Rick saw sadness on the demon’s face and made an assumption. “You were people once. You were a man?”
The question seemed to enrage the demon. “Not just a man—a prince. My family’s kingdom stretched from the Euphrates to the Tigris, and all we wanted, we took. Now I am a prince once more, here to take what I wish and answer only to the Red Lord himself.”
“So, it sounds like you’re still somebody’s bitch,” said Rick.
“I am a prince!” The demon’s face screwed up in fury, but, having stalled sufficiently to recover his strength, Rick was able to spring up and wallop the demon around the head with his lamp.
There was a resounding crack and Rick shouted triumphantly, “We already have a monarchy, thanks!”
The demon reeled backwards on its thick legs, face distorted from the large dent now in the left side of its skull.
But the black haired dead man did not go down.
“Fuck sake,” cried Rick. “Don’t you die?”
“Princes die when princes choose to die.”
“Do they choose to go to Hell? Because that’s where you’ve been rotting.”
The demon tried to backhand Rick again, but this time, he ducked and gave his enemy’s knees a hefty blow with the lamp.
The demon bellowed and stumbled sideways. “I will tear you into shreds and feed your remains to vultures.”
“You’d need to go someplace else for that,” said Rick as he smashed the demon in the hip. “No vultures here, I’m afraid.”
“There will be nothing left when we are done with it. We will destroy all.”
“Except vultures, apparently.” Rick took another swing, but his luck ran out, and he missed. The demon caught the lamp stem, yanked it away from him, and threw it to the ground.
“Now you die, worm.” The demon punched Rick in the stomach, and his ribs cracked like twigs. He slumped to his knees, able only to catch half a breath.
Keith raced to help, but Rick put his hand up and waved him away. “No… Keith, go… help Maddy and Diane. Get them out of… here.”
The demon grinned. “Yes, Keith, run while you can. I’ll deal with you later.”
Keith kept on towards Rick, but slowed down, and then stopped. “Rick, I can’t-”
“Just go!” shouted Rick, clutching his ribs in agony. “Get the hell out of here.”
Keith swallowed, then turned and ran. He called Diane out of the bushes and they went to Maddy’s aid—just in time to save her from being torn apart by a demon creeping up behind her.
Rick coughed and tasted blood in his mouth. Every breath he took was shallower than the last. The effort of even staying upright on his knees was too much. He slumped onto his side.
The black haired demon stood over him, deep, guttural laughter coming from deep down from its dead insides. “A valiant display—braver than a thousand other worms we have slaughtered in this village. It will be a pleasure to add you to our ranks, once your time in Hell is over.”
Rick flailed, no longer able to take another breath. His vision fizzed with swirling rain drops, and he tried to find the strength to get back to his knees and face his death with his head held high, but he only felt himself getting lower and lower to the ground. Eventually, his head rested against the cold tarmac. He looked up at the sky and saw the moon shining down on him. It was pretty.
That was when the demon raised his foot into the air and stamped Rick’s skull into pulp.
~DAVID DAVIDS~
Slough, Berkshire
“Mina? Mina, where on Earth are you, girl?” David had tried Mina’s cell, but it only ever rang out to voicemail. The last couple times, the call hadn’t even connected—it appeared the nation’s cellular network had started to fail. Whatever contingencies were put in place by the networks could obviously only last so long without human intervention. David imagined call centres and hub offices lying empty, employees all fled, or ripped apart by demons. Inside the offices of the Slough Echo, things seemed almost normal, but he knew that was likely an exception. It was just a busy news day as far as the staff of the Echo was concerned. Everybody had been tasked with the same jobs they would have been given if a local celebrity died. They were somehow outside of the situation, as journalists so often were. It was hard to realise that the current situation affected them as much as the people they were reporting the news to.
The last time he’d spoken to Mina, she’d said she was in the waiting area, but when he stormed out there to find her, she had been nowhere to be seen. Her whole website had been erased—didn’t she care? People had been funnelling through to the landing page in droves over the last several hours, and there was evidence that it was directly helping people survive. How on Earth had it been deleted?
David headed back out into the waiting area, returning there to check, even though he’d already inspected it once. It was the same thing he did with his car keys some mornings. Whenever he misplaced them, he’d go to the sideboard in the hallway again and again because that was where they were supposed to be. Mina said she was in the waiting area, so that was where he went once again.
He never expected to bump into Andras.
“Do you know where Mina has wandered off to?” he asked. “She’s needed.”
Andras nodded and looked rather sad. “She got a call off her dad. I think he’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yeah, you know… dead.”
“Oh, poor Mina. Is she okay?” He felt for her. From what he’d witnessed, Mina’s father was a controlling man, but still her father. He could tell she loved him, but lots of people were dying in the world, and no one had the luxury to mourn them. They needed to keep working.
“Do you know where she went, Andras?”
“For fresh air, I think. I asked her if she wanted to talk, but… well, she doesn’t know me, so she went to be alone.”
“Of course. I’ll go look for her, and see if she’s okay.”
Andras nodded. “I’ll make myself useful inside.”
“Yes, please. Little Alice is awake, so Carol will no doubt be back on the floor ready to give out tasks.”
