Kardinal (20 page)

PART SIX.
JUDGMENT.

Soho, London – 2.15am (GMT), 20 May, 2011

AT about the same time as Kamal Najib was pondering how he would torture the British spy captured in Iraq, George Fuad leaned forward on the desk in his new London headquarters and stared into the camera. He furrowed his brow, masking his true feelings with a look of sincerity.

“There is no need to fear,” he said into the lens. “Stay in your homes. You’ll be safe. Humans and vampires can live in peace, side by side. This is the beginning of a new age. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Live it. This’ll be a time when no one is judged for what you are – vampire or human. Thank you. Sleep safely.”

“That’s it,” said the director. “We’ll edit it, and it’ll be on the morning bulletin.”

Fuad rose and loosened his tie. The grimace returned to his face. He stomped out of the room, followed by two members of his staff and a bodyguard.

It was very late. But he didn’t feel like sleeping. There was work to do. He’d spent the past hour recording messages that would be broadcast on TV and radio, over the internet, and on big screens he planned to have erected in city centres. They would feed the people a daily dose of propaganda.

His blood was up. He was in charge now. King of the country. It was what he’d always wanted. So why was he so worried, so unnerved?

He felt so unsettled he wanted to kill someone. Nail someone to the wall and throttle them. Stab someone over and over, just to take his frustration out on a body.

He should be happy. He was in power. He was at Religion, the new base for the United Party, and the centre of government while the Palace of Westminster was being rebuilt.

He trudged along the corridor. It smelled musty in Religion. This building had also been damaged by fire once. You could still smell the charred wood, the burnt bricks.

He thought about halting the development in Westminster. Maybe he’d let the old parliament buildings smoulder, a reminder of what Jake Lawton had done to Britain.

At the end of the corridor, he fished out a set of keys from his pocket.

“Stay here,” he told his companions.

He unlocked the door and threw it open.

Christine Murray nearly leapt out of her skin.

She had been sitting on the couch, watching him on the TV bracketed to the wall.

“Not asleep
?” he said.

She stared at him.

He looked around the room. Bars covered the window. The paint on the ceiling peeled. Damp blackened the wallpaper. The carpet was dusty and old, and a rank smell saturated the air. There was a table with a lamp on it. Murray had a couch to sit on, and in the corner was a single bed, and next to it a door that led into the toilet. A tray sat on the floor with a half-eaten pizza, and an empty mug was perched on the arm of the sofa where Murray sat.

This was her cell.

Elizabeth Wilson was contained in a similar room down the corridor.

“Hope you’re enjoying your stay,” he said.

She said nothing.

“It won’t be a long one, Christine.”

He looked at her, watching out for any fear. But she showed none. She showed grit. And that’s what made him wary. That’s what made him nervous. His enemies weren’t as scared as he wanted them to be. But he’d make them tremble. He was determined that they would be begging for mercy soon enough.

“Killing us all, George?” she said.

“These are days of judgment.”

“You’re kidnapping people from their homes. You’re cramming people into trucks and taking them God knows where. You’re putting innocent people in prison cells with killers and rapists.”

“No one is innocent. They’re enemies of the state. They’re awaiting punishment. Death or slavery.”

“You’re mad, completely mad.”

“It’s subjective, madness. We’ve all got our own truth. Isn’t that the new age way? Well, just happens that my truth is the right truth today. And it’s going to stay that way. I am going to reign like a fucking emperor.”

Now a glimmer of fear did show in Murray’s eyes. That gave him a lift.

“You think you can get away with this?” she said.

“You think I can’t?”

“What made you like this, George?” asked Murray.

He grinned. “My mother never cuddled me.”

“Your mother would be ashamed of you, I’m sure.”

His blood boiled. He tightened up and was close to pounding Murray to the ground. But he mastered his rage and forced another smile.

“What would you know about motherhood, bitch?”

She paled. He liked that. He’d struck a blow.

“You fancy another crack at motherhood, then?” he said.

Murray gawped.

“We could get wed, Chrissie,” he said.

She said nothing.

“You’d make a nice first lady – or queen – or consort. Fatten you up a bit. Bit of slap. New clothes.”

Her throat went up and down. She’d gone even paler.

He laughed.

“Maybe not, eh?” he said. “You couldn’t keep up with me, I don’t think, love. Here, let’s have a look at the telly.”

He turned the TV on. He found the BBC News Channel. The production looked cheap. Cardboard sets. Ropey old presenters. But that was the new BBC. The BBC that had suffered cuts like everyone else.
Cuts and wounds
, he thought.

The TV showed footage from Manchester, shot on a hand-held camera. The picture was grainy. The sound was shoddy. There was an army of black-clad Nebuchadnezzar thugs herding people into trucks. Any trouble, the Nebs had an order, from him, to shoot to kill. No law to worry about, now. No human rights.

