Dan Abnett - Border Princes

Gwen felt self-conscious suddenly.

‘It’s all right,’ James said.

‘I know. I just can’t remember the last time I paraded around naked at home.’

She noted that James let the ‘at home’ slide. ‘Really?’ he said.

‘I just don’t do it any more.’

‘He’d get some funny ideas, would he?’

She shrugged. ‘I think it was the worry that he wouldn’t get any funny ideas.’

James nodded. ‘Coming back to bed, then?’

They curled up together in the dark. Raindrops drummed against the window.

‘It’s all right me being here, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘What do you think?’

‘I didn’t mean like that. I’m imposing. Taking up residence.’

‘It’s fine. I like it.’

They were silent.

‘It’s only fair you speak to him,’ James said. ‘When you’ve got your head straight, I mean.’

‘I know. I will. The next day or two. I hate lying. I hate the lies more than anything. I’ll have to go back, face the music.’

She paused.

‘And maybe pick up a few things.’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. All my stuff?’

He pulled her closer.

The artillery barrage was creeping closer, great white flower-blooms in the night, more pressure-slap than noise, the booming too loud to actually be heard. The world shook and rattled. Muddy vapour stung his nose, terror clawed like a cat in his chest, trying to get out.

Davey Morgan woke up. It was black, black like the Black Out. The luminous hands of his little wind-up alarm clock formed a tiny, green fuzz. He groped around and found his specs, put them on his face. Four o’clock gone.

The noise that had woken him, the noise that had penetrated his dream and whisked him back to ’44, was just the storm. Pelting rain, and a juddering gale. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.

Cold to the bone, Davey swung slowly out from under the eiderdown and put his feet on the balding carpet. He found his slippers and his dressing gown. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.

The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. Or maybe like some yobbo bastard thumping on his backdoor. Some yobbo bastard who’d been beering it up and fancied some fun and games at Taff Morgan’s expense.

This late? In this weather? It seemed unlikely, but the trepidation wouldn’t let go of him. Davey could still remember the dream, the terror of the dream. Fresh and real. Funny, it had been years and years since he’d dreamt about service life, years and years since he’d packed the raw memories of beachheads and the bocage up in some mental drawer and slid it tight shut.

What had opened that up again, after all this bloody time?

He followed the sound of the banging onto the landing. Shadows waved and jumped in the gloom: the wind waving tree branches in front of the street light outside.

He limped down the narrow stairs. More banging, sporadic.

‘It’s all right,’ he reassured the picture on the hall table.

He entered the kitchen. So much rain streamed down the windows, the glass looked like it was melting. Bang! Bang-bang!

‘Who is it?’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’

Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!

Davey took a step towards the backdoor.

The door and windows blew in at him in a blizzard of glass and fire. Pots flew off the stove. Mugs jumped off their hooks and shattered.

Davey Morgan lay on his back, numb, ears ringing. His face was wet. Rain? Blood?

He could smell burned earth, heat, the fetid stink of deeply churned soil exposed to the surface for the first time in centuries. It was a smell he’d never forgotten, the smell of ’44.

He could hear the crackle of flames, the tinkle of glass chips dropping out of broken window frames.

He got up somehow, hauling on the doorframe. There was a bright light outside, a leaping orange glare. Ribbons of smoke oozed in through the gap where the backdoor had been.

Davey Morgan reached the doorway. The yard had gone. The back path too, and the houses and allotments all the way over to Connault Way.

They had been replaced by hell.

The night was a black cave lit up by vast lakes of fire. The ground behind his house had been excavated and tilled by God’s own wrath, torn up, heaped, broken, scattered with debris, splintered fenceposts, mangled chunks of metal and tile. Spools of wire coiled from the banked mud. Burning hanks of ash and soot fluttered down.

As Davey stood and gaped, volleys of mammoth explosions went off along the skyline, overlapping ripples of light-flash. Overpressure bent the air and fanned the flames. Carpet bombing, or heavy barrage, five miles out. He felt the delayed punch of it in his chest.

He thought about ringing the police, but that was just daft. Like they didn’t know about this already. It would be on the news. He hadn’t had the radio on all day. What story had passed him by, what international crisis that would have led to the systematic bombing of Cathays?

He saw a figure, fifty yards away, back-lit by the firestorms, striding slowly across the ruined ground towards him. A tall, thin silhouette, with sharp angles and slender limbs. Another, off to the left, slightly further away. Skinny, gangly, like some bloody teenage yobbo.

No, not even slightly. Too tall. Too thin. Eight, nine feet tall, arms like broom handles. Hands like bunches of bananas.

There were three of them now. Cartoon stick figures, with emaciated frames and giant hands. The firelight glinted off the nearest one. Flame-light off gunmetal, the wink of light catching brass or steel.

From somewhere off to his right, beyond the house, tracer fire started up, the coughing chatter of a heavy weapon. The luminous rounds raked the fire-broken earth and tried to get the range of the approaching figures. Davey ducked down, involuntarily. Gunfire, find cover .

The tracer rounds stitched explosive plumes of soil out of the ground around the nearest figure. It turned slightly, facing the origin of the gunfire, and something pulsed dull yellow on its head where its eyes should have been. Davey felt a scourging, invisible heat buckle the air. Off to the right, a crunching blast threw sparks up into the sky. The gunfire cut off abruptly.

Davey tried to edge his way back into the ruined kitchen. The nearest shape had resumed its slow plod towards him.

He saw it more clearly as it came closer, revealed by the light of the raging ground fires. Bone-thin legs, twice as long as a man’s, took long, measured strides across the churned ground. The legs carried a tall, narrow torso of paint-chipped metal and a head — set on a long, thin piston of a neck — that was half-skull, half-sculpture. Burnished metal features, cadaver-thin cheeks.

‘Go away!’ Davey cried. ‘Go away!’

The thing’s gaze located him. A little hum, a slight change in pitch.

A pulse of dull yellow where the eyes should have been-

Davey Morgan woke up. It was pitch black. The luminous green hands of his alarm clock told him it was four o’clock gone.

He lay there, shivering in his own sweat, listening to the rainstorm throwing itself against the bedroom windows.

Just a dream. Just a bloody dream. Just a stupid-

The noise that had woken him came again. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.

Cold to the bone, Davey got up. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.

The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. He’d had this already. He’d been around this dream once already, and he didn’t want another bloody turn.

He limped down the narrow stairs. Bang! Bang-bang! Bang! He gently touched the picture on the hall table as he went by. He tasted mint.