“Hello?” The voice was American. The voice was Alice.
Guy hyperventilated.
Wickstaff steadied herself with a hand on her desk. “Yes, hello there, sweetheart. Is your name Alice…?”
“Granger,” said Guy.
“Alice Granger?”
“Yes, do …know you?”
“No, you don’t, sweetheart, but I know your dad. He’s here with me.”
Silence.
Wickstaff filled it. “I know that’s a lot to take in, Alice. Your father, Guy, came all the way from home to come and get you. He’s here with me. Do you want to speak to him?”
“Yes.” More crackling.
Guy struggled upright, and then wobbled across the room. He put his hand on the receiver Wickstaff offered him, but before he snatched it, he paused and made eye contact with the general. She was grinning.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, and exited the room.
Guy spoke into the receiver. “Alice, it’s daddy.”
“…DADDY! Daddy, oh my, oh my. Daddy, that’s really you, isn’t it?” His little girl exploded in a shower of emotions—all of them high-volume. The line had become crystal clear, almost as if their very yearning was powering the communication. The strange banging continued in the background, faint.
“Yes, honey, it’s really me. Where’s your brother?”
Alice stopped chattering and went deathly silent.
She breathed into the receiver.
“Alice, honey, where’s Kyle?”
More banging. It seemed a little louder.
“Kyle’s gone, dad. The monsters got him.”
Guy almost dropped the receiver. It felt so heavy in his hand. The saliva in his mouth turned to half-set cement, and his words came out garbled. “Alice, tell me… Alice, are you… what?”
“Kyle was trying to help, and the monsters got him. I’m sorry, dad. I should have…”
“I’m coming to get you, sweetheart, that's all you need to be thinking about.”
“Daddy, I miss you.”
“I miss you too, honey.”
Crackle.
The banging started again. This time it was closer, louder.
“Honey, what’s that?”
“I… I don’t—”
Shouting in the background, people panicking.
Gunfire.
Screaming.
“Dad! Dad, the monsters are here. Dad, come and—”
The line decayed with static. Guy shouted into the receiver. “Alice! Alice! Alice! Alice!”
Vamps
“Back there when you saved me, the angel was hurt. It was bleeding.”
Vamps stared at the woman, but it was Aymun who answered her. “The angels are only invulnerable so long as the gates they came through are intact. The one you saw came from a gate in London that no longer exists. Its tether to whatever force empowers it has been broken. The angel can be killed.”
“We been tracking that prick for weeks,” said Vamps, “ever since we closed that gate.”
Marcy balked. “You three closed a gate?”
Vamps cracked his knuckles and grinned. “Yeah... sorta... kinda.”
What had actually closed the gate was Vamps shoving a lowlife called Pusher into it, but that much Marcy didn’t need to know. She seemed a nice lady. Max, her kid, rode on Mass’s wide shoulders, but Marcy always stayed close to him—she clearly didn't trust them yet, and that was understandable. After her initial surge of relief at being found, Marcy hadn't spoken much. Yet, Vamps sensed her gradually opening up.
“We’re fighting back,” said Vamps, nodding to the MP5 on his hip he'd plucked from the corpse of a black-clad police officer. The SMG was down to its last magazine, but he'd put the previous one to good use. “We closed a gate by ourselves, and I bet there are other people taking it to the demons too. This is war, and it ain’t over. Not by a long shot.”
“Wow!” said Marcy. “I never thought Max and I would see anyone again who wasn’t crazy or dangerous—or both.”
Vamps tapped the woman on the back playfully, but realised it was a gesture to which she was unaccustomed. He folded his arms so they could do no further harm. “Never said we ain’t crazy, luv. Aymun, especially, has a few screws loose. It was him what told us about the angels being tethered to their gates.”
Marcy turned to Aymun, her eyebrows curious. “How did you find that out?”
Aymun blinked slowly like a holy man imparting great wisdom. The guy cracked Vamps up. “I know because I came out of a gate.”
Marcy’s eyes widened. “You’re one of them?”
