‘Dammit!’ Danforth swore, glancing at Rebecca Two where she had fallen. ‘Looks like it’s just you and me then, blondie,’ he whispered into Captain Franz’s ear.
‘Nein, Rebecca, nein, nein,’ the New Germanian was mumbling.
‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist; I doubt that she’s dead,’ Danforth said, as he pushed Captain Franz into the road where he’d spotted his miniature radio. Once he’d retrieved it, Danforth gave Rebecca Two another glance. ‘Shame I can’t take her with me. She’d have been an interesting subject for interrogation,’ he said with regret.
Captain Franz was also looking at her with regret. ‘Nein, nein, nein,’ he was still mumbling, as Danforth frogmarched him quickly away.
‘There she blows,’ Parry said, as the pictures from the cameras flickered from the explosion. As they settled down, the views of what was left of GCHQ were obscured by palls of dust and smoke. The detonation had been timed for the moment the stream of Armagi finished their aerial entry and were inside the installation, and searching in vain for anyone to kill.
‘So zero fatalities on our side?’ Eddie asked.
‘I sincerely hope so. It was evacuated some weeks ago, except of course for the skeleton staff needed to keep up the appearance that it was business as usual,’ Parry replied. ‘And they should have escaped through the underground evacuation tunnels – there are several of th—’
‘Sir,’ one of the soldiers manning a laptop cut in. ‘We’ve just received a burp from Danforth. He’s asking to be extracted. And he says he’s got a hostage with him.’
‘The rest of you pack up your kit! We’re moving out now!’ Parry ordered, as he went over to the soldier. ‘Okay, where did Danforth say he was?’ he asked.
Hermione and the Old Styx had been fortunate. They’d been tucked well into the side of the street when the blast hit, but it had still thrown both of them to the ground.
Hermione was laughing as the air began to clear and she saw what little remained of GCHQ. The Doughnut had been reduced to a pile of rubble, the few parts of it still standing enveloped in flames. ‘So they planted charges and waited for us to turn up, then blew the whole place … is that the best that the poor little flesh bags can come up with?’ she said.
‘They saved us the effort of demolishing it,’ the Old Styx said, gazing at what was left.
Hermione had stopped laughing and was instead making a clucking sound as she noticed how much dust had settled on her coat. ‘Although it pains me to lose some of my children, they’re Armagi, and there are just so very many of them now,’ she said, as she began to pat her coat down, using her human limbs for the front and her insect ones for the back. ‘It’s not the same as when they took my Warriors from me. The humans only made things worse for themselves when they changed the game.’
‘Yes, and they haven’t quite realised that anything they attempt now is futile,’ the Old Styx agreed, nodding. ‘It’s too late for them.’
But Hermione wasn’t listening. She’d stopped brushing her coat, and there was a sadness in her eyes. ‘But I will never ever forgive Will Burrows and the rest of them for slaughtering my Warrior Class – my true children – in that warehouse,’ she said in a low, smouldering voice.
The Old Styx had his mind on more pressing matters. Now the smoke and dust was clearing, he’d been glancing at the street around them, and a frown had appeared on his normally expressionless face. ‘But where did Rebecca go?’ he asked.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Whoop! – there we go again,’ Chester said, switching on the window wipers as pieces of Armagi and the liquid that coursed through their veins splattered the windscreen for the umpteenth time.
He’d been driving like a lunatic, not easing off on the speed even when the motorway was full of obstacles. On several occasions he’d clipped discarded vehicles in the way, almost losing control of the four-by-four and weaving all over the road because he’d been going so fast. And each time there had been a collision, he’d laughed it off, although Martha looked petrified as, sitting beside him, she hung on to her seatbelt for dear life. And Stephanie didn’t allow herself a moment’s rest, because if they were about to crash, she wanted to be ready for it.
