The Atrocity Archives

by Charles Stross

  "I don't see any zombies," Josephine says edgily, crowding up behind me in the gloom.

  "That's because they're–" I freeze and bring up the dry powder extinguisher. "Have you got a pocket mirror?" I ask, trying to sound casual.

  "Hold on." I hear a dry click, and then she passes me something like a toothbrush fucking a contact lens. "Will this do?"

  "Oh wow, I didn't know you were a dentist." It's on a goddamn telescoping wand almost half a metre long. I lean forward and gingerly stretch the angled mirror so I can view the stairwell.

  "It's for checking the undersides of cars for bombs–or cut brake pipes. You never know what the little fuckers in the school playground will do while you're talking to the headmistress."

  Gulp. "Well, I guess this is a suitable alternative use."

  I don't see any cameras up there so I retract the mirror and I'm about to set foot on the stairs when she says, "You missed one."

  "Huh . . . ?"

  She points. It's about waist level, the size of a doorknob, embedded in the dark wooden wainscoting, and it's pointing up the stairs. "Shit, you're right." And there's something odd about it. I slide the mirror closer for an oblique look and dry-swallow. "There are two lenses. Oh, tricky."

  I pull out my multitool and begin digging them out of the wall. It's coax cable, just like the doctor ordered. There's no obvious evidence of live SCORPION STARE, but my hands are still clammy and my heart is in my mouth as I realise how close I came to walking in front of it. How small can they make CCTV cameras, anyway? I keep seeing smaller and smaller ones . . .

  "Better move fast," she comments.

  "Why?"

  "Because you've just told them you're coming."

  "Oh. Okay." We climb the staircase in bursts, stopping before the next landing to check for more basilisk bugs. Josephine spots one, and so do I. I tag them with the mostly empty can of paint, then she blasts their lenses from behind and underneath, trying not to breathe the fumes in before we move past them. There's an unnaturally creaky floorboard, too, just for yucks. But we make it to the ground floor landing alive, and I just have time to realise how badly we've fucked up when the lights come up and the night watchmen come out from either side.

  "Ah, Bob! Decided to visit the office for once, have we?"

  It's Harriet, looking slightly demented in a black pinstriped suit and clutching a glass of what looks like fizzy white wine.

  "Where the fuck is everyone else?" I demand, looking round. At this time of day the place should be heaving with office bodies. But all I see here is Harriet–and three or four silently leaning night watchmen in their grey ministry suits and hangdog expressions, luminous worms of light glowing in their eyes.

  "I do believe we called the monthly fire drill a few hours ahead of schedule." Harriet smirks. "Then we locked the doors. It's quite simple, you know."

  Fred from Accounting lurches sideways and peers at me over her shoulder. He's been dead for months: normally I'd say this was something of an improvement, but right now he's drooling slightly as if it's past his teatime.

  "Who's that?" asks Josephine.

  "Who? Oh, one of them's a shambling undead bureaucrat and the other one used to work in accounts before he had a little accident with a summoning." I bare my teeth at Harriet. "The game's up."

  "I don't think so." She's just standing there, looking supercilious and slightly triumphant behind her bodyguard of zombies. "Actually the boot is on the other foot. You're late and you're out of a job, Robert. The Counter-Possession Unit is being liquidated–that old fossil Angleton isn't needed anymore, once we get the benefits of panopticon surveillance combined with look-to-kill technology and rolled out on a departmental basis. In fact, you're just in time to clear your desk." She grins, horribly. "Stupid little boy, I'm sure they can find a use for you below stairs."

  "You've been talking to our friend Mr. McLuhan, haven't you?" I ask desperately, trying to keep her talking–I really don't want the night watchmen to carry me away. "Is he upstairs?"

  "If so, you probably need to know that I intend to arrest him. Twelve counts of murder and attempted murder, in case you were wondering." I almost look round, but manage to resist the urge: Josephine's voice is brittle but controlled. "Police."

  "Wrong jurisdiction, dear," Harriet says consolingly. "And I do believe our idiot tearaway here has got you on the wrong message. That will never do." She snaps her fingers. "Take the woman, detain the man."

