by Thomas Emson
One of the men approached Aaliyah. She tensed, ready to fight back.
“You, bitch,” said the armed man. “You come quietly, or I’ll blow this fella’s face off.” He cocked the pistol and pointed it at Goga’s face. Then he crouched, removed Goga’s aviator sunglasses and popped them over his eyes. “Nice pair,” he said, still looking in Aaliyah’s direction as the black-clad man handcuffed her.
They were led into the compound.
Goga was struggling. He was unsteady on his feet. He had blood coming from his nose.
No one said anything as they strode in between the buildings and finally came to a halt at another tall fence marked with warnings to trespassers. Beyond the wire lay a huge hole, and above the hole loomed an enormous drill. The type, Aaliyah guessed, that oil companies would use. At the edge of the abyss stood a gatehouse through which you entered an elevator.
Aaliyah glanced at the armed man. He was strong and powerful. He looked like a solider. She wondered how he’d got the scar across his forehead.
The armed man took off Goga’s sunglasses and narrowed his eyes. He pulled the shemagh away from his mouth.
“Keep moving,” he said.
They kept shoving Goga and Aaliyah towards the gatehouse. They finally stopped at the edge of the pit, and Aaliyah and Goga stared down into it.
She gasped. It was endless. Striplights showed how deep it was. It kept going and going, down and down.
“They’ve been digging here for three months, day and night,” said the scarred man.
“For Nimrod,” said Goga.
The man laughed.
“You work for Alfred Fuad?” said Aaliyah.
“He pays me, yes,” the man answered.
“And he’ll kill you when this is done,” said Goga.
Doubt flickered in the scarred man’s eyes, but then he put Goga’s aviator’s back on.
“Lots of tougher men than Alfred Fuad have tried to kill me and fucked it up,” he said.
“He will not,” said Goga. “He’ll give you to Nimrod – all of you.”
“Shut up,” said the scarred man.
“What’s he talking about, Colonel?” said one of the black-clad men.
“Nothing,” said the Colonel. “Shut up, right?”
But Goga continued. “If Nimrod is awakened, Fuad will not be able to control it. No one will.”
“I will,” said the Colonel.
“You will die,” said Goga, “that’s what you will do.”
The Colonel put his gun to Goga’s forehead. “Say another word, and I’ll nudge you backwards a few steps and stand here ten minutes while you scream your way down into hell.”
“Fuad is tricking you,” said Aaliyah.
The Colonel whipped round and put the gun in her face. “I don’t give a shit about the gender of my victims, darling. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Now, I want the both of you to shut your fucking mouths and – ”
She was lightning quick.
Her knee shot up and smashed the Colonel full in the balls. His eyes crossed. His cheeks puffed out. He bent double. And as he fell, Aaliyah used her other knee to crack him in the jaw.
She whirled round in time to see the other two men raise their guns.
She ran at them and barged into them, and they reeled, off balance. But she was unsteady, too, with her hands cuffed behind her back. She sat on the floor and quickly scooted her hands underneath her backside so at least they were in front of her.
“Come on, Goga,” she said.
She leapt to her feet, turned to run, and walked directly into the Colonel’s fist.
She saw stars, her head spinning.
He came at her at full pelt. She tried to defend herself. But she had no chance.
He grabbed her by the collar and lifted her and carried her towards the edge of the pit, and she kicked out at nothing as he prepared to hurl her down into hell.
CHAPTER 38. BRITAIN IS BABYLON.
Former Religion nightclub, Soho, London – 10.52pm (GMT), 19 May, 2011
“I KEEP in touch with my brother in Iraq,” said George Fuad.
“Still alive then, is he?” said Murray.
“He’s had lots of good news in recent days.”
“Been diagnosed with cancer, has he?” said Murray.
“I’m just dying to share it with you, Christine.”
“You’ve got cancer.”
“You think you’re funny, I don’t, and when I have your tongue taken out no one will find you amusing.”
