The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel (35 page)

“Right, right.” Emma sounds distracted. “So you don’t know anything about the lights in the sky or the big bang?”

“Big —” Pete freezes. If he was Mr. Howard, this is the point at which he would be emitting a stream of heartfelt profanity: but he isn’t, so he bites his tongue for a second, offers up a momentary prayer for guidance in time of crisis, and reboots his brain. “— bang? From the bunker?” Across the table Jez Wilson has stopped typing and is staring at him.

“We finished initial crime scene logging and cordoned off the area an hour and a half ago,” Sergeant Gracie recites grimly. “Captain Hastings requested a nearside lane closure on the southbound carriageway of the Otley Road so we took care of that, which is why none of my people were within two hundred meters of your site when the captain called me to say he was sending his men in to examine the site. This was thirty-six, thirty-seven minutes ago. Five minutes later there was a very loud noise – I hesitate to call it an explosion only because there was no light and no debris, but it was too big to be a flash-bang or similar. Immediately afterwards, shots were heard by the nearest officers to the site, who naturally took cover – it was full auto fire, on and off for almost a minute. Thereafter the site fell silent, but the greenish light intensified considerably. I’m unable to raise Captain Hastings on Airwave and he isn’t answering his mobile number. Two ARU constables who went forward to scope out the scene haven’t reported in either. What’s going
on
?”

Jez Wilson is making grabbing gestures with her right hand, while Lockhart leans over the table and points at the speakerphone. “Let me put you on speaker,” says Pete, pushing buttons frantically. “Where’s your helicopter?”

“Police 42’s unavailable: there are traffic accidents all over north Yorkshire tonight and our cameras are having a spot of bother.” Her voice over the phone isn’t shaky, but the over-controlled tension tells its own story. “Do you have any information you’re withholding, Doctor?”

Lockhart hits the microphone switch on the speakerphone. “Sergeant, this is Colonel Lockhart. Can I confirm that you’ve lost contact with the OCCULUS unit and are reporting explosions and gunfire in the vicinity of the bunker?” He glances sideways at Jez, his mustache bristling, and she nods minutely.

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” Emma sounds distracted. “I’ve called the regional support desk but they say we’re fully committed and it’ll be at least half an hour before they can send backup —”

“You need to get everybody out of there
right now
,” Lockhart interrupts her. “Close the Otley Road in both directions, from the intersection with the A6120 all the way out to Bramhope. I’d recommend a civilian evacuation of the whole of LS6 and LS17, but frankly there isn’t time and there’s nowhere to put everyone. Can you raise your helicopter directly? It’s connected to that rash of RTAs.”

“I can call them but I’m not sure they’ll believe me, and I’m not sure
I
believe
you
. Let me repeat, Colonel,
what is going on?
”

“It’s a major intrusion, Sergeant, and if it took out an OCCULUS team you and everyone else in the area are in immediate danger.” Lockhart gets terse when he’s on edge, Pete notes. “There is nothing you can do to help except to clear the area, keep bystanders out, and wait for Captain Hastings’s men to surface or for us to get another team on-site —”

Sergeant Gracie suddenly says “Oh
shit
,” very clearly. There is a crash of shattering glass, and a thud. Then the call drops.

Pinky, who has just entered, stands frozen in the doorway. “Was that what I think it was?”

Lockhart glares at him furiously. “Sitrep, then get out.”

“What was that —” Pete begins, his words already in motion before he processes Lockhart’s reaction.

“That was the last we’ll hear from a very brave woman. Or a very stupid one.
Damn.
” Lockhart looks away from Pinky. “Report, blast it.”

Pinky clears his throat. “I got Ilsa kitted out like you suggested,” he says diffidently. “The Dillon Aero’s mounted on top of the tow bar with a modified Humvee mount. Brains is finishing up the belt feed from the equipment carrier; we figure it can carry about two thousand rounds as long as we don’t mind changing belts every five hundred rounds.”

“And the shields?”

“They fit. I picked up four class-eight wards, and we hit the sixteenth-century collection at the Royal Armouries for three suits of munition plate. The cheap-ass kind: low-carbon steel with adjustable fittings, mass-produced for mercenaries rather than royal showpieces.”

“Then get out of my —”

“What are you talking about?” Pete interrupts.

“We’re going to see if we can get close enough to see what’s going on. Maybe find out what happened to Alex and OCCULUS One,” Pinky says matter-of-factly. “Me and Brains.”

“Change of plan,” announces Lockhart. “I want Brains here: if we lose camera coverage over Woodhouse Lane as well I’m going to need him to help man the monitor room when we fire up SCORPION STARE inside the Inner Loop. So you’ll need someone else to drive the tank.”

