The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel (2 page)

“Come on, Mina,” shouted David.
“We need to get there before the others. There won’t be room to swing your
elbows soon, and I need those shots.”

Mina kept a firm grip on her camera and fought to
keep up. She was fifteen years younger than David, but when there was a story
to be had, the man could move like the wind. His yellow hair flowed behind him
like a thoroughbred’s mane, and he slipped through the crowd like water through
a sieve. All Mina caught were brief flashes of his Argyle socks. She,
meanwhile, bumped into people almost every step, and received more than a few
dirty looks. She couldn’t help but apologise profusely.

Even on a slow day, Oxford Street was one of the
busiest spots in London, and today people were teeming through it like ants.
They packed together in small groups, lining the road on both sides. The police
were massively outnumbered and struggled to maintain order. The large gathering
lacked the festive spirit of, say, a Royal Wedding, and instead held an
atmosphere more akin to a kindling riot. People had a look of mischief about
them, and several lampposts were skewed as people hung off them like chimps.

David shouted again. “Come on, Mina. I can see
those buggers from
The
Chronicle
already there. We can’t let them
hog the headlines.”

Mina fiddled with her camera while trying to run. She
wanted to have the settings ready for when she started snapping. Her pictures would
be used in the
Slough Echo
, but if she produced something noteworthy, it
might spread to bigger outlets, or even go viral. Maybe if she achieved that
her father would finally see she was good at her job, and stop telling her to
quit all the time.

Not looking where she was going, Mina collided
with the square back of a man. The shaved head turned around and glared at her.
“Watch where you’re fuckin’ goin’, luv.”

Mina backed up. “Sorry, I’m so sorry.”

When she heard the man mutter the words,
‘Fucking
Paki,’
she was stunned
.
How dare he! She wasn’t even from Pakistan. How
could people be so hateful?

“Come on,” David shouted for the third time. “Get moving.”

Mina wanted to say something back to the snarling
racist, but instead she ended up smiling nervously and moving on. Much as she
would’ve liked to confront him, she wasn’t that person. Even the thought made
her stomach churn. So she put the experience behind her and focused on her job.

“I’m right behind you, David,” she shouted as she
dodged around a woman with a pram loaded with shopping bags instead of a child.
Up ahead, the historic Selfridges building loomed unhappily. Its sleek interior
was devoid of shoppers, and the bus shelter out front had been smashed and
twisted by enthusiastic oglers trying to climb it.

David pointed ahead, still dodging through the
crowd with fluid ease. “We need to hurry, come on. We can’t afford to miss
anything.”

“I’m right behind you,” she shouted, even though
she was six steps back. They were heading for the Soho Street intersection on
the east end of Oxford Street, but they had been forced to get off the tube at
Bond Street as Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road were closed. It was a
long walk on a normal day, but today was a nightmare. It was like squeezing
through a corridor of hot, sweaty people, and when she saw Newman Street coming
up on her left, she let out a moan of joy. They were only one street away.

“There! I see it,” David shouted.

Mina caught up to him and saw it too. They had
arrived at a police cordon outside McDonald’s. A dozen scientists milled around
inside the tape as if they hadn’t even noticed the thousand-strong mob surrounding
them. They were focused on the strange black stone, curiosity at the forefront
of their minds. Mina was fixated on it too, surprised at how unremarkable it
was.

Since the first stone had been discovered last
night in the village of Crapstone, hundreds more had materialised. Business began
as usual that morning in the City of London, but it soon became evident that
something strange was afoot. At seven-thirty, a double decker bus had struck a
bowling ball-sized stone in the centre of Oxford Street and broken its axle.
The driver got out to investigate, and died of a massive and explosive heart
attack a second after touching it.

News circulated rapidly after that—panic spreading
thick and fast. Identical stones appeared all over the United Kingdom, from
Inverness to Plymouth to Norwich to Hull, and Glasgow too. Wales had identified
more than a dozen within its borders. Word spread that anyone who touched the
stones would immediately die of a heart attack, and that had been the nugget of
news to set the nation on edge.

