The pulsing sound ceases immediately, the portal vanishing like a shadow when the light that cast it is snuffed out. There is still a powerful thrumming in the air, but it sounds steady, controlled and, most crucially, receding.
Blake takes a walk back to the barrier to check on those below, and on the floor at his feet he spots something else that must have fallen from Tullian"s robes during their struggle.
After a few seconds, the thrumming has died and the place is almost silently at peace. Then there comes a reverberating crash from the steel doors at the opposite end of the Cathedral.
"Find cover," Sendak orders, raising his weapon, attached hand and all.
There is another crash, something very powerful bringing itself to bear upon the metal. Then, upon the third, the doors buckle and several soldiers storm through the gap: visored and faceless, carrying machine guns.
"Drop your weapons and get down on the floor," the first of them commands.
Another of them spots Blake looking down from the platform.
"You, hands in the air and come down here, now."
Blake puts up his hands to indicate compliance, but is preparing to explain why he"s reluctant to undertake the second part when something occurs to him.
"Say, you didn"t get here by helicopter, by any chance?"
"Listen," Kirk says. "You hear that?"
Rocks nods. "Choppers."
Upon this word there is an immediate clamour around the emergency doors.
The sound gets louder, then a few moments later they can see the lights of two aircraft coming over the trees.
The helicopters split paths and touch down either side of the wrecked compound. Soldiers spill out and immediately begin scouring the perimeter, taking down the last stray demons with machine-gun fire.
Then a group of four emerges belatedly from one chopper and proceeds towards the games hall.
Kirk drops the chainsaw and grabs one of the net-stands, dragging it from its lodging place through the door handles as Rocks removes its partner. He goes to throw the emergency doors wide apart, but finds they won"t budge. A glance through one of the panes reveals that two of the soldiers are barring the exit, and Kirk has to duck out of the way as the other pair use their rifle b.u.t.ts to smash out the gla.s.s.
The panes removed, it is the other ends of their weapons that are thrust through the resulting gaps. Kirk grabs one by the barrel, Rocks the other, angling them upwards while everyone scrambles back deeper inside the hall. Then the guns issue a series of hollow popping sounds and a number of grenades pinball around the walls and ceiling before bursting open in clouds of gas.
Kirk ducks down and picks up the chainsaw again. He"s got hold of the rip-cord when his legs give, and is unconscious by the time he hits the floor.
x.x.xIV
Lieutenant Rodriguez, the head of the lockdown team, climbs back aboard the helicopter and takes a seat opposite Blake, Sendak and Rosemary. Steinmeyer is lying on his back behind them, across a row of his own. As the chopper begins rising into the dawn sky, Blake looks below to the other side of the FTOF complex, where he can see soldiers carrying unconscious survivors out of the games hall and placing them aboard the second aircraft. Cameron and Marianne are distinct among them by having already been hooked up to IV bags.
"They"ll all wake up in hospital," Rodriguez states. "Where they"ll be told there was a ma.s.sive gas leak and subsequent explosion. The gas had hallucinogenic effects, manifest both before and after the blast, resulting in vivid memories of bizarre events which, clearly, couldn"t possibly have happened."
"They all had the same same hallucinations?" Sendak asks. "That ain"t gonna fly." hallucinations?" Sendak asks. "That ain"t gonna fly."
"Mutually reinforcing hysteria. Somebody shouted "monster" amid the chaos, and in their minds they all saw it. Cross-contamination of their recollections. They can"t be sure a memory is what they actually saw or what someone else claims to have seen. I"m betting it wouldn"t be a tough sell to suggest drugs and alcohol played a part too."
Rosemary shakes her head with bitter disapproval.
"I know it sounds s.h.i.tty, but it"s for their own good," Rodriguez insists. "What would you rather they believed happened to them? Wouldn"t you prefer to wake up later and be a.s.sured the world still makes sense the way it used to?"
"It"s not that I don"t wish someone could tell everyone the weird stuff never happened; it"s that I don"t believe it"ll work."
"It"ll work. It"ll work because they"ll want want to believe our version." to believe our version."
Rosemary looks down for a moment, her way of conceding the point. He"s right. They"ll resist it initially, but soon enough they"ll succ.u.mb to the rea.s.surance the official explanation offers. She just wishes there was such an option open to her. She went into the lions" den for her cla.s.smates and thought it was the hardest, bravest and most selfless thing she"s ever done, but she understands that a more arduous task still lies ahead. It is her burden now to know the truth but tell no one; her duty to maintain their ma.s.s delusion, to reinforce the security of a comforting belief she knows to be false.
