Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours (3 page)

Pearcey secured the outer door and they retreated towards the stairs.

He could see sweat beading on Gallagher’s forehead. Could sense a similar sweat on his own scalp.

Feel his breath coming fast and his heart racing.

Fear and shock trying to overwhelm him.

This whole situation had started out crazy and it was getting crazier by the minute. If he didn’t get a grip on things and, most importantly himself, it would quickly spiral out of control.

The way the world was turning, he had a sneaky suspicion that it would be quite easy to end up dead.

Brown bread, as the cockney folk said.

You’re history, in the immortal words of the bard’s sister. Joan or Anne or Margaret, he’d could never figure out who was in the band.

Pearcey wasn’t about to let that happen if he could avoid it.

As they reached the door to the stairs, he stopped and laid a hand on Gallagher’s shoulder.

“I’m going back out in a car. I can take a drive round, see if this is widespread. Then get my arse back here before you know I’m gone.”

He smiled and shrugged.

The smile was apologetic and the shrug was half-hearted.

“You don’t have to do this. It’s my job. Not yours.”

Gallagher stared at him, still breathing heavily after the encounter outside. Took a moment, took a big breath.

Gathered himself before replying.

It looked suspiciously like a man readying himself for a fight.

“You know well enough that this is nothing to do with my job Carlton. You wouldn’t have brought me otherwise. Suggested my name when Holte asked for volunteers.”

He stepped back and rested against the still closed door that led back into the complex.

There were noises outside.

Gallagher fumbled in his pockets and produced a packet of cigarettes. Lit one with a trembling hand.

Offered the pack.

Pearcey shook his head.

The last thing he needed at that point was to start smoking again. Although it was sorely tempting. He had a feeling that if he reached out and took one, his hand would have some shake in it as well.

Gallagher took a huge drag before speaking again.

Blew the smoke off to one side.

“I have to go and get my daughter. You know that.”

Anne Gallagher was mid-twenties.

Pearcey had never met her, but Sonny had mentioned her in passing. Neurotic and overly dependent, according to her father.

When he described her, Gallagher’s tone held a mix of love, irritation and despair. Pearcey supposed that was true of any parent, to varying degrees.

He nodded.

“Sonny, I don’t know how to ask this tactfully, so I’m not going to bother trying for tact. Are you sure she wasn’t infected? That she didn’t have the City Flu thing?”

He left unsaid the implications of those questions.

They’d just had an uncomfortably close encounter with one of the possible implications, and the conclusions were worse than uncomfortable.

“Yes, she was fine. She wasn’t feeling great, but Annie never feels great. She’s always got something wrong with her ...that’s just how she is.”

He sighed and ran his hands through his short greying hair.

“I should have brought her in with me. It all happened so fast. I just did what I was told to do. Came here and started prepping stuff. Followed the fucking procedures like a good boy.”

Pearcey stared at his friend.

“Have you spoken to her since it all kicked off?”

Gallagher shook his head.

“I’ve been tied up. Busier than a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. This place is like the Forth Bridge, there’s always something needs doing.

But no, she hasn’t answered when I’ve tried. That doesn’t mean anything. She turns her phone off when she’s, you know, in a bad place.

Having a bad spell. And even if she has the bloody thing turned on, the telecoms are fucked.”

Gallagher grasped Pearcey’s arm.

The aggression gone, replaced by something that resembled pleading.

“Look, it’s Lewisham. That’s only across the bastard river for Christ’s sake. If we get a shift on, we can be there in twenty-five, thirty minutes. Grab Annie and be back here before tea.”

It wasn’t pleading in his eyes. It was desperation.

“Don’t make me go alone Pearcey. I will, but I don’t want to.”

Pearcey nodded again.

“Okay, fair enough.”

<><><>

Carlton Pearcey had known Gallagher for about two years. Pure luck that they were both immune to whatever had swept through most of everyone else. They weren’t bosom buddies by any stretch of the imagination, but Pearcey had grown to genuinely like the man as their paths occasionally crossed.

They’d met due to their jobs.

Pearcey worked for the government in a somewhat vague security capacity. Gallagher was an engineer come odd-job man with responsibility for the maintenance of the CIMC emergency bunker.

The Central Interim Management Complex.

An innocuously bureaucratic name for what was, to all intents and purposes, a vast and sprawling shelter concealed beneath Whitehall.

A hardened facility, initially built to withstand attack in wartime. The prospect of outright attack had become increasingly less likely, but the centre had remained.

Nowadays, it was more myth than reality.

