CHERUB: Divine Madness

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘Don’t let him run off,’ Rat said firmly, before taking a few steps forwards and pointing at a metal hatch in the floor.

  ‘There it is,’ Rat said. ‘Sewage tank’s right under our feet.’

  James squeezed past the buggies as Rat pushed his fingers under the hatch and tugged it open. James felt himself heave as he caught a blast of warm air and the most intense stench he’d ever encountered.

  ‘Oh my god.’

  Rat managed a grin. ‘So that’s what three hundred people’s crap smells like.’

  ‘Is there anywhere near here where we might get a torch or something?’ James asked. ‘It’s pitch black down there.’

  ‘There might be something in one of the storage cupboards, but they’re all kept locked,’ Rat said. ‘You’ll have to climb down the ladder and feel your way around the walls. Keep walking straight until you get to the other end.

  There’s probably another ladder and the exit hatch should be right above your head.’

  ‘I suppose,’ James said, before something occurred to him. ‘Hang on,’ he said angrily. ‘Who said I had to be the first one to go down there?’

  ‘You’re senior,’ Lauren said.

  James shook his head. ‘You ignore me all day, but now my rank counts for something.’

  ‘What’s down there?’ Joseph asked, sounding scared. ‘I don’t want to go down that hole.’

  Lauren tousled his hair. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll carry you.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he repeated firmly. ‘It stinks.’

  ‘You want to get to the church, don’t you?’ Lauren said. ‘This is the only way. It’s probably not that bad once you’re used to it.’

  James slid the gun off his shoulder and handed it to Lauren. ‘Safety’s on. Do you know how to use that if the devils come after us?’

  ‘Course,’ Lauren nodded.

  James took a deep breath and stood with one foot on either side of the hatch. As he stepped down on to the first rung of a metal ladder, he tried not to think too deeply about where he was about to put his feet.

  42. LIGHT

  James couldn’t see how many steps down, or how deep the sewage was. Hopefully it was only a few centimetres, then it wouldn’t even run inside his shoe. At least the fumes got better as he stepped down, though he was still fighting back puke every time he took a breath.

  His trainer touched a layer of bubbles. All the Survivors’ contaminated water ended up here, whether it was from a toilet, or the soapy discharge from a dishwasher or washing machine. The next rung brought a trickle over the top of his trainer and in a couple of seconds he could feel the cold liquid squelching under his sock.

  He had a horrible thought: What if this is so deep I have to swim through it? What’s it gonna be like if it runs in my ears and gets in my mouth?

  He felt relieved as his sole touched concrete. It had a worrying coating of slime on it, but at least it wasn’t that deep, barely reaching over his ankle.

  He felt blindly along the wall behind the ladder until he reached the corner. He turned away and took a step forwards, but his foot didn’t touch anything. By the time James realised he’d stepped off a ledge, it was too late to pull back. He felt his body topple forwards and gain momentum. His trainer finally hit the floor, half a metre below where he’d started and he felt it glide through something slippery. He swung his back leg forwards and put out his arms to save himself as he felt the sewage swill up his legs and soak into the bottom of his shorts.

  Lauren heard the splash and yelled out anxiously, ‘You OK?’

  Somehow, James managed to stop himself from falling on his face, but the putrid water had splashed up his arms and there were even a few trickles running down his cheeks.

  ‘This is it,’ James shouted furiously. ‘I quit. If we get out of this alive, I’m never going on another mission.’

  He heard Joseph sobbing up above, ‘I’m not going down there.’

  Then another voice, belonging to an adult. As the metal ceiling hatch clanged shut, James realised Lauren and Rat were in trouble. He thought about climbing back up the ladder, but they had the gun. There wasn’t much he could do to help.

  *

  ‘What the hell are you kids doing down there?’ Ernie shouted, pointing his gun at Lauren and Rat as he looked in the corridor entrance.

  Lauren was startled and let go of the hatch so fast that she almost caught Rat’s fingers as it slammed shut.

