I was right. They are good men.
They found trouble at the army’s left flank. A horde of demons was funnelling down a junction where the M27 joined the M3. The army had been heading north, but it seemed like they weren’t even going to even make it as far as Winchester without a fight.
Tony took a knee and fired. It was too hard to tell if he was hitting anything – he was merely firing into a crowd – but many demons fell as the army unleashed on the incoming horde. As much as the demons had come out of nowhere, this was an army prepared. They survived the first wave with zero casualties, while dozens of demons lay dead on the sloped road. As always, though, more arrived to replace them. Burnt men staggered along, five deep in places. Primates bounded excitedly even as bullets tore into their skin.
“If they ever stopped to think,” said Dendoncker, kneeling beside Tony, “they would’ve leapt out of the bushes further down and ambushed us, not race down an open road like this where we can see them.”
“Thinking ain’t their thing,” said Tony, “luckily for us. Keep the pressure on, lads. Hopefully, they’ll run out of bodies before we run out of bullets.”
A grenade exploded near the top of the junction, scattering demons left and right. In the Middle East, they had used so many of them that they had been forced to unearth stockpiles of old L2A2s, mothballed at the turn of the millennium. To see a grenade exploding today was a surprise, and Tony assumed some cheeky bugger had smuggled it across the channel. Pity more hadn’t done the same.
The demons kept coming, and the army formed a wall of continuous fire, picking its shots and making them count. The fighting was far from over, but so far it was going in mankind’s favour. Thomas arrived in the thick of it, grimly satisfied. “We’ll have the buggers dead by supper. You see, men, this is what I was talking about. The demons are no match for us.”
Tony peered down his riflescope with a grimace. He saw no reason to be confident, and he couldn’t help picturing the massive beast that was heading in their direction. Where was it now? How near?
Thomas stood with his hands on his hips, peering at the demon-littered junction as if it were a verdant meadow. “We’ll warm ourselves beside the fires of victory tonight.”
“We need to fall back as soon as we can,” warned Tony. “Whatever’s coming is worse than this. We don’t want to face it head-on.”
“Colonel, we cannot retreat, we must push forward. Look at what you’re seeing. Hundreds of dead demons and not one of our own. I promised these men a slaughter, and that’s exactly what I’ve given them. Great Britain rises from the ashes!”
Tony stopped firing. The demons were still coming down the road, but their numbers were starting to thin out. The army must have fired a thousand rounds to kill a few hundred demons. A rapid, relentless massacre, but at such a quick pace they would be throwing rocks before long. “General Thomas, with all due respect, we can’t afford to be brazen. There’s an army heading our way, and I can’t say how big, or how vicious, it will be. We need to get our forces back to Portsmouth where we can bed in. This will still be a victory. We can still bask in glory. Sir, I insist.”
Thomas glared. “You insist? You forget, Colonel Cross, that my trust in you is already on shaky ground. I appreciate your concerns, but I intend to face our enemy as promised and wipe it from the face of the Earth once and for all. I can’t do that by retreating.”
“You don’t know what’s coming.”
“A giant demon? We felled half a dozen of them in the Middle East. Without their gates, they bleed like anything else.” Tony went to argue again, but Thomas didn’t allow it. “Enough! This army is moving onward to Winchester, where it will make the first of many nightly camps. If it makes you feel any better, Colonel, you can arrange our defences while we rest.”
Tony ground his teeth.
No, it doesn’t make me feel better. We’re heading right into the jaws of the beast.
The demons stopped coming after half an hour. Tony shot one of the last, a redheaded dead man wearing a white work shirt and red tie. He wondered if demons emerged from the gates with the clothes they died in. That would explain why they ran such a gamut of fire-damaged fashion. In the last year, Tony had seen floral-print summer dresses alongside World War One uniforms and nurse’s outfits. One time, he had even spotted a demon in a toga. Hell was a seemingly timeless place where tortured souls from every point in history could suffer together as one. Would Tony end up there himself one day? He decided that, yes, he would, and that the day might well be at hand.
Dendoncker acted as Tony’s sergeant, ordering men into formation and keeping them moving. He was glad to have the young soldier by his side, and already relied upon and trusted him, which was insane considering he had been planning to murder Tony only the previous evening. War moved relationships along fast. There’d been men he’d served with in Afghanistan he had called brother after a matter of months. If someone fought alongside you, facing down death, you grew to love them pretty fast.
“We’re about to enter Winchester,” said Dendoncker. “I’ve never been. Is it nice?”
“Not any more. It’s a body-strewn ruin like everywhere else.”
“I heard the Urban Vampires reclaimed it.” Dendoncker spoke of them reverently, possibly still in awe of the ruse Mass and his men had pulled off last night. The Urban Vampires had indeed cleared Winchester out, and the main road was open, all wrecks and debris amassed at the kerbs. Piles of
