by Tom Pollock
‘Shut it, tit-face,’ someone snapped at the TV.
‘Call your damn election,’ said another. ‘If you come and collect my vote in person, you can have it.’
‘Shh!’ Pen put a finger to her lips and hissed. Everyone fell quiet and Beth threw her an impressed look from inside her hoodie. ‘Just watch.’
The picture was back to full-screen again. Bright white halogen lights washed over the suburban street. With a rumble low enough to make the speakers rattle, a battle tank rolled into frame. A soldier in a camouflaged helmet leaned out of the turret aiming a mounted machine gun directly between the genteel houses. A string of armoured vehicles followed behind, their passengers watchful behind the sights of their automatic rifles, engines growling impatiently at their cautious progress. A hissing sound like static, just audible from the TV speakers, underlaid it all.
‘Jeez Louise,’ someone said. ‘They’re coming in heavy this time, aren’t they?’
‘Where are they?’ someone else whispered.
‘I dunno – Ealing?’
‘Nah, that’s Beckenham. My daughter … lived there.’
‘Have they tried there before?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Come on,’ someone close to Pen was muttering. She could feel their breath on her ear. ‘Come on, come on, come on.’
Shadow divided the road: a place where the streetlights cut out. From that point on, only moonlight lit the street and everything was spectral and sharp. Pen drew in a breath as the tank approached that line. Radios crackled faintly in the air as the tank rumbled into the shadow …
… and carried on rumbling.
Pen exhaled. Someone at the back of the crowd whooped. The camera zoomed in on the soldier in the turret. His shoulders relaxed and he reached back and beckoned those behind him onwards. The tank purred up a gear as they followed. Chatter broke out around Pen, voices shaky with relief.
‘How far is that from here?’ someone was saying eagerly.
‘About fifteen miles.’
‘Do you think they’ll make it all the way?’
‘What about the hot streets?’
‘They must have satellites,’ another voice said knowingly, ‘thermal imaging. They’ll know what streets to avoid. Maybe they’ve found a way through!’
‘A way through,’ someone echoed, and the crowd cheered. ‘A way out.’
The crowd kept cheering, chanting, ‘A way out!’ It went through them like a wind through rushes. ‘A way out, a way out.’
Pen was still watching the soldier in the tank turret. He was tiny now, a long way from the camera: a toy figurine silhouetted by the headlight wash, but he wasn’t getting any smaller, she realised. She kept watching. Long seconds passed. The column had stopped advancing. The soldier’s silhouette was bent over, his hands braced on the edge of his hatch. He was staring at the road beside the tank.
‘Everybody shut up!’ Pen yelled over the din in the room. Heads turned irritably towards her, but the cheering cut off. In the silence that followed, soft and distant and mediated by microphone crackle, she could hear the soldier shouting.
The camera zoomed in until he was in close up, pointing and yelling – his voice still surreally quiet; the microphone was as close as it could get. The camera panned downwards in the direction he was pointing and Pen hissed.
The tank tracks were half submerged in the road. The asphalt lapped at the steel wheels like seawater.
‘It’s a Tideway,’ she breathed in horror.
The vehicles were sinking. Liquid tarmac was pouring in through the smallest gaps. The soldiers were standing on their seats, already up to their knees in it. They held their discipline, snapping into their radios, but the camera mercilessly homed in on their wide, panicky eyes.
With a groan of metal, the tank tipped backwards. The massive gun barrel stuck up into the air like a flagpole. The soldier was hanging backwards out of the turret, the asphalt licking at his uniform as the tank slid in deeper. The camera zoomed in on his hands as they fumbled with his gun-strap, his helmet. He was getting ready to swim for it.
‘No,’ Pen whispered. ‘No. Don’t. No.’
The helmet came free and an instant later he dived into the road. There was barely a splash as the asphalt swallowed him.