  ‘I just went down to double check the explosives,’ Ernie continued, as he stepped towards them. ‘Georgie was thumping on the door. Head bleeding, she’s in a real bad way.’

  ‘Stay back,’ Lauren shouted, picking up the M16 and noisily clicking the safety to emphasise that she meant business.

  ‘Whoah, little lady,’ Ernie said, grinning like the move was a big joke. ‘Put that thing down. It’s not a toy.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ Lauren said, pointing the gun up high, selecting single shot and firing a round at the ceiling. It made a hell of a racket in the enclosed tunnel, enough to rouse the three toddlers.

  Ernie caught a dose of reality and backed off a little. ‘Well what’s your plan? If you stay here, you’ll get done by the explosives.’

  Lauren didn’t know what to say. Rat got off the floor and stepped forwards with his hands in the air. ‘Hey, Ernie. You know who I am don’t you?’

  ‘Sure, Rathbone. Why don’t you both come over to me so we can talk about this? We’ve got to get you and the little guys to the church quickly. Once Eleanor’s ordered the doors closed, nobody gets in or out until she’s received the message from God.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Rat said. ‘This is the truth, Ernie: I swear as an angel on pain of eternity in a fiery hell. My father called me to his bedside before he died. He’d spoken to God and received a final message. He knew that Susie was going to kill him in a few hours. He told me that the Ark had been penetrated by devils and would be destroyed tonight, not from without but from within. He told me to leave and go into hiding. He said that when I’m older, God will contact me and tell me how to gather the angels and rebuild the Ark.’

  By the time Rat finished speaking, he’d walked to within a few steps of Ernie and was holding his arms out wide, demanding acceptance. Lauren couldn’t help being impressed by Rat’s speech and the sheer balls he showed, facing off a man pointing a gun at him.

  ‘Give me the gun, Ernie,’ Rat boomed, sounding eerily similar to one of Joel Regan’s taped speeches. ‘My father told me that this Ark has been poisoned by devils. Give it to me.’

  Ernie looked uncertainly at the end of his gun. Rat wanted to appear strong and hoped Ernie couldn’t see how badly his hands were shaking.

  *

  James had shuffled ten metres across the tank when he heard Lauren’s warning shot. He was scared that someone had been hit and thought about going back, but finding the exit was the most useful thing he could do.

  His eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark and he could now discern reflections off the water and a crack of light coming through the hatch at the far end. Not wanting to fall again, he slid cautiously across the oily floor, feeling out the ground with his toes before shifting his weight.

  It took James two minutes to reach the corner, though it seemed way longer. There was a ledge, like the one he’d fallen off at the other end. He stepped up and shuffled along. The TAG units had a searchlight sweeping the compound and the cracks along the edge of the exit hatch lit up every time the beam swung past.

  He felt around, growing increasingly frustrated as he realised that there wasn’t any ladder. He reached up, and even went on tiptoes. The metal rectangle was out of reach, but the darkness made it hard to tell how much extra height he needed. Maybe Joseph or Ed would be able to reach up and open it if he gave them a piggyback, but even then how would he get out without help from outside?

  James was only just below the surface and figured there was a decent chance he’d get a signal out from here. As he
reached down into his shorts his heart sank. He’d totally forgotten about the radio and it had gone underwater when he’d stumbled off the ledge. Still, it had been designed to live inside a sweaty training shoe, so there was still a chance it was OK.

  James put the unit up to his ear and switched it on. He couldn’t hear the usual static and the low battery indicator flickered when he pressed the transmit button.

  Some days you just don’t get the breaks.

  *

  Lauren was overwhelmed: dripping with sweat as she held the gun, watching Rat face off Ernie and trying to keep the toddlers in their pushchairs while Ed asked awkward questions and Joseph screamed that he wasn’t going down the dark hole.

  ‘I’m of the blood, Ernie,’ Rat said firmly. ‘To save the Survivors, you must believe what I’m saying.’

  The old man looked confused. ‘How can you get out from here?’

  ‘The sewage tank,’ Rat explained. ‘My father told me about it. We were trying to get over here when you caught us the first time.’

