The Apocalypse Codex lf-4

by Charles Stross

  I stare at my red-eyed face in the bathroom mirror. What am I doing here? I feel like an eight-year-old who’s been handed a laser pointer and a bag of catnip and told to go amuse the kittens behind the chain-link fence labelled Siberian Tiger Enclosure; my so-called External Assets are off the reservation and halfway to the horizon while I sit here with my thumb up my ass, nursing a dream hangover, with nothing to do but fill out expense accounts while Rome burns.

  Pull yourself together, I tell myself.

  Once you start managing other people, you can’t control every aspect of how they do their jobs or keep yourself informed on everything that’s going on. I’m supposed to be taking on a managerial role, for very small values of management (Look at me! I’ve got two contractors working for me! Whoop-de-do!) and I should bloody well stop trying to act like an over-stressed prima donna and start doing my job. Beginning with sending Lockhart a brief sitrep, an expenses update, and a revised estimate on when I expect to have something concrete to report—

  There’s a knock at the door.

  I’m not expecting anyone, the room’s made up, and it’s evening: all this passes through my head before I’m even off the bed.

  I’m halfway to the vestibule, the narrow corridor running past the bathroom to the doorway, when I hear a rattle, then the thud of the door coming up against the security chain. For a moment I think I’m hallucinating: in the back of my head I’m hearing the crunching, munching sound of brain cells dying in the skulls on the other side of the portal, their waiting bodies occupied and animated by something blind and segmented and possessed of a vast, unthinking faith.

  Possessed. Not human anymore. These aren’t the feeders in the night; I’d recognize those guys anywhere. These are something else. They seek and they save—

  (Where am I getting this from?)

  “Who’s there?” I ask aloud.

  “Hotel security. Open up.”

  There’s something wrong with his voice, as if he’s speaking around a mouthful of chopped liver. I mutter a macro in High Enochian, a pre-canned invocation that will open up my inner ear and let me listen again, eavesdropping on what’s left of his mind with a corner of my own consciousness that was only fully awakened last summer, and this is what I get:

  A vast and wistful inner peace has stilled the fragmentary thoughts of the once-frightened human vessel. He knows he’s Saved, for he has eaten the blood and the body of Christ—and the host trans-substantiated into something that has in turn eaten his mind. He isn’t alone, he has a companion in arms. They are barely separate individuals anymore, for their hosts bind them together and control them. They’re united not merely by a common mission but a shared hunger for salvation. They want to help me. They’re dying to help me. And they’ve been sent here to help me find a friend in Jesus.

  I left my phone and my warrant card beside the laptop on the table, didn’t I? I’m going to have to do this myself, I realize queasily.

  “Open up,” says the seeker, its voice breaking into a very inhuman rasp.

  I crunch down on them hard and fast, and I feel their savior-damped fears and needs stab at the edges of my mind like shell splinters as I engulf their shattered minds swiftly, a squid reaping a pair of unwary crabs from the seabed.

  There is a heavy double-thud from the corridor. My stomach lurches. I feel queasy: bloated and simultaneously light-headed as I unhook the security chain and open the door.

  Two men lie on the beige hotel carpet, looking for all the world as if they’ve just decided to take a nap. White shirts, black suits, black ties, like they came to audition for a role in Reservoir Dogs: The Musical. Focussing on the discreet cross lapel pins I see no motion: they aren’t breathing. My bad. I grab the nearest arm and pull; his jacket spills open, revealing a leather holster nestled in his armpit. I pull harder. Corpses are heavy, but I keep dragging until he’s well inside the doorway, then force myself to go back for the other one. I feel numb, like my emotions are wrapped in cotton wool. It’s not as if I murdered them—they barely had enough soul left to keep their bodies breathing and responsive—but I still feel responsible. Most of what was left of their minds was given over to experiencing a weird ecstatic rush of surrender, a feeling of being saved. I don’t think it’s any kind of salvation that Pete the Vicar would recognize, though.

