by Heide Goody
The other soldier looked down. “What is it?”
It was distraction enough. Yang leapt forward. The men saw her coming but were not quick enough to react. Yang dodged to the side of one, grabbed the barrel of his service rifle, and pushed it aside as the man automatically fired. She felt the heat of the discharge and ignored it. She twisted the surprised man so that he partly shielded her from the other.
Yang let go with one hand and found the knife on the man’s belt. “Got your grenade,” she said.
As he turned one way, she turned the other, pulling the knife free, before sticking it in his back, underneath his armour and into his kidney. He grunted in shock.
The other soldier was shouting now. Yang thought he ought to have started firing. Having concerns about shooting his fellow soldier was a weakness. Yang slipped forward under the falling man’s armpit and took control of his rifle. She fired at the stupid, shouty soldier. One round went into his throat, but the second missed. Then the falling man managed to rip the rifle he was still loosely holding from Yang’s grip.
Yang stepped neatly forward, taking the rifle from the one she’d shot as he staggered, hands going to his bloody neck. He seemed to have completely forgotten he had a rifle, the strap slipping from his arm. One bullet finished off the knife-wounded soldier. The one shot in the neck tried to stagger back through the doorway. Yang shot him in the back of the head. He fell, blocking the door from swinging shut.
Yang knelt and aimed down the short length of corridor, waiting for any reinforcements to arrive. As she watched and waited, she controlled her breathing to maintain her aim. She mentally reviewed the sequence of events as it might sound from elsewhere in the building: shouts, then four shots spanning no more than three seconds. The soldiers had been told to kill her. Was there any reason why those particular sounds should draw suspicion?
Steve regarded the mashed end of his pencil, then kicked the corpse of the nearest soldier. “And that’s what happens when you mess with Steve the Destroyer, petty mortals!”
“I killed them,” said Yang.
Steve adopted a masterful pose, leaning on his blunted spear. “Did you though? Did you really?”
Yang looked at him. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“The prawn thinks it’s in charge, but that’s just what chess master Steve wants it to think.”
Concluding that no one was coming, Yang relaxed and began to search the bodies for ammo and weapons. “Why did you follow me?” she asked.
“So you can help me rescue Prudence,” Steve said. “We should never have come here.”
“That’s what I said.”
“That Prudence Murray is a wilful one for such a little gobbet,” he said. “Her mother is even worse.”
“Is that so?” Yang pulled the knife from the dead soldier’s back.
“Pass that here,” said Steve.
Yang threw it so that it clattered to the ground inches from Steve. Blood spattered over his shapeless cloth feet. He turned his pencil around in his hands and, standing on the blade to hold it in place, began to sharpen it.
Carcosa
Rod watched the slaves as the Black Barge prepared to disembark. In the last hour, he had seen the antiques, art and knowledge of Carcosa traded for a Poundland selection of household goods and mail order tat. Jeffney Ray, a gaunt-eyed blonde girl, and a shuffling zombie dressed in the remnants of a Harry Potter T-shirt stowed the goods below and cleared the deck.
The barge set off silently with no engine noise, or any visible means of propulsion. It pulled away from the jetty and stone quayside, moving straight out across the water. To keep out of the way, Rod placed himself on the roof of the cabin and watched Carcosa fade away. Under cold starlight, the city’s stone buildings shone white like chalk, like teeth. The city’s silence was even more painfully obvious at a distance. As the mist parted before the barge, Carcosa was reduced to a bleached image, a reproduction, a jagged white sculpture on the shores of a dark lake in a lifeless world.
When they had left the city far behind, and even the mists had curled away to the horizon, food was brought to Rod. A packet of three out of date shortbread biscuits, a plastic pot of peach slices in syrup, and a can of beer with a name in Russian script were presented to him on a paper plate by the blonde slave. He thanked her, ate the biscuits and drank half the beer.
