The Apocalypse Codex

by Charles Stross

  The situation is as bad as anything Persephone’s ever seen: she, Howard, and Johnny against at least four gunmen who control the egress they need to escape through—and Johnny wouldn’t be running away if he thought he stood a chance. It may, in fact, be non-survivable.

  Howard finally produces the small, gnarled lump, then fumbles for a lighter as Persephone waits impatiently. Seconds stretch out interminably. Three more figures come through the gate. Meanwhile, behind her, she is acutely aware of the feeders driving the dead husks of their victims forward and up the stairs. If Howard can control them there might be some hope of salvaging the situation…otherwise, not.

  Howard clumsily fumbles a cigarette lighter in her direction.

  “Make a distraction,” she says, careful to keep the incipient tremor out of her voice—whether driven by fear or anger, adrenalin surges are infectious and can be devastating. “I’m going to sort this out.” She puts down her pistol temporarily, flicks the lighter, and ignites the pigeon’s foot. Then she pockets the lighter, picks up her pistol in her free hand, and stands up.

  Mind still, calm, in the moment: They can’t see you. And indeed, the fighting figures are oblivious to her. There’s always the moment of cold terror suppressed purely by force of will when you rely on another’s prepared occult toolkit to shield you: all it takes is a quality control error and you’re naked in the gunsights. But no, the Hand of Glory is burning steadily.

  Persephone opens her inner eye and looks round, taking stock.

  Everything is light.

  Beside her, Howard is a green silhouette; she hears him mumbling in the privacy of his own head, hears the hungry-tasting answers from the shamblers beyond the door, themselves limned in light, but barely visible as shadows against the vast, solar glare coming from beneath the floor of the tomb. The portal through which Schiller’s people are coming is a blinding violet hole in space, and a luminous umbilical cord links it to the sarcophagus, which is itself an extrusion protruding from the frozen explosion of power beneath the floor. The river of light pulses slowly, like the heartbeat of a sleeping whale. Persephone can’t quite shake the feeling that if she could see the Sleeper’s body—embedded in the depths of the nova-glare beneath her feet—it, too, would be pulsing.

  A shout explodes from the far side of the pews and echoes shatter from the walls. Then there’s a scream in a different register, gurgling, abruptly cut off. Knife to the throat, if she’s anyone to judge: Johnny giving a good account of himself, she thinks, as she quietly hurries towards the portal. Another pistol shot hammers out and she whips round towards the shooter, but it’s not aimed at her. Schiller’s men in black have hemmed Johnny in between the sarcophagus and the far wall. He’s taken one of them down and is using his remaining knife to hold off three—that’s not going to end well, although they seem curiously reluctant to shoot him. But Schiller’s got more missionaries, and they’re guarding the gate, and they’ve seen the feeders in the night. That’s what the new shooting is about.

  Come on, Howard, give me my distraction!

  Persephone’s dilemma is this: she can deal with the gate, or she can deal with Johnny’s assailants. If she takes the latter, she’ll even the odds—but give herself away. And while the gate is open, Schiller can bring reinforcements through as well as continue to feed the sleeping horror.

  It’s not much of a dilemma.

  Schiller and a handmaid step through the gate while she’s still four or five meters away. This presents her with a dilemma—shoot Schiller and hope it’ll derail his summoning? But as she raises her pistol and sights, the handmaid turns, the sleeve of her gown falling away from the curved black foregrip of a P90: and then there’s a shout from behind.

  “Hey motherfuckers! Over here!”

  Persephone drops to the floor as the handmaid whips round towards her, bearing on Howard—whose distraction has surfaced at precisely the wrong moment—and braces the bullpup gun with both hands. It looks weirdly as if she’s raising her hands in prayer until the deafening roar of bullets erupts. Lips pulled back from her teeth in a rictus, Persephone crawls forward between the pews as the woman unloads. She’s close enough that a shower of hot brass cartridge cases rattle and spill across the floor around her, dangerously close to her back until she rolls sideways and stands—still clutching the burning Hand of Glory—and walks around Schiller and his guard, cat-light on her feet, then steps through the gateway back to the New Life Church.

