Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Here it comes,’ said Fillide, taut as a drum. She had her sword securely holstered in the rig on her back, and gripped her semi-automatic rifle loosely. The muscles of her shoulders were knotted; her mouth formed a thin snarl. Her eyes stared, calm and unblinking. Tom wondered how many battles she had fought in her previous home. And how many wounds she had suffered on this planet, in a body that could not easily die.

  The house stopped shuddering. The windowsills crumbled, and fell off.

  Then the house collapsed, like a battered boxer finally falling down to the canvas. The terrace of East End houses now had a gaping gap. Number 13 Ildminster Square was just a mountain of rubble.

  The rubble stirred; and the creatures began to appear.

  The first was just a shadow, a whisper; then it was gone. Taff and Seamus fired rapid tap-taps from their semi-automatics, but the demon had vanished before it could truly be seen.

  Fillide fired once, randomly it seemed, and a second creature was winged. Six-legged, dragonlike, ICH 3-23 or 3-24. She fired again and this time the silver bullet exploded within the creature’s hide, spattering gobbets of hell flesh and black blood. As the toxic bullet fragments did their work inside it, there was a screeching sound, like fingers scraping down a blackboard, heightened to a deafening pitch. Silver flails whipped the air; and the creature itself was revealed. Its soul, its essence; burning in the air.

  Within a few seconds of the first SCREECH, the creature was extirpated.

  Nothing was left but remnants of molten flesh for the wind to pick up, and scatter over the Earth for all eternity; for such otherly stuff can never decay or be assimilated.

  Tom held his fire. He’d use the Glock for close-range work, he resolved. His eyes scanned the scene. Above him wings flapped like thunder claps and three flying demons appeared in the air – bat-winged, bat-eared, with dragon’s heads and arrowed bows in their claws. Tom recognised them as Beelzebub’s Brood: the shock troops of the demon dimension.

  Arrows rained down from the flying beasts and Fillide and Taff and Seamus fired a hail of shots up with the automatic rifles and all of their shots missed.

  Billy Gilroy took a hit – an arrow in his thigh – and he ripped it from his flesh. But Tom knew that the mere touch of the arrowhead would set fires burning in his blood. Billy was a big man, it was a small wound; yet he was dead in seconds.

  Cameras flashed like strobes, as the crazy paparazzi refusing to heed the call of common sense and flee. Tom’s eyes continued to scan.

  One Brood swooped down and a photographer was ripped limb from limb. Tom raised his Glock and fired and hit the beast, but the bullet bounced off.

  A moment later Fillide fired a single rifle round that hit and ripped through the monster’s hide. The SCREECH noise was heard again and the creature’s silver soul died in mid-air, and its body fragments rained upon the parked cars. The other two creatures flew away, too fast to shoot, leaving jet-black contrails in the sky.

  Suddenly, both of them erupted into novas of yellow flame; a dopplering double SCREECH echoed faintly, then the sky was blue again. A moment later, they heard a familiar engine thrum, and saw a police Harrier II jet hovering in mid air. Its GAU Gatling-type cannons had sped a hail of silver missiles anointed by warlocks towards the Brood beasts; two direct hits had been scored.

  Another Brood swept down from nowhere and Fillide was in its claws. Tom fired and fired again; all his pistol shots hit the creature, three bullets on its head and two on its body, but all bounced off.

  Fillide was in mid-air now. She had dropped her gun but drew her sword as the claws ripped her flesh. And she hacked away with her silver sword as the creature bucked in the air, her slim body gripped in its powerful claws.

  Tom looked up as the aerial battle raged. Fillide’s blood was gushing out like water from a sewer pipe, but she kept hacking away furiously, and entire chunks of the hell beast fell from the sky. Finally she chopped off its head, and SCREECH!! The silver wraith billowed. The demon bird lost its grip on life and was gone forever.

  Fillide fell out of its claws and tumbled to earth, and smashed against the ground with a brutal sound.

  Tom rushed to her. Blood was pouring from her head. Her limbs were misshapen; one of her arms was missing. Her beauty had been turned to bloody meat in moments, and Tom’s heart beat out of synch as he beheld her.

