London Wild (53 page)

‘I can’t see anything amiss at the scene, other than what we already know about, of course
,’ Michael put in as the speech ended. ‘But the cats have all departed the area; we’re too late.’

The
Patriarch then turned to the cat on his left again, but as he spoke he turned his head as if talking to all of them in the circle. ‘Order our people to get out of here. Their tanks won’t take long before they find another route, and we’ll need a head start if they decide to pursue.’

‘It will take time to pass the orders around, my Lord,’ the cat to the
Patriarch’s left replied. He then bowed and walked towards the building nearest him. The photographer turned to see each of the other cats who had formed the circle leave, no doubt to issue the order to pull out to their sections.

The
Patriarch turned back to the camera, though he appeared to be talking to the photographer rather than the network’s audience. ‘That was my son, my eldest living son. I really don’t want to lose him in this coming war, but if that is the will of the Goddess, then so be it.’

‘I-I-I’m sorry,’ the photographer replied.

‘You may go,’ the Patriarch told the photographer. ‘Don’t try and stop my people leaving the area and they won’t hurt you. I’d suggest you take refuge.’ The cats’ leader then turned to leave the photographer. Where he went after that was unknown, as the photographer turned his attention to the battle raging at the rubble.

Charles switched the monitor back to the uplink view and surveyed the scene
. Many soldiers were lying dead near the archway; others lay among the civilians and others still were walking through the mountains of dead, checking every niche and cranny for hiding cats or survivors. He spoke more to himself than anything. ‘They hit us hard and then left.’ He sighed and then spouted an order for Michael: ‘Tell the soldiers to get that ancient tank out of our way, order the tow truck to start moving the civilian transports aside so we can get past, and order the rest of the soldiers to remove the rubble from the archway so we can check on those buried under it.’

‘Yes sir,’ Michael replied quickly. He began immediately to relay the orders to the respective targets. A little more than a minute later he swiveled his chair back to face Charles
and reported, ‘There’s no reply from the tow truck, sir.’

‘Try again,
’ Charles insisted. He moved the scanner to try and find where the tow truck was parked, and what he saw was a shock. ‘Er, cancel that order; they can’t hear you.’

The scene amidst the support vehicles was a heartbreaking one
. The cats must’ve used some sort of explosive on their drivers’ cabins, and they had been unable to maneuver enough in the cramped street to stop the cats from doing this. The tow truck, the supply vehicle, the catering trucks, the broadcast truck, and even the Mariahs were lying broken in small piles of charred ash. By contrast, the Med Units and the meat wagons had been left untouched.

Charles wondered if they had been left because the cats did have some sense of honor, or if they had been left merely as a message, warning him that he would need these vehicles in the hours to come.

‘That must’ve been what happened with the bang we heard.’ Michael was in a state of shock at the scene. ‘I didn’t see them earlier. I only thought to check the main battle zone. It’s not like me to have made such an error.’

‘You didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,’ Gloria offered in his defense
. ‘None of us thinks straight when we’re lacking sleep.’

‘Where’d they get such explosives from? And why didn’t they show up in the scanners?’ Charles asked after a moment
’s reflection. When he gave his next orders, his voice suggested he already thought of himself as having lost the battle. ‘Get on to Colonel Davis; tell him what’s happened and ask him if he knows anything we should be aware of and tell him we need a cleanup team to remove the destroyed vehicles. In the meantime, leave two transports of soldiers here to protect the Med Units and the meat wagons as they do their appointed tasks and clean up this battle zone. We have our own job to do.’

‘If it’s any consolation, sir,’ Gloria commented, ‘I don’t think the cats
will be able to hit us as hard again.’

‘I know, Gloria,’ Charles replied, ‘and what they did hit was the relatively soft part of our convoy, the part that would be easie
st to hit and would reflect on us the worst for losing it in the media. Next time I get command of a convoy like this, remind me to leave a few tanks to protect the rear. Just one tank at the back of the convoy would’ve made all the difference. Let’s go.’

The tanks turned around and headed for the archway they had just come through at a more somber pace. There was no point
in them heading on to the battle zone now. The cats had already left the area, and with the way cats seemed to be able to merge into their surroundings it would be pointless to try and give chase. Besides, that would distract them too much from their mission.

A few minutes passed before anyone spoke
. When someone did, it was Michael. He swiveled his chair round to face Charles again before speaking. ‘Seems the Colonel is keeping up with events via the newspaper. He’s a little disappointed with what’s happened; I think it actually surprised him.’

‘So what news?’ Charles
asked. ‘Has he been holding anything from us?’

‘He confirms that around sixty stealth suits were stolen from the army research labs the other night. He said he didn’t know about it yesterday or he would have warned us then
. It seems the labs are embarrassed about the break-in and are trying to play the whole thing down.’

‘Makes sense, I suppose,
’ Charles replied, sighing. ‘I wish they wouldn’t keep us in the dark, though. Did he say anything concerning the explosive devices? They weren’t supposed to have anything that could hurt us, and I’ve lost half the convoy.’

‘He says he doesn’t know anything about the bombs. The research lab had nothing like that in their storerooms
, and as far as intelligence goes the cats shouldn’t have anything like that either. He does say that it’s possible the research lab is holding out on him again as they did about the stealth suits, but he thinks it’s unlikely after what has happened.’ Michael swiveled back to the control board.

Shortly after the remains of the convoy found their way back to the rail lines and continued their journey along
them, virtually the whole convoy was silent. The only reports that came through to Michael were the ones that they were required to make. The cats, who had seemed to be just toying with them before Benfleet, had finally hit them hard, and morale was rock bottom.

