by Luke Walker
On the screen, Segoth stomped his way closer and closer to France. And if, as I suspected, he was following the people, he was coming closer and closer to us.
“What’s happening?” Tom said.
“Don’t worry about it.” I turned the device off. Outside, empty fields passed us, all of them free of farm animals or workers. While we were no more than a few miles from the nearest town, it looked as if we were deep in the countryside. Nobody lived or worked out here. No work to do. No life to live. If you came out here to get away from the people, the crowds and the constant fear, you came out here to die. Not a bad way to go. At least you’d go in open air in sight of the sky. All right, the heat was stifling, but so what? It was the same everywhere.
“Dave?”
I came back to myself. “Yes?”
“We’ll find her, won’t we?”
After all the horror we’d been through, after the events in my pub and in the block of flats, after witnessing me condemn a woman to a horrible death, the boy’s focus was still on Ashleigh. And that didn’t surprise me. Even if he wasn’t in love with her, he needed to use her as a focus to get himself going. Probably to keep himself sane.
“Absolutely,” I said.
Then I turned the radio on so we didn’t have to talk about it.
25
Ten miles later, we found a very human problem. Traffic.
We were only a few miles from Thetford, which, I worked out, put us roughly another thirty miles from Ashton Hall. And it didn’t look as if we were going anywhere soon.
We’d left the dead fields behind to hit a road that eventually became the parkway skirting around the city ahead. Whether there’d been an accident ahead or some other event, we didn’t know. There was a still line of vehicles stretching miles, the drivers able to do nothing but bake in the afternoon heat. The radio and Tom’s iPad were no help. The only thing on the news was Segoth’s rampage through France. Sacrifices to him were put in the region of two million, and another million were running for the tunnel. The streets and roads of Calais were lined with bodies thanks to the military and the word was people were only allowed on the street if they were willing to act as a sacrifice. Otherwise, they were to wait in their homes for the authorities to either choose them or let them wait until another time when their services would be required.
Tom drummed his fingers on the wheel. Ahead, a few horns blared and the line of vehicles remained still.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said.
“Not a lot we can do. Just keep calm.”
I kept the rest of my thought inside. Namely that we were in exactly the right place for a traffic mugging.
Tom swallowed a few large mouthfuls of water and breathed in an exaggeratedly slow fashion, trying to keep calm. “One thing we haven’t thought about. What is it in Ashton Hall that Ashleigh thinks she needs?” He drummed on the wheel again.
“I don’t know. All I’m hoping for is we find her soon and—” I broke off, then swore under my breath.
“What is it?” Tom said.
“They’re in the tunnel.”
The feed of the broadcast had switched to the security cameras inside the trains and the tunnel. Dozens of sprinting, screaming figures filled the shots. People fell; some managed to get back up while others were trampled to death. And still more kept coming. I’d missed what had happened to the military. Maybe they’d simply been overrun. Either way, the people were coming straight towards England. And that meant Segoth would follow.
Tom leaned towards me so he could see the screen. At the same time, flashes of light lit the screen. Hollow explosions. Gunfire.
We couldn’t take a guess how many soldiers were down there. Enough to mow down the first few waves of the running people, but not enough to stop the others. In the chaos of the smoke, gunfire, screaming people and blown-off heads, the citizens of France fought for their lives under the sea.
The battle passed quickly. Within minutes, the soldiers were overpowered, shot with their own weapons or torn apart. The feed remained on the scene. We were free to see the soldiers pleading for their lives while the people they’d been trying to kill moments before hacked them to death, stomped all over them or simply used their own guns on them, firing dozens of rounds into the bloody lumps of meat that had once been men. Bodies and blood lined the tracks; moans and screams made the soundtrack, burying any lie or cliché the reporters could manage. And all Tom and I could do was watch.
Behind the first few hundred people who’d made it down into the tunnel, more followed. They skidded through the splashes of blood and ruined bodies; they took fallen guns and knives and they ran into the darkness of the tunnel. After a moment, the voiceover reported that the British authorities were already in place to meet the invading French and repel them back to where they belonged. Back to Segoth.
“This is bad,” Tom said.
“I know, but we need to stay focused, right? We find Ashleigh and we deal with this other stuff when we have to.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound at all convinced and there was nothing I could do to help that.
A crash rang out. Someone had smashed a car window way ahead of us and all it took for us to know we were in trouble was that single smash.
Muggers.
26
They’d come from the trees lining the road, men armed with bats and knives and branches. All of us in our cars and vans were easy pickings.
“Oh, shit, Dave.”
Three of the men set to work on a car, bringing their bats down on the windows, reaching inside to snatch bags from the screaming occupants. Another two men knocked down an old guy who’d stepped out of his car at the first sound of violence. They brought their tree branches down on to his head, took his wallet and moved on to the next car. The air was made of heat and screams and the constant crash of breaking glass. More people left their vehicles. Some ran for the fields; others ran at our attackers. Several people tried to reverse or drive to the side. There was nowhere to go and no room to maneuver. In the baking sun of our traffic jam, we were the perfect target.
