Doomware (27 page)

“It’s okay,” Tarot said when David gave him a quizzical look. “I’ll keep watch with the glasses.”

They left the torches where they were, along with the cat curled up asleep on a pew cushion, and trooped outside, making sure the door was firmly shut behind them. David realised straight away what Tarot wanted them to see: the stars. He’d never seen a sky like it. There was no moon, and the brightness and abundance of the stars was startling. They formed a lambent dome above them like a cosmic light show, the band of the Milky Way clearly visible, completely unobscured by cloud.

“Wow!” the boy said. “Look at them all.”

“Incredible!” David said, craning his neck.

“Why aren’t they always like this?” the boy asked.

“Because city lights drown them out.”

“I’ll be around,” Tarot said, and he disappeared into the night, weapon at the ready.

David had his arms around the boy and could feel him shaking. “Are you frightened?” he asked him.

“No, I’m just cold,” the boy said.

“The darkness doesn’t bother you?”

“I can see in the dark if I want to.”

“Oh yes, I forget.”

They went around the side of the church where there was a sheer drop beyond a rickety-looking railing. They were out of the wind here, and the drop made it impossible for any zombies to approach from that direction. David stood with his back against the church wall, his arms wrapped around the boy in front of him.

“Look!” the boy exclaimed, pointing.

David had seen it too: a shooting star. It was closely followed by another.

“It must be a meteor shower,” David said. “Have you made a wish? You must make a wish whenever you see a shooting star.”

“I can make two wishes then?”

“Yes, but don’t tell me what they are.”

“Okay.”

“Can you see the Milky Way?”

The boy nodded. “I’m zooming in on it.”

“That’s the centre of our galaxy. Those are densely packed stars.”

“Like the sun.”

“Yes, only much further away.”

“I can see where the Eridani are.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think they’re okay up there?”

“I don’t know. I hope so,” David said. He couldn’t bring himself to voice his own personal belief that the Eridani were now dead and gone, wiped out long before their transmissions ever got anywhere near Earth.

“Will the stars shine for ever?” the boy asked.

“Oh no. They’ll burn out one day. They’ll run out of fuel and die.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“Even the sun?”

“Even the sun. Nothing’s for ever.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“Well, only one thing,” David said, running his fingers through the boy’s hair as he peered up at the heavens. “Once something dies, once it’s dead and gone – that’s for ever.”

The words hung heavy in the night air. Everything died and it died for ever. It was the truth, the way of things. Such a bitter pill could have been sugar-coated for a kid to swallow, but not a kid like Shawn, who had witnessed so much horror.

“I don’t want you to die,” the boy said.

David was touched the boy had said this rather than “I don’t want to die”. He placed his hand on the boy’s thin chest, feeling his heartbeat, and spoke into his ear. “I have to one day, but not for ages. In the meantime I have a job to do, and it’s to protect you. If anyone tried to hurt you I’d have to kill them. That’s how important this job is. I won’t let anyone hurt you, little man. Ever.”

* * *

David slept in fits and starts, woken frequently by unfamiliar sounds caused by wind gusting against the church. In the early hours he crept outside. Under normal circumstances he would have hated being outside in such darkness, but the stars were calling to him. He went to the same spot he’d stood in with the boy and admired them. Their beauty was mesmerising. There was something reassuring about them he didn’t quite understand, and had certainly never appreciated before. Maybe it was their remoteness, or their timelessness, or their disconnection from the horrors that were transpiring on the face of a tiny, inconsequential planet called Earth. The whole world had gone to hell and the stars were still there in their familiar constellations, unchanged, indifferent.

After a few minutes he heard the church door open. A few seconds later Tarot appeared, fuzzy but recognisable in the darkness.

“What’s going on?” he asked softly.

David smiled. “Nothing,” he whispered.

Tarot stood beside him and looked up at the night sky. “This is some place, huh?”

“Yes, it is. In fact, it’s enough to make you think we were meant to find it. Destined, almost.”

