The Abyss Beyond Dreams (45 page)

‘Slvasta, you need to move,’ Javier said.

The crowd around him seemed to be sharing that opinion. People were turning, pressing towards the buildings lining the streets that had been locked up against trouble since first thing that
morning. Teekay and boots thumped into locks on sturdy wooden doors. The equally frantic residents and storekeepers inside used their strength and teekay to keep them out.

Slvasta turned and let the alarmed crowd push him along. Once he felt the flow of bodies surging round him, he started to push in the same direction as those heading back along Cranwich Road.
The road opened into some sort of square ahead, he remembered; the pressure would ease off and the crowd could disperse down half a dozen alleys and lanes that led away from it.

Behind him, the neuts and mod-apes reached the abandoned barricades. Their weight and speed sent the metal and wood rails crashing to the ground, and hooves sped over them. Slvasta was
concentrating on running with the crowd – he could sense the street opening into the small square ahead while flashes of shared ex-sight showed him the torrent of neuts and mod-apes pouring
along Knole Street. People were clinging to windowsills to get above them; some had even scaled iron lamp posts, hanging on for dear life as the animals thundered past underneath. He perceived one
man drop, to be pummelled under the hooves.

‘Oh, that’s all we need,’ Bethaneve declared.

‘What’s happened?’ Coulan asked.

‘The bastard Meor regiment. They’re coming out of the government buildings. Must have been waiting since last night. Our people missed that.’

‘What in Uracus do they think they’re going to do?’ Javier asked.

‘If the officers are smart, they’ll take out the neuts and mod-apes,’ Coulan said.

‘Those bastards are more likely to kill people for running away,’ Javier said.

‘It doesn’t look as if they’re well organized,’ Bethaneve said. ‘And there are more coming out of the station.’

‘Too late!’

The front of the stampede reached the junction of Cranwich Road. ‘Oh, crudding Uracus!’ Slvasta exclaimed. Over half of the neuts and seemingly most of the mod-apes peeled away to
charge along Cranwich Road. The screaming began all around him – high-pitched shrieks and bass roars combining into a wall of sound that hammered against his brain, amplifying the primeval
fear that was rising all along the road. The last dregs of civility shattered in that single moment. The crowd became a mob, with everyone looking out for themselves, no matter what the cost.

Slvasta came hurtling out of Cranwich Road into Eynsham Square, a pleasant cobbled area with tall blue-leafed arctan trees lining the small central garden. Stalls with striped canvas canopies
defending food and clothes from the sun were clustered together along one side, the vendors fleeing away down side lanes along with the mob.

Then Slvasta saw them, pressed up against the railings round the garden not twenty metres ahead. ‘No,’ he yelled, his mind emitting a burst of horror. Instantly, Bethaneve, Javier
and Coulan were querying him, anxious for his personal safety. The image that blasted into his eyes flashed out, shared openly by his distraught mind, imbued with a terrible flood of urgency and
fright.

*

Josanne’s Hill junior school had begun that Tuesday like any other. Most of its middle-class parents had picked up on the expected trouble growing round Doncastor
station, but the school was eight streets away. Safe enough, surely? Besides, they all had to work. Protesting was all very well for the feckless louts and union militants who lived by sponging off
the edge of society, but those who had to earn money to support their family couldn’t afford to take a day off. They dropped their children off at the school gates at eight thirty, as they
did every day, kissed them goodbye, then went off, gossiping with other parents as they went.

At ten o’clock, as they did every Tuesday without fail, Josanne’s Hill’s full contingent of eight-year-olds, all thirty-two of them, were led out of the school grounds by seven
harried teachers for their weekly swimming lesson at the lido pool on Plaxtol Street, an eleven-minute walk away, taking them directly through Eynsham Square. This Tuesday, the walk took a lot
longer, with the teachers having to wind their way round the clutter of protesters assembling in the streets around the station. It was all good-natured then, but the children picked up on the
excitement, and their teachers had to keep special watch to make sure everyone stuck together. By the time they eventually made it into the square, the neuts had broken loose.

The terrified mob moved like a solid wavefront. Nobody cared that there were children in the way. The teachers gathered their charges together, sheltering them with teekay and arms hugging
close. They were clumped against the railings around the garden, with several children crying as they were repeatedly pummelled against the thick trunk of an arctan tree.

