On Deadly Ground

  By the time I was back on my feet Gary Topp had slammed shut the cabin door. I heard footsteps receding.

  I glanced out of the porthole. The mass of refugees were perhaps three hundred metres away, steadily trudging through the unseen poison gas to the ship. Lightning forked above their heads. And all the time that electricity generated in the bedrock writhed up through the surface to wave tentacles of dazzling blue.

  I looked down at Stephen. He looked a ghastly grey; his eyes were dull and he was panting. I helped him up onto the bunk.

  He pushed me away. ‘Find him…he’ll grab the first gun he can, then come back…to finish it.’

  ‘Stephen. You’re bleeding…’

  ‘Of course I’m fucking bleeding. He stabbed me.’ He gave a grim laugh. ‘Do you think I’m fucking superman…uh.’

  My heart went out to him. He was in agony.

  ‘I’ll just—’

  ‘Rick…forget me. Get that bastard first. I’ll be all right.’

  Chapter 133

  Heart pounding, mouth dry, gritty from the filth streaming down from the sky, I walked along the deck. The ash covered the deck almost ankle deep. It scrunched thickly underfoot like the Devil’s own snowfall.

  Above me, the barrels of the warship’s guns, stained black with soot, loomed out from armoured turrets. They pointed out across the heads of starving refugees, who still continued their agonizingly slow walk towards the ship, carrying their children on their shoulders.

  I couldn’t see anyone on deck; not a soul.

  I leaned back against the guard rail to look up at the upper deck. There I saw a good fifty or sixty gun barrels—rifles and machine guns—aimed at the people on the plain.

  What were they waiting for?

  I knew our people on the upper deck must be hallucinating. They’d see that poor, blackened, half-starved remnant of humanity as grey monsters with bloody red eyes. While all the time sparks shot up from the cracks in the ground. Smoke hung over the plain. As dark and as terrible as a premonition of death. It burnt the back of my throat, stung my eyes; even the taste of baked mud coated my tongue in a bitter film.

  I leaned back against the rail and called the names of people I knew would be up there. They didn’t respond. They were locked up tight in their own world of delusion, waiting for the order to fire.

  I moved more assuredly now. The poison gas had all but left my bloodstream, my eyesight had cleared. I felt in gear. I knew what I had to do: find the madman before he found a gun. Because, as sure the fires of Hell were bursting through, he’d kill Stephen, then he’d kill me. Then there’d be nothing to prevent him from taking his place as undisputed lord and master of our people. And I didn’t doubt for a moment that his would be a tyrannical leadership.

  Reaching the stern of the grounded ship, I crossed the helicopter landing pad. This deck was deserted; nothing but the all-covering, all-choking black ash.

  As I moved towards the centre of the ship again, a door banged open.

  I flinched back, ready to fight.

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘Rick…what’s happening? I can see people out there.’

  In about five seconds flat I managed to tell her what was happening, that I was looking for the man who’d called himself Jesus. She steadied herself against the guard rail. She still looked groggy from the gas.

  ‘He’s badly burnt,’ I said. ‘The downside is, he’s still capable of doing a lot of damage. We’ve got to find him before he gets his hands on a gun, or finds one of his own people who’ll obey his orders without asking too many questions.’

  Kate nodded, taking deep breaths to oxygenate her blood. ‘You go left, I’ll go right, we can meet up at the far end of the ship.’

  ‘No, Kate. We stick together.’

  She gave an emphatic shake of her head. ‘There isn’t time and you know it.’

  ‘OK, but for Godsakes keep out of his way if you find him, then holler—understood?’

  ‘Understood.’

  She looked up at me with those wonderful eyes. They seemed to glow green beneath the pair of eyebrows that were as black as crow’s feathers.

  She squeezed my hand, gave me a grim smile, then she turned and ran lightly along the deck.

  Memories of the day I lost Caroline came thundering back. I felt that same oppressive sense of doom; it hung over the ship flapping its deadly wings.

  Suddenly I had a premonition that in a few short hours I would lose people I loved.

