Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Kane grabs the handle. It jerks down freely enough but the door itself fails to budge.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  He tries the handle again, pulling back against the door in case it’s just an awkward catch, but there is no way this thing is shifting. The rest of the group has gathered behind him.

  ‘It’s locked,’ he reports. ‘It’s fucking locked.’

  He looks to either side, finds a creature filling the corridor to left and to right. The one with the sore face doesn’t look inclined to sit licking its wounds, nor to forgive and forget, while its counterpart lets out an ear-splitting roar, preparatory to a charge.

  Einstein said that ‘religion is an attempt to find an out where there is no door’. Kane has never understood this quite so acutely as now. There are no more fire extinguishers, no weapons to be improvised.

  Rocks shoulders it, stepping back to the opposite wall and hurling himself against the solid wood. It doesn’t give. Kane reflects bitterly on how reassuring that would be if they were safely locked on the other side, when suddenly it swings open twenty degrees.

  They all pile into the narrow gap, Kane shoving Blake and Rebecca through it with the creatures flanking him mere yards away. The door slams to, the second Kane is clear. He sprawls on the carpet, looking up to see the key being turned by the determined figure of Sendak, who then slides a formidably heavy sideboard back into place as a barrier.

  Breathless and choking with the sheer impossibility of what has transpired over the past two minutes, Kane stands up, turns to Sendak and tries to speak.

  ‘It was, it was . . .’ is as far as he can get. He points back at the door, eyes wild, unable to articulate.

  Sendak, grim but calm, silently puts his fists to his temples and extends his index fingers.

  Kane nods in frantic affirmation.

  XXIII

  Adnan feels like he has simply materialised in the games hall. Though it was only seconds ago, he has barely any memory of the journey through the corridors to get here, and his recall of the dining room feels like it’s been censored. He has a vague recollection of his hand on Deborah’s arm as she hurried along beside him, but beyond that, no details. By contrast, his awareness of his current surroundings seems heightened, extra sharp. It is as though his mind has diverted all resources to processing the present, non-essential peripheral systems temporarily shut down.

  He was in this room briefly yesterday, saw only a games hall: various court lines on the floor, blank walls, high ceiling. Right now he sees something else: a space they can control, can fortify, the place Sendak knew they could best hold out. Three doorways, only two of them exits, the third a storeroom. One set of double doors opening inward on to the corridor they entered through; the other pair comprising the emergency exit, opening outward on to a short staircase and disabled access ramp. No windows on any of the walls for the creatures to break through, just a small mesh-reinforced pane of glass in each of the emergency doors.

  The only article of non-functional decor is a yellowed and tattered head shot of George W Bush taped about seven feet up on one wall. That the gormless fucker is smiling down upon a scene of chaos and total disaster is almost reassuringly familiar.

  There’s a clock a few feet along from George. Adnan reads that it’s dead on eleven, then realises that the second hand isn’t moving. WTF? That’s what his watch read when it died on him this morning. He checks his mobile, as he has been doing since: the only thing it’s good for, the paltry signal it achieved yesterday but a memory in the face of today’s flatline. The phone tells him it’s ten past ten. It feels much later, and he fears it’s going to be a very long night.

  Everyone is just standing around, some dazed, some hysterical, all of them waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The only adult, Mrs McKenzie, seems fully occupied by tending to the quivering wreck that is Gillian, slumped on the floor against a wall with her arms clutched around her knees. Anxious glances are directed towards the corridor, searching for Sendak, or at least for one of the teachers.

  Those doors have to be closed, Adnan thinks. He understands this with a primal need, like they’re letting in poison gas. They have to be closed, and now, but he feels as though he doesn’t have a voice to demand it, like if he opened his mouth to speak, nothing would emerge. He’s just waiting, they’re all just waiting, helpless children, crying for the grown-ups to come. He sees Maria with her hands clasped and her lips moving, recognises that she’s saying Hail Marys. That’s the first thing to jolt him out of stasis: gods or grown-ups, they would die if they kept waiting for either to show up and save them.

