Decay Inevitable Read online

  In a pub on the main drag, he drank lager without tasting it and swung his gaze to the clock behind the bar with metronomic regularity. It was a busy night. The pub was convenient for Charing Cross station and welcomed a mix of politicians, City workers and theatre-goers. Cliques buzzed and vibrated in batches of movement and regimented colour, magnets that repelled other groupings. There was tension in the air and Will wondered if it was being engineered by something beyond this social bagatelle. Maybe it had its source in what Christopher had foretold. Did these people, as they sipped their Pimm’s and gins and Guinnesses, have some animal signifier that was coming alive within them? Did they sweat in its shadow? Did they prickle?

  Will felt it, coursing through his bones like cold. A couple of women in tight, shiny dresses knocked into him as they made their way to the toilets. He barely felt it, although they had caused him to drop his glass. He didn’t hear it shatter, or their apologies or offers to buy him another drink. He pushed his way through a corridor in the scrum and felt the bitter night air crystallise on the sweat that coated his chest as he reeled outside. Rain flashed in broken obliques where the streetlamps picked it out, liquid Morse code carrying messages too swift to be read. He splashed down towards the riverbank, clutching the Greene novel in his hand as though it were a cudgel. A train was nosing out of Charing Cross station, one of the last rides home, and he watched its broken passage through the lattice of girders on Hungerford Bridge. Couples were bent against the driving rain as it laced them on the pedestrian walkway across the Thames. Big Ben tolled midnight. Will scampered up the steps to the bridge and waited, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth, for something awful to happen. He counted seconds and had reached 300 when he heard the beginning of it.

  What had he suspected, during the lonely drive south? A drowning, a collision of trains. A car crash. A collapse of scaffolding. Someone. A few somebodies. A blip on the statistical charts compiled by end-of-year accident and emergency investigators...

  The thrum sounded like persistent thunder. It vibrated in his chest and made the rails and the girders pick up the song. Studded in the rain-scratched darkness, following the trajectory marked by the old river on a path to Heathrow, were the headlights of what sounded like a jumbo jet. But there was something not quite right about the sound it was making. It sounded like a big plane trying to do an impression of an even bigger plane and failing badly. It sounded, machine though it was, like a shriek of distress.

  Will felt the cold air drying his tongue but could not close his mouth to protect it. He watched as the jet came out of the sky, twisting over to the left in a graceful banking manoeuvre that did not correct itself. Black smoke was chugging out of one of the engines on the port side; its mate was intermittently breathing fire. Carbon streaks concealed much of the empennage and the portholes. The air appeared ready to shear apart under the weight of the protesting engines as the pilots struggled to right the plane. Will felt the bridge quake as the portside wing clipped it. What he saw next, as the plane tumbled overhead, was hindered by the criss-cross of black metal. The bridge, where it had been struck, was on fire. Some pedestrians, drenched with aviation fuel and alight, had thrown themselves into the water, mindlessly desperate to consume one form of death with another. A train with its roof ablaze stopped short of the platform, as if unsure as to what to do. Will could see figures on board, rushing along the aisles to doors that were locked.

  He sprinted across the bridge to the South Bank, trying his best to dodge the liquid flames that dripped from the metalwork above him. He was just over half-way across when he heard the jet impact. He felt it through his feet as the bridge shuddered. He hurried down the stairs and followed the Queen’s Walk east. A false sunrise had come to the city. It lit up the south-facing sides of the Houses of Parliament and Banqueting House. It turned the water furious orange. Fire surrounded the London Eye, which was tilting precariously over the river. The smell of aviation fuel was mixed with scorched dust and a terrible stench that was like burnt hair. As he approached, the heat already drawing the skin tight across his face, the Millennium Wheel gave up the ghost and toppled into the Thames. A huge tidal wave took off up the river, competing with the roar of the fire. Unable to get any closer, Will cast about for some sign, frantic that he was missing something.

