Malachi felt hands on his ankles, under his arms, and knew he wasn't dreaming anymore. He tried to ask who was there, but couldn't tell whether he succeeded, or if there was a reply.
Another face floated by, so he was unconscious again. Melissa hung in front of him, drifting close enough to kiss, and he did so out of a desperate need to feel something other than the pain. The kiss had no sensation, no living warmth. Melissa made no sound, but her eyes held such deep accusation that he wanted to cry out. Why didn't you save the world, they asked of him, and if he could concentrate for long enough to speak, he still would not have been able to give an answer.
Her face vanished into darkness, as her soul had when the dead claimed her. She died to give him the opportunity to kill an angel. Was it possible that she had been an agent of Hell, using him to kill something good and pure?
He couldn't think, couldn't see answers, couldn't see anything. For so long his path had been singular and sure. Now, he knew he had been living a lie. Forged into a tool for the use of others, he still did not who had wielded him.
At last, he felt a dim sensation from his eyes, beneath the inferno pains. They felt swollen. Perhaps they could be saved. Malachi wished he could ask somebody.
Was there anything left of the world to see? After charging through the months since Stacey's attack towards a moment of pathetic, misbegotten failure, he was spending the last hours of existence away from the one person who still needed him. If Newcastle was like Glasgow, she might already be dead.
If she was dead, she might be walking the streets, ripping the beating hearts from the living. Blind and broken, Malachi could do nothing to ease her torment, or stop the abuse of the woman he loved by dark, apocalyptic evils.
In the real world, the hands carrying him had gone. In the dream world, his wife punched her hand into his chest, crunching his ribs aside and latching stiff fingers around the warmth of his heart. She pulled it free, and he howled silently, knowing that he should be dead, and not understanding why he had to live on.
Dropping the heart into the dust, Stacey reached her hands towards his face. Knowing what was to happen next, Malachi tried to run, but was frozen. When she hooked her fingers into his eyes, pushing into the top of the sockets and levering his eyeballs out, Malachi couldn't scream.
Not even when he was left as blind in his dreams as he was in the waking world.
Outside the nave, Gemmell paused, aware that his heart was pumping too hard, that he was pale and haggard. Sleep was a distant memory, and he wondered whether he was ever going to be able to indulge it again. In the cool of the downstairs corridor, he ran his fingers through his hair, listening to the incoherent moaning from the blind man on the first floor, and then stopped.
There were close to a hundred people on the other side of the heavy door, but they weren't making a sound. Certain that he had left it too late, that the nave would be empty, Gemmell thrust the door open.
Ninety-something heads were turned towards the windows, and the door. A low roar filled the room, coming from beyond the windows on the left, and the congregation jerked their heads that way.
An angry, high-pitched chattering, like a hundred enraged chimps, answered the roar from the front of the building, and the congregation turned to listen to that as well.
Lying to them was no longer an option. Climbing quietly onto the stage, wondering why the pulpit was in scattered, burned pieces, Gemmell took a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention,” he bellowed. The acoustics did a fine job of throwing his voice around the room. As one, the congregation jumped, men and women crying out as they turned towards him. A skinny, narrow-faced boy, a shrieker seeking to regain face, shot to his feet.
“Who the fuck are you?” Voices murmured across the nave, as people shifted angrily.
Gemmell pulled his badge from his pocket and held it up, the air of confrontation diluting his own fear. Confrontation was something he knew. “Detective Inspector James Gemmell, Strathclyde Police. Sit down son, or I'll come down there and put you on your arse myself.” The boy hesitated for a moment, and in other circumstances might have tried to push it, but then he sat. The nave stilled, waiting to see what Gemmell would do next.
