Hell on Earth Trilogy: The Complete Apocalyptic Saga

by Iain Rob Wright

  Richard collapsed into a nearby chair and placed his hands on his knees. He vomited on the carpet. Afterwards, he wiped his mouth and apologised.

  Carol shrugged. “You know how much blood and puke I’ve seen lately?”

  “Not as much as we have. I watched my wife get her head crushed by a seven-foot skeleton. What the Hell are these things?”

  “Demons. Did you ever think they were anything else? Those gates lead straight to Hell, I would bank my pension on it. We are at war with Lucifer’s legions.”

  Riaz snorted. “You can’t verify that.”

  Carol raised an eyebrow. “Want a bet?”

  “How?”

  “I can verify it because we captured one of the bastards alive and have him locked in a cupboard.”

  They all laughed, except for Carol who never changed her expression.

  “What? You’re telling the truth?” said Aaron.

  Carol smirked. “David, show them.”

  The disfigured man appeared and nodded to the door behind him. “Right this way, ladies and gentlemen.”

  They went back out into the hallway where David opened a door to a broom closet. Inside, tied to a chair, were the remains of a human being. It blinked at them when they turned on the light.

  Vamps

  Vamps ducked behind an abandoned tour bus and tried to understand what he was seeing. After escaping the warehouse, they had found themselves on Oxford Street outside the Selfridges building.

  Where it all began. Where the London Gate had opened and spilled evil upon the city.

  And the gate was still open, its glow lighting up the night making it seem like day.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Mass. “Now that we’re looking right at it…”

  Vamps nodded. “I know, Mass. I know.”

  “Come on, you pussies,” said Pusher, already moving along the side of the bus with his two guys. “Time to get the fuck out of here.”

  But Vamps didn’t move. The gate was a hundred metres further down Oxford Street, but even at that distance, he could see the huddled masses of human beings cowering before the shimmering lens. Demons moved everywhere, lining the street, but the section of road directly before the gate was filled only with frightened people—chained up like the ones Vamps had seen Prime Minister Windsor hand over.

  What were the demons doing? Why were they keeping people alive?

  “We can’t leave all these people,” said Vamps. “They need our help.”

  Pusher stopped moving and looked back. “Are you fucking kidding me? We need to run. Look at your ginger muppet. He’s lost the plot.”

  Vamps looked at Ginge and rubbed his friend’s wide back. He had not said a word since Ravy had died on the floor of their cell. “He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”

  Pusher sniggered. “Yeah, whatever, mate. He’ll get you sodding killed. Unless you leg it right now.”

  Vamps looked back at the people huddled in front of the gate. He winced when he saw one of the demons step forward to grab a young girl—a child—and hoist her up against the shimmering lens.

  “Mass, we have to help them, right? Mass?”

  “I dunno, man. What can we do? There are a hundred of them monsters there.”

  The gate pulsed, and the little girl screamed. The demon holding her pulled out her arm and held it straight. Something glinted in the light and streaked across the poor girl’s flesh. She screamed again and blood jetted out of her wrist. She tried to struggle, but the demon held her in place. Eventually, her struggles weakened, and the only thing holding her on her feet was the demon.

  The gate pulsed faster. A bolt of lightning shot out, struck the girl in her chest. She bucked and seized, but then stood straight and shoved aside the demon holding her. The little girl turned around, wickedness glowing in her eyes.

  “I think they just possessed her,” said Vamps, feeling sick. “She’s… she’s one of them now. What the fuck?! That’s why they have all those people chained up! They want to possess them!”

  “Then we don’t have no choice,” said Mass.

  Vamps looked at his friend.

  “We have to help those people.”

  Vamps grabbed his friend’s hand. They pulled each other close and enjoyed the last moment of peace they might ever get as they were probably about to throw away their lives.

  They had no choice.