  Fists clenched, muscles taut, I moved forward in the direction of the ship’s prow. I bled sweat, my teeth rattled in my fool head. Shit, Kennedy, you shouldn’t have let Kate go off alone to look for the psycho. He’ll kill her as soon as look at her.

  Doom beat its dread wings, like some monster raven. In my mind’s eye I could see it hovering above the ship. Vast black wings beating the air.

  The mud on which the ship stood, continued to crack open—crick-crack-crick-crack—the cracks spurted death in the form of poison gas. The whole bastard ground was heating up. Ash pittered dryly down onto my face. Thunder rumbled, lightning stalked the sky.

  And moving towards the ship was that phalanx of half-dead men and women who just a few short months ago were like you, Rick. They lived in ordinary houses, drove ordinary cars. They worked in supermarkets, banks, factories, schools, offices. They saved what they could for holidays, a new TV, their children’s Christmas presents; a new bicycle for little Jamie.

  Now the poor God-forgotten bastards stood out there in a lake of poison gas that reached up as far as their hungry bellies. And they carried poor little Jamie, or Cindy, or Bobby, or Lucy on their aching shoulders. They were dying of hunger, they were choking on the gas, it burned their throats and their eyes; sparks flew up to sting their faces; those that were barefooted must be walking on cushions of blisters from moving across the baking mud.

  Doom beat its black-as-death wings. I could feel it bearing downward, weighing me down. Death was in the air.

  In my head I said a bitter prayer:

  Christ. How could YOU let this happen?

  Do you have no soul?

  No conscience?

  No compassion?

  I moved along the deck at a run, my eyes streaming.

  Any second now my own people would tuck the butts of the rifles into their shoulders, draw back the bolts of machine guns. Then they would open fire. They would massacre the poor wretches down on the hot dirt. All because the electric field pumped from that same dirt fooled our brains into thinking we saw big Grey bogeymen.

  Jesus wept. I wanted to laugh/cry crazily, insanely, stupidly. What the fuck were we doing to ourselves?

  We were wiping ourselves out because Mother Earth was too darn slow to do it Herself.

  ‘Rick! Rick! He’s here. He’s—’

  Thunder rumbled.

  ‘Kate!’

  No reply.

  I’d reached the prow of the ship on the port side. Now I doubled back along the starboard side to where I guessed Kate must be.

  I ran hard, feet drumming the steel deck, I jumped over abandoned cables, ropes, oil drums, spent shell cases from the big guns.

  I nearly ran slap bang into the murdering bastard.

  He was fumbling frantically, trying to load a pump-action shotgun. He was reaching into a paper sack, pulling out handfuls of orange shotgun cartridges, most of which spilt onto the floor.

  He looked up at me with those psychotic eyes that could have been white discs set in the burnt face. They blazed hatred, pure hatred.

  Kate stood at the far side of him along the deck.

  ‘Get back, Kate!’ I shouted. Again that deadly grim spectre of doom hovered above the ship in my mind’s eye. Its death-wings beating slowly, darkly, ever more darkly…waiting to pounce.

  The burnt man grinned. Again the teeth shone unnaturally bright in the charred face. The blister had started to refill itself with fluid, inflating out from the side of his face like a skin balloon.


  ‘Gotcha, Mr Kennedy,’ he called, pleased with himself. ‘Gotcha now.’

  His burnt fingers pressed another cartridge into the shotgun’s magazine.

  Doom’s wings beat harder; the sound was the thunder rumbling down hard against our heads. But I heard the sombre melody of doom—only doom.

  The burnt man straightened, an expression of triumph blazing from his hideously damaged face. He began to sing in a weird cracking voice: ‘Gonna get you, Mr Kennedy. Gonna shoot you in the legs; then I’m gonna shoot you in the cock. Then you’re gonna suck the end of my barrel while I pull the trigger. Mmm…that’s sweet, baby.’

  I edged along the deck, one step at a time.

  The man didn’t seem worried. He sang again: ‘Gonna kill you dead, Mr K, then I’m going to blow away your brother. But first I’m going to make you watch your whore die.’

  Doom hovered lower over the ship. The very fabric of the place seemed shrouded black in pain, despair, death.

