“She needs to be brave, the danger she’s in,” the leader of the opposition added from the other side of the room.
Her attention piqued, Six wandered towards him, twirling the guns in her hands.
“Not from us, you understand,” he said nervously, noting the pistols and the Speaker, still moaning in his chair.
“Then what?” Six asked, her eyebrows rose. “What danger could I possibly be in?”
The ghost hesitated, his eyes glancing furtively around the room. “Traitor! Treason!” some of the others muttered.
He looked very similar to the Prime Minister. In fact, Six could barely detect a difference between them - the same elegant smile, slight build, warm eyes and dimples. She didn’t trust either of them.
“So tell me,” Six addressed them all as he walked back to the screens, “if you’re all ‘living pieces of history’, what the hell happened?”
“What, you want to know why the world ends?” the Prime Minister spoke across the computer. “I’ll tell you why, quite simply, it’s because the rich don’t pay.”
“Cobblers!” someone shouted.
“What like you did, Frank?” the opposition leader chuckled.
Six concentrated on the computer screens as the ghosts bickered. The knights seemed to be wading through the central lobby. Water had flowed into the main hall bringing with it thousands of plastic bottles, clogging up the stairwells and mixing with fallen masonry.
“Aw, this place stinks. Where we going, boss?” Knight Four, as usual, was the first to break radio silence.
“Upstairs,” Lord Truth replied on his own communicator. He was the only one not using a camera but Six could still see his back as he led the others towards sodden stairs. “Through here.”
“So what did she say, LT,” Knight Five asked, “that ghost woman?”
“She said the cure was never processed but they believed it could be distilled from a rare plant called ‘rapunzel weed’. They froze some and brought it here for safe keeping.”
“You know, LT, I’ve been wondering,” Knight Two began, his camera trained on torn and rain soaked paintings. “If everyone else is dead why do we need the antidote anyway?”
Lord Truth turned to him and automatically all the knights focused on their master’s face, the sun blazing through the open roof turning his skin blue. “How else can we protect ourselves?” he said. “How else can we begin again?”
They began marching up the steps. “Six, you getting...” Five whispered into her communicator.
“Yeah,” Six replied, cutting her off.
“Okay, listen people, if I’m not getting radio silence I at least want one at a time on the comms,” Knight One moaned. “Remember, we’ve trained for this.”
“Sorry Serge,” Six replied, flipping the mic switch on her belt. “You’re all looking a- okay from up here,” she added.
“Thanks, Susie,” came his clipped response.
The ghosts were still arguing.
“Oh sure, the rich paid some taxes, sometimes at least,” the Prime Minister was yelling. “And then they complained about how we spent them. And when we disagreed they either left the country, or stopped paying our party funds!”
“Rubbish,” the opposition leader rallied. “You can’t blame the rich. The world ended because the poor were so lazy. All they ever wanted to do was sit around on benefits, stuffing their faces and having children!”
“They didn’t want to clean our streets or fix our schools or unblock our drains,” a bald ghost beside him, added.
Six stayed locked on the computer. The knights had reached the top of the stairs. They looked up to see bats nesting in some of the rafters where the roof was still intact.
“Order, order!” the Speaker was trying to calm his colleagues again, the volume in the gallery mounting.
“The poor would have worked if you’d paid them,” one ghost shouted.
“So nothing got done!” another yelled.
Behind the screen, Six could see the Prime Minister smiling. “And that, my dear, was the system we created. Beautiful wasn’t it?”
The leader of the opposition chuckled. His suit was better fitting than most of the others, although his tie had obviously been used to strangle him. “And you’re what comes next, darling,” he pointed towards her. “Evolution’s bastard step.”
“Survivors,” the burnt woman corrected him, the tiger now dozing in the space where her feet were reforming. “I always told you they’d come.”
“Shut it, Tory Girl!” one ghost spat as Six returned her attention to the screens.
“Her lot aren’t Tories, they’re ours!” another pointed out.
“Oh,” the first giggled sheepishly. “Sorry, I could never tell the difference.”
And the whole House fell about laughing, the woman herself chuckling before taking up their story. “You see, my dear, we just reached a crisis point, where the world turned against itself.”
“We’re not sure why,” the Prime Minister agreed.
“What, like a war?” Six asked. She was trying to watch the feeds from the cameras but most of them had gone dark, the others focusing on a dusty office littered with papers, ripped-up carpet and broken furniture.
That must be Black Rod’s Chambers, Six thought. They must be making their way down to the vault.
“Well, not just one war, my dear, not really,” Marjorie was saying. “You see, you want to hear one reason why the world ended, but we could give you dozens.”
A bearded spectre drifted up from the back of the house, maggots chewing at his face. “Two Timothy, chapter three, verse one,” he said mournfully. “In the last days the people will become lovers only of themselves.”
And for a moment the great hall fell silent, each ghost hanging his head, or hers.
“Guilty,” then came a voice, and “Guilty,” another, before every ghost seemed to admit the crime.
“No, we weren’t at war, at least not at first,” the Prime Minister added sadly. “We just stopped caring, stopped caring about anyone but ourselves. All of us.”
