“Huh? Didn’t you spot the massive army leaving Portsmouth? Thomas headed out this morning to wipe the demons out once and for all. You must have just missed him.”
Mass had been wondering why Portsmouth seemed a little quiet. The chit-chat wasn’t as loud and there weren’t as many campfires. “I took the long way into town,” he said. “They headed north, I’m guessing?”
“What other direction is there to go? I’m just glad I got to stay here. Don’t much fancy being out there on the road at my age.”
Mass nodded. “You’re right. This is the safest place. Cheers for the info.”
“No problem, friend. Hey, if you see Diane, tell her I’ve got some lovely steamed pollack set aside, but it won’t keep forever.”
Mass frowned. “Why would Diane come around here? She lives in the port administration building.”
“Not no more she don’t. She moved over here to get away from it all. Don’t think she gets on with General Thomas, to tell the truth. It must have knocked her nose out of joint, seeing as she was part of Wickstaff’s inner circle. It were too much responsibility for a young lass anyway.”
Mass put his hood back up, ready to exit the conversation. “Diane’s as capable as anyone in Portsmouth. When I see her, I’ll tell her how much respect you have for her.”
The fisherman put down his bloody tackle and folded his arms. “Now, there’s no need to go telling tales, lad.”
“Have a good night.” Mass returned to the others, who were still out of sight in an alleyway between the warehouses.
Addy looked at him. “Well? Learn anything?”
“Seems like Thomas took everyone out on the road – an entire army.”
Addy folded her arms. “So, what… he’s declaring jihad on the demons?”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” said Tox. “He could finally end this. Aren’t you tired of fighting?”
Smithy placed a palm against his temple. “Are you soft in the head? Crimolok’s heading this way with his merry band of demonic dickheads. Thomas is marching everyone right into a smackdown.”
“And leaving Portsmouth poorly defended,” added Mass.
Tox clearly disagreed, huffing and puffing before he responded. “Thomas must know about Crimolok. How could he not? Portsmouth has scouts all over the place.”
“Not that far north,” said Mass. “We’ve come twenty miles since this morning, at least.”
Smithy arched his back and groaned. “Yeah, no shit. I’m ready to drop.”
Mass turned to Addy. “Go get the others. We’ll set the women up somewhere safe before we do anything. Hopefully there’re still people around we can count on as friends.”
Tox nodded. “I know a couple of guys who look after supplies in this area. I’ll go see if they’re still around. What those women need is a warm bed and hot food.”
Mass nodded and waved. “Go!”
Addy brought forward the women and the rest of the Urban Vampires. Cullen was leading them, but he had a grim look on his face. “The city seems deserted,” he said. “Does anybody know why?”
Mass told them about Thomas and his army.
“That’s good,” said Cullen.
Addy frowned. “Why is it good?”
“Because it means we can take back Portsmouth in his absence.”
It sounded good in theory, but Mass doubted it would be that easy. “Thomas wouldn’t have left the city defenceless. We’ll need more than just us to take over. Even if we manage it, Thomas can easily take it back.”
“That depends on what happens out on the road,” said Cullen. “Least we can do is make life hard for the bastard if he survives and makes it back. I’m telling you, we should find out who’s running things around here and take them out.”
Mass didn’t like it one bit. A lot could go wrong. It was too difficult a decision for him to make alone. “I… I need to speak with Diane. If anyone knows the situation in Portsmouth, it’s her.”
“She’s dead,” said a voice from behind them. It spoke from the shadows.
Mass raised his shotgun. “Who’s there? Show yourself.”
A young shaven-headed man stepped out of the darkness. “I come in peace.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” said Tox, and he made a grab for the stranger.
The stranger put up a hand and glared. “If your hand touches me, you lose it.”
Tox wasn’t usually one to suffer intimidation, but he recoiled and stepped back. Something about the stranger’s dark eyes suggested danger, too unflinching, too unconcerned.