  Arc lights stitched the night over the city: scrambled rescue helicopters coming in fast and low to circle the accident site. Will saw Lambeth Bridge in front of him and Waterloo Bridge behind become clogged with emergency vehicles, but their sirens were no match for this roast’s clamour. The snout of the jumbo had pitched up against what remained of Westminster Bridge, a jagged grin having torn the undercarriage away from the part that housed the cockpit. It resembled the head of a shark coming up to attack. Bodies flung from the aircraft lay naked and glazed in impossible positions. Across the water, on Victoria Embankment, a great swathe of people had materialised, appalled and mesmerised by the inferno.

  Will’s tears evaporated as soon as they fell. He retreated from the intense heat when he realised his jumper was smoking. He was about to turn away from the broken jet – firemen were pouring onto Jubilee Gardens – when he caught sight of a dimpled sheet of molten metal that emerged from the twisting columns of black smoke at the heart of the fire. It was perfectly square, and upright. It looked to Will like a large mirror, but its reflecting surface was a rilling, fluid riot. He remembered seeing something like this on the motorway, when he had carried Elisabeth away from their wrecked car. Then, as now, he was tickled by the conviction that he had been allowed a glimpse behind the complexity of death and understood what it meant, what it signified. But it was like waking from a vivid dream and finding it unwilling to resolve itself in the mind. Out of reach, on the tip of his tongue: a black thing in a dark room, and Will was hunting for it wearing sunglasses.

  The dimpled sheet faded from his view, perhaps as the shattered hearts around it gave up their pulses and their last pints of blood. He couldn’t have approached this thing and touched it, as he would have liked, or looked upon its surface to view what might have been written upon it, and hoped to survive. He’d have been dead as soon as he came within fifty feet of it.

  It was only as he hurried back along the Queen’s Walk, bitterly enjoying the fresh bite of cold air, that he realised, after all, that might be the point.

  CHAPTER THIRTY: IN COUNTRY

  “HE’S DEAD. LEAVE him.”

  “But Sean, we can’t just–”

  “We can. We’re going to. Now.”

  Sean was moving as best he could, collecting his clothes under one arm and shooing Emma towards the door with the other. He caught sight of a slender woman in a black cocktail dress moving through the front door with all the padded stealth of a panther.

  “Who’s there?” he asked. For his pains, he got an eyeful of timber as the doorway flew apart. Emma yelped and scrambled into the kitchen, trying to pull on her skirt.

  “Fire escape,” Sean said, grabbing the Walther from Marshall’s fist. He was moving backwards slowly into the kitchen, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts, when she leaned her head around the doorway. The eyes were shifting around the flat, taking it in, the body constantly moving, like the seep of oil. Sean squeezed off a round and watched the bullet pass straight through the flesh of the woman’s forehead. The wound rippled and closed itself up. The woman might have frowned. That’s all.

  “Right,” he said. “Fine.”

  Emma was on the fire escape by now, clanking down it as fast as she could. Sean followed close behind, again moving backwards, his gun cocked and ready, for all the good it would do them. They struck off across the wasteland at the back of the tower block, aiming for the canal and the numerous neighbouring streets, which they hoped were gloomy and narrow enough to allow them to lose their pursuer.

  Sean kept checking back and was rewarded with the sight of a black figure, moving impossibly fast on the other side of the wasteland, seemingly intent on blocking
off their progress. They got to the canal, where Sean lost sight of their attacker among the long reeds that fringed the bank.

  “Come on,” he cajoled. “Across the bridge.”

  They scuttled over the wooden walkway, Sean peering into the distance but seeing nothing. He eased up on the opposite bank and, keeping his gaze fastened on the only access point across the canal, pulled on his trousers and shoes.

  “Who is it?” Emma demanded, breathlessly.

  “I don’t know, but Will, remember Will told us about that crippled thing that was chasing him? I think that’s her. I think. Maybe.”

  “Fuck,” Emma said. She seemed impressed. “She, she...” Emma waggled her hands, trying to put it into words. “...she moved.”

  “I know. Come on.”

