‘Whoa. Sarge, you have to see this.’
‘I’ve seen me enough corpses today to last a lifetime. I’ll take a rain check.’
‘Not the bodies, Sarge. Weapons.’
Sendak and Rosemary retreat from the row they had entered and come around next to Adnan. As they approach, there is a burst of noise from high up on one of the walls, and they turn in startlement, only to be met by the sight of steam venting from a broken pipe.
‘Shit. This thing’s gonna give me a goddamn heart attack before—’
There is another sudden noise heralding movement behind and above, but this time it’s no false alarm. Two demons are bounding along the tops of the cages, gaining speed and preparing to pounce, each gripping some kind of sparking blue pole in its claws.
Rosemary and Adnan react instinctively, each getting off a shot and hitting their target. Unfortunately they both pick the same target. The surviving demon checks its approach, coming in now from a different flank as it bears down on Sendak. He swings around to point the lance and squeezes the trigger, but sprays only liquid, the sudden motion having snuffed his makeshift pilot light.
‘Ah, shit,’ he breathes, figuring this is it as the demon launches itself from on high. He hears a sound that seems to grind electrically at the inside of his skull, like when the dentist is drilling his teeth, then feels a wave of dust on his skin and a taste in his mouth of blood and metal. It’s a sound, a sensation and a taste he’s encountered once before, and in this very room.
They all look for the source and locate a solitary figure at the far end of the row of cells, gripping a rifle similar to the ones locked in the cabinet. He limps towards them, his clothes torn, his face caked with dust, grime and blood.
‘Nice shooting, soldier,’ Sendak hails him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m not a soldier,’ he replies. ‘And my name is—’
‘Steinmeyer,’ Sendak interrupts, recognising the face that’s under all that shit.
Steinmeyer is taken aback for a moment, then he also recognises who he is talking to.
‘Sergeant Sendak.’ Steinmeyer looks at the two armed teenagers in Sendak’s keeping, like that’s the weirdest thing going on around this place. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I still live in the neighbourhood. But if you mean what am I doing down here right now, well I think the answer to that has more to do with whatever the fuck you’re doing here. I see you never scrapped those guns you were working on. What other little experiments might have gotten out of hand?’
Steinmeyer bows sheepishly.
‘Those guns were the price of my soul, which I sold to fund my other work. I never got to apologise personally for what happened to your comrades and yourself. They kept the accident from me, and I didn’t even find out about it until months after you—’
‘The price of your soul just saved my ass, so consider the debt paid. I think you better keep back the act of contrition for your subsequent work. What’s been going on in this place? How come there are demons running loose on my property, slashing up my paying guests?’
Steinmeyer shakes his head.
‘Not demons,’ he says.
‘What the fuck else could they be?’
‘I don’t know what they are. Only what they’re not.’
‘Holy water burns their flesh,’ Sendak argues. ‘They have horns on their heads and they have some pretty fucking serious issues with crucifixes, to say nothing of the whole ripping-people-apart thing they got going on.’
‘Come and see this,’ Steinmeyer says. ‘All of you. Follow me.’
He leads them back along the row of cages and swings open one of the barred doors.
‘There.’ He points.
They draw closer, despite being repelled by the smell. On the walls of the chamber, etched in claw marks, blood and excrement, are a series of pictures.
‘It looks like cave paintings,’ Adnan opines.
‘I’ve found several just like this,’ Steinmeyer says. ‘It’s a narrative. The occupant of this cell telling his story, in some despairing attempt to express himself.’
He points to what now appears to be the first picture in a sequence: a rendering of a horned figure standing over another. The artwork is crude but recognisable, enough to make it clear that the creatures are clothed. The next shows a group of them before two isolated individuals: one boasting a headdress, the other identifiable as the standing figure in the first image.
‘A murder,’ Steinmeyer says. ‘Followed by a trial. This is a civilisation: primitive, possibly fifty thousand years behind our own, possibly a hundred thousand, but a civilisation nonetheless. If you look at the drawings in other cells you’ll see that they were all prisoners: some of them convicts, others captured in battle. Their punishment is always the same, however: they are stripped naked and cast into this black portal. Sometimes it appears as a cave, sometimes a pool, sometimes a pit. But it’s what happens next that is truly revealing.’
‘Oh shit,’ says Sendak, reading ahead.
‘I’m interpreting some of these marks as religious symbols. At this point they believe they’re dead, and have passed through into the next life.’
‘And this is their Hell,’ states Rosemary, having reached the parental-discretion-advisory parts of the narrative. She sees torture, crucifixion and . . . ‘Is this cannibalism?’ she asks.
‘They were fed only their own dead,’ Steinmeyer confirms. ‘And those who didn’t eat simply starved. But you are right: this is their Hell. We are their demons, and they have learned to recognise those who carry crucifixes as the worst of their tormentors. They are murderers and warriors, starved and brutalised, and they will kill on sight any and every human being they encounter, because they believe us to be capable only of evil.’
‘I think the monsters have finished their fag break,’ Kirk announces, staring through the window in one of the emergency doors. ‘Could be game on again. Aw fuck,’ he adds, his tone suddenly less laconic.
