Kingdom: The Complete Series (40 page)

“
Not
yet,” whispers Jamie.

He flexes the muscle in
his mind, and time judders to a halt. The colour – the burning redness in
everything – fades, leaving only the grey chill of that dark moment.

Looking down at his
dying friend, he wipes a stubborn tear from his eye, and turns and runs through
the frozen second.

Jamie spares a glance
back at the Destroyer, caught in the moment as it lashes out again, a whip of
fire cutting through a strike helicopter as it falls in mid-air.

Jamie sprints through
time, heading for a burning convenience store across the road, hoping with all
of his heart that they stock whiskey.

Series
2 Finale

Apocalypse

The squad flinch as
Jamie vanishes and then reappears, crouched over Mark's charred and smoking
body. He has formed his arms into a basket, and drops a collection of glass
bottles at Mark's side, kneeling in the blackened crater.

Nobody says a thing; he
begins to unscrew the first bottle of single malt whiskey.

The sky above them is
dark red, swirling with angry crimson clouds and pillars of ash and dust. Smoke
rises in great black globs from the burning remains of Glasgow's city centre.
There are no lights in the sky; no aircraft, no stars; only the occasional,
hopeless burst of heavy gunfire tracing its way across the blood-red darkness.

Like a burning heart,
the expanding red orb above George's Square pulses and beats. With every
passing moment it burns the city's skin like a rogue sun. It gets hotter and
hotter beneath the Destroyer's glare, until the air is a sizzling haze
scorching their skin.

Glasgow is burning.

There is nothing but
smoke and darkness, long shadows cast by the glare of the Destroyer and the
towering flames of the ruined city. The lights are all off – even the
Trespasser's watch has stopped. Buildings lay lop sided, helicopters evacuating
the last survivors lie in wreckage. Great gouts of flame erupt from the city
where bombers and jet-fighters have fallen from the sky, their electronics
killed with the flick of a switch.

In the middle of hell,
in the throes of the apocalypse, and with the world burning around them, the
squad watch Jamie begin to pour whisky over Mark's dying body.

The alcohol sizzles and
pops as it boils on Mark's skin, and the burnt hero twitches as steam bursts
from the breaks in his scabbing skin. Jamie shakes the bottle empty, dashing it
over Mark's face, his chest, his arms. He tosses it aside and unscrews the top
on a second bottle.

“
You're
hurting him,” says Donald, moving to take the bottle from Jamie. Trespasser One
stays Donald's hand, holding him back.

“
Why
is it so hot?” asks Stacy, rubbing her red and blistering skin beneath her
overalls.

“
The
Destroyer is going to turn everything to ash,” says Jamie as he works, pouring
the third bottle over Mark. This one sparks less, and the steam gives a gentler
hiss. Something, at least, is happening. “That's what the Protector said,
right? It'll turn or absorb who it can, then burn everything.”

“
Trespasser,
I can see -” begins Cathy, pointing past the Trespasser. He turns, following
her finger, and sees a humanoid figure with leathery wings descend from a
rooftop into the middle of the road, red fire surrounding it like a demon from
myth.

The Trespasser draws
his pistol and puts two rounds through its head, the cold determination in his
eyes extinguishing the monster's flame. It falls to the boiling pavement
without a sound.

“
What
was
that?” asks Gary.

“
Nothing,”
says the Trespasser. “Keep pouring, Jamie.”

Jamie pours the fourth
bottle on. Mark has stopped screaming now: there is only the silence, the
splashing, the stench of burning alcohol; of burnt flesh. Jamie keeps going.

“
Another
one,” shouts Donald, looking past the Trespasser.

This one is a woman –
evident from her small, frail figure – and she is pacing towards them from the
smoking pillar of a burnt-out car. Her gait is unusual, as though she is trying
to balance on ice.

The Trespasser fires
two shots from his pistol, and nothing happens. The bullets pass straight
through her as though she is made of smoke.

