise them that it is my strong tactical recommendation that they launch a helicopter rescue. And get Castlemorton on the horn,” he finished, preparing to deploy the most unlikely of weapons against the dead.

* * *

The radio in the administrative building of Castlemorton training area rang loud and long, leaving a persistent ringing tone in the ears of the Panzersoldaten of Two Platoon and Hauptmann Hans Wolff, their captain.

He stood, placing the perfectly moulded black beret on his head with its silver emblem of their mounts emblazoned on the badge, he stepped smartly to the telephone and picked it up.

“Ja, Hauptmann Wolff hier,” he said, then frowned and listened, snapping his fingers and gesturing to the soldier nearest him for something to write on. The soldier scrabbled in the top pocket of his green-grey overalls and came up with a pad of paper and a stub of pencil. Wolff nodded and mm-hmm’d along to the voice on the other end of the line as he scratched numbers on the pad.

“Yes, I understand,” he said in accented English, “of course, we will leave immediately. You too. Goodbye.”

Hauptmann Wolff replaced the handset and breathed in deeply. He turned to his senior sergeant, Feldwebel Stefan Beck, and spoke solemnly.

“We have orders,” he said formally in their native language, “we are now in this fight, and we leave immediately. Replace all ammunition with canister rounds, but keep a few high explosive and armour piercing just in case.”

Beck stood and rearranged the crotch of his overalls, as uncomfortable in the clothing as they all were, and growled to clear his throat before the twenty men of their platoon. Four Leopard 2 tank crews and their four support soldiers were all that remained of their unit, who had been displaced from the training grounds in their own country by the tanks of the American and British squadrons. The huge spit of land in south Wales had reluctantly been their home, but at least it gave them the chance to hone their skills, driving and maintaining their beloved second generation Leopard tanks in that eager and perverse hope of every young soldier that they would get to see active service, and prove to everyone, but mostly to themselves, that they were a fine instrument of modern warfare.

“Wolfsrudel,” Beck shouted, seeing all of their men smiling and bracing as he used the German for the Wolfpack, “weggetreten!”

Wolff watched as the men did as they were told and fell out to their duties, wearing grins as wide as the tracks of their tanks, and turned to his senior NCO.

“Beck,” he said, with a slightly admonishing tone, “do try to remember not to call them that in front of our British allies, won’t you?”

Beck, not dissuaded in the slightest, assured his officer that he would not call their men Wolfpack again. It was a term of endearment, of pride in their commander and fostered a strong sense of belonging. The problem was that the allies would remember the Germans who roamed the Atlantic in packs of U-Boats, and those memories would still be vivid.

“What’s the mission, Sir?” he asked the captain hopefully.

“We head east then south. There is a mass-gathering of the dead ones who are going to cut off the retreat of our allies. For whatever reason, their mission cannot fail, so we are to attack the rear of the enemy.”

“And then?” Beck asked.

“And then we have to kill them all, I imagine.”

* * *

“Receiving, go ahead,” Captain Palmer said into the radio after command insisted on speaking to the officer commanding the convoy. He frowned, his eyebrows meeting at odd angles as his face gave an unfamiliar betrayal for a man who almost always maintained his professional visage.

“Time to intercept?” he asked, flickering his eyes between his watch and the map on the wall in front of his SSM.

“Shit,” he swore to himself, undetected by anyone inside the rolling armour, before transmitting on the radio again, “Understood. Out.”

He switched channels, transmitting the order to press on with as much speed as possible.

Ahead, at the tip of their column, Maxwell’s Spartan chose that exact moment to emit a loud clattering noise and judder to a tortured stop, causing the wagon behind theirs to hit them hard in the rear and concertina the entire column to a very badly timed halt.

* * *

Peter had told Amber to hide behind the big chair, told her to stay quiet and out of sight as the noises upstairs grew louder. He ran on small, light feet to the bottom of the stairs to wait the tense moments for the sounds of a moving corpse to reach the top and begin their halting descent to where their instinctive brain heard noises. Those noises denoted food, and food drove the thing’s feet to move and propel it towards that stimulus.

Peter hid behind the tiny protection of the interior wall to be out of sight of whatever was coming and listened intently, trying to hear over the unnaturally loud sound of his own breathing. The footsteps came steadily, rhythmically, as though the creature coming down the staircase was an actual person in full control of their body, and not the shambolic, jerky actions of a zombie. This realisation made Peter relax and straighten slightly, drawing in a breath to call out a hello. That breath caught in his throat as a new noise drifted around the lower part of the house; that of a gargling, throaty hiss.

At once he knew he had made a mistake. A dangerous mistake, and one that he made because his focus was on the little girl and not on himself. He had never managed to corner himself in a house with one of the faster ones. In fact, he had only encountered them twice and one of those times he had been forced to use the sawn-off shotgun to decapitate the thing. His eyes flashed left to the door, then straight ahead to the chair that Amber was hiding behind, before looking back towards the door. His brain calculated the distances, the time it would take to get her and get out, and his heart dropped in his chest to know that there was no way to get out.

Unthinkingly, he acted as instinctively as the thing coming to investigate their noise and smell.

“Amber! Run, now! Go!” he shouted, his final word becoming drowned out by the ear-shattering screech coming from just the other side of the thin plasterboard wall.

Amber ran, her small feet slipping on the floor and losing her a precious split-second head start. Peter watched her run, his breath held and his mouth open, then his terror doubled in intensity as he realised the one fact he hadn’t accounted for in his escape plan for her.

She reached the door, jumped up and dragged her small fingertips off the locking latch to make it snap back loudly against its spring. The door stayed stubbornly shut and she spun to press her back hard up against the door in paralysing fear as the zombie had emerged from the staircase and locked its clouded eyeballs on her miniature frame and mirrored her wide eyes with its dead ones.

The baggy, pinstriped trousers still had the black and white chequered shirt tucked in, the raised collar skewed and crumpled on one side where a chunk of neck was missing below the floppy mess of unnaturally blonde hair.

Ashen grey lips peeled back from black gums to reveal the contrast of overly-white teeth, and the room filled with the musty smell of old, dry body as it coiled its muscles and bound forward.

The smell was the last straw for Peter.

That instant transportation back to a life which he saw as more dangerous, more claustrophobic and more terrible than the one he now lived, that smell of stale alcohol that made his mind see the woman he hated so much and had killed, but still felt cursed to his very soul for doing so. The memory of his mother made his body move before his mind even processed the emotions.

His mouth opened to emit a strangled cry of fear and rage as his hands came up bearing the pitchfork, which he instinctively aimed at the base of the zombie’s skull. His legs propelled him towards it with a few short steps before his left foot stretched out exaggeratedly to provide the thrust with the instinctive power it needed to penetrate the flesh and sinew and save them both.

As that foot went forward to drive his body weight into the killing blow, his toes caught on the corner of the rug and pitched him downwards instead of up.

TWENTY-THREE

Palmer was bombarded with information via radio, learning for the first time that the stranded convoy was directly in the path of a swarm bigger than the one that had formed in the city, and double the size of the one they had encountered a few weeks before, during the battle of the bridge. That information made the confident young officer’s face go more than a little pale and sagged his posture. Johnson watched from the corner of his eye as he pretended to study the map wall before him, noting that the captain’s right hand was trembling.

The tremble was small, but evidently uncontrollable. Deciding not to wait for the intelligence to come to him second-hand, he switched the channel of his own headset to listen in to the conversation. Hadlington’s precise but peevish voice filled his headphones and a surreptitious glance at Daniels on the radio beside him showed that the corporal was also listening. Catching Johnson’s disapproving eye, he subtly switched back to the convoy channel and listened to the organisation of Maxwell as he cleared out the obstruction to assess the mechanical failure of his own wagon.

“We are pending approval for helicopter rescue, and other armoured resources are on their way to you from your north west,” Hadlington reported, leaving out the somewhat salient fact that there would not be sufficient helicopters to extract the entire force, “We estimate that your time until interception is less than an hour, if you can get moving immediately.”

Palmer’s eyes flickered again over the map, figuring out where the convoy would be at that time. He didn’t like his estimate.

“Wait one,” he said into the radio and turned to Johnson.

“One hour from here puts us where, SSM?”

Johnson already knew the answer, just as Palmer did.

“It puts us at or near the island. Too close for comfort,” he said solemnly.

“So we risk endangering the lives of everyone there,” Palmer thought out loud.

“ETA for aircraft extraction for precious cargo?” he asked into the radio.

“Three-five, thirty-five minutes, over,” came the response. Captain and Squadron Sergeant Major looked at one another and exchanged a silent moment of understanding. The mission. The lives of everyone on the island. Undeniably more important to the bigger picture than their small detachment. Johnson nodded to the officer, who swallowed and transmitted again.

“Send helicopter evac,” he said, “convoy will stay in the open so as not to bring the swarm to your location. Out.”

* * *

The noise that four Leopard 2 tanks made, rolling over the M4 motorway bridge spanning the River Severn, was stunning. They pushed hard, demonstrating that they controlled one of the fastest main battle tanks on the planet at the time, and stopped outside Bristol to refuel from the large wagon following them. The troop had brought their entire fighting strength as well as their own replenishments, and Wolff thought it infinitely more sensible to pause and refuel before they came within sight and smell of the enemy.

Turning south and avoiding the sprawling city entirely, they rolled onwards, encountering larger concentrations of shambling zombies as they progressed. These walking corpses weren’t always walking; some crawled with damaged or missing legs, others hobbled onwards with mechanical injuries which slowed them down too much to keep up with the main herd that couldn’t be seen yet. The only indication that they were ahead was the distant cloud of dust that marked the southern horizon, kicked up by so many thousand pairs of feet, all trudging onwards with some as yet unfathomed common purpose.

Hauptmann Wolff, captain of the troop and breaking convention by commanding the leading tank, told his men to ignore the stragglers and press on through them to the main body of the enemy. Pressing on through, quite literally, the support truck following on behind the tanks drove over swathes of oily mess caused by the crushed bodies, and the men in the passenger seats of those trucks took only necessary shots from their G3 assault rifles against those zombies that posed a threat to them. The men in the tanks ahead had no space for the long rifles, so instead carried Uzi machine pistols for personal defence, should they need to dismount. Their main tool for dispatching the massed dead would be their main 120mm guns and the canister rounds they carried.

When the stragglers became an obstacle in themselves, Wolff scanned the ground ahead for a space wide enough to spread his tanks out and bring their four guns to bear on the mass, which was already beginning to take an interest in the sound and movement behind it. Having thought ahead in his own analytical way, Wolff ordered the four tanks to halt and disperse, then load high explosive rounds into their guns. Unlike their British allies, they didn’t have to follow the projectile with a full bag charge for maximum effect and range, as they had the more advanced single-piece ammunition which made their rate of fire slightly superior. He planned to stall the massive crowd with four large explosions, and make them the centre of attention to divert their collective attention back north instead of south, where his orders had informed him they must be prevented from doing so.

“Halt,” he called into the radio in their native language, waiting as his next orders were followed and the tanks dispersed into a loose lateral line, “targets to your front. Fire.”

Four huge, concussive booms rolled out over the lush landscape, answered by the responding explosions of their high-yield munitions as four brilliant fireballs erupted in the distance.

“Now,” Wolff said seriously into the radio, “we have their attention.” The men in his own tank smiled, as he hoped the others would be doing.

“Load with canister, staggered fire by numbers, stand by,” he ordered in crisply efficient German, watching as his own loader opened the breech and slid in the munition, which appeared the same as a very large bullet. The other tanks reported ready to fire, and Wolff ordered them to illuminate their headlights and fire smoke grenades on his instruction.

“Deploy smoke screen in three, two, one, fire!”

As one, the northern skyline from the perspective of the zombies erupted with a series of eight pops to gout billowing smoke. Almost the rear third of the huge gathering had already turned to investigate the explosions, and perhaps a further ten percent of them now responded to the smoke screen display, to hiss and screech as they turned to investigate.

“Canister to your front at intervals,” Wolff said calmly, “on my mark.”

Then came the agonising wait as the zombies had to be allowed time to approach for their evil and destructive munitions to be fully effective. Wolff watched through his optics, gauging the moment to be just right, and fired the first round himself from his commander’s override controls.

The muzzle of their long gun erupted in smoke and flame, recoiling violently to spew the contents of the canister directly into the path of the oncoming horde. The weapon itself, although modernised and made more lethal over time, had not changed much since its inception some time in the sixteenth century. Deployed against infantry, it was brutally effective as instead of firing single projectiles, the canister disintegrated as it was fired and spread the contents of hundreds of tungsten bolts towards the enemy, and it then fanned out to wreak havoc and death like a hideous and gigantic shotgun.

The four rounds of canister were fired in staggered intervals in order that a fresh wave of dead filled the front rank before the next shot was sent out, and not wasted into already ruined bodies. It fanned outwards to rip bloody holes through the first three or four ranks, before the kinetic energy of their multiple projectiles was spent.

The tanks fired with their barrel only slightly elevated past the horizontal, as their expected advance would bring them perilously close to the maximum depression of the barrels and force a retreat in order to keep them at bay. Their coaxial MG3 machine guns could be brought to bear in closer quarters, but sustained fire with these guns had proved to require a change of barrels after an uncomfortably short time in comparison to the British alternative in their GPMG. Of all the NATO countries, most had dropped the use of canister anti-infantry ammunition in favour of the armour-killing sabot kinetic rounds, or armour piercing munitions developed to beat the improved armour of the Russian T-80 main battle tank. The Germans’ reluctance to withdraw that ammunition had been a fortuitous advantage against their unexpected enemy.

Wave after wave of the dead fell in bloody ruin as great gouts of red mist filled the air above their shattered and dismembered bodies. Some unlucky ones nearer the front caught multiple pieces of the machined shrapnel and seemed to simply disintegrate as parts of their bodies vanished under the onslaught of metal.

Round after round they fired, each report attracting more and more of the undead to turn and investigate the sounds, but the simple mathematics of the equation had never been in their favour. As devastating as their combined firepower was, as many shattered and ruined bodies they threw back with each efficient shot, the tide turned against them.

“Back, back!” Wolff called over the radio as his gunner fired their last shot at maximum depression. The tanks began to roll backwards to bring the front ranks back into their killing fields, but the progress only ramped higher in intensity as the faster ones towards the front of the horde forced their way through to the rear, and pressed out ahead of the mass.

Wolff engaged the MG under his control, barking out rapid bursts of heavy machine gun fire at the smooth motorway tarmac at the feet of the faster ones, for the bullets to bounce back up and graze along, cutting off legs and shattering ankles to stop the advance. Faster they reversed, outpacing the attack and firing relentlessly with all four big smoothbore guns spitting metal and death, as their accompanying twin machine guns rattled away at the enemy.

The tide turned in favour of the living as that fresh wave went down and the slower ones following their lead were forced to climb over the mound of dead that marked the limit of the guns. The tanks pressed forwards, elevating their barrels to scour the lip of that barrier of dead flesh, to be scattered away until the skyline ahead was suddenly empty.

They had attacked the horde, laid bloody ruin to so many thousands of them and formed a wall ten feet high and three times as deep, with more bodies than any of them could possibly imagine.

And they had still only killed less than a quarter of them.

TWENTY-FOUR

Lieutenant Commander Murray of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy shouted at his support crew to hurry because he needed to be in the air ten minutes ago.

He began his pre-flight checks, whipping through them at reckless speed, before the aircraft had even been fully refuelled. The split-second he got a raised thumb from the helmeted man on the ground, he yanked on the controls hard to force the unnatural flying machine vertically skywards, before rotating to somewhere vaguely resembling his bearing and tilting the bulbous nose down to blast away in that direction.

He had left the argument raging in the headquarters building, with that frustratingly punctilious Major wanting to know precise fuel usage and carrying weights before he would authorise any mission. Barret, the senior of the two naval pilots, opened a debate regarding seniority, if only to defer attention as Murray sprinted towards his helicopter with the coordinates scribbled hastily onto a scrap of paper. The army major brought in the army colonel, who of course wanted to know the whole story from the beginning and to congratulate people on a fine presentation, as though lives weren’t at stake. Barret fed wood into that fire as he argued with Hadlington, until everyone in the room froze at the sound of helicopter engines screaming inland over their heads.

Barret feigned a look of confusion and asked the room who the devil that could be flying over their airspace. He gave his excuses and said that he would check that none of his men knew anything about it, leaving colonel Tim Munro smiling up at Hadlington. The major didn’t know if that was out of mirth that the men of the Fleet Air Arm had blatantly disregarded his instructions, or whether in fact the old man even knew what had just happened.

“Major, allow me to tell you a brief anecdote from my school days,” he said as he leaned back and seemed to melt into nostalgia, “I was at Gordonstoun with His Royal Highness,” he said wistfully, as most of his stories began, “although he was younger than I by a few years. I recall it was a spring time affair,” he chuckled suddenly, “but then again, a Highlands spring time would freeze you southern folk to your chairs, and we were given a hearty run over the moors. We all agreed to take a shortcut and slow down our progress to give the appearance that we had run the full circuit despite the god-awful weather. When we got back, maintaining a good ruse as we staggered our returns, each boy was congratulated for their time and rewarded with hot porridge,” he finished, smiling up at Hadlington, and having that smile echoed by the young Lieutenant who followed the Colonel everywhere.

“And, Sir?” Hadlington asked impatiently, waiting with as much grace as he could before his annoyance overcame his manners.

“And, Major,” Colonel Tim said ruefully, “sometimes it’s best not to notice when folk don’t follow your orders when you realise it was unreasonable to expect that from them in the first place.”

With that he smiled, stood, replaced his uniform cap and strolled off in the direction of the bridge to inspect the men as though on garrison duty in some pleasant foreign posting.

* * *

Murray screamed his helicopter low and hard across the landscape. His anger at the ridiculous order came out through the controls as he did the helicopter pilot equivalent of driving angry. Even if they had half a dozen Sea Kings, they would barely be able to withdraw the men of the convoy, so the lack of their second aircraft on the rescue mission made little to no difference.

Hadlington had been waiting for permission to send the aircraft, and that permission was pending the outcome of the allied attack on the swarm of dead. No update had come, either from the tank platoon themselves or the reconnaissance planes flying high above, and so Hadlington had lacked the flexibility to pre-empt the order from command and deploy a helicopter.

As secret as the information had been, soldiers talking about a potential cure had tongues wagging all over the island.

Surely, Murray had thought to himself, any potential cure is worth investing everything we have into recovering it?

Shaking away his annoyance and incomprehension at the rigidity and stubbornly bureaucratic nature of the armed forces, he continued making his way towards the convoy, while behind him the first of the heavy shore bombardment began to land.

* * *

“Helicopter inbound,” Palmer said to his troopers, who had mostly dismounted to assist stripping the crippled Spartans at their front. Maxwell’s in the lead had suffered a total mechanical failure and would not engage any gear either forwards or backwards, and the one behind would need three men working with sledgehammers for an hour to straighten out the bent metal and allow the tracks to move unimpeded. Palmer had decided to forget trying to bring them home and instead ordered as much ammunition out of those wagons, and the men to squeeze in wherever they could find safe space inside the armour.

When they had stopped, the rear sections of the Saxons had swung open and the bewildered civilian in a very dirty white coat was unceremoniously bundled into the compartment, along with the box that the two special forces teams had recovered. One team sealed themselves up tightly again to protect the man and his items, and the others had spread out into the bushes on all four compass points.

The Sea King was audible long before it was visible, and Palmer ordered some of his troopers to secure the patch of flat grass fifty metres away from where their wagons were stopped. The aircraft swooped in as the four bearded men with their modern weaponry emerged out of cover again and opened the rear of the Saxon to form a bubble of eight armed soldiers around the man in their centre. He was transported as though swept along by armoured beetles, deposited into the belly of the helicopter, and then Palmer watched a very brief conversation of shouts and sign language take place between the soldiers.

“You go,” bawled Downes to Bufford, “you’re going straight out to sea anyway, and that’s your remit. Not ours.”

Buffs leaned back, regarding the SAS Major carefully before nodding once and signalling his men to climb aboard. He thought through the suggestion, weighing up the pros and cons of the concept, then decided that it was a tactical decision to send the SBS out to sea and keep the SAS on dry land, and nothing to do with organisational egotism. Bufford snatched four spare magazines for his MP5, all fully loaded. Seeing what he was doing and understanding immediately, his three men did the same and pressed the additional firepower onto the SAS men, who gave them grateful nods.

Their new rule on ammunition against this unexpected enemy was the same as their personal mantra for explosives; P for Plenty.

As the four former Royal Marines climbed up, the others ducked low to retreat from the rotor wash and just as soon as it arrived, the helicopter was gone. They jogged back to the armour without a second glance at the aircraft that could have whisked them out of the country to safety, to find Captain Palmer whipping up his men into fearsome activity.

“Come on, let’s move!” he shouted, before he saw the major and leaned over his open hatch to shout to him over the sound of engines sparking into noisy life.

“The swarm hasn’t been stopped, and they’re still heading for the island,” he said simply. Without another word the SAS men filed back into the rear of their Saxon as the other was filled with men and spare ammunition. Mac paused only briefly to pick up the dismounted GPMG from one of the Spartans and give a nod to Dezzy to collect the link ammunition for it. Engines revved, and the reduced convoy headed towards their temporary home with the seemingly hopeless intention of preventing its being overrun.

* * *

The twin Mk45 127mm guns of the American Destroyer began pounding as soon as they came in range of the horde. Their heavy artillery shells soared high over the coastline to rocket inland and fall amongst the mass of bodies, startling everyone on the island. Their update via Commander Briggs had been that the tanks had intercepted the swarm and inflicted heavy casualties, but had floundered after they had been unable to continue their pursuit due to the piles of dead they had created. Forced to find an alternative route, their German allies were effectively out of the game.

The convoy, no longer carrying the precious cargo after a Royal Navy pilot had pulled them out of the flames, was also making its way towards the island, hoping to hit the horde of enemy in their flank.

The captain of the ship saw no other way that the day could be won, so he ordered his ship to be brought up to the shore and for their guns to be unleashed as soon as they were in range. The only thing he wouldn’t do was use the Tomahawk cruise missiles, following the presidential decree that they should not be used without direct White House authorisation. But that didn’t stop him getting his deck guns in the fight.

Each huge round falling on the crowd did untold damage to those zombies in the immediate area of the splash and explosion, but every crater created by the big guns was instantly filled with the rolling mass of bodies, and each shot fell closer to the island as the targeting was adjusted.

Briggs initially couldn’t understand why there was a seemingly pathological need to attack the swarm instead of letting it dissipate, as most of the others had done. This especially seeing as the island was no longer tactically important to the overall parameters of success, now that the contents of the London laboratory had been recovered, and he carefully offered that opinion to the captain.

“They’ve all gotta be killed at some point, right?” he responded with detached glee, “may as well do it now when the sons-of-bitches decided to have a civil rights march!”

Briggs, as cold as he was, found the excitement for taking even formerly-human life with such reckless overkill distasteful.

And so it became a countdown.

The swarm stepped closer to the island each minute, and each minute the guns of the destroyer degraded them further, until such time as the German tanks and the Brits in their armoured cars caught up with them and added their own hail of ammunition to the party.

Which, after just under an hour, was what happened.

Just as the leading edge of the swarm came into sight, the two Chieftain tanks opened up directly into them with round after round. Every Fox car had been parked where their 30mm Rarden cannons could be brought to bear, and their speed-loaders stacked with six heavy shots ready to pour into the enemy. At the distances they could see on the island, their shot would not fall, because they were firing at less than two miles away. Every elevated section of the island that had line of sight on the single approach road rained down artillery on the smudge of approaching death, and none of them had resorted to using their machine guns yet as the distance was still too great. When their enemy grew closer to under a mile away, then the belt-fed machine guns would spark into life and provide a constant and persistent clattering din to overpower all but the biggest of the explosions.

Palmer’s convoy arrived just as the vanguard of dead began breaking away to sprint ahead for the bridge, and their mounted guns rolled lead and tracer and the promise of a second, more permanent death.

The German heavy tanks, unable to find a suitable route to catch up, despite their superior road speed for such large beasts, were twenty minutes too late to prevent disaster.

TWENTY-FIVE

Peter pitched forward in slow motion, his brain telling him the gruesome outcome before he had even hit the carpeted floor of the living room.

He knew that Amber would be bitten, her young skin would be torn and would bleed, and he would hear her screams before he could get back to his feet and save her.

He had promised her only a few days before that he would protect her and wouldn’t leave her, and now his eyes pricked with tears as he fell, because he knew the last thing he would see and hear before he died was the little girl being torn apart.

That fear and desperation became resolve as he flailed about to try and recover his trip, which had only partly distracted the zombie from flying at the girl. That desperate resolve manifested itself into a blind thrust of the pitchfork in his flailing right hand which bit into the fleshy back of the creature with little force and struck bone straight away.

Peter knew even as his face hit the plush carpet that he had failed her, because hitting bone usually meant that the things just carried on as though nothing had happened to them.

Confusingly for Peter, the sound of him hitting the floor sounded much louder and later than his brain expected, and he opened his eyes to see the feet of the zombie just in front of his nose. Leaping to his feet, he threw himself backwards and scrabbled for the spike he had sheathed on his right hip and held it out towards the twitching thing lying face down.

He saw the single bare foot, purple and bloated from the blood that had pooled there when it died, and the other foot inexplicably covered by a brown sock, and he watched as the bare foot twitched again as though electrocuted. He got to his feet and stepped carefully closer, sparing a quick glance to Amber to see that she was staring at it with her head cocked in confusion. Peter kept the spike held in both hands, levelled at the prone monstrosity as he shuffled around out of its reach to get to her, and then he saw exactly what she could see.

The zombie was trying to claw its way towards her, using only its head and neck as its teeth sank into the heavy pile of the carpet, making the attempts to drag itself forward both fruitless and pathetic. He relaxed and stepped closer, seeing his discarded pitchfork lying beside the crippled zombie and a single, dark puncture wound at the base of its neck.

He had no idea how it had happened, but the tip of a single prong on his pitchfork had penetrated the skin and tissue to force its way in between the sixth and seventh bones of the cervical spine and punctured the spinal cord protected inside. He had effectively, and completely accidentally, paralysed their attacker.

The two children stared at it as it tried to reach up for them as though sheer will and determination could make the food come to its mouth. Peter spun the spike in his hand and walked around to the back of it where he was furthest away from the teeth. Deciding that he preferred to do what he had to do at a distance, he slipped the spike back into his belt, picked up his pitchfork and raised it in both hands before he looked up and saw Amber. He paused, indicating with a flick of his head that she should move and not watch. She shrugged and stepped aside to stand off to his right. With one hard thrust he ended the pitiful attempts of the paralysed zombie to drool him to death.

Their sudden, terrifying fright forgotten, the two children searched the house together and filled the cart with everything they wanted before wheeling it back to their new home. They made two trips back to that house, finding useful items as well as food and drinks, and more ammunition for the shotgun, which Peter took even though he had only ever fired a single shot from the weapon.

They stopped for some food before they abandoned that house as it had been picked clean before moving on to the house opposite. That house was, mercifully, free from zombies. As they were wheeling back their second haul from there, the sounds of rolling thunder began in the far distance.

The thunder sounded in pairs, their echoing twins sounds undulating over and over until replaced by the next wave, to create a rolling wave of ever-increasing intensity until the entire sky was filled with ceaseless noise. Both of them stood still in the road and stared at the empty sky until Peter’s nerve broke first.

“Let’s get inside,” he said softly, reaching down with one empty hand only half thinking about what he was doing.

Just as automatically, Amber reached up and clasped his hand.

The two of them turned and wheeled their piled-up cart back towards their new house and opened the front door. They worked in silence, stacking their haul in the kitchen as the world outside grew even louder, and after they had finished, Amber’s face grew dark and worried at the sounds outside. Peter unwrapped chocolate for her in an attempt to take her mind off the growing concern of whatever terrible thing was happening outside. She sat subdued, chewing slowly and visibly upset. Peter racked his brain for what to say to her. He picked up the cassette player and headphones, wasting a few seconds before remembering that the batteries had slowly died the last time he had given it to her. He had yet to find a new tape to go in the player but seeing as she didn’t seem to mind the same song, it hadn’t been high on his list of priorities when clearing the last few houses. He rummaged around in the kitchen drawer where he had stored the batteries from the houses in that village and found two of the right size before fitting them to the player and taking it over to where she sat quietly. He handed it to her and smiled, seeing her small look of gratitude as she placed the red foam of the flimsy headphones over her ears.

Hearing her hum along to the chorus was the sweetest sound he had ever heard, but it didn’t drown out the sounds of what Peter suspected were bombs being dropped not far away. He went to close the small kitchen window in the hope that the sound would be muted, but as he did so the cat emerged from below with a vertical leap which made him jump backwards in fright. His heart beating in his chest, he turned to see if Amber had been frightened by it too, but he saw that she was still engrossed in the music and hadn’t turned around. The cat teetered on the threshold for a moment as it eyed him expectantly, then dropped down to meow loudly and rub against his hand, doing the dance it did when asking for food.

Peter wasn’t fooled. He knew the cat didn’t love him but was only acting so that he worked the can opener. But in that same moment, he realised that he was fine being used by the animal just because it had decided to stay around them and because it made Amber happy.

He fed the cat first, then made them something to eat before joining her on the comfortable chairs where she sat listening to music and playing with the small plastic figures he had found before they had met.

* * *

High on the cliffs looking out over a misty English Channel, two men ran into the main hall of the old building, wearing looks of fear and confusion. The man in charge, who had only called himself Michaels to them, seemed unconcerned and that made them feel instantly foolish. He didn’t get up, merely lounged in a chair, smoking and looking out to sea through the big picture windows.

“Yes?” he asked, knowing what they wanted but making them feel like scared children for asking.

“That noise?” one of them asked timidly, hoping that the rest would be obvious.

“What of it?”

“What… er… what is it? Please?” said the other one as he wrung his hands and seemed unable to stand still.

“That, gentlemen,” Michaels said as he swung his legs down and stood abruptly, “is the sound of heavy guns. Some way away, I imagine, and nothing to bother us here. Anything else?”

There wasn’t, and he invited them kindly to fuck off and leave him be.

In the hotel erected next to the grand building, two women sat with wide eyes as they listened to what sounded like the result of angering the weather gods raging in the skies of the south coast.

* * *

“Automatic fire, to your front, go on,” Captain Palmer said unnecessarily, as the ragged remains of his overfilled convoy tore into the left flank of the massive horde of zombies. They were just out of sight of the island itself, but not of their effective fire, which tore great holes into the attack from their oblique angle.

Palmer and Johnson were the only men in the convoy not closed down, as their vehicle was the only one bearing a weapon that could not be fired from inside. The Saxons were little more than armoured trucks designed to keep their occupants safe from enemy fire, and they were set back to the rear. Palmer didn’t fire the machine gun because it was at the limit of effective fire and the 30mm cannons on the Fox cars were lethal at that range, as they pumped shot after shot indiscriminately into the crowd.

Both officer and SSM watched the fall of shot as the battle raged ahead, both noticing the regular timing between the huge splash damage of heavier munitions than they carried.

“Your Chieftains?” Johnson asked Palmer, knowing the answer was a negative as soon as he had said it, but failing to come up with an alternative explanation.

“No,” Palmer said, “bigger, must be the n…”

“Shore bombardment,” Johnson exclaimed loudly over the noise of the battle raging around them as he finally understood what he was seeing.

“Must be five- or six-inch guns,” Palmer said.

“Nice,” Johnson said, with evil relish in response to one of those naval guns firing a round that exploded and sent body parts cartwheeling impossibly high into the air.

“Press on?” he asked the officer, suggesting in that senior NCO manner that the officer needed a reminding nudge. Palmer picked up the handset and keyed the radio to respond.

“Advance one hundred.”

The armour lurched forward, closer to the moving river of dead flesh and rendering it that much clearer to their eyes.

“Christ on a fucking bike,” Johnson said in horror as the sheer scale of the swarm was made clear to him, then he ducked back inside and hoisted up his sub-machine gun as reassurance.

“Indeed, Mister Johnson,” Palmer responded with his usual impeccable manners, “I just hope our chaps back at base are doing alright.”

“They haven’t got near the bridge yet,” Johnson reassured him, pointing towards the mess of nothingness and meat ahead of them.

* * *

With no clear commander at the bridge, the men performed their own tasks in crews or troops or sections as they saw fit. The two tanks, one blocking the road and the other firing at a gentle angle from a piece of flat ground to the side of the roadway, poured a hideously destructive amount of fire into the oncoming enemy, who seemed only able to manage progress of an inch at a time. Added to that the combined weight of every Fox car they had left, pouring 30mm rounds into the attack, and over a dozen belt-fed heavy machine guns blasting a storm of lead from their chattering barrels.

Peculiar pops and thuds sounded occasionally as three 51mm mortars were served effectively by the one crew left behind from assault troop and two teams of Marines. Those rounds were a mixture of high explosive and smoke, not for the vision screen but for their incendiary properties of the white phosphorous fillers. Flaming zombies occasionally emerged from the smoke as is was whipped away by the strong wind for them to be blasted apart by high explosive or else cut down by varying degrees of direct fire.

The barrels of the Chieftain tanks were fully depressed by then and unable to bring their muzzles to bear on the leading edge of the attack, instead concentrating on the lowest depression they could manage to degrade the enemy attack as best they could.

On the slopes above them, Major Hadlington tried desperately to call in air support for the beleaguered defenders, as he saw no way to survive the unstoppable invasion, and almost lost the power of speech when he considered that the swarm had initially been almost thirty percent bigger. He had tried to order the Royal Navy helicopter to take off and repeat their trick with the music but Lieutenant Commander Barrett was adamant that everyone, and he included the surprise shore bombardment in that list, would have to stop firing for long enough for them to take off and hover in close to the swarm to lead them away like the pied piper a second time. That pause would result in the bridge being overrun.

Command were unwavering as they denied his repeated requests for airstrikes, as he was told over and over to wait and that there were higher priorities, until eventually they stopped answering his hails.

And then, even the shore bombardment stopped, but not before one last errant round changed their situation for the worse.

* * *

“Understood,” the captain said to the bridge after receiving the orders to cease fire and withdraw to deeper water, “gunners, cease fire, cease fire. Helm, take us about due west.”

The gunners fired their final shot and powered down the huge deck guns as the ship’s engines powered up to steam them out into the mouth of the Atlantic.

Nobody asked the question about their sudden breaking off from the attack, but the captain answered the thoughts anyway.

“Ours is not to make reply, ours is not to reason why…” he said with melodic sadness.

* * *

The final two 127mm high-yield explosive rounds left the long barrels of the deck guns at an impossible velocity and arced their way over the grey water. They were still over the steely waves of the English Channel when they began their long descent towards the target, unseen and in the far distance from where the projectile had started its journey.

These last, lonely rounds were fired as the ship had already begun to turn, dipping the nose of the vessel just enough to change the course of history as the effect on the shot caused them to fall low and miss the zombies.

What they did hit, and in spectacular fashion, was the concrete support beam of the elevated section of the causeway and it caused a shudder to run through the entire length of the bridge. Huge chunks of rock and concrete spewed upwards high into the air, scattering body parts even higher and scattering them over the roadblock.

Cracks appeared in the road, the sound of splitting concrete so loud that it was audible over the gunfire, and Horton felt his stomach lurch inside the closed-down tank weighing in at a shade under fifty-four tonnes.

As one, the three men of the four-man crew housed inside the turret froze as their inner-ear warned them of something more terrible than the approaching horde. There was time for Horton to say one single word before the tank lurched and dropped half a foot as the first part of the degraded bridge began to give.

“Fuck!”

Horton and the loader below and beside him shot their hands up to reach the handles to open the hatches. Millward, Horton’s gunner sitting ahead and below him, crabbed backwards and upwards so unbelievably fast that he climbed backwards over Horton to get out of the hatch before he could, but as he hauled himself out to lead for the roadway, ten feet behind him the concrete cracked again and the tank he leapt from vanished straight downwards.

Sinking immediately in the fifteen feet of water below, Horton lay flat on his chest and screamed “No,” at the shimmering sight of his tank under the water. Bubbles rose as the tanks moved, crabbing slightly sideways as the driver, trapped in the forward compartment and closed down, threw the beast into reverse and gunned the engine only to flood it with water after six feet of underwater travel. Horton watched, willing the man to open the forward hatch and swim to safety, but nothing happened. Standing to strip his webbing off, he was hauled to the ground by Millward, his gunner, who told him over and over again that he was gone.

He was gone, but the forty-foot long section of the bridge that had taken him down had also prevented the swarm from getting any closer as they piled endlessly into the water to be swept away by the strong current in the direction of the wind.

Gun and cannon fire still rained down on the swarm, but the damage had been done. Their forces were split and scattered, and events in the wider world had just taken a turn to make their small corner of Britain utterly irrelevant.

Epilogue

Thousands of miles west, alarms had sounded, and red lights flashed in a dozen underground control rooms all over the United States. Orders were shouted, and urgent telephone calls were made.

One of those calls was placed directly to the White House and interrupted the President’s lunch.

“Sir, they’ve launched,” said the voice. The president’s face dropped. He half expected, and half hoped that this time would never come. The ‘they’ part of the single sentence was as obvious as the thing that had been launched.

Decades of conditioning, years of expecting the worst and mentally preparing for the day when the hard decision would have to be made meant that when the time actually came, he didn’t hesitate.

“Launch counter-strikes,” he said, giving his authentication before replacing the telephone in the cradle, “and may God have mercy on our souls,” he added to nobody in particular.

* * *

Silo doors opened, and rockets ignited, just as had happened in three locations in the Soviet Union. Their missiles, however, were aimed at levelling the remaining undead population of continental Europe to zero to prevent the endless waves of attack on their borders. Those launches had been detected in the west, and the counter-strikes had launched before their nukes had landed in Europe.

Despite the two huge nations being on the verge of war with each other, they still enjoyed direct contact between their governments, where nobody would ever be left on hold.

Calls were placed, desperately asking for the launches to be aborted. Arguments raged, threats were levelled, and time was wasted.

The nukes landed in Europe, closely followed by the six tactical strikes on military and government sites all over Russia. Despite the threats, the retaliatory strikes didn’t come, and the US forces sailed away west to abandon Europe and the UK.

The British were on their own, and the list of priorities was so long that the fates of a scattered mixed unit of military and two small orphans with their cat didn’t even feature.

Part Three

Abandoned

Prologue

“Unidentified vessel, this is the USS McAllister,” came a voice over the crackling radio in an accent the captain of the ship had never heard outside of a television set, “you are ordered to heave-to immediately and return to port. I repeat, heave-to immediately. We will not allow you to enter deep water.”

Captain Mike Xavier, tall and lean but more powerful than his frame suggested, turned and surveyed the people assembled on the bridge of his large transport ship, with his piercing eyes made more prominent as they sat between a thick, dark beard and an equally thick mop of unruly hair. Despite the vessel’s huge size, he had very little space for people on board, so whatever indoor areas that could be fashioned into accommodation had been hastily rigged up, and supplies had been stockpiled from wherever they could be found. They had been stolen mostly, but he believed in the needs of the many.

He had close to four hundred souls on his ship, curiously named the Aunt Margaret but known affectionately by her crew as The Maggie,
and he had been one of the few to emerge as a natural leader in the areas far from London and the initial outbreak. When the news reports went inexplicably dark and nobody knew what was happening, he and his crew had picked up their heavy engineering wrenches and crowbars, and they’d defended the docks from the looters who ran riot in the centre of Liverpool.

A week after that initial panic, new sounds rent the air over the oddly picturesque, industrial Albert Docks. Those sounds were of terror, of bloodlust and the primal fear of prey unable to escape a predator. Ahead of that wave of fear came the refugees; those human beings in possession of self-preservation instincts more attuned than others.

Xavier made an instant decision, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, but he made the decision to help by admitting them into their safe enclave, even before he knew what they were running from.

His men blinked, wide-eyed in disbelief at the instructions, but a growled order for them to move their arses was quickly obeyed.

Over the next month they had fortified the docks, saving people whenever they could and using their tools day and night to clear the strong fences surrounding the commercial docks of the undead. Had they not heard the accounts of those desperate people running through the open gates as those inside shouted them on, they might not have believed what came from the city to gnaw at the chain link barrier in an unthinking bid to mindlessly devour the survivors. Xavier had left one of his more senior men in charge of the gate, a big French deck hand called Jean-Pierre, with arms like knotted and tarred ropes, and shiny, olive skin, and he showed his men how to lead the zombies away from the gates and put them down quietly.

Les morts, he called them. The dead. And Jean-Pierre believed that the dead should be treated with respect, even if they were trying to eat them.

“Unidentified vessel, unidentified vessel, this is the USS McAllister. We are a US Navy Frigate with a full complement of armaments. We are authorized and fully prepared to use deadly force if you do not heave-to immediately and return to port. There will be no further verbal warnings. Heave-to now.”

Xavier, the son of a French merchant sailor and a local pub landlady, a native of the city and a man who had been on those docks since he was a boy, snatched up the binoculars on the side of the instrument panel on his bridge, and scanned the horizon off to his right.

He found the vessel, tiny in comparison to his own gargantuan freighter, and watched as it continued heading west under power and most certainly not heaving-to. He didn’t hear the double crump sounds of far-off deck guns firing a single shot each into the path of the commercial boat, but he saw the huge geysers of sea water erupt skywards in answer.

“Fucking hell,” he cursed to himself, the binoculars still glued to his eyes as he saw the two plumes of white water erupt directly in the path of the vessel, “go back, for God’s sake, man,” he said in a low voice, willing the unknown boat’s captain to turn back and not risk the lives on everyone on board.

The other captain, whoever it was, tested the patience of the US Navy officer, who gave his orders and showed anyone observing that he wasn’t backing down. The warning shots were the last message, albeit not a verbal one, and Xavier had a sinking feeling about what was going to happen next.

Dropping the binoculars and putting himself back inside the confines of the bridge, he gave a simple order to his helmsman.

“All ahead stop,” he said solemnly, “bring us about.”

His helmsman responded with naval terminology betraying his roots, and the ship gave the smallest of lurches as their forward momentum was cut. The sheer size of his vessel and the massive displacement of water it created made it very difficult to feel the changes, but Xavier knew his Maggie well.

Even before they began their slow turn to take themselves away from the distant, loose blockade that their ship’s radar had warned them about, everyone on the bridge sitting high up at the stern of the big vessel started to watch, not needing the binoculars. They saw the explosion and its accompanying fireball as the bright orange ball spewed a great cloud of black smoke into the air.

Nothing was said after the initial shouts and screams of alarm, but the atmosphere on the ship was one of frustration and fear.

Picking the lesser of the two evils, they sailed back towards the docks and back towards the uncertain safety of north west England.

ONE

Squadron Sergeant Major Dean Johnson’s detached unit of light reconnaissance tanks and armoured personnel carriers had exhausted their supply of ammunition into the left flank of the massive horde of undead heading straight for their island stronghold. That horde looked for all the world as though the entire human contents of a large city had all decided to walk in one direction at the same time and with no discernible purpose. It had, however, been degraded by over a quarter of its original number by the attack of a troop of four German main battle tanks. But the dead had piled up so high that the majority of the swarm had simply marched onwards and ignored them. That barrier of broken bodies prevented their advance and forced them to try and find another way around, but that delay had effectively removed them from the fight.

Johnson’s convoy, under the command of Captain Palmer, had been returning from London where they had rescued an eight-man special forces team and the scientist they had been sent in to extract. That extraction had fallen foul of another swarm, another inexplicable gathering of the dead that were known to form and dissipate without obvious sense or reason. And even though that swarm was only a tiny fraction of the size of the one that had cut off their retreat, it was still large enough to make the tight confines of the city streets an impassable death trap.

The armour had rolled in, snatched up their objectives, and rolled out with relative ease, but on their return journey they had been forced to stop and send their precious human cargo out by helicopter. Those objectives, the scientist and his box of virus samples, were escorted out by half of the special forces soldiers in the form of a four-man Special Boat Service (SBS) patrol. They had flown south, out over the Jurassic coast of southern England and into the Channel where the remnants of the military and government command hierarchy remained and pulled whatever strings they had left at their disposal; which, tragically, weren’t that many.

The return of the convoy to their commandeered island base just off the coast was delayed by mechanical failures. They had to abandon the damaged tracked vehicles in order to keep moving and get into the fight, and they had arrived just in time to pour machine gun and 30mm cannon fire into the massed bodies heading for the causeway which cut them off from their people. The defenders on the island had brought tonnes of their own lead and explosives to bear on the attack from the remainder of the squadron’s guns, as well as the two stranded Chieftain tanks that brought them not only heavy cannons, but also their new commanding officer in the Captain.

The biggest weapons deployed in the fight were both unexpected and unrequested, as the American Navy destroyer had steamed towards the coast at full speed to bring both of their huge deck guns, their 127mm cannons firing high explosive rounds, to bear. However, as helpful as their unexpected assistance had been, it had also ultimately spelled disaster.

Their final salvo before the big guns ceased their bombardment had struck the bridge itself, which connected the supports of the narrow causeway, their only way on and off the raised spit of land they had called home for close to a month. The bridge had collapsed, almost costing the lives of the entire tank crew who were the armed and armoured roadblock. They survived that, but the three men who had escaped the fifty-five-tonne coffin were forced to watch as their driver failed to make it out.

Although cut off from the mainland by that final ordnance, it was actually the salvo immediately before that which caused the real problems. One explosive round, detonating deep within the attacking mass of dead, blew scattered body parts outwards in a huge half-sphere of gore and ruin. Some of that re-animated flesh landed on the island, including one shattered chunk of meat and bone that was wrapped in the remnants of grey overalls with an embroidered logo that was illegible from the black gunk that had leaked into the fabric. That fabric obscured the ragged diagonal tear across the chest, leaving one complete shoulder and arm that was oddly untouched by the destruction wrought on the rest of the body. The head, although scorched on the side where the bright white stump of an upper arm bone wiggled inside a shoulder joint exposed by the scoured flesh, remained fully animated as it thrashed around, trying to free itself from the confines of the clothing.

That in itself would not have spelled disaster, only it had been one of the faster, smarter ones. What some of the people on the island called the Leaders, what the Royal Marines called Limas, and what others had no name for because they had underestimated not only their faster movements, but also their unexplained ability to think.

Whereas every other shambolic, shuffling corpse was slow-moving and relatively simple to dispatch individually or in small groups, the faster ones displayed something resembling guile. This particular one, or at least the half a torso, head and one arm of it, freed itself from the restraint of what had been the last outfit it had ever put on, back when it had been a man and not a monster, and spun its head around, trying to get a fix on the myriad sounds echoing around the battle.

“Five left,” shouted a hoarse voice from directly ahead, making the burnt and blackened face fix on the source of the sound, and lock its milky eyeballs onto a target.

“More ammo!” cried the voice louder now, sending a man back to fetch more 51mm mortar rounds to lob high over the now severed road bridge and into the mass. They still kept coming, only to pour over the destroyed parapet and into the fast-moving current to be swept away in the same direction of the stinging smoke from their burning white phosphorous smoke bombs.

As the fourth of those five remaining bombs popped out of the tubes and shot skywards, the hand of the animated piece of burnt meat had clawed forwards using the gaps in the old stonework of the roadway to gain purchase and propel it onwards. Just as the last mortar round was dropped into the hot metal pipe to send it far away at an impossible speed, that hand reached out and locked onto the webbing belt of the soldier kneeling beside the weapon with his back to the unseen threat. He screamed, crying out involuntarily in fright, as he fell backwards with the pull and kicked out the leg of the man holding the mortar tube, sending the bomb with its armed fuse directly into a nearby building through a tall window. It exploded and poured smoke out of the shattered glass. Men screamed and shouted all around as they burned and panicked, but one scream overrode them all.

The man who had been hauled back by what transpired to be just under a quarter of a former human being felt a desperate and strong hand clamp over his face, the sharp fingernails digging in for grip and finding the soft recess of his left eye socket and the vulnerable eyeball within. As that nail punctured the skin and drove deeply inside the skull behind the eye, he bellowed a high-pitched shriek of shock and agony. That shriek was quickly stifled when cold teeth clamped down on the warm flesh of his neck and burst the blood vessels beneath, before the skin gave way and a huge chunk of flesh came sinuously free. Blood pulsed out onto the stone in massive, arterial gushes, soaking victim and attacker and painting them both the same colour.

The other man of that mortar team had fled as soon as he knew that the white phosphorous bomb would land inside their own lines, and as he didn’t like the thought of having his skin burned off his back at a temperature of five thousand degrees, he simply ran.

The battle was being fought on two fronts by then; the enemy advancing towards the thirty-foot wide gap in the roadway were still being fired on as the mass of dead were clogging up even the deep, fast moving coastal water and piling up on the nearest bit of sandy edge to the island, where their numbers would eventually break any but the stoutest of obstacles. The rest of the efforts of the living were spent in evacuating injured men from the building that was now burning violently, and they were carried and dropped some distance away as their rescuers went back to save men and equipment from the flames that by now reached high above the pitched roof.

A groan to the left of the quarter-zombie caught its attention, making it perform the same grotesque travel by clawing its own remains across the cobblestones to find the source. That source was four men, two of whom writhed and moaned; one merely emitted a series of long, intense grunts, as if he were screaming inside in a dream from which he couldn’t wake, and the closest to the zombie simply lay still.

It didn’t know how it knew, but some instinct or smell or other sense told it that this man was already dead and was simply not registering as food when there was moving prey nearby. But the body did present itself as a reliable handhold with which the crawling nightmare could haul itself over to fall on the three wounded men, who, as loud as their screams were, could not raise the alarm over the cacophony of war and flame and smoke.

By the time those three men had bled to death from the cruel bites to their throats and forearms and wrists and hands and faces, the first soldier to have fallen prey opened its milky eyes and sat up to search for fresh meat of its own.

“Attack rear! Attack rear!” came the panicked shout of one man, who was fumbling with the Sterling sub machine gun in his shaking hands. But his frantic shouts went unheard as he fell victim to his friend of many years, who in that instant, did not recognise him as anything but food.

By the time the firing to the front had faded away and those soldiers at the front of the line, led by Lieutenant of Marines Chris Lloyd, had been reorganised and moved on to defend the beach, there were six fully-mobile zombies hunting men in the rear of their forces, thanks to the impossibly damaged remains of just one man. There were shouts and gunfire from the waterline below them, but the higher-pitched screams of women further up the island’s incline grabbed the attention of three of the zombies, who began shambling their way uphill and into the undefended streets filled with civilians.

Cut off, under attack from the water and with a growing enemy gathering strength from within their own enclave, the people left behind on the island were doomed.

TWO

Peter and Amber had huddled together as an unseasonably chill wind ripped across the coastline. She had listened to the music on his cassette player until the batteries wore down, to then play the songs in slow-motion, she hugged the limp and dirty stuffed lamb up under her chin and sat in her characteristically quiet manner. It wasn’t cold inside their new home, even with having to leave a small window open so that the cat who had decided the two small humans belonged to it could come and go as it pleased. But the whistling wind made them both feel insecure and forced them upstairs, where they sat with their knees drawn up and quilts wrapped around them, just waiting for the night to end.

Part of that collective feeling of unease was the hour of booming noise in the distance that began like thunder and ended like the ceaseless banging of multiple drums, until no single sound was distinguishable from another. Those sounds had dropped suddenly in their intensity, as though the bass drum had simply stopped working, then the other sounds faded away to echoes of nothing. Still, they sat quietly upstairs in the big house they had taken over and each drifted deep into their own thoughts before sleep took them.

Peter replayed the events of that day over and over in his head, of how he had truly known terror like he had never experienced in his life when he thought that he had failed Amber, and that she would be killed by the zombie that had caught them unprepared in the house they were searching for supplies. He was sure, or at least he hoped, that she did not know how close she had come to being failed by him and being eaten; torn apart in blood and screams.

He again thanked whatever it was up there looking out for him and giving him his streak of luck, which, he had to admit, was still teetering on the side of good, given that he, that they, were still alive.

He had guessed that the rolling thunder was some form of battle raging in the distance, but since he felt he had no place among the grown-ups left behind after everything went wrong, he decided that seeking out their assistance wasn’t a priority for him and his ward.

And, he thought logically, if the army, or whoever, are in the middle of a battle, then they’re probably worse off than we are.

After they had made it back to their new place and dragged the last of four cartloads inside to stockpile their plundered resources, Peter had allowed himself to replay the recent events, and paid special attention to the minute details his mind conjured up about the last three monsters he had killed with his pitchfork and spike. Two of those, he hated to accept, were conquered by sheer luck.

The female zombie who had walked into the house where he had first found Amber, the woman who used to be a nurse, or who at least dressed like one, had moved faster than he’d expected, and only his good fortune had pinned her snapping jaw shut as he missed her brain with the weapon. He had pulled his back-up, his spike made from an off-cut of the pitchfork, and he’d managed to kill it, but he’d felt then that it was too close for comfort. He hadn’t had time to consider the what-ifs of that scenario, because he had convinced the young girl to come with him and flee the village, ranging over low hills and fields until they found somewhere safer to be.

The other two had been dispatched only hours before; the first a naked, bloated and repulsive creature rising from the low, green water of a brook. He’d been crossing the small bridge and had not even seen it until Amber’s curious and eerie warning had made him turn back to look at her. The memory brought with it the smell, and his stomach flipped angrily as it threatened to show him the can of soup he’d had earlier.

Shaking that away, his mind brought back the slow-motion action replay of the last person, no, the last zombie, he had killed. That one terrified him the most, not for fear of his own violent death and dismemberment, but for the fact that the thing was reaching out for Amber when his run of good luck had struck again, and the tip of his pitchfork, thrust out ahead of him as he fell, punctured the spine of the thing and paralysed it from the neck down.

Amber seemed unperturbed by this, and he reckoned that she didn’t know how close she had come to getting killed. He knew that she didn’t realise he had fallen over the raised edge of a rug and nearly ended her life through sheer clumsiness, and he had no plans to tell her. Ever.

He’d been doing fine for a few weeks after his miserable existence on the family farm came to an uninspiring but utterly bowel-loosening, terrifying conclusion. He had been driven off his land by a crowd of zombies, a crowd larger than all the people he had ever seen before in one place together. He had been quietly going from house to house, moving at night and sneaking into the quaint country homes to eat whatever tinned food they had, and drink the water left in their taps. He didn’t understand why some houses still had running water when others did not, but in terms of priorities he decided that it didn’t really matter.

That quiet drifting had lasted until he was woken one daytime by men in a car who had dragged away a woman from a cottage opposite his hiding place, leaving behind his new purpose in life in the form of a crying, terrified girl.

He had been happy just looking after himself, but that existence had been pointless, other than to simply remain alive until something changed. As a rule, he avoided any other people, alive or dead, but now that he had a child to look after, he felt differently about everything.

Amber, all four and three-quarter years old of her, was more than half of his own age, as he wouldn’t turn ten for another month, but that age difference was relative and circumstantial. He was old enough to protect her, so he did just that.

Add to that the responsibility of the cat who had followed them for miles from their last hiding place, and his need to be on the lookout for cat food, as well as anything that could sustain them, and Peter felt in that moment more than a little overwhelmed by life.

It had always been his sister who had looked out for him, who had protected him and not told him about the dangers of life, because he was too young to have to face them. Now, following that model, he became that person for Amber, who could not protect herself.

Standing up as quietly as he could, because she had finally fallen asleep, Peter tiptoed down the stairs and into the dark, open-plan ground floor of the modern house. It was dark because they had tightly drawn all of the curtains on the front and upstairs rear of the house, leaving the long, wide picture windows of the kitchen uncovered as that was overlooked by nothing, and he’d decided it was safe to leave that way.

A small window beside the back door, one high up and too small for a person to climb through, was left open as a means for their four-legged follower to use as access. Pet wasn’t the right word for it, as no person can ever claim to truly own a cat, as the species practically invented the word capricious. Nevertheless, it had followed them and stayed with them, if only for the fact that Peter used the magic tin opener and fed the black and brown cat a meal that it didn’t have to hunt first, while avoiding the foul-smelling, slow-moving humans who seemed to want to grab it every time they saw it. Peter was happy for the cat because each night they had been together, it had reappeared at some point and was always curled up on or next to Amber whenever they woke.

When it realised they were awake, it would purr loudly, like marbles rolling around inside a hard leather case, and it would nuzzle the girl until she giggled.

The sound of her laugh cut through his soul every time he heard it, as though that sound alone was the only thing worth going through their daily routine for.

As soon as he walked into the kitchen and gently turned the tap to run cold water into a glass, a noise sounded at the window and Peter’s head whipped to the side to see the animal teetering on the frame, half in and half out of the house. It meowed at him, rolling the sound into a chirping gargle before dropping down with a thud onto the worktop and then to the floor in stages as it trotted to his feet with a raised tail curled over at the tip like a question mark. The rattling purr wound up to full intensity and he stepped carefully over the cat to pick up a tin of the smelly meat chunks in gravy, and he opened it to stop the noise and the nagging which snaked between his ankles in a ceaseless figure-eight.

He put the dish on the kitchen bench and watched as the cat sniffed at the meal, then looked back at him to emit a croaky meow and step lightly to the tap which was still dripping from when he’d run himself the glass of water. It fussed at the tip of the tap, turning its head and licking at it to force a small dribble of liquid to run out, which it lapped at.

“You thirsty?” Peter asked it, speaking more to himself, but seeing the cat respond to his words with another chatter of dry-throated meowing. He opened three cupboards in turn, looking for something appropriate and finding a small, glass cooking dish which he filled with water from the tap. The cat stepped with one paw onto his forearm to begin drinking as the tap still ran and made it awkward for Peter to hold the dish until he managed to put it down near the food.

He watched, sipping his own water, as the cat lapped desperately at the cool liquid to slake a thirst the boy hadn’t thought to predict. When it had finished, it sat down and wiped a paw over its face to clear away the droplets attached to the fur on its snout, before dropping down again to trot across the tiled floor, tail raised in the characteristic curl, and up out of the window again.

Peter thought about the brook and the only natural source of water he had seen in the small village, deciding that the cat probably didn’t want to drink from it because of the rotten corpse contaminating it.

He took his water to the wide corner settee in the open lounge area, shrouded in late afternoon gloom with the curtains drawn, and he sat. The thunder, or the guns as he had guessed they were, had stopped hours since to leave a menacing memory, and the air outside had taken on an ominous silence, with the exception of the gusts of wind which howled in fits and bursts. He knew he would have to wake Amber up soon, to make her some food from their newly-acquired stocks that were piled neatly on the kitchen benches in order of category.

As long as they didn’t attract the attention of any crowds of the monsters passing through, and as long as none of the other houses in the village held unwelcome surprises of more than one or two, or worse still, the faster ones who seemed to collect a gang of the others around them, he guessed they could stay there for weeks.

If they were lucky.

THREE

Corporal Daniels, sitting inside the ungainly but more spacious static armoured vehicles, their remaining Sultan, tried repeatedly to get a response on the radio until a hand rested on his arm. Turning to the big man in the small seat beside him, his Squadron Sergeant Major shook his head once at him. The sudden silence was replaced by a muted and weak banging sound from outside their hull, making the four men crammed inside freeze and listen. A faint moan drifted to them, telling them instantly what was outside, looking for a way in.

Their mixed convoy now comprised a single tracked Spartan, their command vehicle of the Sultan with its oddly configured taller profile, two of the brutish and rugged Saxons, which contained Maxwell and his two crews from the abandoned Spartans, and a four-man Special Air Service patrol, as well as their four remaining Fox armoured cars of Strauss’ One Troop.

Thirty-one men, squeezed into eight of their original ten vehicles and dangerously short on ammunition after pouring lead into the disgusting, roiling mass of decaying bodies, now sat in silence inside their armoured hulls, and they waited. Waiting was something they were accustomed to, only not in those specific circumstances. Anyone in any branch of the military would be intimately acquainted with the concept of hurrying up and waiting, but none had ever faced any concept of danger anywhere near their current stress levels.

They waited for an order, waited for something to do and to feel useful. The sounds of moans and bodies bumping into their vehicles echoed and sowed the seeds of panic and fear amongst them. Only a few men held their nerve convincingly, and four of those were in the rear of one Saxon personnel carrier. Major Downes, officer commanding the SAS patrol and referred to simply as Boss by his three men, regarded the rest of his small detachment.

Mac had his eyes closed, but Downes knew he would not be sleeping. Even if he was, he knew that the man would come awake instantly and be fully combat effective inside of a second. Beside him, and similarly motionless, was Smiffy, and to Downes’ left was Dez, who was slowly and quietly checking the action of the dismounted general purpose machine gun, or gimpy, taken from one of the abandoned Spartans. He evidently liked the weapon, but being the patrol’s demolitions expert, it came as no surprise that he held a reverence bordering on an inappropriately romantic involvement with a weapon so capable of destruction. His fingers ran over the linked ammunition for it with a light caress; part technical assessment and part suspect eroticism.

The weapon was undoubtedly a serious piece of kit, and indeed their own vaunted regiment had demonstrated that a single belt of two hundred rounds of the heavy 7.62 ammunition could be used to create a doorway in a brick wall. In polar-opposite contrast, their personal weapons were the small-calibre suppressed version of Germany’s best mass-produced sub machine gun, the Heckler & Koch MP5SD. Spitting their lethally accurate 9mm projectiles with a coughing sound and able to fire in single shot, three-round burst and fully automatic modes, it made them a perfect weapon for close-quarters battle with the undead, who seemed to demonstrate an unnerving ability to locate their prey by sound alone.

The noises made by the few undead pawing over their vehicles outside didn’t bother them as it wasn’t their problem to deal with yet, but that wasn’t to say that they weren’t aware of the threat, in case it became their focus in the near future.

In the command vehicle directly behind them, Captain Palmer and Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson exchanged a look. It was instigated by the young officer, and it asked for ideas as to what the hell they should do next.

They were desperately low on ammunition, unable to raise anyone on the island or anywhere else for that matter, and they had to make a decision. That decision hinged on whether the island had been overrun or not, but to find out they would be forced to leave the safety of their armour.

Using the viewports available to him, Palmer tried to count how many Screechers, as their detachment of mixed forces called them, were in their immediate area.

“Retreat a few hundred metres,” Johnson suggested in a low voice, seeing no response to his words from the officer, other than his fingers moving to switch the channels on his radio to address the convoy.

“Withdraw, minimum three hundred metres,” he ordered, hearing the engines of the different vehicles bark and growl into whistling, clattering life as gears engaged with heavy, mechanical, clunking noises and engine pitches rose to a high whistle before they performed turns and drove away from the wide swathes of broken dead.

Sergeant Strauss, commanding the Fox scout car at the rear of the column, pointed out a raised bluff of ground ahead and to their right, which could accommodate his troop to provide all-around cover. Occupying that position, alien to the warfare he had trained for, to give any attacking force a clear view of their silhouettes, but far more sensible for fighting the new biting, unthinking infantry they had been forced to rapidly adapt to, Strauss opened his hatch and scanned the landscape below them.

The scene was utterly repulsive and stomach-churning. It was horrifying to behold the incredible, destructive power of their guns, which had spread shattered and ruined bodies over almost a mile of flat ground, all the way to the huge mounds of zombies
laid to waste by the combined might of tanks and shore
bombardment. Strauss was torn between a perverse pride in what they could do against vast numbers of enemy infantry, and yet simultaneously sickened by the unnecessary waste of life. His only blessing, he knew from unwelcome experience, was that he was not close enough to truly experience the smell.

Physically shaking his head to force his thoughts to return to the task in hand, he transmitted a report for the benefit of their commanders below.

“Approx. thirty Screechers in close,” he said, estimating the numbers of undead who had shambled their way towards the retreating armour, “no Limas.”

“Roger, Foxtrot-One-Zero, stand by to engage enemy,” Captain Palmer’s voice came back before it was interrupted by another transmission.

“Cancel, cancel,” it said intently, “Charlie-One-One to last callsign: confirm enemy numbers and confirm negative Limas, over.”

Charlie-One-One, Strauss guessed, was the unit callsign for the SAS team currently sitting in the dark rear of a Saxon below his elevated position. Looking back towards the shambling attack, he responded with, “Stand by, Charlie-One-One,” and double-checked his numbers and his assessment of their capabilities. Moments later he gave the report more concisely.

“Hello, Charlie-One-One, this is Foxtrot-One-Zero. Confirmed negative for Limas, enemy at six-zero yards and closing. Count thirty-two, confirm three-two, over.”

“Roger, all units hold fire, repeat hold fire, Charlie-One-One going foxtrot,” came the confident and slightly harsh response.

Almost every man in their convoy had been to Northern

Ireland and all had trained for that theatre, and all of them knew what going foxtrot meant. The four SAS men were going outside to bring the fight to the enemy on foot, and their reason for doing so was solely to keep things quiet.

Inside the back of the Saxon, Downes replaced the phone handset with its inbuilt press-to-talk function and nodded to Trooper Williams, the Yeomanry man assigned as their driver from Maxwell’s troop. Turning to his three men, he saw them all readying themselves and their weapons. Dezzy looked momentarily forlorn as he gently set down the long machine gun and drew back the bolt on his MP5 to see the glint of brass in the dim light of the Saxon’s interior.

Waiting until six eyes looked up at him for the order to break out, Downes nodded again once and growled the words, “Let’s do this.”

The dull afternoon light lit up the interior as the rear doors were thrown open and the men filed out in no desperate hurry. It wasn’t as though they had to flee the truck and find hard cover to protect themselves from culvert bombs or enemy fire, but Williams marvelled at how rapidly their ingrained training had adapted to a different way of life and death.

The last man turned back and shut the door, pausing as he was about to close it, and leaned his head back inside to fix the driver with a stern look.

“I’ll be back! Hah!” he said, as he barked a laugh and shut the door, casting the interior back into darkness.

Downes ignored Smiffy’s levity, knowing that trying to stop the man making jokes was as effective as trying to tie knots in snot.

“Spread out, cover in pairs, don’t take chances,” he said unnecessarily, knowing and trusting the men to do precisely what was required and not to take stupid risks. That was often, he found at least, the biggest misconception about the men in his regiment; they weren’t unstable and insane risk-takers with no fear of death, they were just fiercely fit and committed individuals whose personal limits were higher than those of the average person. They were usually cold, methodical, tough men who lived to do their jobs, and that was why they got the best missions, the best kit, and existed outside of the stiff regime of the big green army machine.

Instinctively breaking off into pairs as testimony to the thousands of hours spent in training, one covering and one moving, Mac dropped in behind Downes’ shoulder and they stalked forwards to close the gap between themselves and the shuffling zombies. Dez and Smiffy spread out to their left, mirroring their movements. After an advance of thirty paces to halve the gap between vehicles and zombies, their weapons began to cough the small bullets at the heads of the shambling attackers, bullets ripping into open maws to destroy brain stems and ‘render them safe’ with next to no noise.

“Stoppage!” Downes heard to his left in the unmistakable accent of his Londoner, Smiffy. He didn’t need to look, but he knew that Dez would already be standing over him, his left lower leg pressed into Smiffy’s back as he physically let him know he was there, covering him as he knelt and cleared his weapon. If he couldn’t clear it quickly, or the enemy advanced too close, then he would call out and rise up to draw his secondary weapon and start popping heads with the Browning Hi-Power holstered on his right hip. That would be less than ideal, as only one of them had managed to find a suppressor for their sidearm and that was Downes with his Sig Sauer P228.

“Clear!” Smiffy called. Again, Downes didn’t look, because he was still selecting targets and firing three-shot bursts into torn and rotting faces, but he knew that Dezzy would have stepped aside and removed the contact from his partner’s back, allowing him the space to stand up safely to rejoin the fight.

Less than a minute into their encroaching action and the loose attacking formation they faced was down. In turn, each man of their respective pairs took turns to perform a tactical reload, when they clicked a fresh magazine of 9mm rounds into their guns, regardless of whether the current load was fully expended. The partially empty magazines went down the front of their dark smocks to be retrieved and refilled later.

“One more,” Mac warned in his characteristically dour voice, made even more dolorous by the Scottish accent. All eyes shot forward, and all widened as they realised the last one approaching them wasn’t shambling or stumbling, but it seemed to be jogging in a slightly drunken fashion.

“Fucking Lima,” Mac warned, with more intensity in his voice, then dropped to one knee and flicked the fire selector of his own weapon from semi-auto to three-shot and began squeezing off bursts to bring it down before it got to them. The others joined him, two firing bursts and two firing longer streams of automatic fire until the thing stumbled and clattered to the roadway twenty paces from them. Loud cracks echoed to their ears as the thing broke bones in the tumbling fall, for it to land, skidding on its face on the tarmac. The four men rose, never taking their eyes off their attacker and the surrounding landscape, as the thing emitted a shrieking groan and rose on its hands to try and get to its feet. One foot, the leg damaged irreparably by either the gunfire or the fall, faced backwards and as it tried to get upright, the bones crunched again, bright white shards puncturing the skin and clothing grotesquely, until it slammed back down to its face to crack its nose and leak black, thick gore from the nostrils, which dripped into an oily puddle before it. The thing began to crawl towards them on three limbs faster than it had any earthly right to do, like some reincarnation of the Exorcist.

As one, the three men took an involuntary step backwards and raised their weapons to crouch into the short stocks and take aim. Downes lowered his MP5 and stepped out ahead of the line, making the others drop the ends of their muzzles and display their ingrained respect for the killing power of guns. Stepping forwards confidently into the path of the crawling monstrosity, he raised his primary weapon at waist height and stitched a burst of automatic fire into the skull to obliterate it.

“Stay!” he said conversationally, as the others joined him at his side.

“Well, would you fucking look at that,” Smiffy spoke with an incredulous tone, “that is the worst fucking outfit I have ever seen.”

Chuckles sounded among the four men as they finally took stock of what the nearly headless Lima had been wearing before he’d died and turned.

“I mean, come on,” Mac said, picking up the thread, ‘this wanker actually chose to wear that when he was alive.”

The four men looked down, regarding a shiny shellsuit so offensive that none of them could make sense of the number of bright colours which adorned the body; it looked just as if he’d been wearing white, and had turned inside a paint shop and thrashed around until he was covered from head to toe.

“Reckon the guy who owns Campari is still alive?” Dezzy asked as they turned and began to walk back, reloading their weapons.

“If he is,” Smiffy answered, “can we just pretend he’s a zombie and slot him anyway?”

“My thanks, gentlemen,” Palmer’s voice cut over their chatter. They looked up to see the young captain in command of the armour approaching them.

“I did say we would see each other soon,” Downes said, offering a hand for him to shake.

“You did,” Palmer accepted, “but I didn’t think it would be so soon, nor under such circumstances.”

“True, Captain,” Downes said, “very true. Have you contacted your base yet?”

Palmer’s face dropped into annoyance and worry before he answered, nudging his head to one side and indicating that the SAS officer should follow him away for a private talk.

“No, they aren’t responding to our calls. Do you think we can push through to retake the bridge?” he asked.

Downes thought, casting his mind back to the rotting, rolling hills of dead and writhing bodies.

“No, we have to find another way. I doubt your wagons would punch through and going on foot is suicide.”

“Dammit,” Palmer cursed, then turned as his name was called urgently from the open hatch of the Sultan behind him.

FOUR

Long before the German tanks had been mobilised and the combined UK special forces teams had arrived at their underground objective in London, an allied team had been covertly inserted onto British soil. They did so via the side door of a twin propeller plane, and the team of four dropped out at just under ten thousand feet to freefall, before opening their canopies to arrive quietly at the twin of the nuclear power station near the south coast.

As the three men and one woman of the Forsvarets Spesialkommando, or FSK, plummeted towards the green landscape to the north and east of London, one of them marvelled that they were being deployed at all. The Norwegian government still hadn’t officially acknowledged the existence of their elite commandos, even though they had been undergoing intensive training ready to play their part for NATO should the Cold War gather any kind of intense heat. Now, instead of deploying in secret under cover of darkness to erode the infrastructure of the Soviet Union, they were heading down to secure a location for a team of American engineers to turn down the dial on the nuclear power plant.

The first parachute commando out of the door, eager to be the first pair of boots on the ground and prove that she was more capable than any man, levelled herself out and glanced at the altimeter on her left wrist as she reached terminal velocity. She knew the other three men of her team would be close behind her, but the low cloud cover prevented them from seeing their objective from height.

As Astrid Larsen fell, she adjusted her attitude to allow for her right hand to reach behind and pull the cord to release her parachute above the cloud cover so as not to issue a loud crack when the chute deployed at low altitude. Taking a breath and holding it, she steadied her torso against the violent change in
direction as the air caught the canopy to snatch her vertically. As soon as she located the steering lines she heard a whistling, flapping noise and checked up again to ensure that her rig had deployed correctly, but her vision was drawn to a man-sized missile.

Her commander, Erik Nilson, last man out of the plane, flew past her out of control and left her with a snapshot of his hand pulling desperately on the reserve ‘chute. Within a heartbeat he was gone, swallowed by the cloud layer sitting close to the ground, and another noise pulled her eyes back up. Spiralling and yelling in fear and frustration, another of her team fell at a far faster rate than her own descent, as he twisted inexorably, agonisingly, trying to release the partially-open canopy that dragged him down at a rate he couldn’t hope to survive. He too disappeared into the clouds, and a second later she followed, pursing her lips against the sudden cool sting of the moisture.

Emerging through the layer herself, she took in the scene below, which set her jaw tight and forced her adrenaline levels higher still.

The compound, strongly fenced and very secure, as she would expect with anything nuclear, had somehow been infected with the disease that threatened Europe and the wider world, and this had the unfortunate side effect of containing the enemy inside a confined area. Having inexplicably lost at least fifty percent of their strength in the drop, Astrid forced herself to concentrate and find a safe place to land. Hauling on the steering lines, she aimed for a single storey building and its flat roof, flaring the canopy with all of her strength at the last moment to try and arrest as much of her momentum as possible. Losing her footing on the loose tar and shingle, she scraped herself painfully along the roof until she could unfasten the straps of her rig and shrug out of it to unstrap the weapon from her chest. Astrid, like all of her team,
carried the same weapon as the UK special forces in the form of the MP5SD, the suppressed sub-machine gun, but unlike them, the Norwegians all carried the same HK P7 pistol with the fat cylinder protruding from the barrel, which she wore on her right thigh. Extending the parachute stock of the gun, she nestled it into her shoulder and took aim over the iron sights to the ground below.

She saw Nilsen, at least she assumed it was him as there was no canopy around the man, partly embedded in the soft grass, with limbs sticking out at horrendously unnatural angles. There was nothing she could do for him, as landing at terminal velocity wasn’t much known for its survivability. Turning her head away from the stomach-churning sight of kneeling people tearing into her commander’s body with teeth and nails, and thankful that she was too far away to hear the ripping and crunching noises she imagined, she looked towards the sounds of distress to her right.

Obscured by the angle of the building, she could see the upper body of another team member, the unfortunate one with the partially failed canopy deployment who’d come in too fast to control his landing. The man, Jonas, was caught up in an upright metal support by his snagged canopy. His right arm hung limply, and he cried out either in pain or fear, or both. Astrid didn’t know what was beneath him, but she saw him struggling to free his pistol with his left hand and clamp the slide under his chin to charge the weapon. He achieved this on the second attempt and began to pour shots downwards towards an enemy Astrid couldn’t see enough from her position. She stood to her full height to try and gain an advantage, but still could not sight his attackers. All too quickly, his magazine was expended, and he tucked the weapon under his arm as his rhythmic yells sounded short of breath. Performing a one-handed reload, he repeated the process to charge the weapon, but stopped to throw his head back and howl in pain. His whole body convulsed, and the firing resumed, but the yells stopped and his face flushed red. Finally locating Astrid in his vision, he shot her a look of panic, fixed her stare for a second, and turned the gun on himself.

Astrid watched him, her face a silent rictus of horror as the top of his skull burst to fountain blood and bone directly upwards before his limp, lifeless head and body slumped down. He twitched, shaking as though someone was trying to help him down from where he hung in the tangled lines, and the realisation hit her at the same time as his body was pulled down out of sight, that he was being consumed by ravenous teeth. Scrapes to her left made her drop to her right knee and raise the gun, with her left arm resting on her left knee, providing instant stability to the weapon. As soon as she had sighted down the length of the barrel, she immediately pointed the weapon up and relaxed.

Christian Berg, the only other surviving member of her team, had landed on his feet perfectly and jogged a handful of steps with the momentum to slow down as he stepped out of the rig he had unfastened on landing.

Under any other circumstance, such a stylish entrance would prompt bragging and laughter, but as the last man to land, he had seen the whole grim show unfolding. Unstrapping his own gun and extending the stock, he asked Astrid in their native Norwegian what she knew.

“The commander is dead,” she reported, by pointing at the knot of kneeling figures who feasted on him, “and Jonas just put a bullet in his own brain.”

“Bitten?” Berg asked.

“I didn’t see, but I have to assume so. He was hung up in his lines,” she said, pointing in the direction where his canopy flapped against the metal poles.

“Nilsen hit his canopy in freefall,” Berg reported woodenly, “I didn’t see it, but I heard it. Jonas must have been unable to recover.”

Astrid pursed her lips in thought, sending up a brief prayer to the old gods for surviving what had become a catastrophic loss of life in seconds; fifty percent of their team dead from just their insertion was devastating.

“We still have the mission,” she said, subtly reminding Berg that at less than two-thirds his size, she still outranked him. He nodded, stepping to the edge of the low building and bobbing his head fractionally as he scanned the ground, making a rough headcount of the visible zombies.

“Do you see any of the faster ones like in the intelligence report?” she asked his broad back.

“I can’t be certain,” he said cautiously, “but I would still prefer to stay up here until they are gone. Shall we?”

“What do you suggest?”

“We call them over,” Berg said simply, “and shoot them.”

Astrid shrugged, checked her watch and calculated the time left before the helicopter would be swooping in to drop off the engineers.

“You think it will work?” she asked.

Berg smiled, shrugging, and repeated a phrase that translated into English as, Birds fly not into our mouths ready roasted.

Astrid understood; it was time to go to work.

It took them close to forty minutes to attract the attention of the majority of the zombies and draw them close enough to dispatch them with bullets to their heads. Those less interested in them had to be confronted at ground level and the pair moved close to each other, at one point ending up back to back when Berg was forced to resort to his secondary weapon, as it was quicker to draw and use the pistol than to reload the MP5. The air around them stank of cordite and their barrels ran hot as they expended most of their ammunition.

When they had finished, when no other enemies came for them and they were left dominant in the field, they finally had the time to attend to their fallen companions.

Or at least, attend to what was left of them.

Nilsen had somehow landed on his back and had been all but hollowed out. His face was gone, and his intestines had been spread over impossibly long distances as the zombies eating them had wandered towards the new sounds and dragged the glistening snakes with them. It was an ignoble and unworthy end to a respected, capable man, but the mission came first, and they managed to pick through his remains to recover the spare ammunition he carried. Both surviving members of the team were down to their last thirty rounds, as they had been forced to dispatch twice the number of enemy than would have been necessary, had they suffered no losses on the insertion. They found the body of Jonas, still partly suspended by his parachute, and tried not to look at the exposed bones of his legs where he had been chewed at like a hanging treat in a birdcage. Silently, his weapons and ammunition were taken to replenish their expended rounds, and the pair entered the building with one of the swipe cards that the whole team carried.

* * *

The engineers arrived via helicopter less than an hour after they had secured the power station. Two men, tired and both wearing a few days’ worth of stubble, followed their escort inside and went about their work in near silence, save for a few necessary words to each other. They finished quickly, far more quickly than the two surviving Norwegians had expected, and they packed up their gear to trudge exhaustedly back to the helicopter, which was sitting motionless on the hardstanding near the main entrance doors. Those doors were sealed behind them, and the helicopter’s engines sparked into life to spin up the limp blades to a screaming whine.

Over that noise, Berg shouted a warning.

It wasn’t any identifiable word, merely a panicked shout of rage and fear and alarm as he slammed his body into the path of the running shape rounding the corner of the building, like a professional sportsman checking an opponent. The combined impact of an inhumanly reckless run and the commando’s large frame sent the five of them tumbling to the ground. Astrid rolled clear of the obstruction at the front of the melee and rose to her knees as she brought up her MP5 in one smooth movement, her right thumb pushing all the way down and flicking the fire selector through to automatic.

The fat barrel of the gun spat savagely, emptying the magazine into the rising creature as it leapt into the air to tower over her countryman. The end of the barrel tracked upwards with the movement as it rose, its chest rippling with the impacts of the bullets until finally the angle of the weapon elevated enough for the thudding noise to become hollower. The splintering, cracking sounds of the creature’s skull coincided with the sudden limpness in the attack. At the peak of its ungainly leap, the wide, cloudy eyes over bared teeth went slack and it fell flat on top of Berg’s broad back to drive the air out of him and the two engineers underneath. Its head flopped, pouring a mouthful of oily drool onto the rolled-up sleeve of one of them.

Silence reigned, broken only by Astrid sucking in a breath and dropping the spent magazine from her gun to click in a fresh one as she stood and kicked out at the torn and broken body to launch it off the living ones.

“Christian! Are you okay?” she asked in Norwegian in a tone bordering on panic, “Are you hurt?” she said insistently, speaking in English this time to all of them but still mostly concerned with her team mate.

“I am fine,” Berg answered, his fingers going to the back of his head where it felt tender, to check his fingertips and find them sheened in the slightest trace of blood. He looked at the red smears on his skin, then at Astrid as they both registered a look of shock. Dropping her weapon to swing on the strap over her torso, she stepped forwards and pulled his head down to look for a wound. Berg said nothing. He wouldn’t ask questions that he didn’t want the answer to, nor would he offer empty reassurances to her.

“I can’t see any broken skin,” she said finally, feeling the relief in him as he sagged. He stood, looking at the two terrified Americans, who remained on the rough concrete bathed in the rotor wash of the helicopter spinning up above them.

“You?” he said to them, watching as they checked themselves over and offered shocked reassurances that they were fine.

“I grazed my elbow,” one of them said weakly, showing a patch of scraped and bleeding skin. He looked dismayed when the minor injury was summarily ignored, and they were bundled into the helicopter. The two Norwegians put on headsets and listened to the pilot as the helicopter’s engines dialled up their intensity, and they rose into the air to turn south and out to sea. Feeling the chill of the speed and altitude, the engineer with the fresh cut to his elbow pulled the gore-soaked sleeves of his shirt down and felt the cold of wet blood and drool on the injury, rubbing tenderly at it as he felt a sudden sting.

FIVE

“Hold the line, boys!” Lieutenant Chris Lloyd called out to his marines. “Conserve your ammunition!”

He pressed his own cheek back into the stock of his L85, the newly-issued SA80 rifle, renamed and given an innocuous codename, as was usually the way with the British Army. It was typically ironic that the SA80, as in small arms for the 1980s, only just started to come into issue when the decade began to draw to a close. Lloyd had seen how the RMPs and some troopers looked with jealousy at the Marines’ guns, when they were still being issued with equipment left over from the second world war, or the sixties and seventies.

That jealousy, as much as he understood it, given the futuristic bullpup design of the rifle, was misplaced, in his opinion. He, or at least his sergeant, the irascible Bill Hampton, ensured that the marines kept their weapons in pristine condition. It was easy, given the amount of time they were hurrying up and waiting, but it was also a sad necessity, because every speck of dust, every grain of sand and every wet leaf or glob of mud seemed magnetically attracted to the gun’s working parts. That was a constant source of annoyance, especially knowing that the word was beginning to spread that the forces would be conducting build-up training for a sandy theatre of war very soon. No major prizes were issued for guessing where that would have been, but it seemed unlikely that they would be deploying anywhere soon.

A shriek to his front focused his mind as the fence before him bent nauseatingly inwards. This prompted a sharp thrust of the attached bayonet into the open mouth of the dripping wet teenager in a navy blazer and diagonally-striped tie, the entire scene eerily lit by the flames of the burning building growing larger off to his right.

At least the bloody spike doesn’t malfunction, he thought to himself.

As another surge of bodies swept over the fallen schoolboy, Lloyd stepped back and fired a long burst of automatic 5.56 at head height and temporarily cleared a section five paces wide. Clicking on an empty chamber, he hit the release catch and missed as the empty magazine fell away, out of his fingertips. Ignoring the drop, he snatched a fresh magazine from the pouch of his webbing and slapped it home to rack the bolt and feed a fresh bullet into the chamber. Bringing the rifle back into his shoulder and nestling it in tight, he inadvertently caught the annoyingly sensitive magazine release catch again, and succeeded in firing only a single round before he clicked dry again.

“Fucking…” he swore as he turned the weapon to look for the fault. He saw it instantly as the profile of the weapon looked almost ridiculous without a magazine seated behind the trigger mechanism. He felt a thump on his shoulder and turned to see the troop medic firing his own weapon one-handed, as his left hand held out the dropped ammunition to his officer.

“Thanks,” Lloyd shouted, not that he expected Sealey to hear or answer him. The man was working, as were all of his marines as they fought incessantly to prevent the impossible tide of dead rolling out of the water like waves of animated meat.

His men were fighting shoulder to shoulder with others. There were three men wearing scarlet berets, whose long self-loading rifles (SLRs) barked loud reports of the heavier 7.62 rounds over the sharp crack of their own lighter ammunition, to over-penetrate and sometimes take more than one Screecher out, as the heavy bullets ripped through the meat wall ahead of them. Add to that the rattling, staccato sounds coming from the Sterling sub machine guns fired by the troopers of the dismounted armour squadron, and the shrieking moans from their enemy, the noise was confusing, terrifying and deafening.

Antiquated as they were in Lloyd’s mind, those submachine guns still killed zombies just as effectively as their new rifles.

He didn’t know what was going on in the rear, nor could he hope to know that he and his men were wasting ammunition when they should just have been getting off the island by any means necessary.

* * *

“What the hell was that?” Denise Maxwell said in response to a muted scream from outside. She and her daughter were in the front room of the empty townhouse halfway up the hill which was being shared with the injured Graham Ashdown, her husband’s second in command, and his wife and son too.

Another scream sounded, closer this time, and was deeper in tone than the first.

“Okay, something’s definitely going on,” she said as she rose to her feet, “other than whatever’s happening down there, I mean,” she explained, meaning the incessant small arms gunfire from below.

She stepped close to the door and pressed her ear to the wood, holding her breath to try and hear more of whatever was beginning to unfold on the island, while the others in the room stayed quiet. Screaming and flailing her arms, Denise flew back away from the door to land half on an armchair covered in a hideously patterned coarse brown material.

The door banged again, desperate hammering making the two young children cry and huddle away from the door. Just before one of them voiced their fears, another noise added to the banging.

“Denise, are you there?” hissed a woman’s voice, “let me in if you’re there, please!”

Flying back to her feet, Denise flicked the lock over and pulled the door wide to scan left and right in the narrow street, before grabbing the woman by her clothing and pulling her inside unceremoniously. Dishevelled, red-faced and half out of breath, Kimberley Perkins spilled inside and for once didn’t try to hide the scarring on the left side of her face.

The bumpy, mottled skin showed up a different colour from her flushed cheeks, but the situation outside was obviously more pressing than her insecurities.

“They’re here,” she said in a shaking voice through gasps of breath, “on the island. We need to go!”

The news left them shocked into silence. That silence seemed to anger Kimberley, and she turned to look for bolts on the door, only to make another desperate sound of exasperation as she found none.

Damn these country people and their unlocked doors, she cursed to herself, having to satisfy her need for security by killing the main light and flicking over the catch to make sure the feeble door was locked. In the gloom of the darkened interior she walked confidently towards Denise and grabbed her arm to shake her out of her shock.

“Denise, we have to get off the island now,” she said to her as kindly as she could, but failing to hide the intensity and fear from her voice, “Where should we go?”

Denise’s eyes met hers, but her mouth opened to emit nothing but silence. She opened and closed it twice, her look turning from dull shock to something leaning heavily towards debilitating fear, until she finally managed to speak.

“We,” she cleared her throat, “we have to get my hu-”

Her eyes grew wider as she realised that her husband, Simon Maxwell, was still out on a mission.

“There’s no time,” Kimberley snapped, “we can’t just wait to be rescued. Now, how do we get off the island?” she said, shaking Denise again.

“We need a vehicle,” Ashdown said as he struggled to stand. His neck was still bandaged, and his left arm was in a sling after the near-miss escape from when half of a former Royal Military Policeman had dragged him from his moving vehicle and tried to eat him alive.

“We load up and get to the bridge, but there’s a tank blocking it,” he finished.

“Can’t we tow it out of the way?” his wife asked as she clutched their son to her side.

“It’s a tank. It weighs more than fifty tonnes,” he said, but seeing that his words hadn’t made themselves clear, he explained it simply, “there’s no way in hell we can drag it clear.”

“So?” Kimberley snapped, eager to speed up the process.

“The helicopters,” Denise said, “Go up the hill and get on a helicopter.”

She had started grabbing up her possessions, throwing items into a fabric shopping bag with round, wooden handles that clacked together in her hand.

“And after that, I have no idea,” she finished.

“After that,” Kimberley said, “is irrelevant unless we get the hell off this bloody island.”

They moved, leaving via the back door to the house and filing along the cobbled rear path past the wall of dark brick. Kimberley walked at the front, the two women with their children in the middle and the slow-moving but armed Graham Ashdown at the rear.

Kimberley stopped at the wooden gate, secured with a twisted loop of wire hung loosely over the post which caught the gate, and it perplexed her momentarily until she saw it and pushed it upwards to free their escape route. Pausing to look back at the small flock she was leading, her eyes caught a glint of dull reflection. Turning towards it, she took in the shape of the short wooden handle and the wedge-shaped head of the small splitting axe stuck into a piece of wood. It had obviously been recently used, given the bright slices of fresh wood on the half-covered pile, and she reached out to snatch it up on impulse.

The worn curvature of the handle felt somehow reassuring in her grip, but not as reassuring as the weight of the head when it came loose from the grasp of the wet wood it was partly buried in. She hefted it once, feeling the weight and the way it moved in her hand, and she turned her eyes back to the darkening streets to lead her people uphill towards what she hoped was safety.

* * *

“Behind!” Marine Sealey screamed, repeating the warning and simultaneously turning away from the bending fences to advance three paces and drop to one knee. He pressed his eye into the scope and began squeezing off disciplined rounds in ones and twos, forcing Lieutenant Lloyd to realise the peril he and his men were in. He looked back, seeing a loose formation of uniformed men and civilians shambling towards their undefended rear.

Undefended, at least, until their medic turned to pick up the magazine for his weapon that he had dropped much in the same way as his Lieutenant had. He had recognised the jerky movement of the ex-people behind him instantly and shouted the warning as he began to pour careful fire into heads.

They were so close that the skulls filled his scope, forcing him to take his eye away after he had expended half of the magazine to locate the next closest attacker and drill a round through their head. The detail in the scope showed him flashes, almost like mental Polaroid pictures, of things he didn’t want to remember.

An eye plastered shut with thick blood pouring downwards from a deep gash to a scalp. A nose bitten clean off, exposing the two gaping holes of nostrils as though the flesh hadn’t been completed over the skull. A throat torn clean out, showing a bloody network of tubes and sinew underneath a mouth that screeched but emitted no sound.

Standing tall, leaning into his weapon and bawling for his men to turn around and fight off the rear assault, he swallowed his fear and resolved to fight harder than he had before. More weapons joined that fight and just as terrifyingly sudden as that attack had begun, it faded further away, and allowed them to take more carefully aimed shots at heads not so disturbingly close.

Renewed shouts of alarm sounded from behind them and Lieutenant Lloyd turned to see the harsh consequences of taking away half of their guns for a few precious moments. The fences and long lines of cruel barbed wire were pushed inwards and worryingly close to what must be their breaking point, where they threatened to give way at any moment under the crushing weight of Screechers crawling out of the water to flood his small force.

Lloyd faced a choice, an imminent and desperately important choice, and he had only a few precious seconds to make it before his inaction threatened the lives of everyone. He looked once back up the hill, then back to where the sea was spewing undead horrors onto their inadequate defences, and he made his decision.

“Fall back! Fall back!” he bawled at the rag-tag collection of military police, yeomanry and marines. “On me!”

With that last command, he ran out ahead of the men and steadied his footing before thrusting the fixed bayonet into the eye of a woman he half recognised from the island. He thought nothing of that act; he couldn’t afford the time or the distraction caused by emotions or sentimentality. Without looking to see if the men behind were following him, he pressed on ahead through the streets with his rifle up in a fast-forward, reckless approximation of the FIBUA course, the fighting in built-up areas training he had led his men through before their most recent tour in Northern Ireland. Had the instructors seen his insane dash into danger, he would have instantly failed the course, but they weren’t fighting snipers and bombers now. They were fighting a new infantry that didn’t use weapons, didn’t lure them out of their protective vehicles to detonate home-made explosives packed into ice cream tubs. They merely swarmed over them in great numbers without feeling pain or holding any regard for anything but a bullet or a bayonet to the brain.

He moved fast, his nerve finally breaking and forcing him to glance behind to see a tight knot of soldiers moving in support. He saw two scarlet berets among the bare heads, and the dark green headgear of his men, and he guessed that he must have absorbed some of the others with him. The cacophony surrounding him made it difficult to discern between the different reports, but he was certain that he could hear three distinctly different weapon reports coming from the loose formation of men catching him up amidst the gunfire and the screams and the now raging crackling of the burning buildings nearer the road bridge.

“Where are we going, Sir?” one of the army men asked him.

“Up,” he answered, racking the bolt to seat another bullet, ready to fire in his rifle after reloading. “Bring as many people as we can along the way, but the island is lost.”

To the credit of each man there, none of them showed
anything but a grim and determined resolve to survive. They were cut off, the enemy was among them, and they had to fight.

SIX

“Send,” Palmer snapped into the radio handset, then frowned as he listened to the response. Johnson watched his face, not liking what he saw, and glanced to the only other man present who was privy to the information.

Corporal Daniels, normally a steady man, looked ashen. His mouth opened slightly, his eyes went vacant and he trembled. Johnson looked back to the Captain.

“Understood,” he said simply in a voice that sounded hollow and final, “good luck. Out.”

He handed the handset back to Daniels, having to nudge the man in the shoulder with it to bring him back to his senses and take the offered equipment.

“SSM, the island is…” he paused, swallowing, “the island is cut off. There was a shore bombardment from the navy, and unfortunately it brought the bridge down with the loss of one of our MBTs.”

Johnson slumped back in the too-small chair and looked aghast. The loss of the main battle tank was a huge blow, but the bridge being brought down was their worst-case scenario. They couldn’t fight their way back home, nor could their reinforcements come to their aid; any vehicle left on the island was staying there.

“It gets worse, I’m afraid,” Palmer said as he rubbed his face, fingers scratching on the fair stubble of his cheeks. “The virus is loose there. There’s an outbreak, and I fear that very few of them are going to make it out.”

That news, and the sinking realisation with it, dropped Johnson’s heart straight down through his guts. For some bizarre reason he couldn’t fathom, his thoughts went to the attractive woman who inexplicably wanted to get to know him. These thoughts came to him in a flash, much faster than time passed, as though the feelings and thoughts all arrived at once and were decoded instantly in his mind. He guessed she would never get the chance to know him now, and he regretted his guarded responses to her questions all those hours ago when they had enjoyed a companionable drink with Maxwell and his wife.

Maxwell, he thought selfishly as he tried to find a way to tell him, Shit, Denise! The kids!

Palmer seemed to read his thoughts and held up a hand to stop the question before it was formed in Johnson’s mouth.

“Yes, most of the men have people there, have family, myself included…” he said, making Johnson feel a small stab of regret for the junior Lieutenant, not out of sadness for losing the man, but for the pain that loss would bring his older brother. Even more wretchedly, he realised that sadness wasn’t for any regretful loss of life, but for the fact that it would make their officer less efficient. He let the silence hang heavy for a moment before the Squadron Sergeant Major cleared his throat and asked a simple question.

“What are our orders, Sir?”

Palmer turned slowly to regard him, his face morphing out of stunned sorrow and back into something infinitely more tempered by professionalism, and his words sounded confident and resolved.

“Ammo count, half of the guns cleaned at once,” he said, dishing out administrative tasks that levelled the men with familiar activity, “Assault Troop to recce south for high ground and try and observe the island,” he said, and then remembered that Assault Troop was down to a single vehicle and a scattering of men among the other vehicles. “Cancel that. Send a pair of Foxes.”

Johnson nodded, then rose to pull himself out of the open hatch above. He was on the verge of reminding the Captain that they only had one single Spartan of Assault Troop left, and no wagon ever rolled on its own, but the man had evidently recalled the facts and changed the order. The only foreseeable problem with the amended orders was a mechanical one; the Fox, as well armed as it was, performed like it was made of chocolate when asked to go off-road with any meaning.

He gave his orders to Strauss, one of the few men without family locally, and hence unburdened by the weight of the news Johnson was forced to keep to himself for the time being. He gave the orders, mixed with part of the information, that the bridge was down, and sent the two crews off to find the high cliffs overlooking the rock that used to be their temporary home.

As he walked back towards the command vehicle, the tall man wearing black clothing and dripping in non-standard weaponry cut across his path.

“Sarn’t Major,” he greeted him.

“Sir,” Johnson answered.

“I wonder if you’ve had any joy contacting your base?”

Johnson looked over both shoulders and lifted his chin in the direction of the Sultan. The SAS men had only a personal radio set which required complex setting up, differing lengths of antennae, the blood of a unicorn and a bucket brimming with good luck to make it work sometimes, whereas their command vehicle had three sets permanently working.

“Best you come and speak to the Captain, Sir,” he said ominously.

Downes listened to Palmer’s report wearing a blank look. His bright eyes oozed alertness, but his expression and features remained stock-still and emotionless.

“You still have RN aircraft there?” he asked, meaning the
navy helicopters, one of which had only recently removed their precious cargo and half of the special forces soldiers.

“Unable to raise them,” Palmer said, “one would hope they are evacuating personnel…”

“Indeed,” Downes responded before changing the subject, “what’s your redundancy?”

Palmer looked shocked, mainly because he hadn’t considered abandoning the island and resorting to occupying a back-up location, at least not without proof that the island was beyond their help. His lack of answer gave Downes the information regardless.

“In the absence of orders from command and any viable way to assist anyone left at base, you will need to consolidate,” Downes said. “I would suggest that we form up in sight of the base and prepare to receive any additional personnel via helicopter, but after that it is our duty to remain operational.”

Palmer viewed him as coolly as he could, fighting the urge to snap at the senior officer out of fear and frustration. He kept his head level and his eyes fixed when he answered.

“Are you assuming control of the men, Sir?” he asked formally, leaving a tense and awkward silence.

“No, Captain,” Downes said with a small smile intended to appease the younger man, “I am not. Merely making a suggestion.”

“Very well,” Palmer said, returning the smile to show that his hostility was fleeting, “I’ve deployed two wagons to get sight of the island, and we will wait for their report. Anything else you need, Sir?”

“No, Captain, just shout us if you need us.”

With that, Downes climbed up and out of the Sultan awkwardly, showing them that he was not used to travelling in an armoured squadron. Palmer turned back to Daniels as soon as the
sound of his boots hitting the rocky ground outside floated in through the open hatch.

“Corporal, keep trying the island. Use the RN and marine frequencies too if you can,” he said, watching as Daniels snatched up a piece of paper that had numbers scribbled in pencil on it from where he had wedged it beside his radios, “and let me know as soon as One Troop provide a report.”

* * *

“Well?” Mac asked Downes as he ducked back inside the open rear door of the Saxon.

“Well, their base is cut off, looks like the navy tried to help and accidentally blew the bridge,” he waited as the snorts of derision rippled around his three men, “and they can’t raise anyone on comms to see if they are flying them out, because there’s an outbreak on the island. Fuck knows where this is going.”

He let them assimilate the new information in their own time, copying their actions of refilling spent magazines from the big bag of bullets laid out between them. That bag, as heavy as it must have been, had been strapped to Mac’s back the entire time they had been deployed, as though it weighed nothing.

“And us?” Dez asked as he thumbed bullets into the metal and compressed the spring.

“Nothing from central command yet, they’re still trying, and unless we use their Sultan to re-bro us, then I doubt we’ll have much luck ourselves,” Downes answered, meaning the Yeomanry’s ability to re-broadcast the communications from their man-portable radios through the command vehicle and increase the reliability ten-fold.

“Are they just not getting through,” Mac asked in his characteristically grim tone, “or are they not answering us?”

“I don’t know,” Downes said pensively, “but I don’t like it.”

* * *

The Bell helicopter carrying the two engineers and the two surviving Norwegians flared in to scrape its skids on the deck of the dull grey American vessel, the USS Mearle, beside the taller, bulbous airframe of a Royal Navy Sea King. Deck crew wearing their different coloured helmets ran low towards them and helped the four passengers down.

“Captain wants to see you two,” shouted one man, pointing behind himself at a sealed doorway leading inside. Astrid glanced up at Berg’s face, seeing nothing betrayed in his stony expression. Technically they didn’t fall under anyone’s command, but with the situation as it was, any senior leadership still active under the NATO banner took authority of troops they found stranded or abandoned with them. The two Norwegians walked towards the doorway and into the gloomy interior without looking back to the engineers, one of whom was growing pale and had broken out in a sweat.

The ship was a hive of well-run efficiency, with people teeming the decks and everyone working like ants to play their own small part in keeping the destroyer operating at maximum capacity. The arrival of two civilian nuclear engineers on a non-nuclear warship was of such little importance that nobody noticed them. Nobody noticed the pale man stagger slightly as his feet hit the deck, not even his fellow engineer, and his arrival went totally undetected.

He followed the lead, winding his way across the flat top of the landing space, and bounced heavily off the doorway to crash bodily into the bulkhead inside.

“Hey, buddy,” said a sailor approaching them, “you okay, man?”

“Yeah,” he gasped as he tried to stand and smile to show he was fine, “just feeling a little queasy, you know?”

“Ah,” the sailor responded with a grin, “you’ll get your sea-legs soon, don’t sweat it.”

The engineer smiled weakly again, stood upright, then rolled his eyes back into his head and pitched backwards to slam unconscious into the deck.

* * *

“Okay, how long has he been out?” asked the diminutive doctor as he strode into the treatment bay in the ship’s medical department.

“Only a few minutes,” said the sailor who had bodily carried him there to save time, “reckons he was seasick or something.”

The doctor placed one hand on the engineer’s forehead and frowned.

“Seasickness doesn’t usually cause a fever, sailor,” he said, then announced more loudly to his medically personnel, “I need IV fluids and get these clothes cut off. We can’t rule out infection.”

“Infection?” the sailor asked, wearing a suddenly worried look on his young face and taking an involuntary step backwards.

“The first sign of this virus,” the doctor explained as he was helping to strip the man, “is a raised temperature. After that it varies, depending on the severity of the injury. Get me a vitals monitor on, somebody?” he called out to the room.

The sailor carried on backing away, mumbling something about returning to his duty, and left the engineer to have his clothes cut away from his body. Heavy shears chomped at the thick material covering his legs to reveal pale flesh. The doctor had recognised his pallor and ordered the fluids as a first measure to prevent the man going into shock. Checking every part of his
body meticulously, the only break in the man’s skin was in the form of a small graze at his elbow. The injury was less than superficial, but the swollen, angry red skin around it screamed infection. He checked the graze closely, unable to find anything resembling a bite mark, and chewed his lip in thought.

“Okay, I need two hundred ccs of IV antibiotics, flush it through with saline and keep the fluids going. This man has a severe infection, but it doesn’t appear to be that infection,” he announced as he stepped back and peeled off his surgical gloves. He left the treatment room to return to his other patients, feeling satisfied that he had averted disaster for the time being.

The engineer, unconscious and having already spoken his last words, burned up from the inside. The combined spittle and blood from the last zombie Astrid had dispatched after Christian Berg had driven them all to the ground had soaked his shirtsleeve and leaked into the open cut on his arm and infected him. The severity of the infection was lessened by the means, but the end result was just as inexorable as if his throat had been bitten out.

The doctor had been called back in and had ordered an ice bath to be used to try and break the fever and prevent damage to the brain. No amount of medication or any other intervention had brought the man’s temperature down, and his convulsions raged intensely for half a minute until he went suddenly still. Paddles were charged as the man was hauled unceremoniously out of the ice bath and dried off desperately, but they were too late to save his life.

“Time of death,” the doctor said, glancing up at the clock on the bulkhead, “eighteen-thirty-two. Someone find out who he was, and I’ll inform the Captain.”

SEVEN

“Welcome aboard the Mearle,” announced the tall, almost gangly man who rose from his command chair on the bridge. The two FSK commandos stood rigid for a moment, seemingly all that would pass for a salute to the American, and he shrugged as if to convey that he didn’t expect anything more. His gaze lingered on Astrid for a half-second longer than he had regarded Berg.

“I’m Captain Alder, this is Commander Briggs from the British Navy,” he said, indicating another tall, thin man who had risen and now offered a hand to them.

“Royal Navy,” he corrected the American, who shrugged again and allowed one corner of his mouth to lift in a small smirk.

“Your report?” Alder asked them as he retook his seat. Berg glanced at Larsen, who raised her eyebrows slightly before responding.

“Chto vy dumayeshe?” Astrid muttered to Berg quietly in informal Russian, as they often did when they didn’t want to be understood by others.

Berg answered her question of, ‘What do you think?’ with a shrug of his own, meaning that he saw no reason to withhold anything.

“What do you know of our mission?” she asked, ever careful and secretive.

“Assume I know everything up to you getting there,” Alder responded in a tone that indicated he had no time left for need-to-know matters. Astrid kept her face neutral as she cursed the arrogance of the man inside the safety of her own thoughts.

“We suffered fifty percent fatalities during insertion,” she began in deadpan but perfect English, “we cleared the objective and protected the engineers as they shut down the plant. We were extracted.”

Captain Alder, clearly annoyed at the brevity of the report, needled her with his next question.

“Too many of the infected there for you?”

“No,” she snapped back, a little too quickly and forcefully and betraying her raw nerves about it, “there was a parachute malfunction which caused our commander to land at terminal velocity. On his way in he caught the rig of our other man and tangled him up. He survived the landing but was caught up. They started eating his legs, so he shot himself in the head.”

Alder took his turn to keep a neutral face and dropped the goading in an instant.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Well done on completing the mission. Get some food and rack time and we’ll see about getting you home, but we’ve got more than enough to be getting on with here. Dismissed.”

Both commandos stiffened again and turned away, seeing the sympathetically smiling face of Commander Briggs. He finished polishing the lenses of his glasses on the tail of his black uniform tie and gestured for them to follow him out of the bridge.

“We are a little overcrowded here, as is everyone in the joint fleet, I should imagine. There’s food being served in the galley and I’m sure you’ll be able to find somewhere suitable to rest your heads for a while if you wish,” he said almost apologetically as though he was unable to be as gracious a host as he could be.

“You are English, so why are you here?” Berg asked in an enquiring tone so direct that it bordered on rude.

“I was attached as an aide between Her Majesty’s forces and our American allies,” Briggs answered blankly, as though he wanted to say more but was simply too well-mannered and polite to voice his opinion. They followed him in silence until he had shown them the head, galley and an area that was used for makeshift beds which were little more than a thin mattress and some stiff blankets. They still carried their weapons, which
under normal circumstances would have raised eyebrows or even attracted challenges, but it seemed that every third person they saw had a sidearm on their belts or even carried long guns. They ate, at least they put some stodgy form of food inside their bodies out of nothing more than an ingrained need to stay fully effective, and then they found a quiet corner to clean their weapons.

Which they had no idea they would need far sooner than expected.

* * *

The engineer, pale and naked on a metal gurney in the medical, opened his eyes. They weren’t the eyes he had previously seen through, in fact he could barely see a thing, not that he could comprehend anything he saw through them anyway. The eyes were milky orbs, his skin remained deathly pale and his right hand twitched in unison with his fluttering eyelids.

The two medical orderlies, their backs turned to him as they chatted inanely about an upcoming baseball game, as though the world weren’t burning all around them, didn’t notice the small movements of what they thought was a dead body behind them.

The engineer sat up slowly, demonstrating a core strength that he did not know he’d possessed when his actions were cognitive, then he bent at the waist and rose silently, fixing his half-blind gaze on the backs of the two young sailors who were still talking without a care in the world. Swinging his right leg off the cold gurney and slapping it gently onto the cold deck, he followed it with his other leg as his eyes stayed glued to the source of the sound. As his second foot slapped down, the slight noise made the hairs on the back of one orderly prickle, and he turned to see the dead body standing upright and staring straight at him.

He turned back, frowning, and looked at his friend, before opening his eyes wide in terror as his head whipped back to the standing corpse.

Too late, he found himself face to face with the body, which was a head taller than he was. Cold hands clamped either side of his face as the sharp fingernails dug painfully into the thin flesh over his skull, but no scream came from him as the open mouth of the zombie clamped hard onto his own and bit hard to tear his lips and the tip of his tongue away in one savage rip. The zombie rocked, staggered one pace to its right, then turned to mindlessly view the source of disruption. Dropping the shaking, gargling mess of the young man it had already infected, the thing that used to be an engineer turned and cocked its head slightly at the other sailor, who was nursing a hand with broken bones after throwing a pointless right hook into the side of its head. Stepping backwards and babbling incoherently, his shoulders clattered into a wall cupboard and bounced him back slightly.

Directly into the jaws of the naked man, who bit into the right side of his neck so hard that the last sound he heard was a crunching noise followed by a squelch. Hot blood ran down his upper body and he blacked out, never to wake again. Not alive, at least.

The second sailor’s body hit the deck and knocked down a tray of instruments, making a harsh rattle of metal echo into the gangway outside the sealed door. The falling instrument tray made an IV stand teeter, before finally toppling over to bang loudly against a metal surface just as two other sailors were walking past.

The two men froze, looking at each other in silent question. One of them rapped his knuckles against the metal door and called out, asking if everything was okay in there. The only response was a strangled, screeching cry from inside, a cry that the two sailors had not heard before and did not have a hope of comprehending, and they threw open the door to offer assistance.

* * *

“What do you think we will do next?” Berg asked Astrid quietly in their native language as they cleaned their weapons.

“Probably go home and wait years for another mission,” she replied sullenly, before she remembered that she should act the part of the senior commando, even if there were only two of them left of their unit.

“Will they try to reclaim the countries lost to the disease?” he asked almost rhetorically, “or just seal them off and let it die out?”

“Will it die out?” she asked, perplexed that the concept of a virus burning itself out of a host was a possibility.

Berg shrugged.

“Who knows? Some scientists at home think that the infected hosts will all eventually die out.”

Astrid stopped cleaning her MP5 as she considered what he had said. The theory was feasible, she had to admit, as the ones she had seen all smelt like they were rotting. She had to accept that if the infected weren’t preserved, then they would eventually decompose enough to not pose a threat to the living.

Almost simultaneously, the two FSK commandos finished reassembling their clean weapons and clicked fresh magazines into place. Weapon discipline made them not chamber a round, as the effects of a negligent discharge inside a small metal box weren’t worth the risk, and both drew their pistols to clean them just as an alarm sounded. The two looked at each other, neither willing to take the risk that it was just a drill or a false alarm, and both stood to ready themselves for yet another fight.

* * *

By the time the engineer had infected and killed four of the
sailors, it had stumbled out of the open doorway, still naked except for a sheet of red blood down its front from the dark mouth that chewed at an unrecognisable chunk of gristly flesh hanging past the bloody chin. It paused in the empty gangway, head swinging left and right as it searched for the next sound to entice it onwards. A shout from the right made it stagger off in that direction, just as the first medical orderly, with a ragged chunk torn from his neck, rose to his feet, opened his own sightless eyes, and staggered off after his killer.

The infection spread rapidly, as each open compartment was packed with people who had no means of escaping a threat they weren’t prepared for. The two zombies ravaged the human contents of three compartments, killing everyone inside without mercy or thought. Sailors beat at them with fists, with furniture, but the confines of the ship’s interior were too cramped, and nobody brought a weapon to bear. By the time the death toll had reached double figures, the three bodies from the medical bay had risen and wandered off in another direction, and so the disease spread undetected and rapidly below decks.

By the time the first shot fired blew the entire right side of the engineer’s face away, there were close to twenty animated corpses roaming the lower decks, tearing flesh with nails and teeth. The engineer slumped forwards as though the power had been cut to his body, but stepping awkwardly over his prone body came more monsters just as eager to rip away skin and disembowel anything not already dead. The rest of the magazine was expended in rapid fire, but the shots were wasted into the chest cavity of the medical orderly, who fell upon the sailor with the gun, as his teeth found the exposed skin above the collar of his uniform.

He died, gargling and spasming uncontrollably as his finger pulled repeatedly on the trigger to punctuate the sounds of his violent death with the sound of the gun clicking dry.

* * *

“Something is definitely not right,” Astrid told her tall companion. In answer, Berg simply readied his MP5 and pointed it away from them as he chambered a round to make the gun ready. She copied his actions and the two settled into a ready crouch to make their way back towards sunlight, as though the outside offered any more protection than the tight corridors below decks.

They stalked onwards, the harsh sound of the insistent, repetitive klaxon drowning out their words and forcing them to communicate on a level that only highly-trained soldiers could manage. With looks and nods they cleared the corners and secured doors so as not to leave any surprises behind themselves. As they climbed the ladder to the next deck they encountered people moving; running in panic, and amidst the chaos one or two voices rose to force order on the sailors. Lowering their weapons and keeping their eyes down, the two Norwegians pushed their way through the crowds, hearing snippets of conversation and questions. Wearing plain clothing with no insignia or rank helped, as they were assumed to be outside of any military hierarchy. As the mass of people dissipated, they rounded another corner and came face to face with two men dressed similarly. Both were fiercely bearded, all seemed to recognise the elite status of the others as one glance at their weaponry told them that they were on a similar level.

“Larsen and Berg. FSK,” Astrid said over the sound of the alarm.

“Bufford. SBS,” said the man at the lead, before nodding over his shoulder and introducing the other man as Owens.

“What’s happening?” she said to him.

“I overheard someone saying there was an outbreak below decks. It’s probably spreading fast on ship. The quicker they die the quicker they turn,” he added, making Larsen frown.

“You’ve seen it?” she asked.

“Not up close,” he replied, “and I don’t fucking want to either.”

“Agreed. So how do we get off the ship?”

“Two of my boys are watching our helicopter. We’ve come back for the pilots,” Bufford answered.

Astrid glanced at Berg, who simply nodded once.

“Do you have room for two more?” she asked.

The leader of the SBS team, having trained extensively in Norway with the Royal Marines before joining special forces, knew of the reputation of the FSK and agreed without hesitation. Another two well-handled MP5s supporting his team was not an asset to be ignored, in his opinion.

“Let’s go then,” he said and led the way.

EIGHT

Lieutenant Commander Murray’s co-pilot and loadmaster fell without even having a chance to put up a fight. The three of them were alone in a small compartment, occupying three of the four bunks, with the vacant mattress becoming home to their flight helmets and the loadmaster’s rig. The door had been left open as they were waiting for orders, and they were as unaware of the drama unfolding on land as they were the lethal outbreak beneath their feet.

A knot of four men, all in US navy uniforms and all soaked in blood, burst into the open cabin and tore into the co-pilot before he knew what was happening. Only Murray, who was pulling up the top half of his all-in-one flight suit, was spared as he had yet to unlock the door to the head. They, or at least Murray, had lucked out as very few cabins had a bathroom even close to them, let alone inside, and only their supposed temporary stay had granted them a cabin near to the flight deck at the stern.

Now, with four strangers and two former friends banging and clawing at the door, he sat back down and waited for inspiration. Or death, whichever came first.

Bufford led his now four-man, or three men and one woman, team through the deck with speed and purpose as the klaxon stopped howling over the speakers. His other two men had been sent topside to make their way to the stern and the waiting Sea King. Their drills were slick, having all learned from the same advanced rule book, and he was grateful of the additional firepower after less than a minute, when one of the faster ones dressed as a cook but looking more like a butcher rocketed around a corner at a full sprint and cannoned off the bulkhead to sprawl on the deck ten paces from them. Instantly, he and Owens dropped to one knee and opened fire with single, controlled shots, just as the tall Norwegian stood over them and added a burst of
fire from his own weapon to ensure that the thing never got back to its feet. As they stood, Bufford looked behind to see the woman, Larsen, also rising up from her knee, as she had instantly turned to protect their rear. Satisfied that four was definitely better than two, they pushed on.

Glancing at a scribbled note in pen written on his left wrist in the gap between sleeve and glove, he checked the cabin designations to look for the flight crew.

He didn’t know why he had done that, but something deep inside him said that he needed to be aware of them in case they had to leave in a hurry. He doubted he would have been so cautious on a Royal Navy vessel, but being away from Her Majesty’s Forces’ hospitality set him on edge.

“Four more, left side,” he called out for the others to hear. No sooner had he said that, than the sounds of shrieking and banging echoed down the tight gangway to his ears, and he knew with total certainty that it was coming from the fourth cabin ahead on his left. Stalking as silently as he could, he held up one hand and sensed the others stack up behind him until a hand rested gently on one shoulder. He held up three fingers for them to see, folded one down, then gripped his weapon again and swung into the doorway to duck low. Owens came in behind him, weapon up high at shoulder height, and immediately the rounds spat from their guns to drill into the backs of skulls as six of them fought for space at the front of an interior door. Berg stepped inside to lean his head and shoulders through the door to take out one of them, before a thudding stream of automatic fire sounded in the corridor. Berg ducked back out, doubling the fire out there, but the two SBS men had to trust them and remain focused on removing the threats inside the small compartment.

As the last body, wearing the flying uniform of a Royal Navy officer, fell to the deck, the sounds of gunfire outside were replaced by metallic scrapes and clicks of guns being reloaded.

