by James King
And from all of these dreams, Bryan would awaken: sweating, terrorised, but knowing that he was right. That eventually, and soon, the Apocalypse would come. And all the Earth would flame in its wake.
On the morning in question – the morning of helicopter crash – Bryan awoke at his usual time and in his usual fashion. He had been dreaming of the vulture, the bird of death, and in this dream it had been plucking the liver out of a still-living man. The bird of death had been prominent in his dreams just recently. He didn’t know what, exactly, the image of the bird meant, but he knew that it would mean something. And, as he awakened, alone, sweating, trembling, he knew that it meaning would be divulged to him today.
Slowly, little by little, Bryan regained his sense of reality. His breathing slowed, his heart rate slowed, and the night-sweat that coated his body slowly began to dry. He realised that he was gripping the bedclothes, his hands tightly knotted fists, and so, little by little, he loosened his grip, his body no longer needing such desperate purchase on the solid world. After a moment of regrouping and re-gathering, Bryan swung himself out of his bed. He rose unsteadily to his feet – tottering like a living corpse - and then slowly, methodically, drew his clothes about him: check shirt, jeans, and deerstalker cap. He paced to the dressing table and put his glasses on – thick coke-bottle lenses which were all that could help his weakened eyesight – and then he gazed at himself in the mirror above the dressing table, just as he did every morning.
His face was something of a mystery, even to himself. The lower half of it was lost beneath a furious tangle of dark brown beard that was so thick that not even the lips were visible. The nose was squat, dumpy, and the eyes were huge, brown, and peering from behind their magnifying lenses. The top of his head was bald, and ringed around monk-like with a sheaf of straggly brown-turning-grey hair. This was obscured, of course, by the deerstalker cap. The cap had been his father’s, who had worn it every day while working out in the field or in the barn. His father had died twenty years ago, and every day since Bryan himself had worn it, a family heirloom that had never been washed, and which was held together by old hair and head grease.
“The bird of death...” said Bryan suddenly to himself, to the mirror. He realised that, when he whispered the phrase, his voice sounded very much like the voice that he heard in the dream. May the voice of his dream was his voice, maybe he muttered aloud when he slept at night, and his own muttered phrases found their way into the nightmare. It was possible. With the day of the Apocalypse strong upon him, anything now was possible.
“The bird of death will come,” Bryan whispered, “and yea truly, this will be the end of days...”
It was time to enact The Ritual. The Ritual was enacted every morning, before he had breakfast, before he left the house. The Ritual was Observed, with an accuracy and an exactitude that was almost militaristic. To not enact The Ritual was unthinkable, and upon this day, this day of days, this very day of The Apocalypse, to not enact The Ritual would be nothing less than blasphemous.
Turning from the mirror, and not bothering as yet to open the bedroom curtain, Bryan stepped out of the bedroom and onto the landing. Bryan lived in a large farmhouse about a mile out of Alchester. The farm house was brick built, three storied, and sprawling. It was surrounded by two barns, several outbuildings, and seven acres of land. The Devlin Farm: Bryan had lived there all his life – could, in fact, count on the fingers of one hand the times that he had been away from it – and he could even remember a time when the farm had been active. The two barns had housed what had then been the largest calf rearing unit in the county, while the fields about had born crops of barley, wheat, potatoes, and sugar beet, as the season and the economy dictated. That had been all – or mostly - his father’s doing. Ron Devlin had been an industrious man: a skilled farmer and a canny business man. But then the farming industry had hit rough times – mad cow disease, the salmonella in eggs scare, etc – while Ron Devlin himself had hit rougher times still. Prostate cancer had taken him off inch by painful inch, until the day dawned in the private room in Alchester hospital where he had drawn his final breath. That had been twenty years ago, although it seemed like only yesterday to Bryan. His mother had died ten years later – a broken heart was the diagnosis from most brow-furrowing, head-shaking onlookers – and then Bryan had been left alone. The cattle sold off, the fields left fallow, his only income being a small inheritance from a wealthy and recently deceased uncle. These days, the barns and outhouses of the Devlin Farm were dark and empty, broken shutters flapping and banging in the stark, cold wind. Today, the crops in the fields were weeds and rocks and empty earth.
