The Silent Neighbours (Watchers Book 2)

by S. T. Boston

  With a last cautionary glance around the cabin, Sam pulled the emergency handle on the cabin door. It gave immediately and fell away into the field, coming to rest on a large divot of ploughed earth. Sam sat himself on the edge of the cabin, dangled his legs over and dropped down the four or five feet to the field below.

  He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been out for, the sun was just peeking its head over the easterly horizon. The sky was clear apart from some very light tendrils of cloud that formed unfathomably long lines across the sky. Sam felt the autumn chill biting into his shirt and immediately zipped his jacket up. Clearing the King Air's wreckage, he surveyed his landing site. The plane had come to rest halfway across East Field, which had found fame in 1990 when Lead Zeppelin had used a picture of a crop circle formation that had appeared the field, in almost the exact spot of the crash, for their Remasters album cover. Sam was impressed that he'd ended up almost precisely where he had planned to land, well crash would have been a more accurate description. Nonetheless he'd survived and was now well and truly back in the game. Briefly he thought that he'd been wasted as an infantry sergeant, maybe he should have joined the air force.

  Sam crossed the roughly ploughed field as fast as he could, reaching the hedgerow he followed it for around a hundred yards before finding an aluminium five bar gate, which he scaled. He wasn't too surprised to see no one had come to his aid, this was a sparsely populated area, even more so after The Reaper, proof positive that the deadly virus had dealt its hand in every corner of the globe.

  With his new, slightly too big, shiny shoes smacking rhythmically on the tatty tarmac, Sam pushed on, walking the short distance from the crash site to the cottage. As he crossed the old canal bridge he stopped momentarily and shook his head at the sight of the half sunken narrow boat that jutted out from beneath the bridge like a massive splinter. It seemed that the local duck community had now taken up residence and two of the web-footed creatures were unsteadily wobbling their way along the breached side of the boat.

  Half jogging down the other side of the bridge he noticed that the Barge Inn sign was still in place, it even looked clean. Sam hoped that the quirky little pub, which had a games room ceiling decorated with hand painted crop circles, like a crazy Sistine Chapel, was still in business. Around fifty yards further up the lane he reached the cottage's gate post. Parked on the shingle drive were two vehicles, one of which he recognised as Adam's old RX7, the Nissan Juke he'd never seen, it filled him with a slight sense of foreboding. Moving his hand to the back of his trousers he removed the Beretta and clicked off the safety, but before he had chance to take another step a shrill scream punched through the air like an invisible fist.

  Chapter 21

  Asmodeous paced impatiently across the bridge of the Arkus 2, his large, strong hands balled into fists of frustration and clutching the bottom of his Armani suit, creasing the material into small lines. Although he despised humanity on Earth, some of the tailoring and fashion appealed to his narcissistic nature. As such he'd had purchased a large number of suits and other highly priced items of clothing while he still could. “So, Sam Becker is gone?” he boomed, it was as much of a statement as a question.

  On the other side of the world, standing on the top deck of a car ferry, Namtar gripped the mobile phone in his right hand so tightly he felt as if he would crush the small device, he expected to feel the handset give at any moment. Taking a deep, chilled lungful of the early morning air he said, “And Asag, my brother is dead.”

  There was a pregnant pause from the other end of the line before Asmodeous finally replied, “Do you have any idea where he might be going?”

  “Did you not hear me, sir? I said Asag is dead. Becker killed him whilst making good his escape.”

  “Yes, I heard you!” Asmodeous snapped, the bark almost reaching down the phone and biting Namtar's ear off. “This is war, Namtar, and in war there are casualties.”

  “Is that all you have to say?” Namtar fumed, he knew he was on dangerous ground being so insubordinate but the loss of his brother was sitting hotly in his gut, like molten lava. “Almost seven thousand years we have served you, been faithful to you, and all you can say is that he's a casualty of war! And this is not a war, this is a fucking personal vendetta, a vendetta that my brother just paid for with his life!”

