Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  Eventually he’d dampened the mood enough that everyone reluctantly packed up and returned to the van. “I liked it here,” Ruth said with irritation. “There was some peace and quiet for a change. And lots of nature.”

  “There’ll be other places.” Veitch spoke without looking at her directly, but he’d been watching her all day, surreptitiously. Her health seemed to have improved immeasurably, thanks to Tom’s potions. She’d still vomited among the trees on emerging from the tent, but she was sure that was the alcohol she’d downed. He felt good to see her so well, especially knowing he’d contributed to it. He still wished she’d look at him sometimes, talk to him in the close, confiding way she’d done when they first emerged from the castle. But there was time. And he actually felt like there was hope.

  They picked up the A68 heading south. Traffic normally streamed along the route, but vehicles were sparse; fewer and fewer people seemed to be travelling any great distance from their homes. The landscape was green and rolling, with a fresh breeze blowing in from the coast. Yet despite the wind, Tyneside was obscured by unnaturally dark clouds which looked suspiciously like smoke.

  Veitch had studied the maps intently before they set off, weighing strategies, discarding options. He eventually decided they should head to the Peak District, where they could find enough of a wilderness to lose themselves but would be close enough to several major conurbations if they needed the security of people.

  With Shavi driving they sped past Consett, which was still reeling from the terrible deprivations of the eighties, and through the open countryside west of Durham. As they passed the branch road to Bishop Auckland the traffic began to back up.

  “Probably an accident,” Church mumbled, leaning forward in his seat so he could peer over the roofs of the cars ahead. A few hundred yards away a blue light flashed relentlessly. The van crept forward a few feet. Shavi wound down the window; exhaust fumes and the stink of petrol wafted in. Above the sound of idling engines, voices carried. “Is it an accident?” Church asked.

  Shavi strained to hear, then shook his head. “I cannot make out what they are saying.”

  The van moved forward again, jerked to a halt as Shavi pulled on the handbrake. Church could see blue uniforms moving around; a few standing in a huddle. There didn’t seem any sense of urgency.

  “No ambulances. No fire engine.” He wound down his window and hung right out for a moment. “Can’t see any wreckage,” he called back.

  Eventually the van had crept forward enough for him to get a clear view. He slammed into his seat, his face concerned. “It’s a police roadblock.”

  “They’re not going to be doing a traffic census with the country falling apart around them.” Ruth leaned over from the back to see. They were only a few cars away from the checkpoint now.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Church glanced in the side mirror. There was a solid queue of cars behind them.

  “Why should it be anything to do with us?” Laura said. “No one even knows we’re coming this way.”

  “For all we know, there could be blocks on every road south.” Church turned to Shavi. “When they wave the next car through, don’t pull up any further. We’ll play it by ear.”

  Everyone’s attention was focused on two policemen with clipboards who were peering into the cars to check the passengers. Church watched them for a moment; a skittering at the back of his head told him his subconscious had glimpsed something else more important. Slowly he surveyed the scene. At first he saw nothing, but a second sweep picked out a subtle detail that sent ice water running down his spine.

  Three policemen stood in a tight group away from the others, watching the proceedings carefully. There seemed nothing untoward about them at first glance until one became aware of the odd way the bright sunlight was striking their skin. It created an odd sheen on the flesh that made it appear like a wax mask.

  “Fomorii!” Church hissed. Without drawing attention to himself he carefully indicated the bogus police. “They’ve arranged this for us, like the trap they set at Heston services. They’re using the report from the Callander cop as a pretence to pull us over.”

  One of the policemen with the clipboards was marching towards them, irritated that they hadn’t pulled the van forward. He started to gesticulate angrily, then paused as his gaze flickered across the faces framed in the windscreen. He glanced down briefly at his clipboard, then spoke hurriedly in the radio pinned to his breast pocket.

  “Shit,” Church muttered.

  Shavi didn’t wait for instructions. He pounded his foot on the accelerator and thrust the van into gear. There was a screech of tires and the stink of burning rubber as he threw the wheel to one side. The van squealed out of its starting position and hurtled forward. Church braced himself on the dashboard, but everyone in the back was thrown across the floor amidst yells and curses.

  Bollards went flying in all directions as the van rattled from side to side. Church had a glimpse of the fake policemen’s curiously dispassionate faces as the van whirled by. Voices rose up above the whine of the engine.

  “Don’t hang about, Shav. Put your foot down,” Laura called out sourly from a heap somewhere in the back.

  They sped down the road at ninety, but the sirens which had risen up in the background were growing louder.

  “We’re not going to outrun them,” Veitch said, glancing over his shoulder.

  “I know.” Shavi took one look in his side mirror, then threw the van across the opposite lane in the path of a lorry. Its horn blared. Church and Veitch both swore as they instinctively threw their heads down.

  The van missed the lorry by a few inches, bounced over a curb and careened down a B road leading into the heart of the fells. Shavi gunned the engine along the deserted road and didn’t let up until they had put a few miles between them and the main road. A village called Eggleston flashed by and the road branched in several directions. Shavi chose the southern route; the police would have to be lucky to follow them immediately. By then the others had just about recovered from the chase.