Slvasta needed all of his strength just to stop, his strongest teekay shell forcing people to surge round him. He was three metres away from the schoolchildren. The braying cries of the neuts
were rising above the human screams as the stampede approached the square.

‘They’re going to smash straight into the kids,’ Slvasta told his friends. ‘Where’s the Meor regiment?’

‘The nearest squad to you is in Arlington Lane,’ Bethaneve ’pathed. ‘They’ll never reach you in time.’

Slvasta turned and faced the end of Cranwich Road. It was barely visible beyond the frantic charging bodies. Curses and threats were hurled at him as people lurched past. He drew the revolver
he’d been carrying – so carefully obscured by a psychic fuzz. It was the one he’d taken from the bunker below the Joint Regimental Council office, a world and a life ago. There
were five bullets in the chamber, another dozen in his inside pocket. His teekay clicked the safety off. He took a breath. Steadied himself.

He was aware of Bethaneve’s distant ’path producing a string of instructions; they were passed along the convoluted command channels of the cells. Then someone else was standing
beside him, a man in his fifties in a shabby jacket, struggling against the throng of people desperate to escape the square.

‘Kolan,’ he said, with a thick Siegen county accent.

‘Slvasta. Thanks for this.’

‘No worries, pal. We’ll not let them get the kiddies, eh?’

Slvasta just had time to say, ‘Right,’ when a frightened young woman came to stand on his other side. She was trembling as her surprisingly strong teekay pushed running people
away.

‘Teekay spike directly into their brains,’ Slvasta told them.

Another youthful lad joined them. Slvasta almost laughed. Four people standing firm against an onslaught. It was suicide.

‘There are more comrades in the square,’ Bethaneve ’pathed. ‘I’m trying to get orders out. They’ll help.’

The mob was thinning out fast. It was mostly the elderly now, wheezing as they half-limped, half-staggered along, crying with fright as they tried to stay ahead of the feverish neuts hot on
their heels.

Then there were no more humans, and the neuts came thundering out of Cranwich Road. Slvasta hadn’t known the stupid creatures could actually move that fast. He stared at the one directly
ahead, and lashed out with his teekay. It died instantly as his invisible blade sliced into the brain, tumbling across the cobbles and tripping two other neuts as it went. He stabbed out again, and
again. The cell comrades standing by him were doing the same. He perceived similar spears of teekay reaching out from other places in the square, directed at the neuts.

One cell was standing just at the edge of Cranwich Road when the first half-dozen mod-apes charged out. The big shambling beasts managed to protect themselves from the teekay assaults with basic
shells, snarling in rage as they did. ’Pathed orders to stop had no effect on them at all. And Slvasta’s memory was all too horribly clear on that. ‘Faller!’ he warned
Bethaneve. ‘There’s a Faller controlling them.’ He raised the pistol, forcing himself not to hurry. Slain neuts were plummeting to the ground, peeling away from the thundering
herd. But the mod-apes kept coming. Slvasta fired.

The noise of the shot overrode every other sound in the square. For a second, there seemed to be nothing but silence. Then the yelling and screaming redoubled. One of the bulky mod-apes crashed
to the ground, blood pouring from the fatal head wound. Slvasta moved his arm, lining up on the next . . .

He fired. Again. Again.

Around the square, people pelting into the relative safety of the lanes began to slow, glancing back. The tiny band of stalwarts standing resolutely in front of the sobbing, wailing children
instigated a great deal of shame. Slvasta’s one arm was raised to shoot with calm accuracy. A mod-ape fell with every bullet. Neuts were collapsing from teekay strikes that were coming from
all directions. As people stopped fleeing, they began to add their own mental power to the strikes.

‘Can anyone see the Faller?’ Javier asked.

‘We don’t know who it is,’ Coulan ’pathed urgently.

‘They’re here for a reason,’ Slvasta told them. His teekay was slapping fresh rounds into the pistol. ‘This is the perfect cover to snatch a few people.’

‘So what are we looking for?’ Bethaneve asked. ‘I’ve still got contact with most of our cells.’

‘They’re strong,’ Slvasta said as he lined up the pistol again. And two mod-apes were slavering as they rushed him, powerful hands raised to grab and claw. He fired. A perfect
shot, catching the lead one in the centre of its head. The back of its skull blew off; gore and blood exploded out.