“Manchester goes first,” he said. “Then Birmingham. Liverpool. Fucking Scots up in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Perth. Then the Taffy cunts in Cardiff, Swansea, Prestatyn, fucking Rhyl. Britain’s being purged, darling. Fucking purged.”

Murray was shaking. He was sure she’d start crying any second. He wanted that. He wanted her tears.

“You’ll cheer up in the next few days. You can watch a few nice little executions with me.”

She looked at him, her mouth open.

He said, “Elizabeth Wilson.”

“No,” she gasped.

“Then that little Chinky bitch when we find her.”

“You bastard.”

“And if he’s got the guts to come and find me, your little boy. I’ll have him killed for you, Christine. Baked alive, maybe. Burnt at the stake. And I’ll feed you his cooked balls.”

He expected that to make her cry. But she was fighting the tears. Biting her lip and looking him in the eye. He smiled, and shrugged at her. Then slapped her hard across the face, sending her reeling across the room. And when she lifted her head, he nodded to himself. She was finally crying.

Manchester – 2.35am (GMT), 20 May, 2011

“WHAT can we do now?” said Ediz Ün.

“Keep fighting,” said Mei.

“For what?”

“For the people.”

“They are not fighting.”

“Some are. Some fight. There is still fight. We must.”

Ediz shook his head.

“We can’t give up,” said Mei. “If we give up, we die.”

Ediz was thinking. His forehead creased. He was scratching the wisps of hair on his chin that might one day become a beard.

“Maybe they’ll treat us well,” he said. “Maybe Fuad is telling the truth – that people and vampires can live together.”

Mei raised her eyebrows.

“OK,” said Ediz, “maybe not.”

Mei had never met anyone from Turkey before she came to the UK. If you had asked her about Turks five years ago, she wouldn’t know what to make of them. But now she’d met Ediz, and he’d become her friend. She’d met other nationalities, too. Iraqis and Afghans and Russians; Australians and Canadians and Moldovans; Ukrainians and Indonesians and many more. She had met them all when she raised an army of migrants to stand up for Britain. To fight the vampires.

They were holed up in a flat above a former Chinese bakery on Faulkner Street. It used to be the home of Liao Bo, the elderly woman who had saved Mei when she’d arrived in Manchester. Before the war the area was known as Chinatown. Now it was a Ghost Town. The takeaways, the restaurants, the stores had nearly all been boarded up. Business was dead. The vampires had conquered. Customers had gone.

Mei practiced some moves with her wakizashi swords. Outside, chaos reigned. The authorities had come in the middle of the night. They had vampires with them. Screaming and shouting filled the streets. Nebuchadnezzar thugs growled orders over loudspeakers as they filed Mancunians into trucks. Gunfire barked, and that triggered shrieks. Someone had obviously tried to run away. And they’d been mowed down. No mercy. No law and order. No rights. Everything Kwan Mei had dreamed about when she had first come to Britain had gone. But she was determined to get them back.

“Why don’t the army do anything?” said Ediz.

“Army do what government tells it. Even if they hate to. And most soldiers have abandoned posts. They do not want to fight the people. The new army is Nebuchadnezzars.”

“We are going to die,” he said.

“Then we die fighting.”

His brow furrowed.

“Ed,” said Mei, “we can’t wait here in this flat. They will come if we sit and do nothing. We go out, kill vampires. Fight back. Look, we are safe, we are protected.”

She indicated the red ribbon clipped to her shirt, and the band looped around Ediz’s wrist.

“We have killed vampires,” she said. “We have killed Nebuchadnezzars too. We can be strong.”

“Not enough of us, Mei. They’ve come to Manchester first because they know we’re here. Our army is here. This is where we started out. Where you brought us together. So they come here first to crush us. They bring us their judgment, Mei. In the middle of the night like this. Drag us from our homes. Take us to their firing squads. They will destroy us.”

“Then fight them.”

She stood and clinked the blades of her swords together.

I go to fight for my friends and for David
, she thought.

She missed David. They had been good friends. He was a boy but as brave as any man. He had the courage of a lion. It would be good to have him here now. He would make a good ally. But he had a different objective. He was driven by rage. His blood boiled. His eye was trained on a target.

George Fuad.

She nudged Ediz with her foot.

“Kill vampires with me, Ed.”

She sheathed the swords and exited the flat. Reluctantly, Ediz followed. She glanced behind her. He was carrying a rucksack that was filled to the brim with wooden stakes.

He’d be OK once he was outside. He liked slaughtering the undead. He had a taste for it. Driving a stake into a vampire’s heart, seeing its body start to char and smoulder, before it disintegrated, was enjoyable. It was like a drug in your veins. It gave you what Ediz called a kick.

He was brave and handsome. He had been a good fighter when the war broke out in February. He had been on the frontline with Mei all the way to London. From these streets, they had marched south. On the way, they had picked up new recruits, and they had killed vampires and Nebs. They were migrants, but the white people cheered them on. Even some white people who usually hated immigrants.