  Two Apache helicopters appeared in the air, their rotors thundering, and unleashed twin fusillades of fire-and-forget missiles upon the laser-targeted site of the Hell Breach itself. Tom closed his eyes. Yet through his lids he could see the flashes of light as missile after missile erupted.

  He could hear a thudding noise – he recognised it as a Chinook, bearing its load of clean-up troops. Then a second chopper, and a third; each transport helicopter would carry, Tom knew, a payload of forty-four London Army warriors.

  When Tom opened his eyes Fillide was staggering to her feet, bloody, her body broken, her arm stump gouting red blood, her skull a strange lozenge shape, but grinning.

  ‘Let battle,’ she said, ‘commence.’

  Chapter 28

  Creatures from the voids of Hell were exploding like fireworks out of the mountain of bricks that once had been the Gogarty house.

  There were some as black as night and many as red as blood; there were hordes that were slime green and oozing damp; others that had no colour but seemed to leach light into their bodies as they leaped, making the air around them paler.

  There were winged creatures that flapped and flew, and many-legged creatures that ran, and no-legged creatures that slunk and slithered; and horned beasts dribbling acid from gaping mouths. There were hound-like creatures too, with three or more snarling heads apiece, tails sharp as daggers, howling with desire for human flesh.

  Twenty minutes had elapsed since the Breach. Tom was now in full battle armour, part of an army of troops that encircled the Gogarty house.

  Tom kept his kneeling position, despite his aching joints.

  The hell beasts from Gogarty’s garden advanced, chaotically. They whooped and hurtled over the rubble of the house like jackals in an abattoir. There were so many monsters they were fighting each other to reach the humans. Powerful blows were traded as the beasts vied for first chance to slaughter their enemy. Claws lashed, and teeth bit throats or haunches, and so much thick demon blood was spilled it left the monsters slipping and sliding in their own mess.

  ‘Go go go! Kill the hell fuckers!’ came the cry over their earpieces.

  From behind Tom, mortars erupted. Pillars of smoke tainted the air yellow, as shells filled with magic-infused napalm crashed upon the screaming beasts.

  Tom was close to the Javelin team: two London Army soldiers in charge of a shoulder-launched Javelin anti-tank rocket they were aiming at the Gogarty house. One soldier squatted with the tube upon his shoulder, as his companion loaded up a missile. For safety’s sake, they occupied their own kill-zone: a long corridor had been opened up in the rows of testudos to their rear; and thus they stood like Jews in the midst of a Biblical sea that had parted behind them and all around. The kneeling soldier pulled the trigger and the missile flew and a backblast of flame erupted from the rear of the rocket tube - a yellow and white balloon of billowing plasma that would have incinerated anyone stupid enough to be standing in its path.

  A moment later the missile reached its target in the rubble of the Gogarty house, and exploded. Bricks and demon flesh spewed into the air. The monsters roared with rage.

  The holy-cannons erupted, and fat bubbles of thrice-blessed water flew through the air, and pounded and splashed the creatures and seared their flesh. Scores of automatic assault rifles rattled off fusillades of silver bullets that plunged deep into demon bodies, before exploding into splinters of agonising magic toxicity.

  The first tier of infantry officers sank on to their knees and commenced to reload, while the armed officers in the second tier, Tom included, stood up and fired. Until the air was very near
full to the brim with flying bullets.

  Meanwhile the Chinooks circled above, pissing down holy water in torrents.

  Tom calmly kept his position, firing off a relentless hail of bullets.

  Shells landed and splattered gobbets of skin and muscle. Demonic skins were lashed by blessed water that burned and never ceased to burn. The air was misty with blood. Tom realised he was screaming with joy: this was war! And he was revelling in it!

  Fillide was by his side, her severed left arm still only partially regrown. But her strength was undimmed and she seemed well able to handle an automatic rifle one-handed.

  The constantly updated holo images projected into the air from Tom’s e-berry gave him an overview of the battlespace, showing that the first phase of the assault against the demons had only been partially successful. Many hell bastards had died, but many more were being birthed out of the legs and heads and splattered organs of the corpses. Like slime evolving into dragons in the space of a heartbeat, the hell bastards were reborn, and continued with their raging attack.