“Thank you. You might have noticed that it's an unusual sort of night.” An older, tweed-clad man in the second row started to laugh, and then found he couldn't stop. The desperate laughter put everybody on edge. Gemmell pointed at the refined looking lady next to him. “Slap him, hard as you can.” She hesitated, looking at him from under her tartan headscarf as though he was joking. “If you don't, I will, and I'm a terrible judge of my own strength. Hit him.” To his surprise, she didn't need any more encouragement than that, delivering a sharp slap that echoed around the room and made him wince. The man stopped laughing, clutching his face and breathing hard. “Thank you,” he muttered to the woman, who nodded.
Gemmell scanned the congregation, glad to see all eyes firmly on him. “I don't need to point out that some very strange things are happening outside. That's why you're in here. You all came because you think it's safer than being out there. You were right. Nobody is to step outside without my say so. You will not even open the door unless I give you express permission. Does anybody here have a problem with that?”
“You can’t keep us prisoner here,” a spiky haired student at the back shouted.
Gemmell stared hard at him. “That's right. You're not a prisoner, son. In fact, I'm tempted to open that door and boot you out myself.” The heckler's eyes widened. “You hear that?” Outside, something serpentine was hissing, a long sound that got under Gemmell's skin and tried to make him shudder. He resisted, but it was hard. “Let me update you on the situation. Today, the Clyde filled up with blood. This evening, fire fell from the sky, and it hasn't stopped yet. When I arrived here, dead people tried to get into my car and pull my organs out of me. In the forty-five minutes since I entered this building, it's been surrounded by things that I don't want to imagine, but have to listen to anyway. So far, they haven't come into the church, and I hope that's because they can't.
“On the other hand, maybe they just haven't noticed us yet. Who wants to open the door, and put that to the test?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Calum gripped the mug of warm tea as he sat back on the moth-eaten armchair, the weight of his injuries and the story the reporter was telling combining to make him listless and sad. The couple sitting forward on the couch opposite him were hanging on every word crackling from the radio, brows furrowed.
“You know what? I'm looking out of my window, and I can't even start to count the dead. An hour ago, there were a handful of them, and nobody knew what they were. Fucking zombies, man! The world is full of fucking zombies. They've got holes in them, and limbs missing, and I've seen some on fire but still walking around like... well, exactly like fucking zombies.”
The reporter sounded exhausted, and Calum wondered who he was. The voice was familiar, but all of the major radio stations were looping the same government message about staying indoors and not approaching strangers. The only people still broadcasting real content were pirates, or so Stephen had told him.
When the dead had converged on him outside the building, Calum had not noticed the door behind him opening. Surrounded by dead faces, he had felt like the only living person left on the planet, and nearly died of fright when Stephen yanked him backwards into the close. It was surreal to be sitting with a brew in his hands, listening to an actual radio, so soon after the horrors of the street.
After slamming the door in the faces of corpses, Stephen had guided a dazed Calum up to this fourth floor flat, where his tiny girlfriend Mary waited. They made him eat a sandwich, and brewed tea using bottled water. So far, they had let him recover while they listened to reports of the end of the world.
Mary shook her head. “Is it like this everywhere, then?”
Calum was so busy wondering why such a pretty girl would shave her head
that he didn't realise she was talking to him. Hoping she hadn't noticed him staring, he nodded. “Listen, I can't thank you enough…”
Stephen shook his head. “There's no need.”
“You might not think so, but I haven't seen a lot of human kindness today.”
Stephen smiled, bashful, and Calum realised that he was older than he looked. There was a touch of grey at his temples, and subtle lines around his eyes. Mary was in her early twenties, he was sure, but Stephen was somewhere in his forties. “You're the priest from St Cottier’s, aren't you?”
“Yes.” Calum sighed. “I mean, no. Not any more.”
Mary gave a shy smile. “Sweet time for a crisis of faith.” Calum chuckled. “Can I ask you a question?” When he nodded, she bit her lip. “We've been talking about whether this is the end of the world. You know, the proper apocalypse thing?”
