She reached the doors leading out into the gravelled area between the defensive wall and the inner complex. The buildings, huddled together in the centre of the base, were made up of prefabricated modules and heavy goods containers, all interlocking and outfitted to provide working and living space for the people within the compound. The complex had everything they needed, from offices and laboratories to comfortable accommodation and kitchens. There were classrooms and even a gymnasium and recreation room. The construction and layout was taken from the blueprint used to build allied Forward Operating Bases in the Middle East, such as in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
Tina stepped through and stopped for a moment, dazzled by the bright sunlight and shielding her eyes from its glare. She was at the southern end of the complex and could see the towering wall of the perimeter and the heavy steel blast doors that made up the south entrance. Between the living areas and the outer defences was an open space of roughly fifty metres in width. This area served two main purposes: the ease of troop movements and to act as a buffer zone. Soldiers could travel from one part of the wall to another within the open area without having to navigate through accommodation blocks, potentially slowing them down in an emergency. It was also designed to allow the walls to absorb a sustained attack from rockets and VBIEDs, Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Device, without the living quarters being effected from shockwaves or debris. The area was also used for the storage of ammunition and vehicles, including the base’s three tanks.
Tina eyed the armoured monsters with fascination. Their huge tracks reached up to the height of her neck, and the barrels of their guns poking out from the colossal turrets reached far out beyond the thick plates of frontal armour. They were formidable looking machines and exuded a great sense of confidence in the strength of the base to anyone who looked upon them. As far as she could tell, they were Challengers, possibly Mark-II, but she could not be sure. She had seen very few tanks during her time in the army, and she was far from being an expert on the matter. Nevertheless, the firepower and defensive strength that the three armoured vehicles gave to the base was formidable and appreciated by all.
Other than the tanks, she was aware of a helicopter being part of the unit’s arsenal. She had not yet seen the aircraft, but she had heard people referring to it as a Lynx, a British made multi-purpose helicopter. In the weeks that she had been there, however, she had never heard the sound of its engines, and she wondered if the machine was at all serviceable or even whether it truly existed, since she had never actually seen it.
The base itself was occupied by just over two-hundred men, women, and children. Originally, it had been intended to house up to two-thousand people and had been set up as a fortress to facilitate continued scientific research and provide information to the Isle of Wight when the mainland was abandoned. However, many of the scientists and soldiers assigned to the station fled early on, leaving just a handful to maintain and defend the compound. As the days turned to weeks, survivors began to arrive at the gates seeking protection and shelter, and the remaining soldiers and doctors saw it as their duty to grant them safety. They had huge stockpiles of food, water, and fuel and more than enough empty accommodation modules to house them. Entire families moved in, and all manner of trade skills were added to the FOB’s growing community.
There was just a platoon of regular soldiers left at the base, roughly thirty men, and from very early on they had set about training the able bodied civilians in the use of their weapons and equipment. Everyone was to play a part and take their turn on the wall or within the daily running of the base.
The experienced troops manned the heavy weaponry and sniper rifles while the base militia assisted with ammunition resupply and the spotting of targets. A close relationship had developed between the soldiers and the refugees, and before long, many of the civilians began to show a great aptitude as machine gunners and even tacticians. There were a few amongst them that were as good a shot with the sniper rifles as any of the regular troops.
Tina moved passed the nearest tank, running her hand along the cold solid armour as she walked out towards the main gate. Over to her left, she heard a number of snorts and grunts. They were coming from the kennels that housed the base’s canine members. They were used as guard dogs and assisted with identifying danger long before the inadequate senses of the humans could recognise a threat. Tina nodded to one of the handlers as he went about his daily routine of cleaning up the dog compound and feeding the always hungry German Shepherds within the cages.
She stopped in the open and looked up at the perimeter. Out on the wall, she could see a number of soldiers peering out towards the south. They seemed to be watching something with interest and swapping opinions and ideas. She instantly recognised two of them. They were Al and Tommy.
Something interesting was clearly happening, and she decided that she wanted to be a part of it. She had sat around for long enough and felt ready to get involved. She adjusted her belt and checked that her pistol was secure. Taking a deep breath, she headed for the wall.
3
He grunted with frustration. His deteriorating brain did not function in the way it had once done, leaving him unable to understand why he was not moving in the direction he desired. Again, he attempted to lift his feet, but his body would not budge. With a groan, he flung his body forward. His lower limbs did not obey and remained where they were while his upper torso lurched headlong and tumbled into the dirt with a splash and an audible crack as a number of bones in his lower legs were violently snapped. Mud was flung up all around him as his body crashed into the squelching mire. His face sank deep into the gloopy ground and remained there for a long time as he flailed his arms in an attempt to push his body free. Finally, he was able to regain his feet, the tightly packed mud acting as a supportive cast around his broken lower limbs. He began the process over again, trying to pull his legs free as the filthy water seeped through his matted hair and down over his gaunt and lifeless face.
