And behind it all that same pitiful moan of the kid on the floor, growing louder, deeper.
‘He’s coming out of it, I think. Will somebody help down here?’
Simon leant into me, a whisper dropping from his lips.
‘You get the gun, I’ll take the priest.’
I’d barely registered what he’d said before he darted forward. I felt the pressure of the gun leave my neck and swung my right arm back as hard as I could. It was a lucky strike, my elbow clipping the pistol just as the man pulled the trigger. The bullet went wide, thudding into somebody in the crowd and catapulting them over a pew. A mist of blood blossomed upwards, painting the faces around it, but I wasn’t paying any attention. I twisted my whole body, bringing my fist round hard into the gunman’s face. He’d probably never been hit in his life, especially by someone with a blacksuit’s punch, and the impact knocked him out cold.
By the time I’d turned back the cathedral had descended into anarchy. Simon and the priest were wrestling with the lamp. Simon may have been taller and broader than the priest but the man had a psychopathic strength. Oil was spilling everywhere, glistening green and blue against their clothes. Most of the crowd were retreating now, reality forcing its way back through their wide, timid eyes. But two or three were doing their best to help the priest, punching Simon in the head and neck and trying to push him over. Zee was running along one of the pews, making for the skirmish, and I headed that way too.
The man with the candle got there first.
He held it out for a moment, his saggy face crumpled with panic. Then with a soft cry he let it tumble from his hands. It missed Simon, the flame almost guttering out as it tumbled earthwards. Then it landed in a puddle of oil and roared to life, the fire like a hand rising from the stone and grabbing both Simon and the priest in its embrace. Even with the flames around them they carried on wrestling, the priest refusing to let go of the lamp despite the fact it had become the centre of the inferno.
‘Simon!’ I cried, ignoring the clawing heat as I ran to his side. I threw a punch into the raging fire, feeling it connect with the priest. He staggered backwards, the lamp now welded to his hands. The flames had engulfed him and he reeled towards the altar, collapsing on the steps. He writhed for a moment, then was still. The fire, still hungry, began to chew up the carpet, catching hold of the altar cloth and the tapestries that surrounded it.
‘Alex, help me,’ said Zee, and I forced my eyes from the smouldering corpse to see him tearing coats from the kid on the floor. Simon was on his knees, beating at the flames on his clothes. But the oil was burning thickly, smearing his fingers, stretching tongues of flame up towards his neck and face.
Zee gave Simon a shove, sending him sprawling onto his back. Then he pounced on top of the blazing body, slamming coats down everywhere he could.
‘Hold these!’ he yelled, and I did as I was told, crouching beside him and pressing the jackets over the flames. Zee’s hands were a blur as he slapped until the fire had been reduced to pockets of charred cloth that smoked weakly. He collapsed on top of Simon, all three of us coughing up a lung and panting for breath.
I scanned the crowd, waiting for the next attack, but with their messiah gone and one end of their haven blazing nobody would even meet my eye. Most were collapsed against the pews, puking and crying and all the other things you do when you realise you’ve become a monster. I should know. I’ve been there too.
The man with the glasses was doing his best to hold the kid still but the boy’s tremors had grown much worse. The boy was thumping up and down, each motion causing a squeal of wood as the pew was dragged over the stone. He was mewling, a horrible sound that reminded me of a newborn animal. And looking at the kid, that’s what he was like. He wriggled against the man’s grip like an oversized baby, gnashing the air, clawing helplessly at the plastic cuff, dribbling mouthfuls of black liquid.
‘What do we do?’ the man asked. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
I knew exactly. He’d woken up, roused by the nectar that surged inside him, by the smell of burning flesh, of spilled blood, the cries of pain. I knew because the nectar inside me was firing up too, boiling in my veins. I felt the wound in my neck pulse as though there was something living in there. My arm twitched, the skin swelling, and I held it to my body as if that would keep it from expanding any more.
