‘No idea,’ she replied for him. ‘I’m having a hard time believing everything you’ve said, and I’ve seen it for myself.’
‘Well there’s a pretty good chance they’re about to see it first hand, too,’ I said, nodding at the kid on the floor. His face was growing darker, like a dead flower decomposing in the sun. ‘How is he?’
‘Getting worse by the second,’ Zee replied.
I felt hot breath on the back of my neck and turned to see the security guard there. She was short and stocky, and her face was fierce, but she had a sliver of warmth in her eyes.
‘Feeling better?’ she asked. It took me a moment to realise she was talking about our toilet break, and I nodded. ‘Good, ’cos I got a funny feeling things are gonna get weird.’ She leant in, whispering conspiratorially. ‘That man, he’s not a priest.’
‘Seriously?’ I asked, a little too loudly.
‘He’s the caretaker,’ the security guard went on. ‘I work here sometimes, do the night shift; I’ve seen him before but wearing overalls and carrying a mop. He’s real dyed-in-the-wool, right-wing, bible-spouting head case, if his talks down in the staff room are anything to go by. The bishop would normally get here about now, but something tells me he ain’t coming to church today. He lives over in the palace; he’d never get across town, not now.’
‘So what’s he doing?’ Zee asked, staring at the man in black robes. The guard shrugged her hefty shoulders, standing straight, massaging her lower back with both hands.
‘I don’t know, and that’s what worries me. He’s started spouting on about the Armageddon or the Apocalypse or somesuch. Trouble is, these people’, she gestured across the church with her hand, ‘are divine nutjobs too and he’s stirring them up something wicked. Most were here for an early Sunday prayer or two; the cathedral’s doors are never locked.’
‘They’re locked now,’ I said.
She nodded, her chins doubling in size and number. ‘We heard noises out there when you were downstairs doing your business. I don’t know what they were, sounded like feedin’ time at the zoo.’ She was fiddling with her holster, popping the stud and clicking it back in. ‘Saw something, too, out on the plaza. Looked like … Well, I don’t know what it looked like.’
‘A berserker,’ Zee finished. ‘Might have been the one from Twofields.’
‘We all agreed it would be better if we locked up,’ the guard said. ‘If what you told us is true, then there’s nothing out there but trouble.’
She peeked at the priest, still prostrating himself at the altar.
‘Trouble out there, trouble in here too, if you ask me. Now I know you kids have been in prison, but you seem all right. I never approved of that bloody penitentiary anyway. Just watch out for yourselves, okay. In my opinion, there’s nowhere more dangerous than a church on the eve of the End of Days. ’Specially if people think you’re on the wrong side.’
A shadow swept across the pews, a fleeting shape forged of light and colour that fluttered from the altar to the doors in the blink of an eye. Every head in the cathedral shot up in time to see a silhouette scamper over the window ledge outside, vanishing just as fast to leave nothing but the clack of feet on stone and a high-pitched howl, ebbing into silence.
‘Think they know we’re in here?’ Simon asked. Nobody answered, but I didn’t think they did. If those freaks had any idea there were human hearts beating warm blood in the cathedral they’d be in here like a shot. They were probably just using the building as a lookout point. If we were quiet, they might leave us alone.
But from the looks of things, quiet wasn’t going to be an option.
‘This is not a time for talking,’ bellowed the priest-caretaker from his altar, his hands held high, beseeching the cathedral’s invisible ceiling. ‘This is a time for praying. Call upon the Lord to carry us in His arms, to keep us safe from the Great Annihilation. Together we shall offer Him a sign of our faith; together we shall rise into His kingdom.’
‘I ain’t rising into anyone’s kingdom,’ muttered Simon.
But most of the crowd had taken to their pews, or were on their knees in the centre aisle, their mouths moving in time with the priest’s as he recited something from the bible. His voice grew more shrill with each verse, specks of spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes even wider now, not blinking. I heard scraping from above us, like there was something running on the roof, running fast.
