Their eyes and mind met again and he felt the sincerity and truth in her words. He knew too who and what she referred. She nodded. “He cannot stop you this way, for you have the power he has never experienced. His deeds thus multiply against him. You have love in your heart. It is a force against which his power cannot succeed. His soul and his city are his own grave. Bury him in it Jonathan. Him and the Shetani, these ‘Tallmen’." she finished.
Jonathan slowly approached the position of the dimension door which was indicated by the inscription on the slab, hesitating when the opening back to his world suddenly erupted in a swirling abyss before him.
“Go quickly now, you have lost much time here. Time passes here at a greater rate here than in you realm. Go now!" she urged as she waved a long elegant hand in farewell.
Jonathan waved and stepped into the madly swirling colours. Back in the rift of time and space through which he had travelled to reach the Overworld of the Sentinels, little in its image sucking walls suggested anyone else had passed this way. When he reached the main tunnel however, its walls seethed with trapped images of thousands of High Hats passing this way and this burdened with packing cases. A whole day had passed during the short time Jonathan had been away.
He studied walls manically shifting murals of the High hats who worked feverishly to transport Flax's booty back to Dubh. Looking closely, he was able to pick out images of the chamber on the Dubh side of the dimension door. High Hats surged into the hall, breaking open wooden and metal crates and examining their contents.
Jonathan winced at the sight and volume of the unfamiliar, but ominously efficient looking weapons. One image drifted by which caught his eyes. It was Flax and the grey haired stranger standing side by side. They looked so similar in appearance, stature and profile, frighteningly similar. Jonathan gasped.
They must be related, but how was it possible, they came from different worlds. How? He shivered. He moved back towards the other exit, ensuring he
did not move to quickly in the vortex, although compelled by a sense of urgency to do so. Where was Flax now he thought? How long would it take to overthrow Dubh? Had he already done it.? No one could stand in his way now, only him, only Jonathan Postlethwaite.
The burden of responsibility seemed to lie heavily on his heart as he approached the exit at the Cross Keys. But fear had been seared from his heart. His contact with the Sentinel seemed to have enriched him and reinforced is sense of purpose. He would get to Flax, destroy him, because
he knew that if he failed, he knew that sooner or later, the beast would return for him. But he would destroy those Jonathan loved first. Jonathan now knew this. Now was it was his moment. His enemy was preoccupied and when he approached the prize he so desperately sought, he would take it all from him.
His resolve was now strong. There was no fear, no uncertainty. Never more had he known such strength and conviction. He felt it, deep inside him now, solid and potent in his heart. It was a weapon which would end Flax's dreams and destroy the spirit of evil which fermented in Dubh's stagnant pit of corrupted humanity.
He emerged from the door at the Cross keys and walked out into the courtyard where broken packing cases littered the cobbled yard. It was evening and snowflakes fell thick and fast onto the torn and bloody corpse of Victor Burns who lay in the doorway to his bakery.
Flax had celebrated the arrival of the two lorries carrying his goods by slitting Victor's throat. Now the snow lay like a funeral shroud over his still body. Jonathan paused to watch the snowflakes for a while. So white and pure, beautiful, he thought, but they did not retain his interest for long and he picked his way through the debris left in the yard past the long, dark windows of the public house where Mrs. Lovenberry had ended her days face down in the bath, her ancient eyes staring at the plug hole, tiny air bubbles clinging to her blue lips. Flax had disposed of her as he did all that had outrun their use.
Jonathan left the yard and ran through the swirling snow to the churchyard where he leapt the blue and white cordoned tape that sought to keep the public from out of the scene of a murder inquiry.
Two policemen on duty saw only a shadow in the thick snow and dismissed it as a fox, declining the opportunity to investigate it in such foul weather. Soon he was through the clearing where the Turkanschoner had slain Ivor Scoggins and down the slope and through the stream. He ran up the short slope to the cave.