  ‘Incoming! Infantry, back up, Over.’

  The police ranks fell back, holding shields aloft, as fighter planes spat down rockets. The pavement outside the Gogarty house shattered as the missiles struck, and many demons fell down the chasm created by the exploding shells. As they fell, bewitched napalm bombs were hurled upon them; burning them as they tried to scramble out of the trench. The reek of Saturnian incense blew back upon the massed police ranks and overwhelmed Tom’s nostrils. It was a noxious blend of asafoetida, civet, henbane, musk, myrrh, mandrake, opium, sulphur and the powdered brains of live-slaughtered black cats. In its unadulterated form, the stench was like inhaling fumes from a vat of acid.

  Tom forced himself to ignore the noise and the smells, and he settled into a rhythm: the deadly calm of slaughter. Fire a flurry of bullets, kneel, clip on another magazine. Stand. Fire a flurry of bullets, kneel, clip on another magazine. Stand.

  The hell bastards advanced towards them –

  Mortars landed. Limbs flew in air.

  The hell bastards advanced –

  Dum-dum silver bullets ripped demon bodies apart and left slime and twitching limbs upon the ground.

  The hell bastards advanced towards them –

  Sheets of enchanted fire blazed from the flamethrowers, turning the advancing monsters into fireballs. The Chinooks swooped and doused the flames with holy water. Screams, once again, filled the air.

  A new and larger missile – a Tomahawk or a Harpoon, Tom guessed - soared through the air like a seagull and landed in the pit nose-down, and a moment later, exploded. Smoke billowed. Tom opened his eyes, but lights still flashed on his retina.

  The soldiers and cops who encircled the Gogarty house breathed in the thick muggy fumes spawned from this latest missile. The fumes spread like mist on an autumn’s morning; all were instantly intoxicated. Tom realised this must be the true dark incense, made from the brains and hearts of human corpses, thrice-cursed, wadded inside the payload, and now let loose upon the winds by the blast.

  Tom felt dizzy and exhilarated and depressed and horny. You’d have to pay good money to get smoke half so good as this in a sleazy Soho dive.

  But those same fumes were toxic to the hell-born. And so the advancing hell creatures sucked in the poisoned air and could not even scream, so great was their pain. And more bullets rained upon them, ripping them apart. Silver wraiths billowed like clouds. And –

  It was a rout, Tom realised. The hell bastards were terrifying and awesome; yet in truth, they were so very easily slain. He began to wonder if -

  The battle turned.

  Legions of the Damned began to emerge out of the pit and on to the street. Another incense bomb exploded but to no avail; the damned were immune to the toxic effects of enchanted incense. And they were too fast and skilful to be easily shot. They leaped over the flailing hell bastards like waves over a sinking ship, and screamed vengeance upon the living.

  Bullets were fired in horizontal hail storms; they were dodged by the resurrected warriors, or absorbed into bodies that cannot easily die. Flame throwers and mortars ignited some of the damned, but others ran past the fireballs, undaunted.

  The damned host advanced with dazzling speed upon the police and army ranks. Swords drawn, axes brandished, fanged teeth glittering. Tom took a deep breath.

  These damnèd creatures had, he knew, once been human beings: frail vessels of soft flesh, just like Tom himself. But they had evolved over their millennia in the hell dimension until their humanity was now just an eerie echo. Sometimes no more than a few fragments of skin upon a flayed be-muscled corpse.

  These warriors could leap in huge bounds. Their fists could punch through armour. Their skin was stronger than steel. They were more powerful, some of them, than all but the most mighty of demons. And they were consumed with hatred.

  For a moment Tom feared that the humans were facing defeat.

  Then a voice screamed in his earpiece: ‘All soldiers with guns pull back, damned warriors and any fucker who can handle a sword – advance! In good order, please. Thank you, Out.’

  ‘Fall back, child,’ Fillide told Tom, in tones of scorn.

  But Tom drew his short sword and his automatic pistol, and stepped forward.

  Fillide gave him a sceptical look. ‘Do not falter,’ she told him sternly.

  ‘I never,’ he told her, in a wobbly voice, ‘falter.’

