“Insufficient data.” Brains grimaces. “If we knew precisely what’s coming our way we wouldn’t have to guess. But quantity”—he hands Pete a shoebox full of mail gauntlets woven in a non-repeating Penrose tile design—“tends to have a quality all of its own. And this stuff isn’t going to do us any good if we leave it down here.”
An hour later, the van is parked in the underground car park under Quarry House and most of the contents of the pallet are on the second floor, via a goods elevator. Pete helps Brains move boxes and crates of munitions, esoteric and otherwise, into the empty office suite next to the conference room. The last he sees of Pinky, the tech ops guy is attacking the tow hitch cover on Ilsa the Kettenkrad with a socket set: a fat cylindrical post with a mounting bracket on top waits on the stained concrete beside the half-track.
It’s four thirty when Pete returns to the conference room at Quarry House, bearing a handful of personal wards. “Brains sent these,” he announces, passing them around the table. Jez Wilson takes one and nods: Lockhart merely twitches his mustache at it. “Class six. He seems to think we may need them. Is there any news?”
“Vik Choudhury says Ops can’t raise anyone at West Yorkshire Met. They’ve clammed up tighter than an oyster’s arse and there’s word of a whole mess of fatal RTAs—traffic accidents—north and west of here. Police helicopter’s tied up, too. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.” Wilson stares at Pete. Her usual ironic detachment is completely missing, replaced by fear-driven intensity. “OCCULUS haven’t reported back in half an hour. What kept you?”
“We just shifted nearly a ton and a half of weapons and ammo up from the special countermeasures repository.” Pete pulls out a chair and flops into it. His arms and lower back ache, a reminder that he’s a grown-up with responsibilities and a family rather than an overgrown schoolboy in search of an adventure story to call his own. The sense of responsibility is crushing: so is the nonspecific sense of onrushing doom. “Do we know anything else?”
“Sit.” Lockhart points at a suspiciously new phone deskset which has materialized on the table in front of Pete’s seat—so new, in fact, that it’s still wearing its protective plastic caul. “If that rings, log it, screen it, and escalate as required.”
“Is that what I’m here for?” Pete asks. “Because”—he yawns involuntarily—“this isn’t what I’m trained for.”
“You’re here because you’re a warm body and this is an emergency.” Lockhart’s expression is grim. “Hopefully this is just a full-dress cock-up and you can go home to your bed in a couple of hours. If not, you’ll get a chance to exercise your professional skill set.”
“What, checking ley lines for signs of drift?”
“No, Dr. Russell: comforting the bereaved.”
This puts a damper on the conversation. Meanwhile, other organization staffers drift in and out: lights are coming on throughout this wing of the building as locally assigned employees filter in to their assigned readiness posts. Mrs. Knight from the Arndale office drops by, amiably businesslike. She could be dressed for an afternoon digging over her allotment, aside from the SA80 slung over her shoulder. Nicky Myers from that same office is busying herself along the corridor with a squad of residual human resources, leaning the blue-suited bodies against the wall beside the entrances to stairwells and offices that are in use, mumbling a continuous stream of instructions in Old Enochian (mostly to the effect that the RHRs should refrain from eating anyone wearing a staff ID badge: it needs repeating, for nothing damages one’s attention span like being dead). Pete glimpses other people he half-recognizes through open doorways as the sound of ringing phones and muted conversation rises, along with the electronic whooshing inbox sounds of email applications.
Pete doesn’t have to wait long before his own phone starts ringing. At first it’s mostly local staff checking in—those who’ve received the alert email or text and who are confirming that they’re expected in the office on a rest day and it’s not just the mail server having a brain fart. (These Pete checks off against the personnel database and reassures that, yes, it is indeed a spot of bother and their assistance would be appreciated.) But the fourth call is different. It’s Emma Gracie, the detective sergeant from the bunker site. “Dr. Russell, have you had any contact from the Territorial Army unit since they cordoned off the site?”
“Just a moment . . .” Pete blinks and looks around. Jez Wilson is busy keyboarding. “Any word from OCCULUS One?” he calls.
Jez glances up, then shakes her head brusquely. “No, nothing to report.” He frowns. “They missed their last call a little over forty minutes ago.”