In his jacket pocket, he found the crushed remains of the macaroon Maurice had given him to eat in the car. It was nothing but crumbly cakey dust now. He scooped it out and gathered it together, so he had a small pile of crumbs in his hand.
He looked at the pile for a time and thought of Maurice, then of Omar and Morag and Nina, and the other people he had left far behind. After that, he tipped the crumbs over the side onto the water. He didn’t mean it to look or feel like he was scattering ashes, but it felt like that anyway.
“Why do you bother?” said the King in Crimson, who was now seated next to him.
“Why do I bother what?” said Rod.
“Bother with any of it. It’s all over for you now.”
“Me personally? Or the world generally?”
“Both,” said the King.
Rod stared across the lake, although there was nothing to see. Black lake, black sky.
“Don’t you know? Didn’t you write me as a character in your play?” offered Rod. The half drunk beer was making him flippant.
“You’re only delaying the inevitable,” said the King.
Rod snorted softly. “That’s the whole point, surely?”
“Is it?”
“It could be our organisation slogan. ‘The consular mission: only delaying the inevitable.’”
“You achieve nothing.”
“We gain time.”
“For what?”
Rod sipped his beer and waved his arm in the direction they were heading.
“I’m going back to Birmingham. I’m going to find my friends. I will help hold off the Venislarn as long as possible, maybe punch a god in the face while I’m at it, and do what I can for as long as I can.”
“Achieving nothing, saving no one.”
Rod ignored the miserable creature. He finished his beer and briefly considered throwing the can into the water. He didn’t, not sure what monsters from the depths he might anger, and unwilling to pollute the waters of another world.
He swung around to look at Sven who was manning the tiller. “You’ve been everywhere, haven’t you, Sven?”
The bargemaster shrugged.
“Are any of the worlds you visit actually nice?”
“Apart from yours?” said Sven.
“Given that ours is about to be destroyed, aye, other worlds.”
Sven gave it some thought. “Yeah, for sure. Some. Port of Celephaïs is very nice.”
“And safe?” asked Rod.
“Sure.”
Rod hesitated before he spoke again. He needed to get his thoughts in order and not disappoint himself by mentally leaping ahead. “And your hold. How many people could it carry if you were taking passengers?”
“I do not usually take passengers.”
“But if you did, Sven. If you did.”
Sven wiped his forehead with his rag and, because he was still thinking, gave his armpit a rub too. “Hundred. Maybe more.”
Rod gave the King in Crimson a look. “We could save a hundred people.”
“What difference does that make in a world of billions?” the King sneered.
“It’d make a difference to the hundred,” he said.
Birmingham - 05:40am
The taxi journey from the canalside in Digbeth to the Cube was a short one. Though the end of the world had blocked some roads, obliterated others, and even co-opted a few into becoming things that defied description, the lack of traffic and freedom to ignore one-way signs meant the uCab driver could zip straight across the city centre, past the ruins of the Bullring shopping centre and the Peace Gardens (now reduced to ash and fallen stone) and round to the Cu
be.
“I probably ought to do this alone,” Morag said, the thought coming to her somewhat belatedly.
“You think that, out of all the gods, Morgantus is the one you can manage single-handed?” said Omar.
“I think he will destroy you on sight,” said Morag. “Me, he has a soft spot for.”
Omar’s expression was grim. “Like a prized beef cow, ripe for slaughter.”
“I’m a ginge. We’re special.”
Omar shook his head and opened the car door. “I’ve got nowhere better to be. I’ve never been to Morgantus’s court.”
“Never?”
“Never. I hear the view from the top floor is quite stunning.”
Morag looked at him levelly. Going inside armed with just their own demands and those of other local gods was probably a death sentence, and Omar knew it. But, as he rightly said, he had nowhere better to be.
“If it’s all the same with you,” said Chad from the front seat, “I might just stay here. Guard the car.”
Morag patted him on the shoulder. “A wise decision. Thanks.”
