The Unblemished (32 page)

The velvet twitched. In his periphery he saw a figure step into line
with him and stop. A mealy smell assaulted him, of raw meat, of
offal. He felt something squirm across his thigh but could not look
down without giving away his position. The boy under his feet
bucked twice, as if trying to get up. Fear took up the sport of his
blood, ripping through his veins with something that was so hot or so
cold there was no difference in it. The thing on his thigh dug in, as if
testing the plumpness of his muscle. It felt like a crab had gripped
him. He wanted to cry out, to brush it away. The figure to his right
proceeded with his leisurely pursuit, sweeping his gaze this way and
that along the sallow ranks. His mate was just behind him, the thin
waterproof material of his coat shushing and hissing, sheened with
plaques of dried blood. Like the man ahead of him, he stopped level
with Manser and placed a finger against the blackened wasteland of
his temples. What felt like an electric bolt flashed down the side of
Manser's head.

'No fresh here,' the man said. 'No fresh.'

They stood at the foot of the theatre and looked back at the
audience, then trawled slowly back towards the exit door. Manser
was fighting black, lazy slaps of unconsciousness now, his face so
slicked with sweat he thought it must surely be his undoing. He risked
a look at the man at his side. He was sitting bolt upright, his neck
cricked violently to one side. His eyelids and lips were gone, his
cheeks scraped from his face like the flesh of a mango from its skin.
He might have been viewing a film after all, a comedy, or a high-octane
thriller. Here comes the car chase. Here's fun. I can't bear to
watch.

He dug his fingernails deeper into Manser's thigh. He was trying
to breathe but could manage little more than a series of short, thin
gasps through the dried-out tablets of his clenched teeth. Manser
slapped his hand away and risked a look back up the aisle. The two
men were at the door, conversing. The boy continued to buck under
Manser's feet. He had to close his eyes to the thought that he was
convulsing, suffering a heart attack, maybe. Dying.

The men finally finished their discussion and returned to the bar.
Once the doors were closed again, Manser levered himself out of the
chair and helped the boy back to his seat. It was too late. It was too
late for any of them. He looked around at the ravaged faces, some in
suffocated agony like the man seated next to him, some in grey, silent
fugues where the fluttering of eyelids was the only indication of life
continuing. Others were trying to get away, squirming on the floor
ineffectually. Manser tried to imagine what had happened here. A
mighty attack had taken place, a smothering of some kind. The
occupants of the cinema seemed brain-damaged, starved of oxygen to
the point of death and then let off the hook. Inexpert murder, or the
behaviour of sick ghouls. It was hideous. It was monstrous. And it
reminded him of himself.

Nauseated, he moved back up the aisle, listening carefully at the
doors before easing them open a crack. Seven figures were in the bar
now. One of them was gnawing at the foot of the dead staff member.

Manser returned to the screen, intending to find an alternative way
up to the street via the fire escape. He missed the lean athleticism that
he had once had, now robbed from him with the shriek of nerve
endings whenever he so much as tried to blink. He reasoned that the
pain must mean that he had not suffered any infection. He remembered
relatives cooing over the cuts and scrapes on his knees and
elbows when he was a boy, telling him that a sting when ointment
was applied was a good thing. Pain was a friend to us.

'Oh yes,' he whispered. 'My best fucking mate, pain.'

It had become so acute that at times he felt it had formed its own
rendering of him: a vague Manser shape, an homunculus, that was
connected to the corporeal version like a shadow. It had its own
blood supply, its own organs. He felt as though he could turn around
and touch it, it was so vibratingly real, a sensation somehow beyond
normal experience, beyond emotion. Once, he had cried when he was
hurt. Now it was as if tears were too flimsy a reaction for what he
was feeling. Death was too flimsy for this.

He paused regularly on his climb back up the stairs, giving half a
mind to torching the cinema to put the poor bastards out of their
misery. But fire was not something he felt able to be near any more.

Baker Street was deserted again, the baying pack having moved
on, perhaps to the nearby Hilton Metropole or the Landmark, hotels
where there were doubtless potential victims holed up in their rooms,
plenty of 'fresh' for them to be getting on with. He thought he could
see little oases in the upper floors of the banks at this busy junction,
and further along Paddington Street, in the office blocks and high-rise
residential flats; coy movement at skyscraping windows. But it could
just have been the shift of clouds in the glass, or the mopping up of
survivors by those monsters perspicacious enough to realise that there
was more going on in the streets of London than merely at ground
level.

Salavaria's stink was all over this.

