The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3) (14 page)

“Then I ran. She told me that she was pregnant, and I ran back to the army.”

He snorted and remained silent for a moment, staring at the dusty floor and the heels of his boots. The others did not speak. No one dared to press him. They watched him intently and waited patiently.

“She never saw me again,” he finally said hoarsely. “But I
saw her. I
had
to know, so two years later, I went back and...”

Stan’s voice trailed off and his head lowered, as though he was struggling with his words and did not want the others to see his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders and nudged at a splinter of wood on the floor with the toe of his boot.

Emily sat staring back at him, hanging on Stan’s every word and having seen the pain in the man’s eyes. It was a pain that the others probably had not seen, but as a mother, she could feel the suffering that Stan had buried deep down inside him for all those years.

“What did you see, Stan?” she asked in a soft and sympathetic voice. “When you went back, what did you see?”

“He was… my son, he was… beautiful,” Stan replied with certainty and a nod as he raised his head again and continued to stare directly ahead of him.

The internal gasps could almost be heard over the crushing silence of the room. Stan was probably the hardest man that any of them had ever met. After working and living closely with him for so long, they had all come to the conclusion that he had no emotions whatsoever and was completely indifferent to everything around him. Now, they were seeing something new, almost frightening, as the man allowed them all a glimpse into what was beneath his cold and hard exterior.

Bobby turned and looked at Taff, hoping to gain some enlightenment on what was happening to Stan. Taff looked back at him blankly, shrugging his shoulders and offering nothing in the way of explanation. Even Bull had a look of concern on his face as he remained seated at the table, staring at the back of Stan’s head. They had all begun to wonder on the state of their leader’s mind.

The room seemed to become deathly quiet for a long time. Nobody dared to move or even wanted to. Even William instinctively knew that he needed to stay silent and watched nervously from the corner.

Stan was a man who was capable of horrific acts of brutality against his enemies, and each member of his team had witnessed such events on several occasions. However, he had always kept a tight grip on his emotions, controlling them with skill, and unleashing them only when he needed to. In battle, he was beyond fearsome, but once the fight was over he easily switched to the calm, reasonable, and methodical man they had grown accustomed to. Even during the thick of a fight, his blood pressure appeared to hardly increase. Now, his feelings seemed to be spilling over the edges of the dams he had in place, and the people in the room all began to wonder whether or not their leader was losing control of himself and was about to become a human hand grenade. They held their breath and waited with nervous anticipation.

The minutes ticked by in silence. The atmosphere in the room was crushing and although no one had made any sort of move, the men of the team remained fully aware of exactly where their weapons were. They had no idea of what Stan was going to say or do next and felt a degree of fear and uncertainty as a result. If their commander had lost his mind, he could easily kill a few of them before they were able to stop him.

“We’re getting out of here,” Stan said, finally. He turned around and looked at each of them, his face back to being a canvas of mystery. “We’ll bug-out in two days. That should give us plenty of time to prep. In the meantime, we need to think about where we’re going, who we’re taking, and how we’ll get there.”

“Roger that,” Taff nodded, a silent sigh of relief escaping from between his lips and his shoulders suddenly sagging with the release of tension.

“Let’s leave nothing to chance on this one, boys. We won’t be coming back, so we need to have all our ducks in a row. Weapons and ammo are priority. Tonight we can all get stuck into the planning phase.”

The rest of them, snapping out from their shocked inactivity as their commander returned to them, shook themselves mentally as though they had just awoken from a strange dream. Their faces changed almost instantly, and within seconds, in spite of their beards, filthy skin, and bedraggled clothing, they began to look like the men they had once been. They had a purpose again, a goal to aim for, and there was work needing to be done.

Danny, his legs still healing from the battering they had taken during the attack on London, was tasked with the technical side of the operation. He began sourcing all the maps and communications equipment that he could get his hands on, hoping to form the framework of a plan. Each member of the team dumped what they had into his lap, and it became his job to consolidate it all and see what was and was not of use to them. However, his pickings were slim, and there was very little he could do to supply the team with everything they needed. The best he could manage in the way of mapping was a drastically out of date road atlas of the United Kingdom with numerous pages missing. Their communications was an even worse state of affairs. Their radios, including the personal sets, had taken a beating over the months. He doubted that even half of them were still in working order.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with all this shit?” he whined with his palms outstretched and indicating the pile of junk on the table in front of him.

“Didn’t you watch ‘The A-Team’ when you were a kid?” Bobby asked from the opposite side of the room, a grin stretching from ear to ear as he winked at the veteran. “Get to work and build us a plane, Danny. Chop-chop.”

While Bobby, Bull, and Kyle went about preparing their equipment and taking stock of weapons and ammunition, Taff went to take over on guard duty with Richard. He found the dishevelled man still sitting on the edge of the shallow trench, staring out over the island, and glancing nervously over his shoulder from time to time.

“It’s about time someone turned up,” Richard grumbled, his voice quickly being swept away in the blustery wind.

“What’s up, Rich, you getting lonely out here?” Taff sneered.

“Lonely? That’s what housewives and people in a normal society get. I’m just scared shitless. I keep expecting one of those things to come running at me from behind a bush.”

“You poor thing. Do you need a cuddle?”

Taff sat down beside him and placed his rifle across his thighs. He scanned the ground nearest to them and then looked into the middle distance before turning his attention to the horizon. He did not speak but nodded to himself, as though he was making his own assessment of the situation inside his head.

“Looks pretty quiet to me,” he grunted, finally. He rolled up his sleeve and began rubbing at his forearm. “I don’t know what you were so worried about. We’ve got a nice little spot here, and it’s not exactly challenging.”

