"Weird set-up in the field, sir," he reported, in a low voice. "Roscoe's in there, sitting on that steamroller thing. Other side of this hedge. It's not a very thick hedge so best keep our voices down. I reckon he's on the steamroller because it's a highest spot for a kiddies' radio he's using and it's a good lookout point for covering the entrance. They dragged three women out of the canteen, all gagged, and have tied them to the fence around the well-head down the bottom of the slope."
Anne gave a little gasp of horror.
"How many men?" Malone demanded.
"Ten, as near as I could judge. They've got David Weir and three of Tony Selby's men in the canteen."
"Are Roscoe's men armed?"
"Four shotguns, maybe more, and Roscoe has the Sterling from the armoury."
Malone swore under his breath. The ex-army submachine-gun and some loaded magazines had been handed in by a woman during an arms amnesty held just before the emergency.
"They had a lookout near the entrance," Hardy concluded. "But he's now sleeping off a right hook. A bloody hard one."
"Well done, Hardy," said Malone, picturing the layout of the field in his mind. He fell silent, trying to work out a plan.
"Mind if I make a suggestion, sir? You know the old saying about making thunder in the south, and attacking in the north? You make some thunder in the south with this thing, and I reckon I could deal with Roscoe and his Sterling." He grinned. "I can move real quiet at night. My dad used to be a poacher."
Malone nodded. It was a good plan. "This is where you get out, Anne."
"Not a good idea, sir. That dress might show up through the hedge."
"I'm not driving into the field with her if Roscoe starts blazing away with a Sterling or anyone lets loose with shotguns!" Malone hissed.
"She'll all right if she stays down, sir. Mr Prescott had this vehicle lined with steel plate, as I recall."
"In that case, I'm staying," Anne declared. She climbed over the back of the passenger seat and sprawled on the floor in the rear of the vehicle.
"Give me three minutes from now, sir," said Hardy.
"I'll hook left when I enter the field," said Malone. "Give Roscoe less of a target with that fucking Sterling."
"You give me three minutes, sir, and he won't have that fucking Sterling." With that Hardy melted into the shadows.
Chapter 57.
THE THREE MINUTES SEEMED to pass with agonizing slowness.
Malone released the flap on his .45's holster while watching the luminous hands on his watch. With ten seconds to go, he started the engine, snicked into four-wheel drive, switched the headlights onto main beam, and roared into the field, his horn blaring. He skidded to the left, the Range Rover's tyres spinning on the soft ground. A shotgun blasted nearby and shattered the rear window. He squeezed off a shot in the direction of the flash and heard someone cry out. Next he took a calculated risk and yanked the steering wheel around. The headlights spoked across the field, momentarily picking out the Winnibago and the three women tied to the fence around the well-head. Malone straightened so that the headlights targeted Roscoe standing on Brenda, his blue eyes twin chips of hate. He aimed the Range Rover straight at the showman's engine and had to swerve to avoid Hardy who materialized out of the shadows, clutching the Sterling. Roscoe remained on Brenda's driver's platform, screaming abuse and calling on his God to wreak divine vengeance on his enemies.
"Three sentinels with Roscoe took a dive into the hedge when I tackled their leader," Hardy panted, offering Malone the Sterling. "Didn't have time to flush 'em out but they're not armed. Do you want this thing, sir?"
Someone fired both barrels of a shotgun from behind the Centrax generator although the targets were out of range.
"You keep it," said Malone. "Use it to keep that clown behind the generator pinned down while I free the women."
"You better hurry, sir." Hardy pointed down the slope. Two sentinels were frantically adding to the bonfire that had been piled up around the three women. They were using the dry brushwood that Tony Selby and his team had cut away from the concrete plinth when they had discovered the well-head.
"Light it! Light it!" Roscoe yelled into his walkie-talkie.