“There was that meteor shower, do you remember, boys?” the oily ghost began. “One of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. We got it, the States, Asia and most of Europe. I remember thinking ‘maybe this will change everything? Perhaps this is what the world needs, heavenly fireworks sent to unite us all?’ A week later India and Pakistan had blown each other to bits and the rest of us were at each others’ throats.”
“There were just too many of us,” the opposition leader shook his head. “The world’s population became so huge. There was nowhere left to go.”
“The fallout from India was devastating, refugees flooding into every country, each closing its borders,” the Scot added.
“By then the ice caps were just slush, our coastlines underwater. There was little food and no land left on which to grow it,” the oily ghost added.
“There were wars then,” the opposition leader agreed, “but there were no clear sides. It wasn’t about countries fighting anymore, whole communities were against each other.”
“Cities would tear themselves apart on the result of a football match,” the fat ghost said.
“City!” one side of the House then charged.
“United!” erupted the other.
“Ha-ha,” the Prime Minister stroked his scarred chin, his hand reducing to bone, reducing to dust and then reappearing, its muscles meeting skin. “We can laugh about it now we’re dead.”
“But this was our legacy, you see?” Marjorie spoke softly. “Terrorism, the financial and environmental crises, they were just the beginning of the end. We had lost control.”
“So we handed our power over to someone else,” the leader of the opposition shrugged. “And that led to the blood plague.”
Six shook her head, confused, as Knight One’s voice crackled in her ear. “We’ve reached the vault, Six, you copy?”
She turned back to the screens where th
e knights faced a door imbedded in an enormous brick wall. Each window gave a different view of it, with that knight’s name displayed at the top.
Six reached for the mic button on her belt again. “Copy that, Serge.”
As she watched, Eddie was placing Tucker’s code breaking unit above the vault’s handle, the lights began flickering in a panel below as reams of electronic numbers flowed.
Hey, I didn’t know he had that! Six thought.
“No two sets of morals were the same,” Marjorie was shaking her head. “Not even within a church, mosque or a synagogue. We couldn’t agree on anything.”
The Prime Minister nodded. “We’d run out of answers and everyone blamed each other. Just as here, in Parliament, where our two Houses, the Lords and the Commons, fell against each other in a battle for authority.”
Six gazed up at him. She’d become so used to the ghosts she hadn’t wondered who killed them. “So that’s happened to you?”
“We murdered them,” the Prime Minister nodded, “and they murdered us. They’ll kill you too if you’re not careful.”
“Oh definitely,” the leader of the opposition agreed.
“So where are they?” Six asked the charred woman, who floated closer as the tiger wandered off.
“The Lords?” Marjorie said. “They’re in the next chamber, my dear. And if you think that we’re in bad shape you should take a look at them!”
And again, they all collapsed into an infectious laughter, some ghosts even tripping over the benches in front of them.
Meanwhile, Tucker’s machine was still trying to crack the vault, Eddie’s camera trained on the unit. It displayed a row of seven numbers: four still spinning, three already complete.
Six turned back to the ghosts. “Hold on, rewind. So the blood plague - you’re saying it was inevitable then?”
“No, no it wasn’t,” the Prime Minister shook his head.
“We had given in, you see, given in to the Devil,” the opposition leader said mournfully.
“Or, at least, made a deal with him,” Marjorie pointed out.
“Why do you think we’re really here, trapped in this cycle of life and death?” the oily ghost shrugged sadly. “Cursed to neither live or die.”
“Wait a minute, the Devil?” Six’s head was swimming now, her eyes glued to the screen where five numbers of the safe’s code seemed to have cleared. She reached for the sunglasses, fixing them behind her ears again. “What Devil?” she asked finally.
“Why, who do you think?” Marjorie laughed. “Your Lord Truth of course.”
“What?” And Six turned just as a blue monkey skipped into the room, scampering through the weeds and flowers, its cartoon eyes bulging as it hurled itself towards the knight.
Its steel jaws snapping as it leapt towards her face.
Chapter Thirty-Four
SIX THREW herself onto the table, her white armour slipping as she rolled onto her back, all the time firing both pistols.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
But the monkey kept coming. Whatever bullets Lord Truth had put in her guns they flew straight through it without causing a scratch.
“It’s just like I told that girl who came before you,” Marjorie was still speaking, the other ghosts silent. “He has to be stopped! We can hold him here!”
But Six could barely register the statement.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
“Crap!” she yelled as the toy barrelled forwards, its steel teeth gleaming, its white eyes bulging. A blue clockwork monkey. Just like her Grandpa’s.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Six gasped.
The monkey sprang onto the wooden surface as Six scrambled backwards, squeezing off three more rounds before tossing the guns aside in an effort to flip herself over the computer.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Every bullet hit its mark. Every bullet vanished. And as she reached the edge of the table the monkey hurdled the screen.
Six kicked out but it was too late, the robot predicting the swipe, dodging her left boot as she tumbled to the floor, crashing into the Speaker’s Chair.
