Beyond Perdition, page 30
The group looked impressed, an expression none of them tried too hard to conceal. Mr Andes then spoke. ‘In my many years on this Earth I have witnessed these weapons in use, all of them can be used to devastating effect but I think for our mission we should use the M4 Carbine and like Adrian said, conceal ourselves using the burial shroud, it will give us an extra advantage at least. Are we in agreement?’
Daniel and Mason nodded, their eyes still darting around the impressive cache of weapons.
The train shuddered on with no one knowing how long it would be until they faced this menace. One of the train guards stepped into the carriage unannounced.
‘Sorry to disturb you all but we have arrived just outside our destination. Ariel doesn’t want the train to proceed any further but hopes you are all ready to carry out this undertaking.’
‘We’re ready’ Mr Andes answered, speaking, he hoped, for the group as a whole.
‘Come on then, this way to disembark.’ Adrian said managing to roll himself out of the carriage and into the adjoining one.
2
When the group finally alighted they were met with cold darkness and the smell of rot and mould. They had ensured they were covered by the shroud, Mr Andes leading the procession firearm in hand. No one spoke, no one dared and anyway at this point, there was no need to. Everyone knew their mission, everyone knew the inherent danger involved and it was as if their elevated heartbeats were now synchronized into something resembling a rumbling engine with the thrusting of pistons.
The steam fortress remained static behind, its engines turned off, resembling another decommissioned train. Mr Andes wondered if Ariel was watching from the safety of her throne room.
Up ahead the darkness dissipated slightly whether due to the penetrating invasion of daylight or something else. The malodorous stench intensified and now the group found themselves crossing over layers of discarded waste from food cans to beer bottles. Whatever they were about to face, it seemed to thrive off the discarded refuse of the past train commuters. Rotten apple cores populated half-finished noodle pots whilst the remnants of sausage rolls and Cornish pasties created an organic smell of foetid waste piles. It was nearly impossible to see the track but the group were forced forward into the narrow tunnel walls.
They stopped suddenly in their tracks. Mr Andes settled the M4 on a tripod and aimed it through the shifting pall. Adrian had recommended a customised scope with night vision capability. It proved invaluable as Mr Andes sought to distinguish the green shapes in the scope the newly produced veil of green. Heat signatures betrayed creatures scurrying in and out of the refuse. Smaller things crawled through the cracks in the walls and up ahead...
Mr Andes did his best to signal to the rest of the group. They too had heard a loud thud, a guttural grunt and now the stench of wet dog. They settled behind Mr Andes’s own quaking frame, the trepidation spreading with a rippling effect. The grunts became growls growing louder as the acoustics were amplified in the subterranean surroundings. Wrappers and cans were kicked up in a flurry of unseen movement and even as Mr Andes moved the customised scope across the green environ, he could pick little up beyond the curious rats and the scuttling roaches.
‘Where is he?’ He mumbled, ‘Where the hell is he?’
Mason gripped the corners of the shroud whilst Daniel did his best to conceal their rear by pinning the cloth to the ground as taut as possible. Though they knew they were invisible, a pervading sense of dread gripped the group, a nagging doubt that this beast, this Titan would be able to detect them by some other means.
Mr Andes magnified the lens on the scope, moving the reticule through the field of green until he saw it. The muscled frame of the creature, its gargantuan shoulders hunched over the garbage piles, its angular face spouting sporadic and unsightly tufts of hair. Fangs rose tusk-like from swollen gums reminding Mr Andes of a warthog or wild boar. Its eyes were black against the green scape. It seemed, at the moment, to be occupied by the food remnants on the track, sieving through the rubbish like an over-enthusiastic recycler. Its arms were a pallid white, the elbow joint concealed by more of the unsightly tufts of hair, great rounded muscle flexed as it threw cans and cases indiscriminately. But this great lumbering beast was not as neolithic as first appeared. He was scrapping the food dregs from each of the containers, savouring the flavours before searching for more. If the discarded item were devoid of sustenance, it was thrown onto a rapidly growing trash pile, if not, the creature’s broad tongue, not unlike the tongue of grazing cattle, licked the packaging clean.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Mason whispered, his own heartbeat a clamouring percussion.
