Kingdom: The Complete Series (50 page)

“
If
that's what they want,” says Mark, “then who are you to tell them otherwise?”

“
Who
am I?” asks the King. “Who are
you?
Who are you to rob these people of a
world without crime, without poverty and hunger?”

“
And
who are you,” says Mark, still struggling to breathe, “to rob them of a world
without fear?”

The King laughs. “All
this coming from a drunk man. What – were you in the pub when they shone the
bat signal?”

Mark says nothing,
pursing his lips.

“
Oh
-” says the King, stopping himself and laughing again. “Is that – is that just
how you spend your evenings? Glasgow's saviour: a drunk. That's... wow, that's
kind of poetic.”

“
I'm
no the one claiming to be Glasgow's saviour.”

“
No
– and if you were I'd laugh. A drunk. Is that what you were doing when my men
came for you? When the fire came for you? You were drinking yourself into a
hole weren't you?”

Mark says nothing –
he's still breathless.

“
I'll
bet the fire just felt like another round of the shakes for you. Do you
remember that feeling? I can practically still taste it, when that burning ball
of hatred came for me.” The King lowers his voice and for a moment, he isn't
gloating. He sounds genuine. “When it hit me, I was filled with such an intense
thirst for violence – for power, for revenge. It almost consumed me, turned me
feral like those mindless animals that tore the city apart. Do you remember
that?”

Mark frowns. “That
never happened to me.”

“
No?
Oh, of course,” he corrects himself, “you got the other alien, didn't you? The
green one.”

“
The
Protector.”

“
Aye,
him. Do you remember how he died?”

Mark says nothing.

“
He
was defeated, Mark. Do you remember? Beaten by the Destroyer – the thing that
gave you your powers was beaten by the thing that gave me mine. Do you think
that means anything? Did you notice that five of you haven't been able to so
much as bruise me yet?”

Snarling, Mark leaps
for him – but the King is ready.

Mark's first punch
misses, and the King grabs his arm, forcing it up and driving his elbow into
his exposed ribs. The weight of the blow drives the air from Mark's lungs;
spittle flies from his mouth. Before he can get away, the King swings him like
a hammer, throwing him through three metal aisles before he comes crashing to a
stop, still struggling for air.

As he gets up, the King
blinks into the air beside him, faster than Mark can track.

“
Don't
get up, Mark. Don't make this harder than it has to be.”

He tries to grunt a
reply, a scathing insult of some sort, but the words and the air won't come.
Nevertheless, he tries to sit up, and the King blurs into the air beside him,
punch after punch raining on his aching ribs. Mark gets his hands up to protect
himself, but the King just punches him elsewhere. Every time he moves his arms
to protect himself, the King targets another exposed area.

Mark screams, unable to
escape or fight back. In his thrashing, desperate attempts to free himself of
the King's assault, his foot finds purchase on the broken floor: he pushes with
all his strength, rocketing away from the King's anger and skidding across the
grimy floor.

The King leaps after
him and punches a small crater in the floor where Mark was a second ago, and
looks up, expecting to see him – but Mark is gone. Laughing, the King takes a
breath and puts his hands on his hips.

“
Hiding,
now? Not very heroic, Mark -”

Mark comes rocketing
out of the darkness like a missile, straight into the King's chest, cutting him
off mid-sentence. They tumble across the floor, until Mark ends up kneeling
over the King, hands around his throat. The King stares into his eyes, his face
trembling as Mark tries to choke the life from him.

The King smiles back at
him.

“
See?”
whispers the King, placing his palms on the edge of Mark's head like a proud
parent, even as Mark tightens his grip. “You can't kill me. There's nothing you
can do to stop me.
Nothing
.”

The King holds Mark's
head in his hands, and with such speed that Mark barely manages to react,
brings his hands around and forces his thumbs into Mark's eyes. Crying out,
Mark bats his hands and away and clutches his eyes, rolling away, scrambling
for cover.

He opens his eyes as he
stumbles to his feet, blinking twice to check that he's ok, and that's when the
King zips in again, delivering a flurry of blows to him that knocks him off his
feet.

Mark lies on the
ground, sobriety coming to him, blood trickling from his nose. He can barely
breathe, every movement is agony.

“
You
can no more stop
me
, Mark,” says the King, fixing his shirt cuffs, “than
you can stop the Earth from spinning. You'll be the first casualty – then your
friends. Decades from now, you'll only be remembered as a footnote: a man whose
greatest achievement was failing to stand in the way of real progress.”

The King stands over
Mark, cracks his knuckles, and kneels down. Like a doctor, he rolls up his
sleeves and rubs his palms together, placing them on either side of Mark's
head. Struggling, trying to roll away, Mark is helpless.

“
Shh,
shh,” whispers the King. “I'll make it quick, don't worry. It'll be quick -”

Before he can snap
Mark's neck, Mark grabs his hands by the wrists and yanks him down towards him,
bringing his head up at the same time and driving his forehead into the King's
nose. Reeling back, the King is open for a split second.

Mark leaps to his feet,
grabs the King by the throat, and jumps as hard as he can.

Trespasser One opens
his eyes, and looks around at his squad: they are silhouettes in the mist,
framed against the light of the moon.

