Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

Atlas’ forces were gone, the warehouse bare save for several crates and the people who had come to stop the bad guys. Riding in on their white horse / black SUVs. It had been a complete and utter failure and all Andrew felt afterwards was a bitter taste of defeat. As the chaos died down and the dust settled, they were all able to take stock and found themselves more confused than ever.

Andrew was not the first to pick himself up, he found Sandy gathering bits of wooden crate out of her hair. She sat on an unbroken box and seemed as though the only thing keeping her together was the simple task of getting wood and dust off her. Angel came over to them looking almost composed – which for him would be essentially shaken at the core.

“Where’s Rick?” Sandy asked, realising his trademark sarcasm was nowhere to be found.

“I saw him grabbing onto a gentleman and disappearing with him,” Angel remarked.

“Wish it was the first time I’d heard that excuse.”

“I meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Sandy assured him, “Sorry. I just…he can’t have gone far. What, your max is like half a mile right?”

“Give or take,” he agreed, “Which makes it odd that that was their evacuation plan at all. Unless they had a secondary part of this warehouse complex where they’d stored their getaway vehicles. God, it sounds like the Italian job when you put it that way.”

“Don’t, because I would hate for this to end on a cliff-hanger,” she pointed out.

The yells came from outside, loud and insistent. The three of them rushed through the broken side of the building – past the remnants of Rick’s stupid truck plan. Why he hadn’t used the door like a normal person, Andrew guessed he’d never know. Maybe it was something of the performer in him – or maybe the contrarian.

Outside the scene was worse – bodies slumped over one another, the remnants of Drake’s team. Against one wheel arch Drake half-sat while Louise hunched over her. She was the source of the yelling, calling for them, calling for help or anyone. Drake looked like she was struggling, her arms waving around her.

“Will you stop it?!” Louise snapped at her patient, the scene taking on a slightly different quality as they got closer. She noted their arrival and asked, “Would one of you help me to convince her she needs some medical attention? Apparently, Agents of MOO don’t need doctors for gunshot wounds.”

“I told you I’m fine,” Drake snapped back at the doctor, pushing herself up even more into a proper sitting position, with what appeared to be her good arm. The other shoulder had a large red and angry wound in it which Louise had been trying to get at, “If you think this is the first time I’ve been shot, you’re sorely mistaken. I still have the scar in my left buttock from Gdansk – and the General was on our side. Compared to you butchers, I’d rather have a ballpoint pen.” She spied the row of neatly clipped pens in Louise’s top pocket and before she could stop her, fished it out, popped off the lid and drove the end into her wound.

All of them winced, even he who had seen several things of a similar nature during special ops. He began to wonder if their new ally wasn’t former military, her precise demeanour and yet field-ready hard arsed attitude was eerily reminiscent.

A second later a small metallic object popped out and skittered to a stop on the tarmac. The pen came out with, as did a rhythmic spurt of quite a lot more blood.

“Okay, yes, I think I have nicked an artery, you may help now,” she admitted, quite dignified. Louise rolled her eyes and set about examining the wound. “Okay, people, it’s important to keep me talking so please could you fill me in just what exactly happened in this shit-storm.”

“Well they seem to have grown from having four people with our abilities to somewhere in the region of dozens,” he answered, “Which I suppose if you’re a Horseman of War, you can’t fight one of those without an army. Rick seems to have hitchhiked a ride along with one of the teleporters so is God knows where and…where is Ruth?”

“Mary took her,” Louise explained, “She just appeared in the car – turns out she’s like you – and disappeared with her along for the ride. After she did that…” She nodded over to the four lifeless forms nearby and sighed, “She is not the sweet but angry young girl I met three years ago. She is brutal. Dark.”

“More enemies, fewer allies, this is not good,” Angel commented unhelpfully – even if it was what they were all thinking. Before Sandy could, as she was about to quite rightly, chastise him they were interrupted by a sound. The soft tinkling of a ringtone in a tune he swore was who let the dogs out. It was coming from inside the car.