“Maybe we should wait for the army to get here? An hour either way probably isn’t going to make much —”

“I can do it,” Pete hears himself saying, from the other side of a cognitive event horizon: “I can drive and ride a bike if that’s what you need.” It feels like a dereliction of responsibility: he should be looking out for Sandy and baby Jess, not haring off on a half-track to fight monsters. But on the other hand, he has an uneasy feeling that if whatever’s going on here isn’t stopped
now
, before it’s too late, whatever the price, Sandy and Jess won’t have much of a future…

Lockhart turns to stare at him. “Are you volunteering?”

“Um, I” – Pete’s life flickers past his eyes like a spool of burning celluloid – “guess so?”

“Stupid.” Lockhart shakes his head. “But it’s your own coffin to lie in. Just try not to do anything
unnecessarily brave
.” He ends on a near snarl: “We’ve lost enough good people already today.”

It takes about a second to fall five meters. In that time Alex is aware of the black pool of water at the bottom of the stairwell rushing towards his feet, of the luciferine glow of eaters flooding through the close-fitting frame of the fire door, of Cassie’s presence above him as she pounds down the steps three at a time towards a flock of ghastly mind-stealers she can’t even sense —

He lands on his toes, a shock of cold dampness rising to his ankles as his fingers hook into claws and he leaps forward into the basement tunnel. It’s an occult inferno illuminated by a glaucous glow from the walls and ceiling: the overhead lights are out. There is darkness beyond every doorway except for the far end of the corridor where a sickly emerald light pulses. There are eaters closing in on all sides, a shrieking rasp of excitement in the back of his head signaling their approach. It sounds like the chewing of chainsaw teeth on razor wire.

Eaters are among the simpler horrors that you can invoke with a targeted summoning grid and the right application of the fourth Turing theorem. Simple doesn’t mean harmless: if they get their teeth into an unwarded nervous system they’ll bed down like malware and take over its body. Luckily for Alex, PHANGs are immune to such hostile takeovers by virtue of already having reached an accommodation with their very own V-parasites. Unluckily for Alex, these eaters have already found host bodies, and as he hits the corridor the first revenant scrabbles into the corridor ahead of him and charges, beak gaping wide.

Alex’s perception of the passage of time slows as the flightless bird – or feathered velociraptor: it’s hard to tell – rushes towards him. Details tell: the green-glowing eyes, the sickle-like claws, the mindless rage. He flinches involuntarily, hand tightening on the dagger Cassie gave him as the bird lashes out with a viciously curved blade on the end of a thickly muscled leg. The floor under his heels is slippery-slick and doesn’t provide much traction, but he does his best and brings the knife up anyway. The bird screeches and begins to turn just in time to impale itself on the blade. It’s as heavy as a big dog. Alex’s breath whuffs out of him as it drags his arm down and twitches the knife out of his grip, dying gouts of arterial blood pulsing across his chest. And of course, that’s the whole point of its suicidal leap: because there are two more behind it.

“Birds?”
Alex asks plaintively as the ostrich-sized horrors bounce off the wall opposite the doorway they emerged from and turn on him with mad-eyed glares beneath rigid crests of crimson and electric blue. They’re not true birds: they’ve got horny beaks fronting mouths sharp with needle-like teeth, ready to tear. They’re flightless and as tall as a man, and although they’ve got arms – or wings – they’re short and stubby, thickly feathered. Like the first, their eyes are green-glowing vortices, and their legs are tipped with three-clawed feet, the middle toes curling like vicious sickles. “You’re kidding me —”

The first raptor is still thrashing and dying as Alex tries to pull his knife free. But it’s wedged between ribs and he’s out of time so he lets go and steps sideways, opens his mouth, and says the first thing that comes into his head. It’s a macro in Old Enochian that he learned as part of his defensive training. There’s no point in being able to summon up the eaters in the night if you can’t boss them around fluently enough to avoid being eaten yourself, and as long as whoever called them also bound them to obey voice commands, then there’s a chance that the ur-language will get their attention, much as two fingers hooked inside the nostrils will get the attention of an aggressive drunk.
“Obey me now! Stop! Halt! Obey me now!”

They scream inarticulate avian shrieks of rage, but they go down on their feathered asses all the same, crashing to the floor as their legs fold up under them. Stubby tails thrash, feathers flaring.
Okay, not birds
or
dinosaurs, somewhere in-between.
He senses rather than sees Cassie arrive at the bottom of the stairwell. He bends forward again, braces a foot on the twitching body by his feet and heaves the dagger blade out, then holds it up before the angry birds.
“Stay down. Don’t attack. Don’t move.”
A memory percolates up from somewhere, something about the Romans using geese as avian guard dogs.

