Armageddon??

by Stuart Slade

  “What?” Randi was stunned by the comment.

  “Well, we know he’s in hell don’t we. Everybody who dies is. We know kitten can find people in hell and contact them if she has enough to go on. You have pictures of your friend, personal stuff, things he gave you? Then give them to kitten, see if she can contact him. Then we can work out how to get him out of there.”

  “Bring him back from the dead?”

  “Why not? We’re sending enough occupants of hell in the opposite direction. At least let’s try instead of wallowing in self-pity.”

  Inner Ring, Seventh Circle of Hell

  Richard Dawkins writhed and twisted on the burning sand, trying to evade the flurries of searing flakes that tormented him. As far as he could see, he was in a featureless desert, broken only by the forms of other victims thrashing about in the same agony as him. He had no idea how long he had been here, all he could remember was the knife plunging into him and then everything round him converging into a single bright dot, the way an old-fashioned television did when the station closed down. Then the impression of a tunnel and the sudden impact of the pain as he had found himself here.

  This was it, this was hell and he was stuck here forever. Then he mentally struck himself, no, he wasn’t here forever. He was here until humans could blast their way down to him and free him. That was it, that was it all. He had to hold out until then.

  The burns from the sand and those accursed flakes made thinking difficult and Dawkins believed he was going mad. There was a voice calling him. “Richard, Richard.”” He knew the pain from the burning was making him hallucinate. “Richard, Richard?” It was still going on.

  “Lalla?” It couldn’t be, she was still alive. He was imagining things.

  “No, its kitten. Is this Richard Dawkins?”

  “Who are you?”

  “You don’t know me, I work for James Randi. You are Richard Dawkins. If you are, we’re using you as an experiment.”

  “I’m Dawkins. Please, help me.”

  “We’re trying. Hold on.”

  Headquarters, Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

  “I’m through, I got him. Poor thing, he sounds terrible.”

  “Being knifed and sent to hell will do that to a man.” The speaker was one of four Special Forces men in the room, wearing orange-red BDUs and armed with the new M4A5s.

  “Get ready to move Lieutenant Madeuce. Once the portal is open, we can’t hold it for long. And don’t forget the bolt-cutters. Ready kitten? Here we go.”

  James Kirkpatrick started turning up the dial, artificially boosting the signal they’d recorded connecting kitten and Dawkins. Soon enough, the now-familiar ellipse started to form. As it increased in size kitten was threshing round helplessly on her couch, her partner dabbing her forehead and whispering comfortingly to her. Then, it was large enough and the Special Forces H-team stepped through.

  Inner Ring, Seventh Circle of Hell

  “Get a poncho over him fast. Damn these blasted flakes, what the hell is this place?” Madeuce was angry and hurried, this was nothing like what had been described to them.

  “Hell boss. Sir, stay still Sir, we’ll get you out of this. Just hold still.” The tool-steel bolt-cutters sliced easily through even the thick bronze shackles.

  “Shit we’ve got company!” A figure, tall and black had suddenly appeared. Madeuce squeezed off a burst from his carbine at him and saw the figure lurch with the hits. Then a streak of fire shot across the burning desert and the baldrick exploded. “Well done Frankie. They don’t like them AT-4s.”

  Behind them the other two members of the team had freed Dawkins and dragged him through the ellipse. Madeuce and Frankie Portello followed them out and the ellipse closed behind them.

  Headquarters, Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

  “We got him!” The voice from the Special Forces team was triumphant. All four were back in the room and the portal had been open for less than a minute.

  The body of Richard Dawkins was in the room with Doctors applying instruments and probes. “We’re getting readings, he’s errr…..” The doctor was about to say ‘alive’ but stopped himself. “With us.”

  “Richard can you hear me.” Randi was urgent, almost frantic, far removed from the gentlemanly, calm demeanour he usually maintained.

  “James how did you… what’s happening?”

  “We got you out. Don’t ask how but we did.”

  “Mister Randi, energy levels we’re getting are fading, its as if his life, if he wasn’t already dead, was leaking out.”