Pen stared. They all stared. For silent moments there was nothing, and then …
There! He erupted from the surface of the road in a fit of coughing and flailing. He was only a few feet from his stricken vehicle, as far as his leap had taken him, but no further. He windmilled his arms raggedly, trying to drag his body into a front crawl, but he just splashed. He didn’t advance a single inch.
A weight settled in Pen’s stomach as she watched.
‘Why isn’t he swimming?’ a thickset man in a turban demanded.
‘The liquid’s not dense enough,’ Pen answered, trying to keep her voice from shaking. ‘There’s no resistance, nothing for him to push against.’
He was sinking. The road was already up to his chin and the tide was pushing it into his mouth. He spat and gasped. His mates were hollering at him to swim, holding out their rifles for him to grab hold of, but they were just out of reach. They swore and revved their vehicles, but though their wheels spun and churned up the road, they went nowhere. There was a commotion in the foreground of the picture: more armed figures, sprinting up the road, but as soon as they reached the line where the streetlights cut out they reeled back. They milled about, toeing the edge of the shadow: the liquid street, lapping up onto dry land.
The soldier wasn’t even splashing now. His arms were fully submerged. His head tilted back, desperate for breath.
And then, like sudden thunder came the sound of helicopter blades.
A dark shape swooped into the picture: the chopper, black and angular as an insect, a light flashing on its nose. Pen saw the ripples its rotors threw up in the centre of the road; she watched the soldiers raise their arms in greeting as it came to hover over them, but the whup whup whup of its blades drowned out their cheers. It drowned out another sound too, Pen was sure of it. One she’d forgotten and remembered only as it disappeared: the static hiss she’d heard earlier from the TV.
A man emerged from the chopper, his silhouette bulked out by a life jacket. He bobbed on a cable like a cat’s toy as he descended towards the sinking soldier.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ someone exhaled.
Pen stirred uneasily and looked at Beth, who shook her head. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t quite—
‘The hissing!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘Why would static from the TV set get drowned out by a sound inside the broadcast?’
It was only then she realised the windows of every house on the street were open.
With a bang like a thunderclap, fire erupted over the road. A pair of dragons, their outlines drawn in blue flame, beat their wings and shot towards the helicopter. Inside Beth’s hood, Oscar crooned.
The soldiers babbled in panic and struggled to bring their rifles to bear. The air filled with the rattle-roar of machine-gun fire, but the Sewermanders didn’t even flinch. They lifted their talons and bowed their backs like hunting falcons as they crashed one after the other into the side of the helicopter.
Orange flared into blue as their claws found the fuel tank, then, shrouded in filthy smoke, the chopper plummeted towards the ground. The liquid street swallowed it with barely a splash, though the hiss of the extinguished fire carried clearly to the news team’s microphones.
The Sewermanders bent their necks as though calling, but they made no sound Pen could hear. They twisted in the air and began to circle the sinking men.
Two more gunshots sounded, then nothing. The soldiers stared upwards, their faces lit blue by the fire.
Pen waited. They all waited. She imagined the gas-drakes swooping down, incinerating their prey with flaming jaws, but they didn’t. They just beat the air, riding their own thermals, waiting.
Beth forgot herself
and put a street-laced hand over her mouth, but it was the man in the turban who spoke.
‘My God. They’re just leaving them.’
The soldiers splashed and struggled, flailing their arms like children who didn’t know how to swim. They were up to their necks now, the vehicles invisible under them. Pen could almost read their lips as they prayed and begged and fought for breath.
Their outstretched fingers less than two feet from the pavement, one by one, they slipped below the surface.
No one spoke. Pen switched off the TV. She turned to Beth, looking for someone to share her horror, but Beth wasn’t looking at her. She was bent over, crooked, staring at the floor.
Beth’s hand was still clamped across her mouth, but cupped, as though to catch something, and from between her fingers a liquid the colour of asphalt was dripping with a plack plack plack sound onto the marble floor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Steeped in shock, the people in the crowd didn’t even notice when the scar-faced Asian girl grabbed her quiet friend by the front of her hoodie and dragged her out onto the fire stairwell.