“We’re clear,” announced Bufford in a low voice.

“Clear here also,” responded the woman’s voice from behind him.

Bufford carefully stepped forward, firing one more single shot into the skull of a sailor who still twitched, and raised his gun again as another sound startled him. It was the sound of the door being pushed open and hitting the knee of a body, preventing it from opening more than a few inches, and the movement of his gun was met with a sudden cry of, “Don’t shoot!”

“You the pilot?” Bufford asked as he lowered the gun all the way.

“What’s bloody well left of him, yes,” Murray spat back angrily as he shoved the door hard to make a big enough gap to squeeze out of. As he emerged, one shoulder of his dark suit seemed almost black in the unnatural light.

“Which one of you damned fools shot me?” he snarled through gritted teeth as the injured arm hung uselessly to drip fresh, bright red blood onto the corpses.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Bufford muttered before raising his voice, “either of you two medics?”

“I am,” came Larsen’s reply as she stepped carefully over the broken bodies and visually assessed the pilot.

“Sit down, take this off, please,” she said as she slung her weapon and reached into a pouch to retrieve a package that she tore open with her teeth. She wiped the fresh blood away from the wound high up on Murray’s right arm and pulled him around roughly to check for further injuries. Murray protested, issuing a few choice words in a hissed voice.

“Seems to be a flesh wound only,” Larsen said, uncoiling the clotting bandage and wrapping it tightly around the injured body part, despite the pained noises coming from her patient.

“We are good to go,” she said, the words sounding only slightly awkward in her mouth.

“Can you still fly?” Bufford asked intensely. Murray seemed to consider the question seriously, as though the concept of him flying with a bullet wound in his arm was even a possibility, and he flexed his bloody hand a few times as he rolled his shoulder with a wince.

“Not very far, but yes,” he said quietly.

“Good. Can we get the fuck out of here then?” Owens said from the doorway, where he had joined Berg in protecting their exit.

With the same formation of the two SBS men in the lead and the two FSK commandos at the rear, they had Murray protected in the middle and holding a semi-automatic pistol taken from the holster of one of his besiegers. They moved more cautiously, more slowly as the injured Murray would not have been able to keep pace with their drills, even if one of them hadn’t accidentally shot him with near catastrophic results. Gunfire rattled dully from the lower decks, muted by layers of metal which prevented the shrieks of attacking zombies from being clearly heard. The resulting cacophony was more of a white noise than any discernible sounds; more the absence of silence, or at least the absence of the normal sounds expected in that environment, that became deafening.

Corridor after corridor, ladder after ladder, zombie after zombie they moved onwards. They fought every step of the way, senses so heightened that their breath came in rapid gasps, and they cuffed at the sweat running into their eyes in the unnatural environment of heat and thick air that seemed to contain less oxygen than it should. The desire, the pathological need to get outside overtook them and heightened their stress levels immeasurably.

Eventually, to their great relief, they broke out into the afternoon sunlight and set foot onto the flat helicopter deck. Immediately the two pairs fanned out left and right to clear the wandering bodies in their path. The last few, too consumed with devouring a kill, didn’t even turn around to face the new threat as they gorged on the fallen body they obscured from sight.

“No,” Bufford said aloud, “oh fuck, no!” and ran forward towards the last few zombies.

“Buffs, wait,” Owens growled before following, as he knew he would be ignored.

Bufford ran forwards, taking shots at the bloody beasts as he went, until his magazine ran dry. Reaching the supine body the zombies were gorging themselves on, he let the gun drop on its sling and reached for his right hip behind the pistol to draw his polished pioneer’s axe. The final zombie, tall and broad and dressed in black with a beard as wild and unruly as Bufford’s, rose up to stand over him and bear its teeth.

The axe swung downwards savagely, making the sickening crunch of bone and brain echo across the deck as it crumpled under the blow to land hard on the deck. Placing one boot on the shoulder of what had previously been his team mate, he pulled the axe clear and looked down at the second man he had personally sent to secure the area.

“Buffs,” Owens said, placing a hand gently on his friend’s shoulder but keeping a very wary eye on the hand holding the gore-smeared axe, “it’s okay, mate. They’re gone now…”

Owens trailed off as he looked down at the last member of the team. The two Norwegian commandos approached and glanced down at the two dead soldiers, both face-value carbon copies of the men they had joined forces with, from their weaponry down to their beards.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here, then,” Bufford said in a dead tone as he stripped the spare ammunition from his former team mates; acting as though he had washed away the loss and guilt but knowing that he was merely ignoring it for the time being.

Bypassing almost all of the checks required by the manual to safely get a Sea King helicopter into the air, they did the equivalent of jumping in a car and driving off without even adjusting the driving seat.

* * *

“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” Captain Alder barked into the radio handset as his bridge crew were breaking out weapons from the lockers in the bulkheads, “USS Mearle reporting an outbreak. Repeat, we have infected onboard and require immediate assistan…” he flinched and dropped the mic as he fumbled for the pistol on his belt. The noise that had made him react was the double-assault of a body slamming heavily into the watertight door and the muted screeching noises that seemed to come from everywhere.

His hand shook, the barrel of the gun wavering as it pointed towards the sealed door, until good sense took over once more and he returned to the radio.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the USS Mearle reporting an outbreak. Requesting immediate assistance…”

* * *

The fleet flagship, and enormous floating city that housed the Admiral, was a polar opposite of the situation aboard the beleaguered destroyer. The Admiral, still and calm despite his mind screaming at the distress call playing over the loudspeaker, stood and smoothed down his uniform.

“Sailor, cut that,” he said, meaning that he didn’t want the transmission playing out loud any longer. There was nothing he could do to help those brave souls, but he knew that he had a duty to the world to make sure that the infection did not spread. That meant that the weight of the decision he was about to make and the consequences of the order he was ready to give rested squarely on his shoulders.

“Helmsman, take us out,” he ordered, hearing the appropriate response and walking to a workstation covered in switches and dials. Picking up the satellite telephone used for communications which they couldn’t afford to be overheard, he contacted the captain of the submarine silently slinking along in the depths like a shark. He gave his orders quietly, calmly, waited for the acknowledgement and ended the call.

He immediately placed another call, this time far to the west, and gave his recommendation.

“Understood, Admiral,” came the reply from Washington, “initiate purge and quarantine. God Speed.”

The Admiral returned to his chair and sat.

Lord, forgive me for what I have to do, he thought as he kept his face expressionless and gave the next orders before he pulled the entire fleet out of UK waters to enforce the quarantine.

* * *

Four torpedoes were fired in two rapid pairs, each targeted on the unsuspecting destroyer. The rippling, rolling explosions struck in sequence from bow to stern and transformed the warship into a mass of black smoke and fire.

In the ensuing chaos of the ship sinking, one dull grey helicopter, flying low over the water heading north, went unnoticed as the combined NATO fleet abandoned the UK mainland to push further out to sea and leave the entire UK and European continent to its fate.

As soon as they had withdrawn sufficient distances, another order was given and each person on board the ships in the fleet turned their eyes away as the evening horizon blossomed brightly with huge mushroom clouds as the nukes of the Soviets and the Americans detonated in a spectacular display of the destructiveness of humankind.

NINE

“Sir? One Troop are reporting in,” Daniels said to Captain Palmer, who switched channels and responded. Daniels listened in as he was still on that channel, but Johnson watched their faces for any sign of bad news. Hearing the end of the one-sided exchange, and understanding Palmer’s orders for the two Fox cars to return to their position, he waited for the update.

“As bad as we suspected,” Palmer said to Johnson, “the bridge is cut, heavy damage and a fire burning near the causeway, and there appears to be a rolling small arms battle going on.”

“Helicopters?” Johnson asked.

“Nothing yet, and unable to raise them. I fear that our specialist colleagues may be right.”

“About what, Sir?” Johnson asked.

“About having to have a redundancy. About setting up on our own and accepting our fate, if you will.”

Johnson frowned deeply, only inside so that his face remained a resolute mask of professionalism and efficiency, as befitted his rank and position.

“With all due respect, Sir,” he began, “those bloody ballerinas from Hereford can fu—”

“Mister Johnson,” Palmer interjected sharply, “firstly, I believe our situation negates the need for such manners; if you wish to disagree with me simply state your opinion without adding your due respect. Secondly, I would suggest refraining from such opinions about the Special Air Service. They have just conducted a rather admirable action on our behalf, and also,” he paused theatrically and looked up at the open hatch before adding in a lower voice, “you never know when they’re listening.”

“Very well, Sir,” Johnson said as he tried to hide a small smile at the weak jest, “I believe that we should not give up on the island for a few reasons. Namely that the majority of our fighting strength is still there, not to mention the men’s families and over a hundred civilians. Regardless of whether we can rescue any arms or armour, we shouldn’t abandon this area until we know for certain. Sir.”

“Noted, SSM,” Palmer responded flatly, re-establishing the hierarchy with a simplistic grace.

“Thank you, Sir,” Johnson responded, climbing out of the Sultan to check on his men, to perform some useful activity and prevent his mind from overflowing through his mouth. He didn’t make it all of the way out before the radio sparked to life so loudly that he heard the tinny rattle from the headphones from half outside the hatch. Dropping back down, he saw Daniels had snatched up the set and had one earphone pressed to his left ear. His right hand scribbled furiously with pencil on a pad of paper as his mouth hung open. Palmer and Johnson watched on, neither of them breathing. A metallic shriek forced Daniels to drop the headset and pull his head away as he screwed up his eyes. Palmer and Johnson waited in the sudden silence of the interior of the tracked vehicle as their radio operator turned to face them.

“It’s…” he began, before swallowing and composing himself, “It’s the Russians. And the Americans. They’ve launched nuclear strikes.”

“Where?” Palmer said, almost jumping out of his seat.

“On who?” Johnson said at the same time, bombarding the Corporal, who was forced to hold up both hands to ward off the questions for a moment as he closed his eyes and took a breath.

“They didn’t know for sure,” he said in a low voice cracking with stress, “but it isn’t us. They think the Soviets launched on Europe to stop the advance and the Americans launched on them, thinking they were retaliating against Ivan launching.”

More silence hung in the cramped, oily confines of the command vehicle until broken by the Captain.

“So, we are largely unaffected then?” he asked hopefully.

“I doubt it,” Johnson muttered sourly, his face no longer hiding his opinion.

“The message said that they’ve cut us off. We’re quarantined. Nothing in or out,” Daniels finished ominously.

“Quarantined? Bloody quarantined,” Johnson snarled. He glanced to their officer, who simply sat with his head in his hands and said nothing. “Sir?”

Palmer looked up, suddenly appearing more exhausted than he had ever looked before, as though the combined weight of the last month of fighting, the implied loss of his only remaining family member and the three days without proper sleep, had all hit him at once.

“I had a fear this would happen,” he said in a small voice. “It appears that the right hand is unaware of what the left hand is doing. Either that or the right hand no longer cares about the left.”

Johnson guessed that they were the metaphorical left hand in this ambiguous description, but the first thing that the captain had said worried him deeply.

“What would happen, Sir?” he asked carefully.

“It’s what senior command called, rather melodramatically I thought at the time, I might add, their Doomsday Protocol,” he admitted in a voice almost inappropriately laced with humour. “When we were initially deployed to the city to exert control, there were fears of our lack of ability to contain the outbreak. I had assumed after the events of the last month that they had abandoned the idea, but it seems that I was wrong. Major Hadlington and I discussed the possibility, and he assured me that command at sea were no longer considering it.”

“What is the Doomsday Protocol, Sir? Precisely?” Johnson asked, not truly wanting the answer but knowing that he had to ask.

“To sever all physical ties between the UK and the rest of the world. To literally cut off our island and let whatever it was burn itself out. It seemed that the cat was somewhat let out of the bag, given that Europe is gone, so I had assumed that the plan was shelved. It seems in that assumption that I was mistaken. Either that or the plan has been widened to incorporate the rest of Europe.”

“Makes sense,” Daniels mumbled to himself, prompting both senior men to turn and regard him.

“Elucidate, if you please, Corporal?” Palmer asked, making Daniels turn to Johnson for a translation.

“Explain,” the SSM said simply, bridging the gap between Sandhurst and a basic secondary school education.

“Well, as far as we know, it hasn’t spread to the yanks,” Daniels said, “not unless they bring it back from here. If I was them, I’d blockade the whole bloody Atlantic and bomb the shit out of everywhere where the Screechers are… alive… or whatever it is.”

The Captain and the Squadron Sergeant Major regarded each other, agreeing with the simple sentiment with a casual tilt of the head.

“So what does that mean for us?” Johnson said out loud, half verbalising his own thought process and half asking.

“Not a great deal in the immediate,” Palmer said, suddenly more confident and alert as though he had shaken off his brief funk of self-pity and concern. “We still have to find a way to get as many people off the island as we can and find a position to occupy until all this nonsense blows over.”

The stereotypical upper-class frippery in his tone gave Johnson a bizarre sense of hope, of reassurance and even eagerness, which he knew was partly down to the faith he had in the officer who was never originally his.

“I’ll see to the men,” he said, excusing himself with an unnecessary task to fill his time, and climbing out of the vehicle.

Turning to the map on the wall and tracing the contour lines instinctively to find higher ground, Palmer selected three options within a close enough radius, utilising Daniels’ local knowledge on a few points, then called for Downes and the freshly returned Sergeant Strauss to join them.

The cramped interior was made far worse, forcing Daniels to climb out to allow the others to see the map. The three locations were marked and briefed, designated as Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, as was the ingrained army way, and Strauss’ troop were deployed with the SAS team to assess and secure any site that would suit their needs.

Just as they deployed, the hope of further bodies to bolster their number became a stronger reality as the radio burst into life once more.

* * *

Sergeant Horton, having survived the collapse of the bridge and escaped the sinking tank, blackened by soot and smoke and streaked with white lines of sweat, turned his head from left to right. The Sterling machine gun, devoid of a magazine, hung from his right shoulder and clanged against his body awkwardly with every faltering step he took. With four other soldiers, he advanced up the hill away from the bright flames of the burning buildings near the short end of the bridge. Behind them, zombies poured from the beach unimpeded by anything but the barrier of broken bodies and the remnants of the fences, as they came on and tangled themselves in the ragged collection of ruined corpses and loosely-strung barbed-wire. They crawled over the other bodies of their kind to spill a mess of clawing, gnashing, screeching and hissing meat onto the cobbles.

Horton turned away, still followed by the three men in army uniform who took his lead unthinkingly. Ahead of them, far ahead and out of reach, a large huddle of men stood shoulder to shoulder, facing outwards as they made slow but defended progress up the street towards the higher ground. Others occasionally ran to them, bursting from buildings to run desperately and push through the ranks of their outward-facing formation and into the safety of the interior. Horton ignored the sprawling crowd filling the lowest part of the island and turned to break into a sluggish jog up the slope. The forgotten machine gun banged into him rhythmically as he moved faster than the three soldiers following him, to stretch out a lead. The rattling intensity of the gunfire ahead of the sergeant rose and fell as new threats emerged to be rapidly put down with disciplined fire.

Rising above the noise of the different calibre weapons was another sound. The loud, clear voice shouted out directions of zombies as they moved. The voice directed the entire ragged array of people as they bunched up and moved as one organism with its beating heart barking orders from within. Horton moved as fast as he could, alone now as his three followers had dropped back so far as to not be in a position to offer him any support. Heading for the centre of the noise, for the beating heart of the group, a scream to his left made his head whip around to fix on the source of it. A door slammed, and Horton swerved without thinking to burst through it. Emerging into the light of the headquarters building, he fixed his eyes on the woman leaning over the desk, her hand clamped around the radio handset as she yelled words that he didn’t understand. She turned and saw him, her eyes recognising Horton’s cloudy orbs staring back at her over his torn face and blood-sheeted chest, and taking in the gore splashed down his uniform from the hole in his neck, she swore as he drew back bloody lips over red-stained teeth. She let out a shriek of pure horror before he flew at her.

* * *

“Convoy, this is the island,” snapped the female radio operator with such panic or undisciplined radio protocols that the beginning and end of the transmission were cut off. The voice transmitting didn’t wait for any acknowledgement, but simply ploughed on with the remainder of the hurried message. She had emerged from the toilet where she had been shoved, no doubt saving her life from the sounds of screams and ripping death in the room outside.

“We’re overrun, and… oh, fuck n…”

The transmission died, as unbeknown to Daniels, Johnson and Palmer, the operator died only seconds afterwards, and at the hands, teeth, of a man they all knew. The three men exchanged looks, as if the bad situation they all knew about had suddenly become much worse, and all three of them knew how powerless they were to help.

“Ghostrider to any of you tank-monkeys still breathing air,” said the headset, before any of them could utter a word about the last transmission. Behind the cocky voice and disregard for operational radio use was the unmistakable whine, the high-pitched screaming of jet engines spooling up, and rotor blades spinning.

“Morris?” Palmer said into the radio, forgetting his own discipline and committing the cardinal sin of using names over the air. “Is that you? What’s going on?”

“We’re here,” Morris replied in a suddenly serious voice, the sound of the engines rising further, “give me a grid and get ready to receive incoming.”

Palmer shot a glance at the map on the wall before Johnson spoke up.

“Not here,” he said, earning an annoyed look from the Captain. He kept his explanation brief and spoke succinctly.

“We don’t have the transport or the safety here. We need somewhere to defend and resupply before we take on more people.”

Palmer thought for a second, his young brow furrowed with the effort of rapid calculations, before turning back to Johnson.

“The camp?”

“It’s our best bet, and it’s close,” the SSM replied, making Palmer glance back to the map wall to convey the grid coordinates for Daniels to relay.

Back to where we bloody started, Johnson thought depressingly, and in shit state, too.

TEN

Kimberley, hatchet in hand and slipping in her sweaty grip, led her line of people through the narrow, cobbled pathways that ran between the back yards of the terraced houses. Twice she had nearly beheaded or bludgeoned innocent refugees, all running away from the noises of the raging battle below. The second person she raised the axe to, lowering it as soon as the string of expletives made it obvious that the shadow was alive, told her about the explosion and the fire at the bridge. In the wan light, her eyes locked once with Ashdown, who shook his head slowly to tell her that their slim plan for escape by vehicle was dead before it had truly begun.

A shriek in a street behind them made everyone flinch and duck down. Children began to cry, and heads turned back to the fierce woman they seemed to have collectively decided was in charge. Kimberley looked to Ashdown, who was being tended to by his wife as he rested against a wall and breathed heavily, evidently still not recovered from his injuries and near-fatal encounter.

Taking the initiative, she snapped her fingers twice to make the small noise echo loudly along the stone corridor over the raging sounds of the battle below.

“Follow me,” she hissed loudly, “we’re going uphill towards the helicopter.”

Her column grew with each occupied house they passed, until she led over twenty people upwards into the night. She had no idea why she chose to put their collective faith and safety in a guess, a desperate hope that they could evacuate by air. The alternative was certain death, but the confidence they all showed in her decision was almost palpable. Inside, her mind screamed in fear and self-doubt, but outwardly she led.

And they followed.

* * *

“This way!” Lieutenant Palmer hissed at the line of civilians skulking through the darkened alleyways. He had gathered a collection, mostly the old and the young and the infirm, but he had managed to threaten and cajole the men of Three Troop to move whatever vehicles they could, and to abandon those that they could not. All around him, men cowered behind low walls and behind coal bunkers with their weapons pointed nervously downhill.

“I say,” he said more insistently, his nasal voice cutting the air at the perfect tone to whip Kimberley’s head around to look at him. Lieutenant Palmer flinched in fright at the speed that the face turned and seemed to look directly at him. Logic cut in on the dance between sense and fear skipping fast through his mind, and it reminded him that the Screechers didn’t carry weapons and walk low to the ground to hide their presence.

He waved them over, seeing the few become over twenty.

“Lieutenant?” Kimberley asked, recognising the shape of the man and his voice even though the gathering dark prevented her from making out his features in any great detail.

“Indeed,” Palmer replied, “get your people under cover and keep them quiet. We will have to move shortly.”

“My peop…” Kimberley started to say before she was cut off.

“We are heading for the landing area. We at least have one helicopter left and I’m hoping that we can get as many of us off this cursed rock as possible.”

With that, he turned away from her and left her to repeat the whispered message to every third person that slunk past her.

“Stay hidden. Keep quiet; we’re getting out of here.”

Lieutenant Palmer, pulse racing and the weight of command pressing down heavily on his shoulders, took three soldiers at random to accompany him and for the first time in his brief military career, he wished that he had taken the time to get to know the names of the men under him. At least he did, now that he had to rely on them to save his life if the need arose.

He moved low, ignoring the trained cautions that the more experienced soldiers had ingrained when it came to exposed areas and corners. Palmer’s lack of military experience made his progress faster, and ultimately safer as this new enemy did not set up ambushes or use ranged weapons. The key here was speed and stealth, weighing up one against the other to remain undetected. He was certain that none of them had infiltrated this high up the hill, but the sounds of gunfire from below grew steadily louder as that fight headed unavoidably upwards. The hulking silhouette of the ungainly and bulbous helicopter tickled the skyline ahead of him, lit by occasional flashes from behind him, and set against the lighter sky over the sea. The sound of a weapon cocking rang out at the same time as a challenge pierced the air a little louder than was necessary.

“Put that down, man!” Palmer snapped at Brinklow, the loadmaster now famous thanks to his musical escapades at the first battle for the island, and who had already been serving in the Royal Navy when the officer was born.

“Sorry, Sir, Mister Barrett and Mister Morris are ready to start pre-flight,” he said, turning to point uselessly into the dark. As soon as he had said this, the pilot appeared and called out to see who it was.

“Lieutenant Palmer, Sir,” Palmer said respectfully, almost pronouncing the slight bow of aristocracy in his DNA, “We have almost forty people not far away; soldiers and civilians.”

Lieutenant Commander Barrett was silent for a moment before responding.

“Depending on how far we evacuate, we can take thirty at a time, just so long as they aren’t carrying too much equipment,” he said after the brief mental calculations.

“Where to, Sir?” Palmer asked.

Barrett didn’t respond, merely climbed back aboard the aircraft. A pregnant pause of no more than twenty seconds elapsed, then a loud noise made them all flinch in the dark as the helicopter’s engines sparked into sudden, raucous life. Barret dropped back down and ran over to put his mouth to Palmer’s ear.

“Get everyone up here,” he said, “we’re going to rendezvous with the remainder of the armour that went to London.”

Palmer nodded and turned away, his mind registering but ignoring the comment about his brother’s column only having a remainder of its original strength.

Barrett climbed back into the fuselage and settled himself into the figure-hugging seat high up in the cockpit. He lifted on his headset and listened in to the end of the conversation his co-pilot was having with the older brother of the army officer he had just sent away.

“Roger,” Morris said over the radio, “Ghostrider, out.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t call us that, Morris,” Barrett said in mild annoyance as he strapped in and flicked switches. “Where are they?”

“Not sure, precisely,” Morris responded as he worked his own controls, “but they have given us an RV point to start dropping people and they’re on their way as we speak.”

“Did they say why?” Barrett asked.

“Indefensible position, I should imagine, but they didn’t specify,” Morris responded and kicked the engine speed up a little further.

“Gary?” Barrett said into the microphone attached into his helmet, speaking over the operational open-mic for their crew.

“Go on,” Brinklow said.

“Prepare to load thirty at a time and make sure you make the first batch heavy with soldiers to secure the RV.”

“Understood,” Brinklow answered.

“Flight time?” Barrett asked Morris.

“A little under five minutes. I’d estimate a fifteen-minute turnaround, tops.”

“Okay, first load expected any time soon. Let’s get them the hell out of here.”

“Okay everyone,” Palmer announced peevishly, “follow me, if you please. We will get you all evacuated in batches, so I ask that you not push one another, and follow instructions.”

He turned to lead them away, hearing the muttered insults aimed at his back and chose to pretend that he didn’t hear them. One man, however, stood tall and spoke at a normal volume, which earned hisses of shushing from everyone in earshot.

“Me and my wife have to be on the first flight,” he began, prompting even the seemingly-arrogant Lieutenant Palmer to stare at him in shock, “my wife is pregnant,” he insisted, with a face that not even he could keep straight.

Palmer glanced at the woman, clearly more than double the officer’s age and with a noticeably flat stomach, as she tried to pull her husband’s arm away, looking at the man with an incredulous stare of mixed disgust and horror.

“Madam,” Palmer said, echoing some of the exquisite manners and gallantry of his older brother, “my congratulations to you and your husband, but please be patient with our efforts to evacuate everyone.” With that, he turned away and called for a sergeant to relay his instructions. Those instructions were accepted and followed, leaving him almost shocked that assuming control of the men was so easy. His mood dropped instantly, knowing that the two intimidating sergeants in his squadron weren’t present, not to mention the SSM or Palmer’s own brother, who he knew the men would follow without question and with something bordering on adoration. The knowledge that he was the best choice for leadership in a pool of one left him a little soured, but he knew he had no time for self-pity.

The group made their slow progress uphill, unimpeded by the undead that tore the lower slopes apart in their unending quest for living flesh. The first thirty bodies were loaded onto the helicopter and the door slid noisily shut before the engines screamed intensely as the wheels squeaked on their suspension shocks in take-off. The noise was incredible, making everyone duck their heads low as the sound of the helicopter faded away to leave them in the relatively quiet darkness. The gunfire still sounded loudly from below them as they began their agonising wait for the aircraft to return.

* * *

“I’m out!” shouted a marine desperately from Lieutenant Lloyd’s right side.

“Here, lad,” came his sergeant’s implacable voice, “don’t bloody waste ’em.”

Lloyd smiled despite the situation, ever grateful for the squat and seemingly indestructible NCO who kept his men in top condition at all times. He knew that the fatherly sergeant would have a number of spare items on or about his person that the lads would either have a habit of losing or forgetting. He had probably stuffed a half-dozen spare magazines for their rifles down the top of his camouflaged smock, on top of the full pouches he had. At any one time the man probably had the equipment of two marines in his possession.

“Civvies on the left!” came another shout, making their officer turn to face that direction. The twenty men he had under his unorthodox command were roughly half and half marines and army, and of the latter he could only tell who was who due to their different weapon reports. The front door of a nearby building was open, showing two frightened faces in the light of their sporadic muzzle flashes.

“Split!” Lloyd called out, pushing his way into the outer rank to force a gap and began waving the survivors out of their hiding place and towards the dubious safety of his flock of armed sheep. They ran, no hesitation or delay, and piled into the formation only for it to close up like some previously unknown single-celled organism. They had almost the same number of civilians huddled together in the middle, and the majority of the fighting was directed back downhill where a loose gaggle of zombies advanced well ahead of the tidal wave still pouring from the now open beachhead.

“Mark your shots, boys,” Lloyd called out to reassure them, only to be heard so that they knew they were still led by someone confident. Their slow retreat moved at the same speed as the mass of the main advance, and soon their only contact was with the surprise arrivals of people who used to be their own and the few faster ones. Lloyd was reminded of that additional danger by a shout from their front rank facing the main assault.

“Lima breaking out!” came the shout, “and it’s bringing more with it!”

Lloyd was preparing to call a halt and drop his front rank to their knees to meet the renewed foray, but another voice called over the din.

“Keep going, I’ll get the fucker,” said Enfield, his cool-headed sniper, who pushed ahead and sat back on his right foot with his left knee up to steady the long barrel of the big rifle he unslung from his shoulder. His spotter and constant shadow advanced a few paces with him, also dropping down to kneel and scan his weapon over his sniper’s head to deal with any threats that presented themselves to them.

Over the tumult of noises, a single, booming report echoed over the rest, followed by a crisp shout of, “Lima down,” as the two men jogged back to the safety of the huddle. Looking ahead to the area lit by the raging fire, Lloyd saw that the vanguard that had flowed out of the main group, hot on the tails of their leader, now faltered and milled about. Around him, the firing had ceased and was replaced only with the crying of the refugees and the clicks and scrapes of weapons reloading.

“Keep moving!” he called, just as they noticed the growing sounds of a rotary wing aircraft surging back over their heads to flare in high above them to land on the island.

ELEVEN

The first load to disgorge from the belly of the aircraft spilled out into the darkness, led by Sergeant Rod Sinclair and half a dozen of his troop, to spread out and adopt defensive positions as the unarmed civilians huddled together. Satisfied that the area was clear after the silence resumed from the harsh invasion of the helicopter, he sent three of his men to open and clear a large, low hangar building, as others activated a few flares so that the returning helicopter could find them easily.

Alone with only what they carried on their backs and feeling abandoned in the dark, they prayed for the aircraft to return soon.

* * *

“I hear them,” a trooper said beside Lieutenant Palmer, who craned his neck up to concentrate on the sounds in the air until he could hear the thudding whine of the rotors at the edge of his hearing. He turned to the group, guessing he had maybe two more loads until they were safely away from the infected and cut-off island. He had heard the battle below them appearing to grind to a halt, and the cessation of regular gunfire, and had assumed that whatever resistance still lived down there was overrun by now. As the helicopter flared and touched down, he counted off another thirty as he slapped their backs and shouted the number out loud. He got to twenty-five and held up an arm to stop the civilians advancing, nodding to a group of soldiers standing ready to climb aboard. The man he had stopped pushed him off balance, shouting. Palmer righted himself and pushed back, finding himself outweighed and shorter than the man. The helicopter took off, leaving him with only a handful of soldiers at his disposal as the man surged forward to push him again.

“We should have been on that helicopter!” raged the man, “my wife is pregnant!”

“No, I’m not, Gordon,” snapped the woman beside him as she tried to pull his arm back. He shook her off angrily, raising the back of one hand towards her in the dull glow of a light bathing the landing area in a weak yellow. His wife shrank back instantly and cowered, displaying the measure of a man her husband was in front of everyone watching. Palmer drew himself up and spoke loudly.

“Now, look here, Sir,” he said haughtily, unable to get another word out as the man punched him squarely on the nose and felled him like a small tree. Screams erupted from the group in response, and the injured Graham Ashdown limped forwards to stand between the young officer and his attacker.

“I know you’re scared, mate,” he said with his hands held out, “we all are, but there’s no need for that.”

“You can fuck off, too,” snarled the man as he stepped forwards and snatched for Ashdown’s gun and knocked him down on top of Palmer, making both men cry out.

Another noise cut over those sounds and brought with it a stunned silence. The sound was a strangled cry, punctuated with a gasping choke and an unmistakable whimper of terror. Palmer and Ashdown righted themselves and looked up to see the man on his knees with eyes as wide and bright as headlamps on a truck. The only thing brighter than those eyes was the slither of sharpened metal at the edge of an axe blade which was hooked around his windpipe and forcing him to remain very, very still. Kimberley tossed her hair out of her face, for the first time revealing the entirety of the scar running into her hairline and distorting the shape of her ear. She leaned down and whispered in the man’s ear, making his eyes widen that little bit further. Without another audible word, the young woman straightened and released him by removing the weapon. The main put both hands to his throat and got unsteadily to his feet to stagger away to the back of the group, as Kimberley took his wife gently by the arm and deposited her with Denise and the others of her original group. Returning to Ashdown, she helped the injured man to his feet and then looked down to extend a hand to the young officer. Taking it, he was shocked to feel the strength in her grip as she hauled him up, looking him directly in the eye as she spoke.

“There is only one way to deal with a bully, Lieutenant,” she said with edged steel in her voice, “and that is to scare them more than they scare others.”

With that unexpected advice given, she turned away and walked tall back to her small huddle that was comforting the woman she had just publicly removed from her abuser, to wait in silence for the last ride out of that hell-hole.

* * *

“On the right!” called out an RMP, his scarlet beret still sitting atop his head perfectly above a stained face that looked calmly over the long barrel of his heavy rifle. Lloyd followed the sound of the voice and looked beyond, seeing a small crowd of bloodied uniforms mobbing something or someone.

“Hold!” he bellowed, feeling the formation halt awkwardly.

“You, you and you,” he said, slapping the backs of the nearest soldiers, of whom only one was originally his own, “with me. Spikes only unless you absolutely have to,” he finished, telling them to use their bayonets and not to fire and attract attention unless it was vital.

They advanced, still unnoticed by the small mob of former colleagues and civilians who pushed at a door hungrily. The door was not barred or closed, and each surging attempt to gain entry was rewarded with a flash of light from within. Lloyd looked at his three soldiers, his own eyes trying to radiate calm when theirs were wide in terror, and he pointed to the bayonets on the end of their guns, then to the base of his neck and to the backs of the zombies who were still unaware of their presence. They nodded and the four of them advanced in a cautious line, just as the door was ripped inwards and two bayonets were thrust forward to spear the faces of the leading zombies. The two crowding behind them eager for fresh meat fell inwards to sprawl on the floor, and they fell to the blades as they punctured the skulls of the downed enemies. To Lloyd’s total surprise, a tall man with a shock of white hair emerged from the doorway wielding the most unexpected weapon he had seen used in his life.

Colonel Tim lay waste to three zombies standing before him with the heavy Scottish claymore blade, severing two heads with clean swings and driving the wide point straight through an eye socket to burst the blade out of the rear of his attacker’s head, with a shout of pure rage to kill the last of the group.

Seeing the four men with raised weapons ahead of him, the rictus of war left his face almost immediately as his genial smile returned.

“Bagged two brace of the blighters now,” he said gleefully, as though proud of his achievements on an organised hunt, rather than fighting for the survival of the human race against the undead. “Still, I imagine you chaps have plenty under your belts by the look of you?”

“Er, yes, Sir,” Lloyd said, “would you come with us, Colonel?”

“Of course. Good idea, er, Lieutenant?”

“Lloyd, Sir,” he replied, disbelieving even his own polite words in the midst of what they were going through, “if you wouldn’t mind?” he said, gesturing for the senior officer to accompany him back to the loose rally square on the main street.

“Come on, you two,” the Colonel announced over his shoulder to the two privates assigned to keep him out of trouble. They stooped to pick up bags, no doubt the Colonel’s chess set or fine china instead of anything useful, and they re-joined the group.

“Fine show, boys!” the Colonel announced as he smiled at the terrified faces, “top shelf!”

Chuckles rippled through the loose ranks in spite of the gravity of the situation, and Lloyd swore he could have heard one of the reservists mutter, “Typical bloody Rupert. There should be one of them puppets of him on that Spitting Image on the telly.”

“Up we go, everyone,” Lloyd said, seeing how alarmingly fast the main group of zombies had advanced as they had been stationary.

* * *

“Up we go,” Lieutenant Palmer announced in ignorant echo of his royal marine counterpart on the slope below him, as he counted another thirty onto the helicopter, leaving only himself and two others on the cobbles. Looking up at the loadmaster and seeing the mental calculations going on, he read the answer in the man’s eyes and turned back to get the last two on board. As he turned, he saw a sight that filled his heart with happiness, and then sank it to the soles of his boots because he knew that he was in for a fight.

“Every man with a weapon to get off right now,” he screamed up at Brinklow, who nodded and went inside to physically remove the soldiers from the aircraft and propel them towards the door. Palmer pushed them away from the aircraft where he arranged them into a loose line.

“Don’t bloody look at me, face front, damn you!” he bawled, finding a gravelly edge to his usually genteel voice. The confused soldiers, all of them having thought themselves safe from the horrors they were about to escape, now found that they were thrust back into the fight under the leadership of a man who was as untested as he was disliked.

As their new and unwelcome reality dawned on them, their eyes spied the formation heading for them in the gloom of the slope leading to the base of the island.

Palmer, having seen and recognised what was heading for them, had made the decision to stay behind and fight a last stand in the hopes of saving more people, but as soon as he shouted his last instructions to the helicopter’s loadmaster and shielded his face as the huge aircraft surged upwards, he felt suddenly and terribly alone; as though he had just condemned all of them. Looking around and wishing he had kept one of the sergeants to lead the men with him.

Or for me, more like, he thought sourly he watched in horror as the men somehow organised themselves.

“Take aim,” one of them shouted, as Palmer saw them raise their weapons to their shoulders. He opened his mouth, desperately willing himself to find his voice before the order to fire was given, when another voice cut the air like the tearing of sheet metal.

“No!” the voice shrieked, higher pitched and lacking the baritone edge usually expected with battlefield orders. “They’re still alive!”

Palmer turned to see Kimberley beside him, shoulders back and head high, with a small axe gripped firmly in her right hand. Before Palmer could utter a word in support, the men realised their mistake. Guns were lowered, and hushed shouts of encouragement rang out to bring the large knot of men to them.

“Identify yourselves,” one nervous soldier shouted.

“Fuck that, mate,” came the breathless and unexpectedly thick Midlands accent of a man emerging from the darkness dressed as a royal marine, “give us a gap, like?”

The men split in the centre, allowing the formation to pour through like a large-scale display of water moving between cells in the body. The front line closed up again, swelled and extended by the addition of over a dozen fighting men.

“Who’s in charge here?” called a confident voice, if a little ragged and out of breath.

“I am,” Palmer said, feeling suddenly threatened by a real soldier challenging his authority, “and have we not set a formal challenge and password?” he said, surprising even himself with how obnoxious he sounded.

“That you, Palmer?” Lieutenant Lloyd asked as he rested his hands on his knees briefly. Palmer said nothing, merely cleared his throat with a sound that reminded him of a small dog attempting to be threatening.

“If you haven’t noticed, man, we’re not fighting the bloody Russians,” Lloyd said with gentle mockery that lacked the tone of confrontation, “and I doubt these bastards are trying to infiltrate our lines. Do you?”

Palmer was left dumbstruck by his own stupidity and had to admit that it was unlikely.

“Quite,” was all that he said by way of admission, “what happened at the bridge?”

“Bloody artillery shell dropped the causeway,” Lloyd said, “and somehow they got behind our defences. So many went into the water that they piled up on the beach and poured through the fences. We could’ve held them, but they started coming from behind us.”

“Is this everyone?” another voice asked, cutting over them both. Lloyd stood up straight on hearing the voice, in spite of not being able to fully see the speaker.

“Everyone we could save, yes,” he answered solemnly.

“We had close to four hundred people here,” Kimberley said, “and now we’ve sent out sixty with what? One more load to go out?”

“I apologise,” Lloyd said with the slightest hint of warning in his voice, “we did what we could.”

“I’m not criticising,” she said, “I’m sorry if it sounded that way, it’s just that the helicopter can take thirty people if they aren’t carrying much with them. We have forty five people here as far as I can count, and most of them have weapons,” she said, leaving the implication open and obvious.

Palmer and Lloyd locked eyes in the low light available from the dull light source near the makeshift landing pad.

“What’s the turnaround time?” Lloyd asked.

“Fifteen, give or take,” Palmer answered as both men lapsed into silence as they figured it would be over ten minutes before the helicopter returned, close to fifteen before it departed and a full thirty before the final sortie flew and evacuated the last of the living from the island. That realisation hit both men at once and both turned to shout orders to the men holding the ragged line.

“Grab anything you can for a barricade!” Lloyd called out.

“Dig in, chaps, anyone with grenades please shout up,” Palmer said.

“I’ll keep the others out of the way,” said a female voice from behind them, then footsteps rattled away over the cobbles as Kimberley went about her own self-appointed duties.

“This is going to be tight,” Lloyd said.

“Indeed,” Palmer concurred.

TWELVE

“Roger, ETA sixteen minutes. Out.” Murray said into the radio, grimacing as he shifted his grip on the controls, making the airframe wobble slightly.

“Are you sure you are alright to fly?” Astrid Larsen asked, her shouted voice coming through the headset clearly.

“Madam!” Murray barked, his voice strained because of the pain and numbness coursing through his body, “I quite understand your concern, but the situation hardly allows that I can merely pull over and let someone else drive, does it?”

“You make a good point,” Astrid said, ducking her head back out of the cockpit to return to the three men in the rear. She had been volunteered to check on their injured pilot after the turbulence had caused the two SBS men to actually sit down and strap in; a rarity with any special forces troops, in stark comparison to the regimented practices of their original units.

“He says that he is fine,” she said to Berg in their native language in response to his raised eyebrow in the red-lit interior of the aircraft, then turned to the other occupants and explained in English.

“He says that he is okay,” she said in English, raising her hand with her thumb and forefinger held together in a circle in the international scuba diving signal for ‘okay’. She didn’t quite believe his assurance, but as the pilot himself pointed out, there was no other choice as there wasn’t much in the way of rest areas in the English Channel. They needed to get to dry land and they had precisely one choice in pilots, which is why all four surviving special forces commandos strapped in and hoped for the best.

* * *

“Who is in charge here?” Captain Palmer called out in echoing similarity to the struggle unfolding on the island, as he dismounted at the landing area back in the camp, where all of his surviving men had started their war, even if he hadn’t.

“Sir,” a voice called from the darkness.

“On me, man,” Palmer snapped. Sergeant Sinclair jogged in, giving the report of the action on the island, the abandoned equipment, the airlifts, and most worryingly about the outbreak.

“Second load just arrived, Sir,” he said, “expecting the last in roughly fifteen.”

“Understood, Sergeant, thank you. SSM?”

“Sir?” Johnson said from directly behind the man, not waiting respectfully out of earshot, as he wasn’t a fan of second-hand information.

“Mister Johnson, I’ll trouble you to take on the defences here, if you don’t mind?”

“Very good, Sir,” Johnson said as he turned away, “Maxwell? All round defence. Protect this LZ until the rest are evacced from the island. We can’t see for shit, so it looks like we’re holding this position until daybreak, which is,” he paused to look at the luminescent tips on the hands of his watch, “eight hours at least.”

“Will do,” Maxwell said, the unspoken stress of his own family’s welfare only just creeping into his voice, but not affecting his abilities as a soldier. Johnson listened as Maxwell went along the perimeter to arrange the men in pairs, unable to see his work well, so relying on his other senses.

“Sarn’t Major?” said a voice from his left, making him turn.

“Who’s that?” he growled, perhaps a little more harshly than he expected the words would come out.

“Sinclair,” came the response.

“Rod. How are your boys holding up?” Johnson asked, meaning the question to be aimed directly at the NCO, but allowing him to give his answer on behalf of Two Troop. It was the original, ‘asking for a friend’ hypothetical question.

“They were pretty rattled, to be honest. Better now, now that we’re away and out of the fight for now,” he answered, giving the answer that Johnson expected; that Rod Sinclair was terrified but holding it together, just as his boys were.

“We’ve got a building open, Sarn’t Major,” he went on, “and there’s a brew on if you wanted one?”

“Good man. Civvies ok?”

“Not the best,” Sinclair answered, his voice giving the indication in the dark that his brow was well and truly knitted, “lots of us and them left behind, if you know what I mean.”

“What’s the bill so far?” Johnson asked, meaning the butcher’s bill of losses.

“There’s another load on their way hopefully, but we’ll be lucky if we’ve come out with a quarter…”

Johnson said nothing, only stayed stock still and absorbed the fact that they had seventy-five percent less life to protect. Those figures swam in his head and tortured him as he tried to imagine the secondary losses; that of the number of fighting men lost and no longer a resource to protect the others. That train of thought delved deeper into his sudden depression as he considered how many of his men would be fighting-fit after the inevitable loss of their loved ones. He thought of the blame, of the bitterness as men struggled to cope with grief and anger.

“Sarn’t Major?” Sinclair said, interrupting his thoughts and bringing him back to the moment.

“Sorry, yes, thank you,” he answered hurriedly, “I’ll have Maxwell take over out here if you wouldn’t mind arranging things inside? Keep them quiet and calm?”

“Will do.”

Johnson listened as Sinclair walked away, pushing down his own feelings as far as he could to survive the night and start afresh in the daylight. He wanted to let someone else decide, wanted to crawl under a rock or just use one to bash his own head in for the failures and the losses. He paced, cursing himself for anything he could have or should have done differently. He should have pushed to have them all evacuated weeks ago, should’ve refused to accept the orders to sit tight and wait for all this nonsense to blow over so that the BBC could resume their normal, polite service and tell people not to panic. As he paced, a smell hit his nostrils and reminded him of the rank insignia on his uniform, kicking back into the role of the Squadron Sergeant Major; a man with the senses of superman, able to detect the lowest of mutterings over distance, and now, in this case, the unmistakable smell of burning tobacco.

He stalked the defensive positions like a hunting bear; soft-footed and slightly crouched, moving carefully so that his equipment didn’t rattle and betray his approach. His nose led him directly to a position occupied by two men, but their low conversation didn’t identify them to his ears. The faint cherry-red glow of the tip of a lit cigarette was what had sparked his senses, and the anger he felt for the breach of routine was heightened to a fury, given the situation. Careful not to be in a position where he could be shot or run-through with a bayonet when he startled the men, he crept close and put his face between their heads, which faced outwards.

“You fucking idiot,” he growled, feeling both men flinch and jump in terror, “if I can smell your bloody smokes, then what do you think the Screechers will do? Stroll up and offer you a light and then be on their merry way? For fuck’s sake, I can smell you further away than a Union Street hooker’s clout!”

The soldier, who had been attempting to hide his moment of stress-relieving indulgence by blowing the smoke inside his uniform coat, coughed and stubbed out the cigarette desperately as he tried not to breathe out. The smoke left in his lungs burned him as it leaked in small tendrils out of his nostrils.

“Hand them over,” Johnson growled, hearing the rustling of clothing as the packet was placed carefully in his outstretched hand, “and the matches. I’m forced to trust you with a gun, but obviously trusting you with the ability to make fire is too much responsibility for one fucking moron.”

A lighter was placed in his hand on top of the cigarettes.

“What about you?” Johnson said to the other soldier.

“Don’t smoke, Sir,” he whispered.

“No? But you didn’t think to tell this waste of space not to?” he asked menacingly.

No answer came, so Johnson rose to his feet and slapped each man across the head before stalking away.

* * *

Both soldiers stayed frozen in position, unblinking and barely breathing.

“Where the fuck did he come from?” the now former smoker asked in a quiet voice.

“I have no idea,” replied his mate, “but I’d rather go back to the bloody island than get in the shit with him again, dickhead.”

* * *

Johnson walked carefully back towards the darker shapes of the low buildings illuminated by the dull glow of the red light from the flares marking the landing zone. He walked inside, seeing a few shrouded lights with people huddled around them.

“Sergeant Croft?” he called out, getting no reply.

“Quartermaster?” he tried, hoping that Rochefort would at least be there.

Still no response.

“Corporal Mander?” he barked, a little louder now, hoping to find any of the men he had left in the island headquarters.

“Didn’t make it, Sir,” a trooper said from his position sitting by his right foot.

“You injured, trooper?” he asked in a neutral voice, ready to launch into a display should the man prove to be fighting-fit and avoiding the outside work.

“Ankle, Sir,” he replied, gesturing at a foot strapped heavily with bandages raised on a wooden crate.

“Did you see it?” he asked quietly.

“No, Sir, but I saw a load of the bastards go into the HQ. Too many to…” he trailed away, suddenly feeling the pang of guilt and responsibility.

“It happened, son,” Johnson said almost coldly, “no point in worrying about it now.”

Unable to face the others and field more questions, he took himself away to a quiet corner of the large room and closed his hand around the cigarettes in his pocket. Suddenly stopping squeezing as he realised he was ruining a finite resource, he released them and gently extracted one from the packet and straightened it before putting the filter in his mouth and lighting it. He smoked half of it, suddenly no longer enjoying the harsh burn in his throat and chest and tossed it onto the concrete floor to grind it out with his boot, as though the action could assuage the myriad emotions he was experiencing.

Walking back outside, he passed the injured soldier again and tossed him the rest of the smokes without waiting to hear any thanks. As he walked towards the exit, a noise to his left in the darkness caught his finely-tuned ear and diverted him to investigate.

Pulling open boxes one at a time to try and find anything useful or at least valuable enough to trade, the man kept glancing behind his right shoulder as though he expected to be caught at
any point like a child raiding a biscuit tin. His glances towards the obvious route showed his inexperience, as the sound of a throat clearing behind his other shoulder made him spin and bring up the bayonet he was using to pry open the crates.

Johnson caught the wrist holding the blade with ease, his large hand and fingers crushing the tendons to weaken the grip instantly to force the weapon to clatter to the ground, just as his right hand raised to grab the throat of the man. Two long strides forced him out of the shadows and into the weak light, and the recognition did not lower Johnson’s blood pressure one bit.

“Trooper Nevin,” he snarled, “kindly explain to me what you just did wrong?”

Nevin, as Johnson well knew, could not explain anything as the hand gripping his throat stopped all normal traffic of air and words. Whether he realised it or not, the question was not intended to be rhetorical.

“Nothing? I shall explain for you, then,” Johnson said more loudly as he continued to march him backwards and choke the life out of him. “Firstly, you cowardly piece of shit, people need protecting and, much as I am ashamed to admit it, last time I checked, you were supposed to be a soldier and not a burglar. Secondly, you flap of gristle, you ever raise a hand to me again and I’ll rip the fucking thing off and shove it up your arse. Sergeant Strauss?” he said, shouting the last two words louder than was sensible, but the rage was pouring out of him like steam by then. Boots sounded on concrete and three men appeared, Strauss at the head of them.

“Ah,” Johnson said conversationally as Nevin’s feet began to dance and his face turned purple, “I believe this is yours, Sergeant?”

“It is, Sir,” Strauss said, his eyes promising punishment close to murder, “what was it doing?”

“I believe it was raiding the supplies here instead of doing its job. See to it that it finds itself in a particularly uncomfortable and dangerous position to prove to me that it is worth keeping around?”

“Yes, Sir,” Strauss said, stepping forward to catch the collar of Nevin’s jacket as the hand choking him opened. The loud gasp of involuntary air intake was cut short as he was hauled away backwards and dragged to the exterior perimeter to stand the rest of the night as sentry.

Johnson, still shaking with anger and emotion, had no time to dwell on the incident as he heard the far-off rhythmic thud of rotor blades.

Barrett, ignoring the professional pride of the flawless touchdown he normally observed, flared and dropped to the tarmac hard and powered down only just enough to keep the aircraft on the deck for as long as it took to unload their human cargo. Johnson jogged over, grabbing the loadmaster and shouting in his ear.

“I thought this was the last load?”

“No,” Brinklow shouted back as he shook his head emphatically, “two more. The other aircraft is on the way back there now.”

Johnson took this in as he watched the faces getting off the helicopter, seeing that not one of them was military, which meant that either all the rest of his men were lost or, more likely, that they were still there fighting, but now with dwindling numbers. He turned to shout another name.

“Captain Pa—”

“Here,” Palmer shouted from directly beside him, craning up to lean his ear towards the bigger man and hear what he needed to say.

“Still one more load on the island. I’m going back with them,” he shouted, stabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the helicopter.

Palmer absorbed this for a few seconds, then nodded once and held up a single finger before turning away and taking off at a jog. Johnson turned to the nearest trooper, pulling two spare magazines from the man’s pouches before he hauled himself on board the aircraft, pausing as the loadmaster looked at him briefly and shrugged. Johnson turned back to see Palmer and two troopers with their arms full. Palmer passed up a dismounted GPMG, and then Johnson took the two full boxes of linked ammunition for the big gun. The last box had the lid lifted back for his inspection, and he kept his eyebrows raised as he looked back to the captain, who shot him a wink before retreating.

The engines screamed, and the ground fell away beneath Johnson’s feet.

THIRTEEN

“Here they come,” Sergeant Hampton called out in warning, before leaning into his rifle and firing single shots at the heads illuminated by the fire hastily lit in a wheelbarrow further down the slope. The fire was a double-edged sword as the flickering flames no doubt attracted the zombies, but the payoff that the soldiers could see their targets was worth the disadvantage.

All along the weak barricade, men started to fire with him, striving to bring down the fastest moving zombies who had stretched far ahead of the mass rolling relentlessly uphill towards their last stand.

The only person not cowering in cover or firing over the barricade stood there feeling suddenly useless as she gripped the small axe in her sweaty palm. She looked around, left and right, desperately searching for anything that could be used to stem the tide of dead and help the fight. Shouts from the front sounded intermittently as men were pulled back from the centre of the line, having run out of ammunition. Each man withdrawn to stand as a second line, with bayonets ready, made Kimberley more and more fearful that they would be overrun before the helicopter returned, and she knew that she would be forced to retreat with the other civilians and abandon brave men to a fate she couldn’t bring herself to imagine.

Before her nerve broke, the firing died off and she stepped cautiously forward to see that the advance line of zombies had been brought down.

“Ammo count!” Lloyd shouted.

Men fumbled in pouches, some bringing out a spare magazine and calling forward another soldier with the same kind of gun to thicken and strengthen the line, which still looked impossibly weak. She caught Lloyd’s eye and saw the resignation, the acceptance there. She also saw from the glint in his eyes that he would not stop fighting.

“Eyes front!” Hampton shouted again, having finished dishing out the remainder of his ammunition to three marines who had joined him in the very centre of the barricade.

All eyes turned to the front, and all hearts sank as the advancing mass was lit up by a few light sources.

“Well, fuck my old boots,” said one man on the front line.

“Now, now,” Lieutenant Palmer admonished haughtily in an attempt at joining in the men’s humour, “ladies present, boys. No need for barrack-room language.”

“Sorry, Sir,” quipped the man, “but there’s a few of them.”

A few of them was something of an understatement. Palmer and Lloyd both stared ahead before facing each other and guessing at numbers.

“Five hundred?” Palmer asked quietly.

“More,” Lloyd said, before realising that Kimberley Perkins was standing within earshot.

“And how many bullets left?” she asked.

“Not nearly enough,” Lloyd said with the same sad resignation his eyes had conveyed.

Kimberley bit her lip, making the two officers misunderstand and try to reassure her.

“Wait here,” she said, then disappeared into the darkness further up the hill.

“Well, there isn’t really anywhere else to be, is there, Christopher?” Palmer said with all the poise he could muster.

“No, Olly,” he answered, “there bloody well isn’t. Look alive, boys!” he called out, “All we have to do is hit three of them with each bullet!”

The weak ripple of laughter died away in Kimberley’s ears as she ran up the slope, her eyes wide to try and make out the shapes of what she hoped to find. Single, loud shots sounded at regular intervals behind her, making her jump as she felt her way along in the darkness, eventually finding the slatted metal indicating what she wanted.

“Sir?” Marine Leigh called out as he lowered the small binoculars from his face, “He did it, Sir.”

“Did what?’ Lieutenant Lloyd asked as he stepped close.

“Did for three of the fuckers with one bullet,” Leigh answered with a toothy grin as he nudged his head at their sniper, who rested the long barrel of his weapon over the barricade. It took a moment for Lloyd to understand that his jest had just been taken seriously, even more time to realise that it had been achieved, but he knew that if any of them could time an accurate shot to line up three of the shambling corpses for such a trick shot, then it was their implacably calm marine Enfield with his Accuracy International.

“Double rum ration for that man!” Palmer announced gleefully, earning an almost audible groan of embarrassment from the collection of men, mostly marines, at his attempt at a joke that was only a century out of date. As their groan died down, a louder, and infinitely more menacing groan rolled upwards to their tenuous position near the top of the hill.

Two other noises pricked the air at the same time; the unmistakable and heavenly sound of thudding helicopter blades and the unexpected sound of a big diesel engine barking into life.

As one, the men holding the thin line turned to the loudest and nearest source of sound, and saw headlights descending the hill towards them. They shielded their eyes from the bright lights as their night vision was instantly ruined, and the vehicle came to a squeaking halt before their meagre barricade.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Palmer called over the clattering of the engine, drowning out the rippling moans from further down the hill and the incoming aircraft.

Kimberley jumped down from the driver’s side as she left the engine running, and either hadn’t heard or had simply ignored Palmer’s protest.

“Clear everything out of the way!” she shouted, climbing back up into the cab without waiting for any response.

“Surely she’s not trying to…” Palmer said, just as he saw Lloyd’s face crack into an evil grin that bordered on madness, until his own mind tipped over into understanding.

“Clear the barricade,” they both shouted in near unison, and watched as the men shoved and pulled at the furniture and crates providing them with the thinnest of barriers between supposed safety and a seemingly unstoppable onslaught of undead. Neither officer knew if the men understood the tenacious young woman’s plan, but it only mattered that, at that very moment, they followed orders. When the roadway was sufficiently cleared, Lloyd called for them to stand clear, then held his left thumb up clearly in the light of the headlamps.

Inside the cab, Kimberley saw the gesture and did that curious, almost automatic action with her left hand of wiggling the gearstick to ensure it was in neutral, pointlessly as she wasn’t depressing the clutch and the big, green truck was still idling and stationary. She leaned her right leg out of the open door in readiness and used both hands to depress the heavy button and release the handbrake, with her left foot wedged unnaturally on the middle pedal. The truck lurched slightly, creaking against the brakes as the pressure from her foot was less than that of the handbrake. She took two steadying breaths, her head rising up to see the oncoming horde a little over a hundred paces away, then rolled to her right and out onto the cobblestones.

The truck moved slowly at first, despite the pull of gravity. It’s hulking green metal and canvas rolled slowly forwards as it began a journey that the laws of physics had already dictated. As certainly and as inescapably as fate, it rolled faster and faster by the second as it accelerated on a journey that would only end in devastation, but the devastation they wanted. As soon as it passed through the gap created in the barricade, orders were shouted for the hole to be sealed again and for the men to make ready. Kimberley ran to the barricade, slapping both hands onto an upturned sideboard as she watched, open-mouthed, at the rapidly retreating back end of the Bedford truck. The sheer bulk of the vehicle obscured the sight of it crashing headlong into the leading wave of the crowd.

She didn’t see it, but she heard it. The soft, wet sounds of metal hitting flesh. The muted pops and crunches of sinew and bone giving way so terribly and inevitably under the onslaught of the tonnes of metal bearing down on them, crushing them, driving them into the roadway to be crushed and smeared as inconsequential sacks of meat, flinging them aside either whole or in parts until the resistance of so many hundreds of bodies adhered to those same inescapable laws of physics.

The truck slowed, still rolling downwards to crush and destroy the bodies as it went, until it burst from the other side of the crowd to slam into a single-storey building and all but collapse it on impact. The remains of the roof caved inwards, cascading tile and stones to the ground, and interrupting the instincts of the zombies at the rear.

Those mindless monsters, the ones following the others in front with no understanding of why, were drawn to the noise and diverted from the main attack to mill about the nearest source of noise. At the head of their advance, those few not crushed by the hurtling truck, stomped onwards.

“Is it going to blow up?” a voice asked from behind the barricade as it broke the silence.

“No, lad,” came the gruffly amused voice of Sergeant Hampton, “that’s only in the mo…”

His retort was cut off by a double crump of explosions, making them all duck instinctively. Nervous eyes peered over the barricade to see a cloud of smoke where the blast had come from, just as the air above them tore with the ripping sounds of the helicopter passing low overhead.

It flared, spun on its axis, and exposed the open side door where the indomitable Squadron Sergeant Major stood with his feet firmly planted and murder in his eyes.

* * *

“Take us directly over them and go slow,” Johnson had shouted into the headset he had been given by the loadmaster. A pause told him that either the pilot was deciding whether to do as he was asked, or that he was looking for the best way to approach the horde.

Johnson rummaged in the box held down by heavy canvas netting and came back with both hands full.

“Hold on to me,” he shouted as he fixed Brinklow with a look and didn’t wait for an answer. The loadmaster did as he was told and took a firm grip on the belt of his webbing as the big man leaned perilously close to falling out. Barrett slowed the aircraft from the flat-out speed he had forced it to on their return journey, just as Johnson saw the most unexpected event unfold below.

A Bedford truck, he had no idea whether it was being driven in a fruitless escape attempt or not, gathered momentum as it rolled towards the attacking horde. His mouth dropped open as it slammed into the leading edge, obliterating the first dozen ranks of undead inside of a second as it ploughed through them mercilessly. His mouth stayed open, even if it did curl slightly into the very beginnings of a horrified smile, as the vehicle carried on throwing them down and crushing them as effectively as interlocking fire from heavy machine guns. He watched as the truck emerged from the far side of the horde to splay its headlight out from the grotesque shadows that had danced through the crowd, bursting into the relatively empty street behind their combined mass, only to slam into a building to bring it down. In the poor light below, Johnson saw the faint edges of the cloud of dust and steam caused by the crash and put his hands together to hook his thumbs into the release pins and pull them simultaneously.

Holding both hands as far out from the open fuselage door as he could, Johnson gauged the drop and distance so far as was possible in a split-second and opened both hands to drop the small bombs at what he hoped was the biggest concentration of dead left standing.

He didn’t hear the double whump and crunch of the grenades exploding, as the hurtling aircraft was over them too fast for the sound to carry. His next glance down showed the ghostly outlines of upturned faces before the aircraft lurched and the wheels bumped to the ground to make him feel impossibly heavy on his feet. Staggering, he climbed down and reached back for the precious tools he had brought with him.

“Sergeant Major?” a nasal voice called from behind his turned back.

Johnson turned, hefting the long machine gun in one hand effortlessly and a box of linked ammunition in the other.

“Lieutenant,” he acknowledged simply, no sound being heard over the engines but his mouth clearly making the word as he walked past the young officer and towards the barricade. Palmer was left standing under the wash of the spinning blades as the surge of civilians rushed towards the door. He switched on, counting them in and counting half a load. He fixed the loadmaster with a look until he was sure he had his attention, then held up a flat palm and told him to wait, mouthing the word carefully until he received a nod in reply.

Lieutenant Palmer ran to the barricade, placing a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Fifteen more on this load,” he shouted, making the two officers and the SSM scan their lines. The numbers were evident. They would have to leave behind eight men.

“The other one is on its way,” Johnson shouted, seeing instant confusion on the faces of the two men before his eyes flickered away to take in the sight of men without magazines in their guns.

“The other Sea King,” he explained, “it’s coming back in a few minutes.”

The officers looked at each other before Lloyd spoke first.

“Leave me and my marines here, you get your lot gone.”

Palmer seemed to bridle, as though the implication were that the marines were the superior soldiers and by definition braver. Then his chest deflated, and he looked expectantly, hopefully almost, up at the SSM.

“I need your medic and a few more back at the rendezvous. Feel free to stay with me, but I need a few of the best you have with me, and I need you to go back and look after what’s left of our boys,” he said in a tone that brokered no argument as he fixed the marine Lieutenant with a stare that spoke volumes.

It said that Johnson was, in no uncertain terms, ordering the Lieutenant back to base. It said that he wouldn’t ask or even allow anyone else to stay in his place, and his firm grip on the GPMG solidified that intention. Lloyd held his eye for a moment longer and turned to speak to his sergeant. Johnson faced Palmer.

“Get the men without ammo on board,” he instructed, “and get yourself back to the captain, Sir.”

Palmer swallowed, nodded, and turned to do as he was told.

FOURTEEN

“Look alive,” Johnson roared as he opened up with the big machine gun, firing short bursts as he swung the barrel left and right to target the closest groups of zombies. The arrival of the helicopter and the brief time it was nestled near the top of the island had served to encourage them all to renew their uphill journey, because they associated the noise with potential prey.

The harsh rattling, percussive hammering up close deafened the men, as a marine to his left focused on feeding the belt carefully into the weapon. Johnson knew they could ill afford a malfunction just then, when his unexpected arrival had quadrupled their firepower all by himself. When the first belt was about to run dry he let go of the trigger, feeling as well as hearing the sudden drop in noise, but imagining that the attack renewed in intensity as his gun went quiet. He knew that wasn’t right, he knew that only a living enemy cowered in cover when in the sights of such a weapon, and these mindless, undead Screechers held no such regard for their own lives.

A slap on his shoulder told him that a fresh belt was seated, and he bent to the sights again and began hammering away at the remnants of the horde. When that second belt ran dry, he took his eyes away from the attack and glanced down at the box behind him, before flicking his gaze up to meet the eye of the staunch marine sergeant, to nod to him once.

That sergeant, Hampton, had stayed behind with five of his marines, all volunteers to a man, and included their sniper, who went about his own work methodically to line up two or more advancing heads, before squeezing the trigger and sending a fat, heavy round through their collective skulls.

Hampton hauled three of his men back from the barricade and began dishing out grenades like bottles of water on an aid mission. The marines, far more accustomed to the small bombs than their tank-driving counterparts, threw with ruthless efficiency to cut huge chunks out of the oncoming waves and fill the air with the crump and bang of explosions to punctuate the heavy rattle of gunfire.

The intensity of the noise was so extreme that the arrival of the second helicopter was felt before it was heard, as the rotor wash pushed them forward when it flared to land close behind them.

Johnson felt that arrival but could not afford to take his eyes from the enemy. The final belt of ammunition was slapped into his gun as he could feel the heat from the barrel radiating back to his face. Four hundred rounds had already been expended through it and his shoulder burned in pain with each squeeze of the trigger. He pulled it in tighter and carried on, deafened by his own personal destruction but yelling for the others to fall back. He felt another slap on his shoulder, this one telling him it was time to leave, and he stood a little taller to make his final stand.

The zombies were close by then, close enough to make out details of their uniforms and faces. He squeezed the trigger in one last surge as he bared his teeth and emitted a low growl of anger and frustration, firing an extended burst of fully automatic fire as he depressed and swung the long barrel left to right to left to spray the heavy bullets at the knees of the ranks of undead. His mind registered that they were thinning out, that he could not see heads of the fifth and sixth ranks of attackers, but there were still more bodies than bullets. When the gun finally ran dry he dropped it where he stood and turned to run towards the helicopter just as the barricade fell inwards under a wash of dead meat.

* * *

“There’s a fight going on down there,” Lieutenant

Commander Murray called into the headset to warn his four passengers, “I’ve got muzzle flashes and what looks like grenades.”

Wordlessly, the four rear passengers unstrapped themselves and stood, holding on to whatever they could as they readied themselves to get back in the fight. All four of them, two bearded Special Boat Service troopers and the two Norwegian commandos of the FSK, were all on the edge of their nerves but what marked them out as special was their ability to compartmentalise. To forget their emotions and to focus on the task in hand. Both teams, originally four a piece, had been halved in brutal savagery only a few hours before, but the remaining men and woman vowed to not be so easily taken.

As the helicopter slowed and turned to present the open side door, the noise of heavy gunfire pounded them over the noise of the thudding blades and screaming engines. All four hopped to the ground and fanned out, two left and two right, in pairs of mixed teams.

Astrid dropped her right lower leg to the ground and rested her suppressed weapon on her left knee as she scanned for targets. The leader of the SBS team, the man even she had found herself calling Buffs, crouched over her with his weapon scanning in opposite arcs to her own.

Uniformed men ran towards them, empty handed or with useless rifles dangling on slings, and began to throw themselves on board the aircraft. A huge, rattling burst of automatic fire from a weapon far heavier than their own sub machine guns sounded ahead from the makeshift barricade and as soon as it stopped, Astrid saw a lone figure turn and sprint for them just as a wave of undead crushed the meagre obstacle to pour over it.

She was hauled to her feet and propelled towards the open door, but she spun with the force and brought her weapon back up to face the threat. Undetected except by the ones pulling their triggers, rounds spat with snapping coughs from their fat-barrelled guns to cut down the zombies regaining their feet and cover the man who ran straight towards them. As he slowed and began waving his arms at them to retreat, the sheer presence of the last man to fall back dominated the area. He grabbed them and pushed them inside before throwing himself bodily on top of the living bodies in the open doorway.

What the fuck are these idiots doing? Johnson thought to himself, incorrectly recognising the profiles of the four shooters as the SAS team he had sent to scout potential safe sites for them.

How did they even get on the helicopter? Came his next thought, before a shriek from behind him refocused his mind and forced him further on. A whip of wind passed his face, buffeting him almost imperceptibly under the downforce of the rotor blades and the dust and debris it sent towards his squinting eyes. Another half-felt sensation behind him made him stagger slightly as a flailing hand of a now-dead Screecher hit his leg as it tumbled to the roadway with two out of three bullets fired into its skull from the burst of one of the guns ahead of him. Slowing as much as he dared and roaring at them to get on the damned aircraft, he grabbed at their equipment and sent them hurtling towards safety before diving headlong on top of them and bawling at the top of his voice.

“Go! Fucking go!” he roared, feeling his body weight instantly tripled by the forces of gravity as the helicopter launched vertically skywards.

As he rolled to get to his knees, a slap of meat on metal made his eyes fix on a bloody hand gripping the ledge. Impossibly slowly, inch by terrifying inch, the top of a head rose to meet the hand and revealed the face beneath.

Despite the gore and blood, despite the missing right cheek exposing teeth all the way back to the molars and gouged-out left eye, Johnson came face to face with his missing radio operator, Corporal Mander. The former corporal hauled himself upwards, performing a one-handed chin-up of such epically strong proportions as to betray how the mind limits the body’s ability. The ravaged mouth opened and leaned forward, making Johnson close his eyes and accept that he had nowhere to go.

A metallic clang sounded in front of his face, thudding the metal deck of the helicopter and vibrating his head painfully. He opened one eye to see the glinting head of an axe and four severed fingers. Following the head to the handle, his eyes matching the flowing contour of the wood and up the slender wrist and the forearm to see the concerned face of the young woman who had terrified him so much with her unexpected interest in him. She didn’t smile, but her look of cold steel filled him with a warmth he suspected was rather unbecoming of a man of his position.

* * *

Corporal Mander went for the radio but found his path blocked by the tall and spare Major from the intelligence corps.

“I said we are to evacuate immediately,” he hissed at him.

Mander ignored him, pushing past the man and going for the set on the desk. He had no time to explain to this man, who even though he was a reservist himself and not a full-time soldier, he saw as lower down on the food chain. Had a man like the captain given him an order, he would have followed it because he knew him to be a clever man who was tried and tested in battle; or even his Squadron Sergeant Major, who Mander saw much more of,
often being on the radio and pretending not to listen to the senior men of the squadron discussing matters.

If Mister Johnson had given the order to strip naked and do the hokey-kokey, then he would do precisely that.

But not this man. He snatched up the set and began to give a report over the channel he hoped his counterpart, Daniels, would be listening to in the Sultan out there somewhere, but after only a few words the door burst inwards.

Major Hadlington screamed foully, his high-pitched wails drowning out the entire upper spectrum of Mander’s hearing as he went down to three of them. A noise behind him made him spin, amazing even himself that he could rip his eyes away from the officer being torn apart, and he saw the female radio operator who had relieved him. She was emerging from the door of the toilet near the radio desk and their eyes met and locked for a second. Saying nothing, he shoved her hard back inside and slammed the door just as a body fell on him from behind. Teeth ripped the skin from his face and lanced pain throughout his entire body as hot breath burned his eyes with the foul smell of salt water gone stagnant. His brain registered renewed screams, the same terrible high-pitched shrieking of impossible agony, and just as teeth gnawed at his right elbow and the lower part of the limb was torn sinuously away, his consciousness fled.

Minutes later, the former Corporal Mander woke, in as much as his reanimated body opened its milky eyes and pushed itself one-handedly off the blood-drenched floor. Three others were in the room with him, not that he recognised them, and the thing they fed on didn’t smell fresh to him. He heard noises from outside, from beyond the door left hanging open, and he stumbled his way through it. Outside in the cool, dark air he lifted his chin and sniffed deeply, turning his face left and up to where the sounds of gunfire echoed from past the huge crowd of the others like him.

Shortly after that, a huge green truck rocketed past him, the oversized wing mirror clipping his shoulder hard enough to break it in two places and spin him around to land hard on the cobbles. He righted himself again and re-orientated towards the renewed sounds of heavier gunfire. His long, halting stumble uphill was sparked by the thudding sounds of a huge machine which started to move as he approached. Clamping his one remaining hand onto the lip of the open door he hauled himself upwards to be rewarded instantly with the smell of fresh meat. He opened his mouth, savouring the delights to come, and was suddenly in mid-air and falling back towards the ground where he had started. The smell of meat vanished, and his remaining senses blacked out in a heartbeat as his skull burst on impact to spill his brains onto the roadway.

FIFTEEN

Barrett slammed his aircraft down to the dark ground, his entire body fatigued with the physical effort of piloting the big helicopter for over an hour of intensive short hops under immense pressure.

Real, literal, life and death pressure.

He waited until given the all-clear from his loadmaster, signifying that everyone was off, and he moved his helicopter to the flat area adjacent to their landing spot; hovering it just a few feet off the ground as the tall beast crabbed sideways.

“Julian? Julian?” a nasal voice called out, snapping Captain Palmer’s attention directly to the unnecessary source of the noise. Mixed relief and annoyance washed over him, and he stepped straight to his younger brother and hushed him, if anything for the embarrassment of the men seeing their officers engaging in such an emotional reunion.

“Lieutenant,” he snapped, sending the message loud and clear which they both heard in their late father’s voice.

Stop your caterwauling! He cried from the depths of their shared childhood, you’re neither women nor animals; show some decorum.

Second-Lieutenant Palmer stopped, wiped the look from his face and resisted the urge to hug his big brother and not let go.

“Sir,” he said formally, finally, “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Where’s the SSM?” his older brother fired back, seemingly unaffected by the emotion of their being reunited. Palmer junior swallowed down the first four things he wanted to say, settling on a brief but thorough report.

“He stayed behind, waiting for the other aircraft and in command of the final group.”

“I see,” the captain said, dropping his eyes in thought. Without another word he thrust a pad and pencil into his younger brother’s chest and waited for him to take them.

“I’ve begun taking a record of who we have left. Unless there are any surviving members of Assault Troop left behind, I’d suggest you start with Sergeant Sinclair’s men.”

The younger Palmer, left without the emotional response to his survival that he had hoped for and, worse still, unrecognised for the fact that he had finally led fighting men in contact and done what he felt was a good job. The final nail in the coffin of his elation was seeing his brother, the man he idolised and tried to emulate all the time, physically grab hold of another officer and turn him to walk away.

“Chris,” he said, using Lieutenant Lloyd’s first name in a rare display of familiarity, “with me, if you please.”

Second Lieutenant Palmer sneered, almost crushing the pad in his hand and digging the dull point of the pencil into his flesh painfully, then stomped away to take the most uncaring and callous butcher’s report ever.

Nestling the aircraft gently back to the ground, Barrett flicked the switches to kill the big jet engines and sank into his seat in pure physical and psychological relief. Pulling off the helmet and headset, he basked in the sudden, if only relative, silence.

That silence was shattered by the shouting of a polite enquiry, even if the voice calling out was filled with tension and authority.

“I say?” the voice called again, “where are the others?”

“I’ll deal with this, Harry,” his co-pilot said as he pulled himself from his seat far faster than his slightly older comrade, “you take a moment.”

“Thank you, James,” Barrett said tiredly to Morris in an unusually intimate moment where the two men used each other’s given names, similar to the conversation that had just occurred
two dozen paces away.

“Ah, Captain,” Barrett heard Morris exclaim from behind him as he leaned back and closed his eyes briefly.

“Lieutenant,” Captain Palmer said as formally as his rushed mood allowed, “might I enquire where the rest are?”

“Yes, Captain,” Morris said with a groan as he climbed down, “the other aircraft by my reckoning should be roughly six minutes behind us, all being well.”

“All being well?” Palmer asked pointedly.

“Well, yes,” Morris replied, fighting the urge to recite no less than two film references given the evident seriousness of the question, “the Sergeant Major was rather heroically taking on an entire horde of undead when we left,” he said, hurrying to add his next sentence, given the widening eyes on the face of the army captain, “but he was far from alone; he had marines and some of your men around him and they were fighting hard.”

“And the other helicopter?” Palmer asked.

“Got released from command to return, I presume,” Morris said, leaving the explanation for Lieutenant Commander Murray’s return flight for the pilot himself, “they should have collected and been in the air by now,” he finished.

Palmer nodded, the gesture unseen in the poor light and adding a verbal acknowledgement hurriedly, and turned away to wait for the tell-tale sounds of the other helicopter coming in.

* * *

“Head count,” Johnson shouted as he shakily regained his feet. The sound of his voice was snatched away in the massive drone of the jet engines and the thudding blades. A headset appeared on his chest, held out by a lean, blonde woman he did not recognise. He knew instantly that she did not belong as part of their civilian complement, given her clothing and equipment, but similarly couldn’t place her or understand how she came to be there.

Pulling on the headphones and adjusting the boom microphone, he untangled himself from the long spiral cable snaking upwards. As he did so, his eyes took in three other forms in similar clothing and carrying weapons he hadn’t seen for real outside of anti-terrorism displays, marking out the four of them as special forces, and he half recognised the brooding, bearded man to his left as one of the SBS team who went out on that very helicopter.

“Report,” he said.

“There was an outbreak on the ship,” said the bearded man, not adding a ‘sir’ or other appropriate deference, which all but announced his specialist status, “they sank it just after we took off. The whole fleet is pulling back, and they’ve fired nukes on Russia because Russia apparently launched nukes on Europe.”

All of this information, although garnered from different sources, slotted in with what the SSM already knew. He glanced around the others in the dull, red-lit interior, seeing the filthy and exhausted faces of men, of soldiers and marines, who had fought hard right down to their last bullet. Of men who had gone toe-to-toe with the Screechers and taken the fight to them with the bayonet. Of men who had gone to the brink of survival and still couldn’t believe that they had got away with it. Johnson looked at those faces, counting thirteen including the four mysterious passengers already on board, and watched in sudden terror as every one of their eyes went wide.

Lieutenant Commander Murray, staying quiet and concentrating hard after the adrenaline of the rapid landing and take-off, headed inland at speed. As he levelled out the angle of attack, flattening the aircraft to cruise, his hand slipped on the throttle and slowed the aircraft. His grip on the cyclic was shaky, his palm seemingly sweaty, but the myriad smells inside the helicopter masked the metallic tang of fresh blood where the wound in his arm had opened up once more. So intense was his concentration that he missed the signs until they were too late, and as the aircraft slowed more and more, his foggy brain, left weak and confused by the blood loss, registered the warning too late.

The unbending laws of physics, that point where gravity outweighed lift, kicked in hard and the bulbous, ungainly helicopter dropped like a stone. As the momentary weightlessness made the eyes of all the passengers bulge, Johnson was pitched over to land hard, flat on his back. His eyes registered a handful of others in similar positions as another weird sense tugged his insides backwards through his spine, as the aircraft’s tail whipped around to overtake the cockpit and eject two men from the open side door and into the night air.

It was that last second spin of the fuselage, combined with the lucky position he had fallen in, that made the difference between survival and death to Johnson. As the tail of the craft hit the main part of the church, which was the only tall feature in an otherwise unremarkable countryside village, the belly of the helicopter slammed into the ground hard. So hard, in fact, that the two people who had somehow managed to stay standing were flattened into the deck on impact like meat concertinas. The severe spinal injuries alone would have killed them, but the worst were the ones who were neither lucky enough to be in positions to survive the crash, nor to be killed in an instant.

One man, a marine, was on his knees after the lurching change of direction had spilled him forwards. As the belly of the aircraft hit the ground his face was pitched forward so violently to meet the upcoming rush of the metal deck that his face flattened, and the contents of his shattered skull pulped into a foul ooze that sprayed instantly out in all directions, as if a grenade had detonated inside his head.

Another was only halfway falling when they struck the ground. There was an eruption of bright, white bone from his shoulder as the straight, bracing arm forced the flesh outwards, until the force ripped the entire shoulder off, to pour thick, hot blood in great gouts over the deck.

Johnson stared at a face opposite where he lay, his ears screaming with the tortured noises, and his head pounding. He was both soaked with the blood of others and sprayed with so many different fluids from the injuries that he felt like a modern art project.

The face, remarkably unblemished if still very dirty, looked at him with pure disbelief and shock. The eyes were wide, the eyebrows slightly lifted and the mouth open to complete the look. Johnson found his eyes staring straight ahead at the chin of the face, scanning downwards towards his own toes, to see the lifeless eyes in more detail, then back up to where the view made him pause for a few heartbeats, until he finally understood what was wrong. The man’s head appeared to be on backwards to his body, and the oddly twisted folds of skin around his neck under his ears told the story of how he had somehow had his head twisted backwards in the crash.

As the sounds of dying metal faded, Johnson’s eyes closed a fraction more with every laboured outward breath, until the darkness ever so subtly overcame him.

* * *

Peter, unable to sleep because of the sporadic noises far off in the dark night, sat on the kitchen worktop in silence and waited, straining to hear what he thought had been a helicopter. He had long ago conquered the normal childish fears of the dark, having been forced to sit in pitch-black woodland by his father until he had stopped crying and started listening.

Nothing can creep up on you in the dark, his father had told him, not if you listen properly. Despite the valuable lesson so heartlessly delivered, Peter knew with utter certainty that there were in fact things that could creep up on him in the dark, and they frightened him even more than the memory of his father.

He had crept back upstairs twice to check on Amber, finding her in a different position each time, but always with the threadbare stuffed lamb clutched to her body, and the cat somewhere on or next to her, curled into a tight ball.

Now, just when those far-off sounds faded into nothing, he slipped down from the kitchen side to land silently on the tiled floor in his new socks, which had been liberated from the bedside drawers of the former occupant, and which were evidently too large for his small feet.

As he reached out to shut the small window, since the cat had now decided that it had enjoyed enough fun roaming the countryside, and had come back inside to settle, another sound pricked the very edge of his hearing. Instinctively opening his mouth and turning his head to the side to allow for better hearing, he heard a mechanical noise which his young brain automatically associated with the word falling.

Sure enough, the spinning, almost Doppler-effect sound was answered by a single loud crash. Peter hesitated, then shut the window quietly and climbed the stairs with deliberate placement of his feet to move noiselessly, as had become his first instinct.

Creeping to the draw curtains at the large master bedroom overlooking the road, Peter inched back the edge of the curtain so as not to make any movement that might attract unwelcome attention. He scanned the skyline over the barely discernible rooftops of the few scattered houses on the opposite side of the single road running through the village. Cutting up each section of what he thought was the horizon into small sections, and looking carefully at them one by one, he could see no evidence of anything he was expecting.

He had to admit to himself that he didn’t really know what he was expecting, but he hoped that he would recognise it when he saw it. With the front aspect giving him nothing, he gently lowered the curtain and walked silently to the rooms at the rear with the largest windows offering what would be stunning panoramic views in sunlight. Still being careful to move the curtains slowly, he was more confident that looking out of the rear was safer, because it looked out directly onto the low-rolling fields instead of the roads and houses on the opposite side. Still he could make out nothing.

Unable to come up with any further options that didn’t involve going outside in the dead of night, he decided that his curiosity would have to wait until daybreak, and he crept back to where Amber slept, to settle down on his own bed beside her.

SIXTEEN

“They’re late,” Lloyd offered pointlessly.

“So it would appear…” Palmer responded in an almost distant voice as his head was turned upwards to the night sky. Their reverie was interrupted by Corporal Daniels, who was calling the captain’s name in a voice that bordered on the too loud, given their tenuous situation.

“Here,” Palmer responded, knowing that the man clearly had something important to say, hearing the insistence in his voice.

“Sir,” he began as he leaned in to prevent their voices from carrying too far, which was odd since they were hoping to expect a helicopter to arrive and land there soon, “word from Charlie-One-One. They’ve scouted one of the options now and are happy that we can defend it if we need to.”

“Excellent,” Palmer answered, “which one?”

“It’s actually not on the list, Sir, but they came across a sign for it and decided it was worth a flutter.”

“What is it then?”

“Some kind of historical country estate, Sir,” Daniels told him, summing up all that he knew of this place in his next sentence.

“It’s mostly got a wall around it, but there are weak points they can strengthen with vehicles and obstacles.”

“Sounds like my cup of tea,” Palmer said casually, as he could almost hear the cogs turning in the brain of this radio man who seemed to take everything literally. That trait made him entertaining when drinking, but less so in high-stress combat situations where a metaphor is used casually.

“How far away, Corporal?” Palmer asked before the next question wasted precious time.

“Roughly forty minutes by road as long as we don’t have too many detours, Sir,” Daniels responded.

“Thank you, Corporal. Anything else of note mentioned?”

“No, Sir,” Daniels said.

“Very well. Mister Lloyd, will you kindly speak to Sergeant Maxwell and see to it that we find sufficient transport for everyone?”

Lloyd’s boots answered for him as he set off towards the large building they had occupied, with a muttered, “Sir,” as he went.

“Daniels, stay on the radio and see if you can find someone to refuel our Spartan.”

“Yes, Sir,” Daniels answered, turning to leave before he hesitated, and half turned back.

“Sir?” he enquired.

“I shall be here, Corporal,” he said in a resigned voice, “waiting for the helicopter’s imminent arrival. On that note, kindly send me the first man you see to act as a runner. Thank you, Corporal,” he finished, dismissing the man, who did as he was told, grabbing a pair of troopers who were walking nearby and passing on the captain’s orders.

“Here, Sir,” said Trooper McGill from Sergeant Strauss’ One Troop as he approached the darker silhouette of the officer. “You needed a runner?”

“Yes, both of you to the other aircraft and pass on this message: attempt radio contact with second helicopter, send update to me directly,” he said, affecting a more formal, almost robotic tone for the wording of the order, before adding, “then one of you remain and wait for news whilst the other returns to me for other orders.”

“Yes, Sir,” McGill answered, intending to come back himself, despite the two of them having just been rotated out for a short break to eat and rest.

“Now,” Palmer muttered under his breath, as the unexpected delay was beginning to cause him more than a little anxiety with each minute that ticked past, “where the devil are you?”

* * *

Johnson’s eyes flickered open, his brain not understanding but his instincts kicking in as a response to the intense heat he felt. The outbreak of a fire somewhere inside the fuselage was threatening to consume the surviving helicopter passengers with smoke and heat before the flames burst out to devour anything left behind.

Groaning and turning in agony to rise unsteadily onto all fours, Johnson took one long, deep breath in and vomited hard onto the hot metal deck under his face. Gasping and gagging for air, he repeated the process twice until he had totally voided his stomach, which he hadn’t realised was still so full. He couldn’t remember when he had last eaten, but he knew from the semi-digested smell that it must have been some time ago.

“Any…” he tried to call out, coughing hard to prompt another dry retch and a nauseating belch with it. He cleared his throat and tried again, this time emitting a cracking, rasping, hoarse whisper.

“Anyone alive?” he called out, earning a groan from his left where a hand fluttered from beneath the uniform of a marine with a broken body. He reached out, grabbing the hand and was in the process of trying to haul it towards himself when a much stronger grip clamped on to the shoulder straps of his webbing and began to shunt him backwards in jerky movements. His right hand fumbled numbly as he cried out with an unintelligible moan of fear and anger, and, almost drunkenly, he worked the stiff leather strap away from the handle on the front of his webbing until the bayonet slid out uncertainly into his hand. He began to thrust it weakly upwards at the face and head behind him, striking out blindly in a desperate attempt to save himself from being eaten alive.

“Oi,” came a simple answer rich with annoyance and impatience, “mind sticking that fucking thing somewhere else?”

Johnson, as though alcohol had dulled his wits, couldn’t understand why this zombie had the power of speech or what new manner of hell he was experiencing. He even wondered for a brief moment whether he was alive at all, or conscious, or whether what was happening to him now was simply his imagination providing him with yet another nightmare to endure.

He didn’t respond to the request and continued to jab upwards with grunts of effort, as he stabbed until he felt his body weight drop suddenly, and his wrist was grabbed. The bayonet was prised from his fingers and the voice sounded in his muffled brain once more.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you,” it said in a voice that might have been meant to be soothing, “I’ve got you.”

Johnson didn’t quit, but his mind and body retreated. They let him down, and he was forced to submit to being disarmed and dragged backwards out of the helicopter and onto damp grass, with the last thing he saw from inside being the fluttering hand gaining flat purchase on the deck to push upwards. The smells and other stimuli around him still got through, but it was as though he was conscious in a coma and aware of everything around him, yet unable to break the barrier and communicate.

He was propped with his back against a tree and had a weapon rested in his lap. His numb hands twitched as though he wanted to pick it up, to drop out the magazine and check for brass, then reload and make the weapon ready to fight, but nothing happened. His head lolled to the side, and he was forced to watch in silence as the shape which had dragged him out went back to the helicopter to be silhouetted against the dull light coming from inside it. That shape returned again and again, each time dragging another person out of the wreckage until his last return journey showed only an armful of equipment. He didn’t make another trip back inside but returned to where he had placed Johnson and four others.

Johnson’s wits slowly returned, and he became aware of new sounds and sensations. He could hear and feel his breath again and he could now smell the acrid smoke and see the first flickers of orange light coming from the fuselage to make the shadows dance. That smoke was laced with the indescribable tinge of plastic, which made his ever-increasingly alert brain register stimuli with knowledge.

Electrical fire, he told himself as he connected the dots, probably a short in a wiring loom.

Whether he was right or not made no difference to him, he was just happy that his brain was beginning to function again and the ringing in his ears was fading. With that torturous white noise dissipating, a crack of a twig in the undergrowth made his head whip to his left, causing sudden pain all down his body, although the instinctive movement of his hands made him feel reassured. He had grabbed up the Sterling sub machine gun and pointed it waveringly in the direction of the unexpected sound, only to wait for nothing to happen.

Couldn’t be a Screecher, he told himself, not even the fast ones would hold off on an attack. Must be an animal. That’s right, just an animal.

He jumped in fright as he failed to detect the approach of someone from in front of him, and he found himself looking into the pale face of the woman he hadn’t recognised from the flight out. Up close he saw that she had long facial features and wide, pale eyes. His assumption that she didn’t seem to be a Brit was confirmed when she spoke to him.

“Do you have any pain in your neck?” she asked in accented English with and undulating quality to the rhythm of her words. He shook his head, deciding that ‘pain’ by his measure was something that stopped him working.

“Any double vision or spots in front of your eyes?” she asked as she shone a painfully bright light into his face.

“No,” he grumbled, pushed further into consciousness by the light which now left him night-blind, “how many?” he asked, meaning to get the number of survivors, but already having a terribly low figure in his head.

“Six,” she said, devastating him with the news of over two-thirds of the bravest men lost. Johnson grimaced, and began the laborious process of struggling to his feet. The woman helped him, watching him like a hawk as he rested for a long time with one hand on the tree trunk and the other cradling the weapon as he rested it on his knee. Eventually he righted himself, and the woman told him she had to check on the others and left without another word. The SSM’s vision returned slowly, and he used the trick of not looking directly at something in the dark to try and see the shapes with the edge of his eye. It worked to a degree and he could see a taller man helping a shorter one walk. The shorter man tried to wave him away and pushed on with a pronounced limp which made him only place his right foot on the ground for the shortest possible time. He didn’t last long doing this, and he dropped to the ground again, cursing. Johnson staggered towards him, seeing the other man who was helping morph out of the shadows to become the SBS team commander.

“Go see to the others,” Johnson told him, “I’ll deal with this.”

The bearded man left without saying anything else, disappearing into the gloom to leave the SSM looking down at the Royal Marine Sergeant. He couldn’t recall the man’s name but knew him to be a good, reliable man. He was also lucky, evidently, and tough.

“Ankle?” Johnson asked him as he knelt heavily beside him.

“Knee,” the sergeant gasped through gritted teeth, “bent the fucker backwards when I landed. Popped straight back in but it’s knackered.”

Johnson fumbled with his pouches trying to find anything to strap the man up with, finding only the clotting trauma bandage given to him when they first deployed with weapons. Wrapping it tightly around the knee and hearing the controlled intakes of breath through the muted growls of the injured man he tied off the bandage tightly without twisting the built-in tourniquet too tightly. The man reached into his own pouches and passed another one to the SSM.

“Stick another one ‘round it,” he said breathlessly, “high and low. Keep the joint straight. I’m Bill Hampton, by the way.”

Johnson did as he was asked, nodding as he remembered the man’s name the second he had said it, immobilising the joint to prevent the damage from worsening and the pain from debilitating him. When he was done the Sergeant held up a hand and Johnson looked at it briefly before hauling him to his feet. The curious walk the sergeant stomped off performing would have been hilarious to watch in any other circumstances, as he hopped forward with his left foot, before swinging the straight right leg around in a low swoop to propel him forward again. The man must have been in incredible pain, but his resolve burned through as he stooped awkwardly to retrieve a weapon from the pile of salvaged equipment. Righting himself and inspecting the action of the SA80 rifle, he looked around and chose a defensive position where he could lean on the low graveyard wall to defend the crash site.

“Enfield,” he called out softly, “with me, lad.”

Johnson was startled again, evidence of just how dulled his senses had become because of the crash, as a tall man moved past him in an almost ghostly way. The man had a long rifle on his back, strapped diagonally, but he also stopped to retrieve a weapon from the pile and moved to take up the position with his sergeant.

A raised voice off to his left made him turn back, dizzying himself again with the regretfully fast movement of his head. He saw the blonde woman kneeling beside the bearded man over another figure and heard that same accented, undulating voice.

“Can you hear me? Open your eyes for me?” she said loudly.

“It’s no good,” the bearded man said as Johnson approached, “she’s out cold.”

“Who is i…” Johnson started to say before his eyes took in the unconscious woman with the livid cut to her scalp which had sheeted the right side of her face in blood.

“Kimberley!” he blurted out, “Miss Perkins,” he added, even now conscious of the looks he would be receiving in the dark.

“We need to get out of here,” the bearded man said as he rose, “every dead fucker inside of five miles would have heard that come down and every other dead fucker will come this way when that fire takes off for good,” he grumbled as he turned to face the SSM, “Bufford. Sergeant, Boat Service,” he said by way of introduction.

“Johnson. SSM, Yeomanry,” the taller man replied. The two shook hands briefly in the growing light from the flames in the near distance.

“I can carry her,” Bufford said, “can you walk okay? Use a weapon?”

“Yes,” Johnson answered both questions with a single word, “where to?”

“No idea. Pilot bought it on impact and I don’t know the area or the objective.”

“Objective is the armour camp,” Johnson told him, “and I do know the area. Give me a second,” he said as he walked unsteadily away towards the church. Returning a few seconds later he announced, “Saint Goswald’s.”

“And where’s that?” Bufford asked.

“Bad news, it’s about twenty miles off course,” Johnson answered, “we’re at least twelve as the crow flies from the camp, and overland at night gives us no chance of making it today.”

“Comms?” Bufford asked.

In answer Johnson turned to look at the helicopter which now burned against the church to light the area. The three of them paused in silence for a moment, then as though some silent signal had been received in all of their brains at once, they adjusted their equipment and readied themselves for a long, tense walk. Bufford bent and picked up the woman to cradle her in his arms and the rest of the weapons were doled out, with the foreign female holding out one of the suppressed weapons to Johnson. He took it, but her grip on the weapon didn’t release.

“It belonged to my friend,” was all she said, then turned away to take her place in the slow-moving line of people.

SEVENTEEN

Daybreak saw Captain Palmer with red-rimmed eyes still looking up at the skies in the forlorn hope that a helicopter would magically appear and solve all of his worries.

The butcher’s bill he had asked for had resulted in a total of a little over forty men remaining and as many civilians. They had rescued marines and troopers alike, but as yet, none of the men with scarlet berets had been accounted for. Hearing the piecemeal accounts of the battle on the island made him realise that the fiercest fight would have been at the low ground where all of the Royal Military Police had been posted. The most interesting of those accounts came from the Royal Marine Lieutenant who had given his report in a flat monotone with distant eyes.

He had said how his collection of men had been losing the battle for the beachhead, and when he’d realised that there were infected running around in the rear, he’d abandoned the fight to make it uphill and collected people wherever they could. The way he described his loose formation made Palmer think of older battles where infantry found themselves caught in the open by cavalry, and they contracted to form a rally square and defend themselves against the men on horseback who could cut down a fleeing man with laughable ease. That loose formation, horribly clear in the captain’s mind, crab-crawled its way up the steep cobbles, until Lloyd joined the defence of the helicopter landing with the captain’s younger brother. Palmer wanted to ask how the Second-Lieutenant had performed, had wanted some reassurance that he shouldn’t be ashamed of how much the men disliked him, and that, when the chips were down, he had stepped up to the mark and become a leader.

He was too polite to ask outright, so waited for mention of him in Lloyd’s report. The marine had said how he had joined the defence, not assumed command of it, and that reassured him
somewhat that the family name wasn’t tainted with a useless soldier.

The stories of that defence came from different sources, all of which spoke of desperation and the relief that came with the arrival of the big Sergeant Major, who laid down a thunderous fire from the weapon he had been handed just before he took off. The scramble of the civilians to get away, the arrival of the ebullient, if not questionably senile Colonel Tim, who recreated the tales of how he had slain the enemy with his family’s claymore, utterly failing to understand that the enemy of which he spoke had been former friends and comrades of those he recited his heroic deeds to. As always, the two privates charged with his protection and general babysitting stood behind him, wearing blank expressions of apology for what they were hearing.

Sometime in the night, long after the runner he had released to his other duties had returned to say that, try as they might, the other helicopter crew simply was not responding to any of their hails, Palmer had turned to more practical matters and focused on organising food, water and transport for the survivors and turned his mind towards the immediate matters.

“Sergeant Maxwell?” he called as he walked towards the huddle of men planning around a map.

“Sir,” the sergeant said as he stood.

“A word, if you please, Sergeant,” Palmer said, retreating a few steps back from the others.

“Mister Johnson hasn’t returned, as I’m sure you are aware,” he said in a soft voice.

“No, Sir,” Maxwell replied, in a voice laced with anger and regret.

“You will assume his duties for now as senior NCO,” Palmer told him, “I’ve discussed the matter with Lieutenant Lloyd and he is in agreement that we form the men differently. We don’t have the numbers to operate as an armoured unit, nor do we have the
machinery or firepower.”

“About that, Sir,” Maxwell said, his face showing no excitement or pride at his field promotion, as he genuinely felt no excitement or pride in having to replace a man he respected, “I think it’s possible to get through the camp to fetch more wagons and ammo for them.”

“Do tell,” Palmer prompted him.

“See, Sir,” Maxwell explained, “we’ve landed in the opposite side to where we started, before you joined us, I mean, and we could cross the training grounds in the middle to get to the other entrance. We can pick up more wagons there, hopefully fuel them and come out to where the ammo dump is. We can meet up at the place the others have found then.”

Palmer paused to think about it for a moment, one finger tapping at his lips.

“Very well,” he finally agreed, “but not you. Sergeant Sinclair can take a dozen men, and make sure that chap who Mister Johnson had a dislike for is attached. Unless you think that’s unwise?”

“Nevin, Sir? I’ll make sure he’s on that, don’t you worry,” Maxwell assured him, taking to his senior NCO role naturally, “I’ll see to it. When do you want to move out?”

“As soon as possible, I’d say,” Palmer told him, “get these civilians somewhere that they can get some proper rest and something to eat. Speaking of that, the rations?”

“Plenty of rat-packs, Captain. Reckon we will probably need two trips to get people and supplies sorted,” he explained, cursing the unusual lack of large transport trucks found by the dozen in such camps, “but I dare say the helicopter can take a good few of the people or supplies.”

Palmer thought again, tapping his lip with the tip of his forefinger once more before he turned and called the marine Lieutenant over. Lloyd joined them at a jog, despite being only a
half-dozen paces away.

“All civilians, equipment and rations to be loaded on board the available transports and the helicopter. Discuss with Lieutenant Commander Barrett which he believes is best to go on board their aircraft; heavy rations or people,” he said to Lloyd before turning back to Maxwell. “Get Sinclair to pick his men, make sure Trooper Nevin is included, and discuss your plan with him before bringing it to me.”

Both men accepted their orders and went about it as Palmer walked away preparing to smooth their resident senior officer into condoning their plans. Finding the man with his feet up and a tin mug of something hot nestled in his hands, he switched on every drop of aristocratic charm and made his approach.

“Colonel,” he greeted the man warmly, “I trust you are well?”

“Captain…?” the colonel said as he made a silent gesture of snapping his fingers before his face.

“Palmer, Sir,” Palmer said with a hint of a bow in deference to the man. The gesture pleased the colonel, evidently, as he slapped his thigh.

“Palmer, yes, yes, of course. Sit down, man. You must be positively exhausted,” he finished, leaving Palmer unsure as to whether it was a question or a statement, so pitching his response at an equably ambiguous level.

“Quite,” he said with all the upper-class mannerism he could affect, “the thing is, Sir, I’ve rather got my hands full with the more mundane matters and we could do with you taking the lead on something, if I could be so bold as to impose?”

“Tell me, Captain,” the colonel said as he leaned forward in his chair and lowered one arthritic leg to the ground at a time, “supply raid? Attack on an enemy stronghold? Speak, man!”

“Nothing quite so strenuous, I’m afraid,” Palmer responded with a winning smile and a chuckle, “it’s more that I need someone to spearhead our move to the other location; somewhere
far better suited to our style, I might add,” he finished with a rueful look.

“I’m your man, Captain,” he said as he stood and rubbed his hands together, “and Captain?”

“Sir?”

“I appreciate we are in the field, but a shave and some appropriate headgear will make all the difference to the men,” the colonel said, reminding Palmer that the man was quite out of touch with reality.

“Yes, Sir,” he said, “I shall do my best.”

* * *

Amber awoke not long after the sunlight shone straight beams through the small gaps in the curtains. Peter was awake, having only napped on and off throughout the rest of the night after he had searched for what he suspected was a crashed helicopter. Leaving her before she woke, he went to the upper windows again and this time made out a thin pillar of oily smoke behind them over a low rise. Chewing his lip as the distance was much further than he’d imagined, he went back downstairs and poured himself more water before opening the window, ready for the cat to leave for the day, and then went back to their room to sit on his bed and think before Amber finally stirred and displaced the tight coil of dirty fur.

The cat woke, unfolding itself like a snake emerging from a pot, and stood on all four paws to arch its back upwards in an upside-down U as it tensed and held its tail out stiffly behind it. As lazily as it started, the stretch ended suddenly as the cat sat back with lightning speed and stuck out a hind leg to lick at the outstretched limb.

“Hello,” said a small voice, making Peter’s heart skip, as Amber had spoken once more. He opened his mouth to respond but stopped himself from making any sound as he watched her reach out and fuss the cat, seeing it slink backwards and forwards past her hand to ensure that both sides of its face were adequately rubbed against her.

Again, with no indication, the cat stepped lightly off her bed and trotted from the room with its tail held high and curled over at the end.

“It’s like a question mark,” Peter said softly, turning to look at Amber who rubbed her sleepy eyes and asked him a question with her tilted head.

“His tail. He curls it over like a question mark at the end.”

She shrugged, as though the observation was pointless to her, but conveyed no annoyance at him speaking. She climbed out of bed, hair a mess, and tucked the stuffed lamb that Peter had given her back into bed. He couldn’t help but smile as she arranged the duvet nicely over it, ensuring it was smooth and that the lamb was comfortable.

She walked out of the room, wavering from side to side as she hadn’t fully regained her alertness, and he heard her shut the door to the bathroom. Peter had taken the precaution, as unpleasant as it was, of placing a small bucket inside the bowl so that the flush wouldn’t serve as a dinner bell and attract anyone or anything to their presence. He planned to take the bucket into the secluded back garden and pour the contents into the brook which ran past, the same one that would still hold traces of the bloated, rotting corpse he had killed. The theory of this worked fine, and he had been forced to do something similar in his past when he and his sister had been banned from using the taps or flushing the toilets.

He waited in the room, planning to let her go downstairs before he added his own waste to the bucket to take it straight outside. The bucket would then go into the downstairs toilet off the kitchen for them to use throughout the day.

He had plans for them, and with it looking likely to be a hot day, he was hoping to get started soon before the sun got higher in the sky. His thoughts of what to do, namely emptying, clearing out and marking the nearest houses before shutting them up tight to prevent anything getting inside them, were interrupted by a shout.

It was Amber, clearly, but the shout was more of an open-mouthed grunt. He flew from his bed and raced towards the bathroom, the spike he had fashioned already in his hand, but instead saw her standing in the doorway, beckoning him frantically towards her. He ran, his loose socks bunching up on his feet as they caught in the thick carpet of the landing as he covered the short distance to her. He didn’t know why, but his protective urges with her ran so deep that his body responded without his mind making a choice. Before he reached her, she skipped back inside and climbed up onto the side of the bath to lean on the sink and shoot a hand out straight ahead of her, extending a finger out of the window.

Peter’s gaze started at her shoulder, following down her small arm and stared past the pointing digit to the daylight outside. Neither of them moved, and neither of them breathed as they watched a line of shapes advancing slowly. Peter’s heart dropped, having never expected to face the dead coming from the unexpected side across the brook from the fields beyond.

As he looked, and as his brain began to register something wrong, or at least the absence of something wrong, it finally dawned on him that the line of people walking their way weren’t dead.

And that frightened him more.

EIGHTEEN

“Hold up,” Johnson said exhaustedly, as he nodded his head behind him at the stiff-legged sergeant Hampton, who offered no argument, “he needs to rest.”

The man he had called, the bearded SBS sergeant, said nothing but simply pointed to the hedge line ahead, indicating the nearest cover. Reaching it first and scanning left and right, he caught the eye of the blonde woman and pointed her to his left as he went off to the right.

Pushing out a perimeter, Johnson thought as his brain gave commentary on everything. He could barely think as he put his effort into carrying the dead weight of the woman he was trying not to look down at. Every time he did, he missed his footing and staggered off sideways instead of concentrating on making forward progress over the uneven ground. Three of them had taken turns at carrying Kimberley, the injured Hampton and the small-statured Astrid Larsen being excused the responsibility. They trudged and traipsed their way across country, twice struggling to find breaks in the dark and having to track sideways to find a style or a gate to get through the thick hedgerows. They had to pass Kimberley over hand to hand, seeing as the blow to her head kept her unconscious throughout. Then they climbed over themselves, their actions punctuated by some of the most colourfully bad language any of them had ever heard coming from the mouth of sergeant Hampton. Kimberley, being unconscious, escaped the experience and the sniper, Enfield, had heard it all before. But the others, even the experienced and irascible Johnson and the SBS man, turned an eyebrow up at it.

Astrid, despite her strong grip on the English language, misunderstood most of what he said and struggled to find any logical sense in the way he combined religion with farm poultry.

Resting Kimberley gently onto the ground and arranging her into something resembling a recovery position, Johnson slumped beside her and caught his breath for a few moments.

“Village ahead,” Enfield said, peering through the scope of his big rifle, “can only see the rear of these houses, but there are rooftops, behind which means more houses opposite. Another church, too,” he finished, stating the obvious as the short spire was the tallest feature ahead of them.

“Jesus tit-wanking fucking Christ,” Hampton blasphemed in a foul hiss of words as he lowered himself as close to the ground as possible before submitting to gravity and slumping down the rest of the way to land heavily and spark off the string of obscenities.

Bufford trotted back to them, stopping at speaking distance and dropping to one knee with his back to them, and scanning the open countryside with a relative air of relaxation. He knew that he’d have plenty of time to react should any of them discover their ragged group in the open. Seeing that the bearded man had returned, or contracted as her own word would have translated, she mirrored Bufford’s stance to overhear what was being said.

“Looks like a small village,” Buffs told them over his shoulder, feeling confident enough to turn his head as he spoke, “we either bypass it or we rest up,” he offered them.

Johnson assessed those options, thinking that a day to sleep sounded like bliss, more so that it meant he wouldn’t have to take his turn carrying the unconscious woman, who, despite her slim body, still weighed too much to carry easily, because of her dead weight. Had she been able to put an arm around his neck and sit up, he would probably have been able to carry her for miles, but the pressure of keeping her head from dangling backwards dangerously made it infinitely harder to manage.

It wasn’t as though handing her over to Enfield or Bufford made it any easier, as he then had to raise the unfamiliar gun and take his place at the head of the slow-moving column of people,
which qualified to the now-indigenous population as a walking buffet. Twice the woman, Astrid Larsen as she had introduced herself, had offered to help the injured Hampton and twice he good-naturedly requested that she kindly left him to it.

“Keep your hands off me and on that bloody weapon, Missy,” he growled at her the last time she asked, “because if you’re half as good with it as I suspect you are, then we don’t want you cuddling me when it’s game time.”

“Resting up for the day means moving at night,” Johnson answered, “which I shan’t imagine is a problem for you three,” he said as he used his head to indicate Larsen, Enfield and Bufford, “but he’s in no fit state to creep about,” he jutted his chin at Hampton, who just glowered at him, “and neither am I if I’m carrying Miss Perkins.”

Travelling silently in the dark was the preferred method for Bufford, but he was accustomed to operating in teams of four, with all of them trained to the same level. Enfield, who already had the demeanour of a wraith with a resting heartrate of two beats per minute, was similarly capable, as would Hampton have been if he’d had the full use of two legs, but Johnson had to admit that he himself was far from the specialist infantryman. He had become a manager, and civilian life held no equivalent to his position, unless it was a powerful foreman in a large plant with lots of staff who would shirk off from their duties if given any opportunity. He had become something resembling a bureaucrat, even if he could still hold his own in a fight. The biggest problem was that his way of waging war allowed him all the time in the world to deal with a slow-moving army of unthinking infantry, as he would be behind metal of differing thickness, ranging from light reconnaissance vehicles to main battle tanks, he would have numerous other similar vehicles at his disposal and would be able to combine them to bring a devastating firepower to bear on the enemy.

The only problem with that kind of warfare was that to keep his dozen or so fighting vehicles in the game, he would need a support network of at least three times that number keeping them supplied and running, and there simply weren’t enough of them left.

He found himself feeling, as painful as it was to admit, a little surplus to requirements.

Astrid Larsen, with her undeniable Nordic features and stereotypically white-blonde hair, also stumped him. She was tight-lipped about her unit, revealing only that she was FSK, which as far as he knew didn’t exist. However, when Bufford had muttered in his ear that she had now lost her entire team inside of a day, he stopped asking. On one of their short breaks he had asked the SBS man, in his opinion the most likely man to know, who and what she was.

“Norwegian commandos, trained to the same level as us and the Hereford boys, seeing as they are mostly free-fallers,” he explained quietly, “Infiltration, erosion of infrastructure, collapsing transport and communication networks, that sort of thing. The plan was that if Ivan went for it, then the Norwegians would be in under cover of darkness and shut most of their western capabilities down inside of a few days. That’s why people don’t know about them.”

“Chances are,” said their quiet sniper to change the subject, “that we’ve missed them already.” Faces turned to regard him, as often people did when he spoke, because he had the uncanny knack of appearing invisible in company.

“Possible,” Hampton said, “but I think they’d either wait for us or at least send out the other helicopter to look for us.”

“Unlikely,” Johnson said in a solemn tone, “If it was me at the camp waiting for the final evac, I’d assume that they hadn’t made it off the island, so what would be the point in wasting fuel and
risking a resource to check a negative?”

That silenced the others.

“Probably right,” Bufford agreed, “under normal circumstances with full support we’d never just give up on anyone, but now? With no support and too many priorities all at once? I think they’d just look to consolidate.”

“So, we find somewhere to hold up here then? Rest?” Hampton asked, unable to keep the hope out of his voice.

Heads turned to look at one another, faces showing agreement as they all submitted to the idea of sleep soon to be found. As one, with the exception of the unconscious Kimberley, all of them emitted a yelp of fright and alarm as something landed inside their discussion. The mess of dirty-looking fur emitted a chirping, meowing sound and looked up expectantly, only to flatten its ears and shoot away close to the ground, eyes wide in fright at their response.

“Fuck was that?” Hampton exclaimed in a voice far higher pitched than the others had heard come from him before, having only responded to the reactions of everyone else, as his eyes had been momentarily closed.

“Bloody cat!” Johnson said, looking around for any sign of the creature which had disappeared as suddenly as it had emerged. All around him chuckles sounded amid gasps of breath being caught.

“Let’s find somewhere before we get ambushed again,” he told them, dragging himself to his exhausted feet and feeling every part of his body ache savagely, “and before I completely seize up,” he added.

“Bill? You stay here with her? Enfield too,” he said and received nods from them, “Shall we?” he added to the others, seeing them rise up wordlessly. Bufford nodded them forward, intending to cross the brook and approach the secluded rear of a large house.

* * *

“Amber!” Peter hissed desperately, as his face showed a terrible fake smile, “get your shoes on, we need to go. Now.” She looked at him with wide eyes, panic evident but good sense and obedience taking over in a second. She ran, flying up the stairs and grabbing her precious things before coming back down with the lidless pot of toy soldiers and her threadbare lamb. Peter stuffed his own feet into his shoes, the oversized socks bunching uncomfortably at his toes, and grabbed the handle of the trolley by the front door.

This, he realised, had been his best idea yet. If they had to leave in a hurry, which it turned out that they now did, then he didn’t want them to have to worry about supplies or going on the run with just what they could carry, so he’d loaded a small amount of food and water, which would sustain them for at least a few days. Grabbing up his pitchfork from where it rested by the front door, he dragged out the trolley and beckoned her to come with him, before reaching back and closing the door gently, so as not to announce their presence by slamming it. In an empty village, devoid of all signs of life and without any background traffic noise, a slamming door would sound like a shotgun.

As that thought hit him, so too did the handle of the shotgun as he shoved his backpack further up on his shoulders. He ignored the heavy clunk on the back of his skull, and instead surveyed the three nearest buildings that he could get to quickly.

Two of those he had cleared, but one still contained the body of the big monster who had so very nearly taken Amber, and the other was the church. His only knowledge of church was that the one his school made them go to was cold and draughty, and he reckoned very unlikely to hold food, water or beds, so he steered them straight to the house that he knew held no zombies, no bodies, but also no food or supplies, other than what they carried.

Decision made, he turned back to Amber and smiled falsely, whispering for her to follow him.

* * *

“Someone definitely used this as a base,” Johnson said, lowering the weapon after every room had been thoroughly checked, “couple of unmade beds upstairs, all the curtains closed tight, stacked supplies…”

“So where are they?” Bufford asked. Johnson looked at him and shrugged as though that question was irrelevant right then, looking down at his boot which had caught something small and green on the floor at the foot of the stairs. Bending down to retrieve it, he held the little plastic soldier up before his eyes, twirling it slowly to take in the posing figure as it drew back one hand ready to lob a German stick grenade high in the air. Giving a small chuckle of amusement, he slipped it into a pouch without knowing why.

They went back and retrieved the others, getting wet in the process of crossing the brook and passing Kimberley over, hand to hand, once more.

Why didn’t we try to fashion a stretcher? Johnson asked himself, blaming the lack of logic on having just barely survived a helicopter crash which had killed over two thirds of the occupants. As far as excuses went, he decided that was a pretty good one.

They laid the unconscious woman on the large corner sofa and all gulped down bottles of water from the plastic-wrapped pallets. Tins were opened, and food consumed, driven by the desperate need to refuel exhausted bodies, and then they began to relax ever so slightly.

When they found themselves inside a clean environment they noticed something unpleasant. After two or three days spent constantly on the move in high-stress situations, every one of them smelt terrible, with the exception of Kimberley, who had only really joined the fight properly the night before.

Astrid made the first move, turning on the kitchen tap and watching the water fall into the wide, square sink. She let it run for a while, making a curious noise of mixed shock and pleasure.

“We have hot water,” she said in awe, turning to look at the others with a smile.

“Two at a time,” Johnson said, taking charge as was his natural way, “wash equipment, bodies, clothes. In that order,” he added unnecessarily, knowing that the two special forces personnel and the two royal marines were unlikely to prioritise anything over their weapons and equipment.

“Looks like it’ll be a hot day,” Bufford added, “and that back yard isn’t overlooked, so we can probably dry stuff on the patio soon.”

And that was what they did, taking it in turns to step into the shower upstairs and rinse off all of their equipment, letting the water run red to brown to pale pink as they stripped down and squeezed out the garments one at a time. It took all day for the five of them to get clean and dry off, putting back on their stiff clothing to dry it the rest of the way as they sat in the sunlight streaming in through the wide kitchen windows, and they cleaned their weapons.

They ate, answered the corresponding calls of nature and found the bucket system in the downstairs toilet, which they ignored for the time being, and sometime in the afternoon, Kimberley groaned, opened one eye, and let out a cry of panic.

NINETEEN

Second Lieutenant Palmer climbed into the cab of the truck at the head of the convoy behind the only two remaining tracked vehicles. He knew his brother was there, running the whole operation and leading the shattered remnants of everyone to a new place. The helicopter took off, its belly stocked with a mixture of people and supplies, as the naval aircrew had suggested not putting all of their eggs in one basket, so to speak. As it thundered off, destined to reach their new position far more quickly than the land convoy, Palmer glanced off to his right, where the collection of a dozen men were gearing up, ready to raid the rest of the massive base, under sergeant Sinclair’s leadership.

He had asked to lead the raid himself, pleading with his older brother for permission to take command, but he had resolutely denied him.

“Sergeant Sinclair’s command will be wholly sufficient, I’m sure,” he said coolly.

Now, devoid of all responsibility and only given a privileged seating position in the truck due to the vague respect the men had for his officer status, he nestled his gun in his lap and waited to be awarded a scrap of gainful employment. The hope, from what he had gathered from the end of the briefing he had heard but wasn’t invited to, was that those dozen men would secure more fighting vehicles and ammunition to secure their new site, which he had heard was a country estate. Having experienced his fair share of such grand residences, even having grown up in one, Palmer knew what he was expecting, and that was old brick wall perimeters, ornate gates set inside them and a magnificent house in the centre. He imagined outbuildings, servants’ quarters and maybe stables. Large, enclosed gardens and acres of land which would have been tended over generations, and likely a decent swathe of woodland to boot. The men, he imagined, and for that matter probably all of the civilians, would not have experienced such accommodation before and he anticipated that they would be embarrassingly impressed with the place. His disdain for the commoners returned with sudden and renewed acidity, because he had had a taste of leading men in combat and was now once again forced back into the wings to wait and try not to get killed.

He sat back and ignored his driver’s attempts to engage him in conversation, like the sullen child they all imagined him to be.

* * *

“Keep it simple, boys,” Rod Sinclair said as he checked the action of his weapon for the twentieth time and betrayed his nerves, “in and out, nothing heroic, we just grab enough and get gone.”

