An agonised shriek rose from somewhere below. A detonation, like a head-on car crash, echoed from the next court.
“No thanks,” he said, picking up her coffee-table and heaving it at the window.
Incredibly, it bounced back — and Valda leaped onto him, sinking her claws into his shoulders. Nick staggered under her weight. Fingernails raked his neck and cheeks, drawing blood. She bit his scalp with wolf-like teeth. He slammed an elbow into her midriff, sending her reeling away, whirled around and, catching her with a left hook on the point of the chin, dropping her to the carpet.
As she fell, the kitchen door creaked open — and a vile stink of rotted fish rolled out. Nick gagged and backed away. The thing in the cloak and hood was there; broad as an ox, yet low, squat. Under its cowl, he saw green, blubbery lips bloated with warts. It raised its hands as it advanced — long, hooked fingers, webbed together with brown translucent flesh. Nick remembered that old movie, Creature From The Black Lagoon, but knew this was something far older and far more terrible.
He grabbed the coffee-table again and hurled it back at the window, which this time ribbed with cracks. He darted towards it, but, in a single frog-like bound, the cloaked abomination had beaten him to it. Nick aimed a blow at its head, but it caught his wrist, twisted him round and hurled him across the room, slamming him into the bookshelves.
He looked up weakly, his previous wounds now open again and bleeding. The horror ghosted through the wreckage towards him. He slung ornaments at it, but they made no impact. It snatched him by the lapels and flung him again. He crashed through the kitchen door and over the sink and draining-board, before landing heavily on the linoleum floor.
It lurched after him. He grabbed two kitchen-devils from a wooden block next to the oven, and slashed at it, but it knocked them from his grasp and seized him in a massive bear-hug. Nick’s bladder weakened as the creature began to crush the life out of him. He grabbed pans and pots from shelves and rained them on its broad head, smashing them into all sorts of shapes, but its resistance to pain was superhuman. This time it flung him clear across the kitchen, straight through the closet door.
Nick found himself lying among mops, buckets and bottles. Knowing he had less than a second, he searched frantically through them, and found what he wanted just as a misshapen shadow fell across him — a jar of white-spirit. As he was dragged bodily out, he unscrewed the top and splashed the liquid onto the monster’s cloak and hood. It continued to grapple with him, bending and twisting him until he screamed in agony. It hurled him again over the work-tops, sending cutlery and crockery to the floor.
He jumped to his feet and threw himself at the gas oven, hitting the ignition switch. As the thing swept him up in its arms, it failed to notice the blue flames come roaring to life. Nick kicked and punched, desperate to force it back against the live appliance. Instead, it drove him the other way, pressing him into the tiled wall, trying to flatten his rib-cage. Half-blinded with agony, Nick clawed along the shelves, and his right hand closed on something cylindrical and hard — a pepper-pot. He jammed it against the wall, breaking it open, then flung its contents into the monster’s face.
The creature grunted and backed away, letting Nick fall. Its shoulders jerked as it doubled forward and sneezed, ropes of green mucus stringing to the floor. Nick leaped up and barrelled into it, finally thrusting it against the oven. The spirit-soaked cloak went up like touch-paper. It took several seconds for the creature to react, but when it did it literally ran amok, dashing itself from wall to wall. It barged into the lounge, falling over furniture, tearing down wall-hangings.
The entire garment was now ablaze. Nick appeared in the kitchen doorway watching in fascination. The monster’s hands were on fire as well, twisting and melting before its eyes. The hood was burning away at the back, revealing a flat warty head, now popping and blistering. An appalling stink of burn added itself to the already repugnant fish odour. With a daemonic, gelatinous bellow, the thing sprang at the window, hitting broken glass, woodwork and metal grille in one battering-ram blow, and erupting through onto the outside walkway. Nick dashed across the room and gazed after it as it fled into the darkness, a fiery, cavorting shape.
Other sounds of violence now distracted him. He vaulted through the window and ran to the concrete balustrade, peering down. Dark figures were dashing past below, brandishing weapons; bottles, machetes, axes. A wild shouting and banging could be heard all over the estate.
