Three soldiers walked in a triangular formation. Sam led the troop with Sev behind her to the left and Sharpe slightly further behind him, covering the right. They were approximately four miles away from the petrol station having made their way through a maze of hills and small run-down buildings.
On their previous patrol, they had stumbled across what looked like a large town. Until this point the soldiers had only seen singular buildings or small villages at most. Searching the town was a job for a much larger team, but the soldiers couldn’t risk the lives of the civilians so a small fire team would have to do. The soldiers moved in silence for the most part. Except for Sev who was singing to himself.
“And I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more!”
“Sev…” Sam hummed in a low tone. “Knock it off.”
“All right, fine, you know I hate the silence. This place gives me the creeps.”
Sam slowed her pace to shorten the gap between them.
“All right then. Fuck one, marry one and kill one. Hit me with your best.”
Sev nodded slowly as he thought about it.
“I’ve got one… but it’s bad.”
“Go for it.”
“Hitler, Stalin and Mao.”
“Fucking hell, Sev!”
Sev and Sam laughed together. Sharpe meanwhile just continued following slowly, scanning the lands around them. Something caught Sam’s eye. She flipped her rifle up to her shoulder. Sharpe and Sev moved into cover on her left raising their weapons.
“Contact front.”
The soldiers locked onto their targets.
The town was in view now. A few tall apartment buildings stretched to the sky behind a wall of tightly compacted brick houses with shattered windows and bare driveways that had once held family cars. But it wasn’t the town that the fire team were currently worried about. Five figures had crawled out of the shadows. They were human in shape, two legs, two arms and a human head. They wore small patches of clothing here and there, but mostly their clothes had been torn away. They only looked human from a distance; as they stepped out of the shadows it became much more apparent what they were. Their legs awkwardly shuffled their bodies forward. Their arms were stretched far longer than any human’s, bent into awkward, painful shapes with long thick claws for slashing and stabbing. Their skin was black and thicker in places, sometimes so thick it jutted out like plates of armour.
Sam held up a hand as Sharpe and Sev raised their weapons, each of them picking targets. Sam spoke in a low, slow voice, with as little movement as possible.
“Wait… let’s see if they move on.”
The creatures stopped a few feet out of the town and stared at the soldiers who were roughly one hundred metres away. The largest of the creatures twitched its head up in a disturbingly unnatural manner. The thing suddenly raced forward towards the soldiers. The other four soon followed. Sam lowered her hand and the three rifles came to life. The skirmish ended in just a few seconds; despite their thick skin the creatures were put down by just a few high-powered bullets from the soldiers’ rifles.
A sixth creature flanked around the side of the team. Sharpe spotted the creature as it charged towards Sev and quickly dispatched it with two perfectly aimed shots to the chest. Sev flinched as Sharpe’s bullets whizzed past him into the attacking monster, which slid to a halt a few feet from him.
“Jesus Christ, I hate these fucking things,” Sev spat. “When we get back everyone gets a mark check.”
Once satisfied that the creatures had been dealt with, Sam waved Sharpe and Sev forward. The two soldiers advanced towards the bodies with their rifles shouldered. Sam moved to the creature that had tried to flank them; strips of torn clothing hung from the monster’s body. Sam could tell from a look that it had once been a woman. A closer inspection revealed the creature had been wearing a doctor-style lab coat. Sam shook her head.
“A Damned doctor? Well whoever you were, you can rest now.”
Sam closed the eyes of the monster before she rejoined the two men standing before the town. Sam slowed her pace as she approached the buildings, which seemed to stretch upward like a wall that screamed ‘Danger’.
“Looks like it’s just been torn right up out of the ground and dropped here, just like all the others,” Sev noted to Sam as she approached.
“Yeah, but an entire town? What the hell happened here?” Sam asked.
She looked out at Sharpe who was further ahead, standing just before the tarmac of a road that abruptly ended just a few metres out of the town.
“All right,” Sam stated. “Let’s keep it nice and tight. Take it slow and if we run into another group of them, we bug out and lose them in the trees.”
