Abomination (The Pathfinders Book 1)

by Jane Dougherty

  Jack winced. “You did all you could, son. Looks like it was you or him. But you have a score to settle with whoever it was forced you to fight.”

  “It was Ace, Matt,” Tully said quietly. “He forced you. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  Matt seemed to have heard nothing. He was still looking inward, remembering the fight, the boy’s blood streaming in a red arc. Finally, he looked Jack in the eye and did not shift his gaze.

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  Jack nodded again. “Sounds like he deserves it,” he agreed. “But do you?”

  Matt carried on cracking his knuckles.

  Jim broke the awkward silence that had settled on the conversation. “So, Mr. Keane, how did you rate Warlord Thor’s strategy?”

  Tully blushed and threw Jim a furious stare.

  His dad gave a curious smile. “I especially liked the fireworks. Very effective. You seem to have found your vocation there, son, I’d say.”

  “What?” Carla was aghast. “You mean you really see Tully as a military strategist?”

  “Not exactly. Theatrical producer was more what I had in mind.”

  This time Tully managed a shy smile, but he stole a quick glance at Carla to check her reaction. She was looking straight at him, a wide, mocking grin across her face.

  “Bloody hell, it was nice when it stopped, though,” Jack rattled on. “For a bit it was like being in that poem by Tennyson, y’know, ‘Cannons to right of them, cannons to left of them, cannons—’”

  “Don’t know it,” Jim said. “From where I was standing, it looked more like the Bastille Day celebrations, except there weren’t any cars left to burn.”

  Jack laughed. “You obviously come from a nice class of neighborhood.”

  “Wasn’t so bad. Was it, Matt?” He nudged Matt, who gave him a half-hearted smile. “We had some good laughs, didn’t we? Remember when the insurance bought your dad a new Peugeot after the old one got burnt out? And it was us and Mad Louis that torched it!”

  Matt’s face flickered to life. “Yeah, and that stupid fucker of a brother of mine smashed it up a month later.”

  Jim laughed, but the light in Matt’s eyes soon died. “Wonder where the stupid fucker is now?” he murmured then lapsed into silence again.

  “The sooner we get out of this place, the better,” Jim muttered under his breath. “What’s this plan, then?”

  Kat opened her mouth to explain her idea, but before she could speak, the door was flung open. Rather it was burst open by Joe’s shoulder—Ace had obviously been expecting to find it locked. In the background they could see the two ferret brothers and the Holy Man propping himself up with a broom handle tipped with a clutch of drac tails.

  “Not too late for the debriefing, are we?” Ace asked, making room for himself next to Tully. He jerked his chin in the direction of Jack. “Don’t waste your breath trying to talk him around. He’s just a clapped out eco-warrior fucker. When Max and Seb have pulled the skin off his back, he’ll do as he’s told.” Tully remained silent as Ace let his gaze wander around the room. His eyes narrowed as they fell on Kat and Carla. “Do you always invite your whores to military conferences?”

  “Do you always bring yours?” Jack asked brightly. Joe frowned and Ace’s face drained white.

  “If you don’t like the company, Ace, you know what you can do,” Tully fumed.

  “The door’s that way,” his dad added, changing the position of his right arm to grab Matt, if need be.

  “Shut it, you,” Joe spluttered through his broken nose.

  “Ah pipe down, Joe,” Tully said in exasperation. “Can’t you get a muzzle for him or something, Ace?”

  Joe clenched his fists, his brow furrowed in a deep frown.

  “Sit, Joe!”

  Reluctantly Joe sat down behind Ace. The ferret brothers edged their way inside too, pushing the Holy Man in front of them. Ace looked around the faces in the room, his pale eyes as unfeeling, as uncaring as a madman’s. Nobody held his gaze—nobody except Tully’s dad.

  “Was there something you wanted?” he asked politely. “A cup of sugar, perhaps? Then maybe we can get back to our private business.”

  The mad expression on Ace’s face changed to cold anger. “Let’s get one thing straight, old man,” he hissed. “Tully here might be the warlord for the moment, but I am the chief. Nothing goes on behind my back.”

  “So, there was something you wanted, then. How about a boot in the hole?”