Benfleet and Leigh were contiguous
, despite the wall. However, the route via the old rail lines avoided getting too close to the town and went through surrounding fields.

During this part of the journey they
passed the remains of a very old castle on the north side of the lines on the top of a fairly steep hill. It had been renovated many times, but always seemed to be on the verge of falling down. Indeed, there seemed to be little left of it except an old wall, what looked like a dangerously placed rock, and a tower with a large gash in its side which ate more than half of it and extended for its full height.

They were actually moving through farmland now
. Of the land that had once held the rail lines, one side was had been reclaimed by the farmer, a pitiful piece of land for a man whose farm had originally extended on both sides of the rail lines as far as the hill on one side and the river on the other.

As they continued east, the river on the south side moved steadily closer and closer to them
. That river was the Thames.

The station at Leigh no longer existed
. All that remained was the badly eroded embankment that had once held the rail lines and one of the platforms from which a person could overlook the bank of the river Thames. There had been a sort of stony beach here, and a few fishing huts lined part of it as they approached where the station had once been.

Once beyond the remains of the station, the rail turned drastically to the north for a short while, but according to the
map Michael called up it would soon find its way back. They were heading through an area that had once had houses on both sides. Many of these houses now existed as no more than ruins. Others had been boarded up, and some actually looked as if they might still be habited. Most of the people here had left to get away from being so close to Sou’nd, but in the same way that some people in Sou’nd had refused to leave their homes, so many here had decided to stay and wait out the storm.

Chalkwell was the next station, and it wasn’t too far along the track from Leigh. By Chalkwell the rail line had found its way back to the river
, and the station again overlooked a beach. This one had a sandy covering and at one time had probably been a great local attraction, but like so many things in this part of the country, it was long deserted.

It was here at Chalkwell, just beyond what remained of the rail station
, that they found a patrol of soldiers manning a roadblock. They seemed overjoyed at the arrival of the convoy because it meant they would soon get word to go home. From the look of them, they hadn’t seen much action in the previous thirty hours, though a few splatters of blood on the cats’ side of the line showed that they hadn’t been without a little bit.

Actually
, they weren’t at Sou’nd yet. The next station on the map was called Westcliff, but Westcliff and Sou’nd had virtually become interchangeable, and the cats’ possession of the area definitely included large parts of Westcliff now. Technically it was another town in its own right, but it was now as much the cats’ as Sou’nd ever was. It was part of Charles’ edict to destroy it.

They didn’t stop to exchange pleasantries with the soldiers
; Charles had a job to do. The convoy continued calmly in through the barricade. The soldiers moved out of the way and lined up to salute as the would-be heroes entered the lion’s den.

When Charles spoke
, it was with the morose voice of a man who had already been defeated, even if he’d won the battle. His reputation with the media would be shattered after the loss of nearly all the civilians. Reports coming in from the Med Units had reported a few survivors, but not many. He could almost see the headlines now:
cat killer causes hundreds of civilian deaths
. Or
is Slim Dorris a bigger menace than the cats?
‘Inform all the tanks that they are to make a battle line as we originally intended. Get the soldiers in support, and then we will begin to destroy the town building by building.’ Then with energy he added, ‘Let’s get to it, people!’

Sou’nd had stood for over a thousand years. True
, none of the original buildings had survived from the early days, unless you counted the pier, and even that had been rebuilt and refurbished several times due to countless fires and even an occasion when a ship had hit it. The pier, built in the nineteenth century when Sou’nd was just known as the south end of Prittlewell, had been famous for holding the title of the longest pleasure pier in the world for nearly three hundred years before another pier had beaten it.

The town had gone through name changes in the last millenni
um or so too, from being the south end of Prittlewell to just being known as Southend, and then, when the cats moved in and the name of the town became such an ugly word, it became Sou’nd.

Yes, Sou’nd had quite a history, but if everything went according to plan from here on, it would have no future.

The twenty-nine remaining tanks, supported by over a thousand armored support infantry, opened fire on the first few buildings in Sou’nd.

And February Makes Five

February hadn’t had a lot of success in trying to sleep. For a start the couch was wet where Kitty had been sitting on it after having been out in the pouring rain. Also her own clothing had gotten wet where her coat hadn’t been able to protect her fully. But there was a lot more to it than that. Today her brother was going to go up against Slim Dorris, the
Great Cat Killer,
and there could only really be one possible result from that sort of matching. Then there was the house itself. It stank of herd. She would like to trust them and knew that Kitty trusted them fully, but they were still herd, and she had trouble with the concept of closing her eyes when they were so close. She wouldn’t want to admit it, but she was scared.

She had turned the newspaper back on at around four that morning and had kept the sound down to the barest minimum at which she could still hear it. Actually
, the volume was so low that at first she couldn’t hear much herself. But she knew that given a few minutes her ears would adjust, especially as there were no other sounds in the house and only the gentle patter of easing rain outside.

She lay back down on the couch
, watching the scene at the green. It was still dark there, and not a lot seemed to be happening. The civilian line seemed to be the only real activity that the broadcasters were interested in. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of an artificial light coming out from either the refreshment tents or from one of the tanks that were already there waiting. But the camera didn’t dwell on either, and even the reporter whose job it was to keep the subscriber interested sounded bored or tired or both. Slowly his voice became hypnotic to February as she lay there. She found it hard to keep her eyes open, and as soon as she closed them, she was asleep.