Darkfall

by Stephen Laws

  “God, Jimmy!” exclaimed Cardiff.

  “Easy,” said Jimmy, holding out his hand to Barbara. “Now, come on. And just be careful not to tear any of your clothing.”

  Barbara glanced nervously down into the pit.

  “Take my other hand,” said Cardiff. She grabbed it, looked hard at him, and then stepped out over the rim. Cardiff lowered her, her feet scrabbling first on the ragged concrete of the roof and then into space . . . as Jimmy leaned out over the edge of the winch platform and grabbed her free hand.

  Barbara saw the chasm yawn beneath her . . . and suddenly she was standing next to Jimmy. Gasping, she stood back from the rim and into comparative shadowed safety.

  “Okay, Cardiff . . .” began Jimmy, but Cardiff was already lowering himself gingerly over the ragged edge. Jimmy watched as he carefully lowered himself all the way down until he was hanging by his fingertips. His suit was crumpled and stained, his hair wild, and Jimmy had a powerful image of the man as he’d first seen him on arrival at this hellish office block: calm, neat and with carefully parted hair. The twat who had put him away on a false charge. Even though he knew now that it was Pearce who had been responsible for the trumped-up charges on other jobs, Cardiff was still a copper, after all. The kind of man he hated, almost instinctively. A copper, for crying out loud. And after everything that had happened to Jimmy, maybe he should just let this slightly overweight Detective Inspector dangle on the edge for a bit, let him suddenly thrash around, trying to get purchase, begging for help. Let first one hand, and then the other fall away from the rim of that ragged ledge on the roof. Let him twist his head back, eyes wild, screaming for help . . . as his other hand finally lost its grip under the overweight of too many police-club luncheon-dinners, and he fell twisting and sobbing into the shaft.

  But apart from the stark physical contrast of his now dishevelled appearance, there was something incredibly different about Cardiff in Jimmy’s eyes as Cardiff twisted one hand away from the roof and flung it out towards him.

  Jimmy leaned out, still braced by the wire around his left arm and wrist . . . and grabbed Cardiff’s arm. Cardiff’s eyes were glazed in a naked anxiety about the drop below him, even though he steadfastly refused to look down into it. Jimmy heaved, and Cardiff swung across to the concrete platform with him, feet scrabbling on the edge . . . and then they were safe. Jimmy unwrapped his arm as Cardiff stood back from the edge.

  “You’re a gutsy old bastard,” said Jimmy. He smiled at him. He couldn’t help it.

  “I’d like to keep my guts intact, if that’s okay,” returned Cardiff, dusting himself off.

  Jimmy hurried on past him, checking the concrete platform beneath his feet as he moved, feeling the shuddering vibration of collapse somewhere below. Barbara and Cardiff followed him tentatively into the darkness towards the dark jumble of machinery ahead.

  “How many lifts are there in the building, Cardiff?”

  “Two . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . I see. Look, we’re standing on the concrete platform that houses the gearboxes and motors for the elevators. They weigh about a ton each, so that platform’s reinforced with steel bars. Back there, where we climbed down . . . there’s just a sheer drop between floors all the way to the basement. Nothing to hang on to, nothing to climb down.”

  “Thanks for not telling me that before, Jimmy.”

  “It’s a pleasure. Now look . . . look . . .”

  They had reached the first of two sheave gearboxes and motors, housed in four-foot-high, three-foot-wide, semi-cylindrical steel containers. Jimmy quickly squeezed past the first, standing between them. Cardiff could see a corded cable, only four inches thick and consisting of six separate half-inch, oil-based strands, descending from the gearbox and vanishing through a cylindrical hole in the platform. Something seemed to explode close by and the platform vibrated again.

  “That came from the staircase,” said Jimmy tightly. “We walked over the top of it back there.”

  “It sounds like Hell,” said Cardiff.

  “It is,” rejoined Barbara. And now Jimmy was stooping down low between the gearboxes, hunting for something. He found it, standing quickly again and yanking open a service trapdoor.

  “That’s it!” exclaimed Jimmy. “Come on . . .”

