Hell On Earth (Book 6): Rebirth

by Wright, Iain Rob

  They’d made good time, travelling fifteen miles according to Tosco, but Maddy’s feet were throbbing and she was ready to rest. Her watch told her it wasn’t even noon. “When can we take a break?” she complained.

  Tosco raised an eyebrow, a cheeky smirk on his face. “Surely you’re not ready to quit?” She glared at him, but he only laughed. “I was planning to make camp at the twenty-mile mark. I know we’ve pushed hard today, but it’s nice to take in some new scenery. Most of us spent the first months of the invasion on the water, and we’ve barely moved since reaching Portsmouth.”

  Maddy had spent the first months of the invasion on foot, desperately trying to stay alive. The thought of being on the road again didn’t exactly thrill her, but she understood that Tosco and his men must have been suffering with some pretty harsh cabin fever. Watching them now, she saw their sharp intakes of breath and wandering eyes. They were enjoying being out in the open – if out in the open meant a deserted village with smashed-in shop windows.

  “So far so good,” said Tosco. “Maybe I should have brought Alice along. Poor kid’s been stuck on The Hatchet way too long.”

  “We still don’t know how safe it is out here,” said Maddy. “When we last saw demons they were aggressive again.” She was, of course, referring to the temporary stupor the demons had entered, which had seemingly ended with their recent attack on Portsmouth.

  “Alice is tougher than she looks,” said Tosco, “but I’m trying to keep her safe. I don’t know if it was the right thing bringing her along with me. She had friends in Portsmouth. Now she’s a fugitive surrounded by coast guards and mechanics.”

  Maddy gave him a sympathetic smile. “Once we reach this camp in the woods we can send for her. She’ll be on dry land again soon. She’ll make new friends.”

  Tosco nodded, but he seemed genuinely guilt-ridden. He’d become a surrogate father to the young American girl and Tosco was clearly trying his best to fill Guy Granger’s shoes.

  The sole female sailor in the group prodded something up ahead with her boot. She looked back and grimaced. “Whatever this belonged to, it’s as fresh as airborne pigeon shit.”

  The chunk of pinkish meat could have been from a pig, but it could also have been human. Maddy grimaced. “Maybe a lion escaped the zoo along with the zebra.”

  Tosco nodded and added his own theory. “Dogs. There’re packs of them everywhere. We need to stay alert.”

  Everyone raised their weapons and reordered themselves in a line. They moved through the abandoned village slowly, edging along the paths and road. Cars and debris blocked their way, and they passed with caution.

  Maddy found another chunk of bloody flesh. It gave off a smell, rotting ever so slightly. Whatever had died had been alive not so long ago. “It’s a hand,” she said, stomach lurching. It wasn’t the sight of oozing flesh – that she was more than used to. It was the shock of coming across it so unexpectedly.

  Tosco stood over the disembodied hand with a grim expression. “Damn it. There were people here. What if this camp in the forest has been attacked?”

  “I’m sure it has,” said Maddy, “multiple times, but we know nothing until we get there. Let’s not panic.”

  “You’re right. With the way things are, it would be a miracle not to find a few corpses here and there. It still could’ve been dogs. I don’t see any signs of demon activity.”

  “Pity,” said the female team member. “I wanted something to shoot.”

  Maddy didn’t see any threats either. Demons usually meant blood, and not just in pools, but everywhere. They bathed in it, spread it everywhere. “I say we keep moving. Sooner we reach this camp, the better.”

  Tosco gave everyone the nod and they resumed their advance. It didn’t take long to find more flesh on the road, and this time there was no way to dismiss it. Four bodies littered the landscape, arms and legs strewn about and mixed together. Cracked and half-eaten skulls grinned up at Maddy and forced her to avert her gaze. The bodies weren’t fresh, but they weren’t old either.

  “This is bad,” said one of the men. “I say we head back to The Hatchet.”

  Tosco looked back the way they’d come as if considering the option. How could he not be? They were here to find sanctuary, not walk into the midst of a demon lair. But what would retreating achieve? They were a species at war. You could only avoid fighting for so long. They had come here for a reason.