‘What?’ asks Rocks, then he sees it. ‘Bollocks.’
Heather rushes across to join them, equally impatient and dreading to discover whatever could have inspired such gloom in anyone with Kirk’s apparent appetite for the fray.
In that respect, the view doesn’t disappoint. There are four demons moving towards the games hall carrying a long and formidable-looking section of timber, several others attending on the fringes.
‘Must have cut away one of the open joists from the barn,’ Kirk suggests. ‘Gaunny use it as a battering ram. Anybody got some boiling oil?’
From what Heather can see, the closest they have is an outside tap attached to a garden hose.
‘Naw, but we do have an archer,’ Rocks replies. ‘Beansy, I hope you werenae lying about having used one of those things on holiday, because you’re up.’
‘I wasnae lying,’ Beansy insists. ‘But I didnae say I was any good.’
‘Well, you don’t need to hit a fuckin’ bullseye,’ Rocks assures him. ‘You just need to plug a few of these bastards.’
Rocks and Kirk open the doors and Beansy takes a pace forward on to the top of the steps. Caitlin is standing beside him, ready to hand him more arrows.
Heather feels suddenly very ashamed. These mere kids are out there defending everyone’s lives while she’s barely holding herself back from hysterics. She didn’t want Blake to leave because she literally wanted someone to hold on to, and because she knew that if he left, she might well be losing him forever.
All fear and desire is naked now, all pretences and façades stripped away. She can admit to what she wants. She doesn’t want to die. Life is all that matters. Life is all there is. She wants to hold Blake again. She wants to tell him the truth. She can admit to that truth. But whatever she wants, she needs to make it happen.
She steps back from the doorway and rushes to the storeroom, looking for anything that might yet be put to use. Alongside footballs, team bibs, hockey sticks and assorted racquet
s, the only item of any weight is a buffing machine for polishing the floor, yards of flex wrapped around its handle. On the wall beside it is a large grey circuit box. Heather crouches down and flips it open. Like everything else around here, it’s a modern affair, with the lights on a different circuit to the power points, and its express purpose is something she knows how to circumvent.
Beansy looks out across the grass towards the barn where everything turned to shite a few hours back. One minute he’s heading in there, healthy buzz off a jay and in with a serious shout of a wee footer with Yvonne; the next minute . . .
Aye. Payback, ya bastards.
Beansy tugs the string between his fingers and draws a bead on his first target. The fuckers with the battering ram seem worryingly near when you’re just looking at them, but become a lot further when you’re taking aim.
He lets fly. The arrow sails into the darkness to no apparent effect.
‘Arse-candles.’
‘Steady, Beansy, don’t get flustered,’ Kirk tells him as Caitlin hands over the next arrow.
Don’t get fucking flustered. Aye, nae bother, big yin. Demons heading towards them lugging a battering ram, but nae fucking pressure, eh?
He takes aim again, holds his breath, remembers this time what that instructor woman told him when she was standing right behind him with that lovely perfume in his nostrils and her tits occasionally just brushing against his back. Fire as you breathe out.
He lets go the arrow as he lets out his breath, and this one thunks into the demon’s belly, downing the fucker and causing the other three to drop the timber.
‘Get in,’ cheers Rocks.
Caitlin feeds him again. He scores a second, shooting his mark in the thigh.
The demons start growling at each other, then the remaining two ram-bearers abandon the thing and go haring off.
‘Ya fuckin’ dancer,’ Rocks declares, but the congratulations are premature. A few moments later, four replacements retrieve the timber, while the two who had scurried off return, carrying wreckage from the exploded vehicles to use as shields. They take position in front of the battering ram, which can now proceed at will.
‘The legs. Go for the legs,’ Rocks suggests. Beansy fires off another three arrows, one hitting a car door and the others biting harmlessly into the ground as the rudimentary siege engine continues to progress.
‘If they get to these doors with that thing, we’re fucked.’
Kirk pulls the rip-cord and starts the chainsaw again.
‘Not gonna happen,’ he states defiantly, but Rocks can see the doubt in his face, the bravado he’s summoning for the benefit of those around him. Recent months haven’t been the best of times between them, but he’s seen what the big man is truly made of tonight. Unfortunately he’s also seen quite literally what several other folk were made of, and that’s the thought he can’t suppress as Kirk gets ready for what could be his final charge.
‘Stop right there,’ orders a voice, and they turn in surprise to see that it’s Miss Ross, holding a hockey stick with something threaded around it.
‘Grab the hose out there and turn that tap on, full bung,’ she tells Rocks. He complies unquestioningly, though he’s a little baffled as to what she has in mind. Under her direction, he floods the stairs, the disabled ramp and the concrete apron in front of both.
‘Great plan,’ Kirk says, equally confused. ‘If we make the path slippy enough, one of the monsters could have a nasty fall. Just need to hope the water freezes in the ten seconds we’ve got before they get here.’
‘Ready the doors,’ Heather commands, as the siege engine reaches the concrete. Rocks drops the hose and steps back inside, which is when he sees that whatever is wrapped around the hockey stick is also plugged into the mains. He catches a glimpse of bare wire on the curled end just as Heather lets it fall into the puddle.