  Side by side with Fillide and two score damned detectives and several hundred damned soldiers and the boldest and fittest of the human soldiers and SCO19 officers, Tom advanced into the fray.

  As he walked he could hear, in the distance, the monotonous shouting of negotiators with microphones who kept up a tirade of propaganda. Begging the creatures from the demon dimension to surrender and face the mercy of humankind. But in truth, these days there was no mercy. The negotiated quotas had been filled. Earth was no longer a haven to the monsters from purgatory and perdition.

  Tom found himself in the midst of the enemy ranks; surrounded by rank flesh and flashing swords. He fired with his gun and slashed with his blade. A sword lashed out at him and he ducked, and Fillide stepped in and took off the creature’s head.

  Now a monster was on his back, biting at his armour. But his body armour didn’t yield. And he fell to his knees and let his companions hack the creature off him.

  He stood up again and fired fifty or so silver rounds with his Glock semi-automatic pistol into flesh that crumbled and tore, then reloaded with one hand from a clip in his bandolier. It was a move he’d practised a thousand times in basic training. He was thrilled at how right it felt.

  He was using his sword to scare the monsters back, his gun to shoot and kill. At this close range, the damned were helpless against the exploding silver bullets of his purpose-built hell-kind-slaying handgun; his simple strategy was to fire bullets into eyeballs so the heads blew up.

  The damned that they fought that day were, Tom later discovered, almost certainly Mongol in origin. They carried broad swords and some wore furs and many had withered yellow faces with wispy beards that curled around the remnants of their angry mouths.

  But at the time, he barely saw who he slew. All he could do was react without thinking. Shooting, slashing, stepping forward, stepping back; all the while awed at the greater power and stunning speed of Fillide and her fellow damned warriors.

  Armed with enchanted swords that had been forged then blessed in the steel works of Dagenham or Harlesden, the damnèd cops and soldiers slew their own kind with terrifying glee. Their swords slashed like dragonflies with dagger wings. Their faces and bodies were drenched with enemy blood.

  Tom saw a sword impale Fillide, thrusting deep into her torso and emerging the other side. But she laughed and shucked her body off the blade and struck her attacker’s head off with her silver sword; then split the head into slivers with a series of fast down-strikes. And the Mongol warrior screamed and silver-wraithed and bu
rned to nothingness.

  An enemy sabre struck her neck and shattered into splinters, and did not quite sever her beautiful head from her body. Blood poured down her throat and soaked her T-shirt. She could not speak because her larynx was so badly gashed.

  But as she instantly struck back against her assailant, the neck wound was already beginning to seal. And her teeth were white within her mask of blood and she roared with joy.

  The thunder of gunfire and the screams of the dying racked the air for nearly three hours. A few demons were starting to re-emerge from the pit that had been pounded incessantly by incense missiles, weakened but still powerful; like fighting dogs that have been whipped to spur their spirits and have entered into the final frenzy of rage. But the hell creatures were driven back once again. And then -

  And then Tom passed out.

  Half an hour later he woke. He was in the casualty tent, set up in the playground of the abandoned primary school. He staggered to his feet, and looked around. He saw dozens of camp beds where the wounded were lying in rest. A few had sheets that covered both face and body. He counted, at a glance, fourteen corpses.

  Tom took a breath, tasting incense and blood and flecks of demon flesh in his throat and lungs.

  ‘You need to sit down,’ a paramedic told him briskly.

  ‘I’m recovered. What’s the news?’

  The paramedic sighed. ‘We won.’

  ‘We won?’

  The paramedic – a skinny balding man in metal-framed glasses - smiled. It was the smug smile of a swotty boy whose school has won the cup in rugby.

  ‘We kicked their fucking arses,’ the paramedic said, with casual arrogance. ‘Those bastards never stood a chance!’

  Tom nodded, slowly. It was true.

  His clothes were on the floor beside the bed. He rummaged in his jacket and took out his e-berry, and turned on the evening news. It was full of replays of the Battle of Whitechapel, as it was being called. The television footage was extraordinary: the press corps had used police helmet cameras to get close up shots of the conflict, as well as helicopter mounted cameras and shoulder-held Steadicams operated by athletic cinematographers.