by Thomas Emson
CHAPTER 65. ENEMIES AND ALLIES.
LAXMAN farted and groaned.
“Lovely,” said Lawton.
“The man makes a terrible smell,” said Ereshkigal.
“Where are we?” said Laxman.
“Twenty miles to the outskirts of Al Hillah,” said Lawton.
“Ah, home,” said Laxman.
Home, thought Lawton. He looked at the clock on the Land Cruiser’s dashboard. It was around 9.20pm. Three hours ahead of London, he thought. Three hours before it would be dark. Three hours before the city would be crawling with vampires. But maybe he could stop them.
“Where’s the dig?” he said.
“South of the city,” said Laxman. “Runs alongside the Euphrates river.”
Lawton glanced at the man in the rear-view mirror.
“How long did you serve, Laxman?”
“Serve? Twenty years. Left in 2001, just before 9/11.”
“What regiment?”
“Royal Engineers,” he said. “And special services. You?”
“King’s.”
“The old Manchester regiment,” said Laxman.
Lawton’s old friend Tom Wilson had been in the Manchesters. Wilson had fought at Hillah in 1920. While seeing action in the region, Wilson had learned about the vampire trinity, about the Spear of Abraham. He’d looted the weapon, along with the remains of Kea, Kakash, and Kasdeja. Kept them in his loft for years to make sure the Nebuchadnezzars never got hold of them. But led by the old chemist, Afdal Haddad, the Nebs had tracked Wilson down. They’d stolen the jars containing the remains of the three vampires, resurrected them, and dragged Lawton, Aaliyah, Christine Murray, Tom Wilson, Fraser Lithgow, and everyone else into this cauldron.
Tom had been murdered by the Nebuchadnezzars. He was over a hundred years old. He’d seen wars and survived them. But he’d been butchered in his flat by thugs.
And they’d sent Lawton his head in a box.
“I’d heard of you,” said Laxman. “You had a name.”
“Bad one, I guess.”
“Yeah, shitty. But I never thought you’d murdered an innocent man in Basra. Guessed you’d have a good reason for doing it. You did the right thing.”
“I’m filling up,” said Lawton.
“Soldiers always get blamed first.”
“Like Fuad will blame you, if things go wrong.”
Laxman sighed. He realized Jake was trying to play mind games.
“What are you going to do with this vampire at the end of all this?” said the mercenary. “You’re not going to let her live are you?”
Playing some of his own, now, thought Lawton, but he said nothing.
Ereshkigal stared ahead.
“I mean, you can’t let her live, can you?” said Laxman.
Ereshkigal was as still as a statue.
Perhaps when the time came, he should leave it to Aaliyah.
He glanced at Ereshkigal. She had once been a beautiful woman, but now only the shell of what she’d been remained. Human emotions had been stripped away. Only an instinct to kill was left.
But she was still beguiling.
Desire simmered in his blood, a poisonous need, and those voices echoing in his head were getting louder.
What’s happening to me? he thought, his head throbbing, the pain in his eye getting worse.
He braced himself for whatever was to come and drove towards the tower blocks and sandstone buildings and street lights and traffic of Hillah.
It was a modern Middle Eastern city.
But lurking beneath this modern chaos was an ancient bedlam, a place that could drive men mad.
CHAPTER 66. THE GATES OF IRKALLA.
THEY were deep underground. Deeper than ever. Deeper than Aaliyah had thought possible. It was stifling. It was hard to breathe. Her chest was tight, and she had to gasp for air. It was like being close to hell – hot and terrifying.
It felt as if the tunnel went on and on endlessly.
Neon torches were attached to the walls and they hummed like bees. They showed the way and gave her a glimpse of the darkness.
As they walked, their footsteps echoed.
Alfred Fuad led the way. Behind him came Aaliyah and then Goga, looking worse for wear. He was hobbling and coughing, and Aaliyah had to help him along. The Romanian had aged so quickly. After the beating, he’d gone downhill. But the damage wasn’t just physical. He’d realized that his lifetime’s crusade was going to end in failure.
