Down: Trilogy Box Set (132 page)

“That means we’ve got to treat each round of ammo like it was a bloody pearl.”

“It also means we’ve got to work out our supply lines. We can’t box ourselves out of access to the river for drinking water and this wooded area for game. Seems to be rabbit and deer about.”

Grabbing a stick Yates cleared out a patch of ground with his boot and drew a circle in the dirt, then four X’s. “We position two men at each of these four compass points,” he said. “That’ll leave me plus four other men outside the perimeter to respond flexibly to threats as they arise and to fetch water and hunt. We’ll rotate, do shifts and whatnot to keep it as fresh as we can. Right?”

“Too bad we had to give up O’Malley and Culpepper.”

“Yeah, well, had to rob Peter to pay Paul, didn’t we?”

“The plan sounds plausible,” Scarlet said. “But how are we going to part the Red Sea?”

“Assemble the men,” Yates said. “I’ll tell everyone how it’s going to go down.”

Before long the men of B Group marched from the woods onto the flat flood plain of the river. Yates had chosen a protectable flying V formation with ten paces separating each man. He took the point. Rifles were on semi-auto, facial expressions on full badass. A few Hellers just arriving in the area saw the marching formation coming but the vast majority of the crowd of several hundred had their backs to them, engrossed by what was happening at the border of the hot zone where the intrepid souls who stepped forward into the void were disappearing.

Most of them turned to the sound of Yates’s firing his rifle once into the air and following up with his booming voice.

“Now hear this all you dead motherfuckers! We are from Earth. We are alive. We are British soldiers. More specifically, we are the SAS, the biggest, baddest fighting force you have ever seen. You will stand aside. You will disperse. You will not approach the disappearing point. You will go back to your homes. You will get the fuck out of here immediately. You will not try to pass to Earth. We will not let you. We know we can’t kill you but we can seriously fuck you up.”

A few Hellers on the periphery ran away but most remained rooted, talking and arguing about what to do. The crowd was large enough that not everyone heard what Yates was shouting and his message had to pass from person-to-person.

Scarlet was to the right and rear of Yates. “They’re not responding, Captain.”

Yates replied, “Lance Corporal, pass the word to hold steady. Let’s see if we can avoid bloodshed. I see some belted knives and swords but no firearms but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

Yates shouted his instructions again at the top of his voice.

From the other side of the crowd a small number of King Henry’s soldiers, a unit of sweepers tasked with roaming the countryside looking for new arrivals to Hell, talked among themselves.

“Let’s circle around and get the better of them,” their captain said.

“I don’t wish to get crashed just as we’re on the brink of passage to Earth,” one of his men said.

“You’ll do as I say,” the captain said, sticking his flintlock into the man’s ribs. “Follow me.”

Yates fired another round into the sky and the sound reverberated like a clap of thunder. A few more Hellers ran off toward the river. The six sweepers pushed their way through the crowd and got clear of their fellow Hellers some fifty paces to the left of where Yates was standing.

A trooper on the left-hand side of the V formation spotted the captain and screamed, “Gun! Left! Gun! Left!”

The trooper closest to him took aim and fired a single shot, shredding the sweeper captain’s head. The five other sweepers charged. Three had swords. Only one had a pistol. He got off one shot that flew high before he and his companions were dropped by a volley of SAS fire. The Hellers nearest the felled and bleeding sweepers began to scatter.

“Cease fire!” Yates shouted. Then he bellowed, “Who’s next? If you haven’t raised your hand then move away from here while you can still walk. Now!”

That final “now” had the desired effect. Hundreds of Hellers took off like runners hearing a starter pistol. As the crowd thinned, those closest to the hot zone bucking up their courage for the final steps into the unknown had to make a decision. Yates saw two men and a woman leap forward and disappear but the rest of the Hellers opted to retreat.

Seeing only the backs of fleeing men, Yates ordered a few of his troopers to check the bodies of the men they had shot.

“They’re all still moving,” a trooper called back. “Even this one missing most of his fucking head.”

