Amidst the Falling Dust (The Green and Pleasant Land, Volume 2)

by Oliver Kennedy

  Chapter 3, Ambush, Sir!

  The journey is not a long one. We follow an A road, a long line of decaying cars marks the path. Where they ran to no one would know. As we get closer there is chatter across the short wave radio. I lean in as close to the cockpit as I can. The Lynx has spotted several tendrils of smoke on the horizon, they can see nothing to indicate its source. A suggestion to strafe the area is dismissed, it would not do well to attract any more attention than the whirring rotors already would be.

  We reach our target and I look out of the window and take in the sight of the much vaunted Brampton Barracks. The site was said to have been home to almost two thousand military personnel and their families.

  I spot the long lines of military housing on the outskirts which transform into large grey concrete blocks which make up the barracks proper. No flags fly. The whole area looks deserted and overgrown. Some heavy vehicles have been abandoned and barricaded across the main gate. There are signs of fighting everywhere, much of the perimeter fence has been breached, pot holes that could only have come from explosive ordinance are dotted here and there. But this battle was been finished long ago, its contenders, both the victor and the dead had moved on many days prior.

  We hovered for some minutes while what I thought was an overly cautious Lieutenant Tasker had his Lynx crew circle the base a number of times. Finally the order to land comes. There were three courtyards, one on the north, one on the east and one on the south side of the base. One chopper was directed to each. Pilots would remain on standby.

  The giant weeds whose strength had broken through the paved floor of the parade ground are blown away as the Puma descends. I look around at my fellow adventurers. There was now at least a vague air of anticipation. Many of them were military personnel themselves, though none had come directly from here to them I am certain this must feel like home turf, familiar ground, a reminder of better days. I saw the odd flash of a smile even, a rare sight and a treasure to spot these days.

  Though I had not bonded with my fellow sailors this did not mean that I was uncaring. I saw their faces, I studied their expressions and tried to discern what might be lurking underneath. When they caught me staring I would look away, I would look upon another, but I contemplated them all and I contemplated what this mission might mean to them. Fuel, food. Fresh supplies of anything. Weapons to defend themselves, medicines to heal themselves, memories of the world to comfort themselves.

  There was so much that could come of this mission to Brampton that for a stark moment as the transport helicopter lowered through the air I felt guilt. These people would come to Carlisle, these people would guard me along the way to Edenpark, they would walk beside me as we hunted for some form of salvation. Deep down I knew we would not find it, deep down the lies I'd told were screaming. But they rested so far down inside that only I could hear them, only I could free them.

  I am sat in the cold embrace of such melancholy when the first rocket fires from one of the residential properties on the edge of the base and blows the tail end of the Puma to pieces.

  Screams. Bellows. Controlled panic. The radio squawks and warbles unintelligibly. I can smell the smoke. We were about twenty feet from the floor when the attack came. The graceful descent turns into a crazed, spinning, metal death dance. We hit the ground but we do not stop, the perverse fairground ride carries on, the main rotor skids and skates the helicopter across the ground until we tip over and it too smashes into thousands of tiny slivers of metal.

  We spin and roll for a while more. Here comes the nausea I have missed so much. My head bangs against the inside of the cab, it strikes my fellow passengers, we break each others noses, we crack each others ribs. Within such a small space we are as much dead projectiles as our kit.

  Eventually the screeching of torn metal subsides, the sound of scraping on concrete ceases. Other noises start to filter in, sounds that were there before but could not make themselves heard. A voice on the radio is raging about an ambush, it is telling everyone to make for the northern parade ground. At this moment in time I am having difficulty telling up from down.

  There is the less than comforting sound of the rear of the helicopter burning, this, coupled with the acrid smell of aviation fuel adds to the ear splitting array of alarm bells that are already hammering my senses. Other people are moving. Some of them are still. Perhaps this is the part where you imagine I turn into a rescuer, that I bravely drag several of my fellow passengers to safety out of the burning wreckage. I will not lie to you, the chances of this are very slim.

  My head is still spinning as I crawl across the broken glass. I can hear several mute cries for help from back inside the helicopter. I do not know what to do, I am not an action man. I stare stupidly at the blood on my hands for a minute. More sensations are inbound, trying to overload an already overloaded system. I look up at the body of the helicopter and see small jagged holes start to appear in it. I am dazed and dizzied and it takes me longer than is safe to realise that there are bullet holes appearing in front of me.

