The Fury (27 page)

A man flew from the back of the ambulance into the bonnet of the car in front, smashing the windscreen and rolling over the roof. He dropped under the wheels of the limo in which Murdoch was riding, making it lurch so hard that everyone inside was jolted from their seats. Murdoch’s head cracked against the ceiling but he didn’t even notice. He watched the other car veer off into the hard shoulder of the motorway, striking the barrier and cartwheeling into the field beyond.

‘What the—’ said Murdoch, looking out the rear window as they passed the wreckage, the air behind them already full of smoke. ‘What the hell are you doing? They need help.’

‘Convoy doesn’t stop until we get to our destination,’ said the driver. And he said something else but the words tailed off, becoming a gasp as he looked at the ambulance.

‘What
is
that?’ Dr Jorgensen said, pressing himself against Murdoch, pointing past the front seats. Murdoch followed his finger, and at first he couldn’t work out what he was seeing. Something was happening inside the ambulance, a raging tornado of objects which surged and spiralled through the air. The lights were flashing on and off, the doors flapping, making it impossible to see clearly what was going on.

‘Get in touch with lead,’ said the driver. The front-seat passenger – another MI5 agent in a black suit – put his hand to his ear.

‘Convoy 1 this is Convoy 5,’ he said. ‘Convoy 4 is down and we have a problem inside the ambulance.’

Nobody spoke. Murdoch squinted, peering into the flickering chaos. A noise had risen up over the thrum of tyres on tarmac, a sound that grated down his spine.
It can’t be
, he thought, but it was. It was the corpse, that same breath only louder now. Much louder.

‘Pull over,’ he said again, his voice a hiss. ‘Do it now.’

‘No, sir,’ said the driver. ‘Our orders—’

‘Screw your orders,’ said Murdoch. ‘Stop the car
now
.’

‘I need you to calm down, sir,’ said the man in the passenger seat, turning. His right hand had strayed
under
his suit jacket and Murdoch knew what he had holstered there – a government-issue 9mm. It didn’t matter. Whatever was happening inside that ambulance was a million times worse than any gun. ‘Sit back in your seat and do not speak.’

Murdoch didn’t obey. He reached to his side, past Jorgensen, grabbing the door handle and wrenching hard. It was locked. He tried the other side, the morgue assistant next to him no longer crying, just staring through the windscreen making choking noises.

‘Sir, if you do not sit back in your seat and calm down then I will be forced to subdue you.’

The door didn’t budge, and Murdoch leaned forward, ready to shout back at the man, ready to take a swing at him if he had to.

He never got the chance.

In front, the ambulance exploded – not into fire, but darkness. It seemed to happen in slow motion, a whip-crack of black lightning that buckled the metal walls, opening them like a flower; which lifted the wheels off the road, making the whole vehicle fly. A lightless wave pulsed from the ruined ambulance, so dark that it hurt Murdoch’s eyes to look at it. It was as if that patch of existence had been erased, as if substance had been inverted, turned to absence. Through that gap, past that hole in reality, was something so vast, so infinite, so empty that his heart broke the moment he saw it.
That’s the real universe
, he understood.
The truth behind the mask. That’s all there is, and it’s nothing.

Another blast ripped the ambulance apart, sending pieces of wheel and engine and flesh in every direction – still in slow motion, like time had no power here. Its exhaust javelined backwards, punching through the windscreen of the car, impaling the driver, not stopping until it had passed right through Jorgensen in the back seat. Murdoch could hear the sizzle of blood on the hot metal, the air suddenly heavy with the stench of cooked meat. Jorgensen’s hand gripped his arm, flexing once before falling still. The car smashed into the centre divide, sparks cascading from the doors as it ground to a halt.

The corpse was suspended above the road in a pocket of absolute night. Its mouth was a churning void, one that seemed to suck up all the light and goodness of the world. Its eyes blazed into the car, right into Murdoch’s head.

It lifted its hands, and as it did so another rippling wave of shadow expanded across the motorway. Murdoch saw a motorbike lifted into the air and pulled into pieces, its rider atomised into a sparkling crimson cloud which was sucked towards the corpse’s raging mouth. He saw one of the limos in front peel apart like a kit model, its passengers disintegrating as they were dragged into the chasm. A storm of metal and emptied flesh ground around the living corpse like a tornado, more blinding black lightning firing wildly in the maelstrom.

There was another crack of thunder. Murdoch glanced round to see two young girls on the road, holding each other as a hail of burning embers drifted down around them. They stared at the monster hanging there.

I’m sorry.
One of the girls spoke, a voice that seemed to be whispered right into his ear.
I can’t save you.

He reached out to them, his fingers pressed into the glass.

Don’t be sorry
, he thought.
It will devour you too. I
t will devour us all
.