“Babe,” Stephen said, as he fiddled with the radio, trying to find another broadcast, “he doesn't know. Nobody knows.” Then he spoke to Calum. “Why didn't you go into the church with the other priest?”
Calum felt suddenly guarded. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
“Are you kidding me? I've just shut the door on a street full of George Romero extras.”
Calum met his green eyes, trying to judge his character, and decided it didn't matter either way. “Three weeks ago, I did something so sinful in my God's eyes, that if I walk into that church, I'll burst into flames.”
Stephen snorted, and Mary giggled from the couch. They both stopped when they realised Calum wasn't smiling. “You're burned,” Mary said.
Calum held up his scorched hand with a wince. “I had to pick up a crucifix this afternoon.”
Stephen took a deep, thoughtful breath, then stepped to the couch, in front of his girlfriend. “I've screwed up then,” he said, his regret obvious. “Either I've brought a nutter into my flat, or I've rescued one of the most evil men on the planet. Either way, you're going back outside, and I don't care what's there waiting for you.”
Ambrose knew as soon as he stepped into the mortal coil that he had mistimed his arrival, but that was not why he howled. Tender flesh layered him in pain, as though he was stepping out of a trash compactor, and he collapsed where he stood, curling up foetus-like on the moist grass. Muscles in his arms and thighs cramped, and it felt like little pneumatic drills were working on the back of his eyeballs, determined to puncture them. His stomach rolled lazily, and he would have vomited if there were anything in his stomach to purge.
A trip in and out of Limbo always hurt. Ambrose screamed not because of the pain, but because he had seen the truth. Judgement Day was rushing to completion. It was no coincidence that it was only weeks after he and Pandora escaped justice. He had thought their escape might be part of a bigger picture that had led to the unveiling of a hurried apocalypse. In fact, they were the sole cause. The love he and Pandora shared had destroyed the world.
Ambrose closed his eyes tightly, hiding them behind his hands as he screamed. The grass at his cheek was chill with frost, cooling his flesh but giving no respite to his thoughts. Hundreds of thousands were dead across the world, and more were falling by the second. Morning would bring no comfort, because there would be no morning. Before the sun rose, the Great Experiment that was the Universe would be terminated, before it imploded on itself. Rules had been broken, fundamental cosmic laws that bound reality together at an intricate level. By falling in love, shattering just one of those laws, Ambrose and Pandora had begun a chain reaction that would unmake everything that existed. The blurring at St Cottier's was the start of that, caused by he and Pandora staying there too long.
That was why God was shutting up shop early. The Experiment needed to close, before there was nothing left to sit in judgement over.
A dog barked close by, and Ambrose opened his eyes.
It was early morning, not long after sunrise. He was lying in somebody's back garden, a small, square patch of winter lawn bordered by the cold skeletons of bushes awaiting their springtime foliage. He couldn't remember how to stop screaming.
Taking the matter out of his hands, his lungs emptied. Ambrose took an involuntary breath in, and caught himself, letting out his next breath with an uneasy gasp. Sucking in one more time, he found some control.
Wiping tears from his cheeks with shaking hands, he sat up. High wooden fences enclosed the garden. The dog, barking and whimpering, was in the next garden along.
Ambrose had never been a dog person. Having destroyed the world, he could try to find satisfaction that there would be no more dogs.
“I am the destroyer of worlds,” he muttered, shocked at how weak his own voice was. “Also, I'm in the wrong place.” Verbalising it, watching his breath steam in the cold air, helped him gather himself.
Having already annihilated the future that he and Pandora might have fought to enjoy, only one thing mattered. Whatever was coming, he had to face it with her. When God's fires ravaged the planet, and their punishment caught up with them, Ambrose wanted to be holding her to him.
First he had to find her. How badly had he stumbled, on leaving Limbo? Was Pandora ten miles away, or in the garden next door? Was he five minutes behind her, or a year?
