The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel (29 page)

“Yo, Vamps, I can’t do
another day, man.”

Vamps looked at his boy, Gingerbread, and shook
his head. “You’ve seen what’s happening to our streets, Ginge. We don’t got no
choice but to help out. Things are fucked up. People need us.”

Gingerbread had grown pale, as he always did when
he was tired. It made his red hair stand out even more, especially his beard.
His expression was the same as Vamps five-year old nephew, Bradley, when he
wanted sweets but got cabbage. “Vamp, man, we ain’t heroes. We gangsters.”

“Yeah, we gangsters, and another gang is moving
onto our turf.”

Ravy joined the conversation. “They’re monsters. I
never signed up to fight no monsters.”

“Me either,” said Mass.

Vamps turned to face him. “We never signed on for
nothing. We were born and raised, yo. This fight came to us. We go out and we
help, just like we did yesterday. We stopped some bird from getting raped. Do
you not get that? She’s alive because of us.”

Mass stood up from the floor and nodded. His grey
hoodie was badly torn where he had fought with a demon. His MMA skills had come
in handy and his strong arms had allowed him to throttle it until it was dead.
“Vamps is right. I like how it feels… I mean, what’s going down is shit, but I
liked the feeling when we helped people yesterday. I felt all respectable.”

Ravy was the smallest of them all, and pretty
useless in a fight, but he had done his part. “Fine, but eventually we gonna
die. This ain’t the boys from West Ham, this is some serious shit.”

“Way I see it,” said Vamps, “the chances of us
dying are pretty high anyway. Least this way we take some of those ugly bitches
down with us.” He looked at Gingerbread.

Gingerbread sighed. “Alright, I’m in. What’s the
plan?”

Vamps grinned, glad that his boys were sound. “We
go out and head towards the first scream we hear. Arm up, boys, today ain’t
gonna be the day we die.”

They grabbed their guns and knives and headed out
of the Boots Megastore where they had holed up during the night. The fighting
in the city had continued, but only in small pockets now. Before finding
sanctuary, they had encountered a group of Chinese tourists in Leicester
square. They were surrounded by hunched over demons and fighting back as best
they could. One of them even knew Kung Fu, which had been amusing. The small
Chinese man had been swooping and swirling amongst the demons like a ferret and
breaking their arms and legs. Before they finally fell on top of him, he had
killed at least a dozen. It had bought the rest of his companions some
time—time enough for Vamp and the boys to come to the rescue.

Vamps had led the vanguard, popping off shots from
his granpop’s Browning. The boys had added fire from their own pieces and, in
the matter of minutes, the fight was over. Their numbers had been growing less
and less, not because they were dying, but because they seemed to be heading
out of the city. Only a few smatterings had been left behind to terrorise
survivors like the Chinese tourists.

The city was quiet and cold, the dawn sunlight not
enough to bring warmth. Dead bodies littered the streets and begun to smell.
The scent of blood was not as strong as the scent of shit. Vamps had never seen
a dead person before, but it seemed that they all shat their kegs before moving
on. It wouldn’t be long before the streets were stinking with disease. He would
have to get his boys out of there soon. Perhaps tonight they would head out and
make for the coast.

Right now though, they had to patrol the streets.
When this war was over, and if they lived, they might just get some respect. No
more being kept down by society because they were young and broke, and crew up
in council-owned flats. They would be warriors, respected by all. When the shit
went down, the upper classes were nowhere to be seen. There were no
middle-class heroes in a ground war.

“Hey,” Gingerbread pointed. “Something’s going on
down there.”

Vamps put a hand over his eyes to shield his sight
from the rising sun. There was definitely movement. “Piccadilly Circus,” he
muttered. “The place was clear last night when we passed through.”

“It isn’t now,” said Ravvy. “There’s a bus
coming.”

Vamps frowned. “If there’s a working bus, why the
hell isn’t it trying to bounce? They should be fleeing as fast as the wheels
will take them.”

They picked up their pace and hurried towards the
bus. The brightly lit signs on the corner of Piccadilly Circus were scorched
and blackened from a fire in the shop below.

The bus up ahead stopped. It was not a city bus,
but a plain white bus with darkened windows. The air brakes hissed and then the
door folded open. A man in a grey suit exited and lit a cigarette.

Vamps street senses acted up. There was something
wrong about the bus driver. He was too calm, the way he stood in the street
smoking like nothing had happened. There was a pile of torn-up bodies not ten
feet away.

