Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

There was a knock at the door and the Ministry of Defence ministerial advisor admitted Manning, Reid and the few other members of the Cabinet who were not dealing with the immediate crisis. The General didn’t trust Manning — he had always been convinced that she didn’t have the backbone to go the extra mile. Sooner or later she would let them all down, most likely at the worst possible time. Reid was a thoroughly dislikeable human being, but at least he was a perfect security officer. The other Cabinet members he could take or leave; weak men and women not up to the job, desperate to be somewhere else, knowing no one else would do the job if they departed. They gathered in the assembled chairs and waited silently.

‘I wanted to give you the opportunity to see the available intelligence before we go into the full Cabinet meeting to brief the PM,’ the General said. ‘There is a lot to take in.’

‘It’s all gone pear-shaped,’ the foreign secretary intoned.

The General set his jaw; there was a man without a job as a result of their inability to contact any other country since the Fall, and he was already preaching defeat.

‘We have a situation,’ the General corrected. ‘An attack has been launched in the Scottish Borders. The enemy is establishing a beachhead, with the intention, we can only assume, of preparing for a full-scale invasion of the country.’

The ministerial advisor drew the curtains and took up a position at a digital projector. The General nodded and the screen hanging on the opposite wall came to life.

‘This film was taken by a reconnaissance unit and transmitted back shortly before the men were wiped out.’

It was difficult to make out what was going on. Smoke billowed back and forth across the screen. It was night and there were trees all around. Occasional bursts of fire flashed here and there, and to all intents and purposes, the image looked like a vision of hell. Sharp blasts of static blared out intermittently, making some of the Cabinet members clutch their ears, and every now and then the picture was disrupted by jagged rips of white.

‘What’s up with the sound?’ Reid asked.

‘The digital signal is repeatedly interrupted whenever the main enemy is near,’ the General replied. ‘The research team suggests that their physical make-up may interfere in some way with technology.’

Every person in the room jumped as a figure lurched into view. Its shiny black skin looked like polished latex, flecked here and there with red, but as it approached the camera the skin ran away like oil to reveal a form constructed out of bone. But this was not its skeleton in any traditional sense. There were cow bones, a pig’s jaw, human tibiae, fibulae and a rib cage, tiny bones that might have come from mice and birds, plus more indistinguishable items of animal and human origin, all topped by a horse’s skull. It looked like a human figure built by a conceptual artist, but it moved swiftly and with a reptilian vitality, a purple light glowing in its empty eye sockets.

‘Jesus Christ,’ the chancellor said in a hushed, sickened tone.

The bone-creature moved like a rattlesnake to grab a soldier standing off-camera. There was a roar like rocks falling on metal and the soldier was whisked aloft as though he weighed nothing. Bony protuberances rose mysteriously from the creature’s body before shooting out rapidly to impale the soldier. The screams were worse than the deafening bouts of static. The camera wavered, but the operator remained true to his mission.

Once the soldier was dead, the creature pulled his body close. It looked like a hug for a departed but respected enemy, yet within seconds it was clear what was really happening. The soldier’s bones gradually burst through his skin to be absorbed into the body of the thing that had killed him, drawn, almost magnetically, into the depths of the form. What remained was tossed aside with a soft, squishing sound that the camera picked up with sickening detail.

The audience was rooted in horror. The General, who had viewed the footage twenty-seven times, searched their faces, seeing the same emotions he had felt himself with each subsequent viewing.

A hand with long, unnaturally thin fingers appeared in the middle of the screen. It was apparent to everyone that it was made of insects and other small, wriggling creatures. A honey bee crawled near the wrist. Beetles and flies, brown and amber centipedes, wasps and midges, all together in one seething morass.

The hand moved forward rapidly towards the camera lens; a jagged flash of white, then black.

Silence fell on the room for a long moment, then Manning asked, ‘What kind of a defence can you mount against something like that?’ Her question was followed by supportive mutterings.

‘A robust defence, the best we have,’ the General replied without revealing the anger he felt at her defeatism.

‘What are you planning, General?’ Reid was thoughtful, unruffled, his expensive pinstripe suit an echo of another time.

‘We’ve mapped the terrain and the location of the enemy’s force. They’ve made no attempt to hold a defensible position-’

‘They don’t care,’ Manning interrupted.

The General ignored her. ‘A direct assault could decimate them.’

‘Conventional weapons?’ Reid asked.

‘For the time being. I’ve made no secret of my disdain for the so-called supernatural artefacts that you’ve been amassing since the Fall. If Mister Kirkham — or anyone, for that matter — can convince me firstly that they work and secondly of their reliability in a battlefield scenario, then I will obviously put them to good use. Until then, we utilise the tried-and-tested methods.’

‘They didn’t work at the Fall, so why should they work now?’ The foreign secretary looked as if he was about to cry.

The General tried to keep his rising anger in check, but it was becoming difficult. ‘It’s a matter of application and strategy-’

‘You tried a tactical nuke at Newcastle,’ Reid noted.

The General gritted his teeth. ‘As I said, if any of the so-called experts at our disposal can find an unorthodox weapon that works, I will use it. The onus remains, as it has done since the Fall, with the Ministry of New Technology.’ Or the Ministry of Magic as the squaddies contemptuously called it, the General thought. It had proved a useless distraction from the outset; nobody could get any of the artefacts to work effectively, and it was unlikely they ever would. If they were still functional, there was a mechanics behind them that no one could grasp.

‘What about the local population?’ Manning asked. ‘Do we need to arrange evacuation?’

‘Intelligence suggests that the enemy has already wiped out all civilians in the immediate vicinity. There’s a portion of Scotland to the north-west under the control of an organisation called Clan McTaff. They used to be a group who dressed up in medieval garb and the like for battle re-enactments of the fantasy kind.’ The General shook his head wearily. ‘Obviously they were extremely well equipped for life after the Fall.’

‘What are you saying? That fantasy gamers shall inherit the earth?’ Manning noted with sarcasm.

The General ignored her. ‘They’ve established a small, sustainable community but they don’t appear to be under any immediate threat. The enemy seems to be directing its attention towards the south-’

‘Towards us,’ Reid noted.

‘A decapitation exercise would be standard practice,’ the General said. ‘Destroy the Government, all resistance falls apart.’

‘You’re ascribing them human motivations,’ Manning said. ‘How can you even begin to guess what they’re planning?’ Her eyes were cold, hard and distrustful.

The General remained calm. ‘Leave the military planning to me, Ms Manning. You concentrate on doing whatever it is you do best.’ He checked his watch. ‘Now, I think the PM is waiting for my assessment. I hope I can count on your full support.’