Don’t listen, Brick ordered himself. But it was there, lodged in his brain, an inescapable truth that seared through everything else. There was something inside him the same way there was something inside Schiller, inside all of them, fighting its way to the surface. It had started with the headache, that maddening thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump. The noise had been something trying to get in, something knocking at his door. And it had succeeded. It was here.
‘I don’t know why we were chosen,’ Rilke went on, fixing her doll’s eyes on them all in turn. ‘But we were. Give it time and you’ll see.’
‘It can’t be,’ said Chris, crumpled against the banister.
The others too were shaking their heads. He could see it in their faces, though. He could see that they believed.
‘Demons aren’t real, Rilke,’ Cal said without conviction. ‘This isn’t real, it’s a . . . a . . .’
Schiller was clawing at the window again. He ripped away the board, hurling it across the room so hard that it impaled itself in the far wall. Sunlight streamed in, seeming to funnel around the burning shape. The effect was dizzying, making it look as though he was burning inside a pocket of darkness.
Rilke smiled.
‘These aren’t demons,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why we’re here, but it isn’t for something evil. It is for something good. Something incredible.’
‘What?’ asked Jade, her red-rimmed eyes swimming.
‘Don’t you see?’ Rilke said. ‘After everything that’s happened to you, isn’t it clear?’
Brick screwed his eyes shut, fighting the swell of emotion that churned up from his gut. He saw the people at the garage, grunting and howling and barking like mindless animals as they chased him. These were the people he had hated for so long, who had hated him. The idiotic, annoying masses who’d been making his life a misery since long before all this had started. Wasn’t it right that they should be punished?
Not Lisa, though. Not her. She hadn’t hated him.
‘Don’t fight it, Brick,’ said Rilke. ‘You know what we have to do.’
He could feel her thoughts in his own, planting a seed in the flesh of his brain. He knew what she wanted. And it felt so right, so pure. It felt more real than any other thought he’d had in his life. People were bad, people did terrible things. Humanity needed to be purged.
He recoiled at the thought, his mind fighting it. That couldn’t be right, that wasn’t right. Rilke had made a mistake.
‘Don’t resist it,’ she said, her whisper detonating inside his head, a shock that swept away his reason. ‘You can’t say no, Brick. It’s why we’re here, it’s what we have to do.’
He felt something warm and wet trickling from his nose, the taste of salt and copper on his tongue.
‘Don’t listen to me, listen to them,’ Rilke said. ‘Listen to what they’re trying to tell you.’
It was trying to tell him something, whatever it was that sat inside his soul. There were no words, just an instinctive feeling which burrowed upwards. We’ve been chosen, but not for this, for something else.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said, his voice faint and distant like a muffled recording of himself. ‘That’s not it.’
‘It is,’ she hissed. ‘If you don’t see it, then you’re no better than the rest of them. If you don’t understand, then you’ll die with the rest of them.’
Schiller screamed, the flames fading like a broken jet engine. He collapsed, his second skin flickering on and off, only the fiery sockets of his eyes still fierce.
‘What we are is a miracle,’ Rilke said. ‘What lives inside us is holy, it is right. Those of you who accept it will be saved. Those of you too blind and too scared to comprehend what is happening will perish. You have to make a choice, right now, or it will be too late.’
‘But what is inside us, Rilke?’ asked Jade, taking a step towards the other girl. Blood dripped from her nose, and her eyes were wide, innocent, trusting.
‘Jade,’ said Cal. ‘Rilke, let her be.’
‘I want to know,’ Jade said. ‘Don’t you? Isn’t that—’ she gestured into the restaurant but she could find no words to describe what she saw. ‘Isn’t that proof enough?’
Cal wiped a hand across his face, smearing away crimson tears.
‘What are they, these things inside us?’ Jade asked again.
‘You already know,’ Rilke said. ‘You all do.’