  Don’t worry about Johnny. Don’t think about Howard. They’re behind you. Think about what’s in front.

  What’s in front turns out to be a squad of men in black clogging up the floorspace of a windowless locker room as they crowd in towards the gate. Persephone dodges sideways to avoid the elbow of an arm that’s cradling an AR-15 in a tactical sling, falls back against the wall beside the gate. Beyond the doorway to the vestry an eerie chant pounds away in time with the slow beat of the green light. Schiller’s reinforcements swarm through the gate at the double; only seconds later, the room is empty but for one man, who stands beside the equipment case that’s plugged into the grid to energize it.

  Persephone takes a step towards him and raises the butt of her pistol, judging precisely where to strike.

  He looks round and meets her gaze. “Ms. Hazard: Hello. I’ve been expecting you.”

  Persephone freezes in place and glances sidelong at the Hand of Glory.

  “Don’t worry, it’s still burning.” The man smiles, not showing his teeth. He has other defenses—her inner sight shows her the tattoo pulsing at the base of his throat. It’s a familiar sigil. As she recognizes it, a cold metal finger fumbles up against the back of her head. “Drop the gun, please.” She complies. “Jack there may not be able to see you, but he can touch you and hear you.”

  “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” she asks, trying to maintain a shred of dignity as she lowers the compact revolver.

  “I’m Alex Lockey. Yes, kick it over there. I handle Mr. Schiller’s security.”

  “You do, do you?” She pauses. “And why is Raymond Schiller’s security a matter of interest to the Operational Phenomenology Agency?”

  Alex’s smile vanishes. “You don’t get to ask the questions here.” His backup, standing behind her, plants a hand on her shoulder, restraining, even as he rests the muzzle of his pistol against the base of her skull. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to have you killed, and that would be a terrible waste.”

  “Let me guess?” At the minute flicker in his eyes she continues. “The Black Chamber has always relied on non-human assets, hasn’t it? To a much greater extent than any of the European agencies. But now the great conjunction is beginning, and you’ve got a huge landmass to defend. You’ve also got a population who are geographically dispersed, many of whom subscribe to frankly implausible religious beliefs that will badly impair their ability to recognize the truth about what is happening. So you’ve got to find a solution to the religious lunatic problem—to people who will mistake the Black Chamber for Satan and his happy helpers—and to defending the United States. It’s only natural to look for the biggest stick. And that thing”—her gaze tracks towards the gate—“is the biggest stick that comes to hand. Am I right?”

  Lockey stares at her, poker-faced. Which almost certainly means yes. Persephone presses on, playing for time and a momentary lapse of attention: “So this is a false flag operation. Schiller isn’t leading it, even if he thinks it’s all his idea; he’s just a useful dupe. If he succeeds, you stand to gain control of a truly monstrous weapon (and thin the herd of god-struck liabilities in the process); if he fails, the Black Chamber could deny all knowledge and responsibility, ask for help in hammering down the lid again if necessary. Trouble is, you still need a second elder of the blood in order to complete the awakening ceremony, don’t you? And the supply of elders from that particular wee free kirk is more or less a monopoly of the British government. So you trailed Schiller through London to get the L
aundry’s attention, relying on Johnny’s background to ensure that we were sent to investigate—”

  “Enough.” Lockey doesn’t look amused. “Eighty percent, Ms. Hazard. Such a shame—”

  He begins to step sideways, out of line with the pistol at the back of her head. It’s the cue Persephone has been waiting for. She reaches backwards and jabs the burning Hand of Glory into her guard’s eye in one fluid motion, turns sideways as he shrieks. The pistol shot—twenty centimeters from her right ear—is a hot hammer blow against the side of her face. She continues her turn and brings her other hand up, grabs the slide of the automatic, then twists, using it as a lever to break the shooter’s grip. Jack stumbles, still shrieking, hands reflexively going to his face. The automatic discharges into the ceiling as she yanks it away, then shoves him backwards.

