The Apocalypse Codex

by Charles Stross

“If it’s okay by you I’d rather not hang around here: the locals aren’t terribly friendly. We have a job to do—close this gate, open the next. Right?”

  The next couple of minutes pass me by because I’m in the zone. Persephone, it turns out, is not carrying any high explosives or banishment rounds, so the job falls to me. “Hold this,” I say, passing her the camera. “If anything comes at us, take a portrait.”

  I rummage through my bag, pull out the wire-wrap board and breakout box and my phone, and go to work. The gate is straightforward. Schiller didn’t try to booby-trap it; all you have to do to close the thing is toss a coil of wire through it and hit it with a signal at the gate’s resonant frequency—

  (Memo to self: do not degauss interdimensional portals at close range without ear protection in future.)

  “Bob. What do you see?” My work done, I look up: Persephone has been trying to get my attention, waving and pointing across the plain.

  I have a premonition, so I look at the fence. Then I look at it again with my eyelids screwed shut. I open my eyes. “We should start climbing. Now.”

  Persephone heads for the steps. I follow her. She’s walking, not running. “What can they do?” she asks as I pass her. “What are their capabilities? You’re the expert…”

  “The fence wasn’t put here to keep the Sleeper in, it’s not strong enough to do that. It’s to keep people who might want to wake the Sleeper out.” (I can feel them waking up all around us, hanging on their stakes like nests of sleeping hornets. We’ve got their undivided attention because we’re the only moving things for a hundred kilometers around. They’re curious about the still-living: I think they see us as a mistake.) “And, if someone is stupid enough to open a gate inside the fence and stick around for a picnic, they’re supposed to deal with that, too. Fuck knows how Schiller managed it…” I put one foot in front of the other with careful determination, not so fast I’m going to run out of breath before I reach the top, but not too slowly either. “They’re vessels for the feeders in the night. You don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

  Persephone glances behind me. “I agree.” She hurries to catch up, bounding gracefully up the steps two at a time on the tips of her toes—for the steps are shallow and the gravity low. “I might be able to hold some of them…”

  “Me too, for a while.” Step. Step. (I have a history with the feeders—it’s possible I can even control them.) Step. “But.” Step. “Don’t want to weaken.” Step. Step. Step. “The defenses.” (And my contractors are another matter.) Step. Step. There are at least a hundred, possibly two hundred steps to the top of the pyramid, and the air here is as thin as in Denver: I’m already beginning to feel my heart pounding. I feel light-headed too, but not from too little oxygen—there’s something about this place that makes me feel as if my skull’s too thin and the universe is trying to leak in.

  “What. Do you expect. To find up there?” Persephone asks.

  “Big temple.” Step. Step. “Sarcophagus.” Step. “The Sleeper—” I misstep as the next flagstone under my foot abruptly isn’t there, then bashes into my sole hard, then drops away. “Shit!”

  “Quake! Drop.” Persephone pancakes across three steps and I land hard beside her, taking the impact on one buttock. I gasp and wheeze in the thin air as dust devils rise across the plain and the steps groan and wail beneath us, stone grinding on stone. For a moment I’m terrified that the temple will fall on us: but no, it’s stood here for many thousands of years. In fact, the designers will have picked this plateau precisely because it was tectonically stable, so why is it shaking now? Don’t think about that Bob, you wouldn’t like the answer.

  The tremors continue for almost a minute. I lie on my back, then as they begin to die away and the groaning and moaning stops I sit up and look down the slope of the pyramid.

  One by one, the mummified corpses are helping each other down from the stakes upon which they were impaled. Limping and wobbling and rattling, they shuffle and lurch towards us across the dusty plain, still wearing the scraps of Russian civil war uniforms they wore when they were murdered. Many of them are fully skeletonized, but they’re still articulated, and they carry knives and rusty cavalry sabers. They don’t have working lungs or larynx with which to hiss brains, but you don’t need to have seen many Romero flicks to know what they’ve got in mind.

  I catch a flash of light in the corner of my left eye and begin to turn just in time to see Persephone standing, camera before her face, taking aim at the lead zombie before I can tell her not to.