“An yea veritably Lord is it the end of days, and thy wrath shall fall upon the land, and the bird of death shall make its feast of carrion.”
Bryan’s voice fell loud and dark within the sombre house. The stairwell seemed to echo with the sound of it, as if it were a throat, striving for its own articulation. Then Bryan fell silent, and cast his gaze about the landing, and the stairs, and the curtained window. Bryan wasn’t really religious. He hadn’t been to church in many years, and he had no real belief in any god. But none the less, he liked to quote scripture – or at least utter phrases that sounded as though they may have proceeded from a religious tract. It sounded suitable unto the day, words that might both acknowledge the coming apocalypse, and refute it.
But anyway, now was time for The Ritual. Bryan descended the stairs, and progressed down the hall to the front door of the farmhouse. He checked the eight bolts that were arraigned about its frame and checked that the pile of sandbags that he had heaped against it the last night were intact. The front door of the Devlin Farmhouse had not been opened in eight years, and never would be opened again in Bryan Devlin’s life time. That was surely one of life’s great verities. Bryan checked the window to the side, and the boards that lay across them were firmly nailed, their heads mottled with the rust of years.
He checked all of the other downstairs windows, and their boards too were intact. He checked the back door that led from the kitchen – his only means of exit from the farm house – and that was firmly locked and bolted, the sandbags heaped. Then he opened the door that led off the kitchen into the larder. The larder was a large room –perhaps twenty feet by thirty – and its walls were ringed from floor to ceiling with shelves. The shelves were stacked tall and deep with cans of food: baked beans, chopped tomato, meats, fruits, and puddings of differing varieties. Bryan had spent a whole year, and not an inconsiderable amount of money, stockpiling these tins. He had once been confronted at the local Tesco store when he had bought their entire consignment of self-brand baked beans in a single supermarket-sweep. Do you really need to buy all those at one go, sir – the slightly disgruntled store manager had asked him. Yes, damn you, yes. Here’s my money. It’s the same colour and the same weight and the same smell as anybody else’s money. Is that not good enough for you? It had been, and they’d let him make his purchase, and he had wheeled his shopping trolley triumphantly back to his pickup in the car park, piled deep and thick with no less than sixty five tins of Tesco’s own baked bean tins.
Stockpiling. Enough food for a year, maybe longer. Proof against the coming Apocalypse.
Bryan selected a tin for his breakfast – rice pudding – and then retreated from the larder, flicking the light switch to dark. He placed the tin on the kitchen table, but made no move to cook it as yet. Now was not the time for eating. The Ritual had been performed, and his fortress was, for now, secure. Now was the time to Mount The Vigil. He did this for an hour each morning, sometimes longer. This morning it would be longer, he sensed. This morning, the stench of The Apocalypse was thick and heavy in the air.
Returning to the hallway, Bryan jogged up the stairs, entered his bedroom, and strode over to the wardrobe that stood in the corner of the room. He opened the wardrobe and, from its darkened, moth-ball scented interior, withdrew the gun. It was a rifle, a pump action shot gun that, like the deerstalk
er cap, had been his father’s, and which had duly been passed to Bryan. But, unlike the deerstalker, the gun was immaculately clean, polished, oiled, and honed. Bryan liked the gun. The gun was his sword against the coming Apocalypse. The gun would, one day, shoot the bird of death from the sky, and the harbingers of damnation from the land. Yea veritably, Lord, bring me my bow of burning gold, my arrows of desire...
Bryan stepped across to the window and pulled the curtains apart. He squinted for a moment at the bright July sun that fell into the room. The Devlin Farmhouse usually stood in darkness, sunlight only intruding when The Vigil was mounted. It took a while for his eyes to adjust, but once they had, he was able to peer at the field that stretched beyond his window. This field did not belong to The Devlin farm, but rather belonged to the Fernihoughs, the neighbouring farmers. The Fernihoughs were a thriving farm, their land yet baring the fruits of the earth, and this field was a ripe, rich yellow rectangle of barley. A good crop. His father would have approved.
