Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  “Can you feel if there are helicopter's up there?”

  “Not yet – too far away for me to tell.”

  “Listen,” says Cathy. They can hear gunfire – assault rifles, human voices, screaming.

  “Hurry,” says the Trespasser, pushing the squad towards the platform in the darkness.

  They emerge into the hellish bloody light, the sky so red it seems inflamed by some infection. Whilst they heard screams before, the only sounds now are sporadic gunshots, followed by a long, sinister silence. The heat hits them hard as they ascend the broken escalator, breathing in dry, heavy air that burns the insides of their lungs like the draw of a cigarette.

  When they get to the surface, the Trespasser holds up a hand for them to stop. They stay low, looking over the towering rooftops to where the red orb of the Destroyer hangs over Glasgow, climbing higher and higher into the sky. Tongues of fire lash out from it, scorching deep wounds into the earth, whilst tears of burning flame weep from its centre and rocket out into the dark recesses of Glasgow to find new soldiers.

  “We're not alone,” says the Trespasser, urging the squad to follow him as he leads them around the subway station.

  They look as they run: humanoid shapes wander the streets like lost children, awakening as the squad begin to move. Some are twisted out of shape, some are seven feet tall and as broad as a truck – but they all have those same red eyes that catch the light like a cat's, and trickles of blood coming from their noses.

  “I can sense helicopters,” says Stacy.

  They turn the corner and pass through what remains of a coffee shop. The metal chairs and tables outside have been blown apart and melted into shapeless husks, the old building torn apart and marked with bullet holes and claw-marks.

  More shadows awaken in the corners of the square, emerging from the flaming mess that was once a shopping centre, clambering over rooftops, climbing out of windows and ruined cars.

  “Just keep moving,” says the Trespasser, and they all hear the urgency in his voice.

  They round the coffee shop and find what they came for – Cathy stops and retches, her hand on Donald's shoulder.

  Sandbags and barricades have been erected around the square in a defensive position – an action which failed, as evidenced by the mixture of dead civilians and soldiers scattered across the area. The helicopters – two of them, side by side – are empty. Bodies lay around them, soldiers in body armour, their weapons lying by their sides, useless.

  “They didn't stand a chance,” says the Trespasser.

  Nobody mentions the corpse lying in the open, or the five bodies surrounding it. Everybody recognises Staff Sergeant Ferguson from earlier – nobody needs to say a thing.

  The Trespasser pushes Stacy towards an empty helicopter, a heavy machine gun mounted on its open door. It's the same type of helicopter they're all used to – dark grey, with a bulbous body and a long thin tail: the kind of helicopter that the Agency uses for almost everything. There is no pilot in the cockpit.

  “Get it started, Stace” he says. “Quick as you can.”

  “Ok,” she mumbles as she climbs into the cabin, past the brutal-looking mounted canon. She plants a hand on the machine's body and closes her eyes, concentrating.

  People begin to emerge from the shadows, into the red light. The air itself, dry and hot, starts to tremble.

  “Get ready,” the Trespasser says, checking his ammunition and loading his last magazine into his pistol. Shrugging, he holsters it and picks up a squad-support weapon from a fallen soldier: a powerful, heavy machine gun. He checks the load and racks the slide, scanning his eyes across the scattered people walking towards them, menace in their eyes.

  The squad stay close to the Trespasser, and he orders them to spread out and put themselves around the helicopter.

  “Protect Stacy,” he says. “And be ready to get onboard.”

  Donald hears Stacy groaning with effort, and turns and leaps in beside her. He puts his hand over hers and tells her to relax, to breathe: her armband remains green, and she feels his fire spreading up her arm and into her heart, helping her, focusing her mind.

  The gears in the engine begin to turn with a screeching, grinding sound. Above them, the blades start to move.

  Now the circling monsters descend upon their prey.

  Mark tenses up, locking eyes with one figure in the crowd that keeps staring at him.

  The air flickers as the red-eyed people start running and jumping towards them.

