Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Adnan stares, frozen, for a breathless moment as the decapitated body remains upright before him, wondering if this is also what Miss Ross saw, whether it will impossibly reconstitute itself before resuming its attack. Then the corpse drops limply to the grass and he knows it’s game on.

  Oh yeah.

  The HUD comes down as he pumps the shotgun. His health is at 100. Ammo reads five. Frags: one. And counting.

  Watching inside the games hall, Radar turns to Deborah with a relieved smile.

  ‘Chalk one up to parsimony,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean? I thought parsimony was being tight.’

  ‘It’s a scientific precept stating that the simplest explanation is usually correct. Either, as Jase suggested, the laws of physics don’t apply to these creatures - even though the ones involving doors seem to apply pretty effectively - or there’s a simpler explanation.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘That Miss Ross couldnae hit a coo’s arse with a banjo.’

  Back outside, the other two demons have clocked that the clash didn’t run to form and their pal has undergone a nasty bit of entropy, but they don’t appear to understand why. They let go of Miss Ross and begin moving towards Adnan, spread apart in flanking formation.

  Adnan takes careful aim and blasts the one on the right, blowing a hole through its stomach. It drops, doubled over and gurgling, unable to scream. The remaining demon gets the picture now. It turns and starts to run, but Adnan shoots it in the back.

  He sees Miss Ross get up and begin running towards where it fell, wonders for a moment what the fuck she’s doing. When she reaches the demon, she bends down and prises a hammer from its grasp, then returns to the barn wall.

  Adnan hears a noise behind him and turns to observe that Radar and Deborah have ignored the directives and are charging out to help. He’s not sure whether the bigger risk is in their leaving the building or in leaving Jason in charge of the door.

  ‘Keep us covered,’ Radar says, rushing past to make for Cameron, who has passed out. He and Deborah lift him between them, she gripping his ankles, Radar under his arms, while Heather embarks on the equally onerous task of pulling Marianne’s hands free from the wall with the hammer. She leaves the nails stuck through the flesh for now, just using the fork-tail to grip the nail-heads and help tug the points out of the wood.

  ‘What about the rest of Cam’s arm?’ Adnan asks.

  ‘Best where it is. It’s freezing out here. That’ll preserve it. Let’s just get everyone inside. There’s morphine in the medkit.’

  ‘Morphine?’

  ‘It’s Sendak’s medkit.’

  Another loud bang echoes above the trees, once more causing Kirk and Matt to stop in their tracks. Kirk has a look around, gripping the heavy stick he retrieved from near the corpse of the thing that attacked him. Matt takes the moment to rest, leaning his backside against the fallen trunk of a dead tree.

  A second bang follows, then a third.

  ‘More gunshots,’ Kirk says. ‘Sounds like there might be a fightback on the cards.’

  ‘I thought you had already started it,’ Matt replies.

  ‘Only technically.’

  He opts to take the weight off his feet, sitting on the trunk a few feet along from Matt. He’s still shaking from the fight, his heart rate well up. ‘Better lie low for a minute,’ he says. ‘Don’t want to head back to the building if we’re just gaunny get plugged.’

  Matt nods, looking distantly into the darkness, still visibly trembling also.

  ‘You okay?’ Kirk asks him.

  Matt nods again, without turning around. Okay’s kind of relative, Kirk realises. He looks at his wounds. On any other night, the gouges on his shoulder would constitute quite a battle scar. Trip to casualty for sure. Right now he can barely feel them for the adrenalin; that and the fact that he’s half numb with the cold.

  ‘Thanks, by the way,’ says Matt after a few seconds of silence. ‘For, you know . . .’

  ‘Never bother.’

  Kirk opens his mouth to say more, but pauses to reassess. He feels he ought to confess, but what fucking good would that do? Actually, mate, I came out here to put the living shiters up you, if not to actually carve you open. Fuck that. But still, he is sorry, and he should say so.

  ‘Least I could do, in fact. I owe you an apology. I’ve been a total cock lately.’

  Matt finally turns to look at him. Kirk thinks for a second that he’s going to say ‘Lately?’, but maybe that’s just what he deserves to hear. In fact, Matt says nothing.

