Down: Trilogy Box Set (133 page)

“It is now,” the man said. “The fellow who lived in the cottage at the end left for the other side. All of them did.”

“How come you didn’t?”

“Too old and tired for such adventures,” he said.

“I wanted to go,” the woman said, casting an irritated look at her mate. “He wouldn’t have nothing to do with it.”

Trevor said, “Like I was saying, the use of your horse. I’ll try to bring him back.”

“We have a deal,” the man said. “Give me the knife.”

“Give me the information.”

The woman spoke and while she did, the man spooned the thick, brown contents of the pot into a wooden bowl and began slurping it down.

“Some days ago, as you said, when the first live ’uns began to appear, we was by the road when we spied these boys of yours walking down the road. Well some was walking, others was playing with sticks, pretend fighting it was.”

“Which direction were they heading?”

The man pointed toward the north.

“Go on,” Trevor said.

“They came upon a train of wagons coming from London. They was taken.”

“Taken by force?”

“They had little choice but to get into the wagons once the king’s men attacked.”

“I don’t understand.”

The woman explained that a party of soldiers rode into their midst intent on robbing the wagon train. The wool traders fought them off but a musket ball hit one of the boys. The other boys wanted to bury him but Bess, the woman in charge, insisted they only cover him and leave him near the road.

“I seen the body,” the man said. “He was well and truly dead, something I’ve not seen here.”

“Where’s the body?” Trevor asked.

“In between the road and the nearest house to us,” the man said. “Can’t hardly miss it.”

Trevor shed his heavy shoulder bag but kept his rifle with him, telling them he’d be back. As soon as he was out the door, the couple sprang into action with surprising spryness. The man opened Trevor’s satchel. Inside were provisions for his journey and a heavy cloth sack. He opened the sack and whistled at its contents: a few hundred rounds of AK-47 ammo and a fully loaded magazine. He scooped the bullets up with his hand and hid them inside a wooden bucket while the woman raced out the back door with one of her woolen cloths and returned with a makeshift bag filled with stones that the man transferred to the empty sack.

Trevor smelled the body before he found it. Craig Rotenberg was decomposing under some loose brush and what flesh hadn’t been lost to decay was lost to insects and vermin. It was only the diminutive size of the corpse that convinced him it was one of the Belmeade boys.

He said a quick prayer and returned to the cottage. The man was at the table with his bowl of brown stuff and the woman was beside her loom.

“Do you know who took them?” Trevor asked.

“We do. We know them well enough,” the woman said. “Wool traders they are. They come from the shire of Devon. Bess is their leader. Her man’s called Ardmore. They come through here every so often selling their wool to London. We trade for a bit sometimes. For my weaving.”

“Were they going to London?” Trevor asked.

“Opposite,” the man said. “To Devonshire.”

“With the boys.”

“Aye.”

“Where in Devon?” Trevor asked. “Do you know?”

“Bess said once,” the man said. “I can’t remember what she said.”

“Hawk something,” the woman said.

“Hawkchurch,” the man said. “That was it.”

Trevor tossed his knife on the table. The man picked it up and showed his only tooth.

“Sure you won’t eat?” he asked.

Trevor picked up his heavy satchel and shouldered it.

“No, I’ll be going now. I’ll be back this way.” He pointed at the saddle by the door. “Show me how to saddle it. I’ll return it too.”

When Trevor was on his way, riding south, the old man retrieved the bucket to inspect his loot.

He held up a bullet and said, “What do you think this is?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” the woman replied.

“This here part is brass. A beautiful bit of brass. I reckon if I melt all of it down we’ll have a nice brass bar, worth a fortune.”

He had a small iron fry pan that he placed on top of the burning logs. He put the bullet in the center and stooped over to watch the melting.

The explosion came soon enough.

The woman let out a piercing scream.

The lead bullet tore off into the brickwork of the hearth and ricocheted into the man’s chest, sending him onto his back, his heart blood leaking onto the floorboards.

The videoconference screen at the MI5 Ops Centre came to life with the split image of two tired and irritable middle-aged men. Ben imagined how his own face appeared on their screens. Pale and puffy at best. On the left was the prime minister from the mayor’s office at Manchester Town Hall, to the right, Jeremy Slaine, back in London from Manchester, installed somewhere in the bowels of the MOD in Whitehall.

