Max Gilbert

  Tony shook his head. "You're insane. ... What about the one directly outside the gates?"

  "That's where I need Ruth. If she stands a little to the front of Chris she can blast it with both barrels-if it begins to move."

  But-but Ruth has-"

  "But Ruth nothing," broke in Ruth. "I can fire one of these." She pulled the shotgun up across her breasts. "And you know as well as I do you don't have to aim. You just point and shoot."

  "Too risky. We can't be sure-"

  Chris spoke. "Tony ... Tony, listen to me. Time's running out. Those things don't even have to break in here, and you know it. They only have to wait and grab that power as it comes through. Like Mark says, it'll be just like catching a ball. They will be the winners-absolutely. We'll be the losers-absolutely. Okay, so this is a risk, a bloody enormous risk, we've got to take it." He paused, watching for the little Londoner's reaction. None. "Look ... Tony. I don't want to see my six-year-old son like Wainwright. That's what we'll become. The Saf Dar's foot soldiers; marched across country to the next village. To kill everyone we can lay our hands on. Then to the next town. We'll be like a virus, infecting the next person, then the next."

  Tony shrugged. "Okay. We do it." He called out to the waiting Hodgsons on the wall and the two youths by the gates. "In your positions, please."

  Ruth moved past Chris until she was almost level with the muzzle of the cannon he would fire.

  "Ruth. ..." he called. "Back here against me. You're too close."

  Reluctantly she stepped back to his side and gave a tiny smile. "Get ready to duck, love."

  Mark revved the motor, slipped the bike into first gear; it moved forward an inch, then he held it back, waiting, his eyes bulging as he nailed his attention to the gates ahead.

  "Now, Tony! Now!"

  Tony nodded. "Chris ... Light the torches."

  Chris picked up the bamboo sticks and held them over the yellow flames. Instantly the fuel-soaked rags caught with an ooomph sound.

  He passed one to Tony, then held the other out in front of him away from Ruth and the cannon. It burned with a brilliant blue flame, looking like a fiery chrysanthemum head, a perfect globe of blue that spat red sparks of flame with a faint crackling sound.

  Tony called to the Hodgson boys. "Open the gates. ... Now!"

  They snapped back the final bolts, then yanked back the gates. They pulled them back as far as they could, using the massive timbers to shield themselves from any stray shrapnel from the cannon blasts.

  Time ran slow like a freezing stream and almost stopped. Chris saw everything. With unnatural clarity.

  Beyond the gate, the nearest figure stood framed by the gateway. The red skin gleamed; the power that leaked through from that other place had pumped up the arms, legs, and neck muscles until they bulged manically, forcing the veins outward like coils of string beneath plastic shrinkwrap.

  Blazing like white balls of glass from the expressionless face were the eyes, staring with a bulging intensity at something above Chris's head.

  Thirty yards beyond that man-shaped chunk of cancer were six more of them, staring at the sea-fort. Beyond that, only causeway. Sand. Dunes.

  "Chris! Now!"

  He slapped the burning head of the torch down onto the fuse threaded into the cannon's breach.

  Hell. ...

  Nothing happened.

  He looked down at the feeble trail of smoke from the fuse. He could not believe it. Christ. ...

  The thing wasn't going to fire.

  Gateman, the idiot, had ballsed it up.

  He had killed everyone in the sea-fort.

  Movement swirled at his side. Ruth stepped level with the cannon's muzzle, bringing up the barrels of her shotgun.

  No, Ruth! Back.

  You're too ...

  Jesus Christ ...

  He jerked his head around to look at the figure in the gateway. Abruptly, it tilted its red, hairless head down in a single, fluid movement. Then those eyes were nailed to him.

  He felt his body jerk back as if hit by an electric shock. The hate radiating from its eyes punched the breath from his body. They burned with a ferocious power that seared his soul.

  Then came a sense of darkness. It rushed into him, filling him, like someone's home being inundated by flood waters boiling with mud and shit from the sewers, sweeping over clean carpets, swirling away armchairs and sofa and tables and cushions. Its force hosed out Chris's memories and polluted them. He glimpsed fragments as they spun past, caught by the inrush of darkness:

  On the beach with David. He runs in his Superman costume, laughs happily. David runs kicking up gouts of sand.

  But it becomes blackened, dirty, this lovely memory:

  David. ...

