The Unblemished, page 31
‘I’m glad I went.’
‘Sorry?’
‘To the hospital, no matter what I keep saying. I’m glad I went. You were there, eventually.’
Bo smiled. It felt good in his face, but a little painful, as if he had called upon muscles to lift and carry that hadn’t been used for a long time. ‘That might not necessarily be a good thing. Nice of you to say, but it could turn out to be premature.’
‘I don’t think so. You’ve come this far. You did so much. You won’t let it happen now.’
‘It might be out of my hands.’
‘Then I won’t let it happen.’
Bo turned his head slightly. She studied the shape of his face, the longish nose and heavily lidded eyes. It was an angular face, although there was a softness in it too. It was hawkish, yet kind. He had strong hands – well, hand – and a deep chest, although he had clearly lost a lot of weight.
‘Claire,’ she said softly, so that her daughter would not hear.
Bo returned his attention to her. ‘Hm?’
‘The way you were looking at her.’
Bo shook his head, then seemed to come to some sort of decision. He said, ‘The lump. It’s not cancer. It’s no cyst. It’s one of these creatures. Well, not just one of them. It’s the reason all of this is happening.’
‘I don’t follow,’ Sarah said, through a mouth that seemed to be irising closed, drying out, turning frozen.
‘It’s the Queen.’
Sarah tried to laugh, but the sound escaping her lips was a collapse of air. ‘The Queen?’
Bo closed his eyes. He saw a dark wet sea of emerald green. He smelled the trapped fusty air beneath canopies; felt it settling like hoar-frost against his skin. He saw the reflected glitter of thousands of retinas as they drank in her shape, smelled the musk of her sex. The reek of butyric acid; the signal to noise. He felt a change in air pressure as they unfolded from their perches. Something huge blundered through the undergrowth. Blind. Mind addled by desire. The fresh scent of seed powering off it. Female screams deadened by the proximity of flesh.
‘Your daughter was raped.’
‘Oliver?’ Sarah gasped.
Bo frowned. He shook his head. ‘This was no human being.’
And now Sarah was gabbling about how she ought never to have let Claire out of her sight. Thinking they were safe, thinking they could get back to a normal life: boyfriends, jobs, college, a future. She told him about the boy, Edgar, in Liverpool. She could see in him now what she had seen in the thin man in Southwold. That unhinged look. That desire. Her daughter was the pooch in heat that all the scummy dogs in the neighbourhood were drooling and howling over.
‘I noticed something about them,’ she said, once she’d calmed down and enough quiet had filled the flat for her to imagine the conversation had not even taken place. ‘They seemed to be confused, blank. Like an old man raised on typewriters being given a laptop and expected to carry on without any help.’
‘That was happening while I was awake. They’ve moved beyond that now. They’re in charge, you might say.’
‘Who are they? What is it we’re in the middle of?’
He told her about Rohan Vero, who seemed to have been a part of his life that was so old now that he imagined him in sepia tones. He told her about the map, and his hand, and the strange organic grid that rippled behind his eyelids. He told her about the horrors of the graves, of Liverpool Road and Eton Avenue, of his life as a resurrectionist, deliverer of meals on wheels, unwitting trainer in the art of murder. He explained what he had learned by the osmosis that had come from living within a hair’s breadth of something at the polar extreme of what he believed himself to be. That they were ageless and sad, but not for pitying. That they had a genuine grievance against the city. That despite their slumber, they were already infiltrating every crevice and crack in London’s tired old body and were close to overrunning its heart.
‘But this happened so long ago,’ Sarah said. ‘They’re belly-aching to the wrong crowd.’
‘Eddie was right when he talked about forebears. It’s about bloodlines,’ he argued. ‘And, well, it’s about blood too. It’s as simple as that. You wake up, you’re hungry. They’re breakfasting like kings at the moment.’
‘On us.’
‘Yes. They’ve always had quite a taste for our kind of meat.’
She grimaced. ‘But they are us. They’re cannibals.’
‘No. They’ve evolved to look like us. A tiger walks down the high street and everyone fucks off. But you can get close to someone, close as you need to be, when you look like them.’