“Hold back, yo.” Vamps put an arm up and slowed
his boys down. He moved to the side of the street, sliding in and out of the
alcoves to keep his approach hidden.

Somebody else was getting off the bus. It was
another man in a suit, this one younger than the other and stocky as a
wrestler. He had long blonde hair like a young Hulk Hogan. In his hand he held
a length of chain, and as he yanked on it the first in a line of handcuffed men
and woman spilled out of the bus. When the last prisoner stepped off, there was
a line of a dozen of them.

“Is it a prison bus?” Ravy asked.

Vamps shook his head. “No, way. Travelling
prisoners wear matching uniforms to stop ‘em running and blendin’ in. I
remembered when they moved me from Belmarsh to Brixton after some fuckers were
trying to off me. They had me in this shitty grey tracksuit. Those people are
wearing their own clothes.”

“Then who are they?” Gingerbread asked.

“Who are the dudes in suits?” Mass asked.

“I dunno,” Vamps admitted. “Let’s crash over there
and watch what happens.”

They moved over to a delivery van and stooped
behind its large rear compartment. Vamps stuck out his head to see what was
happening up ahead.

The two suited gentlemen brought the line of
prisoners into the middle of the road and then had them kneel down. At the same
time, a sleek black Mercedes pulled out of a side street. It parked up and a
chauffeur stepped out and opened up the rear door. Vamps covered his mouth when
he saw who exited.

“No freakin’ way!”

Gingerbread frowned. “Who is it? You know that
dude?”

Vamps turned to his boys and nodded. “Yeah, man.
That’s the fucking Prime Minister.”

Mass whistled. “That skinny fucker is the PM? We
should go over. If we help him, we’ll have it made, yo.”

“Innit,” said Ravy.

Vamps turned back to watch and was absolutely
certain that the man was John Windsor the Prime Minister. He was wearing an
open collar shirt and straight black trousers. His jet-black moustache was a
dead giveaway.

He walked up in front of the line of prisoners and
began talking to their warden. The men and woman all pleaded and begged when
they saw their Prime Minister, but he acted as though they weren’t there. One
woman sought to rise to her feet, but the chauffeur hurried over and kicked her
kneecap. She screamed.

“What the fuck, yo,” said Mass.

Vamps clutched his Browning, making sure it was
still there. “This shit smells wrong man. We need to go help.”

“Yeah,” said Gingerbread. “We should go pop that
stuck up motherfuckers. He cut my nan’s benefits last year.”

Vamps was just about to break cover and go sort
shit out, but he leapt back down when he saw demons spilling into Piccadilly
Circus.

Mass looked like he was about to freak. “What the
fuck, man? There’re hundreds of ‘em. We need to bolt.”

Vamps agreed, but he couldn’t help but watch. The
Prime Minister and his companions seemed unafraid, even as the line of
prisoners screamed and begged. The demons surrounded them and Vamps could no
longer see what was going on.”

“I’m fucking off,” said Mass.

Vamps nodded. “I’ll meet you at the Lyceum where we
saw those rickshaws we can use. I’ll be right behind you.”

Gingerbread frowned at him. “What are you talking
about? We need to get out of here.”

Vamps waved his hand. “Get the hell out of here,
boys. I’ll be there. I promise.”

They didn’t seem to like it, but the boys got
going, leaving Vamps hiding behind the van. Once the others were around the
corner and out of sight, Vamps turned and climbed up onto the vehicle’s roof.

Once again he could see what was going on, and
once again he did not like it. The demons were not attacking the PM, and in
fact the PM seemed to be addressing them. One of the demons – a burned man at
least a foot taller than the others and sporting singed dreadlocks stood
directly in front of him and was nodding his head as if receiving orders.

Then the strangest thing of all happened. The
warden in charge of the prisoners handed over the chains to one of the demons
who, instead of attacking, began leading them away. The demons filed away, back
into the side streets, taking the sobbing men and women with them. The PM
remained behind with his companions and seemed to be smiling. Vamps had been a
dealer most his life, and he had just seen a deal go down for sure.

But what the hell was the trade?

And what the fuck was the PM doing out here
trading the lives of innocent men and women. The anger associated with the
questions made Vamps look down at his gun and think strongly about using it.
But it would be suicide. The demons had only just left and the PM knew shit that
made him dangerous. It was time to bounce.

Vamps moved over to the edge of the van and was
about to climb down when he heard a shout. It wasn’t his boys behind him. It
was the chauffeur. He’d been spotted.