“Right, right.” Emma sounds distracted. “So you don’t know anything about the lights in the sky or the big bang?”
“Big—” Pete freezes. If he was Mr. Howard, this is the point at which he would be emitting a stream of heartfelt profanity: but he isn’t, so he bites his tongue for a second, offers up a momentary prayer for guidance in time of crisis, and reboots his brain. “—bang? From the bunker?” Across the table Jez Wilson has stopped typing and is staring at him.
“We finished initial crime scene logging and cordoned off the area an hour and a half ago,” Sergeant Gracie recites grimly. “Captain Hastings requested a nearside lane closure on the southbound carriageway of the Otley Road so we took care of that, which is why none of my people were within two hundred meters of your site when the captain called me to say he was sending his men in to examine the site. This was thirty-six, thirty-seven minutes ago. Five minutes later there was a very loud noise—I hesitate to call it an explosion only because there was no light and no debris, but it was too big to be a flash-bang or similar. Immediately afterwards, shots were heard by the nearest officers to the site, who naturally took cover—it was full auto fire, on and off for almost a minute. Thereafter the site fell silent, but the greenish light intensified considerably. I’m unable to raise Captain Hastings on Airwave and he isn’t answering his mobile number. Two ARU constables who went forward to scope out the scene haven’t reported in either. What’s going on?”
Jez Wilson is making grabbing gestures with her right hand, while Lockhart leans over the table and points at the speakerphone. “Let me put you on speaker,” says Pete, pushing buttons frantically. “Where’s your helicopter?”
“Police 42’s unavailable: there are traffic accidents all over north Yorkshire tonight and our cameras are having a spot of bother.” Her voice over the phone isn’t shaky, but the over-controlled tension tells its own story. “Do you have any information you’re withholding, Doctor?”
Lockhart hits the microphone switch on the speakerphone. “Sergeant, this is Colonel Lockhart. Can I confirm that you’ve lost contact with the OCCULUS unit and are reporting explosions and gunfire in the vicinity of the bunker?” He glances sideways at Jez, his mustache bristling, and she nods minutely.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” Emma sounds distracted. “I’ve called the regional support desk but they say we’re fully committed and it’ll be at least half an hour before they can send backup—”
“You need to get everybody out of there right now,” Lockhart interrupts her. “Close the Otley Road in both directions, from the intersection with the A6120 all the way out to Bramhope. I’d recommend a civilian evacuation of the whole of LS6 and LS17, but frankly there isn’t time and there’s nowhere to put everyone. Can you raise your helicopter directly? It’s connected to that rash of RTAs.”
“I can call them but I’m not sure they’ll believe me, and I’m not sure I believe you. Let me repeat, Colonel, what is going on?”
“It’s a major intrusion, Sergeant, and if it took out an OCCULUS team you and everyone else in the area are in immediate danger.” Lockhart gets terse when he’s on edge, Pete notes. “There is nothing you can do to help except to clear the area, keep bystanders out, and wait for Captain Hastings’s men to surface or for us to get another
team on-site—”
Sergeant Gracie suddenly says “Oh shit,” very clearly. There is a crash of shattering glass, and a thud. Then the call drops.
Pinky, who has just entered, stands frozen in the doorway. “Was that what I think it was?”
Lockhart glares at him furiously. “Sitrep, then get out.”
“What was that—” Pete begins, his words already in motion before he processes Lockhart’s reaction.
“That was the last we’ll hear from a very brave woman. Or a very stupid one. Damn.” Lockhart looks away from Pinky. “Report, blast it.”
Pinky clears his throat. “I got Ilsa kitted out like you suggested,” he says diffidently. “The Dillon Aero’s mounted on top of the tow bar with a modified Humvee mount. Brains is finishing up the belt feed from the equipment carrier; we figure it can carry about two thousand rounds as long as we don’t mind changing belts every five hundred rounds.”
“And the shields?”
“They fit. I picked up four class-eight wards, and we hit the sixteenth-century collection at the Royal Armouries for three suits of munition plate. The cheap-ass kind: low-carbon steel with adjustable fittings, mass-produced for mercenaries rather than royal showpieces.”
