The Power of Five Oblivion (71 page)

A third man stood between them: old, bald, wrinkled, wearing a suit with a silk scarf around his neck. Richard suspected that he didn’t have very long to live. He looked ill. His skin was an unnatural colour, as if the blood beneath it had somehow drained away, and his eyes were full of pain. He was the one who had given the order.

“Who are you?” Richard demanded. “What have you done with Matt?”

“Two very good questions,” the man replied. “If you’d like to follow me, I’ll answer them as we go.”

Richard left the cell, passing between the two guards. They smelled bad, as did everything in the fortress … he assumed that was where he was. It was as if people had been living here for years without washing or cleaning, as if food had been left to rot, the cells and corners had been used as toilets, and dead and decaying bodies had simply been left where they fell. All these foul odours came together and attacked Richard as he stepped through the doorway. He found it hard not to gag.

“I’m very pleased to see you,” the man said. Perhaps he had got used to the smell and didn’t notice it any more. “I’m chairman of the Nightrise Corporation. The new chairman. You may have met my predecessor in Hong Kong. You may even have been partly responsible for his early retirement. Let’s get moving. I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of time.”

The chairman began to walk, wheezing a little as he went, and Richard fell in beside him with the two guards behind. Everything was bathed in the same blue glow which emanated from the walls and hung in the air. The corridor looped and began to climb upwards, then turned into a flight of stairs. It was like being inside a gigantic anthill. In the distance, Richard heard shouting, the hammering of metal against metal, then cheering and applause … the clamour of a crowd. His outer clothing had been taken from him, leaving him in only jeans and a shirt – but he wasn’t cold. There was a damp, animal heat inside the rock. He could see water, like sweat, glistening on the surface.

“Where is Matt?” Richard asked.

There was a great shout from the crowd. More metal hitting metal. Richard paused, afraid of what might lie ahead, then grunted as one of the guards punched him in the back, using his club.

“You don’t want to linger,” the chairman remarked. “As a matter of fact, I’m taking you to him now, although I should warn you, he’s not a pretty sight. He’s being punished for what he did a while ago. You’re part of the punishment. You two are good buddies, aren’t you?”

Richard didn’t reply.

“We’re almost finished with him for now, but before we stop, we want him to watch you being killed. We want him to see you die.”

So they were going to kill him. Richard received the news quite calmly. The blade was pressing against his flesh, under his shirt. Well, he would use it to take the chairman with him when the moment came … and maybe the two guards as well. But first he wanted to see Matt.

“The two of you should have a couple of minutes together,” the chairman went on. “We’re going to kill you as slowly and as painfully as possible. We have two professionals who are waiting for you just around the corner. I’ve set them to work on other prisoners and I can assure you they’re very good at their job.”

“Is this how you get your kicks?” Richard asked. It was hard to talk. His mouth was dry, his heart pounding. But he had to say something. It helped to hide his fear.

“Not really. No. I serve the Old Ones. I do as I’m told and I survive. Actually, people have been doing horrible things to each other for a very long time, Mr Cole. You might say it’s part of being human and I’m just the same as everyone else. Kill or be killed, that’s what it all comes down to. I guess you made the wrong choice.”

The stairs emerged inside a vast chamber filled with people … thousands of them. They were packed together on benches or swaying on their feet, dressed in the same bits and pieces they had worn when they attacked the World Army. Many of them were holding their swords and shields, banging one against the other. This was the noise Richard had heard. There had been an extra food ration. They were drinking wine out of skins which they passed along the rows, tearing up thick slabs of bread and meat with their bare hands.

Richard looked up. The ceiling was so high above that it was invisible and he realized that he must be in one of the towers that he had seen across the ice shelf, that this was indeed the fortress, the very heart of the Old Ones’ lair. Blue light, shining with a harsh almost radioactive intensity, was pouring in through caverns and grottoes that had eaten into the walls all around. Stalactites, needle-sharp, hung down. Narrow ledges – pathways – connected the different entrances and there were crumbling, uneven staircases connecting all the levels. The crowd continued all the way to the top, disappearing into the shadows. Every step, every patch of ground was occupied by men and women with long, straggling hair and wide eyes, screaming, laughing, waving their fists or pounding their shields, all of them fixed on the spectacle below.