And the kid on the floor was getting worse by the second. He began to cough, the man with the glasses lifting the boy’s head just as a fountain of black liquid exploded from his mouth. It spattered over the uneven tiles, seeming to squirm and wriggle like a puddle of beetles, red flecks sparkling. The kid’s throat had swollen to the same size as his head, his breathing wheezy and ragged. His hands were bigger than they had been, poking out from the pile of coats like rubber gloves filled with tar. He lurched, hard enough to pull the pew towards him. The plastic cuff gouged into his mottled arm, letting loose another trail of nectar.
‘Think you can loosen this?’ Glasses Man asked, but the security guard just shook her head. I didn’t blame her, those pews weighed a ton and it had to have taken some strength to move them.
Another shape landed on the window ledge, slipping for a moment as it tried to gain purchase. Somebody in the cathedral screamed, but there was a hand over his mouth before the noise could really get going. We all stood there, as still as the statues around us, until with a guttural roar the shape launched itself from the ledge back down to the street below.
Almost instantly the impostor priest’s shrill prayers continued, deafening after the silence.
‘The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulphur!’
‘Hey,’ the security guard hissed, firing the word at the priest. He showed no sign of hearing her, calling out with even more force as he talked about a white knight and a golden sword. She tried again, louder this time. ‘Hey! You! Shut up for a minute or they’re gonna hear us.’
The priest kept talking, each sentence capped with a chorus of ‘Amens’ from his flock. The hum of voices was swelling like a tide, filling the cathedral with white noise, threatening to spill from the windows into the streets beyond.
‘Stop it!’ the security guard went on, her own voice now too loud. ‘Just stop it. You’re only the bloody cleaner, for God’s sake.’
At this the man’s eyes – so wide, so motionless they could have belonged to a corpse – rotated in their dry sockets towards her. There was no expression on his face, but beneath that, in the way his jaw muscles danced, the way the tendons in his neck bulged, I could see a fury of insanity and delusion fit to burst.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I am more than that. I am God’s servant, called here today to lead His flock into the new world. He has appointed me his earthly messenger, and through me you shall all be saved.’
‘Christ, who does this whacko remind you of?’ Simon asked. And it was true. What he was saying now could have come right from the mouth of Alfred Furnace himself, without all the religious stuff, of course. The priest turned his lunatic gaze our way.
‘Not everyone can be saved,’ he said, his voice high and wavering, like a child’s. ‘Judgement Day is approaching, the Lord is testing us, for only the most faithful shall pass through the Valley of Death.’
‘He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about,’ Zee said. ‘Can you take him, d’you think?’
‘I can,’ Simon said, edging forward. The priest pointed at us with one bony finger.
‘He is testing us with these demons,’ he screamed. ‘The devil’s spawn who have only today broken free from the bowels of hell. They are not part of His flock; they are not destined for the Kingdom of the Light. Seize them, my children. For only by slaying the legions of the Beast will we be judged worthy.’
‘Oh boy,’ said Zee, using the pew in front to pull himself up. ‘Here we go again.’
‘You’re insane!’ I shouted at the crowd. ‘We’re
not demons, we’re kids, like your own!’
But my silver eyes must have looked pretty unholy in the dim light of the cathedral, because people were already easing themselves out of their seats and advancing up the aisle. I bunched my fists. I didn’t want to hurt a bunch of pensioners, but now that the doors were locked there was nowhere to run.
The promise of violence was charging the nectar up inside me, my body an engine about to be shunted into gear. I fought it, taking deep breaths, trying to stay calm, but black veins were already throbbing in the corners of my vision, common sense and self-control fading into the background as the poison turned my thoughts to murder.
I clamped my eyes shut, the outline of the massive cross of the altar splashed across my retinas. It didn’t fade, it expanded against the backdrop of my eyelids, morphing from a crucifix into what looked like a tower. Yes, it was a tower. It took shape like a photographic negative being developed, windows and doors and a spire slowly emerging. And all around the tower the night seemed to flicker, sparks dancing as if the world was on fire.
