Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  ‘Dan,’ she said, digging her fingers into Dave’s arm like clamps. ‘Are these the only creatures you know about within the town? Because if there’s more we do need to put them down as quickly as possible. And we’re the best suited to that job. No offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ Bourke said in a tone that gave them to understand she’d been as insulting as possible. ‘We weren’t having much luck with them,’ he conceded then. ‘It was a good thing they showed up so late. Most of the town was already home and abed.’

  ‘Bourke,’ said Dave. ‘Do you know of any more Hunn or any other kind of monster in town? Anybody called anything in? Especially from out Shermans Point way. That’s where I’m headed.’

  Bourke and Dave both started at the sound of a gun blast. Karen did not.

  ‘Had a live one, boss,’ somebody called out from up the street a ways. ‘Just put him down.’

  ‘Well be careful,’ Bourke shouted back. ‘All of you. No sense anyone getting killed now.’ He returned his attention to Dave, who was nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet with the need to be gone. Only Karen was stopping him from warping right out of there.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bourke. ‘It’s been Hell.’ He sighed, and it sounded as though he was letting go of a stale breath he’d been holding for hours. ‘There’s no more that I know of. But the phone lines are patchy, and not everyone has cell coverage.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Dave said. He knew there was a cell tower out on the point where Karen’s old man lived. He was starting to calm down a little, but not so much that he wanted to delay any further. ‘You want to wait here?’ he asked Karen. ‘Help these guys out?’

  ‘No,’ she answered quickly, taking both of the men a little by surprise. ‘Sorry, Dan. But Hooper and I will need to scout the town and you’ll be wanting to deal with your casualties.’

  ‘Ayuh,’ the IT guy conceded. ‘Got plenty of them, I’m afraid. Including my chief.’

  He shook his head and his lips began to tremble. Dave thought Bourke might even cry, but he got it under control as another vehicle came flying around the intersection of Mechanic and Washington. It was Igor and Zach in the Growler. Bourke shook his head at the sight of them, a series of short, rapid side-to-side jerks, as though he might shake some meaning into the sight. Perhaps he expected a whole convoy to roll in behind the jeep, which bristled with mounted machine guns, but there were only the two SEALs.

  As Zach stomped on the brakes, the wheels sliding a few feet over the gore-slickened tarmac, Igor leaped from the passenger seat.

  ‘Nasty,’ he said, taking in the ambience of slaughterhouse floor.

  ‘Igor, Zach, this is Dan Bourke,’ said Dave, as the SEALs stomped through the gore. ‘He looks after computers and he kills monsters.’

  ‘Is the military here, now?’ Bourke asked. ‘Are you the relief?’

  He looked hopefully up the road, but the only sounds were the flames of burning cars and buildings, and the voices of the other townspeople as they inspected the bodies of the Hunn. The flames and horror cast a dark Lovecraftian pall over the normally picturesque downtown area of Camden. It seemed to Dave as if he’d stepped sideways into an older, bloodier New England, perhaps from the era of witch burnings.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re not really the cavalry, sir,’ Zach said.

  ‘No, we’re with these assholes,’ Igor added helpfully. ‘I’d say we’re their cab drivers, but even that’d be pushing it.’

  ‘Chill out,’ Zach said, his voice growing mellow, the drawl becoming less Midwest and more Californian surf bum. ‘Mr Bourke, can you give us a quick and dirty sit-rep. What you got here? Is this it?’

  Bourke appeared to really take in the scene for the first time. Like everyone else in the country he’d undoubtedly seen the news reports out of New Orleans, cheered on the army in the Battle of Omaha, and watched with creeping horror as everything fell apart after victory had been declared. The downtown area of Camden Harbor, such as it was, had been trashed. Shops burned and bodies, both human and otherwise, lay everywhere. To Dave, after New Orleans, it didn’t seem all that bad. But he wasn’t a local, even though he was a sometime visitor. The horror in Bourke’s expression was less about the amount of damage than it was about the sense of violation and loss of confidence. The Hunn hadn’t come in large numbers. Just a cohort. But they had come and they could return at any time. Like a biker gang from the lower levels of Hell.

