Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two (2 page)

‘It’s a large area,’ he told us in no uncertain terms. ‘And in addition to the sewers and rail lines feeding into it there are a lot of older factories creating a maze of alleyways and roads.

‘We don’t know how much trouble they’re in,’ he cont-inued. ‘After the first radio car was attacked and the driver killed, one of the sergeants suggested the other cars should be moved back, which they were. We’ve subsequently had reports of sporadic gunfire from the vicinity of the plant but we’ve heard nothing directly from the teams.

‘As a precaution I’d like you to leave one man from each of your teams with the driver of the radio cars, which will then retreat to the same location as the other vehicles while the rest of you proceed as a unit on foot. You are to then find and support the other search teams in taking this creature down.

‘I don’t like asking you to do this without the support of the radio cars, but until we know more about what’s going on I don’t feel I can ask anyone else to go in.’

We all understood where Platt was coming from when he said this. How could you ask anyone to walk into a dangerous situation when they couldn’t even see what they were going up against.

We finished the journey in comparative silence. Unloading from the cars about three hundred yards from the packing plant where the shots had been heard. It was getting on for late afternoon by the time we started walking, but at this time of year we should still have good light for another couple of hours at least.

The radio car drivers and the officers that were staying with them were brave men, who I’ve no doubt were reluctant to leave us in the way they been ordered to, but Platt was right, they were sitting ducks if they stayed around.

We’d only been heading toward the factory for a few moments before we heard another volley of gunfire coming from that direction, confirming we were still heading for the right place.

Setting my lensing rig to its now usual routine, we advanced on the plant with me scanning the entire area before us, and a everyone else with a scope checking to the rear and behind us.

We heard no more shots for another minute or so, and then another brief volley sounded followed by a couple of sporadic shots a few seconds later, but the sounds were to the side of the plant, more in the direction of the rail yard.

And then as we rounded a corner, through the chain-link fence surrounding the yard I saw a flare of light on the edge of the far infra-red that practically stopped my heart.

Sixty or so yards away, crawling across the top of one of the underground carriages I saw a young woman in the same type of uniform that I myself was wearing, and it looked unmistakeably like Ariel.

I lost my breath for a second at the sight of her, and flipped down an additional magnification lens to zoom in on her features. It was then I realised the way she was moving along the top of that carriage. A predatory crawl that was completely inhuman in nature, her limbs twisting and bending in places where they shouldn’t as she crawled along looking away from us.

I couldn’t see the search teams we’d come to support, but I could see smoke from a fire burning somewhere over toward where she was looking.

I quickly advised the group that I could see the creature, knowing it would be too far away and too blurred for the officers with lensing scopes to make out the detail, and suggested we quietly move around until we could find a way past the fence into the yard.

As far as I could tell, the creature hadn’t seen us, but as we moved around I lost sight of it so couldn’t be sure.

Eventually we found an area of the fence that was sagging slightly where it had come unfastened from a fence post, and we were able to lift the bottom of the chain-link high enough for everyone to crawl under, and get inside the rail yard.

Another short volley of gunshots and a man’s scream from deeper into the yard told us which way to go and that we needed to move quickly. We were reckless in our app-roach, but another scream told us were out of time.

We ran now in the direction the screams were coming from, in and out of carriages and work-shops, until only moments later we arrived in an open area between railway lines to discover the creature in the very centre of the group of men attacking them with its bare hands. The strength of the thing was inhuman, throwing full grown men this way and that with apparent ease, then slashing at another couple of men with a claw-like hands that left deep gouges across one man’s stomach and the others back.

The men had obviously tried to give themselves some kind of defence or warning of the creatures presence by scooping out a shallow trench in chippings that the yard was covered in, and then pouring diesel oil into it in a ring around their barricade before setting the lot on fire.

It was a good idea and had probably bought them precious minutes and given them at least a hint of where it was coming from, for despite being invisible the creature would still show up when it tried to move through the smoke.

But by the time we got there the oil had clearly burned down, and as the curtain of fire and smoke had died down the creature had managed to get into the circle without being seen and was now doing its work. But our arrival had distracted it, and as we approached the scene it dropped the man it had just clawed and walked calmly toward us, for all the world thinking it was still invisible.

The first three Manstopper rounds I fired hit it squarely in the chest, knocking the thing back by a dozen yards, where it screamed and shook its impossibly twisted limbs upon the ground, before suddenly flipping itself over and scuttling almost beetle like out of the circle of fire away from us.

My shots had injured it, and as with the other Ariel creature, as soon as it was hurt it lost its ability to remain invisible, this time moving partially back into the visible light spectrum while it screamed and thrashed, before once more blinking back into the far infra-red.

It was long enough for several members of both groups to spot and send several more shots after it.

Before I realised it I was through the remnants of the smoke and fire on both sides of the circle and after it again, but a part of me knew I shouldn’t leave the men, and instead of chasing it down, I forced myself to stop and go back to help the injured and terrified people that I just ignored.

It was hunting these men, and it wouldn’t give up just because it had been wounded. If I followed the creature would have options. It could try to draw me out to where it could get close and attack me, or even just try to draw me away so that it could double-back for its prey before I realised.

I deliberately turned my back on the creature, and walk calmly back to the men who needed my help, removing the empty bullets from my gun and refilling it as I went.

‘Sergeant,’ I called as I walked back to them. ‘We need to set up a perimeter of men with lensing scopes. Use everyman who has one to keep an eye out over a narrow angle of view, while we assess the state of the injured and get them ready to move.’

