The barmaid was on it, pulling a cordless phone from under the bar and making the call. Rick ran to help the businessman, but didn’t know what to do. The ragged wounds on her bare chest looked as if a sharp fork had dragged through warm, flesh-coloured butter. Blood didn’t squirt out so much as continuously oozed.
A coppery scent filled the bar.
“Do you know First Aid?” the businessman asked Rick.
“No, I don’t. We just need to keep her comfortable, I think, until the ambulance arrives.”
“It’s on its way,” the barmaid shouted from behind the bar. “They said ten minutes.”
The businessman shook his head. “I don’t think she has that long.”
“Let’s just hope for the best,” said Rick.
“Oh God,” somebody cried out.
Rick arched his neck to look around. “What is it?”
It was Sarah. She was pointing at the television. “Look!”
The news showed new scenes of devastation, but not of New York. Another city was under attack—London.
The barmaid turned up the volume.
“Oxford Street has been cordoned off as disaster strikes the nation’s capital. Just moments ago, as a large crowd gathered, the unidentified black stone, located this morning in the city’s busiest shopping street, began to emit light. What happened next was something right out of a nightmare. These scenes were captured less than five minutes ago.”
The reporter disappeared, and video footage took her place. It showed a glowing lasso of light emanating from a black stone in the centre of the road. The lasso spread out into a wider circle and formed an archway. There was no loss in quality as the first creature emerged onto Oxford Street. It leapt at a nearby police officer and tore into the man’s neck with blackened teeth. The crowd broke apart, screaming in terror, and people fought each other to flee as more creatures poured through the archway behind them. An endless stream of monsters appeared.
A legion of burned and twisted horrors.
The video ended and the news reporter returned. “This is happening in numerous locations. The mysterious black stones, recently discovered throughout the country and the world, have opened, what appears to be some kind of gateways, and an unknown enemy is pouring through. New York was the first city under siege, but we can now confirm similar attacks in several of the world’s major cities. The Armed Forces are mobilising, as are those of other countries. The best thing to do right now is to stay indoors and stay tuned to your televisions.”
Keith put his hands on his head. “Shit. I need to call Marcy.”
“I need to call my mum,” said the barmaid.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Rick.
Sarah fainted.
~Mina Magar~
Soho, London
Less than twenty feet away from where Mina now stood, a BMW hit a shopfront at 50 mph and sent a shower of glass into the air. The driver got out, dazed but miraculously alive. People strolled around the wreck as if they hadn’t even noticed it, and the only person to even react was a young boy who pointed and laughed.
“David, we need to get out of here.”
“Mina, why aren’t you taking pictures? We need pictures.”
Mina fondled the heavy camera hanging around her neck and considered ditching it, but she just couldn’t. It was a part of her, and had cost as much as her car—not that her decade-old Peugeot was worth much. She sighed and took a skewed photograph of the crashed BMW. The angle would add to the disorientating feeling of the accident. She made sure she got a snap of the shell-shocked driver, too. Next, she intended to take a photo of a burning coffee shop on the corner of the street, but when she looked through her viewfinder, she saw something that made her take notice.
A young woman lay trapped inside the building, crushed beneath an overturned table. She was screaming for help as the flames crept towards her.
Mina realised she was taking pictures of other people’s misery instead of trying to help, so she let the camera hang around her neck and raced towards the burning coffee shop, even as David yelled at her to get back and focus on her job.
The young woman trapped inside had a broken leg—left foot pointed backwards.
“Help me, please,” she begged, eyes swollen with pained tears.
Mina grabbed the edge of the table and strained to lift it. The fire was at the back of the room by the service counter, but it was hot enough to make her break out in a sweat. The girl screeched as the weight shifted against her ankle. Mina had to grit her teeth to keep from dropping the table, for it was heavier than it looked. Too heavy.
“It hurts, it hurts.”
“I know it does,” said Mina, straining with all her strength. “Can you get yourself free?”
“No, it hurts.”
Mina’s arms trembled—couldn’t hold the table much longer. With a groan, she lifted it another few inches, but that was everything she had. “How about now…? Can you get free?”
The girl screamed in agony. “I can’t. The pain…”
Mina’s knuckles creaked. It was only a question of what gave out first—her hands or her biceps. “You need to move. I can’t hold it!”
“It hurts.”
The table began to wobble. Mina couldn’t hold it anymore.
The flames were getting closer.
She would have to drop the table and run. She couldn’t help the girl. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Suddenly the weight in her hands lightened.
“After three,” said David, now standing beside her. “One…two…three!”
Together, they shoved the table up and over. It fell free of the girl, and she screamed in renewed pain, but there was a hint of relief creeping into her cries now. They grabbed her under the armpits and dragged her out of the restaurant and onto the pavement. Nobody came to help or even paid much attention, for everybody in the crowd had some place to be, and it was unanimously away from here.