A bit of small talk kicked things off with the prime minister asking after Jeremy’s wife.

“She’s in Oxford with her brother’s family doing as well as can be expected. It’s hard to know what to tell her about Angus. One doesn’t want to extinguish hope but one must be realistic. It’s like walking a tightrope.”

“I understand perfectly. Tell her Marjorie sends her love.”

“I will, thank you,” Slaine said.

“Right then,” Lester said, turning business-like. “Has anything changed on the ground within the past twelve hours?”

Ben and Slaine began speaking at once then both stopped in deference to the other. Lester’s irritation spilled out into the open.

“All right, all right, go on, Ben, you first,” he snapped.

“Thank you, prime minister,” Ben said. “Amidst the deteriorating security situation we discussed last night, we do have some positive news to report this morning.”

“Yes? What?”

“Surveillance and drone footage from all four hot zones indicate that the entry of Hellers has virtually ceased.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it was first seen at Leatherhead, then Upminster, Dartford, and lastly at Sevenoaks.”

“Your interpretation?”

“Not only the most optimistic scenario but also the most plausible one is that the SAS has deployed on the other side and is effecting a deterrence.”

“Jeremy, do you concur?”

“I do.”

“Are there any other explanations?”

Ben was ready with an answer. “I’ve had a word with Professor von Strobe from Geneva, the director general of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He says it’s conceivable the connectivity between the two dimensions has spontaneously been eradicated.”

“Well that would be good news, wouldn’t it?” Lester said.

“Not for my son and the hundreds if not thousands of Britons trapped there,” Slaine said.

“Yes, quite right, Jeremy, quite right,” Lester said, retreating.

“Time will tell,” Ben said. “In the interim, turning off the spigot is helpful.”

“And what of London and the surrounding areas?” the PM asked.

“That’s the bad-news part,” Ben said. “And it’s getting worse. It’s impossible to get our arms around the numbers but there are certainly thousands of Hellers who have already crossed. In an attempt to characterize their behaviors we’ve been tracking with drones and documenting the activities of a random selection of men, and I’d say at least ninety-five percent of Hellers appear to be men. Most of them will spend some time out in the open, on streets and parks, but almost all of them will enter shops, offices, or private dwellings staying put for hours to a day or more.”

“How do you know they’re Hellers?”

“It’s not perfect but mostly on the basis of their clothing. Of course, if they obtain modern clothes, we wouldn’t be able to differentiate them from the air. I spoke of deterioration. While we have been unable to respond to the vast majority of 999 emergency calls, our analysts have been actively monitoring social media postings from the many citizens who ignored evacuation orders. There has been a dramatic uptick in reports, photos, and videos of violence and mayhem perpetrated by aggressive Hellers. I’m sorry to report a deluge of murders, rapes, and even cannibalism, the latter undoubtedly at the hands of these rover gangs.”

Ben saw Lester turn away from the camera for several seconds. When his face was once again visible, his jaw seemed set, his eyes fiery.

“I’ve thought of little else since our last call,” Lester said. “I believe it’s time to reverse course. I didn’t wish to put our security forces in the impossibly difficult and dangerous position of policing urban areas where they couldn’t reliably distinguish between civilians and aliens.”

“Not to mention the possibility of getting caught up in expanding hot zones,” Ben added.

“Yes, that too. But I cannot in good conscience let the slaughter in our capital city continue. Enough is enough. It’s wholly my decision to make but I did consult with President Jackson to get the American view on this as they are our partners in the funding and operation of MAAC. The president concurs with my way of thinking and says he’d do the same if this were happening on American soil. Jeremy, I want you to deploy the army far more aggressively. I want a dramatic ramping up of boots on the ground, I want armed drones deployed over London, and I want the Drone Warfare Centre at RAF Waddington to develop rules of engagement.”

Ben saw Slaine vigorously nodding. Slaine had been arguing for these measures for the past several days.