The stones were a threat.

Public alerts were issued:
Do not approach the
stones and report any discoveries immediately
. A hotline was set up too, plastered
at the bottom of every news report. New discoveries came in every minute.

The stones were everywhere.

“It’s just a rock.” Mina heard the disappointment
in her voice as she spoke. “I was expecting something more… I don’t know. It’s
just a rock.”

A leathery-skinned old woman grabbed Mina’s arm,
madness in her rheumy eyes, and barked at her. “It’s aliens. They’ve sent ‘undreds
of meteorites to Earth to colonise us. That stone is gunna crack open like a
coconut and spill its load into the atmosphere, you mark me words. We’re all
dead!”

Mina yanked her arm away and rubbed the finger
marks left on her skin. She clung to David, but he paid her no attention,
focused only on making it past the police cordon. Mina covered her mouth in
shock when she saw him knee a child out of his way. The little boy fell to his
knees, got up, then went crying to his mummy, arms outstretched and begging to
be picked up.

“David, you just hurt a child.”

“The brat shouldn’t have been in the way. Ah, here
we are, finally.”

They made it over to a burly police sergeant with
a clipboard in his hands. He was grinding his teeth and taking slow, deep
breaths. His wide eyes examined David and Mina with suspicion. “Stand back,
please.”

“We’re with the
Slough Echo,
” David
snapped.

The sergeant ran a finger down his clipboard and nodded.
“Okay, step inside the cordon, but don’t go within six feet of the object.”

David swooped beneath the police tape without
another word. Mina took a moment to thank the sergeant before doing the same.

The black stone sat in the middle of the road.

Mina’s tummy churned. It wasn’t hunger—she’d
grabbed a hotdog less than an hour ago—it was something else. The mysterious
object, just ten feet away from her, had killed people. It was dangerous. She’d
been so intent on getting to Oxford Street, that she’d not stopped to consider
the peril she was placing herself in. Had the stone been tested for
radioactivity, toxicity? Was she in danger just by being close to it? The dozen
scientists surrounding the thing did little to assuage her fears.

A tug at her arm pulled her away from her fears.
It was David. “Get snapping, girl.”

“Yes, right.” Mina raised her camera and started
snapping away, altering and fine-tuning her settings as she went. It was
difficult to know how the best photograph would look until she examined the
digital reel on her laptop, so she followed the photojournalist’s credo and
just kept on snapping. The more pictures she took, the better the chances of getting
something valuable. Different angles, different settings, different lenses, but
just keep snapping.

David interviewed the police officers, scribbling away
furiously on his notepad while they spoke. Usually he would use a tape
recorder, but police officers were notoriously shy around recording equipment,
and they gave much more away when faced with a simple pencil and pad.

While Mina tried to do her job, a pushy
photographer from
The Chronicle
fought with her for the best angles,
hustling her out of the way so often that it almost felt malicious. Mina knew
she should hustle the older woman right back, but it wasn’t something she was
used to. The other woman carried herself with such confidence and authority
that it was hard to resist her. The police officers all smiled and chatted with
her, while they had only disapproving glances for Mina. She started to wonder
if she would ever find her feet in this job.

Satisfied that she had got as much as she was
going to get, Mina placed her spare lenses back into her hip bag and let her
camera hang around her neck. Now that she no longer stared through a
viewfinder, the black stone in the centre of the cordon seemed to be alive—less
a detached photographic subject, and more an imposing presence that demanded
attention. From six feet away, she could see that the surface of it was not jet
black, but streaked with delicate grey veins. She wondered what it would feel
like if she touched it. It could kill her, she knew that, so why was she so
eager to approach it? It was that same feeling she got whenever she stood on a
high balcony and peered over the edge. That same voice in her head that always
dared her to jump:
Just do it!