The door was still there! He hoped, above all hope, that she would be beyond the door. Her love drew him back to Dubh. She was the spark, the power that he had to defeat Flax. She had to be there. He would prevail becasue of his love for Milly and not because of his anger and hatred of Flax - he could see that now.
The light of the door shimmered before him, beckoning him, every colour radiated along the vortex. He did not hesitate. Once again he moved slowly enough for his molecular structure to adjust. He reached the exit, closed his eyes and stepped out.
In the darkness of the derelict house, only emptiness and the rats greeted him. They began to advance as Jonathan stood disappointed, half despairing. His hope, his strength, seemed to disintegrate when he found that his friends and Milly were not there.
The rats were happy enough though, he would do for them, a meal standing unprotected in the darkness. The first in their ranks sat back on their haunches and prepared to leap and sink their yellow teeth into his warm and inviting flesh. But they never left the ground.
Suddenly the darkness erupted in explosions of brilliant white light which seared the flesh of the rats and sent them scrabbling in retreat from it, the floor rippling with their grey flesh as they sped for the sanctuary of darkness, their appetites for the moment forgotten.
Jonathon was brought back to his senses by the noise and lightening outside the ruin. Outside amidst the chaos of light and thunderous noise he saw familiar figures silhouetted by the flashes of light. He screamed in disbelief at what he saw there.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Silus Flax was impressed by the destructive power of the weaponry supplied by Ben Santiago. Even his prophetic visions of its use could not compare with the frightful efficiency of twentieth century technology.
He had assembled a group of his High Hats in his personal chambers for a demonstration and had used the Uzi sub machine gun on them after a short briefing from Santiago.
Flax stood wide eyed with sadistic glee as he watched them cut to pieces, reduced them to a bloody heap in a matter of seconds. He continued to fire at the dead bodies until the magazine ran dry. Then he smiled as he turned to his shocked supplier. Ben swallowed hard. “But they were your own men." he said hoarsely. Flax shrugged his wide shoulders.
"No one is indispensable." he replied and his eyes narrowed as he looked at him. Ben shivered and Flax laughed as he placed a Fatherly arm around Santiago's shoulders. “We have much to do, let us begin my friend, let us begin our campaign."
After a few hours of planning and instruction, Flax deployed his forces around the city and awaited his zero hour. He set his pocket watch to coincide with the Tallmens’ artificial dawn, but was surprised when the realm he craved to master was not gradually illuminated at the appointed hour. Some light came but it was the intensity he expected. The great banks of smog which hung over the city in this dimmed dawn indicated to Flax that all was not well in the towers.
As Flax watched from his vantage point on a high building above his headquarters, he noticed the flickering rifts that opened sporadically in the Dubh’s field walls. Flashes of lightening, in a thousand different colours irradiated the smog banks as energies ebbed and flowed in the unstable walls. Flax was disturbed.
Why was there an energy problem today? The Halls of Machines functioned normally, he had checked the last night. He shook his head. He would be in control soon he thought, soon he would put the Tallmens' complacencies to right. Then he looked up as first explosions of grenades
and mortars marked the passing of his deadline and his captains lead their men aga
inst Tan strongholds. His murderously equipped army was in full scale assault.
Now the city resounded with the sound of fighting, bursts of automatic weapon fire, grenades flashed and thudded, fires began to burn and the dying screamed as the victors howled in depraved triumph. The whole city began to glow bloodily as fires marked the advance of the merciless High Hats.
Flax watched them through binoculars supplied Santiago. These instruments brought the conflict so magically close to him and he so much wanted to be part of it. He felt the surge of adrenalin flowing through him, he wanted to be there to, but he knew that he must co- ordinate the battle himself.
With the help of a radio and its hastily trained operator he was in touch with all his Captains. Reports flooded in through the heavy hiss of static that the Tans were retreating, offering little resistance and dying in their thousands as they fled to the river and the walls of the Upper City. The High Hats were sweeping the Tans aside, their foe's antiquated weaponry no match for his men's equipment, even in their hastily trained hands.
