The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel (24 page)

“Diane,” he urged. “Diane, wake up. You have to—
Jesus
!”

Rick was jerked backwards by his belt. He twisted
around and saw his brother stumbling across the top of the car. From the road,
the black haired demon snarled, a massive gash in his torso pouring with brown
sludge. Keith slipped off the edge of the car and disappeared out of sight.

Rick turned back to Diane. “Diane, wake up!”

Her eyes fluttered and eventually stayed open. Her
gaze fell upon Rick, and she panicked.

“Diane, it’s okay. It’s me, Rick.”

She stopped struggling and took a hard look at
him. “Rick? I… I thought we left you.”

“You did. It was a trap, but you’re okay. Come
on.”

Diane reached up with both arms and allowed Rick
to drag her up onto the side of the car. She was unarmed and disorientated, so
he told her to hop down and run to the bushes at the edge of the road. Rick,
himself, dropped down and went to join the battle. He retrieved his brass lamp
and smashed in the brain of a nearby demon. Keith was right ahead, being beaten
half to death by the black haired, dead demon.

Rick shouted. “Leave him alone!”

The demon raised his fist to strike Keith again,
but held it in the air and looked at Rick with a sickening grimace. “Wait your
turn, worm.”

“That’s an ironic thing to say for a
maggot-riddled corpse.”

The demon wasted no more time with trash talk. It
dropped Keith to the pavement and stalked after Rick. Rick clutched the lamp,
but felt as if he were holding an inflatable mallet. The creature coming
towards him was massive, and the gaping wound in its torso had not been enough
to stop it.

Rick leapt forward and took a swing, but the demon
was too quick. It backhanded Rick across the cheek hard enough to send him down
to the ground and see stars. The loose stones on the road bit into his palms as
he tried to right himself. Keith staggered back to his feet and leapt at the
demon’s back, but he too was swatted away with a cruel backhand. He ended up on
the floor right next to Rick, and the two brothers crawled backwards together.
The demon stalked after them with the plodding ferocity of a rhino. His gnarled
hands were thick, and perfect for breaking bones.

In the background, demons surrounded Maddy, while
Diane cowered in the bushes at the side of the road. Daniel was nowhere to be
seen.

“Why are you here?” asked Rick.

The demon stopped his approach and seemed to
answer after careful thought. “Because the alternative is remaining there.”

Rick shook his head. “Where?”

“Hell. Do you know what it is like to finally be
free from there? To return home to the place that allows us the pleasure of life?”

Rick saw sadness on the demon’s face and made an
assumption. “You were people once. You were a man?”

The question seemed to enrage the demon. “Not just
a man—a prince. My family’s kingdom stretched from the Euphrates to the Tigris,
and all we wanted, we took. Now I am a prince once more, here to take what I
wish and answer only to the Red Lord himself.”

“So, it sounds like you’re still somebody’s bitch,”
said Rick.

“I am a prince!” The demon’s face screwed up in
fury, but, having stalled sufficiently to recover his strength, Rick was able
to spring up and wallop the demon around the head with his lamp.

There was a resounding crack and Rick shouted triumphantly,
“We already have a monarchy, thanks!”

The demon reeled backwards on its thick legs, face
distorted from the large dent now in the left side of its skull.

But the black haired dead man did not go down.

“Fuck sake,” cried Rick. “Don’t you die?”

“Princes die when princes choose to die.”

“Do they choose to go to Hell? Because that’s
where you’ve been rotting.”

The demon tried to backhand Rick again, but this
time, he ducked and gave his enemy’s knees a hefty blow with the lamp.

The demon bellowed and stumbled sideways. “I will
tear you into shreds and feed your remains to vultures.”

“You’d need to go someplace else for that,” said Rick
as he smashed the demon in the hip. “No vultures here, I’m afraid.”

“There will be nothing left when we are done with
it. We will destroy all.”

“Except vultures, apparently.” Rick took another
swing, but his luck ran out, and he missed. The demon caught the lamp stem,
yanked it away from him, and threw it to the ground.

“Now you die, worm.” The demon punched Rick in the
stomach, and his ribs cracked like twigs. He slumped to his knees, able only to
catch half a breath.

Keith raced to help, but Rick put his hand up and
waved him away. “No… Keith, go… help Maddy and Diane. Get them out of… here.”

The demon grinned. “Yes, Keith, run while you can.
I’ll deal with you later.”