  I get the door shut and chained and I’m just about to fire up the corporate intranet and look up the regulations for dealing with the metabolically challenged when the jaws of the nearest stiff begin to open. His cheeks distend and something begins to pulse in his throat—almost as if he’s getting ready to vomit. Except he’s dead. (Actually he’s been soul-dead for weeks, if not months, but that didn’t stop him walking around.) Now it looks as if the death of the body isn’t any kind of obstacle to indigestion. I watch, repelled, as something forces its way out through the corpse’s lips: a pale white head, eyeless, with whiskery antennae, followed by a segmented body with tiny little legs. It isn’t dead, and I can feel its tiny little mind searching—an atom of desperate awareness, eternally hungry, seeking a soul to save—

  I rush to the desk and grab the shitty Dell laptop, moving so fast I’m not consciously aware of my actions until afterwards. Then I look at the splattered mess I’ve created, and the bodies, and an abrupt wave of nausea seizes me. I make it to the toilet ahead of the dry heaves, then realize with a sense of near-panic that there are two parasites and I only had the one computer, and now it’s all broken and covered in blood and bits of the giant isopod from hell. (Fucking netbooks; you can’t even use one to beat an alien brain parasite to death without it breaking.)

  Luckily there’s a trash can in the bathroom. I carry it back into the hotel room, where the second savior is just pulling its whip-tail free of its deceased victim’s jaws. It leads me a merry chase around the desk for a minute or two, but I have the tongs from the hotel ice bucket, and it does not; eventually I get it in the can, and weight the lid down with one of the missionary’s pistols.

  I sit down, breathing heavily. This is not good. Above and beyond the whole self-defense thing—and I’m going to sleep badly over that, even though they were soul-dead to begin with—it opens a giant can of worms. Someone sent these things to…well, given what was on their tiny minds I’m fairly sure they weren’t just going to try and sell me a subscription to The Watchtower. But what worries me is who sent them. It appears Golden Promise Ministries have been alerted to my presence.

  Which in turn leads me to wonder: What if my tigers have run into a big game hunter?

  IT’S LATE AFTERNOON. THE SKY IS THE COLOR OF STONE AND occasional fat snowflakes drift below the street lights, glistening as they melt before they reach the sidewalk.

  Johnny has spent the day patrolling the exit routes he has carefully laid out for Persephone. Tomorrow, if all goes well, he’ll see about dropping in on one of Schiller’s church’s public services; but first it’s his job to ensure that Persephone’s needs are covered.

  Each of the rented apartments is kitted out with the necessities for either a short or a long stay: fast food, sterile prepaid mobile phones, a couple of off-the-shelf outfits—weekend-casual and office drag—and medical kits. But that’s not enough. He’s also keeping an eye on the safe houses, checking for surveillance, nosy neighbors, environmental hazards like crack houses and off-duty cops. And he’s checking out each house in turn, driving from one to the next and watching from down the street. Lamplighting, the spooks call it; attending a single safe house is usually rated a full-time job, but Johnny’s got three lamps to tend, in different cities. He’s driven maybe two hundred miles today, back and forth between Denver and Colorado Springs and Pinecrest, and he’s almost sufficiently fucked off with the job to phone that geeky bureaucrat guy and set him to work. (Howard wants to help? Let him.)

  He’s driving back towards the safe house in Washington Park when he realizes that he’s being tailed.

  It’s not a new sensation for Johnny, but it’s always
unwelcome. A crawling on the back of the neck, awareness that there are at least one set of headlights behind him that are keeping their distance—he experiments, taking an exit fast and a right turn on a red light, and the lights follow.

  Johnny’s lips peel back silently in something like a smile. This boring legwork is his least favorite part of the job (though he’d rather die than admit as much to the Duchess while she’s depending on him). He’s more than ready for a rumble, though he’s professional enough not to seek one out while he’s on a job, but if someone asks him for one—Got you, my son, he thinks at the lights in his mirror, and looks for a suitable location.

  He passes an alleyway between two shuttered brick-and-steel shops in a block that shows little sign of night life. Half a mile later Johnny circles and turns back towards it, slowing. He indicates in plenty of time, then noses into the alley and kills his lights. His vehicle is a stick-shift pickup with a big block engine, selected specifically for its ability to carry out maneuvers like the one he’s about to pull; and he’s already disabled the airbags and the reversing light. Johnny believes in living dangerously.