Turning briefly from the window, Bryan dragged a wooden chair, and sat by the window’s edge, gazing out upon the field and upon the vast blue sky beyond. His stomach grumbled with hunger, and his mouth was dry and scratchy and in need of a cup of tea. He did not go in search of these comforts just yet though. The Vigil had been Mounted, and now he must watch and wait, and see if this day would truly be the Day of Days. It would be. He could feel it. He could smell it, like harsh, dark smoke in the air.
And so Bryan waited. The seconds and minutes turned. The sun ascended. A light morning breeze made its way through the barley and made it ripple, waves running through its golden ears, making it look like the sea.
And then, at last, it came.
Bryan saw the bird of death arrive, just as he knew that it would.
He saw the bird of death fall to the earth, twirling, smoking, stricken by God’s wrath.
He saw the fire, and the smoke – the presage of which had been so pungent in his nostrils – arise and form its cloud of Armageddon in the sky.
He saw the young man run to the burning wreck, and he saw the young man run away from it, plunging and desperate through the corn.
And he saw the harbingers of death, tottering their scarecrow forms through the corn, their flesh burned and blackened by hellfire, their presence a curse for the very soil upon which they stood. He saw the ambulance men come and be torn down and devoured, their blood painting the ripened corn, and then he knew that the feast of death had begun.
Long moments passed. The harbingers of death tottered unsteadily, as though exhausted from their feast. The bird of death burned in its field, the smoke rising dark and acrid, forming its great exclamation mark of doom in the summer sky. And the breeze moved through the corn, making it sway, making it ripple, creating tides in its golden ears as though it were the sea.
And then, at last, they came. The hoards. The dead ones. The outriders of The Apocalypse, staggering toward him, to embrace him in their rotting arms just as he known that they would. Just a few to begin with, joining their brethren who had crawled from the burning, fallen bird. Then more: a few dozen, then a few dozen more, and then perhaps a hundred, staggering through the corn, wandering through the warm air of the July day, staggering a slow and stately dance of death toward the brick walls of the Devlin Farm House.
At last, Bryan unlatched the window and drew it open. Immediately he was hit by the ripe stench of purification, and if he had thought that any of this was merely a hallucination, just another nightmare from which he would awaken tense and sweating, then that odour told him told him that he was wrong. This was reality. This was the harbingers of death, the hoards, the dead ones, stepping forward to greet him at last. This was The Apocalypse, arrived just as he knew it would, and then time had come for him to make his stand.
Carefully, Bryan brought up the gun, and poised its barrel. Through the open window.
He took aim, the head of the nearest monster coming into his sights.
Carefully, gradually, slowly, he squeezed his forefinger, and the trigger creaked.
Nine
Doctor Christian Morrell paced the laboratory floor in a black rage. His hands were behind his back, clasped together in a twisting anguish of flesh, his face was a reddened beacon of slowly detonating fury, while his pop corn blond hair reared from his head in electric-shock profusion. Giant sweat patches had formed beneath his arms, and the air of the laboratory smelled of body odour, disinfectant, and rage. A heady brew, had there been anyone else to sample it.
But there wasn’t.
Felix had left about quarter of an hour ago, banished from his father’s site. Morrell had told him to get out. Morrell no longer wanted his son within his sight or anywhere near him in that moment. In that moment, Morrell would have quite happily murdered his son, might actually have done it if he could have been sure that he would have won a physical confrontation. Once upon a time he would have, but those days were gone now. Felix had grown as strong as he had grown insane.
Necrovirus...! Morrell’s brain screamed at him, Necrovirus on the helicopter, and the helicopter has crashed, and oh my God... oh my God, the game’s up now. We won’t be able to keep this under wraps. If that virus is even half as strong as I expect that it is...
Suddenly, cutting his thoughts in two as neatly as a buzz saw, the intercom buzzed. Morrell lunged forward and jabbed the switch, his ferocity such that the small electrical device might have responsible for all his woes.
“What?” he yelled into the intercom’s metal grill, “what, damn it, WHAT!?”