Keith kept on towards Rick, but slowed down, and then
stopped. “Rick, I can’t-”

“Just go!” shouted Rick, clutching his ribs in
agony. “Get the hell out of here.”

Keith swallowed, then turned and ran. He called
Diane out of the bushes and they went to Maddy’s aid—just in time to save her
from being torn apart by a demon creeping up behind her.

Rick coughed and tasted blood in his mouth. Every
breath he took was shallower than the last. The effort of even staying upright
on his knees was too much. He slumped onto his side.

The black haired demon stood over him, deep,
guttural laughter coming from deep down from its dead insides. “A valiant
display—braver than a thousand other worms we have slaughtered in this village.
It will be a pleasure to add you to our ranks, once your time in Hell is over.”

Rick flailed, no longer able to take another
breath. His vision fizzed with swirling rain drops, and he tried to find the
strength to get back to his knees and face his death with his head held high,
but he only felt himself getting lower and lower to the ground. Eventually, his
head rested against the cold tarmac. He looked up at the sky and saw the moon
shining down on him. It was pretty.

That was when the demon raised his foot into the
air and stamped Rick’s skull into pulp.

“Mina? Mina, where on Earth
are you, girl?” David had tried Mina’s cell, but it only ever rang out to
voicemail. The last couple times, the call hadn’t even connected—it appeared
the nation’s cellular network had started to fail. Whatever contingencies were
put in place by the networks could obviously only last so long without human
intervention. David imagined call centres and hub offices lying empty,
employees all fled, or ripped apart by demons. Inside the offices of the
Slough
Echo,
things seemed almost normal, but he knew that was likely an
exception. It was just a busy news day as far as the staff of the
Echo
was
concerned. Everybody had been tasked with the same jobs they would have been
given if a local celebrity died. They were somehow outside of the situation, as
journalists so often were. It was hard to realise that the current situation
affected them as much as the people they were reporting the news to.

The last time he’d spoken to Mina, she’d said she
was in the waiting area, but when he stormed out there to find her, she had been
nowhere to be seen. Her whole website had been erased—didn’t she care? People
had been funnelling through to the landing page in droves over the last several
hours, and there was evidence that it was directly helping people survive. How
on Earth had it been deleted?

David headed back out into the waiting area,
returning there to check, even though he’d already inspected it once. It was
the same thing he did with his car keys some mornings. Whenever he misplaced
them, he’d go to the sideboard in the hallway again and again because that was
where they were supposed to be. Mina said she was in the waiting area, so that
was where he went once again.

He never expected to bump into Andras.

“Do you know where Mina has wandered off to?” he
asked. “She’s needed.”

Andras nodded and looked rather sad. “She got a
call off her dad. I think he’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, you know…
dead
.”

“Oh, poor Mina. Is she okay?” He felt for her.
From what he’d witnessed, Mina’s father was a controlling man, but still her father.
He could tell she loved him, but lots of people were dying in the world, and no
one had the luxury to mourn them. They needed to keep working.

“Do you know where she went, Andras?”

“For fresh air, I think. I asked her if she wanted
to talk, but… well, she doesn’t know me, so she went to be alone.”

“Of course. I’ll go look for her, and see if she’s
okay.”

Andras nodded. “I’ll make myself useful inside.”

“Yes, please. Little Alice is awake, so Carol will
no doubt be back on the floor ready to give out tasks.”

“Great, I’ll get right on it.”

Andras walked away, but something occurred to
David that made him call the man back. “Andras?”

He turned. “Yes?”

“You were at Mina’s computer last. Do you know
what happened to the website?”

“Don’t ask me. Everything was fine when I left it.
Maybe it was hacked.”

“By whom? Who out there would want to stop us
giving out information about the demons?”

“The demons, for one.”

David thought the idea of tech savvy demons was
ridiculous, so he gave a thin smile and walked away. There was something off
about Andras. They had found him cowering in the road outside the building, but
since then, the man had shown little fear or concern. Nor had he made any phone
calls to friends or loved ones.

Mina had probably gone out to the front of the building
to get fresh air, but David would rather her be inside. The army south of Luton
had been spotted moving west by a middle-aged postal worker trapped in a Chinese
restaurant. He had been providing typo-ridden email updates from an iPhone
attached to the building’s Wi-Fi. The updates had stopped about fifteen minutes
ago.