“No, my sister. I am as human as you. I came out of a gate because I stepped through one first.”
“In Syria,” Vamps added. He still loved hearing the story of how Aymun leapt into a gate in the desert and popped out of another in the paved heartland of London, like some inter-dimensional version of taking the Tube.
“The gates are all connected,” said Aymun. “They lead to the enemy’s realm.”
Marcy frowned. “Hell?”
“Yes, my dear, Hell—or something akin to it. The reality of what I saw on the other side is hard to describe. It is a place devoid of feeling. Numb, dark, and lacking anything other than despair. Those I met were not tortured of the flesh. Instead, they were abandoned to an eternity of nothingness. Nothingness forever. That is why the demons want out. They want to feel again—to exist again. Just moments in Hell were enough to make me start to lose a grip on myself. Hell makes you forget who you were and become something else. Something empty.”
Marcy covered her mouth. “So, Hell really is invading earth? There were rumours, at the beginning.”
Aymun blinked slowly and sighed. “It is an invasion from a place so twisted and malformed that the creatures who live there lack anything resembling compassion. Yet there is a small contingent that fights to cling onto what they were. There are souls in Hell that still possess a spark of humanity. I met one such being named Daniel.”
“Wait for it,” said Vamps, grinning. “Shit’s about to get real.”
Marcy frowned but kept her attention on Aymun, even as they walked side by side. Further on, Max giggled on Mass's shoulders as he began doing squats. Aymun took a deep breath and continued.
“Daniel is a fallen angel, one of Lucifer’s kin. He wishes to aid humanity against the forces of darkness.”
“Lucifer? As in the devil? Why would anyone associated with the devil want to help humanity?”
“Because the forces behind this invasion threaten more than merely us. I was not beyond the gates long enough to fully understand, but the fallen angel, Daniel, told me help is coming, and that the angels can be hurt if we destroy the gates they came through. You have witnessed this for yourself.”
Marcy nodded, completely enraptured. “The angel caught fire.”
Vamps flicked his wrist and made a snapping sound. “Because we’re badass motherfu—”
“Vamps!” Mass barked from up front. “Not in front of the kid, man.”
Vamps cringed. “Sorry about that, little man. How you doin’ up there?”
Max turned around, losing his balance and forcing Mass to grab a hold of his small thighs. “My butt hurts. Mass has hard shoulders. My dad’s shoulders were comfier.”
“Want me to put you down, kid?” asked Mass, looking up.
“No, it’s safe up here, and I can see far.”
“Okay then. Get ready for the crocodiles!” Mass hopped around and started leaping. Max squealed hysterically, the most beautiful sound Vamps had ever heard. Who knew Mass was so good with kids? Dumbbells, barbells, and the ladies, yes, but kids, no.
Vamps kicked a dead fox out of the road so Marcy didn’t have to step over it, then turned to the woman and spoke quietly. “Max’s dad…?”
“We weren’t together when the end came.”
“Divorced?”
Marcy sighed. “Not exactly. He… He cheated on me with his secretary.
I found out a few days before the gates opened. Last I heard of him, he was off to see his brother in Crapstone. Tell you the truth, I've been heading south hoping to get there and find him. For Max, more than anything.”
Vamps covered his mouth and tried not to laugh. “Crapstone? That’s a place?”
Marcy ended up chuckling too. “Yes, it’s on the south-east coast. I went there once; it's pretty.”
“Well, me and Mass are from Brixton, so we don't really know pretty. Before all this we were… well, we weren’t much of anything.”
“And now you’re wandering heroes, saving women and children from certain death.” She looked up, forced herself to make eye contact. “I don’t care what you were, Vamps. You and your friends are good people. Look at my son; he’s laughing. You have no idea what that means to me.”
Vamps shifted uncomfortably. “Hey, it’s no problem. We just keeping shit real, you feel me?”
Marcy reached out and squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”
“Hey,” Mass barked again. “We got a petrol station up ahead. Worth checking out.”