  ‘I was a plumber before I became an angel,’ Ernie nodded, deep in thought. ‘I’ve had to go down there and unblock it a couple of times. It’s pretty foul, but you can get out.’

  ‘I know,’ Rat said as Ernie dithered, trying to figure out what to believe. ‘My father told me to do this, Ernie. Look into your heart and ask God. Then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’

  The old man’s face suddenly lit up. ‘Yes,’ he shouted euphorically. ‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Only me and two others have ever been down inside that tank. It’s no coincidence: the Lord sent me here to help you.’

  Rat broke into a big smile. ‘Wow, Ernie, I didn’t know that. He must have done.’

  Lauren couldn’t hear properly over the bawling kids, but she realised Rat had pulled off a miracle as she saw him step forwards and embrace Ernie.

  ‘My God,’ Ernie said, grinning like a man who’d discovered the meaning of life. ‘Thank you for choosing me, Lord. Thank you, Rathbone.’

  ‘Do you know how to get out of there, Ernie?’ Lauren asked as she pulled up the hatch. ‘My brother’s already down there somewhere.’

  Ed seemed reassured by the presence of an adult, but Joseph was bawling as hard as ever. ‘Not going down that hole,’ he sobbed.

  Ernie stood over the hatch and pulled it up a few centimetres. ‘You say James is already down there?’

  Lauren nodded, ‘Yeah.’

  Ernie looked mystified as he opened the hatch up. He reached behind one of the pipes running along the wall and flipped a partially obscured switch.

  ‘Why didn’t you turn the lights on?’

  43. BOATS

  Under different circumstances, mastering the controls of a thirty-metre twenty-thousand-horsepower catamaran might have been fun, but Dana was shattered and her foot was agony. She’d lost a lot of blood and as she sat in the captain’s chair watching the radar screen, she had to keep pinching herself to stay conscious.

  Barry was in a bad way, still out cold. Nina came around, hurled some abuse and fought her ropes for a while, but Dana wasn’t in a sympathetic mood and aimed Barry’s gun at her.

  ‘Unless you want a hole in your head to match the one you put in my foot, I’d suggest you shut up.’

  ‘You’ve betrayed the Survivors, devil.’

  Dana smiled. ‘You’re no more of a Survivor than I am.’

  The sea was pitch dark, so all Dana could do was watch the radar screen and the GPS as the cat blasted through the water towards a liaison with an Australian coastguard vessel. It was a huge relief when she saw its searchlight flash across the twin bows. She cut the turbines and left the tricky business of coming alongside to the experts.

  A coastguard officer pulled off a hair-raising stunt, leaping over the side of his ship and dropping several metres on to the slippery deck of the low-slung catamaran. Once he was aboard, Dana watched him scramble to his feet and secure a rope between the two vessels. After a trial run with a container of medical supplies, two more officers hooked themselves to a pulley and slid along the rope on to the deck of the catamaran.

  As two male officers took down the rope, a woman headed up to the bridge. She was taken aback by the amount of blood smeared over the decking.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ the woman gushed, as she saw Dana slumped in the captain’s chair, hardly able to keep her head up. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Faint,’ Dana said weakly. ‘I didn’t take my shoe off in case it made the bleeding worse.’

  ‘That’s good,’ the woman nodded. ‘I’m Dr Goshen. I’ll get one of the lads to carry you down to the mess, then I’ll take a proper look at you where there’s a bit more room.’

  The larger of the two male officers scooped Dana into his arms and took her on an unsteady trip downstairs, laying her out on one of the sofas at the back of the mess.

  He smiled as he put her down. ‘You’re a heavy old lump.’

  Dana struggled to smile back. ‘I do triathlons. It’s all muscle.’

  ‘I can believe that,’ the officer nodded. ‘He’s a heck of a size, that fellow you tackled up there.’

  ‘What about the dinghy?’ Dana asked. ‘Did you find Eve?’