‘The only way in which this beast is a threat is that it blocks Ariel’s steam train. He is like anyone else down here, just trying to survive. Here take a look through the scope.’
Mason shuffled forward remaining careful not to disrupt the shroud and reveal their position. As he peered through the scope, he saw what to him looked more like an oversized gorilla, a heavily muscled torso and shoulders and a face scrunched in perpetual perplexity. It was as much a threat as a caged lion or a sleeping rhino. Yes, it would probably react just like any other creature would if shot at, but then that was hardly its fault.
‘What do we do?’ We made a deal with Ariel’
‘We keep our end of the deal’ Mr Andes answered abruptly.
‘Stay behind me, I want to make a clean shot to the head, quick, easy and hopefully painless.’
The behemoth in front of them was beginning to rise to its feet. It had consumed all that was edible here and was ready to move on. It was now or never.
Mr Andes could feel his trigger finger trembling but a deal was a deal. He lined up the cross-hairs with the creature’s head, making adjustments for distance and...
The sound was deafening. First, the explosive burst of the bullet followed almost immediately by the cracking of cranium, the spilling out of brains and spurting of cranial blood into the air like red maypole ribbons. The beast stumbled back, his body upright for only a second, a shower cap of frontal lobe excretions covering what was left of his forehead. Residual nerves made his muscles twitch before the colossal frame toppled forward like a great oak felled in the forest. It landed with a deafening thud that reverberated down the tunnel, sending more rats scurrying from their refuge like furry shrapnel.
Mr Andes breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Forgive me Father but it was necessary to complete your will.’ He stood up, the shroud falling from his shoulders, revealing the other two members of the group.
‘This was the Titan’ Daniel said, the statement more a question as he observed the primate sprawled out in an ugly mess of skull fragments and brain tissue.
‘I almost feel sorry for the thing, it’s pretty pathetic looking now, can’t see why Ariel or her men couldn’t deal with it.’
‘We all know why we helped, let’s thank God we were given the opportunity to get into Ariel’s good books. There is a reason for everything’ Mr Andes strode forward now clutching the Spear of Destiny. Sieving through the deluge of viscera, he cut through the arteries and tendons in the neck before wrenching the Titan’s head free. Blood gushed from the opening, like an unhindered tap. The head, though caved in, still held the overall cranial profile with the cracked orbital cavities identifying a face.
‘Let’s get back on the train, we’ve done what we need to do.’ He said solemnly.
3
As they approached the train, Adrian rolled out of one of the centre carriages, a twisted grin on his face. He eyed the ‘trophy’ dangling from Mr Andes’s hands.
‘My my, I’m impressed. Come, you two follow me, Mr Andes, Ariel has requested you meet with her in her chamber.’
The head in Mr Andes hand was tracing a path of blood across the floor.
He nodded at Daniel and Mason, a transitory smile of assurance appearing on his face before he disappeared into the front carriage.
‘Come let’s put back your weapons and clean you up, I’m sure that was quite an ordeal.’
Neither of the men answered. What could they say?
Mr Andes closed the carriage door behind him. He could hear activity in Ariel’s throne room but it wasn’t until he turned completely around that he saw...
The jewelled décor, the shinning opal lined furnishing, the regal trappings, all had gone. The gem bedecked walls and the bejewelled floor was now a distant memory. Ariel was sat in a stone basin, her body immersed in a viscous pink liquid, a mucilaginous concoction, a gelatinous assortment of congealed blood and organs. It was like looking at a large bowl of Minestrone soup but with thick intestinal strands and bulbous stomach sacks, livers and kidneys floating like softened croutons. The opaque liquid concealed her body, but her face, for the most part, appeared the same. She seemed to delight in covering herself in a raiment of the thick, gloopy stew, squeezing the meat sacks like sponges in a biological bath. A sickening smile appeared as she saw Mr Andes and the dangling head.