Because, he realises,
she is.

She dissipates like a
cloud, and reforms as she passes through a twisted hunk of metal that was once
a lamp post, hovering towards them like a swarm with a dull, lifeless stare,
black pits where her eyes should be.

“
Gary,
forcefield.”

Gary throws a field up
around them, a blue oily bubble that gives them a moment's reprieve from the
heat. The girl keeps coming towards them, extending her hands, her fingers
blowing away in the wind like torn fabric.

She reaches through
Gary's forcefield with ease, and the Trespasser puts three rounds through her
head. The bullets pass through her as though she were a projection, and the
soldier stumbles back, his mind racing as she drifts towards him like a ghost.

Lowering his pistol,
the Trespasser draws his tazer and presses it against an un-armoured segment of
his suit. The girl reaches for his heart, her hand passing through his chest
with a cold, clammy sensation, like a knife sliding through his skin.

He gasps, his muscles
seizing up; he fires the tazer.

The electricity passes
through his body, shocking him – and her. She screams, her jaw unhinging as her
face turns to shapeless smoke and her body loses its consistency. For a second
she is real, her skin stretching and twisting as her distorted, impossible body
becomes flesh and bone, her skeleton snapping under her disjointed form.

Gary takes that second
and closes his eyes: he grits his teeth and forms a forcefield around her.

With a grunt of effort,
Gary collapses the forcefield into a tiny bubble, crushing the girl into a
shapeless ball of human remains. Releasing his hold on her with a gasp, he
falls to his knees, muttering under his breath.

“
It's
ok Gary,” says Cathy, scrambling towards him as he starts to shake. “It's ok,
son -”

“
She
was just a girl. Just a young lass.”

Cathy crouches over him
and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“
You
did what you had to son, you did what you had to,” she repeats, over and over,
firm and reassuring. His breathing relaxes as she pulls him into an embrace.

Stacy rips the tazer
wires out, and the Trespasser stops jittering on the ground, catching his
breath, still shaking.

“
You
ok man?” asks Stacy.

His heart is still
pounding, and without answering her he turns around: Mark has stopped shaking
and steaming. Donald is watching in awe as Mark's skin begins to knit itself
back together, the scabbed skin dropping off.

Jamie opens Mark's
mouth and starts to let dribbles from the last bottle in. He splutters and
coughs, but his throat pulls the drink down as though it is air and he is
drowning. Mark's hands finally move as his burnt muscles repair themselves, and
he clutches at his face and his eyes, groaning in agony.

More figures appear out
of the smoke across Buchanan Street.

“
Cathy,
make us vanish,” the Trespasser tells her as he gets to his feet and reloads
his pistol.

“
Ok,
everybody get in close,” she says, and motions for them to crouch around her
like a mother protecting her children.

She crouches beside
Mark, who is beginning to resemble a human again. Swathes of scorched skin
slide off his body as fresh pink skin restores itself. They watch his muscles
snap back into place as bone knits itself to his black-burned skeleton. Where
once his flesh was torn open and his damaged organs were visible, there is
newly healed skin. His face and his broken bones click back together.

“
Donald,
help him out,” says Jamie, looking up at the awe-struck doctor.

Donald obliges, laying
his hands upon Mark's body. Together, with the alcohol repairing his broken
form and Donald pushing his healing fire through Mark's veins, the super-man
begins his return from the edge of death.

Then the fog falls
around them as they form a human chain between them all. Swirling mist pulls
them away from the hellish inferno, from the battlefield in the centre of their
city.

For a gracious moment,
as long as Cathy's armband remains green, they have peace. The heat can't touch
them here.

They turn, hearing Mark
gasp and take a deep breath.

He sits upright,
opening his wide, brown eyes and clutching his naked chest. Running a hand over
his regrown hair and the new skin across his face, Mark laughs; and then breaks
into tears.