  There is a concussive blue-white flare of light from the vicinity of the eater: it’s so painfully bright it brings tears and leaves a green-purple haze in my eye. About half a second later the crump! of the explosion reaches us.

  “Woo-hoo!” Persephone bounces straight up in the air, lands a step higher up behind me. “That was fun!”

  “Give me that back.”

  “Why?”

  (It’s a Basilisk gun. When you point and shoot one, about a tenth of one percent of all the carbon nuclei in whatever it’s locked onto are spontaneously replaced by silicon. There is a slight insufficiency of electrons to go around: the result looks a lot like an explosion, and what it leaves behind is more like concrete than flesh. Red hot concrete full of short half-life gamma emitters.)

  “Firstly, you don’t want them to start shooting back. Secondly, I may need them.”

  “Why, can you—” She looks at me and does a double take. “Oh, that. Angleton said you—” She swallows whatever she was about to say, hands it over, and we start climbing again. Actually, she may have done us a favor. The other walking corpses are still picking each other up: the blast knocked most of them down. On the other hand they’re angry now, and some of them have rusty bolt-action rifles.

  We climb again until we reach the top of the steps. I’m gasping for breath and my buttocks and upper thighs feel as if I’ve been beaten with baseball bats. Ahead of us there’s a wall of unmortared giant limestone blocks, windowless and surrounded by a row of pillars the size of ICBMs supporting the roof above. It is like the Parthenon in Athens—if the ancient Athenians who built it had been twenty-meter-tall giants. I can see a dark-mouthed opening between two pillars about eighty meters away, and I am at a loss for words to describe my lack of eagerness to go there. On the other hand, our pursuers are wheezing angrily through the gaps in their rib cages and brandishing stabby implements in a most unfriendly manner, as they come surging up the steps below us like a wave of bony hooligans.

  I point at the opening wordlessly. Persephone nods, then picks herself up and breaks into a loose-limbed jog.

  I stagger drunkenly towards the opening, trying to ignore the grotesque carvings inlaid on the bases of the pillars and the walls of the temple—not so much Achaean as Aztec, but with added writhing tentacles and horned skulls—and follow Persephone up to the threshold. It’s a big rectangular doorway about five or six meters high and three meters wide, and the wooden doors that would normally block it have been carefully opened and wedged. Gee thanks, whoever. I pause beside Persephone and look inside. It’s gloomy, the dim light filtering down from skylights in the ceiling. The roof is free-standing, vaulting high overhead—the classical columns outside are decorative, for there’s no forest of roof supports within—and I find myself peering across fifty meters of stone towards a raised dais that supports an altar-shaped sarcophagus. There’s a glowing circle in the air beside the sarcophagus and, unlike the one we found in Schiller’s office, this one reeks of power, fat and bloated with the life energy of worshipers. There’s a faint metallic smell in the air, as of blood, and it makes me feel hungry. I can feel Persephone’s mind behind me, wondering at our surroundings; I tap her on the shoulder and she glances at me.

  “No time,” I say, then take a step forward. The eaters will be reaching the top step soon, and I’d rather not stop to dicker with them. Besides, there are more tremors. They’ve started again, gentle aftershocks to the earlie
r screeching and groaning of stones. The ground is vibrating again, as if some huge beast is stirring uneasily in its sleep beneath our feet, and even though the shocks are weaker they’re making me nervous.

  Then a human figure dives through the open gate towards us, and all hell breaks loose.

  16.

  THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

  “DON’T SHOOT HIM!” SCREAMS SCHILLER AS HE RISES FROM his throne, clawing at its wooden arms in pain as he stands. “Take him alive! ‘For I am the way and the life, sayeth the Lord!’”

  “Yes, Father,” Roseanne says meekly, lowering her FN P90; the barrel of the bullpup submachine gun is smoking slightly where it melted the cuff of her part-synthetic sleeve.

  The boys aren’t waiting for direction: they pile through the gate in eerie silence, drawing batons and tasers in unison. Their hosts ride them with expert precision, coordinating perfectly to fan their mounts out across the floor of the courtyard on the other side. Schiller shuffles round the throne and takes a hissing breath. “Tell Alex to secure this side, then follow me through,” he tells the other handmaid. “Roseanne, help me.”

