Chapter 2, Operation Black Rabbit
The Lynx prowled the skies ahead of us. It swooped from side to side across the land like a bird of prey. I followed behind in the Puma while to our rear was the large Chinook where the bulk of the forty person foraging squad were on board keeping eyes on every horizon. Surprisingly, despite being frequently laid low by the motion of the aircraft carrier on the waves, air travel did not phase me in the slightest.
Sadly the same could not be said of all of our entourage. I'd heard Lieutenant Tasker referring to the Chinook as the 'puke wagon' and could well imagine there were a few green faces on board.
They should consider themselves lucky however. The pace of the Chinook was relatively sedate compared with the breakneck sky racer that was the Lynx. It swooped up and down like a peregrine falcon, guns trained on every broken window and swaying tree. That was where Tasker rode, the vanguard, and I was well glad for that fact.
We'd spent a week getting prepared. During that time Skellen asked me a multitude of questions about Edenpark. I told him the truth, the parts of it which I thought he'd find palatable, the rest I left to chew over on my own time. I could sense that he was having doubts about that part of the mission, so I spoon fed him as much as I could, until he was sick of worrying and would go along with it if I could deliver only a fraction of that which I was promising.
Supplies were packed, engines were fuelled and the squad was hand picked by the captain and his lieutenant. We flew by charts and came in over a deserted piece of coast. The ashen ruin of a lighthouse waited for as a greeting, a sign of things to come no doubt. I got a lot of odd looks and very little in the way of conversation. I'd been a suit before the downfall and the ill fitting military fatigues did not erase that from peoples memories.
The people who went on these foraging missions were battle hardened veterans. People who'd become used to killing things with their bare hands. I was not one of them, they knew it, I knew it. But this was an opportunity not to be missed.
The first couple of days were as uneventful as days get in the world beyond the apocalypse. Our birds had been fitted with specialised fuel tanks so staying aloft would not be a problem, but flying at night was not an option. These assets were priceless, to lose any of them would be a setback from which we might not recover.
We took off from the deck of the carrier at first light and flew until the sky started to darken. There had been several theories thrown as to why the days seemed to have gotten a lot shorter since the downfall. The woeful among us said that it was probably because the sun was reluctant to try and shine life onto a dead world, the realistic among us said it was likely to do with the effects of a nuclear winter. Either way the result was the same, sunlight was a precious commodity.
It had been a year since Britain succumbed to the cadaver, not a long time in the grand scheme of history yet much of the former nation was unrecognisable. Very few of the towns and villages we came across had not been gutted by fire. The absence of bodies was a testament to the nature of the death that had come to them. Even so here and there I spied piles of bones with moss growing on them. These mass death sites were too organised to have been the cadaver, perhaps one of the lynch mobs that appeared in the early days and attempted to instil order back into their own communities. Perhaps one of the military 'cleansings' that appeared later on in the conflict when the state grew so desperate as to begin mass slaughter of the infected.
Whatever their origin they, like the rest of the evidence of mankind's existence, were being slowly swallowed by nature. We passed by overhead, we, the remnants of that which came before, we ignored the gathered ghosts who stared up at us. We pressed on along the path that would ultimately unite us with them.
That first night we were going to stay on the banks of Kielder Water in the national park of the same name. Given the remote nature of the lake it was felt that there was a reasonable chance of there not being any cadavers in the area. In the fading light we touched down on the eastern side of the lake.
Appointed teams swarmed out of the choppers and fanned out to create a secure perimeter. I formed part of a rear guard, partly through fear, partly through ineptitude. Here and there off into the trees I saw and heard the sounds of metal meeting bone that indicated the presence of the dead. Fortunately our predictions were accurate. Few rotting ghosts haunted the area and those who had made their way on some uncertain path through the undergrowth were despatched quickly and ruthlessly.
Tents were assembled and guard patrols went out. I found myself down by the water. These shortened days made it feel like the darkness was winning. It closed about the camp with incredible speed, smothering the rampant beauty of natures reclamations with tentacles, which became blankets, which eventually became a vast ocean of unrelenting darkness. A few low lights shone in the camp, but only those which were vital, who knew what kind of eyes might be watching from the forest, what bloody beasts might hungrily regard our mad mortality.
The moon smiled wanly upon us, she still shone bright if a touch hazy at times. By her grace I could see little of the world reflected in the water. Just my own gaunt, drawn features, sunken brown eyes and a complexion pale enough to compete with the silver face in the sky. My hand disturbed the water until all images were lost in the ripples, I stood and moved back to the camp.
