by Bali Rai
‘Did she say anything?’ he asked Stone. ‘Anything at all – good or bad?’
Stone nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘She told me to give you a present.’
‘A pres—’
The rest of the sentence remained caught in Aron’s throat as a bullet punched through his forehead and out the other side, taking bone, flesh and blood with it. The boy fell slowly to his left, his head hitting the table before he crumpled to the floor. Stone pushed him aside with a boot, sat down and opened a can. Yawning, he picked a lone lump of brain matter from the plate and flicked it away before shovelling the food into his mouth . . .
* * *
Mias and Saarl stood and considered the metal hatch set into the end of the tunnel, where it sloped downward at a thirty-degree angle.
‘It is barricaded from the inside, brother,’ said Saarl.
Mias kicked at the access but it refused to budge. He tried again with the same outcome. ‘Are you certain the human went through here?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Saarl insisted. ‘I can still smell his disgusting odour in the air.’
‘How long to punch through, then?’
‘Ten minutes, not much more,’ said Saarl.
‘Then make a start,’ Mias ordered.
Saarl backed away from the door. He dropped on all fours, his massive haunches stretching the skin beneath his cream-coloured fur. Mias stepped aside as Saarl growled and ran at the obstruction, slamming against it with gigantic force. The metal buckled slightly but stayed put in its frame. The wolf-like demon grunted, retreated to his start position and repeated his attack. The door held firm.
Unperturbed, Saarl came again and again, each impact bringing him a little closer to his goal as his one-ton mass hammered the hatch. Eventually, it pulled away from the surround so that Mias could see light peeping through the edges. Saarl gave himself over five metres for the final thrust, mustering every reserve of power in his body. On contact, the hatch flew open, crashing against the floor of a corridor with a resonant clang, and they heard a human female screaming in fright.
Mias poked his head through the gap and smelled humans, at least twenty of them, cowering in fear and dripping in their own stench like the filthy beasts they were.
He smiled sardonically and dropped down into the Haven . . .
49
LIAM’S DECAPITATED AND savaged body.
It was the first thing Jonah and Mace saw as they dropped into the tunnels northwest of the Haven, and dawn gave way to morning.
‘Demon spore,’ said Jonah impassively. ‘Everywhere.’
Mace stood perfectly still, eyes wide, mouth open, considering the bloody mess in front of them. Tiny electrical impulses made his right eyelid twitch. ‘If they’ve been here . . .’ he began to say.
‘I know,’ Jonah replied.
They moved on cautiously, skirting the tunnel network and looking out for demons. They found none.
‘How?’ Mace asked a couple of times, feeling the dread fluttering around in his belly. ‘How could they know?’
Jonah ignored him, his concentration total. The demons’ scent lingered everywhere, and lots of it. Mixed in were other odours: canine, lupine, simian and . . .
The inner hatch was gone, the metal frame buckled. Jonah stopped at the threshold, sniffing the dank, sour air. No hint of fresh demon anywhere. Plenty of dead human, however, everywhere. He peered into the corridor, the walls seeming even drabber than usual. A single lamp, barely alive, cast long shadows that faded into darkness, towards the inner chamber. With extreme care, Jonah dropped into the Haven, rolled to his feet and drew a blade. Despite what his senses were telling him, he chose to remain guarded. He felt the heavy thump of Mace behind him.
‘Slowly,’ warned Jonah.
Mace took out both machetes. ‘What’s the point,’ he asked, his face set in a grimace, plum-sized knuckles bulging round his tightly gripped weapons.
‘Are you sure you want to look?’ Jonah asked him. ‘It’s going to be bad.’
Mace shrugged his massive shoulders before pointing at the blood trailing away from them into the gloom. ‘I can see that,’ he replied.
Jonah could see it too and he felt his insides twist. He wondered if he’d find Martha inside, hoped that he wouldn’t. ‘Slowly,’ he repeated, ‘and follow me.’