  Before Tosco shared what he was thinking, gunfire alerted the team. Everyone threw themselves into cover and raised their weapons. Maddy lifted her handgun and looked for something to shoot. “There are people alive out here,” she cried. “We need to help them.”

  “We could be walking right into a losing battle,” said Tosco.

  “It could be the group we’re looking for,” said the female team member, apparently arguing for Maddy’s side. The woman knelt nearby, peering down her riflescope. “They’re the whole reason we’re here, boss. Would be stupid not to lend a hand.”

  Tosco grunted. “You’re right. Let’s move. Weapons ready.”

  Maddy nodded appreciation to the woman and noticed a fine scar running the entire length of the left side of her face. It made her look fierce. “What’s your name?” asked Maddy.

  “Sarah.”

  They got moving, risking an ambush every time they passed a car or blind alley. The village ended abruptly, small thatch-roofed cottages giving way to a lone church, a small green, and then an empty country road lined by tree-lined embankments on both sides. The gunfire came from their left. Tosco took point and worked his way into the trees. The fight was close, maybe in the woods themselves, or maybe just on the other side. Maddy wished she had a rifle like everyone else, and she suddenly hoped Tosco hadn’t provided her with a handgun for any sexist reason. The thought seemed an absurd one to be having right at that moment.

  The woods were sparse, not much more than a buffer between the village and a highway. The highway must have been the scene of the battle because the gunfire was too close to be coming from anywhere else. Maddy spotted people amongst the trees.

  But they weren’t people.

  The figures standing just inside the treeline were demons – men and women burnt to a crisp in the fires of Hell. They were looking the other way, towards the dual carriageway.

  Tosco threw his arm up and shouted, “Fire at will!”

  The line of sailors, with Maddy in the middle, pulled their triggers and lit up the gloomy wood. It took the demons unaware and they lurched forward as bullets struck them in the back. Tosco’s team was too capable to miss, and within seconds they had taken down over a dozen burnt men. The fighting on the dual carriageway continued, was slowly ebbing. Too few guns. A losing battle.

  Maddy broke into a sprint. “Come on, hurry!”

  “Maddy, slow down!”

  She reached the edge of the woods and hopped over a half-dead burnt man with a bullet wound between its shoulder blades. Then she finally spotted humans – two dead men lying on the embankment, their bodies torn to shreds. If not for the gunfire, she would’ve assumed the demons had killed everyone, but there were two people still alive on the dual carriageway – a man and a woman. They were kneeling in the road and embracing while a dozen demons approached them hungrily, taking their time to surround them.

  Maddy fired a shot, but a handgun was no long-range weapon, so she stuffed it inside her waistband and grabbed a rifle that was lying next to one of the two dead men. The weapon wasn’t one she was used to, but thankfully it chattered excitedly as soon as she pulled the trigger. With the attached scope, she found her targets.

  Tosco and the others lined up on either side of Maddy and discharged their own rifles. Once again, the demons were blindsided and fell like rag dolls on the dual carriageway. A few turned and raced towards the treeline, but there was too much distance to cross. A few seconds was all it took to take them down.

  The two people in the centre of the road raised their heads from each othe
r’s shoulders and looked around in confusion. When the male of the pair saw Maddy standing on the embankment, he gave a small, disbelieving wave.

  Maddy waved back.

  Tosco had his team clear the area before he allowed them to enter the dual carriageway. When they did, they formed a semi-circle and closed in around the two strangers, who were still on their knees. Both appeared utterly stunned.

  “W-Who are you people?” the man asked.

  “I’m Maddy. This is Captain Tosco and his team.”

  Tosco lowered his rifle and nodded. “We’re searching for a group of survivors in a place called Kielder Forest.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “We’re from there. Well, recently we are. Before that, we were in Indiana. My name’s Damien. This is Nancy.”

  The woman nodded. “Indiana was my home.”

  “Good to meet you, miss,” said Tosco. “How on earth did you make it all the way here from all the way over there?”