Nine cell members across the square combined their teekay and penetrated the remaining mod-ape’s crude shell, decimating its brain. The bulky creature toppled to the ground, momentum
skidding it along for several metres. It scrunched to a halt a metre short of Slvasta and the other defenders.

Slvasta took a deep breath, trying to stop the shakes. ‘The Faller will be carrying someone away.’ He aimed at a rampaging neut. Fired. Two bullet left in the chamber, two in his
jacket pocket.

‘They’ll be unconscious,’ Coulan added, ‘so it’ll look like they’re trying to help a friend.’

‘Tell our comrades to search for that,’ Javier said. ‘And quick.’

Slvasta shot another neut as he sensed Bethaneve’s frantic instruction spreading across the cells amid the agitated crowds. In Eynsham Square, the stampede had now stalled. People were
turning round and emerging from the side roads, directing teekay strikes at the petrified animals that mewled in bewilderment as they jostled about. They fell in silence, adding to the distress of
those remaining.

Humans closed in on them from all directions, seeking retaliation. The mods that lay dead were kicked at, stomped on, spat at, had their softer flesh ripped by vengeful teekay twists.

The scene vanished behind a deluge of images dispatched by every cell member in the area as they hunted around for people being carried away by others. There were many: men hauling women and
children along, their faces distraught, pleading, urging . . .

‘Look for someone who doesn’t care about who they’re taking,’ Slvasta urged. For a second the montage was overwhelmed by the vision of Quanda’s face, beautiful and
terrible, her mouth parted in a wide victorious smile as she loomed over him.

‘There!’ Coulan exclaimed.

Slvasta focused on the sight gifted by a comrade from a cell at the far end of Cranwich Road, where a relative peace had fallen. People who had leapt out of the way of the stampede were
beginning to re-emerge onto the street, as were the sheriffs. At the junction was a big thickset man in late middle age wearing a filthy tweed jacket and stained brown trousers. He carried the limp
form of a teenage boy over his shoulder. His walk was methodical, inexorable, as evidenced by the determined expression on his squat face. One hand only had two fingers.

‘Got to be him,’ Slvasta breathed.

‘Challenge him,’ Bethaneve sent to the nervous cell member who was watching from a safe distance.

The possible Faller was going round the corner into Knole Street and heading away from the station and the sheepish sheriffs. In all the turmoil no one else was paying him the slightest
attention.

‘Faller,’ the cell member said in a feeble voice. Nobody even heard her, let alone paid attention.

‘Back her up,’ Bethaneve’s instruction went cascading through their erratic communication web between cells.

‘Faller.’ This time the cell member sounded a little more confident. She raised a hand and pointed. ‘Faller!’

The call was taken up by other cell members along Knole Street.

‘You, hey, you!’

‘Stop.’

‘Faller! He’s a Faller.’

‘Stop him.’

‘Sheriff, sheriffs! Do something.’

Now
people were starting to look. The Faller – if that’s what he was – had quickened his pace.

A sheriff stepped towards him. ‘Just a moment, you.’

He was ignored.

The sheriff was only five metres away now, his arm held up, palm outwards as if he was directing traffic. ‘Right, you—’

The Faller flung the unconscious teenager he was carrying right at the sheriff, who collapsed under the impact, crashing to the pavement. He screamed in pain. The Faller started running, moving
incredibly fast for a man his size and age.

It seemed as if everyone on Knole Street was shouting. A cacophony of alarm and fear that was swiftly supplanted by shrill sheriffs’ whistles, calling for help. Some people tried to stop
the Faller, lashing out with teekay. Others – stronger, confident men – attempted to tackle him physically. They were smashed aside as if they were rag dolls.

Then a couple of Meor regiment squads raced into Knole Street.

‘Get down,’ their officers bellowed – an order backed up by shrill ’path shouts. The soldiers brought up their carbines. Everyone dropped to the ground, parents clawing
at their children, forcing them onto the cobbles; even the sheriffs ducked down. The only person moving was the Faller, pounding along at an inhuman speed, still looking directly ahead as if he
hadn’t noticed what was happening. Even treading on cowering bodies as he went.