She glances across at Father Blake and wonders if he"s been carrying the same cross.
"And what about those of us right here who know different?" Blake asks.
"Professor Steinmeyer and Sergeant Sendak are bound to secrecy. I can"t stop you and the girl talking, but I"d strongly advise against it. It won"t help your friends any, but if that ain"t a good enough reason, I can give you a starker one, which is that n.o.body"s going to believe you. You don"t have any proof."
"And thus you wave your magic wand and this all goes away," Blake says.
"Don"t you want it to go away, Father? Get on with your life?"
"No. Because it isn"t over. My young friend Adnan went through that portal, and we all know there"s still a chance we can bring him back."
"I hear what you"re saying," Rodriguez a.s.sures him sincerely. "And I give you my word I"d volunteer personally personally for that particular S&R mission, but we both know it ain"t gonna happen. It would take a lot more leverage than one missing kid to get the bra.s.s to even for that particular S&R mission, but we both know it ain"t gonna happen. It would take a lot more leverage than one missing kid to get the bra.s.s to even contemplate contemplate firing that thing up again." firing that thing up again."
"Yeah," Blake concedes with a sigh, hoping he sells his defeated act better than Steinmeyer. He slumps back in his seat and pulls out the iPhone.
"I"m sorry, Father," Rodriguez tells him. "Usual aircraft rules. No cellulars in-flight."
"Just checking it"s still intact. I"ll be needing it later."
"You can use it soon as we land. Thinking of getting one just like it myself. You reckon they"re pretty hot?"
"This one"s dynamite."
Blake looks out of the window once more as the chopper descends towards Raigmore Hospital. He can see dozens of staff lined up close to the landing pad, waiting to attend to the casualties arriving in two helicopters.
As the wheels touch down, Rodriguez leans across to him again.
"Now, before I let you out of this bird, a.s.sure me one more time that we"re all straight with this."
"I"m straight with it," Blake replies.
"Good. Now get busy forgetting: that"s the best way to help your friends and to help yourself, not to mention your church."
"Don"t worry, I"ll be keeping this strictly to myself."
He pulls off his dog collar, which is, frankly, beginning to chafe.
"I swear to G.o.d."
Bonus Level
x.x.xV
Adnan waits until they"re long gone before making his move. He"s trying not to even allow himself to think about how scared he is, how lonely he feels. He calls up the HUD as he stalks through the strange vegetation, shotgun raised. It"s just a bonus map, he tells himself. A secret level. You complete it and then get back to the main arc of the game.
From his hiding place among the rocks, he had watched with some disquiet as they carried Tullian away.
The Cardinal came through the portal only a few minutes behind, tumbling to the rocky ground amidst a sudden light-storm before an awed and fearful gathering. The flashes and noise accompanying Adnan"s own entrance must have been what drew the creatures, alerting them that something dramatic was afoot, but he had exited stage left and taken cover before any of them showed up. Thus the initial disturbance had served merely as a harbinger of this subsequent advent.
Tullian lay stunned on the ground at first, taking a moment to gather himself as he recovered from what had preceded his arrival, not to mention the rigours of the journey itself. Then he stood up, prompting gasps as his great robes swirled about him. Despite the rips and frays and smears of blood, they must have looked luxuriant beyond the imaginings of these observers in their crude and muddied rags.
Tullian stared for a few seconds, wild-eyed, at the a.s.sembly before him, then turned back towards the portal, which chose this unfortunately coincidental moment to close, prompting another round of terrified amazement.
Then their leader approached him, a huge demon in a headdress just like Adnan had seen depicted in claw marks, blood and s.h.i.t on the walls of that cell: the tribal chief or holy man. Tullian reached out and zapped him with the pike, sending him flying backwards through the air with a flash of blue sparkling light that outshone the sum of their flaming torches.
Within seconds, they were prostrate in worship. Every last one.
Four of them brought up a litter, the chair suspended on poles that the chief had arrived aboard, and very soon, Tullian was being carted off, shoulder-high, like f.u.c.king Threepio in Return Return.
Major lossage. The stupid f.u.c.kers think he"s a G.o.d.
That"s how this s.h.i.t starts.
Also by Christopher Brookmyre
QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING
COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
ONE FINE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
BOILING A FROG
A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY
THE SACRED ART OF STEALING
BE MY ENEMY
ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEBODY LOSES AN EYE
A TALE ETCHED IN BLOOD AND HARD BLACK PENCIL
ATTACK OF THE UNSINKABLE RUBBER DUCKS
A s...o...b..LL IN h.e.l.l