‘What the—’ said Murdoch, looking out the rear window as they passed the wreckage, the air behind them already full of smoke. ‘What the hell are you doing? They need help.’
‘Convoy doesn’t stop until we get to our destination,’ said the driver. And he said something else but the words tailed off, becoming a gasp as he looked at the ambulance.
‘What is that?’ Dr Jorgensen said, pressing himself against Murdoch, pointing past the front seats. Murdoch followed his finger, and at first he couldn’t work out what he was seeing. Something was happening inside the ambulance, a raging tornado of objects which surged and spiralled through the air. The lights were flashing on and off, the doors flapping, making it impossible to see clearly what was going on.
‘Get in touch with lead,’ said the driver. The front-seat passenger – another MI5 agent in a black suit – put his hand to his ear.
‘Convoy 1 this is Convoy 5,’ he said. ‘Convoy 4 is down and we have a problem inside the ambulance.’
Nobody spoke. Murdoch squinted, peering into the flickering chaos. A noise had risen up over the thrum of tyres on tarmac, a sound that grated down his spine. It can’t be, he thought, but it was. It was the corpse, that same breath only louder now. Much louder.
‘Pull over,’ he said again, his voice a hiss. ‘Do it now.’
‘No, sir,’ said the driver. ‘Our orders—’
‘Screw your orders,’ said Murdoch. ‘Stop the car now.’
‘I need you to calm down, sir,’ said the man in the passenger seat, turning. His right hand had strayed under his suit jacket and Murdoch knew what he had holstered there – a government-issue 9mm. It didn’t matter. Whatever was happening inside that ambulance was a million times worse than any gun. ‘Sit back in your seat and do not speak.’
Murdoch didn’t obey. He reached to his side, past Jorgensen, grabbing the door handle and wrenching hard. It was locked. He tried the other side, the morgue assistant next to him no longer crying, just staring through the windscreen making choking noises.
‘Sir, if you do not sit back in your seat and calm down then I will be forced to subdue you.’
The door didn’t budge, and Murdoch leaned forward, ready to shout back at the man, ready to take a swing at him if he had to.
He never got the chance.
In front, the ambulance exploded – not into fire, but darkness. It seemed to happen in slow motion, a whip-crack of black lightning that buckled the metal walls, opening them like a flower; which lifted the wheels off the road, making the whole vehicle fly. A lightless wave pulsed from the ruined ambulance, so dark that it hurt Murdoch’s eyes to look at it. It was as if that patch of existence had been erased, as if substance had been inverted, turned to absence. Through that gap, past that hole in reality, was something so vast, so infinite, so empty that his heart broke the moment he saw it. That’s the real universe, he understood. The truth behind the mask. That’s all there is, and it’s nothing.
Another blast ripped the ambulance apart, sending pieces of wheel and engine and flesh in every direction – still in slow motion, like time had no power here. Its exhaust javelined backwards, punching through the windscreen of the car, impaling the driver, not stopping until it had passed right through Jorgensen in the back seat. Murdoch could hear the sizzle of blood on the hot metal, the air suddenly heavy with the stench of cooked meat. Jorgensen’s hand gripped his arm, flexing once before falling still. The car smashed into the centre divide, sparks cascading from the doors as it ground to a halt.
The corpse was suspended above the road in a pocket of absolute night. Its mouth was a churning void, one that seemed to suck up all the light and goodness of the world. Its eyes blazed into the car, right into Murdoch’s head.
It lifted its hands, and as it did so another rippling wave of shadow expanded across the motorway. Murdoch saw a motorbike lifted into the air and pulled into pieces, its rider atomised into a sparkling crimson cloud which was sucked towards the corpse’s raging mouth. He saw one of the limos in front peel apart like a kit model, its passengers disintegrating as they were dragged into the chasm. A storm of metal and emptied flesh ground around the living corpse like a tornado, more blinding black lightning firing wildly in the maelstrom.
There was another crack of thunder. Murdoch glanced round to see two young girls on the road, holding each other as a hail of burning embers drifted down around them. They stared at the monster hanging there.
