World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1)

by Mark Chadbourn

  "This is killing me," Church mused. "Every time I look behind I think someone's following us."

  Ruth warmed her hands around her coffee mug; she didn't meet his eyes. "A natural reaction."

  Near the door, a tall, thin man was casting furtive glances in their direction, the hood of his plastic waterproof pulled so tightly around his face that the drawstrings were biting into the flesh. At a table on the other side of the room, an old hippie with wiry, grey hair fastened in a ponytail was also watching them. Church fought his anxiety and turned his attention back to Ruth.

  "When I was a boy this would all have seemed perfectly normal," he said. "You know how it is-you're always convinced the world is stranger than it seems."

  "That just goes to show we lose wisdom as we get older, doesn't it," Ruth replied edgily. "We've obviously been spending all our adult lives lying to ourselves."

  "When I was seven or eight I had these bizarre dreams, really colourful and realistic," Church began. "There was a woman in them, and this strange world. They were so powerful I think I had trouble distinguishing between the dreams and reality, and it worried my mother: she dragged me off to the doctor at one point. They faded after I reached puberty, but I know they affected the way I looked at the world. And I'm getting the same kind of feeling now-that all we see around us is some kind of cheap scenery and that the real business is happening behind it." He glanced around; the man in the waterproof had gone, but the hippie was still watching them.

  "I'm finding it hard to deal with, to be honest," Ruth said. "I've always believed this is all there is. I've never had much time for ghosts or God."

  Church nodded. "I always thought there was something there. An instinct, really. You know, you'd look around ... sometimes it's hard to believe there's not something behind it all. But these days ... I don't have much time for the Church ... any churches. After Marianne died, they weren't much help, to say the least."

  Ruth sipped her coffee thoughtfully. "My dad was a member of the Communist Party and a committed atheist. I remember him saying one day, The Bible's a pack of lies, written by a bunch of power-hungry men who wanted their own religion."'

  "Christmas must have been a bundle of fun in your house."

  "No, it was great. It was a really happy, loving home." She smiled wistfully. "He died a couple of years ago."

  "I'm sorry."

  "It was sudden, a heart attack. His brother, my uncle, was murdered and it just destroyed my dad. It was the unfairness of it ... the complete randomness. Uncle Jim was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some desperate, pathetic idiot killed him. You know, I work in the law and I see all the motivations for crime, but if I came across that bastard today I'd probably kill him with my bare hands. No jury, no legal arguments." She bit her lip. "Dad just couldn't cope with it. It didn't fit in with the ordered world view, you see. He tore himself apart for a couple of days and then his heart gave out. And in one instant I could understand the need for religion." Emotions flickered across her face. "Of course, by that stage it was too late to suddenly start believing."

  Church felt an urge to comfort her, but he didn't know how. "The time when the Church had any relevance to people's lives is long gone, yet we all stilt have these spiritual needs. So where do we turn when things get dark?"

  "We look into ourselves, I suppose," Ruth said quietly.

  The hippie's unwavering stare was beginning to unnerve Church; behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were cold and grey, sharply intelligent and incisive. One hand rested protectively on a faded, olive-coloured haversack bearing a large peace symbol and a CND badge.

  Ruth drained her coffee and stood up. "I had better go to the toilet or we'll be stopping all the way to Bristol."

  As she wandered out, the hippie watched her intently. Church gnawed on his Danish while keeping one eye out to make sure Ruth wasn't followed. The man didn't have an unpleasant face; the skin was the kind of brown that only came from an outdoor life, the lines around the mouth suggested more smiles than tears or rage. But there was a world-weariness to him that had added a touch of bitterness or cynicism around the eyes. A large gold ring hung in his left ear and he wore a tie-dyed and faded pink T-shirt, old army fatigues and a pair of rugged walking boots.