Jade smiled, like someone hypnotised. She glanced at Cal, then at Chris, and finally at Brick. He thought he could see right into her head, into the broken pieces of her mind. Then she walked into the restaurant, collapsing to her knees in the middle of the room.
‘Come on,’ yelled Cal. He grabbed Adam’s arm, dragging the boy towards the stairs. ‘Let’s go.’
Brick didn’t move. He wanted nothing more than to be outside, to be away from this madness. But still Rilke’s voice clamoured inside his skull, utterly wrong and yet utterly convincing. He looked at Schiller, bathed in flames. Was this his fate too, if he stayed? Could he really walk away from such a gift?
‘Last chance, Cal,’ said Rilke, calling down the sweeping stairs.
‘Screw you, Rilke,’ he shouted back. ‘Go to hell.’
Chris was already stumbling after him, but Marcus wasn’t moving. His face wore the same look of rapture as Jade’s.
‘Last chance, Harry,’ Rilke said to Brick, and the sound of his real name sent a surge of poisonous euphoria vomiting up his throat. He almost threw himself to his knees right there, ready to embrace her. ‘Listen to their call, make your choice.’
He took a step towards her. Marcus was moving too, laughing softly to himself as he pushed into the restaurant and knelt down before Schiller.
‘You know what they are,’ Rilke said. ‘How can you say no?’
Brick opened his mouth and let out a hoarse, desperate scream – a noise that seemed to come not from him but from the thing inside him. Then he turned, falling over himself and crawling backwards towards the stairs, tumbling down the first few before he recovered. He slid down them, never taking his eyes off Rilke. She shook her head, her expression drenched in a profound sadness.
‘How could you say no?’ she asked again, then she closed the restaurant door. He turned and ran, tearing through the foyer and down the corridor, pushing through the fire door so hard that the chains ripped out a lock of his hair.
He fell in the dirt, his whole body shivering in the blazing sun. And all the while the truth of it was a beacon inside his skull, burning with white heat, the thing inside him issuing a clarion call that he could not ignore.
No, not a thing. Not a ghost or a demon either.
It was an angel.
Cal
Furyville, 4.42 p.m.
Cal caught up with Daisy by the carousel, calling out until she staggered to a halt. When she looked round it was as though she didn’t see him, as though the burning boy had blinded her.
‘Daisy,’ he said, running over, wrapping his arms around her.
She blinked, her eyes swimming in and out of focus and eventually finding him. He held her tight. He didn’t know what to say.
After a moment or two he heard heavy footsteps on the gravel. Chris walking down the path, Adam treading on his shadow. Daisy saw them too. She peeled away from Cal’s grip and ran over to Adam, hugging him. He didn’t react. He didn’t even seem to notice she was there.
‘Tell me Marcus and Brick didn’t go in,’ Cal said. Chris shook his head.
‘Marcus, yeah. Brick’s back there puking his guts up.’
Cal put his hands in his hair, clenching so hard it hurt. He wanted to rip the top of his head off, pull out the memories of everything that had just happened. It didn’t even matter if it killed him. Better dead than this.
‘What happened in there, Cal?’ Chris said. ‘What was wrong with that boy?’
He’s not a boy, Cal thought. Not any more. He’s something else.
But he wouldn’t let himself
say what, even though the word flashed up before him like a signal flare in the darkness of his thoughts. He didn’t need to speak, because Chris plucked it right out of his head.
‘Angels?’ the boy said. ‘That’s insane, man.’
‘Forget it,’ spat Cal. Ha, yeah, just forget it, forget that you saw a boy covered in fire flying around the restaurant, it’s not important.
He ran back the way he’d come, turning the corner to see Brick on his hands and knees outside the door. He wasn’t being sick, he was sobbing, which was a million times worse. Cal went to him, putting a hand on his back. Brick glanced up, his face so pale that his freckles looked like pen marks. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to – they saw in each other’s eyes the truth of what Rilke had told them.
‘Come on, mate,’ Cal said eventually, holding out his hand. Brick took it, hauling himself to his feet. They had taken a dozen steps back towards the carousel before he let go.
