The Fury (19 page)

‘Look, I just want to know what’s going on.’

Detective Inspector Alan Murdoch had been speaking the same words to the same locked door for the better part of three hours. And it was nearly twenty-four hours now since he’d been bundled into a car along with Jorgensen and his assistants from the morgue and taken to the massive MI5 HQ by the Thames. He was being treated like a terrorist, as though somehow he was responsible for the freak corpse and its endless breath. When he’d first arrived they’d strapped him with diodes and sensors and asked him question after question, blatantly refusing to answer any of his. And after that he’d been thrown into this basement room to rot.

He hadn’t even been allowed to call his wife. His mobile phone and police radio had been confiscated; so had his warrant card. He was supposed to have been home this time yesterday, she’d be worried sick. He felt something shift in his gut, the dread of never seeing her again, of never holding his baby boy.

You’re being ridiculous. It’s the exhaustion talking
. Only he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen it, this impossible thing, this living corpse which made a mockery out of everything he knew. Reality had begun to crumble, and here he was with a front-row seat to the end of it all.

‘I really am sorry,’ said Jorgensen for what must have been the hundredth time that day. He sat on the other side of the small room – no, the
cell
– looking a hundred years old. ‘I never should have called you in, Alan.’

No, you bloody well shouldn’t have
, Murdoch thought, saying: ‘This isn’t your fault, Sven. You were just doing your job.’

The pathologist gave him a weary smile then planted his head back in his hands. Murdoch slammed his fist against the door, hard enough to hurt.

‘You’ve got no right to keep us in here, dammit,’ he roared. They’d been given water and a sandwich each but that had been hours ago. Murdoch’s hunger was lost behind the rage inside his gut. ‘I’m a police officer, I have a right to know what’s going on.’

Rights. Murdoch laughed bitterly. He had no rights, not here, not in the heart of the government’s secret service. They could hold him forever and make sure nobody ever asked any questions. But
why
?

There was a metallic clang from outside the door, followed by footsteps. A key turned, then the door swung out to reveal a man and a woman in orderly uniforms. The man was holding a tray with more sandwiches and two bottles of water. He started to walk in but Murdoch barred his way.

‘You can’t keep us here,’ he said. ‘I demand to see your commanding officer.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the woman. ‘I’m afraid nobody is available to speak to you right now.’

‘Please wait inside the room,’ added the man, and there was a definite
or else
that he left unvoiced.

Murdoch bit his tongue, looking past the orderlies to see a long, windowless corridor. At the end of it was a reinforced metal door, guarded by armed men. Murdoch knew that’s where it was, the living corpse. The thought of it there, so close, made him shudder. Even as he watched, the door opened and a group of people walked out. They wore a mix of uniforms – some military top brass, some white surgical coats – but they all wore the same expression of fear. They strode down the corridor and turned out of sight.

‘Look,’ said Murdoch, forcing himself to stay calm. ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble, I just want to go home. My wife, she doesn’t know where I am. Can you at least tell me how long you’re going to keep us here?’

The orderlies must have seen the desperation in his gaunt face, because their expressions softened.

‘The truth is, we don’t know,’ said the woman. ‘There’s something . . . They’re saying it’s something bad, really bad. They’re holding anyone who’s had any contact with it. Did you see it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Murdoch, sighing. ‘And they’re right, it’s bad.’

‘Take this,’ said the man, passing the tray to Murdoch. ‘It might be over soon, they’re bringing in some kind of expert. With any luck they’ll be able to work out what’s going on and get you guys out of here.’

‘An expert?’ said Jorgensen, walking over. ‘What kind of expert?’

The man shrugged, saying, ‘Just somebody who might know what this thing is.’

And what it wants
, Murdoch’s mind added.

The sound of voices rose up, a group of soldiers walking out of the same corridor the others had left by. They headed up towards the guarded door and Murdoch saw somebody else with them, somebody dressed in black robes. The orderly looked over her shoulder.

‘That’s him now,’ she said.

‘The
expert
?’ Jorgensen asked. The man and woman nodded.

‘No way,’ Murdoch said, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. The soldiers reached the door and the man turned, revealing the white collar around his neck, the heavy crucifix that hung over his chest. The expert wasn’t a scientist or a doctor or a general.

