On Deadly Ground by Simon Clark
Chapter 125
I looked at my watch. It was perhaps a couple of hours until nightfall. That’s when they would come for us and shoot us like rats trapped in a tub.
The wind blew dust devils, sending them twisting across the black desert; the ash pittered down onto us. My throat felt as dry as the dirt I lay on. It was hot, too. I found myself thinking of ice cream. Tubs and tubs of ice cream. Neapolitan, pistachio, strawberry, black cherry, all creamy and cold as they slide down your dry throat. Or cornets from the ice cream man who used to drive from Boycott Drive into Trueman Way, playing a nerve-jangling version of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
And here we are: trapped in the crater.
Picture it: The crater’s big enough to swallow a car whole. It’s roughly two metres deep. I can stand at the bottom of the crater wall and just manage to peep over the top, my rifle at the ready. At the bottom of the crater, plum in the centre, is an opening the size of a rabbit hole. Steam rises from the hole, almost like steam blowing from the spout of a gently simmering kettle.
As likely as not, we stood in a crater formed by a geyser. Similar to the one that killed Caroline Lucas. I could hear a knocking sound, as if hot water, or even steam, was being forced along passageways beneath our feet. The more I looked down at it, the more convinced I was it was a geyser hole, one that would periodically discharge superheated steam under incredible pressure.
Disturbing as the notion was, I couldn’t allow that to distract me now. For the moment, the most pressing concern was the trigger-happy Jesus and his murdering gang.
‘I’m thirsty.’ Victoria pushed her heavy red hair from her face. ‘I want a drink.’
‘Join the club.’ I sighed. ‘I’ve got a packet of mints.’
She stared at me as if I was speaking pure Klingon.
I forced a smile. ‘Would you like one, Victoria?’
‘Please.’
‘Kate?’
Kate lay face down against the dirt wall of the crater, where she occasionally shot cautious glances out in the direction of where Jesus, Dean and the rest lay out of sight.
Kate glanced down at me. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and reached down as I held up the packet. A rifle cracked out a slug which zipped over the crater.
‘They’re not letting us forget they’re there in a hurry,’ I said, offering a mint to Victoria, then taking one myself.
‘What happened to your leg?’
I looked down at the burn holes in my jeans. ‘The ground gave way as we ran for the crater. I managed to stop falling all the way through.’
‘You’ve burnt your leg?’ She spoke in that simple direct way that managed to rub me up the wrong way. ‘Is it painful?’
I tried to stay cool. ‘Yes. It did burn my leg, Victoria. And, yes, it is painful.’
Another bullet smacked into the dirt on the crater rim.
‘But that, Victoria, is the least of our worries. Those bastards are shooting at us.’ I shook my head. ‘Dean? I can’t believe it. We were friends for ten years.’
‘How did you burn your leg?’ asked Victoria, eyes naively wide, twisting a ringlet of hair around her finger.
I sighed. ‘It’s just a thin crust of earth. You know, like a pie crust? The heat caused the earth below it to shrink. It’s formed a cavity. At the bottom of that the rocks are probably red hot.’
She nodded, repeating to herself, ‘Red hot.’
‘Yes…red fucking hot. Kate?’
‘Yes?’
‘See anything?’
‘Not yet. But it’s getting dark fast.’
‘Damn…’ I sighed. ‘All this way for it to end like this. Come on, Rick, you thick shit, think…think. There has to be a way out.’
‘Do you love Stephen?’
I looked at Victoria in surprise. ‘He’s my brother. Yes…I guess so.’
‘So do I.’ She spoke in suddenly frank way. ‘I was a virgin until I met him.’
‘Victoria.’ I suddenly felt uncomfortable. ‘There’s no need to—’
‘My family put me away when I was thirteen, you see. My father was a bishop. They said I behaved like I belonged to the Devil.’ She paused, then suddenly she said, ‘Dean’s right. You would make a better leader, you know?’