  I could see the beat of the dread wings; I could hear the sound of those deadly beats. I heard them in every thummpp! of the thunder that battered through the cloud.

  I saw Kate with her back to the steel walls of the ship maybe ten paces from the madman; her frightened eyes locked onto mine.

  Desperately, she flattened herself to the wall to present as small a target as possible. But still she was easy meat for the shotgun.

  I was sweating. I was terrified. I found it hard to breathe.

  Shit…

  No, not now. Don’t let it happen now.

  As the tension built up inside me so the effects of the electrical field scrambled my own thought patterns again. The two people in front of me began to grey-out as the delusions kicked in. I saw Kate’s hair turn into a black mane that followed the crest of bone, Mohican style, back over her head from forehead to neck. Her eyes turned bloody.

  The same happened to the man who called himself Jesus. I could no longer see the blisters on his face. It had become grey, the lips black. Arteries stood out through the skin as arm and neck muscles became swollen.

  The monster bared its teeth, snarled. Dimly I heard the man’s voice working through the snarl.

  ‘It’s happening to you again, Rick Kennedy, isn’t it? You’re seeing us as those Grey bogeymen? Hell, revenge don’t get any sweeter than this.’

  Terror ripped through me. I wanted to scream that terror at them.

  But as the terror hit me I understood at last.

  The hallucinations, the crazed terror it induced, had a purpose. I could use it. I remembered Stenno’s attack on me in Fullwood’s Garage all those months ago. He was terrified when he hallucinated that I was one of those grey monsters. But that terror gave him the strength and, bizarrely, the courage to attack—not to run away.

  Yes, yes, I could use it.

  With terror ripping through my whole fucking body I felt a tremendous energy rush. The blood sang in my veins; I could have believed an eye-searing incandescence erupted through my skin.

  Oh yes, the electrical field disrupted my thought processes; but something inside my head kicked in—not only compensating for the disruption but helping me hold on to it; to exploit it for the good of the species.

  Suddenly I saw the burnt madman’s movements begin to slow down as if I was watching a video in slo-mo. He began to load another round into the shotgun’s magazine. Every movement seemed achingly slow. The bright orange cartridge pinched between his forefinger and thumb appeared to glide through the air towards the gun. Then he would have to move his hand to the stock in order to chamber a round. Then he’d turn the gun on Kate. Pull the trigger. Blast her face at point-blank range.

  Instinct kicked in as it mated with that raw surge of electricity pumping from the Earth. No way were these hallucinations destructive. They were a force I could use. They heightened my senses; they speeded my reflexes; the terror they induced unleashed a flood of adrenalin into my body, making me stronger than I’d ever been in my life.

  With a roar I leapt.

  My adrenalin-driven legs pumped me forward with such force it felt as if I flew at the madman.

  I saw him look up, his face shimmering between bleached-out grey with red eyes and the blistered face and psychotic eyes of the burnt man.

  Those eyes changed from insane confidence, to surprise, to shock, to horror as he realized I moved so fast, so fucking fast, that he wouldn’t have time to bring the barrel of the gun up to blast me.

  Again it all seemed to happen in slow motion. My fist slammed into his jaw; his head jerked back from the concussion.

  In one fluid movement I locked my hands around his arm, then, twisting round one hundred and eighty degrees in an adrenalin-fuelled pirouette, I swung him round, then over the ship’s guard rail.

  With a cry he flew through the air in slo-mo, turning head over heels, his arms flapping insanely at the hot air as if he really thought he could fly.

  The body shrank as it dropped downwards. With a puff of black ash he hit the plain. The shotgun hit the ground beside him, echoing that same puff of black.

  I ran to the guard rail to stand there, my hands gripping the steel. I looked down at the figure lying flat on its back, arms flung straight out in a crucifixion pose.

  Then the impossible happened.

  The man lifted his head. Then, slowly, painfully, he sat up.

  He reached out to the shotgun, gripped the end of the barrel, then, using it as a crutch, he levered himself up from the ground. A moment later he stood on his own two feet.

  Kate ran to the guard rail and looked down, too, in disbelief.