  I spin around and through the thin tendrils of smoke I register the score of armed men running across the tarmac towards me. Some of them are firing their weapons, the rest are waiting until they can get in nice and close so they don't miss. They are a haphazard bunch, beyond the faded mismatched clothes there is only one uniform identifier. Gasmasks. Despite the fairly clement day and the absence of anything directly toxic in the air, as far as I know, each of them wears a shiny black gas mask, the jet black eye balls are glinting in the sunlight as this death squadron races to meet us.

  I hear calls of help from the helicopter get quieter the further I run. I move around so that the chopper is between me and the masked men. I briefly debate what will stay with me for longer, those forlorn calls of help from the Puma or the noise about ten seconds later as a dozen machine guns open up behind me, it's not me their aiming at, their victims are closer and unable to run like I do.

  There is faint relief as I reach the closest complex of buildings and begin to think about which way is north. I look at the sun and try to work it out from there, but I never paid enough attention to Crocodile Dundee and I cannot for the life of me remember whether the sun rises in the east or west. Whichever way I go it will be a guess, and a potentially deadly mistake.

  Hoping that the pain in my chest is from an injury sustained in the crash and not my heart about to give way I begin to hobble my way around the small grey buildings. Sweat is pouring off me, panic has well and truly set in, I run blindly until I bump into an equally surprised figure. We are both knocked to the floor, I curl up in a ball and wait for the inevitable gunshot, or the inevitable gnashing of hungry dead teeth. I have been waiting for that for over a year now. I will continue to wait it seems. I am not shot, I am not bitten.

  I look up to see Fiona Sanders, it would appear that I was not the only survivor from the crash, it would appear I was not the only one to run. It looks as if I am not the only coward left in the world, my relief is brief.

  Fiona kneels against a wall to catch her breath. She seems to be concentrating on something beyond our immediate grey surroundings. I can hear it too, the cackle of gunfire, the occasional boom. Finally she looks at me, finally I am acknowledged.

  “Redmayne” she nods.

  “Fiona” I return. “What's happening?” comes my rather ridiculous question. She manages to keep the scorn from her voice when she replies. “Ambush.”

  “Who?” I ask, somehow expecting her to know. She shakes her head and looks sternly in my direction. “It doesn't matter any more Redmayne, we don't live in the world where you know who your enemy is, they simply are, and it's kill or be killed”. I have barely opened my mouth to respond when she starts again, “Bank robbers, drug smugglers, rapists, murderers and paedophiles. Violent men who are no longer contained by the boundaries of civilisation, now they are free, now they are here”.

  No more words pass between us, we catch our breath for a moment or t
wo more before hearing the sound of many pairs of nearing footsteps. We exchange a glance and silently agree that we do not wish to stand around and find out if they are friendlies.

  Being the brave old soul that I am I let Fiona lead the way. We weave in and out of a couple of buildings before she leads us inside a two story structure that must have been some sort of administrative office for the barracks at one time. I see over turned desks and pieces of rotting paper strewn everywhere, kettles which have not been ask to boil in well over a year and pictures of fallen comrades in broken frames.

  Fiona leads the way upstairs, we crouch as we move along the damp creaking corridors. Fiona carries a solid looking black side arm, I have faith that she knows how to use it. We move through the building before reaching a fire escape.

  From this vantage point it is obvious we are not far from the northern parade ground, I see the tail fin of the Lynx sticking out behind some buildings. A quick glance down reveals no one below and we make a run for it down a fire escape. As we make the dash across the gap between buildings I hear the roar of a weapon from our left, Fiona seems to stumble as she is making her way through an open doorway just in front of us. I catch her as she falls, she is only petite and I am able to drag her in with me fairly swiftly.

  Periodic bursts of fire ricochet off the walls outside. I look down as I feel a warm liquid substance running over my hands, the hands currently holding onto Fiona. Her left hand is firmly clutched on the side of her neck but such a poor compress does little to halt the litres of blood steadily pumping from the wound there.