He climbed back inside and surveyed the wrecked apartment — there had to be a phone. A sideboard had been overturned in the fight, and spilling out from it were some tools — his own, the ones he’d had stolen. It didn’t surprise him. He kneeled down and sorted through them. His phone was in there too. He punched out Knox’s number.
It was answered almost immediately. “Hallo?” said a sleepy Scottish voice.
Knox was playing it carefully in case whoever had pinched the phone was making a re-call on the last number dialled.
“It’s me,” Nick said. “Hit ’em now! Quickly. No questions. It’s started.”
The line went dead.
Nick stood up — and noticed that Valda was no longer lying on the carpet. He spun around, but if she hadn’t shrieked madly before swiping at him with the kitchen-devil, he would still have been slaughtered where he stood.
He was able to dodge back at the last second, and instead of severing his jugular, the blade ploughed into his left shoulder. It bit deep, sending spears of pain down his arm. Valda shrieked again, produced the second devil and took another wild swing. But Nick swerved around the blow and caught her on the side of the neck with a hard backhand chop.
This time she hit the floor dead.
He fell to his knees, gasping. A crimson stain was spreading down his T-shirt; his left arm had filled with pins and needles — he could hardly move the fingers. Had the bitch cut a ligament or an artery? Just probing the wound was agony. He’d need masses of stitches, possibly surgery. But right now there were more important things.
He heard the sound of helicopters, and, when he gazed from the window, saw search-lights blazing down onto the estate. Someone was shouting orders through a loudspeaker. The familiar bedlam of the riot-zone was rising to full crescendo. There were screams of rage, profanities. Burning rubbish was being hurled from roof-tops, deluging onto the roads and pavements.
Despite what he knew about their operation, Nick was astonished at the speed of the WMP response. They might not have nipped the trouble in the bud, but they were meeting it face-on, straight from the outset. They should easily be in time to prevent it spreading to other districts. He climbed out onto the balcony and looked down. Armoured vans were thundering through the plaza, riot-men clad in helmets and fireproof suits following in organised lines. Dogs barked furiously. Snatch-squads had already rounded up individual trouble-makers and were frog-marching them away. Several bodies littered the scene, and for once it didn’t look as if any of them were policemen.
Nick went quickly down the steps, right hand clasped to his shoulder. He ran past the pub and turned down an alley into his own plaza, where yet more riot-officers were busy reclaiming the streets. It was the same everywhere. Most of Speranza’s troops seemed to be running or trying to hide. Vast numbers were being cuffed. Nowhere was there sign of an organised missile-barrage or barricade.
Round the next corner, he found Superintendent Wentyard, also in riot-gear, his visor raised. The senior officer was standing by a heap of confiscated weapons, a glittering array of nailed and bladed implements, terrifying to behold but mostly unused. He’d just thrown a home-made sword onto the pile, and was beating his gloved hands together with more than a little satisfaction.
“You didn’t waste any time, sir,” Nick said.
“We didn’t,” Wentyard agreed. “We’ve had a task-force on standby for the past week. Hurt, Brooker?”
Nick’s T-shirt was now sopping crimson, and he was feeling nauseous through blood-loss. But he had m
ore work to do before he could declare himself unfit for duty.
“I’m okay, sir.”
Despite all visible evidence to the contrary, Wentyard seemed happy with that. He nodded. “Hope you’ve got a few names and addresses for us...so we can have some show-trials, then some exemplary prison-sentencing.”
Nick glanced down the fire-lit plaza. “I haven’t got their addresses. But I know where we can find them.” And he stumbled away.
“Brooker!” Wentyard shouted. “Brooker, wait!”
Nick ignored him, sidling past another phalanx of armoured riot-cops marching behind their shields like a Roman cohort, turning a corner and entering the passage leading to Speranza’s ‘church’. Half way down it, a figure was crawling towards the open basement door. Nick approached from behind. It was the Cobweb Man — he was slithering weakly on his belly, his features broken and bloody from repeated baton-blows.
