“I do not like this!” former Oberfeldwebel Ulrich frowned, not for the first time, “The strike team, there are no professional soldiers among them, this is not good!”
Knut nodded, he understood the big German’s objections, but didn’t see what choice they had,
“I know Joanas, I know – but they are not going to be fighting professional soldiers either. They are just going to clear out some alien fungus and sooner or later we are all going to have to learn to be fighters. The world isn’t as it once was.”
Joanas’s frown deepened still further,
“Yes sir, but anything could happen out there, they could run into...”
“You do not need to call me ‘Sir’, Joanas,” Knut smiled. “The convoy will need protecting as well, and that is far more likely to run into trouble than the strike team is – at least the sort of trouble that might shoot back. We don’t have a choice. We only have two soldiers and we need you to escort the convoy to the hospital.”
“We’ll be fine Joanas, don’t worry so much,” Ashley smiled, although there was less certainty in the small blonde Englishwoman’s eyes than her tone implied. She’d been a botanist before the Event. Of all the nomads, she was the one most able to recognise the sort of thing that might be responsible for the spores, and she wanted a sample of it for later study.
Ashley believed that knowledge was the key to beating back the alien world that was slowly swallowing hers. All the same, she was wishing she hadn’t volunteered as she checked the semi-automatic pistol strapped to her leg for about the fourth time.
“At least take this,” Joanas tossed something to the young Englishwoman, she caught it almost as if catching an American football.
“You remember how to use it?” Joanas asked in English.
“Yes, thank you.” she nodded, Joanas and Kurt had shown them all how to use, clean and maintain the gas masks some weeks ago. Although they technically belonged to the two soldiers – nothing really belonged entirely to anyone anymore. That had been one of Knut’s early decisions. Everything they gathered belonged to the Caravan, few had argued.
“We are ready to go when you are Ashley.” Mathias Forrell strode across the grass, turning to Knut he added, “We are taking the motorcycle and two cars as far as the road, from there we walk. We do not know how far these spores carry so we do not know how long this will take. We will meet you in Bex, Ja?” The man’s English was a little stilted, but clear.
Knut nodded, he was almost as nervous as the volunteers on the strike team. He hated splitting the caravan, but time was of the essence and he saw no other logical option.
“You have your radio.” It was a statement not a question “You know the frequency we are on and the call-sign?” Knut glanced from Mathias to Joanas as he asked. Both men nodded and answered with a stiff, German, exclamation of “Jawoll!”
“Good,” Knut nodded, “The strike team will be call-sign ‘Mjolnir’, the columns call-sign will be ‘Thor’. Good hunting Joanas!”
“Danke, Knut, and good luck to the caravan – we will meet again soon”. With that, the former policeman turned and strode back to where the rest of the strike team waited in their vehicles. Ashley hurried along beside him.
“Hi!” she smiled as she leapt into the back seat of the large four by four, the two women in the front seat hailed her back.
“You all ready?” Esther asked from the driving seat, her voice muffled behind the scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face, covering her mouth several times to keeping the alien spores at bay. They all wore them now, the strike team, save for Ashley who slipped on the gas mask that Joanas had given her. She grunted her affirmation.
From the front passenger seat, Magda patted her shotgun,
“Yes!” she said, a little more brusquely than she had meant to. She adjusted her own face-scarf as Esther turned the big car off the grass and towards the road, following Nathaniel’s police car. On their flank, Ronan’s motorbike kept pace with them. His emotionless eyes glanced over at them before he lowered the visor on his helmet.
Sweat ran down Ashley’s brow despite the chill of the Swiss night. They’d left their vehicles about two miles back, at the side of the road, and had been climbing through wooded hillside ever since. Here and there patches of snow littered the ground, between that and the undergrowth going was treacherous in the dark. The nomads had brought torches with them, each tinted red with coloured gels in front of the lens to make the light less detectable from afar. She wondered about that, there seemed little point, they were hunting some form of fungal spore – it was unlikely to spot torchlight!
