Legion (An Apocalyptic Horror Novel) (Hell on Earth Book 2) (9 page)

Danza said nothing. He had grown pale, but he kept heading towards the bow. Hernandez fought the urge to jump overboard and followed his colleague. When they reached the front, they found Hell had come on board.

The crew battled something on the decks—bloated creatures resembling men, their flesh hanging loose and waterlogged on their bones. The entire ship was under attack. Enemies clambered over the railings and spilled onto the decks. Those with rifles let rip, tearing the enemy to pieces as quickly as they climbed the railings, but others stood unarmed, forced to defend themselves barehanded. The enemy leapt upon them like hungry lions, tearing at their windpipes with sharp, slippery claws.

Danza raised his rifle and joined the fight.

Hernandez stood there.

Seaman Lyle Crane stood nearby and came running. “Sir, we were already under attack when I got here. Do you know what’s happening?”

Hernandez shook his head. “I don’t understand where they are coming from. We should have been safe.”

Lyle’s face appeared grey under the setting sun, and impending nightfall felt like a curtain ready to be pulled over mankind’s corpse. Was this the end? Hernandez watched the abominations kill his crew.
Yes
. “Get on a radio. Call for help.”

Lyle saluted and sprinted off.

Hernandez stood there. He watched his crew fall in a torrent of gore, their slimy attackers ripping them into lumps.

Danza circled back around, popping one of the bloated monsters in the head. It launched backwards over the rail and back into the ocean. “Hernandez, I’m on my last mag. You got ammo? Hernandez? Lieutenant?”

Hernandez looked at the man, but couldn’t summon a reaction. Slowly, like a rusted robot, he reached into his trousers and pulled out a spare magazine. Danza snatched it.

“Thanks! Those things are coming right up out of the water. I see light down there, deep beneath the surface. I think… I think one of those goddamn gates opened in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Hernandez stood there.

Danza gave him a shove on the shoulder. “Hey, Hernandez, get with it! I need your help. Johnson wants a team up on the conning tower to gain elevation. Can you handle that?”

Hernandez stood there.

“Hernandez, go!”

Blinking, Hernandez got his legs moving. His heart thudded in his chest and bile burned his throat like he’d drunk a cupful of bleach. He raced into the ship’s interior, gathering whoever he could along the way. By the time he reached the top of the conning tower, he had seven crewmen and four rifles. He sent one of the men as a runner to gather more weapons.

Hernandez found his voice. “Okay, we need to keep the ship from getting overrun. Concentrate on the enemy trying to board.”

As commanded, the men with rifles concentrated their fire at the railings. The problem was that bloated monsters had now started to come on board via the aft deck too. From the conning tower, Hernandez only had a decent view of the ship’s bow. Someone needed to contain the enemy at the rear.

“Okay, Petty Officer Rossi, hold this position and keep those railings clear. Matthews will be back soon with more ammo.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m heading to secure the aft.” Hernandez flew down the ladder so quickly he almost free-fell, lucky to make it to the deck without injuring himself. The first person he bumped into was Commander Johnson. He was alone and injured. Blood flowed from his right arm hanging limply by his side. He held a Colt 9mm in his left hand. 

“Hernandez. You got a team up top, good work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Danza is pinned down. We need to offer support.”

Hernandez shook his head. “Sir, we need to secure the rear. The enemy is flooding aboard there. If we can stop the tide, we can regain control of the decks.”

Johnson looked back at the carnage behind him. Despite being surrounded, Danza led a large group of sailors currently holding their own. “Okay, let’s go quickly.”

Hernandez raised an eyebrow. “Just the two of us?”

“You see anyone else we have at hand? We’ll gather men if we can find them, but we need to hold the aft now. The men you put up top will help Danza hold the bow.”

Although it had been his idea, Hernandez felt a cold, wet fish in his guts as he considered what a suicide mission heading to the aft with only his injured commander as support would be. Yet, if he did nothing, the ship would be overrun. Even now, dead men slithered along the rails from the rear of the ship.