He did it without question, and within half an hour he came back to me with an update.

‘We have eight dead so far sir,’ he said quietly. ‘Five patrolmen and three railroad staff, there are another four who won’t last much longer if they don’t get medical attention, another three that can walk and might be able to fire, leaving three of my men out of the original search teams still fit and able. On top of that there’s the eight men that came with us.

‘All the men here are low on ammunition, we’re scavenging bullets and guns from the fallen and sharing out the ammunition from those incapable of firing, but we’ll still only have a dozen rounds per man.’

The numbers simply didn’t stack up. There were too many dead or fallen to carry out of the rail yard, and I wouldn’t consider leaving anyone behind, not even the dead knowing what this thing would do to them. But if we stayed the creature would just bide it’s time, get us to use up our ammunition and then pick us off.

It was an impossible situation. We couldn’t leave and nobody could come to our rescue without becoming a target themselves. Even if we did get lucky or somehow manage to find a way to overpower this creature, there was nothing to stop it from just retreating until another opportunity presented itself before striking at us again.

CHAPTER 19 – FEAR ITSELF

I should’ve been afraid, but something inside me had changed or was changing.

I felt something smouldering with an angry heat within me where my fear should’ve been. Even though I now walked through the railyard alone with the creature that had killed so many people still crawling around somewhere.

I could’ve just stayed where I was once I’d found the radio, hoping the creature wouldn’t find me, or even have walked out to where the police radio cars were waiting a couple of miles away. A single figure almost as invisible as the creature itself amongst all the carriages and equipment of the yard.

It was that wonderful time between late afternoon and early evening. The sunlight becoming a deep golden colour as the evening approached but still bright from the day, casting long lazy shadows across the railyard as I walked calmly back to where the search teams waited.

When I arrived back at the area of open ground where I’d left the men, I saw they’d rebuilt the defensive barricade around themselves with some more oil barrels, crates and pallets that had been littering the place. I stopped for a moment between two of the railway carriages on the edge of the clearing to look around and see if the creature had returned. It wasn’t hard to spot, back on the carriage rooftops, staring fixedly at the circle of people in the centre, apparently unaware of my presence or even that I’d left the group.

The thought struck me in that moment about how unfair this situation was to these people. Not only the men sitting inside their circular barricade, peering out through those altogether inadequate lensing scopes which I’d made for them, but also the wider population of the city that had taken us in and tended to our wounded. They simply weren’t prepared for what was happening to them, they hadn’t had the years of war against these creatures to make them ready, to acclimatise them to their new reality and gradually turn them from being ordinary people into soldiers.

But this was the situation they were in now, and adapt I was sure they would.

While I was lost in my own thoughts, the creature seemed to have changed it’s posture slightly. It was subtle, but it instantly made me think it must be up to something so I flipped my magnifying lenses down again to study it in more detail.

How it could appear so similar to Ariel when it was still, but be so obviously inhuman when it moved repelled and fascinated me in equal measure. It had started to creep forward toward the front of the carriage roof it sat upon, clearly stalking the people in the centre of the clearing. The thought rekindled my rage, sending flames licking upward from the previously smouldering coals.

Even as I watched it inched further and further forward, a little bit to one side, then the other over the roof of the carriage, testing the watchers who stood guard with their scopes before advancing again toward the opening it thought it had seen.

I moved away from the carriages I’d been stood between, flipping the magnifying lenses back up as I did so, making no attempt to hide my approach, walking straight toward where the creature lurked on its rooftop rather than back to the defensive circle of men.

It only took a moment for it to spot me, but it was a moment in which it knew I had seen it first, and that I was the hunter again and it was my prey.

I could see it was disconcerted at my presence, at my not acting in the same way as the group it watched, at my ability to see it. As I drew closer it backed away to the far side of the carriage roof allowing only its eyes and the top of its head to be visible so it could watch me.

I continued approaching until I was standing half way between it and the group of police and railyard workers that had been besieged by it, perhaps twenty meters from each.

After watching it for another few seconds I turned my back on it again and walked slowly back to the barricade that the men had built, all of whom were looking much relieved to see me again. The creature could easily have closed the distance to me in the time it took me to walk over to the group, but to do so would expose it to the counter attack of the men behind the barricade. I knew this would cause it to hesitate until it had lost its opportunity.

But I needed to keep the creature distracted, so I kept my back turned to it while I spoke to the gathered circle of men in front of me, not moving past their barricade and into the comparative safety of the circle, still a few yards away from the barricades, alone and seemingly vulnerable should it attack.

‘Mr Hall, I think you should come back inside our circle of spotters,’ one of the sergeants was telling me. ‘The creature is still out there somewhere.’

I ignored him and stayed where I was.

‘Something is about to happen,’ I informed them simply. ‘And it is very important that you don’t react when it does. You’ll hear something and you’ll see something, but you have to remain looking at me. In fact better yet, you need to start making a noise, clapping, shouting, banging anything you can find so the creature doesn’t hear what’s coming, but save your ammunition.’

I held up my hand to stop them before they started to ask what was going on.

‘If you want this thing dead, don’t ask any questions, just do as I say.’

Still looking uncertain they reluctantly did as I asked, shouting and banging the barrels that made up their barricade, as I turned back to face the creature.

You had to pity the thing in a way. Just an hour or two ago it must’ve been sure of victory, could almost taste the blood of the helpless creatures it was slowly picking off, and now, not only had its plans been thwarted, it had also been hurt and chased and hunted in return, and on top of all that its prey was now making so much noise it could barely think.