Series 2 Finale
Apocalypse
The squad flinch as Jamie vanishes and then reappears, crouched over Mark's charred and smoking body. He has formed his arms into a basket, and drops a collection of glass bottles at Mark's side, kneeling in the blackened crater.
Nobody says a thing; he begins to unscrew the first bottle of single malt whiskey.
The sky above them is dark red, swirling with angry crimson clouds and pillars of ash and dust. Smoke rises in great black globs from the burning remains of Glasgow's city centre. There are no lights in the sky; no aircraft, no stars; only the occasional, hopeless burst of heavy gunfire tracing its way across the blood-red darkness.
Like a burning heart, the expanding red orb above George's Square pulses and beats. With every passing moment it burns the city's skin like a rogue sun. It gets hotter and hotter beneath the Destroyer's glare, until the air is a sizzling haze scorching their skin.
Glasgow is burning.
There is nothing but smoke and darkness, long shadows cast by the glare of the Destroyer and the towering flames of the ruined city. The lights are all off – even the Trespasser's watch has stopped. Buildings lay lop sided, helicopters evacuating the last survivors lie in wreckage. Great gouts of flame erupt from the city where bombers and jet-fighters have fallen from the sky, their electronics killed with the flick of a switch.
In the middle of hell, in the throes of the apocalypse, and with the world burning around them, the squad watch Jamie begin to pour whisky over Mark's dying body.
The alcohol sizzles and pops as it boils on Mark's skin, and the burnt hero twitches as steam bursts from the breaks in his scabbing skin. Jamie shakes the bottle empty, dashing it over Mark's face, his chest, his arms. He tosses it aside and unscrews the top on a second bottle.
“You're hurting him,” says Donald, moving to take the bottle from Jamie. Trespasser One stays Donald's hand, holding him back.
“Why is it so hot?” asks Stacy, rubbing her red and blistering skin beneath her overalls.
“The Destroyer is going to turn everything to ash,” says Jamie as he works, pouring the third bottle over Mark. This one sparks less, and the steam gives a gentler hiss. Something, at least, is happening. “That's what the Protector said, right? It'll turn or absorb who it can, then burn everything.”
“Trespasser, I can see -” begins Cathy, pointing past the Trespasser. He turns, following her finger, and sees a humanoid figure with leathery wings descend from a rooftop into the middle of the road, red fire surrounding it like a demon from myth.
The Trespasser draws his pistol and puts two rounds through its head, the cold determination in his eyes extinguishing the monster's flame. It falls to the boiling pavement without a sound.
“What was that?” asks Gary.
“Nothing,” says the Trespasser. “Keep pouring, Jamie.”
Jamie pours the fourth bottle on. Mark has stopped screaming now: there is only the silence, the splashing, the stench of burning alcohol; of burnt flesh. Jamie keeps going.
“Another one,” shouts Donald, looking past the Trespasser.
This one is a woman – evident from her small, frail figure – and she is pacing towards them from the smoking pillar of a burnt-out car. Her gait is unusual, as though she is trying to balance on ice.
The Trespasser fires two shots from his pistol, and nothing happens. The bullets pass straight through her as though she is made of smoke.
Because, he realises, she is.
She dissipates like a cloud, and reforms as she passes through a twisted hunk of metal that was once a lamp post, hovering towards them like a swarm with a dull, lifeless stare, black pits where her eyes should be.
“Gary, forcefield.”
Gary throws a field up around them, a blue oily bubble that gives them a moment's reprieve from the heat. The girl keeps coming towards them, extending her hands, her fingers blowing away in the wind like torn fabric.
She reaches through Gary's forcefield with ease, and the Trespasser puts three rounds through her head. The bullets pass through her as though she were a projection, and the soldier stumbles back, his mind racing as she drifts towards him like a ghost.
Lowering his pistol, the Trespasser draws his tazer and presses it against an un-armoured segment of his suit. The girl reaches for his heart, her hand passing through his chest with a cold, clammy sensation, like a knife sliding through his skin.