The mistake he had made, he realised now, was to listen so much
to Salavaria over all that time he had visited him in the forest, but
never take anything in. All this froth about suitability to his people,
of the flavour of blood, of destiny and promise; he had thought it the
controlled ravings of a man thirty years lost to society. He had taken
his eye off the ball. London was his wake-up call, in more ways than
one.

He had to stop and lean against the railings of a park. At its far
end, a children's playground sat forlorn and empty, its gate wailing
as it swung on its hinges. The reflection of the polished slide was not
a colour he felt comfortable with. He was violently sick, from the
little touches of unpleasantness revealing themselves to him or the
visions of Salavaria, he wasn't sure. He watched his brown vomit
collect pathetically around his shoes. Peanuts and beer. He needed to
get some proper sustenance inside him, if there was a fight to be had
at some point.

He staggered the two hundred metres to Marylebone High Street
and walked south along it, until he found the road he needed, a little
avenue off the main street. He did not know if he would find the
address turned into a pastiche of an abattoir. He was steeled for some
measure of red; it was in his blood, one could say.

He thought he saw the man in the window of the flat but by this
time he was failing fast. He wasn't sure what he was seeing any more.
The light was slicing into his eyes; he had spent more hours than ever
before on his feet, plodding that last leg into London proper. A rest
was on the cards, but it was touch and go as to whether it would
involve soft pillows or a mouthful of cold hard kerb.

He rang the buzzer. A shape appeared through the frosted glass of
the door, might have said something, shouted something in shock.
Manser might have spoken in return. And then he was falling hard
against the man, who smelled right, even if he could not make out any
features. That smell. Kind of chemical. Kind of biological. Kind of
fucked. He was home. He was safe.

Tina said again, 'Who the fuck are they?'

Tea wasn't going to work this time. She handed a bottle of vodka
and a shot glass to Sarah. Sarah took the bottle and swigged from it.
She sat on the sofa next to Claire, who had found sleep. She cuddled
her daughter, paying no heed to the lump. It was a piece of her. It was
warm. A strange part of Sarah was able to love it because of this.
Eddie and Lamb were standing by the wall. They leaned against each
other. Their faces were guarded, filled with hoods and shadows and
circles.

'They were hiding at the hospital,' Sarah said. 'We couldn't just
leave them there.'

'Oh, you could you know, if you tried,' Tina said. 'We don't know
they're clean. Why did you have to bring them back here?'

'
Because they were being chased.
' Sarah's face was as open and as
daring as a cellar door. Her eyes bulged, her lips thinned out before
gritted teeth. She felt dangerous, on the edge of things. They stared at
each other for what seemed like an age before Tina's attention
flickered.

'What about her anyway?' she asked, indicating Claire as she
stirred on the sofa. 'The state of her. She could be contagious for all
you know. What is it convinces you she's clean?'

'She isn't clean,' Bo said, staring at the stained, swollen portion of
her T-shirt. 'But she isn't contagious.'

Sarah watched him. He kept closing his eyes, as if the sight of
Claire had overwhelmed him, as if she were someone famous, and he
a starstruck fan.

'While we're playing this game, lover,' Tina said, 'who the fuck are
you?'

'I can help,' Bo said. 'I'm involved in this. But we don't have much
time. We have to get her out of here.'

'Be my guest. There's the door. Pardon me for pointing it out, but
you could have just missed out the middleman and fucked off straight
away.'

'We're not leaving without you. Nobody stays behind.'

'I don't need a knight on a steed, petal,' Tina said. 'I'm not going
anywhere.'

'You might,' Bo said, standing and pushing by her to get to the
kitchen, 'if you'd seen what I've seen over the past few weeks.'

'We can stand here arguing the toss all you like, hotpants,' Tina
said, watching his progress across her flat, her knife held out in front
of her as if it were some kind of tracking device, 'but I'm staying here
precisely
because
of what
I've
seen. And we can all get our dicks out
and play whose is biggest if you like, but it isn't going to change a
thing. I stay. Help yourself to a big slice of fuck off on your way out.'

Sarah was tired of the bickering. She blocked the other woman out
and concentrated on her daughter. She gently stroked her temples, as
she had done when Claire was a baby; the motion had often carried
her swiftly off to sleep. Sleep. Now there was a thing she wouldn't
mind a little of, but she doubted she'd sleep again after this day. She
wondered if it would take a lifetime to forget the species of cold she
had discovered in that refrigerator. She still did not understand how
they had survived. A few times during the unconscionable minutes
they had to wait, she thought she might cry out, but the cold, and the
girl's hand over her mouth, always kept the impulse at bay. She could
hear awful things happening behind the door. Squabbling. Feeding,
like the troughing of pigs. At one point she thought she could hear a
bone being dislocated at a point where the ball met its socket. How
did she know it wasn't Bo being jointed, or Bo joining in with the
feast? She realised she was hungry herself; her stomach rumbled and
she was sickened by her reactions. The flat truth was that Lamb had
saved her life in that freezing coffin. Tina couldn't know that. Tina
didn't matter.