‘Hey, check it,’ says Beansy. ‘They’re dancing.’
XXXI
We must be ready, Parducci had told him.
Tullian was prepared, but he could never be ready for what he saw when he was summoned to the Orpheus Complex.
They said very little beyond formal greetings as they escorted him down inside the elevator. He guessed their thinking: they were telling him nothing because they didn’t want to prejudice the experiment. Or maybe they were just so scared that they didn’t feel there was anything helpful that they could say to him. He was, after all, the expert in this particular field.
He remembers the heat, the way it caught in his throat the second the doors opened. It was like the blast that could hit you momentarily as you passed directly under a large space-heater, except that there was no ensuing relief of passing out of range. It took only minutes to walk to the brig, where the holding cells were accommodated, but he was sweating heavily by the time they arrived. At least it covered up his apprehension: he’d have been sweating anyway. He was trembling, drawing upon all his strength to steel himself for what he was about to witness, the sight that had driven the king of this same land to murderous obsession four centuries previously.
He was escorted by General McCormack and Colonel Havelock, but they waited outside while he examined the specimens. One soldier, armed only with a pistol holstered at his hip, accompanied him inside the brig, remaining at the door as Tullian approached the first holding cell.
He thought nothing could have prepared him for confronting a live demon, but as he gazed through those bars, he realised he was looking at something far more disturbing.
The creature was seated on the floor, almost balled up. It stared at him anxiously for a moment, taking him in as he stood there in his robes, then looked away, glancing up furtively every so often. It seemed, if anything, relieved to recognise that he was not a soldier. He held up his crucifix. It tracked the movement of his hand initially, but once again seemed at greater ease once it had established that what he held did not appear to be a weapon.
He advanced to the second cell, where his presence elicited much the same response.
Tullian felt genuine, chest-tightening fear. He saw what Parducci predicted the scientists would see, and saw that they would be right.
These were not demons.
He considered all that he thought might be proven when he had stood in that vault and wondered aloud why the Church did not show the world their proof. The corollary demonstrated all his forebears’ wisdom in keeping it secret.
Then he saw the malign brilliance of the Morningstar, of Lucifer’s charade. Convince man that there are no demons by giving him scientific proof that they are instead mere visitors from another world. More exotic than mistaken glimpses of horse’s breath in the morning mist, but finally explicable, and explicable in a way that will further exalt scientific exploration over the spiritual. With demons thus dismissed, so would follow Satan, so would follow Hell, and this would be catastrophic. These creatures, wherever they were from, were not demons, but their presence on Earth was Satan’s work nonetheless: instruments of a plan to destroy faith. Though they might not even know it, they were all the more dangerous agents of his evil for not being demons.
‘The pillars of Heaven have their base in the abyss’. So said Jules Michelet, esteemed French historian and author of the seminal Satanism and Witchcraft. ‘The heedless person who denies this base could shatter paradise . . .’
Who would understand this better than Satan himself?
These creatures were in fact the first wave, dispatched to sow confusion and disguise the true threat. The real invasion would only come when the last bastions of resistance were at their weakest, and what shape might the Church be in a few years after a blow to worldwide faith such as this?
Tullian understood then that he had to beat the Devil at his own game: counter deceit with deceit, meet subterfuge with subterfuge. To wage by force or guile eternal war.
The military asked for his help because they feared they had brought forth demons from Hell. Well, he would give them demons from Hell, and
continue to confirm their worst fears until they finally saw sense and closed this thing down forever.
In time, though, he came to understand that this would never happen. The place would be ‘mothballed’, operations merely ‘suspended’. Inevitably, they would resume. Even if it took years to repeat the anomaly, eventually Steinmeyer or his successor would do this again. He had to destroy it. And not just destroy this machine so that it could not be rebuilt - for anything could be rebuilt - but destroy it in such a way that no one would permit the building of another. A few casualties would not be enough: this had to be a full-scale disaster, to put fear into both army and government that these were unstable forces they were dabbling with.
He had understood even sooner that keeping this whole thing under wraps was an impossible dream. This was not like the vault beneath the Vatican and the trusted few who kept its secret. Information would leak. Soldiers would talk. Scientists would definitely talk. The world was going to find out about these creatures, one way or another, which was why he had to shape the message. That, he realised, was where this could become more than mere damage limitation; that was where this could become a victory. He could take Lucifer’s charade and turn it to the Church’s advantage. For despite Parducci’s reservations, if this abomination was unavoidably to be revealed, then what a renaissance of faith might it inspire, to learn that there truly were demons and there truly was a Hell? What a revolution might ensue were it to be demonstrated that the tenets of science had been shaken, with verified experiments showing the unique effects of holy water upon these creatures?
That was why he had gone to some lengths to ensure Merrick lived to tell his tale, and could have kissed the man when he revealed that he had salvaged some video files. Despite Tullian suggesting that they could be used as a bargaining chip, he knew Merrick would not be able to resist leaking them, especially in the face of any cover-up. A leak from a Church source would be damaging to the point of self-defeating, but coming from a scientist, it was perfect. Unfortunately, there had been that cursed CCTV feed, which had left him with no choice.
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