Cal collapsed on the steps, the same place they’d been sitting only a few minutes ago but which was now on the other side of time. He put his head in his hands, trying not to think. Brick sat down next to him.
‘What—’
‘Don’t,’ Cal interrupted Chris before he could finish. If they didn’t talk about it, then maybe it might not have been real. ‘Don’t say it, Chris, not now, not ever.’
‘But we have to—’
‘We don’t,’ Cal snapped, looking up. Chris was sitting on the path. Daisy and Adam were next to him, both of them staring at nothing. ‘Look, there’s something weird going on, sure, something we don’t understand. But I can promise you this, Rilke doesn’t have a clue what it is either, she’s just guessing, like us. Which is why everything she says is total bull.’
Nobody argued, but nobody looked very convinced.
‘Jade, Marcus, they’ll see that soon enough. They’ll be back. And we need to keep our heads screwed on straight, yeah? We can’t afford to start falling apart now.’
‘So what do we do?’ Chris asked after a moment.
‘We’re all exhausted. We’ve all been through more in a few days than anyone should have to go through in their whole life. None of us has eaten much, we’re probably all bordering on crazy anyway.’
‘That was no hallucination,’ said Brick.
‘I’m not saying it was. But it was dark in there, yeah, and, I don’t know . . . We just need to stick to the plan, we need to get some food. We’ll be able to think of something when we’ve had a chance to eat.’
He looked around. Chris was nodding. Brick shrugged. The idea of going for food seemed alien to Cal. The idea of doing anything seemed alien to him now. Yet they had to do something or fall back into the madness of what they had just seen.
‘Need to get the hell away from this place anyway,’ Brick croaked. ‘I never want to come back here again.’
‘Daisy?’ Cal asked. She seemed to stir, her eyes drifting up.
‘I want to go home,’ she said.
‘I know. We all do. Just not yet. Not yet.’
They sat there, listening to the ocean running its ceaseless course against the shore. Even the gulls had fallen silent.
‘So what is the plan?’ Chris asked.
‘We get the car,’ Cal replied. ‘Your car. We go to the factory. We’ll work out the rest when we get there.’
They were out of the park in five minutes. As soon as Cal squeezed free from the laurel hedge he felt the warmth of the day settle back inside him. It was brighter out here, like the park had been drowned in shade, caught beneath the weight of a dirty big cloud. It was easier to forget.
He held up a branch so that the others could push through, Daisy and Adam first, then Chris and Brick. He could hear them all taking a sigh of relief when they stepped into the shimmering haze of the empty street.
‘Maybe someone will have fixed it,’ Daisy said as they started walking along the front of the park. ‘Maybe people won’t hate us any more.’
And it was tempting to believe it – something in the fresh sea breeze that curled over the fence, ruffling their hair, which made it seem like everything might be okay. It was an illusion, of course, a fantasy, but it still felt good.
‘Maybe,’ Cal said. ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’
He looked up, seeing Brick’s graffiti on the Fursville sign. The glaring face looked down at him with its dead ‘x’ eyes, making him shudder. What if they got to the factory and it was full of people? What if they got trapped? One mistake is all it would take for them all to die.
Yet the alternative was worse. The alternative was going back up to the restaurant and falling to their knees in front of Rilke and her burning brother.
They reached the car park and walked through the damaged section of fence. The Jag was rammed into the hedge behind the shed, its tail end glinting through a mask of branches, its boot still open. At least it would be fast, he thought. If they had to make a getaway in a Punto or a Fiesta they’d definitely be screwed. Brick jogged ahead, pulling away the foliage.
‘Got the keys?’ Brick asked. Chris patted his pockets, pulling a face. ‘You kidding me?’
‘Yeah, I’m kidding you,’ said Chris, pulling out the fob and unlocking the car. ‘Calm down.’
Brick’s expression was so sour that Cal couldn’t help but laugh. Daisy too, chuckling into her hand.
