White and Other Tales of Ruin Page 25

  “Who are you?”

  “I want mummy, I want mummy …”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Please don’t kill us.”

  There were several more dead people, fried in their seats by the demons, but the living outnumbered them. After what I’d seen and been through I could hardly look at them without thinking, Cattle. Sheep. The demons had only killed those with a direct line of sight through the blown out windows. Presumably the survivors had seen nothing of the battle that followed my pad-rifle attack on the coach.

  “We’re just hitching a ride,” I said, looking at the few pale, scared faces in view. “Don’t mind us.”

  “Dad, we’re moving.” Laura was looking through the smashed window and when I bent down I could see the bandstands moving quickly out of sight. The scene darkened and vanished. Somebody screamed. There was a sudden, intense acceleration that flung me down into the aisle and Laura onto the carbonised lap of a seat’s former occupant. A screaming sound erupted through the ragged holes as the coach travelled its strange route.

  I clung onto a metal seat support leg as we picked up speed, feeling myself shoved along the floor, forces conspiring to drive me along the coach to break my bones against its rear bulkhead. I could just make out Laura’s hand where it clasped the chair’s hand rest. I wanted to reach up and lock fingers, reassure her  she was still in the lap of the burnt corpse, and it was probably still hot  but I couldn’t move. I lay there and let events carry me along, my cheek pressed flat to the floor, part of my view through the shattered window and into nothing outside.

  We were being guided, herded, coerced, steered and pulled along, I was certain of that now. Every event, every movement since I’d broken out of the coach to rescue Laura from crucifixion, had been preordained. Attacked when required, left alone or allowed to escape when it best served their intentions and plans … whoever They were. Knowing did not stop it happening, could not prevent the eventual outcome, whatever that may be. I may as well fight against life itself, or rage against God.

  So I lay there, waiting … and very soon the screams began once more.

  The darkness ended and daylight came again. The cries increased, and I heard Laura’s voice amongst them. I pulled myself up, slowly, fighting the forces still crushing me to the floor, tucking my toes against seat supports so that I was not torn away and flung down the length of the coach … and I saw why there was screaming.

  I almost lost my footing, but I’d come this far. Instinct for survival kept me where I was, even though every sense inside, every civilised part urged me to let go.

  This was Hell as it must have seemed in the past, created in the image most expected. Rivers of fire flowed across the landscape, erupting in brief busts of bright white flame as sufferers were thrown in by gangs of blackened humanoids. The gang would turn around and lumber back to a roughly-tied cage, extract another screaming victim and repeat the process, again and again. There were deep, smooth trails between the cages and the burning river, worn away by the shuffling monsters over decades or centuries. Nearer, as if arrayed along the route of the coach for our benefit, thousands of people hung crucified on the rigid skeletons of previous victims. Some of the dying people smouldered and burned.

  We passed a valley where thousands of naked people tried to dodge showers of molten rock falling from some invisible height. They went down when they were struck and were trampled or burned. Hundreds more damned were thrust into the valley through doors hidden in its depths, like gladiators pushed into the arena to face certain death. I could hear their screams, smell their scorched flesh, sense their agony in my bones. The air was filled with a whole concerto of pain, suffering and death. Even the screams of the passengers could do nothing to hide that.

  I saw more. Even though we were a distance away, and the people were really only pale shapes leaping and running and dying against the dark volcanic rocks, I could still somehow make out terrible details: the spectacles worn by one of the men, their bridge pasted with white tape, lenses smashing into his eyes as clumps of rock struck his face; a woman shielding her baby from the onslaught of lava, her back burned bare and roiling with blisters, yet still she didn’t yield; and a child, walking slowly and calmly through the chaos, her face turned my way, eyes filled with something I could not identify in this nightmare place.

  There’s always a survivor, someone said into my ear, and I glanced to my side. It must have been the wind.

  The scene faded quickly, letting the impenetrable blackness return beyond the window. The coach was still accelerating, but if I let go I’d be torn from Laura forever. She looked at me. Her eyes were wide and terrified, her face bloodied and lined with pain and fear, but she smiled.

