Simon Clark - The Fall

But now it was slowing.

Thirty.

Twenty-five.

Twenty.

Slowing fast as bodies compacted against the front of the car.

The tyres rolled over more bodies, throwing the car from side to side like a boat on a storm-riven sea.

‘We’re stopping,’ Sam shouted. ‘Get ready to fire!’

Pushing the muzzles through the open windows of the rear doors, the men cocked the rifles.

Ten miles an hour.

The vehicles had pushed the barbarians back like a snowplough heaping snow in front of it. Now the weight was so great it defeated the forward motion of the car. Probably the bus was doing better than him. Its huge bulk would charge on for another hundred yards or so yet.

But as for the lighter cars at either side, they’d probably been stopped dead in their tracks by now, their bonnets and body panels mangled by the impact of so many hard warrior bodies.

‘Fire!’ Sam yelled as the speedo needle kissed zero.

The reports of the rifles crashed against his ears, deafening him.

Now he pushed the gear lever into reverse, then stamped the pedal to the floor.

With a buzz-saw sound the car lurched, tyres spinning, not gripping.

Plumes of blood-drenched snow turned the air red above the mound of bodies.

The car’s tyres at last bit; they began moving back.

A couple of cars weren’t so lucky. They’d either become stuck under the bulldozed mound of bodies or the tyres’ treads simply couldn’t bite deeply enough into the snow, slush and blood.

Instantly a wave of Bluebeards clambered over the bodies of their fallen dead to leap onto the cars, hammering at them with their axes and swords.

He watched in horror as car windows shattered under the blows. Drivers and soldiers were dragged out to be hacked to death in the snow.

A face appeared at the side window. Sam saw for a moment the blue tattoos across the upper lip. The man raised his axe ready to smash it through the open side window of the Range Rover.

A blast of sound smacked him in the side of the head. One of the soldiers in the rear seat had fired a pistol. The barbarian clutched his mouth. With blood squirting between his fingers he fell back onto the tangle of bodies behind him.

Sam reversed hard now, not waiting to be overrun.

He reversed until he was well clear of the wall of broken bodies, then he spun the car until it faced forward.

A second later he drove away, leaving the mayhem behind him.

What remained of Sam’s fighting force regrouped.

Three of the cars were missing. The remaining ‘wing’ on the bus was a tangled mess being dragged alongside by one of the supporting cables from the king post. A soldier hung dead and bleeding through one of the glassless windows. One of his comrades pulled the body back.

This was going to be no easy victory. Sam knew that now.

And with the Bluebeards still surging strongly towards the exit of the pass that led out to the relative safety of open ground and woodland there was no option but to go back in again.

And just hope the remaining vehicles could knock the fight out of the barbarians. Even so, Sam knew that they couldn’t possibly have killed more than a couple of hundred in the last charge. There would still be more than two thousand of them.

And now those bastards had a score to settle.

Sam swung open the car door. It crunched against the remains of the wooden framework of the wing that held the rocket tubes.

And that framework held more now. There was a severed head, skewered onto one of the timber spars, and elsewhere a couple of bloody hands were trapped in the mess of cables and twisted tubes.

Swallowing, Sam stood on the driver’s seat and leaned out so the cavalry and soldiers could see him. The car itself was awash with blood.

He waved the cavalry and soldiers into the next attack.

They needed every man now.

Sitting down heavily, he slammed the door shut and accelerated once more towards the enemy line.

The other vehicles did their best to keep up with him. But now, with the pass wider and with fewer autos, the line was more widely spaced. Some of the Bluebeards would dodge the oncoming cars and pass through the gaps.

That, Sam hoped, was where the troops following behind would join the fray: picking off the enemy before they made it away from the pass.

He looked from left to right. The bus and the cars, their bodies dented and crumpled, smeared with barbarian blood, raced through the snow.

A group of Bluebeards in front of him parted before the Range Rover could plunge like a torpedo into their bodies.

A series of bangs sounded along the car.

He glanced down. From the door panel, arrow heads and shafts pointed at his leg and hip.

Hell , he thought in amazement, those brutes can fire arrows with such force they pierce steel doors.

Behind him the soldiers fired from the back seats. One of the bowmen slumped onto the snow.

Sam looked ahead to see the dense main pack of Bluebeards emerging from a flurry of snowflakes.

A second later the vehicles once more smacked into them.

The battle had become a dream. Or at least it seemed like that.

In an unearthly way it had actually become quiet. Sam spun the car round, aiming it at individual groups of Bluebeards. Behind him the rifles fired.

He glanced back. One soldier lay back in the seat, head twisted at what would have been an uncomfortable angle if the man had been alive. An arrow jutted from his face just below the cheekbone.

Sam saw cars looking like hedgehogs as arrows bristled from their bodywork.

There, a car had been turned over, the occupants spilled out in a bloody jumble. Flames erupted from the back of the vehicle. Seconds later its store of grenades exploded and a ball of orange rose into the sky like a sunrise.

All around him, bodies looking like crushed strawberries were scattered across the snow.

To his left, the bus moved slowly. Its field guns roared every few seconds or so, blasting explosive shells into the mass of the Bluebeards as they pressed towards the vehicle in a huge tightening noose of men.

Sam realised they were trying to box the bus in so it would eventually become bogged down in the snow.

Arrows cascaded onto it, piercing its flimsy sides of steel sheeting.

Sam looked round. There was precious little in the way of reinforcements. There were perhaps two dozen cavalrymen riding furiously to and fro, killing the enemy with lances and swords.

The bus stopped. Instantly the Bluebeards rushed forward.

Lee flung the bus into reverse, backing it towards the cliff wall as fast as he could, catching and crushing a few of the barbarians in the process. Then the vehicle lumbered forward again, but it was all too slow.

If Lee stopped once more the Bluebeards could probably rush the bus and hold it fast with their own body strength. Once they’d stopped it, even for a moment, they could flood on board and finish off the crew with knives.

Sam edged the car forward, watchful lest any Bluebeards should rush him. But most seemed to be interested in the bus now. Its flanks were so streaked with blood that even its name, Thunder Child , was obliterated.

Sam laid heavily into the horn, attracting the attention of the cavalrymen.

He pointed at the Bluebeards circling the bus, then he let out the clutch. The Range Rover fishtailed as he aimed the car like a missile. ‘Brace yourself!’ he called back at the surviving soldier in the back. ‘I’m going to hit them as hard as I can!’

The slipstream whipping by the window tore at his face, plastered his hair against his forehead, then pulled it away again.

The car had reached 60 when he hit the barbarians at their densest point.