Cabal (18 page)

‘So let’s get the fuckers out where we can see ’em.’

‘You mean …
go down
? I ain’t going down.’

‘No need.’

‘So how the fuck do we bring ’em up, asshole?’

The reply wasn’t a word but a shot, ringing off stone.

‘Be like shootin’ fish in a barrel,’ somebody said. ‘If they won’t come up they can stay down there permanent.’

‘Saves digging a grave!’

Who are these people?
Lori thought. No sooner had she asked the question than Babette was up and clambering into a narrow duct that led off her playroom. It was barely large enough to accommodate her small body; a twinge of claustrophobia touched Lori. But there was compensation. Daylight up ahead, and the fragrance of the open air, which, warming Babette’s skin, warmed Lori too.

The passage was apparently some kind of drainage system. The child squirmed through an accumulation of debris, pausing only to turn over the corpse of a shrew that had died in the duct. The voices from overground were distressingly close.

‘I say we just start here and open up every damn tomb till we find something to take home.’

‘Nothing here I wanna take home.’

‘Shit, Pettine, I want
prisoners!
As many of the fuckers as we can get.’

‘Shouldn’t we call in first?’ a fourth speaker now asked. This dissenting voice had not so far been heard in the exchanges. ‘Maybe the Chief’s got fresh instructions for us.’

‘Fuck the Chief,’ Pettine said.

‘Only if he says
please,’
came the response from Cas.

Amid the laughter that followed there were several other remarks exchanged, obscenities mostly. It was Pettine who silenced the hilarity.

‘OK. Let’s get the fuck on with it.’

‘Sooner the better,’ said Cas. ‘Ready Tommy?’

‘I’m always ready.’

The source of the light Babette was crawling towards now became apparent: a latticed grille in the side of the tunnel.

Keep out of the sun
, Lori found herself thinking.

It’s all right
, Babette’s thoughts replied. Clearly this wasn’t the first time she’d used the spy hole. Like a prisoner without hope of parole she took what entertainment she could find to ease the passage of time. Watching the world from here was one such distraction, and she’d chosen her vantage point well. The grille offered a view of the avenues but was so placed in the mausoleum wall that direct sunlight did not fall through it. Babette put her face close to the grille, to get a clearer grasp of the scene outside.

Lori could see three of the four speakers. All were in uniform; all – despite their brave talk – looked like men who could think of a dozen better places to be than this. Even in broad daylight, armed to the teeth and safe in the sun, they were ill at ease. It wasn’t difficult to guess why. Had they come to take prisoners from a tenement block there’d be none of the half glances and nervous tics on display here. But this was Death’s territory, and they felt like trespassers.

In any other circumstances she would have taken some delight in their discomfiture. But not here, not now. She knew what men afraid, and afraid of their fear were capable of.

They’ll find us
, she heard Babette think.

Let’s hope not
, her thoughts replied.

But they will
, the child said.
The Prophetic says so
.

Who?

Babette’s answer was an image, of a creature Lori had glimpsed when she’d gone in pursuit of Boone in the tunnels: the beast with larval wounds, lying on a mattress in an empty cell. Now she glimpsed it in different circumstances, lifted up above the heads of a congregation by two Breed, down whose sweating arms the creature’s burning blood coursed. It was speaking, though she couldn’t hear its words. Prophecies, she presumed; and amongst them, this scene.

They’ll find us, and try to kill us all
, the child thought.

And will they?

The child was silent.

Will they, Babette?

The Prophetic can’t see, because it’s one of those that’ll die. Maybe I’ll die too
.

The thought had no voice, so came as pure feeling, a wave of sadness that Lori had no way to resist or heal.

One of the men, Lori now noticed, had sidled towards his colleague, and was surreptitiously pointing at a tomb to their right. Its door stood slightly ajar. There was movement within. Lori could see what was coming; so could the child. She felt a shudder run down Babette’s spine, felt her fingers curl around the lattice, gripping it in anticipation of the horror ahead. Suddenly the two men were at the tomb door, and kicking it wide. There was a cry from within; somebody fell. The lead cop was inside in seconds, followed by his partner, the din alerting the third and fourth to the tomb door.