Murray kept her mouth shut.
Fuad smiled. “I like it when someone’s face goes that pale. That’s what fear does, Christine. It’s what power can do. Now, I have some news that’ll maybe put a smile back on your face.”
Murray doubted that.
“Your mate, Jake Lawton, has been caught by the Iraqis.”
Murray’s stomach lurched. She was elated for a moment. Jake was alive. But then her joy petered out, to be replaced by dread. He’d been caught. He would fail in his mission. Without him, they didn’t have a hope.
She looked around. The place was as drab as she’d remembered it. They were in the nightclub’s top floor. All the rooms had been knocked into one. There was a long chamber now, with a big table in the middle. There was one chair at the head of the table, and that’s where George Fuad sat. It was the only chair in the room. No one else could sit. Murray was standing near the window, two big Neb thugs either side of her. A few other Nebuchadnezzars were hanging around in the chamber as well, smirking at her, chatting among themselves, looking pleased. A huge photograph covered the far wall. It had been blown up from a newspaper shot of Fuad waving at supporters from the stage of his recent Hyde Park rally. More portraits of him hung throughout the room. Murray felt the desire to smash them, one by one.
A 50-inch flat-screen TV hung on the opposite wall. It showed Fuad’s victory as presented by the BBC. Already the channel was starting to feel like a state broadcaster. Fuad was obviously choking any balance out of its battered old body. It had only taken him an hour from the polls closing to do this. What could he do in a day or a week? she wondered. What could he do in a year?
“You won’t hold Jake Lawton for long,” said Murray.
“I’m not holding him at all, darling,” said Fuad. “It’s the Iraqis, like I say. But if he does get out, we’ll be waiting for him. He won’t get far. It’s all over.”
“Are you proud of what you’re doing?” Murray said.
“I will be. Once I clean up this country,” he said, indicating the TV. A report showed people queuing up outside a soup kitchen. “The Jeremy Kyle bunch. Scum. Lowlifes. Criminals. They’ll make good food, eh? That’s how you deal with social ills, see. But no politician until now has had the guts to sort it out.”
“You lied to those people, a lie that said vampires and humans can live together.”
“Oh, but why can’t we, Christine? Why can’t we live together in harmony?” he said, and started humming the song “Ebony And Ivory” by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Then he stopped. And the fake smile left his face. A scowl creased his brow. “Oh, yeah, I know why we can’t – ’cause they hunt us. They are our natural predator. Well, not us. With this mark.” He flicked at the red tag on his lapel. He got up and strode towards Murray. She knew what was coming. “You won’t be needing this anymore.” He ripped the red mark from her jacket. “You shouldn’t have ever worn it, anyway.” He tossed it on the floor.
Murray felt suddenly vulnerable. She became queasy, as if someone had taken away a pill that protected her from disease.
She was now in serious danger. She would be a target for vampires.
“Are you going to kill me?” she said, almost hoping he would, so she could avoid the horror of being a vampire’s victim.
Fuad grinned. “You know what? No. I’ve got something worse in mind for traitors like you.” He strolled back to his chair and, sitting down, leaned back. “I hear your kid’s out there. What�
��s his name? David? And the rumour is, he’s looking to kill me – a fucking assassin. Ain’t that a laugh? A boy assassin.”
Murray said nothing. The mention of David brought the pain flooding back. She had been a terrible mother. And now all she could do was be brave for her son. He was out there somewhere, a child not yet fourteen. A boy soldier fighting a desperate war. She would make up for all the years of rotten parenting by doing everything from now on to keep him safe and support him in his quest to kill Fuad. She knew she didn’t have long to live, but every second she had would be lived for David – as it should have been from the start. Now she would do anything to see him one more time, see him and ask him to forgive her. She nearly cried, but fought back the tears. She did not want Fuad to see her weep.
Fuad went on, “So I’ll let you live and see your kid again, if you make a public appearance, on TV, urging him to give himself up.”
