Gavin Smith: Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

At the bridge, the Fräulein cut her story short and brought the half-track to a grumbling, bone-shaking halt. Bill, Harris, Maria and Colstein were waiting for them at the control booth. Dirty black snow was still falling from the sky, lying thick on the ground. The Fräulein switched off the engine to save fuel, which Vadim thought was brave given the problems they’d had starting the ancient vehicle, and all of the squad clambered out. Vadim found himself looking out over a muddy channel with bogged-down zombies stuck in it; at the industrial skyline of the dockyards, the roofs of the neat terraces, the steeples of churches and beyond that the black, snow covered hills.

Bill stuck his hand out first and Vadim took it.

“Thanks for this,” Bill said, gesturing towards the island. “Not sure about that.” He pointed at the mainland. Vadim just nodded. Despite his part in the attack on New York, he didn’t feel like apologising again. “I’m not sure you’d exactly be welcome here, but we’d give some serious consideration into letting you on the island if you’re ever back this way.”

Vadim laughed.

“It has been beyond horrible meeting you,” Colstein said as he shook Vadim’s cold hand next. “And I hope I never see any of you again; but thank you. You didn’t have to come back for us.”

“I think I did,” Vadim said. It wasn’t just for Colstein and the others. In the end, he hadn’t seen himself in Kerrican, but he wondered if he ever caught up with Varishnikov, would he see the same madness in the KGB hardliner’s eyes? “I liked Schiller. He was a good man.”

Colstein opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

Maria didn’t really want to look at him. It was clear she hadn’t changed her views: she still felt that things would be better if he killed himself, and with the hunger always present, he wasn’t sure she was wrong. Right now, surrounded by the living, the urge to feast was strong but not nearly as strong as his resolve. It came as a surprise when Maria grabbed him and hugged him, whispering ‘thank you’ in his ear.

“Keep that switchblade handy,” was all he could think to tell her. She nodded. He looked down at Gloria, who’d accompanied her mother. The little girl was hugging Gulag. Vadim tried not to think too much about the future.

“Why do they call you ‘Infant’?” Harris asked as he shook Vadim’s hand.

“They don’t, Gulag does to annoy me,” he said, glancing irritably at the Muscovite, who was still talking to Gloria. The little girl appeared to be listening intently to him, despite not speaking any Russian, as far as Vadim knew.

Harris raised an eyebrow, and Vadim sighed. “We are given nicknames when we start training for the Spetsnaz. A… mentor of mine was already an officer, and he gave me that nickname.” He wondered where Colonel Krychenko was now. Was he alive or dead? If he was dead, was he still moving? He’d be just as in control as Vadim was; he had never known a man with a stronger will.

“Why?” Harris asked.

“I was nine years when old I killed my first man,” Vadim told him, and the smile disappeared from Harris’s face. “A German soldier amongst the ruins of my city.”

AS HE CLIMBED back into the half-track, Vadim found himself thinking about Kerrican and his fake Nazis. The dead walked the earth looking for living flesh to feast upon, but humans had done this to other humans. He found that deeply depressing. After the bombs had fallen and their world had been destroyed, you would think people would come to the conclusion that perhaps more brutality wasn’t the answer.

What about your mission? he asked himself.

I’m no longer human.

Skull poked him in the ribs, and Vadim turned, more surprised than anything else. The sniper nodded out the back of the half-track, smiling. Vadim looked to see Princess kissing Harris. They broke their clinch and she climbed into the back of the armoured vehicle. Everyone was staring at her.

“What?” she demanded. The Fräulein turned round and managed to coax the half-track back into life as the bridge started to lower. Unexpectedly, Vadim realised he was smiling.

Gavin G. Smithis the Dundee-born author of the hard edged, action-packed SF novels Veteran , War in Heaven , Age of Scorpio , A Quantum Mythology , The Beauty of Destruction and The Hangman’s Daughter , as well as the short story collection Crysis Escalation . In collaboration with Stephen Deas, as the composite personality Gavin Deas, he has co-written Elite: Wanted , and the shared world series Empires: Infiltration and Empires: Extraction . Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon is his first World War Three/Horror novel and he enjoyed writing it a little too much.

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