  “Here they come,” shouts the Trespasser, and the booming register of his heavy machine gun cuts through the screeching beasts leaping at them.

  Mark watches the Trespasser put seven rounds into the chest of a charging man, and he tumbles to the ground.

  Something smashes into Mark from behind, and he rolls and glances around for his attacker; all he finds is a hunk of metal lying on the ground, the remains of a table.

  Something else flies at him – a chunk of masonry – and catches him in the chest. He is knocked over, rolling to avoid the metal and stone being thrown at him.

  Mark's eyes catch his attacker – a woman in a business suit, her hair dishevelled and her designer glasses smashed. She has her eyes closed, and as her hands move so do the objects. He tenses his legs and leaps at her, knocking her to the ground with a single punch to the forehead.

  Objects clatter around him, dropped from the air before they could smash into his body. Mark roars and leaps back into the fray.

  The Trespasser puts down another attacker, and another, firing in bursts to control the weapon – and then they are on him. A man leaps at him, his body contorting and shifting into the hulking figure of a grizzly bear. It rears up and aims a scything claw at him.

  A blue forcefield blossoms around him, and a blow that would have torn him in two screeches against the bubble, like nails on a chalkboard. Trespasser One looks behind him, and finds Gary pushing the forcefield around them.

  Gary focuses as the bear beats on the forcefield with all of its weight, towering above them. The forcefield collapses, forming itself into a blue orb the size of a fist, and smashes against the bears face.

  With a choked roar, the huge creature collapses, returning to its human form as he goes limp on the ground.

  Three identical men swarm Mark, grabbing his limbs with strength that matches his own. He watches them split again into six men, holding his legs down. Breaking one arm free, Mark tries to punch one of them, only for the man to shatter like glass. Another appears to take his place, his glass-attackers multiplying like bacteria: twelve of them now.

  Mark lets out a roar and kicks out, freeing his legs and leaping up into the air.

  His attackers hold on, trying to pin him down, but they weigh next-to-nothing. Mark smashes back into the ground and the clones shatter like ice, fading away on the wind.

  Only one is left, the original, trying to stand up and nursing a broken arm. With his red-tinged eyes he stares at Mark, his face contorting into pure hatred. Blood sputters from his nose.

  Mark punches him in the stomach, sending him flying into the last standing wall of the coffee shop. There is a dull thud, and the man goes silent.

  Cathy leaps inside the helicopter as the engine starts to turn over faster and faster.

  “She's doing it,” says Donald, Stacy squeezing his hand like a woman in labour. Her face is red from the heat and the effort, and sweat has soaked her hair to her skull.

  “Good work, lass,” says Cathy, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  Outside, the Trespasser shouts for them to get onboard.

  The Trespasser discards his machine gun and leaps up into the cabin, swinging himself around onto the helicopter's canon. There is already a belt of ammunition racked in, and he grabs the trigger and aims it into the scattered mass of mutants and psychopaths descending upon them now, dropping from the sky into the battle.

  He opens fire, blowing a hulking creature of muscle and rage off of Mark, who was pinn
ed to the ground. Over the rip-tear rattle of the canon, he can hear the blades begin to beat the air as they turn.

  Mark flinches as lightning hits him, fired from the fingers of some screeching old woman emerging from the smoke. The Trespasser focuses the canon's fire on her, and she disappears in a cloud of pink mist, blown apart. Mark struggles to his feet and runs for the helicopter as more monsters give chase.

  The Trespasser fires past him, cutting down anything that moves. For every creature that falls to his bullets, however, there's another one made of steel; or one that vanishes before the bullets can touch it. He watches his tracers bend around some of the figures, or pass through them to no effect.

  Leaping, Mark tumbles into the helicopter.

  “Go,” shouts Cathy, “we're ready.”

  The helicopter's blades are a booming roar now, and Stacy is crouched by the edge of the metal body with her teeth gritted and her eyes screwed shut.

  “Where's Jamie?” asks Mark.

