Spiral (21 page)

“No, maybe not you,” Drake said. “But there’s something knocking around in her head. I don’t know what it is, and I can’t take the risk. Put her on the backseat, Sparks,” he told Sweeney. “Hold her tight — I don’t want her thrashing about and hurting herself.”

Mrs. Rawls was more than a little disoriented as Sweeney manhandled her into the Humvee. Sliding in beside her, he looped his gigantic arm around her shoulders. “Locked and loaded,” he confirmed.

Drake leaned in through the open door of the Humvee, the glasses attached to Danforth’s device in his hand. “This is the business end,” he said, as he made sure the glasses were securely over Mrs. Rawls’s eyes. “I nearly forgot — don’t want her biting her tongue. Anyone got a handkerchief?”

“Here,” Sweeney offered, producing a rather dirty rag from his combat jacket, which Drake folded over several times.

“Open wide,” he directed Mrs. Rawls. Still groggy, she obediently did what she was told, allowing Drake to place it in her mouth. “Now just try to relax. This shouldn’t take long.” He flicked another switch on the cylinder, and purple light leaked from around the sides of the glasses.

Will winced as Mrs. Rawls’s guttural cry reverberated through the forest.

The Second Officer was buckling up his Sam Browne belt as he shuffled out into the corridor. Rather than go home, he’d just spent his second night in one of the cells in the interrogation wing of the police station, sleeping on a pile of prison blankets heaped on the cold flagstones. He still hadn’t forgiven his mother and sister. Not after they’d killed his little dog and served it up to him in a stew. As he came to the end of the whitewashed corridor and entered the reception area, he was swinging his arms in an attempt to de-kink his muscles.

“Hello,” he called out as he arrived to find it deserted. “Sir? Hello? Anyone?”

There was no response, so the Second Officer raised the flap in the counter and went to the doorway of the First Officer’s room. “Oh, you are here,” he said to his superior, who was bent over his desk, his head in his hands. “Is it the gut rot, sir?” the Second Officer asked sympathetically.

“No,” the First Officer replied after a moment, then straightened up.

The Second Officer recoiled as he saw the man’s battered face, his eye so swollen that it had almost closed up. “What happened? Who did this to you? How many were there?”

“It was in the Hold.” The First Officer sighed. “I was squaring the prisoners away for the night when that bloody Mulligan started on me.”

“Mulligan?” the Second Officer asked. “Bill Mulligan — the cabinetmaker?”

The First Officer glanced down sheepishly. “No, his mother.”

“Not
Gappy
Mulligan,” the Second Officer burst out. “But she’s ninety if she’s a day! How did she —?”

“I know,” the First Officer grunted, shaking his head as if he’d never live this one down. “She was mouthing off about the Styx and — with no warning at all — she let fly at me. Got a vicious right hook, too.”

“Gappy Mulligan,” the Second Officer repeated. He was so flabbergasted that he flopped down in the chair in front of the First Officer’s desk. He hadn’t been invited to sit, and when he realized what he’d done, he found that his superior was squinting at him through his good eye. “Oh, sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to —”

“You stay right there,” the First Officer said. “You know, Patrick, I think we’ve reached the point that we can do away with the usual decorum.”

The Second Officer was astonished for a second time. His superior officer had never —
never
— before addressed him by his first name. Indeed, even the Second Officer’s own family referred to him as the Second Officer, rather than by his real name, because the laws of the Colony demanded it.

“I . . . I . . . ,” the Second Officer stuttered.

“This is no time to be a stuffed shirt, Patrick,” the First Officer said, taking his pipe from a desk drawer and opening a tobacco pouch. It was also absolutely forbidden to smoke in the station. “Face up to it. Half the Colony is slowly but surely starving to death in their homes, while the other half is missing God knows where,” the First Officer continued, as he filled the pipe bowl with tobacco. “And the half that’s starving to death will probably end up killing each other as they fight over whatever scraps they can plunder from the food stores, and” — the First Officer used his flint lighter to ignite the tobacco before he went on — “and you and I, we’ll be stuck bang smack in the middle of it all. Some toothless hag — just like Mulligan — is going to bludgeon us to death with her handbag, and all for a mouthful of salted toadstrip.” He took several large puffs. “The joke is, Patrick,
we’re
all that’s left. A thin blue line holding back a tide of total and absolute anarchy. We’re caught between the devil and a cold, dark sea.” He shook his head stoically. “No, the outlook’s not good for us, old friend. Not good at all.”

The Second Officer had been half listening as he racked his brains to try to remember his superior’s real name, but it wasn’t coming to him. Then something the First Officer had said struck him. “Sir, what was that about people missing? Has there been an incident?”

Like everyone else, the Second Officer had heard the rumors, but he was inclined to believe that it was pure hearsay and that the people were somewhere in the sprawling shantytown in the North Cavern.

