Wickstaff rolled her eyes. “Because this is a chance to flex his muscles. He wants to send a team out to deal with the threat.”
“And I agree, it’s a good idea,” said Tosco, stating his words defiantly. “General Thomas should solidify his authority as soon as possible. Last thing we need is a weak leader.”
“I take no issue with a bit of posturing,” said Wickstaff, “but I see no reason to risk men outside our defences. Fifty demons are not a threat so long as we hold our position behind the barricades, but Thomas fears they might multiply.”
“And might they?” asked Maddy.
“Yes,” said Tosco. “The longer we leave this group, the bigger it could grow.”
Wickstaff shrugged. “Perhaps. We should tread cautiously though and not send men out without getting all the facts first.”
“What facts?” asked Tosco. “We’ve killed enough demons by now to know what we’re doing.”
“But the demons have changed,” said Maddy. “Who knows how they’ll behave if we attack them?”
“Exactly,” said Wickstaff. “I’m about to tell General Thomas the very same thing. We should wait this out and try to gather a bit of information on how best to proceed. No one is in imminent danger. There’s no need to be hasty.”
Speaking of the devil, General Thomas appeared from amongst a group of officers and approached Wickstaff. “Brigadier, we shall conduct a full sweep of the city at twenty-one hundred hours. I want every last enemy dispatched in a five-mile radius.”
“That’s unnecessary,” said Wickstaff. “I know it might seem counterproductive to leave enemies within our borders, but they’re not a threat unless they gather in greater numbers. They could be stragglers, but we have no way of knowing until we learn more. Sending men out in darkness is a bad idea. It would be better to at least delay until morning.”
Thomas looked at Wickstaff as if she were a waitress who had brought him cabbage when he’d ordered steak. “I have been wiping out these beasts for nigh on a year, Brigadier, while you’ve been idling behind your walls. Perhaps it’s been too long since you had to get your hands dirty, but I assure you these small groups can grow like a fungus. Better to mow the lawn while the grass is low than wait for it to tower over us.”
Wickstaff stood for a moment like a malfunctioning robot. Then she blinked. “General Thomas, we do not have the benefit of open desert or aerial drones here. Send men out into the ruins in the dark and they could be walking into anything. Demons haven’t gathered in Portsmouth like this since the Great Battle. I fear they are here for a reason. Who sighted them anyway?”
“One of my scout teams. They went a mile past the barricades to verify the integrity of our perimeter. They reported several dozen demons congregating on the outskirts of the city, spilling out of some parkland. Hundreds more may be on the way.”
“Which is why we should stay behind our defences. That’s what they’re for.”
“Defences are for hiding. Those days are gone.”
Wickstaff pressed the bridge of her nose as if she were getting a migraine. “You’re risking people’s lives for no gain. I respectfully disagree with your intentions.”
Thomas turned away. “That is your right, Brigadier, and as general, I have the right to do as I please.”
Wickstaff stepped after the man, not allowing him to turn his back. “Not with my people you don’t!”
General Thomas growled. “They are not your people any more.”
Wickstaff closed her eyes and took a breath. It looked like she was meditating, but then she exploded into action. “Commander Tosco, call the unit leaders. None of my men are to leave the barricades. We have an hour of daylight left and I want them all on guard duty by the time night falls. Also, call the boats and have them light up the ruins with their spotlights.”
Tosco took a half-step to leave, but then paused. His eyes darted between Wickstaff and Thomas. “I-I’m afraid I can’t do that, ma’am. You handed operational command to General Thomas. I can’t contravene his orders.”
General Thomas gave a smug grin, but Wickstaff didn’t relent. “Well, Commander Tosco, I am taking back control of my people. You can serve who you damn well please, but I refuse to send men and women into unnecessary danger.”
“You have no right!” Thomas roared right in her face, but Wickstaff didn’t even blink. “We had an agreement, woman! You answer to me.”
“We agreed, General Thomas, that you would take things steadily and not charge in like a bull with the clap. As far as I’m concerned, you have not kept your word, which frees me from obligation.”