  “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll deal with this.” Tully was torn between admiration for his dad and an almost overwhelming desire to laugh.

  Ace whipped round, astonishment in his face. “Did I hear that right? This pain in the arse is your old man?”

  Tully nodded. “Coincidence, isn’t it?”

  Joe lurched to his feet. “You cunning little—”

  Tully caught Joe’s fist in mid swipe. “Fate, rodent face. Destiny. Ask your Holy Man to explain. Now sit down and shut up!” Tully pushed Joe back into a sitting position. Ace’s eyes flicked from him to his dad, not in disbelief, but full of calculation. He always had to keep one jump ahead of the pack.

  Tully went on. “We were discussing what should be done with the prisoners. With all due respect, Ace, giving them to Joe and your other hyenas to play with isn’t an option, so there didn’t seem much point asking your opinion.”

  Ace put his thumbs in his belt and leaned back against the wall.

  “Really?” he smirked, “and would your chief’s opinion be of interest if he was to tell you that the question of the prisoners is neither here nor there, considering what the Holy Man here has seen. Like, guess who’s coming to dinner?”

  Jim and Matt looked at one another and their faces drained of color.

  “Bet it’s not your woman who does the posters for Dior,” said Tully’s dad. “Or Barak Obama. It could be my Uncle Dinny, though. He turns up everywhere. Everywhere there’s free drink and a fight, anyway. He has a gift for it. Like at my cousin Carmel’s wedding when—”

  Ace turned red with anger—“I can see the resemblance now. Bullshitting obviously runs in the family”—and aimed a vicious swipe at Jack with his riding crop. It was Jim who grabbed him. Ace was white with fury and wrenched his arm out of Jim’s grip. “You little bastard,” he choked and reached for a knife.

  “That’s enough,” Tully yelled, jumping to his feet and kicking Ace’s hand away from his belt. “The fighting’s over now!”

  “I don’t think so,” Matt said in a quiet voice, shaking Jack’s arm free and getting up. “Not quite.” Suddenly there was a knife in his hand too and Ace was grinning broadly.

  “Little Matt got a problem, has he? Well, come and let Daddy sort it out for him. Joe, Max, Seb!”

  Ace’s three bodyguards stepped between him and Matt, who didn’t even seem to see them. His eyes were on Ace and they were full of hatred. He lunged. Max or Seb blocked his thrust. Seb or Max aimed a kick at his crotch. Matt pivoted and took it in the thigh with a grunt of pain. Joe was working his way around to hit Matt in the side when Jack kicked his legs out from under him and sat on his back. Jim and Kat pulled Matt back and Tully barged in front, pushing Max and Seb away.

  “That’s enough, I said! Ace, call them off and keep them on a chain in future.”

  “They’re only doing their job,” Ace protested, obviously enjoying himself hugely.

  “Did you get what you wanted yet?” Tully’s dad asked, shifting his weight onto Joe’s shoulders. “Because if it’s all the same to you, we’re all a little tired and emotional and we’d be glad of a bit of peace and quiet.”

  “Tully,” Jeff shrieked, sitting bolt upright and pointing at the Holy Man. “Look, he’s doing it again!”

  The Holy Man was shaking and clinging to his ridiculous shaman stick to keep upright. His features were convulsed and a trail of spittle ran down his chin. Ace was still grinning.

  “Another message from the angels, probably. Pin your e
ars back, Warlord. This one’s for you, I’d say.”

  The Holy Man was muttering, slumping from side to side. The others moved back, keeping out of the weaving circle. Jeff was trembling and Kat put an arm around his shoulders and held his hand, trying to keep him calm. At first, the Holy Man gabbled unintelligibly in a low voice that grew louder and firmer until he was shouting.

  “The black company comes. The Bringer of Light and his companions approach, with the bringers of death and the reapers of souls. And he will lead us into the mouth of Hell, and the jaws of Death will close about us.”

  “Here! That sounds familiar.”

  “Be quiet, Dad. He’s having a vision.”

  “Does he read palms too?”

  “Belt up, you blasphemous git!”

  Joe tried to heave himself up and Jack hit him on the head.

  “Ouch! That bloody wart on my thumb! D’ye think he could get rid of it for me?”

