by Chris Ward
His heart sank. An abandoned tower block just off St Peter’s Place in the Lenin District. It might be a decoy, but even if it wasn’t, the building was notorious, a haunt of criminals and drug-addled wraiths, hiding away among crumbling rooms and corridors that should have been detonated two decades ago. It was the last place he would have expected to find the stranger, and the last place he wanted to go.
There was no choice. He could sit and wait for the police to arrive, or he could try to find the stranger and see if they could help each other. Perhaps the stranger could shelter him until everyone of any authority fled on the last train out of town. After all, with a war looming, the city authorities had bigger problems to worry about.
He had just reached the front door when he heard the sound of a siren blaring.
Clicking like a misfiring clock hand, his heart burst one way and then the other. It wasn’t the sound of a police siren like it should be. It meant something different.
Air raid.
‘Father!’ Isabella screamed, leaping the last few steps into Robert’s arms. ‘What do we do now? We’re going to die!’
Mortin put her down, turning in one movement towards the kitchen. ‘Patricia! Hurry! There’s no time!’
The source of the siren was just half a block south, and the sound cut through the walls of their house like a divine wind. Mortin wondered if the sirens had been designed this way since time immemorial, that long, slow drone that put the fear of all God into you.
Isabella was screaming. Patricia, a small hold-all slung over her shoulder, acting no more fussed than if she were heading out to school, appeared in the kitchen doorway.
‘This is a waste of time,’ she said. ‘They aren’t going to waste their bombs on our house. They’re after the factories.’
‘Better not to take the chance. Come on.’
Half dragging Isabella behind him, Mortin led his two daughters out of the house and down the street to an ancient shelter dating right back to the Cold War, on the edges of living memory. Following other citizens down a flight of cold, damp steps into a dark concrete box with a ceiling so low he had to stoop, Robert wondered which of his daughters would prove correct. There were bombs these days that made concrete no more effective as a defence than sponge, but warfare wasn’t like it used to be. Civilians had little value, either as collateral or bargaining tools. It was likely any invading army would sweep right through them, purging the town of anything of use and then leaving its residents cold and hungry in its wake.
Someone charged with directing the human traffic ushered them towards a line of plastic seats that had probably once graced a bus shelter or doctor’s waiting room. Robert sat down with a daughter on either side, one leaning in to sob on his shoulder, the other sitting up gun-barrel straight, ready to leap up into action at a moment’s notice. He wanted to snap at Isabella to shut up, but the shelter was crowded with people, and down here in the dark there was no social hierarchy like there was up on the surface; they were all ducks lined up on an enemy’s wall waiting to be shot. It didn’t matter that he was one of the wealthiest men in town, down here in the dark he was just an irate father snapping unfairly at his upset daughter.
Beneath a layer of dirt and concrete, the siren was just a muffled squeal, but as the doors closed behind the last entrants and voices began to die down, the thumping on the walls like a bass drum beat announced the dropping of distant bombs. Robert put a hand down on the bricks behind him and felt it intimately, like a baby’s heartbeat. He estimated that the bombs were too far away to damage his own house, but somewhere far off that polite little thumping was wreaking untold destruction.
‘We’re going to die,’ Isabella whispered against his chest, over and over. ‘We’re going to die and I won’t get to say goodbye to Victor.’
Mortin stared ahead of him into the dark. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if bombs were raining down on the poor district where his daughter’s worthless boyfriend lived. Sometimes, purges were necessary.
‘We have to hurry!’
The cart had no comprehension of human emotion but at the sound of the word hurry it boosted its speed to near maximum, keeping in time with Victor as he stumbled across the snowy street. Far to the north, flashes of colour lit up the dark sky like a firework display just out of sight. The rumble and crack of exploding bombs reached him as a series of pops and thuds, loud but not deafening, close but not too close. He was no military technician; he had no idea whether they were coming closer or going further away, nor exactly what the targets were. They sounded too far away to be hitting the town, so it made sense that they were bombing the mining operations that lay over that way.
The streets were surprisingly busy, people heading for air raid shelters or just standing in doorways or peering out of windows, watching the distant bombardment. That so few people seemed afraid struck Victor as a symptom of apathy, that these people had lived their lives so long without any excitement that even the idea of impending death was of interest.
Where possible he kept to the smaller streets, judging that the cold would keep would-be muggers and other criminals inside. At times he had to clear a way for the cart to pass, and sometimes he considered abandoning it altogether, but finally he stepped out on to the plaza known as St Peter’s Place and saw the grey rectangle of the abandoned tower block standing opposite him across a field of snow and ice.
Against a sky punctuated with distant muzzle flashes, it was a haunted house of fable and yore, fifty lightless—mostly glassless—windows staring vacantly down at the street, bidding only the brave and the desperate to enter. Victor considered himself one but not the other, and it was the desperation that was leading him. He called the cart to him and started out across the plaza.
