‘My team?’ he replied, looking at Sam, at the empty room beyond her. He chewed on it for a moment, then said, ‘No, sir. I don’t think we can.’
A pause, and a rattling sigh.
‘Then lock yourself in good and tight, Graham, because we’re going to nuke it.’
‘Sir?’ That must have been a mistake, surely. Graham almost laughed at the insanity of it. ‘Can you please repeat that?’
‘You heard me,’ the older man said. ‘We’re out of options. We don’t do something now then there’s no telling what will happen. It’s growing, it’s getting stronger, and it’s moving. Contain the threat, Graham, neutralise it, worry about the collateral damage later. It’s our policy overseas, gotta be our policy at home.’
‘But you can’t,’ he stuttered. ‘You can’t authorise a nuclear strike on UK soil, on London.’
‘It’s done, PM gave the green light five minutes ago. We’re doing our best to get everyone out, but we have to do this quick. That’s why I’m calling, Graham. You seal that bunker until this is over. Either that or you bolt, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get out of the blast zone, not now. Dragon 1 is airborne as we speak.’
‘How long have we got?’ he asked.
‘Ninety minutes max, almost certainly less. I’m sorry, Graham, batten the hatches, hunker down. With any luck we’ll knock this thing clear into next week and get a Hazmat team to you ASAP.’
‘And if not?’
The General snorted down the phone, not quite a laugh. ‘If not, then God help us all. Good luck.’
‘And you, sir,’ Graham said, but it was to an empty line. He gently placed the phone back in its cradle, staring at it as if waiting to hear it ring again, waiting to hear the General say Ha! Got you, Graham, this is revenge for that time you rubbed chillies into the latrine bog roll out in Iraq. But of course it didn’t. It wouldn’t ring again. He turned to Sam.
‘You heard that?’
She had, he could see it in the parchment-grey sheen of her skin, her vacant stare.
‘They’re nuking London,’ she said, shaking her head. A tear wound down her cheek, tracing a path through the dust that had settled there. ‘Oh God, Graham. It’s actually happening.’
He looked at the screen, at the city there. His city. If the attack – no, the beast, deep down you know it – didn’t devour it then an atomic blast would wipe it clean, leave it a ruin that nobody would be able to set foot inside for decades. There had to be another way, but his mind was an empty bowl. He swore and thumped the desk in frustration.
‘You want to lock it down?’ Sam asked. ‘There’s enough supplies here to keep a hundred people for a month, we’d be okay.’
Hide away, shut the door behind them, let the city burn. How could he live with himself if he did that? But what were the options? Make a run for it, head south to where the General was running the operation? At least he’d have a good view of the mushroom cloud as it curled up over Big Ben. He thought of David, prayed that he had got out of the city, that he hadn’t waited for Graham to come home.
‘I—’ he started, then the satellite feed flashed, somewhere around Maida Vale. A tiny spot of flickering colour beneath the raging storm, as if something was burning through the screen from the other side. He craned forward, his nose practically against the glass. ‘What is that?’
The footage was too wide to make out the source of the light, and after a second or two it vanished.
‘Can we zoom in there?’ he said, pointing at the location where the flame had guttered out. Sam nodded, typing in a string of code. The satellite blurred, zoomed in, sharpened, blurred, zoomed in, sharpened, three more times until the view was a handful of crescent-shaped streets and box-shaped houses. The storm was no longer visible, but it was close because its shadow stained the top half of the picture like a bruise. In it there was no sign of life apart from four little dots, undistinguishable, but unmistakable. ‘It’s them,’ he said, ramming the screen with his finger.
‘Who?’ Sam asked.
‘The kids, from the coast.’ It sounded ludicrous, impossible, but then so did everything else that had happened today. Somehow he was sure of it, he would have bet everything on it, he would have bet his life on it. In fact, that’s exactly what he was willing to do. He pushed himself up. ‘Lock yourself in, Sam, stay safe.’
