The Last Angel

by Jon Jacks

  Tom was naturally athletic and lithe. He swung around while raising an arm, dashing the rifle barrel to one side. The shot shattered a nearby pot of geraniums rather than his head.

  Tom effortlessly transformed the whirl of his body into a smooth run, sprinting across the darkened lawns. He was heading towards the hidden Chrissy and Si almost as if he knew they were there, waiting for him.

  ‘Tom! Don’t, don’t run!’ his mother frantically screamed after him. ‘They’ll shoot! They’ll shoot you!’

  ‘Don’t shoot him, please don’t shoot my boy!’ Tom’s father yelled fearfully. Almost at the very same time, he threw himself at the nearest officer, clutching desperately at the gun to prevent it being used.

  Ignoring the parents’ despairing cries, the officers around them brought up their guns to their cheeks. Taking up firing positions, they aimed directly at the fleeing boy’s darkened, shadowy form.

  Suddenly, the darkness around the boy changed, expanding and moving as a tall man stepped out of the solid black of the lawns. The man brought up the stock up a gun, brought it down brutally on the side of the boy’s face.

  The boy collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.

  ‘Sorry Tom,’ Chrissy’s father apologised gruffly. ‘But they would’ve shot you!’

  *

  Chapter 30

  ‘My dad! My dad nearly killed Tom!’

  Even though she had just seen it with her own eyes, Chrissy still couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it.

  Her father had mercilessly clubbed poor Tom Burford to the ground.

  ‘If he hadn’t, as he said, the police would have killed him,’ Si replied breathlessly. ‘I reckon your dad was either very brave, or very stupid. Those officers could’ve just as easily hit him if they’d fired.’

  Chrissy didn’t find this as reassuring as perhaps she should have done.

  She had watched, dumbfounded, as her father had helped the officers drag the dazed Tom off. They’d carried Tom towards a large armoured van similar to the one used to herd the kids into by the green.

  Now, having silently sloped away from the street full of trucks, they believed they were at last far enough away to break into a run and speak without being heard.

  The streets they were passing down now were surprisingly quiet. Apart from the street lights, they were also remarkably dark, with no light emanating from the rows of houses. Either they had already been abandoned, the occupants perhaps taken away in earlier convoys of trucks, or the lights had been deliberately switched off to give the impression that no one was home. Every window was firmly shuttered, with the very same kind of heavy, metal boarding that had effortlessly slid into place in Si’s home.

  Now and again, from somewhere deep within the maze of darkened streets, they heard the crack of a gun, the harsh tones of a warning cry. Sometimes, too, down the distant end of a street, they caught the flash of light that they hoped was a protecting angel.

  Si dialled his mom and dad on his mobile, as much to make sure they were okay as to tell them he and Chrissy were heading their way.

  ‘Still no signal!’ he groaned in frustration, slipping the phone back into his pocket. ‘I hope – what the!’

  He jumped in surprise as a young girl suddenly appeared alongside him out of nowhere.

  ‘Who’re you? How did you do that?’ he demanded nervously and angrily.

  ‘It’s me, it’s me!’ the girl exclaimed urgently, unfurling her gloriously white wings. ‘Jial: Chrissy’s angel!’

  ‘Jial! You’re back!’ Chrissy exclaimed joyously, rushing forward to give her a tight hug.

  ‘Of course I’m back, silly!’ Jial returned the warm hug. ‘Did you really think I’d just leave you like that?’

  Chrissy stepped back slightly, wiping a tear from her eye.

  ‘But everything’s so strange and frightening aroun – wait! Si can see you?’

  She stared at Si in almost as much surprise as Si was staring at Jial.

  ‘Yes, yes, I can see her,’ Si mumbled in astonishment. Then he grinned, chuckled. ‘She’s cute: like a sweet little sister. Just like you’d more or less told me.’

  ‘That…that’s not possible!’

  Shocked, and weirdly feeling a little bit naked and embarrassed, Chrissy looked towards Jial for either confirmation or an explanation.

  ‘Yes, yes, sorry Chrissy: Si can see me now. That’s what I asked for – so I can help him. And so, that way, I can help you too!’

