“What did you do Janice? And your cause of death?”
“I was a nurse. I was in a traffic accident. We’d been treating casualties from Sheffield, there were so many badly burned people to look after. I must have fallen asleep driving home because the last thing I remember is a tree.”
“A nurse. That’s good. Do you fancy working with people recovered from the Hell-Pit? A lot of them are badly traumatized, they need sympathetic handling. You’d be doing a really needed job.”
“Please, umm Miss, excuse me asking but…”
“The name is Fiona. Yes, I’m dead as well. I died in the Great Influenza of 1919. I wasn’t as lucky as you, I spent the last century being drowned in a cess-pit until some Quakers rescued me. So, you see, I know how much you’ll be needed. Thanks for helping Janice. Next.”
Haggerty walked away, hearing the voice behind her. “Nguyen Huu Phai, Vietnamese, two years military service in the Vietnamese People’s Liberation Army. Died of snake-bite.”
“Right, the military authorities will want to speak with you. Please go over there and wait for a truck.”
A truck, Haggerty thought, obviously the fuel shortage that permeated Earth wasn’t affecting hell, or at least not the Armies fighting in Hell. Overhead she heard the scream of jet aircraft and saw two white-painted military jets making their landing runs, their bleached-out roundels showing them to be British. The TSR-2s, the press had been full of their exploits before she had died. They’d made it sound like the “White Ghosts” were winning the war single-handed. She chuckled, poor old Dennis Healey had been excoriated in the press for canceling them so many years ago.
There was a blast on a horn and she stopped short, the blacktop of a road was in front of her and she’d nearly stepped out in front of a huge tank. She looked around and saw a black American woman officer in a Humvee parked by the side of the road.
“Hokay, you want to die twice in one day? Look where you’re going girl. Them Abrams will squash you flat.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve just… Can you tell me where the treatment area for people who have been recovered from the hell pit is?”
“Sure can. We’ll be passing right by it. I’ll drop you off, get in.”
“Thank you.” Haggerty climbed awkwardly into a Humvee. “Last time I was in a vehicle I went to sleep and that got me here. I’m Janice Haggerty, nurse.”
“Keisha Stevenson, Colonel United States Army. My battalion just got here.”
“You’re new here too?”
“Nah. Last time I was here, this was all Baldrick country. Now its just like downtown Bayonne. There’s even a Macdonalds as if hell wasn’t bad enough on its own.” The Humvee swerved through the column of tanks and dropped off the blacktop on to a dirt road. “Hellpit recoverees are just ahead. Some of them are in pitiful state. Been in torment so long they can’t remember anything else. You gonna be doing a worthwhile thing there girl. Hokay, this is your stop. Keep the faith.”
Haggerty started. “What faith.”
Stevenson smiled broadly. “Why faith in science, engineering and applied firepower of course. What other faith could there be?”
Chapter Seventy Eight
Grays Lane, Clifton Council Housing Estate, Outside Nottingham
Time, tide and the SAS wait for no man. Gorgons, they were something different. Gorgons needed care, the available intelligence pointed out that they were uniquely dangerous. They had a means, as yet unidentified, of entrancing humans even when their victims were firmly clad in a good-quality tinfoil hat. The experts had been consulted and the results were disquieting, they suggested that the gorgons could entrance a human just be staring at them. Fortunately, the bit about them turning a human into stone had been discounted, it was believed that they were just a greatly exaggerated version of entrancement. It did appear, though, that the gorgons could kill as well as entrance. Some of their victims had been found with curious spines in them, that was a hint as to how they managed both entrancement and killing.
So, the SAS troops were kitted out in head-to-toe Kevlar, woven to give anti-stab protection as well as against bullet strikes. Of course, that wouldn’t help any if the gorgon started throwing lightning bolts around but one took what one could get. All in all, Captain Greg Crowleigh felt he had taken every precaution he could, the SAS might have a reputation for charging into situations but in reality, a vast amount of careful planning went on first. This strike had been no different although Crowleigh was grimly aware that he and his men were considered the B-team if that. The best of the SAS personnel had been deployed to Hell where they were raising their own particular brand of chaos. Well, now was the time to show the powers that be what his people could do.
“Ready Sergeant?”
The figure behind the grenade launcher nodded although the motion was barely visible behind the gas mask and body armor.
“In your own time then. Your shot is the go-signal.” There had been no need to repeat that, it had been stressed in the briefings often enough but Crowleigh was taking no chances. He hadn’t quite got the self-confidence to trust himself to get the message over. Although he didn’t realize it, that was why he was in the B-team.
The grenade launcher coughed, sending a 40mm tear gas grenade through the downstairs window of the house. An instant afterwards, four more launchers sent similar grenades through the other windows at the front, sending white smoke boiling upwards. Crowleigh started his run, jumping up from cover behind the hedge and heading for the bay windows that marked the living room. The house was a standard council property, similar to thousands of others scattered all over the U.K. This one hadn’t been bought by its occupiers during the 1980s but that wouldn’t change its floor plan. If anything, it made the assault easier for the tenants wouldn’t have made any radical changes the way an owner might.
Two blasts from the automatic shotgun he carried dealt with the window itself, then Crowleigh dived through the shattered glass, landing on the carpet inside in a smooth roll. A figure, human, was staggering around in the white haze of tear gas, wailing and holding it’s eyes. Then, it saw the black shape as Crowleigh rose to his feet.
“Goddess, you’ve come down to save us!” Then there was a brief pause as the human stared at the new visitor through streaming eyes. “You’re not our Goddess, get out of our temple.”
The figure lunged for Crowleigh with hands raised in claws. The Captain didn’t hesitate, one shotgun blast threw the human back against a wall, a second sent it tumbling to the floor. As it died, a Sergeant moved past him and flipped the internal door open. It lead to the hallway, stairs to the top floor leading off from one corner. Another figure was standing on those stairs, holding a piece of wood as a club. The Sergeant didn’t let it speak, although it was so racked by coughing that speech seemed unlikely. The burst from the shotgun blew the figure into rags.
Crowleigh and his men quickly fanned out through the tear-gas ridden house. Individual shotgun blasts or short bursts marked the demise of more members of the cult who had made this house their ‘temple’. The old days of HK-5 sub-machine guns had long gone, pistol bullets just didn’t work well enough against Demons. Two more cult members tried to escape out the back doors but were shot down by snipers who were part of the perimeter that isolated the building. The gorgon inside had evaded capture at least twice already, it wouldn’t make it three times on Crowleigh’s watch. The neighbors had been quietly evacuated, the surrounding buildings checked out then used to house the SAS personnel who were conducting the raid. Further out, a second perimeter reinforced the first. Nothing got through either without being very carefully searched.
Upstairs, Lakheenahuknaasi heard the crash of the windows breaking and the sound of gunfire as the members of her cult were cut down. That didn’t worry her, they were expendable and could easily be replaced if she got the chance. That was the problem, if. The house was filled with a strange white smoke that caused her eyes to stream and her lungs to sear. Worse, the same smoke was having the same effects on the tendrils that adorned her head, they were writhing in an incontrollable red and black mass. Completely useless and without their protection, Lakheenahuknaasi felt hideously exposed as she heard the pounding on the stairs that presaged the door of her room exploding inwards.