Demons? said a voice, that same age-old, ground-shaking whisper. Alfred Furnace, once more in my head. Show him the truth. Show him that you are not a creature of his god, nor of his devil. Show him that you are a work of man, a genius creation, one of the solders of the Fatherland who has claimed this time as his own.
I realised I was groaning, each word splitting my skull open a little wider. I opened my eyes, saw the flesh of my arm begin to swell even more, the nectar that raged through my mind also wreaking havoc with my body.
‘No,’ I mumbled, poison rushing up my throat, into my mouth, almost gagging me. I spat a mouthful, not caring where it went. The image was still there, the tower layered over reality like a transparency. And I saw it again, that creature perched on the spire, a beast that could have been a devil, or maybe a god, baying at the flames, preparing to unleash a nightmare upon the world.
Go on, Alex, show this pathetic man his future. Were those words coming from the creature I saw, that giant of twisted flesh? Was that thing really Alfred Furnace? It was impossible to tell. Take him by the throat and show him the true religion – not a benevolent deity but a new race.
Another noise spilled from my mouth, more a growl now than a groan. I felt my new arm itch and I ripped the tattered sleeve of the hoodie away so that I could dig my fingers into the pus-bloated skin. It was roasting, so hot that it felt as if I’d put my good hand against a grill. I pulled it away, my face crushed into a grimace of confusion.
‘See their true form!’ the priest spat, pointing at my arm, almost jumping on the spot. ‘They are demons. “Take your son, Abraham, sacrifice him as a burnt offering.” It is so written, so shall it be. Burn them, and earn your place by His side.’
The priest and his flock were still coming, faster now, urged on by the panic in the man’s voice.
‘Take one more step and I’ll shoot your heads right off,’ the security guard screamed. Her pistol was out, shaking so much she could have been standing on a fun-house walkway at the fair. The crowd must have sensed her fear because most were still advancing – men and women who yesterday had probably been loving parents, who had cuddled their grandchildren, who now had that same psychotic gleam in their eyes. ‘Stay back, I’m warning you.’
I saw a man behind her – tweed jacket, white hair –but I didn’t realise what he was doing until it was too late. Even as he lifted the candlestick I was running, leaping over a pew and stretching out a hand to block the strike. I was too slow, the huge silver club thumping down on the guard’s head, her hat crumpling. She dropped like a ninepin, wearing a look of surprise that was almost comical. The man snatched the gun from her hand before she hit the floor. He saw me coming and pulled the trigger, the shot zinging over my head. I slid to my knees, hands held up in surrender. At this range, if he fired again, he couldn’t miss.
For the few seconds it took the pistol shot to fade nobody moved. Then the priest strode forth from his altar, hissing his orders through an idiot grin.
‘Yes, the time has come to act. We shall honour you, Lord. We shall sacrifice in your name.’
He held up his hands to the heavens, foam spilling from the corners of his mouth.
‘We shall burn them.’
Burnt Offerings
I never thought there would be a time when I wished myself back in Furnace.
But as I knelt on the floor and watched that crowd approach, fear and desperation turning their faces into cruel masks, as I stared at the man who held me at gunpoint, knowing he would shoot me dead if I so much as moved, I found myself wishing just that.
It wasn’t that I would be safer in the prison. Of course not – these men and women were just that: men and women. They were weaker than me, slower than me. They were nowhere near as dangerous as the rats and the berserkers that had stalked the tunnels beneath general population. They were nowhere near as wicked as the wheezers and their filthy blades. And they’d have all run screaming, or dropped dead from heart failure, if they’d so much as glimpsed the warden.
No, it was something else that made me pray for Furnace, pray to be back in my cell. Because down there, so deep that no amount of screaming would ever reach the surface, I had a memory of the world as a place where good things could happen. Even though we were buried alive I could still imagine life up here, people going about their business, smiling, laughing. Even though there was a small corner of the earth that was rotting away in madness and bloodshed, life still went on above us, it would always go on.