Pen pushed Beth down onto the steps and squatted in front of her. Ignoring her friend’s weak attempts to bat her away, she put a hand behind Beth’s head, under the slick rubber cable of her hair and eased her backwards. Then she prised Beth’s hand from her face.
The tiny streets that marked the frown-lines at the edge of Beth’s mouth were brimming with liquid asphalt; the stuff seeped slowly out of them like blood from scraped open scabs.
‘Crap,’ Pen muttered. She hesitated, then struggled out of her jumper and slapped it against Beth’s cheek. ‘Hold that there. I’m getting Glas.’
Beth shook her head weakly, but Pen turned away and was halfway down the first flight of stairs before she heard the city-rumble of her friend’s new voice. ‘Pen, it’s okay. They’ll re-clot. They always do.’
Pen turned back slowly, a prickle crawling across her neck as she climbed back to the landing. ‘Always?’ she said, her voice taut. ‘What do you mean, “always”, B?’
Beth stared up at her from under heavy lids, the jumper still clamped to her face like an icepack. She didn’t say anything.
‘You know what?’ Pen said. ‘I’ve had about enough of this sealed-lip stuff. We never used to keep secrets.’
Beth’s lips curled upwards, but didn’t part as she said, ‘Once upon a time, you told me we should have.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re crap at it!’ Pen snapped. ‘B, you’ve been shambling around looking sicker than my mum did after chemo – what, you think I haven’t noticed?’ Pen actually put her hands on her hips. ‘How many doctors am I related to, Beth?’
Beth smiled despite herself. ‘About four thousand at last count.’
‘So do I know sick when I see it?’
‘I know you do.’
‘And I know you know, which is why I’ve been trying not to say anything. Because I figured you didn’t want to talk about it, but, but …’ Pen clutched at the air as all her anger and frustration came bubbling up into her chest.
‘… fuck, B! How can you not want to talk about it? I’m your best friend. You and me – together we’ve seen – we’ve, we’ve done—’ She gestured helplessly at Beth’s street-etched cheeks, and then her hands dropped to her sides. ‘We always find each other, at the end of the day, you know?’
Beth nodded haltingly.
‘B, I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying to trust you, to make it your call. You’re obviously hurting and I don’t want to add to that, but … I’m sorry, but I can’t, not any more. You have to tell me, B. You have to talk to me.’
Beth bit her lower lip, and Pen mirrored the gesture, feeling the tougher consistency of the reconstructed skin between her teeth.
‘I’m sick,’ she mumbled. She shrugged, staring at the ground like a grumpy kid.
‘That far I’d got. Sick how, B? Sick why?’
Beth looked up. The light in her irises was dim. ‘Because She made me so.’
Pen didn’t have to ask who ‘She’ was. She was Mater Viae – the only other being to ever look at her with eyes like that.
‘How?’ she said.
‘She infected the streets, and every time I feed from them, a little bit of their sickness seeps into me.’ Beth’s mouth twisted into a tight, bitter smile and the voice emerged from her body in a growl of heavy machinery. ‘Fever Streets, Tideways, what just happened to those soldiers – who do you think this is all aimed at, Pen?’
‘Glas said he didn’t know.’
‘He’s right. He doesn’t.’ Beth exhaled heavily. ‘But I do. I can feel Her malice in every brick, every stone, every scrap of concrete. Her mirror-sister ruled this city for centuries and no one was any the wiser, but She’s only been here five minutes and She’s tearing the place apart with the plague – but why?’
Pen shook her head mutely. She didn’t know.
‘She’s doing it to punish us, Pen.’ The word was a sudden plaintive shriek of train brakes. ‘Not attack, punish. It’s aimed at me, yes, but more than that, at them, for believing in me: Glas, and Zeke, and Petris, and the Lampies, and everyone else She thinks should be hers.’
