The Coldest War (46 page)

Liv gasped. Marsh caught her.

“What was that?” she whispered. “Where did he go?”

“I don't know.” He lowered Liv to the sofa. A small wet spot had formed on her dress.

“John spoke,” she said. Her breath made his eyes water.

Marsh didn't know what to say. He nodded.

“He was talking nonsense, but you understood him.” She shoved him away. She was crying. “You understood him!”

“I—”

“I've gone mad.” Liv ran her hands through her hair. One lock came free of the hairpins and bobbed over her forehead. “My son is a monster.” She glanced at Will. “And I'm seeing ghosts. I must be mad.”

“I assure you, I am not a ghost,” said Will, his voice shaky. “Yet.” He stared at where John had disappeared.

Marsh took her gently by the shoulders. “Liv—”

“Don't
touch
me!” She shoved him away more violently. He banged his shoulder against the mantel, ringing the chimes of a wound-down clock. Shrieking left her voice hoarse. “You spoke to that, that
thing,
as though you knew it. As though you understood.” Liv dodged his outstretched fingers. “Stay away from me.”

“Olivia,” said Will, still distracted.

“Don't speak to me,” she sobbed. “You're not real.” She ran up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed.

The fever redoubled its efforts to burn Marsh's brain to a cinder. He staggered to the sofa. It was as good a place as any to die. Perhaps, if he could muster the energy later, he'd go out to the garden shed. That had been his home as much as anywhere these past twenty years.

Liv pounded down the stairs a few minutes later. She'd changed her dress, done her lips, put her hair back in place. She carried her handbag, too. Had she not heard about the disasters in the city? All across Britain?

“Liv, please stay,” Marsh called.

But she didn't pause before throwing open the front door and heading outside. Even now, at the end of the world, she couldn't spare a word for him. It cut more deeply than anything else she'd ever said or done. Worse than what the fire had done to his face and throat. He'd have given anything for her to stay. Just a little longer. He didn't want to die alone. But she didn't want to die in his presence. So much for their fragile, tentative reconnection. If it had ever existed. He'd been a fool to think it had.

Marsh listened to the creak of the gate. Soon, Liv's footsteps receded into the din of the sirens and alarms still echoing across the city. He wondered if she might have stayed had she understood what was happening. Probably not, he decided. Liv wouldn't have chosen to die alone any more than Marsh did, but that's effectively what would have happened if she had stayed at home with him. Dying alone was his fate, and the knowledge wearied him.

With John gone, she might have been inclined to spend more time at home. If only the world wasn't gut shot and rapidly bleeding out.

So this is it, then,
thought Marsh.
Sleeping alone at the end of the world. A final insult for a wasted life. What a fitting send-off.

Minutes passed while Will and Marsh sat in silence. They shared the understanding of doomed men. The amity of the condemned.

A small part of Marsh wrestled with the question of Gretel. Like a dog gnawing a soup bone down to splinters, he couldn't let it go. Why? Why work so patiently for so many years solely to bring events to this point? Why engineer history to bring about this apocalyptic finale? Decades of nudging, wheedling, watching, correcting, adjusting—just to take the world down with her when she died? There were easier ways to commit suicide. Marsh would have happily strangled her a dozen times over.

It didn't make sense.

But the rest of Marsh didn't care any longer. He'd done everything he could for his country. Perhaps it had been too much, perhaps too little, but he had nothing more to give. He had strived his best, but he had failed. His heart was weary, his body old, his head light, his face ruined. He had no fight left in him. And there was no fighting the Eidolons.

His stubborn refusal to admit defeat had doomed everybody. The enormity of that failure was too much to swallow. Too much to digest before the end came.

He only hoped it would be painless. He'd had enough of pain. He was ready to stop hurting.

Marsh stood. “Come on. I'll take you to Gwendolyn. Before it…” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Before it starts.”

He decided he couldn't face another night—one last night, the last night of anything—alone in the garden shed. Marsh considered a stop at the pub after dropping Will at the safe house. If the world lasted that long. It had been weeks since he'd been tossed out for fighting. They'd probably let him in if he kept his fists to himself this time. Easy enough. He was too weary for rage.