Mace shook his head. ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘This time you follow me.’ He strode off into the darkness, careful to avoid the blood. Round the first corner they found the remains of a woman. Her legs had been torn off, her tongue eaten. She was on her back, eyes open and frozen in terror. A rat gnawed on the exposed bone of her left thumb. Mace kicked the rodent into the wall, snapping its backbone. He raised his heavy boot and stamped down hard. At the next turning, through a door into one of the rooms, Jonah saw another woman – one he recognized.
‘Diane,’ Mace told him before he asked. ‘The one who shouted at Aron when he attacked Prior.’
She was propped up in one of the moth-eaten armchairs, her head lolling to the left. Her chest had been torn open and her intestines sat in her lap, oozing. Mace retched at the stench and backed away, averting his gaze.
‘There,’ said Jonah, pointing to a small pair of legs sticking out from underneath a makeshift bed. He walked in and crouched, peering at a young boy, his neck broken and the back of his skull shattered. Both arms lay at unnatural angles. Jonah looked up at the wall and saw purple smudges. He matched them to the head wound. ‘They broke his body against the wall,’ he said, feeling a wave of human emotions crash over him. ‘Threw him down when they’d done. He was trying to get away.’
Mace didn’t reply.
By the time they reached the doorway to the central chamber, they’d discovered ten more corpses in the rooms and corridors, but not a sign of any survivors. Mace wondered who’d been in charge and whether they’d followed the contingency plans. One of the elders was always on duty, be it himself, May, Prior or Faith. Only they knew about the third, secret exit. That the outer hatch hadn’t been blown suggested a surprise attack and the questions kept returning. The Haven had never been compromised, not ever. How then had the demons discovered it? Where were the others? Had anyone escaped the carnage?
‘Don’t go in there,’ Mace heard Jonah say from the entrance to the central chamber. His face had grown ashen.
‘More of the same?’ Mace asked.
‘No,’ Jonah whispered. ‘Worse.’
Mace pushed him aside, ignoring the warning and immediately wishing he hadn’t. The smell alone told of a massacre, never mind the floor swimming in blood and the human heart staked to the wall with a dagger. Something dripped onto his head, ran down his face. He touched his right cheek and saw that his fingers were red. He looked up at the ceiling. Big mistake.
A rope had been thrown over an old suspended water pipe. Marko hung from it, upside down, his throat slashed and eyes gouged away. Chunks of flesh had been torn from his torso, wounds that were inflicted by razor-sharp teeth. Mace looked away, towards the rear of the chamber. There, a raised platform was littered with bodies, young and old. He walked towards them, feeling the fury rising in his chest, hammering away at his heart. How many would they find slaughtered like animals in an abattoir?
Jonah touched Mace on the shoulder and told him to stop. ‘There’s no sign of life in here,’ he said, trying to fight off the human emotions he normally hid so well. ‘No hearts still beating.’
Mace shook his head. ‘My heart’s still beating,’ he pointed out. ‘I need to see them, all of them. Need to know who else was here when those things attacked.’
‘They could come back,’ Jonah warned. ‘At any time.’
Mace nodded at the corpses on the platform. ‘What are they gonna come back for?’ he asked.
To their right, where they set up the trestle tables when they fed people, Jonah saw the remains of a couple, their bodies entwined. He approached them and felt something akin to sadness. Raj, the tall, brown-skinned man
Jonah had seen at the hotel, lay twisted and broken, his arms round a pale-skinned and freckled woman whose head lay by the side of her torso. Jonah wondered how they had ended up in those positions. Whether Raj had clung onto the woman, trying to protect her. He called over to Mace.
‘Emily,’ Mace said when he saw them. ‘I always thought they made an odd couple. She’s over a foot shorter than he is. She was . . .’
A trail of gore led away from Raj’s corpse, and after a moment Jonah understood. Raj, attacked elsewhere, had dragged his shattered body to Emily in a desperate attempt to help her. He saw that Raj’s eyes were still open and he reached down and closed them. Raj’s skin had taken on a green hue.
Mace knelt at Jonah’s side. ‘I feel sick,’ he admitted.
‘These people were your friends,’ said Jonah. ‘You’re bound to feel something.’