“Who are you?” Mass demanded again.
“Damien. I was trying to help your friend, Diane, but I did a bad job. She headed out to kill General Thomas. Even if she gets the job done, I doubt she’ll be coming back. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Smithy cleared his throat and looked at Mass. “Who exactly is this Diane you all keep talking about?”
Mass ignored him, keeping his eyes on the stranger named Damien. “Why the hell would Diane head out to kill Thomas?”
“You’re Mass, right? Lotta people been counting on you being alive. Thomas has been taking care of business while you’ve been gone, executing people in public, playing games with his enemies. He had Diane’s number from the start, but she couldn’t keep her head and play the game. I tried to help her, but she was too far gone. Revenge was the only thing left for her. I’ve seen some things, let me tell you, but that girl scares me.”
Mass didn’t trust this guy. Something about him was off. “What do you want, Damien?”
“To help. I thought I could do it from the shadows, but it turns out I’m not really the consigliere type.”
Mass frowned. “The hell does that mean?”
“It means he’s a fan of The Godfather,” said Smithy. He put his fingers and thumbs together and said, “I’m-a gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Damien smirked. “It means I’m no good at giving advice. There’s only one thing I’m good at.”
“And what’s that?” asked Mass.
“Fucking shit up.”
Smithy tittered. “That’s so badass. You should have your own comic book.”
Damien glared. “You remind me of someone I used to know. Guy called Jerry.”
“Handsome, was he?”
“Dead.”
Smithy winced. “Downer. Well, I for one am happy to have a self-described badass on the team. Pleased to meet you, Damien.” The two men shook hands, but Smithy ended up rubbing his palm as though it ached. “That’s quite the icy mitt you’ve got there.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. A consequence of being dead.”
Tox spluttered. “Say what now?”
Damien cleared his throat. “We can go into that later, but right now there’s work to do. I heard you all talking, and you’re right, there’s not enough of you to take over Portsmouth. Luckily, Diane was busy while you were gone. Turns out, Thomas isn’t as popular as he thinks.”
People emerged from the shadows behind Damien. At first, just a couple, then almost thirty men and women appeared.
“Diane was my friend,” said a woman.
“The fucker killed Tom,” said a man.
“There’s no way that old bastard wasn’t involved in Wickstaff’s death,” said someone else, the anger clear in their voice.
Mass couldn’t help but smile. Alongside the people Mass had brought back to Portsmouth, they now had a respectable force. Thomas had made a mistake trying to take over Portsmouth, assuming it to be a city. But it wasn’t a city, it was a family.
And families stuck together.
11
The flare lit up the sky like a firework. Tony had been propped against a gnarled oak tree with roots the length of a tennis court. He was only half-asleep, which meant he was, at first, only vaguely aware that something was happening. He didn’t truly wake up until the first chatter of gunfire. At that point he bolted upright and grabbed his rifle.
> Time’s up.
Tony had sought to eliminate Thomas, but the general had been sleeping in a tent guarded by several men. The time hadn’t been right. Now it might be too late.
The camp erupted, thousands of men and women spreading out around the playing fields and nearby buildings. Many were set up in firing nests on upper floors, or embedded inside vehicles. Those in the parklands formed a wide circle, covering every angle of approach with their rifles. Reserves stood within and without the circle, taking cover behind trees and inside shop doorways. Tony headed to Thomas, whose tent stood directly in the centre of the main playing field. The general had puffy eyes and grey skin, as though woken unceremoniously from a deep slumber.
“They’re here,” said Tony. “I warned you they were coming.”
“Yes, Colonel, you did, and like before we shall deal with them. The men know what they face.”
“No, they don’t!”
Thomas rolled his eyes, making Tony want to punch him. “A giant beast, yes. We are more than capable of dealing with it.” Thomas pointed to the rear of the circle, where a L118 light gun had been parked and unlimbered. The men called the modern-day howitzer ‘Lulu’, and it was a veteran of the conflict in the Middle East. Two more existed in Portsmouth for home defence. “That gun has one job and we need only to ensure it has enough time to do it. We took down several giants in the desert with less.”