Flax smiled. The Lower City was his and now he would join the fray himself. Flax shouldered his sub machine gun and, with his radio operator in tow descended to the battle field of Dubh.
Chaos and carnage reigned on the streets he now walked. Buildings burned fiercely, the bodies of Tans lay sprawled in the streets with their ancient and ineffective weaponry clutched in their dead hands. As the High Hat leader moved along through the aftermath of the carnage towards the river, where his forces now assembled awaiting his next order, he sprayed anything that moved with automatic fire. He riddled the unarmed civilians who peered curiously through doorways and windows and those who had emerged in curiosity out onto the streets. Flax found the pleasure of such destruction of human life intense as he picked off his targets indiscriminately as his troops had done; anyone not in a High Hat uniform was a legitimate target and as he neared the river he found himself clambering over piles of bodies of the ordinary citizens of Dubh.
Eventually, only lack of ammunition brought Flax down to earth and he was able to see reason through the red mist of his blood lust. He shouldered his weapon and increased his pace to join his men who waited impatiently on the banks of the foul smelling river, swearing at his radio operator to keep up with him.
The Tans had put up almost no resistance once they had realised the destructive capacity of the High Hats weaponry and had retreated en masse to the Upper City and the expected sanctuary of its curtain walls. The bottle neck of bridges over the river had been the demise of thousands as they attempted to make their way through the terrified crowds swept ahead of the High Hats advance. The bridges had been crammed with people fleeing in fear of the demons that pursued them in top hats. There, caught in the open and vulnerable, they had been slaughtered as they stood like beasts at an abattoir door.
At the corpse swollen river, all was now silent. The firing had stopped because of Flax's orders and the simple fact that there was no one in the open outside the Upper City walls left to kill.
Ben Santiago had been swept up in the demonic atrocities of the High Hats advance. He had led the attacks with the same insane savagery as Flax himself would have. He had, with great difficulty, been able to eventually quell the sadistic enthusiasm of the High Hats as he knew they needed to preserve ammunition and he also released that the city would need people other than the High Hats to function after its fall to them.
The High Hats had wasted much ammunition in an attempt to achieve the latter, but Santiago had stopped it and now he oversaw the setting up of mortars and instructed how and where to launch grenades in preparation for the storming of the Upper City.
Now they awaited Flax. They milled around the river banks and on the bridges swapping stories of their personal exploits and itched to continue the rout of their enemy. Flax arrived and smiled as his horde cheered and waved their bloodied weapons in salute.
“Victory is ours!" their leader screamed until he was hoarse, then embraced Ben Santiago. His insane eyes bore into Ben. “Victory is Ours! he whispered into the arms dealer's ear.
Then he turned to his High Hats again. He looked at the sea of white faces, their wide and manic eyes staring out from beneath the brims of their top hats grinned. Then he looked up at the walls of the Upper City and the dull glow from the field walls which crackled and flashed unstably.
Suddenly he felt cold. Goose pimples arose all over his body and the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. He stared at the sky over the walls across the city. A great arc of golden light briefly lit up Dubh, it was the result of the energy imbalance in the field walls, but to Flax it was more than a chance disruption in the field walls. It was gate through which he would have to pass to secure his position as emperor of this place. Beyond it lay the city of the Tallmen, but they could not stop him. His dream of Jonathon standing before the golden gate now returned to him, causing him to shiver. The dream, the boy!
“The boy.” he croaked out loud, his eyes becoming unfocussed as a thin sliver of paranoia crept into his mind. "It's because of him! He's destroying my world! My dream! “he shouted at the assembled High Hats. A few looked puzzled a few repeated Flax's words, chanting them as if they were religious prayer or a profundity from a prophet.