“People like you always back the wrong horse, don’t you,” Nick said, hunkering down in front of him.
Cobweb regarded him with bruised, hate-filled eyes, but said nothing.
“Who do you think’s going to protect you down there? You’ve screwed up, you’ve bolloxed it. They’ll spread you around this housing estate like strawberry jam.”
“Better than what you’re offering,” Cobweb croaked.
“I’m not offering you anything, son. Nor any of your mates. That time’s passed. You’ve lived by your own decision-making. And soon — pretty soon, I think — you’re going to die by it.”
Nick strode on to the basement entrance, leaving Cobweb behind, and started down the stair. The chasm below was as ghastly as before; lit by unearthly flames, written all over with blood and excreta. It throbbed to the sounds of the battle above. Dust eddied from its dingy ceilings. Muffled shouting could be heard, even at this depth.
Speranza was standing at the far end, by the shaft-opening. His back was turned, but as soon as Nick appeared he whirled around, his pale eyes glittering. Nick limped forwards; his left arm now felt numb, lifeless. But he still had time for this. He had to have. Defiant to the last, Speranza drew a gun from under his coat; a shiny black Mauser. It was a hideous-looking weapon, with a huge magazine fitted under its stock. He levelled it at Nick and grinned.
“That’s far enough, pig. Your boys can hammer skulls all they want up there, it only adds to the energy.”
“But it’ll be brief,” Nick replied. “Briefer than you want it. Your army’s finished. Your troops are already being rounded up There’ll be no long, drawn-out siege here, Speranza, no simmering resentment with endless violent undercurrents that will last well into the autumn. No infusion.”
Speranza’s finger tightened on the trigger. “You, at least, are dead.”
“No Mickey, you’re dead! That’s the price of failure, isn’t it? For the cult-leader?”
Speranza curled his lip in a feral snarl. He took careful aim at Nick’s face — and then his legs were swept from under him. The Mauser went off as he hit the deck, bouncing lead from wall to wall. Nick dived to avoid the ricochets, rolling over and over before looking up again. Speranza was now writhing on the floor, kicking at something that was dragging him towards the mouth of the shaft.
Nick kneeled up, ice running down his spine. Speranza was howling dementedly, triggering bullets everywhere. It made no difference. Whatever had him was remorseless. Nick climbed to his feet, took a tentative step forward to get a better view. Speranza was now on the brink, clawing for a hand-hold. A tenuous, tentacle-like thing, something milky-white, more wraith than flesh, was wrapped around his left leg.
The Mauser’s magazine was now spent, but still Speranza pumped its trigger. He only cast it aside in the last second, before peering helplessly back at Nick, reaching out with an imploring hand. And vanishing from sight.
A nightmarish scream hung on the air behind him.
It took almost a minute for the echoes to fade. Nick fell to one knee, breathless, stunned by what he had seen. He didn’t notice the flobbering, frog-hopping shape approach through the shadows until it was almost upon him. As soon as he heard its agonised wheezing, he glanced around — and, despite himself, gasped. The monstrosity now truly was something from Hell. Its cloak was burnt tatters, its face a puffy, pustulant mass, its webbed hands blackened claws. A single red eye flamed with malignant hatred. It reared over him like a deformed gorilla.
And then — flashing light and deafening automatic-fire.
The creature was flung to the ground, squirming horribly. Another prolonged burst ripped chunks from its head and torso. The third and final volley was just for good measure, raking it head to toe, jerking it about like a marionette.
After that it lay still. Nick looked slowly to his left. Through a pall of cordite-smoke, a cop in helmet and armoured suit, carrying a sub-machine gun, approached. He stopped and lifted his visor. The wan, bearded features of DCI Knox lay beneath.
He stared at Nick, then down at the thing he’d shot. It was dissolving — like butter in a pan, breaking itself down into constituent chemicals, all solid parts liquefying. Section by section, the tattered cloak caved in on itself, until at last it lay flat and sodden in a lake of oily fluids; fluids now running away down cracks and faults in the floor, trickling over the edge of the shaft, evaporating. The reek was unbearable, but it was dissipating quickly; more quickly than anything in nature had a right to.