'You made your first mistake,' Tina was saying now. 'You got
boxed in. Always have a second exit. Always.'

Eddie and Lamb were watching the violent exchanges with dark,
worried eyes. They appeared not to have slept in weeks.

'This is Eddie and his daughter, Lamb.'

'Lamb? Oh that's just beautiful,' Tina said. 'Insert your own
slaughter gag here, here, and here.'

'It's her nickname,' Eddie said. 'Her real name is Rachel.'

Bo strode over to the man and the girl, who both shrank back as
if trying to become absorbed by the wallpaper. He shot the sash
window open as wide as it would go and got down on his haunches
in front of them. The girl was perhaps thirteen, her body beginning to
blossom beneath the vestiges of infancy: a toffee-coloured Stussy T-shirt,
trousers like white noise, a denim jacket studded with badges of
Robbie Williams, McFly, Tracy Beaker. Her legs were long and
gawky, wrapped around each other like thin, knotted branches. She
was pretty, but it was also a hard face. Bo wondered maybe if the
shutters had come down during what she had experienced recently.
Where was her mother? The answer to that question might just be
staring back at him with gritty grey eyes.

'Hold out your hands,' he said.

Eddie said, 'You're just as much under suspicion, in my book.'

'Then let me ease your worries,' Bo said. He ripped off the bandage
on his wrist, ignoring Sarah's protestations, and showed them the
stump. Three fingers so far, tiny and malformed, were regenerating
through the ugly, raw wound. He wriggled them. Lamb turned away,
her face draining of colour.

'Suspicion justified,' Bo said.

'Leave her alone,' Eddie said.

'You asked for it,' Bo replied. 'Now give me your hands.'

He checked their skin and eyes. He told them to open their
mouths.

'What are you looking for?' Nick asked.

'Signs,' Bo said. 'There are ways to tell them apart. In the colour
of the tongue. In the shape of their throats. The quality of the teeth.'

He looked up at Nick. 'They do not abide scars of any kind, nor
marks. No freckles. No moles. It's a kink in their gene pool. It's called
perfection. Skin deep, that is. In many other areas, such as killing,
they're God-awful.'

Eddie said, 'Do you believe that we're drawn together by ancient
catastrophe, that history has a design for us? Especially the tragedies?
Only the tragedies?'

She got to her feet and moved to the door.

'Beware your history,' Eddie said. 'Fear the actions of your
forebears. That is what this is all about.'

Bo moved back. 'They're clean,' he said. 'By which I mean they're
dirty. Like us ... Like you.'

'And what about you?' Nick said, unable to keep the barbs from
his voice. 'How long before you ship us to the others, use us as a tasty
dip for your Doritos?'

'I'm not going that way. I swear.'

'Oh, that's all right then. Only just met you, don't know a fucking
thing about you, but it's all right because, hey, you gave me your word.'

'You have to trust me.'

'Bollocks.'

It was getting warm in the overcrowded room. Bo couldn't keep his
eyes off the nightmarish distension in Claire's armpit. It looked as if a
head were trying to push its way out. He thought he could see
movement beneath the skin. He tore his gaze away, shaken. 'We have
to decide on a plan of action,' Bo said.

Sarah, to her credit, cut off the hisses of breath that Tina and Nick
were inhaling, ready for another tennis match of
fuck you
, by saying:
'He's right. Let's stop butting heads. We have to stick together. Stay
alive. I probably wouldn't have made it back without him. I'm with
Bo. I go where he goes.'

Nick seemed crestfallen although she had not intended it as a
rebuke; Tina wore an expression she suspected was fuelled by what
she perceived as Sarah's fickleness. Tina seemed to be ready to offer
her opinion, but her features softened, she reined it in. Instead, she
asked Sarah about her quest to find a doctor.

'There were none. We have to be careful. A bad injury now and
there's nobody around to kiss it better.'

'How does that work?' Nick asked. 'I mean, no doctors? It was
hardly an exhaustive search.'

Sarah was suddenly irritated by him, by his constant stream of
questions and his inability to provide any answers. 'It felt pretty bloody
exhaustive to me,' she said. 'I put in some miles last night. I pounded
some corridors. No doctors. No nurses. Couldn't even find a porter.'

'We must keep trying,' Bo said. 'Claire is in danger. We have to
keep moving.'

'Where?'

He seemed caught out by the question. He shrugged, rubbed his
jaw. 'The river. We find a boat. We get out that way. Cross the
channel. Find somewhere safe. I don't know.'

