by Paul A. Rice
In their usual manner, the pair of tall young men set about the task without a word of complaint. Ken humped all the spare ammo for the weapons up into the position, cracked open the metal boxes and made sure the bullets were all readily accessible. Taking a last look around, he nodded in satisfaction, climbed down to ground level and then wandered off to find Red and the girls.
After checking in on them, to make sure they were managing with the final preparations, he grabbed his old rucksack and walked back over to the barn. A few minutes later, and with the pack now hanging weightily from his shoulders, he told Junior and Red, who were still working away up in the Nest, to keep an eye out for him. ‘Watch my back, guys, I’m just gonna wander down to the lake to have a check of that area, I’ll be about an hour,’ he said.
They waved their acknowledgement down from the rafters, watching him through the slits they had cut into the roof. Ken walked down to the lake, looking no more concerned than if he were just taking the hounds for a walk, which incidentally, he was. The boys in the roof heard his low whistle, and watched as the dogs fell in behind him. Junior grinned, saying: ‘That guy, he’s something else, ain’t he? He’s even managed to train those damned dogs to perfection…’ Michael nodded silently, grinning as he continued piling the sandbags.
By nightfall they had finished. All of the weapons were sited and all of the defences were laid. Medical kits had been checked and placed in handy locations around the house and barn. Every single corner of the house had been filled with buckets of water and wet towels, Red had fixed a hosepipe to the kitchen tap and then coiled it up neatly in the hallway. The interior walls were lined with filled sandbags, as were the exterior walls. Steel plate was in place by the windows and doors, trucks loaded with supplies and ready, weapons loaded with ammunition and ready. Hunters, themselves, loaded with food and adrenaline – and ready. Ken did one last test of the alert procedure, checked the sentry roster and then suggested they get some rest.
The complete lack of response to that last idea made him smile.
‘Yeah, well…I wasn’t planning on getting any kip either,’ he said, softly. ‘To be honest, I was just gonna sit up and keep my ears open, but I guess that six sets of ears are better than one, eh?’
Red chucked a pack of dog-eared playing cards onto the table.
‘Hell, if I’m gonna die…’ he said, sarcastically, ‘…then I’m gonna die with all of yo’ munny in my back pocket!’
The sound of scraping chairs, and of small change being rescued from pockets, was the only confirmation Ken needed to hear. They were ready, more than ready. Ken knew they were going to have to be – the time for death was upon them.
9
Back-to-Back
Just as they would have done in a movie, the enemy came at dawn. And when they came, they came in droves. There were dozens of them. However, unlike that wonderfully-heroic movie, one filled with brave people doing righteous deeds, the men bearing the Dark One’s message had, right from the start, managed to get their attack wrong. To be fair, which perhaps we shouldn’t be, the events starting to go badly for the attackers weren’t all of their own doing.
They had, after all, been given rather a large helping-hand.
It’s hardly fair to blame someone for not having the sense to avoid walking into a carefully-laid ‘Daisy-Chain’ of high-explosive grenades and Claymore mines, linked together in a lethal necklace of death, and then perfectly concealed by a master of camouflage. That’s a criticism that would hardly be fair at all, now would it? And, it’s no wonder the Dragon was so pissed off when Maggie severed the link between it and Kenneth Robinson. Because the one thing the Beast would have found extremely useful was a man with some decent soldiering skills. The use of such a man may well have made a difference to its carefully-laid plans – a critical difference.
***
Tori had been the one on sentry duty, standing in the cold morning air and watching the mist lifting off the fields. She had been on top of the water tank for slightly over an hour and was only now starting to feel the warmth of the early morning sun, it was mostly an imagined sensation, likely to have been caused by the psychological effect of seeing the first rays of a new day igniting the sky over behind those black woods to the east, but either way, it lifted her spirits. She yawned and blew some warm breath into her hands before returning their grip to the cold steel and wood of her rifle’s insensitive caress.
As the tall woman stood there, stamping her feet to beat the cold trying to seep into her bones, she caught the aroma of fresh coffee, along with the acidic and not entirely unpleasant whiff of a freshly-lit cigarette. Tori turned and watched Ken as he plodded over, kitchen door easing shut behind him.
