Creeping Terror (11 page)

T
HE INSIDE OF THE TANK WAS ALIVE. LIKE A single creature, the foliage and greenery, the branches and leaves, swung round towards the open hatch. Faster than Ben could have imagined, a length of branch shot upwards, stabbing towards him.

He tried to move, lost his balance and fell. The tank lurched beneath him. The branch disappeared back inside as the tank crashed through a low wall and tore across the grass. Ben was jolted forward, falling. He reached out his arms to stop himself tumbling inside the tank, into the greenery. His right hand connected painfully with the first aid box, knocking the clasp. As the box fell open, bandages and tubes of cream and field dressings fell out.

And something else. Ben’s scrabbling hand closed on something cold and metallic. Instinctively he grabbed it – a gun.

Then he felt strong hands on his shoulders, heaving him back up and out of the hatch. Knight pulled him clear and they both fell backwards – just as a mass of ivy poured out of the hatch, like water boiling over on a stove.

The gun was chunky and crude, with a very wide barrel. Ben hadn’t seen anything like it before. It looked more like an old toy than a real gun.

‘Flare pistol,’ Knight shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Might be useful to signal for help. Only one shot, though, so let’s not waste it.’

Ben stuffed the flare pistol into the pocket of his ragged jacket.

‘Now what?’ he yelled back.

The ivy was still boiling out of the hatch, trailing towards them. It coiled and writhed, dragging itself forward.

‘Nothing we can do here. Time we were going,’ Knight decided. ‘We’ll have to jump for it.’

He took Ben’s hand and together they leapt from the moving vehicle. The impact of their landing shook Ben’s hand out of Knight’s. He rolled and tumbled. The tank wasn’t moving fast, but it was a long way down. The grass beneath Ben was pulling at him like Velcro, hooking into his clothes and tearing at his skin.

Ben staggered to his feet and ran for the nearest safety – the narrow road the tank was still rumbling along.

‘It’s heading out of the village again,’ Knight said, joining Ben. His face was scratched and his jacket was in shreds. ‘Taking the curse of the Green Man, or whatever you want to call it, on to pastures new. We have to stop this before it spreads too far.’

The shelling hadn’t stopped. The noise of the tank had simply deadened the sound of the explosions in the village. Some small areas of vegetation had been hit and were burning, but the tanks were aiming at the buildings not the jungle. Smoke rose above the swaying trees, turning the sky to a gunmetal grey. The already ruined buildings were little more than piles of rubble. There was only one structure still standing high enough for Ben to see it properly.

‘Why haven’t they been shooting at the church tower?’ he said.

‘I was just wondering the same thing,’ Knight said. ‘I think we should find out.’

Getting to the church was a nightmare. The entire landscape was coming to life. The grass under Ben’s feet clawed and tore at him. The trees and
bushes lashed out as he passed. Branches whipped at his face, while creepers and tendrils fought to ensnare him.

They kept to open ground as much as they could, not daring to pause for breath or even slow down as they ran for the distant tower that stood proud and defiant against the smoke-filled sky.

The churchyard was a wasteland of ragged tombstones and writhing, overgrown grass. Ben pushed through the broken remains of a wall. Knight, who was close behind him, paused to rip brambles away before they could grab him.

Ben braced himself, then charged into a tangle of undergrowth. His foot twisted awkwardly on a lump of stone buried in the thrashing grass and weeds. Knight arrived beside him, also stumbling and grabbing Ben’s shoulder for support.

‘From the wall,’ Knight said, kicking at a large piece of pale stone.

They waded through the clawing vegetation, tearing free of the clutching grass.

‘That’s
not from the wall,’ Ben said.

Half buried in the churning grass was a head. A head carved from stone. The chipped, weathered face stared up at Ben through blank eyes. One side
of it had been smashed away – recently, since the stone here was pale and unblemished.

‘There’s more,’ Knight said.

He was right. Ben could now see a fractured body – part of the same statue or a different one? Another broken head, lying beside a mossy gravestone … A section of leg … An arm poking up like a pale branch …

A head and shoulders stuck out from the ground further on. The crucifix was still just discernible at the figure’s ancient neck.

‘I think we found where the Puritans dumped the statues of the saints after they smashed them,’ Knight said.

A shout from further into the churchyard drew their attention. Maria was standing with her sword raised. She waved it to attract their attention, the blade gleaming.

‘Over here,’ she called.

She then ran towards them, hacking aside the brambles and tangled grass that tried to impede her progress. She forged a path they could follow back to where Gemma was standing beside a large pile of dark earth.

‘We found the Memento Mori grave,’ Gemma told Knight as he and Ben joined the others.