Sam gave a signal to move forward. As the soldiers moved closer, the street lights burst into life, illuminating the road around and ahead of them. The three soldiers instinctively dropped to one knee facing out to cover all directions.
“Well…” Sev commented. “That’s creepy.”
“Yep,” Sam agreed. “Be careful and stay close, don’t leave line of sight.”
“We should leave,” Sharpe croaked.
“We have a job to do. It’s going to take a long time to go around this town and we could really use more supplies. Unless you feel like braving the bridge?”
Sharpe didn’t respond. He checked his rifle’s chamber and set off into the town without saying another word.
“He’s getting worse,” Sev said.
“I know…” Sam replied solemnly.
“He doesn’t sleep, barely eats…” Sev continued.
“I know,” Sam snapped. “Let’s just get this over with and we can talk about it when we get back.”
The soldiers moved forward down the street. Sev and Sam stayed relatively close to one another while Sharpe moved ahead of them scanning the buildings around them. Sharpe stopped when he reached a T-junction in the road. Sam nodded to the left and led the team forward. Sharpe said something to Sev that Sam wasn’t able to hear and the two men dropped back slightly, opening the gap between them and Sam.
Sam felt like saying something about the loose formation but gave up; she was tired. The long walk was taking its toll and she knew it. She scanned the road ahead; at the end of the street was a tall gloomy house. The three-storey building didn’t fit in with the others. It wasn’t so much the style, it was the way the building seemed to sway unsteadily back and forth. Sam lowered her rifle as she approached.
Sam never understood if she noticed the change in that moment and ignored it or if she simply never realised what was happening. She heard a muffled voice from behind her and the sounds of children laughing and playing in front of her. Sam smiled as she passed the sign in front of the building. The air felt warmer, the glow of the sun lay across her cheeks, lifting her spirits. As Sam reached her hand out for the door a violent force tore her away from the building. Sam’s head pounded, blood oozed from her nose and the air turned to ice. Her eyes strained against the darkness that washed over her again.
“Hey! Look at me, Sam!” said Sev forcefully as he checked over the frightened young woman. Sam had pulled her knees up into a foetal position. She lay on the ground shaking uncontrollably. Sharpe stayed close nearby.
“It’s okay. You’re safe, it’s us,” Sev said again, trying to reassure her.
“Fuck,” Sam growled as she forced open her eyes. “How long was I out?”
“A while,” croaked Sharpe. “An hour… maybe more.”
Sam spat on the ground and was helped to her feet by the two men. She wiped the blood from her nose and allowed Sev to check her eyes.
“You’re okay,” Sev assured. “Let’s finish this sweep and get out of here.”
Sam turned her back on the building and started moving further down the street. Sev and Sharpe hung back for a moment looking at the building.
“Something from your past?” Sev asked once he was sure Sam was out of earshot.
Sharpe nodded slowly. His eyes were locked on one of the first-floor windows and his gaze wasn’t shifting.
“But it isn’t the same town, is it?” Sev started. “You’d have said something otherwise…What are the chances of finding it out here?”
Sharpe rubbed his eyes in an attempt to wipe away whatever it was he was seeing. Finally the sniper tore his gaze away and looked back at Sam.
“Not as low as you’d hope…”
***
After a couple of hours of walking Sam and her team neared the edge of the town. The formation walked down a long road flanked by expensive houses with long decorative front gardens… or at least what had once been decorative. Low brick walls separated bare areas of dirt that had once held patches of perfectly cut grass and neatly arranged flowers.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t salvage anything, you’d have thought a big town like this would have had some supplies,” Sev said, breaking the silence. “Someone probably came through before us.”
Sam nodded in agreement while Sharpe ignored them. His gaze and rifle barrel flicked between windows as he scanned every building around them, checking for even the slightest movement.
“You okay, Sam?” Sev asked when he noticed her silence.
Sam shook her head, she couldn’t put her finger on it but something here was wrong. At the end of the road one house stood taller than the others. It was older, its walls covered with vines and its windows shattered.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Sev said as he turned to comfort her.
