Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper (11 page)

Half an hour later and he was back on the water, putting his plan into action. He'd borrowed one of the sandpits, along with a pair of spades and a few other supplies. He thought of it as borrowing and really did intend to return everything once this was all over. At least that's what he told himself.

The idea had come to him when he'd seen the label attached to each sandpit. It showed two images: one of a couple of toddlers making sandcastles, the other of the same toddlers using the sandpit as a watertight pool. So, Arthur had reasoned, if the sandpit could be used as a paddling pool, did that mean it was watertight enough to be used as a boat?

He was sitting in the sandpit-boat right now and it seemed to be doing the trick. It was bobbing under the surface of the water more than a real boat would, but at least it was holding him afloat. He rowed out through the first-floor window, using one of the spades as an oar. He took the second one as a spare, just in case. Getting through the window was a tight squeeze but he managed it. Rowing was tough – especially since the round sandpit shape wasn't exactly hydrodynamic – but it was a lot easier than the swimming had been.

Arthur took one last look at the toy store, then turned and rowed for the Dublin estate he thought of as home.

The outer reaches of the city were in just as dire straits as the shopping district, if not more so. Whole houses were submerged, along with garden furniture, cars, bicycles and anything else that had been rooted to the ground when the floods came. Arthur could tell he was heading in the right direction, but it was surreal rowing through the familiar yet alien landscape. Once, the sandpit-boat brushed against something and almost got trapped. Arthur looked into the water to find out what was causing the obstruction. A tall, once-healthy oak tree was under the flood and he'd gotten wedged in the thick upper branches. He managed to get free and rowed on. Moments later, he passed a house whose rooftop was just above the waterline. He could see a ladder leaning against the house leading up to the roof. Clearly some people had taken residence on top of the building as the water rose. But they weren't there now. He shuddered to think of what might have happened to them.

An hour later, as he was pondering why he still hadn't seen any signs of life, he had his first indication that he wasn't alone. A scream sounded in the distance, forcing him to stop rowing. It was high-pitched and throaty, a terrible, forlorn sound. For a while, it echoed around him, seeming to bounce off the water itself. But then it faded and he was alone again. He didn't want to think about that scream, about the person who had made it or why they'd made it, but he couldn't help it. He gripped his spade-paddle tighter and rowed onwards. It was all he could think of doing: get home and decide where to go from there. Even if there was no home left, he had no other place to go.

The only other sound he heard on the rest of his journey through the dead city was just as disconcerting. While he hadn't been able to pinpoint the location of the scream, he knew that this sound was coming from his left; he guessed towards the east. It started low then built gradually to a loud roar. It was the sound of engines, several of them at once. He couldn't tell what kind of engines they were but he supposed they must have been from some sort of motorboats. Then, just as gradually as the noise had built, it faded away.

It took him a while to find his bearings as he rowed through the streets in the general direction of home, but eventually he started noticing landmarks both under the water and looming above it to help guide him. Before he knew it, he was passing by his former school. Belmont had been a new construction and was a big, heavy design with sweeping curves and narrow lines. But now, like everything else, the lower half of the building was under water. All the windows had been smashed; even the glass roof had been destroyed. Graffiti covered the walls, screaming grief-laden messages. One read
Burn in Hell!
and beneath it someone else had sprayed
We're already in it!
Looking at the school, Arthur had the feeling that somebody had actively sought to defile the building. Why would anyone want to do that, he wondered, rowing past it.

It took him another forty minutes to reach the place where he and Joe had lived for the past few months. Only the rooftops of the estate were visible above the water, as well as the very tops of the trees on the central green area. He went in for a closer look at his former house. He reached into his backpack and took out a couple of glow sticks he had ‘borrowed' from the toy store. He snapped them and shook vigorously, as the instructions said, then dropped the pair of them into the water. Two circles of green radiance hit the walls of the house as the sticks fell. The windows and doors all looked tightly sealed and he could see a ‘To Let' sign under the water in the front driveway. In a weird way, he felt the same as he had when arriving at the house last October, as if he was seeing it for the very first time. He remembered that evening, he remembered unpacking his things and putting up his posters, he remembered discovering the truth about Loki in the house, he remembered having his first fight with Ash there and he remembered leaving for the last time. He found himself welling up and there was a lump in his throat so he turned towards Ash's house.

The Barry household had been devastated. All that remained of it was the charred and scorched shell of the roof and the outer walls. He rowed towards it for a closer look. When he was close enough, he dropped two more glow sticks into the water. The windows and doors had blown out and the insides of the house appeared to have been vaporised. Whatever force had destroyed the house, it was so great that the windows in the houses next to it had been blown in. A fork of lightning sparked across the clouds overhead, bathing the murky and hollow house in momentary brightness, like a camera's flash. It was like staring into the gaping jaws of the Jormungand: empty and cold, a place of death. Whatever had happened here, it was clear that no one could have survived it. This he knew with great certainty. If anyone had been inside the house during the destruction, they had died. No doubt.

