Graveyard Shift (23 page)

As I climbed from level to level, the majority of the guardians stayed with me while one flew just ahead like a scout and another watched the rear. At each turn of the stairs, enemy agents swooped into range, looking for a way through, but the guardians were multiplying, sending wave after wave of reinforcements down on the shadow creatures, ripping and tearing the darkness apart.

The climb seemed to go on and on, but finally I dragged myself up the last few steps and stood on the platform below the first cabinets marked
HA
and looked out across the ever-growing space with the clouds just above me. I heard an explosion deep in the building — the beginning of the end, I hoped.

Then I rolled the stepladder into place, started up, and pulled out the fifth cabinet drawer from the top. There were more Harvesters here than I'd expected, each with its own folder and reference number. I found Dad's tucked away near the back.

As I opened the file, a second, more distant explosion rang out. Inside the folder was Dad's entire history, indexed and sorted all the way up to the fatal crash.

I couldn't read it now. I wouldn't be able to bear it. Someday, perhaps, I'd try. There was only one thing to do now, and my escort seemed to know. They parted and drifted away as I
kissed Dad's card and slipped it inside a slot at the back of the folder, then closed the folder and filed it away.

The siren stopped immediately. The last intruders faded from view, their dark shapes shrinking into corners and melting away. The winged guardians swept up through the clouds toward the rafters miles above.

It must be over,
I thought. The books were balanced, the numbers aligned. Shattered and close to tears — but I wouldn't cry yet, not yet — I began the long climb back down.

 

The waiting room was the first place I checked after the records office. Ancientspeak music wafted across the white-walled space, a weird kind of bossa nova with soft-spoken lyrics that made no sense to me.

Becky and Mum were together on a white two-seater sofa, watched over by a pair of armed, grim-faced Vigilants. Mum looked broken as she leaned against Becky, who was stroking her hair and whispering, “There, there.”

“It's ending,” I said.

Mum didn't hear me, but Becky looked up. “There's still some activity in the conference room. Lu just got called away.”

“I'd better go.”

“Don't,” she said quickly. “It's under control. You did what you had to do.”

“I'll be fine,” I said. “I won't be long.”

“Please, Ben . . . don't.”

I couldn't begin to tell her what I'd seen in the last few minutes. Whatever she was worried about in the conference room couldn't be any worse than that.

“I'm responsible for all this,” I said. “I mean
all
of it. I need to make amends if I still can.”

Mum peered up at me then, just before I left the room. She didn't seem the least bit aware of her surroundings. Her eyes were glazed and far away.

“It's OK,” I told her anyway. “Like Dad said, it's going to be fine.”

Then I turned away, heading out along the hallway.

The fighting had stopped, but the aftermath was awful to see. Bodies littered the floor, Shifters and Vigilants alike. The walls were cracked and marked bloodily in several places. A scattering of gray-black ashes marked the spot where the Deathhead had fallen. A 11215 if ever I'd seen one.

The conference room was hazy with smoke. It rose from the floor, from burned-out defenders and demons. As I moved inside, it was hard to see much of anything at all. The few figures still standing were like ghosts in the fog. The place had been ripped apart, chairs scattered, the great long table split into two. It looked like the end, but now I heard movement in the smoke — a roar and a muffled scream, the sound of a Mawbreed ingesting a man's soul with one greedy gulp.

It wasn't over. The enemy were defeated, but they didn't know when to stop. I moved deeper into the smoke, half expecting them to lunge at me left and right. The first clear sight I had of anything was a Vigilant cowering on the floor, gazing up in terror at the Mawbreed looming over him.

I couldn't make it stop. I tried to picture something to save him, but it wouldn't come in time. The Mawbreed was fast, faster than a thing that size ought to be, and its drooling mouth covered the guard before I could blink.

Back along the hallway, the telegraph woke again with a sound like a backfiring car. Here came another list of names to add to the last, but there wouldn't be any record of the souls these demons were stealing.

How many?
I wondered.
How many more?

The smoke cleared just a little, forming a canopy under the ceiling, and I noticed another figure stretched out on the floor in front of me, dressed all in white, battered and burned. My heart slumped as I moved nearer and saw Lu kneeling over him. She was weeping and clutching his hand. She looked up as my shadow fell over him, then she looked back at Mr. October.

A fireball, or something like one, had torn straight through him. There were dark scattershot marks around his midriff and chest and a great deal of blood. For a minute — it could've been longer — my mind shut down. I couldn't think. Couldn't feel a thing. I prayed for a dark hole to open up so I could roll inside it and vanish.

“He's breathing,” Lu said.

“No!” I knelt down, facing her. “Is he really?”

“I'm sure of it.”

I let it sink in for a moment. Some relief. Still hope.

“What happened?” I asked.

She shook her head, uncertain. “He was like this when I got here. He rang, but too late.”

Somewhere in the thick of the smoke, a Mawbreed growled. Another, finishing its meal, belched loudly.

“Too slow,” Mr. October murmured. At the sound of his voice, Lu and I looked at each other, drawing the same short breath.

“You're alive,” I said.