“Give himself up?”
“That’s right. On TV. We’re going to Parliament now. Stand outside the ruins. Remind people what Jake Lawton did to their democracy. Burned its heart out. And right there, you’ll tell that kid of yours to hand himself over to me.”
“Never,” she said.
“Then I’ll publicly execute you and do fucking awful things to you, and your son will see – he’ll see everything wherever he is, and imagine his pain, then. Imagine how horrible that’s going to be, to see his mother fucking stripped naked, raped, burned, just imagine that, Christine.”
“You’ll pay for this one day. You will.”
“You believe in fate? Not sure I do. But if it does exist, you deal with it like you deal with everything else in life – you grab it by the balls and squeeze. I am the master of my destiny, Christine. But more than that, I am the master of yours, as well. Yours, your son’s, Elizabeth Wilson’s, even Jake Lawton’s. I am the fucking king of my life and the king of yours. Vampires will walk the streets. Britain is Babylon. I’ve done what emperors have failed to do, what Jacqueline Burrows nearly did. I have taken control. Soon the whole fucking world will cower when they hear my name. I’ll stop at fucking nothing, and I know that sounds over the top, but I mean it. I’ve tasted power, and it’s fucking lovely.”
“You’re mad,” said Murray.
“Who gives a shit.”
CHAPTER 39. NOTHING BUT WAR.
DAVID watched his mother on TV, and his eyes filled with tears.
She was standing behind George Fuad while he addressed the nation in a press conference at the burned ruin of Parliament.
David felt love for her fill his heart, but he also felt anger boil in his blood.
He had been lied to and abandoned. He’d never had a childhood. All he could remember was fighting – first between his mum and dad, then between humans and vampires.
War was his life.
Now he felt more bitter than ever. His friend Kwan Mei had gone up north with Ediz Ün to fight vampires. Mei could muster some forces up there. Her rebellion in February had started in Manchester. She now planned another insurgency. But David had sulked. He wanted to kill George Fuad. He wanted to make a big statement. He wanted attention.
He wanted people to say, “That’s David Murray – he assassinated George Fuad.”
People wouldn’t say things like that if you killed vampires, because lots of people killed vampires. It was nothing special. He wanted to do something special.
“You all right, son?” said Old Bill.
They were in a bedsit in Soho – a crummy, dirty flat that had needles and mouldy food on the floor. A shitty, smelly apartment that had rat poo and dead flies on the windowsills.
Bill said it used to be a brothel before the vampires came. A woman would stand outside and ask men if they wanted to meet a girl. If a man said yes, the woman would take him upstairs into this bedsit, where the men could have sex with one of two Russian girls.
The TV was old. One of those ancient ones with tubes. It sat on the sideboard. There was a damp old mattress in the corner. It was stained with something.
Old Bill sat on a creaky wooden chair.
David sat on the cold, hard floor.
“That’s my mum, there,” he said.
“Nice lady,” said Bill. The old man rolled a fag and handed it to David. David used a match to light the ciggie. He’d been smoking since he was twelve. He was hooked. But at least he hadn’t started drinking yet. Lots of kids his age were already alcoholics. There was nothing else to do in vampire Britain. Schools were only running part-time, three days a week at best. Nothing much for kids to do other than hang around on the streets. And it was probably the first time in history that young people actually listened to their parents’ demands to be in before dark.
David looked at his mum on telly and had a yearning for her to tell him what to do.
Her face was pale. Fear glittered in her eyes. He could tell she didn’t want to be there. It fuelled his hatred for Fuad.
Noises came from outside in the street – laughter, growling, screaming.
“Those vampires getting confident again,” said Bill.
The old man was right. The undead sensed their prey was weaker now. And they had probably been unleashed by the Nebuchadnezzars.
Vampires had stalked humans for years. Mostly it had been done on a small scale. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. They knew how clever and effective humans could be at fighting back. But now the vampires were confident. They had allies in power. Nothing to fear anymore. No one to challenge them.