With no time to waste, Vamps threw himself from
the top of the van. As soon as he hit the pavement he felt the pain. His ankle
folded sideways and electricity ran up to his knee.

He picked himself up of the floor and began
hobbling away. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the PM diving back
inside his Mercedes. But his two companions were giving chase. With two good
legs, they were faster than he was. The fact that he had a gun was not going to
help, because he quickly realised that his pursuers had guns too, bigger ones.

The only question now was who would get to him
first—his boys, or the bad guys behind him. No way did he want to end up in
chains like those people.

Vamps had no clue what was happening, but he knew
one thing for sure: shit just got worse.

“I’m not
interested in playing the victim. I like stories about survivors.”

--Laurie
Holden

Tokyo’s strange, glowing gate
was one of the few worldwide that had emerged indoors. It sat right in front of
JoyCity Plaza’s twenty-foot Gundam statue, and when it had first risen from the
immovable black stone, it had knocked the giant mobile suit sideways to where
it now rested drunkenly against the mall’s south escalators.

Takao was inside
Kiyoshis Playland,
wearing
out the
Tekken 7
cabinet. He had his initials entered in 9 of the top 15
slots and he wasn’t going to rest until he had them all. Best of all, he was
doing it with the character of King, the sluggish wrestler. Nobody had game
like Takao did using King. Let the drones play as Kazuya or Paul—simple
characters for simple minds, with slow thumbs. Last year his mission had been
Street Fighter and Zangief; next year who knew?

The toy store was empty, everyone wanting to be
outside in the plaza where they could see the weird glowing gate. Takao figured
it was aliens. They would probably all be zapped to oblivion by death rays
within the next few hours, which was why he was so determined to leave behind
his legacy and own the Tekken scoreboard. Let no one say that Takao Tenta left
things unfinished.

When the first screams began, they reached only
the fringes of his mind. He was too engrossed in his ever-growing ultra-combo,
to let in external stimuli, but he was eventually disturbed by the sense of
movement behind him. The skin on his neck prickled.

He made King perform a German suplex for the win,
and then span around. What he saw surprised him. As he had suspected, some kind
of creature had come through the gate and emerged into the shopping mall, but
it wasn’t a little green man. It was something more akin to the fiends that
Dante faced in Devil May Cry. It was a smouldering abomination. And it was
killing people.

Outside the Body Shop chain store, an old man in a
winter Kimono beat at the creature with his wooden cane. The creature spun on
him and slashed his wrinkled throat open with a claw like it was swatting a
mosquito. The old man flopped to the floor, gargling on his own blood.

It angered Takao. He had little time for the older
generation—especially those who still hung on to the past and wore Kimonos
outside of ceremonial occasions—but he strongly believed that everyone had a
duty to take care of the elderly. This old man had faced the nightmarish
creature, while everybody else had run. It was wrong. It was ignoble.

Takao felt his fists clench and realised his palms
were sweating. His palms often got wet when he was on a joystick marathon, but
this was something different. This was adrenaline. The kind of feeling you only
got in a real-life fight. It was exciting.

More of the creatures spilled through the gate,
leaping over the old man’s body. The crowd continued to flee, shaming themselves
as they turned their backs on their murderers and fell face down on the floor
as they were attacked. They needed to fight. Where was the indomitable spirit
that Japan prided itself on? It had obviously only resided in the old man.

And inside of Takao.

He spun around and saw that the only person inside
the toy store was the owner. The fat man was cowering behind a ten foot statue
of Sonic the Hedgehog.

“
Debu
!” he shouted at the man.
Fatso.
“We
need to fight.”

“What?” the man said, as if Takao was crazy. “We
need to hide. Those are monsters out there.”

“Yes, monsters. Will we let monsters kill us all?
No, we are Japanese. We will send them back to their pits. Come on.”

“No.”

“Debu! Then, I need a weapon. I will save your
worthless life. I will be your hero.”

The man was wide-eyed and barely listening, but he
did give an answer. “At the back of the store. Take whatever you want.”

Takao nodded. “I thank you.”

He raced to the back of the store, the adrenaline
in his bloodstream making him feel like Mario on a Power Star trip. He was so
alive. What met him at the back of the store left him with a wide grin on his
face.

The dai-katana was as tall as he was, but he knew
the tempered steel would be light as a feather—fragile as a tree branch. He
knew how to use it. A youth in Japan was born with a deep respect for the
sacred tool of the Samurai, and he had practised often as a child with a
blunted blade given to him by his father, a lowly dock worker.