  "Stop–" I begin. The zombies step forward, lurching jerkily, and then all hell breaks loose about twenty centimetres from my right ear. Zombies make excellent night watchmen and it takes a lot to knock one down, but they're not bulletproof, and Josephine unloads her magazine two rounds at a time. I'm dazzled by the flash and my head feels as if someone is whacking me on the ear with a shovel–bits of meat and unspeakable ripped stuff go flying, but precious little blood, and they keep coming.

  "When you've quite finished," Harriet hisses, and snaps her fingers at Josephine: the zombies pause for a moment then close in, as their mistress backs toward the staircase up to the first floor.

  "Quick, down the back corridor there!" I gasp, pointing to my left.

  "The–what?"

  "Quick!"

  I dash along the corridor, tugging Josephine's arm until I feel her running with me. I pull my warrant card and yell, "Open sesame!" ahead and doors slam open to either side–including the broom closets and ductwork access points. "In here!" I dive in to one side and Josephine piles in after me and I yank at the door–"Close, damn you, fuck, close sesame!" and it slams shut with the hardscrabble of bony fingertips on the outside.

  "Got a light?" I ask.

  "Nah, I don't smoke. But I've got a torch somewhere–"

  The scrabbling's getting louder. "I don't want to hurry you or anything, but–" And lo, there is light.

  We're standing at the bottom of a shallow shaft with cable runs vanishing above us into the gloom. Josephine looks frantic. "They didn't drop! I shot them and they didn't drop!"

  "Don't sweat it, they're run by remote control." Maybe now is not the time to explain about six-node summoning points, the Vohlman exercise, and the minutiae of raising and binding the dead: they're knocking on the door and they want in. But look, here's something even more interesting. "Hey, I see CAT-5 cabling. Pass me your torch?"

  "This isn't the time to go all geeky on me, nerd-boy. Or are you looking for roaches?"

  "Just fucking do it, I'll explain later, okay?" Harriet is really getting to me; it's been a long day and I told myself ages ago that if I ever heard another fucking lecture about timekeeping from her I'd go postal.

  "Bingo." It is CAT-5, and there's an even more interesting cable running off to one side that looks like a DS-3. I whip out my multitool and begin working on the junction box. The scrabbling's become insistent by the time I've uncovered the wires, but what the fuck. Who was it who said, When they think you're technical is the time to go crude? I grab a handful of network cables and yank, hard. Then I grab another handful. Then, having disconnected the main trunk line–mission accomplished–I take another moment to think.

  "Bob, have you got a plan?"

  "I'm thinking."

  "Then think faster, they're about to come through the door–"

  Which is when I remember my mobile phone and decide to make a last-ditch attempt. I speed-dial Bridget's office extension–and Angleton picks up after two rings. Bastard.

  "Ah, Bob!" He sounds positively avuncular. "Where are you? Did you manage to shut down the Internet?"

  I don't have time to correct him. Besides, Josephine is reloading her cannon and I think she's going to try a really horrible pun if I don't produce a solution PDQ. "Boss, run McLuhan's SCORPION STARE tool and upload the firmware to all the motion-tracking cameras on the ground floor east wing loop right now."

  "What? I'm not sure I heard you correctly."

  I take a deep breath. "She's subverted the night watchmen. Everybody else
is out of the building. Do it now or I'm switching to a diet of fresh brains."

  "If you say so," he agrees, with the manner of an indulgent uncle talking to a tearaway schoolboy, then hangs up.

  There's a splintering crash and a hand rams through the door right between us and embeds itself in the wall opposite. "Oh shit," I have time to say as the hand withdraws. Then a bolt of lightning goes off about two feet outside the door, roughly simultaneous with a sizzling crash and a wave of heat. We cower in the back of the cupboard, terrified of fire until after what seems like an eternity the sprinklers come on.

  "Is it safe yet?" she asks–at least I think that's what she says, my ears are still ringing.

  "One way to find out." I take the broken casing from the network junction box and chuck it through the hole in the door. When it doesn't explode I gingerly push the door open. The ringing is louder; it's my phone. I pull it wearily out of my pocket and hunch over it to keep it dry, leaning against the wall of the corridor to stay as far away from the blackened zombie corpses as I can. "Who's there?"

