London When it Rains

by C. Sean McGee

  The Therapist turned and looked at her group. Neither of them had clued on to the predicament. They were too busy playing with the device.

  “Fuck em,” she said. “I don’t wanna die.”

  “Do we tell them?”

  “No. It’ll be chaos. They’ll lock everything down. We have to go now before anyone else finds out.”

  The Therapist took a breath. It was a large breath. She might have taken half the air in the room. Were anyone looking, they would have noticed it as a suspicious breath, and like an itch or a yawn, they probably would have taken one of their own.

  “Ok, group,” she said, willing every nerve in her body to be as calm and flaccid as a spell of the doldrums.

  Half of them turned; the other half was having too much fun.

  “I’m just going to step out for a minute or two. Keep doing what you’re doing, you’re doing great?”

  “What are you doing?” she thought, “just get out.”

  Neither showed nary an inch of concern.

  “So, umm, I’ll be right back and….”

  Now her nerves were beginning to show. If she didn’t leave soon…..

  “Just umm… don’t break uh….”

  “We have to go,” pleaded The Concierge.

  Her voice was soft. It crackled. She was on the verge of tears.

  “You’re in charge until I get back,” said The Therapist.

  She was pointing at The Old Man, but she was looking over her shoulder.

  “Lock the door when I leave,” she said.

  XX

  “Follow me quietly, and don’t make a scene.”

  He could have danced his way to the door; it wouldn’t have made a difference. The guests were having the times of their lives - their short little lives.

  “We’re doing this now?”

  The Old Man peered down the hallway. It was quiet and looked hardly as perilous as his beady stare would let on. But that was no reason not to stay close. The Girl kept one hand tugged to The Old Man’s shirt in case he should dart off in any direction, and her other hand was clenched as a fist.

  “You can’t call the elevator without a key,” she said.

  “Stairs it is then.”

  The Old Man took one look out the window. He could see the buses already arriving. There were maybe eight or nine. That wouldn’t even count for half the guests.

  “We haven’t much time.”

  The Girl took one quick look for herself. She could see The Concierge and The Therapist; both of them on their knees and begging for their lives. They’d only gotten as far as the corner. They never had a chance, not even if they’d left a minute earlier. There were so many gunmen, and they were everywhere. Scores of them had already started entering the building.

  “Looks like things are gonna get a little busy around here. Now, girly, what floor are we on?”

  He had his head inside the stairwell, peering up and down. There were no numbers written anywhere; not on any doors or walls, and the seventeen lights on the elevator shone in blank patterns of five.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She was panicking, and not being of much use.

  “Slow down. Breathe, alright? Just breathe.”

  The touch of his strangling hand against her neck sent a shiver of alarm through her every nerve, and in an instant, she felt warm, safe, and calm.

  “What floor are we on, love?”

  “They’re always changing the numbers; it’s too hard to tell.”

  “Right, can’t change that then, can we? Tell me then, the eleventh floor; is it up or down?”

  “It’s in the basement,” she said.

  “Right, so down it is then.”

  They entered the stairwell just as the gunmen burst into the foyer. There were two large explosions that were quickly followed by short bursts of gunfire. It would have been less than a minute all up, but it sure as hell felt longer. And then, as quickly as it all started, it stopped – just like that. In its place, there was prolonged silence. It was the kind of silence that was impossible to hide in. The Old Man and The Girl kept as still as they could, but with that much adrenaline, it was no easy feat. Their hands and legs shook, their breaths howled like the wind; and they both had trickles of warm piss running down their legs.

  “I want this facility stripped bare.”

  The Leader marched through the foyer after the dust and smoke had settled. Behind him, scores of gunmen rushed into the building and held their positions. Those still on the street went door by door taking the neighbours from their beds or their hiding places and offering them comfort and assurance.

  “Sir.”

  A gunman rushed from inside, almost slipping on small pools of blood as he did.

  “Division Six has their position. They’re waiting on orders. What should I tell them?”

  “Destroy every artefact one by one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then burn it to the ground.”

  The first of the buses was already being loaded. It was service staff mainly – cooks and cleaners, maids and bellboys. Most were loaded into the buses dressed only in their undergarments, and some of them stripped bare.

  “We were only following orders,” said one prisoner.

  “It was just a job,” said the others. “We had no money. We had no food. It was just a job. Pease, it was just a job. We bear no allegiance.”

  It mattered very little. They were ushered into the same cages as those whose allegiance was not in question; those that defended their moderate idealism with vile cursing, and threats of revenge and abuse. And soon enough they would all be naked; their heads and eyebrows would be shaved; their eyelashes clipped; and, dressed in their heavy grey boiler suits, it would be impossible to tell one from the other; be they man or woman, or right or left winged. It didn’t matter, not now at least.

  The Old Man dragged The Girl through the first door they passed. The door slammed and echoed down through the stairwell. The Old Man dropped to the floor. He could hear the sound of gunmen shouting and probably pointing in their direction.

  “Is there any other way to the basement?”