‘What about you?’ Mace asked him. ‘Do you feel anything?’
Jonah nodded but said nothing. He thought, instead, about how many of Fire City’s residents had died since his arrival, and felt the searing finger of guilt work its way into his conscience. Maybe he should have stayed hidden and taken on Valefor alone? He knew that his doubts made no sense, but they prodded at him all the same. It no longer mattered. For this latest act of savagery, and for the many that had preceded it, the demon lord would pay.
With his soul.
‘We’ll avenge this,’ he told Mace.
‘Isn’t that why you came?’ Mace replied, almost aggressively. ‘Vengeance?’
Jonah looked away, unable to respond. An image sprang into his mind, something he’d buried deep in his memory. The look of terror on his father’s face, the expression of resignation on his mother’s as Jonah and his siblings were sent away, too young to fully understand. The deep and lasting sense he’d had that he was losing a part of himself . . .
‘Jonah?’
‘What if my presence caused all this?’
Mace shrugged. ‘Maybe it did,’ he replied, much calmer now. ‘But it was going to happen sooner or later. You were just the catalyst.’
‘But these people, your people,’ said Jonah as a surge of gloom followed the guilt, ‘they’d be alive if I hadn’t—’
‘Alive?’ asked Mace. ‘None of us were ever really living. We were all moving targets, waiting for that day to come. This world is shit, Jonah. We’re all living in Hell. For me death is one of the few blessings—’
‘But your people.’
Mace eyed the young man and shook his head. ‘Not just my people, son,’ he said. ‘These poor souls accepted you without question. Their lives changed the minute you arrived and they are dead because of the way things have worked out. The least you can do is make them your people too, Jonah. Your people . . .’
‘I came here for me,’ Jonah replied, his voice changing, taking on a guttural tone. He looked at Mace, who flinched when he saw again the ring of fire around the boy’s irises, the way his features seemed to have sharpened, the bone structure momentarily elongated. ‘But I’m going to destroy Valefor and his legions for you – for all of you!’
They found May near the second exit. She had been stripped of her clothing and staked to the floor by her hands and feet. Something had torn her open, from her neck down to her nether regions. The skin had been peeled back like butterfly wings, and her insides devoured. All that remained intact was her face, those grey eyes staring back at them. Her death mask was almost calm, even serene. Her left fist was locked in rigor mortis, clenched round a tuft of black fur.
Mace sat down at her side, stroked her jet-black hair. The waves of emotion that rose from his stomach made his throat convulse. He swallowed and swallowed but it did no good. Eventually he let it all out, howling like a wounded animal.
Jonah, ashamed by the relief he felt at not finding Martha dead too, closed his eyes. He reached out in his mind, through the invisible cloak thrown around Fire City. Somewhere Valefor and his minions sat, sated and satisfied. No doubt they were feeling victorious, having discovered and destroyed the Haven and killed so many rebels. Time to dampen their mood a little, he decided. Time to do something for someone other than himself. He sent them a message.
I’m coming . . .
50
JONAH AND MACE entered the hotel a couple of hours later, secreting themselves from the army patrols. They found Martha, Prior and Faith sitting alone, their faces etched with grief. Martha sprang from her seat at the sight of them, throwing her arms round Mace and bawling. The giant held her gently, tearfully, relieved that she was alive. He looked over at Faith, whose eyes lit up for a moment.
‘The Haven,’ she began to say, only Jonah stopped her.
‘We’ve just been there,’ he explained, unable to make eye contact.
‘Are they OK?’ asked Prior, with hope rather than conviction.
‘No one,’ Jonah told him, shaking his head.
‘May?’ gasped Martha, her face flushed. ‘Not Aunt May . . .’
‘Everyone,’ Mace added, holding the girl closer and letting her take out her rage on his chest, her fists beating at it.
‘No! No, no, no!’ she wailed. ‘It can’t be true.’
Jonah reached out and touched her on the shoulder. Martha turned to him, eyes and nose streaming, and looked into his face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jonah whispered. ‘This is my fault, all of this.’
