Wicca

by James Follett

  The smell of charcoal, grilled chicken and freshly-baked rolls wafted up the windless slope to Malone's lookout point. Bread and circuses, he reflected. He raised his binoculars and watched Asquith Prescott, resplendent in a spotless white safari suit, and Bob Harding in conversation. The field had been selected for the main assault on the Wall because it had a metalled Forestry Commission road that ran downhill and at right angles into the Wall. The road ended abruptly at the Wall. Beyond the line of strung out vehicles lay, not the familiar, gloomy stands of Forestry Commission conifers, packed tight to make them grow straight as they clawed quickly upwards seeking light, but the image of the glacier-chilled open steppes of 40,000 years ago. Further south, beyond the invisible Wall, was a wooded valley -- the beginnings of the mighty deciduous forest that would spread across this landscape as the ice receded.

  Malone levelled his binoculars at a family group. The slim, elegant figure of the mother was Vanessa Grossman -- the brunette who had given him the iced shoulder treatment in the library. She was sitting on a carefully-spread blanket, looking cool and detached in neatly-creased slacks while her husband struggled with the task of keeping two small children content and clean while they raided a picnic box. Vanessa watched them, laughing occasionally at hubby's antics to keep grubby fingers away from his trophy wife. Her poised manner intrigued Malone. It was as though she had decided that whatever the outcome of the attempt to destroy the Wall, she would be a winner.

  An insistent drone caused Malone to look up. It was Harvey Evans' microlight aircraft approaching from the north. The tiny biplane was on fire watch patrol, ready to summons the fire appliances if any barbecue looked like it was getting out of control. Pentworth lived in dread of fire.

  The squelch opened on Malone's radio. `Sector 7 reporting.'

  `Go ahead, Sector 7,' said Malone into his speaker-microphone.

  `All vehicles in position. Engines off.'

  `Received, Sector 7. Remain on standby.' He added for the benefit of Bob Harding in the field below, `Sector 7 confirming all vehicles in position, engines off.'

  Malone was acting as a police radio repeater, relaying messages between all the sector marshals and Bob Harding's sector marshal below in the command sector. UHF radio did not work well in hilly regions therefore Malone's coordinating presence on high ground was essential.

  He ticked the sketch map on his clipboard. The bold circle around Pentworth that depicted the Wall was divided into ten segments like processed cheese wedges. In response to radio appeals over the last three days, virtually every vehicle-owner had driven to the various mustering points around the town where they had been briefed, issued with typed instructions, and directed to specific sectors. Four-wheel-drive cars, pickups, tractors and off-road vehicles had been despatched to the more inaccessible sectors, and town-owned saloon cars sent to easy access points. This achieved a degree of trouble-avoiding segregation between town and country but the overall result was that there were now 392 assorted vehicles distributed around the Wall's 30 kilometre perimeter, waiting to begin the assault.

  Sector 4's marshal, the last to report, confirmed that his group was ready. Malone passed the information to Bob Harding. He saw a puff of smoke and steam rising above the trees to the north and added that David Weir's showman's engine had turned off the main road.'

  `Excellent! Excellent!' enthused Harding. `How long before it gets here?'

  Malone gauged the progress of the clouds of steam and smoke shouldering through the foliage from the unseen machine. `It's left the main road, Mr Harding. It should be with you in about fifteen minutes.'

  `You better get the drivers ready.'

  `High Hopes command -- all sector marshals,' said Malone into his radio. `All drivers to their vehicles. Do not start engines yet.'

  The last acknowledgement was received just as Brenda appeared through a break in the trees. The huge machine, spewing smoke from its tall stack, with Ellen Duncan standing crouched over the steering wheel and Charlie Crittenden beside her, was making good progress along the Forestry Commission road.

