Wave after wave after wave of the undead.
Fearless.
Unstoppable.
Tens of thousands of them.
The chatter in the ranks was rife:
‘There ain’t barely anything left of the 106th.’
‘I heard they was attacking us ten to a man out west. Those damn things were fighting with each other to get a piece of our boys.’
‘There was a whole host of them trapped under the Sherman, and they were still trying to come at us.’
‘I ain’t never seen so many krauts in one place, and all of them were coming at us. Don’t know how the hell we got out of there alive. Plenty of guys didn’t.’
Coley stopped by the stores to refresh and reload, then headed back out to war.
13
When Isambard Gray, seventh Earl of Pocklington, had commissioned the building of this extravagant stately home in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, he could hardly have envisaged what he’d find there today. His grand yet idyllic country retreat, constructed well off the beaten track, was alive with activity. The grounds of the manor, beautifully tended and immaculately coiffured during peacetime, were now fulfilling a far more practical purpose. Several of the vast lawns had been dug over for the cultivation of vegetables on an almost industrial scale. Others now resembled great tented villages; makeshift barracks and temporary field hospitals and training grounds. There were aircraft and other military vehicles hidden in the shadows, draped with tarpaulins which, every so often, would be hurriedly pulled back to allow a swift launch from an improvised airfield. A squad of new recruits jogged through the middle of the organised chaos in their mid-splattered PE kit; shirt and shorts, pale white legs redraw with cold.
Wilkins had mixed feelings whenever he returned here. It was good to be back in England, that much was certain, but Pocklington Hall was only ever a staging point – a place where he was debriefed, then re-briefed (although he’d already been questioned at length by a fellow agent on the way here). It was hard at times, but everyone had to do their bit. Wilkins forced himself to focus on the end-game to keep him going. He imagined a future time when this damn war would be over. A future he could share with Jocelyn. Maybe they’d settle down somewhere and bring up a couple of children together. Strange that such a seemingly normal plan felt out of reach today, like a naïve fantasy. There was much work to be done before then. Many mountains to climb. It was also funny, he thought, how nervous he felt when he knew Jocelyn was near. More anxious, sometimes, than when he’d been in battle.
The jeep he’d been travelling in for the last hour or so was a tired old jalopy. Damn noisy, too. The track along which they were now driving was pot-holed and uneven, worn away as a result of the heavy military equipment which had been dragged up and down here so many times in recent months. The din and his nerves and his lack of sleep combined to leave him feeling uncomfortably nauseous. What he’d have given for a few more hours sleep before having to face the colonel. There was little chance he’d get even another five minutes shuteye today.
The winter morning sun was beginning to climb over the treeline, bathing the English countryside in a warm yellow-orange glow, long shadows stretching. The jeep came to an abrupt halt outside the ornate entrance to the manor house, wheels crunching in gravel. The driver – Teddy Jones, an unfailingly cheerful Brummie chap – let him out. Wilkins looked to see if he could risk disappearing around the back of the building for a quick cigarette first, but no such luck. Wilberforce, that lily-livered fool, was already waiting for him at the top of the steps. ‘Wilkins,’ he shouted down. ‘Good to see you, old boy. The colonel’s waiting.’
‘Now there’s a surprise,’ Wilkins mumbled as he smoothed his hair then brushed dirt from his sleeve before begrudgingly saluting. ‘And how’s the war been treating you, Wilberforce? Not caught any enemy troops hiding in your filing cabinet?’
‘Ease off, old boy. Not my fault I’ve got a dicky ticker. Now let’s not dawdle, you know what Colonel Adams is like if he’s kept waiting.’
‘Quite.’
Wilkins overtook Wilberforce and marched through the manor. He’d no time for the nervous, cowardly little man. That speck of Belgian mud I’ve just flicked from my sleeve has seen more action than you, he thought but didn’t say. Wilberforce, an infuriating pen-pusher, was a mummy’s boy. And when mummy was as well-connected socially as Lady Brenda Wilberforce, getting yourself diagnosed with a plausible medical excuse so you could stay safe in middle-England, far from the front line, was a cinch.
The manor was heaving with people. A veritable hive of activity. A grand, wide, sweeping oak-carved staircase went up, but Wilkins and Wilberforce went down, taking a dingier and far narrower staircase tucked away in one corner instead. At the foot of the stairs was a grey metal door, guarded on either side. Two stony-faced privates saluted and stepped aside, one of them opening the door to allow the officers through.
For all that was happening above ground level, there seemed to be ten-times that activity unfolding underground. The space below the manor house was immense: a vast, cavernous room filled with the low chatter of hundreds of people hard at work. Artificial yellow light barely filled the place, the fug of cigarette smoke limiting visibility even further.
In the very centre of the room, under the largest, brightest light, was a table-top map of the unfolding war in Europe. Several Wrens pushed markers representing troops, tanks and supplies around the map, informed by others with notes taken from the most recent radioed reports from around the world. Wilkins’ attention was automatically drawn to the area around the Ardennes. The German offensive was marked out in a large bulge coming from the east. The allies clearly had a huge task ahead of them. As well as the Nazi army, they were also having to contend with the ever-increasing forces of the undead, which were represented on the map by the same model tanks and soldiers, daubed with bright yellow paint. Wilkins found it disconcerting just how much yellow paint he could see. It wouldn’t be long before there was more yellow than anything.
Colonel Adams’ distinctive, bellicose voice boomed across the operations room. ‘Lieutenant Wilkins.’
Wilkins turned and saluted the colonel, then followed him into his office.
No time for niceties. ‘Shut the door,’ the colonel ordered.
‘Yes, sir,’ Wilberforce said.
‘And do me a favour, Wilberforce?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Be on the other side of it when it closes, there’s a good chap.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Wilberforce said again, sounding crestfallen, and he obediently shut himself out.
‘I really can’t abide that man,’ the colonel said. He gestured for Wilkins to sit down on a desperately uncomfortable wooden chair, then poured him a tumbler of whiskey and slid it across the desk.
‘It’s a little early, Colonel.’
‘Believe me, it’s not. Drink.’
Rather than sit down, the colonel instead perched on the corner of his desk and looked down on Wilkins with the intensity of a displeased schoolmaster. There was a brief, awkward silence which the colonel quickly ended. ‘Well? Are you just going to sit there all day, Wilkins, or are you going to give me your assessment of what you saw out there?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s all been a bit of a blur.’ And he knocked back his whiskey in one.
‘I’m sure it has, but things are going to get a damn sight worse if we don’t take action. Now tell me, are things out there really as bad as I’m being led to believe.’