Cassie steps into the corridor behind him and crouches down, pointing her wand or mace or whatever it is at the birds – then says, very clearly, “Decoys.” And everything goes to shit.

Bert the caretaker shuffles into the corridor from one of the side rooms. He is looking much the worse for wear. Last time Alex saw him his eyes weren’t full of luminous green threads, twirling lazily in the twilight. Nor was his rib cage on display through the jagged slashes in his shirt, which wasn’t black with crusted blood. Nor was he carrying a sword.

Alex locks eyes with the revenant and
pushes
with his will. His brain freezes and scrabbles as he hits the total absence of anything human. If Bert was still alive he’d be on the floor now, flooded out by the sheer impact of Alex’s mind control power: but although Bert has left the building, his shambling body keeps on coming. It shuffles unsteadily forward as if unaccustomed to the weight of flesh. The guard-fowl are shrieking and struggling unsteadily back to their three-clawed feet, now that Alex has been successfully distracted by the arrival of a genuine take-no-prisoners zombie: and they’re not the only attackers. All around him Alex can feel a press of invisible feeders bouncing about in frenzied hunger, losing all fine control as they discover they can’t dig their mouthparts into his brain.
“Stop,”
he commands Bert, still in Old Enochian:
“Halt now, do not move.”
But it doesn’t work and Bert raises his sword, as slow and jerky as an automaton. One of the birds is up on one leg, holding the other sickle-claw raised almost to its sternum.
“Turn and attack,”
he tells it.
“Attack now!”

Angry eater-possessed bird versus undead Crown Estate site security guard owned by an eater that seems more at home in a quadruped chassis than on two legs: Who will win? For a moment Alex doesn’t expect anything to happen, but then the mutant cassowary spins and lashes out like a kickboxer. Then someone slams his head in a door and the corridor lights up like a set of Christmas tree illuminations that have just shorted out a high-tension grid line.

His eyes are full of irregular purple blotches and his ears ring as Bert the caretaker’s legs – no longer supporting a torso – topple over. None of the guard-birds or feathered raptors or whatever they are survive: instead, a pall of choking, oily smoke fills the corridor in front of him. He coughs as a wiry, surprisingly strong arm reaches around his shoulders. “Sweet idiot boy!” She shakes him gently. “You could have been hurt! That’s
my
job!”

“Um.” Alex straightens up, deliberately not thinking about Cassie’s drastic approach to clearing the corridor. His phone has stopped buzzing, thaum sensor overloaded or burned out by her mace’s discharge. He can still hear the eaters outside his skull yammering to get in – an unprotected human in this place would be zombified within seconds – but luckily neither he nor Cassie fit that description. “Let’s just get to the ley line and go find your father. Do you think there are any more of these things in the way?”

“YesYes for sure!” She raises her voice when she’s excited, and he winces as she gestures expansively with the mace, which is glowing like a radioactive cobalt source:
What is that, the elven equivalent of an assault rifle?
he speculates. “I can feel them yonder!” Cassie says. The tip of the mace twists in a tight circle, pointing at the second-to-last door along the passage like an amputee dowsing rod. “Let me go first —”

Some archaic sense of chivalry – or, more plausibly, the peculiar form of stupidity that overcomes young, heterosexually inclined males in the presence of a female they wish to impress – impels Alex forward along the corridor before Cassie has time to step up and play tank. Even as his feet carry him forward, Alex begins to doubt the wisdom of this course of action. He is a halfway-to-certified combat magician, long on theory and short on experience and reflexes, this deficiency partly compensated for by the whole blood-sucking fiend shtick which, he has to admit, has given him reflexes to die for along with the need for alarming nutritional supplements. Cassie, in contrast, is the sort of thing you fire into unknown enemy territory and leave to fend for itself. She’s
trained
for this job, Alex realizes, while he’s just along because… because Cassie wants him along… because she wants him to…

That’s when the other four incarnate eaters jump him.

The column of oily smoke is still rolling and churning in the predawn sky above Otley when a phone rings in a small, beige-walled room at RAF Coningsby, fifteen kilometers north of Boston, Lincolnshire.

One side of the room is furnished with battered sofas, recliners, and a table with an electric kettle and tea-making facilities. Four men wait here, watching a DVD on the flat-screen TV or poking at one of the computers that sits on the table against the opposite side of the room, beneath a huge map of England and the surrounding over-water approaches. There are phones everywhere, but all eyes turn to the one that’s ringing, because it’s both red and ostentatiously positioned beneath the map.