  The second jolt is more physical: a reverberating thump against the emergency doors, accompanied by a slap of feet and a low growl of frustration. The doors hold, but the whole frame is shaken. They open outwards, which makes them all the harder to breach, but this also means they’re only as good as the hinges holding them up and the wood those hinges are screwed on to.

  Adnan takes hold of a badminton net-stand and carries it to the emergency exit, where he slides it through the handles for further reinforcement.

  ‘We need to barricade this fucker, right now,’ he announces. ‘And get those other doors shut as well.’

  One or two of them look at him like he’s raving incoherently, but for most, the message gets through and the spell is broken. Maria unclasps her hands and helps Deborah in putting a shoulder to a set of five-a-side goals, looking almost grateful to be taking action. Radar arrives at the emergency exit with a second net-stand. There is another wallop at the outside doors as he and Adnan pass the shaft between the handles, but it’s duller, the added metalwork absorbing part of the blow. It will hold.

  Satisfied, Adnan glances towards the corridor doors and sees that one side is still open, Jason Mitchell stood beside it. Adnan is about to ask what’s causing the hold-up when he sees Miss Ross hurry through the gap. She has a shotgun in her hands, but she’s holding it out in front, palms up, like it’s covered in slime and she can’t bear to touch the thing.

  She places it on the floor, alongside a box which she had been cradling between her upper arm and her side. A second, larger box is suspended from her shoulder by a strap. She places this down also, then pulls a piece of paper from a pocket and hands it to Deborah.

  ‘I want a list of who’s missing and a list of who’s here.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ Deborah responds.

  ‘Now,’ she says, very gingerly lifting the shotgun. ‘I don’t suppose any of you lot knows anything about . . .’

  Adnan grips it by the barrel and takes it from Miss Ross’ hand. ‘Tannhauser twelve-gauge. Combined gas-ejection and pump-action. Ghost-ring sights.’ He bends down to retrieve the box of shells and begins loading them into the gun. ‘Takes eight in the breech, one in the tube. Gas ejects the spent shell and the pump chambers the next.’

  He pumps the gun to chamber the first shell, inserts the ninth round and hands the weapon back to the slightly awestruck teacher.

  ‘Who says you learn nothing from video games?’ he adds.

  Deborah leans on the side of a ping-pong table and quickly scribbles down her list of who is present. She scans the hall, counting heads, checking the figure tallies with the number of names, then starts a new column headed by the word ‘Missing’. The tears come on as she begins to write. Despite what she saw in the dining room, it’s only as she puts names on paper that the truth of it seeps through. Philip O’Dowd. Dan Guthrie. Liam Donnelly. Julie Meiklejohn.

  This last makes her shiver, sends something through her that starts as terror and ends as ice, stemming the tears and putting emotions on hold. She glances at Gillian, or rather at the blank-eyed husk that remains of Gillian, and glimpses another reality, not so far away. In that parallel world, it was she who went off with Gillian during the party, back to their bedroom, where it was she, not Julie, who died at the hands of a demon.

  In this reality, however, she is still alive, and a very different pe
rson, all because thirty-odd hours ago, a bag slid a few feet inside a luggage hold. And why did it slide? Because the bus swerved. The bus swerved because the driver turned to look at the fire, the fire started by a hastily discarded fag, the fag discarded because Guthrie was on the warpath, the deputy on the warpath because Cameron’s music was too loud, his music having been turned up because Deborah had turned up her own . . .

  ‘You okay?’ asks a voice, hauling her out of this vortex. It’s Adnan. She wipes her eyes and nods in accompaniment to a breathy ‘yeah’. Then she clears her throat and feels a cold sense of determination take hold. These parallel worlds could regress infinitely behind the present reality for every one of them. They are not lucky, they simply are, and the only thing that matters is keeping it that way.

  ‘I’m compiling a list of who’s missing,’ she announces to the group. ‘Everyone who’s not here, I need their names.’

  Adnan and Radar have a look at who’s already on the sheet. Marianne and Cameron are the first to be listed below the ones they know to be dead.