  Roseanne goes to his right arm and lifts it across her shoulder. “Father, will you—”

  “The prodigal son will serve, willingly or no,” Schiller says quietly. “Through the door, Daughter. ’Less’n I’m mistaken Pastors Holt and Dawes are already beginning Holy Communion: I can feel the life flowing back into me as I stand.” He takes a step forward, then another, gathering strength as he moves. A few seconds later he lets his arm drop from his handmaid. “Follow me. Alex’s men will be here soon. We need to be on the other side to unseal our Lord’s tomb.”

  The cathedral-sized building on the other side of the gate awes Roseanne. She’s dreamed of it for years, even before Father Ray took her for a handmaiden; dreaming in awe and ecstasy that she might be the one to quicken the Lord in His sleep. It’s far above her place to hold such dreams, she knows, but even so she is determined to be present at the second coming, and she feels an icy spike of rage at the flippant Englishman who so foolishly turned down Father Ray’s generous offer. She tightens her grip on her gun’s foregrip. For a butterfly-ticklish moment she’d almost thought Father Ray was going to offer her to the Englishman as part of his ludicrous list of bribes, not that she does not welcome the idea of fulfilling her duty to be fertile and submit to the husband he will eventually choose for her, but the hot flush she felt for a few seconds in the vestry has left her disconcerted and angry with herself for sinning in her soul.

  And so, as she follows the holy father through the portal to the holy sepulcher, her mind is not entirely focussed on the job.

  JOHNNY ROLLS AS HE HITS THE FLOOR—TOO SLOWLY, ALTHOUGH the bullets cracking above his head like maddened wasps are as fast as normal—and bolts sideways, away from the direct sight-line of the gate.

  He knows this place. He heard stories about it on his father’s knee as a wean; he knows the layout, for the village kirk reproduced it in miniature. It’s in his blood, and he knows just how desperate Schiller must be to complete this ritual now that he’s here.

  (Set a thief to catch a thief. Johnny will be having some pointed words with the Auditors when he gets home, by and by, if Persephone doesn’t get to them first; and then there will be a pointed debate among the invisible collegiate membership of Mahogany Row. But that’s of no matter right now. What matters here is preventing Schiller from completing the service of possession that he’s trying to carry out—that, and maybe escaping with his skin intact. And the Duchess and that Howard guy Lockhart sent along on this caper as an understudy.)

  There’s the nave: there, at the front of it is the Altar of the Sleeping Christ, as dad called it—more like the cryonic suspension capsule of an alien nightmare, if you look at it without god-glazed eyes. The ground is shaking slightly beneath his feet. Are the support systems coming online already? They’re elder gods to the superstitious neolithic tribes who had worshiped them, ancient astronauts if you want a more modern metaphor. They’re nameless and inhuman horrors, either way. There are benches in the nave, half-melted looking things made out of some kind of crystalline mineral. They’re sized for humans but each seating position is punctuated by a gully in just the right position to accommodate a stumpy tail.

  Johnny duck-walks behind a pew as the first two bodyguards bound through the gate. He can feel his skin crawling with power in this place, and the throb of blood in his ears is disturbing: there’s a curious sense of euphoria, a giddy light-headedness that seems to come on the back of the distant hymns of damnation filtering through the gate from the church sanctuary back in Colorado Springs. The sacrifices. He’s beginning the sacrificial ceremony. Johnny freezes for a couple of seconds, during which the next two bodyguards arrive and fan out on either side of the gate. The sacrifice of souls joyfully given by their owners is the most potent part of the ritual, necessary to power the invocation that will awaken the Sleeper. All it takes are donations of circulatory fluid from two members of the blood, descended from the ranks of the Sleeper’s chosen priesthood—there is some archaic genetic manipulation at work here, and other, more arcane processes—and the rite of awakening may be performed. Fuck, he’s beginning. He needs me here. Willing, or…?

  With a pang of embarrassment, Johnny McTavish realizes that he might have made a really bad error of judgment. Not merely bad: the worst. In which case there’s really only one thing he can do.

  Johnny stands and shouts, “Over here, motherfuckers!”

  Heads whip round.

