Legion (An Apocalyptic Horror Novel) (Hell on Earth Book 2) (21 page)

* * *

A
s much as
Richard had a duty to protect the people outside the church, his duty as a father and husband came first. He prayed the screams coming from inside were just fear, but the closer he got the more he became certain that something bad was going on inside God’s house.

Riaz tried to grab Richard as he raced past, but Richard dodged him. “I have to check on Jen and Dillon,” he cried out. “Keep fighting. I’ll be back.”

The sight of him running could shake the confidence of those still fighting, but he had no control over his body. His legs carried him into the church on their own volition. He flew through the heavy oak door and scanned left to right, taking in everything but seeing nothing. It was chaos. People clambered over wooden pews and barged Richard aside to escape. He let them go, not interested in their fear, only in Jen and Dillon.

“Jen! Dillon! Where are you?”

“Richard, help!”

Richard spotted his wife at the back of the church behind the altar. It was from that area that people seemed to flee. He did the opposite and raced towards it. What he saw confused him.

“Glen? What are you…?”

Glen was back on his feet, but in no way recovered from his wounds. In fact, his guts hung out the bottom of his shirt. Like the belly of a fish, he was pasty and pale. Reverend Miles cowered up against the chairs of the choir pit as the bleeding officer stalked towards him.

Jen waved her arms at Richard. “Help him!”

Did she mean Glen or Miles?

Richard decided it didn’t matter and flung himself forwards. The first thing he thought when he grabbed Glen around the arms was:
So cold.
His colleague was the same temperature as the icy church. He was also strong, and when he threw back an elbow, he caught Richard right in the jaw. It dazzled his senses and sent him staggering backwards. His vision tilted, and he fell onto his backside.

Glen then turned back to Miles, grabbing the frightened holy man around the throat and dragging him away from the chairs. “Please,” Miles begged. “You are injured, my son. You need to rest.”

“There are no sons left in this world, preacher, only insect carcasses. The Red Lord will claim you all, and you will serve him with backs broken and eyes gouged. Your whimpers will stretch through eternity, and your Father will cower and hide.”

Miles lifted his chin defiantly. “The Father watches over us all. He does not hide.”

Glen snorted with laughter. He snapped Miles’s neck with one hand and let the vicar’s body slump to the floor of his church.

Richard choked on his own words. “G-Glen, w-what have you done?”

Glen glowered at him and all became clear: this was no longer Glen. His eyes were black cauldrons of hate, and several of his teeth had fallen out.

Richard shuffled backwards, trying to get up without turning his back. “You’re one of them.”

Glen snorted with more laughter. “You are a worm.”

Richard clambered up to his feet in time to dodge Glen’s attempts to grab him. He stumbled over to his wife and pulled her away. “Where’s Dillon?”

“In the vestry.”

“Then let’s get him.”

They leapt down the steps before the altar and jinked into a small anti-chamber at the side of the church. Glen was right on their heels, but Richard had to know his son was okay.

Shirley sat up against the wall clutching her chest. She was dead.

Heart attack?

Dillon was cowering beneath an oak desk. When he spotted Richard his teary eyes sparkled with relief. “Dad!”

“It’s okay, son. It’s—”

Glen bundled into the back of him and sent him sprawling into Jen. She tumbled awkwardly with a pained screech. Seeing his wife hurt made Richard see red, and he spun on Glen with his telescopic baton held high above his head. The blow caught Glen’s shoulder hard enough to push him back. 

“Who are you?” Richard demanded.

“I am death,” was all Glen said before launching himself at Richard.

This time Richard made firm contact with Glen’s skull, the baton striking so hard that one of his eyeballs bulged from its socket. Glen slumped to his knees. Like an executioner, Richard brought the baton down again, aiming for the back of the neck.

The blow turned Glen off like a light, and he fell onto his face without a single sound or movement. Richard stood there for a moment, heaving like a rabid beast. His humanity came back to him a moment later, just when he feared it was gone forever, and he spun around to embrace his family.

Jen groped her ankle and hissed through her teeth. “I think… I think it’s just sprained. I’ll be okay.”

“Dad?” Dillon came out from beneath the table. “Mrs Shirley…”

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” He gave Dillon the biggest hug ever and didn’t want to let go, but they had to get out of there. No telling what was happening outside.

Jen limped along with his help as they exited the anti-chamber. The church had emptied, and Richard looked back sadly as they left Miles’s body lying on the floor. The vicar had brought them all together and housed them. Without the man’s hospitality, they might be dead.

Outside, Hell had not retreated. Fire still raged in the road and had started to lick at the barricade. People screamed everywhere. Bodies littered the pavement—human and otherwise.

Demon fought man and the fight was bloody. They spilled so much human blood that the floor was slick with it. So much chaos.

Richard trod on something that might have been a length of intestine. “We need to get out of here.”

Jen shook her head, horrified by what she was seeing. “No, we have to help. That monster took Glen’s body and killed Miles. We need to stay and fight these things, Richard.”

“But Dillon?”

Dillon had his head buried in his mother’s shoulder. With Jen’s ankle, they would struggle to escape even if they tried. Their only hope might be to win this fight.

But it was impossible.

Ahead, Riaz came briefly into view. His shirt was torn open, and his baton dripped with blood. He was an animal, teeth bared as he cleaved open skulls with wild abandon. Yet it was hard to spot anybody else because burnt monsters filled every inch of Richard’s vision. He shook his head. “I can’t let us do this. We’re leaving. We’ll find a car and get somewhere. Soon there won’t be anybody left.”

Jen seemed to battle internally, her eyes red and brimming. “Okay, you’re right. We have to get Dillon to safety.”