He had two mugs of steaming coffee in his hands, a Kalashnikov assault rifle over one shoulder and the grenade launcher slung across his back – two rows of the launcher’s golden grenades, in bandoliers, criss-crossed his chest. Around Ken’s waist lay his fighting belt, bulging with ammunition and other paraphernalia.
There was a cigarette dangling from his smiling lips.
Ken reached the tank and passed one of the steaming mugs up to Tori – she raised the mug to her lips in gratitude, looked pointedly at his smoke, and then raised her eyebrows in the manner of a disapproving, older sister.
Ken saw her look, grinned like a kid and said, ‘Fuck it!’
There was no answer to that retort, none at all.
Tori watched as Ken placed his mug on the wooden platform, and then hoisted his large frame upwards to stand next to her. They stood together in the early morning light and sipped on their coffee, the feeling was upon them. They felt them, the enemy, coming like the heaviness of an onrushing thunder storm. The air had changed in some way, become heavier – it thickened and they felt it. Standing in the half-light of a misty dawn, the two Hunters felt their enemy arrive.
Ken broke the silence, whispering: ‘It’s going be soon, isn’t it?’
Tori looked at him with a wry smile. ‘Yes, it is – any minute now, I do believe…’ she said, dropping her coffee in that same instant. The mug bounced off the wood, somersaulted over the edge and shattered against the stone wall. The words had barely crossed those beautiful lips when the sound of an exploding Claymore, rushing through the stillness of dawn, reached their ears.
Tori looked at him and grinned. ‘Precisely now, is what I meant!’ she said, with a wicked glint shining in her eyes.
Ken looked into those eyes and felt his mind wobble as the intensity of her cobalt gaze burned into his head; the dangers within her, leapt like fire from those blue eyes. He turned away, threw his cup into the hedge, leapt down from the platform and began sprinting toward the house, screaming as he went.
‘Stand to, stand to! This is not a drill – stand to!’
More explosions and the distant sound of hot steel, whining through the air, reached out to them from the lake. It, and the sound of men screaming, seemed to be coming from some other place, some other time – the noises were hollow.
Ken was only halfway to the house when he saw the door burst open. Junior and Michael sprinted across the porch and leapt down to the courtyard without bothering to use the steps. Landing heavily, puffs of dust rising from their boot soles, they turned to Ken. He saw their eyes, the eyes of Hunters.
Junior shouted: ‘Plan A…is it, Ken?’
Ken grinned and confirmed, saying: ‘Yeah, too right it is, boys! Plan-bloody-A! Get straight up to the Nest…Go now!’
They grinned like madmen and turned to sprint towards the barn. Junior laughed out his enthusiasm. ‘Woohoo, let’s get it on, baby, let’s get-it-on!’ the boy said, grabbing his partner by the shoulder and dragging him into the dark interior of the barn.
Ken grinned like the Devil himself. Considering there wasn’t really a ‘Plan B’ and that the time for death had arrived, he felt alive – the taste of battle was one he relished. His heart soared as he ran toward the house. Red and Jane were waiting in the kit
chen for him; she looked at her husband in expectation.
Ken reeled off his words. ‘Right, they’re down by the lake!’ he said. ‘Jane, you watch the rear as planned. Tori will be here in about…’ He stopped as the door crashed open and Tori burst in.
She was breathless and had bad news. ‘There are hundreds of them, they’re moving in a long line up the gulley. Ken, there are so many!’ she said, and then shot a hurried glance at Red.
Ken grabbed her by the shoulder. ‘Good! All the more for us to slaughter,’ he said. ‘Come on…to your places, people, to your places! Take cover and shoot ‘em on sight. Shoot to kill, shoot to kill!’ The fire in his words was unmistakeable.
He waited until he saw the women had taken up their fire positions behind the sandbag walls – Jane covering out toward the rear and Tori watching the front – with his eyes rapidly doing one last check of their positions, and seeing everything was in place, Ken turned to leave. ‘Red, you’re with me, let’s go!’ he said. The two men ran outside and took cover by the sandbag emplacements they had made by the side of the barn.