  Barbara and Cardiff squeezed past the first gearbox and motor. Jimmy was already stooping down and staring into the shaft below. The flickering blue light of Darkfall was dancing upon his face as he looked. Cardiff joined him, staring down into the shaft.

  The elevator cable from the gearbox dropped away from the concrete platform, swaying precariously before vanishing into the blackness of the chasm below. Darkfall light was somehow flickering down below in the shaft, giving an eerie blue incandescence to the sheer concrete walls. The sounds of the Darkfall storm echoed back as if there was some underground sea down there somewhere in the darkness, its pitch-black surf booming hollow on concrete shores. The platform shuddered again and a chunk of concrete suddenly fell whirling into the pit, rebounding from the shaft wall in a spray of disintegration before vanishing into the dark. Seconds later, there was a hollow, echoing crash as it hit the roof of the elevator.

  “Alright, Jimmy. You’re in charge. How do we climb down?”

  Jimmy pointed. “Okay, we’re looking down into one of the two elevator shafts. It’s not too wide. Maybe twelve feet square. Same as the width of the elevator cab. Now, just down and opposite to us . . . can you see, Barbara?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just down and opposite by another twenty feet or so is a recess. That’s an alcove for the elevator doors on the fourteenth floor. There are fifteen alcoves all the way down to the basement, floor by floor. But we can’t open them . . . and even if we could, I don’t suppose we would want to, knowing what’s on the staircases. Right . . . on the shaft wall at our left down there . . . see that? That’s the counterweight, that heavy square bugger of metal. It’s at the thirteenth floor so that means the elevator is down on the ground floor, and it’s going to stay there. If the electricity’s out, and the counterweight’s up here, it means we’re not going to get squished by an elevator that decides it’s coming up. The elevator cab is heavier than the counterweight. Laws of gravity, see?”

  “Should have been an engineer, Jimmy . . . not a burglar.”

  “Alright, no jokes. We haven’t got time. I’m telling you this because we’re going to start down in a second, and I want you to know the layout.”

  “I’m feeling dizzy . . .” said Barbara, and Jimmy looked up to see her recoiling from the trapdoor, steadying herself with a hand on the gearbox-motor.

  “It’s okay, Barbara. Okay. You don’t have to look. Just listen. See the counterweight guides. See, Cardiff? They’re two parallel steel runners set into the wall, all the way down. But they’re no good for us, nothing to hang on to. On the other walls, though . . . either side . . . are the steel runner-guides that the elevator fits into on its way up and down. They’ve got . . . whatchacallit?”

  “Indentations,” said Cardiff. “I can see them.”

  “That’s the word. Just like . . .”

  “Rungs in a ladder.”

  “You catch on fast, Cardiff. You’d make a great office burglar.”

  “If we get out of this you might have a partner.”

  Darkfall thunder or the sounds of a further collapse in the building shook the platform to such an extent that they reeled against each other and made grim nonsense of their jokes. Barbara clutched at the steel housing.

  “Alright . . . alright . . .” she said. “So it’s the steel runners for the elevator cab.”

  “All the way down,” said Jimmy, not trying to react to the further chunks of concrete that fell into the shaft in plumes of dust and rubble. “Easy-peezy-lemon-squeezy . . .”

  “Whaaat . . . ?” said Barbara, in a weary and humoured tone that belied the hypertension and the fear and the horror that threatened to enervate them all in the face of this
ghastly nightmare.

  “North-of-England Geordie-talk, present day, Barbara. When we get out of here, I’ll teach you all about it.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yes?”

  “You get to buy me all the records I’ve missed since 1964. Right?”

  “Better believe it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “That means . . . cool. I can dig it.”‘

  “That’s old-fashioned talk, Jimmy,” replied Barbara. “But I know what you mean. Thanks.”

  “Any records he can’t buy you,” said Cardiff, “I’ll give you. I was young once myself, you know.”

  And now Jimmy had flipped the trapdoor hatch all the way back with a flat slap!

  “Okay,” he said.

  He was trying to smile again, but with the blood-smears from his Duvall-busted nostrils and the concrete dust on his face, it just wouldn’t work.

