“We don’t need anything, gramps, but thanks.”
“I’ll take a Snickers,” said Ginge.
Vamps rolled his eyes. “Okay, we’ll take one Snickers bar, but that’s all. You take care, Mr Tarq.”
Mr Tarq patted Vamps shoulder again and went to inspect the damage to his livelihood. He locked the door behind them as soon as they left.
Mass looked at Vamps and nodded. “It feels good to do good, you know?”
Vamps looked back at the newsagent, now shuttered up safely. “Yeah, it does. No reason to stop now.”
So they continued their mission of cleaning up the streets of Brixton, veering north and forgetting that the real danger was not so far away. It wasn’t until they moved just south of Battersea Park that they realised how foolish their bravado was.
Across the Thames, London blazed. Like the nursery rhyme, it was burning down.
Military helicopters flew overhead, unloading from their side mounted machine guns. More gunfire came from the ground. Even a fighter jet arced across the sky. There was a war across the river and Vamps had led his boys right to it.
Ravy wrung his hands together. “Okay, think we might have gone far enough.”
Ginge went pale, which made his ginger beard seem like a thatch of shining copper strands. “Thank God, because I was starting to think you were crazy. Can we go back home? We’re not even in Brixton anymore. This here is Battersea.”
Vamps nodded. “Yeah, time to call it a day. We did good work. How many heads we busted, you think, Mass?”
“Seventeen. I was counting. Plus we kicked that mugger in the arse.”
Vamps chuckled. “Nice work on that one, Ravy. You really showed him.”
Ravy grinned proudly.
“Let’s not get carried away though,” said Vamps. “Shit’s pretty quiet now on this side of the river, so I say we don’t chance our luck and go any further. Agreed?”
Everyone agreed.
So they took a breather and got going. In the last hour, Brixton had quieted down. Part of it was that the people wanting to get out had got out, but Vamps thought another part of it was that the reality had sunk in for most people—that there were monsters in the city—and had scared them off the streets. Once people’s adrenaline settled, fear found its grip easier. Even Vamps was coming down off his high, and the sight of smoke billowing from the thriving centre of London made his lips dry.
Maybe he had been hasty leading the boys this far north, but they were okay, and they really had done a lot of good today. If they could just get back to their block and hunker down, they could plan what they would do tonight—and tomorrow. Vamps understood that his recent stint of vigilantism had come about because he hadn’t known what else to do. Being pro-active seemed better than running around scared like everybody else. One thing the streets had taught him was that when you acted you weren’t thinking, and when you weren’t thinking, you weren’t afraid. If a Brixton boy spent too much time sitting around imaging being knifed, he’d end up a nervous wreck. And a nervous wreck was a lot more likely to get stabbed. London was a city where only doers thrived. If you hesitated, the streets would beat you down. That was as true in the financial districts as it was in Brixton.
They were halfway through the Patmore Estate now, heading back towards home. They heard a woman’s screams.
“Where’s it coming from?” said Ravy, rubbing his goatee anxiously.
“From that block over there.” Mass pointed.
Vamps started marching. He thought the others might argue, but they didn’t. None of them could stand by while a woman screamed for help.
They found out what was going on in the next street. A tattooed skinhead sat atop an Asian woman and shouted in her face to ‘shut up’ then called her a ‘paki’. He punched her face and wrestled with her clothing. An older guy lay unconscious in the gutter nearby.
“He’s trying to rape her,” said Ginge, looking sick.
“Well, he ain’t gunna succeed.” Vamps narrowed his eyes. The sight of this animal taking advantage of the current chaos by preying on the innocent made his blood simmer. All the selfish, violent acts Vamps had seen today, but this was the worst. To rape someone…
It wasn’t human.
The thug struggled to get the woman’s trousers off. He reared back to punch her again.
Before Vamps knew what he was doing, he gritted his teeth and yanked out his grandfather’s old Browning pistol. He’d never fired it before, but he pulled the trigger without hesitation. The bang was ferocious, but nobody flinched. Gunfire was normal today.