‘What on Earth’s happening here?’
The smile on her face widened, revealing sharpened incisors, sharks teeth with shreds of meat dangling in gory dregs.
‘Throw the head into my bath,’ She squealed, almost orgasmically. Her voice was no longer the melodious tone of royalty or the imperative call of authority, but something different...something animalistic or primal.
‘Who are you?’ Mr Andes said, his feet rooted to the spot in fear.
Ariel, if that was who she still was, began to rise out of the basin. Organs dropped from her frame and splashed back into viscid contents of the basin. Her frame was no longer human, instead resembling the underbelly of a serpent, tessellating scales forming a kind of armadillo’s armour. A throng of breasts, ten at first count protruded from the centre of her writhing body. They remained firm as if engorged with milk as she continued to reach her full height.
‘My God, you are the spawn of Satan, Mother of Demons. Then this place, we’re not on a train, we’re...’
4
Daniel handed Adrian the weaponry before taking a seat. Seconds later, there was a rumbling and the entire train began to shake. Adrian wheeled himself across into the adjoining carriage without providing any explanation.
‘What’s going on?’ Mason yelled over the increasing din.
‘Whatever’s happening it ain’t good’ Daniel replied pointing at the interior carriage walls. What were once possible radiator pipes running overhead now resembled fleshy veins, soft and porous. The floor was pitted with tiny holes. A yellow ectoplasmic liquid was frothing up from beneath their feet bubbling like strong acid. The walls once containing bracketed weapons were appearing to melt like candle wax, no longer oaken brown but red and pink reminding them of open sores or gaping wounds.
‘Don’t touch anything’ Daniel shouted, trying his best to dodge the rising liquid from the tiny porous holes on the floor.
‘This is just like a nightmare I had, I swear, what are we meant to do?’ Mason stammered
‘Let’s find Mr Andes.’ Daniel replied not missing a beat.
The two slushed through the amassing fluids, a sickening squelch accompanying their steps. The door to the next carriage was no longer a door but a kind of oesophageal extension into the next section of the ‘train’. The walls and floor pulsed. The liquid rose to meet the thick blood dripping from the rupturing arteries snaking across the ceiling. All the lights had gone leaving only shades of tunnel light revealing their way. The smell was overpowering. Mason could only think it was like the dead fox he had once witnessed on the side of the road, its body torn open and partially devoured by alighting flies.
Mr Andes was approaching from the other end, no longer holding the Titan’s head but desperately clasping the Spear of Destiny as he worked out a route through the biological assemblage.
‘Quick men, we must get off. This isn’t a train, we stepped right into a burrowing worm. Ariel was nothing but the worm’s cortex, helping it through the underground tunnels.’ His explanation was cut short by another loud rumbling followed by a great shuddering.
‘Hold onto me men’ Mr Andes commanded, aiming the spear at the ground which now resembled a sieve or a colander. He stabbed at the soft floor, blood and mucus spouting upwards like a lanced boil. He continued to thrust the spear whilst Mason and Daniel held tight to his side with trembling limbs.
Slowly but surely he was creating a hole big enough to squeeze through.
‘Hurry, as long as Ariel remains alive, so does the worm.’
As one, they manoeuvred themselves through the gap until they were each standing on the trackbed below. The worm’s sickening underbelly was writhing above them, clearly in pain, the semi-permeable dermis releasing a small effusion of bodily fluid.
‘Use the shroud, quietly as we can.’ Mr Andes pointed away from the giant squirming entity and on into the tunnel darkness.
‘Let’s get as far away from this thing as possible, then we can work out where the hell we are.’
Dusty darkness, a damp and musty odour and the ominous but equally relieving feeling of solitude welcomed them. Mr Andes came to an abrupt halt and lifted the shroud.
‘Let’s stop here’ he said breathlessly, ‘I think we’re safe for now.’