Its existence went unacknowledged.

Officially there was no such place.

Those in the media that were aware of it, were left in no doubt that any reference to it would be unwelcome.

And have unpleasant consequences.

In reality, the centre had been around for decades.

In various incarnations, under a variety of names.

Originally a crisis command centre dating from the Second World War, it had been renovated and expanded in the late seventies and early eighties.

A protected hub that was intended as a control centre in the event of critical failures in the administrative structure.

It had continued to be maintained in the intervening years.

When the City Flu struck and millions began to lapse into unconsciousness, the wheels of emergency process had rolled into action.

Pearcey had been ordered to collect individuals marked as necessary or useful to the administration.

Gallagher had been asked to fulfil the conditions of his contract, and take up residence at the centre.

When a reconnaissance of the surface was required, Pearcey had known that Gallagher would want to be part of it. For no other reason than to go and check on his daughter.

After coming face to mutated face with one of those things, Pearcey wasn’t so sure that it had been his best idea.

Scouting the city was one thing.

A retrieval mission in enemy territory was a different proposition.

Especially when the enemy was a complete mystery.

Unknown numbers.

Unknown capabilities.

Unknown origin.

The brief first-hand experience that he’d had didn’t inspire confidence. Quite the opposite. It left him feeling inadequate and unprepared.

Pearcey had spent a fair amount of his life being scared. It was what he signed on for. Part of the job. Part of the attraction.

He liked it. That sporadic slice of fear added a little zing to life.

This was different.

He didn’t like any of this.

All sense of control had disappeared. Fled like the remnants of a nightmare upon waking.

<><><>

A few minutes later, they stood once again in the shadowy garage.

Fifteen minutes wasted in some respects, but Pearcey wouldn’t have changed it. At least he had a firmer grip on the reality of things.

He already had the keys for the car he’d chosen.

A sleek black Jaguar.

A hundred grand’s worth of supercharged luxury.

Gleaming even in the gloom. Holte had told him to take whatever vehicle he wanted and he’d taken the deputy PM at his word.

Picked one of the better official cars. May as well roll in style had been his thinking. Plus it was fast.

As they strode over to the car, it struck him that he’d have preferred a military vehicle.

Something ugly and armoured.

With big heavy wheels.

If wishes were kisses, we’d all have chapped lips.

He couldn’t remember who’d said that, where he’d first heard it. His mother maybe, or his ex-wife perhaps.

It could have been either. He missed them both.

It was useless pondering.

His mother was long dead and his wife was long gone.

Along with his kid. He didn’t even know where they were living. Up north somewhere.

He had connections, he couldn’t have tracked them down.

At the time, it hadn’t seemed right. They’d wanted away and he wasn’t about to turn into some nutjob stalker chasing after them.

And then?

Well that hoary old bastard time had passed and he’d drifted aimlessly along with it. Not doing much about anything important. Resentment? Shame? Pure irresponsibility?

None and all of the above and it didn’t matter a single, cheerless jot. He hadn’t done anything. That was what mattered.

And now?

Tracking them down now would be next to impossible.

A proper needle in a haystack job.

Complicated by an event that he hadn’t begun to understand yet, with dangers that he couldn’t fully grasp.

And there wasn’t any point pondering his desire for an armoured car either.

There weren’t any of those at the centre carpark and there wasn’t time to find one.

Getting through the secure shutters ate up another ten minutes. A tight spiral of darkly claustrophobic concrete road and blank brick walls. The last gate was a filigree of metal that allowed some light.

Pearcey had a remote that would open it for their exit and close it after them.

He pulled the car to a stop, well shy of the gate.

Got out and eased the car door shut.

A quiet snick that nevertheless had a thick sound to it.

Walked to the gate and checked the road was clear.

He was hoping they could get out and close the door on an empty street.

Pearcey settled himself in the car and in no time at all they were outside, the shutter trundling closed behind them.

The sun was going down, he could see it by the angle of the light.

On several occasions in his life, Pearcey had experienced the sense that he was making a bad call, before he actually committed himself to the course of action.

Call it premonition if you like.

Or call it instinct if that’s preferable.

Maybe subconscious logic, if that rocks your boat, is more acceptable to your particular view of the world.

Whatever the explanation for the feeling, he felt it again then. As they sat in the car, preparing to drive off into the wild, decreasingly blue yonder.

He turned to Gallagher.

“Four hours. Tops. I’m not driving around out here in the dark.”

Jim, Sonny to his friends, Gallagher nodded.