“They’re what I’m worried about,” Richard replied and pointed down into the valley. “They have the run of the mill down there, and no one is doing anything about them. Look at them. There’s dozens down there.”

Taff watched the shambling corpses that lurched through the grassy fields below them. They were spread out and some distance away, but he could already see that there were more of them than there had been the day before. Richard was right. No one seemed to care that the infected were loose on the island.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, mate,” Taff said with disinterest and continued to work on the sleeve of his jacket.

Richard turned to look at him and saw that he was mauling a large cut on his forearm, just above his wrist. Taff’s stubby and dirt covered fingers were buried deep into the tissue and causing the hole to enlarge. Blood was pouring out of the wound and trickling down to his fingers where it dripped into the stagnant pool of filthy water that had accumulated at the bottom of the trench. He hissed and grunted under his breath but remained undeterred in his gory task.

“Jesus, Taff, what’s happened?”

Richard sounded shocked as he stared down at his friend’s bloodied limb. He had no idea what Taff was doing or why, so he tried to make a joke of it in an attempt to mask his fear and revulsion.

“I never had you pegged as the self-harming sort. I thought that was just for teenage Goth kids. This isn’t one of those cries for help, is it?”

“A splinter,” the Welshman muttered without looking up as he continued to dig his fingers into his own flesh.

“Some fucking splinter,” Richard snorted.

“Ah, got it.”

Taff turned to him and held up a long sliver of dark, jagged metal. It was soaked in his blood and glistened in the sunlight as he turned it in his fingers, inspecting the foreign body he had just removed from his arm.

“Another piece of the factory,” Taff said casually before flicking the shard of iron out towards the barbed wire. “In London, when the building we were hiding in took a direct hit from the bombers, Danny nearly got his legs chopped off, Bull got his face peeled back, and I ended up with a load of shrapnel in me. Some of it makes its own way out now and then. You should’ve seen the piece Bobby pulled out of my arse last week. It was…”

“Nah, you’re okay, Taff. I don’t need to hear all the details.”

Richard looked at the gaping wound and suddenly felt light headed. He could not understand how the men were able to deal with such hardships and pain, taking them in their stride, and shrugging them off as though they were everyday occurrences. He supposed that to Stan and his men, having clumps of metal embedded in their skin was not such a big deal so long as they were still breathing and able to function.

They had been through a lot and had suffered just as much, if not more, than any other unit, and their attrition rate was slowly taking its toll on the team. He watched as Taff began wrapping a bandage around his forearm, whistling to himself as he did so. Richard admired their strength, toughness, and endurance, but most of all, it was their ability to deal with any situation or tragedy and continue to perform, substituting their grief with the infamous black humour of the British soldier.

“So why shouldn’t I worry about it too much then?” Richard asked, changing the subject and taking his mind off the fact that he had just watched a man perform the most primitive and grotesque self-surgery he had ever seen.

“Worry about what?” Taff replied, looking up after ensuring that the dressing was tight and secure over the open wound. He flexed his fingers and twisted his wrist, checking on the blood circulation to his fingertips, and ensuring that the dressing did not restrict his ability to manipulate his weapons.

“Them, down there,” Richard replied, gesturing towards the distant infected with a nod of his head. “Just before, you said that I shouldn’t worry about them too much. Why
shouldn’t
I be worried about them?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot to say, we’re getting out of here.”

“Out of here? You mean the house?” Richard asked with surprise and turned to look at the semi-constructed farm building. “Are we moving down to Newport?”

“Nope. We’re getting off the island, mate.”

“When? Where to?”

Taff shrugged while he sat picking the dirt out from under his fingernails with the point of his knife. He was whistling again and did not seem to be particularly interested in the details of their intended move from the Isle of Wight.

“No idea, bud,” he replied, slowly shaking his head. “We only just decided it about five minutes ago. The others are sorting it out while I sit here keeping you company.”

“I’m glad someone is.”

“Oh, and Stan has a son,” Taff added casually.

Richard was about to reply when Taff suddenly jumped to his feet in one swift leap. Within a second or two, he was away from the trench and raising his rifle so that it was pointed in the general direction of the road.

Taff’s sudden movement startled the civil engineer, and he automatically began to think that there was a threat. He reached for the pistol in his pocket and fumbled about for a few long seconds before he finally pulled it free. He climbed to his feet and moved to where Taff was standing, holding the small gun close to his chest with both hands, and then suddenly feeling pathetic. He lowered the pistol and let his arm hang by his side. He was no soldier and at his age, it was not the time to start pretending to be one.

“For fuck sake,” Taff spat.

“What is it? Are those things coming along the road?”

“Nope. It’s something much worse,” Taff shook his head as he continued to look towards the north along the narrow track.

“What could be worse?”

“Trust me, it’s fucking worse.”

“Militia?”

Taff did not reply but watched the Land Rover steadily approaching, bouncing over the rocky track and headed towards the house.

“What does she want now?” He huffed to himself with disdain and then checked his watch. “It’s not even gone nine o’clock, and she’s here to piss me off already. It can’t be time for her daily jump with Bobby yet, surely.”

“Who?” Richard asked, stepping to Taff’s left so that he could see what Taff was seeing. “What does
who
want?”

“Thunder knickers,” Taff grinned. “Who else?”

Samantha’s vehicle continued towards them, her silhouette swaying from side to side behind the wheel as the suspension dropped and bounced on the rough surface of the access road leading up to the farmhouse. She seemed to be in a hurry, uncaring about the potential damage that the undulating and rocky ground could do to her vehicle.