  She’d reached for and taken a firm hold of Chrissy’s hand. Now she made a move to stride quickly away, pulling Chrissy along with her.

  ‘So come on: we have to get moving. We need to get you both to safety. We need to find a convoy–’

  Chrissy pulled back on Jial’s hand, dragging her to a stop once more.

  ‘Jial, we can’t! We saw them putting kids without angels in a van…’

  ‘So?’ Jial grinned. ‘Si’s got an angel now, hasn’t he? You’ve just got to make sure the cops and the soldiers know it when we approach them!’

  She jerked hard on Chrissy’s hand, forcing her into a reluctant run.

  ‘Where Jial, where can we find a convoy?’ Si asked as he ran alongside them.

  ‘Same as you found one last time: look for an orb of light in the sky. And then try and get there before it starts moving again!’

  *

 

  ‘Why, why do we need a convoy, now you’re with us?’ Chrissy asked irritably as they ran through the darkened streets. ‘Can’t you protect us?’

  She couldn’t help feeling irritated, no matter how many times she told herself she was being silly. Jial was right, of course – this was the best, the only way, of ensuring Si was safe.

  Even so, she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed, vulnerable, as if every one of her innermost secrets had been unwittingly revealed to Si. It didn’t help that Si now had an almost permanent grin on his face. He swiftly switched his gaze between Chrissy and Jial, his amazed, joyful expression no doubt similar to the mischievous glee of anyone who’d discovered and opened someone’s secret diary.

  ‘Fight them you mean, fight a chiasmus?’ Jial said in reply to Chrissy’s questioning. She shook her head. ‘But I can, of course, call down an angel who can: if we find ourselves in trouble.’

  Chrissy recalled how the police officers had also referred to the attacking monster as a chiasmus.

  ‘What are these monsters?’ she asked. ‘How come we’ve never heard of them before? Where’ve they suddenly come from?’

  She was fighting for breath as she spoke. At last, they had spotted a semi-spherical globe of light illuminating a small section of the maze of dark streets lying ahead of them. They were now heading towards it as fast as they could. Despite her exhaustion and fear, however, Chrissy noticed that Jial seemed to hesitate before answering.

  ‘They haven’t just suddenly come from nowhere, I’m afraid.’ Jial’s voice was calm and smooth. She wasn’t so much running as rapidly gliding over the ground. ‘They’ve been around almost as long as humans.’

  ‘Mom and Dad’s arsenal: that’s not unusual, is it?’ Si asked knowingly. ‘All these convoys, shutters on the house – it’s all preparation, that’s right, isn’t it? Just in case we were attacked like this?’

  Jial nodded.

  ‘They knew: your moms and dads, all the adults. You were all just too young to be told just yet. The chiasmus are vicious, intelligent – but so are the guards who’ll be protecting the convoy. So remember what I said about letting them know I’m with you!’

  With another nod of her head, she drew their attention back to how close they now were to the brightly illuminated convoy lying around the next corner. They all elatedly whirled around the corner – and slewed to an abrupt, shocked halt.

  In the bright glare of upturned searchlights and headlamps twisted askew, the wrecked trucks cast hard, angular shadows. And the bodies of the dead were strewn everywhere across the groun
d.

  *

  Chapter 31

  ‘Mom! Dad!’ Chrissy tearfully gasped.

  ‘It’s a different convoy, a different one!’ Si exclaimed, urgently yet tenderly taking Chrissy in his arms. ‘I’m sure of it!’

  Even Jial appeared shocked and dismayed.

  ‘Yes, yes; it won’t be the same convoy that took Stu and Elaine, Chrissy!’ she managed to blankly blurt out.

  ‘What…what are these things?’ Chrissy muttered fearfully, glancing with wide, glazed eyes over the torn and bloodied bodies scattered around the wrecked and, in some cases, upturned trucks. ‘How can they do this to armed soldiers and police?’

  Guns lay alongside many of the bodies, often smashed or bent beyond further use.

  There were no bodies of the beasts.

  ‘The angels; why didn’t the angels protect them?’ Si breathed, fleetingly looking back at Jial with an almost accusatory glare.