  Good reason for Dave to be on his way again, but he probably needed to hear this. And while Karen couldn’t be certain of her radar, not after that Thresher in New York had punk’d her so badly, he took solace from Lucille, who’d gone back to sleep. She, at least, didn’t seem to feel like there were any more daemons to kill.

  ‘First reports came in just before midnight,’ Bourke said. He sounded as though he was talking to himself, rather than Zach. ‘Lucky thing that. Couple of hours earlier, it would have been a bloodbath. I was in the office. We’ve had server problems and because of, you know, the troubles, the chief wanted all of our communications links working. He was at home but he . . . he came in. Or tried to.’

  Bourke eyes flitted up the street Zach had just driven down.

  ‘He’s up there. In that wreck outside the bookshop.’

  ‘Do you know where they first appeared?’ Dave asked. He wanted to hear they were nowhere near Annie’s old man’s place.

  ‘Maybe up by the creek runs near the school,’ Bourke said. ‘That’s where the first reports came in.’

  Dave relaxed a little. That was in exactly the opposite direction to Shermans Point and Pat O’Halloran’s place. He tried not to let his relief show, and nobody seemed to notice it. Up and down the street, townsfolk were emerging from their shuttered homes, many of them carrying firearms.

  ‘The Bigfoots came in from that direction,’ Bourke said.

  ‘Bigfoots?’ Zach said.

  Bourke seemed to come to himself again.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what the Pilot called them at first, after the Longreach attack. I guess it stuck.’

  ‘Local paper, not an actual pilot,’ Dave explained, at Karen’s inquiring look.

  ‘So the Bigfoots just marched in, tearing stuff up and burning shit down?’ Igor asked.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Bourke said. ‘By the time they got here,’ he indicated the Public Safety Building, ‘I had enough guns to hold them off. Not that they seemed intent on pressing the case. I suppose they’re learning to be wary of guns and such like.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ Karen said, not sounding at all like she did.

  ‘Mr Bourke, we have personnel we need to secure out on Shermans Point Road,’ Zach said. ‘It seems to me like you have everything in hand here, and you’ll want to be tending to your casualties.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I will,’ Bourke agreed. ‘Will you be coming back here? Will the army be coming in?’

  ‘We’re Navy,’ Igor told him. ‘SEALs.’

  Bourke seemed to consider that, rubbing at his orange beard.

  ‘Really? Well that’s good, I guess. This being a maritime town. So the navy’s coming?’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Karen told him, deflating his sudden optimism. ‘If I were you, Dan, I’d keep a good watch out, and half your guns standing to in your headquarters there.’ She pointed her gun at the PSB.

  ‘You think there’ll be more? That they’ll come back?’ he asked. The prospect did not sit well with him.

  ‘Just be ready,’ Karen said. ‘You only have to make it to dawn and that’s not far off now.’

  Dave realised with a start that she was right.

  ‘I gotta get going,’ he said.

  Igor’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm, exactly where Karen had been holding it earlier.

  ‘This time we all go together.’

  ‘We’ll take the Growler,’ Zach said, as Dave let himself be led back toward the vehicle.

  Igor climbed into the rear, manning the machine gun. Dave saw now that there wer
e two different mounts, one of them a grenade thrower. He hopped into the back of the little jeep, finding a place to sit on an ammo box. Zach and Karen took the front seats.

  ‘Try to call your wife,’ she said. ‘Do it now.’

  The composure Dave had felt frayed a little, just a stitch or two.

  ‘Why? What’s up?’

  29

  The iPhone was useless. Not even a bar of coverage and no time to go looking for WiFi as they drove away from the town centre. The Iridium unit picked up a clear signal without a problem, but when he tried to connect to old Pat’s landline, and then Annie’s cell phone, he hit the wall. No service on either. He felt dread like cold, black water in the pit of his stomach as Zack steered left, taking them around the headwaters of the harbour.

