The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel (7 page)

Less than twenty feet away
from where Mina now stood, a BMW hit a shopfront at 50 mph and sent a shower of
glass into the air. The driver got out, dazed but miraculously alive. People
strolled around the wreck as if they hadn’t even noticed it, and the only
person to even react was a young boy who pointed and laughed.

“David, we need to get out of here.”

“Mina, why aren’t you taking pictures? We need
pictures.”

Mina fondled the heavy camera hanging around her
neck and considered ditching it, but she just couldn’t. It was a part of her,
and had cost as much as her car—not that her decade-old Peugeot was worth much.
She sighed and took a skewed photograph of the crashed BMW. The angle would add
to the disorientating feeling of the accident. She made sure she got a snap of
the shell-shocked driver, too. Next, she intended to take a photo of a burning coffee
shop on the corner of the street, but when she looked through her viewfinder,
she saw something that made her take notice.

A young woman lay trapped inside the building,
crushed beneath an overturned table. She was screaming for help as the flames
crept towards her.

Mina realised she was taking pictures of other
people’s misery instead of trying to help, so she let the camera hang around
her neck and raced towards the burning coffee shop, even as David yelled at her
to get back and focus on her job.

The young woman trapped inside had a broken leg—left
foot pointed backwards.

“Help me, please,” she begged, eyes swollen with
pained tears.

Mina grabbed the edge of the table and strained to
lift it. The fire was at the back of the room by the service counter, but it
was hot enough to make her break out in a sweat. The girl screeched as the
weight shifted against her ankle. Mina had to grit her teeth to keep from
dropping the table, for it was heavier than it looked. Too heavy.

“It hurts, it hurts.”

“I know it does,” said Mina, straining with all
her strength. “Can you get yourself free?”

“No, it hurts.”

Mina’s arms trembled—couldn’t hold the table much
longer. With a groan, she lifted it another few inches, but that was everything
she had. “How about now…? Can you get free?”

The girl screamed in agony. “I can’t. The pain…”

Mina’s knuckles creaked. It was only a question of
what gave out first—her hands or her biceps. “You need to move. I can’t hold it!”

“It hurts.”

The table began to wobble. Mina couldn’t hold it
anymore.

The flames were getting closer.

She would have to drop the table and run. She couldn’t
help the girl. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Suddenly the weight in her hands lightened.

“After three,” said David, now standing beside
her. “One…two…three!”

Together, they shoved the table up and over. It
fell free of the girl, and she screamed in renewed pain, but there was a hint
of relief creeping into her cries now. They grabbed her under the armpits and
dragged her out of the restaurant and onto the pavement. Nobody came to help or
even paid much attention, for everybody in the crowd had some place to be, and
it was unanimously away from here.

Mina and David had retreated from Oxford Street
south into Soho when the gate opened, avoiding the initial slaughter, but they
hadn’t escaped the mass exodus from the city. Everyone in London knew they were
under attack. That nobody understood
by what
made their panic even
worse. They had made it as far as the Soho Theatre before they had slowed down,
and then they headed west onto Meard Street to catch their breath.

“What’s your name?” Mina asked the girl, trying to
stop her screaming and attracting attention.

“G-Gabby.”

“A beautiful name. Gabby, we need to go. I know
your leg hurts, but you need to hop as fast as you can.”

“We can’t bring her along,” said David. “We have
work to do.”

Mina glared at him. “I’m not taking any more
pictures, David. We have to get out of here.”

David looked at her like she was mad. “This is the
news story of the century—of all human history. Do you want to be a bystander,
or do you want to be the photographer whose pictures remain in the archives of
mankind until the end of time?”

“I want to be one of the survivors. Which is why
I’m getting out of here and taking Gabby with me.”

David flapped his arms and stamped his foot, almost
comically. “You will regret this for the rest of your life, girl. Think about
it.”

“There’ll be no rest of my life to live if I hang
around here.”

