There was a knock at the door.
When Guy opened it, he found Frank standing there.
“My aunt is gone,” he said. “I tried to get a hold of her, but a nurse at the local hospital answered the phone.”
Guy sighed. “I’m sorry, Frank.”
“Thank you. Have you got a hold of your kids? Nancy?”
“Nancy is okay, but Kyle and Alice are in London.”
“Their class trip?”
Guy huffed. “Now I really feel like an asshole. I forgot all about it, Frank. They’re stuck on the other side of the Atlantic, and Nancy can’t get hold of them. I… I don’t know if they’re okay.”
“Of course they are. I’ve never known a thirteen year old boy as grown up as your Kyle. He’ll be looking after Alice even as we speak. They’ll be okay.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am. So what’s our next move, Captain?”
“We head for Norfolk, as commanded. We can refuel and get new orders.”
“Sounds like the smart move. You will have a problem on your hands though.”
Guy tilted his head. “What problem?”
“Begins with a T.”
“Tosco? What’s my second-in-command up to now?”
“Some of the men want to leave, go to their families. Tosco told them they could.”
“He said what? I’ll throttle him.”
Frank put his hand against Guy’s chest. “Just stay calm. You can control the situation best by making the most sense. Tosco’s just another demagogue who thinks you run a ship by pandering to your men.”
“Demagogue? Have you been studying the dictionary again?”
“Not a lot to do on board a ship but read. I’ll get the Hatchet moving again. Sooner we leave New York in our wake the better, if you ask me.”
Guy nodded agreement.
They marched up to the pilothouse where they found Tosco and a gathering of enlisted men. Guy was happy to see that none of his other officers had sided with Tosco and were all elsewhere, performing their duties. Tosco held his chin high and squared his shoulders as if he were about to put forward a great speech of noble cause.
Guy didn’t give him a chance to utter a single word. “I understand that some of you want to leave,” he said, wiping the smug expression from Tosco’s face as he took the upper hand and addressed the issue before it had a chance to be raised. Tosco would not get the opportunity to play hero and put forward the concerns of his men. “But I would remind you of why you are here: You are enlisted men of the United States Coast Guard. You are not trained killers, like the Navy. You are not merchantmen or fishermen. You sail the Seven Seas not as pirates. Every man and woman aboard this ship signed up to be a hero, and today we saved over thirty civilians from a terrible fate. For that, they will thank us for the rest of their lives. You probably think that earns you the right to disembark this ship and go searching for your families. Perhaps it does. Yet, I ask you to think carefully, because the moment you step off this ship, you cease being heroes at a time when the world needs heroes more than ever. As long as people are in need of help, it is our duty to stay aboard this ship and do what we signed up to do. Something terrible happened today, and our country is relying on us to minimise the damage. If we fail to protect our homeland, then what do our families even have left to live for? America is a country forged by brave men and women. The moment we stop fighting for our freedom is the moment we lose it. I, too, have a family, but I will remain aboard the Hatchet and do my duty. I ask you to do the same. We are heading to Norfolk, and there we will rearm and refuel. What will happen beyond that, I do not know, but I suggest that those of you that pray do so now. Pray for us all.”
Before anybody replied, Guy turned to Frank and gave his orders. “Sail us out of here, Chief Petty, and don’t stop until I say so.”
~Rick Bastion~
Devonshire, England
Rick still had the injured woman in his arms, but now Sarah had passed out on the floor beside him. Keith was frantic trying to call Marcy while everyone else in the pub paced up and down. The news report said they were at war—not just Britain, but the entire world. Where had the creatures come from? What did they want? Was it all some kind of media conspiracy? Other than what he’d seen on the news, Rick had witnessed none of it for himself. He’d walked to the pub only two hours before, and it had been a normal evening. It wasn’t until this injured woman had collapsed in front of the bar he saw anything wrong first hand.
“The paramedics are here,” somebody said, and Rick looked up to see a man and woman entering. Both wore green NHS jumpsuits, and were quick to rush over to help. There was no mistaking the haunted look in their eyes.
“What happened to her?” the female paramedic asked as she started examining the unconscious woman.
“I have no idea,” said Rick. “She just ran into the pub and fell down.”
“Something bad is going on,” said Keith. “It’s all over the news. My wife isn’t answering her phone. Something’s happened.”
“We know,” said the male paramedic, whose bald head was slick with sweat.
“What do you know?” asked Rick. “Anything we don’t?”
“This woman is dead.” The female paramedic said. She went to stand up. “We can’t help her.”
“What? You haven’t even tried,” said Rick.
“She has no heartbeat. I’m sorry. Usually, we might try to do something, but we had another seven emergencies called in on our way here. We’re the only ambulance in the area, and we have to spend our time where it can do most good. This woman has been dead too long.”
Rick looked down at the woman whose head he’d been holding for fifteen minutes and saw the truth of it. The amount of blood that’d leaked from her chest had formed a massive puddle on the wooden floor beneath her, and her arms were the colour of chalk. She was cold.
“Can you help Sarah?” he asked. “She passed out from the shock.”