Men shuffled their feet nervously, nodded their cautious agreement and generally worried over what was to come. Much discussion was had about the other side of the base, the place they had spent the first days of the shit-storm that had enveloped their world. The difference now, however, was that the word had spread about the so-called Doomsday protocol. The nuclear strikes on Europe and the Soviet Union would have untold consequences, and every man who thought about that ran his mind through the thick mud of stressful what-ifs. The consensus that they had been effectively cut off as a nation, that they had been quarantined and abandoned, led to many having dark thoughts, and without the leadership of men they believed in, they felt growing pains of hopelessness.

They set off in a loose line as they kept their footfalls soft and their eyes alert, moving through each enclosed section of the base as though it were cellular and they molecules passing through the barriers. Their progress was halting, as some sections were locked, and it forced them to take an indirect route. The helicopter crew on their flight out had passed over the area they were heading for, and had reported no signs of life, which was a bizarrely ambiguous use of words, but they did report that a section of perimeter fence appeared to be down, which was what had them all on edge. No doubt about it, they were going into contact and they had to be on their toes.

At the rear of their formation, not immediately at the back where he would be instrumental should there be any rear-guard fighting required, and far enough back from the front that any contact there would be unlikely to affect him, lurked the only man in the patrol not there voluntarily. Trooper Nevin wore a face like thunder and muttered curses to himself constantly about Sinclair, about the Captain who had been forced to intervene with a threat of shooting him for dereliction of duty, and about Johnson who had accused him of stealing supplies. Sinclair, he decided, would get them all killed. He thought he was a timid man and probably not cut out for leadership, and Nevin couldn’t understand why the men followed him so eagerly. He couldn’t see past his own sullen self-centred nature to fully comprehend that the men followed Sinclair because he was humble, honest and hard working. He earned men’s trust instead of demanding it, which is why he did not struggle for eleven volunteers to join him. Nevin also failed to grasp why that bull of a man, Johnson, had thought it was so bad that he was using his initiative and searching the crates for anything useful. To accuse him of stealing, no matter how accurate the charge, just added to Nevin’s hatred of the man who had humiliated him back on the island with a single, short punch, which, if he still thought about it, hurt him even now. He never understood why the corporals and the sergeants hated him so much, even when the officers tended to leave him alone, probably out of fear.

Not that bloody captain, though, he sneered to himself in thought, he’s a right bloody Rupert with his silver spoon up his arse. His little brother is a weasel, sure enough, but this one thinks he’s a soldier.

In truth, the reason the NCOs despised Nevin was mainly because the man was capable, very capable in fact, but at his very core he was lazy. That laziness took more concerted effort than simply performing the tasks he was given most of the time, but in their previous lives as reservists, he had never usually been under such scrutiny for so long. The only exception to this was when the squadron conducted a tour of Northern Ireland, and Nevin was focused to the point where some even considered him for promotion. Of course, as soon as they were out of real danger his attitude returned to that of the same shirking, malevolent bastard they had seen before, and any hopes of promotion were dashed. He still resented that, thinking himself better than most, but what nagged at him now was that the only time he had been expected to perform, he had panicked and a man had died.

Nevin rationalised this again, telling himself that the death of Trooper Harris was the man’s own fault for not keeping watch and not taking the warning he had given him seriously.

Wasn’t my fault, Nevin had reassured himself, stupid bastard should’ve listened.

Of course, that bravado he had now convinced himself to show in his own head wasn’t present when that bastard Johnson had ripped him a new one, again, and promised him punishment for it. That, he reckoned, was why he had to go on every mission there was, so that people like Johnson could force more work on his shoulders.

Well, not any more, Nevin promised himself, first opportunity I get, I’m fucking out of here.

And he meant it. He would look for greener grass. He would find somewhere that appreciated him. He would find another group of survivors, which he reasoned there absolutely had to be all over the place, and he would get away from the army and its bloody rules. He would live like a king, he told himself, and all he had to do was get away. His hand went inside his smock, closing around the grip of the ungainly revolver he had found, prior to being half choked by the SSM. He had all six chambers filled with the little thirty-eight bullets and another dozen loose in his trouser pocket. Despite holding his Sterling and four spare magazines for the sub machine gun, having the unexpected second world war-issued pistol made him feel safer, more prepared somehow for the mischief he intended.

Trooper Nevin, as much as he would never understand it himself, had seen death and it had made him quite insane.

“Over there,” Sinclair said in a loud whisper before holding out his flat hand to the rest of them and miming a chopping motion in the rough centre of their number, effectively halving them. He wiggled the hand backwards and forwards as though he were actually trying to physically separate them and when the two men at the divide had shuffled sufficiently apart, he gave his orders.

“You men,” he said to the rear group, which included Nevin, “go straight for the hangar doors and wind them open. You men,” he said switching his gaze to the front of the group, “take up defensive positions at and around the entrance. You and you,” he said, picking two troopers seemingly at random, “watch the flanks of the hangar. We get the easiest available vehicles, fuel them up and drive out to the armoury. I need at least one Bedford, too,” he added for the tenth time as he recited their objectives, “for the small arms ammunition stores. Let’s go, then.”

The men nodded back at his anxious face, and he led them out.

* * *

Almost a month before Sinclair’s small detachment tiptoed
their way back into the base from the far side of its multitude of fences and walls, and shortly after they had first fled in the night, the large building they had used to house the civilians in a hurry, had been one of the last places to be evacuated. In that haste to get out, the building had not been checked, not that a sweep of that building would probably have prevented the sequence of events that had followed. One woman, in an attempt to sleep in relative peace, was tucked away in a small cupboard with a green army sleeping bag when the call to evacuate had so unexpectedly come.

As much as the army loved lists, the woman had been missed off their rota when they had ended up on the island, as there were simply too many things to do and too few people to organise them.

They had abandoned the base just in time, closing up the gates behind them in an attempt to keep it clear of infestation for as long as possible, but they had no way of knowing back then that they had only narrowly avoided total annihilation at the hands, teeth even, of a small swarm of them approaching through the shrouded woodland behind them. That swarm, driven on by the cacophony of engines and gunfire, converged on one section of perimeter fence and the combined weight of their moaning, hissing, clawing bodies collapsed it to pour them through the gap like so much water through a drain. The swarm dissipated once inside, spreading out to advance in a seemingly unending mass, all heading in the general direction of the main gate where the last stimulating noises had come from. It was as though the zombies shuffled along with some half-blind and half-remembered sense of purpose until something warm blooded presented itself.

The woman slept on, her ears stuffed with twists of toilet paper to block out the noises of so many people crammed into one place, so she had no idea that the ground outside the building was now crawling with the people the soldiers were calling Screechers.

A woman in a skirt and blouse, streaked with dried blood and filth and her high-shouldered matching jacket torn half off her, walked oddly with stiff legs as she rose and fell a few inches every time she put down her right foot. So advanced was her skill and experience at wearing the high heels, that she had miraculously retained one of them. The other foot, bare below the torn remains of her tights, scraped on the tarmac as she veered away to the building which still smelled faintly of something that her subconscious brain told her was edible. Her hair was a mess, but her face seemed strangely unblemished, with the exception of one long, thin scrape caused by a low branch of a tree as she had advanced through the woodland, not knowing why. That mostly flawless face, with its two milky-white eyes set above the scratch, locked onto the doors of the building and her body followed. Pushing into the doors and bouncing back slightly, her hands raised in another half-remembered gesture and her body went forwards again, applying enough pressure through her outstretched palms to force the aperture open. On hearing the bumps and creak of doors, two other zombies split away from the edges of the crowd and headed towards the new sounds without knowing why. They followed the woman on one high heel through the door and into a large room where the smell of living people filled their nostrils and sparked them into more animated action. They stomped through the room in ungainly, uncoordinated actions, knocking things over as they went.

Waking cramped up and in need of a thorough stretch, the woman pulled the twists of paper from her ears and worked her jaw to rid herself of the stiffness. As she did, she froze in the dark, hearing a muffled noise from outside. A noise wasn’t anything to worry about in itself, and she couldn’t place her finger on why the noise disturbed her, but her spine tingled, and her breathing doubled in speed to become shallow as her body flushed with adrenaline.

Inching the door open outwards into the corridor, her eye caught movement off to the right. As soon as she saw the woman with one high heel, she pulled back and shut the door, banging it just loud enough to know that she had been heard. Holding her breath and gripping the door handle with all her strength, the tears began to flow down her face as she heard the faint, ‘click, slap,’ of uneven footsteps coming for her. The sound stopped at its loudest, and the sudden noise of the zombie’s face banging into the door elicited a scream of such volume that it was answered threefold.

The woman screamed, drawing in breath just as the response came from the other side of the thin wood. The racking, shrieking intake of breath through a ravaged throat promised the woman such a malicious death that she cried again, sobbing as she gripped onto the door handle with all her might. Two other shrieks responded in addition to the first, signalling the anticipated feeding frenzy to come when they unearthed their trapped quarry.

Those shrieks carried outside through the doors and to the ears of other zombies. Every one of them to hear it turned and made for the doors to push their way inside and cram into the back corridor, where the shrieks were incessant outside a cupboard door. Those who didn’t hear the initial screams followed the ones closer to the building who had detected it, and they were sparked by the movement to follow and cram inside until the building could hold no more bodies.

Those who had either bypassed or been ahead of the noisy discovery simply wandered away, stimulated by an elusive bit of wildlife or by far-off noises, but those inside the building had been trapped inside by the need to pull a door to leave. They could easily have crushed their way through the doors, but the outside world offered no reason to get riled up and spark such action. Inside the besieged cupboard, the woman screamed and sobbed her way into hyperventilation and eventually unconsciousness, until the combined weight of bodies outside which could not grasp and turn the round door knob broke through the plasterboard wall instead. The renewed screams from inside were short-lived as the woman was grabbed by dirty hands and ragged nails and pulled through the gaps to be ripped apart and devoured in the narrow corridor.

Like some grim and grotesque approximation of crowd-surfing at a rock concert, the woman’s body never landed on the ground, not in any entirety at least, as she was pulled open and eaten above head height by the fifty or so pairs of hands that reached for her. She never returned, never came back as one of them, because there was nothing left of her to reanimate within seconds of being discovered. Although she suffered an unimaginable, horrendous death, at least for the woman who had tried to find some peace in quiet sleep, her nightmare was over.

* * *

There were over three hundred zombies crammed shoulder to shoulder in that building for over a month. Nothing outside had managed to stir them into action and they seemed to slow down and stand still in some form of hibernation. They simply stood, swaying in silence, waiting for something to spark them into undead life once more. That stimulus, that spark to ignite their hunger once again, came in the form of thirteen soldiers pausing just outside the back corner of the building for orders to be hissed.

“Let’s go then,” Sinclair hissed, totally unaware that he had just awoken the beast.

TWENTY

The country residence teemed with life as if it were an ant colony, only instead of the ants there were military personnel and civilians mucking in together to make the grounds as impenetrable to the undead as possible. Despite the obvious military leadership, the nearly one hundred people milling about were almost half civilian and seemed to be operating under the army control quite happily. Not all of them were able, obviously, and one large reception room which Captain Palmer stated with confidence was the drawing room, had become a haven for the young and the old or incapacitated together.

Not the incapacitated soldiers, however, for even the injured men could be propped up to keep watch.

That contingent appeared to fall under the leadership of Denise Maxwell who, after being reunited with her husband, had taken to her own new and unofficial role of senior NCO with as much practicality and necessary enthusiasm as her husband had, despite the terrible circumstances leading to his elevation.

Cooper, the tall man from Admin Troop who was usually flanking the now missing and presumed dead Sergeant Croft, had been one of the only members of his sub unit to survive, and as such was now following the captain with a clipboard liberated from the kitchens. Three surviving officers, not counting the Special Air Service’s Major Downes, who was off doing who knew what, paced the ground floor with a small entourage. There was a fourth officer to have survived, but the Colonel had been in need of a lie down when he arrived at the house, so he was shown to one of the larger bedroom suites, and most likely slept through all of the hustle and bustle taking place on a floor below him.

“Mister Maxwell?” Palmer senior said, slightly louder than his conversational tone, as though stopping and turning to find the man would break the flow of productivity.

“Sir?”

“Organise a small detachment, mechanically-minded people if we have enough, and send them to the nearest farms. I want heavy machinery, diggers specifically and two of them ideally. Also, we need sufficient fuel for them, and a report on anything else useful, such as building materials and the like.”

“Ooh, ooh, hold on a second, Sir?” Cooper said as he almost dropped his clipboard, attempting to find a note on a sheet clipped towards the back.

“Aha!” he declared, finding the piece of paper he wanted and unclipping it whilst simultaneously managing to drop half of the other papers and the clipboard, to be left holding a scrap of paper and half a pencil stub. The whole procession stopped to regard him and made his embarrassment far worse, so he spoke with a quiet voice and flushed cheeks.

“The farm on this estate, Sir,” he said, “there’s a digger on there. It’s on the report from the Sass blokes.”

“Sergeant?” Palmer said as he turned towards Maxwell.

“I’ll sort two teams,” he replied, “one for here and one for other farms. I’ll ask the Major if he doesn’t mind doing one of them.”

“Good man,” Palmer said as he turned and resumed the procession, leaving Trooper Cooper to scurry and catch up after snatching the loose paper from the old, thick carpet.

“Now,” Palmer said, changing the subject as he glanced at his watch, “when are we expecting Sergeant Sinclair and his men?”

* * *

From the air, a view which only a very few of them had enjoyed, the estate they had selected looked ideal for their needs in enough ways to make them choose it as soon as it was found. Judging by the ornate building’s front and high brick wall extending around most of the grounds, the Palmer brothers employed their classical education and declared the estate to be very early Victorian, most likely planned and built almost one hundred years before. A trooper had found a plaque near the large front doors which indeed proved the officers right, detailing the years it had been commissioned and completed as 1891 and 1895 respectively.

The main house had a four-storey central square and a three-storey wing either side of that with a curious rectangular lump added on to one wing, which had housed a larger and more modern kitchen built in the fifties. There were numerous outbuildings forming part of the ready-made defences, including stables which had been converted into garaging, as well as a massive coal bunker and log store. All of these buildings had been painstakingly checked and cleared, and the entire place declared empty. Various opinions had been offered about why, but in Palmer’s view, the rich occupants were likely to have been skiing at that time of year in the Alps, or enjoying some time in their European residence, which would fashionably be on the southern coast of France near to Nice.

There were food stores, not enough to sustain them all through the next winter, obviously, but there were still untouched harvests of ripening maize to reap in nearby fields. The boxed supplies they had brought with them would sustain their people for months, but on calorific value alone and not volume.

They had to supplement, and they had to think fast about it.

The day wore on, passing the midday point and those not actively engaged in strenuous tasks began to worry about the failure of the others to arrive. People consoled themselves and offered their own silent hopes that the men were loading up as much hardware as they could find to bring back to their warm new home in the sun. Not many had the opportunity to sit and worry, as tasks were dished out to small groups of men and women alike, and those tasks ranged from creating an inventory of the food stores in the vast cellar under the kitchen, to estimating the amount of solid fuel remaining for the fires. Most people hadn’t realised yet, but without significant stores of wood and coal and oil for the heating, the coming winter was looking to become a fight for survival against more than just zombies.

The two patrols went out, the SAS men returning first with a digger to hand over their prize and report to a team of three men from One Troop, who began to use the narrower rear bucket on the machine to excavate a trench, under the orders of captain Palmer.

“Fifty yards out,” he ordered simply, “working west from the driveway. Six feet deep and six feet wide.” He received only nods of compliance and verbal affirmations of his instructions.

They went to work, creating the barrier which would slow the advance of any concentrated attack for time enough to emplace heavy guns, and also to prevent the straying of zombies in ones and twos into their safe area. There were men on patrol around the perimeter and others on standby in two Fox cars, which contained almost all of the ammunition left for the vehicles, ready to react to any concentration of enemy and cut them down. That ammunition, those 30mm rounds for the small cannons and the linked bullets for the machine guns, were a finite resource. Just as the bullets for their personal weapons were.

The only thing that wouldn’t run out of ammunition would be their bayonets, but for trained soldiers to be forced to rely on cold steel, that would sap morale faster than ice sapped body heat.

The only thing to be done was to stay busy, prepare their defences, and hope.

By mid-afternoon, Palmer had gone to find the crew of their only remaining helicopter. Lieutenant Commander Barrett and his co-pilot Lieutenant James Morris were playing cards in silence at a table made of dark wood and spindly and elaborately carved legs in one of the grand bedrooms they had adopted as their quarters, while their loadmaster snored gently on the chaise longue underneath the high window.

“Gentlemen,” Palmer said as he knocked twice on the open door, passing through it, “I was wondering if I might…” he trailed away, his nose involuntarily twitching at some newly-detected smell that broke through his normally impeccable manners to contort his face.

“I say,” he asked quietly, “what in God’s name is that odour?”

“That, Captain,” Morris said with evident amusement, “would be the boots of Chief Petty Officer Brinklow. You’re trained for biological attacks, I presume? What course of action would you suggest?”

“I’d suggest burning the man’s boots for starters,” Palmer responded before he could gather himself, “and possibly something similar for the man himself.”

Both pilots chuckled their amusement at his disgust and retort.

“Captain,” Barrett said, as he regarded his hand before selecting one card to lay down and make Morris huff a sound of annoyance, “believe me when I say you get used to it after a short time. I honestly can’t even detect it any longer.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that, I’m afraid,” Palmer said, getting back to business, “I wonder if I could impose on your time?”

Both pilots laid down their cards and paid him their full attention to betray their professionalism. They may have appeared to have been doing nothing, but their reaction showed just how ready they were to be needed.

“I have some concerns,” Palmer began, “concerns I obviously don’t wish to share among the men and the civilians, you understand, and I would like you to conduct a reconnaissance for me.”

“The other helicopter?” Morris asked.

“Yes, primarily,” Palmer said, “and also, I’d have rather expected that the men left to gather more arms at the base would have been back by now, or at least made contact. I’ve just checked with Corporal Daniels, who is rather uncomfortably posted inside the Sultan in this heat, and he hasn’t heard from anyone.”

“Absolutely,” Barrett said, seeing Palmer deflate ever so slightly with relief, “However we don’t have sufficient fuel to do that. We’d need to refuel somewhere before any of that, and the only fuel reserves we know of are in areas that we also know to be overrun. You see the predicament?”

Palmer clearly did see the predicament. His right hand reached up and scratched the four days of stubble on his chin and cheeks, giving him the look of a much rougher man than he was. His thoughtful pause paid off, as Brinklow spoke from the gaudy one-sided couch in the room. His snoring had faded away without any of the officers noticing and he had come awake silently to listen to the conversation.

“The island is out, obviously,” he said as he swung his legs down and slipped them into his boots. Palmer felt as though the source of the smell had been plugged, or at least muted in some way when he did this, “and as far as I know, there’s none left at the base. The only other option I can think of is going back to Yeovilton.”

His suggestion silenced the room as the others waited for the logic behind the idea to explain itself. When nobody spoke, Brinklow gave the explanation himself.

“We know we can reach it with what we’ve got left, and we know there was a lot of fuel there when we left. It’s unlikely that it’s all gone because unless someone went back with a few tankers and emptied it in the last month, then it’s still there. The only downside is that we don’t know how many of the Bitey Bastards are there now. Sirs,” he added weakly to defend his gruff language.

Palmer turned to the pilots, who in turn looked at each other, then shrugged and looked back at the army captain.

“Makes sense,” Morris said.

“We’d need some boys to defend us as we refuelled, obviously,” Barrett added.

“I’ll ask Lieutenant Lloyd,” Palmer said, “his men should at least be more familiar with the base than my chaps.”

“And they are the specialist infantry,” Morris added, wincing immediately as he had spoken without thinking, “obviously your men have fought bravel…”

“I understood your point, Lieutenant,” Palmer interrupted to save time spent having his ego massaged, “I’ll see to it. What time frame?”

“As soon as possible,” Barrett said, rising from his chair, “we’ll start pre-flight checks now. We’ll start the search at the island and work out from there, assuming we have fuel.”

Palmer nodded to them and left, remembering as soon as he had moved from the room that the marines officer was deployed and their sergeant currently missing. Grabbing a soldier from his former headquarters troop to first check his current duty and finding it less important than the task he wanted, he sent the man to find any of the marines and ask who their most senior man was on site.

“I shall be downstairs,” he told the man, “tell them to find me there.” As he spoke, another thought struck him, “And after that, find the SAS Major and request that he speak to me.”

The man had done his job quickly, resulting in the tall and seemingly bored Royal Marine medic arriving and offering a tired salute to the captain.

“Corporal Sealey, Sir,” he said in a thickly accented voice that made him sound almost bored.

“And you are the senior man?” Palmer asked.

“I think so, Sir, with Mister Lloyd out and about with the other corporal and Sergeant Hampton… not here… then I guess I’m it.”

Palmer nodded and was saved from saying anything further on the matter as the tall man wearing black walked in and nodded to them both. Marine corporal and army captain returned the nod and Downes turned to face Palmer expectantly, with his eyebrows raised.

“I’ll get right to it, then,” he said to the two summoned men in the small parlour they occupied, “I want to send out the helicopter with the purpose of finding the other aircraft and giving us some definitive answers about what happened. I also wish to chase up the detachment still at the base. The crew are preparing to leave soon; however, I need a security detail for them as they will need to return to their original station for refuelling. The status of that base is unknown. My thoughts were to send our marines, since they would have knowledge of the base, but I rather fear they have somewhat depleted numbers, given that they are currently out on mission. Corporal Sealey here is the senior man currently.”

“That said, Sir,” Sealey said, “I’m the team medic,” he explained, pointing out that, whilst a trained and experienced commando, he was not a usual leader of men in action.

“I’ll take my team, if you wish?” Downes said, knowing that the offer was expected and hoped for. “Saves my chaps getting stagnant,” he added almost jovially. He had stripped off his smock to reveal thick arms with the sleeves of his black top pulled up and bunched above his elbows. Given the size of his forearms, the chance of them slipping back down unintentionally was almost negligible.

Palmer thanked them both, let Sealey off the hook to return to his duties preparing the house and grounds for defence, and indicated for Downes to stay a while. He walked to the window, looking out over a palatial inner courtyard with enough tended grass to grow crops for half of them, and he let out a sigh of near mental exhaustion.

“You’re doing a fine job, Julian,” Downes told him gently, “making the best of what we have here.”

“Thank you, Major,” he said.

“Clive,” he said, making Palmer realise that he had never actually given the unnervingly quiet Major his first name.

“What were you before?” Palmer asked, “Before your current post, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Not at all,” Downes said, “I was the cliché as it happens. Paras, served my first stint with the Regiment as a troop boss,” he said, meaning his own regiment, as all soldiers said of their military family, “and was invited back as a Major. Only one of mine is a Para, the other two are what everyone calls Crap-Hats. I doubt it matters now, but we were in Afghanistan for the last nine months nearly, playing Cold War games with the whole enemy of my enemy thing.”

The way he spoke showed that his education was at least mostly equal to Palmer’s, perhaps not as expensive as the boarding schools he and his brother had attended but definitely privately funded. He had lost the upper-class edge of that education and accent now, probably because of the company he had kept and by not being insulated from his men, as officers in regular army units would naturally be. He had lived and breathed as one of the men, had forgone any sense of entitlement for himself or servitude from his men, and that bond seemed far stronger than the discipline of Palmer’s own rag-tag squadron.

“I’d heard of such clandestine missions,” Palmer said, “all very secret squirrel,” he said with a smirk as he used the terminology of his men.

“Very,” Downes said, “but I honestly felt for our Russian enemies in that hell hole. To be conscripted and barely trained, then sent into the most inhospitable place on God’s green earth, barring the Borneo jungle in the wet season maybe, where your enemy sneaks around in the dark to cut your comrades,” he said this in a Slavic accent and rolled his R’s theatrically, “to pieces so you can hear their screams all night is just barbaric.”

He trailed off, leaving them both in thoughtful silence before Downes slapped the younger man lightly on the back.

“Give me a straight-up zombie fight any day,” he said nonchalantly. “We’ll talk when I’m back, Captain. Keep up the good work.”

TWENTY-ONE

They gorged themselves, relatively speaking, on the stores of canned food stacked neatly in the house. Without bothering to heat anything, a hardship that didn’t seem the slightest bit important to people who had operated in or trained for war, they took it in turns to spin the handle of the opener and tuck greedily into the contents.

Johnson peeled back the metal lids of two tins, shoved a fork and a spoon into them without recalling what went in which tin, and walked over to where Kimberley was propped up in the middle of multiple cushions, with her right leg elevated on yet more soft cushions.

“Thank you, Dean,” she said with a hint of an awkward smile. He held out the can to her, furrowed his brow and switched hands to offer her the other.

“Fruit salad,” he said, “I’ve got baked beans if you wanted those instead…”

“No, no,” she said weakly, “fruit salad is fine.”

“You need the sugar,” Johnson said as he sat beside her as lightly as possible, yet still crushing the settee under his bulk. “Make sure you drink all the syrup; build up your strength.”

“She needs fluids and rest,” came the unintentionally harsh-sounding voice of Astrid Larsen, “but I suppose that this fruits salad will be good.” Johnson nodded, rising to leave Kimberley in the capable hands of the medic, whilst he stalked away to find a place to sit and eat his cold beans. Dropping himself down on another settee next to the injured Bill Hampton, Johnson froze with his shoulders hunched until the foul stream of hissed swear words finished pouring from the marine’s mouth. Glancing across at him, he saw the man fixing him with an evil gaze which no doubt would have terrified the young marines under his command.

Johnson, however, was no twenty-something marine, and returned the look with his own thousand-yard stare. His look didn’t silence a platoon or two of marines, it cut through an entire squadron’s chatter as well as the sounds of their engines, to focus over a hundred minds on his next words. The two men stayed like that for a second, trapped in some approximation of stags locking horns until one backed away to avoid injury.

“Watch me fucking leg,” Hampton muttered as he looked back down at his own tin of cold food.

“Sorry, Bill,” Johnson said as he leaned back and stirred the contents of his own tin to realise that he had given himself the fork and Kimberley the spoon for her fruit salad.

Fuck it, he thought, licking the fork clean and tipping the tin up to his mouth to drink the contents like an especially thick, cold soup. Hampton was wearing boxer shorts, fresh socks from his own kit and a T-shirt which was fractionally too small for him. Still a very fit and strong man, he had run ever so slightly to fat, having spent more time sitting at a desk due to his rank and responsibilities, and the shirt showed up the bits he might not want people seeing. Johnson looked at him and decided that he probably couldn’t care less what anyone thought of him. His swollen right knee was propped up and looked angry where the bruising was already starting to show.

Larsen sat with Kimberley, checking that she was still making sense after the bang to her head sustained in the crash had left her unconscious for almost a day. When she had come around, screaming terribly as her last memory was that of being in a helicopter dropping unexpectedly from the sky, Astrid had calmed her, filled her in on what had happened, and taken her away to the bathroom where she cut away her clothes and washed her, tending to each injury as she discovered it. They hadn’t noticed throughout the remainder of the night or the first part of the day as they carried her because she was wearing black denim jeans, but she had sustained a nasty cut to the inside of her thigh which refused to stop opening up and bleeding if she moved.

Muffled cries could be heard by the men downstairs as she sat still and bit down on a towel as Astrid put three stitches in the wound before cleaning the rest of her. That injured leg was now elevated on cushions to keep the blood from pooling around the injury and putting pressure on the stitches. She was flushed pink after being scrubbed clean with the last of the hot water, and dressed in oversized jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt, both emblazoned with some American university logo and name.

As Johnson sat beside Hampton, both eating their cold meal in grumpy silence, Bufford returned to the large, open-plan living area after coming down the stairs.

“Your man is keeping watch,” he said to Hampton, meaning Enfield, the marine sniper, “not that there’s much to see, but he insists. I’ve given him another can of scran and told him to get washed up because he’s honkin’. The water’s icers now, but he’s not bothered. He could do with his slug because he looks ready to cream in.”

Hampton nodded sagely and chewed before swallowing and opening his mouth to respond to the SBS man in front of him, but then he put a finger to his lips and burped around it, before wincing and hitting himself in the chest lightly to somehow ease the heartburn and indigestion he was feeling.

“Yeah, we’re all chinstraps, mate, but his oppo got zapped in the crash. Inseparable those two were. Leigh and Enfield; spotter and sniper. Couldn’t fucking write it,” he paused for them to chuckle, “but they were A1, mate. Gen.”

It was Bufford’s turn to nod sagely then, sparing a thought for the other marines who hadn’t made it out, before Hampton changed the subject again.

“Mate of mine went SB in ’83. Steve Priest?” Hampton asked hopefully.

“C Squadron,” Bufford answered immediately with a straight face, “good guy.”

“Yeah,” Hampton laughed lightly, “fucker for biting though. Always easy to get a wind up on him.”

Buffs smiled at his memory, saying, “I’ll spell him upstairs, make sure he hits his grot soon,” and walked away leaving Johnson and Hampton alone again.

Johnson finished his tin of beans, using the pointless fork to scrape the rest of the juice towards the edge where he slurped it into his mouth. Wiping his face with his hand he turned to Hampton and asked, “Is that why your training takes so damned long?”

“What you on about?” Hampton asked back, suspecting that he was being set up for an inter-military jibe.

“You have to learn a new language when you go on your long, romantic walks, camping in Devon. English is just fine for everyone, you know?”

“Fuck off, pongo,” Hampton responded with a smirk.

“Seriously though, is Enfield going to be alright?”

“He’ll manage,” Hampton answered sincerely, “no idea what he’ll be like when the job’s done, but he’ll manage for now.”

“When the job’s done?” Johnson nearly scoffed. “When’s that going to be?”

“Fuck knows,” Hampton said, his tongue protruding from one side of his mouth as he spun his can spanner, which had appeared from a pouch on his kit resting beside him, and he attacked another can, this time ravioli.

The two men sat in silence just as the two women in the same large room sat in quiet conversation. Footfalls above them denoted where Bufford and Enfield traded places for one to stand guard whilst the other washed, and shortly afterwards the sniper made his way down the stairs wearing some ill-fitting shirt and loose trousers over his slim frame. He nodded to both his sergeant and the army sergeant major, and laid out a towel on the low coffee table before resting first his salvaged L85 on the cloth to strip and clean it. Then he rebuilt it and checked the action to load a magazine, ready to go to work. The big sniper rifle came next, the big bolt being drawn back, and the breech cleaned almost with a tenderness.

“You’re good with that,” Johnson said blandly, unsure himself if it was a question or a statement.

“I’m alright,” Enfield said, “I’m just lucky that it makes sense to me when it doesn’t for others. On the sniper course the staff hated me because I just understood how things worked; wind, distance, elevation, relative elevation between shooter and target, air density, humidity, rainfall, curvature of the earth; all things that people had to learn the hard way, but they just make sense to me. So yeah, I’m alright with it, but I’ll only be alright with it another forty-six times, if you get my meaning.”

Johnson did.

“And with the other one?” he asked, pointing at the new bullpup rifle.

“Less so,” Enfield said after regarding it for a time, “but I have a hundred chances more with that than this,” he said nodding between the guns as he packed up the cleaning kit and rolled it tight to fit back into his pouches.

“Speaking of that,” Johnson said as he groaned and creaked his way to standing up, “Miss Larsen, could I borrow you?”

Astrid patted Kimberley’s leg as she stood and walked towards the kitchen and Johnson’s direction, carrying the empty food tins.

“Sergeant Major?” she asked, her accent making the enquiry sound formal.

“I was hoping you could give me a run-down on stripping this?” he asked, holding up the suppressed MP5 she had given him, “I’m assuming it needs cleaning...”

Astrid picked up her own identical weapon and sat at the white kitchen table. Johnson searched the drawers under the granite worktop and located what he wanted on the third attempt, selecting two tea towels and laying one down as a kind of placement, whilst offering the other to the hard, blonde woman. She took it silently, laying out the cloth just as he had. Johnson sat beside her, better placed to mimic her movements without his brain trying to switch the left and the right.

“Charging handle back, verify empty chamber, remove rear stock pin, remove folding stock,” she said with an air of robotics as though she was literally translating the manual in her head into English, “hinge down the lower mechanism and slide back charging handle, remove bolt and carrier assembly,” she went on, performing one task at a time and waiting for him to copy the actions, “rotate bolt head, locking piece, firing pin and spring all come out. There it is,” she said, opening her hands to demonstrate just how simple it was. Johnson rebuilt the gun, making the same movements in reverse until it was whole again, before stripping it down a second time as Astrid watched. She only had to correct him once, and after that he had the task down and began to clean the working parts. She had stripped, cleaned and oiled her weapon before he had finished, but stayed to watch. Of the four magazines he had for the weapon, Johnson found only two of them to be fully stocked, so he stripped the bullets from the spare magazines for his Sterling, which had been lost in the crash. Discarding the old magazines as they had none of those weapons left, he stored the handful of spare rounds in a pouch, ready to refill the magazines, and returned his webbing and weapon to where they rested against the stairs along with the others.

Clean, fed and resting, the six battered survivors from the second helicopter lapsed into uncertain silence.

* * *

Amber cried. She hadn’t cried since Peter had first found her, but now she buried her small face into his only slightly larger chest and sobbed quietly. He didn’t know what upset her most; it could’ve been the fear of having to rush out so suddenly after waking or, more likely he guessed, she was upset that the cat had not come with them.

They had fled in plenty of time to avoid the people, and Peter didn’t dare close the curtains overlooking their former squat now, for fear that anyone there would notice the change. As a result, they were forced to live at the back of the house and avoid the front rooms, which meant that they were limited to existing in the kitchen downstairs and the bathroom and a small bedroom upstairs. He considered leaving the village again, just packing up whatever they could carry and running out of the back, but that would take them back in the direction they had first come from and that felt too much like defeat. He would go in a different direction, but the careful glances he stole at their old house showed the figure of a man watching through the partially open curtains. Any flight out the rear of the house would no doubt be noticed, and he wanted to avoid these people at any cost.

As he sat with her, long after she had finished crying, now just pressing her head into him to emit the occasional spasm of breathing in, he flashed back to the reason he was besieged by fear.

The things, the monsters, the ex-people; they terrified him well enough and with good reason, but the people were somehow worse. He didn’t understand why he had a hard time trusting adults, and he didn’t realise the impact of the neglect and abuse he had experienced, but that mistrust and fear was solidified when he had watched Amber’s mother being dragged away unconscious, leaving behind a helpless girl. He had been the helpless one once, and he’d had his older sister to protect and shield him from the harsher realities of life, but now his innocence, whatever was left of it, his naivety was gone. It had died with his mother, or his dog as he couldn’t be sure which one of the two hateful creatures he was upset about, and it had died with the disappearance of his sister and father before that. It had disappeared with the sickening slaughter of the farm animals at the hands and teeth of the crowd of monsters which had swept through to wipe his home off the face of the earth.

All of these factors and experiences combined to form a hard casing around his personality, and the final part of that armour was watching men drag away a woman and leave her little girl behind.

“I’ll never leave you,” he whispered to her, stroking her hair and shushing her softly, “I’ll never leave you.”

And he wouldn’t. He swore it to her and to himself. He would wait out the day and lead her towards yet more uncertain safety to avoid the terror of what the men would do to her. Her breathing had softened, become deeper and more rhythmic, to tell him that she had fallen asleep in his arms despite not having long woken. It was the stress, he supposed. Just as he closed his eyes to rest with her for a time and pass the day in safety and silence, a sound threw him straight back into the fight for survival.

TWENTY-TWO

“Can’t sit here all day,” Bufford said, “perimeter is insecure. I want to push it out, who’s coming?”

Johnson rose to his feet, cursing every part of his body that ached, which he realised with annoyance, was every part of his body. They had changed back into their uniforms by the afternoon, having washed and mostly dried them, and shrugged back into their equipment harnesses. Astrid Larsen stood and put on her kit, her slim frame carrying the black equipment with uncommon ease as she checked that Kimberley would be fine without her.

The woman with the scarred face waved her away, telling her not to fuss over her and that she felt like a nuisance. Those protestations were ignored as Astrid checked the dilation of her pupils once more.

“Any severe headaches or bad dizziness, send for me,” she told Hampton, who was still established on the other settee with his swollen knee raised. He had allowed Enfield to clean his rifle, and he sat with it resting across his lap, facing the front door as a guard. Enfield readied himself to go with them, the huge and angular rifle strapped diagonally across his back, and the four of them made ready to move out.

Hampton watched, amused and interested in how the concept of rank had gone out of the window. None of those who had survived the crash were regular soldiers; not one of them a uniform filler by any stretch of the imagination. He was a royal marine sergeant, and the lowest ranking of them was a specialist commando sniper with skills far beyond the others in many senses. The bearded man from the special forces was evidently a former marine, as his lingo paid testimony to, and nobody achieved an NCO rank in special forces without being any good. Johnson, despite being what Hampton would unkindly call a weekend warrior or a hobby soldier, was evidently an experienced and capable man, having achieved the highest rank available without become a member of the officer class. His own officer, Lloyd, could be forgiven any scorn for being one of them, because unlike the army, the royal marines officers lived and fought as one of the team and had to pass the same tests as their men, instead of sipping sherry and brandy and relying on family connections like the other branches. The anomaly for Hampton was the Norwegian woman. She had been very quiet, probably due to the same loss that all of them felt for the dead left behind in a burning aircraft, but her loss would be worse as she was now the only one left of her team and her countrymen. She was totally alone, and to make it worse for her, even Hampton couldn’t comprehend how a woman could be a frontline soldier, let alone a highly trained one. He kept his misogynistic thoughts to himself, not that he saw much wrong with the blatantly sexist ideas bouncing around his brain, as she had done nothing but prove herself capable since he had first met her.

Now, watching the four of them stack up by the front door ready to move out, he saw the natural abilities and training of those most suited to the task taking over. All of them would be CQB and FIBUA trained; that is to say they had been taught to engage the enemy in close-quarter battle and fight in built-up areas. Indeed, he and Enfield had attended the same refresher training before their last Northern Ireland deployment. He also knew from conversation that Johnson had toured there, so he would have had the same level of training, albeit to a far lesser degree, as the man was a tankie. The SB man, Buffs, would be able to do room clearances in his sleep, and if he had to guess, the woman, Astrid, would have done a fair bit of that kind of work too.

The natural selection of leadership seemed to evolve before his eyes as the most experienced took the lead, with the second best at his shoulder. The third strongest link would be taking up the rear and the weakest of their small team would be placed third in line where he wouldn’t have to make any decisions to engage without following a lead. The senior man, the highest ranking, fell into place to learn the tactics of special forces room clearing fast and, on the job, not once complaining or trying to force a plan on the others. Hampton’s appreciation for the man went up then, as he liked to see humility where it counted.

“On me, alternate eyes left and right,” Buffs said, “at the door we check, do a perimeter in twos, then go in. I want the nearest houses cleared one by one. We start with the church, head along that side of the road for three houses, then cross over. That gives us a buffer we know is clear at least. Questions?”

There were none. They moved out, eyes wired for any threat, and the first two people in the team feeling only slightly out of sorts for operating in a clandestine manner during bright sunshine. The church was reached within seconds, with Bufford pointing at himself and Enfield, then pointing a flat palm held vertically like a blade and indicating that they would head around the left side of the building. He pointed at Larsen and Johnson in turn, making the same hand gesture around to the right. The instructions were given fast and clean with no misunderstanding, and he hoped that he would not need to repeat them so long-windedly for the next house.

That was the problem with operating at a level of elite excellence; nothing else compared or came close when you had to work with men who didn’t have the benefit of that training.

Johnson nodded at his partner, both moving off as Bufford pointed at Enfield’s SA80 and wagged a finger before pointing at his own suppressed submachine gun. Enfield nodded, clicking on the bayonet to demonstrate that he would not fire a noisy shot unless absolutely necessary.

The big man and the slim but strong woman crept around the side of the church, finding a small stone bridge spanning a brook which trickled and bubbled away beneath. A rotting stench filled their nostrils, forcing both of them to react in disgust. Johnson peered over the edge to see the whitened, bloated and decaying body lying flat on its back in the shallow water, and a wide-eyed blind stare of white eyeballs bored back up at him. He peered at it, knowing it to be twice dead from the wound in its head. He found Larsen’s eye and indicated that the thing had been stabbed through the skull. She nodded at the information, knowing its relevance and adding it to the evidence of survivors in the village. Or at least that there had been some recently. They continued, meeting the others at the rear of the churchyard, where Johnson indicated for Buffs and Enfield to go back around their way. He pointed out the corpse, indicating again in silence that it had been rendered safe in an effective manner which wasn’t often seen before the world went to flesh-eating shit. Buffs nodded his understanding, no doubt filing the information away just as effectively as Astrid had, then he led the way back to the front where a small crowbar was produced from down his back. Jemmying the heavy wooden doors open with ease, the team poured in and checked the few rooms.

The smell of death hit them immediately. Despite the warm weather outside and the direct sunlight that was pleasantly hot, the air inside was cool and damp and laced with the musty stench of death. The source of the smell was discovered in one of the cloisters and the disturbed flies buzzed angrily away from the remnants of the vicar’s hanging body. Beside the wooden pulpit which had tipped on its side, no doubt as the man’s final act, lay next to it a writhing pile of gore where the maggots fed on the filth leaking from his body. Entire chunks of the man had fallen away, decayed from the inside by the gruesome act of nature and the passage of time.

They all took in the scene and all withdrew to search the building for anything of use. Some small supplies of food, mainly biscuits and the makings of hot drinks, went into a bag they found, to be deposited on the front doorstep. Bufford’s pointed instructions made it clear that they would check and search every building and come back for the haul after the work was done. Shutting the door on the church, they cast their minds to the next property.

The front door was stubborn and very locked. Without firing weapons or kicking it in with enough noise to bring unwelcome attention down on them, the team went back around their perimeter to try the back door. The splintering of the wood from the heaving crowbar sounded louder than gunfire but the old wood refused to budge, instead bending and not allowing them access. A snap of Astrid’s fingers sounded, and she waited until the three men looked at her before pointing upwards to a partially open first floor window. Buffs and Johnson cupped their hands and hoisted her high up to watch as she gripped the exposed window frame with one hand and pushed up the locking bar to swing the opening wide. She hauled herself the rest of the way, slipping through the veil of a net curtain to shoot an upturned thumb back out. Soft sounds came from inside the house as she made her way down the stairs. A strained click and a metallic scrape indicated that the back door was unlocked.

The door creaked open to show her in the ready stance with the parachute stock of the gun tight into her shoulder as she leaned into the weapon and pressed her face against it to aim down the barrel.

“Upstairs clear,” she whispered as the others joined her inside and Enfield shut the door quietly, “but you can smell this, yes?”. They could smell it. The same sickly, vile odour as before, and as they advanced on the few rooms downstairs a scene unfolded which further solidified their belief that someone capable was operating in this tiny village long after the fall of everything.

A zombie, a bloody big one even by Johnson’s standards, lay face down on the living room rug with its head haloed by a small puddle of dark filth. The stench of the thing was obvious even when the door was closed, but up close it was incredible. Unlike the dead vicar, the flies had not touched this body, which only seemed odd to them afterwards, as though the priority of thoughts allowed only so much working memory at any one time. What was evident, despite the decay, was that this zombie had also been rendered safe.

“Immobilised,” Larsen said, pointing at a stab wound in the neck as she covered her mouth and nose to inspect the body without touching it, “or at least a miss to the head.”

Nobody answered for fear of having to draw in breath. They searched the house, satisfied that the only occupant was rotting in the room they were happy to shut off.

“In here,” Enfield said, waiting for the others to join him. They weren’t so unprofessional as to rush and make noise, and his call was made in a tone that didn’t spark fear. The four of them found themselves looking at an open wardrobe with a solid metal cabinet with two keyholes, one high and one low, on display behind the rows of large shirts.

“Keys,” Buffs whispered, and everyone cast out to magnify their search parameters for much smaller items. Each room was checked, every drawer and pot emptied for sign of the keys to allow them access to the gun cabinet. They all drew a blank until one last thought dawned on Johnson.

“In its pocket?” he said softly, seeing the disgust on at least one face. Larsen looked at the three men in turn, seeing no obvious sign of any of them volunteering for the task. Tutting loudly, she walked out and downstairs and into the kitchen, where she went straight to the under-sink cupboard to where she had seen what she needed. Pulling on a yellow washing-up glove, she strode towards the living room as she took a big gulp of a deep breath and walked in without breaking step. Slinging the gun behind her and bending down so as not to kneel in the leaking fluids coming from it, she thrust a hand into the trouser pockets of the corpse and let out a dry retch of disgust. Steadying herself and breathing into the crook of her elbow for a few beats, she repeated the process on the other side, until she jerked at the body and came out with a triumphant look on her pale face. Walking straight past them as they scattered, she thrust the gloved hand holding the keys into the sink and turned on the tap to rinse them of the greasy gore that covered them. She breathed hard, repaying the debt of oxygen to her body after holding her breath, and shook off the excess moisture into the sink before leading the way upstairs.

Johnson didn’t know exactly what they were expecting, certainly not anything resembling the military hardware they all possessed, but somehow the two shotguns and one rifle still disappointed him. Enfield reached in to inspect the long gun, running his hands over it and feeling the weight and balance of the weapon as he tried to get to know it.

“This’ll do,” he said, reaching into the wardrobe again for a padded gun slip and settling the new weapon inside. The boxes of bullets were handed out to him, as were the two empty magazines, which both held only five bullets each.

The two shotguns were also inspected, each placed into a similar carrying case and each with a large bag of ammunition to go with them. They were double-barrelled, but even two shots when you had none were better than nothing.

“Cut them down?” Buffs asked Johnson, “back-up weapons?”

Johnson nodded, thinking that nothing short of either platoon or company strength support weapons would be useful against more than a few of the things together, but that stealth was more sensibly employed. An army accustomed to war before the inception of firearms would fare better than the current model, he also thought, then looked down at the submachine gun in his hands, looking tiny in his grip, despite its fat barrel. He hadn’t fired the thing yet, but he knew that there was no such thing as a silent weapon. Even the percussive cough it would make would be nothing compared to the ringing crack that the impacting round would make, but at least the sound shouldn’t carry for miles like the booming report of a rifle. Or a shotgun.

With Johnson shaking himself out of his thoughts, they gladly escaped the smell of the house before moving on to the next one, taking only the salvaged weapons with them.

And that next house held items they were not expecting to find.

TWENTY-THREE

“Yes, Dezzy,” Downes said comically as though talking to an eager child, “you can bring it.”

“Woo,” Dezzy said, playing the part, “thanks, Dad!” he said as he hefted the rescued GPMG and the belted ammunition to go with it, “can I have a go on the load-door gun too?”

Downes fixed him with a stern look which was still partly in character and glared at him until he folded. They had adopted a small ground floor room on one of the wings a short distance from the main entrance as their own. As was always the way with them, whatever part of whatever camp anywhere in the world they occupied, it became a kind of holy place that young soldiers stared at in awe, and others just pointedly ignored, unless they had cause to be there. As for the men themselves, even the Major, as they walked around without displaying any rank or insignia, they were often referred to as ‘Oi, mate,’ by most regular soldiers. They dressed for war, putting on more layers and heavier clothing by necessity than the heat of the late summer made comfortable. Despite the warmth, none of the men was foolish or vain enough to wear short sleeves, and when they were finished, only the lack of black hoods pulled up and the anonymity of a full-face respirator made them look less the part than the iconic imagery of the embassy siege some nine years prior. That was the look that most people associated with their regiment; black-clad counter terrorist soldiers shrouded in mystery; but the truth was something wholly different.

When the younger Captain Downes had returned to his parent unit, the parachute regiment he still officially belonged to, as very few of the SAS were what was called permanent cadre, he was grilled by his peers about his experiences and found that all of them had entirely the wrong idea about the vaunted elite.

Officers were allowed to apply for selection, passing the same gruelling tests as any man, in addition to the planning exercises they had to complete, and if successful, they would serve a tour as a troop leader. That said, being the officer in charge of an SAS troop usually meant working for an experienced sergeant and listening to the more experienced soldiers under their technical command. After that, the young officers, Lieutenants and Captains, were returned to their units to develop and earn promotion. Even fewer were invited back for a second tour, but of those, only the absolute cream made it back as Majors to lead squadrons and hopefully perform well enough to be invited back for the last time as commanding officer. That was Clive Downes’ career goal, once upon a time not too long before.

Col. Clive Downes. Commanding Officer 22 SAS. After that, who knew? A regimental posting back to the Paras as a colonel? A generalship? A UN or NATO command somewhere possibly, but he knew he certainly wouldn’t be running around leading a four-man patrol of the toughest soldiers he had ever met.

Now that the world had gone to shit his career aspirations were dashed, but those were the last things on his mind. What was important to him were the lives of his men, the others around him and surviving the whole shit show. He turned to Mac and stood for the sergeant to check him over. The dour Scot was the only one of them to actually be permanently posted to their regiment, after years extending his attachment and making the dizzy heights of sergeant, and then leaving behind his original corporal rank when he left the Parachute Regiment years before. The others, Dez and Smiffy, were crap-hats, meaning that they had come from regiments that weren’t prized for breeding the elite soldiers, unlike the parachute or rifle regiments. Who and what they were before hadn’t really mattered to Downes even two months before, and it mattered even less so, now that they were the only ones of their regiment left that they knew of. Downes knew of the doomsday protocol, just as he knew of the various other members of the regiment who had been deployed to other parts of the world. If any of those postings became relevant, then he would say so, but for now, knowing that half of them were deployed to protect key European sites and routes from the risk of the Soviets capitalising on the widespread panic didn’t bode well for their overall numbers.

No, as much as he hated to admit it, they were among the last of their kind.

“Come on,” Mac said, snapping him out of his dark reverie with a slap on the shoulder, “my turn.”

Downes checked Mac’s equipment, making sure nothing was loose and nothing rattled. He counted the magazines in the pouches of his webbing, totalling up the number of individual bullets at over two hundred. That might have seemed like a lot when looked at in the calm, cool daylight, but he knew from experience just how fast ammunition ran out. He liked to carry as much as was possible without hurting himself or compromising speed, because his only contacts with organised sectarian criminals ‘over the water’ had led to a sudden and worrying lack of ammunition available. His memories of cowering in a soggy ditch, crawling a few yards and popping up to fire the magazine from his rifle in bursts before reloading and repeating, were vivid and unwelcome. Ever since the day he had finished his tour and returned to a maroon beret, he’d lobbied his own regiment to increase the standard ammunition issued to each man on active patrol, and each time the bureaucrats shot down his suggestions.

In the special forces he found the welcome rule-bending approach to such matters; if he or any of his men wanted a certain weapon or calibre for a particular deployment and could justify it, they got it. If they wanted new kit, more demolitions, then they requisitioned it and they got it. In the last requisitions they made,
the one for the barrow-load of 9mm rounds for their four MP5SDs as well as their pistols, they had also managed to get their hands on a pair of AA-12s.

As far as weaponry went, Downes knew these to be possibly the evillest things on the planet, with the possible exception of a bear trap. Both Mac and Dezzy carried one and they were the polar opposite to Smiffy’s silent killer of a stolen Soviet sniper rifle. Both 12-bore shotguns were fully automatic, and both were loaded with an eight-round magazine. They also carried a replacement magazine in the form of a twenty-round drum, but the sheer size and bulk of them made it impossible to be carried as a back-up when equipped with the high-capacity load. Checking that it was secure, Downes recalled that Dezzy also carried one, along with the small demolitions pack and a few claymore anti-personnel mines. Along with the big machine gun and three belts of ammunition, Downes knew that he would be overloaded, even though he was the exact opposite of what people expected a special forces soldier to be. Dez wasn’t a huge man, but his strength and stamina were like that of an ant and a goat that had been spliced in a laboratory. Even still, Downes wanted him unburdened.

“Dezzy, give me the shotgun. You’re overloaded.”

‘Aww, come on!” Dezzy whined as though his commander was his father telling him that he couldn’t bring a toy.

“So, the MP5, sidearm and gympy aren’t enough for you? Are you planning on taking on the entire bloody zombie apocalypse by yourself? Don’t be a twat; hand it over.”

Dezzy glared for a second, his sullen face bordering on the belligerent as he removed the attitude only seconds before Downes would have an opinion on the matter. Dropping the kit in his hands, namely a large machine gun normally serviced by two men, he unslung and handed over the shotgun.

“I like to keep this handy,” Dez said with a smirk and an appalling American accent, “for close encounters.”

“Drum mag?” Downes asked, completely ignoring the Aliens quote and taking the gun. He reached out his other hand to receive it before turning to Mac and having him help add the extra armament to his back.

“We good?” Downes asked them, getting nods in return as the four of them filed out of their little den carrying enough firepower to start, or end, a small conflict.

* * *

The main pilot, Barrett, was his normal miserable self. Mac put that down to living in the pocket of his co-pilot, who permanently cracked jokes and quoted films, as well as the loadmaster, who was either asleep or else played music which, in a world where silence meant survival, seemed unwise.

Counterintuitive, I think is the word, Mac mused to himself, as was his way. He liked to find the longer words for everyday things as he believed a wider vocabulary made him more sophisticated. Separated him from the beasts. For a man who only spoke when he had to, a wider vocabulary seemed a wasteful hobby.

He glared at the two southerners, waiting for them to switch on and drop their constant clowning, which they always did the second it was time to concentrate. Downes stepped aboard the aircraft, followed by Smiffy, who turned to reach out a hand to take the heavy machine gun from his friend, who then climbed up himself. Mac took one long, lingering panoramic view of the inside of the huge square and the inner courtyard.

“Mac,” Downes shouted, raising his voice again as the whining noise of the starting engines ramped up, “let’s go.”

“Aye,” Mac replied to himself, “still got a bad feeling about this one,” and climbed up into the Sea King.

The flight to Yeovilton took less than half an hour and their arrival was marked by a slowing of their air speed and a looping, banking manoeuvre to allow a clear view of the area.

“Fence is down in a few places,” Morris’ voice came through the headset from the cockpit, “looks like the base was trampled from north to south a while ago.”

“Any sign of movement?” Mac asked just as Downes’ mouth opened to say the same thing. The two men’s eyes met, both waiting for the answer to crackle into their ears over the deafening whine of the engines and rotor blades. That pause stretched on almost reassuringly; reassuringly in the sense that the immediate answer wasn’t an affirmative, and also reassuring in that the man was obviously looking and not giving some half-arsed answer which could put them in danger.

“Nothing moving,” Morris said in a clear, flat tone.

“Okay, put us down as close to the refuelling point as possible,” Downes said as he put an automatic hand to the boom mic attached to his headset and unclipped his belt to rise, “swing by and show me the landing site,” he said as he gripped on tight and leaned his head around to look out of the open side door.

The pilot took them around, slowing almost to a static hover as Brinklow pointed straight down to a rank of large fuel tanks. Downes called into the headset that he had seen it and that they should take them in to land. He turned to face his team and gave instructions, “One-eighty cover. Push out twenty and drop; Dezzy centre with the gympy,” he finished, putting the biggest firepower, that of the GPMG in the hands of his demolitions man, in the middle of their small defence so as to give it the best arc of fire available. He didn’t need to add that they should keep it as quiet as possible unless forced to go loud by numbers they couldn’t deal with easily.

They all unstrapped, readied themselves and hung on tight as the wheels bumped into the tarmac to signify that they should jump down. Their legs bent under the excess weight of their gear and armaments, and then forced themselves straight again to make them upright through sheer power and strength of will. Fanning out to cover the side from where a threat could come, the four men rested into position and kept their senses fully alert over the sights of their guns. Their senses of sound and smell were useless, as behind them the stink of hot oil and exhaust gases swirled around under the deafening rotor wash, and forced them to use sight alone as Brinklow rushed around with Morris to refuel the helicopter.

Their concentration was such that the refuelling was completed in a time which seemed too short, but Brinklow was tapping Downes on the shoulder before cupping his hands between his own mouth and the Major’s ear.

“Refuelled,” he yelled over the noise of the engines ramping up again, “small arms locker in there if you want it?” he shouted, pointing to a nearby single-storey building which had the appearance of a guard station. Downes nodded, turning and running low to Mac to use hand signals to indicate he should follow him. He tried to catch the eyes of the others, but their position and concentration was such that he had to jog the distances to both of them and repeat the process of giving hand signals for them to redeploy and cover the helicopter with just the two of them.

Brinklow followed Downes and Mac at a respectful distance so as to stay well away from any contact that might present itself.

The two soldiers stacked up on the door and Downes waited for Mac’s hand to rest on his shoulder before placing his left hand on the door handle and turning it. Letting the door swing open a fraction, he fought against the natural urge to reach to his chest and throw in a flashbang to stun anyone in the room; instead, he pushed the door wide and called out a hello to see if anyone or anything inside moved.

Nothing.

The ambient noise of the nearby helicopter still drowned out any chance of detecting the slight sounds of small movement, so he went in to clear the room. Mac followed, going right to Downes’ left as their gun barrels swung left and right, always pointing in the direction of their eyes. Two doors came off the main room and they were cleared similarly, resulting in the posture of both men relaxing as they stood tall and lowered their guns.

“Weapons locker,” Brinklow said, pointing to a badly painted wooden cupboard of a size and design that appeared out of place, “and ammunition,” he said, indicating a heavy lock box underneath a desk secured with a heavy padlock.

Downes opened the tall cupboard, finding the contents to be a squad’s worth of new personal arms. Eight SA80 rifles and a longer, bigger version called the LSW, or light support weapon, which was effectively a smaller calibre version of the heavier GPMG machine guns. The LSW was significantly more man-portable than the older GPMGs, or just a longer-barrelled version of the SA80, however you chose to view them. A locking bar ran through the rack, preventing the weapons from being removed, which was secured with another bar, far smaller than the one on the lock box, and Downes turned to Mac.

“Dezzy got a cutting torch in his dems kit?”

Mac shrugged, turning to the door and checking the outside before jogging across the open expanse towards the helicopter.

Downes saw Mac take the big machine gun, kneeling down to settle behind it, as Dez ran back to the helicopter and reappeared with a black rucksack which he shrugged into, and jogged towards the building. That rucksack, the team’s demolitions kit, was usually condensed for whatever option they had, but having the helicopter to carry them, Dezzy had added everything he could find to cater for their needs.

“What do you need, Boss?” he asked as he strode in. In answer, Downes pointed at the locking bar and the heavy padlock on the metal box under the counter. Dez nodded, dropped the bag and rummaged for a set of heavy bolt croppers. The tool made short work of the smaller lock, with only the strength of the man’s arms needing to be employed. Snapping the lock away, he knelt and began to work on the far thicker metal of that padlock, making difficult crimps into the bar at intervals before dropping the tool and reaching into his kit to spark up the small gas cutting torch he carried. Downes knew that without a far larger gas tank, the tool wasn’t going to last for long, but it didn’t have to. Even such a small prize of a few hundred rounds of 5.56 was worth the effort, so Dez worked the torch into the gap where he had cut crimps into the metal, killing the torch to snatch up the croppers before the metal cooled too much. He sat down and brought up his knees to brace one arm of the tool against his knees, with both hands on the furthest arm away.

A grunt built up low in his belly, building into a growl of massive effort as the long arms of the tools flexed, before a muted click sounded. Relaxing, he prised the tool open again and used his gloved hands to swivel the hot remains of the lock and remove it before shaking his hand at the radiating heat.

“Good to go,” he said, looking up at Downes with a smile and breathing hard from the effort.

“Then let’s get gone.”

TWENTY-FOUR

In some bizarre mirror occurrence of the last time Peter had been inside a house when it was broken into, he grabbed the girl and bundled her ahead of him into the airing cupboard. To her credit, she never once resisted him and never once made a single sound; she understood the importance of speed and silence. Throwing himself inside on top of spare sheets and towels as he had done before, he cursed himself as he remembered leaving his camouflage backpack and pitchfork on the rug at the end of the bed where they had been when the noises began. Panicking at the lack of reassurance of having the shotgun in his sweaty grip or the trusted ‘sticker’ of his pitchfork, his grip found the backup spike and held tight to it.

The wood of the front door frame cracked and splintered and the muffled sounds of boots on carpet echoed up the stairs to where the crack of light came through to their hiding place. Amber’s hand sought desperately in the dark for his and their fingers interlocked tightly, and although Peter wanted to keep two hands ready to use the only weapon at his disposal, he could not bring himself to let her go.

Muffled voices, spoken low and not whispered, carried inarticulately up the stairs to where he hid, but they gave no clues as to who or what they were.

They’re alive, he told himself, not that it makes them any less dangerous.

His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps, louder now as they combined with the creaks of the stairs and the banging of his own pulse thudding in his ears to drown out the minute details. He breathed steadily, trying to force his heartrate to slow down, and failing.

When it was just him, before he was responsible for Amber, he would have allowed his fear to dominate him and take over, but now, with another life which he saw as more important than his own, he steeled himself and prepared to fight.

They aren’t taking her, too, he swore to himself, I’m not losing someone else.

Just as he thought this, two soft clicks grabbed his attention. Peering into the gap of the door and trying to interpret the slight shifting of shadows, Peter tried to make sense of what he was hearing and tried even harder to keep his rapid breathing quiet.

* * *

Johnson took his turn using the crowbar on the door. While not as overtly muscular as Bufford, his longer limbs and height advantage made him very strong. Bufford had the stocky look of a power-lifter, whereas Johnson just looked big.

The door came open easily and the second two behind him made their entry. Buffs and Astrid moved fluidly, working as a well-drilled pair who had no intrinsic link of training together, although their efficiency spoke of hours drilling from the same manual. They cleared the downstairs rapidly and effectively, muttering to the other two who had filed in to adopt defensive stances, then pointed out a small, wheeled truck loaded with food cans and packets enough to sustain a person for a few days. Nodding to Bufford, Astrid took the lead as she climbed the stairs quietly, freezing near the top of the stairs at a soft double click of the SBS man’s fingers. She glanced back briefly to see where he was pointing. Her eyes followed the line of his outstretched finger to fall on the strange double-pronged spear propped against a bedroom wall and a battered green camouflage rucksack below with the obvious grip of a modified, sawn-off shotgun protruding from the opening. Astrid and Buffs locked eyes, retreating a few paces down the stairs to give themselves space.

“What’s going on?” Johnson asked softly as they stepped carefully backwards whilst keeping their eyes on the top of the stairs.

Buffs came down first, cupping his hand and placing his mouth close enough to Johnson’s face for his beard to catch in the SSM’s stubble.

“Signs of someone holed-up,” he muttered, “weapons and equipment.”

Johnson pulled back and regarded him, looking at Larsen, who kept her eyes glued to the top of the stairs with her gun raised. Deciding what to do in a heartbeat, Johnson stepped forward to the foot of the stairs and called out in a powerful but unthreatening voice.

“Hello? We don’t mean any harm, I assure you…” he said, turning an ear towards the stairs to listen intently for any sound in response. He heard nothing.

“We’re from the British Army,” he announced, ignoring the fact it that what he had said applied only to himself, “and we know you’re up there. We are just looking for supplies,” he explained, not bothering to say that they were clearing the village to make it safer, “and we won’t hurt you or try to take what you have.”

Still no response, so he waited.

* * *

As soon as the deep voice rang out from downstairs, Amber’s fingers dug into Peter’s hand and her breathing doubled in panicked intensity. He squeezed her hand back, trying to convey through touch that it was okay and that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, just as the words the big, deep voice of the man used wormed into his brain.

They’re army, he thought with sudden elation, but if they really are from the army why aren’t there more of them? Where are their tanks?

As these conflicting thoughts bounced around his head the voice called out again.

“I’m coming upstairs,” it said loud and clear, but careful and somehow soft at the same time, “I’m not going to hurt anyone, you have my word.”

Both Peter and Amber were breathing hard now, and the boy’s sweaty grip tightened in waves on the spike gripped in his hand as his pulse surged through his adrenaline-flooded body. The footsteps sounded, louder this time, and making Peter think of a giant bearing down on them. He had nothing left to do, nowhere to go, and for the briefest of moments he became the scared child he had been before everything in the world had changed.

Screwing his eyes shut tightly, he pretended that he wasn’t there, as though the childish belief would protect him. When the footsteps stopped outside the door to the airing cupboard and a large shadow passed by, Peter felt a coolness descend on him. His breathing became controlled, his senses sharpened, and his body stopped trembling. He didn’t understand the physiological responses to adrenaline, but he didn’t need to; his body was saturated with the natural drug, and he levelled out at the point where he was in the most total control of himself he had ever been. Eyes narrowing, he shook his hand free of Amber’s, kicked his feet out to open the door and dropped onto the carpeted landing in one movement. His body had faced the choice of fight or flight, and his body had chosen the former.

* * *

Johnson, his hands up and open and the gun dangling just above his waist and bouncing gently from leg to leg, bypassed the airing cupboard in favour of clearing the bedrooms first, and froze as a sound behind him ripped the air. The sound made him think that it was involuntary, as though the person making it was simply so scared or angry that it came out of their mouth unintentionally. He whipped around, hands reaching for the grip of the weapon instinctively, but abandoning the move and making to raise his hands again. He stood up straight again after having moved into a crouch when threatened by the noise, when he saw his attacker.

The boy was unkempt, even if he was clean. His hair was too long and scruffy, the clothes he wore were ill-fitting and obviously scavenged, and in his hand was what looked like a home-made ice pick. The boy drew back his teeth in an animalistic snarl of rage and raised the weapon like the shower scene in Psycho.

Johnson reached out, grasped the wrist as easily as if he were picking flowers, and plucked the weapon from the weak hand as though no resistance was offered. He kept hold of the wrist, not gripping it painfully but holding on enough that the boy was on tiptoes and off balance and spoke to him.

“It’s okay,” he growled over the effort of dangling the feral child, “it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The boy grunted with the effort of trying to break free, reaching up with his left hand to try and prise open the fingers as wide as sausages and as tough as leather. He even tried to haul himself up to bite the hand, but lacked the reach. Johnson tried patience, but his aching body and lack of experience at having his instructions ignored snapped something inside of him.

“That’s e-bloody ‘nuff!” he barked, seeing the boy freeze and stare at him, “we’re not here to hurt you, I said, now pack this in,” he continued in only a fractionally softer tone before lifting the boy slightly and releasing his grip to see him fall down to the carpet.

The boy spun and fixed him with a look of rage, then the eyes seemed to change. They lost their murderous fiery intensity and flashed instantly glossy to show where the tears pricked at him. Johnson didn’t know if it was anger, fear or even relief but the sight of it made him soften.

* * *

Peter’s sudden aggression abandoned him as quickly as it had taken over. The man wasn’t a monster, and he wasn’t one of the ones who had dragged away Amber’s mother.

He doesn’t look like one of them, anyway, he thought.

His claims to be from the army seemed true enough, as the man wore the right equipment and had rank badges on his sleeves, and something about his equipment made Peter feel certain that it was well-worn even before everything started. The man spoke to him again, more calmly this time, and repeated that he wasn’t going to hurt him. He seemed to deflate as he spoke, seemed to get smaller and appear less threatening, like he was changing modes or something.

“What’s your name, son?” he asked.

Peter, sat on the floor, looking up at the huge man who he realised was bigger, much bigger than his father, and for some reason, he couldn’t make his mouth work to form words. Noises behind him made him jolt, and he saw two more faces on the staircase; one bearded and wild and the other angular, fair and framed by blonde hair tied up loosely. He turned back to the first man and found his voice.

“You promise?” he croaked, throat dry from the adrenaline.

“We promise,” answered the blonde woman in a voice that sounded strange to Peter’s ears, “we won’t hurt you.”

At the sound of her voice a stifled cry came out of the partly open airing cupboard and all eyes except Peter’s shot to stare at the gap. He slowly rose up from the floor, fearfully regressing weeks to worry that being in close proximity to adults would result in renewed casual violence towards his small body, and he switched his anxious gaze between them as he reached back inside their hiding place.

“It’s okay,” he said softly over the muffled sounds of protesting squeaks, “it’s okay, come on.”

Peter half pulled, half helped her out of the slatted wooden shelf and heard gasps from behind him. She came out, gripping her small arms around his neck and burying her face into his neck so as not to see the new people they had run from.

“I’m Peter,” he said quietly as he stared at one spot on the wall to overcome his conflicting feelings of defeat and relief, “and this is Amber.”

“Is she your sister?” the big man asked him gently.

“No,” Peter said, turning to look at him and wrongly direct some pent-up anger in his direction, “she was left alone after people broke into a house and took her mum away,” he said in a tone that sounded like more of an accusation than he intended. His eyes stayed glued to the man’s, watching the anger and indignation mirrored in his face, and communication something verging on mutual happened between them.

“Come downstairs with us?” the woman said in her curious voice, “and tell us what happened?”

They did. Peter collected his weapons and bag from where he had left them and none of the others tried to take them from him. They sat down, giving the children space and time to relax around them, but Peter’s eyes were constantly drawn to their weapons. He checked them all in turn; the big man he had first tried to attack with his spike, the bearded man who might have looked like a circus strong man if he hadn’t been dressed in black and carrying weapons; the tall and almost ghostly man who was much younger than the other males who had broken in to their hiding place, and who seemed to drift instead of moving, even with the massive rifle slung over his back like some kind of Robin Hood. He unnerved Peter a little, but he got the impression that he and Amber unnerved the man in return.

What surprised the boy was Amber’s behaviour; she had emerged from his neck with a red, wet face to stare at the blonde woman and wear a strange hint of a smile.

“My name is Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson,” the big man said before he seemed to wince and decide to start again, “my name is Dean.”

Peter nodded at him.

“This is Sergeant Bufford,” he said as he indicated the bearded man and realised that he knew nothing else about him other than his unit.

“Alex, but call me Buffs,” the beard said, cracking in half with a smile.

“This is Marine Enfield,” Johnson went on as he gestured towards the younger man, “he’s a sniper.”

Peters eyes went wide with boyish adoration, but he quicker contained himself.

“And I am Astrid,” said the woman before she could be introduced. At the sound of her voice Amber tensed a little, turning back into Peter’s neck. Interpreting her reaction to mean that she wanted to know more about the woman, Peter asked her a question.

“Are you in the army too?” he asked, having taken in her equipment and sensed something about her mannerism that said she was indeed some kind of soldier.

“Yes, but in the armed forces of Norway. Do you know where that is?” she responded. Peter shook his head.

“Go to the top of Scotland,” Enfield interrupted with a small smile and the bitterness of a marine forced to train for arctic warfare in sub-zero temperatures, “turn right and stop when you’ve found the coldest place on earth.”

“Ah, so you have been to my country?” Astrid responded gently with a chuckle.

The conversation stalled until Johnson spoke again.

“I think we’ve accidentally taken over your house, Peter,” he said, seeing the answer clearly on the boy’s face, “and eaten some of your supplies, not counting what you had in the cart ready to go. Very clever that, by the way.”

Peter smiled at the compliment despite himself, giving him the confidence to ask a question of his own.

“Did you use all of the hot water?”

Guilty glances among the four newcomers confirmed that they had.

“It’s okay,” Peter said, “it’s sunny so it will fill up soon.”

“Solar panels?” Astrid asked, “I didn’t think you had them here yet?”

“Yes,” Peter told her before changing the subject, “so do you have a camp or something?”

More glances bounced around the room until Johnson spoke again.

“We did have, twice actually,” he said in a low voice, “but we got separated after a helicopter crash. A lot of people…” he trailed off after a subtle throat-clearing noise from Astrid, “a lot of people didn’t make it. There are two more of us, another man and another woman, in the other house. Will you come back with us?”

Peter looked at Amber, who stared right back at him and shrugged her little shoulders as if to say that it was his call. That he could decide their fate. That the boy who had such a biologically ingrained fear of adults could choose for not only himself but for her, too.

If it hadn’t been for her, if he hadn’t thought that he could provide for her and keep her safe, he probably would have chosen differently.

TWENTY-FIVE

The flight over the island was a depressing one. Hundreds of zombies wandered around looking for anything to spark their interest. Morris’ focus was drawn inexorably out of the cockpit window towards what could only have been one of the faster ones wearing a blood-blackened military uniform and making leap after desperate leap at a small flock of white gulls. They evaded the jumps easily, always flapping their wings and skipping clear of the lunging attacks to disperse and dart back to peck at the food source they were unwilling to give up. Feathers swirled around the display, making it clear that at least one of them hadn’t been quick enough or lucky enough.

The island was totally overrun, teeming with Screechers and making any attempt to rescue the ammunition or fuel left there simply too dangerous. Worse still, there was no sign of the helicopter there. Following the flight path they had done on so many relay trips previously, Barrett moved the helicopter at less than half the speed he had before to allow more eyes to cover more ground. Morris pointed ahead and far off course to their right, indicated a lazy spire of wispy, black smoke for Barrett to wordlessly bank the aircraft and point the bulbous nose in that direction. A little over a minute later they were in a hover at a hundred feet up, looking down on the charred and twisted remains of their sister helicopter, which had merged with the scorched stone of the church it had crashed into. Bodies were strewn around the wreckage, one of them being fed on by a young man wearing filthy blue jeans and a torn shirt as he craned his neck up to reach for the spinning machine far out of his grasp.

They turned away, the tail of the aircraft spinning around, to aim their nose in the direction of the base, and dipped forwards to leave the site of the crash without noticing the trail leading away through the long grass. Their heading led them directly towards another pillar of smoke.

The base, even after the daylight horror of the island and the crash site, made their hearts drop in their chests. The side of the base, which had been previously untouched, with the exception of a couple of downed sections of fencing, now looked like a burning, wrecked ant farm. Screechers pinged aimlessly about, pulled in all directions by the sounds and smells of the recent warzone to have erupted there. The building containing the vehicles pulsed thick smoke out of the large hangar doors and all around there were smears of blood, scorched patches of ground and groups of zombies feeding on the bodies of those too far destroyed to turn and join the ranks of the enemy. Silence reigned inside the helicopter, even as the SAS men leaned out of the doors to look at the horrors below. Barrett eventually decided that they had seen enough and turned to head for their new base.

Flying slowly and not too high, Brinklow looked out of the side door in a daze. One hand rested on the fixed gun and one gripped the fuselage as his brain tried to make sense of what he had seen. There were no answers, at least none that explained the obvious carnage, and his rage grew with each feature that blurred by below him. He could feel himself building up with each tree or building that passed until the shambling, loping line of corpses he saw in one field finally made him snap.

“Slow it down,” he called into the mic savagely, hauling back on the action of the gun and bending into it. The helicopter slowed, and he began to go to work on the rearmost zombies in the group, cutting them down with efficient bursts of fire. He fired four, five, six bursts with the last one cutting down a small knot of three. They all appeared to be moving in the same direction with purpose; no deviation or wandering off after wildlife or other distractions, and just as Brinklow pointed the barrel ahead, he understood why.

“Fuck me,” he shouted, startling them all, “get ahead of these bastards and set her down. Now!” he yelled. At the tone of his voice the SAS men sparked into life, not knowing what, but still knowing that something would require their attention. Barrett complied, not focusing on what Brinklow was shooting at as he battled his own dark thoughts, but now he surged ahead and swung the tail around to show the open side door to the advancing line of enemy.

“Come on!” Brinklow shouted, waving desperately as the beleaguered soldier staggered forwards near the point of collapse. That was what Brinklow had seen, they now knew, the Screechers were following a meal and had so very nearly caught up to their running buffet. The ones trailing back were the slower ones, but the faster ones, the Limas, were so close behind him that he could probably smell them.

Brinklow found himself pushed bodily aside by Dezzy, who made an exaggerated hand gesture whilst shouting, “Drop! Get Down!”

The soldier understood, throwing himself face-first flat into the long grass. As he did, Dez unleashed a torrent of automatic fire at head height just where he had been a fraction of a second before. The three faster ones, who were no fewer than ten paces behind the man and gaining, were decapitated in a flash, their heads erupting in clouds of pink mist as their lifeless, or more appropriately inanimate, bodies dropped like sacks of potatoes.

“Come on!” Brinklow roared, having moved around the machine gun to stand in the open doorway as the man struggled to his feet and half fell the remaining distance to safety. Brinklow grabbed both of his outstretched arms and hauled for all he was worth, sliding the man bodily about as he shouted, “Up! Up!” into the mic. The pilot responded, the aircraft surged sickeningly into the sky, and they were away.

“Hey!” the loadmaster shouted in the man’s face as another headset was forced over his ears, “What the fuck happened?” The man’s eyes fluttered, and his answers came with the heavy expulsion of each laboured breath. He had clearly been running for miles, pursued every step of the way until random chance conspired with fate to save him.

“Attacked,” he gasped, “whole fucking… herd of them… in a building…”

“So what happened?” Brinklow snapped.

“Fucking… Nevin…” the man said, “bastard left us… there to… die.”

TWENTY-SIX

“Let’s go then,” Sinclair said, his voice sounding weak to Nevin in his intentionally chosen position of the least responsibility and danger. He ran forward with them, never pushing to the front or dropping to the back in case they were attacked. He hung back tactically, again to avoid anything resembling hard work, as the stiff handles employed to wind open the hangar doors were ratcheted around to inch open those doors bit by bit. Nevin cowered in cover, protected by everyone and never placing himself in a position where he would have to fight. As soon as the doors were open enough, he let three others slip through the gap first as the handles were continually wound for the gap to grow wider. When no sounds of alarm or gunfire came from inside, he slipped out of the sunshine and into the cool, dark interior lit only by the weak bulb lining the walls above head height. He blinked and let out an involuntary shiver at the change of environment.

“Nevin,” snapped the voice of a corporal, “don’t just stand there like a fucking ornament; get working, you bellend!”

Nevin’s hand slipped inside the pocket where the old revolver sat, touching it briefly for reassurance before he ran off to start working; only his agenda was different. He planned to get himself alone in a vehicle and as soon as they were out of there, he would break away and do his own thing. He would desert from the army, what was left of it, and he would never look back.

Searching the area nearest the door for something appropriate, his eyes rested on the small, low-to-the ground profile of a Ferret. This was the kind of thing that the big bastard Johnson would normally kick around in with a radio operator and driver. The thing looked like a smaller version of their Fox cars which Nevin usually drove, only this was one of the rare enclosed versions with a turret. His teeth flashed white in the low light as a smile spread across his face, looking at the turret which housed a mounted thirty-calibre machine gun. Climbing up and flipping open the hatch, he lowered himself inside to reach for the fuel pump and ignition switches, before hitting the starter button to bark the Rolls Royce engine into life.

All around him, other engines were sparking into similar life as Nevin juddered the little scout car forward and out into the sunlight. The mission was a two-stage thing, because the vehicles on their own were only so useful without the ammunition to equip them. The obvious logic of the British Army dictated that the two elements would be stored in different places, so the requirement was to collect vehicles and then move to the ammunition dump to equip them, and Nevin didn’t want to turn his coat before he had some bullets for the heavy machine gun above him.

* * *

The raised voice of Sergeant Sinclair sparked a sequence of events that led to devastation. All of the trapped zombies inside came to life in a weirdly organic way as the few nearest the wall where the sound came from began to animate and moan as they hissed air in through their noses to try and detect the source. That excitement spread like a rumour, with zombies eight or nine bodies back from the source mimicking the animation of the others without knowing why, until within a minute, every one of the dormant monstrosities was riled up and moaning and bumping into one another. The cacophony they raised went unnoticed by the people who had awoken them as the growling engines masked the sound of impending horror.

One of the zombies, late to the party as one of the last to be infected by the unexplained excitement, sparked into animated hissing and movement until another one, far bigger, collided with her as she was off balance. It flew backwards and fell, slamming its narrow shoulders into a horizontal bar on a door, clicking open the lock and swinging the door wide. The suddenly louder sounds of engines filled the building, making the noise level roll and rise in intensity as the remnants of the swarm began to surge towards the noise and crush together to escape through the open door. The one who had freed them, albeit inadvertently, never regained her feet as the horde trampled over her. The sounds of crunching and cracking bones were nearly inaudible over the hissing and groaning, as were the sickening squelches of her body being flattened by each footfall. The first twenty bodies to step over her made it impossible for her to mobilise again and regain her feet. The next twenty flattened her entirely, leaving only her skull and snapping teeth moving as other bodies tripped over her to fall and suffer the same fate, before her lower jaw was dislocated and half removed by a heavy boot. The last thing her cloudy eye saw before she was snuffed out entirely was a single point of a high-heeled shoe descending into her eye socket to puncture the brain and stick there, tripping the wearer slightly to stagger over her skull and leave her to her final rest as a greasy smear fanning out from the open doorway.

The remnants of the swarm poured their exodus into the open with renewed animation, heading for the sounds of life.

* * *

“Everybody load up,” Sinclair said, repeating his order to his left and right as he waved his free hand towards the six fighting vehicles and small fuel tanker. The men providing cover ran to comply, dropping their lower bodies into hatches and keeping their eyes alert over the sights of their weapons. The journey to the ammunition store was a short one, and to speed their progress Sinclair ordered the gates and fences to be driven through by the lead vehicle; a replacement Spartan for Maxwell’s Assault Troop.

Nevin, again near enough in the middle of the procession to maximise his survival chances, followed the rear of the wagon in front and felt the nervous anticipation rise inside him. He would break away soon, somehow, and he would be free of them.

Maybe I’ll even go back and find better stuff, he thought to himself, imagining the spoils of scavenging when unchecked by the stifling discipline of the army, before thinking of the spoils which could be found elsewhere. All he needed was somewhere he could hide away, somewhere with plenty of food and drink – above all he craved to drink – and wait out the whole mess until rescue came and he could worm back into life as though nothing had happened.

He'd claim that he was cut off, obviously, say that he’d bravely sought the rest of his squadron but assumed them all lost. He lapsed into something resembling a daydream as he drove slowly through the camp, with his wheels intermittently rattling over a downed gate or tangled mess of fencing.

Arriving at the ammo dump, he climbed out, mindful that his was the only vehicle not to require the 7.62 or 30mm rounds, and knowing also that he couldn’t trust his ability to bully or intimidate anyone else into doing his heavy lifting this time. He found what he needed, dragging two large boxes of the heavy thirty-calibre bullets out to beside his small scout car, and prised the wooden casing open with his bayonet to rest it on the roof, before climbing back up and inside to load the first belt into the turret weapon.

Because of the sounds of engines, he didn’t hear the first shouts of alarm. He didn’t notice the running men fleeing for the safety of the building or their new vehicles. Instead, the first sign he saw of anything being wrong was when he popped his head back out of the hatch and saw a grey-skinned, mottled corpse
standing on the roof of the Spartan, holding a man up by his webbing straps. Nevin watched in terrible slow-motion as the arms contracted, muscles bunching against the weight of the struggling soldier, and the open mouth met the upcoming neck as the man pumped desperately with his bayonet to uselessly puncture the abdomen and chest of his attacker. The zombie bit down, tearing warm flesh and rupturing blood vessels as it tore a chunk away and chewed to spill hot swathes of bright, red blood over itself.

* * *

As the crowd exiting the building lost momentum due to the dilution of the noises outside, the change in pitch and tone of the engine sounds as the small convoy drove away served to focus them once more. Rounding the building into sight of where the people had been only moments before, their heads turned to stare in the direction of the fading noise. As one, with a single mind and common purpose, the horde surged in that direction as though they were a flock of birds in flight.

As was always the way, the faster ones pushed their way through the mass to lead from the front, and they pushed out ahead of the more common, slower variety. This sparked the followers to push harder to catch up with the leaders, as if they somehow knew that these special ones, these messiahs, would lead them towards food. They walked through damaged fences and ruined gateways, increasing their pace with every step towards the growing sounds, until they rounded a ninety-degree bend and saw their prize. And again, as one, they attacked.

* * *

Nevin froze, not knowing what to do for the briefest of moments. The irony of his position was totally lost on him; for a man who hated being told what to do, he didn’t realise that his brain was waiting for precisely that to happen and he lost valuable time until his brain forced a reaction. Men ran in all directions as gunfire rang out. They were disorganised, caught out in the open, and only one of them had already loaded a large enough weapon to stem the tide of incoming monsters.

Had Nevin been switched on, had he thought about anyone but himself, then he would have advanced the scout car thirty metres, climbed back and up into the turret, and degraded the attack with automatic fire from his heavy machine gun. The thirty-calibre bullets at that range would slice through so much dead flesh and kill five or six of them with each round, but he didn’t act. Didn’t do what he should to protect the lives of a dozen other men, each of whom was laying down his lives for the sake of others.

Nevin didn’t think like that. He thought for himself. He acted out of fear and self-interest.

Instead of driving towards the danger to rescue the situation, which was not yet lost, he slammed the Ferret into reverse and blasted away in a growling roar of exhaust noise until he was far removed from the danger. He froze again, not being aware of his position in the camp relative to any known escape route, and he climbed back into the turret to better see his surroundings. His hands on the controls of the gun, he swivelled the turret to find a way out before his eyes rested on the few bodies loping towards him at something resembling a drunken jog. Unthinkingly, and ignoring all lessons of fire safety and weapon discipline he had ever received, he opened fire on them, spraying bullets in undisciplined clouds instead of concentrating them in bursts to achieve his objective. Behind the attackers, exposed in the open and almost overrun, were the rest of the men of Sinclair’s detachment. The bullets from Nevin’s wild firing did indeed cut down his attackers, even though his fire served only to disable the majority and not render them safe, but it also stitched into the only semblance of ordered defence around the vehicle Sinclair had occupied, and it had done so just as one of his men was aiming one of their Carl Gustav shoulder-mounted rockets.

The man knelt behind the tentative cover of a Fox, aiming for the main mass of the attack coming at them, and his shot would probably have scattered and ruined twenty or more of the leading ranks of enemy, to give them at least a scrap of a chance of survival. Instead, a single thirty-calibre bullet entered his body and shattered his right hip, spinning him distortedly to land on his left side with his head turned towards the open doors of the ammunition dump.

The rocket fired, showing a huge back-blast and issuing an echoing boom of a high-powered rifle which was precisely what the weapon was. The heavy round flew unseen through the doors, puncturing the thin metal skin of walls to detonate against a heavy steel locker containing the smokescreen bombs. Those smoke screens were the worst thing to have been hit, as the heat and force of the impact ignited the white phosphorous inside to raise the temperature inside the metal cabinet to an impossibly high level. The rest of the white phosphorous also caught fire, bursting thick, white smoke through the cracks in the cabinet and distorting the metal with the heat until it began to sag and melt. The ammunition stacked and stored nearby, ready to load into the vehicles, suffered from the heat and began to ‘cook off’ as the accelerant charge inside their casings heated sufficiently to fire their projectiles. Each explosion caused another, until the air was filled with the sound of a firework show from hell as rounds of all calibres blew until they combined to create a seemingly endless detonation that shook the ground and crushed Nevin’s eardrums even through the sealed armour of his wagon.

Scrambling back down to the driving seat, he threw it into gear again and drove hard away from the rolling thunder to crash through fences and bump over the uneven ground.

He laughed desperately, almost maniacally as he drove away, his laughter lapsing and devolving into bursts of sobbing and tears, before the laughter broke through again. It was the final shred of decency in his body being forced out; exorcised by his cowardice and cruel, selfish nature.

* * *

Only one other man survived the swarming zombies and savage explosions on the base. Having been on the wrong, or perhaps in hindsight right side of the building when the attack was first detected, Trooper Povey faced a choice not dissimilar to Nevin’s. Even though most of the detachment were from Sinclair’s unit and he belonged to Maxwell’s Assault Troop, the men under attack were still his, regardless of who their boss was. Povey knew that they were all one, and his true nature showed as he ran towards the fight and not away from it.

As he ran, the air from his right punched at his senses as heavy bullets pounded past. He ducked away instinctively, hitting the rough ground and rolling to retreat from the fire, which he traced from the broken bodies of a knot of Screechers back to the source. Seeing the dull green of the Ferret and wasting half a second as his brain registered the sheer rarity of finding a turreted version instead of the normal open-top variant, he looked back to his left as the huge booming sound echoed out. Seconds later came the crackling, shattering reports of ammunition cooking off, yet still Povey forced himself to his feet to run towards his men, just as the first blossoming fireballs and screaming sounds of tortured ricochets rang out. Another blast knocked him back down and focused his brain, but only sparked him into movement when a stream of zombies lined up their sights on him and began to advance.

Povey ran.

He ran out of the base and across country, fighting with uneven footing and a gathering chase every step of the way. He managed to keep ahead of the pursuit, only just, having paused twice to unload the last two magazines for his submachine gun to thin the ranks of the pack on his heels. Exhaustion, dehydration and fear boiled his senses into total panic, which served only to keep his legs moving. Every step he took threatened to be fractionally slower than the last until he knew with absolute certainty that he would eventually fall. Weird memories filed through his head in non-chronological order, having no relevance to the situation and making no sense to him, until one memory seemed more vivid than the others. It was the memory of a GPMG firing, and the feel of a helicopter’s rotor wash overhead, until the aircraft in his imagination descended before him and a man screamed at him to get down.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Nevin drove until his panic abated. He didn’t know how far or how hard he had driven, but he was certain that his inability to make choices had led him in any path other than one heading directly away from the camp.

His first realisation of this was when his foot hit the brakes in response to what his eyes were seeing, but his mind hadn’t told him he had recognised yet. He found himself on a grass hill with deep swathes of chalk-coloured rock protruding from the small tussocks where stiff, long grass sprouted up to sway in the breeze.

He sat and stared out of the driver’s small viewing window at what he realised with dawning reality was the sea. Far, far in the distance to the south, the horizon seemed to hold a dark, almost storm-like quality which would have given any person capable of rational thought a feeling of foreboding. Nevin felt no such warning, despite his knowledge of what had happened on the continent to cause such devastation as could be seen over the less than thirty-mile distance, and instead he worked the gears to reverse the scout car and drive more carefully back down the slope to find a road. Amid the bumps and squeaks inside his hot tin can, he continued to laugh to himself, only now it came as sporadic chuckles, sounding as though he had recalled something mildly amusing.

He drove through a low fence, not appearing to even notice it, and stopped at the side of the tarmac, where even after the short time since the dead had started eating people, the land had started to show the first signs of becoming overgrown. Deciding that he couldn’t see enough of the road either way to make an informed decision, he flipped open the hatch to drive with his head protruding, choosing to turn right for no good reason.

He rolled along the roads, almost forgetting the horrors he had endured over the last month and slowly allowed his senses and wits to fully return to him. One of those senses he retained was smell, and the acrid stench of the dried urine in the fabric of his uniform trousers wafted up to pass his nose and eyes as it was blasted away in the breeze.

When did I piss myself? he thought as he drove through the green lanes bathed in sunshine, until movement ahead caught his eye. He slowed instinctively, eyes narrowing as though that would help zoom his vision somehow, and he made out the shape of a person waving in a manner that screamed, ‘not dead’ at him. As he drew closer, the shape became a young woman, who stepped out into the road and continued to wave her arms frantically.

Nevin applied the brakes to come to a squeaking halt, looking down at a woman who was neither as young as he had first thought, nor as attractive as he had hoped. She was slightly thicker around the hips than he preferred, and her nose was too big for her face, but he reckoned that pickings would be slim nowadays.

And hell, who doesn’t love a knight in shining armour? he told himself with a smirk he fought to keep hidden. Yanking on the handbrake, he climbed out and down to road level, leaving the submachine gun uselessly inside the Ferret.

“Oh, thank you,” the woman gasped, “thank you for stopping, you’ve saved my life…” she bent over to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath, “are there any more with you? Any more soldiers?” she asked as her nose wrinkled up at the smell of him, “There were a few of them chasing me,” she said as she looked back over the hedge to the field on Nevin’s left.

His gaze was drawn naturally to where the woman looked, and just as his head turned, a feeling of the empty air behind him suddenly filling spun him back around to find himself facing the black figure-eight of a shotgun muzzle.

“Hands up,” growled a man with ragged facial hair, who held the gun pointed at him from a distance too close to be effective, yet close enough to be very intimidating. Nevin glanced back at the woman who was now smiling an evil sneer and holding a large hunting knife low in her right hand. Nevin smiled back at her, unsure why he felt so calm, given the situation, then back at the man pointing the shotgun at him.

And he chuckled again.

The chuckle got away from him, took on a life of its own and became a belly laugh that began to rumble and rise until he had totally lost it. Knife woman and shotgun man exchanged concerned looks and inched backwards involuntarily until they steeled themselves to challenge this laughing madman.

“Oi, dickhead,” snarled shotgun man, “shut the fuck up before you attract attention to us all.”

This only made Nevin laugh harder at the irony of the situation. Everything he had been through, everything he had survived and finally escaped, only to fall prey to pair of fucking amateurs at the classic ‘damsel in distress’ roadside blag. His laughter took on a tone describable only as nasty, and his eyes opened to check how far away both of them were from him. Something in his brain told him that the knife was far more dangerous to him than the shotgun was at the distances in play; that he only had to move a foot for the blast to miss him entirely but that the knife could find his soft belly in a heartbeat. All of the warrior potential inside him, everything that he could have been if only he had fitted in and applied himself, came boiling to the surface as he demonstrated the ability that others had seen hidden deep inside him.

Striking out like a snake he hit knife woman in the nose hard, snapping the punch back to make it a total shock instead of a knockout blow. As soon as he had lashed out, he stepped back, slapping his hand at the barrel of the shotgun to push it away from him just as the man pulled the trigger to blast a shot so close past knifewoman that she shrieked and threw herself down, where her legs seemed to furiously pedal an imaginary bicycle. Shotgun man’s eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open, thinking that he had killed her, though something in his expression made Nevin think it was fear of the consequences, as opposed to any genuine feeling of loss.

By the time he had regained his senses sufficiently to lift the barrel towards Nevin, he found himself staring into the much smaller but far steadier muzzle of a revolver aimed directly at his face. He froze, feeling the shotgun pulled from his grip as it dawned on him that he was beaten. The handgun disappeared from view as the wooden stock of his own gun arced upwards to hit him hard on the side of the head and spin him around to hit the ground, where he landed dizzy and disorientated but still conscious.

“You still alive?” Nevin asked the hissing, cursing woman who had stopped pedalling her legs and now sat up, rocking and holding her left flank where weak patches of blood showed through the material of her dirty T-shirt.

“You fucking prick,” she snarled through gritted teeth as she fixed him with a look of utter loathing. Her breath came in gasps as though winded. “You... you shot me!”

“Technically,” Nevin said conversationally, “he’s the fucking prick who shot you. Now, I’ll take all your supplies and the fuel from whatever vehicle you’ve got hidden around...”

His voice trailed away at a sound only half heard behind him. That sense made him freeze, tightening the grip on the revolver as his body tensed and he prepared to defend himself again. The tension locked him still as the sound solidified and grew into the unmistakable sound of a charging handle sliding back and forward to seat a bullet into a chamber. That sound made Nevin change his entire approach, switching from gloatingly dominant to obsequious and pathetic in an attempt to live through the situation.

“Okay, okay,” he said, his hand releasing the grip on the weapon to let it dangle uselessly from his right index finger, “let’s talk about this,” he babbled, “to start with, they tried to ambush me, and secondly I didn’t shoot her…”

“Shut your bloody mouth, Nevin,” a gruff voice behind him said.

He shut his mouth, trying to place the voice and make sense of the turn of events.

“Sergeant… Sergeant Michaels?” he asked incredulously.

“Just Michaels will do,” he said as he walked around him to stand over the bleeding woman and give her a blank look of disappointment, “I left that world,” he said pointing a finger at Nevin’s scout car, “behind me. I’ve got a different way now.”

“So I see,” Nevin said as he drew back up to his normal height and allowed the confidence back into his voice, “Do much ambushing of innocent people, do we?”

“Innocent?” Michaels asked, his eyes boring into Nevin like a shark’s. “Nobody is innocent anymore; you’re either alive or you’re one of them.”

He took a step closer to Nevin, putting his face uncomfortably close and not even recoiling when the smell hit him.

“Which one are you?” he asked, his gaze drilling into Nevin’s eyes.

Nevin smiled again.

“I’m better at this shit than these two clowns are,” he said evilly, gesturing at the two people still on the ground, “if you wanted someone better, that is…”

Michaels smiled at him as he stood back.

“Well then,” he said, “welcome to my hilltop.”

Epilogue

“Hello anybody,” came the Liverpool accent over the radio, “this is the crew of the Aunt Margaret out of the Albert Docks. We have supplies and safety but are unable to put to sea because there are warships blockading the coast. If anyone can tell us where is safe to go, contact us on this frequency… Hello anybody, this is the crew of the Aunt Margaret out of the Albert Docks…”

“What do you think?” asked the man with his feet up on the wooden table over the sound of the wind howling outside. Despite the season being good, their location was prone to being battered by inclement weather at any time. When they did have fine sunshine and warm days, then the legions of tiny flies descended on them.

“I think we should tell them to sit tight for winter and then head up here. Tell them that the bastards won’t survive the bad weather.”

The man with his feet up said nothing, simply leaned forward with a groan and spun a dial to increase the microphone volume as he cleared his throat and put two fingers on the transmit button.

“Crew of the Aunt Margaret, come in,” he said, waiting less than a heartbeat for an answer.

“We’re here, hello? Who is this?”

“Crew of the Aunt Margaret,” he said, ignoring the question, “listen carefully. The zombies will degrade over winter. Hold your ground if you can. Ration your supplies and just hold out until spring. I repeat, hold your ground and ration supplies. If you’re still there in spring, we can talk. Out.”

* * *

The two children walked through the familiar front door with obvious trepidation. Johnson went through first, his eyebrows raised and giving a soothing gesture with his right hand to Hampton. The eyebrows and the flat palm pressing downwards made the intention clear; keep it calm.

“Bill, Kimberley,” he said in a voice they hadn’t heard him use before as he glanced over at the injured woman, “this is Peter and Amber,” he said as he stepped aside to reveal their two newest recruits, “and it looks like we might’ve moved into their house.”

Hampton just beamed at them, completely unaware of how terrifying his gap-toothed grin appeared to them. Amber recoiled behind Peter slightly, glancing up the fair-skinned and blonde-haired Astrid with mixed admiration and trepidation.

“Kids,” Johnson said as he bent down slightly in that condescending fashion that people adopt when they aren’t used to children, “these are my friends, Bill,” he pointed at the smiling marine sergeant with his swollen knee propped up on cushions, “and this is Kimberley.”

From her position on the soft settee, her battered body bruised, and her leg bandaged, Kimberley brushed her hair over the scars on the left side of her face. She had given up on covering them in their company, knowing that what they had been through was far more important than her vanity, but it wasn’t vanity that made her cover them now; children could be scared of her disfigurement and she wasn’t of a mind to answer blunt questions.

Peter nodded at both of them, his face set in a grim approximation of seniority. He led Amber in by the hand, glancing back to see that the special forces sergeant had brought back the trolley of supplies, Bufford, responding to the look he received by dragging it through the door to prove that he hadn’t failed at the task.

Enfield was still out there, bringing back the guns and supplies from the doorsteps of the houses they had already cleared. He came back, breaking the awkward silence by dropping the items inside and nodding to Bufford and Larsen, who both in turn looked back to Johnson.

“You’re okay as a three?” Johnson asked, knowing that they were capable on their own and that he was likely their weakest link. Bufford said that they were, and led them out, to leave the atmosphere stilted and silent once more. Amber tugged at Peter’s sleeve, leaning up to whisper in his ear. He pulled back, nodded at her, and slipped off his backpack to remove the shotgun, to watch as she reached into the bag and retrieved her ragged stuffed lamb. Peter held the gun with his fingertips, at no point wrapping his hand around the grip or going near the triggers, to show that he had no intention of using it.

When she had disappeared back upstairs, heading for the room they had occupied before and where she felt safe, Peter put the gun back in the bag, slipping off his shoes and shrugging out of his oversized jacket that he had thrown on inside out in his haste to flee the house. He walked straight into the kitchen, stopping to survey the empty cans and shoot a look at Johnson, before climbing up on the worktop and rising up on his knees to reach up and open the top window overlooking the secluded back garden. He disappeared into the utility area where the washing machine and dryer were, returning after a few seconds with a can of some non-descript fish and set it on the worktop, where he opened the second drawer down to pull out the can opener.

He punctured the thin metal, spinning the handle and squeezing out the oil into the drain in the sink before fetching a fork from the top drawer to scoop out the smelly contents into a shallow bowl.

Johnson jumped, his hand fluttering towards the weapon he had slung over his body, but then froze as the sound became a shape and that shape dropped onto the counter and let out a chippering meow of expectation. Peter slid the bowl towards the cat, who tucked in greedily and purred simultaneously.

“Was this your house, Peter?” Johnson asked, “I mean before.”

“No,” the boy replied simply.

Johnson paused, thinking how best to ask what he wanted to, in the end deciding to just ask it straight.

“What happened to you, kid?”

“How long have you got?” Peter asked, a small smile creeping across his face as he finally realised how much he had grown in such a short time.

* * *

The helicopter returned to the country house well before sunset, rushing their unconscious casualty inside past the two officers, who knew better than to shout for an explanation. The chief pilot, Barrett, nudged the arm of the SAS Major and both ducked into a ground floor study where the door was shut behind them.

Captain Palmer listened to the report in silence, his eyebrows only occasionally twitching before they were brought back under control, only speaking at the very end. He didn’t insult their abilities to ask if they were sure about the island, or the downed aircraft, and especially not about the destruction witnessed at the base.

Trooper Povey will no doubt shed more unwelcome light on that matter, he told himself glumly, assuming he recovers, that is.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said, walking to a dark wood bureau and pouring four measures of brandy into the bulbous, crystal glasses. He used the pause to think, to frame the words he needed to say in such a way that the others understood what he meant to achieve. He handed out the glasses to each man in turn and resumed his original place, before looking them all in the eye and swirling the glass in his hand before raising it.

“To our fallen,” he said solemnly.

“To our fallen,” the others echoed quietly before they all took a long pull of their drinks. From any other man, such a formal display would have run the risk of appearing forced, unnatural or even laughable. From Julian Palmer it just seemed right somehow.

“Gentlemen,” he said again in a more resolved tone, “we have an uncertain time ahead of us, to put matters mildly. We have lost more than half of our original fighting strength. We have almost one hundred civilians who are in need of organising and protecting, not to mention feeding. We have a matter of weeks before we are into autumn and that ticking clock runs straight into winter. We have power, but we need to consider food and fuel in addition to defences,” he paused to sip his brandy once more, “In short, chaps,” he said with a hint of a smile, “we’ve got a lot to do in a short space of time if we have any hope of surviving this.”

The other eyes in the room met his, none of them missing the severity of his point.

“As far as I see,” Palmer finished, “we can expect nothing in the way of assistance or outside help. Make no mistake, gentlemen: we have been abandoned.”

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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Part Four

Adversity

Prologue

February 1990

The two of them, a man and one woman, drove almost silently down the sloping entranceway, the engine cut and the driver fighting the wheel as he feathered the brakes. They weren’t so ill-trained, so lacking in awareness, as to drive straight up to the front entrance and wander around aimlessly, so they had parked nearby and crept in on foot to observe the big structure and its large enclosed yard, having recently been uncomfortably forced into awareness of enemies both living and dead.

They had watched for an hour, all of them accustomed to long periods of stillness, with total concentration and discipline, until they were satisfied that nobody was holding or defending the area. In broad daylight, the assumption that at least some movement would be evident reassured them that it was indeed empty. No sentries showed themselves to piss against a wall or smoke as they stretched their legs. No sounds came from the area at all. One of them wore a beard, shorter than it had been before, but he’d felt compelled to trim it down as the ragged length it had grown to had begun to interfere with his tactical abilities. This man rose slowly to his feet and stayed low. The slimmer figure twenty paces to his right rose at the same time, her smaller frame bulked out with layered clothing in contrast to the bearded man’s mass being mostly meat. He had lost some of his bulk over the months prior, mostly due to the reason they were there in the first place; namely a lack of food. The inability to train with heavy weights four or five times each week, and the struggle to maintain his usual high-calorie intake had taken the edge off his intimidating physique, but not to the point where he was small or weak, by any stretch of the imagination.

The woman was wearing the layers of clothing against the cold, a black woollen scarf wrapped tightly around the lower part of her face, allowing only the slightest puff of warm breath to escape when she spoke in a low voice.

“Overwatch?” she asked simply in slightly accented English, making her suggestion sound like a question, understanding well enough at the same time how her partner thought, to know that he had no qualms about sharing the responsibility of command. At their level of operating, or at least who and what they used to be back in the world, command was a fluid concept, as whoever made it to their team would be capable of leading, regardless of rank.

The eyes above the beard and below the woolly hat pulled down over his brow met hers briefly, before he turned and pointed two fingers at his face with an exaggerated movement. No response came, but he knew that the immobile sniper would have seen his gesture from the tangled branches of the tree he was occupying.

Satisfied that the heavy-calibre rifle covered their approach, the two moved forward, weapons up and tucked into shoulders, as one advanced while the other took a knee to cover their approach in small leapfrog moves. Black boots crunched on fresh frost which still hadn’t thawed, despite the sun having risen in the sky above the low cloud cover. They opened the front doors of the car they had been using since the van from their small village stronghold had given up the ghost mid-mission, both putting their shoulders to the doorframes as the man reached in to put the key in the ignition to free the steering lock and release the handbrake. As soon as they had built a little momentum, they both timed their steps to jump inside and fold their bodies into the seats and pull the doors in with a soft click, as they were instinctively mindful enough not to slam them shut.

The noise of the tyres rolling on the pitted concrete sounded unnaturally loud in the environment they had spent a silent hour in, followed by a shriek of rusted brake pads on drums as he pressed harder on the brake pedal to slow their approach.

* * *

From his position in the old oak tree almost two hundred paces away, the man lying between the branches like a big cat with his right eye pressed to the scope of the Accuracy International rifle winced at the noise. A high-pitched squeal like that could be heard for half a mile in all directions, but hopefully the heavy tree cover in the area would cancel out how far the sound had travelled in the thin, cold air. Snow began to fall, only lightly, but enough to obscure the tracks the others had made.

He hadn’t changed position in over twenty minutes, and even then, the shift was subtle and very slowly done. He was a professional, a term that many people used, but when it was applied to the skill set of a person trained and experienced in killing people at a distance when given a shot window of seconds in a mission lasting hours or days, the word barely seemed adequate. It wasn’t just his uncanny ability to know how to naturally and instinctively correct his aim for the path of the bullet being affected by so many factors, but it was more that his personality suited his chosen skill set perfectly; he was unnervingly calm and noiseless and moved like a ghost. His natural quietness had deepened over the last months, ever since the death of his closest friend and spotter. The two had joined the Royal Marines together and both attended and passed the same sniper training course, and one without the other was only part of a whole. That wasn’t to say that the immobile man in the tree wasn’t a devastating instrument of warfare in his own right, but he was only part of the equation and would probably never feel entire again.

All of these background thoughts only took up a tiny portion of his consciousness, as his focus was on both his two friends rolling the ugly, off-brown Austin Montego down the ramp towards the big building inside the fenced enclosure. Even though his eye was pressed to the scope, his other eye remained open and fed a second visual input into his brain, such was his natural ability to multitask. He watched the two of them stack up as a pair, drilling their CQB ‒ close-quarter battle ‒ methods flawlessly, despite only having the number of half a patrol that the tactics were designed for. He watched as the man reached for the familiar shape of the crowbar tucked down the back of the thick jacket that his webbing was worn over. The slightest splintering crack of wood reached the sniper’s ears over the distance, just after he saw the corresponding body movements used to wrench open the door.

Seeing them both disappear inside, flicking on the large Maglite torches attached to the fat barrels of their compact weapons, he watched as Astrid and Bufford disappeared inside.

And he waited.

* * *

“Ready?” Buffs asked softly of Astrid, who had pulled down the scarf so that her mouth was exposed to the cold air. Her breath misted as Bufford’s did, only hers wasn’t filtered by the scruffy facial hair.

“Go,” she said faintly, following his lead as the two of them poured into the building like water. They split left and right, powerful torch beams flashing around the darkened interior to create crazy shadows between the tall aisles. The beams of light, pointing in every direction that their weapon barrels and eyes did, showed how alert they were to the possibility of unwanted company as they moved anti-clockwise around the inner perimeter of the warehouse, until they eventually returned to the door where they had made their entry. At the centre of the warehouse was a single construction surrounded by an open area before the tall ranks of industrial shelves. That area contained three small forklift trucks and appeared to be the office which ran the distribution for the area. Each of the long, wide aisles contained wrapped pallets of foodstuffs; bags of dried pasta and rice, as well as large tins of beans and tomatoes. The company logo outside the large roller shutter doors meant nothing to them, but the contents made it obvious that the warehouse provided for the catering and commercial markets.

Bufford dropped to one knee as Astrid automatically turned to adopt the same pose facing away from him.

“See if the truck works?” he asked her softly, “Load it and take it back?”

“This is a good idea,” she replied, her grasp of English being almost flawless but lending her a formal tone. She gave the accurate impression of being classroom taught, as opposed to the colloquial use of the language by a native speaker, but that wasn’t to say that she wasn’t picking up a few choice terms that her training didn’t cater for. Her Russian was less formal, but her Cold War training hadn’t required her to blend in with the population on the UK mainland.

Bufford went to rise but froze as a noise behind him sounded muffled in the dusty gloom.

“Office,” Astrid said.

Bufford gave no verbal answer, rising instead and turning to follow her lead as she approached the door. He flicked his thumb all the way up on the fire selector, pushing it from single shot to safe, and let the gun hang down as he reached behind his right hip to draw the peculiar weapon he carried. He had never been awarded or issued the assault pioneer’s axe, a throwback of British military tradition, and especially odd to his hands as it was an idiosyncrasy of the army and not from his naval roots. But he had taken it on a whim from the sergeants’ mess display on the base he had found himself occupying when the world had so suddenly turned to shit. He didn’t know why he had taken it, but he was glad a dozen times over that he had. He drew it now, its polished head glinting off the weapon-mounted light of Astrid’s MP5 as she stood by the door and looked at him, waiting for his nod.

He gave it, crouching low beside the doorway as she spun the handle and stepped smartly backwards to give a distance of nearly fifteen feet, where she froze with her gun raised and ready. Nothing happened immediately, but the groaning and banging from inside in response to their presence told them that one of them was in there. Slowly reanimating, having likely been immobile in the strange hibernating state they adopted when cold and undisturbed, the Screecher inside shambled towards the light and noise. And seeing the weapon-mounted light, it broke into a run.

Astrid, with a clear line of sight, fought against the very natural urge to drill a 9mm round straight through the grey-skinned skull of the beast that opened its mouth and reached for her, taking fast but unsteady steps towards her on legs that had stayed still for too long. Her torch beam illuminated the face, cloudy eyes not responding to the harsh light as a living person would. She kept her discipline, not wanting to waste a single, precious bullet, as they were running out at a rate that was unsustainable, and she held her breath as it reached the threshold and took a longer step out of the room.

As it did, Bufford rose to bring the axe down one-handed in a savage blow that crushed the skull and crumpled the former worker to the concrete floor like a meat concertina. Using his foot to hold the ruined head still, he pulled the axe away and wiped it on the torso just as a single word cut across his concentration.

“Buffs!” Astrid snapped desperately.

He didn’t think, simply abandoned the position to throw himself out of arms reach and roll back to his feet as two snapping coughs tore the air. He looked back to see another one, female, tall and heavily built, fall like a tree as the second bullet snapped her head back. He watched as though in slow-motion, the adrenaline in his body slowing the real-time events of the world briefly, as her body moved like the footage of crash test dummies on television. Her head flew back, whipping forwards with the momentum of her skull and upper spine going through their full range of movement, to go rigid and topple forwards to land with a meaty thud on top of the one he had dispatched, or had rendered safe, as one of their companions said, and she lay motionless.

Bufford looked at Astrid and nodded once, the sincere thanks and the returning acknowledgement passing between them in an effortless flash of non-verbal communication. He rose, dusted himself off and slipped the axe back into his belt before they cleared the small office. The stench they had remembered from the early days was gone, replaced by an almost sickly sweetness of dried-out meat that had gone off.

The cold had changed everything as soon as the unexpectedly freezing winter had set in for real, and despite battling the constant chill and hunger, at least the zombies were easier to deal with. The office held little of worth apart from the warm coats which were superfluous to their needs, but the keys to the single box truck preserved inside the warehouse made them both breathe a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have to search the pockets of the twice-dead corpses.

Rolling up the rear doors, they found the truck half-stocked with sacks containing either rice or flour – they couldn’t be sure which, and neither did they overly care – so they returned to the aisles to use their knives to remove the heavy plastic wrapping from pallets and retrieve heavy can after heavy can of beans and soup. They loaded as much as they dared, both having to strip off their thick coats as they rapidly overheated with the exercise, and seemed to simultaneously feel that they had pushed their luck enough with the time they had been there. They knew that their guard outside would never complain, but he would only remain on-station for so long before he climbed down from his perch with the big rifle slung across his back and follow them inside; such was their curse with a lack of personal communications.

Using the keys to check that the battery still held charge, Astrid flicked the ignition on and off once to give Bufford a thumbs-up gesture from inside the cab. They moved back to the door where they had entered, stepping out cautiously as they knew the long barrel of a high-powered rifle would be aimed in their direction, and Bufford stood tall to make the signal for ‘form on me’ as he placed his left hand on his head with his fingers pointed down like some comedy interpretation of a spider coming to rest on his dome. He held the pose for ten seconds to make sure that he had been seen, then crouched to adopt a defensive position.

Inside a minute Enfield joined them, his newly-acquired small calibre rifle in hand and the longer barrel of his Accuracy International protruding over his right shoulder. He jogged towards them silently, slipping across the open space like the ghost he was, and fell in beside the SBS man.

“Truck loaded with catering supplies,” Bufford said softly with undisguised happiness, “way too much for one haul. Lock this place up and come back with more hands,” he finished. Enfield gave no reply, simply held his hands out for the keys to the car they had found on their way to the warehouse, which Bufford handed over.

“Roller shutter on that side,” he told the marine as he pointed off to their right, “we’ll go in front and you follow.”

The same two slipped back inside and Enfield waited, hearing the laboured sounds of a neglected engine clatter and groan into life before he safetied his weapon and ran low for the door of the Montego. Suppressing a shudder as he slipped behind the wheel, he pushed the seat forward and turned the key with his foot on the clutch to reduce the stress of starting the tired engine. Vehicle travel was something they tried to avoid, but the unexpectedly harsh winter was pushing them to more desperate measures in their need to stay fed. He wound down the driver’s window despite the cold, so that he could hear some of what was going on outside. He could hear the metal roller shutter protesting at being forced to open, like a teenager being made to get out of bed at sunrise, and he slipped the car into gear to fall in behind them at a distance where he would not become tangled up in any drama which might befall them.

They had food, finally, and they were heading back to their little slice of fortified Britain. Being abandoned by the rest of the world, however much of it still remained as before, times were becoming very hard.

ONE

Four months prior

Captain Palmer sat at the desk in the ground floor room of their adopted and adapted country manor and rubbed his tired face with his hands. His stubbled cheeks rasped against his skin, as like almost all of the men, he had forgone the routine of shaving out of a simple lack of water and toiletries. The former Captain of the Household Cavalry, more accustomed to the challenges of armoured warfare than he was the vagaries of logistical concerns, wished that there was someone else to take on the task that had fallen to him.

The few of them who still shaved, despite the outrage of the Colonel, favoured the traditional method of using a straight-bladed razor instead of the more common disposable kind. With close to a hundred people in their group, a steady supply of such luxury items was so far down the list of priorities that they weren’t worth expending any effort over.

His exasperation came from simple mathematics, as he calculated the number of mouths to feed versus the stores of food they had. Their scavenging missions usually followed the template of their SAS team scouting the area, and their remaining Royal Marines and men of the armoured Yeomanry squadron going in en-masse to clear out whatever was available. He knew that there was a booming trade in the black market going on at the house, and even he had lowered himself, via a trusted corporal, and traded a few items for things that he wanted. But his men knew better than to withhold food from the haul. Or at least he hoped for their sake that they did.

Their strange amalgamation of mixed armed services personnel and civilians rescued from the area had evolved over the few months that they had been there, but as a mild autumn began to give way to a sudden and brutally unkind winter, things had become increasingly difficult. He sat in the room, glancing forlornly at the empty fireplace and wishing that there were sufficient fuel stores to have even a small blaze to heat the room. He sighed loudly, uncharacteristically betraying his feelings, and tucked his chin deeper into the large uniform smock he still insisted on wearing, despite the multiple layers he wore underneath, including a thick, knitted jumper to insulate against the chill.

People often spoke of the onset of winter being sudden, but this year had been the worst in his memory and the cold was worse than the many skiing excursions his family had taken him on as a child. Pipes froze solid overnight, cracking the old brass open like a hatching egg and sparking terror as people ran around the large house looking for anyone with plumbing experience. By the time such a man had been located and roused from his bed, the flooding had caused extensive damage to the old carpets and the floorboards beneath. The floor below cascaded water through the cracked plaster ceiling to elicit shrieks of fear and discomfort from those suffering from the unnatural indoor rain, and what came after was worse still.

Because of the pandemonium and ensuing need for lights to be switched on during darkness, an operational cardinal sin, the house attracted unwelcome attention from the outside which raged on throughout the freezing night and into the morning. That single, costly night had taken a significant toll on their lives in the form of half of their remaining ammunition being expended and claiming the lives of three defenders. They still hadn’t recovered from those losses, and morale at the house had plummeted into a deep depression.

Thinking again of the long and confusing engagement, Palmer tried to find the positives as well as ruthlessly assessing their defensive performance and plans. The wide ditch they had dug surrounding the vulnerable approaches to the house had undoubtedly saved them from being overrun, as had the bitterly cold weather which the area was unused to experiencing. They had found that from autumn, the number of Screechers wandering around had reduced exponentially, and those who did wander up to their defensive lines in ones and twos were rotting and sluggish, far worse than they had seen them deteriorate through summer.