“With respect, Prime Minister,” Ben said. “The deterioration we’re seeing was predicted. I don’t wish to be hard-hearted but we did ask for complete evacuation. Most of the two million or so people who did not heed the call did so voluntarily. Our warnings were explicit. Nevertheless, the vast majority of these people are safe, sheltering in place. If we deploy vastly more troops and armed drones, there will be terrible errors. We will kill our own citizens. Of that, there can be no doubt.”

Slaine answered. “I understand we now have some two hundred sniffer dogs trained to Heller smell.”

“That will be of limited help,” Ben said. “But we are dealing with six hundred square miles of territory. There will be many collateral deaths, and life or death drone decisions will be in the hands of remote operators in Lincolnshire with limited ability to identify friend versus foe.”

“I wasn’t planning on having the kill decision in their hands,” the prime minister said. “I’ll want MI5 to authorize each missile fire. It will be in your hands, Ben.”

They crept into Polly’s dark room trying not to wake her too suddenly.

Benona clicked on a table lamp. The low-wattage bulb revealed a shape under a comforter.

“Polly? It’s mama.”

From under the bedclothes came, “Is Brandon here?” Her head appeared. “Brandon, it is you!”

“How’d you know?” Woodbourne asked.

“I smelled you, silly. Where have you been?”

She held out her arms for a cuddle but seemed too weak to lift her head off her pillow. He bent down low and let her envelope his big head.

“I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you too.”

Benona touched her forehead. “You’re burning up,” she said. “I have medicine for you.”

“Is it icky medicine?”

“It’s pills. You’re a big girl. You can swallow.”

Benona went to the kitchen and returned with water. She sat the girl up and put two capsules in her mouth.

“I did it,” Polly said, showing her empty mouth.

“Good girl. Go back to sleep.”

“Brandon, will you be here when I wake up?”

“I’ll be here.”

In the living room Benona and Woodbourne looked at each other until he said, “I know. I smell.”

“Bath and cologne,” she said with a weak smile.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I was almost killed by these men, my daughter is sick, this man comes back to me from Hell, and you ask me if I’m all right?”

“I don’t know how to talk to people proper anymore.”

“Is okay, Brandon. You hungry?”

“Yes.”

“You go, I make some food.”

Later, he emerged from the bath wrapped in a towel, holding a bundle of his dirty clothes. She told him she’d wash them after dinner and sat him down on the sofa with a plate of meat pie and potatoes. She watched as he devoured it.

“You’re not eating?” he asked.

“Not hungry. I’m too worried about Polly. I want her to see a doctor.”

“Let’s take her.”

“The surgery is closed. They evacuated.”

“Because of us?”

“Yes. Many Hellers. Everyone ran away.”

“Not everyone. You’re here.”

“I didn’t want to go to fucking army camp in the north. Someone would come here and take few things I got. I would have gone back to Poland if I had money for travel. Looks like I made a mistake not going. I always make mistake in my life.”

“We can take her to the hospital.”

“I think they’re closed too. No one answers phone anywhere. It’s not safe on the streets.”

“I can protect you.”

Her eyes softened. “I know you can.”

“The pie was good. You got enough food?”

“Only thing I did right. I got plenty before the shops all closed.” She took his plate and put it in the sink. Without looking up she said, “I’m glad you came back.”

“I thought about you every minute I was back there.”

She kept her eyes on the suds she was making with the washing-up liquid. “You want to go to bed with me, Brandon?”

The answer came quickly. “Yes.”

Willie Oakley looked through the peephole into the hallway. He didn’t see anyone but that was little comfort. Someone could be lurking just out of view. He put his ear to the door. Once his hearing had been so acute he could hear a wristwatch ticking from his night table. Now his hearing was diminished. All his senses were diminished. Age did that.

As he gently pushed the door open he second-guessed himself. Did he really need to take out the trash? He was always a tidy man, a clean man. He didn’t like his flat smelling. His garbage disposal unit under his sink had packed up weeks ago and the management company had given him some poppycock about a back-ordered part. Those were the days when a back-ordered part was the problem. The managers, the maintenance people, the caregivers, even his fellow residents had evacuated the Battersea retirement complex, leaving him alone with his smelly trash. It was time to be bold, time to take the trash bags out to the wheelie bins, or at least the stairwell.