“Oh really? How like you both to attack first and ask questions later!” a woman called from a smaller group at the end of the hall.
Lord Truth shook his head as every ghost began shouting. He pointed at the two static figures gripping the mace. “Go,” he said simply and the pair disappeared, the gold baton falling with a clang, just as...
“Order! Order!” came a voice below Six and she jumped as another spirit drifted through the floor and into the Speaker’s Chair around her.
A tingling sensation filtered through her body, numbing every joint the spectre touched. “Excuse me,” he spat, clearly ruffled, his grey jaw detaching from his face in a loop of slime.
“Holy granola!” Six tumbled out of the box, the sunglasses spilling onto the floor in front of her.
“What the hell’s going on?” Knight Five screamed.
“Easy there, ladies,” Lord Truth grinned as more of the ghosts bore down on them. “It seems that we have chanced upon a living piece of history, although when I say ‘living’ I mean it in its loosest form.”
Six tried her best to feel reassured by this as she rubbed the pins and needles from her arms and legs, the sunglasses thrust into her pocket. The rest of the knights were retreating into the middle of the room as line upon line of the figures closed in on them, men mostly, cackling in ill-fitted suits.
“Look at that fat one,” one of the ghosts mocked. “He looks like he’s just about to fill his armour.”
“Is there room for a nappy under all that padding?” another laughed.
“Screw you!” Knight Four yelled, and his gattling gun roared into life.
BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAKA-BRAK-
Bullets sprang around the chamber, splitting wood, punching holes, smashing glass and passing through the heart of every ghost without causing a scratch.
BRAKA-BRAKA-BRA-
Lord Truth stood with his head in his hands, transforming the last of the bullets into butterflies and bees. The knight’s heavy gun turned into a huge spray of flowers, much like the orchids and poppies that crept through the cracked Commons floor.
“Sorry boss,” Knight Four looked down at the bouquet as some of the ghosts laughed so much their heads tipped off their crumbling shoulders.
Knight One slapped the trooper on the back of the head before screaming, “CALM THE HECK DOWN, YOU FREAKING IDIOT!”
“That’s quite enough,” Lord Truth strut up and down the long hall between the two sets of spectres. “From all of you,” he added, pointing at the macabre crowd.
Six pulled herself to her feet and walked nervously towards four of the apparitions, her two pistols raised, though useless it seemed.
Each ghost was hideously scarred, their wounds fresh and bloody, yet they seemed to be rotting from the inside out - their pale bodies and torn clothes turning to dust, invisible, and then reforming again, becoming solid with every second breath.
“Who are you?” Six asked.
“We are politicians, ma’am,” a surly spectre with dead, hollow eyes and a thick Scottish accent replied. “Who else do you expect to roam the halls of Parliament than those who have been chosen to serve the people of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales?”
“But why are you ghosts?” Six pondered.
“Yes, why are you still here?” Lord Truth added, joining her.
The ghost next to the Scot rose high above his seat to face him. “Where else would we go?” he smiled enigmatically, not answering the question at all.
The other ghosts shifted uncomfortably, their bodies twisted, suspended over chairs and broken bleachers as they hung on memories of what was there before. The sun still streamed through the broken roof and birds fluttered above them.
“We were, um, cursed. Cursed by a group of gypsies,” an oily looking ghost with slick-back hair finally replied. “Don’t ask me why,” he added, catching Six’s quizzical look.
Lord Truth raised his eyebrows, his white hair dancing, his black eyes beaming. “Politics,” he chuckled as he glanced down at Six. “It makes fools of us all, eh?”
He then slipped off his jacket and sat on the naked floor. Even there he was almost at her eye level, and directly opposite the smiling spectre, whose torso reduced to bones and maggots and then bloomed back into shape.
“You’re the Prime Minister?” Lord Truth asked, his hands together as if in prayer.
“I was,” the figure replied, his face maimed, two great slashes forming an ‘x’ across his chest and stomach.