A boxing ring, with wire instead of rope, had been constructed in the very centre of the cavern and the crowd was arranged on all four sides of it. Richard felt a fist punch him in the small of the back and he continued forward. Grief tore at his throat and heart.

Matt was there.

He was standing up with his arms outstretched, tied to a wooden frame so that the crowd could see him. It was impossible to guess how much pain he had already endured. His clothes were in rags and his body was a mass of lacerations. Richard barely recognized him. Matt’s hair had been shaved off. His face was horribly swollen. His nose had been broken. Barbed wire had been twisted around his neck.

Two men, dressed in butcher’s aprons, stood close to him. One was holding a knife which he had taken from a trolley, waving it first at the audience for their approval before using it on Matt. As Richard drew closer, approaching the edge of the ring, Matt’s eyes flickered open. He was still conscious, but he showed no emotion. He didn’t even seem to understand what was happening any more. But he knew Richard was there. Something deep inside him – it might have been sadness or it might even have been acceptance – appeared briefly in his eyes. Yet even as Richard began to climb up, his head lolled forward and the audience jeered and booed.

“Keep going,” the chairman said. “I want you to be nice and close.”

Sick, hollowed out, Richard climbed the short flight of steps that led into the ring. The crowd fell silent as the chairman followed. The two guards remained below. Matt was still alive but the breath was rattling in his throat. Blood was running down into his eyes, which were dazed and out of focus.

“It’s time to finish the performance right now,” the chairman announced, speaking directly to Richard but loudly enough for everyone else to hear. “I’d say the boy deserves a rest. But we want him to take away some very special memories of what happened here today, so you can say goodbye to him before we kill you.

“This is where it ends for you, Mr Cole. But not for him. I think it’s important for you to know this. When you’re dead, we’re going to take your little friend somewhere quiet and let him recover. I’d say it’ll take a couple of months. There are a lot of broken bones in there. But we’re going to look after him really well, and in the end, he’ll heal. He’ll get strong.

“And then we’re going to do this again. We’re going to bring him in here and we’re going to tie him up and start all over again. And again, and again, and again – we’re going to keep doing it for the next one hundred years. He’ll be an old man and we’ll still be working on him. Can you imagine that?

“So why don’t you say goodbye while you still can? Then we’re going to kill you in front of him. But in a way you’re lucky. You only get to die once.”

The chairman gestured. The crowd was still silent, hoping that Matt would speak, maybe cry for mercy. Matt’s lips were cracked and swollen but they seemed to be moving slowly, trying to form words. No sound came out.

Richard glanced at the chairman with more loathing than he had felt for anyone or anything in his life. He knew now exactly what he had to do. He understood at last why he had been given the knife.

Before anyone could stop him, he took two steps forward, pulled it out of his belt and, looking Matt straight in the eyes, plunged it into his heart.

LONDON (HOLLY)

I will never forget those terrible last moments at St Meredith’s church.

My heart was already pounding as we slipped out of the house where we’d been hiding … number 13, although I never found out the name of the street. Everything was very quiet – it was still early morning – but in a way that made me even more nervous. There was so much wreckage, so many broken-down buildings and rusting cars, that I could almost feel the ghosts wandering along the pavements. And there must have been millions of those. It was incredible to think that in the space of less than ten years, a whole city could have been reduced to this wasteland. But then I suppose in other parts of the world, with earthquakes and super-volcanoes, it had happened in minutes. I can’t even begin to imagine how London had been before the terrorists came. I just don’t have that much imagination. What I saw that day was just the vaguest impression of a city, a few scraps blowing in the wind.