  ‘No,’ said Karen as he tried to warp away. He could feel her shutting him down without even laying hands on him this time.

  ‘I don’t know what you did before, Hooper,’ she said, ‘but it wasn’t normal. You drained yourself, and me, worse than a couple of minutes warping should have.’

  They passed the small park sloping down to the bay where dozens of yachts and billionaire boats were tied up. Dave had no doubt that if the owners of those vessels had been in town, most of them would have put to sea to escape the Horde.

  He wondered if there were sea monsters out there, and asking the question, answered it. Yes. Yes there were. His mind, not wanting to contemplate what might be wrong at the O’Halloran place, was sliding around on its ass like a fat kid on a skating rink. ‘Stop acting like a redneck ebanashka. Whatever you did before. Don’t.’

  Dave didn’t know what she meant by ebanashka – it wasn’t Olde Tongue, so it was probably some Russian insult – and he didn’t know what she meant by ‘before’. Or rather, he half did. She meant when he’d pushed his warp drive to its limits and felt himself pressing up hard against something mysterious and immaterial. Or immaterial in this reality at least. But he didn’t know how he’d done that or what it meant. He no more understood what had happened than Karen did.

  Zach stomped on the gas as they swung on to High Street, which doubled as Route 1 heading northeast out of town. It would follow the coast for miles, through heavily wooded New England forests, but they were only travelling for a few minutes, looking for Shermans Point Road. Dave calmed down somewhat as it became obvious that there was no damage on this side of town. The power was out but more than a few places ran generators, a must-have item in the winter months when blizzards could take down the grid for days at a time. He saw lights on in lounge rooms, and even the flicker of TV sets through windows in every second or third house. Some people stood out on their front porches, all of them seeming to be armed with hunting rifles of one type or another. Igor waved to them as they roared past.

  ‘Colonel Varatchevsky?’ Zach said as he overtook a northbound Volvo loaded high with camping gear and suitcases. He had to speak loudly over the rush of the wind and the noise of the Growler’s engine.

  Karen’s voice betrayed a hint of wariness. The SEALs had been studiously ignoring her actual status since they’d met. ‘Yes, Chief?’

  ‘You mind if I ask you something?’

  ‘As long as you don’t mind if I tell you to fuck off should I not feel like answering.’

  ‘Fair enough. Can I ask why you’re doing this, helping us, when you could have just disappeared? Gone home even. The Horde and the other monster clans, they’re in Russia too, right?’

  ‘They are,’ she said, not bothering to correct his use of the term ‘clans’. ‘Not as many as there seem to be here, but it is early days.’

  ‘So why are you here? Seriously. That Trinder guy has a hard-on for you and, to be fair, you are a spy. From a really hostile foreign power.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think less of me for that?’

  Her tone was teasing, amused.

  ‘A little,’ Zach admitted. ‘Although I guess I’d be more pissed at you if I’d known you before. You know, when you were undercover.’

  They swept past a side street that Dave recognised as home to Jack and Toby’s best friends, a couple of boys from their school, and another street just one block from Shermans Point Road. There were fewer houses out here and they were set further back into the trees. The night grew closer. Karen seemed to consider Zach’s question, but Dave could tell she was also scanning for monster signals.

  ‘I’m here because I’m here,’ she said. ‘This is where the threat is. So this is where my mission is.’

  ‘You operating under orders right now?’ Igor asked from the back, shouting over the wind that tried to whip his words away.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am to assess the threat and advise my superiors on tactics and strategy.’

  ‘So when you’re done with that, you’re done with us?’ Dave asked. He was surprised at how put out he sounded.

  ‘We are all doing what we have to, Hooper,’ she said, turning around to face him. The wind of their passage whipped at her hair, lashing her face with the long, filthy blonde strands. Zach slowed as they reach the turn-off.

  ‘But you told me you thought we were past all of that shit,’ Dave protested. ‘Trinder and Heath and people fighting each other instead of the Horde.’