Just then, there was a sound behind him. Roaring engines, exactly like the ones he'd heard earlier. He turned in time to see a number of jet skis race into the estate. There were about ten of them, all painted black with luminous-green speed stripes. The sigil on each side depicted a tree with a serpent coiled around the trunk: the Jormungand. Each of the riders was togged out in black from head to toe, and they wore perfectly spherical and reflective black helmets that covered their heads and faces entirely. They came to a stop over where the green should have been, in a V-shaped formation, and the visors of the helmets turned in his direction. Arthur had seen people like this before.

They were Loki's raiders.

They were Loki's wolves.

The raider at the front of the formation stood up on his jet ski – one leg balanced on either support – and took off his helmet. He had a shaved head and a single bushy brow arched over a pair of squinting eyes. A scar cut through the centre of his lips, seeming to split his chin in two. He snarled at Arthur, gritting his teeth.

‘'Oo are you?' he growled at him. ‘Wot're you doin' there?'

‘Nothing,' Arthur started. ‘I–'

‘D'you escape from one of d'camps?'

‘Camps? What camps?'

‘Shurrup, you!' His face turned beetroot red. ‘I'll ask d'questions here. Wot's your name then, one-eye?'

‘Cyclops, maybe,' guffawed one of the others gleefully. The raiders had all now removed their helmets and were staring at Arthur.

‘Actually,' said a third in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘losin' an eye isn't a laughin' matter. A few years ago, I got in a brawl wiv dis bloke. 'E was my bruvver, come to think of it. And in d'heat of d'brawl, I popped 'is eye out wiv my thumb. It just came right out, so it did, made a sound like squeezing some of that bubble-wrap stuff. Anyway, after that, 'e 'ad terrible balance. 'E kept fallin' over and bumpin' into things and 'e looked like a right plonker … actually, now that I think of it, it is kinda funny!'

This set most of them off laughing. The scar-lipped one whipped around to growl at them and they promptly shut up. He faced Arthur again.

‘Now,' he said. ‘Wot's your name?'

‘Ar–' He stopped. He suddenly had second thoughts about revealing his real name to some of Loki's wolves. ‘Will,' he said. ‘My name's Will.'

‘Will,' grunted Scar-lip. ‘Didja hear that, boys? He says his name's Will!' He broke out in heavy belly laughs, as did the others. ‘Wot sort of a pansy-arsed name is Will? Very la-di-da! All right, boyo, you're coming wiv us.'

The others revved up their motors and slashed through the water towards him. Arthur didn't have time to try to escape, but even if he had, he doubted that he'd have been able to outrun the jet skis. The first raider to reach him grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, picking him straight up into the air and plopping him down on the seat behind him. One of the others took his backpack out of the sandpit-boat and put it into a trunk attached to his jet ski.

‘Hold onto my waist tight,' warned Arthur's captor, before adding with a sneer, ‘we wouldn't want you to drown.' He jammed his helmet back on his head and, with a roaring rev of the engines, they all zipped off, away from the burnt-out house. Arthur had one last look at the receding estate before it was gone.

Darkness started to fall as the jet skis raced through the dead city. The streetlights didn't come on as usual, so when it was almost too gloomy to see where they were going the raiders switched on high-beams. The lights cut through the blackness directly ahead of them but didn't reveal much on either side. No longer able to pick out familiar landmarks, Arthur soon lost track of the direction they were going in. The raider didn't say a word as they rode, although, even if he had, Arthur would have had trouble hearing him through the helmet and with the rush of air in his ears.

Eventually, they slowed down. The sun had long since set but the night air was still warm and clammy; not as bad as it had been during the day but still unnaturally hot for Ireland. Arthur looked at the sky above. The clouds were still shifting, sparking green in places, but without the sun to illuminate them they were a darker shade of ivy now. The moon was a blurred crescent through the clouds. Arthur peered past his captor at their new location. They were in front of an enormously high and long wall. The jet skis moved through a gap in the wall, past a ‘Deliveries Entrance' sign and into a huge concrete structure. A steel landing platform stood at just the right level for the raiders to disembark. Concrete steps rose high into the darkness, punctuated along the stairwell with bright worklights. Several more raiders were milling around, going up and down the stairs or boarding their own jet skis and riding out.

Arthur's raider pulled the jet ski right up to the landing platform along with all the others, shut off the engine and stepped onto the metal dock. He yanked Arthur off the small vessel and shoved him towards the steps. With his captor right behind him and the raider who'd taken his bag in front of him, Arthur started up the staircase. He kept his eye fixed on the backpack, praying that no one would think to open it and discover his hammer inside. Voices and laughter bounced off the concrete the whole way up and Arthur had a sense that a lot more raiders were about than he had yet seen. Every so often they came to a landing with a door leading off to some other part of the structure. Wolf raiders poured in and out of these doors but he never got a good glimpse of the rooms beyond apart from a sense of harsh lighting and a cacophony of loud talking and clattering. The raider carrying his bag went through one of the doors on what Arthur counted as being the fourth floor. This room was darker than all the others they'd passed and much quieter. Arthur's captor pushed him towards an emergency door next to it, but Arthur just had time to see the other man come back out of the dim room without his belongings and head back down the steps.

