"The guy"s been slowly losing it for weeks, and when the military said they were taking his toys away, it pushed him over the edge. That said, I have to ask what could possess him to do something as catastrophic as this."
The Cardinal grimaces.
"Unfortunately, I rather think you may have answered your own question, Doctor. What indeed could possess him?"
Merrick didn"t think he could feel more scared, more ill, but he does now. It makes sense, in ways that have consequences too horrible to dwell upon right now. He has to stay focused on the immediate.
"The bottom line is, n.o.body along the military command chain knows anything has gone wrong here. The cavalry aren"t coming."
"Then we have to alter that," Tullian declares. "We will make for Security Control. If the damage isn"t irreversible, then that"s where we can get the systems back online. We can raise the alarm and perhaps reactivate the mag-locks."
"There are CCTV feeds in there too," Merrick adds. "We can spot where the demons are and maybe isolate them. At the very least we can relay their positions to the lockdown team so that the demons don"t get the drop on them."
"We"ll be their guardian angels, watching from above," the Cardinal states drily, picking up the pace.
Tullian stops to examine a sign on the wall, next to an access hatch leading to the accelerator chase. Merrick estimates they"ve travelled about half a kilometre along the duct. They haven"t heard anything for a few minutes: no gunfire, no screams, no slap-slap of approaching feet.
"The next ladder," Tullian indicates. "That should take us to the coolant monitoring chamber. Security Control is up one level after that."
Merrick glances reluctantly down the pa.s.sage towards their goal.
"I"m still recovering from the last ladder," he says.
"Don"t worry, I"ll go first," Tullian is a.s.suring him, when an access hatch further back along the duct explodes open, almost unhinged by the force behind it.
Merrick"s reluctance to approach the ladder is thoroughly dispelled. He overtakes Tullian as they sprint towards it, the Cardinal enc.u.mbered by a stiffness to his gait perhaps resultant of his robes. Merrick scales the ladder like a spider monkey on PCP and finds the overhead hatch to be in mercifully smoother working order than the one where Havelock met his doom. He twists the release and flips it open, barely thinking about what might be waiting for him above it as he hauls himself through the gap. Without pausing to check his new surroundings, he twists himself around and leans through the gap to a.s.sist the ascending Tullian. He can hear the slap-slap approaching as he reaches an arm down, and can"t resist a glance to check the distance. There"s time yet, so stay calm: more haste, less hurry.
Then he hears a clattering sound as Tullian"s hand stretches up and clasps his own. Once Tullian has cleared the hatch, he can see what it was: his iPhone, with the AV files stored on it. It"s at the foot of the ladder, apparently intact; even if it"s damaged, the data should be recoverable.
The demon still has ground to cover. He can make it. Those files represent everything he has done here, as well as the sacrifice of everyone who has been lost. He has to make it.
"What are you doing?" Tullian asks in breathless disbelief as Merrick climbs back into the hatch and slides, fireman style, down the outsides of the vertical poles. He grasps at the iPhone, his nervous fingers sc.r.a.ping the concrete and failing to grip it properly. It spills again, slides a couple of feet. The slap-slap is becoming pound-pound, the weight of the approaching creature palpable as it shakes the floor of the duct. Merrick reaches for the iPhone again and gets hold of it this time, then throws an arm towards the ladder. The demon is yards away, gaining pace, preparing to hurl itself. Merrick"s foot slips on the second rung in his panic. The slap-slap has ceased, the demon in mid-air. He closes his eyes and grips the shaft.
Merrick hears a squealing, grinding, radio-static pulse that stings his eardrums and makes every filling in his head feel like it"s been connected to the mains. A wave of dust buffets him, strong as the wind behind a juggernaut lorry, and he senses a tiny precipitation on his skin. He can taste blood and metal, like licking a battery, a tingling in his sinuses too as the wind fills his nose.
He opens his eyes and looks up. Tullian is staring back at him through the hatch, along the barrel of a decoherence rifle.
"I guess that"s why you were walking funny," Merrick says, by way of acknowledgment.
"How do you think I stayed alive long enough to save you back there?" Tullian responds, offering him a hand up.
"Couldn"t you have used it a bit sooner?"
"Limited charge. I"m only using it when I absolutely have to."
"Where did you get it? I thought the cabinet locks had been sabotaged too."
"Not all of them, presumably, though I had to prise it from the proverbial cold, dead hand of a fallen soldier. The poor soul must have been overwhelmed before he could use the thing. Now, are you going to tell me what is so important about that phone that you were prepared to risk both our lives to retrieve it?"
XXVI The demon dragging Miss Ross has almost reached the stable wall.
"I can see the gun," Adnan says, calmly and quietly. "I can reach it before they reach me."