“Come on!” said Johnson, already heading off. He pulled the trigger on his pistol and hit a bloated creature standing in his way. “Let’s show these fuckers what we do to stowaways.”

Hernandez shouldered his rifle and took off after his commander. Johnson seemed to have snapped—it was the only way Hernandez could explain the man’s lack of fear. Even with one arm, Johnson sauntered along with confidence, raising his pistol and popping off rounds at whatever creature got close. 

Almost at the aft, they found a couple of crewmen taking cover inside one of the rigid hull dinghies that hung over the railings. Both men were unarmed.

“Captain, thank God.”

“Winstead, Gallagher! Get out of there. Your shipmates are dying.”

Both men leapt out. “We were caught unarmed, sir.”

Johnson reached into his belt and pulled a Smith and Wesson revolver into view. He shoved it at Winstead then turned around to grab a fire axe from the wall which he gave to Gallagher. “Both of you, come with me.”

Together, the four men reached the rear of the ship. The sun had fallen below the horizon, but the area was well lit by spotlights. The two Seahawk helicopters blocked full view of the deck, but it was clearly an enemy ingress point. They teemed over the rails.

Johnson took out two bloated creatures mid-step. Hernandez opened up on three more sludging towards their flank. The creatures were slow to move—bogged down by water—yet they could pounce several metres once they picked their target. That’s what happened to Gallagher within moments. The man raised the pistol in time to let off a shot, but it was too late. The bloated monster fell on top of him and disembowelled him with a single swipe of its bony claws. Thinking fast, Winstead dropped his axe and scooped up the revolver; pulling the trigger, he blew the creature away.

“Good work, Winstead,” said Johnson, slapping another mag into the butt of his gun and firing off more shots.

Hernandez took out another bloater trying to sneak up behind them. Its leg came away at the knee, but it continued in a crawl. Winstead picked up the axe again and brought it down on the back of the creature’s skull. The blood spatter was jet-black in the moonlight.

“These things are smart,” said Winstead. “This one was trying to flank us. They’re not animals, not monsters... I think… I think they used to be men.”

Hernandez raised his rifle and zeroed in on another creature coming over the railing. Winstead might be right. Although the enemy’s blue, swollen flesh was monstrous, their nipples, genitalia, and most of all, their eyes seemed human. Had they really once been men?

Were they zombies?

Demons?

Hernandez swallowed and pulled the trigger.

The bloated creature fell down dead.

The three of them continued putting up the best fight they could. Winstead swung his axe whenever he could save a bullet, and Hernandez was on his last magazine—he made each shot count. Johnson, however, was a madman, emptying a seemingly endless supply of extended clips he’d brought with him.

The enemy kept on coming. There could be a thousand of them down there beneath the surface of the water. How much longer could the Augusta hold out?

Hernandez pulled the trigger on his last round. Winstead was too slow spotting a bloater coming up on his blind spot. It leapt onto his back and bit into his neck like a ghoul. Winstead fired his revolver over his shoulder and took care of his attacker, but he was hurt bad. He fell to one knee and tried to stem the torrent of blood leaking from his throat with the palm of his hand. He used the axe handle as a crutch to stop him collapsing completely. “I’m down,” he gargled.

The enemy smelt blood. They focused their attacks upon Winstead and swarmed him. Hernandez ran out of ammo, so Johnson was Winstead’s only chance, but his pistol was too slow to fight off the onslaught. By the time he’d taken down three of the enemy, another four made it over to Winstead. He cursed and swore as they descended upon him, but soon cried out in pain. He tried to swing the axe from on his back, but it was swatted away and skittered along the deck. It came to rest at Hernandez’s feet.

Johnson bellowed at him. “Hernandez, help him!”

“I’m out of ammo, sir.” 

“I don’t care. Do something!”

Hernandez snatched up the axe at his feet and gripped it tightly, but remained where he was standing.

“God damn it, Hernandez!” Johnson slammed in another clip and fired. He hit two of the bloaters on Winstead, clearing a space in the swarm and revealing the man beneath. Winstead was dead, torn apart like a basket of bread. Johnson let out an animalistic snarl and kept on firing. Hernandez ran to his side.

