Thy Fearful Symmetry (23 page)

Then one of their number had ripped out his heart.

It had not been a simple thing, the tearing out of the heart. It had been slow, clumsy, painful, and for most of it the man had been alive. Melissa had screamed into the wind, and would probably still be doing so if Malachi had not physically shaken her, rattling her teeth in her head.

“The end of the world,” he had shouted at her. “If we don't get through them, it's the end of the world!” Wide-eyed, she had stared at him, realising what he wanted to do, what she knew they had to do. “Stay close! Do you hear? Stay close, and keep moving!”

That had been what saved them. Individually, the dead were little threat. They were slow, and mad, and in some sort of pain that Melissa couldn't hope to comprehend. The numbers were the problem. If they got trapped among them, with no room to dodge and move, then they were finished.

It didn't help that every time one came close, and she saw the wet hole in its abdomen, she wanted to freeze up. So far, she had stumbled, dodged, and jumped, and they had not taken her.

When she had seen that first man, who died so painfully among the pack of the dead, clamber to his feet as Malachi and she were running towards the group, she had nearly turned and fled. What stopped her was knowing that Malachi might then never discover which church concealed Pandora. The world would end, and it would be her fault.
 

Despite the snow and the ice-cold wind, Melissa was dripping sweat. Stumbling over a fallen body, skipping on the spot to dodge its flailing hands, she watched Malachi with awe. While she had slept at the hotel, he had not rested, yet he moved like an athlete freshly woken. Earlier, she had seen his strength and brutality. Now she saw his grace.

Smashing his blackjack against the head of an old, dead woman hard enough to knock her into those behind her and stall their progress, he whirled with the same motion to slice his knife across the eyes of a naked teen boy coming at him from the left, leaving it stumbling blindly into its kin. He ended the motion by ducking low beneath the arms of a third zombie (for that was what they were, whether she liked the word or not) and simultaneously lashing out with one leg to bring a fourth crashing to the ground. A maelstrom of violence, he was aware of everything around him, and everything he did had but one focus – to take them onwards.

But the pack of zombies travelled with them. They weren't going to get through to the other side, because the other side kept moving back.
 

Malachi fought on anyway, and Melissa stumbled along in the lee of his ferocity, watching as one fallen zombie grabbed his flapping coat, only to hear the crack as his boot shattered its wrist. She hopped over this body too, wondering how long he could blaze so brightly, before they first took him, and then her.

Melissa tripped over the kerb. How they had come so far to the left when they had been in the centre of the road? It could only mean that Malachi was losing control of the forward advance. Staggering, her head back, she saw what was a hundred yards further along the street.

“Malachi,” she screamed. “It's there! The church is there! We're there!” She saw him take a fast glance towards it at the same time as cold, clammy arms wrapped around her neck. They tightened before she could cry out, cutting off her air, and an icy, leaden belly pushed against her back. She was lifted from her feet and swung against the wall, her cheek smashing against the brick. She had no strength to struggle, even when a frigid hand probed the flesh above her pelvis.

When it shoved through her skin, freezing her exposed, steaming organs, she found that she could scream and struggle after all.

“Melissa!” Malachi's voice, and she saw him trying to fight back to her, a flapping black shadow knocking aside one, then another, then another of the walking dead, but her wide, twitching eyes couldn't respond, and he was going dim, and that vast, invading hand was pushing further up into her. Something had sundered, and her years as a nurse brought back clear pictures of the diaphragm, the slab of muscle at the bottom of the torso that made her breathe. That was why there was no air anymore.

As her vision dimmed a final time, she saw the flapping shadow pause, and then turn. He was going. Malachi was going to save the world. She had done her job, but she would not rest easy. Her final thoughts, as her body shuddered and rocked each time the hand drove further in, and bloody vomit clogged her throat, were with the dead around her.

Did they know who they had been?

Would she?

Could you kill yourself, if you were already dead?

Calum stood in front of the church that had once been his refuge, unable to step past the gate, misery marinating his heart. The wind was up, strong enough to snatch at his hair, and he wondered what time it was. How long until morning, when light would throw at least a thin veil of harsh reality over his city?