To her left, Magda took a tumble and cursed, loudly, in Polish – earning her a stern look from Mathias. Ashley heard the engineer mutter something in Polish. Although Ashley couldn’t speak a word of Polish, she had no doubt that whatever it was that Magda had muttered would be a profanity of some sort aimed at the German. Nonetheless, Magda got back up and carried on, her muscular legs working hard to propel her up the steep, and somewhat slippery, slope.
Over on Ashley’s right Ronan seemed to fair little better with the treacherous terrain, but, as was often his way, he remained silent. As for where Esther was, Ashley couldn’t tell. The moment they’d dismounted the vehicles the small Jewish woman disappeared into the woods with her automatic handgun in a double handed pistol grip she seemed oddly familiar with for an office administrator. Ashley told herself it was because the woman was Israeli and would have served her national service in the IDF although there was something about the Israeli woman that made Ashley uneasy. Once inside the tree line, Esther sort of melted into the scenery, as if she was bred for such a feat. It didn’t make Ashley any less uncomfortable.
Mathias saw them first. He sank to his knees, his police shotgun braced into this shoulder and ready to fire. The others took their cue from him and, slipping to their bellies, crawled the last half dozen metres or so until they were all in a rough line. Even Esther had re-appeared, on the left flank. She knelt, rather than lay, a large tree trunk partially obscured her. Leaning around it, she signalled her readiness to the others.
Ronan lay prone, his shotgun aimed at the strange, alien spores. Ashley realised, with more than a little guilt, that she was the only one without her weapon at the ready. She peered at the spores as she drew her handgun from its holster at her leg. The others hadn’t needed a botanist to tell them that these things were not from around here, or that they were dangerous either, she supposed. There were three of them she could see, swaying too and fro in the breeze. At least that’s how it seemed at first until she realised that the motion of their swaying was nothing at all to do with the wind. They swayed left to right whilst the wind came from behind them. Each stood over 2 metres high on, green, rubbery tendrils that must have been as thick as her arm. She couldn’t tell how many tendrils each stood upon. They dangled in a cluster from the bottom of the roughly spherical main body of the plants. The main bodies themselves seemed to be several shades of green, all flowing together to form a sort of camouflage pattern, pockmarked by irregular black pits and purple boils or carbuncles that pulsed and throbbed. Some of the pits seemed to open and shut like sphincters. Ashley knew this was the source of the spores the plants had been pumping out for God knows how long now. It wouldn’t be long before that stopped.
Mathias fired first, the loud rapport of his shotgun echoing across the forested hillside as the buckshot blew one of the spore balls apart. There was just enough time for Ashley to wish she’d told the nomads to approach the things and burn them before the world erupted with the sound of gunfire.
The second spore-ball vanished in a hail of bullets, ripped apart by the withering fire, its tendrils flailing as the spherical body was reduced to pulp and flying debris. The third one ripped itself out of the ground – the green tendrils flailing as the spherical body squatted low under the hail of gunfire. It sprinted, there was no other word for it. The tendrils churned the ground as the plant-thing hurtled towards its attackers at an alarming speed. Magda, fumbling to reload her shotgun, saw it coming just too late. A heavy tendril lashed out and slapped her across the face, sending her tumbling down the hillside head over heels, bouncing painfully and slamming into tree trunks as she went. The thing took off after her but only made it a few yards before Esther Yadin blew it apart with three rounds from her handgun, advancing on it as she fired. Its tendrils flailed about madly in some form of death throes as the Israeli woman took something from her coat pocket – a bottle of lighter fluid! Spraying the writhing remnants of the thing from another world with the contents of the bottle she produced a lighter.
In an instant the creature’s remains went up, blazing in the darkness as its flailing first increased in intensity and then stopped altogether.
Embarrassed, Ashley realised she’d not fired a single shot. The whole engagement had taken only a few seconds, and she hadn’t been at all prepared. Instead, she’d looked on, like an impartial observer.
Ashley cursed herself for not reacting more quickly, had she been any use at all on this mission? Then she recalled Magda and seeing her go bouncing down the hillside, limbs pin-wheeling as she made one bone jarring impact after another.
“MAGDA!” she called, peering down the hillside. There, some 20 metres beneath her on the slope was the prone body of the Polish civil engineer.
