The queen hissed and levered her bloated form, but couldn't move. A disproportionately small arm waved at me, but what really disturbed my balance were her eyes when she raised her head. They weren't the dead vacant orbs of the other vermin. Hers were black and soulless as she directed her guards to move against us.
The toe of my boot scuffed a piece of fabric. On instinct, I bent down and picked it up. Tears choked in my throat as my mind cobbled together the evidence in my hands. "It's Rose Linton's mother."
Seth swung his head to face me, frowning in the half-light. "How do you know?"
I held up the scrap of fabric, a torn apron bearing embroidered daisies that once, a lifetime ago, were yellow and white. "It's the same as Rose's dress."
Perhaps as little as two months ago, the monster before us had been a loving mother who sat at night sewing flowers on matching outfits for her and her daughter. Then the vermin snatched them from their beds. What have they done to her to turn her into this monstrosity? Had they targeted her to become their queen?
The creature before me narrowed her gaze at the cloth in my hand, then she shook her head. The black consuming her eyes lifted, like pulling aside a curtain to reveal the blue beneath. This gaze was different. It retained a vestige of her humanity, and her eyes teared up as our gazes met.
"Rose?" she rasped, in a ragged voice that reminded me of Henry's disused tone. Her tongue wet her lips, as though she were unused to conversation. The scrap of embroidery had given her a focus point to remember her former life.
I swallowed and shook my head, holding the apron out to her. "Gone."
A tear trickled down its,
her
, face.
The soldiers turned so we formed our own circle, each of us protecting the other's backs, as we faced off with the enemy. The vermin edged closer, a wall of death intent on recruiting us to its cause.
"New plan," Seth said. "We all get out without being bitten, and the War Office can have the next queen we find."
"She can talk, she remembers." I half turned to catch Seth's gaze. Didn't he realise how pivotal that was? There was so much we needed to know. How had she become a queen — did they single her out for this particular path, and why? For the first time, I felt frustrated at my inability to just
chat
with a vermin, but we were short on time.
"Move it along Ella, we don't have much time," Seth said from beside me.
I racked my brain. With limited time, I needed to ask the most pertinent questions. I just didn't know what they were.
"Do you control them?"
A nod. "Yes." She grimaced and screwed her up face for a moment. The advancing vermin faltered, their command to attack cut off. They seemed confused, like drunk men who had woken up face down in an unfamiliar front garden. I shut my ears as the men took the slight advantage, and the slaughter began. Metal sang as it caressed the air, before it struck bone and cartilage. The crunch was punctuated by groans from both those who wielded the swords, and the huff of escaped air from those who had been struck. A gun shot added a staccato beat as the force was used to send a vermin back a stride or two.
"Why? To what end?" So much about what these things were could be locked in her mind, and I was desperate to reach out and shake it free.
"More. They need more." A frown grew amongst the rolls of bloated flesh, and her eyes squinted. More tears rolled down her cheeks. "Not enough yet."
"Time, Ella," Seth said. "Clear the tunnel, Jack and Jake."
She was losing control. The men were cutting down the undead, but more were rising from the earth, as though they were hiding in the layers just waiting to be called forth.
"End it," she whispered as she met my gaze. Then her eyes rolled up into her head, and the spell was broken over the surrounding vermin. They shook themselves, then lurched forward on us as they always had.
I raised my sword, stepping up to the stone altar holding the blade aloft.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, and brought down the katana as hard as I could. She gasped and gurgled, as to my horror, her neck hung by the tendons. Thick viscous blood shot out and coated the cloth covering my face. I sliced again, severing the tendons, and her head dropped to the ground. The eyes closed, and perhaps I imagined it, but I thought a sense of relief touched her distorted features. Blood continued to pump from her severed neck, like the valve had jammed open on a water pump. At the same time, her gross body deflated and began to fall in upon itself.
I didn't have time to stand and stare. We were being rushed from all directions. My blade danced in the swaying lights as we cut a path to the tunnel.
"Light it up!" Seth yelled upward. Beyond the dangling lanterns lay Frank, ready for his orders.
Our team hacked and slashed at limbs and moved toward the tunnel as a single unit, not a man would be left behind. We reached the entrance and slipped through. My heart pounded as we bent double and raced as fast as we could, like a demented child's game, back to the open expanse and air that wasn't contaminated by vermin blood.
Chapter Twenty Three
"Run!"
Seth gave the command as soon as we emerged, but our feet were already moving.
Frank waited up top until he saw we were clear. Then he let the missile drop, jumped, and rolled down the side as though the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels. We ran toward the trees and the shelter of a low ridge. As we passed over, Seth looped an arm around my waist and pulled me to the ground, the damp grass chill against my skin. His larger body shielded me as a
whump
hit my ears, at the same time that heated air blasted over the top of us.
"What was in that?" I asked, although with the buzzing in my ears I wasn't sure if I would be capable of hearing his reply.
A minute passed before he caught his breath and answered. "Ever hear the story of Greek fire?"
Vague memory cells sparked. As a child, I had the benefit of a classical education, and father had loved reading me ancient stories of lost civilisations and long dead warriors.
Seth started talking as he rolled us to our sides. "It was a secret weapon of the Roman emperors, invented in the seventh century. The formula was so closely guarded it was lost to history. Needless to say, the War Office has poured a lot of money into trying to replicate the effect." A grin spread over his face. Boys never lost their excitement for blowing stuff up. "The lads and I replicated our own version, using liquid soap."
"And you just happened to have a drum of it in the back of the lorry?" I threw a glance at the army vehicle. It looked innocuous enough, but now I would worry about spontaneous explosions ruining the peace of the countryside.
"When you explained your theory about the turned having a nest, we thought it prudent to have something on hand, just in case we needed to take the whole thing out," he explained.