On that night, when fate conspired with bad luck to deal them a cruel blow, they came in waves until entire sections of the ditches filled with bodies and allowed the shambling attackers to step over the writhing, struggling bodies to walk almost unimpeded towards the warm flesh of the men and women under Palmer’s charge. Palmer was an officer of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, an officer trained at Sandhurst, which in his opinion, provided the finest officer training in the world, as was demonstrated by the multi-national attendees eager to take back the ways of the British Army to their native lands. But he was still unaccustomed to leading their rag-tag band in defensive infantry tactics without resupply or additional support. It felt unorthodox and more than a little desperate at times. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, the bonds of discipline and service were beginning to unravel everywhere he looked. Uniform wore out and was replaced by civilian clothing, and the cold weather diluted that compliance further still as the men wore whatever they could find to stop them from freezing, just as he did, but at least he still tried to maintain some semblance of protocol.

A knock at the door snapped him out of his miserable reverie, and he drew in a breath to announce that the person should enter, but he swallowed the word as the door opened a fraction of a second later; as though the knock was simply a warning instead of a request for permission. He relaxed when he saw who it was, leaning back and crossing his arms for warmth to tuck his cold hands under his armpits.

“Julian, how are you?” Lieutenant Lloyd asked.

“I’m well, thank you, Chris,” Palmer answered with a genuine smile. He liked the Royal Marine officer, seeing in the slightly younger man a leader who was respected by his men, and capable.

Perhaps ‘capable’ is grossly inadequate, he had thought to himself when assessing the man, as he is personally responsible for bringing the vast majority of our fighting strength out of the fiery hell that was the Island.

And he was. It was his quick thinking and decisive action which had seen a ragged infantry formation, like a rally-square, which had crab-walked its awkward way up almost a mile of steep hill, fighting every step of the way and rescuing as many people as possible before forming a defence atop the hill. They had defended that landing site, suffering the agonising wait between the relay flights of the helicopter which had rescued them from the furnace.

Most of them, anyway.

“Going over the company books?” the junior officer asked blandly to open the conversation.

“Sadly yes,” Palmer replied, “and they do not make for an enjoyable read, I’m afraid.”

“Food?”

“Always food,” Palmer replied tiredly. He glanced at the crystal decanter, automatically feeling the urge to pour both of them a brandy as they discussed business, in spite of the time of day, but the vessel had long since run dry and as nobody had left the house in the weeks since the last attack, any hope of a fresh supply was woefully deluded.

“But also fuel; for the house and the vehicles. And we have burned through too much ammunition to make viable many more defensive actions of the nature we have already endured,” he added in his naturally verbose manner, meaning simply that they were running out of bullets faster than they could afford to. His mind wandered to the strange trend he had witnessed emerging among both soldiers and civilians carrying crude melee weapons with them. Most soldiers relied on the bayonets affixed to the ends of their personal weapons, even if the destructive projectiles were in short supply, but many had also begun sporting folding shovels, hammers and small axes which stayed with them at all times.

“I think we need to discuss reconnaissance with the Major,” he told the royal marine.

Lloyd nodded sagely as he sat, mulling over his friend’s words. The roles and hierarchy of their group had merged and evolved too since their flight and devastating losses after the Island had become overrun and cut off, and as Palmer had been volunteered as the de-facto leader of the group, Lloyd had assumed a sub-command of the defences. Be they marine or trooper or civilian, everyone assigned to defend their home had fallen under the command of the Lieutenant without question or protest, bar one man. Palmer’s younger brother, Oliver, who still insisted on using the double-barrelled version of their family name as though status and breeding meant a damn thing when abandoned and facing starvation, had been assigned to Lloyd as his second in command.

The junior Lieutenant was universally scorned and disliked by the men after his behaviour had once more grown sullen and smacked of assumed privilege. His older brother had hoped that to assign him to that task would make him more accessible to the men, and would allow them to see him working hard, but he too often heard that he was delegating his duties in favour of spending time rubbing shoulders with the half-insensible Colonel who provided little to no practical assistance in their plight. Palmer had managed to steal the senior officer’s two privates away from the man to bolster the defenders’ numbers, but Second Lieutenant Palmer’s repeated absences from duty were both embarrassing and inconsequential.

“The Major will be pleased,” Lloyd opined, “I think he and his boys are suffering from a little cabin fever.”

The Major in question, Clive Downes, while clearly a more experienced and senior officer, had declined the gracious offer to lead their group, claiming that it wasn’t his area of business. Palmer, as much as he hated the responsibility on a daily basis, had to agree. Having a four-man Special Air Service patrol at his disposal was something of a luxury when it came to stepping outside the relative safety of their draughty home. On every occasion they had planned to raid an area for supplies, he had first allowed the special forces soldiers to go in quietly and return to provide an in-depth intelligence report on enemy activity and the requirements of any ensuing mission. This template had worked flawlessly until the weather had turned, but the voluntary grounding of their helicopter in order to preserve the fuel and mechanical integrity of the aircraft had greatly limited their abilities. Now, he felt, necessity would force them to brave the treacherous weather in order to survive.

“I’ll speak to him,” Palmer said, “because I doubt we have more than two or three weeks’ worth of food remaining, even on reduced rationing.”

That seemed to end their conversation on that matter, as neither wanted to face the realities of their dire situation. That situation extended solely to food, luckily, as they still had running water for reasons unknown to them. They had power still, but they knew the cause for this was as a direct result of a mission carried out by the Major and his team back when there was still hope of containing the nationwide outbreak, and they were inserted by helicopter to a nuclear power plant, where the dial was effectively cranked back down to the lowest setting. The engineers had assured them that the plant would run for many more years like that, as it only needed the constant maintenance to run at optimal levels. Given that the demand for electricity was only a fraction of what it had been before, they hadn’t experienced any loss of power. The power alone didn’t help that they were all freezing slowly to death, however.

Very uncommonly for the area, their luck ran out when they dived headlong into the worst winter any of them could recall. The marines grumbled that they preferred their arctic warfare training in the Norwegian winter to the conditions they were facing now, because at least there they were prepared and equipped appropriately. His own men had even taken to wearing their NBC, or nuclear/biological/chemical, protection suits over their clothing, in an effort to block out the worst of the cold.

Lloyd put a stop to the grumbling of his marines before it gathered momentum by assembling his men and telling them all to reach down with their right hands to check that they still had balls, which silenced any further complaints.

The worst affected areas of the vast house, which was heated by log and coal fires and the precious heating oil which fired the huge Aga in the old part of the kitchen, had been granted the use of the gas-bottle powered heaters, but as they were now a finite resource and the high ceilings made most of the heat they provided a waste, they were used sparingly. Palmer had a huge list of priorities to attend to, and heating was among those at the top of the list. He wanted a wholesale coal dealer emptied, almost salivating at the thought of sitting beside a roaring fire and being warm for the first time in weeks, but he knew that warmth would be pointless without food.

No, he told himself as he and Lloyd lapsed into a brooding silence, we need food and we need it now.

TWO

They had every intention of resting for only a day or two after finding the safety of the abandoned village, following their fluke survival of a brutal helicopter crash, but as always, best laid plans often fell at the first hurdle.

Finding the house had been total happenstance and discovering that there were two young children living there was utterly miraculous to them all. The resilience and bravery of the young boy, Peter, had emerged slowly as he relaxed more around them to speak about his experiences.

The young girl, Amber, still hadn’t spoken a word to any of the adults, although she occasionally whispered into Peter’s ear. She did show signs of warming up to one of them, however, and the way she stared at their Norwegian parachute commando bordered on the obsessive at times.

Johnson, in a rare moment of giving in to the urge to smoke, took the packet scavenged from one of the village houses and a lighter to the back garden, and leaned back to perch on the low stone wall of the raised patio. As he lit the cigarette and inhaled, the sound of the sliding doors opening and closing made him turn awkwardly to crane his neck around the bulk of his right shoulder to see who it was. Surprised to see that it was Peter, he nodded to the boy, who zipped up his oversized coat all the way to his cheeks in response to the chill in the air, and came to rest on the frosty stone near to the man three times his size. The two sat in comfortable silence for a time, both staring out over the low ground which fell away from the rear of their modest castle at the thin wisps of mist hanging near to the frozen dew on the grass.

“She likes Astrid, doesn’t she?” Johnson asked the boy, meaning to discern the reasons behind the little girl’s stares at the blonde-haired commando. Peter sighed and dropped his head.

“Her mum had hair like she does,” he answered simply. Johnson said nothing for a while, going back over the facts he had in his head about their story.

“What happened to her mother?” he asked gently, “You said you found her.”

“I did,” Peter said sadly, before pausing and explaining, “I was hiding in a house and heard people. In a car. They broke into another house and dragged her away, then they broke into the house I was hiding in, but they didn’t find me. When they left, I went to look and I found Amber.”

Johnson drew in a breath, fighting down the savage words that had loaded themselves on the tip of his tongue, ready to fire. He swallowed them down and thought before responding.

“You’re a very brave young man, Peter,” he said carefully, forcing the anger out of his voice in case the boy misunderstood and thought it was directed at him. He knew why men would drag away a woman, but he doubted that Peter would or even that he should understand that yet. “I wish I had a few dozen as brave as you in my squadron.” Instantly he regretted his words, as only one of the men who had served under him had shown anything but the utmost effort and bravery. Those men were gone now, scattered and dead to a man possibly, but he had to hope that they had stayed together and stayed alive.

“I had to kill one of the monsters, though,” Peter went on as though Johnson hadn’t spoken. “The front door was broken and it just… walked in. Probably following the noise,” he added, with a sensibility and maturity beyond his small frame and short years.

Johnson had no words this time, so he lowered his head and smoked thoughtfully. His natural manner left him lost when dealing with children; as though he didn’t know how to be around them after a lifetime of being ordered and giving orders among other rough men. Instead he chose to change the subject.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“Don’t sleep much anymore,” Peer said wistfully, his words again making him sound decades older than he was, as though the experience of the last few months had aged him beyond repair and had ended his childhood years before it should have faded into adulthood.

“Want to do the morning checks with me?” asked the Squadron Sergeant Major without a squadron or any men to command, taking a final drag and grinding out the cigarette into the frozen ground. In response, Peter stood and nodded.

Johnson put on a woolly hat and picked up his tools, taking one of the suppressed submachine guns from where the weapons rested against the wall in the lounge. Peter took his own weapon from that rack too, having taken to placing it there to mimic the adults he idolised but didn’t know how to engage with comfortably. He always carried the small spike, like a crude and homemade ice pick, and he slipped the sawn-off shotgun into his small backpack as he hefted the pitchfork and looked up to Johnson, nodding to signify that he was ready to go.

Johnson checked that his gun was loaded, which he knew it always would be, and slung it behind him to pick up what had become his primary weapon in the form of a small sledgehammer. Most men would tire even carrying such a tool, let alone have the strength to swing it more than a few times to crush the skulls of former human beings, but Johnson managed it.

They hadn’t been forced to do much in the way of fighting since they had arrived there, especially seeing as Peter had dispatched a tenth of the undead still trapped inside the small village before their appearance, but when the injuries to Kimberley and the irascible Sergeant Hampton had taken longer than expected to heal and allow them mobility, they had decided to stay where they were until their entire contingent was fully fit. Johnson had told them about the plan to form up at the base and search for another permanent site after that, but their early foray to that base had been met with depressing evidence of carnage and destruction. Of the three sites suggested for the squadron to reform, Johnson could not recall any of the locations, so had spent days on end compiling a list of potential sites to be checked for their companions, if any yet survived. Shortly after they had found the village, a helicopter had been heard, but when they went outside into the secluded back garden to check, the aircraft had disappeared and had not been seen since. In case it came back over, Johnson had found a large tub of white gloss paint and used a broom to push the sticky white fluid around on the empty patch of road by the house. He painted four simple characters, not writing ‘help’, but instead leaving his individual calling card in his radio callsign. If whatever was flying around was military, which it almost certainly had to be, then seeing the legend of F33A emblazoned on the road below, Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha, would grab their attention instantly.

Before they knew it, however, and far sooner than they had expected, the temperatures had dropped and the first snow fell to entomb them for over a week and obscure their aerial message. After that, the priority to move and take their uncertain chances on the road fell into second place behind surviving the winter.

Holding the big hammer in one hand and turning to the only other person in the house who was awake, he announced where they were going.

“Doing the lap,” he said to Enfield, the oddly quiet and calm sniper filling the kettle for the first brew of the day, who simply nodded in response. Johnson paid no attention to what would have previously, in their old lives, earned the young marine an arse-chewing of epic proportions for failing to correctly acknowledge a warrant officer of his standing and position, regardless of them being from different branches of the armed forces. Johnson was never a man to enforce such displays of obedience, he had never needed to as his men respected him, and he didn’t feel the slightest need to do so now. Even less so given that the majority of their small force were either current or former royal marines. He knew that Enfield meant no disrespect by the gesture, far from it in fact, but the man wasn’t in the habit of wasting unnecessary words when a silent look or a nod would suffice.

Doing the lap was what they called their morning routine of patrolling the perimeter of the small village which had been cleared and fortified during the weeks they had been there. Vehicles had been used to block access through their home, rolled and pushed into position before being jacked up and having their wheels removed to prevent them being pushed back out of position just as easily. In between every gap they had piled the furniture taken from the houses, leaving a single space blocked by two vehicles which could be moved should they need to drive their chosen transport out, which they hadn’t done for weeks, given the driving rain and sharp frosts in between the intermittent flurries of snow.

On the outside of those barricades were as many sharpened fence posts and other obstacles designed to snag any unsuspecting dead to wander in their direction as could be sharpened and emplaced. The rear of the dozen houses in the village, which been cleared of anything useful, had been reinforced similarly with coils of fencing found nearby to tangle anything walking in across country. The only other building in the small village not to have been hollowed out was the small pub at the slightly higher elevated end of the tiny strip, which was really little more than a long, low room containing a bar, a fireplace and a selection of dark wood tables and chairs with a dartboard adorning one wall and innumerable stains of suspect origin. That space was left as a kind of retreat; a place where any of them could fall back to and work through their own thoughts, which they found that they needed to do with increasing frequency, given their enforced lack of activity to occupy their minds.

The resources found in the village, the canned food and dried goods looted from all the other houses, had kept them fed for enough time to regain their strength, but occasionally they had been forced to venture out to nearby places for more until their immediate surroundings had been stripped bare.

As Johnson and the small boy whose shoulders reached not much above the man’s waist walked the lap, checking each section for any sign of life or, more importantly, former life, he thought about the worries afflicting him.

How long can we last, living like this? What kind of existence is it, especially for the young ones? What happens when we run out of ammo, or the baffles on the suppressed weapons finally give up, or we can no longer get a vehicle to start?

He tried to answer his own questions, realising that he no idea how to respond to each one without raising yet more questions about the answers he’d conjured up. He knew that they needed a plan, needed so much more than they had in so many ways, but other than taking them all on the road, he had no idea what to do. They had power and heat in the form of the electrically powered fan heaters. They even had a limited supply of hot water thanks to the solar panels on the south-facing slope of the roof they lived under, which never truly got that hot given the current weather. But they were relatively safe, they weren’t suffering too badly from the elements, and they weren’t starving. Yet.

“There’s one,” Peter said softly, snapping him out of his thoughts. Johnson looked down at the boy, followed his gaze past his outstretched finger to see an immobile body slumped over the front of a dark blue Ford saloon car.

“What’s the difference between an Orion and an Escort from the front?” he asked himself out loud. Peter made a small noise of confusion and prompted the man to shake himself out of his distraction.

Johnson put a large, flat palm out in front of Peter, indicating that he should stay back, but not touching him. The thing posed no risk to them as it was, not unless they were foolish enough to put themselves within biting distance and wait for it to wake up.

That was one of the strangest things to have happened, just one development in a very extensive list, but they still found themselves shocked at new developments. The cold seemed to affect the Screechers, seemed to slow them and make them sluggish, but it also seemed to accelerate the way they rotted and fell apart. Already they had discovered a big change in the ones they unearthed from inside houses; the musty smelling ones that were more preserved than others. The unlucky ones who had found themselves outside fared much worse due to exposure to the elements; to the constant rain and freezing temperatures of the harsh early winter, which made their flesh wither and often fall way in chunks. Their skin became something in between grey and clear, hanging from them in landslides of saggy flesh, and resembled the bloated corpses one might expect to see dragged from the River Thames after being missing for three weeks. Their movements were halting and uncoordinated and often they would be inexplicably missing fingers, which he guessed had frozen solid and snapped off. This one didn’t perk up, nor did it respond to their approach as they continued to check the section of the perimeter between their position and the trapped Screecher.

When they did approach, Johnson again gesturing for Peter to stay back, the long and knotted hair twitched as the head rose to slowly rotate on an angle until the clouded, milky orbs locked onto the SSM. He hefted his hammer, leaning over the frosty car to judge the swing required to brain it, when he lost his footing slightly. The woman, almost naked and not looking remotely good, as her withered and sagging breasts slapped softly against her emaciated ribcage, sparked up and clawed a hand at him as it animated close to the level resembling their unexcited state in warmer weather. Johnson recoiled, calling the woman a few choice names as he decided to approach the problem differently. He climbed over the next vehicle along, jumped down on the far side, having first to push out to clear the spikes so he could land unimpeded.

As his boots hit the floor, he slipped on the icy surface, feeling the slight crunch of one ankle as he tried and failed to roll in an imitation of a parachute landing, and he sprawled out to feel his hammer slip out of his grip. He opened his eyes after he landed hard to watch it slide ahead of him and skitter to a stop just out of reach. A hoarse croak, high-pitched and hissing, sounded from behind him, as if the thing impaled against the car was trying to screech, as was their horrifying way, but had lost its voice. He turned in dread, seeing that it had pushed, pulled and fallen away from the sharpened wood it had been stuck against to land on the pitted road surface beside his boots.

He pedalled his feet frantically, desperate for purchase to propel him away from the thing, and as his hands fumbled for the weapon trapped under his back, he heard a single word ring out.

“Oi,” it said, the voice unbroken but as confident as any soldier he had ever served with.

The sound that followed the voice was a metallic singing, culminating in a crunch and the solid noise of Peter’s pitchfork hitting the tarmac on the other side of the skull he had just skewered. The hissing and huffing of the thing had stopped in the same instant, and Johnson followed the line of the metal sprouting from the inanimate head, back up the worn wooden handle and past the boy’s hands to his face, which held no sign of humour or pride or expectation.

“You alright?” he asked the SSM.

“Yeah,” Johnson said in shock, startled and feeling cold to his core at how quickly a slight mistake could change, or end, a person’s life, “Ankle’s tweaked,” he said, the feeling in his body returning as the adrenaline ebbed away and the pain rushed in to replace it.

“It’s icy,” Peter told him as he jerked the spike back out of the skull. Johnson bit back the sarcastic retort that he was well aware of that salient fact and thank you very much for pointing it out all the same. He regained his feet as the boy was cleaning the weapon on the shredded and torn remains of the clothes his victim still wore, hissing in discomfort as he put pressure on the joint but retrieving his sledgehammer and dragging the lightweight corpse away from the road to roll it on the grass before limping slightly back to regain the safer side of their barricade. He hadn’t even seen Peter get over to save him, hadn’t heard the boy move until he had dealt the fatal blow, and he rather suspected that a platoon of Peters would be worth putting money on at decent odds.

“Let’s keep that bit to ourselves, shall we?” he asked the boy as they walked back to complete their lap. Peter only smiled in answer.

THREE

“Understood,” Downes said simply when Palmer told him what was on his mind.

A man with less style, less impeccably honed manners, would have found such a conversation awkward. Julian Palmer, with his natural aristocratic charm, possessed that effortless way of making a polite suggestion in conversation, or merely presenting a problem to someone so that they volunteered to undertake the solution, instead of having to give an order. In that sense he reminded himself of their former Sergeant Major, the very heart of the squadron in many ways, as he too rarely had to give an order; merely a suggestion that men jumped to carry out.

“I’ll need a decent vehicle capable of dealing with all of this,” Downs said, waving a vague hand over the outside air to encompass the weather in general.

“Done,” Palmer said, his mind calculating the available vehicles and fuel supplies remaining and settling on the four-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser found on the nearby farm. A good choice, given that their own military vehicles were both unfamiliar to the SAS men and notoriously unreliable, especially after the months of abuse they had suffered with little to no maintenance.

“And it’s likely to take a couple of days,” Downes added, “I’ll have Mac draw up a comms schedule and get the boys looking at the maps again.”

“You have my thanks, Major,” Palmer said humbly, taking his leave to return to the more mundane matters.

On his walk back to the room he had adopted as an office, he took the long way around via the large, grassed inner courtyard to view the half-ploughed lawns where the vegetable planting had been planned but started too late in the autumn, before the ground froze hard, and which still showed no signs of thawing. They had grossly miscalculated how long their stores of food would last, burning through the ration packs at a rate not quite as desperate as their remaining ammunition, but still too fast to make surviving winter a foregone conclusion. They needed more food, they needed more fuel for fires, and they needed it now.

He had thought ahead in the last week, diverting men from the former Headquarters Troop to join his only remaining radio operator, Corporal Daniels, in a room which had become their unofficial command. There they studied maps of the area, sadly being more topographical than detailed as to the contents of each town and village, and they scanned the lists of the local directory to find businesses that could be of help to their plight. Palmer’s own small office, what he had guessed had been the snug belonging to the former master of the house, was only a door away and he often found himself working alongside the men, instead of spiralling into depression when left alone with his thoughts.

Hindsight, he told himself sourly, is a wonderful thing. We should have started planting food as soon as we got to this place. Should have used the remainder of the good weather to search for more. So many things we should have done.

But they hadn’t done these things. He hadn’t. They had all rested on their small laurels and enjoyed the relative safety and relaxation, and now they had to survive somehow until the weather broke, which he knew could be half a year away. The thought of huddling in the cold and living on little to no food for all that time threatened to push him further into the depressive cycle he felt himself swirling around, and he knew that if he felt that way, then others were certain to feel the same or worse. That brought with it other concerns, and he worried that the discipline of the civilians, as well as his own adopted men, would begin to unravel.

An early stroke of luck was finding that the nearby farm, accessible either by a cross-country walk of almost a mile or a three-mile journey by single-track roads, possessed a pair of greenhouses which had provided tomatoes and cucumbers for two weeks before they ran out. After that, they had been forced to try and remedy their sudden lack of fresh food, and plant more of it. Crops of onions and carrots had been planted, along with spring onions, broad beans and peas, but they were slow to grow in the sudden low temperatures and the yield was far too small to be worthwhile. What they did manage was large batches of stews, which were started by the volunteer contingent of civilians each morning, and which cooked throughout the day in huge metal pots on the Aga. Then when the sun began to set, everyone ate in shifts.

Work teams toiled all day, clearing rooms and arranging things as best they could for comfort. Men and women walked over the low hill to the farm where they took everything of use, which had blessedly included some livestock that still lived. A large and docile horse had been brought inside to be stabled for winter, as had half a dozen cows, which one of the women rescued from the Island knew how to milk by hand. The farm was more of a smallholding and not a large commercial one, and the occupants had left in such a hurry that their livestock had been abandoned. There were chickens and pigs too, but the eagerness of the survivors on finding them had decimated the herds and flocks before Palmer had ordered men to guard the farm, and had spread the word to keep every animal alive. The simple logic of a daily dose of protein in the form of an egg being more important to their survival than a single roast chicken, needed explaining in detail, it seemed, which infuriated the young officer.

The remaining chickens, safe for now from hungry mouths, laid a modest batch of eggs every day, which, just as the fresh vegetables, was nowhere near enough for all of them. He needed to supplement, to think for all of them, and he did so in every way that he could. He spread the word throughout the civilians as he did the military men, asking for experience in trapping game. Soon he had a team of three men who went out each night and each morning to set and check the snares for rabbit and hare, which were more abundant in the area than he had ever noticed before.

Throughout the brief end of summer and early autumn, those snares had been constantly pilfered by the few Screechers roaming the countryside aimlessly, but as the temperature dropped, so too did the numbers of wandering dead they encountered. The snares provided a meagre supply of meat which found its way into the stews, every shred of flesh stripped from the bones in acceptable mimicry of their enemy.

He hadn’t taken the time to consider this perceived disappearance of Screechers, nor did he really have that time available, but when he tried to find slumber, that was one of the innumerable questions that kept him from sleep. The reduction in numbers of flesh-eating undead human beings was a blessing, and most people considered it as simply that, but he refused to accept the assumptions that they were moving off or dying out. He kept his men alert, planned exercises with the other officers and NCOs to rouse the men and women from their sleep, as though they were under attack again. He had done this only twice since they had been attacked in force, both times feeling barely satisfied with the response times, but he’d chosen not to do so again as the backlash from the civilians was unbearable; they were unaccustomed to that kind of life, couldn’t cope emotionally or physically with being woken up in the night to react and then told to go back to sleep, because they weren’t soldiers.

“What have we got, boys?” he announced cheerily as he walked into the room containing men bent over maps, wearing a smile that his eyes could not hope to match.

“The coal place seems viable, Sir,” answered Trooper Cooper who had been made acting Sergeant Cooper as the only remaining man in the HQ Troop seeming to possess more than a few braincells, “and there’s a few supermarkets a bit further out that would be a good idea, only they’re closer to the towns,” he finished, a gentle warning in his tone.

Palmer nodded, knowing that sending men into the larger towns near the coast could be catastrophic.

“The Hereford lot are getting ready to go out,” he said, “get everything you can on your top three supply sites to me as soon as possible, if you please.”

“Sir,” Cooper responded curtly, his single word conveying compliance and not annoyance. Palmer nodded to them and left, walking back out into the long, carpeted walkway where he almost collided with Maxwell.

“Shit me! Sorry, Sir,” he said from behind two large sacks rested on his right shoulder. Maxwell had adopted the role of senior NCO, performing well in the shadow of the loss of Johnson, who was mourned and muttered about by many.

“Not to worry, Mister Maxwell,” Palmer answered as he stepped back, using the honorary address as he would a sergeant major, despite the man still wearing the three chevrons of his actual rank, “but please do tell me what you have there.”

“Flour, Sir,” Maxwell answered almost excitedly as he rummaged with his free hand in the pocket of his smock to produce a large, rustling plastic packet, “and yeast!”

Palmer stared at him, his mouth slightly open, which Maxwell took to be a lack of comprehension.

“I’m taking it to the kitchens,” he said, “I’ll ask Denise to make some fresh bread for tonight’s stew. She just needs a little salt and a bit of oil, see, and you knead it together, then rest it to let it rise, th…”

“I’m aware of the process, Maxwell,” Palmer interrupted him, unsure how he even knew, given that his family home was graced with a cook and staff, “I was more concerned with where you found it.”

“Farmhouse, Sir, tucked away in a shed,” he replied, falling back on the senior NCO style of giving loud, crisp and punctilious answers when dealing with officers. Palmer knew and recognised the routine immediately, abandoning any further line of questioning as pointless.

“Well, my compliments to Mrs Maxwell,” he said formally, “and I’ll expect a nice, fresh crust with the evening meal.”

“Very good, Sir,” Maxwell answered, resuming his burdened march towards the kitchen. Palmer watched him go, thoughts bouncing around his head until his gurgling stomach changed the subject for him. Clasping an involuntary hand to his thinning midsection, he lost his train of thought for a moment and returned to the office where the planning had happened.

“Village bakeries,” he announced gleefully to the room, earning uncomprehending stares from four sets of eyes.

“Sir?” Cooper asked, his face asking the question far more than the inflection did.

“Tactically, it’s wiser to avoid the more built-up areas, correct?” he asked rhetorically, but seeing that Cooper opened his mouth to respond, he continued quickly, “but the smaller villages are all but abandoned, or at least the Screechers there are contained,” he paused, waiting to see if any of them had cottoned on to his idea yet. They hadn’t.

“We go into the small bakers’ and grocers’” he went on enthusiastically, “and take their flour and yeast and salt… they will have all the ingredients to bake bread, surely, so we bring that back and add fresh bread to the menu. I can’t believe…”

His stomach growled audibly again, silencing his enthusiastic speech and raising the eyebrows of the other men in the room.

“Here you go, Sir,” Daniels said in an almost embarrassed tone, reaching into a pouch and coming out with the remnant of a shiny green wrapper, “have a dead fly biscuit before you drop.”

Palmer smiled, gratefully accepting the gesture and the hard biscuit laced with dried fruit, as he knew the men well enough to not feel embarrassed by breaking down the divide between officer and troopers a level. As he chewed, his stomach protested again as it eagerly accepted the food, but Daniels wasn’t finished.

“Oi, Coops, give the Captain one of them Rolos you’re hiding.”

Cooper looked shocked, maybe even a little hurt, and his mouth hung open to begin a feeble protest before the corporal cut him off.

“Don’t pretend you ain’t got any,” Daniels said with a rueful smile, “we’ve all seen you. Peel a bloody orange in his pocket, that bugger would, Sir.”

Cooper deflated before he spoke.

“It’s my last one though,” he admitted feebly, sparking laughter among the others.

“Aw, Coops,” Daniels chuckled, “don’t you love the Captain enough to give him your last Rolo?”

Amidst the laughter at his expense, Cooper reached into his clothing and brought out a tangle of paper and foil wrapping which contained a solitary, lonely, chocolate-covered treat.

“It’s quite alright, Sergeant,” Palmer said, playing along, “I wouldn’t want you to display such affection in front of your peers and cause unnecessary embarrassment.” He let the laughter die down, chewing the hard biscuit and feeling better for it, before reiterating his orders.

“All of the local bakeries, if you would?” he said, his slightly full mouth betraying how much his hunger overrode his breeding, “and I’ll speak to Lieutenant Lloyd to request a detachment of his men to get straight on it. The other task still stands.”

He kicked himself for not thinking of this before, only forming the idea when he saw Maxwell carrying the sack of flour. He had so many demands on his time and energies that he was missing the answers directly in front of his face, and those demands seemed to grow every day. That list of problems requiring solutions and action grew, boiled over, and almost caused a fire in an instant, with the outbreak of pure pandemonium from down the hallway outside his office.

FOUR

“Jesus, it’s cold,” Nevin complained as he blew on his hands and rubbed them, before holding them over the fire he was crouching in front of.

“It’s winter,” Michaels answered with an undisguised lack of interest, “it happens.”

Nevin ignored the sarcastic retort as he stared into the flames, his face contorting into a rictus of distaste for the man he had been forced to bow and scrape to over the weeks since he had joined the group on the Hilltop. At first the grass had been very green, with stockpiles of looted beer and spirits and good cigarettes, which were a luxury to him. Once that initial hangover had passed, made worse by that bastard Johnson limiting them to a single pint a day for his own amusement, he had realised that the utopia he had imagined wasn’t a reality.

It could be, he told himself in quiet moments, but not with Michaels at the helm.

The surprise of finding their squadron’s missing troop sergeant had stayed with him for over a week, until he realised that the man he had known before wasn’t the man he spoke with now. Sergeant Michaels had been a quiet man, fastidious in some respects, and hard on his men, but ultimately committed to them and rewarding when the appropriate time came. The man sitting in the ornate chair behind him in the grand parlour was still quiet, but there seemed to be an element to him now that was either lacking something he had possessed before, or else there was an edge he had gained since. Nevin mused that it could be both; that the loss of family and the addition of lawlessness had changed the man, much as it had changed him.

On balance, he much preferred the Hilltop way of life, in that he was never roused from an uncomfortable sleep to sit and keep watch with the promise of punishment if he didn’t perform his duties under the malevolent watch of senior men. Senior in their eyes, at least, but not in Nevin’s. He had shed the uniform as soon as he’d arrived, and bundled the dirty clothing stained with sweat, blood and the acrid stench of dried urine, handing them to a cowed woman to be washed and ironed. He had wanted to burn the uniform, but Michaels had insisted that he keep it ready. The rationale for that insistence, as much as Nevin didn’t understand it at first, became evident when they had visited a group of nearby settlers who had found themselves in a similarly protected position as the Hilltop.

The rolling higher ground near the seaside cliffs formed a natural barrier against the legions of undead who roamed across the countryside in the late summer, making those on the lower ground inland vulnerable. The unmistakable sounds of battle in the previous months had tugged at Michaels’ thoughts until Nevin had been thoroughly questioned about the two actions to defend the island, and those facts had further solidified his gut feelings about the lower ground.

That geography, nature’s defences, had protected dozens of small pockets of humanity along the coast, and the arrival of Nevin provided Michaels with the additional tool he required to make further acquisitions.

Dressed in his uniform, Nevin was inspected by the former sergeant who wore nothing to indicate the life he had abandoned, other than the webbing and weapons taken from the camp. Michaels instructed Nevin very precisely in what to say and do, and after sunrise he rolled out at the head of a small convoy in the Ferret car he had taken from the camp before he had abandoned the rest of his squadron to die by flame, explosion or the teeth and nails of the dead. The other vehicles, a collection of civilian cars and vans driven by the cruel followers of Michaels and his litter of lawlessness, dropped back to wait out of sight of the big farm, as Nevin powered up the chalk stone track to the fenced enclave, where he was met by three men holding shotguns unthreateningly.

“Good morning,” he exclaimed from the hatch, in an accent designed to mimic any number of officers he had soldiered under, “we’re conducting reconnaissance of the area,” he explained without introduction, “and are collecting numbers and dispositions of survivors.”

His arrogance served him well, as Michaels had explained that people would long for someone in authority to arrive and give them instructions. That assumed authority, which he had to admit to himself that he enjoyed, instantly put the men at ease and prompted the emergence of women and a few children from the front door of the farmhouse. Nevin asked them questions, receiving freely given answers in the naïve belief that the man represented the armed forces instead of a band of pirates. He had climbed out of the scout car, shaking hands with the men and giving broad smiles to the others, who relaxed the more he spoke.

When he had gleaned as much information as his orders had dictated, hearing about how proud they were to still be producing their own milk and meat and vegetables, and still smiling as he did it, he produced the revolver and shot the oldest man holding a gun through the fleshy part of his lower leg.

He felt nothing as he did it. His smile didn’t falter or fade as he showed no remorse for his actions and the taking of a life. He’d become numb to death and pain and suffering, seeing it as a natural course of action as much as breathing was, because this was now the way of the world for him.

The other armed men reacted amidst the screams and shouts of their friends, until a brief, deafening rip of thirty-calibre bullets tore the air and silenced them all. Despite himself and the knowledge of what would happen, Nevin still flinched instinctively from the noise, until he straightened once more in the renewed silence, to smile at the terrified huddle of men, women and children.

The turret on the scout car rotated audibly, swinging down to aim at the group in unspoken threat.

“Now listen to me,” Nevin snarled over the sobs, “you lot will give up food for us to take away, and we expect the same every month. That,” he said, pointing the barrel of his revolver at the old man who was bleeding and crying onto the frosted stones of the courtyard amidst the desperate attention of the women, “is your one and only warning about what will happen if you don’t do as you are told.”

He stayed silent, staring them down and knowing that Michaels would be watching and listening from his position behind the controls of the heavy machine gun. The sounds of multiple engines behind him as the rest of their convoy approached up the track, filled him with yet more confidence in his power over people.

“We don’t want to kill all of you, and we don’t want to drive you off. All we want is a bit of what you have, and we’ll keep you safe in return. Now,” he said as he indicated the shot man again, “strap that up and keep it clean. It’ll heal in time.”

And that was effectively their game. They ran a criminal protection racket. Their process and tactics had evolved with the arrival of Nevin and the heavy gun he’d brought with him, and Michaels was grateful for the addition of another trained man to provide some spine to the collection of men and women who followed him, because a life spent taking when contrasted to a life spent providing was the easier route to take. He could easily have roamed the landscape in the Warrior he’d taken, but his preference was to retain that for defence of a permanent position, because that made him feel more secure. He hid his insecurities well, as outwardly he was every inch the cold, hard man he projected.

They loaded the cars with milk, meat, vegetables and eggs, taking much more than the remaining survivors could afford to give and still live as comfortably as they had done, and they took it all back to the Hilltop, where the approach road was overlooked by the half-buried hulk of the Warrior light tank that Michaels had emplaced when he had arrived there. Nevin abandoned the uniform, dropping it on the floor, knowing that the lesser people would pick it up and fold it ready for their next rouse. Then, not to waste the daylight, he dressed in a leather coat over jeans and boots to go back out.

Michaels’ reason for subduing the farm had been to prevent them from seeing his people passing by on the road below them, as there were resources in the next town that needed more firepower to take. He rode with Nevin, the controls of the machine gun feeling good in his hands as they rolled ahead of the soft-skinned and vulnerable vehicles behind.

“We couldn’t take this place before,” he said into the headset he wore that linked him to Nevin and allowed them to communicate over the din of the engine, “not without the risk of losing too many people anyway. There was some kind of community aid station set up in the town, and there are probably a hundred of the things in between us and what we want.”

“And what do we want?” Nevin asked out of curiosity but lacking the interest to know the minutia of a plan.

“Food,” Michaels said, “there’s a Bejam’s there which still has lights on, so the freezers should still be working too.”

“You mean Iceland?” Nevin asked, knowing that the shop had been bought out and rebranded, and choosing to allow his natural tendency of nit picking to emerge.

“Whatever,” Michaels said, uninterested, “there’s a gun shop and a tool place there as well. I want those.”

Nevin didn’t answer. He didn’t overly care, as he was just happy to be served and fed and to force others to bend to his will. They retraced their route and rolled into the outskirts of the town, passing by the unmarked entrance leading up to the farm, where doubtless the people there would be tending to their loved one and reeling from the after effects of Nevin’s actions.

“Stop by that junction,” Michaels instructed, steadying himself as Nevin slowed sharply, “that building there, red double-doors.”

“Yeah?”

“Get out and open them,” Michaels instructed him blankly. Nevin’s face set in a look of anger and disgust, deciding against upsetting the man who would be aiming a destructive gun at his back, and he popped open the hatch to climb out. He ran towards the building, eyes scanning wildly left and right as he went, reaching the doors and steadying himself with a few breaths before spinning the handles and wrenching them both open with a grunt and preparing for an onslaught of dead rushing him.

None came, surprising him until the stench hit him in the face with as much recalled force as Johnson’s large fist. Regaining his senses, he ran hard back for the safety of the Ferret and scrambled inside to pull down the hatch, just as the gun opened up over his head in short, controlled bursts which spoke of a calmness and discipline few possessed.

FIVE

Not wanting to waste the day, given that it was just cold and not raining or hailing or snowing, as it had been intermittently throughout the week, Johnson removed his right boot and applied a bandage with difficulty to the aggravated joint. As he was struggling to do it, Astrid walked in and tutted loudly.

“This is why men cannot wrap the gifts,” she announced cryptically, snapping her fingers and reaching out for the bandage. Johnson abandoned the task, leaning back on the sofa with a huff as he handed it over.

“You made a twist of it? How?” she asked him as she knelt on the expensive rug at his feet and rolled the bandage back up to begin again.

“Slipped on the ice,” he admitted, leaving out the relevant information that the simple accident would almost certainly have spelled disaster, had it not been for the ten-year-old boy saving his life.

“You should be more careful,” Astrid admonished him gently, her tone indicating that she might have already known or guessed the facts that he hadn’t stated, “especially at your age.”

“My age?” Johnson asked, carefully enunciating the words with an edge of warning.

“Yes,” she said, unperturbed by his tone, “I simply mean that you do not heal as quickly as you would have done when you were younger. A sprain of the ankle could make the differences of life and death, but luckily this is not swollen.”

“Thanks,” Johnson said, feeling the practised hands of the woman wrapping the bandage far more effectively around his sore joint, but further discussion was cut off by Buffs walking into the room and shrugging into his equipment.

“You good to go?” he asked, eyeing the treatment happening in their living room.

“I am,” Johnson answered with finality.

“Good. Me, you, Astrid and Craig,” he said, detailing their team to go out. It made sense, as Hampton was still struggling to put his full weight on the knee that he had dislocated in the helicopter crash. Kimberley was healed and mobile, but being unfamiliar with firearms, she wasn’t the obvious choice to take, plus any more bodies on their foray would reduce the quantity of supplies they could return with and increase the risk of discovery.

“Can I come?” asked a small voice from the open-plan kitchen behind them, forcing Johnson to twist to see Peter’s hopeful expression. He took in the look on his face, turning back to Buffs in the hope that he would dash the boy’s hopes.

“I don’t take up much room,” he added, melting the hearts of the hard men just a little.

“I know, lad,” Buffs said softly, “but with Bill still slow as a snail, who is here to keep the village safe? Who’s going to protect Kimberley and Amber?”

Peter, his hopes of joining the elite dashed in such a way as to elevate his mood, gave a resolved smile and nodded, accepting the refusal with grace and purpose, as he accepted the promotion solemnly.

“You look after this place,” Johnson added, “and we’ll see if we can bring you something good back, shall we?”

“Like what?” Peter asked, half in hope and half in suspicion, as he was woefully unaccustomed to adults showing him any kindness.

“What would you like? Some video cassettes? Books?” Astrid asked, fixing the bandage with a strip of black electrical tape taken from one of her pouches, and standing to allow Johnson the room to put his boot back on and lace it tightly.

Peter opened his mouth to speak but stopped as a small hand tugged at his sleeve. He bent down to Amber, knowing that she wouldn’t speak out loud in front of everyone, and listened as she whispered in his ear insistently.

He smiled, straightened, and answered.

“Some new videos would be nice,” he said, “and Amber wants a Kinder Surprise.”

* * *

They took their van, the most appropriate vehicle found in the village for their needs, and carefully replaced the barrier of cars after they had moved outside their barricades. There were three seats across the front, and Johnson drove with Astrid beside him leaning her legs awkwardly into Bufford’s to allow the SSM room to manipulate the gear stick without intruding on her intimately. Enfield rode in the back, uncomplaining, as riding in the front would have meant separating him from his rifle, because there just wouldn’t have been enough space for both him and his gun.

Hampton had offered an opinion about that very subject, saying the loss of a long rifle in the man’s hands was akin to severing a favoured male appendage. But it was also a tactical choice to sit in the back, as Enfield was the only one of them not to be carrying a suppressed weapon, should they need to get out and lay down fire in a hurry.

They drove carefully and slowly, aware of the treacherous road conditions, to keep their noise profile as low as possible, as was their standard operating procedure. They passed through small knots of buildings, some larger and others smaller than their own meagre stronghold, and past the combined post office and local shop that they had already emptied of anything useable. Twenty-five minutes of slow progress led them to the outer edge of a small town which bore the tell-tale signs of a swarm passing through. Only Johnson and Bufford had encountered the mass-gatherings of dead when they swarmed in impossible numbers, and neither wanted the experience repeated in a hurry. The shattered glass, the smears of gore and the shunted vehicles indicating an unstoppable tide of flesh passing through to clear the area of humanity like a plague, all indicated that something very unwelcome had befallen the town.

With the engine killed and ticking in the frosty silence, the four of them quietly got out and pushed the doors shut with as little sound as humanly possible. They fanned out, their drills wordless and smooth now as the four had learned to operate together more closely through practice, as Bufford led them towards their secondary objective, which was the closer of the two.

Approaching the glass frontage of the gun shop, they saw cracks spider-webbing from half a dozen impacts at head height, where they imagined the undead skulls of zombies had banged hard into the shop windows, which stood intact before the metal mesh grids inside. The door was unlocked, the shop largely untouched and showing no signs of having been ransacked. Gaps on the displays showed where guns had been removed in a hurry, but the locked cabinets of rifles remained intact.

Buffs and Astrid moved through the store, heading around the dark wooden counter and into the back, from where they returned almost instantly to declare the place empty. It only had a back storeroom filled with gun cabinets and a large lock-box like a chest freezer, a single toilet and a kitchen area, where no Screechers could be hidden. Grabbing three large game bags originally designed to hold the carcasses of animals from hunting trips, they set to work taking the heavy-load cartridges from the lock-box, which had yielded easily to Bufford’s crowbar. Astrid had turned to protect the front door as the other three began searching the shop.

“Any more rounds for your rifle?” Buffs asked Enfield, who looked up to meet his gaze.

“Three-oh-eights at a pinch,” he said with a slight sneer at the thought of using inferior tools for his trade, “but they won’t be as accurate over distance.”

Johnson, who was stacking boxes of twelve-bore cartridges on the counter, the boxes bearing the lowest numbers to hand to indicate heavier shot, didn’t think that accuracy over the distances their sniper was considering meant a great deal. He looked at him to voice that opinion, but saw the man heading across the shop floor towards a rack of rifles, with his head canted to the side as he zeroed in on the inspection.

Reaching up, Enfield lifted down a large gun with a dark wood stock that looked almost black. The huge optic seated over the barrel seemed fitting for the size of it, and he paused in his task to watch the quiet man turn it over in his hands and assess it almost lovingly. He hefted it, feeling the weight and balance and evidently finding it to his approval, then ran his hands tenderly over the bolt action a few times to find it smooth and well-machined. Dropping out the small magazine and reseating it, he nodded, looking around for a padded slip and placing the gun inside. Johnson went to turn back to his task, but clearly Enfield was not finished. Reaching up again, he took down a small, light weapon with bluey-grey metal on the barrel and trigger housing, with a deep, rich walnut stock. He pulled back the charging handle, making the clicking metallic sounds of a lighter, higher note than the more serious weapon he had held previously, and ran his hands over it in much the same way, before announcing over his shoulder what he needed.

“Two-two rimfire rounds,” he said with purpose as he snapped his fingers excitedly, “as many as you can find.”

Buffs paused in his search, meeting Johnson’s eye before both men shrugged and began searching the lock-box for the requested bullets.

After ten minutes in the shop, piling up everything they wanted near Astrid by the door, Enfield was equipped with what he considered to be a barely suitable replacement for his Accuracy International when the military ammunition finally ran out, as well as a new personal weapon which seemed woefully small in comparison.

The small Ruger rifle, light and short-barrelled like a toy gun at a fairground sported a fat protrusion at the end of its length which none of them needed an explanation for. The sound baffle would doubtless reduce the noise of any shot, but they all knew that nothing was truly silent when it fired a bullet, as their own MP5s demonstrated with the snapping, chattering coughs they emitted. What Enfield knew but the others had yet to fathom was that the smaller calibre rifle wouldn’t produce the tell-tale crack of high-velocity rounds as their other guns would. To him, it was the perfect Screecher killer.

Beside those chosen guns were box upon box of bullets and empty, spare magazines, next to the bags of shotgun cartridges capable of decapitating a person with ease. They helped themselves to other items after the priority of their resupply, taking thick hunting coats and waxed jackets. Johnson ran his hands quickly along the rack containing the smaller items before asking a question of the others in a low voice.

“How old is Amber, do you think?”

“Three? Four?” Bufford responded with a shrug, knowing about as much about children as Johnson did.

“She is not yet five,” Astrid answered in her curious translation without taking her concentration away from the door. Johnson turned back to the rack and took two padded, waterproof coats in sizes ten and five, determined to provide for their youngest members.

“This is the last of the two-twos,” Enfield said as he returned from the storeroom, bobbing his head and waving his hand over the stacked boxes as he did the mental calculations and finished with a hint of a smile, “Has anyone seen any keys?”

None of them had, meaning that whatever treasures lay locked away in the cabinets in the back would remain hidden. That was a shame for Enfield, who was something of a firearms connoisseur, especially in the light of recent changes to the UK gun laws which had prohibited some very useful items.

A little over two years before, they had learned of one of the worst losses of life at the hands of a civilian in their country. A man had killed sixteen people and critically injured almost as many, before taking his own life to take the count to seventeen dead. That had brought about massive change in the legal ownership of guns and had prohibited some semi-automatic rifles, as well as the ownership of handguns and shotguns able to fire more than three shots. That tragedy, that horrific loss of life, still somehow seemed worse in their memories than the unfathomable death toll they faced now. The result of this was that gun dealers were inundated with such prohibited weapons until they could be surrendered, or else deactivated to fall under the new guidelines.

One of these deactivation projects appeared in Enfield’s hands on his last foray into the storeroom, and on a hunch, he flipped open the cardboard lid of a cartridge box and began to load the red plastic ammunition into the weapon he was holding. Expecting to be prevented from loading more than two, his eyes widened when he managed four and then slid open the breech to seat a fifth ready to fire.

He handed it to Johnson without a word, leaving him to marvel at the Remington pump action in his hands. It had no stock, instead ending in a pistol grip which sprouted a short loop of canvas strap to be slipped over his torso.

“Close encounters,” Buffs said quietly, unwittingly echoing the words of their estranged SAS counterparts.

They carried everything back to their van, not bothering to take anything new except the shotgun which hung from the sergeant major, and they filed onwards to clear out the small convenience shop of everything they could find.

Clearing it for danger, of which there was luckily none, they filled plastic carrier bags with the remaining tinned food, as the smell inside the shop told them all they needed to know about the fresh produce. As they walked quietly and alertly back to the van, the noise of an engine widened their eyes.

Sounds from further into the town echoed along the eerily quiet channels between the buildings before another sound chattered into booming life; that of heavy gunfire.

“The others! The rest of your lot,” Buffs said excitedly, seeing only dark looks on the faces of Johnson and Enfield.

“No,” the bigger man said as his attuned ears recognised the difference in an instant, “that’s thirty-cal.”

Bufford looked at him uncomprehendingly until he explained.

“Ours only had gympies. Seven-six-two. That’s not ours.”

Bufford thought for a second before providing another explanation.

“What if they got one on resupply at the base?” he offered.

“What if they didn’t?” Astrid countered, prompting the four of them to regard each other with something bordering on uncomfortable fear and a desperate hope.

“I’ll go and check, then,” Johnson said, taking a step forward and instantly wincing as he put pressure on his strapped ankle.

“No, you won’t,” Enfield said, ridding himself of any additional weight that could slow him down, which included the SA80 rifle as he unslung the Accuracy International. Buffs drew and offered him the Browning Hi-Power sidearm from his holster. Enfield shook his head to refuse it, tapping two fingers instead on the bayonet sheathed on his webbing, then doing the same to the large scope on his rifle.

“I’m not planning on getting anywhere near them, just going for a look.”

The gunfire continued in disciplined bursts before two pauses and two longer salvos signalled the end of the one-sided gun battle, finishing with a final rattle of a few shots. Half a minute later, as the last clattering sounds of gunfire still echoed through the town, Enfield returned via an alleyway between two shops at a dead run, recklessly flying towards them in an awkward run as he pumped one arm, with the other clamping the rifle to his back to stop it bouncing. Needing no further explanation, they all piled into the van to leave in as much of a hurry as the slippery road allowed.

SIX

Nevin locked the hatch, pressing his face up to the viewport in time to see that the doorway was already piled up with the twice dead bodies which possessed the smell he still had in his nostrils. A kick to his shoulder between the bursts brought him back to his senses, making him put the headset back on in time to hear the voice of Michaels sounding every inch the Troop Sergeant he remembered.

“…cking brain in gear, you dozy wanker!” the voice said through the headset.

“What?” he answered.

“I said,” Michaels growled as though the annoyance of repeating himself promised more peril to his driver than the dead outside their armoured ride, “push forward ten yards.”

Nevin didn’t respond, but he did as he was told and rolled the Ferret ahead in a straight line as instructed. The fire above him intensified as the bursts became longer. Michaels had rapidly filled the double doorway with dead and needed a change of angle so he could fire directly inside to hit the remaining zombies without wasting bullets by firing into the massed pile of meat. This continued for another eight or nine seconds until the firing stopped. A pause of the same time and another long burst opened up, making Nevin think that signalled the end of the engagement, before a final ripping period of sustained fire tore out.

“Go and check,” Michaels said bluntly.

“Check fucking what?” Nevin snapped back, his voice an octave higher than normal.

“Check that there aren’t any more coming out. See if I’ve just blocked the door or if they’re all dead. I can’t see all the way inside.”

Nevin swallowed, his devious mind already imagining a life without someone telling him what to do, but he popped the hatch and took his submachine gun to climb down carefully and walk towards the building, without once taking his eyes off the pile of dead at the doors.

He stepped as close as he dared, seeing no movement and hearing no tell-tale sounds of any of them still mobile. He ran back to the Ferret, climbing up and closing down to lock the hatch again as he sat and shuddered.

“Well?” Michaels asked in a voice no longer edged with scorn.

“All dead.”

“Good, drive on to the other end of the High Street. We’ll wait for the others, then strip this place cle…”

“Ahead, movement,” Nevin barked, cutting Michaels off. Both men looked ahead, seeing a flash of movement beside a building as a shadow ducked out of sight. While the person was no longer there, both men were left with a snapshot image of a shape pointing something in their direction. The something in question was undoubtedly a long rifle, and both men knew that the dead retreated when spotted about as often as they used weapons. The turret moved, and flame spat from the end of the barrel to erupt dust and chunks of brick from the corner of the wall where the person had disappeared. Michaels was no fool, and instead of firing at where the shape had been, he stitched a burst into the wall, knowing that they would over-penetrate and come out into the blind spot where the runner would likely be.

Nevin drove forwards to stop level with the alleyway as the turret rotated again to point directly down it. Nothing. Sure enough, the last rounds Michaels had fired had torn chunks through the soft obstacle of the brick, but no body lay on the ground.

“Who the fuck was that?” he asked Nevin.

“No idea, but the bugger was alive. And armed.”

“Sod it, carry on,” Michaels told him.

Nevin did as instructed again, the last incident all but forgotten but with a question rolling around in his head. He reformed the question before he asked it.

“They were shut in,” he voiced, “Why bother?”

“Why bother wasting the ammo?”

“Well, yeah…”

“Nevin,” Michaels said in a wistful tone, as though he was imparting some sage nugget of advice, “never leave an enemy in your rear. Ever.”

* * *

“It was your man,” Enfield said, breathless from his sprint and raising his voice for the others to hear while he stared out of the rear window of the van. Johnson was driving as fast as he could safely, keeping the truck in low gears to prevent the wheels spinning while he tried to keep the revs low and reduce their chances of being detected.

“Who?” Astrid asked from her position beside him as the others rode in the front, “Whose man?”

“One of the tankies,” he said, eyes still glued to the road behind them and brick dust adorning his helmeted head like snowflakes, “that one who got the bloke killed, pissing about when we were getting supplies for the defences on the island. The one nobody liked.”

Johnson’s heart dropped, rising back up as though it was riding the crest of a wave of hate.

“Exactly what happened?” he asked loudly and carefully.

“Armoured car. Little one, like a Ferret but with a mounted HMG,” Enfield recounted, “It rolled in and took out a load of Screechers coming out of a building, then your chap got out to check. He wasn’t in uniform. Must have seen me, because they fired through the building line to where I’d been watching from.”

Johnson’s mouth set into a tight line, the blood draining from his lips as he squeezed them tight and gripped the wheel hard to make his knuckles do the same.

“It probably was a Ferret,” he said, “with a turret-mounted thirty-cal. Rare as rocking horse shit. But if he was getting back in it, who fired on you?” he asked, knowing from experience how desperately cramped and claustrophobic the interior of those vehicles was, and certain that the gun would have to be manned to be driven and fired at the same time.

“Fuck knows,” Enfield said, leaving relative silence inside the van until it was broken by Johnson’s savage outburst that seemed to rise from his belly, until it poured from his mouth like so much vomited hatred, and it grew louder with each word.

“Fucking Nevin. That bone-idle, useless, thieving little shitbag, fuck!”

Silence returned as their driver’s breath came in growls.

“Mate of yours?” Buffs asked in a light tone.

“Mate? Fucking mate?” Johnson snarled, clearly feeling that it was too soon for levity, “He shirked off at every opportunity, started a pub brawl with our own fucking side when all this was going on, got a decent soldier and a good man killed by fucking about instead of doing his job, left his post to go looting and now, fucking now, he looks like he’s gone fucking rogue…”

“Definitely not a mate, then,” Buffs said, as though Johnson had helpfully cleared up the matter.

Almost under her breath, Astrid asked a rhetorical question of Enfield.

“Why does he always use this bad word like it is a comma?”

Enfield ignored her, keeping his eyes glued to their retreat for any sign of pursuit.

“No,” came the growled response from the driving seat, “definitely not a mate, and whatever that little prick is up to, you can guarantee it’s not good.”

* * *

“Whoever it was,” Michaels said in a voice that was clearly pissed off but tinged with a kind of wary respect for the mysterious person he had tried to kill, “they’ve done a decent job here.” He turned to address the nervous gaggle of followers who darted their eyes everywhere as though they expected some undead abomination to emerge from a side street at any moment. “Come on in,” he called to them, seeing the collective flinch at his raised voice, “grab everything and load it up.”

He wandered outside, seeing the flow of his small crowd of followers part around him like water repelled by compressed air, and Nevin followed as his self-appointed right hand.

“Your old lot?” he asked his newest recruit and fellow deserter.

“Could be,” Nevin said, “but I doubt it. If it was them, I’d expect more. They’d have a lot of the troopers on it, not to mention the bloody bootnecks and the Sass blokes.”

“Hmm,” Michaels growled ambiguously, not making it clear whether he understood Nevin’s points or whether he was just concerned at having elite soldiers knocking about near his patch.

“I reckon they lost nearly half of the fighting men when I got away,” Nevin opined, “and they weren’t supposed to be heading this way, but further inland towards the north west.”

“Hmm,” Michaels growled again, more thoughtfully this time as he turned away and scanned the ground for something he didn’t seem to feel like sharing just yet. He walked slowly, his head sweeping back and forth as he crossed the road, with the smallest of glances to either side which, as unlikely as traffic was, still demonstrated how ingrained some behaviours were in most humans. Nevin followed at a wary, respectable distance until he saw the man stop and stoop to the pavement. Nevin followed, leaning over the crouching man to see the trampled remains of a children’s treat in his hand. The colourful foil wrapper had merged into the soft chocolate interior and all of that moulded to form a crust over the plastic capsule inside as it set harder in the chill temperatures.

Wordlessly, Michaels stood and dropped the detritus as though dismissing the clue as irrelevant.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said as he turned and strode back to the gun store, “Half the people left won’t survive this winter anyway.”

He chivvied their efforts, doubling them almost by his presence alone as the unspoken fear of his displeasure radiated outwards. They made no effort to sort or select anything, merely took the entire contents that weren’t nailed down too securely, before loading it all into a van to be sorted when safely back on their hilltop. He led the way personally into the large freezer store, gun up and eyes narrowed, dispatching two of the things which were mostly dormant in a darkened rear stock room, before pulling shut the open door leading to the loading bay, and ordering everything to be taken. The restaurant part of his new home, taken by the threat of force alone against the unprepared and unsuspecting occupants, had a large walk-in freezer which could cope with most of what they took. When the vans were full, he ordered the place locked up again for a return trip when their supplies ran low. He knew that there would be fresh supplies coming each month from the survivors he intimidated but relying on other people wasn’t something that the former sergeant did any more.

SEVEN

“Chop, chop,” Nevin crowed petulantly at the human chain of ‘volunteers’ who had been ordered out into the cold to unload and sort the scavenged food on their return. He, like Michaels, believed in a hierarchy which dictated that the fighting men such as himself did not need to undertake the lowly tasks of cooking and washing clothes, as the ungrateful people under their protection should earn their keep. He stopped at a girl, thirteen or fourteen years old maybe, and grabbed her slender wrist after she had struggled to pass on an armful of frozen potatoes. His grip was too strong for her to pull away, so she froze still, her body weight leaning away from him in protest as she was powerless to resist any other way.

“What have you done here?” he asked, looking at the bright red skin denoting the fresh scars on her wrists, “Tried the coward’s way out, did we?”

The girl summoned all of her strength to pull her arm away as her eyes flashed with bright, wet hatred and embarrassment. Nevin saw her doing this, and just as she set her stance to wrench her hand free, he let go of her, laughing as she fell heavily onto her backside to writhe in pain at the impact of her unsuspecting arse-cheeks hitting cold concrete. She stared back at him with undisguised hatred, her breath coming rapidly and raggedly through her nose as her mouth was set into a tight grimace to keep the tears of anger at bay. She found her feet as a kindly woman stepped directly in front of her.

“Go and help Ellie stack the freezer,” she said, before adding a whisper of “now.”

The girl went, without a backwards glance at the woman who had diverted her rage, or at the bastard who had invoked it.

The woman, Pauline, the original occupant of the historical site which had been preserved only through investment to turn it into a hotel and restaurant, went back to her task without saying anything to him, even though she desperately wanted to let her thoughts spew out in a torrent of indignant rage. She had taken the girl under her wing, much as she had with the older woman she had sent her to help after the bastards had dragged her away from her daughter to leave the little girl to a gruesome fate. That young woman, Ellie, had been deposited with Pauline, and she had looked after her as well as she could, even though the loss of her daughter left a gaping, ragged hole in her heart, which wasn’t soothed at all by the tears she shed every night as she lay in bed thinking about what had happened to her.

Eventually the exhaustion of the thoughts combined with her tortured insomnia to render her into a state of unconsciousness more than sleep, and each morning she woke, having had a few precious moments more rest, she became able to function a little more every day.

She had resigned herself to her brutal and tragic loss now, seeking a reason to go on living after the certain knowledge of losing her baby girl had finally sunk in, and just when she was considering walking off the cliff, one of the raiding parties, as she thought of them, returned with fresh recruits to their community.

* * *

When Jessica had first been dragged away in the ambulance from her unhappy home life, she had fought hard against her lawful abductors. She tried to refuse the tablets they gave her, saying that she felt fine and didn’t want to have anything to help her relax. The two nurses in white uniforms had held her down then, forcing open her mouth with something like a wooden spoon, and dropped two blue pills into her mouth. They tasted bitter, and she fought hard to spit them out, but her mouth was held closed, until her body betrayed her, and the natural swallowing reflex happened. The two still held her down as the ambulance leaned away from the bends in the road, for what seemed like mile after mile, until her arms and legs lost the power to push against them. It felt as if her whole body was numb, inside a bubble where the sounds and sensations of the outside world were muted and slowed somehow. She tried to speak, to curse them and demand to be let go, so that she could walk back and protect her little brother from the hell he had been left in. She couldn’t speak. It was as if her lower jaw had been paralysed, and she was just drooling past her numb tongue when she tried.

Hours went by in that state when, unknown to her, it had been far less. The slowed passage of time in her drug-induced condition messed with her perception, giving her a sense of days passing with each minute. She was wheeled out of the ambulance after it stopped, reversing to bump the rear wheels against an unseen kerb. Somehow, she knew this; could picture it as though experiencing the end of the journey from an outside perspective. She fell further into that thought, allowing her mind to distance itself from her body as the wheels of the metal trolley she was strapped to clattered and bounced down the ramp and into the cooler dark interior through double doors. Strip lights flashed above her intermittently as she was transported deeper inside the white-walled interior, until she was left alone on the trolley directly under one of the lights, and she could hear voices that sounded muffled coming from a nearby room. One light, the one on the right to her perspective, flickered almost imperceptibly as though it kept phasing in and out so fast that nobody could see it. She could. She could see it clearly and even began to be able to predict when it would happen at irregular intervals. It blinked out for a long second, flickering back to life and radiating its yellowy glow outwards before anyone but her noticed. She began to think it was talking to her; like it was trying to communicate in some way to only her, as if they were both prisoners in this place, and neither could speak freely for fear of the nurses overhearing them and foiling any plans they might make together.

I know, she told it in her mind, we need to get out of here.

* * *

She had been moved, had her clothes taken off her, and her wounded wrists dressed again with fresh bandages. She’d felt a sensation in those cuts when they were roughly wiped clean, and her brain told her that it registered that sensation as a stinging feeling, but somehow the connections to the part of her brain that felt pain were severed or blocked.

She had been dressed in a simple gown which was left open at the back when she was transferred onto a bed in a plain room, where every fixture was immovable and built into the walls. Eventually she managed to sit up, still feeling as though she was inside that same bubble, but as if the walls were growing thinner, allowing more of the terrible outside world to penetrate and send her confusing messages. Her mouth was dry, a sudden return of a normal feeling to her, and as though the room knew what she needed, her eyes found a plastic jug half-filled with water and a paper cup beside it. She poured herself some, getting nearly half of what she spilled over the lip of the jug into the cup, and drained it.

It seemed to her as if the water wasn’t water at all, even though it tasted just like water, but was instead some elixir which woke her up and returned her full array of senses to her. With that return, after her fourth cup was raised to her mouth by her shaking hands, her memory returned with all the rage and hate and terror that she had missed out on when she had been in the bubble. She stopped drinking, turned her head slowly towards the thick off-white interior of the door without a handle, and threw the plastic jug at it with a high-pitched scream of rage.

The jug clattered off the door to clatter noisily on the floor in three bounces before it came to a spinning stop. As that sound disappeared, it was replaced by another, building in volume as it became multiple pairs of shoes moving with ominous purpose towards her door.

The shutter snapped open, revealing a pair of eyes on the other side of the thick Perspex viewing port, then it snapped closed again. She heard a chuckle from the corridor, followed by the sound of the shoes squeaking away in diminishing volume, until she was left alone with only the sound of her breath coming fast.

She ran at the door, bouncing off it as she screamed in rage and frustration, tears streaming down her face from the anger she was feeling, more than from any shred of weakness. The sounds of shoes returned with more purpose, menacingly stamping and squeaking along the corridor until the view port again revealed eyes, only this time narrowed in anger instead of wide with amusement. The shutter snapped across again, and a heavy clunk of a disengaging door lock echoed dully inside her empty cell.

The door spilled inwards, three grown men filling the gap in an instant as she was snatched up and off her feet to be piled back down onto the bed. She fought and screamed as they forced her wrists and ankles into the leather restraints, arching her back as she tried to bite them and use the only weapon available to her that they hadn’t taken away.

They stepped back, out of breath and chuckling at the defenceless girl who was half the size of any one of them, so no match at all for all three. They left her alone, now unable even to reach her face to remove the sweat-sticky strands of hair out of her eyes. She stuck out her lower jaw and blew upwards, attempting to dislodge the annoyance that way, but gave up after a handful of attempts and lay back in angry exhaustion.

She had no idea how long she had been there, but the light from the single, high window grew dull. After her breathing had returned to normal, she felt cold, shivering as the cool air dried the sweat from her body and seemed to leave her permanently deprived of the body heat she had lost.

She lay there into the night, her cell lit only by the wan shaft of dull yellow from an external light outside the window, and she must have drifted in and out of consciousness because she had wet herself at some point. She’d heard footsteps a few times. Had heard the shutter squeak quietly open, as though whoever was peering in wanted to keep the animal in the cage undisturbed as much as possible, and in the depths of the night she heard another sound from the corridor which chilled her more than the low temperature could ever have done.

* * *

The outbreak had spread quickly from the separate section of the hospital, as the main building had been one of the epicentres of the local infection. Being a rural area, naturally the distance between hospitals capable of providing trauma care was often vast. Those attacked and bitten ahead of the main waves of dead flowing outwards from London were rushed to hospital, and in such confined areas where the sick and injured languished in beds, it made the rapid spread a forgone conclusion as the first of many critically ill patients died and then rose in a new form, in which their milky blind eyes zeroed in on the nearest victims.

One of the nurses from the Accident and Emergency department had been smoking outside a fire escape door when the screams and shouts of alarm first came from inside. She dropped her cigarette, grinding it out with her shoe by automatic reflex, looked inside and saw the man who had been brought in with the animal bite to his arm stomping almost drunkenly across the corridor with both arms raised towards an unseen target.

That makes sense, she thought, drunk most probably. The bloke’s burning a fever and blathering on about it being a man who’s bitten him, when there’s no way that’s been caused by a person.

Then the blood fountained past her view, making her hesitate and take an automatic step backwards away from the inexplicable horror she could see inside. The blood was followed by the drunken man on his hands and knees, snuffling at the hot, sticky liquid on the shiny floor. He froze, his head snapping up to lock his gaze directly onto her face as he sniffed the air with exaggerated animal-like movements.

She saw the eyes; milky and clouded as though he had been blinded by cataracts. The head tilted slowly to one side as the muscles of his body tensed before he flew at her.

He’s not drunk, she decided, that’s not natural. Nobody should move like that.

She stood transfixed by his approach as he slipped and slid on the spilled blood, until her senses regained control of her terrified body and she reached out to slam the heavy door hard into his face. The door bounced back, revealing a writhing body crumpled in the doorway where the thick wood had impacted and rearranged his facial features hideously. He climbed back to his feet as she stood dumbstruck at what she was seeing and hearing from inside, and then she ran.

She ran faster than she had ever run before and wouldn’t have thought herself capable of such a feat. She was not a small woman, nor would she ever class herself as athletic by any stretch of the imagination, but she propelled herself with an inhuman speed blindly across the road towards the nearest building set on higher ground.

Snuffling and grunting came from behind her until a hideous, terrifying noise ripped the air as though a set of bagpipes was being tortured on an inward breath. The guttural, primal scream the man emitted spurred her faster until she dared risk a glance behind her to see the man stumbling stiff-limbed closer to her.

The ambulance came from nowhere. Later she realised that her terror and focus had been so consumed by her attacker, by the predator hunting her down, that her brain must have filtered out the sound of the approaching engine and the screech of locked tyres and the sirens. It hit the man square, thumping him bodily through the air with a vile crunch of metal and bone to send him twenty paces down the road away from her. She froze again, unaware of how much her chest was heaving with the rapid breathing, and her instincts took over to send her two steps towards the sight of the injured man, despite the unnaturally violent behaviour he had exhibited. When she saw his broken and shattered limbs begin to move, saw him start to right himself with his ruined body and swivel his crooked neck back around to face her, all sense of helping the man vanished as quickly as it had first appeared, all duty of care evaporated in a heartbeat, and she turned and ran again as other afflicted men and women spilled from the main building.

Going via the rear entrance to the other building, if only to seek sanctuary inside away from the monsters she feared were chasing her, she ran inside and turned to bolt the doors behind her. She ran through the corridors, finding some doors locked and others open to her.

Too late, she found the suddenly familiar sounds of screams and screeches from ahead, and faltered, turning back to bump chest first into a white-uniformed orderly running towards the sounds.

“No,” she pleaded, “don’t go that way.”

“I’ve got to…” he started to say before she slapped him to focus his attention.

“No! You’ve got to get us out of here. Right now. People have gone mad,” she told him, “they’re… killing each other.”

He hesitated for a second, seeing nothing but the maniacally desperate look in her eyes, then led her away from the terrible sounds. He hesitated again, his hands fluttering at the keys clipped on his waist as he slowed and turned to her.

“I’ve got to help them,” he said as he thrust the keys at her, “get as many people out as you can, just don’t open any of the doors with a red card by them.”

She swallowed, nodded, and watched the man jog away as his shoes squeaked on the floor. Left in silence, she turned and walked to the nearest door to peer through the thick glass of the observation window. She glanced away, checking the details of the name and the colour-coded card beside the door. She saw that it bore a piece of red card underneath the legend of a name, surname first, and she looked back inside just as something hit the glass with a wet thud.

She recoiled, stepping back as the fresh shit smeared slowly down with gravity and the cackling laugh bounced around the concrete walls within.

That one can stay there, she told herself, moving down the corridor until she found a door without a coloured card. She looked through, her breath catching as she saw a young girl strapped to the bed looking small and helpless in the leather restraints. She paused, glancing hesitantly at the lack of colour-coordinated risk assessment, and she made a judgement call in the desperate hope that she was right. Fumbling with the keys, she unlocked the door.

* * *

Jessica thought back to that day often. Now, as she hauled frozen bags of potatoes and vegetables onto shelves in the huge freezer, she wondered where her younger brother was, and if he had survived, too.

EIGHT

echo-one-one, charlie-one-one. sitrep: no losses to c-1-1. consolidated position at 50.8734n, 2.8915w with mixed civilian and other arms personnel. supplies low but sustainable at present. survivors in excess of 100 require extraction. confirm viability of secure location.

The message on the small screen was short and to the point, and it also had to be sent when the four-man SAS team were safely away from prying eyes at the big house. Privacy was not something many people could enjoy on any military base, and Major Downes had yet to bring Captain Palmer up to speed on the other deployments of special forces troops. That would have been so far beyond his original pay grade that his need to know had gone from night to day.

“Keep it on, Smiffy,” he said, meaning for his trooper to preserve the integrity of the complex snaking antenna cables used to send the burst data transmission on one of the set frequencies programmed into their man-portable radio, “we’ll give them an hour and pack it up.”

“No need, Boss,” Smiffy said, “getting one back now.”

Downes damn near bowled the man out of the way as he pushed his face up to the small readout to take in the answering message.

charlie-one-one, echo-one-one. no losses to echo teams. our location is viable and defended. supplies adequate. unable to send evac by air. recommend journey by vehicle or boat via shallow coastal waters only. repeat, vehicle or shallow coastal waters only.

“Well, bugger me…” Downes said to himself.

“Rather not, Boss,” Mac intoned from behind him, “I’m more of the blonde hair, big boobs and daddy issues type.” Downes ignored the levity and explained.

“Major Kelly has four bricks under his command,” he said, using the slang term for the four-man teams they usually operated in at the coalface level, “and they were in London as soon as that lab went dark. They were sent for a selection of VIPs and evac’ed by helicopter to a place designated ‘Echo’.”

The three other men of his tightly-bound team exchanged looks. Only Mac’s face remained impassive, as the other two were learning about this for the first time.

“We’ve still got a government?” Dez asked.

“Of a sort,” Downes answered, “but I rather suspect they’re being kept safe for whatever comes after. They are set up for this, the quarantine I mean, and something tells me they aren’t scratching around for flour and yeast like we are.”

Smiffy read over the response again, asking why the need to emphasise the shallow water approach.

“Because whatever is left of NATO’s naval forces will probably sink anything seen leaving the British or Irish mainland, I imagine,” Downes answered. “Send an acknowledgement,” he instructed his trooper.

Smiffy pressed the buttons on the backpack-sized device attached to the lengths of wires, then began collapsing the equipment and packing it back down to be stowed in the rear of their Land Cruiser taken for the reconnaissance mission at the request of Palmer.

“You wait,” Smiffy said as he hauled the ungainly radio up and into the tailgate, “one day we’ll be able to do this from our personal mobile telephones.”

“Dream on, laddy,” Mac drawled, “you just focus on the job we’re doing before you get all that Star Trek nonsense in your head. What are you after? A phone call from your watch?”

Smiffy shrugged. His job was to get the job done, whatever it might be. Unlike the rest of the army, where a man or woman would have one main job and maybe learn how to undertake the roles of the others around them until their experience grew sufficiently that they understood the bigger picture, he had lots of jobs. He was a sniper and a signalman, being well-versed in long-range communications as well as long-range killing. He was part engineer, part infantryman, part paratrooper, as well as being a half-decent medic, as they all were. That was what marked them out as different; not their size or natural ability, but their attitude and their resource for learning.

“So, what’s the deal with this secure site, Boss?” Dezzy asked gently, not wanting to get shut down for raising the subject. Downes stopped folding the map he had been looking at back to its original dimensions, pausing as though he was giving serious thought as to whether he should share the information in full. He resumed his folding with a sharp intake of breath, as though the moment of introspection had robbed him of the ability to inhale, and he stuffed the map into his bag.

“Scotland. Inner Hebrides to be more exact,” he explained, “isolated and well stocked, and hopefully they should be able to see out the infection, or whatever it is, and return to re-establish order. I thought it was a badly kept secret, but obviously not. They’ve been planning this as a fall-back space for years in case of bio or nuclear attack; they’ve built bunkers and stockpiled God knows what. There can’t be too many of us left, probably even fewer after this bloody winter ends, and there will be a lot of rebuilding to do.”

“How does that affect us?” Smiffy asked as he leaned on the side of the truck.

“How do you think?” Mac butted in and answered for the Major, “Every house, every shop, every factory and every farm in the whole bloody UK needs clearing.” His words left them all quiet as the prospect of surviving brought with it even more challenges.

“I mean, come on,” Mac went on, “we’ve seen how they freeze up in this weather, and my guess is that they’ll degrade somehow when the weather warms again, but that doesn’t stop the faster ones much now, does it?”

Nobody answered his rhetorical question.

“Mac’s right,” Downes said, “we know they go into a kind of hibernation, and any that have followed any Limas inside buildings and gone into winter mode will still be dangerous when they,” he waved his hand vaguely to try and demonstrate the word he was looking for in vain, “when they… snap out of it or whatever. Fuck me, lads, even one of them left could end the world all over again. That’s how it started this time.”

Dezzy looked at him, taking in his words and not wanting to lose any more time, or focus on the future of what ifs. He glanced at Smiffy, the two men feeling ever responsible for one another, and both shot the other a look that said it didn’t matter much to them anyway. They’d just do their jobs.

* * *

An hour passed, which had been spent in near silence as they systematically cleared a small village door-to-door, just as they had discussed doing all over their afflicted country in order to get life back to normal. Towards the end of the main road which passed as the High Street, their tactics evolved, as there could be only a few of the enemy remaining in the village, even if they were alerted to their presence, and the team began to make more noise.

The far end of that stretch, nothing more than a reduced speed limit on a section of winding road, held a huddle of houses set back on one side before the road opened up into countryside views again.

“Smiffy,” Downes said in a low voice, “push up to the GLF and hold. Dezzy, on me, ready for the door. Mac, take tail.”

None of them answered, but all dropped into their allocated positions. Dez would open the door, one way or another, and Downes would enter with Mac behind him, while Smiffy kept an eye on the road in both directions from the iconic road sign which had put a smile on the face of any person who had undertaken a fast driving course. The white circle with a diagonal black flash, denoting a derestricted speed limit or, as they liked to call it, Go Like Fuck.

Dez put a hand on the doorknob, pausing to glance at the other two men and receiving a nod to continue, and then he turned the handle to find it locked. That in itself was rare in those parts, but you’d never expend the energy of kicking down a door unless you had to. The air of tension ebbed noticeably as the three men knew they had a longer respite before action was required, and Mac moved to press his face to a downstairs window and check for movement.

Dezzy lowered his weapon on its sling, placing both gloved hands on the cold wood of the door and pressing to see where it flexed and where it was solidly secured. It bent inwards at the bottom on the same side as the lock, but the topmost corner on that side was annoyingly rigid.

“Bolted,” Dez said softly. He didn’t need to explain that this meant it was locked securely from the inside. “Go around?”

“Takes us past the other houses we haven’t cleared,” Downes said, “We go in this way.”

Dez nodded, holding out a hand to gesture his Major back away from the door as he reached behind himself to free the automatic shotgun. He raised the gun to his shoulder, checked behind him to see that the others weren’t too near to him, turned his face away and fired.

Mac hadn’t seen any movement inside, because the window he had peered through looked straight in at a wall. Had they moved further around the outside of the house and explored further, then they would have found the family of five still securely locked inside their home. They might have been secure, but they certainly weren’t safe.

The mother, complete with apron sheeted in blood where she had chewed on the hands, faces and necks of her own children, turned and cocked her head quizzically at the small creaks coming from her front door. It bent inwards slightly, flexing in the bottom corner before her ears detected something that made no cognitive connection, but instead translated into a primal feeling that there was prey nearby.

She turned to face it fully, feet shuffling on the spot before her stiff and seized legs took tentative steps towards it. The door was beautifully crafted, carved from a single piece of oak many years before any of them had been born, and it had hardened with age to be like stone. She heard clicks, voices, and the shuffle of a boot on stone, but again none of these sounds connected to any memories or made any associations in her brain, despite which she was spurred onwards regardless. Behind her, disturbed by her movement and suddenly reanimated state, her children followed in reverse order of height with her eldest child looking over the heads of what had been his two younger sisters before their once-loving mother had changed them into what they now were.

Finally finding her voice, the mother contracted the muscles in her chest to draw in a breath and with it the start of the dry-throated, creaking, shrieking noise they’d made when they’d heard noises outside their home. Since then, since that giant herd of people like they were, had passed through to leave them behind in silence and solitude, they hadn’t been stimulated enough to make that noise. But now, as their once-mother reached out a bony and emaciated hand towards the front door, her mouth let it out to tear the stale air in their home.

With a shattering BOOM, the top quarter of the door disintegrated, letting in a rush of cold, fresh air, as if their house had been a sealed ship in the vacuum of space. The splinters of wood from the sudden opening fanned out, some striking the woman and embedding themselves into her skull and face, but one flew straight and true into her open mouth to puncture the soft wall at the back and drive the wicked spike of hard wood through the sinew and flesh. It punctured her spinal column high up and cut off the unthinking synapses which powered her arms and legs, and made her slump into a heap, effectively blocking her children from reaching the front door before it burst the rest of the way open to silhouette a big man in the aperture.

As one, they all shrieked in attack.

* * *

Dezzy fired a single shot into the wood where he thought the troublesome bolt was, shattering the door and creating a noise, ruinous and huge in the silent confines of the small village. He followed it up with the ballistic application of boot sole to the door just beside the lock. Utterly satisfied with both the mechanical and personal destruction he had just wrought, he stood in the doorway to assess his work. And swore ever so briefly but loudly.

He didn’t think, not like the way that the Screechers didn’t think, but more of a naturally human instinctive reaction. He just raised the gun already in his hands and triggered off five shots into the horrifying abominations reaching for him. He stood frozen, looking over the barrel of the demonic close-quarters tool, disgusted and horrified at what he had just done, until he was shoved aside bodily to crunch into the splintered doorframe. Before Dezzy could right himself and bring his weapon back up to face the threat which had caused the man behind him to act, he heard a pair of muted cracks in rapid succession followed by the sound of a lifeless body slumping to the floor.

Downes hauled his demolition expert back up to his full height, releasing him before stepping into the room with his MP5 held in tight to his shoulder and swinging it left and right to cover the room. Mac bustled in beside him, mirroring his movements to provide maximum speed as they cleared the dank smelling interior of the house. Dez stayed where he was in the doorway, almost panting and unable to control his breathing as he stared down at the horror and gore he had created in a second of unexpected and brutal violence.

A hand clamped onto his shoulder, making him jump and turn on the attacker as he raised the butt of his shotgun, intending to connect it to the skull of whatever had crept up on him when he had dropped the ball of concentration. The blow was blocked, and his eyes met the icy-blue reflection of Smiffy’s.

“It’s me, Dez,” he told him, “it’s me.”

Dezzy slumped, a half gasp of a stifled sob escaping his mouth, which made his friend lean over his shoulder at the destruction inside. Smiffy’s eyes went dull, glazing over as he saw, assessed, understood, dealt with and moved on; all in an instant.

“You had no choice,” he said to his friend, lightly slapping his face to bring their eyes back together, “Hey? You hear me? You had no choice. It’s shit, but it’s done. Now get yourself together.”

He held him by the shoulders for a few seconds, letting Dez’ exaggerated breathing stabilise and watching as the oxygen and good sense returned him to his former self. Dez stood tall, emotionally dusting himself off, and walked inside to step over the three headless bodies of the young children as they lay collapsed in a meat pile in between their twice-dead parents.

NINE

“Major,” Lloyd greeted the leader of the SAS team as he slid out of the passenger side of the truck. Downes walked to the leader of the marines and shook his hand.

“Lloyd,” he answered, scanning his eyes over the twenty men and two big transport trucks arrayed behind him at the agreed meeting place.

“All quiet down there?” the younger man asked, indicating the village in the shallow ground ahead.

Downes hesitated, recalling the initial look on the face of his man, usually so stalwart, reliable and unflappable, when he had first cleared that last house below and ahead of them.

“It is now,” he answered enigmatically, “Want us to hang around?”

“Could you?”

Before answering, Downes looked first at his watch and then up at the sky, which was grey and held an air of veiled malevolence.

“May as well,” he said, “we aren’t going to get another village cleared before sundown and before this weather closes in.”

Lloyd had to agree, having had the luxury of time to make his own guesses about the newest weather front as they waited for their scouts to return.

“I’ll put two at each end of the village,” Downes said, “If you hear us shooting, then pack up and get ready to move.”

“Understood,” Lloyd answered, turning to his men and shouting for them to load up, and instructing them that her Majesty wasn’t paying them to stand around and look pretty.

“They ain’t paying us at all, Sir,” came a disembodied voice from somewhere near a tail ramp.

“Enough of your treasonous comments, Foster,” Lloyd snapped half in jest, recognising the voice instantly despite the speaker’s obvious attempts to hide his identity, “but well done on volunteering to be the first man in. Proud of you, lad.”

Milton, three years the Lieutenant’s senior, smiled in the back of one of the trucks. He had no qualms about being the first man in, especially seeing as the Hereford lot had just been through, which minimised his chances of getting eaten. He had made the joke in the clear knowledge that the officer would return fire with some admonishment and raise the morale of the boys in the process.

He had been offered promotion, told, even, that he would be wearing three chevrons on his sleeve, but he had been adamant that he didn’t want it. After being summoned by Lieutenant Lloyd to the office where Captain Palmer ran things, he had stood to attention and kept his eyes resolutely forward until told to stand easy.

“Relax, man,” Palmer had said smoothly. Lloyd explained to Foster why he wanted him to take the rank, detailing the primary reasons that he was liked and respected by the surviving marines.

“You fought well on the island,” Lloyd said, “and the boys listen to you.”

“Then I’ll keep doing that, Sir,” Foster answered, “but I don’t want the stripes.”

“Why is that?” Palmer had asked, genuinely intrigued as to why a man would turn down such an honour. Foster smiled.

“It’s not like there’s a pay bump, Sir,” he said, pushing the luck of his flippancy as far as he dared, “and if I’m a sergeant, I have to enforce the rules and make the lads scared of me. I can’t have a laugh to lift their spirits if I’m doing that.”

Lloyd thought about their last sergeant, the irritable, irascible and ever-grumpy Bill Hampton. He was like a father to the marines, always looking after them and making sure that they all had the right kit and that none of them went without, but that fatherly attitude harked back to a time when the whip was still an acceptably used tool for facilitating learning. He could be harsh, very harsh on the men if they let him down, and that was the aspect of the role that Foster was trying to refuse to undertake.

“Thank you, marine, you may go now,” Lloyd had said to him, returning the parade ground crisp salute, which he felt was for Palmer’s benefit, a display to maintain the high standards and expectations of his corps.

“I rather suspect, Christopher,” Palmer drawled, “that the man has a point. My advice, if you need any at all, which I highly doubt is the case, is to encourage him to promote the morale of the men without forcing the rank on him.”

Palmer looked up, checking to see whether his conversational advice was being taken as such and not interpreted as an order.

“Your unit is, sadly, smaller now and the men look directly to you for leadership. I say keep him close and mentor the man; bring him into command discussions and see how he thinks.”

“You’re probably right, Julian,” Lloyd answered, knowing that the shrewd-minded young man was indeed entirely accurate.

In the front of the truck, Lloyd also smiled as he finally understood Foster’s point. He could not have reproved his sergeant that way, nor could he expect to tolerate the quips that the man made which required the reprimands he found himself giving out. But the balance was perfect. Foster worked hard and played hard, the men looked to him for their lead and despite his humorous comments, the unit was cohesive.

As the trucks set off down the gentle slope in the undulating land, Lloyd tucked his cold chin into the scarf around his neck and kept his eyes resolutely ahead on their target.

* * *

It took a little over three hours for the small village to be cleared, which was far faster than they had been when they’d first trialled their new tactics. The plan was simple; SAS team go in and do reconnaissance, clear out any small elements of hostile forces, then withdraw. After that, the main body of troops would move in, seal off the village and systematically empty each building of everything useful to be brought back to the large estate they occupied. Anything too large for the trucks would be safely stockpiled and returned for, and any return trip would be conducted with strong numbers because, as they had learned all too often, the situation could change from shit to deadly in an instant when dealing with an unthinking and unpredictable enemy.

Downes had sent his driver, Smiffy, to the furthest end of the village in the truck with Mac so that he could keep Dezzy close to him and wait for the man to speak about what had phased him so badly. He didn’t push him as they sat on a low roof in the cold air covering the closest end of the village’s approach road, but simply waited for him to speak.

Dez sat still and quiet, wanting to strip and clean the shotgun for no other reason than to purge the barely-coked barrel of the weapon of the evidence that he had fired it, as though somehow that would clean away the memory of what he had done. He had done the right thing, but he was a mature enough and experienced enough soldier to know that a person didn’t know what would affect them until it had already affected them. He was tough, he was switched-on, but he also knew that he had been affected by the suddenness of the attack. He knew that he had been affected by his instant, and correct, reaction to open fire.

He considered the other ways it could have played out.

He could have baulked, not taken the shot, and he could have been infected. Downes could have been infected. Mac. Smiffy.

In a world where ‘us or them’ held even fewer moral obligations than before, what he had done made perfect sense, both morally and tactically, but he had still pulled the trigger and violently decapitated three young kids with a brutal and evil storm of lead. He knew they weren’t children, not really, not anymore, but he would forever be left with the images of their small skulls breaking apart under his onslaught.

“You okay?” Downes asked softly, wanting to move things on more quickly than they were occurring naturally. Dez took a breath, held it, and blew it out with puffed cheeks before responding.

“Yeah, Boss,” he said as he strapped the shotgun back onto his pack, “I’m fine.”

“Good lad,” Downes said quietly, his eyes narrowing as he diverted some of his attention away from the stilted conversation and towards the distant countryside. Dez saw his look, followed his eyeline and scrabbled with a belt pouch to retrieve the small binoculars which he raised to his eyes and asked, “Where?”

“My eleven o’clock,” Downes said, not having to explain to the seasoned soldier beside him that he had detected movement, “Stone wall, west towards the higher ground. Gateway.”

Dez followed the instructions he had been issued with as effectively as possible in such few words. They had become expert at this, so in tune with one another after the months they had spent in Afghanistan, where they were more likely than not to be fired upon by the side they were unofficially there to help than by any Soviet conscripts. Then, just as now, only in a very different way, failure to detect the enemy’s movement could easily result in death.

“Got it,” Dez said, his face contorted as he squinted into the eyepiece of the futuristic-looking binoculars, “Screecher. Can’t seem to figure out the gate. Here.”

Dez held out the binos to Downes, who took them wordlessly. It took him only a second to acquire the moving smudge on the horizon and magnify it into a filthy and ragged approximation of what it had once been.

Most of the right arm from just below the elbow was missing, and the right side of what seemed to have once been light blue denim dungarees was sheeted black with gore. The skin of the face, drawn back as though stretched by malnutrition from teeth which now seemed overly large, was far paler than even the other dead they had encountered. It moved sluggishly, drunkenly, as it bumped its small chest into the wooden bars of the gate, unable to comprehend why the way forward was closed to it. Downes watched closely, his own face screwed up just as Dezzy’s had been, as the thing stopped trying to weakly force its way through the obstacle and instead turned its nose up to the sky and seemed to sniff the air, tasting it like an animal would. It threw back its head, mouth open to emit that awful screeching noise that so aptly lent them the nickname given by the soldiers; but no sound reached them.

Major Downes had fought many enemies of Her Majesty over many years of conflict, but never, not even when low on ammunition and pinned down by superior forces, had he experienced a fear of an enemy as he did then. Unbelievably, impossibly, the thing seemed to slowly lower its head and cock it over to one side as it stared its sightless stare directly at Downes from nearly three hundred metres away. Despite himself, Downes shuddered.

“Smiffy could have it with his VAL,” Dez said gently, suggesting that the stolen Russian sniper rifle be brought back, along with its operator, to dispatch the creature.

“It’s too far off to cause us any bother,” Downes said, feigning a relaxed manner that he did not fully believe himself, “Just keep an eye on it and hope it doesn’t have friends around here.”

“Friends?” Dez asked, the binoculars pressed to his eyes once again, “It can barely move, let alone organise a search party.”

And it couldn’t, Downes realised. It could barely walk. It couldn’t climb a simple wooden five-bar gate that any five-year-old could scale with ease. It also looked, he thought hopefully, like it was starving to death.

“See anything?” a voice called out from below them, startling both men, who had the presence of mind and body not to let it show.

“Just one of them,” Dez called down softly to the marines officer, “no bother to us.”

* * *

They didn’t make it back before the rain, but they did beat nightfall. Two very heavily loaded trucks grunted and chugged their way through the intricate defences cut into the ground now frozen solid and showing no signs of returning to the slippery mud it had been not long after creation. The grubby Toyota truck behind them, its own engine barely even breathing hard in comparison, rolled in behind as the men on duty replaced the heavy barricades of wood and wire over the one stretch of approach not cut by the hastily dug moat.

Downes sent his men back to their small corner of the big house, not needing to remind any of them about keeping their mouths shut about the contact they had made with other clandestine troops, and he went to find Palmer. Ordinarily, he would have relinquished his MP5 for one of his men to clean it while he talked officer stuff, but the thought of anyone being further away than the length of their arm to their weapon was utterly abhorrent.

“Ah, Major! Pleasure to see you, do come in,” Palmer exclaimed as soon as he entered the parlour-cum-office.

It wasn’t the Palmer he was expecting, however. In place of the competent and charismatic Captain, he found the entitled and spoilt younger version. The apple who had evidently rolled after it had fallen from the family tree.

“Second Lieutenant,” Major Downes coldly greeted the boy who was opening and closing cupboards and drawers with tuts of annoyance each time he came up empty. Downes guessed what the boy was after, and intentionally kept his hand still from wanting to reach for his back pocket and the small half-bottle of brandy tucked flat against his right buttock. It was rough stuff, clearly no expensive vintage and more of an access tool for a person to find that painless space where stresses and worries no longer affected them, but it didn’t matter much; he had taken it on a whim after seeing that Palmer, Captain Palmer, had run out.

“I suspect,” Lieutenant Palmer said theatrically in his nasal whine, “that you are after my older brother? Alas, he is not here, as you can see. Might I recommend you try the kitchens.”

“The kitchens?” Downes responded before he could stop himself and simply walk off and ignore the privileged whelp.

“Yes,” Palmer said with theatrical relish, “it seems he’s decided to forgo any further career soldiering and become a scullery maid.” Palmer junior invested all the scorn and mockery he could manage, which was a very significant amount as it turned out, into his distaste for the serving classes. The Major, well-bred from a respected family in his own right, ignored the sullen lack of manners as Palmer refused to acknowledge the officer’s superior rank. That kind of divide, that kind of overt disrespect, was likely to be a result of the combination of Palmer’s inherent feelings of superiority through birth right, and the bizarre stress they all felt, which broke down the normal bounds of military discipline. Despite the beliefs of the enlisted men, the officer classes still obeyed a set of strict rules when in their own company.

Without another word, Downes turned on his heel and propelled his tired body towards the kitchens with long strides.

There he found that the younger brother was partly correct, as the older brother was indeed rubbing shoulders with the common folk. And he seemed to be having the time of his life doing so.

The raucous laughter of women filled the room that Downes had walked into, and the Captain looked up, wearing a somewhat sheepish expression as his bare forearms, the sleeves of his uniform shirt rolled up above the elbows, were dusted with flour. His expression darkened slightly, as though the weight of responsibility and his leadership had found him and threatened to drag him back to the present, and he stopped what he was doing.

Downes stared at him, and a smile crept over his face.

“I saw the women making their dough in Afghanistan,” he began, “and I rather think they put their backs into the task a damned sight harder than you are, Captain.”

Palmer smiled, laughing with the others at him being caught out. Instead of ruining his small moment of fun, Downes instead rolled up his own sleeves and washed his hands in the deep porcelain sink set into the thick wood of the kitchen worktop. He shook them dry, accepting an offered towel from a woman nearby, and dried his hands as he looked down at his dirty clothing. The kitchen was warm, perpetually warm in fact, which is why he suspected that the women and children had a tendency to gather there. It was usually occupied in one form or another, day and night. He stripped off the black smock he was wearing, exposing layers of clothing underneath, and he smiled sweetly at the woman who had taken back the towel.

“May I?” Downes asked as politely as he could, indicating the white, frill-edged pinafore adorning her ample frame. The women laughed even more now, Palmer joining in with them thinking that it was a joke. It wasn’t. Downes slipped the white top of the apron over his head and tied the waist straps with fast efficiency before joining Palmer at the worn butcher’s block he was working at.

“Now the key, I’m told,” Downes said as he took his own lump of dough and slapped it down onto the surface to dust it with flour, “is to work it hard and rapidly. Am I right, Mrs Maxwell?” he asked the woman beside Palmer.

“You’re very right, Major,” Denise Maxwell answered, “I never knew you secret-squirrel lot got taught the finer points of baking.”

“Join the British army and see the world,” Downes told her with a conspiratorial smile, “I think we both fell for that one, eh, Julian?”

“I do believe we did, Major,” Palmer said as he began to use the heel of his right hand under the stiff arm to dig his weight into the dough.

“What have you got there, Major?” Denise asked, pointing at the protrusion from his back pocket.

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot,” he said as he carefully retrieved the small bottle by the neck with forefinger and thumb, so as not to cover both himself and the bottle in flour, “Captain? I thought you might appreciate this.”

Palmer looked at the bottle, pretending not to show his mild horror at both the paltry size and the unknown maker of the brandy on offer.

“You have my thanks indeed, Major,” he said, “only I worry that the ladies will feel us to be somewhat misogynistic should we take a brandy in their domain, as such…”

“Oh, don’t you worry about us,” another woman chimed in, speaking slowly as she bumped her hip into Denise Maxwell’s and reached into the back of a kitchen cupboard, “we manage just fine, thank you very much,” she said as she produced a massive bottle of scotch and a handful of china mugs held expertly in her fingers.

They drank. They kneaded dough for the fresh bread they would enjoy the next morning, and in a frozen world of shit, they found a moment of happiness.

TEN

“We need to go outside. We need to go into the city for supplies.”

Mike Xavier closed his eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had heard this from Jean-Pierre for the last week, after he had tried and failed to find another solution to their supply issue.

“For fuck’s sake, JP,” Xavier said, “we’ve been through this. Where can we go? What can we find? The city is full of them, they still wander up to the fence every day, we can’t ju…”

“They have not come for more than a week,” Jean-Pierre cut him off, “and when they do, they can barely walk. They are slow. We can make it.”

“Can we?” Xavier answered, “and if we don’t make it back, then who is looking after the others? They’ll fall apart without leadership, and I know we never asked for it, but it’s in our hands now. I say we stay here, sit tight and ride out the bad weather.”

Jean-Pierre, tall and still heavily muscled despite the shortage of food, glowered at his captain on the very edge of insolence and disobedience, before he withdrew a step and shrunk away slightly as though he was endeavouring to power down the passionate anger he felt at the situation.

“I am sorry, Captain,” he said in a softer voice, yet one still edged with steel, “but we cannot do this. There is not enough food to go around as it is. We need more, or people will try to leave themselves. You forget what happened yesterday?”

Captain Xavier had not forgotten. He remembered only too well having to fight his way to the head of the crowd to beat people back from what remained of their meagre food stores. They had consolidated everything weeks before, keeping a central reserve of supplies which were issued on an equal basis, and that had taken up four of his crewmen to guard it day and night. An angry mob had formed late in the day, borne of desperation instead of malice or greed, and the stores had been broken into. One of his men had been knocked out cold, his scalp pouring blood from where the lump of wood had cracked him hard over the skull without warning. Xavier had led the charge to restore order, far too much noise being made in the process, and by the time he had pushed back the desperate raiders and laid into them, shouting, he turned to see that most of the food had gone. He threw his body into one thief, one cowardly raider who tried to scurry past him with an armful of items, and his body weight checked them hard off their feet into the metal walls of the container to ring a low, dull bell sound as they slumped to the ground. The hood and scarf fell back to reveal the dirty, terrified face of a woman who was clutching fearfully the can of tinned pears in her hand. Xavier, ashamed of himself and embarrassed about the actions of the thieves, couldn’t bring himself to punish the woman any further than he had and turned away from her.

JP wasn’t there; he had been at the gates where he spent most of his time under a brooding cloud of ominous gloom. Had he been, Xavier reckoned that the men and women who’d attacked his crewmen out of desperation would have looked at the shadowy embodiment of terror and decided that they had somewhere else to be. But he wasn’t there, and they were brave enough or scared enough to break into the food stores and destroy their last chance at stretching out what food they had left. He had restored order, forcibly detained the few people under his protection who had been caught stealing and spread the word fast and clear that he wanted anything taken to be returned, or else there would be consequences. He didn’t know what those consequences would be, nor how he would enforce them, but none of the supplies were returned, regardless of the threat.

Now he faced a number of dilemmas. He had a decision to make about what to do with the people his crew members were currently guarding, and that decision would open another can of worms when those protesting at their incarceration didn’t get their way. He had to decide how to ensure that his own men stayed loyal when one of them was badly hurt, because their dedication was wavering by being faced with such uncertainty. Most of all, he knew he had to find more food before the survivors tore each other to pieces.

“One problem at a time, JP,” he said quietly, “one problem at a time.”

“What do you mean, Captain?”

“I mean we can’t ignore what happened yesterday, but we can’t ignore why it happened either. We need food, but we need to deal with the discipline problem. If we were at sea, what would we do?”

“At sea? Then your word would be the law.”

“Exactly, but we’re not at sea. We’re in port, and we’re stuck here. If we set sail then we’ll be sunk, and if we stay then we’ll starve or rip each other apart. Which leaves us with what?”

“We go into the city,” Jean-Pierre said as he banged a big fist onto the desk beside his captain, “and we bring back food. We control the food and we control the people. We double the guard on the supplies.”

“Is that who you want to be?” Xavier asked with genuine curiosity in his voice.

“Who I want to be?” Jean-Pierre shot back, “I want to be alive, and I want to take charge of these people because none of them, none of them, can keep the whole group safe, other than you and me.”

Xavier stared at his right-hand man, his huge enforcer, and he shook his head slowly as a smile crept over his face.

“I hate to say it, JP,” he said after a resigned sigh, “but you’re right. For the greater good and all that. Okay, get everyone together and I’ll talk to them.”

* * *

The crowd assembled below Mike Xavier was a mixed spectrum of human emotion. The angriest of them were either at the front, venting their frustrations and indignation at him loudly, or else at the back keeping quiet. Those quiet ones were who scared him, as they were the ones most likely to try something stupid and get them all hurt or worse. The tired, broken, apathetic ones occupied the middle of the crowd as they just stared and listened in weary resignation to whatever fate would be decided for them by others. The scared and depressed faces looked up at him, interspersed occasionally with one or two faces showing a rictus of misplaced anger at him, and he held up his hands to wait for enough silence to descend on them for him to speak. Finally, hoping that the angry concentration of voices hadn’t stirred up anything unwelcome and attracted the kind of attention they had spent months avoiding, he lowered his hands and spoke.

“We’ve been here too long to let it all fall apart now,” he said, “we’ve survived too long to just give up and rip into each other over a tin of beans. What happened here yesterday cannot happen ever again.” He placed heavy emphasis on each individual word, and then he paused, scanning the faces, seeing that most of the hostility was still there but some of it had begun to transform into confused attention. He went on.

“I am to blame for this,” he said, his hand held flat on his chest, “I am to blame because I allowed this to happen, but no more. No more. We need food,” he said as he started to pace up and down the raised platform he was standing on to be seen as he spoke. “We need more food, but who’s gonna risk their lives to find it?” he stared out at the small crowd, daring them to answer his rhetoric. When nobody spoke he carried on. “Do you expect me and my crew to risk our lives for you? Do you expect us to keep you safe? To feed you? To protect you and just roll over when you attack us? Do you?” he glowered at them, seeing that some of the angry faces had turned into downcast looks of shame. “Of course you don’t, because the people who did this weren’t thinking. But we are going to get past what happened, and we’re going to start by sharing the risks.”

He stopped talking, dropping down from his platform to walk through the assembled crowd and look into their faces as he spoke again.

“My crew and I will lead the way, but you all need to help. We’ll go out there, we’ll put our lives on the line, but you will too,” he paused to turn a full circle as he stood deep in the crowd now, making eye contact with everyone who would meet his gaze. “Volunteers to the main gates in ten minutes,” he called loudly, “and we can all forget this shitty day.”

He turned to walk away before a voice stopped him.

“What about the prisoners?”

He stopped, turning back to the source of the question to find himself looking at a boy on the verge of needing to shave properly.

“Prisoners?” Xavier asked him.

“You’ve taken my father prisoner,” the young man said indignantly.

“And he will have the chance to come with us and redeem himself,” Xavier responded flatly, turning away and nodding to Jean-Pierre, who tossed him the fire axe he had chosen to take outside the fence with him.

* * *

Xavier had doubts about how many people would show up. He had convinced himself that these people were ungrateful. They’d been saved by him and his crew, along with those dock workers stranded inside the fences, back when it all started so suddenly, and now they were happy to let others do the dangerous work on their behalf.

Almost fifty people, a quarter of the total they had there, arrived carrying empty bags and wielding various melee weapons adapted or repurposed to crush skulls. Xavier couldn’t believe it, but Jean-Pierre made no attempt to hide his smug grin.

“You see, Captain?” he said as he beamed a smile of bright, white teeth at him, “I told you that going out would be a good idea. It seems like I am not the only one to think this.”

Xavier said nothing. He chose four of his men, trusted among his entire crew, and asked them to stay behind and man the gates. They were unhappy with their orders, because there was no mistake that when the captain asked them to do something, it didn’t come with an option of saying no. But Xavier gave them reassurance that he needed good men at the gates that he could rely on them to make sure that their escape was well protected.

“And remember,” he told them conspiratorially, “if anyone looks like they… like they aren’t themselves… then you know what to do, right?”

They understood.

Xavier climbed up on a stack of crates, axe in one hand and the other held up for quiet.

“Everybody works in pairs,” he told them, “never leave your back unprotected. Grab everything you can carry and get back here. What we find goes into one stockpile and everybody gets fed.”

“That’s bollocks,” shouted a voice nearby, “if we’re risking our necks, then we get to keep what we find.”

Xavier fixed the speaker with a look.

“If that’s how you want to be, then yous can fucking stay out there, do you understand me?”

The man quailed under the sudden anger, unwilling to risk calling the man’s bluff.

“There’s young kids back there,” Xavier said, “women with little ones. Old folks. You want them to fetch their own stuff? Is that who we are?”

The low mumbles had the vague tone of agreement, so Xavier jumped down again and nodded to his men to haul back the gates.

They spilled into the wide, fog-filled street separating the docks from the city, splitting off in different directions so as not to move as a single crowd like locusts. Jean-Pierre naturally had his captain’s back, as he expected the bearded Liverpudlian to have his, and both turned right to jog down the deserted street towards the nearest shops.

None of the creatures came for them. In fact, none of them were even visible on the streets, which filled them all with an elative hope bordering on over-confident.

Just because we haven’t seen any yet doesn’t mean they aren’t there, Xavier told himself.

And he had no idea how right he was.

* * *

He approached the large, single-storey building with Jean-Pierre jogging beside him. The noise of their breathing was rapid and ragged, and clouds of condensation lingered around their heads when they paused at a junction. They had gone south, directly away from the docks, and found themselves in an area which seemed run down even before the world had stopped turning months before. A crowd of maybe twenty others had followed in their footsteps, despite his instructions for everyone to split up into pairs and not cluster together to attract attention. He mentally shrugged, knowing that he couldn’t think for everyone, and glanced at Jean-Pierre to see the man squinting ahead into the fog.

“Costco,” he said simply.

“Perfect,” Captain Xavier replied, “that will do us.”

They went in fast, the crowd behind them speeding up when they saw that the two men had a clear goal in mind, and the sliding metal frame doors were forced open with a dozen hands working their way into the gaps. They poured inside, packets being torn open and precious contents spilled onto the floor despite his words. He was more annoyed that none of them seemed to be awake to any potential risks and instead just blindly ran in to grab armfuls of food packets and tins.

“Use your brains,” he yelled as loudly as he dared, “get some bloody shopping trolleys and load it up properly.”

Some of them stopped, regarding him with full mouths as their senses returned. They did so, sanity restoring the group as though it passed from person to person like another infection. Despite the growl in his stomach, he kept both hands on his axe as he watched over the now orderly emptying of shelves. Racks of cans and packets were cleared, and his spirits lifted as he knew he would eventually see the winter through without any more outbreaks of civil disobedience or starvation. He relaxed enough to start helping load the supplies himself, slipping the axe through the loop of his belt, which he loosened for the purpose, and used both hands to grab the food which would mean their survival.

A scream, more of a strangled yell from the throat of a man making an involuntary noise tore the air. Mike Xavier dropped the pallets of beans he held and fumbled to free the axe which was caught in his clothing. He took his eyes away from the source of the noise for long enough to pull it clear, only to look ahead and see a door at the rear of the shop being held open by a small procession of dead bastards. A feeling of cold dread descended through his body, slowing time and his reactions to a deathly speed, but allowing his brain to savour every moment of terror. The smell hit him; dry and musty like rotten meat left out to dry. The grey pallor of them sickened him, like the bodies he had seen retrieved from the docks in the past with clear, bloated skin. He felt his feet moving forwards before his mind realised he had commanded his body to respond to the threat.

The first savage swing of the axe was wild and while full of raw power, it was poorly aimed. With a shout of pure rage and fear, the wide blade buried itself into the skull of the first zombie in line and stuck fast, toppling his victim but taking his weapon away in the same action. The falling body did nothing to slow the three behind it as they fanned out in a perfectly orchestrated flanking move and forced him backwards away from their grasp. He tripped on the man who had screamed first, landing on top of him as their legs tangled, and both looked up at their impending deaths with looks of open-mouthed horror. Mike Xavier, captain of his beloved Maggie and beloved leader of his crew, closed his eyes as he knew he had failed them all.

A curious sound made his eyes open again. It was the hollow, echoing sound of metal connecting with bone, and it was answered with the cruel crunch of one of those things giving way to the force of the other. Xavier looked up to see Jean-Pierre drawing himself up to his full height, adding a little more with his raised tiptoes, as his hands were behind his back to bring the heavy metal spike back down in a woodchopper’s strike to pummel and destroy the skull of the nearest zombie with such savagery that the thing was almost decapitated.

Jean-Pierre’s exposed skin on his face beaded with sweat, making his forehead glisten in the poor light of the shop. He raised the long metal spike again, turning his body sideways to swing it like a baseball bat at the final zombie left standing, dealing it a brutally savage blow which snapped the head back unnaturally. Slowly, horrifyingly, the head rotated back to look at him and revealed a gruesomely dislocated jaw. The obvious injury didn’t stop the thing, didn’t slow it down or register any pain on its expressionless face. Jean-Pierre, exhausted after the incredible physical effort put into the three massive blows, kicked the thing in the chest to give himself space from it. Xavier scrambled to his feet, using the man he had fallen on as a tool to push himself up, and not caring, he snatched at the handle of the axe still embedded in the skull of the first dead zombie. He placed the sole of his left boot on the face, feeling the nose give way under the pressure as he pushed, and split open the top of the skull like a boiled egg as the blade broke free. Instead of luxuriously yellow yolk spilling out, a foul-smelling and gelatinous chunk of grey brain matter flopped onto the ground beside his foot and threatened to void the bile from his stomach in an instant.

He gathered himself, spun the axe so that the pointed section instead of the wide blade was pointing forwards, and swung to impale the kneeling thing in the part where the neck met the head.

It stiffened, lifeless the second the cruel, cold metal punctured the dead flesh, and it flopped to the deck.

Xavier met Jean-Pierre’s eyes as the two men stood panting for breath.

“Everybody grab what you’ve got,” Xavier shouted, bending to help up the man he had fallen over, “and get back to the docks. Now.”

He propelled the man forwards and turned to face the door where the attack had come from. Jean-Pierre stood at his side and both men felt the gathering tension build to the point where the two of them felt the urge, the pathological need, to turn and run.

Nothing came, and they backed out of the shop together as their boots kicked at fallen and discarded packets littering the floor. The last man out before them was the one who had tripped him inadvertently.

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” the man gasped as he held his right arm as if his shoulder was injured, “I’ll be okay…”

Xavier pushed the man ahead of him, not seeing how he quickly pulled back the sleeve of his coat to look at the neat oval of puncture marks on his wrist. The bleeding had stopped almost instantly, and the heat he was feeling was close to unbearable. Terrified that he would be left outside the safety of the docks, he kept his mouth shut and staggered to keep up with the others heading back towards safety, or at least what they all thought was safety.

ELEVEN

Bill Hampton, the still-limping sergeant of marines, was on watch when the van pulled back into sight of their small village enclave. He waited for confirmation, not wanting to open up their defences without knowing that it was indeed his people driving and that none of them were infected, before pushing aside the barricade to allow them inside. That confirmation was given by Johnson leaning his head out of the window and giving a thumbs-up gesture, which Hampton took as the universal sign language for everything being hunky-dory.

It wasn’t, obviously, and the looks on their faces told him that everything was not right in the world. Worse than the usual amount of not right, anyway.

“What’s happened?” Bill asked, his eyes scanning to double check that everyone who went out came back whole.

“Get everyone inside first,” Johnson told him, handing him a heavy bag stuffed full of shotgun cartridges which weighed him down in an instant. They went inside, heavy coats being stripped off as the interior was warm by comparison to the bitter outside temperatures. The bags and gun cases were laid down, and Kimberley walked from the kitchen wearing a smile of relief and genuine happiness that they were back. That smile, just as Hampton’s had, faded in an instant as she read their faces.

“What’s happened?” she asked, her own eyes scanning the returning faces to make sure everyone had come back.

“Come and sit down, please,” Johnson said in a curious tone of voice that, if his men had heard him speak with it, would make them think that he had gone soft. Something about her disarmed him.

Peter walked in through the front door and laid down his weapon, his suspicious eyes betraying that he knew something was wrong. Johnson expected him to ask the question too, but he merely shrugged off his oversized coat and sat down to wait for the news.

Astrid rummaged in a bag, coming out with a large rectangular black plastic case and offering it to Peter with a smile.

“There was not much that I could find,” she explained, “but I see the Care Bears movie and I say to myself that Amber would like this, no?”

Peter smiled, taking it from her with a nod and running up the stairs, no doubt to put it on in the big bedroom for her. That fact alone spoke volumes about the people who had owned that house; the fact that they had a VCR and a TV in their bedroom meant that they probably had too much money to spend.

Kimberley had made a large pot of tea as soon as she’d heard their return and had set it down with the cups on the coffee table by the time Peter returned. Some of the adults exchanged looks, but Johnson and Bufford both shrugged at each other as if to say that they wouldn’t keep the boy out of the loop anyway. Amber was different, but this little lad had the mind of a thirty-year-old when it came to practical matters.

“We cleared a gun shop quite satisfactorily,” Johnson started, pouring himself a mug of black tea and dropping in two sugar lumps from the bowl beside the pot, “and most of a grocery shop too before we heard noises.”

“What kind of noises?” Kimberley asked eagerly, stalling the telling of the story and delaying it. The others, being all forces personnel, knew when to ask questions and when to shut up and listen. So too, it seemed, did Peter.

“Gunfire and engines. Military vehicles, but not ours. I’m certain of that.”

“They fired at me,” Enfield said without indignation or anger in his voice, just the facts of the matter. Hampton frowned. Kimberley gave a small gasp and Peter furrowed his brow as though trying to understand why anyone living would do that. He reached the answer quickly, as the majority of his experiences with other survivors were negative until he had met his current company.

“Who?” Hampton asked.

“Why?” Kimberley chimed in at the same time.

“Who is uncertain, other than the fact that one of them was on the island with us. That means that he either got separated from the main group or he chose to leave,” he explained, leaving out the name of his nemesis in case he betrayed how angry he was, “As for why, I can only assume they either thought Enfield was a dead ’un, which is unlikely seeing as he was running and carrying a gun, or they just don’t like people seeing their business. Either way, we don’t want to meet them again.”

“So, what do we do?” Hampton asked.

“We need to join up with the others again,” Johnson said, seeing nods of agreement ripple around the small group, “but I don’t see how we can find them until this bloody weather has passed.”

“Which will be many weeks yet, I think,” Astrid chimed in.

Silence descended on them, broken only by Peter struggling to pour himself a cup of black tea. Nobody moved to help him, signifying that they respected his independence and not that they didn’t care for him, and he sat back down to sip the hot liquid before offering his own opinion.

“There can’t be that many places they could be, surely?” his little eyes searched the assembled faces looking at him, “I mean, I don’t really know, but seeing as they are soldiers too, wouldn’t they think the same as you and find somewhere that they could stay?”

The adults exchanged looks. The concept was nothing really new to them, but hearing it come from his mouth made it a little more real in the moment. Truth be told, they had been busy concentrating on surviving and consolidating more than they had been thinking about searching for the rest of the survivors from the island.

“That’s true,” Kimberley said, “where would you take your people if you were in that position?”

Bufford looked at Johnson. He had been in that position; however, it had been in the hands of his captain and not the senior NCO, and he had only known part of the working logic at the time.

“We need maps,” he said, “and we can try to work out where they would have gone. We can also see about more supplies.”

“I’ll get on it,” Bufford said as he glanced to Astrid. She nodded her assent that she would help.

“So, what did you get today?” Hampton asked, changing the subject.

“New toys,” Johnson answered, standing to fetch his new shotgun and handing it over for inspection.

“Nice,” the old sergeant said with relish, “universal door opener.”

“Exactly,” Johnson answered, seeing Peter’s curious gaze at the weapon. He knew the boy had his own gun, one that he had even modified by taking off the barrels and stock to make it small enough for him to carry and use. He had only pulled the trigger once, he had told him, but for such a young boy to have decapitated an enemy with a shotgun and be alright with it signified something of a change in the way they viewed children.

Enfield stood too, retrieving the gun slips and producing the big hunting rifle first and the small Ruger after.

“Plenty of bullets for these, too,” their sniper said.

“That looks a little, um…” Kimberley said, searching for the right word which wouldn’t cause offence, “small?”