They’d had a welcome respite from the journey when they’d stopped to heat up some cans of food. But before they’d eaten, Martha had wandered off. Stephanie spotted her at the top of a small hill, where she seemed to be simply staring at the sky. When Martha finally returned, she told Chester that she’d learnt from the Brights that ‘nasty man’ was on the move, but they were still going in the right direction to reach him. And she said that a Bright would be remaining with him at all times, to continue to track his movements.
Despite what she’d told Chester, Stephanie had no idea how Martha could learn this from these large moth-like creatures that rarely seemed to stop zipping around the place. Chester didn’t seem to be very interested in this piece of news, instead keeping a whole can of baked beans with cocktail sausages to himself, while Stephanie had to share the second can with Martha.
And then, after Chester had topped up the tank with diesel, they were off again. For once the stretch of motorway ahead was relatively clear, so it didn’t matter that Chester had his foot down.
But after more pieces of Armagi had showered down over them, Martha kept craning her neck to peer up at the sky through the front windscreen. ‘They’re getting tired,’ she said eventually.
Chester didn’t reply, instead rocking his head from side-to-side as if he was listening to a piece of music that only he could hear. And he made no effort to slow the car. ‘You know, dearie, they can’t keep this up all day,’ Martha tried again. ‘They need to rest just like us.’
Chester began to fiddle with the controls of the air conditioning, turning it up and angling the vent so that the breeze was blowing full in his face and ruffling his air. ‘Getting a bit hot in here,’ he said.
What he didn’t say was that the combination of the warm fug in the vehicle and Martha’s lack of hygiene was particularly unpleasant. Stephanie had been shouted at by Chester and Martha when she’d opened her window in the back because they said it was too dangerous. And any benefit from the air conditioning was minimal where she was sitting. So instead, she’d fished out her bottle of perfume from the wash bag in her Bergen and had been taking the top off to sniff it from time to time, to give herself a momentary relief from the smell. She’d gone so far as to pour a drop or two on her scarf, but this elicited such scathing looks from Martha that she didn’t dare do it again.
‘If we don’t slow down and take it more gently, one of my fairies will be killed by those Armagi,’ Martha said. There was no answer from Chester, who wobbled his head again, his mouth puckered as if in a silent whistle.
‘We really do have to slow down, dearie,’ Martha murmured, sounding quite desperate now.
Stephanie had just slipped the stopper from her perfume again and was taking a sniff when Chester yelled at Martha, ‘Shut up, will you?’
Stephanie was so shocked by his reaction that she almost dropped her perfume. She found she was seized by the almost irrepressible urge to punch Chester in the back of the head. He was being so selfish, dragging them all on his insane quest for revenge without the slightest consideration for anyone else. Not even for me, Stephanie told herself.
Suddenly she’d had all she was prepared to take. Maybe it was the stifling and rather unpleasant atmosphere in the car, or possibly her fatigue, but she didn’t care any more.
‘Stop the car. I want to get out!’ she shouted right in Chester’s ear. As she’d barely uttered a word for the whole journey, her outburst came as even more of a surprise.
‘What?’ Chester gasped, the four-by-four swerving wildly on the road.
‘I saw a sign for motorway services up ahead,’ Stephanie replied. ‘Drop me off there.’
Chester didn’t wait that long, pulling over onto the hard shoulder. As both he and Martha turned to Stephan
ie on the back seat, she said nothing, simply grabbing her wash bag and getting out. As she began to walk away from the car, Chester hurried after her.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he asked.
Stephanie came to an immediate halt. ‘What is wrong with me?! What about you?’ She shook her head. ‘Okay, let me spell it out. You are being a foul shit and I’ve had enough.’
He swept a hand at the open fields on either side of the motorway. ‘But we’re in the middle of nowhere. You’ll die.’
‘Like you care,’ she snapped back at him. ‘Anyway, I’d rather take my chances out here than with you in that stinking car.’
‘Whatever,’ he spat, turning on his heels and stomping back towards the car. ‘Do whatever you want.’
‘You’ll kill us all anyway if you keep driving like that,’ Stephanie shouted after him. She snorted to show her disdain. ‘You’re such a hypocrite! I bet your sister was run over by an idiot like you driving too fast.’