I laid back against his chest and stared at the sky. What a night, and it certainly ended with a bang. My hearing returned to normal as his heart pulsed under my cheek. His hand stroked through my tangled hair. We stayed that way for several minutes, while the fire burned, and we all caught our breath.
"Well, you certainly know how to show a girl a spectacular evening." I gave his side a gentle punch.
He caught my hand and kissed my fingertips. "Any time you want an explosive evening, I'm happy to deliver."
A thrill shot through my stomach all the way to my toes. I curled them up in my boots and kept tight hold on the
squee
building in my chest. I wasn't entirely sure he was still referring to blowing up vermin, or something far more intimate.
Then cold water dashed over me as the joy swirled down a drain. I had to go home and face
them
. Events of the previous night still laid unresolved, and sleeping under the stars might be a permanent thing in my future.
Seth tugged on my hand and pulled my attention back to him. "Shall we go look at what's left?"
Around us, the other men stood and brushed themselves off. Dawn broke over the horizon, and the soft strands of light touched the burial mound. The explosion had taken off the top, and now it looked like a savaged boiled egg —cracked and split with the innards rolling down the side. Smoke rose from within, mingling and curling with the mist rising off the damp earth.
I drew a shallow breath. It still smelt foul, but it probably didn't help I had vermin queen smeared all over my handkerchief. I undid the cloth, shoved it into my pocket, and surveyed the debris rolling down the sides of the hillock. Something glinted at my foot, and I bent to pick up a spear head. "I can already hear the archaeologists crying at your wanton destruction."
The mound had slumbered undisturbed for centuries, no one had yet broken through the tough exterior to find the treasure that lay within. And we had just blown the lot up. Priceless artefacts were seared to the bodies of vermin, torn apart to litter the ground like fallen leaves.
Sunlight crept up one side and tumbled down the other. Damp grass glinted, birds broke into song to greet the morning, and sheep called in the distance. It seemed a regular Somerset morning, save for that I was climbing a destroyed burial mound to check on the nest of vermin we had just detonated.
"Careful, it might cave in," Seth said as the ground wobbled and shifted under our feet.
The one foot square hole was now over six feet square, opened to the burgeoning day for the first time in centuries. Smoke drifted up through the impromptu chimney, making our eyes water. Down below were several spot fires, smouldering on forms covered in fake Greek fire. The detergent made the flames viscous and adhesive. It stuck wherever it landed and couldn't be brushed away. You could run, but the fire would cling to your limbs. The vermin had tried to escape, but were piled up at the narrow entrance tunnel. I wondered why none had dashed out to the open night, and there lay my answer, in a tangled heap of charred bone.
A sigh broke free of my chest. I needed names for my book, to match departed family members with those below. Such a task was near impossible now. We would never know who they once were, or where they had journeyed from.
The men glanced at one another. Only one question was left unanswered.
"Do you think we got them all?" Lieutenant Bain asked.
"We'll have to drop down, the entrance is blocked. It will be easier to pull them back from this side. Fetch some rope." Seth gave the order, and one of the twins scuttled down the side, half sliding on his arse with the steep descent.
Ropes were anchored to trees, draped up the side and the down. It wasn't a huge drop, only twenty feet, but no one wanted to break an ankle and find out we missed a pocket of vermin.
Henry and the twins volunteered to go first, and they disappeared in the puff of smoke, mouths covered so they didn't inhale the noxious fumes. Once below, we threw down woollen blankets for them to smother the smouldering remains, and soon fresh air began to circulate.
"Ready?" Seth asked. "I'll go first." He dropped over the edge and whizzed down the rope.
I eased my body over the edge, my feet dangling in thin air, and then wrapped my hands around the rope. My arms took my weight, and just as my muscles began to burn and protest, hands clasped my legs and lowered me to the ground.
My gaze roamed the interior, the walls were blackened and charred. I disposed of vermin for the locals, usually singularly, but had once took on four. That experience didn't prepare me for this… destruction. The explosion had rent them apart. Limbs were scattered, remnants of clothing torn from bodies. And laid over it all, that overwhelming stench, sharp and sweet with the cloying heat of charcoal. Not since that first day had I thrown up, and now my stomach rebelled. It clenched and churned, and I tried to breathe as deeply as I dared to settle it back down.
Seth took my hand and turned my face to his. "Are you all right?" he asked in a quiet tone.
I nodded. "There's just so many of them."
He swallowed and his gaze darted around us. "I thought I would never see something like this again."
In that moment, I understood what the war had meant for our men. We all thought we knew that it was horrible, that they suffered having seen their friends slain and trampled into the mud at their feet. But everything was just words and hollow platitudes, until you had it covering your boots, trapped under your fingernails, and clawing its way down your throat. Down here, in the shattered barrow with the ruined bodies of the vermin, I had a small glimpse into the world they had endured for years. No wonder Henry had lost his voice, his mind unable to process all that assaulted it on a daily basis.
"At least they were already dead." A curious thing about the vermin, although dead, they would keep following their unseen orders until decapitated. Things scuttled in the dark corners down here like overlarge spiders, but I suspected it was limbs trying to re-join a fallen body.
Seth squeezed my hand. "Let's be thorough. The War Office will want a full report on why we don't have a captured queen for them."
If some bigwig from the War Office wanted a queen, then perhaps he should stop wasting time waxing his moustache, and join us down in this hell pit to look for it. A small kernel of self-satisfaction took root in my gut — I was right. They did follow a similar pattern to bees, working to the command of their queen. We thought them mindless, but here they had built an altar to their ruler. Her bloated body had reclined on the enormous stone sarcophagus of an Iron Age warrior. She had controlled their actions, but we still didn't know to what end, apart from her eerie words:
they need more,
not enough yet.