  Malone studied the rust-encrusted machine through his binoculars. It was a sorry-looking sight. Charlie and his family had concentrated on getting the mighty engine mobile and had made no attempt to smarten it up other than to polish its pipe work and brass nameplate which glinted in the bright sunlight. The great boiler-mounted dynamo had been removed and the rotting remains of the full-length canopy stripped away. The entire clattering, hissing monster, its massive rear wheels crunching and ripping at the sun-softened asphalt as they thrust the ponderous bulk uphill, was a mass of crimson patches where red oxide primer had been applied to bare metal. Stuffing box glands on the slide valve steam chests screamed dangerous jets of superheated steam that turned to huge clouds of water vapour in the humid air. Incredibly, considering the state it was in, the improbable behemoth was moving at a purposeful speed up the gradient.

  Charlie's grown-up sons, Gus and Carl, were perched on an improvised fuel trailer behind the engine. The trailer was laden with anthracite beans and a water tank. They had long-handled shovels at the ready to feed coals into the roaring firebox.

  David Weir was standing on the narrow platform behind Charlie, clinging to a corroded canopy support and wondering if giving way to Ellen's deadly mixture of cajoling, sexual blackmail, and plain old-fashioned threats of physical violence in her determination to drive Brenda to the command sector had been such a good idea. In truth, there was very little he could deny her. Despite Brenda's size, the gearing reduction in the worm-drive steering ensured that little effort was required to turn the steering wheel although it required about 50 turns for the steering chains to swing the huge steering yoke that the front wheels were mounted on through a full lock.

  Bob Harding's plan was simple: to use brute force to overload the Wall and possibly destroy it. The Wall was known to use energy economically -- only enough was called upon to repulse an attempt at penetration, and only where it was required. Therefore it might be possible to overload the system and so bring about a catastrophic failure.

  `Afterall,' he had told the council meeting when he had outlined his plan. `We're dealing with engineering. Advanced engineering, admittedly, but not magic. A determined Roman legion could overrun a machine-gun post.'

  Malone focussed his binoculars on Ellen and decided that old jeans cut down to shorts, and halter tops made from knotted blouses had to be the sexiest garments ever devised. The sulfureous smell of burning anthracite was a poignant reminder of his last outing with his children when he had taken them on a trip on the old steam locomotive of the Bluebell Line.

  In the meadow mothers dashed forward and grabbed their offspring when the showman's engine breasted the rise and emerged from the trees, picking up a little speed as it started downhill. Children and adults lined the road, watching wide-eyed as the strange vehicle from another century graunced to a shuddering standstill when Charlie spun the handwheel to wind the wooden brake shoes onto the rear wheels. He wound down hard to hold the ponderous vehicle on the slope. It was stopping for only a few seconds therefore chocks weren't deemed necessary. Steam hissed deafeningly when he dropped the boiler pressure. Some drivers had got out of their vehicles to witness the arrival and were ordered back behind their wheels by the marshal.

  Prescott and Harding cautiously approached the machine when Charlie signalled the all clear.

  `Is this thing safe?' Prescott inquired.

  David laughed and jumped down. `Safe? No tax, no insurance, no MOT, dodgey brakes, about five turns play in her steering wheel before the chains take up, and an uncertified boiler.'

  `No lights and no horn,' Ellen added.

  `And a woman driver,' said Carl, and immediately regretted it because Ellen's aim with an anthracite bean was unerring.

  `All things considered, our Brenda's the most lethal vehicle in Pentworth,' David concluded.

  `But we ain't broken no speed limits,' said Charlie, jumping down so th
at only Ellen remained aboard. He was pleased with himself and the result of his family's efforts to get the great engine working again. Gus and Carl, their faces and arms streaked with grime, were grinning broadly. Without waiting for instructions from their father, they worked the crank handle that dumped hot, smoking ash and clinker onto the road, and set to shovelling coals into the firebox.

  `I don't think you need get up much steam, Charlie,' said Harding. `The gradient should've give you a fair turn of speed by the time you reach the Wall.'

  Charlie eyed the 200-metre downhill stretch of road between Brenda and the Wall. `Map says the road goes uphill on the other side. And I'll want a bit of speed to get away from all those cars when we bust through. I'll use power.'

