Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

He was in a snowy forest. As stupid as it sounded, as though stuck in some messed up fairy-tale, it was true. Rick found himself sat on top of a stranger who had somehow transported them from a warehouse on the outskirts of Manchester into the middle of bloody Narnia.

Tall skinny trees stretched up above him towards an icy light blue sky. Early morning by the looks of it, somewhere East from where they’d been if the man had only managed to transport them through space and not through time. They looked like fir trees, their branches covered with a thick frosting of snow.

Northeast then. Or very, very south-east. Somewhere cold enough to be permanently frosted even in the middle of summer. There were a few possibilities but all of them were ridiculous. He had never seen Andrew transport further than metres at best – perhaps half a mile at the absolute maximum. All of the possibilities he now held in his head were hundreds if not thousands of miles – in a single transport.

He reminded himself to get Andrew to up his bloody game.

There were more pressing matters to attend to. Firstly, his unconscious capture, his breathing shallow but clear – his pulse strong. They had landed on a slope, Rick could see the trail of their tumble clear in the fresh snow. At the top of the ridge, he heard voices – no doubt some of the others. Maybe even…

He stood, grabbing the young man by the scruff of his shirt and dragging him further into the dense forest away from the slope. Out of sight. They would see tracks but for all they knew it was some wild elk or bloody Gruffalo or whatever lived in enchanted snowy forests such as this. He paused behind a particularly thick trunk and waited.

The sounds of voices began to move away, they must not have known of his arrival. He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling mild irritation as he heard the man next to him begin to gently snore. Wouldn’t be snoring when he woke up and felt the frostbite.

Rick weighed his options and hated them all. He was alone, in the middle of nowhere, save for the gods and monsters up the slope above. He had no weapons, save for himself, no backup and no idea how to get those things. On top of that, the BioSuit was doing everything it could to keep him warm, but his bare hands and face would freeze in the fresh but incredibly cold air. He needed to get inside and to the nearest damn phone.

The sounds had faded completely. Leaving his unconscious companion behind him he headed up the slope. The snow made it difficult, several times he had to jab hands in to stop him from slipping back down. Strangely enough, he could feel the cold but felt the same tingle of connection he felt in the ocean. The unquantifiable sense of...something. He supposed it made sense, snow was after all mainly water. It was just an odd realisation and likewise completely irrelevant.

At the top of the slope, he ducked, as though expecting scouts. There were none, the arrivals had gone. They had arrived amongst a thinner cluster of trees, the forest extended over to a nearby road and beyond. It was the strangest thing, clothes were strewn about like mad. A t-shirt here, a pair of jeans discarded over a low hanging branch. Shoes, sticking at random intervals from the snow. They were strewn in a rough pattern over to the road.

The first thing he noticed, apart from the fact that the New Order was simply crazier than he’d thought in the first place; was that the only clothing items and types not discarded were underwear and socks. He then noticed the two crates left discarded on the road and realised – unless they were wandering through the snow in their socks and skivvies and therefore were suicidal – they had changed.

The boxes were bare but by them were deep tracks in the snow. Fresh tracks leading down the road. They had transportation, they had brought a change of clothes. This wasn’t some half-arsed getting out because they’d been caught – this was part of the plan. This was calculated and methodical and therefore seriously something he shouldn’t handle on his own.

So he did the only thing he could – he followed the road, the tracks in the direction they had gone. He didn’t know how far he was from any kind of civilization but he did know that a vehicle would make getting there that much easier. Even if he had to fight a god and an angel to bloody well get it. Plus he had the element of surprise, while they did not know he was there he could find out what the next stage of the plan was.

So he walked, the road gently undulating through the flat and always similar landscape. The forest was vast, it continued, thickening and thinning in a similarly natural rhythm. Only once did the road curve slightly to the left, a slope rising of some small hill to one side – the only rise he could see. He hesitated at that moment, unsure whether to continue on the road or get to higher ground. He knew, either way, they were well ahead of him, he supposed the diversion wouldn’t matter.

So he clambered up the slope, time passing by like thick sand through an hourglass. He could feel it, pressing, maddeningly close. He rushed will all the speed the heavy snowfall would allow him and collapsed, sweating onto the flat and treeless peak. He saw now far more than he wanted to, realised finally what was happening and realised he had never had the time.

The place he was in was an endless valley between vast mountainous peaks that dominated the landscape beyond the trees. The forest carpeted it as far as the eye could see – except for one manufactured and sprawling space of snow and concrete. The only road in or out was the one he had been walking. At its end, in the direction that their vehicle had been travelling was a base. A sprawling military complex of multiple buildings. He had not been far, perhaps half a kilometre and his view was now very good.

He saw figures, mounds in the snow which had once been human. One set of uniforms was snow camouflage – a stupid idea considering they were white and blue and stood out quite well against the powdery substance. Where those men lay it was still, red splattering the ice around them like a serial killer’s Slushie. He heard the cries of two more, defending a thick concrete slab that must have been an entrance.

The minions of Atlas had not just changed – into green military uniforms – they had also brought weapons in their boxes. Machine guns which were tearing down the native force with ruthless efficiency. The two men by the final door cried out as they too joined their allies in the snow.

There were far fewer of them than he expected. Surely more had come given the number of clothes strewn about their initial entry point? He counted four with a single red-gold armoured recognisable figure in the middle. As Rick watched from his vantage point he saw Atlas extended one solitary hand and by sheer force of will wrenched the concrete slab from the bunker. Out floated the screams of dying soldiers and Rick suddenly knew where the others were. Well, if they could transport across half the bloody globe, they would make minor work of things like doors and walls.

He knew he could not take them on, not all of them and be okay. He felt the helplessness crawl over his skin and wore it like a fur coat. Finally, there was silence and Atlas seemed pleased. He barked an order into a small short-wave radio in his hand and got a confirmation that pleased him more.

A figure appeared, arriving in a haze of smoke but wearing his normal clothing. He had not changed like the others and Rick recognised him instantly – the man he’d ridden into town. He was urgently gesticulating and trying to get his point across and Rick knew what the point would be – he had brought someone there he didn’t intend. Someone knew what was happening. One of them, the self-proclaimed heroes.

A wave of Atlas’ hand saw the man shot clean through the head. He fell into the snow, gracefully unable to feel it anymore. Rick felt sorry for the man, if only for an instant. He was changed, the others stripping him of his clothes and replacing it with the green military uniform they were wearing. Rick could see a flash of a red and white badge on the shoulder and wondered briefly if they were British army uniforms.

Atlas knew he was there. He turned and looked directly at the slope on which he was sitting. He braced himself. But Atlas was not angry, he was simply smirking. The grunts, the minions, began to disappear one by one as if they were never there. He looked directly at Rick as finally, he was the last to be transported away. Rick expected him to appear behind him, but he didn’t.

Instead, the blaring sirens and creaking doors of some dying mechanism whirred to life below. A slender figure slid from it, tip first, rising from the ground in a remarkably phallic show of fire. So many things finally clicked into place in his mind but singularly, the thought which remained at the forefront of his mind as he kneeled in the snow in a foreign land, was that Atlas had left him alive to bear witness. To come and see.

As the missile rose into the sky Rick knew what Atlas wanted most of all was for him to see the beginning of the end.