  Off-balance and clutching his face, the hapless Jack—another of Schiller’s black-suited missionaries—stumbles towards the open gate. But he doesn’t stumble through it. He falls across it sideways, legs intersecting with the glowing edge of the portal at ankle level, shoulders and head hitting the side.

  There is blood; lots of blood.

  Persephone spins to bear on Lockey.

  Lockey is diving for the revolver, which lies inconveniently close to the door to the church. Persephone is holding Jack’s pistol by the slide in one hand, the Hand of Glory in her other. Only one thing for it. She opens her mouth and shouts a word that will cost a year of her life, at least.

  Time slows to a crawl around her. The air thickens to the consistency of jelly; light dims, sounds dull. Movement is sluggish, like swimming. Lockey hangs in the air, falling slowly as she lets go of the pistol she took from the hapless Jack, moves her hand to catch it by the butt as it drifts gently floorwards. Her other hand is abruptly heavy, gripped by pins and needles. She struggles to turn and aim one-handed through a period that feels like minutes but is probably a fraction of a second, then to squeeze the stiffened trigger mechanism.

  The gun heaves against her hand, sparks and smoke billowing from it; she can see the bullet as it drills a hole through the turgid air towards Lockey’s head. His hand is centimeters away from the revolver as the cartridge case slowly wobbles free of the breech of her stolen pistol, drifting through the red glimmering twilight.

  Time snaps back to normal and Lockey jerks, then is still.

  Persephone takes a deep, whooping breath and shudders like a leaf from head to foot. Her left hand is numb and tingling; her right feels as if she’s taken a kick to the wrist; and her stomach feels light and sick with the memory of what she has uncovered. But she can’t stop now: if this isn’t a rogue operation within the Black Chamber, dissent among the Nazgûl with a gaslight scenario to confuse and bamboozle the intruders, reinforcements will be along very soon indeed.

  She walks over to the equipment rack, identifies the cable feed under the gaffer tape from the altar in the church, and pulls the plug. There’s a fat spark and a quiet bang from inside the switch box. For good measure, she puts the pistol to the socket and shoots the terminals at close range. It’s risky, but less risky than chancing Schiller’s people to make a field expedient repair. Then she turns to face the portal to the Sleeper’s tomb, and swallows—because despite appearances, she is not fearless.

  A MONTH LATER:

  It’s a bright late-spring morning in London. I let myself into the New Annex via the unmarked door beside a closed high street chain store. I head upstairs towards my office—still hanging off the side of IT Facilities, after all these years—pausing to grab a mug of coffee and say “hi” to Rita on the front desk on my way in. I’m not putting things off, honest, it’s just that I expect the unexpected to happen today, and I’m bad at dealing with unknown unknowns while low on caffeine.

  It’s a small office and I don’t have an outside window, but I do have a nice Aeron chair these days (downsizing elsewhere in the civil service has left us with a surplus of lightly used executive furniture) to go with the five-year-old Dell desktop with the padlocked-shut case and ancient light-bleeding seventeen-inch monitor that is apparently considered suitable for IT staff at my grade. I plonk myself down behind it and am just beginning to get my head around the scale of the sewage farm that is a month’s worth of missed committee meeting minutes when the door opens.

  I glance up, surprised, and my guts turn to ice. My visitor is a tall, late-middle-aged man in a suit, and I’ve seen him three times before in my entire career. I don’t know what he’s called, he’s just the Senior Auditor, and if he takes an interest in you it is usually because something has gone very badly wrong.

  “Uh, hello,” I say.

  He looks at me over the rims of his half-moon spectacles and essays an avuncular smile that reminds me of my childhood dentist just before he reaches for the drill. “Good morning, Mr. Howard. Do you have a minute?”

  “Uh,” I flail for words, then gesture at the solitary visitor’s chair. “Sure.” Too late, I realize that there’s a heap of unclassified literature clogging it up, the better to conceal the suspicious stains and the two rips from which protrude chunks of grubby yellow furniture foam. (I was meaning to replace it at the same time I snagged the Aeron, but got side-tracked…) I stand up hastily and grab for the paperwork, which retaliates by making a bid for freedom and sliding in a messy avalanche to the floor.