  A figure appears in the helicopter, as if by teleportation. Mark almost greets Jamie, used to his sudden method of arrival.

  The figure isn't Jamie.

  It is a grinning man in a prison uniform, a deep scar running up across his face, with a serrated knife in one hand. He is standing beside Stacy, and reaches out for her, smiling as though he's won the lottery, his eyes wide and red.

  Jamie appears out of nowhere, and grabs the figure around the chest – then they are gone again.

  “Jamie?” shouts Cathy. “Where did he go?”

  Mark pushes past her and looks outside.

  “We have to go now,” says the Trespasser as his canon fires up again, beating away the charging monsters. “Or we aren't going to make it.”

  “Not without Jamie,” says Mark, spotting his friend.

  Jamie is rolling around the ground, wrestling for control of the knife with the teleporting prisoner. One moment they are upright; the next they are on the concrete; then Jamie is gone; then the prisoner is gone –

  Mark blinks: it's like watching a flick-book battle, as each fighter vanishes and reappears somewhere else to try and get the advantage.

  Then it stops.

  The prisoner dabs his nose and looks down, holding his head. He falls to his knees – enough of a pause for Jamie to pop into existence behind him and cave the back of his head in with a chunk of brick.

  Jamie appears in the helicopter again, and Mark grabs his arm to make sure they have him.

  “Fly!” they shout at the same time.

  The helicopter gives a surge of effort, and Stacy screams out loud as she pushes herself.

  Then the ground is falling away from them, and they are airborne.

  “We made it,” shouts Mark, “we actually -”

  He stops as a dark figure appears aside the helicopter, arms spread like wings.

  “Flyer,” shouts the Trespasser, and hoses the figure with lead from the helicopter's canon. Bullets tear through the flying man, and he drops like a stone.

  The barrels of the canon stop spinning, and the Trespasser steps away, wiping his head as the war-zone disappears beneath them.

  “Now we've made it,” he says. “Stacy, we're going up in a straight line. You're going to have to steer this thing.”

  “I -” she clenches her teeth, breathing hard. “I can't.”

  “You can,” he reassures her, shouting over the blast of the helicopter's blades. “I'm going to put my hand on your shoulder, and I'm going to tell you what parts of the machine make it turn and tilt forward, ok? You're going to just take it nice and easy, little movements at a time.” She nods her head, and then manages to open her eyes. The Trespasser looks into her bloodshot, wet eyes, her trembling lips pressed together, and starts explaining. “Ok, we're going to tilt forward, there are -”

  “I can't, there's s-so many little p-parts all moving.” She struggles to pronounce the words. The Trespasser sees her determination start to crack, and the fear setting in. “If I stop one of them, then -”

  “Hey, hey,” he squeezes her arm. “If I can fly this thing, so can you. Ok?”

  The tone of the blades begins to falter as though the engine is about to cut out.

  “Stacy...” the Trespasser says, his hand hovering over the parachute cord on his combat-webbing.

  “She's got this,” says Mark, pushing in and putting a caring hand on the side of her face. He wipes her tears away and locks eyes with her. They exchange a look that says more than words can. “You've got this.”

  She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and nods. “Ok, tell me.”

  The Trespasser leans in. “We need to point this thing towards the Destroyer. Now: helicopters would spin in circles if they didn't have the tail rotor acting against the movement of the blades, right?”

  “Yeah,” she whispers, struggling to concentrate. Donald feels her squeeze his hand tighter.

  “So if you decrease the speed of the tail rotor just a little – just a little,” he says. “Then you can make it turn one way, or by increasing it you can make it turn the other way. We're going to tell you whether to increase or decrease, and that's how we'll steer, ok?”

  “I've got this,” she says, her eyes opening again. Her determined glare burns a hole in the floor, and she twists her face up as the helicopter begins to rotate in the air.

  Mark watches Glasgow burn beneath them, holding onto the edge of the doorway as the world speeds by. Besides the sound of the helicopter whirring through the air, all is silent. He looks over his shoulder, through the cockpit and out the glass, and sees the flaming red orb hanging in the sky.

