Poison City (44 page)

Michael is trying to drag himself away from the tumour. It’s leaking yellow bile now, streams of it pouring onto the pulsating floor.

The faces in the walls start to shriek, like terrified inmates in an asylum.

There’s movement in the rippling mass. Bulges pushing outwards like . . . massive blisters. The bulges grow larger, the skin growing thinner. Stretching . . . pushing. . . .

. . . Until they burst, blood and fluids falling in an unholy rain.

Seven translucent sacks slide out of the tumour, leaving behind gaping holes. They hit the ground and split open. Black, foul-smelling fluid spills across the floor, wisps of steam rising into the air.

I stare in horror. Lying in the fluids are seven figures, pale grey flesh covered with blood and mucous.

The figures rise slowly to their feet.

My heart skips a beat. The faces are empty, hungry, feral. Black eyes blink, survey the surroundings. The one closest to me opens its mouth and a bubble of black ichor bursts out and pours down its chin.

Michael is on his back, staring at the creatures in horror. ‘I warned you!’ he screams. ‘I
warned
you!’

‘What is it?’ I shout. ‘What’s happening?’

Michael looks at me. He’s in tears. ‘It doesn’t matter if you kill the Sinwalker! You
can’t
send God’s sins back to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because God is dead!’ Michael screams. ‘We executed him.’

I blink in shock. I turn my attention to the figures as understanding crawls up my spine. The seven deadly sins. If God is dead they have nowhere to go, nowhere to return to.

And with the Sinwalker dead, they’ve taken on form.

Armitage grabs my arm and pulls me away. We back up slowly, watching as Lilith approaches the sins. She holds a hand out, almost as if she’s giving a treat to a dog.

‘Here now,’ she croons. ‘Aren’t you all just perfect? A true gift from God. Would you like to help me? Would you like to help me destroy the world?’

In answer, the seven sins tilt their heads back and scream, an ear-splitting shriek that scars my soul. I clap my hands to my ears as Armitage and I move quickly back up the ramp.

The sins stop screaming. Lilith smiles, steps forward and reaches up to touch the face of the closest one.

Armitage and I are at the arch at the top of the ramp by now. I grab one of the grenades Parker gave me. I hold it up to Armitage. She nods. I pull the pin and throw it back towards Lilith and the seven sins.

The grenade hits the ground and rolls down the ramp. The sins turn to watch as it bumps up against Michael.

Lilith starts running. Armitage and I are already in the tunnel, sprinting as fast as we can. The grenade explodes, a terrific roar of sound. The concussion hits, throwing us both to the ground. A huge cloud of dust billows past us. We scramble to our feet and sprint up the slope, heading back towards the storm drains. The ceiling is coming down behind us. Rocks and stones sliding from the wall, hitting the ground, forcing us to leap and dodge to stay alive.

I can’t see anything. My lungs are filling with choking powder. Can’t breathe. I look around. See hazy darkness. I try to call out for Armitage, but I inhale another lungful of dust. My throat constricts. Flashes of white before my eyes.

A rock falls and hits me in the shoulder. I drop to my knees. Try to crawl on. But then I realize I don’t know if I’m going up or down. I’m trying to breathe, but there’s nothing left. No air.

I push myself to my feet, struggle on. Have to keep going.

And then we’re through the hole in the wall, back into the man-made storm drains.

The choking dust isn’t as bad here. We fall to our knees, coughing and spluttering, spitting up black phlegm.

We don’t hang around. We struggle to our feet and get moving, retracing our steps towards the exit. After about a hundred metres there’s a deep trembling beneath our feet, followed by a long, drawn out crash.

‘That’ll be the tunnel leading into that cavern collapsing,’ says Armitage. She pauses, then smiles. ‘It’s over.’

I nod, then take a deep, shuddering breath. I’m finished. Exhausted. But we did it. We stopped Lilith. Stopped the seven sins. Dropped a cavern on their heads. Which hopefully means we stopped the battles raging through Poison City.

I allow myself a brief moment of self-congratulation.

Stupid.

It’s only a few moments later when I hear the noise.

I pause, turn back. There it is again. A shuffling sound, then splashing water. Echoing back through the tunnels.

I pull in the last of my energy and send out my shinecraft, tendrils of awareness drifting back along the tunnels, trying to track the sound.

I eventually spot it. A figure making its way through the storm drains, limping, clearly hurt.

It’s Lilith.

Fuck.

Should have known it wouldn’t be this easy.

Armitage is pretty far ahead by now. She arrives at the next turning and realizes I’m not following.

‘Come on then,’ she calls. ‘Haven’t got all night.’

I hesitate. I could just keep going. Leave it. Think about tracking Lilith down another day.

Except . . . I can’t, can I? I can’t let her live. Not after what she did. It’s up to me to finish it. I’m the one who brought her here. I’m the one who gave her the sin-eater’s soul.

I look into the satchel. Two grenades.

I take one out.

‘London? What are you doing?’

Armitage starts to walk toward me.

‘Stop!’ I shout.

She stumbles to a stop, checking her surroundings as if expecting an attack.

‘What?’ Her voice is urgent.

‘It’s not done.’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘I . . . have to finish this. It’s my fault, Armitage. I have to end it.’

I pull the pin out of the grenade. The metallic sound echoes around the storm drain.

‘What was that?’ Panic in her voice. ‘London? Don’t be a silly bugger now.’

‘Armitage.’

She hesitates, peers towards me. ‘What?’

‘You better run.’

I roll the grenade towards her. But not too hard. Armitage swears loudly and sprints into the adjoining tunnel.

I turn and run, water splashing up around me as I try to put as much distance as I can between myself and the grenade.