  “Right.” Kirkpatrick was already speaking to kitten. “Can you contact Lieutenant Kim please. Then we’ll open a portal to her.”

  “All right, please hurry though.” kitten relaxed on her seat and closed her eyes, concentrating on her picture of Jade Kim. Over the other side of the room, the H-team was loading up with supplies for the PFLH. No point is wasting trip.

  “Richard, we can’t keep you here, we’re sending you back to the Fifth Circle. We have a resistance team there, they’ll shelter you until they can get you into hiding.”

  “Ma’am.” Lieutenant Madeuce was speaking to kitten. Don’t hold the portal open after we’re through. Once we’ve arrived, we’ll be staying there for a while.” kitten nodded with her eyes still closed.

  On the Shore of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell

  Kim’s eyes suddenly defocused. “Message coming through guys. Our resupply hopefully.

  Lieutenant Kim? It was kitten again.

  “Yes kitten”

  “Get ready, portal opening. There’s a special forces team and a passenger coming through with some supplies. They’ll explain what’s happening. Get ready now.”

  The black ellipse formed as a point and rapidly swelled to its full size, large enough for a man to step through. Five figures came through, four in red-brown BDUs that matched the foul air of Hell very well. The fifth man was naked, his body burned but already starting to heal. Kim recognized that, it was the enhanced healing power of hell. This person was one of the dead, just like Kim and her little unit.

  “Ma’am. Lieutenant Madeuce. Special Forces. This is Richard Dawkins, we pulled him out of somewhere else in Hell and brought him here.”

  “Why? We haven’t room for passengers.”

  “We needed to know if people can be brought from hell to earth and stay there. Well, they can’t, he was, well, dying for want of a better word. The egg-heads needed to know if kitten could find other people, we needed to know if we can do transits like this. So many things. Look, we’re staying on to help you here. In your reports you mentioned a refugee organization. Can they look after him?”

  “Why can’t I fight as well.”

  “Because you’re not trained to. This is a job for professionals.” Madeuce’s voice was curt. “Can we get him to safety. Ma’am. My orders are to place myself under your command.”

  Kim nodded. Being dead had its advantages, if this war went on long enough, she would be the most senior Lieutenant in history. “There is a refugee organization, headed up by a woman called Rahab. We don’t know if we can trust her, this will make a good test. OK, Bubbles, Mac, we better find Rahab. Madeuce, you bring supplies?

  “120 kilograms of Semtex, another M107 a lot of ammunition for same and six M4A5 carbines. Oh, and a video camera. The brass want pictures and films of hell.”

  Kim nodded, the Semtex wasn’t enough but it would do. “Who are you Sir?”

  “Richard Dawkins. I was an author.”

  “I know, I read one of your books. Guess you must be pretty embarrassed huh? Don’t sweat it, we’ll look after you.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Martial Field of Dysprosium, Hell

  Had it been only two earth weeks ago? Then, his army had marched out, banners flying, horns, and trumpets blaring, drums thudding. A sight to stir the blood and induce martial ardor in all who saw it. A huge Army, 60 legions st
rong, 400,000 demons had sortied to defeat the humans. It was all supposed to have been so easy, so glorious. Trampling humanity underfoot, ravaging their cities, destroying their works and carrying their souls back in triumph to Hell.

  And what was left now? How many of the 400,000 had made it back alive? Or even half-alive? 300? 400 at most and the majority were wounded, some so badly they would be little more than helpless children. Neither the humans nor their weapons had mercy, those who their weapons spared, they left crippled and feeble. The sounds were as appalling as the sight of the shattered fragment that was all that was left of his Army. No martial music, no bombastic speeches either. Just the wailing of the wounded and the bereaved. Abigor didn’t know which was worse, the cries of the wounded or the yowls of the females as they hunted through the survivors for their mates. Mostly those howls turned into screams of misery as they realized their mate was not on the tiny list of survivors, on rare occasions, the scream of relief was moderated, diluted, by the grief when they saw the awful wounds the humans had inflicted. Rare indeed for a mate to find her demon whole and untouched. Not one in tens of thousands.