  ‘Rosemary and Bernie,’ says Maria. ‘And Caitlin.’

  ‘Ewan,’ states Adnan. ‘Matt.’

  ‘Rocks,’ offers Radar. ‘Dazza too. And Kirk,’ he adds pointedly.

  ‘At least that makes me feel a bit better,’ Adnan mutters, almost but not quite under his breath. Deborah gapes at him, can’t believe he said this.

  ‘No, I just mean it’s some comfort to think these monsters aren’t the scariest thing out there.’

  Kirk is moving steadily and deliberately now: slower than before, picking his steps, taking care over his balance, mindful of the weight of the large and formidably solid stick he’s carrying. Got a bead on the fucker. Aye. Changes everything when you’re the one doing the stalking and it’s your prey that’s unmindful of your approach.

  Silent. Picking out each step. Steadying his breath, letting each exhale come gently from an open mouth to minimise its sound. Clouds overhead are on the move. The moon breaks through again, bringing hard edges to the greys and shadow shapes, picking out the figure of Matt Wilson crouched beneath a tree like it’s some celestial spotlight.

  This is it. He has to move now, strike before his approach is detected. He alters his grip on the stick, scans the forest floor, chooses his path, takes a breath and begins to accelerate.

  Matt senses the movement, turns in time to see Kirk emerge from cover. His face is a picture of hate, his mouth wide to issue a roar, a battle-cry. Matt knows he has no time, Kirk is moving too fast. He covers his head with his arms, the sight of the swinging stick the last thing he sees before closing his eyes. There is a crunch of contact, a howl of pain, but he feels nothing except the vibration of falling weight upon the ground nearby, followed by scrambling sounds and urgent breath. Matt opens his eyes and removes his arms from view, in time to watch Kirk circle around, placing himself between Matt and the demon that had been about to pounce upon him.

  Kirk has lost the stick. He got a good crack in there, but couldn’t keep hold of it as they tangled on the deck in the after-math. He touches his face, feels warm dampness, glances down at his shoulder where it is stinging. Claw marks. He looks across at his foe: crouched, circling, keenly returning his scrutiny, its tail moving with each step, clearly an aid to balance.

  A phrase leaps to mind, something from a wildlife documentary: ambush predator. Aye. That’s what he’s looking at. Something that likes to surprise its prey: less cocksure when it finds itself facing a square go. It doesn’t look as big as he remembers. Either his fear had blown the creature up in his mind or he’s not looking at the same thing as killed Dazza.

  He checks the horns. They’re small: not truncated like Hellboy’s, but wee, budding, trainer-bra efforts. Definitely not the thing that killed Dazza. In demon terms, he’s looking at a midget or a wean. He recalls the ten-second rule, and though they only clashed for a moment, it was more than enough. He understands. He has the measure. There will be no paralysis by fear. There will be no subconscious surrender to superior mental force and aggression.

  In short, he can take this cunt.

  Kirk touches the wound on his shoulder, glances at the blood on his fingers, then stares back at the demon.

  ‘You fight like a fuckin’ lassie,’ he shouts.

  The demon charges in response, as much in panic as in anger, and hurls itself towards him with an inhumanly impressive leap. Kirk stands his ground and sends the head in. He can feel as well as hear the crunch of breaking bone as his forehead connects with the demon’s face.

  Kirk reels, a little dazed from the impact, but nothing compared to the demon. It staggers drunkenly, struggling to get back on its feet, black blood spurting from its nose and mouth.

  Kirk doesn’t hesitate. He kicks it in the face with everything he has, knocking it on to its back. With it lying there stunned, he kicks and stamps on its head - again and again and again - until he feels a hand on his arm, tugging him back.

  ‘It’s dead,’ says a voice. It sounds miles away, but that’s because his ears are filled with the whooshing of his blood around his head as he thrashes away with his feet. ‘Let’s go.’

  Kirk wheels around and sees Matt standing beside him.

  He looks down at what’s left of the creature’s head, realises he’s trembling with the adrenalin, sweating despite the cold.