  There are lights in his mirror, approaching. Still rolling forward, Johnny slams the truck into reverse, guns the engine, and smokes the clutch. The truck lurches to a standstill and rolls backwards without stalling. It’s got enough torque to haul a ten-ton trailer; the clutch is probably glowing cherry-red. There’s a crunch, more felt than heard, and he lets his headrest absorb the impact. Then he’s out of the cab and into the alley before the engine stops.

  He finds the driver of the crunched car beating back the airbag and struggling with his door, swearing. Johnny tuts admiringly as he scans the passenger seats and the alleyway for spectators; the pickup’s trailer hitch has done a real number on the radiator of the tail car—a Neon, now bleeding out between a pair of overflowing dumpsters. He yanks on the door handle with his left hand, holding his weapon where the driver can see it. “Hands on top of the wheel,” he says, taking care to speak clearly and loudly. “Where I can see ’em.”

  The driver freezes, an expression of profound disgust on his rabbitlike face. “Jesus, Johnny,” he whines, “whatcha have to do that for?”

  Johnny squints at the driver. “Patrick?” Sixty-something, with white receding hair and a salt-and-pepper beard, he’s a dead ringer for a certain former associate of the Network. Johnny takes a step back—ensuring his knife is out of range of a quick grab—glances up and down the alleyway, then turns back to the driver. “Small world, mate.” An old and unwelcome memory prompts him: “Show us yer tongue.”

  “Yer wot?” Patrick looks genuinely perplexed.

  “Like this.” Johnny sticks his tongue out at Patrick, rolls it. “Do it. Now.”

  “Sure.” Patrick looks disgusted, but does as he’s told; his tongue is clearly normal. “What’s that about, for the love of God?”

  Johnny sighs. “Why were you following me?”

  “I just saw you drive past and recognized—”

  “No, Pat. I don’t have time. Listen, I’m doing you a favor just letting you talk. But I don’t have forever. Tell me the truth, okay? Who are you working for?”

  Patrick’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. For a moment, under the shadows cast by the street lights, he looks a century older than his age. “The Nazgûl.”

  Johnny wears a couple of small wards in a leather bag on a cord round his neck, tucked under his check shirt. One of them should—just over ninety-four percent of the time, to within two standard deviations—prick him when someone is lying to him with malice in mind. It is quiescent in the face of Patrick’s quiet despair. “Well, mate, this is yer lucky day.” Johnny lowers his knife.

  Patrick’s eyes widen. “I don’t understand. What’s with waving that thing at me if you’re not—”

  “Case of mistaken identity: we’re not the only players in town.” Johnny scans the alley again. “Tell you what: let’s you and me go somewhere an’ catch up on the news over a cup of tea. It’ll be just like old times again. You on, mate?” Patrick is, in truth, not exactly the rumble Johnny was looking for. His pulse slows, adrenaline rush receding.

  “What about me car? That’s me wife’s wheels you fucking minced.” The airbag is deflating slowly; Patrick slowly eases out of the driver’s seat, wincing. “Jesus Mary, my fucking knee…”

  “Wipe the steering wheel and leave it. You’ve got triple-A? You can call it in as stolen later. Do me right and I’ll front you the dosh for repairs.”

  Patrick raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, Sarge, you win.” That was Johnny’s tag in the Network: it brings back a rush of memories, not all of them welcome. “You’re not angry with me?”

  Johnny shakes his head. “Climb in the cab. Front seat.” He walks round the pickup, opens the driver’s door. “The Nazgûl. You freelancing? Expensing?”

  Patrick climbs up into the high cab slowly, wincing. “They’re paying Moira’s medical bills.”

  “How is she?” Johnny asks, checking his mirrors and turning over the engine. He’s never met Patrick’s other half, but it’s the right question to ask when you’re building trust prior to a debrief.

  “Cancer.” Patrick’s voice is flat. “’Ad it for three years. You know ’ow it is over here.”

  “Jesus, Pat.” The truck jolts forward with a screech of fiberglass and metal. Johnny sees Patrick wince, checks the rearview to ensure the Neon’s bumper isn’t still fouling the tow hook. “Why didn’t you go home?”

