Angel

by Jon Grahame

  So did hunting down scum like Brother Cedric.

  At 11.45 a radio message from an excited lookout alerted Reaper that someone was coming.

  ‘They’re early,’ said Reaper.

  Abraham began to move to the top of the steps but the sound of a motorcycle made him pause. Pete Mack braked his Harley Davidson fiercely in Tower Street and turned up the approach road to meet them.

  ‘They’re on their way,’ he said. ‘But there’s more than expected. Maybe eighty. Maybe a hundred.’

  Pete had been watching on the route from the south, near the junction of the M18 and the M62. It was the first time he’d been able to use the Harley, which was his pride and joy, with a real sense of urgency. His exhilaration at the ride was tempered with the news he brought.

  Reaper said, ‘Sandra’s gone to Monkbar. A hostage situation with the bad bastard who killed Rebecca. Tell her. The odds are too steep. Tell her to stay back and watch the outcome. She will need to get back to Haven to organise resistance. Make sure she goes, Pete.’

  ‘How do I find Monkbar?’ said Pete.

  Abraham pointed.

  ‘Go towards the Minster, he said. ‘It’s just to the right.’

  Pete engaged the gears and set off again, across the car park.

  Reaper shouted up to Yank and Keira.

  ‘Change of plan!’ With so many to fight, the Tower could become a death trap, just as it had 800 years before. ‘Join Jenny and Tanya.’ They picked up their weapons and ammunition and came down the steps.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Yank.

  ‘There’s more than we thought. Maybe too many. Set up behind the field gun. We’ll see how they play it. Wait for them or me to start it. Then take out anyone in the square. If it gets heavy, get back to Haven. They’ll need you.’

  ‘What about you?’ said Yank.

  ‘There’s still a chance to take out Steel. After that, I’ll get moving, too.’

  ‘Luck Reaper.’

  ‘You, too.’

  He nodded to the two girls, who turned and ran along the road towards the field gun.

  ‘James!’ Reaper called. The young man showed himself on the roof. ‘The odds have changed. Steel’s bringing a small army. If you get a chance, put him down. But don’t get trapped up there. There’ll be too many of them. Get back to Haven. We’ll re-group there.’

  James raised an arm in acknowledgement and sank back behind the balustrade.

  ‘And now,’ Brother Abraham said. ‘I think it’s showtime.’

  Reaper stopped him from climbing the steps with a hand on his arm.

  ‘These odds are suicide, Brother. You should get to safety.’

  Abraham smiled. ‘This is my city and this is a holy site. I believe this is a holy cause, good against evil. We stand against evil in different ways, Brother Reaper, but we stand against it together. I shall add authenticity to your charade as well as a little godliness. And I can always seek refuge in the Tower.’

  ‘In that case, I’m glad to have you along, Brother.’

  Abraham walked up the steps. After a moment, Reaper followed, but stopped a short way from the top and knelt. Abraham reached the concrete platform, faced outwards and spread his arms like an Old Testament prophet.

  ‘How’s this?’ he said. ‘Impressive enough?’

  Reaper grinned.

  ‘While you’re at it, you might actually say a prayer,’ he said. ‘I think we’re going to need one.’

  Abraham nodded and joined his hands in front of him and bowed his head. After a moment, he said, ‘Will you hear my confession, Reaper?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My confession. I can’t think of anyone else who would understand.’

  Reaper was confused. ‘Is this really the time?’

  ‘Considering that there may not be another, I think it is. Will you hear me?’

  Reaper glanced at his watch. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  ‘Abraham is not my real name. I chose it when I gave myself to God. My real name is Colin Hazlehurst.’ He took a deep breath, as if preparing for a great revelation. ‘Before the plague, I was a journalist.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Reaper, in shock.

  Abraham made the sign of the cross between them to dispel Reaper’s blasphemy.

  ‘I was a member of that very profession that fed the lie, that fed the madness of modern society. I was a member of the tabloid Press. What changed me was a road to Damascus moment that happened on the Docklands Light Railway.’

  Reaper glanced up at Abraham to see if this was a wind-up but the monk’s eyes were closed and his expression was serious.

  ‘It started with a newspaper story I was writing. A feeble attempt to mock God and His plague. The deaths had started, although this was in the early days of the pandemic. I was writing a “what if” story about the end of the world, without for one moment thinking such a thing would happen. As part of the story, I went online and was ordained by an internet church. A free and painless rite of passage that took two minutes and cost nothing. I ticked the appropriate boxes and became Brother Abraham. My holy orders were granted by an ethereal message – hypertext through hyperspace. You can’t get closer to God than that. It made a very amusing part of the story I wrote.’

  ‘You were ordained over the internet?’

  ‘I became Brother Abraham of the Church of the Eternal Light. It’s based in California – if anyone has survived. It was a gimmick for a story. And no, I didn’t take it seriously, either.

  ‘Then the situation became worse and the possibility of apocalypse was not such a far-fetched idea but others refused to accept the inevitable. Life and lifestyle blinkered them. But my eyes had been opened. My Docklands Light Railway moment. I was on my way home when I knew the world was over. It came to me, a blinding flash of divine revelation.’ He paused, reflecting on the moment. ‘I never returned to the office. I threw my phone away, my first rejection of the trappings of society.