David opened the door in the hallway that led to the
stairwell. He wasn’t about to trust the lift—the power could go at any minute
and he didn’t fancy being trapped inside a metal coffin. Despite the mugginess
of the summer night, the stairwell was chilly, and a draught whistled up the
central gap between the levels.

He started down the step, his ears picking up a
rhythmic thudding, like a tree branch tapping against a window in the wind. It
seemed to come from the floor below, and as he looked down the central hollow
of the spiralling stairwell, he saw something flashing in and out of view. What
on Earth was it?

He quickened his steps. He had a bad feeling, and
was eager to find out he was wrong. But he wasn’t wrong. The bad feeling was
completely warranted.

Mina swung from a long length of telephone cord
attached to the safety railing, her neck broken. The thick, grey cord bit so
deeply into her windpipe it looked like her head might pop off at any minute
and send her decapitated body plummeting to the bottom floor lobby.

“Mina!”

David panicked. He reached out and grabbed Mina’s
legs and tried to hoist her back up onto the landing, but she was too heavy. Her
body swung wildly around on the end of the cord. The only thing he could think
to do was call for help. So he screamed until his throat hurt. “Somebody, help
me! Please!”

Before he knew it, he was sobbing.

Nobody came. Nobody could hear him.

***

Eventually, David’s
thinking prevailed, and he pulled out his phone and dialled Carol. When she
heard what had happened, she appeared in the stairwell within minutes. She
stood beside him now, looking down at Mina where they laid her down on the
landing. Getting her down had been much easier with two of them.

“The silly girl,” said Carol. “She was so bright.”

David was light-headed, so he leaned up against
the railing and dropped his head as he spoke. “We survived so much together, to
end it like this? It makes no sense. She wouldn’t do this, Carol.”

“Of course she would, David, my dear. In fact, it
takes more courage not to kill ourselves right now. You know the demon army is
heading this way?”

David nodded.

“Corporal Martin thinks it might be planning to
head down to the South Coast, maybe attack Portsmouth. The Navy is there,
rounding up people into a refugee camp.”

David rubbed at his temples, fingers moving in
clockwise circles. “They’re trying to exterminate us.”

“Looks that way, which is why it’s such a sodding
shame that young girls like Mina are making their job easier for them. We
needed her. Silly girl.”

“She didn’t do this, Carol. I know her. She was
strong. I listened to her stand up to her father, I watched her run into a
burning building to save a girl—she wasn’t in a vulnerable place. She was
motivated, and she wanted to help.”

“Andras told me her father might be dead. That’s
likely what tipped her over the edge, David.”

He’d been a reporter for thirty years, and
something didn’t feel right. “Andras was at Mina’s computer right before the
website got wiped. He was in the waiting area when Mina went missing. Who is
he?”

“He’s just some chap, David, trying to survive
like the rest of us. He isn’t up to no good, I promise you.”

David looked down at Mina’s body and sighed.
“Perhaps you’re right. Give me a minute and I’ll be back to work.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in the office. Alice wants to see
you now that’s she’s awake.”

“Alice? See me?”

Carol shrugged. “She wanted to see you and Mina
both, but we’ll have to break the news to her. She likes you.”

David frowned. “Heaven knows why.”

“You and Mina saved her life. I don’t blame her
for wanting to stay close to you. You’ve done well, David. Don’t lose yourself now.
I need you.”

“I’ll be back to work in a minute, just want to
put Mina somewhere quiet.”

Carol squeezed him on the arm and smiled. Then she
left him alone with Mina. He was able to pick her up into his arms, and he took
her down another level into the offices of an accountancy firm that sub-let
part of the building. He took her into the boardroom and placed her down on the
long desk where he straightened her legs and put her arms by her side. It was
nice to see her at peace, but strange that he already missed her so. Before the
chaos that erupted in Oxford Street, David had thought nothing of Mina—just another
youngster with a camera, naively hoping she could make a mark on the world. Now
he knew different. Mina had been a brave and kind woman, and he’d been lucky to
know her. He’d been so consumed with his career for so long that he’d forgotten
how to make a friend. In Mina, he had at least found pleasant company, and a
person he respected. Now it was too late to appreciate her, and he regretted it
more than ever.

He felt so alone. There had always seemed to be
time for a wife and kids later on, and even at fifty, he hadn’t felt his
options were closed. He was selfish at heart and had wanted to be free for as
long as possible. Now he wanted nothing more than for someone to sweep him up
in their loving arms and hold him. Just a friend would do.

