Kingdom: The Complete Series (39 page)

They watch in horror as
the
thing
he was shooting at barrels into him at chest height, and a
shower of blood erupts from the screaming figure. His squad have stopped now
too, turning back to see their officer torn apart.

At a screamed order
they drop to their knees and open fire: a hail of lead tears the creature
apart, leaving it scattered across the ground.

“
Men,”
shouts the Trespasser, leading his squad towards the crouched soldiers. He
waves, and they look up. “Trespasser One, Special Forces. You the evac squad
that put out the distress call?”

They look around at a
bloody-faced man who stands up, checking that they're alone, before he nods.

“
We
are. Staff Sergeant Ferguson. You're the help? I don't see any rifles.”

Something explodes down
the street behind them and they all flinch. The Trespasser changes the
subject.  “Where's the rest of your unit?”

“
This
is it,” he shakes his head. “We had a few trucks and an APC – all gone. That –
whatever it was – attacked us. Then some guy dropped off a roof and ripped an
armoured vehicle apart with his hands. Laugh if you want: I don't give a shit
anymore. These things shrug at bullets, this is no place for infantry.” They
look up at the sound of a helicopter passing overhead, and watch an attack
chopper skim above the rooftops, unleashing a salvo of missiles with a hiss.
The sergeant looks at the Trespasser. “I don't suppose you know what's going on
here, do you?”

The Trespasser shakes
his head, just as Jamie appears beside him and points down the street.

“
I
see something.”

They all turn, and the
Staff Sergeant readies his rifle as they do. Right enough, two human figures
are walking towards them through the red-tinged smoke.

“
Sergeant,
get your men out of here,” says the Trespasser, pointing to the shattered glass
of the Buchanan Street subway stairs, leading down into the murky darkness.
“Take them through the subway tunnels – there's an evac point at the St Enoch's
car park.” The officer almost hesitates, looking at his men, and the rifles in
their hands. The Trespasser stops him before he can protest. “Just go, son. You
said this was no place for infantry and you were right. This isn't your fight.”

He pats the soldier on
the back and the soldier nods, leading his squad down the stairs and off the
streets.

The two figures pacing
towards them down the road are shadows in the dust, dark shapes cut out of the
air. Only when they come through the smoke does the flickering light of the
burning city illuminate them.

“
I
don't know if I can do this,” mumbles Donald, hiding behind the Trespasser, who
draws his hand-held grenade launcher and takes aim.

They see a man and a
woman, walking side by side towards them with single purpose. There seems to be
nothing unusual about them.

“
The
first violent move they make,” the Trespasser says, “take them down.”

“
How?”
asks Stacy. “I can't manipulate
people.
”

“
Think
of something.”

That's when the woman
tenses her legs and leaps into the air, descending upon them like a screaming
harpy, her limbs splayed out like claws.

Behind them, the second
torrent of thermobaric bombs go off, and the sky is lit with a flock of
missiles streaking in from across the city. The leaping woman is silhouetted by
the sparkling lights of airborne rockets behind her, and lit from the front by
the blooming light of the explosion.

Time stops.

For Jamie, in the grey
moment that he has frozen himself in, it's almost beautiful. Then, with a sigh,
he takes the grenade launcher from the Trespasser's hand and aims it up at the
woman.

“
I'm
sorry,” he whispers, and then takes a deep breath and lets time snap back.

The woman is blown out
of the sky in a puff of red mist; and before the squad are showered in a rain
of body-parts and gore, Gary throws up a forcefield.

It is just as well that
he did – for the other man is suddenly on the other side of it, his tracksuit
torn and bloodied, and he is screaming and cursing at them, pounding on the
blue bubble. He sneers, then steps back and throws his hands up like a
magician.

Fire begins to course
around his fingers before blooming like a flame-thrower, coating the bubble in
dancing orange flame. Gary, his hands out like a mime forming an invisible
wall, drops to his knees.

“
Stop
him,” he cries out. “I can't keep this up.”

The Trespasser takes
the pistol from his belt and aims it at the man's chest, ready for the when the
forcefield goes down.

“
Stop,
or I
will
kill you,” the Trespasser states. The man doesn't hear – he is
drunk on his own power, pushing more flames from the shimmering air around his
hands. “Stop now,” the Trespasser shouts, motioning with the pistol.

“
I'm
losing it -” Gary groans, wincing.

“
Donald,
be ready to heal us,” says the Trespasser.

“
No
need,” says Donald, and steps up close to the barrier as it begins to flicker.
He can feel the heat on the other side of it, seeping through.

He raises his hand as
though is telling the man to stop, and reaches out with his mind. His
conscience drifts through the man's body until he feels the fire, feels the
heat at his core – it's different from the heat that he feels in his friends
when he heals them. Theirs is a warm heat, a welcoming heat: the roaring log
fire on a cold winter day, the burning sensation that a rousing speech gives
you, the swell of an orchestra.

This – the fire that he
feels in this man – is a cancer.  A sickness feeding on the host at the expense
of their soul, shovelling their memories and happiness like fuel into a burning
furnace in the pit of their heart.

Donald reaches into
that black, corrupted heart with his mind – a mind made for healing – and grips
the man's heart, stopping it.

The flames fade as
suddenly as they came, and the man drops to the ground. His eyes glass over as
Gary lets the forcefield down.

“
Oh
christ,” whispers Donald. “What have I done?”

“
Did
you do that?” asks the Trespasser, taking his grenade launcher back from Jamie
and reloading it.