  “You'd do well to remember who you are addressing,” screamed Asmodeous, his face contorting into geometric lines of rage. Back on the bridge of the craft, which sat invisibly in the Peruvian desert, Namtar's voice filled the room, utilising the hands free calling system that Ben Hawker had designed and enabled with one of his many programs that made Earth tech compatible with the Arkkadian equipment. The small mixture of other Earth breeds present, who were either working with Hawker or part of Asmodeous' small private army stopped what they were doing to watch the fireworks, but at the same time tried to make it look like they weren't watching. “I think I'm surrounded by incompetents,” Asmodeous continued. “You let Becker escape in the plane that you took to transport him in. I have heard nothing from Lilith's team who were retrieving Fisher, and the same goes for the team that was sent to retrieve his sister.”

  “What about the team taking care of the Arkkadians?” Namtar paced the length of the deck, finally the ship sounded its horn and there was a small jolt as it pulled away from the port.

  “They killed two, and two are outstanding. Oriyanna is one of them.” His voice had relaxed slightly but there was a tension to it that told Namtar he might erupt again at any moment, like an unstable volcano. Whilst the situation was indeed grave there was a small part of him that felt relieved that he wasn't the only one to have come up short. “I mean how hard can it be to snatch three Earth-Humans?”

  “Becker was extremely well trained, sir. He was hit a number of times but it would appear he is in possession of The Gift.” There was a silence on the line, the carrier signal clicked a few times before Asmodeous spoke.

  “Then Fisher must also be in possession of it. This was not mentioned in his account.”

  “When I catch up to them I have a the means to disable it,” Namtar reached into his deep pocket and removed the flat black disc, once activated it would dig itself into the skin of the subject and pulse the body, immediately disabling the nanobots which made the magical healing possible. “That is, if I don't kill him first.”

  “They are all to be delivered to me alive, do you understand?”

  “Absolutely,” Namtar replied icily, unsure he could trust himself not to tear Sam Becker's head from his shoulders on first sight. He placed the flat black disc into his coat pocket and removed a small tablet style PC, bringing the device to life he looked at the green dot that was stationary, sat in the middle of nowhere, a small village in Wiltshire. “I took the liberty of bugging him with a small GPS tracker whilst he was in my custody, it's in his jacket pocket. It's one of ours and small enough for him not to notice, for now. I'm sending you the feed.”

  Back aboard the Arkus 2 Asmodeous paced the bridge and reached Hawker. “Can you bring that feed up on the main holo-display?”

  Hawker closed his current screen by placing his palm over the display and closing his fist, he then threw it aside as if he were tossing away a piece of garbage. He was proud of his work and how he'd made the two technologies speak to each other, he had been one of the best during his time at DARPA, a trait which had followed him through to his new duty. His slightly shabby appearance didn't quite fit his intellect. His clothing of choice was a pair of faded blue jeans, a GAP hoody that had seen one too many winter, and a pair of retro Nike Air Max trainers.

  A small green holographical dot began to blink in the bottom left of his display, he touched his finger to it, making the dot turn from green to red as he dragged it to the centre of the display area. Once in the centre it expanded and the GPS read unfolded before him. “There you go, sir.”

  “I monitored him the whole flight,” came Namtar's voice over the speaker system. “
I think he landed about ten minutes ago, he was mobile on foot but has been stationary in this position for the last two minutes.”

  Asmodeous watched the green dot, his amber eyes squinting in frustration. “If I don't hear from the other two teams in the next hour I am going to assume that they have failed,” he said. “I don't know how or why and as impossible as it seems I am afraid it's very likely.”

  “I will be on British soil in four hours,” Namtar cut in, watching the French coast slip steadily behind the ferry and thinking that if the teams were not dead and had indeed failed then they were likely to have gone to ground and taking their chances, rather than facing almost certain death at the hands of Asmodeous.

  “Good, once you are there you will be working with Peltz and Croaker, and any of the others if they check in. Wherever Sam Becker is, I can almost guarantee you will find Adam Fisher and his sister, and more than likely the two Arkkadians, too.”