The thug slumped forwards on top of the woman, a penny sized hole in the back of his neck. Vamps had been aiming for his shoulder. “Racist motherfucker,” he muttered as he lowered the gun to his side to disguise his trembling hand.
The woman slid out from beneath her attacker and clambered to her feet. She took a breath and said, “Y-you… you shot him. How…? Where did you get a gun?”
Vamps took a breath and fought to keep his heart from beating out of his chest. He kept his eyes off the man he had just killed and instead frowned. “Ask me no questions, I tell no lies. You all right, darlin’?”
“I… Yes. Thank you. You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
Vamps glanced back at his boys, who bristled at her comment. After all the good they had done today, they still got treated like common criminals. “I just saved your arse, luv, and you accuse me of bein’ a mugger and shit. I ain’t gunna hurt you. We ain’t even like that.”
“Oh,” said the woman. “It’s just that you all look so… scary.”
Vamps looked down at his baggy black jeans and chuckled. “Just how we do on the streets, innit? You dress how you want, and we dress how we wants. Just clothes, innit?”
“Thank you,” said the woman, seeming to mean it greatly. Her attacker lay dead at her feet, but she didn’t seem to care one bit. There were lots of people dead today, and this racist piece of shit was probably among the most deserving.
It was okay to kill him. Wasn’t it?
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Vamps.”
“Vamps?”
He gave her a wide grin, revealing his gold-plated fangs. “Yeah, Vamps. These are my homies: Mass, Ravy, and Gingerbread.”
The boys nodded silently.
The woman shook each of their hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”
“You need to be careful out here,” Vamps warned her. “There’s some heavy shit going down.”
“I know. I’m a journalist. David and I are trying to get out of the city. You should come with us.”
Vamps looked at ‘David’, who was finally stirring. Then he looked back at her. “Nah, I’m sound, darlin’. These are my streets, d’you get me? Me and the boys are staying put, and any of them fucked-up, Freddy Krueger bitches wants to come take us on, they’re welcome. This is our manor and ain’t nothing gonna bowl up and make a mess of it. You take care, darlin’. Next time, just hand over your phone, innit? And ‘ere, take this.” He pulled a thin black stick out of his belt and tossed it her way. It was a metal police baton he had found abandoned in the street earlier. He’d always wanted one, but this woman needed it more.
The woman caught it, seemed to weigh it up in her hand, then did something that surprised him. She hugged him. “You’re a hero,” she said.
Vamps eased her away, looking awkward. “Easy now. I ain’t no hero. Don’t you go writin’ ‘bout me in your paper. I ain’t news friendly.”
The woman nodded. “I promise. Take care.”
“You too.”
Then Vamps took his boys and carried on heading back to Brixton. He’d just saved a woman from being raped. To do it he had killed a man. He wasn’t sure how he should feel about that, but the boys were looking at him in a way he didn’t like.
Looking at him like he just killed a man.
They got back to Brixton a short while later and had barely spo
ken a word to one another. They checked on Mass’s mum at her flat, but the old dear was tired and confused about things. Mass decided it best to leave her alone. She always had the warden down the hall if she needed help. Ravy called his dad who worked in Slough. He was fine. So was his sister who studied at East Anglia. Gingerbread lived alone and didn’t keep in touch with his family. Vamps lived alone too. That was the bond that made them all so close—they had each other and little else. Vamps had a half-brother some place, but his three true brothers stood right here beside him. The Brixton boys.
They decided to spend the night at Vamps’s flat, first choosing to take beers up to the roof to watch the craziness. You could see right across the Thames.
Night hadn’t yet taken its grasp on the city and the distant high rises still gave off their usual light pollution. In fact, if not for the stench of smoke in the air and the unceasing noise, it might’ve been a normal evening in the capitol.
“Shit, man,” said Mass, pointing at the horizon. “The Shard is on fire. Can you believe that? Next year’s Apprentice is gunna have to get a new opening.”
They chuckled.
“You watch that shit?” asked Ginge.
