by Simon Clark
"Water?"
"Don't worry," said Ruth. "Sea water. While the tide was in, Chris and I lowered buckets on string." She managed a smile. "I think we did pretty well."
"Best run through the procedure, folks. Mark, Tom and John are using their shotguns. Chris ... You and I are chucking the bottles. Be careful. If we drop one, we'll fry."
"I won't drop them." Chris had stuffed his fists into the pockets of his jeans so no one would see his hands shake.
"Right. Procedure, folks. When the Saf Dar are close enough, we pour fuel into that pie tin. Chris and I each take a bottle. We dunk it neck-first into the tin to moisten the rag wick. Hold it out to Ruth who lights the rag with the cigarette lighter, then we chuck the bottle at one of the men ... one of the things down there. Oh, needless to say, pick your target first. You don't want to stand there with a burning bottle in your hand longer than you have to. Right. ... Any questions?"
"Only one." Ruth looked out across the beach. "When are they going to come?"
For the first time that morning Chris looked out over the wall. Twenty feet below, the sea washed around the rock on which the sea-fort rested. Great clots of kelp floated in the turbulent water. The tide was dropping, sections of causeway were being exposed between waves. The roar of the surf softened.
Eight figures had advanced halfway across the causeway. The Saf Dar. Standing as they always did, like a line of red dominoes, the sea swirling around their bare legs. Their hairless heads were turned toward the sea-fort and those eyes glared with an unquenchable brutality.
They did not move. They had slipped into their statue mode.
What if they never came near the gates again? Maybe they had learnt after all that those in the sea-fort had the ability to destroy them. The choice then would be did they leave the safety of the sea-fort to attack the Saf Dar on the beach?
He watched Mark put a box containing shotgun shells on the top of the wall beside Tom and John Hodgson. When it came to the showdown they wouldn't want to waste time fumbling in pockets for ammunition. Reloading the guns after two shots would be cumbersome enough anyway.
Tom grunted, "It looks as if the buggers are in no hurry."
His brother chuckled heavily. "You fancy playing bait, Tom? Nip down there and do a fan dance for them on the causeway. It'll bring the fuckers flocking in."
Chris began to space the bottles out on the table. If he let one of these slip through his fingers when it was lit they'd all be in trouble, with a pool of blazing petrol running along the walkway.
He glanced up at his wife. Her dark eyes were fixed on the Saf Dar. She was willing the bastards to move in close.
Come on. Cluster around the gates then we'll blast you to kingdom come.
"Thought I could help."
They turned to see the Major standing at the top of the steps, the revolver in his hand. The dog sat at his feet. The old man's hand, knobbly with arthritis, shook, and the weight of the handgun pulled it down.
"Ah ... Thanks for the offer, Major," said Tony. "But we've got the situation under control."
"Make it quick," said Mark as calmly as he could. "We've got some movement out here."
Tony continued, "Er, we thought it would be best if you could look after the, er, villagers in the sea-fort."
"Of course ... Of course." The Major sounded puzzled, as if not really sure now why he had come up here. " 'Course, we should really be getting home. Way past lunchtime."
"Ye-es. Quite."
"Tony, they're coming," Mark warned. "We're going to need you any minute."
Tony smiled at the senile old man. "Major, lunch will be served in the mess in five minutes. Best pop down and have a brush-up first."
The Major brightened. "So soon? Good job. I'm starving. Come on, boy." He quickly went down the steps, the dog following, its claws clicking on the stone slabs.
Ruth shot him a look. "He'll have a long wait till lunch. It's only half-nine."
"It doesn't really matter. The old boy will have forgotten every word I said in five minutes."
"Pick your targets," said Mark. "This is it."
Chapter Thirty-seven
"Strategy?" asked Tony.
"Kill them. Burn them." Mark Faust thumbed off the shotguns's safety catch.
"But what the hell do we do then?" asked Ruth.
"I'm out there with this." Mark held up the shotgun. "I'm finishing what we've started."
Chris felt uncertain. "What about those two out on the causeway? They're out of range and they'll not come any closer when they see what happens to their cronies in the next ten minutes."
Tony said, "Chris's right, Mark. We don't take chances. No heroics. We take our time. No one goes chasing these things across the bloody beach. There're going to be no casualties on our side. We can afford to sit here and pick them off when they get close enough."
