Daisy couldn’t remember how to move. It was as though her body had been carved from stone, chipped away a piece at a time, given only the illusion of life. She watched as Rilke came back up the stairs and patted Brick’s shoulder; watched as she walked calmly down the corridor towards her. Daisy wanted to run away, to flee before Rilke tried to shoot her as well, but those stone legs of hers wouldn’t let her. She was fixed there, in that dark corridor that stank of bullets and meat.
‘Don’t be scared, Daisy,’ said Rilke. She leant in, her eyes catching the light that seeped through from the foyer. They looked like alien eyes, as if they were radioactive or something. ‘You may not know it yet, but I had to do that,’ she said. ‘We’re the same, you and me. Look into your head, you’ll see the truth soon enough.’
Rilke straightened up and walked through the door. Brick’s sobs filled the space where she had been, the noise so much worse because it was coming from him, coming from someone so strong. Bricks weren’t supposed to cry, they could weather anything.
‘Brick?’ Cal was stooped over the bigger boy, his hand where Rilke’s had been. Chris and Jade looked on like they were in the audience at the theatre, their jaws unhinged. ‘Brick, mate, what just happened? Who was that?’
His girlfriend, of course. Lisa, thought Daisy. She’d been locked down there, that’s why the stairs had given Daisy the creeps. Her head was full of ice cubes, all smashing against each other. She could see her, a pretty girl who maybe wore a little too much make-up, who swore a lot and who didn’t always get it. Daisy wasn’t sure exactly what she didn’t get, it was just what she could see, and sense, from those little transparent movies. He’d loved her, though, had Brick. He’d loved her with everything he had, and now she was gone. Now he wouldn’t be able to fix her. Not ever.
Those ice cubes were melting, and with them came anger – not hers, she understood, but his. She took a step towards Brick and Cal, then thought better of it, bolting through the door and chasing after Rilke.
‘Daisy, wait!’ Cal called out behind her. She ignored him, almost tripping up the sweeping stairs. Rilke was walking into Waves but she must have heard Daisy’s clattering footsteps because she turned round, a weird, false smile imprinted on her lips. The gun hung by her side, little wisps of smoke curling up from it. Daisy opened her mouth, ready to shout at her, to swear if she had to, but she couldn’t get the words out.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ said Rilke. ‘This is happening for a reason.’
‘What reason can you . . . can there . . . You can’t just kill people.’
‘There are more important things at stake here,’ Rilke said. ‘Don’t you see that? We have to survive. We have to. If we don’t . . .’
For the first time the expression on Rilke’s face wavered, her smile fading. It was like watching a ventriloquist’s dummy, thought Daisy, as though she was speaking not for herself but was a mouthpiece for someone else; something else. The older girl looked down at the gun in her hands and swallowed hard, but when she looked back at Daisy the smile flickered on again – uncertain on her lips but bright and unshaken in her eyes.
‘I need you to trust me,’ she said. ‘To trust that I’m telling you the truth. Those two down there, they would have killed us without a second thought. Don’t you see? It’s us against them, now, but there’s more to it than that, it’s . . .’ She seemed to struggle again, her eyes darting left and right. ‘Just trust me,’ she said, trance-like. ‘You’ll understand it, soon enough.’
More ice cubes, the ones with fire in this time. Daisy saw a tide of people, ferals, surging into the park on a wave of blood, crashing against something that burned, something wonderful. It didn’t make any sense, the images were so fast and so disconnected that they were making her sick.
‘And trust them,’ said Rilke. ‘They won’t lie to you.’
‘Who?’
‘Them,’ Rilke repeated, her eyes seeming to pierce Daisy’s forehead, like she could see what was happening inside. ‘Trust the ice. Trust the fire.’
Daisy heard the ‘staff only’ door creak below, then the stomp of feet coming up the stairs. Rilke retreated further into the darkness of the restaurant until only her eyes, her teeth and the glinting barrel of the gun could be seen. Cal appeared by Daisy’s side. His eyes were red, the dirt on his face tear-streaked.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he croaked. ‘That was his girlfriend. He’s going to kill you.’