  Then knives fly.

  * * *

  “HAND OF GLORY,” SNAPS PERSEPHONE, HOLDING OUT AN OPEN palm just as I hear a couple of gunshots.

  I drop to the floor behind a row of church pews perfectly suited to the hindquarters of deep ones. “I’ve got it in here somewhere…” I rummage in my shoulder bag, end up upending the complaints department on the floor, then drop a spare tee shirt on top of it. Something buzzes aggressively—like a rattlesnake—and I jump back before I realize the ward’s broken and the giant isopod is free. Well, fuck it. I find the second and last mummified pigeon’s foot and pass it to Persephone, who’s kneeling behind another pew with her pistol held at the ready, then go hunting for the lighter. Which I pass across in due time.

  “Make a distraction,” she says, “I’m going to sort this out.” Then she flicks the lighter, turns transparent, and disappears.

  I sigh and power up my camera. Just then I feel an echo of hunger tugging at my attention from somewhere just outside the door. ***Not now,*** I send irritably: ***I’m busy.***

  Unfortunately these are not my feeders in the night; I get a distinct sense of peevish resentment, and then the hunger pressing in on the edges of my mind redoubles. A moment later there is a great clattering of bones as the front of the picket of the damned reaches the entrance and shuffles across the threshold, luminous green worms writhing and twisting in their sunken eye sockets.

  There’s a great shout from the other side of the nave, and then a gurgling scream and another gunshot. The first three walking corpses shuffle towards me. Two of them raise tarnished swords; the third clutches an ancient and rust-speckled rifle with a bayonet the length of my arm. They don’t look friendly.

  I raise the camera and frame them in the viewfinder. One last chance before I blow them back to Molvanîa or wherever they came from, before they got swept up in the Russian civil war and ended up in one of the Bloody White Baron’s death trains: ***I am the Eater of Souls! You are mine to command. Halt!***

  It’s a bit of an exaggeration (if not an outright lie: I am not the Eater of Souls, I’m just his administrative assistant), but for a miracle the half-skeletonized soldiers stop dead just inside the threshold. I sense bafflement and incomprehension.

  ***Report!***

  The rifle barrel rises, and rises until it points at the ceiling in scabrous salute. ***The watch…reporting, Master.***

  Another three zombies
arrive on the threshold, rocking and shuddering to a halt. There are more behind them, the walking undead ruins of a bloody civil war, staked out to die without hope of perpetual rest beneath the racing moons of an alien world: the sentries on the edge of forever. ***It is him,*** I sense one of them saying, ***it is the Lieutenant come to lead us home.***

  (By “home” I do not think he is talking about anything this side of the grave.)

  ***Enemies have come to wake the Sleeper,*** I tell them. ***They must die. There are two allies, an invisible witch and a man with two knives that eat souls. They must live.***

  ***Must they?*** comes a question from the ranks. There’s always one.

  ***I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Follow me!*** And with knocking knees, I force myself to stand up and walk out from behind the row of pews and shout, “Hey motherfuckers! Over here!” ***Charge!***

  I hope Persephone appreciates my distraction…

  Before me, the Altar of the Sleeping Christ is a plain sarcophagus carved from a single slab of black granite, inlaid with metallic flecks that form disturbing patterns if you stare at the surface for too long. It’s four meters long, far too big for a human unless it contains a pharaonic nest of concentric coffins, not that anyone with any sense is going to go looking inside. Reddish sunbeams track slowly across the dusty flagstones of the temple and drip bleeding from the backs of the empty pews.

  At one side of the room, a fight is in progress. Two of the black-suited bodyguards are down, twitching in their death agonies as Johnny’s knives suck the souls from their bodies. The other two aren’t shooting, but they hold batons as if they know how to use them and they’re circling around Johnny McTavish, who—knifeless, now—is at a marked disadvantage.

  A woman in a blue gown leads an older man dressed in priest’s vestments towards the sarcophagus. He casts an angry glare at McTavish, but seems satisfied by the man’s mere presence. It’s not far to the altar, and they’re arriving just as I shout and start to run towards them. The woman looks up in surprise, then raises her arms as if in prayer in my direction. Only she’s not praying.