Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys.

by P. G. Burns

  Simeon is surprised by Reuben’s unusual tone; one of reverence and subservience. Everything clicks. Of course. Reuben is just another player. And even Solfrid is just an underling. It is Michael who is the mastermind. It has always been him. Centuries, perhaps millennia, of planning at work.

  “And what if he is displeased with the results of his experiment?” asks Reuben.

  Michael is smug. “Oh, he will be displeased but what does he expect? He cast us down here, his loyal servants, sentenced to watch over these inferior beings, while he left. But now we know the truth. The Fallen One has told us all; that the humans are his chose people and we Arc Hon and you Djinn are just second-class citizens, only here to guide and help these savages. Well, by the time he has returned this will be my… sorry, our world, and we will be ready for him. I wait in anticipation to see how he reacts to finding these hominids that he loves so much utilised as mere slaves and body vessels for the use of the rightful rulers, the holy trinity of the Arc Hon, the Fallen One and the Djinn.

  Things are now finally clear to Simeon and his questions are being answered, except now he has a new question. Who is the Fallen One?

  Somewhere in the British countryside

  Located in the north of Buckinghamshire lies an area of rolling agricultural landscape known as Aylesbury Vale. Shane sits up front in the stolen Land Rover that Chamuel drives. He wouldn’t class himself as a nervous passenger normally but he is concerned that Chamuel’s erratic driving will bring attention to the group. He assumes that the media will by now have photos and video images of him and the other two splattered all over the TV. It is nearly three hours since the prison break and perhaps two hours since they released the Governor. Perhaps Chamuel had a point, getting out of this predicament would be a lot easier if the authorities were presuming they had died with the rest of the prisoners. Still, they may be lucky and get to this Simeon’s underground place before the story really breaks.

  He feels a pang of guilt towards the Wilkinsons who they left tied up in the farmhouse but he knows if Chamuel had had his way they would be dead, so at least he doesn’t have their death on his conscience. Shane looks into the back seats and notices both Leo and Robert are looking at each other and gripping the seats.

  He decides to comment. “You need to slow down. You’re drawing attention to us.”

  The speedo reads 110mph. Chamuel tuts but he does slow.

  “Yeah, well, we gotta get to the tunnels before you and the twins back there are poster boys for worldwide terrorism,” he retorts. “Anyway, we’re nearly there. In fact, we need to ditch this vehicle.”

  Chamuel swerves off the road and drives through a small wooded area, coming to a sudden halt. Leo and Robert are so relieved to get out of the car they don’t question what is next. Shane does.

  “So, where are we going now?”

  Chamuel smiles. “We are going to gaol.”

  “Again?” sighs Leo.

  Chamuel smiles. It was clear to Simeon that he was a target after he was eliminated by his other Djinn for his radical views towards the humans and so he prepared a retreat, a secret haven with an entrance hidden in the local gaol. He favoured a place called Aylesbury Vale, where he’d had many followers through a Freemason lodge he’d set up there. He had a house built there in the 1700s, calling it Claydon House and by the mid-1800s, he was building underground tunnels into London. Under the premise of building a modern transport service, he orchestrated the commissioning of not one, but many tunnels. The first one, all the world knew about but the second one, only a soon-to-be deceased MP and eleven thousand black slave-workers. He also had a gaol built, which contained the entrance. Today it is a museum but the entrance is still there for those who know how to find it, hidden in the same cell as always.

  Shane and his band of renegades pass into the museum unnoticed as the skeleton staff are busy watching the news on TV.

  “Would you just look at that big black chap? He’s got murderous eyes if I ever saw them. Typical Muslim. It was clearly his plan,” says Ivor the curator.

  “They don’t know who it was yet. Isn’t the fit Mills bloke Irish? Maybe it were the IRA?” adds Eliza, who has worked on the door here for forty of her fifty-nine years.

  “I heard the old guy with glasses is in with the Italian Mafia and it was a revenge hit that went wrong,” says the youngest staff member and the others all mock him for such a ridiculous idea.