  “The basement? Are you crazy? We’ve got to get out of here. If they catch us…”

  “I didn’t ask you tag along. You told me you could get me to the eleventh floor. Now either you can or you can’t, which is it?”

  XXI

  “Mam, our ride is here. We have to go.”

  “I won’t leave my post. I refuse to leave my people – not like this.”

  “There is no post anymore, and they’re not your people. They never were. Mam, we have to go; right now.”

  “You go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

  “I think you underestimate the severity of the situation.”

  “I understand quite clearly.”

  “Mam!”

  He had to shout, on account of the helicopter landing overhead, and from the chants of bloodshed coming from the floors below. The barricades were down and the police who had been holding them were the first to kick down the front doors. There were still those that lay still on the ground, but many of them were dead or badly injured. The rest ran as if it were their profession. They burst through the doors and stormed up the stairs, tearing apart floor by floor. Those who preferred to hide did so behind desks and cabinets, and in rooms with locks on their doors. And then those who thirsted for someone to blame did so by scraping paint off the walls until their fingers bled and making prisoners of those who begged for compassion and surrender.

  “Mam, please, I can’t go without you.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “No, Mam. I can’t go without you.”

  “Just go damn it!”

  “They won’t take me unless I’m with you. I’m nobody without you. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to go to prison. Please, think of someone other than yourself.”

  “I am,” she said.

  Her eyes hadn’t lef
t the young girl. There was nowhere else to look.

  The second shots were fired, The Aide turned and ran. There were only two more floors until the roof. All he had to do was get on that chopper. The truth wouldn’t matter, not now, not with so much at stake. He ran as if his life depended on it, which of course it most surely did. He ignored the bullets that whizzed past his face just as he did the orders for him to stop and give himself up. They called him cowardice and they called him a traitor. But it was easy for them to say; they weren’t the ones being chased.

  It was like a sinking ship. In seconds the entire building was full. There was nobody outside on the square; nobody who could stand or hold themselves up anyway. Inside, the jubilant singing started once more. It might have been a show of defiance, or it might have been an act of sheer denial. Either way, they sang as if this were some kind of victory.

  Across the street, though, it was quiet. Perched on the rooftop, The Sniper slowly adjusted her instruments. She had The Administrator and The Orator in the crosshairs of her scope. Side by side they stood. Side by side they would fall. It was windier now than it was before, and the afternoon sun was glaring in her sight. Not this, nor the awkward angle, would affect her judgement.

  She took one last breath and closed her eyes for a second. As her finger slowly pressed against the trigger, she opened them once more. And there - floating in her sight - was a sparkling and bloodied hair bow. She followed it, as the wind died and it fell back onto the bloodied pavement below.

  The ground was littered with children, and it was painted with their blood.

  She took one more breath and returned to her scope. The Orator and The Administrator had not moved. They were both locked eye to eye. It looked as if very little was being said that hadn’t been said already. The Sniper wiped a tear from her right eye and rested her finger on the trigger once more.

  “Forgive me,” she said.

  XXII

  One shot rang out; then three, four, and twenty. In a matter of seconds, the quiet and calm that had once threatened to give them away turned into a roaring scream of death. Bullets broke bones and chipped away plaster in walls, and they travelled from floor to floor.

  When the shooting finally lulled, The Old Man took his hands off his eyes. He was backed into a room full of machines; his legs tucked up against his face, and his body, shaking like a leaf in the middle of a fucking tornado.

  “Are you mad? Get down!”

  The Girl was standing in the middle of the hallway. There were holes in the ground where bullets had whizzed past her feet and yet, she stood there as if there were no other place she would rather be. She hovered above the holes as she had the pitchers of ale and the shots of whisky back at the bar, holding her belly with one hand while other hanged beside her body with its fingers so neat and gently crossed.

  Already the floors above were being emptied. They could hear the procession slowly marching down the steps as the chains that bound their hands and feet rattled against the concrete stairs.

  The Old Man grabbed The Girl by the back of her shirt and dragged her into the room where he hid. “There are far better ways to die, dear girl – if that’s what you so wish. But not here, not now.”

  The stairway door burst open.

  “Shhhh,” said The Old Man.

  “I’m not scared,” said The Girl.

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  They could hear their footsteps first. The floor creaked and ached as the gunmen made their way along the hall. There were more than a dozen. It sounded like the ground was about to give way at any second. They could see their footsteps next. The gunmen’s shadows blocked out the light that crept beneath the door. They stood there for some time – silent.

  And that was the worst part – the waiting.

  The Leader stormed up the stairs. When he entered the floor, he went room by room, kicking open each door – severing them like splintered limbs. In the first room, they pulled out babies. Some had to be wheeled in their incubators, while others were grouped together and carried like ripened fruit as they slept or cried their lungs out.

  Not a word was said the entire time. There was no indecision. There were no mistakes. There was not a moment of doubt whatsoever. Each gunman played their part intimately. They did so with precision and finesse.

  The second burst open and there, slumped over on all fours, was a cardinal, dressed from head to toe in his extravagant purple attire, and slobbering pitifully as he begged for his life.

  “Release the prisoners,” said The Leader.