A sumptuous feast of the stale and the bland was being doled out by the reluctant volunteers who were called chef by those who truly meant to mock. I swallowed down every last crumb and breathed a sigh of disappointment that I'd failed once more to choke on my meal, I would live to see another, that I might then die and see no more.
The thoughts of excitement which filled my mind when Skellen first announced operation Black Rabbit had faded steadily. The thought of the journey from Edenpark to my house filled me with dread. The thought of what I might find when I got there even more so. Out here in the sea of darkness to entertain a hope seemed as futile a gesture as to try and catch the moonlight, both were out of reach, and were a matter for the heavens alone.
My misery was both compounded and alleviated by the arrival of Sergeant Trowler. Alleviated by the minute contact with another living, breathing, non flesh eating human. Compounded by the fact that he told me that Lieutenant Tasker wanted to see me.
I suspected this might happen, I'd heard rumour of such on the carrier, I dare not call it home. On the ship Tasker was Skellens right hand man, but out in the wilderness he was the king of the night and was to be crossed at your own peril. Whisperings abounded on the ship about expedition members who had fallen out with Tasker and then failed to return from the foraging. Whether or not the captain was aware of these rumours no one knew, whether he believed or not it mattered little, he trusted Tasker and that trust would continue regardless of the path it followed the lieutenant down.
So I was led to the court of the king who sat pretending to pour over maps in order to keep me waiting by his tent door. Taskers face is one of those held in a perma-sneer, maybe he was born with it, maybe some ill fated wind changed on him one day, either way it did little to ease contact with such a jagged, corrosive personality.
“Comfortable?” he says finally, barely glancing in my direction.
“Very” says I to he. He scoffs, there are no answers to anything he can ask me which will not lead to such a response, this I know, this I accept.
“Tell me about Edenpark?” he says. There are no other chairs in the tent aside from the one on which he sits. He does not beckon me closer, I am an ant on his periphery, yet I know his focus is utterly upon me, his dismissive poise is subterfuge, I am his prey.
“What would you like to know Tasker” says I, irritated by the line of questioning. Within a split second he is standing nose to nose with me. His face is calm but I can see the fury in his eyes, it is always there, just like the sneer, lurking in the background and capable of far more destruction than any facial expression. His skin is pockmarked and dry, a single purple vein throbs and
bulges on this forehead.
“Lieutenant” he says very quietly just inches from my face “Lieutenant Tasker” he breathes the words into my face accentuating his rank as he does so. I gulp and nod. Lesson learned. Armageddon has not made a brave man of me.
Lieutenant Tasker proceeds to quiz me about the aspect of the mission with which I have been charged. He asks me dozens of questions to which he already knows the answers. He feigns surprise at many of them, he delights in telling me how likely we are to fail. In no uncertain terms does he make it clear that such failure will be my responsibility. He sounds almost gleeful as he tells me that he will be keeping a close eye on me.
Finally I am dismissed. I resist the urge to bow and curse the coward in me as I leave the command tent and head back to my own equally humble shelter.
It used to be that no matter where I lay I could hear cars and trains and planes. Now there is the golden silence after which so many of us yearned, and it is suffocating. I lay for a while listening to the absent owl. I lay there and consider that there are many dangers in the world and some of them are in this camp.
We are one of the tiny lights of civilisation left, and it terrifies me to think of all the darkness in our midst. Sleep does not come easy, and when it finally rolls around it is a haunting experience. Did I even sleep at all?
We are up at first light. No one wakes me. I roll off the pallet bed and poke bleary eyes and a weary head out of the tent. A chorus of frowns and shaking heads greets me. I was not well liked on board the ship, I was not respected. It strikes me that whereas as on the carrier my failings were tolerated out here they may stretch thin the patience of the mob.
By the looks of it most of the camp has been up for some time, many of the tents have disappeared. I lend as much assistance as I am able. My cold fingers prod numbly at many knots. There is little conversation, any laughter is greeted with surprise and does not last long amongst the crowd. These are bleak times, we buried mirth, it rests in a tomb along side joy and hope, never to see the light again.
Helicopters are loaded. Engines roar, rotors spin. Even as we lift into the air I see a couple of ragged cadavers stagger into the clearing where we made our camp. They have become commonplace, they are herds, they are trees. They are the land.
We begin to sail across the sky once more, on our way to the Brampton barracks and an uncertain destiny.