The female paramedic took something from her kit bag and waved it beneath Sarah’s nose. She winced and began to stir. “She’ll be fine. Just give her a few minutes to wake up.”
“We have to go,” the male paramedic urged.
“What do we do with her?” asked Keith, pointing to the dead woman.
“I’ll inform the coroner,” said the female paramedic. “Just place a sheet over her and wait for someone to come.”
Rick eased the dead woman’s head down onto the floorboards and stood up. He retrieved his pint from the table and downed half of it.
The paramedics disappeared out the door, which left the people inside the pub to stand around anxiously. Nobody knew what to do. Rick wondered if he should go home or stay where he was.
Screaming from outside.
Rick stared at his brother. “What now?”
“I don’t know. Just close the door.”
Rick nodded, went over to do so, but couldn’t help glancing outside at the car park. The ambulance was parked right outside, its lights chasing away the shadows of approaching night. The paramedics were nowhere to be seen.
The screaming had stopped.
He took a tentative step outside the pub and looked around. The front of the ambulance faced him at an angle, its large rear doors hanging open. He couldn’t see inside from where he stood, but the paramedics must be in the back.
Who had screamed?
“Hello? Is everything all right out here?”
The sound of movement from the ambulance drew him forward another few steps. It took a handful more until he had moved around sufficiently to face the rear of the vehicle.
Something horrible glared back at him.
It was a man, but also a monster. His eyes were cloudy and white, lips cracked and bleeding. He looked dead.
“Are you okay?” asked Rick, not knowing what else to say.
“I am your end,” the dead man hissed. “I will use your hollowed skull as a latrine.”
Rick noticed
the bald paramedic lying on a gurney in the back of the ambulance. His neck had been twisted around and broken. This monster had murdered him and would do the same to Rick. He turned to run, but the dead man leapt out and grabbed him, cold hands seizing his throat. Rick fought back the only way he could—with his legs. He lifted his right foot and stamped down on where he hoped a kneecap would be, and the dead man howled and collapsed sideways. The icy fingers slipped from around Rick’s neck and allowed him chance to stagger away.
The dead man bellowed. He reached out his hands to try and grab Rick again, but every time he tried, he crumpled to the ground as his broken leg folded.
“Is it safe?” came a voice.
Rick glanced upwards to see that the female paramedic was lying prone on the roof of the ambulance. A bad scratch parted her left eyebrow, but she seemed otherwise okay. “What are you doing up there?” he said. “Come down and help-”
The dead man tackled Rick around the waist, dragging him to the ground. Before he could react, his enemy had straddled him and was back to squeezing his throat. “Submit to slavery, worm, and you may get to live out your days as a foot licker.”
Rick struggled, tried to bring his legs up to kick the monster off of him, but he couldn’t get any leverage. Every second, the pressure in his head increased and made it impossible to focus on anything else other than trying to get a breath.
“Your men will be sodomites, your women whores.”
“Well, doesn’t that just sum up the 21st Century?” Keith appeared over the dead man’s shoulder, holding what looked like an old iron fire poker. He brought the metal rod down two-handed, like a barbarian wielding a broadsword, and shattered his target’s skull, caving it in at the top so that it resembled a grizzly heart shape.
Rick swatted the hands away from his throat and gasped uncontrollably, even as his brother and the paramedic dragged him to his feet.
“There are more coming,” cried the paramedic.
Clutching his throat and still struggling for air, Rick glanced across the car park and saw that more of the dead men were indeed coming. They lumbered down the road like zombies, but were cursing and shouting threats. One of them brandished a tree branch like a spear.
“Get inside,” Keith urged. “Now!”
The three of them hurried back inside the pub, closing and locking the thick wooden door behind them. The helpful businessman understood that danger was on its way because he quickly dragged a table over to act as a barricade.
Rick staggered over and finished what was left of his pint, then slumped over the table while Keith took charge. He told them what was coming and that they all needed to find weapons. It was good that he was being proactive, because nobody else was. Rick least of all. He could do nothing but close his eyes and wish it wasn’t all happening.
“R-Rick?”
Rick opened his eyes and glanced to the side. Sarah had woken up on the floor and was propping herself up on her elbows. She looked bewildered. “What’s happening?”
He knelt beside her. “We’re in a spot of bother.”
“The monsters are here, aren’t they?”
Rick nodded.
“Are we going to die?”
He looked at her face and couldn’t bear to tell her the truth; so he lied. “We’ll be fine. My brother already took care of one of them.”
Sarah smiled at him, but she looked more likely to cry than laugh.
“Why aren’t they trying to get inside?” asked the female paramedic, whose name turned out to be Maddy. She peeked out of one window through a gap in the curtains.
“Because they don’t want to end up like their friend,” said Keith, patting the iron poker that he had not put down since bashing the dead man’s brains in. His bravado might have been masking the fact he still couldn’t get through to Marcy.
“It’s because they’re smart,” Rick muttered as he worked on his fresh pint. “They’re figuring out the best way to get at us.”
Maddy folded her arms. “Then we have to be ready.”
The businessman, Steven, clutched an iron poker, identical to the one Keith had. He waved it in the air as he spoke. “Whatever is out there picked on the wrong people.”