Richard nodded, glad to have the decision made. “Come on, we’ll head around the back of the post office. There’ll be plenty of cars parked behind it. We’ll think about how to get one started when we get there.”

They began to move. Richard felt fish hooks in his heart as he fled the battle. Could he ever forgive himself? He looked at his terrified son and knew that he would. Still, he could not help himself but to take one last look back at the people he was deserting.

He spotted Aaron, and was glad the lad still lived, but none of his friends had made it. Richard saw them dead in a pile. Aaron sobbed madly as he stabbed and thrust at the enemy. The lad was determined to go down fighting.

What was he doing?

He had to go back. At least try to get those left alive out of there.

“Jen, keep heading for the post office. I’m going to try and—”

His wife’s screams cut him off.

Richard spun around to see Jen in the clutches of a monster. She threw Dillon out of harm’s way, even as Skullface reached down and gouged out her eyes. Her entire body shook, a seizure strong enough to snap her spine. Richard wailed as Skullface slid his fingers so far into his wife’s eye sockets that the back of her skull broke apart. 

Jen’s arms flung out to her sides and clutched at thin air.

“Mummy!”

Richard grabbed Dillon and yanked him back. He glared at Skullface and screamed. “You fucking bastard!” He swung the baton with every fibre in his body. The steel connected with chalky white skull bone.

Snap!

It was not the sound of Skullface’s cranium breaking, but that of the telescopic baton breaking in two. Richard stood there in shock as the slender monster before him smiled despite having no lips. Its smouldering eyes seemed ready to erupt into hellish infernos.

Jen’s body slumped to the ground, her ruined skull thumping against the pavement. A jet of fluid shot from her left eye socket. Skullface stamped his foot and turned Jen’s head to dust. The bellow of laughter that followed was mocking, tormenting.

Dillon wailed.

Richard was unarmed, but that didn’t stop him from throwing himself at the creature that had just destroyed the love of his life. He hammered both fists against its rib cage so hard that his knuckles bled. The whole time Skullface just stood there laughing. Eventually, Richard’s arms gave out, and he slumped to one knee. He glared up at his tormentor and spat. “You won’t win.”

Skullface stopped laughing. In a raspy voice like a swarm of bees, he said, “We have already won.”

The abomination raised his bony hand into the air above Richard’s head, ready to strike.

“Daddy!”

Richard closed his eyes. “Run, Dillon. Run wherever you can and hide.”

“No!”

An almighty impact sent Richard onto his back, but when he opened his eyes he saw Leonard, the guy who had brought Glen back to the camp. The man still wore his leather jacket, but it was now ripped and slick with blood. The cricket bat he held in his hand was broken in two, a wide piece embedded in the side of Skullface’s jaw.

The monster staggered, blasting out a ferocious roar.

Leonard grabbed Dillon and pulled him. Looking at Richard, he screamed, “Get up! Those of us left are getting the hell out of here.”

Richard didn’t argue. He scrambled to his feet and ran after the man who had just saved him. But it would all be for nothing. Dillon had just lost his mother.

Richard had just lost his wife.

Skullface was right. The demons had already won.

* * *

T
he entire area
around the church was a bloodbath. Blood formed a river in the road, and the fires had claimed the buildings on either side. Demons swarmed everywhere.

Riaz fought up ahead, gathering those still breathing to his side. Aaron was there too, standing amidst only a dozen survivors—all that remained of nearly a hundred souls. He held a bloody knife in each hand and growled hysterically at the demons racing towards them.

Riaz spotted Richard and came running. “We have to go now. Richard, where’s Jen? We have to move.”

Richard flinched at the sound of his wife’s name.

Riaz seemed to understand. “Shit, sorry.”

“I need to get Dillon to safety.”

Riaz nodded, and they moved in a group, gathering whoever was left.

“Where do we go?” asked Aaron. “Where?”

There were demons everywhere by now. Burnt men stalked every inch of the road and pavement. The only thing giving the survivors a chance was that the demons were occupied with ripping apart the wounded and dying. Dozens moaned on the ground, begging for help, but they were soon silenced by the tearing out of their throats.

“The newspaper,” said Richard.

Riaz frowned. “What?”

“The reporters I spoke to last night, they were from
The
Slough Echo
. It’s nearby.”

“Then let’s go,” said Leonard, jabbing his broken cricket bat into a burnt man’s snarling face.

They altered course and headed across the high street and through an alleyway between two banks. It took them towards the college. The newspaper offices were nearby, housed in a mid-sized office block with giant printing presses visible through the ground-floor windows—Richard had taken Dillon to see them once. It would not withstand a siege, but if they got there without being seen…

They tore through the college car park and campus, Richard hopped an abandoned bicycle and stopping to make sure Dillon kept up. Unlike Aaron, all tears and emotion, Dillon was expressionless, his sunken eyes half closed.

“It’ll be all right, sweetheart.”

Dillon said nothing, but at least he kept on running.

Soon they reached the rear of the campus, heading across a grassy courtyard. The moon hung overhead and made the surface of the grass shimmer like shards of glass. The college structures were unlit rectangles against an inky black sheet.

Movement up ahead.

“Someone’s there,” said Riaz, pointing to a small shack that may have been a bike shelter. “Come on out.”

They all halted in their tracks and stared apprehensively at the small structure ahead. There was most definitely movement coming from its rear edge. At first, it looked like it might be just one person hiding out, but then several shapes emerged from the shadows.

Eventually dozens.

Too many.

Aaron raised his knives up in front of him. “Demons.”

Richard chewed at his bottom lip. Yes, demons, but not like before. These were not burnt men. These were some kind of animal shape—like apes.

Loosing an ear-piercing screech, the pack of creatures spilled out from the bike shed and raced towards Richard’s group. By now, the survivors were used to fighting. No one backed away—not even Dillon.