The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh. (46 page)

I know I had lived around weapons in America for the thirteen years I had lived there – when I had moved back. But guns didn’t interest me. I didn’t hate them and I wasn’t anti NRA. Its just I had never needed to use one before.

I simply pushed it into my baggy pocket, hoping it didn’t go off and blow one of my testicals away – that would be just my fucking luck.

I climbed out, after checking the rest of the cab for anything useful. Nothing, apart from the keys and the gun. I now stood at the back of the metal truck, trying to fumble with the keys. Rain was running into my eyes. Lightning blinding me as it reflected off the stark dented metal.

After the sixth key the lock clicked.

The truck was resting on its side, and as I opened the lock the weight of the door made it drop open. I jumped out of the way as it thudded down into the wet tarmac, the handle burying an inch into the dark ground. The other sections of door hung where it was, even with all my strength I don’t think I could have been able to swing it up. Not that I needed it to, there was plenty of room for me to climb through.

Two bodies lay strewn about in the back. The heavy containers having rattled around inside as the truck crashed onto its side. This had taken its toll on the two passengers; they were a little worse for wear after being pummelled with the metal boxes. It was like placing two delicate rosebuds in a blender with stones.

I turned one container over and was instantly rewarded with a sticker advertising explosive materials. It was a red diamond shape, with explosives wrote across the middle and a picture of something blowing up above it, with a series of letters and numbers on the bottom. Bingo!
What were the chances of that?
Someone was looking down from above. If I believed in all that, I would have thanked them.

Shit, there I go again, with the theology. It would take a while for all the information I have received to sink in. For the years of having religion pumped into me by my catholic grandmother to start fading.

I pulled one container free. It was heavy but not ridiculously so; I could carry it with relative ease. I pulled it to the back open door, while still standing outside in the rain, leaving the box under the protection of the metal covering.

There was a strange clipping devise that kept the container closed. After trying to open it with no luck, I resorted to using a scrap of metal that lay on the wet tarmac, and proceeded to hammer away at it until it broke open. I wasn’t worried about it blowing up, if simply hammering on it would do that, then it would have detonated when the truck rolled over.

Inside lay a greyish putty-like block, possibly the size and shape of a large loaf of bread. Probably a brick would be a better description. No fuse or switch? It could be C4 or Composition Four as its otherwise known? It could be anything. But whatever it was it most probably needed a timer or detonator of some kind. Then again I’m no expert.

Shit!

I knew Dartmoor National Park was also – apart from an animal reservation – an army training ground. Many square miles were the property of the Ministry of Defence. In numerous places warning signs advertised that live rounds and explosives were being used in the area. This truck was possibly en route to one such training ground.

Would they have been stupid enough to carry the two items together?
I hoped so. They certainly had enough soldiers to defend it if they had.

I had to pull the two bodies from the back to be able to get access to all the containers, which was sickening, considering they were in more than one piece.

All together there were eleven boxes similar to the one I had opened, all with the same red label, blazing across the front. But two boxes were different.

I opened one, the same way as I did with the first box, and was rewarded with a collection of small plastic devices, that I prayed were the detonator switches. On the back of the device was a simple metal pin sticking out. From the movies I had seen I believed this was punched into the putty like explosives. The small devices looked like a kitchen timer, the sort you switched on to count down to the appropriate length of time required to cook something. I even remember my third wife using one. My other two wives were similar to me when it came to cooking – order out.

Eleven boxes of what could be C4, and thirty-six detonators.

Bing-fucking-go!

“Thank God,” I muttered.

Hadn’t the old man said they had provided us with the Gods, with beliefs?
Isn’t it ironic that I would be thanking something they had created. As I said, it would take me a while to adjust. Maybe that’s how smoking man knew so much about the bible; possibly he was one of the ones that had helped write it up in the first place?

Enough daydreaming. How was I going to get all this to the farmyard, which was a good five minutes away?

I looked around. A bonnet of a car lay upside down on the road. I pulled a length of rope from inside the army truck, which had probably, at one time, held all the containers together. I tightened it around the holes on the underside of the bonnet. I placed four metal boxes onto the bonnets wet metal surface and a box of detonators.

Rain was still streaming down like the biblical flood.

I leant inside the truck to smash open one of the remaining containers, then pushed a detonator into it. Leaving the seven remaining explosive containers inside the truck. The timer was set for twenty-five minutes. With enough luck the little firework display would attract some of their attention away from what I was about to do.

I wrapped the blood soaked rope around my hand, wedged it firmly on my right shoulder. Leaning forward I started pulling my cargo towards its final destination.

Rock the Earth

S
weat poured from my body, hair plastered to my face; my heart felt like it was going to explode inside my ribcage. I remembered thinking something like;
the dye was still in my hair even after all the rain I had been doused with.
And I couldn’t remember where my baseball cap had gone.

When the body is tired the brain randomly picks things to meditate on. I pushed the stupid thought aside.

I had pulled the bonnet that was carrying the four boxes of C4, and one box of sixteen detonators, all the way to the embankment. Then dragging two boxes at a time, by there handles, I struggled with them across the field towards the crashed ship.

I sat completely exhausted against the silvery surface of the craft that was wedge tightly in the ground.

The tall crane above had its powerful halogen lights blazing; the whole area around me was now illuminated like artificial daytime.

The rain pelted down as I sat there, not sure of how much time I had left. Or whether the reapers were pouring through right now.
But didn’t they need me as a Key?