One of the aircrew makes a grab for the phone, hitching up the back of his heavy rubberized overall as he leaves his chair. “Yes?” he says. Then he picks up a pen and hastily jots down some notes. “On it,” he says; “I’ll tell them.” He looks over his shoulder. “Got a bad one,” he says. “Airliner down off the end of the runway at Yeadon and there’s something flaky about it.”

“Well damn.” His wingman kills the DVD and the others all stand up. “Let’s get moving —” he starts to say, just as the Telebrief machine at the far side of the room begins to chatter and spits out a SCRAMBLE notice. He hits the red alarm button and runs outside as a siren begins to wail.

RAF Coningsby is one of just two Air Force bases in the UK that operate Eurofighter Typhoon fighters on Quick Reaction standby, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. As the home of 1 Air Combat Group it covers the entire southern half of the British Isles. The pilots jog out into the hangar, where two of the chunky delta-winged fighters are drawn up while their ground crew crawl over them, hastily closing out the preflight check. Two minutes later they’re starting engines and accepting taxi instructions from the tower; five minutes after the SCRAMBLE order they’re screaming northwest at four hundred knots, climbing towards 20,000 feet.

Behind them, Coningsby is preparing another two Typhoons – they can ramp up to twenty-four sorties within six hours, although only two squadrons are available and ready for intercept service over the entire country. Meanwhile, the Control and Reporting Centre at RAF Scampton comes online with new instructions.

There are two unidentified aircraft over West Yorkshire, not squawking but visible on primary radar, traveling east at low altitude. An E3-D Sentry from RAF Waddington will be on its way as soon as it can take off – unlike the QRA Typhoons, the big four-engined AWACS aircraft don’t sit on the apron waiting for a scramble order twenty-four hours a day – but in the meantime, the CRC’s Weapons Controllers are assigning them to intercept and identify.

The Q-force Typhoon FGR4s of Squadron 17 are scrambled to intercept – hopefully not to shoot at – any and all aircraft behaving oddly: from Russian Air Force Tu-95 long-range bombers over the North Sea, to airliners squawking an emergency transponder code or failing to respond to air traffic control instructions. Consequently, they carry a mix of two AMRAAM and four ASRAAM missiles, shells for the Mauser 27mm cannon, and spare fuel tanks. There’s no call for bombs or beyond-visual-range missiles on this duty: opening fire on a target without positively confirming its identity is a wartime action, and apart from the regular Russian visitors nobody has directly threatened British skies for a very long time.

As Quebec-1 and Quebec-2 begin a banking turn to the west, skirting the edge of the controlled airspace around Leeds Bradford Airport, CRC’s provisional identification of the two unknowns – heading east at roughly 120 knots, two thousand feet up – is that they are either helicopters or light planes. Their presence is suspicious because they’re not responding to Air Traffic Control in any way, and they’re minutes away from the site of an ongoing aviation emergency. Q-1 and Q-2 can see them clearly on their CAPTOR-M radar, using reflected energy from the airport’s approach radar in active mode, but can’t identify their type. Q-1 and Q-2 intend to close for a visual inspection and will try to hail the unidentified aircraft, then escort them to land at an airport with appropriate facilities – depending on what they turn out to be.

But all that is about to change: Q-1 and Q-2 are about to become the first RAF fighters to engage in air combat over England since 1945.

A door opens onto the rooftop of Quarry House beneath the stainless steel–clad spire. In the predawn light Colonel Lockhart’s figure is a hunched silhouette, looking out across the low guard rail down onto the bus station and the gentle slope up towards Vicar Lane. “They’re coming,” he says quietly, fingering his bluetooth headset.

“Still nothing from OCCULUS One.” Jez follows him, hands thrust deep in her pockets. Below him, the shuffling figures of a squad of Residual Human Resources are piling sandbags up on the edge of the roof and stacking ammunition boxes and spare barrels for a pair of M60 machine guns. “OCCULUS Two is inbound via the M1 and should be here in about half an hour. Catterick Garrison are throwing together a couple of recce squadrons, and they’ll be double-timing it down the A1(M) as soon as they’re ready. The Highways Agency is closing the northbound carriageway to facilitate, and Army HQ down south are waking up and kicking First Armoured Div and AAC for a squadron of Longbows, although the choppers are at least four hours away. Even if they close the motorway grid to civilian traffic, the first CB2s can’t get here before late afternoon.”