I’m sorry. One of the girls spoke, a voice that seemed to be whispered right into his ear. I can’t save you.
He reached out to them, his fingers pressed into the glass.
Don’t be sorry, he thought. It will devour you too. It will devour us all.
‘Alice,’ he said, thinking of his wife, of his son, knowing that he would never see them again – not in this life, not in any other.
The corpse gestured again with its fingers and more of the world disappeared beneath a blanket of darkness. Murdoch felt his car rise off the ground, then that shadow reached him and it was as if everyone he knew and loved had died – a grief so heavy, so impossible, that it literally pulled him apart. He lifted his hands to his face, seeing his fingers begin to fragment into particles the size of sand grains. They funnelled up towards the dead man, his hands vanishing, then his arms, his vision sparking as his brain turned to dust. And it was almost worse that there was no pain, because at least pain would be one final reminder that he had once lived.
But there was only the vast, roiling, infinite, silent darkness.
Then nothing.
The Fury
Fursville, 7.31 p.m.
Brick felt it. He was drenched in sweat from toiling in the unforgiving sun, every muscle aching. He laid down the shovel, straightening his back, feeling as if night had fallen suddenly and without warning, even though the sun was still warm on his back. Lisa lay beside him, on a patch of light-drenched grass close to the back fence, covered with a tablecloth. He had carried her out here himself, her dead weight making her a hundred times heavier than she had been before. He hadn’t yet looked at her face, because he knew that once he did there could be no more doubt, no more fooling himself that she’d be coming back. He blinked, the sunshine gradually returning. But that chill remained, keeping the gooseflesh on his arms. He picked up the shovel, stepped into her grave, and carried on digging.
Cal and Daisy felt it. They were watching Brick from a distance, her hands wrapped tight around his arm the way she had always clung on to her mum. They turned to each other, both feeling that same sudden, crushing sadness, the knowledge that something in the world had gone terribly, irreversibly wrong. It was like animals sensing an earthquake, Cal thought, not knowing why they are scared, just understanding that they have to escape. It’s the Fury, he realised. Things are changing. And even as the words crossed his mind Daisy hugged him tighter. He looked into her pale eyes and saw her voice there. It’s going to get bad, Cal. It’s going to get a lot worse. He gripped her tight, the same way he would grip a float if he was drowning. He didn’t ever want to let go.
Jade felt it. She sat slumped in the hallway inside the pavilion, a dead man within spitting distance. She felt it as a pressure, one that grated down the corridor and forced itself into her head, blocking her ears like that time she’d dived too deep into the swimming pool. It sat there, an unwanted guest, making even the sadness seem obsolete, futile. It was so dreadful that she opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn’t get the noise out. She sat there, silently howling, knowing that nothing would ever be the same, nothing could ever be good again.
Chris felt it. He stood on the beach, throwing stones into the sea. He watched one hurtle through the hot air, thinking that despite the Fury, despite the shootings, things weren’t all that bad – at least the sun was shining. Then, in an instant, it was as if the ocean rose up, a solid wall of darkness which towered over him, which blocked out the light and which dragged itself over the world, burying everything in s
ilt and saltwater. He dropped to his knees, fighting to remember how to breathe, blinking reality back to life. But even with the sun on his face again he knew that the darkness was still there. It had been born.
Adam felt it. He slept deeply in the pavilion foyer. His dreams of horses and fairgrounds were abruptly tainted, like ink spreading through a bowl of water. Dark, bulging clouds mushroomed outwards, their blue-black surface as dense as granite, polluting everything and leaving him alone inside a bottomless cavern. He cried out for his mum, and for the girl, Daisy, but all that existed in the night was him and a shapeless creature of boundless sorrow. His sleeping body shook, but he did not wake.
Rilke felt it. She shivered in the candlelit restaurant, still holding the revolver. She’d killed for a reason, because she had to, because they all had a more important job to do and they couldn’t let anything stand in their way. But the faces of the man and the girl she had murdered hung before her, ghost-like against the gloom, not speaking, not moving, just watching her. They’d be there forever, she realised. They’d be there until she died. And the thought seemed like the worst possible thing she could imagine, until it hit her, a depthless, hopeless wave of utter nothingness. She dropped the gun, clamping her hands to her head, screaming, Go away go away go away go away.