Behind them came three guards, all armed.
All around them, workers troweled in the dirt. They were like ghosts, coated in dust and debris. They watched as Aaliyah and the others passed, their eyes glittering as if they’d not seen other humans in a long, long time.
Maybe they haven’t, thought Aaliyah. Maybe Fuad had been using them as slaves, imprisoning them down here for months, forcing them to dig and dig and dig.
Fuad stopped. “This’ll do,” he said.
Some two hundred yards down the tunnel, a huge drill was tilted on its axle, its bit pointing upwards. It was like a monster at rest. Around it, people smoked and drank from Styrofoam cups. They leaned on the drill, and they sat against the walls of the tunnel. They looked exhausted.
“That’s it,” said Fuad. “The gates of Irkalla. City of Nimrod. Beyond that opening we’ve just made is a gatehouse, which then slopes downwards towards the city itself. You’ll have the honour of being among the first humans to enter Irkalla for about 5,000 years. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds crazy, Fuad,” said Aaliyah.
“You and your mad brother will pay for this,” said Goga. “You all will.” He looked at the guards. Their eyes strayed from him. He said, “Do you hear me? This man is taking you to your doom.”
His warning echoed down the tunnel.
“Shut up, Goga,” said Fuad. “I’m resurrecting him. He’ll be grateful. He’ll recognize me as an ally.”
“He will recognize you as a slave – if you are lucky – or he may recognize you as food.”
“He’s already got a meal planned,” Fuad said.
Aaliyah glanced at the guards. They looked worried. And some of the workers were talking among themselves.
“Do you realize that Babylon was a slave nation?” the Romanian said. “Nimrod built the Tower of Babel using slaves, and the city was fuelled by slaves.”
“That’s how we’ll run London,” said Fuad. “We’ll run it with slaves. The world will be feudal again. It’s the best system. The best when it’s run properly, by a group of select humans, supported by vampires. That’s the way forward. That’s the way to save England, mate. Save the world. Democracy has failed.”
“Democracy has given my country hope, Fuad,” said Goga.
He buckled. Aaliyah held his arm to brace him.
“My country is now healthy and thriving because of democracy,” he said.
“It’ll soon be dead and decaying, like the rest of Europe,” said Fuad. “Come and see what’s going to kill it, Goga. You too, darling, come and see your fucking god.”
Goga and Aaliyah were herded down the tunnel. The place smelled of diesel and blood. Fumes rose from the drill. It was huge. They had to squeeze past it into the opening, and when Aaliyah slipped through the gap between the drill and the wall and stared ahead, she stopped dead.
Her mouth fell open, such was the awe-inspiring sight.
A huge gateway, three-storeys high, towered above them. It was in the form of an arc. Gargoyles and demons had been carved into the stone. The walls into which it was built were long gone, fallen to dust, crushed by time.
Aaliyah craned her neck and gazed beyond the gateway.
Pillars of sandstone extended into the darkness above them. Where did they end? she thought. There had to be a roof, surely. But it seemed the pillars were never-ending, as if reaching to heaven. Not only did their height seem impossible, they also stretched away as far as the eye could see. It was a forest of pillars, spreading out into the dark distance.
Many of the columns had collapsed into piles of masonry. Some that stood teetered precariously.
Aaliyah scanned her surroundings. She was trying to take it all in, trying to understand how this place – its dimensions – could be real.
Dread filled her. The thought that in this vast, underground, unchartered frontier, something horrific lurked. Something ancient and powerful. Something more frightening than she’d ever known.
“Welcome to the Gates of Irkalla,” said Fuad.
Aaliyah’s astonishment suddenly dwindled, and she came to her senses. The smell wafting out of the distance struck her. It was putrid. Like death.
And then, from mountains of rubble up ahead, figures crawled. They reared up, the masonry falling off them like water, and they lumbered out of the gloom.
Aaliyah froze.