  Kill the little bastard. Now. Thin little neck. Easily broken. My son's a piece of shit. No loss to anyone. Kill the whining little bastard now.

  The figure in the gateway took a single step forward. Already it seemed to fill the courtyard, like a train plunging into a tunnel.

  Then it--

  CRACK!

  The explosion was so loud he thought a chunk of hot iron had gone whirling through his skull.

  The cannon had fired.

  His bastard two-hundred-year-old cannon had actually fired! Sending a bucketful of timber bolts cracking through the gateway at three hundred miles an hour.

  He blinked.

  The figure had gone.

  Just gone.

  Yet he retained a subliminal image of a gush of smoke, a spray of yellow flame.

  Then the figure, still upright, simply shrank. The almighty blow of metal hammered the thing with explosive force backward along the causeway.

  Then Tony's cannon fired, a sharper crack.

  The Saf Dar, twenty yards away on the causeway, jerked backward like dry leaves before a gust of wind, spinning and turning over and over across the causeway, some of them tumbling off onto the sand. Liquid sprayed up into the air as if their bodies had become aerosols. It hung there, briefly darkening the white mist to crimson before falling like spring rain to the earth.

  A rapid movement to Chris's left.

  Mark Faust.

  Twisting the hand throttle, he bulleted across the courtyard and through the gates.

  A second later he scorched through the mess of body fluid on the stones, avoiding the twisted men that littered the causeway.

  Chris saw movement on the sands themselves.

  The one who had been beyond the angle of cannon fire moved after the motorbike like a big cat, huge legs blurring with speed, the red body thrusting forward, reaching out to grab at Mark.

  Chris heard nothing but saw sand spurt at its feet.

  The Hodgsons were firing at the thing.

  One of its legs suddenly rashed with black spots; it stumbled forward, arm outstretched like a sportsman lunging after a ball; its hands brushed the spinning back tyre.

  But it fell short, sliding face down across the stone slabs of the causeway.

  Mark was clear. Already a shrinking dot, accelerating away into the mist in the direction of the dunes.

  The red monster jerked itself to its feet.

  Then it loped along the causeway. This time toward the sea-fort, long arms pumping backwards and forward.

  Chris moved forward. At his side Ruth was shouting. He could hear nothing. The thunder of cannon had deafened him.

  The Hodgson boys struggled to swing the heavy gates shut. On one side Tony helped. Chris threw himself against the timbers of the other, winding himself. He pushed hard and it swung shut.

  He threw the first of the huge bolts as the thing cracked into the other side. Although his deafened ears heard nothing, he felt the solid concussion shiver the timbers.

  Quickly he shot the bolts across, expecting to feel the fury of the monster on the other side trying to batter its way in.

  It never came.

  For now, they were safe.

  Ears buzzing, he followed the others up the stone steps
to the top of the wall to see if Mark had made it.

  But Mark had disappeared into the mist.

  If Chris had been able to hear, he might have picked up the whine of the high-revving bike powering away along the coast road behind the dunes. He heard only a buzzing with a constant ghost echo of the cannon explosions.

  He glanced back into the courtyard. Smoke filled it, almost liquid-looking; lying on the stone floor, spluttering torches still burned, casting a flickering violet light that flashed against the suspended sheets of gunsmoke and the metallic surfaces of the car and the caravan, like images from a silent movie.

  There was Ruth, moving across the courtyard in the direction of the sea-fort building-she would be going to check on David-her movements jerky in the flickering light.

  Tony's cannon had snapped free from its cradle with the force of the explosion and was pointing vertically upwards, a piece of metal the size of Chris's fist torn from the end.

  The Hodgsons leaned forward over the top of the wall to stare down at what lay on the causeway.

  From the sound and the fury and the pandemonium of five minutes before, the scene on the causeway below was now one of stillness.

  As if some sick artist had been using finely minced raw beef as modelling clay, six man-shaped figures lay sprawled across the causeway in a pool of what looked like thick red oil. Not one moved. Most lay on their backs where they had been thrown by the hammer blow of the cannon blast. The one that had been standing in the gateway had caught the worst of it and had been batted back almost twenty yards. It was little more than a wet skeleton.