“But this one is bigger, and it could be invulnerable, like the others were in the beginning.”
“The gates are all closed, Colonel. That thing will bleed, I promise you. Either way, the fight is upon us, and it’s your duty to make sure that we meet it as true British heroes. This is our moment – the turning point of history. Be a part of it, Tony. Stand with me.”
Tony tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. He let out a sigh. Arguing was a waste of time and energy that they couldn’t afford. “I’m with you, Thomas, but only because there’s no other choice. After this battle is through, you can have my fucking resignation.”
With a bullet to the head.
Thomas appeared genuinely hurt for a moment, but he soon settled on anger. “Resignation accepted in advance. I suggest you consider your future wisely, Tony, or you might find you don’t have one.”
“If things go badly here, none of us do.”
Before the general could speak again, Tony turned tail and ran. There was no sign of where the threat was coming from, so he picked a section of the circular firing line at random. As it turned out, the threat came from everywhere at once.
Coughing gunfire met demonic screeching. The men had orders to be conservative with their ammo, but it was hard to pick targets in the dark. They had searchlights pointed at the nearby buildings, but shadowy gaps existed in several places and wrecked vehicles obscured many of the sight lines. More than ten thousand men and women were crammed together, standing in each other’s way.
When Tony spotted the first demon, he thought he might have imagined it. The slight flicker of movement, a disturbance in the shadows, quickly grew into an endless flow of monsters. Directly in front of Tony, two dozen at least came clambering from beneath the collapsed awning of a French restaurant.
The battle raged. Tony picked his first shot, taking the head off a primate as two more leapt in behind it. Someone else in the firing line took both monsters out with a long burst of rifle fire.
Amongst the staccato of combat rifles, shotguns roared. Handguns popped. Machine guns rattled, spaced every fifty feet along the circle. Demon blood erupted into the air, coating the masonry of the various buildings and painting them red. Guts and innards slopped on the road. The demons slid and fell in the offal of their own dead. All the while, the firing line continued its assault, bullets hitting flesh a hundred times a second. Tony started to believe they had a chance. The demons kept coming, but they were being massacred. They had to run out of bodies sometime. How many could there be? How many had been hiding during the previous months?
And how many came out of that giant gate?
An almighty crash sounded in the near distance, out of sight but not far away. It sounded like a building collapsing, or two speeding vehicles colliding head-on. It was a chest-shuddering, painfully loud noise that caused every soldier to lose their focus for a moment as they peered around for a cause.
Dendoncker sidestepped until he was standing next to Tony. “The hell was that? Sounded like a goddamn plane coming down.”
“I think it was a building collapsing. How are you for ammo, kid?”
“I got a shitload, but there’re a shitload of targets too. I don’t know which will run out first.”
Tony checked his own supply and saw he was down to two magazines. Dendoncker had so many that the curved metal containers seemed to hang off every inch of his belt. Tony was glad to see he was prepared. “Where are the others?”
“Taking up the rear, over there. Demons are coming at us from all sides. I reckon they plan on surrounding us and spreading our fire.”
Tony looked back and saw men firing at the circle’s rear. “It would be the smart thing to do. It means we have no way out of this fight besides winning or dying. There’s no third option.”
Dendoncker nodded. “Whatever happens, happens. Can’t cheat death forever, right?”
“You’re right, this has to end. Let it be today.”
“You’re a good bloke, Colonel. I want to go out following a good man.”
Tony chuckled. “Then I have your final orders, soldier.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Go give the bastards hell.”
Dendoncker ran off to rejoin the circle. Tony did the same. It was too chaotic to stick together, so he focused only on what he could shoot.
The ground shook.
Another boom clattered the air, echoing between buildings.