  The thick nest of terraces were formed like a maze. Darkness helped them move through it, sucking them into the core of green at the centre of confused streets and pathways. Few of the streetlamps were functional. Around half of those that did work spat and fizzled chancy orange light, a poor man’s disco. It did strange things to colour, this sodium pulse. It turned the skin into a dappled, beaten armoury of greys. Twenty minutes of rat-runs saw them hunkering down behind a squad of wheelie bins by a creosoted fence. The house at their rear was still awake. The sounds of laughter and glasses chinking. A smell of curried food. Beyond that, the night was silent but pregnant with something that felt like anticipation. It prickled the skin.

  “How long do you think we’ve been waiting?” Emma asked after another twenty minutes had expired. “I’m cold.”

  “Oh, not long enough,” he replied, drawing her under his arm.

  “How long before we can go? How much longer do we have to wait?”

  “Bit longer,” he said, and turned to smile at her. “Helpful, aren’t I?”

  “Marshall’s dead, isn’t he? We couldn’t have saved him?”

  “I don’t think so. He had lost a lot of blood. He was coming to warn us, remember that. He wasn’t coming to us for help. He saved our lives.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Sean squeezed her arm. He felt better. The wounds were knitting together quickly now. He could feel the fizz of repair coursing through his body.

  He remembered something from his childhood. His mother leaning over him with a wad of cotton wool dipped in TCP.

  “Where does it hurt, love?” she had asked him. “Show Mummy.” And he remembered laughing and trying to pull the cotton wool out of her hand. What had he done? Tripped on the road and grazed his knee? But in the time she had pulled his trousers down to sterilise his cuts, the wound had healed. A quick healer, they had said about him. It’s because he’s got good blood. He’s a strong lad, that one. On the football pitch, hoofed into the air by reckless defenders, he had picked himself up and plodded on. Tin legs, they had nicknamed him. Sean had believed it all. If you weren’t used to injuring yourself every time you fell over, you didn’t question your lack of bumps, bruises, breaks.

  “When Marshall came in,” Sean said, “what was it he was covered in? I mean, what was it in the doorway? The colours.”

  “While we were fucking?”

  “Yeah. The colours. The light.”

  Emma kissed his cheek. “Maybe you were dizzy. I was that good.” She kissed him again. “It was that good. Had to be we were disturbed on our first time, though, hey? I was ready to knock Marshall’s block off, before I saw what had happened to him.”

  Sean returned his attention to the opposite edge of the lawn, where the pale narrow houses huddled together as if mirroring or mocking them. “I think, maybe, it was a way through. Being, I don’t know, born.”

  He felt Emma drop away from him, an infinitesimal collapse. “Because we were fucking?”

  Sean shrugged. “Jesus, why not? It was our first time. Remember what Pardoe said about ripples happening when we met up. Well, having sex... maybe it’s intensified the ripples. It’s triggered off something else. Something new.”

  Emma digested this for a moment and then giggled, drawing herself into his protective warmth again. “You shouldn’t be throwing such big stones in,” she said.

  Emma was having trouble trying to stop laughing now, but it was bitter, edgy laughter that threatened to spill over into madness or tears. Sean stopped it by kissing her hard. He wished he could pass something on via the kiss, as if in his saliva he possessed some balm that could help Emma make this transformation and help her cope with the immensity of the changes in her life.

  Sean

  He whipped his head up.

  Emma, sobered now, said, “What is it?”

  “Shhh.”

  Sean

  “Someone’s here,” he said. “Can you hear?”

  Emma stiffened. Her hand rose out of the shadows between them and a finger pointed. Out of a black cumulus of hedges, Marshall stumbled. Now they both heard him, his voice weak, almost childish.

  “Sean?” He sounded unsure, as if the mind controlling the utterance could not fully appreciate the awful prospect that he was still alive. “Sean. Help. Me. Emma. Emma. Save. Me. Oh. God.”

  Emma began to rise, her breath coming in stitches, her eyes filled with tears.

  Sean held her back and put a hand over her mouth. He drew her face close to his and slowly, deliberately, shook his head. Emma’s eyes widened and grew angry. He leaned into her and whispered, as quietly as he possibly could, “Marshall is dead. That is not Marshall.”