‘But Stephen was elected. He’s charismatic, clear-headed, he’ll—’
‘No,’ Victoria said crisply. ‘That man who calls himself Jesus. He would make a better leader than Stephen. But you would make a better leader than Jesus. Isn’t that right, Kate?’
Kate looked surprised by the conversation. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t thought—Victoria, careful—ouch.’
In one second Victoria reached out, cupped her hand around Kate’s ankle and pulled. Kate slithered to the bottom of the crater beside me.
Then Victoria scrambled up to the rim of the crater, saying quite coolly, ‘Walk due west for two hours. You can’t miss the ship. It stands in the middle of a plain.’
I stood up.
‘Victoria. Where the hell are you going? You’ll get your stupid head blown off…Victoria!’
She climbed out of the crater.
Gunshots.
Chapter 126
I climbed to the rim of the crater but still crouched down low. I looked up to see Victoria standing there defiantly, facing Jesus, Dean and the rest, her feet apart and firmly planted in the black ash.
I reached out, grabbed a fistful of her long skirt, ready to drag the damn fool back into the crater.
Then at least she wouldn’t get shot. Boiled alive, maybe; already spurts of steam were blasting from the fissure at the bottom of the crater. But not shot. From the corner of my eye I saw Kate trying to avoid them.
‘Victoria,’ I yelled. ‘Get down…they’ll kill you.’
A rifle cracked again. The bullet passed between her legs with a loud smacking sound, punching a hole through the heavy material of her skirt but just missing her inner thighs.
‘Victoria!’
I pulled at her skirt, but she was better balanced than I was. I began to work my feet up against the crumbly dirt wall of the crater. Once my feet were braced I could simply yank her back into the crater.
Of course, there was a chance the geyser might blow. But right now the biggest danger were those bullets which were likely to unzip her stupid skull any second now.
‘Victoria. Get back into this hole. We’ll shoot our way out if we have to. Give me a chance to think of some—’
A bullet clipped her forearm. A trickle of blood ran down her wrist, then branched off into a whole delta of rivulets down her palm; glistening blobs of crimson began to drip from her ringers into the ash.
I yelled at her in a kind of despairing rage. ‘You’ve been hit, Victoria…can’t you feel it? Victoria, stop…what the Hell are you doing?’
Before I could drag her back into the hole by her skirts she suddenly and decisively walked forward, pulling herself free from my grasp.
I slithered lower into the crater to watch what happened next.
She walked slowly away from the crater, her back to me. I watched her raise her hands slowly out at each side of her.
She was surrendering to Jesus and his gang.
The shooting stopped.
‘I haven’t got a gun,’ she called out to them. ‘I’m coming across to you.’
Jesus and the others weren’t taking any chances. They still lay flat. All I could see were the barrels of their guns poking above the rise in the ground.
I heard Jesus call to her. ‘Good girl, Victoria. I’m glad at least you’ve come to your senses. Not like those stupid bastards in the hole.’
Dean called out. ‘What about Kate and Rick? Are they coming out?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Why don’t you ask them?’
I couldn’t make out the reply exactly, but the tone of Dean’s sneering voice was enough for me.
I spoke to Kate in a low voice as she crawled up the crater wall to my side. ‘The moment I stand up
‘They might give you a chance to surrender.’
‘Not a hope in Hell. Even if I, and Stephen come to that, swore allegiance to Jesus and his tribe and went through his sordid little rituals they’d cut our throats the first chance they got.’
‘We can’t stay here, Rick. Touch the ground. Do you feel it?’
‘The vibration?’
She nodded. ‘The pressure’s building. And we’re sitting in nothing but a big blow hole.’
‘Christ, talk about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.’
‘We’ve got to do something…but for Godsakes what?’
‘We’ve got two choices,’ I said. ‘Stay here and be boiled alive when the steam comes blasting through, or shoot our way out. Any preferences?’
‘Either way doesn’t look good. What about Victoria?’
‘It looks as if she’s gone over to the other side. Probably she’ll end up as Dean’s woman now.’