“Yeah, man. Next year I’m gunna take part and show L.A. Shugs my business idea.”
Ravy frowned. “L.A. Shugs?”
“Yeah, Lord Alan Sugar.”
“What’s your business idea?” asked Vamps.
Mass folded his arms and lay back in his deckchair with a smug expression. “Gunna sell digital light switches.”
Vamps frowned. “Digital what-nows?”
Mass rolled his eyes like they were idiots. “Digital light switches. I mean, what’s the deal with how up-to-date everything is, but our lights are the same as fifty years ago. I want to replace light switches with these little LED touch screens that let you adjust the brightness, set a schedule, and even have them adjust automatically based on the sunlight in the room. It’s so simple man, and it wouldn’t even be an expensive gadget to manufacture. People would lap it up. The world loves tech. I would do the same with plug sockets. Make ‘em digital. Let you switch stuff on and off from your iPad.”
Vamps was impressed. “You know, that’s actually not a bad idea. I suppose it’s bound to happen. Someone needs to get in and get it started.”
“And when I’m L.A. Shugs’ main man, I’ll be a millionaire. Get us all out of this shit-hole.”
“You’d share the money?” said Ginge.
“Hell, yes. We family. One of us makes it, we all make it.”
“Word to that,” said Vamps, putting up his beer for a toast.
They clinked bottles, but then Ravy said, “Too bad the world has ended.”
Vamps groaned. “Way to bring down the mood.”
“Sorry. I’m just saying… Look at this place. There’s fighting in the streets, looting, monsters tearing people apart… That’s some heavy shit.”
Vamps looked out at the city. Gunfire lit up the dusk like fireworks. Most of it came from the direction of Hyde Park, which had been illuminated by high powered floodlights. Several helicopters buzzed in and out of the area. Was that where the Army had assembled?
Were they taking care of business?
Like Vamps had with that rapist?
He pulled out his grandfather’s Browning and lay it across his knees, studying it. The brushed metal was scuffed and tarnished.
“How you get that thing, anyway?” asked Mass. “I don’t think you ever told me.”
“It was my grandpa’s.”
“Really? He was in the war?”
“Nah, man. He was a gangster, same as us. He robbed it off some dude back in his cat burgling days. Was too hot to sell.”
Mass chuckled. “Wish I’d met the old guy.”
Vamps smiled at the vague memory he had of his grandfather. “Yeah, he was a good crack. Died when I was eight, couple years before I met you lot.”
“Good he stuck by you,” said Ginge. “You know, after your dad did one.”
The mention of Vamp’s father brought silence. Vamps clutched his fists instinctively but gave no thoughts to his feelings. The lads didn’t need to hear about some deadbeat knocking his ma around. Way Vamps considered things, he had no father. End of conversation.
He put his grandfather’s Browning away.
For a while, Ginge had kept them updated from his phone’s internet, which was patchy at best. They watched juddering videos of monsters from Hell—too many to deny their existences. Those gates led to some terrible place and the damned and dead were spilling out. Some of the monsters were so badly burned that you could see bone.
“Think this will all go away?” asked Ginge when an hour had passed. He had barely touched his beer, more an eater than a drinker. Mass, on the other hand, drank two bottles ahead.
“Like hell it will,” said Ravy. “We’re all fucked.”
Vamps exhaled, took a swig of his own beer.
An explosion.
All four of them leapt up out of their deck chairs and went over to the edge of the roof. A fireball filled the night sky, blooming from the ground and heading towards the stars. Vamps gripped his beer bottle tightly as it swung next to his leg. “It’s one of the helicopters. The fighting’s moved to Hyde Park.”
“How the hell did they take out a helicopter?” asked Ravy. “They have anti-air missiles now?”
“Maybe it was pilot error,” said Ginge. “Zipping around all those tall buildings…”
Somehow none of them believed it. The distant fighting had intensified in the last hour. Things weren’t going well. The Army was going all in.
Then they saw something none of them could quite fathom.