  “You mad fucking bastard!” Veitch looked angry, but there was a note of respect in his voice.

  The others in the back were fine, if bruised, but they were all aware their predicament had taken a turn for the worst.

  “We’re going to have to abandon the van,” Veitch said. “After that stunt they’re going to be looking out for it on every road.”

  Laura peered through the rear windows at the landscape, a windswept smudge of greens and browns, patches of firs, areas of dark scrub beyond the fields that lined the road, leading up to the high country in the north. “Great. We’re back in Deliverance country. Where are we going to find another van round here?”

  “We aren’t.” Veitch motioned for Shavi to pull up a rough side lane which led behind a thick copse. “We’re going to keep well off the roads. All roads.” Aghast, Laura dreaded what was coming. “We’ve got plenty of supplies, tents, we can live rough. If we lose ourselves out there, with all the shit that’s going down they’re not going to have the time or equipment to find us.”

  Church nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a good plan.”

  “It’s a plan,” Laura said in disgust. “So’s lying in the middle of the road until something runs us over! Listen, I’m not a camping kind of girl. What we’ve done so far, fine. At least there was, you know, civilisation nearby.” She looked back out the windows. “All I can see are blisters, no bathrooms, cold wind and rain.”

  “You’ll live,” Veitch said dismissively. He grabbed the books of maps. “We’ll have to use this to navigate. The way I see it, we can pick a good route south from here to the Pennines. They’d have to really want us to come after us.”

  “They really want us,” Church said.

  They removed all their rucksacks, tents and provisions, shared them out, then drove the van as deep into the copse as it would go. The leaf cover was thick enough to ensure it would take a while for it to be discov
ered. Sirens wailed across the open landscape as they moved hurriedly south away from the road. They crested a ridge where the wind gusted mercilessly, and then they were in open countryside.

  The going was slow. Although Ruth was much recovered, she flagged easily and had to take many long rests, even over the first five miles. The A66, the main east-west route across the north country, appeared in the late afternoon. They waited in the thick vegetation by the roadside for nearly ten minutes until they were sure there was no traffic nearby, and then scurried across, ploughing straight into the fields beyond.

  According to the map there were only four villages between them and the next main road ten miles away. The rest of the area was eerily deserted: just fields and trees and the occasional scattered farm. Although they needed to be away from the main thoroughfares, the isolation unnerved them. They knew the old gods were not the only things that had returned with the change that had come over the world; other things best consigned to the realms of myth were loose on the land; some of them frightening, if harmless, others sharp of tooth and claw, with a wild alien intelligence. None of them relished a night in the open countryside. That thought stayed with them as they marched in silence, trying to enjoy the pleasant Birdsong that rang out from the hedgerows and the aroma of wild flowers gently swaying in the field boundaries.

  As twilight began to fall they neared the first of the villages marked on the map. Ruth suggested they pitch camp somewhere within the village boundaries, for safety. If they were going to risk a night in the wild, there were plenty of opportunities ahead. She looked ghostly white in the fading light and she had twice headed over to the hedgerow to be sick; the whole journey was taking its toll.

  Her voice sounded so exhausted they all agreed instantly, whatever their private doubts.

  Darkness had fallen completely by the time they reached the village and the golden lights were gleaming welcomingly across the night-sea of the fields. They hurried down from the high ground with an exuberance born of the potent desolation that emanated from the deep gloom shrouding the rest of the landscape; sounds which they could not explain by bird or foraging mammal pressed heavy against their backs; movements of shadows against the deeper shadow seemed to be tracking them in adjoining fields.

  Laura cried out at one point when a figure loomed out of the night. It was only a scarecrow; even so, there was something about it that was profoundly unnerving. The clothes seemed too new, the shape of the limbs beneath oddly realistic; as she passed she had the strangest sensation it was turning to watch her. She could sense its disturbing presence behind her as she continued down the field and suddenly she was thinking of the man on the train turned into a figure of straw. When she felt a safe distance from the scarecrow she glanced behind her, and instantly wished she hadn’t. Although it could have been her troubled imagination, she was sure there were two red pinpricks staring out of the shadows beneath the pulled-down hat. Watching her.

  The village was an odd mix of country money and rural decline: a handful of run-down sixties council houses cheek-by-jowl with sprawling ancient dwellings, overlooked by an Elizabethan manor house. There was only one main street, not blessed by street lights, and a couple of brief offshoots. Somehow a small pub and a tiny shop had survived the decline that had afflicted many similarly sized villages. There warm night air was thick with the aroma of clematis and roses which festooned the houses on both sides of the road. Everywhere was still and silent; although lights shone from the occasional undrawn curtains or crept out from slivers between drapes, there was no movement anywhere.

  “We ought to ask if it would be all right for us to pitch our tents within the village boundaries,” Shavi said with his usual thoughtfulness. He selected a house at random and wandered up the front path among the lupins and sunflowers. His rap on the door was shocking in the stillness. A second later the curtains at the nearest window were snatched back with what seemed undue ferocity to reveal the face of a middle-aged woman. She bore an expression not of surprise or irritation at being disturbed, but of unadulterated fright. When her searching gaze fell on Shavi she waved him away furiously and drew the curtains with a similar, and very final, force. He returned to the others, looking puzzled.

