by Mike Wild
The owner proffered his hand and nodded to her briskly. "Professor Augustus Farralay, madam... My colleague, Winston Bey."
"Good evening," the other man said. "May we be of assistance?"
What, Annabeth thought? She stared hard at the pair, no idea who they were. The first, a huge barrel of a man with a bald head and a bushy black beard might have been a street wrestler but for his smart dress and monocle, while the other, in a pin-striped suit and white turban, sporting a voluminous white moustache and eyebrows, looked like some cheap variety hall magician. But cheap variety hall magicians did not do what he did next. As the one called Farralay battled more of the corpses away, this Bey wrote signs in the air and it was filled suddenly with phantasmal snakes that darted at the dead things Farralay could not reach. Fangs bared, hissing clearly audible over the burning fires, they whipped and lashed at the dead, reducing them to flailing confusion.
Judd stared at them open-mouthed, but they were just too sinister. "Mum, I'm scared..."
"What's happening?" Annabeth pleaded. "Please, who are you people?"
"Best to save your questions for later, madam," Farralay declared. "For the time being, what say we get the devil out of here, eh?" He laughed as if he were Santa Claus and then struck out at the corpses with his fists again, crushing the skulls of - or actually beheading - those nearest. Both Judd and Annabeth cringed each time they heard an awful crunching of bone, and then Annabeth spied John moving through the pack and almost screamed. She knew this was no longer her husband - in the name of sanity, how could it be? - but she could not let him be treated this way. And as Farralay swung, she halted the man's arm, for a terrifying instant becoming convinced he was going to turn the club on her.
"Get out of here?" she reminded him, seeing his eyes widen and nostrils flare.
"Yes - yes," he said after a second. The feral stench coming off him was appalling. "Quite so, quite so."
The four of them backed away from the graveyard and left the corpses shambling in pursuit of whatever was calling them. The town offered no escape still, and as Farralay and Bey hurried the mother and son through its winding, burning lanes the pair dealt any emergent victims of the flames who got in their way the same treatment as they had the dead. But to Annabeth and Judd's horror, many were still very much alive. One old woman - hand on neck and face contorted with pain - came haltingly at them begging for help, and Farralay killed her with a single blow.
"Mum!" Judd screamed as the woman dropped in a twitching heap to the ground.
"Stop this!" Annabeth pleaded with undisguised horror. "For God's sake, they need your help!"
"No, dear," a voice said.
For the second time that night, Annabeth turned and found herself facing strangers. Two more, as strange and out of place here as the others. The first was a short, dark-haired slip of a woman in a low-slung evening dress and pearl earrings who grinned broadly, and the second a taller and much stockier woman wearing a matronly skirt and coat, who tamped down a Sherlock Holmes pipe. At least that was what Annabeth thought they were, because though she couldn't put her finger on what, there was something not quite right about both of them.
Bey greeted them as George and Harriet.
"Look dear," George - or was it Harriet? - said conspiratorially. She took Annabeth by the arm and emphasised each word that followed. "There is nothing you can do for these people. They are already dead."
"No," Annabeth said in denial, "she was alive."
"Balderdash," Harriet - or George? - came back. "Utter tripe."
"Don't upset her, darling," George admonished, and she showed Annabeth where the old woman - her whole face gone - was rising up from the ground. "They're nothing more than puppets, understand? All we can do is try to stop as many as possible of them reaching it."
Annabeth stared. "What are you talking about, puppets, it? I don't know what you're saying."
Farralay was suddenly grabbing her by the arm, dragging her to where one of the lanes opened out to offer a view of the cliff-top monastery.
"You asked earlier what was happening," the big man said forcefully. He held Annabeth's chin and tipped her gaze upward. "Look," he prompted. "I said, look!"
Annabeth looked, and shook her head vigorously in denial. "I don't believe it. This has to be a dream."
"No dream," Farralay said. And if the giant of a man hadn't been holding her up then, she would have fallen to her knees. For over the monastery a great golden figure was materialising - looming over the town. Itself seemingly made of fire, it was a vague rather than detailed apparition, but it seemed to be holding out arms as if beckoning to her, and as it did an enormous pair of wings seemed to flex behind its back.