  I smiled back, and for a moment there was nothing wrong.

  And then sunlight burst into the coach. There was a valley outside, a mosaic of odd-shaped fields coating the slopes, a long lazy river snaking down to where the hills faded away in the distance. There was a crowd of people in the foreground. They provided a further splash of colour to the lush green grasses, their summer clothes and tanned flesh merging to form a giant painter’s palette across the valley floor.

  They were all looking up.

  As the coach moved by, the perspective was all wrong. We were still accelerating, I could feel my insides distorting and my eyes twisting in their sockets, but we still had time to see the giant airship fall in a graceful, leisurely fireball from the sky. The people did not run. They stood there and looked up as if not believing this could happen, even though they could see the flames scorching the sky and the burning people falling like foolish descendants of Icarus.

  The front end of the huge ship ploughed into the crowd, flames spreading like ripples on a sun-bleached pond. I thought I saw the girl again, wandering unconcerned through a meadow –

  The window flipped back to black.

  “Daddy,” Laura said, but then we were blinded with light, the sun shining off fields of ice and snow, huge wooden houses and hotels like boils on the mountainside, the faint black lines of ski lifts heading towards the summits, tiny black dots zigging and zagging down towards an evening’s rest and chat and drinking. And then the cloud of white behind then, following slowly at first but gathering momentum, sweeping the skiers down at two hundred miles per hour and crushing them into red splashes, crashing through buildings, burying everything, everything, and walking across the snows in the foreground without a care in the world was the little girl, and —

  There’s always a survivor, someone said —

  The scene changed instantly from one of light to dark, the sea at night. A huge swell moved mountains of water, and there were dozens of little boats out there, each of them crowded with thirty or forty men. In the distance oil burned on the water’s surface, but none of the men looked that way. They were staring looking at something else, a black shiny-skinned monster gliding through the swell, and then it coughed out fire and one of the boats exploded into splinters of wood and bone. Men screamed, gargled as they drowned, and the cannon fired again, wrecking another boat. There were men on the deck with machine guns, laughing as they shot the survivors in the water, one of them aiming for hands and shoulders so that the victim would be unable to swim, drowning slowly. The gun fired again, again, and each time a boat came apart, spilling men whole and in pieces into the sea for the bullets or the cold or the sharks to finish off.

  The girl bobbed gently in the foreground, watching us. Her dress had spread out around her and she looked like a huge jelly-fish. Bullets splashed and I wanted to shout a warning, but somehow I knew it wasn’t required.

  There’s always a survivor, the voice said again, and another nightmare scene manifested, and another, and another. Soon they were racing by like the frames of a film, indistinguishable singly but making up a moving image of pain, suffering and death as I had never before imagined possible, and —

  There’s always a survivor.

  Chele dropped down
from a hatch in the ceiling. I could barely hold on, Laura was pressed back into the stinking, crackling remains of the corpse in the seat, but Chele seemed unconcerned at the acceleration. Her eyes had gone, and out of their sockets protruded thin, weak antennae. Her face was darkened around the eyes and nose where heavy bruises were forming, and along her hairline knobs were pushing through the skin, looking for all the world like horns forcing their way from her skull. One of them split the skin as she approached and she tilted her head as the antennae came through, perhaps picking up on some distant demonic discussion.

  She reached for Laura.

  I tried to lean forward but the motion of the coach pushed me back, pressed my loose skin and flesh against my bones until I thought that I’d be ripped away from my skeleton.

  “Dad!” Laura hissed as Chele’s hand closed around the back of her neck. “Dad, thanks for coming for me. I love you Dad … thanks …”

  I didn’t come for you, it was for me, I thought, but I wasn’t about to say it even if I could.

  Chele’s hands were blackened, the solid armour of the demons, and her nails had grown long and taken on a metallic tint.

  The coach accelerated some more and from the window I could see the hazy image of the little girl.

