by Stephen Laws
But the rage would not come. The rage that had eaten at his guts for so long, and had launched him at Sergeant Lawrence—who even Jimmy knew was a good man at heart—would not serve him now.
The reception doors juddered open again. The storm breathed its ragged, ice-breath into the corridors. Rohmer pushed through, followed by Duvall. Rohmer zeroed in on Pearce straight away.
“The caretaker’s room in the basement. Where is it?”
Gilbert stood between them. From his viewpoint in his seat, enervated by this strange sapped feeling, Jimmy could see that Gilbert’s previous nervousness had now reached a new pitch. He clutched at Rohmer’s lapels.
“lt’s a Return, isn’t it, Rohmer? You’ve been lying to me all along.”
“Get out of the way,” snapped Rohmer, pushing him to one side as he moved towards Pearce. “The basement room?”
“What the hell happened outside?” asked Pearce.
“The basement room. Now! Where is it?”
The reception doors opened again and Jimmy felt the ice-cold blast on his face with’ curious detachment as Cardiff pushed through.
“Down the corridor. First door on the right,” said Pearce. “But you won’t get me going into that basement again after those bloody noises we heard down there. Thought my eardrums would burst.”
Rohmer turned quickly, striding away down the corridor with Duvall close behind. But now Gilbert was fumbling at Pearce’s lapels, eyes glittering with what Pearce could now see was naked fear.
“Noises? What noises? You mean screaming voices like we heard before, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“No . . . look, get off me you crazy old bastard.”
“What kind of noises? Please, you must tell me.”
Pearce shoved Gilbert away from him. “Noises like . . . explosions. Like thunderclaps, echoing over and over. Cardiff heard them too. Blew the bloody windows in downstairs.”
“This caretaker’s room .. . the basement . . . is downstairs? Below ground?”
“Yes, but . . .”
Gilbert backed away, face white, fumbling at his gloves again. “He was lying. He’s known all along.”
Somewhere in the corridor, the basement door slammed and Jimmy watched everything as if it was taking place on a stage, and he was a member of the audience. He watched as Gilbert exchanged a look with an equally shell-shocked Frye . . . and then hurried quickly towards the reception door.
Cardiff seized him by both arms, preventing his escape.
“Let me out of here, you bloody fool!”
“Why? What the hell is happening now?” snapped Cardiff directly in his face. Gilbert tried to push past him, but Cardiff held firm. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what . . .”
“Look . . . look. . .” Gilbert ceased struggling, realising that Cardiff would not let him go until he knew more. Gilbert forced himself to become calm, drew a deep breath and then the words came out in a torrent. “Rohmer is lying. He must have told you about a Darkfall back there. Maybe not everything . . . but he’s lying when he says the Darkfall has passed. It hasn’t passed. It’s still happening.”
“Oh my Good Christ . . .” said Frye.
“Those noises,” continued Gilbert. “The explosive noises you heard in the basement. Well that’s symptomatic of a Darkfall strike.”
“We’re in a Secondary Darkfall?” said Frye in sudden realisation, and a voice that wavered.
“A what?” snapped Cardiff.
“We’ve experience of two kinds of Darkfall,” continued Gilbert, still looking to find a way around Cardiff, the words still spilling out of him. “A Primary Darkfall is where the storm builds to a pitch and there is one strike. There may or may not be a disappearance depending on the circumstances. But there is also a Secondary Darkfall. We’ve only had experience of two—that’s where the effect continues to build, continues to escalate, with continuous Darkfall strikes. The effects can be horrendous. On both of the previous occasions, the area was evacuated and isolated until the storm blew itself apart. That’s what’s happening now . . . and why we have to get away from here. The noises you heard—the explosive noises—were the acoustic effects of a second Darkfall strike. That’s when your second disappearance occurred. And that second strike means that this is a Secondary Darkfall. So let me past—the Darkfall’s still active!”
“Then why didn’t we get sucked into the building like the others?” said Cardiff, still holding on to him. “We were here. We touched things, were in flesh-contact down there in the basement. But the Darkfall didn’t affect us.”
Continually frustrated in his attempts to get past Cardiff, Gilbert exploded in rage.
“Because you were below ground! Look . . . we’ve seen the early report on this incident. There was a caretaker here, in the basement, when the first strike occurred. The man who raised the alarm . . .”
“Beaton?”
“Yes, yes, yes. The reason he survived the first strike is the reason that you all escaped the second. You were below ground when it happened. And we do know that for some gravitational reason we’ve yet to fathom, the absorption effect is nullified below ground level. Those outside the building remained unaffected by the strike. Now, let me past. . .”
“We’re here,” gasped Frye, still hardly daring to accept the fact. “In a Secondary Darkfall. But why? Why would Rohmer withhold that information from us. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he endanger himself?”
“There is no danger,” said Rohmer. And they all turned to see that Rohmer and Duvall had returned. They were standing listening in the corridor.
Duvall was carrying two plastic containers. Cardiff could read the label on one of them: “Paraffin”.
“You knew that there was still Darkfall activity when you sent us in?” Gilbert whirled to face him.