Now, however, nowhere was safe. There were no more smiles up here, no more laughter. That dead core was spreading outwards, infecting everything. It had only been a few hours and already these people were broken beyond repair. They’d had a glimpse of hell outside their window and their sanity had been snapped in two as easily as a dry twig. And they hadn’t seen the half of it, not yet. What would they do when they finally set forth from this cathedral and saw the streets running red, the monsters that were treading this city into bone dust?
It suddenly stuck me how easy this would be for Alfred Furnace, if what he had said was true. All he had to do was rock this one city to its knees and the cancer of fear would spread. The world would crumble all by itself.
‘Secure them,’ the priest was saying as he strode forward. He stepped over the kid on the floor, the boy’s face resembling a rough carving in mahogany, lumps like woody knots bleeding black sap. The man with glasses hunched over him, glancing at us with an apologetic expression. I knew that look, the one that said he was on our side but too afraid to do anything about it. I’d worn it enough times. ‘Fetch the lamps.’
Simon grunted, started walking towards the priest, but the old man with the gun lifted it towards the ceiling and fired again. I heard the bullet ricochet off the stone, scraps raining down over the pews.
The kid on the floor reacted to the shot, his eyes snapping open, bottomless pits devoid of colour. He stared at the ceiling, his lips peeling back to reveal stained teeth, his back arching as if he was in agony.
The smoking barrel dropped right at Simon, freezing him in his tracks. We were all standing in the centre aisle, the armed man closest to the doors, the rest of the crowd clustered around the priest, and the four of us in between them.
‘Time is short,’ the priest said. ‘We must exorcise the spirits from this child by slaying those who have engineered his possession.’
‘This isn’t necessary,’ Zee quavered. ‘We’re not demons.’
‘You and the girl can stand back,’ the priest said. ‘Your eyes don’t shine with the light of the devil. Your souls can be saved.’
Zee started to argue but Lucy grabbed his arm, pulling him away. He looked at me, arms held up, mouthing, What can I do? I shook my head, warning him to stay away. Then I met Simon’s eye, saw exactly what he was thinking. Let them get close enough, then give them hell. We closed ranks, standing shoulder to shoulder as we had so many times before
.
An elderly woman had run to the altar, lifting a ceremonial lamp from the cloth. She hurried back with it, handing it to the priest. He walked closer, ten steps away, then five, before coming to a halt. He made the sign of the cross over his chest, kissing the base of his thumb. All the time he circled the lamp in his hand, the oil sloshing inside.
‘I really wouldn’t do this if I were you,’ I said. ‘I’m sure God doesn’t take too kindly to killing kids.’
‘You’ve never read the Old Testament,’ Zee muttered.
‘You are not children,’ the priest went on, eyes bulging so much they looked as if they’d pop right out of his head.
‘They’re not children!’ somebody behind him yelled. The way they were acting reminded me more than anything of inmates inside the prison, the pack mentality that spread like wildfire, devouring common sense and reason. Right now these people were animals. They had their leader and they’d follow him into the heart of madness because it was safer there than standing alone.
‘Easy,’ came a voice from behind the crowd. I recognised Glasses Man, his words lost behind a deep growl of pain, like an injured animal. ‘Hey, guys, I think he’s waking up. Can I get some help here?’
But all eyes were on us. I backed up, feeling the hot barrel of the gun sting my neck. This was crazy, there was no way they could just burn us alive. But even as I watched somebody else had fetched a candle, a small man, younger than the rest, clutching it to his chest with both hands like a cross to ward off vampires.
‘Give me strength, Lord,’ the priest wailed. ‘Place your hand on me and give me the courage to do what must be done. Accept this sacrifice, trust us to kill these devils in your name.’
He unscrewed the top of the lamp and held it up high, drops of oil spilling down his arm and onto the stone. Some of the crowd were stepping away now, their sense of reality returning.
‘Wait,’ said one woman near the back. ‘You’re not actually going to do this, are you?’