Ascent

by Walker, Luke

  I don’t want to think about this shit so I won’t. Simple as that. It’s nothing to me. This whole fucking thing is nothing to me so I’m not going to think about it. It’s not in my head. It’s not around me and it’s not a fucking thing. Not one fucking thing.

  Believing all this was easier than Kelly might have expected. It was almost as if invisible, probing fingers pulled away from her head.

  “Okay.” She nodded and wished she hadn’t. Her shattered nose felt like a grenade had gone off in her face. “Up.”

  Leading Simon, Kelly stepped away from the window and towards the next flight of stairs.

  Below, the building exploded.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The tremor speeding from below hit them before Kelly had chance to grab hold of any support. She dropped, Simon coming with her. They hit the floor as the building roared, the sound drowning out their screams. Swirling dust slipped over the railings at the stairwell. It ascended in a grey cloud, filthy and choking. Kelly coughed, throat burning. She spat to clear the taste from her mouth and nose, grit crunching between her teeth. She managed to stand and Simon came with her. The dust cleared a little and the rumble of the collapsing stairs beneath rolled on. Staggering, Simon ran through the fog. Kelly followed, squinting as her eyes teared. They crashed into the railings around the stairwell together and the mucky air parted at the same time, blown apart by no wind.

  At least the first two floors and sets of stairs had collapsed, sending brickwork, glass, and shattered masonry raining to the destroyed foyer. Huge mounds of rubble lay in piles, obscuring the floor and rising alongside the pillars. Of the lift, there was no sign, and it was the same with the ground floor windows and exit to the street. Even if below had been a way out, it was totally sealed to them now. More waves of dust made their way up the ruined stairs. The echo of the explosion followed, the noise oddly hollow. It could have reached them from underwater, muffled by pressure and the gloom. The cloud flowed out from the stairs into the gap directly underneath her and Simon, then grew thin to show the tallest mound of debris.

  Carl stood on top of it, staring straight up, the muscles in his face utterly slack. Whatever had attacked him after his run into the lift had done more damage. One cheek hung in a huge flap, the meat inside looking like undercooked beef. Down his neck and into his chest, claw marks revealed the meat of sinews and the grey of bone. Her shocked eye traced the length of his body, saw the pumping fist of his heart cradled between his snapped sternum, and the forearm dangling from an elbow, held to the rest of the limb by tearing flesh and a bundle of veins and arteries.

  “Jesus,” Kelly whispered, and Carl’s voice boomed from all around, even though his lifeless face and mouth remained still.

  I’m coming for you, Kelly. You fucked me so I’m going to fuck you.

  Carl winked out of existence and, while nothing took its place, something lived down on the wreck of the ground floor. She caught a tiny glimpse of an outline of the lizard-thing, misshapen, hideous in its deformities. There was the suggestion of a twisted spine dozens of feet long, a head as large as a bus, and too many eyes peering up at her. And its mouth.

  The mouth opening for her, now revealing hundreds of jagged teeth and its tongue flicking out to taste the air, taste her terror and guilt, relishing the feelings and drawing sustenance from them.

  The dust cloud sealed the thing from view. The echo of the explosion began to fade and Kelly realised she was holding her breath in exactly the same way Greenham Place was.

  Holding it, waiting.

  Blindly, she reached for Simon and once again found his hand. In the poor light, the white of his fingers against the black of hers became a dirty grey. Even the horrible smears of blood all over her clothes turned into a murky no-colour. The splashes on her face and drying in her hair could have been paint. They could be. All she had to do was pretend. Doing the same with the wounds causing those splashes was hard to the point of impossible. She’d try, though. It was the last thing left to do.

  This is not real. None of this is here. I am outside on a nice day and the sun is shining and there’s green all around me. There are no buildings and streets and roads. I am alone and it’s a nice day.

  Kelly craned her neck. Above. The stairs.

  The roof.

  The sunshine.

