The 13th Horseman - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,58
it was him!”
“I had my doubts, but I couldn’t say for sure until I’d seen him with my own two eyes. He fought a Hellhound, then face-planted twenty metres on to concrete without winding up a messy splat. Death Nine’s human now, and no human could do that. Besides, you said yourself, he’d been there for ages,” War shrugged. “He couldn’t be Death. Death’s barely been human a few weeks. He would have to be someone new.”
An icy needle of shock pricked at the centre of Drake’s chest. “New?”
“Aye. Stands to reason.”
It hit Drake like a sledgehammer. He reached for the fence to support himself, but his hand slipped and he lurched to one side. “Mr Franks,” he said in a barely audible whisper.
“Who?”
“Mr Franks. Darren Franks. D.F.”
“What you on about?”
“The other teacher. The one in the cupboard. He’s the old Death, and we’ve left him with Mel!”
“Helloooo!” called a voice from nearby. Famine was slowly approaching on his scooter, waving enthusiastically with one hand, while frantically trying to steer with the other. “Be with you in a minute.”
Drake didn’t wait for Famine, and he didn’t wait for the other horsemen. He ran back towards the school gates, his pounding heart making his legs move faster than they had ever moved before, until...
PZZZZKT!
A shock of pure agony exploded across Drake’s skin and through his skeleton, hurtling him backwards on to the ground. He rolled in pain, his legs refusing to function as he kicked and struggled to stand up.
In the depths of his shock-addled brain, he knew the pain, recognised it as the same sensation he’d experienced when he’d tried to shoulder-barge the Deathblade Guardian. Only worse. Much, much worse.
It took both War and Pestilence to get him to his feet and keep him there. They were still supporting him when Famine dismounted next to them. He gave the scooter a firm pat on the back of the seat, and it trundled over to a patch of grass on the other side of the road.
Famine looked at the sleeping children and police officers around him, and at the two halves of Dr Black on the pavement at War’s feet. “Missed anything?” he wheezed.
Leaving Pestilence to support Drake, War slowly made his way closer to the school gates. He stopped just in front of them and turned his head slowly left and right.
A pale blue glow hung in the air in front of him. It stretched up, down and side to side. It was barely there, barely anything. If War hadn’t been looking closely, he would never have seen it.
Cautiously, he raised a hand and touched one finger against the glow. A gasp of pain burst through his beard as he drew his arm sharply back. He shook his hand around and clenched it into a fist a few times, never taking his eye off the glow.
“Some kind of magic barrier,” he said.
“What, like a force field?” Drake asked. He pulled away from Pest and hobbled over to War. “Can you break through it?”
“I can barely even touch it,” the big man replied.
A sudden scream from within the school cut Drake off before he could say anything else. He looked up to the first floor, and caught a brief glimpse of Mel at the window, before a shadow appeared behind her and she was dragged back into the room.
“We have to do something!” Drake yelped. “We have to—”
The Earth trembled beneath his feet. On the other side of the force field, the horses neighed and stamped their hooves against the concrete.
A low rumble shook the ground, making them all stagger away from the glowing blue barrier.
“Can I just make it clear,” Famine said, “that that wasn’t me?”
“Earthquake?” Pest asked. “That’s one of the signs! It’s one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Oh, God, what if we’re wrong? What if this really is the end?”
The ground vibrated again. From inside the barrier there was the sound of falling rubble. Narrow cracks began to split the pavement beneath the horsemen’s feet.
“It’s not an earthquake,” War said grimly. He followed the lines of the cracks. They led all the way back to the school.
“Then what is it?” Drake asked. He was still looking up at the window on the first floor, and so he was the first to notice when it started to move. With a crack of snapping concrete, the extension on the front of the school building began to rise slowly up, revealing an enormous chrome construction below.
“What... What is that?”