The Forever Man - Book 1: Pulse

Axel had gotten the villagers to build fires. Many fires. They had also put together a couple of hundred torches. The torches were as rudimentary as one could imagine. A three-foot length of wood, the end wrapped in bandages torn from sheets until it looked like a giant Q-tip. These had been soaked in cooking oil and then distributed amongst the people.

  The officers had also helped make up around one hundred Molotov cocktails. There wasn’t enough time to get very fancy about them so they were simply a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel in a glass bottle with a rag stuffed into the neck. Axel figured that these would be good both as defense and as illumination.

  Axel had also gathered all of the villagers together and talked to them. He had advised that the women and children were retired to the village church with five armed men and when, or if, the day was lost, they were to attempt to make a run for it.

  Patrick walked up to Axel who was standing on the wall, looking out across the fields. He carried with him an implausibly expensive bottle of red wine from Axel’s father’s cellar, and two cut crystal glasses. In his shirt pocket he had stuffed a few cigars.

  He poured wine into the glasses and held one out to his friend. Axel took it.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Patrick toasted back. ‘Cheers. Health, wealth and all that crap.’ He held the glass up to the setting sun. The light caught the crystal and spread a rainbow over his unshaven face that matched the ever-present multicolor coruscation in the sky. A Kandinsky painting. Or perhaps an early Mondrian. ‘I always though that I’d get mine in Afghanistan,’ Patrick continued. ‘Or maybe some toilet in Africa. Definitely did not expect rural, bloody England. What about you?’

  Axel shrugged. ‘Thought that I’d survive. Maybe make Major then retire, take over the family business. Get married, have a bunch of rug-rats. Get gout, have a stroke, premature baldness. Normal. Just normal.’

  Patrick laughed. ‘Christ, kill me now. Really? Is that how you saw your future?’

  Axel nodded. ‘Ordinary, you know. No EMP strikes or solar flares. No fighting hoards of psychotic criminals in a village in the middle of an English county. Definitely no end-of-the-world scenarios. Tea with the vicar, village cricket, Pimms and cucumber bloody sandwiches. Where’s Dom?’

  Patrick grinned. ‘With that fat blonde bird from the post office.’

  ‘Who, Sweaty-Betty?’

  ‘That’s the one. He figured that he deserved a last shag and she was the only one whom he reckoned was a definite.’

  ‘Well,’ said Axel. ‘He’s correct there.’

  Patrick pulled out two cigars and bit the ends off them. Flicked his Zippo and got one going, handed it to Axel and then worked on his own.

  The two of them stood in compatible silence for a while as the sun sank slowly behind the trees.

  ‘I reckon they’ll come around ten o’clock,’ said Axel. ‘Maybe later. But not earlier. And they’ll come slowly, clear a path, chuck ladders against the walls. Rely on the dark to shield them.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Asked Patrick.

  ‘We wait. Keep our eyes skinned. Think we see something, anything, we throw a Molotov at the movement and see what happens.’

  After a few more minutes Axel left Patrick at the wall and went for a walk around the village. He stopped wherever he saw people and chatted. Lifting spirits, cracking jokes, giving advice. The vicar was holding a service in the village square. A short and simple one.

  ‘When you go out to war against your enemies,’ said the vicar. ‘And you see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you. And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people and shall say to them, Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies.’

  ‘Hallelujah, father,’ whispered Axel.

  Someone touched Axel on the shoulder and he spun around quickly. His nerves on edge.

  ‘Whoa, boy.’

  It was Dom, rifle in hand and ridiculous broadsword strapped across his back.

  ‘Surveying the troops?’ Asked Dom.

  ‘Yah,’ agreed Axel. ‘Poor bastards. They don’t deserve this.’

  ‘And we do?’

  ‘It’s different. Butcher, baker and candlestick maker. Not soldier.’

  ‘What can I say?’ Asked Dom. ‘Sometimes life gives you lemons and there’s bugger all that you can do about it. Sometimes being a soldier simply sucks the big one. Remember what Colonel Biggums used to say?’

  Both of the young men spoke together; ‘Please don’t tell my mum that I’m a soldier, she thinks that I play the piano in a whorehouse.’

  Axel laughed. Genuine happy laughter.

  ‘We’d better take up our positions. Won’t be long now.’ He turned to face the vicar and shouted. ‘Father. Positions please.’

  All around became a roil of movement. People running to the walls, lighting torches, saying last second prayers.

  And Axel was correct. They didn’t have to wait long. Although the moon was less than half full it was a cloudless night and, with the extra aurora, one could pick out movement at about thirty yards. Axel lit up a Molotov and heaved it at the area that he suspected. The flaming bottle arced through the air and exploded on the ground, flaring up in a burst of yellow flame. The firelight clearly picked out a group of men crawling along the ground, dragging a ladder behind them. The villagers on Axel’s wall opened up with their shotguns, spraying the area with buckshot. Then the flame went out and the night seemed even darker than before.

  Axel heard the crump of exploding bottles coming from the other walls as similar scenarios unfolded.

  It was the beginning of a long night.

  The next two hours carried on in the same way. The thump of Molotovs exploding accompanied by short smatterings of small arms fire.