Will didn't move. “Circle,” he mumbled.

Marsh sighed. “Doesn't matter what it said. Nothing we can do about it now.”

And he believed that, but for the niggling voice in the back of his head.

Gretel. Why did she do this? Why the long game? What vision of the future could have prompted her to facilitate the end of the world? To guarantee there
was
no future? What was worse than this?

It was all so out of character for her. She always had a solution. Always had an escape … Or was this just as it appeared? The woman was insane. Evil. And von Westarp had given her a god's power.

No.
He shook his head, tried to clear it.
I'm just an old man. A tired old man, dying alone because my wife can't abide my company even at the end of the world.

He snapped his fingers. “Let's go.”

“Broken spiral,” Will murmured. He looked up at Marsh. “Do you know what I'm remembering?”

Marsh sighed again, rubbed his beard. Sickness rumbled in his gut. “I don't have the energy for this. I just want a pint before the demons take me.”

Will continued as if Marsh hadn't spoken. “Our little jaunt to Germany. You made a very compelling case for it, didn't you? It was the easiest thing in the world for the Eidolons to fling us several hundred miles in an instant.” He stretched, unlimbered his long arms from around his knees. “That trip was also a circle, you know.” He traced a wobbly semicircle in the air, with his finger: “From here to there in the blink of an eye.” He completed the circle, saying, “And back again. A circle through space. And yet the Eidolons never bothered to name
me
.” He paused. “At the time I thought the entire idea was the height of madness. But perhaps our failure was a lack of ambition.”

Will offered an invisible spider-thread of hope, but all Marsh felt was the sting of dread and the comfort of surrender. He'd been coming to terms with death and he didn't have the energy for anything more. He didn't have the energy to unravel another layer of Gretel's machinations. He was ill. He was ready to die.

Please, no more. There can't be more to do. I'm weary, and I don't care any longer.

“What are you saying?”

“I finally understand your name, Pip. I know what it means and why they gave it to you.” Will shook his head. Marsh couldn't tell if it was a gesture of awe or pity.

“Fine. Just tell me.”

“What if Gretel had foreseen a way to stop this?”

“Stop this? She caused this. She's been aiming for this since the beginning.”

“Yes. The beginning. But when was that, exactly? How long ago?” Now it was Will's turn to stand. “I think we ought to return to the Admiralty. She said she'd be waiting for us. But we haven't much time.”

Time.

No.
Marsh fell back on the sofa, stomach churning with mothball sickliness. He hated Will's line of reasoning and refused to follow along. It frightened him too much. More than he feared dying alone, he feared the thought that Gretel's plans for him extended beyond the end of the world.

Marsh shook his head. “I can't do this.”

“I know you better than that, Pip. I know you can't bear the thought of dying with an unsolved puzzle on your hands. Even if you won't admit it to yourself.”

When had Will become the strong one? Damn him.

“But Gwendolyn,” Marsh tried.

“We have an understanding. Don't you want a straight answer out of Gretel? After everything that has happened? I do.”

“I want this to be finished.”

“It may be. But let's hear what she has to say. One last time.” Will extended a hand, offered to help Marsh up.

“One last time.” Marsh took Will's hand and struggled to his feet. “To know why.”

The din of sirens, panic, and chaos still clamored across the city. Less than three hours had passed since he'd issued the order to kill the Soviet saboteurs. Not enough time to put out every fire, assess the damage, spin a cover story. No sweeping this under the rug as a gas main explosion. Too many witnesses. Marsh knew there were people gathered amidst the wreckage of Whitehall, probably at that very moment, striving to concoct a plausible cover story. Because it was their job, and the poor sods didn't know the world was dying. Didn't know the Eidolons were poised to snuff them all.

In spite of the noise, the atmosphere on the streets was hushed. Expectant. As though the entire neighborhood had drawn a ragged breath and, like a tuberculosis patient, struggled to hold it through the tightness in its chest. As did the rest of the city, Marsh reckoned. As he did, too.