  ‘Oh, God…the man’s indestructible. Why didn’t the fall kill him? For Godsakes, why?’

  The burnt man turned his face to stare up the two of us. The psychotic eyes blazed. I could see he was grinning.

  Then, still using the shotgun to support himself, he limped backwards, away from the ship, so he could shout to his own people on the deck above Kate and me.

  ‘Tesco…Rolle…Axeman!’ he roared. ‘Everyone listen to me! We have traitors in our midst. Rick Kennedy and Kate Robinson have murdered Dean Skilton; they murdered Victoria. They are on the deck below you. Kill them before they can murder us all.’ He took a huge breath and shook his fist at us. ‘KILL THEM NOW!’

  Chapter 134

  ‘Damn,’ I whispered, my heart sinking. ‘If we can’t convince them that he’s the murderer—not us…’ I left the sentence unfinished. I looked down appalled, not knowing what the Hell to do next.

  Down below on the plain, the man leaned on the shotgun. He screamed up at the others that Kate and I were the double-crossing murderers, that everyone was in danger while we were still alive.

  Some hundred metres away, across the baked crust of mud, thousands of half-starved, half-gassed refugees shuffled towards the ship like zombies. They still carried their children on their shoulders, even though exhaustion must have been taking a murderous toll on their bodies.

  And all the time the man who called himself Jesus raved wildly: ‘Kill Rick and Kate. Kill them while you’ve got the chance. If you don’t they’ll murder every single one of you…’

  He stopped shouting. He stared up at the ship, his body suddenly frozen in shock. He’d seen something that had struck a deep paralysing fear into him.

  I leaned back as far as I could over the guard rail and looked up at the upper deck. His people and mine now strained forward, guns at the ready.

  I saw the expressions on their faces.

  My heart gave a sudden leap.

  I recognized the expression, they were deep in the grip of the hallucination.

  I saw that the pupils and irises of their eyes had shrunk to black dots; they wore that fixed expression.

  The burnt man on the plain below had seen it, too. He realized that those people armed with shotguns, handguns, rifles, submachine guns, saw him as one of the grey monsters.

  I looked back down at him as he screamed. ‘No! NO! You cretins…it
’s me! Open your eyes, open your fucking eyes! My name is Jesus! You morons! I am Jesus. I AM JESUS!!!’

  He dropped the shotgun to wave both arms above his head. Those on the upper deck stared down at him in horror and revulsion.

  This is one of the murdering Grey bastards, they were thinking. This is one of the creatures that killed the old man; these monsters murdered half the nation.

  ‘No! Open your eyes! My name is Jesus. My name is—’

  The gunfire drowned his voice.

  I watched, horrified, as the crust of burnt mud seemed to froth around him as a hundred bullets tore into the ground.

  He screamed, and held up a hand, looking like some nightmare traffic cop trying to flag down a car. But those bullets were unstoppable.

  The metal slugs tore into his stomach, chest, legs. He screamed; he lifted his hand higher. Shotguns roared above me; I saw the buckshot strip away the fingers; yet still he continued to hold up his hand, palm outward. The stumps where the fingers had been spurted blood.

  A machine gun chattered, ripping up the mud around him. Bullets chewed his feet, legs.

  He screamed, sank to his knees.

  He roared out in a voice that bled terror and agony: ‘I…AM…JESUS…YOU CAN’T…KILL ME…I AM ALIVE! I’M ALIVE!’

  Rifles cracked. I actually saw the red tracer fly like points of light towards his face.

  A bullet hole appeared between his eyes, so big you could have slipped your finger through that wet wound and into his head as far as the knuckle. Simultaneously, the back of his head erupted, showering brains out onto the hot mud where they sizzled and steamed like an egg broken into a frying pan.

  My hands ached, I held onto the steel rail so tightly.

  I couldn’t believe it. This time he was dead.

  The corpse, slumping flat on its back, lay limp as a rag doll on the ground, the bullet-ravaged arms thrown outward, the mouth grotesquely open as if the corpse still tried to howl abuse at the sky.

  I gave a huge sigh of relief, rubbed my face, and said: ‘He’s dead…thank God. He’s really dead.’