‘No,’ said the shadow in the doorway. ‘He’s not. He’s going to do exactly what I tell him.’
‘What?’ Cal spat. ‘What are you talking about, Rilke?’
‘Exactly what I tell him,’ she said again, sinking deeper into the tar-pit dark. It didn’t sound like Rilke speaking any more, it sounded like something much older. ‘He doesn’t have a choice.’
Cal looked at Daisy. He was scared, it seemed to ooze from his every pore. Daisy reached out and took hold of his hand and he squeezed back, so hard she felt one of her finger joints pop. Rilke retreated even further, letting the door swing shut.
‘You’ll come to me when you’re ready,’ said Rilke, her voice muffled. ‘You all will.’
There was a click, a heavy thump, and it took Daisy a moment to realise she’d locked the door. Rilke laughed, a soft chuckle that set Daisy’s teeth on edge.
‘Because you’ll die if you don’t.’
The Other: III
Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion
looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
Murdoch
M1 motorway, London, 7.16 p.m.
The convoy was made up of nineteen vehicles. Four police bikes took the lead, sweeping other cars out of the way, blocking the entrances onto the dual carriageway and letting the first three black government limousines move at a constant seventy miles per hour. Smack bang in the middle was a private ambulance, long, black and windowless, which looked more like a hearse. Two more police bikes flanked it, their riders equipped with machine guns and dark-visored helmets. Another three limos rode in their wake.
Detective Inspector Alan Murdoch sat in the second of these, sandwiched between Dr Sven Jorgensen, the Scotland Yard pathologist, and one of his assistants from the morgue. He glanced through the tinted glass of the rear window to see the two squad cars and four bikes that formed the tail of the convoy. Their blue lights turned the city around them into a constantly shifting ocean, the illusion so strong that Murdoch suddenly felt like he was drowning, like there was no oxygen left in the car.
He sat forward, sucking in air, the seat belt tight around his neck. The convoy thundered onto a roundabout, hardly slowing, then pulled onto the M1. Wide-eyed people watched them go from inside their cars.
If only they knew, he thought, peering through the vehicles in front to see the ambulance. Its single patient lay in a bed in the back. Not alive. Not dead either. Breathing in that one endless, howling breath. If only they could see.
He wanted to signal back at them. He wanted their help. He wanted them to know that he was a prisoner. Of course they’d never actually said that, the soldiers who had escorted him out of his Thames House cell. They’d invited him to come with them, but there had only been one answer he could give. This was MI5, this was national security. He may have been one of the top ranking detectives in the capital, but if he’d made a break for it – as he’d so desperately wanted to – they’d probably have shot him dead on the spot.
Murdoch was so tired that he wasn’t sure if the muscles in his face worked any more. His eyelids felt as though they were being pushed down, like those of a corpse that somebody was trying to close for the last time. His skin broke into painful goosebumps at the thought and he had to sit forward in his seat again, fists clenched, to stop the world from spinning. The guy to his left, one of Jorgensen’s assistants, sat with his face against the window, sobbing gently. He’d been like that since they’d left MI5.
A police bike
accelerated past them, its siren squealing, vanishing past the side of the ambulance. Please let us stop, Murdoch prayed. Let something distract them so I can get out of here. But the convoy continued, blasting through the heavy evening air like a freight train. They were heading out of London, he realised, going north-west. The only place he could think of that lay out this way was Northwood, the military base.
He looked to his side, past Jorgensen’s weary face, through the shaded window which turned the sunlight to toffee. He lived close to here, over in Finchley. Right now Alice would be putting John in the bath, maybe feeding him, trying to stay calm for the baby. She’d have called his work by now, his friends. She’d be desperate. Maybe the security service would already have spoken to her, told her he had been detained, but that would only make her more frantic. He wished he could put his hand to the glass, somehow beam out a message to her. It’s going to be okay. He realised he was doing it anyway. I’ll be back soon, I won’t let them keep us apart. I promise. Please don’t worry.
