9781629270050-Text-for-ePub-rev

by Unknown

  Tom nodded. “They looked Neanderthal.”

  “Then the planet. The creatures—did you see the creatures?”

  “Yes. And the tsunami. I think it wiped them out.”

  “But did you see the creatures? What they were?”

  Tom glanced across at her. She was staring at him as though her sanity depended on his answer. “Dinosaurs,” he said.

  She expelled her breath in another deep sigh. “Thank God. I thought I must be going crazy.”

  “The last thing I saw. . . .”

  “Peter.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  Tom uttered a short humourless laugh. “I guess he was trying to tell us something. But it’s utter nonsense. Dinosaurs were wiped out millions of years ago by an asteroid that hit somewhere near Mexico.”

  “Millions of years ago? Or thousands?”

  “Millions. A lot of millions. Every year my class did a project on dinosaurs. But thousands, millions, what’s the difference? Even if he was trying to tell us that the extinction was caused through some spaceship crash landing, he couldn’t have been there.” He laughed again. “It really is complete bullshit. He must be off his rocker.”

  “But the image, vision, whatever it was—it was so real. I was there, seeing it happen before my eyes.”

  “Yes. It’s a neat trick, I’ll give him that. But that’s all it is. Some sort of mental conjuring trick.”

  “Well, it’s a very realistic one.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “Look, we’ll tackle him about it when we stop for the night, okay?”

  “Okay. After all that’s happened, I don’t think anything would surprise me any more. . . .” She tailed off and Tom realised that she was close to tears.

  Ceri resumed staring out of the window. Tom didn’t disturb her. He had no idea what to say.

  * * * * *

  A black Audi wound its way down the M1 towards London, weaving from side to side. A dent in the front wing attested to a close encounter with the crash barrier. Behind the wheel sat Joe Lowden, grinning as he peered blearily through the windscreen.

  A stalled car loomed large in his vision and he twisted the steering wheel, scraping the car with the Audi’s bumper as he went past.

  “Oops,” he said, chuckling.

  Sitting in the front seat of the car he’d scraped was a rotting corpse that seemed to grin at him. Joe waved and beeped the horn.

  He slowed the car to a crawl and reached into the open polythene bag on the passenger seat. Using his knees to keep the vehicle’s course in more or less a straight line, he rolled himself another joint.

  When he reached the M25, he turned onto the anti-clockwise carriageways and headed south-west. He had never been to this neck of the woods before and didn’t really know why he had turned off the M1, but he knew it was the right thing to do.

  “Hinningdon Hospital,” he muttered. “No, that’s not right. Hillingdon Hospital. Yeah. . . .” He chuckled again.

  Quite why he was making for a hospital he had no idea, but it seemed as good a place as any to start. Hospitals had drugs by the bucketful, just waiting for someone to come along and pick them up. Well, that someone would be one Joe Lowden, a northern lad. He would collect everything he could find, even if he never had any use for it himself. If there were other survivors, he may be able to trade what he didn’t want. Start an empire. He’d soon become far more important than either of his parents had ever dreamed of being. Ha! He’d show them.

  Visions of the new order with Joe Lowden as the Godfather-type head of the organisation playing happily in his mind, Joe eventually eased the Audi through the congested roads of Hillingdon. There was always a gap he could squeeze through as though blocking vehicles had been moved out of the way and he was able to drive into the hospital’s car park.

  As he brought the car to a halt, he could see walking towards him the first living person he had encountered in, well, he had no clue how long, but it was probably a week at least.

  Joe opened the car door and stumbled out into the fresh air. It made him cough. A woman had nearly reached him. She was slim and tanned. Jean-clad, firm-looking thighs; perky breasts straining against the material of her jumper. Hanging by a shoulder strap, a machine gun bumped against her hip. When she spoke, it was in a strange accent: Australian maybe.