“We have to get out of here, sir. We can’t hold them off with one gun. They’re going to surround us.”

Even now, it happened. The creatures sensed their advantage and spread out around the railings, waiting to close in like a net. They were smart.

“Sir, we have to go, now!”

“We’re not going anywhere, Lieutenant. Do your duty and secure this area.”

Hernandez looked at his superior officer—saw the madness in his eyes. The man had lost it. The blood on his face made him look like a snarling madman.

“Sir, this is suicide.”

“This is duty. The enemy is aboard our ship. We will die before we let them take it.” He fired off several more rounds, each one hitting its mark. More bloaters came over the rails. The smell of brine-soaked flesh overpowered them.

“I’m heading back to the bow,” said Hernandez.

Johnson glared at him. “Forever a coward. I order you to remain here and do your duty, Lieutenant. If we die, then we die as officers of the United States Navy. We die proud.”

Hernandez wobbled, his knees made of wet sand. He looked around at the railings and saw dozens of the waterlogged abominations all around him. They were surrounded by monsters. No way to survive.

“I won’t die for you, sir.” Hernandez lifted the axe and buried it in his commander’s collarbone, splitting his neck away from his shoulders. Utter shock covered Johnson’s face. He tried to speak, but couldn’t.

Hernandez put his foot on Johnson’s pelvis and yanked the axe free. He swung it again, burying it deeper into the ruined neck tissue like a lumberjack felling a tree. Johnson gurgled. Blood came out of his ruined throat in rhythmic gushes.

Hernandez snarled and pulled the axe free again. This time, Johnson slumped onto his back. “There’s your honourable discharge, sir.”

The creatures fell upon Johnson and tore him apart as he bled out on the deck. Several more stalked Hernandez, but he kept them at bay with mad swings of his bloody axe. He edged backwards, desperately hoping he would make it back to Danza and the others, and that the other lieutenant had things under control. Gunfire still blazed—both a good and bad sign.

With Johnson dead, the ship now lay in Hernandez’s command. The thought excited him as much as it terrified him, and the fact that he considered such things now, in this moment, surprised him. The other thought in his head, bizarrely, was that if he died, the ship would go to Danza. He wanted that even less than dying.

But that seemed to be the way things were destined to go. As Hernandez backed up towards the ship’s launch bay, hoping to slip in through the hangar and race towards the bow, he found himself cut off. If he tried to take the enemy at his back, the enemy at his front would fall upon him—and vice versa. He had no way of defending himself without leaving himself exposed.

This was it. The end.

Killing Johnson had been unnecessary because they had both been screwed.

The first creature attacked and Hernandez was ready. He swung the axe like Mickey Mantle clutching wood. The blade had so much elbow grease behind it that it took the bloated bastard’s head clean off. It also left Hernandez unbalanced and out of breath. The next creature barrelled right into his side and knocked him down. He hit the deck, the enemy on top of him. More surrounded him and closed in, ready to take their piece of flesh.

Hernandez whimpered. Time to close his eyes.

Rat-a-tata-tata-ta.

The sudden wetness on Hernandez’s face startled him. He flinched and opened his eyes, pushed the weight off of his chest. The creature was dead, its body weeping black blood and sea water from a dozen different holes. The other bloaters had scattered, many of them dancing the death tango as bullets riddled their bodies.

Rat-a-tata-ta.

Hernandez kept low and dragged himself into cover inside the hangar’s entrance. He dared peek out for only a single second to see who had come to his rescue. Had Danza secured the ship? The bastard would be a hero.

But it had been heavy machine-gun fire that had turned the tide. Something bolted down and chain-fed.

Hernandez saw the spotlights circle around and realised who had saved him.

It was another ship.

T
he streets were
a chaotic mixture of fear and anger. As many people fled as stayed to throw bricks at shop windows and kicked in car windscreens. Fight or Flight. The concrete jungle of Brixton had become a plain old jungle, and only animals lived in it.