“Then I call on you to tell me of the events that led to your demise,” Lord Truth asked calmly. “What happened here?”
The three ghosts around the Prime Minister grinned mischievously, their forms equally scarred, each trapped in its own cycle of death and decomposition. “Do you think he wants to hear about the battle for London?” the Scot enquired.
A family of meerkats scampered through the grass beneath the oily one, another poking through his ribcage. “Perhaps he’s after something a bit more saucy?”
The third sat to the left of the Prime Minister with a hulking frame, his face an open wound from cheek to jowl. “Then perhaps he should try replicating the last King of England!”
Lord Truth’s eyes flickered between the three as they laughed. He hesitated now. “You know me?”
But the Prime Minister said nothing, his face reverting to a mottled skull, to dust, and back. Knight Two whispered behind Six. “I don’t like this, Susie.”
“Me neither,” Six breathed. She could still feel her bruised cheek swelling. “Not one bit.”
“Why don’t we start at the beginning,” Lord Truth resumed. He had undone his cufflinks now and rolled up his sleeves. “Which one of you idiots started the blood plague? We know there’s an antidote somewhere in this building. It pays to assume you all had something to do with it.”
The reaction from the benches was instantaneous. All around them voices yelled, “That wasn’t us, we didn’t start it!”
“That had nothing to do with us!”
“That information is classified under the Official Secrets Act. On whose authority, Sir, do you ask?”
Their inquisitor smiled. “I am Simon Starr. Sometimes known as the Saviour of all that’s left of this world, but I prefer to be called Lord Truth.”
And again the gallery erupted in a cacophony of brash, snarling voices. “Saviour? And I’m the ghost of Queen Mary!” one ghost shouted above the rest.
“You?” the Scot spat in disgust, “You don’t know who you are, scum!”
Six flinched and glanced at her comrades, each closing in around their leader.
“Lord of Truth? I can smell your lies from here,” the large ghost next to the Prime Minister sneered.
The Prime Minister hung uncomfortably, his body contorted as if he was experiencing the pain of his wounds for the first time. “You are out of your depth here, Simon Starr,” he wailed.
Six felt the ground quaking beneath her and she looked up to see waves of dust falling from what was left of the ceiling.
“I suggest you leave immediately,” the ghost continued, his face breaking into a grin as the building’s foundations began creaking, the wooden panels on the walls clattering to the floor, the birds above screeching and flying for cover. There was a loud CRACK!
And a huge oak beam fell towards them.
Six closed her eyes.
And, for a moment, her world was silenced.
She coughed, and heard the others choking around her, spluttering on the filthy air. And when she looked up, through a thick cloud of dust, she could see that Lord Truth had suspended the beam inches above them. It was floating in mid-air and the Prime Minister was now gagging, as if being strangled, Lord Truth curling his finger towards him, tightening his grip.
“I’ll leave when I’m good and ready,” her master began as the joist flew back into place, the ghosts that had tried to wrench it from the rafters tossed aside.
“I’ll have no more
of your parlour games,” another twitch of his black eyes and more ghosts were revealed, the panels they’d ripped from the walls in their hands, their feet no longer banging on the floor but pinned to it.
It was as if he had control over all of them. And Six felt her pistols suddenly shifting in her hands, as if their clips had been emptied and reloaded with new ammo.
“Knight Two, shoot the Speaker,” Lord Truth commanded.
“What?” the knight spluttered.
“Just do as I say!”
Knight Two pulled his rifle into his shoulder and took aim at the Speaker’s Chair, firing a single shot, a grey bullet piercing the chairman’s arm.
“Ow, bloody hell! That really hurt!” the ghost gurgled, the others recoiling in fear.
Knight Two glanced up at Lord Truth and then down at his rifle. “How the Swiss cheese did that happen?” he wondered.
But Lord Truth didn’t answer. Instead he focused on the choking Prime Minister, curling his long finger as the spectre gasped, his windpipe surely about to snap.