Was there going to be a morning at all? Perhaps this was all there would be for the rest of time. Perhaps the apocalypse had eaten the sun, and it was his fault for not handing Ambrose and Pandora over to Metatron when he had the chance.

At the end of the path, the door to the church was open, and a man in a Celtic t-shirt was propped next to it, smoking a hand rolled cigarette and eyeing him suspiciously. There were obviously worshippers inside, and his heart sank further. Was Ambrose even there?
 

Suddenly, the smoking man jerked upright, dropping his cigarette and crushing it guiltily underfoot. “Father Baskille! What are you doing here?”

“Bob? Is that you?” One of his flock. One more person he had failed.

“Aye, Father. What are you doing here? I thought you were having a holiday, or something? Reflecting, like?”

“Was I?”

“Aye, your replacement said.” Bob walked down the path, rubbing his arms against the cold. “Mad night, isn't Father?”

“That it is, Bob.” Calum guessed what Ambrose had done, and almost smiled. “Could you bring him out here?”

“You not coming in, Father?”

“Not just now, Bob. Just fetch him, please.”
 

“No worries.” Brow furrowed, snow melting on his red face, Bob went back up the path, and vanished inside.

Moments later, Ambrose burst out the door, hair flying, and ran down the path. He slid to an elegant halt in the slush, and Calum thought he had never seen the demon look so happy. They looked at each other for a moment, outcasts both.

“What do you think of my doorman? I've asked him to guard the stairwell, and make sure nothing happens to your valuables.”

“Or yours.” This time, Calum really did smile. “How is she?”

Ambrose stared briefly into the wind. The snow and fire blowing around him made him an impossibly romantic figure. He looked back at Calum. “The same. I take it things got complicated?”

Calum realised how he must look, covered in blood, burned flesh, and bruises. Ambrose knew all about that, didn't he? “Since you left me bleeding in that flat, not a lot better. Here's your box.” Calum pulled it out of his back pocket, and part of him was amazed to see it still in one piece. He held it out, but Ambrose didn't take it. The demon was looking at him strangely, his pinched features frozen.
 

 
“I was in a flat?”

“I'd be dead if you hadn't pulled Clive off me.”

Ambrose took a careful breath in. “Clive?” His voice was almost inaudible beneath the wind. The demon reached out and took the box, looking at it as though it would bite him. “Clive Huntley?”

Calum was becoming scared all over again. He had brought the box to Ambrose. Everything was supposed to be all right now. Why wasn't everything all right?

“Calum,” Ambrose looked at him, and there was a terrifying grief in his eyes. “My plan isn't going to work. I'm not going to be able to escape as I thought I might. You have to tell me exactly what happened at the flat.”

“But you were there…”

“I haven't left the Church all day.”

Calum didn't understand, but he told the demon anyway. He wanted this to end, so he could find somewhere sheltered to curl up, sleep, and forget that he had ruined the world with his loyalty to this creature.

As he finished, Ambrose nodded. “Yes, of course I had to have you bring the box here, or I wouldn't have been able to save you.” Gibberish. “Thank you, Calum. You've been a… friend. I'm going to return the favour, and make sure you get here alive. I wish I knew why.”

“What…” Suddenly, the demon's attention was on the street, as a crowd of quietly drunken rioters staggered around the corner of the church. Calum sagged at the thought of fighting through them.

“Calum,” Ambrose said, and the urgency in his voice made the ex-priest focus. “Run.”

“They can barely stand up.”

“There's a reason for that. Run.”

“What reason?” Calum saw the blood, the wounds, the listless eyes, and knew what he was seeing.

Even if he didn't believe it.

He turned to run, and saw more of them coming around the other side of the church. He was trapped. Instinctively, he wanted to step through the gate, but he forced himself not to. With a tired look at Ambrose, he turned and staggered across the road, hoping that the door to the block of tenements might be open. Throwing himself against it, he found it was not. On the other side of the street, Ambrose leaned over the gate, his knuckles white as he gripped it, unable to come out and help, as Calum was unable to join him safely on holy ground. The undead surrounded him.