  Abigor heard the sobbing at his feet. A cavalryman was sitting down cross-legged on the ground, the head of his Beast in his lap. The cavalryman was badly wounded, his side laid open by fragments, but his Beast was dying. The fire in its angry red eyes was slowly dimming and the cause was obvious. The wound in its side was massive, blasted open and burned deep. A seeker lance had caused that, Abigor knew from seeing too many.

  “Sire, he wouldn’t stop. I tried to make him stop and rest but he wouldn’t. He just kept going, carrying me back here. I did try to make him rest but he wouldn’t and now he’s dying.”

  In this case, the Beast had shown better tactical common sense than its rider, Abigor reflected. If they had stopped, they’d have been caught and killed by the Iron Chariots. But it was true, the Beast had saved its riders life. “What is your name rider?”

  “Visharakoramal Sire, of the Right Wing.”

  “Visharakoramal, take your mate and go home. Go to somewhere quiet and remote where none who might seek would look and make your home there.” On the ground the light in the Beast’s eyes flickered and went out. It was dead. “Do not let his sacrifice be in vain. Take your mate and go home, when hundreds of thousands are dead, one more will not be noted.”

  Visharakoramal nodded and gently laid the Beast’s head down, then took his mate and quietly left. Abigor looked around, catching another three figures coming through the hellmouth. Two demons carrying a third whose legs had been blown off, probably by one of the mage-bars the humans had scattered. That was new also, the sight of demons helping their wounded. They must have learned it from the humans, at Hit, Abigor had seen how many humans would risk their lives to rescue one of their own who was in trouble. He’d seen the great Iron Chariots go places and do unimaginable, terrible things to help one of their own. It was strange, exposure to the humans was changing the demons in ways other than the nightmare of the human’s crushing superiority in weaponry.

  “Sire?”

  Abigor turned. Behind him was a figure, not as great as he but still larger than the pitiful remnants of his Army. A Lesser Herald, but one whose wings were stunted and malformed.

  “Sire I am Memnon, Lesser Herald. I have a message for His Infernal Majesty. May I accompany you to audience with him?”

  An audience with Satan? Abigor shuddered, to relay the tale of this catastrophe was certain death. “You realize my company might bring you death? Who is your message from?”

  “From Yahweh. And death I think, is the least of our problems.”

  That was true, Abigor thought. It might be good to have company on this final walk. He found himself urgently wishing he’d died on the run to the hellmouth just a few hours ago.

  Six hours earlier, Hellmouth, Western Iraq

  Abigor crouched in the hollow. The hellmouth was clearly visible on the horizon, the impossible geometry glimmering black against the dark blue velvet of the predawn sky. For the umpteenth time that night – he hadn’t slept; the quiet desert sounds kept startling him from any pretence of restfulness – he began to mull over the defeat, and stopped himself. There was just no way of explaining how the humans had become so powerful.

  Sighing, he shook himself and peeked up; the huge portal was less than ten miles away. A straight run would get him there in less than an hour. He would cross through and – and then what? Report to Satan? Abigor frowned. If Satan had heard already, Abigor was as good as dead; no other Duke would want to begin to associate with him. His position in the court was gone, taken now, probably by Belial or some other scheming coward.

  Could he stay with his former allies? The thought flitted through his mind, then was easily dismissed as he began trudging through the soft sand toward his destination. The Dukes who were former allies were just that – former. None of them would touch him with a thirty-foot pole now; given the totality of his defeat, he suspected that nothing could save him. But what alternatives did he have? Stay here, where the human magic crushed everything in its path and they sought out their defeated enemies to slaughter them like cattle? He had to get back to hell, he had to warn the others of the nightmare they faced.

  The sun peeked above the horizon behind him, and his shadow stretched far ahead of him. The cloudless sky was striated orange and pink, fading to purple in the western sky before him. For a moment, Abigor stopped and looked around him, at the last clear, white stars fading in the west, at the beautiful dawn panorama unfolding in the east over the flat, unimaginably vast desert wastes. The ground here was as like a part of hell as any he’d seen, and yet above it stretched such beauty. The humans didn’t know what they had, he thought; how could they appreciate such sublime beauty? And demons didn’t know what they were missing either. With a twinge of sorrow, he contemplated again his ruined future back home under the dull, ceaseless striation of hell’s skies.