“Are you taunting me?” Tarot asked, his tone good-naturedly accusing.

“Come on! A church, the first night we’re away? You think fate brought us here, don’t you?”

“No comment.”

“Or God?”

“No comment.”

David laughed quietly. A shooting star carved a silent arc across the sky.

“I’ve never seen so many shooting stars before,” David said.

“How often did you get to look before?”

“True.”

“We don’t see what we never look for.”

A distant owl hooted. David wrapped his arms around himself, shivering slightly, and sighed.

“Why did this happen, Tarot?” he said. “Why did the whole world go to hell? I keep thinking if only the human race had never allowed cyber’ systems that controlled absolutely everything. If only we could go back in time and change that one thing, then none of this would’ve happened.”

Tarot contemplated this for a moment. Then he seized David’s upper arm. “Don’t you think it’s possible they lost something when they lost the ability to feel
this
?” He squeezed his biceps until it hurt. “That they anaesthetised themselves into it? That they lost some essential part of what made them human when they gave themselves over to machines? Something
vital
. Something no computerised system could ever make up for.”

Tarot hadn’t relinquished his grip on David’s arm; it was going numb with pain. He touched the back of Tarot’s hand, and the pincer-like grip relaxed at once. David stared at him in the darkness, unsettled. Tarot had never talked in terms of “them” and “us” before, nor had he ever implied a belief that cybernetics had brought it on themselves, that they had deserved it. He’d thought along those lines in the past and it had always left him feeling ashamed of himself. Then there was the note of something disconcerting in Tarot’s voice. Something uncharacteristic. Something dangerous, even.

“I don’t know,” David said uncertainly. “Is that what you think?”

Tarot let go of his arm. “I don’t know either,” he said. His voice had returned to normal.

“What would you do if you met the creator of the virus? If it was just one person, and they were standing right in front of you?”

Tarot thought for a while. “I can’t answer that question.”

“You’d want justice to be done though?”

“Of course, but I don’t think justice is even possible in the circumstances. How would you atone for the murder of billions?”

“I hate them, whoever they are.”

“I try not to hate anything,” Tarot said with a sigh. “People have a way of becoming what they hate.”

In the morning they carted everything back down the hill. David felt an affection for the church and wanted to stay – so he could look at the stars again if nothing else – but he knew they had to move on. They couldn’t risk running out of food and water in such an isolated location. Tarot refuelled the car and they continued west, David at the wheel. The roads were mostly clear of stationary traffic, but the winding nature of them prevented travelling at high speeds. As soon as they hit a dual carriageway David was able to gun the engine and they made good progress.

After driving through a little white town, they crested a hill and suddenly the ocean was before them, deep-blue and glinting in the sunlight. The boy was beside himself with excitement. David wound his window down and took in the sensations of the seaside. The dull roar of the waves. The call of seagulls. The taste of salt in the air. All of these called to mind childhood memories and his spirits soared.

The coastal town they entered was sandwiched between tree-covered hills on one side and the Atlantic on the other. It was home to an eclectic collection of dwellings, a combination of big and small, old and new, from ramshackle old chalets to palatial new estates. It was quaint and picturesque in its own way (if you ignored all the signs of apocalypse). The seafront area was lined with modern apartment blocks and static caravan parks. There was a small green, several shops and an amusement arcade. They hardly saw any zombies at all, lifting David’s spirits even higher. It seemed too good to be true. They had the place to themselves – a summer seaside ghost town.

They stopped in a car park beside the amusement arcade. To the right a pebble ridge stretched away into the distance, and to the left a slipway led down to a sandy beach. When he saw the beach David’s heart sank. It had been too good to be true. The beach was crawling with zombies. Zombies fighting. Zombies feeding on bodies. Zombies fucking. Zombies wandering about aimlessly. It was like a great panoply of zombie action.

“What the hell?” David said.

“They like the beach,” Tarot said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“They’re not going in the water,” the boy observed.

David peered at the distant ocean. The boy was right: he couldn’t see any zombies actually in the surf.