‘Out of the way!’ the cop inside yelled. The trooper stepped back and with a grin of satisfaction on his face the arresting officer dragged his prisoner out of hiding, his colleague kicking from behind.

Lori caught only a glimpse of their victim, but quick-eyed Babette named him with a thought.

Ohnaka
.

‘On your knees, asshole,’ the cop bringing up the rear demanded, and kicked the legs from under the prisoner. The man went down, bowing his head to keep the sun from breaching the defence of his wide brimmed hat.

‘Good work, Gibbs,’ Pettine grinned.

‘So where’s the rest of them?’ the youngest of the four, a skinny kid with a coxcomb, demanded.

‘Underground, Tommy,’ the fourth man announced. ‘That’s what Eigerman said.’

Gibbs closed in on Ohnaka.

‘We’ll get fuckface to show us,’ he said. He looked up at Tommy’s companion: a short, wide man. ‘You’re good with the questions, Cas.’

‘Ain’t nobody ever said no to me,’ the man replied. ‘True or false?’

‘True,’ said Gibbs.

‘You want this man on your case?’ Pettine asked Ohnaka. The prisoner said nothing.

‘Don’t think he heard,’ Gibbs said. ‘You ask him, Cas.’

‘Sure enough.’

‘Ask him
hard.
’

Cas approached Ohnaka, reaching down and snatching the brimmed hat from off his head. Instantly, Ohnaka began to scream.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Cas yelled at him, kicking him in the belly.

Ohnaka went on screaming, his arms crossed over his bald head to keep the sun off it as he clambered to his feet. Desperate for the succour of the dark he started back towards the open door, but young Tommy was already there to block his way.

‘Good man. Tommy!’ Pettine hollered. ‘Go get him Cas!’

Forced back into the sun, Ohnaka had begun to shudder as though a fit had seized him.

‘What the fuck?’ said Gibbs.

The prisoner’s arms no longer had the strength to protect his head. They fell to his sides, smoking, leaving Tommy to look straight into his face. The boy cop didn’t speak. He just took two stumbling steps backwards, dropping his rifle as he did so.

‘What are you doin’, dickhead?’ Pettine yelled. Then he reached and took hold of Ohnaka’s arm to prevent him claiming the dropped weapon. In the confusion of the moment it was difficult for Lori to see what happened next, but it seemed Ohnaka’s flesh gave way. There was a cry of disgust from Cas, and one of fury from Pettine as he pulled his hand away, dropping a fistful of fabric and dust.

‘What the fuck?’
Tommy shouted.
‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’

‘Shut up!’ Gibbs told him, but the boy had lost control. Over and over, the same question:

‘What the fuck?’

Unmoved by Tommy’s panic, Cas went in to beat Ohnaka back down to his knees. The blow he delivered did more than he intended. It broke Ohnaka’s arm at the elbow, and the limb fell off at Tommy’s feet. His shouts gave way to puking. Even Cas backed off, shaking his head in disbelief.

Ohnaka was past the point of no return. His legs buckled beneath him, his body growing frailer and frailer beneath the assault of the sun. But it was his face – turned now towards Pettine – that brought the loudest shouts, as the flesh dropped away and smoke rose from his eye sockets as though his brain were on fire.

He no longer howled. There was no strength in his body left for that. He simply sank to the ground, head thrown back as if to invite the sun’s speed, and have the agony over. Before he hit the paving some final stitch in his being snapped with a sound like a shot. His decaying remains flew apart in a burst of blood-dust and bones.

