Hands that were too big. Fingers too long and tipped with points that were effectively talons.
And then she moved faster. The gradual, calculating approach disappeared and the speed was awesome.
Took Pearcey by surprise.
Had him fumbling for the gun in his jacket like some no-hoper. Someone without the natural instinct that marked you out as being resourceful and expedient enough for leadership. Not characteristic of a chap who was capable of more than grunt and follow.
Pearcey had always been more than a grunt and follow kind of guy.
He cursed himself as those whip thin arms clamped his shoulders and bowled him over. Felt a depth of self-disgust that would have made his long-gone instructors smile with pleasure at his self-awareness.
He reacted with training and temperament because they were all he had.
Ignored the damage the talons inflicted.
Barbs that punched his flesh.
Tore through his tough coat as a thorn will puncture flesh. Waxed cotton and padded lining pierced like wet paper.
Thrust his hands at the creature’s shoulders and gripped as best he could. It wasn’t easy gripping that rippling flesh.
Like trying to hold molten wood.
Carlton Pearcey would always give challenge a run for its money. It was part of his nature.
Along with a number of other traits.
An inability to admit defeat was paramount amongst those. Pearcey couldn’t give in unless pushed to extremes. Even then, it was grudging.
That characteristic was closely trailed by rebellious and cynical.
All of his files would tell you that in carefully couched terms. A wonder that he had ever got a job in government circles. A product of circumstance.
Such was the beauty of friendship and debt.
His innate capability played a part.
It helped if you were actually quite good at what you did.
Pearcey wrestled the thing above him. Somehow avoided snapping jaws.
Felt his arms tiring.
Enormous strength in a skeletal frame. Bearing down on him.
The sting of gashes on his shins.
Clawed feet ripping through denim.
Spittle flecked his cheeks. Spilling from the creature’s mouth as it strained to bite his face.
He cursed himself again for being unprepared.
Entranced by the unknown, when the unknown was what he’d been trained to deal with. Maybe it was age. Maybe he was just too far past his best to cope with a serious situation. Like a footballer who plays on after his legs have gone.
He considered the gun and the knife and attempted to gauge a method to bring them into play.
Change the game.
You have to remember that it’s all a game. When it gets too real, that will see you through. Play the game until the last minute and pray for extra time. An added minute or two. A second, because that’s all it takes. Don’t give up.
He closed his mouth to avoid the dripping liquid.
Flexed his arms to avoid the pistoning jaw.
Drew up his legs to avoid the scraping feet. Was about to attempt a throw when the pressure shifted to his right.
Then dropped away completely.
Gallagher stood above him for a frozen moment and then blurred away.
Pearcey rolled and righted himself.
Ready now. The gun in his right hand and the knife in the left.
Watched Gallagher hit the cleaner-woman creature-thing as it attempted to rise. Shatter its head in a spray of thick red fluid.
Hit it again because it wouldn’t stay down.
Step back panting and gasping.
Exhausted and disgusted.
The iron bar that he’d brought with him clasped in both hands.
Dripping.
“What the fuck is going on?”
As he spoke the words, Gallagher turned to him and spread his arms, the red-wet steel flicking blood in a flaring arc.
Pearcey shook his head.
“Fucked if I know my friend, but I’m beginning to think that what was on the footage was genuine. Real.”
Gallagher hadn’t seen the films.
Not that it would have prepared him.
It hadn’t prepared Pearcey, and Pearcey was a veteran. Forged in the fire of a fair few conflicts, none of them clean.
There were some things that you couldn’t train for.
Some things defied analysis, quantification and definition. You either could or you couldn’t.
That was why he’d wanted Gallagher to come with him. Gallagher had a natural expediency about him.
That and the fact that Sonny Jim Gallagher had his own agenda. One with which Pearcey could identify.
The both inspected the twitching creature on the ground. Head cracked, lumpy maroon liquid seeping on to the tarmac. The wound was horrible, but it paled when compared to the thing itself.
She was hideous.
Made Pearcey’s flesh crawl and a little shiver run down his spine.
“That is one ugly bastard.”
It appeared that, amongst his other qualities, Gallagher had a talent for understatement.
Ugly didn’t do it justice. Just scratched the surface.
Pearcey looked around.
Another figure had appeared at the end of the road.
Behind that another two.
The clock was ticking.
“Yeah, and here are some of its ugly fucking friends. Come on Sonny. Let’s get back inside. In light of this, I think we need to reassess the situation and I don’t intend doing it here on the street.”
As they swiftly re-entered the building, Pearcey glanced at the sky. Light was an apt word, they didn’t have a whole load of that left.
And whatever they decided to do, he really didn’t want to be out here in the dark.
Chapter 3
Decisions
Pearcey secured the outer door and they retreated towards the stairs.