I looked over the rim of the crater. Victoria was halfway from the crater to where the others lay, guns at the ready, just over the ridge of earth. The breeze blew at her long hair, it rippled the material of her long skirt. She looked as if she’d just stepped from an oil painting. You know, one of those big dramatic ones they’d hang at the top of flights of stairs in art galleries: beautiful stormswept woman in foreground, with that backdrop of burnt earth, mountains of black cloud split by forked lightning.
Crump!
Half a kilometre away a geyser erupted from the ground, flinging a column of boiling water a hundred metres into the air. Steam billowed, then wafted across that black plain like a ghost.
‘Here it comes,’ I said in a grim voice. ‘There’s probably a whole network of subterranean chambers filled with boiling water. It won’t be long before this one blows.’ I glanced across at Victoria. ‘There is option three.’ I looked back at Kate.
‘What’s that?’
‘You could join Victoria. They wouldn’t kill you.’
‘No, but you know what they’ll do to Victoria? And what they’d do to me if I join her?’
‘They might not—’
‘Don’t kid yourself, Rick. There’d be a gang rape first, then what? Slavery? Until I proved myself as a worthy wife for one of them? You think I want that, Rick?’
I shook my head. ‘But we’re going to have to decide in the next five minutes. Shoot our way out; or wait here. And I really think that geyser’s on its way.’
Kate’s green eyes locked on mine.
I squeezed her hand. ‘What’s it to be, Kate?’
‘We’ve been together five weeks.’ She gave a grim smile. ‘I think I could cope with being with you for the rest of eternity. What about you?’
My mouth dried. I managed a nod. ‘Maybe it’s best if we…what the hell is that woman doing?’
It was as I was speaking to Kate that I heard shouting.
Victoria had almost reached Jesus and the others. But now she stood about ten paces from them.
‘What the heck is she doing?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘Christ, she must be mad after all. Just look at her!’
‘She’s just standing there, stamping her feet.’ I sighed. ‘Crazy, crazy woman.’
‘What are they shouting at her?’
‘As far as I can make out they’re telling her to get behind them and lie down out of the line of fire in case we start shooting.’
The shouting continued. They were yelling at Victoria to move forward; I saw hands gesture for her to move but she stood there stamping the ground. Each time her foot came down it sent up a puff of black ash. I though for a moment one of them would jump up and pull her down behind the ridge of earth but they weren’t taking any chances. Kate and I had our rifles at the ready.
I glanced back down into the bottom of the crater: boiling water had started to well up from the fissure. It bubbled and spat as the pressure built up behind it. Any second now a ton of boiling water could blast through there, tearing the skin from our bodies.
I remembered what had happened to Caroline Lucas. I shivered.
I looked back to where Victoria was performing her weird stamping dance, like a surreal version of a Spanish Flamenco, her hands still held high. This time I heard Dean Skilton’s voice. ‘Come on, you stupid bitch! Move! I’ll give you to the count of three, then I’m going to drop you!’
Victoria paid no attention. She moved back, still stamping every pace or so. She held her head to one side as if listening to the sound her foot made.
She moved further back, still listening, still stamping.
Then I saw she was only a dozen paces from the hole I’d made when I fell through the crust of earth.
‘Oh, God,’ I breathed, ‘I know what she’s going to do.’
Kate shot me a look. ‘What? She’s—’
‘Victoria!’ I yelled. ‘ Victoria! No!’
The others realized, too. I saw Dean kneel up from behind the dirt ridge. He held both Beretta pistols high and fired them into Victoria’s body.
I saw the bullets thudding into her. She staggered back. Still she held out her arms at either side even though the agony of the bullets tearing into her stomach must have been excruciating.
Then she stumbled forward. I thought she’d fall flat on her face but she regained her balance, her head swinging back upright, whipping back that long red hair.
Then she gave one almighty stamp with her foot.
‘Christ…’
I watched, my eyes wide, my heart thumping.
The whole surface of the ground, from the hole I’d made falling through the baked crust to beyond the ridge of earth, began to sag.