The First Officer blinked as smoke wandered into his good eye, then he located a message scroll by his elbow and pushed it across the desk. “The Fifth Officer submitted a report while you were resting. You and I have both fielded a couple of unsubstantiated claims about missing citizens, but this is different. One of our own is unaccounted for. No one’s seen hide nor hair of the Third Officer for twenty-four hours.”

“But he’s been doing the beat in the North,” the Second Officer said, referring to the rural cavern. “I saw him not long ago. Isn’t he over there right n —?”

“He didn’t report for duty this morning,” the First Officer interrupted. “And he hasn’t been home. Word is, something went on in the North overnight and, whatever it was, my guess is he got caught up in it. Look at this edict from the Styx,” he said, jabbing his pipe stem in the direction of the scroll. “We’re being refused access.”

“The North? Off-limits to us?” the Second Officer said. “Why? We’re police officers.”

The First Officer nodded. “Highly irregular, isn’t it?”

The Second Officer read the message. “Why on earth would the Styx impose a full restriction order?” He got to his feet with a sudden snort of indignation. “I’m going down there to take a look for myself,” he resolved on the spur of the moment.

“Really?” the First Officer said, his eyebrows arching with a detached amusement as the strong tobacco began to work on his strained nerves. “Then you’re a braver man than I am, Patrick.”

No one came out to check the Second Officer’s credentials as he approached the Skull Gate, but that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t been observed by a Styx. He passed through it and, twenty minutes later, reached the final incline down to the South Cavern where he could look out over the streets and houses. As the thrumming from the Fan Stations resonated in his ears, it seemed to be louder than usual, as if it was the only sound in the whole of the city.

Even when he entered the built-up area, he had the sense that he was the last person left in the Colony. There would normally be somebody out at that time in the morning as they went to their places of work or opened up their shops ready for the day, but now the streets were completely empty.

Despite the fact that he wasn’t on speaking terms with his mother and sister, the Second Officer was so concerned that he stopped off there first. Finding that the front door was locked, he managed to drop his key with a clatter on the top step as he tried to open it. As he bent to retrieve his key and then stood up, he again became aware of the eerie calm all around him.

With their curtains drawn, the windows in the terrace opposite were dark and unfriendly, like many black eyes glaring at him. For a while the street had been crammed to capacity with New Germanians, but the Styx had since taken them Topsoil. Over the weeks, he’d heard the New Germanian troops being mobilized at all sorts of odd hours during the night, their feet beating a tattoo on the pavement in perfect unison. But even though they’d now gone, very few Colonist families had been allowed to move back into their homes. He was beginning to wonder if they’d ever return and if his street would ever be the same again. Particularly if something untoward had gone on in the North Cavern.

He finally let himself in and went inside. His first port of call was the kitchen, and not finding his mother or sister there, he tried the sitting room, then the bedrooms upstairs. The beds were unmade, the covers pulled back.

Of course, Eliza might have taken their mother out somewhere, but the Second Officer couldn’t imagine quite where at that early hour. He was trying to stop himself from thinking the worst — that the Styx had paid a visit — as he descended the stairs. Pausing in the hallway, he heard a sound, which seemed to come from the empty kitchen, and immediately ducked into the sitting room to fetch Will’s shovel from the sideboard. If there were thieves in the house, he was going to give them the hiding of their lives.

The Second Officer crept into the kitchen and listened. There was another sound. He went to the far end of the kitchen and slowly opened the door into the small vestibule. He tiptoed across it to a second door, which led to the coal cellar. As he pressed his ear to the door, he was sure he heard a scrabbling noise.
Maybe a rat
, he thought to himself.

But then he was certain he could hear whispering.

Two-legged rats,
he told himself.

Counting silently to three, he flung the door open and tore in with a roar.

Someone moved in the shadows. He saw the whites of their eyes.

He raised his shovel, ready to strike.

“OOOH MY GAWD!” his mother wailed, her hands up to protect her face.

Eliza screamed.

“What . . . ?” the Second Officer cried, not believing his eyes.

In their nightgowns, both his mother and sister were black with coal dust as they cowered in the far corner.

“What in God’s name are you doing in here?” the Second Officer demanded, adrenaline still pumping through his body.

His mother began to cry.

“We thought it was the Styx at the door . . . coming for us,” Eliza managed to say.

Both she and the old lady were still shaking as the Second Officer led them back into the kitchen and sat them down. He looked at them, so terrified, their faces and clothes thick with dust, then looked at the kitchen floor and the trail their bare feet had left on the tiles. The tiles that the old lady labored day in, day out to keep so spotlessly clean that one could eat off them.

And he couldn’t be angry with them about the little dog any longer. But he
was
angry; he wanted someone to pay for what was going on in the Colony. Everything was falling apart. And this previously loyal Colonist, this upholder of order, knew precisely who was responsible.

“This has to stop,” he whispered under his breath. “The Styx have to be stopped.”