The Beauty of Destruction (8 page)

As she wrapped the holly around Bladud and Anharad’s arms, both of them wearing crowns of mistletoe, Britha noted that the Trinovantes noblewoman, with her bloodshot eyes, looked as tired and hung-over as befitted a bride on her wedding morn.

5

Now

Du Bois knew it was ridiculous to get attached to objects, particularly for someone as long-lived as he was, but he was going to miss the Range Rover. Absurdly he found himself worrying if Alexia had damaged his Vincent Black Shadow. He was worried about his brother … his sister. Despite her augmentations she was not ready for a situation like this. Nobody really was.

The roads into London, however, were just too jammed with wreckage. Much of the Heathrow area, and indeed the westernmost parts of London, was on fire from what must have been a rain of falling planes.

From raised ground they had caught sight of the M25. It had become one big bumper-to-bumper traffic jam interspersed with huge piles of wreckage. Some of the road was burning and the drivers seemed to have formed tribes and were battling each other across the roofs and bonnets of their now-abandoned cars.

Du Bois had parked the Range Rover in a back street just off the A30 by a Kawasaki dealership. He had taught Beth how to smear her blood onto her clothes. The nanites in her blood used the matter in her clothes to replicate themselves. Her clothes looked the same but, like his, would harden when they were hit and distribute the kinetic energy of blows and bullets. He provided her with some simple webbing that could carry ammunition for the Heckler & Koch USP and the Benelli M1014. Then he shut and locked the concealed weapons locker and ordered it to destroy the remaining ammunition they couldn’t conveniently carry. Du Bois tossed an incendiary grenade into the Range Rover and walked away knowing that he had just started yet another fire.

They walked in through the glassless windows of the bike dealer – it seemed people had got there before them. Du Bois smeared blood onto two of his keys and passed one to Beth.

‘I’d say I can’t ride a bike, but that’s not true any more, is it?’ Beth said, her boots crunching on broken glass. Du Bois glanced over at her. Beth was solidly built, quite heavily muscled. Her face was plain but not as unattractive as she seemed to think it was. He didn’t really approve of the Celtic-style tattoo creeping up her neck, though it matched the interlocking knotwork design painted on the back of her leather jacket. Her dirty, dark blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. ‘Where are we going?’

Du Bois reached one of the remaining bikes and straddled it. ‘We’re going to see the King of London,’ he muttered, unable to keep the distaste from his mouth. ‘We need transport.’ Beth just frowned. Blood changed the shape of the key as he slid it into the Enduro’s starter. The bike fired first time and he gunned the throttle.

‘You want to go to London? After what we just saw?’ she demanded.

Du Bois said nothing.

‘Look, my father …’ she tried.

He could see the guilt all over her face. There was no need to mask his own as the only bit of guilt he felt at having killed her father was the pain that it would inevitably cause her.

‘I think you should stick with me for the time being,’ he said. ‘But it’s up to you.’

When he roared out of the showroom Beth was following.

At one point on the ride into London they had found themselves on a deserted, sunken, dual carriageway. At the top of the grass banks on either side of the road a firestorm had raged. Ash rained down on them like snow and only their augmented bodies had enabled them to breathe. It was strangely beautiful. Du Bois had glanced behind him to see a look of wonder on Beth’s face.

They had made their way through the city towards Kensington. They had seen a few people in the streets. Many of them had seemed lost and had little idea what to do. There was some sort of migration towards the centre, however, and every Tube station they had passed had been crammed with people. He had seen double decker buses lying on their sides but some of the underground trains still seemed to be moving and full. The streets were jammed with abandoned cars. Only a few of them had been wrecked, or burned, though the sky was full of smoke. They’d only had to avoid a few attacks. Still, du Bois found himself using all his concentration to navigate the streets. This at least stopped him from becoming angry thinking about whom he was going to see.

They’d had to dump the bikes when the press of people became too much. A military convoy was making its way down Kensington High Street between the designer shops and pricey cafés. Challenger tanks and Warrior armoured personnel carriers with eight-pointed stars painted on them crushed expensive German saloons and Italian sports cars as their tracks rolled over them. The armoured vehicles had loudspeakers bolted to them, playing something that du Bois’s internal systems assured him was a form of music called UK Grime. The soldiers were handing out SA80 assault rifles, ammunition, and other weapons to young men and women wearing shell suits. As one of them ran by, du Bois could see that he had shaved off an eyebrow and crudely tattooed a postcode just over his eye.