Beth buried her face in her hands, but her voice didn’t break. ‘The city’s been weaponised. She’s turned it against us. She is so, so much stronger than me, and we’re all out of allies, and now …’ Only now did Beth falter. ‘Now She knows it.’
Pen struggled to swallow ‘What do you mean, “now”?’ she asked.
‘She saw it,’ Beth said. ‘Through the eyes of Her Street-Serpent yesterday. Thames, Pen, I could barely run! If She ever works out where we are, She’ll come at us with everything She’s got.’
Pen spread her hands in exasperation. She couldn’t believe she was having to say this. ‘Then don’t be here.’ She almost laughed at the simplicity of it. ‘If the city’s making you sick, then bloody well leave it!’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘BECAUSE I HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO STOP HER!’ Beth’s shout had the sudden violence of a car crash.
Pen fell back a step, but then she saw Beth’s expression: not angry but desperate, pleading for Pen to understand.
‘Thames and Christ, Pen, you’ve met Her. You’ve looked into Her eyes. You really think if I bail tonight it’ll all be hugs and cocoa and making up for the rest of ’em tomorrow? You really think She’ll forgive them? Pen – they’re our friends, and they’re trusting me to save them from Her. They’ve put their faith in me.’
‘Don’t lecture me on faith, Beth,’ Pen snapped. ‘You never understood it. They’re trusting you to save them? You said it yourself: She’s stronger. You really think you’re keeping faith with them by lying to them about that?’
She took a half-step closer to Beth and the diesel scent of her best friend filled her nostrils. ‘You’re right, Beth,’ she said. She held Beth’s gaze with her own. ‘I’ve looked into Her eyes. I’ve seen what She’s capable of, far closer up than you have, and I’m telling you, if this creature’s coming for you, you run.’
She searched for Beth’s hand; took it; threaded her fingers with Beth’s. ‘You run for your dad, and …’ She hesitated. ‘You run for your mum. Please, Beth, you run for me.’
But Beth wouldn’t meet her gaze. ‘Pen, I can’t. I can’t do that to them.’
‘Beth,’ Pen said in as even a voice as she could, ‘if you stay, this sickness – will it kill you?’
‘Yes.’
The determination in that one word chilled Pen. She heard Beth’s insistence on staying, her insistence on dying, and everything felt unstable. The thought of that loss filled her like a vacuum.
They put their faith in me.
Just like she had.
And just like that, Pen knew what she needed to do. She squeezed Beth’s hand, then released it and turned back down the steps.<
br />
‘Pen, where are you going?’
Even though her voice was made of engines and turbines and smoke, the fear in it was almost palpable. It made Pen’s stomach clench. But she had known Beth for a long time and she knew she wouldn’t change her mind, not as long as she thought people were depending on her. Whatever other changes the bizarre alchemy moving through her friend had wrought, one thing at least was the same: she was still more afraid of letting people down than she was of getting herself killed.
She looked back over her shoulder. ‘To see the friends you’re waiting on. Maybe they’ll be able to talk some sense into you when they know what’s happening to you.’ She took the first two steps slowly, then something broke inside her and she ran, half expecting at every step for Beth’s street-laced hand to clamp down on her shoulder before the next.
CHAPTER EIGHT
She was breathless by the time she reached the kitchen. Gutterglass had company. Now a woman, the old trash-spirit was pointing at one of the latest symptoms on the map with a ludicrous fake fingernail stuck to the end of a carrot broken in the places where the knuckles ought to be.
Two statues flanked her. The one carved into the form of a limestone angel was in considerably better repair. Ezekiel’s face was turned to Gutterglass in an expression of bored but saintly patience. The second statue was a granite monk with lichen patching him like mould. His face was hidden by the jut of his carved hood, but Pen knew his eyes were the first to track her as she burst in.
‘Kid’ – as ever, Petris’ voice sounded like he was gargling rock salt and it was pissing him off – ‘what do you want?’