The corpse’s exposed flesh looked almost wooden, as though it was made from red oak or African mahogany. It was a rich shade of ochre, scattered with deep brown spots where the skin had broken, revealing festering sores that were crawling with larva. Huge pale blisters filled with fluid and bubbling out from his cheeks contrasted lightly against the deep orange of his features. He stood, still wearing the tattered and filth smeared remains of a pair of jogging trousers and a t-shirt. The mud around his feet had risen up to his knees, and he seemed to be unable to break free of the vacuum grip of the waterlogged earth that held him rooted to the spot. He twisted and turned, trying to raise his legs, but it was no use. His feet were locked in place, and he would remain there. Again, the body lurched forwards and crashed into the wet filth.
Al wondered just how long the thing would stay there, slowly rotting away while its feet stayed firmly planted deep into the ground. He could see the frustration and confusion that the creature was experiencing. It could not understand why its legs refused to pull themselves free of the sludge, and he almost felt a pang of sympathy for the unfortunate man. He shook his head as he watched the corpse go through the same routine that he had seen it carry out the day before, over and again.
“Dumb bastard,” he uttered to no one in particular.
They were standing on the top of the T-walls; six metre high slabs of thick reinforced concrete sections, slotted together like building blocks to form a solid barrier encompassing the entire base. Twenty metres in front of the main wall, a smaller barrier had been constructed from the same material but two metres shorter, giving the base a double layer of blast walls and a clear field of view. Huge, thick steel plated gates with giant locking mechanisms were fitted at four separate locations, covering each point of the compass, and although they were not completely impenetrable, they were more than a match from any small arms and most light anti-tank weapons. Altogether, the base occupied a piece of land that was close to a kilometre square, including the smaller outer wall.
Along the inside of the parapet, a steel walkway had been erected around the circumference of the perimeter, allowing the defenders an elevated position from which they could see the entire area that surrounded the Forward Operating Base. At two-hundred metre intervals along the length of the walls, raised platforms with mounted machinegun positions had been built, using thick iron support beams and piles of ammunition crates filled with concrete and topped with corrugated iron sheeting to shelter the guards from the weather. Jutting out above the parapet like the towers of a castle, the sustained fire positions watched over the ground, the barrels of their deadly machineguns ominously pointing out over the vast area of what they had come to refer to as ‘no-man’s land’.
Beyond the walls, for a distance of almost a thousand metres, there was nothing but a desolate wasteland. It had been deliberately cleared by fire and treated with chemicals to ensure that nothing could grow there, giving the defenders of the FOB a clear line of sight and unobstructed field of fire.
The view was bleak to say the least. Thousands of corpses lay slowly rotting in the sun, entangled amongst the wreckage and wire that lay strewn over the lifeless, blood soaked soil, having been despatched by the snipers and their silenced weapons from their firing positions on the wall. The soldiers inside had refrained from using their heavy and medium machineguns for fear of attracting unwanted attention from the infected. Instead, the defenders opted to use the almost silent and precision shooting of their marksmen. It saved on valuable ammunition and unnecessary noise.
During the unusually hot summer, the smell of the numerous bodies that remained unburied out in the open had been enough to drive some of the survivors within the walls close to madness. The reek of decaying human bodies had covered a vast area around the base like a blanket and stubbornly clung to the air, almost as though it wanted to remain close to the living in order to torment them. No matter where they went, or how well they tried to seal the rooms in which they hid, the stench of the decomposing cadavers that lay piled up just beyond the perimeter found its way in to the people within the compound. For health reasons, there had been a few attempts made to dispose of the bodies, collecting them together and covering them with dirt and lime, but it had been futile. There were just too many dead to deal with, and they could never do a satisfactory job of burying them all. Very often, the presence of living people moving around in the open would eventually be noticed by wandering dead eyes, forcing the men and women to retreat back behind their armoured gates, leaving the rotting corpses where they lay. Since the rains had returned, and the temperature began to drop, the smell of death was less overpowering, but it was still there, lingering within the winds.
Just beyond the demarcation zone was the start of the built-up area. It was a large town that before the outbreak had a population estimated at almost two-hundred thousand souls. It was highly doubtful now if the living population reached any greater than one-hundred. The virus had rampaged through the town as it had done through the rest of the country, leaving a trail of shambling ghouls in its wake. Most of those who could do so had fled but as in all towns and cities, there were always a handful of survivors who refused to leave their homes, choosing to barricade themselves in behind their walls and sitting tight, confident that they could wait it out until the crisis was over.
Once the air force had finished, it was likely that the majority of those still within the built-up area were now dead. Many of the buildings on the outskirts were destroyed or left in ruin. The streets of the suburbs had become a jumble of almost impassable channels strewn with rubble and debris, all but trapping the infected within the urban area in an attempt at containing the spread of the dead plague. The tactic had partially worked but eventually the reanimated corpses, forever shuffling from one place to the next in a mindless existence, stumbled out from the makeshift cordons around the towns and cities. Within weeks of the first reported cases upon British soil, everyone soon began to realise that the outbreak was impossible to contain. The dead would always find a way out or a way in.
