Walking through the cemetery was the last thing Lucy remembered clearly. After that, she mostly remembered lots of water, and the confusion as it reared up in front of her, impossibly massive, and so far inland. What a pity, she thought. So soon after the last flood, when we were just getting back on our feet. And as the absurdity of that thought hit her, so did the wave. Suddenly she was trying to swim, and there were dislodged tombstones floating in the water, slamming into each other, and then into her, and then she was dead, and in a strange version of Rhyl town centre without any litter or dog dirt or tourists.
She found herself at the back of a long queue, most of whom had suffered horrible injuries: there was a man with a road sign sticking out of his chest, and a woman in a hard hat who was so pierced with nails that she looked like a hedgehog. Everybody seemed slightly out of focus. Lucy brought a hand up to her face and saw that she was too. In front of her were three younger girls with pale skin and blue lips.
‘Here, Jen, what’s going on?’ said one. She had a hard face, and greasy blonde hair.
‘Dunno, Sal,’ said Jen. ‘I think we might be in Heaven or something.’
‘Looks like Rhyl to me, Jen. A rubbish Rhyl, without a shopping centre or a Greggs or anything else good.’
The third girl, a slight redhead, laughed nervously.
‘Maybe it’s not Heaven then. Maybe this is the queue to get into Heaven,’ said Jen.
‘Do you think we’ll get in?’ said Sal.
‘Course. We’re under eighteen. They got to let you in if you’re under eighteen. It’s the law. We’re definitely dead though, because I remember the big wave round the back of the cinema and I can’t swim.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucy. ‘I think I drowned too. I was at the cemetery, and now I’m here.’
The girls stopped talking and looked Lucy up and down. The redhead giggled.
‘Oh my God. Are you, like, talking to me?’ said Jen. ‘She is, isn’t she?’
‘That is well embarrassing,’ said Sal. ‘Are you some sort of emo or something then?’
‘No. I’m Lucy. It’s nice to meet you.’ She extended her hand.
‘Loser,’ snorted Jen, and turned round. ‘So what do you reckon Heaven will be like? I bet everyone gets a boyfriend as soon as they get there. And an iPad.’
Death gathered her mists into legions and platoons. She could not quite believe she was doing it. She was usually the result of fighting, not the cause of it. This was War’s area of expertise. But when she started to think about her fellow Horsemen she got angry, and decided that anger was probably all you needed for a war. Then she looked at her sorry bunch of mists, and thought: anger, and someone else to fight for you.
Although the death rate had rocketed, very few of the freshly killed were coming to the Afterworld. The Apocalypse was doing very little for the recruitment of new atheists, and the ones that did turn up were hardly spoiling for a fight. It seemed that the most bloodthirsty and fervent army of all time would be facing the kind of people you would want on a protest march, but who would not have been much use at, say, the Somme. Unless some poems needed writing.
Death lined her army up on the ridge nearest to the Underworld. She was not sure where the war would be coming from, but she knew that waiting for it at the bottom of a valley was probably not that smart. She had hoped that they would not be needed, but when the Seventh Blast sounded, she knew it would not be long before the demons and their boy returned. She mounted her horse, and turned to address her troops.
‘It seems that you were right all along, all you naysayers. There is no Prime One.’ This got a massive cheer, and Death felt an uncharacteristic shiver of excitement pass through her. ‘This is not the Apocalypse. It is a coup, engineered by extremists. And now their army is coming here to end us, and if they are successful they will go on to destroy everything in existence.’
This didn’t get a cheer, and Death suddenly felt a little less confident, which was also a new sensation for her. If she had one characteristic, it was certainty. ‘I don’t want you to think that we don’t have a chance though, even if we are just mists and they are flesh and angry and are filled with a supernatural zeal for ending mists who disagree with them.’
The mists seemed even less happy at this. Afraid that she might be losing them, she thought back to all those noble last words that had been uttered over the years, and saw a way through. Rhetoric, that was the trick, which in her mind just meant more exclamation marks. ‘I say that being mist is your greatest advantage! You can move in ways they cannot! They cannot hurt you, because you are already dead! And best of all, you can do this!’
She raised one clenched fist in the air. Her scythe appeared, and a huge roar of excitement blasted back at her. ‘Think of a weapon, and the fog will reform to place it in your hand!’
The mists cheered. Exclamation marks, thought Death. That’s all it is.
As the mists excitedly tried out their previously unknown talent for making weapons appear – she saw one man manifest a tank, which immediately squished him – the demons and their boy appeared on the opposite ridge.
‘You failed,’ said Death once they were in earshot. It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Yeah, well, you did a great job of holding on to all the dead, didn’t you?’ said Kartofel.
