World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) (18 page)

Church parked the car round the corner and they sauntered up to the depot on foot. It comprised a large warehouse surrounded by smaller units, with a wide turning area for lorries at the front; the tarmac was cracked and tufts of yellowing grass poked through. As they neared, a fork-lift truck whizzed by carrying a pallet full of yellow oil drums, and through an open slide-door they could see movement deep within the building. Twelve-foot-high gates barred the way; they seemed to be opened electronically.

"We've got no chance of getting in there unseen," Church said.

"Don't be defeatist, Church-dude. Where's your ninja training?" Laura waited patiently and when a lorry pulled up at the gate five minutes later, she slipped through in its wake and motioned for the others to follow. The rumble of the lorry's engines drowned their footsteps as they sprinted across the wide open space to the shelter of the depot. Laura led the way along the wall and then dived down the alley she had described. Once they were out of sight of the main entrance, they rested briefly behind a pile of oil drums while Laura checked her bearings.

"This is the place." She turned back to the others. "I hope you're set. There's no turning back now."

"We're set." Church steeled himself, but the apprehension he felt was increasing with each moment.

Laura picked her way among the oil drums with the others close behind, the air thick with the stink of chemicals. Finally they came to a clearing among the stacks.

"Here we are," she said.

"What do we do? Say abracadabra?" Church could see nothing out of the ordinary.

"This is the place," Laura repeated defiantly, but there was a note of anxiety in her voice, as if she were afraid it really had all been in her mind.

Tom and Ruth hung back, keeping watch as Laura and Church investigated, but the moment they stepped into the clearing there was a sudden drop in temperature and a rushing sound like water cascading over rapids. Tom and Ruth turned in time to see the air opening, not like a door as Laura had described it, but like someone slashing silk with a razor blade. They moved forward together, but they were too slow. The gap in the air folded around Church and Laura then sealed, leaving only a faint aroma of pine forests and lemon.

Ruth and Tom had just a second to wonder what had happened. There was movement at the end of the alley; an oil drum clanged, then rolled over noisily. Three depot workers appeared, moving menacingly towards them. At first Ruth thought they would be able to talk their way out of the corner until she saw the wild look in their eyes and smelled the choking stench of animals' cages. Their faces began to move like oil on water.

Tom put an arm across Ruth's chest, forcing her to back away, but another sound from the other end of the alley brought them to a halt. More were coming from the other direction. Tom cursed under his breath. "She's led us into a trap."

There was a brief sensation of floating in water and then Church was suddenly somewhere else. The odour of chemicals and diesel fumes was replaced by more natural smells, of clean, fresh air and damp stone. He was standing in a corridor with a flagged floor and rough-hewn stone walls. Torches burned at intervals, but they didn't cast enough light to dispel the gloom. It was too sudden a transition to comprehend and for a second he felt as if the ground was violently moving under his feet; desperately he flailed around until he found a wall on which to cling. With his eyes clamped shut and his chest feeling as if it were being crushed by an anvil, his mind screamed out for some kind of explanation. Feebly, he tried to tell himself he had fallen through a hole in the ground into some structure beneath; it was such a ridiculous assertion it didn't hold for a second. He hadn't fallen at all. Beyond the floating, he couldn't describe what had happened to him. With dread acceptance, he opened his eyes and looked around. It was true; somehow he had gone from there to here-wherever here was-in the blink of an eye. All at once his gorge rose and he turned to one side and vomited.

It took him several minutes to reach some kind of equilibrium, but he knew there was no point in pathetically trying to deny the truth; and after all, over the past five weeks he had seen enough impossible things simply to start to accept without trying to understand.

His initial worry was what had happened to Laura. She had been at his side when the strange effect had begun to happen in front of them, but there was no sign of her along the stretch of corridor. Briefly he considered calling her name; but who knew what else might answer?

Certainly there was no point staying where he was. He was about to choose a direction at random when he heard someone singing, though faintly, as if it were filtered through numerous layers of stone. It hadn't just started, he was sure of it, but neither had he been aware of it before. It had a quality that made the hairs on his neck prickle. He weighed his options for a moment, decided he had none, and then started to move towards the music.

His footsteps echoed louder than he would have liked, and he remained permanently alert for any sound of someone approaching, but at the same time his mind was working overtime: where was he? There were few clues in his surroundings, but his deliberations took a new turn as he rounded a corner into another branch of the corridor.

On his right was a window, the first he had seen. He approached it in hope that it would allow him to get his bearings, but the moment he glanced out, an icy cold rushed through him. The view was of an infinite black void where occasional flashes of fire like distant explosions flared then subsided. There was no sign of surrounding land; whatever building he was in seemed to be floating in space.

Panic came first, like spiders in his mind; it was worse than he had feared. But somehow he managed to damp it down and continue on his way with a stoic acceptance; there would be time enough for explanations. He hoped. Tom had been right when he suggested Church's experiences had changed him; certainly if he had been presented with the same situation a few months ago he would not have remained so calm.

Although the singing didn't grow any louder, he found it increasingly entrancing, soothing even. Round another bend, he came to an oaken door, studded with black iron. It didn't seem particularly special, but after what he had seen he was filled with apprehension at what might lie behind; still, the safe option would get him nowhere. Throwing caution to the wind, he grasped the iron handle and threw the door open.

