Down: Trilogy Box Set (115 page)

“What the hell was that?” he said, shaking the cobwebs out and pushing himself to his feet.

“Sounds like cannon fire,” Monk said.

“Get some of the lads. Now,” Heath said.

In their passage, the men had lost their favored weapons, long curved rover knives, but most had rearmed themselves in the houses and shops in the town centre. Those who hadn’t were able to find knives in the Indian restaurant inside the mall and the kitchenware department at Sainsbury’s. When a group of the drunken louts assembled one of the men told Heath he’d found a way to the roof and led them up the stairs to the top of the multi-story car park.

The wrecked Merlin helicopter was burning with intensity. The rovers were forced to shield their eyes and keep their distance.

“What is it?” one of them asked Heath.

“I’ve no idea,” he answered before adding, “This is a strange land for which I have little comprehension.”

“It’s called a helicopter,” the addict said. He was almost too drunk to form words. “It’s a buggered, flaming, helicopter.”

“I like it here,” one of the men said, wobbling on boozy legs. “Good drink, beautiful victuals, plenty of molls. Doesn’t bother me that flaming machines are falling from the skies. As long as they don’t land upon me head.”

Heath lost interest in the blazing wreckage and used the vantage point to survey the town below. Encircling the town at key junctions were the flashing red and blue lights of emergency vehicles.

“I don’t know why they haven’t tried to crash us,” Heath told Monk. “No coppers. No soldiers. Doesn’t make sense.”

“They’re probably scared of us,” Monk said.

“Maybe, but in time they’ll come.” He surveyed his gang members and asked, “Who’s the least drunk of you lot?”

Amidst sniggers, no one answered. Heath picked three of the least glazed-over and told them to stay on the roof and let him know if they saw any men advancing. He was going back downstairs to have a kip.

Heath had been asleep in one of the supermarket aisles for less than an hour when one of the rovers on the roof came running for him.

“They’re coming,” the man said.

Heath sat up and massaged his face. “On foot? On horseback?”

“No. Inside machines.”

“Motorcars,” Heath said to his sixteenth-century gang member. “They’re called motorcars. How many?”

“One big ’un what was on the bridge. Heading straight toward us.”

Heath was already on his feet, kicking his men awake. There were about fifty of them. Thirty or so were unaccounted for, off somewhere in the town.

“Come with me,” Heath shouted. “They’re coming to crash us. It’s time to fight.”

As they made their way out to the street Heath drew two of his new butcher knives from the new belt he’d gotten off his first victim. The kid was pale and pimply and was at the wrong place at the wrong time, rounding a corner shortly after the rovers arrived. He’d looked askance at Heath who, lacking a belt buckle, had been dealing with his loose trousers, turning his head this way and that in utter confusion. The kid hadn’t even said anything. It was his look of contempt at Heath’s filth and stench that had prompted Heath to bend over, pick up an ornamental stone from someone’s front garden, and bash the kid’s head in. Before stealing his belt, Heath had stood over him, marveling at this kid’s immobility. He’d kicked him a few times to be sure before coming to the conclusion that unlike victims in Hell who were incapable of dying, this one was dead. It had dawned on him at that moment that the incredible had happened: he was back on Earth.

The pedestrian zone beside the shopping centre was deserted. Heath and his men were bunched, waiting for their attackers to arrive. They had fought many soldiers in the past, usually in accidental skirmishes. The king’s men didn’t like coming out at night to challenge rovers, but these soldiers were different.

There was a buzzing sound overhead. Heath saw the small flying machine with four rotor blades. It swooped low but not low enough for him to swat it with one of his knives.

He looked to his east toward the High Street and told the men to retreat in that direction but the flying machine followed, hovering at no more than twenty feet above the ground.

Inside the armored personnel carrier Sergeant Ferguson alerted Lieutenant Venables to what he was seeing on his laptop. The drone operator back on the bridge was tracking activity in the shopping district and uploading the feed.

“Have a look at this,” the sergeant said.

Venables glanced down and as a sign of his interest, snatched the computer away for a better look. Illuminated in the floodlit pedestrian promenade was a group of men fleeing from the drone. They were dressed in shabby, archaic garb and they were brandishing knives.