He could see sweat beading on Gallagher’s forehead. Could sense a similar sweat on his own scalp.
Feel his breath coming fast and his heart racing.
Fear and shock trying to overwhelm him.
This whole situation had started out crazy and it was getting crazier by the minute. If he didn’t get a grip on things and, most importantly himself, it would quickly spiral out of control.
The way the world was turning, he had a sneaky suspicion that it would be quite easy to end up dead.
Brown bread, as the cockney folk said.
You’re history, in the immortal words of the bard’s sister. Joan or Anne or Margaret, he’d could never figure out who was in the band.
Pearcey wasn’t about to let that happen if he could avoid it.
As they reached the door to the stairs, he stopped and laid a hand on Gallagher’s shoulder.
“I’m going back out in a car. I can take a drive round, see if this is widespread. Then get my arse back here before you know I’m gone.”
He smiled and shrugged.
The smile was apologetic and the shrug was half-hearted.
“You don’t have to do this. It’s my job. Not yours.”
Gallagher stared at him, still breathing heavily after the encounter outside. Took a moment, took a big breath.
Gathered himself before replying.
It looked suspiciously like a man readying himself for a fight.
“You know well enough that this is nothing to do with my job Carlton. You wouldn’t have brought me otherwise. Suggested my name when Holte asked for volunteers.”
He stepped back and rested against the still closed door that led back into the complex.
There were noises outside.
Gallagher fumbled in his pockets and produced a packet of cigarettes. Lit one with a trembling hand.
Offered the pack.
Pearcey shook his head.
The last thing he needed at that point was to start smoking again. Although it was sorely t
empting. He had a feeling that if he reached out and took one, his hand would have some shake in it as well.
Gallagher took a huge drag before speaking again.
Blew the smoke off to one side.
“I have to go and get my daughter. You know that.”
Anne Gallagher was mid-twenties.
Pearcey had never met her, but Sonny had mentioned her in passing. Neurotic and overly dependent, according to her father.
When he described her, Gallagher’s tone held a mix of love, irritation and despair. Pearcey supposed that was true of any parent, to varying degrees.
He nodded.
“Sonny, I don’t know how to ask this tactfully, so I’m not going to bother trying for tact. Are you sure she wasn’t infected? That she didn’t have the City Flu thing?”
He left unsaid the implications of those questions.
They’d just had an uncomfortably close encounter with one of the possible implications, and the conclusions were worse than uncomfortable.
“Yes, she was fine. She wasn’t feeling great, but Annie never feels great. She’s always got something wrong with her ...that’s just how she is.”
He sighed and ran his hands through his short greying hair.
“I should have brought her in with me. It all happened so fast. I just did what I was told to do. Came here and started prepping stuff. Followed the fucking procedures like a good boy.”
Pearcey stared at his friend.
“Have you spoken to her since it all kicked off?”
Gallagher shook his head.
“I’ve been tied up. Busier than a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. This place is like the Forth Bridge, there’s always something needs doing.
But no, she hasn’t answered when I’ve tried. That doesn’t mean anything. She turns her phone off when she’s, you know, in a bad place.
Having a bad spell. And even if she has the bloody thing turned on, the telecoms are fucked.”
Gallagher grasped Pearcey’s arm.
The aggression gone, replaced by something that resembled pleading.
“Look, it’s Lewisham. That’s only across the bastard river for Christ’s sake. If we get a shift on, we can be there in twenty-five, thirty minutes. Grab Annie and be back here before tea.”
It wasn’t pleading in his eyes. It was desperation.
“Don’t make me go alone Pearcey. I will, but I don’t want to.”
Pearcey nodded again.
“Okay, fair enough.”
<><><>
Carlton Pearcey had known Gallagher for about two years. Pure luck that they were both immune to whatever had swept through most of everyone else. They weren’t bosom buddies by any stretch of the imagination, but Pearcey had grown to genuinely like the man as their paths occasionally crossed.
They’d met due to their jobs.
Pearcey worked for the government in a somewhat vague security capacity. Gallagher was an engineer come odd-job man with responsibility for the maintenance of the CIMC emergency bunker.
The Central Interim Management Complex.
An innocuously bureaucratic name for what was, to all intents and purposes, a vast and sprawling shelter concealed beneath Whitehall.
A hardened facility, initially built to withstand attack in wartime. The prospect of outright attack had become increasingly less likely, but the centre had remained.
Nowadays, it was more myth than reality.
Its existence went unacknowledged.
Officially there was no such place.
Those in the media that were aware of it, were left in no doubt that any reference to it would be unwelcome.
And have unpleasant consequences.
In reality, the centre had been around for decades.
In various incarnations, under a variety of names.
Originally a crisis command centre dating from the Second World War, it had been renovated and expanded in the late seventies and early eighties.
A protected hub that was intended as a control centre in the event of critical failures in the administrative structure.
