Men shouted. The gunfire resumed. The giant demon rose from the ruins of the French restaurant, its chest blackened but unhurt by the explosive shells levelled at it. In its hand was another chunk of cement the size of a Fiat.
“Look out!” Tony shouted.
The giant skimmed the debris towards the playing field like a stone across a pond, taking out a large chunk of the firing line. Demons immediately threw themselves into the newly created gap, attacking men from the side.
When it had appeared that the demons were defeated, it had been a cruel lie. Hundreds more – maybe thousands – raced from alleyways and side streets. Men screamed and fell, the firing line rapidly shortening as monsters overwhelmed it.
Tony found his voice, shaking his head at Thomas with a mixture of rage and sadness. “We’re fucked.”
Thomas looked at Tony, his face stricken with horror. “What?”
“I said we’re fucked, goddamn it. We’re fucked, and I told you we would be.” Tony raised his 9mm and aimed it at Thomas’s face.
“Don’t you dare point that at me, you insubordinate fool.”
“I should have done this long before you made it across the channel. You’re a lunatic, Thomas. Look what you’ve done. Fifteen thousand souls, penned in and fed to the lions.”
Thomas’s bluster began to waver. “The fight is still ongoing. Tony, see reason, man!”
“The fight is over, you arrogant bastard. Wickstaff would never have been so reckless. I’m going to kill you. It’s the least I can do for her.”
General Thomas turned ashen, staring into the end of Tony’s handgun. “Please.”
“It’s too late.”
Thomas’s focus suddenly darted over Tony’s shoulder.
Oh shit!
Tony turned just in time to see a primate flying through the air. He tried to get out of the way, but it was too late. The demon crashed down on top of Tony and tore at his neck and chest. He rolled back and forth, trying to bring his knees up, trying to bring up his handgun. He yanked at the trigger frantically, probably hitting his fellow soldiers as much as demons. He screamed in pain as talons and teeth tore at his flesh. This was it. This was the end.
It hurt.
It was humiliating.
And in the corner of his eye, Tony watched Thomas hurry away.
The screams of men tore the world apart. The stench of blood and demons corrupted the air. Tony was bleeding and walking, bleeding and walking. At any moment, a demon might appear and take him down. Each stumble seemed like a miracle.
How am I still alive?
The answer was simple, yet hard to understand. One moment he’d been trapped beneath a demon, flesh being torn from his body. The next, that demon was dead in the grass with a dozen smoking bullet holes blotting its torso. Twenty-four hours before, Pearson’s men had attempted to murder Tony. Now they were saving his life.
The men helped Tony to his feet, but there was no time for thanks. Demons were everywhere, their numbers increasing until there was barely any room to move. Where terrified soldiers attempted to flee, primates hunted them down, leaping on their backs and biting into their necks. While the army had brought only a handful of horses, the animals’ hysterical braying could be heard over the top of everything.
Tony possessed only one thought, and he voiced it to the men who had saved him. “Thomas? Where did he go?”
One of the soldiers pointed. “He took off with some of the other officers. I doubt they made it far.”
Tony put a hand to his bleeding neck and groaned. “I had the bastard. I was one second away from pulling the trigger.”
No one replied. Now that Tony was safe, the men scattered, fighting for their own lives. Thousands of men and women were still fighting, but they fell by the dozen. The demons were like a wave crashing down, gathering up bodies with unrelenting force. More of them spilled from the side streets, but it was their leader that did the real damage.
Tony watched in horror as the giant yanked up the massive oak tree he had slept against earlier. Its massive roots tore the earth apart. The resulting crater swallowed up men and demons both. The beast then swung the ancient oak as if it were a cricket bat, obliterating a hundred men. Bullets struck the giant like a swarm of angry bees, but they imploded on impact, causing no damage besides sooty black marks.
“It’s over,” said Tony. “We’ve lost.”
And that was when he started walking. He had no destination, no purpose, he just couldn’t fight any more. He was done.
At first, he focused on making it to the middle of the playing fields. Then, he continued until he reached the road. Finally, and miraculously, he left the parklands and entered a side street. The more he walked, the more he wondered if he was dead. Perhaps his spirit had left his body and he was simply roaming the Earth.
The fighting faded behind him, the screams of men almost at an end. Demons screeched and wailed triumphantly, their victory well earned. Humanity had never stood a chance.
Thomas doomed us all.
Or were we doomed from the beginning?
Portsmouth’s best men lay dead in a moonlit Winchester playing field, their blood soaking the grass. The demons would continue their purge until they reached the gates of Portsmouth. There, a diminished mankind would stand no chance of repelling an attack.
He wept as he walked, so loudly that he was sure he would be heard. Yet nothing came. No demons appeared to end his misery.
He walked for hours, right through dawn and into the bright morning. Eventually, he made it out of Winchester and entered the rural area that would eventually lead to the North Wessex Downs and Oxford beyond. It was the area where he’d found Mass.
Had the leader of the Urban Vampires taken his people north to Kielder as promised, or was he dead? Exactly how many people lived up there in the forest?
