“Quiet please!” said the umpire.
In the royal box, Ellie leaned forward, excited, while Alfie kept a concerned eye on the darkening sky. Was that thunder he heard rumbling in the distance?
“Alfie, just watch,” Ellie hissed. “This is going to be historic.”
Kate Robertson bounced the ball patiently and waited for complete silence. She tossed it high in the air to serve. Around the country, several million pairs of eyes watched the ball reach the top of its trajectory and fall back to Robertson’s waiting racquet. WHACK! She sent the ball high over the net … and clean out of the arena! The crowd’s gasp was as loud as a jumbo jet. Britain’s number-one tennis player had transformed, her berserker face stained with bright blue tattoos, her hair suddenly blonde and bushy. Brandishing her racquet like a club she pounded the ground. With a ripping sound, a glowing red crack appeared in the famous grass as if a knife had been drawn across the court.
“Racquet violation, Miss Robertson!” the umpire yelled.
But no one in the crowd was listening. They were too busy scrambling for the exits away from some of the spectators who, as the magic took hold, were also turning into Viking berserkers, tearing up their seats and throwing their picnics into the air.
“Alfie, what’s going on?” said Ellie, looking to her brother.
But Alfie wasn’t in his seat. He was already disappearing through the exit to the private VIP area behind the royal box. Ellie was aghast – he had deserted her at the first sign of trouble.
“ALFIE!”
What Alfie was really doing was looking for somewhere quiet where he could put on his Defender armour without being seen. Because whatever was happening out there, he knew what this was – this was Lock and his brother and the Vikings – this was their plan. He just hoped it wasn’t too late to stop them.
Meanwhile, a few miles north of London, Hayley had finally reached the Whisper Grove Care Home and burst into her gran’s room.
“Ah, nurse, good, I need some help,” said Gran, not recognizing her as she glanced up from the television she was watching. “The tennis has gone all funny.”
Hayley just clocked a snippet of the panic on Centre Court before the broadcast abruptly ended. She took the brakes off her gran’s wheelchair and helped her into it. Whatever was going down at Wimbledon, she hoped Alfie could handle it. Right now, she needed to get Gran out of here.
“Gran, it’s me. I thought we’d go on a little trip – the countryside, maybe,” said Hayley, as she weaved the wheelchair towards the exit.
She thought she would have trouble getting past the home’s staff, but everyone seemed glued to the TV news.
“That sounds nice, dear,” said Gran, seeming to understand who she was again.
Outside, a strong wind buffeted the trees. A storm was blowing in. Hayley ran quicker, looking for a car she could take.
“What’s the rush, child?” Gran said, gripping the wheelchair’s armrests.
“Just want to beat the traffic, Gran,” Hayley said.
“Can we offer you a lift?” said Agent Turpin, leering as he stepped out from behind a bus stop.
Agent Fulcher appeared and grabbed Hayley, lifting her off the ground. They must have been staking the place out all along.
“Thought we’d given up on you, didn’t ya?” Fulcher shouted, triumphant.
“Get off!” Hayley cried, struggling.
But Fulcher had her in an iron grip. Turpin was holding a pair of handcuffs. They’d obviously learned their lesson since last time.
“Hurry up and cuff her, she’s as slippery as a bag of eels!” Fulcher said as Hayley squirmed.
With an ominous click, the handcuffs locked themselves tight around Hayley’s wrists.
“Hey, you’re the man who wants to stop bingo!” Gran said to Fulcher.
“No, I’m not. And I’m not a man, either,” Fulcher complained.
“DON’T TOUCH HER!” yelled Hayley.
Turpin, smiling like a piranha, helped Gran out of the wheelchair and into the back of their car.
“Now, then, Mrs Hicks. How about that day trip, then? We’ve got a lovely place we can take you while we have a little word with your granddaughter.”
Gran looked doubtful, her eyes clouded. “I want to see Lawrence.”
“Don’t listen to them, Gran!” Hayley shouted, glaring at the agents. She couldn’t believe they would stoop so low as to tease a fragile old woman. “Gran might be sick, but she’s not as sick as you two!”
“You know, I almost hope you resist spilling the beans about who your Defender friend is,” Turpin said. “That way I can let Agent Fulcher do what she does best.”