Malone hurled the Range Rover down the slope. The chainlink fence and its three captives loomed in the windscreen. He spun the wheel so that the sentinel who was about to light a torch caught the full force of the door when Malone shoved it open and rolled on the grass. Hardy galloped down the slope, weaving left and right, and threw himself flat when he was within the Sterling's useful range. There was a sharp rat-tat-tat accompanied by muzzle flashes as he fired a short burst to deter the gunman behind the generator from trying to shoot at Malone.
The second bonfire-builder came at Malone with a shovel and keeled over, screaming and clutching his arm when he received the full benefit of one of Malone's deadly kicks.
Malone could hear Roscoe in the distance, yelling at his men to drag the railway sleeper chocks clear of the showman's engine's front wheels. He glanced up the hill, couldn't quite make out what was going on, and turned his attention to the three terrified women. Their faces white, their eyes imploring, their mouths bound with duct tape. A shadow came rushing out of the darkness and keeled over in response to a burst of fire from Hardy.
Ellen kept still while Malone examined her bonds. A stout cable tie had been used to fasten each of her wrists to the chain-link fencing. Vikki's and Claire's bonds were the same. Malone was considering searching the Range Rover's toolkit for wire cutters when he looked up the slope and saw what Roscoe's plan was with Brenda. His sentinels were using a railway sleeper to lever the showman's engine off its hard standing of pine logs. The great machine was rocking back and forth. It was only a matter of seconds before the mighty machine came charging down the slope. Small wonder that the cult leader was staying aboard -- he intended to steer it straight at his victims.
There was nothing for it but to use the .45. "It'll make a helluva a bang," he warned Ellen, "but it won't hurt. For Christ's sake keep absolutely still." He pulled the cable tie hard across the revolver's muzzle and fired. The tough plastic parted easily and the deflected round punched harmlessly into the ground.
Roscoe gave a demented cry of triumph. Malone looked around. The sentinels had succeeded: the showman's engine was rolling and gathering speed as it lurched down the slope.
Faraday abandoned his position behind the big generator and worked backwards, keeping the machine between himself and whoever it was who had got hold of the Sterling. Firing the shotgun with any accuracy with one arm was impossible anyway. He slipped his last two cartridges into the barrels and kept moving. If he circled right around and came up close behind Malone, accuracy wouldn't be a problem.
Malone's second round was as successful as the first, and Ellen was free. "Get clear!" he yelled.
Claire's hands were trembling. Malone held her left wrist, pulled the cable tie across the muzzle and fired. Her wrist came free.
The great traction engine was less than 70 metres away and still piling on the speed. Roscoe could be seen spinning the steering wheel. The steering chains were slack, causing him to over-correct but his mean course was straight at Vikki.
Claire was free after the second shot. "Get clear!" Malone yelled. The girl didn't need the warning. One look at the monster pounding down the hill was enough.
Vikki closed her eyes. Malone's first shot was good; the cable tie parted, freeing her left wrist. The ground was shaking beneath the onslaught of the ponderous, changing machine. Malone's second shot only partly severed the cable tie. He pulled trigger again but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He dropped the gun, grasped her wrist, and sawed the hang of tough nylon back and forth on the chain-link's rough galvanizing.
Brenda was only thirty metres away when the cable tie parted. Malone grabbed the terrified girl and dragged her clear. "Run!" he yelled. "Run!"
And Vikki ran with Malone hard on her heels. He heard the traction engin
e's front wheels hit the fencing and threw himself and Vikki flat. He twisted around in time to see the charging machine rip through the fencing and hit the well-head's concrete plinth. Both front wheels were shattered by the tremendous impact but the momentum of the machine's mass was enough to keep it going. The huge boiler sloughed across the concrete, raising a great blaze of sparks, and smashed into the squat methane valve.
It needed only one spark, but Brenda provided them by the million.
Chapter 58.
THE BLAST'S CONCUSSIVE BLOW swept over them, making their eardrums ring with pain, and a tongue of blueish-white flame thundered around the traction engine. Roscoe's screams were drowned by the tremendous roar from the mighty flame that was reaching higher and higher into the night sky, lighting up the field as though it were the middle of the afternoon. It was if a hatch leading to the crucibles of hell in the depths of the earth had opened. It was on such a colossal scale that the destruction of Adrian Roscoe was a mere nothing in the flame's fearful presence. He danced, his mouth opening and closing, and then slumped over the steering wheel and was still, the heat searing the flesh from his body. In a way it was fitting that he should die in the same manner that he had planned for his victims.
