by Kim Newman
For seconds, everything was almost quiet, and she felt the fabric of reality bending around the standing dead man. Far away, vast and impersonal forces focused on this spot, exerting a tidal pull. If there had to be a second coming, this was when Susan would have wanted it.
There was another explosion. Rather, an implosion. In a fingersnap, Jago wasn’t there. His body folded into a straight line and disappeared, leaving behind a vortex which pulled in everything around. Hazel vanished like a photograph folded over, and the others were distorted, elongating towards the knife slit in reality. Susan felt a wind behind her as twigs, leaves, pebbles and bits of rubbish were sucked in.
It hurt her eyes to look at the wound where Jago had been. It popped, and went away. Hazel fell outwards, on to the other girls. Paul made a grab for her, snatching her away. Dust settled. Susan was coughing, bringing up bricky phlegm from the back of her throat. Her head was clear, all ache gone. Anthony William Jago did not exist.
* * *
Allison Conway was cleanly dead, neck broken in the fall. Susan closed the girl’s still-shining eyes, and extricated her limbs from Jenny Steyning’s. She laid the corpse out properly, and wished she had something to put over Allison’s face. Dead, Jago’s demon queen looked young.
‘Jenny,’ she said, reaching out.
The girl flinched, fuming terror. She thought she was in Hell.
‘It’s all right. It’s Susan.’
That didn’t reassure Jenny. The girl was afraid of her. She clutched a fold of her dress like a comforter blanket and buried her face in it. Her skirt lifted, and Susan saw bare, scratched legs. Inside her head, the fires of Hell burned as she chastized herself for failing her Beloved.
Paul was holding Hazel, shaking her. The woman’s head flopped. He spat out bloody drawing pins, and tried to breathe air into her lungs, blowing and pumping. Susan felt Hazel’s heart. It was still. She was gone. Paul blew fiercely, hands working her ribs like an impatient lover. Susan still read movement in her mind. She wasn’t brain-dead.
She touched a finger to Hazel’s chest. Scraping the nail with her thumb, she made a spark. Paul jerked away, owwing. Hazel’s heart beat. Once. Twice. Regularly. She was unconscious, but she was back. Paul began crying. Finally, Susan had found a real use for her pilot-light pyrokinesis.
Susan picked up the gun he’d thrown away, as much for the memories that clung to it as for protection. She felt James’s hand on its grip, and Paul’s. And, touching the still-warm barrel, she felt the last of Jago.
* * *
Many things had changed with Jago’s passing. There were no more demons, no more angels. The earth was closed, as smooth and overgrown as centuries could make it. The Light had gone from the sky, and the Kingdom of Heaven was vanished. In Alder, dreams no longer came true.
But many things were left over. The Manor House was a slow-burning ruin, people streaming from it. There was a din in the air, the combined pain and confusion of thousands of survivors. And there were thousands of dead.
As Susan came out of the woods into the trampled gardens of the Agapemone, helicopters descended from darkening skies. The army was coming in. A large machine with a Red Cross emblem was settling a comfortable distance from the fire. A civilian chopper dangled news cameras.
She heard gunfire, and shuddered with rage. There was no need any more. Weeping, she hummed ‘Ding-Dong, the Wicked Witch is Dead’.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept.
A little boy grabbed her sleeve and pulled. ‘Help my mummy and sister,’ he said. ‘They’ve been hurt.’
* * *
She left Jeremy with the medical team in the garden. A girl called Jessica, who knew the boy, was looking after him, clinging to him like a toy. Jeremy’s mother had a broken knee and a punctured side, but his little sister was just shocked. That was the most common injury, shock. People sat around, shaking their heads, not believing what their memories told them had happened. Already, she’d heard a rumour that someone had released a powerful hallucinogenic gas. A hippie friend of Jessica’s was nearby, complaining as a doctor tried to set his many broken bones, calling for a missing woman Jessica said had not come out of the fire. He had dead leaves in his hair.
