Kingdom: The Complete Series (43 page)

They exchange a firm
nod, patting each other on the arm, and then time flows once more, and Jamie is
sitting across the helicopter.

The air gets hotter,
and the sky a darker shade of red, as they draw closer to the Destroyer.

“
Gary,
forcefield now,” shouts the Trespasser, his voice cutting through the racket.
Without hesitation, Gary extends his hands like a conductor and the entire
craft is caught in a protective bubble.

Something flashes
around the helicopter, and then the light is gone.

“
What
was that?” asks Jamie, standing up and staring out the cockpit.

“
The
Destroyer is below us, and it's angry.”

“
Oh
hell,” says Jamie. “Cathy, can you make us disappear?”

“
I
can try,” she nods, “tell me when -”

“
Now,”
shouts the Trespasser.

Cathy's face screws up
as a roaring mist encapsulates the helicopter. Flame and thunder crackle
towards them – then the heat is gone, and the fog bathes them in the damp mist.
Cathy relaxes her power, and the mist is blown away by the helicopter's blades.

“
We
can't keep this up,” says the Trespasser, turning to Mark. “We're over it – you
ready?”

“
Ready
as I'll ever be,” says Mark, shaking the nervous jittering out of his muscles.

He steps up to the
helicopter's edge like a diver to the board, springing up and down on his toes.
Unscrewing the bottle that Jamie saved him, he downs the last drink he may ever
have, and closes his eyes in contentment as the world makes itself right for a
moment.

“
Are
you sure you can hit it? We're quite high, it's not a huge target.”

Mark looks out, holding
onto the edges of the door, and sees the dead, silent city beneath him. In the
centre, like a light shining through the smoke and the ash coasting over
Glasgow, Mark sees the pinpoint of red light.

“
We're
really high up,” he mumbles, light headed as the drink kicks in.

“
Mark,
can
you hit it?”

“
Yeah.”
He turns around and gives them a peaceful, contented smile as he tosses the
empty whiskey bottle over the edge. “Like I said. Any idiot can fall, right?”

Mark closes his eyes,
lets go, and plummets out of the helicopter.

He feels the wind
pulling at his hair and his shorts, buffeting his body as he drops like a
stone. Mark's arms are out at his side as though he is being crucified, and he
finally opens his eyes and looks ahead at the ground racing towards him.

In the centre is the
Destroyer, burning bright in the darkness, and Mark speeds towards it.

Every second brings him
closer, and faster. He feels the air streaking around him, slowing him down
now.

Gritting his teeth, his
stomach flipping over inside, he clenches a fist and extends it in front of his
face.

Too slow, still.

He streaks through the
sky like a missile, both fists in front of his face as the red orb of the
Destroyer screams towards him.

Everything is silent
for Mark.

There is only the
forcefield: that oily red bubble burning his city, his world, to a cinder.

He starts to will
himself faster, and the air forms a cone of vapour in front of him as he
approaches the speed of sound.

For a second, all of
his strength is focused on two tiny points at the tips of his knuckles.

Mark screams, and
punctures the shield like a bullet zipping through flesh.

From the helicopter,
the Trespasser watches Mark's figure vanish into the darkness.

Moments later, there is
a deafening crash, and a bass note cuts through the chaos like a knife.

Eyes wide, the
Trespasser watches the red orb tremble and shatter like glass, bursting into
flame and light and dissipating on the wind.

“
He
bloody did it,” he says. “Stacy, decrease power to the main rotors. We need to
get lower down.”

“
Trespasser,”
she grits her teeth, “something is happening.”

“
What?”
he begins, trying to see through the confusion in her eyes. “What's happening?”

“
Uh,
Trespasser...” says Jamie, pointing out into the darkness.

Across Glasgow, lights
have started to come on, flickering to life in the distant shadow.

“
Oh
shit,” whispers the Trespasser.

He checks his watch,
and sees the second hand struggle to life and move across the face again.
Standing up, the Trespasser rushes for the helicopter's cockpit and throws
himself into a seat as the controls begin to light up again.

“
It's
moving on its own,” shouts Stacy. “It's like I'm fighting against it.”

“
Don't
fight it, Stace,” the Trespasser shouts. “I've got the wheel now, you can
stop.”

She lets go, and
without a sound collapses into Donald's arms, her eyes rolling into the back of
her head.

The helicopter
plummets, and Jamie grabs onto Gary's collar to stop him flying out of the open
doors as the craft spins, throwing them all against the walls.

“
Hold
on,” the Trespasser screams. He pulls back on the controls, fighting the spin.

With the air outside
rushing past them, the chopper finally stabilises and the Trespasser starts to
power down and bring them closer to the ground.

“
Command,
Command, come in. This is Trespasser One,” he shouts into his comms unit. “Do
you copy?”

“
We
copy, Trespasser,”
says Command, his voice shaking –
something the Trespasser has never heard before.
“What the hell is happening
down there, we lost power to everything -”

“
Listen,
Command, listen to me,” he shouts his officer down, taking a breath to calm
down. “You need to alert everyone that's listening: don't drop a nuke. We've
got this, we can contain it with minimal loss of life.”