Even Schiller felt it, locked inside the cold casket of his body. He groaned, twitching, shedding sparkling flakes of ice on the floor. Rilke shot up, running over to where he lay and collapsing to her knees beside him. She called his name, holding his head, stroking his cheek, waiting for his eyes to open. He moaned again, a nightmare noise, then he lay still. But she knew he’d sensed the same thing as her, even from deep inside whatever fathomless sleep he was lost in. He understood what was happening.
‘You have to get better soon, Schill,’ Rilke said, brushing back strands of thin, dark hair from his eyes. ‘We need you. We all do.’
She put her head on his chest, trying to ignore the bone-numbing chill, focusing on the shadow that had pulled itself over her mind, which had pulled itself over everything.
‘Because it’s here, little brother,’ she said. ‘It’s here.’
Sunday
And where two raging fires meet together
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
Brick
Fursville, 5.05 a.m.
He woke to the sensation of needles in his back, moving rapidly up and down his spine. It wasn’t painful, it was almost relaxing, until something else began to jab into the flesh of his shoulder.
‘Ow!’ he said, rolling over, the world a blur. There was a flurry of noise, wings beating and a coarse caw. He blinked hard until he made out a seagull on the ground a few feet away. It stared at him with black-eyed curiosity, skipping closer as if about to begin another attack. Brick grabbed a handful of soil and lobbed it at the bird, watching it waddle clumsily then soar with perfect grace into the burgeoning dawn. ‘Yeah, you better run,’ he called after it, and he almost managed a smile before remembering where he was.
The sandy soil was from a mound next to him, a five-foot-five by three-foot outline in the grass. It had taken hours to dig, but only minutes to fill in – he’d desperately swept earth over the corpse and its chequered tablecloth shroud until no trace of it remained. She had been cold when he’d touched her, stiff. She hadn’t felt real. Brick wasn’t sure if that had made it easier or harder.
He’d walked onto the moonlit beach when he’d finished. There he’d found a starfish, a dead one. He’d placed it on the head of her grave and told himself he was doing it as a mark of respect, so he wouldn’t forget. In reality, though, he’d done it because he worried that if he didn’t weigh down the grave with something then her body would crawl free in the night. It would come after him. He’d followed the starfish with about a hundred stones.
And then he’d fallen asleep next to her. She had been cold, but the earth had been warm. It had spent the day soaking up the heat, and the touch of it on his skin was almost human. It could have been her lying next to him, keeping the night at bay.
But it wasn’t, of course. He’d killed her. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he hadn’t stopped it from happening, and that made him as guilty as Rilke.
Rilke.
Brick struggled to his feet, his whole body aching. The effort made his head spin, a blood rush that caused the morning light to prickle like static. It brought back something else, a feeling he’d had when he was digging, a sensation that something really bad had happened. It did, you moron, his brain told him. Lisa died. Only it was more than that. He couldn’t explain it, just that it had felt as if the entire world had lost someone it loved.
Had he seen something too? A shape amidst the chaos? A man whose mouth was a storm and who bled endless darkness onto the world?
He snorted, feeling ridiculous for even thinking it. The shovel was lying on the other side of the mound and he picked it up. The dirt-encrusted wood cut into the blisters on his palm, making him wince.
Rilke. She’d shot Lisa dead. She’d pay for that, she and her comatose brother. She had the gun, but that wouldn’t help her, not forever. Sooner or later she’d let her guard down. Brick gripped the handle, sweeping the shovel through the air. The blade caught the amber light of the morning, making him smile. Yeah, she’d pay.
Lisa’s grave wouldn’t be the last to be dug in Fursville.
Daisy
Fursville, 6.37 a.m.
