Authors: Paul Wigmore
On any other day this would have been a rare treat for both of them, to have found such unspoiled beauty in the heart of the English countryside and on what was looking to be a beautiful Summers day too. Unfortunately they had no time for sightseeing or to even consider exploring what looked to be many wondrous trails through the hills, all leading off from the village. There was only one trail on their mind, and that one led to the pub atop the hill overlooking the village
.
They parked the car behind the church and began the walk through the village in the general direction of “The Trident”.
Seb had the idea that if they hadn’t arrived in the middle of what looked to be tourist season for this little village then their very arrival would have bought them some unwelcome stares from locals. He imagined them with pitchforks and flaming torches, probably making human sacrifices to their sun god in the hopes of a good crop next season.
It wasn’t
hard for them to find the correct path as they neared the hill looming over the village, there were signs pointing to a rugged looking pathway that snaked its way up the hillside with
“Trident Path”
in faded yellow letters daubed across them.
The climb looked steady but arduous as the two of them stood at the bottom of the path, Clara with her hand resting on a fence post, presumably to divide the village from the hills.
‘Well...let’s go see the wizard’ joked Seb nervously as he turned to look at Clara, and for some reason, held her hand tighter than he had before. Not wanting to let go, fearing that if he let go, then he may never hold it again. His usual boyish charm was off duty and he seemed to be lost without it. The look he gave her wasn’t one filled with confidence but one of hope. He hoped to god that she knew what she was doing, he hoped to god that he wasn’t going to lose her and that together, they would defeat whatever evil was waiting for them at the top of “Trident Hill” as he had begun to call it.
Gavin had arrived back at the warehouse the previous evening and was soon p
ut to work with Lilith and Saul, the three of them chanting the deadly song over an empty wine goblet...well empty but for a flea.
Even the demonic pets on the all too realistic ceiling had grown quiet at the sight of the three of them. They stared down and watched the flea as it jumped back to life once all three had given their blood to the glass. Lilith had pulled out a vicious looking blade
from the confines of her luxurious mane and sliced the palms of each as they chanted the familiar nursery rhyme, till the blood reached the flea at the bottom of the glass and it suddenly sprang back to life. Once it had its fill, it sprang from the glass and another appeared in its place, then another and another. After a while, they didn’t appear singularly but two at a time, then four, then eight and so on and so on until they came at a rate of probably two to three thousand or more. They just appeared in the glass, took a sip of the blood and then were gone.
By the time Clara and Seb reached the top of “Trident Hill” the next morning, millions, if not billions of infected fleas had been released upon the world by the deadly trio
.
‘Well, here we are... now what?’ asked Seb as they finally reached the top of the climb. Clara sat down on a bench outside the pub and took in the view, not really listening to Seb. She had been fighting her own demons ever since she had woke that morning and all the way up the hill that would lead her to defeat or victory. Although she had a feeling that whatever happened now it could only be a bittersweet victory or a shattering defeat. Why was Gavin caught up in all of this? And why did she have to be the one to bring him down. She had buried him not so long ago
and she didn’t know if she had it in her to be the one to bring him down for a second time.
She had tried getting through to him all morning, but it was as if a barrier had been put up all around him. Even on the climb up the hill, she had still been trying to penetrate through to him, but his mind was like a mass of dark clouds that she just couldn’t navigate through
. This along with the climb is why she felt so exhausted when she reached the top.
She watched Seb as he wandered over to the other side of the pub to get a better look at “The Trident” hung on the outside wall.
‘I hope you figure out how to use this thing’ he called to her as she walked past the front opening of the pub towards Seb and “The Trident” In front there were three steps which led down into a garden area with benches and a number of bushes bordering the garden area before you reached the entrance to the pub itself. There didn’t seem to be anyone around as she looked in the windows as she walked past. Not a soul stirred inside which was probably not as strange as it would be in the city at this time of day.
Their previous guess had been a complete under estimation. The Trident was roughly ten foot long and looked as heavy as a house. They both stood there at the side of the white walled pub, just staring stupidly up at “The Trident”. None of them wanting to speak aloud the obvious question,
how to get the darn thing down?
It was fixed to the wall with two large metal brackets, one at the bottom and the other fixed just under the base of the three prongs. Seb was just about to suggest going back into the village to buy a spanner which he hoped would do the job of loosening the bolts when
they both felt the warm caress of wind on their faces and the sweet smell of lavender envelop them. Clara knew instantly,
‘They’re here’ she said with a smile and took Sebs hand in hers as the dragons snaked their way across the sky to them for the second visit that Liu had foretold.
When that very first flea had taken its fill of the infected blood from the wine goblet, instantly every other flea across the globe had also become infected with the disease. Saul had just produced more to ensure that the job was done with haste. He had waited long enough for this moment and didn’t want to waste a moments time. He could literally taste his freedom from the accursed hallowed ground
. The fleas were given one job, and one job alone. It was to infect every living child on the planet with the plague. It was also a job they did well and expediently. Within hours there were reports of major flea infestations taking hold of every building in every city across the globe. Nobody seemed to have a hold of the situation at all. It began with local reports pointing the finger at the governments sanitation departments until the reports from across the globe began to pour in. Possibly the strangest theory was one of a terrorist plot although not one person could quite explain why? Or what benefit it would have to their cause at all.