Lori willed Babette to look away, as much for her own sake as that of the child. But she refused to avert her eyes. Even when the horror was over – Ohnaka’s body spread in pieces across the avenue – she still pressed her face to the grille, as if to know this death by sunlight in all its particulars. Nor could Lori look away while the child stared on. She shared every quiver in Babette’s limbs; tasted the tears she was holding back, so as not to let them cloud her vision. Ohnaka was dead, but his executioners were not finished with their business yet. While there was more to see the child kept watching.

Tommy was trying to wipe spattered puke from the front of his uniform. Pettine was kicking over a fragment of Ohnaka’s corpse; Cas was taking a cigarette from Gibbs’ breast pocket.

‘Gimme a light, will you?’ he said. Gibbs dug his trembling hand into his trouser pocket for matches, his eyes fixed on the smoking remains.

‘Never saw nothin’ like that before,’ Pettine said, almost casually.

‘You shit yourself this time, Tommy?’ Gibbs said.

‘Fuck you,’ came the reply. Tommy’s fair skin was flushed red. ‘Cas said we should have called the Chief,’ he said. ‘He was right.’

‘What the fuck does Eigerman know?’ Pettine commented, and spat into the red dust at his feet.

‘You see the face on that fucker?’ Tommy said. ‘You see the way it looked at me? I was near dead, I tell you. He would have had me.’

‘What’s going on here?’ Cas said.

Gibbs had the answer almost right.

‘Sunlight,’ he replied. ‘I heard there’s diseases like that. It was the sun got him.’

‘No way, man,’ said Cas. ‘I never seen or heard of nothin’ like that.’

‘Well we seen and heard it
now,’
said Pettine with more than a little satisfaction. ‘It weren’t no hallucination.’

‘So what do we do?’ Gibbs wanted to know. He was having difficulty getting the match in his shaking fingers to the cigarette between his lips.

‘We look for more,’ said Pettine, ‘and we
keep
looking.’

‘I ain’t,’ said Tommy. ‘I’m calling the fuckin’ Chief. We don’t know how many of these freaks there are. There could be hundreds. You said so yourself. Hide a fuckin’ army you said.’

‘What are you so scared of?’ Gibbs replied. ‘You saw what the sun did to it.’

‘Yeah. And what happens when the sun goes down, fuckwit?’ was Tommy’s retort.

The match flame burnt Gibbs’ fingers. He dropped it with a curse.

‘I seen the movies,’ Tommy said. ‘Things come out at night.’

Judging by the look on Gibbs’ face he’d seen the same movies.

‘Maybe you
should
call up some help,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

Lori’s thoughts spoke hurriedly to the child.

You must warn Rachel. Tell her what we’ve seen
.

They know already
, came the child’s reply.

Tell them anyway. Forget me! Tell them, Babette, before it’s too late
.

I don’t want to leave you
.

I can’t help you Babette. I don’t belong with you. I’m –

She tried to prevent the thought coming, but it was too late.

– I’m normal. The sun won’t kill me the way it’ll
kill you. I’m alive. I’m human. I don’t belong with you
.

She had no opportunity to qualify this hurried response. Contact was broken instantly – the view from Babette’s eyes disappearing – and Lori found herself standing on the threshold of the kitchen.

The sound of flies was loud in her head. Their buzzing was no echo of Midian, but the real thing. They were circling the room ahead of her. She knew all too well what scent had brought them here, egg-laden and hungry; and she knew with equal certainty that after all she’d seen in Midian she couldn’t bear to take another step towards the corpse on the floor. There was too much death in her world, inside her head and out. If she didn’t escape it she’d go mad. She had to get back into the open air, where she could breathe freely. Maybe find some unremarkable shop girl to talk to about the weather, about the price of sanitary towels; anything as long as it was banal, predictable.

But the flies wanted to buzz in her ears. She tried to swat them away. Still they came
at
her and
at
her, their wings buttered with death, their feet red with it.

‘Let me alone,’ she sobbed. But her excitement drew them in larger and still larger numbers, rising at the sound of her voice from their dining table out of sight behind the ovens. Her mind struggled to take hold of the reality she’d been thrown back into, her body to turn and leave the kitchen.