He tried to nod, but ended the movement wincing.

“Too slow,” he repeated. “This body wasn't meant for combat. It hit me before I had time to change. There's a lesson in there somewhere, Ben. Never bring your mourning attire to a war zone.”

His gray eyes held mine. His face muscles ticked as if he was trying to take on another appearance but hadn't the strength.

“Sometimes it's all too much,” he said. It was the first thing I'd ever heard him say, a lifetime ago at Highgate Cemetery. Feeling through his pockets, I found a handkerchief and dabbed it around his damp face.

“You know what to do to finish this,” Mr. October said. “And you know
how
. It's your time now, young man.”

I knew very well what he meant. I had to visualize what I wanted so clearly that I could have sketched it.

His eyes fluttered shut. Perhaps he'd only blacked out. He still might survive. So I wouldn't mourn yet. I'd only feel what I needed to feel. All I needed now, as I got up to my feet and the seven remaining Mawbreed came into view, all I really needed was rage.

They dragged their great bulk toward us, leaving silvery snail trails across the stone floor. Seven red mouths gaped open, scenting us on the air. I took a step forward, bunching my fist around the handkerchief as the picture came fully together in my head.

It wasn't pretty, but it had to be done. It wasn't something I'd ever boast about, but I wanted it now more than anything.

“For my dad,” I said, “and for Mr. October. For everything you've done here tonight. For everything you are.”

Lu let out a gasp behind me as a tremor rolled through the room. Everything seemed to flicker and turn black for a second.
It's your time now,
Mr. October had said, and I wondered if I found the phrase book in my pocket and opened it the words might finally hold steady and be still.

It wasn't easy to watch when the Mawbreed began to eat one another. But I'd made this happen and I had to see it through.

It began when two of them ambushed another, turning on it from both sides, their ravenous mouths clamping down on it and devouring it in three, four swallows. At the same
time, the other four went into a kind of standoff, facing one another for several moments before all flying in at once, chomping blindly, smothering one another with their suckered hands. Suddenly the whole nest of them were pulled into the same fight for survival. I'd imagined all this, I'd dreamt it up, but a part of me wished I hadn't.

Mawbreed fed upon Mawbreed until only one was left standing, and that one was so morbidly bloated that it couldn't move. It lumbered to and fro like a drunk, letting out a belch that would've drowned out the siren if it hadn't already been switched off. The creature gave me one last lingering look — if it could see anything at all, and I wasn't sure that it could — and opened its yawning, dribbling mouth as far as it could go.

Then it proceeded to eat itself.

I watched until there was nothing left to see. Wherever it went after that long last swallow, I'll never know. I felt drained as I came slowly back to myself and looked down on Mr. October.

“Will he make it?” I said to Lu. “Will he heal?”

She looked at me, stunned by what she'd just witnessed. It took her some time to find the words.

“What you just did . . . I never saw anything like it.” Then she nodded, remembering the question. “There's a chance. His pulse is strong.”

She glanced past me and across the room, eyes widening. I followed her look and saw what she saw: the last surviving enemy in the room.

Its shadow nimbled down the wall — the spider shape whose web had sucked out the light. When it reached the floor, resting in the shade below the windows, I almost lost sight of it. Then it spun itself a new form, a nearly but not quite human form with two arms and two legs that hovered above the ground in front of the stained-glass windows.

Its face wasn't clear to see, but I knew the general shape of it well enough, and I recognized the grating voice when it spoke.

“Next time,” said Nathan Synsiter, the scarecrow, second in command to Randall Cadaverus. “Next time, Ben Harvester. We told you what would come upon you if you took sides in this struggle. Don't think it's over between us. Whatever else you do, don't fool yourself about that. We'll be back for full payment, with interest.”

I was still trying to decide what to do with him — flip him inside out or make him explode — when he hurled himself at the glass, dissolving for an instant, then becoming just another frozen figure in an ancient battlefield scene.

This battle was over; the eternal war would go on. I'd taken only a small part, yet seen enough for a lifetime. As I turned from the windows, a medical team ran inside the room, followed by a crew of battered and bruised Vigilants. The medics ran to Mr. October while, behind them, Becky looked in from the door. My mother was with her. She looked OK, but I'd seen her look much, much better.

Becky slowly took in the scene, the carnage, the injuries to Mr. October, with mortified eyes.

“Oh my God, Ben, is he . . . ?”

“Not yet,” I said. They were stretchering him away when I noticed Mr. October's fingers wiggle at his side. The movement reminded me of the first sweet apple he'd pulled from the air for me, and I thought,
You know, he may look fragile, but he's very resilient. Where there's life, there's hope.

Lu scrambled to her feet and dusted herself off, then took my arm as we walked from the room.

“I'll take you home now,” she said. “You did good, very good. But that's enough for one night.”

“And what a night,” Becky said. “What a Halloween.”

We went out, leaving the empty conference room behind — empty except for the Overseers frowning down from their portraits at the carnage.

W
ell, that's what happened. It's everything I know, up to and including Halloween night at HQ.