"Why didn't he jump clear?" Malone asked.
"Blame me," said Hardy. "I handcuffed him to the handbrake shaft. I didn't think he was going anywhere with a hundred tonnes of steamroller attached to his wrist."
"Well he's certainly gone somewhere now," Malone observed.
"Wonder if he'll be made welcome?"
Deprived of its methane fuel, the Centrax had stopped but several emergency site lights remained on, powered by the generator's batteries. A power failure alarm was bleeping.
The sentinels who had sent the traction engine on its final journey and their master to his death, were thunderstruck and helpless, standing on the slope and staring up at the mighty column of roaring blue fire lancing into the sky. Malone and Vikki backed away from the appalling heat. Eventually not even 100 metres was far enough away. They were joined by Ellen and Claire. They had pulled the duct tape from their mouths and yet were still unable to speak.
Malone pointed to the Winnibago. Its paint was starting to blister and bubble. "David and the other are in there!"
Ellen rushed to the mobile canteen and disappeared inside. She emerged a minute later with David Weir and the three power engineers, all were rubbing their wrists. They backed away from the widening sphere of the flame's terrible heat and stood gaping. The Range Rover suddenly burst in flames.
Malone realised that he had forgotten all about Anne. He uttered a cry and started forward but heat had already been working on the vehicle's methane tanks and it was torn apart by a cataclysmic explosion. Debris rained down, forcing them even further back. He said nothing to Vikki, indeed speech was virtually impossible.
They all moved further and further from the hellish epicentre. The remains of David Weir's traction engine collapsed and the terrible lance of flame and thunder now had unimpeded access to the heavens. The silent witnesses stood in a loose group, emnities forgotten as the now leaderless sentinels contemplated the scene of Adrian Roscoe's last stand against his God's imagined enemies. David with his arm around Ellen's waist, Vikki clinging to Claire, Malone thinking about Anne.
The Winnibago finally burst into flames. Its aluminium roof melted and collapsed and it, too, caught fire, sending clouds of heat-driven sparks spiralling upwards.
There was a sudden cry from behind. Malone wheeled around just as Faraday pitched forward, dead from the mortal blow that Anne had delivered to the back of his skull with the Range Rover's jack. A quiver of nerve impulses caused his fingers to tighten on his shotgun's triggers. The barrels roared and the twin blasts of shot sprayed harmlessly into the ground.
Conrad Hardy knelt and examined the still form. He looked at Anne in respect and admiration. She was standing legs apart, breasts heaving, eyes wide with a mixture of triumph and shock. clutching the heavy jack like a talisman.
"He's dead, miss," said Hardy. "Not much left of the back of his skull."
"I'm a misses," Anne hollowly.
Malone took the jack from Anne, and dropped it on the ground so that his arms were free to hold her close. She accepted the security and extended the same to Vikki. The three stood together, not moving.
At that moment something extraordinary happened.
For six months they had become accustomed to warm, humid nights. Even as far back in March, when the Wall had first appeared, the nights had been consistently warm -- nothing like the normal, variable but rarely balmy nights of southern England. They all felt the strange tingling sensation that they knew from the many times they had touched the Wall. It lasted a second and was gone.
The rapidly shrinking Wall had swept over them. In that moment, the bubble of warm, humid air that had been their atmosphere was also gone. The temperature fell with a suddenness that had Anne clinging even more closely to Malone. Her tiny white party dress was hopelessly inadequate. Malone placed his jacket around her shoulders. A chilly wind blew from the south-west. This was not the nightly zephyrs of convection currents within the Wall but a stiff and sustained breeze that bore the scent of the sea.
"The Visitors are coming!" Vikki suddenly cried out, pointing at the sky in the direction of Pentworth Lake. They all looked up but could see nothing beyond the glare.