There were bodies hanging from lampposts, street names carved into their flesh. Directly across the road he saw a table of young men outside a café. They had salon-groomed beards and hair. They were wearing tweed and very tight trousers. They were studiously ignoring each other as they frantically tapped at their phones. Du Bois wondered for a moment if they were communicating with each other via text instead of talking, or just describing the firefight on whatever passed for social media on the corrupted internet. A stray, or perhaps not-so-stray, bullet caught one of them in the head and he fell sideways off his chair, spilling his latte.

Du Bois and Beth backed further into the doorway of a designer make-up boutique. Du Bois glanced behind him to see naked men and women painting make-up on their bodies in a way that reminded him of tribal war paint. There was a severed head on the floor of the shop.

Beth’s eyes were wide. Again it looked like her body wanted to panic but the technology in her system was fighting it. It had been so long since he had first been in a battle that what was going on in Kensington High Street barely registered with him. Though the battle’s location did feel a little incongruous.

‘Beth?’ du Bois asked. She ignored him. He was pretty sure she would be shaking if the nanites in her body hadn’t been controlling her biochemistry. He wasn’t surprised that she wanted to shut down. The fight with the Do As You Please clan in Portsmouth had been one thing. They had obviously been evil and they’d taken her sister. What was happening here was on such a massive scale as to be abstract. Du Bois had no doubt that Beth was tough. He had seen that first-hand, but there was only so much a mind could take in one go and this whole situation had been engineered to drive humanity insane.

‘Beth!’ du Bois hissed louder.

Beth jerked round to look at him. ‘What’s the fucking point?’ she demanded. There was the snap of bullets passing close to them. A nearby car bounced on its suspension as holes appeared in its bodywork and the remaining glass in its windscreen shattered.

‘I’m sorry to break this to you, but people lived like this all over the world before today. Just because it hasn’t happened in your country for a while doesn’t mean you can just give up!’ He knew it was harsh but he suspected it was what she needed at this moment.

‘What’s your fucking postcode?’ an almost guttural, south London accented voice demanded.

Du Bois glanced over at the young man with the tattooed postcode above his eye. His hair was shaved into a pattern that du Bois suspected was supposed to be a Tube map. He looked very young. Du Bois found himself reminded of the root of the word infantry. London was at war, it just didn’t seem to know who with. It was a horrible inverse parody of the blitz spirit.

‘Do you think there’s any way I can convince you of the imbecility of fighting over an address?’ du Bois enquired.

‘Yeah? Well there’s no oil in Lambeth, is there?’ the postcode soldier told him. Du Bois just stared at the youth as he raised the SA80 to his shoulder. Du Bois didn’t like that the boy seemed to know how to use the weapon, that it was trained at his head rather than where he was wearing more armour, and that the boy knew enough to keep out of reach. ‘Now, what’s your fucking postcode?’

‘I’m a tourist,’ du Bois suggested.

He practically felt Beth wince behind him. The boy started to squeeze the trigger. Du Bois started to move. Three red holes appeared in the boy’s chest and du Bois was aware of the sound of suppressed gunfire. Hot metal shell casings bounced off his face. The boy staggered back and fell to the floor. Beth was staring down at him, looking stricken as she lowered the suppressed
UMP
. Du Bois saw her swallow hard.

‘I—’ she started.

‘He was going to shoot me,’ du Bois told her.

‘It was barely me doing it … it was like I was on automatic …’ She flinched and jerked the
UMP
up to cover a sprinting girl who reached down to grab the fallen SA80 as she ran by.

Du Bois brought his weapon up and moved off. Beth followed only a moment later. They were making their way past the front of an art deco building containing a number of high street clothes shops. It looked like the roots of trees had pierced the ceiling of the building and grown down through the floors of the shop. It didn’t seem to be deterring the smartly dressed, middle-aged female looters.

They turned right off Kensington High Street and onto Derry Street. The street battle seemed to be heading east towards Kensington Gardens.