  The crash of church bells, icy-cold and terrible, rained down from above. Kelly shrieked, hands against her ears, which did nothing to block the sound. Simon staggered as if punched, and still the bells clanged with mercy, all the bells welcoming family and friends to a wedding where the guests would be unable to stop smiling, their faces turned into rictuses of mocking joy while more arrived, all cramming through the doors to bring their dead, to shove the bodies to the priest’s feet, each corpse a mouldering wreck of tattered flesh and grey bones. The wedding and the funeral, both together and both announced to the whole world by the thud of the ringing bells.

  As if replying to the bells, something new came to the air.

  There were three distinct voices, all crying together, all in agony. Rod, Dao and Alex twisted into a single shriek, deafening Kelly and Simon. He fell against her, then stumbled to the railing, head whipping back and forth in desperate negation. The three lost to Kelly and Simon, all taken by the building, shrieked their pain, and there were occasional words in the howling. Blame, fury, judgement all wrapped in the shouts for Kelly and Simon to suffer as the others had, for them to cut their own throats, to stab their fingers into their eyes, pull the meat free and let the fire cook the sockets before it baked their brains. To do all that and scream as the people they’d let die did the same.

  Kelly bounced off Simon, her knees buckling. She spat, letting tendrils of saliva dangle from her mouth and mix with the blood still dripping from her damaged nose. Simon clutched the railing, keeping himself upright only through leaning on the cool metal. He no longer had the strength to cover his ears; the pound of the church bells would deafen him before long and he could only take all the hate Greenham Place could throw at him and laugh at the faint belief that escape was possible—escape offered by a woman who’d given him up as a little boy and was doubtless dead, along with every other person in this city he didn’t know and wasn’t home.

  Dead and burned into nothing more than hot ash.

  The roof, Simon. Come to the roof.

  Silence crashed down, cutting everything in half, the lack of sound so sudden that Simon thought his hearing really had been destroyed by the noise. Then he caught the tremors of his breath and the murmur of Kelly’s sobs.

  “Kel?” he whispered. “You there?”

  She reached for him, still crying, and took his hand without a word.

  “The roof. We need to get to the roof right now.”

  Wiping snot from her upper lip like a child, Kelly nodded. The roof. Yes. Even if it wasn’t out, it was something.

  Side by side, they made it a single step from the railings before a new noise roared down and up and to all sides.

  The agonised wail of a little boy. Simon and Kelly stared at one another, understanding on a level far below rational thought that the sound wasn’t Dao’s boy Yang, nor the memory of his dead son Huan, the image of him brought to Greenham Place purely to taunt the man.

  This was the real Huan. They were hearing the cries of a boy condemned to fall from a climbing frame, over and over, fall and hit his little head on the soft and springy grass that was no help in keeping his neck whole and unbroken. They were hearing the loop of a child’s violent exit from the world, and Greenham Place had managed to bring it to them or them to it. Either way, they’d been given Dao’s hell.

  No, Huan. Oh, God. Help my boy. Help him.

  Kelly closed her eyes for a moment, sure she was going to start screaming and never stop. The sheer insanity in Dao’s cry had to be contagious. No way could she hear that without losing her shit forever and ever.

  The roof, Simon. The command managed to drown out the boy’s
tears for only a moment. Get to the roof and stop this. Stop this for all of them.

  The woman’s voice smashed its way down the stairs, something beyond human. It was like hearing trees talking. There was power in the command; maybe even more power than whatever horror powered the creature with the giant’s mouth and the stink of its ancient breath.

  Kelly ran. Matching her step for step, Simon ran with her. Together, they sprinted for the tenth floor.

  In answer to their dash, a roar shook the building from the roof down to the rubble coating the ground floor.

  Then the landing and offices of the third floor fell to join the remains of the first two floors, the shriek of snapping metal and the thunder of breaking glass beyond anything in the world. Thousands of tons of masonry rained down, bringing the mashed leftovers of office chairs, desks, and computers down through the clouds of thick dust. The little remaining of the lift shaft exploded, vomiting chunks of glass as big as boulders and as small as the blades of kitchen knives through the smoke. Huge cracks raced along the windows, turning the non-stop sunlight into a dance of white beams while the racing smoke climbed quickly, obscuring the mountains of broken floor and ceiling, even as water from pipes sprayed down and sparks of shattered light fixtures were flashes in the fog.