  “G’day, mate. I’m Tess Granville. Hope you had a good journey.” Although her face wore a friendly expression, her tone suggested that she didn’t really care whether he’d had a good journey or not. “If you could make your way to the Accident and Emergency Department.” She motioned with one hand towards the hospital building. “It’s signposted.”

  Joe eyed the gun, then moved his gaze up to her chest. The grin had not left his face.

  “Nice gun, nice tits. Hey, baby, do you want to join my gang?”

  “Mate, if you could just make your way to—”

  Joe lurched towards her, holding out both hands to that luscious chest. The indulgence of the past few days had made him incredibly horny.

  The woman took a smart step back and raised the gun in one movement, pointing it in Joe’s face. He juddered to a halt.

  “Hey! Hey! No need for that, baby. I’m just being friendly, you know.”

  The affable expression had left the woman’s face. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a firm line.

  “Then take this as a friendly warning,” she said. “Don’t make any attempt to touch me again. Make your way inside the hospital. Go to the Accident and Emergency Department. Do it now.”

  “Okay, okay. Hey, baby, fancy a smoke?”

  The gun didn’t waver. “Go. Now.”

  The first alarm bells were managing to pierce the fog that shrouded Joe’s mind, but he was barely aware of them yet. He stumbled past the woman—she took a couple more paces backwards to remain out of his reach—and made for the hospital entrance. A man stood by the door, also holding a gun.

  “Hey, brother!” said Joe. “How you doing?”

  The man didn’t smile. “Inside please, sir,” he said in an American accent. “Follow the corridor to the E.R.”

  “Huh?” said Joe. “That’s a TV programme, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, right,” said the man, but his face remained expressionless. “Accident and Emergency Department. That’s where you need to go.”

  “I don’t need to go there, brother. I’m not injured.”

  The man’s voice grew lower, almost a whisper. “Call me brother again and you will be.” The knuckles on the hand gripping the butt of the gun whitened.

  Joe edged past him. “What is it with people round here?” he said. “Where’s all the love?”

  The alarm bells in Joe’s mind had set up a clanging, jangling racket and at last he began to pay attention. Uneasiness helped clear away more of the befuddlement and Joe became almost clear-headed for the first time in many months. He stopped in the corridor. A sharp smell of antiseptic and something else filled the air, clearing his mind further. That something else was familiar: an acrid smell that he could almost taste, metallic against the back of his throat, like an electrical discharge.

  “Keep moving, please,” said a voice. Another gun-toting man stood against the corridor wall. Further down, Joe could see another. “Down the corridor to your right, please.”

  Joe stumbled on, passing two more men and one woman holding guns, motioning him onwards.

  He turned into a wide room, laid out with cubicles formed by drawn blue-patterned, plastic curtains. A line of bedraggled people, maybe twenty long, men and women, stretched from the doorway to a wooden desk on wheels—more like a lectern—behind which stood a stern-faced woman. Two or three armed people wandered up and down the line. A group of unarmed people, four or five strong, watched the line intently. The sharp smell of ozone grew stronger.

  An armed woman stood inside the doorway. “Join the queue, please,” she said to Joe. Her voice contained no hint of emotion.
Robotic almost.

  Joe hesitated. “Um, I’d like to talk to someone about this,” he said.

  The woman flicked the gun, a submachine gun, towards him.

  “Join the queue,” she repeated. Joe noticed that she had dropped the "please."

  Joe opened his face into what he hoped was his warmest smile and took half a step towards the woman.

  “Hey, is that a Thompson?” he said in a buddy-buddy voice, pointing to the gun.

  The woman’s finger moved to the trigger.

  “Last chance,” she said. “Join the queue.”

  “Jeez, okay, okay,” said Joe, backing away. He turned to the queue and shuffled to the end.

  He nudged the man in front of him. “Hey, man, what’s going on here?”

  A drawn, pale face turned to him. The man’s breath was sour, like spoiled milk, and Joe felt his stomach lurch.

