“You okay?” Smithy asked, raising his voice over the din of the rotor blades. “You don’t look good.”
“I’m fine. Just battered and broken like everybody else.”
“I’ve never had a helicopter ride before. It’s loud!”
“That’s because you’re not wearing your ear protectors,” said Mass, nodding at Addy, who was sitting quietly on the front bench wearing hers. At the rear of the chopper, the undead Damien sat beside Angela. The thrumming of the cabin seemed to relax everyone.
“Neither are you,” said Smithy. “Too manly to put them on?”
Mass smirked. “What’s your deal, Smithy? Before I met you, I had thirty Vampires, every one of them a total badass, but none as calm and collected as you. Other than the lame jokes, you’re a fucking warrior, man. Tell the truth, were you a secret agent before all this?”
“Ha! Nah, I was… well, I wasn’t much of anything, really. I didn’t really think about anything beyond the weekend. I treated life like a laugh most of the time.”
“So what changed?”
Smithy shifted in his seat. “I dunno. I kept surviving at first because I was desperate to find other people. It terrifies me, the thought of being lonely. The worst. I suppose I take risks because I would rather die myself than see everyone around me die and leave me on my own again.”
Mass saw the fear in Smithy’s eyes. It was clear that loneliness frightened him far worse than any demon. “You’re a good bloke, Smithy. I wish I’d known you before all of this. Look after Addy for me, okay? She’s not as tough as she acts.”
“None of us are.” Smithy glanced at Addy, unaware of their conversation due to her ear protectors. “So, this trip you’re taking is one way then?”
“It is for me. I wish there was another way, but this is my mess and I need to clean it up. I killed Vamps. I set Crimolok loose.”
Smithy pulled a face. “Get out of it with that shit, will you? How long do you think Vamps’ body would have held out? He was rotting from the inside out, man. Crimolok was getting free eventually. All you’re guilty of is speeding things along. Besides, if we let our friends suffer, then what’s the point? We’re fighting for the survival of the human race, aren’t we? Well, part of being human is giving a shit about other people. You did the right thing, Mass. Stop beating yourself up about it. It’s getting old.”
Mass’s tear ducts erupted and he was suddenly sobbing. He couldn’t remember the last time he had let his emotions go, but he made up for it now. Whimpering sounds he wasn’t proud of kept erupting in the back of his throat and he couldn’t keep his face from scrunching up in misery. He went to turn away, but Smithy lunged and pulled him into a hug. “It’s okay, big guy. If ever there was a time to cry, it’s now.”
Addy noticed the movement and turned her head. She saw Mass’s tears and immediately threw off her ear protectors and came over. She joined in with the hug, the three of them holding each other without saying a word.
Mass missed his friends; not just those he’d lost, but those he was going to lose. The future no longer existed, causing a massive hole to grow inside of him. There was only one thing to do now: close the gate.
I guess I always knew I would end up in Hell. Brixton boy till the end.
“I think we’ve found it,” said the living Damien, who’d been leaning over the back of the pilot’s seats and staring out of the cockpit. His friends, Steph and Harry, were with him, holding hands and silently awaiting their destination. They were an odd bunch.
Mass wiped away his tears and headed up front, holding on to the ceiling straps to keep from falling. At first he saw only the night sky, but when he managed to look down at the ground three hundred feet below, he saw the gate. It lit up everything around it, but not in a beautiful way. It was like staring at a nuclear reactor ready to explode.
Against the autumnal trees and green fields of the Wessex Downs, the gate was an unnatural blight on the scenery. It shimmered and popped, more like a flame than a lens, and every now and then it would shift in such a way that you got a glimpse of what lay beyond. Mass knew he was looking straight into Hell.
Demons were flooding out of the gate, a line of ants from up high but an army of death on the ground. Getting to the gate would be impossible, even with their weapons. The pilots had already informed Mass that the helicopter was an old US Coast Guard rescue chopper. It had no guns, cannons, or missiles, only a winch, harness, and high-powered searchlight. At a push, the pilot had said it could paint a target for something else to shoot at – but they were on their own in this.
“So what’s the plan?” the undead Damien yelled from the rear of the helicopter. “Are you going to leap out of the helicopter Mission Impossible style, or are we going to land and have ourselves a ruck?”
“There are too many demons on the ground,” said Mass. “The best bet is to go down on the harness.”
Angela wore a disapproving look on her face. “That puts a lot of trust on the pilots. What if they screw up?”
“Then he goes splat,” said undead Damien with a grin. “Embarrassing way to go.”
Mass looked at everyone. “Who has a better plan? I’m all ears.”
“I don’t,” said Harry. “Seems