  ‘I’ve been a pure shambles, tell you the truth, and not just since Dunnsy died. That’s maybe just brought it to a head. I’m not making excuses here, but . . . there’s stuff I’m having a hard time trying to handle. Stuff it’s impossible for anybody to understand.’

  Matt’s nodding, looking away again. He seldom, if ever, looks you in the eye. That has always pissed Kirk off, but right now it makes it easier to talk, makes it feel like the guy is listening and not judging. That’s what made it impossible to talk to Rocks or Dazza: because he knew they’d offer advice, they’d try to help, and though he couldn’t say why, he didn’t want that; couldn’t take that. He didn’t need help. He just needed to be heard.

  ‘I’ve been acting the hard man as long as I can remember, but it’s only recently I’ve come to realise it’s the path of least resistance. It’s an easy part to play when you’re actually feart of the tougher ones. And it’s a very good cover for what I don’t want anybody to suspect about me.’

  ‘Being gay, you mean,’ Matt says, and gives Kirk a bigger fright than anything else that’s jumped out at him tonight.

  Jesus.

  That wasn’t what he was talking about, but by fuck, there it is out there now. Matt says it flatly, matter-of-fact, in a way that would sound like a sarcastic throwaway insult from anybody else. But Matt says everything flatly and matter-of-fact. He’s not coming the cunt, trying to be obnoxious: he’s stating the truth.

  Kirk finally gets him, and it would very much appear that he gets Kirk.

  Kirk’s impulse is to deny it, explain that he was actually talking about being brighter than anybody knew, but he can see this is futile. Matt knows, which nudges denial off the list of options and prompts him instead to ask himself therefore how obvious it is, and who else has tumbled.

  ‘How did you know?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m qualified to recognise it,’ is Matt’s reply.

  ‘You’re qualified to . . . ? Oh. Oh.’

  ‘Quid pro quo.’

  ‘Or mutually assured destruction.’

  ‘Neither of us has much to lose. I’m not exactly covetous of social cachet and who the hell is going to give you a hard time?’

  Kirk thinks of Mr Kane’s words that day: if you start shining in the classroom, who’s going to dare give Kirk Burns any shite for it? What was true then is even more true of this.

  ‘Doesn’t make it any less frightening, does it?’

  ‘No,’ Matt agrees.

  ‘Though this fair puts it into perspective. When there’s fuckin’ monsters loose in the world, it seems crazy that anybody should give a fuck whether you’re into girls or guys.’

  ‘Heresy, dear boy. Pope Benedict said homosexuals are as great a threat as global warming.’

  To his surprise, Kirk finds it in himself to laugh, and glances instinctively into the trees in response to having made an involuntarily loud sound.

  ‘Just goes to show,’ Matt adds, ‘you can take the boy out of the Hitler Youth, but you—’

  Kirk feels another warm spray, accompanied by a dull thud that shakes him through the tree trunk. When he looks again at Matt, his head has been split down the middle by an axe, buried in his skull all the way to the bridge of his nose.

  Kirk barely has time to react before he sees a second demon coming at him, swinging a heavy, awkward object. He throws himself over the side of the tree trunk as the object crashes into the wood where
he was sitting. Its weight and solidity would have surely been enough to smash his skull, but its ungainliness bought him the fraction of a second that kept him alive.

  Kirk looks for the stick, realises it’s on the ground on the other side of the trunk. The demon lifts its weapon again, its partner meanwhile struggling to disembed the axe from Matt’s head. Kirk sees the object clearly now and recognises two things: one, that it is a chainsaw; and two, given that said chainsaw isn’t turned on, he’s not looking at the dux of Beelzebub High.

  Kirk takes a short run and dives at the bastard, hurling himself over the tree trunk and slamming into the demon on the other side. They both crash to the ground and roll over a couple of times in a thrashing tangle. Kirk takes a couple of slashes from its claws, but when he rolls free, he can see that he has disarmed his opponent.

  The other demon has now got Matt on the deck and has a foot on his head to increase its purchase in removing the axe.