Growl was digging with a short-handled spade. The edge of the blade had rusted away, but despite the earlier rain the ground was dry and powdery. He had dug deep, standing in a pit almost up to his shoulders. Rupam was working with him, scraping away loose soil in a metal fire bucket and chucking it up on to a growing pile above.

Maria stood ready with the sword, constantly watching for any movement from the plants and undergrowth round them.

‘Enough,’ Growl told Rupam. He leaned his spade against the steep side of the pit and scrabbled at the floor with his bare hands. ‘I think this is it.’ He looked up for a moment at Knight, Ben and Gemma, who were all staring down into the pit. ‘The coffin has decayed, of course. We found a few splinters of wood. Fragments, nothing more. But this …’

Growl teased something pale from the earth with his fingers. It was a human skull. The jaw was missing and it was stained with age.

‘There’s this too,’ Rupam said. He had found the broken hilt of a sword.

‘Memento Mori,’ Knight said. ‘Anything else? Any sign of the Crystal?’

Growl carefully replaced the skull where he had 
found it. He took the remains of the sword from Rupam and laid that down too.

Rupam gave a sudden yell, leaping back as Maria’s sword flashed through the air towards him. But he was not the target. A sinewy root broke out from the earth at the side of the grave pit, stabbing towards him. The sword cut through it easily and the root fell to the bottom of the grave. It twitched for a moment, then was still.

Growl seemed not to have noticed. He had found something else. It looked like a pouch or a small bag made of dark leather. It was torn and scuffed and falling to pieces. And in the muted light of the pit, it seemed to be glowing.

‘The Crystal?’ Ben wondered.

‘Open it,’ Gemma urged.

Growl tipped the small bag up, emptying it into the palm of his hand. In among the loose soil and torn bits of the bag’s lining, something burned with a pale white light. Growl let the soil and debris scatter through his fingers. He was left with an object about the size of a golf ball, but faceted and gleaming with inner luminescence.

‘Holy Crystal!’ Maria said.

‘Indeed,’ Growl told her. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger, gazing deep into the
glowing heart. Then he let it fall into his palm and tossed it up to Knight.

‘Diablo’s Crystal,’ Knight agreed.

‘It’s glowing,’ Ben said. ‘Does that mean it’s working? That it’s doing whatever it’s supposed to be doing?’

‘In that case, why are the plants going wild?’ Rupam asked, clambering out of the pit, then reaching down to help Growl scramble up after him.

‘A good question, young man,’ Growl said.

They all stared in fascination at the Crystal now resting in Knight’s palm. Sam leaned forward, her hand on Ben’s shoulder, to get a better look.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ he murmured.

‘Sorry,’ she said out loud. ‘Would you rather I wasn’t here?’

‘You’re not,’ he
almost
said.

‘Have you told Growl about the saints?’ Sam asked. She obviously knew he hadn’t. ‘Tell him about the saints.’

‘What about the saints?’ Ben asked her, more loudly than he had intended.

‘What saints?’ Growl asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Knight, slipping the glowing Crystal into his jacket pocket. ‘Probably not
important, but it might interest you to know that we stumbled – literally – over the broken-up statues from the church tower.’

Growl frowned. ‘Where?’

Ben pointed. ‘Over there. Only …’ There was something in the back of his mind that wasn’t right. He tried to remember exactly how the broken stones had looked.

‘But if they were removed hundreds of years ago,’ Gemma said, ‘how come they’re still here? Wouldn’t someone have taken them away by now?’

That was it. ‘They weren’t though, were they?’ He remembered the clean, new break down the side of one of the heads. ‘It’s recent. It has to be. That’s why this is all happening now, isn’t it?’

Sam was nodding. ‘Has to be,’ she agreed, though no one else heard her.

‘If the statues were recently moved, their spell over the Green Man was broken,’ Growl said, thinking it through. ‘The Crystal alone isn’t enough to keep everything in check. But who removed the statues and why?’

‘Greene,’ Ben realised. ‘When we got through the barrier, one of the soldiers said something about Greene vandalising the church.’ He turned
to Rupam. ‘What did he say exactly? Do you remember?’

Rupam nodded. ‘Of course. He said …’ The boy stared thoughtfully into the distance as he recalled the conversation. ‘He said, “I don’t know what Colonel Greene’s got against that village. But pretty soon it’ll be nothing but rubble …” Then Ben asked what he meant and he said, “He’s had it in for that place ever since he spent a week there alone on survival training, a couple of months back. First he had his men vandalise the church – now this.”’

‘“This” meaning the tanks,’ Ben explained. ‘And vandalising the church – that must be it. Didn’t he tell us he’d camped out in the churchyard or something?’

‘If Greene was here, in the churchyard for a while, he might have been infected. Possessed,’ Knight said.

