by Glenn Cooper
On cue, Simon and Alice came running down the hall until they caught up with them.
“I don’t know if this is the worst news or the best news I’ve heard,” Alice said. “Didn’t they make it home?”
“Do we know why they’re here?” Simon asked.
Garibaldi pushed open the large double-doors. “Let’s ask them, shall we?”
The greeting was chaotic. John and Emily were mobbed like rock stars, bouncing from embrace to embrace, all the while pelted with questions.
“Let them breathe!” Garibaldi said, grinning from ear to ear. “Give them a chance to talk.”
“Giuseppe,” John said, clapping Garibaldi’s shoulders. “It’s good to see you.”
“I don’t know if I am supposed to be happy or sad,” Garibaldi said. “But in any event, simply allow me to be pleased to lay these old eyes upon you and Emily.”
Emily kissed his cheeks. “You look well,” she said.
“You are a liar,” he said. “A charming liar. I am an old, tired man.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You put us all to shame.”
Caravaggio came up behind Emily and whispered, “So, have you finally decided to leave John for me?”
“Not exactly,” she laughed, “but it is splendid seeing you again.”
“I have something to show you later,” he promised.
When Emily hugged her, Alice broke down in tears.
“I’ve thought of you every day,” Emily said.
“And I, you. Did you and the others not get home?”
“We did but we had to come back. We’ll explain. Have you had second thoughts?” Emily asked.
“Of course, how could I not? But I do love Simon and I’m needed here. I wasn’t loved or needed back home. So I’m good. I’m really good.”
“Everyone,” John announced. “I’d like you all to meet my brother, Kyle, and these two fine British soldiers who’ve risked their lives to get us here, Sergeant Tom O’Malley and Trooper Jack Culpepper.”
“Gentlemen,” Garibaldi said, “I could not be more pleased to meet you.”
“John’s told me all about you, sir,” Kyle said.
“If you are John’s brother, then you are also my brother,” Garibaldi said. “I noticed you are limping. Were you injured?”
“A long time ago,” Kyle said.
“And these fine young soldiers,” Garibaldi said, addressing the SAS men. “I couldn’t help notice your rifles. What are they?”
“AK-47s, sir,” O’Malley said. “Thirty-round magazines, capable of firing in full-auto or semi-auto modes.”
“Wherever did you get them? I’ve seen nothing like them in Hell.”
“Kyle Camp’s responsible for them, sir. He’s a gunsmith. He made them here in a forge in England—sorry, Brittania I guess it’s called.”
“Well, I will wish to see what they are capable of,” Garibaldi said.
Forneau ordered wine and food brought in and everyone took to chairs and sofas to listen to John talk.
“I suppose I’d better start with what happened when we got to Bulogne-sur-Mer,” he said.
“We know all about it,” Simon said. “Brian Kilmeade came to Paris and gave us a full accounting.”
“Where is he?” John asked.
“He returned to Iberia with Queen Mécia,” Forneau said. “The queen has committed to raising a large army to assist our alliance. We do expect them in Paris any day now.”
“Brian saved the day,” John said. “If it hadn’t been for him we’d all be learning Russian in one of Stalin’s prisons. But getting out of Francia wasn’t the end of it. We had more fun and games when we got back to Brittania.”
He told them about returning to Dartford only to be ambushed by King Henry and Thomas Cromwell, about taking Henry hostage moments before they were transported back to Earth, about learning that the MAAC technical staff, a class of schoolboys, and untold numbers of Londoners had been lost to Hell, and about the spontaneous opening of passages between the two worlds that had unleashed a veritable floodgate of Hellers to Earth, rovers included.
“There have been whispers about a passageway back to Earth,” Simon said. “I didn’t believe it but it’s really true?”
“It’s true,” Emily said.
Caravaggio said, “Can you imagine? Who wouldn’t wish to return to the living, if only for one day, one hour?”
“Put it out of your mind,” Garibaldi said. “This is our home now and we have much work to do.”
Caravaggio bowed. “Of course, maestro.”
“What happened to Trevor, Arabel and the children, and all my friends from South Ockendon?” Alice asked.
“They all got back safely,” John said. “Trevor returned with us and a squadron of British special forces soldiers, colleagues of Tom O’Malley and Jack Culpepper. He’s trying to find the schoolboys. The soldiers have deployed to the four known passageways with Kyle’s rifles to block more Hellers coming through.”
The wine and food arrived. Kyle lifted his full glass and caught John’s eye. His brother gave him a nod and a smile, brotherly permission to hit the bottle.
“And what is your mission?” Garibaldi asked John.
“It’s Emily’s mission. The rest of us are here to support her.”
“We need to find my former colleague, Paul Loomis,” Emily said. “He’s with Stalin who’s latched on to him as a science advisor. When we saw Paul in Germania he told me he knew how to plug the passages. No one else on Earth has an idea how to do it. We’ve got to find him, learn the method, and return home to put it into place.”
Simon swallowed a mouthful of pheasant and asked, “What will happen if you can’t, as you say, plug the holes?”
