Another War

Chapter Ten

The contrast in light was abrupt. Before, everything was dark and dismal. Now it was bright and sharp like lightning. Thacker leaped from the door of the machine, orientated himself to the shift in gravity, and strode out into a sea of shifting rubble, swinging his spear in short, predatory arcs.

The Ankhani reacted, as far as he could tell, firstly with astonishment, then fear. They stopped their probing of the wrecked Land Rover, and as he turned to face them, they started backing away.

Thacker wondered if the armour was Ankhani-made after all, whether it was originally of human artifice, whether it had been designed to combat gods and monsters from the dawn of time, whether the Ankhani had taken the hero suits back to their own world and hidden them away so that they no longer presented a threat to their power.

The creatures would run into a blizzard of machine gun fire, but shrank from a man in brazen armour, wielding a spear and shield. He had to make the most of it, while he had the advantage.

With Adams still clinging to him, he leapt forward and plunged the spear deep into the heart of the Land Rover’s engine. Metal on metal shrieked and sparked. He twisted the leaf-shaped blade this way and that, scraping the point across the ruined engine block.

‘That’s not going to do it,’ shouted Adams. He let go his death-grip on Thacker’s head and dropped to the floor. He scrambled into the cab and reached through to the crates of grenades. He grabbed one at random, and struggled back out.

Thacker jumped up to the ruined ground floor and darted at the mass of Ankhani. They flowed before him like a great dark tide, deciding not to get close to him even though their numbers were such that they could have overwhelmed him in seconds.

It felt to Thacker like he was in control, actually master of his own destiny for the first time in days.

‘Major! Remember Jack.’

How he would have liked to have chased the Ankhani, spearing them one after another until the ground ran black with ichor. But Adams had called him to his senses. With a final defiant flourish of his shield, he dropped back down to the cellar.

‘Can you throw this accurately?’ Adams presented him with a phosphorous grenade.

‘Of course.’

‘I need to be well away when it goes off. You’ll need to protect me, even if you can stand the blast.’ Again, Adams had to remind Thacker of his frailty.

‘Yes, yes.’ He crouched down and Adams climbed up to his perch. Barely before he’d settled, Thacker was off, running to the far edge of the ruins.

When he judged the distance safe, he took the grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it in a low, tight arc. The bomb slotted into the space where the windscreen used to be, and suddenly white fire boiled out.

Adams slipped off and pressed himself behind two courses of brick. Thacker stood and watched as the Land Rover burned brightly enough to cast a shadow. With a shattering crack, and a blast of heat straight from the furnaces of hell, the grenades exploded.

A churning ball of flame flashed out and up, the air stiffened, the ground trembled. He watched it all. He looked into the heart of the inferno and stared it down. The fireball mounted a dirty pillar of dust and smoke, and roiled into the sky.

Eventually, he blinked, looked down, and saw that the machine was ripped apart. There were shards of it everywhere, scattered around him like bright tears.

‘You can get up now,’ he said to Adams.

‘Is it gone?’

‘Destroyed. Forever.’

The Ankhani were fleeing, scattering in the Oxfordshire countryside, slipping through hedgerows and leaving only frost-marks in their wakes.

‘They’ll kill plenty before they’re all caught,’ said Adams.

‘They’re nothing. Forget them.’ Thacker turned his gaze to the east and the west, then finally to the north. ‘That way. I can feel him like a pain in my head.’

‘Major? Go back to the camp first.’

‘That’s wasting time.’

‘You want me to get you to Jack? Go to the camp.’

Thacker picked Adams up roughly and carried him over the rubble and up the driveway to the camp.

‘Damn you, man, you’ll break me,’ Adams snarled at Thacker, who didn’t care. After looking to his new bruises, he took the Union flag that had been draped over the guys of a tent and told Thacker to tie it to his spear. ‘With that, the Army might just hesitate long enough to listen to an explanation.’

He disappeared into another tent, and emerged with some spare fatigues. He changed out of his white coverall and into khaki.

‘Now, Adams. Now.’ Thacker had run out of patience.

Adams tied the last shoelace. ‘Done. Now run like you’ve the very devil at your back.’

They went straight across country, as the crow would fly and the fox would hunt. Thacker found that he could hurdle hedgerows almost without breaking step. Landing from such a height didn’t affect him at all, but poor Adams suffered grievously from the shocks and knocks that he carelessly received.

In copses of trees, Thacker would dart athletically between the trunks, leaving his passenger to be lashed by the overhanging branches. He would leap streams and gullies and almost shake Adams off with the impact.

On and on, always northward, guided by some enhanced sense of Thacker’s until they could hear the rattle of small arms fire and the crunch of mortars.