  “Long story. How did you get here? You’re American too.”

  “I came by boat. I was a coast guard before this.”

  The woman gasped. “My ex-husband was US Coast Guard based out of New York.”

  “You’re kidding me? What was his name? Perhaps I knew him.”

  “Captain Granger. First name, Guy.”

  Tosco stumbled. Even Maddy was gobsmacked by the coincidence. What the hell were the odds? The world had become a large and empty place, so to find his deceased superior’s ex-wife was close to a miracle.

  Tosco struggled to speak. “I-I was Captain Granger’s second in command aboard The Hatchet. You’re Nancy, right?”

  Nancy got to her feet slowly, like she was moving through water. “Y-You knew him? You knew Guy? Where is he?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Nancy’s eyes teared up, but she nodded as if she accepted it. “He was a good man. Brave.”

  Tosco seemed to tear up a little himself. “I learned a lot from Guy. When the war first started, we butted heads many times over him coming here to find his—” He put a hand to his mouth and spluttered. “Jesus Christ! Nancy, I have Alice on board The Hatchet. It’s anchored at the coast.”

  Nancy’s legs folded, and Damien had to leap up to steady her. Once he got her steady, he looked at Tosco and shook his head. “This is insane, but we shouldn’t be discussing it here. Come on, we have a van parked less than a mile away. We should head back to Kielder and figure things out.”

  “Alice,” said Nancy. “I need to go to her. I need to go right now.”

  “She’s safe,” Tosco assured her. “I have fifty sailors back on The Hatchet, and enough weaponry to break off a chunk of England. As soon as I know it’s safe, I’ll radio in and have her brought to you.”

  Nancy’s eyes rolled. It looked like she might pass out as she mumbled to herself, “Alice, my sweetheart, you’re alive.” Then she gathered her wits to look at Tosco sternly. “What about Kyle? Is he on board The Hatchet too?”

  Tosco peered at the ground. “I’m afraid Guy never reached him in time. I understand he died in London trying to escape with his sister.”

  Nancy lurched forward and vomited. Damien held onto her and looked at Maddy. “Help me get her out of here.”

  The van was parked down an alleyway between a pair of small factory units. One had been a woodworking business. Shavings and half-finished carvings covered the ground, having spilled out from beneath an open shutter. The unit next to it was a shot-blasting firm.

  “Okay,” said Damien, “into the van.”

  Tosco and his squad piled into the back of the nondescript white vehicle while Damien hopped up front. Maddy helped Nancy climb into the passenger seat beside him.

  “There’s enough for three,” said Damien. “Hop up.”

  Maddy obliged, sliding in beside Nancy and slamming the door closed. She went to pull on her seatbelt, before remembering that traffic collisions were a thing of the past. “You have many vehicles?” she asked.

  “Five or six,” said Damien, leaning forward to start the engine. “The problem is finding petrol. For a while we siphoned it from all the wrecks, but it seems like it’s going bad or something. Nothing we get running lasts very long.” As if to prove his point, the van’s engine coughed and spluttered before catching. Once it was rumbling though, it sounded perfectly healthy. Damien glanced at her as he pulled onto the main road. “The guy with you is American, but you’re not. Where you from, Maddy?”

  “Reading. I was a paramedic. Still don’t know how I survived. Suppose I fell in with the right crowd. I ended up in Portsmouth a few weeks after everything started.”

  “Portsmouth?”

  “There are thirty thousand people there. We’ve been fighting the demons for months, and we’ve been winning, but…”

  “But it isn’t over. Yeah, people feel that here too. Something bad is coming. Don’t ask me how I know, but the demons are rallying for one last clash. If we’re not ready…”

  Maddy sighed. There was no need to finish that sentence.

  Nancy began sobbing quietly. Damien rubbed her back with his gear-shifting hand, but he split his focus between Maddy and the road. “So, you planning to get everyone south to Portsmouth?”

