Kingdom

by Andy Tilley

  ‘Come on Christine. I think it’s best if we go and wait for Jack on the main road. No point standing here freezing to death is there.’

  Thomas grips his daughter’s hand and steps away from the doorway. He leads her into the centre of the road so as to split the distance of the night shadows massed on either flank. This change in perspective morphs the place and the up ramp is no longer a way out (its walls no longer there to defend against the woods) but ramparts defining a gauntlet that they must run. Oh, but it won’t be hot oil, rocks and arrows that Setantii will rain down on their charge to the gate and Thomas knows it even before a second loud crack (closer and high to their left) confirms that something is in motion, hunting them down. A flash of white between tree trunks and he catches a glimpse of the weapon that Setantii has chosen. Ironically, it’s Christine’s favourite woodland story time character, Mr Brock, who is scrambling down the slope to say hello.

  ‘Run Christine, as fast as you can princess, keep a..!’

  A volley of sticks and leaves blasts over the wall less than ten paces ahead, cutting short Thomas’s instructions and their sprint to safety. Debris is still tumbling through the air when two huge claws burst from it, grapple the capping stone and effortlessly heave a huge head up onto it. Behind the head a third set of claws and then a fourth appears, scrabbling for grip to lever the remaining black bulk of a badger into view. Such a powerful animal this is, a low and wide bundle of muscle. Not the quickest in the woods Mr Brock, but he has the teeth and the attitude sufficient to savage any dog that dares. What chance this father and his blind daughter then?

  Setantii doesn’t hesitate, tumbles her beast down over the fifteen foot wall. Thomas takes a step backward from the fiery blue eyes that are fixed on him as the silkie manoeuvres her animal into position. No longer able to hide his terror, Thomas shouts past the creature, toward the gate for help. Christine cries out too but the badger simply ignores their panic, creeps forward again and forces Thomas to make a move. Any move will do, any attempt at prolonging for even a few seconds the lives that those looming slashing swipes will take!

  ‘Setantii don’t! Please don’t do this!’

  Dragging his screaming daughter to one side Chevalier slings Christine against the nearest wall, knocking the wind out of her and with it her ability to scream. The silence lasts only as long as it takes his terrified princess to refill her lungs but it’s enough for Thomas to be heard, command her to stay still whilst he digs in; her back pressed tight against the wall, he in front with a wide armed stance to complete the shield. Mr Brock simply adjusts his position, wheels around to face them and begins priming his haunches ready for what will be a decisive and lethal attack. Instinctively Thomas can read the animal’s posture, anticipate when it will strike and with this knowledge comes a weird calm that begins a slow, entirely inappropriate countdown in his head.

  ‘Five……four…..’

  The badger’s rear legs continue to flex, shuddering as they gather the energy needed to spring its huge front claws and teeth onto its prey. Even above the screaming Thomas can hear the boar grunting and growling, the beast itself merely a dark outline in this place that’s been shunned by the lamps.

  ‘….three……two……’

  Thomas Chevalier opens his mouth to repeat his plea but instead remains silent. Enough is enough. This proud man refuses to beg anymore, not even for the life of his daughter whom he loves. In truth, he can’t imagine her life without him in it to protect her. So maybe it is time to call it a day, end the dreadful uncertainty that he and Christine have spent the past ten years wandering through. Yes, perhaps it is time now to stop trying to convince each other that their future is bright. It’s time to stop lying to one another. This is their future now; tearing, shredding, blood soaked claws. But however gruesome this will be, perhaps it’s for the best that they die here tonight, together on these cold damp cobbles.

  ‘……..one……..zero.’

  An awful guttural snarl marks the end of the count down and launches the attack. Thomas raises his arms, closes his eyes, discovers that time is not only relative to light but to dark too for it takes an age for the badger’s jaws to finish closing, crunching and puncturing his hand into a bleeding sack of broken bones. The attack hits hard, the badger too heavy to fend off. One slow heart beat later the first claw arrives, ripping through Chevalier’s jacket and gouging into his shoulder. The pain jars his eyes open, demands that he watches as another brutal moment slides into view. Mid air the beast twist, peels back snout and lips to retarget teeth at Chevalier’s neck. These fangs flash bright in Thomas’s mind, as do the stripes of the badger’s head, lit suddenly by a halogen white light?

  The windscreen behind the headlamps eventually arrives, smashing the badger’s hind quarters high amidst a shower of glass. Thomas cries out again, not in pain but in anticipation of it. Huddling over Christine he offers himself once more as protection against the back end of the car that’s skidding, crumpling and grinding along the wall. Mercifully it stops, only inches away and easily close enough for Thomas to see and hear the driver leaning across from his seat, popping the door lock and shouting at him.

  ‘Get in!’