While the doctors worked to help the living, soldiers were tagging the dead, setting them aside. Susan had never thought she would see so many corpses. The mainly young soldiers were shaken, but persisted with their orders. Susan tried not to look at the faces, knowing they would mostly not mean anything to her. Some she had names for—Gary Chilcot, Brother Phillip, Douggie Calver—but most were strangers. As she stood by, one of the corpses, a plastic tab wound round her ankle, sat up and started complaining at the soldier who was laying a polythene shroud over her. It was the hippie’s friend, and they had a reunion. The couple reminded her of Wendy and Derek.
A young man in hornrims was playing his guitar by the rubble of the Gate House, trying desperately to exert a calming influence. A helicopter had just flown in with nothing but a shipment of blankets, which were fast being distributed to a crowd of naked, bruised, bloodied and sex-slimed people. She saw Sharon Coram wrapping herself carefully, a mad but satisfied smile on her face. No one was going to call her a slag any more, not after what they’d just done with her. She had discovered her own power, and no one could take it away. The vicar was crying and praying while a nurse put him to sleep with a needle. Other survivors of the cluster-fuck were shell-shocked, not talking to each other, trying to pretend it had all been a dream. Susan wondered if a Midwich generation of babies would come out of the Fucking Hell. The soldiers had some wind of what had gone on with these people, and a few of the more callous ones were making jokes. Jokes sat ill with piles of corpses, but everyone had to cope the best they could.
There were fire-fighters too. They had come in by airlift, unable to get through the people—and vehicle-clogged roads. The Agapemone was out and gently steaming, a blackened chunk missing. The roof was Jago’s skull, whole crown blown away. A fireman emerged from the front door with a girl over his shoulder. It was James’s waif, Pam. She was alive. Susan was surprised how many people were. Good and bad, wheat and chaff. Gerald Taine stumbled out of the house, long hair burned away. Cindy Lees, blinking in the helicopter searchlights like a convict caught in mid-escape. A soldier led out a radiantly smiling Sister Janet, impatient with her as she preached the immediate Second Coming of the Lord to the deaf ears of the dark. A doctor was trying to prevent Kate Caudle going into labour two months early, forcing his calm on the bucking woman. Susan waited for the others—Karen, Marie-Laure, Mick, Derek, Wendy—but they didn’t come out.
Night had fallen, but the rescue work went on. It would take days to count the living. It would take for ever to identify the dead.
* * *
‘Put it down, miss,’ said the scared eighteen-year-old with the rifle.
It took her a moment to realize he meant the pistol. The rifle was pointed at her, and she nearly laughed. To survive Jago and be shot by a raw recruit with a quivery trigger finger…
She laid the gun on the ground, and backed away. Two soldiers, their own guns slung, approached and patted her pockets. The first private kept his rifle on her until she was declared clear by the corporal.
‘Are the spooks here yet?’ she asked.
Her question didn’t mean anything to them. They shrugged, and lost interest.
She was still limping, but felt she should not take up the Red Cross’s time. There were gravely wounded people who needed treatment.
‘Shit,’ a soldier said, rugby-tackling her and climbing on to her body, rolling them both into the roadside ditch.
She realized there had been a shot.
The soldiers were all in the ditch, rifles aimed. The corporal nodded, and went over the top, firing from the hip. Her private drew a bead in the darkness, and fired once.
‘Snap,’ the corporal said. ‘Good work, Woodford.’
They all got up, brushin
g dirt from their clothes. Her ankle was screaming. Woodford was shaking. The corporal was searching a plump male corpse. He had taken a clunky revolver from the dead man. He found a wallet and dug it out, opening it up.
‘Congratulations, Woodie. You’ve just bagged a copper for the pot. Meet Detective-Sergeant Ian Draper.’
‘I had to do it,’ he explained to Susan. ‘Had to… he’d have killed us.’
The corporal dropped the wallet on Draper’s face, and the unit moved on. There was a lot more mopping up to do. It was the middle of the night, and the fires were only just out.