“We’re all going to die,” Gabby moaned. “They’re
coming to kill us.”

Mina grabbed the girl’s head and seized her focus.
“Gabby, we will be just fine. Move as quickly as you can, okay?”

They continued south towards the theatre district,
Mina propping up Gabby, and David following behind and complaining about what a
mistake she was making. Part of her wondered if a real photojournalist would do
as David suggested and continue taking pictures. War zone photographers stared
death in the face every day, but she was choosing to run away. This felt different
though. This didn’t feel like a situation where reporters should be expected to
hang around and document.

They’d not yet witnessed the invading creatures
first hand, but the scattered survivors fleeing the city had screamed and
wailed about burned monsters tearing people apart. One woman even barked at
Mina about a giant angel come to smite them all. People had gone mad with
terror. David tried interviewing some of them, but most of what he got was
confused babble.

The roads were clogged with wrecked vehicles and broken
glass covered the pavements. Slow-moving lines of exhausted survivors funnelled
along where there was a gap, and uniformed shop workers stumbled side-by-side
with executives and public servants. Several thousand refugees looking for a
way out—and this was only one small part of the city. How bad were things?
People were already starting to turn on one another. Mina saw a topless man
strike a cyclist with a brick before making off with his bike. The previous
owner still lay unconscious in the gutter outside a media office. David insisted
on getting a picture.

Helicopters buzzed overhead but did nothing to
help.

Gunfire clattered in the distance.

Gabby moaned before they even made it to the end
of the street. “I need to stop. My leg…”

“We can’t stop, you stupid girl,” cried David.

“I can’t go on anymore.”

Mina eased the girl up against the bonnet of a
crumpled Royal Mail van and stepped back. “Thirty-seconds,” she said, “but then
we don’t stop until we’re safe. Do you understand, Gabby?”

Gabby nodded, fresh tears down her cheeks. “I’m
not even from London,” she muttered. “I live in Stroud. I only came here for a
job interview. My mum will be so worried about me.”

“Sorry,” was all Mina could say.

David tapped his foot and generally looked pissed off.
Mina did the only thing she could think of to oblige him—she lifted her camera
and started taking pictures. She zoomed in on an old man lying beneath an
overturned motorised scooter. There was a chance he was alive, but nothing
anybody in the street could do for him. His head was smashed open and his
brains were bleeding out. Mina had to cover her mouth to keep from throwing up.

The crowd began to thin out as they passed the
Apollo Theatre, enough people having fled to the further reaches of the city leaving
Soho mostly deserted. If not for David’s constant lingering, they would have been
out of there too.

Ominous grey smoke rose above the skyline back toward
Oxford Street and across the river, the spiky summit of the Shard rose solemnly
in the background. London burned, but the gunfire in the distance might have
been the Army fighting back. Could the situation be dealt with? Could the city
be reclaimed from whatever abominable horrors had spilled out onto Oxford
Street?

Mina took her last picture—a snap of a dirty Labrador
trotting down the pavement with a rolled up newspaper in its mouth—and was
about to turn away when she noticed something in the distance. At first, her
eyes only registered movement, but then she took in some of the finer detail. Something
was definitely there.

Unsure of what she was seeing, she looked through
her camera’s viewfinder and zoomed in 12x. Something massive strode across the
road several blocks back. The semi-naked figure walked like a man but was five
lengths taller and had the remnants of wings on its back. Mina thought about
what the crazy woman had barked at her earlier:
A
giant angel
.
Could such a thing be true?

Just as she started to accept what she was seeing,
the giant creature disappeared into the next street and was gone as quickly as
it had appeared.

David grabbed her arm. “Time to go.”

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

Mina shook her head. “There was… Nothing.”

A scream.

Mina and David turned to find Gabby on the floor. She
crawled backwards as something stalked after her.

A creature had leapt up onto the roof of the Royal
Mail van. It was so horribly burned that its nostrils had fused over and one
eye socket was hollow. It leapt down on top of Gabby and seized her by the
arms, hoisting her up off the ground like a child.