He was a priest.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’

Rilke Bastion ignored her brother the way she had learned to do through years of practice. He trotted along by her side as if he were a dog, not her fifteen-year-old twin, his sad little face turned up to her with those puppy-moist eyes. If Schiller had a tail, it would be permanently fixed between his legs.

‘Rilke, please, mother will be angry.’

Their mother wouldn’t even know. She was cocooned in the same musty, tea-stained sheets she spent half her life in. She spent the other half in the old-fashioned wooden bath chair that sat wheel-locked beside the huge windows in her bedroom suite, her eyes watching over the estate but her mind rotted, unthinking.

‘Please, Rilke, I don’t want to go.’

His canine whine was a knifepoint in her ears, making the headache she’d had for at least two days now infinitely worse. She stopped, spinning round and grabbing Schiller by the collar. Looking into his face was so like looking at her own reflection, and yet utterly different. She could see the same high cheekbones, the same sharp green eyes, the same narrow nose. And yet it was as though she were staring into a trick mirror, one of the ones that distorted your
image
, making her chin too weak, her jowls too loose, her eyes too watery. She glared at Schiller until he looked away, as he always did. Only then did she release him.

‘Go on, then,’ she said as he brushed his hands down his polo shirt, trying to get the creases out. ‘Go home.’

Schiller peered down the street where the vast bulk of St Peter’s Church sat like a mountain in the dark. A mile or so past that lay home, the crumbling manor house entombed in the shadows of its endless grounds.

‘Go on,’ she snapped. ‘What are you waiting for? If you’re going back then go. I’m finding this party with or without you.’

‘But I don’t feel too good,’ Schiller replied, rubbing his left temple. His eyes darted up, meeting hers for a fraction of a second. The truth was that she wasn’t feeling too good either, her head was pounding. But she ignored the throb, glaring at her brother until his hand dropped in submission. ‘Okay, but I don’t want to stay all night. Please, Rilke.’

Good boy
, she thought.
Good dog
. She patted him on the head, hard enough to make him flinch. Then she turned and carried on down the street. She’d heard about the party from a cleaner called Millie who worked part-time at the estate. Not that Millie had told her to her face – none of the staff dared talk to Rilke. She’d overheard the girl chatting to one of her friends when they were dusting the library. An illegal rave, she’d called it, and they’d giggled at the word ‘illegal’.
It’ll be cool, just music and stuff, come along, it’s not far out of town, you know the Logan farm up by the coast
.

‘Not all night, though?’ Schiller said to her back. ‘Please?’

‘All night, little brother,’ she said. She always called him that, even though he was technically a few minutes older. ‘Till the birds start singing.’

Farlen wasn’t a big town. Some people didn’t even call it a town at all, more like a village with an ego. It had grown up around their own house, centuries ago, back when the Bastion family was rich and influential. Over the last couple of generations the estate had crumbled under its own weight, the huge house disintegrating, rats gnawing at its foundations and pigeon droppings eating through its rafters. And the town seemed to be under the same curse.

Good riddance to it
, Rilke thought as they reached the end of the high street and the boarded-up shops that sat there. The line of lights ended, a pool of bottomless black beyond looking like the edge of the world. The stars were out, the moon too, but the cool silver glow they emitted was reluctant.

A pang of something nestled uncomfortably in her stomach. She slowed, opening her arm and letting Schiller slide his own through the loop. He hugged it tight, and she could feel his gratitude ebbing off him in great, golden waves.

‘I love you, little brother,’ she said. ‘You know I won’t let anything happen to you.’

‘I know,’ he whispered as they stepped out of the light. Rilke slid the torch from her jacket pocket, flicking on the beam and carving a channel through the night like Moses with the Red Sea. She pulled Schiller closer, picking up the pace and practically dragging him along by her side.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s not far.’

The music hit her at the same time as the stench of the ocean.

She hated that smell. What did they say? That in Britain you were never more than seventy miles from the sea. And every year it seemed to creep in a little closer, eroding the beach and the cliffs, rotting the land away a few metres at a time. It was the vast weight of it that scared her, not just its width – spanning the gulf between continents – but its unthinkable depth. There was just so much of it, and if one day it decided to swell, to spill its lightless guts onto the land, it could wipe the world clean without a second thought. A frightening thought, if not necessarily a bad one. There wasn’t much in this world that made Rilke smile.