It was as he was directing those words out of the car, willing them to fly home, that he heard the squeal of brakes in front. Then the back door of the ambulance opened and the unravelling of his world began.
‘Mick, what the hell is it doing?’
Mick Rosen jumped at the sound of his partner’s voice. He felt like he was lying on a knife-edge, the slightest movement or sound ready to slice him in two. He’d never been this scared in his life, even though he’d been a medic in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though he’d ridden in ambulances across battlegrounds and minefields and through enemy camps with bullets punching through the windows. He thought he’d seen just about everything there was to see, every horror that man was capable of inflicting.
He’d thought wrong.
He glanced at the trolley that lay in the centre of the private ambulance. There were no machines there, no wires or drips. Why would there be? The man that lay on it, a sheet pulled up to his neck, was dead. He had no pulse, his blood wasn’t flowing, he stank of rot the way any day-old corpse does in the middle of summer.
Yet his mouth hung open, too wide, a snake’s just before it devours its prey. And it was still inhaling that single, unending breath, that hellish wheeze which had already made Mick throw up once that afternoon and which was close to making it happen again. He was wearing a biohazard suit, though, so he didn’t have a choice but to hold it back. He swallowed a mouthful of bile, groaning without even knowing he was doing it.
Nobody knew for sure what this thing was, but there were rumours. They’d had a priest come in to look at it – not a doctor, not a surgeon but a priest. That had spooked Mick more than the corpse itself, that and the fact that he’d heard a few people whispering words like ‘Antichrist’ and ‘Defiler’. It was absurd, ludicrous – until he looked back at the body, heard that awful, guttering breath.
‘What do you mean?’ he managed after a moment or two. His partner, sitting next to him at the back of the ambulance, was Alik Garro. They’d been working together for a couple of years now for SIS, mostly disposing of the bodies of terrorist suspects who had been subjected to over-enthusiastic interrogation. They weren’t exactly friends, but they got on okay, united by the knowledge that what they were doing was keeping the country safe, was keeping the bad guys out.
‘I thought . . .’ Alik started. He was staring at the corpse, and most of the colour had drained from his face, leaven it ashen behind the plastic of his visor. He shook his head, sitting back. ‘Nothing. It’s nothing. That thing’s just giving me the heebie-jeebies.’
The ambulance swung round a corner, hard enough to throw Mick against Alik. His seat wobbled, and for a second he thought he was going to end up face-first on the corpse. This time a wad of something he’d had for lunch made it up his throat, sitting on his tongue. He swallowed again, drenched in cold sweat.
Hurry up, he screamed at the driver. They were only going to Northwood, why hadn’t they arrived yet? He would give practically anything to get out of this metal coffin. He felt the ambulance slow, pulling left then accelerating again. Was the driver trying to make him chunder?
‘Mick, there it was again!’
Alik was on his feet this time, gripping the door handle. He was staring right at the corpse, the look on his face one of a man who’s just seen his kid get hit by a lorry. Mick’s heart lurched, palpitating, as if it couldn’t quite remember how it was supposed to work. He massaged the pain from his chest, still watching Alik. He didn’t want to see what the other man was seeing.
But something dragged his head round, forcing him to look. The corpse lay there, those eyes so dead and so alive at the same time. He’d tried to close them, as had Alik, but they kept springing open. There was a darkness in those milky, lifeless pupils, a heavy black weight which seemed to fly back and forth, invisible but unmissable. It was like there was something in there that wanted out.
‘Wha—’ Mick started, then he saw it himself.
The corpse’s mouth was widening. It wasn’t opening, it was just getting bigger. Mick realised he was on his feet as well, his back pressed against the door of the ambulance. Open it, his brain screamed. Open it and jump, because better to be dead on the motorway than to see this. But he could no more turn the handle than he could force a cry up the constricted passage of his throat.
A tooth dropped from the corpse’s gums, vanishing into its throat with a dry click. Another followed, sucked in like it had been hoovered up. And that noise, that relentless breath, was getting louder, increasing in pitch like a jet engine before take-off.