  The gunmen entered and went straight to the back of the room where – after tearing off a cloak of red velvet - they cut through the bulky chains that kept a small and cramped cell tidy and shut. As sparks flew, inside, seven young boys dared not move. They scuttled and burrowed into the farthest corner where they did little but shake tremendously. Their bruised and naked bodies were covered in billions of tiny goosebumps – either from the rasping cold or from sheer fright. They pressed against one another like startled sheep, and they eyed the gunmen nervously whilst kissing the crosses that they wore around their necks.

  The Leader stepped into the room and gazed at the walls surrounding. From ceiling to floor, they were decorated in acts of bestial perversion. There was scripture inscribed in blood and faeces, and there were pictures of the very worst kind of atrocities, held to the wall by the dried tears of broken, young boys.

  “Come and save me, dear Lord,” said The Cardinal.

  The Cardinal threw himself back and forth as if some tide or rhythm were in control of his body – writhing in his muscles, tendons and veins. As he sang, he wept. And the more he wept and blubbered, the louder he sang, and the wilder he thrashed his body.

  “Save me from vicious, cruel and brutal enemies. I depend on you, dear Lord. I have laid my trust in you since I was but a mere lamb. I have relied on you since the moment I was born. Dear Lord, do not desert me, not in my hour of need. Dear Lord, I love you and I will continue to praise your name as I have my entire life. And I will announce your power to save, to intervene, and to degrade and devour those who dishonour your name. My enemies are yours alone. Dear Lord, come to my aid. Smite if you may. Dear Lord, I love you, please, do not let me down.”

  “Bag him,” said The Leader.

  The Leader was the only one whose face was not covered. He was the only one with nothing to hide. He looked The Cardinal dead in the eyes; from the second the door ripped off its hinge, to the moment a cloth bag was pulled over his face and tied off around his neck. He would never mention why he allowed The Cardinal his final prayer. He would never mention, and nobody would ever dare to ask.

  “When this building is burnt to the ground, you start here, in this room.”

  And room by room he went, making his way up along the hall. This was, by sure, where the most serious and deranged kind of religious fanatics and artefacts were housed. The Old Man listened intently as each room was cleared of his inhabitants; their capture marked by the echo of steel shackles, rattling down the concrete steps.

  “This one,” said The Leader.

  His shadow was enormous. It’s stretched into the darkness and even there, it cast a shadow on the wall. When the light burst in it grew even larger. It spread out over the body of an old man, and that of a young pregnant woman. They lay side by side – their hands entwined. They both looked peaceful and still. They looked, on one hand – dead, and other the other hand - not. Their eyes were as vacant and glassy as the trinkets that dangled off the young woman’s ears. They looked devoid of life. Yet, their bellies rose and fell as if they were not, in fact, dead. Their pulses were strong, and their skin was warm and elastic. They looked neither here nor there; neither alive nor dead. Strapped to their heads were small metallic crowns, and pressed firmly between their entwined hands were two small remotes.

  For the first time, one of the gunmen seemed estranged.

  “Do I have to spell it out? Load them on
the fucking bus.”

  “Yes, sir. But sir, they’re tied to these machines. What do I….?”

  The Leader sighed for the first time. More than anything, this gross incompetence was a reflection of his teaching. It was a measure of how far he had yet to come.

  “If they don’t come apart then shoot them,” said The Leader.

  “Yes, sir.”

  XXIII

  The Old Man awoke in a confused and rattled state. The world was beige, and it was hot and smothering, and it smelt like a mix of burning plastic and mothballs. When he inhaled, the world wrapped tighter against his head and forced itself further down his throat. And when he exhaled, it was a gagging reflex. He spat out the world, but only as far it would go, and then he sucked it back in again.

  The second he awoke, he had no idea of even who he was. There was an instant, which felt somewhat profound, where his mind was completely blank. He had no memory whatsoever. He did not know his name. He had no idea where he was. He had no idea of the world or bearings of his place in it. He felt, in that instance, without any prejudice or any expectation at all. He felt light as if his consciousness were not weighed down with the heavy sediment of his past. He felt as if he had suffered a great blow to his temple; one that had rattled his every sense. In that instance, when he awoke from unconsciousness, he felt entirely new.

  But an instance is brief, and barely a second later, he realised quite quickly that he was choking of a torn bedsheet which was tied around his head. His first instinct was to panic, but this only made things worse. His second instinct was to panic even more.

  “Sir.”

  The Leader turned, holding the controls for the unconsciousness machine in his hands.

  “There is no sign of the Imam in question.”

  The Leader didn’t respond. He went back to examining the parts in his hands. He flicked the switch and watched the lights glimmer on the headpiece that comfortably sat, like a bloodied crown, on the head of one his gunmen. With each turn of the switch, he watched how the gunman’s eyes went from piercing and ready, to cold and vacant in a mere second. They were the same eyes but at the turn of the switch, they were void of any occupants. There were no lights and no signs of life whatsoever, yet his breath and his pulse were proof enough that the gunman was not dead. On the eleventh test, when the gunman’s eyes glazed over, The Leader put two bullets in the gunman’s left leg.