Six stood staring at Lord Truth open mouthed, his blue-grey face malevolent and, she thought, more than a little bit mad. She was frightened, she’d never seen him like this. “L-lord Truth?” she stuttered.
The ghost of the Prime Minister was no longer choking but drooling now, his eyes as crossed as the wounds on his chest.
“You will tell me what I need to know or I will shoot another,” Lord Truth began. “And another, and another, until...”
“Wait,” one of the ghosts stepped forward from the other end of the chamber. It was the woman the others had shouted down before, her body burnt, her face ashamed.
“Stop,” she said. “Please, just stop. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE GHOST watched Lord Truth releasing his grip on the Prime Minister as all around the chamber the benches clamoured, outrage and scorn dripping from the lips of the House of Commons.
“Traitor! Treason!” the politicians yelled.
The woman ignored them. “You’ll have to forgive my right honourable friends, most of them were paid to shout,” she said gingerly in an upper-class accent.
Lord Truth glared at her, regarding her charred visage with an air of disdain. “I’m done playing around. Just tell me what I need to know,” he said stiffly.
“Fine,” the ghost nodded, pulling smartly at the lapels of her unravelling tweed suit. “Well the blood plague was a mistake, one of almost incalculable proportions,” she began, her complexion little more than veins and sinews one moment, wrinkled skin and charm the next.
“Traitor! Treason!” the other ghosts heckled, banging their benches on the floor.
“Haven’t you caused enough trouble already, Marjorie?” the heavy ghost beside the Prime Minister scowled.
But she persisted. “The blood plague was not, however, the sole reason for the end of the world, Mister Starr.”
Lord Truth shook his head impatiently, his grey face as cold as granite. “So it was manufactured, a weapon? Who started it?”
“I’m not sure that’s really relevant anymore, seeing as everyone’s dead,” Marjorie stared at him. “But I can tell you where the antidote is.”
“It is here then, in Parliament?”
“Yes,” the woman nodded anxiously.
Some of the spirits detached themselves from their seats, gliding around the two figures, spitting and taunting. “TREASON! TRAITOR! TREASON! TRAITOR!”
Marjorie swallowed, her skin flaking away so cooked muscle could be seen moving up and down her throat. “It’s kept frozen in the vault.”
“Frozen?” Lord Truth asked.
“It’s made from a rare plant. We had it transported here from a laboratory in Sussex when we realised what it could do.”
“TRAITOR! TREASON!” the ghosts admonished, but with a flicker of Lord Truth’s black eyes they were cast aside.
“Unfortunately it was too late,” Marjorie added.
“And how do we get to this vault? Through the basement?” Lord Truth strode over to the front bench and collected his jacket, glancing at Knight One as he did so.
“Of course not, that’s flooded,” Marjorie answered.
“So how?”
“There’s a secret door in Black Rod’s chambers...”
Knight One turned towards his troops. “Okay, Eddie, I want you to set up a base of operations here. Six you’re running it. Everyone else get ready, looks like our intel’s panned out. Remember, I want cameras on and comms clear, people.”
Six was distraught. “Serge, you’re benching me?” she asked as Eddie placed his laptop on the large table with the fallen mace.
Knight One gripped her shoulder. “You’ve been through enough scrapes on this one, Susie,” he said, sizing up her swollen eye and patched-up arm. “And I need someone here I can trust, not someone who’s gonna spray the farm with bullets,” he added, cocking his head towards Knight Four, who was only now tossing his bouquet of flowers aside and grabbing Knight Two’s spare pistol.
“Okay,” Six nodded, though she was smarting inside.
“Tucks, how are we doing out there?” the sergeant spoke into his communicator, twisting the small camera that was clipped to his shoulder guard. “Eddie you getting that?” he added.
Six watched as Eddie tapped on a tablet he’d attached to the laptop’s screen and displays from each of the knight’s cameras popped up in separate windows. “Check,” he said.
Then a broken response came over their headsets as Tucker called back: “Sorry Serge... barely hear you... quiet here... found a... sweet shoes, but there’s a freaking tiger in the yard... kid you not.”