Mark nodded. "No heroics. Right. ... Tom ... John. Listen. We want to make sure we hit these bastards hard."
As Mark spoke Chris looked down at the Saf Dar.
Of the eight that had been standing on the causeway, two had stayed midway, well out of range of the shotguns and petrol bombs.
The other six had moved nicely forward into the slaughter zone. Twenty feet below on the cobbled area outside the sea-fort gates, they stood in two lines of three. The first line must have been six paces from the gates, the other line of three ten paces behind that. Their bald red heads gleamed dully in the misty light. From this high angle he could not see their faces. He was glad.
As he stared down at their massive shoulders, almost bursting with a muscle growth that forced veins and arteries up against the skin so it looked as if living snakes wormed beneath, their heads moved. Smoothly, slowly, they tilted their heads to look directly up at Chris. Their glass-shard eyes glittered coldly, faces expressionless, mouths parted to expose uneven yellow teeth.
It was as if they were silently willing the sea-fort to collapse into dust so they could pick out the fragile human beings from within, like a boy picking out the white flesh of a coconut from its broken shell.
"Let's do it."
It was time. His heart pumped, sweat prickled like pins on his forehead. For Christsake don't let those bottles of petrol slip through your fingers.
"Looks as though those two out on the causeway don't want to come to the party today. ... Might as well start without them." Mark, resting his elbows on the wall, brought the shotgun butt to his shoulder. He said to the Hodgsons: "The three of us will take out the three of them that are farthest from the gates. Tom, you take the one on the left. John ... the one on the right. I'll hit the one dead center. Tony ... Chris. You lob the petrol bombs at the three nearest the gate. At this angle just drop them straight down ... let gravity do the work for you. And for God's sake burn the bastards to ashes. Get ready. Together on the word go. All right?"
Everyone nodded.
Chris wet the wick of his first petrol bomb. Tony did the same. Ruth stood ready with the lighter.
Mark Faust stood, shotgun snug to his shoulder, squeezing every gram of concentration down the gunsight.
The word came:
"Go."
All three men fired simultaneously. All three shots struck their targets.
The three Saf Dar jerked back.
Strangely none reacted to the shots, even though one lost a face in a spattering of shot. A cavity appeared in the chest of Mark's target. The third's stomach split open and something resembling a white bag of minced steak slipped wetly out onto the cobbles at its feet.
The things stood, like wounded statues.
The shotguns cracked again. An arm vanished in a spray of cherry red. Mark's shot kicked in the monster's forehead. The thick dark stuff they'd seen before poured down the bodies as if they were melting.
Tom's shot blasted the leg off another. Smoothly, it slipped into a kneeling position, its broken leg at an angle beneath its bare backside.
A wave broke over the causeway and washed ar
ound the three, carrying away a dark slick that made the water look unnaturally smooth, like oil.
"Chris ..."
He looked at his wife. She held out the burning lighter. Carefully he prodded the rag wired around the end of the bottle into the blade of flame.
The petrol-soaked rag flared immediately, spitting blobs of blue flame, scorching the back of his bare hand.
Carefully, he turned, leaned forward over the wall, and released the bottle.
It seemed to take seconds to drop down to the three stationary figures.
Then they vanished in a blossom of white fire. Chris felt the uprush of air hot on his face.
Two seconds later the flare subsided to a burning puddle of petrol on the cobbles.
Another bomb flared brilliantly; Tony had dropped his.
Quickly, Chris dropped another. Then Tony. Then Chris.
They established a rhythm, making sure that the three things below were at the center of a furnace. Those bastards might not burn in hell but they were burning here on earth. And still too frigging stupid to move.
"One down!" cried Mark. His shot sent one of the Saf Dar toppling back onto the causeway-now a chewed-up rag doll of a thing, with a frayed head; splinters of white bone stuck out through the chest like raw French fries.
The Hodgsons roared out, an ear-vibrating cheer. A wave rolled in, tugging the fallen Saf Dar with it. It vanished into deep water.
"Four to go, lads," called Tom Hodgson.
Along the wall the two boys also fired their rifles, the small .22 bullets pecking holes in the red skin of the Saf Dar.
The one still kneeling on the causeway had become a chewed-up stump, hardly even approximating a human shape.
Chris lobbed a petrol bomb at it and a rose-colored flame bloomed around it.
