Somewhere deep in his sleep, the air exploded thick with dust. He shook his head trying to dislodge the piercing ring from between his ears. A cloying metallic tang filled his mouth. He spat a foaming-red mouthful onto the ground beside him. Men, women and children screamed in the dust, debris and chaos. A second explosion rocked the ground, silencing them and sucking the air from his lungs. Consciousness ebbed away before returning in a maelstrom of debris that swirled in the downdraft of a helicopter’s clattering rotors. Someone was pulling at him.
‘Three dead, one double amp, lucky bastard, immediate medivac required,’ a voice shouted through the horror.
He was on his side, a great weight pressing him further into the dirt and rubble, like some dark force sucking him underground. Blinking to focus, he fixed his eyes on the khaki legs and boots of two medics hefting a casualty onto a jungle-green stretcher. They stepped away. Helix stared across the gap into the dead eyes of Ethan. Adrenalin and panic flooded him. He tried to sit. A heavy hand pressed him back.
‘Easy fella,’ the calm voice said. ‘You’re OK. We’ll have you in the heli in a tick.’
More legs. A second stretcher. Another body. Gabrielle? No! Her eyes opened. A tear escaped tracing a track through the dust on her cheek. ‘Helix,’ she said, her voice weak, hand reaching out. ‘Helix… Helix help me. Please…’
He stiffened in the dark. ‘Gabrielle?’ He sucked a deep breath as Sofi’s features swam from the pale green light of his night vision. ‘Fuck.’
‘Are you OK?’ Sofi said, sliding away to her corner of the freight container. ‘You were moaning and thrashing around.’
He swallowed the nightmare of the mission that left him in hospital with injuries that would have ended a less tenacious man’s career. ‘I’m alright.’ He sat up, took a deep swig of water from his bottle and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
14
42 Hours
The lengthening late afternoon shadows painted the desolation of the deserted town of Chepstow in shades of grey. The salty wind, rolling in from the River Severn punctuated the silence. Wind-beaten cladding clattered against a looted warehouse, beating out the passage of time. Snow gathered in knee-high drifts, stained orange where it swamped the rusting skeletons of abandoned vehicles.
Helix scanned the tyre tracks of their departed transport back towards the Severn Bridge. In the distance the pinnacle of the weathered Welsh tower stood visible just above the treeline. Mammalian footprints wove their way down the middle of the road towards the town centre. Helix pulled his hood over his head. Getting dropped on the Welsh side of the Severn had been a risk worth taking. With the weather worsening and the fading light, crossing the bridge on foot would have taken hours they didn’t have. Apart from asking, ‘Where to?’ Mace’s courier had maintained a discreet silence during the 30-minute drive from the junction of the M4 and M5 motorways on the perimeter of Bristol.
‘Five point three six miles as the crow flies,’ Helix said, hefting his bergen onto his shoulder.
‘Approximately two hours walk, depending on gradients and conditions under foot,’ Sofi offered.
Helix looked to the west, the first flakes of resurgent snow peppering his face. ‘At least the snow will cover our tracks. Come on.’
The final destination was vague. All he had was that it overlooked the ruins of Tintern Abbey on the eastern bank of the river Wye. ‘It’ll be dark by the time we reach the bridge in town,’ he said, setting off in the same direction as the animal tracks.
Almost every home they passed bore the daubed signs left by the emergency services as the pandemic escalated. Gaps in the ivy-strewn walls and windows revealed the sprayed red crosses that indicated the presence of an Ebola victim or more likely the whole family. The idea had been that the emergency services or units like Helix’s would return later to bury the dead in pits dug in gardens or any available green space. That was if they returned at all. Entire streets had been ravaged by fire as civilisation and order had collapsed. Trees, nettles and the ubiquitous ivy filled the crumbling shells.
Hardly a single pane of glass or door remained intact among looted remains of what must have once been vibrant streets, filled with small pastel-painted shops, many of which had also succumbed to the flames of panic. The steel frame of a supermarket and petrol station loomed in the last of the daylight, its few remaining red, white and blue cladding panels coated in soot, buckled by heat and wreathed in Russian vine.
At a narrow junction, Helix paused, canted his head and listened. Snow fell steadily, cloaking the cobbles and amplifying the silence. Luminous flakes floated through his night vision. Towering to their left, the ruined ramparts of the 11th century Chepstow Castle brooded, its crumbling crenelations like a row of jagged teeth against the twilight sky. The fortifications rekindled the images of the men manacled in Ulyana Lytkin’s medieval dungeon. Closing his eyes, he searched for images of Ethan in better times: his unkempt hair, sideways grin, a joint hanging from his bottom lip. Instead, all he found
