Down: Trilogy Box Set (143 page)

“I’ll wind the clock back five minutes and let you see how this unfolded,” Major Garabedian said.

Ben watched as one man, then three, then a dozen, then more began materializing in the empty town centre.

“Can you give us some magnification?” the prime minister asked.

Close-up views showed men in non-modern clothes, peering into shop windows and cars, some walking in small, uncertain circles, some shielding their eyes from the sun.

“I’d say they’re Hellers,” Garabedian said. “No doubt in my mind.”

A voice Ben didn’t immediately recognize came on the line. “I concur.” It was Jeremy Slaine who was at the prime minister’s side in Manchester.

“Upminster was rock-solid until now,” Ben said. “What’s happening in the other hot zones?”

“They’ve been quiet. Just checking again,” Garabedian said. I’m putting up real-time images now.”

Dartford and Sevenoaks were deserted. Then Ben spotted something on the feed from Leatherhead.

“Hang on, could you zoom in on Leatherhead near the white van and the red car?” he said. “Yes there.”

One man was carrying another man on his shoulder. On further magnification, the men were wearing the SAS camouflage fatigues specially provided for the mission. The man being carried appeared to be missing part of his right leg.

Slaine said, “This looks like a wounded man being evacuated. I’ll inform the 3 Commando Brigade outside Leatherhead that they’re coming their way.”

“Right, keep an eye on this,” the prime minister said, “but let’s get back to Upminster. I think this must be very bad news for Captain Greene’s D Group. I can’t help but conclude they’ve been over-run.”

“I’d have to agree,” Ben said.

“What are our orders, sirs?” Garabedian said.

“What assets do we have over Upminster?” Lester asked.

“One Predator overhead, a Reaper two minutes out.”

“Ben,” the prime minister said, “I believe I know my mind on this but I want to hear from you.”

Ben thought about Woodbourne, lying in a pool of blood next to the Polish woman. He knew he’d been a murderer and yet, he’d tried to help that little girl. There had to have been some good in him. And these Hellers flooding Upminster. How many of them were thoroughly and unrepentably evil? Did all of them deserve what they were about to receive?

Ben wet his lips with his tongue and swallowed the moisture so his voice wouldn’t sound too thin.

“I am concerned about how many will get through our security cordon. I fear there’re too many of them to contain. I think we need to act before they disperse.”

“I have to agree, and Jeremy Slaine is nodding his approval,” the prime minister said. “Major Garabedian, you may fire.”

A few seconds later Upminster centre erupted in a fireball that forced Ben to shut his eyes. When he did he saw the image of Woodbourne lying on the floor, his pool of blood merging with the Polish woman’s. Ben couldn’t shake the feeling that Woodbourne’s dead eyes seemed to be staring directly into hers.

Angus and the boys were desperately afraid of the dark woods but equally afraid of the road. One held the danger of rovers and wild animals, the other the danger of Bess and Ardmore. It had been Stuart’s idea to prevent getting lost by keeping to the woods with the road never more than twenty yards away. In the pitch dark with all the uneven ground and myriad obstacles achieving that proved difficult. By the time dawn came, the boys were surrounded by woods, the road nowhere to be found.

Fortunately for Glynn, Harry had woken up soon after Angus decked him, and though he moaned all night that his face hurt, at least Glynn didn’t have to carry him for long.

In the meager light of early morning, surrounded by towering pine trees, the boys took stock of themselves. All of them were scuffed and bruised from tripping on roots and vines and bashing into branches but Harry complained more than anyone, rubbing at his swollen jaw and split, blood-caked lip.

Angus couldn’t take it any longer.

“Shut your mouth before I shut it again,” he shouted. Danny shushed him and pointed randomly into the woods as a reminder that Bess might be out there somewhere. Lowering his voice Angus fumed, “Boris is dead because of you and all you can do is winge and cry like a little fairy.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Harry moaned. “I didn’t want to go. If he’d just let me stay none of this would’ve happened.”

“I think you really ought to shut up, Harry,” Kevin said. “You’re pressing your luck.”

“I’m thirsty,” Andrew said. “We’ve got to find some water.”

“We need three things,” Stuart said. “We need water, food, and we need to find the road.”