Rolling to his feet, he saw that his howling arrival had not gone unnoticed. In a bedroom overlooking the garden, an old man peeked around the side of the curtain, a phone to his ear. He jerked back when he saw Ambrose looking, and the demon doubted the authorities would be long in arriving.
Why is nothing ever simple, he asked himself, feeling none of the irony he tried to force. Sizing up the fence to his left, he took two steps forward, and threw himself over it.
Gemmell stared at the congregation, matching his will to theirs, holding still as the echo of his question died away. Nobody answered, but he didn't like the energy in the room. So far, they had acquiesced to his authority and badge. Some were even secretly delighted to be told what to do. Others were looking for something to lash out at, and Gemmell knew he would have to identify them quickly. Beyond the door lay things none of them could comprehend, and their helplessness was going to have to be redirected somewhere. Prayer was too passive. They had to feel like they were doing something.
Gemmell let the silence hold a moment longer, then continued. “If we're agreed that going outside is a bad idea, we need to make this place more comfortable. We might only be here a couple of hours, or it could be longer.”
“We need to eat,” a man in the fourth row shouted.
Gemmell pointed at him. “Well done, that man. You've just volunteered. Pick six people, go through that door, and find the kitchen in the annexe. Raid it, and start cooking whatever you can find. Remember how many mouths we have here. Make up a soup or broth, something that can go around. Which reminds me,” he pointed at the lady in the headscarf. “I want you to take this mouthy bastard,” he nodded at the skinny boy who had given him lip earlier, “into the corridor outside. There's an unconscious man on the stairs. Bring him through here. Does anybody have medical experience?” Two under-dressed young women at the back of the nave, who had clearly been drinking earlier in the evening, raised tentative hands. “Set up a corner, and look after the injured. Check the annexe for a first aid kit. Anybody who's hurt, speak to those two. I don't care if it's a severed arm or a scratch, get it seen to. And nobody go upstairs. That's a crime scene, and I don't want you bastards trampling all over my evidence, understand?”
The congregation stared at him, mouths agape.
“AM I SPEAKING BLOODY URDU UP HERE?”
When the whole room jumped, Gemmell was pleased. People started bustling around. Only those he had directed were doing anything useful, but the rest bustled with purpose anyway. As a group, they felt like they were making things happen. Gemmell wished Summer were there, so that he had somebody to be smug at.
The lights went out, plunging the nave into darkness. Everything went quiet, giving Gemmell a second to catch his breath from the fri
ght. Then somebody started to scream.
“No!” Gemmell shouted, but the scream was joined by another, and then people were moving, running into each other. There was a smash, a pew falling backwards, and cries of pain. “No! Everybody stay still! Listen to me! Everybody stay calm!” Unable even to hear himself, he knew his voice wasn't carrying over the din of fright and pain that rushed over him. Gemmell looked towards the windows, and was dismayed to see no electrical light coming in. The streetlamps were off, and the only illumination came from the tiny flecks of fire still falling from the heavens. For his eyes to adjust, they needed something to adjust to. It was almost pitch black.
While Gemmell could not make himself heard, the voice that boomed through the windows seized the attention of the whole church. The cultured, mocking tones froze Gemmell's blood.
“Ambroooooose! Come out, come out, my friend! I've fooouuund yooouuu!”
Clive's arms dripped gore, but he felt the heat on them as though through several layers of clothing. Like all sensations, it was muted.
Walking was easier than it had been. While he could not muster any speed, he had mastered his balance. He found that if he could keep his head held so, then it meant he was correctly positioned for staying upright.
Speech was more difficult, but he could make himself understood, even if he sounded like a drunkard. At least he could try to explain what he was doing to those he was doing it too. Their fear as he invaded them made him wish that he were dead, which only made him laugh, because of course he was dead. This laughter had consumed him when he ripped the heart out of the four-year-old boy whose mother lay dead on the pavement. Clive had decided to gift children and the elderly first. Frail beings, they would not survive the night without the gift.