He gasps, his muscles seizing up; he fires the tazer.
The electricity passes through his body, shocking him – and her. She screams, her jaw unhinging as her face turns to shapeless smoke and her body loses its consistency. For a second she is real, her skin stretching and twisting as her distorted, impossible body becomes flesh and bone, her skeleton snapping under her disjointed form.
Gary takes that second and closes his eyes: he grits his teeth and forms a forcefield around her.
With a grunt of effort, Gary collapses the forcefield into a tiny bubble, crushing the girl into a shapeless ball of human remains. Releasing his hold on her with a gasp, he falls to his knees, muttering under his breath.
“It's ok Gary,” says Cathy, scrambling towards him as he starts to shake. “It's ok, son -”
“She was just a girl. Just a young lass.”
Cathy crouches over him and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“You did what you had to son, you did what you had to,” she repeats, over and over, firm and reassuring. His breathing relaxes as she pulls him into an embrace.
Stacy rips the tazer wires out, and the Trespasser stops jittering on the ground, catching his breath, still shaking.
“You ok man?” asks Stacy.
His heart is still pounding, and without answering her he turns around: Mark has stopped shaking and steaming. Donald is watching in awe as Mark's skin begins to knit itself back together, the scabbed skin dropping off.
Jamie opens Mark's mouth and starts to let dribbles from the last bottle in. He splutters and coughs, but his throat pulls the drink down as though it is air and he is drowning. Mark's hands finally move as his burnt muscles repair themselves, and he clutches at his face and his eyes, groaning in agony.
More figures appear out of the smoke across Buchanan Street.
“Cathy, make us vanish,” the Trespasser tells her as he gets to his feet and reloads his pistol.
“Ok, everybody get in close,” she says, and motions for them to crouch around her like a mother protecting her children.
She crouches beside Mark, who is beginning to resemble a human again. Swathes of scorched skin slide off his body as fresh pink skin restores itself. They watch his muscles snap back into place as bone knits itself to his black-burned skeleton. Where once his flesh was torn open and his damaged organs were visible, there is newly healed skin. His face and his broken bones click back together.
“Donald, help him out,” says Jamie, looking up at the awe-struck doctor.
Donald obliges, laying his hands upon Mark's body. Together, with the alcohol repairing his broken form and Donald pushing his healing fire through Mark's veins, the super-man begins his return from the edge of death.
Then the fog falls around them as they form a human chain between them all. Swirling mist pulls them away from the hellish inferno, from the battlefield in the centre of their city.
For a gracious moment, as long as Cathy's armband remains green, they have peace. The heat can't touch them here.
They turn, hearing Mark gasp and take a deep breath.
He sits upright, opening his wide, brown eyes and clutching his naked chest. Running a hand over his regrown hair and the new skin across his face, Mark laughs; and then breaks into tears.
“I'm ok,” he whispers. Jamie throws his arms around his friend and embraces him. “I was blind, I was dying, I was -”
“You're ok,” says Jamie. “That's all that matters.”
“I'm sorry – I failed, I'm so sorry -”
“That's enough
,” says the Trespasser, leaning over and grabbing his arm. “You did what you could.”
“The Destroyer's won,” says Mark, still clutching Jamie's shoulder and Donald's hand. Around them, the mist blows like a swirling dream, cool and forgiving. Cathy's armband flashes orange. “The Protector is dead – Glasgow's burning, isn't it?”
Trespasser One nods. “He took out our electronics as well. We're blind, deaf; defenceless. He's going to burn everything to the ground – whatever his minions don't destroy first.”
“We need a plan,” says Donald.
“Hurry up,” groans Cathy. “I can't do this much longer.”
“Hang on Cath.” Stacy pats her shoulder. “You're doing great.”
“If everything else is offline,” says Mark, “then we've only got one weapon.”
“You,” says the Trespasser.
“And I can't fight that thing,” says Mark. “The shield is too strong.”
“The Protector said we had to hit it with immense force concentrated in a small area, right?” asks Jamie. “What about jumping into it?”