“It’ll do fine for popping heads at medium range,” Enfield said, “plus it’s very quiet.”

“Quiet is good,” Peter said, feeling suddenly embarrassed as they all turned to look at him. “I mean,” he began, his face flushing with colour, “it’s just better to not be heard is all I’m saying…”

“No,” Astrid said, “Peter is correct in what he says. Quiet is indeed good.”

Peter smiled and relaxed a little, the worry of giving his opinion in front of these big and frightening people washing away and being replaced with something else which he hadn’t experienced before.

Acceptance? Pride? Belonging?

What he felt was totally alien to him, but he couldn’t explain the main reason he was afraid to give his opinion in front of them. It was because he had lived his whole life in fear of being struck without warning if he spoke when his parents had decided that he shouldn’t. The only problem with that was that he never knew when he was to stay silent until the first smack made contact with his skull. It was the reason he never stood within arm’s reach of a grown up when they spoke, even if none of them noticed. It was the reason he flinched at unexpected noises and movements. It was the reason he could read the temperature and mood of a room in seconds.

Peter was a survivor. He wasn’t born as such, but his life had moulded him into one. It had shaped him and trained him to be almost perfectly developed to survive the world as it now was. He was empathic to the point of being a chameleon; able to blend into invisibility just to stay safe.

“Of course he’s right,” Hampton said as he gave the boy a gentle pat on the shoulder with a meaty hand larger than the boy’s head, “wish we’d always had officers as smart as Peter here.” He beamed a smile at the boy who, for the first time in his life hadn’t flinched away from being touched by an adult. Peter smiled back.

“So where do we look?” Johnson said aloud to himself. Bufford got up, sifting through the paper maps on the shelves before grabbing a few and turning back to them.

“Grab a map and start looking,” he told them.

“Pete,” Enfield said as he leaned over the side of his chair to pick up the new rifle, “let’s leave them to it. You can help me sight this in if you like?”

Peter nodded, hiding the wider smile he felt creeping out from inside him as his brain tried to reign in his enthusiasm. He had never looked forward to anything before, never got excited about anything promised unless it was actually happening. Every so often, when one of his parents was drunk to the point of feeling magnanimous, he would be promised something that he wanted only for it to be forgotten about entirely when sobriety returned. On the rare occasions he had reminded them about such promises he had invited punishment or humiliation, so he had just given up looking forward to anything.

Walking beside the tall Royal Marine whose footsteps seemed to make no noise, his eyes kept darting to the short rifle he carried as the bubbling excitement of all young boys when given the chance to play with guns rose closer to the surface. He looked up at Enfield as they walked. The marine was twice his size but about the same relative build, which made him wonder how he had become a marine because they were supposed to be very strong and tough. He didn’t know how to ask the question, mostly because he didn’t know how Enfield would respond, so instead he asked what he needed him to do to help.

“I need you to spot for me,” Enfield told him, producing a small set of binoculars from a webbing pouch and handed them down to him, “I need you to call out whether I’m left or right, up or down on the target.”

“What target?” Peter asked, his own feet travelling at a relative velocity of three to one to maintain the same pace.

“I’ve got one,” Enfield told him, “we just need something static to fix it to.”

He led them to the far end of the village, the one from which they didn’t regularly drive in and out of, and he reached into the bag he was carrying to produce three white cardboard boxes, which rattled and a handful of small, black metal rectangles.

“These are the magazines,” he told Peter, “twenty rounds apiece, and they go in like this.” He picked up a short bullet from the box he’d flipped open and spun it in his hands so that the brass glittered in the dull daylight before he slid it into the recess and pressed it down with his thumb. Then he added another on top. “That’s two. Eighteen more.”

Peter nodded, his tongue protruding slightly from one side of his mouth as he concentrated, and he carefully loaded in more bullets as Enfield spoke.

“This doesn’t have a bolt, so I can’t bore-sight it first. That’s when you take the bolt out and line up the hole through the barrel with the target. After that you line up the sight and fire a shot.” He rested the gun over a sturdy wooden fence and brought out a contraption from the bag. He rested it over the barrel and twisted the end until the G-clamp held the barrel tight to the fence. Enfield looked along the length of the barrel and squinted, pointing it at a tree about fifty paces away.

“Stay here and watch my back?”

Peter met his eye and nodded, unsure what he would do if something happened when he was outside the safety of the barricades. Enfield climbed over, still barely making a sound as he moved like the adult version of Peter, and trotted away over the cold ground. He stopped at the tree, producing a rough-torn square of beige cardboard, bearing concentric circles around a solid central circle, and held it against the trunk of the tree before tapping at the corners with something. He scanned around before jogging back, skipping over the barricade with the faintest of protests from the springs of the car he mounted as he crossed it. Looking back at his work, he squinted again and nodded to himself. Peter looked at the makeshift target, seeing that the circles were almost the same size as Enfield’s head had been when he was there, and he asked about it.

“Where did you get the target?”

“It’s off the side of the ration packs,” Enfield told him softly, “thoughtful of them to give us food wrapped in a target. Right,” the marine sniper told the boy as he bent to the rifle and changed the subject, “watch that target and tell me where the bullet hits.”

Peter raised the binoculars ready but still jumped in fright when the small rifle coughed and spat a bullet far sooner than he expected. He thought that it would take time to line up a shot like that, that it would need careful consideration, but the man just aimed and shot.

“Well?” Enfield asked after a brief pause.

“Oh,” Peter said hurriedly, “err, up and right?”

“How much by?” Enfield asked confusing him, as he could surely see the same thing through his scope.

“Um, like the same as my hand?”

“Flat hand or your fist?” Enfield asked him, condensing the boy’s information and teaching him how to describe it.

“A fist.”

“Good,” Enfield said, standing up and clicking the dials on the scope before bending his head back to the sight and twisting the clamp a little tighter to make sure the gun didn’t move when he fired it, “standby. Firing.”

The gun spat again, no rolling echo of the gunshot rippling across the landscape as he would expect from gunfire out in the open.

“You hit the black bit,” he told Enfield.

“Smack in the middle?”

“No… just above it.”

“On the centre line though?”

Peter looked hard as he thought about his answer. “Slightly up from the middle. Half a fist.”

Enfield made another adjustment and fired another shot, this one hitting dead centre.

“Bullseye!” Peter said, a little more loudly and excitedly than he meant to.

Enfield just smiled at him from the corner of his mouth in a cocky way as he spun the lever to release the G-clamp and free the gun.

“Now we see if that’s right,” he said, hefting the little rifle into his shoulder and leaning into the standing shooting position before squeezing off half a dozen shots in rapid succession. He stopped firing, looking down at Peter who still stared up at him.

“Well?”

Peter fumbled with the binoculars to look at the tree. As the picture came into focus, he saw that the very centre of the black spot was a single ragged hole exposing flashes of damaged bark and the white of virgin wood beneath.

“Whoa…”

Enfield chuckled, lowering the rifle and dropping out the spent magazine before offering it to the boy.

“Your turn,” he said, seeing the glisten of happy tears in Peter’s eyes staring up at him.

TWELVE

“Who the hell was it, then?” Nevin asked Michaels angrily.

“What does it matter?” he responded, pausing halfway through pouring the rusty liquid from a crystal decanter into a matching tumbler. He waved the decanter by the neck to emphasise his point and added, “Why can’t you just let it go?”

Nevin said nothing, chewing at his lip instead of answering.

“Ah,” Michaels said annoyingly, pausing again to take a gulp of the whisky before he went on, “you’re worried about it being our former colleagues, aren’t you?”

Again, Nevin said nothing, which was an answer in itself.

“Look,” Michaels told him as he slumped into the leather chair by the fire, “chances are that they…” a knock at the door stopped his words as both men stared at the doorway. Their eyes followed the path of the young girl carrying a wicker basket full of logs over to the fire, with difficulty because of the weight. She dumped it down, readjusting it to keep it clear of the direct heat, then turned to give an overly sarcastic bow before she walked towards the door. Her actions showed deference, but her eyes promised a painful death if only she could manage it somehow. Both men shuddered internally, privately, at seeing how much she detested them.

Michaels looked at the fire, then at the new supply of logs, then glanced pointedly at Nevin and raised an eyebrow. Nevin returned his gaze for a few beats before letting out an exasperated sigh of defeat and putting down his own glass to bend and pick up a log before tossing it half-heartedly onto the flames. Michaels tutted but carried on.

“Chances are, they are either gone or are too far away to be encroaching. It was probably just another nobody, so don’t worry about it.”

“Easier said than done,” Nevin said, “I can’t imagine they’d be happy to see me if our paths crossed again.”

“Why?”

Nevin hesitated. He still hadn’t revealed the full extent of his betrayal when he had fired through his own men and caused the mother of all explosions. He didn’t know how many of them had survived, if any, and if any of them had, then his name would be shit among the squadron. And with the Royal Marines. And the Royal Air Force helicopter crews. And the SAS and the SBS and the civilians. It wasn’t a list of enemies he wanted to think about for long, not if he wanted to sleep ever again.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “what do we do next?”

“Do?” Michaels asked after a hefty gulp of scotch and the ensuing grimace, “About what?”

“About who is out there?”

“It doesn’t matter who is out there,” Michaels said, his tone mocking and derogatory, “so stop flapping your bloody gums about it. We carry on as we are, we try not to freeze or starve over winter, we collect the rents, we keep our patrols going and if we want something, then we take it. You think there’s a government coming back? You think we’re expecting the Americans to roll in with tanks to help us out? Wake up, man. They’ll be too busy keeping the outbreak firmly on this side of the Atlantic. After that, they’ll be busting their guts trying to keep it from crossing the Pacific. Nobody cares about us, get it into your head.”

* * *

Jessica kept her mouth tightly shut the entire time she was walking out of the main house. She walked slowly, taking measured steps with a neutral look on her face so that nobody knew how much she was seething. She walked tall, her head held high and her jaw set tight, and went straight back to the crowded room that she shared with the two women. The older one of them wasn’t there when she walked through the door, but the young woman was. She was lying back on the bed she occupied, her head in a book, and she looked up, puzzled as Jessica fast-walked in and threw herself face down onto the pillow on her bed. She drew in a muffled breath, filling her lungs to their full capacity, and she screamed as loud and long and hard as she could.

Ellie watched her as she fully extinguished the first scream and drew in a second breath, like water withdrawing from a beach ahead of a tsunami. Despite the muffling of the pillow, the second scream was still loud enough to hurt her ears in the small confines of their room. Ellie waited for it to subside, lowering her book and breathing in to make her own sound and ask if the girl was alright. Before she could ask, a third muted scream tore the room in two and made her wince until the sound faded away to nothing.

As suddenly as the invasive sound had started, it ended, and the girl sat up to wipe the tears from her face.

“You alright, my sweet?” Ellie asked the girl. Jessica looked at her, wearing a face that said she most definitely wasn’t alright, but it also seemed resigned to the fate that she was powerless to escape.

Escape, she thought, I need to escape.

“I’m fine,” she said instead, “just angry at them.”

“Which ‘them’?” Ellie asked with a small smile.

“The ‘alive’ them. The ones who keep saying how they are ‘keeping us safe’.” She added emphasis to the words with scorn, which went some way to masking how scared and helpless she felt because of them. Ever since the nurse had unstrapped her from that hospital bed, she had vowed to always be in control of her own life. They had run, had found more terrified people also running, had managed to escape the hospital grounds and it felt to her as though she had been running and hiding in silence for as long as she could recall. The group she was with had changed. Some left and some joined. Others died. By the time they were ‘rescued’ by the people living here, she was utterly exhausted by a life on the run, and at first, she had relished sleeping for an entire day knowing that someone else was keeping watch, but after that initial elation she quickly recognised that something was very wrong.

For the second time in a month she had been effectively kidnapped and imprisoned, regardless of the legality or justification for either event, and now found herself put to work as a servant in return for a safe place to sleep and some food. They treated her like a dumb child, even more so when they saw the scars and fresher cuts on her wrists and arms, but they didn’t know who or what she had been before. They didn’t know she had been raising her younger brother and saw the world not like the dumb kid they assumed her to be, but like a shrewd and suspicious adult.

Ellie’s own face descended into a mask of neutral hostility. The same bastards the new girl was raging about had taken her away from her daughter, knocked her out cold to stop her struggling before she could say that her baby was still in the house they were dragging her from. By the time she had come round and told them, their leader had sent the men straight back but they had found nobody. Her baby was gone; her little Amber, so innocent and such a good girl, was lost to her forever.

She had steeled herself, cloaked herself in a numbness to just wait out the storm, and when order was restored, she would tell the authorities just what these people had done, and they would be punished for it. She tried her hardest not to think about her daughter, because the thoughts paralysed her. She had no tears left, no more capacity for anger, just the flickering pilot light of survival that kept her burning at the lowest possible setting.

As selfish as she felt, she could offer Jessica no solace or agreement and talk about these people and what they had done to them. Jessica knew all about Ellie’s story, told to her by Pauline, who shared the room with them, but ripping off the scabs of someone else was a cruel thing to do. She knew that the woman missed her child, just as she missed Peter terribly and broke down every time she imagined him being left behind. Her thoughts of him suffering at the hands of this new world weren’t the worst thing she could imagine, but instead her anger and fear was that he had been left in the dubious care of their parents. She shuddered to think what would happen to him if he’d been left alone with them, but she knew that a violent death at the hands and teeth of the monsters that normal people had become would probably be a blessing.

“I miss my brother,” she told Ellie in a quiet voice, “and I don’t know who would have looked after him when I wasn’t there.”

“How old was he?” Elie asked in a matching low tone.

“He is three years younger than me. He’ll be ten now.”

Ellie bit her lip, not realising she had spoken as though her brother was already dead. He probably was, but that kind of realistic pessimism wouldn’t have gone down well with her.

“What about your parents? Grandparents?”

Jessica scoffed and curled a lip in disgust. “We didn’t have much use for them even before this. He was left alone with them, which is worse than being properly alone.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie asked, sitting forward and feeling suddenly heartbroken for the girl and her missing brother.

“Every day,” she said dully, her eyes unfocused and staring at a blank spot on the wall, “we wouldn’t know what mood she was in. I’d get him up and get him dressed, I’d feed him breakfast and we’d go to school before she woke up. Our father was already out, gone to work still drunk usually, so we just learned to take care of ourselves. When it wasn’t a school day we would do the same. Sometimes I’d still make us packed lunches and we would go off for the day. The punishments for disappearing weren’t as bad as if we’d stayed there anyway. She would hit us, then wait until he got back in from work on the farm, and then she’d make up lies about how bad we had been. He would hit us and he never once believed us that she had already dished out the smacks.” She took an exaggerated sigh, as though the memories coming back to her were exhausting. “There was a stick, a thin walking stick, that they hung on the wall outside our bedrooms. It was our reminder to do everything right and stay out of their way. When it came down it…” she closed her eyes and lowered her gaze, “…it wasn’t a good place to be, and I left him there. I need to go back and find him.”

Ellie bit her lip again. She wanted to say that he wouldn’t be there. That no child that young could survive on their own, even if they’d had a good start in life, which these two obviously hadn’t. She said nothing, because the girl needed something to believe in. It was at that moment, right then as she watched the girl’s face turn from catatonic exhaustion to angry resolve, that she knew she had given up too soon on her own child. With a surge of heat that seemed to run through her body and electrify her, she sat up, energised, and grabbed the girl by both shoulders.

“Snap out of it,” she told her with a gentle shake, “we can get through this. We can get out of here and we can find them.”

“How?” Jessica asked, looking up at her with something resembling hope breaking through the tiredness. Just then the door opened and Pauline stood there, wearing a curious look as she took in the two of them locked in their intense conversation.

“Maybe Pauline can help us,” Ellie said hopefully.

THIRTEEN

Captain Palmer walked through the woods behind their large house with Major Downes. The two men had a respect for each other that had grown to be something resembling a friendship, but each was closely committed to their tasks and didn’t lose time on frivolities. That said, both understood that taking the time to keep themselves sane was just as important as staying fit and healthy.

They had taken their breakfast together, enjoying the wholesome goodness of warm, fresh bread to accompany the eggs and the meagre ration of a single slice of bacon, and at the invitation of Downes, Palmer had joined him to investigate the reports of deer seen close to the house. Hunting animals with military weaponry may not have been sporting, but meat was meat and they had little time to observe the niceties. Downes, much to Smiffy’s sullen disgust, had borrowed his stolen soviet sniper rifle and loaned the tank captain his own MP5 so that neither of their shots would be heard far away. The pretence of hunting deer was no fallacy, but Downes wanted Palmer well away from any other ears before he told him the facts he had yet to share with anyone outside of his own patrol. Those men could be trusted to keep their mouths shut, as could Palmer, he suspected, but the man was under a lot of other conflicting pressures and his reaction was less than a certainty.

“How are we looking for winter?” Downes asked, hoping that Palmer would suggest that their current position was untenable.

“We seem to have broken the back of it,” he said almost happily, “if we can just get through the worst of this winter, then we should be well on our way to rebuilding.”

Downes kept his voice low and his eyes ahead, as the intelligence regarding the deer was genuine.

“Given the choice,” he said carefully, “would you want to rejoin any other units left alive?”

Palmer stopped and looked directly at the SAS Major.

“Who and where?” Palmer shot back, seeing through the uncharacteristically clumsy attempt at hypothesis.

Downes took one look at the younger man’s face and decided not to lie to him. He just had to trust that he would do the right thing with the full facts.

“Inner Hebrides. Part of the Doomsday protocol was for special forces to take as many surviving members of government as possible to a safe location.”

Palmer thought about it for a moment before asking, “Major, do we still have a working government?”

“I’m not sure about working, but yes. We still have cabinet members alive and protected.”

“Major,” Palmer said just as carefully, “why did you keep this information from me until now?”

“Julian,” Downes said in an apologetic tone, “please understand that this was part of the wider picture that I wasn’t at liberty to discu…”

“God dammit, Major!” Palmer erupted, “you think I have enjoyed thinking that we are all that is left? You think I have relished the thought of turning farmer and becoming the bloody mayor instead of a soldier? Damn you, Major,” he cursed without the full force of his opening words, “and to answer your question I would rejoin in a heartbeat.”

“I only had this confirmed yesterday,” Downes told him, “and I apologise for not telling you before. So how do we do this?”

“We go there, Major, immediately.”

“And how do we transport all of our personnel, the civilians, and our equipment there?” Downes countered.

“I shall speak with Lieutenant Commander Barrett, and see if we can manage relay flights,” Palmer said.

“That’s a possibility, but it’s doubtful. I would suggest that the safest option would be a road convoy.”

“In this weather?” Palmer asked.

“It may be slower and less comfortable, but air is less certain. I doubt Harry would want to run those kinds of relays. It’s maybe four hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies.”

“That gets him there and less than halfway back on a full tank, which he doesn’t have. Another refuelling trip?”

“It’s possible,” Downes said, “I know they have a very small airfield up there, but perhaps using the helicopter for precious cargo and as many of the civilians as possible would be better?”

Both men lapsed into silence as they ran through their own private thoughts and plans until a snapping sound brought them back to the present. Neither men instinctively recalled the deer they were after and both were alert for the screeching, shuffling onslaught of rotting people. For them to see the dusky speckled fawn directly ahead of them was a pleasant surprise. They froze, both slowly raising their guns.

“Take the shot if you please, Major,” Palmer whispered. Downes said nothing but carried on the slow movements to bring the VAL into his shoulder. A soft click sounded, then the tiny atmospheric change as he held his breath in anticipation of the shot, then the sharp metallic snap of the action firing.

The deer fell, making both men smile in anticipation of fresh meat, but it seemed as though they weren’t the only ones stalking the animal, as another sound ripped through the air in answer. Downes, still looking through the scope at the fallen animal, twitched the scope upwards to the frost-covered features of an old man advancing towards them. Its wild eyebrows twitched above the milky eyes, focused as much as they could be on the fallen animal and not on them. Downes held his shot, scanning around, and counted three more advancing from the same direction.

“Advance left flank twenty metres,” Downes said in a low voice, totally professional in an instant, “four enemy ahead.”

Palmer moved low, disciplined enough not to run and make more noise to attract their attention to him. Behind to his right came the steady, rhythmic sounds of more sharp snaps as Downes began putting fat, sub-sonic 9mm bullets into rotten and frozen skulls. Palmer drew level with their kill, raising the borrowed MP5 and drilling a three-round burst into the side profile of a woman reaching out for the warm corpse of the deer.

“Fuck it,” he snarled, abnormally savage with his language but justified as he saw the rough chunk of flesh torn from the animal’s back. He looked for more targets, wanting to kill more of them for contaminating their meat and ruining the day.

“Withdraw,” Downes called out, prompting the captain to turn away and thread his way back through the trees.

“Where the bloody hell did they come from?” he asked as he fell in beside the Major in their retreat.

“They’re everywhere,” Downes said. “Have you noticed it’s warmer under the tree cover?”

He had, although he hadn’t made the connection between that slight temperature increase and the faster movement of the Screechers.

“Would you prefer a Scottish island?” Downes asked him.

“Yes, Major, yes I would.”

* * *

“Send it, Smiffy,” Downes said to his man on the complex radio set. The burst transmission, already typed in and ready to send, shot up into the ether as a high-frequency data burst.

echo-one-one, charlie-one-one. state availability of aviation fuel on your end. single helicopter available but insufficient fuel for more than one sortie. intent to travel by road. advise.

They sat in silence, waiting for any response to come and knowing that it could be up to twelve hours later, depending on any number of varying factors. Palmer had joined them in their small den, which was deemed out of bounds for anyone but the enigmatic men from Hereford. Lloyd was with them, invited into the folds of secrecy out of necessity and trust on Palmer’s behalf. What wasn’t odd in the slightest was the lack of the presence of the half-mad Colonel and the younger brother of the captain, a constant source of embarrassment to him. To their relief, a responding transmission came in quickly.

charlie-one-one, echo-one-one. minimal stocks of fuel, helicopter a no-go. by road, rv 57.003813n, 5.8271730w. transport provided by ferry. god speed.

“Mac?” Downes said.

“Go,” the Scotsman answered, grabbing a pad and pencil. Downes recounted the grid coordinates and heard the responding scratch of lead on paper.

“Give me a minute,” Mac said as he pulled open a map. Palmer turned to Lloyd, who had cleared his throat to offer a suggestion.

“If Harry and James could fly the civvies up,” he said, meaning Lieutenant Commander Barrett and his junior co-pilot Lieutenant Morris, “then that leaves us with a combined forces strength of what? Forty men left? Two trucks, supplies, at least one or two of the Foxes?”

“Got it,” Mac cut in, “Mallaig. It’ll be the ferry port to Skye, I wager.”

“You’d want to convoy for what, seven hundred miles?” Downes asked Lloyd after turning back from his sergeant.

“What other choice do we have?” the marine lieutenant answered.

“None,” Palmer said, “not unless we stay here and wait to starve or be overrun. I, gentlemen, would much prefer to have a small stretch of the North Atlantic between us and the Screechers.”

“So, Captain,” Downes asked formally, “how do we convince the civilians to go?”

“We need more food first,” Palmer said tiredly.

* * *

The small collection of officers and soldiers weren’t the only ones huddled in a room too small for them and planning a way out. Miles away, on the cliffs above the foaming white crashes of waves far below, sat a young girl and two women speaking in low voices to one another.

“It would be better to leave either at night or very early,” Pauline said to the others, “most of them will be asleep.”

“The guards never sleep,” Ellie offered darkly, her eyes unfocused and distant in thought. “They would if we made them, though…”

“What do you mean?” Jessica asked. Ellie didn’t answer her directly, instead she turned to Pauline intently and asked her a question.

“Can you steal a bottle of alcohol? Something strong?”

Pauline thought about it for a long moment before nodding slowly with a sceptical look in her eye. “What are you thinking?”

“It would look too obvious if we just walked up to one of the guards and gave them a bottle, wouldn’t it?” she asked, explaining her plan through the medium of asking rhetorical questions to lead them through each step, “so how about one of us gets caught near the guards and we make it look like we’re trying to hide the bottle? That way they’ll just take it off us and send us away. Then we wait and slip past them after they’ve drunk it.”

“Won’t work,” Pauline said flatly, disappointment heavy in her tone, “because they change the guards halfway through the night. I’ve seen it. They’d probably just wait for a few hours, then go and drink it when they get back inside. Michaels is pretty hot on that kind of thing…”

Ellie sat back, all enthusiasm gone in an instant to be replaced with sullen defeat. The three of them sat in silence for a while before the girl spoke.

“We need a diversion,” she said in a small voice, her eyes only raised to meet theirs after she had spoken.

“Like what?” Ellie asked.

“A fire,” said Pauline distantly, “fire always gets people scared and running around.”

“So what do we set on fire?” Ellie asked.

“Nevin,” Jessica answered nastily, an evil curl on her lip as she spoke the name of the horrible man who humiliated her.

The older women didn’t know whether to laugh or be scared.

“Our bedding,” Pauline offered, “throw it out of the window here after it’s on fire and that way they’ll have to go around the building to see where it’s coming from. They sat in silence for a while, each of them considering the plausibility of the plan.

“It could work,” Ellie said as she narrowed her eyes, “but has anyone got a lighter?”

Pauline and Ellie exchanged looks and shrugs, and a resigned huff from the girl made them both look in her direction. She rolled up the leg of her trousers to expose the tops of the boots she had been wearing ever since she ran from the hospital barefoot. Tucked inside the top was a lighter, beside a metal nail file, a Yale style key, and a teaspoon. Lost for words, the other two said nothing as the girl replaced the trouser leg and displayed the needed item.

“What?” she said when she saw the looks of the others, “I see things and I pick them up. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

Pauline took the lighter and struck a flame with her thumb on the third attempt.

“We still need something inflammable,” she said, “to make the flames nice and big.”

“You’re joking, right?” Ellie said, “with these mattresses?”

Pauline looked aghast at the implied criticism of the place she had lived and worked in for so long, but still didn’t understand Ellie’s point.

“Polyurethane foam?” Ellie asked, almost annoyed that nobody understood her point, “It’s very inflammable,” she finished.

Both Pauline and Jessica gave an, “ahh,” in unison.

“So we set fire to the bedding, toss it out of the window, wait for everyone to start running around and then what?” Jessica asked.

“Then we make a run for it,” Pauline said.

“Where?” Jessica asked.

“Anywhere,” said Ellie, sounding more reckless than she truly was, “just away from here and these pigs.”

“Out there,” Jessica asked softly, “with the monsters?”

“Yes,” she bit back, “anywhere is better than here.”

FOURTEEN

“We can’t stay inside forever,” Hampton said through his gritted teeth as he flexed and bent his damaged leg.

“No,” Johnson countered, “but neither can we risk running around in sub-freezing temperatures with snow and ice everywhere.”

“We need to, Dean,” Bufford said as he placed a calming hand on the man’s shoulder, “if not for ourselves, then for the kids; they need more food than we have left and if we wait for the weather to get worse, the job will be much harder.”

Johnson couldn’t argue with the logic It wasn’t as though they needed his permission anyway, he wasn’t in charge of them, but it had evolved that decisions were made in a more democratic fashion than their former lives would have thought possible. None of them was placed above the others. Johnson was a very senior non-commissioned officer, but then Hampton and Bufford were both hugely experienced sergeants who had trained more than their fair share of young officers in nominal command of the men they served with. Astrid, the curious commando spy from Norway, was clearly no uniform-filler, and possessed a sometimes frightening intellect. Even their lowly-ranked marine, Enfield, was a specialist and a cunning man with an eye for ground like a predator.

Hell, Johnson thought, even the kids are qualified to weigh in on decisions, given how long they’ve survived on their own.

The only person not to hold rank or military experience was Kimberley, but something about the woman was so forthright that she was not the meek kind to simply obey orders she didn’t agree with or understand. Johnson had tried, very delicately given their tenuous attraction to one another, to explain to her that if the time ever came that she was told what to do in a dire situation, then she simply had to bite her tongue and trust the people she was with. She had accepted that, but something told the big man that those were the only set of circumstances under which she would submit to rule.

“Fine,” he said eventually, “what are you thinking?”

“Small recce team,” Bufford said, “not looking at shops or houses but more at commercial stuff. That means,” he said as he spread out a map, “heading back this way towards the coast.”

Johnson looked at the map but could see no reason to refuse the man.

“You’ll keep an eye out for signs of others though, correct?”

“We will. Good or bad, we’ll make damned sure first,” Enfield answered for the SBS man.

You’ve already planned who’ll be going then… Johnson told himself.

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

“Three-man team. Small, quiet, fast,” Astrid said in a tone of voice which brooked no argument.

Johnson looked at her, then Bufford, then Enfield in turn and saw no shame in their eyes. They weren’t trying to circumvent him, not intentionally, and he tried to find any logical reason to force one of the three elite soldiers out of their role so that he could retain a hands-on approach. It was pointless, and he knew it. Two special forces commandos and a sniper? How could he hope to replace one of those at their job? If it was co-ordinating the resupply of an armoured squadron, then Dean Johnson was your man. Laying an ambush using his faster tracked vehicles and luring enemy tanks into a killing ground he had set up to pour murderous 40mm fire into them? That was, as they said, most definitely his bag. But running around in freezing conditions, moving like a ghost and fighting like half a platoon if called upon, then no; he was no commando.

“Timescale?” he asked, changing the subject from his dark thoughts of inadequacy.

“Leave at first light tomorrow, be back by dark,” Bufford said confidently.

“Alright,” Johnson said, all fight leaving him and his belly already turning towards happier thoughts, “but you really need to bring back supplies tomorrow, because you need to eat well tonight.” The SBS sergeant and former Royal Marine smiled at the Squadron Sergeant Major, who thought that the muscular man had already visibly lost enough size to be a concern for them all. They had been living on reduced rations ever since their panicked return from the gun store, while fear of heavy machine gun fire kept their heads down for the ensuing weeks, until hunger promised a far crueller death. His beard, wild before their helicopter had crashed and stranded them in the countryside, had grown wispy and looked bedraggled until he took scissors to it and cut it shorter. Johnson himself, despite attempts to maintain standards for no reason other than that he had always done so, had succumbed and grown a tough, scratchy beard of short hair which came through with a ginger hue, despite his hair the being darkest of brown.

They were, he had to admit, in a bad way, and that would only worsen if they didn’t break out of hibernation and find more supplies.

But there were so many risks. The roads were iced over, after weeks of snow and frosts and thaws and more frosts. Packed snow had turned to mush, only to freeze solid and dry once more into slabs as hard as concrete which wouldn’t fade under an entire day of direct sunlight. They had to be almost three months shy of the break of spring, and this winter had conspired with other events to be the worst in as long as he could recall.

The only person not bothered by the temperatures was Astrid Larsen, but then again Johnson guessed that if your home country regularly experienced minus thirty degrees inland during winter, then the constant snow and sleet of a British winter, no matter how harsh, was of little concern. What was concerning, at least to Johnson, was that their country was not set up for such a bad winter, just as it couldn’t cope with a prolonged period of hot weather in the summer, and if the world hadn’t turned into a flesh-eating circus, there would have been frozen hell on earth this winter anyway.

The cold was good for one thing though; the dead were slow, lethargic, and very few in number. Those that did wander into their little fortified island posed next to no threat, unless you fell on your arse in front of them and dropped your weapon, that was. They had all expressed a hope that the bad weather would put an end to the infected population.

“Who wants to cook then?” Hampton chimed in, making it obvious that he was hungry and wasn’t going to cook.

“I’ll do it,” came a small voice from the open-plan kitchen behind their conversation in the comfortable lounge. Heads turned to take in the small frame of Peter, the sleeves of his oversized sweatshirt rolled up and slipping down constantly over his bony elbows as he hefted a large pasta pan into the sink and ran the tap to fill it. “Spaghetti and meatballs okay for everyone?”

They had kept the dozen tins of meatballs back intentionally, and the dried pasta was probably good for a lifetime if they weren’t overly fussy, which clearly none of them was.

“Need a hand?” Kimberley asked. Peter just turned and smiled at her, so she used the can opener to wind off the jagged metal discs before pouring the lumpy, sloppy contents into another pan for heating.

“Where’s Amber?” Astrid asked from the other room, seeing that the two people other than herself who the little girl gravitated to were engaged in the cooking.

“She’s right here,” Peter said, “she’s helping me, isn’t that right?” he turned to pull a face at her as she was sitting up on the kitchen worktop out of sight of the lounge area. She pulled the face back playfully, but still didn’t say a word.

They ate together, testimony to the sheer size of the house as all eight of them could sit around the massive dining table set in the kitchen and still feel as though the house was empty. When they had finished, Johnson and Hampton went with the three who would be leaving in the morning, and Amber went back upstairs to watch the Care Bears movie for the third time that day. Peter, uncomplaining, took the plates and rested them in the large sink beside the pans. He shoved the sleeves of his top up his arms again, not bothering to rectify it when they slid down immediately afterwards, and he ran the tap. Kimberley got up, taking a flat sponge and holding it under the water, which had already run warm, then turned to clean down the table.

He washed, armpits resting on the sink edge and sleeves dropping into the soapy water, as she dried.

“Who taught you how to do this?” she asked, full of curiosity.

“My sister,” he told her after the briefest of pauses as though he was deciding whether to tell her or not. “She did a lot of cooking. She showed me how to cook the pasta and test it, but she didn’t let me open the tins because I could cut myself on them.” He left out that she liked to use the jagged slices of metal to score lines in her own arms.

“She showed me how to wash up as we went along, and she made my sandwiches for the next day as we did it.”

Kimberley, her heart breaking with each word he spoke, resisted the urge to patronise him. He was clearly very resilient, and to make out that his survival was extraordinary was to invite doubt into his mind.

“Were your parents working then?” she asked, seeing the boy turn and regard her quizzically.

“No,” he told her, “they watched TV and drank and smoked cigarettes. We weren’t allowed to watch the TV most of the time.” He went back to washing, his sponge making squeaking noises on the plate as he wiped circles of soap suds onto it. Kimberley didn’t know what to say, but she found herself asking the question she knew she shouldn’t.

“Peter, where is your sister now?”

He paused, thinking, then resumed the squeaking on the plate.

“She went away, to hospital, so she’s probably there now. I’ll try and find her after this has all finished.”

Before Kimberley could even start to figure out what to say to that, Peter asked his own question.

“What happened to your face?”

She froze, hearing the question asked so blatantly and innocently when people usually never had the courage to ask her.

“It was an accident,” she told him quietly, resting down one clean plate and picking up another to dry.

“Was it an accident doing a new roof?” Peter asked, “Only I saw when we had a new roof on the pig shed at home, and someone accidentally poured hot tar stuff down their hand and it looked the same.

“No, Peter, it wasn’t an accident with roofing tar, it was…” she trailed off.

“What?” he asked her, a concerned look on his face as he turned to her.

“Someone hurt me,” she told him, “someone I should have been safe with, but I wasn’t.”

“Was it your parents?” he asked, “did they hit you, too?”

“No,” she said, a tear forming in her eye, not for her own mistreatment but for the terrible reality the boy had lived before zombies roamed the country, “it was my… my husband. I got married very young, you see, and he wasn’t very nice to me.”

“Oh,” Peter said, clearly sad for her, “did you tell the police?”

“In a way,” Kimberley said, snapping out of her reverie and scrubbing the tea towel at the plate once more.

“Did someone hurt him back for you?” Peter asked as he washed up.

“I did it myself,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

Peter stopped, thinking about it, then continued scrubbing. “That’s good. You shouldn’t let bullies keep hitting you. I did that once, hit him back, and he didn’t try it again.” Peter’s eyes went vacant for a moment as his mind followed the logic that the bully was probably no longer alive.

Kimberley said nothing, simply put the dry plate down and folded the damp tea towel before giving the boy a gentle flat palm on the head as she turned away. She didn’t trust herself to speak lest the tears come again. She hadn’t talked about what had happened for years, and moving to the country had been her way of leaving it behind her, in the past with her married name.

The planning conversation had ended during the time she had been with Peter, so when she walked into what she thought was an empty room with red, puffy eyes and her chest heaving with the effort of keeping her tears at bay, she wasn’t expecting to find the two men standing mutely staring at her.

“This one will be fine for me,” Hampton said in a stage voice as he took the closest book to him, a hardback Catherine Cookson that didn’t seem like his kind of thing at all. He made his limping escape from the room, his injured leg still rendering him less useful than he wanted to be, leaving her facing an embarrassed Dean Johnson who seemed as though he didn’t know where to look.

“Um…” he started, looking left and right for escape and finding none. He began to edge away, leaving the distressed woman to cry in peace, but she threw herself down to the sofa and let out a high-pitched growl of frustration.

“I’ll, err, just be going…”

“I’ll be okay,” she said, wiping angrily at the tears on her cheeks, “I promised myself I’d stopped crying about this years ago,” she said as she waved a hand over the scarred side of her face, “but I just got reminded of something and it caught me off guard.”

Johnson sat carefully beside her, fearful that she would be annoyed with him, and dared to reach out for her hand.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he tried tentatively. She looked at him, the mask of cool resolve falling back into place despite the puffiness of her red face.

“It seems stupid now,” she said, “like it doesn’t matter anymore. That little boy in there has been through so much and he doesn’t complain, doesn’t fall apart…”

“Don’t be silly,” he told her gently, “some injuries never heal, not properly.” She regarded him oddly then, trying to marry up the tough, bearded soldier with the kind and caring words of a therapist.

“Peter asked me about the scars,” she said after a moment. Johnson nodded, looking at her intently as she spoke, as though he could lose her if his concentration wavered and the spell broke.

“I was married when I was eighteen,” she began, “to a soldier. It was wonderful and new, but when I got pregnant my father insisted that we got married. We did, and as soon as we’d had a two-day honeymoon, he started hitting me.” Her eyes locked with his, burning brightly with strength and pain in equal measures. “I lost the baby, which he blamed me for. My whole life was gone in an instant; I wasn’t allowed out, I couldn’t wear the clothes I wanted to wear, I had no friends…”

“Did he do that to you?” Johnson asked, his anger barely under control as he suspected the answer already, as his hand raised slightly towards the hair covering the puckered skin.

“Yes,” she said, “he’d been court-martialled and discharged not long after we got married. He had a tendency to drink and get into fights. That made him worse. I’d burnt his food, according to him anyway, so he grabbed my hair and pushed my head down onto the hotplate. ‘you don’t listen’ he told me.”

Johnson breathed in hard through his nose to try and tame the indignation and rage he was feeling at how this beautiful, strong and kind young woman had been so badly treated.

“So you went to the police?” he asked.

“Not directly,” she said in a neutral tone, “but they were called. By the neighbours, I think. I stabbed him in his sleep a week afterwards, not that I remember doing it. He survived, unfortunately, and I spent four years in prison for it. Apparently, I was given a lenient sentence, on account of my temporary insanity. You know how many times I’d been to the local hospital in the year I lived with him?” she asked. Johnson opened and closed his mouth, unsure if the rhetoric needed a response.

“Thirteen,” she told him flatly, “thirteen times in twelve months with injuries I got from him. They asked me if I was sorry at the trial, they asked me to show remorse,” her lip curled in disgust, “I told them I wished I had never met the bastard.”

She stayed sitting there, staring off into painful memory for a while before she sniffed abruptly and stood up as though electrified.

“And there’s me feeling sorry for myself, when a nine-year-old kid has survived this on his own literally, looking after a toddler. Put things into perspective, doesn’t it?”

FIFTEEN

The two women and the girl tried to be as quiet as possible as they squeezed and pushed the mattress through the window of their room. When it was two thirds of the way out, hanging over the void, the lighter was clicked until the flame took hold. The foam scorched, melted, then caught in a sudden, toxic flash of flame which made them all choke and push at the burning lump with renewed energy to force it out of the window. Black smoke hung in the suddenly hot air of the small room as they all fought to crane their necks out of the opening at once to see where it landed. Their disappointment was palpable, as the burning mattress had landed fire side down and extinguished their attempts at arson.

“Grab more,” Ellie said, “rip pieces off.” They tore at the other mattresses, Jessica using the sharpened edge of her stolen teaspoon to slice at the stretched sections until they came apart in her hand. A kind of conveyor belt system established itself within seconds, with Jessica cutting pieces away using her adapted tool and Ellie passing them to Pauline, who set them on fire and dropped them one after another out of the window to the mattress below. They caught, spreading the fire until the darkness outside took on an eerie orange glow and an acrid smell sapped the oxygen from their immediate world.

“More,” Pauline hissed, “keep it coming.”

They did, and by the time shouts were reverberating loudly around the building, they had shut the window to their room, with only one mattress remaining. They had bundled up their few possessions and clothes into pillowcases and tied them together like bags, waiting for the commotion to build up. They put their coats on over their layers of clothing, holding their nerve collectively as they didn’t want to be discovered.

Shout of ‘fire’ rang out loudly over the noise of doors opening and slamming and footsteps running fast down the corridors. They waited, breath held until some undetermined time when they should make a break for it. Their eyes met, darting between the three of them like electricity, until Ellie made the decision for them.

“Go!”

They went. Stepping fast along the corridor and down the stairs as doors opened and closed all around them. One man blocked their way, eyes wide and wild in the low light of the emergency bulbs, and he demanded to know what was happening.

“Fire!” Pauline yelled, repeating the panicked call that rang through the now busy building. The word was infectious somehow, spreading the disease of fear faster than the bites of the zombies ever could. People ran and jostled, pushed and shoved on the stairways to demonstrate their primeval terror of the untameable element. Nobody noticed their subtle luggage, nobody stopped them to question why they were fully dressed and wrapped up warmly against the cold night air when others were in disarray and clutching blankets around themselves. They continued the shout, using it as a catalyst for the panic and confusion that spread faster than the fire.

Outside, among the milling crowd of terrified people who were foolishly all looking inwards when logic should have told them that the bigger threat came from the bright flames and the noise attracting attention from elsewhere, louder shouts of authority took command. One voice stood out above all of them, barking orders to some and instructing others to get out of the way. Water buckets were found but the frozen surface of the small pond there proved yet another barrier until someone who wasn’t panicking found a large rock to drop in to break the icy surface.

As this activity churned, three figures slipped towards the back of the group, waiting again for the unfathomable right time to act. When the double echoing boom of consecutive shotgun blasts rang out from the approach road and the answering screams of fear rose and gathered momentum, the three figures knew that the time was right.

They didn’t run, they simply faded away from the group and turned towards the darkness.

* * *

“What the hell is going on?” Michaels snapped at Nevin, who was still lacing his boots as he shouted orders.

“Fire,” he said, “other side of the building on the outside. I’m having people put it out now.”

“Fire?” Michaels asked incredulously, “How?”

“Haven’t got that far yet, maybe we should put it out first so we don’t burn the whole place down, and then we can figure that out afterwards?”

“It’s a solid stone building, you moron,” Michaels condescended nastily, “the worst that will happen is a few scorch marks if the fire is outside.”

Nevin said nothing, only shot the man a murderous look that was mixed of embarrassment at not figuring that out and anger at being talked down to again.

“It’s a diversion,” Michaels told him after a moment of thought, “get every guard on the perimet…”

BOOM, BOOM.

The two men’s eyes met in the poor light cast by the weak, yellowy bulbs. No words passed between them but instead a communication on a deep, almost telepathic level flashed as though they were speaking in the same high-frequency data-burst transmissions as the military radio sets. They ran towards the sound of the gunfire, Michaels pausing only to grab one of his armed men and order that every one of their guards be set to the perimeter immediately.

It was just one of them, passing by on their slow-motion travels in the freezing cold weather, and attracted by random chance to the noise and the smells and the bright orange flames licking up the side of the building. It turned towards the attractive sounds, its unthinking brain associating the disturbance with food, and it shambled uphill away from the road.

What remained of its nose was turned up into the air to sniff, and it detected the sweet scent of fresh flesh. Before the ravaged vocal chords could issue the high-pitched screech of attack, a bright blossom of flame and noise showed ahead. It rocked backwards, the torn rags of the shirt it had been wearing so many months before being blown away along with most of its right shoulder. The right arm hung limply, the muscles and tendons severed to make the two-handed reach only fifty percent effective. The second shot, the beautiful and deadly bloom of fire and lead erupting from the end of the shotgun’s barrel took the entire left side of the face off the creature. As gruesome as the inflicted injures looked, they were far from effective at rendering the former person less dangerous. The shocked and terrified guard fumbled with cold fingers inside thick gloves that denied him the sense of touch in locating a pair of fresh cartridges to charge the double-barrelled weapon again. He was forced to look down, to locate the new ammunition with eyesight in the poor light, and when he looked back up, he let out an animalistic squeal of pure horror.

With one useless arm hanging by gristly threads and half of what had once been a face scoured from the bone by the flensing shot, the thing bore down on him and drove him to the ground. He held the gun across his chest, screaming in short, pathetic gasps as he pushed the weapon out to keep the snapping jaws away from the exposed skin of his face. The rotting jaws opened and closed repeatedly, trying to find purchase and fulfil its sole purpose in life. It gave up trying to reach the face, instead turning and burying the broken pegs in its mouth into the thick sleeve of the waxed jacked the man wore. The bite force was unreal, sparking a howl of agony from the frozen sentry, but something inside him knew that the fight wasn’t over; knew that the teeth hadn’t broken his skin and told him that he still had a fighting chance to survive.

He abandoned the attempts to push it directly away from him, instead allowing the arm it was biting to drop and rolled it over away from him. He flew to his feet with a speed and flexibility he didn’t know he possessed, struggling in a hideous tug of war which ended in the glittering of once-white teeth cascading through the air as the gripped sleeve was torn free. He staggered backwards a pace, righting his momentum, reversed the shotgun and brought the butt down savagely hard, twice, three times, until he stood and allowed the tears of fear and adrenaline to flow freely down his face.

He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps; multiple and moving faster than any undead attack would have a right to. He smiled weakly at his reinforcements, grateful of the living company to tell his ordeal to, but blanched when he saw the face of the man who looked at him. Michaels regarded him coldly, eyes darting from the ruined head of the zombie to the man clutching at the arm which was already bruised by the sheer bite force of the attack. Something flashed between their eyes, another instant of communication, but this one was wrong.

“It didn’t bi…” the guard managed, before Michaels raised the barrel of his gun and fired a bullet into his skull from three feet away.

Michaels and Nevin looked down on the two bodies lying at their feet, happy in their ignorance that they had contained any potential outbreak before it had started.

“Stay here,” Michaels told Nevin, “I’ll send someone to take over.”

He walked away, thinking that he had a bad feeling something more sinister was happening.

* * *

“I’m stuck,” hissed Ellie after she had helped Jessica over the barbed wire strands of a fence that had been recently repaired and reinforced. Pauline turned back, trying to help free the snagged denim on her thigh as the younger woman tried not to cry out from the stabbing pain.

“Hurry up,” Jessica warned them, watching back up the hill in the direction they had slipped away from as louder shouts drifted down to them.

“Got it,” Pauline told Ellie, shaking her hand to try and numb the pain of the metal stabbing into her thumb. Ellie’s other leg went over the fence just as another hiss of warning came from the girl.

“They know,” she said, her whisper an octave above where it had been previously, “they’ve got torches.”

They did indeed have torches, and in the frost-covered grass of the slope leading away from the hilltop prison was a thick line of disturbed ground showing darker than its surroundings. The three women moved with renewed urgency as the threat of instant pursuit spurred them on. No more gunshots had come from the hill, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any more if they were discovered.

“Which way?” Ellie asked as they reached a thick hedgerow at road level. Pauline didn’t answer, she simply turned left and followed the line of the thick foliage for over a minute until she stopped and ushered them over a wooden style in a man-made break in the hedge. It was overgrown, but the gap was still big enough to let them through. They dropped down onto the roadway, the surface icy under the sharp crunch of old snow yet to thaw.

“Come on,” Pauline hissed at them, taking off down the road at an uncertain pace due to the treacherous footing. They made as much ground as they could, slipping and helping one another when they lost their feet. Steam gathered around them in a haze as the moonlight illuminated them in a way that they couldn’t see under the weak lights at the hilltop. Bathed in a shiny purple ethereal glow, they moved quickly, with their ragged breath coming in gasps. They knew they had to move fast, to put distance between those chasing them and themselves, but with each step the fear grew that they would be caught.

Jessica said nothing, but she was forced to stop when she was winded. She had no breath left and the painful stitch in her side doubled her over and made her recovery even less effective. Ellie noticed first, sensing that there was one set of footfalls too few, and turned back to her. Pauline hadn’t noticed them stop, hadn’t heard Ellie’s hiss of warning, and with each second the gap between them grew wider. Ellie didn’t dare shout, for there were still things out in the countryside that were more frightening than men with guns, but she was stuck between the two people she had fled with. She was closer to Jessica, and knew that Pauline would surely stop and wait for them when she realised she was alone. As Ellie walked to Jessica, seeing the girl grimace and stand tall to try and catch her breath, she saw a curious haze of light behind her. It took her the half a dozen steps to reach her before her brain computed what the growing glow meant, and when she reached the girl she grabbed her and dropped to the ground, rolling them both into the ditch where the trickle of ice-cold muddy water threatened to take the breath away from them both. Jessica gasped, but the sound was barely audible over the grumble of an engine moving slowly along the road, following their obvious tracks.

The engine note waned, idled, then picked up again as the lights passed by Ellie and Jessica. Both of them squeezed their eyes shut tightly, hoping that if they couldn’t see their pursuers, then perhaps their pursuers couldn’t see them. Ellie realised as soon as the truck had passed and left them in darkness again that the tracks they’d left must have been confusing, but they hadn’t stopped so instead the truck carried on.

Only one set of footprints left? Ellie thought. What if one person was carrying the other?

Quite why she reasoned the logic on behalf of the people hunting her she didn’t know, but perhaps understanding your enemy was the key lesson.

“We need to go, now,” she whispered in Jessica’s ear. The girl’s eyes shone brightly back at her as they reflected the power of the fat moon high above them. She nodded once, understanding what they now both knew.

They couldn’t help Pauline.

They forced their way through the hedge to emerge in the field on the far side, then set off in a straight line across the dark countryside at an oblique angle to the road.

* * *

Pauline saw the road ahead of her grow lighter, just as the unmistakable rattle of an engine reached her ears. She slowed, then stopped, and turned to face her impending humiliation and punishment as the truck lights illuminated her with full beams and made her turn her eyes away to save being blinded.

She had lost the other two somehow, but she had not seen or heard how or when they had disappeared. She knew it was some time ago, because all she could see as far as the distant lights were her own footprints; clear and very singular.

The truck stopped in front of her, the sounds of doors opening and closing, and a torch was shone directly into her face.

“How many others ran with you?” a voice demanded. Pauline said nothing, but smiled a sweet smile that had ‘fuck you’ emblazoned all over it. The man behind the torch hit her once, a brutally hard backhand that caught her between jawbone and cheek and sat her down with a sickening thump into the slushy snowmelt.

“How many?” the voice growled again, the promise of more pain evident in the tone.

“Five,” Pauline lied with no idea why she said what she did, “three men and three women. We all split up.”

Silence met her lies, underpinned by the chugging rattle of the truck engine.

“Bring her back,” the voice said, “she can be an example.”

As she was dragged to her feet and thrown into the hard back of the pickup truck, the man climbed in behind her and rested his cold, wet boot soles on her body.

“You cost us a guard,” the voice of that bastard Nevin said, “and Michaels won’t be pleased with you for that.”

SIXTEEN

Dawn saw activity all over the region. The four-man SAS team deployed to seek more food and resources to both survive the winter and in preparation of making a very long and uncertain journey by road.

The three-person team slipped from their fortified village base with no fuss and even less noise, taking their van on a long-range scavenging run in the hopes of staving off starvation.

Nearer the coast, burnt wreckage and scorched mattresses were shoved over the cliff as the clean-up started at the hilltop. The rotten corpse of the lone attacker was discarded over the edge, along with the rest of the detritus but the dead sentry, dead at the hands of Michaels as everyone had heard, had apparently been popular. The others wanted a proper burial for him. They wanted to challenge the man over his account of their friend’s death, as not one bite mark was evident on his body.

“You dig a bloody hole in frozen ground then,” Michaels had spat at them, “because I wouldn’t bother.”

They did bother, despite how difficult and backbreaking it was, and questions began to be asked about the woman who had been dragged back up the hill during the night. The people wanted to know what Michaels was going to do with her, and Michaels responded by telling the people that he would do whatever he damned well felt like doing, and if they didn’t want to find themselves out on their ungrateful arses, then they would do well to stop questioning him. Those with questions faded away, and even some of those trusted with guns began to side with the majority.

Michaels, that evil bastard who was always beside him and who seemed to share the same mutual hatred for everyone and everything, and half a dozen others all clustered closely as though they could sense the change in mood.

The mood faded as most of those men left in vehicles to search for the missing men and women who had apparently fled in the night. Sneering down at the people who watched him leave, Michaels reached above him and pulled down the heavy hatch before the small tank he rode in drove away.

* * *

“Contact, north west,” Mac called softly from his standing position with binoculars pressed to his eyes, “looks like multiple Screechers, standby…”

“Talk me in,” Smiffy said, having abandoned his imitation of a television personality the instant Mac called the threat out.

“Past the stone cottage,” Mac said, having widened his view to include the foreground briefly so that he could accurately describe the location to his sniper, “hedgerow following wes…”

“Got ‘em,” Smiffy cut him off, “just two by the look of it…” he went quiet as he watched the targets approaching them from a long way off. Downes and Dezzy were behind them somewhere, clearing out a larger building which would be useful for storing and sorting the supplies when they called the marines and the remainder of the squadron in.

“Don’t seem that rotten,” Smiffy said skeptically, “probably hibernated inside.”

“Drop ‘em,” Mac instructed him, demonstrating his opposing ethos to their Major when it came to the undead. Downes was of the opinion that if they weren’t close enough to threaten them, then it was a waste of a bullet, whereas Mac wanted to put down every one he ever saw, because it would need to be done eventually anyway and he wasn’t one for putting off today’s job until tomorrow. Smiffy took two longer, deeper breaths as Mac heard the click of the safety catch disengaging on the stolen Soviet rifle. He watched through the binoculars at the distant figures shambling over the field, waiting to see their fuzzy shapes drop in response to the sharp crack he expected to hear.

“Hold up,” Smiffy said, “something ain’t right with these…”

“What’s not right?” Major Downes asked as he emerged silently behind them onto the low rooftop they occupied.

“Two dead bastards,” Mac said, “coming in across country.”

“Specify, what ain’t right, trooper.”

“Don’t look that dead, Boss. Only… only sort of half dead,” he replied, prompting silence as everyone brought out their optics to try and see what their shooter had seen.

“You know what, Smiffy?” Downes asked from behind his compact binoculars, “I think you might be right. Mac, Dez; left flank along hedgerow. Smiffy; with me.”

* * *

Jessica didn’t speak as she walked, just as Ellie behind her kept silent. Both of them were frozen to the core, filthy and soaked from the ditch water which hadn’t dried from their clothes, despite having walked all night and through the dawn. Both were exhausted to the point of collapse, but neither wanted to stop as the fear of pursuit was constant in their minds. As they crested the rise and looked down into the shallow valley towards a small collection of houses and what looked like a village hall, Ellie simply pointed the direction they should head in and both trudged onwards, shivering in silence.

A crackle of twigs sounded ahead, making Jessica and Ellie snap their heads upwards to find themselves looking in the same direction. Both of them froze, and Ellie looked around on the ground for anything she could use as a weapon. Kicking at a lump of rock, she prised it from the stiff earth with difficulty. She hefted it in her right hand, pushing Jessica behind her, who clutched at the pathetically small sharpened teaspoon retrieved from her boot.

Nothing moved. No more sounds came from the thick hedgerow ahead of them, and their breath began to slowly return to normal.

“Put down your, er, rock, please,” came a cultured and strong voice from over their left shoulders. Ellie yelped and spun, trying to push Jessica behind her again and only succeeding in tripping the girl, who fell to the frozen ground behind her and was too weak to get up. Jessica yelped then, seeing two men dressed in black clothing and carrying machine guns emerge from the bushes. Behind her, Ellie found herself looking into the clear, bluey-grey eyes of a tall man with his hands held out to show open palms. A gun hung on his chest, and various other dangerous looking items adorned his torso and waist, but his eyes pierced through everything to convey a message to the young woman that she was safe now.

Ellie dropped her rock, sinking to the hard earth beside Jessica, and both sobbed with exhaustion and relief.

* * *

Michaels had stopped talking to Nevin, solely because the man was annoying him. He wanted to go back, wanted to show strength in front of the others back at the Hilltop and maintain their control over the people. Michaels thought the man wanted to get back behind their defences and hide in the warmth, which was no bad thing in his opinion, but Michaels desperately wanted to find the people who had escaped his rule.

He had no idea it was just two women, or a woman and a girl, who were unaccounted for, but any loss was galling to him and he found himself pathologically unable to let it pass.

He had forced Nevin to stop their cramped armoured scout car, the Ferret with the thirty-calibre machine gun mounted on top and told the man to get out. The two of them walked carefully around a frozen, deserted village with their weapons held low but ready. Neither expected to be set up by any of the dead bastards out in the open, not in those temperatures, but it didn’t pay to be complacent at any time.

That caution, that alertness, paid off when they both heard the sound of an engine at the same time. Their eyes met and, despite their almost obvious dislike for one another, both men recognised the need to work together. The Ferret was too far away, parked down a side street as it was too much of a giveaway to leave on the main road, and both men instinctively sought appropriate cover more attuned to the dangers of Northern Ireland than to a frozen southern English village amidst the undead apocalypse. The engine note grew, splitting into two distinct sounds with one lower, heavier note and another higher-pitched with a slight rattle. Michaels looked over at Nevin and caught his eye. He showed him a flat hand and waved it down in the cramped confines of the doorway he occupied. As awkward as it was, the signal for ‘take cover’ was obvious enough. Nevin nodded back, sinking out of sight into the shadows.

They waited for almost a minute before a dusty and frost-free box van rolled through the village. Michaels saw a flash of blonde hair, long and naturally straight, in the cab. Following after that, at a distance he could only describe as tactical, was a dirty beige Montego with a single male driver. Michaels waited until they had passed into silence, then rose to see Nevin emerging on the opposite side of the road.

“See the woman in the truck cab?” Nevin asked him. He nodded, having his guesses firmed up by Nevin’s information.

“And what do you reckon was in the truck?”

“Well the signage said something catering, so…”

Michaels smiled, seeing that the two vehicles had left wide, black tracks in the freshly fallen dusting of snow that a blind child could follow.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s follow those tracks.”

* * *

Downes and his men left Lieutenant Lloyd with the village they had cleared as they tried to keep the woman and the girl out of sight in the back of their adopted Land Cruiser. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust the marines, it was more that they saw no further need for excitement. They did consider requesting a loan of Marine Sealey, the only surviving medic from the island, but Smiffy said that he was capable of looking after them.

“It’s just a bit of mild exposure,” he said casually, “nothing a warm-up and hot drinks won’t cure.”

Water had been boiled on a small fire fuelled by solid white blocks that burned with a chemical intensity, and powdered hot chocolate was found in the hall. Dezzy found two mugs, added sugar liberally from the sachets he found in the kitchen area before pocketing as many as he could grab, and brought the drinks out to them, where they were safety wrapped up in blankets. Neither of them baulked or even pulled a face at the amount of sugar they were being force fed. Downes filled Lloyd in on their find, made their excuses and drove the frozen refugees back to the house. Neither spoke over the almost one hour they spent in transit, and both fell asleep leaning on one another, much to the annoyance of the two soldiers cramped in the boot space on top of their kit and radio. At least neither of them felt the urge to ask if they were nearly there yet.

Arriving back and threading the emplaced defences which visibly marred the approach to the attractive house, Downes looked back the way they had come. Fresh snow had fallen here when none had been seen in the valley they had searched, and their tyres made wide, dirty scrapes in the earth, which was adorned with vast coils of barbed wire strung between fenceposts driven into the ground at uneven angles between the neat excavations of earth from the trenches. In the frozen snow it looked just like the pictures he had seen painted from memory by the survivors of the Great War. The thought left him under a dark cloud, as already the death tolls of the two conflicts were horribly uneven.

“We’re here,” he announced, glancing at the woman and the girl, who had regained consciousness to blink and stare out of the windows. Neither of them answered him, not that he expected them to, given their recent ordeal, and they were ushered through the house to the warmest part, which had always been the kitchen.

“Sergeant Major Maxwell,” Downes said comically, referring to Denise and not her husband through the intimate use of formality. The two had spoken at length on more than one occasion as they sat at the heavy butcher’s block work surface. He found her to be every bit as reliable and essential to the effective running of the house as her husband was, having been thrown into the role of the senior NCO after the tragic loss of the Squadron Sergeant Major.

“Clive?” she answered quizzically, looking up from her task in the big, deep sink to stare at the bedraggled pair he guided into the room and steered towards the massive range, which radiated heat. “What’s all this?”

“Found these two young ladies this morning, both rather wet and cold,” he told her.

“Who are they?”

Downes hesitated a fraction longer than was normal, arousing suspicion in the woman. “They haven’t spoken yet,” he answered, worried that Denise would think he was palming off a problem onto her. She shot him another look, one that bordered on disappointment, and turned to the shivering arrivals.

“Hello, my loves,” she said kindly, her eyes matching the smile and the warm tone of her voice, “what have you been up to then?” The question was rhetorical, as she fussed about them getting them seated beside the warm metal and pulling levers here and there before moving a metal pot onto a hot section of the old cooker to bring it back up to temperature.

That was the thing about the old kitchen, Downes thought to himself, it never got cold or switched off and was in a permanent state of tick-over until more was needed from it. It was like a living organism, more so than any modern, conventional kitchen would be.

“I shall leave you to it, Sar’nt Major,” he said, ducking a small bow and retreating to shed himself of weapons and get into some drier clothing.

“I’m Denise,” she told them as she wore the same wide smile, “we’ve been here a while now, and it’s about half and half with us normal people and the army lot.” She left out the variation of having RAF and Royal Marines there as it was only important to the people who lived by such acronyms and identities. If she hadn’t been an army wife, then no doubt she wouldn’t have cared either.

“What are your names?” she asked as she busied herself with the hot water and cups to make a drink.

“Ellie,” the older one said. Denise couldn’t place their relationship, as they could easily be sisters given the apparent age difference, but neither bore the slightest resemblance to the other physically. She knew that didn’t mean anything as such, but she was a woman who trusted her hunches.

“And what about you, my sweet?” she asked, leaning down to put herself in the eye line of the younger girl.

“Jessica,” she said, a hint of sullen anger in her voice, which was thick with cold and exhaustion.

“Well,” Denise said as she looked up to meet the eyes of one of the other women who gravitated around the kitchens, “let’s see if we can’t find you some clean clothes to fit, eh?” she nodded to the newly arrived woman, one of her corporals she guessed, if the civilian mirroring of ranks and responsibilities was to be observed. The woman looked long and hard at the two people wrapped in blankets huddled by the warm hearth, nodded to herself and left the room clearly having taken all the measurements she needed.

“Who is in charge here?” Ellie asked through numb lips.

“Well,” Denise said as she sat back on the wooden stool facing them and gently slapped her hands onto her thighs, “it was all a bit up in the air when we got here, but the Captain, that’s Mr Palmer senior, is sort of in overall charge. There’s Clive, Major Downes, who you know obviously, and Mr Lloyd has his marines. I run the kitchen, I suppose, and my husband is Mr Palmer’s senior man. His little brother is here too, the other Mr Palmer, but he doesn’t mix with us much…” She trailed off as she saw the perplexed looks from Ellie and Jessica.

“I’m waffling now,” she said, “tell me how you ended up out in the cold?”

“We ran away from the place we were at,” Ellie said, “and we… we…” she cast her eyes down as she couldn’t finish the sentence.

“We lost the woman who came with us,” Jessica finished with an edge of flint to her words, “they caught her. The men, not the others…”

Denise was shocked. Not being a woman usually lost for words she was speechless at the unspoken implications of what they had said.

“Were you… prisoners?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” Ellie said, “and it was probably worse than you think.”

* * *

They had been warmed, cleaned, dressed and fed before they were sat in front of a large fire crackling noisily in an ornate fireplace. There were four men in the room when Denise led Ellie and Jessica in. Downes they knew or at least had met already, and the others were introduced in turn.

“Ladies,” said Denise Maxwell, “this is Captain Palmer.” Palmer stood, offered a small bow and invited them to call him Julian if it pleased them.

“May I introduce Lieutenant Christopher Lloyd of the Royal Marines,” he indicated a good looking young man with broad shoulders and a weathered face. “You have met Major Clive Downes of the Special Air Service,” Downes smiled a greeting at them again, “and finally Mr Maxwell, our senior non-commissioned officer who reports directly to me and, of course, Mrs Maxwell, who I appear to report directly to sometimes...” They all smiled at the weak but obvious joke and the newly arrived pair were invited to sit nearest the fire. As they did, a loud crack came from the flames and a smouldering ember spat out to land on the hearth.

“Our apologies for the poor firewood,” Palmer said as though such things were under his direct control, “we have used up the stocks of seasoned wood and have been reduced to burning a coppice of ash we have found. It’s quite green but won’t suffocate us, I’m assured.”

Ellie smiled to accept the unnecessary apology, feeling oddly at ease with the formality on display. He had a way, a manner, that made her feel far more elevated than her position had ever been.

“I understand,” Palmer said gently, “that you have been residing at a place where the conditions were somewhat… unpleasant.” He left it as a statement. An invitation to explain and not a question that could be easily shut down with a simple yes or no.

Ellie told them. She told them everything from the moment she had fled with her daughter and hidden in villages as they went house to house for food to survive off. She told them about the men who had come and dragged her away, about the man in charge who had forced those same men to go back and look for her daughter, but who had come back with only news of her disappearance. She told them about the enforced work, about the women who kept the guards ‘company’ in return for items and certain freedoms. She told them about the rumours that the man in charge, this Michaels character, was forcing survivors to give him their food under the threat of violence against them. She told them about their plan to escape, about the pursuit and getting separated from Pauline, then walking all night and all day until they stumbled on the four soldiers.

“My sniper nearly shot you,” Downes said, suddenly looking awkward as he tried to turn it around to show how much of an ordeal they had suffered as to look as though they were undead, rotting creatures.

“Hang on a minute,” Maxwell said, glancing at his wife who had picked up on the same critical piece of information, “you said Michaels, right?”

“That’s right,” Ellie said, “they said he was a soldier too, just like the other one with the small tank.”

“What other one?” Maxwell asked.

“Nevin,” Jessica said, speaking for the first time during the meeting and curling her lip in hatred and disgust at the mere mention of the man’s name.

Looks were exchanged through the room as almost everyone had some piece of information that others did not possess.

“Michaels was our missing troop sergeant,” Maxwell said to the officers as an aside, “never showed up when the deployment call came in, so we chopped up his troop and shared the lads around others to fill the gaps.

“And Nevin?” Downes asked, having felt the overt hostility in the room at the mention of his name.

“Trooper Nevin,” Palmer said with measured tones in a display of uncharacteristic anger, “was the bane of Mr Johnson’s life. He is a lazy shirker, who is responsible for the bloodbath that led to the unfortunate…” he glanced at the young girl before choosing his next words carefully, “…passing of Sergeant Sinclair and his men. Trooper Povey attested to this, if you recall?”

They did recall. Not only was the loss of life a crippling blow to them as they had lost close friends and almost half of the remaining squadron strength, but the devastation that it was betrayal and cowardice of one of their own stung them deeply.

Palmer wanted to ask about Michaels, about his strengths and weaknesses as a man and a solider, but such conversations could be had with Maxwell in private.

“Ellie,” Lloyd asked, “do you know where this Hilltop is?”

SEVENTEEN

Mike Xavier and Jean-Pierre burst back through the gates of the docks after yelling at his men guarding them to get the damned things open. They collapsed into a heap together, having run over half a mile through the thick fog and fearing that at any second they would have the undead fall upon them and tear them apart. Cans and packets of food littered the roadway as terrified men and women dropped their precious cargo in the fearful flight.

It was desperate, it was ill-disciplined, and it was a shambles. Xavier knew it as much as everyone else, and he felt responsible for it. He had been the one to yell at everyone to run when they had been attacked in the shop, and he knew in hindsight that he should have organised a dedicated guard and kept the others calm and orderly, instead of the mass panic they were now looking at with a destructive air of ‘every man for themselves’.

He retained enough sense to order his men to take the food from the scavengers who flooded through the gate, each wearing similar looks of terror and relief in equal parts to be safely back inside the wire, but having seen the horrors that still existed out there. The pile of random foodstuff grew large. Large enough, he dared hope, to sustain them for a time. It would, if only he could ensure that some sort of order was maintained, because he had been horrified to see how rapidly normal people devolved to demonstrate the Darwinist theory of it being only the fittest who survived. He caught his breath, remembered what he must look like to the scared people who had been out there and deciding that he shouldn’t be just as terrified as they were, and so he stood with his feet planted widely in the open gateway with the gore-smeared axe held in two hands.

“Put the food down there,” he called to the people who trickled back in, opening his mouth to repeat the instruction to the shapes emerging from the fog but catching them in his throat as he began to speak them. The shapes morphed into two people, one of them being half carried with a limp arm slung over the neck and shoulders of another. Xavier froze, his heart rate feeling as though it had suddenly tripled, and the axe moved with a mind of its own as he let it swing low in one hand and draw back ready to take a batter’s pose like he readied himself to play baseball.

“Stop there,” he growled, “don’t come any closer.”

At the tone of his voice, instantly conveying fear and threat, Jean-Pierre appeared at his side, having abandoned his task of ensuring that people gave up their haul as they returned. Xavier felt the man’s breath behind his neck, heard the miniscule gasp of air inwards as he saw what had prompted the challenge and recognised it immediately.

“She’s okay,” the person carrying the other shape called out weakly, “she just hurt her ankle is all.”

“I said stop,” Xavier warned again, real menace edging the words this time.

“No,” pleaded the shape, coming into focus as the edges of the fog released them, “she’s just twisted her ankle…”

At the mention of the afflicted area, Xavier and Jean-Pierre both glanced down to see the white ruffles of the woman’s leg warmers soaked in a dark red. The blood had run through to her white trainers, showing a stark contrast with the other foot, and as their eyes glanced back upwards they saw her head lolling and her eyes rolling back into her head as though she was suffering from a fever. Her face was so white she seemed almost see-through. Her mouth moved constantly, weakly, as though she was trying to speak or suckle like a baby. Xavier knew he should say something, knew he should lay down the law and protect everyone and say something about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or something like that, but the words just wouldn’t come to him. His mouth flapped uselessly, just as the woman’s did.

“You must leave her,” Jean-Pierre snapped, “she has the sickness. She cannot come in here.”

“But,” the man protested pathetically, “please?”

“No,” Xavier said, finally finding his voice, “she’s infected and she will turn into one of them. She has to stay out there.”

The look of ruined hope transformed in the man’s eyes into a sudden and foul loathing.

“Who the fuck are you to say who comes in and who stays out?” his face contorted into a hateful rictus, and he saw the eyes of the two men barring his way turn suddenly wide and white in response. Filled with hope that he could intimidate them, he carried on.

“She’s fine, now get out of my fucking way or else I swear to fucking God, I wi…”

The two men facing him flinched backwards as though he was about to vomit something noxious on them. He knew then that it was something else, something awful that had scared them and nothing to do with his anger. He had that sinking feeling that he was being watched, that something was behind him as the hairs on his neck stood up at oblique angles to his skin. Lowly, inexorably, he turned his head to look behind him.

He stopped when he had turned halfway to his right. He realised, too late, that the weight of the woman was no longer hanging on him and dragging him down. She was standing on her own, all reliance on him gone in an instant. Their eyes met, and despite the poor light and the heavy fog, the last thing he saw before the pain of teeth ripping the flesh from his neck forced his consciousness to flee was the milky white orbs or her eyes.

Jean-Pierre and Xavier moved as one. Like a choreographed pair of dancers, they both moved forwards diagonally and crossed one another’s paths to swing their weapons in almost perfect unison into the heads of the two unfortunate scavengers standing before them. As they dropped, screams sounded nearby as others witnessed the terror of the undead, stirred from their hibernation by the desperation of living humans for sustenance, reaching their gates.

As the captain and his first mate swung the gates closed just in time, two last healthy survivors ran in before the rotting smell hit them and the small wave of musty, hungry, zombies flowed out of the fog to reach for them.

The last man, clutching his shoulder, fell at Xavier’s feet as Jean-Pierre locked off the gate and immediately reversed the heavy spike he carried to start puncturing skulls and crushing the cruel metal tip through eye sockets. The gate flexed worryingly, bending inwards under the weight of a concerted attack, the likes of which they hadn’t suffered before as they had always kept a low profile. Xavier stood, grabbed a handful of the man’s jacket and hauled him bodily to his feet with a strength that his thin frame didn’t imply.

“Hey,” he said to the man as he turned to leave. The nervous eyes rounded on his, almost pleadingly, until he saw Xavier pointing to the bag of food he was carrying and directing him to leave it with the rest.

* * *

The panic subsided after an hour. The death toll was taken, and they believed that they had lost four from the names of people who were unaccounted for. Two of those were put down directly outside the gates and were visible, but the two others seemed not to have made it back at all. The food haul, however, was hardly worth it. They could expect to survive for maybe a week on what they had brought back, and that was only if it could be rationed out and protected. Without any real weapons there was no hope of maintaining order through force, and Xavier knew it was only a matter of time before they saw a repeat of the events which had led to their poorly planned shopping run.

He had recruited Jean-Pierre, who had agreed unquestioningly as was his way with the captain he had known and sailed with for years, and two others. One was from his crew, a squat and unsmiling engineer known amongst the crew as Jase. Xavier didn’t know if his real name was Jason or whether it was a nickname he didn’t understand, but he filed that away with the whole raft of other shit he didn’t need to know. He was completely taken aback by one of the other volunteers as one of ‘the others’ as he thought of them came up with the idea and wouldn’t take no for an answer when she demanded to come with them. Philippa McAndrew was short and small, what some men would call petite but Jean-Pierre, who preferred his women big, said that she had the body of a young boy. That put Xavier off looking at her, given the unfortunate connotations of what JP had said, but there was no denying the fire in her. She had a broad accent, which to those who had never spent much time on the far side of the Atlantic would simply fall under the category of ‘American’.

Her idea was for a small group, say no more than four, to take one of the many smaller boats from the dock to sail up or down from the city keeping close to land and hence staying well and truly off the radar of whatever warships patrolled the stretch of water between the mainland and Ireland. A small group would also allow them to keep a low profile and not attract any of the things out there, and that way they could bring back food without causing a big commotion like they had earlier.

Xavier tried to let the implied criticisms ride, but her words put him in a dark mood.

“I don’t know how you do things in America,” he said, “but over here it’s not polite t…”

“Canada,” she said flatly, cutting him off.

“Eh?”

“I’m from Canada, not America, but please, you were saying?”

Xavier felt all fight evaporate from him in annoyance as he realised he had nothing to say in the first place. He diverted the conversation with practicalities.

“You got a weapon?” he asked her.

“I’ll find something,” she said, “when do we go?”

Xavier looked at Jean-Pierre.

“As soon as you’ve got a weapon,” he told her.

* * *

The small white fishing boat chugged lazily out of the docks and turned south to skim along the dark waters of the River Mersey in search of food.

Back at the port, in the bowels of The Maggie, where the survivors all huddled for warmth and companionship to stave off the fear and the cold, one man was absent from the group. He had taken himself away, as the noises he was making were threatening to draw attention to him He gasped and moaned as he burned up from the inside with a fever the likes of which he had never known or even thought possible. He rocked in the corner of the bathroom, hidden behind the dirty shower curtain as if believing the filthy plastic sheet could block out the world and keep him from being discovered. The only lighting there came from the weak glow of an emergency bulb, but with eyes accustomed to the dark it was enough to see in at least some detail. Slowly, stifling the sobs as he inched the material up his arm, he exposed the bite mark on his wrist. It was swollen, angry, and in place of what he would expect to be red flesh there was black. Or at least such a dark purple that it seemed black in the low light. He knew he had been infected, but the fear of receiving an axe to the head was somehow more terrifying to him than dying a slow and painful death through the fever which tortured his body. He was too frightened, too fevered, to know what would happen when he finally succumbed to the sickness, and he couldn’t help himself. He closed his eyes, resting the burning skin of his face against the cool tiles of the shower cubicle, and he fell asleep.

He awoke sometime in the dead of the night, in as much as his body began to move when what had made him him had fled; chased away by the temperature soaring in his brain and killing off every conscious part of the man who had once inhabited the body. He stood, seemingly full of power and rage as pain and hunger no longer affected him as it once had. He staggered from the shower cubicle as the plastic sheet slithered over his face until gravity pulled it down behind him, then his head snapped to the right in response to a sound; a single cough, low and soft, but the unmistakable sound of something living nearby. He sniffed the air, an animalistic and predatory gesture which sparked him onwards towards the narrow cots set up all along the section of the large ship. He found the first beating heart, the first hot skin to meet his teeth, sleeping in an alcove near the toilet block. Only a choking, gurgling sound came from the person as they gasped without vocal cords or the supply of blood to the brain. The hot, sticky fluid fountained upwards so hard that the flow atomised on the metal roof above their makeshift bed and sent a fine red mist to drift down over them. The first man chewed on the mouthful of crunchy sinew and stringy meat for a while, until something made it stop and regard its victim. The milky, blind eyes found themselves mirrored by a similar stare, and slowly the first man opened his mouth to allow the chewed flesh and pipes to drop out of his foul maw. The second man rose, walking off in a direction for no known reason and not bothering to check if the first man had followed him. He had in fact followed, solely because the movement and noise attracted it to the behaviour of its victim, which now somehow led the way for him. They killed as a pair, chewing great lumps from men and women indiscriminately until a horrified scream sounded the alarm. By the time they had been discovered there were five of them animated, all following the second one of them to have been turned, and as the main sleeping area awoke to the terror of shouts and screams, they all tried at once to get through the single door leading away from the threat.

New sounds answered those screams, as the unholy shrieks of all but one of the newly turned beasts sounded horribly loud in the metal confines of the ship’s belly. What followed was a bloodbath, where the only escape to be had was either over the side of the ship into the icy blackness below, or else out of the docks and into the foggy city where death would just take a little longer to find them.

EIGHTEEN

Nevin drove slowly, keeping the revs of the Ferret low and thereby reducing the chances of them being detected. They didn’t need to maintain visual contact with them, as the tracks they left in the snow were like a shining beacon that just cried out to be followed. Those tracks eventually stopped at a barricade in a country road between two large properties on the edge of a small village. They left their vehicle far away from the village and went back on foot, both carrying their weapons, to spy on the barricade.

Voices reached them, drifting back on the wind, and not raised carelessly as they would be if amateurs resided there. The height of the barricade meant that they could see nothing, and Nevin turned to Michaels and indicated with hand signals that he was going to skirt around the village. He added a gesture to tell Michaels to stay where he was, but the raised eyebrow made it clear he had overstepped the mark. Nevin said nothing more, only went and wished that he could take the keys to his Ferret, when like all military vehicles, the damned thing started on a switch and couldn’t be overridden.

He went slowly, hugging the ground low and keeping his eyes and ears alive to the risk of discovery. He went to the left, to the lower ground, and tracked a small brook which bubbled and raged in its own tiny way, with the additional water flowing in between the rocks and chunks of ice. He stopped, finding the smallest of gaps to peer through in the prickly hedge running beside the stream, when he saw something that he didn’t expect; that was, if the people inside had been tactically minded. In the gloomy air outside, the shining beacon of artificial light coming from the wide windows and double doors of the kitchen shone like a beacon, even though the sun had yet to start its decline with any purpose.

The light didn’t surprise him, but what did take his breath away and threaten to rob him of all stealth and sense was the shape he saw in the kitchen.

It, he, was unmistakable. The size of him. The sheer presence, despite having clearly lived in the wild for weeks or more, given the beard he now sported. The cut of his large shoulders and the disapproving, threatening cut of his brow.

Johnson. Squadron Sergeant Major Dean Fucking Johnson.

The man had terrorised him. Hit him, on more than one occasion, and never missed an opportunity to humiliate or punish him. He was the reason that Nevin had escaped the bounds of the army, had abandoned his mates – or at least the men who should have considered him as a mate – to death and fear when he had ensured his own safety.

If he’s here, Nevin thought to himself, then where is the rest of the squadron?

His logical mind told him that half, or maybe a third, of the squadron was destroyed when he had got clean away, but then he recalled that Mister Johnson had never made it back. He had been stranded on the island or, if the helicopter had even made it there to lift them out, he was lost somewhere, along with a load of the marines.

Nevin settled in to watch. He saw the owner of the blonde hair they had both seen in the truck cab, and he smiled evilly at her uncommon looks. She was no beauty, not in his opinion anyway, but she had a look that was different. He saw another woman, one that he had recognised from the island, as well as the short sergeant of marines and another bearded man he didn’t recognise.

That’s four, Nevin thought, and none of them is from the squadron.

He assured himself that Johnson was stranded, cut off from the main group, if they even still lived, and had met up with others. They must have fortified their little village and thought themselves safe, but he guessed that they hadn’t counted on having to defend themselves against an enemy with heavy machine guns. He slithered back to Michaels, finding him gone from where he had left him, and so he jogged back awkwardly on the frozen ground to find him lounging on the angled hull of the Ferret with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, as he had his hands stuffed deep in his pockets and his collar turned up against the icy breeze.

“Well?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t fucking believe it,” Nevin answered in an excited whisper, “It’s bloody Johnson!”

“Who?”

“Johnson!”

“Hang on,” Michaels said as the penny dropped, “Johnson, Johnson? The SSM?”

“Yeah, and it looks like there’s only a few of them there with all the food in that truck they found.”

Evil mirrored evil as their eyes met, both of them feeling an air of excitement at taking from others, especially others who had ruled their lives with strict discipline.

“How many is a few?” he asked.

* * *

“Shh,” Astrid Larsen said abruptly as she held up a finger, “did you hear that? The engine sounds?”

“I heard nothing,” Enfield said. From anyone else the speed of his answer might have sounded dismissive, but she knew him well enough to know that he was always tuned in to his senses. She relaxed, satisfied that she had imagined the sound of revs picking up before dropping into a higher gear.

They carried on unloading the truck, carrying large sacks of dried pasta, wearing smiles that only the promise of a full belly could warrant. There was rice and flour too, as well as huge catering tins of baked beans and mushy peas. It wasn’t going to be winning any awards for style and presentation, but their dinner would be packed full of much needed calories.

They ate together, the mood high despite the bitterly low temperatures outside, and for the first time in as long as they could remember, they were full. It didn’t go to waste, as the leftovers were sealed in Tupperware tubs and placed outside on the patio. One plate with half a portion left untouched wasn’t saved, however, as the scraggy cat had leapt silently onto the worksurface to lap at the sauce until it was noticed. It froze, growling in a way that was almost funny, and shook its head rapidly to kill the pasta shell it held between its teeth.

They went to bed, with no idea that their safe haven was firmly in the crosshairs of men who had learned to enjoy the pain of others.

* * *

The mood at the Hilltop was sullen, awkward even, and both Michaels and Nevin received curious looks when they returned.

“What the fuck is that all about?” Nevin moaned to Michaels, who simply huffed in response to simultaneously indicate that he neither knew nor cared. Orders were given, men and women were armed, and a scrawny goat was taken from the shed it lived in to be dragged reluctantly to the back of a truck by the rope around its neck.

The fighting men, and a couple of women in the same bracket, left the Hilltop without reassurance or communication with anyone there. A handful of guards, now more worried about their leadership than either the zombies or the men and women under their ‘protection’, shot nervous and sullen looks as they were left alone and outnumbered by the small population who seemed ready to revolt. One guard in particular was wary, the one keeping the door firmly shut on the woman who was locked inside after her attempt at escape. The guard was finding that her evident popularity with the crowd was in directly inverse proportions to his own. The small crowd gathered, saying and doing nothing except watching him and the door he was blocking. He was so intimidated by the passive aggression of these unmoving people that he wanted back-up and demanded that other guards join him there. Barring the way with their shotguns, almost half of the armed guards left behind ended up huddled in that doorway before long. If any more were required there, it would seriously hamper the security of the main approach as they were already spread thinly enough.

If Michaels and Nevin didn’t get back soon, they thought, then they wouldn’t be coming back to the same place they left.

The uprising was ready to start; all it needed was a spark.

* * *

The three vehicles ‒ an estate car, a farm pickup and a Ferret scout car with a turret-mounted thirty-calibre heavy machine gun ‒ chugged at a gentle pace through the countryside. They went via a very circuitous route, stopping at every village and town to kick in doors where they could and make enough noise to invite anything preserved inside to shuffle forth into the harsh glare of a snow-covered landscape. The hibernating zombies woke. Whole families, as they once had been, staggered outside on stiff limbs in response to the sounds and smells of fresh, living meat. Each settlement they passed through prompted more followers, and the desperate bleating of the tethered goat attracted them inexorably onwards as the convoy pressed on. They had established a pattern; accelerating as they approached a village, dismount, kick doors in or open them, return to the vehicles and make noise until the leading edge of the herd following them caught up. Rinse and repeat.

There weren’t many dead preserved inside, and some villages held none at all, but they had amassed enough of an undead infantry division that by the time the Ferret pulled ahead to lead the way to the fortified settlement they wanted to attack, there were close to fifty zombies, all dry and musty in various shapes and sizes and states of undress following in their wake.

The goat was never going to be a winner in this scenario, and when the three vehicles pulled off the main road ahead of the small herd and the goat was dragged, pulling and bleating loudly, from the pickup they could see the approaching micro-horde speed up as the smell and sound of the distressed animal reached their senses.

Nevin didn’t so much volunteer for the job, but he didn’t really object either. To be the one who acted so bravely to take down Mister Bloody Johnson was an accolade he would be happy to live with, after they had broken down their defences and taken what they had.

He moved slowly, angry at the incredible strength the wiry goat had summoned up, but when it smelled the rotten flesh behind it, there seemed to be no more argument about which direction they should head in. Nevin stooped, scooped the animal up bodily despite the struggling, and dumped it over the vehicle barricade with difficulty. He heard a crunch as the animal landed, unseen on the far side, and instantly the bleating ramped up in volume, intensity and frequency. The thing positively screamed, and Nevin smiled sickeningly as he guessed it must have broken something as it fell to the frozen roadway on the other side.

Happy with the results, he ducked away to double back to the safety of his armoured vehicle as the zombies shrieked and moaned to fight one another and jostle for the lead position as they zeroed in on the injured goat.

Game on, he thought to himself.

* * *

The sound of a baby crying made them all freeze. Wide eyes met others that mirrored their shock and disbelief, and as one they all scrambled for their coats and weapons to pour outside. The sight of a goat, one front leg held off the ground and dangling as the thing bleated constantly in high-pitched protestation at the pain, confused them all.

“What the…” Hampton began, just as Enfield pushed past him and raised the small rifle to drill a bullet into the goat’s eye socket.

“…hell?” he finished.

“Noise like that will attract everything for miles,” Enfield said, “like a bleeding fish flapping in the water, the sharks’ll come.”

The now dead goat still held everyone’s attention, as the blood poured out in pulsating gouts to soak the snow red. When the sound of the injured animal had echoed away to nothing, another sound, one far more ominous and recognisable, filled the air like a hum.

Shrieks, far off but still too close, and the moaning, wheezing sounds of air being driven in and out of lungs which no longer seemed to need it appeared to surround them.

“Bags,” Johnson hissed, “everyone in the catering truck just in case, now!”

By everyone, he meant Kimberley and the children, as the others were already launching into action. Enfield threw himself up a ladder lashed to the side of a house with a small balcony that offered a commanding view of the road. He hefted the small civilian rifle he had grown so fond of, but still had his beloved Accuracy International sniper rifle on his back, despite the limited number of bullets he had left for it.

Peter had gone back inside for Amber, smiled at her and helped her sweep up the stuffed lamb and toys into her bag before hurrying her down the stairs to slip her little feet into her Wellington boots and wrap the new padded wax jacket around her. He added a scarf and a hat until only her eyes were visible, then bundled her and the bags he carried into the truck.

She didn’t fall for the false smile and the higher-pitched voice offering her reassurance that everything was alright. She wasn’t stupid. She knew something was very, very wrong. She didn’t even flinch when the sharp snapping cracks of Enfield’s measured shots pierced the air. Peter left her there, returning shortly afterwards wearing more layers and throwing bag after bag into the back of the truck and holding his trusted spike aloft before smiling at her again and disappearing from view. Other sounds rang out, confusing her with what sounded like stones being thrown hard against metal in closely-grouped twos and threes. Amber sighed, pulling the dirty stuffed lamb from her bag and nudging down her scarf, she pressed the worn material to her lips and waited for it to end.

“Where did this lot come from?” Hampton asked, his own rifle still unfired as he among all of them carried an unsuppressed weapon. The increase in the intensity of the attack made him rectify that as the louder noise of his weapon joined the fray.

“Fuck knows,” Bufford answered, his voice distorted by his right cheek being pressed hard into the stock of his weapon as he moved and fired, moved and fired, picking off the skulls of the nearest Screechers to prevent them from reaching the barricade.

A shriek tore the air behind them as a cluster of three or four emaciated monsters had worked their way inside through a weakness they hadn’t known existed. They were at the rear of the truck, reaching inside and snapping their blackened teeth at the warm flesh of the precious cargo. Johnson heard the shriek of the Screechers in attack, turning and raising his weapon just as a hatchet blade swept downwards into one skull, and a two-pronged spike burst from the back of the head of another. Three more attacked over their dying comrades, unthinking and uncaring as to their fate, and as Johnson lined up to riddle their brains with bullets, the huge booming report of a shotgun firing filled the air. One of the heads he was aiming at fell away, half severed by the scattering lead storm, then another popped open like a hard-boiled egg. Johnson bit down his revulsion and drilled a pair of bullets into the remaining zombie. He ran forward, kicking the bodies clear of the open tail section, and glanced inside to see Peter concentrating, with his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth as he forced his shaking fingers to slot new cartridges into the sawn-off shotgun. He locked eyes with Kimberley, her own weapon dripping gore, and he jumped to drag down the roller shutter lower in readiness to leave. They were fighting all around now, and the end was inevitable.

Johnson, unfamiliar MP5 squeezed tightly into his shoulder, pinged off rounds in ones and twos, depending on how accurate his opening shot had been. He held his head up away from the weapon to view the bigger picture, and he saw it at the same time as Bufford and Astrid. None of them had chance to call it before their sniper shouted down the warning to them from his perch.

“Too many,” he called out, “fall back.”

It was the worst news they could receive, and it spelled dread for them. They knew they could never have stood a chance against the kind of hordes they had experienced back when it began, but those mass gatherings, those unexplained events, those undead singularities had all but stopped as soon as the weather had begun to turn towards winter. They had dared to hope that they wouldn’t be forced to face down another crowd, but none of them was so naïve as to think that they couldn’t one day be surprised by the Screechers. That was why their immediate plan was to bug out, to withdraw, in the opposite direction of the attack if they ever found themselves facing an onslaught like they did now.

Despite planning for it, expecting it even, the savagery and speed of the wave of dead meat emerging from the countryside took their breath away with how fast things could go from normal to neck deep in shit.

“Pull back,” Johnson echoed, hearing a rising flurry of muted gunshots as the defenders on the line upped their intensity at the risk of reduced accuracy. It was a vestige of training against an enemy that had a fear of incoming bullets. It was designed to make any attackers put their head down to avoid the incoming rounds and give those defenders precious moments to move. Bufford and Astrid reloaded as they ran, their movements instinctive and well-practised, and they climbed aboard one by one as Johnson started the truck. Hampton paused at the back, looking up at the only man of his unit left alive as far as he knew. Enfield wasn’t shimmying down the ladder to join him. He wasn’t even looking in the direction of the attacking wave of zombies, but instead he was staring aghast behind him and rapidly struggling to slip the strap of his larger rifle free of his shoulder to bring it to bear on the road leading away behind them.

Hampton followed his gaze, looking up at the small rise in the road behind them questioningly with his breath held. He expected to see the heads of yet more zombies appearing at any point; expected a larger horde to attack them from the rear, but instead he saw the dull green painted metal of a British army military vehicle. His heart soared for the briefest of moments, suddenly happy that the others had found them and rescued them at the best possible moment. He turned to shout to the others that the squadron was there, that they could help them take on the horde, but just as he did the impossibly loud clattering sound of a heavy machine gun erupted from behind him. He followed the flashes of tracer ammunition, which over the short distance it fired made it appear as though laser beams were being shot from the turret of the small tank, and those beams aimed directly up at the small balcony of the house where Enfield had been.

“Go!” Hampton roared as he hopped down painfully, pulling closed the roller shutter of the rear of the truck as he did, pushing Astrid bodily back inside as she had moved to follow him, before slapping a flat hand twice on the side of the vehicle, “get out of here!”

In the front seat beside Johnson, Bufford looked wide eyed at the SSM and shook his head. The message was clear; no way could they get out if they stayed to mix it with whatever living enemy now attacked them.

One word ran through Johnson’s mind: Nevin.

It could only be him, much the same as the vehicle being used to assault them was the same Ferret they had heard in the town where Enfield had been fired upon. They were stuck. Stuck like rats in a barrel and the lid was closing fast. They had only one option to get away, and that was to force open the barricade in front of them against the tide of Screechers and drive away, leaving their two marines to an unknown fate.

“Fucking go!” Hampton yelled again, barely audible over the big gun firing on full automatic and disintegrating the house as great chunks of tiled roof and masonry fell away.

“We can’t leave them,” Johnson said, knowing it was foolish to hesitate or even consider staying to fight alongside them against far superior forces, even if the undead weren’t attacking them at the same time.

“We have to,” Bufford told him. “You’d do the same.”

He knew he would. He would sacrifice himself to give the others a chance at escape, a chance to get the kids out to safety no matter how slim their odds of survival. Johnson closed his eyes momentarily, glanced in the driver’s side mirror at the small but devastatingly impervious vehicle behind them, and he let up the clutch to jolt the truck forwards. It bumped into the barricade, into the part left on reasonably preserved rubber instead of flat metal, and he used the torque of the diesel engine to force it clear. Screechers fell under the weight of the rusting, cold metal and the way the car swung outwards cleared a path for their truck to nose its way out of the village and leave behind not only their friends, but all of the hard work and hope and stored supplies they’d been relying on.

NINETEEN

Enfield saw the turret swing towards him and, for the second time in this short episode in his life, he found himself the unfortunate focus of attention for the commander and gunner of the Ferret and the current subject of the thirty-cal machine gun’s attention. He hadn’t had a chance to even bring the Accuracy International up to his eye before the huge bullets tore the air towards him. He threw himself backwards, straight through the single pane window of the house with the pretty balcony set at the perfect height to look out over the fields as though there was no village there.

The concussive ripping booms of the big projectiles hammering past him was deafening, and he could think of nothing other than trying to get clear of the onslaught. He lay on the musty carpet of the bedroom, glass and brick dust falling over him as he closed his mouth and forced his eyes shut. He crawled forwards blindly, trying to put any distance between him and the gun even if it was a few pathetically desperate feet of bedroom floor. He opened his mouth, gasping a breath in and immediately choking it out as the dust stuck to his throat. He coughed it out, sensing a break in the firing by the absence of the waves of pressure as opposed to the lack of noise. As his hearing returned to him, a more familiar sound reached up to his hiding place; the crackle of an SA80 rifle firing bursts of automatic 5.56. Enfield furrowed his dust-covered brow in thought.

Why would Bill Hampton be firing small arms at a bloody tank? Surely he wouldn’t waste the ammo.

Another noise pierced his consciousness, this one dialling into his sense to inspire fear at a molecular level. The shriek of the Screechers sensing fresh meat fired a round straight to his fear receptors as it sparked something so primal in him. His fuddled and assaulted brain made the tenuous connections between the gunfire belonging to his sergeant and the attention of the undead bastards drawn to the noise, and all thoughts of the scout car and its evil thirty-cal were forgotten as he forced himself back to his feet to return to the ravaged remains of the once picturesque balcony.

Only part of the standing area survived, and great chunks of the exterior wall of the house had disappeared. Piles of rubble rested on the frozen ground below, and Enfield regained the cold, clear air of the outside world in time to see the back tyre of the Ferret bounce over a lump of stone with a swathe of off-yellow cladding still attached to it. The cladding crumbled away under the weight of the heavy wheel, but the attention of the gunner had passed him by. The turret swung to the left, the barrel depressed and a long, rippling burst of fire spewed from it as it rolled forwards. The sound of Hampton’s rifle went quiet, stopping at the same time as a yelp of pain and the crumbling rumble of a collapsing building. The Ferret went on, switching its aim to point dead ahead where it fired burst after burst of rounds dead ahead, no doubt to try and bring down the escaping box truck which symbolised the entire reason that he and Hampton had stayed behind in sacrifice; so that they could get away.

He saw sparks ping off the left side of the scout car as it was stopped, paused in the gap in the barricade as the driver shunted it back and forth to get the correct angle to escape the village enclave. The car stopped as the turret swung to the left in search of a target. Elated that Hampton was still alive enough to shoot at them, Enfield’s sudden happiness was marred with the knowledge that his sergeant was about to be riddled with heavy calibre bullets.

He blinked his eyes to clear the dust from his vision, shook his head to reset his senses, and pulled the heavy rifle into his shoulder to take aim at the single point of vulnerability for small arms. It was a difficult shot; difficult to the point of impossibility but he wasn’t just anyone with a gun.

He was an expert. He was the consummate professional, and his chosen profession was accuracy. He could put a bullet wherever he wanted, and right then he aimed for the tiny slats of the left side viewing port where the gunner would be looking out of.

It was desperate, but it was all he could do. He aimed, not having to correct for wind of drop of the bullet but putting the crosshair above his target as he was firing at a tenth of the range that the big rifle was sighted for, and he fired.

* * *

“Who the fuck is doing that?” Michaels asked over the headset, not expecting Nevin to answer.

“Doing what?”

“Some twat’s shooting at us! Left side. Stop a minute…”

Nevin chuckled nastily and stopped the Ferret as he kept his eyes forward in search of the truck that had disappeared. Most of the zombies they had herded were dead now; crushed by wheels or else thrown down by bullets. They had driven around to the far side of the village to barge their way through the barricade as soon as the attack came from the other side. Nevin was impatient, he wanted to press ahead and chase down the box truck to take whatever was in the back of it. The six others hiding in their cars nearby, ready to move in and take the stockpiles, would stay hunkered down until they had rolled through and dealt with every threat. As much as he wanted to chase down Johnson, who he had guessed was in the truck, he did as he was told and waited for Michaels behind him to spin the barrel of the gun and deal with the idiot who might as well have been throwing rocks at them. The man behind him manning the gun was consumed with a swift victory, distracted by the destruction of their undead conscripts, and he had broken his own cardinal rule.

Never leave an enemy in your rear. Ever.

Nevin waited, looking forwards until a hollow, metallic scream echoed inside the cramped interior and deafened him with a ringing thrum. He couldn’t understand what had happened, and in his deafness, he tried to speak and heard only a muted croak in his head; as though he could feel the vibration but not hear the sound. He dabbed his fingers at his head, feeling hot liquid on his skin and looking down in disbelief at the bright blood. He reached back to his scalp, feeling sharper chunks alongside the hot gelatinous globules adorning his hair, and he squirmed in his seat to view the gruesome destruction wrought by a single armour-piercing bullet aimed at precisely the right spot.

It had been Enfield’s second bullet that had managed to penetrate the latticed metal of the viewing port. Michaels leaned towards the aperture, pressing his face right up to the gap just as the bullet pierced the armoured skin and twisted to warp and break apart. As it did, the trajectory of the spinning lump of metal varied to pass through the bridge of his nose and blew his right eye out through the temple. He was dead before he knew that he had even been shot, before he could sight in on the injured man in camouflage combat uniform and finish him off, and his lifeless body slumped behind his driver with half of his face blown away. The bullet embedded itself inside the cramped interior somewhere, missing the driver by mere inches as he had no idea what had happened.

* * *

Enfield let out his breath, taking his eye away from the scope slightly as his hand moved the well-oiled bolt and his fingertips caught the expended bullet casing as he had with every carefully placed round he had ever fired through the weapon. The turret stopped moving and the Ferret stayed still for a long time. The sniper was weakened by his desperate escape from the gun, and he wavered and lowered the gun as his legs threatened to give out. He slumped down, the pain across the back of his right shoulder erupting in an agony he had never thought possible, and he slid off the destroyed edge of the balcony to land heavily on the cold ground below. He blinked slowly, each closure of his eyes getting longer than the last, until the darkness and the cold took over.

* * *

Nevin, when his senses were restored, had to stifle a laugh. He weighed up the pros and cons: It was unfortunate that Johnson and the others with him had escaped, and it was less than ideal that whatever guns and food they had stockpiled were mostly gone with them. There were stacks of shotguns and plenty of ammunition for them, but the obvious lack of anything good combined with the missing people made it clear that they had missed out on something.

It was good, despite the shock and the gore adorning the back of his head, that Michaels was gone, because it left it wide open for him to take over the Hilltop as his own. It was far easier to return with his body from what he could call a successful raid, abandon Michaels’ despotic vision of hunting escapees down and generally make life feel a little easier for everyone who would be happier to serve him and make his life rosy.

The vile winter would end eventually, and after that he would enjoy himself. He had even decided to be generous, ordering the shocked foot soldiers he had travelled with to take everything from the big house and help him drag the near-headless body out of his wagon. One of them asked if they should bury Michaels.

“Would he waste time and effort digging a hole for you?” Nevin asked them in return. No threat or malice in his voice, only the stark honesty of his words which resonated with the others. They took what they wanted from the village, dispatching the few lurching, staggering corpses that remained in the area. A few stragglers had followed the main group but moved more slowly than the others, and they had to be dealt with by the two people left on guard. Nevin stayed in the Ferret, electing not to add a gunner to sit behind him as it would take too long to train someone in the very basics of how the gun operated. He decided to recruit a driver for himself at some point in the near future, but his list of considerations was huge and growing by the minute. He saddled up his small force, looking back at the destruction they had wrought on their unsuspecting enemy with a cruel satisfaction.

* * *

After they had left, when silence had descended on the once peaceful village, along with the soft blanket of fresh snow, a pile of bricks thrown down from the corner of a partly destroyed house shifted to cascade rubble and the powdery white dust to the dark smears exposed by the movement. Sitting up and looking around with a stunned sense of confusion, Bill Hampton tried to figure out what had happened. The last thing he knew was that he’d been firing a pointless barrage at the armoured vehicle in impotent rage, just as a final ‘fuck you’ to try and spend his life giving the others an extra second to get away. The turret had spat flame in his direction, deafening him as heavy bullet after heavy bullet tore down a section of wall behind. Massive chunks of masonry and brickwork had fallen on him, striking him hard in the back of the skull and burying him under the rubble. Now, awake and only half sensible, he clawed his way out of the pile of bricks and dragged himself along with no idea where he was heading. He made it to his feet uncertainly, staggering like one of the undead, only less aware of the world surrounding him.

He found a piece of metal in a pile of rubble that didn’t belong, a straight line protruding up at a diagonal angle, and he dropped to his knees to follow the cold pipe into a small snowdrift to trace its origin. It wasn’t a snowdrift, but merely a barely warm body covered in camouflage material, blood, brick dust and fresh snowfall.

“Get up,” he grumbled thickly through a mouth full of dust and blood, “on your fucking feet, lad.”

The pile groaned, moving to expose a vicious red line scored across the burnt patch of uniform. Hampton pulled at him, dragging him out and falling backwards off his knees for them both to land nearly face to face. The battered features of marine sniper Enfield came slowly into focus and opened his eyes to regard his sergeant.

“Sarge?” he croaked, like a child emerging from a nightmare and seeking the comfort of a parent.

“It’s me, lad,” he said kindly, “it’s me. I’ve got you.”

Enfield came around as slowly as Hampton had, and broke out into a crippling shiver, whereas the older man seemed not to feel the cold. He looked at the thing in his hands, the beautifully crafted weapon capable of killing at over a mile away if the person holding it had the requisite skill. Enfield had the skill, but he no longer had the weapon. Somehow, probably during the fall he knew he must have had, the breech of the gun had struck a rock hard and bent out of shape. Even if it could be mended to allow the trapped bolt to run smoothly free, he wouldn’t trust it not to explode with the first bullet he would fire through it. His beloved gun was gone; sacrificed to the fight and having earned its place by that sacrifice. Enfield looked around dumbly, not sure what he needed, but totally sure that he needed something. He felt naked somehow, and incomplete.

Unaware of his desperate confusion, Hampton’s eye landed on a dark colour among the snow-covered detritus. He stumbled to it, dragged it free of the fallen timber and stone, and returned to his stunned marine. He forced the small rifle into his hands, clasping his fingers around it as though the weapon could revive him; could resuscitate his senses.

It did. His frozen fingers clasped the dark wood of the stock as he blinked his way back into alertness. As he did, a flutter in his eyelids told Hampton that the pain had come back to him along with the memory of what had happened, of the massive devastation and unimaginable change in such a brutally short time frame. He doubled over, exposing the score mark across his right shoulder blade. Hampton fumbled at his pouches, coming out with a wound dressing which he shoved into the damaged clothing to cover as much of the injury as possible.

“We need to move, now,” Hampton told him through thick lips in a voice which still didn’t sound like it was his own.

“The others?” Enfield asked, barely able to keep his eyes open.

“They got away, lad. They got away.”

Enfield smiled, thinking of the sweet little girl and the tough, resourceful boy.

Whatever happens to me, he thought, at least they’ve got a chance.

TWENTY

“Anything?” Johnson asked Bufford as he looked in the smashed remains of the large wing mirror.

“Nothing,” he replied, “where are we going?”

“No idea,” Johnson said, “just anywhere but here.” Just then a loud double-thump came from the thin wall behind the cab. The others in the back wanted to stop. Johnson said nothing but drove on until he found an empty lay-by on a stretch of open road. As far as he could see, nothing could jump out on them there.

He jumped out, weapon up and ready, and rolled up the rear doors as Bufford pressed ahead to point his weapon down the road. Astrid started straight in with the questions, demanding to know where Hampton and Enfield were. Johnson just shook his head slowly, and saw her features darken and set hard.

It was her armour. She defended her soul from the devastating news by hearing it, then shutting it out of her feelings until such time that she would be able to deal with it properly. That space, that emotional void, was still occupied by the death of half her team in the cursed air insertion so long ago, and more recently when her friend Christian Berg was lost so brutally and senselessly in the helicopter crash. That space was filling with bodies fast, and she worried that it might overflow before she got the time to deal with any of it.

“Where are we going?” Kimberley asked, leaning forward to place a reassuring hand on his arm. The touch was as much to reassure her as it was him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted sadly, “I just don’t bloody know.”

* * *

Nevin drove in at the head of the small convoy, recovered from the ordeal of being sprayed with Michaels’ brain matter and oddly pleased with himself. A sullen crowd gathered to greet their return, but the mood was less than welcoming. Two of the guards had been almost overt in their allegiance to the people there, publicly voicing their disgust at how Michaels had hunted people down like animals. The smoulder of revolt didn’t take flame then, because the news of Michaels’ death sent waves of shock and relief around them.

The relief was short lived, because Nevin’s words made it obvious that he had chosen himself to step into the vacant shoes. He told them that they all had to move on, to carry on with their lives and ensure their survival. He reminded them that the monsters were still out there; that their safety was not guaranteed.

Then he made a mistake. He ordered for the blood and viscera to be cleaned out of the Ferret and walked away without waiting for a volunteer, just assuming that it would be done without question. He demanded fresh clothes brought to him and began stripping off as he headed inside the main building. He didn’t hang around or even glance backwards to see if his instructions were being carried out, because he just assumed that he could step in where Michaels had left off.

He washed in a bowl of lukewarm water, ducking his head under and flinching as a chunk of something small and sharp jabbed painfully into his finger. He raised his head, water dripping down his eyebrows as he looked to find the source of the affliction. He picked the tiny shard of sharp bone out of his flesh, disgust and pain on his angry face despite the tiny proportions of the injury. He finished washing, looking around to see if the fresh clothes he had ordered had been delivered unobtrusively without him noticing. They hadn’t, so he forced himself to put back on the boots and trousers he had worn all day. He wore the inner layers of his top half but couldn’t bring himself to wear anything still matted with the partial remains of the man who had ruled the place he now saw as his own. Shivering against the cold as he wore two layers too few to stave off the low temperatures, he went back outside wearing a foul look and prepared to take his temper out on the first people he found.

He walked outside and found a gathering of people facing the entrance, milling about almost uncertainly as though they lacked the final catalyst to take action as a group. They had a clear common purpose, but the spark to ignite the flame was missing.

That spark came when a bedraggled woman gently pushed her way to the front rank and faced him down. She rubbed at her wrists where they had been tied until the revolt had forced her release. She showed no emotion when she heard the news of Michaels’ death, but inside she rejoiced almost cruelly, betraying a side to her personality that she didn’t know she had. She wasn’t ashamed of it. Now she faced the shivering man and felt the weight of the support behind her making her more powerful than he was.

Nevin knew it in the same moment that she did, and his hand fumbled in the pocket of the trousers for the revolver. The crowd descended on him as one, pinning his arms and body with so many hands that he was utterly powerless to resist. It was the realisation that the threat of violence only held so much sway over others, and when the majority recognised their power, they were an unstoppable force. The gun was wrested from his grip and the barrel turned on him for the cold metal to grind the soft, thin layer of flesh between his eyes. He screwed his eyes shut tightly and tried to squirm away from the pressure, a keening noise escaping his mouth without permission, until a strong voice cut through the hum.

“No,” she said, “not like that.”

“Hang the bastard!” a woman shouted in a shrill voice made aggressive by the horrors of oppression.

“Shoot him,” yelled a man, most likely unwilling or unable to do so himself, but happy to allow another to bear the burden.

“We can’t let him go,” another voice shouted, being met with grumbles of affirmation and support.

Pauline thought about it, thought about how best to satisfy the people who had suffered under the control and cruelty of him and people like him. The others had been given a choice; stay and become one of them or leave and consider themselves apart forever. None of them was the ringleader type, but this man, Nevin, he was toxic.

“Oh,” she said nastily, letting all of the anger and frustration pour out of her after months of imprisonment, “we can let him go.”

Nevin was frogmarched by so many pairs of hands around the building to face the sea from the high cliffs. He had begun to hope that they would banish him, would eject him from the safety of the Hilltop with only the clothes on his back. He willed them to do that, begged and pleaded in between threatening and abusing the people pinning his arms. One man pushed through to spit in his face, and looked horrified when Nevin spat back, as each man held the same contempt and hatred for the other. The man despised Nevin for what he had done to people, how he had bullied and exploited the weak. Nevin hated him because he hated everyone.

He was powerless to resist the will of the people, but babbled pleas and threats constantly in the desperate hope that something, anything he said would save his life. It didn’t, and without any more words or opportunity to talk his way out of his fate, they pitched him over the side of the cliff towards the sea far below and listened as his screams faded into the sounds of the crashing waves far below.

* * *

Captain Palmer called a meeting. Because everyone was present, it had to be held outside in the cold in order that everyone could hear him. He told them about the safe site in Scotland, about how Britain was effectively cut off and that no help would be coming in the near future. He told them that it was their duty to get there, by any means possible, and to support the remnants of the rightful government.

“It might be your duty,” called a voice from the crowd. Palmer could not find the face of the disembodied words, but he recognised the voice and knew it belonged to the man who had always been vocal about their plight. That vocalisation had usually been negative, and his younger brother had told him of how the man had lied about his wife being pregnant in order to try and get on board one of the rescue helicopter flights back on the island. He had struck the young officer and had looked likely to do so again until another of the civilians had intervened, but since building up the life they lived at the house, he had gathered some support among the non-military people, and even his wife had returned to his side.

“…but it’s not ours,” he finished amidst a chorus of agreeing murmurs.

“Very true,” Palmer said, “so if anyone wishes to stay here, then we will discuss the supplies and resources to be left behind.”

Bizarrely, some of the civilians untethered to the squadron by family wanted to come with them, just as the surprise of a few army families wanting to stay rocked Palmer’s confidence. He saw that not as a desertion, but as a failure on his part that he did not inspire those men sufficiently to follow him. The disillusion was tempered by the reassurances of Lloyd and Downes, as well as those of his younger brother, who had become more noticeable now that the possibility of a more comfortable life peeked over the horizon. Those who wanted to stay did so out of hope that loved ones and friends had survived, and that they could be there to offer safety and assistance to those who would hopefully emerge in the spring, like daffodils.

What took two days to decide, amidst arguments and tears, was that almost fifty of them wanted to stay, wanted to take over the big house and work the farm and man the defences to keep them safe from the suspected return of the Screechers when the warm weather came back. Among those fifty were half a dozen of the squadron men, but none of the RAF crews or Royal Marines had any inclination to remain behind. The core of the squadron had remained intact, but Palmer wondered how many of those would have fallen away if they hadn’t rescued their families or if those they had rescued had wanted to stay. The pull of family was a force stronger than gravity. The marines, just as the remaining helicopter crew and the SAS team, all still considered themselves deployed, more than surviving a nuclear apocalypse where the undead walked the countryside in hordes, and the only support they could count on was their own. Their units were still largely intact, and that helped maintain the cohesion between the men.

Plans were drawn up, supplies were sorted and stockpiled and the three vehicles they planned to use as their convoy were meticulously prepared and repaired by cannibalising whatever they had left. They were mindful not to leave those staying behind without the use of heavy guns, and to that end they left a handful of working squadron wagons arrayed where their guns could do the most damage to any assault by the dead or the living alike. The decision as to whom to send ahead in the helicopter, which they had checked and double checked could only manage one trip, was a difficult one.

The person they should send in charge of this detachment of the civilians should be sensible and senior enough as to have their report taken seriously but should ideally not be a man who was irreplaceable on what would very likely be an arduous and dangerous journey. Palmer had thought to send Maxwell, his interim Sergeant Major, but the man was simply too vital to the running of things to let go.

He elected eventually to send the newly-minted Sergeant Ashdown, injured horribly so long ago by the gruesome animated remains of a Royal Military Policeman, and promoted to replace Maxwell as the nominal head of Assault Troop. He travelled with his family, all of them intertwined with Maxwell’s relations, and his presence satisfied Palmer that the word of the RAF crew would be supported by a sergeant. He sent three other soldiers on the helicopter, none of them carrying more than a small bag as the weight of luggage would put lives in danger in many ways, and those men were carrying some form of illness or injury that would hamper their performance on the hundreds of miles of unknown road they would likely be fighting along.

The two newest arrivals, shrouded in tragedy, had both flatly refused to come. Both held on to the desperate belief that their loved ones were still alive, and both knew that they wouldn’t find their way to the Highlands of Scotland and across a stretch of sea to find safety, so they stayed.

Arrayed the next morning before the ornate walls of the house, and seeming at odds with the building, but at home with the barbed wire and trenches, the large Bedford truck and two Fox wagons, along with the dirty Land Cruiser adopted by the SAS team, set off without fanfare or ceremony, heading north towards uncertainty. The helicopter, warmed and checked thoroughly after weeks of frozen inactivity, lifted off and thrummed sedately away into the gloomy winter sky.

Palmer, unfamiliar with the Fox but picking up the commander’s seat and the controls with an ease which spoke highly of his intellect, paused before they rolled out. He looked down to the man who was staying, but who he had hoped would come. The man’s loyalties ran too deep for him to abandon hope of his real boss returning.

“Corporal Daniels,” Palmer said as he waved him over, “I don’t suppose I can facilitate an eleventh-hour deal and convince you to join us?”

“’Fraid not, Sir,” he said with a smile, “I’ll stay and mind the radio. Mister Johnson will pop up again when the weather breaks, I’m sure of it.”

“I pray for all our sakes, Corporal, that you are right.” He leaned down, fixing the man with direct eye contact and held out a gloveless hand. Daniels climbed up on the hull of the angular wagon, removed his own woolly mitten, and took the hand in a firm grip, shaking it as the cold flesh of both men’s hands warmed slightly as though the skin liked company.

“Drive safe, boss,” he told him.

“You also,” Palmer replied, “I’ll make contact when I can, see if we can’t reconnect in summer.”

Daniels nodded, sure that he wouldn’t see any of the men again but feeling that he had done the right thing by staying. Someone had to keep the pilot light on for the SSM, because Daniels knew the man well enough that even if he was dead, properly dead and not one of the Screechers, then he would have spent the last moments of his life doing something worthwhile. He knew if he was still alive then he would find him, eventually, and if he was one of those things? Well if he was, then corporal Charlie Daniels would do for him personally, then follow the boys to Scotland.

On his own if he had to.

TWENTY-ONE

Nevin came to, his head unbelievably thick and groggy as he struggled to recall how he had come to be where he was. To answer that conundrum, he thought, he had to first figure out where that was in relation to where he last remembered being, and when he followed that memory-string back to the source, he recalled with horrifying clarity what had happened. They had seized him, stripped him of his gun and dragged him to the cliffs. Without mercy, much the same way that he treated people, they had thrown him off the cliff into the evening sky where he didn’t so much fall as tumble, end over agonising end, until his broken body came to rest on a soft, mossy outcrop and his skull thumped hard into the natural green rug until the resistance of the rock underneath fought back and knocked him out cold.

He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, much as the way these things worked when hit very hard in the head. But his clouded mind reasoned that it hadn’t grown fully dark yet, and logic dictated that given the freezing temperatures he was highly unlikely to have been unconscious all night. He reckoned he would have died of exposure if that had been the case.