  Vamps turned to get Ginge, to try one more time to talk his friend back to reality, but he was taken by surprise when Pusher grabbed Ginge by the back of the shirt and tossed him into the road. Ginge tripped over his own feet and sprawled against the tarmac. Instinctively, both Vamps and Mass ran to gather him back up, but as they did, Pusher yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey bitches, enjoy Hell.”

  The shout was loud enough to alert the demons at the gate.

  Pusher and his two guys legged it into an alleyway and were gone from sight in seconds.

  Vamps and Mass tried to pick up Ginge, but he was a dead weight, not even trying to help them by standing. No matter what they did, they could not get him moving. But no way were they leaving him.

  Vamps looked at Mass, who looked back at him. Both of them were scared, but neither was about to leave the other. They were family, and that was how brothers on the street lived and died.

  “I got your back,” said Mass.

  Vamps nodded. “And I got yours, brother.”

  They managed to get Ginge to his feet just as the demons surrounded them. At least Vamps had been able to hide his grandfather’s Browning under his t-shirt before they grabbed him.

  Witnessing a mass of demons racing through the night towards you is terrifying, it doesn’t matter who you are or how tough you might be. That was why Vamps found himself shaking for the first time in his life.

  The burnt men were accompanied by their ape-like companions, and other demons more human—more like greying zombies. There were also a couple of flesh-and-blood human beings, but their eyes were pure Hell. They were possessed.

  “You want to fight?” Mass asked, holding Ginge against his big chest so that their friend didn’t see what was coming.

  Vamps shook his head. “Not yet. We fight now, we die. Maybe later.”

  “Later we’ll probably be dead too.”

  “But not for certain. We fight now and it’s certain.”

  Mass let his body relax just as the demons fell upon them. Vamps swore as a burnt man clobbered him around the back of the head and shoved him. Before he had chance to shake it off, he was grabbed on either side and restrained. One of the ape-like creatures backhanded him with one of its long, bony arms. Vamps saw stars and went limp as they dragged him away, but turned his head enough to see that Mass and Ginge were being brought along too. Least they were still together.

  Being this close to the demons—with them actually touching him—made it hard to breathe. The air was like spoiled fish on a barbecue.

  What lay ahead was worse.

  Further up Oxford Street, the imposing gate shimmered in all its wretched glory. Before it huddled a mass of frightened people, as many children as adults. Their fear was intoxicating. It made Vamps want to throw up.

  “Sssit down,” one the demons hissed. Vamps was about to oblige, but the thing hit him in the back of the shoulders. It knocked the wind from his lungs, and he ended up panting on his hands and knees. Mass and Ginge got clobbered too, but Ginge didn’t cry out. He was too far gone to even register pain.

  Vamps reached out and touched Ginge’s arm. “Ginge, man. Please!”

  One of the demons kicked Vamps in the backside. “Quiet!”

  That the demons could speak was frightening. Vamps had considered them monsters until now, but they were more intelligent than that—monsters with an agenda, enemy soldiers that could be cruel and vicious all on their own. They were so confident of their own strength that most of the prisoners weren’t even secured. Their fear kept them in place.

  Vamps shuffled up beside his fr
iends and kept his mouth shut. He still had to believe there would be an opening—not just to escape, but to help some of these people. Pusher may have screwed them over, but Vamps was right where he had been intending to be—sat in the road in the heart of the city with his family beside him. If he was going to die, better it be here. If he was going to live, better to fight here.

  The demons grabbed a young man—perhaps thirty—and shoved him towards the gate. His screaming face was awash with snot and tears. “Please, I have a family. I have children. I’m a school teacher.”

  A burnt man whacked the man in the kidneys and shut him up. Then sliced open his wrist. “You are nothing.”

  The gate shimmered and popped.

  Another lightning bolt.

  It struck the man the same way it had struck the girl. Only a few seconds passed before he turned around and smiled at his comrades. “My brothers!” The school teacher now spoke with a German accent. “My brothers, thank you. I am back in this world of eternal struggle, and I am ready to fight!”