“Tried it,” says Mark. “Didn't work. If I could fly, maybe, and get up some speed, but -”
“It's too late to learn to fly, Mark.”
Mark looks around at them, the eyes of his squad staring at him with hope. He swallows his fear and nods.
“Maybe it is,” he shrugs. “But any idiot can fall.”
“What are you saying?”
“Get me in a chopper, or onto a jet or something, and fly me above it. I can drop off and hit it at speed – maybe fast enough to pierce the shield.”
“Nothing works, Mark – all our electronics are gone, that means no flight.”
“I don't need electricity,” says Stacy, her eyes widening. “I can make a helicopter work.”
“For long enough to fly that high?” asks Mark. “You could die, Stace.”
“I'm getting better,” she shrugs. “We have to try.”
“The Destroyer would blow us out the sky,” says Donald. “You've seen what that thing can do.”
“Only if it can hit us,” says Jamie. “Gary, myself, Cath – we can all protect the chopper whilst it flies.”
“And if Stacy can work the rotors, I can help her pilot it,” says the Trespasser.
Donald shrugs. “I can probably help Stacy if she starts to struggle – use my fire to help hers.”
“Where would we get a helicopter?” asks Mark, his face stern and unflinching now.
“The St Enoch's Centre,” says Trespasser One. “There were choppers there evacuating soldiers and the last of the civilians. One or two of them might still be there,” says the Trespasser. “We can go through the subway tunnels – it might be cooler down there too.”
“Guys...” groans Cathy. Her armband flashes to red.
“Ok, let's move. Be ready to fight,” says the Trespasser.
“Oh, I'm ready,” says Mark, standing up out of his crater.
“Not quite yet you aren't,” says Jamie.
The Destroyer has burned away Mark's shorts, leaving him naked.
“Oh.”
The air flickers as Jamie stops time and donates Mark the pair of shorts he was wearing beneath his overalls.
“That's better,” says Mark. “Ok, Cath. Let's go.”
The Trespasser readies his pistol, and the whole group tense up, ready for a fight.
With the roaring, burning sound of the Destroyer's wrath screaming all around them, the mist dissipates, revealing Glasgow at the end of the world: nothing but burning buildings, ash and brimstone.
Three figures emerge from the red, burning darkness. They begin to walk towards the squad, but this time Mark smashes into them like a cannon-ball, bowling them over as he punches and kicks his way free, shouting a slurring challenge.
The squad roar a hesitant battle-cry and follow him into the fray.
A man with an unhinged jaw and fangs has Mark pinned to the ground, gnashing at his throat, his eyes bulging out of his skull as he holds Mark with inhuman strength.
“Amateur,” sneers Mark, and head-butts the beast so hard that he caves its face in. It goes limp and falls on Mark, and he tosses the body off of himself and gets to his feet.
Trespasser One closes the distance with a pale faced woman in a track suit, who opens her mouth and lets loose a torrent of boiling, frothing water. He brings his hands up to defend himself, crying out as the water seeps through his armour, scorching his already-burned skin.
Jamie is suddenly behind the screaming woman, her banshee-like cry accompanying the torrent of steam and bubbles. Without saying a word, Jamie links his elbow-joint around her throat and locks it behind his other arm, squeezing as she thrashes at him.
There's a struggle and a snap, and she stops moving.
Out of the smoke comes an arm four times longer than any human arm can be, punching Jamie across the jaw and sending him to the ground. Like an elastic band it snaps back to its owner, who emerges from the smoke like a rubber puppet on stilts, his legs lengthening with a grotesque cracking sound.
He towers above the squad and reaches down with gangly, greasy arms, a clown-like grin too large for his elastic face as he wraps his rope-arms around Stacy.
She screams and struggles, and Donald lays a hand on the man's leg.
The rubber stiffens and contracts, and the rubber-man falls to the ground, his heart stopped. Donald falls to his knees with the effort, his armband orange.
More figures emerge out of the gloom, following them.