The pair fell into a sunken road, and surprised a platoon of camouflaged Gurkhas making their way up to the battle front. As one, the soldiers cocked their guns in a clatter of metal. As Adams had hoped and predicted, they stayed their trigger fingers a fraction from firing.

The young English lieutenant in charge of the group advanced slowly on them, his pistol trained alternately on Thacker’s forehead and Adams’ heart. He’d had a briefing, and frankly hadn’t believed a word of it. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

‘Who goes there?’ he asked, his voice betraying his nerves.

‘Major Thacker, Chemical Weapons Unit, Porton Down.’

‘Private Adams. Formerly of the Third Battalion, Durham Light Infantry.’

The officer brought the muzzle of his gun up to vertical. ‘Sir? We were told to look out for you, but…’

‘Where’s Jack Henbury?’

‘A mile over the rise. There were advance units, but they’ve now turned on us. We can’t get close to him.’

‘How close is he to Banbury?’

‘In the outskirts already. The situation is very confused. There are civilians everywhere: only some of them are trying to kill us.’

‘Get me forward,’ ordered Thacker. ‘Adams? Off. Your work is done.’

‘I’m sticking around. I need to find Master Robert.’ Adams swung down and stood defiantly in front of Thacker.

‘Didn’t you hear? They’ve been converted. Robert Henbury belongs to Jack now.’

‘I won’t believe it until I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Master Robert would never give in to that thing.’

It was useless arguing with him. It would get Adams killed, but it wasn’t a concern of Thacker’s anymore. The lieutenant consulted briefly with a map, and pointed his way down the road.

‘This leads right over the bypass and the railway line. The creature’s last position was just beyond there.’

‘You’ve been warned not to get too close,’ said Thacker.

‘Yes, but how close is that? We’ve lost contact with units well outside what we thought was the danger zone.’

‘Leave Jack to me. Just get me that far.’

The lieutenant nodded, and they started off. Thacker thought the pace impossibly slow, but the Gurkhas were doing almost double-time.

They started to pass bodies. Soldiers, civilians, caught in the moment where they stopped trying to kill and instead had been killed. People: men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, all now cut and torn and beaten and shot. They’d woken up that morning to beautiful warm sunlight, and wondered what the day might bring.

It brought them Jack Henbury, and they wouldn’t see the sun set.

‘I thought the artillery would be here by now,’ said Thacker.

‘It is. But they can’t fire on Banbury.’

‘Why not?’

‘Good God, Major, we’re trying to reduce the collateral damage, not shell built-up areas.’

‘That’s a mistake.’

The lieutenant looked sideways at Thacker. ‘How can you say that?’

‘Because I’ve felt him in my head.’

‘Oh.’ The hedges either side of them suddenly stopped. The road continued out over a bridge which spanned first a four-lane carriageway, then a pair of electrified train tracks.

There was nothing moving on the Banbury ring road. It was blocked with burning and crashed vehicles, smoke and glass, and spilled loads from jack-knifed lorries and burst vans.

Beyond, where the road dipped down into the heart of a down-at-heel council estate, there were more fires, the sounds of breaking and exploding, of screaming and shouting, of shooting and bloody riot.

And briefly, in the gap between two houses, Jack Henbury’s bizarre figure could be seen, the air, the very fabric of reality rippling around him. Then he was gone.

The lieutenant turned to Thacker. ‘Do you honestly think you can kill him, dressed in that?’

‘I think that if I can’t, no-one can.’

‘I only ask, because I’m going have to risk the life of every man here, and frankly, you look damn strange.’

‘Forget what I look like. I carried Adams on my back all the way from Henbury Hall, and I’m not even out of breath.’ Thacker felt better than that. He was itching to do battle, almost desperate to prove what he could now do. No more beating his head against trees for him. He would close with Jack, spit him with his spear and crush his spindly neck.

‘Right.’ He waved his point man on to the exposed bridge. He was halfway across, above the bank that separated the road and the railway. He stopped, and beckoned them on.

The rest of the platoon started over. The man on the bridge raised his rifle and shot three of them dead before the others could scramble back.

The lieutenant lay flat on the tarmac, his head just below line-of-sight. He shouted angrily at Thacker: ‘Is this too close? How can this be too close?’

Thacker got to his feet, his soldier’s instincts too great to overcome his new-found sense of invulnerability. ‘It’s certainly too close now. Jack’s powers have got stronger. It’s up to me, now.’

He started running, faster, faster. The figure on the bridge was firing at him. He could see the muzzle flash, and feel the impact of the bullets as they thundered against his out-thrust shield.