“If they don’t go into the water,” David said, “and if the tide comes right in–”

“Which it does,” Tarot interrupted him; “hence the pebble ridge.”

“Then they’ll be forced–”

“Into the town.”

“Great.”

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the Everards and the Varleys and the honeytrappers.

“What do you think?” David asked Tarot.

“It’ll be the same everywhere,” Tarot said. “I think we should try one of those apartment complexes. If they were holiday homes most of ‘em should’ve been empty.”

“Good idea.”

David threw the Land Rover into gear and hit the accelerator. He was keen to put the disappointment of the beach behind them as quickly as possible.

The first apartment building they came to – a large sign proclaimed as being
Shanti Court: 2, 3 & 4 bedroom luxury apartments
– had an unusual, futuristic design with curved motifs reminiscent of ocean waves. It was four storeys tall at its highest point and had balconies front and back. There was an entrance to an underground car park, but the barrier preventing access to it was huge, metal and firmly shut.

“You two stay here,” Tarot said. “I’ll take care of it.”

He jumped out and disappeared around the side of the building.
 

Seconds later they heard gunshots ring out. David opened his door, eager to check that Tarot was all right, but just then Tarot reappeared and flashed them an okay sign.

Tarot returned a couple of minutes later. “I’m inside, but I can’t budge the barrier.”

“I’ll park somewhere else,” David said.

He drove to the rear of the building, where there was a small visitors’ car park. It was empty; David took this to be a good sign. He quickly parked up, and together they trooped to the ground-floor reception. David immediately noted there wasn’t a smell of death about the place; at least, none more so than anywhere else – another good sign.

“I think we ought to let Shawn decide again,” Tarot said, pointing to a retro feature fixed to the wall: a floor plan etched onto a metal plaque. “Which one do you want to stay in?”

Shawn gaped, his blue eyes wide.

“The third floor’s got two penthouses,” David offered.

“Oh, I want a penthouse!” the boy said excitedly, bobbing up and down on the spot. “Yay, a penthouse! What’s a penthouse like?”

Tarot grinned. “The top floor’s probably safest anyway.”

The lift appeared to be in working order. David and the boy rode up, while Tarot took the stairs just in case the lift got stuck.

On the top floor landing the boy was faced with another choice: the left penthouse or the right penthouse. He used a counting rhyme to decide, coming up with the left-hand one. Tarot set about gaining entry. There were several ways of doing it, but the quickest was his preferred method: explosives. He packed Apartment 28’s lock with plastic explosive and primed it with a corded electrical detonator. He took greater care than usual, attempting to use just the right amount of explosive to blow the lock without rendering the door completely unusable. They took cover on the stairs.

For the boy’s benefit, Tarot cried, “
Fire in the hole!
”

He triggered the explosion. The muffled
bang
was a lot less dramatic than his warning cry had been, making them laugh. When he examined his handiwork Tarot was satisfied: the door was open but hadn’t been blown to pieces.

David stepped into the apartment and breathed deeply, searching for a stench of rotting bodies beneath the acrid smell of the explosives, but there was none. The apartment was ultra-modern and ultra-tidy. Off the hall were three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room that contained an open-plan kitchen and a dining area. Every room except the bathroom had access to a balcony. The floors were tasteful parquet or tile. But by far the most impressive thing about the place was the view. The living area and master bedroom had glorious views – notwithstanding the zombies – of the beach and the ocean, with full-length windows to maximise the effect. In the real world the place must have cost a fortune.

“It’s like a show home,” David marvelled. “And this was just somebody’s holiday home.”

“Maybe it’s a rental apartment, and it wasn’t booked out,” said Tarot.

“I bet when the tide comes in it’ll be like being
in
the sea.”

The boy ran from room to room. “I love it!” he cried. “I’ve chosen my room.”

Trying his luck, he’d chosen the master bedroom with the en suite bathroom, walk-in wardrobe and stunning oceanic view. The two men smiled knowingly at each other.