“Command,” Venables said into his headset, “are you seeing this?”

His commanding officer at the MOD in Whitehall replied, “We have it. Stand by while we analyze. How close are you?”

“Two hundred yards.”

“Right. Hold your position and stand by.”

“What is it, Sarge?” Private Saunders asked.

“An assembly of hostiles, by the look of them,” Ferguson said.

“We going to engage?”

“Not for me to say, is it?” the sergeant replied.

Ben Wellington was beside John Camp in the back seat of his Jaguar when his phone rang. The two of them were on the way back to MI5 from their meeting with the queen. King Henry was on his way to an MI5 safe house in the Hampshire countryside with a contingent of security staff, doctors, and nurses, one bewildered royal butler, a few trusted palace housekeepers, and one very willing minder, Professor Gough. Ben listened to the caller and retrieved his tablet computer from his briefcase.

He passed the tablet over to John and said, “This is real-time MOD drone footage from Leatherhead. What do you make of this lot?”

John shook his head. “Rovers.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’ll peg it at ninety-nine percent. All of them have at least one knife, a lot of them two. They hold them pointed down, like rovers do, best for downward thrusts. And see the way they’re running. It’s like they’re gliding. They’re confident runners, especially at night.”

Ben thanked him and spoke into his phone. “First off, we believe with a very high level of probability that these are Hellers, not members of the local populace. Second, we believe, also with a very high probability that they are the most dangerous sort of Hellers. These men are predatory killers. Yes, I would absolutely endorse that course of action. Of course. I’ll maintain visual contact and remain on the line.”

Lieutenant Venables announced, “We’ve been cleared to engage the enemy. Sergeant, we’ll be rolling up on them. We’ll dismount with a fifty-yard buffer and on my mark we will open fire. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Saunders whispered to the private next to him, “’Bout fucking time we kicked some alien arse.”

The rovers kept running away from the drone and the Marine armored personnel carrier that had come into view. Heath shouted for his men to stop when the vehicle stopped and soldiers spilled out.

Heath was outside the Victorian redbrick Leatherhead Institute on the High Street. “Are you ready to fight them?” he shouted to his men.

The men raised their knives and gave off blood-curdling cries.

“Let ’em come,” Monk yelled. “There’s not many of them. We’ll strip their flesh from their bones.”

Lieutenant Venables raised his hand and gave the order to fire.

The video feed on Ben’s tablet had no sound.

John watched the drone’s-eye-view of 5.56mm NATO ammo thudding into rover torsos and heads. The rover who seemed to be in charge was directing the others with frantic waves of his arms before taking multiple hits to his chest and crumpling.

Monk fell to his knees beside Heath then rose in anger and charged the Marines. He made it only a few strides before he was cut down.

John passed the tablet back to Ben and said, “You don’t know how many times I wanted to rake those bastards with automatic fire.”

Venables ordered a cease fire and led his commandos toward the immobile bodies littering the pavement. The first rover they stood over was dead from a headshot. The next one was still alive, just barely, with two bullet holes through the lungs. It was Heath who stared up at the soldiers and mouthed a “fuck you.”

“What are our orders?” the sergeant asked Venables.

Venables asked the same question into his headset and the reply came from Whitehall: no medics, no prisoners.

The lieutenant answered his sergeant by dipping the barrel of his rifle and firing a round between Heath’s eyes. The rest of the squad didn’t require further instructions. They went about their grim business delivering coup de grâces until all the bodies were still.

“Doesn’t seem sporting,” Ben said, looking away from his tablet.

“They’re rovers,” John said. “They …”

“I know all about them,” Ben said. “I had my own dealings.”

“Anyway, they’re already dead.”

In one instant Heath was staring down the barrel of a rifle, and in the next he was lying on his back in the center of a rank town, the Leatherhead of Hell. The rovers who preceded him were already upright, shifting about in stunned silence.

Monk offered a hand and pulled Heath to his feet.

“Seems we’re back where we belong,” Monk said. “It were good while it lasted.”

“Bloody good,” Heath said, checking for injury. “Last I saw of you, your head had a large hole in it.”