‘Get back,’ I told the man in glasses. He didn’t argue, easing the boy’s head off his knees and shuffling away. A spasm rocked the kid’s body, the pustules on his broken face bursting, his insect eyes never blinking. Then he opened his mouth wider than should ever have been possible and unleashed a cry of anguish.
Too late I realised what that cry was. It was a call for help, the same way a cub calls for its mother. And moments later, as the windows grew dark, silhouettes thrashing against the leaded glass, I realised that its call had been answered.
They’d found us.
Invasion
They came through the window hard and fast, led by the same berserker we’d seen at Twofields station. It pushed its fat, grinning baby face through the leaded glass, emitting that same spine-chilling giggle. Then it dropped the ten metres or so to the floor, snapping a pew and scattering bibles like leaves.
A window smashed on the other side of the cathedral, two shapes pushing through a vision of angels, not seeming to notice that the glass was cutting their skin to shreds. Judging by the amount of nectar that was spilling from them, streaming down the walls, those wounds would be closed before they hit the floor. They were both inmates who had become rats, their overalls scuffed and torn almost beyond recognition, their faces darkened by the fluid pumping beneath their skin. One had already grown enormous forearms, reminding me of Popeye. It bared its teeth at us, growling like a dog, then dropped, landing awkwardly and sprawling on its side. The second followed, scampering on four limbs towards the fire as though it was the first time it had ever seen one.
The only sound I could hear was, incredibly, laughter. One of the men in the crowd was chuckling to himself as he watched events unfold. Everybody else just stood there, breath held, as if by sheer collective will they could stop this from being real. I realised I was doing exactly the same, praying that if I was still and silent enough that berserker and its spawn would leave us alone.
No such luck.
The berserker advanced first, scrambling over a pew, moving on all fours. It sniffed the air, evidently catching the scent of the kid, loping towards him. Glasses Man was sitting on the floor, between the kid and the berserker. He shuffled backwards, his specs hanging off one ear, his hands held up.
‘I was just trying to help him,’ he said. ‘Please, I didn’t—’
The berserker lifted the man in its massive arms, throwing him across the cathedral. He hit a pillar with a chilling thwack, bouncing off into the shadows beneath a pew. It was the sound more than the sight, I think, that suddenly propelled everybody into action. Where there had been stillness there was now chaos as people ran, nobody choosing the same direction.
A woman thumped into me as she bolted for the main doors. She made exactly five steps before one of the rats got her, bounding up the southern aisle and cutting down between the pews. It leapt onto her back, teeth lodged in her throat, sending them both crashing to the floor.
I felt a hand on my arm, flinching at the touch before realising it was Zee.
‘Let’s move,’ he ordered, taking his own advice and running along the length of the pew towards the northern aisle, Lucy close behind. Simon was after them like a shot, not looking back.
I watched the second rat take down another member of the crowd, the man who had been holding the candle. It didn’t pause to feast but propelled itself up, felling another victim with a gargled cry of delight. Somebody threw a punch at the rabid inmate. It connected with a crack, but the creature didn’t show any sign of feeling it, using one hand to knock the fist away and the other to claw out the man’s throat. Behind it all was a backd
rop of smoky flames as the altar continued to burn, the fire somehow making its way up the stone walls in search of fuel, finding the ancient wooden rafters.
‘Alex,’ Zee yelled from the other side of the cathedral. ‘Come on!’
I remained motionless, watching the berserker lean over the kid on the floor. Not that he was a kid any more. There was nothing of the child left in that swollen mass of blackened tumours that struggled to free itself from its plastic binds. With surprising tenderness the berserker grabbed the kid’s hand and pulled, the plastic snapping. Then it pushed the boy to his feet, nudging him with its snout the same way an animal might do to its offspring before it takes its first steps.
I can honestly say that it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
The kid – the rat – took a hesitant step forward, then caught sight of somebody cowering behind a column. It moved clumsily but fast, so fast, covering a dozen metres in a second. And it knew exactly what to do with its prey, tearing into it with expert precision.