  Then the fourth floor collapsed.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Kelly fell a few inches from the last set of double doors, and so Simon hit them by himself and stumbled through. He turned as they swung closed and dread fell on his shoulders with a freezing caress. They couldn’t be parted. Not now.

  He threw himself at the doors and fell to the hard ground beside Kelly. Only then did the impact on the doors and the floor register. It almost didn’t matter. Everything was pain. More bruises and more cuts to spill more blood.

  “Come on,” he panted, not quite able to hear himself over what sounded like a bomb going off on the lower floors. “Up.”

  He reached for her. Their hands damp with mingled sweat and blood stuck together, and Simon pulled. Kelly made it to her feet and Simon’s strength abruptly gave out. He slid down; she slapped an arm against the wall, balancing herself. He saw her eyes become two growing white balls as she stared behind him, and he choked on the swirling dust and smoke a second before he saw it.

  The cloud broke over the top of the final flight of stairs and closed in on them eagerly.

  It’s here, Simon thought from the spaces outside his head. Whatever the fuck’s inside this building, it’s in that smoke. Its mouth is right here.

  As Kelly dug her fingers into the meat of his shoulder and yelled for him to get the fuck up, he saw a section of the dust cloud part. Two lips spread wide, curving at their edges in a mocking smile, gave him a view into the mouth and tunnel that had swallowed all the people yesterday, and had taken Rod, Dao and Alex today.

  Fuck you, he thought.

  Then they were up, staggering through the doors again, their lungs hot like coals and exhaustion threatening to spill them to the floor.

  Ahead, the long corridor of the tenth was lined on both sides by office doors just as Dao had said.

  They both realised it at the same time.

  Dao was up here. He found the way out and he didn’t even know it.

  They held one another and lurched forward, neither looking back as the first fingers of the cloud slid underneath the doors and came after them.

  “Where the fuck is it?” Kelly yelled. She struck one of the office doors with a bloody hand. It swung open over a plush carpet to reveal a huge desk, sofas and cabinets. Daylight on the other side of the window mocked her. No help here.

  “Where’s the fucking roof?”

  Simon slipped in his own blood, shoe squeaking. They both dropped to their knees, both crying out.

  Simon looked back. The advancing cloud was no more than twenty feet behind and coming fast. Anything beyond it might as well have not existed.

  “Move.” Another detonation from below threatened to drown out Kelly’s voice.

  What floor’s that? Fifth? Sixth? Seventh?

  It probably didn’t matter. Greenham Place could spill their bodies through its yawning mouth as soon as it wanted to. The smoke and dust at their backs was simply a game to it.

  She pulled him on, punching more doors open to show more executive offices. Arm around his shoulder, Kelly brought them to a stop at a junction. Ahead, one corridor passed a couple of meeting rooms, from which the fresh, morning light shone to the floor, and another corridor jutting off to their left. Nothing down there but a dead end.

  And a lone door.

  Screeching mindless joy, Kelly pulled on Simon. He tensed, rooting himself to the spot. For a second, her grip came away from his neck and a lifetime of fears and doubts crowded in on him, eager to offer their assurance that trust and hope were pointless for someone like him.

  “It’s a dead end,” he shouted.

  “The roof.” She stabbed a finger towards the door.

  Ten feet behind, the pulsing smoke filled their corridor. It came at a rush, as if propelled by a great wind.

  If she’s wrong, then you’re dead.

  Simon nodded. Kelly’s arm slammed down on his neck, pulled him close, and they pitched forward, eyes straining, bodies battered. Kelly spat blood. They staggered on, and the smoke claimed her blood a few seconds later.