  The Holy Man shot upright, as if he had been given an electric shock. His eyes rolled, showing the blind whites, then gradually focused on Tully. He pointed with his stick, letting the drac tails dangle on the floor.

  “The Bringer of Light seeks the fourth companion. He will find Eblis-Azazel dwelling among the tribesmen, and he will raise him up to sit at his right hand. Then he will bring light to the whole world, and the whole world will adore him and sing his praises.”

  “Doesn’t sound too terrible so far,” Jack whispered. But Tully’s face was pale, and Carla clutched his hand, while Jeff writhed and moaned in Kat’s arms. The Holy Man’s head slumped onto his chest, his last reserves of energy seeping away. His eyelids drooped and his voice fell to a murmur.

  “And in the brightest instant, he will annihilate the tribes and only Eblis will remain. The reapers of souls and the bringers of death will sweep across the land in an orgy of blood and destruction, and no living thing will withstand their passing.”

  The Holy Man collapsed on the floor and this time nobody bothered to see if he was all right.

  “Is this…er…imminent?” Tully’s dad asked. “Or do we have time to pack?”

  Nobody replied. Tully knelt down next to Jeff and bent his head close to hear what he was saying. The child’s breathing was hoarse and labored. The words came out in sharp staccato bursts.

  “The Burnt Man’s coming, and he’ll kill us all. Soon. I can feel the pounding of giant drax and the trampling of his army. We have to get out, Tully. We have to,” he hissed in a frantic whisper. Tully glanced across at Ace but he was engrossed in trying to make sense out of the Holy Man’s final splutterings. He turned to Kat.

  “He’s right,” she whispered. “It’s time to move it.”

  “Okay, Ace.” Tully took a deep breath, thinking quickly. “I want all the men assembled in the cafeteria in an hour, the women too. And put a couple of guards on the prisoners, anybody but Joe and the twins. It’s time to talk about the next move.”

  “You coming too, or are you going to finish your basket weaving class first?” Ace asked, a faint note of unease creeping into his voice. Tully knew that if Ace suspected anything, he would never leave them alone. Hoping his earnest expression looked credible, he dropped his voice to a mere whisper and licked his lips.

  “Listen, Ace, I don’t want this to go any further, but there’s trouble out there.”

  “Yeah, I know. He has half his face burnt off and he’s a paranoid schizophrenic called the Light-Bringer.”

  “He’s only a hypothesis for the moment. What Jim and Matt saw, when they went on what you so inaccurately called a mopping up operation, was a camp of Rippers out where the flyover used to be. Remember them? Jim told me about Spiv the Wrestler who busted up with Big Bob and left the Gouge. Well, he’s back with him.” Ace suddenly looked sick. “That’s where Bob disappeared during the fight—back to his old mate. And they’re waiting for us.”

  “How d’you know?” Ace’s voice was as pale as his face.

  “Jim and Matt. They’re going to take me out there to get a look. The women can stay here with the prisoner. Jeff can’t be moved yet anyway. We’ll pick him up on the way back. We’ll need an hour at least, say two, to get out there, find out what’s what and get back. If we’re not back by then, get the men on battle alert, but no panic, okay?” Ace nodded. “Keep them close to the defensive positions, nobody gets sent out looking for trouble. We can’t afford to lose any more fighters. I want those drac barriers setting again, and bring out all the petrol and paraffin you can find.”

  The inside of Tully’s mouth was like sandpaper. He tried to maintain an expression of utter sincerity, keeping his eyes fixed on Ace’s. Ace looked worried—more than worried. He was terrified of Big Bob. That much Tully already knew. It had been pure speculation that a twenty stone ex-wrestler would provoke a similar reaction.

  Ace nodded curtly and looked at his watch. “We’ll wait two hours.” Jerking his head at Joe and the ferret twins to follow him, Ace left in a clatter of knives and useless assault rifles.

  “What on earth was that yarn you were spinning him?” Carla wanted to know. “That you’d discovered a plague pit underneath the bank?”

  “Nothing so picturesque. I just conjured up another boogeyman for him to worry about.”

  “Boogeyman,” Jim snorted. “You haven’t seen what that burnt bloke trails around after him.”