  … always a survivor …

  My vision darkened and senses receded. I saw Chele open her mouth to laugh as her other hand swung around, sharpened nails aiming for Laura’s exposed throat, and then I could see nothing.

  I heard laughter. Chele’s cruel laughter punctuated by the clicks and clacks of her throat hardening and closing in, allowing her no more say in the matter of her fate than, in truth, any of us have.

  When I awoke there was a dog licking my face.

  I was lying in a gutter. A few people must have passed me by because there was money scattered by my feet. I sat up slowly, looked down at myself, checked for broken bones, finding an ache or cut on every square inch of skin I touched. I could hardly blame them for not stopping to help, because I should be dead. Little did they know I’d just been through Hell.

  I recognised the street. I was lying on cobbles, I could smell Chinese food and as I sat there rubbing my head, the mutt still trying to lick my hand, two drunks burst from a door behind me and staggered along the pavement. They threw some slurred abuse my way but they were too pissed to do anything other than talk.

  Laura.

  Perhaps I’d been in there, in the pub with those men. Maybe I’d drunk myself into oblivion after oblivion, coming back again and again for weeks on end. The barman would know not only my name and life story, but my direct banker’s number as well. Perhaps by now he even owned my house.

  I looked for the door between the pub and restaurant, but there was only a bare spread of wall.

  Laura.

  I was covered with dried mud and blood, some of it my daughter’s. I could smell her on me. I could remember her, how she’d thanked me what seemed like minutes ago and how I’d kept my selfish truth silent from her in those last few moments before … before …

  I stood and ran home, ignoring the pain and stares, the comments and shouts, trying not to see the scared looks on kids’ faces as I breezed by. And with every step I took I expected a meteor to come blasting down out of the sky, a gunman to turn a corner with fifty pounds of explosive strapped to his chest and a belt-fed machinegun spitting death, a wall of water to come washing along the street, thirty feet deep and carrying the city’s story with it, sweeping up history and washing it clean.

  I looked for disaster and death, but I saw only typical, mundane life. I wanted to stop people in the street and tell them just how fucking lucky they were, why didn’t they smile, why didn’t they live.

  But right now wasn’t the time.

  Now, I had to get home.

  And Laura was there. Huddled on the doorstep like a shame-faced kid come home after her first night away. She was in a worse state than me, and when I saw her I burst into tears. She looked up, smiling and crying at the same time, and our tears weren’t of sadness or despair or fear. They were because never, ever have two people been so happy to see each other alive.

  I knew what we were, and I whispered it into Laura’s ear as the world went on around us.

  “We’re survivors,” I said, “because there’s always a survivor.”

  I believed that. They let us survive.

  I know that I should tell people what I know and what I’ve seen, but somehow it feels secret and forbidden. And every time I work my way to doing so I see Laura sitting in the sunlight or browsing through a book or cooking us a meal, and I dread changing anything. It’s all so perfect now, it’s drawn us together, and it really feels as though we’re doing Janine — my wife, Laura’s mother — proud.

  Besides, sometimes I see demons in the dark.

  So I live with the guilt and bad memories, and the certainty that every time I go to a concert or sports match with Laura I can cast my eyes across the crowds, and know that amongst them there are people who will suffer an horrendous fate. Normal people who will find Hell, not because they need it, but because Hell needs them. For fodder.

  I feel terrible. I hate myself for saying nothing.

  But I live with it.

  There are worse things in life, after all.

  * * *

  The First Law

  1. THE DEVIL’S CHAPLAIN

  On their fifth day adrift at sea, they saw an island.

  At first, there were only teasing hints of land: a twisted clump of palm fronds; darting specks in the sky which may have been birds; a greenish tinge to the underside of the soft clouds in the north, just above the horizon. They should have felt impelled to paddle towards it, but five days of sun, thirst and heat had drained them of hope. They lay slumped in the boat, their skin red and blistered, tongues swollen, lips split and black with dried blood.