As his senses slowly returned to him, he blinked his eyes to better focus on what he could see around him. A rhythmic huffing sound came from nearby, but he didn’t understand what could make such a noise, and besides, the sight his eyes drank in shut off all concentration to anything else. He had lifted his head, propping himself up on one elbow to stare down the length of his body at where his legs had once been. He knew what he saw couldn’t be his legs because, for one, he knew that if they were, then the sickening sight of the broken bones protruding through the pale, grey flesh and the dirty material of the trousers would prompt at least some feeling of pain. He felt nothing, and tried to move the broken leg he could see. It didn’t budge, so he tried harder, grunting as he forced all of his effort into making the feet twitch, move, or do anything in response to his commands. He visually traced the feet and legs back to his own waist, patting his body as he went upwards until finally he was rewarded with the sensation of being touched at his midriff. He froze, patting downwards again and feeling nothing before moving his hands back up until he could feel his own touch. His hands moved faster, whipping up into a desperate frenzy as he sucked in a deep breath and began to scream in fear and horror and hope that the paralysis was something his brain had invented, or that he was still unconscious, but those thoughts were pushed aside as another feeling came to him.

Nails raked down his scalp from behind, making him squeal and move awkwardly as his top half dragged the numb, dead lower half with it. He turned to see, to smell, the rotten waste of what had once been a person wriggling towards him on the same rocky outcrop above the waves below. He shrieked, the decomposed beast shrieked back, sounding a hollow hiss in place of the characteristic scream, and the two inched closer to one another as the battered, limbless, ruined corpse shuffled inexorably closer to the paralysed man who could do nothing to defend himself but scream louder. Nevin tried to escape, tried to drag his half-useless body over the rocky green of the outcrop and drag himself clear of the rotten monstrosity that was thrashing slowly with one arm and no legs from the knees down. It must have been there for a while, because it was barely identifiable as a person other than by shape.

Nevin’s numb hands slipped on the soggy, moss-covered rock, and his face hit the ground with no body strength to support him. As he hit, the cracked stumps of blackened teeth reached forwards and connected with the skin beside his right eyebrow. It clamped down, ripping and tearing as the sudden heat of his blood threatened to cook his face in contrast to the frigid air whipping around them. He howled in pain and fear as the thing craned its neck forward to chomp on his face again. He desperately tried to claw his own way to the ledge and pour himself over to dash his own body on the rocks beneath. He failed, but he did succeed in dislodging his attacker. It fell off the ledge, coming to rest only a foot below on another rock, but that distance was an insurmountable peak to the thing as it could barely locomote any more. Sudden heat, a burning intensity from within him, replaced the bracing cold he could feel. He knew the wind was still blowing hard against his exposed skin, but he no longer felt the temperature of it.

He dragged himself into a position half against the rock face, looking out over the gathering gloom and dark clouds over the English Channel. Hot blood ran down his face, and he suffered in fiery agony as the infection tore through his ruined body to finish him slowly.

As the strength fled from what was left of his body in the form of his hot blood that let off small clouds of steam as it spilled, he lapsed again into blackness as, below him, the rotten thing stopped chewing, letting the strip of flesh pulled from his face fall away, and lapsed back into its icy hibernation.

Nevin, or at least the broken thing that used to be Nevin, remained on that cliff ledge for untold months until he eventually rotted away to nothing. The last thing to die, the infected core of his brainstem, lay dormant as the body that carried it was useless. Nevin never took another life, never had the chance to spread fear and infection as he had when he was counted among the living, and he was forced to watch the coming and going of the tide on an island he no longer had the capacity to understand.

* * *

Above him, on the day after he had been rejected from the human race for non-compliance, a pair of eyes looked down on his immobile body from a deeply lined face. The face was lined with age, but mostly with worry and stress after a lifetime spent organising the activities of others. Those eyes had driven through appalling weather conditions, nursing the ungainly box truck at often very low speeds until they had seen the tell-tale column of smoke coming from a building high on a hilltop. They had reached it eventually, spending three long hours watching it for signs of hostility before driving up the steep approach road. When the occupants of that hilltop bastion took in their weapons and remains of uniform, they had pointed their shotguns and rifles at them.

Johnson and Bufford, the only ones visible as the others were in the breezy back of the truck, did little to assuage their fears that they weren’t hostile, but when the two women and the two children climbed down from the back, suddenly the atmosphere changed for the better. The woman who seemed to be in charge of them bustled to the front and brought them inside to feed them, providing hot drinks almost constantly and marvelling at the bearded man’s capacity to guzzle down coffee, and she spoke to them about what had happened to bring their two groups together. It soon became clear that people from this camp had attacked them, but as three of the exhausted newcomers snatched up their weapons, seemingly expecting to fight again, she had assured them that the time of their existence when they hurt other people was well and truly over.

“Those men are gone now,” she assured them, “one never came back and the other we dealt with ourselves.”

That was when they had been shown the carnage of blood and gore inside the Ferret. That was when Johnson had been shown the place where the man called Nevin had been tossed off the cliff as a definitive sign that he was unwelcome.

The woman, Pauline, was wary of scaring the two children but was very attentive to them and their needs. She asked them their names, and the young boy answered for them.

“She doesn’t talk much,” he explained with a sad, depreciating smile, “not since her mum got taken away by bad men.”

Something about what he said struck a chord cold in Pauline’s heart, and her gasp as her hand fluttered at her mouth made everyone sit up and take notice.

“What is your mummy’s name?” she said in a voice affected solely for addressing a frightened young girl.

Amber looked at her, then at Peter, then back the woman who asked the obviously silly question. She leaned in and whispered to Peter, the only way she would still communicate with anyone other than him, by using the older boy as a medium. He smiled, looked back at Pauline and answered for Amber.

“She said she’s called ‘Mummy’…”

Pauline smiled despite her frustration and tried another way.

“Do people call her Ellie?”

The mention of the name flashed across Amber’s eyes like electricity, and she began to look around as her young brain associated knowledge of her mother to the possibility of her being there. She didn’t see her, obviously, but her wide eyes turned back to Pauline and pleaded for her to tell her where her mother was. The older woman’s eyes fell, crushing her with the knowledge that she would have to be the bearer of bad news and break the girl’s heart all over again.

“I’m really sorry… Amber,” she said warily, reaching out for the girl’s hand and trying not to take offense when she snatched it away. “She was here until two days ago, but we tried to run away from the bad people who were here before. They caught me and brought me back, but Ellie… but your mum she…” Pauline cuffed away the tears rolling down her cheeks as she looked into the bright, wide eyes of the little girl who mirrored her tears in utter silence.

“Your mum wasn’t caught, so she must have got away with another little girl called Jessica.”

At the mention of the other name, the little boy started. His gasp was exaggerated and drawn out, becoming a whining noise which morphed into words seamlessly as he spoke in rapid excitement.

“Jessica? How old is she? What did she look like?”

Pauline held up both hands to calm the innocent onslaught of his questions before she answered.

“She’s a teenager,” she told him, “slim and quiet with long, brown hair.”

“Has she got…” Peter hesitated, embarrassed of the facts behind what he was admitting but knowing that it would solve the confusion unquestioningly, “has she got scars on her…” his voice trailed away again but his fingers mimed slices across his wrist. Pauline’s mouth dropped open, as though the chances of finding one of the missing children she knew about was huge, but both was unbelievable. Her reaction gave flame to the kindling of Peter’s stress and fear and hope and he burst out in tears, falling down to the ground and sobbing as Amber, silent tears still streaming down her cheeks, dropped down behind him to wrap him in a hug that melted the hearts of even the toughest human beings to witness it.

Johnson coughed, clearing his throat and turning away from the scene as Kimberley met his eyes. She cried, emotions of the past months boiling out of her at the display of innocence and humanity, and she wrapped her arms around his neck where the relief and sadness just flowed. Beside them Astrid wiped her eyes clear of tears as her own, but Bufford remained staunch and silent.

“I’ve got to find her,” Peter cried, his own upset making Amber cry louder and harder with him. People crowded the children, eager to comfort them and mistaking them for helpless dependants instead of the tough, resourceful survivors they were.

“We will, Peter,” Johnson told him from behind Kimberley’s embrace, “I promise we will.” He meant it and eyed the half-covered hull of the Warrior fighting vehicle Michaels had emplaced and knew just how useful the new technology would be to enable him to make that promise become a reality.

TWENTY-TWO

Mike Xavier took over on watch, adjusting the grip on his fire axe as he switched his head from right to left. He could hear his heart beat in his ears, and each breath made him worry that the sound of his rising panic would bring down an unstoppable horde of undead to tear them apart.

He was a calm leader. He had faced off with corrupt officials in foreign countries, had braved countless weather fronts capable of killing him and his crew, had worked in conditions so treacherous in his rise to captaincy that he would have thought himself better equipped than he was to deal with this unexpected hell. He was learning more about himself, and what he was learning wasn’t filling him with confidence about his abilities.

He had taken over from the diminutive Canadian woman, Philippa, on guard duty as they ran short shuttle runs to bring back the stocks of food they had found a dozen miles down the river. The thickly populated areas showed few or no lights, but Xavier’s upbringing on the banks of the Mersey had left him with an almost telepathic intuition about the area. He had directed them to hit the shoreline near to a golf course on the opposite bank and there they had pillaged the store room of an abandoned club house before loading as many crates as they could of food and bottles of drink on board the four electric golf buggies they had borrowed for the task. They drove their supplies down to the river and loaded them on board the small fishing craft before returning twice to take more. It was on that third return trip when they had just got back to the boat and he had taken over sentry duty as two others had done before him, when they came at them from the darkness.

Emerging in a ghostly formation from the inky black beyond the reach of the weak light still glowing on the jetty they occupied, a dozen undead shuffled on damaged bodies and chilled feet towards them uncertainly. He didn’t know what it was that had attracted them.

The smell of us? Or have we made more noise than we think we have? Christ, it’s like they have a sixth bloody sense of where we are…

“Get back on the boat,” he hissed.

“Two, maybe three more trips,” Jean-Pierre told him in a voice that was a force of magnitude too loud for Xavier’s comfort. The sweat on his palms doubled before he could answer.

“Sshhh! For fuck’s sake! Get back here.”

The desperation in his tone cut through to Jean-Pierre like a blade. He froze, having the good sense not to drop his burden, but gently bend his legs and sink down to rest it on the ground silently. He paced fast to his right, taking three quiet strides until he blocked the path of their stocky mechanic and whispered in his ear. Jase dropped his burden, less quietly, and fast walked towards the boat as though not looking around would render him invisible to the things that hunted them.

“What the hell?” came a loud and annoyed Canadian voice from the darkness, “Who the heck is leaving their stuff in the dark? I could’a fallen over that, you know? Could’a hurt myself real bad.”

Three desperate voices shushed her in response. Philippa froze, hearing a guttural shriek pierce the air in the near pitch black. Other shrieks joined in, firing off in yelping barks like urban foxes heard in the dead of night, only they all knew there were no foxes there making that noise. The three of them still a way from the short jetty froze, huddling together in fear. From his position higher up, and having been in the darkness longer than the others and still in possession of his full night vision abilities, Mike Xavier watched as the loose line of zombies stopped. The one at the centre of the line, the one he thought looked like a leader as it was the first to move before the others fell in with it, barked another long shriek again and slowly turned its head in a very specific direction.

Directly towards Jason, Jean-Pierre, and Philippa McAndrew.

“Ruuuun,” he bawled, dropping down heavily onto the surface of the wooden platform before he chopped down with the blade of his axe on the mooring line to sever it instantly.

He heard the thudding of feet in the cold, still air, but what separated his own people from the undead was that one set of thumping footfalls came with the rasping of desperate and terrified breathing, whereas the other did not. The living ran towards him just as fast as the dead did, and it was a straight race as to who would arrive first.

He fired up the engine, revving it into life and not caring who or what heard any more because they’d already been discovered, and were already being hunted by a pack of them.

Two thuds sounded impossibly loud on their ungainly and borderline overloaded boat, followed by a third who shouted, “Go, go!” as he sailed through the air to almost collide with Xavier at the controls.

They pushed off, accelerating to loop out away from the muddy shoreline and into the deeper water of the channel. As he pulled away, Xavier dared risk a look back as splash after splash sounded over the roar of the tiny engine and he looked to see the vague hints of human shapes dropping off the jetty towards them. The animated dead bodies sank, lacking the buoyancy and speed of movement to swim, but one remained standing resolute on the jetty. It was so calm, its gaze so intent and almost knowing, that Mike throttled back to look at it.

He knew from seeing their eyes up close that there was no way it could see him, no way those milky eyes could focus at distance in the dark and find him, yet the thing seemed to be staring directly through his soul. With a long, hissing shriek it turned away, and all of the others who hadn’t fallen into the freezing water turned to follow him a second later.

Silence hung on their small, stolen boat as none of them wanted to be the first to speak. None of them wanted to ask how the shuffling blind things had found them, how they had screamed into the air and somehow known precisely where they were. None of them wanted to ask why they had seemed to be following the orders of one of them, for fear of sounding insane, but all of them were thinking it.

On the plus side, they had recovered more food in the few hours they had been away than the entire failed foray into the city had yielded in its entirety. Mike was happy with that, as food was the great leveller when it came to dealing with hungry, scared people. So, as they settled in for their slow return journey north towards the mouth of the estuary by the docks housing their beloved Maggie, he concentrated on the rolling blackness of the water and tried to block out the thoughts that threatened to overcome him with dread and desperation.

The sun was beginning to rise as they returned, casting a ghostly ethereal glow on the far side of his ship’s huge profile. The mist hung in great swirls, occasionally obscuring the skyline of the city behind the docks. One swirl of chilly white cloud parted ahead of them, and a gasp from the bow of their small craft made Xavier throttle back to nothing to investigate. He dashed forwards to see Philippa, one hand clasped to her mouth, pointing to the water ahead.

A body, face down in the classic dead man’s float, bobbed in the swell ahead. The jacket it wore was bloated with trapped air, but the immobility and the deathly stillness of the body made it clear that it had been in the cold water for too long to waste their efforts by getting whoever it was out. They exchanged looks in the gloom of the pre-dawn, eyes like white beacons in their cold faces, and heads were shaking to indicate the sentiment of being unable to save them.

As the mist swirled and cleared on the approach to the huge vertical wall that was their floating fortress, a shriek erupted from high above them. They all froze, knowing that sound and hearing it on an almost cellular level as every inch of their bodies reacted instinctively in fear. As the adrenaline coursed through them, the sound reverberated around the abandoned docks and gave a chilling doppler effect as the person issuing the shriek plummeted overboard to fly like a house brick straight down.

The noise of the body hitting the water was like an explosion, and the icy water splashing over them took away the breath of the two who were unaccustomed to being assaulted by the cold of the sea. All around them other shrieks pierced the air, and further ahead, more splashes sounded as fountains of white water burst upwards. From those impacts in the water, nothing surfaced. No bodies broke the surface to gasp in huge lungfuls of precious, life-giving air.

Without warning or explanation Xavier gunned the engine of their small, overloaded craft and took them out to the deeper water where he turned the boat in a wide U shape. He killed the revs again, all four of them standing and holding on to look back at the docks as the sun broke rank to peer over the top of the ship.

All of them were there. Even from the distance they were at, Mike and Jean-Pierre could recognise some of their crew, their friends, from the shapes of their bodies. But not from how they moved, because their movements were jerky and spasmodic as though they were being propelled by electrical impulses controlled by unpractised hands.

“They aren’t like the ones in the city,” Jean-Pierre said slowly.

“No,” Philippa answered, surprising Xavier who hadn’t even known she had gone on the failed expedition, “these are… newer somehow.”

“They’re not frozen up yet,” Mike answered without emotion, “not like the older ones. I bet they’re still warm.”

His revelation quieted them all down to watch in near stunned silence as the people they had shared their space with for months, the people they had spoken to that same day, were gone. They weren’t themselves any more. They were dead, but still there. Present but vacant. Moving but no longer alive. They stared for a long time, even past the time when some of their deathly pale former friends had stopped making the hideous screaming noise and scanning around for them. Long past when they had not thrown themselves overboard but simply walked off the edge of the tall deck to try and get to them. They drifted away, all but two who stared directly at them with their heads cocked slightly to one side as a dog would when waiting for a tasty morsel.

“We need to go,” Philippa said, snapping them all out of their stunned reverie, “we need to find somewhere to hold up.”

“What about The Maggie?” Jean-Pierre asked Xavier, turning to speak to him alone as he stared hard into the eyes of his captain.

“She’s lost, JP,” he said flatly, “and we can’t keep her afloat with just the four of us anyways.”

Jean-Pierre accepted the sad fate and loss of his home in silence. Xavier said nothing, simply turned their nose around to face back down the river and opened the throttle enough to get them moving gently and not generate a loud noise for the dead to follow.

They headed inland, away from the dangers of the sea and the warships that lurked off shore. Away from the big container ship and everything they owned. Away towards uncertainty. Away towards risk and adversity, with only the food they had found, the clothes on their backs and the makeshift weapons they clutched in cold, tired hands.

TWENTY-THREE

Charlie Daniels had half a dozen soldiers left with him, and although only a corporal he was the ranking man remaining at the big house. He did what he could, setting out his stall to the thirty people left there and asking them all to do their part to make it work. Large parts of the house were shut off, it being pointless to keep them open just to allow the draught to permeate the rest of the house. They contracted to the rooms nearest the kitchen, not even bothering with the second floor of the house any longer. The small amount of livestock they had left was housed in the wide inner courtyard which was destined to become a vegetable garden as soon as the weather thawed. The nearby farm still had to be visited when the fresh vegetables were needed, but essentially with fewer than a third of their number remaining, life was significantly easier, especially as their stores would stretch to fulfill their requirements for winter, and then some.

The place had taken on an almost eerie feel, like a ghost ship or a deserted town, and no sooner had the helicopter taken off in a swirling maelstrom of whipped-up snow and the others left by vehicle, than the power struggle began.

“We need one person on watch each night,” he said, “but everyone else needs to know what to do if the alarm is raised. In the daytimes we need to keep on top of the food and the firewood, but also we need to keep going out to look for other people who might have survived the wint…”

“Who died and left you in charge?” asked a whining yet deep voice. With such a small group remaining, the speaker couldn’t hide, but it was the same vocal man who had tried and failed to upstage the captain when he spoke to them. It was the same man who seemed to be at the heart of every shred of disharmony, every hint of discord, and Daniels knew that he had to be dealt with before he made a play for control that he likely couldn’t handle. He had to nip this in the bud, but without using force. He had to show that he was a better candidate for leadership than the budding communist in their midst.

“Nobody died,” Daniels answered as though the question was a genuine one, “not recently, at least. What would you suggest we do?”

All eyes turned to the man, Gordon, who for a man who liked to use his above average height to intimidate people, seemed to visibly shrink a couple of sizes. Daniels executed it perfectly, as the onus was on the man for solutions instead of problems.

He had clearly stepped outside of his comfort zone. The silence was deafening, and it seemed to oppress him as though an entire football stadium had suddenly shut up just to hear the empty words he yelled at the players.

“Well, I…” Gordon said, realising that his only skill for public oration was to point out the flaws in other people’s plans and not come up with any of his own, “I think we should… well, we should…”

“Exactly,” Daniels said cutting him off, “that’s a great idea. So,” he said addressing them all again, “as my pal here has pointed out, we need to stay warm, stay fed and stay ready to defend ourselves. Everyone okay with that?”

They were. One of the civilians who stayed behind, unsurprisingly a farmer as they existed in a huge swathe of rich farmland, had offered to take the lead with the horticultural matters. Another had offered the services of him and his wife to look after the small amount of livestock they had, and both of these offers were well received. The wives, falling into the status quo of gender stereotypes, took up residence in the kitchen where the warm hearth tended by Denise Maxwell and her followers was kept alive.

Daniels wished he had managed to keep her, along with her husband of course, but he knew that his choice to stay behind in the hope that the Squadron Sergeant Major was still out there somewhere would be a lonely one.

It really was easier with fewer people there, and if anything, the house was too big for their needs. Thoughts of moving elsewhere were abandoned as pointless, and there were so many plans to make and consider that his head was spinning. He set the guard for the night, having walked the defences out in front of the house for nothing much more than something to do, and he went to spend his evening sitting in the only environment he really felt comfortable in.

He climbed inside the Sultan, left parked in the expanse of the inner courtyard half transformed into their vegetable garden, settled into the uncomfortable canvas seat, careful not to spill the cocoa in his tin mug, and twiddled with the dials to listen in on different channels as though the repetition of old habits could bring him comfort.

* * *

“Charlie?” a voice shouted, startling him awake inside the chilly metal coffin. He had fallen asleep in there, kept warm by the auxiliary heater despite the uncomfortable seat, which spoke of how exhausted both physically and emotionally he was.

“In here,” he yelled, looking up at the closed hatch and mentally tutting at himself that the sound wouldn’t carry well. He stood and opened it, popping his head out and repeating his words. The chill morning air hit him hard after a night spent slightly warmer than was comfortable.

“Incoming,” the excited young trooper shouted, turning and running for the house as soon as he had passed his message. Daniels flew from the hatch of the Sultan like a grenade had just been dropped inside. So many thoughts and questions came to him – how many, what direction, how far away – but with nobody there to ask he just gripped his Sterling submachine gun and sprinted on stiff legs for the door. He burst through the house, other men throwing on heavy coats and smocks with weapons in hand ranging from their own automatic guns to shotguns used for hunting, and they jostled for position to get outside.

“Contact ahead,” shouted a trooper looking through binoculars, “on the road.”

“How many?” Daniels asked, the first question firing off from a list that had grown since he first heard the news.

“One,” came the reply, “looks like… like a bloody Montego!”

“A what?” Daniels asked, his slightly muddled brain trying to figure out how the Screechers had got their hands on the off-beige car he could now see approaching them.

“It’s weaving a bit,” the report carried on, “two inside from what I can see…”

“Stand to, stand to!” Daniels yelled, scattering the few trained men he had into defensive positions and confusing the civilians holding their shotguns until they hesitantly followed the soldiers and took up defensive positions. They waited, peering over the sights of their weapons at the car meandering its way towards them. It came on slowly, uncertainly and with a high-pitched sound of a revving engine in need of a higher gear. Daniels, amateur mechanic as everyone in the squadron had to be, guessed that it was probably a clutch synchromesh issue, and the driver had managed to get the car moving in gear and didn’t want to jeopardise their forward momentum by trying to be clever and selecting third when second kept them moving.

The car came to an abrupt stop, bumping nose first into a fence post and knocking it down before the driver overcorrected with an exaggerated snatch at the wheel to pitch them off the road into the shallower part of a ditch. Daniels stood, already running to them to offer help, as he shouted a warning to the others to keep their eyes open for bites.

When he yanked open the rear door behind the passenger, he froze. Slumped forwards, a mess of filthy camouflage uniform and assorted weapons, were two marines bleeding from half a dozen injuries.

“Sar'nt Hampton?” Daniels asked with disbelief, “what the bloody hell have you been up to?”

“Get him out,” Bill Hampton said as he fluttered a weak hand at the unconscious passenger. His eyes were rolling back in his head, a mixture of concussion and exhaustion combining to rob him of his consciousness. Daniels went to the far side of the vehicle and pulled open the dented door to reach in and retrieve the marine sniper they had thought lost to them, along with others. As he reached in, a bolt of fur shot past so quickly that he couldn’t tell if it was brown or black or grey. Dismissing their third feline passenger for the time being and knowing that it would gnaw at him later, he dragged the bleeding Royal Marine out and yelled for others to help him. They were both carried, hands under armpits and gloves gripping trouser legs above their boots, into the house ahead of Daniels, who was left to retrieve the weapons from the car. A curious noise and a sensation not felt for many months nagged at his ankles and looking down, he saw the exposed back end of a cat that had its tail held high like a vehicle antenna. It snaked between his legs, coursing between them in an endless figure of eight like the symbol for infinity, and the rattling purr drifted up to him.

“Alright,” he told it, “there’s food inside.”

As though understanding him, or at least acknowledging that he had noticed it, the cat abandoned its racetrack around the man’s ankles and trotted away after the two men being hoisted up and carried.

* * *

The men were uninfected, which had been the primary concern especially for the seemingly negative contingent of the civilian population, and their injuries had been treated as well as they could manage. Mostly they were suffering from exhaustion and exposure, so getting them clean and warm was the best way to deal with them. Both men slept on mattresses dragged in front of a fire kept well stocked with the split logs of the ash tree in what had been the captain’s office. They slept through the following day until Hampton woke first and sat up groggily to try and clear his head. A large, grazed lump was raised up on the back of his skull and had clearly affected his ability to balance.

“You should rest, Sarge,” Daniels told him.

“No,” Hampton answered as he checked over the sleeping marine beside him, “I need a bloody drink.” Daniels didn’t think that was a very good idea, but then again neither was disagreeing with the man.

“No,” he insisted, “you need rest.”

“See these, lad?” Hampton asked, pointing two fingers on his left hand to his right sleeve, “these mean I tell you what to do, and you do it.” His eyes looked down to where his fingers rested, and instead of seeing the chevrons of his rank displayed he saw only the cold, bruised flesh of his upper arm.

“Ah, bollocks,” he said, dropping back down to the bed.

One of the women brought out a bottle from somewhere and used the tail of her apron to wipe clean a cup before pouring a decent glug and handing it to him. He took a sip, making an appreciative sounding grunt as he rolled it around his mouth and swallowed it. He looked up at Daniels, evidently assessing the man and showing neither disapproval or any sign of being impressed.

“You in charge then?”

“I suppose I am,” Daniels said.

“And the others? My Lieutenant?”

Daniels told him everything. About the helicopter evacuations, the failed resupply mission at the base, the winter and the shortage of food, then the announcement of the others up in Scotland. Hampton stopped him there, firing off a few questions about specifics; location, numbers, defences, before letting him resume. That led up to their arrival and Hampton was invited to reciprocate with their own story.

It was his turn to tell them everything. He recounted the helicopter crash, where so many brave men had fought through hell only to lose their lives in a bloody accident. The unfairness of it still stung him, and he shot a cautious glance at Enfield who still slept on his side with the puckered skin of the bullet score mark exposed on his right shoulder. He told Daniels about how the other half that particular equation had been lost; how he had found marine Leigh concertinaed with a crushed spine in the wreckage of the twisted airframe. He told them of the survivors, having to raise his voice to tell the excited corporal to wait after he had erupted on hearing Johnson’s name. He had to explain who Astrid Larsen was, as much as he knew anyway, and filled them in on the kids they had found living alone in all of the shit they had been wading through for months.

“Kids,” he told them, “little kids all on their own and doing just fine before we turned up.”

Then he crushed the re-inflated hopes of the army corporal and told them about the attack on their village. He told them about the savagery of the armoured gun rolling through their little hiding place and tearing down buildings with automatic fire. He said how he and Enfield had stayed and fired on the attackers to distract them long enough for Johnson and the others to get away. How they had come to after both thinking they would be paying the ultimate price only to find themselves banged up and all alone.

Going from elated to crushed once more, Daniels left them alone to eat and recover.

He busied himself for the rest of the day, trying to avoid too many questions so as not to have to give answers which depressed him, and when darkness threatened, he retreated to his place of comfort once more. His turning of dials was less enthusiastic than it had been the previous evening as the man he had hoped to make contact with was missing, with God knew what chasing him. The location Hampton had given them was half a day away in the snow at least, and from there he was so far behind their scent that attempting to track them down was less than pointless. He lapsed into a catatonic state of immobility, numb to everything including the cold coming in through the open hatch with a view to preventing him from falling asleep there again. A crackle of static came from one of the battered radio headphones left resting on the hook where they hung. Daniels looked at it, willing it to speak to him again and not believing that he hadn’t imagined it. He glanced away, convincing himself that the sound was in his head. It crackled again, too low to hear but rolling in a pattern that made him think of familiar words. He snatched them up, leaning forwards to grab them and force them over his head.

The sounds of the outside world went quiet, blocked out and replaced only with the rapid sounds of his breathing. Nothing happened, and his finger hovered of the transmit button before he took it away and reached up to pull off the headphones, annoyed with himself for allowing his imagination to interrupt normal programming. Just as he went to sack the activity as pointless, the noise came back to him loud and clear.

“Hello, any station, this is Foxtrot-three-three-alpha…” came a slow, almost bored sounding voice, as though the message had been repeated ad infinitum and no longer held any passion.

Daniels was certain that he had imagined it. There was no way that could be genuine.

“Hello, any station, any station, this is Foxtrot-three-three-alpha…”

Daniels stabbed his finger onto the transmit button and croaked out a response without allowing his voice to settle to its normal radio tone.

“Foxtrot-three-three-alpha, this is zero-bravo,” he said, snatching at the vehicle callsign from a lifetime ago, “is it really you?”

A pause on the other end made him doubt that he had heard it at all, that he was asleep and dreaming it.

* * *

“It’s really me,” Johnson said from fifty miles away sat in the slightly roomier and far more modern interior of the Warrior sat on the hilltop over the cliffs by the English Channel, “and, my God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

TWENTY-FOUR

The first day’s progress was pretty poor, Palmer had to admit. They had encountered too many obstacles and turned around too many times to make any distance, and their path north on the wider roads was blocked by a frozen shattered barricade of ruined bodies stretching out as far as they could see. The carnage was horrendous, but at least they were spared the stench that would probably be detectable from space when the weather warmed up again. There was no way through, and by nightfall on their first day they had barely made two hundred miles after having to backtrack and avoid the obstacle of dead.

They circled their wagons as such, occupying an empty building for a restless and uncomfortable night.

The following morning they were forced to keep to the smaller roads, which halved their average speed. The following day went better than the first, with Sergeant Strauss ranging ahead to scout the best path before the heavy truck followed under escort of the other Fox and the battered-looking Land Cruiser adopted by the SAS men. Fuel was found when they ran dry, but they had brought enough food carried by them individually that they weren’t forced to scavenge. Everywhere there was evidence of hordes having passed through, where entire wide swathes of landscape still showed signs of having been trampled flat by thousands of pairs of undead feet.

“Choke point ahead,” Strauss reported via radio, “too narrow for the Bedford.”

“Can you force it?” Palmer asked, feeling the pregnancy of the pause as the question was considered.

“Roger,” the response came.

Ahead, peering out of the limited viewing slit of the Fox, Strauss instructed his driver to slowly force the truck blocking their path out of the way. Being unable to get through the village would mean a long detour and another hour turning around to backtrack and locate an alternative route.

“Easy,” Strauss cautioned, “don’t damage us…”

As soon as he had issued the warning, the truck blocking the way shunted forward with a metallic crack followed by a creaking noise as the snapped handbrake cable could no longer arrest the momentum of the heavy vehicle. It rolled, gathering speed on the very shallow slope, and crashed into the glass front of a building.

It was a cinema, only a small one but one which had been occupied when an infected person staggered inside to flee the horrors on the street. Everyone inside had been turned, and as none of them retained enough fine motor control to operate the fiddly door locks, that was where they remained until the sound of shattering glass woke them from the state of inactivity they had all fallen into. As though heat radiated through them and melted their coma-like states, the noise woke them in waves and sparked their animation until they all funnelled out of the building and turned their ashen faces and clouded eyes towards the main attraction: the sound of an engine and a moving vehicle.

“Fall back,” Strauss yelled, startled by the sudden appearance of so many undead heading directly for them from close range. His driver threw the wagon into reverse and propelled them backwards as Strauss shouted the warning over the radio.

Hearing the news of a mass of dead directly ahead, the first they had encountered other than one or two half-frozen Screechers posing little or no threat, Palmer roared for the rest of his convoy to stand-to. The radio sparked into life again, this time Strauss giving them the bad news that in their haste to withdraw backwards, his driver had beached them on the wrecked remains of a car.

“Get clear, leave us,” Strauss instructed. Palmer had no intention of abandoning any of his men, regardless of how long for, and he ordered everyone out to form line.

Like some echo of infantry from hundreds of years prior, Palmer lined the men up shoulder to shoulder to face the onslaught and slug it out toe-to-toe.

“Make ready,” he ordered loudly as he pushed himself into the very centre of their line and extend the stock of his Sterling, “aim…”

As one, all of the assorted weaponry of his men drew up level to aim at the oncoming undead who advanced with their mouths open to emit the hideous shriek that had earned them their nickname. Their musty stench ranged ahead of them like a picquet, turning the noses of the armed men and threatening to double them over in repulsion ahead of the main wave of attack.

Palmer filled his lungs, intending to call the order to fire loudly and whip his men into action. Before he could give the order, a great bark of diesel engine filled the air as a main battle tank, huge and loud in the confines of the town’s streets, revved and rolled towards them on squeaking tracks. Stunned, the dismounted men held their fire and stared in confused awe at the arrival of such a heavy hitter, then watched as it spun on its tracks to turn up the road and rolled forward again, straight into the advancing enemy to crush them down under its sixty-tonne weight. It went ahead, stopping when the tidal wave of undead ran dry, cracked off two short bursts from the mounted MG3 similar to their own GPMGs. The clattering gun went silent as quickly as it had started, and the tank clunked into reverse to go back over the crushed wave of stinking corpses.

“Give them room,” Palmer instructed, dispersing his men so that they didn’t become living victims of the unfamiliar heavy killer. The tank stopped, nudging its bulk to the side to shunt the stranded Fox off the wrecked vehicle carcass it had bellied out on, like a larger tortoise stopping to nudge a smaller one free of a troublesome rock, then it continued backwards to stop near the rest of the convoy. The hatch opened, and up popped a crisply overalled man with a moustache and a black beret adorned with a silver badge of the tank he commanded.

He climbed down, stamping to attention as the heels of his boots clacked together.

“Good afternoon,” he announced in accented English, “Hauptmann Hans Wolff.”

Palmer took a stunned step forwards, lowering his weapon and raising his hand to return the salute that the man was offering.

“Captain Julian Simpkins-Palmer,” he answered, unsure what was happening, “how did you… where did…”

Wolff smiled, disarming his English counterpart.

“Captain,” he said, “we hear you would be heading this way and we have been intending to do the same.”

“From who?”

Wolff held up a hand to calm the questioning.

“I apologise, Captain, perhaps I should be starting in the beginning?”

* * *

Barrett’s tired Sea King flared in to land on the flat surface directly outside the small control tower of Broadford airfield. Designed for small, light aircraft only, the navy pilot was shocked to see the dull green fuselage of heavier military transport planes, and could only imagine the high-stakes pressure of that landing, which would only be described as ‘tactical’ as the pilot pretty much slammed the plane on the deck and hauled on full reverse to save over running the small stretch of tarmac. On their swoop in he saw what looked like ground works going on to extend the runway, and that kind of investment made him feel happier that this place was designed to stay infection free.

They were met at gunpoint. Nothing overly hostile, but the intention to use the arrayed weapons was clear.

“Nothing to be alarmed about,” called a gruff but cultured male voice via a loudspeaker horn, “we need to observe quarantine rules first.”

Men in biohazard suits came forward, ushering the helicopter passengers away one by one as they were led inside to be stripped, checked, given a fresh jumpsuit and left behind clear plastic curtains where large metal urns bubbled ready for their hot drinks.

Barrett, Sergeant Ashdown and the rest of his crew in tow, called out for the officer in charge.

“That would be me,” said the man with the speaker, “Colonel Kelly, British Army.” He wore a sandy brown beret with the famous winged dagger badge visible as it reflected the weak sunlight. Barrett replied with his own rank, introducing the others with him.

“We’ll catch up when you’ve been processed, Barrett,” Kelly said, turning away.

They waited their turn, going into another plastic curtained room to strip off and leave their clothing to be burned. The civilians had no issue with this, but the men of Her Majesty’s forces were a little more precious over giving up their uniform. They were assured that they would get replacements, but their reluctance was made worse when they went through to the larger waiting area and found themselves wearing the same plain coveralls as the civilians. Their bearing marked them out as military, and Colonel Kelly approached them on the other side of the thick, clear plastic.

“Gentlemen,” he greeted them before he was interrupted by a loud voice.

“Now look here, man,” crowed the voice of their own Colonel, the half-insensible man from a Scottish regiment, who probably hadn’t seen any real soldiering since the Korean War, “tell your man to give me back my father’s claymore!”

Kelly looked at him, glancing back to Barrett and receiving an apologetic shrug by way of explanation, before ignoring the man as an insignificance.

“Major Downes didn’t come with you?” he asked the pilot.

“Not enough room on board and not enough fuel for two trips, Sir,” he answered. Kelly nodded.

“So, they’re travelling by road then?” Barrett nodded through the plastic curtain in response.

“The Wolfpack?” a junior officer asked Kelly.

“Wolfsrudel,” he responded, correcting him with a smirk, “but yes, please do put them on alert.” He turned back to the quarantined men and added, “one hour in here, then you’ll come with me to our HQ to be debriefed.” He announced it as though it was already fact, as though it was written in stone because he had decided it. He gave off an air of arrogance, but one matched with a brutal competence and confidence in his abilities and the abilities of his men that such arrogance was almost instantly forgiven.

“But I warn you, gentlemen,” he said ominously, “the situation may not be as rosy as you were hoping for.”

Epilogue

“Doc, are you certain that you can create more of the virus from the research material the Brits recovered from your lab?” drawled the man in the grey suit with an accent that could only be narrowed down to somewhere on the lower east coast.

Professor Sunil Grewal bit back the correction that he hadn’t been a mere doctor for over ten years. Something told him that the man in the very plain suit with the very plain face wouldn’t have cared anyway. The men and women of the CIA all had one thing in common when it came to him; none of them seemed to give much of a damn about what he said or thought, only what he could do.

“I am certain that I can,” he said, “but the question remains of why you would want me to.”

The suit didn’t answer his question, but simply turned away and gestured at the doorway where another suit was bringing in a bespectacled man in a lab coat, clutching a leather satchel to his chest. Everything about him said that he wasn’t there by choice.

“Doc Grewal, Doc Chambers,” the suit said, introducing them. Grewal knew of Professor Richard Chambers by reputation. He was an immunologist who had spent most of his life working on vaccines. Scientifically speaking, the two men were opposite sides of a coin; Chambers had devoted his life to stopping nature’s destructive will, whereas Grewal had enhanced and weaponised it. The two professors nodded a wary greeting at one another, as though they were both waiting for the punchline, when the suits began to file out of the lab.

“Make more of it, then figure out how to kill it. The president needs a vaccine in a month to start rolling out production. Make no mistake, gentlemen, it’s not a case of if this virus reaches the United States but when. I suggest you use your time wisely.”

With that, he left and shut the door. Through the glass section Grewal could see the uniformed guard standing mutely in place. He turned to Professor Dick Chambers, holding out a hand to be shook and opened his mouth to speak.

Chambers hit him in the face with a nervous and tentative right-handed jab, shocking them both. He hit him again, harder this time as his confidence grew, and rocked the man back on his feet. He hit him a third time, dropping his satchel and putting his body weight into the blow to knock the other scientist off his feet to land hard on his backside.

Grewal dabbed a hand to his face, feeling lips already swelling and taking his fingertips away from his nose covered in a film of oily blood.

“Are you finished?” he asked as he looked up at the tearful, red face of his attacker.

“Yes,” Chambers said, “now show me what ungodly mutation you’ve cooked up, and I can see if I can undo your god-damned Frankenstein’s mess.”

Part Five

Adaptation

Prologue

“Absolutely not, Professor,” said the man in the grey suit, with a cold finality to his words. He didn’t raise his voice, but the intensity was there. “No way. No how. No chance whatsoever.” He stabbed an index finger onto the desk to underline his point in case he hadn’t been heard clearly. “No.”

“But,” Professor Sunil Grewal whined, annoyed that the bureaucrats lacked the ability to comprehend that what he was asking for was vital, “without subjects to conduct the research on, Professor Chambers and I simply won’t be able to confirm whether or not the serum works, let alone what side-effects it might have on—”

“He’s right,” Chambers agreed reluctantly from the only other chair in the room, which he’d occupied without offering to his colleague. The two men hated one another, or at least Chambers despised Grewal, as he’d been personally responsible for creating the unnatural abomination which had wiped out what he guessed would be more than half of the world, by that point. “Without a test subject, a series of test subjects ideally, we can’t be certain of anything.”

“I’m confused,” said the suit who called himself Agent Fisher, as he leaned back at his desk and steepled his fingers. “You assured me that the recipe you cooked up in the lab killed the virus ten times out of ten. Explain to me how that’s now wrong.”

“It’s not wrong,” Grewal snapped petulantly. “Tests in a petri dish are very different from tests in live host subjects. Already there have been reports of… variations in the behaviour of some infected subjects, and we aren’t even close to beginning to understand or explain why that is. If you’d simply allow us to study a series of captured specimens a—”

“Study?” the CIA man enunciated coldly. “Captured Specimens? Professor Asshole, I’m not sure you fully understand the ramifications of those words, so let me lay it out for you.” He whipped a hand up and snapped his forefinger and thumb together, indicating to Grewal that he should keep his lips firmly together while the man spoke.

“Studying a captured specimen means constructing a purpose-built lab with strict control and containment procedures. That holds significant risk to the United States Armed Forces personnel involved in every aspect. Furthermore,” he said loudly, repeating the gesture with his fingers to stop Grewal from interrupting when he saw the opportunity. “Capturing those specimens would require missions in hostile territory to return an infectious host subject to US soil and jeopardise those personnel on the mission. Moreover, we would threaten the safety and security of the entire United States by bringing even one of those things back here, so no, Professor, you can’t ha—”

“What if we don’t have to bring them back here?” Chambers asked quietly from across the office, his eyes staring upwards at the ornate patterns chasing themselves over the ceiling. Grewal and the suit looked in his direction, waiting for the rest of his thought. Chambers leaned forwards in his chair, eyes back on the two men and his hands moving with the words he used to air the idea out loud.

“There’s a secure, military-run base in Britain, right?” he said, waiting for a reluctant nod from the CIA man, who wondered which one of the people at the facility had been talking too much. “So we task their military to capture the specimens and we do the testing over there. That way the whole Atlantic sits between them and home.”

The suit sat back, watching Grewal out of the corner of his eye before turning to fix him with a direct stare and a crooked smile.

“I’ll run it up the chain of command,” he said, pretending that he wasn’t a very senior shot-caller and not convincing either of the scientists, “but I’d say you two need to pack up and get ready to fly to Scotland.”

ONE

Squadron Sergeant Major Dean Johnson couldn’t sleep. He didn’t sleep much at all anymore. He stood in the morning air, the pre-dawn chill tightening his skin and reminding him that he was alive, sipping from a mug of tea as he thought about the day’s work to come. Exchanging a curt nod of greeting with the evidently cold man standing guard and eagerly awaiting the arrival of his relief, he stared out over the low, rolling landscape looking inland over the half-hidden profile of the Warrior emplaced to guard the single approach road.

Leaving the Hilltop wasn’t an issue for him as the place had never even remotely been home; home was with his squadron and what he had learned via radio from one of the few people of his former life still alive made him feel like a nomad.

The crunch of feet on gravel made him stiffen, until he reminded himself that he wasn’t in danger, wasn’t out in the battleground that was anywhere not protected or fortified against the remnants of the population who had died yet continued to walk the Earth. Turning, he saw the expected sight of Peter stepping in his direction; his small feet treading lightly, as if suggesting the boy had evolved and adapted to this new and brutal world as much as the faster type of Screechers had. He gave his young companion a nod, warmer than the one he’d given the sentry, and softened his usually harsh features with a small smile.

“Can’t sleep either?” he muttered in a low voice, sympathetic to the fact that almost everyone else there was still slept.

“Never do,” Peter answered in a tone of voice that made him sound forty years older than his mere decade. His brow furrowed slightly as he thought about it. “Didn’t before, not really, and finding out about…”

He trailed off as though saying the words out loud would make the knowledge of his sister’s survival and subsequent disappearance all too real. Johnson reached out his huge left hand and rested it gently on the nape of the boy’s neck, giving him a light squeeze of reassurance in an attempt to convey how he felt.

So many emotions ran through him at that moment. He felt a heavy loss for the boy and, if he were honest, for himself. He felt a burning and fierce pride for the sacrifice of the two Royal Marines who had held their own long enough to allow him to drive the box van away from their small sanctuary and save the lives of the two children and the others, and that pride swelled inside him when he learned from Daniels that they had made it out alive somehow.

“I know, lad,” he said, feeling the words to be wholly inadequate but needing to voice his understanding. “I know. We won’t give up yet, though.” He looked down to meet Peter’s eyes with his own. “You believe me?”

Peter gave a sad smile which seemed to say that he knew Johnson meant the words but he was just too pessimistic, too broken by the events of the last months, and indeed all of his life before, to allow himself to believe anything good could ever happen again. He let out a long, resigned sigh.

“If she’s survived this long,” the boy said as he shrugged his shoulders to hide his neck from the cold air, “then I’m sure she’ll manage a little while longer.”

Johnson felt a wave of sadness at his words because he realised they were given to reassure the old soldier and not to provide the child beside him with any form of comfort.

The boy’s resilience and maturity humbled Johnson. He’d seen more good sense and practicality from him than from many soldiers he’d commanded in his years, and could only imagine what Peter would have become if he’d had a better start in life. If he’d had the opportunities and education which had been wasted on Oliver Palmer, he’d have quite likely become an intelligent and capable leader, like the infuriatingly arrogant second lieutenant’s older brother was.

Both of those men were gone now; travelled north to Scotland, according to Daniels. He let out his own sigh and wondered if he’d ever meet up with them and the other members of the squadron again.

“I’m sure she will,” he said quietly, bringing his attention back to the world and the boy’s words. “I’m sure she will.”

Peter seemed to shake his own dark mood off in the same moment and rolled his shoulders to stand taller, as though he’d banished the frightened child inside him to his room without dinner.

“When do we go?” he asked the squadron sergeant major with no squadron.

“We?”

Peter smirked playfully. “You grown-ups wouldn’t last five minutes without me and Amber to look after you.” Johnson laughed in spite of his own dark mood and the early hour.

“Oh, if I’d had a squadron of Peters… we’ll go soon,” he said as he extended a finger towards the partially hidden light armour, “and we’re taking that to be on the safe side.”

It was Peter’s turn to smile. Despite the collapse of their world, despite the fact that they had been cut off and abandoned, he was still a ten year old boy, and what ten year old boy didn’t want to ride in a tank?

Pauline, the apparent leader of the Hilltop survivors, wasn’t surprised when Johnson had told her they would be leaving soon. She didn’t expect such rough soldiery types to sit back and settle, not when there was a war to fight, and the news that they would be setting off to link up with their own people and search for Amber’s mother and Peter’s sister was expected.

In some bizarre parody of loved ones setting off for a day’s work, she brought them all sandwiches made with thick, fresh bread to sustain them on their search, along with a few insulated flasks of strong, sugary tea. The flasks, arrayed inside the Warrior side by side, their tartan decorations looking like some new type of ammunition for the 30mm main gun, provided Johnson with a curious amusement as he maneuvered the big, tracked vehicle out of the widened ditch it had occupied to hide the hull from any approaching enemy.

Michaels, one of his former troop sergeants turned Hilltop dictator by all accounts, had still retained enough sanity to ensure the Warrior had a full tank of diesel and was loaded with both blue and yellow-tipped ammunition for the autocannon. Johnson sneered suspiciously at the controls for the chain gun which was widely rumoured to be a poor upgrade for their tried and tested general purpose machine guns firing the same ammunition.

Still, he told himself, beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers, especially when he felt the grunt of the engine through the controls and it bucked free of the ditch which would’ve stranded even the most capable off-road truck for an eternity.

Being the only man among them accustomed to operating and living inside an armoured fighting vehicle, he was forced from his rightful place in the turret and took up residence in the forward hull to drive. Peter, much to his absolute delight, was offered a spot inside the turret alongside Bufford, who Johnson had trained in the basic use of the chain gun.

“What about the big bastard?” Buffs asked him as they sat in intimately close proximity as the commander and gunner would. Johnson patted the breech of the 30mm and shook his head sadly at the sergeant of the Special Boat Service.

“You expect me to be able to teach a frogman how to hand-crank an HE round into this and follow up with a clip so as not to get a stoppage and have to start over?” Bufford gave him a withering look, secretly pleased that the comfortable inter-services rivalry had begun to reassert itself. “Just stick to the chain gun,” he told him. “You still probably fuck it up, so pay attention. And no coffee breaks,” he grumbled as he fought to maintain a straight face, “I don’t want to have to retrain you when you forget it all.”

Astrid Larsen and Kimberley Perkins stepped inside the dark confines of the troop-carrying section comprising the rear of the Warrior, their arms loaded with bags of supplies and weapons. Amber followed, her own backpack stuffed with her favourite things, along with water and food should she need it. The top of that bag sprouted a threadbare and tired-looking stuffed lamb which had previously been Peter’s sister’s and had been one of his only comforts from the place where he used to live—not that he called it home even in his head. It had become Amber’s prized possession not long after he had found her alone and frightened and she had carried it with her ever since. She also carried Peter’s creation, his ‘sticker’ as he called it, fashioned originally from a pitchfork and modified for small hands to wield against the shambling corpses still wandering the landscape.

“Zero-Bravo, Zero-Bravo,” Johnson said into the radio after they’d said their farewells to the civilians who had shown them kindness, “this is Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha.”

He waited a beat before the excited voice of corporal Charlie Daniels came back to him, his usual calm radio demeanour chipped away to release the emotion he felt.

“Three-Three-Alpha, Zero-Bravo,” he replied in quick words, using the out of date rotated callsigns which were the last they had been issued.

Johnson pressed the button to transmit but took his finger away again.

“Fuck it,” he said aloud to himself, unheard by the other two members of their little band inside the tank over the noise of the engine. He pressed to transmit again, this time abandoning the protocols he had spent a lifetime drilling others to adhere to.

“Charlie, we’re on our way to you now. Get the kettle on, lad. Out.”

TWO

“What the bally hell do you mean?” Second Lieutenant Oliver Simpkins-Palmer shrieked obnoxiously at the uniformed but hatless man standing safely on the bow of a ferry twenty paces from land. “I order you to dock that boat, immediately, and allow my men and these civilians to board.” The soldier, wearing no obvious badge of rank or indication of his unit, could be heard laughing by everyone on the empty concrete of the Mallaig ferry port.

“Who’s actually in charge?” he yelled back.

“Now you look here,” Palmer erupted, his face turning crimson and spittle launching from his mouth on a trajectory like heavy artillery. His finger was extended, wagging furiously as though the mere threat of the digit would enforce his weak words. “I’ll have you court-martialled an—”

“What seems to be the problem?” a voice asked from behind him, cutting him off and making him suddenly aware of his self-inflicted embarrassment, not only at being denied after a life of entitled ease, but by the shame of losing control of himself.

“Major,” Palmer said, composing himself and greeting the man with the genteel nod of an aristocratic bow. He stepped aside for the tall, bearded Special Air Service officer to lay eyes on his enemy, “this…” he waved a frustrated hand in the general direction of the small car ferry, “man, is refusing my orders to dock and allow us to board. I must insist that y—”

“That you, Tip?” Major Downes called out.

“It is,” replied the man testily in a broad Newcastle accent. “I’ll leave you to have a word, Boss.” He turned away, stepping down from whatever he had stood on to call out his instructions to the officer.

“Lieutenant,” Downes said, “perhaps you need to take a minute?”

The order was made in a polite, suggestive way which Palmer’s education and breeding should have picked up on instantly, but the exhaustion and stress of their long journey by road had robbed him of his decorum.

“Major, I really must insis—”

“Oliver,” Downes interrupted him angrily, “you really must stop insisting. In fact, bugger off out of my sight while I talk to a real soldier.” Palmer looked ashen, as if he’d been struck in the face with a dead fish. In truth, he was not the only one to be so exhausted by days of travel under constant threat, and Downes’ uncharacteristic outburst served to underline just how strung out they all were. He watched as the young officer moved off, uncertainly at first, but building up to a stomping march, no doubt to find his older brother and make the man’s life harder. Downes sighed, wondering how one family could produce two so incredibly different sons. He turned back to the man on the bow of the ferry sitting low in the water.

“How’ve you been, Tip?” he asked corporal Stanley Tipuric of ‘B’ squadron, SAS.

“Not too bad an’all, considerin’,” he responded dolorously. “Good to see you made it.”

“Tell me about it,” Downes agreed. “And you too.”

“Still got your boys?”

“I do,” Downes called back, “it’ll take more than this shit to kill off Mac,” he added, knowing that a jibe at the hard Scotsman’s expense would serve to break whatever ice there was between them.

“I’ll need yous all to follow the instructions to the letter,” Tip said in a more professional tone now that the brief pleasantries were out of the way.

“Containment and quarantine?”

“Aye,” Tip shouted back, waving an arm behind him to some unseen person controlling the boat. “The Colonel’ll fill you in later.”

“Colonel?” Downes asked. “I thought Major Kelly was in charge here.”

“Aye, only it’s Colonel Kelly now.”

* * *

“Honestly, the man laughed when I gave him an order! Laughed! And the Major added insult to injury by banishing me so he could speak to—”

“Olly,” Captain Palmer interrupted tiredly as he rubbed both hands over his stubbled cheeks, “did it occur to you who the man might be if the Major knew him on sight?” His younger brother recoiled as he always did when he had missed the obvious, his chin retracting so much that it all but disappeared until he regained his composure.

“I don’t give a good God damn who he is,” the younger brother blurted out, albeit with less gusto than his original complaint. He further betrayed his anxiety when he glanced surreptitiously over both shoulders before continuing his rant in a softer tone. “I don’t care if the man sprouted wings and was anointed by Her Majesty the bloody Queen; he’s a rank and file man and he failed to observe the ru—”

He stopped talking, mouth hanging open in confusion as his older brother simply walked away with an exasperated shake of his head.

Palmer senior arrived at the edge of the docks just as his German counterpart did. Hauptman Wolff, as characteristically pleased to be alive as he was every day, looked just as tired as Palmer felt, although he somehow made his tiredness seem far more precise, as he did with everything. The two officers fell in step as they approached the SAS Major.

“I rather fear we’ll find ourselves interned in some kind of concentration ca…” Palmer began, his words trailing off as he realised too late the insensitivity of them.

“I suspect,” Wolff replied without any trace of anger or upset, “that you are correct.” A smirk began at one corner of his mouth before it spread uncontrollably. “And you should not fear saying such things to a German, Captain. We are just as appalled as you are about the history of our armies, as I think that you are of your own histories, no?”

Palmer was saved from having to respond and defend the proud honour of the British Empire, as the major heard their approach and turned to fill them in on developments.

“Small contingent of police, civilian and military, but mostly it’s our boys,” he informed the two captains. “Pretty much all of B squadron were home when it kicked off; on standby for the terrorism thing and all that.”

“Am I to presume that they will want us quarantined?” Palmer asked him.

“Yes,” Downes said, “civvies first. They want three loads so we don’t inundate them.”

“Inundate?” Wolff enquired politely but uncertainly.

“The boys on the island don’t want too many of us at once,” Palmer explained. “Rather than be overwhelmed in quarantine, they prefer that we stay here until they can process us in a more controlled manner, I presume.”

Downes nodded, taking charge for the first time in the months he and Palmer had known one another.

“Captain Wolff,” he said, earning a click of the man’s boot heels to indicate his undivided attention. “Can you maintain watch on the road and come over on the last boat with my boys and me?” The German tank commander’s head nodded in a short, sharp bow.

“Of course, but I do not see how these,” he held his left arm out, ramrod straight and palm held vertically flat, to point at the small civilian car ferries, “will possibly transport the weight of our tanks.”

“And you’d be absolutely right,” Downes responded, which is why we’re all dismounting and going over on foot. Vehicles stay on this side of the water. Infection risk.”

Palmer swore that he could have detected the slightest gasp of shock and loss from their ally, and he knew only too keenly how the loss of a man’s mount affected him, as he had been forced to leave his own Chieftain behind many months before.

“I must protest this,” Wolff said, unknowingly repeating the words of the younger Palmer which had so recently earned him a humiliating retort. “What infection can a machine have? It cannot catch a virus! Why must we leave our tanks…” He trailed off as his eyes followed the outstretched hand of Downes and took in the sight of a matted, crushed slab of blackened meat on the front of the nearest vehicle. White bone jutted out of the mess of gore and rags as an unidentifiable chunk slid slowly away from the metal to hit the ground and make them all grimace at the soft slapping sound it made.

“I understand, Major,” Wolff said quietly.

“They’ll still be here,” Downes reassured the man. “No Screecher I’ve seen yet can figure out the controls on a Leopard…”

“But,” Wolff answered softly, “I do not like the thought of leaving Edda alone here among the enemy.”

Palmer and Downes exchanged a look, both men fighting down the urge to laugh. Palmer’s tank had been called Annabelle, and as much as he’d enjoyed the bond with the machine, he hadn’t felt the same heartbreak that their friend was evidently feeling.

“Edda?” Downes asked quietly, unable to resist.

“Ja,” Wolff shot back with a look of challenge in his eyes, “this is the name of my grandmother. It means maiden of battle, like the Valkyries of the Norse.” His impassioned defence of the name of a tank left both British officers silent for a moment until Palmer placed a gentle hand on Wolff’s shoulder.

“Edda will be here when we need her again,” he reassured him. They were saved any further awkwardness as the ferry bumped into the dock gently, emitting a clanging sound loud enough to remind all of them that they weren’t exactly safe until they got off the mainland.

“Julian,” Downes said as he turned to Palmer, “if you could organise the civilians? Send as many of your chaps with them as you can and the rest are to take the second boat.”

Palmer nodded. “What about Mister Lloyd?” Downes glanced up, taking in their theatre and scanning the assembled mix of people for the marine officer. Spotting him adjusting a defensive position of a pair of surviving marines, he satisfied himself that the job of their defence was adequately taken care of.

“If you could inform the Royal Marines that they will be taking the second transport. The Hauptmann and I will fill the last one.” He turned away but snapped his fingers as a thought struck him.

“Actually,” he said carefully, “if you wouldn’t mind being on the first one? Perhaps your, err, perhaps the Second Lieutenant can accompany the remainder of the men?” Palmer swallowed and gave a weak smile of understanding. The shame of his brother’s poor attitude and ineptitude at all things soldiering was a blemish on his reputation, but blood was blood and privately he couldn’t stand to hear his brother maligned by so many people.

“I’ll let him know, Major,” he said tonelessly.

“All aboard,” came a soft and distinctively Geordie shout from the sloping dock into the icy water. “One at a time, if you don’t mind,” Tipuric said to the nervous civilians as they stretched cramped limbs and stiff backs on the short walk towards the boat. “This way to safety, folks.”

THREE

“What the bleedin’ell is she doing?” Sergeant Bill Hampton asked as he looked out of the window. Marine Enfield, a man who had been unnervingly quiet and still, even before the world burned down and he lost his best friend in a helicopter crash, appeared beside his sergeant soundlessly. Hampton flinched in fright before covering his shock with a string of expletives.

“Shouldn’t be out there by herself,” Hampton complained, “not even wearing a proper coat…”

Enfield stared out of the window of the room they shared, the only sound he made a low whistle of breath through his nose. He watched the girl for a few moments longer, before shrugging and turning away. Neither of them had spoken to the only other people to have arrived separately, apart from themselves that was, and neither knew how they were so intrinsically linked to one another through their associations.

Hampton continued to watch the girl, seeing her breath mist and linger in the heavy, cold air, like miniature clouds which hung to mark her progress towards the frosted-over hull of the tracked vehicle. Seeing her bang on the side of it and step back, he allowed himself a private smile as the squadron’s surviving radio man popped out of the hatch to lean way over to accept whatever hot beverage she’d brought him.

* * *

Charlie Daniels, shivering inside the empty interior of his Sultan command vehicle as the heater powered by the small external generator struggled to fight off the cold, jumped when he heard two bangs on the hull directly behind his head. Too often he’d experienced and subsequently relived the sounds of so many undead hands clawing at the armour like a frustrated cat attacking a sealed tin of tuna, knowing that something tasty hid inside.

Taking a few breaths to relax and compose himself, he stood and spun the handle to open the hatch before poking his head and shoulders out.

“Down here,” said a small voice. Daniels leaned over to take in the smiling face of the teenage girl cupping a tin mug in both hands. The contents steamed tantalisingly, which told Charlie all he needed to know. Reaching out with a broad smile, he took the drink and thanked her, bringing it to his face to inhale the sweet steam. He wrapped his hands around the mug, his gloves protecting him from the heat of it; at least, protecting all but two of his fingers, since he’d cut those two from his glove so he could still manipulate the radio dials.

Hot chocolate. With a sigh of satisfaction, he gingerly touched his lips to the drink, only to recoil as the liquid was hotter than lava.

“What you up to?” the girl asked.

“Just waiting for my friend to call up on the radio,” he told her, forgetting his very recent injury and foolishly trying the drink again to see if it had cooled down in the last second.

“Can I help?”

Daniels opened his mouth to answer, recognising that he would actually be glad o the company of someone interested in his secondary profession. But a nagging doubt plucked at the back of his mind.

“Do you want to bring someone else to keep you company?” he asked her awkwardly.

“Like who?”

“Like, err, like that woman you turned up with?” he tried, listing the only person he knew that she knew, bar the now-absent SAS patrol who had found them. Their arrival had sparked another, more concerning fear about their security, causing them to face the prospect of risk coming from other people for the first time since the virus had swept over the country.

“She’s been in bed for over a week,” the girl answered, reaching up to grasp the cold metal and placing a boot on it, ready to haul herself up.

“Hold on,” Daniels said, suddenly seeming worried that the girl was coming aboard regardless of the need for a chaperone.

“What?” she said, ceasing her climb as she saw no way to scale the high side.

“It’s…”

“You’re worried what people will think if you hang around with a girl my age?” Daniels looked shocked but swallowed and nodded.

“Don’t be so silly,” she told him dismissively and resumed her climbing.

“Go ‘round the front,” he told her, “you’ll never get up this way.” He waited as she dropped back down, heard her boots shuffling towards the lower section at the nose of the vehicle until she reappeared on the hull.

“Move over.”

He did, ducking back inside and moving away from the hatch as she lowered herself inside, flailing for purchase with her feet. Eventually spilling into the Sultan’s interior, she straightened her clothing and grinned at Daniels.

“Easy,” she said, her smile wavering as her teeth chattered.

Daniels frowned, glancing around and resting his eyes on a tattered, green army smock that he snatched up and went to drape around her shoulders. He froze, leaving the jacket resting over her slim frame as he backed off.

“Relax,” the girl said, “I know you don’t have any funny ideas.” Daniels relaxed but couldn’t help maintaining the frown.

“How do you know? I mean,” he added hurriedly, “I don’t, but still… how do you know?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t really,” she admitted, reaching down to slip a sharpened slither of metal from her right boot and twirl it before her face to catch the dull light from the open hatch. “But if you did have, you’d only have them once, know what I mean?”

Daniels knew precisely what she meant.

“So, who’s your friend and where is he?” the girl asked. Daniels slid back into the seat in front of the radio as his fingers went to work on the switches and dials.

“He’s my boss, actually, and he’s on his way here.”

“He’s in the army too?”

“Yeah. He’s my Squadron Sergeant Major,” he said, investing the title with all the grandeur he felt for it.

“So?”

“Sooo… so he’s my SSM.” He shrugged as if to indicate that the matter was dealt with. “That’s it. We got separated after the island—that was the last place we were before here—and everyone thought he was gone, but I wouldn’t take those odds…” he glanced at her to see her confusion and rephrased. “He never made it out on a helicopter when some of the boys and the civvies were knee-deep in a hell of a fight. Well, he did make it out, only the helicopter went down, which we’d never have known about if they hadn’t survived the crash and the winter.” The girl looked at him with a curious eyebrow raised.

“You’re really confusing,” she said. “You know that?”

“Sorry,” Daniels said, sipping the drink again and wincing as it was still unnaturally close to boiling. “My boss was missing in action, and everyone thought he was a goner. I stayed behind in case he popped back up, still believed you see, and he did. Not long after everyone went, as it happened…”

“Went where?” she asked, picking up a new avenue of questioning but intending to circle back around to her original lines of enquiry.

“Scotland. Or at least a big island just off the coast of Scotland.”

“And what are they doing there?”

Daniels shrugged, not entirely sure how to answer the question with anything meaningful.

“Not worrying about zombies. I thought you knew all of this. Didn’t you get the option to go with them?”

“They said something about going,” she answered with a shrug of disinterest. “My brother’s still here, so I’ll stay.” Daniels’ face dropped. He stopped tweaking the dials on the radio and sucked in a breath ready to be the voice of reason. Turning to face her, he started to speak as gently as he could.

“Liste—”

“Don’t,” she snapped at him. “I’m sick of people telling me that he probably didn’t make it or that he probably got evacuated or anything else like that. Unless you’ve seen Peter walking around as one of those… things, then you can save your breath.”

Daniels shut his mouth and turned back to the radio. The two sat in silence for a long time before she broke the spell, and it started with a conversation about music. She couldn’t understand that for a car, as that was essentially how she saw the tracked command vehicle, it didn’t have a radio or cassette player. When Daniels pointed out the radio, she laughed at him and explained it as though the corporal was a little slow.

Her laugh wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t unkind or hurtful but more that her default setting was one of defensive aggression; as though she was a much older woman who had been bitten hard by life and chose to get her digs in first.

The two unlikely companions talked for a while as they grew more comfortable around one another, never straying far from the safe topics of conversation so as not to scratch any surface too deeply and risk unveiling their darker thoughts beneath.

“I heard you mention…” Daniels began, shaking his head slightly as he decided to just come straight out with what he meant. “Someone said you had a brother.” She glared at him, her nostrils flaring once and her eyes glazing over with a coldness that spoke volumes about how fast the girl could erect a defensive wall. Daniels saw that and spoke more quickly to prevent her closing down completely. With his eyes cast down to stare through the thick metal beneath his boots, he muttered the words through a tightening throat.

“I had a brother,” he told her. “My twin brother, actually. He was six minutes older than me, which he loved telling people…” Daniels sucked in a sudden breath through his nose and sat upright, delivering the next sentence as though reporting on the weather. “He moved away a few years back, chasing some promotion. The town where he lived is gone now. One of the swarms—did you ever see one of those?”

She shook her head.

“Those swarms were something else. Not just thousands of people in a crowd, but moving like they all became one and poured over things like water.” His face contorted slightly out of anger or repulsion before he mastered his emotions and physically shook the feelings away. “Well, one of those swarms went through where he lived, according to the reports. I have to accept that he’s either one of them, in which case he probably went down in the fight at the island, or he never came back as one of them and is just… dead.”

He gave another simple shrug, as if to indicate that it was just one of those things. It was what it was and shit happens and c’est la vie and any other worthless platitude he could think of to try and feel less wretched about everything. Finally sniffing and looking up through wet eyes at her, he saw his gaze mirrored almost identically.

She gave him a small, sad smile.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” she told him softly. “But mine isn’t dead and he isn’t one of them. I know it.” Daniels gave her the same pitying smile and opened his mouth to respond before the radio headset crackled in time to stop him. He snatched it up and turned up the volume.

“Zero-Bravo, Zero-Bravo, this is Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha.”

“Three-Three-Alpha, Zero-Bravo,” Daniels answered almost breathlessly, agonising his way through the pause that followed.

“Charlie, we’re on our way to you now. Get the kettle on, lad. Out.”

Daniels smiled broadly, a warming feeling of happiness and satisfaction radiating through his body as he turned to regard the girl again. He realised in that moment, even though common sense had told him that his brother was almost certainly gone, his faith that Johnson was still out there had paid off, so her faith that her brother was still out there couldn’t be dismissed just yet.

FOUR

“A few shufflers starting to head our way,” Mac reported to Downes and Lieutenant Lloyd, who were organising the loading of the second ferry.

“Any Limas?” Lloyd asked. The dour-faced Scot shook his head slowly, but the negative reply didn’t offer any hint of optimism.

“Not yet,” he intoned ominously.

It had been that way ever since the cold weather had shown the first signs of moving on. Throughout the coldest time, they had seen far fewer of the Screechers, the shuffling corpses slowed by the unspeakable damage wrought upon their bodies by the elements and other factors. They held no regard for one another, and many were found dragging themselves along roads on worn stubs of fingers, their legs having been crushed into ruin by the trampling feet of their undead comrades.

Since the days became less bitterly freezing cold, the shuffling type of zombie had begun to re-emerge, or at least had started to move enough to catch up with them wherever they were and stagger into sight, like the most catastrophically hungover people; their clothes rotting and falling off them in strips to expose the pale, dead, emaciated flesh underneath.

“How far out?” Downes asked, his undivided attention on his sergeant.

“Few hundred yards and closing. All coming straight up the road.”

“Tell Smiffy he has the green light to start popping them,” Downes instructed, “but nobody else is to fire unless they get in close.” Mac nodded his understanding of the simple orders and turned away to see them fulfilled without another word. Smiffy, the SAS patrol’s Londoner, was still in possession of the suppressed stolen Soviet VAL sniper rifle and had proved his ability to hit undead heads from distance with very little noise, in comparison to the loud reports of other weapons.

“It’s only a matter of time,” Lloyd warned the SAS major, meaning that the one kind of enemy invariably led to the other making an appearance. The addition of a few Limas would complicate their evacuation no end, not to mention run the risk of losing men and bringing the contagion to the safety of the island stronghold.

“Isn’t it always?”

Lloyd smiled back at the taller man, silently acknowledging his point that they were only ever moments away from total disaster.

As the second ferry, loaded with a mixture of bedraggled squadron men and royal marines, chugged slowly backwards to boil a wash of white water against the sloping dock, a raised voice from behind turned Downes’ attention. Eyes darting left and right, he saw in an instant what was happening.

“Limas!” cried Dezzy, left hand cupping his mouth as his right gripped the stock of the dismounted machine gun which he had a worryingly intimate relationship with. His suppressed MP5 bounced against his waist as he jogged back, abandoning the frontal position to move and cover their left flank, where a more pressing danger had presented itself.

Downes glanced over his shoulder, seeing that their ride off the mainland was still blocked from docking by the slow moving second vessel. Gunfire broke out; not the subtle, focused coughs of his team’s weapons as they lined up careful head shots, but the heavy clattering bursts of the MG3 machine guns mounted on the German tanks. The very fact that they were forced to use them conveyed enough of a threat to cause Downes significant concern, and his orders reflected that.

“Recall everyone on foot,” he bawled, “to my position NOW.”

His orders were relayed, only half heard by some in between the chattering bursts of heavy gunfire. Mac reached him first with Smiffy close behind, the long barrel of his sniper rifle jutting over one shoulder as the automatic shotgun appeared in his hands. Downes saw it and followed suit without hesitation, dropping his MP5 on its sling to retrieve Dezzy’s shotgun, which he still carried after their demolitions man refused to part company with his acquired GPMG.

No sense in wasting 9-mil bullets and blowing out the baffles on the MP5s, his mind reasoned. Plus, 12-bore cartridges are a lot easier to come by than bullets.

His uncharacteristic loss of concentration was shattered by Dezzy stitching three short bursts from his belt-fed gun at a shape appearing between two buildings.

“Rückzug! Alle Mann zu mir!” Wolff bawled to his men, who responded immediately by stopping their onslaught with the mounted guns and closing hatches to drop to the ground and run towards the dock.

Lighter gunfire, rapid and staccato, added to the din as the dismounted troopers added fire to the approaching mob with their Uzi submachine guns. A knot of men formed, all facing outwards and cutting down anyone, anything, appearing between the vehicles and around nearby buildings. They weren’t in any immediate danger of being overrun, but their position was undefendable in the long term and they all knew it.

“Fast fucker!” Mac yelled. “Eyes left!”

Downes turned, his eyes passing over the prone form of Dezzy, who was working his machine gun alone like a stone-cold professional, searching for the subject of Mac’s warning.

Then he saw it. Jumping, no, flying through the air like no human body had the right to do. It must have flanked their position, creeping close before leaping from the roof of an abandoned car to attack Dezzy from outside his field of fire. The implications for what Downes saw didn’t even register as he brought up the barrel of the wicked shotgun and fully depressed the trigger, while holding on as tightly as possible with his left hand. The gun bucked, shaking his entire body violently as it spat the contents of half a dozen heavy cartridges in the direction of Dezzy’s impending death.

He fired on instinct, not properly aiming the gun or even holding it, so that it couldn’t do him damage, but every shot seemed to spit from the barrel in a gout of flame so slowly that he began to fear he would fail his man.

The fourth shot blew away the lower part of the creature’s extended left arm, the inertia of the lead spinning the body slightly as physics did what it did best. The fifth shot seemed to hit nothing, but the sixth caught the Lima’s spinning skull to blast away the top of the dome like a boiled egg being expertly opened.

Time seemed to return to normal speed as the ruined attacker slammed onto Dezzy’s back and forced the air from his lungs with a pained oompff.

“Dez!” Smiffy screamed, running towards the intertwined bodies and lining up a kick to the jaw of the zombie. Downes saw that his shot hadn’t killed it at all, merely stunned it, and watched in utter horror as he tried to raise his gun again, only to realise that any shot would invariably pepper the SAS.

Smiffy’s kick connected directly under the jaw, which was already beginning to open in anticipation of a bite of warm flesh. The open maw snapped shut with a sound louder than a pistol shot as Downes saw two small, white projectiles fly out of the thing’s mouth in opposing directions. The force of the kick was so great that it took Smiffy off his feet to land on Dez’s back and force another grunt of breathless pain from him. Downes looked at what was half of his patrol vulnerable on the ground, taking the initiative and raising the brutal shotgun as the filthy creature was just clear of them.

But he didn’t fire. Seeing the Lima rocked back on its knees, upper body arched backwards at a grotesquely unnatural angle, Downes lowered the shotgun and fought against the spasms in his stomach as he took in the sight.

With his last shot, which had opened up the top of the skull, combined with the savage force of the kick, the thing’s brain had leapt up and out to hang in gory ruin over the right side of its face. Milky eyes fluttered as the damage wasn’t quite enough to end the creature, and the sight of that fluttering involuntarily tightened Downes’ finger around the trigger for him to destroy the pulpy mess.

“Fuck’s sake!” Dezzy groaned as he rolled out from under Smiffy, who was cursing and clutching his right ankle.

“We must be leaving, Major!” Wolff shouted, tugging at his shoulder. He nodded, helping Mac drag the other two troopers to their feet to half carry them to the last ferry, which was finally approaching the dock. Downes looked around, seeing a few zombies but marking all of them as the faster type from their easily recognisable movements. Gunfire continued all around him, but without him and his team adding to it, the encroaching enemy were making concerning progress.

“Into the water,” he shouted, repeating himself louder until Wolf shouted the translation in German. Louder cracks of gunfire sounded then, making the major look up to search for the source as his legs felt the savage cold of the water he’d stepped into. The second ferry, stopped just out of the way of their own, sprouted all of their marines pouring volleys of shots into the approaching enemy to buy them the time they needed to escape.

The water went suddenly deep, submerging many of them as they paddled desperately towards the low hull of the ferry and the safety it promised. Hands reached down to grasp at Downes’ soaked jacket and haul him aboard, in turn dragging Dezzy with him, as he wouldn’t release the winded soldier.

The two men were dumped on the deck unceremoniously and lay on their backs side by side.

“Did you see that?” Dezzy asked through gasps. “The fucking thing… flanked me…”

“I saw it,” Downes told him, saying nothing more as he didn’t like to share his darker thoughts.

* * *

Downes, in spite of being intimately acquainted with hardship and twin concepts of cold and wet, was shivering uncontrollably by the time their boat docked on the picturesque Isle of Skye.

Low cloud shrouded the towering rock crags to their left, obscuring the true height of the cliff face, but to their front the small port was anything but idyllic.

Soldiers in full NBC suits, Noddy suits as his men called them, stared anonymously at them as the circular holes showed only their eyes inside their respirators. It was less the way they looked at the bedraggled men and women arriving and more the emplaced gun positions that caused the greatest concern. The dock had evidently been prepared to perform the task of quarantine admission, given that metal mesh grids had been hastily welded together to form a sealed walkway for them to pass through. The men from the island piloting the boats remained onboard, staying to the upper decks where they didn’t come into contact with anyone representing a potential infection risk.

“All weapons and equipment into the buckets,” shouted a voice muffled by a respirator and dulled by repetitive boredom. “Keep moving forwards… All weapons and equipment into the buckets…”

Recovered from the impacts during their brief crossing, Dezzy stiffened beside his officer.

“Are these Green Army muppets?” he grumbled, worrying that their more exotic arsenal would be seen as novelty toys by men unaccustomed to more than a few weapons.

“Not all of them,” Mac answered from behind them. “Look at the rooftops.” Both Downes and Dezzy looked up, spotting the shape of a rifle held by one man and recognising it as a Colt. “Got to be our lot mixed in among them.”

“Classic, aashi—” Smiffy said, gasping in pain as he put too much weight on his injured ankle. The shouted instructions continued to be repeated as they dutifully shuffled forwards. When it came to their turn at the cut-out section of heavy mesh to deposit their trade tools into what looked like hastily repurposed plastic fish tubs, the man calling out the orders stopped to stare as the four men spent longer than everyone else removing everything from their persons that could be classed as lethal. Smiffy hesitated, the liberated Soviet rifle clutched in both hands as he fought with every fibre of his body, not wanting to let it go.

“Put it down,” Mac said unkindly. “It’s just a gun.”

“It’s bloody not!” Smiffy protested. “It’s mine, an—”

He stopped talking as Downes’ bearded face spun to fix his eyes with a shadowed look. Wordlessly, he placed the VAL into the bucket as though laying a beloved pet to rest, before standing tall and limping onwards without a second glance.

They deposited next to no spare ammunition for any of their weapons, having expended most of their rounds since getting back to the UK so long ago and starting the rollercoaster ride they’d been on ever since.

“One at a time,” came the next shouted orders, “step through and remove all items of clothing…” the enclosed walkway split into two lanes, both intermittently opening up and sealing again as solid metal sheets slid open and closed to admit one person at a time.

The backlog of civilians, understandably hesitant about that phase, though unconcerned about relinquishing their weapons—the reversal of the soldiers’ concerns— passed more slowly, as the military personnel were oddly more accustomed to getting naked in front of strangers.

The enclosed sections were lit by bright yellow lamps which forced Downes to shield his eyes as he went through to receive more instructions from another suited soldier.

“All your clothes off,” he said with as little effort as was required, “into the bag.”

Downes stripped, feeling the soreness of wet clothes already so uncomfortable through travel and sweat. He still shivered and his skin was cold to the touch, which caused him concern; he was well trained enough and experienced enough to recognise the early signs of exposure and hypothermia, but explaining that right then would have delayed the process so he kept his mouth shut. He was struggling to take his boots off, so the soldier passed him a short-bladed knife to cut the laces. His feet were in shit state. Pale, translucent skin peeled off in large patches to expose the sore pink beneath. No deployment he’d ever been on had left so little time to maintain himself.

“Arms up,” the speaker waited until Downes had complied. “Spin around.” Again a pause. “Okay, put this on and keep moving through.”

Downes accepted a plastic packet containing a dark blue boiler suit with a chunky zip so awkward for his numb fingers to operate that it smacked of a government bulk buy from the lowest bidder. The boiler suit was accessorised with a pair of wellington boots after he had been asked his size.

“T…Ten…” he stammered through chattering teeth.

He was handed a pair with a large ‘12’ stamped on the sole but he didn’t care.

The separation ahead of him slid back, forcing him to squint again from the harsh daylight obscured by the clouds, and he shuffled forwards keeping his hands wrapped around himself.

The next station in the conveyor system where he was instructed to stop required him to place a thermometer under his tongue and wait in silence until the hands of a cheap, plastic clock ticked around and a thickly gloved hand reached out to take the instrument and inspect it. Satisfied that he wasn’t running a fever—as would have been evident to anyone bothering to look at how close to hypothermia he was—he was waved through the final obstacle of a heavy, rubber curtain and into a tented area where the noise of so many people talking at once assaulted his senses like a flashbang.

His nose directed him through the crowd of civilians and squadron men and marines to where he detected the origin of the coffee aroma, but his uncontrollably shaking hands couldn’t manage to manipulate the tap on the urn. Panic rose inside him, so uncommon for a man who had fought through lethal warzones for the last year of his life, not to mention all of the trials he had faced before.

The simple fact that he couldn’t manage to pour himself a cup of coffee threatened such a debilitating wave of anxiety that he almost dropped the mug as his knees gave out on him.

Before he could hit the ground, strong hands grasped his upper arms and held him up to pull him back to his feet.

“Allow me, Major,” captain Palmer’s impeccably mannered and cultured voice sounded softly in his ear. The cup was taken from his unresisting hand as the major fought a wave of dizziness which forced him to grip the edge of the flimsy trestle table for balance.

“Sugar? Milk?” Palmer enquired.

“He’ll take both,” Mac’s gruff voice announced as the Scottish sergeant shouldered his way through the crowd to appraise his officer with a practised eye.

“Grab a couple, if you don’t mind, Captain,” Mac told him, still not taking his eyes off Downes before grabbing the nearest civilian by the sleeve and pulling him towards him. “You, go get me three blankets.” The man nodded, his eyes wide, and disappeared to comply.

“We need to get you sat down,” Mac said in a tone that was probably intended to be soothing but still sounded like a threat to anyone who didn’t know him. He walked the major towards the small gas-bottle heater which was the focal point for so many cold people, and his loud voice cleared a path like Moses.

“Move your arses!” he bawled. “You! Clear out of the way.” This last was aimed at a young man who fled from his choice position in front of the glowing bars radiating heat, just in time before Downes was deposited directly in front of the heater and Palmer arrived to thrust the cup containing hot, sugary liquid into his hands. Before Mac could say or do anything else, a speaker erupted inside the fenced shelter.

“Commanding officers report to quarantine exit. I repeat, commanding officers to quarantine exit.”

Mac looked up, meeting Palmer’s eyes and nodding to convey that the tank captain had to speak for them all. Maxwell, filling the boots of his predecessor perfectly, appeared behind the captain’s right shoulder. Mac’s eyebrows met in the middle, not hiding his response to the other arrival as Palmer Senior turned to find his younger brother had fallen in with them, somehow making his bland boiler suit look like the high fashion he was born to parade.

Captain Palmer, too exhausted to be careful with his words, elected to give his instructions to his younger brother under the guise of speaking to the NCOs. He spoke, fixing his brother with a direct stare that made it obvious he was talking to him.

“Leave the talking to me,” he said quietly. “I rather suspect we aren’t as welcome as one would hope.”

FIVE

Eight days prior

The US Air Force C-130 transport plane banged hard onto the tarmac as the engine shrieked and roared in full reverse, with a juddering running throughout the airframe which threatened to break it apart. The pilot’s warning to brace for a ‘combat landing’ meant nothing to Professor Grewal, serving only to panic him into believing they were dropping down into a war zone. So when the wheels hit the ground hard and bounced the heavy cargo plane back up into the air, to reverse his body’s grip on gravity so suddenly and sickeningly, he cried out in panic, thinking that they were crashing.

His hearth thumped in his chest almost as hard as the screeching tyres did as they hit the tarmac a second time and let out a tortured noise before the plane rose into the air again. The fuselage skewed sideways, like a powerful car would do when the driver floored the throttle from a standing start, only with the sensations being reversed so that forwards was backwards and up was down. It simply overwhelmed him, forcing from him another yell of panic.

On the fourth or fifth impact, punctuated by the tortured, muted sounds of rubber on tarmac, his body tried to tell his mind that they were slowing down even if he wouldn’t believe it. When his brainstem overrode his choice to hold his breath and he gasped in a deep lungful, he finally understood what the pilot meant by the term ‘combat landing’.

The headphones he forgot he was wearing crackled into life and played a short burst of static before the pilot’s muffled voice filled his ears.

“Thank you for flying zombie airways. We know you have no choice, so we don’t really care if you enjoyed your flight. Be sure to take all of your shit with you when you leave.”

The plane turned a slow circle on the spot, so close to the end of the runway, which fortunately Grewal didn’t have a forward view of, as one of the uniformed soldiers nearby unstrapped and stood up to stretch. The man was average height with a stocky build but other than the fearsome beard and a stare that could penetrate steel, he seemed entirely… average. The other men on his team seemed similarly fit, as if they could swim five miles of open ocean before breakfast each day, and all of them were equally as dismissive of the two scientists and their small staff.

They didn’t exactly get off on the right foot when the Brit assumed they were there to carry his research equipment, which had been dumped on the tarmac at the airport near Langley. He hadn’t seen the team come in via chopper from Little Creek, so he’d had no idea who or what they were when he’d given them instructions on carrying the crates onto the plane.

Grewal neither knew nor cared that the US Air Force pilots were acting on behalf of the CIA, nor did he care that the men and women providing their security were part of the US Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He knew that some of the staff attached to what he considered to be his project were with Chambers and had come direct from the CDC, but with so many different people from various places using a whole raft of acronyms and reporting to different admirals or generals or politicians, he’d lost track and managed to confuse a US Navy Seal team with grunts who were there to carry his boxes.

He still hadn’t had the opportunity to make up for his rudeness, not that he ever tried hard to consider the feelings of others, but something about the unsettlingly still man in charge of that team made him feel as though he’d committed a grave error that he needed to rectify soon.

“Come on, Doc,” Agent Fisher said as he moved past towards the ramp and broke the eye contact between the tough soldier and the terrified scientist. Fisher had swapped the Langley camouflage of his grey suit for the more practical black military style clothing, bearing no badges of rank or any insignia at all to denote who or what he was.

He wore a black vest over his anonymous-looking uniform and carried weapons, as did the other two men sporting identical haircuts to accompany their outfits, and Grewal tried to recall their names. Wood? Carter? He shook his head as he realised that he didn’t care anyway.

“At ease, Master Chief,” Fisher said in a tone somewhere between sarcastic and respectful as he passed the staring SEAL. Grewal was forced to follow and pass unnervingly close to the man he was certain hated him; but then again, he had grown accustomed to being hated everywhere he went. Since being rescued by British Special Forces from the London lab which had been the epicentre of the outbreak, he hadn’t been many places other than US military bases. Still, everyone there hated him too, even if he had created the virus only by accident while carrying out the orders of both his and the United States governments.

He shuffled along behind the agent, eager to be off the plane which had so recently tried to kill him, and eager too to get away from the malevolence hiding behind the beard that still tracked his movements like a predator.

“Are you Fisher?” a man wearing British army camouflage uniform asked confidently as he and a small entourage approached the rear ramp of the plane. They had disgorged from a pair of dull, green military vehicles parked nearby, and from their physiques and bearing, all had the obvious look of fighting men.

“That’s me,” the CIA man said, stepping up to greet the speaker.

“Colonel Kelly,” the man said, offering a handshake and half crushing the agent’s hand with enough force to push a vein out in the side of his own neck. Grewal shot a quick look at Fisher, who still maintained the poker face he wore permanently, even if one eyelid did flicker a tiny bit. The Colonel offered no other information, and Grewal guessed that was either because the agent knew who he was or else the man just enjoyed secrecy. He turned, pacing away and expecting to be followed as he continued to talk.

“We’ve arranged a facility for you to use,” he explained. “It’s basic, hardly the standard I imagine you’re accustomed to, but needs must.” Fisher ignored the jibe at him needing a five star hotel.

“Have the requirements been met?”

“Isolated location, secure perimeter, given that three sides of it are the Atlantic, and a power supply,” Kelly responded. “Like I said, it’s basic.” He reached the driver’s side of the vehicle he’d arrived in and opened it, pausing before climbing back in and peering down the short runway towards the sight of three transport trucks lumbering towards them.

“You’ll be taken directly there,” he told the visitors. “I have a small force in place to ensure you aren’t disturbed.” Something about the way he narrowed his eyes when he said that made Fisher think he meant that they weren’t to leave their basic facility. “And other than that, I expect you to conduct all of your experiments without affecting the population here.” He climbed behind the wheel without another word, the three other soldiers doing the same before the engine barked into life. It rattled away under the kind of acceleration a person might use when the maintenance of the vehicle wasn’t his or her personal concern. This left the gaggle of Americans alone and waiting for their convoy to arrive.

“I think we can safely assume they aren’t exactly pleased to see us,” Fisher opined to the others, his gaze resting finally on Professor Grewal, who was transfixed by the look that implied he was solely responsible for that, too. Movement directly beside him made him jump and move away, to find that the leader of the US Navy SEAL team had appeared at his side without Grewal being aware in the slightest of his approach.

“Master Chief,” Fisher said, “I trust you and your team can be ready for an excursion by sixteen hundred?” The man nodded, still not saying a word, and turned to requisition one of the approaching trucks for his team and their gear.

Grewal walked back to the plane, hurrying with his hands out in front of him saying, “No, no, no!” as he rushed to stop one of the uniformed US Army soldiers from handling a piece of equipment too roughly. The man from the MRIID put it down carefully and stepped back, leaving Grewal to protect the sensitive centrifuge and oversee the rest of the equipment getting loaded onto the transport.

“Bloody ham-fisted buffoo—”

“Everything okay, Doc?” Fisher’s voice startled him and elicited a small yelp from him as he clutched the lab equipment tighter to his chest.

“Yes, yes, I err…” Fisher slapped him on the back a little too hard to be entirely friendly.

“Relax,” he told him. “A broken test tube ain’t exactly the worst thing that could happen, if you catch my drift…”

* * *

The term basic, was something of an understatement. Their facility, such as it was, was a farm and outbuildings which had been hastily repurposed, and the previous occupants displaced to God only knew where. It was chosen for location, not that Grewal understood that. Situated on the south-western tip of the craggy, mountainous island they now inhabited, the narrow approach to what was now their base could be cut off by a small force to minimise the risk of anything getting loose. When that was explained to him, he nodded sagely and offered his opinion.

“Like Leonidas’ defence of Thermopylae?”

“Interesting that you choose a reference where all the good guys died,” Fisher said, a mirthful smirk adorning his face.

The rooms of the main house and other buildings were portioned out, with the main, high-ceilinged shed being the main attraction. Judging by the smell, it had previously housed livestock, but the hint of recent blacksmithing hung in the air to mingle with the residual aroma of shit. That metalwork had been the construction of a series of small, steel mesh cubes, evidently the holding cages for what would be their test subjects.

Test subjects, he thought sourly, huffing to himself and earning a mild look of query from Fisher. He shook his head to deflect any questions, and instead began organising where he wanted the equipment unpacked.

“When can you start collecting specimens?” Chambers asked, standing near to Grewal but wearing an expression of distaste to make it clear that their being on the same side wasn’t by choice on his part.

“This evening,” Fisher answered simply. “You’ll have something to work with tomorrow. The MRIID guys will run the security side of this facility and they have orders to put down anything not under direct and total control. That understood?”

The two scientists caught each other’s eye for a fleeting second, then both nodded, sharing an understanding in that moment that they were on the threshold of something either very important or else very dangerous.

The plan was simple. They would take samples from infected hosts and run the same tests that they had against the pure viral strain back in the labs on the other side of the Atlantic. Those updated samples, or ‘real world’ samples as Grewal called them, could throw up any number of complications to spoil their perfect world lab results. Numerous factors could affect the viability or severity of the infection, making it more or less resilient to any possible ‘cure’ they could devise. As if reading his thoughts, Fisher asked them both a question.

“Don’t give me long answers,” he warned them, “but can you make a cure we can use?” Chambers and Grewal looked at one another

‘Cure’ was a subjective word, given that those infected would be killed off, but technically speaking it could cure the rest of the world by killing the infection in the hosts. Chambers sucked in a breath and pursed his lips, radiating anger that his years of experience and research were treated like everything was a yes or no answer when it came to anyone from the military or the government. Grewal adopted a different approach.

“If our compounds work the same in the field as they did in the lab, then yes,” he told the agent simply, having gone over this very subject with the man more than once already.

“If,” Fisher answered. “Lot of ifs involved with things nowadays…”

“Well,” Grewal said in a tone of voice designed to end the conversation, “if we don’t get any test subjects, there will be some definite nos.”

SIX

Johnson was more comfortable driving the Warrior than he expected to be. It was a vast improvement on the previous generation of fighting vehicles he’d driven before, and combined all of the things he liked and added a whole raft of new tricks and gadgetry. He still had that unavoidable fifteen metres of limited vision when he drove closed-down, with the hatches sealed to protect them from anything outside that felt like biting them. He mused that they—the developers of such mighty war machines—would only solve that problem when they gave the drivers television sets with externally mounted cameras, so that they could play the most expensive of arcade games.

“Left at the next T-junction,” came Bufford’s voice through his earphones. “Left, left.”

The repetition was something so familiar to the military men; men who could ill-afford a mistake when half hearing words with a subtle difference such as ‘no’ and ‘go’. Johnson acknowledged the instructions, grateful for them, because he couldn’t make out the road signs clearly after such a short time without the routine cutting back of trees and hedges. Even after the bitter winter had forced so much life to retreat in the exceptionally low temperatures, nature was rapidly reclaiming the land.

Another voice cut through to him, this one female and curious in accent and inflection, but the tone of it made things clear to Johnson that the speaker was suffering.

“We have to stop,” Astrid Larsen said, her voice sounding thicker and more sluggish than usual.

“Is everything okay back there?” he asked, concerned that something was wrong in the rear troop-carrying section of the armoured beast he was nursing along the relatively smooth roads.

“The fuel tank,” Larsen said with evident difficulty. “It is moving and making us all sick.”

Immediately Johnson eased up on the controls, more like those of an aeroplane rather than a conventional car, to slow their ride and hopefully reduce the effects they were feeling. He cursed himself for not recalling the rumour around the base when these new vehicles arrived for testing; that their transparent fuel bladder caused seasickness to those sitting next to it in the back.

He paused at the junction, seeing a pub on the opposite side of the road with an almost empty car park and he decided that it was more than open enough to offer them a chance to rest. He called it out to Bufford sitting behind and above him in the commander’s position, waiting as the man assessed the ground through his viewport before he agreed.

The Warrior rolled in, turning almost on the spot instead of looping a wide arc to swing around like a car would, and came to a stop in the middle of the open tarmac.

“Is it clear?” Larsen’s voice came over the radio. Johnson peered out of his own limited view, seeing nothing to cause him any worry, and waited for the SBS man to give the word.

“Looks good,” Bufford declared. “Let’s take ten minutes.”

Hatches open, rear doors wide, the armoured fighting vehicle looked oddly out of place in the semi-idyllic setting of the country drinking hole. The two abandoned cars sitting on flat tyres, and the overgrown, neglected feel of the building and beer garden spoiled it somewhat, but those in the back didn’t seem to care for those small things as they spilled out to steady themselves and gratefully suck in long breaths of chill air.

Johnson and Bufford, both with weapons in hand and eyes constantly roving for threats, didn’t ask them such stupid questions like enquiring if they were okay; merely allowed them the time to settle their stomachs after sitting beside a huge, sloshing fuel tank for the past hour. Peter, clambering down the dappled green hull, jogged to Amber and knelt down to her. He asked if she felt sick, but the girl just smirked and shrugged one shoulder up to her ear as if to say that she was fine and couldn’t understand why Astrid and Kimberley were so affected.

The sight of the two children interacting, still a welcome novelty that made the adults both happy and at the same time tragically sad to watch, was interrupted by the sound of glass breaking.

It wasn’t a smash, not a shattering blow of a window imploding under force, but was more of a ringing, snapping sound, as if someone had leaned on a single pane too hard. All heads whipped towards the source of the noise and saw nothing coming from the building to indicate an immediate threat, but still they readied their weapons as Peter ushered Amber back towards the safety of the vehicle.

Guns up into shoulders, with the exception of Kimberley and Peter, who held their melee weapons with sweating palms and formed the second rank of their small defence, they held their ground to see if anything presented itself.

Nothing happened. The eerie quiet of the car park told them nothing, as sweating hands gripped weapons tighter in preparation for an impending confrontation with the dead, as feet shuffled nervously to adopt the perfect stance in readiness. A gentle change in the breeze pushed the light wind into their faces and carried with it a hint of sweet, necrotic flesh that they recognised all too well.

“What the hell are we doing?” Peter asked in a hushed whisper from the back of their formation. “Why don’t we just leave?”

The solution to their peril, so simplistic and easy to recognise for someone so young and logical, stunned the trained soldiers for a heartbeat. Their heads had been filled with angles of fire, approach routes of the enemy and their numbers; with the risk of the faster ones being in play, and all manner of other problems that Peter’s mind wasn’t encumbered by through an overload of knowledge.

Johnson spoke first, mimicking the same low whisper that Peter had adopted.

“Everyone inside the wagon,” he hissed. “Nice and slow.”

As they turned to file back inside the safety of so many layers of metal armour, a new noise broke the spell. A loud bang with an accompanying crack, followed quickly by a second with a louder, more worrying sound of smashing glass and the tuneful tinkle of the broken shards hitting the ground below. As one, their eyes roamed slowly upwards to the first-floor window, breath catching in throats as a collective series of gasps fired like a ragged volley.

From that window, only fractionally too small for a fully grown adult to squeeze through, protruded the head and left arm of a Screecher which moaned at them and gnashed white teeth set in receded, black gums.

“Now would be good,” Bufford said as his feet propelled him towards the side of the tank. He dropped his weapon to turn and hoist Peter high up to grasp the top of the hull and begin to pour himself through the open hatch. The sound of the rear doors closing came loudly, but not as loudly as the splintering of wood and more breaking glass as the unseen door holding back the hungry monsters gave way.

Johnson, moving lithely for a big man with all the encouragement of a gruesome death at his back, knelt on top of the Warrior and slipped the short-barrelled shotgun from his shoulder to point it in the direction of the building.

His intention was to provide cover, should any of the bastards break ranks and make for one of his group before they were safely ensconced, but if he was honest with himself, he relished the prospect of firing the gun to relieve some of the pent-up rage he had been bottling up inside himself for far too long.

“We’re in,” Bufford reported. “Let’s go!”

“Hold on,” Johnson said, telling himself that he was in little danger and that he needed to satisfy a curiosity that had just presented itself to him. He wanted to know, after such a brutal winter, which had followed the hot end to the previous summer and the short, sharp shock of a brief autumn season, how the ones preserved inside had degraded. They’d seen well enough how those zombies stuck in the open had turned out. They were generally ragged, emaciated and pale-to-the-point-of translucent skinned. But his curiosity, mixed with a hint of bloodlust, kept him in position atop the armoured vehicle.

Behind him, on the higher section of the hull, he heard the hatch bang shut and lock to indicate Bufford’s escape to safety. His own hatch, to the front and left of the vehicle, was open and inviting for him to step down into, but still he didn’t make a move.

“Come on!” Bufford’s voice yelled from inside, the sound travelling out through the open hatch to him. He turned to look at the hatch again, only spinning back to face the pub at another, far more insistent noise than the shouting of his comrades. A boot-sole crunching stone—one of those sounds that the mind understood deep down far more quickly than the brain could verbally identify —followed by the desperate sucking inwards of breath in what he knew was preparation for the ungodly shriek the things let out.

It never got the chance to finish the call to arms, as Johnson’s blast took it full in the chest to throw it down in broken ruin. He’d loaded the gun with the heaviest of hunting shot, effectively launching a handful of small ball bearings into the body at brutally short range before the pattern of the projectiles had time to spread out. The body hit the ground, landing on its back with a crunch as a second, heavier sound copied it. That sound, Johnson saw with disgust, was the head-first impact of the mindless monster from the upstairs window finally wriggling itself free to plummet the short drop to the car park, where it met an instant end, the inertia of the weight of the body cracking the skull to switch off the lights for good.

More spilled out around the corner of the pub and just as Johnson pumped another cartridge into the chamber on instinct, good sense prevailed as his mind recognised the danger he was putting himself—putting all of them—in, as one of the tightly-packed crowd of overstaying late-night drinkers was leaping over the front ranks with inhuman agility to reach its canned meal first.

Johnson turned, heading for the hatch just as a mechanical whirring sound above his head forced him to duck underneath the swinging barrel of the main gun. Bufford, likely just as eager for some payback as Johnson was, swung the cupola towards the threat just as the SSM threw himself inside and slammed down the hatch.

The deafening, chattering racket of the main coaxial chain gun hammering rounds into the mob blotted out every other sound in the world until the hatch was sealed. That gun, firing at the closest range it could manage with the barrel fully depressed, tore bloody ruin through the pack to turn the previously quiet car park into a butcher’s shop in seconds.

Johnson threw on the headset to hear the tail end of Bufford’s opinion.

“…oody hell are you playing at? Get us out of here!”

Johnson fired up the massive engine, throwing it into gear and taking off fast enough to buck the Warrior’s nose up into the air and force the still-firing gun to tear great chunks of stone out of the building in a sweeping arc as they made their escape.

He didn’t let up until they were half a mile down the road, then he realised he’d gone in the wrong direction and slowed to report his error to the others.

“We’ve gone bloody east,” he reported, annoyance heavy in his words of self-criticism. “I need to turn us around and go back past the pub. Buffs?”

“Oh,” the SBS man chuckled, “I’m ready for another pass. Still not letting me use the artillery?”

Johnson ignored the quip, only giving a low growl in response, not wanting to expend a valuable piece of ordnance by sending a high explosive shell into a pub housing a few Screechers and a now-deceased Lima.

“Give them another pass with the co-axial,” he said. “I’ll stick to the far right of the road to give you space; make sure none of them gets near us.”

“My bloody pleasure,” Bufford responded.

The pub came into his limited field of view in under a minute, and he didn’t slow to allow his gunner the time to enjoy himself, but blasted past at close to their top speed amid a roar of diesel engine revs. The gun began barking and burping its rounds at the strung-out crowd milling about in search of the promised meal that had vanished before their eyes. Johnson steered to the furthest side of the road away from the building to keep his distance, but was still forced to line up two of them to be crushed under his right side tracks.

In a fleeting moment, they were past, and even though the cupola had swung all the way around to continue firing on the move, the gun quickly fell silent.

Johnson took a few deep breaths, settling himself back into a more sedate cruising speed, and let out a sigh. In his earphones, he heard amused chuckling rising into uncontrollable laughter which went on for slightly longer than he wanted to tolerate.

“What’s so bloody funny?” he snapped at Bufford.

“I… I was just thinking…” Bufford replied in a voice that implied he was wiping tears from his eyes. “That’s probably got to be the longest pub lock-in of all time…”

SEVEN

Professor Grewal, along with Professor Chambers and his small team, set up the lab equipment in readiness for having something to work with. As per their requests, banks of fridges and freezers filled one wall of the former livestock barn under bright lights and their samples of potential vaccine cultures had been painstakingly transferred to the freezers from mobile cold storage, using liquid nitrogen.

Grewal, finding himself at a momentary loss for useful activity, wandered over to where the stainless-steel urn bubbled away keeping the water warm for their drinks. He used a plastic spoon to shovel a decidedly unmeasured amount of instant coffee into a polystyrene cup, before splashing the almost-boiling water in. He looked around for sugar and fresh milk to accompany it, instead finding only an off-brand powdered creamer. He picked it up, inspecting it as he might a particularly virulent strain of bacteria, and decided against contaminating the drink with lumps of the stuff.

“Yo, Doc,” barked a loud voice from behind him, forcing a small yelp from his lips as he jumped and turned around to face one of the men from the US Army department responsible for all matters regarding infectious diseases.

Grewal opened his mouth to explain for the thousandth time that he was a professor, and hadn’t been a mere doctorate holder for well in excess of a decade, when he saw the inane look on the man’s face and decided not to waste his breath.

“Yes?”

“The frogmen are on the horn, saying they’re coming in hot with a couple of new buddies for you.”

* * *

Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Miller was unhappy about his orders. He made representations about those orders, even so far as requesting a meeting with the base commander prior to shipping out, only to arrive at the commander’s office to find the man’s desk chair occupied by a guy in a grey suit that screamed ‘Langley’ directly into his brain.

As soon as he met the man, Fisher, he claimed to be called, although Miller always knew his type to have forgettable fake names, he also knew that arguing was pointless. Orders were orders, and it looked like his orders came directly from the CIA.

He’d changed his approach then, and instead of standing to attention and addressing a senior officer as he had planned to do, he removed his headgear and flopped into a seat without asking for permission. Treating the man like an equal, even if the son of a bitch was technically in charge, set Miller’s stall out plain as day.

“So,’ he mused in a tone of obvious annoyance. “You want us to fly to butt-fuck nowhere, England—”

“Scotland,” Fisher interrupted annoyingly.

“—butt-fuck nowhere, Scotland, and take a boat to the mainland where we’ll be capturing live specimens of infected humans. I got that right?”

“In a nutshell,” Fisher told him, politician’s smile not wavering.

“And your intel package is complete and up to date?” Miller went on.

“Count on it.”

“And how do you propose we go about securing said infected assholes?”

Fisher leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was the smile of a man who knew he had already won, because unless the SEAL wanted to commit mutiny and refuse to carry out his orders, he was stuck with them.

“Master Chief,” he said smoothly. “I’ll leave the finer details of that matter to you entirely. Just get it done.” Miller banged his clenched fist hard on the top of the oak desk, knocking down a framed picture of a square-jawed man in an officer’s uniform shaking hands with a man who looked remarkably like Reagan, and he snarled at the CIA agent.

“Easy for you to say, four thousand miles away in your office.” Fisher’s smile evaporated and he leaned forwards to look directly into the eyes of the soldier.

“I’ll be there with you, Miller,” he said quietly. “And just because I wear a suit now, don’t think I didn’t get my hands dirty. I’ve seen shit all over South America and the Persian Gulf, and that’s got me where I am. You don’t like your orders? Tough shit. I’d prefer you to be a willing participant in this, but I asked the president for a team of elite operators and he sent me you. If you’re not up to the job, I can request the US Army or the Marine Cor—”

“We’ll do it,” Miller interrupted before Fisher went on to commit further blasphemy. “Just don’t think we agree on everything.” He stood and replaced his headgear before fixing Fisher with a hard look. “You got that?”

* * *

“Got it!” Miller’s man, Hernandez, called from behind him after Miller had pointed out the low section of rocky beach he wanted to land at. The six SEALs had enough time to stow their gear and tool up for the immediate mission, as Miller reminded them that the sooner they got it out of the way, the sooner they could rest up in safety.

They had met as a team and thrown ideas out together after reading the briefing dossier on their newest enemy. It was simpler than understanding the fighting capabilities of a foreign power, because these things only had one tactic, and that tactic would be the same the world over.

They swarmed en masse, and they tried to eat you.

Miller had told them, over and over, that they would only engage small groups and lure them in ones and twos into their cargo net trap. Then, with their ‘volunteers’ snagged in the nets, they would drag them directly back to the facility on the island just off the mainland, without coming into contact with them and risking any of them catching a bite. Sure enough, those ‘volunteers’ would be wet through from being dragged along a small stretch of icy water, but he passed that off as a tactical choice, given that the reports from the British claimed that low temperatures slowed their movements.

What bothered him most of all was the reports of some of the infected displaying increased physical and mental abilities over the horde. As much as Grewal and Chambers wanted one of those, Miller was reluctant to make it his priority until he’d had his own boots on the ground and seen how badly the shit had really hit the fan.

Hernandez cut the engine before they neared the shore, floating in as silently as possible to bump and scrape the boat onto the rocks in the shallows before the others jumped out to drag it ashore. The bundled cargo net was carried out from the prow of their small, black inflatable and they patrolled fast up the shore to get away from their infiltration method just like they had drilled to do.

The fact that they were fighting a new kind of enemy didn’t register, but Miller wasn’t completely ignorant of having to adapt their tactics, which is why he assessed the narrow street of what appeared to have been a small coastal village and formulated the execution of his plan.

“Shepherd, Coleman,” he hissed in a low voice designed to carry only as far as it needed to. “Take the north and south rooftops over that chokepoint.” He indicated the empty street ahead with a bladed hand. “Hernandez, ready on the boat. Jackson, on me with the cargo net.”

“Where do you need me?” the youngest and newest member of their elite team asked. Miller smiled at the kid in the dark, not that he saw it.

“You’re the bait, Willy.”

* * *

“I’d like to formally lodge my complaint about this mission, Master Chief,” Walt Wilson complained quietly as he stood alone in the street. He didn’t mind being called Kid or Willy, hell he enjoyed the hazing as it meant the SEALs must have liked him to some degree, even if they hadn’t gone to war as a team until then. But what he didn’t like was being bait.

“Shut up,” one of the two Daves hissed from the low rooftop to his left. Miller and Jackson were out of sight too, keeping watch over their area of operations, leaving only Hernandez a few paces out to sea with the boat’s engine ticking over, ready to open the throttle wide.

“You’re doing fine,” Miller’s voice sounded low and reassuring, before he raised it slightly to encompass the whole team within earshot. “Flare out.”

A pop and a whooshing, hissing noise seared along the street, bathing the quaint abandoned houses in a fiery red glow. They stayed at high alert, every sense dialled way up in anticipation of their first encounter with the enemy. The flare burned fiercely ahead of their position, giving off more noise than they’d expected, but the sheer emptiness of the world, devoid of any trace of life, seemed to amplify any disruption to the silent dark.

As the glow began to fade and the noise abated, Miller’s nerves began to increase as he considered their next move.

Should he fire another flare and double-down on a tactic that might not work? Should he relocate his team and try the same thing further inland?

As he was weighing up the options, a voice cut through to focus him completely.

“Contacts. Three, approaching from the east.” Miller slowly inched his head around the side of the rough surface of the bricks to see three dark shapes silhouetted against the fading red light.

“Hold position,” he told his men. “Kid? Make a noise.”

“Make a…?” Wilson started to say before trailing off. He drew himself up, feeling alien as he stood tall out of cover, and cleared his throat.

“Yo!” he yelled, leaving the single syllable to echo down the artificial canyon of the terraced buildings.

“Yo?” Miller asked, chuckling. “First contact with the enemy and you decide to lead with ‘yo’?”

“Well,” Wilson shrugged, “you kinda put me on the spot… I didn’t know wh—”

“Look alive!” Coleman snapped from above them. They all snapped their focus back to their front, where the shouted word had sparked a slow, cumbersome approach to their position.

“I, er,” Wilson said. “I don’t like this…”

Miller ignored him. He carefully watched the three figures shambling closer through the red, smoky haze of the dying backlight. He was certain that none of them was the reported faster type, the ones who had been seen running and jumping instead of walking like drunks, but he also knew that they didn’t exactly have a mastery of their chosen battlefield.

“Master Chi—” Wilson began, before the words were drowned out by a tortured, ripping, gasping shriek in stereo from the advancing pair.

Gloved hands instinctively gripped weapons tighter as brains fought against the body’s natural urge to defend itself; to kill the Screechers before they got close.

Wilson’s nerve threatened to break first as he raised the butt of the sub machine gun into his shoulder and took a bead on the closest zombie. Before Miller could stop him from pulling the trigger, he abruptly lowered the weapon a fraction and stood a little straighter but remained ready to drill rounds into it.

“Back up now,” Miller told him, his breath catching in his throat as the kid stumbled on the heavy knotted rope of the cargo net when his boot heel caught it. He righted himself, stumbling backwards a little faster until he was clear of their rudimentary trap.

Nobody spoke. Nobody opened fire. The only sounds were the ripping, gasping shrieks of the monsters and the dying fizzle of the flare as it sputtered and flashed darkness over the red-bathed street. Just as the leading zombie stepped a halting, bare foot onto the edge of the cargo net, the flare died completely and plunged them all into darkness.

The absence of the flare’s light wasn’t a true darkness; even with the total absence of any light pollution, the night sky held a few twinkling stars and a dull wash of moonlight. Red light didn’t obliterate a person’s night vision like the white beam of a light bulb would, but still the panic of losing their sight was enough to trigger fear to rule over their bodies.

Wilson turned and ran, adding a, “Fuck, fuck, fuuuck,” to keep the undead attackers zeroed in on their meal. Miller held his nerve, closed his eyes to imagine how the scene was playing out without the distractions his eyes would give him, and gauged how fast they were moving.

“Hernandez!” He bawled, “Now!” Sparking multiple things to happen at once.

Hernandez, out of sight but connected to them by a long, heavy rope, gunned the throttle of the inflatable boat to snap that line taught and snag the two creatures in the net as it folded up around them to drag them towards the stony beach.

Miller and his team abandoned their positions to retreat, now that their mission objectives were bagged, and he jogged forwards to make out the shape of their youngest team member scrambling backwards on the ground to get his legs away from the writhing, shrieking mess tangled inside the heavy net.

“On your feet, kid,” he snapped, keeping his own very wary eyes on the dangerous cargo. “Everyone onboard and let’s get the hell off this island.”

EIGHT

“Be advised,” the tinny-sounding, far away American voice said, “significant infected event travelling south to north close to your bearing. Expect contact to the east as early as seventeen-hundred, over.”

“Acknowledged,” Daniels said into the radio with a resigned tone laced with fear. “Thanks for the heads-up. Out.”

“What is it?” the girl, Jessica, asked from the front of the cramped Sultan as she mimed the actions of driving the tracked vehicle, complete with engine noises. Daniels swallowed, not sure how to answer the question. He was accustomed to living his life surrounded by other hardened men and not a young girl with a blunt and forthright manner. He paused, long enough for her to turn around and give him a stern look, before deciding to just tell her.

“AWACS reporting another swarm,” he said, opening his mouth again to explain his use of military jargon.

“The Americans are still flying over us then?” she asked, betraying the fact that she listened a lot more than she spoke. “They haven’t entirely abandoned us?”

“Who knows what they’re doing up there… spying on something, no doubt,” Daniels answered, leaning back in the narrow seat and laying out his small pouch of dry tobacco scraps to try and force enough together with his fingertips to be worth the effort. Jessica abandoned her pretend driving position, stepping towards him and noticing his shaking fingers were making a mess of the task requiring fine motor skills. Wordlessly, she took the thin strip of paper from his sweaty fingers and gently sprinkled the tobacco evenly along the crease down its centre. Her own small fingers deftly rolled it into a smooth tube better than Daniels’ usual efforts, before she licked the gummed edge and passed it to him. He thanked her with a mumble and lit it, sucking hard to get a lungful of stale smoke, before letting it out with his eyes closed.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked, eyes open again as he regarded the well-rolled cigarette.

“Swarm warning?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“Yeah,” Daniels answered, pausing to draw on the rolled smoke again before his eyes went wide. “Shit, we need to warn the SSM!” He snatched up the radio set and turned dials before calling out a repeated phrase over and over, with no reply.

“Is it close?” she asked quietly in a lull between his hails.

“Yes,” he said, not turning to look at her. “It’s coming from the island—the place we were before here. They must’ve got off at low tide somehow and back on the mainland.”

“Is it heading here?”

“They’re not sure. Last reported direction of travel was just ‘north’, which puts them heading right to left off to our east going past.” She frowned, evidently thinking the problem through geographically.

“So they’ll miss us?”

“Foxtrot-three-three-Alpha, Foxtrot-three-three-Alpha this is Zero-Bravo, come in, over…” he said into the radio, ignoring her question.

“Oi,” she said, jabbing him in the upper arm with an extended index finger. “They’ll miss us, right, Charlie?” He dropped his head, mouth open ready to try and call his SSM again.

“Maybe,” he said quietly. “But the others are heading this way right into their path.”

* * *

“Getting something garbled over the radio,” Bufford said to Johnson over their link inside the Warrior. They’d driven hard for ten miles before they were forced to stop and deal with the scraping noise directly above the driver’s hatch. With that lucky hitchhiker removed and half decapitated by Bufford’s shiny pioneer’s axe, they had resumed their journey, heading north and west over the low, rolling countryside, which was beginning to show the earliest hints of spring.

“What is it?” Johnson asked, his eyes narrowed as he focused forward on the small slice of road he could see through his viewing slit.

“Well, if I knew that…”

“I think they’re saying ‘Foxtrot’,” Peter said confidently. “That’s you, isn’t it?” Johnson opened his mouth to reply with the long version, stopping before he wasted his breath.

“It might be,” he answered. “Keep listening. It’s probably just Daniels seeing where we’ve got to.”

Forty minutes of steady driving later, Johnson stopped the Warrior abruptly. Noises of complaint came through his headphones as the uncomfortably seasick passengers in the rear section would have been banged around with the suddenness of their halt. Johnson ignored those complaints and stared ahead.

“What do you make of that?” he asked, prompting silence in his ears. The question was intended for Bufford, who remained quiet as he stared through the optics to their front.

“Nothing good,” he finally answered.

“What is going on?” Astrid’s voice sounded in their ears.

“How far does it extend?” Johnson asked.

“Left to right… as far as I can see with the topography. No way around.”

“What is happening, Johnson?” Larsen demanded in a tone that betrayed her former seniority among the Special Forces of her native country. A pause hung heavy on their communication channel before Johnson broke it with the sobering news.

“There’s a smear on the horizon to our front,” he said in a flat, almost emotionless voice. “Buffs, the toggle on the fire controls, zoom in.” Bufford found the controls and used the magnification to full effect before a hiss of breath filled their ears.

“Shhhhit…”

“Be specific, Sergeant,” Larsen admonished from the back, where she couldn’t see what they were talking about.

“It’s a swarm,” he said, mirroring the same toneless vocal attitude of their driver, “and it’s directly in our way.”

* * *

“Zero-Bravo,” Daniels said with evident relief in his voice. “Be advised there’s a reported swarm in the area.”

“We know, lad,” Johnson said, no longer concerned with correct radio protocol. “We were driving straight towards it until we saw it.”

“Send grid-reference and bearing,” Daniels instructed. Johnson, anticipating the request, gave the grid from the local map and a compass bearing as best they could ascertain. Silence followed after the brief, “Wait one,” reply as Johnson imagined his corporal checking the location and direction against his own position.

Knowing the man was competent at reading a map, Johnson grew annoyed and then concerned as the silence stretched longer than expected.