‘You look like us,’ Nick said, startling them both.
‘I’m not rising to it, Nick,’ Bo replied. ‘I’ve already told you. I’m in between. I’m dangerous. But I’m your best bet, too. I haven’t given in to the temptation and I don’t intend to.’
‘That’s what you say. But I’m warning you. You come near me and I won’t hesitate to stab this –’ he brandished a screwdriver ‘– right through your dirty little heart.’
‘Or maybe you could just shake my hand, depending on how all this turns out.’
‘We’re all going to die. That’s how this is going to turn out,’ Eddie said in a low voice, his attention on his daughter, who was sleeping against his arm.
‘That might well be the case,’ Bo said. ‘But it’s all about how you do it, isn’t it? I’m not going to die sitting on my arse in this room, pissing myself, puking, crying, begging them to take my daughter, not me.’
‘You don’t know if that’s how it will go,’ Eddie said, his head jerking up to meet Bo’s gaze full-on.
‘But you know it might,’ Bo said. ‘Give your daughter some hope, even if you don’t have any. Be a fucking father.’
Eddie looked as if he might take it further, but Lamb moved in her sleep, put her arm across his leg. He visibly slumped, the tension seeping out of him, and he placed his hand on her head, stroked her gently.
Bo looked at them all closely, each in turn. He was trying to see something that would trip them up, hinder them, weaken them. He saw it in all of them and none of them. Sarah’s weakness was the desperation of her search to free her child. It could conceivably compromise their aims, but then, that unshakeable drive was also her strength. He knew, from the moment he met her, that he was grateful she was on his side. Her single-mindedness would be a boon if she could channel it correctly at the critical moment. Of the others, only Claire seemed capable of seriously hampering their progress. Her weakness was obvious in the firm cluster of metallic blue that was visible in the yoke of her arm. She was staring back at him with a kind of baffled determination, as if she were unable to reconcile her condition with the bizarre grouping in which she found herself. Nick and Tina stood close together and Bo didn’t know which of them was the more scared. Tina plumped cushions on her sofa as if she were preparing for a marathon session in front of the TV rather than a suicidal dash across central London. Nick kept looking around, perhaps for a weapon, perhaps to keep himself busy so that his trembling would not be so apparent. There was also his barely disguised contempt for Bo and his jealousy at having been nudged out of some position of prominence, perhaps where Sarah was concerned. Bo wanted to disabuse him of the notion; that kind of thing was as far away from his mind as his hand was from his wrist. But they had no time to waste on cautious discussions, reassurances, promises. Bo felt sorry for them, but he had no choice but to force them through this hoop. To leave them here was to let them die.
Eddie and Lamb – she had woken up now – held on to each other and batted whispered reassurances to and fro. There was a slowness running through the group. They were lame backmarkers in a stampede of wildebeest. They were going to be taken down. But what else could they do but try?
‘Why can’t we just stay here?’ Tina was asking, again. ‘I mean, I stockpiled all this food. I mean, why did I go to all that trouble if we’re just going to run for it? And where are we going? Why is where we’re going any better than here? I mean, this is my flat. I should be making the dec–’
‘That noise again,’ Bo said, and Sarah heard it too, a faint rhythmic sound, like that of a spoon violently scraping the bottom of a pot. Bo stood up abruptly, causing the legs of the chair to skid on the floorboards. The sound stopped, but after a few seconds it began again, more urgently.
‘That’s not good,’ Bo said.
‘What isn’t?’ This was from Nick. Sarah thought that the faint hysteria in his voice made everything he said seem like some garbled code for I wish to fuck that I hadn’t clapped eyes on you.
‘That noise. I don’t like it.’
‘It sounds like something being scratched.’
‘Gouged, more like. It sounds like someone hacking through the wall with a chisel.’ As Bo cocked his head, he saw Sarah shift her position on the blankets she had been sleeping on. She made to rest her head on the elbow that she placed on the floor. Almost immediately she sat up and stared down at the bare wood.
‘Get up,’ he said to her. ‘Get up. Now.’