CHAPTER 67. THE FAR, FAR DISTANCE.
ALFRED laughed at the Sinclair woman.
“You’re frightened of my workers, darling,” he said.
The guards chuckled.
“Thought you were supposed to be some kind of Amazon warrior queen,” said Alfred. “You wait till you meet Nimrod.”
“I’m so excited,” said Sinclair.
She was a mouthy bitch. Alfred couldn’t wait to see her scream at the sight of Nimrod.
“There is nothing but dust and rubble here, Fuad,” said Goga. “Nothing but dead history.”
The workers skulked from among the rubble. They were covered in dirt. Their eyes gleamed, but their faces and clothes were soiled.
They do look like ghosts at first sight, thought Alfred, stumbling from the rubble.
Among them was a middle-aged man. He wore glasses, which he took off now and wiped on the hem of his shirt. He clicked his fingers, and a girl handed him a wallet-sized item that was filmed in dirt. The man wiped the item clean on his shirt. It was an infrared detector. It looked for movement. It looked for life. Alfred licked his lips, wondering what secrets the detector held.
“Dr Meyer,” he said, “did you find anything?”
Roland Meyer was a Nebuchadnezzar and an archaeologist. Alfred and George had proposed to him the possibility of going after Nimrod the previous year.
Such a quest was heresy among the Nebs. It was like Christians trying to find the face of God. It was dangerous and foolish.
But his academic inquisitiveness had finally got the better of Meyer, and he’d left his post at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, the previous September, and had started to prepare for this expedition.
One of his university’s former students was Manfred Korfmann, the archaeologist who had continued Heinrich Schliemann’s work at the site of Troy. Now Meyer felt he would be mentioned in the same breath as Korfmann and Schliemann. He was about to uncover a truly mythical city, and, along with it, a god.
“We have found a city, Mr Fuad,” said Meyer.
“Yes, but any life in that city?”
“Just ourselves.”
A ripple of panic ran through Alfred. What would George say if there were nothing here? Nothing to resurrect? Nothing to worship? Alfred might as well stay underground if he had nothing to give his brother.
Goga laughed. Alfred backhanded him across the face. The Romanian fell. He dropped his walking stick. The Sinclair woman went to his aid.
Alfred fumed. “If he laughs again,” he said to one of the guards, “just fucking shoot him.”
He turned to Meyer.
“Doctor,” he said, shaking inside. “We’re in Irkalla. You understand Irkalla?”
“I understand Irkalla, Mr Fuad.”
“Irkalla. The underworld. Hell. The dwelling place of Nimrod.”
“According to myth.”
“Then where is he?”
“I said, sir, according to myth.”
Alfred’s head hurt. He thought it would explode. He ground his teeth together until his jaw ached.
He was thinking, What would George say? What would George do?
Should he have Meyer shot? He knew that killing a Nebuchadnezzar was unlawful. No Neb could purposefully harm another, although a few months earlier, George had thrown old Afdal Haddad out of a window. But he supposed the law didn’t apply to George. Not if he made the law. Maybe it wouldn’t apply to him, either, as George’s brother. He thought of reaching for a pistol and blowing Meyer’s fucking clever brains out of his fucking clever head.
But he stopped himself.
Christ, what am I going to do if this fucking Nimrod’s not real? he thought.
Maybe nothing was real. Everything was a myth. The dream of a new Babylon. The vampires. Being down here in this stifling, airless hell-hole.
It was all just something he’d dreamt.
All the glory that they’d planned for, all the blood that had been spilled, nothing but ten minutes in his sub-conscious.
He had to make the dream reality. He had no choice. He had to make it live again.
The lust for power was too much. The fear of letting down his brother was unbearable.
No, Nimrod definitely existed. The trinity had existed, and legend said they’d been ripped from the Great Hunter’s chest. They were his three beating hearts, born as monsters.
“Give me my fucking laptop,” he barked at one of the guards.
The guard took the computer out of its case and handed it to Alfred, who flipped it open and logged on.