‘Jesus, would you get a move on?’ said a voice to my side. I realised Simon had come back for me, tugging furiously on my jumper. One side of his face was charred black but he didn’t seem to be in too much pain. ‘You’ve seen it all before, come on.’
Still I didn’t move. The berserker lifted its head, studying me from the other end of the aisle, then started moving, stepping over the still-warm bodies in its path.
‘Screw you,’ Simon said, retreating for the second time. ‘You wanna die, then go ahead and die.’
And that’s precisely why I wasn’t moving, I realised.
Because I wasn’t going to die.
The berserker reached me, towering up to its full height – a metre or more above my head. It grabbed me by the throat, the same way it had done before, turning its ugly head this way and that as if trying to get a good look at me. But it didn’t need to.
It knew exactly who I was. What I was.
With another infant chuckle it released its grip. Then it turned its back on me, scouring the cathedral for new victims. In a rush of anger the nectar detonated inside my head, firing off so many synapses that time seemed to unravel – the fire burning, the rats moving, the people screaming all in slow motion like a movie whose projector was running out of power.
‘Don’t you dare,’ I heard myself say as I watched the berserker slope off. ‘Don’t you dare!’
I ran forward, shoving the berserker in the back with everything I had. It lurched, using its forelimbs to stay up. But all it did was angle its head over its shoulder and hiss at me. I heard a shot from somewhere in the cathedral but I ignored it, my anger swelling up inside my head, making my vision flicker on and off. This was by far the worst thing that could have happened, worse even than me being torn to pieces, being eaten alive.
The berserker didn’t kill me because I was a part of its family, because it could sense the same life force in me that flowed through it, because we had the same father, and that man wanted to keep us both alive.
It didn’t kill me because it knew that I was one of them.
‘I’m not,’ I screamed, picking up the candlestick that had been used to brain the security guard. ‘I’m not one of you. I’m not the same as you!’
And in my head, out of nowhere, came his voice –that same impossible half-whisper, half-shout of Alfred Furnace.
But you will be.
I lifted the heavy candlestick, a solid silver bar that must have weighed as much as a lead pipe, and as the nectar forced a battle cry from me I brought it down on the berserker’s back. It hit with the same sound a car makes when it drives into a wall, a weird metallic clang that reverberated around the cathedral. The berserker toppled forward, falling flat on its face. But it didn’t stay down for long, scuttling away and unfolding once again to its full height. This time the look it gave me was more threatening, but still it didn’t attack.
Another shot, and I glanced over to see Zee firing the pistol. There was one dead rat by his feet, the body twitching. Another had the sense to duck down behind a pew, the wood splintering as Zee fired. The berserker uttered a wet screech as it retreated, and the two remaining rats burst from their hiding places, following it towards the broken window. It ushered them up the wall and through the glass, leaping after them and pushing its way out into the open air. It looked back only once, and as its eyes met mine I once again heard that voice, reverberating around my head as if the very bells of the cathedral were ringing.
You will be.
Clear Sight
As soon as the berserker had gone Zee, Simon and Lucy made their way back to the nave. Lucy was staring at me with a mix of fear and suspicion, and I noticed that the boys were doing exactly the same. I lowered myself down onto a pew, looking at my right arm to see the bulging tendons pulsing with nectar. It had swollen so much that it could have belonged to a skinned gorilla. The itch from the bite was spreading down through my chest and my stomach, even as far as my right leg, but I didn’t dare peek beneath my clothes to see what was happening.
Zee came and sat next to me, his head in his hands. It took me a moment to notice he was crying.
‘It’s never going to end, is it?’ he said, wiping his face with his sleeve. I slung my good arm over his shoulders, feeling them heave. Before I knew it I had tears of my own, Zee’s frustration and fury contagious. He lashed out at the pew in front, his bony fists not budging it. ‘It’s never going to end. Not now.’
I wanted to reassure him, calm him, but what could I say?