  Suddenly, his ears perked – a small buzz in the distance. Could it be a human implement? He froze for an instant, and in that instant, he detected a now-familiar deeper rumble: horseless iron chariots. He broke into a flat-out sprint for the portal.

  Multi-National Force Headquarters, Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq

  “Have we got the Global Hawk feed up?” asked General Petraeus.

  One of the technicians, Bert, replied, “Yep. It should be on the main screen right …” there was a ticker of fingers on a keyboard and a mouse click “… now.” The screen blinked, fuzzed, and there was the hellmouth, black against the pink-lit sand.

  The whole scene moved slowly as the cameras on the Global Hawk zoomed in on the portal. The entire hellmouth surveillance mission had been on the backburner as the Global Hawks had been used to control the allied forces that had annihilated the demonic army. That was over now, the baldrick army was shattered beyond comprehension or reconstitution, there were only handfuls of baldricks free and alive between the hellmouth and the Euphrates, and that had pushed intelligence-gathering back to top priority. Nobody ever won a war by defending themselves. They won it by taking the fight to the enemy. It was time to begin striking back at Hell, and that meant learning as much as possible about it, especially the terrain near the hellmouth which was, in the plans Petraeus and his colleagues were starting to draw up, the site of the first beachhead.

  For a moment, Petraeus wondered if this was how Eisenhower had felt in 1943, then stifled the thought; Eisenhower had known so much more about his enemy, and his enemy had known about him. The two situations were only comparable if you didn’t think about it. Then, he noticed a small black figure far below the Hawk, also making for the portal. “What’s that?” He indicated the figure.

  “Just a moment, sir.” The feed one the screen jumped through the magnifications until the figure was clearly visible: a large baldrick, running as fast as it could.

  “Feed this through to the nearest armored unit, with orders to intercept and – wait,
zoom in just a little bit more.” Something about the figure had triggered his memory. The feed duly zoomed, and Petraeus recognized the baldrick: his counterpart, the lucky one he’d missed with the artillery during the main battle. “Orders to intercept and capture.” If this worked out, it would be a huge intelligence bonus.

  Hellmouth, Western Iraq

  The roar of the Abrams engine almost deafening and the imperfections in the land bounced her around in her commander’s seat, adding extra bruises to the impressive collection she had already collected. Captain Keisha Stevenson nodded as the crackling orders came through the radio, and then repeated them on the company channel. “Guys, we’ve got a target. Orders to capture.”

  In the light of the Iraqi dawn, the Abrams tanks and Bradley vehicles under her command sped up and veered left, the Bradleys belching black smoke and kicking up sand that hovered in the air in their wake, slowly dispersing.

  Abigor ignored the pain in his side, pushing his legs as fast as they would go. The hellmouth was growing larger, a black swirling void underneath the horizon. If the humans didn’t notice him, he was only a few minutes away from home. He could almost taste the sulfurous air.

  But the roar of the iron chariots was louder dominating the sounds of early morning. He didn’t let himself look over his shoulder, only gamely pushed faster. All he felt, his whole being, was now his feet pounding into the ground, his heart thumping in his chest, and the tingle of the magic in his back (he had long since abandoned his trident), all undercut by the gathering rumble of iron chariots.

  All too soon, they were close behind him the cloud of dust they raised choking him. One pulled ahead of the rest and was almost beside him its odd head turning so that the long tube was pointing at him. Abigor tried to run around it, failed, then he switched doubled back and ran behind it, the hellmouth just a few yards away. His senses were overwhelmed by the cold and unyielding taste of the iron, not at all like the friendly warmth of the bronze or tin he was used to. As he dived behind the Chariot, he could feel a blast of heat, uncomfortable even for his own thick skin. Even as he expected the deadly blast off human mage-magic in his back, he continued to marvel at the humans’ ingenuity and ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Chariots, without horses, that generated their own heat, propulsion, and magic fire lances while carrying humans within them.