Amidst the falling dust (The Green and Pleasant Land) Read Online Free PDF

well come out little man”, comes the sibilant hiss.
    “Surrender now, quietly to me, down here in the dark, I will make it quick, I promise”.
    His accent is untraceable. Just another Englishman who has turned away from the horizon. I wonder a year and a half ago what this man would have been doing. Rotting in a deep, dark hole at her majesties pleasure; or sitting in an office, discussing the news over a mug of tea. Fiona was right, it mattered less and less with each passing day, who we were and where we came from. There were no ashes from which to rise, just more and more fire to fall into.
    There are many puddles down here and more than the occasional rat. I tiptoe as quietly as I am able, up and down this way and that. The noise of the fighting has gone now, we won or we are dead, or I am just too far underground. Though my eyes adjust to the gloom somewhat I still find myself bumping into pipes every now and then. I use the wall to navigate through the dark until I get to a point where the wall stops. The air changes and I sense that I am in a very large underground room.
    There is a stench down here, not the smell of something rotting, the smell of a thousand things which have rotted away and left only an angry, putrescent vapour to pollute the air, odorous ghosts which clog the senses.
    The smell has been getting worse the further I have come. I stand at the edge of the large vault and sniff the foul air, from somewhere close by I hear a movement, a slippery, wet, sound.
    A few steps back and I feel a cold metal barrel against my head.
    “Hello little man” whispers the voice, he follows up his greeting with a short sharp whack against the back of my head which sends me to the floor.
    Suddenly a light shines in my face, I am blinded again. I can hear the sound of a weapon being unsheathed, the blade rubs against a whetstone. “Where have you lot come from then?” asks the Englishman in a conversational tone. I do not answer him. Beyond the shining light my other senses still probe the room. That sound is still there, louder, more pronounced. I look around for the weapon I dropped when he hit me, it has been swallowed by the gloom.
    The light moves, it seems to wedge itself in a hole in the wall. My attacker walks forward. I need to stand up, I need to fight, I scream at my limbs to react. They ignore me, they are being governed my a more powerful imperative. A silhouette is framed in the light of the powerful torch. I see a gas mask slung over one shoulder. In both hands he holds knives. “You may not feel like talking now but you will in a minute my friend, of that I can assure you”.
    He stops mid stride. He's heard it too. This is not a background noise, it is the sound of something close by, something alive, something large. I can make out some of my attackers features, he is nondescript, plain and mundane looking. He is staring off into the dark behind me.
    What was a slopping, slow, wet sound changes. Now there is a noise like a cracking whip and suddenly my assailant collapses beneath his own nemesis. Some fiend labours over him in a crazed attack. The light is not good and nor are my senses, but it looks like a cadaver. An armless, legless cadaver, just a body, just a head, just teeth. How can it be that such a creature moves? It is mounted, mounted on the end of what I could only describe as a giant tentacle.
    All down the thick, slimy arm of the beast there are spikes which flex as the cadaver at its end devours the now dead marauder. It seems there is no air to breath, my lungs are struggling, does it see me? This question rotates around my mind at ten thousand revolutions a second. I close my eyes to calm the whir. Slowly I rise to unsteady feet. I start to creep around the edges of the torchlight, to stay outside the dining area.
    I am halfway to false freedom when I see the second tentacle arrive, an equally hungry and deformed cadaver sits on its tip, it begins to feed alongside its fellow.