Pearcey would recall what he said after that nod of the head.

Would think about it later in the day.

That four hours would be plenty of time.

Getting to Westminster Bridge should have been a breeze. A walk in the proverbial park.

The distance was insignificant on any normal day.

They had a very fast car.

The roads, on the whole, were empty.

Some stalled traffic, but Pearcey knew the driving was mostly okay. Navigable at least. Some care needed here and there.

He’d been driving round the city for the last few days and had been pleasantly surprised by the decrease in traffic. He detested urban driving. It wasn’t often that he felt like his life was being made easier.

The fact that it required a cataclysmic event for it to happen took the shine off it somewhat.

The easy driving didn’t last very long.

Very little ever works out the way it should or the way you expect. That was a maxim that he’d learned early on in life.

Sometimes though, circumstances conspired to make you forget lessons learned.

They hit the first creature by accident.

Pearcey was accelerating around the corner from the centre exit and it appeared from nowhere.

A hideous wiry thing.

Huge head and massive jaw.

Skeletal limbs that terminated in hands and feet that were too big for reason.

Flailing razor-blade claws that caught the dying rays of the sun and sent shards of light every which way.

It came from a shadowy doorway.

Jumped at the side of the Jaguar.

As if it could take down even a mechanical beast.

Latch on to the glistening black metal and devour it.

The creature struck the curved angle of windscreen and driver’s window and bounced away.

“What the fuck.”

Gallagher shouted without thought. An involuntary outburst, an exclamation that seemed huge in the confined space of the vehicle.

Pearcey was silent.

Slewed the car to a halt.

More reaction than conscious decision.

His foot stamped the brake out of instinct as the impact made him swerve towards the opposite pavement.

He looked back and studied the thing he’d just hit.

It was a tangle of limbs, lying against a wall.

His eyes flicked forward and registered more figures a few hundred yards away. Moving with a staccato caution.

Predatory.

Proportions slightly wrong, even seen from a distance.

His gaze skimmed back to the casualty and he watched, with breath held, as it unfolded smashed limbs and rearranged itself.

The tangle breaking open like the worst kind of flower.

Diseased but somehow still verdant.

It staggered upright.

Swung its head in their direction and began a hobbled run towards them.

The video footage. A shooter.

Pearcey half remembered a YouTube clip from the presentation by the jittery yet ballsy kid he’d brought in from the suburbs.

The kid had stood in front of the assembled survivors in the CIMC government bunker and tried to explain the inexplicable.

Show them evidence of what was happening above their heads and all around the world.

Pearcey remembered the audio on one of the videos. A clip of some guy and his friend shooting strange, maybe make-believe creatures.

Get this ...they don’t die easy. You have to get them in the head to be sure. Hit them in the body or legs and those fuckers just keep getting back up.

Pearcey had half recalled it when Gallagher killed the cleaner woman thing.

At the back of his mind, he’d known it.

Breathed a sigh of relief when Sonny cracked the crow bar across its skull because the action rang a bell.

In more ways than one. The ringing sound.

Get a grip Pearcey. The clock is ticking.

He slammed the Jaguar into gear and accelerated through the figures at the end of the road.

Four of them.

He felt the wheel shudder in his hands as one of them clipped the right wing and was hurled away.

He wouldn’t be surprised if it got up again and begin a damaged pursuit.

It didn’t matter, he was out of there.

Foot jammed to metal.

Engine snarling oiled precision.

Another turn and one more, and then his left leg was extended, slammed against the brake.

The car slipping and juddering as he flexed his shoulders and gripped the steering wheel in an effort to control the slide of stopping.

The road was swirling with them.

Drifting between cars, flickering in and out of growing shadows like forgotten wraiths.

Ghostly and all too real in the diminishing light.

He couldn’t drive through that.

“Jesus Christ. Back up for fuck’s sake.”

Gallagher’s voice an echo of his own thought.

Pearcey was ahead of his friend though. Already reacting.

His arm thrown old style across the seat and a racing reverse. The backend hitting more of them.

Hurling them into the air.

For a time, everything other than driving became secondary.

A short distance became a seemingly endless endeavour. Restrained acceleration and frantic reverse.

The clock continued ticking and the sun continued sinking.

<><><>

Pearcey stopped and surveyed the bridge.

It reminded him of a film. He couldn’t recall which film. He was useless at that sort of stuff.

He half-watched things.

Videos, movies.

Television was something that he absorbed more by osmosis than study. The cinema was worse.

Hopeless.

Other people around him. It was a constant challenge to his awareness.