‘It’s gonna end pretty damn quick if we don’t get out of here,’ Simon said, nodding at the fire. The whole eastern end of the cathedral was blazing, fuelled by the draught that cut between the broken windows. A thick blanket of smoke hovered just above head height, filling the inverted bowl of the dome and dropping steadily closer. I was grateful to it as I wiped my eyes, blaming my tears on the burning air.
‘Why didn’t it kill you?’ Zee asked, looking up at me through red-rimmed eyes. ‘It didn’t even try. What that’s all about?’
‘Maybe it had a crisis of conscience,’ I replied, attempting a smile. ‘Decided it wanted to be a pacifist.’
‘Yeah, because it was real gentle with everyone else,’ Zee retorted. He looked at Lucy, who had made her way from body to body. The ones that hadn’t been savaged beyond recognition, that was. ‘Any survivors?’
‘They’re all dead,’ Lucy said, her hand resting on the throat of a woman for a second before she shook her head. ‘Jesus, they killed everybody.’ She stood, throwing an expression my way almost fierce enough to knock me dead. ‘See what they did? Your friends? They killed everybody!’
‘They didn’t kill her,’ Simon replied, nodding at the security guard who stared unblinking at the ceiling. ‘That was your friends.’
Lucy turned her glare on him and Zee stood up, his tears apparently forgotten as he walked between them like a referee. She looked back to me malevolently.
‘That thing treated you like you were its brother.’
‘Look at me,’ I hissed back. ‘I look more like those things every second. Soon I’m gonna look more like them than I do you. In its eyes I am its brother.’
‘But the rats by the Metro, they attacked you,’ said Simon.
‘They’re just animals, though,’ I replied. ‘They’re feral. They attack everything, even each other.’ I’d thought the berserkers were mindless killers as well, but they were something far worse. They possessed intelligence – not human intelligence, but they were clever enough to recognise friends from enemies. Clever enough to follow orders. ‘I think Furnace wants me alive for some reason,’ I went on. ‘Maybe he wants us all alive. I don’t know why, though.’
‘So he can kill us himself, probably,’ Simon said. And even though I knew that was far too simple an explanation, I still nodded.
‘Let’s forget it,’ Zee said, swallowing hard. ‘It’s pointless trying to work out what’s going on when none of us hav
e a clue.’ He turned to the cathedral doors, still chained, then looked at the window, the fire now licking at its sill. The flames had also reached the first row of pews, devouring them with relish. He set off towards the northern aisle, taking Lucy’s arm as he went. ‘Come on, I think it’s time for some fresh air.’
I didn’t get up straight away. Part of me just wanted to sit there until the flames consumed me. Surely there was some rule that if you died inside a cathedral then you had to go somewhere good afterwards. It’s not like I believed in heaven or anything, but I’d seen hell – hell was right outside this building, spreading fast – and anywhere had to be better than that. My arm throbbed, the sensation passing to my fingers, the nectar singing inside me. I was changing, again. And if my suspicions were right, if my worst fears were coming true, then it would be far better to be cremated right here than to find out what I was turning into.
But if I was really part of Furnace’s plan, maybe I could find a way to stop it. Maybe I could find a cure. Reluctantly, as I felt the heat getting closer, I pushed myself up from the pew and followed the others.
Zee walked through an archway into a small anteroom, passing through it to another spiral staircase, this one stretching upward. He set off at a pace.
‘Er, Zee,’ I asked. ‘I know I shouldn’t question your wisdom, but isn’t it a bad idea to go up when you’re inside a burning building?’
‘You’re right, Alex,’ he said, and he must have been feeling better because his exhausted laugh echoed up the stairs, emboldened by the stone. ‘You shouldn’t question my wisdom.’
We seemed to go round and round forever, my head growing dizzy with both the rotation and the effort. At one point we passed another arch, which led off into smoke-filled shadows, but Zee ignored it, clomping relentlessly upwards. I don’t know how much later it was that sunlight began to filter into the staircase, and after three more upward loops we stepped out onto a sweeping balcony.