‘Uh-uh,’ she said, pushing up from her chair. ‘No way. You go, I go.’
‘Sam—’
‘Sam nothing, it’s my job to look after this city, I won’t hide my head in the sand. Whatever you’ve got planned, I’m with you.’
He nodded, walking into the elevator. Ninety minutes till detonation. That was enough time if he could locate a motorcycle and hotwire it. He had no idea what they’d find if they got there, but at least they’d be doing something. If those kids were somehow good, at least he could warn them. And if not, he’d have the satisfaction of seeing them burn. The elevator closed, and Sam grabbed his hand as they headed up into the storm.
Afternoon
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’
Rilke
North London, 12.14 p.m.
It seemed to take longer, this time, for life to catch them.
The world snapped into place around her, and with it came a noise like no other, a roar so loud that it felt as if it was pushing her into the earth. She clamped her hands to her ears as another jet of milky vomit erupted from between her lips. But still the noise raged, part thunder, part howling cry, part ringing, as if she was standing inside a giant cathedral bell.
She forced herself to open her eyes, already knowing what she would see there. The sky was alive, a madness of movement that boiled overhead like an upturned cauldron of oil. Vast clouds of matter circled in slow, almost graceful orbits. In them she could see scraps of things, the glint of a truck, the outline of a tree or a church spire, and countless smaller objects – people, she realised – that could have been leaves kicked up by the wind. The tornado was so dense that the sun was a copper penny in the sky, forgotten, the streets around her as dark as dusk.
And in the centre of it all was him, the man in the storm. Rilke couldn’t see him past the chaos of the clouds, but he was there. She could feel him, as she could feel gravity, pulling on her, calling to her with that ageless, endless inward breath. He was the ghost inside the machine, inside that engine of darkness and dust raged over her, and his voice was the cry of a million horns. Just like Revelations, she thought, remembering the stories she had heard in church. The angels sound their trumpets, and the world ends.
A lunatic cackle escaped her, drowned out by the storm. She was still on her knees, she realised, Schiller lying before her. Beads of blood hung over his wounds, just floating there as though they hadn’t quite remembered what they should be doing, as if they were trapped somewhere between where they had come from and where they were now. He blinked up at her, his left eye a crimson pool. Part of his skull was cracked where he had been shot, chipped loose like a flake of flint. What lay beneath was slick and dark and matted. She cupped her hand to it, as if to hold in his brain.
You did it, Schiller, she thought to him, knowing that her real voice would not carry here, that there simply was not room for it in the screaming air. You brought us to him, I’m so proud of you.
He smiled at her, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. She shook his head gently until he focused again, then she looked up at the storm. Did it know they were here? Could it sense them? Help us, she screamed inside her head. Don’t let my brother die!
The storm thrashed in its own fury, the sweeping clouds like the tentacles of a hundred creatures writhing and coiling. Rilke looked around, past Marcus, whose face was a portrait of pure horror, past the new boy, Howie, still locked inside his casket of ice, seeing a street, houses on b
oth sides. Everything was covered in dirt and ash, a fine rain that still fell from the ruined sky. There was nobody else in sight. How did they talk to him? Think Rilke, she said, seeing her brother slip out of consciousness again. Think think think you stupid girl.
Schiller had to change. It was the only way. If he was an angel again then the man in the storm had to notice him. It was too big to see them as they were now, too loud; it was like a combine harvester about to crush a ladybird. She placed her other hand on Schiller’s cheek, lifting his head off the ground. He groaned, but he was still with her, still alive.
Once more, little brother, she told him. Let it out, and the storm will see you.
He shook his head, just the slightest of movements that she could feel in her fingers.
Once more, she repeated. He only needs to know that you’re here, then he’ll fix you. I know he will, Schiller, I know it, you have to trust me. She cradled his head against her stomach and placed her free hand on his heart. Let it out, let it speak. He’ll make you better, and you won’t have to be weak ever again. Let it out.