“This isn’t time for bravado,” said Rick, staring into his pint. “The thing that attacked me wasn’t human. It was like a zombie, only it spoke. It hated me, hated all of us.”
Sarah plonked herself down on a chair next to him. “We need to get help.”
Keith pointed his poker at Maddy. “She was supposed to be our help.”
Maddy sighed. “On our way here, emergency calls came in from all over. Only reason Tom and I made it here was because you people were the first to call. I wouldn’t hold up much hope of getting any more help. I’ve got a feeling that emergency services are inundated right now. Poor Tom…”
“Then we stay here,” said Keith. “We batten down the hatches and arm ourselves. The Army will get a handle on this eventually. That thing that attacked Rick was easy enough to kill. Wherever these things came from, they underestimated us.”
“I need another drink, Diane” said Rick, suppressing a dire need to belch. The barmaid fetched him one.
“I don’t think getting drunk is the answer,” said Keith.
Rick held up his fresh pint. “You go ahead and be the hero. I’m going to get pissed.”
Steven waved his poker again. “We need to stick together and stay focused. You’d be dead if your brother hadn’t helped you.”
“I would be too,” said Maddy. “Thank you.”
Keith lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. “Just doing what anyone else would have. I’m sure my brother would do the same.”
Rick sighed. “So what do we do?”
“We get ready,” said Keith. “Those things try to get inside, we do everything we can to stop them.”
Maddy nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
Everyone agreed, and within minutes, they all had weapons. Rick, Steven, and Keith clutched iron pokers from the pub’s three fireplaces, while Diane and Maddy wielded knives from the kitchen. Everyone else went with whatever they could find, ranging from jagged beer bottles to a baseball bat found hidden beneath the bar. It was just in time, too. The attack began not ten minutes later.
The fight came not to the front door, but to one of the windows. The thick double-glazing did not shatter, but crumpled inwards a piece at a time. Everyone formed up, weapons at the ready.
A window smashed at the opposite end of the pub.
“Damn it,” Keith shouted. “Split into two groups, one at each window. Move, move, move.”
Rick headed towards the other window, taking Sarah and Steven with him. To his dismay, they both looked at him like he was the one in charge.
The window shook in its frame, the curtains flapping as the air moved. “You both ready?” Rick asked.
Sarah nodded. Steven pulled off his blazer and threw it on the floor, rolled up his shirt sleeves, then gave a thumbs up.
“If they’re anything like the one that attacked me, these things like going for the neck. As soon as they lunge, let them have it.”
Large shards of glass fell loose and shattered on the ground. Rick tightened his grip on his poker, knuckles creaking. Sarah held her beer bottle near her waist, ready to stab.
Then the siege halted.
Both windows stopped cracking as the enemy outside stopped attacking. Rick looked at his brother at the other side of the pub, who replied with a confused frown.
There was noise. Rumbling.
Rick cocked his head. “Is that…? Is that the ambulance?”
“It sounds like somebody is driving it,” said Steven.
Sarah shifted on the spot. “Those things can drive?”
“It looks that way,” said Steven. “Why, though? If they want to get at us in here, why drive away?”
Rick had a thought. “Unless…”
Sarah looked at him. “Unless what?”
Rick
heard the noise of the accelerating engine just in time to shout a warning. “They’re going to ram us.”
An earthquake shook the building and the barricade in front of the pub’s door disintegrated as the nose of a speeding ambulance crashed through it. The heavy wooden door flew off its hinges and crashed against the bar.
“They’re dividing us,” Rick shouted. “They’ve split us in two.”
The ambulance’s rear doors sprung open and dead men spilled out. From the driver’s seat, a corpse with long black hair slid out. It looked at the poker in Rick’s hand and laughed. “I’ll gut you with that thing before you ever get chance to swing it.”
Rick defied his enemy and swung at a dead woman with mottled grey breasts. His head was fuzzy with alcohol, but he was glad to have the edge taken off now. Sober, he might have retched at the sight of her caved in skull.
Steven joined the fight and took out two dead men in quick succession. Sarah was less aggressive, and backed away until a dead woman was right on top of her. Desperation made her strike out, but she managed to slice her attacker’s throat open.
From the other side of the pub, obscured by the crashed ambulance, the other guests fought for their lives. Rick worried about his brother and gritted his teeth as he connected a blow with a brunette’s rotting skull. He fought his way to the ambulance, but dead men continued to spill out into the pub and blocked his way.
The fight had just got started.
Steven held his own. With Sarah huddled behind him and striking out at anything that got too near, they made a good team. Rick took out another attacker, gained several more feet towards the ambulance, but the black haired dead man stood in his path.
“A valiant effort, worm.” He struck Rick in the chest with the force of a kicking horse and sent him flying into the air.
Rick hit the ground in a crumpled mess, and it was only dumb luck that allowed him to keep a hold of his poker. He thrust it out in front of him as protection while he fought to get his breath.
“You are pathetic, worm.”
Rick waved the poker, but was powerless on his back. “W-what are you?”
Hell on Earth Trilogy: The Complete Apocalyptic Saga Page 9