  Her words turn to gargles and she has the look in her eye. It is the look of someone who knows, it is the fear, it is inevitable death captured in the capillaries, muscles and coloured orbs of the human eye. Unfulfilled dreams fall from these orifices and spill over my hands with the blood.

  “I am so sorry” is the only weak comfort that I can afford. She nods. She lifts the gun up towards me and for a foolish, fearful second I think that she means to pull the trigger, but she turns it and thrusts the weapon into my hand. I release her to take the gun and we slide down unceremoniously to the floor. I look at the weapon and say thank you. She never heard the words.

  Gently sliding Fiona's body right to the ground I stand up bloody and afraid. Our assailant fires another burst, some of the bullets find their way in the doorway. He is close, only metres away. I envision myself stepping confidently from the doorway, coolly lifting the gun and blowing the mother away in a style not unlike that of James Bond. It will remain a vision, I turn and run, Fiona will lay there unavenged, until she rises, perhaps to take her own retribution.

  This was some sort of utility block, I run past big old industrial sized washers and driers, piles of dress uniforms are neatly folded and covered in insects. A gasmasked villain has followed me, I hear his muffled shouts start to fade as I duck and dive and weave through the building.

  I exit a rear door to find myself on the field of battle. In the middle of the parade ground sits the Lynx. Its crew have abandoned her and appear to be sheltering behind some concrete bollards off to my left. They exchange frenetic bursts of gunfire with the masked men who seem to be swarming out of the buildings to my right like ants. Just as I am about to retreat back inside and find somewhere to hide someone rears up and slams me into the wall.

  I see the sun glinting on the knife as it heads for my throat, I close my eyes and piss myself in the same instant. Where is death? I sneak open an eye. Then another. The blade is millimetres from my throat. I look into the eyes of a berserker, a product of war, a machine for killing. I look into the crazed eyes of Lieutenant Emmanuel Tasker.

  “Redmayne” he growls at me with a note of disbelief, “God damned Redmayne”. I am shoved aside and follow him as he heads into the utility building from which I just emerged. The warrior is already moving away from me down a corridor, I am a distraction, nothing more. I think about following him, hiding within his shadow, but I sense his shadow is heading for a dangerous place. I let him go and within a few moments I am alone again.

  The solitude does not last long. The battle outside still rages and is about to enter the building. I start to run again and as I pass through the main corridor I see my old friend the gasmasked killer who murdered Fiona. In his right hand he holds a large hunting knife and I note that he has started to strip the body of my former comrade. Upon seeing me he curses. I do not fire, I run away and he gives chase once more. You must think me a coward, you don't know what this is like, we live in different worlds.

  This time he manages to keep up with me as I race through the building. When it seems that he is only a few seconds behind I take a gamble and almost fall as I race down the darkened stairway into the basement below the barracks.

  Deep down in the dark the din was dimmed to a dull and distant roar. The battle was a far off thing, the guns ring out with a hollow hate that cannot reach me here. Drip, drip, drip. The damp and dank dungeon below the barracks is a foul smelling and inhospitable place. My gas mask clad adversary followed me down here. His footsteps boomed with great confidence down the stairwell, but caution has staid his tread as it did mine. This is not somewhere that one runs lightly, and that goes for the hunter and the prey.

  If I meet a cadaver down here I am finished. If the bandit finds me I am finished, to them both I will be another hunk of meat just like Fiona. If I never get out of here then I am finished also. After a time it becomes obvious that the basement level goes down to several sub basements which run under the entirety of the barracks. Within a few minutes I am lost, within a few more I begin to wonder whether or not lost is an adequate term to describe the hopelessness of my predicament. It is a despair which is compounded by the whispers from my pursuer.

  I assume from their clarity that he has removed his gas mask. He calls out to me every now and then, perhaps trying to elicit a reaction that will not come. He whispers to me of all the things he will do to my body with his blade. He tells me that I can't get out. He tells me that he is coming for me.

  If his intention is to frighten me there is no need, I will not get much more scared than this I hope.

  “You may as well come out little man”, comes the sibilant hiss.

  “Surrender now, quietly to me, down here in the dark, I will make it quick, I promise”.