Something flashed across the sky, too fast and small to be a plane. There was a sliver of time laden with foreboding and then a building a couple of blocks north plumed with fire and smoke as a deafening explosion rattled Victor’s teeth and billowed his face with the first gust of warmth he had felt since the end of summer.
Even as he began to run across the plaza, Victor couldn’t decide if he was running towards or away from danger. The gaping, doorless entrance to the tower block loomed ahead of him, twin drifts of snow filling the entrance, leaving between them a thin rift that had been packed down hard by dozens of pairs of passing shoes. Something else fast and small flashed overhead, and he ducked inside before the sound of another explosion rattled the walls around him.
He turned to see the cart squeezing through the gap left in the snow by the tower block’s illicit occupants. For a moment a bright light lit up the street behind it, then another boom brought icicles tinkling down around him. Victor slipped down against the back wall of the old entrance lobby and pulled his knees up to his chest, watching the sinister firework display outside.
In his haste, he hadn’t thought to write down the details of the surveillance robot’s stored data, and while he had loaded a couple of his computer tablets on to the cart, he didn’t want to unload everything now. What he remembered though, that the tracking signal had gone faint when the surveillance robot had been inside this building, told him all he needed to know.
The signal had gone faint because it had been weakened.
Because it had gone underground.
The stranger was downstairs, in the basement.
Victor pushed himself to his feet. He glanced back at the floor below him, wishing he had more time to spare. Despite the freezing temperatures, inside this entrance he felt safe, and after the events of the last few hours he just wanted to crawl up into a corner for a while, but he had to push himself on.
To his right a broken door revealed a staircase. Snow had been tracked inside and left dirty marks on the stairs going up, but the stairs heading down were remarkably clean. With the cart using its reversible wheels to follow him, he started down.
12
The Entrance into Hell
There had been no word yet
from Lena. Pavel had tried the secure radio link several times a day, but she never answered. Barely an hour passed without him considering her a traitor, a coward, an infidel who had earned his trust and then used it to escape, except that he knew Lena better than that.
The girl wanted a fight, and she had gone looking for one.
When the bombs started to rain down, Pavel headed straight for the subterranean chambers below City Hall, a relic from the Communists which contained a complete communications control centre capable of running Brevik without ever going up to the surface. Over the years he had ensured it was maintained and updated, so the absence of windows notwithstanding, it was almost possible to believe he was still up in his own office. He had even hung a couple of murals on the walls, and a plastic pot plant stood in one corner collecting dust.
He felt absurd and a little guilty to admit it, but in some ways the bombs provided the evidence he needed that indeed there was an enemy on the way which should be feared. With the armies of hackers employed by every government almost as dangerous as the soldiers themselves, physical evidence was more necessary than ever to cajole a community into action. Now, as they risked total and utter obliteration, people were finally prepared to listen.
The radio on his desk buzzed, making him jump.
‘This is security officer Markus Vorstock. Sir, I have some reports concerning the damage received.’
‘Code?’
Without hesitation, Markus reeled off a nine-digit number. Pavel cared little about the number, only the length of the pause before it came. There was none.
‘Proceed.’
‘We’ve witnessed damage to nine mining operations. The strikes were carried out by drones. Four pits have been sealed by direct hits, while three others suffered peripheral damage. Two others were missed entirely, while seven other strikes hit abandoned mining dormitory buildings, suggesting that our enemy’s data is inaccurate and out of date.’
Pavel nodded. It was to be expected. ‘Casualties?’
‘We’re estimating ninety. Mostly nightshift workers. Many more may be trapped underground, but we’re working to secure their escape through emergency access shafts.’
‘Good. And of the other strikes?’
Pavel could almost hear the shrug from the other end of the line. Markus didn’t know. ‘Our estimation is that they were warning strikes, no more.’
‘Warning us of what?’
Markus’s sign mirrored Pavel’s own thoughts. ‘That they exist. Whoever they are.’
‘Thank you. Return to your post.’
There was a slight pause. ‘Sir, if I may be so bold as to suggest something….’
‘Go ahead.’
Pavel waited, but no reply came. The static seemed to intensify for a few seconds, then the connection died. Pavel switched off his receiver and sat staring at the little radio, wondering if Markus Vorstock was still alive.
The boy had been watching Patricia for about half an hour, his frightened eyes flickering back and forth from the floor to her face. Her father and sister were sleeping restlessly on the bench beside her, but Patricia was still wide awake. Somewhere out there on the streets was her brother, and she couldn’t relax until she knew he was safe. There had been no sound of any strikes for at least an hour, but down in the gloom of the air raid shelter the passage of time was difficult to measure. At some point she guessed they would be given an all-clear to return to their homes, but whether that was tonight or dawn or five days from now, she didn’t know. As the seconds dragged past, the idea that they would be stuck down here forever grew and grew.
The assembled crowd probably numbered about a hundred, spread across a space about the size of a couple of school classrooms. At first people had sat in uniform rows, talking to their immediate neighbours in hushed, fearful tones, but over time they had split off into microcosms of society. A few groups of kids sat playing cards or tapping on little handheld computers. Some older people were spread out on the floor in rows, trying to sleep as best they could, while groups of business-types sat in tight circles and discussed company matters or the coming war. The boy sitting opposite her stood out simply because he was alone and detached from everyone else around him.