“”Er... Doctor Morrell...” Mrs Sanders began. Mrs Sanders was used to the Doctor’s rages, but even she sounded flustered beneath the weight of this latest onslaught, “...I’ve just had a message from Mr Gudrie. There is to be a meeting in The Boardroom in ten minutes. Mr Gudrie has asked that you attend this meeting as a matter of urgency.”
Morrell was silent for a moment. He screwed his eyes shut and ground his teeth in infuriated anguish. A meeting. In The Boardroom. In ten minutes! It was the very last thing that Morrell needed right now. Right now, he needed time to think, to plan, to map out some course of action that would neutralise the worse of his psychopathic son’s actions. But now... Mr Richard Bloody Gudrie had summoned him to a meeting in his bloody Boardroom.
“Doctor Morrell..?” Mrs Sanders was saying, “...Doctor Morrell, are you there?”
“Yes, damn it all to hell, I’m here. And you can tell Gudrie if he asks that yes, I’m on the way to his infernal meeting. As soon as.”
He snapped the intercom dead before Mrs Sanders could say anything else, and then stormed out of the laboratory in a whirl of fury and white coat tails. He passed Mrs Sanders desk without a glance toward her, while Mrs Sanders for her part took great and abiding interest in whatever was on her computer screen.
At last Morrell gained the corridor that would take him down to The Boardroom. The Raddex headquarters was a huge compound that was designed as a single circular hub from which four arms radiated. The laboratories and admin departments were mostly located in the arms, while the Boardroom and offices belonging to the Senior Executive Officers were located, naturally enough, in the hub. The compound had four levels, a car park that could accommodate five hundred cars, three canteens, two gyms, two reception areas, and the whole place was surrounded by a four meter high perimeter fence that was composed of razor wire and concrete stanchions. For all the comfort and high-spec slickness that the base exuded, that fence spoke the truth of what the place really was: a prison, a kind of concentration camp. There were guards who patrolled that fence, but the real jailors in the Raddex Complex were corporate greed and secrets.
At last Morrell arrived at the pine double doors of the Boardroom. He offered a short, curt knock, and then stepped through the doors. The room beyond was large, surrounded by walls of opaque glass, and lighted by fluorescent strips that were hidden in the ceiling. At one end of the room stood a large display screen, next to that a
presentation lectern, while in the opposite corner stood a large, drooping cheese plant.
The room was dominated by a large oval table. Sitting around the table were seven people. At its head was Richard Gudrie, CEO of Raddex. Next to him was Monica Breddon who was Gudrie’s deputy in Raddex, and widely tipped to be the next CEO when Gudrie finally retired. Next to her was a uniformed police officer, and next to the police officer was, also in uniform, a military man, high ranking from the look of his flashes and his medals. The rest of the quorum were relatively minor Raddex functionaries – Senior Executive Officers and Admin managers – who Morrell had seen around the base but took no great interest in. He allowed himself a moment’s worth of relief when he saw that Felix was not present.
“Ah, Doctor Morrell,” said Gudrie at last, “glad that you were able to join us. Please, take a seat. Allow me to introduce you to Chief Inspector Wilson- ,” the police officer nodded, “ – and Colonel Ronson - ,” the military man nodded. “I believe that you know everyone else present, so let’s make a start.”
Morrell nodded at the two men he’d been introduced to, and took his seat. Slowly, he ran a finger around the inside of his shirt collar, suddenly feeling hot and stifled. He had a theory that Gudrie deliberately made the air in this damn Boardroom as oppressive as possible, just to intimidate people.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Gudrie began, “as I am sure that you are all by now aware, we have something of a situation on our hands. This morning, at around nine o’clock, one of our helicopters was en route from the Raddex HQ to the military base at Adlington. For reasons as yet undiscovered, this helicopter crashed. We received a call from the helicopter pilot, Joseph Sullivan, at ten past nine reporting a serious fault with the helicopter – he thought possibly a fuel leak, but this is unverified – and then contact was lost. It was later confirmed that the helicopter had crashed and that, tragically, there were no survivors. This event is of course bad enough. But what that helicopter was transporting from us to the military base, makes this situation a hundred fold worse. Monica, perhaps you’d like to take over from here.”