Tunnels 06 - Terminal

looking around.
    The Armagi in the cathedral were almost all completely still, although every now and then one of them would open and close its wings like a resting bird.
    ‘Good timing,’ Drake said, and with Elliott supporting him they edged through the shimmering border of blue light.
    ‘Hey, that’s trippy,’ Drake muttered.
    Elliott was quiet, keeping watch on the Armagi, who were following their every movement.
    As they reached the tank, both Elliott and Drake stopped for a moment. One of the Armagi hadn’t managed to get outof the way in time and had been pinned under the tank, its head crushed by the track. It was the strangest thing to watch because the Armagi was continually transforming into the long thin body of a Styx and then back into an Armagi, over and over again. It was trying to regenerate, but the point at the back of its head that Martha had identified was under pressure from the tank track, and it was stranded somewhere between its two forms.
    ‘Nice,’ Drake muttered sarcastically. ‘Now you see one monster, now you see another.’
    ‘Come on,’ Elliott urged him, supporting him as they skirted around the shape-shifting creature and then clambered up onto the tank.
    Once the two of them were safely inside and the hatch had been secured, Jiggs looked at Elliott and then at the blood smeared all over Drake. ‘So the masking trick really works. Your blood fools them.’
    Without waiting for either of them to speak, he inclined his head towards the controls for the chain gun. ‘I don’t want to worry either of you unnecessarily, but you should know that we’re almost out of rounds. And we’ve been making a hell of a racket here, so we need to make ourselves scarce before any Limiters decide to join the party.’

    Parry and his men were on top of an office block overlooking St Paul’s. From behind the parapet at the very edge of the roof, they’d seen the Challenger reverse into the cathedral and out of sight. And now huge numbers of Armagi were arriving, but stopping on the cathedral forecourt as if waiting for something, waiting for a command.
    Parry was just about to consult with Eddie about the situation, and particularly the way the Armagi were behaving, when his satphone went off.
    ‘Hi Parry, it’s me, Bob,’ the caller said.
    ‘Bob, can this wait?’ Parry told him. ‘I’m a bit tied up at the moment.’
    ‘It can’t,’ Bob replied.
    Parry frowned. ‘Okay – go ahead.’
    There was a slight delay before Bob spoke again. ‘Just a courtesy call. I thought you should know we’re about to send a nuclear missile your way.’
    ‘What! Here?’ Parry gripped the satphone so tightly the plastic casing creaked. He waved frantically at Danforth and Eddie to switch their headsets over so they could listen in.
    ‘Yessir. One of our subs in the Atlantic has been given the firing sequence and is waiting for the final order from the President. That means you’ve got around fifteen minutes to get the hell out of Dodge.’
    ‘Can I ask why you’re doing this?’
    ‘Sure, although rather have me try to explain the situation, I want you to see something. I’m breaking every darned rule in the book, but I’m going to give you a secure link to look at. Are you near a screen there?’
    Danforth moved to the nearest laptop, where one of Parry’s men was working, and typed in the link address as Bob reeled it off. An aerial image came on screen. It was clearly from a drone flying at some altitude. ‘Right, it’s up,’ Parry confirmed. ‘What do you want to show me?’
    ‘Hold on,’ Bob said.
    The drone changed course and then Parry saw the need for urgency. Along a stretch of the Thames around Canary Wharf,huge numbers of Armagi had come together and were moving in dense columns across the ground. As Parry watched the video feed, the light reflecting from these columns of creatures made them look like runnels of molten silver as they reached the riverbank and slipped straight into the Thames.
    ‘That’s the story all the way along the river from Canvey Island to the estuary. A mass transit’s currently in progress,’ Bob said. ‘And we’ve been tracking their movements once they’re in the water, and they’re migrating out to sea. Our best guess is that this is an invasion force on its way to the rest of the world.’
    ‘The cell breaks open, and all the new viruses spill out,’ Parry recalled.
    ‘What was that?’ Bob asked, not understanding.
    ‘Something