Tony lost his footing, the grass becoming trampled and slick. He went down on one knee, his rifle strap yanking at the back of his neck as he lost a grip on his weapon. He quickly got a hold of it again and emptied his current magazine into a pair of burnt men joined at the hip.
Tony shook his head in disbelief.
Siamese twins? What on earth did they do to end up in Hell?
He was about to get back to his feet and reload when something caught his attention. He looked left and upward, seeing something moving behind a multi-storey car park built from shiny beams and carefully sculpted concrete. The three-level structure suddenly turned ugly, clean lines contorting as concrete cracked and crumbled. The shiny beams bent and came loose. Within seconds, the car park came crashing down, and a towering beast, more terrifying than anything Tony had ever seen, appeared amidst the rubble. The creature almost seemed to glow.
Portsmouth’s soldiers stopped firing, stunned into inaction. Many of them had fought giant demons before, even helped kill a few, but this was three times the size of any they’d ever seen.
Tony was the first to take a shot at the giant beast. His rifle was empty, so he yanked his 9mm from his belt like a gunslinger and started popping shots at the giant. It was more symbolic than an actual attempt to harm it. He just needed to break everyone out of their stupor. The gunshot was a rallying cry. “Take it down,” he yelled, reholstering his handgun and pushing his final mag into his rifle. “Take it down.”
Echoing his call, General Thomas rushed back and forth inside the circle, his mouth pressed against a radio. “Take it down, take it down. Gunners fire. AT teams fire. Give the enemy everything you’ve got.”
The chaos went up a gear as machine-gun fire was overruled by the kaboom of the L118 firing. Shells whistled overhead and hit the giant demon with pinpoint accuracy, striking its chest and torso. The beast staggered, crashing against the French restaurant and demolishing it. Falling debris obliterated the nearby demons and scattered many more. The whizzing sound of RPGs joined the fray. Explosions lit up the fringes of the battle. Parts of demons rained down to earth with a splitter-splatter. Rifle fire, shotgun b
lasts, and handguns barked endlessly. Demons screeched in pain and anger, their bodies shredded and torn. The battle raged and twisted, but never once did it cease.
Until suddenly it did.
The only movement was the grey smoke drifting through the searchlight beams. No more demons emerged from the shadows. Their leader lay motionless in the rubble.
Did we win? Is it over?
Tony wasn’t sure who started it, but the army began to cheer. He couldn’t help but join in, but when someone grabbed him from behind, he spun around with his rifle raised, ready to shoot.
It was General Thomas.
The old man was beaming. “We did it! I told you, didn’t I? We finished the bastards off once and for all.”
Tony had no words. If true, they could finally reclaim the land. They could take back the farmland and factories, power plants and water facilities. They could exit the dark ages.
Thomas was screeching like a lunatic, running back and forth along the lines. “We are victorious. We are victorious. Long live Great Britain. Reborn and everlasting.”
The smoke gradually cleared, revealing demon corpses, body parts, and dozens of injured soldiers. It was like something out of a nightmare, as close to Hell as Tony ever wanted to get. Yet they had won. They had faced their end and refused to accept it.
Dendoncker appeared in the centre of the circle, a delirious grin on his face. “Christ, we beat them.”
Tony nodded, still unable to speak. He looked around, searching for signs of life. The playing fields were only full of cheering men. There were no gunshots or cries of pain.
It can’t be this easy. This doesn’t feel right.
Something shifted overhead, just above Tony’s view. He tilted his head back, expecting to see a bird, but the small shape flew too quickly across the night sky. It glinted against the moon and rapidly descended.
Tony’s stomach turned.
Dendoncker disappeared. One second the young corporal was standing there smiling, the next his body was ten feet away in the grass.
Tony whimpered.
A slither of Dendoncker’s skull remained, most of it now plastered to the heavy chunk of cement that had fallen out of the sky like a meteorite.
Hell On Earth Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 154