  He persevered with the smile when he spoke again.

  “Let’s go . . .”

  SEVENTEEN

  Rohmer slid into the flickering shadows of the stairwell and stood for a moment with what had been his hand on the stair-rail. The rail was juddering violently.

  He could no longer hear the screams, but there were other sounds now, almost lost in the all-enveloping roar of the rumbling avalanche below. They were like the sounds from some bizarre aviary; a high-pitched chirruping and squealing and rustling. There were the sounds of other animals, too: the sounds of heavy ragged breathing, squawking and chattering.

  He strode through the slime at the top of the stairwell to the head of the quivering stairs and looked downwards into the guttering shadows and the rising clouds of dust.

  All but two flights of stairs—from Floor 12 to 14—had buckled away from the wall structure and collapsed into the staircase shaft, taking with them most of Rohmer’s Reborn. That had been the sounds of the great rumbling explosion and the screams.

  With no remorse for the death of His Reborn, Rohmer leaned further forward, concrete oozing from his jaws . . . and saw the survivors.

  There were still six or seven Returners on the remaining staircase, hanging on the banister railings. One of them, the thing that looked like a centipede with a human face, was crawling up the wall. ‘

  Rohmer walked down to meet them, and when he turned on the fourteenth-floor landing, he opened what had been his arms wide in greeting.

  “Reborn!”

  They turned as one to look up at him.

  Gilbert was still there, crouching on the staircase with his stretched face and his monkey-claws.

  Something in rags and with two heads kneaded its crackling steel fingers like some kind of worry-bead combination. One of its faces was grinning insanely, the other identical face had a look of sorrow.

  Other indeterminate shapes undulated in the darkness.

  And Rohmer knew instinctively that they had heard and seen his struggle with the Old Flesh and were in awe of him. But there was little of real kinship there as they shifted uneasily before him. The Transcendence had destroyed every vestige of reason in those New Brains. Only hate and rage and hunger . . . and now fear, remained. But there was still, Rohmer could sense, a vestige of something that wanted to make sense of this new condition. And it was that sense that kept them instinctively waiting and watching; waiting for Rohmer to tell them what to do.

  “I’m not human any more,” said Rohmer, the Messiah. “And neither are you. We’re all . . . New.”‘

  The staircase on which the things crouched juddered violently, and they swarmed up to him, stopping just below the fourteenth floor to gaze up at Rohmer, like some ragged Horde from Hell.

  “I’ll give you back your Minds. Because we can create our own rules now. We can do what we want without limit. I’ll lead you.”

  The things on the staircase could not understand what he was saying. But there was a kinship now, an understanding of the emotion behind Rohmer’s words. They began to howl. And that unearthly noise echoed up and down the rumbling, roaring stairwell.

  “I will lead you. Because I am your New Saviour . .

  Rohmer laughed: a horrifying, rasping bass sound . . . and the things on the staircase tried to laugh with him.

  Grinning through cement-encrusted fangs, Rohmer turned his attention back to the Exit door aperture on the roof—and to what was still out there on the roof.

  “Follow,” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jimmy sat on the edge of the trapdoor aperture, legs dangling. Bracing his hands on either side of the aperture frame, he pressed up with all of his weight on his hands and suspended himself directly over the drop . . . and then lowered himself, quickly compensating for the change in balance by snatching one hand across to join the other.

  Now he was hanging from the trapdoor aperture by his fingertips, with a fourteen-storey drop below him.

  Jimmy swung once towards the elevator cable and grabbed it with one hand. Letting go of the trapdoor rim, he seized the cable with his other hand and clung to it. Now he was in the centre of the shaft, and the sway factor wasn’t as bad as he’d thought once it had his weight on it. Maybe twelve inches. Jimmy entwined his legs and feet around the cable and stretched out with one hand to the far wall, grabbing one of the metal tracks for the elevator cab.

  Christ, don’t let my gloves tear.

  He let go of the cable and clung to the rail, screwing his eyes shut against the sweat and blood that was running down his face.

  “Jimmy, are you okay?” called Cardiff.

  “Yeah . . .” He climbed up the rail and waited.

  Barbara was taking deep breaths.

  “There’s no other way,” said Cardiff. “Just don’t . . .”

  “Yes, I know. Just don’t look down.” An unholy howling sound was issuing from somewhere above; ghosts of that echo swirled and eddied within the guttering elevator shaft.

  “Rohmer will be back with those things shortly,” said Cardiff. “And then it’ll be too late anyway . . .” Barbara stepped forward, and Cardiff took off his belt as they’d discussed. He wrapped it around her waist, fastening the buckle tight and knotting the loose end around his gloved fist. “It’s a dream, Barbara. Remember? That’s what you kept telling us. It’s only a dream. Keep thinking it.”

  She watched Cardiff finish knotting the belt in his fist and took his other hand as she stepped towards the trapdoor aperture. Cardiff waited for her to sit down on the edge, but she had paused and he looked back to her to see that she was studying him intently. There was a tear-gleam in her eyes.

  “I’m glad I dreamed you two.”

  There was a strange, aching lump in Cardiff’s throat when he spoke again.

  “Come on, love. Let’s go.”

  Without a further word, Barbara sat quietly on the trapdoor ledge. Cardiff lay flat on the concrete platform as she lowered herself through, jaw set. Now she was hanging by her fingertips, her long black hair whipping. Bracing one hand on the gearbox housing, Cardiff stretched to keep his exposed face and neck from contact with the concrete platform . . . and then clutched tight on the belt, taking her entire weight on his other arm.

  “Alright, Barbara. Let go!”

  Barbara’s fingertips left the trapdoor aperture, and Cardiff felt the agony of stretching muscles in his arm as she swayed over the shaft.

  Hurry up, Jimmy! yelled Cardiff in his mind, teeth gritted. Hurry up, before I . . .

  Below, Jimmy had grabbed Barbara with one hand and pulled her over to the metal rails.

  “Okay! Let go, Cardiff!”

  Cardiff rolled back from the aperture as Jimmy began to unfasten Cardiff’s belt from her waist. He lay there, resting on one elbow, sucking in breath. A feeling of dreadful enervation was beginning to creep over him.

  God, I don’t know if I can do this. We’ve come so far . . . but I just don’t know if I’ve got the strength left.

  There were cramping pains in his chest again. He could feel the open wounds in his chest searing a
nd throbbing. The trauma and the fear and the immense physical effort seemed as if they must catch up with him at last. What if he let them go on without him?

  So you’ve found reasons for living again, a voice seemed to whisper to him. And now you just want to throw it all away again? Is that what Lisa and Jamie would have wanted, Cardiff?

  The sounds of Beasts echoed from somewhere above again.

  “Cardiff!” shouted Jimmy, his voice echoing in the elevator shaft. “Come on!”

  They need me.

  Cardiff swung his legs over the edge of the aperture and lowered himself down again.

  Barbara had climbed down so that she was almost opposite to the fourteenth-floor elevator-doors aperture, to give Jimmy and Cardiff more room. “That’s it . . . that’s it . . .” he heard Jimmy say. “Just like before, Cardiff. Just like before. Easy . . . easy . . .”

  Pain like liquid fire was stabbing in the arm which had lowered Barbara.

  Christ, this is it! I’m going to fall!

  His burning arm jerked free from the aperture, and he groped blindly for Jimmy, spinning helplessly in mid-air. The fingers of his other arm slid from the ledge.

  And Jimmy had him now as he fell, hanging on tight as Cardiff slammed hard against the metal rails with an echoing, metallic crash. Jimmy clung tight as Cardiff thrashed at the rail, grabbing for purchase. At last, his feet had found one of the ‘rungs’, and he hugged the rail tight as Jimmy climbed down to Barbara.

  “Right . . . right . . .” said Jimmy. “We’ve done it. The rest is easy . . .”

  “Lemon-squeezy,” said Barbara in a breathless, frightened voice.

  “You said it, Barbara. Now, look. I’m going to climb past you. I’ll go first, then you and Cardiff . . . Cardiff?”