We waited.
Silence. Nothing. On the whole surface of the planet, there is nowhere that silence is perfect - an engine will rumble in the distance, a bird will sing, an insect will scuttle, a leaf will sway in the wind, a footstep will fall, a brick will crumble. This was not a perfect silence either: the wind was humming outside, a low mournful tune from some forgotten folklore that had accepted death and now found the subject mundane; the drizzle was turning into rain that rattled like a thousand tiny ball bearings against the glass. But nothing in it that was human. I felt for Nair’s phone in my pocket, felt the burning brand on my right hand, aching.
Then Oda said, “I smell fumes.”
At once I looked up, and it seemed that the whole room in unison drew a long, deep breath through the nose, and all at once we all smelt what she, sharper, had detected - the unmistakable warm dry whiff of car fumes drifting across the floor. I risked a little more brightness to the neon glow in my hands, pushing the orange-pink bubble of illumination towards the door, and saw it, thin greyish-brown trickling smoke crawling in through the gaps, spilling over the floor.
I drew my light back, half-crawled to the window, and looked out. In the street below, a thing that might have been fog but for the sickly brownish thickness of it was rising, tumbling out of the exhaust pipes of the cars parked below without a sound, filling the streets like some swaying alien sea and still rising, crawling up the sides of the buildings and slithering through the gaps at the sides of the doors.
The troopers were already reaching for gas masks - say what you would, they were prepared. Kemsley and Anissina didn’t seem to care, their skin taking on a strange silverish tone, their nails already two inches too long, but in Oda’s eyes, even as she tied a scarf across her nose and mouth, I could see the fear. I drew my own scarf across my nose and mouth, but that still left eyes, already starting to sting and itch with the dirt crawling up in gaseous form from the door and floor.
And we heard, somewhere not so far off:
Dededededededededededededededede
. . .
And perhaps a hint of:
Duhdeduhduh duhdeduhduh duhdeduhduh
. . .
I looked back out of the window. It was a long way down, deeper since we now couldn’t see the bottom. By the faint neon clutched between my fingers, I could see the sickly fumes twist and spin around Anissina’s breath, as it seeped slowly from her peeled-back lips. She still superficially resembled a human - two arms, two legs and all the bits in between - but her skin had a metal shimmer to it, her hair a wire quality, her tongue a twisted red forked sliver on the air. The fumes didn’t seem to be bothering her. They were bothering us.
Then the door opened. I said, “No, wait, don’t . . .”
Kemsley said, “Shoot it!”
Gunshots in a confined space are like having popcorn explode inside your eardrum; automatic gunfire was the popcorn, the bag, the oil and the whole microwave. I half-saw in the flashes from the barrels a figure, all hood and faceless shadow, staggering back as his clothes were ripped to shreds, as fabric popped and burst backwards and outwards and severed and snapped and spat and the men emptied out every bullet they had in the barrel, I could hear the clitter-clatter of falling casings, smell over the stench of the exhaust fumes the sweeter stench of burning powder and overheated metal and, when it stopped, I could hear nothing but banging in our head and taste nothing but dirt and smoke and see nothing but afterburn star flashes on the inside of our eyes. “Stop!” we screamed, “Stop!”
And they stopped. Eventually.
I crawled to my feet, pressed my neon bubble into my chest for childish safety. In the torchlight, I could see the thing standing in the door. Its clothes were nothing but a scalded, smoking spiderweb, blasted threads clinging to each other by the thinnest strain of grey fabric, hood shot straight through so I could see the smog rising
behind
it, look straight through that non-face, through the nothingness, empty air, that supported the almost nothing of its clothes. The spectre seemed more surprised than hurt, its hood turning downwards as it examined the shrivelled remnants of its garb, no flesh beneath, nothing to suggest that anything worse had happened to it than a saunter through a very thick shrubbery. Then its head - the emptiness that was its head - turned upwards and seemed to fix its attention on the nearest soldier, who, without a finger falling upon him, started to scream.
It was an animal noise, pure and without thought. It wasn’t just that his vocal cords were tightened by agony or terror, it was his whole throat, his lungs, every part of him that had anything to do with air, seemed to clench. His feet left the floor, his fingers spasmed wide, the gun falling down at his feet, his face went back and his throat seemed to buckle. He screamed and screamed so loud and so high and I could see the bottom of his ribcage seem to twist into it, heard it buckle, snap and crack like dry cereal hitting hot milk, pushing more air up through his mouth.