Ginge dropped his beer bottle to the ground where it shattered. “Is that… Is that a giant?”
The word sounded stupid, but Vamps knew no better way to describe what he saw emerging from the floodlights of Hyde Park. A giant man wearing nothing but a loin cloth. Like some massive caveman meant to fight Godzilla in one of those awful Japanese movies. But this was no movie.
A giant laid waste to Central London.
“We need to get gone,” said Ginge.
Mass folded his huge arms. “Hate to be a pussy, but I agree.”
“And go where?” asked Vamps. The beer in his throat tasted like acid.
Ginge held up his phone. “The web said parts of the south coast are still okay, Portsmouth, I think. Maybe we should head there?”
“Let’s just boost a car and go,” said Ravy. “I could cope with the thought of zombies or demons in the park, but I ain’t sticking around for no giants. That thing could step across the Thames and be here in ten minutes.”
Vamps took another look across the city. He placed the thing as at least thirty feet high. If it wasn’t standing in the park, it would be hidden behind the buildings, and if it slipped out of sight there would be no way of knowing how close it was. By the sound of it, the Army was letting loose with everything it had.
But the giant didn’t fall. It was a titan—invulnerable.
“Let’s bounce,” said Vamps, deciding that living in a refugee camp in Portsmouth was better than surviving home any longer.
Ginge exhaled as if relieved. “Thank fudge for that. Actually, can we swing by mine to grab some food first?”
Mass punched Ginge’s flabby arm. “We’re about to run for our lives, man. We ain’t stopping for no Cadbury’s Cream Egg, buster!”
Ginge frowned. “Fine.”
They headed into the stairwell and started down. Televisions blared in some of the flats, so people were still at home, which made Vamps wonder if sticking around was a good idea. His gut instinct told him to stay put, but after seeing the scenes in Hyde Park he had a bad feeling. Eventually, the battle would spill over into Brixton and beyond. Staying alive on the streets would be even harder than normal.
Halfway down the stairs, three floors up, voices came up to meet them. Someone had entered the entrance hallway on t
he bottom floor. Vamps knew because he heard the broken front door scrape across the concrete.
“You sure he lives here?” came a voice they all recognised.
“That’s the fucking dealer who screwed us over,” said Mass.
“You mean the one we robbed at gunpoint?” Ravy added.
Vamps peered over the bannister to the stairwell below. It was definitely him. Pusher.
Other people too. Three more guys and a kid Vamps instantly recognised.
Vamps reached to the bright green cap on his head. “It’s that car-jacking piece of shit.”
Mass looked at him. “Who?”
“I caught a kid breaking into cars this morning and put him on his arse.”
“So you were fighting crime before you even met us today? You Batman.”
Vamps chuckled. “Batman would be good now.”
“He lives in this building,” said the car-jacker. “My mate Jasmine used to go out with him. Third floor, I think.”
“Hey, I remember Jasmine,” said Ginge. “She was hot.”
Vamps shook his head. “Not now, Ginge.”
Pusher started up the stairs with his entourage. “Gonna teach that piece of shit what happens when people mess with me. He’s fuckin’ dead. My kid was there.”
Mass smashed his fists together. “Let’s go choke this mother out.”
“Wait up a sec.” Vamps held back his bulldog and peered over the railing again. He watched Pusher ascend the bottom staircase—saw the stubby length of brushed steel in the dealer’s hands.
A sawn-off shotgun.
“He’s coming in heavy,” said Vamps.
“You gunna get your gun out,” asked Ravy nervously. Still no one had mentioned that he had shot a man earlier. Vamps didn’t know how they felt about it.
He didn’t feel good about it himself.
Vamps kept his voice low. “Back to the roof. We need to lie low.”
Mass looked at him slack-jawed. “We gunna run?”
Vamps nodded. “Don’t matter how tough you are in a gunfight. Anybody can catch a bullet. I ain’t gunna risk that, so let’s bounce.”
Hell on Earth Trilogy: The Complete Apocalyptic Saga Page 40