  If the three staff members could be bothered to look at the monitor that watched over the entrance and hallway of the museum, they may have noticed that the four people entering the prison cell exhibit are in fact the same four people they are scrutinising on their TV screen. Luckily for the staff, they did not notice.

  The cell stands as it has these past three hundred years, only now it’s an exhibit, kept as it was to give the visitors a realistic experience of life in gaol back in the day. Chamuel sneaks over the barrier and counts bricks, up then across. Shane gets the Indiana Jones theme in his head.

  Under the stone bench attached to the wall a small opening appears.

  “Well it still works, sheesh… how nobody ever found this, I don’t know!” Shane hopes it is going to get bigger as he doubts he could squeeze in through it as it is. He looks at Robert and knows he definitely won’t. Chamuel pushes the brick harder and the opening grows a few centimetres more.

  “You first, big boy,” Chamuel instructs Robert, who lies down and rolls into the black opening. He sticks for a moment but after a helping foot from Chamuel he disappears into the darkness. Next Leo puts his glasses into his pocket and, kneeling, enters the hole head first. Soon his feet are swallowed up.

  “Ok, once I release this brick, we got sixty seconds, so get on your belly, soldier boy and start shuffling. Shane ducks under the bench and pushes his body into the dark, damp hole. Soon he is in a narrow tunnel and he can hear the other two shuffling ahead of him.

  “Get a fucking move on!” he hears from Chamuel, whose silhouette fades as the opening closes behind him. Shane wonders how Robert managed to get through as he himself is struggling to move in such a confined space. The incessant griping of Chamuel behind him drives him on and soon he reaches another opening and he can make out Robert’s outstretched arm pulling Leo out and up onto his feet. Shane reaches the end and is relieved to find a lighted, spacious room awaits them.

  Chamuel exits last, still moaning. “Man, you need to wash them feet soon as we find some running water.”

  The modern room is lit by florescent strip lighting that turns on and off via a sensor. It reminds Shane of the interrogation rooms back in Afghanistan with its bright lights. A large secure door seems to be the only way forwards and the three men wait patiently for Chamuel to produce a key. Chamuel walks to the door and simply pushes it open before turning to face the three humans.

  “Seriously? You three are the saviours of the world? The world is fucked.” He laughs to himself and walks through the door.

  They follow him into a long white-washed corridor, leading to a red-walled corridor, which leads to a lift with a metal shutter gate that needs pulling up and down. They all enter the lift and, after what seems to be a one-floor descent, the doors open into a huge room resembling an empty hangar.

  “So he had it all kitted out, did he?” says Shane sarcastically.

  Chamuel does not reply; instead he continues walking until he reaches the far side of the huge room where there is a small door. Inside they find a person-sized clear tubular chute.

  “What’s that?” asks Leo.

  Chamuel smiles. “Transport to London.”

  The group stands on a small platform looking into this spectacular-looking network of clear tubes. “This is the lay-line system. It makes it possible for blocks of meat like you three to travel at real speeds, instead of faffing around at snail’s pace.”

  Leo looks apprehensive. The trip here in the stolen Land Rover at breakneck speed was fast enough for him; he is sure he is going to dislike
this form of transport even more.

  “Right, who’s first?” Shane steps forward and Chamuel opens a sliding door to one of the tubes. Leo observes, “It looks like an air tube system, the ones which cashiers would use to send money up to the offices.”

  “Okay,” Chamuel tells Shane. “Step in, place your hands on the blue spots and feet on the red spots so you are assuming the missionary position, if you can remember how that goes.”

  Shane follows the instructions like a good soldier. He can feel the anticipation coupled with excitement. Even in the elite company of paratroopers, Shane was classed as an adrenaline freak and he loved speed. He doubted this would match his first skydive or the first outing with the air force when he was allowed to take the controls of a Typhoon jet but still it was a pretty big buzz.

  “Okay, you ready?”

  “One question, what’s at the other ennnnnnnnndddddd?”