Then we saw it. A thin line of redness drew itself across an eyelid, tiny and vivid in the torchlight, then another across his cheek, then another down his chin, then another over the twisted, warped protrusion of his tortured windpipe, then another, and another, slashing through his nostrils, inside his nostrils, across his lips, over his gums, over the white of his eyes that began to fill with scarlet blood as, faster than the mind could register them, his skin began to break and crack, tear and slice and slide with a thousand little dribbling cuts, never longer than an inch, never wider than the thickness of a sheet of paper, and now there was no air left in his lungs to scream by nor nothing in his body that seemed to let him inhale but he hung suspended there as his skin cracked and parted and sliced and his eyes went red and filled with blood and his teeth stained with blood and there was just blood and the rattle of his bones and breaking cartilage of his windpipe and Kemsley was screaming, “Do something, do something!” in a voice that rolled unnaturally deep and full of bubbles from inside his throat and we realised he meant us, do something, and there was still the spectre in the door just watching and Oda stepped past us, levelled her gun at the soldier’s head and fired. Just fired, just . . . did it. But his head rocked back and his body jerked by the cuts still kept cutting, slicing under his nails, tearing apart his flesh, wiping away all trace of skin except a few loose white shreds like the thin roughness of dry skin exposed to too much sun, drooping off bright red flesh.
We looked at the spectre. We opened our hands and snarled, let the neon bloom around us and bending our head like an angry bull, charged for it, past the dead body being turned into dead meat in an assault jacket, through the door and slammed the top of our head crown-first into the spectre’s chest. We felt something resist, the strength and softness of a pillow, and kept on pushing, driving the spectre back to the edge of the balcony and there, on the very edge, bent down all the way and tipped it, grabbed it by its trendy trainers and hurled them up with all our strength, vision a blazing blue, and threw it hood-first into the smog below.
It fell without a sound. No voice, to make no noise.
We straightened slowly as it vanished into darkness, turned and by our neon glow stared into the face of the man known as Mr Pinner, the death of cities. We were sure of it. He stood at the end of the balcony walk, head on one side, smiling at us. Just smiling, hands in pockets. He looked . . . ordinary. An ordinary man in a silly suit, no taller, possibly a few inches less, than we stood, in his thirties and trying not to think about middle age, smiling, an expression of almost fond amusement, like a teacher watching the smug pupil in the class struggling with an idea that the other kids have already grasped.
He didn’t seem to have anything to say, just stood and smiled.
Then we said, “Mr Pinner?”
And his smile flickered. Just for a moment, it flickered. Recognition - surprise.
Then Kemsley had pushed past me, he was shouting, roaring, an animal snarl from animal lips, he’d forgotten which fire was anger and which was fear, which was cause or effect, and just shoved straight past me, gun in one hand, flames, bright, gas-stink flames shedding carbon crispiness, in the other. He fired, emptied the entire magazine at Mr Pinner and threw the fire, a billowing burst of cooking stench and searing heat. We covered our eyes, heard it hit, heard the soft
whumph
of it slamming over a solid mass, smelt burning, just charred and crispy burning, heard tortured warped glass crinkle and crack.
I opened my eyes. Mr Pinner was standing in a shroud of smoke and fumes. His pinstripe suit was untouched, not even scorched; but the bullets had entered his flesh. I could see a mass of them, five, bunched in the middle of his chest. He looked at them with mild disinterest. Then he reached carefully with thumb and forefinger, and stuck them into the nearest bullet hole. His lips and eyes narrowed in concentration as he twisted and turned his fingers inside the gap in his flesh. They tightened; he pulled them out. There was a small, snub bullet in his hand.
I looked for blood. There wasn’t any. The hole in his chest was white, an off-white beneath the padding of his suit, and the only thing that seemed to come from it was a tiny slip of paper. It slipped from his flesh, dropped onto the floor, tumbled over the balcony towards us. I bent down to pick it up, even as Kemsley screamed and threw more flames, belched electric sparks from his sharpened teeth, fumbling in his pocket for more ammo as he did.