“We need to get out of here, man.” Ginge leant against a lamppost and took great heaving breaths. “I mean, this shit is like Iraq or something.”

“I don’t see no soldiers,” said Mass. “We could use a couple of AKs right now. Wonder if the newsagents across the road sells ‘em.”

“No one will be coming to help us,” said Vamps. “You think they’ll be sending police, or the Army, to help out Brixton when Oxford Street and Soho are in the shit? We don’t matter.”

Ravy ducked as a brick flew over his head. It hit the side of a bus stop and rained glass on top of the old man taking cover there. “Shit man. We’re gunna get our heads caved in.”

Vamps looked at the madness erupting all around him and felt disgusted. Their city was under attack, and the first thing people did was turn on one another. Why? To grab a fistful of fags from the newsagent? What made people act this way?

Fear.

“We have to do something,” he said. “You think these monsters from Oxford Street are going to stay where they are? Those gates are everywhere. Where the hell would we even go?”

“Anywhere but here,” said Ravy.

Vamps shook his head. “If I’m going to have to fight for my life, then I want it to be here, where I know the streets and the people. This is home, yo. Where else you wanna be?”

Mass was already on board. “Mr Tarq runs the newsagents. He let me off for shoplifting when I was a kid. Used to let my mum off when she was short too. He don’t deserve to get his place trashed.”

“Then let’s get started,” said Vamps. “Let’s clean shit up.”

“What the fuck?” said Ginge. “We ain’t crime fighters. This morning we tried to sell drugs and then straight up robbed a guy.”

Mass smirked, his wide chin jutting out. “Which shows what bad motherfuckers we is. Don’t mean we have to stand around and watch our hood get jacked up though, does it?”

“Okay,” said Ravy. “As long as you and Vamps do the fighting, I’m down.”

Ginge sighed. “Fuck sake. Yeah, fine. I’m down too.”

Vamps nodded, proud of what they were doing—proud of his friends. “Let’s go save our corner shop.”

They legged it over to Mr Tarq’s newsagent and flew through the open doors like something from
The Avengers.
Vamps felt good as he said, “Shop’s closed, bitches.”

They grabbed a teenager helping himself to snack food and drinks and tossed him right out onto the street. The kid had been in the middle of piling half the shop’s inventory into his carrier bags when Vamps walloped him around the head.

“Get the hell out of here, you little rat,” Vamps snarled in the kid’s face, flashing his fangs.

“Aw shit, man. You’re Vamps. All right, I’m leaving.” The teenager legged it, empty handed.

Vamps nodded to his boys. “See, home has its advantages, like a killer rep.”

There were another two teenagers in the throes of anarchy, but they too headed away on their toes when they saw Vamps and his crew. Once the looters left, the shop was quiet, the chaos outside muted by the steel shutters over the front windows.

Magazines lined the floor like a glossy carpet and broken bottles of red wine gave the cramped space the look of a crime scene.

They heard moaning.

Vamps looked around but saw no one. He tilted his head and honed in on the sound until he realised it was coming from behind the counter at the back of the shop.

“There’s someone back there,” said Mass.

Vamps followed the moaning, took a moment, then leant over the desk.

A man shoved his hands up at his face. “Please, don’t hurt me anymore. Just take it.”

Vamps studied the old man, his grey hair befuddled and stained with blood, and felt his stomach turn.
Fucking animals.

“It’s okay, Mr Tarq.” Vamps reached out his hand but kept his palm out and harmless. “I’m not going to hurt you. We came here to help.”

Mr Tarq cowered. “Please!”

Mass came over and stood beside Vamps. When he saw the battered old man, he shook his head and cursed. It took him a moment to let go of his anger. “Hey, Mr Tarq, it’s me, Alfie. You know me. You know my mum, Heather Masters.”

Mr Tarq looked up at Mass and frowned. “Little Alfie Masters? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Mr Tarq, but not so small anymore. We came to help you. It’s okay.”