  “My thoughts exactly, sir.”

  “You will be in charge of the operation. I have dispatched the Gulf Stream jet to you from Portugal, the co-pilot, as you know, stayed with the plane. He tells me that there is still some hardware on board that you may find useful, tranquilisers and such.”

  “How long do I have?”

  Asmodeous looked at Hawker who opened up a number of smaller screens within the large one, the GPS read shrunk and adjusted to the same size as the others, all still retained the visually pleasing holographical 3D layer effect that Earths computer scientist had not yet managed to perfect. “North Korea will have Kwangmyŏngsŏng live in around ten hours. The United States, Russia, China and the European Alliance will be live by this time tomorrow.”

  “Thirty hours,” Asmodeous boomed. “You have thirty hours to secure them and get them here. The jet is going to RV with you at a place called Netheravon, it's an old military airbase, decommissioned now. From what my team here can tell it's used, or was, up 'til recently for skydiving and pleasure flights, so the runway should be in good shape. It's about ten miles from Becker's current position. By the time you get to the UK, meet up with Peltz and Croaker and haul your arses up country, it should be there waiting. Make that your first stop.”

  “Understood.”

  “Oh, and if you fail, don't bother coming back to the Arkus! I hope that will give you enough of an incentive to do a good job.” The line went dead. Namtar felt as if he could launch the handset into the channel, but he resisted the urge and clenched his teeth tightly, whilst letting his anger recede from boiling point. Placing the phone into the pocket of his grey jacket he paced to the rear of the ship and looked into the broiling, churning water at the stern. He had no desire to fail and he was certainly not planning to have a front seat position for the coming apocalypse.

  Chapter 22

  A persistent Blackbird, perched among the twisted branches of the plumb trees, serenaded Taulass with a pretty, yet somehow annoying song, rousing him slowly from his deep and rest full sleep. For a few brief moments, in the bleary eyed period between waking and sleeping, whilst the birdsong seemed to form part of some twisted dream, he thought he was in his bed, safe. Then like a train emerging from a tunnel, reality bit. He sat himself up in the reclining sun lounger, which had been his bed for the night. His body still thrummed with a dull pain, although it had nothing on what he'd experienced the previous night. Standing himself up and looking down at his ruined clothing he ran his hands over his body in an exploratory fashion, checking his wounds had healed, which much to his relief, they had. The Gift was a wondrous piece of technology, however Taulass couldn't help but feel that he'd tested its effectiveness to its limits, and some. Despite its miraculous ability to heal it had done nothing to stifle the initial pain of an injury, and being shot to shit hurt, a lot.

  Stretching his aching limbs he crossed the small timber building, his bare feet creaking over the tantalised wooden floor. Drizzle dusted the thin glass door, grey clouds were hung, motionless, filling the maggoty dawn sky, as if someone had thrown a blanket over the sun. He shivered and looked across the garden toward the house he'd fled. His view was obscured by a number of pine trees that lined the adjoining property like twenty foot green sentinels. He'd made good his escape that way last night but didn't recall seeing them. Nonetheless, behind the trees he could still see a single, solitary plume of smoke tracing its way into the damp sky, as if eager to join the cloud that had a lid on the morning.

  Momentarily filled with the vigour at having both escaped and survived, Taulass ran through in his head what he need to achieve. Firstly he needed clothes, his loose fitting and bloodied jogging bottoms were ones he'd bought whilst on Earth, the ones he always slept in. His wrecked shirt also formed part of his night time attire, although red it did nothing to hide the massive, dark crimson pool of blood that had congealed and dried into the material overnight. He needed to wash, he could feel dried blood caked onto his skin, like one of those weird facial masks that Earth women, and some overly image conscious men, used in a self-obsessed effort to keep age at bay. Catching a very watered down, ghost-like reflection of himself in the drizzle-powdered glass he saw that he closely resembled what could only be described as the walking dead. Last year a number of boisterous children dressed as Zombies had trick-or-treated at the house, his current state of dress and appearance was not a million miles away. However, with it still being a good six or seven weeks until the unusual Earth festival, he doubted he'd pass as a reveller on his way home after an evening's fancy dress party.