“Arghhh!” she groaned as the monkey pounced, spikes jutting from its tiny hands as it landed lightly on her stomach.
“Get offa me!” Six yelled and punched it weakly aside before reaching for the mic switch on her belt, “Serge?”
“Six, you got a problem up there?” Knight One’s voice spat through her earpiece, before, “I’ve got it, Serge, I’ve cracked it!” Eddie’s communicator interrupted them.
Six clambered to a fighting stance, scanning the room for a trace of her foe. Across the scattering of books that had spilled from the table, the weeds and the flowers, the broken benches where the ghosts hung silent and watchful.
It couldn’t have gone far, I barely hit it!
“Six, I repeat, are you okay?” Knight One continued.
“I dunno Serge, I think...”
But as she paused Knight Two was on his communicator, cutting her off again. “Okay, Serge, I’m opening her up.”
“God dammit, I said one at a time on the comms, people,” Knight One barked. “Eddie, where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Six span around to view the computer screens where Knight One was grabbing at Knight Three’s armour. “I gotta go, Serge!” Three was saying.
And then, within a split second, all their training fell apart.
Knights Two and Four were heaving at the door of the vault as Knight Five stood, distracted by Lord Truth, his face glowing with intensity. “This is the moment we have been waiting for, my knights...” he began.
And there, in the screen’s reflection, Six saw the eyes of the clockwork monkey edging closer, its tiny claws extended as it scaled her armoured back.
Crap!
Only Knight Three’s camera remained focused on the door of the vault as it swung open.
“...The moment we come of age. The moment of our salvation.”
And then the thunder of machine gun fire roared through the dungeons.
BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA!
Six cowered, the explosions in her earpiece pounding her skull as the sunglasses fell backwards, cracking under the monkey’s fist as it leapt towards her head.
“Ouch!” Six reached blindly for her sword, her eyes fixed on the screens, at the automatic cannon embedded in the vault, its bullets spraying wantonly, someone’s communicator still transmitting.
BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA!
The monkey snatched at her hair and swung back to meet her.
BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-
Smoke puffed from the barrel of the machine gun in the vault, empty casings spilling from its chambers, and another monkey, brown this time, its features awkward and ugly, crept out from the safe.
And for a moment the blue monkey stopped, an inch from her face, hanging there, staring at her.
Six could make out the camera parts expanding in the black dot of its cartoon eyes, hear the chips and possessors whizzing inside its frame. She could see the rough steel of its serrated teeth, the small antenna poking from its felt head as it raised its pink hand, blades extending from minute slits in each finger as it prepared to slice through her neck.
And then it blinked its plastic lashes, a red light glowing beneath the blue fur of its stomach.
And it dropped to the floor and sped off to find its mate.
As Six watched it go she could taste the rush of vomit in her throat. She swallowed it down.
“Lord Truth, Lord Truth, are you alright?” she screamed into the microphone. “Serge? Five? Two? SPEAK TO ME!”
Six grabbed the glasses from the floor and gripped hold of the computer, lifting it from the desk. The machine gun had stopped firing but as she scanned each window all she could see was bodies.
All the knights.
Lord Truth.
“I have been betrayed, Susie Haast,” he gurgl
ed, almost like he was speaking underwater.
“LT?” she was weeping now. The sight of all her friends, all that blood, each one slumped on the floor.
And his face, ravaged but alive and speaking into Knight Five’s camera. “I have been betrayed,” he repeated. “Was it you?”
Six shook her head. Betrayed?
Because it was a trap.
The bomb was loose. The bomb and its trigger. Just like in her grandfather’s story.
“You must go.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t leave you,” she cried.
“You must,” he smiled, the gash where his mouth used to be splitting all the way to his ear, his skull smashed, his brain naked, blood soaking through the folds of his white shirt.
“But you can change this? You can change everything!” Six wailed, her hand at her lips, sweat pouring down her back.
“Not this time, Susie, not this time,” he gasped. “You must go.”
“NO,” Six pleaded at the screen, at his face, his left eye a pool of crimson.
“I’m not asking,” he nodded, the bloody mass shifting in his broken head, leaking in solid lumps onto the floor. “It’s an order. Go! RUN!”
“NOW!”
And Six turned away from him.
She sprinted out of the House of Commons, the ghosts left drifting in her wake. She skid through corridors, their walls draped in tattered canvases, their floors a garden of plants, the sun filtered through bare ceilings.
She turned into the central lobby, splashing through the water, stumbling over fallen bricks and rubble. And she didn’t go up the staircase, she didn’t go into Black Rod’s office, she didn’t go down to the vault to try and save him. Because she was too scared.
Because the monkey bombs were loose.
It was a trap.
And soon the two robots would meet, their arms outstretched, their steel jaws reaching for an embrace that would shake the very foundations of London.
Crushing her friends. Killing her Saviour. Burying the Devil.
And just as she saw it, just as she saw the relief of a broken window beckoning her towards it, just as the floor collapsed beneath her, the explosion rippling through walls like paper, carrying her forwards on a molten tide, she saw a small diamond, encased in gold, its faces glinting in the light of her escape route.
The Last Days Page 28