‘I felt this weird vibration,’ she said to him, pushing herself to her knees. ‘Coming right up through the –’
There was a deep snapping sound; the floorboard that she was levering herself up on burst apart, spraying splinters and blood in a sudden, shocking spume. Something white moved up through the breach until it was flush with the surface. Sarah’s jaw dropped and she scooted back on her arse, knocking over mugs of tea and knives, and cracking her head against the corner of a coffee table.
Teeth. Grinding up through the floor. She stared at them while blood leaked out of the wound in the side of her head, wondering why she couldn’t feel any pain, wondering, crazily, how she had discovered a wonderful new way to anaesthetise people: shock the living shit out of them. The teeth were bared, slicked with blood from their own beribboned lips. They thrashed and tore at the edges of the hole and were replaced by a hand with horribly long fingers, horribly long nails. At the same time a weight crashed against the front door of the flat, popping one of the locks clean off its housing.
‘Jesus fuck,’ Nick said.
Eddie said, ‘They’re coming through the door. The door! How do we get out?’
Bo turned to Tina and spread his hands. ‘Well?’
She was staring at the hissing, chomping mouth as it tried to gnaw off another chunk of wood. The hand reappeared, lashing around as if it could exercise an effective attack if only it could find something to grab hold of.
‘Tina. Now.’
‘There’s a hatch, just by the door. A hatch to the attic.’
‘Christ,’ Nick breathed. He was hopping from one foot to the other as if he were in desperate need of the toilet. ‘What was it you said about exits?’
‘We have no choice,’ Bo said, already moving. Sarah was at his heels. The others scrambled to their feet and dithered in the area between the front door and the ruined boards.
‘Is there a ladder?’ Bo asked.
‘You have to pull it down,’ Tina explained. ‘It’s folded into the hatch.’
The door bulged as more weight flew against it. Another lock sprang free. One of the bolts bent. A large split appeared down the centre.
‘What is it they’ve got, do you think?’ Lamb asked, her head against her father’s chest. Sarah thought that she looked as if she might try to burrow into his jacket at any moment. ‘An axe? A sledgehammer?’
‘Hunger,’ Bo said evenly. ‘And determination.’ He flipped the catch on the attic seal and a fold-up aluminium ladder concertina-ed into the hallway.
‘Come on,’ he said, clapping his hands. ‘Let’s go.’
‘You go first,’ Nick said.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Nick,’ Sarah said, and started up the ladder. She saw his nervous little look behind him and bet he had rued his challenge as soon as it was uttered. She had to believe it was safe up here. If it wasn’t, if they were as crazed as the attack made her believe, then they would be coming in through the ceiling, through the windows as well.
It was hellishly dark in the loft. She pulled herself up, then twisted around to duck her head back through the hatch, just as Nick was about to follow her through.
‘Tina, do you have a torch in your bag of tricks?’
She saw the other woman shrug off her rucksack, and then Nick was barrelling past her and she reached out her arms for Lamb, who was next. Then Eddie, then Tina, brandishing a large Maglite, then Bo.
‘I’m guessing we can’t lock the hatch from this side,’ he said.
‘No,’ Tina said.
‘At least we can pull this ladder up. That should stall them for a minute or two. Any luck with a route out of here?’
The beam from the torch picked out a surprisingly uncluttered, relatively dust-free space. A water tank, a few picture frames and a small box of cheap white crockery were the only stored items. There was an unpleasant stuffiness, a smell of mice and damp. The attic was walled in at each end of Tina’s flat space. There were no windows.
‘Shit,’ Bo said. ‘I was hoping this might be a communal attic, that it would run the whole length of the block.’
‘We’re fucked,’ Nick said.
Bo reached out and grabbed him by his shirt collars. Tina’s grip on the torch slipped as she recoiled from his violent reaction. Clownish light jounced around the ceiling boards. Some of them were rotten and cracked; she could see the silvery sarking beneath, the insulating barrier against the roof tiles.
‘Say that again and I’ll make sure you are,’ Bo said. ‘Let’s do this as a unit. We have to work together.’
‘Do what as a unit?’ Nick asked, but the aggression had fled his voice. There was an incredulity there now, born of the fatalist’s logic. ‘Die?’