  “No! Portsmouth was safe once, but now it’s a lit firework. There was a woman in charge named Amanda Wickstaff, who locked down Portsmouth before it was overrun. Thousands survived because of her.”

  “So what happened?”

  “A tyrant murdered her and took over. He would’ve killed me, too, but Tosco and his men got me out. We came here looking for sanctuary.”

  Damien’s knuckles clenched around the steering wheel. “Nothing’s changed then? Greedy men are still willing to kill to get what they want.”

  “Listen, Damien, if you want peace and unity, then General Thomas is your enemy. The woman he killed was a hero. He’s an arrogant, dangerous piece of work.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Everyone thinks their side are the good guys; don’t mean it’s true.”

  Maddy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and what makes you such a moral authority?”

  Damien half glanced at her and chuckled. “I’m a path walker, maybe the last one in existence. I didn’t even realise there were more of us until there wasn’t. It’s like a part of me got severed. I don’t think there are many of God’s worlds left.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Are you trying to say you’re some kind of saviour?”

  “No, nothing like that – I’m just a nobody from Sutton Coldfield – but I can create gates. If things don’t go our way, I’m the last chance of getting us out of the fire.”

  “You can open gates? Like those that brought the demons?”

  “Similar, yeah, except my gates open across the tapestry. The demon gates only connect to Hell.”

  “Huh?”

  “The tapestry is like a web. It connects all of God’s worlds to each other, and to Heaven and Hell. Path walkers can traverse the tapestry. Sometimes they can see things from other worlds too, or see back and forth along a single strand.”

  “You can see the future?”

  “No, but others like me could. I just have the gate thing. My powers are stronger whenever I’m near totems. Oh, totems are people who exist on other worlds too. They’re like copies. Path walkers are the same, except we have powers.”

  Maddy had to laugh, even though the world had moved beyond the scrutiny of the supernatural. Science clearly hadn’t known everything. “How did you learn about all this?”

  Damien manoeuvred them onto a country road and shrugged at her. “It just came to me suddenly. I think it came from other path walkers, those who died. It’s like I gained their knowledge or something. Do I sound crazy?”

  “Yes! You sound insane.”

  Damien chuckled. “Yeah, I would have thought that too, not so long ago. Anyway, I’m just a part of things. Maybe you are too.”

  “Then we need to help each other. There’s not enough
of us left for any other option.”

  “I agree.” Maddy knew she was being unreasonable by taking offence. This young man didn’t know her from Adam. Of course he wouldn’t risk his people just to keep her safe. That might change over time, but right now it was too early to ask a stranger to go to war.

  Although I did just save his life.

  Twenty minutes went by in silence while Maddy watched the ruined scenery pass by. Skeletal corpses littered the landscape. Dogs roamed the roadsides, staring like hungry ghosts.

  Damien broke the silence a short time later when he announced, “We’re here.”

  Maddy straightened in her seat and stared ahead through the grimy windscreen. The country road they’d entered was little more than a dirt track now, with thick woodland on either side. The trees thinned out after a while, revealing ragged stumps where they’d been felled.

  “Everyone at Kielder has worked to clear a perimeter around the camp,” explained Damien. “They needed the wood to build, and the space gives advance warning if anything tries to come at us. We’ve dug moats and put up other defences. All in all, we’re not an easy target, if the demons even manage to find us.”

  Maddy’s mouth fell open as the van hopped and wobbled over the uneven ground. The trees continued to thin out, until the van entered a massive stretch of open ground punctuated by wooden spikes, trenches, and other fortifications. At the end of the killing field was a grassy hill with a castle.

  This wasn’t Portsmouth.

  “Home sweet home,” said Damien, switching off the engine. “Hope you like fish.”

  Maddy turned her head and saw a massive lake surrounded by people fishing. Further back was a village with dozens of wooden huts and twice as many tents. It was a second dark age, but it was beautiful.

  “I can’t believe this place. It’s paradise.”

  Damien chuckled. “Let’s see what you think when it’s your turn to empty the latrines.”

  Maddy got out of the van. Hundreds of strangers came to greet her.