People were running out of buildings into the streets to escape them, scratching themselves and literally tearing their contaminated clothes from their bodies. In the city of Manchester itself a bus travelling along Portland
Street had suddenly been overcome with the little parasites and people began jumping from their seats, itching at their skin and shouting at the driver to stop the bus. He however was madly swatting at his arms and slapping his face as if he were being attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes. He lost control of the bus and slammed into the front of the Britannia Hotel taking at least three people under the bus before he went into the wall.
A passenger jet from Liverpool to Prague with three hundred and eighteen travellers came hurtling through the skies over Germany and imbedded itself into the Notre-Dame cathedral, with no survivors but for the fleas
.
Looting had become rife in every major city as shop owners ran from their stores to rid themselves of the pesky insects. The looters didn’t seem to care that the counters were
covered with millions of fleas. They ran in and grabbed what they could carry although most of them abandoned their loot further down the street as they could no longer carry the tv or stereo because of the biting from the fleas. Cars were also being abandoned on the streets which were causing more and more collisions. Emergency services were nothing more than useless as they had no protection of their own. In fact an ambulance responding to a blaze that started in the kitchen of a cafe on New st in Birmingham but had spread next door to the bookies, had actually crashed through the front window into the writhing mass of smoke while the driver had been trying to rid himself of the thousand or so fleas that had swarmed his body only seconds before.
In the early stages of the contamination,
(the first hour or two)
it was just blind panic that filled the cities and villages. After a while most cities across the globe had begun to look the same. Flames were licking the skies turning them a deep orange and soot black. The main cause of the fires were the chefs or cooks that had ran from their stoves without turning the heat off, or even knocking pans over in their haste to get out of their flea ridden kitchens, although there was no escape outside either. Emergency services all over were stretched to their limit and were still all but useless. There were people jumping from buildings, hoping trees or bushes below would cushion their fall to escape the flames and the smoke, whilst others not brave enough to attempt a leap of faith, died much slower, surrendering to the suffocating fumes before the lick of the flames could be felt at their skin.
This was all in the space of a few hours, the devastation was unseen since the days of the black plague which Saul had wrought upon this world before, although he had not quite finished his masterpiece yet
.
At 1:45 that afternoon, Tom Mclurey walked through the streets of death, pulling his cart behind him, not really sure where he was going to take his cart or what to do with it when he got there. He had just decided that he had to focus on something.
Of course when he had kissed his wife
Linda goodbye that morning and shook his over zealous Labrador pup from his ankle, he had not known his whole world was about to fall down around his eyes like the London stock market on Black Wednesday. But it had and there was nothing he could do to change that now, all he could do was ring the bell he had found in the rubble around the Paternoster Square Column which now lay on its side amid the rubble of the London Stock Exchange itself.
He had fled the building earlier on that morning when the fleas first took hold. There was a sl
ow wave of realisation that swept through the building as people began scratching at their arms and legs whilst trying to buy or sell their shares, for their clients. The mild discomfort soon turned to panic as the little parasites became all too visible. He was lucky as he had been close to the exits when the wave of panic spread to hysteria and people began to rush towards him and the exits. He turned tail and fled like any sane person would. He ran for maybe five minutes but those five minutes felt like five hours as he watched the devastation all around him spread like wildfire. Over the next hour or two he wandered the streets, trying to avoid the crazy people and falling bodies. He wanted to get back home to Linda and the Labrador pup, “Cobra” but as the time went on it became more and more difficult to move through the streets. He eventually realised he had turned back on himself and was heading back towards Paternoster Square. He was riddled with bites and felt sick to his stomach but something pushed him on to go back there.
There
had been an explosion from what seemed to have originated from “The Gentry”. It was a pub directly opposite the Stock Exchange that Tom frequented most afternoons. It looked to him as if it had blown right through the pub and also the gas pipes underneath as it had blown right through the front of his beloved exchange. This was his second home, in fact Linda had said he spent more time at work than at home lately. He saw the bodies lying strewn all over and the Column on its side. There were still people screaming from windows or falling to their deaths. He clambered over the column itself towards something that had been twinkling in the firelight. He picked up the bell, which he recognised as the one Joe would have used in “The Gentry” at last orders and that was the moment he finally lost it. His friends had all gone, his wife was unreachable... he had tried calling but received no answer at home, so he could only think the worst. He took the bell and for reasons only known to himself, went looking for a suitable cart. When he found one in a local supermarket he began to fill up his cart with the dead as he walked along the streets of London calling an all too familiar chant whilst he rang his bell.
Bring out your dead,
Bring out your dead.
And that’s how at 1:45 on the 5
th
June 2010 a London stockbroker was found to be walking the streets of London with a Tesco pallet trolley dragging behind him ringing a bell and calling for the dead to be brought forward.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR