The Apocalypse Codex

by Charles Stross

  Johnny reaches out sideways without taking his eye off the alley and takes Patrick’s left wrist. It’s bony, the skin loose as a chicken carcass; he rotates it, glances sidelong at the symbol tattooed there. It’s quiescent right now. He lets go. “Jesus, Patrick,” he says softly. “How long?”

  “Two years. It was that, or bankruptcy and no high-quality chemo for Moira.”

  Johnny does not want to hear this, so he leans forward, scanning, as he guides the big truck down the narrow alleyway. Putting a human face on the oppo is never welcome: it feels like staring into a bathroom mirror and seeing a skull. Learning that an old workmate has taken the Dark Mark—signed on as a freelance stringer for the Black Chamber’s mind-riders to spy through—is harsh; that he’s done it for the love of a good woman is all the worse, like a moral bullet to the kneecap.

  At the end of the alleyway there’s a car park and a row of dumpsters. Johnny slides the pickup round and out towards the street exit on the far side. Pulling out into the traffic he asks, “What do the Nazgûl want with me, Pat?”

  There’s a pause. Then, “Mister McTavish. What are you doing in Denver?”

  The voice is Patrick’s, but it speaks with a Midwestern twang quite unlike his Northern Irish tenor. The other ward around Johnny’s neck is suddenly choking and hot, gripping tight; there’s a pale violet light in the cab, coming from the vicinity of Patrick’s wrist.

  “Cut that out: I’m not your bitch.” Johnny’s hands clench the wheel, but his mind is abruptly calm. He’s got his rumble; the potential for collateral damage is simply an unwelcome addition.

  “You are on our soil. Under normal circumstances that makes you my bitch.”

  “You want to talk to me, get a fucking cellphone.” Johnny pauses. “What precisely do you mean, normal circumstances?”

  A laugh forces itself out of Patrick’s larynx, followed by a wheezing series of coughs. “You will tell us who sent you here.”

  “Nobody sent me.” Johnny slows, seeking a parking space. He’s acutely aware of the sleeping, hungry knives holstered inside his jacket, a million miles from the hand that grips the gear stick.

  “You are here with your mistress, Persephone Hazard, who is inside the Omega Ministries’ compound.” The creature that animates Patrick’s body speaks assertively. “This we know. Eight hours after your arrival, an agent of the British Special Operations Executive also arrived in Denver. You were observed together.”

  Johnny pulls over, kills the engine, and switches off the lights. He turns to face Patrick’s body. “Why are you telling me this?” He demands. As he turns, he palms a small item from beneath the steering column. “Who are you?”

  “We are Control.” The amber glare of the street lamps casts deep shadows across Patrick’s face, but not so deep that Johnny can’t see the faint fluorescent trails writhing in the empty gaze. “The unblinking, red-rimmed eye, as Peter Jackson frames it. We see everything we look for. Usually.”

  Johnny waits. The pressure on his ward is oppressive: he can feel it around him, as dark and implacable as the waters of the Challenger Deep, a chilly, soul-crushing dread.

  “But we cannot see your mistress. And now that we know where to look, we cannot see inside the Omega Ministries’ domain.”

  “You’re having trouble seeing—” Johnny stops. (The Black Chamber is having trouble with remote viewing? Is there some grit in the unblinking panopticon gaze? Or a detached retina?) “What do you want?”

  “We want. Co-operation. Yours, mostly. Freely given.”

  Johnny chuckles nastily: “Fuck off.” His grip tightens on the item he palmed. Control has got Patrick. It’s a dilemma. Usually he wouldn’t think twice about doing the necessary, but there’s no telling what happens to the mount after the rider departs. “You’ve got assets. Use them yourself. Like I said, I’m not your bitch.”

  There is a pause. “Normally we would. And we’d deal with you later.” A longer pause. “First we could not see within the Omega Ministries. Now the area of darkness is growing. Colorado Springs is closed to us. Denver is dimming. Our hands are numb and cannot grip.” Control’s tone is chilly. “Are you Born Again, Mister McTavish? Are you willing to bend your neck to the yoke of Raymond Schiller’s master?”

  “Are you telling me you’ve lost your grip?”

  “That depends on the meaning of the word ‘lost.’” For a moment Control sounds uncertain. “We are experiencing difficulty conducting operations in north-central Colorado. There is an unnatural storm system to the north that formed overnight, a weather bomb. Flights are diverted, road checkpoints are established. The FBI office in Denver reports that all is quiet on the western front, but pools of darkness expand and the gripping hand is paralyzed.”

  The pressure on Johnny’s ward relaxes a little, and he takes a deep breath. “You think Schiller is to blame? What’s he doing? Begun one of the great summonings?”

  “Find out, Mister McTavish. Write us a letter, a full and frank report, or tell your friend O’Donnell here. Either way: inform us, let us know what you discover. Be of use to us and we will have no reason to take exception to your presence in our backyard. You have three days. Use them wisely.”

  Of an instant the oppressive sense of dread vanishes. Johnny lashes out, pulling the compact taser just short of Patrick’s sallow face. It’s not his favorite weapon, but it’s safer—probably. For an uncertain moment he wonders if he’s making a deadly error. But the faint glow in Pat’s eyes has gone; he slumps forward against his seat belt, then begins to shake and twitch uncontrollably.

  Johnny safes the taser hastily, then flips it around, using it as a wedge to separate Patrick’s teeth: the fit only lasts a few seconds, but by the time it’s over Johnny has crossed a line in his own head. Sometimes people do good things for bad reasons, and sometimes people do bad things for good reasons. He isn’t sure which this is yet, but he’s hoping for the former.

  PERSEPHONE GLANCES SIDELONG AT HER MOUSY GUIDE: bellwether, she thinks. The scene is crystal clear. The guards holding the struggling sacrificial victim down wear black wind-cheaters emblazoned with the oracular runes FBI. They’ve got sidearms. There are another twenty congregants—everyone from the course, and a few besides—and the church pastors. Heads are turning. Behind her, a windowless tunnel. Fire doors. Her heart skips a beat as she takes a short step backwards. “Sorry, honey,” she says to Roseanne or Lisa or whoever her guide is, and punches her over one kidney: the woman stumbles into the underground chapel as the struggling victim rams his forehead into his guard’s nose in a classic Glasgow kiss. The other FBI man sidesteps his follow-through kick sharply and is already pulling a pistol as Persephone skips back two steps and slams her elbow into the glass cover of the fire alarm.

  The doors slam shut as the siren winds up to a screech. The emergency lights come on, illuminating the route of her sprint.

  She makes it up to the first floor in a breathless run and barely breaks stride as she hits the crash bar on the fire exit. The door opens, and she finds herself on one side of the church, on a concrete path winding between deep-frozen snow piles around the side of another windowless building. She trots to the end of the path, then cuts back to a fast walk, composing herself, trying to look unobtrusive. Don’t draw attention. Icy cold, she’s working on her evacuation route. At least sixty seconds before they fan out and start looking for me. The prisoners…she winces. But they’re the least of her problems. She’s blown her cover. What was going on in that chapel was worse than anything even Johnny had feared. Better warn him as soon as possible, before I use the safe house and wheels. Just in case.

  The church complex sits at one side of a street. Opposite it squats a two-story building, low and wide, with glass windows through which she can see brightly colored posters on the walls. There are desks and chairs: perhaps it’s a primary school or kindergarten. It’s Saturday, though. Persephone trots across the street, round the unfenced side of the school, and up the wooded slope behind
it. There’s snow on the ground which will show her tracks—very bad. She can hear alarms now, and a quick glance shows her the other fire doors opening, people spilling out. She turns to ignore them and slides her shoes off—the two-inch heels are no good off the beaten track—then breaks back into a run.

  Elapsed time: two minutes. She’s past the school, coming up behind another building. It’s three stories high with a complex spaghetti-work of gas pipes and ducts behind it, just like a hospital or clinic. A big diesel generator and an enormous tank of fuel sit in readiness behind a chain-link fence, but the rear approach is clear and there are windows at ground level. A couple of them are open. She darts towards them, keeping low and using available ground cover—of which there is much, for the trees come almost all the way up to the building.

  Observe, orient, decide, act: words to live or die by. Right now, Persephone is disoriented—on the run, cut off. It’s time to go on the offensive, work out where she is and what’s going on, then get the hell out of this trap.

  Unlike Mr. Howard from Capital Laundry Services, she’s seen the things in the silver salver before and knows exactly what they are, and by extension, the unplumbed depths of the cesspool in which she has so abruptly found herself treading water. And her day has just gone from normal to nightmare in sixty seconds.

  PICTURE THIS: IT’S EARLY AFTERNOON IN A BLANDLY CORPORATE hotel room in downtown Denver. There are two corpses lying on the floor in the middle of the room. An upturned bathroom waste bin sits on the floor nearby, its former steed’s handgun holding it down. It rattles from time to time as the complaints department within expresses its opinion of the accommodation. I am sitting in the desk chair, drained by my exertions—both physical and mental—and taking a few minutes to assess my options.

  Here’s my situation: the bad guys know where I am. This is obviously undesirable. So this is my plan (which is mine, what I invented all by myself): I am going to run away, very fast. Simples!

  There are minor complications, of course. First, I’m going to have to notify Lockhart, Hazard, and McTavish. Especially the latter two. Both of whom hung out a big Do Not Disturb sign last time I called them.

  Second, there are the two corpses. Housekeeping are going to be very unhappy, and I don’t think tipping high will cut any ice. I feel a bit sick whenever I think about what I did to them. They were, once upon a time, thinking, feeling human beings; by the time they came knocking on my door there wasn’t much left inside them—understatement: they were little more than zombies that hadn’t begun to smell—but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I want to know for sure who sent them, and why.

  (And when I find them I want to give the bastard who wrecked their minds a piece of my mind.)

  I generally try not to jump to conclusions, but I’m willing to wave my little pinkie in the air and swear that they’re not from the Black Chamber. The Black Chamber isn’t big on Christianity. In fact, they treat it as a character flaw among their employees. Given that I’m over here to ride herd on an investigation into the Golden Promise Ministries, being doorstepped by a pair of armed Christian missionaries is all but definitive. So, I’m working on the assumption that Schiller sent them and that there’s more to GPM than meets the eye.

  Thirdly and finally, there’s the thing in the bin—the complaints department. I don’t know exactly what it is, but a quick look in Dead Guy #1’s mouth—quick because I don’t enjoy throwing up—shows that it’s empty: nothing inside but a nub of scar tissue at the back of his mouth. And unless I’m suffering from auditory hallucinations, he did ask me to open the door. So the logical deduction is that the thing in the bucket is some kind of hideous parasite that does double-duty among the Jeezemoids; talk about speaking in tongues.

  I need to know what they’re capable of. So I’m going to have to contain it, bind it, and see what, if any, control one of these parasites can exert on a victim.

  (Yes, I’ve seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I never imagined I’d find myself having to deal with an outbreak, but there’s a first time for everything.)

  First things first: call Lockhart. I reach for the hotel phone and punch in my special calling-card number.

  “Hello, Garrison Fitzhugh estate agents. We’re sorry, but the office is closed right now. Opening hours are 9 till 5, Monday to Friday. Please leave a message after the beep…”

  Of course it’s closed; it’s 8 p.m. on a Saturday evening back home. I clear my throat. “This is Bob Howard. I’m in Denver and I want to talk to someone about a problem with my property. I can’t contact the tenants and I just had a call from Environmental Health, who seemed to be upset about an infestation of giant wood lice”—there’s no codeword for “alien brain parasite” so I make one up on the fly—“so anyway, I’m not sure how long I can fend them off. Please call back.” I hang up. Hopefully that little zinger will rattle Lockhart’s cage.

  I’m busy doodling an intricate design on the inside of last night’s pizza box lid with a conductive marker pen when the phone rings.

  “Bob.” It’s Lockhart. “Sitrep, now.”

  “This is a hotel phone line.”

  “Are you in public?”

  “No—”

  “Sitrep. Now.” Going by his tone of voice he is just slightly stressed.

  I tell him about the MIBs and the slater from hell that’s scritching at the inside of the trash can. Phone codecs are designed to filter out the gaps between spoken words, but I can hear Lockhart’s blood pressure rising all the way from London. When I finish, he’s silent for a few moments. Then he lets me have it: “Your mission is over. I want you to book the next available flight out of the United States and fly home immediately. Between now and departure, go to ground.”

  “What about—”

  “Bring the parasite if you can, but be ready to destroy it if anyone tries to interfere.”

  “I meant Hazard and McTavish—”

  “Mr. Howard.” He’s clearly making an effort to sound calm, which is scary under the circumstances: “Let us be quite clear, your part of this operation is over. You’ve been compromised and there has been an abduction attempt. You’re on a reconnaissance mission, not a search-and-destroy; that’s sufficient justification for us to start making direct enquiries into the, ah, situation that certain outsiders were poking their noses into. It’s also sufficient justification for you to run like hell and not look back, don’t you think? It will be much easier for us to make those enquiries if you are on hand to file an eyewitness report, instead of filling a shallow grave somewhere in Colorado.”

  “Are you telling me to ditch BASHFUL INCENDIARY?”

  A moment’s hesitation: “Not exactly, Robert. But you told me they went to ground, and it seems to me that they are eminently capable of looking after themselves. I understand your natural loyalty, and it does you credit. If you can notify them that the operation is terminated, without risk to yourself, then you may do so. But it is impossible to over-emphasize the risk management aspect: we want you back here in one piece, and that is more important than anything else you can do in the field.” Lockhart pauses again, as if someone is feeding him instructions. “I want twice-daily verbal reports and I want to see you in person within twenty-four hours. Is that understood?”

  I stare at the phone as if it’s grown bat wings and fangs. “I understand,” I say. I understand that you’re telling me to leave the two contractors you made me responsible for to die in a train wreck, is what I manage to keep back. You cold bastard, you.

  “Good. Call me with an update tomorrow.” The line goes dead.

  I stare at the phone and stifle the urge to scream obscenities. It passes quickly enough, anyway: unprofessional, unproductive, and might attract unwanted attention. Nevertheless, my opinion of Lockhart has just taken a nosedive. Loyalty is—has to be—a two-way street in my line of work. This isn’t a painful but basically survivable workplace situation like a lay-off or downsizing: Persephone and Johnny are out there right no
w, being stalked by walking corpses with parasites for tongues and heads full of revelation. If I don’t do my damnedest to see them to safety, what does that say about me? Sure, Johnny is an over-muscled asshole with a disturbingly easy-going attitude to killing, and Persephone is just plain disturbing (a bizarre chimera, half sexy Eastwick witch and half KGB hit-woman)…but I feel responsible.

  So I take a deep breath and go back to urgently doodling on the pizza box.

  Summonings and containment grid, field-expedient, 101: if the thing you’re trying to contain is pallid, has too many legs, and is about the size of a human tongue, a pizza box will do just fine. More to the point, I really want it to be locked down properly before I try using the tattoos to call Persephone or Johnny—it’s a trophic eater, which means if it isn’t securely contained when I call it’ll be all over my frontal lobes like grease on a hamburger before I can say “oh shit.”

  I’m thinking on the fly, here. (Although now that I’m in middle management I think I’m supposed to call it “refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation,” or, if I’m being honest, “making it up as I go along.”) Revised plan: box up the complaints department, pack my bags, and go straight to the airport. All that’s left is to call Persephone and Johnny, then pull the eject handle, get the hell out of Dodge City before it’s too late, go home, and hide under the bed for a week of gibbering reaction time.

  I finish doodling on the inside of the box, and collect a handy cable from my travel electronics kit. It’s got a couple of pointy contacts; I stab these through various points on the diagram, and plug the other end into my JesusPhone. OFCUT does the rest, and I gingerly transfer the live summoning grid to the carpet in front of the bin.

  The complaints department sets up a horrendous racket as I slide the grid under it. Then it stops, abruptly. I’m half-expecting a blue flash and a vile smell, but no such luck: looks like I’ve successfully contained it. I raise the bin gingerly, ready to slam it down if the many-legged monstrosity makes a bid for freedom. The thing is tightly curled in the middle of the grid, which is shimmering faintly—for all the world as if it’s held in place by magic cling-film. Great; all I have to do now is refrain from dropping it.