“Then get out of my—”
“What are you talking about?” Pete interrupts.
“We’re going to see if we can get close enough to see what’s going on. Maybe find out what happened to Alex and OCCULUS One,” Pinky says matter-of-factly. “Me and Brains.”
“Change of plan,” announces Lockhart. “I want Brains here: if we lose camera coverage over Woodhouse Lane as well I’m going to need him to help man the monitor room when we fire up SCORPION STARE inside the Inner Loop. So you’ll need someone else to drive the tank.”
“Maybe we should wait for the army to get here? An hour either way probably isn’t going to make much—”
“I can do it,” Pete hears himself saying, from the other side of a cognitive event horizon: “I can drive and ride a bike if that’s what you need.” It feels like a dereliction of responsibility: he should be looking out for Sandy and baby Jess, not haring off on a half-track to fight monsters. But on the other hand, he has an uneasy feeling that if whatever’s going on here isn’t stopped now, before it’s too late, whatever the price, Sandy and Jess won’t have much of a future . . .
Lockhart turns to stare at him. “Are you volunteering?”
“Um, I”—Pete’s life flickers past his eyes like a spool of burning celluloid—“guess so?”
“Stupid.” Lockhart shakes his head. “But it’s your own coffin to lie in. Just try not to do anything unnecessarily brave.” He ends on a near snarl: “We’ve lost enough good people already today.”
16.
SCHWERPUNKT
It takes about a second to fall five meters. In that time Alex is aware of the black pool of water at the bottom of the stairwell rushing towards his feet, of the luciferine glow of eaters flooding through the close-fitting frame of the fire door, of Cassie’s presence above him as she pounds down the steps three at a time towards a flock of ghastly mind-stealers she can’t even sense—
He lands on his toes, a shock of cold dampness rising to his ankles as his fingers hook into claws and he leaps forward into the basement tunnel. It’s an occult inferno illuminated by a glaucous glow from the walls and ceiling: the overhead lights are out. There is darkness beyond every doorway except for the far end of the corridor where a sickly emerald light pulses. There are eaters closing in on all sides, a shrieking rasp of excitement in the back of his head signaling their approach. It sounds like the chewing of chainsaw teeth on razor wire.
Eaters are among the simpler horrors that you can invoke with a targeted summoning grid and the right application of the fourth Turing theorem. Simple doesn’t mean harmless: if they get their teeth into an unwarded nervous system they’ll bed down like malware and take over its body. Luckily for Alex, PHANGs are immune to such hostile takeovers by virtue of already having reached an accommodation with their very own V-parasites. Unluckily for Alex, these eaters have already found host bodies, and as he hits the corridor the first revenant scrabbles into the corridor ahead of him and charges, beak gaping wide.
Alex’s perception of the passage of time slows as the flightless bird—or feathered velociraptor: it’s hard to tell—rushes towards him. Details tell: the green-glowing eyes, the sickle-like claws, the mindless rage. He flinches involuntarily, hand tightening on the dagger Cassie gave him as the bird lashes out with a viciously curved blade on the end of a thickly muscled leg. The floor under his heels is slippery-slick and doesn’t provide much traction, but he does his best and brings the knife up anyway. The bird screeches and begins to turn just in time to impale itself on the blade. It’s as heavy as a big dog. Alex’s breath whuffs out of him as it drags his arm down and twitches the knife out of his grip, dying gouts of arterial blood pulsing across his chest. And of course, that’s the whole point of its suicidal leap: because there are two more behind it.
“Birds?” Alex asks plaintively as the ostrich-sized horrors bounce off the wall opposite the doorway they emerged from and turn on him with mad-eyed glares beneath rigid crests of crimson and electric blue. They’re not true birds: they’ve got horny beaks fronting mouths sharp with needle-like teeth, ready to tear. They’re flightless and as tall as a man, and although they’ve got arms—or wings—they’re short and stubby, thickly feathered. Like the first, their eyes are green-glowing vortices, and their legs are tipped with three-clawed feet, the middle toes curling like vicious sickles. “You’re kidding me—”
The first raptor is still thrashing and dying as Alex tries to pull his knife free. But it’s wedged between ribs and he’s out of time so he lets go and steps sideways, opens his mouth, and says the first thing that comes into his head. It’s a macro in Old Enochian that he learned as part of his defensive training. There’s no point in being able to summon up the eaters in the night if you can’t boss them around fluently enough to avoid being eaten yourself, and as long as whoever called them also bound them to obey voice commands, then there’s a chance that the ur-language will get their attention, much as two fingers hooked inside the nostrils will get the attention of an aggressive drunk. “Obey me now! Stop! Halt! Obey me now!”