Fulcher grunted her approval and threw Hayley into the back seat next to her gran.
As the car sped back into the city, Hayley stroked Gran’s hand, comforting her, and plotted her next move. She couldn’t make a run for it and leave Gran with these two thugs. But maybe she could get someone’s attention and scream for help. However, as she scanned the streets for the police, she noticed cars abandoned everywhere and people running around in a panic.
“Something’s happening out there,” she said.
Turpin turned round and sneered. “Nice try. But you’re not getting out of it this time, missy.”
Suddenly the car jumped as a red crack split open the road beneath them. Hayley flung herself in front of her gran as they skidded to a halt. She sat up to see Fulcher with her nose to the window, watching a group of berserkers rampage past, pulling down road signs and terrorizing screaming pedestrians.
“The girl’s right. Something’s wrong, Turpin.”
She looked over to see Turpin’s head touching the roof of the car, his face bulging and wild-eyed, his shoulders and arms expanding till they were bigger than hers.
“RAAAAAAAARGH!” berserker Turpin bellowed, wrenching off the steering wheel and punching it through the windscreen.
Fulcher screamed a surprisingly girly scream and tumbled out of the car.
“WAIT! HELP US!” shouted Hayley.
A cab slammed into the back of them with a crunch, sending their car spinning again. When it came to a rest, the door next to Gran was hanging off its hinges. Relieved to find they were unhurt, Hayley leant against her gran, pushing her out.
“GRAN, WE NEED TO GO!”
Hayley rolled out to see berserker Turpin leap on top of Fulcher, clawing and biting like a rabid dog. Fulcher was punching back, giving as good as she got, but for once they were evenly matched. As they rolled past grappling with each other, Hayley saw the key to the handcuffs fall from Turpin’s torn trousers. “The key!”
“I’ll fetch it, dear,” said Gran breezily, not seeming to grasp how perilous their situation was.
“No, Gran!”
But before Hayley could stop her, Gran had shuffled over, picked up the key and brought it back – just in time as Fulcher staggered past again, carrying a flailing Turpin on her shoulders like he was an unruly toddler.
“GET OFF ME!” pleaded Fulcher.
Gran released the handcuffs and Hayley rubbed her sore wrists. She pulled Gran away from the havoc on the road, looking for somewhere – anywhere – they might be safe from this outbreak of … of whatever it was.
Meanwhile, in the Map Room, LC and Yeoman Box stared, dumbfounded, at the ops table alarm lights. Every single one of them, the length and breadth of the kingdom, was flashing. As the Raven Banner’s magic travelled along the ley lines of Britain, Burgh Keepers were sending in frantic reports of sortilegic meters ringing off the scale. In the Keep, grim-faced Yeoman Warders rushed around, answering the phones and plotting the dark magic’s unstoppable advance.
“The Wandle ley has gone past Wimbledon now, sir!” shouted Brenda.
“Greenwich Burgh Keeper says his meter’s just exploded!” yelled another beefeater.
LC stared at the map in despair. Nowhere was safe from the magical infection. Transformed berserkers would soon be in every city, every county
, every village. A ready-made army of lunatics to do Lock’s bidding.
“Ragnarök,” muttered LC, darkly.
“I think I’ve got one of their albums,” said Brenda.
“It means the Viking apocalypse. Chaos. Fear. The end of the world as we know it. We MUST find His Majesty!”
“No word from the Defender!” shouted the beefeater manning the radio link.
The last they’d seen of Alfie he’d been at Wimbledon before the screens went down. The powerful magic sweeping the land must have been interfering with mobile communications, as only the old-fashioned landline telephones seemed to be working.
“What are your orders, Lord Chamberlain?” asked Yeoman Warder Gillam, not quite managing to control the tremble of fear in his voice. “What should we do?”
LC gazed around the Map Room. With Alfie missing, Brian on the run and Hayley also absent, panic was starting to creep in. Even Herne was behaving oddly, turning in circles, barking and whining.