* * *
She found Teddy by what had been the cider tent. Two soldiers were guarding the barrels from looters, and a tea urn had been set up. Teddy had a plastic cup of cold tea in his hand. There was a field full of similar cases, just sitting, not talking much. A few groups were exchanging, ‘What the fuck?’ wonderment, and dragging on cigarettes for warmth.
‘James?’ Teddy asked her.
She shook her head, and Teddy spilled his tea, face screwing up. She bent down and hugged him, encouraging him to cry into her shoulder. She saw beyond Teddy, and met a pair of glittering diamond eyes.
Beside Teddy sat a bulkier, hairier boy with the same face, smiling quietly. His brother. Susan sensed ferocity inside the boy, and saw blood on his face and around his mouth. She didn’t want to know what he’d done during the last few days, although it was steaming off him like sweat from a racehorse. She wanted to leave Alder immediately, and never see any of these people again.
‘Susan,’ someone shouted. She turned away from the boys. Out of the darkness walked David Cross, face like death.
* * *
She slept under a blanket in a tent by the main road. The IPSIT team had commandeered material from the festival. The tent had been tie-dyed, and sunlight came in multicoloured. It was well into the day. David had tried to debrief her the night before, jabbing questions at her, trying to get round her exhaustion. She had not slept for days, and a dreamless oblivion crept around her. David insisted she take a shot for her ankle, and the painkiller ate away her remaining strength.
When she woke up, there were radios on, and conflicting news reports filtering back to the site.
‘…Britain’s greatest peace-time disaster…’
‘…friends and relatives can call our relief hotline…’
‘…the effects of the heatwave and of unchecked drug abuse…’
‘Now we have to ask, should these pop festivals be allowed to continue?’ said a spokesman for…
She sat up, and her head did not ache.
This morning, her Talent was stronger. Jago must have been damping her. She kept her hands by her sides and folded up her blanket. It was a party trick.
Her hair was gritty, and she was hungry. A nurse, tiny IΦT insignia on her collar, noticed her and came over to force her back down. Susan shook her off and went outside. The heatwave had not broken.
By day, things looked worse.
The dead were under tarpaulins, and she could see the damage done to the village. Several houses were burned level sites, with depressed people squatting in the gardens, and almost all the buildings were broken in some way. The road was cracked and churned, and there were burned-out or abandoned vehicles at the sides. Trucks were towing many away, clearing paths for the rescue teams.
On the garage forecourt, a couple of soldiers gathered around a corpse who was inset into the asphalt, his back, hands and the top of his head showing. They were wondering how the hell that had happened. A little girl who looked like a miniature Jenny sat on a pile of tyres, sucking a lollipop.
Helicopters were coming and going, and there were more troops around, as well as medical people and government men in dark suits. The police were out in force, trying to establish what crimes had been committed and by whom. Some of the casualties had been victims of murder or manslaughter. Susan guessed that would never be sorted out. Culprits would go unpunished, except in their memories. Handcuffed youths were being packed into a fleet of black marias by officers in riot gear. ‘That’s my son’s geography teacher,’ said a Somerset-accented WPC as three armoured officers wrestled a profanity-spitting harridan into custody.
David was standing by an undamaged beech tree in a devastated front garden, with an army officer and a man in a raincoat. Only Alastair Garnett would wear a raincoat in this heat.
A large helicopter touched down near where the pub had been, and a party of dignitaries clambered out, security men first with hands in their breast pockets and radio mikes, then a waving, sternly solemn figure in a combat jacket. Susan should have known he would show up.
Garnett scuttled off to press flesh with the VIPs, leaving David alone.
She stood beside the parapsychologist and told him, ‘It’s over.’
‘Susan?’
‘The project is finished, David. I’m walking away.’
They won’t let you, he thought.
She smiled, and looked around. She did not even have to see the chunk to pick it up. She got a hold, and lifted a chip of metal into the air. It was part of a hinge, a rusting triangle with one shining sharp edge where it had been broken. It was shaped roughly like an arrowhead.