“The passageways could widen on their own,” Emily said. “There’s no way of predicting where it could lead. A connection as large as all of London? All of England? All of Europe? It would lead to complete and utter chaos and destruction.”
“A tide of bad souls polluting your shores,” Caravaggio said.
“We need to know where Stalin is,” John said. “We find Stalin, we find Loomis.”
Forneau said, “We know precisely where he is. He went to Cologne to prepare for a coordinated assault upon us. Our spies tell us he is seeking allegiances to surpass our own forces.”
“He is likely to get the Slavic kingdom to join with him,” Garibaldi said.
“How significant would that be?” John asked.
“It would not be good for us,” Garibaldi said. “But I am more troubled by reports suggesting he is having negotiations with Alexander, the Macedonian. Here I am in Francia. If I were to turn south to meet him in Italia, then the Russians and Germans would take Francia. If I stay here, then he will continue to lay waste to my kingdom.”
“Then maybe it’s for the best if he joins Stalin so you can whip both their asses,” John said.
Garibaldi almost fell off his chair laughing. “Whip their asses! You Americans are priceless.”
Forneau frowned. “I do not know what would be gained by whipping enemy donkeys but if I understand the point John is making, one decisive victory over all our foes would be sweet indeed.”
“And to that end,” Garibaldi said, “Simon has assembled a team of French and Italians, some of them modern men. They have been working tirelessly at the principal forge in Paris to use the knowledge from your books to build better weapons.”
“How’s it going?” John asked.
Simon began talking with a full mouth only to be gently rebuked by Alice.
“She’s trying to teach me manners which is like teaching a pig to fly,” he said. “To be honest with you, John, it will be some time, a good year I should think, to modify the forge’s chimney stack and build a steam engine to achieve the kinds of heat the blast furnaces are meant to put out. Only then can we make this marvelous Bessemer steel and really get somewhere.”
“Not a short-term solution,” John said.
“That i
s so.”
“Stalin has the books too,” John said. “So we have to believe he’s no further ahead.”
“I don’t see how he could be going any faster than us,” Simon said. “And he doesn’t have what we have: Simon the boilermaker.”
Alice patted his curly head. “If this melon gets any larger he won’t be able to pull on his undershirt.”
“If Stalin has Paul Loomis working on the same project, I’m sure you’re in the lead,” Emily said. “I’d put my money on a boilermaker over a particle physicist every day of the week.”
“So how do we get to Loomis in Cologne?” John asked.
“Let’s finish our meal,” Garibaldi said. “Then I’d like to see these new rifles of yours in action. My old brain is slowly forming a plan.”
After they had eaten, Garibaldi led them toward a courtyard but Caravaggio asked Emily if she would come with him instead. She agreed, saying she had no interest in watching men shoot.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Come, it’s not far.”
The destination was a room toward the rear of the palace, not far from the bustling kitchen. He asked her to wait in the hall while he went inside and when, moments later, he returned to bring her in, she saw it was a painter’s studio. There were pots of brightly colored paints and artist’s palettes on the tables. A cloth he had thrown over the easel was concealing a large canvas.
“This is what I wanted you to see,” he said, pulling the cloth away.
She gasped at the nearly completed painting.
It was Emily, standing at the window of a castle turret, her blonde hair caught in a breeze, gazing at a green, sun-splashed countryside. He had imagined her in a sumptuous red and green Renaissance frock with a low-cut bodice and heaving breasts, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her lively eyes searching below.
“Is this how you see me?” she asked softly.
“Yes, in Earth, not in Hell, with the sun shining and birds singing and love in the air.”
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Thank you.”
“It is I who must thank you. You have given me this inspiration. It led me to remember what it felt like to be alive and in the presence of beautiful women.”
They heard loud gunshots.
“Soldiers at play,” she said.
He touched her wrist. “Do not forget my offer, Emily.”
“I remember it and I’m flattered but John Camp is the love of my life.”
Caravaggio sighed and re-draped the painting. “And he doesn’t have the aroma of a dead artist. Let us go and watch the soldiers at play.”
They arrived at the courtyard to the aftermath of the shooting exhibition. Splintered wood from the small round table set on its side as a target littered the grass.
“Michelangelo,” Garibaldi called out to Caravaggio. “You must see these incredible repeating rifles. Go ahead and show him.”
Trooper Culpepper seated a new magazine and destroyed what was left of the table in a series of deafening booms.
“Bravo!” Caravaggio shouted. “May I hold it?”
Culpepper got a nod from John and put the rifle on safe mode.
Caravaggio tested its weight and exclaimed, “This merchant of doom is lighter than the archebuser I myself carry. How many of these do you possess, John?”
“Just the two.”
Garibaldi couldn’t contain his excitement. He waved his hands like a youngster and said, “But we need dozens of these, hundreds, thousands. There is nothing we cannot achieve if we have them.”
“Hang on, Giuseppe,” John said. “Making new ones isn’t going to be as simple as that. First of all we’re going to need these two rifles in case we need to shoot our way in to get at Paul Loomis. If and when we make it back, we’ll give you one to break down and make castings. But the harder part will be making the bullets and the primers to set them off.”
“But surely you left the English forgers with the ability to fashion additional rifles,” Forneau said.