Ken’s mind raced – had he done enough, were they ready? There was only one way in which the enemy were able to get to the house, and that was going to be straight past Red and him. The rear was impassable, coils of carefully placed wire and concealed mines had taken care of any possible attack in that direction. The sides of the farmhouse were also covered, except possibly the hedgerow in the distance. He calmed himself, letting his thoughts do some cold calculation. No, the only way to get to the house would be straight up the middle, straight through the wall of fire being delivered by Michael’s machinegun and Junior’s sniper rifle. Then there were the mines, grenade launchers and accurately-wielded assault rifles, the onrushing enemy had a lot to get past before they would ever hope of reaching the inner perimeter.
The sound of detonating explosives shattered his thoughts. Their booming resonance pulsed towards the house. More mines exploded, this time much closer. Ken saw them in his mind, heard Junior’s question flood into his head.
‘Four hundred yards, they’re heading into the open! Now, Ken – should we fire now?’ Ken watched the mental pictures that Junior and Michael sent him.
A long line of men were fanning out, left and right of the track leading to the farm, the enemy were using it as an axis and heading straight towards them. No cover there, only the heavily-mined gulley over to the enemy’s left.
Their formation, and lack of any decent cover, meant only one thing to Ken – perfect machinegun targets. He answered Junior’s question with his own thoughts. ‘Yes! Let ‘em have it, boys – kill ‘em all!’
Immediately, the belt-fed weapon began its staccato song of death.
‘Che-che-chet…Che-che-chet…’
Tightly-controlled bursts of fire rained down from the Eagle’s Nest. Three to five rounds in each burst – disciplined, controlled, and deadly. Ken saw the distant enemy falling like wheat before an invisible scythe, tracer rounds flickering amongst them like supersonic fireflies, plumes of dirt and blood rose into the air as the heavy bullets hurtled into and through all which stood before them. The deeper, more resonating bark of the sniper rifle added its own baritone to the choir of death.
‘B-oww…’
There would be a pause, whilst a fresh target was located, and then a repeat of the sound, whilst hot on its heels, the machinegun spoke up again. Their chorus rose to a crescendo and Ken saw the whole thing in his head, it was as though he was standing next to the boys, he saw and heard everything they saw and heard. The magical gift, one that Maggie had shown them, was now fully unwrapped.
Ken laughed to himself, thinking: ‘Who needs radios when they have this type of stuff going on?’ The thoughts were crazy, but not as crazy as the pictures in his mind. He smelled the odour of battle from the position above him, he heard the boys’ voices – calm and collected in the heat of this, their second battle.
They were as clear as crystal in Ken’s racing mind.
He heard Michael, saying: ‘Over to the right, Junior! Three hundred yards…there! Yes, left, left!’
The machinegun spoke.
Michael, shouting: ‘Good shooting!’
He listened to Junior’s voice, calmly saying: ‘Pass me another belt of ammo, will you? Mind the barrel with your hand, its red-hot! Look at that stupid prick, the one over there to the left – take him out, Mikey!’
The sniper rifle boomed.
Junior, whispering: ‘Awesome shot, dude, awesome!’
Machinegun, sniper rifle, machinegun…it went on and on.
In his mind, Ken stood next to them, watching the enemy and giving the boys his own target indications, his orders crackling over the noise of their weapons.
‘Four hundred yards, half right…six of them by those small rocks, crawling in the open…’ The rattle of the belt-fed weapon jarred his thoughts and blurred his vision. The tinny sound of falling shell-cases and bouncing metal links only added to the surrealism of his surroundings – it was sheer madness. The enemy were in total disarray, falling like ninepins.
The sensation overcame Ken; it was as though he had become the master of some new-generation video game. Think a thought, point with your mind, and then let the soldiers in your head do the talking.
Thought: ‘Four hundred yards, by the hedgerow...’
Mind soldiers: ‘Che-che-che-chet! ‘B-oww…B-oww!’