“We can't keep this up,” shouts the Trespasser, cutting Stacy free of the rubber-man's arms with his combat knife. He pulls her free and points the squad to the stairs in the darkness. “Head for the subway.”
Jamie picks up Donald, linking his arm under his shoulder, and the squad stay close together as they stumble toward the stairs, towards the shadow in the darkness.
“Twelve o'clock,” groans Jamie, peering through the gloom. “High.”
The Trespasser looks up and sees a pale green man, his hands webbed and his toes long and slimy, clinging to the side of a burning building. He opens his mouth, showing a coiled tongue with a sharp spear on the end, ready to strike at the squad.
Trespasser One raises his pistol, and two shots spray the frog-man's guts against the wall. He drops with a wet thud, and the squad climb over the rubble and descend into the Buchanan Street subway, thundering down the stairs.
The darkness is absolute. As they search through the shadows, only the faint red light of the Destroyer's haze follows them in.
“I don't suppose anybody has the 'see in the dark' power, eh?” asks Mark as he barges through a ticket-stile, cursing in the darkness.
“I have a torch and night vision goggles,” says the Trespasser. “But the bloody Destroyer went and knocked them all out.”
“Hold on,” says Stacy. “I can kind of feel my way about.”
Gary laughs through the tension. “Well, that's what we're all doing Stace, no offence.”
“No, I mean I can feel the mechanisms. Like, we're walking through ticket stiles, yeah?”
“Right.”
“Well straight ahead is clear, until – I can feel the lights, like little bugs in my mind.”
“Can you turn them on?” asks the Trespasser.
“No – I can't do electricity; even if the Destroyer hadn't broken everything. But I can feel the wee switches in them. Everybody hold onto me.”
The squad do so without saying a thing.
“Operation human centipede is a-go,” sighs Gary.
“Surely operation conga-line would be better,” whispers Jamie as he holds onto Gary's shoulders.
“Can you guys hear that?” asks Cathy. They listen in as Stacy leads them in silence through the blindness.
There's the distant rattling of desperate gunfire. They can hear the roaring of fires, the creak of collapsing buildings above them. From time to time, the low, red bass note of the Destroyer's cry r
eaches their ears, shaking the earth.
There's nothing else.
“It sounds like the world's ending,” says Jamie.
Trespasser One turns in the darkness. “It is.”
“Maybe,” says Mark.
“Stacy, we close?” asks Gary from the back of the line.
“Going down the stairs,” she says. “Watch your step.”
The train tracks have a strong reek to them, like damp smoke. It is the choking scent of brimstone, the volcanic stench of sulphur.
“Smells like eggs down here,” says Gary.
“There's something burning, no doubt,” says the Trespasser. “The surface is getting too hot.”
“You're sure the tracks aren't going to shock us?” asks Cathy.
“Cath,” whispers Donald, “all the electricity in the city is off.”
“Just in the city, you reckon?”
“No,” says the Trespasser. “It must go further. I'd go as far as to say worldwide.”
“Worldwide power cut? That's -”
“It's a disaster,” says the Trespasser. “But I reckon it's the most accurate guess owing to one fact: if people elsewhere in the world could launch missiles – they would have.”
“You think?”
Their footsteps echo on the train track as they push deeper into the darkness, with Stacy feeling the way with her mind, gauging the path by the machinery.
“To be honest,” the Trespasser goes on, his voice flat, “current strategic doctrine is fairly clear about how to treat this situation.”
Jamie gives a bitter laugh. “Lots of bombs and missiles constitutes a strategy, I take it?”
“The city has been evacuated, and the nature of the threat is such that if it is not contained now, we lose our chance for good. If the nations of the world were capable of a nuclear strike, we'd be ash and dust right now. The fact that we haven't been nuked is, ironically, a bad sign.”
“Guys,” says Stacy, stopping the group. They bump into one another like a convoy on ice. “We're below the St Enoch's centre station. Start feeling for the edge and climb up.”
Kingdom: The Complete Series Page 33
