The Fury (28 page)

He woke to the sensation of needles in his back, moving rapidly up and down his spine. It wasn’t painful, it was almost relaxing, until something else began to jab into the flesh of his shoulder.

‘Ow!’ he said, rolling over, the world a blur. There was a flurry of noise, wings beating and a coarse caw. He blinked hard until he made out a seagull on the ground a few feet away. It stared at him with black-eyed curiosity, skipping closer as if about to begin another attack. Brick grabbed a handful of soil and lobbed it at the bird, watching it waddle clumsily then soar with perfect grace into the burgeoning dawn. ‘Yeah, you better run,’ he called after it, and he almost managed a smile before remembering where he was.

The sandy soil was from a mound next to him, a five-foot-five by three-foot outline in the grass. It had taken hours to dig, but only minutes to fill in – he’d desperately swept earth over the corpse and its chequered tablecloth shroud until no trace of it remained. She had been cold when he’d touched her, stiff. She hadn’t felt real. Brick wasn’t sure if that had made it easier or harder.

He’d walked onto the moonlit beach when he’d finished. There he’d found a starfish, a dead one. He’d placed it on the head of her grave and told himself he was doing it as a mark of respect, so he wouldn’t forget. In reality, though, he’d done it because he worried that if he didn’t weigh down the grave with something then her body would crawl free in the night. It would come after him. He’d followed the starfish with about a hundred stones.

And then he’d fallen asleep next to her. She had been cold, but the earth had been warm. It had spent the day soaking up the heat, and the touch of it on his skin was almost human. It could have been her lying next to him, keeping the night at bay.

But it wasn’t, of course. He’d killed her. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he hadn’t stopped it from happening, and that made him as guilty as Rilke.

Rilke.

Brick struggled to his feet, his whole body aching. The effort made his head spin, a blood rush that caused the morning light to prickle like static. It brought back something else, a feeling he’d had when he was digging, a sensation that something really bad had happened.
It did, you moron
, his brain told him.
Lisa died
. Only it was more than that. He couldn’t explain it, just that it had felt as if the entire world had lost someone it loved.

Had he seen something too? A shape amidst the chaos? A man whose mouth was a storm and who bled endless darkness onto the world?

He snorted, feeling ridiculous for even thinking it. The shovel was lying on the other side of the mound and he picked it up. The dirt-encrusted wood cut into the blisters on his palm, making him wince.

Rilke. She’d shot Lisa dead. She’d pay for that, she and her comatose brother. She had the gun, but that wouldn’t help her, not forever. Sooner or later she’d let her guard down. Brick gripped the handle, sweeping the shovel through the air. The blade caught the amber light of the morning, making him smile. Yeah, she’d pay.

Lisa’s grave wouldn’t be the last to be dug in
Fursville
.

Daisy didn’t recognise the voice, and it was this uncertainty that pulled her from her dream. By the time she’d opened her eyes she’d already forgotten what had been in her head, only that it had been bad, an echo of what she’d felt the previous evening with Cal.

She was lying in the staff room of the pavilion, on a bundle of cushions she had pulled off the stinky, damp sofa. They hadn’t been very comfortable, but she’d still slept okay, considering everything that had happened yesterday. She sat up, looking around. Adam was curled up next to her. Chris was still bundled in the far corner of the room, his face pressed against the dirty wall like he was trying to smooch with it. Jade and Cal were gone. Brick had never been there.

Silky yellow light crept in through a crack in the boarded window. It seemed to shine through the ice in her head, and she could see another boy, skeleton-thin. She clambered off her makeshift bed, careful not to disturb Adam, then walked to the door. Her hand was on it before she remembered that there was a dead man outside, down the corridor.

Just don’t look and it won’t be there
.

She opened it and turned left, walking purposefully towards the fire door, speeding up only when she thought she heard Edward Maltby’s feet tap-tapping after her, his soft groans as he reached out with bloody fingers. She dived under the chains, squealing, kicking out at the illusion. When she stood, brushing herself down, she realised she wasn’t alone.