As Sev made his turn a small glint of light reflected off his rifle and then bounced off something in the shattered window of the house at the end of the street. Sam caught a glimpse of the light and for a split second spotted a sudden and bright yellow flash that disappeared as quickly as it came. Something hot sprayed her face and the sound of the gunshot echoed through the town. Sev dropped to the ground clutching his stomach. Sam levelled her rifle at the window at the end of the street and let loose a volley of shots. Sharpe dropped down behind a low brick wall.
“Get him to safety!” Sharpe bellowed to Sam as he let loose a volley of bullets.
Sam grabbed Sev’s collar and with one hand pulled him back across the street to Sharpe’s wall.
“Running low here, Sam!” Sharpe growled.
Sam ducked down behind the wall and swapped out her rifle’s magazine.
“I’ll cover you, just get to that house!”
Sharpe replaced the empty magazine in his weapon and made himself ready. Sam jumped up and started firing her weapon. Sharpe vaulted over the low wall and raced forward as fast as he could. The sniper cleared the distance in seconds.
He slammed shoulder first into the door and fell into the empty room with his weapon loaded and ready. Sharpe stopped and listened; he didn’t dare move. Sam’s rifle had fallen silent. Sharpe kept his weapon pointed at the staircase opposite the now-empty doorway. He could hear the whimpers and murmurs of Sev coming from down the street.
Sharpe waited; he slowed his breathing and listened for any noise to tell him where the shooter was. Sharpe heard the floorboards above him creak slowly as something shifted its weight. Sharpe snapped his rifle to the spot above him and fired three shots through the floorboards. The last round connected with something, the echoing squelch of meat tearing rang through the soldier’s ears. Sharpe moved towards the stairs, taking time to cover the openings to the rooms on either side of him with the barrel of his weapon. The stairs of the building moaned and sagged under the weight of the fully geared soldier. Sharpe advanced slowly; he kept his breathing slow and his steps as light as he could manage. The stairs led Sharpe to the body of the man that had attacked them. A large burly man lay slumped below an open window. Half of his face had been torn away by Sharpe’s bullet. The man’s lower jaw hung loosely from his head, held in place only by a stretched cheek. His blood had soaked the rest of his body and the ceiling above him was coated in a thick red mess. Sharpe advanced on the man slowly; he kicked away an unimpressive hunting rifle from the body and studied the man. His skin around his hands had discoloured and morphed into thick plates of black callouses. The veins around his neck leading to his face jutted out uncomfortably. Sharpe’s rifle snapped up to the man’s skull when his one remaining eye moved up towards him.
Sam waited until Sharpe stepped into the window of the house through her own weapon’s scope before she moved to Sev, who was clutching his side with a blood-soaked bandage where the bullet had entered. He groaned as he shifted back and forth, convulsing from the pain as his blood left his body and pooled around him. The bullet had torn through him just below his armoured vest, which was now the only thing holding his intestines inside.
“Sam… are you… an angel?” Sev forced a smile.
Sam scrambled through her pouches trying to find a new bandage for Sev.
“Come on, don’t get delirious on me now, it’s not that bad.”
Sam wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Sharpe appeared beside them and handed Sam a clean bandage.
“Oh God, bring the angel back!” Sev tried to laugh but started to choke on the blood collecting in his mouth.
Sam looked to Sharpe with a serious look of concern.
“Hey…” Sev groaned. “I’m the medic here, I know how bad it is… Get out of here. Leave me my pistol and a couple magazines…”
“Not happening,” Sam growled. “We’ll get you back to the others and get you patched up.”
“He won’t make it back to your camp in that state.”
Sharpe and Sam both spun on their heels with rifles raised as they heard the new voice.
Standing before them a good twenty feet away was a man. He wore a blue shirt with tan combat trousers over military boots. His head was covered by a thick mop of black hair and he desperately needed a shave. His face was harsh and strong, bags hung under his eyes from lack of sleep and a revolver hung from his belt. From his angle, Sharpe could see the protruding barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his back.
“Sorry,” he said in a thick Australian accent. “This a bad time?”
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