  His accent is untraceable. Just another Englishman who has turned away from the horizon. I wonder a year and a half ago what this man would have been doing. Rotting in a deep, dark hole at her majesties pleasure; or sitting in an office, discussing the news over a mug of tea. Fiona was right, it mattered less and less with each passing day, who we were and where we came from. There were no ashes from which to rise, just more and more fire to fall into.

  There are many puddles down here and more than the occasional rat. I tiptoe as quietly as I am able, up and down this way and that. The noise of the fighting has gone now, we won or we are dead, or I am just too far underground. Though my eyes adjust to the gloom somewhat I still find myself bumping into pipes every now and then. I use the wall to navigate through the dark until I get to a point where the wall stops. The air changes and I sense that I am in a very large underground room.

  There is a stench down here, not the smell of something rotting, the smell of a thousand things which have rotted away and left only an angry, putrescent vapour to pollute the air, odorous ghosts which clog the senses.

  The smell has been getting worse the further I have come. I stand at the edge of the large vault and sniff the foul air, from somewhere close by I hear a movement, a slippery, wet, sound.

  A few steps back and I feel a cold metal barrel against my head.

  “Hello little man” whispers the voice, he follows up his greeting with a short sharp whack against the back of my head which sends me to the floor.

  Suddenly a light shines in my face, I am blinded again. I can hear the sound of a weapon being unsheathed, the blade rubs against a whetstone. “Where have you lot come from t
hen?” asks the Englishman in a conversational tone. I do not answer him. Beyond the shining light my other senses still probe the room. That sound is still there, louder, more pronounced. I look around for the weapon I dropped when he hit me, it has been swallowed by the gloom.

  The light moves, it seems to wedge itself in a hole in the wall. My attacker walks forward. I need to stand up, I need to fight, I scream at my limbs to react. They ignore me, they are being governed my a more powerful imperative. A silhouette is framed in the light of the powerful torch. I see a gas mask slung over one shoulder. In both hands he holds knives. “You may not feel like talking now but you will in a minute my friend, of that I can assure you”.

  He stops mid stride. He's heard it too. This is not a background noise, it is the sound of something close by, something alive, something large. I can make out some of my attackers features, he is nondescript, plain and mundane looking. He is staring off into the dark behind me.

  What was a slopping, slow, wet sound changes. Now there is a noise like a cracking whip and suddenly my assailant collapses beneath his own nemesis. Some fiend labours over him in a crazed attack. The light is not good and nor are my senses, but it looks like a cadaver. An armless, legless cadaver, just a body, just a head, just teeth. How can it be that such a creature moves? It is mounted, mounted on the end of what I could only describe as a giant tentacle.

  All down the thick, slimy arm of the beast there are spikes which flex as the cadaver at its end devours the now dead marauder. It seems there is no air to breath, my lungs are struggling, does it see me? This question rotates around my mind at ten thousand revolutions a second. I close my eyes to calm the whir. Slowly I rise to unsteady feet. I start to creep around the edges of the torchlight, to stay outside the dining area.

  I am halfway to false freedom when I see the second tentacle arrive, an equally hungry and deformed cadaver sits on its tip, it begins to feed alongside its fellow. From the darkness behind me I hear the sound of much writhing. I turn and squint against the blackness. Something huge sits there, I have seen but one part of this horror.

  I start to run again. I am getting good at running. As I pass I snatch the torch from the wall. I press my hands to my ears as the beast lets me know its anger. I am reminded of the undulating 'nooooo' of the cadavers I have heard before, but a thousand times louder and of a depth that could swallow cities whole.

  My lungs start working again, my legs pump as they have never done before. I am surprised there is still moisture left to sweat, but its presence is undeniable as it runs into my eyes and soaks my fatigues. Every now and then I turn and flash the light at my pursuer, this is a mistake I cannot help repeat such is my thrilling, morbid fascination. What looks like dozens of cadavers follow me, each and every one of them sits on the end of a tentacle, that leads back into the darkness, back to something else....

  Walls give way with a tumbling crash, pipes are snapped apart like matchsticks. The creatures strength is matched only by its desire to feed. Is it chasing me or guiding me? I know not but my ascent back to the world is by some murky fate far quicker than the slow escape down. I come upon a stairwell up which I am instantly racing. My feet pound against the metal, now and then I stumble, my shins accrue more bruises. Looking down I see them rising, thick slimy tentacles fill the stairwell behind me like a flood, at their tip the cadavers scream through sharp and rotting teeth.