David saw the glint of metal, and was surprised.
‘Your psychokinetic facilities seem to be on the up again. That’s unprecedented. The Talent should have faded with the end of puberty.’
She made the chunk vibrate in the air, then shot it through the beech by David’s hand. Bark peeled away from the bright orange borehole that ran right through the tree.
David was shaking. She brought the chunk around to his face, and let it hover.
‘This is wood,’ she said, tapping the wounded tree. ‘That’s the Prime Minister’s head over there. I’m walking away, you understand?’
He understood, immediately.
* * *
She walked through several checkpoints, unhindered. The soldiers didn’t bother her, didn’t even notice her. Another neat trick.
Witch Susan was dead with Jago. She would have to decide who she was now.
The road from Alder was crowded with stalled traffic. She understood the motorcade was a mixture of concerned relatives, late festival-comers and media types.
Several reporters asked her questions, but she ignored them.
She saw the car from a long way off. It was a black length of limousine parked by the roadside, pointed away from Alder, as if waiting to pick up someone leaving the village on foot.
Someone like her.
As she walked past the car, a black-mirrored window rolled down.
‘Miss?’ said a voice.
She looked. Inside the car was an old, old woman, sensibly dressed, withered but firm. Susan perceived her strength. She could see the young face under the wrinkles, with bobbed hair and a Twenties mouth.
‘I’ve been waiting a long time,’ the woman said. ‘I used to live in that village.’
Susan already knew that.
‘I knew something like this was coming.’
Car horns honked, but they were ignored by the impatient jam.
‘Susan?’ the old lady asked.
She admitted it, and got into the car.
‘Miss Kaye,’ she began, ‘you saved my life, you know—’
‘I know.’
She leaned back against the upholstery. Inside, the limousine was a bit battered, seats faded. But it was comfortable, secure. There was a nurse with Catriona Kaye, taking up room.
‘I’m sorry about Camilla here, but I don’t work as well as I used to.’
The nurse frowned.
‘I’m a Century Baby,’ the old lady said, ‘and I should like to see out the millennium.’
Camilla touched a button and the window rolled up, shutting out the glare of the sun. Susan wanted to sleep again.
‘We’ll talk when you wake up,’ the old lady said. ‘And then I’ll drop you off somewhere.’
AFTERWARDS
<
br /> The thesis was not what he had expected when he first planned it, but nothing ever was. The Secular Apocalypse was finished, typed and due back from the binders. Next week, he would submit. And, viva voce or not, it would be over. If anything was ever really over.
To celebrate, he took them out for an afternoon, going to the aquarium and for a walk along the seafront. The sea calmed Hazel down, and she could look at it for hours, even in the November cold. It was late for seaside holidays and there was almost no one around. Pie shops and arcades were shut up for the winter.
They sat on a bench and watched Hazel playing down by the tide. She was wearing the black riding helmet she had picked up somewhere and would never be without.
‘Watch out,’ he shouted, ‘you’ll get your shoes wet.’
She turned and stuck two fingers up to him, giggling. He wondered where she got that from. She was a fast study, and learned new things every day. The waves foamed an extra two feet when they came back, and swarmed around her new shoes, soaking her to the socks. She laughed. There were children—other children, he could not help thinking—on the beach, and, despite their disapproving parents, they let Hazel join in building a sandcastle.
‘She’s such a happy little girl,’ Patch said, squeezing his arm. ‘She wasn’t at all like that the first time round. She had moods.’
Paul remembered Hazel’s moods. His tongue rubbed his capped tooth. Living without pain was strange.
Hazel treated Paul and Patch as her mother and father, demoting her real parents to distant, barely tolerated relatives. It was embarrassing, and awkward in all sorts of ways. The couple with the sandcastle-building children twittered among themselves, discussing the peculiar family they had come across. The father said something about Hazel being ‘not all there’, and they grimaced, as if the condition were infectious, liable to spread to their precious kiddies.