“You’ll catch a bullet for this. This is mutiny.”
“No,” said Wickstaff. “This is survival, which means doing everything you can to keep people alive.” She turned to Maddy. “Tell our people they report to me and only me.”
Maddy grinned. “Gladly, ma’am.”
“You will not give that order, girl!”
Thomas pointed a bony finger right in Maddy’s face, but it only infuriated her. She stuck her middle finger up at the old fart and kept her focus on Wickstaff. “Anything else I can do for you, General Wickstaff?”
“Yes, would you kindly move General Thomas’s things out of my office, please?”
Thomas went bright red, a stark contrast to his grey, colourless hair. “I am not leaving Portsmouth, you fool. I’ll have you, and anyone who joins you, locked up or shot.”
Wickstaff faced the man, and it was then Maddy realised the woman was an inch taller — an Amazon. “General Thomas, you may command your men in whatever way you wish, and you’re welcome here at Portsmouth, but if you fight me, you’ll regret it. I’ll wipe the floor with you.”
Wickstaff nodded. “And by the end, you’ll be left with half your army and none of mine. Good luck liberating the United Kingdom then. I’m sure Commander Klein will take his nuclear submarine elsewhere too. That would make the German Confederation far more of a threat.”
“Don’t you dare blackmail me, woman!”
“I just did, and you can suck my dick if you don’t like it.” Wickstaff turned on her heel and marched away. Maddy couldn’t help but smile as she looked back and saw Thomas trembling in abject fury.
Your move, asshole.
Smithy was waiting at the back door, ready to close it at the first sign of anything unfriendly. He didn’t know what had made him go back to help Mass, but he couldn’t forget that a stranger had saved his life last night – a stranger who had apparently once been a friend of these people. Aymun, they had called him. He could still remember the sight of the man being impaled through the chest.
Once Mass and Addy were inside the kitchen, Smithy slammed the door. A heavy china cabinet stood beside it, so he put his shoulder behind it and heaved until it was blocking the door. He immediately felt safer, but then a pang of worry struck him. “H-Hey, where’s Dave?”
Addy looked him in the eye for a moment then glanced away. “I don’t think he made it. I probably wouldn’t have either if he hadn’t started freaking out.”
“What d’you mean?”
“He was clutching his head like he had bugs inside his brain or something.”
Smithy nodded. “He can feel when Crimolok is near. It’s like demon-sense or something.”
Mass was rooting around the drawers for knives, but he looked up now. “Crim-a-who?”
Tox entered the kitchen from the other side. “We don’t have time to chat. We need to get this place squared away.”
Smithy looked back at the china cabinet, wondering if it would hold. Then he hurried to catch the others as they exited the kitchen. They all gathered in a large reception hall at the front of the house. It was dimly lit, but Harriet was busily lighting candles.
“Where’s the basement?” asked Mass.
“Over there.” Tox pointed to a door beneath the stairs. “Cam is gathering weapons right now.”
Mass frowned. “Cam?”
“The dude who wa
s trying to kill us. He said his name is Cam. We should watch him.”
“Too right,” said Smithy. “I’ll go give him a hand.” He rushed to the door Tox had pointed to, and when he opened it, light splashed up a short, wooden staircase. At the bottom, he found a survivalist’s wet dream. The damp-stone room was crammed with supplies. Crates of bottled water and tinned food took up the entirety of one wall while a stockpile of assorted weaponry filled the two far corners. Smithy hadn’t eaten in days, so he threw etiquette aside and grabbed some kind of protein bar from a box and bit into it. It was the best shit he’d tasted in months.
At least if I die tonight, I’ll die happy.
“Some of the weapons have no ammo,” said Cam, “and some are untested. We take whatever we find, but this is not a gun-wielding country – part of the reason I come here from Nigeria. Now, I wish I were back home.”
Smithy huffed. “Don’t we all? What stuff here do you know has ammunition?”