  They came to the door together, the nondescript metal a faded grey, the bar in its centre so like the one covering the fire exit which had proved useless that Simon thought he might weep like a child.

  Kelly brought her hands to the bar.

  Seven feet away, the cloud sped down on them.

  Six.

  Five.

  Simon slammed both his gore-streaked hands beside Kelly’s and heard her call out her sister’s name in a hurt, desperate gasp.

  Four feet.

  Three.

  They shoved on the bar with everything they had.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Darkness.

  That was first.

  Then cold.

  “Are we dead?” Kelly said.

  “Don’t ask me.” Simon focused his energy on keeping hold of Kelly rather than raising his voice. Doing so was out of the question in any case. So was running from the door at their backs. All he could manage was staying upright and holding on to what little food they’d had in over a day.

  Against his body, Kelly shivered. He’d been too consumed by the previous few minutes to feel the cold, and the chill closed in fast as Kelly shook again. Simon did the same and tried to hug himself without giving up his hold on Kelly’s slim shoulders. The harsh air caught in his throat, making him want to cough, and he had a flash of a memory: being a kid no older than ten and walking to school in the middle of a sharp winter. Everything bright and pure white on all sides, and the morning too cold.

  “Where are we?” Kelly whispered.

  Her answer came from behind. Scraping nails ran down metal, the sound ugly. They both let out weak shouts and jumped forward. The scraping continued. It was like a dozen knives being dragged across a stone floor, and that couldn’t be right because there was nothing out in the corridor but dense smoke.

  You think that matters? Simon asked himself bitterly.

  Whatever they’d left behind after their mad jump through the heavy door, it was no more than a few feet away, and if it found a way in, it’d be all over them in a second.

  Shaking in the frozen air, Kelly fumbled in her jeans pocket and managed to slide her lighter free. It slipped out of her damp hold and hit the ground with a little tap.

  “Shit,” she spat, fighting off hot tears. All the exhaustion of her broken body and broken heart said to lie down, close her eyes, and let Greenham Place do its dark work. Kelly breathed through her mouth, which helped to lessen the fire in her nose. “My lighter. I dropped it.”

  “Okay. Down. Together.”

  They crouched, their free hands tracing over a ground that felt like ice. The
jagged scrapes on the door ceased for a moment, and then a massive crash struck the entrance. Simon’s cry met Kelly’s yell. The thud hit the door again, some terrible thing pounding its rage and demanding entry.

  “What the fuck is that?” Kelly cried.

  Her fingers brushed metal, passing over it almost quick enough for her not to realise she’d found the lighter. Laughing her triumph (and not hearing the mad note living in the sound), she yanked it from the floor and jerked upright. Simon came with her; the moisture coating her fingers made flicking the lighter on almost impossible. Boiling with frustration, Kelly tried again. A tiny flame flickered into life for a few seconds, sending writhing shadows over the floor for a few feet and stretching them towards the wall on their left. An instant before the lighter went out, they saw the clear floor, pipework covering the walls with valves and taps, then the light limning what looked like a pole, rising up to the ceiling. Thick darkness crashed down and brought a new sound.

  The slide of a lone footstep.

  Without thought, Kelly moved to flick the lighter again and Simon stilled her.

  “Don’t,” he breathed. “It’ll see us.”

  Out in the corridor, a volley of mad laughter rang out. Another crash struck the door. Simon shoved his face to the side of Kelly’s head and found her ear.

  “Move to the wall on our left. The pole. I think it’s a ladder,” he whispered.

  Another step hissed in the dark. Whatever was with them, it was happy to take its time. That knowledge was no comfort.

  Gripping each other in a death grip, Simon and Kelly crossed to the left wall, both reaching blindly. They hit a cold surface at the same time, their fingers splaying across the surface.

  “Where is it?” Kelly whispered.

  Another hiss of a sliding step sounded from the other side of the room.

  “Where the fuck—”

  Kelly’s voice broke off. She found a jutting pole, then one stretching horizontally to a third pole. A vertical pole.

  A ladder.