Mina went to help, but David grabbed her shoulder
and twisted her around. “You already saved her once.”

More creatures surged into the street from a side
road up ahead. They leapt on any stragglers they could find, and agonised
screams soon filled the air. Gabby screamed too, as the burned man gouged out
her eyes with its blackened thumbs. It was enough to extinguish any hopes Mina
might have had of saving the girl. There was barely a chance to save herself.

David was already running, but Mina caught up with
him once she got a hold of herself. The creatures pouring into the street
moaned in ecstasy as they tore the heads and limbs off screaming victims. One
of them spotted Mina and gave chase.

“David, help,” she screamed.

David tilted sideways at a sprint and pointed ahead.
“Over there.”

A pharmacy lay ahead, its door hanging wide open. David
made directly for it, leaving Mina little choice but to follow if she had any
chance of escaping the thing tearing after her. She leapt up on the pavement
and sprinted.

The creature chasing her dodged around a shattered
bus shelter and headed her off from the front. Unaware, David carried on
running. To her astonishment, the creature spoke. Its charred lips cracked and
peeled as they formed words.

“Nowhere to run, little girl. We are everywhere.
The Red Lord will make you his slaves.”

Before Mina could reply, the creature leapt at
her, a roaring beast snatching out with skinless hands. Mina grabbed the only
thing she could—her camera—and swung it as hard as she could. The heavy,
digital SLR struck the burned man in the side of his skull and dropped him to
the pavement where he went still. The strap broke and the expensive piece of
equipment shattered on the ground.

 Mina got moving, and made it through the
pharmacy’s door just as David was closing it. It slammed behind her, and David
quickly tipped a display rack over to act as a barricade.

The streets filled with terrified screams.

“Quick, get back here,” said David, crouching behind
a service counter at the back of the room. Mina leapt over, and they both
scurried to a storage area at the back stacked with pills and medicines.

David put a hand on Mina’s shoulder and eased her back
against the wall. “Did any of them see you?”

“Wouldn’t they be in here by now if they had?”

“I saw that one attack you. I think you killed
it.”

“What? You mean you saw me in trouble and didn’t
help?”

“What could I have done? Besides, you handled
yourself pretty well. If a little woman can kill those monsters, then the Army
should get this whole mess sorted out soon.”

Mina bit her lip at the sexist remark. Too much
had happened to get into a petty argument. She wasn’t good with confrontation
on a normal day—had been meek and shy ever since her mother died and her father
began home schooling her. She wanted to sit in silence and try to make sense of
it—but could the fact that London was under attack by bloodthirsty monsters
ever make sense?

She thought not.

***

David pulled his phone out
of his pocket and tried to make a call. Several times he had tried in the last
hour, but the mass panic had caused the network to fail as thousands of people used
their phones at once. This time, however, looked promising as David glanced at Mina
urgently from where he sat. “Yes, hello? Carol, is that you? Oh, thank God.
Yes, it’s David. I’m okay…”

Mina kicked out a leg at him across the floor.

“…Mina is with me too. We’re stuck on a London
backstreet somewhere in Soho. There are monsters attacking—that’s the best way
I can explain it. Do you want a quote from me? How about-”

Mina kicked him again. “Can she get us help?”

David rolled his eyes but took the hint. “We need
help, Carol. We’re trapped inside a grimy little pharmacy, and I don’t know how
we’re going to make it out of the city. Things are bad. That stone in Oxford Street
opened some kind of portal.” He paused and listened, then said, “I don’t know
if it’s aliens. They don’t look like aliens. They look more like demons. Carol,
you need to send help. In the meantime, I can conduct an interview over the
phone. Carol? Carol…?” David glanced at his phone and cursed. He immediately
redialled but couldn’t get through. “Damn it.”

Mina honed in on something he’d said and mentioned
it now. “Demons?”

David looked at her curiously. “What?”

“You said they look like demons.”