  He did nothing further to arouse suspicion and after a while Church's attention wandered, but when ten minutes had passed he began to grow anxious. He finished his coffee and went to stand outside the toilets, but although he tried to wait patiently, alarm bells were ringing in his head. He swung open the door and called Ruth's name. When there was no reply, he headed to the newsagents, but she wasn't there either. The car park was deserted. She hadn't slipped by him and returned to the cafeteria. Suddenly his heart was pounding as his uneasiness worried into a pearl of panic in his gut.

  He decided the best option was to get security to put out an announcement, or at the very worst he could check to see if they had seen her on the surveillance cameras. The office lay at the furthest point of the thoroughfare, through a windowless door and up a short flight of stairs. Church stepped on to the stairs, desperately trying not to think the worst. But he had barely climbed three steps when he became starkly aware the temperature was dropping rapidly. By the time he reached the top, his breath was pluming and shivers rippled through him. The main office door creaked open noisily. Against one wall there was a curved desk with a bank of black-and-white monitors showing scenes from the car park, the Travelodge, the cafeteria and others. An uncomfortable silence lay heavy over everything, punctuated occasionally by sudden bursts of static from the radio speaker on the desk. But what caught Church's eye first was the glittering cobweb of frost that dappled everything-the desk, the equipment, the walls and floor. His head was spinning as he advanced slowly; it didn't make sense. A high-backed leather chair was turned away from him at the desk; he could just make out the tip of the head of a man sitting in it.

  "Hello?" he said hesitantly.

  His voice echoed hollowly; all remained still and quiet. He stared at the man's unmoving head, hoping the guard hadn't heard him, knowing in his heart that wasn't the answer. And suddenly he wanted to run out of there, not turn the chair around, not find any answers at all, but he forced himself to move forward. His footsteps sounded crisp, his breath was clouds of white. He spun the chair round in one movement and his stomach contracted instantly. The guard was frozen as solidly as if he had been left out in an Antarctic night; frost rimed his eyebrows and hair. His stare was glassy, his bloodless skin blueish beneath the unforgiving striplight. Church backed away, unable to come to terms with a situation that both terrified and baffled him. But as he turned, another shock brought him up sharp. Behind the door, hidden from his initial view, several bodies had been stacked. He recognised one of the women he had seen working in the cafeteria; the others also seemed to be staff from the services. Church felt like his head was fizzing as ideas banged into one another without forming one coherent thought. He rushed through the door and down the stairs two steps at a time.

  When he crashed through the door into the main thoroughfare, the hippie from the cafeteria was waiting for him. "They've taken her," he said, with a faint Scottish brogue. He glanced around furtively. "Outside. Don't draw attention from any of the staff."

  "Who's got her?" Church snapped, the anxiety cracking his voice.

  "Quiet," the man said sharply. "They want you both dead. They already know who you are."

  "Ruth-"

  -is not dead yet. But she will be soon and you'll be next. Now, come." He led the way to the car park, Church following like a sheep, confused, but slowly regaining his equilibrium. The hippie gazed around the bleak, puddled car park until his eyes settled on the grey Transit Church had earlier believed was following them. "There," he said.

  Church looked into the man's face, wondering if he should trust him, and then he threw caution to the wind and set off weaving among the parked cars. As he neared the Transit, he could see it shift slightly o
n its suspension, although the windows were too dirty to see who was in the back. Without a second thought, Church grabbed the handle and yanked the rear door open.

  There was a roar that wasn't human and a stink that reminded him of the monkey house at the zoo. Ruth was unconscious on the floor of the van. Standing over her, his face wild with rage, was the man in the waterproof Church had seen at the door of the cafe, his beady, darting eyes like an ape's behind the mask of his face, which had a strange waxy sheen. The man snarled and lashed out. Church caught a glimpse of a silver-bright knife that almost curved into a crescent near the end, and then he was yanked back suddenly.

  Church's new associate stepped to his side. "Stay out of his reach. He's too strong for you."

  Church was overwhelmed with sensations; the stench coming off the man making his head spin; the way the black-pebble eyes were filled with a monstrous anger Church couldn't begin to comprehend; the rasp of breath deep in the man's throat; the flash and glimmer as the blade danced in the air between them; and then the instinctive knowledge that this was what he had seen under the bridge. Ruth's captor jabbed the knife at Church and said what sounded like, "Arith Urkolim."