Tina’s hand steadied in time for Sarah to see Bo push Nick away and move into the centre of the attic, where he was able to stand erect. From beneath them, the sounds of rending wood deepened and quickened. Another clatter as the third or fourth lock burst. They would be inside within a minute. Sarah imagined her blood on this attic floor. She didn’t want her body to be left here; this was no place to die. She didn’t want mice running over her. She didn’t want to be a fixture with a few tatty frames and chipped cups.
She reached up and tore away some of the fibrous insulation.
‘Cover your mouths,’ she said, and lifted her jersey to mask the sudden dense rain of dust and filaments.
‘Here,’ Bo said. ‘This one’s loose.’
‘This one too,’ Sarah cried.
‘Punch it out if you can. Use the butt of the torch. Use anything.’
Tina pushed through and cracked the rubber casing of the torch against the tile. It flew out of its position, causing a small landslide of slate. ‘If I’d known about this, I’d have had the managing agents in,’ she said. ‘Do you know how much my service charge is each year?’
‘We’ll never fit through that,’ Nick said. ‘There’s too much timber in the way.’
‘Much of it is rotten, Nick,’ Bo replied. ‘Come on, give us a hand. And watch out for nails.’
They all hit out at the slates and the battens they were positioned upon. Some of them gave way easily; other sections were more resistant. Sarah didn’t like how slowly they were progressing. At the moment they had a hole that Lamb would barely be able to fit through, let alone the larger members of the group. An almighty crash heralded the invasion. It wouldn’t take long before they realised what had happened. The thought that very soon she might be dead – or worse – turned her bowels to soup.
And then a large section of the ceiling simply gave up the ghost and slithered into the gap they had created. The noise was immense; if the creatures in Tina’s flat had been unsure of where they had vanished to, they knew now.
Bo was up through the fracture in no time, reaching back through it to help the others on to the roof. The cold slashed through Sarah’s thin woollens and she wished she’d slung on a coat before leaving. Underfoot, the tiles were slippery and steeper than they had appeared from the inside. Her legs wobbled a little when she realised how far up they were; there was nothing in the way of balconies or trees or soft earth to offer a barrier if she should trip and fall, just fifty feet in which to get used to the idea of soft meets very hard.
It didn’t help that the darkness was so complete up here. There were no streetlamps working, no ambient light of any kind. She could see a fire, though, on the roof of the Centre Point building; another on the summit of the BT Tower. Standing on that unstable roof, wondering if she should kick off her shoes so that she could gain a better grip with her toes, she thought about Christmas and the lack of decorations anywhere. She felt briefly panicked about what to buy Claire, whether she would appreciate some clothes, maybe some amber jewellery – she reckoned it would suit her eyes, her skin colour – and almost laughed out loud at the peculiar way the mind worked, at the impossibility of her situation.
Eddie came up last. Bo and Nick had him by the arms when he pulled a face. ‘My belt,’ he said. ‘It’s caught on something. Wait. Wait.’ The last word came out as a strangled runt of a sound. Bo could see enough of him to know he wasn’t wearing a belt. Something had hold of him.
‘Eddie,’ he said.
Eddie’s head snapped back. His grip on Bo’s hand suddenly went into spasm; Bo felt nails sinking into his flesh. Then the grip slackened just as swiftly. Eddie opened his mouth to say something, shook his head once and fell back through the hole, almost pulling Nick with him. They saw his mouth welling with blood, and then a horrible swarming as he was buried beneath dozens of bodies.
‘Run,’ Bo said.
They slipped and skidded along the apex, heading west, as far as Percy Street went. At the last section of roof before they met Rathbone Place, Bo paused to look out into the road to check their positioning. Sarah glanced at Nick, who was watching Bo, and she felt a strong belief that he might nip over to where Bo was crouching and push him off the edge. His body actually swayed towards Bo, and she couldn’t persuade herself that it was just his compensation in the teeth of a stiff winter wind. She moved quickly, positioning herself between the two men, looking back at Nick, whose expression was as flat as any of the slates they were standing upon.