The three Saf Dar directly below who were enduring the fire bombs had sunk into a sitting position, the withering heat eating into the great blocks of muscle in their legs and torsos.
Still they did not react.
They should have been writhing across the ground in agony as the flames turned their bodies to charcoal.
Chris pitched another bottle at the crippled one. This time, burning, it rolled over and dropped off the causeway into the sea. It sank, leaving a slick on the surface.
"Four to go!"
The three gunners concentrated on the remaining figure at the back, the lead shot taking bites out of the creature as if it was being eaten alive by an invisible Pit Bull terrier.
It began to lean back, almost at an impossible angle. Then it toppled, as stiff as a pine tree. The sea swallowed it.
Chris and Tony had not let up with the bottles of fuel on the three nearest the gate. They sat in a lake of flame; the petrol even ran in burning rivulets down the causeway to where the sea washed over it. Smoke climbed into the sky like a ghostly black pillar.
Then, as the final bottle crashed down, splintering, sending flaming pieces of glass across the stone slabs, the three things began at last to move.
They moved like crippled crabs, arms and legs jerking awkwardly. They crabbed their way slowly, whether on their backs or fronts Chris couldn't tell, as far as the causeway edge, then slipped into the water.
"None to go."
"You've done it. ..." Tony Gateman sounded as if he didn't believe it himself. "You've bloody well done it."
"Thank God," breathed Ruth with feeling.
Chris reached out and pulled her close, hugging her trembling body.
"That's a total of seven, including the one I took out before," called Mark, resting the barrel of the shotgun across his shoulder. "Eight left. Now we sit and wait for them to get close again."
"If they come," said Ruth.
"Oh, they'll come back," said Tony. "Believe me, they'll come back."
Chapter Thirty-eight
"Tony, what makes them blow up like that?"
David noticed how surprised Tony was when he asked the question.
"Makes what blow up?"
"These coalmines."
"Oh ... It's in the book?"
David hadn't been allowed out of the sea-fort building, so he'd sat with the other people from the village (which had been dead boring) and looked at a pile of books he'd brought with him.
That morning he had heard a lot of shooting outside. Also a burning smell had floated through the windows.
But when he'd asked people what was happening they'd replied, "Nothing." He'd also asked the old man with the revolver and dog. He was nice, ruffling David's head with one of those old-men hands, bony with brown splotches on the back.
The old man said, "Damn natives again. Still, the NCO's got it in hand." Then he'd looked around the big gundeck room full of people as if he'd seen it for the first time. "Should really be getting off for a spot of lunch."
After a while David had given up asking. The mist was too thick to see much apart from a bit of gray sea water at the back of the sea-fort, so he'd sat on a chair swinging his legs backwards and forward while looking at the books. One about coalmines had caught his eye. Inside, a picture showed an explosion, throwing men and machinery and bits of coal and stuff along the tunnel in a big yellow blast.
Tony had come in a lot later, looking dirty and sweaty. That's when he had reacted oddly to the word "explosions."
"That explosion will have been caused by methane," he explained. There was a big black smudge on one cheek.
"Me-fane."
Tony smiled, very tired. "Methane. It's a gas. You know ... Like air. ..." He moved his hands about him. They were dirty too. "You can't smell methane, or see it. But it's highly inflammable ... Inflammable means it burns very easily. A bit like the gas that comes out of gas cookers and gas fires. Sometimes methane builds up in enclosed places like caves-"
"And coalmines."
"It can be very dangerous. It only needs a little spark, then-"
"Boom ... Where's it come from then? Me-fane?"
"When things rot they produce methane. Or it occurs naturally in some places underground. Like your coalmine."
David thought about the cellar beneath the sea-fort. He was about to ask Tony a question when Mark walked into the room.
Tony looked up.
"Any more?"
"No such luck. I don't know if those two on the causeway understood what we did to the others, but they're staying put. John Hodgson popped off a couple of shells at them but they're way out of range. If the tide wasn't in I'd go out and hit them close up."
Then the big man turned and walked out of the room. Tony followed.
David guessed a lot had happened that morning. Important things. But the grown-ups had all ganged up together. They were keeping secrets from David.
"Coffee, Ruth?"
"Please. ... You couldn't rustle up a couple of fresh croissants too?"