Two of the snipers on top of the wall were currently in a bet to see whether or not the body of the reanimated man trapped in the putrid sludge of no man’s land would eventually manage to free itself. It had now been there for over two days, and it was still no closer to freedom that it had been when the soldiers had first seen it wander into their sights. A cease-fire was called, and everyone was instructed not to shoot the ensnared corpse no matter how much of a tempting target it presented. The two men agreed that the cut off time would be five days, and by then the loser of the bet was expected to pay up. The prize was a bottle of vodka and a night off, while the loser covered the shift of the victor.
“I think Phil’s going to win this bet, Harry,” Al said as he turned and smiled at the sniper standing beside him. “That thing’s going nowhere, mate.”
“That shit head always wins,” Harry grunted back at the big man and spat over the edge of the wall. “I’ve never known him to lose a bet.”
“So why did you bet against him?”
“Boredom, I suppose,” Harry shrugged.
“Well, it looks as though Phil will be having a private party while you’re up here freezing your nuts off for him. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if that sneaky shit has crept out there and cemented the thing’s feet into place.”
“Aye,” Harry agreed with a sigh, “I wouldn’t put it passed him. I have a feeling that that thing could end up acting as our very own Christmas tree. That’s if anyone has the balls to go out there and decorate the fucker when the time comes.”
A short wiry man but with a plump face that did not seem to match his frame, Harry had been a sniper in the army for almost ten years. However, he was not the greatest of shots. Even after years of training and practice, he was still the worst marksman in the platoon, even amongst the standard riflemen. During his sniper training, he had barely scraped through with the necessary score to pass the course.
However, what made Harry special was his eyesight and his attention to detail. He could look at a piece of ground and within seconds would know every fold, rock, and piece of foliage as well as its range, position, and whether or not it should actually be there. He was famous for having a photographic memory and was able to identify the slightest change to the landscape, no matter how small.
He had a number of nicknames. Amongst them were ‘Hound’, on account of his ability to locate
anything
, and ‘Bull’s Eye’. The latter name was given to him partially as an ironic taunt due to his lack of shooting skills and also as praise for his ability to see for long distances and in great detail. His judgement of range, wind, depth, and speed were unmatched amongst his peers and as such, he was usually used as the main spotter for the snipers, always being consulted for his opinion and expertise before a difficult shot was made. Many of the men in the platoon joked that he was more deadly when carrying a pair of binoculars than he was when carrying a gun.
Al turned to Harry and eyed him intently. He had subconsciously noticed that something was out of place with him, but his attention had been too fixed upon the cadaver that was stuck in the filth of no-man’s land. Now, it seemed incredible to Al that he had not seen the oddity immediately, and his face became a mixture of amusement and confusion.
“Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you only half dressed?”
Harry turned away from the trapped figure out beyond the wall and stepped back from the pile of sandbags he had been leaning against. He looked down at himself, as though Al’s observation had come as a surprising revelation to him. He was wearing his usual issued uniform; combat jacket, boots, and his webbing harness that carried his ammunition and equipment, but his legs were bare and his rear was on show for all to see.
“Oh, I forgot about that,” he replied casually and turned back to the wall, raising his binoculars and continuing his vigil as though it was a perfectly normal state of attire to be in. “I’ve got the shits again, and I’m down to my last unspoiled pair of trousers. I’m not risking ruining them as well, Al.”
Al turned to Tommy and raised an eyebrow. The naturally contorted face of Tommy stared back at him, his narrow eyes conveying his lack of astonishment at Harry’s actions. He shrugged and shook his head, signalling that he had heard all he needed to, and that it was pointless to make any further attempt at understanding the strange man’s motives. He lit a cigarette and puffed away with disinterest while Al continued to study Harry.
Harry was one of the most peculiar men that either of them had ever met. Behaviour that would be otherwise shocking to the rest of humanity always seemed to be perfectly normal and acceptable to him.
Al remembered an incident from years earlier when Harry had gone missing for a number of days during a jungle warfare exercise in Brunei. He was finally found in a small village to the east of Liang and by then, had somehow gotten married and had become the father of five orphans whilst living in a mud hut. When the Company Commander and Sergeant Major had walked in on him, Harry had been holding court with the local elders of his adopted village. He greeted the astonished officer and senior non-commissioned officer as honoured guests, offering them a place to stay with food and drink. At first, reeling from shock, they had accepted his offer before recovering and dragging him back to camp.
It had taken a lot of careful treading for the MoD, Ministry of Defence, to extract Harry from that situation without causing an uproar and still preserve the reputation of the British Armed Forces. All the time, Harry had remained completely bewildered and unable to understand what the problem was. It was only days later, when he finally sobered up, that everyone realised he had been drunk for the whole time on locally brewed rice wine.
Al was about to say something but saw that Harry had become intently focussed on something far out beyond the wall. His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to become oblivious to everything around him as he studied the land. Then, raising his own binoculars to his face, he scrutinised the buildings in the distance, slowly scanning from left to right. Al began to do the same, trusting in Harry’s ability to see things long before any of the others could.
“You smell something?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth without taking his eyes away from his field glasses.