The prey was weak. The hunters were strong.
Welcome to Britain, 2011. Vampire Nation.
David’s blood was up. He listened to what George Fuad was saying on the television: “We can all look forward to a better Britain, a Britain where human and vampire live side by side.”
Side by side, thought David, with a wire fence between us – the humans penned inside, the vampires snarling and sneering, waiting to drink our blood.
It would be like Nazi Germany. Concentration camps all over the UK. Humans farmed to produce food for vampires. Some people would be slaves, building the Babylon Fuad dreamed of creating.
Sweating and bleeding for the undead.
I’d rather die, thought David. And I will, if I have to.
He smoked his cigarette. Old Bill smoked too. The bedsit filled with the smell of fresh tobacco. The street outside filled with screams. It was 11.30pm. The time of the vampire. The time for death.
On TV, George Fuad laughed while David’s mum wept.
And that triggered David’s tears again. He loved his mum so much. He wanted her to be his mother again. Like she’d never really been. But that wasn’t to be. Fortune wasn’t going to smile on David and his mum. Fate would not give him a family.
Fuad was inviting David’s mum to the microphone. David’s nerves were on fire. He felt sick and dizzy.
“What’s happening?” he said.
“Turn it up, son,” said Old Bill.
David went to the TV set. The volume knob was missing. He had to twist a screw to increase the volume. He managed it just as his mum’s shaky voice was saying, “And I would encourage anyone thinking of hurting our new government, or its leaders, to hand themselves in. There will be an amnesty for forty-eight hours. Prime Minister Fuad has pledged this. He is a man of his word.”
“No way,” cried David.
“She’s being forced to say this,” said Old Bill, “you can tell. Look, lad, she’s crying. Crying while she’s reading from that piece of paper. And her voice is shaking.”
“I would particularly,” said David’s mum, “like to ask my own, dear son, David, to hand himself in. Prime Minister Fuad has told me, myself once an enemy of the state, that David and I can be together, as mother and son, and we can live safely under the care of the new government. This is true of all sons and mothers, fathers and daughters, who have been torn apart by the terrible war instigated by… by men like… ”
David’s mum fainted.
Black-clad thugs rushed forward to grab her.
David stood up and yelled out for his mother.
Fuad’s face for a second showed fury, but then it softened, and he moved forward to the microphone.
“The poor woman’s under a great deal of pressure,” said Fuad as his thugs carried David’s mum out of shot. Fuad looked directly into the camera. “This has been caused by you, David. Your mum loves you. I’m sure you love your mum, son. We all love our mums. She wants to see you again and be a proper mum to you. Come on, son, give yourself up. All the rest of you, too. You want to see your mums and dads and sons and daughters again? You want to be families again? Give yourselves up and live at peace in my new England.”
Fuad stepped away from the microphone. The camera wheeled to a news reporter, who started talking. But David wasn’t listening. He was in a fury. He was gathering his stuff, getting ready to go to war.
“Calm down, son,” said Old Bill.
“I can’t calm down.”
“You can’t go with all that fire in your belly.”
“I’m going to kill him, Bill.”
“Best do that when you’re cold, not when you’re hot.”
David tried to calm down. Old Bill was right. He had to be in control of his emotions. Jake always told him to do that – control yourself, then you can control other people.
Where was Jake now?
He could really do with Lawton’s company.
“I wish Jake was here,” he said.
“He’s with you, son. In your head, in your heart.”
“I hope he’s not dead; I wouldn’t know what to do without him.”
“You’d know. In war, the young have to be old before their time, son. War makes men of boys like you. Fighting makes you hard and cruel. But you’ve got to fight when you’re calm. Jake would tell you that. Give yourself an hour or two. Have a little plan. Even if you don’t stick with it, it’s worth it. Come on, let’s have a drink and another fag.”
David lay on the cold hard floor again.