“Great, I’ll get right on it.”
Andras walked away, but something occurred to David that made him call the man back. “Andras?”
He turned. “Yes?”
“You were at Mina’s computer last. Do you know what happened to the website?”
“Don’t ask me. Everything was fine when I left it. Maybe it was hacked.”
“By whom? Who out there would want to stop us giving out information about the demons?”
“The demons, for one.”
David thought the idea of tech savvy demons was ridiculous, so he gave a thin smile and walked away. There was something off about Andras. They had found him cowering in the road outside the building, but since then, the man had shown little fear or concern. Nor had he made any phone calls to friends or loved ones.
Mina had probably gone out to the front of the building to get fresh air, but David would rather her be inside. The army south of Luton had been spotted moving west by a middle-aged postal worker trapped in a Chinese restaurant. He had been providing typo-ridden email updates from an iPhone attached to the building’s Wi-Fi. The updates had stopped about fifteen minutes ago.
David opened the door in the hallway that led to the stairwell. He wasn’t about to trust the lift—the power could go at any minute and he didn’t fancy being trapped inside a metal coffin. Despite the mugginess of the summer night, the stairwell was chilly, and a draught whistled up the central gap between the levels.
He started down the step, his ears picking up a rhythmic thudding, like a tree branch tapping against a window in the wind. It seemed to come from the floor below, and as he looked down the central hollow of the spiralling stairwell, he saw something flashing in and out of view. What on Earth was it?
He quickened his steps. He had a bad feeling, and was eager to find out he was wrong. But he wasn’t wrong. The b
ad feeling was completely warranted.
Mina swung from a long length of telephone cord attached to the safety railing, her neck broken. The thick, grey cord bit so deeply into her windpipe it looked like her head might pop off at any minute and send her decapitated body plummeting to the bottom floor lobby.
“Mina!”
David panicked. He reached out and grabbed Mina’s legs and tried to hoist her back up onto the landing, but she was too heavy. Her body swung wildly around on the end of the cord. The only thing he could think to do was call for help. So he screamed until his throat hurt. “Somebody, help me! Please!”
Before he knew it, he was sobbing.
Nobody came. Nobody could hear him.
***
Eventually, David’s thinking prevailed, and he pulled out his phone and dialled Carol. When she heard what had happened, she appeared in the stairwell within minutes. She stood beside him now, looking down at Mina where they laid her down on the landing. Getting her down had been much easier with two of them.
“The silly girl,” said Carol. “She was so bright.”
David was light-headed, so he leaned up against the railing and dropped his head as he spoke. “We survived so much together, to end it like this? It makes no sense. She wouldn’t do this, Carol.”
“Of course she would, David, my dear. In fact, it takes more courage not to kill ourselves right now. You know the demon army is heading this way?”
David nodded.
“Corporal Martin thinks it might be planning to head down to the South Coast, maybe attack Portsmouth. The Navy is there, rounding up people into a refugee camp.”
David rubbed at his temples, fingers moving in clockwise circles. “They’re trying to exterminate us.”
“Looks that way, which is why it’s such a sodding shame that young girls like Mina are making their job easier for them. We needed her. Silly girl.”
“She didn’t do this, Carol. I know her. She was strong. I listened to her stand up to her father, I watched her run into a burning building to save a girl—she wasn’t in a vulnerable place. She was motivated, and she wanted to help.”
“Andras told me her father might be dead. That’s likely what tipped her over the edge, David.”
He’d been a reporter for thirty years, and something didn’t feel right. “Andras was at Mina’s computer right before the website got wiped. He was in the waiting area when Mina went missing. Who is he?”
“He’s just some chap, David, trying to survive like the rest of us. He isn’t up to no good, I promise you.”
David looked down at Mina’s body and sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. Give me a minute and I’ll be back to work.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in the office. Alice wants to see you now that’s she’s awake.”
“Alice? See me?”
Carol shrugged. “She wanted to see you and Mina both, but we’ll have to break the news to her. She likes you.”
David frowned. “Heaven knows why.”
“You and Mina saved her life. I don’t blame her for wanting to stay close to you. You’ve done well, David. Don’t lose yourself now. I need you.”
“I’ll be back to work in a minute, just want to put Mina somewhere quiet.”
Carol squeezed him on the arm and smiled. Then she left him alone with Mina. He was able to pick her up into his arms, and he took her down another level into the offices of an accountancy firm that sub-let part of the building. He took her into the boardroom and placed her down on the long desk where he straightened her legs and put her arms by her side. It was nice to see her at peace, but strange that he already missed her so. Before the chaos that erupted in Oxford Street, David had thought nothing of Mina—just another youngster with a camera, naively hoping she could make a mark on the world. Now he knew different. Mina had been a brave and kind woman, and he’d been lucky to know her. He’d been so consumed with his career for so long that he’d forgotten how to make a friend. In Mina, he had at least found pleasant company, and a person he respected. Now it was too late to appreciate her, and he regretted it more than ever.