  The man shook his head. ‘They’re rubber and plastic, virtually impossible to pick up on radar, even when the sea’s as calm as it is tonight. I doubt she’ll last more than a couple of hours out there with an open hull. One big wave will flood her out. Even if she makes it to Indonesia, they’ve anchored the tankers a couple of kilometres offshore and vented off the gas in the jetty.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Dana said, sniffing involuntarily as she imagined Eve ploughing through the sea, desperately bailing out her tiny boat.

  The coastguard officer looked anxiously at his colleague, as if to say I didn’t mean to make her cry.

  ‘Try not to worry, we’re doing all we can to find her.’

  Dana waved her hand in front of her face. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s … My foot really hurts, and I’m tired and Eve … Eve isn’t really a bad person, you know. She’s only fifteen. It was just the lot she got in with.’

  As Dana said this, the light-headedness suddenly overcame her. She heard one of the coastguard officers shouting for the doctor, then everything went black.

  *

  James looked at the row of flickering lights and Ernie’s desert boot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He stared down at his clothes: his shorts and trainers were soaked in brown water and there was a humungous cockroach crawling up his arm.

  ‘I …’ he gasped, unable to curse, unable to think; angrier than he’d ever been in his life before. ‘There’s a light switch,’ he spluttered finally.

  As he looked around, he realised that the switch also powered a fan that was venting off the fumes. He also made a final discovery that made him totally insane: a gantry. If James had gone left instead of right when he’d stepped off the ladder, he’d have found the metal gantry stretching over the sewage from one ledge to the other. You wouldn’t have wanted to eat your dinner off it, but it beat wading through filth by about a billion per cent.

  ‘This better be a dream,’ James groaned.

  Ernie hopped from the ladder on to the gantry without so much as getting his boot wet.

  ‘James,’ he gasped, ‘what in the blazes are you doing down there? Look at the state of you.’

  Lauren’s head popped down through the hatch and James thought he saw a tiny grin. He pointed at her. ‘Don’t you dare laugh.’

  Lauren screwed up her face in horror. ‘Is that toilet paper stuck on your leg?’

  Ernie walked along the gantry and grabbed a ladder that hung horizontally from two hooks on the wall.

  ‘I don’t know what kind of welcome we can expect when we get out there,’ he said gravely.

  James realised he had to forget his personal embarrassment and focus on the mission. ‘Lauren,’ he shouted. ‘My radio’s knackered. Get yours out and
try telling Chloe what’s going on; we don’t want TAG units shooting when they see us.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ Lauren nodded.

  She squatted down in the damp passageway and pulled off her trainer. Meanwhile, in the tank, Ernie was using the top of the ladder to push the hatch open.

  ‘Chloe, do you copy me?’ Lauren shouted.

  Chloe came back in her ear: ‘Loud and clear, Lauren.’

  ‘We’re about to head out via the sewage tank. We’re between the fourth and fifth turrets. Can you make sure nobody starts shooting at us?’

  Chloe sounded elated. ‘You’re getting out? Thank god. I think you’ll be OK. The TAG teams are all over the other side by the airport and as far as we can tell, the Survivors have abandoned the turrets.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Lauren nodded. ‘Everyone’s been ordered to get into the strong rooms beneath the Holy Church. But you’ve got to tell the soldiers not to come steaming in here. The whole joint has been wired up with explosives.’

  ‘Got that,’ Chloe said. ‘I tell you what, head out of the Ark and run for at least a few hundred metres, just in case someone tries to take a pot shot from inside. I’ll drive over to meet you in my car. I should be there to pick up in a few minutes.’

  ‘We’ve got company,’ Lauren said. ‘There’s nine of us altogether.’

  ‘Nine …’ Chloe gasped, pausing briefly before realising that there would be time for explanations when her agents were out of danger. ‘Right, I’m on it.’

  Lauren tucked the radio in her shorts and looked across at Rat. ‘You go; I’ll start passing down the little ones.’

  At the other end of the tank, the hatch was open and the ladder was in place. Ernie held his gun out to James. ‘You go first, take this to cover yourself.’

  ‘OK boss,’ James said, as he hooked the gun over his shoulder and stepped on to the ladder.