  ‘This was two weeks before the end. Life was staggering on towards an inevitable conclusion. Then I realised the importance of my ordination. I went back online and read the philosophy of the Church of Eternal Light. It was simple enough, a combination of humanism, benevolence and Christian principles. I immersed myself in a search for truth. I looked for it in Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism. And I found Him back in the Church of Eternal Light and its philosophy of basic humanity. I opened my heart and God entered. A simple God who delivered a message of good and evil. A God people could understand.

  ‘Before the plague there were too many gods, too many beliefs, hatreds, wars. My God is the One God who is neither Muslim nor Christian nor of any particular persuasion. He embraces all, for God is a concept that belongs to everyone. As all around me died, God allowed me to live. He told me to pray to Him and to help others who wished to follow a truer path than before.’

  Abraham had been speaking quietly and without fervour. He had been confessing the accident of his position. He sighed and said, ‘That is why I came to York and that is my confession.’

  They exchanged a long look; Abraham’s was expectant and hopeful.

  Reaper said, ‘Do your followers know where you were ordained?’

  ‘No one asked.’

  ‘Probably best not to tell them.’

  ‘Probably,’ agreed the monk. ‘Do I have your absolution, Brother Reaper?’

  ‘You do, Brother Abraham.’

  ‘Then I shall offer another prayer for our salvation.’

  Hell, thought Reaper, kneeling on the wet steps. It can’t do any harm.

  He armed the Uzi.

  Sandra favoured the carbine she had learned to shoot with and leaned against a tree for stability. Across the road was a toyshop with a window full of anti
que dolls, then a bicycle store and then the parked Mercedes that, even now, Brother Mark was telling Cedric was waiting for him. She hoped Cedric would not suspect a double cross. He was in a bad situation and human nature would make him want to believe what Mark was promising: an escape without a shootout. His followers would likewise want to accept terms rather than fight; they were amateurs, after all.

  She knew what she had to do: kill again without hesitation. Amateurs they may be, but they had chosen Cedric and violence and had crossed the line without hope of redemption by holding children as hostages. There could be no doubts, no second chances. Once again, she was judge, jury and executioner.

  A woman climbed over the wall in the same place where she and Brother Mark had jumped down. She stared anxiously across the road into the trees but did not see Sandra. She took up a position at the side of the bicycle store, leaning her back against the wall and resisting the urge to look around the corner. She continued to stare across into the trees and, when her body stiffened, Sandra knew she had been seen. The plan was taking shape.

  Two men appeared at the corner of Monkgate. One was young, one middle-aged. Both wore track suits. One carried a rifle, the other a handgun. They hesitated on the corner by the second hand shop, stared up the road and one pointed.

  ‘It’s there!’ he shouted.

  The men were joined by Brother Cedric, still favouring his crossbow, and a young woman who held the pony tail of a little girl in one hand and a knife in the other. The young woman had a sharp face that might have been attractive but for the harsh lines of anger and desperation. Her hostage was too terrified to cry, her eyes and mouth wide in fear. Cedric was grinning and the group began to move at a fast pace towards the promised car.

  Already the plan was working because Mark had negotiated the freedom of one child in return for the car. But, of course, they would not let the second one go.

  Sandra focussed through the sights on the woman with the knife and blanked her mind to any thoughts of compassion. She squeezed the trigger: a chest shot that sent the woman spinning backwards to crack her head on the pavement. The knife fell from her hand but she maintained the grip on the girl’s hair, pulling her to the ground with her. The other three stopped in shock. The man with the rifle pointed it across the road towards the trees but couldn’t see Sandra. Another chest shot put him down. The younger man dropped the handgun and raised his arms. Too late. She shot him, too.

  Cedric crouched, the crossbow at the ready but without the benefit of a target. He backed up until he was against the glass of the toyshop, dozens of eyes from dead dolls staring at him.

  ‘Bastard!’ he shouted, and fired the crossbow bolt in final, desperate anger, and Sandra remembered how he had killed Rebecca.

  The chest shot raised him from his crouch. The head shot that followed smashed him back through the glass of the window and he lay, half in and half out of the display, two more dead eyes staring into eternity.

  Sandra walked steadily across the road. She let the carbine hang from its strap and took the Glock from its holster. The woman peeped round the wall from the side of the bicycle store. The little girl now started crying and the noise seemed to break the tension. The woman ran to the child, scooped her up into her arms and continued running towards Monkbar. Sandra inspected the bodies and delivered three head shots.

  Brother Mark and Pete Mack came round the corner from Monkbar. They stopped and stared at the bodies. Then shooting from the other side of the city caught all their attention.

  Chapter 20

  THE SHOTS FIRED BY SANDRA COINCIDED WITH THE RADIO message that Steel was coming.

  Reaper dropped the PR on the floor and told Abraham, ‘They’re here.’

  The brother stood straighter.

