Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Visitors?’ asked Gogarty, politely.

  ‘Police.’

  As she spoke, Sheila clasped her hands together, and rubbed one palm across another as if washing them. An involuntary tic that always possessed her when she was in Gogarty’s presence. She felt her pulse race.

  ‘You told them about us?’ Gogarty asked, smiling.

  ‘I was tempted to.’ Sheila stared at him defiantly, pretending to be unafraid. But she, and he, could smell the stench of fear leaking from her every pore.

  Gogarty nodded, and smiled again. He clicked two fingers and Naberius moved - faster than thought. And he had his claws around Sheila’s neck in an instant.

  ‘I shan’t betray you,’ she said calmly.

  ‘You’d better not.’

  Gogarty nodded, and Naberius released his death-hold.

  ‘But you can’t stay,’ Sheila said. ‘Not any more. You really can’t.’

  Gogarty smiled. Slowly, and cruelly. ‘Oh, my dear,’ he said, ‘I rather think we can.’

  Chapter 10

  At four am Roy kicked Fillide out of bed, and she got dressed in the dark.

  ‘See you at the briefing,’ Roy murmured, from under the bed clothes.

  ‘Yes, master,’ Fillide said.

  She stifled her rage, with well practised skill.

  She left the flat dressed in black jeans, black leather jacket, sword and gun. Even she could not wear designer couture to a hit.

  She jogged six blocks to the street where she’d parked the car, a BMW that was stolen but not yet reported missing. Then she called in her location to Lucretius and Magnus. They were due to meet at a high rise in Battersea. A crack house. A three person job. She drove fast, above the limit, daring anyone to pull her over. That would give her an excuse for sitting this one out.

  But she was out of luck tonight. No cop cars spotted her. And any speed cameras would register the BMW as belonging to a senior official with royal connections based at the Saudi Embassy, so there would be no fines coming her way.

  She parked in the car park of the Belmont Estate. The last of the 1960s Battersea council blocks. Four towers, balconied, connected by walkways. A sad attempt to brighten the place had turned it into a mess of purple and orange paint daubed upon grey concrete.

  This part of the Battersea area had been yuppified and gentrified many years ago. Middle class families had turned the sink estate into an airy urban community. Now it was run down all over again - the South of the River effect. Wine bars were boarded up. Fascias were faded. Shop fronts were used by flyposting gangs to advertise raves, gigs, and orgies.

  Fillide called in her location and Lucretius answered.

  ‘See you the foot of the stairs, Mandela Tower,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘I salute thee, comrade.’

  ‘Thee too,’ Fillide said casually.

  Fillide got out of the car. She strapped on her sword, tightened her rig, checked the ammo in her gun. Regular ammo today but she had a clip of silver bullets wadded with incense in case of emergency.

  Ten minutes later Lucretius pulled up in his pimp-mobile. Fifty thousand pounds worth of Alfa Romeo with a turbo-charged engine. This baby could actually fly, he liked to brag, given a ramp and a following wind.

  Lucretius hopped out of the car, and a moment later was by her side, without seeming to have passed through the intervening space. It wasn’t magic: just the legacy of many years of guerrilla warfare in the forests of Germany. Instead of street clothes, Lucretius wore a British army camouflage uniform, with LUKE written above the front pocket. An affectation he’d been warned about, since it made him so easy to identify. But that was his way.

  Magnus arrived a few minutes later, in a petrol-guzzling green 4 x 4 with swaggeringly huge wheels. He wore a huge sheepskin jacket and a ghastly plaid shirt, his sideburns and huge moustache giving him a faintly comic air in the moonlight. He was wearing a gun belt with two Browning Hi-Power .45 semi-automatic pistols in leather holsters, and was carrying the Enforcer as if it were a toothpick. It was not yet dawn.

  ‘Hi,’ he said grinning.

  ‘How goes it?’

  ‘Can’t complain. You?’

  ‘My life is shit, a living hell, and it’s all thanks to you, you evil cock-less craven cur,’ she told him reprovingly.

  ‘Ha! You’re welcome, you old slack-breasted whore.’ And he beamed. ‘But let’s face it, your life would be an empty barren thing without me to hate and revile.’