"What can you see?" Malone shouted.
"Nothing. But I know they're coming! The Wall has gone! They said that the fire would consume all our oxygen!" She pointed. "There! There they are!"
They all saw the Wall's arrival just as Vikki had finished speaking. It was no longer a mighty sphere of an invisible force ten kilometres in diameter but had become a faintly glowing orb that drifted silently from the direction of Pentworth Lake. Only when it was silhouetted against the mighty flame could the watchers see how small it was -- a mere fifty metre diameter replica of what it had once been. It rose rapidly to the very top of the flame, centred itself over the terrible column of fire and descended. The flame was not deflected but was absorbed into the sphere. The noise diminished and ceased altogether when the Wall touched the ground and kept sinking so that it became a hemisphere. The flame had vanished completely. The Wall lifted, changing from a hemisphere back to a globe of energy, leaving behind a mass of fused metal where the well-head had been and the now cold remains of the showman's engine. The Wall had created a merciful silence apart from the crackling from the burning Range Rover and the Winnibago. It remained hovering over the well-head's concrete plinth.
We must go now, Vikki, before there is anymore killing.
"Why did you come!" Vikki cried out so that everyone turned to look her. We cannot say.
You owe us that much! All the suffering you've caused!
We did not mean to, Vikki. Please believe us. What has happened here has been terrible. Beyond our understanding. Goodbye, Vikki. Your child is our gift -- a part of ourselves that we understand; a part of yourselves -- a people that we don't understand. But it can only be those things if he wants to be. We will leave behind a monitor -- what you call a spyder. It will wait until your son is an adult when the monitor will enable his powers, but only if your son want's them enabled.
I will have a son?
Yes. A normal, healthy boy with far above average intelligence. You will be proud of him. You must tell him about us. Tell him that the monitor is waiting and that it will come to him when he is old enough to understand. If he so decides that he wishes to talk to us as you can, the monitor will ensure that he will be able to so so. Not merely him, but the generations that will follow after him. It is a new monitor and is very different from the one you know. It will not be possible to find it and will remain dormant and always near your son until he calls it. We have ensured that he will have the wisdom to make the right decision for your people -- our laws do not allow us to make that decision or to interfere. We can only provide a helping hand in t
he hope that when the time comes, he will consider us worthy partners. Do you understand?
Vikki remained sunk in silence, not answering the Visitors while watched anxiously by her mother and her companions.
Do you understand, Vikki?
Everything except one thing. Why did you come?
One day your son will know -- if he wishes to know.
I want to know! If you don't tell me why you've come, I will kill myself and the baby! Vikki projected an honestly held vehemence into the terrible thought.
There was a pause before the Visitors answered the girl.
You would do that, Vikki?
Yes!
Yes -- you have that ability. Very well. We will tell you. We did not want to because our reasons for coming expose our shame.
What shame?
A finger of ethereal light detached itself from the now shrunken Wall. It was little more than a glowing point attached to its parent body by shimmering thread that seemed shrink to almost nothing as it lengthened, but the light swam with myriads of coalescing colours and moved purposefully towards Vikki. She didn't flinch when it stopped a few centimetres from her face, illuminating her features. It was so small that it was reflected in her green eyes as twin spots of luminescence.
Don't be afraid, Vikki. It is easier for us to tell you this way.
Anne was about to drag her daughter away from the phenomenon but her hand was stayed by Vikki saying aloud: "I'm not afraid." There was a faint, enigmatic smile playing at the corners of the girl's mouth. She reached out to touch the light with the forefinger of her left hand but it withdrew a little way and hovered, as though uncertain.
"I promise you I will try to understand," Vikki whispered. "This is the hand you gave me. I know I hated it at first, but it the most wonderful gift you could have given me. Touch it. Please touch it and forgive me for being ungrateful." The point of light made a whirling circle around Vikki's finger. It stopped, touched it, and was gone -- absorbed into the darkness in an instant.
The Silent Vulcan Page 26
