Pandaemonium (42 page)

‘So many,’ Rosemary says. ‘Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe.’

‘All these cages are open, every one,’ Sendak states. ‘Computer error maybe, some kind of malfunction.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ Adnan reports, having proceeded one row further along and encountered more mutilated remains.

‘What?’

‘Think I found the screws.’

Adnan steps away carefully from this latest discovery, mindful of his most recent encounter with a corpse. Blood has coated the wall above the bodies, and almost but not quite obscured the existence of a glass cabinet attached to the stonework. He tugs up his sleeve and wipes the spray from the front panel. The blood smears slickly across the glass, but is cleared enough for him to make out the contents.

‘Whoa. Sarge, you have to see this.’

‘I’ve seen me enough corpses today to last a lifetime. I’ll take a rain check.’

‘Not the bodies, Sarge. Weapons.’

Sendak and Rosemary retreat from the row they had entered and come around next to Adnan. As they approach, there is a burst of noise from high up on one of the walls, and they turn in startlement, only to be met by the sight of steam venting from a broken pipe.

‘Shit. This thing’s gonna give me a goddamn heart attack before—’

There is another sudden noise heralding movement behind and above, but this time it’s no false alarm. Two demons are bounding along the tops of the cages, gaining speed and preparing to pounce, each gripping some kind of sparking blue pole in its claws.

Rosemary and Adnan react instinctively, each getting off a shot and hitting their target. Unfortunately they both pick the same target. The surviving demon checks its approach, coming in now from a different flank as it bears down on Sendak. He swings around to point the lance and squeezes the trigger, but sprays only liquid, the sudden motion having snuffed his makeshift pilot light.

‘Ah, shit,’ he breathes, figuring this is it as the demon launches itself from on high. He hears a sound that seems to grind electrically at the inside of his skull, like when the dentist is drilling his teeth, then feels a wave of dust on his skin and a taste in his mouth of blood and metal. It’s a sound, a sensation and a taste he’s encountered once before, and in this very room.

They all look for the source and locate a solitary figure at the far end of the row of cells, gripping a rifle similar to the ones locked in the cabinet. He limps towards them, his clothes torn, his face caked with dust, grime and blood.

‘Nice shooting, soldier,’ Sendak hails him. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m not a soldier,’ he replies. ‘And my name is—’

‘Steinmeyer,’ Sendak interrupts, recognising the face that’s under all that shit.

Steinmeyer is taken aback for a moment, then he also recognises who he is talking to.

‘Sergeant Sendak.’ Steinmeyer looks at the two armed teenagers in Sendak’s keeping, like
that’s
the weirdest thing going on around this place. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I still live in the neighbourhood. But if you mean what am I doing down here right now, well I think the answer to that has more to do with whatever the fuck
you’re
doing here. I see you never scrapped those guns you were working on. What other little experiments might have gotten out of hand?’

Steinmeyer bows sheepishly.

‘Those guns were the price of my soul, which I sold to fund my other work. I never got to apologise personally for what happened to your comrades and yourself. They kept the accident from me, and I didn’t even find out about it until months after you—’

‘The price of your soul just saved my ass, so consider the debt paid. I think you better keep back the act of contrition for your subsequent work. What’s been going on in this place? How come there are demons running loose on my property, slashing up my paying guests?’

Steinmeyer shakes his head.

‘Not demons,’ he says.

‘What the fuck else could they be?’

‘I don’t know what they are. Only what they’re not.’

‘Holy water burns their flesh,’ Sendak argues. ‘They have horns on their heads and they have some pretty fucking serious issues with crucifixes, to say nothing of the whole ripping-people-apart thing they got going on.’

‘Come and see this,’ Steinmeyer says. ‘All of you. Follow me.’

He leads them back along the row of cages and swings open one of the barred doors.

‘There.’ He points.

They draw closer, despite being repelled by the smell. On the walls of the chamber, etched in claw marks, blood and excrement, are a series of pictures.

‘It looks like cave paintings,’ Adnan opines.

‘I’ve found several just like this,’ Steinmeyer says. ‘It’s a narrative. The occupant of this cell telling his story, in some despairing attempt to express himself.’

He points to what now appears to be the first picture in a sequence: a rendering of a horned figure standing over another. The artwork is crude but recognisable, enough to make it clear that the creatures are clothed. The next shows a group of them before two isolated individuals: one boasting a headdress, the other identifiable as the standing figure in the first image.

‘A murder,’ Steinmeyer says. ‘Followed by a trial. This is a civilisation: primitive, possibly fifty thousand years behind our own, possibly a hundred thousand, but a civilisation nonetheless. If you look at the drawings in other cells you’ll see that they were
all
prisoners: some of them convicts, others captured in battle. Their punishment is always the same, however: they are stripped naked and cast into this black portal. Sometimes it appears as a cave, sometimes a pool, sometimes a pit. But it’s what happens next that is truly revealing.’

‘Oh shit,’ says Sendak, reading ahead.

‘I’m interpreting some of these marks as religious symbols. At this point they believe they’re dead, and have passed through into the next life.’

‘And this is their Hell,’ states Rosemary, having reached the parental-discretion-advisory parts of the narrative. She sees torture, crucifixion and . . . ‘Is this cannibalism?’ she asks.