“
Minimal?
Son, we've lost contact with almost every unit in the city centre, loss of life
is no longer a concern -”

“
Sir,
trust me on this,” he says, bringing the chopper down among the still-standing
buildings of the city centre. “You need to target George's Square with all the
ordinance you have. Missiles, bombs, whatever – but it needs to be
simultaneous. Do it now, before that thing can switch off the power again. You
might not have long, do you understand?”

“
Are
you giving me orders now, Trespasser?”

“
Now
is not the
bloody
time for this, Command! Get your shit together and
fire the ordinance, do you understand?”

There is silence on the
comms.

“
Loud
and clear, Trespasser One.”

“
Good,
now I'm going to get my squad to safety.”

“
Trespasser.”
Jamie appears at the cockpit's edge and leans in, looking at the Trespasser's
rigid expression. “Mark is still down there, you'll hit him with that stuff
too.”

“
Jamie,”
he looks up at his squad member. “We won't get another chance like this. Mark's
tough, and he's smart – but we can't put all of our eggs in one basket, you
understand?”

Jamie shakes his head
and leaves the Trespasser to pilot the helicopter as they descend upon a
building not far out from George's Square, the bright-lit sign of Glasgow's
towering cinema flickering back to life and beckoning them down.

Mark kneels up from the
dust in the crater, the red shadow burning beneath him on the ground. Fists
clenched, teeth grinding together, Mark shouts mindless abuse at it and punches
it in its fiery crimson head again and again.

Every blow slams it
back against the ground as it tries to rise against him, raising its faintly
human hands in confusion, trying to ward off his blows.

Mark bats away a
flailing strike from its blood-coloured arm, and smashes a fist straight
through its face. Pieces of the Destroyer break off and dissipate like smoke
before it reform itself.

A trembling bass note
builds as the two super-powered beings battle in the crater that was once
George's square. Masonry and flaming debris fall around them, the rains cast by
Mark's earth-shattering impact.

Again and again Mark
roars and punches it as the bass note grows louder and stronger, juddering his
bones and shaking his mind till he can hardly see.

He takes his hands away
for a moment to rub the strain from his eyes; that is when the Destroyer
strikes back.

From its skull comes a
torrent of energy, blasting into Mark's sternum and propelling him up into the
air like an acrobat. He flips over, struggling to regain control.

In the air, Mark is a
sitting duck – and easy target for the Destroyer. It stands up and extends its
arm, blasting Mark into a pile of rubble and fire with beams of crackling
energy. Mark screams, feeling the same pain that he felt not so long ago, the
sensation of his skin bubbling and boiling.

The Destroyer ascends,
hovering in the air over Mark, pouring pain and anger down upon him. Mark hears
nothing but the bass-scream of his death, writhing, helpless beneath the
Destroyer's assault again.

He almost lies back.

Mark almost lets his
arms down and welcomes death like an old friend. So many times has he faced
death recently, so many times has he suffered through the pain and fear and
come so close.

And so many times has
he endured.

Mark's scream of agony
twists and turns into a roar of anger, a booming, raging protest. He raises his
hand as though he is shielding himself from the sun, and plants one hand on the
scorching rubble beneath the beam.

Pounding energy burns
at his skin, but the fire inside him burns stronger, repairing the damage,
strengthening his muscles, his mind. Grunting with effort, Mark rises to his
knees.

The Destroyer pours yet
more power onto him, torrents of it cascading over him, breaking like water on
rock.

Mark closes his eyes,
focusing everything into his legs.

Pushing Mark down with
all of its power, the Destroyer can do nothing but watch as Mark stands up,
cocks his arm back, and leaps up the beam like a bullet down a barrel.

Mark smashes into the
Destroyer like an avenging angel, hitting its head with a flying uppercut that
shears torrents of wispy red smoke from its body.

A low bass scream cuts
through Glasgow as the Destroyer is sent spiralling up into the air, and Mark
follows it on the impulse of his leap. Just as he starts to slow, at the apex
of his jump, he reaches out and grabs the Destroyer by the leg.

Letting out a roar of
primal anger, Mark swings the Destroyer like a hammer and slings it down into
the crater. It tumbles and falls like an aircraft without power, thudding into
the ground.

Mark falls after it,
descending upon it like an eagle upon its prey, his fist cocked back as he
plunges to the earth.

He lands on the
Destroyer's prone form fist-first, and it tries to slap him away with an
intense, focused energy beam. Mark puts a hand out and stops the beam before it
can leave the Destroyer's body, and punches it hard in the head with his free
hand.

Again and again he
rains blows upon the monster, until silence falls across Glasgow.

The Destroyer has
stopped fighting back. He looks at it, waiting for it to turn to smoke and
drift away like the Protector did before.

It just looks at him,
that same bass note turning his stomach sour, shaking his lungs and turning his
vision to a blurred smear.

It's screaming, he
realises. That low, constant bass note.

It's screaming for
help.

Mark looks up, and around,
and sees why it has stopped fighting.

Across what remains of
Glasgow's buildings, circling the George's Square crater like broken fortress
walls, are silhouettes. Upon each building stands a legion of demons, monsters
and psychopaths, creatures pulled from the darkest corners of the human mind,
brought home to their master by its ringing call.

As one, moving
together, the beasts begin to drop from the buildings, some carried by their
stronger allies, and pace towards Mark in a tightening circle, drawing in like
a noose.

Whichever way he looks
are shadows, silhouettes in the darkness.