'And you're just going to lasso us all into this little quest of yours?'
Nick asked.

'It's not just about Claire,' said Bo. 'We have to leave. If we stay
here we will be overrun. They are getting stronger. The roads are
blocked and the train tracks out of the city destroyed. They are
cleansing the streets of resistance.'

'Cleansing?'

Bo nodded. 'They're preparing their nest.'

'What's that noise?'

'It could be my guts,' Sarah whispered. 'I haven't eaten in what
feels like weeks.'

'Me neither,' Bo said. He went to the window. Claire was leaning
against it in her bra and shorts. It was hard both to look at and look
away from the creamy lump that was crammed into the junction of her
armpit. Claire was red-faced, feverish, visibly shaking as she tried to
keep her temperature down, ever since Bo had suggested the thing
inside her desired heat. She was murmuring something over and over;
Bo placed a hand on the back of her neck and leaned in close, said a
few words of his own. Outside, movement was everywhere; shadows
flickered, like flames on chemical fuel. He saw gangs chasing down
hopelessly slow people trying to make a break with suitcases or
buggies, or children in tow. Death was unfolding before him in any
and all permutations. There were flensings and decapitations; heads
being wrenched; the necklacings of stripped captives; nooses lowered
from balconies. Sudden flame leaped from office-block windows.
Bodies fell great distances, perhaps still alive before they impacted,
perhaps the last act of a desperate bid to get away. He saw the muscles
of a bare-chested man strain to the point of rupture in his desperation
to detach something from someone screaming to be killed first. He saw
cars tearing along Tottenham Court Road, colliding, ploughing
through shop fronts and receptions. The screaming was such a
constant it became easy to tune it out, like muzak. A woman stabbed
a man so hard, so many times, there couldn't have been much left of
him to absorb the blows. A man strangled a woman with spiritual
concentration, before tenderly moulding her into positions where he
could shear away at her soft, vulnerable areas with his teeth.

This is London. This is us.

When he came back to where Sarah was lying on the floor,
scanning first the rest of the room to check the others were still
asleep, she moved over to make more space for him. He sat down
and took the plastic water bottle she offered him. He tried to
drink without spilling any, but his good hand was shaking so hard
that it was impossible. He saw Sarah tip a glance at the windows,
but she didn't go to check on what he had witnessed. He could tell
she had already seen enough.

'It was stupid of me to go to the hospitals,' Sarah said.

'You don't have to keep saying that.'

'I know. But part of it wasn't just about finding help for my
daughter. I had to get out. I was suffocating in here. I don't know
why they want to stay. Don't they feel trapped?'

'They would feel trapped no matter where they were. But don't be
too harsh. They don't have quite as much of an investment in all of
this.'

'I'm glad I went.'

'Sorry?'

'To the hospital, no matter what I keep saying. I'm glad I went.
You were there, eventually.'

Bo smiled. It felt good in his face, but a little painful, as if he had
called upon muscles to lift and carry that hadn't been
used for a long time. 'That might not necessarily be a good thing.
Nice of you to say, but it could turn out to be premature.'

'I don't think so. You've come this far. You did so much. You
won't let it happen now.'

'It might be out of my hands.'

'Then
I
won't let it happen.'

Bo turned his head slightly. She studied the shape of his face, the
longish nose and heavily lidded eyes. It was an angular face, although
there was a softness in it too. It was hawkish, yet kind. He had strong
hands – well, hand – and a deep chest, although he had clearly lost a
lot of weight.

'Claire,' she said softly, so that her daughter would not hear.

Bo returned his attention to her. 'Hm?'

'The way you were looking at her.'

Bo shook his head, then seemed to come to some sort of decision.
He said, 'The lump. It's not cancer. It's no cyst. It's one of these
creatures. Well, not just one of them. It's the reason all of this is
happening.'

'I don't follow,' Sarah said, through a mouth that seemed to be
irising closed, drying out, turning frozen.

'It's the Queen.'

Sarah tried to laugh, but the sound escaping her lips was a collapse
of air. 'The Queen?'

Bo closed his eyes. He saw a dark wet sea of emerald green. He
smelled the trapped fusty air beneath canopies; felt it settling like
hoar-frost against his skin. He saw the reflected glitter of thousands
of retinas as they drank in her shape, smelled the musk of her sex. The
reek of butyric acid; the signal to noise. He felt a change in air
pressure as they unfolded from their perches. Something huge
blundered through the undergrowth. Blind. Mind addled by desire.
The fresh scent of seed powering off it. Female screams deadened by
the proximity of flesh.

'Your daughter was raped.'

'Oliver?' Sarah gasped.