  And then the intensity of firing increased at Patrick’s wall. Axel glanced over to see Molotovs sailing in from the other side of the wall. Six, seven, eight of them. One struck a villager in the chest and he went up like a Guy. A stuffed straw man except for the screaming and rolling about. Other villagers threw buckets of water on him and the fire sizzled to a steaming halt but the screaming continued.

  He saw a ladder thump against the top of the wooden fence. Patrick ran along the walkway and kicked the ladder off, leaning over and firing his shotgun into the faces of the people below. People fired back and Axel saw Patrick take a hit, his hair flicking up as buckshot pellets struck him. But although blood poured down from his scalp he appeared to be okay with the injury.

  And then there were people at Axel’s wall. Running in hard, twenty or thirty of them appearing out of the dark. Their clothes and faces blackened with mud. Carrying ladders. Maybe seven or eight sets of them. Axel aimed his Webley and started to fire. The old handgun booming like a cannon. Next to him shotguns cracked and Molotovs fluttered through the air, bursting in billows of flames.

  The ladders thudded up against the fence. Axel reloaded and walked to the top of the first ladder, kicking it sideways so that it slid off the wall, taking another one with it. People came boiling over the top of the next ladder and Axel shot them as they came, the Webley bucking in his hand like a live animal. Two other male villagers were using their makeshift spears, jabbing at the faces of the criminals as they climbed the ladders. There was a volley of fire from the bottom of the fence and both of the spear-wielding villagers went down in a welter of blood. Axel reloaded again, fired, reloaded. The old pistol red-hot. Every time he touched it, his skin would blister and slough off. After the seventh reload, the rounds started to cook off in the barrel. The captain dropped the revolver to the ground, its usefulness over.

  He swung the pump action shotgun off its sling over his shoulder and started to fire at the attackers. Rapidly, pumping the action as
fast as he could.

  And then the fence was clear. They had beaten the attackers back.

  Axel turned to survey Patrick’s wall only to be greeted by a scene of total disaster. Not only had the enemy breached the defenses, they had actually smashed down a portion of the fence and were pouring in.

  But even worse than that, the vicar’s fence had also gone and Axel could see that the church was surrounded, already burning strongly as a group of the prisoners threw Molotov after Molotov at it. The roaring of the flames almost drowning out the screams of the women and children trapped inside.

  Axel grabbed a spear and reloaded the shotgun as he ran to assist, anger and hatred swamping his other emotions in a blind fury. He gestured at five other villagers. ‘With me,’ he shouted. ‘The rest of you stay on this wall.’

  As soon as he had reloaded he started firing from the hip, taking out two men by the time he got to the mêlée. And then it was hand-to-hand. He slashed at man’s throat and the knife on the broomstick cut deep. Blood sprayed in an arc and he went down. Axel spun and smashed the butt of his makeshift spear into another attacker’s temple, then he raised it high and stabbed down into his clavicle, plunging the blade deep, turning and withdrawing.

  More of the Belmarsh boys were pouring in through the gap, forcing the villagers back, step by bloody step.

  Patrick had lost his rifle and now also wielded a spear, fighting like a demon. A combination of MMA and animal fury. He glanced across at Axel and laughed. The bastard was enjoying himself. Doing what he had been trained to do. He pivoted and struck again, slashing and parrying. And then a massive thug came at him, wielding his empty shotgun like a baseball bat. Patrick raised his spear to block the blow but it was to no avail, the weapon merely shattered the cheap wooden handle and smashed into Patrick’s temple. He went down like a stone and another three prisoners piled in. Kicking and stabbing him on the ground.

  Axel shouted his friend’s name and fought desperately to get to him but it was too late, Patrick’s body lay broken on the ground, limbs twisted and bleeding, his life draining out of him into the English sod.

  Then Axel heard a scream, a cross between a war cry and a shriek of agony as Dom came sprinting around the corner, brandishing his ridiculously huge broadsword. He smashed into the group that had just taken Patrick’s life swinging the sword and screaming. The four attackers went down in a welter of blood and body parts. This didn’t even slow the young man down as he waded forward, hacking and slashing. All around him torches had fallen to the floor and fires were spreading. The night aglow as the flames jumped from building to building. Someone ran up behind Dom and, before Axel could shout a warning, placed his shotgun against the back of his head and pulled the trigger. The young captain went down in a cloud of blood and brains.

  Axel glanced around him. There were over a hundred Belmarsh boys in the perimeter now and, however hard he looked, there seemed to be no villagers left standing.

  And, unhurriedly, a ring formed around him. He held his makeshift spear at port turning slowly, trying to keep as many people in his line of vision as possible. Eventually a large man stepped into the circle. He stared at Axel for a while and then smiled and raised his shotgun to his shoulder. ‘You lost,’ he said.

  Axel lunged forward with his spear but it was too late.

  The man pulled the trigger and the compacted shotgun pellets hit Axel in the side of his head, tearing out his eye and ripping at his flesh and skull.

  The captain fell to his knees and toppled over.

  The battle for the village of Judge’s Cross was over.

  Chapter 26