The old man nodded and slowly pulled himself up against the counter. He clutched his ribs and winced a few times, but he didn’t seem too hurt.

Vamps made sure the old man was steady. “You okay, gramps?”

Mr Tarq bent forwards, in obvious pain, but reached out and patted Vamps on the shoulder. “Yes, my son. I am okay. Bless you for being good boys. I thought there were none left.”

“Not many,” said Vamps. “But it only takes a few.”

“Yes, yes, my son, you are right. Please, I must close my shop. The world is a dark place today, and I wish to be alone to think on it. Take anything you want before you go.”

“We don’t need anything, gramps, but thanks.”

“I’ll take a Snickers,” said Ginge.

Vamps rolled his eyes. “Okay, we’ll take one Snickers bar, but that’s all. You take care, Mr Tarq.”

Mr Tarq patted Vamps shoulder again and went to inspect the damage to his livelihood. He locked the door behind them as soon as they left.

Mass looked at Vamps and nodded. “It feels good to do good, you know?”

Vamps looked back at the newsagent, now shuttered up safely. “Yeah, it does. No reason to stop now.”

So they continued their mission of cleaning up the streets of Brixton, veering north and forgetting that the real danger was not so far away. It wasn’t until they moved just south of Battersea Park that they realised how foolish their bravado was.

Across the Thames, London blazed. Like the nursery rhyme, it was burning
down
.

Military helicopters flew overhead, unloading from their side mounted machine guns. More gunfire came from the ground. Even a fighter jet arced across the sky. There was a war across the river and Vamps had led his boys right to it.

Ravy wrung his hands together. “Okay, think we might have gone far enough.”

Ginge went pale, which made his ginger beard seem like a thatch of shining copper strands. “Thank God, because I was starting to think you were crazy. Can we go back home? We’re not even in Brixton anymore. This here is Battersea.”

Vamps nodded. “Yeah, time to call it a day. We did good work. How many heads we busted, you think, Mass?”

“Seventeen. I was counting. Plus we kicked that mugger in the arse.”

Vamps chuckled. “Nice work on that one, Ravy. You really showed him.”

Ravy grinned proudly.

“Let’s not get carried away though,” said Vamps. “Shit’s pretty quiet now on this side of the river, so I say we don’t chance our luck and go any further. Agreed?”

Everyone agreed.

So they took a breather and got going. In the last hour, Brixton had quieted down. Part of it was that the people wanting to get out had got out, but Vamps thought another part of it was that the reality had sunk in for most people—that there were monsters in the city—and had scared them off the streets. Once people’s adrenaline settled, fear found its grip easier. Even Vamps was coming down off his high, and the sight of smoke billowing from the thriving centre of London made his lips dry.

Maybe he had been hasty leading the boys this far north, but they were okay, and they really had done a lot of good today. If they could just get back to their block and hunker down, they could plan what they would do tonight—and tomorrow. Vamps understood that his recent stint of vigilantism had come about because he hadn’t known what else to do. Being pro-active seemed better than running around scared like everybody else. One thing the streets had taught him was that when you acted you weren’t thinking, and when you weren’t thinking, you weren’t afraid. If a Brixton boy spent too much time sitting around imaging being knifed, he’d end up a nervous wreck. And a nervous wreck was a lot more likely to get stabbed. London was a city where only doers thrived. If you hesitated, the streets would beat you down. That was as true in the financial districts as it was in Brixton.

They were halfway through the Patmore Estate now, heading back towards home. They heard a woman’s screams.

“Where’s it coming from?” said Ravy, rubbing his goatee anxiously.

“From that block over there.” Mass pointed.

Vamps started marching. He thought the others might argue, but they didn’t. None of them could stand by while a woman screamed for help.

They found out what was going on in the next street. A tattooed skinhead sat atop an Asian woman and shouted in her face to ‘shut up’ then called her a ‘paki’. He punched her face and wrestled with her clothing. An older guy lay unconscious in the gutter nearby.

“He’s trying to rape her,” said Ginge, looking sick.