  “She’s got family on this side of the pond.” Patrick closes his eyes. “Like I said, the Black Chamber offers a generous medical insurance package. Even for stringers.”

  Johnny reaches out sideways without taking his eye off the alley and takes Patrick’s left wrist. It’s bony, the skin loose as a chicken carcass; he rotates it, glances sidelong at the symbol tattooed there. It’s quiescent right now. He lets go. “Jesus, Patrick,” he says softly. “How long?”

  “Two years. It was that, or bankruptcy and no high-quality chemo for Moira.”

  Johnny does not want to hear this, so he leans forward, scanning, as he guides the big truck down the narrow alleyway. Putting a human face on the oppo is never welcome: it feels like staring into a bathroom mirror and seeing a skull. Learning that an old workmate has taken the Dark Mark—signed on as a freelance stringer for the Black Chamber’s mind-riders to spy through—is harsh; that he’s done it for the love of a good woman is all the worse, like a moral bullet to the kneecap.

  At the end of the alleyway there’s a car park and a row of dumpsters. Johnny slides the pickup round and out towards the street exit on the far side. Pulling out into the traffic he asks, “What do the Nazgûl want with me, Pat?”

  There’s a pause. Then, “Mister McTavish. What are you doing in Denver?”

  The voice is Patrick’s, but it speaks with a Midwestern twang quite unlike his Northern Irish tenor. The other ward around Johnny’s neck is suddenly choking and hot, gripping tight; there’s a pale violet light in the cab, coming from the vicinity of Patrick’s wrist.

  “Cut that out: I’m not your bitch.” Johnny’s hands clench the wheel, but his mind is abruptly calm. He’s got his rumble; the potential for collateral damage is simply an unwelcome addition.

  “You are on our soil. Under normal circumstances that makes you my bitch.”

  “You want to talk to me, get a fucking cellphone.” Johnny pauses. “What precisely do you mean, normal circumstances?”

  A laugh forces itself out of Patrick’s larynx, followed by a wheezing series of coughs. “You will tell us who sent you here.”

  “Nobody sent me.” Johnny slows, seeking a parking space. He’s acutely aware of the sleeping, hungry knives holstered inside his jacket, a million miles from the hand that grips the gear stick.

  “You are here with your mistress, Persephone Hazard, who is inside the Omega Ministries’ compound.” The creature that animates Patrick’s body speaks ass
ertively. “This we know. Eight hours after your arrival, an agent of the British Special Operations Executive also arrived in Denver. You were observed together.”

  Johnny pulls over, kills the engine, and switches off the lights. He turns to face Patrick’s body. “Why are you telling me this?” He demands. As he turns, he palms a small item from beneath the steering column. “Who are you?”

  “We are Control.” The amber glare of the street lamps casts deep shadows across Patrick’s face, but not so deep that Johnny can’t see the faint fluorescent trails writhing in the empty gaze. “The unblinking, red-rimmed eye, as Peter Jackson frames it. We see everything we look for. Usually.”

  Johnny waits. The pressure on his ward is oppressive: he can feel it around him, as dark and implacable as the waters of the Challenger Deep, a chilly, soul-crushing dread.

  “But we cannot see your mistress. And now that we know where to look, we cannot see inside the Omega Ministries’ domain.”

  “You’re having trouble seeing—” Johnny stops. (The Black Chamber is having trouble with remote viewing? Is there some grit in the unblinking panopticon gaze? Or a detached retina?) “What do you want?”

  “We want. Co-operation. Yours, mostly. Freely given.”

  Johnny chuckles nastily: “Fuck off.” His grip tightens on the item he palmed. Control has got Patrick. It’s a dilemma. Usually he wouldn’t think twice about doing the necessary, but there’s no telling what happens to the mount after the rider departs. “You’ve got assets. Use them yourself. Like I said, I’m not your bitch.”

  There is a pause. “Normally we would. And we’d deal with you later.” A longer pause. “First we could not see within the Omega Ministries. Now the area of darkness is growing. Colorado Springs is closed to us. Denver is dimming. Our hands are numb and cannot grip.” Control’s tone is chilly. “Are you Born Again, Mister McTavish? Are you willing to bend your neck to the yoke of Raymond Schiller’s master?”