Daisy didn’t recognise the voice, and it was this uncertainty that pulled her from her dream. By the time she’d opened her eyes she’d already forgotten what had been in her head, only that it had been bad, an echo of what she’d felt the previous evening with Cal.
She was lying in the staff room of the pavilion, on a bundle of cushions she had pulled off the stinky, damp sofa. They hadn’t been very comfortable, but she’d still slept okay, considering everything that had happened yesterday. She sat up, looking around. Adam was curled up next to her. Chris was still bundled in the far corner of the room, his face pressed against the dirty wall like he was trying to smooch with it. Jade and Cal were gone. Brick had never been there.
Silky yellow light crept in through a crack in the boarded window. It seemed to shine through the ice in her head, and she could see another boy, skeleton-thin. She clambered off her makeshift bed, careful not to disturb Adam, then walked to the door. Her hand was on it before she remembered that there was a dead man outside, down the corridor.
Just don’t look and it won’t be there.
She opened it and turned left, walking purposefully towards the fire door, speeding up only when she thought she heard Edward Maltby’s feet tap-tapping after her, his soft groans as he reached out with bloody fingers. She dived under the chains, squealing, kicking out at the illusion. When she stood, brushing herself down, she realised she wasn’t alone.
‘And that’s Daisy,’ said Cal. He was talking to the boy she’d just seen in her thoughts, another teenager, maybe a year or two older than her. He was very skinny, his T-shirt fluttering like a sail on a mast. He smiled gently from beneath a mop of curly hair, then stretched out a hand. Daisy noticed that it had been wrapped with cloth, like a white boxing glove tinged with pink. He seemed to remember the bandage and slapped his hand to his side.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Hi.’
‘Marcus,’ said Daisy, plucking his name from her head. The boy frowned, looking at Cal for an explanation. Cal just shrugged.
‘I told you things were weird here,’ he said. ‘Marcus saw the message we left, on the internet.’
‘Would have come anyway,’ said the boy. ‘You guys got this psychic brain pull thing going on. Couldn’t have stayed away if I’d wanted to.’
‘Did you just arrive?’ Daisy asked. ‘Would you like some food?’
As soon as she said it she remembered Rilke, and the fact that the girl had locked herself in the restaurant with all their sup
plies. Luckily, Marcus shook his head.
‘Been in the old car showroom, over the road,’ he said. ‘Found a box of something that used to be crunchy in the office. Got there this morning, ’bout three or four, maybe. Didn’t want to come over until I knew who was about, even though it felt safe, y’know?’ He tapped his temple then paused, squinting at the brightening horizon over Daisy’s shoulder. ‘Wasn’t just me. There were four of us, ’til we got to a place called King’s Lynn.’
He looked at his hand, and more ice cubes bobbled to the surface of Daisy’s head. She saw two girls and an older boy, floundering in a sea of raking fingers and blunt teeth and bulging eyes. Their screams filled her mind, and for a terrible instant pain flared all over her. She gasped like she’d fallen into a frozen pond, forcing the ice cubes down where she couldn’t feel them any more.
‘We got ambushed trying to steal some petrol,’ he went on, the words catching in his throat. ‘I had to leave them. I . . . They would have killed me too.’ He held up his bandaged hand like a half-hearted excuse. ‘Nicked a bike and cycled the rest of the way. Knackered now. Could do with a kip, yeah?’
‘You want to show him to the staff room?’ asked Cal. Daisy shook her head. She didn’t want to go back inside, back to where the dead man lay. Better to stay in the sunshine where ghosts couldn’t get you. Cal gestured towards the fire door and he and Marcus ducked under the chain, vanishing into the gloom.
Daisy looked left, towards the front of the park. She didn’t want to go that way, either. That way was the tail of the night, still sweeping over the land. That way was whatever she’d seen in her head last night. She set off to her right. It was brighter here, the sun already creeping over the fence, and she could hear the soft whisper of the waves. She slowed when she turned the corner, seeing the mound of soil that lay halfway across the patch of overgrown grass next to the crazy golf. She and Cal had watched Brick for what seemed like an eternity last night. He’d still been digging when they’d gone inside. The poor thing.
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