  The demons continued their work, shoving people up against the gate and bleeding them. All manner of accents materialised. Vamps heard people change their speech to German, Spanish, French, and many tongues unrecognisable.

  Who was possessing these people, and why had they not been able to escape through the gates like the other demons?

  The latest possessed soul spoke with an Arabic accent or similar. The young woman in broken spectacles looked bizarre as she spouted off fiercely. “Ha! I stand in their graveyards as I swore to do one day. I topple their towers and ruin their greatest city. I stab fear into their hearts. But I knew nothing of true terror. Now, I will bring this degenerate world to its knees. The Red Lord will reign.”

  Mass looked at Vamps and raised an eyebrow. “Man, I think that’s Bin Laden.”

  Vamps said nothing to that. It was absurd. So why did he believe it might be true?

  The huddle of frightened people grew smaller with each sacrifice, and the buffer between the gate and Vamps reduced. He wanted to help, yet for thirty minutes he sat and did nothing whilst people had their bodies taken over. Soon he, Mass, and Ginge would suffer the same fate. So why wasn’t he doing something?

  Because he had absolutely no idea what to do.

  He looked at Mass. “I think it’s time to fight.”

  “Really? Shall I take the forty demons on my right, and you take the fifty on your left?”

  “Maybe these other people will join us if we start something.”

  Mass scanned the trembling, white-faced people. “I don’t think so, blud.”

  Vamp sighed, nodded, sighed again. “Then I guess this is it. The Brixton Boys’ last stand.”

  Mass sighed too. “Time to die?”

  “I think so. You got my back?”

  Mass punched his palm. “Till the grave, Jamal.”

  The mention of his birth name almost wrecked Vamps. Thoughts of his old dear—the only person who called him Jamal—and the friends he had known and lost, made him want to weep. But it also made him angry. Angry that these fucking demons thought they deserved another shot at the world after screwing up the first time round. They belonged in Hell. They had no right to be here.

  Vamps nodded at Mass. “Let’s do this.”

  “Quiet!” One of the zombie-like demons marched towards them, looking like a middle-aged postal worker with jaundice. Before the demon struck him, Vamps leapt up and head-butted the fucker right in the face. Mass leapt up and grabbed him around the neck before he fell.

  Snap!

  Mass let the dead demon fall to the ground where its face fell unnaturally to the side on a broken neck.

  All Hell broke loose as the remaining survivors screamed and cowered. Some leapt up to join the fight, but not enough. This was a fight they would all die fighting.

  Vamps was okay with that.

  He pulled out his Browning and popped the nearest burnt man in the head. Then he swivelled and aimed another shot into an ape’s face. The next trigger pull brought the echoing click of an empty chamber, so he took down the third demon by smashing the old wooden butt into its face. The scrap of skull between its eyes crumpled and blood filled both eyes.

  “Lights out, motherfucker!”

  Vamps turned and saw Mass perform a double leg take down, not on a demon but on a gun toting human who was working with the demons. One of Windsors’ men. He knocked the wind out of the son-of-a-bitch and took his pistol. He shoved the muzzle in the guy’s mouth and pulled the trigger without pause. It was messy.

  Vamps thought of the rapist he had shot, and froze for a second. Everything around him moved in slow motion, and he wondered if he was paralysed. All sound merged into a single, high-pitched buzz. The only smell was blood.

  He was in Hell.

  Then he was back.

  Back in a world where killing was no longer avoidable.

  Mass leapt up and continued firing shots, rounds flying all over the place and striking demons in the kneecaps and arms. One bullet even hit a kid, but there was no time for guilt. These people were dead anyway unless Vamps and Mass somehow pulled off a scene to rival Sparta.

  Vamps remembered Ginge and spun around to get him. Surprisingly, the big lad was on his feet. Vamps grabbed him by both arms and looked into his eyes. “Help us, Ginge. Help us get the fuck out of this.”