‘And that’s Daisy,’ said Cal. He was talking to the boy she’d just seen in her thoughts, another teenager, maybe a year or two older than her. He was very skinny, his T-shirt fluttering like a sail on a mast. He smiled gently from beneath a mop of curly hair, then stretched out a hand. Daisy noticed that it had been wrapped with cloth, like a white boxing glove tinged with pink. He seemed to remember the bandage and slapped his hand to his side.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Hi.’

‘Marcus,’ said Daisy, plucking his name from her head. The boy frowned, looking at Cal for an explanation. Cal just shrugged.

‘I told you things were weird here,’ he said. ‘Marcus saw the message we left, on the internet.’

‘Would have come anyway,’ said the boy. ‘You guys got this psychic brain pull thing going on. Couldn’t have stayed away if I’d wanted to.’

‘Did you just arrive?’ Daisy asked. ‘Would you like some food?’

As soon as she said it she remembered Rilke, and the fact that the girl had locked herself in the restaurant with all their supplies. Luckily, Marcus shook his head.

‘Been in the old car showroom, over the road,’ he said. ‘Found a box of something that used to be crunchy in the office. Got there this morning, ’bout three or four, maybe. Didn’t want to come over until I knew who was about, even though it felt safe, y’know?’ He tapped his temple then paused, squinting at the brightening horizon over Daisy’s shoulder. ‘Wasn’t just me. There were four of us, ’til we got to a place called King’s Lynn.’

He looked at his hand, and more ice cubes bobbled to the surface of Daisy’s head. She saw two girls and an older boy, floundering in a sea of raking fingers and blunt teeth and bulging eyes. Their screams filled her mind, and for a terrible instant pain flared all over her. She gasped like she’d fallen into a frozen pond, forcing the ice cubes down where she couldn’t feel them any more.

‘We got ambushed trying to steal some petrol,’ he went on, the words catching in his throat. ‘I had to leave them. I . . . They would have killed me too.’ He held up his bandaged hand like a half-hearted excuse. ‘Nicked a bike and cycled the rest of the way.
Knackered
now. Could do with a kip, yeah?’

‘You want to show him to the staff room?’ asked Cal. Daisy shook her head. She didn’t want to go back inside, back to where the dead man lay. Better to stay in the sunshine where ghosts couldn’t get you. Cal gestured towards the fire door and he and Marcus ducked under the chain, vanishing into the gloom.

Daisy looked left, towards the front of the park. She didn’t want to go that way, either. That way was the tail of the night, still sweeping over the land. That way was whatever she’d seen in her head last night. She set off to her right. It was brighter here, the sun already creeping over the fence, and she could hear the soft whisper of the waves. She slowed when she turned the corner, seeing the mound of soil that lay halfway across the patch of overgrown grass next to the crazy golf. She and Cal had watched Brick for what seemed like an eternity last night. He’d still been digging when they’d gone inside. The poor thing.

She approached the grave, her thoughts turning to her own parents. Would they be underground now? She wiped tears away furiously, but they kept coming. How could people do that to their loved ones? How could they put them in a hole in the ground, cover them up with dirt and just leave them there for all the worms to eat? She couldn’t imagine anything worse than being trapped in the cold ground, in the dark, all alone with nothing to do, forever and ever and ever.

She hurried away from the grave. There was a banging noise coming from somewhere nearby, and when she walked down the back of Fursville she realised it was coming from one of the small metal sheds against the fence. She passed ‘Utility’ then ‘Sanitation’ then ‘Danger: Do Not Enter’ before coming to an open door marked ‘Caretaker’. She peeked around it to see Brick inside, rummaging through piles of junk.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked. He glanced at her, then went back to whatever the answer was, throwing sheets of corrugated iron against the wall of the shed. The clatter was deafening. Eventually he reached down and grabbed something, holding it up.

‘Bingo,’ he said, tripping out of the shed into the light. He held up a hammer that was so rusted it looked like it had been dipped in bright orange gunk. It didn’t have a handle any more, just a short metal nubbin. He set off back the way Daisy had just walked. He didn’t even look at the grave as he passed it, using the little hammer to hack through the jungle of the crazy golf. Daisy followed, careful not to get scratched by the jaggies that pinged back after him.