‘They were fed only their own dead,’ Steinmeyer confirms. ‘And those who didn’t eat simply starved. But you are right: this is their Hell. We are their demons, and they have learned to recognise those who carry crucifixes as the worst of their tormentors. They are murderers and warriors, starved and brutalised, and they will kill on sight any and every human being they encounter, because they believe us to be capable only of evil.’

Heather rushes across to join them, equally impatient and dreading to discover whatever could have inspired such gloom in anyone with Kirk’s apparent appetite for the fray.

In that respect, the view doesn’t disappoint. There are four demons moving towards the games hall carrying a long and formidable-looking section of timber, several others attending on the fringes.

‘Must have cut away one of the open joists from the barn,’ Kirk suggests. ‘Gaunny use it as a battering ram. Anybody got some boiling oil?’

From what Heather can see, the closest they have is an outside tap attached to a garden hose.

‘Naw, but we do have an archer,’ Rocks replies. ‘Beansy, I hope you werenae lying about having used one of those things on holiday, because you’re up.’

‘I wasnae lying,’ Beansy insists. ‘But I didnae say I was any good.’

‘Well, you don’t need to hit a fuckin’ bullseye,’ Rocks assures him. ‘You just need to plug a few of these bastards.’

Rocks and Kirk open the doors and Beansy takes a pace forward on to the top of the steps. Caitlin is standing beside him, ready to hand him more arrows.

Heather feels suddenly very ashamed. These mere kids are out there defending everyone’s lives while she’s barely holding herself back from hysterics. She didn’t want Blake to leave because she literally wanted someone to hold on to, and because she knew that if he left, she might well be losing him forever.

All fear and desire is naked now, all pretences and façades stripped away. She can admit to what she wants. She doesn’t want to die. Life is all that matters. Life is all there is. She wants to hold Blake again. She wants to tell him the truth. She can admit to that truth. But whatever she wants, she needs to make it happen.

She steps back from the doorway and rushes to the storeroom, looking for anything that might yet be put to use. Alongside footballs, team bibs, hockey sticks and assorted racquets, the only item of any weight is a buffing machine for polishing the floor, yards of flex wrapped around its handle. On the wall beside it is a large grey circuit box. Heather crouches down and flips it open. Like everything else around here, it’s a modern affair, with the lights on a different circuit to the power points, and its express purpose is something she knows how to circumvent.

Beansy looks out across the grass towards the barn where everything turned to shite a few hours back. One minute he’s heading in there, healthy buzz off a jay and in with a serious shout of a wee footer with Yvonne; the next minute . . .

Aye. Payback, ya bastards.

Beansy tugs the string between his fingers and draws a bead on his first target. The fuckers with the battering ram seem worryingly near when you’re just looking at them, but become a lot further when you’re taking aim.

He lets fly. The arrow sails into the darkness to no apparent effect.

‘Arse-candles.’

‘Steady, Beansy, don’t get flustered,’ Kirk tells him as Caitlin hands over the next arrow.

Don’t get fucking flustered. Aye, nae bother, big yin. Demons heading towards them lugging a battering ram, but nae fucking pressure, eh?

He takes aim again, holds his breath, remembers this time what that instructor woman told him when she was standing right behind him with that lovely perfume in his nostrils and her tits occasionally just brushing against his back.
Fire as you breathe out.

He lets go the arrow as he lets out his breath, and this one thunks into the demon’s belly, downing the fucker and causing the other three to drop the timber.

‘Get in,’ cheers Rocks.

Caitlin feeds him again. He scores a second, shooting his mark in the thigh.

The demons start growling at each other, then the remaining two ram-bearers abandon the thing and go haring off.

‘Ya fuckin’ dancer,’ Rocks declares, but the congratulations are premature. A few moments later, four replacements retrieve the timber, while the two who had scurried off return, carrying wreckage from the exploded vehicles to use as shields. They take position in front of the battering ram, which can now proceed at will.

‘The legs. Go for the legs,’ Rocks suggests. Beansy fires off another three arrows, one hitting a car door and the others biting harmlessly into the ground as the rudimentary siege engine continues to progress.

‘If they get to these doors with that thing, we’re fucked.’

Kirk pulls the rip-cord and starts the chainsaw again.

‘Not gonna happen,’ he states defiantly, but Rocks can see the doubt in his face, the bravado he’s summoning for the benefit of those around him. Recent months haven’t been the best of times between them, but he’s seen what the big man is truly made of tonight. Unfortunately he’s also seen quite literally what several other folk were made of, and that’s the thought he can’t suppress as Kirk gets ready for what could be his final charge.

‘Stop right there,’ orders a voice, and they turn in surprise to see that it’s Miss Ross, holding a hockey stick with something threaded around it.

‘Grab the hose out there and turn that tap on, full bung,’ she tells Rocks. He complies unquestioningly, though he’s a little baffled as to what she has in mind. Under her direction, he floods the stairs, the disabled ramp and the concrete apron in front of both.

‘Great plan,’ Kirk says, equally confused. ‘If we make the path slippy enough, one of the monsters could have a nasty fall. Just need to hope the water freezes in the ten seconds we’ve got before they get here.’

‘Ready the doors,’ Heather commands, as the siege engine reaches the concrete. Rocks drops the hose and steps back inside, which is when he sees that whatever is wrapped around the hockey stick is also plugged into the mains. He catches a glimpse of bare wire on the curled end just as Heather lets it fall into the puddle.

‘Hey, check it,’ says Beansy. ‘They’re dancing.’