I scooped up the piece of paper. There was lettering on it, faint, in dull ink. It said:
Thank you for shopping at Tesco.
Mr Pinner was still standing, still unscathed, Kemsley pushing another magazine into his pistol. I grabbed him by the shoulder, was shrugged off, grabbed him again and hissed, “You can’t kill him like this!” and dragged him back into the flat.
I kicked the door shut behind us and Kemsley collapsed against the wall. His eyes were streaming, clear lines streaking down the dirt clinging to his face, to all our faces, from the ceiling-high smog now filling the room. Oda was coughing, even Anissina looked unhappy, and our lungs burnt, ached, our eyes stung, every part of us calling for water and none to hand. Our head wanted to fly away from our stomach, our stomach wanted to see what it was like where the feet were at. We pressed our hands against the door, whispering, “
Domine dirige nos, domine dirige
” - the old blessing of the city, “Lord, lead us” - telling the lock, dear lock, be our friend, just for a minute, be our friend.
“My bag!” I wheezed. “Paint!”
Oda staggered forwards, half-tripping over the skinless, faceless, humanless flesh that had a few moments before been a guy with a gun, opened the satchel hanging off my back and handed me a can of paint. I drew quickly, the first ward that came to mind - a cross within a cross, in bright blue paint. Someone was trying to force the door, slamming it back on the hinges, but as the last dribble of paint went on, the thundering stopped.
A voice from outside said, “Are there Aldermen in there, by any chance?”
It was a polite, well-educated voice. It knew the answer to its own questions. The paint on the door began to burn, to bubble and peel. I turned to the window and said, “Only way out.”
No one, not even sobbing Kemsley, seemed inclined to argue. Not any more.
“No way down,” pointed out Oda.
We strode to the window, slammed our palms towards the glass. Not touching, we didn’t need to get that close, the movement and the magic were enough. The glass burst out, not a shard left in the frame, and tinkled merrily away down into the swirling smog below. Oda leant out, tears - not of sorrow, but of pain and chemical suffocation - running down her dirty face, and said, “We don’t know what’s down there.”
“Gotta be better than in here.”
“We’ve no way down.”
“Don’t troopers carry rope?” We turned to look at them. They shrugged, and didn’t offer rope. “Terrific,” I sighed. I looked up to the ceiling, smelt paint simmering, roasting, heard Anissina say, “He’s coming through the door!”
I reached up to the ceiling. I could taste electricity, still feel it lending me a little more strength, a little more speed. Electricity that happy meant something friendly to carry it in. I heaved with all my strength, closed my eyes and told it to come to me, to bring its friends with it, strained and dragged until my head spun and my knees bent, felt dust falling in my hair and down my face, mixing with dirt, smog and tears, and here it came, the great coils of wire, twisting out of the ceiling, the floor, the walls, spinning and spitting like angry snakes on a hot plate, rising at my command. I waved furiously at the cables, commanding them towards the window, imploring,
please, please, please be my friends
. . .
Bricks tumbled from the walls, the whole building seemed to creak as length after length tore from the crackling gaps in the floor: a tarantula’s web, an earthquake’s playground of cracks rippling and writhing as the cables crawled at my command down the side of the building. I gestured furiously at the nearest trooper, “Get your arse down it!”
He looked with doubt for a moment at this snapping, angry coil vanishing into smoggy darkness, but good training and a better brain were his saviour, and he threw his leg over the window ledge and wriggled down into darkness without a word. Coughing and hacking, I gestured more troopers towards the cable, caught Oda as she staggered, legs wobbling in the fumes, and felt her immediately pull away from my touch, as if I was somehow dirtier than her. Even with death knocking, I had time to feel a soft warmth in my throat that might have on a better day been sorrow.
Then Anissina said, “The door!”
I turned, saw a flash of light around the hinges, heard the bolts snap, then bury themselves in the ceiling, saw Anissina stumble across the twisting floor as more cables crawled from beneath us and lashed out of the walls in a zigzag of twisted wire. I saw Kemsley raise a child’s face, too much going on for that mind of his to comprehend, look up towards the door, and see for a moment in it a man in a pinstriped suit, from whose chest thin wafts of paper tumbled where there should have been blood.