Ahead, two of the men carrying machetes headed towards our section of the road.
Tom smacked a hand against my arm. “The gun,” he yelled, reaching for my shirt pocket.
I slapped his hand away. “We’ve got five shots. Can’t waste them.”
Ahead, a few more men headed to our part of the traffic jam, smashing windows as they went, grabbing bags and wallets, breaking heads and arms of anyone who fought back. Bodies, a few still moving, lay sprawled half out of car doors, the road stained red around them. Shards of glass and metal lay in twisted heaps. Behind wasn’t much better. Probably another half a mile of stationary vehicles. The only way out for everyone was if the drivers right at the back reversed, freeing space for others to do the same. The problem was back there, they wouldn’t know exactly what was happening. And they wouldn’t until it was too late for us.
“We have to run.” Tom grabbed the door handle.
I pulled him back. “We’ll never get to Ashleigh on foot.”
“We won’t get to her if we’re dead,” he shouted and grabbed the handle again. I yanked him back.
“Reverse,” I shouted. “Fast.”
“What?”
“Do it.”
I’d checked behind us. Two old guys in a car, both straining to see what was happening.
“Ram them,” I said and thought again of the woman I’d let die in the flats. “Do it.”
Tom changed gears; our wheels screeched and we shot backwards. The rear of the van hit the car, and the driver raised a fist at us. He shouted something and tried to back up. We hit him again. In front, we’d given ourselves another foot of room. And the muggers were still coming, still swinging their bats and branches into car windows.
Tom, understanding my thin plan, shot us backwards. We hit the car, crumpling its front and damaging the back of our van. The passenger was trying to get out; we rammed t
hem again and he flew backwards in his seat. Ahead. Another foot of space. Not much, but it was all we had.
Tom changed gears. We raced forward, Tom spinning the wheel, and clipped the car in front. Metal scraped metal; the van rocked. Our side bashed into the car. We scraped it again, and five of the muggers, seeing what we were doing, broke into a sprint toward us. We were their bounty and we were trying to escape.
Something fast shot towards the side of my face. It missed purely by me pushing myself back in my seat.
A baseball bat.
The man at the side of the van bellowed at me, pulled his bat back and I grabbed it. My fingers caught a tiny section near the handle; I pushed and the top of the bat clipped the man in the chin. He fell back, still shouting, before coming at us again.
“Come on,” Tom screamed. He yanked hard on the wheel. We shoved the car in front towards the side of the road, spun around and raced forward. The man with the bat smacked it against the side of the van and jumped out of the way before we ran into him. Drivers and passengers who’d left their vehicles dove for cover. Cars and trees streaked by and we left the jam and the broken glass behind.
Moments later, Tom’s tears exploded out of him.
But the boy kept driving.
27
Ten minutes after our escape from the muggers, Tom asked me where we were going now the most direct route was a write-off and I’d given him a one word answer.
Ely.
He hadn’t liked that plan at all, told me it was the stupidest idea he’d ever heard, shouted at me we’d get killed within minutes. I’d told him we were running out of time and that meant we didn’t have any choice. The traffic and the mugging had taken our choices away. So Ely it was.
We drove towards the city’s outskirts and I told Tom to pull over. We parked at the side of the road, both staring to the wrecked city in the distance.
The cathedral was still standing. Or at least half of it was. The rest was flattened as almost every other building in view. There were no signs of life. There hadn’t been any in the last ten years. Not since Naz Yaah made her appearance in the middle of the night and proceeded to destroy most of the city and surrounding countryside. Wherever we looked, the signs of her visitation were still clear despite the years. The stains of her slime marked grass and road; great dents in the concrete sat beside uneven piles of rubble thrown up from the ground when she’d shaken her lower half. And where her mouth of a million teeth had chewed at the land, massive rents stood out.
Naz Yaah the White Worm. The Wet Beast. The Scorcher. And the signs of that last nickname were all too clear from our position. Her slime was acidic, you see. Pools and trails of it had eaten roads, buildings and people, leaving burn marks all over the place. And the subsequent fleeing by Ely’s citizens had left the city an abandoned wreck. Except for a few.
The Little Nazs.
The word was they’d set up home here in the hope the White Worm would return to consume them. In the meantime, they killed anyone who came within five miles of the city and surrounding fields. And our plan was to drive straight on.
“Dave.” Tom swallowed. “Listen. I want to find Ashleigh and help her. I want that more than anything, but this is insane.”
“Relax. We’re not going through the city. We’ll go around it. It’ll take us twenty minutes. We’ll go fast and quietly, okay? We’ll be fine.”
He remained silent and did the same as me: studied the road ahead and the fields around us. The only movement came from the waving grass growing long and unkempt below a huge sun. If there was anyone watching us, they were keeping out of sight.
“Dave?”
“Yeah?”
“Back there. The people. The knives.” He swallowed. “Seems a bit…I don’t know. A bit unlucky for us, doesn’t it?”
Despite the heat, a strange cold crept up and down me. “Meaning?”
“I’m not sure. Just seems everywhere we go, things aren’t going our way. Like something’s trying to keep us from Ashleigh.”