She hoped she’d put the right level of gratitude in her voice, and didn’t make it sound like she was glad he wasn’t coming with them. His surprising spiel with the samakha had possibly saved their lives (and committed them to finding more than a hundred luxury canalside apartments for the fishfolk), but she didn’t want to go walking into the most dangerous den in the city with Chad’s mouth ready to go off at any moment.
She got out and waited for Omar to shuffle round to meet her. “I don’t know which of us is the most decrepit invalid at this point,” she said.
Omar looped his arm through hers. His hand rested on her wrist. It was oddly pleasant to have the comfort of simple human contact.
“One of us is healing,” he told her.
The Cube was, as its name suggested, a cuboid building, over twenty storeys of businesses and apartments, overlooking the Peace Gardens on one side and a large junction of the Birmingham Canal on the other. The canal side of the building linked to bridges and elevated walkways which could take a Cube resident to any number of bars, restaurants, boutiques and galleries, along the waterfront or inside the Mailbox shopping centre. Morag imagined most of those swanky eateries would now be gutted by fire or demolished. Coming from the street side of the Cube, she wouldn’t get to see unless she walked all the way through the building.
Before they entered the lobby area, Morag looked up the side of the building. The shield of light and energy over the city cast a peculiar glow on the glass and plastic cladding, but otherwise it appeared the same as always. As the seat of power in this city, on this Day of Judgement, Morag would have expected more. She didn’t know what. Maybe some sort of crackling energy column bursting from the roof. Maybe Presz’lings, Uriye Inai’e or Croyi-Takk, clinging to the outer structure, screeching and hooting in victory at the ravaged world. There was neither.
“We might die in here,” she said.
“Death – actual death, the cessation of being – would be a victory at this point,” said Omar.
“Cheery bastard, aren’t you?”
They went inside. Beside the bank of lifts there was the concierge desk. The concierge was a servant of Yo-Morgantus, a corpulent chap of few words, with crazy pattern baldness that looked like he had been frenziedly attacked by electric clippers. He was not at his station today. Somehow the man had been fused and cemented into the wall behind his desk, skin and hair blended into the fabric of the building so that only his face, belly and one forearm protruded beyond the surface. His eyes followed them as they walked to the lift. Morag gave him a nod of greeting. Neither spoke.
The lift doors closed and carried them up. Omar’s arm twitched against Morag’s.
“Do you remember when we first met?” he said.
She thought for a second. “The Caledonian Sleeper. Edinburgh to Birmingham. We sat in the buffet car and drank whisky.”
“Glenfarclas,” said Omar, savouring the word.
“You knew me. I had no idea who you were or what I was getting myself into.”
He murmured, a hint of laughter. “I knew who you were. I didn’t really know you.” He shifted a little closer, not quite leaning on her. “I do have to say, Miss Murray, you are quite possibly one of my favourite human beings.”
“What the fuck?” she laughed.
“A refreshingly unrepentant human being. If there was true power in anger, Yo-Morgantus would have a lot to fear from you.”
“Instead we’ve got—” she puffed out her cheeks. “—some Venislarn denizens who want new homes, functioning taxi services and some semblance of an economy. Plus a half-hearted promise to co-operate with each other and protect at least some of the remaining humans.”
“Very half-hearted.”
“Will it be enough?” she asked. “I mean, you seem to have known what was happening from day one. Me. My pregnancy. Prophecies and predictions and some ritual that only Mr Grey knows.”
“His invention. His life’s work.”
“You know it all. You’ve studied all the sources.”
“No more than Vivian has. Since the world is ending, I will admit to you, privately, that of the two of us, she is the far more knowledgeable.”
“But you know how this is going to play out?” she said.
“Would you respect me more if I said yes?”
She gestured upward at the floor they were now fast approaching. “This. A deal with Morgantus. Do we stand a chance?”
He smiled as he squeezed her hand again. “Not a hope in hell, my dear.”