Chester froze on the spot, but remained facing away from her. He didn’t know how to respond. Stephanie’s remark had struck him to the very core; at that moment, something penetrated his anger and the all-consuming desire for revenge.
Stephanie wasn’t finished. ‘And what’s so stupid is, haven’t you noticed there are only Armagi when we’re near towns? So if we lose some Brights now, like, how will we manage when we get to London, which seems to be where we’re heading?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s probably full of Armagi So without Martha’s fairies, we’re as good as dead.’
‘I have to say she’s right, dearie,’ a voice suddenly declared. Martha had come over to listen. ‘We need to let my fairies have a breather and some food. And you do need to steer a little slower.’
‘It’s drive, Martha. You drive a car.’ Chester turned to Stephanie, and cleared his throat. ‘Yes, maybe I’ve been pushing it, and I reckon we could all do with a proper break. How many miles to these services you saw?’ he asked.
Stephanie didn’t reply.
‘Come on. Put your stuff back in the car. London isn’t that far, and you love London,’ he argued, trying to be consolatory as he gave her a sheepish smile.
Stephanie humphed. ‘Yeah, so what’ll we do when we get there? I just know it’s going to be, like, the most terrible place on Earth,’ she said. ‘I just know it.’
‘But it’s still London, with all the shops you love. And there’s bound to be something open,’ Chester said, maintaining his smile. He was obviously making a huge effort to be pleasant to her, but Stephanie could see the deranged light hadn’t left his eyes. ‘Come back to the car, will you, Stepho?’
‘Stepho? Nobody calls me Stepho,’ Stephanie said under her breath. But against her better judgement, she began towards the vehicle, dragging her feet and asking herself what the hell she was doing.
‘And we thought it looked bad the last time we were here,’ Drake whispered. He and Jiggs had crawled over to the windows and were poking their heads up just high enough to gaze out over London.
With numerous stops along the way to allow Drake to recuperate, they had walked the length of the train tunnel, all the way from Essex to central London. When they finally arrived at the platform below BT Tower, they had immediately taken the stairs up to the same floor in the tower from which they had observed the results of the Styx’s first efforts to stir things up in the capital. But that had been several months ago, and it was immeasurably worse now.
‘No power anywhere. So the whole grid must be down,’ Drake said. ‘I was hoping we might be able to fire up one of the tower’s dishes and get a signal through to Parry.’
‘See, over there on that office block,’ Jiggs suddenly said, squinting through the darkness as night began to set in. ‘It’s easy to miss them in this light, but can you make out what’s on the roof?’
‘Jesus,’ Drake replied, as he saw the many crystalline forms of the Armagi teeming on the rooftop. ‘How many are there?’
‘Actually the whole place is crawling with them. They’re everywhere,’ Jiggs added, as he spotted more on other roofs.
‘It’s gone too far,’ Drake said, as he slumped down on the floor. ‘How do we ever pull ourselves out of this?’
Jiggs checked the tracker before answering. ‘The beacon has definitely shifted since we went underground.’ When Drake simply lay there, Jiggs was concerned. ‘I know that hike through the tunnel must have felt like several marathons to you. How are you holding up, old man?’
‘Cream crackered, sick as a dog, everything hurts … shall I go on?’ Drake mumbled. ‘And, worst of all, this leg feels like it’s on bloody fire,’ he added, touching it just above his knee and grimacing.
‘Let me take a dekko,’ Jiggs said, crawling over to him. Starting by his ankle, he rolled up Drake’s combat trousers until he could see the dressing on his lower thigh, which he then peeled slowly back. He recoiled slightly. ‘I’m afraid the burn here is badly infected.’
Drake nodded stoically. ‘I wondered what the smell was.’
Jiggs patted his Bergen where he kept his medical kit. ‘Let’s get away from the windows and I’ll change all your dressings.’