It was unreal. For what seemed like hours, Ken, and the two boys perched above him, played havoc with the advance of their enemies. Not one of them managed to get nearer than three hundred yards. Their corpses littered the fields to fall in stacks against the dark line of the distant hedgerow. Ken had no idea how many they had destroyed, killed, but he knew it was a lot.
‘How many more are there?’
The thought broke his link with the shooters above.
As if in answer to that last thought, he heard Tori’s voice, she was screaming at him… ‘More men are arriving! Many, many more – down by the lake, there’s dozens of them!’ Ken couldn’t see anything in his mind. He turned and looked back at the farmhouse. Tori was standing on the step and shouting at him. ‘I couldn’t get through…you were in the battle,’ she yelled. ‘There are more of them, lot’s more, and they’re all running this way!’
Ken nodded and waved. ‘Go back inside! Be ready, everyone get ready, they’re coming back!’ He shouted out the warning, ran to the barn and hurriedly stamped his way up to the Nest. The steps of the wooden ladder were covered with empty shell-casings, as was the floor of the barn below – they had fired hundreds of rounds.
As he scrambled onto the floor of their position, the boys looked up and Ken saw the inferno in their eyes. Their inherited blood-line was now fully out in the open. Both the men, for they were in fact, men. Both had that calm, almost arrogant expression upon their faces. It wasn’t such a meaningless trait as arrogance, more of a fiery confidence, one of trust, belief in each other, and of overwhelming love. Emotions born from dealing with the undeniable horrors of blood and sorrow, emotions caused by the never-ending reason for their existence – fighting the Darkness was their life, and when that fight came, loudly arriving upon their peaceful doorstep, then the Hunters would shine.
And shine they did.
As Ken looked at them, calmly reloading their weapons, brushing empty brass cartridges away, looking out of their firing slits, waiting for more of the enemy to stray into their lines of fire, he saw them shine. In fact, he saw them do more than just shine – the light of their strange inner force seemed to sparkle from within them. Ken thought of the blueness, which he had seen Michael’s father radiate with, of how the light almost exploded from within Jack when his final moments had arrived. Their posture and, the perhaps imagined, slight twinkling aura permeating from the men before him, served only to remind Ken of two things. The first, being of how dangerous these men were, and the second, of how crazy his own life was!
‘This whole
situation is totally fucking nuts!’ he thought, jerking back into reality as a voice invaded those nearly-overwhelming thoughts.
‘Crazy, but real, Ken, look at those bastards, there’s hundreds of them!’ Junior’s soft voice ripped Ken back from the chasm of his whirling thoughts.
He crawled forward to take a look.
Red’s son was right, there were a lot of armed men advancing upon their position, whether they were in the hundreds was not something Ken would be able to confirm, and he had no intention of laying there and counting them.
He looked at the men, saying: ‘Right, same drills as before! Short bursts, well-aimed, effective fire only. Don’t blast off in panic, and keep your heads down! Don’t fire from the same position for too long, move around, okay!’ Ken watched as they nodded. ‘Don’t forget,’ he ordered, ‘if they reach that wire then you guys must come down straight away, I don’t want you trapped up here! We’ll take ‘em on in the courtyard!’ They nodded in acknowledgement once more. As Ken slid down the ladder, he heard Junior cocking the action of the machinegun.
The sequence of battle repeated itself, but with one change – this time the enemy tried to approach up the gulley towards the water tower. Red saw them and yelled out a warning. Looking up from where he was kneeling behind cover, Ken saw the rapid, stiff-fingered pointing that Red was making with his hand.
He heard Red’s voice in his head.
‘Gulley, Ken…they’re heading for the gulley!’
At the same time as Ken heard the big man’s words, all the hounds began to bark loudly. Their leader, Rufus, who had spent the previous half-an-hour running around the perimeter of the farmhouse with his cohorts in tow, hot lead whipping past their heads, leapt across to the sandbag wall. With his forelegs propped up on the makeshift barricade, hackles bristling, lips pulled back viciously, the old hound started howling in the direction of the enemy. Looking at the dogs in amazement, and deciding that, perhaps, it was time to join the fight, Ken rose to his feet, swapped his rifle for the grenade launcher and ran to the water tank.