Vamps sidestepped so he could see around his friend’s wide back. Sure enough, a brand-name petrol station with an adjacent mini-mart lay ahead. The place was shuttered.
“Must be a rough part of town to have shutters,” said Mass. “Might mean no one's been inside though.”
Aymun pointed to a white van parked by the pumps. Someone lay dead inside, rotting in the driver’s seat. Mass skirted around it to keep Max from seeing the grisly scene. Vamps was once again impressed by his friend's paternal instincts.
“There’s no way in,” said Marcy. “We’ve tried to get through shutters before; it’s impossible.”
“Nah,” said Vamps. “You just got to know the way in.”
Mass dropped Max to the ground and took off his backpack, then tossed it to Vamps who quickly unzipped it. From inside, he pulled out a heavy copper mallet. “Here's our key.”
“You’ve been carrying that around in your pack?” Marcy asked Mass, incredulous.
Mass shrugged his boulder-shoulders. “It’s a workout, innit?”
Vamps turned to his friend and grinned. “Boost?”
“Yeah, man.”
Vamps trotted up to the front of the petrol station and waited for Mass to link his fingers. Once he did, Vamps stepped up and allowed his friend to launch him upwards like a child. Ten feet in the air, he wrapped his fingers around the lip of the low roof and hung on. It wasn’t difficult to hoist himself—he’d lost at least a stone in the last few weeks, so he was soon standing up on the roof.
“Be careful,” Marcy shouted.
“And watch out for bird poop,” added Max.
Vamps looked down and saluted. A strange gesture, but one he thought the little boy would appreciate. “I’ll be done in a jiffy, little man.”
The roof of the petrol station was flat and lined with sticky felt. A large air conditioning unit took up the centre of the space, but that wasn’t the way in. The way in was anywhere on the long flat roof not close to an edge. Vamps got to work. Picking a spot at random, he raised the mallet over his shoulder and brought it down as hard as he could.
The roof cracked.
But it would be some time until it yielded completely, so he struck at the same spot again and again, several times, before stopping and tearing up a section of felt. Underneath lay wooden planks. He struck at the timbers one at a time, causing them to split. Nails jutted out of the splintering wood, but Vamps worked around them and got to the plasterwork beneath.
“Almost in,” he shouted after twenty or so minutes.
“Cool,” shouted Mass from the forecourt. “I’m getting hungry down here, man. Reckon they’ll have Pot Noodles? Gunna boil me some water and wreck a couple tubs of Chicken Chow Mein.”
“What’s that?” asked Max.
“You never had a green Pot Noodle, kid?”
“No.”
“Then prepare to become a man.”
Vamps chuckled and allowed the voices to fade. He still had work to do.
It took another thirty minutes before he was finally through the roof. There wasn't much that could go wrong breaking into a building when it didn’t matter about noise or visibility. No one was around to call the pigs, so burglary had become extremely easy—a way of life in this new world.
Vamps lowered himself carefully, swinging his feet until he located a shelving unit underneath him, which he then descended like a ladder. At the bottom, he found himself inside a dimly lit store resembling a thousand others that existed up and down the country. As he'd suspected, the place was unlooted. Half the stock lay rotting and spoiled, still on the shelves, but the other half…
Gallons and gallons of soft drinks and water lined the unlit refrigerators. A year’s supply of booze too. Canned foods of all varieties piled the centre aisles and made Vamps' mouth water. Having done this many times before, he hurried behind the counter and grabbed a handful of plastic carrier bags. He filled them with sports drinks first, and then moved on to chocolate, crisps, peanuts and biscuits. The high calorie snacks were handy because they were small and easy to stock up on.
Once he had filled a dozen bags, he climbed the shelves again and tossed the bags up through the hole and onto the roof. Finally, he filled a dozen more with the lightest stuff he could find, along with one other thing he didn’t want to forget. By the time Vamps climbed back onto the roof, the sky had dimmed, and the temperature had dropped by a couple degrees.
Mass and the others stared up at him from the forecourt.
“Your search yielded well?” said Aymun.