Daniel peered around the semi gloom. Flag-stoned tunnel walls, disused track line but nothing particularly distinguishable.
‘Where do you think we are?’
‘Haven’t a clue, all I know is that we should think about resurfacing?
‘What about Logan?’
‘There’s nothing to say he’s even still down here. He was aware of the mission’s brief, God willing he has begun to make his way to the fortress on his own. It is a great relief to me that he has Karen’s guiding hands. I say we head to the surface and try to better get our bearings. I don’t know about you but I’m fed up with these dark and disorientating tunnels.’
Mason was brushing his clothing down vigorously, the memory of the worm’s innards still vividly imprinted in his mind. Other than a few fine details, it had been exactly like one of his bad dreams only this time he hadn’t woken in a pool of his own sweat. This time he had merely followed a Nephilim under an invisible shroud through some underground tunnels in the time of the Great Tribulation. He couldn’t write this. He would surely make an effort to try but even as he thought about it, his memories of what occurred in Hell and now what was happening on the ravaged Earth were just one big jumble it would be like piecing together the nonsensical happenings of an acid trip (Gonzo journalism). This concluding thought made him think once again of Logan and how his experiences, made all the more dramatic by that damned Devil Dust must truly be the definition of Hell on Earth. I hope you’re okay, he muttered internally, we’ll find a way out of all of this, buddy, and life, well it may not go back to normal, but anything’s better than this.
Mr Andes removed two large stones from the track and with a mumbled blessing he began a process akin to Catholic transubstantiation. The stones softened and the unmistakable smell of freshly baked bread emanated from their surfaces.
‘Eat up before we continue, no doubt it will be a while before we rest and eat again.’ He said this matter of factly and yet his expression told of real concern, of fear of the unknown. None of the party dared to guess what was going to happen next. All they knew, was that the world was a very different place now and anything was possible.
CHAPTER 25
PROPHET OF THE BLOOD MOON
1
Not many people could claim to recall the events of their own birth. But then Nero standing at nearly eight feet tall was not ‘many’ people. He could remember his birth because he had orchestrated it, every part of it, from the selection of his carrier to the time and place of its occurrence. He had moulded the mind of his earthly ‘Mother’ with sickening relish like an evil puppeteer. He knew that the lunar calendar called for a blood moon and that records before and after would describe such a phenomenon.
Nero knew how he would look when fully grown as he had already become his complete form, or at least a version of it whilst in the pits of Hell. It was here under the masterful tutelage of Satan himself that Nero grew in the knowledge and practices of the dark arts, becoming for all intents and purposes, a powerful mage, a practitioner of black magic and an expert in the Occult. It was this knowledge which spanned demonology, conjuring and evocation that shaped him during adolescence. It was the reason why he was expelled from every school; why teachers and pupils feared him alike and why on one tragic winter night, he forced his own mother (no more than a vessel) to take her own life. It was understood she would be rewarded by the Devil for her part in the End times and for birthing the Antichrist, but Satan, being the father of lies, no tome records her true fate.
Nero had amassed a great following, calling his party the Triple Sixers and mandating them to recruit more men to fight on the side of the Devil. Man’s insatiable curiosity and unfortunate tendency to leap in uninformed meant many turned from their respective religions. From Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, Jewish synagogues and Christian churches, they followed this larger-than-life being. His appearance during and after the Rapture fooled many ‘devout’ followers in the Church. He never claimed to be the second incarnation of Christ, he didn’t need to, out loud at least. His worshippers and there were many, wrote countless treatises on the subject. Records that were once just muddled compositions of over-fanatical followers became ‘factual books’ and before the final battle, his eventual coming was taught in national and international school curriculum.
Children as young as six learned of the great prophet Nero born of a prostitute on the night of the blood moon. TV and internet further repeated the lie, spreading it across the globe until not a single person, tribe or community had not heard of Nero. Nero would perform great miracles, recreating such events as the feeding of the five thousand, the water into wine and even the calming of a storm as it racked ocean waves.