He hit the Gurkha with the shield boss as he passed, barely breaking step. The man was flung back against the bridge’s metal railings. He didn’t stop to look, or even glance behind him. He knew he’d killed him with one blow.

He slowed as he got to the other end of the bridge. At the T-junction, the road that went right petered out into a wasteland of old, abandoned cars and fly tipping. The one that went left was a scene straight from the deepest circle of Hell.

There were bodies, much like the ones he’d already seen. He was ready for that. The burning houses and cars, likewise. He’d practised civil riot control and military urban combat. He’d simulated throwing up a cordon around a contaminated site and shooting mothers and children who tried to breach the wire.

He’d caught a small taste of what to expect at Henbury Hall, when he’d first tried to shoot Jack. There on the streets of an English town, it hit home what life with their new god might be like.

There were hundreds of people facing the towering figure at the far end of the street. Some were lying down before him, calling for mercy that would never come. Some were standing, cutting themselves with knives and glass, calling out their pain and devotion, desperate to show their zeal. Some were turning on their fellow worshippers, singling out one person for their lack of faith, and beating them to death for their faults.

Others were committing the most degrading, bestial acts they could imagine, and offering up their deeds as a sacrifice.

Thacker’s ancient suit of armour didn’t amplify his courage, either. He swallowed hard on a dry mouth and felt suddenly very cold.

Jack seemed to look up, to notice him, through the beatific haze of adoration. He turned his strange body, and craned his neck to get a better look. Something of his puzzlement was communicated to his diabolic congregation. They started by looking over their shoulders at him, and ended by facing him.

Thacker could barely look at them, their bloodied and tear-streaked cheeks, their eyes without a spark of hope, their bodies given up to serve their capricious master.

From somewhere, he found his voice.

‘Jack Henbury? I’ve come for you.’

A knot of pressure built up in his skull, but it faded. It was not like before, now he was protected. A thin, reedy sound drifted over the silent crowd. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was. Then he started to hear words.

‘What are you? Why do you not bow before Me?’

‘Why? Because I’m going to kill you, you freak, that’s why. I’ve already destroyed the machine. When I’m done with you, I’m going after the Ankhani, one by one.’

‘You cannot defy Me. I am your god.’

‘I’ve defied you once already, and I’ll do it again.’

‘Then,’ said Jack, ‘you are My enemy, and I must crush you like I have crushed all opposition to My rule.’

With that, the mob began to edge forward, their faces contorted with fear and superimposed rage. They picked up weapons: bricks, paving slabs, wooden posts and metal bars, broken bottles and building tools. A few had guns, and they aimed them at Thacker.

Perhaps he could have beaten them all, lunging through the middle of them, swinging his spear and his shield. He would be a great bronze giant ploughing through a sea of demented people, breaking their skulls, piercing their ribs, trampling them underfoot. They would try to cling on, bring him down and probe his armour for weak spots, looking for an unguarded place through which to slip a thin knife.

He didn’t wait for them to reach him. He turned and ran. He knew he could outpace them, and by the time he stopped to take stock at the T-junction, the vanguard of his pursuers were already twenty yards behind.

He cut left onto the Banbury Road, but almost immediately went left again. He jumped a garden fence, and was suddenly alone. Climbing onto a coal bunker, he leapt into the next garden. Behind him, he could hear both horrified consternation and abject apology as the mob tried to explain to Jack that they had lost sight of the metal-encased man. By the sudden screams and wails, he was not placated.

Thacker kept working his way up the row of houses until he was sure he had Jack between him and the mass of crazed worshippers. He stepped between two of the houses and made his way to the street.

Jack had his back to him. He was selecting people at random and pitching them high in the air, watching them fall broken-backed to the concrete. The survivors covered their ears uselessly against the mental blast and wept, because it was not them that had been chosen.

Thacker hefted his spear and watched the flag flutter, checked the dented lion aspect of his shield, and started walking towards the god.

It was then that he noticed, sheltering by Jack’s feet, two men. One was naked, bowed, filthy, balanced on only one leg, his hands tied tight behind his back and his neck in a noose. The other end of the rope was held by a man in a tattered and soiled suit, one shoe on, the other missing.

It was Dickson, and his prisoner was Robert Henbury.

The ministry man just happened to glance round as Thacker approached. Certainly, he couldn’t have heard him through the noise. He almost turned back, his eyes not believing what they were seeing. He brought up his pistol, and instinctively Thacker threw his spear.

It was a throw worthy of a hero. The broad leaf blade slammed completely through Dickson, and out the other side, the red, white and blue cloth tied to it turned violent crimson. Dickson sank to his knees and pitched over onto his side. The gun clattered to the floor, and at that, both Henburys looked round.

Thacker didn’t hesitate this time. He put his head down and charged.