  Harding nodded in agreement. `Okay, Charlie. If you do go through, let's hope you don't run into a Farside army tank.'

  `Mr Crittenden,' said Prescott.

  Charlie regarded the landowner with poorly-disguised distaste. He had had many brushes with Prescott and Pentworth Town Council before the Wall. It was a different now that his skills were appreciated. `Mr Prescott?'

  `You're not to take any chances. If anything goes wrong, you're to jump off that thing.'

  The traveller jerked his thumb at Brenda and folded his brawny arms. `Sitting up there and running the boiler at three-quarters working pressure for the last couple of hours has been chancy enough. I reckon I can look after myself, Mr Prescott. Okay, everyone. Let's get going. Off you get, Miss Duncan.'

  At that moment a rich, stentorian voice boomed across the meadow. `The Wall is the will of God! Hell and damnation await those who seek to thwart his will!'

  Adrian Roscoe had emerged from a public footpath near where the road disappeared into Wall. He was holding a loudhailer to his lips and leading a group of 30 of his solar sentinels as he termed his followers, all dressed in spotless white gowns with the cowls pulled forward. They all carried heavy staffs which they handled in a business-like manner.

  The loudhailer swept the gathering. `We have come forth to oppose and thwart the pestilential forces of evil, witchcraft and Satanism that are at work in our community!' With that Adrian Roscoe sat cross-legged on the road and bid his followers to do likewise. They were all young and disciplined; the three morris police on duty in the sector would be no match for them.

  Prescott viewed their appearance with well-disguised satisfaction tempered with concern at the sort of favour Roscoe would require in return for this strong turnout.

  All activity ceased. The children stopped playing, the caterers stopped doling out grilled chicken quarters. All eyes were on the improbable group sitting in a line across the road with their backs to the Wall. It was a measure of Roscoe's increasing support among the town people that several exchanged waves and shouted greetings with the monk-like figures.

  Malone checked his map and found the footpath that Roscoe had used to reach the field. He was about to warn the sectors that there might be a delay when Brenda unexpectedly lurched forward. Her sudden movement was the result of the actions 60 years before of the man who had last parked the showman's engine in a field where she had been allowed to rot before David had rescued her. The long-dead showman had wound the brake handwheel as hard as possible to jam the brake shoes onto the mighty rear wheels. For 60 years the brake shaft had borne the torsional stresses. And now Charlie's jamming on of the brakes on the incline had turned the invisible hairline cracks in the shaft into a fracture.

  The breaking shaft sounded like a pistol shot and the brake shoes fell away from the wheels. Charlie gave a cry and lunged for the boarding grab handle but was knocked aside by the trailer. He would've been run over had Carl not grabbed him and yanked him clear. Gus chased after the runaway engine and he too was forced to veer away by the trailer. David uttered a cry of fear. He tried to start after Ellen but was forcibly restrained by Prescott and Gus.

  `Gotta let her go, Mr Weir,' Charlie panted. `Ain't nothing for it. If she keeps it on the road, she should be okay.'

  Malone realized that something had gone seriously wrong. The plan was for Charlie Crittenden to drive the engine into the Wall. Certainly not Ellen. He trained his binoculars on her. From this position he couldn't see her face but he could guess at her terror.

  The showman's engine had started rolling in such a leisurely manner that Ellen didn't fully appreciate what had happened other than that the giant machine was moving and that she was alone. But within seconds it had picked up speed and was accelerating rapidly. The mighty rear wheels pounding and grinding -- the spinning flywheel a terrifying presence beside her, coal flying off the bouncing trailer. She tried to wind on the brakes but the handwheel spun free, and Brenda was moving faster than it had at any time during the long, slow journey from Temple Farm. It was veering to the left. She frantically spun the steering wheel clockwise to compensate. The slack in the steering chains, which had been a joke at 8 kilometres per hour, was no longer funny.

  `Get out of the way!' she screamed at Adrian Roscoe and his followers who were sitting in the clattering engine's path. Even at this distance his intense blue eyes shone with icy hatred.

  Malone came to an immediate decision and seized the initiative. `High Hopes Command -- all drivers!' he barked into his radio. `Start engines now! Start engines now!'

  392 hands reached for as many ignition keys and the engines of 392 vehicles spaced along the 30 kilometre perimeter of the Wall roared. The drivers sat tense, a passenger beside each one twisted around to watch the raised white flags of the marshal in each sector. A slight blackening of the Wall in the command sector indicated that the driver of a Commer van had forgotten his instructions not to move until the flag fell.

  Ellen's frenzied correction of Brenda's yaw caused the machine to swing to the right. That veer she also over-corrected with the result that the clattering engine swung from side to side as it careered downhill, but she managed to keep it on the road. When she had first driven the thing the evening before, Charlie had impressed on her the importance of never allowing it onto uninspected ground because there was no vehicle in Pentworth capable of pulling it clear if it ever got stuck.

  `Get out! Get out!' she yelled at the group sitting in the road. She stood and waved frantically but the terrible jolting forced her to sit.

  It was hardly necessary to attract their attention; the sentinels were staring in disbelief at the clanking, thundering apparition bearing down on them, their faces white with fear. Two of them jumped up despite their leader's bellowed admonitions to remain steadfast in face of Satan. Brenda was 30 metres from the group when they decided as one that remaining steadfast in the face of several tonnes of hurtling cast iron and bronze was not a sensible option. They ignored their leader and scattered like chaff in a wind tunnel. Adrian Roscoe remained seated. He raised the loudhailer to his lips and hesitated.

  `I can't stop!' Ellen screamed, spinning the steering wheel to keep Brenda on the crown of the road.

  With the thundering, titanic forces of hell and damnation only 15 metres away, the cult leader's beliefs underwent a sudden and profound revelation -- namely that the word of God, even when amplified by a loudhailer, wasn't going to stop this monster. He scrambled to his feet and leapt clear. Ellen caught a glimpse of his searing eyes as she swept past. The Wall was straight ahead, a truck each side of road, passenger faces staring at her awesome approach.

  `High Hopes Command -- all sectors,' said Malone calmly into his microphone. `Go! Go! Go!' He repeated the pre-arranged order three times.

  The marshals' flags went down. 392 drivers gunned engines and slipped clutches. Nearly 1000 tonnes of steel and glass surged forward into the Wall, driven by the irresistible combined forces of 150,000 shaft horsepower.

  Most people had seen the curious, blackening effect when they pressed a hand against the Wall. But what happened next provoked gasps of astonishment and dismay for it was as if a huge black shroud was springing from the ground and climbing to the sky under the assault from
the massed vehicles, their spinning tyres throwing up blue smoke and clods of turf as they strained in impotent rage against the unknown forces opposing them.

  Malone's view of the adjoining sectors was obscured by trees, but the Wall made visible climbed high above the foliage like a rising curtain of black ink soaking into tissue paper. He stood and stared about him, seeing the terrible curtain as a huge circle 10 kilometres in diameter, rising higher by the second.

  Harvey Evans, piloting his microlight at 2000 feet above Pentworth Lake, had the most stunning view of all. Hardly crediting his senses, he banked and flew in a tight circle, and so witnessed the entire 30 kilometres of the mighty wall of night rearing up, huge, black and terrifying. For the first time he was confronted with the true scale and the awesome nature of the mighty forces that were holding Pentworth trapped.

  Malone, normally unflappable, was so overcome that he had to sit abruptly. The screams of a terrified child carried clearly up the slope.

  At that moment the charging showman's engine hit the black barrier square on like an unstoppable iron tornado...

  And disappeared through it.

  Chapter 18.

  FOR SEVERAL SECONDS THE group standing on the crest of the rise were struck speechless at seeing the impossible happen.

  `She's done it,' breathed Harding at length. And then, jubilantly, `By God -- she's done it!'