Martha let go of Mace and wiped her tears away on her sleeve. Then she shook her head. ‘You didn’t kill them,’ she pointed out.
‘If I had never come here, never started this mess . . .’
‘It was always a mess, Jonah,’ she replied, taking hold of his face. ‘You’re not to blame.’
Jonah felt the urge to hold her close, and tried to fight it. He found himself gazing at Mace, who gave him a slight nod of the head. Slowly, uncertainly, he put his arms round Martha, half expecting her to run from him. When she did the exact opposite and drew into his body, he felt relieved and something more. Something he didn’t understand but liked and welcomed all the same.
‘Oh, Jonah!’ Martha wailed, the sobs returning as she buried her face in his shoulder.
The others sat silently for a while, the only sound other than Martha’s grief coming from Faith as she made coffee. No one had anything to say, so consumed were they by grief and horror. Each of them longed to let their feelings out, just as Martha was doing, but none of them did. When the time came, and she had cried herself dry, it was Martha who broke the silence.
‘Where’s Tyrell?’ she asked, letting go of Jonah.
She thought they’d say he was still at the Haven, maybe salvaging what he could or seeing to the dead.
‘He was taken,’ Jonah said softly. ‘Out in the wastelands.’
‘Taken where?’ asked Martha, no longer able to cry.
‘South,’ replied Jonah. ‘We don’t know exactly.’
‘Oscar?’
‘We didn’t find him,’ said Mace. ‘There were a few bodies we didn’t recognize. They were too badly mutilated. But no one survived, Martha. No one.’
Jonah proceeded to tell them about their trip, slowly and deliberately. Mace sat stony-faced; he felt unable to say anything that might help. Not that anything could. Everything they’d built, as tenuous as it had been, was gone – destroyed in one night. Proof, if it was required, of how fragile their existence had been. Only when Jonah had finished did Mace speak up.
‘Who told them?’
It was a simple, obvious question, and both Prior and Faith, despite their seniority, looked to Martha.
‘It was Aron,’ she revealed, almost spitting out his name. ‘Stone told us.’
‘Stone?’ Mace asked in amazement. ‘The mercenary who works for the Mayor?’
Prior tried to lighten the mood with a chuckle. ‘Worked for the Mayor,’ he replied.
When Mace gave them a confused look, Faith took up the story. ‘Stone seems to have switched sides,’ she explained. ‘And the Mayor is no more. Martha kil
led him.’
Jonah glanced at Martha, his eyes searching her face. She nodded a reply to him before explaining everything that had happened.
‘You trust this Stone?’ he asked when she’d finished.
‘I want to say no,’ she admitted. ‘But he did warn me about the Mayor.’
‘Not to mention telling us about Aron,’ Prior reminded her.
‘That too.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Jonah.
‘He got rid of the bodies,’ Martha replied. ‘Said he’d be back.’
‘We’ll wait until he gets here,’ declared Mace.
‘And then what?’ asked Faith.
‘Then we leave,’ he added. ‘But not before we send those bastards back to Hell.’
Stone turned up in the evening, and Mace took him to one side immediately.
‘Talk,’ he said. ‘Talk and convince or, so help me, I’ll cut off your head.’
Stone looked at the machete in the big man’s right hand and realized that he wasn’t boasting.
‘Would I be here if I was your enemy?’ he asked, repeating what he’d told Martha and the others earlier. ‘Would I have helped your friends, or warned them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mace told him. ‘Just seems odd to me – this moral rebirth you’ve undergone.’
Stone smirked. ‘Moral?’ he replied. ‘I don’t do moral.’
Mace, taken aback by the soldier’s candid reply, raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s my job,’ Stone added. ‘I’m doing my job.’
‘I thought your job was working for the Mayor,’ said Mace.
‘There are forces bigger than that old pervert,’ Stone replied.
‘I don’t understand.’
Stone lit up a cigarette, and considered the best way to respond. ‘The work I do isn’t what you think it is,’ he explained. ‘On the surface I am what you think I am. A mercenary, working for the government, taking the devil’s coin. But beyond, there are layers that stay hidden. Things that you don’t understand.’