They walked down the stairwell, listening to the noise outside in the street. It scared Mei, but she steeled herself. She was ready to fight. She was ready to bring judgment down on these criminals who had stolen her new country.

Ediz and Mei opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, and the havoc spilled inside.

Vampires were attacking humans. Nebuchadnezzars were herding Mancunians into coaches and trucks. The vehicles were lined up, waiting for their reluctant passengers.

“Are you ready to fight?” said Mei.

She unsheathed the wakizashi.

“Always ready to fight,” he said.

He armed himself with stakes.

They charged out into the street. The noise hit Mei. It was deafening. The sound of terror. Screams and shouts. Sirens blaring. Gunfire erupting.

For a second, Mei hesitated. She thought,
Where are the British police?

But the cops were gone. Most had left their jobs. They were either fighting the vampires as part of a small resistance army somewhere, or they’d been killed or herded off to one of the Nebuchadnezzars’ camps. Those officers who remained in uniform kept a low profile. Some probably joined the Nebs, just to survive. But they couldn’t do anything to stop this takeover. That was down to people like Mei and Ediz.

Mei shook off her fears.

A vampire was pinning down a girl.

Mei leapt forward, kicked the creature in the head.

It rolled away, snarling.

It got ready to pounce on Mei, but baulked when it saw the red mark. It looked confused for a moment, the question haunting it:
Why has a Neb attacked me?

Its dithering gave Mei a chance to attack.

She launched herself at the creature like a harpy, shrieking at the top of her voice.

She plunged a sword into the creature’s chest, and its heart burst. A screech poured from its throat. Fire ran like a dynamite fuse along its body. And it fragmented. Erupted into dust. Its ashes washed away on the breeze.

Mei wheeled, ready for another kill.

She saw Ediz nail two vampires, one on his left, the other on his right.

“Over there,” said Ediz, pointing.

Two vampires were clambering over a Fiat that contained a woman and two little children. The car had stalled. The kids were crying. The mum was screaming.

The vampires crawled all over the car, trying to dig their fingers into the door frame, trying to smash the windows.

Mei sprinted towards the scene. She leapt and landed on the boot of the car. One of the vampires turned to her and hissed. She drove a sword into its chest, and it wheeled away in agony, crumbling before it had gone ten feet.

The other vampire realized what was happening. It turned tail and fled, but ran straight into Ediz, who slayed it.

Mei encouraged the woman in the car to fire up the engine, which she managed to do. The car drove off, tires skidding.

Ediz and Mei scanned the streets.

“Too many of them,” he said.

It did look hopeless. Vampires everywhere. Nebuchadnezzar thugs were separating families, putting women on a coach, children on another, and forcing men into trucks.

It tore at Mei’s heart.

A vampire attacked them. Ediz turned to face it. The creature’s eyes widened in terror. It saw the red mark around the youth’s wrist.

“You’re Nebuchadnezzar,” said the vampire.

Ediz marched up to it.

“What if we are?” he said.

“You… you are killing vampires?” said the creature.

“You can’t trust anyone these days,” said Ediz, and he drove a stake into the vampire’s chest.

Two-black clad Nebuchadnezzar soldiers raced forward.

They fronted up to Mei and Ediz, aiming their guns at them.

For a few moments, they were all silent – a stand-off.

Then one of the Nebs said, “What the fuck are you killing vampires for?”

Three other Nebs joined them, one carrying a clipboard.

He was looking at his clipboard, and then looking at Mei, and he did this a few times before a smile spread across his face.

He showed her the clipboard. A photo of her at the head of the army she’d led through England a few months before was pasted to a sheet of paper.

“It’s her,” said the Neb. “The foreign bitch with a price on her head.”

The thugs moved in.

“Run, Ediz,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

The Neb with the
clipboard said, “Unfortunately, guys, we need to take them alive. Mr Fuad wants to make an example of every rebel.”

The Nebs charged.

They overpowered Ediz, pinning him to the ground and handcuffing him.

Mei shrieked, slashing with her wakizashi.

A Neb lunged. She twisted away, stabbing backwards. Her blade slid through a gap in the Neb’s Kevlar vest. She felt it go into him, shredding arteries, scraping bone, slicing organs. He yelled out in pain. She yanked the sword out of his body, and blood spat from the wound. The man fell, writhing in agony on the road.

“Hey, Slanty Eyes,” said the Neb with the clipboard.

“Racist bastard,” said Mei. “I cut your tongue out.”

“I’ll blow his head off first.”

The Neb held his gun to Ediz’s head.

The Neb said, “Down on the floor, you tart. Hands behind your back. Or the Paki gets it.”

“I’m Turkish,” said Ediz.

“All the fucking same,” said the Neb. “All fucking foreigners pissing on this country. Put the fucking weapon down, sweet and sour, and get down on the floor.”

Ediz said, “Don’t do it, Mei. Run. Let them kill me.”

“I will fucking kill him, I promise you,” said the Neb. “Come on, China doll. Give it up. It’s judgment day.”