  ‘We are, for now,’ she said, breaking off for a moment to scan whatever frequencies she found the Threshers and orcs on. ‘But I don’t see you volunteering to defend my family or my country. For now, I serve them here, Hooper. But only for now.’

  There were a couple of properties at the intersection of Route 1 and Shermans Point Road, but they were dark. Dave recalled them as being summer rentals, empty for most of the year. There was no reason why they should be occupied now. Away from the highway, full darkness fell upon them again, pierced only by the headlights of the little jeep. Igor charged the machine gun with a metallic ratcheting sound.

  ‘Let her be, Hooper,’ he said. ‘She’s a soldier. Like us. She doesn’t get choices. She gets orders.’

  Chastened by the rebuke, Dave let it go. He’d been diverted anyway by Karen’s mention of family. She’d never said anything about them before, and as far as he knew from the briefing by Trinder she had none in America. In fact she’d been here so long as a deep cover agent that she probably had nobody other than older relatives back in Russia. Did they even know where she was, what she was doing? Karen had turned back to the front, probably scanning the airwaves again. They roared down a long straight stretch of road and Dave was tempted to warp just for a second, to see if he could. He didn’t think Karen was blocking him anymore, trusting that he would do as he’d promised. It would be a quick and dirty way to check for Threshers, but he caught himself before the thought could go further. Zach was driving. They were all in the jeep. It would probably keep going at this speed and fly off the road.

  Karen turned around again and gave him a firm shake of the head.

  She knew what he’d been thinking.

  That was a hell of a thing, having anyone inside his head like that. But someone like her, a spy and . . .

  She interrupted his train of thought.

  ‘I’m right here you know, zasranec.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She returned to scanning ahead.

  ‘At least you’re not staring at my ass anymore.’

  Further chastened, Dave tried to keep his mind from wandering again. They were getting close.

  Igor grinned at him.

  ‘Busted.’

  *

  Pat O’Halloran had done well from the fishing trade. He still owned a share of the small fleet of trawlers he’d built up, although it had been ten years since he’d been out on the water for a living. He was probably the richest man Dave had known before moving down to Texas to work in the oil industry, and he had reason to resent him for that. As careful as the old trawler man had been to raise his daughter right, Annie was still his only daughter, and he’d spoiled her rotten, at least as far as her ex-husband was concerned. To Dave’
s way of thinking, a good deal of the trouble in their marriage had been less about realities than expectations, primarily the expectation of one Annie O’Halloran that her husband would be able to keep her in the style to which her old man had accustomed her.

  The Growler swept around the long looping curve that would deliver them to Pat’s place and Dave found himself wondering less about monster infestations – it did seem pretty quiet this far from town – and more about how Annie was coping shut away up here. It made sense she’d moved in with her dad. They hadn’t owned the townhouse they’d lived in in Houston. That was a company condo, so she hadn’t been able to shake him down for it. Alimony took a big bite out of Dave’s ass, of course, but Annie had always been one of those women for whom equality meant busting his balls to work two jobs. One on the rigs or at the office, and a second when he was at home with the boys. He almost grinned at the idea of her brow beating old Cap’n Pat into school runs and homework supervision, but the grin faded. O’Halloran had probably done it willingly, and of course there was Vietch to call on as well. Her lawyer and boyfriend.

  Dave hoped Boylan had made a mess of Vietch like he’d promised.

  Pat’s house was comfortable, but no mansion. A solid red brick cottage in the Colonial Revival style, notable mostly for its easy access to the outer beaches of the point. It was a long way from the big city restaurants and galleries that Annie had a taste for. Hell, it was a long way from downtown Camden if you weren’t driving. The walk up to Route 1 alone was a good quarter hour.

  Still, he had to admit, it had one abiding advantage, didn’t it?

  As remote as it was from New York, where Annie would have loved to live, it was even further from the Gulf and the Texas oil towns where Dave had dragged her and the boys, and where he still lived.

  Or where he had lived, until last week.

  ‘Anything?’ he asked Karen.

  ‘No. I think we’re clear,’ she said. ‘How’s Lucy?’