"Impossible," Annabeth mouthed. But impossible or not, it was there, and in her skull the agony began again.
"Mom, don't listen!" Judd urged, but perversely Annabeth wasn't listening. The voice was louder than ever, even more demanding.
Show me!
SHOW ME YOUR SINS!
My sins, yes, Annabeth thought. My sins. From deep within her came the same memories that had tortured her earlier, flooding her mind once more with sorrow and regret. Except this time she was convinced she could have done more. Stretched a little more towards John, arched her splattered, battered body until muscles tore and she crushed her own baby to feel the grip of his hand in her own. Oh God, she could have saved John. Just that little more effort and she could have saved him! It was her fault he died! It was all her-
"No!" Annabeth screamed. This memory was wrong. She had done all she could. She had done everything in her power. And no entity that cared would put her through this again. Nothing that cared would suggest that she had killed her husband. This was no sin, it was an accident and that was all. An accident. And knowing such she rejected it. Rejected it. Rejected it!
"What the hell are you, you bastard!" Annabeth screamed at the figure above the tor. "Leave us alone!"
"A resistant," Bey said impressed, and raised a white eyebrow.
"Few and far between," Farralay agreed.
"But she'll remember," Harriet commented, as if in warning. "Perhaps we should-"
The remainder of her comment was ripped away by the roaring drone of the two RAF Mosquitoes as they turned to meet the materialising figure. Their banking brought them directly over Annabeth for the first time, and she began to wave her hands frantically in the air.
"Tower from Nighthawk Two. I have survivors on the ground. Please advise, over."
"Roger, Two. There is now an official presence in charge of ground operations - please ignore, over."
"Ignore, tower?"
"Affirmative, One. We are instructed to cancel reconnaissance, over."
"Roger that, tower. But there are still people who need help here."
"I'm sorry, gentlemen. But as of a minute ago, this affair passed out of our hands, over."
"Tower, this is Nighthawk One... something in... Oh no, Susan... no, I never meant-"
Annabeth saw the first of the planes wobble and thought, No! It was the Voice again; it couldn't be anything else. Don't listen, she pleaded. Oh God, don't listen. But it did no good. As she watched, the plane veered from its flight path and out towards the sea, and Annabeth staggered back as there was a sudden incendiary burst inside its cockpit. Seemingly without a pilot, the plane nosedived and vanished into the dark.
"Jesus, oh, Jesus! Tower, what is this thing? Is it causing this?"
"Nighthawk Two, avoid the anomaly, over. Once again I say, avoid the anomaly."
"Negative, tower - I'm getting this on film."
"Return to base immediately. That is an order. I repeat, return to base immediately."
"Sorry tower, no can do. That thing killed the leader. We need to know what it is."
Don't be a bloody fool, Annabeth thought, as she saw the second plane head straight for the figure atop the tor. Then again, what could she do? She could only look on as the Mosquito flew directly at the glowing apparit
ion - then into it, through it. She sighed with relief as the plane emerged on the other side, but the sigh caught as she saw something eject suddenly. Whatever it had been a moment before, it now burned horribly bright, as if it were a sailor's flare.
"Unfortunate," Farralay commented.
"Most," Bey agreed.
"Potentially awkward," George and Harriet said together.
What the hell are you talking about, Annabeth thought? "Tell me what's happening!" she shouted - now insistent. But Farralay and the rest just bundled Judd and herself further along the lane. "At least tell us where we're going!"
"The beach, dear," Harriet or George said, and grinned once more. "Rendezvous, don't you know."
Rendezvous with who? Annabeth screamed silently. She soon found out. The small bay by which the town huddled sat beneath the seaward side of the tor, and at the base of its rocky face was a vast cave mouth - another entrance to the system below. As the group arrived on the dark shingled beach, more of the - there was no other word for it than freakshow - emerged out of its cavernous maw.