“Keep calm and defend the realm!” LC barked, striding up and down. The beefeaters stopped what they were doing and watched him. “The Tower of London has stood impregnable for nearly a millennium. It has faced down every enemy ever sent against it. The Black Death Rat Men of 1348. The Dragon Storm of 1666. Even Hitler’s Abominable Snow-Nazis could not crack its walls. It shall not fall—”
The Keep shook as a powerful earth tremor struck. Plaster fell from the ceiling and a grand tapestry depicting a past Defender’s victory over the giant bats of Wookey Hole fluttered to the floor. A wide, red crack snaked under the main doors and through the Map Room, sending Yeoman Warders diving for cover and splitting the Tudor Rose on the floor in half. The ravens called in alarm and flew to the battlements. Next to LC, who was gripping the ops table, there was something wrong with Brenda. Her body spasmed as the banner magic woke the Viking blood sleeping in her veins, transforming her into a snarling berserker. In moments, her uniform hung in tatters, drool fell from her mouth like a river and her eyes were red and wild.
The enemy was inside the Keep.
Ellie swung the Venus Rosewater Dish – the large silver plate that was the trophy for the Wimbledon Women’s Champion – and smacked it hard into Kate Robertson’s face. It wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined presenting it to her hero, but then she hadn’t expected the tennis player to turn into a berserk Viking monster either. Seeing as her worse-than-useless brother had chosen to save himself, Ellie figured it was up to her to set a better example. So she was doing her best to guide panicking spectators away from the marauding berserkers and towards the exits. It had been bad enough knowing that there was a gang of zombie Vikings out there causing mayhem, but seeing normal everyday people all around her transform into these hideous, mad creatures was much more terrifying. What was going on?
A loud crash and renewed screaming drew Ellie’s attention to the far entrance, as Guthrum and several of his draugar warriors burst on to Centre Court. Lightning coursed across the blackening sky and torrential rain fell, turning the grass into a quagmire. The stench of rotting flesh and dead fish filled the air as the corpse Vikings stamped into the arena. Guthrum scanned the crowd, and his cruel, dead eyes locked on to his quarry.
“ELEANOR!” he thundered.
Guthrum pointed at her with a finger that was more bone than flesh, and his men pounded towards her, shoving bystanders out of the way. The Viking lord was following Lock’s instructions to the letter.
“Bring me Princess Eleanor,” Lock had told him. “She is not to be harmed, or you’ll have the Black Dragon to answer to.”
Ellie vaulted the net, skidding through the mud and rolling off the court as a hollow-eyed Viking lunged for her. Tangled in the net, the Viking roared with anger and ripped himself free as two more of Guthrum’s men closed in on her from either side. Ellie picked up a broken racquet handle and threw it at one of them, impaling him in the neck. But the beast plucked it out and tossed it aside as if it were nothing but a splinter. Ellie backed off and heaved the umpire’s chair over in front of her pursuers, but they crushed it underfoot and kept coming. Just as Ellie had resigned herself to being grabbed by the foul-smelling Viking dead, the sodden turf beneath their feet rose out of the ground of its own accord and carried the confused savages back the way they had come, clattering them into the scoreboard. Ellie looked up to the sky to see the Defender astride Wyvern. He landed in front of her, reaching out his hand.
“Get on!” he shouted.
Ellie wiped the rain from her face and looked around at the terrified faces of the spectators still cowering inside the arena. “What about everyone else?” she called back.
“The Vikings are here for you!” yelled the Defender.
As if to prove Alfie’s point, Guthrum himself began to stomp the length of the court towards Ellie. As he approached, his Viking followers stood still and started to sing their strange song. Their leader’s body shook and expanded at incredible speed, so that within two more strides he had become a giant. Ellie fell on to her back in shock, while the Defender drew his sword and spun Wyvern round to face Guthrum. The giant Viking chief roared, sending ropes of green drool flying out of his mouth, and heaved his axe down at the Defender. Ellie fully expected to see the superhero cut in half, but somehow his glowing sword withstood the blow. Guthrum bellowed with rage as he circled, attempting to reach the princess, but the Defender blocked him each time, hovering just out of range of his swinging blade. Seeming to tire of the stalemate, the giant stepped back and glanced around the court.
“Time to go!” shouted the Defender, holding out his hand for Ellie once more.