‘At least I have an army,’ said Death. ‘What about you?’
‘Call that an army?’
‘They’re ready,’ said Death. ‘See how they eat out of my hand!’ She turned back to her troops, and gestured for silence. ‘And now we will show them what it means to mess with the Dead!’ she yelled, raising her scythe in the air, expecting another roar.
A worried murmur passed through the crowd. The mists fidgeted nervously. Some of them looked away. Kartofel cackled.
A crazed ululating battle cry rang out, and they turned to see what had worried the mists. War was standing on the other side of the valley, drenched in blood, his eyes the only specks of white on his whole body. As the battle cry died out, he cackled with glee. ‘Here we come! The last battle! The ultimate army! The greatest war of all time! Awesome!’
‘What a wally,’ said Kartofel.
‘That much we can agree on,’ said Death.
The heads of the Zealous Army of Martyrs appeared over the crest of the hill, stretched out over the length of the horizon: it was not possible to look on them all at once, for they were wider than any one field of vision, and this was just their front line. The air filled with a rumble of undead feet.
The Afterworld army immediately broke ranks, becoming a shapeless fog so thick that it became hard to see anything at all.
‘Fall in! Stay in ranks! The only chance we have is if we stay in ranks!’ Death bawled. ‘We’re here to defend this world, and defend it we will!’
The mists settled instantly, reformed, and once again became organized into rows. Death folded her arms and looked at Kartofel.
‘Fair dos,’ he muttered. ‘So what’s the plan?’
‘We let them pour into the valley,’ said Death. ‘They’ll have to climb the slope to get at us, and hopefully that will tire them out.’
‘Have we got a better plan? One that doesn’t rely on zombies getting tired?’
‘I think that’s a good plan,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll go back to Pandemonium. Hopefully The Opposition can send reinforcements.’
‘What about us?’ said Djinn. ‘Can’t we come?’
‘No. You three will need to fight. If they push us back to the Veil, the mists won’t be able to pass it. We’ll be penned in. We need to hold the ridge.’
On the other side of the valley, War had watched the chaos in the opposing army with a hungry smile. Then he watched Death pull them back into order incredibly quickly, which ruined the moment for him a little bit. She wasn’t supposed to be going off organizing armies. That was his job. She was supposed to clean up after him. Fair enough, he had sort of betrayed her, but that didn’t give her the right to start fighting wars. He responded with a bloodcurdling cry (although his opponents had no blood to curdle).
‘CHAAAAAAAARRRRRRGE!’
Lucy and the girls had progressed to the head of the queue. An old man with a bulbous nose, a bushy white beard and a bald head was sat at a small writing desk. He wore a black suit with a high white collar and was using a quill to check off names on a long scroll. On either side of him were a number of zombie clerics, each one representing a different religion.
‘Good afternoon,’ said the man as the three girls stepped forward. ‘My name is Charles, and I am the Classification Officer for this ward. Ahead of you are two choices: eternal paradise, or an existence of everlasting worry and doubt. Should you choose eternal paradise, there are representatives of your chosen religion on hand to discuss your onward journey according to belief system, whether that involves absolving you of your sins, some sort of trial, or paying the ferryman. If the latter is applicable we have a variety of attractive loan packages.’ He dunked the quill in his inkwell and held it over the parchment. ‘Now, do you believe in an all-powerful Creator or Creators, whatever name you know Him, Her or Them by?’
‘I’ve got a cross, if that’s any good,’ said Jen. ‘It’s more of a fashion thing though . . .’
‘Fear not. You shall be filled with a complimentary blinding righteous zeal on recruitment. What say you? Paradise, or barren waste ground of tormented souls?’
‘Paradise,’ said Jen.
‘Paradise,’ said Sal.
The redhead sniggered.
‘Three for paradise,’ said Jen.
‘Step to the right, please, good ladies. Welcome to the Zealous Army of the Martyrs. May the Prime One or Ones go with you, depending on your personal faith journey.’
‘Army?’ said Sal. ‘What d’you mean, army?’
The girls were ushered to one side by a smiling undead priest, and led away. Charles made a note on the scroll, and beckoned Lucy forward.
‘Good afternoon. My name is Charles and I am—’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lucy. ‘I heard you tell those girls. I’m Lucy.’
Charles looked down at the scroll. ‘I know. What say you?’
‘Well, I have a few questions first . . .’
Charles slapped his head and ran his hand slowly down his face. ‘Another one for the waste ground of tormented souls,’ he shouted. Lucy opened her mouth to protest, but before she could say a word there was a soft popping noise, and she was gone.