  “Ah, security by obscurity.” The Senior Auditor perches on the edge of the chair and waves me back to my seat. “I gather you arrived home the day before yesterday. How are you feeling, Bob?”

  The first name takes me by surprise, so much so that I start to stutter: “Oh, um, I’m f-fine, o-over the jet lag—” He’s watching me with sympathetic eyes, deep brown with pupils so huge and dark I feel as if I’m falling into them, down into a sea of stars—

  “Ruby. Seminole. Kriegspiel. Hatchet.” The nonsense words ricochet from side to side of my skull like bullets; my tongue feels like leather and I can’t look away. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Howard, so I’ll make it quick. Execute Sitrep One.”

  From a very great distance I hear my own voice, in a cadence not my own, say, “Subjective integrity is maintained. Subjective continuity of experience is maintained. Subject observes no tampering.”

  “Exit supervision,” says the Senior Auditor, and I flap my jaws soundlessly for a few seconds, taking deep breaths. He breaks eye contact. “I’m sorry to have to subject you to that, Mr. Howard, but I’m afraid it’s the lesser evil—the alternative would be a month or two under observation in Camp Sunshine, and we need you operational too badly to spare you for that long.”

  “What”—I swallow—“kind of tripwire was that?”

  “You’ve seen The Manchurian Candidate.” The Senior Auditor raises an eyebrow. I nod: I’m bluffing, but I can look it up on Wikipedia later. “The Black Chamber have been known to forcibly install back doors in the minds of foreign operatives who fall into their hands, turning them into sleeper agents. After your experience in Santa Cruz eleven years ago…we felt it best to take precautions. It’s a standard precaution for all field agents who are tagged for fast-track development.”

  “And I’m not—” I pause. “No, if I was, you wouldn’t tell me. You’d use me as a conduit?” I’m grasping for straws.

  He shakes his head, somewhat sadly: “No, Mr. Howard, I’m afraid we’d have to decommission you. If we couldn’t excise the damaged tissue, that is, but that kind of neurosurgery has a poor prognosis.”

  I am taking deep whooping breaths. “Aaagh—”

  “I’m very happy to say that you’re fine,” he adds hastily. “Would you like a minute to—”

  I wave wordlessly.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he adds awkwardly. (I manage a nod.) “I am here to clear up some loose ends from GOD GAME RAINBOW. First, before we continue—I’m required to ask you this: Is there anything you would like to disclose to me in confidence?”

  “Uh. Um…such as…” I manage to ask
, but it feels like my brain’s still freezing from whatever he just did, combined with the realization that if my traitorous nervous system had given a different answer I could be dead.

  “Oh, anything you’d like to confess.” He emits a self-deprecating chuckle. “Excessive expense claims, bribes, embezzlement, you’re working for the KGB as a double agent, that sort of thing. In confidence, with no disciplinary outcome indicated if you make a clean breast of it to the Audit Commission at this point.” He looks at me hopefully, like a kindly uncle expecting me to confess the origin of the scratches on the door of his new Jaguar.

  “Um, er”—stop that—“well, Gerald Lockhart gave me a rather exotic credit card and instructions to use it in a manner that’s not consistent with our usual expenses policy. Does that count?”

  “Perhaps. What did you use it for that might be inappropriate?”

  “Well.” I rack my brain. “He told me to fly business class and stay in a higher class of hotel than I’d have used on a regular travel account. When given the scram instruction I rented the first car I could get, for a week, unlimited mileage in case the airport wasn’t available. Oh, and I ordered out for some items when in the hotel—including a pizza.” He frowns minutely. “But I needed the pizza box to make a field-expedient containment grid for one of Schiller’s hosts, which I used to locate the breeding pool.” His frown clears. “I tried to keep receipts, but the Black Chamber confiscated them.” Along with the contents of my wallet, my passport, the pizza box, my IronKey, and everything else I was carrying.

  “Well, I think we can find a way to retroactively approve the pizza and the car hire,” the Senior Auditor says gravely. “And I shouldn’t expect the hotel and air fares will be a problem if you were ordered to use them. Is there anything else?”