David wept over Mina’s body.

Perhaps she really had killed herself. If he was
drawn to such dark introspection, perhaps she had been too. It still didn’t feel
right, though.

He ran a hand over her cheek. “Sorry, kiddo. I
hope you’re some place nice.”

He was about to move away, when he noticed a spot
of blood on her shirt. It could have come from her broken neck, but when he
looked at her throat, he saw no breaks in the skin, not even where the cord
constricted her flesh. He examined her more closely, until he eventually
discovered the source. One of her fingernails had torn away.

A defensive wound?

David had once reported on a murder case in Essex
where he’d seen the body of a woman close up. She’d been raped and strangled. Her
fingernails had been broken too.

Did somebody attack you, Mina?

Andras?

David couldn’t bring himself to trust that man.
Something was just off about him. Somebody had done this to Mina; he was sure
of it.

It was time to do some investigating.

He headed back upstairs and into the newsroom,
acting calmly while remaining suspicious. Alice waited for him with a cup of tea
and handed it over. “I’ve never made tea before,” she said. “Everyone in
America drinks coffee.”

David took a sip. It was weak and lukewarm.
“Perfect! You’re a natural English lady if ever I saw one.”

She smiled, but then fell back to sadness. Obvious
survivor’s guilt—a brief glimmer of happiness followed by shame as memories of
her brother’s death returned. He did something he was unused to and gave the
little girl a hug. “We’ll get you home to your mummy soon, sweetheart, I
promise. Let’s just get this mess sorted out first.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know I’ll never go home.”

“You don’t know that, Alice. We’ll do everything
we can.”

“I heard Corporal Martin say that America is just
as bad as here. My mommy might already be dead.”

It hurt David’s heart to see a child so devoid of
hope, and he did his best to combat it. “There are lots of people still very
much alive, Alice. We are fighting back. Your mummy might be okay. Your father
too. He’s a Coast Guard, isn’t he? He’ll be safe on his boat.”

“I don’t see my daddy much. He’ll be too busy to
come and get me.”

“I don’t have children, Alice, but believe me, I know
your father will be doing everything he can right now to get to you.”

Alice nodded, but didn’t seem to believe him very
much. “He doesn’t know that Kyle is dead. Corporal Martin has been trying to
reach my mommy, but she’s not answering anymore. That’s how I know she’s dead.
She said she would stay indoors with Clark, so why isn’t she answering?”

“The phones are playing up, sweetheart. Corporal
Martin will keep trying her. Why don’t you go ask him to call again now for
you?”

She sighed. “Okay. Tell me when you want more
tea.”

“Will do.” He took another sip of the lacklustre brew
and smacked his lips. “Mmm.”

Once Alice had gone, David went and grabbed Mitchell,
one of the
Echo’s
system administrators. The pasty-faced spindle of a
man had a look of constant illness—with perpetual dark bags beneath his eyes.
“Hi, Mitchell. I was wondering if you could do something for me.”

“What’s up, David?”

“Is there any way you can go on Mina’s computer
and find a history of what was done on it?”

“You mean like a list of user actions?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly.”

Mitchell nodded. “Piece of piss. There’s black box
software on the entire network. It records every single keystroke. Carol had it
installed after we got accused of phone hacking last year. She wanted to know
exactly what was going on under her nose. You thinking somebody in the office
deleted the emergency website on purpose?”

David nodded and kept his voice low. “I do think
that, yes, and I also think that someone used Mina’s computer to do it.”

“Makes sense. The backup was on Mina’s laptop, and
that got deleted too. I’ve been trying to restore it for the last hour. Where
is Mina, anyway?”

David decided not to confuse things for the time
being, so he lied. “She’s gone to get some air.”

“Okay, well, let’s go take a look at her
computer.”

They went on over to Mina’s cubicle, where Mitchell
sat down and opened her laptop. David leaned over his shoulder while he tapped
away. “How long will this take, Mitchell?”

“Ten minutes. Leave me to it.”

“Okay, I-”

Somebody bumped into the back of David, and he was
unnerved to discover it was Andras. He held two steaming mugs of tea out in
front of him. “I saw Alice made you a cuppa earlier, so I thought I’d get you
one a little stronger. Bless her socks, but she goes a little overboard with
the milk.”