  Magnus had never admitted having any qualms about his betrayal of Fillide all those years ago. In fact he freely boasted about how he’d duped her into trying to escape, so that Roy could, in his own words, ‘teach her a lesson in humility’.

  Fillide still festered with rage about what the Viking had done to her that night. But she had no choice about the things she did in the service of Roy. Nor did she get a say about who she worked with. So she made the best of it. And thus, for the last eight years, she and Magnus had been partners in crime.

  ‘How many inside?’ Fillide asked casually.

  ‘Our snout says four, five, maybe six. Could be ten or twelve or more if they have guests from down the corridor, the place is a rabbit warren of crack dens,’ said Lucretius, grinning at the ineptness of his information.

  ‘Who’s protecting our main guys?’ Fillide asked.

  ‘They’re hooked in with the Turkish mafia. Selim’s lot.’

  ‘They’ll have a surprise.’

  ‘Linklater was here,’ said Magnus, who had been staking the place out for two days. ‘He stayed for three hours.’

  Fillide nodded. ‘Roy will be pleased about that,’ she suggested.

  Linklater was a former curator at the British Museum, who moonlighted as an authenticator of stolen artefacts. These days many of the London drug lords liked to dabble in stolen antiquities as well as dealing crack, smack, puff and dark incense. They got a kick out of owning ancient bling. But Roy Hall enjoyed it even more.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Fillide.

  They ran up the stairs tirelessly, with Fillide taking the lead. The other two were seasoned warriors with legs that were used to running hundreds of miles in a single day. Fillide by contrast was a city girl who had always done most of her work indoors. But her body was supremely powerful now and she could run for days without wearying. Furthermore she was, thanks to Chikamatsu, possessed of extraordinary fighting skills, and was gifted with a body that could survive being shot, stabbed, or blown up at close quarters.

  To kill any of these three assassins one would need anointed silver bullets, or a silver axe, or a silver sword, or a silver mace or hammer; and a great deal of luck.

  Their enemies called them the Trinity.

  They had no friends.

  When they reached the tenth floor they paused and took stock. The walkway on this floor was empty. They could see no lookouts, and no trace of ambushes. There were several trip-wires but they were easy to spot and step over. They observed a tell-tale knot in the concrete, inside which was concealed a motion detector; which Magnus disabled with a simple incantation that Roy had taught him. Lucretius used the binoculars to search the neighbouring rooftops for hidden snipers. Nothing.

  They had a clear view across the estate, its garish concrete towers framing a vista of London at night. St Paul’s was to the east, a relic of classical decorum in a land now populated by arrogant skyscrapers. Its white dome was floodlit and shone in the dark night and was encircled by black clouds of aerial demons.

  The Buckingham Bordello was to the far west, lit up like a landing strip, its neon lights flashing in synchrony to the pulse of giant sound systems. Closer to them on that same bank was the Palace of Westminster, home to the London Parliament and the primary meeting place of the Warlock Council. It remained an awesome sight with its soaring Gothic towers.

  Directly below them was the leafy sweep of Battersea Park and the glittering blue-black waters of the River Thames. The London Ey
e was also visible from their vantage point - a giant revolving wheel so brightly illuminated it outshone the stars in the sky.

  The wind was fresh and fast, and blew Magnus’s long hair wildly around, and slapped a chill on Fillide’s cheeks. On nights like this in Rome, Fillide’s pulse would race with sensual excitement. Now, she had no pulse.

  It was time. Magnus nodded at Lucretius. Lucretius nodded at Fillide. Fillide nodded to both of them. It was her turn to lead the attack, and she knew the men would follow her anywhere without hesitation.

  Fillide felt oppressed by a sense of dread. She hated these raids, and she hated the evil acts that the Trinity so often perpetrated. She hated killing humans. She hated her life. And she hated Magnus and Lucretius in equal measure. But, as always, she had no choice.

  Fillide counted with her fingers: ten, nine, eight...

  Lucretius’s face was utterly still; his eyes blazed with energy. Magnus was snorting with anticipated joy.

  Seven, six, five...