We came out into the road, or what was left of it. I could make out some of the white lines painted in the middle and the yellow lines, which used to mean you weren’t allowed to park, but they were partly concealed by dust and debris, and actually it was impossible to tell where the road was or where it went. The church was very close to us, only a hundred metres or so away, and as it was just about the only building that was still standing, more or less intact. It seemed enormous. It could have been a monument to the whole dead city of London. There were bits of shops and offices on either side of us, so we weren’t completely exposed. But like everyone else, I wished Jamie had chosen a time when it was darker or rainier to bring us out.

“Stay close,” Will said, speaking in a whisper.

I didn’t need to be told. I had Amir and Ryan in front of me. Simon and Blake were in front of them. Jamie was next to me. And the two brothers, Graham and Will, were behind. Jamie and I had each been given a gun too and I hoped that if I had to use mine, I’d be more effective than I had been on the
Lady Jane
. To be honest, I was glad to be surrounded by so many armed men, and as we moved down the street – quickly but carefully, looking in every direction – I did my best to stay right in the middle.

The attack, when it came, was completely unexpected. It didn’t come from shape-changers, the evil policewoman or anything to do with the Old Ones.

It came from dogs.

It was probably quite by chance that they found themselves in this part of the city, but there were a dozen of them and they were out hunting for food.

When London was attacked, they must have been pets that had been left behind and they had banded together, just like the people we’d seen in the Tube station, forming a pack. As they came rushing towards us I saw that they certainly weren’t anyone’s pets any more. They were horrible. There were little fat ones, running as fast as they could on stupid stunted legs, and tall, raggedy thin ones with matted fur and blank eyes. They were all mongrels, the worst bits of every dog you ever saw thrown together to make the ugliest creatures you could possibly imagine. It was obvious that all of them had only one thought in whatever was left of their brains: food. They were howling and barking, snapping at the air with teeth that were jagged and as sharp as razors. Obviously they spent quite a bit of time attacking each other. There wasn’t a single one of them that didn’t have some dreadful injury … bites on the stomach and chest, throats torn open, ears and eyes missing. One of them was dragging itself after the others on two legs.

They must have been downwind of us when we came out of the house and had picked up our scent. God help any of us if we had been alone and unarmed. The dogs would have gleefully torn us apart and eaten us. From the look of them, they must have often done exactly that. Of course, we had weapons. We had plenty of time to see them coming. So although they were like something out of a nightmare, there really was no chance that they could do us harm.

But that wasn’t the point. I saw Blake raise his machine gun and send a spray of bullets, which cut into them, killing four or five instantly and halting the others, as if they had run into a sheet of glass. Several of the dogs were wounded, not killed outright, and they went completely mad, snapping at their own bodies, trying to bite out the cause of the pain. One or two of them sniffed at their dead companions, realizing that there was an easier meal right in front of them … although maybe it would be better if they came back later. In any event, the attack was over. But at the same time the sound of the machine-gun fire had echoed across the city and now anyone in St Meredith’s or nearby would know that we were here.

“Run!” Will ordered.

He was right. If we were going to reach St Meredith’s and find Jamie’s door, we had to get there as quickly as we could. We had lost the advantage of surprise but there might still be a few moments before the enemy worked out which direction we were coming from. Forgetting the dogs, we belted towards the entrance to the church. As we went, I saw Will take something from his belt and throw it. It was a grenade! It only occurred to me then that the entrance to the church was almost certainly locked, and although he might have been planning a more cautious approach – picking the lock, for example – we couldn’t waste any more time. We just had to get in.

Will put up his arm to signal us to stop and we crouched down. The grenade exploded, smashing open the wooden door which had stood there for centuries, even surviving the destruction of London … until we had arrived. We were about thirty metres away now and out of the corner of my eye I saw something move and felt my legs turn to jelly as the spider scuttled round the side of the church and stood there, quivering, looking down at us with the dozens of glittering black discs that were its eyes. There was a huge, heaving sack of venom under its belly. I had seen the spider the day we first came to St Meredith’s but it was even more horrible now because it had seen us. It knew we were there.