‘Okay, but I want to check something first,’ Drake said, pulling his trouser leg down, then hauling himself along on his belly across the old carpet tiles until he’d reached a section of window further around on the tower. ‘Remember that army checkpoint in Charlotte Street?’ he said to Jiggs. Then, grunting with the effort, he raised himself up so he could see the view below.
‘You’re hoping that they left a radio,’ Jiggs guessed. ‘You know that it was more than just a checkpoint there. I had a mosey round last time, and didn’t notice any comms equipment, but there were some heavy-duty munitions in that resupply truck,’ he said, indicating the solid-looking lorry beside the khaki awning.
Despite his discomfort, Drake was grinning. ‘You managed to snoop around in there, right under their noses?’
Jiggs nodded. ‘Piece of cake. We could really do with an ammo restock if they left anything behind when they ran for the hills.’
Drake was frowning as he continued to study the scene below. ‘Um … yes, that would be great … but … shouldn’t we be setting our sights a little higher?’
Jiggs was intrigued. ‘Why, what have you got in mind?’ he asked.
Drake pointed beside the truck that Jiggs had been referring to. ‘If I’m not mistaken, that’s a brand spanking new Challenger 2 parked down there, ripe for the picking.’
Jiggs nodded as he contemplated the latest model British Army tank. ‘Now that would be a stylish way to get around town,’ he chuckled.
‘Wouldn’t it just?’ Drake said.
Some of the buildings were shops, so badly damaged by fire that it was impossible to tell what they’d been selling.
And in other buildings, curtains flapped in the upper windows as the wind sucked down the street, and when it blew at its hardest the paper and rubbish strewn across the pavements and road began to dance and swirl.
‘This place hasn’t changed much,’ Will said as they crept along, Elliott protecting him every inch of the way.
‘Careful!’ she suddenly whispered, and froze.
From the door of a pub one of the young Styx lizards scuttled out. It looked at them.
There was the sound of slithering and the clicks of opening and closing jaws.
Before they knew it, other lizards were out in the open, from windows all over the same corner building, darting across its stucco facade.
The blood Elliott had spread on Will seemed to still be doing the trick because after their initial interest none of the lizards paid them much attention. As all the lizards returned inside the building again, there was the crash of a glass breaking. For the briefest moment Will could imagine that it was business as usual in the pub, and one of the punters had missed the bar with his pint.
But then Elliott nudged him on again, and he had a glimpse of the cocoons hanging from the fau
x rustic beams across the ceiling of the pub – fibrous-looking pods in which Armagi would be growing.
Further on, as they edged along the wide road filled with shops, the sky began to show the first cold grey signs of dawn. From somewhere in the distance, there was terrible screaming.
‘Brrr. That’s awful,’ Will said, also speaking for Elliott. The dark and the cold and the sheer desolation were getting to both of them.
Elliott was staring at a cinema across the street. ‘We should find a place to hole up. How about there?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ Will said, immediately moving with her towards it. At the entrance of the multiplex cinema, Will caught sight of the poster for a film that must have just been released when the Armagi had begun to spread. It depicted an advancing mob of zombies with leached green faces and mouths smeared crimson.
‘Not so clever now, is it?’ he said, indicating the poster. ‘People wanted gore, and they’ve got it big time.’
Elliott didn’t reply as they climbed a stationary escalator to the foyer with counters for popcorn and ice creams; then she led them into one of the smaller auditoria, with its rows of seats and blank screen.
‘This’ll do until it’s dark again,’ she said, dropping heavily into one of the seats.
‘You okay?’ he asked, worried because she seemed so drained of energy. Will knew he was making life harder for her and slowing her up when she was in such a desperate hurry to get wherever she needed to be. And her hand was a terrible mess because she’d repeatedly sliced it open to squeeze more blood from the wound for his benefit. He wondered if this was making her feel faint.
‘What’s that noise?’ he asked suddenly, as he heard noises above them.
‘We’re under a nest,’ she answered. ‘Like in that house we went into.’ Without lifting or moving her head, which rested against the back of the seat, her eyes slid upwards to the ceiling. ‘The Armagi are breeding up there.’