  Kirk springs up into a defensive crouch, keeping his eyes on his foe. Both his stick and the chainsaw are lying on the ground between them, his position several feet closer to the latter. The demon rushes forward and picks up the stick. It brandishes its new weapon as Kirk hefts the chainsaw, letting out a sneering hiss that suggests it is pleased with this turn of events.

  To each his own.

  ‘Jolly sporting of you, old chap,’ Kirk says.

  He pulls the starter cord, prompting the chainsaw to buzz into life.

  Vengeance follows.

  Sendak is crouching down beside Blake with an arm around his shoulders.

  ‘Gotta let go, okay?’ he says.

  There is another wallop against the door, shuddering the upended contents inside the fridge.

  Blake nods. He’s reluctant but he understands. As long as this moment endures, this moment of holding Kane’s head and weeping for him, then he doesn’t have to deal with the next one. The assaults on the kitchen door, however, deny him the luxury of prolonging it.

  He lets Kane’s head come down gently to rest on the floor and climbs to his feet, Sendak close by to steady him if needed. He looks around, sees a room full of scared people. It feels like he’s been away from them for ages, in some other place: somewhere calm where he didn’t feel fear, only grief. Now that he’s back, he sees their fear but doesn’t feel his own. He’s not quite ready yet to feel anything at all.

  Sendak taps his chin, makes him look into his face.

  ‘How you doin’, man?’

  ‘Been better,’ he replies. ‘Yourself?’

  ‘I’m having limited fun right now.’

  ‘Copy that, as I believe the expression—’

  Sendak puts a hand to Blake’s mouth and casts an urgent glance towards the windows.

  ‘Shit. Kill the lights. Now.’

  Rocks reaches quickly for the switches and complies. The room doesn’t plunge into complete darkness, but is instead sparsely illuminated by the windows, transformed from black mirrors into providing a dim view of the grounds outside.

  Demons are emerging from the gloom, making their way directly towards the kitchen, which until seconds ago must have looked like a shop window to these bastards. They’re tooled up. One is carrying a pitchfork, one a machete, another an axe; one of the fuckers even has a scythe.

  ‘Been raiding my barn,’ Sendak says grimly. ‘All we got is fuckin’ sports goods and kitchenware. God damn it.’

  ‘No such thing as an atheist in a foxhole then,’ Blake says. It’s about all he can manage by way of gallows humour.

  Sendak nods, keeping his eyes on the windows. ‘That’s right,’ he says in a low register. ‘Everybody converts when their life is at stake. Everybody. No matter what they profess to believe. When the shit hits, they all convert.’ Then he glances briefly at Blake with the most grimly serious face the priest has ever seen, and adds: ‘To atheism.’

  Sendak checks his grip on the baseball bat and stares at the approaching horde. ‘Anybody who truly believes there’s a better world waiting for them just as soon as they leave this one ain’t gonna take evasive action to put that off. If you believe that shit, then you go throw yourself out there and buy the rest of us some time, because I sure ain’t trusting you to get my back. What do you say?’

  Blake swallows and picks up a sharpening steel, the only weapon left.

  ‘I’ve got your back,’ he tells Sendak.

  ‘Good man. There are only atheists in foxholes, Father, because that’s when you realise this is all you got, and if there’s gonna be a solution, it’s gotta be man-made.’

  The approaching demons are less than ten yards away. Another shuddering impact shakes the upturned fridge, a section of the door frame coming loose in a cloud of exploding plaster dust.

  Yvonne and Caitlin shove the fridge back hard against the door while Beansy and Rocks stand facing the window, weapons in hand. Every one of them looks terrified; even Sendak’s face betrays that he doesn’t fancy their chances, though only Blake is close enough to see this.

  Through the windows, the nearest two of the demons is close enough for Blake to make eye contact.

  Then from outside, there comes the quite implausible sound of someone singing.

  ‘Iiiiiiii’m a lumberjack and I’m okay . . .’

  Blake wonders for a second whether he is really hearing this, then receives his answer when the creature he’d been staring at turns to investigate where the sound is coming from. The moment it does, a severed demon head smacks it in the face with bone-shattering impact, before a human figure comes charging out of the darkness, revving a chainsaw.