  Their ship had been torpedoed and sunk five days earlier. So far as they knew, they were the only survivors. They had begun to feel cursed, not blessed.

  “I think there’s an island there,” Butch said, “unless the clouds are green with envy.” He was small, normally chipper, and one side of his face was badly bruised from the sinking. He knelt at the front of the lifeboat and stared out across the sea, a grotesque figurehead.

  Roddy closed his eyes against the blazing sun, but still it found its way through. It was as though his eyelids were turning transparent through lack of sustenance. The lifeboat had been capsized when they found it, and any supplies previously stored on board had been swallowed by the sea. On the third day it had rained, and they had managed to trap enough water in cupped hands and bundled clothes for a few mouthfuls each. Since then, they had gone thirsty. Roddy felt life seeping from his body with every drop of sweat.

  Ernie was the only officer with them, but thankfully he had refused to pull rank. He seemed to acknowledge, as they all did, that their position levelled anything so fleeting as grade. They had all been thrown together by the disaster of war, into the same class; that of survivor. So he prayed out loud instead, and at first his praying had helped, until Roddy had commented on how prayers had not aided the other three hundred of the ship’s crew. Since then Ernie had been sitting at the stern, spouting occasional brief outbursts of worship as if to goad the others into violence.

  It was not that Roddy had no sense of religion. It simply felt redundant out here, in the middle of the ocean. Today, he thought, God was indifferent.

  “Definitely an island,” Butch said. “Look. Leaves, or something. Covered in bird shit, too.”

  Roddy managed to raise his head and upper body until he was sitting up. Joints creaked in protest, he moaned in sympathy. His stomach felt huge and heavy and swollen. Ironic, seeing as he had not eaten for days. The sun beat at his forehead like a white-hot sledgehammer, trying to mould him all out of shape. He followed the direction Butch was indicating and saw an island of dead things floating by. But among the brown leaves, several huge egg shapes cl
ung on with wispy tenacity.

  “Coconuts,” he said.

  “Must be migrating,” Butch commented.

  Norris, apparently asleep until now, raised his hairy head. “Do they migrate?”

  “Stupid bastard,” Butch muttered, but it was to himself more than Norris. Survival may have thrown them together, but it could not change the way they all thought of the cook. He was unliked and unlikeable. He had been on three ships which had been sunk in the past year, and if anyone attracted the badge of Jonah, it was Norris. He took any such suggestion to heart and fought the man who made it, which only drove the gossip underground and made it harsher.

  “Shut your mouth, Norris,” Ernie said. “Of all the people God would choose to put on our boat of survivors —”

  “I put myself here, mate,” Butch cut in.

  “Of all the people,” Ernie continued, unabated, “we get you.”

  Norris sat up and winced. “What do you mean by that, you trumped up shit?” His lips were bleeding. Skin had sloughed from his burnt forehead, and now hung down over his eyes. Roddy wondered vaguely whether it helped to keep the sun at bay, and almost put his hand up to his own forehead to see whether he was in the same state.

  “He means,” said Max, “that you’re a Jonah. A curse, a bad omen. You’re the ancient mariner, and you wear our lives around your scrawny neck.”

  “Ancient! You’re the ancient one, you old bastard. Look at you, big and bald...”

  Norris trailed off when he saw that nobody was paying him any attention. Max did not bother to fill him in on the significance of what he had said. Butch was banging on the gunwale with the palm of his hand, trying to attract their attention. Max stood in the centre of the boat, and Roddy marvelled once again at his resilience. He was over six feet tall, big without being fat, bald as a baby and about as mild-mannered. The wrong man for a war, Roddy had always maintained. Max was intelligent, educated and sensitive, and Roddy had seen him cry more than once. He was also one of the bravest men Roddy knew. But his was a bravery gained by confronting his fears and grabbing them by the throat, not the blind boldness of rushing a machine-gun emplacement without a second thought. That bordered more on foolishness in Roddy’s book. Max was brave because he would never let his fears defeat him.