He felt so alone. There had always seemed to be time for a wife and kids later on, and even at fifty, he hadn’t felt his options were closed. He was selfish at heart and had wanted to be free for as long as possible. Now he wanted nothing more than for someone to sweep him up in their loving arms and hold him. Just a friend would do.
David wept over Mina’s body.
Perhaps she really had killed herself. If he was drawn to such dark introspection, perhaps she had been too. It still didn’t feel right, though.
He ran a hand over her cheek. “Sorry, kiddo. I hope you’re some place nice.”
He was about to move away, when he noticed a spot of blood on her shirt. It could have come from her broken neck, but when he looked at her throat, he saw no breaks in the skin, not even where the cord constricted her flesh. He examined her more closely, until he eventually discovered the source. One of her fingernails had torn away.
A defensive wound?
David had once reported on a murder case in Essex where he’d seen the body of a woman close up. She’d been raped and strangled. Her fingernails had been broken too.
Did somebody attack you, Mina?
Andras?
David couldn’t bring himself to trust that man. Something was just off about him. Somebody had done this to Mina; he was sure of it.
It was time to do some investigating.
He headed back upstairs and into the newsroom, acting calmly while remaining suspicious. Alice waited for him with a cup of tea and handed it over. “I’ve never made tea before,” she said. “Everyone in America drinks coffee.”
David took a sip. It was weak and lukewarm. “Perfect! You’re a natural English lady if ever I saw one.”
She smiled, but then fell back to sadness. Obvious survivor’s guilt—a brief glimmer of happiness followed by shame as memories of her brother’s death returned. He did something he was unused to and gave the little girl a hug. “We’ll get you home to your mummy soon, sweetheart, I promise. Let’s just get this mess sorted out first.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know I’ll never go home.”
“You don’t know that, Alice. We’ll do everything we can.”
“I heard Corporal Martin say that America is just as bad as here. My mommy might already be dead.”
It hurt David’s heart to see a child so devoid of hope, and he did his best to combat it. “There are lots of people still very much alive, Alice. We are fighting back. Your mummy might be okay. Your father too. He’s a Coast Guard, isn’t he? He’ll be safe on his boat.”
“I don’t see my daddy much. He’ll be too busy to come and get me.”
“I don’t have children, Alice, but believe me, I know your father will be doing everything he can right now to get to you.”
Alice nodded, but didn’t seem to believe him very much. “He doesn’t know that Kyle is dead. Corporal Martin has been trying to reach my mommy, but she’s not answering anymore. That’s how I know she’s dead. She said she would stay indoors with Clark, so why isn’t she answering?”
“The phones are playing up, sweetheart. Corporal Martin will keep trying her. Why don’t you go ask him to call again now for you?”
She sighed. “Okay. Tell me when you want more tea.”
“Will do.” He took another sip of the lacklustre brew and smacked his lips. “Mmm.”
Once Alice had gone, David went and grabbed Mitchell, one of the Echo’s system administrators. The pasty-faced spindle of a man had a look of constant illness—with perpetual dark bags beneath his eyes. “Hi, Mitchell. I was wondering if you could do something for me.”
“What’s up, David?”
“Is there any way you can go on Mina’s computer and find a history of what was done on it?”
“You mean like a list of user actions?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly.”
Mitchell nodde
d. “Piece of piss. There’s black box software on the entire network. It records every single keystroke. Carol had it installed after we got accused of phone hacking last year. She wanted to know exactly what was going on under her nose. You thinking somebody in the office deleted the emergency website on purpose?”
David nodded and kept his voice low. “I do think that, yes, and I also think that someone used Mina’s computer to do it.”
“Makes sense. The backup was on Mina’s laptop, and that got deleted too. I’ve been trying to restore it for the last hour. Where is Mina, anyway?”
David decided not to confuse things for the time being, so he lied. “She’s gone to get some air.”
“Okay, well, let’s go take a look at her computer.”
They went on over to Mina’s cubicle, where Mitchell sat down and opened her laptop. David leaned over his shoulder while he tapped away. “How long will this take, Mitchell?”
“Ten minutes. Leave me to it.”
“Okay, I-”
Somebody bumped into the back of David, and he was unnerved to discover it was Andras. He held two steaming mugs of tea out in front of him. “I saw Alice made you a cuppa earlier, so I thought I’d get you one a little stronger. Bless her socks, but she goes a little overboard with the milk.”
David tried to smile, but only a grimace appeared on his face. Standing in front of Andras, he was even surer that something was odd about the man. Maybe Mitchell would find the answers that proved his suspicions were well founded.
David reached out to take one of the mugs, but as he did so, Andras thrust out his own arm. Their hands collided, and the mug bounced up into the air. It flew over Mitchell’s shoulder and landed right on top of Mina’s laptop. There was no fire, or even sparks. The laptop’s screen simply flickered for two seconds, then went dark.
Mitchell leapt up. “Damn it! You clumsy idiot.”
Andras covered his mouth in horror. “I’m so sorry. I… It was an accident.”
David looked down at Mina’s laptop and groaned. “Is it okay? Can you fix it, Mitchell?”
Mitchell picked the laptop up and winced as it drained steaming hot tea from its vents. “It’s gone to digital heaven.”
The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel Page 24