As much as I wanted to tell the boy that was a mad idea, I couldn’t. So many things had gone wrong for us, he might have had a point. And if something wanted us to fail, it could only be one of our dark gods.
But then why play with us in such a way? Why not just kill us? I didn’t know and couldn’t imagine.
“Forget it for now. We’ve got stuff to do.”
“All right.” Tom’s throat was dry enough for me to hear the click when he swallowed again.
“Ready, Tom?”
He gave me a tiny laugh. “No.”
He gunned the engine. We skirted a mound of rubble, then a five-foot-deep scar in the road, a scar from burning. And picturing the ghastly bulk of Naz Yaah’s wet body rolling back and forth over the same road we were on turned me cold despite the heat.
The road took us through the wild fields and clear signs of the Worm’s visit. Tom kept our speed at a steady thirty, hands tight on the wheel. Neither of us spoke. All of our attention was on the road. It curved to the right, brought us to a bypass and Tom kept to the middle of the road. Rubble had piled high on either side and something about it disturbed me. It didn’t take long for me to work out what: the piles were much too neat, too set. I told myself not to be paranoid. There had obviously been a clean-up at some point over the last decade. Maybe the authorities wanted the bypass and road clear for reasons I couldn’t and shouldn’t consider. But still, I didn’t like it.
“Keep an eye out,” I said to Tom.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
Pressure built inside my throat and mouth and although the temperature outside the van remained constantly high, I grew uncomfortably hotter. We reached what was effectively a tunnel—both our sides bordered with rubble easily twenty feet high. The road became more dangerous. We had to slow to pass holes and rents, and our wheels rolled over old burn marks. I wanted to tell Tom we only had a short way to go in a weak attempt to reassure myself. I said nothing. Too much like tempting fate.
The tunnel took us another half a mile; clear daylight waited at its end, fields framing the opening. I stuck my head out of the window, letting the blowing air dry my sweat-soaked face. And that’s when the car came up fast behind us.
28
I screamed at Tom to speed up. He did so immediately; we shot out of the tunnel into baking sunshine and I looked back. The car was bearing down us, doing fifty to our forty. Even with the distance between us, the figures of at least four or five men were clear. Little Nazs. Had to be.
“Keep going,” I yelled and fumbled with the gun. Five shots. And the only thing in our favor was that the men behind us would have no way of knowing we were so limited on bullets.
Tom had to slow a fraction to take us around a wide hole; the car behind closed in and the man in the passenger seat stuck his head out of the window. Dressed all in black just like the men who’d come close to killing me a few nights before. He saw me looking back and smiled. Then one of the men in the back passed a handgun to him. The man leaned farther out, aiming directly at our rear window.
“Right,” I screamed.
Tom swerved to the right as the man fired. His bullet went wild. He fired again and something in the back of the van exploded with a hollow bang. Tom screamed and swerved the van all over the road. The man fired at us, three quick shots. They missed. He slid back inside and one of the guys in the back leaned out, loudspeaker to his face.
“You are in the territory of the Children of Naz Yaah. Pull over immediately.”
The car drew closer and I wanted to tell Tom to speed up. There was no way he could. Not without hitting the dozens of pits and loose rubble littering the road.
“What do we do?” he shouted.
The passenger reappeared, leaning from his window. He held a shotgun in both hands, the barrel fixed on our rear window. He was still smiling. Tom saw him.
“Dave, we have to—”
I bellowed over his shout. “P
ull over and get ready to fight.”
Before he could react, I yanked the wheel, spinning us around. He hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop beside a burn mark covering the road from side to side.
The Little Nazs had stopped a little way from us and were leaving their car, two of the men armed with guns, all five of them big guys. All of them black-coated shapes with the line of the White Worm on their fronts.
I gripped the door handle as tightly as I held our gun. Beside me, Tom was muttering under his breath. A wish. A prayer. Maybe both.
The men advanced on our van.
“Get ready,” I said and opened the door.
29
We faced one another, Tom and I beside our van, the men next to their car with their guns held on us. And all around, the afternoon cooked. Miles away, people would be getting on with their lives of working, stealing and being scared. And here we were. There was no way out and I knew that.
“Drop it,” one of the men said.
“Dave,” Tom whispered.
I dropped the gun and breathed to Tom: “Fight them. Don’t make it easy.”
“Names?” the man who appeared to be in charge shouted.
“Dave and Tom.”
He smiled. “Surnames.”
“Does it matter?”
He walked toward us. Another two followed and stood behind him. Up close, the scars on his cheeks were much clearer. Any little hope I had died.
The Little Naz was the same man who’d wanted me dead before Tom rescued me.
“Hello,” he said. “Again.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“How the fuck did you survive that crash?” Tom said dully. “You went off the bridge. How did you get out of that?”
The man appraised him as if surprised. “Naz Yaah protected me. How else?”
“Of course,” I muttered.
He paid me no attention. Instead, he stood in front of Tom. “So. The young man who interrupted our sacrifice. Why did you do it? What is he to you?”