The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (40 page)

                            Jonathan winced at the sight and volume of the unfamiliar, but ominously efficient looking weapons. One image drifted by which caught his eyes. It was Flax and  the grey haired stranger standing side by side. They looked so similar in appearance, stature and profile, frighteningly similar. Jonathan gasped.

They  must  be  related,  but  how  was it possible, they came from different worlds. How? He shivered. He moved back towards the other exit, ensuring he

did not move to quickly in the vortex, although compelled by a sense of urgency to do so. Where was Flax now he thought? How long would it take to overthrow Dubh? Had he already done it.? No  one  could  stand  in  his way now, only him, only Jonathan Postlethwaite.

                            The burden of responsibility seemed to lie heavily on his heart as he approached the exit at the Cross Keys. But fear had been seared from his heart. His contact with the Sentinel seemed to have enriched him and reinforced is sense of purpose. He  would  get  to  Flax,  destroy  him,  because

he knew that if he failed, he knew  that  sooner  or later, the beast would return for him. But he would destroy those Jonathan loved first. Jonathan now knew this. Now was it was his moment. His enemy was preoccupied and when he approached the prize he so desperately sought, he would take it all from him.

                            His resolve was now strong. There was no fear, no uncertainty. Never more had he known such strength and conviction.  He  felt  it,  deep  inside   him   now,   solid and  potent  in  his  heart.  It was a  weapon   which would end Flax's dreams and destroy the spirit of evil which fermented in Dubh's stagnant pit of corrupted humanity.

                            He emerged from the door at the Cross keys and walked out into the courtyard where broken packing cases littered the cobbled yard. It was evening and snowflakes fell thick and fast onto the torn and bloody corpse of Victor Burns who lay in the doorway to his bakery.

                            Flax had celebrated the arrival of the two lorries carrying his goods by slitting Victor's throat. Now the snow lay like a funeral shroud over his still body. Jonathan paused to watch the snowflakes for a while. So white and pure, beautiful, he thought, but they did not retain his interest for long and he picked his way through the debris left in the yard past the long, dark windows of the public house where Mrs. Lovenberry had ended her days face down in the bath, her ancient eyes staring at the plug hole, tiny air bubbles clinging to her blue lips. Flax had disposed of her as he did all that had outrun their use.

                            Jonathan   left   the   yard   and   ran   through   the swirling snow to the churchyard where he leapt the blue and white cordoned tape that sought to keep the public from out of the scene of a murder inquiry.

                            Two policemen on duty saw only a shadow in the thick  snow  and  dismissed  it  as  a  fox,  declining the  opportunity  to  investigate  it  in  such  foul weather.  Soon  he  was  through  the  clearing  where the  Turkanschoner  had  slain  Ivor  Scoggins  and down  the  slope  and  through  the  stream.  He  ran up  the  short  slope  to  the  cave.

                            The door was still there! He hoped, above all hope, that she would be beyond the  door.  Her  love  drew him back to Dubh. She was the spark, the power that he had to defeat Flax. She had to be there. He would prevail becasue of his love for Milly and not because of his anger and hatred of Flax - he could see that now.

                            The  light  of  the  door  shimmered  before  him, beckoning him, every colour radiated along the vortex. He did not hesitate. Once again he moved slowly enough for his molecular structure to adjust. He reached  the exit, closed his eyes and stepped out.

                            In   the   darkness   of   the   derelict   house,   only emptiness and the rats greeted him. They began to advance as Jonathan stood disappointed, half despairing. His hope, his strength, seemed to disintegrate when he found that his friends and Milly were not there.

                            The rats were happy enough though, he would do for them, a meal standing unprotected in the darkness. The first in their ranks sat back on their haunches and prepared to leap and sink their yellow teeth into his warm and inviting flesh. But they never left the ground.

                            Suddenly  the  darkness  erupted  in  explosions  of brilliant white light which seared the flesh of the rats and sent them scrabbling in  retreat  from  it,  the  floor rippling with their grey flesh as they sped for the sanctuary of darkness, their appetites for the moment forgotten.

                            Jonathon was brought back to  his  senses  by the noise and lightening  outside  the  ruin.  Outside amidst the chaos of light and thunderous noise he saw familiar figures silhouetted by the flashes of light. He screamed in disbelief at what he saw there.

Chapter Twenty Nine

                            Silus Flax was impressed by the destructive power of the weaponry supplied by Ben Santiago. Even his prophetic visions of its use could not compare with the frightful efficiency of twentieth century technology.

He had assembled a group of his High Hats in his personal chambers for a demonstration and had used the Uzi sub machine gun on them after a short briefing from Santiago.

                            Flax stood  wide  eyed  with  sadistic  glee  as  he watched them cut to pieces, reduced them to a bloody heap in a matter of seconds. He continued to fire at the dead bodies until the magazine ran dry. Then he smiled as he turned to his shocked supplier. Ben swallowed hard. “But they were your own men." he said hoarsely. Flax shrugged his wide shoulders.

"No one is indispensable." he replied and his eyes narrowed as he looked at him. Ben shivered and Flax laughed as he placed a Fatherly arm around Santiago's shoulders. “We have much to do, let us begin my friend, let us begin our campaign."