The first looked like some bank manager who one day might snap and kill all those he worked with, and he came backing out of the cave with twin revolvers aimed in his wake, sweatily firing shot after echoing shot at figures that pursued him in the darkness. With him came three more figures: a nasty-looking thug with a wooden truncheon, a dapper little skeleton of a man wielding a silver-tipped walking cane, and a taller man dressed in the coat, helmet and goggles of a First World War flying ace. But there was nothing lantern-jawed about this latter - a slight tear in the scarf he wore on the lower half of his face exposed a spot of raw and horribly scarred tissue like that from some Frankenstein's monster.
Another figure, a skeletal old woman with hawk-like features who seemed half librarian and half banshee, waited for them outside.
Farralay introduced them: Alex Nestor and Jack Strummer, Michael Magister and Randolph Rochester, then Miss Cecilia Bird. But Annabeth no longer cared. Because none of these people shocked her quite so much as the figures who came in pursuit. There was nothing strange about them as such. They were simply not human at all.
Oh, God, she thought, and it was then that all the insanities of this surreal morning suddenly coalesced into one and the nightmare truly began.
"Collapse the roof, Magister!" Nestor ordered. "Do it now!"
Magister nodded, his brow furrowing in response to his orders, and Annabeth heard a dull rumbling from deep inside the tor. Dust started trickling from the roof of the cave mouth, and then rocks to fall, crushing the creatures beneath. Those that had already made it through, Nestor and the rest simply shot, bludgeoned, or attacked with serpent phantasms, until all lay dead.
Annabeth stared at Magister. The skeletal man was rigid with tension, pouring in sweat, and all the veins and arteries beneath his skin pulsed as if a layer of writhing worms had subcutaneously infested him. Tiny capillaries around his pupils popped, flooding his eyes with blood. The entire tor, and the ruins of the monastery above, shifted, and the rockfall became an avalanche.
All Annabeth could think was, he's doing this with his mind.
"Mum, the other people..." Judd said.
The other people. Annabeth's thoughts flicked suddenly to those she had seen entering the cave on the opposite side of the tor. If Magister was collapsing the roofs of the caves, then they were all being buried alive...
"Stop..." she said weakly. "Please stop..."
But that wasn't the end of it. Just before one final great slab of rock dropped to seal off the cavernous maw in front of her, something that was impossible flew slowly - no, hovered - through the closing gap, pushing rocks aside as it came. Almost as wide as the cave itself - disc-shaped, silver and with strange engines whining. It was some kind of... she struggled for words... flying saucer. Nestor and the others backed off and, as Annabeth gawped, the machine hovered slowly away from the cave mouth, over the beach and began to accelerate out to sea.
"Oh dear. Our friends appear to be departing," Professor Farralay pointed out.
"Miss Bird, if you please," Nestor said.
Cecilia Bird nodded and moved to the shoreline, positioning herself where seawater lapped at her feet. There, her arms stretched out wide, a mane of white hair billowing behind her and giving her the appearance of some ancient goddess, the woman summoned a storm. And in the midst of the storm, something else.
Some creature from the depths.
Judd clinging onto her, Annabeth screamed. And she kept on screaming as the tentacled behemoth pulled the saucer beneath the waves.
If Annabeth needed a final straw, then this was it. She collapsed to her knees sobbing, looked slowly around the beach at the dead bodies, at the collapsed cave and then above the monastery, where the golden apparition was gone now.
She spoke almost to herself.
"God, what have you done? They're dead... all of them dead. Who are you people?"
"Alex, I warned you," Harriet said.
"She's right," George concurred. "There is the possibility this lady might... go to the press."
Nestor nodded, knelt down in front of Annabeth, smiled. "It's all right. Mr Magister will take care of things, won't you, Mr Magister?"
Annabeth looked up slowly. Nestor's smile was warm and comforting but she sensed something in it that-
Michael Magister stood over her, still covered in sweat. He, too, smiled.
"Run, Judd," Annabeth said. "Don't look back."
"Mum?"
"Run, boy. Now!"
