The lieutenant nodded, and they started off. Thacker thought the pace impossibly slow, but the Gurkhas were doing almost double-time.
They started to pass bodies. Soldiers, civilians, caught in the moment where they stopped trying to kill and instead had been killed. People: men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, all now cut and torn and beaten and shot. They’d woken up that morning to beautiful warm sunlight, and wondered what the day might bring.
It brought them Jack Henbury, and they wouldn’t see the sun set.
‘I thought the artillery would be here by now,’ said Thacker.
‘It is. But they can’t fire on Banbury.’
‘Why not?’
‘Good God, Major, we’re trying to reduce the collateral damage, not shell built-up areas.’
‘That’s a mistake.’
The lieutenant looked sideways at Thacker. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Because I’ve felt him in my head.’
‘Oh.’ The hedges either side of them suddenly stopped. The road continued out over a bridge which spanned first a four-lane carriageway, then a pair of electrified train tracks.
There was nothing moving on the Banbury ring road. It was blocked with burning and crashed vehicles, smoke and glass, and spilled loads from jack-knifed lorries and burst vans.
Beyond, where the road dipped down into the heart of a down-at-heel council estate, there were more fires, the sounds of breaking and exploding, of screaming and shouting, of shooting and bloody riot.
And briefly, in the gap between two houses, Jack Henbury’s bizarre figure could be seen, the air, the very fabric of reality rippling around him. Then he was gone.
The lieutenant turned to Thacker. ‘Do you honestly think you can kill him, dressed in that?’
‘I think that if I can’t, no-one can.’
‘I only ask, because I’m going have to risk the life of every man here, and frankly, you look damn strange.’
‘Forget what I look like. I carried Adams on my back all the way from Henbury Hall, and I’m not even out of breath.’ Thacker felt better than that. He was itching to do battle, almost desperate to prove what he could now do. No more beating his head against trees for him. He would close with Jack, spit him with his spear and crush his spindly neck.
‘Right.’ He waved his point man on to the exposed bridge. He was halfway across, above the bank that separated the road and the railway. He stopped, and beckoned them on.
The rest of the platoon started over. The man on the bridge raised his rifle and shot three of them dead before the others could scramble back.
The lieutenant lay flat on the tarmac, his head just below line-of-sight. He shouted angrily at Thacker: ‘Is this too close? How can this be too close?’
Thacker got to his feet, his soldier’s instincts too great to overcome his new-found sense of invulnerability. ‘It’s certainly too close now. Jack’s powers have got stronger. It’s up to me, now.’
He started running, faster, faster. The figure on the bridge was firing at him. He could see the muzzle flash, and feel the impact of the bullets as they thundered against his out-thrust shield.
He hit the Gurkha with the shield boss as he passed, barely breaking step. The man was flung back against the bridge’s metal railings. He didn’t stop to look, or even glance behind him. He knew he’d killed him with one blow.
He slowed as he got to the other end of the bridge. At the T-junction, the road that went right petered out into a wasteland of old, abandoned cars and fly tipping. The one that went left was a scene straight from the deepest circle of Hell.
There were bodies, much like the ones he’d already seen. He was ready for that. The burning houses and cars, likewise. He’d practised civil riot control and military urban combat. He’d simulated throwing up a cordon around a contaminated site and shooting mothers and children who tried to breach the wire.
He’d caught a small taste of what to expect at Henbury Hall, when he’d first tried to shoot Jack. There on the streets of an English town, it hit home what life with their new god might be like.
There were hundreds of people facing the towering figure at the far end of the street. Some were lying down before him, calling for mercy that would never come. Some were standing, cutting themselves with knives and glass, calling out their pain and devotion, desperate to show their zeal. Some were turning on their fellow worshippers, singling out one person for their lack of faith, and beating them to death for their faults.
Others were committing the most degrading, bestial acts they could imagine, and offering up their deeds as a sacrifice.
Thacker’s ancient suit of armour didn’t amplify his courage, either. He swallowed hard on a dry mouth and felt suddenly very cold.
Jack seemed to look up, to notice him, through the beatific haze of adoration. He turned his strange body, and craned his neck to get a better look. Something of his puzzlement was communicated to his diabolic congregation. They started by looking over their shoulders at him, and ended by facing him.
Thacker could barely look at them, their bloodied and tear-streaked cheeks, their eyes without a spark of hope, their bodies given up to serve their capricious master.
From somewhere, he found his voice.
‘Jack Henbury? I’ve come for you.’
A knot of pressure built up in his skull, but it faded. It was not like before, now he was protected. A thin, reedy sound drifted over the silent crowd. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was. Then he started to hear words.
‘What are you? Why do you not bow before Me?’
‘Why? Because I’m going to kill you, you freak, that’s why. I’ve already destroyed the machine. When I’m done with you, I’m going after the Ankhani, one by one.’
‘You cannot defy Me. I am your god.’
‘I’ve defied you once already, and I’ll do it again.’
‘Then,’ said Jack, ‘you are My enemy, and I must crush you like I have crushed all opposition to My rule.’
With that, the mob began to edge forward, their faces contorted with fear and superimposed rage. They picked up weapons: bricks, paving slabs, wooden posts and metal bars, broken bottles and building tools. A few had guns, and they aimed them at Thacker.
Perhaps he could have beaten them all, lunging through the middle of them, swinging his spear and his shield. He would be a great bronze giant ploughing through a sea of demented people, breaking their skulls, piercing their ribs, trampling them underfoot. They would try to cling on, bring him down and probe his armour for weak spots, looking for an unguarded place through which to slip a thin knife.
He didn’t wait for them to reach him. He turned and ran. He knew he could outpace them, and by the time he stopped to take stock at the T-junction, the vanguard of his pursuers were already twenty yards behind.
He cut left onto the Banbury Road, but almost immediately went left again. He jumped a garden fence, and was suddenly alone. Climbing onto a coal bunker, he leapt into the next garden. Behind him, he could hear both horrified consternation and abject apology as the mob tried to explain to Jack that they had lost sight of the metal-encased man. By the sudden screams and wails, he was not placated.
Thacker kept working his way up the row of houses until he was sure he had Jack between him and the mass of crazed worshippers. He stepped between two of the houses and made his way to the street.
Jack had his back to him. He was selecting people at random and pitching them high in the air, watching them fall broken-backed to the concrete. The survivors covered their ears uselessly against the mental blast and wept, because it was not them that had been chosen.
Thacker hefted his spear and watched the flag flutter, checked the dented lion aspect of his shield, and started walking towards the god.