  “Nor do I want to,” Carla said emphatically. “I intend to be well away before he pops up again. I think it’s time to let Kat take the lead.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “The one they call the Sacred Hole is the one that we can leave by. All the others I’ve ever heard of are entry holes. It isn’t far—must be less than an hour’s walk from the east side—and if Ace believes there’s an enemy camp out beyond the old flyover, he’s not likely to choose that direction if he decides to come looking for us.”

  Kat looked around at the anxious faces. Her plan, the only possible way out that she could see, had gone down with as much enthusiasm as if she’d offered them a choice between strychnine and anthrax.

  “What’s the matter? Isn’t that what we decided? That we have to get out of here, go anywhere as long as we don’t have to meet the Burnt Man?” Jim looked down at his hands, Matt paced about the room like a caged bear and Jeff chewed his lower lip. Kat threw herself back against the wall in exasperation. “Does anybody have a better plan?”

  “I was hoping you were going to tell us about a brand new four-by-four you’d discovered, and an intact petrol station,” Tully said airily, trying to hide his disappointment.

  “To go where? You don’t understand because you’ve only just arrived, but the rest of us have lived through five years of watching the earth pulling the plug on itself and humanity squabbling over the leavings like dogs over a bone. There is nowhere to go, nowhere that isn’t exactly like this.”

  “Well, we don’t know that for sure—”

  “We saw it on the TV before everything went down, damn it! The whole world erupted, the oceans rose up in tidal waves, and even the sun disappeared. Nothing grows, the only animals left are mutant scavengers and half the planet’s radioactive because the reactors all blew.”

  “She’s right, Tully,” Matt murmured. “An’ it’s getting worse. You haven’t been here long enough to notice, but it is. If it gets any fuckin’ colder, we’ll freeze before we starve.”

  “But if we go south—”

  “What south? The bits that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic haven’t flooded will be nuclear desert! The only place to go is to another time, and hope we have better luck than Doctor Who with what we find when we get there.”

  “Sounds logical to me,” Carla said, hoping she sounded conciliatory, “but do you really have no idea where this hole leads?”

  Kat threw up her hands in exasperation. “The Holy Man has the human sacrifices thrown down it and none of them ever come back. Well, they couldn’t could they? It’s an exit hole.”

  “Could
also be because they all have their throats cut first,” Jim added as explanation.

  “Excuse me,” Tully’s dad said, scratching behind his ear, “but could we reel back a bit? For a minute I thought you said something about human sacrifices.”

  There was a moment’s embarrassed silence before Kat said, “I did.”

  “Oh, okay. And we’re going to jump down this hole where you lot throw the stiffs?”

  “We are.”

  “Fine. Is there any particular reason for throwing dead people down this hole?”

  Kat hesitated again and looked at Jim, who nodded to her to carry on. “Well, the Holy Man says it’s to propitiate the worms.”

  “The worms?”

  “That made the holes.”

  This time Jack threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Nice one! No, honestly, though, what’s he mean really?”

  Kat glanced at Jim through lowered lashes. “Honestly, the sacrifices are for the worms that made the holes.”

  Carla frowned. “Kat, you were a research student in biochemistry. That worm story’s just crap to frighten babies with.”

  Jeff tugged at her sleeve and shook his head. “It isn’t, though. There are worms down the holes. I’ve seen them.”

  “Well, there’s no answer to that, I suppose.” Jack scratched his chin. “Does anybody here know how to imitate a very large, very hungry blackbird?”

  Jeff giggled, Tully smiled and Jim chuckled. Then Kat and Carla spluttered with laughter, and even Matt found it hard to keep a straight face.

  I knew he’d get us out of it, Tully thought to himself. He’d have us laughing at the prospect of ritual suicide.

  “Come on then, comrades. Wrap up warm and let’s be off. Last one down the black hole’s a maggot.”

  “Jim, do you think we could get to the Lady Day boutique and get all our gear without being seen?” Now that the decision was taken, Tully wanted to get moving as quickly as possible. “There’s a reserve of warm clothes and tins of food I’ve stashed away. We’ve got a good hour before Ace begins to wonder where we are, and probably another hour after that before he decides to do anything about it.”