He was probably older than her, fifteen or sixteen, but he had the vacant, innocent eyes of a perennial follower. His skin was chapped and flaking and the hands he held over his knees looked callused from manual labour. She was sure she had seen him hanging around with Esel, but her brother’s friends tended to drift in and out of focus, changing with the seasons and his violent whims. Because they had nothing to offer her, she rarely wasted her eyes on them for long.
But he was staring at her. That meant one of two things: he wanted to fuck her like most men did, or he had something to say. She hadn’t yet seen him smile. While he might still want to fuck her, it probably wasn’t today.
She got up and walked over, sitting down beside him. In the gloom, her shadow almost seemed to linger behind her, as if reluctant to let her go.
‘I don’t like people staring at me,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘What do you want?’
His lip trembled when he spoke. ‘You’re Esel’s sister, aren’t you? I’ve seen you around. He used to talk about you a lot.’
‘Charmed,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Some … something … something attacked him.’
Patricia gripped his arm and squeezed through his jacket hard enough to make him flinch. ‘What? What attacked him? Where is he?’
‘It was a man, but he had this thing with him. A robot. Esel wanted to push him around, beat up on him a bit. We were just being … lads.’
Patricia wanted to slap the words out of him. She knew about Esel being a “lad”. His ever-shifting gang terrorised whole neighbourhoods. Their father, of course, knew nothing, but Patricia, sharing the intimacy of being a twin, often had to listen to his boasts of who they had bashed about, which houses they had broken into, and what they had stolen. None of his former friends would tell and none of his victims would report it through fear of retaliation, so Esel’s reign of terror continued unchallenged.
‘Where is he now?’
‘It … it … shot him.’
Patricia felt the strength drain out of her hands. She clamped them to her knees to stop them from shaking. ‘Where?’
‘In the Lenin District. Just off Nickolsky Street.’
‘Is he … dead?’
The boy shook his head, then nodded, then shook it again. ‘I don’t know. We … ran.’
Anger replaced her fear. She dug a finger into his thigh, into a weak spot between his muscles she had often used to hurt men who had tried to take advantage of her. ‘You fucking coward. If I find out you left him to die, I’ll gut you and every member of your family.’
A tear trickled down his face, the surface glossing over as the chill air in the bunker tried to claim it for ice. ‘I’m sorry.’
Patricia jumped up from the seat. Her father and sister were still sleeping. While her father could get men together, her sister was useless and would create a scene. The best thing to do was go alone.
She pulled up her hood and looked down at the whimpering boy. She wondered how many fists he had thrown on her brother’s instruction, how many old people he had pushed over or kicked in the face, yet here he was, a blubbering coward.
‘Remember what I said,’ she hissed, then hurried for the stairs.
Victor was about four levels underground when the bomb hit the building above him. The sound was only a muffled thud followed by a sharp crack, like a cloth being snapped tight. He hung on to the wall until the vibrations passed, noticing a sudden stuffiness to the air where it had been chilly and fresh before. Something somewhere had been blocked, and he hoped it wasn’t the only way out.
Once below ground, his only light was from a torch he had packed into the cart, and he held it out in front of him, scanning the shadows below as he moved step by step down into the bowels of the buildi
ng.
Several times he had come to doors, the entrances to old underground apartments, but those not rusted shut had opened on to dusty corridors of darkness. He began to wonder if he had been mistaken, if the coordinates he had translated were wrong, if perhaps he had unwittingly climbed down into his own tomb, when he came to the final door and saw a flickering light coming from beneath the door.
His eyes widened as he swung the torch over the inscriptions smeared on to the door in untidy paint scrawled over the top of years of others that had faded or chipped away.
YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD IF YOU HAVE REACHED THIS DOOR. ENTER AND MEET YOUR END. THE DEVIL WAITS INSIDE FOR YOU.
Reading about such a thing in a book, Victor might have laughed it off, but standing here in front of the door with the flickering light coming from underneath, surrounded by freezing walls of concrete and earth, he could imagine the door led down into the fires of hell itself. His legs trembled and his hands shook, the torchlight flickering across the words, highlighting and erasing them in turn.
It took him several tries to make his shaking fingers grip the handle and open the door. When it swung wide with a creaking groan that could have been a wraith moaning in timeless agony, at first all he saw was a fire built into the far wall, beating flames up and around a blackened chimney, spitting pieces of broken furniture out on to the concrete floor and the heap of rags and old clothes that were piled in front of it.
And then something shifted on the pile of old clothes, and a spindly, scarred monster rose up, its charred frame a silhouette against the fire behind, its jutting, pointed face twisting towards him in a sneer, one black eye opening and closing in long, slow blinks.
Victor heard a sinister laugh and the rustle of feathers.
Then the room went black and he slumped to the ground, his legs collapsing beneath him.