Cam looked around, moving stocks and barrels aside as he searched the stash. “This hunting rifle.” He handed Smithy a long, lightweight weapon that could have been an air rifle for all he knew. “It fires the bullets in that red box.”
Smithy picked up the ammo box and was pleased by its weight. “Anything else?”
Cam picked up a few handguns and put them in a duffle bag alongside a plastic tub box full of loose rounds. Then he grabbed a pair of shotguns. “These are old, but they should do.”
“Let’s get it upstairs where it can do some good.”
Smithy turned his back and carried the tub of ammo upstairs. Cam followed with the duffle bag. It was strange, but he didn’t sense any threat from the man despite them having been shooting at each other only ten minutes ago.
Everyone grabbed a weapon and positioned themselves at the hallway windows. Smithy hadn’t noticed earlier, but the they were boarded up with only a few inches clear at the top. Wooden boxes had been placed on the ground so people could step up and aim their guns over the top of the boards. Despite the age of the house, the windows were double-glazed with opening panels at the top. They made perfect parapets.
“What’s happening out there?” asked Smithy. “It’s starting to get dark.”
“Chaos,” was Mass’s reply, as the big man peered through the gap at the top of one of the windows. “The demons are everywhere. Can’t you hear the screams?”
Of course he could hear the screams.
“What about the women?” Harriet moved with a candle into the centre of the room. “They’re out there by themselves.”
Mass flinched. “Shit! I forgot about them.”
“They’ll be sitting ducks out there,” said Smithy. He hopped up on one of the boxes and peeked through the window gap. The writhing mass of demons and the static, bloody corpses turned his stomach, but he blanked them out and searched for the paddock and those shipping containers. There had been two dozen women out near the pit.
When he spotted the containers, he assumed the worst because he didn’t see a single woman, not one screaming for their life or trying to get away. All he saw was two unmoving containers. But then he realised something. “The containers are closed! I think… I think they locked themselves in.”
Harriet sighed. “Thank God. We need to rescue them.”
“Let’s rescue ourselves first,” said Mass. He cocked his shotgun, still standing on one of the boxes. “Everyone ready to kill some demons?”
Tox stepped up to the last of the three windows. “I should have already died twice today. Let’s see how long I can keep this going.”
Mass turned to the others, those not at windows – Harriet, Cam, and Addy. “Make yourselves useful wherever you can. They won’t all come at us through the front door.”
“The house is boarded up well,” said Cam, “but we will not be safe forever. How many fiends do you believe are out there, my friend?”
Mass sneered. “I’m not your friend. You were trying to kill me.”
“And you were trying to kill me. Now you are the enemy of my enemy.”
“Which makes us friends for now,” said Smithy. “Let’s keep things civil and see who’s alive at the end. Cam, to answer your question, there are a shit tonne of fiends out there, so get to a window and start shooting.”
Cam lifted a pair of handguns and nodded, then he, Addy, and Harriet disappeared into the house.
Smithy looked to his right, to where Mass was standing. “You’ve survived worse odds than this before, right?”
“Sure, once. Except that time I had a buddy with a flaming sword and an ageing pop star with angel powers.”
“Oh,” said Smithy. “Well, I have chewing gum, if that helps?”
“You’re shitting me? Of course it helps. Hand it over, man.”
“Heads up!” Smithy tossed the squashed green packet from his jeans pocket and Mass caught it.
Mass popped the gum into his mouth and nodded his thanks. “Have to admit, for a bunch of murdering wankers, the people here knew how to plan ahead. If we can keep these barricades in place, we might have a chance.”
“What went down here?” Smithy looked out at the demons. They were almost done with their victims. Soon they would turn their focus on the farmhouse. “The people here, they – what? – kidnapped you?”
Mass grunted. “To be more accurate, they stole from me, lured me into a trap that killed most of my men, and then slit my throat.”
“I was going to ask you about that,” said Tox in a low and miserable voice as he peered through the third window. “Looks like it was a bit of a bleeder.”