  Fillide and Lucretius had their guns drawn and held low, so they couldn’t be spotted as armed from a distance, or by any patrolling helicopters. Magnus used both hands to hold the metal Enforcer, his home-made version of the police ramming tool.

  Four, three...

  The walkway was still deserted. A few lights were on in neighbouring flats and Fillide hoped that no-one would come out. A cat was startled at the sight of them and leaped away down to the next balcony. Its mew dopplered as it continued to flee.

  Two...

  One.

  Now! Fillide made a downward sweep with her left hand; the hand that wasn’t holding a Glock semi-automatic pistol.

  Magnus hefted the Enforcer. Using it like a battering ram against a medieval castle, he crashed it against the door. The Enforcer was solid steel and unliftable by any human being, but Magnus wielded it without effort.

  And again! And again! The Enforcer thundered upon the metal fortified door like Thor’s hammer upon the body of a Frost Giant.

  From inside the flat they could hear shouting and the noise of guns being cocked. The dealers were tooling up. Lucretius was grinning. And Magnus was wild-eyed and entering a state of hysterical frenzy as he smashed the metal ram again and again against the door.

  Crash!

  Magnus was bright red in the face, panting like a dog, though he had no need to breathe; he was chewing on a magic mushroom to heighten his senses and his battle fever; his berserker rage was upon him.

  ‘You could hurry up,’ murmured Lucretius.

  ‘Fuck the gods!’ roared Magnus.

  Crash! The door was breaking off its hinges.

  Fillide knew that a conventional police raid on a crack house would employ at least twenty officers and dogs, and all the officers involved would have military-calibre body armour to protect them. But Fillide, Lucretius and Magnus had no armour, and no backup. It was the three of them against an army of scrotes inside.

  Just the kind of odds they liked.

  Fillide felt a surge of joy that startled, then appalled her. Was she actually enjoying this? Surely that was not possible?

  Crash!

  The door smashed in, ripped off its hinges, and Magnus threw the Enforcer away. The three of them stepped aside as if carrying out a practised ballet move, and hugged the walls or balcony as a hail of gunfire flew past them from the cornered gangstas within.

  Stonework shattered, and the sound of gunfire and ricocheting bullets shattered the silence of the moonless night. Then Lucretius lunged an arm across and threw a pin-less grenade inside. When it blew they ran in, through the flames.

  Inside the flat Fillide saw, through the billowing smoke and yellow-tongued fast-spreading fire, five men and four women, most of them holding automatic rapid-fire handguns and shooting blindly into air. Two shooters were already dead on the floor, ripped to pieces by the grenade. The overhead lights had been blown out by the blast, and the only illumination was from the burning furniture. But Fillide had perfect night vision and she aimed and shot faster than thought.

  An instant after she had fired her first two bullets, two men hurtled backwards, as if their strings had been pulled. She was using hollow point .45 ACP cartridges and the impact was phenomenal.

  One woman turned fast and fired her Uzi right at Fillide and the bullets accurately connected, ripping through Fillide’s torso and legs. She felt the shock of pain and injury then Lucretius’s gun barked and the woman died and Fillide herself kept firing. Magnus was hit by a shotgun blast in the chest and he roared in delight.

  The three of them marched through the flat in a darkness lit by the burning sofa and near-continuous muzzle flashes. They walked slowly, shoulder to shoulder, blasting away and reloading and blasting again; massacring all in their wake.

  There were eleven riddled corpses lying on the floor in various contorted positions when they had finished. When Fillide lit a flare they could see that blood smeared the walls and ceiling like a Jackson Pollock drip painting.

  Magnus and Lucretius checked the other rooms, turning on all the corridor lights and lamps. Eventually Magnus found a young coffee-coloured woman in a T-shirt and jeans cowering under a bed.

  ‘I was just here to see my boyfriend, I’ve got nothing to do with –’ she began to say.

  He despatched her with his bare hands before she finished her sentence, then dumped the body in the living room. Fillide gave the girl’s corpse the briefest of glances, then thought of her no more.

  The smell in the room was nauseating; several of the drug dealers had voided themselves in their death throes. Magnus blew out the windows with a shot from his Grandpower semi-automatic pistol, and let in some perishingly cold night air.