  Even though the couple of hundred timber bolts flying outward at three hundred miles an hour had done an effective flesh-shredding job, it wouldn't last long. Already the force that had driven these things from the wreck of the Mary-Anne to lay siege to the sea-fort would be repairing the mutilated bodies. The growth of cancer flesh would start to fill in the holes made by the iron bolts; arteries would worm through the bloody mess to reconnect to whatever heart pumped those fluids through their bodies; new skin would slide over torn muscles; new eyes would bud in their sockets.

  Even as they watched, the one on the causeway heaved its ripped body onto the sands; then, on all fours, moving like a seal ruptured by a ship's propeller, it began to drag itself down to the sea. In a few hours it would be back. Stronger than before.

  Like the one that now sat ten yards from the gate. After its charge at the gates it had simply knelt down on the causeway. It stared at the sea-fort like some sinister but wise Red Indian warrior, its heavy-lidded eyes blinking with a slowness that was not human.

  These things were in no hurry. Down there on the causeway the creature broadcast through its body language alone: We will win

  We have only to wait. ...

  Chapter Forty-five

  "Careful, Mark, old son, careful."

  He spoke the words aloud as he eased the throttle down.

  "No rush now. Slow down. ... Take it easy, old son."

  The back tire slid as he turned from the causeway onto the coast road.

  Don't spoil everything now by falling off the blasted bike. Easy does it.

  He throttled down further. The speedo needle slid back to forty-five.

  He breathed deeply, refreshing himself with the cool misty air blowing across his face. It left the taste of sea salt on his lips. And, God, the air smelled sweet here away from the sea-fort. The sudden sense of freedom was immense.

  He shook his head to try to dislodge the aching pressure from the cannon blast on his ears. What he had seen would take longer to fade. The strawberry mash of twisted bodies he had driven through-and over. Bits of the red grue still clung to the front tyre.

  The manic hammering of his heart began to slow; he felt cooler, in control. His eyes scanned ahead as far as the mist would allow.

  No Saf Dar. Maybe they were haunting somewhere else with their red statue faces. The dunes looked deserted. Ahead, as far as he could see in this damn mist, the road was empty. Same as the flat expanse of sea marsh to his right.

  Mark rode, keeping the bike at around forty-five, actually enjoying the feel of it as it ticked confidently across the tarmac. At this rate he would be in Munby in twenty-five minutes.

  The time was 8:29.

  David stopped, his stomach hurting with the shock.

  The room was full of strangers.

  He stared for a moment until his vision blurred, the goldfish bowl clamped in his fists.

  How did strangers get inside the sea-fort? Tall. Strange color. Stood up straight. Not moving.

  Shout for his dad?

  No ...

  Suddenly he gave a little chuckle.

  No.

  "Bottles. ... Bottles full of gas." He said the words aloud to dispel the scary feeling.

  In this room it wasn't easy to see that well. The window was small and really, really dirty. And there was no electricity. It had gone somewhere. He wasn't sure where, but he hoped it would come back soon.

  He crossed the room, walking by the six big gas bottles that stood there on end. They looked like ghost soldiers all in a line, with blue uniforms, standing stiff and straight.

  He placed the goldfish bowl on the windowsill. It was covered with fluffy bits of old cobweb and an ashtray with dusty cigarette ends piled up in it. Not that anyone would be allowed to smoke in here now with the gas bottles.

  "Flammable," his dad had said. "We have to keep these away from fire, kidda. They can go up like bombs if we're not careful."

  He positioned the goldfish bowl, then peered in through the plastic.

  "Take fish thing away ... Nathty." That's what that big silly girl had kept saying. "Nathty fish thing. Ah- ah don't like it. Don't like it, not one little bit." The girl was as big as a grown-up; but she had a little white face and a little kid's voice. "That fish thing. ... take it away, David... or... or I won't marry you." Then she had made that silly grin.

  He knew only vaguely about the word "marry." That's when two people lived together.

  Me and Rosie Tarn worth, he thought with disgust. No way.

  Even so. He'd carried the goldfish out of the caravan. Across the courtyard with the big guns near the gates, smelling of smoke (something had happened but the grown-ups were keeping secrets; so could he).

  He'd moved the goldfish partly because he was fed up with Rosie moaning all the time, and partly because he no longer liked the look of it.

  He pressed his fingers lightly against the plastic bowlful of water. It felt warm. Like a cupful of warm milk.

  He looked more closely but he couldn't see much. The room was half full of light and half full of darkness.

  "Gloomy," he mouthed as he stared, the blue-soldier gas bottles standing to attention behind him. It was very quiet. No one about.