  ‘I…I don’t know,’ Jial admitted with a dismayed shake of her head.

  Towards the centre of the wrecked convoy stood the armoured van that had been used to transport any young adult no longer accompanied by a protective angel. An entire side of it had been ripped open, a vast hole of shredded, jagged metal.

  From the surrounding darkness, there came a snort, a low, gleeful howl, a gravel-disturbing scuffling.

  Edgily reaching for each other’s hand, a horrified Chrissy and Si nervously tried to scan the enveloping shadows for any hint of movement.

  Jial threw her head back and yelled out a call for help.

  ‘I call on Saint Michial and the Angelic Guard to protect us!’

  *

  The darkness of the shadows shifted, flowed.

  First a gruesome, angular head, then massive powerful shoulders emerged from the fluctuating blackness. The creature languidly stepped out of the surrounding debris, heavily muscled arms loosely swinging by his sides. His gait was smoothly athletic.

  He snorted, growled.

  From close by him, there came a responding grunt. From behind him, a hungry slavering.

  More creatures moved out of the shadows, every one of them gigantic, colossally built. They were all ridiculously contoured with an array of constantly writhing, undulating muscles. Reflecting the light of the trucks’ headlamps, their eyes appeared glazed, empty – soulless.

  Illuminated like this, the beasts could have been some lost, evolutionary branch of ape, a creature giving rise to legends of fearsome monsters, to fairy tales of Beauties and Beasts. Yet they moved like men, confident of their power and dominance over the small group of inferiors they were nearing and gradually surrounding.

  Si and Chrissy nervously edged back from the approaching creatures, shivering in fright. To their side, disturbed metal sheets slid and grated against each other. More shadowy forms emerged, seemingly gruesomely chuckling, their teeth bared.

  Jial, probably with less, if anything, to fear, stood her ground.

  Once again, she threw back her head and screamed into the night.

  ‘Michial! Gabrielle! Please help us!’

  *

  Chapter 32

  The nearest beast grinned, as if understanding yet mocking Jial’s plaintive cry. A set of sharp fangs glistened like icebergs where they were caught by the light.

  Like the rest of the creatures gradually appearing from the surrounding wreckage, he seemed in no hurry to approach the angel and her charges. He, like his companions, was obviously confident that his prey had nowhere to run, no chance of escape.

  His eyes glowed like orbs of fire, flickering brightly with flames of gold, silver and red. Around him, the eyes of the other beasts similarly flickered into flaming life, as if transformed into globules of molten lava and glass.

  The steady advance of the creatures came to a halt. At first one by one, and them almost as one, they began to curiously peer upwards, shading their now painfully squinting eyes beneath swiftly raised arms.

  Illuminated in an abruptly intense brightness, the edges of their fur appeared to blaze, as if set alight. Then they glowed almost white as everything around them was also instantly irradiated with a shimmering light, like a slice of early dawn irresistibly imposing itself on a fragment of night.

  With all the suddenness, noise and blinding glare of an impacting meteor storm, the previously encroaching creatures were sent reeling back across the scattered debris. The bright light immediately steadied and remained in place, however, forming a wall of fiery orbs lying between the fallen beasts and a relieved Chrissy and Si.

  Through the barrier of swirling flame, they could just make out the still illuminated forms of the creatures lying beyond it. Strewn awkwardly across the angular wreckage, the beasts writhed slowly, as if either painfully or slightly dazed. Even so, they were gradually rising to their feet once more.

  The creatures roared and growled, a mingling of anger and agony. They were all clutching at some injury or other, whether a flopping, useless arm, or a shoulder pinioned with the broken, glistening shaft of a lance or spear.

  As Chrissy and Si’s eyes at last adjusted to the fierce, coruscating glare of the blazing orbs, they began to make out inside each one of them the shimmering armour, wings and weapons of angelic warriors. Knights in silver or gold, bearing glittering shields, wielding flaming swords, or standing ready with raised, fiery spears. Their massive, feathery wings rapidly spread out behind them, creating a seemingly impassable barrier.