  ‘That went well,’ said Magnus.

  Lucretius puked blood.

  ‘You’ve been silver-bulleted?’ Magnus asked.

  Lucretius nodded: pale. ‘In the gut,’ he said. He sat down. He took some deep breaths.

  ‘Give it five,’ suggested Fillide.

  Lucretius puked more blood. Then he wiped his mouth. ‘I’m fine.’

  He stood up, his healing process complete.

  They’d made an inordinate amount of noise in the course of their raid, but none of them were worried about that. Roy had paid the local CAD dispatchers to ignore all 999 calls regarding shots being fired in the Belmont Estate, Battersea. And in any case, in Fillide’s experience, no one bothered to dial 999 any more. Not unless their house was on fire or they were kids prank calling.

  So the Trinity saw no urgent need to leave the scene of these multiple homicides. Instead, they showered and put their bloodied clothes into bin bags. Fillide had a bullet hole in her leather jacket, which was annoying. So she binned that too, and clad only in bra and jeans she searched the flat. They found twelve kilos of heroin and the suitcase of antiquities that Linklater had authenticated. A good day’s work.

  Lucretius was still grinning. He had been a legionnaire under the Emperor Trajan in life, and combat was an unceasing pleasure for him.

  ‘Nice flat,’ he said.

  It was in fact a shithole.

  Magnus was equally elated after the carnage. He raided the kitchen and found a bottle of whisky and a bottle of brandy and blended them in a pint glass. Fillide sipped the remains of the whisky from the bottle. Lucretius opened a bottle of red wine by biting off the neck and swallowing the glass fragments: his party piece.

  Magnus drank his pint of brandy-whisky without pause. Then he smacked his lips and sighed.

  ‘If I were a poet, I would tell the story of this day,’ Magnus said. ‘This great battle we have fought and won!’

  ‘It was a turkey shoot,’ said Fillide. ‘No glory. Just another job done.’

  ‘Ah you have no romance in your soul,’ he said, reproachingly.

  ‘I have no time for tales of courage. It’s all shit.’

  He snorted, annoyed.

  ‘Not so,’ said Magnus. ‘Not so.’ His eyes were dreamy with memories.
‘Not so!’

  Fillide knew the old Viking’s battle stories well. She knew that Magnus had lived a full and barbarous life. He had sailed in longboats. He had fought Franks and Gauls. He and his fellow warriors had pillaged the coastal towns of England and France on a yearly and sometimes monthly basis. He had even travelled to Greenland, a land of ice and bitterly cold waters with black skies overhead where a man could truly feel alone. Furthermore, as Magnus often bragged, he had once proudly served with Egill Skallagrímsson – ‘that mad fucker of other men’s widows’, as Magnus called him – on the side of King Æthelstan against the Scots and the Norse king of Ireland, at the legendary battle of Brunanburgh in England.

  Thousands of warriors had fought with swords and axes that day. And entire fields of green grass and yellow hay were left drenched with blood. The following spring the wild flowers grew thickly in those fields - the aromatic and colourful legacy of direst carnage.

  After the fiercest of battles, in which brutal warriors hacked at armour and flesh until the grass became a marsh of blood, Æthelstan’s army had prevailed. And Eigil, widow-fucker and curser of kings, survived and lived to the ripest old age. But Magnus himself had perished, hewn by a Scottish axe that sundered his skull and left him, in the words of the great poem about that battle, as carrion for ravens, toads, eagles and kites.

  And then, after achieving this glorious death, Magnus woke again in another place.

  At which point, the Viking had been bitterly disillusioned to discover that his beloved Valhalla was just a myth. For he did not find himself, as he had been promised, in a great hall with golden shields on the ceiling where he could carouse wildly and tell tall tales with his fellow dead warriors.

  Nor was there a goat called Heithrún, or a hart called Eikthyrni, or a boar called Sæhrímnir on which the warriors of the North could endlessly feast. Nor indeed was there any fighting, or feasting, or fucking, or glorious intemperate boozing. Instead the Viking’s afterlife was an eerie dimensional void in which Christian and Hindu and Japanese and myriad other demons co-existed with the damned of every faith.