  Breathing too hard to answer, Chevalier does as he’s told. Forgetting the pain he yanks at the door handle but there’s too much damage to this hand and the door for it to be opened. Wincing and with one eye on the dead badger Thomas switches position, tries again with his good arm but as he dallies a new noise fills the silence left behind by the crash; a high pitched, squealing bedlam that demands his attention, turns him away from the stubborn door in order to see what the hell kind of horror can make such an atrocious noise. And there, in the far dark corner where wall meets station, rising from the train track is his answer; Setantii’s second wave pouring over a chain mail fence bringing with it a revitalised sense of urgency for Thomas.

  ‘Shit! The doors jammed!’

  The first of the rats is already less than a car’s length away. With time running out Thomas grabs his daughter and bundles her through the broken passenger window, dumping her headfirst onto the safety of the passenger seat.

  ‘Turn it around!’

  Thomas slaps the roof hard, urging his friend to get into gear whilst at the same time flattening himself as much as possible to avoid this wreck of a vehicle as it pulls away from the wall. Bouncing over the body of the badger the car first discards its rear bumper and next that stubborn door! Falling to bits like this it puts Thomas in mind of something that a clown might drive around a circus ring, but there is nothing funny about the macabre scene (or clown’s for that matter) that slowly unveils itself as headlights swing across a mass of fur flowing out from behind the station. Revolting yet mesmerising too, Thomas watches the rats part like rancid water then regroup once the car’s wheels have rolled through their ranks. Too soon they’re on him, well before the car has completed its turn. Kick! Connect! Squeal! The closest of them is sent tumbling back into the throng. A second on his shoulder, ripped from it and tossed against the wall. Time to flee but the wave of vermin is relentless, clawing at his trouser legs, leaping over his head and grasping at hair. Impossible to outrun this plague and already a squirming black mat has been laid across his escape route, pimped by hundreds of tiny blue LED’s through which Setantii is homing in. Thomas knows the race is lost and yet still he high steps on only to skid, stumble and fall with his very next stride. Face down and helpless, drowning beneath a frenzied flood of tiny incisors all ripping at his flimsy cotton armour and for a second time in as many minutes Thomas Chevalier accepts his fate for it won’t be long before they’ve reached the good stuff, the stuff that this stricken man needs to hold his life and soul together. And for a second time in as many minutes, Jack Noble comes to his rescue.

  It is the strangest thing. Thomas can hear the car breaking hard then stopping. A damaged door crunches open and Jack begins shouting on his way through the rats. But the biting and the writhing? Well that
’s all stopped. At first this lack of pain terrifies Thomas, the idea that somewhere nerves have been exposed and severed (just like the telephone cables at the Manor had been one year). But this can’t be the case because he can still feel the pinch of tiny claws all over him. It’s just that the claws are standing still for some reason, standing by whilst his rescuer reaches in to pull him from the eye of the hurricane. It’s only when Thomas has staggered to his feet (composed himself sufficiently to take the first of two painful strides needed to reach the car) that he gets a sense of what might be happening here. That fiery blue wave, the one that had crashed into him less than twenty seconds ago, has dissipated. Something’s pulled the plug, drained all that malicious blue hate from these rats’ eyes and left a smouldering red scum behind, too cool to be rage though and more like shock. So stunned are his attackers in fact that Thomas is able to take his time. Carefully he lowers himself into the car, wincing out loud only once when he twists to check that Christine is safely tucked away on the floor beneath the back seat. With a thankful nod to Jack the horror finally ends and the car rolls forward. It isn’t until the safe sanity beyond the gate is reached that Chevalier dares to speak, the quiver in his voice betraying how scared he remains and the amount of pain he is in.

  ‘Christ Jack you left that a little close didn’t you?’

  ‘Hey, this pile of junk doesn’t get anywhere quickly mate. Maybe it might be a bit quicker off the mark now it’s lost a couple of doors though eh?’

  Jack’s lack of gravity doesn’t lighten Thomas’s mood.

  ‘Shit you’re bleeding everywhere. Lancaster Infirmary’s not far so we…’

  ‘No Jack! Just get us to the bloody Manor will you?’

  Thomas feels bad about his outburst, hopes that his friend (who after all has just risked his life to save their’s) understands the fear behind his brevity. Even so, perhaps he was a little harsh.

  ‘Look, Jeremy’s got more kit down at the Manor than any A&E in the country.’

  Jack’s still sulking a little so Thomas offer’s a final attempt at an apology.

  ‘I tell you Jack, you should have seen some of the invoices he’s put through over the years. It was hard to tell sometimes if he was setting up a laboratory or starring in his own series of CSI Hartford.’

  At last the friends can smile together, Thomas snorting out loud when he turns to see Christine (less than half a mile from the place where she almost died) fast asleep.

  ‘Poor things exhausted. So anyway, how have you been doing? Are you pretty much fully recovered?’

  ‘You kidding? I’m not wearing the polo neck as a fashion statement if that’s what you mean. No, the stitches come out next week but other than that I’m feeling okay. Close call though. Surgeon reckoned that one of the gashes was less than three millimetres from my main artery. If that crazy hadn’t been able to fight off Setantii as well as he did then you’d be rat shit by now I reckon!’