“Yes, there were readings.”
“For God’s sake, why?” bleated Frye, returning to the window and looking out briefly into the night at the blurred wreck of the car in the forecourt. “That’s a Returner out there, Rohmer.”
“Duvall is here to handle it.”
“But why? We must get away from here.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Rohmer smiled. “We’re going to ride out the storm.”
“What’s a Returner?” asked Cardiff.
“Sometimes,” said Rohmer, “they come back. We don’t know yet how it happens. The inert structures, the buildings, whatever . . . can occasionally . . .” He hunted for a word. “Can . . . cough out what they’ve absorbed. Sometimes literally on the spot where the absorption occurred. On other occasions, people are spewed out into the atmosphere and turn up hundreds of miles away. Their molecular structure is changed. That may account for their ability to survive such an ejection. It’s been happening for hundreds of years. Maybe you’ve heard of Kasper Hauser in Germany? Then again . . . maybe not. It’s already happened twice with your office-block incident. Once with Eleanor Parkins, in London and twice with . . .”
“Vincent Saville,” finished Cardiff.
“Coughed out again,” said Rohmer. “Sometimes they’re dead . . . sometimes they’re alive, if you can call it that. But when they return, they’re . . . how shall I say it? . . . not themselves.”
“Transmuted,” said Gilbert. “Their molecular structure is transmuted with the inert material in which they were absorbed.”
“And what the hell does all that mean?” asked Pearce.
“It means,” said Duvall holding up one of the paraffin cans, “that we have to burn what we found in that car wreck outside.”
“It may be still alive,” said Rohmer matter-of-factly. “And if it is, things could become . . . fraught, shall we say.” I
Duvall moved forward with the two paraffin cans.
“The car,” said Pearce. “I hear what you’re saying about bodies being sucked into walls . . . and sometimes spat out again. But how does a car fit into all of this? You trying to say a car was sucked into the bu
ilding? Human flesh, you said . . .”
“I don’t know,” said Rohmer. “There’s a lot we don’t know. That’s why we’re here. Duvall—see to that business outside.”
“I want to see,” said Pearce, without taking his eyes off Rohmer. “I hear these fairy tales, but I can’t swallow them. I want to see what’s outside in the car.”
“Want to give it a parking ticket?” said Jimmy from his chair.
“Quiet, Jimmy,” said Cardiff. “Okay, Pearce. If that’s what you want. But you won’t need to burn that thing, Rohmer. It’s already been burned.”
“Humour me,” said Rohmer and gestured to Duvall again. The storm intruded once more as Pearce and Duvall exited. Gilbert and Frye watched them leave and for an instant it seemed as if Gilbert wanted to dash out after them again. Rohmer took him by the coat sleeve, leading him to one of the upholstered seats beside Jimmy.
“Why, Rohmer?” asked Gilbert. “Why didn’t you tell us that this is a Secondary Darkfall? What are we doing here?”
“You’re both here to assess and observe,” said Rohmer. “But you’re also weak and you frighten easily. There have been two strikes here, that’s true. But you know that the accelerating effect on a Secondary Darkfall starts slowly and gains momentum. There hasn’t been any danger to us. And there won’t be any danger.”
“Thanks for the warning, Rohmer,” said Cardiff. “There may have been no danger to you. But there certainly was to us, you bastard. If any one of us had been touching a wall above ground we’d have been part of the bloody architecture by now.”
“But you should have told me . . .” continued Gilbert.
“And me.” Frye had moved back to the windows again, to watch Duvall and Pearce battling their way through the storm to the car wreck. *
“I needed you both,” said Rohmer. “You’re the best we have. And I didn’t have time to pussyfoot around. As for you, Cardiff. You were sent instructions to evacuate but your own computer equipment was unable to receive our instructions and advice, as you very well know. The Secondary Darkfall effect escalates. There has been no danger to you or your people since the second strike. There won’t be another strike for a further forty minutes or so at least, which is why I want you and Pearce out of here now. You’re not part of this investigation.”
“And me?” asked Jimmy.
“As I said before. You stay.”
“Like hell he does,” said Cardiff. “He’s a civilian—and he’s in my jurisdiction, not yours. He leaves with us—and you can stay in this bloody office block if you like.”
“You’ve seen my identification papers. You know I have the authority.”
“Do I hell. I want corroboration from central office.”
“And how do we do that with radios and telephone knocked out by the storm?”
“Exactly,” replied Cardiff. “No corroboration, no overall authority. You’re not telling me what to do, and you’re not keeping Devlin here.”
“Never knew you cared so much,” said Jimmy, emerging from his lethargy and rising from his chair at last to join Frye at the black, rain-blurred windows. Gilbert was rubbing his face with both hands as if trying to wash away bad dreams.
“Shut up, Jimmy. When Pearce and I leave, so do you.”
“I think not,” said Rohmer.
Lightning jarred the heavens once more, briefly illuminating the reception windows as Rohmer and Cardiff faced each other. Neither was going to back down.