  After making himself look less like a living corpse, he needed to get to the safe house. The small two bedroom property in Kingston upon Thames had been rented by them for the past two years. Although furnished it had never been used or stayed in overnight. It was nothing more than an emergency backup plan to be used in the event of things going south, which over the last twelve hours they undoubtedly had. Stabbing his hands into his pockets he clutched the recall tab and felt relieved that he had a way out, even if the worse happened he was not stuck on Earth. He had no intention of pulling the plug on the operation yet, though. Oriyanna was alive and if she hadn't gone to the safe house he needed to find her. After all, he'd lived through much more testing times during his previous residency on Earth.

  * * *

  If there were a headstone somewhere in a cemetery that commemorated Taulass' life on Earth as a Watcher, it would read Richard Blake 1840 – 1950. Richard had been his Earth name, it was a fairly unassuming name, for he'd held a very unassuming position in society, hence his slightly longer than normal one hundred year service. During those years, firstly living in London, then in the 1940's moving further south to the safer confines of the country, he'd witnessed humanity at its darkest hour, twice. The second such time stuck in his memory more, for by the time World War Two broke out, Earth tech had developed enough to allow death to touch every corner of the globe. Working as a reporter for the Daily Express, a paper which on his return to Earth he'd proudly discovered was still in publication, he'd been low key, yet able to keep up to date with news all around the world. In those days information had not been so easily and readily accessible and television was not the main medium for news. On September the 7th 1940 he'd almost lost his life when, on the very first night of the Blitz, a high explosive German bomb had detonated near to his small terrace house on Union Street. The blast had stripped the front facing wall from the property and caused the roof to cave in. Thankfully he'd taken shelter in a cupboard under the stairs, crouched down next to his old iron bath and string mop. That one occasion had been enough to get Taulass to relocate outside of the city to a quieter part of Surrey, where he lived out the rest of the war. Although he'd regularly find himself in war-torn London for work, it was far safer to live in an area not targeted by the relentless waves of German bombers that seemed hell bent on burning England's capital to the ground. Despite the Nazi threat being great and the death toll during the war being unthinkable, it was not his job to protect Earth-Humans fro
m each other. Wars between men were not his concern, he would merely have to endure them and hope that humanity would learn from its mistakes.

  It had pained him to witness both the World Wars, but when his time came to an end in 1950, he couldn't help feeling a new hope for the Earth-Humans, the winds of change were coming and he felt certain that those bleak and death-filled days would never been repeated on such a wide scale, a foresight that had proven right. After returning to Arkkadia he'd kept a close eye on information fed back by the next generation of Watchers, keeping himself abreast of Earth technology and advances in medicine. He'd been astounded at how quickly, during times of peace, technology had developed and how fast things were moving along. Unfortunately war seemed almost normal to Earth-Humans, and despite the atrocities he'd lived and witnessed whilst on Earth, smaller wars and conflicts reigned on. As soon as one ended another crisis seemed to arise. Eventually this lead to John Remy's time, and after much deliberation by the council it had been deemed that they would try to steer humanity away from conflict and toward peace. A plan that had been working until the night when all four Watchers had been killed by Finch, the start of the events that were to plunge humanity into previously unexperienced times of hardship and death. A small part of Taulass felt the odd pang of responsibility for what had happened. After all, Buer had been on Earth for some eighty years before the plan had been put into action, eighty years spanned back to his time as a Watcher, but neither he nor his two dead colleagues had known. Buer had been cunning, the Earth-Breed program had made sure that this new army was completely unknown and untraceable. A sleeper-cell style attack on a massive scale, one that had taken decades to nurture.

  * * *

  Shaking the memories aside, Taulass left the summer house and padded his way across the manicured lawn which, in the light of day, he saw was also home to a well maintained pond. The Glock felt stupidly heavy in his pocket and he kept having to haul the material up in order to prevent it from pulling his joggers down around his ankles.