‘Alice,’ he said, thinking of his wife, of his son, knowing that he would never see them again – not in this life, not in any other.

The corpse gestured again with its fingers and more of the world disappeared beneath a blanket of darkness. Murdoch felt his car rise off the ground, then that shadow reached him and it was as if everyone he knew and loved had died – a grief so heavy, so impossible, that it literally pulled him apart. He lifted his hands to his face, seeing his fingers begin to fragment into particles the size of sand grains. They funnelled up towards the dead man, his hands vanishing, then his arms, his vision sparking as his brain turned to dust. And it was almost worse that there was no pain, because at least pain would be one final reminder that he had once lived.

But there was only the vast, roiling, infinite, silent darkness.

Then nothing.

Brick felt it. He was drenched in sweat from toiling in the unforgiving sun, every muscle aching. He laid down the shovel, straightening his back, feeling as if night had fallen suddenly and without warning, even though the sun was still warm on his back. Lisa lay beside him, on a patch of light-drenched grass close to the back fence, covered with a tablecloth. He had carried her out here himself, her dead weight making her a hundred times heavier than she had been before. He hadn’t yet looked at her face, because he knew that once he did there could be no more doubt, no more fooling himself that she’d be coming back. He blinked, the sunshine gradually returning. But that chill remained, keeping the gooseflesh on his arms. He picked up the shovel, stepped into her grave, and carried on digging.

Cal and Daisy felt it. They were watching Brick from a distance, her hands wrapped tight around his arm the way she had always clung on to her mum. They turned to each other, both feeling that same sudden, crushing sadness, the knowledge that something in the world had gone terribly, irreversibly wrong. It was like animals sensing an earthquake, Cal thought, not knowing why they are scared, just understanding that they have to escape.
It’s the Fury
, he realised.
Things are changing
. And even as the words crossed his mind Daisy hugged him tighter. He looked into her pale eyes and saw her voice there.
It’s going to get bad, Cal. It’s going to get a lot worse
. He gripped her tight, the same way he would grip a float if he was drowning. He didn’t ever want to let go.

Jade felt it. She sat slumped in the hallway inside the pavilion, a dead man within spitting distance. She felt it as a pressure, one that grated down the corridor and forced itself into her head, blocking her ears like that time she’d dived too deep into the swimming pool. It sat there, an unwanted guest, making even the sadness seem obsolete, futile. It was so dreadful that she opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn’t get the noise out. She sat there, silently howling, knowing that nothing would ever be the same, nothing could ever be
good
again.

Chris felt it. He stood on the beach, throwing stones into the sea. He watched one hurtle through the hot air, thinking that despite the Fury, despite the shootings, things weren’t all that bad – at least the sun was shining. Then, in an instant, it was as if the ocean rose up, a solid wall of darkness which towered over him, which blocked out the light and which dragged itself over the world, burying everything in silt and saltwater. He dropped to his knees, fighting to remember how to breathe, blinking reality back to life. But even with the sun on his face again he knew that the darkness was still there. It had been born.

Adam felt it. He slept deeply in the pavilion foyer. His dreams of horses and fairgrounds were abruptly tainted, like ink spreading through a bowl of water. Dark, bulging clouds mushroomed outwards, their blue-black surface as dense as granite, polluting everything and leaving him alone inside a bottomless cavern. He cried out for his mum, and for the girl, Daisy, but all that existed in the night was him and a shapeless creature of boundless sorrow. His sleeping body shook, but he did not wake.

Rilke felt it. She shivered in the candlelit restaurant, still holding the revolver. She’d killed for a reason, because she had to, because they all had a more important job to do and they couldn’t let anything stand in their way. But the faces of the man and the girl she had murdered hung before her, ghost-like against the gloom, not speaking, not moving, just watching her. They’d be there forever, she realised. They’d be there until she died. And the thought seemed like the worst possible thing she could imagine, until
it
hit her, a depthless, hopeless wave of utter nothingness. She dropped the gun, clamping her hands to her head, screaming,
Go away go away go away go away
.

Even Schiller felt it, locked inside the cold casket of his body. He groaned, twitching, shedding sparkling flakes of ice on the floor. Rilke shot up, running over to where he lay and collapsing to her knees beside him. She called his name, holding his head, stroking his cheek, waiting for his eyes to open. He moaned again, a nightmare noise, then he lay still. But she knew he’d sensed the same thing as her, even from deep inside whatever fathomless sleep he was lost in. He understood what was happening.

‘You have to get better soon, Schill,’ Rilke said, brushing back strands of thin, dark hair from his eyes. ‘We need you. We all do.’

She put her head on his chest, trying to ignore the bone-numbing chill, focusing on the shadow that had pulled itself over her mind, which had pulled itself over everything.

‘Because it’s here, little brother,’ she said. ‘It’s here.’