  Nothing. Not skydiving, not rolling a Typhoon at plus 5G, nothing prepared him for the feeling he was experiencing at this moment, as if he was plummeting to the ground with a huge weight tied around him. He hurtles through the tube, somehow avoiding contact with any sides as his body speeds through. And yet, despite the mind-blowing speed he feels no G force. The trip lasts no more than twenty seconds and without any warning he comes to a sudden stop. He hovers inside the tube briefly then drops the small distance to the floor. There is a swoosh noise as a door opens to the side. Shane quickly pulls himself clear and out of the way of the others arriving. He steps into another large hangar-sized room, only this one is not empty. Not by a long shot.

  The noise of Leo arriving and stumbling to his feet does not distract Shane from the awe he feels at what he can see. Soon Robert arrives via the lay-line tube and last comes Chamuel, who looks at his fellow travellers as they all stand silently staring into the room.

  “What did I tell you, fucking impressive, innit?”

  Simeon had worked tirelessly converting his old HQ into a modern-day war room. The room, easily the length and breadth of a football pitch and fifteen metres high, is filled with objects whizzing around: hundreds of floating pods, each no bigger than an upright vacuum cleaner and not that different in shape, except these are like transparent bubbles with coloured forks of light flashing around inside them. These pods keep stopping at small stations attached to the ceiling and the walls and then detaching themselves randomly before setting off again, whizzing around till they find another station. The lightning emanates from a spinning core of energy, which Shane notices resembles a marble in size and shape; in the centre of the space there is a square glass room the size of a large sitting room. This is the command centre, which contains all the controls and various monitors.

  “This is the God computer,” says Chamuel. “The most advanced and wonderful technology you philistines will ever see. Come on, let’s get in the little room and I’ll show you how it works. These are organic bots, they collect data from the minds of all the little minions that are channelled with Simeon through his bloodline, data from nearly one hundred and fifty million minds spread throughout the world.”

  He looks to Shane, waiting for his comment, but only receives a blank expression.

  “Information and knowledge are the strongest and most powerful weapons you can possibly harness,” he explains. “This facility will allow you to process all the information available direct from Simeon’s line of humans.” Again blank expressions. Sighing, Chamuel moves to a small control panel. The screen is liquid and ripples to his touch. Give me a name of anyone on the planet but not someone you are personally attached to. A celeb or someone like that.”

  Robert says, “Cyril Regis.”

  Chamuel looks at him. “Who the fuck is Cyril Regis?”

  “He is a legend! He played for the Sky Blues back in the…”

  “Never heard of him or the Sky Blues but let’s go with it. He still alive?”

  “Ehh, I think so.”

  Chamuel shakes his head then puts his hand further into the liquid screen and the pods outside seem to become more erratic. Leo looks on in amazement. He wonders how many there are. Hundreds? Thousands? How do they not collide?

  Chamuel points to a floating cube where a three-dimensional picture appears, “Is that Cyril Regis?” he asks Robert.

  Robert screws his eyes up trying to make out the grey, balding, black man standing in a bank queue.

  “Yes, it could be. Yes, it is. He’s a bit older than last time I saw him, but yes, that’s him.”

  Chamuel continues, “Cyril is standing in the NatWest bank on Dudley High Street. I won’t go into details about him as I doubt anyone but Jihad Joe here cares but we could find out where he lives, who he lives with, if he is married, having an affair, if he was gay, if he had a secret love child, etc. etc. I’m sure you get the point.” The picture evaporates when Chamuel takes his hand out. “The Djinn have used instruments like this to influence and persuade humans to do their bidding for centuries. They have bribed, blackmailed and corrupted you saps into following them and carrying out their wishes.

  “Of course, they don’t need a huge rig like this as they can link directly into any linked human’s mind, but Simeon is a very clever Djinn. He has created this device so as to give you, Shane, the ability to gain the same insight as your opponents. It doesn’t do exactly what they can do and I’m not sure your tiny brain will be up to controlling all the information it will download, but in some ways it’s even better than Vril-linked mind communication. We won’t sweat the small stuff now though; we will get the instruction book out later. Let me show you around the rest of the place.”