Her brother’s eyes emptied and for a moment she thought she’d lost him. But he must have caught a glimpse of death there, of something worse than pain, worse than the Fury, worse even than the storm, because his whole body suddenly lurched up, as if he’d been woken from a nightmare. And with the motion came the fire, erupting in the furnaces of his eyes, flooding over his body, turning him into a phantom of blue and red and yellow. His wings unfolded, so bright against the brooding clouds. He screamed a word at the storm, a word that cut across the street, that pushed its way through house after house, demolishing them.
And the man in the storm heard him.
Something detonated in the middle of the tornado, an almighty crack that could have been the earth splitting. A shockwave ripped outwards sending a cloud of debris surging up into the sky and out across the city, stripping away the clouds, revealing what lay beneath.
He hung there, too big to be human – so much bigger than the tower blocks he soared above – and yet somehow still a man. He shimmered in the unsettled atmosphere, like a heat haze, a mirage, his body made up of shifting shapes and shadow, his hands held out to his sides. His face was not really a face, just a spinning vortex that reminded her of those huge drills that carved tunnels into mountains, an endless, seething gyre that sucked in everything around it.
But it was his eyes . . . Two gaping sockets in his head, so dead and yet so full of rancid glee. It was impossible to tell how far away the man was, a mile or two maybe, but Rilke knew those eyes had seen her, she felt them crawling over her face like corpse fingers, working their way into her head, into her thoughts. Her mind was suddenly a clockwork toy, a clumsy mess of tin and spring, peeled apart and broken by its touch. It’s a bad thing a bad thing a bad thing, something in her railed, but she fought it, he’s not, he’s going to save Schill, he has to save him because nothing else can, please please please.
Schiller was standing now – or hovering, a foot above the road – that atomic pulse making the concrete vibrate. He spoke again, a rippling surge of energy that opened up a trench in the earth, channelling towards the man in the storm. And the man answered, whatever he was. That inward breath never so much as paused, but those eyes beamed their message directly into her head; not words, not even images, just the awful silence and stillness of the end of all things. The sheer weight of it, of eternal, infinite nothingness, sent her reeling. She tripped over Howie, falling on to her back, the wind knocked from her lungs. That’s all it will leave, she thought. A gaping hole where the world once sat.
‘No!’ she screamed, the word sucked out of her mouth by the snapping wind, by the endless roar of the storm. She would not believe that. Go to him, Schiller, kneel down at his feet, show him that you are here to serve. He would surely open his arms and welcome them as his children, wouldn’t he? He would skin the flesh from their souls, fillet their bones, leave them as pure fire. Go to him, little brother. No, run, take us away from here. No, little brother, this is where we belong. The two halves of her waged war, and she felt the little clockwork engine of her mind come apart even further.
Schiller rose, a fish on a hook, the brightest thing in the sky. The man watched him, vast tidal waves of matter still flooding across London, engulfing everything they touched. Whipcracks of black lightning lashed out from the ground beneath the storm. Only there was no ground there, Rilke realised, just a void. It had simply been erased. The man watched her brother the way a lizard tracks a bug, its black eyes full of greed, hunger. But there was a spark of recognition there. It understood who Schiller was.
It knows you, she told her brother, looking up to where he blazed against the unnatural night, a star that had been knocked loose from the firmament. Her heart seemed to lift alongside him, the knowledge that she had been right, that they were here to serve the man in the storm. She grinned, the euphoria a flood of sunlight inside her arteries, making her feel like she was already nothing but heat and light.
It didn’t last.
The man in the storm twitched its fingers and turned the world inside out.
The ground crumbled away beneath her, the air suddenly full of rock and stone and houses. She opened her mouth to scream but it never came as she tumbled into darkness, as though she was falling into a bottomless grave. Schiller still burned high above her, and she reached out for him, knowing that if she did not then she would fall forever. Her brother’s eyes raged, a flicker of emotion deep inside the fire, and she felt his arms wrap around her – not his flesh but something else. He wrenched her from the pit, pulling her up to his side along with Marcus and the other boy, holding her to him with a thought while the city crumbled around them. There was no ground between her and the storm any more, just the void, an ocean of emptiness.