  Marshall was standing at the centre of the green, cocking his head, as if he had somehow caught a sliver of what Sean had passed on to Emma and was trying to pinpoint where the fragments of sound had come from.

  Watching Marshall, Sean could see little things, little tell-tale signs that suggested it was not the man. Marshall would not wear his hat so far back on his head, like Sinatra. His belt buckle was tied across his coat, something Marshall never did because it made him feel restricted and didn’t allow him access to his gun. This Marshall had thrust his destroyed hand into his pocket. Sean guessed that was because, dead, it would have stopped bleeding. This Marshall could not replicate the flow that was needed. This Marshall had to hide the lack of bloodshed.

  Sean saw the only way they could escape. “Here,” he mouthed to Emma. She gaped at him uncomprehendingly. “Love me. Fuck me.”

  Already his hands were moving under her skirt, touching her, trying to coax some heat and wetness from her. She protested, trying to wriggle back, her eyes on Marshall as he staggered across the green. But maybe something in Marshall’s gait, the way his drunken stumble had arrested itself and was becoming, by the second, more controlled, caused her to give pause.

  “Trust me,” Sean said, rubbing his fingers against and into the soft, moist yield of her sex. He guided her hand to his trousers and she unzipped him, drawing him out into the cold. He risked, “I love you,” because he needed to say the words and he needed her to be reassured. She nodded and leaned over him, quickly stiffening his cock with her mouth. She drew away and shuffled over him, apeing the position they had been in earlier. When she sank on to him, she had to stifle a moan by stuffing a fistful of jumper into her mouth. They moved against each other as slowly as they dared, and instantly rainbow motes began to tremble in the air, six feet away. It was like white noise on a television screen. Emma’s thighs trembled at the end of every upstroke, Sean’s when he rose to meet her coming back down, the price they had to pay for stealth: every shred of them wanted to speed up, to sprint for that delicious moment.

  Emma watched Marshall, or what had once been Marshall. He seemed to have shed every aspect of the pretence, but for his shell. He knew they were there. He could read it in the warmth that had impinged upon the cold air of the park. He could smell the animal in them as they rutted. But he couldn’t see them. Yet. She recalled the pathetic, determined figure that had pressed through the bars of the hospital gates, like an unpopular child desperately trying to keep up with the would-be friends who were attempti
ng to lose her. This person had evolved. This was real danger. It possessed knowledge and guile and strength. Will would have been dead by now, were he in the same situation from which they had rescued him. She wondered, as she felt herself grow giddy from the soft, impossible rhythms that her body was being sucked into, if the creature’s evolution had reached its ceiling yet. She wondered if, in a short while, it would be able to see them in the dark, if its eyes might develop some kind of thermal recognition now that it realised such a thing would be useful to it.

  Pondering this, she felt the moment upon her. She knew she was going to come soon and could not stop herself from upping the ante. Sean tried to respond by reining in her new energy but she would not be denied. The colours sparkled and pulsed, as if catalysed by this development.

  And Marshall saw.

  The colours coalesced, forming a vertical palette. Smears of fresh hues as the colours merged ran up and down the palette as it twisted, creating a column. The air around it seemed to distort, as if unsure what side of the column to be on.

  Emma bucked against Sean, beginning to make soft, yelping noises. Sean gave himself to the feeling too, and within a few strokes was there with her. They lurched apart at the moment of climax. Cheke was rushing them now, the glamour that was Marshall already reabsorbed. She shot twice, but the curtain of colour between them distracted her aim and the bullets were wayward. Dogs had started barking all around them. Lights were coming on in bedrooms. The third bullet caught Emma in the throat and she went down, clutching her neck with both hands. Somehow Sean managed to drag Emma into the maelstrom before Cheke laid her hands upon them. He had the final impression of her gun rising, level with his head, but he threw his arm across his eyes and toppled forwards into the cold fire. This time there were no faces in the flames, no incitement or enticement. None was needed.

  Now, as with the first time in Myddleton Lane, Sean rewarded his courage, or recklessness, with a scream that he believed would never end.