He fired off an email to George:
“Drop everything. We have a problem. Need to talk – now!”
After logging off, he handed the laptop back to the guard.
“Meyer,” he said, “how long have you been down here?”
“We have been at this level for three days, Mr Fuad, myself and my team.”
Alfred scanned the faces. They looked thin and grey. They looked like earthquake survivors, dug out after days. They were mostly students, eager to work for Roland Meyer. They all looked like they could do with a square meal.
Meyer continued:
“We have not seen the sun in days.”
Alfred thought. He supposed that since most, if not all of the students, would never see sunlight again, they deserved a break. These weren’t Nebuchadnezzars, so they would be slaves or food under the new regime. None, except Meyer, wore the red mark. For a moment, Alfred pitied them.
“Let your team get some food,” he said. “The canteen is one level up. Take them up there, Dr Meyer, and eat as much as you want. I’ll give you ninety minutes. Then, back to work at” – he checked his watch – “eleven thirty at the latest, right?”
The doctor nodded, and he trudged away with his team.
“Take this pair back to the cell,” said Alfred.
“You fucker,” the Sinclair woman said.
The guards marched them away. Alfred was left alone. He stared at the rubble.
It so was quiet. The ruins of Irkalla stood before him. Empty. Void. Useless.
He walked through the gate. Goose pimples raked his body, and he shivered.
The silence was piercing.
He stared up into the endless darkness and wondered how such heights were possible under the earth. It seemed as if the apex was higher than the first and second tiers of the dig, which were between 200 and 500 feet below ground.
It didn’t make sense.
But after all, it had been built by a god. Maybe this wasn’t earth. Maybe it was a place for gods. An imaginary city, outside natural law.
It might explain the Tower of Babel story, he thought.
The Bible said Nimrod had built the tower so he could reach God, so he could be God.
Had he succeeded?
Craning his neck, Alfred truly thought so.
He wondered if it were true that Abraham had come down here to the deep and did battle with Nimrod. Most archaeologists, theologians, and historians dismissed such things as myth, fables. But they did not have vision. They did not have ambition. They were not the Fuad br
others. And they had not seen the depictions on the cave walls.
Alfred scrambled up a pile of rubble. He nearly slipped a couple of times, debris streaming down behind him. But he made it. Stood on top of the little hill of masonry like a king surveying a conquered land. Stood proud. Stood tall.
Where are you? he thought.
And then he shouted, “Where are you?”
His voice echoed through the caverns and raced away into the far, far distance, and it scared Alfred to think of his call hurtling back in time through the darkness.
Where had his voice reached? Who heard that call? What unnamed, unchartered places had his words reached?
Maybe somewhere beyond Irkalla. Maybe the deepest part of hell.
He waited until the echo died.
He waited for something to come back.
But nothing came. No answer.
Just silence and darkness.
He shook his head gloomily, trying to think how George would take this.
He turned and trudged down the mound of rubble and started to make his way towards the gate. He needed a drink. He needed lots of drinks.
Behind him, where he’d stood moments before atop the masonry, there was a disturbance. Only a slight one. A dribble of rocks and pebbles rolling down the slope. Alfred saw nothing of it. He was gone. But had he been standing there, he would have heard a rumbling noise, similar to a growl produced by a very large animal. The noise came from the heart of the deepest darkness. The far, far distance.
And had Alfred heard it, he would have known, then, that something lived in the abyss.
CHAPTER 68. HURT FROM SOUL TO SKIN.
“IF you do anything stupid,” said Lawton, “I’ll have her rip your throat out.”
Laxman shrugged.
Lawton emptied bullets from the Makarov he’d snatched from Laxman.
“I’m walking in front of you,” he said. “You hold the gun on me, say I’m your prisoner.”
Laxman shrugged again.
He took the gun.
He seemed to weigh it in his hand. Making sure I’ve not left any ammo in it, thought Lawton. Laxman curled his lip when he realized Jake hadn’t accidentally left a bullet in the gun.
