Дэвид Уоллес - Island of Fog and Death

Steve told Peri to wait, while he moved round to the side of the cottage. He returned after only a quick glance around the corner at the rear of the cottage. He leaned close to Peri and softly whispered, “The back garden is full of snakes. There must be a couple of dozen of them.”

“If there’s someone in there, we better get him out, and do it now,” she replied, and reached up to tap on the window, a rhythmic tap that she hoped the occupant would recognise as man-made.

A gravelly voice reached them from inside. “Who’s that?”

“Sir, we can get you to safety,” she replied. “But you have to come out now.”

“Can’t,” the voice replied. “Who are you? Are these snake things all over, or just around here?”

Steve moved to the front door and tried the handle. As he had expected, it was locked. He pushed open the letter box slot and immediately smelled something unexpected.

“Gas!” he called out to Peri.

“Sir,” she said. “What are you planning to do?”

“Bloody house is full of those damned things. I’m planning to kill ’em all.”

“Sir, we can take you to safety,” said Peri. “There’s no need to do anything drastic. Can you go to the front door and come out?”

“No,” he replied. “One of ’em must have slipped in before I noticed. Bugger bit me. I can feel it tearing up my guts. I have to do this now, or never. I’m goin’ to blow the place on three.”

“No – wait—”

“One.”

“Steve, get out of here, now!”

“Two.”

Peri and Steve ran across the garden and out to the road.

“Three.”

There was a loud whump! The gas ignited and the expanding air blew out the windows and doors with an almighty crash! Orange-yellow flames billowed out through every opening, rising into a fireball above the roof. Walls started to crumble and the roof fell in. Peri felt the shock-wave hit them, and she was pushed onto the grass beyond the roadway, deafened. In the space of a couple of seconds, the cottage had been reduced to nothing but a pile of burning debris.

Peri thought her ears might have taken lasting damage from the blast, because the noise seemed to be going on and on, and coming from different directions. She struggled to sit up, and only then did she realise that Steve and Troy were both firing their assault rifles, and that there was gunfire all round them. She stood with her borrowed pistol and adopted the firing stance that Troy had taught her, while trying to get her bearings and work out which way was which.

Steve and Troy were both firing in the direction of the burning cottage, and she remembered what Steve had said about snakes in the back garden. The effect of the blast was easing, and she felt less dazed and disoriented, and at last worked out that the special forces patrols on The Circle were firing, too.

Troy noticed that she was back on her feet. “Peri!” he called out. “Watch our backs and left, nine to twelve o’clock.”

“I have twelve to three,” shouted Gus, firing his Sig at something up the road.

Steve too was using his pistol, firing one-handed while talking on the radio. Peri turned to face her sector, and saw sinuous black shapes on the road. She immediately swung the pistol, two-handed, in arc to line up a shot and squeezed the trigger. The loud bang and the recoil took her by surprise. She realised she had closed her eyes reflexively and had no idea where the shot had gone. She sighted again, this time forcing herself to keep her eyes open, and fired. This time she saw the puff where the bullet had struck the tarmac road surface and knew she had missed completely. She remembered reading about pistol shooting, and realised that the targets were probably too far away for accuracy. She watched the nearest snake, and let it come closer and closer, until her nerve failed her and she fired again and again, still without success.

“Listen,” Steve shouted. “Everyone’s been ambushed, either snakes or infected humans. The bulk of them seem to be in the southern part of the island, so our best bet is to go north and find somewhere we can defend.”

Peri looked round at him. “The chapel – that sounds solid and should limit their avenues of approach.”

Steve glanced at her and shouted, “Watch your sector, Peri!”

She turned and realised that a couple of snakes were coiling to jump. “Shit!” she yelled, and simply swung the pistol one-handed in their direction and squeezed the trigger twice. To her complete astonishment, the head of each snake twitched out a puff of pink mist as her bullets hit them. “How the hell did that happen?” she said aloud.

“Without turning round, Peri,” Steve was shouting again. “Start side stepping up the road to the north, be ready to run on my command. Hold a square formation, Amanda in the centre. Troy? They’re too hard to hit with bullets. Time to frag the little sods.”

“Grenade out!” shouted Troy. “One away – two away.”

“Grenade out!” echoed Steve. “One away.”

On the third explosion, Steve yelled, “Run! Let’s move it! Go!”

They went.

The team ran through the fog, up Harbour Way, for two hundred metres or so, before Steve called a halt. “Hold your positions, and listen out,” he said. “Anybody hear any snakes in the grass?”

“I got nothing,” said Troy.

“Wait and listen,” Steve responded.

Neither Peri, nor Gus, nor Amanda could hear anything stirring. Gus shot an interrogative look at Tash, and the dog shook its head.

Finally, Steve broke the silence. “Okay, we seem to be clear of them, and we’ve caught our breath.”

Troy spoke up. “The snakes all seem to be to our south, so if we wanted to exfiltrate back to the boat we’d have to recross infested territory. From the gunfire we heard, the other fire teams ran into them in the southern half of the island too. It’s a reasonable assumption that there are no safe routes back to the harbour.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “We have two options. Call for an extraction by air, or carry on. Peri, what do you want to do now?”

“I want do what we came here for. Find El Gordo and kick its arse.”

“That works for me,” said Steve.

“Hey, don’t the rest of us get a say?” asked Amanda.

Peri answered with a question. “Do you want to find your friends?”

“Of course I do. I just don’t want to be taken for granted.” She gave a shrug of acceptance.

“Then you want to go forward?”

“Of course I do,” Amanda repeated.

Peri turned to the white-haired Swede. “What about you, Gus?”

He smiled at her, and exchanged a look with the dog. “We’ll be safest if we all stay together, I think.”

“Right, then let’s move out,” said Steve. “Diamond formation, I’ll take point, Troy to the rear, Gus and Peri, right and left, and Amanda in the centre with the dog. Slow and quiet, people.”

They resumed their progress up the road.

After another few minutes, Steve halted the party and pointed diagonally to his right where the dark shapes of low buildings could be seen through the fog. “That must be Clifftop Farm,” he whispered. He touched the push-to-talk switch for the command channel and called in a brief progress report. Troy moved up alongside Peri.

“Well, boss?” he whispered. “Should we recce this place?”

“If it’s full of snakes, all we’ll do is give away our position.” she said. “I’d rather not get chased around when we’re so close to the place Amanda’s team should be. I’d vote for closing in on the target. What do you think, boys?”

Steve had re-joined them. “I agree,” he said. “And so does Captain Mike. The other patrols haven’t found a single civilian survivor, only corpses and snake-infested people who attacked them like zombies. The chances of finding anyone intact over there is zilch.”