“
I'm
ok,” he whispers. Jamie throws his arms around his friend and embraces him. “I
was blind, I was dying, I was -”

“
You're
ok,” says Jamie. “That's all that matters.”

“
I'm
sorry – I failed, I'm so sorry -”

“
That's
enough,” says the Trespasser, leaning over and grabbing his arm. “You did what
you could.”

“
The
Destroyer's won,” says Mark, still clutching Jamie's shoulder and Donald's
hand. Around them, the mist blows like a swirling dream, cool and forgiving.
Cathy's armband flashes orange. “The Protector is dead – Glasgow's burning,
isn't it?”

Trespasser One nods.
“He took out our electronics as well. We're blind, deaf; defenceless. He's
going to burn everything to the ground – whatever his minions don't destroy
first.”

“
We
need a plan,” says Donald.

“
Hurry
up,” groans Cathy. “I can't do this much longer.”

“
Hang
on Cath.” Stacy pats her shoulder. “You're doing great.”

“
If
everything else is offline,” says Mark, “then we've only got one weapon.”

“
You,”
says the Trespasser.

“
And
I can't fight that thing,” says Mark. “The shield is too strong.”

“
The
Protector said we had to hit it with immense force concentrated in a small
area, right?” asks Jamie. “What about jumping into it?”

“
Tried
it,” says Mark. “Didn't work. If I could fly, maybe, and get up some speed, but
-”

“
It's
too late to learn to fly, Mark.”

Mark looks around at
them, the eyes of his squad staring at him with hope. He swallows his fear and
nods.

“
Maybe
it is,” he shrugs. “But any idiot can fall.”

“
What
are you saying?”

“
Get
me in a chopper, or onto a jet or something, and fly me above it. I can drop
off and hit it at speed – maybe fast enough to pierce the shield.”

“
Nothing
works, Mark – all our electronics are gone, that means no flight.”

“
I
don't need electricity,” says Stacy, her eyes widening. “I can make a
helicopter work.”

“
For
long enough to fly that high?” asks Mark. “You could die, Stace.”

“
I'm
getting better,” she shrugs. “We have to try.”

“
The
Destroyer would blow us out the sky,” says Donald. “You've seen what that thing
can do.”

“
Only
if it can hit us,” says Jamie. “Gary, myself, Cath – we can all protect the
chopper whilst it flies.”

“
And
if Stacy can work the rotors, I can help her pilot it,” says the Trespasser.

Donald shrugs. “I can
probably help Stacy if she starts to struggle – use my fire to help hers.”

“
Where
would we get a helicopter?” asks Mark, his face stern and unflinching now.

“
The
St Enoch's Centre,” says Trespasser One. “There were choppers there evacuating
soldiers and the last of the civilians. One or two of them might still be
there,” says the Trespasser. “We can go through the subway tunnels – it might
be cooler down there too.”

“
Guys...”
groans Cathy. Her armband flashes to red.

“
Ok,
let's move. Be ready to fight,” says the Trespasser.

“
Oh,
I'm ready,” says Mark, standing up out of his crater.

“
Not
quite yet you aren't,” says Jamie.

The Destroyer has
burned away Mark's shorts, leaving him naked.

“
Oh.”

The air flickers as
Jamie stops time and donates Mark the pair of shorts he was wearing beneath his
overalls.

“
That's
better,” says Mark. “Ok, Cath. Let's go.”

The Trespasser readies
his pistol, and the whole group tense up, ready for a fight.

With the roaring,
burning sound of the Destroyer's wrath screaming all around them, the mist
dissipates, revealing Glasgow at the end of the world: nothing but burning
buildings, ash and brimstone.

Three figures emerge
from the red, burning darkness. They begin to walk towards the squad, but this
time Mark smashes into them like a cannon-ball, bowling them over as he punches
and kicks his way free, shouting a slurring challenge.

The squad roar a
hesitant battle-cry and follow him into the fray.