When she caught up she saw that he was hammering a big nail into the fence. It was awkward because he couldn’t really get any strength behind it, but he was taking his time and making sure he hit the nail squarely on the head. Gradually, millimetre by millimetre, it disappeared into the soft wood.

‘This bit was loose,’ Brick said, running his thumb over the sunken nail. ‘Whole fence could open up. No good if we want to keep the ferals out.’

He pulled another nail from the pocket of his jeans.

‘I’m sorry about Lisa,’ Daisy spluttered, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them. Brick tensed up, studying the nail in his hand as if it had the answer to everything written on it. Daisy stood there, hoping he wouldn’t be mad. After a moment or two he looked at her through red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. He nodded, and she understood that it was a thank you. He placed the nail against the flapping fence panel and began to hammer again.

‘There’s another boy here,’ she said. He paused, then carried on. ‘He’s very thin. He said there were others but . . . but they didn’t make it.’

He finished the nail and started on a third. Daisy hopped from one foot to the other. She was hungry, thirsty too. She didn’t want to ask Brick about food, though. She didn’t want to give him any reason to go inside and see Rilke. Only bad things could come from that. But there was another matter she wanted to talk to him about.

‘Brick,’ she started, talking over the hammer blows. ‘Did you feel it too? Yesterday.’

He didn’t even pause this time, tapping away at the nail until it vanished. He gave the fence a shake, the panel still flapping at the bottom, before reaching into his pocket again and squatting down.

‘It was really horrible,’ she said. ‘Just this . . . a kind of feeling, like being numb, but being really sad too.’ He still didn’t reply. Daisy chewed her thumbnail, wishing she was better at finding the right words. ‘It was like something had gone wrong with . . . with life.’

Tap. Tap. Tap. Brick hammered away, the nail going in at an angle. Daisy waited a moment more then turned to go. She didn’t really need him to answer. She could see it in his head, in his thoughts. He
had
felt it, he knew exactly what she meant. Only there was more there, in his mind. She focused, pulling an ice cube free, trying to work out what was inside it. It didn’t make any sense, there was only chaos, like a whirlwind, and a constant, gasping noise that made her flesh crawl. Something awful, something evil, something . . .

She glanced back at Brick to try and fine-tune the image. He was looking at her, and as their eyes met an understanding clicked home.

This storm, this whirlwind, this bad thing, it wasn’t a something, it was a
nothing
. It was the absence of something, and that absence was spreading – deleting, erasing, cancelling everything it touched. That’s why it felt so sad, so horrible, because this thing was the very opposite of life, the opposite of death too, it was the opposite of everything.

Antimatter
, the word that floated to the top of her thoughts belonged to Brick, not her; she didn’t even know what it meant. She knew that he was thinking the same thing as her, though. They both knew what it wanted, this
other
. It wanted to take everything and turn it into nothing, to devour it, to wipe it from existence.

And when it was done, reality would be nothing but an empty hole in time.

‘Please, Rilke, I just need to talk to you.’

Rilke stood by the restaurant doors listening to Cal rant and rave. He’d been out there for a while now, pacing back and forth like a wolf, first pleading, then threatening, then fuming.

‘Rilke, we need our food, our drink. It’s not fair, that’s
our
stuff
.’

He banged on the door, flakes of ice drifting loose. Rilke’s silent laugh came out as little puffs of breath. She clutched the gun, her hand so numb from the cold that she couldn’t feel it, only its weight.

‘Look, you don’t have to speak to me, you don’t have to see the others. Just let me in for five seconds and I’ll get what I need. You can keep some of the rations, okay?’

The door rocked on its hinges, making her take a step back. Cal kicked it again, hard, the wood creaking.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said Rilke.

‘Then let me in,’ Cal said. ‘We need food. I’m coming through these doors one way or the other, Rilke.’

She didn’t answer, happy to let him stew in his own anger. He was so predictable, thinking he could do what he wanted because he was a boy, because he was strong. Rilke knew why she had been chosen, but why Cal? Why the others? They were pathetic.

‘Rilke!’ he snapped. ‘I mean it, you have to let me in.’

‘No. I don’t.’

Her smile widened. She was in charge because she had all the food. Cal and the others couldn’t just stroll down to the nearest Tesco’s and do their grocery shopping.