  “Everyone has to go behind one of those curtains and—”

  He broke off and turned away as a shrill scream rent the air. It cut off almost immediately. Joe watched the curtains. One of them quivered and a woman shuffled out. The hair at her temples had been gelled down and her jaw hung slackly. A line of spittle hung from her lower lip. She looked neither to the right nor left, but half-walked, half-stumbled to the other end of the room and disappeared through an open doorway.

  Another waft of sour milk hit Joe as the man in front turned back to him.

  “That’s how everyone leaves,” he said. “Go behind the curtain normal. Come out like that.”

  The line moved forwards as the woman in the front of the queue walked slowly towards the cubicle just vacated by the slack-jawed woman. From her bearing, she appeared to be terrified, an impression confirmed when she cast a wide-eyed glance behind her at the people standing in line. She reached the curtain and paused. Although she was many yards away, Joe clearly heard her gasp and saw her clutch at her head. She stepped forward and the curtain twitched closed behind her.

  As more people shuffled from the cubicles, the line moved forwards.

  Joe nudged the man in front again.

  “Hey, man, why don’t we make a break for it?”

  The man’s haunted eyes turned his way again.

  “They’ve got guns,” he said. “Anyway, someone tried that just before you got here. See them?” He nodded towards the unarmed group that continued to scrutinise the queue like customs men looking for drug-smugglers. Joe had an idea that they had started to focus on him. “A woman made a break for that back door. All they did was stare at her and she stopped in her tracks like she’d run into an invisible wall. They carried on staring at her and she turned round and walked into the cubicle. But she didn’t walk normally. She jerked about like a puppet.”

  “But that was just one woman, right? If we all make a run for it at the same time. . . .”

  The man shook his head. “Then they’d use the guns. Besides, you’re assuming that we don’t all want whatever lies behind those curtains. I for one welcome it.”

  Joe stared at the man. “It could be oblivion, man.”

  “I sincerely hope so,” said the man and turned away.

  Joe glanced at the unarmed group again. They had definitely turned their attention to him.

  “Fuck this for a game of soldiers,” Joe muttered.

  He stepped to one side, trying to look casual, and took off towards the nearest armed person. If he could grab the gun, he might stand a chance.

  He had only taken two paces when something slammed into his mind and he skidded to a halt three yards from his intended target. The armed man in question glanced in his direction, his mouth turning up in a sneer, before resuming his pacing.

  Joe tried to get his legs moving again, but they refused to obey. Then they did start to move, but towards the curtains. Struggle as he might, he had no control over them. He tried to move his arms but they swung uselessly at his sides. He tried to cry out, but his mouth and throat had stopped working, too. The only things he could move of his own volition were his eyes. They swivelled towards the unarmed group of people. Each member of the group was staring at him intently.

  The man he had been talking to glanced at him as he passed. A told-you-so grimace was his only reaction.

  Joe walked, or was walked, to the curtains. The man’s description had been accurate. Joe’s legs moved in quick jerks; he must resemble a puppet in the hands of an inexperienced puppeteer.

  He was halted for a moment in front of a curtain. A slack-jawed man appeared and shuffled away. Joe was marched inside and onto the plastic-covered bed that dominated the cubicle. His nose was still his own as it was filled with the ammonic smell of urine. A yellow puddle had formed on the plastic sheet. Joe lay down on it.

  A machine stood next to the bed. A man stood by the machine, his hands near the small array of dials. Wires ran from the machine to two metal-tipped electrodes.

  A woman stood the other side of the bed. As Joe lay back, she bent over him and smeared some sort of gel onto his temples. The man brought the electrodes forward.

  Joe’s limbs remained out of his control, but his vocal chords were suddenly released from whatever had held them. He used them to scream as loudly as he could.

  * * * * *

  Bishop was sitting in his apartment cleaning his pistol when the knock came on the door. He opened it to find Simone Furlong standing there.

  “Chosen,” he said. “I thought Wallace was going with me to the airbase. We’re not leaving till the morning.”