"f.u.c.k, would you forget about the gun?" Jason tells him. "You"re always on about empirical evidence, Adnan, well trust the evidence of your own eyes: Miss Ross shot that thing three times from close range and it barely batted an eyelid. Gillian"s right: we"re dealing with supernatural beings. The normal rules don"t apply."
Adnan turns to Radar.
"One word: parsimony."
Radar nods, understanding. He barges Jason aside and grabs the net-stand.
"Radar, you open that door and you"re as good as killing him," Jason argues.
"You definitely up for this?" Radar asks.
"It"s my funeral," comes the reply.
Deborah steps up and mans the other door, her hands on the unlocking bar.
"Same deal as before," Adnan advises. "Close it immediately. Don"t risk opening it for a second longer than you have to. On three. One . . . two . . ."
"No!" shouts Gillian, rushing to stop them, but Adnan completes his count and disappears through the doors.
"Why did you do that?" Gillian asks, tearful and uncomprehending as she stares at the pair of them. "Why did you let him do that?"
"Faith," Radar replies blankly.
Adnan feels the fear slowing his legs as soon as he hears the doors closing behind him. As the cold air hits his face, so does the stark realisation that he may have just made a fatal mistake. From inside, it looked different, felt different. There was this irrepressible compulsion within him to take action, partly driven by the desire to save his friends, and partly by the simple belief that he could could. Knowing he could help seemed to relegate all other considerations. He wasn"t a brave person, though he tried to be a selfless one, but the thought that he could make the difference had somehow muted the sense of danger. It"s been b.l.o.o.d.y well turned up to eleven now he"s outside, though.
He can"t see the gun: lost it when he had to take his eye off the windows as the doors were pulled open. He thinks he knows roughly where Miss Ross was standing, and is heading that way, but if he doesn"t spot the weapon again, he"s f.u.c.ked.
He comes close, he comes really close to turning on his heel, racing back and hammering contritely on the doors to be let back inside. Then he sees it: a dark sheen of metal catching the light differently from the frosted gra.s.s.
One of the demons has heard the doors open and begins moving towards him. The others turn briefly but are not diverted from their task, content that their comrade will deal with the situation as before. They proceed with hauling the scared and struggling Miss Ross to her feet and preparing to nail her to the wall. Cameron they have temporarily given up on, and he remains where he fell, curled up in a shivering pile on the ground.
Everything is simple now. No decisions to be weighed, no morality to consider: only instinct, only survival. A race, in which second prize is death.
Unlike Miss Ross, he doesn"t stalk his way steadily towards his enemies. He"s sprinting, low to the ground, arrow-like, and he"s going to make it. The demon facing him is in no greater hurry than the one that took down his teacher, failing to comprehend what is at stake should he reach the strange black stick that flashed and banged. Perhaps they think it"s a totem, some witch doctor"s charm that wields power over the human credulous and devout, but holds for them no fear.
Miss Ross shot that thing three times from close range and it barely batted an eyelid.
There is a reason why the demon wasn"t injured, and he"s betting his life that it isn"t the one Gillian suggested.
Adnan reaches the shotgun with the demon half a dozen yards away. He"s never fired one before, but he"s watched Miss Ross make all his mistakes for him, so he knows what not to do. He pumps the slide, chambering the next sh.e.l.l, and raises the gun to his shoulder as the demon lets out a vicious roar and prepares to lunge.
The roar is cut off as the demon"s head flies apart in an explosion of black blood and splattering tissue.
Adnan stares, frozen, for a breathless moment as the decapitated body remains upright before him, wondering if this is also what Miss Ross saw, whether it will impossibly reconst.i.tute itself before resuming its attack. Then the corpse drops limply to the gra.s.s and he knows it"s game on.
Oh yeah.
The HUD comes down as he pumps the shotgun. His health is at 100. Ammo reads five. Frags: one. And counting.
Watching inside the games hall, Radar turns to Deborah with a relieved smile.
"Chalk one up to parsimony," he says.
"What do you mean? I thought parsimony was being tight."
"It"s a scientific precept stating that the simplest explanation is usually correct. Either, as Jase suggested, the laws of physics don"t apply to these creatures - even though the ones involving doors seem to apply pretty effectively - or there"s a simpler explanation."
"Which is what?"
"That Miss Ross couldnae hit a coo"s a.r.s.e with a banjo."
Back outside, the other two demons have clocked that the clash didn"t run to form and their pal has undergone a nasty bit of entropy, but they don"t appear to understand why. They let go of Miss Ross and begin moving towards Adnan, spread apart in flanking formation.
Adnan takes careful aim and blasts the one on the right, blowing a hole through its stomach. It drops, doubled over and gurgling, unable to scream. The remaining demon gets the picture now. It turns and starts to run, but Adnan shoots it in the back.