“Daniels,” he called into the radio, “bearing isn’t towards your location. They’ll bypass and head north.” The logic was sound, as the things rarely deviated from an easy route when they gathered in numbers, unless something grabbed the attention of the Limas.

“Negative,” Daniels’ voice came back in a hoarse whisper. “Bridge on that road is out. Collapsed last summer. They’ll be forced down the lower ground directly to our location.”

The transmission had been cut shortly after that, when Johnson’s questions had been answered and he was unnervingly in agreement with the corporal’s assessment. He prayed he was wrong, prayed that the swarm—even if it was miniscule compared to the ones they’d encountered before—would ignore their comfortable country residence and carry on up the country.

They were stuck, with no way to cross through the flowing river of dead meat and reach the others, and knowing now that the bridge north of them was destroyed, they had no way to get ahead of the shambling procession in time. As the light began to fade, Johnson reluctantly turned their big tracked vehicle around to find somewhere safe to spend the night.

Peter’s heart raced as he peeked out of the open hatch to see a large farm building ahead of him. Memories of his previous life came back in an unbidden rush that made his body react to the influx of adrenaline he experienced. Calming his breath as he focused hard on climbing out without falling, he forced away the images that came to his mind.

The poor cows, unable to outpace their hungry attackers, being pulled down and devoured.

His father’s dog opened up like it had exploded, to soak the rough carpet, a white shard of rib bone protruding at an odd angle as hands clawed at the insides.

His mother, smeared with gore, trying to bite him through the dirty glass of the patio doors.

Hundreds upon hundreds of pairs of feet passing by only inches from his face as he tried to stay still and not breathe in case the horde detected him.

“You okay, son?” Johnson asked him quietly, seeing the odd look in his eyes and voicing his concern.

“Yeah,” he replied between rapid breaths. “Fine.” He hefted his sticker—the pitchfork he had adapted for his size to make it the best weapon for killing zombies—which seemed to signal the end of their conversation; he was ready to work.

“Clear that barn,” Bufford announced firmly but quietly, “secure all the exits and back the tank in. That’s our emergency exit if we need one.”

Nobody disagreed with the plan, nor did anything need adding to it. They formed up, going about their work as required. Johnson thought of asking Peter to guard the rear of their Warrior with Kimberley, but decided that he wanted to keep the boy close, given his uncertain mood.

The two Special Forces trained soldiers moved in, fanning left and right through the wide entrance to the dry, musty barn to clear every corner of it and search every nook and cranny that could hide a human of any size.

They swept the lower floor, finding it clear of other exits or entrances and blessedly free of Screechers.

“Upstairs,” Bufford called out, indicating the narrow wooden stairs leading up to a timber mezzanine with a low head clearance. Johnson raised the muzzle of his suppressed MP5, a gift from Larsen with the ominous words that it had belonged to a friend of hers, but Peter placed a small hand on his arm. He looked down at the boy, who shook his head. He followed Peter’s gaze and saw how thin and fragile the dry wooden slats of the steps seemed, and understood. Johnson nodded back, lowering his gun and holding out a green torch to the boy, who accepted it and slipped his slender shoulders out of the straps of his bag to do a swap with the big man.

Johnson watched him go up, red glow of the torch radiating out ahead of him as he advanced up the stairs, the point of his pitchfork held ready. He felt no shame at letting a child face danger in his stead, he realised. That in itself was bizarre, but not as abnormal as the fact that the kid had seen the danger and offered to face it as the best weapon their group had in that situation. His own small weight bowed the steps dangerously, so much so that Johnson was certain he’d have fallen through them before he’d even reached halfway to the mezzanine. When Peter went out of sight at the top and the only indication of his safety was the red glow from the torch sweeping left and right, he held his breath until a little voice called down to them with all the military gusto his declaration deserved.

“Clear,” he said, letting them all relax as he clicked off the light and carefully climbed back down.

Johnson quickly backed the Warrior inside, and then it took all of them to force the seized runners of the heavy wooden doors to move. Eventually, after much swearing and grunting, the two doors almost met in the middle and were secured with a loop of heavy chain.

The barn, judging by the oily smell of old spilled diesel, had been used as a tractor shed to save the valuable machine from braving the worst of any seasonal weather outside. Now, the mighty machine replacing the tractor’s parking spot was opened up as they spread out and got comfortable for the night.

Larsen ignored the priority of food and drink, instead searching the shed until she found a tub of thick paint and a stiff brush, which earned her a quizzical look from Kimberley.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“I swear,” Astrid told her, “if I have to watch that fuel moving around like the waves of the ocean for even one more kilometre, I will be sick all over the other people.”

“Oh,” Johnson said, shocked by the quiet woman’s outburst. “Not very comfortable, then?”

“It is the right fucking bastard,” she snapped back, betraying how much the motion sickness had affected her, and also how much time she’d spent in the company of the men of Her Majesty’s armed forces.

Johnson, after ten minutes of trying, finally got Daniels back on the radio. His face when he returned to the others told the story before any of them had the opportunity to ask.

“They’ve been forced to abandon the place they were living in,” he said quietly. “They’re on their own now, just like we are.”

“Your man Daniels tell you that himself?” Bufford asked. Johnson shook his head.

“He was driving. Looks like he’s trained himself a young apprentice.” At those words he couldn’t help but feel his eyes drawn to Peter.

NINE

“They don’t believe us,” Daniels half screamed with the sheer frustration of it all.

“None of them?” Jessica asked him as she looked up from the bag she was re-packing on the hull of the Sultan. “Not even the army ones?”

“Some of them do,” Daniels admitted as he checked over both shoulders to see if anyone could see how much ammunition he’d swiped from the room designated as an armoury, after collecting his Sterling. “But even those who do believe us don’t think we should follow the others. They probably don’t want to be back under orders. Makes you wonder what kind of people chose to stay…”

Jessica acknowledged that with a grunt, stopping what she was doing to look up at an approaching figure. It was Ellie, the young woman she had run from their hilltop prison with. The two were locked to one another, intertwined by shared experiences and by similar losses in their lives. She was hurrying over carrying a large bag, but her face registered more anger than fear. She threw the bag up at the girl ten years her junior and stormed to the front of the vehicle to clamber up.

“You’re sure?” she snapped, sounding annoyed with the girl.

“Don’t ask me,” she answered with a shrug, nodding her head down at Daniels.

“You’re sure?” Ellie asked again, directing her question at the soldier juggling an armful of loaded magazines.

“Yes,” he told her, “I’m bloody certain of it. Which means we need to be gone from here, either east or west but preferably west, sometime in the next ten minutes.”

“Hold on,” Jessica asked as she stood up from her packing as if struck by a thought. “Are they going to just let you take this?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” Ellie grilled him.

“It means there’s nobody left to ask. Not really.”

“Not really?” Jessica needled him, knowing him well enough by now to know he wasn’t being entirely truthful.

“It means that I’m technically the highest ranking soldier here, and I’m just a Corporal.”

“But there are more of…” Ellie waved her hand irritably towards the house behind him. “…them than you, and they might not like the idea of you taking your tank away.”

“Armoured vehicle,” Daniels corrected her peevishly. Ellie ignored the comment.

As if to underline the point she’d just made, two people came from the house and headed in their direction, one clearly carrying the unmistakable profile of a shotgun.

“Look alive,” Daniels told them, as if either understood what he expected of them. He let out a sigh of exasperation and turned to face the approaching men as he held the sub machine gun casually in his right hand.

“Fellers,” he said as they approached.

“You ain’t fucking taking that,” one of them said, the one not holding the shotgun, before Daniels could say anything else. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

“No?” Daniels asked, still keeping his hand holding the gun very still, but his eyes focused on the twitching man behind the speaker. The man was shifting his grip on the shotgun nervously, as though his palms were slick with sweat that was preventing him from holding it steady. Daniels recognised that as a bad sign.

“Who does it belong to then?”

“Her Majesty the Queen,” the speaker sneered with sarcastic nastiness at him, as though invoking royalty made his point any more valid.

“Whom I serve,” Daniels answered calmly. “Do you?” The man bristled, nostrils flaring as his own argument was turned on him in an instant.

“I’ve paid taxes all my life,” he snarled. “What about you, Mal?”

“Yep,” croaked shotgun man from over his right shoulder.

“So, we’ve probably paid for that over the years, along with whatever pittance you earned driving it.”

“First off,” Daniels said as a flutter of movement caught his peripheral vision. The two men saw his reaction and began to turn to look, so he spoke louder to get their attention back.

“First off,” he said louder, earning stares from both of them, “I’ve paid more tax than they’ve paid me.” That was a clear lie, but it never helped to let on how much his second career was worth back in the world. “So, I’ve paid for it too, if that’s your way of thinking.”

“Pfft,” the speaker scoffed at him, as though the childish dismissal of his logic would win the argument. “You’re not taking it, anyway.”

“Yes, we are,” Daniels said, still cool. Shotgun man, his nerve breaking as his minute vocabulary was already exhausted, growled and raised the gun to point it at him. Daniels smiled and took a pace to his right, putting the speaker directly in between him and the gun. Both men opened their eyes wide in surprise at being so easily thwarted, and both recognised that they were in water beyond their depth.

Shotgun man was saved from having to make any decision by the hollow, sickeningly solid-sounding clunk of wood striking bone. Daniels leaned past speaker man, who had whipped around at the alien sound, seeing the shotgun fall to the grass as his bodyguard’s eyes rolled back in his head. Toppling like a felled tree to thump into the damp earth at his feet, he dropped to reveal an angry and impatient Ellie, who appreciatively weighed the pick-axe handle in her hand, suggesting that she could get used to the feel of it. Her eyes snapped up to offer speaker man a slow, wicked smile.

Daniels tapped him on the shoulder and cleared his throat, asking him if he wouldn’t mind awfully fucking off.

Two minutes later, long enough to retrieve the shotgun and the belt of cartridges to accompany it, the corporal and his two young female companions rolled towards the exit of their country house and towards the lonely sentry who faced a choice of whether to attempt to accost them or not.

He evidently decided against it, instead choosing to melt away into the shadows, no doubt to claim that he hadn’t seen them leave. Daniels drove, seeing as the teenage girl would never be let loose on the controls for anything other than pretend, and the scowling young woman, Ellie, showed no inclination to do anything other than sit in a canvas seat and wait.

“Stop,” Jessica yelled over the sound of the barking, whistling engine. She repeated it, louder this time, until Daniels heard her and eased off the throttle. What she’d seen from her elevated position behind him, with an infinitely wider field of view than his own, was obviously beyond his vision and he trusted her enough to slow to a dead crawl.

Over the quieter sound of the vehicle rolling forwards, he heard a new voice shouting.

“Wait!” it yelled; desperation conveyed through the single, shouted word. Unable to see clearly to the right side of the Sultan, he popped open the forward hatch and tried to lean out enough to see a young man running towards them with his arms full of clothing and possessions which he was trying and failing to shove into a backpack affixed to a metal frame. Jessica, self-appointed as the gatekeeper for their escape, called down to him.

“Who are you?” the words sounded blunt and judgemental, hasher than Daniels knew was actually the girl’s personality.

“I’m coming with you,” the man said, running towards the front of the rolling vehicle and shouting at the driver.

“Charlie, stop for fuck’s sake!” At the use of his first name, Daniels hit the brakes to bring the Sultan to a creaking stop.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Steve! Steve Duncan,” the man yelled back, lobbing his half-packed bag up on the front of the vehicle and clambering up behind it. Daniels hadn’t worked with the man directly, but he knew him well enough. He was originally from the admin troop of their now scattered squadron, and hadn’t been with them long, having only recently come through the basic training courses to be attached to their reserve unit.

“Where’s your weapon?” Daniels asked him, seeing the man was wearing his webbing over civilian clothes but not finding the shape of the sterling sub machine gun he should be in possession of.

“Still in the armoury,” he answered. “Some wanker’s there blocking the door and mouthing off about having you arrested for assaulting someone.” He dropped inside the hatch to follow his mess of kit and seemed shocked to see the two female occupants. He nodded and smiled at Jessica, who smiled back and waved. Then he turned to do a double-take at Ellie, colouring up slightly as he mumbled something which was drowned out by the revs building back up to lurch them onwards away from the house.

Duncan sat at Daniels’ usual seat, lifting the headset to speak more clearly to him.

“Getting clear and heading west?” he asked.

“I reckon so,” Daniels answered. “No chance of getting west ahead of them with the bridge out. And besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were already this side of the main road.”

“Exactly,” Duncan answered, “why the hell didn’t anyone else believe the report?” Daniels’ reply made him tick off the reasons in his head, which all made sense.

“Because it came from me,” Daniels told him. “Because it was based on a report from the Yanks, and because people are comfortable so they don’t want to believe it.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Jessica’s voice cut in on their conversation. Duncan spun to look at her, seeing her holding the large earphones over her head and her eyes burning into him for an answer. He opened his mouth to speak, feeling more than a little nailed to the spot by the forthright girl, but Daniels saved him from responding.

“They don’t want to believe they aren’t safe there,” he explained. “They like their little slice of freedom and they don’t want the status quo to change.”

“Status Quo? What’s the band got to d—” Jessica began, stopping herself before she asked the embarrassing question.

“The people who stayed,” Ellie explained, her own ears covered with the headset normally reserved for the vehicle commander, “were the ones who didn’t want to leave with the army. They don’t like other people making rules for them to follow, so they’re not going to give up their new life now.”

“Even with the chance of a horde of those things bearing down on them,” Duncan added, glancing at the woman and locking eyes with her to show he understood her perfectly.

“So they don’t want to believe they’re in danger because it doesn’t fit in?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah,” Duncan said. “I tried to tell them, even the other lads,” he said to mean the few remaining squadron men who hadn’t left under orders, “but nobody wanted to listen.”

Silence filled their earphones as all four of them were left in quiet contemplation.

“Speaking of listening,” Daniels said as he turned the nose of the Sultan to head north up a farm track, instead of driving towards the main road where he half expected to see the leading ranks of a detachment from the dead army approaching, “get on that radio and call up the SSM.”

“I can do it,” Jessica said excitedly, clawing her way through the interior to get to the seat beside their newest crew member, “Charlie taught me how it works.”

“Foxtrot-three-three-Alpha,” she said into the radio, her lips forming the words in their uncommon combination with concentration.

* * *

As the sun began to sink to their left, the leading edge of the swarm found themselves suddenly dropping from their path as the roadway under their shambling feet fell away to nothingness.

The rubble below in the narrow, muddy creek bed was rapidly added to with the writhing mess of twitching, moaning bodies, and the inexorable flow of dead followed the precise course of action that corporal Daniels had predicted. Even though they were dead, they still followed the same generic behaviour of living humans and inevitably followed the path of least resistance. Much in the same way that water always flowed in the easiest direction to follow the unbreakable laws of physics, they spilled out of the small riverbed and poured down the slope in the general direction of the low rise hiding the large country house from sight.

Nothing from that direction overtly attracted them; there were no smells or sounds that could carry that far to serve as a lure. But the swarm was so inexorable, such a self-perpetuating phenomenon, and the noise the leading rank made attracted more behind them. This pushed them onwards, making more noise which, in turn, brought on more from the creek bed and road, the slowest of which were in danger of being left behind, without a reason to go on. These stragglers were abandoned to wander in response to the flutter of a bird’s wings or a gust of wind rustling the first early leaves on a tree.

That momentum gathered, sparking the small percentage of Limas in their midst to surge ahead, to leap and climb over the slower-moving bodies of their subordinates and force their way to the front where new sensations piqued their primal instincts.

Smells, brought like the ghost of a whisper on the wind, turned their heads to the large buildings on the lower ground. Their direction of movement was followed when the rest of the swarm, as if sensing the excitement of their front runners, sped up their own advance and began to moan and issue occasional shrieks. Those noises quickened the pace of those behind, setting off the chain reaction that would whip the thousand former people into a frenzy which the unprepared and hopelessly under-equipped residents of the big house could never hope to defeat. Vehicles fled not long after the first ranks appeared on the horizon, but the exodus was too little, too late. Some of those vehicles caused a large mob of the main assault to break away and follow the sounds of revving engines north, sparking off another chain of events that would prove catastrophic.

* * *

The unorthodox crews of two armoured vehicles settled in for the night; one fully closed down in the open and the other shut inside a large farm shed. They all heard the faint sounds of heavy gunfire in the distance, denoting a desperate defence which they all hoped would be successful, even if they knew deep down it would not be.

TEN

“Oh, dear God!” Professor Grewal cried as the contents of the cargo net thrashed and hissed and shrieked at him and his small team. “What are we supposed to do with these?”

“Not my problem,” Miller answered flatly, hiding the enjoyment he was lapping up from frightening the British scientist. With a hand signal, he and his team melted away from the makeshift lab, having fulfilled their responsibilities for the night and leaving to get something to eat and some sleep.

Grewal, left with a lethal cargo and no way to control it, turned desperately with pleading eyes aimed at the man from the US army’s infectious diseases department. The man, a sergeant as far as Grewal could make out from the multiple stripes on his sleeve, smirked.

“Alright, boys,” he said, “suit up. Doc, you might wanna get yourself clear for this part…”

Four of the soldiers, all wearing heavily padded suits with an outer layer of thick, rubbery material and plastic visors covering their faces, approached the cargo net which had been dragged into a large caged area. The taut ropes keeping the mouth of the net closed were loosened, and the suited soldiers stepped forwards with long poles complete with loops of heavy wire sprouting from the ends. Grewal recognised them as the kind of thing used to secure and control dangerous dogs, and he had to admit that the principle was an easily transferrable one.

With a lot of yelling and a few tense moments when one of the soldiers was forced onto his back by the attacks of the soaked and shrieking beasts, eventually both of them were secured, each with two poles looped around their neck. The difficulty came then when they couldn’t figure out how to drag them out of the larger cage and into the smaller ones where they could be used as lab rats.

“Fuck this shit,” the sergeant said, reaching up to strip off his own helmet and rummage in his removed equipment to retrieve a cigarette and lighter. He struck flame to the end of a smoke and inhaled deeply, his eyes closed, before he stepped forwards and opened the cage.

“Alright, assholes,” he announced, gaining the instant and undivided attention of the thrashing corpses. He blew smoke at them and brought up both hands to gesture them forward. “If you’ll step right this way, thaaat’s it, keep following the sound of my voice…” he paced backwards, luring them towards him as both bubbled and tried to shriek at their slowly escaping meal. One by one, they were corralled into individual cages, the loops being removed from their necks before the team took off their suits and began to scrub them down with a strong-smelling bleach solution.

“Draw straws for the next time,” their sergeant said, “unless one of you screws up, then being the bait can be your reward. Oh, hey, Docs.” This last was aimed at Grewal and Chambers, who had re-entered ahead of their own team. “All yours. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to stick your fingers through the bars. These animals may bite…”

“No,” Grewal answered, “you don’t.”

“Your team are staying here, though, right?” Chambers added. In answer, the sergeant raised his eyes to a section of the shed elevated about twenty feet from the floor. Up there, just visible in the gloom, was a pair of soldiers sitting behind a heavy machine gun, ready to end the experiment should anything go awry. Chambers nodded his understanding, turning to give his orders.

“Full tissue samples,” he ordered them. “Run everything from the beginning. Blood, DNA, everything. And anyone getting themselves bitten will find themselves instantly dismissed from this team.” A heavy clunk of metal sounded from behind him, prompting all of them to turn and look.

“Anyone gets themselves bit,” the sergeant said dourly, his hand still resting on the heavy semi-automatic pistol he had produced, “and I’ll personally guarantee your dismissal from the human race through the medium of my forty-five.” They all stared at him, waiting for his face to crack and betray the fact that he was joking. His face, however, stayed resolute and the awkward silence extended until the lead scientist cleared his throat for their attention.

“Get the samples,” Grewal told them, “set up the tests and then we can get some sleep. We’ll deal with the results in the morning.”

Grewal watched as the grunt work of their scientific mission was undertaken. He hung back, offering such encouragement as he thought fit in the form of loud tutting and the occasional patronising slow shake of his head. Seeing the suspicious and permanently scowling sergeant still sitting cradling the large handgun he’d threatened them with, he drew himself up to his full, if meagre, height and approached him.

“I’d prefer,” he began, his courage abandoning him slightly as the sergeant’s head turned slowly to glare at him. He made a low noise in his throat, as though he wanted to cough but fought the urge. “I’d prefer it if you weren’t quite so… hostile, to my staff.”

“I’d prefer it if you weren’t such an asshole,” he replied without a trace of humour. “But we don’t often get what we want now, do we?”

“What’s your name?” Grewal demanded, as if the implied threat of a complaint could frighten the man.

“Yates. Staff Sergeant Yates.”

“Well, Staff Sergeant Yates, as I said I’d pref—”

“I heard you,” Yates snarled quietly. “I also don’t give a shit. You and your little science project set the whole goddam world on fire, and now me and my people are putting our lives at risk so you can do it again. You want a,” he sarcastically air-quoted with his finger, “less hostile work environment? Don’t kill half the people in the goddam world. Period.”

Grewal shut his mouth and backed away, watching the sergeant lean back in his uncomfortable chair to resume staring at the two bedraggled creatures in their cages, who had given up their frantic shrieking and were satisfied just to moan and chew at the heavy mesh to try and get to the living.

He waited in the shadows of the barn lab until the samples were taken and placed in the chillers to await the response to the serum he and Chambers had developed.

Finding a way to attack the virus had been a simple thing to approach, but a very difficult one to refine. Using highly infectious host carriers to deliver it, as he had with the original disease, was his first and only thought on the matter, but he was anxious to see how the tests fared in a real-world experiment. Using something aggressive had been automatic for him, and he toyed with a few possibilities.

He experimented with the world’s newest killer virus on professor Chambers’ insistence: HIV; despite his concerns that the rate of degradation would be too slow for his style. The biggest problem with that disease was that it killed its human hosts by attacking their natural ability to defend themselves through their immune system. Given that the infected didn’t respond with their immune system, the early tests had failed to give them any kind of positive results.

After two weeks of failed lab experiments using anti-viral medication, Grewal turned back to what he did best and began messing with nature on a cellular level. He attacked the deadly zombie virus samples with Dengue fever, hoping that he could cause some kind of catastrophic body shutdown in the infected humans, but while on the cellular level it did indeed attack the virus, the delivery method still escaped them.

That’s when he circled back around to the only aggressive virus he knew well, and one that boasted a one hundred percent mortality rate if untreated. Trying to combine Dengue fever with rabies was impossible, given that the lyssavirus was just so incompatible with the haemorrhagic fever, and he was forced back to the metaphorical drawing board.

A wasted week of working alone followed in the gloom of their subterranean lab. In a rare moment of reflection, he realised he didn’t even know which state it was in. This period of solitary labour saw him combine the samples at his disposal and utilise the aggressive nature of rabies to deliver the haemorrhagic properties of Dengue fever.

Eventually, working through the samples of every infectious disease known to mankind, courtesy of the US Army MRIID and combined CDC freezers, he stumbled on a rare example of virus he’d never even considered using, until he saw the four letters stencilled on the glass vial. IHNV. Infectious haematopoietic necrosis virus; a form of flesh-eating infection seen in certain fish.

The destructive properties of the virus, those which effectively turned the insides of an infected host to gloop, fit his requirements perfectly.

Infected tissue, when treated with this serum, haemorrhaged and effectively died at the cellular level in every single test they conducted. When the plain suits who deflected attention whenever they were asked if they were CIA heard the explanation, it became clear to Grewal that they had very different expectations about the work.

“So you’ve developed a cure?” they had been asked. Grewal turned to Chambers, the two men locking eyes and hoping that the other would answer. Chambers stayed quiet so Grewal let out a sigh.

“There is no cure as such,” he explained. “Not unless you change the parameters of cure to include the destruction of an infected host.” He’d seen the annoyance on the man’s face and went on to explain further.

“The virus destroys the brain function, effectively killing the host anyway. Even if we could somehow find a way to purge it from their bodies, they’d be left a brain-dead vessel, capable of barely remaining alive at absolute best. More likely, from what we’ve been told, they’d have acquired injuries or simply rotted away so that there would be very little left, physically. So no, we can’t bring anyone back, but we do think we can kill them off a second, more permanent, time.”

That conversation led them to where they were, on a cold and windswept Scottish island with two former human beings in cages, minus chunks of their mottled flesh which were sitting in glass dishes, waiting to see if the theory worked in the real world, instead of just in a laboratory.

* * *

The following morning, after a short and uncomfortable sleep, Grewal returned to their lab wrapped in multiple layers of clothing in an attempt to keep the biting wind from seeking out any gap it could find to chill him to the bone. He poured coffee, shuddering at the sachets of foul-looking powder the Americans called ‘creamer’, and hugged the cup in both hands, before making his way towards the sample fridges and the start of their real work.

The discovery they made, the one that would change the fate of the world’s survivors, wasn’t due to any of the complex biological work, but due instead to the most random of occurrences.

Grewal walked past the position where he had suffered the conversation with Yates only hours before, glancing down at the soldier fiddling with the dials of a radio to fill the space with the hissing crackle of static.

“Cut it out, Mancini,” another uniformed man chided him. “You ain’t gonna find anyone playing songs anymore.”

“Oh, ye of little faith, Corporal,” the man evidently named Mancini retorted, just as the feedback from the speakers shrieked and hissed, before emitting a low hum that barely registered in the ears of the humans.

Grewal froze, glued to the spot as his chest heaved in animalistic terror at the sounds coming from his right. Mancini carried on spinning the dial and the two caged zombies stopped shrieking and launching themselves at the bars, to lapse back into their slower state of animation.

“Do that again, Private,” he said, with a finger pointed at Mancini.

“Specialist,” the man muttered back, turning the dial as instructed. When the sound dipped back into the low, barely audible hum again, the two corpses wailed and attacked the heavy mesh to get to them.

No, Grewal though, not us; the radio.

“Take it back again and leave it there.” The soldier did as he was told, his wide eyes fixed firmly on the two occupied cages. When the hiss and whistle of static gave way to the low frequency sound once more, the dead went into a state of savage behaviour, trying to force their faces through the wide mesh to reach for the source of their excitement.

“Oh, Jesus,” one of the American lab assistants cried, seeing what the smaller of their two test subjects was doing. All eyes turned to it, many turning away in repulsion as it—she—forced her face through the small gap in the mesh to strip the mottled skin away, like a potato being peeled, to expose a bright slash of white cheek bone beneath. Someone vomited noisily, the meagre breakfast of toast and coffee splattering onto the concrete floor of the shed. From behind them, a wavering voice wailed, “Oh, dear God!” before a single, booming noise made them all flinch in fright and sudden deafness.

The half-peeled face snapped back, the contents of the skull fountaining outwards where the back of the head had been ejected in bloody chunks of bone and scalp. The half-headless body slumped slowly, mouth closing as it sank down to its knees to rest against the mesh.

“Shut that shit off, Mancini,” Yates barked, weapon trained on the head of the second zombie, in case that one tried to pour itself out of the cage like the other. The radio clicked off and everyone relaxed.

“Sergeant,” Grewal began, seeing the solider whirl on him and holster the heavy pistol.

“Staff Sergeant,” Yates snapped. “You don’t hear me going around calling you the wrong thing, Doc.” Grewal opened his mouth to correct him but thought better of it.

“You didn’t have to kill the subj—” he began.

“You do science,” Yates interrupted him, “I’ll do security. You rile ‘em up again and run the risk of one breaking out, you’ll see me do that again. And now I’ve got to explain to a bunch of Navy SEALs that they have to risk their lives, again, to fetch you another lab rat…”

Grewal ignored his words, turning to look at the shocked young man still sitting by the radio he’d been playing with in the vain hope of finding some entertainment.

“Specialist,” Grewal said, the word unfamiliar to him as something he would call another person, “could you take that very far away from here and find out exactly what frequency that was?” Mancini looked up to Yates, who nodded. “And someone find Agent Fisher urgently.”

ELEVEN

“Major?” Mac said gently, still managing to sound almost angry at everything as he spoke. If not angry, then very disappointed at the least. Downes opened one eye, then the other, groaning and moving to sit up, like he had the mother of all hangovers. His body ached all over, worse than after any PT session he’d ever experienced, but nobody told him to stay flat on his back or rushed to help him up; perhaps because they knew he’d just shrug them off anyway.

“How long?” he croaked.

“About eighteen hours,” Mac answered, sounding jealous.

“Jesus,” Downes swore as he rubbed the heels of both hands into his sunken and dark eye sockets. “What’s the gen?”

The ‘gen’, according to Mac at least, was that they’d been better off down south, but he didn’t want to give that opinion to his major just yet.

“Best you get your strength up and meet the Colonel yourself,” he answered cryptically, the absence of facts speaking volumes. With more groaning, swearing and a liberal amount of blasphemy, Downes stood unsteadily and took a moment to acclimatise to being upright. Blinking open his eyes again to aid his balance, his vision cleared to take in the form of the tank captain, smiling and offering him a bone china cup on a saucer.

“Always trust an officer of Her Majesty’s armed forces to bring the good china on a campaign,” he joked weakly, with slowly formed words. A crooked smile joined his jest, which Palmer acknowledged with one of his own.

“Quite right, Major,” he said. “Although I’m ashamed to admit that all the good brandy and cigars have perished; casualties of war, I’m afraid. And I’ve misplaced my backgammon board.” Downes accepted the tea, taking in a long gulp of it, despite the heat, and letting the sugary goodness coat his throat as the strong aroma filled his sinuses and worked to wake his brain up the rest of the way. With an almost ungentlemanly aaah, he replaced the delicate cup on the matching saucer and regarded the young officer.

“I trust you handled everything in your stride while I was incapacitated?” he asked with an apologetic edge to his words.

“Not much to handle, truth be told. The Royal Marines’ medic declared you unfit on account of exposure.” He held up a hand to ward off the protests and explain more. “A combination of the cold water, a lack of rations and exhaustion. In his words,” he pulled an amused face and attempted to affect the accent of the Midlander.

“There weren’t enough heat left in the coals to revive the fire!”

Downes smiled at the terrible impression but recognised it for what it was; an attempt to alleviate the stress and embarrassment with a little weak humour, much as he had done when he first woke. He gulped the remainder of the tea, his thirst intensifying, as if the small cup he’d just finished had awoken his senses. He turned wordlessly to Mac, wearing a look one could only call ‘hopeful’, and the dour Scot took the cup and left the room, muttering to himself.

“Something of a character, your Mister Kelly…” Palmer said when the two officers were alone. Downes’ expression darkened at the second intimation that things weren’t as rosy as they should be.

“Tell me,” he said.

Palmer shifted in his seat, his exquisite manners fighting against his tiredness and natural urge to be blunt. Eventually, after a stern and quizzical look from the SAS major, tiredness won through.

“I never expected a military dictatorship to be this…”

“This what?”

“Well, it’s not quite as enjoyable as one would imagine.”

Downes hmmm’d in response but was saved from making any immediate reply as the door banged open and Mac reappeared arse-first to spin in the doorway, revealing a tray with a pot of tea, more cups and the most welcome sight of thickly sliced bread bearing the unmistakable smell of fried sausages. Mac put the tray down with as much care as he would a sack of potatoes and shoved a plate towards the major.

“Had them put a snotty egg in yours,” he said. “Just how you like it.”

Downes, had he been able to, would’ve thanked his NCO profusely. He said nothing, instead nodded in wide-eyed thanks as he’d just crammed the biggest bite of the greasy sandwich as possible into his mouth quicker than he could reload his MP5.

Palmer, less driven by crippling hunger, reached for the tea pot.

“Shall I be mother?” he asked, the words an automatic reaction to the task. With obvious care, he poured the aromatic, dark liquid into three cups and offered one to Mac, who grunted in thanks and sloshed in an unmeasured amount of milk, before heaping sugar into it and banging the teaspoon around like he was ringing a dinner gong.

Palmer, ignoring the lack of manners as an irrelevance, deftly scooped sugar onto his own spoon and cascaded it into the liquid, then added milk with such precision that he didn’t spill a drop. He finished his ritual by swirling the liquid and gently running the edge of the spoon on the lip of the cup, to then place it down without a sound. He offered that cup to Downes and repeated the ritual as the man chewed desperately, before swallowing large mouthfuls of bread, pork and egg.

When Downes had finished, gently thumping one fist into his chest as though he could force down the food, he nodded his thanks and took a long gulp of tea, only to pull a face and squeeze his eyes shut, forcing that swallow down. He opened his eyes to regard the tray and saw Mac snatch up his own sandwich in case it was picked off by enemy fire. Palmer gently pushed his own towards him.

“This would be my second of the day,” he admitted, “and I also ate yesterday. I insist, Sir.”

Downes offered no resistance and gladly ate a second sandwich as the three sat in silence, waiting for him to regain his strength. Palmer made him another cup from the pot and waited patiently.

“So,” Downes said as he leaned back and hid an uncomfortable burp behind his hand, “Kelly has adopted the strong-arm approach to matters?”

Mac and Palmer exchanged a look before the captain picked up his cup and lifted one leg over the other as he sat back.

“Perhaps I should start from the beginning?”

* * *

Downes’ collapse caused more than a little hysteria among the civilians of their convoy to have witnessed it. Their medic, a man inclined towards sounding at the same time both bored and annoyed, if only because of his accent, had rushed in to take over and deal with the major. This was a condition his training and experience made him far more comfortable to treat than the uncertain arena of infected human bites.

“Commanding officers report to quarantine exit. I repeat, commanding officers to quarantine exit,” the speaker announced insistently. The younger Palmer appeared, his boiler suit somehow fitting him, whereas everyone else’s only seemed to fit where they touched. He ignored the obvious look of hostility from the rough SAS soldier and smiled at his older brother in the hope that he could convey his support without words.

“Leave the talking to me,” Palmer Senior said with a quiet forcefulness. “I rather suspect we aren’t as welcome as one would hope.”

The two officers and the NCO met up with Lloyd and the German, Wolff, as the hastily built shelter was unlocked and the five men slipped out amid the shouted questions and protests of the civilians. Three uniformed men, all wearing respirators and carrying automatic rifles, led the way up the slope away from the ferry dock. They were ushered into the rear of a military Land Rover, climbing up to sit under the canvas back that kept the persistent drizzle from their cold bodies. The ride was blessedly short, given that they bounced around on the cold, hard metal interior over the bumpy roads, all the while feeling the chill of the brisk Atlantic wind as it found every gap in the flapping canvas cover.

With a metallic squeal of protesting brakes, the vehicle pulled to a stop and the sound of the driver banging his flat hand on his own door prompted them to shuffle awkwardly to the back and climb down. A two-storey stone cottage was before them, with a single soldier standing sentry at the door, so low that they were forced to duck under the lintel to escape the rain.

The cottage, a modest dwelling which had evidently been repurposed very recently, opened up into what would have been the sitting room and which now played host to the dining table, covered in paperwork. The five newcomers stepped inside, filling all the available space in seconds to somehow reduce the air in the room.

A whistling sound came from the next room, prompting Palmer to step towards the threshold of the doorway and clear his throat politely.

“With you in a minute,” came a strong reply. Palmer stepped back delicately, as though chastened by a teacher at the expensive boarding school of his youth, to wait as the sounds of china clanking together drifted out to them. Moments later, a man of remarkably average height and build walked in bearing a tray loaded with mugs piled on top of one another precariously and a large pot venting steam from the spout. He cleared a section of paperwork from the table by shoving it along and slid the tray onto the wood. Letting out a breath which spoke of relief at his success in not dropping the precious cargo onto the floor, he turned to regard them before snapping his fingers in front of his face.

“Biscuits,” he said, turning his face towards the kitchen and bellowing the word for the attention of someone they had yet to see. A man wearing the uniform of the Grenadier Guards, adorned with a captain’s insignia, stepped into the room with a handful of the small, wrapped parcels they recognised from their ration packs. The biscuits were added to the tray and the two men turned in the small room to regard their visitors.

“Kelly,” the first man said by way of introduction before gesturing at the younger man. “Barton.”

Barton nodded his greeting and ducked out of the room again, evidently not needed for whatever conversation was about to take place.

“Colonel,” Palmer Senior began, one flat hand on his chest as he prepared to launch into a short speech of gratitude for their hospitality.

“And you are?” Kelly asked in a brief bark.

“Palmer, Sir. Household Cavalry.” Kelly nodded once and turned to the next man in line. Wolff’s heels snapped together and he opened his mouth to speak, but Kelly lifted a hand dismissively.

“I can guess who you are, Captain Wolff. You?”

“Lloyd, Sir. Royal Marines.” Kelly’s eyebrow twitched upwards as if to explain that he could damn well tell the difference between the uniforms of the British army and the royal marines, and then his gaze came to rest on the second to last man.

“Lieutenant Palmer,” Palmer Junior crooned, dropping the double-barrel as his brother had, so as not to confuse matters unnecessarily, “Yeomanry.”

Kelly looked at the last man, meeting Mac’s eyes and exchanging a nod with the man who came from the same place he did.

“Am I to assume,” the colonel said sombrely, “that Major Downes did not make it here?”

“He’s well enough,” Mac answered, “suffering from a touch of exposure on account of taking a wee swim as the rear guard.” Kelly smiled, genuinely pleased that the other SAS officer had survived.

“Right, well, I shan’t keep you long,” he said, “I know you’ll be anxious to get back to your people. We’ll give you a few days to rest, but after that, I’ll need every able-bodied man, woman and child to pitch in; things aren’t exactly easy, isolated up here.” He paused to pour tea from the pot into the mugs, beckoning them forward to help themselves and spoke as they waited patiently for their turn at the tray.

“There are a number of farming and fishing tasks in need of more hands—not the deeper water stuff, obviously, just coastal trawling—and a significant amount of work is required to patrol the perimeter here.” He took a sip, smiling at the drink as if he were pleased with himself for making it well when it wasn’t a task he was remotely accustomed to performing.

“We’ve got over six hundred square miles of rocky island to keep clear, and you’re never more than five miles from the coast at any one point, I’m assured. Lots of places one of the bloated bastards could wash up, and it’ll come as no surprise to you that I could do with more trained men. That’s where you’ll come in, when you’re rested, Captains,” he said, pointing at Palmer and Wolff. “The men already in place will maintain control of the two open quarantine docks but you’ll oblige me by commanding a section of coast for patrols.”

Kelly ignored the lieutenant, assuming him to be under the command of the man with the hint of family resemblance who must have been a relation, turning to the royal marine to request of him the same task. He left Mac off the orders list, no doubt intending to catch up with his officer when he was able to.

“And, Sir,” Palmer asked as he took half a step forward. “Might I enquire as to the state of things in the wider world?”

“The wider world?”

“Quite. You see, we’ve been somewhat out of the loop, so to speak…”

“Yes, I imagine you have been. Well, Captain, I’m sorry to say that the European continent is lost; either to atomic bombs or to the enemy.” He let the silence hang so that they all understood the finality of his words, noting how stone-faced their German ally was at receiving the confirmation.

“Given that the Americans nuked the Russians as soon as the Russians nuked their European borders, and a good number of their own Soviet States I might add, we can assume that everything to the east is either dead, dying or otherwise shut off. Australia, New Zealand and a handful of other island nations are closed off, although they’re still speaking to us, at least…” he trailed off, glancing at the front window as the sound of another vehicle pulled up outside. “Speaking of the outside world,” he said with a hint of annoyance as the front door opened and a man walked in, wearing black uniform with a sidearm holstered on his belt. He stopped, taking in the dishevelled men in matching boiler suits before smiling at them in welcome and helping himself to a cup from the table.

“Gentlemen,” Kelly said, “Agent Fisher, CIA.” Fisher spluttered on his drink.

“Dammit, Colonel. I brought you some coffee…” He turned to face the men again.

“Just Fisher is fine,” he said. “And congratulations on surviving this long.” He turned to Kelly and raised his eyebrows as if to ask why they weren’t already talking in private.

“You’ll be given billets after everyone passes quarantine. Take a few days to recuperate and get your equipment back. Good day, gentlemen.”

They filed out, finding their uncomfortable ride still in place with the engine running. Climbing back aboard to wait for the bumpy return ride, Palmer had to raise his voice for the others to hear him.

“I’d hazard a guess that we’ve just discovered where the real power lies.”

TWELVE

“Ladies on the left, gents on the right,” Daniels announced after tentatively checking outside their armoured vehicle for any signs of unwelcome attention. They’d driven until darkness forced them to stop, and as they were unable to find anywhere enclosed to rest, they’d elected for the most open area where nothing could approach without being noticed.

They went to their respective sides of the Sultan in the early dawn to empty the overnight contents of their bladders; Daniels took his Sterling to their side, insisting that Ellie take their only other weapon, the shotgun, to their female bathroom.

“Try the others?” Jessica asked as they climbed back up to escape the cold outside air for the slightly less cold air inside the Sultan. Duncan checked the maps as Daniels started the engine to get some heat into the interior. He hadn’t wanted to leave it running or rig up the external generator.

“Need some bloody fuel soon,” he mumbled, earning a demand from Jessica to know what he’d just said.

“Nothing. Did you want to try them?” Jessica didn’t respond to him, but threw herself into the seat by the radio set and began to hail Johnson.

“They’re not answering,” she yelled after a while, frowning that she hadn’t received an answer and clambering up to poke her head out of the hatch. She opened her mouth to repeat herself, but then stopped, seeing the direction they were all facing and hearing the noise that had attracted their collective attention. Her elevated position meant she could identify the source of the noise before they could see it, and the single spoken word sparked a flurry of action.

“Car.”

Daniels and Duncan scrambled for the front of the Sultan, making Ellie follow without instruction. Duncan dropped into the driver’s hatch as Daniels settled himself in behind the butt of the machine gun mounted on the top, to swing the long barrel towards the direction of the approaching sound. Then they waited.

“Start her up,” he instructed. “Just in case.”

“In case what?” Jessica asked, remembering only fractionally later than the others that not all people were as welcoming as they would be. Tense seconds ticked by until a dirty brown car rolled over the top of a rolling dip that characterised the roads in the area. Daniels adjusted the aim of the GPMG to meet the sudden intrusion but almost immediately let the barrel of the gun swing up as he relaxed.

“It’s the marines,” he said, climbing out to meet them as the car pulled up close to them with protesting brakes.

“There’s hospitality for you,” the thick-set driver complained as he pulled himself out of the car and limped around the front towards them.

“Sorry,” Daniels said, gesturing up at the gun. “Can’t be too careful…”

“He meant leaving without us, dickhead,” the passenger said, having exited the vehicle without being noticed. He cradled a short rifle with a fat barrel across his body and looked so comfortable with it that the weapon seemed like an intimate part of him.

“Sorry,” Daniels said again. “Had to move quickly before the locals brought their pitchforks.” The two marines, still wearing most of their uniform but with bits of civilian clothing evident on both, gave each other a fleeting look.

“We know what you mean,” the older man said. “Ran into some resistance when we were gearing up to leave, ourselves.”

“Oh?” Ellie asked from her spot on top of the tracked vehicle.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” the man with the rifle said dismissively. She could imagine one of the self-styled leaders of the people left at the house trying to tell these two what they could and couldn’t do, and smiled to herself as she imagined the two Royal Marines doing what they wanted anyway. The smile faded when she thought of all the people left behind.

“Did the swarm come?” she asked quietly.

“Think so,” the man with the rifle said. “We saw the faster ones coming over the hill when we took off.”

“And there are more than usual out on the road this morning,” the driver added, “so we should probably get moving.”

“Okay, we keep going north,” Daniels said before looking to Jessica. “And keep trying Johnson on the radio.”

“Johnson?” the marines chorused in shock.

Daniels frowned, confirming who he was talking about. He hadn’t spoken to the two men since they had arrived a few days earlier and they had been resting ever since the ordeal that left them at the house.

“Where are they?” Hampton demanded. “Have they still got the kids with them?”

“Kids?” Ellie asked.

“Boy and a girl,” Enfield said quietly. “Peter and Amber.” Ellie gasped, looking at Jessica, who was wearing a look of abject shock that mirrored her own.

“You get on that bloody radio,” Ellie hissed, “and you find out where they are.”

* * *

The muted crackling of the radio inside the Warrior drifted out into the barn, causing the occupants to stir. Exhaustion and adrenaline had taken their toll. One adult was left on sentry duty and could be forgiven for falling asleep while guarding their location. So when the radio sparked to life and the scratching and moaning answered from outside, they all woke to see a panicked Kimberley looking aghast that she hadn’t raised the alarm sooner.

Bufford was up first, weapon in hand as he moved towards the gap in the barn doors and held out a hand towards the frightened woman to try to tell her that it was okay. Larsen joined him, moving her head from side to side as she tried to see through the crack into the dawn and assess the strength and numbers of the enemy, without getting too close.

The radio crackled again, prompting a swelling surge in the intensity of the moaning outside. Bufford turned back to flap a hand at Johnson in the gloomy interior of the building, telling him silently to shut the noise down.

“Shit,” he hissed, glancing at Astrid and receiving confirmation of his assessment of the enemy.

“Twenty or more out there,” she said quietly. “I would suggest that we go now.” In response to her words, the moaning outside swelled and the wooden doors creaked as the combined body weight of so many agitated corpses surged towards the crack. They hastily threw their gear inside as Johnson primed and started the raucous engine. In the confines of the barn, the exhaust note barked louder than any car on the road ever could, to rise and growl with a deafening rumble. Hatches closed just in time as shafts of wan daylight began to appear in the wooden walls as well as the sliding doors, threatening that the structure could not hope to hold back the dead for long.

Johnson slammed down his own hatch just as the left-hand door splintered and fell inwards at an angle to admit a meagre flood of hungry creatures, like water breaking through a child’s dam in a stream. The last image he had of the grotesque sight was of a Lima crouching to leap onto the front of the tracked vehicle, to shriek as it beat bloody fists into a ruin of broken bones and torn fingernails as if, with the sheer force of its malevolence, it could break through.

As his hands and feet manipulated the controls, Johnson realised the horrific sight wasn’t the only assault on his senses in their rude awakening, because some of the stench that followed the former humans had crept inside before he had safely sealed the hatch.

The Warrior bucked, pitching the Lima forward to break its nose and knock its remaining teeth out on the metal, before tumbling it back into the slower ones in its wake; just in time for the heavy tracks to crush and crunch them into the straw-strewn dirt. The weak barrier of wooden doors didn’t slow their escape for even a second, as the dry timber exploded outwards in far less spectacular fashion than in any action movie.

Accelerating away and flattening the rearmost stragglers, Johnson saw a flash of bodies through his viewport until the road ahead was clear of obstructions. It was like a snapshot his mind took, which didn’t even allow him the time for the image to develop. He thought fleetingly of the instant cameras he’d seen which could do this. His snapshot revealed to him some explanation for why the last few were late to their surprise breakfast meeting.

A woman, age unfathomable given the decaying ruin of her face and sagging, emaciated body, stumped towards them with both arms reaching out as if begging for their help. She had an exaggerated, lop-sided limp due to the fact that her right foot was missing from mid-shin. The thing beside her, two heads shorter and destroyed to the point of appearing androgynous, walked with a wobbling gait as the broken bones of its legs threatened to give way with each step.

Twitching the controls fractionally to his left, Johnson made sure to put both of them under the tracks to save them the trouble of having to walk any longer.

“We’re clear,” he announced. Over the headset he’d hastily thrown over his ears, he could hear heavy breathing but no panic or distress. “Peter, was that Daniels calling us?”

There was no reply.

“Peter?”

“He’s not here,” Bufford said breathlessly, with more than a hint of panic in his quiet words. In response, their forward momentum was cut violently enough for shouts to come through as those in the rear section were slammed into the separation. He began to turn the vehicle around, spinning it on the spot, with the tracks churning the ground up in opposing directions, just as a loud thud sounded on their roof. That thud was accompanied by a second, slightly louder, and two sections above their heads were being scratched and clawed at in animalistic desperation by what could only have been the faster ones; the ones who still retained just enough cognitive ability to understand where their quarry had gone to ground, and who were now trying to dig them out.

“Larsen, is he there with you?” Bufford asked. A pause hung heavy with hesitation before any reply came.

“He is not,” Astrid answered, her own voice sounding broken by the stupidity of their unforgiveable mistake. Two of them were Special Forces soldiers, trained to a staggeringly high level and accustomed to working in small teams. The very core of their ethos was to always work as one and never leave anyone behind. More thuds and shrieks sounded as their Warrior was swarmed by the remains of the crowd, which had swelled to a far larger number than they had originally thought.

“We’re going back,” Johnson announced, delivering the statement as if daring anyone to countermand his decision. They rolled forwards, not even feeling the bumps of those undead bodies crushed under the weight of their wagon, until Johnson stopped and stared forwards through the limited view he was afforded. He swallowed, feeling a lump in his throat he hadn’t experienced for a long time, as he saw the hundreds of Screechers flow around the barn with the ruined door and head directly towards them.

Bufford saw it too, wishing he could reach out and squeeze the sergeant major’s shoulder to reassure him with the words he carefully chose.

“Going back for him signs his death warrant, Dean,” he said. “We need to lead the rest of these rotten bastards away and come back for him. We’ve got to trust he’ll know to keep his head down, and that we’ll come back for him.”

Johnson said and did nothing for a long time, but simply stared ahead. He couldn’t see the dead ground in front of them, but it was filling up with the tightly packed undead, who pawed impotently at their armoured skin like a cat scratching at a patio door in the rain.

“Sit tight, lad,” Johnson said with a wavering voice. “I’m coming back for you.”

The revs rose aggressively as the Warrior shot backwards and slewed left, before loud clunking noises indicated their switch of gears to launch them forwards and down a tree-lined single-track road, away from the farm.

“Light those fuckers up, Buffs,” Johnson snarled, no longer able to hide the sound of his sniffing nose betraying the fact that he was crying for the first time in as long as he could recall. “Let ‘em have it and don’t bloody stop until they’re all done for.”

* * *

Peter couldn’t sleep during the night. Almost everyone else was so exhausted that sleep wasn’t something they had to find, merely submit to. He was tired too, only something about their location set his nerves on edge and prevented his heartrate from slowing enough to even consider slumber.

Sleeping in a barn made him reminisce the early days of being all alone, and the logical train of thought took him back further to the arrival of the first Screechers he’d seen and the subsequent interactions with his mother.

It wasn’t the horror of what he had seen that put him on edge. It wasn’t the immediate loss of his childhood—what little there had been of one—or any other such self-absorbed sorrow; it was more a reminder of the existence he’d suffered and survived before the dead came back to life and tried to tear the living apart.

He finally began to understand that it was his fear of those living people from whom he’d been unable to escape in what he considered to be his former life. With this thought came the further realisation that he genuinely preferred his current existence, and all that it had given him, to everything prior. This realisation brought on a wave of nausea so profound that he had to stand upright and lean against the side of their small tank to steady himself.

That nausea turned to a grumble in his stomach, so threatening it couldn’t be ignored. His eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom inside the barn, showing him a slither of silhouette and the barest of reflections of light from the axe head in the hands of the person taking their turn to keep watch.

He remained still, hoping that he hadn’t disturbed Kimberley and taken her concentration away from her task. Reaching down slowly for what had been his pillow, he scooped up his battered backpack by the loop on the top and carried it with him as he tiptoed towards the creaking stairs leading up to the mezzanine level. He had to move so slowly, taking each step with infinite care and precision so as not to wake them all up. But the only alternatives were to go outside—not high on his to-do list—or else perform the basic bodily function that was nagging at him in front of the others. Given the option of climbing the rickety stairs and doing what he needed to do in private, he elected for that choice.

Reaching the dusty, dark privacy of the upper level, which looked as if it had been abandoned for its original purpose many years before, he used the precious possession of the green metal torch and its red-filtered lens to bathe an eerie glow on his task.

Reaching into his bag and working by feel, he pulled out the item he needed and used the sensitive tips of his fingers to locate the edge of the cellophane wrap and stretch out a length of it, then he used his teeth to cut the plastic and pull away a square to lay it on the ground. Carefully unfastening his belt, he lowered himself into position with the empty plastic bottle held in place for the secondary function, and tried to stay silent while he did what he needed to do. When he’d finished, he used some of the precious toilet paper flattened inside the top pocket of his pack. Wrapping the unpleasant bundle to seal the odour inside, so as not to attract the unwelcome attention of anything less than alive, he added a second layer of plastic wrap to the package and settled it neatly in a crevice far away from anywhere it could be found, allowing himself a smirk that perhaps one day, when their country was reclaimed, someone would find the preserved remains and open it for an unpleasant surprise.

Feeling much lighter and less uncomfortable, he settled himself against a pile of old, dusty sacks and found the spot more comfortable than he had been at ground level with the others. Despite the scratchy feel of the old, rat-eaten material, he found his eyelids getting heavier by the second as the crack of starlit blackness through the doors grew ever so slightly grey, until he drifted off into a light sleep that would last for barely an hour.

The dull crackle of a radio speaker tickled his consciousness, making him think that he hadn’t tuned his clock radio properly to one of the four stations he could get from his room. He reached out with his right hand, expecting to find the long, rectangular button that would allow him just a few more minutes of sleep before he really had to get up or face the consequences of having to be told to do something twice by either of his parents.

He groaned as he stretched, reaching out further to find his school clothes to pull them towards him and slip them on under his covers, but his hand didn’t touch folded cloth like he’d expected. Instead, it found the worn-down grip of the sawn off shotgun resting on top of the rough material of his pack. His small fingers explored it as his eyes stayed closed, finding the metal of the trigger guard cold to the touch, which served to send a bolt through him, like it was electrified.

His eyes flew open as the shouts of alarm from below cut through his reverie. Grabbing his bag with a gasp of panic—because any one of his companions shouting meant that there was imminent danger—he leapt up to join them, totally forgetting his environment and slamming his forehead hard into an exposed wooden beam of rough wood.

The blow didn’t knock him out, not out cold anyway, but it dealt enough of a blow to stun him sufficiently that he could only watch through a wide crack in the warped floorboards. He saw the rear end of their Warrior surging out of the barn in a cloud of thick exhaust smoke, to rip the doors off and let in a wash of dawn light. It also exposed the invading crowd of Screechers left moaning and following their escape to step and stumble over their crushed and partly destroyed comrades alike.

Peter didn’t move. He hoped they wouldn’t be able to detect him where he was, relying on the smells of so many warm-blooded people there, mixed with the thick fumes from the Warrior in the confined space, to sufficiently confuse the ones who remained there.

He watched, still face down on the exposed boards of the treacherous mezzanine, as the few who lacked the sense to follow the mobile can of zombie spam milled about beneath him like lost souls;

He didn’t panic, at least not at first, but instead watched one Screecher with fascinated interest as it moved uncertainly beneath him. It took three or four staggering steps in one direction, before stopping and throwing its head wildly from left to right in search of something, only to repeat the process over and over.

Inside the safety of his head, Peter gave a commentary to the Screecher’s behaviour, chuckling to himself as it amused him to imagine what it was thinking, if it could think. He watched it fly forwards again, knocking over his sticker—his modified pitchfork that had seen him through a number of sticky situations—as it froze and looked about, bewildered.

What the bloody hell did I come in here for? He heard in his head. The thought spoke in his mother’s voice, which didn’t bother him at first, but when the confused zombie repeated its behaviour, he heard the words spoken again with more venom, as if it was his fault that his mother had walked into a room without knowing why; blaming her only son instead of her alcoholism or her sick mind.

He scoffed involuntarily, and through the wide split between the two wooden boards where his right eye had a clear view of the ground below, he saw the confused zombie freeze and crane its neck awkwardly upwards until it stared straight at him. He didn’t breathe, waiting for the awful, ripping noise of the shriek he fully expected at any second. That shriek, he knew, would attract more of them. He could see it playing out from start to finish in his mind with brutal clarity. They would try to climb the old stairs, collapsing them and trapping him on the upper level. Even if any of them made it close enough to reach him without falling, he knew he could defend that narrow staircase until the end of time with nothing but a plank of wood.

If he had an endless supply of water and food, that was.

He knew he only carried enough water for a day or two, but after that he would be too weak to make any attempt at escape with a chance of survival above zero.

In a moment of realisation so sudden and overwhelming, he knew he had to escape now or else be trapped to die of dehydration over days of agony, when he would grow weaker and more delusional by the second.

Snatching up his backpack, he stood, not rising to his full height as the drying blood on his forehead, leaking from just inside his hairline, served as a harsh reminder, and he made for the stairs just as the noise hit him.

It wasn’t the noise of a shriek. Wasn’t the battle cry of a Screecher calling out the location of food to every other undead bugger in earshot. Instead, it was the very loud and oddly reassuring sound of heavy machine gun fire barking out big bullets a way down the road from him. He watched through the gaps in the floor again as the handful of confused undead still stuck in a time loop inside the barn made directly for the exit to follow the sounds of gunfire.

Granted the slightest of reprieves, Peter threw himself down the stairs as fast as he could, to break through a broken board five steps from ground level. He thumped down hard, banging his face painfully into the dirt, to be rewarded instantly with the taste of blood in his mouth. He scrambled to his feet, his fumbling right hand grasping desperately for the shaft of the pitchfork, to throw himself from the barn and turn instinctively in the direction where he saw the fewest undead shambling towards the building.

He ran, stopping and slipping in a painful slide that left him on his back as his feet backpedalled desperately to avoid another group rounding a corner further ahead. He got back to his feet, diverting his route towards a ladder set against the side of a large, low building and he attacked the rungs with as much speed as he could muster. Reaching a flat roof larger than the barn three times over, he lay on his back and listened to the sounds of gunfire getting further away with each echoing burst.

“They’re leading the herd away,” he told himself in a quivering whisper. “Then they’ll come back for me.” His eyes screwed shut and his mouth contorted as his body betrayed him and he began to break out in tears. He forced it away, managing to keep it at bay for a few seconds but then the tears came in a flood that he was unable to stop.

He cried angrily and silently to himself as he lay flat on his back on the roof, his chest heaving and his diaphragm spasming like an inconsolable toddler, all the while hearing the sounds of the engine and the gunfire fade away, as the only people he’d ever trusted since his sister was taken from him left him all alone.

THIRTEEN

“In English, Doc,” Fisher said with a smirk that Grewal guessed was intended to make him seem confident. It didn’t, instead lending the American an added air of arrogance that made him marginally less likeable than he had previously been. Grewal sighed, not in an exhausted way in spite of the few hours’ uncomfortable sleep he’d had, but in a mentally tired way that conveyed just how much he enjoyed explaining complex matters to his intellectual inferiors. He sat, sucked in a breath and looked the CIA man in the eyes.

“The serum works within the very small and confined tests we’ve conducted. There is still a very long way to go to ensure that its lethality is fine-tuned sufficiently, bu—”

“That’s getting away from English again…” Grewal swallowed down the retort he knew his tiredness threatened to unleash, before answering in a measured tone.

“Stage one looks good,” he said in a strained voice that bordered dangerously on being too sarcastic. “Stages two to four need to go just as well before we can say we have a cure. What I really wan—”

“You dragged me all the way down here to tell me that you’d what? Got a gold star in a third grade math test?”

“I’d have come to you, only I’m not permitted to leave the facility,” he answered through gritted teeth, continuing before Fisher could interrupt again. “That’s not the breakthrough we’ve made, however.”

At the mention of the word ‘breakthrough’, Fisher shut his mouth and shot an expectant look at the scientist. Taking his uncharacteristic silence as permission to continue, Grewal spoke.

“I won’t bore you with the details,” he said sarcastically. “However, we made an unexpected discovery during testing yesterday.”

“This is how one of your lab rats ended up with a forty-five through the dome?” Grewal ignored the interruption, knowing Fisher’s silence was too good to be true.

“The subject became so animated that it literally broke itself apart trying desperately to get to the source of a simple noise.” Grewal held up both hands to keep Fisher quiet long enough to complete the report. “A soldier was trying to tune a radio set and stumbled on a patch of static that was barely audible to us. That frequency sent the subjects quite literally wild. It was like a feeding frenzy; like the phenomenon of sharks sensing blood in the water and becoming almost mindless with bloodlust. We need to harness that sound and utilise it to draw all of the infected into central locations where we can re-infect them with the completed serum.”

Fisher sat still, eyebrows almost meeting in the middle as he processed what he’d just been told.

“Sooo,” he answered, “you’re telling me you know their personal phone number? Their magic frequency? You know the sound that drives them wild and you want to use it as a lure?”

“The sound itself isn’t necessarily the real trigger, probably more likely that it simply simulates one of them, getting it agitated as it hunts or kills an uninfected host… like I said: blood in the water.”

“Huh,” Fisher answered, not bothering to explain his views any further.

“I thought that, perhaps, you could develop something that could deliver this frequency somehow,” Grewal tried hopefully.

“What?” Fisher said, seeming to reconnect with the conversation suddenly and recall the few words he’d missed. “Oh, we, er… we actually have something already for that. Just needs a few minor adjustments, I reckon.”

It was Grewal’s turn to look confused, which seemed to delight Fisher, who sat upright and glanced over the Professor’s shoulder towards the partially open door of the room he’d commandeered as his office. This he’d achieved by summarily ordering the two US army personnel resting there to find somewhere else to be.

“This is classified,” he began, then shrugged as though it didn’t really matter if he divulged the secret, as the enemy it had been designed to be deployed against no longer existed. “You’ve heard the term ‘Psy-Ops’?”

“Psychological warfare?” Grewal asked, his mind racing ahead to the conclusion but not saying it out loud in case he deflated the CIA man too much, given how excited he seemed to be by divulging state secrets.

‘Uh huh. See, we had this idea way back—like Vietnam way back—and we’d developed a battlefield sound emitter designed to degrade an entrenched enemy and force them to surrender or abandon a position that would otherwise be too costly in servicemen’s lives to take conventionally.” Grewal sat back and casually raised one knee over the other. He did it naturally, seeing nothing wrong with the gesture, but Fisher was distracted by it as he found it unnervingly effeminate. He shook his head slightly and carried on.

“It’s like a bomb,” he explained, moving his hands through the air as they described the smooth shape of the projectile. “Only there’s no warhead—no explosive charge—instead, this thing hits the dirt after being dropped from pretty much any altitude and cracks open like a nut. When the housing comes off… pow! The device inside activates and gives you eighteen to twenty-four hours of the worst high-pitched screaming and white noise you could imagine.”

“Why don’t they just blow it up?”

“What?”

“The device,” Grewal asked. “Why wouldn’t the enemy just destroy it?”

Fisher hesitated. “It, er… it should be too painful to get near for starters. Like, agony, to be anywhere near it.”

“Irrelevant,” Grewal said half to himself. “The infected subjects would just try to eat it, I imagine. So, how soon can we have a few and how quickly can they be retrofitted to emit the low frequency sound?”

“Hold up there, Doc,” Fisher said defensively and leaned away as though warding off his enthusiasm. “I mean, there are channels to go through here. I can’t just call up Langley and say, “Hey, remember those weapons we have mothballed in the basement? The ones that were probably war crimes waiting to happen? Yeah, I’ll take four to go. With mustard. Can you deliver?”

Grewal stared back at him, not finding the sarcasm amusing in the slightest. Fisher deflated, his shoulders sagging as his fingertips rubbed the skin at his temples to distort the shape of his eyes.

“I’ll place a call,” he said, “see if I still have any sway back home.” He nodded his chin to the doorway, which Grewal took, with awkward grace, as his dismissal. Fisher stooped to pick up a heavy plastic case from the threadbare carpet and set it on the small desk in the room as Grewal stepped outside, pausing at the top of the stairs to peer back through the gap and eavesdrop on the one-sided conversation.

* * *

Fisher went through the laborious process of setting up the satellite phone and dialling the correct sequence of digits to reach his superiors at Langley. The call bounced around through a couple of extensions until the right people were located, and a glance at his watch made him curse his own stupidity as he realised he’d called the Pentagon at a little before eight a.m. their time.

“Hellard here,” came the gruff, almost fatherly voice from the other side of the Atlantic.

“Sir, it’s Fisher. With the science team sent to Scotl—”

“I’m well aware of who and where you are, Agent Fisher,” the older man interrupted, belying the kindly tone he usually employed to be his professional front. “Have you found a cure to the ‘problem’ yet?”

“We’re working on that, Sir,” Fisher stammered quickly before getting directly to the point of his call. “Sir, we’ve made a discovery here that would make a number of options more viable if it worked…”

“Well, spit it out, Son!”

“I—we—need as many of the prototype TSE devices and some engineers to re-tune them as you can muster. Long story real short, Sir, we think we can attract them into forming large groups which, as I said, will make more than one of our tactical solutions much simpler and more effective.”

“Wait a minute,” Bob Hellard, deputy director of the CIA, said coldly. “The United States is currently expending significant energy and resources in monitoring the behaviour of those infected in the UK.” His words sounded as though he was standing before a closed meeting of the senate asking for budgetary increases. “And now you want to use a prototype device to intentionally draw them into herds or whatever?”

“Sir,” Fisher said flatly, as if he was dropping the bullshit. “If this project doesn’t work out, then I don’t need to explain it to you that having them concentrated in the major cities will make it much easier to wipe the slate clean again so we can repopulate.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, during which Fisher didn’t speak. He barely even breathed. In his mind, the next person to speak and fill the void in the conversation was the one to lose, and his career was staked on the mission being a success. Many had simply wanted to nuke Britain and seal off Europe, especially now that the news out of their west coast was just as bleak. He knew their maritime forces were stretched thin enough maintaining constant coastal patrols, not to mention the concerns of many that a horde would walk over the frozen expanses from Russia to Canada with the next winter. But if he could provide the solution to controlling the movements of the infected until they could be purged, either by napalm or whatever artificial virus-killing virus the scientist was cooking up, then the people of America could sleep soundly thanks to him.

That was why his explanation featured the word ‘we’ so heavily.

“You’ll get your toys, Fisher,” Hellard said finally. “And an air crew to deliver them. But I expect results by the end of the week.” The connection was cut before Fisher could respond, but the abruptness of the call ending did nothing to stifle his sense of achievement.

Outside the door, still and silent, Professor Grewal fought down the urge to storm back into the room and demand an explanation for the terms, ‘wipe the slate clean’ and ‘repopulate’. Instead, he melted away, returning to his foul-smelling cow shed lab to continue working on one of the few things on the planet he could actually affect.

* * *

The transport plane arrived the following morning, banging down onto the runway in a similarly uncomfortable and reckless fashion as the one which had brought the science team and their minders. Three crates were unloaded with a forklift truck and placed on the back of the dull green trucks the British military favoured so much, before being driven a short distance to where the helicopters operated on a makeshift patch of flattened land adjacent to the main runway.

That rotary wing staging area, filled with very bored personnel, including one royal navy Sea King crew, was stirred into activity when the recognisable noise of incoming helicopters thrummed the mist-filled air and set them all to looking around to be the first to detect and correctly identify the aircraft.

“Sounds big,” Lieutenant Commander Barrett opined as he craned his neck upwards and shielded his face with his left hand to block out the meagre light of the sun behind the dense clouds. His right hand cupped a tin mug and the fingers of that hand sprouted a cigarette, a habit he had been drawn back into through long days of inactivity.

“More than one,” James Morris, Barrett’s younger co-pilot answered. For once he didn’t add a vague reference of either song lyrics or a film quote, which Barrett usually failed to recognise.

“Twin rotary,” Gary Brinklow, the crew’s loadmaster said confidently, without looking up from the dog-eared Jilly Cooper he was reading. He’d served in the Royal Navy longer than either officer, and had enjoyed a relaxed position of authority even before the world had ended.

“Chinook!” Morris exclaimed as he pointed west at a dark shape surging through the low-lying cloud cover.

“Almost,” Brinklow corrected him nonchalantly. “That’s a CH-Forty-Six. It’s just closer.”

The two pilots stared at the approaching helicopter, seeing that their NCO was absolutely right and this bulbous, unnatural-looking flying machine was indeed much smaller than the larger Chinook helicopters designed and built by the same company.

“Well,” Barrett exclaimed with a chuckle, “that didn’t make it across the Atlantic all by itself, did it now?”

Neither of his companions answered. The fact that there was at least one aircraft carrier out in deeper water beyond their sight and reach made them feel even more trapped as they were forced to sit and watch their own helicopter gather dust without the fuel allocation to operate it. The realisation dawned on them all at the same time that if the Americans—it could only be them operating such a large machine off their coast—could keep a large twin-rotor machine in the air, then they could surely spare a tank of aviation fuel to allow them to retrieve more survivors.

The large beast banked to loop their small heliport once, before levelling out to set its wheels onto the flattened area. Immediately, the screaming sound of its engines being cut lowered the noise level and the three men of the Sea King that had seen so much action already watched as the rear ramp lowered to reveal an empty cargo hold and the exiting flight crew. There were six of them, indicating that they had sent a maintenance team to accompany the aircraft, and their path would lead them past the British crew to reach the buildings.

“Welcome to Skye,” Barrett said, smiling and extending a hand to the pilot in the lead. The man took it suspiciously, not offering his own name in response to Barrett’s introductions, but smiled weakly as though to end the conversation without confrontation. Then he just walked away.

“What the hell was that all about?” Morris asked the senior pilot quietly.

“Not sure,” Barret answered as he lifted a hand to point at an arriving convoy of Bedford trucks coming from the direction of the newly arrived cargo plane. “But it’s more than likely got something to do with that.”

FOURTEEN

The argument that flared briefly around the stationary hulk of the Sultan burned out slowly like a dying flare. The strenuous protestations of Duncan were met with blank faces of refusal at best, and a threat of bloody violence from the one member of their party he least expected it from.

The girl, Jessica, pulled a blade from her right boot, and held it low beside her, which seemed to signify her potential use of it wasn’t a mere threat. Duncan held up his hands and backed up a pace.

“Whoa, hold on a minute,” he laughed, hoping to lower the temperature by lightening the mood. Daniels flicked out a hand to clip Jessica’s right sleeve, which caught her attention enough to see his head shake. Sighing, she replaced the blade in her boot but kept her look of target analysis fixed firmly on the man she didn’t know.

One of the men, she corrected herself as one of the newcomers spoke. He made words like any other person, only to her ears the sound came with a quiet force to them, like the man didn’t need to raise his voice. She was already wary of him from the way he moved, seemingly without making a sound, but his words added a gravity in support of her own wants, which raised his standing with the girl.

“We go back for them,” he said simply. No justification. No swaying argument or impassioned speech about why; merely a statement of fact as though any other path simply wasn’t an option.

“Agreed,” Daniels said, glancing at Ellie, who had her face buried in her hands as her body was racked with sobs she tried her hardest to keep silent. “But we don’t have an up-to-date location, bearing or RV point set up…” The two marines glanced at one another to convey a silent opinion about the lack of operational awareness. The taller of them, the man who had simply identified himself as Enfield, reached into the door pocket of the passenger side and produced a map, which he proceeded to spread out on the front of their ugly car.

“What do we know?” the heavier-set marine, sergeant Hampton, asked.

“We know they were down on the coast and heading north west towards the house,” Daniels explained. “We know they saw the swarm travelling north and they intersected their path. They holed up on a farm somewhere overnight.”

“A farm somewhere,” Hampton repeated matter-of-factly, looking again at the quiet man cradling the rifle. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find around here.” He glanced with theatrical exaggeration over both shoulders to take in the open, rolling landscape dotted with a few farms as far as the eye could see.

“Point taken,” Daniels said, “but that doesn’t explain why they aren’t answering their radio.”

“No,” Hampton mused distractedly as he ran a thick, sausage-like finger over the map to trace the major roads. Silence hung for a while until Daniels leaned in to look at the map to circle his pointed finger in the air before stabbing it down.

“That’s where we were,” he said, snaking the finger north to tap on a vague area, “and this is where we are now.” The finger lifted up again to hover until it traced the red line indicating a wider road. “Best guess is that they were heading this way—no sense in using the smaller roads when there wasn’t enough traffic around here to block the main roads—and the swarm would’ve come though… here… ish.”

He gestured a wider track with two fingers to show a roughly south to north direction that passed very close by their residence of yesterday.

“Meaning they’ll still be on that side of the line and not answering us,” Hampton said. “Anyone want to state the obvious?”

“They were in a Warrior with a full armament,” Daniels said firmly, refusing to accept that they had been overwhelmed by unarmed zombies. Thousands of zombies, granted, but still none that could bite through armour.

“And two of them are ninjas,” Enfield chimed in helpfully.

“And two of them are Special Forces,” Hampton agreed without breaking verbal stride. “What was the plan?” he asked Daniels.

“The plan?”

“Yes,” the marine sergeant asked him with exaggerated slow speech. “What was the plan for when you met up?”

“Erm, head to the north west coast of Scotland where the others went… We didn’t set an RV because we were in radio contact.”

“So, assuming we don’t find them and can’t raise them, would they go there under their own steam?” Enfield asked. Daniels shrugged, admitting the obvious logic.

“No,” snapped Ellie as she advanced on the huddled men. “No way. We’re not leaving. Not if Amber and Peter are with them.” She shouldered her way in between them, dwarfed by their height and size, to stab her own slender digit onto the map. The gesture was intended to make her point but instead it served only to draw the attention of the three soldiers to where her fingertip landed, which was about forty miles away from the places they had been discussing.

“I’m not suggesting we do that,” Hampton said angrily. “These people are… these people are our friends. We’ve spent a god-awful winter with them and both of us were prepared to…” he sucked in a calming breath and closed his eyes briefly before speaking more calmly. “Both of us stayed behind so they could get away.” That piece of information silenced the small, fierce woman and her face softened. Hampton took his gaze away from hers to regard Johnson’s former radio man.

“We move from here to their last known position. Keep trying the radio and we’ll follow in the turd-mobile.” He nodded back to the tired-looking ride they’d turned up in, unable to keep the derision from his face as he regarded the Ford Sierra. The vehicle had adopted no fewer than three different shades of metallic brown, despite being only six years old, going by the ‘B’ registration on the plate.

“Look alive!” Duncan shouted from his position half out of the Sultan’s hatch. As one, they all moved with purpose, Enfield spinning to bring the rifle scope up to his eye to scan the road in the direction they had come from.

“How many?” he asked loudly, eye still glued to the optic and guessing correctly that the elevated position afforded a better view of the threat.

“Dozen,” Duncan shot back. “Maybe more.”

“Any fast fuckers?” Hampton growled as he limped fast for the driver’s door of the Sierra.

“Well… oh shi—” His curse was interrupted by a coughing twang which Hampton knew was his marine rendering something safe. A second and third shot sounded, both at even intervals, which told the sergeant that the threat was imminent, if Enfield was picking them off at a steady rate.

“Too many,” Daniels called out from atop the Sultan. “Grab your gear and squeeze in here.” Hampton hesitated for a second and a half before swearing foully at the awkward lever to tip the front seat forwards and retrieve their bags. All the while, Enfield took steady, measured shots at the heads appearing over the low rise until a noise behind and above him paused the rhythm. The noise was Duncan pulling back the cocking handle on the big machine gun in preparation to fire.

“Don’t,” Enfield shouted up, “you’ll just bring more our way.” Hampton emerged from the car, still muttering as he manhandled two large packs and his own weapon.

“And the boot, Sarge,” Enfield chided his NCO in between two shots.

“Crap,” Hampton cursed, stomping back to fight with the keys and open the boot. “I fully expect you to keep the bastards off me, Enfield,” he reminded the marine in a conversational tone. “If you don’t, rest assured that I’ll make it my afterlife’s work to personally eat you, should I become the enemy.” He spoke as though there weren’t murderous former humans bearing down on his exposed back, as he retrieved a cardboard box with a few holes stabbed through it. The box shook in his hands and he muttered to it as he limped towards the Sultan and handed it up with a warning not to open the lid.

They clambered up the front of the tracked vehicle to bottleneck at the hatch before Enfield took three more rapid shots to expend the remainder of his magazine and then he too dropped inside. The interior, as cramped as it was with the four of them previously, now seemed uncomfortably claustrophobic. Duncan had abandoned his position at the pintle-mounted gun to settle himself behind the driving controls and to fill the empty air around them with the sudden bark of their loud exhaust.

They rolled away, abandoning the car with the doors open in the centre of the road.

“Where did they come from?” Duncan shouted back from the forward section. “We haven’t seen any for days—weeks even—why now?”

“Stragglers from that swarm is my guess,” Hampton yelled back before asking the next logical question. “So where did the bloody swarm come from?”

FIFTEEN

For all their secrecy, for all their ‘need to know’ attitudes, the CIA put things in place with such rapid efficiency that the time from theoretical concept to practical application elapsed in under forty-eight hours.

The cargo plane that brought the experimental Psy-Ops weapons had been loaded almost immediately after Fisher’s phone call back to Langley, and the engineers required to reprogram the devices had taken only six hours longer to locate. The helicopter and crews assigned the task of delivering the payloads were already in-theatre, so weren’t difficult to find, but the clandestine feel of their orders to land on the Isle of Skye, where they would be briefed in person, rippled around the crew of the US aircraft carrier like a rumour.

The chief engineer, a sullen man with drooping cheeks and permanent bags under his eyes, neither offered his name nor did he engage any of the scientists or soldiers when he was escorted to the facility to test a scaled-down version of what he had created. Staff sergeant Yates, rivalling the engineer for the title of world’s most annoyed man, cleared the area and stood his team on alert with express orders not to fire unless he gave the order.

Standing in front of the four occupied cages—with three more subjects brought in during daylight, courtesy of the unfriendly SEAL team—the engineer flipped a switch on the briefcase-sized contraption he had brought with him. As the almost imperceptible, low hum filled the air, all four zombies went apoplectic with an insane rage that caused the living people to take involuntary steps backwards.

“That’s enough,” Yates growled, just as the engineer had evidently reached the same conclusion and killed the device.

“What’s the range on it?” Professor Grewal demanded, haranguing the engineer before he had even closed the lid on his case.

“On this?” he glanced at Yates, who sighed and gestured towards the exit. He took the case a full fifty paces to the house, where he flipped open the lid and activated it again. Almost immediately, Yates began hollering for him to shut it off. They tested it out to a range of almost two hundred paces before the results diminished even slightly. The engineer walked back; eyes cast down as his lips moved in silent calculations.

“Power on this is about one percent of the main device,” he explained. “Assuming the same rate of fall-off, you’re looking at around eleven miles minimum.” Grewal nodded, turning to catch the eye of the quiet and unnerving leader of the team assigned to risk their lives and bring him test subjects.

“Mister Miller?” he said, hoping the man wouldn’t berate him for not using his correct military rank as Yates had. He spoke fast to fill the pause that could be filled with derision and abuse. “Would this device be useful to you? A means of attracting them perhaps?” Miller smirked and shot a sideways glance at one of his team, who looked embarrassed. He turned back to the engineer and raised his eyebrows as if to ask his permission. The engineer shrugged as if it was no matter to him.

“I only threw that together to test the frequency,” he said. “You’ll need batteries for it but I’m sure you’ll manage just fine.”

“We will,” Miller said with a nod, accepting the case and handing it off to one of his men. “We’ll call it the ‘Yo’.” Sniggers rippled out of the shadows where the rest of the bearded men lingered. Miller offered no further explanation and led his men out of the building.

“Before you go, Mister Miller?”

“It’s ‘Master Chief’ to you,” one of the other SEALs said with evident hostility.

“Master Chief Miller,” Grewal said in an apologetic tone, “I appreciate that your job is a very dangerous one and we appreciate everythi—”

“Get to the point, Professor,” Miller interrupted. “I don’t need my ass kissed before someone gives me shitty detail.” Grewal straightened and cleared his throat.

“Very well, we need one of the faster ones for testing. I need to see how—why—the virus has produced different results in them…” Miller kept his cold stare firmly fixed on Grewal for a few seconds past the point of it being uncomfortable. He let his breath out through his nose, before nodding once and turning away. Grewal watched them go, stifling the shudder he could feel threatening to travel down his spine like electricity, before turning back to the engineer.

“How long before you can have the bigger device ready for testing?” The engineer frowned at him and took a step away towards the door.

“Last I checked, I didn’t work for you,” he answered. “I only came to make sure it made those… things pay attention. You stick to your job and I’ll stick to mine.” He left, not giving anyone there a second glance in his haste to be far away from the infected, who gnashed and snapped their teeth at him from inside their cages.

A loud, slow, almost sarcastic clapping began from the upper level, where the big machine gun was set up pointing at the cages. All eyes turned to see Fisher smiling down at them, a heavy black coat zipped up tight under his chin. He stopped clapping after a few seconds and spoke loudly as he also turned to leave.

“Couldn’t have put it better myself. Where’s our cure, professor?”

* * *

Grewal mulled over the best delivery method for the serum. Chambers had shown him how all of the lab tests had been successful, in that the chunks of infected flesh cut from their subjects had all haemorrhaged their fluids to leave a gelatinous mess in the sealed dishes.

He had opened his mouth to say that the serum might work on necrotic flesh samples, but it couldn’t be certain to work on a live subject, before he shut his mouth, recalling that the subjects weren’t ‘live’ and were essentially also necrotic flesh. A thought hit him and he turned to find the man he needed.

“Sergeant Yates?” Yates looked up and pursed his lips at the annoying interruption to the nothing he was doing before. “Sergeant, what would be the best way to infect people with a virus? Militarily speaking, I mean.” Yates seemed to consider his question for a few beats before deciding to give him the sensible answer.

“I’m not sure I know about that,” he said carefully, “perhaps your CIA man could answer better. The scenario we most suspected the Russians would use against us was a liquid, spread through either a direct attack on our water sources, or an airburst device if the attack was overt.” He stared at Grewal, sighing when the man showed no obvious signs of having understood him. “A bomb,” he explained. “One that scatters the infectious substance in the air over a large area.”

Grewal tapped the tip of the pen he’d been holding against his teeth as he thought, surprising the few people close by when he launched himself from the seat he was occupying to march to the fridge and pull out a vial of clear liquid. Then he shrugged off the coat he was wearing to begin fighting his way into a hazardous material suit.

“Clear the room,” Yates barked, looking up to shoot a few hand signals at his people on duty behind the safe end of the machine gun, before climbing into a suit himself. Grewal said nothing, correctly assuming that the man wanted to keep a close eye on what he was doing.

Suited, he used his ungainly gloved hands to pour the contents of the vial into a contraption that resembled something a person would use to spray water on a plant. He approached the nearest cage, glancing at Yates with a look that seemed to convey a, ‘Here goes nothing’ attitude, and stepped closer to the cage to spray the zombie in the face twice. He sidestepped to the next cage and repeated the process before backing off.

Neither zombie showed any signs of having been affected by the light mist falling on its dead face and both continued to rage at the mesh which denied them the warm, fresh meat that came so tantalisingly close. Grewal stripped off the mask of his suit and turned to Yates with a smile. He saw that the sergeant had the heavy pistol still gripped in his right hand and was keeping one wary eye on the cages.

“What now?” he asked after nothing happened.

“Now we wait.”

* * *

They didn’t have to wait as long as Grewal had thought. He’d taken himself back to the house to wash and eat something, realising he’d gone straight through lunchtime without noticing. He was therefore understandably annoyed that he didn’t even get to take a bite of the sandwich he’d made for himself when the door burst open and one of the soldiers told him with wide eyes that he had to come quick.

His annoyance evaporated when his mind caught up with why his presence might be required in such a hurry. He ran the short distance to the makeshift lab, slipping on the smooth stones twice and cursing the infernal Scottish weather for raining almost constantly. When he arrived in the large shed, the noise assaulted his ears painfully. It was the same ungodly shriek they let out when sensing an imminent meal, only somehow different; as though the shriek was their only medium of communication, like a baby crying, and right then, they were trying to communicate fear and pain.

He ignored the offer of the rubberised suit thrust out towards him, walking towards the cages where two of the zombies were moaning and pressing their faces into the metal to get to him. The others… weren’t. They were standing and swaying, staggering even as their raw vocal cords played a tortured symphony of uncomprehending pain. One turned towards him, dark, almost black blood leaking from the eye sockets around the blind, milky orbs that seemed to stare at him pleadingly. It opened its mouth again to gargle another hideous sound, but viscera poured from its open maw as it pitched forward to slam its face off the mesh and leave a streak of gore on the metal. It sank to the hard ground to convulse and jerk like an eel, blood beginning to ooze from every visible patch of exposed skin. Before his eyes, the active and very lethal infected person became increasingly still as the vile puddle it converted itself into grew outwards and threatened to touch the toes of his boots. He stepped back in a daze, looking to his left as the second subject fell backwards like a felled tree, gagging and gargling. As both creatures treated with the serum grew still and silent, the absence of their sound was replaced by a ragged cheering and applause from soldiers and scientists alike.

“You think this solves anything?” Grewal roared, turning to stare down everyone in the room and silencing them in a second. “You think this undoes any of the damage we’ve done to humanity? This solves nothing!” He paused, breathing hard as even he was surprised by his outburst. He continued in a quieter but still angry tone. “Even if this works on a massive scale... even if we kill every one of the infected, that’s still a human life lost. You think we’re winning?” He scoffed, “We’ll be lucky to scrape our way out of this shit as a species.”

Pausing only long enough to eyeball all of them in turn, he fought down his body’s treacherous urges to cry in response to the surge of adrenaline and the sinking feelings of guilt he suppressed so well every day, and he stormed out of the building.

He found Fisher leaning against the wall by the back door to the house they had commandeered. The man was smoking, still huddled inside his large waterproof jacket, and seemed to find the agitated state of the scientist amusing. Grewal was spared having to either appear rude or attempt small talk.

“The engineer’s just gone,” Fisher said as he dropped the butt to grind it out on the wet cobblestones with the toe of his boot. “Reckon we’ll be good to go tomorrow.”

“Good to go on what, precisely?” came the retort in a voice that still shook with guilt and anger.

“The testing phase of the lure device.” Grewal relaxed slightly.

“For a terrible moment there, I thought you were going to say you wanted to deploy the serum.”

“It works, doesn’t it?” Fisher asked with raised eyebrows. “What else would you have to cheer about?”

“It worked on them,” Grewal answered sourly, jerking his head back over his shoulder towards their makeshift lab. “There’s nothing to say it’ll work on the adapted strain.” At the mention of this, Fisher’s eyes seemed to glaze over, just as they did when he was faced with something scientific that he either didn’t want to be burdened with or else just felt bored with. Grewal had tried, on more than one occasion, to explain why the variations in behaviour of a small percentage of the infected was so important. Fisher, increasingly under the gun from his masters back in the States, needed answers and solutions instead of more questions and problems.

Fisher watched as Grewal stormed off inside, no doubt to work out his emotions in private, and went back to the room he was using to pick up the radio set and place a call to the other side of the island.

He gave orders for the device to be made ready and deployed as soon as possible, before leaving the house and climbing back into the passenger side of a military off-road vehicle. That was, after first absent-mindedly trying to climb in on top of his driver and muttering angrily about the steering wheel being on the wrong side.

Back at his headquarters, he ordered up some coffee and waited for it, grimacing as all caffeine-addicted professionals did when presented with a beverage they weren’t accustomed to. He closed the door to his room and placed another call on the satellite phone to order the AWACS be diverted to monitor the activity of the infected after they had dropped the device, along with the mass production of serum for immediate transportation over the Atlantic.

SIXTEEN

Johnson drove in a noisy stop/start game of Screecher destruction.

The first mile of flight had seen the gun run dry and he couldn’t spare the time to stop and reload it, nor could he divert enough concentration to accurately explain to Bufford how to do it. Instead, and much against his better judgement, he grudgingly allowed the SBS man to fire the big 30mm cannon into the largest concentrations of undead.

In the rear section, Kimberley was beside herself with guilt and grief because she had fallen asleep when it was her turn to keep watch. But the real heartbreak came when Amber realised why the adults were so upset. She screamed and pounded her tiny fists against the inside of the armoured door, demanding to be let out and sobbing for the boy who she had grown so attached to, as she screamed his name over and over. The sound of her cries broke their hearts and renewed Johnson’s hatred of the creatures for all that they had taken away from so many people.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” he growled into the microphone of his headset, using the growing light to line up a knot of approaching Screechers to mow them down under his left-side tracks. Then he crunched into reverse and repeated the process until the road ahead was clear.

The muted banging on the thick armour to his left told him that more had fallen upon their inedible transport from the foliage on their flank, and he calmly reversed the Warrior once more to repeat the process.

“I’ll go back for him,” Bufford said as he tried to work out the overly complex reloading procedure for the chain gun.

“We don’t separate,” Johnson answered, still repeating his reverse and advance crushing manoeuvres.

“But the lad’s on his own—”

“He was on his own before we showed up,” Johnson snapped back, “and he was doing just fine. Don’t underestimate him; he’s probably safer without us attracting all this attention.” He felt callous as soon as he had uttered the words, clamping his mouth shut and concentrating on his task. All around them, more palsied hands clawed at their hull, forcing him to back further away from the farm until he could no longer even see the approach road to it.

“Where the hell did all these bastards come from?” Bufford snarled as he fought with the machinery. “We haven’t seen these kinds of concentrations for months, and now all of a bloody sudden they start protesting again? What is it, another fucking miner’s strike?”

“Are we clear of the herds?” Larsen’s voice cut in sharply. Johnson gave her a quick ‘stand by’ before spinning the Warrior in a full three-sixty to check.

“Seems clear at the moment,” he reported, “I’ll wait for more to catch up with us an—” The sound of the rear doors opening cut him off, prompting an outburst from both him and Bufford so that neither of them had their words heard.

“She said,” sniffed Kimberley’s voice over the vehicle intercom as the door closed again. “She said to clear them out and come back for her.”

Johnson hesitated, feeling the blood rise in his face until he breathed out to stop himself from bursting. As much as he hated it, as much as he couldn’t stand not being in control, he had to trust both the young boy and the Norwegian commando to handle their own business.

Selecting reverse again, he set his face and went about handling his own.

* * *

Astrid Larsen walked fast and smooth away from the rear of the Warrior, which she covered long enough to ensure the occupants were safe behind the closed door. Her gun was up, tucked tightly into her shoulder with her right cheek pressing into the parachute stock and she moved with the grace of a dancer. Everywhere her eyes looked, her upper body pointed. Everything she looked directly at was automatically lined up in the sights of the MP5 so the only decision she needed to make was to shoot or not to shoot.

Three of them fell in rapid succession; their switches were flipped as each emerging Screecher collected a 9mm bullet directly through their open mouths to blow out the brain stem. No other threats emerged, leaving her to make the next decision.

Through the trees or back down the road? she asked herself. The balance was between open space where she could see the threats coming from distance, and simply facing what seemed like fewer of them among the trees. She opted for the off-road route, stalking between the branches faster than anyone watching would expect, without any evidence of noise as her boots weaved her in a wide loop back towards the barn they had slept in.

Twice more, she stopped to dispatch a pair of loping Screechers who were bumping their way awkwardly through the foliage towards the retreating sounds of an engine and the renewed rattle of gunfire. A third, impaled on the low, broken branch of a fir tree through one shoulder, reached for her until the bullet punched through its skull and turned it off.

Buffs got the chain gun working again, she mused over the raucous sound in the distance. Keeping a small portion of her brain tethered to the others wasn’t a distraction. She knew that for certain as a grey, balding head appeared through a copse of holly leaves with one prickly green addition sprouting comically from its face, and she drilled it through the mouth with a single round from almost a dozen paces away.

That part of her mind, that small percentage of her consciousness that imagined what they would be thinking and saying and doing inside the Warrior, was what kept her mind sharp and focused. If she thought fully about what she had just done, if she logically assessed the facts coldly, she would be tempted to turn and run back to the safety of the armoured fighting vehicle and hammer on the door to be let back in.

As it was, keeping a part of her consciousness with them, what she was doing was just like holding her breath as she ducked underwater. She knew she could go back to safety whenever she wanted, and that knowledge gave her the courage and confidence to do what needed to be done.

Breaking through the foliage onto a wide field of overgrown grass, she scanned her surroundings and detected none of them. Pausing for a handful of seconds, she listened and absorbed every hint of sounds to map the small battlefield better in her mind.

Gunfire and engine behind and to my right, she thought as she marked the position of the others.

Shrieks to my left and behind, the slower-moving Screechers following the destruction wrought by their light tank.

She ran towards the farm, body low and gun still tucked tightly into her shoulder, as fast as she could without winding herself like a racehorse blowing out its lungs. She paused again nearer the collection of low buildings and listened once more.

A heavy sound like meat hitting a butcher’s block rang out ahead of her past a line of evergreens, focusing her attention on the nearest farm buildings. Choosing that as the most likely source of something out of the ordinary—or at least more out of the ordinary for the situation—she headed towards it.

Nine more wandering corpses went down to her weapon, some requiring more than one shot on the rare occasions she missed. Such misses were due to an unexpected stumble of her moving target, or an unlucky deflection that removed only part of the skull, which the Screecher no longer needed in order to function.

This was no super-human ability, she knew. It was no natural skill that others should be jealous of, but instead was the result of thousands of hours of practice and endless training; like the end result of a knife being sharpened.

The same sound as before, which she now recognised as a body hitting concrete from height, diverted her attention slightly to the right of her approach. Ducking low to shoot a look around the corner of a building, she saw three corpses mangled in a pile underneath a steel ladder. Two others milled about at ground level, reaching upwards and lacking the ability to climb the ladder, which told her that there must be something above her that excited them.

Perhaps a ten-year-old boy defending his position? She thought as she delivered two execution-style deaths to the backs of their heads.

The silent thought was answered by a booming report of a shotgun and the ballistic arrival of another corpse splattering and crunching into the concrete ahead of her, accompanied by a hissed whine of, “Shit!” from up above. Looking at the body still trying to move as the brain wasn’t destroyed, she took in the left arm, which was missing from the mid-forearm. With an exaggerated gasp of fear and understanding, Astrid leapt backwards as the thing rounded on her and lashed out its right arm with a speed and accuracy she hadn’t seen up close before.

The terror of realising she’d come within arm’s reach of a faster one—a Lima—took her breath away momentarily, as the thing began to use one hand and one stump to propel itself towards her along the ground, dragging destroyed legs to scrape the jagged shards of exposed bone noisily along the rough surface.

The mental numbness caused by the realisation evaporated in a flash. Specifically a tiny, suppressed muzzle flash as four single shots spat from the barrel of her gun to punch into the skull and end the grotesque movement. She was panting hard and whipped her head from left to right as she realised her situational awareness had suffered a lapse due to the fear of coming face to face—or boots to face, more accurately—with a Lima.

“More coming ‘round the left side!” came a muted shout from above her, Peter trying to keep his voice down and balancing that fear of discovery against the desperate need to warn her of the danger. Larsen looked up, saw the silhouette of the boy’s head and shoulders peeking over the edge of the flat roof and looked to her left to raise the gun in preparation for a renewed assault.

“My left,” Peter hissed. She looked up, saw the direction he was pointing in and glanced down in time to see the front-runners of the wave of rotting meat spill over themselves to get to her. Her mind took less than half a second to calculate speeds and distances, and she knew they would be on her before she could get clear of the building. Without hesitation she dropped the gun on its sling and gripped the cold metal rungs of the galvanised steel ladder to catapult herself upwards.

As she sprinted vertically, arms and legs pumping like a spider monkey in full flight, her brain gave her a quiet admonishment.

Stranding yourself on a roof with a young child isn’t the best idea you have ever had…

She told herself to shut up, and climbed.

SEVENTEEN

Downes, wearing fresh military uniform with as much of his old equipment that could be salvaged after a rigorous bleaching, stood when his colleague entered the room. In any other regiment, in many other situations in fact, he would have offered Colonel Kelly a salute.

Even with the obvious brevet rank and field promotion to lieutenant-colonel, Kelly still wore no badge of rank, just as Downes or any of the Special Air Service personnel didn’t, but something in him, so far as Downes could see, had changed.

“Downes,” he acknowledged almost abruptly with a rapid gesture of one hand to a seat opposite his desk. “How are you feeling now?”

“Much better, Kelly, thank you.”

“Heard about the old hypothermia…” Kelly said in a tone that needled Downes for a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Touch of exposure is all,” Downes told him dismissively, internally bridling at the unintended implication of weakness. “The doctor assured me it was a combination of exhaustion and lack of food that made me susceptible. Been rather pushing it on too little food and sleep recently.”

Kelly smiled. It was a companionable smile and one that harked back to the start of their acquaintance, if not friendship. The two young parachute regiment lieutenants hadn’t known each other before both arrived at Stirling Lines for their first crack at selection. Downes, eager to drink in the full experience, carried his own heavy bags and stepped down onto the platform at Hereford train station to join the milling group of fit-looking young men, reluctant to speak to the other candidates from the off. Kelly, in contrast, bore no shame in his family’s wealth and arrived at the gates in a Rolls Royce driven by an employee of his father. He dressed and acted the same as the other men, was just as fit and tough as many and indeed more so than quite a few, but his underlying hint of arrogance put some people on edge.

Both men had performed well in those early days of no sleep and seemingly permanent physical training, often finishing each forced march or run at very close intervals. Where they were pushed harder than the other ranks were before or after the day’s physical work was done. It could be anything from having to get up an hour before the men and plan the route for the day, to being pulled aside at a checkpoint to be asked to solve random mathematical equations. All of these additional pressures were designed to ensure the officers’ minds were as sharp as their bodies and fit for the task of commanding Her Majesty’s Special Forces.

Their physical and mental abilities marked them out in the first two weeks of gruelling, constant competition, as both had shown the unmeasurable quantity which made a man perfect for such endeavours. There was an attitude to each of them, a hidden layer of resilience, which made them both push through barriers and even ignore pain, which allowed them to achieve goals that would be otherwise impossible.

Of the commissioned ranks in their intake, only two men survived until the vaunted escape and evasion phase. This part of their training, at the final stages of their initial selection, was where their mental resolve and strength of character was truly tested. It didn’t matter if they’d successfully evaded capture, as at the final checkpoint in the exercise they would be taken, hooded, and subjected to the same treatment that any man taken in the first few days would be. Trying to maintain a watch on the number of hours and days they had been held, deprived of their senses and forced to maintain painful stress positions, both men emerged unscathed to be told that the exercise was over. They weren’t told if they had passed it, that torture at least hadn’t ended, but both men eventually earned their sand-coloured berets and both performed so well that they were invited to return years later at the rank of major.

“No Guinness and sausage sandwiches this time, eh?” Kelly joked, earning an unforced chuckle as the two men shared a memory from so long ago. The cans of Guinness, poured into tin cups to settle out and be drinkable, had been smuggled into camp illicitly to accompany the fried sausages crammed into the thick slices of bread. Both the sandwiches and the Guinness provided the two young men with their much-needed additional calories.

“No,” Downes admitted with a smile which faded when their current business reasserted itself into the forefront of their minds. “My chaps told me a few things that have caused concern, Kelly…” he said, hoping the man would still be in the mindset of their shared past and be forthcoming.

The look on Kelly’s face darkened. He leaned back and surveyed the man before him, before taking a sharp breath in and speaking fast as he leaned forwards.

“I’ve got over four hundred miles of coast to patrol, and I have fewer than two hundred men to do it. Granted, most of that coastline is impassable but that’s beside the point. Men need to sleep, men need to eat, civilians need to be kept in check, and quarantine procedures for you ragtag bunch sapped more of my reserves than you could imagine.” Downes sat forwards slightly, as if planning to interrupt, but he kept silent, watching the colonel closely as he poured excuses over him.

“I have people making demands of me every day—not least of all the few members of parliament who still believe they are somehow relevant to the current situation—and I still have to keep this island safe from the ever-present threat of an outbreak. So tell me, Major, what concerns do you have?”

Downes sat back and kept his face neutral. Although he hadn’t worked alongside Kelly for years, he knew the man well enough to recognise the stress behind his words. This was a man who came from wealth and privilege; a man accustomed to success. He chose to engage in a life of hardship to prove himself worthy above all others, and yet…

“And I can see you’re doing an admirable job, given the circumstances, Colonel,” Downes said carefully. “I doubt many officers I’ve worked with in my time would have conducted operations so effectively.” Kelly gave a small but gracious nod in acceptance of the praise.

“But I have to ask,” Downes went on, “who is truly in charge of things here?”

Kelly regarded him with a flash of cold fury for a fleeting moment before he controlled his expression. As much as he tried to mask his anger, his nostrils still flared as he fought to keep his breathing slow and measured.

“Speak your mind, Major,” he told Downes.

“Very well. Naval blockades off the coast. The CIA presence on the island. What exactly are we here? Is this a foothold for Britain to regain our home or a foothold for the Americans?” Kelly held his stare for a few seconds before deflating as he released his breath.

“If I’m completely honest with you, I don’t know. I’m assured that the remnants of our civilian government have done some form of deal with the US, which is evidently either ‘above my pay grade’ as they say, or else they believe the finer points are beyond my limited capability of understanding as a mere soldier.”

“So they aren’t here to evacuate us, and we can’t leave of our own accord?”

“Oh, we’re entirely free to go back to the mainland and do as we please, just not free to cross the Atlantic and risk infecting their continent.” Downes’ lips set in a tight line as his fears were confirmed. They were trapped there, totally at the mercy of a foreign superpower, regardless of their allegiance, and the decisions were being made at a level far above them.

“And the CIA involvement?”

“Ah,” Kelly said awkwardly as he leaned back and folded his arms, “there we find ourselves at a technical impasse.” Downes took the implication and the information in his stride, reverting to an out-loud train of theoretical monologue.

“So, the CIA are here and seem to be calling the shots. Aircraft have been seen coming in, and they’ve brought in personnel and equipment which aren’t overtly military, according to my information…” He paused to look more closely at Kelly, who kept his features still and listened. “Which could imply to someone that they’re conducting tests and require a secure base of operations as near as possible to a steady supply of infected people.” Still Kelly stayed silent and motionless.

“Are they conducting tests here, Colonel?”

“Yes,” Kelly admitted without hesitation. He seemed to want to say more, as though the force of keeping the information bottled up inside him was causing pain.

“Are there Screechers on this rock right now?”

“Yes,” Kelly said again, this time with only a moment of hesitation. “At least I believe so. A team of scientists came in over a week ago with a few CIA agents, a small team of Navy SEALs and a detachment of Army personnel specialising in infectious diseases. They’re on the furthest west spit of land possible, and any outbreak faces the Atlantic to the west and a line of guns to the east.” Downes nodded slowly, imagining the placement to be Kelly’s idea.

“So what do we do?”

“Not much we can do,” Kelly answered. “I’m having the others in your little convoy reallocated to patrol sections of coast and replace my boys covering quarantine and guard on the civilians, obviously focusing on the easterly sections of our perimeter.” A knock at the door interrupted their discussion. “I’ll keep you and your chaps in reserve, if you don’t mind?” Downes stood, hearing the tone of dismissal in the colonel’s words, to agree and take his leave. Opening the door, he was faced with three people, two men and a woman, who stirred some vague recognition in him, and he crossed their path awkwardly in the confines of the small landing. Fighting the urge to loiter and listen through the door, he returned to the waiting Land Rover and was driven back to his allocated billet in thoughtful silence.

* * *

Kelly kept his face neutral behind the false smile as the three civilians filed into the room. They all had another person with them; a sort of entourage of one each to ensure than none of them believed themselves superior to the others.

Playing backstop at a meeting with the Under Secretary of State for Agriculture, the Minister for the Arts and the Minister of State for Housing, all very much former titles and positions in his opinion, even though they seemed to cling to them in an attempt to validate their importance, was not a prospect he had been looking forward to.

He smiled to put them at ease, listened and nodded along with their ridiculous ideas for regrowth and repopulation of the British Isles when all the nasty business was over. Just in time before the boredom and annoyance could get to him, before he erupted and told them the truth—that they weren’t cowering off the coast with a view to moving back in when the pest control problem magically sorted itself out—Captain Barton knocked politely but urgently on the door before opening it.

Peering around the edge of the door, he smiled and cleared his throat.

“My sincere apologies, Colonel,” he lied smoothly as he played his part in the planned interruption. “Urgent military matter, I’m afraid. Can’t wait.” He flashed his best smile from his strong jawline as Kelly stood and smoothed down his camouflaged shirt, mirroring the smile in falsity, if not quite matching the dazzling charisma of the younger man.

“Duty calls,” he told the politicians solemnly, hoping the sheer cheesiness of the line wouldn’t betray their deception to end the meeting. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. See yourselves out, if you please.” He swept from the room to leave the echoing sounds of both officers’ boots thundering down the stairs to be followed by the rising pitch of an accelerating engine. Those sounds rose before falling away suddenly, only to rise again as the volume faded away with the next gear, taking the vehicle further away. The politicians, unable to have any kind of meaningful conversation without a referee, lapsed into an awkward silence until they were carried back to the town of Portree.

EIGHTEEN

Strictly speaking, Barton wasn’t entirely telling tales about there being a military matter requiring Kelly’s attention. The colonel sat in the passenger seat of their vehicle and endured the rough, bumpy roads being negotiated too fast by the captain instead of one of the men under their command.

“I think this will be far enough, Barton,” he said, having banged his head once too often on the door frame, forcing him to hang heavily from the handle above the window.

“Not quite, Sir,” the captain replied, raising his voice over the noise of the engine and howling wind. “Something has actually cropped up. It seems our colonial cousins have been playing with their toys and have caused something of a stir on the mainland.”

Kelly growled low in his throat before asking for an explanation.

“Can’t say I’m one hundred percent up to speed on the subject matter, Sir,” he said apologetically. “Perhaps we should get it straight from the horse’s mouth?”

The horse in question was pacing back and forth as far as the stretched cord of the satellite phone would allow. He was evidently excited as words tumbled from his mouth, barely taking the time to look up and acknowledge the two men as they walked in, other than to raise his eyebrows and smile briefly.

“Yessir,” he said into the phone, “yessir, that’s right. Uh-huh. Coverage like we never expected… No, Sir drives them crazy. Yessir, I will. Thank you.” He replaced the handset into the cradle of the black briefcase and turned to clap his hands together.

“What the bloody hell has you so excited, Fisher?” Kelly demanded.

“Pull up a pew, Colonel, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

* * *

The engineer couldn’t get away from the place they called ‘the facility’ quickly enough. Some facility it was, given that it was a farm shed with some hastily welded cages thrown together. What was inside those cages brutalised his senses and would probably stop him sleeping for the rest of the month. Or the rest of his life, he wasn’t sure yet.

With that lasting memory fresh in his thoughts, he rushed back to the small hangar he’d been camping out in to be close to his work and began the modifications to prepare the three devices brought from America.

With the precise frequency, courtesy of the radio he’d been told a soldier was trying to tune when the phenomenon was stumbled upon, he was familiar enough with the device to make short work of reprogramming the interior workings. As soon as the first one was ready, he took a break, waving over the single guard sent from the US Air Force to keep watch over the merchandise. Pulling his last pack of Newports from his pocket, he tapped the base twice to shoot two filters free and offered one to the young man, who slung his rifle over his shoulder and smiled as he took it. Producing a lighter, the engineer lit his own and offered the dancing flame over as he sucked in a long pull and closed his eyes to stretch his back. He glanced down at the cigarettes, seeing that the carton was only half full and regretting giving one away, because he was down to his last pack. He’d been around enough military personnel in his time to know that a whole carton of smokes was easier to come by than most things when enough servicemen gathered in one place, but he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to switch to an inferior brand before he got home. Perhaps a carton of Lucky Strikes would see him back, he mused.

“Go tell your bosses the first one’s ready,” he said as he exhaled. “I’ll prep the other two and then I can get the heck out of here.” He frowned as he took another pull on the cigarette. “Where in the hell are we, anyways?”

“Scotland,” the kid replied, as though the vague geographical information made any difference to either of them. The engineer shrugged, taking back his lighter and feeling the unseasonal breeze tighten his skin as he vowed to finish the work as soon as possible so he could go home.

The helicopter crew for the CH-46 Sea Hawk arrived within the hour in a wash of noise and increased wind. They paid the engineer no attention, seeing just a man in coveralls stooped over what looked like a medium sized aircraft munition in the middle of a hangar, and loaded the device they had been sent for.

The pilot spoke in that relaxed tone they always used which, to the uninitiated, sounded like it must have been part of their basic training.

“Roger, proceeding on bearing one-five-one degrees for four-two-zero miles,” he reported, signing off as he turned the nose of the noisy helicopter just left of south to drop the device in a large city far away from their safe place off the coast.

Those instructions had come via radio, and the crew had no idea they originated from a house only a few miles away and came from the Central Intelligence Agency. If they had known, they probably wouldn’t have cared because, just like the engineer, they were eager to get their job done and be back where they were more comfortable. In their case, it was the massive aircraft carrier sitting ten miles off the western edge of the Irish coast as part of the blockade to ensure none of the escaping survivors carried the disease to their home.

Their sedate cruising speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour saw them passing over the centre of what their map told them was a place called Bristol, when the pilot slowed and turned a few long, lazy circles to lower their altitude.

“In position,” he announced over their link, “drop when ready.” In answer, the rear ramp of the helicopter lowered with a mechanical whine to admit a rush of chill air from the abandoned land below them. Unlike a conventional bomb, this one merely had to be ejected into mid-air at a height exceeding one thousand feet for the device to activate on landing. That was as much as they knew—as much as they needed to know—and when the seemingly innocuous missile had been shoved clear over the edge of the ramp, they closed it up and began the three-hour flight back.

“Be advised,” the pilot reported to their command structure, “package is delivered. RTB.”

* * *

Bristol, a sprawling city on the banks of the busy River Severn, had been devoid of life for some time. Not all life, just human life. Or more specifically, it was utterly devoid of all living human life.

Trapped inside so many buildings, the thousands of undead woke from their state of hibernation to be whipped into such a frenzy of excitement that many broke free of their prison premises by barging their way through glass windows, and even in some cases breaking down doors in their frenzy to get to the source of whatever it was driving them so animalistically wild with hungry excitement.

Further out, in the suburbs of the city and even into the southern parts of Wales, the same activity was happening and waking up all of those trapped, dormant infected souls and driving them towards the centre of the neighbouring city by way of walking through the wide estuary.

For over a hundred miles, far further still than any of the wildest theories could have predicted, zombies were waking up and forcing their way out of their dry tombs to fulfil their desperate need to reach the source of the low frequency sound that triggered the tiny part of their brains still functioning into believing there was food on offer.

* * *

“Good God, man,” Kelly exploded as he stood from the chair he had been occupying. “We’ve still got people on the mainland. There are civilians there, have you lost your mind?”

Fisher leaned back in his chair involuntarily in response to the colonel’s anger.

“Relax, Kelly,” he said. “We have AWACS monitoring and they’ll be able to warn anyone nearby if the swarm threatens them.” Kelly didn’t sit, nor did he relax.

“You’ve just intentionally unleashed hell on those survivors all over again,” he said coldly. “And you aren’t even willing to evacuate any of them.”

“Not true, Colonel,” Fisher said as he reached for a piece of paper and waved it towards the officer. “Civilian evacuations are planned to begin at oh-nine-hundred next Wednesday. Your people will get new lives in the US of A.”

“And the military personnel?” Fisher shifted in his chair once, before fixing the hard man in front of him with a stare of pure granite.

“When our job here is done, Kelly, we’ll discuss that.”

“We’ll discuss it now,” he said firmly. “You’ve outright refused to support our efforts in recovering more survivors from the mainland which, until this moment, has been swept aside as inconsequential. I assure you, Sir, it is not. Evacuating the civilians on this island is one thing, but unless we can actively rescue more, then I fail to see the point in us being here at all.” He remained standing, chest heaving up and down as he fought to control the many words he left unsaid from tumbling out, after the unwise outburst he had already released.

Fisher stared at him for a few moments, wearing a look somewhere between mild amusement and barely veiled rage.

“Let’s get a few more things straight, shall we?” He stood suddenly and leaned over the desk with both fists pressing down hard onto the polished wood. “The United States is not here as an aid mission. The United States is occupying this part of Britain for military and scientific purposes to research, develop and hopefully deploy whatever vaccines or cures or weapons we can to ensure that the disease created here doesn’t cross the Atlantic Ocean. There are people on the other side of the globe pondering exactly the same questions to our western borders, and I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say they’re looking at a hundred Hiroshima-style solutions, so it doesn’t matter a good God damn whether the serum we’re developing on this island works or not; America will defend its borders at whatever cost.” He calmed, sitting back in his chair and speaking in a slightly softer tone.

“Colonel, you and your people are backed into a corner with nothing left to barter with. Your price of admission to the promised land when we’re done here is your continued service. When the work is done, we’re all going home, and you can either come with us or not. But if you don’t, then I wouldn’t be expecting foreign aid any time soon. So yes, to answer your initial question, I assure you I have most certainly not lost my mind and I will continue to order the deployment of weapons both experimental and biological on the mainland until we find a way of killing every last one of those bastards. You can go now, gentlemen.”

Kelly breathed out, never once having taken his eyes off the man sitting behind the desk holding all the power. With as much dignity and decorum as he could manage, he left the room and kept his face like stone until he was a mile away from the CIA headquarters.

“That bastard,” he erupted, making Barton flinch and torque the steering wheel alarmingly. He regained his composure before the colonel spoke again, this time in a more equable and thoughtful tone. “But at least he let slip that his show wasn’t the only one in town, and he’s under pressure to get results or his Washington DC masters will likely pull the plug on him and his little circus here.”

NINETEEN

Peter thrust out the spike, punctured a brain through a nostril made more accessible by the fact that the nose was partly torn or bitten away, and risked a glance over the ledge to watch the lifeless corpse bounce down the growing mound of bodies—animated and rendered safe alike—forming against the low building.

He had been running to and fro on the roof, in order to cover both places where his elevation was threatened. Then, behind him, on the other end of roof, the sounds of an approaching body reached his ears. Somehow, they, and he could only assume it was the smarter, faster type of biters, were managing to climb the ladder at the end where Astrid had appeared. On the side he covered now, it was a matter of sheer numbers and extremely bad luck; the misfortune being that the wall was the site where the former farmers had decided to pile enough junk that the hungry crowd below were able to use it as the start of a ramp.

His own efforts to stem the vertical flow of stinking bodies intent on eating him had, paradoxically, made it easier for more of them to climb the growing pile. Turning to his left, he drove the tip of one straight pitchfork prong into the skull of a balding man just behind his ear. The reaching arms stopped reaching for him, but the weapon held fast as the thing’s second death had caused it to flop sideways and resist his efforts to tug it back out. He cursed it and began to growl in effort through his gritted teeth, as a scraping noise behind him made him spin to see another one wearing the shredded and filthy remains of a shirt and tie get both arms and half a torso over the ledge. Yanking desperately on the pitchfork, he was forced to reach over his right shoulder to grasp at the smoothed-down handle of his father’s shotgun to use the last loaded cartridge at brutally close quarters.

The air in front of his face punched at him with a pressure wave that was confusing, before the sharp cracks he heard tied in with what his eyes were seeing. The zombie shuddered with each cracking noise until the fourth or fifth one snatched his head back and toppled it backwards to fall away and knock a half dozen more of them back to the ground. His mind caught up with his senses and he craned his neck to see Astrid crouching over one knee from a sitting position with her gun tucked into her body tightly and aimed his way. He nodded his thanks automatically, seeing her return the gesture and spin away to reload before she fired more shots over her side and turned to run back to him. Seeing his predicament, she landed one boot hard on top of the bald head and he gripped the shaft of his sticker firmly, straining to pull it free. He fell backwards as it was released from the gory grip of the skull and rolled back to his feet to begin the routine of thrust and withdraw, this time trying to improve his aim for the soft bits that didn’t threaten to steal his tools.

Astrid was firing more intensively then, pausing to fill the temporary quiet with the clicks and scrapes of well-practised hands performing another reload, and she didn’t let up until the main assault had been forced back. Peering over the edge again together, Peter saw that only the luckiest or most sure-footed of biters could make it through the mess of farmyard junk and bodies to climb for their position.

Their small breather didn’t last long, as a shriek from behind them forced the world to grind down into agonising slow-motion. The shriek, the rasping expulsion of air that conveyed nothing but hatred and malice and hunger, echoed loudly over the low rooftops of the barn louder than anything else in their immediate surroundings. They turned together in time to see the horrifying sight of a young man wearing a blue and white striped shirt marred by dark gore. The terror of being face to face with a Lima, one not horribly damaged and less dangerous, wasn’t reduced by the fact that he had either lost his trousers in the months since the outbreak or else had turned in a state of being half dressed. The baggy boxer shorts had remained on, but the socks had worn away at the soles to leave what looked like black ankle warmers banded about his mottled grey calf muscles.

As they stared, neither yet able to bring a weapon to bear, those muscles bunched and tightened in anticipation of the leaping attack they both knew was coming. Both had seen Limas at work before—albeit at a safe distance usually—and both knew what the human body was capable of when free of the constraints binding it to normality.

It launched into the air, limbs flailing as it instinctively thrashed and whirled to correct its aerial course. Mouth open in ready anticipation, both of them could see the wide maw filled with blackened gums and the two flashes of bright metal of the man’s gold teeth as a cloud of bright, white smoke obscured their vision, billowing outwards in an expanding cone towards the flying monstrosity.

Peter’s hand had reached instinctively over his right shoulder where it landed directly on the grip of the sawn-off shotgun. The web between his finger and thumb, spread wide and taught, hit the smoothed-down wood and triggered his fingers to clamp down and seize it tightly. Pulling it in one smooth movement, he set his stance wide and forced his left palm down on top of the barrels near the breech, as his right index and middle fingers reached for the two triggers.

He couldn’t remember which trigger he had pulled when he’d fired the first shot only a minute or two before, but somehow his brain registered that pulling one of those triggers would achieve nothing but a moment of fear before the zombie cut him down in a blur of teeth and pain. Knowing this on a cellular level, even if he couldn’t explain it in triple the time it took to act automatically, both fingers squeezed the triggers at once before the gun had even finished the downward arc of his draw, to spit smoke and flame and a deafening noise out ahead of them.