Growl nodded. ‘If he was susceptible. His name suggests an ancestral link of some sort to the ancient priests and elders who worshipped the Green Man. And so the Green Man was presented with someone he could use to remove the blocks on his power. Despite those blocks, he managed to get inside Greene’s mind and persuade him to remove the statues and break them up. To start
the process of setting him free. With every statue Greene broke up, the power over him grew …’

‘We can hardly put the broken statues back together again,’ Maria pointed out.

‘But we can destroy the church tower,’ Growl told them. ‘It used to be the force that held the Green Man back, when the statues of the saints were intact. Now it’s become a symbol of his supremacy and his freedom now the statues have gone.’

‘Which is why the tanks are not firing on it,’ Ben realised.

‘Destroying the rest of the village,’ Knight agreed. ‘Returning that to nature, but preserving its own source of power and influence.’

His words were punctuated by the distant thunder of an explosion.

‘It won’t take them much longer,’ Gemma said.

‘And then the tanks will roll out of the village and keep going, taking the Green Man with them,’ Ben said. ‘Nowhere will be safe.’ In his mind’s eye he could see again the horrifying contents of the tank – a weapon of destruction driven by a force of nature …

‘The natives are getting restless,’ Maria said.

All around them the grass was twisting and leaning as if in a breeze. Trees swayed and thrashed.

‘To the tower,’ Growl ordered. ‘Quickly.’

‘But how can we destroy a church tower?’ Ben asked.

His words were lost in the noise all around them.

‘It knows what we’re saying, what we’re planning,’ Knight shouted. ‘How can that be?’

Growl shook his head. ‘It senses something, certainly. We must hurry.’

Together they ran towards the tower. It was like running into the wind while wading through deep water. The tower was dark and forbidding, rising up over the churchyard. The church itself looked small and fragile by comparison.

Maria hacked her way through the thickening jungle of plants. Ben and the others forced their way through after her. The sound of the approaching tanks grew louder and closer with every second that passed.

Ben was near enough now to see the alcoves in the sides of the tower, where the statues of the saints had stood. The carved foliate heads – the representations of the Green Man – were still there. Hideous, misshapen faces stared out from the midst of carved wreaths of foliage. Blank eyes watched sightlessly from a mass of leaves and stems, stained green by the damp years.

Except that the eyes were not blank or sightless. They were intent, staring at Ben and his friends with malevolent life. The faces looked down on them, snarling in rage – just like the face Ben had seen inside the tank.

T
HE WALL OF FOLIAGE WAS BULGING AGAIN. The noise was deafening. A huge battle tank tore through the undergrowth, its tracks shredding grass and branches.

Ben was standing right in front of it, frozen to the spot. He felt someone grab his shoulders and drag him away. The two of them fell, the tank crashing past just a metre away. He saw Gemma and Rupam leaping for cover on the other side. Growl and Knight were also rolling clear. Twisting round, Ben saw with surprise that it was Maria who had saved him.

She got to her feet and retrieved her fallen sword. ‘Don’t mention it,’ she yelled above the sound of the disappearing tank.

There was a massive straggly hedge around them. No sign of the others.

‘It’s trying to keep us from the tower,’ Ben said. ‘Oh, and yes – thanks.’

Maria forced a quick smile. ‘We need to get back to the others. There’s no way we can destroy the church tower on our own.’

‘There’s no way we can destroy the church tower full stop,’ Ben told her.

But he didn’t know if she heard. Maria was swinging the sword in a wide arc, lopping off the ends of plants, hacking through branches. The narrow leaves of a weeping willow dipped towards them. Maria’s sword sent them spinning away like green confetti.

The whole landscape had changed as the mass of vegetation moved in. It was difficult to tell even where the tower was any more. The trees arched above Ben and Maria, so it seemed as if they were in a vast green cathedral.

They backed away towards the gap where the tank had driven through. Already it was closing up, like green doors sliding unevenly across. Above the constant rustle of the plants, Ben could hear the distant crump of explosions and the rumbling of the tanks. Beyond that he thought he could hear someone shouting – Rupam? Knight?

‘Come on,’ Ben cried.

He could think of only one way to demolish the church tower. Only one way to bring a halt to this
whole business – assuming Growl was right.

Maria backed away from the encroaching plants, sword poised.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘We’re following that tank.’

She spun on her heel to swipe away a trailing bramble and said, ‘Why?’

‘Because we need it,’ Ben told her. ‘That’s why.’

‘We need a tank?’

‘Unless
you
have a better plan?’

‘
You
don’t have a plan,’ Maria told him. ‘But that’s fine, because neither do I. So let’s go find a tank.’

Now that it would have been useful, the sound of the tanks’ engines had all but died away. They fought their way along a narrowing avenue of greenery. Pale leaves glowed where the sun was struggling to break through.