“Nice car,” said Jimmy, wiping the condensation from his patch of window, but still giving himself only a blurred view. “Or at least it was a nice car.” Pearce and Duvall were blurred figures beside the wreck, distinguishable only in that Duvall was carrying the paraffin containers, which he was setting down on the pavement. Rain was hissing on the roof of the car, wreck, fogging the scene still further. The figures blurred completely out of view in that mist.
“That’s a Ford Zodiac,” said Jimmy. “Or it was. You can tell by the wings on the back. About 1964 I’d say. Not a lot of them about. One less now, that’s for sure.”
“Are you sure that thing is dead?” bleated Frye. “The thing in the car?”
“No,” said Rohmer, without taking his eyes off Cardiff. “That’s why Duvall is going to soak it in paraffin and set fire to it if they’re able to in this storm.”
“Nice car,” said Jimmy. “Bet it had whitewall tyres. Two-tone, green and cream bodywork.”
“I’ve got a job to do,” said Cardiff, also staring out Rohmer.
“If it’s dangerous, we all should be out of here. But you talk as if these . . . Returners . . . were freaks, or movie monsters or something,” said Cardiff.
“They are,” said Rohmer. “Eleanor Parkins. One of your own Returners. Her body had been fused with concrete, plastic, plaster and steel. Our post mortem revealed a mutated amalgam of all of these inert materials within her own tissue. By our definitions, she couldn’t possibly have been alive.”
“So she died?”
“She was terminated. We had no choice.”
“You killed her?”
“You had to be there, Cardiff. Believe me, we had no choice.”
“Some of them return with minimum or no mutation at all,” Gilbert mumbled from his seat. “We have two in captivity. They talk of having seen ‘The Other Side’.”
“The Other Side?” asked Cardiff, eyes still fixed on Rohmer.
“Mental derangement,” returned Rohmer. “Brain decomposition. Hallucination caused by trauma. We’ll dispose of them eventually, just like the others.”
“You kill people who return?”
“We dispose of them, Cardiff. That’s all.”
“Fog lamps,” said Jimmy. “Spotlamps. Leather upholstery. Bench seats, front and rear.”
“They talk of Heaven and Hell,” mumbled Gilbert. “The ones who come back who aren’t mutated to the point of monstrosity say that they’ve seen it. In that netherworld state, while they’ve been in that state of absorption.”
“A three-speed car with a column change. Ocelot seat covers. Top of the range. A really tasty car.”
“Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?” mumbled Gilbert.
“Will you all shut the hell up!” shouted Jimmy, turning from the window. The lethargy and enervation were gone. “How much longer do I have to listen to all of this crap? It’s like I’ve been dragged out of the pub and into a bloody video nasty. Look! If it’s dangerous to be here, let’s just get the hell out of it . . . !”
Thunder boomed in the sky.
The windowpanes of the reception rattled.
And then the strip lights overhead flickered . . . and went out.
The reception area was plunged into a blue-black relief. Distant streetlamps blurred by rain cast eerie blue light into the lobby; great criss-cross squares of it. The strip lights flickered again, providing the faintest luminescence. Gilbert uttered a strangled cry and leapt to his feet with shadow reflections of crawling rain on his spectrally white face. Frye recoiled from the window.
“Shit!” Cardiff fumbled to where he’d seen a light switch, began to reach for it . . . and then stopped. “Was that a strike? A Darkfall strike?”
“No,” said Rohmer in the spectral gloom. “Too early.”
“The hell with that,” replied Cardiff. “Gimme a pair of gloves.”
“There are Operative gloves in Frye’s case.”
“Give them to me.”
Frye moved in the darkness to his case, flipped it open and rummaged inside. He flinched when Jimmy took hold of his arm. “Me, too.” Frye fumbled again and came out with two pairs of skintight brown gloves of some man-made material. While Jimmy pulled on a pair, Cardiff strode over, took a further pair from Frye and returned to the light switch.
“Unnecessary,” said Rohmer calmly.
“The hell with you,” replied Cardiff, pulling on the gloves.
He flicked the light switch. It made no difference. The strip lights were dead. Reaching o
ver the reception desk, he lifted the telephone receiver. But there was no crackling static—there was nothing at all.
“All the power is dead.”
“Oh no . . . oh no . . . no, no, no.”
Cardiff looked back over to the reception windows at Frye’s silhouette. He was not reacting to this latest development, but to something that was going on outside.
Somewhere beyond, on the forecourt perhaps, orange flame seemed to splutter and flare in the darkness.
“Something’s happening out there,” said Frye, pressing closer to the glass. “I ‘can hardly see, but something is thrashing around by the car. Something is burning and thrashing and . . . oh, no, no, no.”
Jimmy pushed Frye to one side to get a better view. Rohmer was already moving to join them as Cardiff replaced the telephone receiver and pushed away from the reception desk. Gilbert backed into Cardiff. He pushed him out of the way.
Something out there was making a noise.
It was a sound of screaming, muffled by the storm. But screaming nevertheless. A sound of hideous pain and anger . . . and surely not a sound that could be made by anything human.
And now there was the loud crashing retort of what could only be a pistol shot, joined immediately by the rattling, roaring sound of thunder in the sky.