So this is my dispatch from Pandemonium House, hidden away in a place no one will ever find it unless they know how to look. And you do have to look in just the right way, otherwise the walls on Camden Passage stay sealed and the alley beyond it stays hidden. It's a secret.

I'm recording this for myself, to try to make sense of it all. I'm typing it at the desk on the old Olivetti Lettera 22. Built in 1958, pistachio colored, it could've been anywhere in its life before it came here. It could've belonged to a famous author or to a war correspondent who carried it around the globe, or it could've been here all the time. Perhaps it's never left this place, and it's only ever been used to record the names of the soon-departed.

That's the part of the job I'm starting to like least. After what very nearly happened to Mum — and I still swear it was her name I saw that night, not Dad's — it hurts to type the cards. Whenever the telegraph spits out a new name, I know someone else somewhere else is hurting too, or soon will be.

You can't take these things for granted. You have to concentrate. I've learned my lesson and I know not to mistype the cards, not to misfile them, and never, ever to unbalance the books.

Two hours after we left the conference room, word reached us that Mr. October's condition had worsened. Ministry medics were holding a vigil while Sukie, who quickly recovered and returned to duty, kept a close eye on the telegraph, hoping and praying his number wouldn't come up.

I want badly to see him again, fully recovered. I want to see the twinkle in his eyes. Still, there are times when I think it would've been better if we'd never met at all. Life would've been simpler, at least. I'm part of the eternal war now. I've made a target of Mum as well as myself, and I have to be watchful every second. You never know what's waiting in the shadows.

“I'm not out of the woods yet,” Mum said the last time we spoke, but she's slowly improving every day. Now that I think of it, she's seemed better ever since the moment Dad looked into her eyes and touched her arm. Maybe what she'd needed most of all was a chance to see him one more time. Closure, Mr. October had called it.

There's a postcard on the desk by the typewriter. Mum sent it over the weekend and it arrived in today's mail. It's from Lanzarote and pictures a rugged desert terrain, all gray and orange under a clear blue sky with palm trees and volcanic mountains in the distance.

Ellie's still waiting to hear about the condo, but they went anyway, and the long days of sunshine are working wonders, Mum's postcard says in very legible handwriting. She wishes I were there. She'd tried to persuade me to go, but my duties here will keep me busy until Mr. October returns. If he ever returns.

Mum isn't happy about my involvement. She probably never will be. After that night at HQ, I had to tell her everything, and she still hasn't come around to my way of seeing things. In time I hope she'll understand, that she'll support everything I have to do and be like Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, or like Iron Man's confidante, Pepper Potts. But I don't see it happening any time soon.

Before she flew to the island, we used some of Aunt Carrie's money for Dad. It didn't feel right, Mum said, to buy a marker for a cemetery or churchyard in his hometown where we'd never see it. So instead we paid for a bench with a brass nameplate in London Fields. It sits to one side of a tree-lined path with a view of the Pub on the Park in one direction, and in the other direction a view of the house they're rebuilding on our street.

I sat on that bench on Sunday, a quiet morning, too cold for barbecues and sun lovers. I thought about Dad as I added
him to my sketch pad, picturing him as I'd seen him for the last time, healed and at peace after four unspeakable years.

I missed him and I knew I wouldn't see him again. He wouldn't squeeze my hand again or read me bedtime stories, and he wouldn't whisper to me on the wind with the dead, dry leaves blustering around me, because he wasn't there anymore. We're still recovering, Mum and me, we're still coming to terms. We know it will take quite a while too.

During Mr. October's absence, I've formed a close-knit team with Lu and Becky — one of the Ministry's best in the field. It's a punishing schedule, and now and again we see things we'd rather not see, such as the 63964 last night that none of us wanted to look at. But for the most part we keep good time and the work is rewarding.

At school it's been harder on Becky than me. Her gang is distant toward her now, she isn't part of the in-crowd, and they don't invite her to their houses so often. She's sad about that, but she knows that her true calling comes first. Most lunchtimes we go to the crypt and talk about things we've heard and seen on our shifts, but we never discuss Ministry business in school.

Raymond Blight gave Becky a push in the corridor the other day. I called him on it, but all I got in return was a look, that Raymond Blight look. And I thought,
If you had half an idea what I can do, Raymond . . . you wouldn't do that
.

“But that would be an abuse of power,” Becky said when I brought it up. It sounded like something Mr. October might
say. “People abuse the power they have every day, and it only gets the world into more of a tangle.”

She was right, of course. Gifts aren't given out for no good reason. They're supposed to be used with care, not wasted away, and not abused, either. Besides, there are more important things to worry about than Raymond Blight.

Things like the work we do unseen every day. The war we're all caught up in. The threat Nathan Synsiter left me with before he jumped back inside the glass. It's a threat that stays with me all the time, because I know he means business and I know I'll see him again one day, and I know when I do we'll have to settle the argument.

But I have to stop now. The telegraph is working again. Another list is on its way and the machine rocks and puffs and shakes the room. I sit watching and waiting for it to stop, but it keeps on going. That's just the way it is sometimes. There's always more work, there are always more calls to make — and it looks like another long night ahead.

This list goes on and on and on.