They listened to reports coming over the wireless as they made their way back through the snarl of London traffic. Reliable information was spotty; SIS was patching reports together from the BBC and other news outlets.

“Disturbances” was the word of the hour. A “disturbance” had cleared away the surprise attacks. (So much for a cover story.) But now disturbances were reported elsewhere. Patches of rapidly spreading darkness over the Midlands, in the American Southwest, Tanganyika, India, the former Germany.

Ripples, coalescing at random. Forward and backward from the moment when Marsh heaved a boulder into the duck pond.

Germany. Not far from Weimar was Marsh's guess. There was probably another “disturbance” centered on Arzamas-16, too, but of course no such news was forthcoming from the Soviet Union. He imagined men and women like Will's assassin trying in vain to fight the Eidolons, unaware that their efforts only attracted and enraged the demons.

Unlike Gretel, who had gone to tremendous lengths to hide herself from the Eidolons. All for naught. Why?

The Eidolons lived outside of space and time. They perceived Marsh as a circle. A spiral. An Ouroboros.

This hadn't begun when Gretel returned from the Soviet Union. She'd put this in motion long, long before. The catastrophic open conflict between Arzamas-16 and Milkweed had been inevitable at least since the end of the war. Perhaps earlier.

But how do you stop something inevitable?

You can't. You must head it off before it starts. By going back to the beginning, to nip it in the bud.

That's what she wanted. But Marsh wouldn't give it to her. That bint could die with all the rest.

But not before she told him why.

A cold wind swept the city. They crossed the Thames again, headed back toward the heart of the chaos. Bobbies stood at major intersections, ostensibly to direct traffic and keep the crowds of panicked Londoners at bay. But the officers' silver whistles hung unused about their necks while they gaped at the sky like everybody else.

“Look,” said Will. He pointed north.

Toward where an ink black sky boiled above the Midlands. It held a darkness more complete than any storm clouds, darker than any moonless midnight, more thorough than the wartime blackouts. This wasn't darkness caused by the absence of light. It was the absence of existence. Primal chaos. The darkness of oblivion.

Roiling. Churning. Spreading.

Growing exponentially, as the Eidolons perceived more and more of the human world.

“Dear God,” Will whispered. “Aubrey.”

The marines had abandoned their posts by the time Marsh and Will returned to the Admiralty. The remaining pixies stood unmanned, some upright, but most lying skew-whiff across the parade ground by virtue of a growing gale.

The howling wind blew north. Toward the vacuum of nonexistence created by the Eidolons.

They found Pethick alone in Pembroke's office. He'd helped himself to the bottle in the sideboard. His tie lay coiled on the floor.

“If you've come to plead with the children to save us, it's too late,” he said. “Eidolons gobbled 'em up.”

“Where's Gretel?” said Marsh.

Pethick sneered at him. “She killed Leslie because he wouldn't have pulled the trigger. He was a good man.” He tossed back a finger's-worth of scotch. A glistening trail of spittle dangled from his lips to the mouth of the bottle. “You've killed us all. Bloody gorilla.”

A shudder of distaste flashed across Will's face. He saw an echo of himself in Pethick's collapse.

Will said, “We need to find her.”

Pethick sloshed scotch across the desk when he gestured to the corridor with the bottle. “Waiting. Happy as Larry.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

And she was. They found her in one of the old Milkweed rooms that had been reduced to dusty storage after the war. She sat in a broken office chair, bare feet propped on the edge of a metal desk, wiggling her toes. The hem of her dress hung from pale and bony ankles.

Without preamble, Marsh said, “I won't do it. I won't go back. I'd rather stay here and watch you die.”

“Ah.” She clapped and spun her chair in a circle, braids windmilling about her head. “So you finally understand why
they
named you. I knew you would. Eventually.”

“I don't understand a damn thing,” Marsh rasped. “I know you're terrified of the Eidolons. And yet you forced my hand, forced me to unleash them to combat a menace you engineered. You let the Reichsbehörde fall to the Red Army so that this would happen. You destroyed the world with your long game.”