  "Your manager." He sounds merely amused this time. "What a sorry shower you are! Come on up to Mahogany Row and dry off, both of you–the director has a personal bathroom, I think you've earned it."

  "Uh. Harriet? Bridget? McLuhan?"

  "Taken care of," he says complacently, and I shiver convulsively as the water reaches gelid tentacles down my spine and tickles my balls like a drowned lover.

  "Okay. We'll be right up." I glance back at the smashed-in utility cupboard and Josephine smiles at me like a frightened feral rat, all sharp teeth and savagery and shining .38 automatic. "We're safe now," I say, as reassuringly as possible. "I think we won . . ."

  * * * *

  The journey to Angleton’s lair is both up and along–he normally works out of a gloomy basement on the other side of the hollowed-out block of prime London real estate that is occupied by the Laundry, but this time he's ensconced in the director's suite on the abandoned top floor of the north wing.

  The north wing is still dry. Over there, people are still at work, oblivious to the charred zombies lying on the scorched, soaked, thaumaturgically saturated wing next door. We catch a few odd stares–myself, soaked and battered in my outdoors gear, DI Sullivan in the wreckage of an expensive grey suit, oversized handgun clenched in a death grip at her side–but wisely or otherwise, nobody asks me to fix the Internet or demands to know why we're tracking muddy water through Human Resources.

  By the time we reach the thick green carpet and dusty quietude of the director's suite Josephine's eyes are wide but she's stopped shaking. "You've got lots of questions," I manage to say. "Try to save them for later. I'll tell you everything I know and you're cleared for, once I've had time to phone my fiancé."

  "I've got a husband and a nine-year-old son, did you think of that before you dragged me into this insane nightmare? Sorry. I know you didn't mean to. It's just that shooting up zombies and being zapped by basilisks makes me a little upset. Nerves."

  "I know. Just try not to wave them in front of Angleton, okay?"

  "Who is Angleton, anyway? Who does he think he is?"

  I pause before the office door. "If I knew that, I'm not sure I'd be allowed to tell you." I knock three times.

  "Enter." Andy opens the door for us. Angleton is sitting in the director's chair, playing with something in the middle of the huge expanse of oak desk that looks as if it dates to the 1930s. (There's a map on the wall behind him, and a quarter of it is pink.) "Ah, Mr. Howard, Detective Inspector. So good of you to come."

  I peer closer. Clack. Clack. Clack. "A Newton's cradle; how 1970s."

  "You could say that." He smiles thinly. The balls bouncing back and forth between the arms of the executive desktop aren't chromed, rather they appear to be textured: pale brown on one side, dark or blonde and furry on the other. And bumpy, disturbingly bumpy . . .

  I take a deep breath. "Harriet was waiting for us. Said we were too late and the Counter-Possession Unit was being disbanded."

  Clack. Clack.

  "Yes, she would say that, wouldn't she."

  Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Finally I can't stand it anymore. "Well?" I demand.

  "A fellow I used to know, his name was Ulyanov, once said something rather profound, do you know." Angleton looks like the cat that's swallowed the canary–and the feet are sticking out of the side of his mouth; he wants me to know this, whatever it is. "Let your enemies sell you enough rope to hang them with."

  "Uh, wasn't that Lenin?" I ask.

  A flicker of mild irritation crosses his face. "This was before then," he says quietly. Clack. Clack. Clack. He flicks the balls to set them banging again and I suddenly realise what they are and feel quite sick. No indeed, Bridget and Harriet–and Bridget's predecessor, and the mysterious Mr. McLuhan–won't be troubling me again. (Except in my nightmares about this office, visions of my own shrunken head winding up in one of the director's executive toys, skull clattering away eternally in a scream that nobody can hear anymore . . .) "Bridget's been plotting a boardroom coup for a long time, Robert. Probably since before you joined the Laundry–or were conscripted." He spares Josephine a long, appraising look. "She suborned Harriet, bribed McLuhan, installed her own corrupt geas on Voss. Partners in crime, intending to expose me as an incompetent and a possible security leak before the Board of Auditors, I suppose–that's usually how they plan it. I guessed this was going on, but I needed firm evidence. You supplied it. Unfortunately, Bridget was never too stable; when she realised that I knew, she ordered Voss to remove the witnesses then summoned McLuhan and proceeded with her palace coup da tat. Equally unfortunately for her, she failed to correctly establish who my line manager was before she attempted to go over my head to have me removed." He taps the sign on the front of the desk: PRIVATE SECRETARY. Keeper of the secrets. Whose secrets?