A batch of shouting broke out behind Mina and made
her turn around. The burly sergeant who stood outside the cordon had dropped
his clipboard and had begun fighting with a lad in a red hoodie. A skinny girl
batted the sergeant with both fists, yelling at him to leave her boyfriend
alone. The profanity she used was impressive.

The sergeant applied a headlock, yanking the lad
around. “I told you to bloody get back.”

The lad twisted and squirmed, trying to break
free. “You have no right, pig! People deserve to know what’s happening!”

The sergeant released the lad’s neck and shoved
him backwards. “Move away or I’ll bleedin’ place you under arrest.”

“Fuck you, pig,” the girlfriend shouted.

“Go suck a dick,” said the lad.

“Okay, that’s it.” The sergeant reached to his
belt and pulled out a canister of CS gas. He pressed the nozzle and gave the
young man a full dose in the face that sent him stumbling backwards, coughing
and spluttering. The lad’s girlfriend screeched like a tomcat and pounced on the
sergeant with her claws out. The sergeant restrained her easily with his meaty
arm, and let her have a dose of the CS gas too. She fell to the floor weeping
and scratching at her eyes.

The crowd ignited in anger. Hundreds of yelling
voices merged into one, singular accusatory howl.

“Nazi!” somebody shouted.

“Fuckin’ pig,” came another.

The sergeant was on his radio, calling for backup,
but before he got a call through, somebody threw a milkshake that exploded
against his chest and covered him in pink mess. His face grew red with fury,
and he started throwing punches at whoever was near. The lad in the red hoodie
was pulled back by the paternal crowd, which then surged forward as a single,
massive organism. Mina winced as she saw the same snarling racist who had called
her
Paki
punch the sergeant in the face. The loud crack was like a
cricket ball hitting a bat, but the stunned police officer remained on his feet
and continued swinging his fists madly.

But it was a battle lost before it’d already
begun.

The crowd dragged the sergeant to the ground, and the
racist thug kicked his head like a football. Somebody else stamped on his
testicles. Mina was glad the sergeant was unconscious through most of it. She
was also glad that she had not confronted the racist. That could have been her
head being kicked like a football.

The two police officers within the cordon raced to
their colleague’s aid, but could not get near. The crowd was a pack of lions
guarding its prey until it was well and truly dead.

“We need to go,” said David, clutching Mina’s arm.

“We need to help.”

“No! We need to get out of here before they do the
same to us.”

Mina shook her head. “Why would they attack
us
?”

“Because we’re on
this
side of the cordon. Now
come on.”

Mina allowed herself to be dragged, but found
herself unable to take her eyes off the black stone. She got the feeling it was
staring right back at her.

Police cars raced down Oxford Street, sirens
blaring, but they had to stop when they encountered the thick mass of bodies.
Within seconds, the squad cars tilted and rocked as people laid siege to the
trapped officers. The windscreens cracked as people climbed up on the bonnets
and, within seconds, the police cars had disappeared in a sea of bodies.

“This is insane,” said Mina. “They’re acting like
animals.”

“Just keep moving, and don’t make eye-contact.
Things are about to get nasty.”

“They’re already nasty.”

David grabbed her arm again and pulled her close. “People
are afraid, Mina. And when people are afraid, their inner cavemen come out.
There’s no rationality in a man when he panics. Just keep your head down and
don’t stop moving.”

Mina dodged around an old woman who had fallen in
the road. She wanted to stop and help her, but the crowd was a living thing, and
swallowed the pensioner up before there was any chance to offer help. David
dragged Mina beneath the awning of French
Connection to catch a breath.

“What do we do, David?”

“We wait for the first gap in the crowd and then
get the hell out of this city.”

“David, there are hundreds of those stones. What
if this is happening everywhere?”

“There are thousands of them,” he corrected her. “You
were there when Carol got the report. Thousands of them all over the world. I
don’t think I understood the chaos they would cause until now. Hundreds of
years ago, people’s superstitions kept them in line. Now, in the age of
science, people don’t tolerate things they can’t understand. Until someone
makes sense of these stones, things are going to get ghastly.”