  She stepped forward, forcing Bishop to take a step back, making a gap for her to squeeze past him. She skipped into the living area, looking around like a child in a toy shop.

  “Cool apartment,” she said.

  Bishop closed the front door and returned to his seat, walking through the waft of expensive perfume that she trailed behind her.

  “What is it you want?” he asked.

  “A direct man. I like that.” She whirled around to face him. “Milandra lied to you.”

  “Ah. Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her voice had a faraway, dreamlike quality that Bishop was beginning to suspect masked a sharp intellect. “I don’t yet possess the talents that she has, but I can do things most people can’t.”

  “Go on.”

  “Milandra sympathises with the drones.”

  “I could sense that much. So?”

  Simone smiled. Bishop noticed that she had green eyes, flecked with gold. Cat’s eyes. “So I watched closely during the Commune when she made contact with the traitor.”

  “So did I,” said Bishop. “All I saw was him close his mind and protect the two drones that were with him.”

  “That’s all she wanted anyone to see. However, being the Chosen has certain advantages. I could see what really happened. And the best part is that she had no clue I was watching.” She tittered.

  “Okay. Why are you telling me?” Bishop had sidestepped the real question of what she had witnessed deliberately. He wasn’t the sort of man who liked to ask for what he wanted. He preferred to take it.

  Simone shrugged her slight shoulders. “I want you to catch them.”

  “Them? There’s only one traitor.”

  “The drones that are with him. Kill them, too.”

  “You hate them that much?”

  Her eyes blazed and she almost spat the words. “Yes, I fucking hate them!” She breathed deeply for a few moments. “This is our world and they’ve taken over.”

  “Not for much longer. If the Great Coming succeeds. . . .”

  “And if it doesn’t? It’ll be two less to hunt down and kill later.”

  Bishop considered for a moment. “Okay. The traitor is my number one priority. . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “ . . . but if the drones are still with him, they’re as good as dead.”

  Simone smiled. “I had a feeling we’d see eye to eye. Now for what I saw. . . .” I can show you she sent.

  Bishop shook his he
ad. “Uh-huh.”

  Simone took a step closer and placed a finger to his temple. He didn’t flinch. “Hmm . . . what secrets do you want to keep hidden, I wonder?”

  Bishop raised his hand and caught her arm by the wrist. Her eyes opened a little wider. He brought his head forward until it was an inch or two from her face. “No secrets,” he said. “But I ain’t letting you in.”

  He released her arm and she stepped back, bringing her other hand across to rub her wrist where he’d gripped it. Bishop half-turned away and picked up the pistol and cleaning brush. He started to clean the barrel.

  “You’re a bit of a bastard, aren’t you?” said Simone.

  “Better remember it,” Bishop said, concentrating on the weapon.

  There was a long pause and Bishop knew that she would now say what she had come to say. “They’re not going south to Plymouth. During the Commune, they were still in Wales, around ten miles north-west of Cardiff. They’re heading north. She warned Ronstadt. Told him that someone would be coming after him.”

  “If he has half a brain, he already knew,” said Bishop. “North. Okay.”

  “Make sure you get them.”

  “Close the door after you.”

  He didn’t look up until the door had slammed behind her. Then he grinned and bent back to his task.

  A few minutes later, another knock came on the door.

  Bishop’s eyes narrowed. He placed the gun back on the table and strode to the door. He yanked it open.

  “What—”

  But it wasn’t the Chosen come back to salvage some injured pride.

  “May I come in?” asked Diane Heidler.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The temperature dropped to almost freezing and the sky lowered as the afternoon wore on.

  “Think we might be in for more snow,” Tom remarked.

  Ceri merely grunted.

  They drove on, making better time, only needing to slow down occasionally to steer a cautious path around knots of vehicles. Tom had stopped noticing the rotting corpses that still occupied some of the cars.

  Now and then, Peter would stop at these vehicles and insist that he and Tom top-up their fuel tanks. Each time, Peter would refuse to engage in any conversation other than to plan the immediate journey.