  With threatening snarls and raging screams, the beasts charged into and threw themselves against the line of angelic knights. They lashed out with powerful strikes of fists and claws. They leapt high into the air, dropping down once more with pounding arms and fiercely kicking legs. Teeth were bared, jaws snapped, bit home, and rived and tore.

  The angels silently yet resolutely retaliated with the violent thrust or swooping curve of an expertly handled sword, the lunge and plunging stab of a spear, the push, shove and deflecting arc of a shield. They hacked, slashed and struck out at the furiously oncoming beasts as if both tireless and unaffected by any emotion.

  Writhing and screeching in pain and frustration, the odd beast would now and again reel backwards, nursing painful wounds. But they would immediately rush back into the fray, ducking away from a slashing sword to swing out with a slicing cut of their own evilly sharpened talons.

  No longer afraid, Chrissy and Si watched the battling angels in awestruck admiration. But Jial, who had stepped back towards them, pulled urgently at Chrissy’s arm.

  ‘Quick, quick; we have to leave, while we have the chance!’

  ‘Leave?’ gasped an exasperated Si. ‘Why leave now? This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!’

  ‘The angels are winning! We’re saved, Jial!’ Chrissy breathed excitedly, her eyes never leaving the ferociously fighting lines of combatants.

  ‘Trust me; we have to leave, now!’ Jial insisted, pulling harder on Chrissy’s arm and dragging her back towards the main bulk of the shattered convoy. ‘We need to move quickly; in fact, if we can find one, we need to find a truck or something that’s still working!’

  ‘Another truck?’ Chrissy wailed miserably with a glance at Si’s still obviously badly injured hand. ‘I could hardly drive the last one!’

  ‘Chrissy, I reckon Jial’s right!’ Si warned, almost tripping over his feet in his sudden eagerness to step back from the warring lines. ‘Some of the beasts look ready to break through!’

  As all three of them broke into a run, Chrissy peered back over her shoulder to try and see what Si could mean. She was just in time to see one of the creatures ignore the thrashing sword strikes of an angel, and duck beneath the wall of wings.

  With a satisfied growl, he started elatedly looping towards them.

  *

  The beast moved incredibly swiftly.

  He was gaining on them far quicker than either Jial or Si appreciated, Chrissy realised.

  Spotting a large gun that had been cast
to the floor, she bent down, picked it up, and swung around to aim it at the pursuing beast.

  She’d never held a gun before, let alone fired one. Of course, she’d seen in movies, read in books, that all you had to do was pull the trigger. But wasn’t there something to do with flicking a safety catch on or off? And what if the gun had already been fired? What if it no longer contained any ammunition?

  Too late to think of all that now – the snarling beast was almost upon her.

  Chrissy pulled sharply on the trigger.

  There was a noise like a clap of thunder, repeated innumerable times. The recoil of the blast punched back painfully hard on Chrissy’s arm and lower chest. It threw her off her feet, sending her rolling across the ground.

  Caught in a rapid burst of bullets at point-blank range, the beast’s head disappeared in a vaporised cloud of blood and flesh. The huge, powerful yet now headless body crumpled to the floor almost at Chrissy’s feet. She nervously scuttled back, crablike, on her hands and feet.

  She glanced over towards the line of battling angels, which seemed to be holding. Strangely, however, many of the beasts appeared to be shrugging off the ferocious blows. It was as if they were so intent on chasing after her and the others, they’d become increasingly uncaring of the punishment being meted out to them.

  Another beast was already edging his way into a position where he could duck beneath the angelic wall. His eyes were firmly locked on hers, readying himself to charge across and capture and probably kill her.

  An anxious Jial was hovering low over her, the fluttering wings enveloping her in a draft of reassuringly cool air. Accepting Jial’s proffered helping hand, Chrissy quickly pulled herself to her feet.

  Si was standing by a small, open-topped vehicle, some kind of jeep. The uniformed driver was still limply slumped across the seat. Si brusquely pulled the driver clear, letting him flop lifelessly to the ground. Even Chrissy could see the bright gleam of a deeply gashed throat.

  ‘Si, your hand!’ Chrissy cried out worriedly as he slipped into the driver’s seat.