“
What
-” he says, his voice a rasping whisper. “What happened?”

“
You
had severe internal haemorrhaging,” says Donald, leaning back and getting his
breath back. His nose is trickling blood, which Cathy cleans with a
handkerchief for him. He bats her away. “The King punched you.”

“
That
bastard has powers,” says Trespasser One. He sits up, looking around at a loss.
“Where's my gun?”

“
Guns
aren't any use,” says Jamie. “We need to get out of here.”

“
Wait
– where's the King?”

“
In
there with -”

 
The
roof explodes across the parking lot, and two entangled figures rocket into the
air, separating and vanishing into the darkness.

“
Oh
no,” whispers Jamie.

Stacy is at the wheel
of a car, speeding through the empty streets with the wipers whipping back and
forth.

“
Come
on, come on,” she whispers, running another red light. Her knuckles are white,
and she's shaking from both the cold and the adrenaline.

“
Stacy?”
comes a voice from the phone sitting on her thigh.

“
Chloe?”

“
Yeah
– listen, Jamie just reported in. They're ok”.

She lets out a tense
breath. “Oh thank god.”

“
They're
heading home.”

“
What
about Mark? Is he ok?”

“
Jamie
said he leapt into the sky with the King, roughly north judging from his
description. I'm listening to the police scanner for things falling from the
sky; it sounds like he's landed next to the Possilpark train station.”

“
Ok,
I'll head there and see if I can find him.”

“
No,
Stacy, listen -”

“
He
could be hurt, Chloe. He might need help.”

“
Stacy,
the King was with him. There's a fifty-fifty chance you'll find the King
instead of Mark: they're saying he has powers now, you won't stand a chance
against him.”

She digests this, and
shrugs. “He won't know who I am.”

“
It's
too risky, Stacy. Just come home, Mark's a tough lad, he'll be fine.”

Stacy looks at the road
ahead, her headlights cutting through the darkness, and then hangs up the
phone. She drives north.

Mark lies in a muddy
crater, letting the rain cleanse him. His stomach is a twisted, knotted mess
filled with bile and anxiety, and with every breath he can feel his ribs bend
and crack like old rusted steel.

Pale orange light finds
his skin, a flickering street light fighting against the darkness for a moment
before fizzling out with a pop. Groaning, Mark twists himself over and gets to
his knees, hunched in the sodden mud with his nose dripping blood.

He looks around and
sees nothing but empty buildings, boarded windows hanging off like worn
bandages. It's a place without life – like a tired old animal lying down and
accepting its fate.

Mark struggles to his
feet, one hand on his aching chest as he stumbles towards the abandoned
buildings. His feet slip on the mud, and the drink and the pain blur his
vision; everything is an inky smear, as though the rain is rinsing the world
away from him.

When he stumbles onto
the road, he's so out of it that Stacy almost runs him over.

Stacy parks the car and
throws herself out of it, turning the locks with her mind as she jogs towards
Mark. The cold rain hits her, stinging her flushed cheeks. Mark is still
standing in the middle of the road, looking at her with a mixture of confusion
and annoyance.

“
Stacy?”
he asks. His voice sounds like tearing metal.

“
Mark,”
she crosses her arms, and walks towards him like a cautious animal, one
deliberate step at a time. As she gets closer, the moonlight shows her the
bruises and cuts covering Mark's face, swollen and battered. “Christ,” she
whispers, “you look like hell.”

“
What
are you doing out here?” he asks her. She stands a few pace away from him,
uneasy about stepping in further.

“
I
came to get you. Everyone made it out. Come on, we can head back to the safe
house -”

“
I'm
not going back,” he says, and walks away, towards the abandoned houses.

“
Mark?”
she walks after him, her voice echoing through the hollow town. “Ok, let me get
you a drink or something -”

“
No
drink,” he shouts without turning.

He stops at a fence,
leaning on it with both hands like he's getting his breath back. Stacy catches
him up, standing behind him and looking up at the shells of houses. The rain
trickles from her soaked hair into her eyes, making her make-up run.

“
Look
at this. These houses were abandoned,” says Mark, staring down at the ground.
“There just wasn't any reason to stay for these people.”

“
Or
maybe,” she whispers, the rain plastering her hair against her forehead, “it
was because a massive alien nearly destroyed the world nearby.”

Mark silences her with
a look, and she shrugs. Glowering, Mark turns back to the empty houses.

“
He
was right.”

“
The
King?”

Mark nods. “Glasgow is
falling apart – there's nothing
here
anymore, and the people aren't
going to fix it unless someone leads them.”

“
So
lead them,” says Stacy.

“
They
won't follow an alcoholic.”

“
You're
not
an alcoholic, I've told you.”

“
Even
if people would follow my example,” he sighs. “There's no way to stop the King.
He's stronger and faster than me, and he doesn't need to be drunk to do it. He
won't let me help the city.”

“
There
has to be something we can do to him. I mean, even you need to breathe, right?”

“
Apparently
he
doesn't. I had my hands around his neck and – nothing. Plus, we can't
imprison him.”

“
So
what – we have to kill him?”

“
Don't
just say it like that, Stace.”

“
Why
not? He's a psychopath – a dangerous criminal hell-bent on controlling
everybody that he sees.”