They scream inarticulate avian shrieks of rage, but they go down on their feathered asses all the same, crashing to the floor as their legs fold up under them. Stubby tails thrash, feathers flaring. Okay, not birds or dinosaurs, somewhere in-between. He senses rather than sees Cassie arrive at the bottom of the stairwell. He bends forward again, braces a foot on the twitching body by his feet and heaves the dagger blade out, then holds it up before the angry birds. “Stay down. Don’t attack. Don’t move.” A memory percolates up from somewhere, something about the Romans using geese as avian guard dogs.
Cassie steps into the corridor behind him and crouches down, pointing her wand or mace or whatever it is at the birds—then says, very clearly, “Decoys.” And everything goes to shit.
Bert the caretaker shuffles into the corridor from one of the side rooms. He is looking much the worse for wear. Last time Alex saw him his eyes weren’t full of luminous green threads, twirling lazily in the twilight. Nor was his rib cage on display through the jagged slashes in his shirt, which wasn’t black with crusted blood. Nor was he carrying a sword.
Alex locks eyes with the revenant and pushes with his will. His brain freezes and scrabbles as he hits the total absence of anything human. If Bert was still alive he’d be on the floor now, flooded out by the sheer impact of Alex’s mind control power: but although Bert has left the building, his shambling body keeps on coming. It shuffles unsteadily forward as if unaccustomed to the weight of flesh. The guard-fowl are shrieking and struggling unsteadily back to their three-clawed feet, now that Alex has been successfully distracted by the arrival of a genuine take-no-
prisoners zombie: and they’re not the only attackers. All around him Alex can feel a press of invisible feeders bouncing about in frenzied hunger, losing all fine control as they discover they can’t dig their mouthparts into his brain. “Stop,” he commands Bert, still in Old Enochian: “Halt now, do not move.” But it doesn’t work and Bert raises his sword, as slow and jerky as an automaton. One of the birds is up on one leg, holding the other sickle-claw raised almost to its sternum. “Turn and attack,” he tells it. “Attack now!”
Angry eater-possessed bird versus undead Crown Estate site security guard owned by an eater that seems more at home in a quadruped chassis than on two legs: Who will win? For a moment Alex doesn’t expect anything to happen, but then the mutant cassowary spins and lashes out like a kickboxer. Then someone slams his head in a door and the corridor lights up like a set of Christmas tree illuminations that have just shorted out a high-tension grid line.
His eyes are full of irregular purple blotches and his ears ring as Bert the caretaker’s legs—no longer supporting a torso—topple over. None of the guard-birds or feathered raptors or whatever they are survive: instead, a pall of choking, oily smoke fills the corridor in front of him. He coughs as a wiry, surprisingly strong arm reaches around his shoulders. “Sweet idiot boy!” She shakes him gently. “You could have been hurt! That’s my job!”
“Um.” Alex straightens up, deliberately not thinking about Cassie’s drastic approach to clearing the corridor. His phone has stopped buzzing, thaum sensor overloaded or burned out by her mace’s discharge. He can still hear the eaters outside his skull yammering to get in—an unprotected human in this place would be zombified within seconds—but luckily neither he nor Cassie fit that description. “Let’s just get to the ley line and go find your father. Do you think there are any more of these things in the way?”
“YesYes for sure!” She raises her voice when she’s excited, and he winces as she gestures expansively with the mace, which is glowing like a radioactive cobalt source: What is that, the elven equivalent of an assault rifle? he speculates. “I can feel them yonder!” Cassie says. The tip of the mace twists in a tight circle, pointing at the second-to-last door along the passage like an amputee dowsing rod. “Let me go first—”
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