  "What did he say?" Church snapped.

  At Church's voice, Ruth stirred slightly, and his relief that she was okay surprised Church with its force. He edged to one side, looking for an opening, but there didn't seem any way he could get past the knife, and Ruth's captor was already trying to manoeuvre into a position to close the rear doors; strangely, he seemed wary of Church, ensuring the knife was always between the two of them, when he could probably have snapped Church's neck with one flex of his fingers. At the same time, he was changing; his skin seemed milky, then translucent and Church thought he could glimpse scales glistening just below the surface, while his tongue had grown forked at the tip like a snake's; when it wriggled out over his thin, dry lips it was accompanied by that deep, disturbing rasp from the back of his throat.

  Ruth's eyes flickered open and briefly met his. Church saw an instant of panic as she took in the surroundings and then her natural control reasserted itself. At that moment her attacker lunged forward to grab the door handle. Knowing all would be lost if it shut, Church fumbled, then grasped the edge, feeling his knuckles pop and his tendons stretch to breaking as, effortlessly, Ruth's captor began to drag it closed.

  "Get away!" the hippie barked. "He's going to use the knife!"

  Church looked up to see the blade at throat level, drawn back to strike. The snake-man said something in the same guttural language, his eyes now black with a red-slit pupil.

  Suddenly Ruth's boot struck her attacker's calf with such force he overbalanced. Before he could recover, she had tangled both her feet among his legs. Church seized the moment, shifting his weight to fling the door shut so that with the force of the snake-man's pull it slammed into his face like a hammer. The dirty window glass exploded in a shower of crystals as the attacker crashed backwards over Ruth. In a sudden burst, Ruth scrambled out from under him, kicked open the door and tumbled out on to the wet tarmac, but Church's attention was still focused on the knife. He half thought about grabbing it when it clattered on to the floor of the van, but before his eyes it shimmered, then changed shape into something that resembled a silver spider which scurried away into the shadows.

  "Let's get away from here," the hippie hissed, dragging them both by their jackets. "Where's your car?" The snake-man was already pulling himself to his feet, his face a mess of blood and torn flesh. An ear-splitting, inhuman roar erupted from its throat as they ran to the Nissan, and for a second of pure terror, Church thought it was coming after them. As he pushed the key in the lock, Church couldn't help glancing back, and instantly wished he hadn't; framed in the open van doors, he saw the snake-man howling terrible monkey cries as he tore at his clothes and face which was transforming, melting, shifting into something so awful Church gagged and turned away.

  When they were safely inside, he fired up the engine, gunning the accelerator, and then they were lurching forward in a screech of tires.

  Only when they had pulled off the slip road into traffic did Church's heart start to return to normal. He turned to Ruth in the passenger seat. "Are you okay?"

  She nodded, her face pale and drawn.

  "That thing in the van," he stuttered, "it was the same as whatever we saw under the bridge. Not the same one, though. So there's more of-"

  "They can put on human faces," the hippie interrupted from the back seat.

  "They'd taken the place of all the staff there!" Church said, finally accepting what he'd seen.

  "Waiting for you," he continued. "I think, if we took the time to investigate, we would find something similar at the airport and at other sites on all the arterial routes out of the capital."

  Church felt queasily like things were running out of control. "They're after us?" he said dumbfoundedly.

  "I was in one of the cubicles when I heard someone else come into the toilet and hang around outside. When I started to come out, the door burst in. Caught me a right one." Ruth tenderly touched the ripening bruise on her temple. "The first thing I thought was, `What a geek,' because he had that hood pulled so tightly round his face you could only see the little circle of his features. He looked like a mental patient. And then I thought, `You'd better make some noise because this bastard is going to try to rape you.' And then his face changed. Just a bit, like a flicker in transmission or something, but I got a hint of what was behind it."