  “I told you,” Laura said, “Deliverance country. Don’t bend over to tie your shoe laces. You’ll be squealing like a little piggy.”

  “There’s always one miserable battleaxe in every village,” Ruth said. “Knock somebody else up.”

  “You don’t have a trace of innuendo in your body, do you?” Laura noted.

  Shavi tried the next house, then one a few doors up the street and one across the road; the response was the same in all of those that deigned to peek through the curtains: fear.

  “Look, this is bleedin’ crazy,” Veitch said with irritation. “Let’s try the boozer. I could do with a pint. At least they won’t turn us away.”

  As they moved down the main street towards the creaking sign and bright lights of the pub, Church slipped in next to Tom. “Looks like they’ve been having some trouble here.”

  “Hardly surprising, an isolated place like this. They should count themselves lucky they’re still hanging on. Remember Builth Wells?”

  Church recalled the deserted town, the preying things lurking in the shadows waiting for new blood. “From their reactions I don’t think it’s the kind of place we should be out sleeping under canvas.”

  “I think you’re right. Let’s hope the inn has some rooms.”

  The pub was The Green Man, echoing the name of the tavern on Dartmoor devastated by the Wild Hunt; another strange, disturbing connection in a world now filled with them.

  Church led the way in to the smoky bar; flagged floor, stone fireplace with cold ashes in the grate, dark wood tables, chairs and bar, an old drinking den, a hint of establishment. Small wall lamps provided focused pools of light which threw the rest of the place into comforting shadow.

  Drinkers, mainly men, were scattered at tables and along the bar, a surprising number for a small village pub at that time of night. They heard the hubbub of hushed voice as they swung the door open, but the moment they were all inside every conversation stopped and the drinkers, as one, turned and stared, their expression shifting through the same emotions: fear, relief, suspicion, surprise.

  “Deliverance,” Laura repeated in a singsong voice as she marched over to the bar.

  Veitch leaned over to whisper to Church. “Nah, it’s like that other film. American Werewolf. The Slaughtered Lamb. Rik Mayall. And that bloke who did the tea adverts.”

  “Brian Glover.”

  “Yeah, him.”

  Church glanced round, not sure whether to smile at the ludicrousness of the response or feel disturbed at whatever lay behind it.

  “You know,” Ruth broke into the conversation, “sooner or later someone’s going to say Folk don’t come round here much in a hick accent.”

  Laura fixed a cold stare on the barman, who appeared to have frozen midway through pouring a pint of bitter. “You see these scars?” she said pointing to her face. “The last landlord who didn’t get me a drink quick came off much worse.”

  “Sorry.” The barman was a side of beef in his fifties with curly ginger hair and rock ‘n’ roll sideburns. “We don’t get many new faces in here these days.”

  Ruth exchanged a secret smile with Church.

  The barman checked his watch. “Just stopping off for a quick one on your way to … ?” He waited for her to finish off his enquiry.

  She ignored him, glanced along the optics. “Better get me a big vodka. Ice, no mixer. Make it a treble. I’ve had a day of hard labour and I’m a wilting flower who’s not used to that kind of treatment. Oh, and whatever this lot want.”

  The barman didn’t make any other attempt at conversation; he seemed thrown by Laura’s demeanour, as if she were speaking to him in a foreign language. They took their drinks to a gloomy corner and the only two free tables, which they pulled together.


  “It certainly has character,” Shavi noted as he scanned the room while sipping on his mineral water.

  “If you like wall-to-wall crazy and forties horror movie cliche.” Laura swigged her drink gloomily. “I don’t know why we couldn’t have stayed in the city.”

  “What do you think’s going on?” Church asked.

  Tom wiped the cider from his drooping, grey moustache. “Just a local problem. Otherworld was filled with the detritus of a million nightmares, little ones and big ones, and I presume most of them have found their way back here.”

  There was something comforting about the age-old atmosphere of the pub after the fearful atmosphere out in the night. They settled back in their chairs to enjoy their drinks, appreciating the half-light which gave them a measure of cover from the suspicious glances. While Laura amused herself by staring out the few locals who dared to look their way, the others discussed their apparent success in evading the Fomorii. “They’re obviously determined to catch us,” Church noted. “But it was interesting they used subterfuge. We must have set them back so much in Edinburgh they’re afraid of taking an over-the-top approach.”

  “When have you known them not to be over-the-top?” Veitch noted.

  “He’s right,” Ruth said. “There was something about this that reeked of desperation, not revenge. You’d think they’d have gone for the nuclear option.”

  Tom pressed his glasses back against the bridge of his nose. “I think their true motivations will become apparent very quickly.”

  “So in the meantime let’s make the most of this lull and enjoy ourselves,” Laura said sharply. “You lot, you’re like, Let’s look for some big, heavy stuff to depress us. You know, fun is an option.”

  Church smiled, gave her leg a squeeze under the table. He was surprised to see the palpable relief on her face.