  A dark green Hummer turned off Tower Road and came towards them slowly. It had a sheet of steel welded to the front. Behind it, Reaper saw two 4x4s. They had four-door cabins with truck beds in the back. Two men were standing in each truck bed. The first pair had a machine gun resting on the cabin roof. The second pair had rifles. These cars also had steel sheets attached to the front. Reaper turned away his head and maintained the posture of praying. The vehicles had entered the square behind him. Others parked on the approach road and an assortment of 4x4s went past on the Tower Road and he heard them turn right towards the Hilton Hotel. They were making sure. They were surrounding him.

  The cars behind him had stopped but the engines continued to tick over with a gentle rumble.

  Doors opened; boots crunched on the road.

  Brother Abraham spread his arms wide, the shepherd’s crook in his right hand, every inch the prophet and not at all like a journalist, and shouted, ‘Who dares disrupt a holy penance?’

  ‘So you’re Brother Abraham!’ someone laughed. ‘We’ve no beef with you, Brother. We want the Reaper.’ The voice was loud and confident. ‘I assume this is him?’

  Reaper knew he was living on the edge and, perhaps, by the grace of Abraham’s God. His body was tense in the expectation of being hit by a bullet at any moment. He was unhurried as he got to his feet. He wondered how long he would have when he turned around and whether he had chosen the correct weapon. The Uzi was notoriously difficult to aim. He wondered if he would have time to run for cover afterwards. But first, he had to kill Steel.

  He turned slowly. Three vehicles were in the square. The Hummer and the one with a machinegun were facing the Tower. The third was parked broadside behind them. The men they had carried had taken up positions behind the vehicles to cover all directions. All the doors of the two vehicles facing him were open to provide added protection – except for the passenger door in the Hummer.

  Four other vehicles were stationery on the approach that led up from Tower Road.

  ‘Are you the Reaper?’ the man said, in his loud voice.

  He was big, wore army fatigues and a floppy camouflage bush hat that hid his hair. He was not Steel.

  Reaper saw that the machinegun was trained on him, as were the rifles of at least four others. This was suicide time, without a diversion of some kind. But he had told the girls and James not to fire until he did.

  ‘God is the judge of all men …’ shouted Abraham, in a voice that made even Reaper jump, and diverted the attention of the men below. Thank God for religion, he thought. He shed the coat and opened fire.

  He held the gun down as firmly as possible but the spray was erratic. He hit at least two men, including the chap with the big voice, and made others wince and duck rendering their return fire wild and unsteady. He aimed most of it at the front passenger window of the Hummer where he guessed John Steel was sitting.

  As he flung himself left off the steps, he was hit in the chest. The Kevlar vest saved him from death but the pain was numbing. The hit added to his momentum and he went sideways quicker than he had intended, rolled on the grass, found a grip with his toes and propelled himself down the embankment to find cover behind the cars he had parked below to escape the bullets.

  Even as he ran and scrambled and dived, he was aware that a battle had started in the square behind him.

  The solitary wait James had had on the rooftop had seemed longer than it had actually been. It was time during which the view over the city and the river had made him remember his family and, of all things, a day at York races in the autumn before the virus – a wonderfully happy day. His father had treated him as an equal, even though he was only thirteen, his mother had been elegant and beautiful and his younger sister had left her tantrums at home. Thirteen. When was that? A lifetime ago.

  But once the wait was over and the action started, everything went into fast-forward mode. He watched Brother Abraham attract the men’s attention, saw Reaper fire the Uzi and chaos reigned. James first took out the two men manning the machinegun. Two clean head-shots. He ducked and ran as return fire from rifles chipped the mason
ry near his head. He lay flat, a foot back from the balustrade, and looked for the red-haired figure of Steel.

  The girls behind the field gun had opened up, causing further consternation among the men behind the vehicles. Men from the cars parked on the approach road spilled out and ran to join the fight, taking cover by the vehicles or at the corner of the Crown Court building. A fresh crew now manned the machinegun and James made them his next priority. He put one down and stopped its chatter before return fire sent stone chippings into his face like shrapnel. For a moment he was blinded by blood and, in his confusion, the carbine slipped from his grasp and went over the side of the building.

  He was desperately angry with himself, and desperately worried about the safety of the girls. He rubbed his eyes clear and grabbed the L85. The machinegun was again firing at the sandbag and field gun emplacement. He stood up and leant on the wall and fired bursts from the automatic rifle into the back of the truck, silencing it once again. His determination was such that he was unaware of the bullets that hit the concrete and stone around him as the enemy responded.

  James had crouched to change magazines, then, rising again to fire more bursts at the gun itself to render it ineffective, he saw the red curly hair of Steel among the vehicles. At last, he had his primary target. He aimed the gun, standing upright for perfect balance, and was flung backwards by a burst of fire that took him across the chest. His fall continued into blackness and his last regret was that he had missed.

  ‘Bugger,’ he thought.

  Yank and Keira fired short bursts from behind the cover of the field gun’s armour plating. Jenny maintained an almost constant fire from the light machinegun as Tanya fed the ammunition.

  The noise was deafening, the acrid smoke and smells engulfed them, and their weapons grew hot, but the enemy was not attempting to attack. They were simply returning fire. The girls could keep this up as long as the ammo lasted.