“Is that’s Ruth’s phone?” Sandy asked.

“Yes, Andrew, would you have a look – Sandy I need you over here to do a bit of cauterising otherwise I’m never going to stop this blood flow.”

Glad he would not have to see that Andrew went around the jeep in the hurried and frenzied race of a man trying to get to the phone before it stopped ringing. He found it easily, a Blackberry of all things, half protruding from between two seats. The screen said unknown caller so he did the only he could think of – he answered it.

“Hello?”

“Oh, Andrew, I won’t ask what you’re doing with Ruth’s phone but hey, it’s good to hear your voice,” Rick’s tone came sounding faint and tinny.

“You were with us two minutes ago – where are you? And why are you calling by phone?”

“My earpiece fell out in the snow, put me on speaker,” Rick asked to which Andrew obliged, bringing it back around to their small bedraggled collection of individuals.

“Okay, you’re with us now, did you just say snow?”

Drake had taken to playing on her phone, a fact which infuriated Louise who was still trying to now put pressure on and do something to close the wound. He saw the MOO standard-issue med kit nearby and was surprised by how well-stocked they were. There were even things he wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at their purpose but maybe one day would get to ask.

“Yes, I did say snow, you’ve got to seriously up your game these buggers seem to be able to teleport…let’s say a bit further,” Rick snapped at him, “I don’t know where I’m calling from exactly, only that I’m in an army base where everything seems to be written in Cyrillic, everyone is dead and I am calling from a big red phone in the control centre of the damned.”

“Grad, he’s in Grad,” Drake’s voice popped up. At their quizzical looks, she showed them the app on her phone, “It’s a MOO app – 21st century and all. I’m tracing the call and it shows you’re in a military base the Grad government don’t think we know about.”

“Grad? Where the hell is Grad?” Sandy asked.

“It’s a small post-soviet country in the permafrost near Siberia,” she explained, “Very keep themselves to themselves types. Did you say they’re all dead?”

“Yeah, Atlas’ plan seemed to be to attack this one base, but that wasn’t all,” Rick continued, “This is not just a base or a bunker, this control centre – it has silos. They launched one. A big arsed one, and I don’t know where it’s going.”

“Do they have an app for that?” Sandy asked her sarcastically.

“No, but that might be why I’m being rung, excuse me…” Drake answered her call, clipped tones betrayed as her already pale face began to drain of even more colour. She thanked the person on the edge, absurdly polite. “Our systems are showing its trajectory is coming this way. Could be York, Leeds, Manchester – any of these cities are in the path and prime targets. It seems an older model, most of these small soviet countries only have what’s leftover.”

“Is it…”

“We don’t know if it’s nuclear,” she answered before he could finish. A gravity stole over the situation that had not been there before, a deep-down human chill that comes only from the mention of the worst monster man ever created. The beast that had only ever be used in combat twice, to devastating effect.

They remained in silence but all of them felt the clock ticking down.

“Sandy, can you fly?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“It’s not a daft question,” Drake snapped at her, “You control fire, you could quite easily propel yourself with practice. Can you fly?”

“No, I can’t fly,” she threw back.

“Her dad’s called Keith Harris, course she can,” Rick joked from half-way across the world.

“Come into my time zone and say that,” she bitched at him.

“Look, a helicopter will be here in two minutes – it was sent the moment I was shot,” Drake began, “Only I’m not going to get on it – you are. It will take you as close to that thing as it can as fast as it can. Best case scenario you burn the hell out of the guidance system and send the lifeless hunk of metal to the bottom of the North Sea.”

“And worse case?” Sandy asked back, feeling already as though she could hear the sound of the rotors approaching. “If it is…y’know…”

“Better it blows off the coast and we deal with the tsunami, rather than in an area with a population approaching two and a half million,” she answered easily, coldly.

They could all hear the rotors approaching now, the wind whipping up a storm.

“Go.”