Vamps nodded. “Yeah, man. It yielded very well. Here!” He tossed down the bags. “Make sure you catch this shit, yo!”
Mass and Aymun caught most of it, and Max and Marcy stood there as if they couldn’t believe their luck. When a bag of chocolate hit the pavement and split open, Max squealed with delight. It was another sound that Vamps loved. He was getting soft.
With the final bag tossed, Vamps clambered off the roof and landed with a heavy splat that sent shock waves up his heels. “Shit, why does that always have to hurt!”
“Are you okay?” asked Marcy, hurrying over.
He put up a hand. “Just need to learn how to land. I got flat feet, but don’t you tell nobody. If you’re hungry, dig in. We have enough to last us a few days.”
“Did you get everything? I can't believe our luck.”
“There’s still loads left inside, but we can’t carry more. Besides, we’ve been on the road long enough to know there’ll be other places.”
Marcy closed her eyes and looked off into the distance. "It's so insane..."
Aymun stood nearby and begun to nod. “That world ended so suddenly? Yes, it is insane. Places like these are echoes of the past.”
Marcy laughed, an edgy noise that sounded fraught with anxiety.
Vamps folded his arms. “What’s funny?”
“Oh nothing. It’s only that I’ve been struggling to provide for Max for weeks now, and in a few hours, you manage to provide more food than I could in a month. I’ve been fleeing in terror at any demon that comes within a mile of me, while you come along and chase off an angel. Ha!”
“Why is that funny?”
“It's not. In fact, it makes me feel rather useless, like the apocalypse is only as hard as I've been making it.”
Vamps let his arms hang by his sides. “We struggled at first too, but once we stopped being victims, things eased up. You’ll be okay now, Marcy. You and Max will be okay.”
“Yeah,” said Mass. “We look after each other, don't worry.”
“But for how long?” Marcy ran a hand through her frizzy brown hair. “We can’t wander the earth forever.”
Vamps glanced sideways and saw Max tucking into a Freddo bar. He grabbed a sports drink from the line of shopping bags and took a decent swig. Then he went back to Marcy and looked her in the eye. “We’re heading down to the coast. T
hree days at most if we walk.”
“The coast? Why?”
“Get on a boat or something, innit?” said Mass. “Or maybe find a place on the beach and fish. The Navy might have things under control. All we know is that there’s nothing around here. London was a ghost town by the time we left.”
“I wanna go on a boat,” said Max, unwrapping another Freddo bar. Chocolate stained his mouth. “Daddy has a boat. Maybe he’ll be there.”
Marcy huffed. “Daddy has a tiny little motor boat that rocks in bad weather. But fair enough, it sounds like a good plan. Would be good to have a destination, wherever it is.”
“Then let’s make the most of what sunlight we have left, my friends,” said Aymun, fastening the lid on a bottle of water from which he'd been swigging. “A traveller must keep moving until the moon meets his back.”
Vamps rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, Aymun. Let me take a slash first.”
Mass glared at Vamps. “Language, dude!”
“What? That’s not even swearing! Fine!” He knelt to face Max. “I’m just going for a weewee, little man, okay?”
“Me too! I need a weewee.”
Vamps glanced at Marcy who looked around nervously for a moment before nodding. “Just be careful.”
So Vamps found himself holding hands with a child and leading him around the back of the building to make weewee. Something he never would have imagined himself doing at one time.
Life has turned bizarre.
When he pulled out his python to commence peeing, Vamps found himself unable to go. Perhaps it was because Max was staring right at him. “You’re black,” the little boy said.
“Um, yeah. That okay with you, little man?”
“I’ve never had a black friend before. I don’t think my daddy likes black people because he never talks to any.”
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like us. Some folks… some folks don’t have much of a comfort zone beyond what they're used to.”
“What’s that mean?”
Vamps strained, tried to push his urine out. The boy continued looking at him. “It means your daddy probably just didn’t have a chance to make any black friends.”
Hell on Earth Trilogy: The Complete Apocalyptic Saga Page 62