Church didn't know what he had expected, but it certainly wasn't the bedroom he had occupied as a seven-year-old. It was there in detail, down to the blue bedspread adorned with a picture of a cowboy on horseback, the annuals and comics, the lamp with the mosaic base on the bedside table: everything he could remember, and some things he couldn't. And there he was, asleep in his cowboy pyjamas, his pale face so innocent and untroubled it made him feel like crying; he could barely remember being that way. It seemed almost like he was watching the scene through glass. When he reached out, his hand came up against resistance and the air sparkled and shimmered around it.

The sparkling continued after he removed his hand until he realised that now it was coming from within the room. Something was gradually coalescing out of the glimmering at the foot of the bed. Eventually he saw it was a woman with long auburn hair and a beautiful, fine-boned face that reminded him of the idealised females in classical paintings. Her dress was long and of the darkest green, and it was embroidered with the finest filigree of gold in an astonishingly intricate pattern which, disturbingly, seemed to be moving as if it had a life of its own. Church had a sudden sense of majesty that took his breath away. Slowly she raised her arms and the sleeping Church woke as if she had called his name. He blinked once, twice, then a broad smile of wonder crept across his face. The woman smiled in return, then said three words softly.

In that instant, Church knew the scene that was happening had happened. The memory clawed its way from the back of his head where it had been dismissed as a dream and buried by reality; and it had happened not once, but several times over a short period.

The tableau slowly grew dark and then disappeared into inky blackness. Church closed the door and turned back to the corridor, trying to understand the tears that had sprung to his eyes. There was one other thing he did remember; the phrase she had uttered as a greeting:

Brother of Dragons.

This time Laura managed to control the nausea. As the stone corridor settled into focus, her biggest fear returned in force: that she would be compelled to look once again upon the things she had faced during her previous visit. Of all she had seen then, it was not the glimpses into her past that had been the worst, although that had been bad enough, but what she had to accept was a vista on to her future. It had been more than anyone should be expected to bear.

For a moment she wondered what had happened to Church, but in that place nothing was a surprise. The ethereal singing filtered through the walls; at least this time she knew what to expect. She set off purposefully, wishing there was some direct route, recalling how the maze had changed, even when she had tried carefully retracing her steps. She guessed it wasn't even as simple as stum bling across the right path; she felt instinctively that the maze allowed her through when she was ready.

The windows tempted her to peer out, but she resisted; it disturbed her too much. Instead she turned her thoughts to Church and the others. She hadn't made up her mind about them yet. Church was impossible to read at first glance; he was all dark water moving deeply, but she liked that in people. Superficiality was boring; the fun came in stripping away the layers, like unwrapping a surprise birthday present, until the real person was revealed, good or bad. Ruth seemed a little too nicey-nice, and, if she admitted it to herself, Ruth's easy confidence made her uncomfortable. The hippie disturbed her on some deeper level. When he looked at her she felt like squirming, as if he were mentally dissecting her with a cold contempt.

Deep in the building a rumbling began which sounded like the breathing of some mighty beast. Laura picked up her step, hoping against hope that Church and the others were the right ones and she wouldn't have to come here again.

"Follow me," Tom urged, clambering on to a heap of oil drums. He held out a hand and hauled Ruth behind him and then he was scrambling to the top of the precarious pile like a monkey. Ruth was more cautious, but the sight of the approaching men-who-weren't-men spurred her on.

The top of the heap was level with a dusty window which Tom smashed with his elbow, turning away to shield his face from the flying glass. Beneath them, their pursuers were already tearing at the drums in an attempt to unbalance them, roaring in the guttural language Ruth had first heard in the service station car park. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the merest glimpse of their true faces before she had snapped her attention away, but it was enough to make her head swim to the verge of blacking out.

Tom grabbed her as he knocked out the remaining shards of glass from the frame before hauling her through on to a metal walkway. "Sorry, I couldn't help looking," she gasped as she slowly regained control.

"Their faces are too much to bear until you're used to it." Ruth had an instant to wonder how Tom knew this before he grabbed her arm and pressed his palm against her forehead. At first it was cool, but then she felt a warmth spread out into her brain. "There. It won't be pleasant, but at least you'll be able to deal with them now."

Ruth glanced down and felt her gorge rise, but she didn't black out. It was still too much for her mind to register, as if she were looking at a TV where the signal was distorting and breaking up; misshapen bone and scales, things writhing both on the skin and underneath it. But the horror that assailed her didn't even come from the appearance; it was as if it were part of their existence, radiating out from deep within them. She turned quickly and pushed Tom away from the window.

"What's happened to Church?" she cried. Her heart jumped when she thought of him.

"I don't know where the door leads. We can come back for him later. First we have to save ourselves."

The walkway overlooked the depot's loading bay. A lorry had its rear door down and had been half-filled with the oil drums. A fork-lift truck was abandoned nearby. There was no one around, but they could hear an insane cacophany of roars drawing closer.

"They've been put here to guard the door. They let us in, knowing we wouldn't get out again. They'll tear us apart if they catch us." Tom stopped suddenly, then climbed on to the walkway's railing. "Come on."

His leap carried him on to the roof of the lorry, where he landed awkwardly. Ruth moaned when she saw him lie there for a second or two, but then he was up and limping along to the cab. She swayed on the railings for an instant, afraid to follow, but then she saw the creatures swarming in through the main door like insects, their forms thankfully blurred into grey shadows by her mind. Her landing was graceless, but she managed only to wind herself and then she was scrambling and sliding behind Tom, who was already lowering himself over the side through the cab's open window.