But before she could take it, Guthrum hurled his huge axe across the court into a large steel buttress that supported one side of the arena. The impact shook panels loose from the roof and they tumbled down like boulders in an avalanche. Alfie looked with horror at the dozens of scared people trapped in the stands below the beam – if the wall came down they would be crushed.
“What are you waiting for?” Ellie screamed at him. “HELP THEM!”
Alfie twitched Wyvern’s reins and she shot across the court towards the stands. The Defender reached the damaged buttress just as it was toppling over and used all his strength to prop it up. But not before he had whipped out his nunchuck sceptres and hurled them at the giant. He glanced back just in time to see one of Guthrum’s draugar leap into their path and take the strike intended for his master, the magical thread which joined the sceptres severing his head in an instant. Not that it stopped the disembodied draugar’s head from spitting curses at the Defender from its resting place on the front row of seats. Guthrum guffawed with laughter and scooped up Ellie with one mighty hand. She screamed and squirmed, but to no avail.
“NO!” yelled Alfie.
But below him spectators were still running clear of the stands. He couldn’t risk letting go of the wall yet. All Alfie could do was watch as the giant undead Viking clambered up and over the lip of the arena and carried his sister away.
“Ooh, that’s a nice hat,” said Hayley’s gran as she gazed into the shop window. “Do you think they’ve got my size?”
Hayley pulled her clear, just as a stone bollard whizzed past their heads and shattered the window. Oxford Street looked like a war zone. Even more so than usual. A bus lay on its side while its berserker former driver jumped up and down on top of it, chewing a snapped windscreen wiper. The berserker who had just lobbed the bollard through Topshop’s window had now turned her attention to a black cab and was heaving the bumper off, cackling with delight. What looked like a nurse’s uniform hung in rags off her now blue-tattooed, muscle-bound body. Hayley shuddered to think how many other people had woken up and gone to work that morning as normal, unaware that, hours later, they would become hulking, grunting maniacs. A shrieking teacher ran past them, pursued by a group of blonde, bug-eyed child-berserkers, who were spitting with rage and tearing off what was left of their school uniforms.
“Tsch, no manners, to
day’s youngsters,” said Gran.
Hayley pulled her into a doorway as half a motorbike skidded past on fire. “This is serious, Gran. We need to get off the street.”
“Why don’t we take the Tube then? Where are we going?”
Hayley realized there was only one place she knew which was likely still to be safe. If they could get there – which right now was a big “if”. “The Keep.”
“Where, love?”
“Sorry, the Tower of London. I have, um, friends there.”
“Simple,” said Gran, “Central Line east to Bank, then change on to the District line at Monument, one stop to Tower Hill. We’ll be there in a jiffy.”
“Can you walk that far? We don’t have your wheelchair.”
“Wheelchair? What wheelchair? Never used one of them in my life!”
And with that she hobbled off towards the Tube entrance, pausing only to take a free newspaper from the hands of a vendor who had just turned into a gibbering berserker. Hayley pulled her away before the crazed Viking had a chance to grab her. This was one day when her gran’s failing mind had its advantages, she figured.
The situation underground, however, was not much better than on the streets. Hayley and her gran squeezed their way on to the crowded eastbound platform just as a Tube train pulled in. But the moment the doors opened, terrified passengers poured out, pursued by yet more berserkers – berserker commuters, berserker tourists – every carriage seemed to have one. Hayley even caught a glimpse of a berserker policeman inside the train, ripping up seats and smashing handrails.
“What’s the matter, dear?” asked Gran. “Why aren’t we getting on?”
“Out of service,” replied Hayley. “We’ll have to find another way.”
“Oh, blow it, why don’t we just hike it through the service tunnels? We used to do it all the time at the end of our shifts.”
Decades before, when she first moved to London, Hayley’s gran had been a Tube driver. She had always boasted that there wasn’t a corner of the city she couldn’t find her way to using the subterranean network. She led Hayley to a small staircase which spiralled down to a door marked: DO NOT ENTER. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Hayley stopped – she had no doubt that once upon a time her gran knew the Underground like the back of her hand. But the way she was now, Hayley feared they might get lost down here in the dark for ever.
Dark Age Page 18