He sees Miss Ross get up and begin running towards where it fell, wonders for a moment what the f.u.c.k she"s doing. When she reaches the demon, she bends down and prises a hammer from its grasp, then returns to the barn wall.
Adnan hears a noise behind him and turns to observe that Radar and Deborah have ignored the directives and are charging out to help. He"s not sure whether the bigger risk is in their leaving the building or in leaving Jason in charge of the door.
"Keep us covered," Radar says, rushing past to make for Cameron, who has pa.s.sed out. He and Deborah lift him between them, she gripping his ankles, Radar under his arms, while Heather embarks on the equally onerous task of pulling Marianne"s hands free from the wall with the hammer. She leaves the nails stuck through the flesh for now, just using the fork-tail to grip the nail-heads and help tug the points out of the wood.
"What about the rest of Cam"s arm?" Adnan asks.
"Best where it is. It"s freezing out here. That"ll preserve it. Let"s just get everyone inside. There"s morphine in the medkit."
"Morphine?"
"It"s Sendak"s medkit."
Another loud bang echoes above the trees, once more causing Kirk and Matt to stop in their tracks. Kirk has a look around, gripping the heavy stick he retrieved from near the corpse of the thing that attacked him. Matt takes the moment to rest, leaning his backside against the fallen trunk of a dead tree.
A second bang follows, then a third.
"More gunshots," Kirk says. "Sounds like there might be a fightback on the cards."
"I thought you had already started it," Matt replies.
"Only technically."
He opts to take the weight off his feet, sitting on the trunk a few feet along from Matt. He"s still shaking from the fight, his heart rate well up. "Better lie low for a minute," he says. "Don"t want to head back to the building if we"re just gaunny get plugged."
Matt nods, looking distantly into the darkness, still visibly trembling also.
"You okay?" Kirk asks him.
Matt nods again, without turning around. Okay"s kind of relative, Kirk realises. He looks at his wounds. On any other night, the gouges on his shoulder would const.i.tute quite a battle scar. Trip to casualty for sure. Right now he can barely feel them for the adrenalin; that and the fact that he"s half numb with the cold.
"Thanks, by the way," says Matt after a few seconds of silence. "For, you know . . ."
"Never bother."
Kirk opens his mouth to say more, but pauses to rea.s.sess. He feels he ought to confess, but what f.u.c.king good would that do? Actually, mate, I came out here to put the living s.h.i.ters up you, if not to actually carve you open. f.u.c.k that. But still, he is sorry, and he should say so.
"Least I could do, in fact. I owe you an apology. I"ve been a total c.o.c.k lately."
Matt finally turns to look at him. Kirk thinks for a second that he"s going to say "Lately?", but maybe that"s just what he deserves to hear. In fact, Matt says nothing.
"I"ve been a pure shambles, tell you the truth, and not just since Dunnsy died. That"s maybe just brought it to a head. I"m not making excuses here, but . . . there"s stuff I"m having a hard time trying to handle. Stuff it"s impossible for anybody to understand."
Matt"s nodding, looking away again. He seldom, if ever, looks you in the eye. That has always p.i.s.sed Kirk off, but right now it makes it easier to talk, makes it feel like the guy is listening and not judging. That"s what made it impossible to talk to Rocks or Dazza: because he knew they"d offer advice, they"d try to help, and though he couldn"t say why, he didn"t want that; couldn"t take take that. He didn"t need help. He just needed to be heard. that. He didn"t need help. He just needed to be heard.
"I"ve been acting the hard man as long as I can remember, but it"s only recently I"ve come to realise it"s the path of least resistance. It"s an easy part to play when you"re actually feart of the tougher ones. And it"s a very good cover for what I don"t want anybody to suspect about me."
"Being gay, you mean," Matt says, and gives Kirk a bigger fright than anything else that"s jumped out at him tonight.
Jesus.
That wasn"t what he was talking about, but by f.u.c.k, there it is out there now. Matt says it flatly, matter-of-fact, in a way that would sound like a sarcastic throwaway insult from anybody else. But Matt says everything flatly and matter-of-fact. He"s not coming the c.u.n.t, trying to be obnoxious: he"s stating the truth.
Kirk finally gets him, and it would very much appear that he gets Kirk.
Kirk"s impulse is to deny it, explain that he was actually talking about being brighter than anybody knew, but he can see this is futile. Matt knows knows, which nudges denial off the list of options and prompts him instead to ask himself therefore how obvious it is, and who else has tumbled.
"How did you know?" he asks.
"I"m qualified to recognise it," is Matt"s reply.
"You"re qualified to . . . ? Oh. Oh Oh."
"Quid pro quo."
"Or mutually a.s.sured destruction."
"Neither of us has much to lose. I"m not exactly covetous of social cachet and who the h.e.l.l is going to give you you a hard time?" a hard time?"