The church was going to protect the demon, and throw the one time priest to the horde.

Dead men and women formed a semi-circle six or seven deep around him. In front of him, a young woman with short, black, curly hair stared at him. He could smell her perfume.

Everything was calm for a moment, then the knowledge that he was going to die infected his flesh like a virulent disease, and he began to scream.

Malachi's hatred was absolute, but no matter how many opponents he stabbed or bludgeoned aside, he couldn't make anything die.
 

Somewhere in the crowd behind him, he knew that Melissa had found her feet, and shambled away in search of the living.

Spinning on one leg, he slammed his heel into the face of the last zombie between the churchyard wall and himself, payback for the one that had struck lucky and broken his nose. Blood poured down his lower face, a source of warmth in the freezing night. The zombie went down, and he leaped over it, hands hitting the wall so he could boost himself over.

Landing in the churchyard, he whirled, expecting arms to be reaching for him, but there were none. The zombies were milling away from the church, suddenly interested in something happening at the front. It was as though they could not see him on holy ground. Bone tired, Malachi took a moment to relax, staring out at the mob hitching past. There were more of them now, and he knew that if he watched for long enough, he would see raven black curls among the lolling heads.

He stopped looking. He hadn't wanted Melissa to die. That his job was easier without having to babysit her was beside the point.
 

He refused to examine the moment when he had decided that she was as good as dead. She had made eye contact, or tried to, her pupils tiny as the fat zombie thrust into her, working his way through her flesh, grunting stupidly as it pushed towards its goal. Malachi did not want to wonder whether he could have moved faster, even saved her. He did not want to acknowledge that, having found the church, her death had conveniently removed a problem for him.

Swallowing the new hate, directed inwards this time, he bit his cheek to clear his head. There was only one important matter left to deal with, and then he could wallow all he pleased. Pandora.

He weaved past the gravestones along the left side of the church, feeling the cold acutely now that he was cooling down from the fight. As he reached the front of the building, he saw what had distracted the dead. Across the street, a battered, bloodied man was trapped outside a Victorian tenement block. The dead were all around him, but for some reason had not yet attacked.

“Ambrose,” the man screamed. “Help me!”

Ambrose must have been the man standing at the gate to the church, a slender figure with long, wavy black hair. He looked distraught, and Malachi did not blame him. His friend was about to die, and all he could do was watch.

The zombies closed ranks, snow swirling around them, and Malachi lost sight of the man they had surrounded. Ambrose leaned forwards as though he would dash through the gate and onto the street, and then slumped.

Malachi saw that the front door to the church was ajar, and left the man to his grief.
 

Slipping inside, Malachi met stillness, and the hushed murmur of prayer. After the buffeting wind, the peace was a miracle in itself, and one that made him want to relax. Appearances were deceptive though. Somewhere in this building, Pandora waited for him.

He wouldn't find her among this field of bowed heads. Malachi could taste desperation seeping through their pores. These weren't the faithful. Almost everybody in the room was plea-bargaining for a better deal when the world ended. Malachi sneered, knowing it wasn't fair to compare these people to the quiet, resolute example that Melissa had set, but doing it anyway. He remembered the conflict on her face when she had followed him towards the dead. Trust, and fear. She had tried to save these cretins, had thrown herself into danger to do so. Were any of them worth it?

Walking quietly around the side of the congregation, shaking his head to fight off the somnambulistic effect of the muted praying, Malachi made for the door at the far end, near the dais. Stepping into a short corridor, he was glad to push the door closed behind him, putting a barrier between himself and the hypnotic murmur.

“Back inside, pal.” The voice was gruff, broad Glaswegian, and its owner was sitting at the bottom of a set of stairs leading up, wearing football colours like a badge of authority. “Priest says nobody goes up there.”

That alone was enough to make Malachi take the opposite view, and he glanced up at the same time as he grabbed the man's hair and slammed his head against the stone wall. The green-clad sentinel went out like a light, slumping back, and his head whacked hard against a step. Malachi bounded up into the darkness.