Smithy looked at the blood-soaked bandages around Mass’s throat and imagined how it must have felt. “Yeah, I reckon that’s going to leave a scar. I hear apple cider vinegar helps.”
Mass smirked. “It’s just a paper cut. We get out of this and—”
The attack started. Their conversation ended at once.
Finished with everyone out in the open, the demons now rushed at the house. They threw themselves at the boarded-up windows and the thick front door, and for a second, the sheer force of the assault made it seem certain the barricades would splinter like wet matchsticks. Miraculously, they held.
Smithy angled his shotgun at a demon right beneath his window and fired. The top of its head exploded, which made him even more glad of the boards because they shielded him from the spatter. Mass and Tox fired their weapons too. Elsewhere in the house, Addy and the others joined the fight. The world became a disorientating barrage of ear-battering noise – animalistic screeches and relentless gunfire. Smithy had never been in a fight like this, and it made him realise how detached he’d been from the end of the world. There were still people in the world fighting to stay alive. He had never been alone.
Mass was firing the hunting rifle Cam had brought from the basement. It was single-action, so he had to reload it after every shot. It meant the demons were piling up at his window. When he went to shove the barrel back out through the gap for another shot, it was yanked from his hands. “Damn it!”
Smithy watched the demons toss the rifle into the yard. He managed to shoot the bastard that had yanked it away, but the others hooted and yelped with glee. For a moment, they reminded Smithy of the monkeys at the zoo – mischievous scamps – but then one leapt up and tried to claw his face through the gap in the window. He reminded himself how wicked they were.
“This is like how they used to be,” said Tox between shotgun blasts. “They’re relentless and blood-crazed.”
“Looks like they’re done taking it easy,” said Smithy, groaning. He never could have survived on the road if the demons had remained in berserker mode. All of a sudden, things seemed hopeless again.
“I need to get the 12-gauge,” said Mass. “Can you two hold on without me?”
“What choice do we have?” said Tox. “Try to keep hold of your weapon this time.”
Smithy pulled his trigger and obliterated a primate trying to barge open the front doo
r. He stopped to reload and was about to tell Mass to go, but the big guy had already headed into the kitchen where he must have left his shotgun. From the rear of the house, Cam and the others continued firing. Demons surrounded the house.
“Hey, Smithy! You in there, bitch?”
Smithy recognised the voice, and it sent chills down his spine like an icy tongue. He stared out the window and saw Frankie standing beside the tractor, kicking at one of the dead men lying there. His face was contorted, flesh dripping away like hot candle wax. “Smithy, I know you’re in there, blud. I can smell you.”
Tox glanced aside to Smithy. “You two know each other?”
“Yeah, we met recently. It didn’t go well.”
“Enough said. I’ll leave him for you to kill.”
“No, feel free to take a shot. I’m not fussy.”
Other demons surrounded Frankie, and he stood far enough away that Smithy would never hit him with a shotgun. Was that why he was keeping his distance? In fact, all the demons had stopped assaulting the house and were now standing back. It was as if they had been ordered to pull back.
Frankie called out again. “Hey, Smithy, I’ll make you a deal, yeah? Come out and let me bugger you against this big old tractor tyre and I’ll let your friends live. Go on, take one for the team.”
Tox looked at Smithy in a way he didn’t care for. What must the guy be thinking? Frankie was one unhinged piece of shit – even for a demon.
“Sounds like a good deal to me,” said Mass, coming back into the hall with his heavy shotgun. “Get out there and drop your kecks, boy.”
Smithy swallowed. “He-He’ll kill me. Frankie is a complete psych—”
Mass shook his head and smirked. “Chill out, I’m just pissing around. We don’t negotiate with demons. He wants you, he can come get you.”
Smithy nodded. “Thanks.”
“You’re one of us.” Mass filled his pockets with shotgun shells from the tub and got back to his window.
“They’ve fallen back,” said Tox. “Maybe they’ve decided it’s not worth it.”
Hell on Earth- the Complete Series Box Set Page 126