“MAGDA! Oh god, I think she’s dead – MATHIAS! ESTHER! HELP!” She called as Ronan appeared at her side and gazed down the hill,
“She looks dead to me.” Ronan’s monotone voice seemed disinterested in the fate of their colleague.
“That isn’t helping Ronan!” Ashley barked
“It wasn’t meant to be helpful, only an observation.” He shrugged as the others joined them.
“I’ll go down and get her.” Mathias looked around “Ronan, you come with me. You two – burn what is left of the... things”.
“SHE’S ALIVE!” Mathias called up to the others as he and Ronan reached the prone woman. There was blood in the snow, but the raspy sound of her breathing could be heard over the light wind that was blowing up. On the slopes above them, two more small fires bloomed as the women burned the last of the Spore-Ball remains.
He reached down and checked Magda for a pulse.
“I’m alive you German idiot, just help me up. I think I may have broken my ankle and my nose.”
“The ankle is twisted, but I don’t think it’s broken,” Ronan said as he felt it, a little too roughly, eliciting a sharp hiss from Magda. “As for your nose – well, you weren’t pretty beforehand so it won’t matter.”
Magda laughed, an action she immediately regretted as pain spread through her ribs. In truth, she wasn’t so certain Ronan was joking. He tended to be very blunt and, if the truth were to be told, he wouldn’t be wrong in his assessment, she supposed. Not that she cared much. He didn’t exactly attract admiring glances himself. She chortled more cautiously this time as the two men helped her up. Blood covered her face from where her nose had lost the debate over which was toughest with the rock she had bounced it off on the way down the hill. She tested her ankle by placing some weight on it and hissed again in pain.
“I think you are right,” she admitted, “It hurts a lot, but I do not think it is broken. My ribs though – I think… aargh!” she shot Ronan a warning glance as he prodded her in the side.
“Yea,” he nodded “You’ve broken a rib.”
“Then perhaps you should not poke me in the side!” she snarled.
“Good idea.” he nodded, his expression as emotionless as ever.
“You will have to help me down the hill,” she admitted through gritted teeth. The tough Pole did not like accepting help or showing weakness around men at the best of times. To ask for help from two men when one was a German was almost more than she could stand. She had never liked Germans.
“My shotgun?” she asked, “I dropped it when that thing hit me.”
“CAN YOU SEE MAGDA’S SHOTGUN UP THERE?” Mathias called up the hill in English.
“YES!” Esther called back “I WILL BRING IT, WE ARE ON OUR WAY DOWN NOW!”
Progress down the hillside was slow. It was still dark, forcing them to be as cautious as they had been going up the hill. By now the light from the fires where they had burned the alien fungus was over a mile behind them, and although they could still see the flames, they shed no usable light this far down the hillside. They took it in turns to help Magda down the hill. The extra effort was surprisingly tiring. She insisted on doing what she could for herself, but in the dark, on a slippery hillside, with a twisted ankle, broken ribs, a mild concussion and a broken finger as well, she couldn’t help but be a burden.
“What is it you see?” Esther spoke suddenly, startling Ashley who’d been scanning the night behind them and to the right,
“N... nothing” she swallowed, trying to get a grip on herself. It’s been a tough night and one she wished was over. Secretly she wondered how she’d managed to survive the apocalypse, she certainly didn’t seem to be cut out for survival. She was jumping at shadows, hearing things that weren’t there... no... no, there it was again...
“I... I think I can hear something though...” she seemed uncertain for a second and then “No, I know I can!”
“What do you hear?” Esther asked, peering into the darkness as if willing it away would let her see what might be lurking there.
“Movement!” Ashley said, “Something crashing through trees in the distance. Can’t you hear it?”
Esther stopped and cocked her head to one side,
“No, I c... wait... yes! Yes, I hear it!” the two women looked at each other, fear in their eyes. They looked back into the night for a split second and then took off down the hillside as fast as they could, all sensible precautions thrown to the wind,
“RUN! RUN!” Esther called to the others
“SOMETHING’S COMING, AND ITS BIG, AND MOVING FAST!”
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