The sound was muffled, but Ben could hear an engine. He saw the exhaust smoke before he saw the tank. It was buried in a mound of moss and overgrown vegetation – as if it had been standing there for years, not minutes.

‘Waiting for something?’ Maria wondered. She was whispering, as if afraid the tank – or the plants – might hear.

They picked their way closer. Maria hacked away
hanging creepers and chopped through a root that reared up in front of Ben, preparing the strike.

‘Growl said the tanks were going to take the Green Man’s influence with them, out of the village,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe it’s getting its strength up to do just that.’

As they edged closer, they could see that the blanket of ragged green covering the tank had not grown up round it. It was spilling out of the open hatch on the top. Twists of ivy and other weeds curled out of the end of the gun, while brambles and bindweed wrapped themselves along the barrel.

Ben reached up and grabbed one of the trembling weeds that were poking out of the gun. It snapped between his fingers.

‘It’s brittle.’

‘All the plants are getting brittle.’ Maria swung her sword in a low arc, snapping through a variety of branches and stems to make the point. ‘There’s not enough water in the soil to support the sudden growth.’

‘Dry and brittle,’ Ben said thoughtfully.

‘What are you thinking?’ Maria asked.

Her face was shadowed, stained green by the filtered light. It made her look even more moody and sullen than usual.

‘I’m wondering if you can drive a tank,’ Ben said. ‘That way at least we can get through the jungle.’

Maria’s sullenness was gone in an instant. ‘I’ll give it a go.’ She paused to hack away a fern that lashed out from the shadows. ‘But we need to evict the current occupants first.’

The note of the engine changed, deepening as they approached. The tracks began to move – slowly eating into the mossy ground, wrenching out the tangled plants that were wound into the metal sections of the track and the wheels.

‘It’s moving!’ Ben shouted above the increasing noise.

‘Yeah, I noticed.’

Ben ran, his feet sinking into the spongy ground. It seemed that the earth itself was pulling at his ankles. He was heading for the back of the tank as it started to move away.

Ahead of him, Maria grabbed hold of an overhanging creeper with her free hand, swinging herself up on to the thick branch of an ancient oak tree. She ran along the branch. Leaves grabbed at her, while smaller limbs whipped across. The branch itself began to twist and buck under her feet. She ignored all this and jumped, landing
surefooted
as a cat on the back of the tank. She bent
her knees to absorb the force of the drop, bringing her sword up at once, then chopping down on a tangle of long grasses and bindweed that hurled itself at her.

Gathering speed, the tank began to pull away from Ben. It was now or never. As he ran faster, he could feel his heart thumping, his legs straining. He jumped for the back of the tank.

Maria’s hand grabbed hold of his wrist as he fell just short. She wrenched him up beside her with a strength born of desperation and adrenalin. Ben stood there gasping as she hacked away at the writhing plants.

‘They certainly know we’re here,’ Maria yelled above the straining engine. ‘What now, Mastermind?’

Ben pointed at the open turret of the tank, where a green shape was heaving itself out, growing so rapidly it looked as if it would swamp them. Maria seemed to understand and hacked a way across the back of the tank towards the rising mass of green.

As soon as she was within range, she swung the sword hard at the leafy pillar forcing its way up from the hatch. The blade bit deep. Branches and leaves fell away. But they were replaced almost at once by more.

‘I can’t cut away everything,’ Maria shouted at Ben.

‘You don’t have to,’ he shouted back.

The expression on Maria’s face when she saw what Ben was holding was a mixture of surprise, disbelief and elation. Her look made the whole nightmare almost worthwhile. He raised the flare pistol and hurled himself into the midst of the green mass.

The plants scratched and clawed at his face and hands, tore at his clothes. Only as he reached deep into the foliage, struggling to keep hold of the pistol, did Ben realise he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Knight had said it was loaded. But did it need priming or anything? Was there a safety catch?

His index finger was tight against the trigger. He squeezed. It didn’t move – nothing. He was struggling to keep hold of the pistol, scrabbling with his other hand to try to find a mechanism, a lever, anything that might move or twist or click to make it work. All the time, stems and shoots were tearing at his hands, trying to drag away the pistol.

Finally, he found something that moved – at the back. A cocking lever, maybe? He couldn’t hold on any longer. A length of bramble was cutting into his throat, squeezing tight. Maria was holding on
to his legs – the only reason he’d not been dragged bodily into the tank. He tugged at the trigger and felt it give.

Then the flare pistol was jolted from his grasp.

Ben struggled back out of the greenery. He’d failed. He’d pulled the trigger and nothing had happened.

Or had it?

Even above the engine noise, he heard the whoosh of the flare as it ignited in the cabin. Ben leaned forward again to see what was happening. It was a mistake. Immediately the greenery pouring out of the tank enveloped him, dragging him down.