She breathed through her mouth, focusing on the glow ahead. Spotlights rose from a stubbled field maybe half a mile away, throwing light right back at the stars and the huge grinning face of the moon. The music was nothing more than a pulse that she could feel in her feet, as if the very ground were alive. The truth was she hated this kind of party, the people you got there, all high on something or drunk off their faces. All stupid, the same way most people were stupid. But it had to be better than another night of unrelenting boredom at home. Rilke had never been a big sleeper.

She shone her torch on the short, grassy bank then stumbled up it, Schiller’s arm still limpet-tight around hers. It was tough going on the uneven ground but the earth was hard and she kept her pace steady, sticking to the same ploughed furrow. The heartbeat grew more powerful the closer they got, popping in her ears, brushing against her skin. It found an echo in the pain between her temples –
thump-thump . . . thump-thump . . . thump-thump
– like something was stuck inside her skull and trying to beat its way out. She picked up her pace, the rave pulling itself out of the distance like a cathedral of light.

They were halfway across the field when Schiller stopped, planting his feet into the dry earth like an anchor. She turned, shining the beam into his face.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he moaned, squinting in the harsh light. ‘I’m scared.’

‘You’re such a baby, Schill,’ she replied, wrenching him forward. He dug in, fighting.

‘Something bad is going to happen,’ he went on.

‘Don’t be stupid.’ And yet even as she said the words she felt something inside her, something in her gut, scream out –
He’s right, he’s right, he’s right
– a wordless, instinctive jolt of adrenalin. The rave was close enough for her to see the ring of vans and cars that circled the party like wagons; and past them the heaving mass of flesh that seemed to breathe in and out with that bone-shaking heartbeat.

Rilke swallowed, suddenly cold. She almost retreated right there, ready to lead the way back across the field towards home. But once again that stubborn streak stopped her in her tracks, made her bury that instinctive warning. The Bastion family had always been driven by its women. They were the ones to lead.

She clenched her arm, trapping Schiller’s tight and pulling him across the field.
He needs a leash
, she thought. They walked for another minute or so, the crowd ahead coalescing into individuals – guys and girls in their teens and twenties pretty much all wearing glow sticks. Most were inside the ring of vehicles but others were loitering in the shadows around the party, talking or kissing or lost in their own private drug-
induced
dances. There was nothing to be scared of here. She’d stay for an hour or so, just to see what it was like, just to have had the experience, then they’d go. She’d pretend to be leaving for Schiller’s sake, that way he would owe her.

He was resisting again. Rilke looked over her shoulder, not slowing. He said something, his words lost in the deafening bass thump that seemed to rise from the earth.
What?
she mouthed, shrugging her shoulders, waiting for him to start moaning again. But he wasn’t.

‘My head,’ he yelled, leaning in close. ‘It doesn’t hurt any more.’

She was about to reply when she realised that the ache in her own brain had gone, so swiftly and so suddenly that she hadn’t even noticed. She put a hand against the side of Schiller’s head, stroking his temple with her thumb.

‘See, little brother,’ she shouted, smiling. ‘What did I tell you? Everything is fine.’

He couldn’t have heard what she said over the noise but he smiled back, the reflected spotlights making his eyes twinkle.

It didn’t last.

She knew what he was looking at before she could even turn round, like she’d seen it with her own eyes – two people, a man and a teenage girl, stumbling towards them. And there was more – a flash of something else, something that smelled of rot, a girl and two boys asleep in an old restaurant, someone else walking through a forest, someone else driving a car, then a dozen more, two dozen maybe. The images were so strong that she was gripped by vertigo, as though she’d been wrenched out of her own body and thrown into a lightning-fast orbit.

Schiller called out her name and she spun round. The man and the girl were sprinting towards her,
fast
, uttering pig grunts as they gained ground. There were others too, the kids that had been loitering outside the party, charging across the field.

They all had the same expression, silhouetted against the lights but unmistakable. They were furious. These people meant to kill them both, Rilke understood – the knowledge absolute and unquestionable. They meant to trample them into the field, to make mud of them.

She gave Schiller a shove, yelling at him:

‘Run!’