The explosion hits.

A tremendous roar, like a demon screaming fire and brimstone into the night.

I’m plucked off my feet. Sailing through the air as everything explodes with orange and red light. I smack into the ground, skidding through the water until I hit the wall.

I groan, roll onto my back. My ears are ringing but I can still hear a mighty rumbling and crashing. The light flickers and dies away, but not before I see more smoke and dust roiling through the air.

I push myself to my knees, my feet.

I try to peer back but the dust is too thick. I think the grenade has done its job, though. I’ve trapped Lilith this side of the drains.

We’re trapped in here. Her and I.

Chapter 23

I limp back along the tunnels and reach the spot where Armitage and I descended into the Sinwalker’s cavern. The tunnel is gone, the opening blocked with huge chunks of rock. I try to pull one or two out, but they don’t budge. The whole chamber is buried.

I carry on walking. I have my gun out. I’ve hooked the last grenade through the belt at the back of my pants. I don’t think I have any energy left to use the wand. I’m not tracking her by shinecraft either. Only one direction Lilith could have gone.

Ten minutes pass. My nerves are on fire. Every part of me is straining to hear. Freezing at every sound. Spinning around at shadows. My cell phone light picks out a white powder on the walls. I touch it and it crumbles beneath my fingers.

Salt.

We’re close to the end of the storm drains, where they empty out into the sea.

My left hand curls nervously around my gun. I turn the phone off. No point in making myself a target.

I wait for my eyes to adjust. There’s light filtering into the tunnels from somewhere up ahead. Just enough to illuminate the curves in the walls.

What if I’m too late? Maybe she made it out the storm drains.

I start to run, follow the curve of the drain around . . .

. . . And there she is. Limping.

‘Stop!’

Lilith freezes, then turns slowly around. She looks . . . 
furious
. There’s blood on her face. A nasty gash in her cheek.

‘You,’ she growls.

‘Yeah, me. Turn around. Keep walking.’

She doesn’t move. I fire my Glock past her shoulder. The crack echoes around the drain.

‘Turn around and keep walking. Don’t make me say it again.’

She does as she’s told.

‘Hands in the air,’ I say as I follow after her.

She raises her arms. ‘You haven’t saved them, you know.’

The tunnel is growing brighter, a grey-white light that picks out the bumps and crags in the concrete.

‘The war is coming, Tau. The orisha are tired of being second-class citizens. We’re taking back the occupied land.’

We reach a junction. Darkness to the right. The storm drain opening is to the left, the full moon visible in the sky beyond.

‘Stop there.’

She stops. I gesture with the gun for her to move to the side. When she does as instructed I move to the opening. I keep her in sight as I peer briefly out the drain.

A thirty feet drop into the ocean. Fuck.

‘Didn’t think this one through, did you?’

‘Shut up.’

We’ll go back. I destroyed one way out with the grenade, but there have to be other entrances into the tunnels, from different parts of Durban.

‘Turn around.’

Lilith doesn’t move. She’s smiling at me.

I hesitate. Why is she smiling?

Then a wave of emotion hits me. Hatred. Fury. It blanks my mind, turns me into an animal, filled with rage. I scream and shoot at Lilith. She ducks away, darts to the side. I empty my magazine as I try to kill her, try to end her, but my hand is shaking so much I don’t get anywhere close.

When I’ve no more bullets I drop the gun and run at her, hands curled into claws.

Before I reach her I feel my insides twisting. I stagger, stop moving. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

I double over, crying out in pain. Hatred, lust, fear, they pummel through my body, shredding my nerves, leaving my curled up on the floor. I’m weeping, weeping for lost hope, weeping with desire, weeping with hatred and fury. The emptiness inside is like a devouring beast, sucking me dry. Like I’m being eaten from within.

The feelings surge through me, cut into my very soul, strip away everything that is me. Everything that makes me Gideon Tau, just . . . falls away, leaving behind an empty shell filling up with . . .

. . . With sins.

I force my eyes open and there they are. The seven sins. Standing in a semicircle around me, Lilith at the front.

The sins’ faces are vibrating, moving so fast I can’t see their actual features. Except for the black eyes. The eyes are filled with hunger.

‘I just want you to know,’ says Lilith. ‘Before you die. You failed. We’re still going ahead with our plan. We’re still going to infect the world.’

I gasp for breath, attempt to pull the shattered remnants of my mind together. I push myself up. The sins aren’t grey anymore. They look like they’re made from oil. Their bodies slick with viscous fluid.

I can’t let them get out of here.

I struggle painfully to my feet. I can feel their presence corrupting me, trying to wash away my humanity, wash away everything about me. I can’t let them do it. Not yet.

I hold on to one thing. One thing I know will keep me human, will stop them pulling me down.

Cally.

Blood is pouring from my eyes, my nose. I can feel the sins hammering at me, trying to get past the wall, into my soul.

I don’t let them. I keep my thoughts on Cally.

Her first birthday, when she pulled herself around the house in one of those kid chair things with wheels.

Her first day at school. Happy and smiling, ready to go. The tears were all mine. I didn’t want her to go. Didn’t want her to grow up.

Christmas, presents unwrapped by the tree, the smell of pine needles hanging in the air, then swimming in the afternoon heat of an African summer.

The sins are disturbed. They cock their heads to the side, looking at me curiously. Lilith frowns, glances uncertainly at the sins.

‘What are you doing, Tau?’

The sins step closer, pushing Lilith with them.

Cally and Becca, playing at the Botanical Gardens. Cally on her bike and us getting told off by the security guard because bikes aren’t allowed. We run away, laughing, Cally pedalling furiously because she’s scared of going to jail.