Knight One’s brow furrowed. “Okay, Tucks you’re breaking up pretty bad. We’re going down to the basement so sit tight and we’ll be with you soon. Remember we’re all sharing one audio channel now so I want radio silence. Six is on the comms, you copy?”
“Six... on comms?” came Tucker’s crackled reply. “She must... pissed.”
Knight One smiled a goofy grin before taking one of Six’s pistols. He dragged the clip from the gun’s handle. The bullets inside had been replaced by translucent pellets that seemed to congeal into thick slugs - almost as if the weapon was loaded with parts of the ghosts themselves. “Looks like the boss has dealt you some of his new ammo. If you’ve got any problems you use it, okay?”
“Sure thing, Serge,” Six nodded.
“These lot are all dead anyway,” Knight One chuckled, handing the gun back.
Dead but not quiet, Six thought. All around them the ghosts were muttering to each other, some of them grinning and pointing at the equipment Eddie had set up.
“How much trouble can they be?” she added dubiously.
His interrogations complete, Lord Truth beckoned her over. “Are you alright?” he smiled.
Six didn’t know what to say. She was in total awe of him, of course. She had been for so many years now, yet she’d never seen him behave the way he had with the Prime Minister. He seemed so violent, so unhinged, she thought.
She felt for his sunglasses in her pocket. “Here, you’ll want these back.”
“No, you keep them,” he said, pushing them away. “Tucker will never forgive me once he sees that black eye you’ve got.”
“What? No I can’t do that, they’re yours. You always wear them. They’re...”
“It’s fine,” he grinned, sliding them over her ears. “Take them.”
Six blushed as the shades slipped on her nose. “They’re not my size anyway, LT, they’re too big! Can’t you just replicate another pair?”
“There’s no time for that, Susie. Just keep them safe,” his eyes narrowed. “You may need them one day to,” he played with his quiff for a moment as if deciding what to say, “to see things a little differently.”
Six was confused. She’d never heard Lord Truth speak like this before. She slid the glasses onto her hair. “But...”
&nbs
p; “Keep them, that’s an order,” he touched her cheek, his hand cold as it changed from grey to silver in the shadows, almost as if he were a ghost himself. “Now, if anything happens, I want you to find Tucker and get home. You two are very special to me.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen, LT,” Knight One clapped Lord Truth on the back with an easy arrogance, although he had to reach up to do it. “We’re in complete control here. Okay everybody. Let’s move out.”
And the knights began filing past her, Two and Five turning to smile as they left.
Knight Three was the last to leave, sweat already beading on his neck. “Just look after my kit, okay?” he called as he disappeared through the crumbling door.
“Sure Eddie, sure thing,” Six answered.
Then they were gone.
Six went to the computer and watched them march down the corridor, their cameras feeding each knight’s point of view to the screens. Immediately, the ghosts closed in on her and she stretched her pistols towards them. “Don’t even think about it.”
They retreated, turning their attention back to the woman at the end of the hall.
“TRAITOR! TRAITOR! TREASON! TREASON!” they all chanted, circling her, their bodies disintegrating and solidifying, trapped in a breath of time.
“TRAITOR! TRAITOR!” they bellowed, as a tiger strode into the room from the door behind the Speaker’s chair, its sleek coat glistening with water, sparkling orange and black.
Six gasped as the great cat brushed past her and sidled up to the woman, the other ghosts bumping into each other in their haste to get out of its way.
“It’s okay,” Marjorie winked at the knight as the cat rubbed against her smouldering legs. “He’s with me.”
Six breathed again. I’ll never get used to this place, she thought, and she turned back to the computer, Lord Truth’s sunglasses slipping on her head.
“You are very brave,” the woman said, her hair thickening around her blistered face and then falling out in clumps, before regenerating again.
“Don’t you ever shut up?” the Prime Minister shouted. The tiger settled at the woman’s feet, purring as she stroked him between the ears with her skeletal fingers.
The Last Days Page 27