  The sunlight blinds me as I stumble from the metal cellar like doors and out into the open. I am greeted shortly by gruff shouts and a blow to the head. Recovering eyes take in several sights. The smouldering wreckage of the Chinook with dozens of burned bodies around it. Many men in gas masks standing around the parade ground. Around fifteen of my fellow sailors are knelt upon the ground with their hands on their heads. Most are weeping as a gasmasked villain goes down the line and ends their coil with a single round to the back of the head.

  “We have to run” I gasp to the stranger who stands over me, looking down at my wretched form through impassive black lenses. “Your running days are over bitch” he muffles as he lifts his weapon. There is so much to be seen down the barrel of a gun, so much life that can fit into such a small dark space. My would be executioner is almost decapitated by one of the doors through which I excited as it flies from its hinges.

  A roaring mass of tentacle cadavers surges from the opening. The rumbling in the ground is a testament to the size and strength of the beast. Indeed even as its long arms unfurl through the opening the ground around the entrance begins to crack and splinter, such are the insufficiencies of its dimensions. Guns roar. The gas masks appear from many directions. The death sentences that were being carried out against my tearful fellows have ceased. Four of them get a reprieve.

  The cracks in the ground get bigger. The cadaver tentacles flay this way and that. Men are swiped aside, flung up high over the buildings by the force. Others are pinned to the floor and many mouths descend, rending and tearing. Blood sprays from the tentacles painting the concrete red. But still they flail, still they emerge, not only from the cellar doors but now from the large cracks which appear here and there. Bloodied and mangled cadavers punch through the floor and begin to hunt.

  I make it to my comrades and we start to run together. The gasmasks ignore us, they have bigger problems. The whole area feels like it is becoming unstable. As we race towards the edge of the parade ground I see movement between the buildings, in the buildings and curling up around them. Dozens, no hundreds of tentacles are rising up from all directions.

  Alleys are blocked, entrances burst open to reveal gaping maws and bloody saliva. I turn and see a similar picture unfolding around the large parade ground. Fifty foot long tentacles fill the air, swooping down every now and then to pick off a marauder. Their numbers are dwindling, the maws descend in packs like rabid dogs, pinning a meal to the ground and tearing it apart within seconds.

  From deep in the ground there are rumbles now and then. The creature roars from far below, though unless I am mistaken the noise gets louder each time. It rises. I fear we will soon be part of the feast. I look to my beaten fellows, they are resigned, they have drunk their last cup of melancholy, it fills their veins until the weight drags them to the floor, the world has become a monster and there is no point fighting any more.

  Then there meets my ears a familiar sound. The sound of something man made, the sound of something that is engineered, powered by a fuel that human hands prised from the earth. I hear the sound of rotor blades, I look up and see a bird of prey, sleek, metallic and bristling with mass destruction.

  The Lynx swoops in. Chainguns trail fire across the parade ground, rockets spray through the air and sever whole tentacles with a mighty boom. In the cockpits he sits, my most hated fellow traveller, battle hardened, battle maddened, battle-god. Lieutenant Emmanuel Tasker. His face is a mask of precision focus. The Lynx glides effortlessly towards us. Several tentacles dart towards it but are driven off by the hail of fire which screams barely inches above our crouched heads.

  The chopper lands and we half stumble, half drag each other towards it. Tasker barely looks back to check we are all in before gunning the engine and lifting us into the air with such force that we roll around in the back like downed bowling pins.

  I get enough leverage to be able to pull myself up and gaze out of the window. Tasker angles the chopper and its main rotor blade cuts through a mass of tentacles which bar the way. Behind us the few remaining gasmasks have turned their weapon to the sky. They will not escape their fate and their resentment at our flight fills them with a raging despair. Then we are up and away. I look back to Brampton Barracks. The last I see is a huge fissure appearing in the middle of the base, from it something begins to emerge, a gigantic, logic defying mass. I do not see its entirety, we fly too high and too fast, the base and the monster are soon left behind. All I will carry is a hint, a flash of memory of the thing that emerged from the deep.