“Four things,” Danny said. “We also need weapons.” He picked up a long piece of fallen branch and snapped it in two over his knee. “I’ll be in charge of that.”

“We stay together,” Angus said. “If we split up we’ll never find each other again.”

Stuart began examining all the trees in the immediate area and said, “Do you think the moss grows on trees like it does back home?”

Harry didn’t seem sure if he was allowed to speak so he raised his hand first.

“There’s no direct sunlight here because of cloud cover but since the geography seems to be the same as in Earth, my guess is that the solar system in this parallel world has the same configuration. After all there are similar light and dark cycles. Since we’re in the northern hemisphere, there still should be some subtle differences in the temperature on one side of trees than the other.”

“Does anyone have any idea what Shitley just said?” Nigel asked.

“He said that moss ought to be growing on the north side of the trees,” Stuart said, “which means that way is north.”

Angus looked around the forest. “The farm was on the north side of the road and we definitely never crossed the road last night. London is northeast of Devon so the road has to be southeast of us.”

“That way,” Stuart pointed.

“All right,” Angus said, “Danny, you’re in charge of making everyone a walking and fighting stick, Stuart, you’re the outdoorsman, so you need to find edible mushrooms and berries, that type of thing, and all of us need to listen for the sound of running water as we go, and the first one to spot the road gets a gold star. No, I take that back. Stuart gets the gold star for letting the sheep out of the pen last night.”

To laughs and whistles, Stuart took a deeply appreciative bow.

They walked for hours without finding water or anything remotely edible, though Danny did make a half-hearted attempt to club something under a bush he thought might be a snake or a rabbit. Each boy except for Harry, who declined, did wind up with a stout stick and a pocket full of rocks. And it was a beaming Andrew who finally claimed the prize for spotting the road.

It was empty.

They were so tired of walking on boggy, uneven ground, weaving through trees and thorny bushes that they allowed themselves the luxury of tramping for a while on the hard, flat road. Their luck seemed to be changing, for shortly afterwards Glynn heard a gentle gurgling noise which they followed back into the woods, throwing themselves on the ground to gulp beautifully cold water from a small creek.

After they could drink no more, Harry sent them into paroxysms of laughter by asking whether they thought the water was safe.

They rested for a few minutes until Angus exhorted them to get moving again.

“We should stick to the woods now,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” Glynn said. “Just a while longer on the road. I’ll keep an eye out to the rear if you watch the front.”

“All right,” Angus said, “but the last thing we need is to run into Bess.”

“Maybe she isn’t even following us,” Nigel said.

“She’ll be coming,” Kevin said. “Know how I know?”

“How?” Danny asked.

“Because she’ll be missing her little Harry bedtime stories.”

“Did you tell her your favorite ones?” Nigel asked. “Goodnight Moon? Ant and Bee?”

“No, that’s not it,” Glynn said, “It was probably shit about the universe in a Stephen Hawking computer voice.”

“Leave me alone,” Harry shouted, “just leave me alone!”

He ran off crying toward the road, his face getting whipped by the branches he failed to deflect.

“Come on, Harry, we didn’t mean it,” Nigel shouted. Then to the others he giggled, “Yes we did.”

“Let’s go after him,” Angus said.

Harry kept running, ignoring Angus’s calls to wait up. Angus yelled again for him to stop and as the woods gave way to the road, Harry turned to shout back, “Leave me alone!”

The huge black horse hit the small boy, throwing him into the air and as he landed in the road, the front and rear hooves trampled the life out of him.

Angus and the others emerged from the woods and stopped to stare in mute horror. It was impossible to know which was worse, the sight of Harry’s broken and bloody body or Ardmore, swinging his leg off his black horse and drawing a pistol from his belt.

Bess climbed down from her wagon, ran to Harry’s side and knelt beside him.

“He’s dead,” she said. Her tone wasn’t sorrowful, it was angry. She pointed a bony finger at Angus. “This is your fault, Angus. Now you’re going to pay. Shoot him, Ardmore. Put a bullet into his hateful face.”

Angus couldn’t seem to move. Ardmore’s arm was raised, the pistol at pointblank range. The other boys also were frozen in fear.

There was a high-pitched sound, a crescendo of a whine, as if the air was being parted. Ardmore dropped his pistol. Though cocked it didn’t discharge.