  It’s a simple truth and Chevalier shivers at the thought of it. They’ve both had close calls at the hands of Setantii it seems, and she will certainly try again soon to punish the men who double crossed her. It feels important to Thomas to try and figure out if there is any science behind these lucky escapes so he asks Jack to tell him more about the mental patient who attacked him at the institute.

  ‘Jonesy god bless him. Of course he hasn’t a clue what happened to this day but I just couldn’t cover for him, too many witnesses screaming through the door. He’s been transferred down to Broadhurst, poor bastard. I feel bad about it but when things calm down I’ll get him back where he belongs.’

  Thomas winces again but this time at his friend’s pain.

  ‘So why do you think he didn’t deliver that killer blow then?’

  ‘He didn’t want too, simple as that. Loved me to bits that ol’ pant pissing fool did. And when it came down to it, as susceptible as his broken mind was, Setantii just couldn’t force him to it. Oh I’m sure he thought he had done me in. I was a right bloody mess, all but dead but Jonesy managed to hold back just enough to leave something for the crash team to work with when they eventually busted in. Must have blown Setantii away seeing me kicking ass tonight!’

  And there’s the second answer. Thomas recognises it immediately; the rats had been frozen mid-attack by nothing more mysterious than fuse blowing astonishment. Even for a being as powerful as Setantii, it’s one hell of a feat controlling a thousand minds at once. The shock of seeing her nemesis back from the grave like that must have been simply too much. With her hard drive crashed she’d had no time to reboot all those rats and so her prey slipped away. Oh, but she’s back online now! Thomas can trace her constant presence as the car speeds south through the night. Bright pin pricks of light soaring high, flitting through woodland or shooting across black fields, arrow fast. Birds and bats she relays, each poor animal possessed, ridden to an exhausting death then discarded for the next. Paradoxically her presence is comforting, like the monster in the movie which isn’t so scary when you can see it. Only when those tiny blue dots disappear (less than ten minutes into the journey) do Thomas’ nerves really begin to jangle. This is no longer a pursuit, it’s a race and the only thing that he has that can beat Setantii to the lab is a phone.

  ‘Tom? Yeah, we’re on our way, I’d say less than forty minutes but listen. The silkie’s going to beat us there. What I need you to do is get the Range Rover and meet us outside the Black Bull. And bring gun’s Tom. Shotguns, pistols, anything you can get your hands on. Leave now and take the long way round past Grayson’s farm. Park at the back and we’ll see you there. Good luck.’

  Thomas tosses his phone into the glove box and shuffles forward to better scan the night sky, through the hole in the damaged windshield. Switching his vigil between this and the rear view mirror he can easily watch over his sleeping princess at the same time. Dad is glad that daughter is finally resting, never suspecting that Christine isn’t sleeping at all. She’s busy, concentrating hard and making a kind of phone call too.

  Chapter 34

  I saw a film once. Scarface it was called and it ended in a cocaine fuelled bloodbath; Pacino’s last stand, his character off his face and raking down his enemies with an M16. The scene I am in now looks a bit like that, only the slain hoodlums here are creatures of the woods and the powder smudged across their dead faces is not white but black. There are chunks of them everywhere, bits of furry or feathered flesh strewn across the roof of the Range Rover. More recognisable are the animals squished onto the road. These are still intact, flat and emptied of blood and guts but for the most part all there. It seems they served their purpose well these little kamikaze critters, laying themselves down like that to grease tyres, skid the car from the road and into the tree. Good god, her timing must have been perfect to pull this off! The boot is popped open and there are guns there.

  ‘Keltz, what do you think?’

  He shrugs, like me undecided as to what the nature of any danger might be. The human’s aren’t a problem, wouldn’t warrant us carrying the shotgun or the pistol but neither of us are quite sure what rages in Setantii at the moment. I toss him the shot gun and he catches it neatly with one hand, stepping forward to load his pockets with shells. I check the clip in my pistol and it’s full. The expertise and steady hands that do this are not Cristian’s though because he never held a gun. Must be either Ruby or no, most likely the teenager (taken at the bus stop last night) who was use to handling a weapon. Looking further into the car I can see the back of somebody’s head resting on the gear stick.

  ‘I’m going to check around the front Keltz. Cover me would you?’

  My order does sound both pathetic and dramatic and Keltz isn’t going to let the moment pass.

  ‘Got your back serge! And hey listen, if I don’t make it, tell me kids I love ‘em and Brenda that the girl at MacDonalds meant nothing to me.’

  Funny bastard. I can still hear him chortling away as I peek in through the open driver’s door. I
recognise the dead man sprawled across the front seats. His name is Tom, Tom Jackson or something like that. Yeah, whacko Jacko we called him, the village copper. I remember that he drove Rose and I home in his police car one autumn morning when Mrs Edmundson grassed us up for sapping apples out of her back garden. Well, whacko Jacko won’t be reading any more terrified kid’s their phoney rights, poor sod. I just hope he was dead (or at least unconscious) before what ever it was came to steal his eyes. There’s nothing I can do for him so I stand and start to walk back to Keltz, ask him if he has picked anything up.