It had continued to be maintained in the intervening years.
When the City Flu struck and millions began to lapse into unconsciousness, the wheels of emergency process had rolled into action.
Pearcey had been ordered to collect individuals marked as necessary or useful to the administration.
Gallagher had been asked to fulfil the conditions of his contract, and take up residence at the centre.
When a reconnaissance of the surface was required, Pearcey had known that Gallagher would want to be part of it. For no other reason than to go and check on his daughter.
After coming face to mutated face with one of those things, Pearcey wasn’t so sure that it had been his best idea.
Scouting the city was one thing.
A retrieval mission in enemy territory was a different proposition.
Especially when the enemy was a complete mystery.
Unknown numbers.
Unknown capabilities.
Unknown origin.
The brief first-hand experience that he’d had didn’t inspire confidence. Quite the opposite. It left him feeling inadequate and unprepared.
Pearcey had spent a fair amount of his life being scared. It was what he signed on for. Part of the job. Part of the attraction.
He liked it. That sporadic slice of fear added a little zing to life.
This was different.
He didn’t like any of this.
All sense of control had disappeared. Fled like the remnants of a nightmare upon waking.
<><><>
A few minutes later, they stood once again in the shadowy garage.
Fifteen minutes wasted in some respects, but Pearcey wouldn’t have changed it. At least he had a firmer grip on the reality of things.
He already had the keys for the car he’d chosen.
A sleek black Jaguar.
A hundred grand’s worth of supercharged luxury.
Gleaming even in the gloom. Holte had told him to take whatever vehicle he wanted and he’d taken the deputy PM at his word.
Picked one of the better official cars. May as well roll in style had been his thinking. Plus it was fast.
As they strode over to the car, it struck him that he’d have preferred a military vehicle.
Something ugly and armoured.
With big heavy wheels.
If wishes were kisses, we’d all have chapped lips.
He couldn’t remember who’d said that, where he’d first heard it. His mother maybe, or his ex-wife perhaps.
It could have been either. He missed them both.
It was useless pondering.
His mother was long dead and his wife was long gone.
Along with his kid. He didn’t even know where they were living. Up north somewhere.
He had connections, he couldn’t have tracked them down.
At the time, it hadn’t seemed right. They’d wanted away and he wasn’t about to turn into some nutjob stalker chasing after them.
And then?
Well that hoary old bastard time had passed and he’d drifted aimlessly along with it. Not doing much about anything important. Resentment? Shame? Pure irresponsibility?
None and all of the above and it didn’t matter a single, cheerless jot. He hadn’t done anything. That was what mattered.
And now?
Tracking them down now would be next to impossible.
A proper needle in a haystack job.
Complicated by an event that he hadn’t begun to understand yet, with dangers that he couldn’t fully grasp.
And there wasn’t any point pondering his desire for an armoured car either.
There weren’t any of those at the centre carpark and there wasn’t time to find one.
Getting through the secure shutters ate up another ten minutes. A tight spiral of darkly claustrophobic concrete road and blank brick walls. The last gate was a fil
igree of metal that allowed some light.
Pearcey had a remote that would open it for their exit and close it after them.
He pulled the car to a stop, well shy of the gate.
Got out and eased the car door shut.
A quiet snick that nevertheless had a thick sound to it.
Walked to the gate and checked the road was clear.
He was hoping they could get out and close the door on an empty street.
Pearcey settled himself in the car and in no time at all they were outside, the shutter trundling closed behind them.
The sun was going down, he could see it by the angle of the light.
On several occasions in his life, Pearcey had experienced the sense that he was making a bad call, before he actually committed himself to the course of action.
Call it premonition if you like.
Or call it instinct if that’s preferable.
Maybe subconscious logic, if that rocks your boat, is more acceptable to your particular view of the world.
Whatever the explanation for the feeling, he felt it again then. As they sat in the car, preparing to drive off into the wild, decreasingly blue yonder.
He turned to Gallagher.
“Four hours. Tops. I’m not driving around out here in the dark.”
Jim, Sonny to his friends, Gallagher nodded.
Pearcey would recall what he said after that nod of the head.
Would think about it later in the day.
That four hours would be plenty of time.
Chapter 4
Bridges
Getting to Westminster Bridge should have been a breeze. A walk in the proverbial park.
The distance was insignificant on any normal day.
They had a very fast car.
The roads, on the whole, were empty.
Some stalled traffic, but Pearcey knew the driving was mostly okay. Navigable at least. Some care needed here and there.
He’d been driving round the city for the last few days and had been pleasantly surprised by the decrease in traffic. He detested urban driving. It wasn’t often that he felt like his life was being made easier.
The fact that it required a cataclysmic event for it to happen took the shine off it somewhat.
The easy driving didn’t last very long.
Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours Page 2