  His stomach twists into knots, and crouching beside him, Jamie looks up and sees the fear in his eyes.

  “You ok?” he asks, standing up and looking out across the ruined city.

  From the west end and the university buildings, all the way across the city to Dennistoun and the tower-blocks of Partick, Glasgow is a black, scarred landscape lit only by sporadic, blazing fires and choked by pillars of smoke. The stars are hidden behind the swirling clouds of ash and dust, an entire city coughing an infection out into the air.

  “No,” says Mark, barking out a bitter laugh. “I'm about to leap out of a helicopter and try to punch an alien that's going to burn the earth to ashes. Jamie, I've almost died twice in – what, has it even been twenty-four hours?”

  Jamie pats him on the back. “Yet here you are. You're bloody hard to kill.”

  “Doesn't feel that way. Thanks, by the way; for saving me. I thought I was gone. I thought I was going to be blind even if I did survive.”

  “You were,” says Jamie. He forces a smile and nudges Mark. “Hey, if we get through this, I think we should buy some shares in a whisky company.”

  “Yeah,” says Mark, distracted as the helicopter climbs higher into the sky. “Listen man – if I don't make it -”

  “You will.”

  “But if -”

  “Mark.” He says it with such stubborn belief that Mark turns and looks in his eyes: he sees no obnoxious wishing or naïve optimism in Jamie's face. “You're going to make it. This thing nearly got you before – but that was before.” Jamie reaches inside his overalls and pulls out a small thirty-five centilitre bottle of single malt, and passes it to him. “I thought I'd better keep this for you in case you got blasted again. You can down it before you jump.”

  Mark takes it, nodding, holding it in his hand since his shorts lack pockets. “How do you even fight a thing like that? I mean – it's just hatred and power. You can't punch that.”

  “Yes you can. You just need to punch it harder.”

  “I'm doing it alone this time.”

  “I'd come with you if I could, man,” says Jamie. “We'd kick this guy's head in. Alien invades Glasgow, gets battered by a drunk guy. That's almost poetic.”

  Mark fakes a laugh and looks away, biting his lip.

  Jamie pats his back. “Looks like this is a job for beer-man, right?”

  “Why
does it have to be me?” asks Mark, turning around. Jamie sees the façade break like he knew it would, and the fear underneath it. “I don't want to do this, man.”

  The noise of the rotors fade as Jamie plants a hand on Mark's shoulder, and the world slows to a halt. Time gives them a moment to themselves, the only people talking in the world.

  “You're in the rare position, Mark, of being in the right place, at the right time, and being the right man for the job. You are, literally, the only person who can save the world.”

  “I didn't ask for that. I didn't want any of this.”

  “Nobody ever does – but the world is going to burn, and everybody else with it, if you don't try. I know we always make a point of saying we're not superheroes, we're not going to start wearing capes, blah blah blah – but Mark, you're about to fly into an alien monster that's going to destroy the world, and try and punch it to death. You are a bloody superhero.”

  “I don't feel like one. I'm terrified. I don't want to fight.”

  “Nobody said heroes don't get afraid. The difference is that they don't let it stop them.”

  Mark nods. “Thanks Gandalf.”

  “Don't be a smartarse. You saved me and Chloe more than once. You're already a hero, mate.”

  They exchange a firm nod, patting each other on the arm, and then time flows once more, and Jamie is sitting across the helicopter.

  The air gets hotter, and the sky a darker shade of red, as they draw closer to the Destroyer.

  “Gary, forcefield now,” shouts the Trespasser, his voice cutting through the racket. Without hesitation, Gary extends his hands like a conductor and the entire craft is caught in a protective bubble.

  Something flashes around the helicopter, and then the light is gone.

  “What was that?” asks Jamie, standing up and staring out the cockpit.

  “The Destroyer is below us, and it's angry.”

  “Oh hell,” says Jamie. “Cathy, can you make us disappear?”