                            After a few hours of planning and instruction, Flax deployed his forces around the city and awaited his zero hour. He set his pocket watch to coincide with the Tallmens’ artificial dawn, but was surprised when the realm he craved to master was not gradually illuminated at the appointed hour. Some light came but it was the intensity he expected. The great banks of smog which hung over the city in this dimmed dawn indicated to Flax that all was not well in the towers.

                            As Flax watched from his vantage point on a high building above his headquarters, he noticed the flickering rifts that opened sporadically in the                             Dubh’s field walls. Flashes of lightening, in a thousand different colours irradiated the smog banks as energies ebbed and flowed in the unstable walls. Flax was disturbed.

Why was  there  an  energy  problem  today?  The Halls of Machines functioned normally, he had checked the last night. He shook his head. He would be in control soon he thought, soon he would put the Tallmens' complacencies to right. Then he looked up as first explosions of grenades

and mortars marked the passing of his deadline and his captains lead their men against Tan strongholds. His murderously equipped army was in full scale assault.

                            Now the city resounded with the sound of fighting, bursts of automatic weapon fire, grenades flashed and thudded, fires began to burn and the dying screamed as the victors howled in depraved triumph. The whole city began to glow bloodily as fires marked the advance of the merciless High Hats.

                            Flax watched them through binoculars supplied Santiago. These instruments brought the conflict so magically close to him and he so much wanted to be part of it. He felt the surge of adrenalin flowing through him, he wanted to be there to, but he knew that he must co- ordinate the battle himself.

                            With the help of a radio and its hastily trained operator he was in touch with all his Captains. Reports flooded in through the heavy hiss of static that the Tans were retreating, offering little resistance and dying in their thousands as they fled to the  river  and  the  walls  of the Upper City. The High Hats were sweeping the Tans aside, their foe's antiquated weaponry no match for his men's equipment, even in their hastily trained hands.

Flax  smiled.  The  Lower  City  was  his  and  now he would join the fray himself. Flax  shouldered  his sub  machine  gun  and,  with  his  radio   operator   in tow   descended   to   the   battle   field   of   Dubh.

                            Chaos and carnage reigned on the streets he now walked. Buildings burned fiercely, the bodies of Tans lay sprawled in the streets with their ancient and ineffective weaponry clutched in their dead hands. As the High Hat leader moved along through the aftermath of the carnage towards the river, where his forces now assembled awaiting his next order, he sprayed anything that moved with automatic fire. He riddled the unarmed civilians who peered curiously through doorways and windows and those who had emerged in curiosity out onto the streets. Flax found the pleasure of such destruction of human life intense as he picked off his targets indiscriminately as his troops had done; anyone not in a High Hat uniform was a legitimate target and as he neared the river he found himself clambering  over piles of bodies of the ordinary citizens of Dubh.

                            Eventually, only lack of ammunition brought Flax down to earth and he was able to see reason through the red mist of his blood lust. He shouldered his weapon and increased his pace to join his men who waited impatiently on the banks of the foul smelling river, swearing at his radio operator to keep up with him.

                            The Tans had put up almost no resistance once they had realised the destructive capacity of the High Hats weaponry and had retreated en masse to the Upper City and the expected sanctuary of its curtain walls. The bottle neck of bridges over the river had been the demise of thousands as they attempted to make their way through the  terrified  crowds  swept  ahead  of  the  High Hats   advance.  The bridges had been crammed with people fleeing in fear of  the  demons  that  pursued               them  in  top  hats.  There,  caught  in  the  open  and vulnerable,  they  had  been  slaughtered as they stood like beasts at an abattoir door.

                            At the corpse swollen river, all was now silent. The firing had stopped because of Flax's orders and the simple fact that there was no one in the open outside the Upper City walls left to kill.

                            Ben Santiago had been swept up in the demonic atrocities of the High Hats advance. He had led the attacks with the same insane savagery as Flax himself would have. He had, with great difficulty, been able to eventually quell the sadistic enthusiasm of the High Hats as he knew they needed to preserve ammunition and he also released that the city would need people other than the High Hats to function after its fall to them.

The High Hats had wasted much ammunition in an attempt to achieve the latter, but Santiago had stopped it and now he oversaw the setting up of mortars and instructed how and where to launch grenades in preparation for the storming of the Upper City.

                            Now they awaited Flax. They milled around the river banks and on the bridges swapping stories of their personal exploits and itched to continue the rout of their enemy. Flax arrived and smiled as his horde cheered and waved their bloodied weapons in salute.

“Victory is ours!" their leader screamed until he was hoarse, then embraced Ben Santiago. His insane eyes bore into Ben. “Victory is Ours! he whispered into the arms dealer's ear.

                            Then he turned to his High Hats again. He looked at the sea of white faces, their wide and manic  eyes staring out from beneath the brims of their top hats grinned. Then he looked up at the walls of the Upper City and the dull glow from the field walls which crackled and flashed unstably.

                            Suddenly he felt cold. Goose pimples arose all over his body and the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. He stared at the sky over the walls across the city. A great arc of golden light briefly lit up Dubh, it was the result of the energy imbalance in the field walls, but to Flax it was more than a chance disruption in the field walls. It was gate through which he would have to pass to secure his position as emperor of this place. Beyond it lay the city of the Tallmen, but they could not stop him. His dream of Jonathon standing before the golden gate now returned to him,  causing  him  to shiver.  The  dream,  the  boy!