  Ginge stared straight through him. He turned away like he’d just remembered he’d needed to be somewhere. Vamps cursed.

  The three or four men who had leapt up to join the fight were now dead—torn to pieces. It had seemed like only thirty-seconds since they had first jumped up. That was how quick it was between a man living and dying in this new world.

  But Vamps was still alive, and so were his friends.

  Vamps’s focus had still been on Ginge, which led to him being blindsided by a burnt man, but Mass was there to grab the monster in a rear naked choke and pull it away. Vamps stamped on one of its knees to make the struggle a little less strenuous. Mass broke another neck and threw the demon to the ground, but he was tired and panting.

  Vamps was tired too.

  A hundred demons surrounded them—a giant net closing in. The enemy had stopped rushing in so carelessly though, now approaching slowly and methodically. Vamps smirked that a legion from Hell was being cautious around him and Mass. It was something he could hold on to if this was the moment of his death. He had died as one hard-as-nails motherfucker.

  They were about to rush back into the fray when something blasted down Oxford Street. Windows either side of the road that were not already broken now shattered into a million pieces. The demons stopped their attack and stared upwards. Mass and Vamps exchanged glances and realised that something was behind them. The blasting roar had come from further down the road.

  “Should you go first or should I?” asked Vamps.

  Mass swallowed. “I’ll go.”

  “Okay.”

  Slowly, Mass turned around to face the other way. Once he had, his eyes almost popped out of his head. “Fuck me.”

  Vamps swallowed and turned around too. His eyes went even wider than his friend’s. “I was hoping I’d imagined that thing.”

  The giant stared down at them both, a huge monster glaring at a pair of ants.

  Hernandez

  The shot echoed off the deck, but the sound it made as it struck Danza was muted. Nothing more than a soft thud. The look on Danza’s face was also muted—in fact, he seemed more confused than anything else.

  Then the Lieutenant fell to one knee. A rosette of blood bloomed in the centre of his chest. His breaths wheezed, like air escaping from a tyre.

  Hernandez clenched his jaw and made sure Danza looked at him as he spoke. Dusk cast a shadow across his face—or maybe it was the man’s light fading. “You forget yourself, Lieutenant.”

  Danza opened his mouth, but instead of words, only blood spilled out. The man fell onto his belly and died like a fish. Hernandez let his weapon r
est by his side, but spun to address his crew. “You all forget yourselves! When Commander Johnson fell, the Augusta became mine. I will not tolerate mutiny—not when the world itself is at stake. I seek only to aid my country. As Navy men and women, you all vowed to do the same. So I ask you, what exactly is the problem? Why heed the words of a weasel like the one who lies dead at my feet?”

  Silence. Nobody dared answer the question.

  Hernandez re-holstered his weapon and allowed his anger to subside. “Good, then I expect you all to follow orders from now on. Without exception.” He turned to Cuervo, who smiled nervously yet affectionately. “Lieutenant Cuervo is my second-in-command. You will all obey her as you obey me.”

  “She’s just an Ensign,” someone muttered.

  Hernandez scanned the crowd. “Right now, she is the only one I trust to carry out my orders. Dismissed.”

  Hernandez turned on his heel to leave, but before he did, he motioned for Cuervo to follow him. She followed along without complaint, but there was something about the way she glanced at him that suggested she feared him. That was good.

  As they walked in silence, it occurred to Hernandez that he didn’t know where he was heading. Then it came to him, and he knew exactly where to go.

  Johnson’s cabin was his now, more spacious than any other on board. The man’s things lay everywhere, and Hernandez was quick to hide away the former commander’s family pictures in a drawer.

  “Would you like me to store all of Commander Johnson’s things for you?”

  Hernandez looked at Cuervo and smiled. “You are a senior officer now, Lieutenant. You don’t tidy up. Have someone else do it later. I just wanted to come here and take a look for now.”