It was only the fourth time he’d ever drawn the weapon to use it, and although each time he had been desperate and facing death just as he did now, he didn’t flinch from the noise and violence of the gun going off. He also hadn’t expended his supply of ammunition, which he’d tampered with just like his father had done to illegally shoot deer, and the solid ball of lead and wax barely had time to begin breaking apart when it hit the zombie in mid-air. The force of the gunshot spun Peter in spite of his attempts to stay standing, and as his right side was thrown backwards, the body of his attacker-turned-victim fell through the thin skein of gun smoke to land heavily in between Astrid and Peter. It skidded through the rough shale littering the rooftop, just as time seemed to speed up once more when Peter’s backside thumped heavily onto the deck.

Peter’s shot, fired blindly with nothing to guide it but hope and instinct, had blown away most of the right arm and shoulder to leave a broken and ruined body in which the upper and lower sections seemed unable to communicate with one another. The legs seemed to be furiously pedalling as if the doomed creature dreamed it was in the closing stages of a bicycle race. The upper body, twisted aside at an angle, tried to reach for the ankles of Astrid with each ridiculous and grotesque circuit it thrashed, teeth snapping together as it wheezed, until the Norwegian woman riddled the thing’s head with a burst of automatic fire, to leave a sudden stillness and silence to their rooftop.

That silence didn’t last long, as the renewed moaning and shrieking from below forced them both to snap back into action again.

“We cannot stay here,” she said to him, whipping her head left and right to both keep watch and look for a viable alternative to their current predicament. Peter calmly levered over the catch to break the shotgun in half and up-ended it to allow two spent cartridges to drop to the rooftop. Slipping the bag from one shoulder he thrust a hand into the pouch where he knew the full cartridges would be. He slipped the reloads into the barrels, hearing the satisfying pop each side and gripped the chopped-down stock to flick his wrist and snap the breech closed. Restoring the gun to the top of the bag and the bag over both shoulders, he stooped to pick up his pitchfork and nodded at Astrid to signify that he was ready.

As he caught her eye, he saw how hers flickered to her left—his right—and turned to see another two pairs of mottled grey hands breach the high ground.

“Silage,” Peter said as he pointed to one of the longer sides of the building. She didn’t understand the word or his meaning but followed anyway, seeing as an idea she didn’t understand was better than no idea at all. Reaching the edge of the roof with the boy at her side, she saw the twenty foot drop to the tops of low, black plastic covered mounds.

He turned to look at her face, seeing the confusion and scepticism evident.

“It’s just grass,” he explained in rapid words, “cut and piled up there with plastic over the top. It’s to feed cows,” he added as though the purpose of the practice would assist her understanding.

“And this is a safe thing to land on?” she asked him. Peter couldn’t say yes for certain, but when another shriek behind them from the direction of the ladder added to the chorus of moans from the other side, he guessed they didn’t have much in the way of options. With a shrug, he stepped off the rooftop, throwing his legs out ahead of him to fall a few seconds before landing hard on his backside.

The landing was much, much harder than he’d expected.

It had been one of the games he played on the farm where he grew up, climbing on the great mountains of cut grass as his father reversed a tractor up and down the steep slope in order to crush it down and squeeze out as much air as possible. When those great slopes of squashed grass filled the slots between the rough concrete walls, they spread huge sheets of thick, black plastic over them to seal in the grass and let it rot just enough to be exactly what the cows wanted over the winter months.

What Peter hadn’t taken into consideration was the fact that this grass had been there for months longer than usual, and the added time left to ferment provided a lot less cushioning than his childhood games told him there would be.

He landed hard, knocking the wind out of himself and shooting a pain up through his spine from his tail bone that threatened to make him vomit, on top of losing the ability to breathe temporarily. A thud beside him warned of Astrid’s arrival at almost ground level and her melodic voice hissing curses in a language he didn’t understand made it obvious that she’d also expected a softer landing.

If their impact was painful, the meeting of running zombie and rough concrete just above them was catastrophic. It had gained the rooftop just as Astrid’s blonde ponytail had disappeared from view. Breaking into a run to catch the escaping food, it sailed clear over the ledge of the roof and overtook the woman as she’d dropped vertically downwards. The momentum of the reckless run took it past the small covered mounds to slam it into the hard ground below. As it rose, broken leg bones crunching when it struggled mechanically to regain its feet, the top of its head fountained outwards as the head snapped back to start the slow, spinning descent to the ground. Peter looked to his left to see Astrid lying flat on her back with a pistol in her hand sprouting a fat pipe on the end of the barrel. She scanned that barrel left and right before dragging herself to her feet with a hiss of pain. Peter followed, not waiting for any invitation to move, and the two of them fled across the farmyard to seek higher ground.

“Why are there so many of the fast ones?” Peter gasped quietly to her in between sucking lungsful of air.

“This,” Astrid replied, also out of breath, “is what I am thinking also. There!” she said, pointing out a tall, steel structure standing forty feet off the ground. Peter saw it, recognised a grain storage silo when he saw one, and also knew that if they were seen going up there they’d never be able to come down again.

“No,” he said, tugging her sleeve back while all around them, the shrieks and moans echoed ominously. “We’ll be trapped.”

“Trust me, Peter,” she said. “We just need to stay off the ground long enough for them to come back.”

* * *

“Where the fucking fuck are these fuckers fucking coming from?” Johnson roared in impotent rage as he crunched the Warrior over another group staggering down the single track road.

“There’s something going on,” Bufford answered from behind him. “This ain’t right; not even for the shit-show we live in. And why are they all the fast bastards?”

They had turned around twice now, or at least they’d tried to, and the decision to save ammunition had long ago been made as they faced three or more Screechers for every bullet they carried. Using the heavier 30mm ammunition was even less sensible as they’d probably attract more than they killed with each heavy, percussive shot. Johnson idly wished they still made canister for their guns, or the more modern flechette ammunition, effectively turning their small cannon into a giant shotgun. One shot of that could clear a hundred or more of the bastards, packed tightly as they were on the road, following the noise of their engine.

“Go left here,” Buffs interrupted Johnson’s daydreaming as bodies still crunched under their tracks. The Warrior slowed and lurched slightly as the junction was taken too fast to be comfortable, not that comfort was their main concern at that point, and Johnson trusted Bufford to read the map to direct him back towards the farm, after their circuitous route to lead as many of the mob away while crushing those in the road as a bonus.

As he drove, fighting away the worry and panic and banishing it from his mind, since that would serve only to reduce his effectiveness, he allowed his mind instead to wander towards other questions that needed answering.

Why has another swarm appeared now? After a winter of seeing very little activity, he had begun to hope that they were dealing with a few stragglers and had turned his attention towards the potential of more living enemies.

And why, he asked himself, angrily echoing his question to Buffs, is almost every one of these buggers a Lima?

“Left ahead,” Bufford said, interrupting his thoughts, “single track for three miles. Staggered crossroads; left again.”

“Roger,” Johnson acknowledged, happy that he was effectively driving a box around the area to head back for the boy and female commando he was trying not to think about, in case his guilt overcame him.

“Twenty minutes,” Buffs told him in an attempt at reassurance.

“Twenty minutes is a long time,” Johnson whispered to himself as he narrowed his eyes and focused on driving as fast as he could without crashing.

TWENTY

“There! I heard it again!” Jessica said excitedly.

“Okay,” Daniels told her, “I believe you. Just get your bloody head back inside before something takes a bite out of it.” Reluctantly, she lowered her body away from the open hatch, for the spot to be re-occupied by the tall, quiet soldier who carried his weapon like it was a prized possession. Or his first-born child.

“She’s right,” Enfield said after a few moments. “Towards our ten o’clock. That’s seven-six-two if it’s anything.” Daniels, having seen the marine for what he was, took that assessment as pure fact without question. Instructing Duncan to look for roads branching off in the direction of their ten o’clock, he fought with the map until he was looking at the right section for their general area.

There were far too many zombies around for his liking, and more than one person had voiced an opinion that something was going on, because there was no reason for every dead person in the county to suddenly up and decide to head in one direction. He didn’t know anything about that, but he did know that he was much happier heading back into a fight with the two royal marines on his side.

“Mortars?” The marine sergeant, Hampton, pondered aloud. Daniels, the sound so familiar to him as to be ingrained in his psyche, answered before Enfield’s mouth could even form a word of response. “That,” he announced confidently, “is the sound of Mrs Rarden birthing six of her most troublesome daughters...” When silence greeted his poetic musings, he sighed, “I’m wasted on this audience. That’s 30mm on full auto. One of ours. The SSM’s over there.”

It took them over half an hour to battle their half-blind way through the country lanes towards the last place they could guess the sounds were coming from. No more gunfire sounded, which made the task of hunting down the original source difficult, but eventually they rounded a bend in the lane and saw a small crowd of dead clambering over one another to form a rising mound of once-human bodies, all of them reaching upwards for what looked like two small shapes clinging onto the fragile frame of a metal silo.

“Sarge,” Enfield said urgently. He didn’t raise his voice, merely spoke with an increased intensity that cut into everyone crammed inside the small space of the armoured vehicle.

“What do you see, lad?” Hampton asked with mirrored urgency.

“Need you on that gun. Two friendlies up high, and two metric fuck-tonnes of Screechers underneath. My nine o’clock.”

Hampton didn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t describe himself as a brave man; that self-awarded description was for people who craved recognition for the things they did. Bill Hampton was simply the personification of a no-bullshit attitude that allowed him to get the job done. He didn’t act how he did to get his men to like him; instead, he just did his job to the best of his ability and the men loved him for it, just as they didn’t perform to avoid his punishments, but out of a need for the sergeant to like them; to tell them they did well.

Without questioning the matter of his personal safety, he undid the hatch and squeezed his wide shoulders out of the gap to swing the big machine gun in the general direction of the things he didn’t like and started blasting away.

He fired in short, controlled bursts like he had always been taught. In fact, the only time he had ever fired one of these beasts on fully automatic for an entire belt was eight years prior when he’d lain on his back on the high ground at San Carlos bay and fired a full belt at an Argentine fighter plane wreaking havoc on the vulnerable ships at anchor. He hadn’t told anyone the story, and those who had seen him do it weren’t encouraged to repeat the tale, because it wasn’t necessarily something he was proud of.

He was proud now, he realised, but he knew that he didn’t need anyone else to be proud of him. He felt no remorse for the dead because they had no souls. They fought for no cause and had no regard for anything. Their war would rage until the end of humanity and beyond. The dead weren’t the sons and daughters of people any longer. They weren’t just like him, only on the other side of the battle lines, and he unleashed hell on them with a stony expression.

Two hundred rounds of ammunition, to the uninitiated, sounds like a lot of bullets. In truth, two hundred rounds is not nearly enough to get many jobs done. Hampton stopped to attach another box of ammunition and feed it through, before yanking back the warm metal of the charging handle to resume his one-man onslaught.

The growing mountain of dead became a sea of twice-dead, and the reaching hands stopped reaching upwards and began reaching towards him. The gunfire paused long enough for him to lean back and shout down through the gap that perhaps their driver would kindly reverse for roughly fifty paces. At least that was what Steve Duncan chose to hear and not the actual words used, which could only politely be described as ‘salty’.

The incessant, percussive rattling of the machine gun started up again until the remainder of the zombies were spread out in a reducing cone towards their vehicle.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” a voice Hampton recognised shouted at him. Looking up again and recognising the shape of Astrid Larson with her shock of bright blonde hair, he realised he was obviously just as noteworthy to her, although he imagined himself to be significantly less attractive.

“Saving your arse,” he yelled back. Enfield chose that moment to emerge from the other hatch and bring his small rifle to bear on anything in their immediate surroundings still moving. A sharp bark of laughter drifted back to him in answer.

“Where’s everyone else?” he yelled.

“How about I tell you when you get us off this thing?”

“Fair point,” Hampton grumbled to himself as he leaned inside again to give instructions. The Sultan crept forwards, crunching over the bumpy obstructions, which were mostly physically immobilised and not actually dead again. As soon as they reached the foot of the metal grain silo, the two refugees clambered down to drop onto the hull of the vehicle. Hampton’s big gun stayed silent but Enfield continued to spit small bullets into skulls whenever anything threatened their perimeter.

“We’ve got more coming,” he warned them as they obviously weren’t getting inside quickly enough for his liking.

“Are they the fast ones?” Larsen asked breathlessly.

“Don’t look like it.”

“Good. Time to get out of here.” Hampton dropped down and helped Astrid inside the Sultan, where she immediately banged her head and her elbow on exposed metal, providing enough of a distraction that the others didn’t notice the smaller of the rescued people enter. The hatch was closed, plunging them into a darker setting until Enfield closed down his hatch too, to remove the last of the daylight.

“Where are the others?” Hampton asked.

“We got separated,” Peter said. “I was… I was left behind when we were attacked. Astrid came back for me…”

“Johnson took the others to lead away the swarm,” Astrid explained, taking up the recounting. “There seems to be an unnatural number of what you call the Li—”

“Peter,” a voice said from nearer the front. The word was muffled as though the name had been uttered from behind the speaker’s hands, which they had.

“J… Jessica?” Peter asked, but he already knew it was her. He broke down and sobbed like the young boy he was deep inside, pushing his way through the press of bodies as the tears started to flow more freely than they ever had. He clawed his way the short distance to his sister and threw himself against her, until she wrapped her arms around him and cried just as hard and freely as he did.

The two children, reunited against all odds, would not let one another go in the gloomy interior of an overloaded armoured vehicle, and the only other sound to fill the space was the quiet sob of another occupant.

“Where’s my Amber?”

* * *

Johnson’s concentration had never been more focused than it had been on that drive. He pushed twenty-five tonnes of armoured fighting vehicle through the overgrown lanes. At the staggered crossroads Bufford had warned him about, he had to throttle back and decide the best way to navigate the obstacle of three cars which had collided so many months ago.

From twenty feet away, he saw the dried-up remains of the driver of a Vauxhall Carlton turn to face his approach.

“Hold on,” he said unnecessarily as he ran the left side tracks over the front of the car with much less discomfort than he expected. Accelerating away, he looked out for signs of the upcoming left turn Bufford had called out to him. Overgrown road signs were barely visible but the faded white lines in the road gave subtle clues to the presence of adjoining roads, if a person knew what to look for. When the centre line turned a solid white, he slowed, looking for the tunnel created by the trees hanging down where the branches hadn’t been forced back by the passage of people in vehicles.

Those branches snapped away as the Warrior forced its way through like they were nothing. The close confines of the narrow road made the going much slower as he fought with the huge machine to keep it out of the ditches either side of them, driving their speed down even more and increasing Johnson’s stress levels. The hull scraped and banged with the noise of their aggressive progress until they emerged from the wooded tunnel into the harsh light of the full dawn. Before them, the edge of the farm opened up with the sprawl of low buildings seeming to grow outwards organically. Everywhere before them lay the crushed and broken remains of so many former people they had destroyed.

Only they weren’t. These had been cut down by gunfire moving in the other direction and couldn’t have been from their escape. Just as Johnson opened his mouth to call this information out to the others, with fears of another Nevin incident surging to the front of his mind, Bufford beat him to it.

“Armoured vehicle,” he snapped as the turret hummed to swing towards the unexpected intruder, “nine o’clock, fifty yards.” Johnson stopped the Warrior and immediately threw it into reverse out of habit. His conscious mind caught up with the subconscious in time to tell him that the likelihood of him having been drawn into an ambush was slim to non-existent. But training born of repetition took just as long to undo as it did to become second nature in the first place. He stopped, realising that he was highly unlikely to get an instant profile recognition, as the man in the turret wasn’t a cavalryman. He hesitated, experiencing a rare moment when he didn’t know the right thing to do; and then the radio came to life.

“Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha, please tell me that’s you…”

* * *

Rushed radio traffic was exchanged between the two armoured hulks and the route for extraction was agreed. The Sultan followed in the wake of the larger Warrior, which was the obvious choice to take the lead, and they all listened with wet eyes and breaking hearts to hear the shaking voice of a young woman talking through her tears incoherently to hear the sweetest of rare sounds when Amber spoke a single word into the radio in the rear section of the Warrior.

“Mummy?” she asked in a small voice before bursting out in tears for Kimberley to hug her tightly.

“We need to get clear of whatever the hell is going on here,” Johnson said to Daniels over their link.

“Agreed,” he said. “We’ve seen concentrations of Limas at the front, with a strong force of Screechers behind, then miles of stragglers lagging behind them. They’re all heading north by north-northwest, from what we can tell.”

“What’s north-northwest of here?” Johnson asked back.

“Bristol,” Bufford interjected dourly, leaving a moment of silence hanging afterwards.

“Jesus,” Johnson muttered, “I thought even the Screechers would have better taste than to go to bloody Bristol.” The joke was a weak one, but for the few people who had visited the city recently, the words held more than a little merit.

“Something’s off about it all,” Daniels offered pensively. “Can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but it’s got to have something to do with the Americans… Let me think about it and we’ll talk when we find somewhere safe to stop.”

That was their current priority—finding a place beyond the reach of the steady flow of slow-moving zombies to stop and reunite the stricken mother and daughter who were crying inside the two respective vehicles with inconsolable happiness. They headed directly east, an agreed compromise between turning directly away from the flow of dead back towards the coast, which would hinder their overall goal of heading to the far north west of Scotland, and trying to avoid said flow of dead.

“Is it me…?” Daniels asked over the radio after almost twenty miles of relatively flat A-roads.

“No,” Johnson answered, “they’re definitely thinning out.” Another ten minutes showed no signs of any Screechers on the move, so they took a turn north and stopped at the nearest patch of raised ground. Emerging carefully with weapons raised, they inspected the tracks and undersides of their vehicles to ensure they weren’t carrying any biting hitchhikers.

As soon as the all-clear was announced, a young woman with the same fair hair as little Amber dragged herself clear of the Sultan’s hatch desperately. Dropping to her knees and sobbing, she reached out to beckon her little girl to her and held her so tightly, like she’d never let go again.

“Oh my baby, my baby,” she said over and over as she showered the girl with kisses all over her head and face. “My baby. Who found you? Who looked after you?”

Wordlessly Amber leaned around her mother and smiled with her right index finger pointing at the unlikeliest of rescuers. Picking Amber up and carrying her, she threw her free arm around Peter’s neck and pulled him tight to her.

She whispered fast in his ear, and although Johnson couldn’t hear the words, he was sure it was her thanks for saving the girl. He’d done more than that, the SSM knew. He’d not only saved her life but had cared for her with a patience he was sure many adults couldn’t muster even under normal circumstances. When Ellie released the boy, he was grabbed roughly by the big man’s hands. Johnson eyed him for a second with a mixture of ingrained fear and relief, before hugging him close just as the woman had done.

“You frightened the shit out of me,” he berated the boy as his eyes lifted to take in the bedraggled appearance of Larsen and nodding his heartfelt thanks to her for risking her life. Peter stayed close to him, not quite hugging him but not withdrawing either. A girl cleared her throat to get the attention of both of them, and Peter pulled away from the hug he was returning, not able to tell Johnson just how much it meant to him.

“And who’s this?” the SSM asked.

“This is my sister,” Peter said, his words choking on the tears he was holding back, “Jessica.” Just the simple act of speaking her name triggered the pent-up emotion hidden away for so long, and Peter collapsed into Johnson, who wrapped him up tightly in an embrace that made him feel safer and more secure than he had ever felt in his entire life.

TWENTY-ONE

The testing of the device had been a success and had elevated Fisher’s standing greatly. The applications for the adapted technology were huge, and he had received the reports from their AWACS early warning aircraft that the effective radius of the device was roughly forty miles, which gave them the ability to cover about five thousand square miles with each device.

He was no fool. He knew that the plan would be to attract as many of the infected into single locations for the air force to wipe them out, and that was how they would reclaim Britain, if it was deemed viable. But now, he had given them a way to do it with minimal expense. Already the reports had upwards of ten thousand infected gathering in the city they’d chosen far to the south of their remote, offshore location. He knew that back at Langley, their technical people would be figuring out the distances and times required, based on the information they were gathering now on how to use a ripple effect to drop the devices and pied-piper the infected all into one location, where they could be hit with napalm, or whatever, and be wiped out.

Obviously, they would still need to deploy ground troops to check every room in every house and building in the whole country, because there still had to be plenty of people who had been infected and turned after shutting themselves away at home.

He looked again at the brief report received by fax on the effects of the device. As anyone would expect, the first to reach the location of the device were the faster ones, and calculating how many of them used their superior—or at least less impaired—physical abilities to get to the city first gave an indication of how many would follow. That swarm, that migrating herd, that infected singularity merged and grew from all directions, all heading for the same spot, like iron filaments in water with the introduction of a magnet. The sheer numbers on the thin printout in his hand didn’t fully reflect the gravity of the situation; either how many had died or how many had turned and still needed to be dealt with.

What he wanted, and what he proposed in the report he was trying to formulate, was for his idea to be used as the method for purging Britain of the dangerous infected. He would sell it as the most cost effective way. Not cheaper in terms of dropping bombs, because he knew better than most people just how many his country had stockpiled ready for all-out war; but in terms of not destroying the infrastructure, buildings and resources that such a devastating bombardment would cause, and hence minimising the future rebuilding costs. His way would mean that the infected simply bled themselves to death and would be just a pile of bones and puddle to clean up by the time US forces arrived to put boots on the ground.

The UK was a perfect foothold to reclaim Europe and beyond, and if the American forces could develop the fastest way to clear an area of infected and kill them off by the thousands, then the riches of half the world would be theirs for the taking.

They could emerge as the dominant power on the entire planet.

Fisher’s personal ambition wasn’t quite so grand, but he would be a fool not to seize the opportunity on offer. The least he expected when the business was done was a position as section chief somewhere.

His reverie was interrupted by the mechanical sounds of the fax machine chirping and chuntering as another vital piece of information was received, and as he watched the printer arm shoot back and forth over the roll of paper, he jumped slightly, startled by the sudden noise of the satellite phone’s shrill ring.

“Fisher,” he said in economical answer to take the incoming call.

“This is Jacobs,” came the slightly delayed and detached voice, “pickup by chopper at twenty-one-fifty your time for briefing.”

“Understood,” Fisher answered, hearing the call cut from the other end.

He slowly replaced the receiver into the case and rested the fingertips of his right hand there, smiling. If Jacobs was involved, then he knew Langley and, in turn, the White House, would be investing in his plan.

A glance at his watch told him he had a little under thirty minutes to be at the nearby airfield, so he threw on the heavy coat he was sure he’d die of exposure without in the harsh landscape and drove himself.

* * *

The ride to the carrier stationed thirty miles to the west was short but uncomfortable as the helicopter bucked and dropped, thanks to the icy crosswind it flew through. Fisher could only imagine how harsh it had been there in the middle of winter and was thankful he’d arrived as the worst of the weather was beginning to break. He was amazed how the conditions could so drastically switch from a fresh covering of perfect dry snow to a diagonal downpour of stinging rain like a million needles aimed for any gap in a man’s clothing where skin was exposed.

Those musings killed the time until the engine note changed and their airspeed slowed for the pilot to begin clawing his careful way sideways to land the skids on the rolling deck. The rotors powered down and Fisher unstrapped to reach for the door as it was opened from outside. Another agent greeted him. Fisher didn’t recognise him, but the appearance of a man in a suit was so out of place on a navy warship that it made his agent status obvious. The man shouted over the noise to confirm he was who he was and led him inside.

“Briefing room is this way, Sir,” the man said, offering nothing more but leading the way to what counted as a large room aboard the floating fortress.

“Fisher,” Jacobs called out to him as he walked in, “take a seat.” Jacobs didn’t introduce any of the dozen other men sitting at the chairs arrayed before a raised dais and Fisher saw a mixture of uniforms which were primarily naval. Others not in uniform were just as obvious, but the briefing started before he could get a bead on them.

“Okay then, I’ll get right to it. Aerial surveillance reports indicate that the use of the device was far more effective than expected, with a confirmed radius of roughly forty miles give or take, depending on the terrain,” Jacobs explained, telling Fisher that everyone in the room was just as read-in on the situation as he was, if not probably more so. “Other devices are either being retrofitted in theatre or are in transit from the US and expected to be fully operational for deployment within seventy-two hours. Mister Robertson will fill you in on the method.”

Robertson, tall and built like a sportsman but appearing oddly timid in the company he was presently keeping, stood and adjusted his spectacles. The man was clearly with the agency and not an agent, so Fisher marked him down as one of their eggheads immediately.

“Gentlemen,” Robertson began with more confidence in his voice than Fisher expected from his demeanour. He nodded towards the back of the room and the lights dimmed in response. A projector started up to flicker a bright display against the solid wall to their front. A map of the UK appeared, quickly followed by another acetate sheet laid over the top, showing a red circle.

“The plan is to drop a series of devices in sequence over a period of nineteen days.” Another three sheets were laid over the displayed image with more red circles appearing and overlapping. “These devices will bring out any of the infected people and cause them to congregate in a single area, ready for the deployment of a cure.” Murmurs rippled around the briefing room and Fisher shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Estimated time before we are able to begin operations there is eight to twelve days.” Robertson nodded at Jacobs and sat again. Jacobs’ eyes found Fisher and his expression invited him to chime in. With a long intake of breath, Fisher steadied himself and stood, proceeding to walk to the front of the room to be able to turn and see everyone’s faces.

“Are you planning to drop this special ordnance and congregate every possible infected being into the same location as the test area?” a man in a naval uniform asked.

“Negative, the area…” Jacobs looked to another suit, who consulted a stack of papers for a frustrating handful of seconds.

“Bristol.”

“Bristol is being used as a secondary test area to deploy the serum and also test the most effective munitions against the infected. The other devices will be dropped ranging north to south and will cover most of Britain, eventually leading everything to…” He once again snapped his fingers impatiently at the man with the papers, who desperately rifled through them to find another place name.

“Hastings,” the agent said eventually.

“So the infected all end up at Hasti—” Jacobs shot a quizzical look at the agent, who froze with no idea why that had caused the man any confusion. “Seriously? We’re having another Battle of Hastings? Anyway… it’s been calculated that this is the best area that won’t damage any real infrastructure or impede deep-water ports for the eventual repopulation efforts.” He scanned the room to make sure there were no little hands raised in the air and wrapped things up.

“First off, gentlemen,” he said confidently, “let’s be clear on what we mean by the word ‘cure’…” He paused to take in the expressions on those faces. “The ‘cure’ being developed is a serum that prevents any of the infected from representing a danger to any living person or animal. It kills the infected person by causing massive haemorrhaging. It is not pretty, but it does work. I’ve seen it.”

“Seen it how?” asked a voice from the front row. Fisher opened his mouth to respond but Jacobs cut him off.

“The how and the why and the where are classified,” he said abruptly. “What’s important is that the serum is in production, the first batch of which will be delivered very soon.”

Fisher’s eyes went wide for a second before he got himself under control. Professor Grewal had been adamant that further testing was required, but Fisher’s eagerness to provide results had forced his own hand in reporting the success back to Langley. Both Grewal and Chambers—who he found far more amenable than the Brit—were in agreement that the ‘cure’ as they all liked to call it, wasn’t ready for use without more testing. As Jacobs went on explaining more of the logistics of how it would all happen, Fisher leaned back against the edge of a desk and tried to sum up the courage to interrupt the more senior man.

That courage never materialised, or at least his career aspirations stopped the words from forming in his mouth, but either way he stayed silent, as the plans to bring troops over the Atlantic in time for spring were discussed.

“What about the evacuation of anyone left there?” a voice asked from nearer the back, unaware or simply unconcerned that ‘there’ was more accurately ‘here’.

“Quarantine and evacuation protocols will be dealt with by the military,” Jacobs answered, “and the President has agreed to expedite all applications for asylum from British citizens, but this is not our primary concern. Our primary concern is developing the most effective method for corralling and destroying those infected.”

“What’s the method for deployment of the cure?” a man asked, the wings on his US navy uniform indicating that he was a pilot.

“Airburst munitions,” was all Jacobs said.

“Specifically?” the aviator asked, unperturbed at the attempted stonewalling. Jacobs sighed.

“As of oh-eight-hundred tomorrow, three AC-one-thirty Spectres will be stationed in Las Palmas. They will have the necessary munitions supplied to them and the delivery will be by forty-mike-mike and one-oh-five-mike-mike airburst. Any other questions?”

“What about a BLU-eighty-two with a daisy cutter?” one man asked.

“Too much serum to waste in one go if it fails. Next?”

“Las Palmas?” asked another voice uncertainly, sure they were asking a stupid question but going ahead with it anyway.

“The Canary Islands,” Jacobs explained, reciting information he’d recently learned by the sound of his voice. “The outermost region of Europe, a little off the western coast of north Africa in the Atlantic, owned and controlled by the Spanish government. We entered into an agreement with that government some months ago but since then contact with their continental base of operations has been lost, with obvious assumptions for what that means. There is a contingent of government on those islands who are effectively trading new lives in the US for all their surviving citizens for use of the island chain by our forces indefinitely.”

“In-flight refuelling?” the pilot asked.

“KC-one-thirty-fives,” Jacobs told him, the information meaning nothing to many in the room but evidently satisfying the man asking.

“When do we start?” asked a new speaker.

“In forty-eight hours,” Jacobs said. “As I said, deployment of the sonic lure devices will begin in the north and head progressively south, providing the fastest time on target for our planes when the party starts.”

The briefing was dismissed, leaving Jacobs and Fisher at the front of the room. The two men’s eyes met and Jacobs must have detected the trepidation in Fisher’s.

“Forty-eight hours,” he said again, waiting for Fisher’s acknowledgement.

“Forty-eight hours. Understood.”

TWENTY-TWO

Finding somewhere to safely park two armoured vehicles under cover was no simple task, given their size. The sudden and oddly concerning lack of wandering zombies made the task infinitely safer and more simple, and while that conundrum was pushed temporarily aside, they settled on a large industrial garage unit.

Bufford and Larson got out first, the former having been cooped up inside the Warrior for too long and the latter insisting that she was fine, in spite of having expended almost all of the ammunition she’d been carrying only a few hours previously. They entered the unit via a small pedestrian door, before emerging a full ten minutes later as Bufford hauled on a chain to roll up the big shutter and admit the two vehicles reversing inside. The roller shutter came down behind them and Duncan immediately set about searching the large workshop for fuel stores.

As they all congregated and stretched their cramped muscles, sounds of a trapped animal, hissing and yowling, drifted out of the hatch to them, followed shortly afterwards by a small projectile of brown and black exiting the vehicle and seeking the nearest piece of low cover too small for a human to fit. Everyone but the royal marines looked shocked. Peter had already learned of the survival of the cat who had followed him and Amber so long ago. He smiled at Johnson, who just seemed speechless.

“Bloody thing has to be down to two lives maximum,” he muttered, digging in his pack and handing a tin of something to Peter. He fished in a pouch on his webbing to produce a tin opener, offering it to the boy, who was already proudly holding his own and grinning at the SSM.

Kimberley hovered behind Peter and smiled nervously at Johnson as she fussed over the boy and earned suspicious glances from his sister. Ever since he had been left behind at the farm, she had blamed herself and expected criticism from others, but when none came, she seemed to act harder on herself than even before. Johnson smiled back, forcing his facial muscles to move into some semblance of an expression designed to reassure her that she wasn’t to blame. Privately he blamed himself, even taking Peter aside when he could pry his sister from him for just a minute, to apologise to him. Peter had been the one to offer the reassurances then, taking responsibility for sneaking away from the group without telling anyone.

Johnson, a man accustomed to large industrial garages, returned the conversation to the subject of diesel and brought Duncan’s attention to the grubby metal tank standing in the yard.

“Better to get it now than risk having company later,” he said. The logic was sound, but it was a hassle to drive the two big wagons back outside and crank the heavy hand pump up and down to brim their tanks, while the others formed a loose cordon with their guns trained outwards. The task all but drained the remains of their strength. When both wagons were full, Johnson encouraged them to fill the three metal jerrycans they found with diesel, seeing as they were already there.

Safely back inside, they set a guard and began a debrief on what had happened since they had last seen one another.

Daniels, finally stood down from the need to do things immediately, filled Johnson in on what he’d missed.

“It was bad, Sarn’t Major,” he admitted. “We lost half the boys when they went back to the base for more wagons and gear. Only Povey made it back and that was because the Regiment boys found him being chased by a pack of the bastards. It was Nevin.” At the mention of the squadron sergeant major’s nemesis, the big man scoffed in derisive anger before a smile crept across his bearded face and he recounted his last sight of Nevin—undead and trapped inside a shattered body halfway down a cliff—to the radio operator. Daniels’ smile grew to mirror the SSM’s.

“Good,” he spat vehemently. “Less than the fucker deserved after what he did.”

“That’s not the half of it,” Johnson went on. “Seems like our missing troop sergeant set himself up as lord of the hill and was running a bloody protection racket, which Nevin found himself a part of. It was those two bastards who wrecked our little winter headquarters with a Ferret.”

Daniels nodded towards the two royal marines. “But they did for him?” Johnson sucked in a breath as he fought down the physical response the recalled emotions threatened to overwhelm him with.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Saved our lives by being prepared to give up their own. It’s bloody good to see them in one piece…”

“The others, the Mister Palmers and Mister Lloyd, went to Scotland with the SAS blokes and the helicopter crew.” Johnson nodded along as Daniels gave him the details on that, listening as he described the brutal winter with too many mouths to feed and not anywhere near enough food to go around.

“Funny,” Daniels said, “when they all left, there was more than enough food left. I think that’s the way, you know? Small groups…”

“Probably right,” Johnson agreed distractedly, his thoughts evidently going elsewhere.

“We going to talk about this or ignore it?” a voice asked from behind them. Daniels turned, hearing the hostility in the tone and misunderstanding it. He found himself facing the wild-bearded SBS sergeant whose abrupt manner he had taken as angry. Johnson, accustomed to his directness, answered him.

“Can’t say it hasn’t been on my mind,” he agreed. “Charlie? Fetch me a map of the area.”

The map was laid out flat with most of them huddling over it.

“We’re here,” Johnson said, indicating a small town outside Salisbury, “and the Screechers stopped coming round about here,” he said, tapping the sharp tip of the bayonet he was using as a pointer on the map a few miles to the west.

“The house was back here,” Daniels said as he tapped a finger on the map, “and AWACS reported the swarm down here.” Again, another tap on the map some twenty miles to the south.

“All of them heading in the same directions…” Larsen said thoughtfully.

“So why do you think this has something to do with the Yanks?” Johnson asked Daniels.

“They were on to me straight away,” he said, brow furrowed as though he was trying to find the source of the paranoia in his own words. “I’d been broadcasting regularly, seeing if I could get them to make contact back.”

“Them?” Bufford asked gruffly.

“The Americans, mainly. There’s at least one French frigate and some supply boats from other European countries. Our navy’s there too, but they’re not running the show, by any stretch of the imagination.”

“And you know this how?” Johnson asked, suspecting he knew the answer but not comprehending that anyone had the patience he suspected Daniels possessed.

“Spent all winter going through every NATO frequency on the list,” he answered flatly. His tone gave away the fact that it had been tedious work, to say the least.

“I got a response in the beginning,” he went on, “and they wanted to know our location and strength and all that. Said they were cataloguing survivors for future extraction when the situation was under control. I asked what that looked like and they didn’t say anything. Anyway, they took my emergency hailing channel and just stopped answering. Gave up after a while; I was more interested in finding yo—in finding any more of our boys who’d made it off the island and were at a loose end.”

“And we appreciate it, Charlie,” Johnson said, seeing through the young man’s pretence. “But that still doesn’t answer the question…” Daniels looked down for a moment, probably deciding on the best way to phrase his thoughts, before raising a single finger and wagging it slowly as he spoke; almost as though it were connected to his mind with an invisible string that teased out the conclusions from the mess of suspicion.

“They were already up in the air and had eyes on this swarm not long after it formed—my guess is that there were a lot of Screechers still hanging around after the island—and this is after months of the Yanks not making contact.”

“So, you think they knew about the swarm before it happened?” Bufford grilled him, leaning in to see the man’s face and gauge the answers his expression would give when his words would not.

“Something like that,” Daniels answered, still frowning pensively. “What if they weren’t looking for a swarm specifically? What if they were monitoring the county to see if the Screechers responded to something?”

“All you can eat buffet?” Bufford asked sarcastically. “One of those raves for Screechers?”

“Weapons test?” Johnson asked, unable to keep the hint of trepidation from his voice.

“What?” interrupted a small voice from behind them. They turned or craned their necks to see Peter approaching, his older sister following close behind almost uncertainly now that she was no longer the protector of a frightened, naïve young boy. “Some kind of thing that calls them all to one place?”

They all stared at him for a second before exchanging silent looks with one another.

“Well, they were all heading in one direction, weren’t they?” Peter went on, not put off by their attention or fearing adults like he used to. “And the faster ones were all at the front with the slower ones behind, so that makes sense…”

“It does make good sense,” Astrid said, having wandered in to join the impromptu pow-wow. “Do any of you have an alternative suggestion?”

“I get that we’re all interested in this and all… aargh,” Hampton said with a groan as he put his stiff leg up on a low stack of car batteries. “But what difference does it make really? So what if someone’s fucking abou—”

“Ahem,” Ellie cut in, having been the last to join the group’s congregation.

“—if someone’s playing silly buggers with the Screechers and sending them all to one place, as long as that place isn’t where we’re going, I present the case that we accept that fact and carry on about our business.”

“What the sergeant’s trying to say,” Enfield said in his calm and controlled voice, “is that we’re wasting braincells on a problem we don’t need to deal with. Not yet, anyway.”

“Exactly,” Hampton agreed. “Thank you, Marine Enfield. Next time I need you to speak for me, I’ll shove my hand up your jacksie and use you like a puppet.” Hampton was joking, although only those who’d spent the last winter with them would know that the marines never needed to exchange harsh words or fall back on the rank structure to get anything done.

Enfield held Hampton’s gaze, even when the sergeant waggled his eyebrows once and muttered, “all the way to the elbo—”

“But they were heading north,” Kimberley asked. “Scotland’s north. Who’s to say they aren’t all heading for where the others are?” Johnson opened his mouth to softly explain what she’d missed, hoping that nobody else beat him to it, as the thought of her feeling embarrassed or shamed in any way stung him. He was beaten to it, but in such a kindly and commanding way that he found his feelings move from protective fear to something resembling immense pride. And a healthy dose of protectiveness.

“Because we went east,” Peter told her, beckoning her towards the table where he looked at the map for a moment, trying to get his bearings. He’d evidently been watching earlier as the soldiers had discussed it, because his eyes were lingering on roughly the correct grid squares before Johnson tapped a gnarled fingertip on an area to the east and slightly south of the place he’d identified as their current location. “Since the…” he swallowed and shook himself like a twitch overtook him. “Since the farm, we went this way. Corporal Daniels told Mister Johnson that they were going south to north to begin with, and the Screechers we saw were going east to west.” With each directional description, the young boy ran his finger in the relevant compass point flow. Johnson saw Kimberley hiding a smile that he knew would not be out of amusement at the boy playing grown-up, but would be from genuine pride.

“So they’re all heading to a single point which is west from here and northwest of where the others started off?” Kimberley asked him, having leapt far ahead of his explanation logically but taking a brief moment to let him develop his confidence.

“So, it would make sense that if we went north we’d see them heading southwest,” Peter concluded.

“Only they’ve stopped,” Johnson said. “About eight miles back. No obvious reason why.”

“Could be the range of whatever’s attracting them. Like blood in the ocean attracting sharks over a certain distance.” A few faces grimaced at the analogy.

“That’s Hollywood rubbish,” Bufford chimed in, sounding almost bored as though he’d had the conversation before. “I’ve been in the water all over the world and sharks don’t go into a frenzy just because someone cut themselves shaving or got stabbed multiple times.” He added an unapologetic shrug which raised more questions than it dismissed about his history of underwater activities.

“Regardless,” Johnson said, rolling up the map and raising his voice a little to change the subject and take charge. With more civilians and two more soldiers, he felt as though order needed to be restored. Him taking charge wasn’t an arrogance—if anyone more capable who he trusted to guide their choices was there, he’d happily take instruction rather than give it—but things needed to be done.

“We’ve got maybe two days of water on our wagon. What about your lot, Charlie?” Daniels looked abashed as though he’d failed his sergeant major.

“A day. And food. We left in a bit of a hurry…”

“We were the same,” Hampton added as he idly picked at a piece of hard skin by a fingernail with the small blade of a folding knife. He saw the attention his actions were receiving and mumbled a reassurance that he hadn’t stabbed any Screechers with the knife before. “We had two canteens full and are down to half that now. We also didn’t get any food on the way out the door on account of not having been there long and some cock-jockey of a civvy trying to tell us what to do.”

Priorities needed addressing, and for once, Johnson missed how simple that small matter had been over winter. There had been weeks at a time when fresh snowfall could be collected and allowed to defrost, and that didn’t take into account their comfortable home—before the village had been destroyed—that still enjoyed running water.

“First things first,” Johnson said, looking to Enfield, who was already lifting the small rifle and bending to pick up the large, padded gun slip. He held out the smaller weapon to Peter, who hadn’t held it since he helped the marine sight it for the first time so long, and yet not so long ago. Enfield headed for the steel staircase leading up to the half-mezzanine floor but Peter hesitated and glanced behind him. He smiled at his sister, who seemed to give a small nod of permission before he turned back to follow and swallowed down his recent memories of steel ladders and mezzanine floors.

Sentry duties covered, Johnson then recruited Bufford to lead a small recce and see what the immediate area offered. He would ordinarily have asked Astrid to go too, but she was displaying a post-adrenaline exhaustion that would make her reactions sloppy. Coupled with the fact that her weapon was filthy through firing and her ammunition count was incredibly low, he tactfully left her out of any plans.

“I’ll come with you, Buffs,” he said, picking up his gifted MP5 from the table and walking away. “Bill?” he shot back to Hampton, who smiled sweetly in comical response. “Square everything away in here and set about seeing if there’s anything we can use?”

TWENTY-THREE

“Yo’s in place,” Jackson said to Miller in a quiet voice. The team was looking forward to this fetch and carry mission, because it required the liberal application of bullets to the heads of infected monsters. They weren’t bloodthirsty or callous, not overtly at any rate, but the SEALs were becoming frustrated by being in sight and smell—oh dear God, the smell—of the enemy. Miller nodded and took up position, wishing for the third time in the last half hour that he’d brought the Colt rifles from the ship’s armoury in addition to the loadout he had opted for, to keep their noise profile as small as possible.

He reassured himself that these things didn’t wear any kind of protection, and a five-five-six round went through a skull or a face just as well as the 9mm they carried did.

“Okay,” he said, after checking the action on his weapon again, “light it up.”

Flares were activated and tossed ahead of them, and the briefcase device—their new, non-human yo—was set a little way behind the cargo net. Even before the device was switched on, the flares revealed two shadowy figures shambling awkwardly, drunkenly down the hill towards them. They’d elected a new spot for trapping, as they had every time they’d been sent to the mainland for test subjects, only this time they would get to end the suffering of more than a few before they hopefully got what they came for.

“They’re slow ones,” Shepherd said in a low voice, asking permission with his tone.

“Okay,” Miller told them, “nice and slow. Take your time and mark your shots.”

It took a few seconds for the suppressed snapping sounds to start coughing from the barrels of their guns. The first wave of shambling enemy fell quickly, the sudden absence of their moans swelling those coming on from behind, much in the way bees would respond if you swatted one too close to their hive. It was like a pheromone was released when one died, which made the others coming behind even angrier, and when a commotion at the back of the slow advance cut the air with a spine-chilling shriek, they knew their target was in play.

“We got one incoming,” Miller barked to his men. “Hernandez, you get ready to hit the gas. Daves, fall back and keep shooting. Jackson, Kid? Cover and move. Go!”

Slick and professional, the two Daves—Coleman and Shepherd—stopped firing and fell back, keeping their profiles low so as not to interfere with the shots of Jackson and Wilson. Miller was already behind the slung net, standing tall in plain view as the two moving men stopped, turned, and began lining up headshots at the advance so the other two could fall back under cover of their fire.

It was a natural thing to maintain their fire discipline and training, even if this enemy didn’t fire back, because to learn something different now would mean to lose the years of muscle memory, of ingrained training, and would run the risk of them not knowing instinctively what to do when the shit hit the fan.

Too many of them were approaching now, so Miller gave orders to start slowing them down instead of wasting time with a careful headshot which required a good aim.

“Kneecaps,” he called out. “Drop the bastards and slow them down. We need the fast one to reach the net first.” He raised his own weapon and began rattling bullets ahead of them in controlled three-round bursts, by flicking the safety catch down two notches.

To his left and right, he heard the rattle of near-continuous gunfire interspersed with his team calling out their magazine changes. Cycling his own weapon like he’d fired a hundred thousand rounds through one—which he guessed he probably had—he removed the pressure from the trigger as another shriek sounded close to the leading edge of the advance. It burst through the front rank and stopped, bone-thin arms held low and away from its skeletal body with fingers splayed out like claws, staring directly at him.

In the half-second it did that—the half second that felt like an excruciating minute to Miller—he stole a fleeting glance down at the case at his feet. He didn’t have time to marvel at how effective the device was, and yet it was its very success that had contracted his life and the lives of his men into that tiny warzone on the edge of the icy cold water off the western coast of Scotland.

“Get rea—” he began saying, just as it crouched down and burst towards him, lumbering fast like an animal charging him head-on.

“Break, break, break!” Jackson yelled, telling all of them to get clear of the net. “Hernandez, now!”

The SEALs scattered, running and rolling and yelling as the sound of the outboard motor of their boat gunned it to maximum with no preamble. Miller moved, feeling that familiar bullet-time phenomenon as his mind and senses operated at a level that cycled information faster that the rest of him. His legs seemed to take an age to respond. When they did, his boots moved so slowly over the sandy shale of the beach that he might just as well have been in the water up to his waist. Slowly, desperately, he ran to his left as the rope connecting the left side of the net to the boat accelerating away to sea began to go taut and lift from the wet ground so fast that it left the water soaked into its fibres behind. He threw himself over it, sailing through the dark, cold air at waist height just as the shriek off to his right sounded both impossibly close and impossibly loud.

He hit the wet sand with a thud and spun to bring his weapon up. All around him, the gunfire had started again as he stared at the living, shrieking whirlwind of limbs that was the faster one fighting against the heavy, wet fibres of the net trapping it.

“We need to get the fuck outta here, Miller!” Jackson barked at him as he stopped firing long enough to click in a replacement magazine and charge the weapon. “Last mag!” he added.

Miller snapped out of it, jumping up and raising his weapon once more to empty the magazine in bursts aimed at head height into the ranks of the infected backlit by the red flare, still advancing on them. They retreated back towards the water before Miller spun and jogged back towards the thrashing net, calling for the others to cover him. Reaching down for the handle of the case that was just a little too effective at riling up the infected, a bony hand with broken and ragged fingernails shot out of a gap in the net to claw at his left calf muscle. Even through the thick trouser leg, he felt the sharpness of the attempt to drag him into the snapping teeth he could hear but not see. He tugged his leg away hard, hearing a snap that could easily have been bone, and reached down again for the case.

The thing trapped inside reared up on its knees and lunged. Miller reacted on instinct, applying force with the nearest weapon on his body to the closest target on his enemy.

His right knee crunched cruelly into the face of his attacker in the dying light and freed him to scramble away. The team, still firing and moving, splashed into the black water where Hernandez had brought their small boat back in to collect them, before opening up the throttle again and dragging the writhing bundle out to sea.

* * *

Professor Grewal waited eagerly, fighting the urge to administer doses of serum to the remaining three test subjects to satisfy his anxiety that it would randomly be ineffective against them.

Every test conducted so far, through every means of exposure, had resulted in the catastrophic haemorrhaging of the infected subject and resulted in death. Or at least permanent death.

He paced, unable to stay still with nervous anticipation of what the unsmiling, bearded soldiers were bringing back. They had been deployed specifically to bring back one of the faster ones, and only one of the faster ones. They seemed pleased to be given the green light to start executing the infected people, and the report via radio that they had succeeded caused the makeshift lab to erupt in fist-clenching, high-fiving celebration.

The wait for them to return had been agonising, and more than a few false starts had deflated the excitement when people claimed to have heard a boat engine. The last false alarm had been a female lab technician who pointed inland with her claim, and her beratement was still ongoing when a voice called out from the seaward entrance to the large outbuilding.

“Here’s your goddamned fast one, asshole,” Miller snarled, dropping the rope he was holding, with the rest of his team following suit to leave a soaked, writhing, shrieking bundle. Grewal had no time to respond to their arrival or the insult as Yates barked orders at his team to suit up and secure the subject.

Subject, Grewal scoffed to himself internally. It’s much easier to call them that than acknowledge what they really are.

This one had been a young woman. Tall and probably thin to begin with, given that the remnants of clothing she wore didn’t seem baggy on her. It was obvious to anyone who had observed the behaviour of the infected for any amount of time that she was different; her movements were faster, sharper, and her blind eyes above a viciously broken nose that still oozed dark gore zeroed in with a terrifying speed and accuracy on anyone who spoke.

In spite of Yates’ strict instructions, his team struggled to loop the thick wires on poles over the matted strands of lank hair and had hit her in the skull hard enough to knock off chunks of grey skin and expose the bone beneath.

“Be careful of the head, we need her alive!” Chambers shouted at them, earning a salvo of savage looks which all spoke of an invitation to pick up a pole and show them all how it was done. He got the message loud and clear but still flinched every time the skull was impacted. Grewal ignored the ‘alive’ part of his warning and prepared a dose of serum in the same aerosol dispenser he’d used the first time.

A shout of alarm behind him made him spin. No words reached his ears; only the guttural yell of primal fear as though a Neanderthal was being attacked by a predator.

Grewal decided that what he could see actually matched that description perfectly, as the subject had thrown off one of her captors and grabbed the heavy pole attached to her neck to swing it around savagely. Yates was standing directly in front of her—it—and ducked to save himself but ultimately doomed the soldier on the other side, who took the full ballistic force of the swinging pole in the side of the head to be knocked out.

Untethered on both flanks, the thing snapped its gaze to lock onto Yates and advanced on him, forcing him backwards. It writhed and thrashed as it moved, like a feral cat wearing a collar, until the force of its efforts dislodged the coil of wire from around its neck.

Grewal, standing fifteen feet away from the unshackled monstrosity, froze and let out the slightest involuntary whimper of terror.

Yates, however, didn’t freeze. He let the pole drop in his left hand as his right instinctively reached for the heavy forty-five, realising with crippling panic that in his haste to get a suit on, he’d left the weapon holstered under the thick, baggy rubber suit where it was useless to him. Looking back up to his attacker in time to see her mouth open wide enough to rend a fresh tear in the mottled grey skin of her cheek and fighting down the urge to coat the inside of his protective visor with the MRE he’d recently consumed cold, he did the only thing he could and brought the pole up desperately to defend himself.

The thing bit down at him, teeth breaking on the rough surface of the pole’s grip as the full bite force was deployed without the breaker fuse of pain feedback. Yates was treated to an up-close, an extremely up-close, view of two teeth being forced out of the dark flesh of a gum and drop onto his visor. He screamed. Bellowing incoherent rage and fear, the sound formed an ululating, keening war cry as he pushed back on the pole with every ounce of strength he possessed.

A crack sounded. Not a clear, sharp snap like the clean breaking of a bone, but the sinewy crunch of something being forced out of joint.

None of them knew that Miller’s knee had come close to breaking the neck cleanly and had driven shards of shattered nose into the brain. It had done damage that would have been irreversible, had she still been fully alive. The pain such an injury would have caused would have been crippling and debilitating, but without that circuit feeding back to the brain to cease all activity, the ruined body carried on attacking until the force exerted on the spinal injury was too much and the joint gave way.

The broken neck alone wouldn’t have been enough to kill the creature, not fully, but the movement shifted those shards of bone to puncture that part of the brain that drove the infected to keep fighting. With a last limp expulsion of dark gore from the mouth, she slid off Yates to land face down amid shouts of alarm. Two men of the SEAL team burst back in, weapons up and eyes scanning until they took in the scene and advanced on the still body of the thing they had gone through so much to capture. Yates was hauled to his feet and had multiple weapons trained on him. He was so dazed that he didn’t even spit back an insult when ordered to strip off the suit and prove he wasn’t bitten. When they were satisfied he wasn’t infected, the atmosphere in the room turned from fear and shock to anger.

Arguments raged around Yates as he sat with his face in his hands and took a series of long, deep breaths. The SEALs were unhappy that they would have to go back out, an understatement to end all understatements.

The scientists were unhappy in their turn that Yates had killed the one test subject they needed to give the green light to the operation. Yates reached a shaking hand down to his right hip to run his fingers over the wood inlay of the gun’s grip, reassuring himself that it was still there and telling himself that he would never be out of reach of it until they were off that cursed island.

Loitering in the shadows, a man in a heavy black coat sighed and slipped away. Successful confirmation test or not, Fisher would damn well give that green light to start deploying the serum, because the timeframe he had been granted had almost expired. He didn’t see their delays as relevant or in any way likely to affect the overall mission.

Fisher smiled to himself in reassurance as he climbed back inside the vehicle to be driven back to the CIA base of operations, telling himself that he’d soon be settling into his new office as a section chief, if it all went as well as he hoped it would.

TWENTY-FOUR

Fisher was once again picked up by helicopter and ferried back to the floating fortress out in the eastern edge of the Atlantic. It was a great expense to go to, only to have a single spectator involved, but he hoped it was an indication of how his stock was rising.

In truth, Jacobs wanted him there ready to be sent back to the US, should anything go wrong. If it did then Fisher, as the sacrificial lamb, wouldn’t be afforded time to find a replacement for his own neck on the chopping block.

Fisher strode in, confidence exuding from his body like a scent, nodded greetings to the faces he recognised and shook hands briefly with Jacobs.

“Time on target?” he asked the senior man.

“A little under twenty mikes,” Jacobs told him, gesturing behind them at the coffee pot and paper cups. Fisher didn’t want a coffee but poured himself one anyway, in case a refusal would be seen as nervousness. Twenty minutes was a long time to wait when your career aspirations were riding on the outcome of what was about to happen.

“Sir,” a uniformed technician called out. Fisher stood upright from where he had been leaning against a wall, incorrectly thinking that he was being called over, but hesitated when Jacobs answered and stepped up to the console. “Gunship approaching target area.”

“Put the channel on,” Jacobs instructed, leaning back and producing a packet of cigarettes to add to the already thick, smoky atmosphere in the darkened room. Fisher stepped forward, listening intently to the sounds coming from the speaker beside the radio and fighting to make out the words over the continuous droning hum and whine of the engines.

“Affirmative, Zeus-one-one. Conduct reconnaissance circuit and report,” the speaker announced.

“Acknowledged,” came the reply from the pilot as the background noise shifted almost imperceptibly. Hundreds of miles away, in the dark skies over a city teeming with inexplicably agitated undead, a large cargo plane similar to the one which had brought Fisher to Scotland banked forty degrees to its left and began flying a long, seemingly lazy loop of the area.

Their infrared detection package, state of the art in any of the world’s former militaries, was rendered useless as the massed bodies gave off no heat to identify them as bright white outlines in a sea of abandoned black and grey. They adjusted the contrast of their imaging displays, until the black outlines of human figures could be made out at the edges of the densely packed crowd.

“Jesus ‘aitch…” one of the crew muttered as he finally understood what the enormous mound was in an open area adjacent to the wide river. The writhing pyramid of dead meat rose from ground level like a molehill, only instead of fresh earth, it was the animated bodies of the former inhabitants of the UK.

“Zeus-one-one. Confirm concentration of infected, Control. Advise are we cleared to engage, over?”

“Zeus-one-one, Control,” came back the clipped tones of the operator in the control room on board the carrier. “Confirm you are cleared to engage. Repeat, clear to engage.”

The crew of the AC-130 went to work. The pilot kept the steady banking manoeuvre at the same angle to maintain the even platform for the gunners to do their gruesome work.

Their commands were short and clipped, their drills slick and well-practised as they poured round after 40mm round screaming down through the night sky, to detonate in violent air bursts and fill the air with the weaponised aerosol serum.

Almost immediately, the mound of infected piled high over the device, which was humming and radiating its almost-silent rallying call out for miles in every direction, began to fall away. A minute after their brutal aerial bombardment began, a hundred and twenty small bombs had exploded just above ground level. The infected—the zombies—fell in uncomprehending physical failure, as their sallow skin blackened from every cell in the remains of their broken bodies, as the minute tissue walls degraded, the fluids left inside their bodies haemorrhaged with catastrophic results.

As the serum spread through the massed crowd, they began to fall and lie on the ground to twitch and leak black gore into the concrete, moving for the last time. When the treated ammunition was spent, the crew switched to their standard load and began destroying everything outside the test zone, paying careful attention to and recording the most effective means of destruction.

The armed cargo plane stayed on station for almost an hour, pouring every piece of serum-treated and standard munition they carried into anything moving. With a brief radio report, the pilot levelled out the long wings of the aircraft and headed south to rendezvous with their mid-air refuelling appointment and back to Aeroporto de Gran Canaria.

“Rewind the tapes,” the crew chief said into their intercom. “There’ll be a jet standing by to take it off our hands.”

* * *

Before they had landed, another aircraft had taken off to head over Britain at high altitude. The crew had flown that same route so often that it was second nature to them. But this time, their brief sent in the night gave them specific co-ordinates to concentrate on, instead of a general patrol searching for infected activity.

Their last mission had sent them to the same area, and their discussions went on, back and forth for hours as they flew, debating why they had been sent to that specific location again. The only person on board not to involve himself in the speculation was the overall mission commander, a lieutenant colonel. The idle chatter died down and the crew lapsed into relative silence, until the pilot’s voice broke the stillness in their earphones.

“Approaching target co-ordinates,” he said, receiving no reply but knowing that the crew would be readying to carry out their individual tasks.

“Confirmed infected singularity still occupying the city,” one of the men with his eyes pressed into the viewfinder reported. “Estimate numbers to be… hold the phone… hold the goddamned phone!”

“What is it?” another muffled voice asked over the intercom.

“That answers the question,” the man staring down through the strong magnification told them. “Something… something killed all of them.”

“Repeat that,” growled the voice of the mission commander.

“Confirm no movement, repeat no movement in any of the infected,” the operator, a lieutenant, replied. “They appear…”

“Take your time,” the mission commander said slowly, though not to be misinterpreted as kindly, “and give me a report.”

“Sir, they appear to have… melted, or something.”

The mission commander closed his eyes and relaxed. He knew without looking through the scope or viewing the footage from far below them that the serum had been deployed and the results had been everything they had hoped for.

“Confirm no movement of infected?” he asked, waiting a handful of seconds for a response.

“Sir, I’m getting some residual movement but… but nothing I can see for certain. I see none of them still alive. Or whatever it is they are.”

The mission commander switched his headset over to a radio channel only he was tuned to, hailing the same small command and information centre in the bowels of a US navy aircraft carrier. He hailed them with their callsign and waited for the response.

“Confirm mission successful,” he said clearly. “I repeat, mission was successful. Some residual movement at ground level but confirmed deaths of infected are believed to be as close to one hundred percent as possible.”

He listened to the response, given with whoops and the sounds of enthusiastic backslapping in the background, then ordered the flight crew to fly a pattern over the target site for a full video to be taken, and to head back home.

TWENTY-FIVE

In typical fashion, the Sultan broke down after two days. The Warrior pushed ahead of it to be able to sweep a large section of their perimeter, should they be threatened by any Screechers, as the other armed members of their small group fanned out with their eyes alert and their personal weapons made ready.

“How is it, Charlie?” Johnson called out from the commander’s hatch of the Warrior.

“Fucked!” came the terse reply. “Gearbox is shot. We can crawl in first or stall in sixth with fuck all in between. Second line job at least. Got a REME FMA in your pocket?” Johnson ignored the rhetorical question.

Hampton, up on the top of the stranded tracked vehicle with both hands on the big GPMG, huffed in annoyance. They stripped everything they could from the wagon, down to the last bit of diesel they could siphon out, using the length of yellow rubber garden hose to fill the jerry cans they’d decanted into the Warrior’s fuel tank. Hampton, remaining in place behind the machine gun until the job was done, unclipped it from the pintle mount and handed it down to Enfield who had, in turn, made his own small rifle safe and handed it to Peter to hold.

The boy swelled with pride as he turned outwards to keep a watchful eye on their surroundings, eager to demonstrate that he didn’t negligently point the barrel at any of their own people, with all the enthusiasm of a child seeking praise. His sister, loitering near the open rear section of the Warrior that would become a very cramped and uncomfortable place in the near future, watched him with a curious expression on her face.

“Let’s get this buffet moving then, aah—shit!” Hampton cursed as his damaged knee took the shockwave of him jumping back down to the roadway. He hobbled for a few paces, muttering more colourful phrases to himself like Popeye reciting an angry monologue, and shot a narrow-eyed look at the girl trying not to smile at his misfortune.

With a forlorn last look at the uncomfortable metal box that had been his only permanent residence since everything went to hell, Charlie Daniels climbed into the driver’s section of the much newer metal box, this new home making him feel as capricious as the cat, who had been corralled into a more permanent mobile detention centre than the taped-up cardboard box it had previously been trapped in.

He was grateful for once that the men he was slightly envious of and whom he held in very high regard didn’t possess his skills. Johnson took up his appropriate role in the commander’s spot with Bufford at his side, who had already been partly instructed in the use of the Warrior’s weapons systems, and the rear section was packed with people and equipment.

Their ‘shopping’ yielded perhaps three days’ supplies for them, which meant that they would be stopping for another supply run within two days. Johnson reckoned that they had maybe four hundred miles of range. He was guessing from what he could recall, as he hadn’t had much in the way of familiarisation with the vehicle and the one he had played with at the proving grounds had admittedly been a test chassis. What they found, however, was that their progress was often halted by blocked roads and their average speed suffered massively as a result.

“Corporal Daniels,” Johnson asked conversationally as they slowed to approach yet another blockage of rusting vehicles.

“Sarn’t Major?”

“Remind me why we’re going around cars and not over them?”

“Erm…”

“Bugger me, Charlie,” Johnson sighed. “I know it’s a Volvo but we are driving a sodding tank, Son.”

Johnson couldn’t see the look on his corporal’s face in response to his words. Why it hadn’t dawned on Daniels to be more bullish with their progress until then was a mystery, but receiving such an epiphany through the medium of permission caused a smile to slowly creep across his face.

“Hold on tight,” he warned over the vehicle intercom. “Bit of turbulence ahead…”

He went slowly, running one side of the tracks over the front of the large estate vehicle, then tipped them over to one side until the other tracks crunched over a smaller car which flattened with much greater ease. They travelled that way for hours on end until the occupants of the cramped rear section could take no more discomfort and they found somewhere appropriate to stop.

Three days went by like that, each day sapping their strength and morale until Johnson was pulled aside by Hampton when they had stopped to rest.

“We need to dig in for a day at least,” he said. “Everyone needs some rest and the supplies are dwindling.” Johnson nodded, appreciating the straight talking approach from a man he suspected was even less inclined towards bullshit than Johnson was himself.

“Town ahead,” he told the marine sergeant and nodded in a general direction to their front. “We’ll find somewhere and range out again for food and water.” Hampton nodded back, less inclined to waste his breath on words than many people, and went back to where the others were stretching their legs and their backs and generally blinking at the alien display of sunlight, after being cooped up inside the back of the Warrior for days.

Of Peter, Johnson had seen less than usual as he was relegated to the rear section and had his sister’s undivided attention. She fussed over him, but Peter seemed oddly resistant to her. Amber had gone the other way, it seemed, and had understandably regressed to the extent that her mother was unable to put her down without the girl bursting into panicked tears and making an uncharacteristic amount of noise. Johnson felt sorry for her, not because of the fear and loss they had all experienced, but for the fact that she couldn’t understand what was happening. Being so young, she had understood that her mother was gone—lost to her—but now that she had inexplicably come back, the girl had become overwhelmed by everything. He didn’t blame her, simply felt a sadness that he could do nothing to salve.

He stayed on watch in spite of the tiredness he felt behind his eyes after hours of peering intently through the observation window in the Warrior, and noticed how the tall, quiet marine had found himself a piece of high ground to occupy and was scanning the horizon with his weapon. Johnson had thought both men lost, sure that they had died in defence of the village they had been living in, and that he—they—owed their lives to the two men. But then he found out so unexpectedly that they had survived, and this whole experience made him understand a little better how Amber must be feeling now.

They had travelled north west, bypassing Birmingham and the densely packed sprawling suburbs that all major cities sprouted outwards from their cores like weeds, continuing straight on past Stoke-On-Trent and went to ground in a large industrial unit a day’s drive north west, near the banks of a wide river.

Travel weary, if not downright bedraggled, they spilled from the vehicle like they’d crashed and were trying to walk off their minor injuries. The area they had stopped in was open enough that there was little to no threat of any immediate attack, but that didn’t prevent them from having their weapons ready, even if their cramped-up bodies didn’t move with the slick alacrity they could demonstrate on better days.

“Buffs?” Johnson said quietly. The SBS man turned to look at him, silently following the direction of his outstretched hand with his eyes until he saw the side of the building he was pointing at. He looked back to Johnson, seeing him first point to himself then snake his hand around in an exaggerated movement to the left to signify that they would meet around the back. Johnson looked back towards the others, to see Hampton settling himself into a position of relative comfort near the driver’s hatch on the lower hull of the Warrior, just as Enfield adopted a position of overwatch with his small rifle, his backside nestled on the cold armour of the turret. Hampton gave him a nod, signalling that they had this area covered and that the two men could do what they needed to.

Johnson moved, knowing after so long together that Bufford would already be ahead of him as his drills were slicker and more intense than his own. He saw no competition between them, just a maturity and an understanding that his professional soldiering had taken him down a different path. They all had their roles to play in the current game plan—or at least what had been the plan for Her Majesty’s armed forces before the world turned upside down—and that game plan was transitioning from all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union to a somewhat sandier climate. Bufford’s role would be to insert himself into enemy territory, most likely by water, but he was also capable of dropping by parachute, walking or driving over any terrain; the aim being either to destroy something vital to the enemy, or to feed back intelligence and targeting information.

Astrid Larsen, as innocent as she looked to the untrained eye, was a hardened woman whose role would be to insert herself far behind enemy lines, as Bufford would, only she was also able to blend in as a native of their enemy’s motherland and would be trained to sneak in and collapse local infrastructure; transport, power and communications. Everything about the woman made Johnson and the others question why their own armed forces still refused to allow women to conduct frontline fighting roles.

Johnson, along with Daniels for that matter, was the one who could use his light and mobile armoured vehicles to lure the T-55s of the USSR into chasing them down, only to find themselves swamped by the combined firepower of the rest of the squadron. It was Johnson who had been trained to set such an ambush; to look for the perfect geography and encourage the men to be patient until that trap could be sprung.

What he wasn’t, and he knew this instinctively, was a Special Forces operator.

He made more noise than was strictly acceptable, given their circumstances, as he pushed through the overgrown foliage pressing up against the building, and to add insult to injury, he had only covered a third of the circumference before Bufford called out softly from his front to minimise the risk of getting shot over a simple misunderstanding.

“Anything your side?” Johnson murmured as Bufford appeared through the leaves.

“Side door on the far side. Doesn’t look like it’s been opened for years. You?”

“Nothing. Try the side door or move to the next building?”

“Next building,” Bufford said. “I don’t much like the alternative exit strategy for this one, if you catch my drift.” Johnson did. One of the cardinal rules for surviving the death of the world by flesh-eating monstrosities was never to paint yourself into a corner.

They moved to the adjacent building, exchanging some brief hand signals with the two royal marines before they ducked out of sight once more. Johnson worked thoroughly, careful not to make too much noise and finding the going easier than the previous building’s exterior had been to navigate. It took him precious seconds to understand why, until his brain caught up with his instincts and he noticed small tell-tale signs of human presence. He froze, not yet sure if that human presence was alive or dead. Tightening the grip on his weapon, he pressed on, turning the corner after a quick glance around it showed Bufford on one knee covering the side door to the unit. He joined him, seeing the intensity in the man’s eyes as he pointed to the apex of the roof above them, indicating the three small windmills stuck to the structure, with wires snaking down to the door they knelt beside. Bufford’s eyebrows went up as if asking for Johnson’s opinion. Johnson shrugged, reaching up with his left hand to touch the door handle and gently pull the handle down. It gave, creaking only slightly as the door opened a crack. Bufford readied himself, nodding to Johnson to signify that he was ready.

The door was wrenched open and they burst inside, guns up and fingers ready to move onto triggers, with no idea what they expected to find.

“Fucking hell!” Bufford swore. Johnson glanced over his left shoulder to where the SBS man had moved to. In terms of expectations, Johnson wouldn’t have been surprised to find a ravenous horde of undead. Wouldn’t have been shocked to find other living humans pointing weapons at them. He was, however, very surprised to see neat rows of dark soil in troughs with lengths of hosepipe running along them, jury-rigged lamps hanging above them and green plants sprouting upwards to creep towards the source of the light and heat along intricate networks of wire and sticks.

Johnson lowered his weapon, reaching out with his left hand to grasp the most unlikely of items and one that he realised he had given up all hope of ever seeing again.

Pulling gently as his fingers squeezed, the vine pulled with him until the ripe tomato popped off to shake the whole row. He held it up in front of his face, turning it around and inspecting it like it was a chunk of moon rock. He focused his eyes on the incredulous face of Bufford behind the juicy item and spun slowly on the spot to take in the multiple rows of dirt-filled troughs all sprouting different forms of sustenance. He saw potatoes and carrots to accompany the two rows of tomatoes, dreaming of adding a couple of rabbits and some salt and pepper to it.

Then the truth dawned on him. He was trespassing on some other survivor’s farm, stealing their supplies and threatening their livelihood. A glance at his friend told him that the other man knew it too. A noise from behind them made them both turn and raise their weapons; Johnson standing tall and Bufford dropping to one knee, to train their weapons on a tall, muscled black man with a tangle of dark beard and wide, wild eyes staring at them over a tight-lipped mouth and who was seething with anger. His right hand wasn’t empty, although his heavy metal spike was held low, which somehow made both him and the weapon more menacing, like he knew how to use it and was so confident that he didn’t need to threaten them.

“Calm down, JP,” a strong Liverpudlian male voice echoed around the inside of the empty factory unit. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t here to pinch our carrots.”

TWENTY-SIX

“You did what?” Professor Grewal shouted, slamming down the clipboard he was holding so hard that it bounced back up off the desk.

“Keep your hair on, Doc,” Fisher replied so casually that the scientist was ready to start throwing punches in an attempt to knock the reckless stupidity out of him. “The test was a complete success. Every one of them dead. You should be proud of your achieveme—”

“Do they teach you this kind of ignorance in the CIA or simply recruit people who naturally possess it?” Fisher’s face dropped the false smile it was maintaining.

“You were given a job to do. You did it. Don’t think for a second that this was a pet project of yours, that you had any control over the timeli—”

“They just recruit the arrogance then,” Grewal snarled with angry sarcasm, “understood.” Fisher took a step towards him and swelled up his size, but Grewal matched his movements and bested him in both height and the intensity of his anger.

“You deployed an untested serum on thousands—hundreds of thousands—of infected subjects with no idea what it would do to them. That kind of stupidity is… is…” he shook his hands beside his ears as there simply wasn’t a word in the English language strong enough to accurately describe what they had done.

“It has been tested,” Fisher shot back with a retreating step. “You tested it here and it was successful in one hundred percent of the trials. You want more time to repeat that test? You want to be responsible for more deaths when we could be wiping out these assholes with the serum we know works?”

“It’s unfathomable. We don’t know it works,” Grewal answered him angrily, “that’s the whole point.” Fisher’s face screwed up in total incomprehension. Grewal looked fit to burst, like a kettle boiling water with no steam vent. Seeing this, professor Chambers stepped in between the two men.

“I believe we were quite clear,” he explained. “We needed to test the serum on one of the anomalous infected before we could guarantee with any kind of certainty that it would work fully.”

“What are you saying?” Fisher asked, doubt infecting him like the viruses they were discussing could so easily. Chambers rubbed tiredly at his face, turning to see if Grewal wanted to jump back into the conversation, but only seeing him walking away and kicking the large plastic boxes that had contained their lab equipment. He sighed and looked back at the CIA man.

“Viruses produce different responses based on the physical response of the host. That’s where you get unexplained strains of immunity to certain illnesses.” He paused to check if the slightly shocked agent was keeping up. “The reports—confirmed reports— tell us of a faster type of infected which retains a significant portion of motor function and some higher cognitive ability. This means that the initial infection causes a low-percentage response which, unfortunately for us, actually increases their lethality.”

“In English, Doc,” Fisher said as he had done so long ago when the current events were little more than a spark of an idea.

“Simply put, Agent Fisher, the virus has already created mutations. The genetic makeup of those infected who are… different, could have as yet unknown side-effects when combined with the serum.”

It finally dawned on Fisher. “Why the hell didn’t you test it on one of them?” he half yelled.

“Because you shot your bloody load early and went to war before we said it was ready,” Grewal hissed through his teeth as he returned to the conversation. “And I can only hope for your sake that it kills them just the same as it does the others.”

Fisher paced back and forth for a few seconds, evidently deep in thought.

“Okay,” he said finally, “here’s how we’re going to play it. We get one of the faster ones back here and test it right away.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Chambers asked.

“Then we update the threat package that a tiny percentage of the infected are still in play. We’ll have to go in with ground teams—whole armies—if we want to take the UK back.”

“Ahem,” said a voice in mimicry of clearing the throat. Grewal turned to see Staff Sergeant Yates stepping towards them. “I think you’re kinda missing the point; these faster ones aren’t just a bit quicker on their feet than your average schmuck. They think. They actually hunt us, like we’re prey. That updated threat assessment better be accurate if you don’t want more lives at risk.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Grewal interrupted before Fisher could respond. “It’ll take weeks for them to corral the remaining infected into one place and deploy the serum again. I imagine it’ll also take a while to manufacture the sonic devices and create more of the serum.”

All eyes turned to Fisher, who had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Yeah, that’s, uh… that’s not exactly accurate.”

“What are you saying?” Yates asked.

“I’m saying the planes are already flying the devices in and the serum’s loaded into munitions. They’re ready to rock.”

“Unless we can tell them otherwise,” Chambers said, trying to get the conversation back on track.

“Sure,” Fisher agreed, silently telling himself that there was no way he would put his neck on the line to pull the plug on a billion-dollar operation, based on a few infected with the magical ability to jog and open a door surviving the fire. Surely the military would be capable of mopping up a few grasshoppers when they got there?

“Good,” Chambers said, raising his voice to encompass the whole makeshift lab and get everyone back to work. “In the meantime, we’ll prep for the arrival of the anomalous infected.”

“Assuming we do get one and it survives long enough to be injected with serum,” Grewal added with a fleeting, sideways glance at the staff sergeant.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Two agonising hours later, a wet and angry SEAL team returned. They dragged behind them the same cargo net with a thrashing, shrieking detainee trapped inside and Miller’s words to them before the net was unfurled made it clear that triggers would be pulled if they screwed up a second time. He glowered at everyone in the room before spinning on his wet boot heel and ordering his men back to secure the boat.

Yates took control, instructing everyone to either suit up and get a pole or else get the hell off his lab floor. The once-living occupant of the sea-soaked net was dragged into the mouth of the nearest open cage door and locked inside, for the net to be teased off the subject with difficulty until a bony limb broke free and everyone jumped backwards with shouts of fear and alarm.

It thrashed its way out of the bonds, wailing and shrieking as though made even angrier by the kidnapping and the warm bodies so close to it, yet at the same time finding the way to them blocked by steel mesh. It rammed itself into the metal barrier over and over again, gouging chunks of flesh from its body and losing a front tooth with a snap as it tried to bite its way through.

“We need tissue samples,” Chambers said loudly, looking around and waiting for a volunteer to present themselves. Normally this would be a simple thing; approach the cage door and allow the subject to reach out with a hand through the gap, then grab the limb and cut away some cold flesh. Yates turned his head in an exaggerated move left and right to see that none of them—neither the scientists nor his own people—had the balls to get the job done.

He stepped up, no doubt uttering choice opinions inside his protective visor, and waited for the arm to come out of the aperture towards him. It did, striking like a viper as he grabbed the wrist hard. Just as he was about to shout for someone to take the sample, he found himself dragged clean off his feet to impact the cage, the unbelievable strength of the disgusting creature taking him by surprise.

It was superhuman. Incomprehensible how someone not overtly muscled like a prize-winning bodybuilder could exert such brute force, and for the second time in his life, Staff Sergeant Yates came face to face with one of the faster ones, with nothing but desperation and crippling fear driving him to escape.

Hands pulled at him, making him become the rope in a panicked game of tug of war, as the savage, snarling creature threatened to drag him back towards it and pull his whole body through the small hole if it could. Yates roared incoherently with rage as his gloved right hand found the grip of his pistol.

He ignored the screams of protest, of fear that he would kill another precious test subject and send them all back to square one, because he knew what he planned wouldn’t leave the thing double-dead, but would free him and obtain the tissue samples in one unorthodox move.

He pressed the barrel of the forty-five-calibre pistol against the slender forearm of the thing, angling it upwards as he braced his body with every ounce of remaining strength and leaned away before pulling the trigger three times.

The sound of the gun going off in close quarters amid the pack of bodies was deafening; not just the sound of the three small explosions but the concussive wave of pressure that accompanied each pull of the trigger.

The flesh burned where the muzzle flashes had scorched it, but the fat bullets punched their way through flesh, bone and sinew to make the grip fail. Yates fell away, conscious to keep a firm grip on the wrist of the hand still digging its nails into the thick rubber of his suit. He tried to ignore the image of the grey skin stretching before it tore away to leave him lying on his back, holding the violently severed hand.

“Stand back,” Grewal shouted, his command muffled by the protective suit. “Back!” They moved aside as he stepped close, an aerosol machine held in both hands, looking like an oversized vintage perfume dispenser.

He pumped it, covering the grotesque face of the creature with a fine mist that it aspirated simply through the effort of shrieking and trying to get to so many fresh victims. It gave no reaction at first, but that was to be expected as the other, non-anomalous infected didn’t exactly fall down choking and clutching their throats like comedy villains on the big screen.

It faltered, staggering slightly as though drunk, and blinked its milky eyes at them.

“Here’s your goddamned tissue sample,” Yates gasped as he stood, holding out the dead hand for Chambers to take, before walking off unsteadily.

The anomalous infected, the thing they had heard being called a Leader or Lima in the intelligence reports, blinked its eyelids again and slumped back in the cage to land heavily against the cargo net, where it raised the ruined, ragged stump of its left forearm to inspect it.

A low hiss sounded; not like the hiss they emitted before they shrieked the air back out so hideously, but a noise that sounded far more pensive than they had ever heard one of them make.

Chambers crouched down to meet the creature’s eye level, pulling off the large hood of his suit, despite the warnings from others.

“Look at the eyes,” he said, lifting a tentative finger towards the sitting subject. They did. The eyes, the milky orbs from their infected dreams that they’d expected to see, were fading, allowing a dark iris colour to return and lend the hideous beast an air of humanity.

Before any elation could spread, it exhibited a kind of seizure and shuddered as if in agony or racked by a sudden bout of epilepsy. It stopped, going still as they all stood and stared, before it relaxed finally to be at peace. Chambers stayed crouched down, still staring at the face, which had regained a hint of emotion before it went slack.

“Dick?” Grewal said gently from beside and above him. Chambers looked up at him, seeing him offer a sterile steel tray to take the severed hand he was still clutching like a prized possession. Chambers held it out for him, dropping the hand just as the tray fell away to clatter onto the hard ground. Time moved slowly for him, while the others in the room seemed to move fast to throw their bodies away from him. Then he turned his head back to face the cage.

Those eyes, no longer milky but bloodshot white with a jet black iris, were wide open and fixed on him. The creature flew forwards, its remaining hand shooting out of the gap with perfect accuracy to grab him by the sleeve, hauling him forwards. Chambers screamed. He screamed with the terror of what was happening, even if he didn’t fully understand it, and he screamed with the pain of his index finger being bitten clean off between the first and second knuckles with a bite force the rational part of his brain couldn’t believe belonged to a human body.

A gunshot erupted again, loud and close, and Chambers scrambled away from the cage, clamping his left hand hard around his right wrist, with speckles of dark gore patterned over his face. He blinked it away but felt the sting of the sticky fluid on his eyeball as strong hands hauled him upwards.

A tourniquet was lashed around his right forearm and twisted to be painfully tight as voices fought for space in his brain. One shushed him, telling him in an American accent that everything was going to be okay. Another screamed repeatedly in a deep voice, which only paused briefly for the man making the awful sound to refill his lungs and start again.

“Too late,” a gruff voice said over him. “It’s all over his face. Can’t guarantee there’s no infection.” He recognised the army sergeant’s harsh tone and connected it with the sound of a gun’s hammer being cocked.

“No,” another voice—Grewal’s voice—snapped. “Wait, please.”

Grewal ran to the sample fridge, knocking aside a panicked lab assistant in his desperate haste to fetch a fresh vial of serum. Opting for the direct application method, he stabbed a syringe into the rubber section in the lid and tipped it up to draw out an unmeasured amount of the clear fluid before squeezing the plunger to force the air from it. Not bothering to find a vein, he jabbed it hard into Chambers’ shoulder and depressed the plunger to fill the muscle with the cold liquid.

“It’s his only chance,” Grewal’s voice drifted to him as the fever began to burn him up faster than he expected.

Professor Richard Chambers had precisely zero percent chance of surviving from the moment the infected thing bit into his flesh. The metaphysical changes alone that the subject had undergone in a matter of seconds were unprecedented, and now with its head blown half off, it would never reveal the secrets of what made it especially lethal to living humans.

Chambers, by the cruellest twist of fate, was also one of those few people, one of the tiny percentage of human beings that possessed a certain genetic trait which combined with the virus in a way that left them just as violent and ravenous, but still in possession of enough cognitive ability as to be truly, horrifyingly dangerous.

The addition of the serum to his body before he died simply accelerated the process and bonded with the original virus to create the freshest version of hell mankind could conjure.

All over the south west region of central England, there were almost five thousand like him, all spreading out with murderous intent and a newly unlocked ability to stalk and hunt their prey—living people—with renewed energy and lethality.

Chambers sat upright, tensed the muscles of his right forearm and snapped the tourniquet off his limb. Pulling at the heavy, cumbersome protective suit, he tore it away from himself with startling ease and turned his head to face professor Grewal.

Grewal had seen that look in his eye once before—had seen it just before the scientist had punched him in the face—only now the eyes weren’t light blue and on the verge of tears but jet black amid a sea of red lightning bolts running through the white sclera. It drove a cold dagger of terror into Grewal’s chest.

Before Grewal could move, Chambers’ hand shot out impossibly fast and gripped his neck so hard that his hands and arms went painfully numb instantly. He tried to speak, at least his mind formed the words but his mouth couldn’t respond, due to the pressure around his neck.

Chambers leaned forwards, sniffed him once as he growled low in his chest, then bit him on the cheek hard enough to scrape his front teeth down Grewal’s cheekbone before the burn of the fever started to take him.

Chambers dropped the other scientist, the two of them finding themselves once more on the same side, regardless of how they’d felt about one another. He set about hunting down the other living people. Impacts hit his body, but as none of them blew apart his skull, they barely slowed him as he leapt and climbed and tore at them; never stopping to eat but just dealing debilitating blows before his attention was caught by another living enemy.

* * *

“Okay, that was definitely a forty-five,” Dave Shepherd said to the other SEALs, who had all stopped their work to stare back up the hill at the building they had just come from. The answer to the statement came in the form of an explosive rattle of automatic fire which had to be from a squad gun. If that was being used inside a building, then the day had almost certainly gone to shit, Miller knew.

They began to ready their weapons again, stacking up and waiting for the word to advance back up the hill just as screams filled the black sky.

“No,” Miller said. “It’s loose, and that means an outbreak. You know our orders.”

They did.

Wordlessly, they climbed into the boat and pushed off, taking a compass bearing to direct them out to sea where they would find the naval flotilla and hope to be done with the scourge.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The men of the British Special Forces elite took their role seriously.

Acting as the cut-off between what was obviously some kind of viral testing facility hastily thrown together by the Americans in a secluded farm on the west coast of the island, and the rest of the population to their backs in the east. They had never officially been told that there were scientists there testing the sickness that caused the dead to become ambulatory and tear the flesh from others unthinkingly. However, their strict orders to destroy anything coming from that direction that didn’t give the correct codeword response to their challenge—with a heavy inference to shoot first if they weren’t speaking at all—made it clear that they were facing the potential of infected people seeking a way through them.

They had made a small town of tents in the lee of a raised hillock which sheltered them just a little from the harsh weather the island experienced. But since they’d all successfully completed SAS selection and training, and had all spent time living in harsh environments where the power of the elements alone might kill them, this hardship barely even registered as one.

They rotated their turns on the road barricade, just as they took turns sleeping and patrolling the impassable ground either side of the only stretch of flat ground which the road ran through. That road was covered by two interlocking firing arcs of belt-fed general purpose machine guns capable of destroying any vehicle moving towards the farm.

“I still don’t like it, Tip,” a trooper complained to the man beside him as he lit his cigarette and tucked both hands back under his armpits to leave the smoke dangling from between his lips as he spoke. “There was more bloody gunfire earlier, so the boys said.”

The man he spoke to sighed, as though bored of hearing the same arguments come from him. “There’s always gunfire from there. It’s the easiest way to kill one of them.”

“Well, I still don’t like it.”

“What don’t you like, Ed?” corporal Tipuric asked trooper Jenkins.

“Well,” the man said, voice still muffled by the cigarette and his Welsh accent, “they could be doing all sorts of things down there, and we don’t know anything about it.”

“What are you worried about?” Tipuric snapped, the cold taking the edge off his usually long patience. “Expecting a BTR-Eighty to come plodding up the hill? Howay, man. Bloody cold’s got to your brain.”

“Well, if one does come up, it can bloody well have one of these bastards,” the reply came as one hand was taken from the warm armpit it resided in and tapped a dull, green tube standing vertically.

“Take more than one,” Tipuric answered absent-mindedly, annoyed with himself for even being drawn into the idle conversation. He was saved any further retort by a sharp sound from the darkness ahead of their position. Both men froze, hearing the sudden absence of low chatter from either side of their roadblock. For ten long seconds nobody said a word, waiting to see if the noise repeated itself. Tipuric didn’t move, other than to tighten his grip on the Colt rifle he cradled and run his thumb up towards the safety catch.

“Fox,” he said confidently. Before anyone could disagree, the sound came again, only much further to the left of where it had originally sounded, to give the impression that there were more than one of the animals out there. That sharp cry was answered by a low chorus of hisses in various tones.

Tipuric stood, flicking off the safety catch and pointing his rifle front as he shouted.

“Stand to! Stand to! Attack front!”

Muzzle flashes from the medium machine guns lit up the dark night, showing hideous snapshots of men and women wearing a mixture of camouflage uniforms and white coats, all smeared with dark patches of blood, approaching at a run up the slope towards them.

Behind them, a mortar was sent up to pop high over their heads where a small parachute deployed to gently lower the fired projectile back to earth as it burned brightly and provided illumination to the battlefield.

That illumination did not make them happy. Tipuric’s mind counted just over twenty, which wasn’t an insurmountable number by any stretch of the imagination for such well-trained and well-armed men, but something nagged at the back of his mind as he lined up heads between the iron sights of the rifle and clattered off bursts of fire.

He should have listened to that nagging doubt. If he had, they might have won. Might have survived. As it happened, the noises they had ignored had originated with two former people—one in a pale shirt with a missing finger and another wearing the uniform and insignia of a US army staff sergeant—who had flanked the roadblock from the impassable high ground to each side and fallen upon the men firing the GPMGs.

As the guns went silent in unison, Tipuric instinctively turned to his left and began triggering shots off at the shape of a crouching man in a once light blue shirt with the collar undone and the sleeves rolled up as though he was still working after a long day. The shape crouched further, like it was powering up, then leapt clear of the aim of his rifle like a human-sized grasshopper, which left the SAS man momentarily stunned. Spinning and searching for a target, he looked back at the trooper who had been beside him, in time to see the man’s boots fly through the air as his rifle flashed with automatic fire when his trigger finger spasmed. As trooper Jenkins sailed backwards out of their defensive position, one of the bullets he inadvertently and negligently fired ricocheted from something and thumped into Tipuric’s side with just enough force to punch its way an inch into his flesh. Immediately, the wound welled with hot blood and took his breath away, but he was instinctively certain nothing vital was hit. Staggering back to his feet, he hefted the rifle with the heavy attachment under the barrel for firing small grenades, only to find the space before him empty.

A feeling. A creeping sensation. A cellular knowledge made him turn around, as the absence of sound and wind from behind him told his brain that there was a person there.

Rotating his head slowly, he saw the shirted man standing with such horrible and unnerving stillness that his presence was the absolute portent of the violent end he always expected to meet in battle one day.

He had expected it by an Argentine bomb or bayonet in the Falklands and he had expected it from a sniper in an attic room in Derry or Belfast, but he never, not once, expected to die as he did on a freezing roadside on a Scottish island.

He began to raise the gun but it was knocked violently aside by an arm much stronger than his own. He retreated a step to whip the Browning pistol up and trigger two fast shots into the chest right where the heart was, in the classic double-tap he had trained to deliver for so many years.

The muscle-memory of the fatal shots—fatal in almost any other scenario—cost him his life. Had he acted less instinctively, had his brain pulled the trigger and not his subconscious, as he had trained his body to do, he might have aimed for the head and scored a lucky hit.

The two bullets did nothing. They didn’t even delay his death for a second as the hideous thing before him snatched a hand out and dug the fingernails of its right hand into the flesh above his collar bone, tearing through the three layers of clothing to break the skin and snap the bone as it dragged him towards its open mouth.

The last thing Tipuric saw, before he was blinded by the sheet of blood flowing from the bite to his head, was the bright reflection of the illuminating mortar in the black eyes of the thing that killed him.

* * *

Fisher, unable to sleep in his bed, went downstairs in the house he and the other CIA men had adopted as their own and sat in a threadbare, wing-backed chair that he guessed was older than he was. He poured himself something from a bottle bearing a name on the label he couldn’t pronounce and held it up to the small light that the lamp bulb emitted to bathe the room in a soft, dull yellow. The colour and clarity of the drink was to his liking, and he allowed himself the small fantasy that he was a connoisseur of such things before taking a hit of the drink and tossing it back without tasting it.

He coughed hard, spluttering as if the harsh whisky had fought back and insisted that he treat it with more respect than to just swallow it like it was prescribed medication, instead of something that took years to mature.

He wiped his eyes and stood to pour another, still coughing intermittently, and took a tentative sip this time. He allowed the drink to coat his mouth and burn his gums before taking a swallow and feeling the liquid pass down his throat to where it warmed his stomach and tempted him to take another sip.

When that glass was finished, he allowed himself another, arguing internally that he was unlikely to hear anything important until the morning when the tapes of the air bombardment and the reconnaissance fly-over were delivered to the carrier.

That footage would vindicate him, he was certain. It would show that the infected were made inert, were bleeding out to pose no threat to the lives of American servicemen who would be arriving by boat the following summer to begin cleansing the nation, ready for clean-up and repopulation.

After that, they would move into the European states that could be easily defended, and from there the pattern he had devised would be repeated. They would again use the devices to attract the infected into concentrated areas before destroying them with the anti-virus developed under his direction. This simple, and most importantly cost-effective, strategy he was sure would earn him an elevated position when the deck was shuffled, which it surely would be soon.

There were other states in the world still alive, still independent, but their survival was largely down to luck and geography, whereas the United States remained whole through strict quarantine procedures and a hard line of dedicated defence. He’d heard the scuttlebutt that so many ships had been sunk and so many aircraft shot out of the skies to prevent even the slightest chance that the virus would land on their home soil. All of those refugees who had followed procedure and been taken in would one day be repatriated to run what would effectively be a client state of their own administration.

He knew that if the boot were on the other foot, the Brits or the French would do precisely as they had done. He doubted the might hiding behind the Iron Curtain would have been much different, for that matter.

Fisher’s tumbling thoughts of the world’s politics and his own ambitions swirled in his head until, ironically, the sleep that eluded him in bed took him quickly as his head slumped against one of the high wings of the armchair.

A hammering noise woke him, reminding him of a jackhammer ripping up the road to make way for more roads, more cars, more people. The world had too many people in it already.

The hammering sounded again, reaching his brain fully this time and setting off the alarm bells. The bangs on the wooden door sounded as if the person on the other side were fleeing the very hounds of hell.

He woke with a gasp, the empty glass falling from his lap to land on the thick hearth rug with a heavy thump of the crystal tumbler’s base. A strangled noise escaped his throat as he stood, unsteady through tiredness more than the few glasses of scotch, and he made his way to the door to slide across the heavy bolt and admit a red-faced, terrified man in American military uniform.

“Sir!” he gasped, “We have to get the hell outta here!”

“Calm down, soldier,” Fisher ordered him. “What’s going on?”

“Outbreak,” the soldier panted, “at the lab.”

Fisher stared at him for a second with a blank expression on his face. He rejected the urges to ask if he was sure, or to state the idiotic belief that there had to be a mistake. He swallowed, nodded to himself, then turned to face up the stairs and bawl out that they were leaving. The other two agents had already been woken up by the banging and both appeared at the top of the stairs to exchange terrified glances with one another.

“Take the other vehicle and meet us at the airfield,” Fisher told them as he shoved his feet into his boots and pulled open the door under the stairs where they had stowed their emergency gear. Fisher took a spare magazine for the Beretta he carried to augment the two full ones, then picked up a Colt sub machine gun, similar to the larger versions so easily recognised the world over but firing the smaller ammunition like his sidearm. Two spare magazines for that went into a pocket of the coat and he turned to see the uniformed man almost dancing on the spot as he glanced behind him into the darkness, clutching his own service weapon.

Fisher prompted him to move, climbing into the left side of the vehicle as the panicked soldier drove a little too fast for the narrow roads.

“Calm it down a little,” he said after one too many close calls with the rocky edge of the road, “we ain’t getting out of here if you kill us in a car wreck now, are we?”

“No, Sir,” came the reply in a voice that sounded almost tearful.

“Tell me what you know,” Fisher instructed him.

“We had watch on the quarantine barricade, like you said,” he blurted out. “All of a sudden they just lit up the night; full auto and flares. Then they went quiet and the noises started in…”

“What noises?”

“The screams, like, animal screams…”

“Like a screech?”

“Yeah, only… only worse than I ever heard…”

“Did you call it in?” Fisher asked, trying to get him back on track.

“The Lieutenant was trying to. He sent me to get you back to the airfield so you could call in reinforcements or whatever…” Fisher chuckled darkly.

“Sir?”

“Son, why would the United States military throw reinforcements at this place? We were only here to test the serum against them and now we know that works, well…”

“So, everyone will…”

“LOOK OUT,” Fisher snarled as the soldier snatched the wheel over to narrowly avoid a gatepost they were heading directly for. “Eyes on the goddamned road!”

They arrived at the airfield after a few more miles of tense silence and Fisher slid from the vehicle to start shouting orders for the helicopter to be made ready to fly. The air crews seemed surprised to be roused in the night, but the news of a suspected outbreak encouraged them to get into the air as soon as possible.

The rotors were turning, and Fisher was standing at the rear ramp when one of the crew tapped him on the shoulder and beckoned him to the bulkhead, where he was handed a headset. The pilot was on the other end, asking when they were taking off. He looked back out into the darkness, wondering how the other two agents could have taken close to half an hour just to get dressed and drive the few miles to follow him, and he made a judgement call.

“Go now,” he said, “if they aren’t here by now, I don’t think they’re coming.”

The helicopter took off, rotating in the air to point the nose west before dipping it and surging through the dark sky. Their path took them over the house that Fisher had been in so recently, and when he heard the reports of a fire there through his headset, he couldn’t understand how the idyllic farmhouse, with its surprisingly comfortable chair and potent scotch, was burning. He knew, or at least he strongly suspected, that the other two agents with him had run into the infected shortly after he’d escaped the house, and his thoughts tortured him, wondering if they might still be alive if he’d stayed long enough for them to get dressed and get in the vehicle with him.

Cold, hard, good sense reasserted itself and he knew that if he had stayed, it wouldn’t mean the addition of two more lives on the aircraft now, but would spell the death of everyone. That guilt hit him immediately as his conscience forced him to give everyone still on the island as much of a fighting chance to survive as possible.

“Call up the base,” he instructed the crew. “Tell them there’s been an outbreak. Tell them… tell them to do whatever they can.”

TWENTY-NINE

The door to the room Downes had adopted as his own burst open as if the big Scotsman occupying the doorway was clearing the room of terrorists.

“On your fucking feet, Boss,” Mac barked. “Bastards are on the island.” If any words would bring a man into full alertness under any circumstances, it would be the report that Screechers had boots on the ground in their safe haven.

“Where?”

“East coast.”

Downes was dressed before the brief exchange was complete, sitting on the bed again to lace his boots, as Mac picked up the major’s webbing and checked it for magazines before holding it ready for the man to shrug into.

“The boys ready?”

“Smiffy’s on the door,” Mac told him. “Dez has gone to rouse the others.”

That made sense to Downes. Smiffy was still limping from the sprained ankle he’d given himself kicking the head half off a Screecher, so Dez being the runner was the sensible choice.

“Major?” snapped a crisp voice from the lower floor of the small house. “Major?”

“Here!” Downes answered in a clipped voice that was all business. He appeared at the top of the stairs to see Captain Palmer at the foot of them, similarly dressed for battle. He saw the anger and concern in the younger man’s eyes and felt for him; they’d been through hell enough already, and the responsibilities heaped on the man who should, by rights, be in command of a section of main battle tanks, had so often threatened to be too much for him to bear. “Your men?”

“Half on patrol on the north coast, half in town,” Palmer answered, hesitating before he anticipated the next question. “No way to get word to them, I’m afraid.”

“Has anyone sent word to Colonel Kelly yet?”

“The Colonel was the one who sent word to us, Major.” Before Downes could respond, a knock on the open door grabbed their attention. Maxwell was there, eyes wide with the same fear and indignant rage that his captain mirrored.

“Men are forming now, Sir,” he reported. “What’s our orders?” Palmer looked to Downes, as though admitting that he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Dez reappeared at that point with steam emanating from his exposed head and face into the cold night air.

“Locals are awake and getting out. I’ve told everyone to form up in the little town square thing by the pubs.” Downes nodded to acknowledge the report but Dez wasn’t finished.

“Couple of the local boys are fishermen,” he went on, “reckon we can get to St Kilda through the Outer Hebrides if we can get enough people into boats.”

“Where?” Palmer asked, confused.

“You’ve heard of the Deep Sea Range?” Downes asked. Swirling information about missile ranges in their remote northern areas.

“We… we have people there?”

“Unmanned base,” Mac explained as he dragged the bags of spare equipment and ammunition from the corner of the room. Dez slung his MP5 and hefted the GPMG taken so long ago from one of Maxwell’s abandoned Spartan wagons.

“Defensive position?” Palmer asked.

“We can line everyone up at the docks with our backs to the sea,” Dez answered. “Other than that, there are multiple approaches. If it was armour or vehicles, we’d stand a chance, but…” he shrugged to indicate that the Screechers could come at them any way they liked.

“Do it,” Downes said before turning back to Palmer. “Is there anyone we can send in a vehicle to fetch your men back?” Palmer looked at Maxwell, knowing that he couldn’t afford to lose him, if he wanted the men and the civilians kept in check. He turned back to the major and drew himself up.

“Yes, there is.”

“What the bloody hell is all this noise about?” Oliver Simpkins-Palmer complained as he yanked open the door to investigate the shouting and banging which had woken him. Everywhere he looked, he saw people running, carrying children and possessions in a state of panic.

“We have a deployment, eh?” croaked an elderly voice as a private from a Scottish infantry regiment led the mostly senile old man down the stairs.

“That’s right, Colonel,” he said reassuringly, “we need to get you in the fight. Show the lads how it’s done.”

“Splendid!” Colonel Tim crowed from inside the multiple layers of knitted clothing he was wearing to counter the ill-health that had afflicted him since arriving on Skye. He saw the second lieutenant and tried to wave his family claymore towards him. “Blighters want another crack at us, Palmer!” he cackled. “Get your hat on and grab a revolver.”

Oliver Palmer didn’t bother answering, having lost all patience with the old man shortly after arriving on the island and realising he held no power there. He’d spent the subsequent time doing very little, as his brother had removed even the small amount of responsibility bestowed on him, preferring instead to trust the royal marine lieutenant in his place.

“Olly,” the voice of his brother snapped. He turned to see him dressed for battle and wearing a hard look of resolve.

“Julian,” he answered, one lip curling in jealous derision. “Come to mock the unemployed?”

“Olly, I need your help.” The words shocked the young man into forgetting his arrogance.

“What’s happening?”

“There’s been an outbreak on the west coast of the island,” Palmer Senior told him quietly, “our American friends are either dead or have abandoned us. We have to make a stand and consider fleeing the island.”

“What? And go where? Are you sure?” he bombarded his brother with questions, all of which were ignored.

“Can you find Lloyd and the others? They’re patrolling the north coast.” Younger brother fixed elder with a hard look, as if suggesting his brother only wanted him when the officer he rated as a better soldier wasn’t available. The fact that he was being sent to fetch his preferred replacement only added insult to the injury he felt he had been dealt. Before he could say anything, his older brother recognised the look on his face and grabbed his shirt with both fists. He took three hard paces forwards to slam the second lieutenant into the interior wall.

“This is no time for your childish jealousy,” he snarled. “How many times have we come through the fire against the odds? How many? The one time you were asked to do any real soldiering, you did well. So why the hell can’t you just do what I’m asking of you without the bile?” Oliver shoved his brother back to break the grip and stepped up with the same savage look in his eyes.

“Real soldiering? Like seeing to the civilians and keeping the mad old bat of a Colonel out of your way? Like managing the lists of supplies while you send sergeants out in charge of patrols?”

“Yes,” Julian answered with the same vehemence. “All of those activities you think are boring, that you think are beneath your lofty station”—he sneered those words at him—“that is real soldiering; doing the hard work that doesn’t win you a blasted medal.”

The two brothers stared at one another for a few seconds until their anger began to abate.

“Please, Olly, go and get our men back and let’s save as many people as we can.” Oliver drew himself up, adding a very military bearing to his stance, and he accepted his brother’s orders.

* * *

“Keep the civilians moving,” Maxwell shouted, waving his arms frantically to force the flow of people towards the handful of fishing boats that illuminated the docks with their harsh deck lights. Even such a small number of people—no more than two hundred in Captain Palmer’s estimation—packed into a confined area like the small dock in the town, seemed like a stampede trying to pass through a funnel. He feared that the gunfire would start soon, that the time to get as many people as possible safely off the island would be over.

With each minute that went by, with each boat that filled up and pushed off to safety, the sense of dread grew heavier in his stomach. He looked at his watch, counting the minutes since his brother had left and hoping that he would have found the detachment of marines and yeomanry and would have turned them around to bolster their armed defences.

As that thought struck him, the concern of having enough space on boats to evacuate them all dragged him back down into frightened depression.

Then the shooting started. One rifle fired, then it was joined by half a dozen others, like a contagious infection, but any other noises were drowned out by the screams of the terrified civilians who crowded onto the boats, unheeding of the warnings not to overload them.

Palmer heard clear voices ring out above the din; voices of Maxwell and Foster, the marine that Lloyd had placed trust in. Those voices called for order, for calm, for action without panic and they were like rocks on the shallows that the fear broke upon.

Palmer saw them then, coming from the higher ground, shadows flitting between the buildings as the last of the civilians pushed out to sea. The firing had stopped as no more targets were spotted, and in the lull in noise, Palmer heard a sound that cut through his flesh to chill the very marrow of his bones.

The shrill, barking cry of an animal pierced the air. It froze the men, too, and more than one frightened face turned to look at the captain as though he could save them, could reassure them somehow. He knew they wanted that from him, knew that he could tell them that it was just a Lima, and hadn’t they killed plenty of Limas before?

He tried, but he couldn’t force the words from his mouth.

The sound came again, undulating and yowling like a wolf’s cry. It was undeniably an animalistic attempt to communicate, and his fear rose as high as he had ever known when he realised, with utter horror, that this was something altogether new.

“Make ready,” he called, shouting the only thing he knew to say. It had the effect he wanted in that it did indeed steady the men. They all leaned into their weapons and waited for a fresh hell to fall from the shadows.

* * *

Fisher’s arrival on the windswept deck of the carrier in the middle of the night was met with little reaction. The report that they had lost most of their forces based on the island was met with less reaction than he expected, and his seniors were only interested in the results from the deployment of the serum.

Residual movement, that was the term they used. Residual movement was a good day as far as they were concerned. Jacobs asked him outright if there was any reason not to go ahead with the full-scale deployment of the sonic lure devices and end all of the infected with the serum.

He kept his mouth shut, not wanting to add a feather of failure to his cap and delay the plan to start saving the world because some dead scientist wanted to try it out on a redhead or something, to make sure it worked on all of them. Residual movement, that was the terminology that stuck in his head. If the combined military might of the United States Armed Forces couldn’t handle a few infected left, then who was he to throw fear into the mix?

He said no, and Jacobs snatched up a telephone handset to mutter into, before replacing it a few seconds later.

“You need a break,” he told Fisher. “Get a hot shower and some chow; the show’s about to start.”

* * *

Before the first of the sixteen devices planned so precisely to land on UK soil dropped, before the cargo planes full of serum-filled munitions landed in The Canary Islands, ready to be loaded onto three AC-one-thirty-H gunships, a lone, small cargo ship fought through the choppy sea around the north west tip of the Isle of Skye.

The man at the helm, a reclusive Scot who was less than impressed to be roused by twenty armed men demanding his assistance, piloted his craft recklessly in order to satisfy the two officers who shouted encouragement to him.

The decision to abandon their vehicles and head directly to the evacuation site was driven by the young second lieutenant who appeared to his royal marine counterpart to be far more enthused than was his usual languid style.

In short, he imagined the younger man had received a rocket directly up his arse.

They heard the gunfire as soon as they rounded a headland against a choppy tide, before the flow of the water pulled them faster towards the Portree dock hidden from sight by the dark rocks.

“I say!” Palmer yelled at the semi-toothless man spinning the wheel to keep them steady. “Can you turn around,” he shouted clearly and slowly as though he was conversing with a foreign waiter and was ignorant to how offensive he came across as, “and bring us into the dock stern first?” The old man looked at him like he was insane for a few beats, before shrugging and muttering something only he could hear.

“Look alive, boys,” Palmer cried as he checked the magazine in his own weapon and charged it, ready to forge a path through the huddled men of the yeomanry and marines. When he reached the rear railing, what would soon become the very front rank of the fight, he turned a full circle and treated them all to his best bloodthirsty smile. The men all knew him, so none were convinced as to what the spoiled aristocrat was up to.

“It’s about to get rather busy here,” he went on, “so any man not willing to get his hands dirty should make his way to the rear and give us all a little more space.” His roguish smirk, visible to all of them under the harsh, bright deck lights, lent him an air of being a little unhinged.

As much as the men mistrusted him, given their previous experience, they recognised his bravado for what it was.

“You buying the drinks afterwards, Mister Palmer?” shouted a voice from half a dozen paces away. Palmer, blessed with outstandingly good fortune, recognised the speaker and could even marry the wet, windswept face with a name.

“Help me get the others out of this steaming pile of shit, Sergeant Cooper, and I’ll share a brandy with you all.”

“Yeah,” Cooper added, pushing his luck, “but are you buying the bottle, Sir?”

Palmer checked his weapon once more and pulled a spare magazine from his webbing to hold it alongside the gun as a statement of intent. “Cooper, I’ll buy a whole bloody barrel of the finest stuff if we see the dawn.”

As he delivered the line, thinking—hoping—for once that he had managed what he had seen so many officers achieve and made the men want to follow him into danger, the boat’s engine note changed pitch and ramped up to bubble the water at the stern.

“You heard the Lieutenant,” Lloyd said as he shouldered his way through the men to occupy the same spot on the railing as Palmer did, yanking back the charging handle of his rifle as he spoke. “Look alive!”

The boat swung around, revealing the raging battle that their own side was most definitely losing.

* * *

“Keep firing!” Captain Palmer roared, just as his own gun ran dry and he fumbled to replace the spent magazine. The area immediately to his front filled up with ragged bodies of former inhabitants of the island, mostly soldiers in various forms of torn and bloodied uniform, with civilians added in here and there for flavour. They flowed like water into the void that his reload caused, and the closer the enemy got to him, the more he struggled to seat the fresh magazine.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he hissed to himself as he couldn’t force his hands to work. He almost threw himself down in fright as a massive, clattering noise erupted to his right.

“Fuck off!” Dezzy, one of the SAS men, yelled at the Screechers he threw down as he fired the GPMG from the hip. He flashed a toothy smile at the captain and followed it up with a wink before opening up again with another long burst of heavy, rattling gunfire. Palmer seated the magazine and fed a round into the chamber as he stole a glance around their shrinking battlefield.

“They’re retreating,” Downes yelled over to him. He looked again and saw it was true; the enemy were falling back into the shadows. As welcome as the reprieve was, the connotations of what it meant chilled the cavalry officer to the bone.

Then he heard it again. The yelping noise, like a screech but speaking a language he couldn’t understand. It was animalistic, but it was clearly heeded as the wave of freshly turned undead slunk away into the darkness.

“Reload,” Palmer yelled. “They won’t stay gone for long.” The remaining men followed his instructions as voices called out names of their friends who they had lost in the confusion. Some lay bleeding on the wet ground of the docks, whereas others had been dragged away. Palmer kicked over the body of the thing that had caused all the commotion; a slim female with one missing hand from what he guessed was a recently earned gunshot wound at close range. There was something odd about her appearance, something different, other than the fact that she’d sailed twenty feet through the air from the nearest rooftop to land behind their front rank and bring chaos to the fight.

Bayonets had brought her down eventually, but her slashing nails and ripping teeth had done enough damage to open the gates to the surging attack from the darkness ahead.

That was when it hit Palmer. It was a concerted attack; not the kind they had seen from the swarms in the past but an infinitely more human attack.

It was deliberate. Planned. Orchestrated and executed well, and when it failed, the enemy commander had sounded the retreat. He sought out Downes in the huddle of surviving men and fixed the man’s eyes with his own. Something passed between them in that moment; some understanding of what had just happened. What they were facing was new, and far more frightening than just a mindless horde marching heedlessly into their bullets.

A noise behind them made them turn. A ragged, rolling cheer that swelled into a war cry of massed men ramping themselves up into a frenzy, ready to join the fight. Palmer couldn’t understand where these men had come from until he recognised the sharp profile of his younger brother’s face at the very front of the men, and his eyes zeroed in on his brother.

While their backs were turned, the next attack came.

The barking, shrieking yelp came from up high, revealing the position of a blooded man in a torn blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. He shrieked again just as a targeted mass of Screechers piled into the right side of their position and overwhelmed the men there.

Downes was their target. The bloody and blackened fingernails reached for him, ignoring the other potential victims within range, dragging him backwards and making him drop the weapon he was holding. Palmer didn’t hesitate; just slung his own gun and stooped low on the move, as he fast-paced forwards to scoop up the automatic shotgun and reverse it to point the dangerous end at things he wanted to render immobile.

He triggered off a burst of rounds, feeling the savage, violent recoil of the gun and not even blinking at the gore and destruction it wrought.

The heavy gunfire of the GPMG added to Palmer’s onslaught to ruin the attack, then as the major was left on the ground, Dez switched his aim back to where the enemy commander had showed himself.

He—it—ducked away before the bullets could walk their way up the wall towards its position, but the damage was done. The renewed attack on all fronts was met by a hail of bullets from the rear of the boat as the reinforcements came into range. Smiffy helped Dez, crouching beside their officer to defend him and pour fire at the Screechers, even though they must surely have known he was done for.

Palmer stepped up beside them, adding measured shots from the shotgun to blow away limbs and remove heads. He fired until the gun ran dry, slinging it diagonally over his body to retrieve the sterling and start rattling off more shots. A hand grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back slightly. He tried to shrug it away, thinking that someone was attempting to force him to retreat but instead he found his younger brother pushing in beside him to add his own fire to the desperate defence.

The attack failed again, and only a few shadows rippled in the middle distance. The barking noise sounded once more; so like a Lima and yet infinitely more terrifying, considering what they had just witnessed.

“Onto the boat,” Palmer Junior yelled, repeating the order as the men fell back without turning their vulnerable backs to the face of the enemy.

“Onto the boat, Julian,” he added in a low voice.

“We must help Major Downes,” the captain answered, just as Mac burst through the men to fall beside his teammates.

“Oh, no, Boss,” he crooned with more sadness and emotion than anyone thought him capable of, “what the fuck have they done to you?”

Downes choked, bubbling blood out of his mouth as he looked down to see the puncture wounds caused by fingernails in his ruined abdomen. He turned his head and pointed with a shaking hand, unable to speak as he fought down the convulsions the pain caused him.

Mac saw it. Saw the neat row of teeth marks in his neck and knew it was over for the officer. Setting his face in a grim line he nodded, trying to convey his feelings and coming up woefully short.

“I’ll… I’ll stay with him,” Smiffy said, handing up his weapons and shaking them until they were taken. His hands fumbled for the pistol and the spare ammunition before he was asked by the dour Scot just what in the hell he was doing.

“Bastards…” Smiffy said between gasps of breath, “bastards got me too,” he admitted, rolling up his right sleeve to expose the raged chunk torn from his forearm. “I can already feel the burn,” he said as he turned to Dez and gave him a wan smile. “Look after that Ruski rifle,” he said, pointing a bloody finger at the stolen VAL from a lifetime ago.

“Time to go,” Lloyd said, turning to shout more orders. Palmer looked up to see the shadows moving again, no doubt swelled with slower reinforcements in preparation for another wave of attack.

“Go on,” Smiffy said, cradling his boss’ head in his lap, “fuck off now.”

“No,” Dezzy snapped, “I’m not leaving you like this.”

In answer, Smiffy took back his pistol and gestured with his head for them to leave.

They left before the next attack came, leaving the docks empty but for dead and turning soldiers, and two dying SAS men.

As the boat followed the reverse course out of the shielded bay, two small calibre shots echoed out to sea after them.

Epilogue

The handful of fishing boats eventually sailed through the choppy water to slide into the small bay on the uninhabited island of Hirta in the Outer Hebrides. They were freezing cold, frightened and so uncertain of any future that the numbness they felt was just as likely to be from the emotions coursing through them as from the exposure to the elements.

Palmer jumped down first, paddling through knee-deep water until he stepped clear onto the sandy beach. The dawn hadn’t fully broken yet, providing the steely grey ambience that made the whole situation even more surreal.

“Where to now, Captain?” asked a rich voice he knew well, only now it carried an edge to it that only battle could muster.

“Up the hill,” he answered, “to the military base, I presume?”

“And hope to find a roaring fire and a hot bath?”

“Indeed,” Palmer said, before bowing his head and regarding his bloodstained hands holding two weapons. He looked at the shotgun, staring at it for a moment until snapping himself out of the numb reverie.

“Olly,” he said quietly, “I… I owe you an apology. What you did saved the lives of the men—saved my life—and you have my gratitude.” As soon as he said the words, he felt as if they hadn’t been enough to convey his true feelings. They felt too formal, too wooden and not believable enough.

“Orders, Captain?” Lloyd asked, arriving with a squad of marines looking ready for work.

“Press on ahead, if you please, Mister Lloyd, recce the base and see if you can’t find a way inside.” Lloyd nodded and urged his men onwards with some kindly insults to get them moving. Behind them trooped the rest of the survivors, some of whom had been with them since even before the captain had arrived in the commander’s seat of his Annabelle so many months before. They had saved none of the Germans who had saved their lives, and of the special air service patrol, the surviving fifty percent stopped beside the two brothers.

“That answers the question of what the bloody scientists were doing on Skye,” Mac stated flatly. “They’ve taken the Limas and made the bastards even faster and smarter.”

“Did you notice how none of the ones attacking us were the Screecher type?” Julian Palmer asked quietly.

“Like life couldn’t get any fucking worse?” Dezzy asked rhetorically. “So what? They’ve made the virus or whatever worse?”

“Perhaps,” Captain Palmer opined. “Perhaps it’s just nature. Perhaps the Screechers have adapted and evolved. Which begs the question of what our next move is.”

“We do the same as they’ve done,” his younger brother answered with strength and more than a little vehemence. “We survive. We fight back. We adapt.”

Part Six

Annihilation

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.

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.

* * *

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.”

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.

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.

* * *

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.”

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.

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

“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.

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.

* * *

“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.

* * *

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.

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.

* * *

“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.”

* * *

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.

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.”

* * *

“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.

* * *

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.

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.”

* * *

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?”

* * *

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.”

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.

* * *

“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.

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…”

* * *

“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.

* * *

“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.

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.

* * *

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.

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.”

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.

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.

* * *

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.

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.

* * *

“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.

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

“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.

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

“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.

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.”

* * *

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.

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.”

* * *

“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.

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.

* * *

“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.”

* * *

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.”

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.”

* * *

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.

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?”

* * *

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.

* * *

“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.

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.

* * *

“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.

* * *

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.

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.”

* * *

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.”

* * *

“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.

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.”

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.

* * *

“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.”

* * *

“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.

* * *

“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.

* * *

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.”

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.

* * *

“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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.”

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.”

* * *

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.

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

“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

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