“We didn’t take any chances of the technology falling into the wrong hands,” John said. “When we left the forge we melted the rubber molds and smashed the plaster molds.”
Kyle raised his hand like a kid in the back of a classroom. “Excuse me. I’ve got a confession to make.” He removed his backpack and took out a cloth-wrapped bundle. “I probably should have told you this but I kept one set of rubber molds.”
John looked furious. “Why’d you do that?” he asked.
Kyle shrugged, “I don’t know, just in case we got ourselves in a jam. I probably should have run it by you.”
“Let’s talk,” John said. “Just the two of us.”
He pulled Kyle over to one of the arched doorways and slammed him. “Look, if these molds had fallen into the wrong hands then Garibaldi would be crushed like a walnut.”
“But they didn’t, did they?”
“That’s not the point,” John fumed.
“Yeah, it is. If these are the good guys then we’ve just put AKs into the right hands. Are they the good guys?”
“Yeah, I think they are. But will they be forever? You know what they say about absolute power corrupting absolutely.”
“Guess that’s a chance we’re going to have to take.”
“Did you save the bullet molds too?”
“Yep.”
“Well, without primers it’s all going to be moot.”
“I saved a jar of the chemicals too.”
John threw his hands in the air. “Christ, Kyle. I’m glad we’re on the same team. If you were in my unit I’d have you referred for court martial.”
Kyle got up and pushed his face inches from John’s. “Well, I’m a fucking volunteer, so fuck off.”
“Do you also have Professor Nightingale in your backpack? Without him, once your jar’s empty, there’s no more primers and no more bullets.”
“Emily knows how to make them now.”
John shook his head and stepped away to walk off his anger. A minute later he returned and said, “Well, you know what we’re going to have to do?”
“What?”
John smiled. “We’re going to make Giuseppe some rifles and ammo.”
Kyle nodded. “Thought you were going to say that.”
22
The morning light flooding her windows woke Benona with a start. She wasn’t used to sleeping all the way through the night. Ever since the Heller invasion she had risen every few hours to look out the windows, check the radio news, look in on her daughter.
Woodbourne was fast asleep under the covers, still smelling strongly of the cologne he’d splashed all over before slipping into her sofa bed. His Heller odor was slight. She felt protected and loved for the first time in ages. Something close to a smile softened her face but then she remembered.
Polly.
She’d gone the entire night without checking on Polly.
At first she was relieved to see the girl lying so peacefully under her duvet.
Then she was horrified.
She shook her. “Polly? Polly?”
The girl was unresponsive and red-hot to the touch, her breathing heavy.
“Brandon! Come quick! It’s Polly!”
The big man was fast to wake. He was in the girl’s room in a flash.
“She’s sick,” Benona wailed, “she’s real sick.”
“But you gave her the new medicine, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but maybe it was wrong medicine. I think she’s dying. Polly, please wake up for mama.”
“I’ll go fetch the doctor,” he said.
“The surgeries are all closed.”
“Can you ring for an ambulance?”
“Nobody’s picking up emergency number. The radio keeps saying this.”
“Then let’s take her to the hospital. What’s the nearest?”
“Homerton. I’ll see if they pick up phone.”
Her hands were shaking as she paged
through the directory assistance book looking for the number. She punched in the number. The phone rang again and again. She hung up and tried numbers for different departments. Finally she put the phone down and began to cry.
“Tell me where the hospital’s at. I’ll go over there and see if I can find a doctor.”
“Is dangerous, Brandon.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Woodbourne left her in Polly’s room, pulled his ragged clothes on and ran out onto the street. Glebe Road was deserted and so was Richmond Road. It was about two miles to the hospital and he flat-out ran. In a weird way he was fitter in death than he was in life. He had been a big smoker in the 1930s and ’40s and never walked when he could hop in a motorcar. There were no smokes in Hell and frequently he had to run to save himself from soldiers, rovers, and villagers he had robbed. Now, his legs churned under him and his coat billowed behind as he sped down the middle of the carless road.
Ben was in the loo at MI5 headquarters when his mobile went off. He fished it out of the trousers around his ankles and saw it was the Drone Warfare Centre at RAF Waddington.
“Wellington.”
“This is Major Garabedian, sir. We’re tracking a target and we’re going to require your firing authorization.”
“I’m just away from the ops centre. I’ll ring you back in two minutes. Is the target imminently threatening known civilians?”
“I think we can wait two minutes, sir.”
Ben washed his hands and hurried to the lifts. He’d been chained to the office ever since the prime minister put him in charge of drone-kill authorizations. Every time he had given the nod he had felt diminished, made smaller and cheaper by self-doubt. Had he killed any civilians? Would he ever know for sure? There weren’t enough soldiers deployed throughout London to do an after-action evaluation on each missile strike.
“What have they sent us?” Ben asked on arrival.
“Putting it on the big screen now,” one of the techs said. “You’re on speaker with RAF Waddington.”
“This is Wellington,” he said. “Just this one man?”
The zoomed-in image showed a solitary figure with a billowing coat running down the middle of an empty street.
“Just the one, yes,” the air force major said.