“Well, he ain’t gunna succeed.” Vamps narrowed his eyes. The sight of this animal taking advantage of the current chaos by preying on the innocent made his blood simmer. All the selfish, violent acts Vamps had seen today, but this was the worst. To rape someone…

It wasn’t human.

The thug struggled to get the woman’s trousers off. He reared back to punch her again.

Before Vamps knew what he was doing, he gritted his teeth and yanked out his grandfather’s old Browning pistol. He’d never fired it before, but he pulled the trigger without hesitation. The bang was ferocious, but nobody flinched. Gunfire was normal today.

The thug slumped forwards on top of the woman, a penny sized hole in the back of his neck. Vamps had been aiming for his shoulder. “Racist motherfucker,” he muttered as he lowered the gun to his side to disguise his trembling hand.

The woman slid out from beneath her attacker and clambered to her feet. She took a breath and said, “Y-you… you shot him. How…? Where did you get a gun?”

Vamps took a breath and fought to keep his heart from beating out of his chest. He kept his eyes off the man he had just killed and instead frowned. “Ask me no questions, I tell no lies. You all right, darlin’?”

“I… Yes. Thank you. You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

Vamps glanced back at his boys, who bristled at her comment. After all the good they had done today, they still got treated like common criminals. “I just saved your arse, luv, and you accuse me of bein’ a mugger and shit. I ain’t gunna hurt you. We ain’t even like that.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “It’s just that you all look so…
scary.
”

Vamps looked down at his baggy black jeans and chuckled. “Just how we do on the streets, innit? You dress how you want, and we dress how we wants. Just clothes, innit?”

“Thank you,” said the woman, seeming to mean it greatly. Her attacker lay dead at her feet, but she didn’t seem to care one bit. There were lots of people dead today, and this racist piece of shit was probably among the most deserving.

It was okay to kill him. Wasn’t it?

“What’s your name?” the woman asked.

“Vamps.”

“Vamps?”

He gave her a wide grin, revealing his gold-plated fangs. “Yeah, Vamps. These are my homies: Mass, Ravy, and Gingerbread.”

The boys nodded silently.

The woman shook each of their hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

“You need to be careful out here,” Vamps warned her. “There’s some heavy shit going down.”

“I know. I’m a journalist. David and I are trying to get out of the city. You should come with us.”

Vamps looked at ‘David’, who was finally stirring. Then he looked back at her. “Nah, I’m sound, darlin’. These are my streets, d’you get me? Me and the boys are staying put, and any of them fucked-up, Freddy Krueger bitches wants to come take us on, they’re welcome. This is our manor and ain’t nothing gonna bowl up and make a mess of it. You take care, darlin’. Next time, just hand over your phone, innit? And ‘ere, take this.” He pulled a thin black stick out of his belt and tossed it her way. It was a metal police baton he had found abandoned in the street earlier. He’d always wanted one, but this woman needed it more.

The woman caught it, seemed to weigh it up in her hand, then did something that surprised him. She hugged him. “You’re a hero,” she said.

Vamps eased her away, looking awkward. “Easy now. I ain’t no hero. Don’t you go writin’ ‘bout me in your paper. I ain’t news friendly.”

The woman nodded. “I promise. Take care.”

“You too.”

Then Vamps took his boys and carried on heading back to Brixton. He’d just saved a woman from being raped. To do it he had killed a man. He wasn’t sure how he should feel about that, but the boys were looking at him in a way he didn’t like.

Looking at him like he just killed a man.

* * *

T
hey got back
to Brixton a short while later and had barely spoken a word to one another. They checked on Mass’s mum at her flat, but the old dear was tired and confused about things. Mass decided it best to leave her alone. She always had the warden down the hall if she needed help. Ravy called his dad who worked in Slough. He was fine. So was his sister who studied at East Anglia. Gingerbread lived alone and didn’t keep in touch with his family. Vamps lived alone too. That was the bond that made them all so close—they had each other and little else. Vamps had a half-brother some place, but his three true brothers stood right here beside him. The Brixton boys.