Ben tore back through the ranks, bursting through gaps and leaping over heads. As they neared the Veil, he looked back over his shoulder and saw just how vast the angels’ army was. And although the horde charging towards the relatively thin band of fog was scary, there was a small part of him that couldn’t help seeing an army of ghosts about to battle an army of zombies without thinking it was kind of cool. If only Tegwyn could see me now, he thought. And then another thought hit him: he probably can.
Lucy had become a creature of fog. And somehow she had ended up shoulder to shoulder with fog versions of the Grand Druid, and flippin’ Tegwyn Price. And then, in the distance, she had seen an army of zombies and before she knew it she was holding a long green staff in her hand, and she realized that she was in a war.
She looked around her and saw that her fellow fog-druids were also equipped with inexplicable weapons. Tegwyn was armed with a long bronze shield emblazoned with an eagle’s head, and the Grand Druid had somehow gained a green wizard’s hat. Everywhere she looked new fog-people were materializing, and they had weapons too: spatulas, hedge trimmers, shovels. One small boy was armed with a barbarian’s club, his older sister with just a cloak. Confusion reigned, and as Lucy looked out over the fog she could see panic lapping over the army, breezing backwards through the ranks. She looked at her fellow warriors, and their massively inappropriate weapons, and could not help but think that perhaps panic was the most sensible option.
In the heart of the disarray, a young woman with pale green hair and a horse to match raised her arm, and the rippling waves of panic that were thrusting up towards them suddenly stopped. The fog-people in front of them refocused, and began to steel themselves behind the girl on the horse.
‘Nnnn,’ said Tegwyn, ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘What?’ said the Grand Druid.
‘We’re just going to wait for them to charge, are we? It doesn’t make sense. Whoever that silly girl on the horse is, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
‘I’m sure she’s doing her best, Teg. It’s not an easy situation, obviously for anyone. It’s caught us all a bit unawares, hasn’t it? One minute you’re reading up about pagan birthing rituals, the next you’re dead and preparing to fight in a battle loosely based on Judeo-Christian myth. I checked the woodland auguries just this morning and they didn’t say anything about this.’
Tegwyn screwed up his face in annoyance.
‘You think you can do better, do you?’ said Lucy.
‘We need experience,’ said Tegwyn. ‘Since there don’t appear to be any genuine warmagi here, we’ll have to pass to the artillery phase. Strategy, that’s ninety per cent of what war is.’
‘Oh, shut up, Tegwyn,’ said Lucy.
‘Nnnn,’ said Tegwyn, and muttered something extremely sexist under his breath.
A grey blur suddenly leaped over their heads, shaking the ground as it landed. They all looked behind them in time to see a massive furry creature dash away with a teenage boy on its back.
‘What was that?’ said the Grand Druid.
‘This is going to sound weird,’ said Lucy, ‘but it looked a bit like Ben Robson riding a giant rabbit.’
‘Nnnn,’ said Tegwyn. ‘As if.’
The Martyrs had slammed into the Afterworld army with zeal, ripping and tearing at the mists until they evaporated in an anticlimactic hiss of steam. Death barked out orders quickly and often, hoping to distract her troops from any shock they might feel at seeing that they could be torn apart so easily.
Fortunately, the martyrs were not that hard to kill either. Their bodies were already decaying, and so it was easy to separate them from their heads. Death was enjoying that part of it, swooping her scythe around in wide circles, beheading zealots. The only trouble was that they were outnumbered, that and the fact that for every mist killed the air became heavy with steam. Not only did it make it hard for her to see, it also condensed whenever it touched her skin. Soon she was dripping in a sweat of departed spirits, and the wetter she got, the further back they were pushed, closer and closer to the edge of the Afterworld.
‘Nnnn, I’ve had enough of this,’ said Tegwyn as he narrowly missed being evaporated by a Saracen. ‘I’m going to the front. If this was Warmonger she’d be facing a mutiny trial by now. We need to attack their flanks.’
‘What flanks?’ said Lucy as she shoved the end of her staff into a Vestal Virgin’s eye. ‘They’re everywhere.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re not a gamer,’ said Tegwyn.
‘Actually, I know exactly what you’re talking about. You take the number of casualties in an engagement by and subtract it from the army’s loyalty score. Then, using three dice, you have to roll equal or less than that number to avoid your army running away. Somehow I don’t think that applies here.’
‘Nnnn,’ said Tegwyn. He ducked a blow from a passing Zulu warrior and made a dash for it. Before long he was recklessly running over the terrain, dodging blows from mist-thirsty zealots.
Lucy sighed. ‘There’s always some idiot who wants to copy what they’ve read in a book or played in some game somewhere, isn’t there? I suppose we’d better go after him.’