Mina and David had retreated from Oxford Street south into Soho when the gate opened, avoiding the initial slaughter, but they hadn’t escaped the mass exodus from the city. Everyone in London knew they were under attack. That nobody understood by what made their panic even worse. They had made it as far as the Soho Theatre before they had slowed down, and then they headed west onto Meard Street to catch their breath.
“What’s your name?” Mina asked the girl, trying to stop her screaming and attracting attention.
“G-Gabby.”
“A beautiful name. Gabby, we need to go. I know your leg hurts, but you need to hop as fast as you can.”
“We can’t bring her along,” said David. “We have work to do.”
Mina glared at him. “I’m not taking any more pictures, David. We have to get out of here.”
David looked at her like she was mad. “This is the news story of the century—of all human history. Do you want to be a bystander, or do you want to be the photographer whose pictures remain in the archives of mankind until the end of time?”
“I want to be one of the survivors. Which is why I’m getting out of here and taking Gabby with me.”
David flapped his arms and stamped his foot, almost comically. “You will regret this for the rest of your life, girl. Think about it.”
“There’ll be no rest of my life to live if I hang around here.”
“We’re all going to die,” Gabby moaned. “They’re coming to kill us.”
Mina grabbed the girl’s head and seized her focus. “Gabby, we will be just fine. Move as quickly as you can, okay?”
They continued south towards the theatre district, Mina propping up Gabby, and David following behind and complaining about what a mistake she was making. Part of her wondered if a real photojournalist would do as David suggested and continue taking pictures. War zone photographers stared death in the face every day, but she was choosing to run away. This felt different though. This didn’t feel like a situation where reporters should be expected to hang around and d
ocument.
They’d not yet witnessed the invading creatures first hand, but the scattered survivors fleeing the city had screamed and wailed about burned monsters tearing people apart. One woman even barked at Mina about a giant angel come to smite them all. People had gone mad with terror. David tried interviewing some of them, but most of what he got was confused babble.
The roads were clogged with wrecked vehicles and broken glass covered the pavements. Slow-moving lines of exhausted survivors funnelled along where there was a gap, and uniformed shop workers stumbled side-by-side with executives and public servants. Several thousand refugees looking for a way out—and this was only one small part of the city. How bad were things? People were already starting to turn on one another. Mina saw a topless man strike a cyclist with a brick before making off with his bike. The previous owner still lay unconscious in the gutter outside a media office. David insisted on getting a picture.
Helicopters buzzed overhead but did nothing to help.
Gunfire clattered in the distance.
Gabby moaned before they even made it to the end of the street. “I need to stop. My leg…”
“We can’t stop, you stupid girl,” cried David.
“I can’t go on anymore.”
Mina eased the girl up against the bonnet of a crumpled Royal Mail van and stepped back. “Thirty-seconds,” she said, “but then we don’t stop until we’re safe. Do you understand, Gabby?”
Gabby nodded, fresh tears down her cheeks. “I’m not even from London,” she muttered. “I live in Stroud. I only came here for a job interview. My mum will be so worried about me.”
“Sorry,” was all Mina could say.
David tapped his foot and generally looked pissed off. Mina did the only thing she could think of to oblige him—she lifted her camera and started taking pictures. She zoomed in on an old man lying beneath an overturned motorised scooter. There was a chance he was alive, but nothing anybody in the street could do for him. His head was smashed open and his brains were bleeding out. Mina had to cover her mouth to keep from throwing up.
The crowd began to thin out as they passed the Apollo Theatre, enough people having fled to the further reaches of the city leaving Soho mostly deserted. If not for David’s constant lingering, they would have been out of there too.
Ominous grey smoke rose above the skyline back toward Oxford Street and across the river, the spiky summit of the Shard rose solemnly in the background. London burned, but the gunfire in the distance might have been the Army fighting back. Could the situation be dealt with? Could the city be reclaimed from whatever abominable horrors had spilled out onto Oxford Street?
Mina took her last picture—a snap of a dirty Labrador trotting down the pavement with a rolled up newspaper in its mouth—and was about to turn away when she noticed something in the distance. At first, her eyes only registered movement, but then she took in some of the finer detail. Something was definitely there.
Unsure of what she was seeing, she looked through her camera’s viewfinder and zoomed in 12x. Something massive strode across the road several blocks back. The semi-naked figure walked like a man but was five lengths taller and had the remnants of wings on its back. Mina thought about what the crazy woman had barked at her earlier: A giant angel. Could such a thing be true?
Just as she started to accept what she was seeing, the giant creature disappeared into the next street and was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
David grabbed her arm. “Time to go.”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
Mina shook her head. “There was… Nothing.”
A scream.
Mina and David turned to find Gabby on the floor. She crawled backwards as something stalked after her.
A creature had leapt up onto the roof of the Royal Mail van. It was so horribly burned that its nostrils had fused over and one eye socket was hollow. It leapt down on top of Gabby and seized her by the arms, hoisting her up off the ground like a child.
Mina went to help, but David grabbed her shoulder and twisted her around. “You already saved her once.”