  He’s never killed anything before. Christ, look at it. What a fucking mess. He looks at Matt, thinks of what he felt less than an hour ago, thinks of what else could have been lying at his feet, thinks of what he wanted for Barker, thinks of Dunnsy, thinks of Dazza, thinks of Ewan. He feels something welling up, something he knows he can’t stem. He pulls Matt closer, throws his arms around him and starts to cry.

  Marianne tugs on Cameron’s arm and urges him to slow down. She’s breathless, she needs to get her bearings, and the intervening events have thoroughly vindicated Deso’s suggestion of hiding out somewhere indoors. She doesn’t know where Deso and Rosemary ended up, and more to the point, nor does she know where she and Cameron have ended up. When the creatures converged on poor Bernadette, they all just scattered.

  The music is distant now, though still bloody playing: Radar must have had a whole default set-list cued up on his laptop. It’s easy to imagine the party still going on in one of Adnan’s parallel universes: all of them are still dancing, none of this horror has happened, and the only thing she’s anxious about is whether either she or Adnan will get up sufficient nerve to initiate a snog.

  By a dim glow of light through the trees, she is able to deduce that they are just north of the Fort Trochart compound. From memory, the barn should be the first thing they come to, as good a place as any to fortify themselves.

  ‘I’m guessing if Adnan was here,’ Cameron says very quietly, ‘you’d be finding it pretty hard not to say “I told you so”.’

  ‘Why?’ she asks, with pronounced consternation.

  ‘You’re the one who already believed in all this stuff. Demons, I mean: that’s what we saw, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’m into Tolkien as well. Doesn’t mean what we saw were orcs. I believe in the power of myth, but that’s not the same as believing the myths themselves. Reality is what you’re left with when you stop believing in things, so it doesn’t matter what these fuckers are: what matters is how we keep them from killing us.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any pointers on that score: do we need stakes through the heart, silver bullets . . . ?’

  ‘Pointers? Yeah.’ She glances towards the dark grey shape of a two-storey structure just distinguishable against the black of the night. ‘We barricade ourselves inside there and wait for the cavalry.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cameron says. He strikes her as too scared to dissent, even if he did disagree. The one good thing about the blind leading the blind is that the follower is unaware that the leader can see fuck-all either.

  Having caught her breath just enough, they both set off at a cautious jog, trying t
o cushion their footfalls as they proceed. While they were aimlessly running, it never occurred to them to exercise any such stealth, only to put as much distance as they could between themselves and whatever was tearing Bernadette apart. As soon as they had a goal, however, despite neither making an entreaty to that effect, they were both instinctively endeavouring to conceal their movements. There is a palpable fear of being set upon from any angle at any moment, ramped up the closer they get to their destination, a thought that hadn’t crossed their minds either of the times they fled in panic.

  They reach the outbuilding at its rear, Cameron accelerating when he sees the narrow door at the left-hand corner of the gable end. Marianne can’t shout, so she has to draw upon the last of her reserves to catch up with him before he can open it.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘We need to do a circuit. We don’t know what’s already in there.’

  They make their way cautiously around to the front, where they can examine the main entrance.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Marianne concludes. ‘It’s still locked from the outside. Give us a hand with this crossbeam.’

  They lift the beam from its brackets and lower it to the ground as quietly as possible, before Cameron tugs the door open. Marianne glances back, anxiously looking out for possible pursuers, then follows him inside. They both stop as they feel a squelching underfoot.

  ‘Shite,’ Cameron says.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Hang on, is that a light switch there?’

  ‘Yeah. Let me close the door first, though.’

  ‘Got you.’

  Marianne pulls the door to, then Cam flips the switch. They look down and see that he is standing in a puddle of blood, more dripping into it from above. Slowly, reluctantly, they look up, just in time to see a baling hook swing down into Cameron’s chest. He gets hauled rapidly upwards out of sight, blood spraying around his wildly kicking legs.

  Marianne turns and runs, pushing the door open only to slam into another creature, who grips her around the throat and lifts her up. The image of Fizzy’s death flashes into her mind and she wets herself as she spots a knife in the creature’s other clawed hand.