The man gestured with his hands again, pulling up the earth as though he was lifting a blanket. On either side of him a billion tonnes of matter rose into the air, hurled towards them. The air roared, Rilke’s ears popping as a concussive wave of pressure reached them first. She lifted her hands to her face, knowing that they would offer her no protection, that she would be crushed into dust. But even though the world shook and shook and shook there was no impact, no pain.
She peeked between her fingers, seeing a bubble of flickering firelight around them. House-sized pieces of concrete smashed against the shield like waves against the rocks, cars and trucks and trees and people too, bursting into liquid as they struck. The tide was endless, flooding into the darkness beneath them, pressing against them, gushing overhead, making her feel as though she was inside a cave, her brother burning like a campfire. There was nothing written on his face, no sign of Schiller’s human weakness, everything blazing at full strength as he fought to keep them alive.
The torrent stopped, the sky opening up once again, still full of smoke, a waterfall of matter dropping into the darkness. Ahead of them, the man hung in his storm, and there was something else in those eyes now – not so much in them, she understood, as being channelled through them. It was hate, pure and simple. It wanted to kill them.
What have I done? she asked, panicking, seeing the gulf beneath her feet, an open mouth just waiting for her to fall. Schiller’s power was the only thing keeping them up, and how much longer would it last? She grabbed her brother, the flames cold against her skin, tickling her. He beat his wings, the bubble of fire around them guttering out, spirals of dust dancing off in all directions. Marcus hung beside her, held by invisible fingers, the new kid too, the four of them locked in the fury of the man’s eyes. Oh what have I done, Schiller? I was wrong, wasn’t I? I was so wrong.
The howl of the man’s endless breath increased, black streaks slicing through the air as if life was a canvas being torn. The storm once again began to funnel into his gaping maw, debris pulled from the air, sucked inside. Rilke too, her stomach doing loop-the-loops as she hurtled towards him. She held on to her brother with everything she had
, even though she knew she didn’t need to, feeling him being pulled through the air like a boat into a whirlpool.
‘Fight it!’ she yelled into his ear, barely able to hear herself. His answer fluttered into her thoughts.
I can’t, I can’t Rilke, he’s so strong.
The current was too powerful, dragging them towards the churning blades of his mouth. They were speeding up, the man looming before them, so big, a colossus. His eyes burned. He was going to eat them, and then what? Then nothing, you will never have been and will never be again.
‘Schiller!’ she pleaded.
Her brother spoke, the word like a missile detonating in the middle of the storm. The man didn’t even seem to feel it, reeling them in faster, faster, until there was only his mouth, only that boundless, lightless throat. Schiller spoke again, but his voice was human, a kitten’s mewl. His coat of flames vanished and he flailed in mid-air, caught in the flow. It was done, it was over, it was lost.
Rilke closed her eyes, took a deep breath that stank of flesh and smoke, and screamed, ‘Daisy!’
Daisy
East Walsham, 12.24 p.m.
‘Daisy!’
Daisy looked up at the sound of her name. The ice cubes had grown agitated. They were all retreating, all except for one, his one, where the man in the storm still hung. She didn’t want to look but how could she stop herself? The view it contained was different now, the city rubbed away beneath him the way she would just rub away a piece of a drawing she didn’t like. Everything around him was still being vacuumed into his mouth.
‘Daisy!’
Her name again, and this time she recognised the voice. It was Rilke’s. And sure enough wasn’t that her and her brother and Marcus and Howie right there, like insects drowning in dust as they were funnelled into the storm? Oh Rilke, you went to him, just like you said, she thought, the sadness like a pressure in her chest. And now the girl was going to die. Why hadn’t Rilke listened to her? Why hadn’t she believed her? She was so stupid!
The Storm Page 14