She was too tired to be shocked. “Then why? What’s the point?”
“Misdirection.”
“What?”
“If Morgantus is watching us, then his eyes are not where they should be.”
“You mean Mr Grey’s ritual?”
“No. Not that, either.”
Before she could ask him what he meant the lift dinged and the doors opened.
05:44am
Prudence heard a series of bangs as she was marched back up the steps of the cinema auditorium. She had pleaded with Kathy Kaur and Captain Malcolm to not kill Yang. She had demanded, asked, pleaded, and finally wept silently. Malcolm kept his distance from her, as though embarrassed, speaking with some of the thirty or so men and women who accompanied them. Kathy occasionally glanced towards Prudence, each time nodding as though, yes, this was normal.
In the covered driveway area through which Prudence had entered the cinema, they paused. A unit of soldiers, guns at the ready, crossed the deserted road and moved swiftly but cautiously alongside the dual carriageway. Kathy and Prudence moved with the second group. The chatter among the men had dampened. Prudence sensed a tension, a fear, among them.
Stunned – depressed more than stunned at what had happened – Prudence barely had the energy to wish a building would fall on them all. She stumbled, swept along with the battalion of murderers down the carriageway, and into the area before a square red-fronted building.
“Five minutes to form up inside the Mailbox,” Malcolm said to Kathy. “Another five for the marksmen of bravo team to get into position on the roof. We’ve had intel from spotters on Commercial Street that a man and a woman have just entered the Cube, descriptions matching Sheikh Omar and Morag Murray.”
Prudence perked up at her mum’s name. Kathy was looking at her.
“Yes, we might get to see your mum,” said Kathy. “You’ll like that.”
They climbed the steps to the entrance of the building. What doors there might have been inside were destroyed. Within was a strange space: cavernous and made from shiny cream-coloured stone. There were escalators and glass frontages which looked as if they should belong to shops, but no shop signs. Human bodies littered the floor, dozens of them, as though everyone had been caught up in some instantaneous, deadly rampaging storm.
“What a waste,” said Malcolm.
“A Hollywood film company w
as making a movie here,” said Kathy.
“Then it’s their fault for being here,” he said, suddenly dismissive.
Kathy gave Captain Malcolm a peculiar look. “Foreign lives aren’t as important as British ones?”
Malcolm gave it some thought. “Film people. Movies people. I never thought of them as real.”
The soldiers were forming into groups in the clearest space in the giant hall, three groups of maybe eight or nine soldiers each, and a smaller group to one side.
Malcolm addressed the men at the front of each group. “This is operational HQ. You’re going in with minimal planning, but it’s strong planning. We are relying on momentum and effective covering fire. Each team commander will need to use his initiative, but run all communications through us here. We have no ability to regroup for a second attack. How long until Yoth-Bilau is scheduled to show, Dr Kaur?”
Kathy Kaur looked at her phone. “Forty-three minutes.”
“Forty-three minutes before the Soulgate closes around our world and we’re all truly doomed,” said Malcolm. “Bravo team, get your marksmen on the roof.” As a handful of men peeled off and hurried to emergency exit doors, Malcolm pointed at some further off escalators. “Up there are the shops, restaurants and the offices of the BBC. Beyond them are the wharf side bars and restaurants. There are two pedestrianised routes to the Cube. One at canalside, one at the storey above. Alpha team will accompany Dr Kaur and the package—” Malcolm looked at Prudence “—the packages to the Cube. Your primary mission is protecting them at all costs. Bravo is covering the approaches alongside the wharf side. Charlie team is going to set up positions to cover the bridge leading to Waterfront Walk and Commercial Street on the other side of the Cube building.”
A pair of soldiers approached Kathy with the wire cage cylinder studded with blue john shards. It was held in a harness of canvas straps. They helped Kathy thread her arms through them so she could wear it like a backpack.
“Heavy?” said one, as she helped Kathy tighten the straps.