  Church shook his head in disbelief. "They're after us?" he repeated stupidly. "I thought we were after them?" Gradually his thoughts started to come together and he turned and briefly examined the hippie before returning his gaze to the road. "And who are you?" he asked then. The man's cold eyes had been impossible to read; Church thought he might have done too many drugs, something to take him one step away from normal human experience.

  "Tom," he replied. "I've never had much need for any other name. But Learmont is my family name."

  "That wasn't what I meant. You'd better start explaining."

  Tom removed his glasses and cleaned them, then checked through the window at the quality of light; although it was mid-afternoon, night did not seem far away. He smiled inscrutably. "Life is a poem and a new verse is about to start."

  Ruth saw the anger flare in Church's face and calmed him with a hand on his forearm. She turned round in her seat and stared at the hippie coldly. "You've been speaking like you know what's happening. You've been acting like you were waiting for us, even though we didn't even know we were going to stop here. I've just had the most frightening experience of my life. Don't play games with us."

  Tom removed a small tin from his haversack and began to roll himself a thin cigarette. To Church's irritation, he remained silent until the blue smoke clouded his face, and then he said, "The world you grew up in is dead. It simply doesn't know it yet. This society is like some dumb animal that's had its throat cut and is still wandering around as if nothing has happened. You see, the most enormous conceit of this time is that the rules of the game are known. The scientists have fooled the populace-and themselves-that the universe is like clockwork, and that grand lie will cost everyone dearly. The universe is not like clockwork. The universe is like stoats fighting in a sack, bloody and chaotic, and any rules there might be could never be glimpsed by you or I."

  He sucked on his cigarette, choked a cough in his throat. Church felt odd licks of anxiety, while Ruth waited for the punchline.

  "The one true law of the universe is duality," Tom continued. "You would think even the most confused of philosophers would see that, but it seems to have eluded all the apologists for this so-called Age of Reason. Hot and cold. Life and death. Good and evil. And what would be the flipside of science?"

  He addressed the question to Ruth, but it was Church who answered: "Magic?"

  Tom smiled slyly. "The seasons have turned. The Age of Reason has passed. We're on the cusp of a new age."

/>   Church laughed dismissively. "I thought all that Age of Aquarius rubbish went out with flower children and love-ins."

  "The Age of Aquarius is one way of making sense of it, but it isn't the whole of it. Yes, we are entering an era of spirituality, wisdom and magic. But there will also be blood and brutality. All I'm saying is you must let go of old certitudes, keep an open mind. That's the only way you'll be able to face the trials that lie ahead."

  "You're not telling us anything," Church protested.

  "This isn't the time or the place. We need to move quickly. What happened back there wasn't the end of it. They won't be happy till you're both dead."

  When Church looked in the rearview mirror he could tell from Tom's set face that he was not about to reveal any more. A small nugget of anger made him want to drop the man off at the next services in retaliation, but he knew he couldn't dismiss the one person who seemed to know something about what was happening in his suddenly chaotic life. He glanced at Ruth, who smiled back as warmly as she could muster, but her eyes were still terribly scared.

  They hadn't gone much further when Ruth's mobile phone rang. She answered it, then said to Church, "It's someone called Dale for you."

  "He's a friend. I gave him your number for emergencies." He nursed the phone against his shoulder as he drove. "What's wrong, Dale?"

  "You tell me." Dale's voice was drawn and worried. There was a long pause, then he said, "You've had some trouble at your flat."

  "What do you mean?"

  Dale sighed. "Well, there's no easy way to say this ... It's been burnt out."

  "What?" Church almost dropped the phone.

  "Someone broke down the door, then set fire to it. The fire brigade got there before it took out the rest of the house, but ... well, I'm sorry, Church, everything's a write-off." Another pause. "That's not all. I've had the cops round here asking after you. I don't know how they found out where I worked, how they even knew we were friends ..." Dale's voice faded; he sounded disorientated, worried. "They wanted to know where you were. I got the feeling it was about more than the fire."