Yates swore under his breath. “Leave them as a warning. Teams one through four, take up your positions. Don’t get too close to the hot zone. The boffins told us it might be expanding. If you pass through I’ll take it as a desertion, not an accident. Team five, do some hunting. I fancy a nice joint of venison for supper.”

Thanks to their compass and silk maps, Marsh’s A Group quickly located the Sevenoaks hot zone. They discovered a similar situation to the one Yates had found in Dartford. Hundreds of Hellers ringed the zone, daring one another to take the plunge into the unknown. A nobleman from Maidstone had come to inspect the scene, accompanied by his well-armed militia, and this was the group that Marsh focused on.

Taking cover behind a shabby stables about a hundred yards from the crowd, Marsh conferred with his sergeant and with Trevor.

“We dominate that lot, we dominate all of them,” Marsh said.

“I can work two men up along that line of bushes and set up a sniper nest by that big tree,” the sergeant said. “I reckon the bloke with the helmet on the tan horse is the big cheese. We’ll take him out first then anyone with a long gun. Wouldn’t be surprised if that starts a stampede.”

“I like it,” Marsh said. “Once they clear out we can set up a defensive perimeter around the hot zone and dig in for the duration.” Then he sniffed a few times and said, “What the fuck smells so bad?”

Trevor said he thought he knew and told them to wait. His rifle at the ready he crept around the wooden building. A latch held the door shut and when he slowly swung it open he recoiled at the concentrated stench.

“What was it?” Marsh asked him when he returned.

“Come and have a look,” Trevor said. “John told you about them before we left but seeing’s believing.”

There was just enough light coming through the door to let them see what was inside. The sounds of groaning, moaning, and pathetic pleas filled in the rest of the picture. Marsh and the group sergeant only penetrated a few paces before turning in disgust.

Gasping at the fresher air Marsh said, “Is this a rotting room?”

Trevor nodded.

“Bring each trooper in here,” Marsh ordered his sergeant. “I want the men to see what it is we’re up against. I swear, we are going to keep every goddamn Heller from coming to where we live or we’re going to die trying.”

Trevor had set out on his own, trying to figure out where the Belmeade schoolboys had entered Hell. He had left Marsh and his men to their plan and it had gone off without a hitch. After sniper fire cut down the Baron of Maidstone and his men Marsh established his perimeter. The baron had taken a bullet to the mouth so he couldn’t be questioned but those militiamen who could still talk were interrogated about the boys. None confessed to knowing anything about them or any Earthers. Trevor didn’t fancy being back in the British army so he had left A Group as soon as he could, telling Marsh he would rejoin them at some point, with or without the schoolboys. He began wandering the surrounding meadows looking for clues.

In the near distance was a heavy forest. He wondered if it would have attracted or repelled the boys. He had to admit he didn’t much fancy being in the woods come nightfall so he decided to see what he could find in that direction while there was still daylight. After a while he noticed a well-trodden path through some low bushes leading into the forest. Almost immediately his eye fell upon a small piece of bright blue and gold wool stuck to a bush. He plucked it off the thorns and inspected it. Blue and gold. Weren’t those the Belmeade colors?

He plunged into the woods and tentatively called out, “Angus Slaine? Are you here?”

Trevor kept moving, calling Angus’s name every minute or so.

“Help me.”

He wasn’t sure what he was hearing until he heard the faint call again.

“Hello?” Trevor called out in response. “Angus?”

“Help me.”

“Where are you?”

“Over here.”

The voice was coming from behind a naturally fallen tree. Trevor swung the stock of his rifle against his shoulder and came up over the tree.

He recoiled at the sight. “Christ!”

A man was laying there, his abdomen split open, intestines visible and covered in insects.

“Help me.”

Regaining his composure, Trevor asked, “How can I help you?”

“Water.”

Before departing William’s forge, everyone had been given a waterskin, gifts from one of William’s workers, the bellows man. Trevor knelt down, trying not to breathe in the smells of putrefaction, and gave the man a few sips, watching the liquid soon drain out the holes in his gut.

“Thank you kind sir,” the man rasped. “Unless I am dragged away by the fox I’ve been battling with all these days, this shall be my final place of repose.”