I looked up; the cool rain was refreshing, as I looked at the halo of water cascading down around the powerful light, my tired mind slipped to all those long relaxing days sat inside my conservatory, simply watching the famous wet English weather. I could, and would, sit for hours, going into a kind of hypnotic trance, while staring at the relentlessly moving thunderhead clouds and their falling mother load.

I hadn’t seen another being since I had escaped the evil midgets. Not counting the many dead upon the highway. My mind was now accustom to seeing death. I don’t know if I could ever look at the living the same way again. As the bible said, we are simply a fading mist, as soon as we are born the inevitable fading starts.
And just like the morning mist, who will miss us?

A line from the song After the Storm, by a group called Mumford & Son’s, came to mind:
you must know life to see decay.

I was considering placing the C4 around the outside of craft that was protruding from the ground, but I didn’t know if it would even warm its surface, let alone blow it up. But I simply wanted a diversion, but why not go for the complete show?

I opened the box of detonators and filled up the pockets of the tracksuit. It turned out the gaudy tracksuit, with its big baggy pockets, came in useful after all. Then, carrying a box of C4 under each arm, I headed towards the crafts entrance.

I was half expecting it to be guarded, but it wasn’t. All busy at the portal. The door swished open and I ran inside. I sort of knew my way around. With the single corridor running at a slightly downwards angle. I soon reached the first doorway.

Inside I used the small pocket-knife – which I had taken from the dead soldier – to cut away a small section of the C4. Like putty it adhered to the surface I pushed it against. Then I shoved in the grey plastic timer. I repeated this in three of the soul chamber rooms. All the while trying not to look at the green swirling mass of souls swimming about inside. I hoped this would release them, give them the rest they deserved.

Then on the last soul chamber that I put the explosives in, I pulled the two items from a pocket that I had gathered from the massacre upon the highway. On one section of glass where I pushed the C4 against, I pressed one corner of the photo into the greyish explosive surface, before forcing the timer in place. For all I knew the woman that I had prized the photo from, could at this very moment be watching me from the mass of moving souls on the other side of the glass. Then on another tank, after securing the plastic explosives, I pushed the timer in then hung the small pink knitted baby boot from it.

Their lives will be avenged.

I stood outside the last chamber. The chamber that held the tank with the strange articulated aliens inside. I simply left what remaining C4 there was by the closed door and then ran with all my might back the way I had come.

I was confused that there was no one was around to stop me. I would have welcomed a small alien half-pint to fill with lead from my acquired gun. But alas, none jumped from around a corner.

To be on the safe side I wedged a timer in one of the remaining two containers and ran a little way back inside the ship, leaving it on the metal decking.

One container left.

I sat hiding in the trees, the box beside me. I cut the loaf of C4 into five parts, each about the size of my hand, then I pushed timers into them and placed three back into the box and one in each of my pockets. They could come in handy.

I was so engrossed that the time had passed unnoticed. I was almost startled to death when a loud and powerful explosion knocked me back to my knees, as I was trying to stand up. The seven containers left inside the army truck had ignited.

I had no idea that C4 was so powerful, that’s if it was C4?

The fireball shot heavenwards, reducing all the down pouring rain to steam. The ball of flames raced outwards consuming a long line of stationary vehicles. All the petrol tanks added to the fireball. The trees around me bent under the onslaught of the shock wave. Heated air washed over me. The ground continued to tremble like an earthquake. The sound was phenomenal, making me press my hands firmly against my ears. The sound of rendering metal shrieked across the distance.

Silence ensued, as if all the air was being used up at once by the heaven reaching flames. Through the trees I could see the extent of the explosion. The fireball now disbanded like a vast reddish-yellow mushroom.

Flames continued to shoot heavenwards as more vehicles gave way under the onslaught, adding numerous small explosions to the musical symphony.

Branches from the trees lay around me. I was covered in pine needles, dead leaves, dust and soil.

I could now hear the sound of metal falling back down to earth. A couple sections of what could be from the bus, landed in the field, along with smoking chunks of the highway. The explosion must have left a crater thirty meters wide.

I hoped it caught their attention. They would have had to be blind and deaf to have missed it.

I could see figures racing across the field. Possibly to check it wasn’t their craft that was going up in flames.

Soon, I hoped.

The old woman and her large son came bounding across, closely followed by five or six pygmy aliens, and a handful of fiery eyed mothmen.

I picked up the remaining container and wedged it under one arm, and held firmly to the gun in the other. I set out heading around the fringes of the trees towards the rear yard. Adrenaline enabling my aching body to move.

I stopped beside a tumbling down wall, straining my eyes trying to see what was happening by the entrance to the craft. I could just make out a midget holding a dark object against his chest, the old woman and son standing beside him trying to figure out what the object was.

They didn’t get time to examine it too closely, because one or possibly all the charges I had placed inside the craft detonated.

It started with a deep rumbling sound that seemed to seep from the ground itself, as if a huge powerful geyser was about to erupt.

I placed my remaining C4 down on the ground and perched behind the wall, hoping the rest wouldn’t tumble down on me.

The flames billowed out of the entrance, which ignited the container the midget was holding, and because he was now outside the fireball expanded.

All the figures disappeared in a bight white-yellowish encompassing circle of death. They must have been incinerated instantly; because even from the distance I was I had to duck behind the wall. Loose rocks dropped, just missing my head, with dust billowing from the gaps between the boulders. A hissing sound came from the rocks heating up.

Suddenly all went eerily silent.

It seemed like ages later when I eventually looked over my protective, now steaming barrier.