More creatures surged into the street from a side road up ahead. They leapt on any stragglers they could find, and agonised screams soon filled the air. Gabby screamed too, as the burned man gouged out her eyes with its blackened thumbs. It was enough to extinguish any hopes Mina might have had of saving the girl. There was barely a chance to save herself.
David was already running, but Mina caught up with him once she got a hold of herself. The creatures pouring into the street moaned in ecstasy as they tore the heads and limbs off screaming victims. One of them spotted Mina and gave chase.
“David, help,” she screamed.
David tilted sideways at a sprint and pointed ahead. “Over there.”
A pharmacy lay ahead, its door hanging wide open. David made directly for it, leaving Mina little choice but to follow if she had any chance of escaping the thing tearing after her. She leapt up on the pavement and sprinted.
The creature chasing her dodged around a shattered bus shelter and headed her off from the front. Unaware, David carried on running. To her astonishment, the creature spoke. Its charred lips cracked and peeled as they formed words.
“Nowhere to run, little girl. We are everywhere. The Red Lord will make you his slaves.”
Before Mina could reply, the creature leapt at her, a roaring beast snatching out with skinless hands. Mina grabbed the only thing she could—her camera—and swung it as hard as she could. The heavy, digital SLR struck the burned man in the side of his skull and dropped him to the pavement where he went still. The strap broke and the expensive piece of equipment shattered on the ground.
Mina got moving, and made it through the pharmacy’s door just as David was closing it. It slammed behind her, and David quickly tipped a display rack over to act as a barricade.
The streets filled with terrified screams.
“Quick, get back here,” said David, crouching behind a service counter at the back of the room. Mina leapt over, and they both scurried to a storage area at the back stacked with pills and medicines.
David put a hand on Mina’s shoulder and eased her back against the wall. “Did any of them see you?”
“Wouldn’t they be in here by now if they had?”
“I saw that one attack you. I think you killed it.”
“What? You mean you saw me in trouble and didn’t help?”
“What could I have done? Besides, you handled yourself pretty well. If a little woman can kill those monsters, then the Army should get this whole mess sorted out soon.”
Mina bit her lip at the sexist remark. Too much had happened to get into a petty argument. She wasn’t good with confrontation on a normal day—had been meek and shy ever since her mother died and her father began home schooling her. She wanted to sit in silence and try to make sense of it—but could the fact that London was under attack by bloodthirsty monsters ever make sense?
She thought not.
David pulled his phone out of his pocket and tried to make a call. Several times he had tried in the last hour, but the mass panic had caused the network to fail as thousands of people used their phones at once. This time, however, looked promising as David glanced at Mina urgently from where he sat. “Yes, hello? Carol, is that you? Oh, thank God. Yes, it’s David. I’m okay…”
Mina kicked out a leg at him across the floor.
“…Mina is with me too. We’re stuck on a London backstreet somewhere in Soho. There are monsters attacking—that’s the best way I can explain it. Do you want a quote from me? How about-”
Mina kicked him again. “Can she get us help?”
David rolled his eyes but took the hint. “We need help, Carol. We’re trapped inside a grimy little pharmacy, and I don’t know how we’re going to make it out of the city. Things are bad. That stone in Oxford Street opened some kind of portal.” He paused and listened, then said, “I don’t know if it’
s aliens. They don’t look like aliens. They look more like demons. Carol, you need to send help. In the meantime, I can conduct an interview over the phone. Carol? Carol…?” David glanced at his phone and cursed. He immediately redialled but couldn’t get through. “Damn it.”
Mina honed in on something he’d said and mentioned it now. “Demons?”
David looked at her curiously. “What?”
“You said they look like demons.”
“Don’t they?”
“Yes, they do, but if they’re demons then the gate that opened was…”
David finished her thought. “A gate to Hell.”
Mina nodded. “That would make things a whole lot worse than we even thought.”
“We’re not being invaded by Hell, you silly girl. I won’t even consider it. Heaven-Hell, it’s all a load of codswallop.”
“Well, wallop me a cod,” said Mina. “Because those monsters outside are demons.”
David huffed. “Aren’t you a Hindu?”
“What? Because I’m one of the brown folk? There’re as many Christians in India as Hindus, but that’s beside the point. Up until today, I was an atheist, same as you. Yet here you are, talking about demons.”
David folded his arms across his chest. “Fair enough. You may still consider me still an atheist though.”
“Even after everything you’ve seen?”
“Those monsters could have been anything. Escaped lab specimens for all we know.”
“What about the…” Mina trailed off.
“What about the what?”
She knew David wouldn’t believe her, but she was burning to talk about it. “I saw something else,” she said. “There was a giant. It looked like a man with wings. It looked, I suppose, maybe, a little, you know, like… an angel.”
David bellowed with laughter, then flinched and covered his mouth. “Sorry,” he said in a whisper. “But you must be mad.”
Hell on Earth Trilogy: The Complete Apocalyptic Saga Page 7