“Yeah, you’re in a fix all right,” Trevor said, standing.

“You are a living man,” the man said.

“How did you know that?”

“You’re not the first I seen.”

“Who did you see?”

“Young ’uns. Boys they were. Live boys.”

“When?”

“I have lost all sense of time. It was not yesterday. It was not today. I am unable to say.”

“Which way did they go?”

“I am too weak to raise my hand but I am looking in the direction they ran.”

“What were they running from?” Trevor asked.

“To be truthful, I believe it was me.”

Trevor began to run through the forest too, calling for Angus every so often, pausing only to catch his breath and take compass bearings so he could find his way back to Sevenoaks. After an hour he broke through into another featureless meadow and without any sign of which direction the boys might have taken, he kept going straight until he came upon a road cut by cart tracks.

“If I were them, which direction would I go?” he asked himself. “If they came this way at all.” He checked his compass and picked south but after only a few yards he reversed himself and went north instead. He had gone less than a mile when he saw something ahead, something white amidst a palette of brown and green.

He stooped to pluck it from a deep rut. It was a cotton handkerchief with two monogrammed letters: KP. What were the boys’ names? Wasn’t there a Kevin?

It came to him because he remembered smirking when he read his name off a list. Pickles. A lad named Pickles would be in for some stick, wouldn’t he? Kevin Pickles.

He looked around. There was still some light before evening descended but he didn’t have all the time in the world. He’d keep heading north. Toward London. He began jogging but stopped almost immediately when he glimpsed a cottage mostly concealed by a hedgerow. He found a passable gap and shouldered through the hedges and saw a row of six rundown cottages but no people. A skinny horse was tethered in front of one of them.

Cautiously, he went to the closest cottage and rapped on the door, rifle ready. There was no response. The door wasn’t latched from the inside and it opened with a gentle push. It was empty, the hearth cold, the cupboards bare. He entered the next four cottages one after another and found the same thing. That only left the last house in the row, the one with the horse. Again he put his knuckles to the door but this time he heard a muffled, “Hallo?”

“I’m looking for a little help,” Trevor called back.

“Go away.”

“Not before I talk to you.”

“Go away. We’ve got a gun.”

Trevor moved away from the door and shouted, “Believe me, I’ve got a bigger one. Open up or I’m coming in. I just want to talk. I won’t hurt you.”

The door opened. The elderly man with a scraggly beard and one yellow tooth was armed only with a piece of firewood, no more than a thin branch. He stared at Trevor and his large AK-47.

“You’re from the other side, ain’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“We’ve seen things. We’ve heard things.”

“Can I come in?”

“I reckon I can’t stop you.”

Inside, an old woman sat on the floor at a rickety vertical loom weaving a brown cloth. She had white hair the consistency of straw and a deeply folded and lumpy face that looked like a decaying gourd.

“I’m sorry for barging in,” Trevor said. “I’m looking for some people.”

The woman sniffed the air. “You’re one of them.”

“Yes I am.”

“We seen plenty of live ones a short while back,” she said. “They come from near the Sevenoaks village. Most didn’t last long.”

“What happened to them?” Trevor asked.

The old man tossed his piece of wood into the hearth and lit the kindling with a candle. “They got taken by sweepers mostly. There were women too. They got passed around I reckon. Some poor souls met rovers. That happens when nights come around. I seen a few bodies. Dead they were. Imagine that.”

“I’m looking for a group of boys. To get them out of here. They would have been the first to come through.”

The man didn’t reply. He hung an iron pot over the fire and began to stir its contents then tasted something gelatinous on the tip of his spoon. Only then did he say, “Are you hungry?”

“I asked about boys.”

“Well I’m hungry and I’m going to eat some.”

It was the woman who said, “What will you pay?”

“For information about the boys? Just tell me if you know anything.”

“We know things,” the woman said.

“I don’t have any coins but I have this.” He reached into his satchel and pulled out a knife from William’s forge.

The man rose slowly from his crouch by the fire and inspected the blade.

“It’s a good one. What we know for your knife.”

“It has to be good information. And I’ll want the use of that horse. Is it yours?”