Du Bois led Beth to a door in the side of the art deco building and looked into an empty reception area.

‘It’s their worst nightmare, isn’t it?’ Beth said, nodding back towards Kensington High Street. She still looked like she was struggling to hold it together.

‘What is?’ Du Bois asked, distracted. He had his carbine at the ready.

‘All those south London scrotes rampaging through the nice parts of the city.’

‘Yes, this apocalypse seems full of irony. I don’t think there’s a “they” any more. Beth, are you with me?’ du Bois asked.

‘I don’t know what we … what I’m doing.’

‘Surviving.’ Du Bois stepped into the reception area, scanning all around. Beth followed, the
UMP
at the ready, the shotgun slung down her back. Du Bois accessed old plans of the building. It had been a while since he’d had to come here and he had never used the stairs before.

‘I think I’ve seen some of these people on the telly,’ Beth said. The room was full of beautiful people, all of whom had the look of someone faintly famous. Du Bois’s internal systems were identifying most of the partygoers as micro-celebrities from reality or talent shows. ‘Now I want to start shooting,’ she added. All of them seemed to be trying too hard to have a good time. They were coated in sheens of sweat and desperation.

‘Fucking arsehole,’ du Bois muttered. They were standing in a glass-fronted restaurant looking down on a roof garden with a stream running through it. Beth gawped at a pelican wading through the water. There were more micro-celebrities sat in deck chairs on the level below.

The restaurant provided a great view of London’s rooftops. Smoke was rising from many places in the city. There were holes in the dome of the Royal Albert Hall, and the big wheel that was the London Eye burned.

‘He’ll be in the Spanish Garden,’ du Bois said, and went down the stairs.

Beth followed, looking around, seemingly confused by what she was seeing. ‘Don’t they know there’s—’ She only just managed to stop herself.

Du Bois led her through an open area where a DJ was playing insipid music and more of the partygoers were dancing.

They came out into a garden with fountains. Vines climbed the Moorish inspired architecture that surrounded the landscaped area. It was quiet here. Decorative stone and ornamental flora deadened the sound of the disco. There were small grottos with comfortable sofas all around the garden. A number of the partygoers were engaged in various intimate acts in the grottos while paparazzi photographed them.

Du Bois pushed his way along the raised path at the edge of the courtyard to one of the nooks. He could hear The Doors playing ‘Five to One’.

The music was coming from a modified walking cane. He was lying on one of the sofas, naked, but little of his nudity was on show due to the masses of hair and beard. He wore coloured sunglasses and was surrounded by a detritus of drug paraphernalia and empty bottles. There was a
Buckaroo Banzai
comic lying, open, across his expansive, beard-obscured gut.

‘He looks like a fat John Lennon,’ Beth muttered, clearly unimpressed. The figure opened his eyes with a start.

‘Is John here?’ he asked.

‘He’s dead,’ du Bois said viciously. ‘Hello, Gideon.’

Gideon looked around the Spanish Gardens.

‘Who are all these people? I don’t think this is what I meant.’ He sounded a little frightened, though he had always seemed somewhat disoriented.

‘How is this old hippy going to help us?’ Beth asked.

‘I’m not a …’ Gideon started. ‘This has been done to me.’ He glared at du Bois. He was starting to sound like he was more with it. ‘Can I offer you some drugs?’

‘I’m fine,’ Beth assured him.

Du Bois raised his carbine to port and lit a cigarette with the lighter in his free hand.

‘What do you mean “this has been done to you”?’ she asked. ‘Someone forced you to be a hippy?’

‘I’m not a … well, yes. It’s a thematic prison.’ Again he glared at du Bois.

‘This guy’s not a friend of yours, is he?’ Beth asked. Du Bois and Gideon continued to glare at each other.

‘Gideon here is a fantasist, a less malevolent version of the Do As You Please clan—’ du Bois started.

‘I’m nothing like those—’

‘His father was an actual scientist. He was with the allies when they liberated Europe and came across the Nazis’ cache of S-tech. Gideon inherited the cache.’

‘Tell me, Malcolm, do you really believe that, or do I just need an origin story? I’m curious, did my brother work for you in the end? He thought that technology had the potential to free us from brutality as well.’