  Chamuel is dancing around, excited by his role as guide to this place of wonderment. It reminds Leo of Willy Wonka as he jumps around, springing from one end of the room to the other, pointing to various weird and wonderful gadgets. Leo half expects to see Oompa Loompas on the other side of the door as they enter yet another large room. At least that would explain the boiled sweets, he smiles to himself.

  They enter a new room. This one is only half the size of a hangar and has doors stationed all around it and a balcony, which also has doors all around it. The layout and doors could be that of a futuristic prison, thinks Shane.

  “Each door is a lay-line,” says Chamuel, “capable of transporting you in seconds to a choice of over two hundred locations within London. Now, let me show you the armoury and the living quarters then we can all get a well-earned rest so we can plan the tactics for tomorrow.”

  Shane looks for the usual smile on Chamuel’s face but there is none. They pass into a room full of modern and not so modern weapons, all orderly stacked. Both Shane and Robert are impressed, Leo not so much. Finally the living quarters, which resemble the on-board facilities of a submarine, very snug with small sealed chambers containing single beds and nothing else. These pod-like sleeping chambers are just a tad bigger than a pulldown sun-bed and big man Robert remarks that with all the room down here, such claustrophobic sleeping arrangements seem unreasonable.

  “Oh, sorry your fucking highness,” snaps Chamuel. “Not good enough for a cave monkey? Would you rather you were up in the Kashmir Mountains counting stalagmites, is that it?”

  Robert whispers to Leo. “He is the most racist black man I ever met.”

  “Tell me about it,” sighs Leo. “Try being a Jew in his presence.”

  Chamuel opens one of the sleeping pods. “They are small, but trust me, they serve two very important functions, one is sleep and the other, well, actually, let’s get around to that later. Right, finally through here is the kitchen, fully stocked. Everything runs off the national grid, so don’t worry about the bills. Any questions?”

  No one wants to hear Chamuel’s sarcastic reply so no one asks anything.

  “Good,” says Chamuel. “Now I gotta go back up top get some nice threads, I might even get me a new identity a fit non-smoker without the duck features. I suggest once you girls finish exploring… you get some sleep. Especially y
ou, Shane. You gonna need your sleep, tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “What’s happening tomorrow?”

  Chamuel shrugs his shoulders. “I dunno, you’re going to tell me. Don’t worry, it’ll all become clear tonight. Now just get some rest. I will have a drink for you boys while I’m up there in the West End. Well, except for the Muslim of course and the Jew. Anyway, I will have a drink for you, Shane.”

  As he leaves Leo holds his arms out in disbelief: “Jews drink!”

  As tiredness overcomes them, Shane realises very quickly how comfortable the pods actually are. A low hum does not disturb him but in fact relaxes him until he drifts off into a deep sleep.

  He is not surprised that his dreams are vivid and that he is meeting with Amitiel in a large country house. Cream teas are being served by an eight-foot-tall butler and a tiny but beautiful French maid. Amitiel sits on the large garden lawn. She is wearing a formal and conservative unfitted dress with beaded edges. She looks very cross. Shane kneels beside her.

  “You decided to ignore the plan and do your own thing did you?” She pulls out a copy of The Times which looks like it is from the 1920s. A picture of him and his two colleagues next to a sketch of Chamuel brings a smile to Shane’s face, seeing the duck features.

  “What can be so funny? Are you fucking insane?” she frowns, only getting crosser. “Please don’t tell me that of all the billion saps to choose from Simeon has picked a fucking idiot?”

  Shane is both taken aback and offended by her outburst and gets defensive in return. “I am not an idiot but I will not be involved in killing defenceless people! That is me, okay? I don’t like bullies and I won’t be one.”

  Unimpressed, she gestures wildly. “If there was a Lord God, I would beg him to save us. This isn’t the playground, Shane. You’re not on a mission to avenge Chloe. This is a battle to save your species. Your opponents will not show any weakness, believe me, and they will thrive on your weaknesses so don’t reveal them.”