‘Idiot, Lucy? That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?’ said the Grand Druid. ‘I know Teg can be a bit, well . . .’ He was interrupted by amartyr dressed completely in tartan waving a mace in his direction. Without thinking, Lucy thrust her staff upward at a sharp angle, and took the martyr’s head clean off.
‘Let’s worry about being polite after the war, shall we?’
There was one small part of the Afterworld where the Martyrs were making no progress at all. No matter how many of them charged up the hill, they could not press beyond what was now technically the Afterworld front line, although line is a very strong word for three demons fighting more or less back-to-back. They were so successful, in fact, that their opponents had started to swerve away from them, which says a lot for blind faith: when it meets an obstacle it does tend to find a tricksy way round it.
‘This is rather fun,’ said Orff, as Legion turned into a rhinoceros and skewered four marauding monks on its horn. Then it changed into a thousand wasps, dumping the four bodies unceremoniously on the floor while simultaneously attacking a whole group of Teutonic Knights.
Alf swooped his head forward and gulped down several attackers in one go, making a little runway for Djinn to wisp into. He expanded his girth to absorb six Aztec priests, then contracted suddenly, knocking them together so that bits of them fell off.
‘Told you so,’ said Kartofel as Talullah incinerated a whole platoon of Spanish Inquisitors. ‘All those years of whining. All you needed was a little bit of healthy destruction. Does you the world of good.’
Death pulled hard on the horse’s reins, and swung the scythe round. A row of rotting cavaliers were sliced in half just before they could lunge at the group of mists fighting nearest to her. The horse reared up, and they changed direction, heading for the next closest band of mists in peril.
‘Nnnn, you there,’ yelled a voice from behind her. She lopped off the heads of a couple of Spartans and turned to see a mist scrambling toward her carrying nothing but a shield. Behind him, doing an excellent job of preventing his evaporation, were two more: a young woman with a long staff, and a portly man in a wizard’s hat. ‘Nnnn. What do you think you’re playing at? We should be in retreat, or else we should be turning!’
Death’s brow furrowed. An axe thudded into her thigh, as if she were a ham on a butcher’s block. The sound she made was more out of shock than pain. Her attacker, a stern fat-faced little man, was clumsy: he had a crazed look of righteous indignation on his face, but he lacked experience. He frantically yanked at his axe, trying to dislodge it.
Death swore. (She had quite an impressive vocabulary of swear words, thanks to her presence at the scene of so many accidents.) The man put his foot against her horse’s flank and pulled with all his strength. She felt herself begin to topple, and before she knew it she had let go of her scythe and was on the ground. She landed on top of her attacker, pressing the axe deeper into her thigh. She flailed at the man, only stopping when she was sure he wouldn’t be able to axe anybody ever again.
‘And now you’ve gone and lost your horse,’ said the mist with the shield. ‘That’s like losing a standard bearer. Shoddy.’
‘Excuse him,’ said the young woman. ‘He’s a sexist idiot. I think you’re doing a great job. Cool hair, by the way.’
‘Are you trying to lose us the war?’ yelled Death. She yanked the axe from her thigh, and it came away cleanly. The indentation (for ‘wound’ seemed too grand a name) fizzed a little. Steam rose from it, and it was healed.
A zealot wearing a Welsh Guards uniform blundered out of the mist. Death swung the axe in an upward curve, literally disarming him before felling him as she brought it down.
‘What do you say to that then, Teg?’ said the mist with the staff.
‘Nnnn, I could do that if I had an axe,’ said Teg.
‘You could have,’ said Death. ‘Think of it, and it will be in your hand. Don’t you know anything?’ She demonstrated by making a new scythe appear.
Teg’s shield reformed itself into a huge axe, and he promptly fell over from the weight of it. The mist with the staff started to laugh, and even Death allowed herself a smile. It was a moment soon cut short, for a mob of angry villagers and townsfolk charged out of the fog. A man in dungarees and a straw hat thrust his pitchfork at them. Death dodged it, and instead the blow stabbed Teg in the backside, and with a steamy fssst he was gone.
Death called out for her horse. The mist with the staff had now become the mist with the spear, and her companion had gained a bow. The three of them stood back to back as the villagers circled them, farming implements jabbing out of the steam. They were surrounded.
Their enemies did not get much time to sport with them, however. There was a great beating of wings, and the gas demon and his gannet landed in the middle of the circle and gobbled down the front row of attackers. Seconds later, the other two demons joined them, and they had enough breathing space to rejoin the main army.
Heartened, Death cried out, ‘Let’s show them what we are made of!’
Nearby, a philosopher was evaporated by an angry conquistador.
‘I think they already know,’ said Kartofel.