‘Open the door!’ Cal yelled. ‘Seriously, I’m getting really pissed off. Are you gonna shoot us all? Tell me what you want or I swear to God I’m gonna break this door down and give you a slap, girl or no girl.’

Rilke uttered a brittle chuckle that seemed colder than the breeze.

‘I only want one thing,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to Daisy.’

Cal protested, but after a while he gave up. She listened to him retreat down the stairs, his curses eventually fading into the immense quiet of the pavilion. She pressed her forehead against the frozen wood of the doors, wondering if he would give her what she had asked for.

He will. He has to if he wants to eat
.

She straightened and walked over to the nearest table, laying the gun down beside a flickering candle. She had to peel her fingers from the cold metal. It was incredible, really, that something so small could be so deadly. That simply squeezing your finger could result in the end of a life.

But the two people she had killed, the two
humans
, they hadn’t deserved to live. None of them did. That’s why she was here, why she had been chosen. And very soon she’d have weapons which would make this gun look like a plastic toy. Isn’t that what she’d felt last night? The knowledge that there was something out there, something terrible and yet wonderful. A force of pure destructive power.

Schiller lay in his pocket of ice, his body still radiating cold like an inverse sun. He hadn’t so much as twitched since the previous evening, but she knew he wouldn’t stay like that forever. She wasn’t sure how she knew, she just did. He wasn’t dying, he was changing, like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

‘But into what, Schill?’ she whispered. ‘What are you becoming?’

Daisy had the answers. The little girl didn’t realise it, but they were locked away somewhere inside that pretty little head of hers. She just needed a little bit of encouragement to get them out.

The candle was struggling, as if the darkness had weight, snuffing out the solitary flame. Rilke took another one from the pile she’d collected, lighting it from the first and planting it in a socket of melted wax. It, too, began to stutter against the heavy gloom. She smiled at the blatant metaphor.
We few are the flames
, she thought to herself, mesmerised by the dancing colours.
We are the light in the darkness.

And what could the darkness be, other than humanity? This crushing, heaving mass of people who had no legitimate right to life. How many souls lived on earth now? Six billion? Seven? All of them like insects, crawling around on their hands and knees or slaughtering one another in pursuit of scraps. They were ignorant, they were cruel, they were the night that smothered the day. They did not deserve their existence.

That’s why all this was happening. That’s why she and Schiller had been attacked – why they’d
all
been attacked. The people sensed something different in them, something special. And they hated it, because it was
better
than them. She remembered the men and women back at the rave, the way they had turned into beasts – biting, clawing, scratching, howling. They had acted like animals because that’s all they were, because they had sensed that Rilke and Schiller were more than them, that she and her brother were dangerous, that they were . . .

She paused, unable to think of the right word. The twin flames fluttered but they didn’t go out. They wouldn’t go out, they wouldn’t succumb to the darkness.

And what about the thing she had sensed last night? That wave of utter nothingness, that awful knowledge that what lay beneath the skin of the world was an infinite abyss of absence. She wasn’t sure, but this creature, this force – whatever it was – might be here to show them the way. As dark as its image had been, it might be the light they needed to follow. Why else would she have seen it?

Footsteps, more than one set. Rilke cocked her head, feeling Daisy’s presence outside even before Cal’s voice came through the doors.

‘She’s here,’ he said. ‘She says she’ll talk to you, but only if you let us have some food.’

Rilke walked to the doors, then doubled back and picked up the gun. Cal was too pathetic to try anything, she was pretty sure about that, but she couldn’t afford to take any chances, not when the truth was so close. She slid back the lock, then pulled open the door with her free hand. Daisy stood there, squinting. Cal was beside her.

‘You don’t have to go in,’ he said. ‘Whatever she has to say, she can say it right here.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Daisy. ‘She isn’t going to hurt me.’

Daisy gave Cal a hug, then walked into the restaurant. Cal watched her go, then glared at Rilke.

‘You’d better not,’ he hissed. ‘You’d better not lay a finger on her. I’ll be right here, Rilke, I’m not going anywhere.’

Rilke laughed at him, then let the door swing shut in his face.