“Did it now?”

“All the lads back?”

Monk looked around. “Not all. Only the ones with us when the soldiers opened fire.”

“They had some rum old guns, didn’t they?” Heath said admiringly.

“That they did. Now what?”

Heath shook his head. “I don’t know why we were sent back to the land of the living and I don’t know why we’re back in this shithole. I suppose we’ll just have to carry on doing what we do,” Heath said. “Let’s go back to our camp and take it from there.”

“Come on, lads,” Monk shouted. “Fun’s over. Heath wants us back to the woods.”

Fifty rovers began walking toward the forest.

Heath thought his eyes were playing a trick on him. Or maybe it was just the blackness of the night. One by one his men seemed to be disappearing. Monk saw it too and he left Heath’s side and cackling, plunged forward.

Heath was alone.

Behind him was the town.

Ahead of him, darkness.

Without hesitation he stepped forward.

“What are we to do with all these bodies?” Sergeant Ferguson asked.

“Not our problem,” the lieutenant answered. “We’re to proceed to the helo crash site and check for survivors.”

John noticed it out of the corner of his eye on Ben’s tablet lying on the armrest between the two men. The drone was hovering overhead showing the soldiers milling over the scattered corpses.

“Jesus.”

The rovers were back, running toward the unaware soldiers.

“Do you have comms with the Marines?” John said.

In alarm, Ben said he didn’t and started to ring Whitehall.

Private Saunders heard something and looked up just in time to see a rush of rovers upon him, punching, kicking and gouging. He smelled their vile odor as he tried to raise his weapon. He saw his knife getting snatched from its sheath and felt the cold steel getting thrust into his chest.

The last thing Lieutenant Venables heard was the sharp warning from Whitehall command in his headset before Heath took him down from behind, ripped his helmet off, and sank his teeth into his neck.

The two of them were running on coffee and adrenaline but their fatigue was palpable.

“Look, let’s try to keep this short so you can get some sleep,” Ben said.

They were in a briefing room at Thames House, MI5 headquarters in London. Through the windows they could see a passing barge motor down the Thames and traffic backed up on the Embankment. From their perch everything seemed normal enough.

John and Emily assured Ben that they were fine but Ben repeated that he would get them back to Dartford as soon as possible.

As other MI5 operatives filed into the room John whispered to Emily, “You do look like shit, you know. You’ve got to rest.”

She replied with a weak smile. “You look worse. We’ll sleep soon.”

“Right. Let’s begin,” Ben said. “The situation on the ground has clearly shifted in the past few hours and we need to make some hard decisions. The prime minister and the Cobra group will be meeting within the hour and I’ll have to provide our recommendations. So with that, Eva, could you catch us all up?”

Eva Mendel was the MI5 analyst responsible for Ministry of Defense liaison. An efficient, emotionless woman, she was crisp and to the point.

“I’ll start with Leatherhead,” she said. “Has anyone not seen the drone footage of the attack on the Marines? Fine, in that case, no need to show it again. The Hellers, rovers, whatever we choose to call them, were eliminated by the lads from 3 Commando only to reappear very much, quote-unquote alive, a short distance away with tragic consequences. The MOD has not sent in any further troops but all remote footage confirms without any doubt that there were no survivors on our side. In Dartford, Sevenoaks, and Upminster we haven’t had occasion to witness the phenomenon of terminated Hellers reappearing but within the past hour we have witnessed this. Again, what you’ll see is drone footage with thermal imaging, starting with Sevenoaks in the vicinity of the Belmeade School.”

The large monitor at the front of the room showed a dark empty playing field from a height of approximately one hundred feet. Initially the field was empty. Then a bright image of a person appeared. The person stood still for several seconds then began running in one direction before stopping and reversing course. Then two more people appeared and the first person joined them. A minute passed and five more individuals popped into view. The group of eight then proceeded to the evacuated school building and seemed to force entry.

“This is not good,” John mumbled.

“As far as we can tell,” Mendel said, “these individuals are still inside the school and no more have appeared. Now for Dartford. You’ll recognize the grounds of the MAAC facility, also fully evacuated as of early this afternoon. I’d draw your attention to the tennis court.”