“Ardmore!” Bess screamed, running over and half-catching him as he slid onto the road. Her fingers latched onto the short length of bolt protruding from his chest but it was too well seated to pull it out.

Ardmore sputtered and tried to speak but the only thing coming out of his mouth was red froth.

She let out a blood-curdling “No!” and sought out the solitary rider up the road who was loading another bolt into his crossbow and kicking his reluctant horse to a gallop.

Bess shouted at her outriders, “Get him!”

None of her three henchmen had firearms but they had swords and though Trevor was pointing a crossbow at them they charged him full on. Trevor was bouncing in the saddle too heavily to aim another shot carefully. He chose the horse coming at him the fastest and fired at its huge brown mass. The mare pitched forward into an earth-thudding somersault, steamrolling the rider and crushing his pelvis.

Trevor threw the crossbow down and with one hand on the reins he pulled his loaded pistol from his satchel and cocked it. The two other riders were almost on top of him. He pulled the trigger but the powder must have been damp. The gun didn’t fire.

One of the swordsmen slashed at his horse’s neck. The wounded animal whipped around so forcefully that Trevor was thrown clear. He scrambled to his feet, drawing his own sword just in time to parry a series of blows from the closest rider while the other man dismounted to challenge Trevor on foot.

The sword fight played out some fifty feet from the boys. “Who is he?” Glynn asked the others.

“I don’t know but he’s trying to help us,” Angus said.

Bess had been cradling Ardmore’s head in her lap but now she gently lowered it to the ground and reached for his gun.

Angus saw what she was doing and so did the other boys. They all began to scatter but stopped when she didn’t pursue them. Instead she slowly walked toward the clashing swordsmen.

Trevor’s back was turned; he didn’t see Bess coming. Her shooting arm was extended straight and unwavering as if the heavy pistol was weightless.

Glynn was by Angus’s side. “We have to stop her,” Angus said.

They both still had their heavy walking sticks. Glynn caught up with Bess first and swatted her across the back, cracking the stick in two. She didn’t fall, she didn’t cry out. She merely turned to Glynn and calmly fired into his forehead.

Angus screamed, an agonized guttural scream, and he began laying into her with his stick. She shielded her face with one arm and reached into her trousers with the other. That’s when Angus saw she had cocked her own pistol. All he could do was continue to flail at her but she seemed immune to pain. She was too strong.

Angus heard footsteps coming from behind and then, in a blur, he saw all the other boys—Nigel, Danny, Stuart, Kevin, even frail Andrew—swinging their sticks at Bess, preventing her from raising her gun hand. Then Danny delivered a lunging strike to her breastbone and she fumbled the pistol.

Angus picked it up.

The gunshot tore into her jaw, ripping the mandible clean away.

The man who was fighting Trevor on foot momentarily turned toward the blast giving Trevor a split-second edge. A vicious downward thrust cleaved the man’s shoulder. He reeled away and staggered into the woods. The swordsman on horseback saw Bess lying in a pool of blood and decided he was done. He turned toward Devon and soon, all that remained was a trail of dust.

Trevor put his hands on his knees to catch his breath and after several moments, began walking toward the boys.

“Is one of you Angus Slaine?” he called out.

Angus let the smoking pistol fall from his hand. “I am.”

Trevor saw two boys motionless in the road. He counted six of them standing. “There were ten of you,” Trevor said.

Angus began to cry. He managed to say, “Glynn, dead. Harry, dead. Boris, dead. Craig, dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Who are you?” Angus asked.

“My name’s Trevor. Your father sent me to find you. I’m here to bring you home.”

They covered the distance from Paris to Cologne in one full day, showing their true colors through Francia, but disguising themselves as a caravan of Russian soldiers when they crossed the border into Germania. They were split between two sturdy, covered wagons, each pulled by a team of excellent horses. Traversing the French territories, Brian and John drove one wagon with Emily, Sergeant O’Malley and Trooper Culpepper riding inside. Simon and Caravaggio drove the other team, with the Russian, Ostrov, under wraps. Inside Germania, Ostrov emerged to drive the lead wagon and talk his way through the Russian checkpoints while Simon and Caravaggio hid inside.