He found it difficult to relax enough to just let go and ignore his surroundings.

Maybe it was his job.

Perhaps his character.

His eyes only stopped roving when he read books. That was a pastime that delivered relaxation.

In the right environment of course. Where there was no threat.

<><><>

The setting was like something from a movie he’d seen at the cinema.

The one set in London with the guy who was in a coma.

Woke and discovered that the world had gone to shit whilst he was hooked up to tubes and busily thinking the thoughts of those locked inside their own heads. Happily removed from reality.

The film must have made an impression on him for Pearcey to recall that much. When the guy woke, he’d walked on an empty bridge. That was what this reminded him of.

Westminster Bridge was a big structure that had always captivated him, even though he was used to it.

Now, it was just unnerving.

The air of desolation.

The sense of abandonment.

The lack of activity. The absence of people. Traffic.

This time of day, early evening, it ought to be bustling. Pedestrians, fumes and congestion. A welter of humanity in motion.

The sun’s angle and the sense of emptiness lent it a new dimension.

The slant of light, the depth of shadow and contrasting brightness should have been beautiful.

It filled Pearcey with a simple sense of urgency.

Their time was ticking away.

Whirling like a dervish into the void.

Pearcey felt the urgency in his bones, a bad ache that had started when he entered the underground garage and didn’t go away. Just got more insistent. There were so many elements to this that were outside of his control.

So many things to make his job harder. The job had to be done nevertheless.

He had to assess the situation, identify the risks.

Quantify the danger for the powers that be at the bunker and report back with information that would help them make decisions for the nation.

What was left of it.

He felt too fucking tired and too fucking old to do it.

He was out here because he was the best they had.

There wasn’t anyone else at the shelter who was halfway close to his experience. A young field guy would probably have barrelled through this. Taken chances without even considering things. Just blasted ahead and worried about dying later.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any of those available.

Young idiots that wouldn’t think twice about it.

A lot of the people at the shelter were clever. Like the lad who’d delivered the presentation.

Jules ...Julian, whatever his name was

Put him out here, and the cleverness wouldn’t necessarily be the answer. He’d struggle to find his ringpiece using both hands, even with notes and a map.

That was why Pearcey had wanted Gallagher. The man was older, had been around. Knew the corners where the dirt was hidden.

It was part of the reason anyway.

A practical, expedient part.

Gallagher was capable, had some initiative. Which meant he was less likely to be overly reliant on Pearcey if something shitty hit the fan.

Another part of it was compassion.

Gallagher was worried about his daughter and Pearcey could identify with that. He could understand how that felt.

Empathy, who’d have thought it.

Back in the day, he’d been pretty much free of emotional contagion. Sympathy and concern were easily stifled beneath a necessary skin of pragmatism.

The compassion had resurfaced though as he got older. It was one of Pearcey’s weaknesses.

<><><>

The bridge was passable.

He clung to that and vaguely detested himself. It was too much like an old man grasping at straws.

But at least it was one obstacle that could be surmounted. He’d worried that it would have become blocked since he’d last crossed it.

It wasn’t deserted.

There were abandoned vehicles and one or two glimmers of movement. The suggestion of motion was at the far end of the bridge.

Too far for him to be sure.

Given the odd quality of light and his obstructed view.

It could have just been shadow play. Or stress and his old eyes teaming up to spook him.

He didn’t think so though.

Instinct and experience were starting up a soft duet in his head.

A bittersweet melody he’d heard numerous times before. All about turning round and giving it up as a bad job. Getting the hell out of Dodge. In fact leaving Kansas completely, while the leaving was good.

Not that it mattered, whatever tune was getting airtime in his head. They had to cross Westminster Bridge. That eight hundred feet of gorgeously gothic wrought iron was the fastest route to where they needed to go.

Hit Lambeth as quick as possible and blast through.

A small part of him wondered how long it would be before it was painted again.

The glorious bridge.

How long before the detail was properly attended to, maintained in a way that would ensure its survival for future generations.

How long before it saw its usual volume of traffic. The return of feet and wheels pursuing the mundanely important.

It was a distraction and he knew it.

He was indulging it because it gave him an excuse to not push his foot down on the accelerator.

However useless it was to ponder things, sometimes the seduction got the better of you.

Especially when your heart wasn’t in the alternative.

“Is there a problem? Do you see something?”

Gallagher brought him back to the business at hand.

“No, we’ll be fine.”

The engine growled and they started moving.

Optimism, like pondering, was sometimes pointless.