At last they found themselves gazing only at a heap of filthy cloth and a drying blotch on the floor, which, among all the other stains in that grisly chapel of blasphemy, was virtually indistinguishable.
“I think you were right,” the DCI said, his voice shaking.
Nick glanced back at the mouth of the shaft and imagined the roiling blackness beneath it, which almost certainly — for the moment at least — was subsiding again. “About what?”
“About no-go zones. Maybe it’s time we all started believing in them.”
****
a shade of yellow
Gary McMahon
Brett came home from the war a changed man; in many ways he was a slender shadow of his former substantial self. It didn’t particularly matter which war he’d fought in, or where it had been located, for as far as he was concerned all wars were, inevitably, a smaller part of the same war that continued throughout history, consuming lives like some huge infernal machine that worked away behind the scenes. Anyway, this one was considered a mere conflict — a skirmish — by the media and the politicians and the man-in-the-street. Not a real war at all.
Like so many broken and unappreciated men before him, Brett returned not to poems and parades but to an empty house and an absent wife and infant daughter. His family had deserted, just as he wished he'd done on that far-flung sandy battlefield where he’d received his injury.
His leg was ruined, a flaccid dead thing that trailed behind him where once there had hung healthy apparatus meant for kicking footballs, running races and stretching out in quick karate kicks during sparring sessions at his local dojo. This injury, he realised, was simply another war — a form of psychological warfare; a war of attrition. A fight that he could never win because he was not equipped with the correct weapons. Rather than guns and tanks, this conflict required patience.
He struggled through the empty rooms of his house, touching the familiar objects, the touchstones (and heart stones) of his former existence: framed photographs, awards, sporting trophies, the very real memories of a life lived in extremis. After five months in an army hospital, it was good to be back with his possessions — however little they now meant to him. Still, the familiarity was good, a bonus. So much else in his world had been rendered alien.
The period after he'd been flown back to the UK was nothing but a blur: his memories were sketchy at best; at worst they depicted yellowish crimson-stained nightmares, like sketches on scraps of burnt and bloodied paper. Brett’s mind retained images of the walking dead staggering through green-tinted hospital corridors, and
wards whose floors were soaked in blood and greyish matter through which the staff would wade in high rubber boots. His mind filled the gaps in his memory with stock footage, random clips from every horror movie he had ever seen.
And his time before entering the hospital was filled with horrors: of that much at least he was certain.
He lurched into the living room, driven by nervous energy and unable to settle, to sit down and rest. His hand drifted to the telephone as he neared the little waist-high table upon which it rested. He flicked the switch on the answering machine, and waited for the message to begin.
His wife’s voice, light and seemingly carefree, the hint of a smile coming through in the familiar words:
“Hi, you’ve reached the home of Cathy and Brett Jones. We can’t take your call right now, but if you leave a message after the beep we’ll get back to you.” She ended on a slight giggle; she always did when her mood was good, her humour light.
He would change the message eventually, but for now, her tinny voice could stay. It was all that remained of her presence in the house.
That night, as usual, Brett drank himself to sleep. His whisky-fuelled dreams, were as dry as the desert he’d left behind and filled with images of casual violence and bloodshed. Ruined bodies lay stacked across each other like discarded uniforms in a whorehouse foyer, and sick-bright flashes of yellow dotted this corpse-strewn landscape, moving among the dead: a ragged cloak rippling in the warm, still air, or a sickly-coloured carrion bird dipping and rising between snacks…
****
“Excuse me,” said the woman as she barged her trolley into Brett’s withered limb. When she glanced down below his waist, her gaze passing from the aluminium walking stick to the thin appendage that hung below the hem of his army jacket like a cloth-covered tapeworm, the woman’s eyes went dead. She hurried on, looking back only once with a look of disgust on her face. Brett did not know if the expression was born of the sight of his injury or his shabby soldier’s apparel. Or perhaps a fear far deeper and less easy to define had prompted her hasty exit.
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