He took the sword down with both hands and pulled
it from its sheath. It caught the light and glinted with supernatural perfection.
It was a thing of exquisite beauty, forged to bring instant and clean death.

The screams outside continued.

Takao left the back of the store, and by the time
he reached the front, the demons had multiplied and one was already inside with
him. It was stalking the fat proprietor, forcing him back against an old
Sega
Rally
booth.

The debu looked at Takao and pleaded. “Help me,
boy.”

Takao lifted the sword so that it rested
horizontally away from his side. He narrowed his eyes. “I am no
boy
. I
am Takao Tenta.”

He ran across the store, dodging between display
racks—and purposely kicking over the
Hello Kitty
stand that had replaced
the Pokemon one that had stood for years—and within seconds he was only feet
away from the demon.

It turned and looked at him; hissed with a mangled
tongue and blackened lips. The creature was from some fiery hell, but he was
going straight back there. He brought the sword down in a diagonal arc. The sudden
blur of steel seem to miss the creature completely, and it continued coming,
but then it stopped and seemed confused.

Takao stood still, unafraid.

A slight slithering sound, and then the left half
of the demon came away from the right. Both slabs of grotesque flesh slapped on
the ground.

The debu got down on his knees and laced his hands
together like a Christian prayer. He was crying as he thanked Takao profusely.

Takao batted away the man’s hands. “You shame
yourself, debu. Join the fight or die without honour.”

He left the debu on his knees and hurried outside
into the shopping mall. The only people remaining were now left with no choice
but to fight. The demons had them in their clutches. They kicked and punched,
but none were warriors and none were armed. A young woman, with her black hair
dyed a Western blonde was swinging an armful of shopping bags at two demons
trying to take her down. Her fight was hopeless, but her spirit was bright.
Takao ran to her aid.

With the sword trailing behind him like a silver
tail, Takao dove over a sushi cart and then swung around a signpost. The demons
had just disarmed the young woman of her bags when he appeared behind them. Again,
the scared weapon seemed to dance and shimmer in the air as he drew a dozen
invisible shapes. He stepped back a second later and examined his work.

The demons sprayed blood like a pair of geysers as
their bodies came apart at the seams. Blood spattered the young woman’s face,
but it was still easy to see how beautiful she was. A princess if ever there
was one.

Takao grabbed her and pulled him into his arms.
“Stick with me and you will be safe.”

She nodded, almost swooned.

He kept her behind him as he did what no one else
was willing to: he headed into battle.

Two dozen demons lay directly in his path, some
busy with victims, some free and heading right for him. He cut them all apart
with ease, the sword becoming more and more a part of his arm. In his mind, he
tore down the enemy with the same skills he used in the arcades. His reactions,
his skill of seeing an enemy’s moves before he did… It was no different.

A demon leapt at Takao. He ducked and lifted his
sword over his head. The demon came back down to earth in two pieces.

The fallen Gundam suit was just up ahead, still lying
against the escalators; it made a perfect runway. Takao leapt up onto its giant
feet and sprinted up its legs. When he reached the torso, he dove sideways and
came down right in front of the gate. Before he landed, he drove his sword
directly down into the skull of a demon. It lodged so deeply, he could barely
get it back, and was forced to stand on the corpse while he yanked at the hilt.

All around him, demons closed in, but he lopped
off their arms and heads before any could get close enough to even breath on
him. Before long he was a king, surrounded by the bodies of his fallen enemies.
His princess cowered behind the Gundam statue, but she knew she was safe. Her
hero would protect her.

A child’s stuffed toy lay beneath his boot,
covered in blood and lacking its owner. It was Cloud Strife, a fluffy Buster
sword sewn to the back of his purple suit. Covered in blood, Takao felt the
Final Fantasy hero was a kindred spirit. They had both faced hell and survived.

Angry and ready for more, Takao stood before the
gate and waited for new foes to come forth. The translucent centre of the gate
shimmered and plopped, like an icy ball launched forth from Ryu’s fingertips.
Hadoken.

Something else was emerging from the gate.

Takeo wiped the blood from his hands onto his
shirt. He gripped the sword tightly in front of him, determined never to be
parted with it. He was Ronin, a lone Samurai concerned only with protecting the
innocent.

What came through the gate was no lowly demon like
the ones that lay dismembered at his feet. What came through the gate was a
giant, taller even than the fallen Gundam statue. It looked down at Takeo with
utter hatred and murder in its unholy eyes.

But Takeo did not run. “Fighting you will bring
out my true strength,” he whispered. Then he narrowed his eyes and ran towards
his enemy.