Judd was far too shocked and far too frightened to do anything else. He ran for the rocks as his mother bade, looking back only once.
The last image he had of Annabeth Jardine was a spasming, twitching thing whose nose, mouth, ears and eyes poured out blood.
His mother slumped, dead, to the ground.
"In answer to your question, madam," Professor Augustus Farralay said, "His Majesty's Government, Department Q."
He stroked her hair.
"We're the good guys."
TWO
The M1, southbound
2.48am, present day
BHHHHWWWWOHHHHTRRRRRR!
The blast from the speeding hazardous materials tanker's horns erupted suddenly, unexpectedly and deafeningly, loud enough to blow windows, perhaps eardrums, perhaps to fell Jericho's fabled walls. Shiny twin pipes of polished chrome, these things looked innocuous enough - fashion accessories for the macho-looking vehicle - but in actuality they were state-of-the-art noise machines, designed in terms of the sheer decibels they emitted with one purpose in life. Mounted, for health and safety reasons, above and away from the driver's cab on either side of the tanker, they existed to inform other road-users that some quite serious crap was motoring towards them - or to put it another way, to scare the living bejeezus out of anyone stupid enough to be in its path.
Hannah Chapter did not consider herself stupid. She wasn't in the tanker's path. The young woman was, however, spidering her way with a great deal of urgency along the catwalk on its roof.
The horns blared as she passed between them.
"Gyyah!" she roared. In the circumstances, it was the closest she could manage to bastard.
Hannah slapped her hands over her ears, clamped her teeth together, and squeezed her eyes shut as the seemingly endless noise pummelled her temples with waves of pulsing agony so intense they were physical. This instinctive reaction to the horns was, of course, a mistake, and one the tanker had hoped she'd make. Beneath Hannah's feet, the speeding vehicle veered suddenly and deliberately across the motorway lane, its intention to throw Hannah off balance as a precursor to hurling her off the roof.
Suitably unbalanced, Hannah was jolted onto her side and whipped out a hand to stop herself from stumbling. It landed in a patch of black viscous gloop - the earthly remains of one Mabel Donovan, who in death as in life seemed to be everywhere - and Hannah felt her palm skid out from under her. She buckled and her right knee hit metal
before it too slipped, wrenching her thigh, and Hannah felt herself starting to slide inexorably down the curve of the tanker's side. It veered again and she lurched upward in a last-ditch gamble to regain footing and steady herself - but it was a gamble that failed to work. The manoeuvre served only to feed Hannah's momentum and, as the horns blared in victory, she plummeted off the side of the speeding behemoth, arms windmilling the air.
"-king son of a-!"
A second, that was all she had. Hannah twisted in mid-fall, flailed madly for some kind of handhold, and managed, miraculously, to grab one. A huge "oooff!" escaped her as she slammed back into the side of the tanker, winded. Whatever it was she was grabbing - some rail or other, she didn't care as, as long as the damn thing held - she was doing so by her fingertips, dangling so low that her boots kicked against the racing road surface, sparking her steel toe caps and making her dance an involuntary jig.
She wasn't having that. Hated jigs. Reminded her of the hillbilly rednecks back home. With an agonised groan, Hannah began to pull herself back up, cursing when her glasses slipped off her nose and were crushed beneath a wheel. Godammit, that was the third pair this week.
Oh yeah, she thought wearily, here we go again. Why in the name of Rob Zombie did she persist on getting herself involved with this crap? She was an intelligent girl, after all. She could have gone to Harvard and been a doctor. Yale, been a lawyer. Hell, right now she'd have been ecstatic with a Ronald McDonald graduate programme and an endlessly smiling future as gold-star manager of the month.
But noooo. She had to choose Arkham University and major in cryptozoology. So tell me, Hannah, what is it you want to be when you grow up? Me? Oh, I want to spend my days down sewers shooting dead, slavering things. I fancy trekking through some stinking South American jungle annihilating soul cannibals. Or how about a trip to some its-grim-up-north sink estate to kick seven shades of unholy shit out of the neighbourhood's happy-slapping, blood-sucking vampire chavs...