The raider still with Arthur kicked the emergency door open, letting in the stifling night air with a whoosh.

‘Down you go,' he ordered. When the boy didn't move, he gave him a harsh nudge forward. Arthur gasped when he saw where he was.

Croke Park was the largest sporting stadium in Dublin and the fourth largest in Europe. It was situated in the very heart of the city, less than a mile from O'Connell Street. Three tiers of seating circled the green pitch on three sides, while the fourth side was closed in with a smaller stand. High-powered floodlights beamed down from the edge of the roof, highlighting everything in glaring whiteness. Blue-plastic arena seating filled the stands entirely and some raiders were scattered about the seats. A few were lounging back and relaxing; others were chatting or sipping beers. Some had even transformed into wolves and were chasing each other through the aisles of blue, playfully nipping at each other's tails.

‘I said down you go!' the raider grunted once more, giving Arthur another sharp shove.

The view of the pitch was what had stopped Arthur in his tracks. It should have been under the flood like the ground outside the stadium, but this wasn't the case. Instead the playing field was full of people wearing dirty, mud-smeared rags. Some of them shuffled to and fro but most were just hunched or lying on the ground. The grass itself was gone, trampled into a sticky, muddy mess.

Steps led down the tier to the pitch, between rows of plastic seats. Before the raider could give him any more helpful encouragement, Arthur slowly started down, taking the steps one at a time because his legs felt suddenly unstable. As he went, some of the people below turned his way, giving him cursory glances, then looked away once more. A group of wolf raiders who were huddled in some nearby seats, watching the crowds, jeered him. They swore at him, calling him names and cackling loudly. One of them even threw an empty beer can at him. It clattered by his feet as he passed.

As he stepped onto the pitch, his foot slid out from underneath him on the slippery muck and he landed with a thud on his back. Suddenly–

–Yggdrasill, the tree of life, is being hammered by the rains of Asgard. Lightning strikes it, splitting a thick branch in two. And–

Arthur blinked and found himself back in Croke Park. What was that, he wondered, still lying on the ground. He had managed to avoid hitting his head off the last concrete step, but the fall had hurt nonetheless. He lay still for a minute, stubbornly trying to block out the sounds of the laughing raiders in the stand. Then, just as he was about to get up, something tugged at his feet. He looked down the length of his body to see a grubby-cheeked boy aged about five pulling off his shoes. Before Arthur could stop him, he was off, weaving at a sprint through the mob and taking Arthur's favourite pair of Converse with him.

‘Hey!' Arthur shouted after him. ‘Get back here! They're –' He struggled to his feet, sliding even more now, and started to run after the boy, but the thief was lost in the crowds before he had taken more than a few steps. He sighed and looked down at his feet. His socks were already covered in mud and soaked through. Seeing no other choice, Arthur looked up and moved deeper into the huddled mass.

The things Arthur saw as he moved among the people on the pitch shocked and frightened him. The level of human despair he felt pouring from them was stifling and, much like a balloon, the tension threatened to burst at any minute. Judging by the raggedy, stained state of them, most appeared to be wearing the clothes they'd arrived in and Arthur guessed that they'd been here for weeks, if not months. The clothes were universally loose, as if the wearers hadn't had a decent meal for a long time. Their hair was greasy and their skin unwashed. Heavy bags hung under their tired-looking eyes and their ashen faces were drawn and ill-looking. They turned to him with want in their eyes, as if hoping that he might have some spare food or relief to offer them, but knowing that he wouldn't.

Many of the people were asleep already, especially the elderly captives. They lay on the ground itself, with only thin and uncomfortable layers of clothing or plastic bags between them and the slick mud. There was no cover from the night sky, no tents or huts to keep them dry when it rained. Arthur wondered what would happen whenever it did rain, as Croke Park didn't have a roof over the pitch. He was actually amazed that people could sleep at all with the bright floodlights glaring down, but he figured they must have gotten used to them by now. The stench throughout was pungent; even more so when he passed a line of Portaloos that clearly hadn't been emptied in days. Most people kept their voices to a low mumble, whispering together in small groups. Only the babies didn't seem to understand this protocol and cried loudly and wilfully. At one stage, Arthur heard angry shouting and turned towards the sound to see a pair of middle-aged men (both in dirty shirts and ties) fist-fighting over which of them owned a much-stained blazer. Eventually, one of the men knocked out the other with a fierce blow and triumphantly claimed the jacket.