It seemed to sag in one piece as if the ground had turned into rubber and Victoria’s weight pulled it downwards into a concave shape like a bowl.
I heard screams, panicky shouts as Jesus, Dean and the other men scrambled to their feet to try and escape what would happen next.
They were too late. The baked soil that covered the hollow subterranean chamber broke like it was thin ice on a lake.
Instantly there was an uprush of sparks from the fire pit beneath them.
I watched as the crust fractured as if in slow motion. Then it collapsed, dropping the screaming men into the pit. Red sparks streamed upward.
Victoria had gone, too. I saw her simply drop straight down into the fire, her hair blowing out behind her. She wasn’t screaming.
Then they were gone.
Chapter 127
‘They’re all dead?’ Kate watched me as I backed gingerly away from the pit.
‘They must be. That’s the closest I can get. The heat’s terrific.’ My face smarted. It was like trying to put your face too close to a furnace.
‘It would have been quick?’
‘Instantaneous. Not that Jesus, or whatever his real name was, deserved it. Dean, too. They deserved to slowly roast after what they planned to do to us.’
‘You think they would really have killed us?’
‘No doubt about it. Stephen, too, and anyone else who didn’t submit to him totally. As Jesus said, we were two tribes trying to live in the same space. It just wouldn’t work.’
‘What now?’
‘With Jesus dead I suppose his people must join ours, accept Stephen as their leader.’
‘Come on,’ Kate said, rubbing her arm anxiously, ‘let’s get out of here; before that thing blows.’
I looked back at the geyser crater; steam now filled it, giving it the appearance of a witch’s cauldron. White vapour spilled over the rim.
We turned our back on it and headed west.
After a while Kate said, ‘How did Victoria know the ground was so thin there?’
‘She’d have seen where I almost fell through the crust into the pit. It was like thin ice.’
‘When she was stamping her foot, she was listening for the hollow sound, wasn’t she?’
‘She was,’ I agreed. ‘But I
Kate gave me a knowing look. ‘Saved your life, you mean.’
‘My life?’
‘She thought you should be leader. She made that pretty clear. It seemed logical to her that in order for that to happen she should sacrifice her own life.’
‘There’s no answer to that. Her brain worked in a mysterious way. I’m thankful, eternally thankful to her, but as far as I’m concerned Stephen’s in charge. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’
A kilometre behind us, whatever destructive spirit resides within the Earth had its own say. With a rumble that vibrated the ground beneath our feet the geyser at last burst through the crater where we had sheltered. A plume of boiling water spurted to stand as high as a ten-storey building before showering down onto the ground where it splashed a curtain of black dust high into the air.
Chapter 128
The ground sloped gently downwards before levelling out into a plain. It stretched out in front of us; a seemingly limitless expanse of black dirt, totally flat, totally featureless apart from the warship.
The warship sat there, looking absurdly out of place in that arid desert.
There were no signs of buildings or roads or fields. Everything made by man had vanished. Visitors from another world might gaze coolly down from their spaceships and surmise there never had been life here on this barren plain. Everything, but everything, had been swept away by the tidal wave. The same tidal wave that had carried the huge ship far inland from the ocean. Then the sea had rolled back again, leaving the ship high and dry.
What would that wave have looked like? Thundering towards you across once-dry land?
I pictured it all (believe me, I tried not to, but images oozed bright as TV pictures into my mind). I pictured horrified men and women staring out in disbelief from the windows of their homes as the tidal wave approached. I pictured the wave itself. Which was—what? Thirty kilometres wide? Five hundred metres high?
Vividly—terrifyingly vividly—I could see it thundering across the landscape, propelled by the vast explosions somewhere deep in the ocean. I saw the wall of green water moving faster than an express train. I saw it turning creamy white as it curled like the perfect surfing wave of Colossus himself. That monstrous body of water would roar across the land with the destructive force of Jehovah’s own bulldozer, scraping from the face of the planet forests, topsoils, hills, roads, houses, factories, schools—even whole cities. Millions must have died.