  The nearest demon lunges at him and is promptly disembowelled with demonstrable and vocal alacrity. Then he moves on to the one reeling from its recent concussion, relieving its headache by the non-prescription expedient of relieving it of its head.

  Blake gawps in a kind of gruesome awe at this spectacle of fervent carnage.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he mumbles.

  ‘Naw,’ corrects Rocks in elation. ‘Kirk Burns.’

  Sendak pats Blake on the shoulder. ‘Man-made solution,’ he says.

  Outside, the remaining demons have sussed the odds and are making for the trees, Kirk shouting after them.

  ‘Aye, yous better run, ya Hun-lookin’ bastards. You kick the arse out of bein’ ugly.’

  Sendak puts down his blade and swings open one of the windows.

  ‘In here, come on,’ he calls.

  Kirk switches off the chainsaw and hands it across, then retrieves the abandoned axe also before clambering through the gap. His clothes are spattered with black blood, his top ripped at one shoulder.

  ‘You all right?’ Sendak asks.

  ‘Aye, but I’m no’ sure I’ll get a second day out of this T-shirt.’

  Then Kirk spots the body on the floor.

  ‘Aw, fuck. Fuck.’

  He kicks out in anger, booting an oven door. ‘Fucking bastards. They got Matt. Ewan . . . Dazza.’

  ‘Christ,’ says Rocks. Caitlin takes his hand and he’s grateful for the feel of it, though it’s not enough: it’s like a trickle of water that only lets you know how thirsty you are. He pulls her against him. No more, he thinks. They’re not getting anyone else.

  Kirk is shaking his head grimly.

  ‘I’ll never kill enough of these cunts. Never.’

  Sendak grips him around the uninjured shoulder.

  ‘I hear you, man. I hear all of you. But we got work to do right now.’

  On cue, the door leading to the executive dining room takes another thump. Kirk picks up the chainsaw again.

  Sendak nods towards the other door.

  ‘Need to get down this corridor to the games hall. But we got a visitor waiting out here, okay?’

  Kirk yanks the starter cord.

  ‘I’ll introduce him to my wee pal.’

  Sendak and Blake remove the barricade, shoving the island unit back into the centre of the room and clearing a space for everyone to assemble, ready
to run. Sendak counts down with three fingers and grips the handle.

  He opens the door, revealing the corridor to be empty. This time, however, he sticks his head out and checks above. It’s all clear.

  ‘Okay, everybody, let’s move it out, fast.’

  Kirk leads the way. Sendak remains at the door, ushering the others through and protecting the rearguard once they are in the corridor. He’s ditched the bat for an axe in one hand, a knife in the other.

  They move steadily but cautiously down the corridor, not going flat out because of what they might run into. Kirk keeps his eyes darting around, ready to react to movement.

  There is a crash from behind.

  ‘Keep looking forward, people,’ Sendak shouts, though it’s his duty not to heed his own instruction. He glances back to the kitchen: a demon has smashed through one of the windows and landed awkwardly on top of a cooker. Its feet scramble for purchase, kicking - and, he fears, turning - a couple of the gas taps in the process.

  A second demon clambers through the jagged gap, letting out a defiant roar. Yeah, you’re all real tough when the chainsaw’s out of range.

  Rocks can’t prevent himself glancing back when he hears this noise. Though it won’t make any difference, he needs to know how close it is. As he turns his head, he’s aware of a frantic movement at his side and sees Caitlin lifting into the air, screaming. A demon has burst through the ceiling tiles and grabbed her around the neck.

  Rocks gets one hand around Caitlin’s waist and plunges his knife into the demon’s arm with the other until he feels the blade strike bone. The creature lets go and retreats, shrinking rapidly back out of sight.

  ‘Fuck, they’re in the crawl space,’ Sendak warns. ‘Could come from anywhere. Just run. Fast as you can, run.’

  A ceiling tile explodes in front of Kirk as he reaches the corner, a demon dropping from it a few feet past where he is supposed to turn left. It didn’t get the memo about the chainsaw. Kirk lets his momentum take him beyond the turn and rips into it while the others hurry past at his back.

  Sendak tugs him away from his work. The creature is not dead, but it’s not posing a threat either, and he won’t be feeling any guilt about not administering a coup de grâce.