‘No,’ Mick said, shaking his head, the fear like a suit of razor wire beneath his skin. ‘No.’ Keep saying it and it will stop, it has to. ‘No, please no.’
Those gums were crumbling, dissolving into its expanding maw. It reminded Mick of a sandcastle at the beach when the tide rises, the water lapping away at the foundations, pulling it in slowly but inexorably. The dead man’s lips, too, were coming apart, breaking into a million particles which defied gravity, circling the chasm of its mouth.
‘Jesus, stop the ambulance!’ Alik was screaming, the words misting up his visor. He was clawing at the door, now, thumping on it, his eyes so wide they didn’t look real. ‘Stop the ambulance! Let us out!’
The ambulance didn’t slow, the screams lost in the turbine-howl of the corpse’s breath. Its eyes had changed, too. That spark of life inside them was brighter, full of rancid glee. Mick reached out and grabbed Alik’s arm, holding it tight.
‘Where’s your radio?’ he asked. Alik stared back like he didn’t recognise him. ‘Your radio, Alik?’
Alik didn’t reply, and Mick realised he’d lost him. He’d seen what fear could do to a man. It could strip his mind in seconds and leave him nothing but a collection of broken, unconnected parts. Mick swore, scouring the ambulance for the radio. It was the only way of getting through to the driver. The cabin back here was soundproofed.
Don’t look at it, his brain told him. He knew that his own mind was on the verge of cracking. He could feel the madness there, like an unscratchable itch right at the base of his brain. Don’t look, Mick. And yet how could he not? His head seemed to swivel round by itself, his eyes focusing on the nightmare in the middle of the ambulance.
The corpse’s face was a whirlwind of particles which circled a throat of utter darkness. That throat wasn’t just lightless, it was devoid of everything. It was pure, absolute absence. It was still growing, too, the flesh of the man’s cheeks and nose crumbling into dust, circling that pool like debris around a black hole.
And those eyes. Those dead, all-seeing eyes. They were alive with laughter, a sick delight that seemed to scoop out Mick’s insides. He collapsed against the door, the radio forgotten, all things forgotten. Nothing mattered any more. How could it, when something like this existed?
The ambulance slowed and Mick felt himself being pulled towards the centre of it. He managed to grab the door handle, to root himself in place, but
Alik wasn’t so lucky. His partner slid across the floor without a sound, hitting the end of the trolley and doubling over it.
That whirlwind breath seemed to double in volume, an inwards howl that detonated inside Mick’s head, making him clamp his hands to his ears. Alik’s face was dissolving into the whirlwind. His eyes were the first to go, melting into sherbet and spiralling down the churning hole. The rest followed, erased like an oil painting drenched in turpentine. Alik’s body juddered and shook, suspended off the ground as if by invisible ropes.
There was something else, too, something else coming out of Alik. Mick couldn’t see it so much as feel it, an energy seeping from his partner, being pulled from every pore, sucked into the madness.
The corpse was eating Alik’s soul.
The Antichrist, Mick thought. The Defiler, the Beast. Only he knew that this thing was older than the Bible; ageless, and infinitely evil.
The itch inside his skull expanded, obliterating everything in a single, devastating short-circuit. Mick no longer knew he had a wife, he couldn’t remember the names of his children. Every moment of his past was erased in that one fraction of a second.
The last few flecks of Alik circled the mouth, disappearing. The vortex growled, bigger now, hungrier. It wanted more. Mick could feel it reaching for him, invisible fingers seeking to pull him close, wanting to devour his soul too. But he wouldn’t let it have him.
He turned away, opened the door of the speeding ambulance, and stepped into the evening.
A man flew from the back of the ambulance into the bonnet of the car in front, smashing the windscreen and rolling over the roof. He dropped under the wheels of the limo in which Murdoch was riding, making it lurch so hard that everyone inside was jolted from their seats. Murdoch’s head cracked against the ceiling but he didn’t even notice. He watched the other car veer off into the hard shoulder of the motorway, striking the barrier and cartwheeling into the field beyond.