The golden discharge in the field walls faded and Flax recovered his composure. Yet now urgency filled him. The dream hung over him like the smoke from the bloody war he had brought to Dubh. The boy was here. The problems he had blamed on the Tallmen might be something to do with him he realised. The boy was out there, a real threat. Now time was of the essence. He had to find him and find him soon, but he knew that he would find him, that their paths would soon cross. He been close recently, he was alive. Soon, thought Flax. Soon. was silent now, apart from the static crackle from the field walls. It was a silence which slipped inside the soul, creating an atmosphere of expectation and fear.
On the Upper City walls the remaining Tans organised themselves to face the onslaught of the High Hats. They hoped that the narrow bridges, on which many of their number had been massacred, would perhaps give them some advantage as the High Hats advanced.
Santiago dropped his hand, signalling a barrage ofmortars and grenades. The grenades spewed smoke across the river and covered the High Hats advance on the walls of the Upper City which disintegrated under the deadly rain of fire and shrapnel. The Tan remnants died or fled.
Soon the High Hats literally exploded through the gates of the Upper City. There was no opposition and the frenzied minions of Silus Flax sought to fulfil murderous passion on anyone who happened to come within range.
Soon the bodies of Meks, dragged from their dwellings and killed, littered the streets. Flax ordered a halt to the attack. He needed the engineers and mechanics of the Upper City to run the Halls of Machines, without them he could not hope to sustain the realm he would tear away from the Tallmen when he conquered the Towers of the Tallmen.
His orders proved difficult to enforce, but, after halting several berserkers in his host with a hail of bullets from his own weapon, silence fell upon a shocked and shattered Upper City.
Only the hum of the engines could be heard now, perpetual and comforting to Flax. This was his home. He smiled. At least they functioned still, he thought and by the sweet tone the halls emitted, efficiently. Now he knew that the problem that threatened the city was with the Tallmens’ technology or management of it.
But how could the boy have got to them? Even the blazing lights of the Sentry Towers had now almost dimmed out of existence. He ordered his men on to the roofs of the Machine Halls where they gazed through the thickening smog of battle at the City of the Tallmen.
The lights of the Sentry Tower were ominously dull too. The metaphorical significance caused Flax to smile. They guarded his final goal and he knew that the Tallmen would still prove to be a real test. His men were well armed, but the technology of his enemy was highly advanced and they had nowhere to run and hide.
Flax h
ad seen their weaponry used on only a few occasions, but it was lethal and efficient. On the open killing ground between the halls and the Towers they could pick off his men at will. He looked nervously at Santiago, who grinned back at him, his face manically confidant. He assured his client that the Tallmen would collapse with the same ease that the Tans had folded before them.
Leaving Santiago to organise his next strategy and he moved down to the Halls to force his way in. With a few trusted captains, they blew open the main doors and marched inside in jubilant arrogance. Flax was relieved to find that all was indeed, as he wished it to be. He inspected all the Halls and found the lines running normally, although the Meks worked anxiously, as he and his entourage passed by.
Reassured by Flax, the Black Gaffer, of their safety, they continued their work in fearful concentration. They knew of this man who now controlled the Upper and Lower Cities. They knew his reputation, his methods and now feared him more than the sadistic legend of Hall Nine. The new master of the Halls of Machines issued commands to his captains and his faithful servants ran gleefully to carry them out as he climbed the metal stairway to his old control room. He felt good to be back amongst his beloved machines, wrapped in the bouquet of warm oil and hot metal he felt confidence build in him at the prospect of the forthcoming battle with the Tallmen.
As he entered the control room, he heard the sound of gunfire in the Halls. He sniggered. His men were executing the Council of the Halls of Machines, the lap dogs of the Tallmen. Now he had total control of the halls and the Tallmens' power supply. He had his hand at their throat, soon they would crawl at his feet one way or another. They could not win.
He swung open the control room door and stared at his deputy who fell on his knees at the sight of the Hall Engineer in whose absence he had taken over from. Bolster's rolls of fat quivered as Flax advanced toward him.
The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption Page 28