Donald nods.

“
You
saved us,” says Jamie, patting him on the back. Donald doesn't react.

Stacy looks back
towards the square. “Did the missile strike work?”

They see the huge red
orb still hovering above the city, lashings of flame cutting the buildings down
around it. More flames leap from the inside of the orb, arcing out over the
city to create more monsters.

The Trespasser wipes
his visor clean. “No. Shit.”

The explosions rock the
crimson shade suddenly enough that it loses focus, and Mark's twisted, burned
figure is given enough time to gasp for air and roll away.

Every patch of his skin
has been scorched off, leaving red, weeping flesh beneath it. His eyes have
been burned out – he is blind, his vision a constant rippling white. He looks
like a walking corpse, a red mannequin.

The deep bass note
trembles as the bombs and missiles rock the Destroyer, cracking open its
shield. While it is distracted, Mark – wheezing for air and limping – heads
towards the breeze. Even as the pressure wave pushes him to the ground again,
he clings to life.

The blast passes like a
nightmare, leaving his skin dry and covered in thousands of tiny cuts from the
debris. The fire within him is fading, weakening with every step.

He tenses his legs and
gives it one last go: he leaps into the night air, away from the Destroyer, his
heart crushed and his body broken. Mark is in the air for longer than he can
count. The missiles go off, and he feels the flame and the heat, the detonation
propelling him further, higher.

Only by the sensation
in his stomach can he tell that he is falling. The ground meets him like an old
friend and he feels the breath driven from him as though he has been hit by a
train.

He can't move,
struggling to roll onto his back. Mark stares into that same burning whiteness,
his sight gone. He weeps, but his tear ducts have been scorched out. His
strength has left him – he lies alone on a street that he cannot see, in a city
that he keeps trying to give his life for.

With the last of his
energy, he opens his dry, burned mouth in desperation and tries to call out the
name of his friend.

“
Mark?”
shouts Jamie, hearing his name croaked somewhere in the darkness.

“
Was
that who fell? I thought it was another of those psychos.”

“
Oh
god,” says Jamie, waving through the smoke and seeing the charred husk of his
friend on the ground. “Oh god, Mark.”

He rushes into the
crater, kneeling beside him.

“
J-Jamie?”
rasps the skeletal form on the ground. He is unrecognisable – his skin has been
flayed from his body, his naked form torn apart by the Destroyer.

“
Mark.
Oh god,” whispers Jamie. He reaches down and lays a hand on his friend's chest.
“It's ok man. I'm here. We're all here.”

“
He's
dead,” rasps Mark. “Protector. Dead. Destroyer won.”

Jamie looks up at
Donald as he kneels down and puts a hand on Mark.

Jamie asks him with his
eyes:
Can you do anything?

Donald lifts his face
mask and looks up at him, and Jamie feels the Trespasser's hand on his
shoulder. Tearing his face-mask off, Jamie tosses it aside and wipes his eyes.

“
There
has to be something we can do,” he whispers.

Mark's blackened hand
tightens around Jamie's, and he looks at him with eyes that are fused shut, his
hair burnt away.

“
Not
strong enough,” whispers Mark. “I'm sorry.”

“
Mark,
hold on,” he squeezes his hand. “Donald can fix you up, we can get you back up
-”

Donald is shaking his
head, and the Trespasser squeezes Jamie's shoulder. Behind them, Stacy chokes
back a sob.

“
Ah
shit,” whispers Cathy, taking Stacy in her arms.

“
No,”
says Jamie. He lets go of Mark's hand and stands up. “You're not dying like
this.”

“
Jamie,
please,” says Donald.

“
We
can't just give in, Don,” says Jamie, laying Mark's hand on his own burnt
chest, which is still rising and falling with each defiant breath. He leans in
close to Mark. “You can't just give in.”

The Trespasser gives
them a solemn look as he pulls off his mask. “The alien is gone. Mark is...
Well, it may be time to pull out, and consider a nuclear strike.”

All around them, a
sudden grinding bass note erupts. Across the city, any lights that were on
suddenly flicker and go off. The red darkness is complete; missiles in flight
stutter and fall from the sky. The sound of gunfire falters, and the
helicopters circling the city plummet from the sky.

“
Oh
no,” says the Trespasser. “No, no -”

“
An
EMP?” asks Donald, looking up at the dark city.

Trespasser One tries
his comms. “Command? Command, come in.”

Nothing.

“
What?
What's happened?”

The only light now is
the Destroyer, rising above the city. It lifts itself into the sky, a pulsing
red orb like a portal to hell, growing in size.

They feel the trembling
of its roar before they hear it, a buzzing so low it feels as though something
is punching their insides. The world begins to heat up, and they all gasp as
they feel the burning on their skin.

“
It's
knocked out our electricity. We have no heavy fire-power,” says the Trespasser,
scratching at his sun-burnt flesh. “I don't even have comms.”

“
What
does that mean?” asks Cathy. “What's our next step?”

“
There
isn't one,” the Trespasser says, his shoulders going limp. “We can't nuke it if
it can just switch the power off. Depending how far this power-cut has gone, we
can't even launch a single missile. It's over.”

“
No
it isn't,” says Jamie. “Not yet. There must be something else we can do.”

“
Even
if there was, the Destroyer is going to burn Glasgow to the ground,” says Gary,
dropping his mask. “You can feel it heating up. Then there's god-knows-how-many
super-powered psychos out there. We're out of time.”