  "Matrix management," I finally say, the lightbulb coming on above my head at last. "The Laundry runs on matrix management. She saw you on the org chart as head of the Counter-Possession Unit, not as private secretary to . . ." So that's how come he's got the free run of the director's office!

  Josephine is aghast. "You call this a government department?"

  "Worse things happen in parliament every day of the year, my dear." Now that the proximate threat is over, Angleton looks remarkably imperturbable; right now I doubt he'd turn her into a frog even if she started yelling at him. "Besides, you are aware of the maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Here we deal every day of the week with power sufficient to destroy your mind. Even worse, we cannot submit to public oversight–it's far too dangerous, like giving atomic firecrackers to three-year-olds. Ask Robert to tell you what he did to attract our attention later, if you like." I'm still dripping and cold, but I can feel my ears flush.

  He focusses on her some more. "We can reinforce the geas and release you," he adds quietly. "But I think you can do a much more important job here. The choice is yours."

  I snort under my breath. She glances at me, eyes narrowed and cynical. "If this is what passes for a field investigation in your department, you need me."

  "Yes, well, you don't need to make your mind up immediately. Detached duty, and all that. As for you, Bob," he says, with heavy emphasis on my name, "you have acquitted yourself satisfactorily again. Now go and have a bath before you rot the carpet."

  "Bathroom's two doors down the hall on the left," Andy adds helpfully from his station against the wall, next to the door: there's no doubt right now as to who's in charge here.

  "But what happens now?" I ask, bewildered and a bit shocky and already fighting off the yawns that come on when people stop trying to kill me. "I mean, what's really happened?"

  Angleton grins like a skull: "Bridget forfeited her department, so the directors have asked me to put Andrew in acting charge of it for the time being. Boris slipped up and failed to notice McLuhan; he is, ah, temporarily indisposed. And as for you, a job well done w
ins its natural reward–another job." His grin widens. "As I believe the youth of today say, don't have a cow . . ."

  Afterword

  INSIDE THE FEAR FACTORY

  Fiction serves a variety of purposes. At its heart lies the simple art of storytelling–of transferring ideas and sequences of events and pictures and people from the storyteller's head to that of the audience solely by means of words. But storytelling is a tool, and the uses to which a tool can be put often differs from–and is more interesting than–the uses for which the tool was designed.

  Fiction is spun from plausible lies, contrived to represent an abreality sufficiently convincing that we do not question what we hear–and there are different forms within fiction. Consuming fiction is fun, an activity we engage in for recreation. So why, then, do we have an appetite for forms of fiction that make us profoundly uneasy, or that frighten us?

  The chances are that if you've got to this afterword, you've done so the long way round–by reading "The Atrocity Archive" and "The Concrete Jungle." This book is a work of fiction, a recreational product. Nobody forced you to read it by holding a gun to your head, so presumably you enjoyed the experience. Now, at risk of demystifying it, I'd like to pick over the corpse, dissect its three major organs, and try to explain just how it all fits together.

  Cold Warriors

  I'd like to begin by painting an anonymized portrait of one of the greatest horror writers of the twentieth century–a man whose writing was a major influence on me when I wrote these stories.

  D. was born in London in 1929, of working class parents. A bright young man, he was educated at St. Marylebone Grammar and William Ellis, Kentish Town, then worked as a railway clerk before undergoing National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.

  After his discharge in 1949, he studied art, achieving a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Working as a waiter in the evenings, he developed an interest in cooking. During the 1950s he travelled, working as an illustrator in New York City and as an art director for a London advertising agency, before settling down in Dordogne and starting to write. His first novel was an immediate success, going on to be filmed (in a version starring Michael Caine); subsequently he produced roughly a book a year for the rest of the twentieth century. D. is somewhat reclusive, and was notorious at one point for only communicating via Telex machine. He may also hold the record for being the first writer ever to produce a novel entirely using a word processor (around 1972).