‘Seriously?’ Brick asked. ‘You think this is funny?’
‘Just your face, mate,’ said Cal, and God did it feel good to smile again.
‘Yeah? We’ll see if you’re still giggling when your face is under my backside,’ Brick stuttered, the stupid insult making them all laugh harder. ‘Just shut up,’ he said, but his eyes showed a glimmer of light. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Come on,’ said Cal, pushing the boot shut. ‘Before Brick sits on my face. Shall I drive?’
‘Uh uh,’ said Chris, jiggling towards the car and sliding behind the wheel. ‘My car, my rules.’
‘Shotgun!’ Cal and Brick yelled together, both of them making a break for the passenger door. Brick got there first, ripping it open and diving in head first. He manoeuvred his gangly body round, extending two middle fingers towards Cal.
‘Looks like all the babies are in the back,’ he said with a grin as Cal kicked the door shut.
‘Up yours,’ he said. He held the rear door open so that Daisy and Adam could clamber inside, getting in after them and planting his knees into Brick’s seat. The bigger boy’s response was to slide his chair all the way back. ‘Hey, no fair,’ Cal yelled. ‘Chris, tell him.’
‘Behave,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you stop messing around. And put your seat belts on.’
That did it, all of them doubled over with laughter – even Adam, caught up in the sudden surge, his eyes shining. It could go on forever, Cal thought, this golden light which melted up through each fibre of his body, which made every single particle in the car seem to glow. It wasn’t coming from him, it was flowing from somewhere else, a current of warmth which spread from him to Daisy to Adam to Chris to Brick and back again. Whatever this thing was inside them, it was healing them. It would keep them strong and it would keep them safe.
Cal wiped the tears from his eyes, his cheeks aching. He looked at the others, and in that moment of quiet they seemed to know each other like they had been together for an eternity.
‘You ready?’ he asked.
They all nodded. Chris put the Jag in reverse, revving the engine.
‘Then let’s do this.’
Rilke
Furyville, 5.15 p.m.
Rilke could hear the faint growl of a car engine, rising and then fading. She knew who it was, she could almost see it through Daisy’s eyes – the five of them inside the big silver car, the fat boy driving. They were laughing. Laughing. The sound of it, echoing almost silently through her thoughts, made her blood boil.
She knew where they were going, too. She could pluck that
thought out of the storm of emotions inside their minds, as easily as taking a sweet from a bag. It was a sign that whatever was inside her was growing in strength. It had to be. Soon she’d be like Schiller, gripped with a holy fire and ready to burn down the world.
He sat before her now, and even though he was no longer alight, even though he was slumped and loose-limbed like a marionette with its strings cut, she could feel the energy pulsating from him. He was still cold, the carpet beneath him a lake of ice. He stared at the floor with two sets of eyes – the old eyes she knew so well, and two pits of fire which sat over them, shimmering gently.
Marcus and Jade were there too. They were both on their knees, gazing at Schiller as though they had just seen the face of God. It wasn’t too far from the truth, she guessed, except they both had this same gift. It just hadn’t been opened yet. They all had it. She’d seen it inside the man with the shotgun, the one she’d killed – the creature of flame inside him which had died when he died. The ones who fled had it too. She was disappointed that so many had run from their responsibility. It was no surprise that Brick had gone, Cal too, blinded by his own self-righteousness. But she had wanted Daisy to stay. Of all of them – Schiller aside, of course – Daisy was closest to changing, to becoming what they were all destined to become.
Jade turned round. Her eyes were wide and wet, her copper-coloured hair like a pyre in the sunlight from the broken window. She was the kind of weak creature that Rilke would usually hate. But she had been chosen too. She was her sister now, as much as Schiller was her brother.
‘What are we, Rilke?’ Jade asked.
‘Angels,’ Rilke replied. Jade cocked her head, her mouth hanging open. It seemed an age before she spoke again.
‘How can that be?’